The position that they had chosen was a strategic one, where there were great slopes of green grass which could force the battalions of the Imperial Army to funnel from them, which would break their formation, where escape would be difficult. "Green fields, the cool breeze of spring, the blue skies above…" Miryu said whilst scanning the scenery around them, "This place should be a picnic spot, not a battlefield…" The warriors around her broke into a bout of laughter, suddenly aware of the irony around them. She remembered well that she chose to fight with the blade of her katana reversed the last time she was in battle, and this time, she was sure that she would fight as she always had, for there was no use of a glorious and suicidal last stand of sorts if there was one among the suicidal madmen who fought, but cut no enemy down.
"Well, this is all it boils down to," Graham said to her, patting Yuki lightly. "I wish you good luck, my dear." She smiled, and said that she survived thus far because of sheer luck, and this time, she was unsure if Lady Luck still liked her enough to grant her some more. "You'll pull through, don't worry." They would all be dead if she did not, Graham thought to himself, with Miryu being one of Japan's greatest warriors in every sense of the word.
With shining eyes of sapphire, her gaze was directed to the hill before them, where there were three horsemen, dressed in full uniform. Under the glare of sunlight, she could not recognize their faces, but she could see that one among them was of smaller and bulkier stature, and the anger from that man was so evident in his own Ki, or the lack thereof… Omura was there, he was there to see them die, either in utter glory, or in utter shame. At Katsumoto's call, she quickly rode with him and Algren, followed by Ujio to meet them. It did not take long for her to recognize the other two riders: one of them was Colonel Bagley, the man she loved to hate, and the last one, was Gant's NCO, the young and pleasant soldier that she was sure that the Irishman had taken a liking to before his untimely death.
"Sir, the Imperial Army of Japan demands your surrender. If you and your me- er… fellows lay down your arms, you will not be armed," Bagley said to Katsumoto, fumbling slightly on his words when he saw Miryu next to Algren once again. Damn, was that woman as hard to kill as Algren was, or was she just invincible? Katsumoto simply stated that his surrender would be impossible, as Omura had already known. It was then when Bagley cast a poisonous look at Algren and Miryu. "Captain Algren, we will show no quarter. You and your bodyguard ride against us, and you are the same as they are."
Algren gave him a wry smile, and replied, "I'll take that as a compliment, Colonel… and Miryu here won't be holding back this time." Omura looked disgusted at the loving smile Algren and Miryu shared at the former's remark, and decided to keep his silence. In the matter of seconds, the girl and the American would be killed by the massive numbers of his men, and he would not have to set eyes upon the two of them ever again.
The attempt made by the Imperial Army had failed, and they would have no other choice but to use military force. It was a strange experience for Miryu, fighting against an army, for during the Bakamatsu, she had been killing men who were not soldiers. She was simply killing other warriors, whether they were samurai of serving the Bakufu, who hardly attacked in single units, or a rag-tag group of whatever the enemy could throw at her. It was something that she looked forward to, a welcome change, to say the least.
Just after the moment Algren had told Graham to stay by the horses, and had given him all his journals, he returned to Katsumoto and Miryu's side. "What happened to those three hundred warriors at Thermopylae?" Katsumoto asked the two of them.
"Dead to the last man," Algren answered without hesitation, with a knowing smirk on the corner of his lips, causing Miryu to smile at both men. There seemed to be a strange bond formed between Katsumoto and Algren, one that transcended cultures, one of brotherhood. "Well, perhaps we'll be luckier, with Miryu here…"
She scowled playfully, and asked, "Am I some sort of good-luck charm now?" However, their playful banter was interrupted by the impact of a howitzer round upon the ground, a mere eight feet away from them. They were out of range, but not for long… It would take a simple adjustment of firing angle before the howitzer rounds would be able to fall around them, and just moments later, a few among them were already killed by a single round. Now, the enemy's range was perfect.
Quickly, Algren told Katsumoto to tell the men to fall back, and fall back they did. Before long, they had caught side of the first division that the Imperial Army sent towards them, and no one need telling that Omura wanted a full-scale attack against them. Behind the wooden barricades, the samurai waited for the soldiers to fire at them, and when they did, the effect was staggering. Many among them had fallen after only two volleys, and that was when Algren gave a signal, at which a single archer, second only to the late Nobutada, fires a flaming arrow which landed accurately at a cache of pitch, which created a terrifying wall of flames that enveloped the soldiers.
