Title: Tanabata
Challenge: Je ne Regrette Rien
Fandom: Queen's Blade
Pairing: Tomoe/Shizuka (Initially One-Sided, Eventually Reciprocated)
Characters: Shizuka, Tomoe, Head Priestess of Masakado Shrine
Rating: T
Genre: Angst/Romance/Drama
Length: 7436
Content Notes: A few brief graphic descriptions of injuries, for anyone uncomfortable with that.
Author Notes: IDK this randomly came into mind when I saw the current challenge and I always wanted to write something for Queen's Blade so...
Summary: "I did not say what I said to cause mockery, instead only to inform of the truth on how you are, not a true blood demon, but a half demon, who will likely be barred from the fire she was raised to learn how to draw blood in," Tomoe replies calmly as she begins walking up the stairs. Shizuka doesn't give a rebuttal, only silently following her, but what is there to debunk anyhow? Tomoe is right. As a half-breed, she cannot use any satanic powers like her full-blood mother was rumored to unless she uses the forbidden ninjutus and scrolls of the Kouma that'll be at the cost of her life, and even if she were a full-blood demon, her grandmother won't make any exceptions for what has just transpired. Kouma Ninjas who fail are expected to accept death. To instead become the test subject of a missed target is an act punishable by instant death. (Or, a reimagining of how Tomoe and Shizuka met, and on their final meeting with each other.)

---

I.

IF YOU HAD TOLD SHIZUKA during her earlier days as a Kouma Ninja that she'd not only fail the mission given to her to prove her worth but that she’d end up like a lost puppy following around her target who managed to best her, she would've laughed in your face and then gut you with her kodachi.

As an underground assassin on the infamous island Hinomoto, you're only taught in the clan to act in punctuality, fulfilling your posts as ordered and never showing either your enjoyment or contempt for whatever you are assigned to perform.

Comradeship is barely more than working with one or more clansmen for a mission due to possessing similar abilities that’ll increase the payments for successful bounty hunts, and disobeying higher-ups almost always results in either severe injuries or death.

Perhaps Shizuka always deviating from following those written and unspoken guidelines was a sign looking back that despite her strengths and kill count she was flawed in terms of conducting as a true member of the Kouma, infamous within her clan for flashing a smile while others performed phlegmatically, keeping a few coins to herself instead of giving the full amount to the organization after every duty completed, and only not yet murdered because she was the oldest grandchild of the current head, and therefore the heiress who one day would lead their people’s actions and beliefs.

Of course, beyond her bloodline, she was able to get away with her behavior because her clan had a larger issue at hand to face—

The Musha-Mikos of the Masakado Shrine. 

After decades of increased weakness and being overwhelmed by the corruption of Hinomoto, the once prominent shrine that had a massive downfall three-quarters of a century ago had created a new generation of uprising maidens, the warriors quickly becoming the ire of the country’s black market workers and elitists as they started to be successful in meddling in the affairs of criminal trading and trafficking, purifying invaders that ninjas had been hired to bring the head of to clients with fat wallets, and getting more and more meetings with the young recent Empress who killers were waiting for the day they’re commissioned to overthrow for an older, more criminal-friendly female to take her place.

Soon, the temple whose girls and women of previous years were low and in danger due to either being kidnapped and turned into slaves or murdered while on pilgrimages became a beacon of reformation, and many spectators of their revival in power and influence started to put them on their hit-list.

One of those onlookers was the Kouma Ninjas, and to prove her worth as the future head Shizuka’s grandfather ordered her to stealthily enter the shrine maidens’ residence and eliminate the uprising priestess Tomoe, who Shizuka’s grandfather had gotten information about that she was the one most constantly speaking and training with the current Musha-Miko Head Priestess Kanui, and according to Shizuka’s grandfather, would be the one who Shizuka would likely have as a foil in the upcoming years.

Shizuka does what her grandfather orders, wasting no time in sneaking her way past the barriers around the temple produced by Ofuda and the spirit-protected Torii at its entrance, not letting her mission get out of her mind even when shrine maidens surround her with the sharp ends of their naginata pointing at her neck and heart, the silver-haired female quickly throwing them off her before she travels into the obscure forests of their so-called sacred land.

It’s in the sunrise that Shizuka ends up meeting Tomoe, the priestess quick to clash her sword against the round snath of Shizuka's kusarigama.

Shizuka spends most of the battle mocking her target, teasing how she’s struggling, and makes sure to tell the black-haired woman that she'll make her death quick and painless with how little she believes Tomoe can handle a simple potential stab.

