Whoop-de-doo! It's approaching midnight, and I have not started my homework.
I'm goooooooood.
Disclaimer: Gintama's not mine, it's Sorachi's. La lal al alalalalalalaaaaa MAGICALLLL BANANA XD
Eyes of Wolves
- 9 -
.: MARCH, ONE MONTH AGO :.
Kamui is ruthless to the point where his fellow Yato tribesmen nearly buckle under his cruelty. The 7th Division is assigned to wiping out a particular city, for reasons classified by the top of the top brass, on a faraway planet called Sciuttla.
"This can't be the right spot," mutters a petty officer, swallowing. It's a simple place, a little town center bustling with colorful Amanto families, surrounded by comfortable suburbs of the most vivid hues. It's a beautiful planet, if not a bit disorganized here and there. The definition of a happy home.
"It looks like a retirement paradise," agrees another, noting the pearly gates of a closed community and the marbled white pillars of the mayor's office. From these solid, shining whites and creams come the defiant palette of greens, blues, reds, yellows, and everything in between. One woman, who has baby blue skin, is adorned with fuchsia scarves and evergreen boots. Her son, who has the same light blue complexion, followed in a fantastically yellow school uniform, bright as the sun.
"Why do we have to destroy this?" sighs the first, looking forlorn. He fingers his umbrella out of habit, as many Yato do. Placing a hand on the window, he suddenly notices the reflection of his superior behind him. Both men whip to attention.
"Lieutenant," he addresses crisply, "I did not notice you there."
Zenshi nods, slightly, and the two relax their salutes. Donned in a brilliant navy uniform, a Yato-styled outfit embellished with gold pins and embroidered borders, he is the picture of royalty. He wonders, sometimes, if Abuto ordered the flamboyant golden extras simply to push Zenshi up the ranks and assimilate his stature as that of a captain.
He certainly looked the part, many would say.
Kamui, on the other hand, resignedly refers to Zenshi's fanciful style as overkill. An "intergalactic diplomat's mask" is what he proudly came up with.
"Are we really raiding his place?" sighs the first crewman. "It's rather pleasant, yes?"
Zenshi, more recently accustomed to the various accents of their several foreign ambassadors, finds the man's Yato accent almost comforting.
"Yes," he answeres. "They have had…several squabbles that present a threat to their national security."
"Just paste some pink glue on it," mutters the second man flatly, all but content with their new assignment.
"If only it were that easy, Ensign Delong." Zenshi places a hand on the shorter officer's shoulder, startling the man. Deep cerulean eyes bore into plain brown ones. "But our captain prefers liquid of the red kind, the type you find in living bodies."
When Zenshi turns to continue his supposedly nonchalant stroll down the hall, the two men shrink into a huddle. Very faintly, Zenshi hears one of them say:
"And how unfortunate for us."
.: APRIL, PRESENT :.
Zenshi proved to be the best carpenter's assistant that Tsukuyo could have asked for. Actually, the aggravated woman had simply become too impatient for the police's decision, and pulled the nearest Yoshiwaran builder to their door (which had been blown to bits).
"You two, come on in," called Hinowa from within. "I made lunch."
"There," Tsukuyo declared triumphantly. "You'll finally get to eat Hinowa's bento."
Zenshi failed to reply, seeing as he was currently hauling a chunk of drywall across the former parlor. The carpenter — who was actually just their neighbor a few shops down — had brought two practically useless Amanto as his assistants. One lounged on a chair, feigning exhaustion, and the other slowly hammered away at a poor, overbeaten nail.
The Yato eyed the section of wall the two assistants had been tasked with destroying. To his dismay, the entire thing was completely intact, save the section that had been damaged by the bomb.
"May I ask," he said, with dangerous patience, "why this wall is still here?"
Tsukuyo, who stood between Zenshi and the lonely table in the former parlor, followed his discontent glance. The one man, a young Amanto teen who looked relatively humanlike if it weren't for his fluffy yellow dog's ears and protruding tail, grimaced.
"It's too hard, we can't break it. We'll need to call in the boss so he can bring the big tools." The dog-boy nodded.
His coworker, another Amanto who looked quite like a giraffe with glasses, snorted a few incomprehensible phrases before adding, "And boss busy. Bother him is no."
Tsukuyo made a face, struggling to hear through the giraffe's thick, rolled accent that originated from the back of the throat. Zenshi, adept at interpreting the most alien of accents, simply sighed.
He very nearly stomped over to the wall, looking sour. Nonetheless, his face was completely blank. Tsukuyo, however, noticed a slight twitch to his eye, one that screamed impatience.
"No use, so walling, such hard," chirped the giraffe.
"If we can't break it, you probably can't either," sniffed the dog-boy.
Zenshi threw them a condescending glance, and then proceeded to smash the wall with a single strike. No, not quite — he simply rapped his knuckles harshly, as if knocking for the police that Tsukuyo so hatefully disregarded, and the wall split beneath his fist.
The two Amanto went silent in awe.
"Much use," Zenshi told the giraffe arrogantly, "no walling, such soft."
He received only a reproachful giraffe's bleat, and the sound of Tsukuyo's laughter.
.: MARCH, ONE MONTH AGO :.
"Convict me of treason, I don't care!" screams the petty officer. He clutches the corpse of his friend, the pessimistic ensign. "Kill me! Do it!"
