Sugimoto grabbed the wood of the rifle's muzzle in face of Hijikata's hostility in a way that he could swing it almost like a baseball if he had to defend himself. In response to this, Yuki bends forward and puts his hand on the katana, prepared to draw it at any moment.
Asirpa was going to say something… but Hijikata-sama interrupted her…Yuki thought, and looked at Ogata, who was staring at the Ainu girl's back. He noticed too…
She said 'My dad'...interesting… Ogata thought, his eyes an abismal black as he looked at Asirpa. So she is… the daughter of Nopperabou?
What happened next was too fast for normal people's eyes to see. Sugimoto and Yuki's movements were something else even for well-trained people.
Sugimoto attacked Yuki with the rifle's wood but was quickly dodged by Yuki who just leaned his head to the side to avoid being hit. It got Sugimoto very surprised but then he tried it again just coming back the riffle's wood to hit Yuki on his side but Yuki blocked it with the katana in a blink of an eye. Their arms trembled from the effort used against each other.
Hijikata looked at Yuki with amused and proud eyes. I taught Yuki well… Hijikata thought.
Meanwhile, Ogata smiled and was very amused by that scene.
"Sugimoto, stop that!" Asirpa was very concerned when she saw his attack.
Hijikata steps forward. "Don't, sir," Yuki said respectfully to him without taking his eyes away from Sugimoto. "All of you, don't move, I can take care of him".
"Oh, you can take care of me, you say?" Sugimoto said, looking very angry at the other man but was smiling. "Let's see if that's true."
If he turns to help Hijikata, it can be good for the plan. I can't kill him. Yuki thought and pushed Sugimoto backwards. Then took a step forwards Sugimoto, dodging at his attempt to hit Yuki's face with the rifle again. He punched Sugimoto's belly with the free hand but got surprised when he got grabbed and thrown against the wall, falling to the floor and dropping the sword.
Yuki got up in time to defend himself from another punch from Sugimoto, then moved his head forward to hit Sugimoto's forehead with his own. Yuki managed to knead but Sugimoto held Yuki's knee with one hand while the other hand grabbed his clothes to do a judo attack by throwing the opponent against the ground. The Lieutenant gasped when his body hit the ground with a thud. Sugimoto stood on top of Yuki who kicked him on the side of his knee, knocking him down.
This time Yuki caught the katana again, got up and kicked Sugimoto's face so he couldn't stand up either. Yuki dodged his attempt to kick him and quickly stepped on Sugimoto's hand while he fixed katana's tip to the ground through the other hand of his. After that, Yuki knelt his right knee on top of Sugimoto's chest and he gasped for air for a moment.
Sugimoto stared at Yuki angrily and Yuki smiled back at him and reached up the free hand to clean the blood that came down from his forehead.
"Easy now, Sugimoto", Yuki said mockingly. "Try anything again and I'll kill you."
Hijikata approached them both, looking down at Sugimoto. "What do you want, Sugimoto? Maybe we can help each other. It's better to talk than to fight."
"Furthermore, we have the number advantage," Yuki reminded him. "And me."
"Let me meet Nopperabou to confirm something. It will be a shame if someone takes the gold before we talk to him," Sugimoto said, feeling battled and angry, he was still staring at Yuki. "Before Asirpa talks to him. She needs to talk to him."
"How about we continue this conversation at the dinner table?"Nagakura suggested.
The two groups became one, and they were now having a delicious meal that Ienaga cooked for everyone. From a distance, it looked like the Last Supper by Leonardo Da Vinci.
Yuki chose to sit on a chair next to the table, not with everyone else, after getting some food for himself. He liked to stay where he could watch everyone and observe in silence, not being used to eat with company. He had always isolated himself during meals since his army days, he had never felt like he had truly belonged anywhere.
He watched the table that was fully covered with plates, glasses and food where the people who had previously not necessarily been friends eat and laugh together. He looked at them, discovering a new feeling that he had never felt before: he was wishing for something, something though that he just couldn't put a finger on.
