Meh. Last one for today. Got projects to do!
Fun facts:
Ch. 46: Kagura saying "Who're you referrin' to?! HUH?!" to Sougo is basically a parody of Tsukuyo asking Zenshi who he was referring to. (lol)
Ch. 46, voice actor reference: If you didn't know, Kagura's seiyuu (voice actor), Kugimiya Rie, also voices Happy from Fairy Tail, who likes teasing people by saying "He lliiiiiiiikes you!"
Disclaimer: Sie sind das ichigo gunyuu und wir sind die Gintoki.
((((( 'nuff said ))))
Eyes of Wolves
- 47 -
.: SEPTEMBER, PRESENT :.
The once pearly marble gates and limestone steps painted with strange, shimmering glazes of gold and silver, were miry ghosts of their past, glorious selves. The palettes of greens, blues, reds, yellows, and everything in between were decimated to broken fragments of stained glass windows, a rainbow dissolved in monolithic ruins.
"We're headed to the next city over, East Tomokaz," Mutsu told them. Sakamoto, who had been intermittently humming whenever he didn't feel nauseous, handed them a brochure.
"It used to be a popular vacationing place before political trouble," he announced. "Ahaha, these colors are great!"
Zenshi gave the pamphlet to Tsukuyo, who browsed scenes of happy couples and florid sights. The Yato stared out the window restlessly, recognizing what once used to be the stairs to the governor's home, the city hall. There was a particular street, broad and cobbled, where he briefly imagined a memory — a woman with baby blue skin and bright fuchsia scarves, evergreen boots, and a fancy updo, walking briskly with her identically blue son in a mustard yellow school uniform.
But all that remained was ash and dust and fragments of a happy town, a town that was probably on the back of postcards and on the covers of brochures. There were charred buildings, ravaged by fire; grisly remnants of public service buildings, blown to bits by a bomb; a garret, exposed to the sky because the roof had been shredded off its very supports, covered in gossamer webs and gaunt loneliness.
Every now and then, a body, colorful but grafted in debris and disturbingly gray.
"This town was a victim of a purge," Mutsu explained. "The military government, intent on establishing a totalitarian regime, has been destroying the 'free' towns that had garnered the support of enemy planets."
"Planets," echoed Tsukuyo.
"Yes, there is a trio of smaller planets in locked alliance against Sciuttla's military government. They have yet to actually declare war, but tensions are…tense." Mutsu made a face. "I believe they are trying to defend a doctrine of intervention in Sciuttla should the government system go awry, but this authoritarianism party obviously doesn't agree. That's about all I know. You'd have to ask that guy for more." She jerked a thumb at Zenshi.
"You knew about this?" Tsukuyo asked.
"I told you about it."
"Ya said somethin' about a civil war."
"I see." Zenshi was hardly in the mood to converse with her, now. He had indeed told her there was a civil war, but that was justifiable in his case. He'd simplified the story to deter her from going, but here they were anyway, and his words had little effect on her.
"Yer in a bad mood. Did ya get up on the wrong side of the bed?" Tsukuyo, whose jokes were poor to say the least, did not manage to cheer him up. He would have argued that the rooms on the ship had beds that pushed conveniently in the wall, thus ending up with only one side to get on and off, making her joke completely null and void, but he hadn't the heart to make fun of her.
"Zen?" Mutsu peered at her cousin's face, trying to discern meaning in his imperviously cold expression.
"Six months ago, I stood within that town hall. It stood as high as Hosen's palace in Yoshiwara."
The two women went quiet, respecting his unease.
But Zenshi turned to Mutsu.
"It's hard to kill your men, but it's harder to watch them die in each other's arms." At this, he turned and exited the bridge, an oppressive weight on his shoulders. Tsukuyo and Mutsu watched him go, the human and the Yato both sensing the incorporeal guilt that had materialized in the man's conscience.
"Do you know what…what happened here? Why he was here?" asked Tsukuyo.
Mutsu, with a forlorn glance at the passing, decimated town, shook her head.
.: MARCH, SIX MONTHS AGO :.
There is something tragic about the way Ensign Delong fights. The moment in which the indefatigable warrior recognized the plight of the children before him is the moment his own daughter's face must have flashed into his mind. He realizes it's something he cannot give up.
And the way his face spells out every single thought is heartbreaking.
Delong's intentions only become lucid when the adoptive mother of a trail of orphans cringes because Kamui has grabbed one child by the throat.
"I'm typically against killing women and children," says the captain with half libelous and half indulgent delight, "but there are certain people I agree with more, and they want you dead."
Kamui is not above the influence of the political intergalactic powers that dictate where the Harusame go and how they do their work. But he is not subject to the fanciful whims of rulers who simply want to create mass genocide or livid terrorism. Because Kamui, this time around, has found that the strongest assets lie within the military government — whose dictator is what the boy would deem a "worthy opponent" — there are nearly no qualms in killing these bystanders.
"You're a pawn," cries the woman, when the child suffocates beneath Kamui's grip. "Stop! Please, stop!" she adds, seeing Kamui's knelling glare.
"I'm a pawn? Oh, hardly. You're a pawn, madam. Where is your husband now?"
"I don't need him to tell me to fight for our ideals, our dreams!" The woman clutches one of the orphans close to her. She has honey-olive skin and teal hair, and none of the children are her own, but they resemble her in her fierce defiance and determination to live.
"You know," Kamui says, "I don't like killing the little ones. But I'll gladly take thi—"
He whips around, raising an arm to parry the swing of Delong's umbrella, unable to seize the one child closest to him and paralyzed in fear.