With their escape blocked, Katsumoto ordered the rest of the archers to fire, and before long, the soldiers were annihilated. "They will call for a second wave," Miryu said, unsheathing her katana. "Omura is an impatient man…" He would put up all the stops he could until every single one of them was killed. "And we are running out of tricks here."
"What do you suggest, Miryu?" Katsumoto asked, he was open to any suggestions at that particular time, and Miryu had proven herself to be quite… creative in such matters. Her answer was that they abandoned all creativity and just meet them head on, which she reasoned with much eloquence, was the only way they could do it. "You are indeed a genius…" he commented, before giving the order.
From then on, every single one of the samurai lost track of time. All they knew was that they had to fight with everything they had, and fight, they did. The bell on Miryu's katana was ringing constantly, and it seemed to all those that looked upon her that she fought with effortless ease. The sapphire orbs of Tsubasa Battouryu from that moment on became coated with a shade of gold, the eyes of the legendary hitokiri. She had known no hatred towards them, but her resolve to defend her own people was so strong that it had replaced what rage she had in her heart. A student of the Hiten-Mitsurugi Ryuu served no master, and now, she was fighting on her own terms, in her own manner. Yes, she may be assigned as Algren's bodyguard by the Emperor, but even her servitude under His Imperial Majesty as under no formal bond, but her own willingness to act as his bodyguard, and now, she was "on loan" to Algren until she was married, per the Emperor's edict.
"She's good," Bagley commented, looking at Miryu through his binoculars. He had never seen her fight before, and this was the first. With her back to Algren's, it seemed that the stories he had heard of the female dragon that brought Kyoto into a river of blood came true before his eyes, and with her skill, not only Algren, but many others were left unscathed. "Would it be wise to take Miss Tsubasa out first?" His suggestion fell upon deaf ears, for Omura saw nothing now, no reason so long winning the battle remained his goal. Turning towards the NCO, he asked, "Son is Miss Tsubasa really as invincible as you Japanese claim she is?"
The NCO dared not answer the question. As a youth, he had fought in the same battlefield as Miryu before, and he remembered the amber glow of her eyes as she crossed swords with Harada Sanosuke of the Shinsen-Gumi, and the power that all could feel from her… That experience had been shocking enough to see her behead two men with one strike of her sword, decapitating several more in rapid succession; nothing had been gorier to his eyes…
With the advance of the reinforcements for the first division, Katsumoto gave the order for Ujio's cavalry unit to emerge, forming attacks in three separate directions, screaming, charging towards the advancing soldiers. It would be a battle to be remembered by the textbook authors of warfare, Miryu smiled to herself as she impaled a young soldier in the chest with her katana. His form had been good, but his footwork so bad that it was not worth a mention, and if he had met with opponents like Nakao or Ujio, he would have been worse off.
Next to her, she heard a man calling out Agren's name, and found it to be Silent Bob, diving to save Algren from a bullet, but she was even faster: Throwing her wakizashi into the soldier's chest, before he could have fired the shot, saving both men at the same time. Silent Bob bowed to her in gratitude, while Algren just pulled her close to him for a quick kiss, appalling the elder to no end. "Be careful, Captain," she murmured before instinctively ducking a swing of the bayonet and performing an almost acrobatic leap before killing the soldier with what was known as Ryu-Tsui-Sen of the Hiten-Mitsurugi Ryuu, the Flash of the Dragon's Hammer, an attack that ended with the soldier being spilt vertically into half.
Before they knew it, three thousand men had been sent to their deaths, three thousand men who faced 500 samurai, including a gaijin and a woman, 500 samurai who were armed with only the weapons that had been and still were the pride of their ancestors. Omura had began to panic, and told Bagley to send the reserves, seeing that only a hundred now remained, as if the gods had granted him victory finally. "Miryu… where are you?" Algren called, before he found his beloved, standing not far from Ujio, who had already been gravely wounded. "You have to get out of here!" he shouted, knowing that Omura and Bagley would send the heavy artillery in, and there would be no hope for survival.
