The woman was silent and she shifted uncomfortably, it was never a good sign when the woman was quiet. Give the yelling, screaming, ranting woman any day, just not the calm quiet little old lady she saw next to her right now.
It had to be something about the fight she had with her mother yesterday in front of the lords and lady's, but this was unusual for the woman. The child looked up at her adoptive grandmother who seemed to look at nothing in particular from the porch. The child dug her toe into the dirt at her feet, hands clasped behind her back an she could feel the bruise on her cheek from yesterday.
"There comes a time when you must grow up." The words startled the child, as if she hadn't heard the woman talk in years. It startled the child so bad that she actually jerked back and whacked her head on a low lying dojo decoration.
"There will be a time when you have to make a choice...I do hope that choice will not come too soon." The woman seemed to ignore her plight at the metal decoration. She was only five, how was she supposed to know the meaning behind the words. Now fifteen years later, she still almost didn't know the meaning of the words.
Going through the stances of iaijutsu she drew her sword in a offensive strike before sheathing it once more. The speed of the strike, she had seen her grandmother do it, the weight of the air that seemed to follow the seamless move.
The wood dummy across from her creaked slightly, the breeze blowing through her brown hair that was now scattered across her face as her chartreuse green eyes peered through the strands. She did not swipe the strands away as the wood creaked again, barely moving before the top half, at a diagonal line started sliding away from the rest of it.
The wood hit the ground before she relaxed, so much tension in her shoulders that when she moved them it was almost painful. She wiped the sweat from her upper lip, her cheeks flushed not from exertion but from adrenaline, from her imaginary foe trying to kill her.
It wasn't that she hated it, but the flush of her cheeks, the way her pupils were blown made her look like a western opiate junky who had just come back from a fix. She lifted her katana, in it's sheath the sword wasn't anything spectacular but the sheath was a bright white, hilt was wrapped with white bandages and the guard was made of silver and the butt was also silver with a opal at its centre.
When the katana was unsheathed it was at it's most deadly, you see for a white sheathed with all the silver the blade itself was made of a metal that had been dyed black before it was shaped. The blade gleamed black with a small razor edge that was completely made of white silver, in the dark, that edge would be the only thing you would have seen before it hit you.
If the user didn't use iaijutsu like she did, her enemies were lucky if they even got a small glimpse of what she was taught to render upon those enemies.
Iaijutsu was the practice of unsheathing, making a strike before sheathing the sword once again. If an iaijutsu user could do all that and then keep speeding up each time if they were trained for their whole life, then it would look as if you hadn't moved the tiniest bit while an enemy seemingly fell without warning.
She spun the katana around her hand, catching it against her palm and holding it out in front of her. Her yukata blew slightly in the breeze, she could feel the collar brush up against her neck every once in a while and she closed her eyes to the sound of the birds chirping and the leaves creating the sound of falling rain.
There was the sound of yelling, it floated on the breeze and she turned, the fabric of her legs drifted against each other. She turned, opening her eyes, her ears picking up the sound of horses hooves and her nose picking up the scent of fresh blood.
She turned the direction of the breeze that came slowly from the east and took off. The dirt lifting from the ground as her geta hit the dirt, lifting from the pounding of her feet.
The wind in her face the scent started to get stronger as she did so, the trees blurred beside her as she used in her training from when she was to become a shinobi. The wind seemed to be whistling past her ears as she turned sharply, burst through the tree with such speed that the leaves had been shaken from the stems they were attached to and followed her.
The clearing was large and wide, the ground covered with old leaves and dark dirt with three men in Date armour kneeled in the dirt, six men standing over them and as she burst out of the bushes. She took in each soldier as she did so, her senses seemed to expand past the six normal one of touch, taste, hearing, smell and sight.
She could feel their heartbeats, felt the way they reacted to her sudden presence, felt there swords that they gripped like the touch was her own. Smelt the sweat and metal on their skin as she jerked to a stop, could feel the presence and fear of the men kneeling. Suddenly if felt as if she had stumbled onto a war zone without realizing her mistake first.
Her grip on her katana tightened, the gloves of leather tightening on her fingers to a point of which she could feel her knuckles digging through her skin. Her other, right hand gripped the white wrapped hilt in a grip that was calm and loose, ready to parry or lock in battle. It was what she had been trained for by her grandmother, espionage was what her mother had trained her.
