A/n: So first I was like, 'I'll post it this weekend!'

But then I was like, 'but it's ready now...?'

So here you are. Enjoy. This one will be updated monthly, because I have a life now, okay?

A high-pitched whine split the night, cracking into a thousand glimmering strands of colored light. One burst, than another, than the third – more and more until the stars paled before their glory. A paper lion danced in the street below, its red-gold, silken hide gleaming in the lantern light. Bystanders clapped and cheered it on as it wended through the streets like a curious cat, sniffing and searching out good luck, chasing away demons and angry ghosts with its thundering paws.

Megumi watched the festival from the small window of the high room she and Shinomori had rented. They had been on the continent for nearly a year now, moving from city to city as he chased long-dead leads with the perfect focus of a man who allowed nothing else in his life. Before the war his quest had been vengeance; now he sought redemption with the same cool clarity.

And she… she was here because she had nowhere else to go.

She could have stayed. They would have fought for her, the veterans of the Edo cell (Tokyo, now, as if changing the name could somehow change the thing itself, and maybe it could). But it was easier to go, easier to remove herself from a country that no longer needed the reminder of her presence. She had been his creature, after all. Kanryu's doctor. If they had managed to find his body, perhaps… but they hadn't, and the only proof she had that he was dead was her own conviction that Sir Hiko would never have let him live.

She was all of Kanryu that remained.

So it was only right and natural that the rage of those who remained would focus on her. It was only right and natural that, without Kanryu to put on trial, they would seek vengeance against her. And who was she to say that she did not deserve punishment? She'd had a choice, the same as anyone, and she had chosen to live. She had protected her own existence, bought her life in the blood and suffering of untold thousands and that was sin enough to condemn her.

Sano hadn't understood. But then, she hadn't expected him to.

And she had been selfish to the end. She could have stayed and answered the charges, accepted whatever penance the new government deemed appropriate, allowed them to sweep her into the burning-pile with the rest of the detritus and feed the pyre of the old world with her still-breathing corpse. But she had not. She had run, instead.

She had chosen to survive.

A staccato burst of firecrackers accompanied another round of cheers and shouts from the merrymakers below. Meat glistened and popped on streets vendors' grills, savory scents and sharp spices drifting up to where she sat in her high window, looking down from the shadows. She could see the rooftops from here, watch the slinking profiles of cats and cat-burglars outlined against the dull-shining stars. Eventually one of them would prove to be Shinomori, coming back with another dead-end (in which case he would brood all night) or a live lead (in which case he would sit tense and silent, and catnap a little towards dawn).

She had chosen to survive. And she would. At least until Shinomori had his answer.

After that…

After that, she would see.

"They will talk to you of peace. They will say that the war is over. They will ask you why you cannot live in peace, why there cannot be fellowship and love between master and slave now that the cannons have ceased their firing, now that the masters have been cast down, now that our chains have been broken. They will ask and you must give them an answer, the only answer. You must say that the war is not yet ended."

Sano sat cross-legged on the cold earth at the edge of the assembly, listening. Shishio's words fell into his heart like rain into half-dead soil, soothing the rage that parched him. Rage was his constant companion, these days. It sat coiled under his heart like a serpent made of stone, weighing down his chest until the air was enough to drown him. It was a shameful thing – he had never been so cold, before the war – and it wasn't as if his was the worst pain to come from those gunpowder days.

That was an important thing to remember. Something to hold on to when the stone serpent threatened to pull him under. He had lost so little. So little, compared to others. But enough and more to force the scales from his eyes.

"Say that the war is not over, brothers and sisters, and know that it is true. The war is not over. We are not free. As long as former masters still walk the halls of power, as long as our children are scorned and shunned for the markings forced upon them, we are not free. As long as they pass laws that steal our labor and our sons and daughters for imagined crimes, as long as they deny us the right of arms to defend ourselves, to defend our families, we are not free. Do not trade the iron bands of slavery for the gossamer of a spider's web. Do not let them gild the bars of the old cage and call it freedom!"

Shishio pounded the heel of his hand into the edge of the podium, marking time with the rough rhythm of his words. A low murmur passed through the crowd, punctuated by the occasional shout of agreement. There were visitors to the settlement tonight; they glanced uneasily at each other and at the crowd of listening freedmen, doubt and growing revelation warring on their face.

The truth would win, Sano knew. It always did.

The war had ended but the war was not over. The new world he had fought so long for – the new world that she had bled for, had sacrificed more than anyone for – was nothing but the old world with a new coat of pain.

"The bosses who whipped us in the fields now whip our families in the streets! The masters who set our quotas now set our tax rate! I say to you: we are not free! We are not free and we will not be free until we have raised up a generation of our own leaders on our own land, until we have the means to defend that land, until the sovereignty of that land is respected by all! Until we are established as a power in our own right – existing without the sufferance, the tolerance of our former masters – my brothers, my sisters, we are not free!"

Shishio roared. The crowd roared with him, carried out of themselves, long-buried feelings finally given voice and bound by words for all to see. Sano grinned fiercely and unsurprised as the visitors joined the chorus. Their eyes shone.

The war was ended. The war was not over. And as long as it was not over – as long as the new world was still only a distant dream – he would fight.

The board was changing, slowly but surely, and the change was not natural. There was little doubt of that, after these last dispatches.

He tossed the papers on to his desk, sitting back with an irritated sigh, and pushed the pieces idly around his game board. Chess was a poor representation of politics, all things considered. The rules were too restrictive, the outcomes too certain. A knight could only ever be a knight, only ever move in the way that knights moved, only ever serve one master. Reality was more… fluid. Gō was better, but, like chess, didn't allow for nearly enough factions.

The board was changing, and he had traced the changes to their natural heart. The new capital, once Edo, now Tokyo – now officially the seat of government, no longer lying to itself and the world about its role. Some restoration –

Enough. Vengeance made for strange bedfellows, and he'd never cared much for the Emperor anyhow. Let someone else take the new government to task for that broken promise.

"What do you think, sister?"

He said it out loud, knowing that they were alone. She gave him a long, solemn look, silent as she so often was these days.

He didn't need the words, anyway. He knew her far too well.

"I know, I know." For a moment he lapsed into brooding silence, steepling his fingers just below his nose. "There's no reason to think our paths will cross. Nor is there any reason that they should."

"Yes, I'm certain." He snapped it without meaning to, irked by her silence. "He's kept himself out of it as much as a man in his position can."

"Although…" He fiddled with the bridge of his glasses, thoughtful. "The instructor is a different story. But still. Her efforts – intentional or otherwise – have nothing to do with this. I won't seek them out. I have no reason to."

She smiled at him, approving. His answering exhale was not quite a sigh. For a moment he stared vacantly out his window at the glittering summer sea, wondering.

Then he shook his head and dove into his papers. There was much to do.