"Do you know what I'm saying?"

"What is the grammar structure of this language? I still haven't figured it out... Maybe it's the dialect?"

"Do. You. Understand. What. I. Am. Saying?"

"I... I still have no idea what in the... I... I think that word was "you" but..."

Maru groaned and fell back onto the grass. "This is hopeless!"

"Oh, stop being so dramatic!" Shoda snapped from beside him as she peered out from behind the old wall they had taken shelter behind. "We need to get to Otsuki. He should be able to point us a safe road out of here."

"Otsuki?" The gaijin paused and looked over at her, "I know him!"

Shoda smiled, "Ah ha! I knew that old codger would be involved in keeping this guy!" She scooted closer to him and furrowed her brow before Maru watched her begin making small motions with her hands as she talked, "Do you like him?"

The man nodded and did the same, "I see what we're doing here. Now... I do. He was a... Hm, a friend."

When Maru watched her work, Shoda smiled over at him... Though it was more of a smirk, "I had a friend once who couldn't speak, so in order to figure out what he wanted to say, we made little gestures for certain words. Might even help him pick up our language a bit." She turned back to the man again, "What is your name?"

"Oh! Okay, now that I did understand," the man nodded and then patted his chest lightly, "Avery."

"Avery... Okay," Shoda repeated the gesture, "Shoda." She gestured to Maru, "Maru."

"We need to stop sitting here asking him questions and start finding the old man," Maru peeked over the old wall as the frustration began mounting. Becoming public enemy number one in the span of a few hours wasn't exactly what he had in mind.

Shoda slowly turned to look at him and shook her head in disbelief, "Are you- do you understand that without being able to speak with him that we will be unable to do anything with him? If he can't help out, we'll all be in trouble."

She had a point, Maru knew. He glanced back at Avery, who was watching him with a look on his face that Maru couldn't quite figure out. If they could at least communicate with him, then they stood a chance of at least having a third person to help them out if things got hairy. With Ran gone, having more hands would be better than having none.

"What are you three doing here?" They all looked up to the voice to see Otsuki staring down at them, shaking his head in shock. "You all need to leave! If Kubara finds you, he'll have you drawn and quartered!"

"I'd like to see him try," Shoda replied as she stood up and looked around. "Otsuki, I need one last favor from you." Maru watched her reach into her jinbaori and produce a letter that she handed to him. The old fisherman looked down at the letter before looking back up to her in confusion.

"This is..."

"From Gyoubu Rokujo. He asked me to give it to you on behalf of our mutual friend."

"Is it about... about Hanbei?" He asked as his eyes fell back down to the letter with a small shake of his head, "Is... Has he...?" Shoda lowered her eyes and cast them elsewhere as Maru and Avery stood up to join her. "Then... Oh..." Otsuki brushed his thumb over the name with a shaking sigh, "He never got his pardon."

"He didn't, but that wasn't all that was in the letter. Umemaru reached out to him and wanted to find everyone. Something has come up, and he needs all hands."

"My lady, I'm old and washed up..."

"We all are."

"Mind telling me what's going on?" Maru asked as he looked between Shoda and Otsuki as Avery crossed his arms beside him.

Shoda watched him for a second before she frowned, "None of your concern, but we do need to get out of here. Otsuki, what's the fastest way out of town."

"The river," Otsuki nodded as he slipped the letter into his top. "I have an old boat. I'll just say you stole it. Follow me."

Otsuki led them through the brush just off the main road, and soon they found themselves sliding down the loose dirt to the riverbank where an old, ragged fishing boat sat moored on the deep brown mud. A younger man was sitting beside it mending nets when Otsuki ushered them in. He looked over at the man and furrowed his brow, "If Kubara's men come by-!"

"I never saw anyone. I was mending my net inside when I realized the boat was gone," the man replied with a small shrug of his shoulders, making Otsuki nod and turn again to face Maru and Shoda.

