Uhh this chapter was kind of hard to write. A bit filler-ish. Sorry for the lack of updates in the last few days - super busy, and Olympics!
FUN FACTS:
Ch. 40: Zenshi's Mom's name, "Lanhua", means orchid.
DISCLAIMER: Gorilla-sensei.
This fic is so hard to write ahhhh.
NOTE: I drew that scene of Zenshi and Tsukuyo, where she's eating the jelly haha. It's on my deviantART if you're curious (link in profile)
Eyes of Wolves
- 42 -
.: FOUR YEARS AGO :.
Tabs is in tears because his little sister has been forced to enlist as a new 7th Division recruit because his family is practically dirt poor and the Harusame pays well. There's no one to pity him up in the bridge, except maybe Ensign Delong casting him a weary but sympathetic glance.
But Tabs is insistent in his blubbering tears, the poor thing, because as he explains, his baby sister is a little farmer girl who plows through the rain with her alien pony, a green thing with fluffy underdeveloped wings, and harvests carrots for their parents when times are hard and she can't make it to school. She's only sixteen while Tabs is now about twenty, but she's a hardy girl with a toothy smile that he can't bear to see blackened by this world, just as he has despite his bubbly demeanor.
"Danchou," he starts, voice quavering. "You've got to cut some of the new ones, please. Even our section wasn't this big."
The redhead is eating an ice cream sundae, from which he takes the spoon and points it at the officer with an amused grin.
"The more the merrier," Kamui chirps straightforwardly.
Even the rest of the bridge crewmen are feeling a little sore for Tabs, who spends his day pacing back and forth, messing up announcements, and generally making people angry.
"There's no way out once you're in," Mei tells him sadly, an eerie premonition of the years to come. "Her name's already registered up at the space center. I don't think we can take it out anymore."
Tabs, inconsolable for the rest of the week, does not go unnoticed by Zenshi. The lieutenant, at the end of each day, briefly claps a hand on the other man's shoulder and offers him a simple inquiry of his day. It's not much, but Tabs knows.
"Miserable, sir," he replies with thorough melancholy. On Friday, he comes out and asks, "Do you think there's any sort of thing that would get her kicked out right away? Sent to another job?"
"You can't really get sent to another job after signing up to be a pirate," comments Mei sardonically.
"You're not helping," Tabs whines.
"You're giving me a headache." Mei is, sweetly and simply, not always the kindest.
"Seriously," pleads the ship's announcer, running a hand through his dull brown hair anxiously. "She wanted to be a business entrepreneur, a traveling agent, maybe a tour guide. Even a wedding planner. Or a galaxy idol's manager. Or a lawyer."
"Not a lawyer," Zenshi flatly rebukes, folding his arms.
"Okay, not a lawyer," agrees Tabs, "but she wanted to do something. This isn't how she wanted to travel!"
"What's her name?" Mei draws a face on the misted window to her left, seated as they are in the eighth deck's short observation lounge.
"Ryoko." Tabs scrunches his nose, as if trying to capture an elusive thought. "Maybe an incident with a higher officer? Would that get her kicked out? Like a secret affair?" He makes a face, however, at this. "Insubordination right out of the gates? Thievery? Anything? Lieutenant?"
"He's pretending not to hear you speak your foul, treasonous words," Mei narrates, following Zenshi's nonchalant gaze out towards the rainy planet. There they are, a massive ship parked on the Yato planet, and none of them are really allowed off — except the daring few that sneak away, specifically from Zenshi's stationary guard because that's the most lenient exit — and most of them forlornly study the pipes that run in and out and up from their hometowns.
"Initiation is in two hours," Tabs exclaims, standing. His antsy pacing rivets all three into a bundle of nerves, and soon enough, Mei is fidgeting and Zenshi closes his eyes because Tabs sends overwhelming waves of edginess. "What am I going to do? I promised my parents I'd keep her safe, even if I was a pirate."
"Then why'd they send her here?" Mei snorts.
"They didn't. She's coming because she knows that this is the only surefire way to bring income back to the farm." He, too, is a farmer boy, a rare agriculturalist of the urban Yato world.
"That makes no sense," points out Mei. "You just said she was forced."
"By the circumstances!"
"You're ridiculous."
"And you're filthy rich!" Tabs hits hard, and at this, Zenshi actually laughs. It's just a chuckle, but both of his aides turn and eye him incredulously.
"That's right," Zenshi affirms, "we are. Aren't we?"
