And So It Begins.

Author's Note*: I apologize for the unannounced 2 week break! Thank you SO MUCH for 4k views!

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The transition from the hallowed, snow-muffled silence of the Shirakawa-go peaks to the mechanical roar of Kanazawa was like a plunge into a freezing, oily river. The city didn’t just breathe; it hissed. Beneath the brick-paved thoroughfares, the newly installed steam pipes thrummed with a relentless, subterranean vibration—the heartbeat of a new era that had no room for the ghosts of the old.

Fog rolled off the Sea of Japan, thick and yellowed by coal smoke, clinging to the eaves of the Nagamachi samurai district like a jaundiced shroud. It was 1877, and the world was being rebuilt in the image of iron.

Jinko walked with his shoulders hunched, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, though his fingers never strayed far from the hidden hilt of his blade. The air here tasted of coal soot and salt, a far cry from the crisp, pine-scented wind of the mountains. Every clatter of a horse-drawn carriage or hiss of a steam vent made his skin crawl.

"I’m tellin’ ye, this place smells like a dyin’ forge and a wet dog had a baby in a gutter," Jinko muttered, his accent thick as mountain mud and twice as heavy. "My nose feels like it’s been rubbed raw with a rusted file. How do folks breathe this gunk day in and day out? It’s enough to turn a feller’s lungs to charcoal."

"The olfactory assault of this metropolis is indeed quite distressing, Jin-kun," Aika replied, her voice a steady, formal anchor amidst the noise. She clutched her bundle to her chest, her eyes darting between the towering brick facades. "One finds oneself yearning for the pristine clarity of the highlands. However, we must remain focused on our objective. My father's time is... it is dwindling with every tick of those Western clocks. We cannot afford the luxury of discomfort."

Danjiki, walking with the effortless, upright posture of a man born to silk and steel, let out a short, refined hum of agreement. "It is a tragedy of modernization, is it not? They traded the scent of cherry blossoms for the stench of progress. But Jinko is right to be wary. This city is a predator. It does not hunt with claws; it hunts with ledgers, telegraph wires, and gallows."

Jinko spat into the slush, his eyes narrowing as he watched a patrol of police in their dark Western-style uniforms march past. "I’m a maniac, sure enough, but I ain't plumb stupid. To pull a feller like yer pop out of a state-killin', we can’t just go in swingin’ steel and hopin’ for the best."

"Darn right about that." Danjiki exclaimed.

"Like Old Man of the village said, these city dogs, they don’t care 'bout honor or the 'right' way of things." Jinko continued, They care 'bout who’s holdin’ the leash."

"So what's the plan?" Aika asked.

"I'm thinking.. I need me a name. A big-shot name that’ll make 'em sit and stay. Someone high up the ladder who likes tradin' favors more'n he likes the law."

"A pragmatic, if somewhat crudely phrased, assessment," Danjiki drawled, his aristocratic poise unshaken. "Even in this 'Enlightened' age, silk still recognizes silk. We shall have to find someone whose greed or ambition outweighs their loyalty to the Ministry of Justice. Someone with the power to sign a release form and the lack of soul to feel guilty about it."

"Or.. someone that will help us get away with things when the need arrives." 

"Precisely."

---

The tension snapped in the Musashigatsuji market. It was a chaotic crush of merchants hawking English wool, local seafood, and the latest German-made gadgets. The air was a cacophony of shouting and the rhythmic clack-clack of geta on stone.

As they wove through the crowd, a group of young men—sons of the new bureaucracy, dressed in stiff high collars, felt hats, and carrying silver-topped canes—pushed through the throng with purposeful arrogance. One of them was loudly reading a newspaper, a sneer on his face as he recounted the "barbaric" details of the Clockwork Butcher’s latest victim.

"The Major was wired to a telegraph key!" the student laughed, his voice high and shrill. "Can you imagine the backwardness of it? Truly, the mountain remnants are desperate to be heard."

Distracted by his own mockery, he slammed his shoulder hard into Aika. She was thrown off balance, her feet slipping on a patch of black ice. She stumbled into a rack of hanging dried squid, her hood falling back to reveal her pale, refined features.

"I beg your most humble pardon, sir," Aika gasped, her voice trembling but maintaining its rigorous formality even as she clutched the fishy rack for support. "It would appear there has been a most unfortunate and jarring collision. I trust you are unharmed by my clumsiness?"

The man didn't offer a hand. He sneered, his eyes scanning her mountain-spun cloak with visceral disdain. "Watch where you’re going, you try hard literate rat! This city is for citizens of the New Japan, not for trash who can’t even navigate a proper sidewalk without causing a nuisance to their betters."

