The Day of Thunder

[Togashi Satsuki]

Having picked up the fact that there was a shrine in the village, Satsuki had really wanted to go there. Not only to pray, but to pay her respects to the local spirits and learn more of the village's spiritual traditions. Like this upcoming ritual they had for the festival.

"... What do you mean it's off-limits?" she was puzzled, but didn't cause a scene. "I mean, I understand, but..." the young woman sighed, turning away from the steps with disappointment.

[Jiyo Sora]

"As your Dad would say if he could be bothered to string that many syllables together, 'All in due time.'"

Sora ambled up with a grin.

"What the hell are you doing here, kid?"

[Togashi Satsuki]

She sighed, and shook her head. A grin on her face in return of course. "I could ask the same of you, old man. Thought you would be enjoying your retirement at this point, and let us young 'uns deal with all the doom going on these days?"

With a laugh she stepped forward and offered Sora a hug. "It's good to see you again."

[Jiyo Sora]

He returned the hug, then, as they pulled back, put a hand on each of her shoulders, as if he were looking for something.

"Hm. Hm. Seems like you haven't aged enough to have to deal with doom unsupported. Besides. You know I never figured out what to do with myself in peacetime."

A blatant lie, and she knew it.

"But you know how it is, you're sitting around with kids climbing the walls and some madman who sent you to hell sends you word he wants to see you..."

[Togashi Satsuki]

Her eyes scrutinized his in return. Having seen his strange eyes since she was young, his evil eyes had never really bothered her, and at some point when she was a small kid she had said something along the lines of his eye being like a pretty ember.

"It will be a hundred years before I age as much as you have, uncle Sora," Satsuki joked. "... Shinsei asked you to come huh? Didn't think he'd do that to an old man."

[Jiyo Sora]

"Well. What do you know about this Thunder business? Because I can tell you, I'm not here to be one, we're all pretty clear on that. So, without knowing what the hell it is I'm doing here, off I tromped."

He dropped the bantering tone for a moment and sighed.

"But believe me, he's going to answer for making me leave Kinyoubi with two five year old hellions to wrangle. Still. Seems like a lot of my friends are here, so I have that going for me."

[Togashi Satsuki]

"Wow, I've been out of the loop... congratulations to your family! And yeah! That is just cruel to leave that saint of a woman alone with the kids." She even pushed up her sleeves now. "Tell me which tent in his and I'll give him a piece of my mind."

It was uncertain if she meant to beat him up, or burn his tent down. Both seemed equally likely.

"As for this Thunder-stuff," barring anything said publicly by Shinsei earlier that hadn't happened yet, "I came here because I felt drawn here. Like... something of importance is going to happen here very soon. I heard Shinsei was headed north with some followers, but I travelled on my own here, following my own senses."

[Jiyo Sora]

"On your own, huh? "

He grinned.

"Not what I heard. I heard you walked in with one of the many Daimyo I don't get along with and a few others, including a certain bluebird. Not like poor lonely old Sora who had to make do with running into some monks, Ai, and Wu Zhe the day I got here..."

[Togashi Satsuki]

"Well, more or less on my own," she chuckled, admitting to the fact that she hadn't been on her own. "But it's true, I travelled here with Genji and his cousin Akito, as well as Doji Hikaru, and Lady Makime. She told a rather funny story about you, by the way."

"I would've thought you'd travel with the rest of the Imperials, or Shinsei himself?"

[Jiyo Sora]

"Shinsei hasn't even got his crow with him, what chance did I have? And far as that goes, you see any other Imperials here? We're stretched pretty thin, Boss's orders."

He paused.

"Makime told the wall story, didn't she?"

It wasn't like he and Makime had enjoyed (for a given value of enjoy) many other interactions in their lives.

He started chuckling.

"Always gets it wrong. Tell me, did this version have me shouting before Anjing got there?"

[Togashi Satsuki]

"You're not the only one with the Imperial phoenix though," she did point out.

"As for Makime, yeah, it was the wall-story. Not a story I expected her to tell, to be completely honest! And, yeah, she did say you were screaming like a petulant child on top of the wall, taking a piss on it." Remembering the tale, she already started grinning with laughter.

