It didn’t look like the home of a dangerous man.
The mansion was grand enough, almost like a small castle, its upper floors rising like graceful white birds, the sort of place that might have belonged to a samurai of the highest rank. Maybe it had, once. Now the gardens were getting overgrown with weeds, and there were green blotches on the white walls. The only sounds were the shrilling of crickets and the rhythm of a shishiodoshi in the garden, banging against its rock as it filled, tipped over and emptied.
“Who was this guy anyway?” Kuro asked.
“His name was Kousaku Mori,” Aoshi said. “Made a great deal of money selling art objects to rich Europeans. An odd choice, considering that a great deal of his wealth went to financing anti-foreign activities.”
“That’s clever, making your enemies pay to destroy them,” Okon added.
“His name came up in Saitou’s investigation of Enishi Yukishiro’s arms-dealing. It seems he wrote to Yukishiro and offered him a powerful, dangerous weapon. His letter mentioned ‘a product of Japanese invention that can surpass anything the foreigners offer.’”
“It seems odd that a dealer in antiques would know anything about weapons,” Okon mused. “Old swords or spears, yes, but not anything a modern person would call powerful and unusual.”
“Wonder what it could be,” Kuro muttered. “Something like a Gatling gun, or a really big cannon?”
“Maybe it’s a bomb,” added Okon.
“Or some new kind of poison?” Misao tugged on her braid. “Aoshi-sama… just what are we looking for?”
Aoshi’s ice-blue eyes riveted each of them in turn. “I don’t have any idea.”
The three Oniwabanshuu sweatdropped.
“Unfortunately, Mori-san died, apparently of natural causes, before the police could interrogate him, so we have to find the weapon ourselves. Misao, I’d suggest that you take Okon and search the house. Look for anything out of the ordinary. Also look over Mori’s papers and correspondence. Anything in a foreign language, bring it along; Saitou has people who can get it translated. Kuro and I will take the grounds and outbuildings.”
Misao opened her mouth, closed it again. Aoshi was right as usual – he did have a lot more experience in things like this than she did. It wasn’t that he ever did anything to undermine her authority, he was always totally supportive – but he led so naturally that everyone followed him. It made her feel she was a novice on her first mission, not Okashira.
“Fine,” she answered aloud. “Come on, Okon.”
“It’s so spooky,” Okon whispered. She and Misao groped their way across the dark room, slid open the shoji, and trundled the heavy amado back to the end of the engawa. Dim, green-filtered light streamed into the room.
“Doesn’t help a whole lot,” Misao commented. “I wonder if Mori-san could see in the dark.” She sighed. “Where do you want to start with this stuff?”
“This looks like it ought to have papers…” Okon produced a piece of stiff wire and set to work. Before long the chest was open, and the two young women were sorting through the documents it contained.
“Find anything?” Okon asked, a long time later.
“Not a thing. Everything’s in Japanese, and it’s all about antiques. Old jewelry, old mirrors, old swords, this guy wasn’t dealing in weapons, he was just buying antiques. Maybe there isn’t a weapon.”
“Misao? Take a look at this, would you?”
“Huh? It’s just… hey, it’s shallower than it is on the outside, isn’t it? Here, give me a hand!”
The chest did indeed have a false bottom, and under it was what looked like a large block of wood with an inlaid pattern. “What’s a thing like that doing in here?” Misao wondered. When she shook it, it rattled a little. “I don’t see any locks or hinges, but I bet it’s a box. It’s too small to be the weapon Aoshi-sama’s looking for, but maybe it’s a part of it.”
“Part of it?” “Like, oh, the fuse for a bomb. Or the handle you crank on a Gatling gun. Something the weapon won’t work without. Now how do I get this… oh!” Part of the inlay slid aside under her fingers, and the box split into two halves in her hand. “Now I can really show Aoshi-sama…” she broke off, staring at the object that had fallen out of the box.
“That doesn’t look much like part of a weapon,” Okon said slowly. “It’s too bulky to be a handguard, more like a weird piece of jewelry. Misao?”
