Inertia

(a.k.a., "Sonata of Death")

Author's Note: I had been planning to write a Kyuzo/Kirara story of the non-romantic variety but somehow became inspired to write this instead. Yeah, I don't know where it came from either...

Disclaimer: I do not own Samurai 7 or any of its characters…

Your razor sharp kodachi pierces the chest of the mechanical beast, dragging it downward to tear out its metal heart as you kick off the creature's torso into a slight back spring, the second short sword in your left hand cleaving the Benigumo in twain.

The large mechanical warrior begins to fall in two pieces, and for a split second you begin to fall alongside it, watching as the lit orbs in its head go out, the burning soul of the once-human samurai extinguished in that instant. But while it continues to fall, you do not, landing instead on the shoulder of your next Benigumo opponent. Four slashes and the enemy plummets toward the ground in five pieces while you push off towards the next fight, riding the wind as though it were your own personal vessel.

And for a moment you believe you can fly, the red overcoat fluttering in the wind your wings, your feathery blond hair rustling in the rush of inert air as you race by it, the sword in your left hand pointed straight ahead, the backhanded one in your right at your side, awaiting its chance to strike.

You pierce the Raiden's brainpan and as you shift your body to land on the mechanical warrior's chest, the right-hand sword enacts its moment of glory, swiping the head clean off. Your left arm moves in tandem, Raiden head still in tow, flinging the mechanical head behind you to take ownership of the bullet that previously had your name on it, having sensed the gunshot even before you heard it.

And in a flash the bullet's master is no more, no match for the lightning-fast swiftness of your blades, your body careening through the clouds once more.

A Raiden swings its oversized sword at you, but its lumbering movements are no match for someone of your size and speed. Instead you twist in midair, thrusting a sword into the side of the gigantic weapon, shifting your weight, swinging along the hilt of your blade to perch yourself sideways on the enemy's blade. And as the mechanical beast raises his sword to shake you off, you allow gravity to do all the work for you, the sharpened steel of your blade cutting through the Raiden's sword as though it were rice paper, momentum carrying you closer to your opponent's appendage. And in three swift movements, you are no longer attached to anything but clear blue sky, the Raiden's arm and head likewise.

It's all about motion; never stopping, constantly propelling yourself forward, juking and jinking on occasion to keep your enemy from predicting your movements. One falls before you, another is torn asunder, and yet you continue to move on to the next, never looking back, only forward. Always focused on the next challenge, the dead left in your wake never forgotten but no longer your concern; no longer of any interest to you.

You drop onto the large Dragon Cloud class battle cruiser from behind, your enemies – two tea kettle-shaped Yakan and an imposing Raiden – unaware of your presence, given no time to realize that they are even dead, your light footfalls and the hauntingly quiet flashing of your swords making you a deadly apparition, Death unseen. A few calculated sword strikes and you are airborne once again, bouncing sideways off a newly bisected Raiden as shrapnel and debris from the collapsing battle cruiser rain down upon you from above.

Brawn and firepower are no match for nimbleness and skill; recklessness and abandon no match for stealth and grace. Unbridled passion is death when faced with controlled ardor of similar magnitude. You have come to know these things over time; you have come to use them to your advantage on the battlefield.

Swords once more sheathed on opposite ends of the lone scabbard lining your back, you hit the ground running, the Mimizuku foot soldiers and Yakan lining the deck of yet another battle cruiser the targets you have now set your sights upon. You are no longer alone, no longer a winged phantom soaring through the clouds on a solo mission, three fully-human compatriots already in the thick of the fray you now throw yourself fully into. You know not their names; just that they fight your enemy and therefore that makes them your allies. You think of them only as Brown, White, and Blue, based on their respective choices in fashion.

You fight alongside them, but you do not fight for them.

You do not fight for the peasants that work the ground far below the merchant ships that ply the skies. You have no love for the farmers for they are nothing but cowards, too frightened to rise against their oppressors despite having larger numbers.

You fight for merchants, and yet you have nothing but disdain for them, for they have no honor; values and loyalty bought and sold on a daily basis. You fight alongside samurai who have exchanged their honor for titanium exoskeletons, traded their swords for firearms. A samurai is his sword; samurai a title these mechanical contraptions can no longer claim.

But you are samurai. That is why you fight.

The winning side or the losing side; it matters not to you.

What do those that would lord over you fight for that is so important? You know not, you care not, for you fight for yourself. You fight because it is what you live for, your twin blades the instruments of destruction in the sonata of death your graceful body instinctively moves to, the love song that awakens your soul, the metronome your deft feet keep in step with, your arms moving in concert with the rest of your body as you leap and twirl and pirouette in an endless ballet of death.

