Spirit Unbreakable

It was the early hours of morning, the time that everyone still considered nighttime. Riumi couldn’t sleep. His mind was full of decisions he had to make. He sat in the training room staring out the open screens at the city lights. The Guardian Outpost had been a monastery once. The traditional building and landscape remained the same, a preservation of the past. It sat on the hillside overlooking the sprawling city. As Riumi stared into the ocean of lights, he caressed the object in his hand.

After leaving Mikomi, Riumi had gone to the training room. He had found Damian there. He had told Damian all that had transpired since they had last met which had led to what he had to do now.

“I have a plan, but I’m going to need the help of a few Guardians,” Riumi had said.

“What kind of a plan?” Damian gestured for Riumi to follow him and he sat near the open screens that overlooked the garden.

“Well assuming that the UNG are not particularly worried about me being a Guardian, I believe that they are going to make an attempt to kidnap Mikomi again.”

“You should leave her here. They wouldn’t dare touch her if she stayed here at the Outpost.”

“I know Mikomi well enough to know that if I left her here she would find some way to get away from you and try to come after me. Unfortunately, her safety isn’t foremost in her mind.”

“She loves you too much.”

Riumi tensed at the comment and looked at Damian. “It’s not that. She just sees me as a means of excitement in her life and doesn’t see the danger that it could bring to her. She is a child and so thinks she is invincible.”

Damian shook his head. Riumi was just a child himself and couldn’t see things for what they were. He was too driven by his quest.

“I agree. You have to take her with you to France.”

Riumi nodded. “I know that the UNG are going to be on the lookout for me and her. They are going to find out that I have left Japan and I just want to give them more than one destination to have to check in to.”

“I see what you need. Decoys. There are quite a few Guardians with children that I am sure would be willing to lend a hand. To tell you the truth, it is almost uncanny how perfect the timing is. I and the crew that came with me are now headed back to our respective nations since the Guardian examinations are done. I could make arrangements for us all to leave tomorrow and you and Mikomi could be thrown into the mix.”

“Thanks Damian. I appreciate all that you have done for me.” Damian looked at Riumi, he could tell that something else was still bothering the boy.

“You look pensive, Riumi. What else is on your mind?”

Riumi glanced into the garden, his eyes distant, no longer observing the things that were before him. “I’m worried I won’t be able to keep her safe. I can’t be with her every moment.”

Damian patted Riumi consolingly on the knee and got up from where he sat. “I think I may have something that will put your mind at rest, at least a little.”

Riumi looked up from his distant gaze nonplussed and hopeful. Damian smirked and wondered why Riumi tried to hide how much he cared about the little girl when it was so obvious to everyone but the two involved. It was a problem he knew that they would have to work out for themselves.

Footsteps in the corridor woke Riumi from his thoughts and his mind returned to the present and the cold dark night surrounding him. He turned to see who had caused the disturbance and saw Mikomi standing in the door holding lantern. The haunting glow of the lantern enveloped Mikomi almost as if casting a pall on her future.

“Damian-san thought I might find you here,” she whispered afraid that anything more would provoke an undesired response.

“Mikomi, I –” He looked at her and saw her hopeful pleading eyes and averted his gaze. He didn’t notice Mikomi as she became disheartened and began to turn away.

“I’ll go,” she couldn’t keep the hitch from her voice.

Riumi jumped to his feet and tried to catch her before she left. “Wait, Mikomi. Have you ever been trained in any form of self-defence?”

Mikomi turned back to Riumi just as he caught her shirt and beamed. “I’ve been training in jujutsu almost my whole life.” She brought the lantern over to where Riumi stood and suddenly noticed that he was holding something in his right hand. “What’s that?”

Riumi glanced at the objects in his hand and then back at Mikomi. “I didn’t know that.”