When Mei scowls, he rises, walks over, and slaps the back of her head good-naturedly. Tabs ducks when his superior walks by, but Zenshi does the usual clap on the shoulder and leaves. Mei relinquishes a string of invectives so atrocious as to never be repeated that the room itself seems offended, as the air chills and demystifies any of her intentions.
"Where's he going?" Tabs asks, but not to Mei because she's busy swearing her tongue away. She answers nonetheless.
"Probably to oversee initiation. Jinlin's doing it this time. The whole spiel, you know the one." It's the same as the one they received, except each time they recruit, no one wants to do it, and it ends up being Jinlin — whose voice could put you to sleep — or a tech — and all the techs are rather incompetent in regards to guiding a group. The one year Mei decided to jump in, they just happened to have a trio of firecrackers ready to blow up parts of the ship left and right, and Mei certainly didn't help better the situation. That would be the generation of seamen and women that ultimately were the life of the party. Most, however, were sentenced to another fleet, probably the left wing of the 7th Division.
After that incident, Mei resigned herself to making faces behind Jinlin, stopping only when she knew something important was about to be announced. (For example, when Jinlin warns the younger Yato not to mess with their higher-ups, Mei is dead silent, her effusive excessiveness halted because do not mess with your higher-ups is advice that will determine whether you live or you die on your first day.)
"I'm going too," Tabs announces, pacing right out the door and leaving a cynical Mei tracing circles on her lap.
"It's in two hours," she says to no one, now that he's gone. "Have fun."
.: AUGUST, PRESENT :.
The Shinsengumi were a fastidious group, exempt from empathizing with the grievances of people, human and Amanto alike. Well, at least a good portion of them were. For the hedonist Yorozuya leader, who grumbled but provided an eyewitness account, the police force was intolerable. But it was the immutable Hijikata that truly defined the group, with the subtle stream of smoke trailing from the end of his cigarette.
As his presence, accompanied by his squad's, filled the room, Zenshi found himself stuck in the middle of a crowded room with nothing to alleviate the incorrigible leaden weight in his chest.
Mutsu, who had a tendency to finger the edge of her wide sedge hat, had taken a seat next to the ever-positive Sakamoto. Tsukuyo, half torn between checking on a few people — Sa-chan the stalker was, of course, present, and the Yorozuya were never outside her concern — meandered to and fro, only settling when a police officer summoned her for questioning.
Dead bodies were carted away. To their dismay, one innocent customer had been caught in the crossfire, and the antidote had arrived too late. The woman's face was covered, but Mutsu refused to go anywhere near her. Zenshi recalled something Mei had once said, almost sadly but mostly as a blunt insult to Earth:
"Humans are weak."
And in her indiscriminate, ineffable disdain, she was right.
.: FOUR YEARS AGO :.
Jinlin is hardly deterred by the fact that this group of Yato has a straight dichotomous personality split down the middle. One half has the eyes of predators in the night, and the other is a mild group of middle- to low-class daughters and young sons.
But there is strange awe in all of them, and she supposes that's because behind her stands that severe, young lieutenant of hers, daunting with his analytical gaze and squared shoulders. She appreciates that he has an inherent grace, a strength most likely inherited from that famous father of his. Yet he is his own character, often brooding and silent but emanating an elusive kindness that even he cannot place.
Jinlin is finishing her usual, tedious and somewhat dreary intro, ready to pass the baton along to Jenhao, who is more eloquent and better at doing the main ship tour. To be honest, the whole thing feels like a cruise ship excursion, but the Harusame isn't completely an organization of brutes, and Kamui likes the initiation because he finds it amusing. Their accompanying vice-captain relents and comes up with something along the lines of, "It attracts more young warriors," when asked.
She narrows her eyes when she spots a familiar face; there is a meek but sturdy girl of youthful but marriageable age, and has an anxious quality about her that resembles someone Jinlin knows.
And that someone taps his shoulder just as the girl looks up with wide, kitten's eyes.
"I'll do the tour," says the boy, says Tabs.
"Where's Jenhao?" asks Jinlin, somewhat uncomfortable within the boy's serious proximity. He's leaning in her face and looking nervous. Tabs has always had that insipid, bland handsomeness to him — it's a little ragged and jagged, but still there — that came with maturity, but for strangely enough, Jinlin can only remember the young boy she initiated three years prior. She, then, was also quite young, but his class had been the one to remember. After all, their very own Mei and Zenshi came that year as well.
"I'm here," Jenhao announces, appearing seemingly out of thin air. "But if he wants to help me do the tour, that's fine."
