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Strictly speaking, Naaza shouldn’t be there.
The captive Troopers are now under the purview of Badamon, as per Arago-sama’s orders. He has obeyed the order to transfer them from their cells in the dungeons to the priest’s personally designed one without protesting. Naaza is obedient like that.
However, something itches under Naaza’s skin. He needs… He needs to see if the girl, if Kourin is alright – and, perhaps, the rest of the captured whelps as well.
Do not get him wrong; they’re enemies of his Master, and he has no intention to free them.
But Naaza is… Naaza has been raised a Healer first and a warrior second, and despite the years, despite his position as a Masho, something has always remained of that mindset.
This is why he has kept his touch professional and quick on Kourin’s bare body, and why he has kept her away from the spirits for longer than strictly necessary. It is also the reason he let her share Suiko’s cell before Badamon ordered their transfer.
Physically, he knows the whelps are fine - he saw to it himself, checking unconscious body one after the other and applicating poultices and bandages if needed, or anti-venom in the case of Suiko, who might not have survived without it after facing his creation. The armors can absorb a lot of damages, but there is always a limit to how much they can contain. There is a reason Shuten was out of commission for so long after facing Rekka at the mouth of the volcano, and it wasn’t JUST due to their Master’s displeasure.
No, Naaza is not very worried about their physical health (or so he pretends to himself).
Mentally, though…
He knows captivity can be hard on the mind, even under normal circumstances. But Kourin went through quite the ordeal as it is, and… It doesn’t sit right with Naaza, knowing she and the other two Troopers are to be overseen by Badamon. Badamon is a spirit; what does he know of keeping a human alive and relatively healthy?
(Phantom needles prick at his skin, and he ignores them. He’s good at ignoring phantom aches.)
With their luck, Badamon will push too far, too fast, and one of the Troopers will end up dead and Arago-sama will be furious. It will be on the priest’s head, of course, but their Master has never been shy about handing collective punishment if he’s unhappy, and Naaza would rather not end up in a pit (again).
So he lurks nearby, and he listens to the screams of the Troopers when Badamon does something to weaken the armors and the bearers, or whatever it is he’s truly doing, and he grits his teeth, repeating to himself he doesn’t have to intervene.
Really.
If he was smart, he’d leave this place already, would return to his quarters or go see how Anubisu is holding up. That part is already covered, though. Rajura has seldom left her asides of the times he must answers Arago-sama’s summons, which doesn’t happen as often as it used to. Their Lord prefers to call upon Kayura, who he has sent after the remaining Troopers.
Naaza doesn’t know what to think of this girl. Where does she even come from? How old is she, exactly? Who has trained her? Why is she so favored and the Masho so easily pushed asides? It cannot ALL be due to Shuten’s betrayal, surely?
Ugh. Too many questions, too few answers, he shakes his head in anger. All he’s going to get at this rate is a headache.
Why does he have to fucking care, uh?
But the screaming has stopped for a while now, and he doesn’t like it.
Nothing good ever comes from a prisoner who has stopped screaming while being punctually tortured.
Oh, fuck it, Naaza finally decides as he makes his way inside.
The Demon Head’s Shrine is the first thing he sees, and it makes him shudder despite himself. He’s not sure why.
(Four giant mouths, ready to swallow them all.)
The Troopers are hanging there, one in each stone maw, and the spirits seem to have departed, much to his surprise. The Doku approaches cautiously, just in case it’s a trap of some sort (by whom? For whom?) but nothing happens and something in his posture relaxes.
His eyes are drawn to Kourin first, because she’s the one he’s mostly there for, but his gaze still roams quickly over Kongo, then over Suiko… who is staring right back at him.
“Suiko,” he dips his head slightly, not feeling like taunting the boy. He looks exhausted, dark circles under his eyes. Kourin and Kongo do not look much better, come to think, and it makes him frown. Such exhaustion in so little time… what has Badamon been doing? “Have they fainted?” he asks despite himself when he notices neither the green nor the orange clad Troopers have reacted to his approach.
Something tenses in him.
“Sleeping,” Suiko answers curtly. “For what it’s worth.”