Mikomi looked from the objects in Riumi’s hand back to his face. “They wouldn’t let me train in kendo, not without a sponsor, and I wanted to make sure that I could stand up for myself, so I went with jujutsu –” Mikomi stopped abruptly and shuffled her feet turning her gaze away from Riumi. After a moment she continued, “When I met you and saw you that day practicing Kendo with a stick, I always wanted to be strong like you.”

“Mikomi, I don’t know if I am always going to be there to protect you. Damian found these for you. I thought I could teach you some tessenjutsu, it’ll be easier to teach you now that I know you have some martial arts training.” He shoved the objects into Mikomi’s hands and she took the weight of them. Curious, she set the lantern on the tatami mat and examined the objects in its light.

She found that she was hold a pair of tessen, Japanese war fans made of iron. She flicked her wrist deftly and opened one of the fans placing the other on the ground. Her eyes greedily devoured the surface of the fan. She had never seen such a decorative tessen before. It looked amazingly like a fan that the geisha would use in their performances every spring for Kamogawa Odori. It was a pale blue colour with a frosted gold covering the middle where plum blossoms hung on thin branches. It was the loveliest gift she had ever received. She touched the edge of the fan and flinched when her finger came away bleeding.

“It may look like a decorative fan, Mikomi, but it’s a tessen, don’t forget that. Damian and I thought that it would best if you could defend yourself, in case something happens to me.”

Mikomi stuck the bleeding finger in her mouth and looked a Riumi. “But, it’s against the law for me to carry a weapon.”

“Not if you’re my apprentice,” Riumi replied and grabbed the lantern. He started to leave the room causing Mikomi to collapse the tessen and follow after him.

When she caught up to him she grabbed his sleeve and Riumi stopped. He glanced at her without turning his head and noticed she was bowing, her head looking at the floor beneath her feet.

“I thought you were going to leave me behind,” she finally said.

“You wouldn’t have stayed here if I had done that. Am I right?”

Mikomi stood upright beside Riumi and let go of his sleeve, “No.”

“Then by leaving you behind I would have just cause more trouble for myself. You would have been caught and I would just have had to come after you. At least this way I can keep an eye on you.” Riumi walked forward leaving her in the hallway to look after his retreating frame.

Mikomi looked at the tessen in her hands and hugged them tightly to her chest. She snapped to attention when she heard Riumi speak.

“We are leaving for France tomorrow evening. We’ll start practice in the morning.” Mikomi did not respond, instead she bowed again to him. When she stood erect, Riumi was gone. Mikomi walked towards her room, a smile engraved on her face.

As Riumi disappeared around the corner, wandering towards the room that had been given to him, he felt lightheaded. Placing his hand at his temple he closed his eyes for a moment and rested against the wall. I shouldn’t have stayed up so late, he thought.

As he was about to open his eyes and move on, he had a sudden sharp sensation in his head. When he did open his eyes, he was no longer staring at the darkened hallway of the Guardian Outpost, but instead, he felt someone holding him in a tight embrace, there were hot tears on his face soaking into the shirt which was obscuring his vision. He heard a woman speaking in anguish, “How many hundreds of thousands of voices were silenced by my hand?”

He felt an overwhelming despair fill him, and as fast as the strange vision had come, it vanished. Riumi saw one last glimpse of the dark hallway he was standing in before he collapsed and the world before him vanished.

When Riumi awoke, it was to the sound of heavy breathing. When he opened his eyes, he found them focusing on the dancing frame of Mikomi. The sun was shining in through the screens and he was lying on a futon. He watched Mikomi dancing with her new tessen. She looked graceful as she performed the Kyomai dance that he had seen Geisha perform at Kamogawa Odori. He saw her wince every time she brought her injured shoulder up too far, but he couldn’t help but smile at her determination to push through the pain.

“I didn’t know you knew Kyomai, Mikomi,” Riumi said as he sat up. His head still ached from whatever had occurred last night. The strange vision. He had never had one while he was awake before. They are getting worse. He was sure now that they weren’t memories. So what were they exactly?

