RONIN - File 01: Sado
- Shizune Mai
- Jan 17, 2016
- 18 min read
SHINRA TOWER, MIDGAR
DISC 01 - APRIL 2005
“Shinra Military Police, Alpha Company Commanding Officer, Captain Shizune Mai,” the blonde woman in the black suit said evenly.
Shizune stood rigidly in front of the diminutive blonde woman who was seated at a lacquered wooden desk. Not more than 30 minutes prior, Shizune in her full MP battle dress, administering training drills with the rest of her Alpha Company MPs in the Virtual Reality training hall on the 60th floor of Shinra Tower. While in her battle gear, Shizune was unrecognizable by face–the mandate of the Alpha Company doctrine was that no Alpha may show their face when on duty, and as a matter of practice, they all made use of crimson face masks. Now, however, having been summoned to an unremarkably small office on the 66th floor, Shizune stood before them in her meeting uniform–a khaki upper and lower that looked like a cross between regular army fatigues and something a dignitary might wear, her raven black bob-cut topped with a simple crimson beret. Her hair was parted on the right, and the long bangs knifed downwards on either side of her porcelain face. In place of her targeting optics eyepatch, she wore her reading glasses. Shizune always felt naked without her crimson face mask. No, naked wasn’t the right word. At a tactical disadvantage, Shizune thought, irritated.
The blonde woman, who had yet to introduce herself, was flanked on either side of the desk by two other similarly besuited individuals. The man to her left was slightly taller than Shizune, standing at about 5’ 10”, with a crop of jet black hair parted at the side, the spikes of which sloped downward at angles. He seemed to be at least part-Wutaian, and at least partly familiar. The other man to the woman’s right was much taller, probably in the upper-six-foot range. He had a large horizontal scar running across his face at the bridge of his nose and violet eyes. A short shock of black hair culminated in a ridge of short bangs which jutted pugnaciously up and forward. This man wore his stubble proudly and seemed to be sporting a subtle, yet perpetual grin.
“What do you know about the Turks?” the blonde woman asked.
Shizune raised an eyebrow slightly.
“Pardon?”
“The Turks,” the woman said again with the same neutral tone as before, only this time with slightly more enunciation.
There was something about this woman that Shizune could not gauge, and that put her on internal alert. The fact that she was asking about “Turks” was just pure nonsense. The fact that Shizune had been in this same situation before several years prior–on the upper office floors of the tower in a private meeting with some unknown suit who asked about “Turks”–was laughably redundant. The memory of that event still made her smolder with embarrassment and rage. When she was but a Staff Sergeant, word had got out that Shizune was trying to get into the Turks, a group of suits who supposedly carried out clandestine operations for Shinra–the kind of operations that were morally gray and should not be linked back to the company. Shortly after, Shizune was contacted by a woman in a suit and brought to an office not unlike the one she was standing in now. The woman with the cigar, Shizune remembered. She had told her that she was selected as their next recruit. Then, when the woman couldn’t hold her composure anymore, she threw off her disguise and bellowed a retarded brand of laughter. SOLDIER 3rd Class Lina Rosewater, whom Shizune had several run-ins with in the past, explained through amused giggles that the Turks weren’t real, and that Shizune was a fool for believing thusly. The entirety of the SOLDIER corps came out of hiding and began laughing at her. Shizune summarily punched Rosewater in the jaw, breaking her own hand in the process, and spent a week in the brig for assault on a SOLDIER.
That was five years ago.
“The Turks are a myth,” Shizune began, “they are simply a scary story concocted by the denizens under the plate to frighten their children into behaving.”
The blonde woman stared at Shizune, unblinking. Shizune had seen this sort of glassy-eyed look before on storefront mannequins.
“Is that what you believe, Captain Mai?”
“I don’t see a reason to believe otherwise,” Shizune said, as-a-matter-of-factly.
The blonde woman’s eyes lowered briefly, then darted back up to Shizune.
“So,” the woman said slowly, apparently still in thought, “that’s all there is to it, then? Can there be no truth to the legend of these, ‘Turks?’”
