The Day of Thunder

[Haka Soju]

"Do not apologize," Soju says, waving her words away. "I am not easily offended, and you seem like a pleasant girl. Too many apologies will make people think you are a pushover, and that is not my sense of you."

At the question of her family, a pained look flashes across Soju's face. "No. I have no family remaining. A daughter, but she quite understandably wants to kill me. And nearly has, a few times over."

[Nanzi Ai]

Where was her fan… that was shocking, sure there were times that dearest Mother drove her crazy and maybe, just maybe she wanted to slap her in the darkest moments but kill your own mother? What could… should she ask? Is she staring… she is staring… smile, preen, girl, preen.

Ai managed a neutral countenance and uttered, “Why? More importantly, why would matricide be understandable?”

[Haka Soju]

Soju is silent for a few moments, merely playing with the water with her hand. "This is the part where I should offer a convenient lie or half-truth, but since we have already talked about the Shoji..."

"My daughters, Mai and Miki, were born as twins, which was seen as particularly portentous among my people." Soju's voice becomes flat and monotonous as she speaks, as if she were trying to keep all emotion out of her thoughts. "When they were fifteen, the village took my daughters into the forest and handed them over to the priest, who helped them perform the Crimson Ceremony. This was one of the ceremonies that we believed would keep the gateway to the spirit world closed... the strongest of our rituals, performed every ten years. I knew this was coming, and I believed that it was for the best."

She raises a hand to wipe at her good eye, then lowers it and continues. "This was a ritual that could only be performed by twins. They were joined by a sacred cord, representing their twin souls, and taken to the very mouth of the gate. Then, while we watched, one of the twins would... kill the other, by choking her to death. My daughter, Mai, was the survivor, and afterwards, she..." A pause. "...she attacked me, but my husband got between us and died. I don't think she had planned on that."

Another moment passes, and Soju gives a helpless shrug of her shoulders. "So it's understandable why she wants me dead. Truthfully, I half hope that she succeeds one of these times. Maybe it will help her move on and recover from what we made her do."

[Nanzi Ai]

"That is a barbaric practice, surely the Scorpion have not continued it," she responded with more anger than she realized in her tone.

[Haka Soju]

"The forest is in Kirin lands now," Soju says, her tone resigned. "Presumably they are doing something about the gateway to keep it closed, but it's difficult to care too much. We will find out in a few years, I suppose. That being said, I doubt the Scorpion would be all that upset if they were the ones tasked with guarding the forest. My daimyo, Haka, was once a Shoji, after all, and my people exiled her for what I understand were very good reasons. Not that it matters anymore, I suppose."

She gives Ai a sad look. "I did say we were terrible."

[Nanzi Ai]

“Yes, yes you did, and now perhaps you have a chance to try and repair the wrongs done. I cannot condone murder, though whatever feud between you and your daughter should be resolved and hopefully without loss of life unless her Honor demands it,” she said, thinking this insane situation through, at least from her perspective.

“Can there be no understanding between the two of you, and why you, specifically? Your husband already lost his life to this… let it end there, why must more blood be shed?”

She took a deep breath and then said, “But yes, you warned me.”

[Haka Soju]

"I cannot say for certain what is in her mind, as our talks have tended to be very brief. Presumably she hates me, and it is difficult to think her wrong for doing so." She lifts her hands out of the water and spreads them in a 'who knows?' gesture.

[Nanzi Ai]

"How do you feel about it, I sense you feel her rage is justified?" she asked closing her eyes.

Now all she could see was her own mother and that made this all the more difficult to focus.

[Haka Soju]

"I was wrong. I forced them into it, and when they tried to escape, I caught them and brought them back. They loved each other so much. Even after it was over, I still thought we had done the right thing, to save everyone. It was only later that I realized..." She shakes her head. "I do not like how things are between us, but I do not think there is a way forward for her that does not end in my death." Soju gave another helpless shrug, then took a deep breath. "Presumably things are much happier for the daughter of some gods, neh?"

[Nanzi Ai]

“By many shades better, any travails I have endured were light compared to that. I simply live in the shadow of giants; my father fought the forces of literal Hell and saved the Champion of the Spider and my Mother well she is the daughter of the Sun. Our greatest trials were simply living up to such greatness.”

“How sad when people realize I can’t shoot lightning or command storms,” she mused.

Ai circled back to Soju and added, “Later you realized… that what you did was wrong, or some other revelation? Or is this what you mean with terrible things having no meaning or point.”

[Haka Soju]

"Shooting lightning would be very fun," Soju admits with a thin smile.

"It was later, yes. My children were gone, my husband was gone, and I was all alone in my home. I had lots of time for... thinking about things. It was not just my daughters, understand. It was someone's daughters, or their sons, every ten years, stretching back... who knows how long? Hundreds of years, hundreds of hundreds? A long chain of sorrow and suffering, of crying mothers and traumatized survivors, all piled up against a gate to keep it from opening. And that is only the Crimson Sacrifice. There were other rituals, other terrible things, along the way, too many to count."

She motions to her missing eye. "When I was just a baby, my father cut out this eye because it was colored different from the other. They believed it would bring bad luck to the tribe, so they removed it, because if anyone outside my family had learned of it, I would have been tossed out into the forest and left for dead. All so that we could survive in that cursed forest and keep the gateway shut."

