Lunch, With A Side of Doom

The group had huddled beneath the felled, giant evergreen tree, meat on spits, the scent of fat burning on bonfires when the stranger handed off a bottle of booze to her left. Shiraishi no-doubt took it without hesitation and chugged it until he was ragged by the next person along.

“It could be poisoned,” Sugimoto told as he sniffed the drink.

“I hope not; I’ve been drinking from it all the way here,” the stranger smirked while fluttering a glance to the ex-soldier.

Sugimoto sat up straight and bit at the air between him and the pale woman. “Why are you even here?”

“Didn’t we already have this conversation?” Rooting through the bag by her left hip, Sugimoto halted reaching for his weapon when his fellow compatriot caught the tension.  

Stretching his arms above his head, even the fearsome sniper couldn’t help but to take the chance to warm the bottoms of his feet at the fire when he was threatened by the solid winter front catching up on the group. “I searched her bags when she was finding us something better for dinner than nettles.” Lace-by-lace undoing his boots, Ogata grumbled. “She has booze and traps I saw her disassembling on the way up. You don’t have to be so suspicious.”

“Coming from you, that fills me with even more apprehension.” Returning his attention to the female, Sugimoto stood over her as she rooted through a bunch of obscure torture devices. “What are you doing?”

Metal contraption filling the palm of one hand, booze gourd in the other, she flopped to her left and straddled Shiraishi. Shoving the alcohol into the ex-prisoner’s hands after practically emptying one of the smaller bottles into his mouth, the woman nodded upwards to the Matagi. “Mountain-man is going to hold your head-”

Eyes wide, mouth wider by force, Shiraishi garbled. “-Is this going to hurt?”

“Do you want it to?”

Calloused hands plastered over the smaller scarred ones holding onto the sides of his cheeks. “Who the Hell would want it to?”

“You would be surprised…” Glancing up in recollection, the bear-lady hummed before looking the convict in the eye. “I can give you something that will make you feel nothing, but you won’t be in control of your body-”

“-I want that!”

Snorting in thin air through blocked nostrils, the woman dabbed a cloth against a tiny vile and shoved it into Shiraishi’s mouth, between the inside of his cheek and his outer gums. “Hurry up, I don’t sit like this for free.”

A grip on the back of her hips slid down to her rear and a very pronounced eyebrow shot up. Without so much as joint movement, a fist put the ex-prisoner’s lights out. Sucking in a breath and readjusting the back of her outfit where the con had groped her, Sen inserted what appeared to be a spring-clamp into her victim’s - patient’s - mouth.

“Why do you even have something like that in your bag?”

“It’s a tool I use for enhanced interrogation.”

“You mean torture?”

Offended by a waft of rot when she looked closer into the convict’s mouth, she blindly held her hand out, “pass me the pliers.”

“Are you trained to do this?”

“Let’s say yes for time’s sake. My knees are getting numb from the cold and his gob stinks.”

“I’m not surprised he has a rotten mouth with all the crap he lodges in there.” Still holding onto the ex-prisoner, Tanigaki grimaced at the white-out eyes and drool smeared around the problem area. “Is there any need for me to keep hold of him after you knocked him out?”

“I don’t want my hand to slip if he spasms. Mind, taking his tongue out could be part of an all-inclusive package deal, if you prefer?”

“Just do what you need to do. I’m sick of hearing him complain about his goddamn toothache and mouth-sores.”

 

A couple of hours later…

Even after washing up from refurbishing Shiraishi’s mouth and butchering the deer down to the correct sizes, the stranger still had blood staining her skin from the day’s earlier activities. During his task to collect water, Sugimoto saw the stranger at the stream behind their camp while the rest were settling for dinner. Catching the woman fastening a spare shirt shut with a piece of twine at the waist, he turned away out of habit.

“If it’s your intention to protect my modesty, I have to say, you’re a long time too late.” Tying her hair back off her face with a simple pin, the woman shrugged her bag up her shoulder and coughed to clear her throat in order to ease the man’s delicate sensibilities. “I’m finished.”

Turning around, the ex-soldier glared at the woman he couldn’t quite pinpoint. “If you try anything funny-”

“-You’ll hurt me, yeah, I get it already.”

Ragging the collar of her shirt, Sugimoto brought a turned-up button nose to his own scarred snout. Tiptoes struggling to keep her neck safe balancing on the frozen ground, the stranger’s grip found its way around his right wrist. His skin under the grasp began to burn, and he felt a foreboding crime building from the woman apparently unconcerned by the confrontation even with a military-trained man. Yet, Sugimoto was immortal, and that meant he would come out on top regardless of what could be. Or maybe not this time, given the danger in her eyes which wasn’t quite hidden behind her lax expression.