As humiliating as it is to admit it, it is due to that underestimating of the human that the assassin eventually stumbles, the katana of the shrine maiden quickly throwing Shizuka's weapon to a nearby tree, the side of Tomoe's blade in almost direct contact to slash her throat before the half-demon can make a run for it.

Shizuka is so stunned when she loses that her words delay when she demands of Tomoe, after getting on her knees and letting out an outburst of rage, "Kill me…and be done with it."

The blue-eyed woman closes her eyes and waits for death as she thinks over how she should’ve paid more attention when her mentors and grandfather warned her to conduct her missions more professionally, only to be treated with a warm, inviting hand on her shoulders.

“No, I will not.”

Standing up, Shizuka immediately opens her eyes.

“Huh?”

“We may as warriors spend our time under the sun’s rays and moon’s shadow saving Hinomoto from the sins that engulf it”—Tomoe then hugs Shizuka much to the latter’s confusion—“but as true priestesses, we will not kill those who have a chance at redemption. I believe, with enough removal from your upbringing as a ninja of the dark arts, you can one day become an honorary priestess alongside me and my fellow sisters of Kami.”

Shizuka immediately steps away from Tomoe when she finishes explaining her reasons for showing mercy, disgusted at her for forgiving her and furthermore sounding as if she’s pitying her.

“Are you a fool? I’d quickly dealt away with your life had the shoe been on the other foot. Why on earth would you decide to lend a helping hand to your would-be murderer? Do you not see how easily this can backfire?”

To Shizuka’s bewilderment, Tomoe nods in agreement, a serious look on her face.

“At any moment, there is a chance you could easily attempt to complete your original task. The chance of you instead separating yourself from your time as a shinobi for unethical profit, however, is far greater. I know not much of your family, but I do know that Head Akihiro of the Kouma Ninja Clan will not easily allow you to return after a failure caused by miscalculating an enemy he had warned you of their possible potential, even given the benefits you could give the Kouma due to what you inherited from your mother.”

Shizuka is astonished once more, silent for several moments before she laughs and cups Tomoe by her chin.

She didn’t expect her target to be simultaneously as conservative as she is expected to be as a Miko as she is sly, dropping a bombshell the black-haired human only could have known if she had gotten a rival ninja clan someway or the other to give up what they knew.

Or, in an extreme case, had been watching Kouma just as they had been watching Masakado by the usage of yūjo.

When she eventually finds what to say, Shizuka lets out another small laugh. “Well, well, well… and here I thought us demonic assassins and other mercenaries that spray blood for yen and machinery on this cursed island were the ones with secrets. It seems to me, however, that you’re not exactly giving religious lessons when you leave your precious little shrine. Tell me, does your head priestess or so-called ‘sisters’ know you’re traveling around the den of thieves and the unchaste girō? ”

Taking a big step forward, Shizuka licks her lips.

“Are you even celibate as is required? I think,” Shizuka comments as she stares into the violet orbs of the other woman, “I might want to check out for myself to see whether you truly want to save me or if you’re working for a more impure, pleasurable reward you’re expecting to receive by being a martyr for a little ol’ poor lost demon like me.”

To Shizuka’s displeasure, Tomoe doesn’t take the bait. Instead, keeping her expression of stoic determination, Tomoe only tells her a simple response before the priestess turns around and travels back to the temple:

“A family full of known tension from the start is easy to unravel the pieces of.”

Shizuka follows her in quick rage, demanding of her, “What type of Miko rubs in the painful past of someone she’s meant to save? ”

Tomoe continues walking, not looking back.

“I did not say what I said to cause mockery, instead only to inform of the truth on how you are, not a true pure-blood demon, but instead a half-demon, who will likely be barred from the fire she was raised to learn how to draw blood for,” Tomoe replies calmly as she begins walking up the stairs in front of them.

Shizuka doesn’t give a rebuttal, only silently traveling behind her in anger, but what is there to debunk anyhow?

Tomoe is right. Shizuka may have skin and lips pale as pearls and sharp ice eyes below silver locks but, once her round ears are shown and her bronze horned headband is thrown off, it is as clear as day that she is half-human.

As a half-breed, she cannot use any satanic powers like her mother was rumored to be able to unless she uses the forbidden ninjutsu and scrolls of the Kouma, that’ll be at the cost of her life.

Even if she were a full-blood demon, her grandfather won’t make any exceptions for what has just transpired. Kouma Ninjas who fail are expected to either accept death at the hands of those they weren’t able to subdue or at the hands of a higher-rank shinobi in the dark clan.

To instead become the test subject of a missed target—a shrine maiden no less—is an act that will be seen as nothing but a cowardly move of a failed heiress, and no doubt will she be made an example of and then replaced in being the heir by one of her younger half-siblings.

