Stories - v3. Rurouni Kenshii part one, separated because of size
Illness is everywhere in this era, even in its people. So much so, the moon peers down on a diseased world.
Elsewhere, a cart’s wheels pressed flowers down as it trundled along a field. A young girl-child, in a light and dark green striped kimono and gray obi, stared tiredly through liquid amethyst eyes at the brightly colored wooden top in her hands.
There is no cure for this disease.
The little girl bent and picked up a flower that had been uprooted from the ground due to the cart she was walking next to. She looked up at the black haired girl in the red kimono who was walking beside her, then looked back at the flower in her hand. After a moment of intense deliberation, she gestured for the older girl to kneel down, then placed the flower in her surrogate older sister’s black hair. After all, flowers were meant to be placed in the hair (preferably behind the ear), and the flower was white - it went much better with black hair than with red.
The smell of blood is as common as the smell of white plums. Death no longer terrifies man, so he creates slavery and savagery, which surpass the horror of death. It can only be fought with more bloodshed, and the cycle never ends.
The man walked down the path shaded by trees, moonlight streaming through the branches. With each of his long strides his sheathed katana knocked against the bottle of sake he carried, whilst his white cape billowed behind him gently.
Even if a person of incredible strength were to arise, they would not be able to stop the inevitable.
They would be able to do nothing.
She was glad her baby brother had never - and would never, now - know what it was like to be called a demon because of something you were born with, and couldn’t help, like your hair and eye color. Mikitsu had been wonderful, a treasure, and he deserved so much more than he got. They all did.
A blood stained blade gleamed in the moonlight, and greedy eyes locked on the caravan passing through the plains. Then clouds cut off the moon’s light, throwing the world into darkness.
This world is headed for destruction.
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Screams cut through the night air, telling a tale of terror and suffering. Bandits, bloodthirsty men with nothing in their hearts but greed, cut down the members of the caravan with no concern for the lives that they were taking.
Screams and chaos filled the air. Feet ran, pounding the road as the members of the caravans ran for their lives, to no avail. A man was cut down from shoulder to hip; another's head was driven through with a spear. A woman was skewered and thrown to the side of the road, the blood seeping through the folds of her obi sash, taking her life with it.
Takuma Gesu sneered to himself as he cut through a man in a peasant’s gi and hakama and laughed as the man fell on the grass, staining it with his lifeblood.
Weaklings, all of them. Is there no one here to give me a challenge? Gesu was different from the rest of the bandits by one major point - all the other members of his band wanted to see was gold. All he wanted to see was blood.
Weak, weak, weak. Is there no one here to give me a little sport! He thought as he cut down a man in rough peasant’s garments.
He looked past the corpse and a flicker of red caught his eye.
Blood...no… his eyes widened in shock …hair! Red hair. That color …he grinned …it must belong to a demon! Heh, maybe he could get a little sport after all.
Bloody visions dancing in his head, he headed for the little girl who had caught his eye as she struggled to hold a fallen katana in her small hands.
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Ever since her mother had died, she had had no one to rely on but herself. She had had to take care of Mikitsu, who was just a little boy, only five years old, and her father, who had been blinded in an accident. She had had to be mother and daughter, sister and wife - without ever really experiencing someone taking care of her herself. So it was a shock when she had arrived at the caravan, with blistered feet and eyes blinded by tears and met the three girls. The three girls who had adopted her into their small, fractured family, who had wiped away her tears, and soothed her nightmares. The girls who had made her smile and laugh in what seemed the first time in years… she had sworn to protect them as best she could. Protect this small, fractured family, as she had been unable to protect her own.
She would do anything to protect them.
Even break all the rules of sex and class and creed that had been bred into her by her family, by the villagers and by the slavers, and bend down and pick up the sword that one of the men had dropped.
Even change her life forever, and start on a path that would end up staining her very soul with blood.
And she would do it with no regrets.
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Hiko Seijuro the XIII, was not the type of man to believe in anything he couldn’t confirm with his own senses. He did not believe in the Shinto gods and goddesses, in Buddha, or any other kind of higher power. He believed in men, and what men could do, and even that had been sorely tested over the years, as he’d seen too many atrocities to count.
But just as he didn’t believe in any higher power, he also didn’t believe in fate, and, as such, was always tempting it. This, (as anyone who had ever said ‘nothing could possibly go wrong’ could tell him) was a very bad idea. He had been so sure that nothing could reaffirm his faith in the human race.
