Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ Hearts of Swords ❯ Chapter I - Alone ( Chapter 1 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

* * * R E C A P * * *

"What is your name, little one?"

She sniffled and she peered at him with watery eyes, and uttered, "Tsukino
Usagi."

Looking up at him with wide, innocent eyes, she nodded and grabbed his fingers
in her little hands. He smiled tenderly as he began to walk away from the
village.

Usagi failed to notice the blood that stained his hands.


* * END PROLOGUE * *


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H E A R T S O F S W O R D S

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"That sunshine doesn't touch this place..."

Chapter I - Alone
[Sengoku Period, 1512]


The harvest moon hung in the night sky as she walked down the street. Although
a chilly autumn breeze swept through the area, she did not paid it any heed. It
was as if she was the cold itself. Her hair fluttered behind her as her hakama
swept behind her.

To those who knew her, they knew that she wore the hakama and the gi to hide
her true origins. The scabbard of her katana thrust into her waist band slapped
silently and comfortingly against her leg. The deep purple color of her gi also
aided her by making it seem as if she was shrouded into the shadows itself.

Villagers were hurriedly making their journey home; for it was not safe to be
out during the night. It was underneath the moonlight did the battles rage, and
it was during these nights when the heavens poured down a shower of blood upon
those who met their deliverer.

The soft clatter of her daisho warned those around her that she would easily
rid them of various limbs if they tried to bother her. It served as a warning
to those ignorant enough to attack her. With her clan's crest stitched into the
breast of her gi, she walked down the streets with a gracefulness that was
lacking in a samurai.

Spinning on her heel, she unsheathed her kozuka and held it against the man's
throat. Her exceptionally sensitive hearing had been tracking this man ever
since he had been following her from the bar. His eyes were wide with fright as
the edge of the short blade grazed his skin, drawing a thin line of blood.

"Who are you?" she queried softly.

He shook his head, trying to formulate words in his haze of terror and fear. To
hurry the process along, she pressed the blade into the wound, applying more
pressure. He choked out a gurgling cry as a stream of blood slowly dripped down
his neck.

"Who *ARE* you?" the girl asked.

"I--I wa-was s-sent by-by th-the Mu-Murakami..."

She narrowed her eyes as she removed the knife from his neck. He seemed to
breath in relief, just as she effortlessly slammed the point of the knife into
his jugular and ripped it across his neck. He let out a surprised, but futile
gurgling cry of death as he slumped to the ground, clutching at his ripped
throat. Soon, his blood spilled onto the ground and he was motionless. She did
not spare a glance behind her as she continued on her path.

* * * * *

By the time the moon was veiled by the clouds, she had returned to the camp,
and was greeted by her leader. She bowed formally to him and reported to him
the spy that had followed her. He swore under his breath as he nodded and began
to compose a letter to their clan's leader. It was not unusual for them to
encounter spies that would ruin them.

"Were you followed on your path here?" he asked.

"No, I was not. I disposed of the spy while I was on my way out of town," she
replied.

"I see," he murmured.

He remained silent, and she took this as a cue to leave. The fire crackled with
life and vibrant strength as she sat down by it. There were two other men that
were part of their small group. It was a very odd family, but it was her family
and the only people in her life that she trusted.

"Oi, little one. Did all go well?" a voice interjected.

"Yes Keisuke-san," she replied. "All went well."

"Oi, Tetsuo! She's back! It's all good. We'll strike at dawn," Keisuke chirped
merrily.

The man known as Tetsuo stood up, the ebony tendrils of his hair sweeping
across the width of his shoulders. His eyes, dark and veiled in mystery, were
like pieces of jade ice as he looked at the young girl. He had been pleasantly
surprised when the leader of their group had brought along the girl, but what
terrified him...was her skill. Her lethal skill with the katana surpassed them
all; she was evenly matched in skill with their leader.

When he had watched her in battle, it had chilled him to the bone. Such a child
filled with so much bitterness and anger, burning intensely as she was immersed
into the heat of battle. Her innocence was gone. She was no longer a child, but
a battle-hardened samurai and he knew it. They all did. They too, had once been
children, but lost their childhood to the bloodbath that this war was. What
pained them all was that she could have been someone that could have become
something far beyond a samurai, but had sacrificed it for the life of a blood
stained warrior to bring peace to the land.

Sighing in weariness, he strode off to converse with his leader, leaving the
young man Keisuke to try to persuade the girl to talk to him. The other member
of their group of four was currently busy writing a report to their clan
leader.

"Machisu-san?" he said respectfully.

The man looked towards him, and he could see that the man was hardened. Beyond
repair. His eyes were eyes of the haunted; souls who had seen too much and done
too much to ever become fully human again. Tainted by blood, haunted by the
past and hardened by hatred, this man was their anchor. He was the level-head
during the heat of the moment, and his silent protége would follow him into the
battle and emerge from it, bathed in blood and eyes burning like the sun. The
pair of them were fierce and indomitable.

