Nameless Hitokiri: Chapter One

Over time legends and facts will become intertwined, dates are forgotten, memories die, and storytellers grow old. Never before has the name been forgotten, maybe she never had a name to be remembered. She was the princess of nothing but at the same time everything was hers, still her name remains lost for none cared to recall her, instead she was banished from the realms of thinking minds. But her spirit still enchants the rivers and the grass where she walked allowing the natural world to flourish and carry her despite the restraints of time.

~*~

With every step she took her body protested, it begged her to cease the relentless pace she had kept since before the stars had faded from view the previous night. Her blonde hair hung at shoulder's length and formed waves that caressed her sharp jaw. She was without name and had been referred to as "Hittokiri Ansatsu Geijutsuka" a title for a manslayer. She had fought in the ranks of the Imperialist uprising but had left her comrades two evenings prior and was on the run ever since... since the incident... and now she was wanted as a deserter but for much more than punishment. She had been a fool, a fool to believe that she alone could change anything, a fool to not have been suspicious at a summons that was truly a trap. At that moment she wished, more than anything, to be away from the incident of the trap, from the humiliation, from being robbed of something she valued as much as her life. No, she had been robbed of something far more precious than life, something she should have protected. All she wanted was to sit down and cry, cry away her pain and frustration, cry it all out of herself until she had cried herself into a hollow shell that could survive on bread alone. However, her desires went unquenched in the way she supposed, instead her heart was to be mended at the hands of a man she'd never known until that moment of that evening as the sun sunk beneath the horizon, dragging with it all the color, blood, and tears of its reign.

"Hurry up Idiot!"

"Shut-up, you're the idiot, Rooster Head."

"Cut it out or I'll beat you to a pulp!"

These words were followed by boyish laughter as two young boys ran up the road headed in the opposite direction of Hittokiri. The warrior girl eased her grip on her concealed knife upon seeing a boy in a white gi with a humanly unsurpassed cumulation of brown hair that somehow managed to stand up straight and add a good foot to the boy's height. His companion wore a yellow gi and a red Ha'ori (that jacket thing of Katsu's) and had black hair that extended to his shoulders, both boys wore red headbands and Hitokiri recognized them as belonging to the Sekihoutai. She knew well that these boys posed her no threat but she predicted that the other Sekihoutai would be close behind and judged it best to avoid them and their clan.

"Hey there, Sekihoutai boys, I am lost and require your assistance. What names do you go by?" Hitokiri called out to them.

"I go by Sanosuke and my friend here goes by Katsu. How may we assist you lady and may we inquire as to your name?" The boy with the tall hair, Sanosuke, replied mocking a gentleman as his companion, Katsu, buffeted him over the head.

"I have no name, I would prefer it if you would leave me to be on my way." Replied the girl holding back a laugh at the boys' juvenile behavior.

"Shouldn't you be with your husband, Lady?" Asked Katsu his voice bearing suspicion, "Perhaps you could hold an audience with our captain to see if he finds your tale believable."