The chrysanthemum & the katana (Cyrano x DS)

[Bunny]

The leaves had started to fall, a rain of fluttering ruby and gold. Just before winter came was Kiku's favorite time of the year. It was like living in a dream; albeit a chilly dream. The weather was always turning when the leaves left their branches and on some days, Kiku could swear she could taste snow in the air as she breathed in the crisp air. It had been once such a day when they had come. Bandits, thieves... Kiku wasn't sure what they were really. One was very much like the next, were they not?

-- ♡ --​

The space between her shoulders burned softly under the weight of her basket. Filled to the brim with the labor of a hard day's work. The chestnuts rustled together, a dry sound that was familiar to Kiku as the burrs rubbed against one another. As the sun had risen, slowly trailed across the sky and started to sink behind the mountain, it was all she'd heard over the gentle sounds of nature around her. The calls of birds, the bubbling of the nearby stream, the sounds of the denizens of the forest like music to the gentle rhythm of chestnuts falling on top of one another as Kiku picked the chestnuts from the ground and tossed them into her bag. The heavy weight of her locks had been pulled back at the nape of her neck by a bright blue ribbon. The contrast between the deep, dark richness of her hair and the blue of the ribbon was vivid. Much like the contrast between the bright blue of her simple kimono and her hair as the ribbon was tugged free and her hair swayed in a silken rush across her shoulder blades.

Shifting the weight of her basket, she pushed through the tree line. A frown pulled at Kiku's lips. Something was... wrong. There should have still been a thrum of activity, people hurrying about their chores, the din of children playing, the smell of food slowly filling the air. The village was eerily silent. Cautiously she approached, hands clutching her bag as she crossed the dirt road and hedged around the edge of a fence. Chickens plucked happily at the ground and the warm brown of her eyes flickered to the feathered beasts. There was too much seed on the ground. Setting her pack down, Kiku reached for a small knife she had tucked into her obi. The little knife was a pathetic weapon and Kiku knew how silly she'd look with the small, blunted blade. It wouldn't provide her with much in the way of defense, but it was better than nothing, wasn't it?

Each step was careful, her concern and fear mounting. Had something gone wrong? Wouldn't someone have come to get her? Her progress was slow and Kiku couldn't shake the feeling of eyes on her, though as she turned in a slow circle near the middle of the village, she could see no one. "Hello?" Though fear ruled her, the melodic cadence of her voice was unmistakable. Somewhere to her left, a door opened, the sweep of the wooden door against the ground loud in the silence. Turning quickly, her hair a whip as she spun, Kiku found herself looking at a rugged man, dressed in armor. Armor? The man wasn't known to her and his rough appearance was unlike any in her village. Sure, the men of her village were worn by labor, sometimes dirty, but they didn't have an air of violence around them. The man as he approached her, did.

-- ♡ --​

The woeful attempt at defending herself had made the man laugh at her and it had drawn others from home that did not belong to them. In the closet home, she could see the forms of huddled men, women and children and a picture had formed in Kiku's mind. While the events themselves were unclear, these dirty, unkept and quite frankly foul men had taken control of the village with minimal effort. No doubt, there had been some deaths, for while mostly peaceful, they had old samurai and a few soldiers who had come to call their sleepy little village home. So far from the nearest city, in the shadow of the mountain, they had all known about the threat of the Yokai, though they mostly left the village alone, appeased by offerings of food and spirits. Such offerings though would not placate the men who had taken their homes.

They had heard, their leader said, of a beauty within this village. One pleasant of face, body and voice. It had made Kiku's stomach turn for while she wouldn't have considered herself any of those, she knew what others said of her. Her skin was almost golden from hours in the sun, though soft and smooth. The delicate lines of her face were pleasing. High cheekbones, a full, kissable mouth. Eyes of honey brown and hair of sables-in-shadow, rich and dark. Her limbs were carved of perfection and while small, her body curved just so in every place it should. Was it her? They'd questioned Kiku. Hands had pulled at her kimono, her obi, leaving dark stains on the blue cloth. Within moments, despite her pitiful attempt to stop them, she'd been laid bare, nagajuban and hadajuban pulled agape. More laughter had ensued as Kiku had struggled to cover her nakedness, shame and anger coloring her pale cheeks.

