Four figures sat in the dimly lit room, each of them slouched in a chair facing the table between them. Each focused on the pair of letters before them. All united in trying to deal with the knowledge the letters brought them.
Their mother was dead.
"Is there any chance that this is some... terribly tasteless joke? Or just a lie?" the only woman among the four asked, sounding something between desperate and resigned.
The middle brother, still clad in the white robes of his office, shook his head, "None, I checked the letters, and asked the girl, neither lied."
The woman sneered at the mention of her mother's messenger. Pale, flawless skin and painted, red lips twisted into an ugly expression at least half motivated by grief. Her fists clenching the fine silk of her robes.
"One of us will have to go to her house," the eldest said dully, unknowingly interrupting his sister, "take care of her body. Decide what to do with what's left." There were several beats of silence before he turned to look at his sister, "It'll have to be you, Saki."
The woman was jolted out of her own thoughts, "Why me? I understand why you can't, Hayato. But surely Sōma or Takeshi could go instead?"
Sōma shook his head, "The Daimyo isn't going to let me go anytime soon. The Stone/Cloud/Mist alliance is up to something. They're being way too accommodating on price negotiations for weapons and chakra metal lately, especially as they're buying in bulk. Our Lord wants me around to make sure it's nothing pointed at us."
Takeshi just raised an incredulous eyebrow, "You really want me to be the one organizing anything?"
His three siblings winced at the memory of the last time their youngest brother had packed anything. They were still looking for a few family antiques from when they had moved to the capital in the first place.
Saki slumped in her chair, "Fine. I'll go and deal with mother's body and whatever hasn't been looted from the house by now. I'm not looking forward to that."
Sōma perked up slightly, "Well the good news is you shouldn't have to worry about looters or what state mother is in. I asked Eri... Era... the girl about what state the house was in when she left. Apparently she put up some sort of sealing barrier around the house. It should have preserved everything inside in exactly the state it was in when she left, and kept anybody not of our blood from finding it."
The rest of his siblings stared at Sōma, disbelief written clearly across their faces. Sōma was rather glad he wasn't the only one to react that way to the news.
Saki snapped out of her stunned state first, "That's preposterous!" she spat. "I can't believe you of all people would be taken in by such a bald faced lie! The little brat can't even come up with believable stories! Why you brought her to my apartments..."
"First of all," Sōma cut across his sister frowning at her, "she didn't lie. I had my eye on her when I asked, and she never spoke anything but truth. Second, I brought her because given what I read in the Daimyo's letter, I thought at least the two of you might want to have some say in what happens to her."
"The second letter was... interesting," Takeshi admitted slowly. "That is truth as well?" he asked his older brother.
Sōma sighed and rubbed his eyes, "As far as I can tell? Mother wasn't a swordsman, neither am I. What mother considered, 'impossibly talented' I have no idea. Or how accurate her assessment is. She wrote what she thought was the truth, but...?" he shrugged. "As to the more... extreme assertions, all I can tell you is that mother believed it."
Takeshi nodded. Having grown up with two family members possessing the Shinjitsugan, he was intimately familiar with its limits. If a person didn't think they were lying, the Truth Telling Eye wouldn't show anything wrong.
"Why are we even speaking of this girl?" Saki snarled, "She is a nobody, pat her on the head, give her a coin if you must, but send her on her way."
"Mother asked us to look out for her," Sōma said softly. "Her last request. I can't just ignore that. How can you? Especially..." He trailed off looking at the scrolls in front of Saki, noticing for the first time that only one of them had been opened. "Did you even read the second letter?" he demanded of his sister.
"Do not take that tone with me," she snapped back, sounding eerily like their mother for a moment. "And I did not. I want nothing to do with another one of mother's..." Her lips twisted as she struggled to find the word she wanted, "strays. I have my own children to look after." She glared at Hayato, "As do you. You two," she turned her glare on her two youngest siblings, "should be more concerned with your nieces and nephews. You do remember them, right, your actual family?"
Takeshi sat forward with a snarl, vitriol the likes of which only family could produce on the tip of his tongue, only for Hayato to raise a hand to stop him as he spoke up himself, "I will admit that mother's tendency to take in foundlings was a little frustrating when we were little. But she always had an eye for talent and capability. Not to mention being a very good judge of character. No fosterling of the Shouji family has ever proven to be anything but a great boon for us. Mifune is an excellent example of this."
Saki's face softened for just a moment, then hardened again, "Mifune isn't the issue here."
Takeshi rolled his eyes, "Why did you bring him here anyway?"
"Because he's spent more time with the girl than anybody else we have access to at the moment, and I thought getting his opinion of her could be useful. Given what was in mother's second letter, I'd say that was a good idea."
The brothers all nodded while Saki looked at them, confused. "What's in the second letter?" she demanded after a few moments when it became clear that her brothers weren't going to volunteer the information.
