"The longer we live, the more we find we are like other persons." Oliver Wendell Holmes

-o-

"Woooow. It's dirty!"

"Komanchi!"

"I'm sorry, but it is."

The pattering of voices into the blacksmith's shop roused Yuuka from her dozing. She cleared her throat uselessly, making small exhaling noises out her nose with a fist to her sternum.

A small crowd of people was gathered at the open doorway, led by Masamune. "That's all right," The repairman said. "I know it's small, but you're welcome to make yourselves at home."

"We thank you." A proud man several years older than Yuuka was standing next to Masamune. His hair was in dreadlocks to his shoulders, brown with the beginnings of silver.

"Old warriors help each other, don't they?" Masamune replied slyly. At last, he seemed to remember that he hadn't left the shop empty. "Oh, right. Everyone, I'd like you to meet Tachibana Yuuka. She's a regular of mine. In fact, she's pretty handy with a sword herself."

Yuuka bowed to them in greeting and smiled.

"The honor is mine." The long-haired man replied as though she had spoken. He studied her a moment more, as though contemplating what to say, but was silent.

Yuuka made a vaguely curious sweeping motion at the people gathered. Masamune picked up on what she was trying to say. "These farmers are collecting samurai to defend their village from the Nobuseri. This is Kambei and Gorobei."

Gorobei was another older samurai, shockingly tall with silver hair cropped short to a square-ish head. A large, interestingly shaped scar headlined his right cheek. When he spoke, it was with a touch of displaced amusement. "An honor to meet you, samurai."

"Yuuka, why don't you help me fix this? It would do you some good to get some more practice in." Masamune handed over a sword, presumably Kambei's, which for some reason was slightly curved.

Taking the blade, she regarded the awkward bend with a raised eyebrow. Her metal fingers hissed against the steel, and she took the blade to the forge. Yuuka vented air below the fire, her foot pumping the bellows to stoke the embers into a crackling orange hum. The samurai and farmers milled about in the meantime, getting settled into the workshop, exploring and poking around.

"Are you sure it's okay for us to stay here?" The girl who spoke was young, though not particularly a child—maybe ten years Yuuka's junior. Her clothes spoke of a rural citizen, simple long sleeves and tassels in her hair. She was some kind of religious figure; it was clear just by looking at her.

"Make yourself at home." Masamune waved a hand. "Only problem is that I don't know if I'll have enough room for you all!"

Heat pulsed out of the forge in heavy waves, warming the workshop. Yuuka pulled her robes down to her waist and tied the sleeves so her arms were free to cool down. There was simplicity to fixing things that she enjoyed. Steel didn't stare blankly at her, steel didn't scoff, and steel didn't shrug her off; it remained always the same. There was nothing else on earth that felt quite like fixing something that had been broken. It was something Yuuka could do without having to try and communicate with anyone: people expected her to be focused and quiet, and those were two things that she could say with conviction that she was good at.

At some point, a young dark-haired samurai and the farm priestess left to the city. Gorobei announced he was going to stake out the joint, survey the castle, and keep a general eye on things. One of the farmers, a timid man, volunteered to assist him, and the pair clambered away to the roof.

"I apologize for the inconvenience, my friend." A voice over her shoulder: Kambei. He sat beside her while she worked.

The samurai held the air of a master, but the pose of a humbler man. His nose was crooked, and the laugh lines around his mouth had become pronounced, but there was an aged handsomeness to him. His eyes most of all were tired, even sad.

Yuuka waved him off with a smile. It really wasn't any trouble. The forge was what she loved. The injured sword glowed tangerine, flecked with ash. She laid it on the anvil and gently tapped it with a hammer. Kambei observed her work, perhaps worried after his blade like a father worries after a sick child. Yuuka held up a hand to reassure him, and the samurai smiled faintly.

"Please, don't mistake my interest for distrust." He said. Then, after a pause, "I take it you can no longer speak."

The hammer froze mid-tap. When the pause stretched too long, Yuuka carefully set the steel back into the forge to heat it again. Of course she had learned to live with her disability; the metal plating across half her body was proof enough of that. But no one exactly put it out there, just said it. There was murmuring, pitying looks when she tried signing, raised eyebrows, sure.

During her short introversion, she experimentally signed a message to him. You speak JSL?

"Yes, though not as well as you, I'm sure. Please, continue your work in peace." With a respectful bow, he left her.

Yuuka glanced at him, turning his words over in head while she removed the cherry red sword from the forge. More tinkering and tapping, taking a solid ten minutes, interrupted only occasionally by slight bouts of coughing. When the blade began to cool again, Yuuka observed it to judge its straight edge before setting it back into the forge for another go.

Masamune wandered over. "How's it goin', girl? Why don't you take a break? I'll let you polish it."

The mute samurai took her leave, stepping out onto the ledge overlooking the courtyard. Far off, across the whole way, her favored teashop was perched on the wall like Masamune's shop and nearly every other store in the city. She could nearly smell the suckers waiting to get conned, thinking they were the cleverest go player around.

The breeze dried the sweat on Yuuka's arms. Below her, Kambei was walking down the stairs to the flat center courtyard, a plain geometric shape of dirty white pavement. Spare machinery parts were tossed there and held under tin sheds, but there was still a good clear portion. Two specks of figures joined him there; it seemed that the priestess and the young samurai had returned.

"It seems that one found you." Kambei's voice was deliberately loud, to get the attention of someone not directly in front of him.