“Legend?” Shizune snorted. “The rumor,” Shizune corrected, “is just that–a mere fiction.”
The woman’s eyes lowered again, and Shizune thought she heard a strange sharp breathing noise come from the taller man with the plastic grin.
“And what if it were true?” the woman asked. “What then?”
Shizune scowled.
“What if they were real, and they wanted to recruit you?” the woman stated, as if it were some kind of a reward.
In an instant, Shizune grabbed the woman by the collar. The woman made no move to defend herself, and she did not seem afraid, either. Instead, she swiftly raised a hand to gesture for her comrades to hold. The both of the men in the room seemed to exchange glances, but no one seemed shocked at all. In fact, it seemed they all still wore their bored expressions.
“Do you know who I am?” Shizune seethed. “I am the Company Commander of Shinra’s elite–the Alpha Company. I was trained personally by Major Rhian Oris, and Lieutenant Colonel Rikka Langly before her. I was given my command over the crimson legion by none other than General Zedrick LaVend himself.”
Shizune’s gloved grip on the woman’s collar tightened with a telltale sound of leather straining.
“You want to waste my time, bring me up here to discuss legends? Fine. The Crimson Lady. That’s what the human trash of the slums call me. They say The Crimson Lady and her Alpha Legion take no prisoners, and that she devours the fresh hearts of her enemies,” Shizune spat. “That’s a rumor you should look into!”
“I heard,” the blonde woman said nonchalantly, “that when you started as a Private, your peers in the MP used to call you The Crazy Cheesecake Lady.”
Shizune’s eyebrow twitched rapidly and her teeth clenched in a gristle-pop. She coiled her left fist for a knock out strike and let the blow trace its thunderous trajectory upwards, aiming for the woman’s chin.
The dull, sickening thud of the blow was immediately accompanied by a resounding explosion of pain–on Shizune’s own chin.
Through a red, unfocused haze, Shizune realized that she was now on the floor, on her back, looking up at the three people in the suits. They looked down at Shizune curiously, as if she were some kind of strange animal. The blonde woman was unharmed.
Shizune hadn’t even landed her blow.
You bitch! Shizune had meant to scream, but all that came out was “Mfhmhmhfm!” Her jaw was broken in two places. The blonde woman was kneeling beside Shizune now, her face close. She flexed the fingers of her right hand and shook them out as if to let crumbs fall from them. Shizune tried to move, but her limbs felt like lead. She’d never been hit this hard before. She could see the blonde woman’s face up close again, but this time she had an actual emotion written there. It didn’t make sense. The woman seemed to be smiling, as if satisfied with something.
All three of these black-suited bastards were smiling.
“This–one–is–fascinating–,” the blonde woman declared with a smile, drawing out each word like a sword from a sheath.
“Right!? I fucking told you!” the black-haired man exclaimed with pride, stabbing a pointer finger downward at the prone Shizune. “She’s perfect!”
The taller man chuckled, the bass rumble like a landslide waiting to happen. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, boy. She’s not in yet.”
“Well look, she’s still conscious,” the black haired man said, still pointing excitedly at Shizune. She felt as though she wanted to vomit.
The taller man seemed to shrug his shoulders in concession. “Alright, so she passed the first test. She remained cognizant after getting decked by the Boss. Big deal.”
The blonde woman continued to stare at Shizune with a soft smile as she stood and smoothed her suit with both of her delicate hands.
“She’s neat, I want to see more. Val?” she said to the taller man. “Bring her up to the office. We’ll get her some ice and then have a genuine conversation.”
The taller man hoisted Shizune’s body onto his shoulder, stomach down, and now Shizune was facing behind him. Her crimson beret was still on the ground. When the taller man stood at full height, Shizune’s head was level with the blonde woman.
“By the way, about Rhian,” the woman said.
Shizune wanted to headbutt this bitch’s teeth in for using her former CO’s first name that way.
“You shouldn’t throw my cousin’s name around like a credential,” the woman said. “She hates that.”
Shizune groaned angrily, strings of bloody drool spilling out of her now monumentally swollen lower jaw. Her eyes were locked firmly on her beret.
