Turning Swallow

Summary:

OR, One morning, four-year-old Sasaki Kojiro remembers a life not yet lived, and decides to do something about it. History changes. SI!Sasaki Kojiro. Expect general lightheartedness, but dark topics when the time comes.

CH. 16 START

In spite of the name that his parents had given him, Takeru wasn't any sort of warrior, nor was he particularly fierce. In fact, he hadn't been trained in any sort of martial art, given that he'd been born a commoner. He was a scholar, not a man of war. Rather, he'd taken his station in Honno-ji by choice, given the chance to interact and aid Oda Nobunaga when she was away from the capital city of Kyoto by virtue of his eye for economics and his talent for money-handling. There was just one issue. Oda Nobunaga had never so much as consulted with him before going off and gallivanting into her next battle. He'd been told by his superiors in Kyoto that he was to follow the warlord into battle and advise her upon the happenings in the capital, but for nearly five years, that hadn't been the case. The Oda warlord had simply gone and left without him, leaving him and his fellow advisors a message that said, 'Prepare a feast for when I return.'

Now, as the sky darkened above the temple and the banners of Akechi Mitsuhide neared, he couldn't help but feel that the gods above were punishing him for his rampant ambitions. Takeru had even begun to think about just going ahead and making a break for it, like some of the others had, but he'd hesitated for too long, and the army of the traitorous general had arrived. If he tried to leave now, he'd be cut down for desertion before he could get anywhere safe and made an example. Not to mention the fact that even if he did escape, he might very well be hunted down by General Akechi, on the basis of trying to spread the word of the soon-to-happen ambush. Just then, a new person began to speak, asking a very poignant question.

The strange man, strange boy really, asked, "Are you content to die like this?"

Takeru snorted to himself, of course he wasn't. But what was he to do but wait and die, however? Oda Nobunaga barely had any troops, outnumbered nearly five hundred for every able-bodied man she could possibly throw at her foe. To run was to die and to flee was to die. Despite Takeru tuning out the boy's words as the mad ramblings of a child, some of his fellows yelled answers at him. The boy smiled, and then began to speak properly. Despite his initial ignoring of the boy's words, Sasaki Kojiro, he had called himself, the boy's voice was rather persuasive. Takeru found himself enraptured by the boy's words. The boy spoke with the confidence of a man decades older, in a tone so unshakably confident of victory that Takeru found himself nodding along. Somehow, someway, the scholar found himself absolutely certain that the boy in front of him wouldn't die, no matter what happened in the conflict to come. No one could speak like that without something up their sleeve.

Then, the boy had come up to him to speak, and Takeru found himself enraptured. Unlike the people around him, and even Oda Nobunaga herself, Sasaki walked around with relaxed shoulders, speaking and laughing with the people at Honno-ji without worry. Further still, when he'd asked Takeru's name to ostensibly reward him after the battle for staying, Sasaki had asked with genuine curiosity, rather than any sort of false politeness. When he answered the samurai, he hadn't even gotten the look of disdain that he usually got from other samurai when they realized he lacked a surname. Sasaki had simply nodded and moved on to asking where his family lived, so that if Takeru died, his family would be compensated.

Takeru watched numbly as he did this for every single person there, servant boys and maids included. It wasn't only in that single conversation that Takeru had been so convinced, but in every single conversation that followed. He spoke to everyone with a friendly manner, paying no attention to formality regardless of status or gender. He called the servant boy, who Takeru often ignored himself, by his name, which was 'Koto.' He spoke to that boy and the samurai that followed, who went by the name of 'Suto Masahiro,' with the same familiarity, forgoing honorifics. Takeru realized something astonishing about Sasaki Kojiro. The boy treated everyone the same. It brought up a warm feeling within him, that someone of obviously high status, given that he could invoke Oda Nobunaga's name without consequence, considered him equal to a samurai of noble birth.

