"Alright, so now we start the epic battle between Takasugi, Katsura, Kagura, Abuto, Kamui, Gin, Okita, Hijikata, Kondo and me!" Shinpachi announced happily.

"No, you moron." Kamui corrected him. "This is the flashback chapter, the big battle is next chapter."

"What?! But I was just getting my new special attack move ready!" Glasses whined.

"Nobody cares about that anyway. You're not even tagged in the story description."

4-year-old Kamui smiled up at his mother, who was holding a bundle in her arms.

"Look, Kamui." Kouka said gently as she bent down to his level. "This is your little sister, Kagura. Say hello to her."

The young boy wondrously looked at the small, crying baby. "She's not as pretty as you, Mami." He frowned at the flesh-coloured, wrinkled, hairless baby. "I thought she'd be."

His mother let out a chiming, light hearted laugh. "Dear, you have to hear this!" She called to the neighbouring room. A few seconds later, a tall man appeared in the door frame.

"Yes?" Kankou asked his wife.

"Kamui, why don't you repeat what you just said?" She giggled.

"I said that she's not as pretty as Mami is." He pouted and looked to the side.

His father roared in laughter, then put his hand on his son's shoulder. "Don't worry, all babies look like that at first." He said reassuringly. "Even you. But one day, she'll blossom into a fine young woman who will have both her father's and her mother's good looks."

"I think she's already prettier than you, Papi." His son grinned at him innocently.

A tick mark appeared near Kankou's forehead. "What did you just say?"

"Ka-mu-i." She said it slowly, trying the word on her small tongue. "Kamui!"

He grinned at her. "Very good."

She smiled back at him and he gently ruffled her first bouts of bright red hair. "Now try this. Big bro-ther."

"Big bro- broth- bra-" She pouted when she couldn't get it.

"Bro-ther."

"Big bro-za!" She exclaimed happily.

"Close enough."

Kamui watched his younger sister from afar, as she stood over the small pile of dirt and tears ran down her face. "S-Sadaharu…" she choked out and sniffled.

It had been a day since his sister had woken up to the dead rabbit in her arms after her Yato strength seemingly crushed it, but she was still too young to understand the extent of her powers. But she'd need to learn about the cycle of life eventually, anyway.

He sighed and walked up behind her, putting a comforting hand on top of her radiant hair. "It'll be okay."

She glanced up at him through her vermillion bangs. "Will it really, big brother?"

He ruffled her hair. "Yeah, it will." He at least hoped, for both their sakes, that it would be.

She turned around and slung her short arms around his stomach (due to their height difference) and pressed her face into his shirt.

He continued patting her head soothingly while silent tears slowly began to moisten the fabric of his shirt.

"It's all going to be alright." He whispered once more.

"And then you take this outer strand and fold it over, right in the middle." Kouka's gentle voice rang through her bedroom.

Kamui cringed at the next harsh tug on his hair, but resisted the urge to cry out in pain. The things he did for his little sister…

"Like this, Mami?" Kagura's blue eyes must've been shining brighter than the brightest sun in the universe, judging by her exited voice. He let a small smile form on his lips.

Kouka chuckled. "Oh dear, Kagura, you knotted up his hair completely! We'll have to do this again. Let Mami show you once more…"

A few rough pulls and tugs on his hair later and a strand of his red hair fell over his shoulder. He hadn't even realised when his hair had grown that long.

His mother's fingers ran through his hair as she divided it into three equal strands. "You take the one on the outside and put it in the middle, then the one on the other side and you also put it in the middle, you see?"

He could have laughed at his sister's clumsy attempts at doing his hair, but he was too distracted by the occasional bouts of pain when she pulled at the wrong strand.

But it was a good kind of pain, a kind of pain he was willing to endure.

She stood at the top of the stairs, clutching on to her purple umbrella.

"Are you ready to go?" Kamui asked her.

She continued watching the rain drops fall off the brim of her umbrella and nodded. She took his held out hand and put her small one in it.

"Say, big brother?"

"Yes?"

"When will the rain stop?"

Kamui glanced at the dark grey sky past the brim of his own opened umbrella. "I don't know, little sister, I don't know."

The moment she laid her eyes on him, she ran towards him and immediately hid behind him. Kamui raised an eyebrow in surprise, looking over to where she had been standing.

Three other, semi-menacing Amanto glowered at him, annoyed expressions on their faces. Kagura cowered a bit more behind him when they shot her a poisonous look.

"Remember what we told you, squirt." One of them warned her before the three of them disappeared into the alleys of Rakuyou.

Once they were out of ear-shot, he glanced down at his younger sister. "What was all that about?"

She looked away nervously. "N-Nothing."

He sighed and knelt down in front of her so that they were on the same eye-level. "You know you can tell me anything, right?"

She nodded furiously, but her six-year old mind already knew how to lie.

"Don't you want to come in?" He asked his little sister who was sitting on the staircase in front of their house.

She continued looking up at the grey night sky and shook her head. "I never get to see the sky. It's either raining or the sun is shining."

Kamui sighed and sat down next to her. "Papi told me that sometimes you can see the stars, and that all stars are like Rakuyou."

"Really?"

He nodded. "Really. Whenever he travels, he gets to see new civilisations and meet new people."

Her face brightened with a smile. "I also want to see all those stars one day!"

"All right, how about we visit the most beautiful together, okay?" He ruffled her hair affectionately.

"It's a promise! And not just the most beautiful one, but all of them!" She exclaimed.

"Haha, I don't think we can do that... but we can still try." He picked her up at the collar and turned back towards the house.

"Big brother! I want to continue looking at the sky!" She flailed around with her arms and legs.

"It's just grey. Let's look at the sky again when we can actually see the stars."

