Chapter 63

The Pearl Osprey

Leo was a number of miles from Sequoia, pressing on through the wonders of the Roshfall. The sun had reached its noonday crest but an hour before, yet was not often visible between the branches of the towering redwoods. The smells and sensations of the forest were invigorating.

With him was Mitsuhide. The former Adel Unit commander had ditched his ruby Praetorian armour, and the gauntlet embedded with Alexander's magicite was in his daysack. He was dressed in the loose-fitting shirt and breeches of his Balambi ancestors, replete with a straw hat and zori. Leo himself had shorn his obsidian shell, dressed in a plain polo shirt and cargoes, but wearing the same black all-purpose boots he had arrived with from the future.

For seven weeks Leo had been stuck in this world. Almost two months since he had seen Alanis, Leona and Griever. He did not have a photograph of any of them. It was not as if he had gone to the ruins of FH knowing there was a realistic danger of being displaced in time. Killed, maybe, as had presumably happened to Vargas and the others, but not trapped in another timeline.

It had been five weeks since Leo had broken his vows to Alanis. And, considering how distant he and the Empress had grown, his infidelity could now be chalked off to an affair. He had been able to live out his only and final fantasy, and now it was past time to deal with the consequences.

Ultimecia was nothing like Alanis. Leo had to dug deep and rediscovered what had drawn him to Alanis in the first place. She had been tall with Almaj blood and colouring, strong of body and firm of mind; women in that bleak future had to be, or they simply could not survive. A moral code and honour similar to Leo's own. Competent with a blade; Leo could have bested her, but many a Son of Almaj would have struggled in that feat. And whereas the Empress could shape the perfect body for her subjects to feast their eyes upon, Alanis had been naturally beautiful. Certainly not feminine in the way she had carried herself, as there was no place for that in such an unforgiving realm, though she had borne both of their children with grace; fine heirs to the forgotten Christophe line.

As soon as Leo had rediscovered those answers, he had done the charitable thing and called off his... affair. Afterward, prolonging it for just one more night would have been impossible. It had been the inevitable conclusion to a blemished love that had first been sullied by the command to murder Ifrit Almasy, then even more so by his desperation murder of Sorceress Quistis.

Her Grace had been visibly hurt, which cut him more deeply than any blade could. Leo still loved her, and for better or for worse, he always would. Alas, as both Nero and Kain had passed on, there were rumours abound that Ultimecia had satiated her longing with both Rillina and Rubicanta that same night. Which cut Leo as equally as deeply, but he had taken it on the chin, ignored the jeers of both Zebalga and Reinhardt as they laughed of how the three women's shrieks of ecstasy had shaken the Tower of Babil. Though Leo's old, impregnable barriers were back in place for the first time since the day the Empress had broken them.

Leo never intended to lie with another woman again. He had resolved to wait for Alanis. He did not know how much longer he would live for, in this timeline. Not for very long, if Esthar lost the war. The Children of Fate would not allow it, after Quistis; Fujin would not allow it, after Seifer, and Leo would not run from any of them. Sadly, Leo knew Alanis would not be born for over two hundred years, and she would not die for even more. But still, he would wait. He would await her arrival in the Netherworld, and when they were finally reunited, he would confess all to her. He would ask his wife for forgiveness, and if she did not grant it, Leo would willingly accept that as part of his Judgement.

Yet, he would remain Ultimecia's Knight for the duration of the war. The bond could be platonic, as it had been so for some Sorceresses in the past. He was still a loyal subject of the Empire, and could campaign to prevent a dystopian future from becoming a reality.

Leo was nether ignorant nor stupid. Now that there had been ample time for reflection, he had inevitable tried to think of workarounds to stop the eventual ruination of the Planet. Let Her Grace win her war, then convince her to pour resources into sustainable energy, as opposed to spending two centuries syphoning magicite and causing imbalances in the Aether. Fisherman's Horizon, an abandoned settlement in the future, had demonstrated it was possible to power an entire city by harnessing the sun, the wind and the tides. Why not just use their methods across the whole Empire? This way, the vision of a prosperous, worldwide empire first made ambition by Emperor Axtius would remain reality.

It had been a month since Leo had become known as the Sorceress Slayer. What he had done to the Blue Mage splintered his peace most hours of the day, and rightfully so. It was that single act, that execution, which had soiled him far more than laying with Her Grace.

Leo had taken it upon himself to learn as much as he could about the woman he had murdered, as he previously had only known her name from the history books. As one of the six Children of Fate who defeated Sorceress Edea at the Battle of the Gardens, who would also later triumph over Ultima Weapon, and as one of the recipients of Sorceress Rinoa's powers during the Divide.

