92. Blood Over Water

“With your brother’s best wishes, Suo Fu!”

Everything that could possibly happen took place over those next few seconds. The flow of time lapsed to such an extent that each individual twinkle of light from the chandelier decided to take its sweet time to glint across the room, to prance around the opulence and the mirrors. The individual rays bounced off the pristine metal of the handgun, and at long last illuminated Shibaru Harigane’s mortified expression. The old woman’s eyes receded under the shadow of her brow, cheek vacuum-sealed to the brittle skeleton underneath. Her mouth was ajar only an inch.

Recognition, only far too late.

Suŏ Tian-Kuo, face contorted in glee, let his index finger twitch on the trigger. Inside the handgun, the spring-loaded hammer clicked off its latch and began to cross that finite distance.

Fabric tore itself to shreds from the opposite side of the table. Kinuka Amibari had stood on instinct and acted. Her face had paled beyond any extreme, eyes sharpened into pinpricks. She whipped her arm forward. Threads from her sleeve lashed tight around the assassin’s wrist, and she yanked the arm away.

The crack of gunshot ricocheted off the walls. The bullet tore a clean hole through the centre of the table, splinters flying.

Ruri Karakusa threw themselves in front of Granny, shunting the table away and locking themselves in place—eliminating the chance of any follow-through.

Juusei Kanon quickdrew her own gun, psychic energy sparking through her outstretched finger, and fired a shot that gouged an inch of flesh off the shoulder of Tian-Kuo’s restrained firing arm. He grunted and recoiled, clutching at it with his other hand.

Lastly, Rinkaku Harigane burst from his seat and drove a crackling uppercut into the young man’s jaw, launching him a foot into the air.

Time only resumed when Tian-Kuo landed roughly on both feet. With supernatural grace, he only allowed himself a single stumble, and recovered his posture almost too quickly. The platter of glasses he had thrown as a distraction were a nice encore. The shattering glass and clang of metal accompanied the shocked silence that now deafened the Fickle Flower Field. Rin and the gang had mobilised in front of and around Granny, and glared with a single hatred. From the gambling floors, all eyes were on top table and the suited assassin who threatened their Queen.

“Damn you!” Tian-Kuo swore in Mandarin and clutched at his jaw. Yanking his restrained hand closer, he freed his wrist with the silver flash of a hidden blade, and retrained his pistol on his target. “The stories remain true, even now.” He coughed out a brackish laugh. “Grandfather did say you always had a posse at your beck and call.”

Granny clutched at her heart, chest heaving. Ruri took it on themselves to support the her by the shoulder, standing half in-front, an invincible shield. Juusei matched Tian-Kuo’s threat with her own, the barrel of her finger trained right between his eyes.

Rin clicked his fingers. “Hey, asshole! I’m not sure what backwards-ass culture you hail from, but in most civilised countries there’s a law of common decency called ‘Respect Your Fucking Elders’,” the shout was punctuated with a heavy stomp on the floor. “A lot of them don’t deserve any, mind you, but that’s besides the point! I’m all for pushing the boat when needed, believe me, but rocking up uninvited and pointing a gun at an old woman doesn’t seem very fucking respectful to me!”

Tian-Kuo ogled the loud, frothing teenager as though he were made of cheese.

Rin took his silence as an invitation to continue. “Now you’ve gone and pulled this stunt, just a regular old apology won’t cut it. You now have two options.” He raised both fists, backs facing away— “Option number one,” he said, unfolding the middle finger on one hand, “you slide that gun over this way, get down on your knees—I’m talking proper prostration, no half-arsing it—and get to apologising. Lick the floor clean on your way out, while you’re at it. As for option number two—” He unfurled the middle finger on his other hand and bared his full set of teeth with a wicked gleam— “Juusei over there is going to show everyone in this parlour what the brain of a fucking idiot looks like, atomised over fifty-five squared feet of lacquered flooring!”

“Rinkaku, dear—” attempted Granny—

“Shut up, old hag!” Rin gestured angrily at her without turning around. “I haven’t even gotten started on you yet! Wait your turn!”

Tian-Kuo didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow. “So. You’re him.” His tongue flashed like a snake’s over his upper lip, and his flat, owlish face contorted into a grin. “Dearest cousin. We meet at last, Suǒ Língé.”

“That’s not my name and you know it.” It didn’t take long for Rin to figure out why he could suddenly understand Chinese. If placed on a list of ‘Most impressive things Rinkaku Harigane has done over the past day,’ it would rank thirty-three—and Rin wasn’t even proud of that fact. He was just amazing at everything, clearly, and continued to astound everyone around him, himself included.