He was about to get a bit of a nasty shock.
He’d been walking home from the village where he went to get sake. There was a small village at the foot of the hill he had made his home, which did for supplies, but the people there didn’t have very good sake.
If it weren’t for that, he never would have heard the screams.
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The little girl tensed as a dark figure approached splattered with blood. The gleam of teeth was a shocking white in a dirt-smeared face - the man was smiling. He was enjoying this. Enjoying the slaughter. If he got his hands on Kasumi-san, Akane-san, and Sakura-san…no. She wouldn’t think about that, because it wasn’t going to happen.
She wouldn’t let it happen.
She would protect them as she had failed to protect her father and Mikitsu.
She launched forward - and lost her grip on the katana as trembling hands pulled her back. The hands belonged to the girl who had received the flower, the one called Kasumi, and she held the redhead close as she and the other girls crouched in fear.
“Don’t look” Kasumi whispered, “please, don’t look.”
Through a small window made by Kasumi’s shoulder and neck, the violet eyed girl watched as a member of her little, makeshift family, (Sakura this time) - ran forward to the bandit, crying out for mercy. Not mercy for Sakura though, the girl realized. She was asking him to spare her!
“Please, spare this child, please, I beg of you!”
In an instant, she was cut down. Blood filled the girl’s vision.
Sakura…
The same thing happened to Akane, but the child didn’t see it this time as Kasumi had thrown her body forward, blocking out the view. But that didn’t stop the sounds. The sound of Akane running forward, of her cry as she was cut down without even the time to finish her plea - again, to spare the child…
There was a sob in Kasumi’s voice as she cried “Akane!” and then her voice firmed as she raised herself up to look down at the child she was protecting.
“Listen, little one, my life will end here like that of my sisters, but you cannot die yet! You are just a child. You have not chosen your life, as we have been able to. You cannot die now. You must live. Live a full life the way you want to - for the sake of those who died here tonight--"
She wasn’t able to finish her sentence as a rough hand hauled her up by her hair. The bandit sneered and raised his sword, and then, with one swift movement, thrust it through Kasumi’s neck. The little girl gasped, as Kasumi placed her trembling hands on the sword that was now covered in blood. The black haired-girl’s mouth formed words that could barely be heard.
“Live dear heart.”
The bandit ripped his sword away and dropped Kasumi who fell on the ground in a heap, her face turned towards the little girl who she and her sisters had practically adopted in the short time they had known her. She had to tell her, somehow. When someone is close to death, sometimes they can see things others can’t. Kasumi knew that her ‘imouto’ was not meant for this fate, she was meant for something greater, something that would shape the world; she just needed to tell her…
“Choose…for me…”
And Takuma Gesu slammed the sword down through Kasumi’s red kimono, dying it black in the moonlight with an innocent woman’s blood, as the sword cut into her heart. Her last thought was of the girl that was the last of her family, now, and as she breathed her last breaths, Kasumi looked at her ‘little sister’…and she smiled.
She would live, and that was all that mattered.
Itoe…
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Itoe’s head was ringing. It seemed impossible that all her family was gone. Mother, Father, Mikitsu…and now Kasumi-san, Akane-san, and Sakura-san… were the villagers right, all along? Was she a demon, a monster that destroyed all she touched?
And as if that wasn’t enough, Kasumi’s last words were running through her head, over and over.
Choose…
She had chosen, hadn’t she?
She had chosen to look after father, to take care of Mikitsu…
Or had she?
Choose…
Was there really anything else she could have done? She was eight years old - and a female eight-year-old at that. What else could she have done, it’s not like she could have just left - she’d have been dead, or worse, before the day was out. Had she really ever chosen anything, out of her own free will before? With nothing pushing her or stopping her from making that choice?
Choose…
Her head was spinning with all the new thoughts that had come upon her. It was as if some dam had broken, and something had rushed in and filled her, something new and bright and burning.
Something an awful lot like hope.
But it looked like she wasn’t going to be able to explore this new flame that had settled inside her, or to think about Kasumi’s ‘choose’.
Because the man who had killed her sisters was still standing right there, and he had his sword raised.
Itoe shut her eyes, and then, just as the bandits sword came sweeping down to end her life as it ended so many others lives before now… Hiko Seijuro came upon the caravan.
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