Until Shizuka finds a way to escape from the country before her clan finds out she’s alive and in enemy hands or she somehow kills all the members of Masakado, though, this is what she’ll have to do to get by.

With a determined face, Shizuka walks inside the back of the temple once Tomoe slides the doors open, proposing to herself that she’ll only spend a few days with the warrior priestesses before escaping to perhaps Zanef or the Little Elves Forest.

---

II.

“Shizuka,” Tomoe calls out, “please hand me the soap.”

With flushed cheeks on a pale face, Shizuka does what she is ordered, looking the other way to avoid showing her embarrassment to the naked shrine maiden.

It has been six months since she has become the student of one of the top warrior-priestesses in Masakado Shrine.

The first three months were a great trial to get through—much like Shizuka, the virgins of the temple were very stunned and angry when Tomoe declared to them that she would take in the half-demon as an example of how to rehabilitate former foes and turn them into a force of good, to help in the Masakado quest to save Hinomoto and the current Empress from the sins of their inhabitants.

By orders of the neutral Head Priestess Kanui, Shizuka was to be at Tomoe’s side at all times, and her weapons were never allowed to be on her unless there was a state of emergency.

Only once five months passed and Shizuka saved a new priestess from an attack at a local market was the half-demon granted more privileges and now can stroll around with her kunai, although her kusarigama and kodachi are still confiscated unless Shizuka is needed in a fight, and Shizuka is not allowed to do any financial job unless it’s approved by the temple and the profits go towards the starving children of Hinomoto.

In the time the former shinobi has spent with the warrior priestesses, she has learned three things she had previously thought otherwise.

For starters, despite the low blows concerning Shizuka’s past that the black-haired woman gave during their first meeting, Tomoe much to Shizuka’s disappointment is truly an innocent genuine priestess of her group’s god, oblivious to sex outside of its usage for reproduction and how it is forbidden in the lives of shrine maidens like her, only finding out the information she revealed about Shizuka being a half-blood and her mother because Shizuka’s mother was once an enemy of Head Priestess Kanui during the leader’s younger years.

(That revelation made Shizuka understand better why the Head Priestess had been calm and not questioning Tomoe’s desires to turn Shizuka good, with the middle-aged woman at the time declaring it a “great way to make amends of the past and the sins of the father”.)

Also as well, according to Tomoe, Shizuka’s heartbeat gave it away.

“Full-blood demons have heartbeats loud yet silent when you’re close because they’re able to protect its sounds from humans who might try to stab through it,” she had once told Shizuka, “but no matter how much your body tries to mimic demonic protections, yours has a slight sound of vulnerability that only someone with human blood in their background can produce.”

The second thing is that shrine maidens hold grudges way more than one would expect. Shizuka knew that Tomoe being so adamant in redeeming her was not a common trait of the shrine’s members, but she wasn’t expecting the amount of intimidation and stalking she would endure her first several weeks staying.

Shizuka would always have at least six pairs of eyes on her wherever she went and whenever she spoke, at times having the threat of a nearby sword or spear pointed at her if she looked at a private room for too long or tried to clear the tension in the air with a joke or two, at one point almost having a bow and arrow threatened to pierce her heart when she tried to comedically suggest to a priestess that they could spend a day or two not rushing to pray to one of the statues in the main hall.

By the end of the fourth month’s transition into the start of the fifth month, the guarded behavior and glares had died off…somewhat, but the priestesses have made it clear that they will be prepared and attack the second they believe Shizuka is no longer salvageable and instead an unholy enemy to put down for good. 

Shizuka doesn’t blame them, of course, remembering how she had done damage to several of their weapons and clothing the day she came to cut the head of Tomoe off, although it still bothers her that for forgiveness on everything being destroyed, she had to do long hours of writing scripture passages and stories and recite them in front of every shrine maiden, the woman often standing in embarrassment whenever she got a line wrong and had to repeat them while onlooking Mikos giggled.

The third new knowledge is that there will likely be no worry for the shrine maidens in the future because, surprisingly, Shizuka doesn’t want to leave and in fact is now sincerely dedicated to changing her ways for the better.

She initially suspected that she wouldn’t spend more than a month or two before she’d find an open spot, steal some valuables from the shrine and incapacitate anyone who witnessed, and escape in the night on a boat to the mainland, where she’d try to join the black market of the southern and western sections of the large continent.

Obviously, killing Tomoe in the process wouldn’t grant her freedom from punishment if she went back to the Kouma Ninja, as they’d realized that she didn’t die on her mission but instead chose to rely on the mercy of an enemy for half a year instead of performing her duties excellently and quickly as a future head should’ve, so she’d have to move on from her time with the Musha-Mikos as if nothing happened.