“Are you not satisfied by looking in my eyes? Or at this point, the fact my body conceals no weapons? What more do you need from me to see that I’m not a threat to you?”

“I want to know why you want to be so close to Asirpa.”

“I never asked to be close. I’m the one with the information you need and I was invited to stay for dinner; if you really distrust me so much, I will leave - it’s no skin off my nose, either way.”

“If the day comes I find out you betrayed her, I will kill you.”

Wafting heavy, scarred hands away from her upper chest, the foreigner yanked herself out of Sugimoto’s grip and stepped onto her back-foot. “When that time comes, I really hope for your sake that I’m having an off-day.”

“Or what?”

“Or you may very well find the end you were looking for before you met her; I mean, what’s an immortal versus a death-bringing bitch who can’t go a place without taking what’s owed? Someone will have to settle up in the end and I really would hate to see Asirpa cry.” Picking up the kiseru which had fallen to the floor and the water pouches she’d refilled for the group, Sen puffed on the barely lit embers to revive her vice. “When did you last contact your love? Is she still waiting? Have you had moments when you find yourself realizing that you had forgotten about what you clung so desperately to before getting caught up with that girl and her quest yet?” Holding onto the last of the man’s physical hope which in that moment drown out any light in his eyes, the stranger lounged back against a thick bole with a plume of smoke from her lungs and a relaxed coo.

Jaw pulsing and brows furrowed, Sugimoto gnashed at the bitter air under his breath when he heard Asirpa call for him to return.. Glowering back, he kept his eyes on soot-surrounded slits until his neck couldn’t twist any further. “You better watch yourself.”

Grinning while she watched the man turn his back on her and make his way back to the group, Sen tapped the burnt tinder out of her pipe and into the snow. Squashing it underfoot to make sure they had been completely snuffed out, she cracked her neck left and right in quick succession, stowed the item away in the belt holding draw-string pouches, and followed Sugimoto’s footprints back to the camp. Halting halfway, she tongued the corner of her lips.

“You do know it’s rude to eavesdrop on other people’s conversations, right?”

Almost invisible bar a pair of narrow eyes peeking out past his poncho, Ogata was perched a good eight foot up the tree the stranger had stopped just before. “I wouldn’t want to miss a scrap between an immortal and the mistress of murder.”

“No, I guess one wouldn’t.” Nodding to herself, she set off again. “Hurry and come down before you miss out on dinner.”

“Careful, you almost sound concerned.”

“We’re going to need all the help we can get in the upcoming trip.” Wafting her left hand above her head as standard military boots hit snow a few yards in front of her, Sen hummed in a sing-song tone. “’Wouldn’t want the infamous Wildcat to perish from something as feeble as missing a meal.”

Holding onto the remark, or more so what was implied by it, Ogata watched the woman to his right amble with a buoyant swing to her arms while she hummed a tune matching the groan of the woodland trying to recuperate from the constant attacks of winter frosted winds.

Returning to the group dividing the food amongst a mish-mash of used metal tins and wooden carved bowls, the woman dropped down on a woven blanket and kicked off seal-skin boots. Rooting through her bags, she took out gourds from a linden bark sack and passed one to either side of the fire she was now sharing with different kinds of fugitives. Placing another bottle between her thighs as she unfurled another bag, the newcomer wet her lips with the poke of her tongue.

Eyes sparkling or rather, glazed from his impromtu surgery, Shiraishi numbly fondled the bottle he was passed. “Just how much money do you make to be able to afford this amount of alcohol?”

“Greedy people are stupid, so more than enough.” A clatter of metal pieces fell in front of bare shins as her legs folded them Indian style when she gently shook out the interior of a tanned hide pack. Before calloused fingers could even reach for the first piece, the three soldiers grunted at the splay they were way more than familiar with. Sugimoto looked to the other men who had been enlisted, his apparent bad feeling growing with each action the woman made. However, he chose to keep his concerns to himself bar the occasional glance to his fellow ‘patriots’.

Ogata on the other hand, had no qualms about coming out and calling the delicate situation as his mind saw it. “That’s a military rifle; it wasn’t in the bags I checked earlier.”

“I can’t carry everything I own all the time,” she itched her upper lip with her lower teeth, making her look like a wild Pike with her pronounced lower canines visible and her eyes down. “I told you I had to pick some things up; I got my bear-skin, my booze, and my gun.”

“Who did you kill for that?”