“My class went to Kamogawa Odori a few years ago and I loved it so much that I started to learn. These tessen are heavier than the fans I am used to using though. I thought practicing Kyomai with them might make me handle them better when learning tessenjutsu,” she stopped suddenly and came closer to where Riumi had sat up, “What happened to you last night. When I came around the corner you just collapsed onto the floor. I had to get Damian to help me get you back here. I was really worried about you Riumi.” Tears were welling in her eyes as she spoke which made Riumi look away uncomfortably.

“I’ve been having strange dreams lately,” Riumi finally said.

“But you weren’t sleeping.” Mikomi grasped Riumi’s hand which made Riumi turn to regard her. She was wiping her tears with her free hand, “What will happen to me if you can’t protect me? I’m counting on you, Arashi-san.”

Riumi pulled his hand away from Mikomi’s grasp and flung back the covers. “Let me get dressed and we can start practice.” As he stood, he glanced at the clock on the wall. They had less than six hours before they left for France, hopefully without the UNG following them every step of the way.

Mikomi berated herself for the weakness she had shown to Riumi. Her face turned stony, a reflection of his, and she turned away from him. She had to show him that she was strong enough to take care of herself so that he wouldn’t feel that she was such a burden.

When Riumi returned freshly showered and in a new set of clothes, he saw that Mikomi had switched from Kyomai to jujutsu. She stopped when he appeared in the doorway. He held a sonic pulse rod, the same weapon that had been used on him the previous day by the incursion team that had come after Mikomi.

“How is your arm feeling, Mikomi?” Riumi asked. He stopped her so he could examine her left arm.

“It’s fine,” she said wincing as Riumi lifted her arm above her head.

“Your face says otherwise,” Riumi sighed, “Don’t push yourself too hard Mikomi. You need it to heal properly or you could damage your arm to the point where you would be unable to use it. Let’s practice some defence, but I would like you to rely more on your right arm for today.”

“Defence against a pulse rod?” Mikomi asked incredulously.

Riumi handed her a pair of gloves. “I think those should fit.” He ignored her question. “Those gloves should help stop your body from absorbing the impact of the pulse that will travel from the tessen. We won’t try manoeuvres today, I just want you to try and get used to blocking the sonic pulses, standing against the impact, and getting used to handling the tessen with gloves on.”

Mikomi put on the gloves and flexed her hands, trying to get used to the mesh restriction. She grabbed her tessen and flicked her wrists letting them fly open, the brilliant colours caught the sunlight and reflected the glowing patterns onto Riumi’s black attire. She took a moment to get used to the feel of the tessen through the gloves, dropping them a few times, and then nodded to Riumi. “I think I’m ready.”

“All right, all I want you to do is watch for the pulse distortion. Do you know what that looks like?” Riumi asked.

“Seeing as the only time I was ever shot at was at the orphanage yesterday and you were blocking my view, no.”

“It’s hard to see if you don’t know what you’re looking for,” Riumi instructed. “It looks similar to a heat wave that you see coming off of the road on a hot day, but it’s spherical. I’ll shoot a few practice shots at that training dummy behind you. Try and follow the pulse with your eyes.”

Mikomi nodded and stepped aside. She stared intently at the pulse rod and watched as a ripple of energy started close to where Riumi held the weapon in his hand and extended to the end detaching itself and disappearing into the air. She heard it impact the dummy and stared at Riumi.

“This might take a while,” Mikomi said and sat down.

She was surprised to see a smile on Riumi’s face as she sat down on the tatami mats. It was such a rare occurrence that she wondered what had prompted it.

“Don’t worry Mikomi. This is why we are doing this, while we have the time to observe, rather than waiting until we have to defend ourselves against it in the real world. There are fewer distractions here, and if you learn to notice it now, than even with distractions you’ll be able to spot it.”

