A pair of injured men fled through the streets of a nocturnal Iron Country town. The capital was built almost like a maze. Walled corridors extended for kilometers in each direction long after the actual castle complex from which the Iron Shogun ruled ended. The living quarters began at least eleven kilometers from the central nexus point of the walled maze.
The tapping feet of the men's sandals were irregular. One of them limped, while the other did his best to support the first. They were both wearing kimonos sophisticated enough and made of expensive enough material to betray their ranking to be that of the samurai class. The one limping had a nasty bleeder in the gut which he kept always pressed down. He was a tall and handsome man, athletically built, above average height, chiseled jaw, short black hair, and a streaming black ponytail. His friend, however, while wearing clothes of matching sophistication, looked more akin to a descendant of a human and goblin union. Short, blown up, and pudgy nose, flat and square face decorated with a handful of scars and an occasional wart.
Both men had signs of cuts over their bodies. Battle scars and tatters on their kimonos and hakama stained their silky outfits with traces of red. Their faces wore expressions that didn't just translate the torment of their bloody twinging but also seemed worried about something that came from the direction of the Shogun's castle.
A tremorous shockwave sent a pillar of dust flying into the air, somewhere halfway in between the two fleeing samurai and the castle. The sheer magnitude of the slash that leveled the wall made the ground quake and send both men flying into the opposite sides of the wall. The resulting fling tested the integrity of their ribs and made both cough up blood and stare at the incoming signs of destruction with hopelessness. The devastating, pillar-shaped shockwave of dust that made the ground quake repeated again and again, coming ever closer to their location. Like the fin of a shark closing in on its chow.
"Those tremors… It must be Kusunoki," the shorter and significantly less attractive swordsman in a bloodied and cut-up green kimono turned around to face the incoming doom. "I'm healthier. Go on outta here, I'll hold him off for as long as I can."
"Don't be ridiculous!" the taller and much graver-looking swordsman in a blood-soaked sky-blue kimono cursed back at his comrade. "You'd just be throwing your life away and I wouldn't be limping off too far without your help either. Let's keep going. If Kusunoki has company, I'm sure they won't appreciate Kusunoki cutting through the walls of Shogun's town. They'll insist that they proceed through the streets just like us. Let's bet our survival on that for now…"
"Tsk… How did it get to this? We're betting our survival on someone leashing the Shogun's dog. Not to mention… What exactly is our plan once we flee this maze? Do we turn to the commoners for help? Samurai have been cutting them down like trash and persecuting them just to test the sharpness of their blades for years. We'd be lucky if they sent us away instead of taking us in only to butcher us while we rest and eat us. It'd be the first handful of meat they'd be getting in years…" the man dressed in bloody green grumbled while leaning his friend over his shoulder and returning to a desperate retreat from the castle.
"Hmm?" a young, plainly dressed girl was cleaning up the staircase outside of a small inn. Her bored eyes turned to the corner only to see a pair of limping men with signs of upper class on them: silky kimonos, swords by their sides, ponytails, headbands, and such. She gasped and dropped the broom. The pair slowly limped up to the inn with a tall and handsome samurai with dark hair wincing and crying out in pain while his shorter and much rounder friend positioned him by the inn's wall.
"I don't think I can go much further. You'll have to leave me, Tsuyoshi. If they catch me, maybe they'll be less devoted in their search for you since they won't be coming back to Shogun empty-handed?" the handsome samurai chuckled to himself before wincing in pain and falling over on his side, grunting and rolling on the sand as he was bleeding all over the yard which the girl worked so hard to sweep and clean.
"Don't be ridiculous, Kazuto!" the shorter yet broader samurai raised his friend up with just one hand by his collar and pulled him in, winding a fist back but refusing to pound his friend into submission since the impression was that he just couldn't take it and live. Submitting to despair, the swordsman dropped his friend and turned to the young girl, who froze and shook in terror at the sight of the samurai.
Samurai were bad business, they were all-around the worst. Whenever samurai visited their inn, they expected free service merely because they were the higher class of townsfolk. According to them, the fact that they didn't cut the insolent peasants that built their businesses in the country's capital down was enough of a payment for all the food, drinks, and comfort they asked for. Not to mention that they were crude and violent toward other customers. If these didn't come here to stay, the petrified and whimpering girl fully expected them to draw their swords and cut her down just for being "an eyesore".
"What the fuck are you waiting, you little broad!? This man is fucking dying! Help him!" the man his friend called Tsuyoshi earlier approached the little chick and lifted her off the ground with one hand, drawing her in closer like some ogre about to devour a child before heaving her over his head and pointing at his friend. "Isn't that what this place is here for?"
