50 CHAPTERS
special extended chapter to celebrate 50 chapters of Zenshi's story
thank you for all your love, support, and continued reading thus far into my first thorough project!
-Cavallo Alato-
(Equestrian-Equine)
DISCLAIMER: Hideaki Sorachi owns all Gintama characters and concepts, save Cavallo Alato's OCs.
Eyes of Wolves
- 50 -
.: SEVEN YEARS AGO :.
His mother says nothing when she finds him alone in the kitchen, midnight rising high in the sky with the desolate moon, forty-eight hours before he leaves with the Harusame's fleet.
She says nothing when he takes the knife to the nape of his neck, hand quivering because he's gripping the handle so hard. In one glib swipe, he has severed his long braid from his head, letting the black hair, which glints navy in the gloating moonlight, fall to the floor.
"Sit."
He does so.
And his mother, Lanhua, returns to beautifully silent eloquence, drawing a pair of scissors from the pantry drawers and trimming the haggard strands of hair until its neatened up. The next day, she will properly find a men's razor and clip an undercut for him and finish neatening the rest of his appearance.
After all, she thinks sadly to herself, she cannot let her son — who looks so much like his father that she is wistful — run amok with hair like a street gang leader. She will never let him fall, if she can.
The little boy with the flapping braid and the baby blue umbrella will always be her little boy.
And there is nothing, not even his eyes, which glow like the eyes of wolves in the night, that can change that fact.
.: SEPTEMBER, PRESENT :.
Mutsu came stalking up to them with such urgent pace that none of them had any time to react to Jenhao's statement.
"We came at a bad time," she uttered, cursing to herself. "They're about to commence a lockdown because the military's doing a monthly visit. It's an arbitrary surveillance — we were hoping they'd do it at the end of the month instead of now."
"The military?" echoed one of the Hyakka. "Wait, what do you—"
"This is your Minister of Civil Safety, from the capital. The East Tomokaz Trans-Galaxy Terminal will be conducting a regulated search and safety conduct. Please cease all shop activity, shuttle transportation, and outgoing flights. Incoming flights are to taxi for their allotted amount of time and then remain in designated areas. Thank you for your cooperation, and we will be around shortly."
"Safety," parroted Jenhao, frowning. "Whenever this comes around, it's bad news. This is one of the occurrences where people 'disappear' by the government's hand."
"They're roundin' up the rebels?" Tsukuyo assumed. Jenhao nodded.
"The 'Minister of Civil Safety' is a former general. He's basically just looking for suspicious people to torture and lock away." Jenhao pulled out a mobile phone from his right pocket. Around them, the people began milling in little clusters, outside terminal restaurants and duty-free shops, lingering at the boarding gates. Travelers obediently paused their trips and sipped complementary cups of coffee that one of the cafés handed out during such events.
A crash resounded from their left, the west end of the building.
Sirens wailed, growing louder and higher in pitch as it approached.
"Is this normal?" Mutsu asked, dragging Sakamoto behind her.
"No," replied Jenhao. "Something's up."
Zenshi quickly glanced about, calculating the circumstances and the odds of escaping if the need presented itself. The open ceilinged harbor had long since disappeared behind them, and they were stuck fast in the center of this wing of the building, which resembled a modern airport.
Jenhao's cell phone vibrated in his hand; he picked it up.
"Sir, we've got to move," came an urgent buzz, so loud that those in the near vicinity could hear the voice over the distant sirens.
An indoor security vehicle rammed around a corner and came charging down the aisle. In it was a dead Sciuttlan man with purple skin, dressed in military apparel, shoved aside by a few rebels.
"Wait, aren't those—" The Hyakka woman didn't finish because the car swept alongside their group and the man driving motioned urgently.
"Get in, fast!" ordered the man. His left index finger sported one of those plain rings, and immediately, Mutsu threw Sakamoto into the open terrain car.
"Raku!" exclaimed Jenhao. "Why did you leave the base?"
"No time to explain, sir, get in! We don't have the time!"
"Raku?" Tsukuyo and Zenshi said in unison, both shocked a standstill. It was then that they realized their parsimonious judgment had left a gaping hole in observation — the sirens on this car were silent, and the ones that were roaring ever closer were manned by armed soldiers, rounding the same corner.
Jenhao took Tsukuyo by the arm and forced her into the car, urging Zenshi to follow suit. There were two other men with matching code rings were also in the vehicle, one aiming a machine gun out the side, and the other managing a touch screen tablet displaying a glowing blueprint of the terminal.
"There will be no evacuation call," said the man who, to their surprise, dismay, and shock, was Raku. "They're bombing the terminal."
