AT LONG LAST! I've been SO busy it's UNBELIEVABLE!
But...for the kind readers who have waited so long... A NEW CHAPTERRRR.
Full of random stuff, hehe. That's a tendency of mine. Let's see where it goes!
(to that one guest: I got an email notification and you motivated me to squeeze in the time!)
DISCLAIMER: Gintama is Sorachi's. Also. CavAlato rewatched Be Forever Yorozuya, and it is a masterpiece. /CRY FOREVER
Eyes of Wolves
- 54 -
.: ELEVEN YEARS AGO :.
There is something stingy in the way she glares at him because he has almost flirtatiously engaged her family. And it's not flirtatious in the way that he's appealing by looks — it's the way he is so easily appealing, yet he can easily persuade someone that he is not.
But Mei is always Mei.
She's always the younger sister of Aina, the star, Aina the model, Aina the one on that television program or on that radio show or in that new movie, The Last Love.
She's always in a shadow of expectation.
Her glare is sad, so sad.
So he stops, because she's his friend, and for the first time since he left the only people he ever knew, he feels pained because another person is hurt.
.: SEPTEMBER, PRESENT :.
He somehow knew the next sequence of events, but never figured out how.
Tsukuyo turned before he could say a word — he didn't know if he'd been ready to say anything in the first place. The woman had grown so accustomed to his nature that she just turned and recognized his presence. In his urgency, he didn't bother with subtlety, after all.
"Ya didn't think I'd actually go, did ya?"
He absolutely despised being caught off guard, being fooled, being deceived, but those negative emotions melted away when she threw him the most lopsided grin he'd ever seen on her face.
And then, with a hesitant flicker in her movements, she quickly reached up and pulled his face down to hers and kissed him.
Her porcelain face went red; she didn't look at him after that.
"Go send yer reconnaissance team. This is yer thing. We can hold the fort here."
The three Hyakka behind her smiled.
When she refused to turn back around in her stubborn, immobile way, Zenshi simply stepped around her, pressed his lips briefly to her forehead, and then ran back for Jenhao.
.: -KAIENTAI- SEPTEMBER, PRESENT :.
"When pawn become useless, you throw them away." Kamui smiled. "At least, that's what Hosen told me once."
"And you listened?" spat Mei, kicking a shard of debris away from herself. Rather than shard of debris, it more closely resembled a strip of metal Kamui had torn from the ship wall with his bare hands that he'd proceeded to throw at them mercilessly. Mutsu, who fared just fine, was more upset about the fact that her ship was being demolished than anything else.
"Of course not. Why would you throw a pawn away? They could double-cross you." Kamui put his hand on the hole he'd just created. "Instead, you kill them."
"Your entire crew is gone, then."
"My crew or your crew?" Kamui tore another piece of wall out, metal crumpling in his hands like paper.
"Will you quit damaging my ship?" hissed Mutsu, staggering to her feet and drawing a gun.
"Your ship? Oh right, your ship." Kamui grinned his grin. And they knew that those piercing blue eyes were anything but smiling, for they were perspicuously bright, shining with such fervent blood-lust that there was no erasing anything.
.: SEPTEMBER, PRESENT :.
There were two looks that Linter was famous for, one of which he wore 99 percent of the time, and the other remaining for the one out of a hundred times he ever spent in truth. The former was the appearance of eruditeness, of wisdom, of grace and strength and all that one should ever need to manipulate souls out of their host containers. And the other was the estranged repentance, the divulged, relenting sight that he thought fatuous. But it meant all the world to his family. It was that strange, unfitting little smile that knew all and felt all that his wife cherished, that his son looked forward to.
It meant that he cared.
And it meant that he understood.
His son never stopped waiting for that smile to return, even if it was only expressed through silence and sad, sad eyes.
Linter admitted to losing it. He smiled, of course, in the way that his son hated, and he was well aware of the boy's feelings. The father had let himself become carried away by power and greed and everything far from his family. And because of that, his wife was lonely and abandoned, his sister-in-law dead, his brother-in-law dead, and his son floating ever more distant.
So he smiled.
If only his son had thanked him, then he might've been forgiven.
But he wasn't, and he didn't expect to be.
.: -KAIENTAI- SEPTEMBER, PRESENT :.
"Now, how should I execute you? Slowly? Quickly?"