"Tetsuo is right. We will strike at dawn," he replied.

He bowed. "Yes sir."

* * * * *

Four dark figures stood against the rising sun. Its rays shined hesitantly,
peeking out shyly from behind the mountains. As the heavens and the earth
watched, the small band of desperate warriors ran towards their target, their
intent clear.

They were a sight to see: amidst the tall, domineering figures, a slim figure
stood, golden bangs gently caressing the person's forehead. The deep violet gi
and the grey hakama against the bright light of the sun contrasted sharply, and
made all of them appear like warriors from the depths of Hell itself.

Without warning, the four figures took off towards the village, running at a
pace that almost seemed inhuman. The smallest figure darted ahead of the pack,
and just as they reached the town's limits, a thin ray of blinding white was
seen before a man fell dead, a spray of red erupting from the clean, deadly
blow that was delivered.

Not stopping in the onslaught, the figure continued in their bloody path, the
katana slicing easily through flesh and bone. The mysterious figure's long hair
fluttered in the breeze as they leaped into the air and executed a perfect
roundhouse kick to the enemy's head. A loud snapping noise echoed through the
lonely morning.

The silhouette of the figure against the rising sun ducked and weaved through
the ranks of the enemy, kicking, slicing and stabbing their way through the
waves of the Murakami clan. The prowess displayed in the mastery of unarmed
combat and of the sword was unmatched in the enemy as they fell prey to the
deadly blade of the four.

A wrenching scream pierced the stillness of the morning as more blood splashed
onto the street, metal singing to metal as the conflict mounted. Battlegrounds
were always littered with bodies and blood, permeated with the smell of death,
blood and flesh. However, this morning's battlegrounds were not open plains or
the forests they usually fought in. It was the streets of a village that had
been oppressed by the Murakami clan. As the protectors of their Lord's land, it
was their duty to eradicate the threat from their homeland.

The battle began to draw to a close. All four of them were bathed in blood and
grime, but there was one man left standing. In the middle of the street, the
slight figure of the golden-haired warrior was illuminated by the sun, which
had fully risen into the sky during the battle. Indigo blue eyes, burning with
resentment and hatred bored into the anonymous enemy.

Eerie silence descended upon them as the blue-eyed samurai held the katana in
an unusual fashion: the tip of the blade was aimed towards the enemy, with one
hand holding the hilt by her temple and the other hand resting on the ji. Eyes
locked and within the blink of an eye, both warriors were running at each other
with grim determination etched into their features.

Holding the blade vertically behind their backs, they rushed at each other and
the man from the Murakami clan swung out in a wide, sweeping arch in front of
him, only to find that his opponent had leaped into the air. Twisting around in
mid-air, he heard the slap of slipper-clad feet in the ground behind him. He
spun around to meet the deadly blade and metal clashed against metal. The two
of them danced their deadly dance, twisting and turning, jumping and sweeping
to and fro. It was a hypnotic, entrancing sight to see.

The blue-eyed warrior's featured turned dark as the enemy's blade came, and to
finish the dance, ducked underneath the swing of the blade and lunged. The
green clad enemy had no time to react as the razor-sharp edge of the blade
sliced deep, splattering crimson red onto the streets and on the victorious
warrior. Darkness descended and he knew no more. The golden-haired samurai had
defeated him.

Tetsuo and Keisuke watched in stoic silence as their young companion performed
chiburi, bowed to the fallen opponent and replace the katana into its scabbard.
Sun-bleached golden hair was stained with the dark crimson of blood and just as
Keisuke was about to offer words of congratulations when indigo blue eyes
dulled and she slumped forward. He quickly caught her, and noticed the large
wound running cleanly from her right shoulder to the left part of her lower
back. Tetsuo saw this and hurriedly took off his gi and using it as a makeshift
bandage, ripped strips and wrapped it around the wound.

"How deep is it?" came the deep baritone of their leader, Machisu.

"It'll leave a pretty visible scar," came Tetsuo's gruff response. "It's deep,
but she'll pull through."

"How visible?" asked Machisu.

"Very visible," replied Keisuke, grimacing. "Like the one you have. It might
not be so bad if we get her to a doctor."

Machisu rubbed the scar over his left eye, the raised, scarred skin that was
the only proof of his profession. Usually, other scars he had received would
have healed over time, fading to a pale reminder of his battles, but the one he
had received on his eye remained an angry red welt and the rough, upraised skin
was the only reminder of the lack of vision in his left eye.

Sighing in resignation, he said, "We'll take her to the nearest doctor."

