Saizo(A.K.A. Evil-guy) glared at the girls for a while, before he slowly turned around. Somehow, even his back gave off an angry vibe and Sanne was very glad he wasn't standing close to her. Myrthe seemed to keep her cool, more thinking along the lines of 'Oh dear... Troublesome...'
The other samurai shoot angry glances at the girls, however silently checked on them if they were alright. Sanne tried to smile at Sasuke, but he only tried to copy the extreme angry vibe Saizo was giving. He didn't succeed completely, but nonetheless, Sanne itched away from him.
When all the samurai were fully facing the army of surprised mermaids, Saizo demanded all attention with one word. "Leave."
The mermaids hissed, growled and did some other weird things while backing away from the samurai, knowing, they couldn't win this fight.
Sanne stuck out her tongue at them and Myrthe smirked, which resulted in some more hissing. Even so, they slowly retreated and Myrthe couldn't refrain from yelling a "Yeah, cowards, run while you can! Run from our wrath!" She wanted to start evil cackling but one look from Saizo over his shoulder shut her up again.
Just before the mermaids were fully out of sight, the mermaid they first met turned around and looked Myrthe directly in the eyes.
"Evil seeks evil, wrath seeks wrath." She said mysteriously.
"Uh-huh. Sure." Myrthe said, waving her hand in a dismissing motion. She was already getting in a crouching position to crouch over to her friend without being noticed by the very angry samurai.
With a final huff, the last mermaid disappeared.
"Whew!" Sanne sighed in relief. "Glad that that's over."
Myrthe had now begun her crouching, but was suddenly grabbed at the collar of her kimono and lifted up in the air. She flailed widely. "Can you NOT!" she asked frustrated. She then was promptly released. Normal people would have landed upright, she hadn't been lifted that high, but Myrthe was already coming close to face fisting the ground again.
Luckily, she was straightened by a firm grip on her arm, almost too firm. She didn't even have to look to know who was manhandling her and she wouldn't give Evil-guy the pleasure of showing him her pain, so she decided to stare daggers at random objects.
"Pff, Mi-chan, you almost fell..." Sanne started to say laughing but the angry, displeased looks of the samurai made even her shut up. Not wanting to be at the receiving end of their anger, she made herself as small as possible.
Both of the girls were expecting an angry tirade, but instead of that, they got something even worse. The silent treatment.
The guys began to walk, Hanzo at the front of the group followed by Myrthe, who was flanked by Munenori and Rennoshin. Evil guy was walking behind them, and Myrthe could just feel his angry glare burning.
Behind him was Sanne, flanked by Goemon and Sasuke, and at the back of the group was Musashi.
The girls were separated, obviously so, but Sanne was too scared to protest and Myrthe thought it wiser to stay silent for now. They walked that way for a while, until there was quite a distance between them and the waterfall. Hanzo gave a hand signal, but Myrthe didn't notice and Sanne was too far at the back to even see it.
So when the guys suddenly unpacked their stuff and seemed to set camp, the girls didn't immediately know what was happening.
Though Myrthe was silently watching, and eventually began to guess she had missed some kind of signal, Sanne thought that the sudden change was caused by an attack and quickly did her best imitation of a karate pose. This gave her some strange looks, but the samurai were getting accustomed to the girls' antics and quickly dismissed it.
The pose, of course, looked ridiculous. More so because Sanne accidentally hit herself in the progress. Myrthe let out an unladylike snort and Sanne relaxed a bit. She wanted to say a lot of things, but still didn't dare, so she began to wildly gesture towards her friend, who was sitting at quite a distance from her.
Myrthe and Sanne had both been put on the ground. Sanne was making angry faces, then looked confused and pointed to the guys.
Myrthe shrugged and ticked on her forehead, before gesturing to the group of men. Sanne snickered and Myrthe joined her, but one angry look later and they fell silent.
The spot the samurai had chosen for the camp seemed really well picked. It was a fairly small area without trees so they could easily set up a campfire and all sleep around it. Sasuke and Musashi were already starting to gather wood to make a fire, while Rennoshin was looking at the wounds of Cassim. The blue ice-cold substance, which the spears of the mermaids had left behind, wasn't visible anymore, but the frostbite had caused some small looking wounds on Cassim. Luckily, they didn't seem to be so bad since Rennoshin just took a bottle out of his bag and started to put the contents of it on Cassim's wounds. After he was done, he looked at Myrthe's arm, and put very few of the ointment on her wound before helping the rest of the guys set up camp. It was done in a few minutes. Since it didn't seem like it would rain, they didn't need any shelter, and the samurai always build their camp in a way that they could leave within a few minutes if found necessary. After the samurai were done, they all sat around the newly-made fire. Each of them grabbed random stuff out of their bags and started reading, cleaning swords or just relax around the campfire.
