Sengoku Basara franchise does not belong to me. Original characters are products of my neuronal action potentials.
I'm not sure who's reading (if anyone at all), but please review. I can read my chapters over (which I do), but it's like doing a crossword I created myself. As the writer, I will never experience the story like you do as a reader. So let me know if it's good, bad, mediocre and/or really needs work.
Please, help me make it better than it is now, because I know it's possible. Thanks!
Now for some srsbsns!
Move over Mitsunari, it's Ran-dono's time to shine!
Ch 3:
"Mitsunari-dono, daijoubu desu ka?" Ran inquires, hands folded on her lap.
"Leave me be," he intones without looking at her from his seat against the walls that is painted with an amber glow from the western horizon.
She had not planned on being here, not after their first encounter with his eerie, arrogant words. Ran was tending to the Ishida soldiers at the barracks after they had returned from a recent campaign three villages over, when one of field generals accosted her about Mitsunari.
"Ran-dono, General Ishida fought ninjas during today's battle", he had strands of grey escaping his kabuto. "They do not fight as we samurai do. Please, I ask humbly of you to go see to him first."
Of course she had explained to him that his General was a man of great skill, and that she couldn't simply leave behind the many wounded here to tend to one man. One rude, conceited man, she may add.
"An army is nothing without its leader. Never have I doubted General Ishida's military prowess but alas," he removes the kabuto and lowers his head in pardon, "he is a young man."
In that instant, she had felt ashamed. Ashamed, that she had not understood what the wise samurai saw in the general.
The invincibility of youth.
Of course, how could she forget? Young warriors, too gung-ho about fighting for their own good, without even the slightest hindsight to take care of themselves. She had seen it before in a certain Oushuu ruler, who practically epitomized transient immortality, so why was she so surprised to see it again in different warrior who was just as young, if not younger?
But now that she is here, kneeling at the entrance of his chambers, there is no doubt that this is the person who needs her most desperately. His stormy eyes and heaving shoulders told her gut instinct to press on. Without another word, Ran advances to his corner where the walls have gone pale without the rays of dusk.
"I beg your pardon, but nothing ails you, my lord?" she persists, straining against the dark to meet his eyes.
In the blink of an eye, she sees a flash of silver as the odachi flies from the sheath that rests against Mitsunari's shoulder. For a moment, Ran thinks it's the fear of death that arrests her breathing, but after the weapon clatters lifelessly on the mat, she knows it's Mitsunari's frozen grip instead.
He curses underneath his breath and falls back against the wall, shorter of breath than before.
"Mitsunari-dono!" Ran seizes his hand and searches his gaze, but he tears away.
At a closer distance in the moonlight, she sees the source of his problems. There underneath the right clavicle where his armor fails to reach, a single puncture, the size of a pinhead, scabbed with dried blood. Wordlessly, Ran reaches for back of his ankles and squeezes the tendon. He demands to know what she's doing, but there's no reply as she drums each knee with her fingertips. Mitsunari is about to bark an order when a sigh of relief escapes her lips when his wrists twitch reflexively against her drumming.
He's about to tell her off when she tells him to stay here and to follow her instructions. "The needle injury you have isn't good. We have time, but there isn't much. I will do my best, Mitsunari-dono."
Ran is out the door before he can spat who the hell she thinks she is.
"But Ran-dono, Mitsunari-sama is adamant about-"
"Tschiyo-san, Mitsunari-dono is not well." This is absurd. She was wasting time she- HE did not have, as the senior attendant explained to her about why the General of the Ishida army did not have a futon.
"Mitsunari-dono, ordered it never to be bought into his room. He doesn't sleep in them," the older woman explained.
"He needs to be comfortable," Ran said with finality in her voice, "get one for him immediately. Time is of the essence. Hurry. Go."
She is halfway down the corridor to her room for the ingredients to concoct the antidote before the head of staff gave up and decided to deal with the task at hand.
Ran returns to Mitsunari's room to find him not only in a futon but changed out of his armor as well. The candles at each corner bathe his room in a beige glow. Bright enough for work, yet dim enough for rest.
Thank you, Tschiyo-san.
Slowly, she lowers the tray with bowl of dark liquid on to the ground and sits Mitsunari up, noticing the slack in his arms. He isn't happy but it's hard to tell underneath the shroud of hazy eyes. Her sooty hands are shaking as she holds the bowl out to him.