It had taken Kamui a total of fifteen minutes to find Mei's meandering vessel and the damanged Kaientai. It took him only three to demolish half of the beaten up merchant ship and disable the cannons.
"Painfully? Painlessly? Painfully."
"Kamui, wait." Mutsu hovered over Mei, who clutched her left leg, in which yet another metal shard had sliced through. "Get your priorities straight."
"I am the admiral of the Harusame," drawled Kamui. "I think I can put my priorities where I feel fit."
"You're an idiot," spat Mei.
"So are you." Kamui grinned. "Riddle me this, Ms. Lieutenant. What are the chances that someone comes to your aid in the next five minutes, as I kill you all slowly and painfully? Someone with…a ring like yours."
He gestured at the silver bands both of them wore.
Mei didn't hesitate: "Zero," she declared. "Zero percent."
"You sure? I actually think someone might come," Kamui mused aloud. "I wonder who."
Mei shook her head.
"Zero percent."
And she was right, and it wasn't the type of right that garnered her praise, it was the type that saved her life, because within the next five minutes, the man that found them didn't wear a ring; he didn't need a ring.
And Kamui should have noticed.
He turned.
And he found himself staring into the face of a man who didn't wear rings, who didn't label himself with anything other than himself.
A man who only needed scars and memories and places and people to tell him who he was and what he fought for.
"Good to see you, Lieutenant," Mei croaked.
"Good to see you too, Mei."
.: SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO :.
It rains forever.
But his father still comes home.
.: SEPTEMBER, PRESENT :.
Kamui was a devotee to himself.
Or so he believed.
So when the red-haired Yato's fist collided with Zenshi's jaw and sent the older man flying, and Mei cried out, he felt nothing.
But when Mei suddenly croaked that name, that name, Kamui wanted nothing more than to crush skulls between his fingers because the desuetude of his heart had rusted painfully.
Kagura.
.: SEVEN YEARS AGO :.
Kamui stares out the window, and for once, Zenshi knows what the boy thinks.
There is no forward.
No behind.
No left, no right.
No up, no down.
There is nothing.
And it is everything.
.: SEPTEMBER, PRESENT :.
Kamui shut his mind down. Zenshi drew his parasol and shot, but the boy was too nimble, dodging quickly and seeming to ricochet off the remaining walls with unnatural speeds.
"Did you know," the younger Yato called, "I was promoted?"
"I could tell you I cared," replied Zenshi, dodging behind a half-demolished control panel, his opponent's bullets ricocheting off the metal boards. "But I'd be lying."
"Oh, you care," whistled Kamui. Finding an open time interval, the red-haired boy took two seconds to turn and shoot at the scattered Kaientai crewmen. Several old, haggard samurai wielded both swords and pistols, reading the commands of Mutsu with quick, nimble agility.
Mei, who had rather brashly ripped the shard of metal from her leg — thus allowing a large fountain of blood to splurge from her leg — proceeded to chuck said shard in Kamui's direction, ignoring the nausea that accompanied the act.
"You have a death wish," hissed Mutsu, tearing her scarf from around her neck and hastily wrapping it around Mei's leg.
"So do you. Why are you even helping me?" Mei took Mutsu's gun and aimed it over the barrier of blasted doors they'd erected.
"I'm not going to answer that." Mutsu tied a heavy knot around the other Yato woman's leg, frowning at the fact that the fabric was already soaked through.
"Sorry to ruin your scarf," said Mei, "did your boyfriend give it to you?"
Mutsu glared. "Careful with that gun, it's got quite the recoil."
Mei pulled her arms back to her chest, ducking when a stream of bullets came flying their way. "I can take care of myself, Mucchi."
"If you two will stop bickering…" Zenshi found himself parrying more than one Yato now — aside from the blatant murderous aura of Kamui, two others without the silver alliance rings had boarded the ship. The human crewmembers were downed with unconcerned nonchalance; Mutsu was far from happy when the two Harusame officers arrived.
"Oh shut up, Lieutenant, we're working here." Mei staggered to her feet and aimed at Kamui, firing steady shots until the gun ran out of bullets.
"You've succeeded in upsetting a psychopath, I see," snorted Mutsu, taking her gun back and reloading.
"His sister is always taboo," replied Mei, shrugging. "What can I say? I like ticking people off."
"Obviously," Mutsu and Zenshi chimed in unison.