Jinko’s protective instinct flared like a match dropped in a hayloft. He didn't think; he moved. He stepped into the man’s space, his amber eyes turning into jagged shards of glass. The air around him seemed to drop ten degrees.

"Ye best pick up that bundle she dropped, ye puffed-up city-slicker," Jinko growled, his voice a low, dangerous rumble that caused nearby merchants to go silent. "And ye aughta do it 'fore I decide yer face looks better inside-out. My lady friend here was bein' more’n polite, but I ain't got half the patience she does for yappin' lapdogs with too much starch in their collars."

"Jinko, please," Aika whispered, she reached for his arm. "It is not worth the disturbance. We must remain inconspicuous!"

Danjiki stepped forward, his expression one of bored, aristocratic disdain as he looked at the bureaucrat’s son. "It truly is a tragedy," Danjiki sighed, his voice smooth and cultured, echoing through the now-silent market. "One would imagine that 'Enlightenment' included the basic tenets of etiquette. However, it appears your education was as shallow as your character. Do compensate the lady for her trouble, there's a good fellow. It would be... most unwise to refuse a request made with such sincerity."

"Or what, you relics?!" the man shrieked, his face turning a blotchy, panicked red. "Police! Officers! I am being accosted by mountain brigands! Interference with a citizen of the State! Help!"

Whistles pierced the air—the sharp, shrill, repetitive sound of the metropolitan police. From three different directions, the dark uniforms of the law began to converge, bayonets glinting under the gaslights.

"Dreadful timing," Danjiki remarked, though he looked more annoyed than afraid. "Pinco, you did say a few moments ago you're not a maniac. So what's your next plan?"

".....I suggest we.."

"We..?"

"RUN THE FUCK AWAYYYY!!!!"

---

The chase was a frantic, bone-rattling blur of gray stone, hissing steam vents, and blinding white snow. The police moved with a terrifying, mechanical organization, blowing their whistles in a rhythmic code that signaled their positions.

"Divide their attention!" Danjiki commanded as they rounded a corner into the Nagamachi samurai district, where the earthen walls provided a maze of narrow shadows. "They cannot pursue all of us through these narrows without losing their formation! Break!"

"I’ll draw 'em off!" Jinko hollered, his boots skidding on the wet cobbles. He vaulted over a low earthen gate with the explosive power of a mountain cat, his cloak snapping in the wind. "C'mon, ye flat-footed sons-o'-bitches! Try and catch a real man for once! Ye couldn't catch a cold in a blizzard!"

He led a group of six officers toward the canal, his mind racing. He needed to lead them away from Aika, but the city was a labyrinth he didn't understand. The fog rolled in off the sea, thick and blinding, turning every street lamp into a hazy, useless eye. Jinko turned a sharp corner, expecting a clear path to the waterfront, but found himself staring at a dead-end brick wall and the roaring, white-hot hiss of an industrial steam vent.

He skidded to a halt, the brick wall looming like a tombstone. Behind him, the whistles were getting louder.

"Darn it all to hell and back!" Jinko hissed, his heart drumming against his ribs. He looked up at the slick, soot-covered eaves of the building. "Reckon there’s only one way but through."

Meanwhile, Danjiki and Aika had dived into the shadow of an old waterwheel, the massive wood encrusted with jagged, dripping ice. Danjiki held a finger to his lips, his other hand resting on the hilt of a concealed dagger. The police ran past, their heavy boots sounding like thunder on the wooden bridge above them.

Once the footsteps faded, Danjiki emerged, smoothing his hair with an irritated flick of his wrist. "It appears our young ward has succumbed to his own impulsiveness," he muttered, his aristocratic composure returning, though his eyes were sharp with concern.

"Danjiki-san!" Aika emerged from the fog behind him, clutching her torn skirts and gasping for air. "I implore you, where has Jin-kun gone? I fear he has been apprehended in that dreadful scramble! I saw them corner him near the canal!"

"Do not despair, princess of Kōdōkai," Danjiki replied, his voice a calm, cultured anchor. "That dude has the survival instincts of a feral cat and the stubbornness of an old mule. He is likely currently leaping across rooftops as we speak. However, our current separation is... suboptimal. We are fractured in a city that is currently hunting for our heads, and the Inspector is no doubt aware of our arrival."

"So our next course of action is..."

"Moving about, remembering locations and well.. regrouping with that idiot."

