Author: Jun-I
Chapter 11: Secrets Kept
Pairings: female Kyuuzou/female Heihachi, Kanbei x Kyuzo, Shichiroji/Kanbei
Kyuuzou was on the ground when she heard a terrified scream from the sky. "Heihachi-dono!" For a second her heart stopped. Then the scream came again, full of desperation and grief. "Heihachi-dono!"
It was Katsushiro's voice. The samurai woman quickly scanned the battlefield with her keen ruby eyes. She saw that the engine compartment of the Capital had detached and was falling towards the earth. When the massive chunk of the great ship crashed to the ground, Kyuuzou caught a glimpse of the red-headed girl lying on it. Heihachi lay crushed and bloodied under the rubble. There was no way she could still be alive.
Kyuuzou's world stopped moving. She had seen many others die in the past but never before had she known the agony which seared her soul when she saw that still, small body under the wreckage. She never expected to feel this way. It was not until Kyuuzou saw the samurai maiden fall that she realized Heihachi meant more to her than any of the others. Much, much more.
Even so, there was nothing more she could do for the other woman. Kyuuzou steeled her heart and charged back into the battle. Yet as she fought through ranks of mecha warriors, she did not feel quite present in the moment. It was as if part of her had already left with Heihachi.
Perhaps it was because the red samurai was in this distraught frame of mind that she did not see the bullets coming. Yet she was not too shocked when they hit her. Kyuuzou had known all along that she was a mortal, even though Heihachi had worshipped her as a goddess.
Kanbei rushed over to catch the woman in his arms as she fell. Even as blood filled her lungs, the cold warrior told the man to leave her and go finish his work. The man held her still. But she barely noticed his presence. The female samurai's fading thoughts drifted to the maiden who had loved her hopelessly with all the desperate intensity of someone who had never loved before. But then the dying woman had never loved before either. Kyuuzou did not know what love was. Not until Heihachi had come and gone.
Kyuuzou's senses were flooded by searing pain, and yet she felt oddly at peace. She saw Heihachi waving at her from a distance. "Wait for me in the village," she heard herself say to the smiling flame-headed girl. The crimson warrior did not hear the tall dark man speaking tenderly to her, asking her to wait for him on the other side, telling her that he would join her soon.
The white-clad samurai felt the bloody body in his arms grow limp. He closed his eyes and took a deep, ragged breath. Kyuuzou would never put her arms around him again in the land of the living. For a few all-to-brief nights, he had gladly embraced her warm, willing body. But somehow he had always wanted more, more than she was willing to give.
Then the old soldier looked once more into the warrior's vacant ruby eyes. For a moment he thought he saw an image in those scarlet orbs other than his own reflection – the image of a beautiful, smiling flame-haired maiden dressed in a mechanic's garb. A stranger who looked oddly familiar. He blinked, and the vision was gone. Now Kanbei saw only his own face reflected in those dead eyes. He took his glove off and passed his bare hand over Kyuuzou's smooth, pale face in a last caress, closing those ruby eyes for good.
The two women were buried side by side in Kanna, next to the only man who knew the secret of the grand passion that never quite came to be. Kanbei had given Shichiroji the duty of preparing Heihachi's corpse for burial. The aide was more than surprised when he undressed the mechanic's bloody and battered body and found the slender form of a young woman beneath the shapeless clothes. He quickly and carefully wrapped her in a clean shirt. Then Shichiroji slipped her bulky vest back on, the same garment that had hidden Heihachi's female form for so long.
The blond samurai never spoke of this strange matter to anyone, not even to his lover Kanbei. If Heihachi wanted to keep a secret, who was he to reveal it? But in the years that followed, Shichiroji sometimes wondered what other secrets the small warrior had kept hidden behind her smiling eyes.