Kamui does not move. He is not the type to kill by request; he first preys on his target, watches them wriggle and squirm before going for the heart. Unless there is a readily available stock, he'll bide his time before his killing spree.
"You are protecting the very asset that we're supposed to eliminate in this mission," Kamui says, mustering a jaded expression. "The destruction of this town, along with that woman—" he points at a woman, huddling with several colorful Amanto children, a little ways behind the crewman, "—is our purpose. And yet you protect her. A filthy, foreign peasant who runs a sad, rundown orphanage. It's the least beautiful thing in this village of rainbow vomit."
Zenshi finds Kamui's insults the most amusing to listen to. Sometimes, the boy with blood-stained hair can come up with the most chilling threats. But other times, he comes up with wordy little speeches he finds evocative. Zenshi would not like to be the one who tells Kamui that he's inadequate in this threat, though if anyone were to break any news, Zenshi would typically be the one.
"Yes," growls the officer through gritted teeth. "Yes I am. I have a son. Delong has a daughter. I won't stand to watch someone else's child killed when our own live on the money of pirate's dirty work."
"Why now?" Kamui prods. "Why not before?"
"Our children had to grow up, first."
"Oh, but have they?" Kamui picks up a broken umbrella — presumably Delong's — and twirls it. "Tell me, Petty Officer Jenhao, have you children really grown up? Can they defend themselves in this dark universe?"
A pause.
"Or have you simply accepted the fact that after you die, there may exist an unfortunate accident where your wife, your daughter, and your unborn son are all killed?"
Kamui's smile is colder than the blackest planets. He is the threat, the dealer, the god of death. While seeming like a rather blockheaded commander, he is, in reality, a killer Yato. He reads his men like books. He puts in time just to know his crew, to find their weakness and push and prod and inch deeper with his claws until he knows he's far enough to break them.
The officer is frozen.
"No," he says adamantly. He has lowered his friend, Ensign Delong, to the ground.
Then, as if struck by a revelation, Kamui turns and beams at Abuto. The co-captain is wholeheartedly mystified by the boy's excitement. Kamui then faces Zenshi.
"Zen, you kill him. I want you to kill him."
Zenshi is stunned to a staggered halt. His typical silence is prolonged, and he simply stares uncomprehendingly at the redhead.
"Abuto," calls Kamui lightly. "We're leaving."
Kamui, giving up a kill? Zenshi, almost wryly, wants to grab the boy by the shoulders and shake sense into him.
But when Kamui passes him, he is everything but changed.
You cannot hide your blood from me, either.
.: APRIL, PRESENT :.
Zenshi was impressed with Hinowa's cooking, with Seita enthusiasm in sharing his overflowing lunchbox, with Tsukuyo's lightening mood. For a short interval, he allowed himself a moment of relaxation, kneeled at a makeshift table. Actually, the little kotatsu that had been pulled out for momentary use was satisfying and warm, but strange given the opening of a warm season.
"You know," Hinowa noted. "You looks more like the type to wolf down your food, yet you pick at it so delicately." She noticed the wan, half-hearted shrug. "You don't have to be polite. We're all family at the table."
Suddenly, there was a pang of homesickness, of a horrible, wrenching desire to be the little boy that curled up under a blanket, watching an old film on New Year's day, with a woman who quietly hummed in his ear.
Hinowa was painfully like his mother.
"Thank you," he said, accepting another bowl of rice. He was no exception to the Yato — he, too, had a bottomless stomach. He just tended to ignore its grumbling more effectively than others.
.: MARCH, ONE MONTH AGO :.
Zenshi reaches for the man, and the response is immediate. A fist flies for his face, but he catches it and instead of retaliating, he stuffs his wallet into the officer's fingers. There's not much left, but it will have to do.
"L-Lieutenant?" stutters the man, fumbling with the simple leather pouch.
"Take the money, the woman, and her children, and run to the nearest bus station."
"I—"
"Remember the mission. They're not just after this orphanage — they're destroying the whole town."
Shocked, fearful silence.
"Take everyone to the bus station and ride it all the way to the next big metropolis. Those are too large and too radical for takeovers. Do you understand me?" The words run out of his mouth like music notes along a staff, and he has never talked so fast or so furiously before.
"Why are you helping me?" whispers the other Yato. "Why won't you just kill me?"
"I am a living, breathing man of conscience before I am a Yato," Zenshi tells him, hands now on his shoulders. "Do you understand what I've told you about fleeing?"
"I…I don't think I can do it."
"You are not a coward. You are a proud man." Zenshi grips the umbrella that the man has loosely clasped on his belt. "Protect them, and I will protect your family."
"And I'll return home, after it all?"
"Yes."
The man stands there on the line between breaking into sobs and ripping his hair out. The woman behind them is thanking Zenshi a million times with a million tears, and the children eye him with wet noses and lost stares.
"Petty Officer Jenhao, that is an order." Zenshi wrenches the man's attention back to himself. "And it is my last. Will you or will you not obey?"
When the words finally sink in, the Yato soldier is shaking. He raises light, calloused fingers to Zenshi's left cheek and mouths quietly:
"I hope my future son is as brave as you are, Lieutenant."
.: APRIL, PRESENT :.
He realized that he'd have to go home, soon.
But the more he looked, the farther away "soon" appeared to be.
So? Comments, questions?
Also, please tell me if I set one tense and accidentally lapse into the other. I tend to do that A LOT.