Ah, Naaza thinks as his muscles immediately relax. “First watch?” he asks the green-eyed boy in a casual way, because it makes sense. Even captured, no, especially since they’re captured, none of the youths will take the chance of being all vulnerable at the same time. They’re smart enough to make sure they have a look-out, if only to warn them if more pain is incoming. It’s curious that Suiko didn’t try to wake his friends from their sleepiness when he saw Naaza come in, but… he supposes that Suiko must see him as a lesser evil than the spirits, which surprises him, considering what happened to Kourin, and he’s SURE she has shared parts if not all her ordeal with the other Trooper.
Suiko doesn’t directly answer, just huffing. His eyes are cold as they watch Naaza – colder than usual, that’s it.
He’s not surprised. He has been expecting it. Naaza’s eyes stray from him toward Kourin, taking note of the little twitches of pain at the corner of her mouth despite her otherwise lax features. From the way her arms and shoulders are pulled upward, maybe? From whatever it is the spirits have been doing? Or from something else entirely? He wouldn’t be surprised if she’s having a nightmare and grimacing because of it.
The Kami know Anubisu has had her fair share after she was…
“Do not look at her; you do not deserve to!” Suiko snips at him and Naaza’s eyes narrow at they return to his favored adversary.
“Bold of you to think you can order anything from me, boy,” he replies coldly.
But he understands the outburst and doesn’t condemn it. Naaza remembers his eyes and his horrified face when he brought Kourin to him, the way he had taken in her unusual way of dressing, and the naked concern when she had all but broke in his arms.
Suiko has a right to be emotional.
But Naaza will not tolerate too much disrespect either, both due to his rank and to the fact Suiko is but a captive and him the captor.
He glances at Kourin again, just to prove to Suiko that the boy can do nothing to stop him, and smirks at his look of quiet fury.
“You fuckers had no right,” the youth says in a low voice. “No right to touch her like that…”
Naaza doesn’t reply immediately, too busy giving Kongo a new cursory visual check-up while he’s at it. Of the Troopers, he’s the one who looks the best, the circles less pronounced under his eyes. He’s even snoring softly, proof his sleep is deep. That might be just as well.
“No, perhaps not,” Naaza acknowledges, because he can do as much. The way they have used Kourin, the way they let Anubisu do whatever she wanted… They had no right, but they still took it. “But what is done is done, boy, and there’s no use crying over spilled milk.”
“Spilled milk?” Suiko answers sharply, his eyes shards of green ice. “Is that how you consider Seiji’s virginity? The mental trauma you have inflicted on her, using her like you did? Touching her body without her consent? Leering at her like animals?!”
Naaza twitches. He knows all that already, he doesn’t need the bloody Trooper to point it all to him! Those are things he has already considered on his lonesome! He doesn’t need another to point them out to him!
Especially when it sounds even worse coming from an outsider than when it comes from his own mind.
“If we were animals, boy, Anubisu would have had her revenge in full!” he snaps back at the Trooper, careful to keep his voice controlled.
He doesn’t want to wake up the two others if he can help it. Call it mercy, maybe, but if they have the opportunity to rest, then he’s loath to break it just yet.
“Is that how you justify it?” Suiko’s rage is like a wave crashing on the beach. “Do you even hear yourself, Masho?”
“I don’t expect you to understand, whelp!” Naaza doesn’t shout, but it’s a near thing. Both Kourin and Kongo twitch in their uneasy sleep. “You have no idea of what Anubisu has lived through, what we have been trying to do to help…!”
Suiko’s expression shifts. It becomes… neutral. Almost sweet, in a way that Naaza finds vaguely frightening. “I do not understand, you say? On the contrary, Naaza,” he stresses the Doku Masho’s name. “I understand all too well. Or did you forget whose friend you used in your scheme? What make you think I would not be doing anything, and I mean anything for Seiji? To sooth her mind and help her recover from the damages YOU caused?”
Naaza blinks and stares. Suiko stares back, inflexible despite his clear exhaustion.
“The difference, Doku Masho,” Suiko continues in that quiet voice of his, “is that if our positions had been reversed, then I would never have stripped Anubisu naked, nor touched her against her will, nor encouraged Seiji to take revenge at all. I have more morals than that.”
