Disclaimer: since I uploaded the last chapter, I still have not yet owned Sakura Taisen (Sakura Wars) - not that I plan to gain acquisition of it anyway. It belongs to Hiroi Ohji, and our beloved characters to Kousuke Fujishima and Hidenori Matsubara. I only own my plot and some original characters - Aki Kayama, Chiharu Tachibana, and Natsue Oogami in this chapter.

This second chapter continues the previous one. Here, one of my characters will have her first few lines. The events here were written as viewed by Maria (first part) and Sakura (second part). I tried my best to see the events as these two, hopefully I got their characters right. Anyway, enjoy!!!

Dawn of Seasons

Chapter 2

Another month had passed since that last Revue International conference. A lot of things had happened in Daitekoku Gekijou. They'd had that four nights of Beauty and the Beast performance and got some splendid reviews – as well as some crude criticisms from some media people who seek sensation. Iris had finished those headpieces she was sewing for the little girls; and Chiharu was so attached to hers it was with her everywhere. Letters from Kazuma and Lievya arrived from their current post at Australia. The Managerial Office get busier and busier, up to a point where its three attendants must spend sleepless night working in it. And the three weren't the only ones who suffered from stress and fatigue, for they were called out of the office one afternoon when Leni collapsed during a dance practice.

As Vice Captain/Assistant Manager Maria Tachibana sat beside her pale, thinning, cold-sweating sister the latter's room that whole evening, she realised that the time had come. Hanagumi was no longer a team of nine. It was a team of two: Leni Milchstrasse and Iris Chateaubriand. If there was ever another war – may God forgive her for thinking of this – they would stand no chance. They needed new comrades, preferably young girls on their spiritual energy prime.

And who would best fit those roles but Aki, Natsue, and Chiharu?

"A penny for your thoughts, Tjotja[1]?"

Maria turned and saw Aki on the door. The pre-teen wore a cream-coloured dress she was a bit too old to wear, her brown hair tied in two pigtails. In her hands was a tray, with a sole bowl on it. Iris must have sent her to bring Leni's dinner.

"Ah, Aki. Nothing, really. I'm just sitting here with your Tante[2]. Did your Tatie[3] send you here?"

"Yes," answered the girl. She walked to the table and put the tray there, next to the neat stack of papers and folders. "Tatie is too busy cooking dinner at the moment, so she sent me instead. Perhaps she did that to keep me out of the kitchen, she's been shunning Natsue and Chiharu out as well."

"Thanks then," Maria said. "You may join Natsue and Chiharu now, I'll make sure that Leni eats."

"Alright, Tjotja. See you later."

After Aki left, Maria stood up and walked to the window. Leni's room had a full view of the garden – they had specifically arranged it to enable the Tante to discreetly supervise her nieces playing in the garden. Chiharu and Natsue had been in the garden, Maria could hear their faint voices. Scanning through the trees and bushes, she spotted the girls – clad in dresses similar to what Aki was wearing – sitting between the cherry and orange trees, having a 'tea party' with their dolls and stuffed animals. Hiding behind a nearby bush was Leni's dog Shirou-the-fourth, busy eating a piece of cake which was not supposed to be given to him – the girls had been breaking orders again.

Closing her eyes, the markswoman slowly massaged her tensed forehead. Having fought wars as children, Leni and Iris did every step possible to protect the children's innocence. Long play hours, frilly dresses, all studies and no work – an upbringing perfect for a princess. She was sure those two hands-on aunts would not react kindly to the junior-team plan. They had lost Kazuma, Koujiro, and Lievya to Revue International schemes, and surely they would not want the three to get involved as well.

And Maria also didn't want to turn them into war engines.

Watching Kazuma and Lievya plunging into an international battle against Dark Forces was hard enough, even after all those preparations the Hanagumi did to ensure the two's survivals. The preparation itself was also an intense mental torture. No parent should watch their precious children walking around with guns and swords, moreover teach them how to attack. She still remembered yelling at Lievya for hesitating during a training session and finding herself crying in her room later that evening. Kazuma and Lievya left Daitekoku Gekijou as adults in teenaged bodies, being armed with all their parents' and aunts' combat knowledge. Each day, the Hanagumi women would secretly scan newspapers, fearing for the worse for the two. Every letter they sent home was a relieve; at least the two were still alive.