"Mitsunari-dono, I've prepare this for you. It's –"
"I did not ask for your help," he turns his head away with a mild scowl, "or for you to make me such poisonous liquid."
She winces at his acerbic remark, but the bowl never leaves her outstretched hands despite the assault on her pride.
"The needle that stung you on the chest has left you poisoned, Mitsunari-dono," Ran explains with a calmness even she can barely manage, "…I have made the antidote. Please, you can doubt me later, but not now. The poison has taken your legs, it will take your arms next, and then…" Her voice leaves as she recalls the grisly effects from her manuscripts, and she eyes the swirling bowl.
He glares at her. "And then what?"
Hesitation.
"It travels north, paralyzes your speech, seizes your lungs," her voice barely a whisper. Ran turns to him again with renewed desperation. "So please, trust me Mitsunari-dono. I offer you my head if you still doubt me after all this is over."
She passes the bowl to him at a closer distance and lowers her head.
"Douzo."
Mitsunari watches her for a moment before turning his head.
"Ah."
Ran waits for him, but he doesn't stir. The strained scowl on his face, and she realizes. Of course…
"Mitsunari-dono, if I may," with slow deliberation she reaches for his immobile hand and wraps it around the bowl with her smaller ones, bringing the liquid to his lips, "here."
If the young general was angry, he didn't show it after emptying the first dose.
Ran had just sent out a letter to Ieyasu regarding Mitsunari when she returned to the latter's room. She'd thought he would be doing better, but the acute fever and night sweat during his slumber told her otherwise. At this time of the night, the servants were probably sleeping so she did what she could with a rag and a bowl of water.
She is about to rinse the rag when he mutters in his sleep.
"What are you doing?"
"I-You are running a fever", she fumbles with the dirtied rag. "I thought to wipe off the sweat."
Mitsunari considers her reply.
"Get it over with," comes the same somnolent voice, and it sends a chill down her spine.
She runs a corner of the rag down his face and it confirms her worst fear.
"Mitsunari-dono, it's almost time for your next dose," she announces, a tremor threatening to break through her professional façade, "I'm going to get it for you, now."
Ran hauls the entire kettle back to his room at a speed she never knew possible for a problem she'd never thought could get so out of hand. The antidote she made, he'd have to take it all tonight. At high concentrations, there's a chance the antidote may overexert his heart, but Ran decided the chance at life was better than the certainty of death. If the toxins remain unopposed, it will be a short matter of time before respiratory arrest occurs.
Ran brusquely slides open the shoji door.
She has to try. What honor is there in being a doctor if she couldn't even save a man, this young man in his prime, from slow asphyxiation?
Mitsunari was doing very well with Ran's help, downing the bitter liquid between bouts of caustic remarks when he suddenly went silent. Initially, she thinks it's because he's busy drinking, but then it becomes all too clear what happens when he fails to reply to his name being called.
For the first time, Ran feels the brunt of real life betraying facts. The manuscript that she committed to memory fell to death ears against this brutal reality of impending death. After all the studying, practice and attention to detail- what did she do wrong? Her eyes fall dark.
She thinks of the Ishida army, how they will be band of men without direction now that their general was going to die. She thinks of her failure to one man, this young, righteous, devoted man who was going to die a most horrible, untimely death, leaving behind men who had entrusted his life in her hands. Her blurry vision trails to the said man, whose eyes are staring at her through a storm. Apologizing, she turns away; the contents of the bowl in her hands threaten to spill under the momentum.
The ceramic bowl resting in her hands held the rest of the antidote. There isn't much, but at this point there isn't much to lose either. If death was so determined to claim him, then she would do everything in her power before that final moment arrived. She had to.
"Mitsunari-dono, if you can hear me," she discreetly blots her eyes, "I shall help you finish the last of the antidote. I will pray for your swift recovery. Please, pardon my impropriety."
His pupils dilate as she drains the bowl and smashes herself against him to force the rest of the bitter fluid down his throat.
There was no grace, no gentleness, no warmth, no feeling usually associated with said physical contact. A normal girl would never imagine her first kiss to happen in such a manner, with a dying, male counterpart nonetheless.
But Ran isn't imaging.
She's thinking
…
About the Ishida army
about its General
the arrogant, devoted warrior
Who was just a man.