Both of them made her feel confidant in what she could do with a sword or even in hand to hand against one. It had taken years to get this far and she would not let it was down the nether worlds river.
"Begone! Peasant! This is not your place!" One of the men called, some of then sneered as if they knew something she did not yet she felt not traps or even other people in the vicinity.
"Run boy!" That wasn't now, the Date faction soldier was kicked in the back. As he landed face first in the dirt, his hands tied behind his back she could taste blood in her mouth, and realized that she had bitten her own tongue to keep from calling out to him.
"Begone boy!" She sneered, she could feel the curl of her lips, the way her one canine showed through them. Boy, she had been called that before, by a lord none the less, it was why she had been smacked so suddenly by her mother that it had made blood rush through her mouth and her eyesight go totally red with rage.
"What are you doing with these men?" The soldiers seemed to jerk, her voice wasn't at all girly but it also wasn't boyish, it was a subtle in between that made people want a closer look at what gender she really was.
"None of your business peasant!" One of them growled, his hand tightening to an almost painful grip on his sword. The tension was high in the air, filled with was testosterone of the six before her, making her head reel and her mind go slightly blank as she struggled to keep a normal face even though she knew it probably wasn't working very well.
"These men are under the Date house mon, what is your business with them?!" She almost ground out the words between her teeth, the men in front of her slowly starting to tick her off by the second, they had already called her peasant and boy. She would not take anymore insults to her very being nor gender today, she was sick of disrespect.
"None of your business peasant!" One of them drew on his sword, holding it in both hands, his fingers were too tight, he would not be able to win against a loose finger grip let alone an iaijutsu user like her.
A tight grip put tension in the hand, which would put tension in the wrist and forearms instead of the elbows and upper arms where it would be needed to block and throw an opponent off from a lock. Having tense fingers meant the elbows would be locked and would not be able to move as smoothly as most samurai would have liked.
He was trained, but not particularly well. The rest of the men also drew their swords except for the ones kneeling who were disarmed and had their hands tied behind their backs which would hurt considering armour was not made of cloth.
"Then I'll make it my business." Her blade clicked but an inch from hilt to sheath, the black gleaming in the sunlight and at this hour it would catch the eye just enough for the men to loose some focus upon her movement.
It worked, she was already under one of them before he even realized she had moved, she blade swung in a wide arc towards his stomach, going low and just under his chest armour to the soft flesh underneath. Flesh parted like butter underneath her black blade, the blood spurting and hitting the armour so it poured like a waterfall to the ground beneath him. She could feel blood, hot, wet and sticky against her face as she moved, so close to the ground that she could see the particles of dirt in retrospect even through her torso wasn't even touching.
She brought her knee up underneath her, pushing off and flipping elegantly over his already falling body before she was upon the next one. The blood already drying on her face as the men cried out, she ducked under a blindly swung katana, cutting high this time in a smooth upwards arc.
It caught him in the chin and cut his face from jawbone to temple, he fell backward without so much as a sound as his fingers twitched around the hilt of his blade.
She stood for only a moment, flicking the blood off her blade and sheathing it before concentrating, eyes closed as the other four men had to turn around. The two men that had still been kneeling had thrown themselves to the sides so they would not be in the way of her swords, it made the job easier for her but she wouldn't have left a single scratch on their helmets if they hadn't.
She could feel the burning and twisting power, the electricity at the brim, she could feel it pour from the nape of her neck, down her right shoulder and into her sword.
Feeling the course of her power she loosened her grip even more on the sword as one of the swords came close to her neck, inch by single inch until it was just a millimetre away.
She disappeared, it seemed as if she had just vanished into thin air, one second she could have felt the sharp edge of a steel blade at her throat and the next she was on one knee, across the clearing and behind all four men.
Blood dripped from her blade, the wind seemed to catch up and it blew her short, mid-neck length hair all forward and into her face. She could feel blood sticking to her arms and neck, the blood on her face once again dripping and wet.
She stood, flicked the blood from her blade and turned, seeing the soldiers almost frozen within time, one in mid swing while the others were still in the same exact running positions. She slowly sheathed her blade before it was an inch before closing completely, it clicked.
They fell one by one in sprays of blood, coming from all over their bodies were cuts going so deep that she could almost see the other side.