Gingerly, Keisuke pulled the unconscious bundle into his arms and they ran into
the town in search of a doctor.

'I hadn't realized that she knew the 'soe te' technique...' he mused.

"Machisu-san?"

"Yes?" he answered.

Keisuke, 29 years of age, stood before him, holding the girl in his arms. "I
want to know...what is her name?"

Closing his eyes, his mind went back to that horrid day. The day where he had
lost everything, and gained this girl. "Tsukino. Tsukino Usagi. She was a child
when I found her orphaned in the wake of the destruction of my home."

The man's eyes widened considerably. He hadn't thought that Usagi was a child,
and had always believed that she was somewhere in her twenties. Her demeanour,
grace and expressive eyes had made her seem older than her years. Now he
realized just how much of a child she was. His heart clenched in sorrow and
anger. Now he realized why her eyes burned passionately with hatred during a
battle. She was fighting to avenge the death of her parents and to avenge the
innocent that died needlessly in conflict.

"She fights for a better future, and revenge." Machisu murmured. "I have shaped
her so."

* * * * *

The world was blurry and distorted as she slowly opened her eyes, then felt a
searing pain along the length of her back. She choked on her breath at the pain
that coiled and throbbed, but then felt a cool hand apply some sort of an
ointment that reduced the pain.

"Are you all right?" a gruff voice said quietly.

"I'll be okay," she replied. "What happened?"

"Your last opponent scored a nasty path on your back. It'll scar."

"Will it scar like your eye?" she asked.

"Yes."

Silence descended upon the two. He ran his calloused hand through her golden
tresses in a fatherly gesture. She smiled quietly and closed her eyes. "I had
no idea that you knew the 'soe te' technique."

"I remembered watching you do it," she replied softly, her voice hoarse. "It
looked...graceful."

He shook his head, the unkempt ebony locks falling into his eyes. He watched
her still form with rueful eyes as he remembered the past. "You...can stop
being a samurai."

"That would mean giving up. I don't give up," she responded. "Besides, I am too
much of a samurai to truly mesh with the citizens. What will I do?"

"You can become a geisha," Machisu suggested.

Her mirth was apparent in her voice as she responded, "I don't think I'd like
that kind of a profession."

The two continued to banter softly and soon, she was lulled to sleep by the
sound of his voice and he gazed at her sleeping figure. She appeared innocent
and guileless in her sleep, but both of them knew that she was not as guilt
free as she appeared to be. He crept out of the room silently, but not without
glancing at his "daughter". In one hand, she clutched the scabbard that held
her katana, and the other hand was currently her make-shift pillow as she slept
peacefully.

Smiling fondly, he joined his other two companions as they too were treated for
their wounds. The people were grateful for eliminating the Murakami men, and as
soon as their wounds were treated, they would help the villagers in cleaning up
the mess they had created. As much as they were the enemy, leaving dead bodies
on the streets was disrespectful to the spirits of these warriors, and because
they were fellow warriors, they would give them a proper burial.

"I didn't know...didn't know that she could be so..." Keisuke murmured.

"Dangerous?" Tetsuo supplied.

The younger man shrugged. "I guess so. What I mean is that I always believed
that she was at least twenty-one or twenty, but...she's only a *child*. She
shouldn't be a samurai."

"She has nothing left. No parents, no siblings, and this is the only life she
knows. What else can she be *but* a samurai?" Tetsuo replied. "She was orphaned
before she was ten years old and has been following the bushido ever since she
was found by Machisu-san. All she knows is the life she has led so far."

Keisuke contemplated quietly as the words of his companion sunk in. It was true
that she was only a child, and because her life was nothing *but* the sword, it
was all she knew. Her prowess with the katana was almost -- if not level -- of
a master samurai. It was truly a frightening sight to see a *child*, and a girl
at that, to be so adept with the weapon of a man.

It was at that moment Machisu chose to announce his presence. "She has a long
list of people to kill before she can let her katana rest."

Both of them looked up, startled to see their leader standing there. "Her
family was destroyed by the Red Tigers of the Fukushima clan. She had to watch
as her parents died right in front of her very own eyes. The Fukushima's are
her enemy. As long as they are alive, she will continue in her path to kill
them."

"You make it sound so...honorable," her soft voice interjected.

They all turned around to find the aforesaid female standing there, her top
unclothed and wearing only the black obi and her grey hakama. Her hakama was
modified to suit her tastes; the skirt was slimmer and narrow, unlike the wide
ones of the regular hakama, so that it wouldn't distract her when she executed
some of the spinning moves. A strip of cloth was tied around her breasts and
the wide strip of a cloth bandage was wound tightly around her abdomen.

"Usagi, where is your gi?" Machisu demanded.

