Ahhh sorry for the slow updates! As I said, updates will be much, much slower from now on. I'm in sports and clubs; the competitive seasons start now. It's super time-consuming and so tiring! is also malfunctioning with copy and paste so I'm cheating and using an old document to submit.
(honestly, I also fell really hard for a guy, made up my mind to try and hang out with him, and then my friend broke my heart by showing me he had a girlfriend...but it appears they have broken up, but I'm already in shambles so who the cheesecake even cares. I want to be cheese fondue)
DISCLAIMER: Gintama belongs to Sorachi Hideaki, and you know, if he wants to be a cheesecake, then let the man be a cheesecake. I approve 100%.
Eyes of Wolves
- 52 -
.: -KAIENTAI- SEPTEMBER, PRESENT :.
"Mutsu-taichou, wasn't that the Harusame?"
Mutsu slammed her fist on a button and the screen in front of her switched to a posterior camera.
Yes, that was the Harusame, complete with their entire 7th Division fleet spelling disaster for them all.
.: SEPTEMBER, PRESENT :.
"You could have killed them," Zenshi seethed, relaxing his grip on Tsukuyo's wrist.
"And you care, why?" He was mocking his son again. Linter was fully aware of the fact that Zenshi had grown attached to quaint little Earth; he had expected, knowing his son's nature, Zenshi to deter the women from leaving Yoshiwara. In fact, Linter had predicted, two hundred steps ago, that Harusame's former foothold on Earth would rebel. He had mistakenly assumed that his son was aggressive enough and chivalrous enough to shoulder the burden himself. A ridiculous assumption. Linter recognized his mistakes when he saw them, and he would not blame the grief of someone's death or the forlorn letters from his wife for his blunders.
Zenshi went deadly still.
"You know why."
.: SEPTEMBER, ONE WEEK AGO :.
He unclipped the clothes from the hanging line outside, handing them to Hinowa because she was stationary in her wheelchair.
It was then that Tsukuyo practically stalked outside, her heels sinking into the soft grass littered with a few early autumn leaves.
"Something the matter, Tsukki?" inquired Hinowa, holding out a large basket that Zenshi dropped one of Seita's yukatas into.
"I'm checkin' the west side today. I might be late fer dinner."
"That's fine. Don't push yourself too much, okay?" Hinowa always had such a sweet, motherly tone. It was hard to disobey. The woman wheeled around, basket in lap, to the end of the small courtyard garden where she traded it for another bin full of washed clothes to dry. Somehow, she had managed to develop a little laundry business for Yoshiwarans and Hyakka members alike.
While she was turned, Tsukuyo reached over and wrapped her fingers indignantly around his collar. She missed fabric and instead grabbed a golden chain that dangled from one of the ornaments. He was tempted to protest the abuse to his outfit, but the blonde courtesan shot up on her tiptoes and placed a haphazard kiss on jaw.
And then she turned, walked away with her maple leaf kimono falling in smooth lines around her legs, ignoring him for the rest of his stunned silence.
Hinowa smiled and pretended not to see.
.: SEPTEMBER, PRESENT :.
Night fell on Sciuttla far more quickly than expected. Long after Zenshi had turned in thick silence, giving his father the cold shoulder, the Kaientai had radioed in on a secure line. By then, the hotel had gone quiet, most of its refugee residents taking to rooms and cots and sequestered family squares for the night. The guests from Earth were divvied up into a few hotel rooms. The Hyakka were lucky enough to be offered one of the suites — which, unfortunately for the refugees, had been closed off to make arrangements fairer — while Zenshi and Sakamoto found a room nearby.
When Mutsu's call was patched through a series of bounced towers, Jenhao came immediately to his former lieutenant's door.
"Sir, we've got a problem." Jenhao, ever mild and patient, was uncharacteristically uneasy.
Zenshi nodded, waiting for him to go on.
"The Harusame's 7th is here."
.: SEPTEMBER, ONE WEEK AGO :.
She leaned towards him.
He caught her eye.
.: SEVEN YEARS AGO :.