Although Quistis had been orphaned, her significant height, fair hair and blue eyes led many to suspect her parents had been Trabian highlanders, which would also explain her robustness; she had had the blood of Shieldmaidens within her. She had seen thirty-eight namedays, meaning it was likely both her parents had died during Trabia's Lunar Cry. Furthermore, Quistis had mastered blue magic before becoming a Sorceress, which was understood to draw power from a lesser plane of the Aether, as it can only be used in self-defence; feral monsters tap into this same pool when they feel threatened. Perhaps many Tools of Hyne had possessed this ability eons ago, but they had lost the knack with evolution. Quistis had been among that rare breed that could harness their inner beast. She became the Azure Sorceress.

And now, Leo knew Quistis had been the youngest ever to become a SeeD, that she had been tutoring her own classmates but two years later. Her IQ had been recorded as somewhere near the high score on a dartboard. She had married into the notorious Aki clan before her twentieth nameday. She was also a exemplar violinist, and had published many successful dirges after relocating to rural Dollet.

Leo's self-enforced research had inevitably turned to Quistis' widow, Nida, who was the only child of the esteemed Heihachi Aki. From what he understood of Balambi customs, the Knight who outlived his Sorceress was eternally soiled, shunned from his clans, and exiled from his homeland. It had happened to Hideyoshi in centuries past, and would now be happening to Nida. And so, Leo's deep self-reproach extended to Nida, too, and he often reflected on the way he had condemned his fellow Sorceress' Knight to a life of infamy. Custom said that Nida could never take up arms again, even in self-defence. Though if Leo ever met Nida, he would be honour-bound to grant him the chance of becoming immortalised for the right reasons.

'This looks like a good a spot as any,' Mitsuhide said, stopping Leo's habitual brooding.

''Tis the best we will find,' he agreed.

They had crested a raised section of ground to be met by a shallow, sunlit stream, its waters flowing gently eastward. A narrow opening in the forest canopy was almost deliberately placed to blanket the water in a thin strip of sunlight, giving it a sheen. They could see the silver streaks of perch as they swam upstream in the otherwise undisturbed water, and Leo knew bringing fishing gear had been the right decision. But they weren't here for catching kois, not just yet. What they were here for would likely scare off all the fish, anyway.

In the future, Ujio of the Akechi clan had been the only one to ever best Leo in sparring. With his ancestral homeland underwater, Ujio had been one of the last known keepers of the katana disciplines. Like Mitsuhide, he had wielded Murasame and had born Alexander's magicite on a gauntlet. He had been one of the eleven Praetorians slain by Omega, being the first to reach Leo during at the end of his heroic stand, and the first to fall. He had been the only one Leo had ever missed.

Now, Ujio's ancestor had become the closest thing Leo had to a friend in this era. The man was widowed, and although Leo was not the same, he was suffering a hopeless longing for Alanis. No amount of time would heal that chasm. He and Mitsuhide had been frequenting Sequoias bars together, and regularly paired up for these outdoor activities together when off duty. The friendship grew with each passing day. Leo and the Twelve – or what was left of them – had actually been off duty for several days now, as Ultimecia had insisted on infiltrating Dollet alone.

In Galbadia, Leo had fought the Abadon and the Lionheart to a draw, had maimed the Cyclone, and had mortally wounded the Bloodhound. The latter two deeds added to his shame, but on both occasions he had been outnumbered two to one, could not stop to think, and needed to ensure neither could rejoin the fights. Leo had intended to kill Almasy outright, but only managed to cut his spine, and then Leonhart had leapt between them. Nonetheless, as word of those 'feats' had spread, there had been many speculative whisperings, not least among the Praetorians, as to how Leo would fare against the man previously considered the Empire's most adept swordsman.

Leo could not speculate, he had to know. The realm said Mitsuhide was the best, and he could not resist. He had often suspected there was a trait in the Christophe line that compelled him to challenge skilled opponents, and it was simply not a behaviour that could be corrected. Besides, Leo needed to avenge that loss to the friend who had given his life for him. He had to see if he had learned from his only defeat. Moreoever, they would be fighting man-on-man. There would be no witnesses, not all the way out here, unless a wendigo or moogle were spying on them. Only the two of them would know who the better man was, and they had already agreed to take that knowledge to the grave.