He didn’t tell her the reason that he was smiling. He was suddenly reminded of a time long ago while he was still in elementary school. Hiroshi had ‘acquired’ a sonic pulse rod and had subjected Riumi to an improvised game of tag, Hiroshi being the grand master and Riumi the target. After being hit many times, even on a low setting, Riumi had learned exactly what a sonic pulse looked like. With a few deft dodges, Riumi had overtaken Hiroshi and turned the sport around. At the end of it, they had both ended up winded, laughing on the grass, numb from head to toe.

“I think I’ve got it,” Mikomi said nearly an hour later. Riumi powered the weapon down to a lower setting and Mikomi positioned herself in front of the training dummy.

“I’ve set it low enough that it won’t knock you out if you miss. Your objective for now is to use your tessen to stop the pulses.” Mikomi nodded and Riumi shot the first pulse. He wondered if Mikomi had gained the ability to slow her perception of events enough to watch the fast moving pulse accurately. He discovered after a few practice shots that she had not. He could see she was getting frustrated with every shot that tingled and numbed her skin. Riumi didn’t know what to suggest.

“Do you want to take a break, Mikomi?”

Mikomi looked at him with fierceness. She was tired of looking so weak in front of Riumi, but she couldn’t concentrate. Realization suddenly dawned on her. When she had always practiced jujutsu or Kyomai previously, she had always done it with music. It helped her concentrate on her task if she knew that the sounds she was hearing were constant. She wasn’t waiting for a change; she wasn’t even listening to it. The music helped her concentrate on her other senses because she knew that the music had nothing to do with what she was trying to concentrate on doing, and tuning it out became second nature. Besides, her music held the emotions to help her keep determined. She brought out her Flimsy that one the caretakers at the orphanage had given her and slipped in her wireless ear buds. She looked a Riumi who was giving her a curious look.

“Music helps me concentrate,” she said. She tapped the screen and let the music encase her.

Riumi was momentarily baffled by Mikomi’s approach, but remembered that he had used similar techniques to heighten his other senses, a blindfold or ear plugs. Mikomi’s was just a more modern solution. He fired the weapon and watched as Mikomi’s accuracy steadily increased. After a little while, he strengthened the pulse to what would normally disable a child of Mikomi’s size and fired. Mikomi let the tessen take the impact and he watched as the tessen clattered to the ground. Mikomi dropped the other one as well and grabbed her hand, a look of surprise on her face. She took one of her ear buds out and glared at Riumi.

“My whole hand is numb!”

“I thought it was about time that we moved on to the third part of today’s training. Do you think you could do it without the music? You know there isn’t always going to be music to keep you focused.”

Mikomi pouted as she shook her arm in attempt to return feeling to it. “Sure there will. I mean I always have my music with me.”

Riumi came up beside her and took the other ear bud out of her ear. “I’m trying to tell you that I don’t think that you need them anymore. At least try. You know what it feels like when you concentrate with your music on so why not try to get that same level of concentration without it.”

Mikomi nodded, feeling nervous now that she knew that one error would have her passed out on the ground. The feeling back in her hand, she grabbed her tessen and took her stance. Riumi fired again and Mikomi blocked with her left, a little nervous that her right hand wasn’t ready for another impact.

When it hit, her hand went numb once again and she lost her grip on her tessen. Riumi gave her another few minutes to regain feeling. While Mikomi sat rubbing her hand and arm, she had a thought. If the impact was too much for one hand to handle on its own, than maybe she could use both tessen to disperse the pulse. She got up from the floor and grabbed her tessen. Riumi aimed and fired. He was intrigued by the compromise that Mikomi had come up with as he watched her link the tessen together letting both arms absorb some of the impact. The result was that she did not drop her tessen.

“Very good, Mikomi. Practice like that until you can build up your stamina,” Riumi glanced at the clock again, “Another hour and then let’s get ready to leave.” He turned back to Mikomi who beaming from his sudden praise. She had his attention now.