Silver Millennium Soldier
-16- Ronin
by
Mike Macdonald
(Age: 27)
copyright 10-13-2006
Age Rating: 18 to 127
Rei's afternoon workout provided a much-needed release she couldn't get anywhere else. Somehow, the act of swinging a wooden stick and shouting short nonsensical words loosened the knots in the pit of her soul. It wasn't necessarily relaxing. It didn't shake the negative views she held on the dusty culture she'd been raised in. But it helped her to breathe again.
"Ai! Yah! Toh!"
Three successive swings, shake the blood off the blade (had it been a real blade and had someone been attacking her), return the sword to the hip. Three steps back. Chest out, back straight, elbows out with the hands at the belly--the samurai's defense mechanism, giving the illusion of size to intimidate an opponent. It never worked for the runt of the Hino family. Her brothers and sisters were miles away and she could still hear them laughing.
Her feet slid apart, the right foot forward slightly. The blade lunged out in a chest-splitting upward arc. Her enemy would have been cut in two.
"Ai!"
Her left foot slid to the left and carried her into a downward cut. The second attacker no longer had a head.
"Yah!"
Her mind's eye should have seen a bloodstained field littered with bodies and shredded banners, and two ronin lying dead at her feet. Instead, she saw that damn city again, the ivory castles described by her feline visitor. She'd seen it before he appeared at the shrine with the two girls. It haunted her in dreams when she was younger, but only briefly. Now, even while in meditation, she saw it all the time. She saw its people in their homes, laughing with friends and kissing their families. She saw festivals in its streets where humans congregated with creatures of mythology and beings of divinity, regarding one another as equals with the help of alcohol. Man, God, and Beast living in harmony, oblivious to the turmoil reaching for the rug beneath their civilization's feet.
Her feet pivoted and she spun around for a vertical cut down the center of a third attacker at the rear, one with bright blue eyes and long golden locks of hair.
"Toh!"
The wooden blade hovered an inch from the girl's nose. She'd almost gone completely undetected, if the birds in the cherry blossoms hadn't been so silent for the last minute. Rei was frozen in position, waiting for the intruder to submit. She'd flinched a little, but her eyes looked more surprised than frightened.
"Pleasant weather for attacking someone," the girl said with a funny accent.
Rei lowered her wooden sword and subconsciously returned it to her hip as she'd been trained. The young lady was dressed in a long blue skirt that stopped three inches past the knee, and an orange blouse that matched her slippers. The bow in her hair, a gaudy red butterfly perched on the back of her head, made her look like a very tall first-grader.
"What’re you selling?" Rei asked.
"Avon products," the blonde said. "Care to take a look at our body wash selection? Fit for a noble! Even a reincarnated one."
Her lips curled up on this last sentence. Rei responded with a cold glare and promptly returned to her exercise.
"Didn’t I make myself clear the first time?" she said. "Or do you people not understand sarcasm? I’ve got a master’s degree and a fresh start on the horizon. I'm not gonna toss my dreams away just to play dress-up with hooligans from the netherworld."
A large stone sat in the courtyard near where they stood. The blonde girl planted herself on it as though it were her own chair and crossed her legs. Rei's face went sour again.
"Well," the girl said, "we certainly got the impression that you weren’t thrilled about your forgotten heritage."
"I’m not exactly thrilled with my current heritage. Go away and don't bother me again."
Three successive swings, shake the blood off the blade, return the sword to the hip. Three steps back. Chest out, back straight, elbows out with the hands at the belly.
"It’s not so bad," the blonde said, "helping folks out. And after a while, you find a way to switch back and forth between your normal life and your secret one and not lose that much sleep in the process."
"Don't you have anything better to do with your time than sit here and distract me?" Rei said with a scowl.
Her visitor smiled like before. "No."
Rei's feet slid apart, the right foot forward slightly. She drew the blade and brought it down in a vertical cut. Her visitor seemed amused by the shouting because her smile never went away as she watched.
"Never seen swordsmanship before or something?" Rei asked.
"I've been immersed in it," the girl said. "But I prefer whips n' chains."
"That's a little too kinky for my taste," Rei said flatly.
"Ah, you don't know what you're missing, Love."
She really wasn't going to leave. Rei was sure of it. All she wanted was a little peace and quiet, and for every otherworldly nuisance in the city to leave her to her thoughts and mind their own damned business.