“Whoever you say you are is irrelevant; I couldn’t care any less.” Tian-Kuo opened his arms wide, and spun his pistol around his finger. “It seems your dear grandmother has kept far too many secrets from you all the while. Her blood, Suǒ Blood, runs thick and fast in your veins. I can hear it roar with every foreign word from your lips. I recognised you the moment I saw that gleam in your eye, Língé, for it is the same as mine. Furthermore—”

Rin unearthed a heavy groan, dragging both hands down his face in exasperation, exposing the whites of his eyes. “Oh my god, do you ever shut up?” He turned back to the rest of the gang and pointed with his thumb. “I hate this guy already. Juusei, kill him.”

The girl whooped and cocked her finger gun. Granny abruptly stood out in front. “Hold fire.”

“Aww, what gives?!” Whined Juusei, the spark dying on her fingertips. Her gun arm visibly wilted like a clown’s flower.

The old woman stood on shaky legs, but faced her fate nonetheless. “I will not allow any of you children to stain your hands with the blood of my past.”

Rin had long since had it with these crypticisms, and just started flailing his arms around out of frustration. “What?! What are you talking about?”

“Calm down.” Kinuka lassoed the boy by the throat and yanked him back towards her before he threw himself into any more of a fit. He sighed, and didn’t even protest when Kinuka’s shaking hand found solace holding his shoulder.

“Your cousin speaks truth.” Granny pointed to her forehead. “Listen to the thrum of his psychic energy, Rinkaku. You will feel the resemblance of his signature to mine, to your father’s, to your own. A woman is defined by the secrets she keeps. For your sake, for the sake of our family, I have kept a great many. None of you were to know this; none of you deserve to know this. It is my cross to bear; my stake at which to burn. You children have your own lives in which to make your own mistakes. Never should you have to suffer for the sins of your elders. I have spent my life running from a past that has never once relinquished me.” She chuckled, mirthless. Tears began to bead the crinkles in her eyes. “Perhaps this is my error; perhaps my life of atonement was spent in folly after all. You, boy,” she pointed ahead, “You must my brother’s— You must be Láozàn’s—”

“Don’t you dare say his name!” He snapped, flaring with psychic energy. “You, who betrayed your family; you, who defiled your birthright; you, who took everything you were given, and cast it all aside, and for what? This empire you have built is hollow! You have no right to ever refer to my grandfather with that sinful mouth! I came to this place to put an end to you!” He reloaded his pistol and trained it on the mournful face of his great-aunt. “I, Suǒ Tian-Kuo, will reclaim my grandfather’s honour over your corpse!”

“Just you try it!” Juusei cackled, fizzing with pent-up psychic energy.

“That’s enough,” Granny barked. “I will not allow you to get hurt on my behalf.” She softly moved Ruri aside, and stepped out in front. “It seems the wound I inflicted on my little brother ran deep enough to fester, a wound time alone couldn’t heal. It is a shame, but he always did have a weak heart.” She seamlessly switched to Chinese in her next sentence, “I only find it a shame you have allowed yourself to be shackled to a conflict that is not your own, Suǒ Tian-Kuo. They failed to have me retrieved, they failed to have me killed; so they wait until the throes of senescence are about to claim me, before conscripting someone so young and yet to lead a life of their own, forever staining their hands with an irreparable sin. Deplorable.” She sighed harshly through her nose. “Know this, boy: I chose my own fate when I left Shanghai some fifty years ago. I intend to see that fate through until the very end. If you intend to kill me, then give it your best shot.”

Tian-Kuo’s face had rapidly begun to morph through several stages of silent, violent protest. All the while, two sets of footsteps—one firm, the other hobbling—were ascending the stairs, accompanied by the rhythmic clack of a walking stick. Just as the assassin opened his mouth, a gnarled hand clapped down on his shoulder, and a wheezy, wistful voice drifted over the assembly, shooting a deathly chill into every bone.

“Now, doesn’t this just brings back memories. Fate indeed.” He chuckled. “So confident, so headstrong. You always did enjoy your grandstanding—didn’t you, Shibaru dear?” At long last, Old Man Consequences hobbled into view. Taking the peaked cap from his head, he ran curled and hairy fingers through salt-and-pepper hair. His leathery face under those mirrored sunglasses broke out into a crooked smile. “I once hoped there would never come a day where I see you walking towards me, but you’ve long since left my side. It makes me a little sad, even now, but this too must be Fate, don’t you think?”

