2026-01-05: Consequences of Authority
- Cutscene: Consequences of Authority
- Cast: Shiryuu Ryouhara
- Where: Inokashira Line between Sumaru and Tokyo
- OOC Date: 2026-01-05
- IC Date: Sep 05 2012
- Summary: There is a price for everything.
- Content Warning: Psychological abuse and execution by suicide.
"Tsuchigarasu Utahiko. The last hanzaisha of the Ryouhara Yongarasu. As the sole remaining traitor, I discharge you of further responsibilities. You have been marked by the ninkou 'Metsumeitou.' Your execution will now commence."
The saltire killing mark of the ninkou was already on the older shinobi's bare chest, sealing his fate. There was said to be another, ko-ryu version of this ninkou that was haunted by the ghost of its previous owner, but this Metsumeitou was gendai-ryu, perfected ironically enough by the late Setsuya Ryouhara. An unfitted tanto whose tang was wrapped in linen, with a loose tail end left dipped in ink. A poison ink, absorbed through the skin over the heart. Living was not possible past forty minutes, and the end was painful delirium.
"And here I thought that boy was broken beyond repair.." In the rumored histories of the original, what one did after being marked by Metsumeitou and how long they were able to resist its pull would define that condemned's honor as a person. The condemned was now free of his chain bindings, given the honor of a white kimono to drape over his battle-worn shozoku. So far, Utahiko was doing admirably against the ravages of a very modern poison.
He wouldn't stop howling. He could remember the strange twist in his heart as he entered the safe house in Sumaru, the dingy basement, with the sanitarium-lined walls of the cell just beyond, shut snug with a four inch thick batten and iron brackets. The folding spears of the shinobi naturally parted for him, even with his arm in a sling and his middle still bound in linen. Grim, the boy looked to the old man called from Akita personally to overlook the affair. He shook his head at Shirogarasu.
"How many did we kill," Kouzou had asked him once, the man now on the other side of that gate.
The silver-haired man had perched on the steps leading up to the higher levels of the pagoda. He kept careful watch on the condemned, his sheathed sword in his lap. It had already killed two people in the night. Unlike the other shinobi, who wore special gloves and helms when handling the marked prisoner to prevent a scuffle from dooming them, Shiryuu wore no such protections. He met Utahiko levelly, eye to eye, a stone's throw away.
While the Tsuchigarasu was armed with Metsumeitou laid ceremonially in his lap, he had no desire to use it. Instead, the man looked up, a grim expression painted across his gnarled face. It was somewhere between bitterness, and satisfaction.
"I imagine you're going to have a time telling the brothers," Utahiko had laughed icily. "Imagine how loyal they'll be to the cause... when you have to give them their father's head in a box.
It wasn't a box. Shiryuu remembered the folded, bloodied hagoromo in his arm, and the way Kouhei's eyes burned when he turned it over, after the executions, after Utahiko was in the ground. The way Shuuhei wouldn't look him in the face. What is it you say to children who have just lost their entire world?
What was said to him in rainy Akita, when he was old enough to know? He couldn't remember. Would anyone have said anything to him at all?
"You may have the right blood, boy, but Tenzen was wrong. You were better off as one of Setsuya's pretty, empty-headed pets."
Utahiko was not at all dissuaded by the shihaisha's sudden, sharp glare. "It's true. With the Aomori in bed with the Kirijo, how long will it be before every other shinobi possesses supralunar might? What will you do when even Shingaya and Hatsumi are carrying around those little handgun trinkets? Perhaps even in time, the Hirano will no longer come to fear the name 'Ryouhara...' what was that child's name?"
Then, Shiryuu's attention sharpened, snapping taut like a garotte. "Careful," he warned. He was determined to see this through, but a dying man had no more fear. "Or you'll do what," Utahiko challenged. "Take another night trip to Shibuya? Perhaps you never killed the Mizugarasu either... perhaps you got cold feet, just like you did his son. Perhaps you've hidden Setsuya there? Or is that tawdry little Order blonde still your target?"
Utahiko fixed his hand on Metsumeitou as Shiryuu glared, almost standing up. The actual blade of the ninkou was meant to be given to its target, to end the suffering before delusion set in. It would never kill an enemy, only its user.
"Remember. Ikou's time was an age and a handspan ago, boy." Utahiko's voice was colder, now. "And in our darkest hours, it was not some tensai we turned to. Then, they had turned to Shinmei. Not long ago, we turned to Setsuya.. Yet you..."
"--Shinmei," Shiryuu finally corrected him, with a long, slowly levelled glare, "did not use gendai-ryu." The ko-ryu ninkou, Bankasoujin, was set end-first on the ground, the fittings making an ominous sound inside the case as he set the swordpoint to the step, as if to remind Utahiko.
"And his enemies did not squander the few chances they were given."
There was still iron in the boy's voice. His grip tightened across the hilt of his sword. Utahiko stared at him, in open defiance.
Shiryuu's next words are the last he would speak to Utahiko.
"There is a cost to committing obscenity before the moon."
"A cost, gladly paid," Utahiko seethed.
A moment later, he smiled, eyes closed.
He lifted the unfitted knife to his belly.
"...for the Ryouhara."
The rumble of the car below him slowly drug the grey haired boy's attention to the present, the feel of the tremendous weight of the train as it shot down its track. The entire grisly affair had been settled, leaving Shiryuu alone in that train car with nothing but his thoughts. A hundred of them, all clamoring for attention inside of his skull.
"Ah. The boy who never cries," Utahiko had snickered, when he first came to to realize his fate.
It left the onmitsu to run both of his hands through his hair, staring at the empty chair just ahead of him.