Encounter

I'm in my mother's arms.

She's holding onto me tightly.

Maybe I'm eight or maybe I was born just ten minutes ago.

It doesn't matter.

My mom's with me, and she tells me she love me. And that's all that matters.

We live in a small cottage in the forest. There's a pond next to the house. It's deep and blue, but sometimes when the sun shines in a specific way, it looks green like the plants surrounding it. Most of the time, you can see the bugs in the water. The ones that stand atop the liquid as if the laws of the world don't apply to them. They dance around and play with their other bug friends.

The sakura trees are out. The pink is at its brightest. It must be spring. The petals float down to the ground. They don't fall, they take their time, they go at their own pace. Everything feels magical.

Mom says she loves the sakura trees. It's her favorite.

But when I bring her a branch, she gets all mad.

She says sakura trees are the beauty of life. Breaking a branch is like breaking the cycle of rebirth. Life is sacred but powerful, it's the one thing stronger than death. She tells me to never break a branch again.

But she keeps my branch in a jar with water. Its blossoms as warm as my mother's embrace.

She's having sakura tea now. I'm sitting by her. I have a cup of tea myself.

I ask her why she kept the branch I snapped off.

She says we shouldn't discard all the bad things that happened. We should enjoy the good things that come from it.

She tells me the sakura tea was made from the petals of my branch.

I don't like my tea. It's too salty. But I don't tell her.

She starts telling me about how important life is.

I listen, but I don't understand. This is because I don't know what death is yet.

The Ronin Gunslinger jolted awake. His arms and legs flailed like wild electricity. His head hit the top of the dumpster in the complete darkness. All there is is the sound of buzzing flies and the crinkle of trash bags.

He pushes the lid above him and light floods in like a storm. He's in the process of getting out when he suddenly stops, as if he noticed something.

He traces his fingers across his cheeks. There used to be a scar there, but now, there's a bandage.

He sticks his hand on his back. There's a couple of bandages there as well; they're neatly placed too.

All across his body, arms and legs, there are bandages covering the biggest of his wounds. Remnants of some ointment are there as well. All of the dried up blood on his skin were gone.

He arched his eyebrow in curiosity and leaps out into the street. The sun is setting; it's the afternoon.

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Mizuki was near where the Ronin Gunslinger's bike was first seen entering the highway. There were no security cameras here, but Mizuki could tell there was some sort of fight going on. There were little marks of blades etched into the ground and nearby wall.

"Oi oi oi, what do we have here?!" a gruff voiced called out.

A group of three bikers came into view. They were straight black jackets and had a helmet that covered their entire face. Mizuki could instantly tell they had no concealed weapons.

"Kid, I'm not interested in your boy scout cookies," Mizuki glanced at their direction.

"Things haven't been going very good recently, but I guess things are changing. Boys, we're gonna be eating like kings today, thanks to this beautiful little lady!"

The three of them started approaching her slowly.

Mizuki pulled out her pistol from her waist.

"Get any closer and I'm gonna blow the fucking shit out of your brains!" she growled.

One of the bikers started laughing, and the trio started sprinting towards her.

Mizuki shot the one at the middle by the chest. He seemed completely unfazed and kept on running.

The hell?

She shot three more bullets, but all it did was get him to laugh maniacally.

The biker closest to him pounced on her like a leopard.

Mizuki's military instincts took over, and she swiftly kicked him by the waist. He flew off and landed on a pile of trash bags with an UMPH.

The next one closed in, and Mizuki hit him on the head with the butt of her gun. She was about to kick him to the wall, when the third one flew in and punched her across the alleyway.

She tumbled backwards but got back to her feet. But the first biker ran towards her and knocked her off her feet again.

She groaned in frustration and started shooting him in the visor of the helmet. It shattered into shards, but the biker himself was completely fine.

Mizuki gasped in surprise. With the visor gone, she could see the putrid yellow eyes of a beast. The skin surrounding it was an ugly blue like clouds before a thunderstorm.

"Why don't you just accept your fate. Onis won't be too rough with a pretty girl like you!"

She punched him by the eyes in anger. He stumbled back, and Mizuki quickly was on her feet again.

"What the hell is up with this 'oni' bastards?!" she muttered. She saw the two other bikers about to circle her.

Suddenly two gunshots rang out. The both assailants collapsed like a paper doll. There was a hole right on the center of their helmets as blood leaked through.

"THE HELL??!!" screeched the remaining biker and sped towards that direction. He ran much faster than before; Mizuki's eyes could barely keep up.

The biker ran towards the shadowed figure, but even before he could reach him, there was a sudden cry of pain, and the biker was split in two vertically. Blood spewed out of both ends.

The figure left the shadow and revealed himself.

He was the Ronin Gunslinger, and one of his katanas were pointed at Mizuki like a gun. Mizuki noticed the bandage by his cheek.

She pulled up her gun too, aiming at his forehead.

Suddenly, the Ronin Gunslinger returned his weapons back to their sheath. Mizuki stared at him in confusion, gun still pointed.

"You're the one that bandaged me," his voice was gravelly and low.

Mizuki just stared at him, her grip on the pistol tightening.

"Thank you." The voice came out unnaturally, like he wasn't used to saying it, but obvious he still meant it.

"How did you know?!" she barked.

"I noticed you scent," he said casually.

Mizuki chuckled but quickly noticed he wasn't joking.

"Get out of here. This isn't your world." he said. Then he walked from the way he came from and disappeared in the shadows.

Mizuki plopped onto the ground, the tension with the Ronin Gunslinger got to her. She sighed.

"First time I get called pretty, and it's by a literal devil."