“It’s beautiful,” the younger girl sighed. Four small red crystals surrounded a larger central one, the same bluish-green as the ice when the river froze in winter. It seemed to stare at her like an eye. Like Aoshi-sama’s eyes… She pulled off her tekkou and slipped the mysterious object around her wrist. Part of it extended up to fit like a ring around her index finger; a fifth red crystal winked at her. The two girls went back to sorting through the merchant’s papers.
“This is boring,” Misao complained. The room seemed stuffy, its air stagnant and dead. She held her arm up, gazing at the ornament in the green-tinted sunlight. The four small stones gleamed like mad, red eyes. The central crystal reminded her of Aoshi, the way he never smiled, never showed how he felt, never took her seriously either as Okashira or as a woman… They seemed to be whispering to her, a whisper like the rustle of wind. I wish there could be a breeze in here.
A slight rustle. The papers around her stirred.
Huh? Where’d that come from? A breeze…
A few letters blew across the room.
I made a breeze just by thinking about one?
She made a little dust devil of letters, set them spiraling to the ceiling and let them slowly down to the floor.
That’s fun! What else can I do?
A quick, sharp breeze snatched the paper from Okon’s hand.
“Misao-chan? What are you doing?”
Misao giggled. “Watch what I can do, Okon!” She set the papers to spinning around her in a great whirlwind. It felt wonderful! The giggling became a full-blown laugh, she wanted to dance in the wind, she wanted to dance in the wind with Aoshi-sama and show him how to feel… I’ll make him take me seriously!
“Misao-chan, what in the – take that thing off!” Okon lunged at her, reached for the bracelet, for the wonderful new beautiful thing that made her feel so good and let her dance with the wind…
The wind became a rope and jerked her back. Okon slammed into the corner post, and only her ninja reflexes saved her from injury.
“I won’t let you have it, Okon,” Misao crooned from the center of the vortex of papers. “You can’t have it, and you can’t have Aoshi-sama either. He’s mine, all mine!”
“Misao…” Okon wondered if Misao knew what she was saying, knew how deeply her words hurt. She and Aoshi had been over long ago, whatever was between them had ended the night he was named Okashira, but the old wounds still ached sometimes…
“I’m going to find Aoshi-sama and we’re going to dance in the wind forever and ever!” Misao ran out of the room, laughing manically.
“Misao…” Okon repeated in a whisper. What had come over the girl? Was she possessed? That bracelet was evil! Okon also ran, in the opposite direction from the one Misao had taken, with only one thought in her mind.
I have to find Aoshi!
“There’s nothing here, Aoshi-sama,” Kuro said. “Man, it would sure help if we knew what we were looking for.”
“Hmm.” Kuro was right, this blundering about in ignorance was annoying. It wouldn’t look good if they couldn’t find the weapon. Aoshi didn’t like unaccomplished missions and he didn’t like screwups, and this was looking more and more like a screwup all the time. “A very dangerous weapon…”
“All we’ve seen is antiques. The only weapons we’ve found are some old swords and stuff. Che, I hope the girls have had better luck than we’ve had.”
A product of Japanese invention… There was something about that phrase that made his skin prickle, something he should remember but didn’t. A weapon that didn’t look like a weapon, not a sword or a gun or a grenade…
No good. The memory was gone.
“Aoshi-sama!” Okon came running around the side of the house, her long hair flying. “Aoshi-sama, she’s gone insane!”
“What? Who? Talk sense, Okon!” Kuro sputtered.
“Misao-chan! She’s coming after you, Aoshi-sama!”
“Okon! Report!” Aoshi snapped.
His harsh tone was as effective as a slap. “We found a… a tekkou,” she said. “Misao thought it was pretty, and she put it on. Then she started… making the wind blow.”
“Whaddya mean making the wind blow? That’s nonsense.” Kuro scoffed.
“I said… get… away… from… AOSHI-SAMA!” Something struck Okon and knocked her flying. Something… but there was no weapon. Nothing but air – air that struck like steel. And Misao, with her braid whipping in a wind that none of them could feel, her crystal-blue eyes oddly flat and blank. She raised her arm; she wasn’t wearing her usual handguard, but rather something white, with a blue-green stone and a small gleam of red…
Wind buffeted them. It picked Okon up bodily and flung her some distance away. “Okon!” Kuro shouted and charged toward Misao.