Then, the first poundings at the barred-off gates of Honno-ji began, and people began to fall into formation. For his part, Takeru was given a cupful of blistering hot oil and told to throw it at the enemy on command. The people of Honno-ji formed five groups, arrayed one after another in lines. The first consisted of Sasaki Kojiro and Oda Nobunaga herself, who waited at the door to engage the enemy. The second consisted of Takeru and his fellow non-warriors. They were to throw their oil and retreat towards the fifth line for more. The third consisted of roughly twenty samurai, all with orders to not only defend the second, but also to hold position should the enemy break through the combined forces of the two in the first. The fourth consisted of samurai that wielded the ten guns that Honno-ji contained, told to hold fire until ordered to shoot. The fifth consisted of actual non-combatants, in charge of fetching and boiling the store of oil prepared for Oba Nobunaga's notorious week-long celebrations.

The gates of the Honno-ji Temple were forced open, giving the enemy around ten feet with which to make their way into the Temple proper. Sasaki Kojiro was the first to move, dashing at the first intruder. The intruder didn't even manage to take three steps into the Temple before his head fell from his shoulders. Sasaki kicked the body back into the approaching crowd and used that distraction to free two more enemy soldiers from the burdens of living. The Oda moved forward now, charging after her retainer with a bloodthirsty grin. Then the conflict began for real, as enemy soldiers snapped to attention and roared forward. Kojiro moved again, dashing towards a cluster of soldiers. He used the superior reach of his blade to sever the tips of the polearms that had been thrust his way, before also severing the arms of the men who'd attacked him. Once they fell to the ground, he ducked down, grabbed an intact spear, before yelling at Nobunaga to duck and launching the spear. With a trust that could only have come from years of comradery, the Oda warlord obeyed, despite the swing that was coming at her, and the fact that ducking now could prove fatal. That trust proved well-placed, as the spear lanced into the man's stomach, despite having been thrown from about fifteen feet away. Yet, today was the first time that Takeru had even heard of the name Sasaki Kojiro. The samurai looked to be only ten, yet moved with the skill of someone far older. Too stressed to contemplate any more, Takeru put away the thought.

The battle continued, and the teamwork of the Oda warlord and her retainer proved exemplary. Together, they held the line at the Honno-ji gates, proving more than able to hold back all those who tried to approach. Time after time, when one or the other got stuck, their partner reacted with speed, sometimes even abandoning their own foe to help the other. Oda Nobunaga had responded to the spear throw with some help of her own, as she called for Sasaki Kojiro to jump, before sliding under his leaping form and taking down the man he was fighting. As Oda finished that fight, Sasaki turned towards her pursuing opponent and cut him down swiftly. In another clash, Sasaki Kojiro had ducked low to slip past an attack on his way to another foe, leaving his back open to a fatal blow. Oda Nobunaga responded instantly, stepping forward to fill the space where her partner had been and stabbing that enemy in the stomach, taking advantage of him preparing for a deathblow. In the meantime, Kojiro had used the opportunity that ducking under that swipe had given him to cut the throat of another foe. As one, they turned to face a new batch of foes. This continued over and over, and in this manner, they killed upwards of perhaps fifty men. It certainly helped that these were merely footsoldiers, not accomplished warriors, but the accomplishment was no less astonishing.

The two began to retreat, after about half an hour of constant combat, and the second and third groups stepped forward to meet the enemy. Takeru and the rest of his group had had to get hotter oil, given that the warlord and her retainer had held off their foes for so long, but when their time came, they fulfilled their duty. They stepped forward, and Takeru threw forward the oil in his cup with a smooth motion. He watched with a horrible fascination as his oil splashed onto the face of an enemy soldier. The soldier didn't even have time to close his eyes, before the oil landed on his face. The man dropped instantly, clutching at his face and screaming. There was the hiss of something being burnt and then there was screaming. Ten men had dropped to the ground, clawing and screaming at their eyes. The next group approached, unaware of what had happened to the last, and received the same treatment. They dropped, eyes burning, throat seared, and faces charted. The sizzle of cooking flesh filled the air, and as Takeru looked around in horror, seeing that thirty foes were on the ground. All of them had curled up in the fetal position and were tearing fruitlessly at their faces. A samurai of the third line pulled him back, and he let his body be pulled. The samurai stabbed down, killing one of the soldiers on the ground. The rest of the samurai did the same, and just like that, thirty men were dead.

