The Day of Thunder

Ranmaru blinked. "Huh. I meant it more like... Concubinage might not be so bad." He crossed his arms in deep thought, for him at least. Not everyone was supposed to be able to enjoy his precious seed.

"Hey I'll have you know that my mom is the best anyone could ask of a woman! She's great at making great things." He flicked his hair. "Like me!" Next he patted his daisho. "And these!"

"She did a fucking great job . . . "

He wasn't looking at the swords.

"Don't get why the concubine stays around. Job's finished, go find a new one."

It wasn't entirely sure if he realised he'd said that aloud.

Satsuki was about to make a rebuttal to Ranmaru, but thankfully Hoto-Hori piped up first. "Right, agreed on that at least." A nod.

"Anyway, I have better stuff to do than to be some third-wheel to a loving family, so yeah... no thanks," she stuck her tongue out at Ranmaru and made a face. "And you should be nicer to women. Not telling you to fall madly in love with them or anything, you know, but like, you don't see the Emperor declaring his sisters to be inferior to him and his brothers."

"Pass around the concubines...?" Ranmaru furrowed his brow. He'd assumed that the one would stick around in his philosophy but this was... Well, he couldn't think of the logistics of it. "A rotation would make inheritance weird..." This was definitely something to think about while he was alone in his manly manner.

"But if we compare their achievements, are they not lesser than their brothers?" Ranmaru scratched the back of his head. "Not to say that I stand on equal footing as any of them." Could he beat Doji in a wrestling contest? He actually wasn't sure.

He blinked, whistled and grinned.

"You obviously haven't seen Doji and Yuzuru fucking going for each other's throats with words in court, or Shinjo beating the bloody living daylights out of someone on the practise field."

"And," her tone turned serious now, "auntie Doji is currently doing all she can to protect us all. And I won't tolerate anyone saying anything bad about her." The look she gave Ranmaru was very pointed.

"Aaaaanyway, before we got sidetracked," why did Ranmaru always dumb down everything around him? "is there anything we can help you with, Hoto-Hori-sama?"

"You won't tolerate it?" Ranmaru stared back at her, more like a petulant child than a real challenge. "But okay, sure. I didn't get to see any of that since I had other things to do." Wrestling with Doji or Shinjo was a little ridiculous anyways. They'd complain if he used their superfluous appendages against them! But he could push a man off of him by the chest without problem...

The world was complicated. "I was the under the impression that he had handled it himself. Like a man."

"Oh everything is fine now. Absolutely fucking fine. . . . . How are you?"

He was beginning to think that maybe these two didn't like each other much.

Her eyes narrowed but managed to hold her tongue this time at least. "I'm fine. Really. Even if some test my patience. Have you come here to track down portals, perhaps? I might be of some assistance if you need."

She liked uncle Yuzuru and most of the Imperials she had met or knew, so of course she'd offer to help. Satsuki's mother often stressed that it was important to help.

"Portals? Does that have anything to do with all this Corruption stuff or is it something else?" Ranmaru's question was, of course, directed at the other man in the conversation.

He blinked, having not expected actual inquiring questions.

"Well no . . . I'm here to see what the fucking donkey is up to. Summoning people to the middle of nowhere for his own weird shit reasons. Although if there are any portals around I'll have to scout them and report back."

Ranmaru's question got Hoto-Hori's serious face to appear.

"Yeah, some of them are really fucking dangerous. Rip your face off without a second glance fucking dangerous if it's somewhere like gaki-do. Even one to Chikushudo cna be dangerous depending on what comes through it. You might get fluffy bunnies or starving wolves . . . fuck knows what sometimes."

Stories of the spirit realms was familiar to her - her mother had intimate knowledge of many of the realms as a Spiritwalker.

"W...wait, what? Donkey?" Satsuki felt certain she hadn't seen any donkeys in camp.

"No portals full of whacky things, which means that the donkey has summoned us in a different sense." Ranmaru, in a rare sense of insight, snapped his fingers. "Shinsei!" he blinked. "Donkey?"

"Spot on. Fucking donkey summoning folks out to the middle of fucking nowhere. If he's flinging out weird shit then I'll have to stop him."

He nodded at himself . . . somehow.

Oh no. How embarrassing. Sanmaru of all possible people guessed something she didn't! Maybe it wasn't too late to immolate him and thus remove all evidence...

"What sort of 'shit' exactly are you keeping an eye out for?" What she was learning more and more with each year was that Shinsei was a lot more controversial with people than her mother had let her on.

"I thought he was going to tell us all about some grand plan to stop this, uh, Corruption stuff." Ranmaru looked over at Satsuki. It seemed that, oddly enough, they could agree on one thing; they had no idea about the man's controversies. Maybe it was a Dragon thing.

"That fucking donkey says one things and means five others. Every single fucking time. He's like a doomcrow with an even worse fucking crow, although that particular fuckwit seems to have gotten the cluestick and buggered off now."

The smiles and sparkles were gone now he could rant about his least favourite corvid . . . oh wait the demon raven . . . second least favourite corvid.

"You seem to know them very well...?"

There was something very familiar about this Yuzuru. "Oh... oh, now I remember! You were at Shiba's first Winter Court five years ago, right?"

Ranmaru crossed his arms as he listened to all this. At some point, he glanced down and decided to puff up his chest a bit.

"The Winter Court? Seems like a big hassle to me..."

"Yes I was. What a fuck up that was as well."

Well he had been there . . . although maybe he looked a little bit different back then.