“No…” Granny’s jaw dropped, and every last ounce of colour drained from her face, from her clothes, from everywhere in a metre radius. Her eyes shook, thin tracks of tears carving rivers through the ridges and gorges of age on her cheeks. “Fune…” She gasped, backing away, and knocked her leg against one of the strewn chairs and lost her balance. She toppled, but Rin caught her by the shoulders just in time.

“You—” He glared— “I knew my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me down there. Who the hell are you?”

“Oh, so you’ve entirely forgotten about me, have you Shibaru? How cruel.” The Old Man sniffed, and wiped under one eye with his finger. “You never told your dear grandson anything, did you? I’ve watched over you for so long, and you’ve never once looked back. How sad, but this too must be Fate.”

“Rin—that’s him! That’s the old man!” Kinuka cried, her pointing hand shaking. “Earlier, on the street! That’s the man who broke your leg!”

Juusei saw red, whipped a finger gun over her shoulder took aim at the geezer. Psychic energy surged through her arm. “You’ll pay for that, bastard!”

“You will not,” interjected a surly voice from the far corner of the stage. All eyes in that split instant tracked the resonance across the room to the sudden and looming Rikiya Atsura. Eyes closed, the man’s stubbled scowl seldom lifted. The ornate pins in the black bun behind his head twinkled in the golden chamber light. He stood perpendicular to both parties, the tails of his hakama billowing in the sudden rush of wind. The opposing hand crossed his body and grasped the hilt of his right hand katana, and the flick of a thumb popped the guard from the sheath.

Eight-Span Mirror: Sword Drawing

八咫鏡「抜刀」 Yata no Kagami・Battō

A brilliant flash of steel. Along the arc of the blade, a perfect line of symmetry shielded Tian-Kuo and Old Man Consequences. Juusei’s eyes widened as she saw her own face and her comrades’ reflected ahead of them, clear as day, but it was already too late. With ear-splitting bangs, the barrage of psychic bullets burst from her fingers. Juusei gasped as her own gunfire blasted holes through her shoulder; Kinuka, through her midriff, and Ruri, their legs. All three fell to their knees, wide-eyed and silenced.

“Such recklessness,” Atsura chided. The swordsman spun the katana in a ceremonial gesture and sheathed it. The plan of his Eight-Span Mirror vanished that instant.

Rin looked in horror to see his friends fall one-by-one. He was the only one left standing. Granny’s legs had completely given out. Rin had just about guided her to a chair when the gunshots rung out. Looking at her now, it was strange. The fact had occurred to him, but the sight had never really registered. She had always been so strong—but she really was getting older, wasn’t she?

“Rikiya…” The poor old woman’s face turned grotesque with this second bout of recognition, even paler to the point of translucency. She reached a feeble hand towards the swordsman, and coughed and wept when she clutched her fist on air. “My dear, what happened to you?”

“It has been a long time.” Atsura took his hand from his sword. The man begrudgingly inclined his head, but refused to bow. “You abandoned us. You left us to the fires and to the wolves, to freeze and to rot. I am one of the few still standing. Not many saw it through to the turn of the millennium. Long ago, my sword was once at your service. These blades now bear your name, scorched into the metalwork.”

“Dear Shibaru,” Old Man Consequences shook his head with another chuckle. “You must realise by now. This, again, is Fate.” The man removed his sunglasses, and half a tone of light drained from the entire room. The white voids were eerie spotlights, piercing through the gloom. Granny inhaled sharply, and the man’s voice took on an otherworldly rumble. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

The old woman’s sight was eclipsed by her ray of hope. Since his arrival on her doorstep over a week ago, Rinkaku Harigane’s face had changed. Yes, his hair still remained ruffled in wild cascades; yes, the dark rings remained permanently etched under his eyes; yes, the permanent scowl irritability remained carved into his mouth, but his face now exuded the kind of reassurance that put her palpating heart at ease.

“You stay right there, Granny.” His voice had calmed. He spoke softer than he had ever. He put a hand on her shoulder, and squeezed lightly. “You weren’t wrong, this is your cross to bear—but I’m not losing the only remaining member of my true family here tonight, and so if you think you’re going to throw yourself in harm’s way on some self-aggrandising gesture of symbolic atonement, or some cheesy line like that—” And for the first time, a tears broke their banks down his cheeks. “I’ll never visit your grave. Got that?”

