"Kuno-san," someone shouted. "What is your stance on your brother's plans?"
"Is it true he tried to kill you?" another voice demanded. Kodachi's face was growing past shocked into the nature of irritated.
"What about the attack of Ittan-Momen on you several days ago?" a third asked.
"Can you give us any answers?"
And so on.
"Answers?" Kodachi asked smoothly. "If you desire answers you have come to the wrong place, I can merely provide opinions. And as to brother." She glared angrily. "He is a fool. The world grows close and he seeks to drive it away. Our blood grows thin, and he seeks to purge new blood. He fights for the honor of our clan, which has never been anything other than a long-kept lie passed from father to son, and he drags what's left of our name through the mud. Our nation faces terror and civil war and the media asks questions of high school girls on the way to classes!! Good day!"
She thrust her nose in the air and walked on leaping out of the center of the huddle of reporters, and moving to the roof tops to head for school.
****
"Well," Nabiki said, watching the news. "Good to see that Kodachi hasn't changed all that much, she still goes for speech making."
"Couldn't find anything, could you?" Ranma asked. Nabiki shook her head.
"If he were anyone else," Nabiki said. "I'd say he'd taken a small trip outside the city to find someplace to prepare away from view, but Kuno is hardly that smart."
****
"And that is Kuno Kodachi's opinion of her brother's behavior," the reporter on screen was saying, looking to the camera. "She hardly seems to support his cause in any regard, and it would seem to this reporter that there may be truth in the rumors we here from police sources that she was, indeed, attacked by her own brother."
The television was snapped off, and Kuno sighed.
"Ah, my poor sister," he said. "It seems that she has finally fallen to the curse of her deranged mind. Japanese blood grown thin? What foolishness and nonsense is this? We are the very peak of perfection! The Kuno honor a lie? Impossible! We were made samurai by Oda Nobunaga himself! We are the greatest of samurai. Drive away the world? We ARE the world, and the world shall obey us!"
"Indeed, my lord," Scythe said, bowing and smiling as the few of Kuno's followers they had collected gave a rousing cry around them. Kuno posed before them, and then turned with a flourish to leave the room with his advisor.
"Have you learned anything of my loves?" Kuno asked as soon as they had their privacy.
"I have learned...something, my lord," she hesitated dramatically, drawing his attention.
"Well," he asked, turning slowly to face her. The priestess appeared meek and full of grief, but was inwardly rejoicing. "I shall not punish you for informing me of the terrible wrongs they must now be suffering under the sorcerer that seeks to preserve this foul and corrupt soceity."
"That is the problem, my lord," Scythe said. "The pig-tailed one...IS the sorcerer..."
"What, you give credence to that base lie?!" Kuno demanded. The priestess backed away and held out her hands in supplication.
"A form granted him by his foul, unholy arts," Scythe insisted in a rush, head down to hide the smirk that flashed over her face. "Nothing more than a distraction for thy greatness my lord. It was truly an insidious plot."
"Indeed." Kuno said as if suddenly finding himself in a lighted room that had before been dark. "Indeed. I see it now! The foul varlet hath spent all this time seeking to split me from my fair Tendo Akane, and hinder me in observing the evil cloud that has been growing over this land! Certainly I was accurate in declaring him not a man after our first battle in which he used foul and base treachery to give the appearance of my defeat to the exchange, as he has ever done despite my repeated victories against his foul craft. This shall not go unpunished!!"
Well, that would be one less red-head in the world it seemed. Scythe smiled as one caught in the grandeur of some holy quest. It was a genuine smile.
"But what of the fair Akane?" Kuno demanded. "How does she fair."
"I must bring you further ill news, my lord," Scythe reported. "The Tendo daughters...are not Japanese."
"What idiocy is this?" Kuno declared. "Tendo Akane is the very picture of Japanese feminine grace and beauty!"
Scythe briefly wondered if Kuno needed glasses. Akane was certainly lovely and had a level of appeal, but it wasn't traditional Japanese beauty. It was more like the beauty of an efficiently maintained and athletic body.
"Some generations back," Scythe said. "A samurai returned from the wars in Korea with a concubine taken from those engagements, Lee Soo-Young." In reality they had married, but if she was going to play the part of one of Kuno's fanatics, a little revisionist history was not above her. "This Korean whore is the forebear of Kushairo Kimiko who married Tendo Soun and gave birth to the three Tendo sisters. My magic has shown me this."
Kuno frowned and considered what he had been told. His tigress, a foreign devil? Surely that could not be.
"We must find the papers to prove this," he decided finally, to the internal frustration of Scythe.
"Of course, my lord," she said. "We shall dispatch investigators shortly."
"Perhaps you can let us handle that?" a new voice said, as a man stepped out of the shadows.
Scythe pretended to be surprised by the presence and ducked, with an appropriately feminine scream, back behind Kuno. The stranger seemed to be amused by that. Scythe was satisfied with that expression, it meant that she was not being taken seriously, which left her still in a position to play the puppet master...or perhaps mistress.
Kuno pulled "his" blade and brandished it before the stranger.
"State your name and business," he declared. "Or find your head being sent back to your family."
"I represent an organization that holds similar opinions to your own," the man said. "We would like to discuss cooperation in toppling the current government."
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(Posted Thu, 19 Dec 2002 06:08)
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