Kuro was a big, powerful man. Yet as Aoshi watched, he had to slow, then stop against the force of air like a moving wall. He raised his hands to shield his face and tried with all the power in his body to step forward… but step by step he was driven back. He stumbled, fell, and the wind rolled him down the slope while Misao laughed like a mad thing.
“Come dance with me, Aoshi-sama!” she cried. “Come dance in the wind!”
“Misao,” he called. “Let’s go home, Misao.”
“No!”
Okon crawled toward Aoshi. “That must be…” A blast of air sent her tumbling after Kuro.
“The weapon.” Japanese, unique, powerful… what do I know that’s like that? I can’t remember!
“Fuujin” said a new voice, a female voice.
“What? Who?”
A woman stood behind Aoshi, a woman who hadn’t been there a moment ago. She was sedately dressed in a mauve kimono, her hair was gathered behind her head and hung in a straight fall down her back. The perfection of her face was only accented by the two small moles on her chin, one directly above the other. There was a symbol tattooed on the back of her hand.
“The madougu, Fuujin. The Wind God.” The woman stepped out of the patch of shadow she had appeared in. “One of the elemental weapons of the Hokage ninja.”
“The Hokage…”
“Aren’t they only a legend, onee-san?” Kuro had picked himself up and was supporting Okon as they climbed the hill.
An indescribable expression crossed the woman’s face, part sadness, part reminiscence, part pride. “No, in their time the Hokage were as real as… the Oniwabanshuu. I am addressing the Okashira, Aoshi Shinomori, am I not?”
Aoshi inclined his head. “Former Okashira.” His eyes glinted like the sharp edges of ice. “You have the advantage of me,” he said in an even, quiet voice, smooth and dangerous as flowing water.
“I am called Kage Houshi.”
“Aoshi-sama!” Wind coiled around him, jerked him forward. “Pay attention to ME, not her!!”
“She’s possessed!” Kage Houshi cried over the rising wind. “You have to remove the Fuujin from her!”
“Come on, Aoshi-sama,” Misao begged. “Come dance with me!”
“Misao-chan, no!” Okon cried.
“I know you, Okon.” Abruptly Misao’s manner changed. The wind died down and she spoke very calmly and quietly, but her voice had an icy edge. “Did you think I didn’t see you, back then?” She started walking toward the older woman. “Hugging Aoshi-sama, kissing him, letting him put his hands all over you? You thought I was just a little girl, didn’t you? You still think I’m just a little girl!” she screamed. “I’ll show you, I’ll show all of you! Take that! And that!” She lashed savagely at Okon with an invisible whip.
“I can throw it too, like kunai,” she said. “See?” Kuro jumped back. His clothing was slashed in several places and his arm was bleeding.
“Misao, don’t do this,” Aoshi pleaded.
Pleading? Aoshi-sama? Misao faltered a moment, but then the mad light was back in her eyes. She laughed. “None of you ever took me seriously, but I’ll show you. I’ll show you all! Just try and stop me!”
“You can stop each of us, Misao, but can you stop all of us?” Aoshi signaled to Okon and Kuro. “You’re fast, but one of us will get through!”
“Don’t underestimate me!” she yelled. Okon, Kuro, and Aoshi all were flung back by the force of the whirlwind that rose up around her. Pebbles and bits of debris spun around her, to fly out from time to time and strike with bulletlike force.
“Please, Kage Houshi-san!” Okon cried. “Please tell us what’s happened to Misao!”
Kage Houshi swallowed. “The most powerful madougu, like Fuujin, can overwhelm the minds of their users. Without special training in the Hokage techniques… that’s strange.”
“What is?”
“Fuujin’s crystal was a clear blue, with the kanji ‘kaze’ carved into it. This crystal is the wrong color, and has no kanji.”
“Could that affect the way the weapon acts?”
Kage Houshi nodded. “I don’t know what it is, and I don’t know what it can do. That makes it very dangerous, especially to the girl who is wearing it. It may drive her beyond her body’s limits… it may even suck the air from the center of that whirlwind!”