"Go safely, my lady. And Nightingale," Otsuki turned to look squarely at Maru, "there's still time for you to change your job, you know." Maru blinked at him, but before he could ask, Otsuki turned to Avery with a smile and spoke slowly and clearly, all traces of his rough accent vanishing much to Maru's surprise, "Take care, friend. I'm sorry I couldn't do more to help you."

Avery reached out and clapped the man on the shoulder, "I won't forget this, Otsuki."

"Do you understand what he's saying?" Maru asked as Otsuki returned the gesture.

"Well... maybe just a little."

---

They moored the old boat some ways up the river, and Maru vaguely thought he recognized some of the places from another hunt he had been on. If he remembered correctly, there was an old monastery nearby. More importantly for him, there was another sect of Sayonakidori. The Sango Sect was one of the oldest branches and had a separate area covering the area around the monastery, a convent, and several towns. The area was ripe with Tengu as well, and the very thought of the winged yokai made Maru's arm hurt. However, from what he heard, the sect had a working relationship with the tengu, which alone made the entire thing more confusing for everyone involved. According to Genkai, their leader, the tengu kept most of the worst yokai out of the picture. Maru didn't quite know why the winged yokai agreed to work with them, but who was he to argue.

He had stashed his armor away in one of the sacks left on the boat and had slung it over his shoulder as he saw Shoda wrapping a zukin around Avery's head. He hadn't noticed it before, but strapped to her back had been a sack filled with a change of clothes. He figured Himonoe must have been involved.

"They feed your people well if you get this big normally where you're from," Shoda chuckled as she finished off the cowl and pulled it firmly into position. The tall gaijin had to crouched down to accommodate her and sat amiably by without a single word of protest. "I wonder if all people from his country are so big. Think their hair is all this color?"

"I wish we could ask," Maru leaned back against a nearby tree and watched as Shoda motioned for him to stand up and pull the mouth covering over his lower face. His eyes were still going to be a bit of a giveaway, but every now and again he had seen people with strange colored eyes. He was just hoping that nobody would wind up asking. "So, know where we are?"

"Not exactly. I do know that there is a monastery here," Shoda supplied as she looked around and rested her hand on the hilt of her sword.  "Do you?"

"Same as you. I know about the monastery and a sect of Sayonakidori who might be able to help me. Other than that? Nothing."

"Great. We're the blind leading the blind right now."

"I get the sense that we're lost."

"I think even Avery here knows that we have no clue where we are."

"Well, good to know that we are all equally lost," Maru sighed as he searched around for any sign of anything he could find that might point him to where he needed to go, but nothing even remotely seemed familiar. Not a promising start, to be sure. If he could get his bearings, everything would work itself out in due time.

Or so he hoped.

They grabbed their things and started up the riverbank. The walk down the old road nearby seemed to be taking an eternity, and they did most of it in silence. Maru glanced over at Shoda from time to time, but the onna-bugeisha seemed lost in thought. He looked over at Avery and saw the man taking in all of the sights with an almost childlike wonder that was, he begrudgingly admitted, rather endearing. Maru had to wonder if their land was anything like the one where he came from. He had so many questions and not a single way to ask them, and it was more than a little frustrating.

"You're holding it upside down."

"I am not."

"Yes, you are."

"No, I am not-! Oh... Oh, I was..."

Shoda paused and looked at Maru, who had also heard the pair of voices, and when they rounded one of the nearby bends in the road, they saw who it was. Two Sayonakidori stood, holding a map between them, and for the first time since the river, Maru finally felt like he had a hand on the situation. "Allow me," he moved past Shoda and Avery and made for the two black clad figures who were too absorbed in their map reading to notice him approaching.

"Well, if we decide to avoid the hollow, that makes it easier."

"Well, yeah. I was thinking we could loop around the western side and see if we could cut her off, but if she winds up with the tengu, maybe they could do us a favor."

Maru cleared his throat, prompting the two to look up from their map and frown, "Pardon-"

"We're extremely busy, citizen. There's a town two miles down the road. Can't miss it."

