Ranbu no Izayoi
&
Esben Mathiassen
She couldn't sleep. How could she, with her temper still flaring after all of tonight's idiocy? First, Reisa had gotten away. The wench had been
right there, and everyone else had sought to deny Izayoi the sole thing she'd wanted out of this life.
And second? The young master was being an ungrateful little brat. She wasn't the magical cure-all to his woes that he'd been looking for. Her best hadn't won victory for Osprey against Edren. Why would it against Valheim? Izayoi had told him as much, and yet he'd still rebuffed that. Incorrigible little shit. Hadn't the fact that she'd gotten him out of execution proven anything? Her job had been finished the moment Hien reached the outside with an armed escort.
The samurai shook her head, resisting the urge to put her fist through a sliding door. Instead, she slid it open like a normal person, only to see Esben out in the courtyard. An audible snarl came from her throat. She hadn't forgotten his role in dragging her away from the battlefield.
Esben looked up from his journal, over to the source of the animalistic growling that pulled him out of his notes.
"Hmm. Not how I'd hoped to spend such a nice moonlit night." He snapped it back shut over its ribbon bookmark, though he didn't stand up from the post he was leaning against as he wrote.
"Can't sleep? Me neither."He'd already managed to go through and explore as much of the household as was available to explore; he wasn't about to go poking in anybody's rooms as they slept, after all. Regardless, however spacious the safehouse was, he quickly ran out of anything new to explore, and had taken to the central courtyard. Luckily, any smoke from their fighting had blown
away from this part of the city, leaving the courtyard actually habitable.
He stared at Izayoi for a moment longer across the courtyard, head cocked slightly to one side, before speaking up again:
"For what it's worth, I think he wants you to die about as much as you want to die.""Then the young master must wish for my death most deeply." Izayoi retorted without a second thought, scowling.
"Leave him be. He is merely disappointed at how badly his teacher has gone to rot. Once reality sets in, he will adjust."Evidently, she wasn't keen on bringing her argument with Hien into a conversation with anyone else.
"If you actually believed that, you'd have done like any good servant and taken those last words of his as an order," Esben replied flatly.
"If I was particularly worried about what he thought, I'd bother to seek him out rather than spend my time out here. I doubt he's sleeping any better than either of us."He glanced back up to the sky, sighing.
"I'm sure you've something you want to say. May as well say it, that way we can get on with things.""I never was much of a proper samurai in any area outside of combat. The public reviled me as a barbarian before they exalted me as a war hero." She remarked dryly, gazing up briefly at the stars before back to Esben.
"Of course I've something to say." She snapped, her moment of introspection finished.
"Why did you even bother dragging me from the field? Avenging my family is my foremost wish, and not a single one of you deigned to grant me it. Only Ciradyl has the excuse of friendship for saving mine life."Esben stared wordlessly in reply, his normally placid expression an utterly blank, unreadable mask in the moonlight. After a point, it was obvious that he was expecting more; when nothing more came, however, he did eventually speak up before the silence could become
too awkward.
"I expected a statement, not a question you should already know the answer to." He finally pushed off the post he was leaning against, walking towards the center of the courtyard and pointing over Izayoi's shoulder back at the main dwelling of the household, where the others were all resting or sleeping.
"What is our team's mission, Izayoi?""I know full well what you imply." Izayoi glared, unwilling to entertain this.
"If you wish to lecture me about cohesion, do not bother. I do my part when it does not directly interfere with my own stated mission. Caradoc ought to be glad if and when I do die to complete it. He's simply pragmatic enough to put off avenging his brother for the moment. There is no logic or rhetoric to use here. Save your breath.""They'll be a cohesive unit with or without you," Esben replied, just as dismissive of Izayoi's reply as she'd been to what she thought she was saying.
"Possibly even moreso without. That's not what I'm talking about, and I have trouble believing someone like you is so short-sighted as to believe it is."He pointed again, in the general direction of Galahad's room.
"Caradoc first. From what I've gathered of what you all have told us happened prior to Rudolf and I running into you, he's basically gotten himself disowned over his willingness to put national rivalry aside and work with you." He turned slightly, his hand now falling over Éliane's space.
"I know Elly came with an entire unit, and I know they aren't around anymore. I'm not particularly willing to ask who they all were, both because I don't want to pull up a painful memory for her and because I don't want to know if any of them were people I knew yet. Eve has never even known a normal existence at all, and what little she had that was close to it was taken from her and she was left to fend for herself before finding us. Arton is obviously displaced. Miina, wrong place at the wrong time, and now she's stuck with us and gets to hope we remember her in any of the rest of what we do. Rudolf and Robin, there's something pathological behind each of their choices to seek this out, and they're already starting to pay for it."He shifted as he called out each in turn, before his pointing finger fell on Izayoi.
"And then there's you. And Hien, for that matter. Ciradyl too, soon. Displaced. Multiple of those close to you killed. Whether determining the source of the Blight or trying to fend off Valheim, we're all in the same spot: All fighting from an extremely disadvantageous position. Valheim has assets to spare. We do not."His hand dropped, as he looked to the sky again, back where the glow of the fires from before was still diminishing as Valheimer troops and local citizens worked to stop the spread.
"You are an asset we can't afford to lose at this point, especially taking out a singular captain, no matter how personal the enmity there. It was far from the most expedient choice. Hien himself, injured though he was, was still putting up quite a fight to drag you back. If we abandoned you, he wouldn't have, and he'd have even more reason to fight against us than you did. Even if the rest of us did get him out of there alive, we'd have lost him as an asset letting you get killed. Not only that, the odds are good that he would have perished as well, and likely myself, Ciradyl, and Chisaki along with him. On top of that, even losing just you, this early on, would only be a stronger blow to the morale of the group to pile atop all the rest they've already had, and that is one asset we and this local resistance cannot afford to lose ever. Not while we're still this far behind."He turned away from the sky over the walls of the courtyard, starting to walk back towards the main dwelling.
"Be angry with me all you like for this last night. If sacrificing you is ever the most expedient choice, I'll take it without any hesitation. This time it wasn't.""Tch," Izayoi scowled, her expression stuck in a glare. Of course she understood all of this full well. The difference was that she could barely bring herself to care.
"Perhaps you are a SEED after all, to have so effective a mindset. Though it continues to boggle the mind why you would openly declare yourself a spy." She admitted begrudgingly.
"Fine. Expedient choices are what keep me stuck here to begin with. I continue to hold a better chance of killing Reisa and as many Valheimr as possible while with you lot. Pray that continues to hold true."She gazed out at the smoke and flame still rising into the air, her eyes less hard. More forlorn.
"Ranbu no Izayoi lost the war against Edren. None of the others should give one whit about anything past my diminished sword arm if they had any ounce of sense. Before the war, might was the only thing that defined me. I needn't tell a SEED of the quality of the majority of Osprey's other generals during the conflict. And afterwards, I had Isshin and Suzume. Now I am stripped of my godspeed sword, my credentials as a military leader, and my family. The resistance are fools to place any faith in me.""Hien considers you close enough to worry so about you, and individual might and skill aren't the only things to define a person's worth in circumstances like this." He passed Izayoi, sliding open the door behind her.
"Try to get some sleep. Don't give him reason to call you out as tired, as well as slow."The door slid shut again, Esben's soft footfalls barely audible as he left Izayoi standing outside.
"He forgot to mention 'old'." Izayoi remarked dryly to herself, continuing to stare out at the skyline for a few minutes before turning to return to her quarters as well.
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