Frankly, with how idiotic she saw Tomoe bringing her in was, she thought she’d enjoyed the possible moment she would do what a half-demon trained as a shinobi of the dark arts from birth was expected to do.

The more time she spent with Tomoe and even the most suspicious of the shrine maidens, though, the more she started to truly see that the priestesses’ insistence in coming in the middle of every dispute and crime and putting an end to it was, not a naive act of zealous martyrdom in a hopeless land, but instead of an act of bravery and care of a country still with the chance of entering the next era in better terms.

Little by little, the years of teaching she went through by her grandfather, where she was groomed into seeing life to be necessary only for profit and quick to dismiss in the name of it, was stripped away from her.

Dare she say, the past several months she spent with Tomoe—watching the shrine maiden pray before her meals and before she left for the day, watching the shrine maiden perform incantations with her paper talismans on the gates of nearby defenseless villages fearing bandits and yokai, watching the shrine maiden practice her usage of her sword Kushinawa against the air or Shizuka as a practice partner, watching the shrine maiden have a wide smile on her face as she would go to the poorest areas of Hinomoto and give coins and wheat of bread to the beggars and homeless—has been more mind-blowing and inspirational than the two decades she spent under the custody of the Kouma.

“Shizuka.”

Snapping out her thoughts Shizuka looks at the voice that just called out her name, turning around in embarrassment when she realizes it is from Tomoe, the Miko rising in all her naked glory and standing with her whole body drenched from the water of the hot spring she’s in.

Trying to remain calm, the shinobi responds, “Yes, Tomoe?”

Tomoe points at the towel behind the half-demon.

“The towel. I’m trying to not spend too much time here so we’re not late for our trip to Himawari. You seem to be red in the face…are you sick? ”

Tomoe gets up and walks towards her, resting the back of her hand on Shizuka’s forehead, cocking her head.

Shizuka, trying her best not to look down at the bare, wet breasts that are almost pressed against her clothed chest, lets out an awkward laugh as she turns around and grabs the towel.

“Just a bit of a cold, nothing bad”—Shizuka hands the shrine maiden the fabric while walking away with her eyes shut—“but, uh, I’ll just go back inside and wait for you in the main hall.”

Before Tomoe responds, Shizuka is already inside the temple, her face still a scarlet tint contrasting the snow-like color of the rest of her body.

---

III.

There’s one night, perhaps in the tenth month Shizuka spends at the shrine, that she comes to a realization. 

Tomoe, Head Priestess Kanui, and the half-demon recently came back from a trip to Hinohana City, the capital of Hinomoto, where the two shrine-maidens discussed current problems with the council representatives and Empress Hinata Hinomoto that need to be investigated or solved, while Shizuka spent her time guarding to make sure the naive Empress’s relatives didn’t send a sudden “unknown suspect” that would attack and disrupt the meeting.

Hinohana City was an area Shizuka had never been to before, and she was shocked at its beauty despite the deterioration and stench of murder and poverty that surrounded most of the rest of the island, the capital’s buildings with strong rich wood and skyscraper tall sculptures of gods and goddesses with sun emblems and staffs, the stores having bright Toros that could be seen from streets away, the women wearing fine kimonos of fabrics so captivating and thick that Shizuka is sure they came from one of the kingdoms on the mainland, a few of the attires even mixed with outfits the former ninja heard women in Vance or the capitol Gaino commonly wear.

The scenery however paled in comparison to the difference Shizuka saw in her country’s Empress versus her family and the government, the white-haired young girl looking like she could be no older than fourteen or fifteen, her golden eyes sparkling with curiosity and confusion in the midst of those related to her by blood or job titles whose orbs shined with greed and contempt as Tomoe and Head Priestess Kanui made it clear that Empress Hinata—and the congress alongside her—would need to implement several changes within the head system of Hinomoto to reduce crime rates.

Half a decade ago, such an inexperienced and underage girl leading her country would be what Shizuka’s grandfather would be training the half-human to study to better execute the possible day their clan got the call to send a ninja to sneak in and assassinate.

Now, however, Shizuka can only give pity for such a young girl to be forced into leadership by the corrupt in the land of the corrupt.

Tomoe, on the other hand, had a grace of refined wisdom and a sense of duty to her as she stood and let the room of onlookers know that the Musha-Mikos would do their best to restore their country to its glory days, her hair movingly little but shining beautifully in a way that Shizuka couldn’t help but stare at in admiration as the shrine maiden stood by her master and supported the Head Priestess in front of the awry assembly, even as the politicians complained about the church and state’s separation being “violated”.

