Back to Bite

As they came before the man on the throne they both bowed, and Jian presented her as the 'honorable Lady of the Island, Mitsurigou Kintsuke.' She liked the sound of that. The man seemed to consider her for a moment before speaking, his voice deep and rough, more in his chest than his throat.

"I welcome you to my fortress, Lady of the Island. My servant informs me that you were extended an official invitation, and it must be so, else you would not have made it beyond the braziers outside. Tell me who invited you."

"She said her name was Shoucheng, your lordship."

"Is that so?"

He didn't sound convinced.

Kintsuke nodded, giving him a quick description of the woman that had invaded her home and slaughtered her friends, and it seemed to convince him. He ran his claws along his tapered length of beard for a moment before rising from his throne to inspect her circling slowly. He tilted his head this way and that, and as he did his bangs shifted, revealing a series of waving lines in a sunburst arc along his brow. She took the chance to get a better look at them as he tilted her face up with a clawed finger for a moment, grunted, and returned to his throne.

Her mother's words echoed in the back of her mind. Could it be…?

"Rejoice, Jian, for this is not Daiyufan. You may live another week yet."

Kintsuke thought Jian would melt with relief.

"You have her eyes; I will give you that, but those ears, half-breed, I suspect they're your father's?"

There was a subdued snarl in his tone.

"The man I met who claimed to be my father had the same ears as mine if that's what you mean."

"And what of your mother?"

Slowly, she drew the pendant out from under her hanfu.

"This is all that's left. She insisted I keep it."

He narrowed his eyes at her and the pendant, and she could feel his internal conflict through the fluctuations of his waves of jyaki. A wicked smirk twisted at the corner of his lips.

"Jian, fetch tea and a putuan, and delay any other business. My grand-daughter and I will be engaged for some time."

***

The man was quiet for a while once they finished their colloquy, letting Kintsuke take her time putting everything in place herself. Daiyufan had been her mother's birth name, which she left behind when she fled the continent with her father. She could not blame Daiyufan for leaving after having been hidden away for years as the family shame; not because of her gender or tainted blood, but because she had not inherited the family skill. Her father, apparently, had been of no notable birth or ability, hence this man's distaste for him.

Kintsuke's grandfather had both been pleased and infuriated to see his daughter go. She had gone behind his back, run off with some peasant, yes; but without a child in the nest, he was able to conceive another. It seemed that affliction was a family trait. When Kintsuke asked why he hadn't simply been rid of Daiyufan, he became quite incensed. "Those filthy mortals may drown their daughters for their nefarious reasons, but this family does no such thing." Kintsuke kept how Daiyufan had done that very thing in her own way to herself.

"I did not mean to insinuate such an act, honorable one. My apologies, I meant no insult."

He simply grunted.

"Might I inquire about your current heir, if they inherited the flame?"

She couldn't quite place the glint in his eyes.

"Yes, she did, though my Shoucheng's fire was…lacking."

Kintsuke blinked as she realized what she had done. She felt no guilt about it, though, and it seemed her grandfather did not want her to, for he was not admonishing her.

"My condolences for your loss, honorable one, though I have to wonder why she would travel to the island in the first place."

"Shoucheng knew she was weak and sought to remedy that. Perhaps she believed her sister would hold some secret to strengthening herself and her flame."

She considered the bone pendant again, and realized. "She thought I was Daiyufan."

"Most likely; Shoucheng was not aware of her sister's disability."

He cocked his head, as though to follow Kintsuke's racing train of thought.

"She implied that my death, rather Daiyufan's death, was your will. Perhaps she misinterpreted something somewhere along the way?"

He narrowed his eyes at her.

"Yes, she must have," he said pointedly.

Kintsuke nodded, accepting the answer, though she wasn't convinced. A silence fell between them for a short time. Jian, ever silent, refilled her cup of tea.

"I wonder if, perhaps, it was Daiyufan's desire from the beginning to have me come here of my own accord one day, and that is why she left me with the scrap of paper baring this design; as a lead."

She indicated the pendant still in her hand.