Blast that boy, Naaza thinks as his fists tighten. “You can play all high and mighty, boy, and pretend you have the higher moral ground, but we both know it’s a pretty lie. Morals mean nothing when it’s a friend’s sanity on the line.”
… he just admitted aloud that Anubisu is a friend. And to a Trooper at that. Naaza must be more tired than he thought.
“Funny to say that, when it’s apparently clinging to your morals that stopped you from truly raping Seiji yourselves,” Suiko replies, voice cold anew, and Naaza feels like he’s been slapped. “I don’t know when you drew a line in the sand, and I don’t know how much of it has been chipped away by the waves, but there’s still something that stopped you, and we both know it.” He pauses, face twisting. “Too bad it wasn’t strong enough to stop you all altogether, even HER,” he spits out the last word, and Naaza growls.
“You will not talk about Anubisu like that,” he warns, ready to take out a sword and press it to the whelp’s neck if needed.
“Bold of you to think you can give me orders,” the boy replies simply, echoing Naaza’s earlier words. “Why should I respect her, when she did so much harm to one of my friends?”
“She didn’t really want to…” Naaza starts, feeling silly to even argue the point.
Suiko’s eyes do not leave his when he speaks next. “And that doesn’t change anything as far as I’m concerned. She hurt Seiji. I understand that she too has been hurt,” he acknowledges briefly, mouth thinning, “but that is no excuse for her behavior, nor yours.”
“… a soft youth like you cannot grasp it all,” Naaza says after a beat of silence.
It’s a weak defense, but it’s all he can say.
“You’ve never seen a woman bleed halfway to death because she tried to get rid of a burden she was keeping secret from everyone,” he continues in a low voice, enjoying the way Suiko sags in his bonds in realization. “You never had to listen to her crying in the night, caught in the midst of a nightmare she couldn’t wake up from. You never had to listen to her broken account of being manhandled, kidnapped, raped multiple times before she managed to turn the tables on her captor. You never had to see her almost break down when she recounted the cold reception of family, her kin gave her when she made her way back to them, ultimately turning her away for something that was never her fault.” Naaza makes a helpless gesture. “When faced with THAT, child, you find there is little you’re not ready to sink to if it helps, even just a little.”
“No, I never had to,” Suiko says tonelessly. “But thanks to you, I have to wonder just how badly my own friend will be in the future.”
Naaza wants to say it’s not comparable. Kourin hasn’t been… Well, alright, Anubisu did acknowledge her actions as rape, but it’s not the same thing. Those were only fingers and a tongue, not a cock! Kourin will not be left with a child growing inside her, will not suffer THAT indignity. Also, the Troopers are providing her with support already, something Anubisu didn’t have until much later after her own ordeal.
Kourin no Seiji is much luckier than Anubisu; why can’t anyone see that?
“I did what I had to do,” Naaza rasps out. “Even if it wasn’t fair for Kourin.”
It wasn’t fair for anyone, really.
“At least you admit it. You know, part of me wants nothing more than to tear your throat out with my teeth,” Suiko informs him, eyes still as cold as the midnight sea. “However,” He closes his eyes for a moment, inhaling sharply as Naaza raises an eyebrow. “Seiji doesn’t want revenge. And as much as it grates me… I must thank you,” he says in a formal if cold voice.
Naaza can’t help it; he startles. “Thank… me?” he repeats in disbelief. That’s it. He doesn’t know what Badamon is doing exactly, but he has already made one Trooper crack. “Have you started to lose your mind, Trooper?”
Suiko smiles at him, a thin, merciless thing. “To clarify, I want to thank you for taking Seiji to me. You didn’t have to do it, and we both know it. So yes, I think saying ‘thank you’ is perfectly appropriate, if only for HER sake.”
Naaza has to look away at that. He wants to say, ‘it was normal’, or ‘it was the right thing to do’, because it WAS. But he’s a Masho, he cannot afford to look too soft. He could say: ‘I didn’t do it for her’, but that’d be a straight out lie, one he knows the Trooper would pick up on. Suiko isn’t one who’s easily fooled by words.