​

The torment and shame had not lasted and after what seemed like a lifetime of leering eyes, rough hands, she'd been allowed to pull her kimono together with trembling hands. She'd be going with them and they would leave the village mostly alone, though they would also be taking half their stores for the winter as well. They should be thankful the men had said that it was all that they were taking. There had been a scuffle, as she and their winter stores were loaded onto a cart, her Father unwilling to let her go without a fight. As Kiku had ridden off into the growing dark, she could still see the bright crimson of his blood against his temple and she'd breathed a sigh of relief as he'd stood, growing ever smaller as the cart rocked back and forth along the path.

-- ♡ --​

She hadn't shed a tear, she couldn't. Not for these men and she had been able to offer very little when she'd been plucked from her village other than a soft plea that they not resist. One life was not so much, when she took into account the many souls that resided there. Perhaps it had seemed brave... All Kiku had known was terror, but she'd not allowed the men or her village to know. It was the last gift she could give them, even if they likely all saw through it. Kiku had fallen asleep at some point. The pain and discomfort finally pushed from her mind as sleep claimed her. The rocking of the cart had been almost soothing, if one ignored the way her hands tingled, the rope slightly too tight and the way the roughness of it bit into her soft skin, chaffing her wrists.

Voice could be heard, muffled and far away... Her sleep had been dreamless. Starting awake, she gave a small groan. It took a moment for Kiku to realize that the cart no longer moved. Staring out into the darkness, she couldn't make out anything beyond the dark shape of trees and there was no moon to aid her. A rough hand pulled at her restraints and then yanked her forward. She fell against a sturdy man as she was yanked from the cart, her body pressing against his. A smirk curled on his face and in the darkness Kiku could see the white of his teeth flash. Recoiling, she tried to pull away but the man made a chiding sound, like one might to a naughty child or animal and stepped back, pulling her behind him. Stumbling, she was forced to move quickly to keep up with his longer gait. Where was she? Another.. village? There were no lights that she could see. It was like walking in the blackness of ink and where the man dragging her moved almost gracefully, she was left to stumble over every stone and root.

Ahead, past the boulder of a man, Kiku could see the flickering of torches in the dark. The closer she drew, the brighter the orange gold got. There were other women here and Kiku could tell that they had likely once been beautiful, but the light was no longer there. Their eyes hollow. Would this be her fate? Kiku would soon find out no doubt... Led into a small room she was shoved, violently down onto a dirty pallet. Without a word, the man turned and left and Kiku could hear a lock slide into place.

 

[CyranoDeBergerac]

Kuroto had learned many things in his thirty odd years of life. For example, he had learned that years were like the heads of slain enemies, once you had a certain number of them you simply stopped counting. Another was that fame and infamy were largely the same thing, only pointed in different directions. Fame had found Kuroto of the Waves the moment he had washed up on the shores beneath Mononoke Castle, the only survivor of a nanban shipwreck. A little, black skinned baby boy floating in a basket surrounded by bloated corpses and debris. A gift for the household of Lord Mononoke from the gods of wind and sea. There were few people who looked like him in the islands of Wakoku, all of them slaves at the nanban trade port on Chozei. Instead of returning the babe to ‘his people’, a journey he would doubtless not survive, Lord Mononoke had given him to his wife’s wet nurse Aia and her husband Hiroku, one of his chief retainers. It was Aia who had named the babe ‘Kuroto’ which meant ‘black one’; though it was the way of rumors that had surnamed him ‘of the Waves.’ He has been a son in Hiroku’s family, his difference of appearance ignored by his adopted parents and siblings. Those cruel children who had mocked him kept silent or befriended him as he grew into a young man who proved to be the perfect warrior. Fast, strong, agile, and a foot taller than his average opponent. The legend of the curiosity that was the ‘black samurai’ spread throughout the land. Kuroto had been y’all and strong enough to don his father’s spare armor at fourteen, outgrowing two more sets of armor in his time riding in the company of Lord Mononoke.