Maru reached to his hip where his somen hung and held it up, the black metal catching the light as he did, "Actually, I was hoping for some more direct assistance."

That made them pause and lower the map. "You're a nightingale, then? I'm Kai, and this is Shou of the Sango Sect."

"Maru. I'm from Kazegumo's bunch back in Kai."

"Maru," Shou, the taller of the two, nodded slowly. "Yeah, we've heard about you. Killed a gyuki in your first year and have been riding a wave of successful contracts ever since. Kazegumo's golden boy."

"To what do we owe the pleasure?" Kai asked as his eyes flicked back to Avery and Shoda.

"My friends and I were met with some resistance back with Kubara. Mind if we stock up on supplies and get a place to stay for a day or two?" Maru gestured back to the two as he spoke.

Kai and Shou nodded and gestured for them to follow. Maru was a little surprised when they led them through a thick grouping of trees and down a small game trail nearby. "Nice to see a familiar face," Kai nodded as he helped lead them through the small game trail and back to another road that seemed to be quite removed from the one they were just on. "We've been dealing with Rotted yokai and all sorts of nasties drawn here by the fighting. We had one hell of a big yokai pass through here a few days ago. Whatever it was, it was powerful. Even the tengu decided to steer clear of it."

"Did the monastery call in any contracts?"

Shou nodded as he jumped in, "Just one on a Rotted tengu. Turns out it was just that slippery onmyoji hack that's been in the area not knowing how to do his job. Gave us some feathers as compensation and left."

Maru knew why it did by proxy. Sanjuro made a point of getting all of his weaponry from the Sango for one simple fact: they were forged with tengu feathers. It was an old technique that infused weapons with the ability to better hold magical charges, whether that was using onmyodo elemental slips, spells, or any manner of incantations. It was that very technique that made them infinitely better at slaying yokai, too.

"The whole thing just works," Kai nodded in agreement as well before he glanced back over his shoulder at the three. "What brings you out here? Didn't think we'd see one of Kazegumo's golden boys all the way out here."

"I'm here on contract," Maru nodded as the group paused by a fork in the road. He reached into his bag and produced the picture he had been given and held it out to them. He looked between Kai and Shou as he handed them the worn sketch. "Seen this yokai?"

Kai took it and quickly glanced at Shou, who took it as he shared the glance. "Nope," Kai spoke as Shou handed Maru the sketch. "Never seen it before in my life."

"You're lying."

"Yeah? And what are you gonna do about it?" Shou snarled as he stepped towards Maru. "We. Haven't. Seen. It."

It was then that Maru noted how quiet Shoda had been, and when he looked back at her, she was standing by as stony faced as he had ever seen her and watched the two Sayonakidori before her with the eyes of a hawk. Maru turned back and went to protest, but she reached up and put a hand on his shoulder. "Drop it," she murmured, her voice low as her eyes trailed back to the two hunters standing before them.

He followed her gaze and started to see why. Hands had slowly gone to weapons, and Kai and Shou looked like they could back up their insistence with brute force if necessary. "All right, no need to get tense," Maru held up his hands.

"Let me make one thing clear," Kai spoke, his dark eyes piercing through Maru from beneath his somen. "Here, yokai who have posed no threat are treated with decency. I know that Kazegumo has a no tolerance policy, but that doesn't go here. Do we understand one another?"

Maru nodded, even if the concept was sitting wrong with him. He resolved to stay silent until he heard Shoda chuckle behind him. "Who knew some of you had moral compasses."

"I'm sensing a bit of tension here," Maru heard Avery mutter something in his strange tongue behind him and had to bite his own from snapping something at Shoda. He had plenty of his own reasons for hating yokai. The fact that Genkai's men had so little problem with borderline animals that killed humans for sport was beyond him. 