Now Myrthe tried to start a gesture conversation, but her hand was forcefully put to the ground by Munenori.
"What is your problem?" Sanne finally yelled, getting fed up with their behavior.
"What is OUR problem?" Goemon answered, positively fuming. "You two! That's our problem!"
"What did we ever do?" Sanne shrieked, balling her fists.
"Oh, 'What did we ever do' she asks. Well, you-" But Goemon was interrupted by a hand on his shoulder. He looked up to see Hanzo, shaking his head.
Sanne was ready to yell some more, but Myrthe had finally managed to make her way over, under the watchful eye of Rennoshin and Saizo, and halted her.
"Sanne, we should apologize."
"What? Why?" Sanne asked, bewildered.
"Because," Hanzo started. "You ran away from us, from your destiny, to bring not only yourself but the entire world in danger." He let the words sink in for a moment, and looked from the emotionless face of Myrthe to the confused one of Sanne. "Do you have any idea what happens when the Samurai princesses die? The world will get out of balance. Natural disasters will occur without stopping, tons of people will die and that's only the tip of the iceberg. Once the princesses awaken, the world will depend on them. Depend on the power Mother Nature has granted them. If that power suddenly disappears, chaos will ensue."
"... I was more thinking of apologizing because we ran away only to need to be rescued, but that is a good reason to apologize too..." Myrthe mumbled.
"Wait, wait." Sanne said, becoming pale. "So, we could have died right there?"
"Weren't the deadly spears enough indication for you?" Myrthe deadpanned.
"B-but, I thought, maybe they just wanted to capture us and-"
"Mermaids don't capture humans." Musashi said. "They kill. It is their nature. Never has there been a mermaid that left a human alive willingly. It are beings of pure evil, how could you not have known this?"
"Well, in our world they are cute things that fall in love with a prince and brush their hair with forks and-" Sanne got some pretty weird looks again so she quickly added "I'll shut up now."
"Silence indeed." A calm ice-cold voice suddenly spoke up. All the samurai and the two girls were now looking at Saizo.
He looked at the girls with an equally ice-cold glare. "Whichever excuse you two want to come up with is fine by me. Just do not, even for one moment, think that we will find it good enough to bring yourself, but more importantly everyone around here in danger."
He looked away from them in the fire that has just been made. "You two should have never left us" after a few seconds of silence he looked at them with a now extremely angry glare, "it was the most irresponsible thing that you two could've done. What would you two have done if those mermaid had decided to fight after we came to you girls aid? We would have to protect you two. And knowing their nature, they could've definitely killed some of us, simply because of the fact that you two cannot protect yourself. And Cassim, Sanne, your loyal companion, your lifetime friend, you brought an immense danger over him like this. What would you have done if he had protected you and thereby had given his life? Then how could you have lived with yourself further on?"
Myrthe and Sanne were now completely silent. Myrthe knew that Saizo was right and that they never should've done such an irresponsible thing. But still, where was their choice? They now knew that they had made a mistake, but how would they know that these guys would do so much for them? Sure, they could say a lot, but now they had seen them keeping their word. And it made them feel irresponsible, small and childish.
Sanne was mostly feeling guilty about the fact that she had put her little Dango in so much danger. Saizo was right, what if he had died? She couldn't explain how she got the bond with Cassim so quick, but she did, and she would've been devastated if he had died, for her. And what if she had died? Out of all the things that Saizo said, she just kept thinking about only those two things.
Saizo however, wasn't done yet. The, now scared, girls just made themselves as little as possible to listen what else he had to say.
"And don't forget, that you have now alerted the mermaids. Evil as they are, they must've started informing our foes. And to say that that is going to be a problem is an understatement. Knowing that you two are still in a very, very early stage of fighting and protecting, they will come and try to dispatch of you two as quickly as possible."
Myrthe was silently praying that she would never make Evil-guy angry again, because hell, he was definitely scary when he was this angry. Especially because he didn't raise his voice once. He just talked in that icy, soft, angry voice.
"We are really sorry" Myrthe said sincerely towards Saizo and then turned to the other samurai, "really sorry."
Sanne whom was still thinking about the almost-losing of Cassim joined in. "Yes, very sorry."
Saizo just looked at them, and didn't say anything, just looked. As if he was measuring their sincerity on this one.
After Saizo just stayed silent, Rennoshin took the word after a few minutes of silence. "So, I really hope you two did learn something out of this and remember this, but let's now just all be happy that they are still alive."