He has been in crowded environments and has shared a table and meal with other people, with fellow soldiers when he was in the army, always when he forced himself to be close and participate. It was now that he felt a similar feeling to back then. The memory of the battalion's men's laughter and smiles during meals, conversations and jokes came to his mind. He had always preferred the solitude over socializing, yet he forced himself to sit with them, it almost felt good in a way.
"Come eat with us," a gentle voice pulled Yuki back from his daydreams, who looked at Asirpa with surprise, who had gotten up from the table. "I saw you didn't come to eat with us. Come! Bring your chair over here. Everyone must eat together!"
"O-ok then…" Yuki replied, trying to disguise how awkward he was. Although unexpected, he complied with the request.
He pulled out his chair to sit at the table, next to Hijikata, and facing Ogata, who was looking at him with a half smile. Yuki arched an eyebrow at him, but brushed it off, giving his food a bigger importance.
"Curious how a group of people like this managed to get together." Sugimoto began, looking at Ogata and Yuki with a look of contempt and lackluster. "These two guys,after all, were two of First Lieutenant Tsurumi's men. Anyone who becomes a traitor can do it again."
"Sugimoto… You know you almost killed me," Ogata said with a notable sarcastic tone of voice and a mocking smile, pointing his hand to his chest in a dramatic way. "But I'm not one to hold a grudge, even so, your statement really hurt me."
Yuki arched his eyebrows after hearing that. Yuki's face turned grin and his eyes intensely in rage. Yuki tensed his jaw to stay calm. I should have killed you, how dare you do that to Ogata… Fortunately for you, Sugimoto, you're useful.
The rest went silent, not wanting to get involved.
"And you, Second Lieutenant Hagiwara? What do you do with them?" Sugimoto confronted. Yuki stared at him, disguising the surprise. Did Sugimoto feel he was willing to kill him? "You never struck me as the kind of person to get into this kind of situation."
"Nothing is ever what it seems. I bet you never thought you'd be the kind of person who would do what you did back in the war to survive, and look at you now. Sugimoto…we all do what it takes to survive or to protect someone we care the most, don't we?" Yuki answered, looking at Ogata involuntarily as he spoke. Yuki's eyes changed from intense rage to slight softness.
Their eyes met, and the sniper's eyes narrowed just as Yuki looked back at his food. Sugimoto lowered his head, not answering that, his hat hiding his eyes. After all, he has already done and will do whatever it takes for Asirpa.
After being finished with the meal, Sugimoto, Ushiyama, Yuki and Asirpa, went to the mines in search of Tsukishima and the fake skins while the others remained in the house, delving into some clues as to how they could distinguish the fake skins from the real ones.
At Edogai's the house, Hijikata was in a room that looked like an office. Opening the drawers of a desk, he began reading all the papers that he found. Ogata helped looking for any clues inside the stuffed animals.
The window glass broke and then fire spreaded through the house. Someone threw a molotov cocktail inside to burn down the house. The old man quickly left the room to escape from the fire and the smoke.
"Ienaga, don't go outside!" Hijikata warned before she opened the front door. "You will be shot!"
"I saw military uniforms moving outside" Ogata informed, with his back against the wall next to the window, cocking the rifle in his hands. "It looks like we're surrounded by several soldiers."
Hijikata armed himself as well, releasing the catch on his shotgun, preparing himself..
"They must have come to destroy the clues of the fake skins," he said, looking carefully out through the curtains of a window.
"Which is proof enough that Tsukishima is alive," Ogata said. "There are bars blocking the windows, if they try to break in, they will have to use the front door. Then, I'll just have to direct them towards the entrance."
That being said, the sniper ran upstairs and broke a window to shoot the soldiers that were surrounding them outside. To get out of Ogata's field of vision, Tsurumi's men ran to the eaves of the entrance.
That's when Hijikata fired, bullets crashing through the wood of the door. Nikaidou and Tsurumi's other men were not hit, but left the cover of the entrance's eaves, again staying in Ogata's field of vision which took the advantage and fired, hitting one of the soldiers in the shoulder.
