The Day of Thunder

[Jiyo Sora]

It had been a very long time since he'd traveled the roads alone. For the past seventeen years or so, he'd usually had at least one of the children with him, if not his whole family, and whenever he traveled with any of them, he'd always made sure he wasn't the only guard along for the ride.

And even when he'd made trips without any of them, Shiba, Jiyo, or Yuzuru had usually insisted that he take a small guard detail, and given his high opinion of all three of them, he'd usually acquiesced.

But not this time.

He walked north, neither showing off nor taking any great pains to conceal his name-bedecked armor, his weapons, or his oracular discolored eye.

It was a learning experience.

He'd seen the madness- the corruption of the Realm of Evil- before, of course. He'd led a few details of Jiyo bushi in the necessary violence of containing and purging... outbreaks. He also knew full well how widespread the trouble was. In addition to the formal Imperial reports coming in from all over the Empire, his own sources had kept him apprised.

He had known, intellectually, how bad things had gotten. He knew that Shinsei hadn't called him up for anything simple or easy.

He doesn't do simple or easy, the poor bastard.

But as Sora marched north, along roads that had become very familiar to him over the past twenty years, the full impact came home to him.

The entire empire was afraid- from the bleary-eyed samurai at various stops along the way, clearly afraid to get some sleep to the farmers, all too many of whom had seen or knew of someone falling to the touch of Jigoku. But on some level, he'd been prepared for that.

He had not been prepared for the burden of others' hope.

Sora was hardly the most famous man in the Empire. He wasn't even the most famous former Hikaru tribesman now service to the Kami.

But he was known well enough that word got around. Jiyo Sora, who had gone south to help rescue Hisomu- who had been one of the five to venture into the heart of Jigoku itself, and who had returned unharmed. Who had been the driving force behind the imperial library system which had brought literacy to so much of the Empire's population. Who had protected the Emperor's daughters when they had been children. Who had been to every corner of the Empire.

If only people had been able to be disappointed that the man they'd heard of was simply a forty-six year old father of five, no longer as fast or as dangerous as he'd been twenty years past, marching north alone at the behest of a monk with absolutely no idea what he was supposed to do when he got there.

But no.

Farmers smiled and offered him places to sleep in their humble homes. Weary bushi perked up, bowing formally and calling him "Jiyo Sora-sama" with vim and vigor when they either read his name or, in a few cases, recognized him.

They trusted him. They trusted him to play hero yet again and do something about the literal nightmares stalking the Empire.

They trusted him more blindly than his own children did. Even Reiko and Kozan, who had only seen five winters, knew their father was just a man. An older man than many, who had to eat, drink, and sleep like anyone else, and who sometimes came home in a foul temper that only they could save him from.

The people of the Empire, on the other hand, saw him for the story, rather than the man.

By the time Sora had crossed the border into the Lion provinces, he was already feeling burdened. He let himself hope that things might be different- after all, he and the Lion Clan were worlds apart in many respects, and if he had gotten along well with the younger generation at the Winter Court, that shouldn't have meant much.

But no. If anything, the stories Akodo's people had heard were even more idealized. And the Lion's adherence to hierarchy also meant that Sora was a man with Authority. And people with Authority were supposed to fix things.

And so his story grew.

Three days into his trip through the Lion lands, he encountered a minor outbreak of madness, and stepped in to do what he could.

The one crazed farmer he killed before the man could grab a child (and had Sora been terrified he'd slip up and skewer the kid on his naginata instead of the wildly capering madman? Oh yes) became five madmen in the tenth re-telling. If the story lasted another century, he'd probably be slaughtering four hundred armored and armed lunatics at a time, all by himself, while the fires of the Sun played along his naginata's blade.

How to tell them that without the peoples whose aliases covered his armor in characters of bronze hue he wouldn't have amounted to a damned thing?
How to tell them that whatever the stories might say, that he had always been more lucky than virtuous?
How to tell them that he was glad they were reassured by his presence, because he sure as hell wasn't?

He couldn't.

So he accepted the smiles, the lodging, the food, and yes, the burden of their hope.

But he didn't like it very much.