"How did she do that...?" Yuzuha whispered to Sen as he and the others stood back while Emi, Hachirou, and Daigo spoke with the elder about a possible solution to their raider problem. "How... how?"

"She's got a gift," Sen smiled as he watched Hachirou turn around and make his way back to the group with a broad grin on his face. "What did they say?"

"They're mostly happy to have their people back, and the elder has agreed to let them work in defense of the town if everything goes well. They're welcomed back, no strings attached so long as the banditry stops after the next attack."

"Good," Sen nodded and glanced back at Hashi.

The yokai stood behind him, rubbing his injured arm and seemed to be focusing rather hard on it. Sen slipped over to stand closer to him and rested one hand on his friend's good arm. "Hashi?"

The yokai looked down at him and let out a long sigh before he gestured to the arm and patted it. It's sore.

"Will you be alright to fight? Should you stay back?"

Hashi shook his head. I'm fine.

Sen crossed his arms and nodded ever so slightly, "If you insist."

"One of the farmers said that he's seen signs of the raiders," Aoi trotted up and put his hands on his hips. "Sen, I'm putting you, Hashi, and Daigo on the front gate. Princess and I will be holding the back with Hachirou and Emi keeping the townsfolk safe in case they slip in from the sides." He glanced beside him as Daigo meandered up. 

The bandit looked more than a little uncomfortable as Hachirou gave him a brusque slap on the shoulder. "We're all friends now. Might as well cooperate!" 

Aoi clapped his hands together and rubbed them almost excitedly. "It's been a long time since I've had a good fight!"

Hachirou sighed, "I think you're too eager for a fight..."

Daigo stepped away from them and gestured to the front gate with his chin. "Shall we go scope it out?"

Sen glanced back between the two arguing warriors and nodded, "Yeah... Yeah, we should."

The three of them walked along the outer wall and Daigo clicked his tongue as they made their way around. "It could be worse," he spoke with a smile. "The wall could just not exist."

Sen chuckled and looked up at Hashi, "How long should it hold?"

Hashi looked from the wall and back to Sen before he just shook his head, prompting a laugh from Daigo, "I mean... He's right!"

They made their way back to the gate and stood overlooking the road. Sen could see the smoke that must have been the reason why the elder had reason to believe that they were on their way rising over the trees in the distance. He, Daigo, and Hashi stood in silence for a long time before Sen looked at him and asked, "What do you know about the armor the elder offered us?"

"That junk?" The man wrinkled his nose and crossed his arms over his chest, leaning his spear against the inside crook of his arm as he did. "I don't know. It apparently belonged to some warrior that lived on the farms near here. They say he came from nothing and became some big shot hero who slew an ushi oni that was destroying some northern coastal town before he came back. I think it's just some old story to make the villagers feel better. They always say he'll rise from the dead to defend them, but last I've seen, there's no spectral peasant-warrior coming to save them."

"You don't seem like the type to readily come to the rescue of random townsfolk," Sen turned to him, "nor do you seem to humor their superstitions."

"Why should I? They just sit here and let themselves get killed and bullied. I'm done with that life."

Sen watched his face. He ground his teeth and set his jaw as he fixed his eyes firmly ahead, something about the notion angering him, so Sen asked, "Then why come back here with your men?"

"My family was killed in the fighting years ago," Daigo admitted quietly as he leaned on his spear. Sen watched him in silence, saying nothing as the man seemed to collect his thoughts. "They burned my fields, killed my father and mother, left my little sister to rot in the field behind our house while I was making the trip to sell our rice. Banditry was my way of getting back at them."

"Why stop now?" Sen asked him and Hashi nodded. "Why help these people?"

Daigo paused for a long time before he shuffled and looked back towards the road. "I couldn't help my family, but maybe I can help theirs. These guys... They're all my family now. I owe them this much, even is the townsfolk don't like it."

Sen studied his face. There was an unspoken regret there, a shame brought on by the only choice that he had been given, and it was one he understood. "They may not now, but someday they'll see," he began. "They may never say it to your face, but these people will always remember what you will have done for them. They won't hate you. Not the same way."

"You mentioned that you knew what it was like," Daigo looked back at him and furrowed his brow. "Why? You a bandit too?"

Sen hesitated, the story catching in his throat, but something about Daigo loosened the noose that had been around his neck for so many years. Daigo understood him. Perhaps that was why the words poured forth from his lips so easily, "I can... use magic, a little. I'm not good at it, but when I get put in a life or death situation when I'm losing... It gets out of control. I killed a boy once when that happened. They had always said I was a demon child, and Hashi took care of me. They tried to kill me for what I did, threw me into a river. Time passed, people still stayed away from me, but... We protected them. Never asked for anything."

"Why? I would have let them rot."