Delong fights with jaunty grace, with an invidious strength and precision that accompanies his lithe and lissome technique well. He is always quite immodest, a gruff, obdurate, and masculine figure, but never ignorant or disrespectful to companions of any rank. His bloodlust has a macabre noxiousness that roars in the face of danger.
He is danger itself.
"Don't touch the girl," he hisses when Kamui takes a few measuring steps back. The girl who had been nearly caught by the clutches of the merciless commander wails and sprints to the middle of the cluster of children.
"Delong, wait!" And then there is Jenhao, followed by no one else because they are scattered, searching for the group that only Kamui has managed to sniff out. He's too late.
"Both of you?" Kamui assumes indifferently that both of them are traitors. "I'll kill both of you."
"How dare you," growls Delong, ossified now in his stance. "These children had parents. These children have nothing to do with this."
"And what turned you, ensign?" Kamui has a hateful expression now. "Are you defending the woman, the children, or both? I don't understand."
"Of course you wouldn't, Danchou, you're a child," spits Delong. He's about to say something else, but suddenly he is face to face with Kamui, so close that they can hear each other breathing. Delong's black umbrella snaps under Kamui's heel and suddenly there is a massive pain in his jaw and he's flying backwards, crashing into the broken up gravel of a back road.
"I've made it so you can never say so again, ensign," Kamui announces apathetically. There is an impressive air within the curbing of his anger, which typically translates into bloodthirsty excitement. "Zen, come look. His jaw is broken."'
Zenshi has been silent, a pithy background pillar in perturbed silence. He knew the ensign was going to lash back; he saw it with his own eyes. That's why Zenshi lets him go, why he doesn't even offer a glance because he knows, and Delong knows, what a kind heart is. And Zenshi doesn't object to a justifiable cause.
"Danchou!" exclaims Jenhao, picking his way towards the other officer.
"Petty officer, don't take another step," Kamui orders. Jenhao freezes.
The next scene is one that Zenshi regrets watching passively. He can only hope that Jenhao catches his cue, the subtle movement towards the children. The Sciuttlan woman — her name, he learns, is Uhuru Ominira — is very perspicacious, and sees the tall Yato inching to her right step by step as Kamui fights Delong.
Zenshi tilts his head.
Run.
She begins to usher her children in that direction, but Kamui feels he interruption and looks up. Delong takes that instant to scramble from Kamui's grasp and drive his elbow into the boy's gut. However strong Delong is will never suffice, and unfortunately, it is a difference in power that Kamui exploits. A split second passes, but it's fast enough and Kamui whips back and blocks the blow. He twists Delong's arm in such a way that the man screams, leaving the limb hanging useless at his side.
"Danchou," calls Jenhao, who is promptly ignored, even when he repeats himself and tries to reason with his superior. It's a wise move, and exactly what Zenshi needs. He always appreciates Jenhao's knack for understanding people in general. The petty officer needn't know the idiosyncrasies of Zenshi's body language — the situation itself tells the entire story. Jenhao is buying time.
"Don't forget," calls Kamui, "you're on my list, too."
Kamui lunges for Jenhao, who is so used to a sanguine environment where words may prevail over violence — Zenshi blames himself for taking the man along on too many negotiations, too many peaceful encounters, erasing the resplendent instinct of Yato that burned so fiercely in the others — that the predicament doesn't register. He dotes on his passive personality, so much so that Zenshi is reminded of his mother and aunt. Jenhao doesn't move, and Kamui is going to kill him.
Ensign Delong throws himself in Kamui's path, the boy's extended hand slicing right through his ribs and through a lung. So sharp is Kamui's vicious strike that he almost can't pull his hand back out.
The man collapses where Jenhao catches him.
"Well, how strange," Kamui laughs. "You typically don't do this type of thing, if I'm not mistaken. Am I right, ensign? You're not a kind person."
Delong grabs Jenhao by the collar and tries to utter something, but it's practically incomprehensible. But Jenhao knows, and just by watching, Zenshi knows.
"I will," promises Jenhao. "I promise you."
There, again, is another transformation. Jenhao watches the sanctity of life depart from his superior's — no, his friend's — body with unseeing eyes, a sedate composure traversing his features. He looks up and sees that the woman and her children have frozen, now that the distraction has stopped and Kamui has one eye unswervingly monitoring them. Zenshi has not moved, cannot move, should not move.
"So. You, too? This has become more fun than I imagined. So tell me," Kamui says, "what made you do it?"
Jenhao shakes his head.
"Suit yourself," Kamui says. "You seem to have a death wish."
"Convict me of treason, I don't care!" Jenhao has the ensign's dead body, still warm, in his arms. He clutches the deceased's shoulders, letting him sink to the ground slowly. "Kill me! Do it!"
No more time can be bought; this is the last conquest, the last attempt. Zenshi stands there in silence, almost mocking silence, and he knows that he should move but he is rooted to the ground, rooted by his thoughts and the savage desolation that seizes him like a storm. He could not stop Delong because the man would have despised him for it. He could not stop the ensign, nor could he stop Jenhao, because the conviction in their eyes is something he cannot disrespect.
And Jenhao's eyes are so tired, more than tired, because he has finally broken beneath the weight of all the sins he has committed, all the times where he stripped the rights of people away from them without hesitation.
But there is only one thing that matters.
He is free.
just two big sections
but
dang it dang it dang it
where's my ZenTsuuuuuu