"I won't leave this battlefield, Captain Algren, whether you like it or not!" she shouted back, staying her ground. She knew that she had seen this before, in a dream, in a dream so long ago… Why did some of her dreams have to be prophetic in nature? This was where she belonged, in the battlefield, free, and fighting for her people, and even Nathan Algren could not sway her. In her dream, he and Katsumoto managed to convince her to escape, but not this time. She was staying, and she made him see why by killing another soldier before him, allowing the poor boy's blood to splatter onto Algren's red armor. "I am a samurai just as they are, and if I die here, I would have died as a student of the Hiten-Mitsurugi Ryuu, living in its principles and dying by it!"
Defeated, Algren put his arm hand on her shoulder, and looked at her for one moment before continuing to kill the soldiers around them. They fought until the soldiers stopped advancing, and they knew very clearly that it was not a sign of victory. Three thousand soldiers had been felled, and four hundred samurai… But what was a hundred samurai against the remaining two thousand reserves, and the full might of the artillery?
The last charge of the horsed samurai was a glorious one. They had been assaulted by many howitzer rounds, but they were undaunted, and when they were out of range, and they resonated fear into the hearts of the soldiers. Volley after volley did not seem to kill them, and when Algren saw that the time was right, he took his katana, reversed its grip and threw it directly into Bagley's chest before pulling it out when he rode past his former superior, honoring his promise to kill him for free.
Just a little more… just a little more, and they would have reached the Gatling guns, and Miryu would be able to cut them down, but it seemed like it had never been their fate to achieve it. When almost all the riders had been killed, when only naught but twelve or fifteen remained, they were shot by the Gatling guns. Dropping from her horse, Miryu executed once again, the ougi of the Hiten-Mitsurugi Ryuu, Amakakeru-Ryu-No-Hirameki, killing all those before her at point-blank range. It was a sight more magnificent than the telling of ancient tales, that at least ten men fell victim to the claws of a dragon.
Falling onto the green grass next to Algren, she found that only she, Algren and Katsumoto remained alive… Ujio had been shot to his death, Nakao killed earlier, while Silent Bob disintegrated by a howitzer round… The circle was complete… and the battle was over. They were defeated, and by the gods, did they make a last stand. Moving towards one another, bleeding profusely, they did not notice that the soldiers around them had stopped their attacks, and something most miraculous happened.
The young NCO deliberately disregarded Omura's orders to kill them, and took off his hat. With utmost reverence, he knelt down and prostrated before the three survivors, with the others rapidly following suit. The battle had been won by the Imperial Army, but the war in the name of the samurai's lives and their way of life, it had been won by the samurai themselves. Nothing could change that, not even Omura's seeming rage.
"Help me up," Katsumoto told the two of them, giving Algren his sword. The American refused to help Katsumoto, but he replied that by their traditions, Miryu could not do so, and he had wanted to die by his own honor. Reluctantly, he took Katsumoto's life, with Miryu holding his hand, steadying the katana for him. "They are all perfect…" were his last words, and when Algren and Miryu turned around, they saw a sakura tree, with the most beautiful blossoms… Katsumoto had finally found what he had wanted to find, and he was in peace.
But there was more than that waiting for the man and woman who fought for the samurai, the sole survivors of what seemed to be a hopeless cause. "We are yours to kill now," Miryu told the young NCO. "Do so as you see fit…" she shouted in Japanese, knowing that Algren would understand her words. However no bullet round came… All of the soldiers remained as they were, prostrate, honoring their enemies. They were destined to live, and they had received the honor to do so. Overcome with gratefulness, and with grief, relief, and a myriad of other emotions, the two of them returned the gesture, and when they rose, they were awarded with countless applause.
The young NCO walked towards them and picked up Katsumoto's katana, cleaning the blade, and sheathing it before wrapping it in a sheet of silk that he seemed to have prepared. "Tsubasa-san, Algren-taicho, the Emperor has told me that he would see you should you survive," he told them in his native tongue. Perhaps they had survived the battle, but what fate the Emperor had in store for them, they did not know… Bowing, they agreed to return to Tokyo with what remained of the Imperial Army, and were treated like honored heroes of the battle, given the best treatment and care until they were well enough to enter the gates of the palace, almost a week after the battle.
"No matter what happens, I'll be by your side," Miryu said to Algren before they were ushered into the imperial throne room. "If death awaits me, then so be it."
For the slightest moment, Algren gathered her into his arms and held her as best he could without injuring himself, and kissed her on her forehead. "I know…" he murmured, and walked into the throne room with her, one hand holding hers, and Katsumoto's katana in the other.