Just like Shizuka can’t help but stare at Tomoe now as she is slumbering in her futon, in the room where only the two of them sleep at. 

When Shizuka first went under Tomoe’s wing, she was forced to be in this specific chamber as it was the furthest away from the keepsakes of the Musha-Mikos, as well as had a door whose hinges were manipulated on purpose so that there would be such a loud creak whenever Shizuka left, the women of faith would be alert and ready to defend themselves if she attempted to attack them.

Eventually, she gained enough trust for the hinges to be fixed back to normal and was offered a room that, while still under some sort of surveillance, would give her more freedom.

Shizuka denied it, however, having become accustomed to and quite happy with Tomoe as a roommate, the resting area a secluded place for her to be one-by-one with the woman that had saved her from death either by other priestesses in white and red garments or ninjas in shadow-black gear.

After all, at moments in the middle of the night, Shizuka can look for minutes on end at the plump pink lips of Tomoe, and how stunning her down and freed black locks looked with the moon’s light casting upon her by the window, an almost identical replica of the Hinomoto Goddess Hinae that the Musha-Mikos worshipped and fought in the name of.

Listening to the sleeping woman’s peaceful exhalations, Shizuka leans forward, eying Tomoe’s mouth as she moves closer and closer until their lips almost touch.

Mere centimeters away from coming into contact for a kiss, however, Shizuka stops herself and moves back, shaking her head.

Getting up from her futon, she rises and creates a distance between the shrine maiden and her, turning around to stare at the bright stars in the deep blue sky of the night.

Damn it, the half-demon thinks to herself as she looks at the reflection of Tomoe on the windows, of all people, it had to be a woman who promised herself to a spirit.

In love. Shizuka, the half-demon who at one point in time would be the head of the fearless Kouma Ninja Clan, has fallen in love with the beautiful shrine maiden Tomoe who bested her in combat during their first meeting.

---

IV.

A week after the one-year anniversary of Shizuka leaving the Kouma Ninjas to become a new ally of her former target—becoming an “honorary priestess” as Tomoe declared it—the clan attacks the shrine just as Tomoe speaks with her leader concerning the Queen’s Blade Tournament that, after divination from a nearby head priest, Tomoe had spent the past few weeks voicing her desires of to join in order to use the winnings to better Hinomoto’s economics and put an end to the island’s social and political corruption.

To Shizuka’s surprise, rather than join the shrine maidens in a fight against what she presumed to be against her grandfather she instead gets isolated and comes into contact with Asahiro, one of her younger-half brothers.

Two years her junior, the nineteen-year-old boy is also a half-demon. He has a younger twin by the name of Akimitsu, and the two males are so identical that the only difference between the two of them is that while Akimitsu enjoys causing chaos but acts carefully in the process, Asahiro gets so invested in power and winning that, like his half-sister, he can stumble and not get up easily once he meets his match, a flaw that contributes to how he ends up receiving a fatal blow at the end of the dark reunion between the two half-siblings.

“For the sake of the country, huh? I couldn’t accept such beautiful words,” Asahiro mocks between a bitter laugh, “even in the end…”

As he lets out a brief sound of pain before falling to the pavement in a pool of his own blood, Shizuka stares ahead at the back of the burning Masakado temple with a frown, swinging her kodachi to her right side to throw off the half-demon blood that got onto the upper half of its blade when it cut through Asahiro’s chest.

“You’re wrong, Asahiro, she isn’t fighting for something like that,” she says out loud to herself knowing that her sibling is already deceased before sprinting away, not looking back at his slashed-open corpse.

Tomoe desires Hinomoto to change for the better, but it isn't for the country itself she is fighting for. No, she is fighting for those precious to her—the other Musha-Mikos, the citizens, the uncorrupt Empress, and new allies alike—and that's why Tomoe is strong.

A true shame that type of dedication is one that Asahiro—and Shizuka before she met Tomoe—would never understand.

Shizuka was never close to her two half-brothers (nor her younger half-sister Kiyomu before her death a decade ago) before she fled their clan, but there was one point where she could’ve said she had somewhat of an alright relationship with them for a bunch of children being trained to become fearless shinobi for merchants within their nation’s black market, teaching the redheads how to throw their kunai in a straight line or blend in with their surroundings with just a bit of creative usage of mud and tree branches.

If only the twins’ mother wasn’t butting heads with Shizuka’s mother, angry so much at how Shizuka’s mother managed to be with Shizuka’s father first that she committed multiple crimes and is suspected to be the mastermind behind a few other attacks that led to all children involved motherless and the twins’ mother executed, but not before successfully instilling into the minds of her twin sons to continue her wish of revenge and triumph in her stead.

