I must, he thought dreamily, be waiting to die. The blade passed, tantalizingly close, to the sunburnt skin on the back of his neck, roughened up from years and years of sleeping in the brush, on the ground, wherever he could collapse without the risk of being found before the sunrise. And with the blade, the shadow of a wing, the rush of wind from the mirror-world, salty and wet in his hair. He moved, as always, inelegantly and with damning precision, down to his hands that were his feet, down and over, and his feet met the policeman's face, strong as a soldier's fist, and he felt the satisfying crunch of teeth and bone against his heel.

Still dreamy, still smelling that faint salt-ridden breeze, he rolled over, crouching on his heels, knees to chin, and rocked, once, twice. His breath came hard now through his bared teeth, and he strained against the urge to just be done with it and fall back asleep right there, right next to a presumably dead man. He had stripped corpses once, when he was young, back on the islands, cleaning them before they were burnt, unceremoniously, efficiently, by the lone undertaker left to the islands by the Satsuma authorities. He had slept among the dead once, when he was so very tired, just like now.

He was not sure he wanted to be doing that again.

Slowly, slowly, he forced open one gray eye, and then the other. He could, now that his senses were starting to return to this world, far from the mirror and the crows, hear the steady rush of the stream drumming in his ears. The policeman was, he hoped balefully, still alive. He didn't feel like throwing a body into the river, hearing of its swollen and putrid emergence a few days down the road. He turned to look, his eyes starting to adjust to the pale moonlight again.

A steady, if hesitant, rise and fall of the chest, though his jaw was impressively nonfunctional, his face a perplexing shade of purplish-black. Mugen smiled to himself. I must be growing soft. And almost immediately, naw, just smarter. After traveling with those two morons, one couldn't help but grow somewhat more concerned with the ways of the world outside, and the well-being of its inhabitants. It wouldn't do to leave a trail of the dead behind him, at any rate. This would do just fine. The lawmen would leave him alone, if he didn't do much to them. And that, he surmised, meant not killing them when he lost himself to the blindness of battle.

Kariya had said it, hadn't he. No control, so wild and open, I can read you like an open book. Bastard must've meant something to it.

He rose to his feet, in one swift motion, feeling the lightness as the blood rushed away from his head. He exhaled once, letting his chest collapse, pushing the breath out of his lean frame, wanting to sleep, wanting to hear their voices again, if he couldn't see them now. He waded into the stream, feeling the light tickle of minnows biting his ankles, and splashed the cold water over himself, pulling his shirt up over his head. What sleep he wanted, what sleep he so desired, would have to wait.

He didn't want to sleep smelling like blood, smelling like the memories he wished he didn't have. Methodically, he wrung the shirt through the current, watching the burnt-red stream of spilt blood flow over his feet, mixing with the water. Some of it, he knew, feeling the sting of the water on his cuts, was his-most of it was the poor fool's who was now groaning, life still throbbing away within him. He snapped the shirt once, letting the spray fall on his face. Suddenly careless, he flung it to the riverbank, thinking to hang it out later. He breathed softly, letting his skin prickle in the chill breeze, and rubbed a hand against rough stubble, cracking his neck, stretching this way and that, so much a lissome predator.

Three days since he'd set off, one more altercation in a bar later he had resorted to the back roads, far enough that he wouldn't be looked for, close enough that some would still try. He stood idly in the current, the water rhythmic against the back of his bare legs, suddenly unsure. Where was he heading? To Ikitsuki, surely, to see what was left of his memories and theirs. The why, that was the question. To say that he still saw the crows, to say that he still heard a song in his sleep, a song that once bound him and a man from so far away, seemed too inelegant an answer.

In other words, bullshit.

So then, the why remained. But he had never needed a reason to wander away and alone, to run ferociously where others tremulously stepped. He loved this, the uncertainty of it, the exhilaration. Maybe not the stealing food, the sometimes-counting of all his possessions, and even sometimes, the need, instead of the want, to steal from and lay waste to everything that came chasing his way. But this, a cloudy sky, a swift stream running at his feet, his foes vanquished (or at least, rendered harmless), this was what he loved. A landscape with no memory buried beneath its surface.