Still, perhaps under his better judgment, he said nothing as the two Sayonakidori led them down the trails further until they reached their compound. It looked like a military encampment, but more of a permanent one rather than the pop-up tents and makeshift barricades that made up the mobile camps the ever shifting armies often used. The low wooden buildings were spread out across the grounds and hidden behind a high wooden wall. The only buildings that barely poked above it was the large central building which looked to be an old temple or shrine converted for a more worldly purpose.

"Grab the boss," Maru turned his attention from surveying the camp when he head Shou speak. "We've got one of Kazegumo's hunters here on contract. We need to get his authorization to give them supplies."

As they were gestured to wait, Maru looked further around the camp. The buildings seemed old enough, but had been repaired recently if the new thatching on the roofs were any indication. The area was cleaned and maintained, and nothing all around seemed amiss. There was a conspicuous lack of training going on, and he wanted to ask why had he not begun to catch the wary looks from the many other hunters wandering about. Many of them traveled in pairs, others carried tools and other equipment, but all of them were watching him with a look that one might give a wild animal. A moment later, Kai returned to the group and gestured for Maru to follow him, only when Shoda and Avery moved to join him, he held up his hand. "Not you two," he shook his head. "Genkai only wants to see Maru."

"Shout if things get dicey," Shoda muttered to him as Maru moved to follow Kai.

Kai led him to the main hall, and his suspicion of it once being a religious site was further confirmed when he stepped inside and found himself faced with rows of stone buddhas, and before them, sitting cross-legged with a scowl on his face, was their leader himself. Genkai was a large man with a broad chest and wide shoulders, almost matching Avery. That alone was impressive considering that Avery was a a behemoth of a man. Maru had heard rumors through the mill that he had been a sohei once before becoming a member of the Sayonakidori. His head was shaved, his facial hair had grown out, but he was still the same intimidating man that Maru remembered from the meeting between the sect leaders all those years ago.

"So, you're one of Kazegumo's, eh?" He asked, voice deep and gruff as he tapped his long pipe and brought it to his lips.

"That's right. My name is Maru. I'm here on a contract..."

"I know why you're here. The order dictates that I supply you, but you leave tomorrow morning as soon as the sun rises," Genkai spoke as he blew smoke from his mouth like an angry forge, his thick eyebrows furrowing low over his sharp eyes.

Maru was take aback, and it took him a moment for him to gather his thoughts before he blinked. "I... Why, if I may ask?"

"Because there's a reason why I don't take kindly to Kazegumo and his pack of snakes," Genkai replied, his scowl still firmly on his severe face.  "They almost ruined the delicate balancing act I have going on here with the tengu, and it cost me more than a few men." Genkai watched him for a long time before he took another long drag on his pipe before he blew out yet another long plume of smoke. "Don't take it too personally. Blame your boss."

---

"Good to know that Kazegumo is just as popular as I remember," Shoda jeered as the group settled down for the evening.

Maru tired to ignore that gnawing sense of annoyance that had been plaguing him since he had arrived, but it was getting harder and harder to deal with. He glanced at Avery, who seemed to be lost in thought as he slipped under his blanket "Why would they be protecting it?" Maru asked as he angrily threw his gear down as the feeling finally began to boil over. "It's a killer!"

Shoda watched him from where she had sat down, watching him, "And how do you know that for certain? Hm?" Maru stopped in his tracks and snapped his head towards her, "For all you know, he killed in self defense."

"I have a contract."

"Oh, yes! And no idiot has ever taken a contract out of spite, right? Isn't that what Kamuro was?"

That was a punch to the chest Maru wasn't ready for. Kamuro still loomed omnipresent in the back of his mind like a dark cloud, always watching him and waiting for him to slip up and say something wrong. it was what everyone used for a comeback, and even the other more lenient sects liked to throw it back in their faces whenever at all possible.

But he remembered.

It had been a contract. A wealthy merchant farmer, if he recalled. He claimed that the entire space was filled with yokai, that the town was infested.

It was his farmland now, if the rumors held up.

"It's not the same."

