Sometimes I don't know what I'm writing.
Disclaimer: Sorachi-sensei is da creator and owner all hail sorachiiiiii
Eyes of Wolves
- 6 -
.: MARCH, ONE MONTH AGO :.
Traitor.
.: APRIL, PRESENT :.
"You're sure you're not hungry?" Shinpachi offered, out of the kindness of his polite, plain heart. The boy was so unbearably courteous — was this their special guest treatment? — that Zenshi felt the urge to flee. But at the same time, he was curious as to how Kagura was faring in her new, bizarre dwelling.
He held up a hand, declining again.
"So, what have you been doing in Edo?" Gin asked. Truly, it was more of an interrogation, but Zenshi didn't mind, even though he wasn't all too comfortable with too many words.
"Hiding."
"Where?"
"Everywhere."
"And where are you going now?"
"Somewhere."
"Can you get any more vague?"
"Probably."
"Hey Patsuan, I'm tired of this guy. It's your turn." Gin stood and motioned for his bespectacled employee to sit. Shinpachi, wary of the samurai's intentions, sank into the couch opposite Zenshi deliberately slowly.
Suddenly, there was a loud banging at the door. Grumbling about how door-to-door solicitors were becoming too cocky and impolite these days, Gin trod over to the sliding door and opened it.
"Gin-san! Everyone!" came a young boy's voice.
"Oh, Seita-kun!" exclaimed Gin, a broad smile lighting his face. "What's up?"
The boy was immensely distressed.
"It's terrible! Yoshiwara was attacked!"
.: Thursday, TWO WEEKS AGO :.
"Take this, and run. I grabbed it from your room."
A familiar bundle of cash and clothes, along with an old blue umbrella, was shoved into Zenshi's arms.
"W-why are you doing this for me?" For the first time in his life, alarm showed clearly on his face, and his heart beat like the thundering hooves of racehorses. The clouds had had a sudden change of heart, and instead of drifting away peacefully as was forecasted, they returned with a hearty vengeance. The rain was hard and heavy and each raindrop stung his skin.
"Just go." A one-armed shove, and Zenshi was thrown into the next alley.
When he looked up, Abuto was gone.
.: APRIL, PRESENT :.
Perhaps attacked was an overstatement. Three "suspected" homes were raided, and the shop where Seita worked was turned completely upside down. Zenshi cursed himself twenty times, and then twenty times more.
He thought that returning to this city would throw them off his trail.
He thought that his bait, sent to the faraway corners of the universe on the tails of major trading companies and allied pirates, would relinquish him from their grip.
He thought he could outsmart the Yato, the Harusame's 7th Division.
And he was horribly wrong.
.: Thursday, TWO WEEKS AGO :.
He was stuck in that alley for a good ten minutes, drenched in puddles and rain and mud. He clutched his belongings to his chest, feeling like the little boy he had supposedly surpassed a decade ago.
A heavy block of metal slipped from his haphazardly folded clothes and hit the ground with a clang and a splash. Zenshi grabbed for it.
His mother's locket.
.: APRIL, PRESENT :.
He smelled it right away. The moment the scent hit him like a brick, he knew, and Kagura knew, exactly what was laid ahead.
"Get down!" screamed the girl, grabbing her dog's collar and wrenching him away from the door when they reached it. Gin and Shinpachi threw themselves to the street, and Kagura herself hit the floor within the next millisecond.
Zenshi, however, could not.
He threw himself in front of Seita before the bomb hit.
.: Thursday, TWO WEEKS AGO :.
Because even though nothing could ever pay for saving his life, Zenshi firmly believed in repaying debts.
He left the trinket of gold on the counter of the old woman's shop.
.: APRIL, PRESENT :.
A woman hoarsely cried Seita's name, but before Hinowa could reach them, Tsukuyo had grabbed the woman and pulled her away. The former courtesan's legs dragged on the ground until Tsukuyo tripped and they both sprawled across an upper level balcony. The bomb had ravaged most of their home, reaching the upper levels of the shop but not the portion where the two women had hastily scrambled.
Seita was incomprehensible, babbling nonsense as he realized who was braced over him. Zenshi balled his right hand into a fist, tearing the shrapnel from between his knuckles. The rest of his body, along with Seita's, had been shielded by his old but trusty umbrella.
"A-Aren't you—"
Before Seita could utter another word, several police officers burst out of seemingly nowhere. With a calculated glance, Zenshi counted fifteen uniformed men raiding the building.
A man with a cigarette loosely clenched between his teeth strode over confidently.
"You," he said, to no one in particular, "have just found our latest target."
Target?
"Are you trying to tell me we nearly got blown up because of you?!" Now, Gin had leapt to his feet and had grabbed the officer by the cravat. "You people!"
"Don't touch me," hissed the other man, blinking through a wisp of smoke.
"Oh, Hijikata-kun," snarled Gin, "I'm so intimidated."
The man spat his cigarette to the ground, ground it with his heel, and raised a fist as if to strike. Before either could make a move, a string of fast, sharp kunai came hurtling their way, and they leapt aside.
"Ya just blew up our house!"