The brothers glanced at each other. Instead of answering, Hayato, who sat closest to her, nudged her unopened scroll closer.
Saki glared at them.
For a moment there was no sound as the siblings engaged in a silent staring contest. Finally Saki scoffed and opened the scroll. She read quickly, her brothers waiting for her. She read the scroll, then read it again, before glaring at Sōma.
"And this is Truth?" she demanded, glaring at her brother.
Sōma nodded solemnly, "Mother believed it to be true at least. I'm not inclined to doubt her."
Saki scoffed, "Reincarnation? Preposterous. She got somebody else to write it. Or somebody else wrote for her and sent her as a plant."
"You don't think mother would be able to tell if she was being lied to? Or set up?" Sōma asked, his voice vacillating between incredulous and offended.
"Of course she could!" Saki snapped, "but how do we even know if she actually came from mother?"
"Because I asked her, and watched her as she answered," Sōma told his sister flatly.
Saki gritted her teeth but didn't say more. After a few moments Takeshi spoke up again, "I want to hear what Mifune has to say about her."
The other two brothers nodded in agreement while Saki just glowered. Within seconds, Mifune was summoned and moments later he entered the room with a bow.
"My Lady, General, Teacher, Truth Sayer," he greeted each of the siblings individually before straightening. "I take it you wish to ask about young Rhostana." He pronounced the name carefully. The girl was good at hiding her reactions, but not good enough. He could see how she flinched slightly every time somebody butchered her name. He was determined to learn to pronounce it correctly, the girl deserved that much.
Though he would like to know where such a strange name came from.
Takeshi sat forward slightly, "Yes. Our mother wrote us all letters introducing her to us, and asking us to take care of her." Mifune nodded slightly. The Shouji family's habit of taking in and fostering talented orphans was well known to him. He was a beneficiary of this habit after all. "And also several things we're having trouble believing."
The last statement didn't surprise Mifune in the least. If Granny was even half as aware as he remembered her being then she couldn't have missed the oddities with the girl.
Mifune thought for a moment or two, "She has been trained in the sword before, though not with a katana, and by someone quite skilled. She is, frankly, better than she should be at her age, no matter how talented she is, or how skilled her teacher. A five year old simply hasn't had enough time to learn everything that she knows. At first I thought she might be an infiltrator, a ninja under one of their jutsu. We tested for that though, and in fact not only is there no sign of chakra being used as a disguise, but it appears that she has no chakra at all. Despite that, though, she is both stronger and faster than she should be. I fought her several times, and I won most of those spars, but were she fully grown I don't think that would have been the case. And then there's the way she learns. It was like fighting one of those damned Uchiha. She only needed to see a technique performed once, and practice it a few times before she seemed to have it mastered. And then she'd begin to improvise with the technique, which is something that I've never heard of an Uchiha doing."
Sōma watched Mifune while he spoke with his doujutsu active. Not because he didn't trust Mifune, but because this way, if the conversation became important later, nobody would be able to claim falsehood on the captain's part. Once Mifune stopped speaking, Sōma turned his attention to his youngest sibling, the only real sword expert among them, in spite of Hayato's high position in the army.
"Is that even possible?" Saki asked slowly. Much like her mother, she couldn't avoid absorbing a certain amount of knowledge about the sword just from growing up next to Takeshi and Mifune. "I thought the entire point of doujutsu was to do things that weren't possible otherwise."
Takeshi sat back thinking hard, "Not... exactly. There are people that learn physical actions faster than others. Who can process physical movements better. This could be such a natural trait taken to the extreme. Doujutsu don't do the impossible, they just make the difficult easier." He waved a hand at Sōma, "At least at a basic level, the Shinjitsugan allows you to tell when somebody is lying, and draws your attention to the hidden. If somebody studied body language, facial expressions, and vocal cues to an obsessive degree, they could do the same."
Sōma frowned at this description. On some level Takeshi wasn't wrong, on the other hand no matter how hard one studied physical intricacies they'd never be able to see someone's soul. Something he knew that his mother was capable of. At the same time though, he couldn't disagree with Takeshi in this instance, so he kept his peace.
Saki leaned forward, "Is she dangerous?"
Mifune sighed for a moment. He had been one of the first Shouji foundlings, so he had spent most of his early life with Saki, the two of them being roughly the same age. She had never been thrilled with her mother's policy of adopting talented orphans, resenting the attention they took away from her and her brothers. So he also knew what she was trying to do now, find any excuse to turn the young Rhostana away.
"Not in the sense you mean," Mifune told her bluntly, "At the moment she has no attachments to anyone, except for your mother. My impression of her is that she's trying to decide what to do next. She asked about how to become a samurai, but I don't think that was motivated by patriotism."