By the time Shizuka finishes dashing from tree to tree and reunites with Tomoe, the shrine maiden is kneeling with the blood of both her fallen sisters and Shizuka’s other brother Akimitsu on her robes, the color of the fluids blending in with her red skirt, though Tomoe comments hours afterward that bloody night that the half-demon male escaped into the woods towards the east—perhaps to the Village of Yokonatsu—with a few deep but none fatal injuries onto him.

Another brother Shizuka will likely have to face in a battle to the death in the future.

Before having that knowledge about her surviving brother, however, Shizuka idly stands up above on a tree branch, looking down at the sobbing Tomoe for several minutes before jumping down and getting on her knees to hug her, the bodies of their fallen comrades (Tomoe’s old and Shizuka’s new) as much all around them as the fierce and heavy flames covering the land and building of the temple, Tomoe holding the closest one she was too—the violet-haired Masumi—tightly in her arms.

“Let’s go together ”—Shizuka strengthens her hug of the wailing sole survivor of the Musha-Mikos—“if I fight alongside you…I think I can become strong too.”

For the rest of the evening, like the kanji in her name Shizuka is silent.

✦

✦  †  ✦

✦

Early the next morning, after Tomoe does a quick funeral service for the fallen shrine maidens and Head Priestess Kanui, the only two women spared from the Masakado Shrine Massacre gather what little didn’t obliterate in the fire or attack of the Kouma Ninjas and make their way towards the docks of Hinomoto, ready to travel to the mainland and head to Gainos in order to participate in the famous Queen’s Blade Tournament.

After an hour of observing the map they were given of the continent past their island and trying to accustom themselves to some of the languages the mainlanders formed, Shizuka becomes bored, and almost starts to come up with a random game or conversation to pass the time before Tomoe beats her to it.

“The boy from your former clan who escaped my Kushinawa...before he left, he commented, ‘Shizuka-nee will face karma another day’. If I am correct, would it be wise to assume that he is your younger brother? Perhaps from another mother?”

Shizuka stops glancing at the map in her hands and rises her eyesight to the sorrowful, reddened eyes of the priestess.

“Yes, that was my half-brother. Akimitsu is his name,” Shizuka responds casually, “and his twin, Asahiro, has already been slain by my kodachi. Neither the twin still alive nor the twin now deceased has had me in good favor for several years now, as our mothers being demons were in constant battle with each other over my father. Their mother was found guilty of killing our other half-sibling Kiyomu, and now the twins’ mother is forever condemned to the depths of hell as punishment for her crimes, which her sons blame me for.”

Glancing back down at the graph, Shizuka scoffs.

“Silly, isn’t it, that a shinobi devil trained in the art of stoic executions could be so easily swayed by love? So much power she had and yet she threw it away for a man who is barely even at the headquarters, and left this world by successfully giving wrongful and hateful information to her young sons rather than apologize for acting as a single woman with only lust in mind rather than as their mother. As a result, one went down due to being blind by their greed in the same matter she did. Be glad you are not with such a family dynamic.”

In a downcast tone, Tomoe responds, “Most shrine maidens are given as an offering to the Masakado Shrine during the first few weeks or months of their life. I was different—at the age of five, my mother and father on a warm night dropped me in front of the entrance to the shrine and rang the bell to alert the at the time Head Priestess Chiko, the aunt of the future Head Priestess Kanui, leaving before she came to get me. I cried for weeks when I realized later that night that they weren’t coming back.”

Shizuka looks up at Tomoe once more, surprised when she sees tears starting to form in the shrine maiden’s eyes.

“I would try to escape the temple during the night, and scream and kick all morning when the older Musha-Mikos would catch me and put me in the timeout room until I cried myself to sleep”—Tomoe uses her sleeve to wipe her face—“and, funnily enough, that room you and I spent the past year in is that exact one, and that’s why the other shrine maidens were so easily able to undo and fix the hinges of the door. The door was always configured for me, as I was a very focused little girl set on traveling my way back to my village and demanding why my parents decided to leave me with the priestesses.”

Shizuka tries to reach out to pat her on the back, but Tomoe smiles and stops her, the black-haired woman looking happily up at the bright sun above them.

Looking back down when the light starts to strain her eyes, Tomoe continues, “When I was at the age of nine, one day they took me and other girls my age to a village not so far from the capital, to get a glimpse on how the food drives for areas invaded by Hinomoto ninjas and Sheldan Free City pirates went. That was the last time I ever voiced my rage over my parents again.”