They seem to have forgotten that Zenshi is standing there in somewhat morose silence, but it's of no great importance at the moment.
The group then proceeds to file out of the announcement hall and down deck seven's starboard walkways.
"Welcome, all," Tabs says stiffly, obliterating all credibility and seniority second by second, as the young Yato crack down on his fretfulness. A quick glance at Jinlin and Zenshi, who have rounded the back of the recruit herd, and then a sharp inhale. "I'm Petty Officer Zhuyi, and I'll be your tour guide today. I typically work as head communications technician up in the bridge, which will be one of our later destinations."
There's a loud snort, and everyone turns to see Mei, slinking along the corridor and next to a few of the somewhat frightened girls.
"Tabs, you're too soft, I can't hear you back here," she shouts with obnoxious loudness. She slings her arm over the recruit closest to her, and to Tabs's horror, it's his sister Ryoko. "You should just let Jenhao do the tours, you know? You're seriously milking it up, calling yourself the head tech up in the—"
Mei trips.
Jinlin, Jenhao, and Tabs stare incredulously.
Mei stands.
"Did you just trip me?" she asks Ryoko, viciously dark.
"No," she answers. She's a sun-freckled character, with a roundish figure unlike that of her lanky older brother. But they have the same olive-flecked brown eyes and plain, lackluster hair, with similar contours to their ski-jump noses. Her voice, however, is unwavering, determined, unlike her nervous brother who is, in essence, worrying her.
"I don't think you understand," Mei hisses, now pinning the girl against the bulwark. The poor thing has gone silent, eyes flashing completely blank because she's shocked and everyone is staring. "That's not the answer I'm looking for. Did you or did you not trip me?"
"No, ma'am." The whisper ekes out its existence in fear, draining the girl of her Yato blood and filling her with terror in the face of Mei's officious terrorism.
Tabs looks like he wants to curl up in the ball, grab Mei and throttle her, and give his sister a hug all at once.
Zenshi places a hand on Mei's shoulder.
"Petty Officer," he says, so coldly that even the strongest of the young bunch exchange wary glances.
Mei doesn't move, and suddenly Tabs knows that it's on purpose, everything's on purpose, and the way Zenshi has sequestered a good portion of the poor farmer folk — some of which he recognizes from way back when — that this is a plan.
For a moment, it looks as if the lieutenant's fiery aide is not going to stand down, but she relents and releases the jacket collar of Ryoko, Tabs's younger sister. And then, without even pausing for a moment, she throws the girl to the floor and starts screaming such extreme profanities that most of the new recruits must think her insane.
Of course, as Jinlin and Jenhao fold their arms and smile beneath their masks of nonchalance, Zenshi repeats himself with overt irritation. Their lieutenant is a scary person, to say the least, when he's not happy. In fact, his squad is trying to hide smiles now, especially since he has taken Mei by the arm, thrown her aside, stepped on her flailing arms, and offered a hand to poor, spooked Ryoko.
The brunette accepts cautiously, placing her weather-worn, calloused hand in his larger one. She practically floats to her feet because Zenshi pulls her up so gracefully, whilst still patronizingly trampling his aide beneath his boots.
"Lieutenant, sir," Mei growls, "will you get off of—"
Zenshi moves his foot so that he's now pressing down on part of Mei's cheek and part of her jaw. He never even says no, but it's clear.
"Your impudence makes us seem like brutes, Mei," he drawls, bored. "And that just ruins this tour, hmm?"
"And you're stepping on your aide, what a great example," she manages, as he relents and walks away, a hand on Ryoko's shoulder and guiding her back to the group.
"And that," Jinlin picks up quickly, "is why I told you not to irritate your superiors."
She flashes a smile before adding, "There are three people specifically you should avoid when they're in bad moods. And this man would be one of them."
Zenshi brushes past her, very casually ordering for a gate release, because half of this massive Yato crew is going home. Actually, they're going to an international business and job application center neighboring Ocentisa, and when Tabs comes by later blubbering with tears and asking how and why and when and just how again, Zenshi simply turns and tells him:
"You said it yourself — I'm bloody rich, aren't I?"
The crew, after that, silently smiles, because they don't forget those rare acts of kindness.
So yes, Zenshi just used his father's prestige to pay off the Harusame and send a bunch of random kids to potential jobs.
Uh. This was hard, but I wanted to do a little on Tabs.
I've got a decent design of Tabs, and some of Zenshi's squad have been drawn.
I drew Linter uhuhuehuehue.