Okon gasped.
“Misao…” Kuro whispered.
Aoshi said nothing. He stood up and began to walk toward the whirlwind, very slowly, his arms at his sides, held out away from his body a little with his fingers spread to show he had no intention of fighting.
“Ara… what is he doing?” Kage Houshi exclaimed. “Without a madougu… or Flame…”
“What do you think he’s doing, stupid woman?” Kuro demanded. “He’s going to get that thing off of her! He’d do it for any of us!”
“He’d do even more for Misao,” Okon murmured, her eyes on Aoshi. Misao’s words had awakened memories she had thought long buried, of sweet, hasty, fumbled kisses in the shadows, of watching Aoshi build a wall of ice around himself, and the little girl who could always get through that wall to make him smile…
Misao let the whirlwind drop. She watched Aoshi approach her. What am I doing? she wondered. I don’t want to… I can’t hurt Aoshi-sama. What’s happening to me?
But it was like a song in her head, driving out everything else. Prove yourself the strongest, the crystal sang to her. Make them take you seriously. Make them recognize you as Okashira. Fight them! Fight them! FIGHT THEM! It felt good to make the wind blow, so very good… it made her feel like she was flying, the way she felt when she touched herself there and thought about Aoshi-sama… this was even better…
Aoshi saw sanity flicker momentarily in Misao’s eyes. Then they went blank again and the wind picked up. He felt little stings on his face and hands; she was toying with him, inflicting weasel-slashes. He kept walking toward her at the same steady pace.
Again the whirlwind rose around her like a solid wall of air, even stronger than before. Somehow I have to get through it. He watched the wind pick up leaves and pebbles, tried to follow one with his eyes but couldn’t. Misao stood in the center of the column of wind, her clothing not moving. The air is still at the center. But how to reach that still air? Jump over the wind-wall? His eyes followed the column up, up… he couldn’t do the kind of aerobatics that Himura was capable of, and even if he did manage it he’d be helpless in the air. He’d be cut to ribbons before he reached her.
There has to be a way to get through it… if I can control my movement… that’s it! He began to move, faster and faster, circling the whirlwind in a tightening spiral.
“Masaka!” Kuro leaned forward in open-mouthed amazement. “What in hell’s he trying to do?”
Aoshi moved as though the whirlwind was a human opponent, was Himura, was Shishio. “Baka!” Kage Houshi murmured behind her hand. “Two kodachi, against Fuujin’s power?”
“Kaiten Kenbu,” Okon breathed.
Aoshi was in the whirlwind now, was part of it. The bits of debris in the vortex slashed at his skin and clothing but he was beyond feeling anything, caught up in the Kaiten Kenbu. The speed and power of its deadly dance was his only hope for getting through the wall of wind surrounding Misao. Its force tried to push him out, but he moved with the wind, ever faster, ever pressing inward. The air felt like he was trying to get through a solid wall, he couldn’t let himself think about that, there was no wall, was no wind, nothing existed but the spiraling dance and Misao, Misao standing in the still heart of the whirlwind, blank-eyed and oblivious to him, her face turned skyward in unholy ecstasy. Emotion flickered through him, fleeting and barely noticed, a stab of jealousy that the passion in her expression was not for him. It tinted his concentration, lent the speed and power of desperation to his attack. He had to get through, he had to reach her, he had to…
I’ve never seen him move like that, Okon thought. Because it’s Misao…
He’s so fast! Kage Houshi marveled. No one can move like that without a madougu! I think he could even surpass the speed of Hyoumon Ken! How can the Oniwabanshuu do it?
And then he was through! The force he had been exerting against the wind’s resistance suddenly had nowhere to go; he fell forward into the eye, his momentum carrying him into a collision with the entranced, oblivious Misao. Before she could react, he rolled, pinned her under him, and wrenched the evil-looking ornament from her arm.
The whirlwind slowed, dropped, died. Awareness flickered in Misao’s blank eyes, puzzlement, regret. “Aoshi… sama?” she whispered. Then her eyes rolled up, showing mere slits of white before they closed, and she went limp.