Sometimes he cannot see his own feet in front of him, and it's not because of the dark.
Now is one of those times, but he moves forth nonetheless, leaving all certainty behind.
.: EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO :.
He clings to the edge of the metal table with pale fingers, just able to watch the quick flicker of his aunt's hands as they scissor back and forth. She executes everything with grace and strength, working so quickly as to prevent the Yato bones from weaving back together before she is done operating.
"Zenshi, come from his side and watch here." She points to a divot in the small child's head; it doesn't look normal, but it must've been from prongs that assisted in birth, Auntie explains. He watches with natural and abundant curiosity, falling in time with her delicate yet confident movements. The young Yato boy absorbs her technique instantaneously.
He remembers when she sets a broken arm.
He remembers when she amputates a man's leg at the knee.
He remembers when a young girl, broken and lost and emotionally bruised, comes in and Auntie simply listens when it's time to listen and speaks when it's time to speak, until the girl can stand up, less shakily than before, and walk home with less darkness in her eyes.
.: SEPTEMBER, PRESENT :.
Morning came with such rage and intense light that Zenshi hardly noticed the sun rise. He waited for about an hour after Jenhao's urgent announcement before stirring Tsukuyo, allowing the blonde courtesan a few more precious minutes of sleep they would lack for the next few days.
A large screen in the hotel's conference room was manned by several Sciuttlan Amanto, plus Jenhao and Linter. Mutsu appeared on the screen, with her men scuttling about behind her.
"As you can see, we're skirting the southern borders," she inflected in her pragmatic, monotone voice. "The Harusame touched down as soon as we left. I'm pretty sure they noticed us."
Alongside the main projector, a few women were monitoring screens sporting bright, moving radars and dots. From the frequency of little green dots on the black panels, Zenshi assumed they were airway traffic monitors. There was a large, pulsating target on one particular green speck; most likely, it was the Kaientai's fleet.
"Uncle," Mutsu said through the microphone, urgently. "I have reason to believe they're tailing us."
Almost in unison, Linter and Zenshi checked the blinking screen, scanning from larger green icons to the smaller ones. Indeed, a tiny blip was wading back and forth behind Mutsu's last ship, and it was unidentified. Most of the stats on the board could be magnified, naming each ship — merchant, travel, private — and official destination. For Mutsu to be traveling along the southern edge of the city, where a long, secured wall separated city from vast plains cut only by a desolate transcontinental train, meant she was off the air traffic regulations.
"I see," Linter responded. "Do you have visual on them?"
"Occasionally." Mutsu transferred their communications camera to that of one of the smaller ship's. "There."
A little space yacht floated in and out of few, weaving behind a few sparse, old buildings and intermingling with a couple of wayward travelers on the same path. The government seemed to fail to notice that the little southern alleyway, the gap between city and rolling hills, was a highway for incognito travelers.
"That's definitely theirs," Zenshi confirmed. "I typically used that one."
"Of course you did," sighed Mutsu, but not unkindly. "All right, we have confirmation," she called over her shoulder as the camera refocused on her seat. "Let them know in the Left Arm's bridge."
Never a very congenial girl, Mutsu hardened her glare and stared squarely into the camera.
"Plans? Zenshi?"
He appreciated the fact that she naturally addressed him first, but was hardly cordial in accepting his father's interruption.
"Let them follow. It's simply a reconnaissance type ship. Find their motives first. We may gain the upper hand," Linter instructed definitively, expunging any sort of evasive tactics Mutsu might have prepared.
"Bad idea," Tsukuyo suddenly broke in. "This is the Harusame."
Everyone looked at her, but the courtesan of death was pallid and stoic. Zenshi felt a glib pride in her confidence, in her unwavering stance. It mattered not that she was the only human in the room, that she was a woman and a foreigner. She was Tsukuyo.
And her statement was completely valid — this was, indeed, the Harusame, and its most powerful fleet nonetheless.
"Tsukuyo is right," Zenshi affirmed. "Reconnaissance or not, they are capable of taking down an armada twice the size of the Kaientai. I'm not underestimating you, Mutsu, but it's fair warning."