Sōma and Takeshi sat forward, excited at the mention of interest in samurai. If the girl was as talented as Mifune and their mother made her out to be, and she had an interest in being a samurai... Well that would make everything much easier.
Mifune thought about the question, reviewing everything he had seen the girl pay attention to and react to while escorting her to the capital. After a few moments of consideration he spoke slowly, "If I had to guess, and it is a guess, I'd say she's like a scholar introduced to a new library. She's a martial artist who loves the art at least as much as the martial, and we represent an entirely new body of technique and philosophy to her. So as much as she wants access, she's trying to decide if the downside, actually having to be a samurai, is worth what she'd be given in return."
"How would you go about talking her into joining?" Hayato asked.
"At the moment she probably thinks there's only a couple of things that we have that she hasn't seen before. There are only so many ways to move the human body in a manner that is effective with a two handed sword, after all," Mifune shrugged. "So I would show her the library."
Takeshi smirked and Hayato laughed.
Saki slumped back into her seat, folding her arms across her chest, "You are speaking of her like she's a rational adult. Not a five year old."
Mifune blinked, thought back over what he had just said, and nodded, "Because that is how she acts."
"And there's a reason for that," Takeshi said, glaring at his sister, "And not something that we are going to speak about further here."
Saki bristled at her younger sibling giving her orders, but before she could start a fight Hayato cut her off, "So it's agreed that we should sponsor her career as a samurai?"
The brothers all said aye while Saki grumbled. Takeshi looked at Sōma, "You should also teach her how to use the Shinjitsugan. She's got it, we might as well make sure she's a credit to it."
Mifune's eyes widened in shock. The girl had the Shinjitsugan? Was she a few generations removed bastard? For a moment he opened his mouth to question, but after looking at the siblings he decided it better, and safer, to hold his peace.
Sōma simply nodded, looking tired. Saki, on the other hand, was gripping the table and almost carving furrows in the wood with her nails from how hard she was gripping it.
"Are we done now, then?" Saki snapped, clearly at the end of her rope, "Or is there something else you want to give her? Apartments in the palace? Keys to the treasury?"
The three brothers didn't respond to her question verbally, but all nodded.
"Let's go meet the girl, and tell her the good news." Hayato said standing.
The rest of his siblings stood, following him as he headed towards the waiting room a little ways away from the room they had been meeting in. Most of the siblings walked quietly, or in the case of Saki stalked, but Takeshi fell in next to Mifune.
"Have you decided to take that promotion, finally?" Takeshi asked. "Age and chance are going to catch up with you eventually on the front lines."
Mifune shrugged, "Having something to do keeps me young," he joked. "But yes, once this war is over I'll take the promotion. I feel like I'll be of more use making sure the next generation knows what to do when the ninja inevitably lose their minds again."
"You think it'll happen again?" Takeshi asked, his voice giving no sign what he thought the answer was.
Mifune snorted, "Of course. If the cost was going to shock them into being more reasonable, they would have stopped after the first one. This war will end sometime in the next five years or so, and then there will be peace for exactly as long as it takes for the Hidden Villages to scrape together enough troops for them to try wiping each other out again. All we can do is try to take as much advantage of that down time as we can."
Takeshi nodded and started to respond when he was cut off by Saki's strident voice, "What is going on here?"
Mifune and Takeshi glanced at each other, then hurried forward to see what had set Saki off this time. Catching up, they found three children outside of the room where Ericka had been left to wait.
One of these children was Ericka. She stood in the center of the hallway, standing out like a sore thumb in her simple peasants clothes in the middle of the Iron Palace finery. She had her tiny fists planted on her hips and an expression of disapproval that nobody her physical age should have been able to produce.
Her glare was directed at a boy roughly her own age, lying on the ground clutching his face and crying. A spray of blood covered his green wrap shirt, but didn't reach his finely made hakama. On the ground next to him an impressively large earthworm squirmed in brainless panic. On the boy's other side lay a silver pin topped with an intricate lacquered flower.
The last child was a girl who was hiding behind Ericka, clutching her shirt and hiding her face in the redhead's back. She was dressed in a pink kimono embroidered with flowers. Her shiny black hair was done up into a bun on one side of her head, and seemed to have been violently pulled free of a matching bun on the other side. The bun still intact was held in place by a silver hairpin matching the one on the floor next to the boy.
The two nobly dressed children looked enough like each other to be siblings. Takeshi in fact knew them to be twins. The youngest children of...
"What have you done to my son, you little beast?" Saki shrieked, rushing forward to the boy on the ground.
The girl, Ericka, blinked at the sudden arrival of the five adults, looked down at herself, then to the boy on the floor, then to the girl who still clung to her back, and finally back to the adults.
"I can explain everything," Ericka said. Saki snarled at her which only caused her to blink, "Okay, most things."