"I'd suggest you stop hiding," called Kamui. "You all know I don't have the patience to do this stand and shoot thing."
He smiled then, but only up to the point where his two men simultaneously collapsed to the ground, bullets in their backs. At first, the Yato boy didn't react. His two crewmen were in spasms on the ground, the deleterious bullets bleeding a thick blackish-blue instead of red.
"Mutsu! I told you not to alter the ship without my permission!"
Kamui swiveled on his heel, looking half enraged and half intrigued.
"Samurai."
.: THIRTEEN YEARS AGO :.
"You have to sneak around on your own ship?" Mutsu asks.
"It's not my ship."
They creep along the walls, conspicuously playing ninja, never once believing the idea that a ship would never be their own. They are naïve and young and mindlessly absorbed in their tasks, ignoring the woes of their parents they decry and embody all at once.
"If it's not your ship, then why are you on it?" Mutsu adds, after thirty seconds of snooping or so. They have been doing this slow, menacing crawl for only a minute, but both have forgotten their true purposes already. For Mutsu, she wonders why she's shuffling about on her uncle's ship, and for Zenshi, he wonders why he's even on the ship at all.
"That," Zenshi tells her, "is a good question."
.: SEPTEMBER, PRESENT :.
"This is my ship," Mutsu snarled, her reloaded gun aimed over their barricade. "I do what I want with it."
"Oi, Mutsu, that's—"
A hand grabbed Sakamoto by the collar and forced him to hit the floor. The former Joui patriot hit the deck with such force that he was duly discombobulated for a hefty half minute or so. The one that dragged him down was none other than a fellow human, looking pissed and as far from smiles as possible.
The Courtesan of Death herself threw Sakamoto aside and briefly let out a string of such unrepeatable swears that even Mei looked put off.
Zenshi made a face that quite adamantly demanded to know why she was here. Any words would have been pointless, because Mutsu had begun shooting, and Kamui slung the stilled bodies around him as shields.
"Don't even bother," Tsukuyo hollered. "No one else was gonna follow'im."
Sakamoto, at some point, was thrown into the fray, where he rather deftly placed a few shots that skimmed Kamui's sleeve.
"Why'd you leave?!" Mutsu screamed into her captain's face as he wiggled his way closer. Kamui, busy defending, inched his way closer to their fort, ignoring Tsukuyo's onslaught of kunai from behind.
"Aww man, Mutsu, what didya do that scarf?" Dismayed, Sakamoto shook his head, sunglasses slipping down his nose.
"So you did get it from your boyfriend," Mei whispered.
"I will break your pretty little nose," Mutsu hissed.
"Ladies." Zenshi took his parasol and drove it mercilessly into Mei's wound. She screamed murder, swearing as colorfully as Tsukuyo, if not more, and throwing in something about a super sadist who would receive some omitted, profane, and violent act done to him in her vengeance.
"I don't get how you're having so much trouble with one guy." Sakamoto shrugged, now picking at the threads coming loose from his jacket. "I mean, can't you—"
The entire ship shook, then. Kamui dropped the corpses of his men and laughed.
"My slowpoke crew is finally here," he announced. The intercom buzzed, and the familiar voice of Abuto came drawling across the ship's premises.
"This is the Harusame speaking. The Kaientai is to—"
A loud crash screeched across the microphone, and their enclosed battle ceased as the sound of a scuffle ensued. A few of Kamui's men could be heard over the hanging microphone, calling for Abuto, but they were abruptly cut off.
"Sorry, Vice Commander, but only I get to touch the intercom."
Kamui's face went dark.
No one ever noticed the skinny, inconspicuous Tabs leave the room.
"Looks like yer not as good as yer sister," Tsukuyo taunted. As Kamui turned, Zenshi made the shot.
But it skimmed past Kamui's ear, heading straight for Tsukuyo.
Sorry if this is kind of messy. Tell me if anything is OOC.
Also: my headcanon is that Kamui uses violence and his Yato tendencies to wash away any lingering emotions (the warm fuzzy kinds) he possibly feels. So when Mei mentions Kagura, that's when Tabs leaves, because Kamui is so momentarily angry for that one second that red is all he sees.
Uh. Yeah. Also, psychological explanation for other Kamui stuff was explained in ch. 10.
FOR NOW.
HERE IT IS.
Hope to update sooon again!