The window that Ogata was at suddenly shattered close to his face, slightly wounding him near the eye. Certainly a bullet had passed very close to his head. He ran to another window to see where the shot had come from and saw at least five more soldiers were hiding behind one of the neighboring houses. It looks like there are a lot of them here…
Downstairs, Hijikata was on one side of the front door, reloading his shotgun when Tsurumi's men broke down one of the doors and entered. The first entered heading towards the upper floor of the house.
Nikaidou darted forward, but the old man was behind the door and had drawn his katana, raising it above his head to deliver a slash from top to bottom. However, he was grabbed by the waist and thrown to the ground, initiating a physical struggle.
Ogata heard the floor creaking from the hallway and hid behind the door. The soldier who had gone up in search of him entered the room to look for him, however, as he passed the door, he was hit in the stomach with Ogata's bayonet, entering almost all of his flesh and puncturing his lungs. The soldier retaliated by using the butt of his rifle to hit the sniper right in the face.
Meanwhile, outside right behind the house, Ienaga was looking for a way out, but all the windows were barred so there was no escape. The smoke from the fire grew more and more dense, making it harder to breathe. Then, she was startled to see the bars being ripped off by Ushiyama, with Asirpa clinging to his back, Yuki and Sugimoto not far behind.
Once the passage was clear, Yuki, who was more agile than Sugimoto, jumped into the house and ran towards the entrance. As he passed the stairs, he heard the sounds of fighting upstairs, so he ran to the source of struggling to see who it was.
When he stopped in front of the door, Yuki saw one of Tsurumi's men lifting his rifle, sitting on top of Ogata, who had his hands in front of his face to protect himself.
"Die, you two-faced son of a bitch! Bastard!" He yelled furiously. Ogata reacted with a mocking smile, his bruised face with blood running down his nose.
Yuki kicks that man's head without doubting for a second, throwing him to the side and taking him off Ogata. The soldier soon recovered and got up, attacking whoever had just hit him with the rifle's butt. Yuki defends himself with ease from the rifle's blow, blocking him with his forearm and throwing a punch against the man's belly, which bends him forward. The soldier, annoyed, throws himself at his opponent, grabbing his waist and causing Yuki to slam his back against the wall.
Yuki elbows him on the head, trying to free himself and try to grab the revolver at his waist. But he is surprised when he sees the gun in the soldier's hand, already preparing to shoot, but is finished with his head being cut off by the sharp blade of a quickly unsheathed katana. His body falls to the side, headless, with a thud.
"It's funny that sometimes I forget I have a katana with me", Yuki said while searching for Ogata and finding him still trying to stand up, "I'm a bit used to using my bare hands for fighting, you know."
Ogata didn't say anything and Yuki just arched his eyebrows, bowing his head a little to the side.
"What, do you want me to thank you?" He asked sarcastically with a smirk.
Yuki stared at him for a few seconds in silence before giving a half smile, also mocking, and saying:"Heh, apparently what you have in skill with the rifle, you lack in a hand-to-hand fight. That must be the reason you were beaten up."
Ogata responded to the provocation by spitting blood from his mouth to the side. What he didn't expect to see was Yuki's hand extended to help him up. He stared at that hand momentarily, expressionless, before accepting this little help.
Everyone managed to get out of the back of the house, and divided themselves into groups so they wouldn't attract attention. The destination was now Kabato's Prison in Tsukigata City. If they couldn't distinguish the fake skins from the real ones, they would need the help of a forgery expert who was incarcerated in Kabato's prison. Otherwise there would be no alternative but to meet Nopperabou directly in Abashiri Prison.
"He'll probably be willing to tell everything, if it's for his own daughter," Hijikata said.
"So you knew she's his daughter…" Sugimoto observed with distaste.
Yuki stared at Hijikata from behind with a suspicious gaze. What more that old man could possibly know? Yuki wondered if Hijikata was hiding more important information about everything. Besides, he didn't remember seeing the Hijikata tattoo's copy as well… because they hadn't done that yet.
They left for Tsukigata.