The blonde woman followed Shizune’s eyes to the ground, then she snapped her fingers at the black haired man as they began to leave the room. “Koucha.”
The black haired man stooped quickly as he was leaving the office and fished up the crimson beret as he followed his cohorts out the door of the tiny, unremarkable office on the 66th floor of Shinra Tower.
OPENING (Ronin Theme): “YOUNG MEN DEAD” by THE BLACK ANGELS
\ \ \
TOWN OF BANSHU, SOUTHERN WUTAI
DISC 03 - JULY 2015
Shizune woke with a start. She inhaled huge gulps of air as if she had had been suffocating. She could hear a weezing, moaning thing nearby, and that put her on edge. It took her a few moments to realize that the noise was coming from her.
The world was sideways, and the blanket was damp from her sweat. Shizune was lying face-down on a baby-blue futon. It was morning. There was a dull pain in her head. A faint summer wind blowing in from the open window played gently with her long streaks of raven black hair as they dropped haphazardly across her face. As the view of her tiny bedroom came slowly into focus again, Shizune composed herself. After several long moments of re-centering, Shizune sat up in her bed and closed her eyes.
“和敬清寂,” (“Wa-kei-sei-jaku”), Shizune said evenly, slowly in Wutaian to no one, savoring each syllable.
Shizune.
That woman has been dead for five years, she thought, as if reaffirming a well-known fact.
I am Rei Kashiwabara.
It was summer in the district of Banshu in the Southern part of Wutai, and the sweltering summer was punctuated by refreshing ocean breezes and the perpetual daytime sound of the cicadas buzzing in bushes and trees. On particularly clear days like this, one can even see the ocean sparkling out to the far horizon and hear the waves crashing against the black volcanic coasts. On such summer days, the winds would blow through the rice fields and you could see the ripple of countless reeds in a shimmering wave of vibrant green. At night, the people of Banshu eschewed the Shinra-provided Mako light strips and instead preferred the light of natural paper lanterns strung up along footpaths and outdoor drinking pubs. The wind of the evening was that of a dark but gentle lullaby, mingled with the sounds of distant, drunken laughter and grasshopper songs.
This is Banshu. Wutai. I am Rei Kashiwabara. I own and maintain the cafe called ‘Wakeiseijaku.’
As a former Turk, Shizune had paramount training in disguise and infiltration. The ability to assume any identity on the fly for any purpose was a way of life for a Turk. The mantra she had just recited constituted a means of resetting her identity for a given mission, but it was usually only utilized extensively in the initial phases of mentally establishing a cover identity–not after five years of living in another skin. Shizune raised an eyebrow as she puzzled over this apparent crack in her facade.
I was born in Minamikata, Central Wutai
Her eyes darted around the room, taking silent notice of her surroundings, but something was not right. She found it increasingly harder to focus. This was Rei’s room, her room, her unassuming refuge. Just the simple dwelling of a cafe owner. That’s all.
I am not good at sports. I love poetry. I have never left Wutai.
She could hear the sound of children playing in the distance. Perhaps they were chasing each other again on the hill to the South of her cafe, or screaming at some newly-found insect in the small glen just to the West.
Today’s special is Northern Style thick matcha.
Something wasn’t right. The sounds of the children, the soft touch of the wind, the smell of her futon–all ceased doing and being.
It’s too hot today for a kimono.
In her memory was the smell of burning scrap metal again.
The mantra wasn’t working.
In her mind, she could see it again–Shinra branding her Turk cell as traitors, the hasty escape from Shinra Tower, SOLDIER being deployed to hunt them down, her escape pod falling to the ground as she cast a gravity spell on herself to ease the fall, in turn breaking nearly all of her ribs and pulping a few organs. Five years in hiding.
I am Shizune.
\ \ \
OUTSKIRTS OF MIDGAR
DISC 02 - JULY 2010
When Shizune woke, the world was sideways. The horizon was vertical. There was a fire smoldering in front of her, about ten meters ahead, the black industrial smoke billowing lazily to the right, into the sky which was not supposed to be where it was. She was lying on the ground on her side, mangled, lacerated, and broken, but painfully alive. The sandy grit of brown earth was in her mouth.