"Perhaps, though I don't see how she would have had the care or foresight to arrange such a meeting. She was not a terribly bright female, though apparently neither was Shoucheng."

He sounded bored.

Kintsuke took a moment to consider all she had heard, smelling opportunity skirting around her ankles again. Inside, she smiled. Did she dare?

Why, yes; yes, she did.

"I think, maybe, it was because of these."

She lifted her hand, letting her youki coil into her palm and ignite in harmless black and purple.

"Knowing what they are capable of, she may have done the only thing she thought would be of any help."

She more than had his attention again. His eyes focused on those flames, a mad sort of expression spreading across his face.

"You have them…" he breathed.

Kintsuke met his gaze.

"I can only make these and the green ones that devour whatever they touch, but I saw many other hues in the large braziers outside. This fire can do other things, can't it? Is that what the prism is that Shoucheng wanted so badly; the ability to see and control more than one kind?"

His grin twisted and he sat back with a chuckle.

"Astute, aren't we? You would be correct, though it takes years of dedicated practice to master more than two or three of the hues. If you can produce both the green and the purple, then you must be able to see the prism."

He stroked his beard again.

"It merely slept inside Daiyufan, then, and passed on to you. Perhaps… Yes, indeed, perhaps she sent you here in her own way; to replace what she took from me when she left."

"What was it she took?"

He narrowed his eyes at her. "The same thing you took from me when you killed Shoucheng, half-breed; my heir."

***

1404, early-Muromachi Period, Autumn, Musashi

Sesshoumaru caught the scent of that damned half-breed again. How it was still alive, he could only speculate, but he seemed to have a little time on his hands today, and so he followed the trail.

It was too easy to keep the spawn from sensing him watched him haul himself up a tree and into the higher branches where fruit still grew. He slowly gathered them into his kimono sleeves, stretching to harvest all he could.

'Be careful, little hanyou,' Sesshoumaru sneered silently, 'that you do not lose your footing as you reach so high.'

This wasn't the first time Sesshoumaru had tormented his 'brother' in such a manner as he flicked his whip of light out to sever the branch the boy balanced on. The sounds of him crashing to the ground, bemoaning his ruined meal pleased this Sesshoumaru up to the point that the boy began to cry. He always cried like this, over the most insignificant things.

His moment of amusement concluded, Sesshoumaru made to depart.

"Just leave me alone already! Why do you keep doing this to me? What did I do?!" the boy sobbed and wailed.

Sesshoumaru paused for only a moment.

'You stole the destiny of this Sesshoumaru, condemning my honorable father to such a pitiful death. You were born, half-breed; that is what you have done.'

He took to the sky to escape the piercing sound.

He wondered, though; had the mongrel finally learned to use its nose? To memorize and attribute scents? On one hand, Sesshoumaru wasn't surprised it had taken this long; on the other hand, it infuriated him. Half-breed or no, the blood of his great and honorable father ran through the boy's veins. He should have been further developed by this point, but he was just too simple, too weak. There was far too much human in his nature, quite unlike…

Sesshoumaru blinked.

Unlike…who?

He couldn't remember. He knew the point of comparison existed, but he could not recall what it was. It bothered him greatly; the inexplicable need to remember causing an uncomfortable sensation in his chest. He analyzed it as he continued to wrack his brain for who or what it was he'd tried to compare the boy to.

As he sat quiet and pensive under the waxing moon, Jaken grew restless, and concerned, fretting noisily despite Sesshoumaru's demand for the imp to leave him be. It seemed he was worried about this Sesshoumaru, anxious to ease whatever burden he was carrying. Equally eager to be rid of him, Sesshoumaru sent Jaken on a needless errand to fetch water from the nearby river, which the imp waddled hastily off to do.

Sesshoumaru let the blessed silence envelop him, finding solace in the silvery glow high above him. What was it he was forgetting? There was a memory, faint and blurred, but it was there, buried somewhere under his unwavering focus and iron will. Could one smell a memory? He understood that it was all in his head for the smell was incomplete.

Still, it brought him a strange comfort, this ghostly rich and molten scent…