“… It was easier than to prepare another cell,” he settles for, knowing it’s not true and by the way Suiko looks at him, he knows it for the lie it is as well.
He glances back at Kourin again. Hanging like she does, even with her armor on, he can’t help but think she looks even smaller and more vulnerable than she did naked in his arms, despite the metal protecting her body.
Has she always looks so young?
“She’s fifteen, same as me, and the rest of us are younger still. Of course she looks young,” Suiko says quietly, and Naaza realizes belatedly that he has spoken aloud.
Damn. For all he has been worried about Anubisu slipping, it seems that in the end, HE is the one who’s slipping. Stupid, stupid, he chides himself.
“Young, but an adult already,” he shakes his head, trying to clear his thoughts.
Suiko has a short bark of disbelieving laugher. “An adult? At fifteen? That’s not what the law of this country says! None of us will be legally considered an adult before we reach the age of twenty, Doku Masho,” he doesn’t sneer, but his expression isn’t kind. “As far as the world is concerned, if they see us, they will see children.”
And Naaza… Naaza doesn’t understand.
It’s not that he doubts Suiko’s words – Suiko isn’t a liar, never was; the boy is too honest, even worse than Rekka, who is displaying a white lie in hiding her true sex – but they do not… want to sink in.
Naaza was already considered an adult when he was fifteen, fighting on battlefields and providing healing to the survivors. He was old enough to fight, then he was old enough to be considered a man, albeit a young, inexperienced one.
The Troopers aren’t… Sure, the Masho call them whelps, and pups, or other demeaning names to highlight their youth and inexperience next to the Masho, and the immaturity they all saw them display at one point or the other (Kongo especially… but Kongo is apparently among the youngest…) but never, never have they really thought about them as literal children.
(“We’re not in the business of raping children.”
“No. Just me,” Kourin bites out. “Who is legally a child.”)
A wave of nausea hits Naaza, and it takes all his will to keep it under control.
He cannot… The Troopers aren’t kids, he repeats to himself several times in a row to settle his nerves. Even with those weird standards the modern world has picked to recognize one as a full, autonomous adult. Kourin has her monthly bleeding, for the Kami’s sake! They’ve picked up steel and they’re wearing armors, and they fight with all their heart and soul; those are the marks of adulthood as far as Naaza is concerned.
(Even if the Troopers apparently don’t see themselves as true adults…)
Why, just why did Naaza decide to go down there again, he thinks with a touch of desperate rage?
“Fifteen, and a child,” Suiko stresses again, sensing a weakness and pouncing like a shark who has scented blood in the water. This boy can be more merciless than Shuten, when properly riled. “Are you really proud to have used her as you did, Masho?”
Naaza doesn’t have time to answer, because someone else do it for me.
“Better me than someone else,” Kourin’s voice is soft, her words careful and deliberate, and Naaza turns to look at her with a grimace. He remembers what she said, about having a sister even younger than she.
Suiko attempts to do the same, but it’s nearly impossible for him to turn in his current position.
“Seiji? How are you feeling?” he asks, worried.
“Tired,” she replies simply. Her violet eyes are on Naaza, and the way she looks at him…
She’s worried, Naaza realizes. But it’s not the same kind of worry she showed in their rooms. Back then, she had been afraid for herself, afraid of what their plans might have been. Now…
Now she looks more like she’s afraid… for him?
No, that’s ridiculous.
He doesn’t dare to approach her, doesn’t dare to say anything. His tongue feels tied, stuck in his mouth, unresponsive.
“Naaza,” she says in the same quiet tone, free of any strong emotion. Naaza would have preferred hatred or anger, anything that showed the mental anguish and the justified fury and resentment she ought to feel toward him and the other Masho. This quietness is worse. “Anubisu?” she asks, and Naaza swallows.
“… Better now,” he admits gruffly, because he understands the unspoken question. He’s not the only one who doesn’t know how to ask, it seems.
Kourin’s eyes close briefly, and something akin to relief passes over her face. “That’s… good, I suppose.”