It worked, she thought ruefully.
Shizune tried to laugh at the absurdity of it, but spat blood instead. Her military training began to reassert itself and she rolled on to her back, righting the view of the sky once more. As she did so, pain flooded her world and she gave a ragged moan. A quick physical assessment indicated to her that she had a broken left arm, several broken ribs, and a concussion, but given her training and her remaining Restore materia, she would be able to manage. The pod had apparently come down outside of Midgar in the wilderness to the West somehow. Given her current view of the tiered city, she judged that she might only be a day’s journey from the coast. She knew that Shinra would be tracking it, so she casted a hasty Restore spell to patch up a bit and ease the pain for quick escape and began to distance herself from the pod wreckage. Each weary, hobbled step she took was one farther away from the Turks, Shinra, and her sister.
\ \ \
TOWN OF BANSHU, SOUTHERN WUTAI
DISC 03 - JULY 2015
“Shizune!” someone had barked accusingly from behind her.
Shizune froze for a fraction of a second, muscles tensing and ready to uncoil murderously in the next moment. It was always strange to hear her own real name being used by others.
“I told you, Shizune,” the young Wutaian mother yelled angrily at her toddler daughter, who was clutching a tiny wooden sugar box on the table. The sugar box was upside down in the toddler’s hands, and the sugar had spilled everywhere around the table and floor. The mother and daughter were seated by the window of the idyllic Wutaian tea shop cafe, Wakeiseijaku. It was a sunny, Sunday afternoon.
“Don’t touch that anymore! That’s it, we are going home right now!”
The little girl wore a yukata a size too big and sported lopsided pigtails that looked like random grass sprouts. She began to scrunch her face up, mouth opening wider until she began to cry and howl.
“Come on, Shizune, let’s go. I’m so sorry about this,” the young mother said to the waitress.
“Don’t worry about it, I’ll take care of it, Mrs. Yamanaka. Bye bye, Shizune!” she said to the toddler, stooping lower to smile and wave at the little girl.
The toddler continued her tantrum as the two left the cafe. They had been the only customers left in the cafe on that slow afternoon.
Shizune let out a slow exhale. She closed the door to the cafe slowly and locked the door. She raised her right hand to the back of her head to undo the hair tie, letting her long black flowing hair fall past her shoulders. In the time since she arrived in Banshu, she let her short bob-cut grow out to waist-length every year, then cut it back to shoulder length. As she let her arm fall back down to her side, she clutched at the long scar that snaked from her elbow to her wrist.
That was too close, Shizune said to herself.
You can’t go all PTSD every time you hear your old name. There are other people out there named ‘Shizune,’ too.
After the mother and daughter left, Shizune had closed shop early to ponder her favorite poem, a short Banshu-style poem. Shizune had put a Wutaian calligraphy version of the poem inside the cafe, just above the entrance. It read:
One time, one meeting;
This moment only.
But for my precious memory,
Spirited away
Upon the summer wind.
Amano, the old woman who works at the market where Shizune buys her powdered tea wholesale, had introduced her to the poem some time ago.
“It means, my dear Rei-chan” (as she was so fond of calling Shizune), that all things in this world are fleeting. Do you know that word?”
“Yes, Amano-san,” Shizune had said, smiling coyly. “I think it means, ‘temporary’?”
“Good, good” Amano said, nodding her head. “Exactly. You young people worry too much. This poem reminds us that we need to live in the moment. No regrets for lost opportunities. If someone hurts you, forgive them and move on. If a lover spites you–BAH–it’s his loss, go find another one!” Amano concluded with a rough cough-chuckle.
Amano’s Wutaian was thick with the Banshu dialect, common among the peoples of Southern Wutai. As Rei Kashiwabara, Shizune was spared from having to adopt that rough dialect since her cover identity hailed from the city of Minamikata in Central Wutai, where the Wutaians speak a much more neutral dialect. Still, she found that despite the guttural intonations and hard rolling R’s, she was able to pick up the dialect with ease.