Turning her nose up, the ashen woman pouted without taking her eyes off her task of cleaning the pieces of the instrument she had stowed away in the wilderness days ago. “Don’t hold everyone to your own standards. I traded for it.”

“What, in a time of turmoil, would make a soldier give up his weapon?”

“Pussy.”

Shiraishi spat his drink straight out, the majority of it spraying from his nostrils. Sugimoto looked up and wobbled his head as if in contemplation. Tanigaki remained faithfully straight-faced bar a gentle blush which he attempted to mask with a bicept while covering Asirpa’s ears. Ogata coughed a laugh at the ridiculousness of it. “You wouldn’t get my gun.”

“Why do you have to go an’ make everything sound like a challenge?” Smirking into the neck of her sake bottle, the stranger side-eyed the instigator.

The bald convict looked between the pair, to his pal, and then back to the antagonistic pair again. “What’s going on here? I don’t like it. I don’t like it one bit.”

Wriggling out of Tanigaki’s lax hold on the sides of her head, the youngest climbed over the legs of soldiers and plonked herself down by the stranger who had decided to return after telling her such a definite secret only days before. “Please tell the others what you told me the other night.”

“My father’s a prick. I ran away. Shit got real bad, real fast - the end.”

Rolling her eyes, Asirpa nudged the woman in the side of the ribs only to recoil with a panicked physical apology of wafting hands and an attentive stroke above the area. Regardless of knowing the kid was smart enough to remember that she was injured, Sen held up the hand closest to the girl up in dismissal. The older woman shuffled away from the bonfire so her back was against the trunk closest to her. Swigging from the bottle of booze she had kept for herself, gnawed fingertips put the standard rifle back together without a glance to the task.

“You asked why a person like me is up here, all alone…if you have the time or interest, I’ll tell you.”

Shiraishi sat in a similar position to the woman, his frog-legs bare as he played with his toes. “Do you have to reassemble a gun while you do it? I feel like I’m about to be lined up and shot.”

“I’m just putting it back together and cleaning it after I left it in frost,” tossing a small but insurmountably weighted pouch to Sugimoto’s lap, the woman sniffled sharply. “You now  have all my ammo.”

“I really can’t understand why a lady would be out here on her own,” Tanigaki leaned to his right and tried to force the woman to take a cut of the meat she’d brought them.

“My older sister and I ran away from our father and his new family a long time ago; I wasn’t even a teenager back then. He was a wicked man, but I guess you can say all men are wicked in one way or another given the right motivation…no matter how fast or far you run.”

Sugimoto paused the deer skewer from his mouth. “You were a child then. Perhaps he was doing those things to provide for you.”

“It must be nice to be loved by your family.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That look on your face when you tried to explain his actions away without knowing anything said everything. You cared about your parents and you clearly felt their love in return. Somebody like you could never begin to understand what it’s like to be despised by the people meant to nurture and protect you.”

“What about your mother?” Asirpa asked, her innocence cutting through the dismal expressions of some of the others.

“She had always been sickly, so I wasn’t able to see her much. She died around eight months before my father remarried. I was seven at the time, so I don’t have many memories of her.” Coughing a curt laugh, the woman cracked her neck to the left. “It’s probably for the best.”

“That doesn’t explain why you’re the white Mountain-Tanuki of Hokkaido,” Ogata shot from his position curled around a far trunk on the look-out.

Sen turned her head and bared her teeth, “Who’re you calling a mountain tanuki, you squinty-eyed viper?”

“As much as I hate to agree with him, you keep speaking, but you’re not really telling us anything.”

“What do you want, my entire biography - it’s not as interesting as you may think.” Halfway through refilling the tobacco of her pipe, the stranger shrugged her shoulder and winced. “My older sister and I used to spend a lot of time at the port; it was calming to watch the waves ebb and flow, the water lull the same as always regardless of what was happening on land. It was the perfect hobby to keep away from the snobbish people who always hung around my father and it kept us out of the way from whatever was going on at the house.” Lighting her vice, verdant eyes watched the embers stuffed into her pipe glow a few inches from her face. “We learnt Japanese from a tutor by force before we even hit the mainland but it had an unexpected side-affect: my sister was always polite and friendly no matter who she was speaking to, and she was looked down upon for it. Wherever we were situated, people warmed up to her instantly; she was loved by the locals despite who she was the daughter of. It didn’t take long before she met an Ainu man who worked for our father at the docks. They started courting and fell in love, I guess.”

“I bet that pleased Daddy dearest immensely.”

“Don’t interrupt!” Asirpa smacked the convict while she inevitably leaned in to hear more.