At fourteen he had killed his first man, at fifteen he had taken his first head as a trophy. His lord’s foes did not soon forget the man who wielded two swords and fought with the ferocity of a beast. Though his more cruel opponents referred to him as ‘ a beast that attempts to act like a man.’ More such comments followed the Siege of Sekihara, where Kuroto was the only samurai to survive and escape. Now he was ronin, masterless, armor less, horseless. An honorless and shameless vagabond, too cowardly to end his life in the honorable fashion of a warrior.

Frequently drunk, dirty and uncouth, Kuroto wandered from place to place across the islands taking work wherever he could find it. In times such as these there was always work for a man who was skilled with a blade. There were few more skilled with the sword than the dark-skinned wanderer who wore the three blades in his belt. Katana and wakizashi on his left hip in the style of the samurai; tanto on his right hip as a constant taunt to those ‘honorable’ figures who claimed that the small dagger should have slit his belly and emptied his guts years ago. Since Sekihara these blades had tasted the blood of all manner of beasts and men. Yokai, bandits, highwaymen, rebels, wild animals, even once an arrogant warrior monk. If there was money to be made in the shedding of blood, and the price was right, Kuroto would draw steel from sharkskin and glut himself on blood money.

It was coincidence and circumstance that brought him to that lonely village so soon after the bandits had done their damage. He had been taking backroads through the hills and mountains in order to avoid any unpleasant encounters on the main road that weaves through the rice paddies and pastures of the lowlands. He had been making his way towards the Iron Mountains, where miners were protesting their wages and conditions and Iron Mongers were gathering hard cases in order to put the miners back in their place. Both sides would be desperate for a man like Kuroto to touch his steel to the scales. Which meant that both sides would bring their best to the negotiating table in order to find the right price. Word of the lonely village in the hills had come to Kuroto's ears from an unlikely source, one of the daughters of a farmer who plied her trade on her back in the half-hack, half-houses of the villages that grew at the crossorads winding through the hills.

Coincidentally she was on her back while she told him of her home; and also coincidentally her toes were in the air around Kuroto’s ears. It had been the third day he’d spent in the nameless ‘village’ waiting for the rains to pass and the girl had gotten used to his company while they sheltered in her room behind the inn. Once she had gotten over her initial reaction to his appearance and endowment she had taken to her trade as lustily as with any other customer, and it turned out that in her mind said trade included talking her client’s ears off in between sounds of joy and screaming herself hoarse.

“Oh if you think I’m beautiful then you need to see Kiku! Now that was a girl who could break men’s necks! In any other village you’d think I would be the real prize right? Well not in my home, no, all eyes were always on Kiku, ‘oh isn’t she so beautiful’ ‘what a pretty little flower’ ‘she’ll make some man a good wife some day!’ And all that shit. Well, her father never let her leave home like mine did. Probably couldn’t bear the thought of her marrying some brutish samurai or ending up making an honest living like me! Well, she’ll never fuck a man like you! All the boys back home were ugly as dogs; and the whole place smelled of pig shit anyway! Ha!” Out in the rain a pig grunted and Kuroto started to do something that would hopefully keep her from talking for at least a few minutes.