"Isn't it?" Shoda asked with a scoff. "You're so blindly loyal that you don't even check the validity of your contracts, eh? Ah! What professionalism!"

"What is this?" Maru finally snapped, spinning to look down at her. "Why do you keep antagonizing me?"

Shoda stood up, and despite her short height, she cut an impressive figure that even made Maru take a pause. "Let me explain something to you, boy.  Once upon a time, I knew Kazegumo. He pursued and attacked a very good friend of mine on a hunch about some stupid sword that probably doesn't even exist. I know him to be a selfish, conceited, arrogant little man whose sole redeeming quality was his incompetence. I've watched him drag innocent kids into the fold of his dogmatic little organization enough to know brainwashing when I see it, and I know that he hasn't sunk his feelers all the way into you yet. Why, I don't know. If I can make you doubt him even just a bit, then my job is done."

"And who was this friend? You expect me to believe that Kazegumo attacked some random person for no reason?"

"His name was Akechi Mitsukage, and he was the..." Shoda paused, her mouth seeming to get ahead of her mind, and Maru saw her narrow her eyes and fold her arms across her chest, "...the finest swordsman in all of Mino, and an even better friend."

The name rang familiar, and Maru wracked his brain trying to figure out where he had heard it before when his mind pulled him back to one snowy day. It was after he had returned to the fold, but he had still be new when he had stumbled onto Kazegumo and Sanjuro having a meeting. Pressed against the wall just out of view, a small wall obscuring him from the rest of the archives, he heard them speaking.

"And what of Mitsukage? I doubt he would be amenable to conversation."

"He never was. You'd think for someone like him, diplomacy would be a way of life. It doesn't matter. We found him."

"You aren't considering...?"

"Do not question my motivations or my methods, Sanjuro. I'm deploying the Hand. He either gives us the sword or we take it from him by force. Those are his only options."

"I know that name," Maru muttered as Shoda slowly unfolded her arms. "Kazegumo was looking for a sword. The hierarchy thought he was insane."

"He is."

"He didn't seem to think so." Maru narrowed his eyes, "What is all this even about? Why did Kazegumo want to find him so badly?"

Shoda seemed to hesitate before she refolded her arms again with a shake of her head, "I cannot say. Not yet. Listen, as far as I'm concerned, we are allies for the time being. Your journey is taking you my direction and you had enough common decency to save this guy," she thumbed at Avery, "and to me, that tells me you're not quite like your boss. Until you can prove to me that you won't go running back to Kazegumo with everything I tell you, I think we'll just settle on that." Without waiting for him to respond or saying another word, Shoda sat down and laid herself down on the mat, flipping over to have her back face him.

Maru sat down where his things were laid out and found himself staring flatly out at the door. One thing he didn't want to ever admit to himself was how much that bothered him. That inherent distrust. It wasn't always like that. Not in Kai. Once upon a time, people trusted him there. Kamuro changed everything, and the memory still hung sharp and clear in his mind. True, there had always been people who disliked the Sayonakidori. He knew that there always would be, but now it seemed like everywhere he went, people whispered and glared and shooed him away like he was a leper. Whenever he thought briefly back to his time with Atsumori, when people were happy to see him and treated him like their own, is struck an old wound that he was confident would never fully heal. He laid back on the bed and screwed his eyes shut against the invasive memory of the day he said he planned to leave. The insults, the accusations, but amidst it all...

"If that is what you believe you must do..."

Tell me to stay. Order me to. Maru begged the memory, but all that greeted his begs was a sad smile.

"Then do whatever you have to. Just do it with pride."

The memory blackened into nothing and left him alone in silence. Maru kept his eyes shut as that pang of regret slithered into his chest. He flipped onto his side to face the wall and pulled the old blanket taut around his shoulders as he tried to forget the whole ordeal, but one part kept echoing  in his mind.

Just do it with pride.

"I don't feel it," his whispered almost silently as he felt himself give into exhaustion. "I never have."