Tsukuyo's face was dark with rage, and every time she brandished another kunai, someone cringed.
"No, it was a terrorist," reasoned the police officer.
Terrorist. Terrorist. Zenshi turned the word over in his mind. Terrorist — not the Yato. Could this have just been a freak accident? Was that kind of thing even possible, let alone probable?
"I could care less," she hissed, wrapping a hand around another knife.
"Tsukki," murmured Hinowa, left kneeling beside a now-safe Seita and Zenshi, who discreetly covered his bleeding hand with his good one, "we don't want a misdemeanor against the police, please."
Tsukuyo, disgruntled, lowered her weapons and stepped back.
"Y'all gonna pay for this mess?" She gestured at the blown up front of the little parlor.
"S-sure," came the wary reply. Probably, the police officer reckoned that a general insurance against crazy terrorists would do, but who was to say that Hinowa had that kind of thing? This was, in fact, a former city buried beneath the earth.
Tsukuyo whirled round then, ready to scold Gin and Seita when she spotted Zenshi. Her eyes flew from his face to his hand, which he supposed wasn't actually all that discreetly hidden.
"Are ya gonna stand there and tell me yer hand ain't injured?" she said tersely.
He would chance a shrug, but instead, Zenshi just stared at her, blinking slowly.
"Are you," he replied slowly, "going to tell me that you're not going to suffocate me with bandages again?"
He could not tell if the ruddiness of her cheeks was from rage or embarrassment. Zenshi would, very logically, assume the former.
.: Sunday, LAST WEEK :.
"You would think," he said, "that the son of a politician is smarter, yes?"
Zenshi knew he had been caught. He knew it from the moment he stepped into Yoshiwara that they had him strung in a thick network of traps and lies. No, he'd known this the day he stepped aboard that massive Harusame ship.
He never liked to call himself a pirate.
"I'd like," Kamui said, from his post atop a building, "to see you run."
Five Yato, all crewmen that Zenshi recognized, leapt out of dark windows. They tossed their cloaks and came at their target in unison. Zenshi's gaze shot up to Kamui one last time — he sent the boy a wide, wild grin — and fired one shot at the crimson-haired Yato.
And then, he ran.
.: APRIL, PRESENT :.
"Um. How does everyone know you?" asked Gin, rather uncomfortable with the fact that his friends in Yoshiwara were acquainted with Zenshi, a clear foreigner.
"Zen-chan's famous, yes?" Kagura stated, as if it was common knowledge. Gin simply looked miffed, and Kagura continued. "He's got connections everywhere. Do you know some guy named Hata?"
Zenshi shook his head, ignoring when Tsukuyo very harshly extracted a sliver of metal he had not bothered with. She slapped on a roll of gauze, stopping only when he grabbed her wrist and gave her a look that spoke of his dislike of mummy hands.
"I picked'im up in a gutter," Tsukuyo explained. "All torn up and dyin'."
"Not quite," Zenshi apprehended, though reluctant to speak up.
"Not quite? You were on heaven's doorstep," Tsukuyo hissed. Zenshi shut up, as he was very apt to do.
"Death's door, eh?" drawled Gin. "Never fun. See a shikigami?"
"I would hope not," Zenshi replied.
"Because," Gin continued, "there's one right here." He nodded at Tsukuyo, and then reflexively ducked for the incoming barrage of shuriken.
"I guess we're in line for hell then." Zenshi withdrew his hand, avoiding the glare that Tsukuyo issued both of them.
"It's better than nothing," Gin laughed.
Better. Really?
.: Sunday, LAST WEEK :.
He recognized the man. They played checkers on Saturday nights when the ship's crew was idle. Zenshi would have been tempted to say he saw no kindness in the man's eyes, that he was a ruthless killer like all other Yato, but he would have been lying. The man's pang of sympathy, of pity, tightened Zenshi's core like a creature curling in on itself. Defeat.
As a solid fist collided with his jaw, Zenshi struck out with his heel. The back of his boot landed a good hit on the man's collarbone, but a bullet grazed Zenshi's right side. There was a flash of black, and then both hit the pavement.
Jarred by the landing, Zenshi staggered to his feet, hands gripped around his umbrella in a typical defensive fashion. He had taken out two of the five pursuers, but the remaining three slipped in and out of his battle range at arranged periods of time. As one recuperated, the next would leap in on a blind spot, giving Zenshi no time to rest. There was always someone watching him.
Politics.
He immediately thought politics, to his dismay. His father, at the dinner table, often spoke of knowing one's opponent ten steps — no, twenty steps — ahead in the game. Zenshi supposed that this was how his father won so many elections, how he became such a big name diplomat. From a clan and a race of fighters, such negotiation skills were impressive.
Zenshi stopped waiting for them to come.
He started to hunt them, instead.
.: MARCH, ONE MONTH AGO :.
He finds himself running for his life. His head is, inevitably, now on the target lists of his many, many space organizations. His pursuers are not the type to take betrayal lightly, not at all.
He has just made an enemy out of the largest crime syndicate in the galaxy.
I'm a lazy writer, sorry. -sweatdrop here-
but HEY
HIJIKATA CAMEO!