She laughed quietly. "It is not as if they haven't seen my body. My gi has been
damaged. I don't have one."

Machisu removed his gi and handed it to the young girl. "Wear mine. I'll get a
new one for you."

When everything was sorted out, a gi-less Machisu and the others joined the
villagers in cleaning the mess that they had left in the wake of their attack.
It was a tedious process that they had been through countless times, and it
was always methodical, clinical almost.

Thoughts drifted in her mind and she knew that she should have felt some sort
of sorrow...remorse at committing mass murder. But she didn't. She felt nothing
but emptiness. Perhaps not even that. In her eyes, she could still see the
charred corpse of her family, and in her ears the agonized screams of her
mother echoed and reverberated mercilessly. It became louder and louder, until
she couldn't take it. She slammed her hands over her ears in an attempt to
block the pained screams but it was futile. She slumped to her knees, tears she
had never shown sliding down her cheeks.

"No! No! Mommy no!" she sobbed.

A hand was on her shoulder in an instant and she knew that hand. The same hand
that she had taken when she had realized that she was alone in the world. The
hand that had taught her everything, raised her and saved her.

Machisu.

"Make them stop..." she whispered. "Make them stop...she's dying..."

He watched with soulful eyes as he pulled her into a warm, paternal embrace. No
matter how dangerous she was with a katana, she was still a child. A child that
he had raised to become the warrior she was now.

Villagers watched, and Keisuke watched as he witnessed a tender moment between
father and child. He smiled with melancholic mirth as he continued on with his
task.

* * * * *

Metal clashed with metal and screams rose around them as they tried to hold the
enemy away from the village. Just as they had finished cleaning up the dead, a
process that had taken three days, another skirmish had rampaged into the scene
and it was up to the four to defend the town.

Four against thirty-six men were not very good odds.

These were vengeful men they faced; having lost their comrades to a group of
vigilante samurai. So they fought. They slashed and stabbed, swung and axed;
danced the dance of death.

"Run! We have no choice now! Run!"

Her eyes narrowed as she gutted her enemy, refusing to acknowledge her defeat.
She would not run until these men were killed. Her blade glistened in the
afternoon sun as it swung again and again like the scythe of death, stealing
away the dead souls.

Lost in her world, hazy with pain and blood, she only saw the enemy: formless
shadows that leered at her with crimson red eyes, featureless creatures that
hunched over her parents, devouring them before her very eyes...

A piercing scream of wild terror and an unfathomable amount of pain shattered
the organized chaos of the battlefield as the last opponent fell to his defeat
before her, the red red blood splashing onto her lightly tanned skin.

Breaths heaving, she scanned the battlefield...

to find herself alone.



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Author's Notes:

I think this is the only fanfiction I've written to date, that has a chapter
this long. I have never tried anything like this before, and I probably never
will again. Many of my fanfics moved very fast and were over before it began,
and that is my flaw. I'm trying to correct that as I'm going along, and
hopefully, I will spare this fanfiction from my big huge writing flaw.

As for the historical information, I'm still trying to be as accurate as I can
possibly make it. The time period is just about right, and this is before the
time that Rurouni Kenshin (aka Samurai X) is based upon. At least, I think so.
Heh. ^^ The information such as the prefecture names and clans, are all real.

I have been researching into lesbianism in Feudal Japan, but I'm coming up
empty right now. So, if anyone has any information, PLEASE PLEASE *PLEASE* send
me an e-mail or an ICQ message. I'll be ever so grateful. :)

[E-mail: sherazard_@hotmail.com]
[Website: http://ashura.br0ken.org (HIATUS)]
[Weblog: http://ashura.blogspot.com]

1st draft: Completed. (06.17.2002)

TRANSLATION:

daisho - A matching set of short and long sword. The 'daito' is the long sword,
and the short sword or knife is called a 'shoto'.
buishido - The way of the swordsman. It is a code of a warrior that all samurai
follow.
kozuka - A utility knife that is held in a special section of the saya. Kozuka
is only the handle, but it is called a 'kozuka' nonetheless.
saya - The scabbard that holds the katana.
hakama - Pants that is like a skirt, only it is split into two sections for the
legs.
gi - The top that men wear with their hakama. The bottom is usually tucked into
the hakama and tied tightly by the obi.
obi - A belt.
chiburi - A technique which is a part of a kendo 'kata'. It is the process of
shaking the blood off of the blade.
soe te - A sword wielding technique. It means 'assisted hand'. One hand holds
the hilt while the other hand is placed on the flat edge of the blade.
kata - A series of techniques performed as warm-ups or for practice.

Resources:

http://home.austin.rr.com/scajapan/H ISTORY.HTM
http://victorian.fortunecity.com/duchamp/410/shogun.html
http://home.earthlink.net/~steinrl/glossary.htm