At this, Mutsu rejected the offered hand.
"Take the Captain," she declared, backing away from the security cruiser. "I'm going back to the Kaientai."
Before anyone could stop her, the brunette was racing back down to where her men were unloading — no, they were reloading, immediately reversing action because Mutsu had been wary of the lockdown — and leaving Sakamoto rather helpless with the group of Amanto.
The car began reeling down the hall, away from the pursuers. The government cars wailed, sentencing people to the strict confines of the side shops as they raced after the stolen vessel.
"Fifty seconds to lockdown," said the man with the digital tablet. "Forty-five…Forty…"
"Those doors will close on us if we don't go faster," Jenhao said.
"They don't call me Raku the Rapid for nothing, sir." Raku slammed his heel on the accelerator, speeding up so quickly that one of the Hyakka nearly lurched out of the car. Tsukuyo grabbed onto her companion, knowing that Zenshi's firm hand around her waist would keep her stable.
"Twenty-five seconds."
A massive, looming door made of steel was descending from the opened corridor. The military teams behind them were tenacious, closing the gap between them with each ticking second.
Zenshi's inner clock began to chime, pilfering counts off of his heartbeat, resounding every half-second with propagating intensity in his ears. It was no different from any other time he was running, running, running.
Except this time, he could tell front from back, up from down, and left from right.
.: SEPTEMBER, ONE WEEK AGO :.
It was almost uncomfortably quiet between the two, neither of which were prolix people in the first place. The mother and son and retreated to the latter's room to work on a school project — Hinowa was doing all the cutting and pasting while Seita tried his best to print neatly on the poster — leaving Zenshi and Tsukuyo to their own.
"Do ya cook often?"
She asked the question so abruptly that he was startled. Zenshi frowned to himself, wondering how and why he suddenly became so easily perturbed.
"Occasionally."
"And yer old job? Did ya cook for yerself?"
"No." He was tempted to tell her she was overextending her allotted twenty questions, but at the moment he didn't mind. There was a sanguine cheer to her voice, as if she expected to weed out some juicy info from the resolute Yato. "Keep in mind that I was a pirate."
"Didn't ya dislike bein' called a pirate?"
"I do." Her curiosity was beyond satiating; he would not attempt, but he would comply.
"Is that like or dislike?"
"Taste this." He had baked the ratatouille for nearly fifty minutes, and upon presenting it to Tsukuyo, he secretly hoped that she liked it. No, he very evidently hoped that she liked it.
"Y'know, a gentleman would warn me that the dish is hot."
He wasn't sure how to react to her bold, snarky remarks. Usually he was the one-upper in every conversation.
"It's hot, be careful," he deadpanned dryly.
"Much appreciated," Tsukuyo drawled. She took a dainty bite — actually, she wasn't dainty in the least because she tried so hard to eat elegantly — and considered the flavor. It was excellent. "This would be good with somethin'…maybe rice?"
"We have rice." Zenshi produced a bag of deep sea blue rice from some obscure planet, and made a show out of contemplating how much to cook.
"If that stuff is poisonous, I'll kill ya."
"I'm sure." But he glanced down, and seeing that she was still eating the ratatouille, gave her a reserved glare.
"Where did ya learn to cook western foods?"
"Are you going to eat the entire thing before I can serve it to Hinowa and Seita?"
"What kind of food do the Yato eat?" She stood and circled the table, the dish in hand as she nonchalantly continued to nibble away at it.
"Am I going to have to cook another dish?"
"Do ya not like cookin'?"
"My dish, please."
"I'm sorry, your dish?" Tsukuyo's smirk was almost flirtatious, enticing, daringly so. "It looks more like mine right now."
Zenshi wiped down the kitchen, cleaning any knives and cutting boards, turning off the oven, and returning spices to their cabinets. All the while keeping an eye on Tsukuyo, who meandered in slow circles around him, demolishing the poor ratatouille. He had to admit that he'd served a small portion, mostly due to the fact that he honestly wasn't sure if airship zucchini cooked the same as Earth zucchini, which his mother had used more often than not.
Tsukuyo had a saccharine grin plastered on her face now, as if she was drunk on nothing but the vegetable dish.
"I made that so Seita would eat his vegetables," Zenshi told her flatly.
"Oya?" slurred Tsukuyo, clearly mocking him now. "Why, I didn't know."
Zenshi mustered as much a stolid expression as he could, despite the fact that her teasing was indefatigable and ridiculously amusing.
"After all, he's got a hist'ry of not eating his vegetables," he retorted effortlessly.