"Th-This isn't a hospital… Sir…" the girl whimpered out with trembling knees. She covered herself up with her noodle-thin arms and extended them as if to ward herself off from the brutish swordsman that was manhandling her just a second ago and couldn't move his hand away from the hilt of his sword. "This is an inn. We can feed you and give you a comfortable bed at night to sleep in…"
"Well, he doesn't look very fucking comfortable, does he, you little bitch?" Tsuyoshi wound his hand back to smack some sense into the kid before stiffening and lowering his hand, wrestling himself back from the other, more violent side of his personality.
"We don't have time for this…" Kazuto grunted while dragging his bleeding body across the yard and over the staircase that the girl was sweeping, smearing a terrifying amount of blood on it despite his slipping kimono showing thick patches of fresh bandages over the man's wounds. "The Shogun's dogs will be all over this place in a second. They were too close to lose our trail… Girl… Please… Come closer…"
"What is the meaning of this, Sachiko? How loud must you be to clean a porch? I swear, if I find you reading those comic strips again…" an elderly man in plain farmer's clothes stepped outside and exclaimed in shock after seeing two samurai in front of him with one bleeding out on his staircase.
"Finally, someone we can talk to!" Tsuyoshi picked the man up by his shoulders and slammed him against the wall of his own home. "Listen here, pal. We're with the Yakuza, see? The Nirakuki Clan! We can make having business in the middle of the capital very profitable and very safe for you, see? Boss Nirakuki doesn't forget favors. Take us in and help my associate here, you need to decide quickly!"
"The… The Yakuza?" the man babbled. "Why is your friend bleeding? Are the Shogun's men looking for you? It will be a death sentence if we shelter a member of the Yakuza inside our walls. We're on the outskirts of the capital, after all."
"The death sentence will be a whole lot more immediate if you don't shelter us, ya hear me?" disgruntled, Tsuyoshi slammed the innkeeper against the wall a couple of times more. Almost as if with each slam, he rolled a die and expected it to land on a favorable result.
"Alright, alright, come in. Hurry," the innkeeper gulped down the entire battlefield composed of his consciousness and the risks. Common sense, cold and calculated logic, with the very human incentive to stay alive and keep his family alive while he's at it. As if inspired by a second wind, Tsuyoshi grabbed Kazuto and dragged him into the inn. Based on the relative unresponsiveness of the fallen Yakuza swordsman, he found a place where he could receive some health just in time, as the man could merely hang like a numb sack of bricks and grunt when moved, without the apt discretion.
"Sachiko, your mother and I will tend to these Yakuza folks. Please, put the kettle on to boil and then run off to Nagoya-san's house. Ask them to let you stay for the night and tell them we're dealing with a rat infestation and that you're scared," young Sachiko just nodded with wide eyes and a hanging jaw. She had never seen this side of her father. It was like he had the resolve to not let either of these men leave his inn alive if he had to. While Sachiko knew her father as an intelligent, kind, and loving family man, this man she was staring back at looked like he was capable of anything.
Scared and shaking, the little girl in a plain robe ran off across the sandy street to the other side, knocked on the outer gate, and looked around. It was difficult to say where this instinct was coming from, but Sachiko felt like at any point something scary would turn the corner and, if they got their eyes on her, they'd devour her in an instant like a rabid hound. Tearing up and buckling by the knees by the cruel whims of her own imagination of savage beasts with bloodshot eyes, the girl squealed and crawled inside the Nagoya family estate yard when she saw a handful of samurai clad in silky kimonos and decorating their robes with sophisticated ribbons signifying their military accomplishments turned the corners and wandered into the street.
Almost like it was waiting for this moment, a gust of wind picked up and began carrying the dust across, forcing the samurai to tip their straw hats down to cover their faces. It was this very haunting breeze that gave young Sachiko the leeway necessary to slip away from their attention and crawl into the yard of her neighbors in the middle of the night. The girl pressed her back to the wall and panted with a heavy breath of clear lungs, feeling her heart pounding. With a whimper, she flopped on all fours, imagining a samurai's blade piercing through the wooden gate and impaling her on it by accident. She crawled to the brush and curled inside of it despite the scratching of the thin yet sharp branches.
A bit of garden dirt, the rub of some grass, and a few scrapes from the branches of a bush didn't feel like that big of a deal, given that her entire life was at stake. She could see the Nagoya family patriarch stepping out of the door to check who was knocking earlier. One sight of the samurai made him bow to the ground and crawl back indoors. A samurai with tied, long, black, curly hair nodded in approval of the Nagoya family patriarch's discretion, as neither of them was checking his yard. It was the blood on the porch of the Tanogen family home that was fresh enough to still drip from it that attracted the attention of the samurai.