Granny could only murmur his name, before the boy scoured his face with a rough hand, stood out in front, and took steps forward. The Fickle Flower Field golden chandeliers cast him in a glorious glow, a radiant outline that intensified with every step. Rin cast his eyes between the Chinese Assassin, the Old Man, before turning his glare on Atsura.

“You’re JPRO, aren’t you? Hakana’s lot,” he asked.

Atsura nodded.

“Figures. You fuckers would give the Chunichi Dragons a run for their money in never knowing when to quit.” Rin faintly sensing the observer’s signature nearby, no doubt too busy observing to bother showing his face. Whatever strange flight of fancy fascinated the noir-voyeur to spend so much time noticing from a distance instead of ever actually throwing that stupid hat of his into the ring, Rin didn’t have (or want) the slightest clue.

 “Your reputation precedes you, Rinkaku Harigane.”

“Good.” Rin crackled his knuckles. “I’m assuming you didn’t hear about me because of my amazing designs in the latest architectural exhibit in Tokyo, no? Pity.”

He was yapping to save face and give himself time to think. It also helped him practice public speaking, one of his myriad standout enthusiasms (yeah, right.)

Three-on-one.

A giddy grin scrawled across his face, as he weighed up his fleeting odds. With Tegata nowhere to be seen, and the other three incapacitated, he was absolutely fucked. He had seen Atsura’s mirroring technique—or, rather, he hadn’t. That’s just how fast it was. The speed of his sword-draw would give him a one-way express ticket to Being-Cut-In-Half Prefecture before Rin even had the chance to make that joke out loud.

The other two had the additional threat of the unknown.

Suǒ Tian-Kuo—his second-cousin, apparently—just oozed lethality. Every time he locked eyes with that maniac, every hair on his neck, arms and legs stood up with such attention it was like they were trying to pluck themselves from the skin. Was it the look in his eyes? Or just the way he absently twirled that blade around his fingers like a bored student with a ballpoint pen. His third eye made no pretences, and the fact he’d been able to sneak up on the lot of them meant he was no slouch. However, from the way Tian-Kuo eyed Atsura occasionally, something else made itself very apparent: these two were not on the same team. The Suǒ Clan rung a bell: a Triad—if his late-night wikipedia binges had borne any fruit at all—responsible for high-profile political assassinations. No matter their origins, the fact that their scion now sported psychic abilities meant that Gus Ishimatsu had this entire farce held in his unreasonably large palm. Rin wouldn’t allow himself to take his eye off either of them for even a second. The moment he did, they’d slit his jugular, carotid, or both, and leave him to bleed out in a ditch while they polished off Granny.

For his own sake, for her sake, for the sake of whoever else mattered at the time, and for the sake of his dream: he would not let that happen.

And then there was the Old Man.

That chilling smile had already burned itself into his waking nightmares for years to come.

There was no point spending energy thinking about that kind of terrifying enigma. If he tried, he would rapidly reduce himself to a blibbering vegetable, rocking back and forth in a fetal position. With how easily the old man had snapped his leg earlier, Rin actually found his lack of intervention a blessing. Frail stature and the way he croned over his walking stick notwithstanding, the psychic signature he gave off was something so transcendent he could barely parse it. Rin had the sneaking suspicion that if the old man had the will or intent to actually do anything to any of them, they would all be ridiculously, horrendously, super-mega dead by now. He, like Hakana (wherever the hatman was, busy posing menacingly) was just here for the show.

Rin lowered himself into a stance, and began spinning together his frames. All that thought had taken place in the span of a few seconds.

“I’ll take you on,” he declared. “You’re not killing me, you’re not killing my grandmother, you’re not killing my friends, and you’re sure as hell not laying a finger on my Ascension Blade. I suggest you go home. The interior of this place is a gaudy nightmare already. It sure as hell doesn’t need any more splashes of red to clash with all this gold.”

Tian-Kuo’s eye twitched, and the knife flashed by his side. The indicative spark of psychic energy through the nerves gave Rin enough pause to brace himself. He leapt at Rin, brandishing a swift silver death. “That’s a poor choice of last words, Língé!”

But Rin’s posturing had given someone else enough time to regain their footing.

“You will not harm my grandson!”

Shibaru Harigane’s voice warbled with resolve. She stood and interwove both sets of fingers into a complex gesture. A sudden pressure of psychic energy filled the top deck, an audible hum in everyone’s ear, before it flattened out into a wave of tranquillity.

MINDSCAPE

虚廟 KOYASHIRO