Leni stirred in her uneasy sleep. Maria looked at her second youngest sister, the one sister she could probably relate the most to. They both had not much childhood to tell anyone about. They were both teenaged war engines, calm, logical, and cold. Until today, she still found it a bit hard to get in touch with her emotions, and she knew Leni felt the same. Would they be able to go on knowing that they'd sent the children to the same place?

But what if Revue International started recruiting the three girls too? She was too observant not to pick those hints and remarks up. RI officials had come to know that the girls did indeed possess considerable spiritual energies. At this rate, it wouldn't be long before a new city troupe was established somewhere in the world – and one of the three would be needed. Sure, they could just not give their permissions, but, could they afford risking their relationship with Revue International and the girls themselves? She knew the naïve girls well enough to know that they would put up a fight against their parents' decisions not to let them go if they were recruited.

Setting aside the trains of thoughts, the unreadable Vice Captain sat back on the chair and started wiping cold sweats off her sister's head.

Shinguji Sakura had always trusted her superiors' decisions. Not because they were both her partners – her real husband and her on-stage 'lover' – but because she knew they were reliable. That was why she found herself walking down the dingy street at one of Tokyo's most dreaded areas at this ungodly hour. She'd kept one hand on her gun, though. In situations like this, a gun was clearly handier than a sword. Her skill with gun was dirt to Maria's diamond, but she reckon she was decent enough to at least defend herself.

"Crazy old folk, why this place out of all?" she heard her husband muttering under his breath. His gun was out, he was on siege.

"Always a bit eccentric, isn't he?" Maria responded. She also had her revolver out, aimed at an imaginary thing in the distance. "I reckon it's easier to get good cheap sake in places like this."

"He'd better not be drunk tonight," Ichirou said, "or I might bash him."

Sakura chuckled, and she could hear Maria chuckling too. Their former commander was such a character, even in his old age. The older man had always managed to grill Ichirou's nerves – and Sakura suspected it wasn't unintentional.

They took a right turn at the miserable intersection and entered the first building on their left. It was an old, miserable building; looked even more forlorn in the dim light. It reeked of sake – Sakura wrinkled her nose, for the smell was so strong. People in the rooms all along the hallway were making strange noises – doing God-knows-what. The shadow behind one of the paper doors reminded her of the closing scene of Kaijin Bessou[4] – except that it was performed by a real man and a real woman. Honestly, she didn't know how could Ichimoto Yoneda stand living in this place.

Soon they reached the room he rented, located at the back of the house. Yoneda-shihainin wasn't drunk tonight, thank heavens for that. The door slid open as soon as they reached it, he must have seen their shadows.

"Welcome, kids," the old man said, "come in."

They entered the room and sat down on the tatami. It was much better than the other parts of the building they'd seen, well-kept and clean. Yoneda-shihainin had kept everything traditional, apart from the bedside table in the corner of the room where he placed pictures of his old teammates and the Hanagumi. Tonight his futon was nowhere to be seen; he hadn't yet slept. Sakura suspected that the phone call requesting a discussion about 'forming a new troupe' got him a bit too excited.

"The Revue International are on your heels, aren't they?" he asked them straight-forwardly.

"Yes," Ichirou answered. "But it's actually more than that. Right now, what is called Hanagumi is actually a team of two. As good as Leni and Iris are, they alone would not stand a chance against those dark forces."

"And they're getting old, aren't they?" the ex-manager asked. "I'm actually surprised they could maintain their spiritual energy levels for so long. Any suitors yet for your sisters?"

"As you know, they don't want it," Ichirou answered, a hint of guilt in his voice. Yoneda-shihainin had been hinting that he hoped for marriages for Leni and Iris – his two youngest daughters. "They're too attached to their nieces."

"Ah, lovely girls, aren't those daughters of yours?" asked Yoneda-shihainin, grinning. "I still remember the day each of them were born. Now, forgive me for forgetting this, but how old they are now?"

"Natsue turned twelve last month," Sakura's husband answered. "Aki is eleven – won't be long until she's twelve, though. Chiharu is eight, she's the baby of the bunch. You should visit and see them one day – sadly and gratefully, they were nothing like their parents."

Her husband's last sentence invoked some thoughts in Sakura's mind. Natsue, Aki, and Chiharu were raised in abundance and with lots of love – unlike what their parents had growing up. They were also shielded from the harsh reality, Sakura and her sisters had themselves ensured this. She disliked admitting this, but Natsue and Aki's attitudes didn't quite match their ages. They were too childish.

"Have you started them on combat training yet?" asked Yoneda-shihainin.

"Not yet," Ichirou answered again. "They were too young for it."