Soju squeezes her hand shut, causing a jet of water to squirt up into the air. "Over many lonely days, I started thinking, if all of this blood needed to be spilled to save the world, then maybe the world was not worth it. At what point does the cost become too much? Later, of course, after the Shoji broke apart and joined the Clans, I started to wonder whether our sacrifices even had an effect upon the gateway. What if generations of Shoji had been killing their own for no purpose? That's the sort of thought that can drive a person to madness."

[Nanzi Ai]

The young bushi was silent, she had no riddles to spout, no great wisdom to ease that kind of misery. She focused her gaze on the steaming waters and the subtle ripples from her body’s movements. She allowed some silence to reign before she found her voice once more and said, “There are no words that I could find to make what you and yours have suffered have meaning. We are all ignorant of things, and there are at least ten thousand things in creation, how can one know it all?”

“Rightly or wrongly your people suffered to do what they thought was best for the whole, it was how you survived. But now, maybe there is a better way, it does not mean that what came before was pointless it just means we did not know what we do now.”

“This story I am told is true; A great warrior-king once did a great and heroic thing, but to accomplish that act he was seduced by a darkness disguised as a friend. It offered secrets and knowledge that aided this warrior-king use that knowledge to complete great acts of heroism but each was just a golden step down a deeper hole.”

She continued softly, “In time this darkness became as close as a friend, as family; but it was all lies and illusions. The darkness was revealed for what it was and the great Warrior-King was wrought with sorrow and woe for what evils they had done. But how could they know?”

Ai finished with, “I suppose the long and short of it, is that we are all ignorant things until we are not; all things matter even if in time they are forgotten.”

[Haka Soju]

Soju listens to the story and nods at Ai's conclusion. "Perhaps. Do you believe that ignorance of the evil one has done excuses that evil? If an evil person attacked your family and killed your parents, believing that they were doing good, would you forgive them after they were told the truth and set free? Or would you seek to appease your honor in their blood, for your parents are still dead by his hand?" It seemed like an honest question and not some attempt to trap her in wordplay.

[Nanzi Ai]

Soju listens to the story and nods at Ai's conclusion. "Perhaps. Do you believe that ignorance of the evil one has done excuses that evil? If an evil person attacked your family and killed your parents, believing that they were doing good, would you forgive them after they were told the truth and set free? Or would you seek to appease your honor in their blood, for your parents are still dead by his hand?" It seemed like an honest question and not some attempt to trap her in wordplay.

“I honestly don’t know, there are… people that my Honor demands I must bring to justice, but what form that justice takes eludes me. I have questions that demand answers. I do not know if Ignorance is an excuse, but, perhaps it could be. Yume-Jigoku thrives on our ignorance, our weaknesses, and wants to turn us against each other,” she responded.

“Is the Warrior-King beyond redemption, or is there good they can still do in this world? You… Haka-sama, I feel can still do some good in this world, but your death ends any potential for that.”

She paused closing her eyes in thought before continuing, “Honor demands action, but Bushido calls us to act with Compassion as well.”

“That’s a mountain of words for I am unsure how I would act, and that troubles me.”

[Haka Soju]

"I think it is good to be unsure and to question it. The rules handed out by the sky-gods seem very..." She paused to consider her words. "...complicated, and in many places contradictory. My teachers among the Scorpion made it very clear that honor was a tool to use against others, and that I should not hesitate to lie, cheat, and seduce others in order to accomplish whatever goals are set in front of me. I do not think anyone told them I was set to be a singer."

She waves her hand in air, as if dismissing her own words. "And that is... it's own mess... but it shows that even among your wise gods, there is disagreement on how one should act in such situations. If they do not agree upon how people should act, then - in my mind - it falls to us to make up our own minds. To listen to our hearts and find our truth, our path through the darkness, rather than listen to what they tell us we must do."

Soju allows her words to linger for a moment before shrugging and sinking a bit deeper into the water. "But, I could also be wrong. I am not claiming that I have answers, and you should be very suspicious of anyone who does, young Ai."

[Nanzi Ai]

Her final words elicited a smile and she responded, “I will keep that close to my heart, Haka-sama. What has brought you to this place then, this village feels rather out of the way and rustic otherwise.”

[Haka Soju]

"Haka sent me here to perform for the festival. A few songs, everyone claps, says the Scorpion are better than the Crane at such performances, some dirty looks from the Crane, then off to the next festival." From her tone of voice, Soju doesn't sound overly excited about it. "I enjoy the singing, but less so all of the politics around it."

[Nanzi Ai]

But everyone knows that House Doji are the better… she dispelled the thought and then focused on the actual words. She asked, “Wait, what festival?”

She could ignore the slight, for now.

[Haka Soju]

"There is a festival in this village, beginning tomorrow, I believe? I recall one of the villagers saying something about it celebrating the new year, but I did not get the details." Her expression turns thoughtful. "Was there something about honoring the god of brooms?" After a moment, she shakes her head and shrugs. "I honestly do not remember. They all blend together in my mind."

[Nanzi Ai]

“Oh, I will have to make sure to attend and represent my Clan and family in the matter. If it is your Duty to disparage the Crane I would be saddened that I will have to repair the Honor of my family, Haka-sama,” she said kindly and with respect.

No ill will for sure.

“Do you attend many of these festivals, in your duties for the Scorpion? I believe my Honored Father met your family’s founder. She was a priestess, if memory serves?”