The next morning the rain stopped and Kuroto stepped out of the shack that reeked of sex to stand beneath clear skies. The mud sucked at his sandals, threatening to pull them off, but his kasa protected him from any left over rain falling from the trees overhead. His conical straw hat was in the typical ronin style, flatter on top with round curves so that his eyes were shadowed. For others it might serve as a mild form of disguise, keeping the more distinctive top part of a ronin's face hidden from view at a distance, but there was no disguise that Kuroto could wear that would hide who he was. The hat was the newest piece of his attire. His hakama was old and patched in several places, initially black his kimono had faded to grey and the golden patterns had faded to a color closer to piss-yellow. The Kanji for 'wolf' on his back was barely legible. Unshaved, unwashed, and uncouth. The onlythings that marked him of any importance were the swords at his belt and the color of his skin.

Like most samurai, Kuroto kept his katana and wakizashi on his left hip, though different than others he kept the katana blade facing up and the wakizashi blade facing down. On his right hip he also had his tanto openly displayed. A taunt for those who said that the blade should have emptied his guts by now. The bo staff in his right hand completed his arsenal as he set out on the dirt path that took him from this colletion of shacks up into the mountains in the direction of the village that the girl had mentioned. It would take him two days out of the way from his path to the Iron Mountains, but if this Kiku was as beautiful as the whore said then it would certainly be worth it. Especially if they had similar opinions on straw bedding.

As the second day of his detour was ending he smelled smoke in the air, and was able to make it out flying above the trees in the direction he was heading. Moving with practiced care, he had slipped into the woods and then began to make his way over the deer trails on the fallen leaves. It was slow going, but he arrived at the village before nightfall and was able to walk into the village center while the head men of the village had debated what they should do. One of the older men of the village recognized him by reputation and the usual negotiations had begun. Yes, he was Kuroto of the Waves. No, he was not here to rob anyone. Yes, he could see that misfortune had befallen them. Yes, he was interested in helping. Yes, there would be a fee. Many voices joined in then to convey what had occured, including the deaths of several members of the village who had tried to fight when the bandits had arrived, and informing the ronin of what all had been takne. They were poor vilalgers, and with half of their witner stores taken they did not have much to offer him in return for his aid.

In the end the agreement was fairly simple. Kuroto would take a mule loaded with the armor that the oldest veterans had kept from their campaigning days and offer it and a small purse of silver and bronze coins in ransom for the kidnapped Kiku. The villagers would pack up what remained of their food supplies, everything they could carry, and they would go down to one of the cities in the plains for the winter. When the snows thawed they would return, hopefully with the aid of real samurai. It seemed a solid plan to the ronin, considering no one could give him a proper numbering of the bandits. The agreed upon number was somewhere between fifty and one hundred.

---

There were maybe thirty bandits dancing around the fire in the small camp nestled into the back of the valley. Of the thirty, only one seemed to be in possession of armor. A large, ugly boulder off a man who stamped about the feast like some kind of bandit-king. The buildings in the camp were solidly built, perhaps the remnants of a mining expedition or lumber enterprise before being taken over for this use. That would also explain where these rough men with no regard for their fellow human beings had come from. More had likely flocked in at the word of loot and women. There were always such men crowding in the hills, callous, rough, unwashed and hungry for gold and women.

Kuroto paused for a moment in his musings to sniff at the pit of his arm and decided that perhaps that description hit a little too close to home. For all of his vices and failings, no woman had ever come to his bed unwilling and he had never lifted his hand against a woman who hadn't been a threat.

The bandits had constructed a simple palisade of sharpened timbers around the camp, with a platform above the gate that currently housed two guards armed with bows. The gate was shut and likely barred, presenting the first obstacle for the ronin. However, upon surveying the camp and seeing the women huddled together away from the men like cattle, Kuroto had decided to abandon the plan of a ransom. These men were peasants, not veterans of serious campaigns. Likely bullies who were used to taking whatever they wanted without facing serious resistance. The type of men that he had witnessed armored samurai cut through like wheat in the field. If he had armor and horse he could have ridden down there himself and taken them simply and easily. A man on horseback was a terror to fight, and in armor he was worth five men afoot. At his best Kuroto could likely fight three of these bandits at once without issue, though in an ideal situation he could likely walk away from fighting seven men of their caliber - so long as they were unarmored.