"You seem to forget that my father was a pirate," deadpanned Mutsu. "I know very well what we're capable of, and what they're capable of. And if that new lieutenant is anything to go by, the extent of their experience is clear as day."
"I see you remember my loudmouthed aide, then?"
"Who wouldn't?" Mutsu rolled her eyes. "Does it appear to be her?"
"They're weaving in the typical fashion I order, so yes, I'd say so."
"How delightful. Get my captain out here." Mutsu waved her hand.
"He's asleep."
At this, Mutsu didn't seem surprised.
That is, until an officer burst into the room, the camera was jolted from its position, and someone yelled, "Hard to port side!" and the line went black.
.: SEPTEMBER, ONE WEEK AGO :.
"What are you guys doing?" asked Seita, making a face. Hinowa was horribly tempted to laugh aloud, but knew it was a brash action, so she bit her lower lip and waited for the young man and the young woman to reply to her son.
"I am instructing Tsukuyo in the ancient art of laundry folding," Zenshi informed the boy flatly, so genteel in the way he smoothed a florid, gaudy yukata. He pitied the man who owned the dreadful thing. There was a certain extent to which one wondered what kind of people came to Hinowa's modest Laundromat.
"It's laundry."
"Do ya want to do this or homework?" Tsukuyo spat, crumpling a fine shirt in her hands. Zenshi cast her a sidelong glance, and she seemed to realize what she was doing. "Or do ya want to iron this?"
"I ain't doin' nothin'," Seita drawled, mimicking her accent. Her face flushed, and she got to her feet, which sent the boy flying out the door with a grin on his face.
"Well hey," Hinowa said softly, "You got rid of him. And thank you for helping me, both of you."
"You can't possibly do all this on yer own," Tsukuyo reasoned. "How many people came in today?"
"Over forty. And most of them need custom tailoring."
"What's the big deal?"
"Soyo-hime is having a banquet."
"And thus, Tsukuyo, the ancient art of folding." Zenshi touched her elbow; she sat back down.
They leaned towards each other, and Hinowa, again, pretended not to notice.
.: SEPTEMBER, PRESENT :.
When the camera flashed back on, the supposedly secure line had been intercepted, and an all too familiar face appeared.
"Wow, I can even see you guys," drawled the 7th Division lieutenant. "Mucchi, you would think that secure lines are secure."
"Well, sorry," Mutsu snarled, appearing on another half of the screen as her camera was rebooted. "You didn't have to shoot a missile at us, either."
"Hey, your last ship didn't heed our warning," Mei replied easily. "Now, who are we talking t—"
"Unrestricted missile warfare on merchant ships was banned by the Intergalactic Admiral's Pledge thirteen years ago. Would you like to be detained for violating airway traffic laws?"
There was terse silence, and then Mei said:
"Zen?"
But then the next voice that came in belonged to Tabs, and he interjected:
"Unrestricted and unwarned missile warfare, Lieutenant."
Obviously, the former aide and the technician were rather incapable of holding mature conversation, because Mei went off on a tangent and began chastising the poor boy for calling Zenshi their lieutenant, and then went onto harp about Zenshi himself.
"Mutsu." Zenshi nodded at his cousin, who then opened up the video connection and allowed the Harusame to see Zenshi in a narrow window, revealing nothing else of the conference room. The tall, dark-haired Yato stared impassively at his friend, whose cropped hair looked brighter than before and whose eyes flaunted about a tad less. "Mei, has the position matured you at all?"
But the easy, level smirk on Mei's face dropped. She flashed the ring on her left index finger, as did Tabs.
"Perhaps," she said, nearly inaudibly. "But I can't make any suspicious moves now, can I? Now…"
Mutsu's end of the camera rattled and shook; most likely another vital hit.
"Lights out, Lieutenant."
Okay, so this chapter was super duper hard to write, but hey I got it out.
You have some ZenTsu (yey)
and some other stuff...
Questions? Comments? I know the end if kind of lacking...I just wanted to get through with it and give you guys something haha...XD