“Did you find your parents?” Shizuka asks.

Tomoe shakes her head. “No, to this day I do not quite know what village I came from, outside of the fact that it was far away, perhaps at the edge of the northern section of Hinomoto. I do remember, though, that my parents were barely more than a pair of walking skeletons on the journey they took to bring me to the temple, and that is the exact same description of the people in the village we visited. There were children my age dying on the streets and even the criminals roaming around looked like they hadn’t had a proper meal in years, and that is when I realized my parents didn’t want me to end up the same way.”

Shizuka doesn’t interrupt any further, astonished that the origins of the priestesses she spent her entire childhood hearing propaganda from the Kouma about could be just as poor and suffering as that of the wanderers roaming the streets in the northern and eastern ghettos, despite the image of Masakado Shrine’s well-kept and beautifully designed quarters known for possessing several artifacts and weapons from their glory days.

She of no means has the same opinion now, but in the first few days as a former enemy living at the residence, Shizuka had foolishly thought the women to be clueless, privileged temple worshippers who never could know or be connected to the circumstances outside their spell-protected land that was a main reason for the poverty among Hinomoto’s commoner regions in the first place. 

To know that almost all the shrine maidens were brought from families who spent decades wasting away while the capitol’s richest families thrived over allowing illegal organizations to roam as they pleased in small villages far away, however, made Shizuka feel awful for how much hatred and contempt the nefarious criminals of the country had for the Musha-Mikos. 

These weren’t women from affluent backgrounds wanting to suddenly act like voices of reason out of boredom from living within the circles connected to the royal family, like most ninjas and some of the villagers suspected them to be.

No, not at all.

Instead, these were victims of the same system that indoctrinated Shizuka and her half-siblings and impoverished multiple prefectures and towns, who chose to rise up and attempt to bring down the layers of errors of their nation that led it to become an acreage of defilers and sufferers.

“It is because of this past that from that moment on I vowed to become a proper warrior priestess who would change Hinomoto, so that children of the future would be on the streets only to play games with each other and the homeless population would be small and once found helped properly, while traffickers and murderers would be handcuffed and brought to justice before they can even blink. Most of all...”

Tomoe walks past Shizuka and stands at the end of the ship they are on, pointing at the faraway but slightly visible beach shores of Zanef. Shizuka makes her way to her.

“When several weeks before this morning, a nearby village’s high priest’s samurai guard had come to Masakado to declare to us that a revelation from the priest informed him that the most reliable of our shrine was to ‘cross the west seas and participate in the Queen’s Blade’, I knew the only way I would be able to see Hinomoto change for the better is if I become the next queen…with you by my side.”

Tomoe softly holds Shizuka’s hands, blushing. With a grin, Shizuka shakes her hands out of Tomoe’s grasp to wrap her arms around the other woman’s waist, embracing the warrior priestess tightly.

“Well I’ll be damned, Musha-Miko Tomoe, that sounds to me like the start of a confession. As the rules of the Miko lifestyle state, you need to keep yourself chaste”—Shizuka stops to giggle as Tomoe’s face reddens and the shrine maiden tries to deny that there was a romantic underlying to her words—“but if you keep ending your sentences and declarations like that, you might end up having to choose between your duties as a woman of your Kami Hinae or as a woman of the great demon Shizuka’s tastes!”

Tomoe squeaks as Shizuka playfully gropes her hips. “S-Shizuka! We are in public!”

Shizuka’s grin widens, the silver-haired female stepping away backward and blowing a kiss.

“There’s no family left for me, so get ready after you win to take me in as your dutiful king, so I can have a nice title when I bring the remainders of the Kouma to the ground!”

(Later that night, after they reach the mainland and check into a hotel, Shizuka doesn’t sleep and instead thinks over her childhood and her only half-sibling still alive—although she’d never tell Tomoe this—wondering how things could’ve been if her half-sister wasn’t murdered by a fool in love and that same fool didn’t convince two impressionable children to hate their own older sibling, wondering if she could’ve convinced her brothers and sister to leave the clan with her and join the good fight for a better Hinomoto.)

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V.

“All warriors have a wall they must climb over. Once someone finds their reason to fight, that’s when they change from a fighter to a warrior."

Those were the words that Tomoe had said the day they met after Shizuka started to break down screaming in childish, long-repressed fury at the shrine maiden triumphing over her in a battle between blades.

At the time, Shizuka saw them as patronizing, something meant to mock her loss and gloat in her face how as a half-demon Shizuka was both restricted by her failure to utilize her demonic blood abilities and by losing to a woman she had been sent to kill.