He waded back to the bank, wrung his shirt out one last time, squeezing hard, watching the water drip into the mud. He snapped it again, enjoying the tense sound, and threw it up over an overhanging branch, hearing a harried squawk and the faint rustle of disturbed leaves. He dropped himself under the shadow of the tree, suddenly all a bag of bones. His sword was still there, from where he'd flung it aside in the rush to pulverize his attacker's face. It was sharp enough to do its job, he figured. Didn't need that much more care. He could hear Jin's violent disagreement already.

He stared up at the sky, again, his consciousness firmly in the waking world. Sometimes he remembered her, mostly in anger that now lay dormant, spent coals. Mostly he remembered what he had said to her, of faraway stars, of lives so small they were almost meaningless, against that great inky expanse of the night sky. He hoped she was dead. He wished she'd learned her lesson. Knew that she wouldn't have.

Thought no more of her, the greatest and most jarring insult, given her piteous need.

Small lives, he'd told her, and she'd despaired and never turned back. And yet somewhere were two small lives, tiny flames buffeted by much violence and more sadness, that mattered so much to him. His confusion at his own actions rose up, but he tamped it down, forced it down. Here he was, doing what he liked. And wasn't that enough? He shut his eyes, let out a tired string of swears, rhyming nonsense he'd learned out at sea, and descended headlong into the dreamworld.

When he woke, the light had just started to crawl over the tips of the pines, and the ghostly mist hadn't yet dispersed, burned away by the brightness of day. It hung, threadlike, across the branches and the leaves, draping the woods in an eerie coat of silvery gray, the cloak of the dead. He sneezed, wondered briefly if washing his shirt had been a terrible mistake, and just as easily shrugged it off. He hated the smell of blood sometimes.

He half-opened his eyes, hoping he'd fall again just as easily into sleep, knowing just as well that he wouldn't. And then, reluctantly, turned his head imperceptibly to look at where the wounded man had lain. The undergrowth was flattened and stained dark where he'd been, and the smell of blood and injury still hung lightly in the misty air, but he had managed to crawl off. Back towards the town, and judging by the width of the trail, someone had been kind enough to help him.

He was glad they hadn't killed him in his sleep, though he supposed even policemen had their more honorable moments in life. Surprises, it seemed, never ceased to be. He yawned, staring up at the light starting to filter through the pines, more exhausted now than he had been after the fight. Silence didn't do well by him.

Silence.

The woods are never silent, he thinks. Even without the pair of them chattering away beside him. And then, he knows.

He snaps forward suddenly, with spring and speed, his arm reaching out for his sword as he felt the sting of a sharp edge hitting his skin. Falls gracelessly forward, hearing the low thunk of knives hitting wood. They sound small. Which, doubtlessly means, there will be many more to come.

His knees are already curled, and he lunges away from the tree, up and high, catching a glimpse of his black-clad attacker. Leaps away with his unsheathed sword in his left hand, his arms loose at his sides, and lands on his feet, tense, his toes lightly bouncing against the earth, his teeth bared in a growl.

"The hell are you?"

No answer, which infuriates him, and already he can feel the blindness settling in, the indifference to everything that surrounds him. His attacker is small, lithe, quick, and before he can comprehend his position, the stranger leaps forward with a short sword, which Mugen dodges, throwing his own sword-arm back, letting the attacker's movement carry him past his target, and he stumbles then, unused to this improvisatory quickness.

Mugen uses his own unwieldy momentum to flip himself over, farther away from the masked stranger. He needs to see before he can strike, needs to sense everything in the ground and the air and the stranger in front of him.

Of course, he isn't given the time.

But now he is awake. And now he is more than a bit annoyed. The stranger leaps, Mugen swerves downward, curling his sword-arm inward. A barrage of throwing knives plunge downwards, but already it is too late-Mugen rolls forward to a knee, a child's movement that dodges the knives, and then lashes outward and back with his sword, slashing across his attacker's torso. The wound will not be fatal, he knows—he's struck to get away this time, not to kill.

Next time, he knows, he will kill.

The attacker stumbles, Mugen is immediately on his feet, swings his sword to his throat as he turns to face him.

Or..her, it would seem.

"Good as I remember you," she says, straining to laugh. A light wave, and two others drop from the trees. Mugen would've had a real fight on his hands this time. He licks his lips at the thought of it, his blood still running hot.

