I’m still the same person! I’m not some damn incubator you have to wrap in cotton-wool!
CHARGING INTO MELEE WITH A HUNDRED WARRING CHI-MONGERS— There are people down there dying!
BETTER THEM THAN YOU.
Godsdammit, it’s that kind of thinking that’s led us here! That one life is worth more than another. Guildsmen worth more than citizens. Nobles more than commoners. Shimans more than gaijin.
YUKIKO—
No! Either all life is worth fighting for, or none of it is!
A thundering shock wave crashed against them, nearly knocking her from Buruu’s back. Hana cried out, pointed at the chi refinery, the blossoming fireball rising into the skies. The complex shattered as if it were glass, claxon wails and screams lost under the explosion’s rumbling yawn. Lazy flame stretched up and out, black smears across blood-red skies.
“What the hells is going on?” Hana yelled.
“Kaori outed the Guild rebels over the wireless! The rebels had no warning this was coming. We have to help them!”
“Help who? I can’t tell who’s a rebel and who isn’t!”
RED.
Buruu’s voice echoed in the place where the headaches lived.
Yukiko squinted down through the black and blood haze. She glimpsed two Lotusmen weaving amidst the tumbledown maze, one pursuing the other, rocket packs trailing blue-white flame. The one in front was marked with red paint; messy strokes across its spaulders, one deep line down its featureless face. The Lotusman in pursuit fired a popping burst of shuriken from a handheld thrower, metal stars glittering like fireflies.
“The ones trying to run!” she shouted. “They’re marked with red!”
“You’re right!” Hana yelled. “They must be the rebels! Go! Go!”
Hana leaned into Kaiah’s spine and the pair dived into the smoke, spiraling as they fell. Kaiah clapped her wings together, an ultrasonic boom of Raijin Song rippling outward, scattering the Guildsmen in the streets below.
Buruu’s eyes were locked on the carnage. Bursts of shuriken fire severing fuel lines, rupturing chi tanks. Gouts of flame, tangled knots and clumsy brawls, Lotusmen colliding midair, tumbling to ruin beneath collapsing houses. Citizens were running from the inferno where the refinery used to be, tiny figures hurling themselves into the Amatsu river, its filthy “waters” already ablaze.
Buruu, they’re dying. We have to help them!
The arashitora said nothing, amber eyes locked on the carnage below. Yukiko’s fingers ran over her stomach, the place she wouldn’t let herself think about. She reached out with the Kenning and felt warmth there, resisting the urge to turn away.
Brother, I need you on my side. On our side. Now, more than ever.
Buruu sighed from the tips of his feathers. Muted daylight gleamed on the metal covering his wings, the polarized glass over her eyes, the Guildsmen fighting and dying below.
WHAT OTHER SIDE WOULD I BE ON?
And like a stone, they dropped from the sky.
*
There was no room in Hana’s head for understanding.
The girl was no stranger to violence and death—all their lives, she and Yoshi had fought for every inch, every scrap and desperate breath. But this was different. This was a battle they’d write about in history books. This was a day people would remember. Where were you when the rebels rose and set fire to Yama city? Where were you when the Guild War began?
Well, it just so happens I was there. Skies painted blood, flying through the smoke and flames on the back of a godsdamned thunder tiger.
She’d stalked Kigen’s alleys for years inside Daken’s mind, the tomcat’s impulse of scent and sight and instinct augmenting her own. But Kaiah’s mind was awash with a feral, predatory overload. Nothing like she’d felt with Daken, nothing so complex—it almost made her feel guilty, to form a bond so deeply and so quickly. She could feel the smoke in Kaiah’s eyes, seething thermals beneath her wings, the weight of the tiny monkey-child on her back. But at the same time, Hana was still in her own head, wind-tangled hair stuck to her cheeks, exhilaration pounding against her ribs like a steamhammer.
The air was filled with metal shards, Kaiah banking and rolling between the shuriken spray. Guildsmen tumbled from the air as she passed, blue-white flame and mists of red, gurgling, metallic screams. Hana felt an impact at her shoulder, then realized Kaiah had been grazed, not her. She felt stabbing pain in Kaiah’s leg, looking down to find a glittering metal star protruding from her own thigh. And there, in the midst of the smoke and the screams and the blood, she realized she couldn’t tell where she ended and the thunder tiger began.
Tearing and biting, ripping and roaring, only those marked with red untouched. Swooping through the smoke, seeing soldiers; Iron Samurai tromping under the black Kitsune flag. Hana realized the Fox Daimyo must have sent out troops to restore order. She saw a general leading the soldiers, struggling to form words rather than a shapeless scream.