"Because Ebume was my home," Sen confessed, and it was like a stone was lifted from his throat and he could speak freely again. "Because in spite of everything, I... cared. I think you do, too, underneath it all. If you didn't..." He paused before looking to Daigo, whose features had softened, "you wouldn't be standing here with me."

Daigo opened his mouth to speak, but Sen faintly heard something from the tree line and gave him a forceful shove away just as an arrow struck the old wall where his head had been moments before. The raiders burst from the trees with shouts and screams, and Sen saw why they'd be dangerous. They were clad in actual armor and their weapons looked half decent. Either way, it was going to be a hairy fight. Some of them seemed to lose their steam when they saw Hashi. Not a surprise, Sen figured, considering that Hashi had thrust his naginata into the ground and given a deafening roar that made a few of the greener raiders stop dead in their tracks and consider their options. However, their leader took no time at all in showing his face.

He was clad in a full suit of armor and was brandishing one of the finest spears that Sen had ever seen. "Daigo," he began as Hashi helped him unsheathe his odachi, "don't panic, but I think this guy was a samurai."

"Yeah," Daigo nodded, "kinda getting that feeling myself."

"You're the little shit whose been killing my men!" The man shouted.

"That's not Miraki..." Daigo muttered.

As he finished, the man Sen guessed was Miraki appeared meekly from behind the samurai, "That's Daigo, boss. I don't know who the vagabond and the yokai are..."

"Shut up, Miraki," The man spun his spear into a fighting form. Sen knew it well. Myugou used to use it a lot, set up and held for a flurry of quick thrusts and fancy footwork – very dangerous in the hands of someone who knew how to use it. "Yokai or not, they can't stop me. My name is Naotani Hatakeyama, and I am the man who is going to kill you!"

"I've been waiting for you, samurai!" Daigo called out and started to walk towards him as he brandished his own spear.

"You're not the one who interests me, Daigo the Farmer," Hatakeyama focused his attention on Sen. "I want to know about the one who walks with demons. Men like you are a dime a dozen, but him? Even Old Gosakumaru won't talk to me, but he's calling you, isn't he?"

Sen knew the question was aimed at him. "Gosakumaru?"

"The spirit that terrorized my men in the forests. Not the one who killed Miraki's raiding party. That Ashura was a surprise. No, the phantom samurai who had kept us from attacking until I came along."

"What kind of freak are you?" Daigo shouted from beside Sen.

"Not a freak," Hatakeyama began to stalk forward. "I am a samurai of a clan which no longer exists who speaks for our dead!" he lunged forward and Daigo met him. For being someone who wasn't trained in spearwork, he was holding his own well against Hatakeyama, who attacked him with all of the ferocity of a demon.

Sen looked to Hashi and gestured to the other men and Miraki, and the two agreed to handle them while Daigo dealt with the samurai. Sen turned on Miraki, who gave a yelp of surprise when Sen swung his odachi and nearly took his head off on the first strike. "What in the hell are you?" The man shouted as Sen refused to relent. Miraki attempted to get some jabs in and missed or couldn't get close enough, with the length of the odachi working to Sen's advantage by keeping the weasel of a man at arm's length.

Sen glanced over at Hashi from time to time and saw him cutting down the mane one by one until Sen saw that one of them had snuck up behind him. "Hashi! On your left, behind you!"

The yokai wasn't fast enough, and the raider managed to give him a good stab with the spear directly under his shoulder blade. The yokai let out a roar of pain and spun to grab the man by the head and slam him into the ground with a sickening crack that Sen could hear from where he stood. At the same time, he caught Daigo get knocked off of his feet and stabbed through his shoulder when he tried to slide out of the way of Hatakeyama's spear thrusts. When he turned to try and help, he felt Miraki's katana cut through his arm.

Before the raider could get another hit in, much to Sen's surprise, Hatakeyama slammed the shaft of his spear into Miraki's face and sent him rolling head over heels across the ground. "You don't deserve this fight!" The samurai shouted as Miraki scrambled away and he turned his full attention to Sen. "This one is mine."

Hashi went to help, but he grunted and collapsed to his knees as his hand grabbed at his Rot-infected arm. While he was distracted, Hatakeyama thrust out with his spear. Sen narrowly dodged the strike and seized Miraki's katana. He wasn't good with the shorter, lighter sword, but it was all he had. With Hashi and Daigo out of commission, he was on his own. "You're not bad," Hatakeyama nodded at him. "This is a good fight. Your defeat will bring me no shame."

"I don't plan on losing, but thanks," Sen hoped he sounded more confident than he felt. Hatakeyama moved forward with a speed Sen wouldn't have expected out of a man in full armor. The spear danced forward as Sen bobbed and wove around it, raising his sword from time to time to block and deflect, but focused more on trying to weave his way to his downed odachi. He was almost circled back around when Hatakeyama thrust hard and sent the katana spinning from his hands and clattering to the ground.