The name “Rei Kashiwabara” was also intentionally selected by Shizune as being a horrendously common first/family name for those from Central Wutai. With the gil stash in her escape pod, her skills as an Ace Turk, and a little bit of luck, Shizune had been able to make her way all the way to Wutai relatively without incident. With the remaining gil, she had purchased a small cottage in Banshu a couple of kilometers from shore where she set up her cafe, Wakeiseijaku. Though she had only studied it in her university days, Shizune found that Wutaian Sado, or “The Way of Tea” came naturally to her, and so, alongside conventional and modern offerings such as coffee, her cafe also served tea. As was the custom in the small town of Banshu, shop owners would open or close their shops at will, for any number of reasons, ranging from the daily horoscope which was determined by temple Omikuji interpreted by the shrine maidens, all the way up to their own personal dispositions. It was most certainly not uncommon for shop owners in Banshu to close shop on account of the amicable weather and their need to enjoy such weather for themselves. And yet, despite the capriciousness of this supposed “business model,” life in Banshu somehow went on.
This suit Shizune just fine, for she could close the shop at any time for virtually any reason, and this helped her to blend in. For as much as she could, Shizune tried to maintain as low a profile as possible, and that meant being unremarkable and normal. It was in that last regard, however, that she had failed–upon first glance, she was evidently in her 30s and still single. Not normal in Banshu at all. And it was on this that Amano had never failed to comment.
But getting married to maintain cover? Sharing a life with someone else was the last thing she wanted to do. Sharing a life with anyone, in any way, always lead to the same thing in the end: a temporary–nay, fleeting–sense of belonging, and sudden, senseless partings. So had it been with her parents, her sister, her beloved Alpha Company, and her family of “rumored” Turks. Shinra, Midgar, SOLDIER–the whole mess of it could burn.
‘One time, one meeting; this moment only,’ indeed, Shizune thought as she stared at the poem above her door, the curves of the Wutaian calligraphy of each word familiar in some mysterious way. She loved everything about this poem. In an effort to bolster her Wutaian cover, she even went so far as to imitate this style of writing in her own handwriting.
The poem had apparently been written about 40 years prior by a woman named Yae Nagase. Though not the most well-renowned poets of her time, Nagase’s career was cut short by her untimely death at the young age of 22. That was all that Shizune could find out about the artist who created her favorite Banshu short poem. For the former Turk, head of the Research and Logistics Division, this was a woefully inadequate amount of information. But those appellations were several lifetimes ago, and Shizune wasn’t Shizune anymore.
What I know about this poem is enough, Shizune thought to herself, completely unconvinced.
A sudden knock on the door startled Shizune.
It took her a few moments to re-center, to pick herself out of those accursed ruminations, out of the serial acknowledgments of a past that Zero Protocol mandated was to be forgotten and never referenced again.
There was a second set of knocks on the door.
Rei Kashiwabara, Shizune said to herself.
“Yes?” she called from behind the door.
“Hey, are you guys open?” said a male voice from the other side of the door. His voice was that of a whimsical young man, and his Wutaian pronunciation was atrocious. A sailor from one of the shipping vessels, most likely. A few sometimes ended up this far inland while on shore leave.
“I’m sorry,” Shizune said, “I just closed up for the day.”
“Aw, really?” the young man said, managing to sound actually incredulous. “Well, I’ll make it worth your while with a bunch of good stories and a big tip”
“There’s no tipping in Wutai,” Shizune said politely.
“I know,” the man said, “but I heard this place as excellent tea, and I don’t know when I’ll be back in Banshu. Banshu’s known for its tea, right?”
Shizune unlocked the door and opened it. In the doorway stood bearded man in gray utility coveralls and a matching lidded cap. The patch on his left shoulder and cap bore the ubiquitous mark of the Shinra Electric Power Company, and the patch on his right shoulder was a stylized anchor with an Anglerfish on it, apparently the personal heraldry of whatever vessel he worked on. He had something that looked like stubble trying to be a beard, and Shizune couldn’t tell if it was an intentional fashion choice or a lack of grooming discipline. He smiled nervously, his eyes creasing in the bright Wutaian summer daylight.