"Kagura, what are you doing?" Her mother's tired voice said.

She looked up at her mother, determination burning in her eyes. "I'll help you get better." It was a statement, no questions asked.

"Oh sweetheart, that's not something you need to worry about." She reached out to pat her daughter's head, but only manged to limply place her hand on top of her vermillion tresses.

Ten-year-old Kagura sighed and took her mother's pale hand into her own, giving it a tight squeeze.

"If I don't worry about you, Mami, who will?" Her voice was filled with sadness and disappointment. Disappointment of him and their father, he reckoned.

"What are you talking about?" Kouka asked her daughter.

"Papi hasn't been home in months, and big brother leaves more and more often as well. There's nobody here besides me and you."

He clenched his fists by his side and decided to leave his place at the doorframe, before either of them realized he was there.

Kamui was strong. Yato were strong. And he was even stronger, because the legendary Umibouzo was his father.

That was also why he was a monster.

But if he was a monster, what was his sister?

He never saw those three suspicious guys ever again. But then again, this was Rakuyou, a place notorious for its loose rules and high criminality rate. This was the place all the exiles gathered, so people disappearing wasn't too rare of an occurrence.

Which is why their father had been so adamant about their training. They were Yato. They were strong. But a trained Yato was even stronger.

They had to be as strong as possible.

That was the underlying mantra, with each punch they practiced, every well executed kick, every stretch and bend, every flexed muscle, all of it boiled down to one thing.

Get stronger.

They were living in a dangerous place on a dangerous planet. With every day, every passing minute, every second, reality became clearer and clearer.

Hunt or be hunted.

Eat or be eaten.

The first one to understand this had been Kagura. After their mother's health had begun to dwindle, she matured extremely fast.

She took on the responsibilities in their house, doing all the things Kouka had done up to that point.

Kankou left on a journey in search of a cure, but every time he came back, it was empty-handed. The periods of his journeys grew longer and longer, and soon the two of them were forced to do small odd jobs here and there to gather enough money to sustain their family.

It wasn't until shortly after Kagura's twelfth birthday that he took full notice of it. What started off as a friendly spar quickly turned into something much, much worse.

She engaged hard, aimed precisely and punched hard and rough. And it was quite a punch. She was fast, mobile and it almost seemed as if she was experienced.

The thought sickened him more than it should have, and he couldn't bring himself to say anything while he lay on the ground coughing up blood.

"I expected more of you, big brother." Her voice was icy and cold, void of any emotion but disappointment.

He pushed himself of the ground, watching her back as she went back inside the house.

So those were the kinds of things she did for money.

He didn't talk to his mother about it. Ever.

She had more than enough worries already, and telling her that Kagura had gotten involved with the people she was supposed to have been shielded from was not something he wanted to burden her with.

So he smiled. As did Kagura.

But he never missed the way she would hide her bandaged fists behind her back.

Their father wasn't there.

It was their mother's funeral, and the last member of their family wasn't there. He knew Kagura was bitter and mad and furious, but she hid it under a wall of ice and stone.

She didn't even cry.

All those tears over a dead rabbit, but none for her mother.

In the moment it happened, he was shocked. A few seconds later, he wondered why he had been surprised in the first place.

It was an ugly, ugly truth after all.

Almost as ugly and terrifying as Kagura standing opposite of their father, blood splattered across her clothes, feral bloodlust dancing in her eyes as she dangled Kankou's arm from her fingers.

He wanted to be horrified, but could he be horrified of something he had watched grow? The seed of hatred had grown inside of her, but he only watched, never intervened.

His father – no, Umibouzo – shared that same look in his eyes. Pure rage, a beast on the hunt, focused on his prey. They were both hunters, but one was the other's prey.

He didn't remember screaming, shouting, telling them to stop.

But his father's defeated look once realization dawned upon him and his sister's furious eyes told him that he had been heard.

But could he really call them his father and sister anymore? Because, up until a few seconds ago, they had been nothing but animals.

She was fourteen. He ran after her, trying to stop her.

She was fourteen.

After the fiasco with their father, she had looked at their house one more time and then she took off, running towards the centre of the town area.

Kamui sprinted and urged his legs to go faster and faster, but Kagura had always been faster than him. He turned the corner in time for him to see her drop their father's maimed arm in front of another Yato.

Housen.

He was just about to call her out, but she turned to him with a look cold enough to freeze over hell.

He couldn't do anything while he watched her leave with Umibouzo's nemesis and the tall blonde Yato.

He returned home afterwards, but his father had only left a note on the table.

Restock ointments and bandages. I left on another assignment.

-Papi

Kamui's blue eyes landed on the small bin in the corner of the kitchen which was now filled with bloody towels and clothes.

He crumpled the note with his father's handwriting and threw it into the bin. That man had the gall to call himself Papi.

What a no-good father.

What a no-good sister.

What a no-good family.

It didn't take him many meals of lonely egg on rice to make his decision.

Leave.

His father wasn't coming back anytime soon, and neither was his sister.

There was nothing left for him on this no-good planet.

It was no surprise that the first job offer he got on this new planet would be to beat up humans. The reputation of the Yato must proceed him.

But the real surprise was the unlikely duo of a silver-haired samurai and a bespectacled boy who got him out of his troubles.

The unlikely duo that gave him a real (yet underpaying) job.

The unlikely duo that became his new family.

AN: I know this doesn't follow canon, but this story is semi-AU for a reason.

Kagura's view on all this is going to come up in one of the later chapters, so you can look forward to that, but the next chapter is taking us back to the epic stand-off ;)

Once again, let me know your thoughts on this :)

[Edit 31.05.17: Still busy removing honorifics, don't mind me]

~Emi