Before he could recover, Sen felt the spear slam into his shoulder and take him off his feet, sending him spinning across the ground and rolling over himself. His head struck a rock when he rolled and he felt the blood beginning to ooze down his scalp and temple as he blinked away the stars in his eyes. He slid into Hashi, who Sen saw was snarling and gripping his arm. The way the yokai's face was screwed up tight told him that he was in immeasurable pain, if the fact that his entire body had gone as rigid as a piece of wood.

"I'll finish you off and give you a good death, then I'll take the horns of the yokai as a trophy."

Something about that made something inside of Sen snap. His hand went to the small of his back where his tanto was kept, and he lunged up and stabbed it into Hatakeyama's shoulder between his chest plate and shoulder guards before he yanked it out and kicked the man away. He slashed out at his arms as Hatakeyama attempted to regain balance and kept himself close enough to keep the spear useless. He stabbed the tanto again into the gap in the samurai's armor and into the space near the joint of his shoulder, and when he did, he flung his whole weight at the man and knocked them both over so that he was on top of him on the ground.

He pinned Hatakeyama to the ground and hovered his tanto over the man's throat, "Do. You. Yield?" He snarled as he dug the point into the man's throat.

"Just kill him!" Daigo shouted from where he was lying and gripping his injured shoulder..

"Then we're just like them!" Sen snapped back over his shoulder. He felt the blood from the wound on his temple drip down his cheekbone. "Give me an answer!"

Hatakeyama stared up at him through his somen and finally closed his eyes, "I do."

"Will you ever come here again?"

Hatakeyama opened his eyes and shook his head. "Miraki and his men are dead to me. I'll spend my days wandering," Sen went to stand up and walk away, but when he did, Hatakeyama seized his ankle, "but I will do it to be better than you, Wolf."

"What did you...?"

"It's what they call you. The spirits that surround you. The Wolf of Ebume, the drowned child beloved by the demons, a vengeful ghost," Hatakeyama hauled himself to his feet and regarded Sen with a sort of respect as Sen wheeled around and readied his tanto again, "but you are, above all, a lonely, scared child, forgotten by the world and hated by the people you protect..."

"How do you know that?" Sen shook his head.

"They flock to you – ghosts and yokai – while humans run away... To be chosen in such a way is an honor for people like us, we kuchiyose." Hatakeyama took up his spear with a trembling arm. The wound he received from Sen seemingly had done a number on him, but he bowed regardless. "When next we meet, I will be ready for you."

As he lumbered back to the trees, Sen sheathed his knife and sprinted back to Hashi. "Hashi!" He dropped to his knees beside his friend, who looked up at him apologetically as Sen hurried back around behind him to look at the stab wound, it didn't seem that deep, but he knew that even shallow wounds could kill if they hit the right spot. "What's wrong? Are you alright?"

Hashi gestured to his arm and shook his head. No.

Sen felt Daigo join them, "Let me help stand him up." Together, the two of them hefted Hashi to his feet, though Sen could feel how unstable he was. The pain must have been horrendous if he couldn't even stand up on his own.

They managed to help him through the front gates when the other rejoined them, accompanied by concerned villagers. "He needs help!" Sen called out as Hachirou moved to take the injured Daigo's place. "Daigo was hurt, too! Help them first!"

The elder hurried and helped Daigo along with one of his other men, but Sen felt someone take him by the injured arm and saw that the rather rough grab had come from Yuzuha. Judging from the amount of dirt and blood she was covered in, things had gotten equally messy on their end. "You're hurt, too," she glared at him and dragged him over to sit him down, her eyes immediately going to the puncture wound as she went to yank off his kosode.

Panic set in and Sen grabbed at the garment, "What are you doing?"

"Cleaning your stab wound, you idiot!" She tried again to take off the top, but Sen protested. "What are you? A damned nun?"

"Let me..." Sen pulled open the top and held it back off his shoulders so Yuzuha could get at the wound, careful to keep his back obscured.

Yuzuha gave him a look, but said nothing as she took a cloth handed to her by one of the local women and began to wash it up. Sen bit the inside of his cheek and exhaled sharply through his nose, but he didn't utter a sound. Aoi dropped down into a squat beside her and handed her a gourd of strong smelling liquor. When she gave him a look, he turned to her and frowned, "It will keep it from getting infected. Pour some on the rag or straight onto the wound." He stood up without saying another word and went to where Daigo was sitting and gave them another gourd before hurrying over to where Hashi and Hachirou sat.

Yuzuha did as she was instructed, and Sen couldn't keep back a snarl of pain when she poured the alcohol straight onto the open wound and quickly pressed the cloth back over it. She watched his face for a while before taking the cloth up to the side of his head where the rock had sliced it open. "You beat a samurai. That's impressive."