The hidden girl carved her dirty fingernails into her shins and cried out of her own helplessness. These horrid men would kill her parents, they'll confiscate or burn down the inn that was meant to be the start of their family tradition. Her family had to work for three generations as potato farmers in the outskirts, working frigid soil and seeing little to no gain but working one bit at a time toward the goal, delving into a lifetime of debts just to make a shot at an attempt of moving up as peasants to being merchants, service providers… All to be butchered in the hands of the samurai, warriors who claimed to be sublime artists yet defined their legacy with lives they've trampled and forgotten and family homes they've razed to the ground just like they were about to do with the Tanogen Inn.
The Yakuza bosses claimed they would bring order. They worked closely with the farmers and the lower-class merchants that worked further away from the center of the town. They established unions, helped the workers and the merchants realize their value to the country, and make justified demands, all in exchange for being the weight behind the Yakuza's forces. The Yakuza offered swordsmen with skill and affinity for violence matching if not surpassing that of the samurai's own. A handful of Yakuza could rival and potentially surpass a lone samurai, and that was enough. Each Yakuza boss strived to be the Iron Shogun, realism demanded that they worked together, splitting the underground of the Iron Country like democratic kingpins, but to the Shogun they were just another band of rebels wanting their slice of his authoritarian pie. The Yakuza were more organized; they worked differently from both the idealistic rebels and the guerilla types that played the long game but they were criminals to slay, nonetheless.
And yet, all they brought Sachiko and her family was the end. Their end, and the end of their dream. Even if Sachiko survived, that would be all that she'd have accomplished–she'd survive. What life would she live from that point on? She may as well maraud the swords from those Yakuza goons that trampled on their peaceful lives and take a swing at the Shogun's castle gates. Her odds of surviving life in the capital all by herself would be the same as trying to topple the Iron Shogun with a sword she could hardly hold raised off the ground.
A crude rumbling made Sachiko peer through the brush. She expected to hear screaming, blood-curdling noises of cruelty and savagery. Blood splattering across the walls and vicious destruction of all that three generations of Tanogen family clusters worked to build. A lifelong dream that many added upon, but only Sachiko's father was bold to pull the trigger on and actively pursue it, only to be entangled in the war between the Yakuza and the Shogun's government.
A shiny flare made Sachiko exclaim in awe and then cover her eyes. It shot straight from the full moon dangling above the deceitfully quiet night sky and blasted without asking for permission, shaking like its own journey caused it torment, straight for the crossroad north to the Tanogen Inn.
"A shooting star?" Sachiko gulped. Right now, she wanted only one thing most of all–that her peaceful family life would come back. That she could have the idyllic childhood back where her worst nightmare was the childish caprice of having to do chores and learn how to watch over the inn. It didn't matter how that happened. If the Yakuza would kill the samurai and then bleed out if the samurai would arrest the Yakuza and then leave… All that mattered was that her family was safe, and she had her life back.
But what if the star didn't hear her plea? What if Sachiko didn't follow the star closely enough, what if some stray thought wandered into her mind and thusly ended up messing everything up? Was it worth gambling her family life, her entire future, and hundreds upon hundreds of years that her ancestors worked toward the building, all the sacrifices and risks her own parents made to get to move into the capital and run their inn? No! Sachiko needed to make sure that the star heard her wish!
With determination matching, if not surpassing, that of the samurai to find the Yakuza, the Yakuza to elude their pursuers, and even the will of her father to protect his family, Sachiko dashed from the Nagoya yard bush to the shining object that caused such a ruckus by crash-landing straight into the crossroad of a busy street in the Iron Country. Most people hid behind their blinds, cowered, and covered themselves up, believing it to be just another outbreak of violence. Just the samurai slaying criminals, punishing the civilians for the crime of having little to no military value in their militarized autocracy, or hunting down the Yakuza and playing heroes of the rotten society.
Even if she saw the ill, the rot coming up from the bottom of the core, if she absorbed all the mean talks of the oppressed commoners and merchants that rested in her inn while Sachiko served them drinks, bowed, and sang to them to make them feel just a bit better, she didn't want the star to fix the system. She didn't want the Iron Shogun to boil and leak as bloody pus from the inside of his oversized armor. All that Sachiko wanted was for the star to spare her family from being caught in the crossfire.
"Hey, child…!" someone yelled out. The strict, masculine tone and the self-righteousness, the feeling of entitlement for everyone to obey their command, left there no questions about whose voice it was. And yet Sachiko clenched her tiny fists and kept on running. All the way until she tripped and fell, tearing her robe up and grazing her forearms and knees while she dragged across the gravel street closer toward the shiny object that attracted the attention of the samurai.