"The hell are you?" he repeats, his voice savage.

She unwraps the mask from her face, and he sizes her up. Good looking features-seemingly sculpted face, dark eyes, the light skin of a wealthy scion. Clearly had other amusements than arranging flowers, though. He's far from forgiving, though, but he's willing to be curious.

"The hell you want, then."

"An assassination. A useful murder. Some fun. Call it what you want." He scowls.

"Y'all's squad there not cut for it?"

It's her turn to scowl now. "Yatsuha," she says abruptly. "Perhaps they are, but your skill is unquestionable."

An appeal to his vanity, from a lovely lady. It wouldn't be the first time, he thinks, remembering Fuu's incoherent anger.

He leers at her, hungry for something. "What do I get?"

She, not unappreciative of his unsteady gaze, throws a pouch at him, which he easily catches, without taking his eyes off her.

He briefly breaks his stare, feeling the pouch's not-insignificant weight. He fumbles with the strings briefly, reaches in and pulls out a gold coin. Runs his fingers over its smoothness, tests it with his teeth. It's soft-high grade material right here.

He breathes in, once, and only once, before grinning wickedly, flinging the pouch and its contents up in the air.

"Can't buy me, not that cheap." He yawns, suddenly bored, as the pouch's contents fall to earth. He reaches for his shirt from the branch, catches her wrist, and twists it, carefully, so he doesn't break it. She still drops the knife, even though he figures she must've been through this rigmarole so many times before. Too skilled not to have seen that one coming.

And so, he is doubly suspicious.

"What do you want?" he asks tiredly, pulling his shirt off the branch and over his head, running a hand through his scruffy hair to brush the dirt and leaves off. He's restless now, he realizes. He doesn't want to be here, having this conversation, knowing that he'll be bound somehow to his words.

"You need work, and I need a worker." she says flatly. "I've seen you work. As a bodyguard, not too long ago."

Mugen moves swiftly, so swiftly her two companions are dumbfounded when they see him holding her up, by the scruff of her neck, inches above the ground. It's cartoonishly impossible, but his anger is very, terrifyingly real.

"If you do anything, anything, to them, I'll find you in hell and tear you to pieces." His rage surprises him, the fact that he has moved without thinking shocks him. So deep in his bones, it seems, runs the bond between the three of them. He lets none of it show in his face. Just arrogance. And the white-hot rage that forced his feet.

"Let me down," she says calmly. He's suddenly embarrassed now, wonders if he's exposed them to even more danger, curses the attachment that separation breeds. He backs away from her, unsure. Murdering these three isn't beyond him, and his body tenses, ready to strike if he wills it.

"This may be useful for you. The government has been stepping up this…purification campaign of theirs in recent months. Something about building national character, pride in blood and lord," she says flatly, matter-of-fact all of a sudden, though her gaze still lingers on him with some interest. He's pleased for that, at least.

Purification. The word disgusts him, and how could it not, spawn of a penal colony, child of Ryukyu, never at home anywhere. He's suddenly aware of how dark his skin seems against hers, of his lean frame and unruly hair.

Of his difference.

"The official is in Nagasaki. His charge is for religious cults, underground groups. He's already gone after the shrines of Guanyin and the protective deities at the port, you know, the ones that serve the trading crews? Smashed the idols, burnt the buildings down."

Mugen sets his teeth, suddenly realizing her hook to lure him in. The one she had all along, waiting up those dark sleeves. "Shut up," he snarls abruptly, knowing his fate, hating it all the while.

"What will you do?" Yatsuha minces no words, though she looks as if she might touch him, she looks as if she wants to see he's okay. It makes him, against reason, all the more annoyed.

"I," he says, emphasizing the syllable, "will meet you in Nagasaki. You can go ahead and leave me alone."

A ghost of a smile flickers over Yatsuha's face, he thinks, but she's ever the professional, waving her two companions back into the rapidly receding shadows. "A fair request. I'll do my best to honor it." She turns to leave, and he can't help but admire the lean firmness of her frame, the dark hair held tightly in place with long pins. He wonders if she'll keep her word.

Wonders, briefly, if it would matter even she didn't.