With their daysacks on rocks, they ensured they were sufficiently watered and warmed up. Mitsuhide used Alexander's power only to blunt the edges of their weapons, so that they did not have to use fake ones. For a gunblade wielder and a katana user, this would have been unseemly, and Leo would not be able to switch to his akimbo stance. Then they faced one another, three yards apart. Mitsuhide's held Murasame upright, in two hands, standing in that distinctive half-squat with the blade pointed toward the break in the canopy.

'I must confess, I'm excited!' Mitsuhide said.

'Likewise!' Leo admitted.

Leo usually allowed his opponent to move first, but this time he took the offensive. His instincts would fight his battle for him. Whether he cut or thrust or parried came purely from his subconscious, and his hands moved with a life of their own. It would be the same for his opponent; after all, the best fighters did not spare time to think. The time it took to decide whether to parry or block would mean death, especially against an opponent with Mitsuhide's skill.

Leo always thought the default stance of samurai was a very awkward one. They remained in that half-squat, crab-like in their movements. It gave them excellent balance but served to slow their movement. It was also the most similar they got to traditional swordplay first popularised by the knights of the Lost Kingdom or the Holy Dollet Empire, as their stances only became more bizarre from there.

Soon enough, Mitsuhide had changed to a one-handed stance. Murasame was held sidelong above his head, and he struck Leo as lithely as the streak of a perch not four feet away, the end of each stroke blending into the beginning of the next. Mitsuhide remained in this aesthetically impressive stance for over ten minutes, his form not diminishing, never missing a step even as they got tantalisingly close to the banks, or brushed the ancient trunks of the nearest sequoias.

Leo kept Harbinger unified. He might have two stances, but once he split his gunblade into two, it was difficult for him for reassemble it mid-battle. It was an irreversible decision, and he would know when the time was right to make it. Then again, most all of Leo's duels were over within one minute, let alone ten. Only the Lionheart, the Abadon and Ujio himself had lasted this long. No one else had come close.

Ten minutes became twenty. Mitsuhide had gone back to his default stance before changing it up again. Now he stood with his katana pointing behind him. In Leo's mind, it defied all logic to point one's weapon away from an opponent, but now Mitsuhide's agility became his armour. He spun more than he struck, a razor-edged whirlwind that lashed out when Leo least expected it. Then he started flowing between stances, starting a chain of combinations in one and finishing in another, all the while ever so subtly manoeuvring Leo toward the stream.

In a moment of certainty, Leo knew he was going to have to make a sacrifice, or he was going to lose. To regain ground, he allowed Mitsuhide to smote his arm, just below the right shoulder. But he was able to give what he received, Harbinger sliding across Mitsuhide's tricep for the briefest of drawing slashes. If this were an earnest match, he suspected that he would be worse of. Still, when they resumed the place they had been at the start, Mitsuhide lowered Murasame and bowed. Leo returned the stiff gesture as best he could.

Still relatively new to the Twelve, Mitsuhide stood as the only Praetorian without some kind of moniker. Her Grace tended to name her most trusted followers after some kind of predator or supernatural being, denoting them with a unique colour. Ialantha, the Golden Raptor. Rillina, the Emerald Viper. Lani, the Onyx Scorpion. In the future, Ultimecia had called Leo the Obsidian Harbinger, but he had never told anyone that here. Ujio had been known as the Pearl Osprey, denoting his forced union with Alexander and the birds of prey once prevalent above his homeland.

'What say we honour our wounds?' Leo proposed. 'Continue this single-handed?'

Mitsuhide smiled, adjusting his straw hat, which had managed to remain on his head the entire time.

'Of course.'

Leo split his weapon and buried the right-hand half in the dirt behind him, leaving it standing up. He would be fighting with his left, though he was ambidextrous; his father Gestahl had trained him that way, and he had never used a shield except in air jousting. Their handicap meant that Mitsuhide would not able to use his default stance, but Leo was not worried about that, as he knew the samurai had another ace up his sleeve.

'Let us decide this, Pearl Osprey!' Leo said elatedly, before realising his slip.

Mitsuhide blinked, then gently leaned into his second stance, curved blade held over his head.

'So that's how I'll be remembered,' he noted. 'Fitting! Yes, King Leonidas! Let us resume!'

Twenty minutes became thirty, then forty. In a real battle, they would never have had time for this. Some dog with no honour would interfere, as they always did. There would be more important things at stake in the battles not yet fought. If one of them was commanded to withdraw or redeploy, then they would be expected to do so. In fact, Leo was amazed they had not been disturbed by a funguar or cockatrice by now, as they had sighted many of them on their path through the Roshfall. Yet they remained undisturbed.