With blurry eyes and a bleeding, busted forehead, Sachiko looked up at the fallen star, admiring its luminosity and the rainbow light show. It was so bright and so pleasant to look at that it made Sachiko feel like she felt when she read comic strips in the newspaper. Even if she knew that someone employed by the Shogun drew them to distract the commoners from the fact a military dictatorship was oppressing them, Sachiko thanked that faceless man for being so good at their job and helping her forget. Even if it was just for the fifteen minutes of scrolling her eyes across a funny, cartoonish paper strip…
"A shooting star?" Sachiko sifted through the dry mouth full of dust and gravel. She could hear heavy steps from behind her, the samurai were rushing after the fallen star and one of them was dragging Tsuyoshi by his hair while a handful more dragged Sachiko's mother and father out, bloodied and decorated with some licks but alive for now.
"Beeeeeep! Wrong!" a shrill, low-pitched grunt came from even higher above the shining, rainbow-clad object that looked like something out of this world. It was as if this object had been entirely hand drawn and colored into a very real and very colorless world devoid of mercy and capable of ending one's life and everything that one's family worked to achieve for generations because of some freak accident. Just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. "This isn't just a fallen star at all. This is a rocket ship, can't you see?"
The one talking was a pint-sized, flying, fairy-like humanoid creature. It had round, toeless feet that had been entirely black from waist to toe while a violet dress-like robe stretched over its waist and waved like a frilly, rustling freely in the wind. Tomoe-shaped brown decorations added to the rosy pink-colored top of the robe and the teal collar. The fairy from the sky had just three long fingers, easily larger than the entirety of its hand, and a whacky head that was as large and bulky as the entire rest of its body. It had large, baby-like eyes with reflective crimson rings that had been enveloped inside standout black rings as if someone had painted around the eyes with an ink brush. The fairy-like creature was mostly bald, except for the bent mount of light orchid-colored hair that hung like a dune on the very top of its head.
"My name is Ichi, Earth Clan! I've come here from the Moon on my rocket ship! Pleased to meet you!" the levitating sky-fairy extended its ridiculously disproportionate hand out to Sachiko. "You seem to be unwell, let me help you as a show of goodwill…"
To seal the deal of his offer, without waiting for a response, Ichi snapped its fingers and produced an eraser block of his own size. Grabbing it, Ichi rubbed it across the bloody graze on Sachiko's forehead, leaving just a void of white in its place. With his oversized fingers, Ichi drew onto Sachiko's head, giving her forehead color. Then he sized Sachiko up with his fingers like an artist gauging their masterpiece only to do some broad strokes with his fingers.
"Your hair had that strange, icky red smear on it. I accidentally brushed some of it out too, but don't worry, I redrew it from scratch. You'd be surprised how good white looked in your hair, so I left it white. Don't be alarmed, I didn't white it out completely. I left it more like silver-grey to help you adjust and to make it look less like I erased it…" Ichi explained with a whimsical, toddler-like attitude as if he had done something elementary. Awestruck, Sachiko pulled the locks of her hair to where she could see them, gasping at seeing them having become sugar-white.
"H-How did you do that?" Sachiko muttered, losing track of what was real anymore. Did the samurai catch up to her and murder her and all this was just a dream?
"Oh, I can paint stuff with my fingers… My mom doesn't like it when I paint something important but… Kind of like this…" with one eye winced, Ichi pointed at the sky and dotted his leftmost fingers at a few dark spots in the night's sky, creating a handful of new stars to form a brighter and more complete picture. "She'll get mad at me, probably, sketching stars is a big no-no she says… But we shouldn't be traveling to Earth either so she'll be mad at me anyway!" Ichi exclaimed with a joyful pose and curled himself up as he laughed it up in a playful hover above the ground.
"A rocket ship…" Sachiko turned to the crudely drawn spacecraft that the curious sky-fairy landed on. The outlandish ability of this entity to draw things and make them come to life as if he had created them would explain why this rocket ship looked so out of place in this environment. Then again, this celestial visitor being a toddler would explain why he didn't take too much time working on making this rocket ship blend in and why he made such a crude sketch of it before shooting himself off to Earth in it.
It would have taken the absolute impossible to make Sachiko forget about the handful of samurai bundled in her home, searching for wounded Yakuza. Fortunately for her, Ichi was more than just impossible. It was impossible's older, better-looking cousin going to the same school that knew martial arts and could play the shamisen and told the funniest jokes and graduated with the top grades.