“Alright,” Shizune said, “but you’re the last one for today.”
“Exultant!” the young man declared again with his horrible Wutaian pronunciation. The word choice was also odd. Shizune guessed that the man had meant to say “Excellent.”
“Welcome to Wakeiseijaku,” Shizune said, gesturing to a table by one of the open windows. “Right this way.”
The sailor wasted no time entering the quaint cafe with white stone walls on the interior, adorned sparingly with Shizune’s favorite poems and Wutaian manners of speech.
After the sailor sat down, he removed his work cap, tossing it unceremoniously on the table and rapidly ruffling his dark brown hair with both his hands as if shaking off stress. He made a sound that was a cross between a growl and a yawn. It was loud and vulgar. It reminded Shizune of a dog.
“Sure is dark in here,” the sailor said, blinking his eyes.
“The natural light is enough, especially in the summer,” Shizune explained. “It must have been a bit of walk from the harbor to here, so I imagine it will take your eyes a little while to adjust to our ambiance.”
“Um,” the sailor said with a nervous smile creasing his eyes into happy slits. “Sorry, I’m still studying Wutaian, can you say that slowly?” he said with a conclusory chuckle.
“Of course, my apologies,” Shizune said. “It’s very bright in Southern Wutai in the summer, so your eyes-”
“YES!” the sailor blurted out suddenly, making Shizune jump. “Sorry, I mean, yeah, I get it. Sorry, I’m just excited that I understand what you’re saying.”
Shizune laughed nervously. “I’ll be right back, but please look at the menu there and give me a call when you are ready to order.”
“Oh, uh, I kind of already know what I want–can I have your daily special tea? Cap’n said this place had a thing where, you know, different tea every week, all of em are good, he said.”
Shizune feigned a flattered expression, hoping that she was blushing. “Well, yes, we happen to be serving Northern Style thick matcha as today’s special. It’s very bitter and not the typical consistency of tea, is that alright?”
“Yes, ma’am, by all means,” the sailor said. “I’m always up for something new, and the Cap’n is never wrong about a place to eat or drink.”
Shizune gave a curt bow. “Very well then, I will return shortly with your tea. By the way, who is your captain?”
“Captain Mizune Shai of the shipping freighter The Crimson Lady.”
Shizune’s blood ran cold, but her body reacted on instinct.
In a single, underhanded arcing swipe of her outstretched left arm, Shizune had snatched up two extra cake forks from her cafe apron and launched them both directly at the sailor’s unguarded eyes. In the next fraction of a second, her right hand unholstered her concealed pistol and she triple-tapped the man at point blank range–two rounds in center mass, one in the head.
The crack of the gunfire hung ringing in the air for a long second.
“I had a feeling you would do that,” the man said, somewhat exasperated.
His head was tilted lazily to the side, and he had evidently dodged the round aimed at his head. In his right hand were the two forks Shizune had thrown at him, caught between his outstretched fingers just behind the prongs, meaning he had caught them in midflight and then dodged the bullet. He brushed his chest off with his left hand and two flattened 9mm rounds fell to the wooden floor of the cafe with dull knocking thuds. Shizune was about to fire again, but the man shrugged and said, “Really? You don’t recognize me?”
Shizune had meant to fire again anyway, but before her finger could squeeze down on the hair trigger of her pistol, she saw past the stupid beard and accent.
“What are you doing here?” Shizune said, each word separated by space for emphasis. She still had her gun trained on the sailor.
“I thought we could hang out and talk about old times. Drink tea and eat cheesecake together.”
“How did you find me?” Shizune asked evenly but firmly.
“Oh god, Shizune, that’s going to take forever to explain.”
Shizune winced at hearing her old name used to actually address herself. She flared her nostrils and exhaled sharply in frustration.
“Since we are being sloppy and simply blurting out names, I’ll say it again–what in the hell are you doing here, Riwin Koucha?”
“How about getting the band back together?” Riwin said with the Devil’s smile.
つづく
ENDING (Riwin Koucha’s theme): “EVIL WAYS” by BLUES SARACENO
Comments