As their relationship improved, however, it became clear to the former shinobi that the words were meant to be encouraging and hopeful advice that, at the right moment, Shizuka would implement and formally be able to therefore remove herself from her time as a mercenary assassin—or, more specifically, from her times as a future heiress of a clan that brought nothing but blood and fear into the people of Hinomoto.

For Shizuka, that came when she faced the oldest of her younger half-brothers and dealt with him, and later on when she found out the brother that had escaped was hiding on the mainland; she killed him too when she saw him trying to kill a family for merely two hundred dollars, Akimitsu having even in his last breath to Shizuka’s disappointment vowing to continue what his mother wanted from him despite being on the verge of death, and their clan barely having any surviving members left.

At the very least, he informed her of what happened to their father and grandfather—the former still on his mission and the latter killed by Asahiro while the elderly man was in a state of severe sickness after he refused to give either twin leadership of the Kouma Ninja—and that he did wish things could’ve been better for him, Asahiro, Kiyomu, and her.

She did a small funeral for him and his brother afterward, quietly mourning them for their innocence corrupted and lost.

While Shizuka found eventual peace with what happened between her half-siblings and her father, however, she realized a cruel irony about Tomoe—

Despite her seriousness in reforming Hinomoto and winning Queen’s Blade, her kindness and allowance to give opponents second chances continued even as the tournament’s start came closer and closer, which in times of war will lead to only putting herself at death’s door.

Sparing Leina Vance. Letting her guard purposely down against the redheaded woman with obsidian devil wings. Not putting her all against the bunny-eared witch with pink, goo hair and abilities.

There is only so much passiveness one can give until it becomes dangerous, and no matter how much Tomoe upholds her vows of goodwill behavior and attacking styles, it will soon become detrimental to her goal of fighting her way to the throne of the current queen—a woman known for her cruelness and quick, brutal ways to bring enemies to their knees—if she keeps with these hesitancies and moments of leniency, of pity.

That’s why they’re where they at now, with Shizuka laying on the ground with a deep, open, and fatal wound on the middle of her chest, the work of the fine katana Kushinawa.

“Shizuka, why on earth,” Tomoe lets out between sobs, “did you not move when I struck the final blow?!?!” 

The half-demon in question just flashes a weak smile, weakly biting her lips as she flinches in pain.

She had lied to Tomoe and convinced her she never left the Kouma Ninja, pushing her to the edge she already was stepping on following her victorious brawl with Elina Vance, in order for the shrine maiden to reach her full potential.

With the look of regret on Tomoe’s face, Shizuka is sure she’s just realized that Shizuka was only pretending she was still an assassin after her, but Shizuka’s glad the plan worked long enough for Tomoe to lose any blockage to her full capabilities.

Now, Tomoe has officially gone from a fighter to a warrior.

Rising barely up with shaking legs to leave a quick kiss on Tomoe’s lips before handing the shrine maiden her demon headband as “the only thing she has left for Tomoe to remember her by”, and telling the shrine maiden not to cry, Shizuka falls back down and rests her head, staring at the nearby fire covering the graves and tombstones at the cemetery the former shinobi brought them to.

Tomoe is a strong woman, and Shizuka has no doubt her chances of becoming the new queen of their world will be high, a glorious event for spectators to witness. It somewhat hurts Shizuka that she won’t be there to witness it come to fruition, but the half-demon is looking on the bright side of her sacrifice—

She has helped remove Tomoe’s weakness. In due time, Tomoe’s dreams of bringing Hinomoto to its former glory will be set in stone.

You would never allow yourself to be defeated by me, Tomoe-sama, and since I believed that, I could challenge you to this fight, the half-demon mentally admits to herself with as much strength as she can muster, “and I now return the life you gave me on that day…because of that, I believe I was able to wield my sword as absolutely as you. Probably.”

Looking briefly to her right at the crying Tomoe, Shizuka is calm even as Tomoe starts to let out anguished screams, the priestess gripping tightly onto the headband she’s been given.

Even though she is losing control of keeping her eyes wide—her vision blurring more and more by the second—and every breath she’s taking feels like her lungs have been crushed to pieces, Shizuka is not showing a single moment of pain and fear for her upcoming end.

No, despite everything, these last few moments are not something melancholic or cruel to her even when she involuntarily closes her eyelids out of fatigue, because right before she becomes no more she hears a beautiful sentence screamed out in the mourning yells of Tomoe, her first ever friend, her first ever love, her first ever thing to give her hope in Hinomoto and life as a whole—

“Not as friends, but as partners—my other half—I planned to live the rest of my life with you and only you…!”

Smiling, Shizuka goes still.

[FIN.]

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