His planning would need to be a cunning one in order to succeed.

As any cunning plan begins, his started by him boldly walking up to the gate of the camp and announcing his presence to the guards above.

"Hullo! I hear you've got some beautiful women in there! I'm here to show them my swordwork!" He called up to the guards, swaying drunkenly from side to side and slurring his words. Over the sounds of the celebration going on deeper in the camp he could barely be heard, and even then the guards were tired and ornery, not wanting to deal with the drunken fool at the moment. In the dark of the night, and with his hat low, they just might not notice the color of his skin. Kuroto didn't give them time to conduct a serious examination however.

The palisade they had constructed and the platforming they were standing on was ten feet high, tall enough that an ordinary Wakokun man could not jump up on his own and would need to stand on the back of another. Kuroto was not an ordinary Wakokun man however, and along with being particularly tall, he was also considerably agile.

While the guards were bending over to see who had dared approach, and likely to shout some manner of derision at him, Kuroto crouched down and bent deep before launching off the ground with all of the force he could muster. His left hand caught the edge of the platform and pulled himself up, cracking the butt of his bo staff into the jaw of the guard on the right - exactly where the jawbone connected with the skull. Jawbone, skull and flesh broke and the guard dropped to the platform never to rise again. Vaulting over the platform's railing, Kuroto landed on the platform on his knees, catching himself on his left hand his nimble fingers deftly slid the bo staff between his fingers and thrust it out to his left. No cry could escape the crushed windpipe of the second guard, and a swift blow to the back of the head sent the man to hell.

Kuroto owned the night, his clothes and skin allowing him to blend into the shadows as good as any ninja. Having left his kasa with the ransom mule he easily slipped one of the quivers and bows over his head and shoulders, reasoning that it might come in handy later, before leaping down to the ground and taking a moment to unbar the gate before slipping along the outskirts of the camp to continue reconnoiteuring.

In his scouting he was able to watch as another large man, still small to his scale, dragged the silhouette of a woman towards a small shack and locked her inside. After leaving the bow and arrows in one strategic location, and the bo staff in another, he crept up on the small shack and the man who was guarding it. Whatever the shack had been used for previously it had not been for keeping prisoners, as it was inoptimally placed in such a location that it could not be watched at all times from multiple positions. This meant that if someone approached it unseen, relatively easy of a task for a trained warrior, then they could draw a short blade such as a wakizashi and slip it across the guard's windpipe. Swiflty and silently freeing his soul from the mortal coil.

A man with a slit windpipe did not die gracefully, and it was a struggle for Kuroto to drag his flailing body to the side of the shack without a limb hitting anything to draw attention. Once the body was deposited face down in the mud Kuroto liberated the key to the shack from the folds of his kimono and opened it himself. Stepping inside, with the moonlight behind him he did not realize what a sinister figure he would cut. Only eyes and teeth visible, his mouth upturned in an off-putting smile, too-white teeth often being compared to that of a beast. His eyes were more bestial though, the blood lust of a warrior glistening in those dark brown orbs. A different kind of lust engorged his member, imperceptible fortunately through the shadows. The woman being held in the shack was without a doubt the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Terrified and certainly without the servants that high ladies and oiran would need in order to maintain their beauty, but even without such aids her beauty shown through.

So stunning was her beauty that Kuroto did not think properly when he shut the door of the shack behind him, and he did not consider just what reaction his first words to her would elicit.

"You are just as beautiful as rumor said." He whispered so that they were not overheard by any of the revellors, likely trying to determine what order they would rape her in. There was certainly a chance that in the dark he might be confused with one of their number, a leader coming to take his first turn while she was fresh- or a maverick bucking in line. Of course, Kuroto had been mistaken for a yokai or foreign demon in less menacing positions as well.