“When our father found out about their relationship, he called the police and involved the military, and said that the Ainu had raped my sister - which was so far from the truth that even at such a young age it made me sick. They were going to execute him as soon as they found him. It was the last straw for my sister and she was going to elope with him, but refused to leave me. We ended up running away at the break of dawn while our father was way too interested in his ships. We took refuge at that man’s kotan. It was a dangerous idea, and selfish, but we had nowhere else to go.” Leaning against the tree trunk behind her to ease her ribs, the blonde pinched the corners of her lips. “If it weren’t for the fact my father’s business partner’s were adamant about leaving the country that morning due to a contract, then I have no doubt that he would have ordered the whole mountain to be razed to the ground out of spite.”

“So you stayed with that Ainu man’s family?” Sugimoto’s eyes softened a fraction when the woman turned her face away to exhale her smoke, the ink he was becoming familiar with clearly making an attempt at hiding the gouges carved into snow-white skin.  

“They had no reason to help us: we were causing them trouble, and foreigners during a time where people had to pick sides, but they saved us and gave us shelter. My sister married that seasonal worker out of love and soon after gave him a son, and they moved into their own home while I stayed with my brother-in-law’s father who was then alone due to being a widow.” Cracking the bones in her fingers one by one, Sen tilted her head in recollection for a time that seemed forever ago and yesterday all at the same time. “That man you’d probably call an ‘uncle’ could see how much I hated sewing and weaving, and I didn’t have the patience for helping rear children, so he took me hunting with him and taught me how to survive on my own if need be.”

“Perhaps he wanted to take you as his second wife,” Asirpa told, the innocence of her culture getting lost on the other men when they quickly pieced together the age difference. Grimaces followed.

“He was unlike any of the other men in that kotan; the others still had distrust and fear in their eyes when they looked at me - no matter how much time I spent there, their apprehension remained. Not like I could blame them…I would never blame them for it. I was terrified of that man who could click his fingers and wipe everyone living on that mountain out of the history books and he was my father.”

Shiraishi cringed, “I don’t like where this is going…”

“You have a rotten mind, just like your gob - it was nothing like that. My father-in-law was the real father I never had. Without his kindness and patience, and his unselfish ways which could very well have come back and seriously burnt his people, I would have been dead or working in a whore-house long before now. And in turn, where would that leave you lot?”

Before Asirpa could catch her partner’s upcoming blunder, Sugimoto gnawed on a deer skewer as he glowered at the side of the stranger’s face. “If you were so content there, why are you half-way across Hokkaido, murdering poachers and dwelling in the mountains wearing half of a bear?”

“Because I have nothing to go back to any more.”

The sharpshooter had no qualms about picking open scabs, apparently. “Are they dead?”

Shiraishi cried out as the small girl curled into herself in knowing. “Ogata!”

The newest addition to the group didn’t display any hurt. In fact, she barely showed anything at all bar a blush caused by the booze she was chugging as fast as she took breath. “Yeah, they’re dead. About twelve years ago, a wave of smallpox ravaged the kotan we were in, and several others in the nearby area.” Leaning to the side, she picked up the bottle of sake and took two swigs while her tobacco smouldered in the device she was holding in the other. “The people I chose as my real family died, along with the majority of the other families who refused to move because they believed it was their land come what may. Those who survived dispersed, and I set out on my own.”

Asirpa turned to look up at the body she was resting against. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Sen barked a laugh. It was loud, and obnoxious, and her right hand flopped onto the  smal body next to her. Still, left nimble fingers tweaked at her surroundings. Twiddling the metal cuffs in her hair, the woman’s brow furrowed at the expressions she was receiving.

“I hoped none of you would look at me with pity. I really makes my booze taste bad.” Startling those she was sat with from the morbid realization of the telling, she held up her hand lazily by her chest and tilted her head. “Is there a person sat here who hasn’t lost something important to them: A family, a lover, an inheritance, an ideal trodden on, freedom?” She pointed at each of them individually and continued after making a note of their expressions. “I don’t see why I should get any sympathy. Besides, I don’t want, nor need it.” Taking a drag on her kiseru, the ashen woman stretched her legs out and warmed the bottom of her feet by the fire. “I survived. Maybe for a reason, maybe not. Maybe because the Gods really do like to torment me. I’ll tell you the same thing I told them all those years ago: they shouldn’t have pissed me off by killing the only things I learnt to love, because I’m petty enough to keep up an argument with even Gods. After all, I have nothing better to do.”