[Jiyo Sora]

"Oh please, you can't tell me you buy that Yuzuru trained anyone who swears even more than I do... Anyway. Makime's half right. The screaming like a petulant child started with Anjing. Saw me taking a leak on her ideal man's monument to his own importance and took it poorly. So, I got myself stowed away, helped her the last little bit of climbing the wall- which really did prove how fucking useless it was without anyone guarding it if the two of us could both climb it with weapons and armor- and we got into a bit of a shouting match. And since Anjing and I are both as stubborn as we are loud, it went on for a bit."

He paused, shook his head and chuckled.

"I'm not surprised Makime gets it wrong though, she's got this habit of trying to reframe reality to suit her. Did she tell you what she shouted up at us from where she was sketching the wall from the ground?"

[Togashi Satsuki]

Satsuki covered her mouth partially, only to not burst out laughing as she was vividly imagining the whole thing. "She said," snicker, "she said fight it out or fuck it out."

This time her laughter bubbled up fully. If there was anything she certainly inherited from her mother, it was that free-spirit laughter of hers. "I never ever thought I'd hear her say something like that, and now it's just burned into my skull!"

[Jiyo Sora]

"Well, she got that part of the story right. And it kind of worked in one way, because Anjing and I both turned on her in the short-term. Turned into a sort of three-way argument at that point. But it did get us off of the top of that damned stupid wall to go better yell at her and each other."

He shook his head.

"Don't know who would have won if we'd taken to throwing punches- Anjing and I, that is- but I can tell you that literally nobody won that wider shouting match. Three young idiots, all with strong opinions and adding up to maybe one half-wit between the three of us."

[Togashi Satsuki]

"That sounds about right from the story she told, yeah," laughing still, she wiped tears from the corners of her eyes. "And to think I thought she was gonna tell some weird story about my mom or something when we asked her for tales of that time, and then she turned out that gem."

Satsuki regarded him with a grin. "Auntie Anjing is here as well, you know. If you wanna get into a new shouting match, or build a wall."

[Jiyo Sora]

He sighed.

"I doubt our interactions would be so pleasant this time. The Crab.... well."

[Togashi Satsuki]

"You can't fault them for how they feel, at least the older ones," Satsuki chided Sora little. "I know uncle Shiba did what he had to do, but it doesn't change that it was a loss of ancestral lands for those who were once of the Seidou, and a pretty long journey to make to very inhospitable lands."

She did prefer for everyone to get along, but sometimes you just couldn't fault people for being upset. "Do you think it would go that poorly?"

[Jiyo Sora]

"The alternative was leaving them to face the Nezumi's retribution. They have every right to be unhappy, but their refusal to accept where the responsibility lies speaks volumes. They blame the Boss for a choice their own leadership forced upon him, and cherish their resentment."

He sighed, and shook his head.

"Add those grievances to the personal animosity between Anjing and myself? I think a stony silence would be the best outcome available."

[Togashi Satsuki]

"Ugh, you old people." Satsuki rolled her eyes. "Always so set in your opinions, not considering looking at things differently. They didn't have to be moved to the ass-end of the Empire, you know. I get why Shiba did what he did, but that was... too extreme."

Reminded her a bit of the talk about drastic measures earlier that day.

"Sometimes there are no perfect choices though. I admit that much. Doesn't mean that there aren't consequences to the less perfect ones. Belittling the Crab for their situation isn't helping it, to be honest." She shrugged, knowing that Sora was as stubborn as a mountain goat that didn't respect no man.

[Jiyo Sora]

"And where else would they have been better? Once they were uprooted from their homeland with no way back, where would you have had a mountain people like the former Seidou sent? The Shinomen Mori? Perhaps give them the former Stag lands so they could sit looking south at lands they thought of as theirs every day?"

He shook his head.

"It was a shit state of affairs. I am not belittling them, Satsuki. I am simply not having any part of the little fables they tell themselves about why their hardships were inflicted upon them. And as long as they cling to those fables, how, pray tell, are we to expect them to warm to any representative of the Imperial Families?"

A sigh, then.

"Keeping them fed, supplied, and attended by extra healers over all that distance was an absolute nightmare- I saw the toll organizing all of that took on Jiyo. Do you think me so blind as to ignore the toll it took on them?"