Tsukuyo glared.
And then she scooped up a good portion of the ratatouille — she looked absurd, snapping up a stack of sliced zucchinis and eggplants and squashes with her chopsticks — and stuffed it unceremoniously into her mouth. The blonde courtesan cradled the dish to her chest, wiggling her chopsticks in his face.
"Are you drunk?"
"What makes you think that?" She ate some more. Zenshi was thoroughly convinced that he'd spilled rum, something or the other, into the tomato sauce during his ratatouille-conceiving endeavors. Perhaps Hinowa's oven emitted noxious fumes from aged grapes or hardy beers.
"Stop," Zenshi finally requested, exasperated. He was tempted to roll his eyes, but she had done it for him.
"Make me."
So he grabbed her wrist and leaned down, placing a brief kiss on her mouth.
And pulled the plate from her hands, turned around, proceeding to ignore her for the rest of her stunned silence.
.: SEPTEMBER, PRESENT :.
"Fifteen…"
Their only gunman could hardly take on the government's platoon of lined vehicles. All of them, somehow crammed into the stolen car, ducked down to avoid the flying bullets.
"Ten…"
"We're not going to make the door," shouted the gunman, reloading. "Find a different route!"
"There is none!" cried the other, scrolling relentless through the contents of his tablet. "They've cornered us, look!"
Indeed, the airport was not only beautifully designed, but cleverly made so that terrorists attempting to sabotage safe travel were shot down with minimal effort. Dead end.
Zenshi didn't need a cue nor a countdown when his internal clock hit five seconds.
As the gunman fumbled with his ammo, Zenshi rose from the seat and shot out the wheels of their pursuers with stunning accuracy.
And then Tsukuyo was clawing at his shirt, yelling for him to get down unless he wanted to lose his head, and they were flying past the gate, skimming just under it, the convertible windshield shearing away as the steel plates descended, the passengers flattened within the car, trembling for that one millisecond.
And then they were flying out into the city, past the regular planes and the shuttles and the people, smearing Sciuttla into a neon blur, borne forward with relentless force.
.: SEPTEMBER, ONE WEEK AGO :.
She didn't enter his room that night, but she did knock on his door.
"Yer a jerk," she spat ruthlessly, without hesitation.
"Are you angry?"
She glared, flushing the same rosy red she had just before dinner.
"I'll have you know, I gave up my status as—" Tsukuyo stuttered midsentence, coming to a screeching halt. Zenshi smirked, knowing that it irritated her more than she let on.
"As…?"
"Yer a jerk."
"I'm pleased to know you think so highly of me, my fair lady of peace."
"Ya know what?" She was between storming in and wringing his neck and slamming the sliding door shut. He was sitting there on his cot, browsing simply through one of the novels he'd found in the guest room's shelves. One of them was actually Hosen's old favorites, written by an old Yato author, called "The Plight of Men."
"What?"
"You can go tell yer father the king that Planet Pheromones ain't gettin' a grandchild heir any time soon."
"Are you insinuating that I would have had an heir?"
She flushed a deeper red, and then stormed down the hall, leaving the door ajar so that his soft laughter could be heard, but only until she turned the corner.
.: SEPTEMBER, PRESENT :.
They exchanged the battered police vehicle for an incognito civilian's SUV, the inchoate operation proceeding with calculated organization.
"They don't know our base, so as soon as we're off their radar, we should be fine," Jenhao told them, once settled into the slightly cramped car. Their prior flight from the terminal had been reckless and dangerous. Somehow managing to lose the tail of several summoned police forces, Raku had gunned across a few back roads, exiting the city briefly for a wild terrain detour, before slipping back in from the south.
"That's Raku?" asked Tsukuyo, ignoring the poor, harried Yato.
"Boss," whispered one of the Hyakka. She was promptly disregarded, to her dismay.
"Hold tight for now, Ms. Earthling," Raku said. "We've changed rides, but it doesn't mean we're out of the way. East Tomokaz is one of the few cities that have a few roads left without fully equipped cameras. I'm trying to look for those."
Raku was not Sciuttlan, not Yato, not anything that the Yoshiwaran women recognized. But Zenshi did. Raku had the look of an average human, save for the fact that he sported snake eyes and scaled skin, tan with the beaded, meshed pattern of a diamondback snake running down his arms. His hair was purple, purple to the point of Sciuttlan approval, and he had short talons instead of fingernails.
Zenshi didn't know the name of the Amanto specifically, but he knew of a man from the same planet. He knew the scaled skin and the thin, flickering tongue. Raku exuded marshy determination and focus; it was a trait that could translate easily into murderous intent. Zenshi knew it firsthand.