“Seiji?” Suiko asks, and he sounds like he’d want nothing more than to snap his bonds and take the girl in his arms. “Are you…?” his words fail him, leaving the sentence hanging awkwardly between them.
No, she’s not alright, and he’s smart enough to not ask. Naaza wouldn’t ask either in his stead.
“I could be worse,” Kourin answers. “After all,” and now she stares at Naaza in the eyes, “they were still too soft-hearted to finish the job.”
Suiko audibly chokes. Kongo, still unconscious, twitches and groans in his sleep.
… He didn’t come down to this place to receive mental slap after mental slap, Naaza thinks as he visibly flinches away from the bound Troopers. Suiko’s eyes are sharp and narrowed, and something like dawning realization appears on his face.
What has the boy understood?
Naaza isn’t sure he wants to know. He takes a step back, then another.
“We’re not ‘soft-hearted’, girl,” he finds himself telling to Kourin, his voice shaking faintly.
“Really? That’s not what someone in this place thinks,” she replies, voice still quiet and soft, like a feather in the wind. Her eyes are scanning toward the ceiling, where the spirits usually gather, and Naaza can’t help but follow her gaze.
There is no one, of course there is no one, but…
(Where is Badamon right now?)
He swallows despite himself. The Troopers are just trying to get to him, to play mind games…
(It’s not their style, and he knows it. If they say something, then they genuinely believe in what they’re saying. It makes them both naïve and dangerous at the same time, this lack of deceit or secondary goal.)
“I can’t help but wonder, too,” Kourin continues, “who aside of you and Rajura knew about Anubisu?”
“No one,” Naaza says automatically. Anubisu had started hiding before coming to the Youjakai, and if Naaza and Rajura have learned the truth about her by accident and kept the matter secret, they made sure no one else knew. They never told Shuten, and they never told Arago-sama, and they never told any foot soldier, or any servant, and they certainly never told Badamon!
“Really? No one would have ever seen anything in all those years?” Suiko is the one who speaks now, an eyebrow raised. “I mean, Seiji and Ryo never tried to really hide from us, but YOU picked up on the fact they were girl relatively quickly, did you not?” His voice becomes harder. “Just how much have you been spying on us?”
Naaza and Rajura and Anubisu have never slipped!
… but the servants are spirits themselves, his mind whispers, and if they are sworn to obey the one Masho they’ve been assigned to, who’s to say they do not have to report to Badamon himself? No, Naaza is getting paranoid. Badamon couldn’t have known. If he had, he would have…
Would have what? What reason would he have had to keep Anubisu’s true gender a secret? It wasn’t as if it benefited him, was it?
It’s… it’s too complicated for him, Naaza decides, shaking his head. Rajura might be able to make sense of it all, but not him, not now. He needs…
He needs to get out, before Kourin or even Suiko can hammer him with another sentence that feels like a noose around his neck.
“You children are ridiculous!” he snaps aloud, turning to leave with long strides, desperately trying to ignore the fact he has called the Troopers ‘children’ and was, maybe, truly meaning it.
“Naaza… there are four mouths in this shrine,” Kourin’s voice calls after him and Naaza’s almost falter in his steps. “Why is that?”
His fists tighten.
He has asked himself the same question before. He’s not sure he’s reassured by the fact the Troopers have noticed too.
Four mouths. Five Troopers.
(Four Masho…)
He doesn’t answer and leaves the room in a rush. His eyes dart right and left despite himself, searching for Jiryoushuu or worse, Badamon himself suddenly appearing out of nowhere and (dragging him back in there to tie him up with the Troopers) chiding him for even coming into their dominion without proper deference or authorization.
… They used to see Badamon very often, in the first century following their arrival in the Youjakai, did they not? Then they saw him a lot less often, and Naaza had always felt privately relieved. He had never liked going to ‘purification rituals’, always feeling sick and angry and on edge after.
Why is that? And why are the Troopers’ words needling him so much? It can’t be ALL paint-up guilt about Kourin, can it?
He needs… Naaza needs to think. And he needs Rajura.
If someone can entangle a mess of words and feelings, it’ll be the Gen Masho.
At least, he really hopes so…