Your swords find their way back into your hands, first the left as you strike downward, bisecting a Yakan, feet still propelling you forward as the right-hand sword comes from a low angle to split a second Yakan open diagonally. You parry a sword on your left, removing the offending arm with your right, then ripping clear through the Mimizuku's body with the left.

You move with quiet precision, no wasted movements, no wasted breath. And it is in those moments that you truly feel the swelling in your heart, the rush of life coursing through your veins. You are a man with but one love: the battlefield. And yet you keep your thoughts guarded, your features rigid. You are a man capable of truly expressing yourself only with action.

Words deceive, emotions betray. Actions alone define a man.

Fighting is all you know, a sword an extension of yourself since as far back as you can recall, hours upon hours of every day perfecting your technique, refining your skills, mastering the use of two swords until there were none better known to you, not even your own sensei.

Never once do you look to your fellow samurai, aware at all times where they are, what they are doing, they themselves aware of you so as to not interfere or accidentally harm you. You sense what they are doing, anticipate what they will do. But regretfully, you also know when two – White and Brown – will fall to the hail of bullets that suddenly fill the air all around you as reinforcements take up posts on the opposite side of the deck near the cruiser's hatch.

You dodge the gunfire, blocking several with your blades, using the enemy as a shield when possible, your lone surviving cohort doing likewise. But capable as you are, you understand your own limitations, and you are aware that you cannot cover the necessary ground to take out the snipers without inevitably being felled by the gunfire yourself. As if reading your thoughts, Blue momentarily turns his back to the enemy and cups both hands together. He refers to you as Red Jacket to get your attention.

You are already moving well before he even speaks, using the leverage of his arms to springboard yourself across the expanse that separates you from your targets, obligingly deflecting several of the bullets that would have pierced Blue's turned back had you not done so, as well as several intended for you.

An errant bullet manages to graze your ribcage and you grit your teeth in pain. And though the slit of your eyes narrows and your brow becomes more furrowed, you do not slow, resolute purpose quickly erasing the grimace that graces your features, shifting the pain away to be dealt with at a later time. You do not fear death, nor falter in its presence. You are the living embodiment of death and you do not fear yourself. It is your enemy that fears you, or should if he had any sense.

As your flight comes to an end, you begin to twirl in midair, both swords fully extended outward, dicing four of the Mimizuku into several pieces before your feet touch ground. You immediately thrust forward with your left hand, piercing a foot soldier through the chest and just as quickly jump back, releasing your sword as you just barely avoid a downward strike from swiping off the tip of your nose, a few not-so-fortunate blond locks fluttering before your eyes. Your eyes narrow even more, lips tighten, left boot planting itself on the tip of the enemy's sword as it touches down, right hand flipping your own around and removing the threat from the world with a diagonal slash. Your right boot kicks up the enemy's sword before it can hit the ground, your left hand instinctively grabbing for the hilt, a backhanded strike thrusting clean through an approaching Yakan from behind. You pull it free and whirl it around, flinging it horizontally end over end, decapitating a foot soldier whose sights are set on Blue.

Blue rushes past you as you retrieve your wayward kodachi, and you follow him towards the hatch a second later. But you do not accompany him into death, struck down by a highly-skilled samurai standing in the open hatch, the cadre of Mimizuku swarming past him intent on coaxing you to follow nonetheless.

You recognize that you are now your army's lone combatant on the deck of this battle cruiser, but it does not bother you. You prefer it this way; no one else to worry about, no one else to get in your way. Just you and your opponents; one versus many.

They fall one by one to your swords, a parry here followed by slash, a dodge roll and strike there, a backward handspring superceded by a back-handed thrust; nothing but mechanical parts and scraps of clothing littering the deck around you when you are finished.

No one else is aware, no one else knows it, but you have been keeping count. You would be hard-pressed to find another samurai in this war with as many kills, who has wrought as much destruction as you, who has rained down as much death upon the opposition. And if there were such a man, you would like to encounter him, to allow him to fall with honor by your blades.

Perhaps he already has. Or perhaps this lone samurai before you is such a man.

For the first time since this battle started, you allow yourself a momentary pause as you size up your opponent, committing to memory every aspect of the warrior whose ghost you will carry with you for the remainder of your days: black overcoat with red trimming, rough facial features on swarthy skin, long raven hair flowing freely in the wind, lone katana cradled lovingly by scarred, calloused hands.

In turn you grant him a moment to contemplate whether he truly has the ability to out-duel you or decide that he is indeed gazing upon the benefactor of his impending doom.