In fact, he had once killed a man with the same snake eyes and the same scaled skin.
.: TWELVE YEARS AGO :.
Zenshi hangs back loosely, watching a hoard of diplomats maraud the square and begin bickering. Linter arrives, and the authority he carries with his presence alone is enough to silence them all. He spares but a glance at the dead man in the center of the courtyard.
"My son, if you would please."
Whoever is holding back Zenshi — though there is clearly no need, for the dead man in the center has already been killed — lets him go. The boy doesn't quite meet his father halfway, but instead finds walking straight to be more imperative than anything.
It's only then that he remembers the sharp pain down his face before he grabbed the knife and drove it between three large scales concealing the assassin's heart. He lifts a cautious hand to his nose, his cheek, feeling ripped flesh and coming away with darkened, bloody fingers.
"Impetuous boy," sighs Linter. "But my boy, nonetheless. Come here, let's get you cleaned up."
But Zenshi doesn't quite pay attention to his father; his focus is elsewhere. His consciousness oozes from him like the hardening, thick blood streaming down his face.
He doesn't realize he's asleep until the canine pup that his aunt keeps around licks his cheek, and it's the last thing he sees before the nothingness envelopes him in its imbuing arms of darkness.
.: SEPTEMBER, PRESENT :.
Miraculously, they reached the hotel where several refugees from destroyed towns and cities had fled to for the past six plus months. The lodging is massive, high-class, and impalpably beyond their expectations.
"You're hosting refugees here?" Sakamoto blurted incredulously. Zenshi had nearly forgotten the presence of their only human, or rather, a human in the shape of a brunet cotton ball. "How are you affording this?"
"We're not. Our patron is supporting us anonymously," Jenhao said, a tad exasperated. It appeared as if he received similarly impertinent questions plenty enough, and Sakamoto's boisterous, oblivious laughter was pushing even Jenhao's mightily bottomless wells of patience.
"Yer patron is filthy rich," Tsukuyo muttered, still glaring at Raku. She had finally accepted the fact that her questions would have to be answered later in exchange for her cooperation. The Hyakka simply milled behind their leader, the colorful hotel structures sometimes distracting them. They were more tourists than anything.
"He's scheduled to visit and discuss the plan of action soon with Uhuru Ominira, the face of the revolutionaries. We don't know when because we're operating under clandestine circumstances," Jenhao explained. "Zenshi, you were to be drawn from Earth somehow so that you could come here with the funds."
It occurred to everyone that Zenshi had no baggage on him, no belongings.
"Don't worry," he informed them curtly, pulling out a card. "I have my places."
"Of course." Jenhao nodded, breathing a sigh of relief. Of course his former lieutenant had created an alias bank account off somewhere in the universe — because who would be stupid enough to carry around two large suitcases full of money?
But the one thing that bothered Zenshi was the fact that he was "drawn out" from his cover on Earth. First of all, who might have known he had abandoned the Harusame after committing an act of open mutiny, and how did they find him? What was the key to "drawing him out" to Sciuttla?
And then he knew. There were two reasons he knew, and Jenhao and Tsukuyo both recognized the cold, inflexible apprehension that became fixed in his tense jaw and his emotionless expression.
The silver bands that everyone had worn, from Mei, Abuto, and his crewmen, to the men here, to Mutsu and the Kaientai.
There was only one man capable of amassing so many relations and so many powerful allies.
Only one man, whose name will remain anonymous, could issue such orders in multiple areas of the universe in a plan that will counteract Harusame's terrorist activities in Sciuttla.
That man, the "higher-up," the "patron," the "sponsor," has both personal and professional purposes, including the death of his sister-in-law by the hands of the Harusame.
Zenshi called those who ran from their fears cowards. If he turned now, he would become one of them. Yet he already was a coward, a crippled, self-proclaimed knight, for he had already run once. Ignominious fear laid waste to his mental control, unsheathed his wavering indecision between admiration and loathing. He realized then that his hatred was not hatred at all.
Because the man in front of him, dressed as he always had in brilliant Yato silks, was not a man he hated, not a man he feared. Zenshi could not place the sensation.
There they stood, face to face, after over a decade of lost contacts and severed relationships. Zenshi no longer understood his younger self, his dread for this fated meeting.
But he knew, after all this time, in the face of his father, who stood so regally and regarded him with such pride even now, that nothing was impossible.
Chapter 50 hails the advent of:
-Romance! *gasp* They...!?
-Action!
-Plot twists?!
Thanks for reading! See you next chapter...!