On the forty-second minute, Mitsuhide adopted the stance that Leo had been waiting for. He could not remember what the Balambi called it, but it translated to 'Form of the Moon'. He had only seen it once before, when he had sparred with Ujio, and its unorthodox nature had been his undoing. Mitsuhide stood with his blade held diagonally to the sky, and had they been sparring at night, it would always be pointed towards the moon. As it was beyond the horizon, Murasame was fixed at a focal point in the sky, at a cloud shaped like a bird – or an osprey.

This was what Leo had been waiting for, the moment when he would avenge his only ever defeat! Mitsuhide's offence was now dictated by which direction his arm was pointing. He kicked as much as struck; sudden, battering rams of strikes that were especially effective against a man of Leo's size, and landing just one could impair him as much as any blade. This was how Ujio had beaten him. Ujio had moved Leo to uneven ground, placed a leaping sidekick square between his pectorals, then brought Murasame down on the crown of his head. In a real duel, Leo would have been killed before his face could register his disbelief.

This time, he was ready. He allowed the kick to land, firming his abdomen against the crushing blow. It was still incredibly painful, but he had been struck harder during his father's brutal training regimens, and he had had only a child's lean muscle back then. Now, Leo was six feet six and weighed over twenty stone, bigger than Gestahl had ever been. He parried the follow-through, blending into a drawing slash that made contact with Mitsuhide's neck. Though he had been so fast in his recovery that Murasame did the same a fraction later. Leo's slash was not an instant kill, and Mitsuhide would have had time to land his own even if his lifeblood had been seeping down his shirt.

A draw!

Mitsuhide had his hand to his neck, even though there was no wound.

'You've seen the tsuki no katachi before, haven't you?' he asked.

Leo nodded once. 'I have.'

He was reluctant to say more, for fear of jeopardising Ujio's existence.

'The Pearl Osprey,' Mitsuhide repeated. 'I must remind you of him, whomever he was. Will be, I mean. I must say, it's comforting to know samurai still exist in your time, even though my homeland is no more. The tsuki no katachi is a sparsely used discipline, and few of us can master it, still.'

'The Pearl Osprey gave his life for me,' Leo admitted. 'Breaking away from the rest of the Twelve, he saved me from Omega.'

'Which was his clan?' Mitsuhide asked.

Leo hesitated. 'Your own.'

Mitsuhide sheathed his katana, then adjusted his straw hat again. Leo walked to the standing half of Harbinger, wiping it down before reunifying it.

'Now, there is only to determine who is the better angler!' Leo said.

This had been the other reason Leo wanted this trip. He had been eager to see the fishing techniques of the Balambi, which had been lost by the future. They angled as competitively as they had duelled, and later Leo used methods he had learned, his combats rolled up as he stood ankle deep in the cool water, while Mitsuhide found a comfortable section of bankside to compose a haiku.

Later, they discussed their families. Mitsuhide missed Hikaru dearly, though her scapegoating for the loss of half a million soldiers meant that Leo was the only one Mitsuhide could speak to openly about his true feelings; she had brought heavy shame upon his clan. It took several hours, but the saké loosened his tongue, as it did Leo's. For the first time, Leo had confessed his adultery. Mitsuhide was quiet for a long while.

'You must be the bravest man alive, to break off an affair with the Empress,' he said quietly. 'The Praetorians she takes a liking to dare not refuse her. Well, the path to redemption has to start somewhere, my friend!'

Leo said nothing. Instead, their conversations steered towards Mitsuhide's three children. They were with his sister now, as custom dictated that they could not live with Hikaru's clan. His eldest, Jubei, was about to turn fifteen. This was the threshold of adulthood in the Empire, and meant he could enlist in the army; young Jubei was eager to help erase the shame his mother had brought to the Akechi clan.

However, Leo and Mitsuhide both agreed this was not the best option for him. The war would be over sooner rather than later, and the participation of green, fifteen-year-old infantry personnel would make little difference to the outcome. Leo had forbidden Leona and Griever from enlisting in the imperial army too early. It would be best for Jubei to remain in education, and keep training for the battles of the next generation, to take sufficient time master the disciplines of the samurai. There would always be battles, even if there were no more wars.

They did not pack away their gear until sunset. After so many hours of sitting on the bankside, they would welcome the nightime hike back to Sequoia. They would have sobered somewhat by then, and could continue their night on the town. Leo was contented that he had found some small measure of happiness. He figured he had taken his second step on his path of redemption, as Mitsuhide put it, and this had been one of the finest days of his life.