With his last strength, he flung the strange bracelet from him, as far as she could. Then he collapsed on top of Misao. His whole body felt as limp as boiled noodles.
“Misao-chan!”“Aoshi-sama!” Okon and Kuro ran toward Aoshi.
Aoshi sat up slowly, cradling the braided girl’s inert body in his arms. He tore his eyes from her face and sought out Kage Houshi. “Misao will… be all right now… won’t she?” It came out as a choked whisper; he barely had enough control left to speak at all. He was too drained to care how it sounded.
He loves her… it hurt, watching that love. It always hurt when she saw couples together, happy families, the special glow in a man’s eyes when he looked at the woman he cared for, the tenderness in a mother’s face when she looked at her child. It was a pain she had lived with every day of the three hundred years since Ohka-dono died, every day of the three hundred years since she took on the crushing burden of immortality by sending her little Recca into an unknown future.
She picked up the discarded Fuujin and examined its crystal. I never knew a madougu could accept other crystals… “She should be.”
“Aoshi-sama… what about the weapon?” Okon asked.
“I’ll take that,” Kage Houshi replied.
“But our mission…”
“As long as the madougu are in the world, there will be people who try to use their power for political ends. The Hokage chose to give their lives to keep that power out of the hands of ambitious men. I will not allow their sacrifice to be in vain.”
“But Saitou-san…”
“Let it go, Okon,” Aoshi ordered. “She’s right. It’s too dangerous. We’ll tell Saitou it was a false report.”
“Thank you, Shinomori-san.” Kage Houshi stepped into a patch of shadow… and vanished.
Kuro blinked. “Huh? Hey, where’d she go?”
“Back to wherever she came from. Let’s go back to the Aoiya. It looks like we didn’t find anything here.”
So safe…
She was held, rocked, sheltered in steel and sandalwood, protected even from herself, the wind’s song silenced, no wind could reach her in this safe, sheltered place…
Wind…?
She remembered wind. She remembered putting the strange ornament on and finding out she could make the wind blow. After that things got fuzzy… but she remembered Aoshi-sama trying to stop her, Aoshi-sama pleading, Aoshi-sama…
I tried to hurt Aoshi-sama?!
She opened her eyes. Aoshi-sama’s profile was impassive as always, except that a streak of blood ran down his cheek and a purpling bruise was swelling over his eye.
Did I do that?
“Aoshi-sama?”
No response. She didn’t really expect one.
“I’m sorry.” Not that an apology would mend anything…
Aoshi still didn’t say anything. He didn’t look at her. He stood up, holding her close.
“Really, Aoshi-sama, I’m all right, I can walk.”
His expression hardened; his arms tightened around her, fierce and tender, and unbreakable as steel bands.
She let her head rest against his shoulder. Well… maybe not…
NOTES, EXPLANATIONS ETC.
This isn’t really part of the Shadow and Sun continuity. It started out with somebody, somewhere, pointing out similarities between two brash, untraditionally tough, kunai-throwing girls – Fuuko Kirisawa and Misao Makimachi. Then there’s that wind attack called a weasel slash (I finally tracked down the explanation for that)… and well, Misao just seemed a natural for the Fuujin.
In the FoR manga it's stated that Fuujin’s hypnotic effect is due to the substitute crystal. I’ve taken the liberty of having an unknown person supply the crystal (rather than Kage Houshi), and I’ve also made up the color of Fuujin’s true crystal, since it’s only seen in manga.
Hyoumon Ken (Ice Crest Sword) originated as a Hokage sword style, used with the water madougu Ensui.
Shishiodoshi = “deer-scare.” Water flows into one end of a bamboo tube. The tube tips, knocks against a stone and makes a noise. The water dumps out, the tube rights itself, and the process repeats. A fairly common garden ornament, even in places without deer to scare off. An engawa is the narrow veranda that runs around the garden side of a Japanese house; shoji are the paper-paneled sliding doors that open onto it, and amado are wooden sliding panels that close off the engawa and protect the shoji in bad weather.
Was Kousaku Mori an ancestor of Kouran? Could be… I was thinking along the lines of there being more to Kouran’s longevity obsession than simple greed, like maybe the men in his family tend to die fairly young.