The stoic expressions of those listening to the brazen words faltered when Asirpa chuckled. Stuffing her face with a second helping of skewered deer, the youngest stared the newcomer in the eye. “The Gods don’t like to be mocked, but they do like tenacity.”

“I can proudly say I have that in spades, if nothing else.”

“If what you say is true, about having nothing better to do, you should join us.”

Sen quirked her brow, not quite swayed by the possibility of loot - her knowledge of the danger being exponentially greater than anything that they could possibly find, even if the rumours were true. “On your treasure hunt?”

Sugimoto frowned at the stranger before turning his attention to the small girl. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

One arm behind her head, the white haired female rubbed her feet together by the embers. “He’s right. I could be tricking you.”

Asirpa shot up and lurched at the older woman. On her knees, now between the older female’s legs, the small girl smacked the top of muscular thighs with conviction as she stared up into verdant eyes surrounded by black. “You said something to me the first night we met. You looked me in the eye and said something I didn’t expect you to say.”

“What about it?”

The little girl frowned and tightened her grip on the cloth hanging loose over firm muscles. “I believe you.”

Dropping her pipe into an empty dish, hot palms patted cold digits. “That’s something I haven’t heard in earnest in a long while.”

“What do you say? Will you come with us?”

“Hmm…I guess I can...” Sen made a thoughtful hum and pointed dramatically at the girl almost half her height and less than half her age. “Only if you call me Sapo!”

“E-eh?”

Sugimoto looked between the two females. “What’s that mean?”

“Sapo means older sister.”

Turning onto his side, away from the group, Ogata propped his head on his hand and snorted before looking off into the darkness. “I think there’s some deep trauma lodged in that thick skull of hers.”

Squinting a glower at the speaker’s back, Sen hissed. “I’m going to set your beard on fire while you sleep.”

Shiraishi plastered his palms over his head and ran his hands down his chops only to realize they were still mostly numb. “I’m glad I’m bald.”

“We should finish up eating and go to sleep soon so we can make an early start,” already packing his belongings up, Tanigaki glanced to the other members of the group to make sure they weren’t too into the idea of drinking alcohol all night long.

Nodding with a clap, the blonde uncharacteristically gave in to sensibility without a fight. “That settles it then. We’ll carry on moving towards Kushiro when it gets light.”

Face flushed and lids heavy, Sugimoto repeatedly jut his empty gourd at Sen. Presumably this was his way of asking her for a refill without actually asking her for anything. “Why Kushiro?”

“I heard of a man in that area who had odd tattoos on his upper body. Aside from that, the 7th Division sent out a small recon squad yesterday while heading through Oketo on their way to Nemuro, so it wasn’t that hard to piece it together. You’ve also had bounty hunters tracking you from a few towns back.”

“How do you know that?”

“You hear a lot of interesting things in the men’s bathhouse.” Cracking her neck to the side, she held her free hand up by her shoulder. “Of course, I can’t say for sure, as I’ve also heard on more than one occasion that the boss of a local Yakuza gang can turn into a dragon, so it’s sketchy at best.”

“Could he?” The little girl asked.

“Could he what?”

“Turn into a dragon?”

“I dunno - I was busy dealing with a different kind of serpent.”

“Don’t tell her things like that!” Sugimoto and Shiraishi did their best to scold the lewd implication but nothing substantial came of it.

“Tch, what will the poor kid do when she gets married and knows nothing about male anatomy. Her female family members are supposed to prepare her for that kind of life, but she’s out here with you morons when she’s supposed to be learning to be a ‘good Ainu woman’. As her senior, I have a duty to teach her, even if it’s awkward for everyone else.” Patting the top of the younger girl’s head, Sen side-eyed the men. “Most importantly, bad sex is a lead cause in unhappy marriage.”

“Stop it,” Sugimoto yapped.

Asirpa’s face brightened when she finally understood part of the conversation. “It’s not about the size, it’s about the-” Sugimoto clasped his hand over Asirpa’s mouth, a guilty look blatant on his face.

“And just what have you been telling her?”

“It wasn’t me!”

Shaking her head with a clear look of disgust for the man, Sen took Asirpa clean out of his grasp and turned away with the smaller girl buried in her bust. “Were you grooming her?”

“Fuck off, you witch. I was doing no such thing! How could you say tha-”

“-Asirpa, sweetheart, have you seen any of these men’s penises?”

“All of them.”

“You’re all rotten.”

“It’s not like that! Asirpa, tell her the context!”

Already staring up at the natural canopy under his covers, Tanigaki mumbled under his breath, “what did I do…?”

Updated: 21st September 2020 - 18:00