"Now it's my business." She jogged over to the men, one of them, who had seen the whole thing, looked at her with bright and fearful wide eyes. She righted him from his position and then untied his ropes.
"I have-" Her looked down at his untied hands, rubbing at his sore wrists. She could see the angry red marks that would probably need ointment to keep from blistering or worst peeling off.
"I've never seen anything like that before..." She could only nod, no one wants to hear someone speak when they are covered in blood. Plus it wasn't her place to try and talk to the soldier.
The first helped untie the second and she untied the third while he got the other to his feet, they left the bodies in the clearing. She would have to send her people to dispose of the corpses, being the head of her clan wasn't so bad, it just came with responsibility and she really didn't mind teaching swordsmanship skills to them.
But it also came with a lot of questions, even before they all stepped a single foot on the grounds of the very small village people were upon them, taking in the sight of the Date soldiers and her covered in the drying blood of her enemies.
Men had taken the soldiers off her hands and into their own, the soldiers had been taken in almost like family from sight while she was dragged off towards the river that ran through the village.
At the very edge, she was stripped of her yukata and pants, her sandals had been thrown somewhere off to her right while the women, all young in age started to throw buckets of water on her body. It was actually quite cold, she could feel goose flesh pimple her whole body, head to before they literally dragged her in and made her dunk.
They scrubbed her pale skin so hard, red blotches were left in their wake, they had pulled at her knotted hair so hard she almost felt chunks of her scalp come off into their hands. No trace of blood was left behind and she was grateful even though she didn't ask for the attention that she was given.
The river water was still running streaks of red.
She was dressed yet again in a simple pale tea green yukata, her sash being tied diligently by a child who she had trained in hand to hand on more than one occasion. She slipped on her geta herself as someone ran to get her sword. She was handed her sword before she was sent on her way, a small thank you falling from her pink lips before she quietly left with words spoken to a well trained man that was the shinobi corps leader and the one that had guarded her bath.
She walked through the village, people were bustling to and fro, carrying items or even children. She was waved to several times and she waved back with a small smile on her lips.
"Kurai!" She turned, the woman bustled to her side, wide hips with a child over her shoulders, the black hair and green eyes so close to Kurai's own that they could have been born of the same woman. Well almost, they were cousins after all.
"Yes, Kurin?" She stopped to let the woman catch up, she could see the curiosity in her cousins eyes and the unspoken questions that mingled there in the green depths.
"Those Date soldiers, their wounds are being taken care of and they're being fed good food and clean water as we speak. Old lady Chiyo said they had been starved and were dehydrated, herbs were put into the food to help them back to health but-" she trailed off, her eyes at her feet as they walked, Kurai kept her eyes forward and to the location they were going, which was the dojo that Kurai taught at.
"But I am wondering how long they will be here...I mean no offence but we only have enough food for us to last the month with just the mouths we are feeding now. So how long do you-"
"Tomorrow." She said with finality, she would use her very own hawk for the purpose of letting Date Masamune know that his retainers were in the Tenshi clans care and that they would be sent by horse to his compound at dawn tomorrow. Her bird would be their within the hour and knowing the Date clan, they would be at the village by nightfall.
"Kurai-" She started and Kurai gave a single glare from the corner of her eye.
"I said tomorrow Kurin. No more words need to be said. I'll send Fuki now and the Date will probably be here by nightfall. If there is something wrong with that, state the facts and be done with it." It may have been harsh, but the woman was younger than she was and had already popped out three kids by the time she was nineteen, Kurai wondered how much work it must have been by herself while her husband fought for her safety with the Date on the battlefield. Hell, not just her safety, but for the land of Oshu's safety as well.
"How many were there?" Kurai stopped and sighed, it wasn't her place to tell. It wasn't her fault, they had drawn on her first, she would have not had to kill them had they laid down their swords. She swore to herself she would never kill a man who would not think twice about doing the same to her. It is why she had killed her own father to be truthful. But that wasn't her choice either, he had asked her to, who was she to say no to a death by honourable suicide?
"Six." Kurin took a deep breath and nodded, her cousin was always the one who thought about a man and his family, if he had one and what were his last words to them. It never even crossed Kurai's mind to think about that.
Afterwards with a farewell to her cousin, she sent Fuki with the message off to Date's domain, now all she had to do was wait until the showed up at the preverbal gates.