In another life you might have been allies, but in this one he is your enemy because your lord says so, and that is reason enough for you.

You press the attack first, a downward slice with the sharp instrument in your left hand, but your opponent easily rebuffs it, holding his ground in a middle guarding stance. With two hands on his weapon, the opposing samurai is easily able to push your one-handed sword back and away, and with great swiftness reverses his own blade to deflect the backhanded swing from your right before pressing his own attack, forcing you back with a direct thrust, his katana just barely caught in the crux of your crossed blades.

You acknowledge his defensive skills, but in that instant recognize an opening. You take a step back and await his attack, an overhead side-thrust that you block and hold with your left, body rotating counter-clockwise using the blocking arm as a focal point, right arm encircling your waist as the sword it holds targets in on the soft belly of its prey now at your back. And as you step forward with your left foot, left arm swinging horizontally to the side in a half-circle, you bring the duel to a bloody finale.

You respect your opponent even as you ruthlessly cut him down, even as you silently curse him for not presenting you with the challenge you had hoped to face before taking him on.

But then very few do.

But it is enough to tide you over, to temporarily assuage your cravings, for it is not the killing that satiates the hunger of your blades but the victory, the feeling that one more samurai was unable to best you in combat; one more battle cruiser was no match for one man with two swords and an indomitable spirit.

But though each victory fuels your spirit, still you yearn for a greater challenge, the desire to stare down Death in the form of a worthy opponent, to swipe with your swords fearing each one may just be your last, willful enough to know that not even Death can best you in a duel.

But Death will surely claim you one day, of that you are certain, and though you will die with honor, you fear you will not die in the manner of your own choosing, that a random act beyond your control will be what snuffs out the life burning within your soul.

Because in the end you are just a man.

You can dodge the bullets that fly at you, you can parry the sword strike intent on claiming your life, and you can shield yourself from the explosions. But even a samurai as skilled as you cannot avoid the bulky pieces of destroyed battle cruiser showering down from the dark clouds above your head, leaving you with no safe haven to run to save perhaps open sky and the merciless ground far below, no Raiden or Benigumo within range to break your fall.

And even as you try your best to find an opening, to find a means to escape this random death, deep inside you accept that perhaps this is your time, this is the moment that you will die with honor, that your greatest fears will have been realized and life will now be over for you.

For in that moment the oversized warship hits and blackness claims you…

And though you do not die, you sense that your fears are not completely unrealized.

You come to, half-buried in soil, body bathing in a pool of your own blood, your twin kodachi still tightly clasped in your fists, wreckage and slaughtered soldiers, human and mechanical alike, surrounding you on all sides.

As you weakly stand, you look heavenward to the explosions splotching the orange-glow of the sky as it now approaches twilight, and your heart sinks, more battle cruisers falling from the sky, the retreating army of Raiden and Benigumo fleeing the great Tenshukaku battleship that was destined to emerge the victor in this war.

But who the victor is matters not; winning or losing side it is all the same to you.

Your legs can barely support your weight, but in time your strength will return. You have cuts and gashes covering your body, but in time those will scar over with dead flesh. Blood rushes from open wounds but even now your body works to staunch the flow. You will survive to see another day, but you may as well be counted amongst the dead that surround you.

Because as you witness the last battleship fall, it dawns on you that this is how it ends. There is no more fight; there is no more war. There remains no worthy challenge. There are no spoils of war for you. There is no more life for you.

This is where your sonata ends and the dirge begins.

End

A/N: As best I can tell, very little details are presented about the Great War and even less about Kyuzo's role in it – much less which side he was fighting for. Though I would never call Kyuzo traitorous, he does come across as very mercenary-like, only one with honor, fighting for his own personal ideals as opposed to fortune and fame. So I intentionally left it vague as to who he fights for, in turn making him not overly concerned with whether he is on the winning side or the losing side, because in the end neither matters. Without a battlefield, a dedicated swordsman like Kyuzo loses either way; his life no longer has a purpose.

Samurai 7 deliberately highlights the concept of the battlefield being a place where the samurai truly come alive, for the battlefield is their purpose, and all of the seven samurai in the series certainly demonstrate this in their own ways. I believe Kyuzo, however, embodies this need more than any of the others. As a quiet loner and a samurai who only wishes to perfect his skills with a sword, what other purpose could he really have besides fighting? He, more than any of the others, truly comes alive in the thick of battle.

This story was extremely experimental. I've never written anything quite like this before, though I quite enjoyed writing in second person singular point of view for the first time. It just felt more complementary to the streaming prose style I employed in the story. I certainly hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. Constructive criticism is always welcome and praise-worthy reviews even more so!