An electric zap of cold anticipation shot up Yuuka's spine; the feeling that she should be down there, closer, itched at her. The threat revealed himself before she had a chance to run back inside for her sword. Another samurai, it seemed, though too far away to distinguish any features.

Yuuka strode back into the workshop and snatched her sword from the side of the forge. She adored her katana, the blade polished to a loving shine, the handle braid dark blue. A small crescent moon ornament hung from the end, a glittering slice with a finely carved arrow cutting across. Gorobei—who had just returned from the rooftops—and Masamune looked up when she gestured for them to follow.

Unfortunately, her lack of communication meant that only Gorobei and the farmer followed, and to her displeasure, the small girl. The group of them all piled out of the workshop and around the block to the courtyard. By the time they reached the first landing, Kambei and the bodyguard were already stood out, ready for a duel. The onlookers watched, enraptured by both fighters' stoic control of the situation.

Yuuka leaned forward against the rail to get a better look, teetering on her toes. Gorobei glanced away from the circling samurai to address her. "What is it?"

She shook her head in response and waited until Kambei's back was to her. The other man, now facing her, could be placed in her memory instantly. The shock of blond hair and dual swords were hard to mistake: the bodyguard from the palace. Almost as soon as she recognised him, roving maroon eyes drifted up to meet fixated green. Yuuka's eyebrows jumped and she fell back from her precarious leaning, suddenly feeling as though she had been caught committing a crime. The bodyguard watched her coolly for a moment, then away as he continued to match Kambei's pace.

When blades clashed, it was like watching lightning strike, startling and bright. Steel clanged and grinded faster than Yuuka had ever seen. Sunlight winked at her, reflecting from the swinging swords. Dust swelled up around the ronins' ankles as they circled and moved, feet stepping rapidly back and forth, grappling for a better standing position, so close their chests nearly touched. All the while, their swords hardly separated until there was a pause. Blades rested at necks, and the tension was so thick it could nearly be tasted.

Kambei said something to the bodyguard, only quiet enough for the duelists to hear. Whatever it was, it was enough to provoke the blond into dropping back a step.

The next move was so fast that Yuuka would have doubted it happened at all if she hadn't been watching it. Kambei's sword wasn't even a blur. It simply appeared in its next position, but somehow the bodyguard managed to deflect it. The force of the opposing blades sent the ronin skidding backward in different directions. The duel-wielder landed back on his feet in a single jump, using the momentum from his deflection. Kambei rolled away, but stood with dignity and brandished his sword.

By now, other citizens had begun to take interest in the fight. Yuuka dimly recognized the presence of others in landings above them, but didn't care to look. The way things were going, she knew if she looked away for even a moment, she would miss an entire era of the fight.

It turned out to be an accurate prediction. Within only a few seconds, steel clashed again and Kambei had resorted to hurling metal pipes like javelins from under a shed that housed them. He vaulted up into the scaffolding to avoid a charge, and used a huge rod to swing at his opponent from above. Having put up with enough of it, the challenger cut the steel holding the shed up. The whole thing went down with a deafening crash, toppling the enormous piping. At some point along the way, that bodyguard had appeared on the scaffolding of the shed, and was now both were forced to maneuver away from the enormous tubes dropping all around the courtyard. The vibrations could be felt through the ground all the way up to Yuuka and Gorobei. A cloud of dust that truly felt like a cloud had dropped to the earth turned the air beige and gritty.

When the dust settled, the ronin were at a stalemate. Each had the other's sword to a throat, so close that skin was likely broken. Words were exchanged, again too soft for anyone to hear.

"Wow…this is scary." Komanchi's tiny whisper chimed through the silence. Yuuka heard herself swallow.

Kambei briskly turned his back on the bodyguard. A ripple of surprise went up through the small crowd. The older samurai was clearly waiting to see if the other would strike with his back turned and weapons away. The bodyguard shifted and placed his sword on his shoulder, considering his next move. Yuuka found she was clenching her jaw in anticipation. She heard a single one of her heartbeats, a jarring ba-dum in her right ear. A perpetually squeaky bolt in her artificial shoulder peeped when she shifted. Next to her, Komanchi whimpered. Her tiny fist clutched Yuuka's pant leg.

"All right, finally done…huh? Look out, Kambei!" A metallic voice boomed through the tense silence. Kikuchiyo, a robotic samurai that Yuuka actually recognized from various visits around the workshop, was stomping down the steps toward the untouchable duelists below.

"It's Kiku!" Komanchi squealed.

Kikuchiyo roared, charging with his comically massive sword poised to swing at the narrow figure of the blond samurai. The latter whipped one of his two swords up to neatly disarm the robot and raised his blade to strike a killing blow, but Kambei rushed in behind him like a ghost. The duel blade dropped to the ground when he was in turn disarmed, and Kikuchiyo obliviously went skidding on his back past Kambei and the bodyguard. He hit the far barrier with a crash, a wheeze, and a groan. Gorobei sighed and shook his head, accurately summarizing the mood.

The bodyguard sheathed his sword, turned, and left back up the stairs. On his way up, he glanced at the group Yuuka was a part of. He didn't acknowledge her when their eyes met, but looked away with an air of boredom that was so thick it seemed put on. Then he crested the high staircase and disappeared as quickly as he had arrived.

-o-

-Yuuka has severe damage to her chest area (lungs), diagnosing her with vocal cord paralysis that's bad enough that she was made permanently mute…I kind of wanted to clear this up since she isn't going to exactly explain it in clear terms.

-Please review! I want feedback—I've never written a mute main protagonist before, so tell me what you think!