He looked around and found agreeable looks on the rest of the samurai's faces. It seemed that they thought that Myrthe and Sanne had been punished enough by the angry tirade that Saizo had given them. Besides, all that needed to be said, had now been said. If they were sincere in their apology and really understood, no further anger needed to be shown. The samurai were also happy that this little 'adventure' didn't cause any bloodshed by any party.
"Yea" Sasuke began with this usual cheerfulness "at least you two understand and are back now!"
"Time will learn" Saizo just said.
"Still, couldn't you tell the 'when we die so does the world' business, I don't know, SOONER?" Myrthe finally said after a tense silence caused by the last sentence of Saizo. "You see, we're not really, you know, used to something major like that."
"I guess that was our mistake." Musashi sighed. "We didn't think you were stupid enough to get in such danger so soon."
"Hey!" Sanne yelled offended, but Myrthe just did her usual shrug.
"Besides, normal people know this stuff."
"Oh excuse me, could you please define NORMAL? It's not like seven guys who call themselves the protectors of the samurai princesses are any normal, are they now? " Sanne asked.
"Nice touch of sarcasm, Sanne." Myrthe said, patting her friend on the shoulder. Her pupil really was growing up, and she wiped away an imaginative tear(Myrthe basically learned Sanne all the sarcasm she used).
"Thanks, Mi-chan." Sanne said with a cheeky grin, before quickly sobering up and muttering a "But really, thank you for saving us, I guess..." to the samurai.
"Yes" Myrthe added, "thank you, we would've been fish food if it weren't for you guys." And again, she was silently smirking about her fish joke, despite her honest gratefulness, luckily only Sanne noticed.
The men slowly nodded, and the tension subsided a little.
While the final preparations were made for the night by the samurai and Sanne who was trying to make it up to the guys, Myrthe sat down and kept pondering the burden they were apparently carrying. Sanne hadn't picked up that 'little detail', because she stopped thinking when they were told they were in a live-dead situation and that Cassim could've gotten hurt too, but Myrthe couldn't just let it go. When they died, chaos would ensue. But still, if they died, there was a chance they would return to their own world. They couldn't just let all these people here die, but what if these people were frictions of her imagination? Because, yeah, she admitted that minds in general could be pretty messed up so probably capable of such a treat. Then dying together with the fictional world shouldn't be a problem. Still, Myrthe didn't want to risk the lives of that many people to a gamble and decided to try and stay alive, though she was of course trying pretty hard already.
Another problem of the whole thing was that they were bound to get in a lot of dangerous situations, being the special-sparkly-sparkly-princesses and all.
Saizo and Hanzo were thinking about the same danger and were quietly whispering with each other, mostly so that the girls wouldn't hear because the other samurai had been trained to pick up even the faintest noise and could probably hear it all.
"Now that the mermaids know, it's only a matter of time before the other 'evil beings' heard it. The first pursuers will likely reach us in about two or three days already. We have to take precautions."
Saizo nodded and took a glance at the girls. Myrthe was knocked on the head by Sanne for not help throw wood in the fire, and now rubbing the sore spot with a scowl. The Dango was sitting at their legs, happily barking. What had they done to such a sacred beast...?
"We have to train them more in a shorter time span." Saizo decided, shifting his glance to Hanzo again.
"I agree. Let's take them to a clearing tonight to learn the first things. They can't be allowed rest anymore."
That being decided, the two men slowly approached the girls, who were startled and thrown out of their conversation by two looming shadows, soon followed by the other samurai who had indeed eavesdropped on the exchange of Saizo and Hanzo.
"Is something wrong?" Sanne asked innocently.
Myrthe looked suspicious from one man to another, before catching on. "Ooooooh no." she said.
"Nope, nope, not a chance." she now was shaking her head, while Sanne was getting more and more confused.
"What's going to happen?" Sanne asked.
"You girls," Goemon said with an evil glint in his eyes. "Are going to get the training of a life time."
Moonlight phonex101: YEEY, thank you for reviewing, as always:D and we're really glad that you liked this chapter. And not to worry, there will be probably a lót of weird things coming….*cough cough*(if we don't judge you, you'll don't judge us okay, then we're both just weirdXDXD)
And sooo happy that you really like our little story:D and 2,000 stories O.O, that are a shitload of stories right there.
And about the space, that is probably Myrthe's fault since she makes the LONGEST CHAPTERS, ALWAYS, so Sanne feels guilty then and makes longer chapter tooXD
Sanne is actually now sitting next to me nodding severely. She slept over, and I had a nice conversation with her…in her sleep….yeah….
And the scolding was actually pretty hard since we're both so into the story that Sanne actually gets mad at the samurai XD and sits here like "do they even have the right to be mad?" XD (maybe a little weird, but at least we're dedicated to this story:D
We'll be off to Italy in a few days so we're gonna have tons of fun, see ya after that!
Stay awesome and review please:D