The pit of Rei's mind tingled as she prepared for her third cut, as if someone's finger was rummaging around inside her head, nudging past her memories and bumping the diploma she had yet attained. The image of a tender-hearted American career man was upturned and nearly teetered over the edge of the tiny shelf where her hopes were stored. It was so subtle that anyone lacking absolute control over their mind and spirit would never have noticed.
Rei's third cut was an upward arc to her immediate right that barely missed the intruder, who rolled backward onto the grass with a shriek. Rei caught her balance and kept her eye on the girl with her stick at the ready, raised above her head. Her heartbeat could've been heard a block away.
The girl hissed an obscenity in German. "You’re a touchy one, aren’t you?"
"Don’t do that again," Rei said, still poised for a knockout blow to the intruder's skull. "That what you came here for? To invade my privacy? What the hell are you?"
"I came here," the girl said, standing again, "to encourage you to be part of something special. We’re trying to preserve the well-being of all the men and women and children in this city, and in the long run, this world. And we’re the only ones who can do it."
Rei finally lowered her weapon. Assuming she was now safe, the girl brushed the grass off her skirt and straightened her hair. Again, her eyes showed no signs of anger or fear. Offense, rather. Rei had never met anyone so completely sure of herself.
"If it were up to me," the girl went on, "I’d force you to join. Lord knows I can try. But it’s up to you whether or not you want to be a part of it. People are dying and we need all the help we can get right now. Willing help."
The joyous festival haunted Rei again. She wished she could shout to them, to warn them of the coming danger, but they wouldn't hear her if she did. They'd never know until their end was marching right up those streets, painting the city with the blood of its children.
The city wasn't of ivory and crystal, but concrete and asphalt. The blood belonged to human children. Dozens lying dead in the street, torn and broken, and many of them blackened and smoldering. One remained alive, sitting in the midst of the carnage with a dead puppy clutched dearly in her arms. The puppy's leash was broken, the other half in the dead hand of a middle-aged man still crackling with flames. The drunken laughter dissolved into the weak sobs of children and adults gathering around the scene. No one would help the little girl. Her mind was gone. Her clothes and hair were drenched with the dog's blood. No one would help her. No one knew what to do.
The blonde's eyes were locked with Rei's. Like lanterns, the light within them had gone out with a flick.
"The price of apathy is high," the blonde said. "You won't recover from the debt. You won't have dreams anymore."
Rei said nothing. The images flooding her mind's eye had departed, but a sick feeling in her gut lingered. When the blonde decided the miko would ask no questions, she turned and walked to the courtyard gates.
"Cherry Hill Hospital is a ten minute walk from here," she said as she left, giving a weak smile over her shoulder. "Stop by if you change your mind."
Rei was alone again. Her wooden sword slipped from her grasp during the conversation and now laid in the grass. She left it there as she sat on the house's porch steps and lit a cigarette since there was nothing else she really felt like doing or thinking about at the moment.
After her cigarette, it was back to routine. Normally she would polish Grandpa's swords and spears before her next meditation, but after the pleasant encounter with the strange girl, she craved a good sweeping of the mind's nooks and crannies. She sat down at the house altar in a comfortable position, closed her eyes, took a deep breath and held it for ten seconds. On release she began to sink deep into the null space of the mind. To the sanctuary where no thoughts were permitted to enter. No thoughts of work. No thoughts of family trouble. No thoughts of ivory cities. She took another deep breath and held it.
A loud squawk drove the breath out of her body in a scream. Phobos and Deimos sat side by side atop the altar with their heads tilted, each of their beady black marbles reflecting Rei's startled expression. She crawled up to the altar and hovered over her two children menacingly. Phobos was supposed to be the well-behaved one of the pair. She expected this sort of thing from Deimos, but not his sister.
"I already fed you," Rei said with a scowl. "What do you want?"
"Nevermore," Phobos said.
Rei scoffed. "You’re very clever. Why are you pestering me?"
Neither familiar responded, nor blinked. They just sat and stared. Rei swallowed and sat on the floor.
"Don’t tell me you think I should help those people, too."
When the birds still remained silent, Rei laid back on the floor and sighed. If nothing else, maybe lounging about for a bit would ease her mind.
"Well, I don’t care what you darlings think," she said to the ceiling. "I don’t have to play along with such a silly game to justify my existence. I may be spiritual, but I’m not superstitious enough to believe Fate has decreed that I should reclaim my birthright as a valkyrie of the moon. I, and I alone, control the path my life takes."
"Nevermore," Phobos said.
Rei sat up at this and glared at the birds. The manner in which they looked upon her was just like that of the blonde visitor in the courtyard. They still sat atop the altar, staring expectantly.
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