The samurai stepped forward, and Oda and Sasaki came out to play again, having rested for some time. With the help of the third group, they forced the horde of soldiers back, returning the battle to its original state. The cycle repeated again, as clueless soldiers, unaware of what had happened to their allies, made their way to the battle. Hours passed, and it became dark, the world lit only by the torches of their foe and the fires that they themselves carried. Battle became all the more treacherous at night, and yet, the killing sped up. Time seemed to blur. Three false retreats saw the enemy soldiers advance, get decimated, forced back, get cut down by Oda Nobunaga and Sasaki Kojiro, before they were allowed to advance again. The enemy pushed one another in the fight and they continued to do so for so long that Takeru came to realize something, even as he launched scalding oil at the newest batch of foes. There was no commander here. The men might as well have been ordered to 'take the Temple.' They entered through the gates, got murdered, and some idiot commander just kept sending more, certain that whatever resistance was being put up, it'd end soon. It was made all the better for the fact that no soldiers managed to flee. In total, nearly five hundred men lay dead. The battle ended when no more soldiers came. The two main combatants were exhausted, but even in the dim light, Takeru could see that while Oda Nobunaga was covered in dozens of scratches and cuts, Sasaki Kojiro's clothes hadn't even been damaged. The only thing that happened to them was that they'd been dyed red. Covered in blood not his own and with the expression on his face, yet bearing no wounds, Sasaki Kojiro looked every part a fairy tale monster.

That impression was only worsened when Sasaki Kojiro gave the order to cut apart the bodies and bring them outside the temple to put on in a gory display. The mere thought made Takeru sick, and it made the rest of the men sick too. It was one thing to kill men, but to kill them and brutalize apart their corpses so terribly? That was the stuff of nightmares, actions performed by demons like Shuten-Douji and Ibaraki-Douji, not mortal men.

Sasaki's voice dropped as he spoke in frustration, "Do you think that we will have a repeat of today, tomorrow? If you do, we will not. Whatever Kami up there that has decided to bless us may not grace us again. There are only two ways to defeat an army. Either you kill enough men to destroy its strength, or you kill its spirit."

The man made to speak more, but the galloping of horse hooves caught the attention of all within the Temple. A group of men on horseback stormed through the gates, and Akechi Mitsuhide himself rode into Honno-ji Temple. He made to speak, only getting halfway before the general saw the carnage.

"Men, I thank you for your service! You will be-!" General Akechi spoke, before his eyes widened at the sight of the scene and he choked on his words.

Oda Nobunaga reacted exactly as one would expect her to; she simply raised her hand, before bringing it down with an order.

"Fire." she commanded.

The samurai with guns did so as one, the sounds surprising Takeru, who'd honestly forgotten they were there. The traitor general fell from his horse, bullet wounds appearing in his chest. Three of the projectiles tore straight through him, while the rest either went wide or hit his bodyguards. The man's death was anticlimactic, having perished the moment the bullets had struck him. His guards made to flee on their horses, but Sasaki cut them down before they could get anywhere, severing the tendons of the animals and forcing them to fall.

The Oda warlord called towards Sasaki, saying, "Sheath your blade, Kojiro. The battle is done."

A/N: Not perfectly happy with this chapter. Kojiro's not quite supernatural enough to just kill the entire army, but is skilled enough to kill 500 men with support. Basically, AU things. Oda Nobunaga has some soldiers rather than nobody, there are loyalists to Nobunaga in Akechi Mitsuhide's army, and she's warned ahead of time, so while the army goes ahead to catch up, Akechi travels a bit more slowly. He has an army of 20,000 and when he sees that there is light in the temple, he assumes that Obunaga has been captured or killed. He goes there to take credit, but sees like 500 dead people and a very alive oda nobunaga. He gets shot, and Nobunaga wins again.