"Being fair, I just closed the gap so his spear was useless."

"You kept him off-balance and got in close. That's not an easy feat," She smiled at him. "You're better than you look, warrior."

"Do I look that bad?" Sen asked with a chuckle,

"Like an emaciated dog that is... also... handsome?"

"...Was that a compliment?"

"Never mind," she coughed and sat back as she finished wiping up his wounds. She ripped off a strip of a towel a woman had left them and began wrapping up Sen's stab wound. "They'll get you some bandages soon. The girls inside with Emi and some of the old folks are getting them prepped. Gotta admit, they're pretty grateful."

"Any casualties?"

"None. Aoi led our group in back like a right leader. Think he used to be an actual samurai once upon a time," Yuzuha shook her head as she watched Aoi give orders to the group. "He's damned good with a blade, too. I thought the yokai were a fluke, but he's... amazing. Think he's not telling us stuff?"

Sen shrugged, "Everyone has their secrets."

"True. Hey, one of those farm girls said she was going to make us some meat tonight. We're going to eat good!" She paused when she saw his head turn to watch Hashi, who was grunting in pain as Aoi helped Hachirou clean the stab wound on his back. "Hey," she got him to turn back to her and she smiled, "he'll be okay."

"Yeah... I hope you're right."

---

A few days passed, and wounds began to heal. One thing that did not get better was Hashi's arm. Sen had watched it closely during their stay in the little village, and The Rot had one begun to spread. This time, from the stab on his back. The ashy tendrils had begun to wind themselves in vein-like rivulets along his back and his hand had begun to twitch and spasm. Time was truly something that Sen now had to think about, something he had to plan for an anticipate. How long would it be, after all, before it reached his other arm? His legs?

The questions plagued him as the group began to pack, and he was pulled from his thoughts by a familiar voice. "I never did thank you," Daigo's voice made him start. "And about what you said... I'm still going back, but I'm letting the boys keep the weapons and stay here."

"You won't stay?" Sen asked as he adjusted his odachi and the pack he had taken from Hashi.

Daigo smiled and shook his head as he twirled his spear in his hand, "Nah. They don't need someone like me here. This town is too perfect for that."

"Sen!" Emi burst into the small hut where Sen and Hashi had set up and almost bumped into Daigo, "The monks-!"

When the four emerged, they found Dainei and the others all pouring through the back gate of the village looking rather lost. It was the elder who moved forward to greet them, "Honored juushoku, how can we help you?"

"We... We awoke today to find that our abbot was gone. He left us a missive saying that we should come here... I had no idea that the village was in such a state. Please, forgive us!" Dainei dropped onto his hands and knees and pressed his forehead to the ground as the other monks followed suit. "Please, allow us to help make this right!"

"Can you help us rebuild?" One of Daigo's bandits asked. "We have too few houses for everyone here."

"We can use wood from the broken parts of the temple," one junior monk offered as he sat up. "We can't live there anymore and there isn't enough to rebuild, so why not use it to start patching up houses?"

"We could also reinforce the old wall," another offered as they all began to rise.

Sen couldn't help but smile, and when he looked over at Emi and Hachirou, both of them were beaming as if they had done the world a miracle. "This," Emi looked up at Hachirou with a smile, "is what we were sent to do." She looked over at Sen and held up one hand to give him a small bow of gratitude, and soon Hachirou followed suit. He didn't know why, but he was happy that they were happy.

He turned to say something to Daigo, but when he did, he found the man making his way towards the front gate without having said so much as a single word to anyone else.

"Daigo!" One of the men from the group burst out from the crowd and hurried off towards him. "Where are you going?"

"Kuma?" Daigo seemed as surprised as anyone when his old bandits ran towards him.

"Are you... leaving?" Kuma asked, surprise written all over his face. "You can't just walk off on us now! Who else is supposed to lead our new watch?"

"Your... new...?" Daigo stared at them, blinking slowly.

Sen couldn't help but smile as the old elder came forward to Daigo with a low bow, "We can't give you any money, but... There is an old open house, if you want one."

Daigo stood staring at them before he turned back around to the group. Sen shrugged, "That sounds like a good deal to me."

"Sen... Thank you," Daigo turned and gave him a grateful nod. "If you ever need anything from me or the boys, you just let us know and we'll be there."

"Before you go..." The elder gestured forward and had two men bring forward the old armor he had promised. He smiled at them, "Your payment... Though I feel like it isn't nearly enough for what you've given us."

Sen reached out and took ahold of the armor, and he felt as though something passed through the armor and through him as well, and only one thing passed through his mind as he stared down at the gorgeous faded cording of the old armor.

Thank you.