"Too young, eh?" the ex-manager asked, subtly smiling. "Iris was nine when she started with us."

Maria tensed up. Sakura could understand her elder sister's anger; the half-Russian had lost her innocence too early, during a war which robbed her off her childhood. "This is an entirely different case, Yoneda-shihainin," she said defensively, "we have never had to teach Iris how to wield a sword or fire a gun."

The old man just smiled and looked at them. "You're trying not to involve your little girls in this. That's it, no more and no less."

Sakura felt her own anger raising. "Isn't that enough that we've given up our elder children?" she blurted, unable to control herself.

"Unfortunately not," answered Yoneda calmly. "Have you ever thought that Revue International might ask for your girls, to be placed somewhere in a faraway country with strangers they don't know?"

The question sucked all the blood away from Sakura's head. She swayed a bit, suddenly feeling dizzy. Ichirou and Maria's silences told her that they had ever discussed this before, during one of those rare moments when she wasn't with them.

"It was just by luck – and a bit of persuasion from this old, crazy man – that they didn't split Kazuma and Lievya. Their original plan was to send Kazuma to Cairo and Lievya to Moscow. This grandfather knew that his grandchildren would get bashed senseless by the horrible older personnels at those places. So, out of his love for them, he coined this idea of All Nations' Revue Troupe to those Revue International benefactors, who bought it. And that was because their parents were too stubborn to form a junior group in their troupe. Your reluctance to let your children fight, Sir and Madams, had cost you two of them. And, how about your younger son Koujiro, Oogami? Is he still happily training to be a revue troupe leader, waiting for the day when they would tell him to pack his bags and go captaining a troupe of young ladies somewhere in the world?"

Sakura clenched her fists, shaking in attempt to control her emotions. She could feel Maria and Ichirou shaking as well.

"Kayama and Kaede are in a transfer process to All Nations' Revue Troupe," Yoneda-shihainin continued, looking at the three of them. "They have long wanted to keep an eye on those kids from All Nations' Revue Troupe, such a decent bunch they are. My hand-picks, you know. I'm hardly ever wrong in this matter, look at you guys."

After all those incidents in many revue troupes around the world, Sakura could really say that finding a team that would harmonise well wasn't an easy job. Most of the times, people just got a mismatched bunch of girls, with some incompatibilities in spiritual energies or personalities.

The ex-commander stood up and walked to the corner of his room. He pulled out, from under the tatami, a closed folder, and walked back towards the spot the three were sitting on. He gave the folder to Ichirou, who took it a bit hesitatingly.

"What's this for?" her husband asked.

The old man smiled. "There has been this interesting research conducted by some Kanzaki Heavy Industry engineers – Sumire's father informed me about this a while ago. Apparently they've found techniques to breed soul crystals. This might mark a new era in Koubu technology; for you can combine the cores of good warriors and obtain a super-species from it."

"Wouldn't it be dangerous, if it ever fall into the wrong hands?" Maria questioned.

"That's why it had been kept secret for all these times," Yoneda-shihainin answered. "They have successfully fused soul crystals from Paris Kagekidan and bred five new ones from the union. Now, the technology is still quite unstable and they aren't yet sure if they could fuse more than five, but there had been plans to try with nine."

"Ours?" Maria asked, slightly surprised.

Yoneda-shihainin smiled. "Whose else?" he asked, a hint of pride in his voice. "The legendary Teikoku Kagekidan Hanagumi."

"Ah, I see," Ichirou said, lifting his head up from the document he was scanning. "A parent's crystal would be a good match for their children, wouldn't it? This technology ensures that at least Natsue and Chiharu will be able to stay with us, and that they will get compatible team-mates. Matching Aki into the team won't be hard, so I reckon this would solve the problem."

"You got it right, old boy," Yoneda-shihainin said. "Your task now is to find some other girls to fill the spots. They need to be matches for your spiritual cores, so it might not be so breezy. You might have to travel as far as the South Pole to find those young ones."

To be continued...

Notes:

[1] (Russian) Aunt

[2] (German) Aunt

[3] (French) Auntie

[4] The Hanagumi performed this in the movie (with Sakura and Lachette in leading roles) and in 5th Kayou Show (with Sakura and Maria as leads). The one I'm referring to here is the Kayou Show version – which was ended with an intensely romantic/sensual scene between the land princess (Sakura) and the sea prince (Maria).

Alright... second chapter posted. Hope it's enjoyable for you, I'll be coming back next weekend with the third chapter :).