---

They moved cautiously toward the edge of the warehouse district, sticking to the deep, soot-stained shadows. The fog was so thick now that the world felt like it had been erased. Then, they saw it—a silhouette standing at the corner of a crumbling brick building, illuminated by a single, flickering gas lamp.

The figure wore an indigo cloak, the fabric damp and heavy with the salt air.

"That's.."

"Her face..!"

"Tenmichi-san!" 

Aika cried out, her voice a desperate, formal plea that cut through the hiss of the steam pipes. "We have traversed such distances to find you! Please, I beg of you, do not run again! Return with us to the safety of the village, away from this mechanical madness!"

Tenmichi didn't turn around. Her shoulders tensed, a visible tremor running through her frame that she couldn't quite hide. Her hands were clenched so tight the knuckles were white even through the darkness. When she finally looked over her shoulder, her amber eyes were hollow, reflecting the flickering gaslight like two dying embers.

"Stay back," Tenmichi said. Her voice was fragile, like thin ice over a black, freezing lake.

"I say, Tenmichi," Danjiki intervened, his tone softening but remaining refined, his aristocratic drawl replaced by something more sincere. "This martyrdom you’ve embraced is quite unsightly. You are being pursued for crimes that clearly lack your... particular aesthetic. You are no murderer of officials. Come, let us settle this matter with some modicum of dignity and return home."

"Stay away!" Tenmichi snapped, her voice cracking as she took a step back into the deeper shadows. "You’re just weights. Don't you see? If you stay near me, the gears of this city will crush you too." 

"What's that supposed to mean?" Danjiki asked

"I am already dead, Danjiki."

A moment of silence goes by.

"...?" Aika audibly questions that statement.

"Huh?! What's with the personality switch you were just delirious 2 weeks ago!" Danjiki argued.

"I’ve been dead for ten years, since the day the Hades Bureau took the sky away."

"I’m hollow."

"I’m not the girl who laughed in the snow anymore. I’m just a hunter looking for a ghost."

"Just... go away."

Inside, her heart was a riot of pain.

She wanted to return to them, for things to be the same way again.

But she didn't want to run to them.

She wanted to feel the grounding strength of Danjiki and the reckless, stupid warmth of Jinko’s grin. 

But the familiarity of what took place in Shirakawa-go with Tenkai left her remembering things she didn't want to associate with again. 

She's a paradox of emotions, she herself doesn't know what she wants, and even if she does, she doesn't know how to go about wanting it. She feels like something that's not melting in a pot of stew.

"That is a patent falsehood!" Aika shouted, her formal posture finally breaking. She took a step toward Tenmichi, her eyes shining with tears. "You are not hollow! I have seen the kindness you attempt to hide behind that mask of ice! I will not permit you to discard your life in this manner! To a lot of people you are family, Tenmichi-san! Family does not abandon one another to the dark!"

Tenmichi flinched as if struck by a blade. She pulled her cloak tighter, her eyes darting toward the sound of distant whistles. "Don't follow me. I mean it. If you see Jinko... tell 'im to go home. Tell 'im he’s a maniac and he’s got no business in a city of iron. This city doesn't want heroes. It wants blood to grease the gears. And I’m gonna give it what it wants until I find Ichirō."

With a sudden, ghost-like movement, she stepped off the curb and vanished into the freezing fog. One moment she was there, a pillar of indigo grief; the next, there was only the swirling gray mist and the sound of a distant steam whistle.

---

Danjiki stood in the silence for a long time, his hand resting on his chin as he stared into the void where Tenmichi had been. The cold was beginning to seep into his bones, but he didn't move.

"She is in profound distress," Aika whispered, her formal facade finally sagging into weary, bone-deep grief. "She speaks as if her heart has been replaced by the very gears she hunts. How can she believe she is hollow?"

"Because it is easier than feeling the weight of what she has lost," Danjiki agreed, his voice turning grim and losing its playful edge. "She is waging a war within her own soul, and I fear she intends to be the only casualty. But she is correct about one thing—this city is a most precarious cage. If we stay together, we are an easy target for a coordinated sweep."

He turned to Aika, his expression firm, the light of the gas lamp casting long, sharp shadows across his face. "Lady Aika, I must ask you to perform a task of great import. Jinko is out there somewhere, likely attempting some feat of spectacular, uncoordinated idiocy to fulfill his promise to you. You must locate him."

"He will be drawn to the centers of authority—the Courthouse, the Academy, or the Prefectural Office—where he thinks he can find his 'big shot.' He has the subtlety of a landslide. Find him and convey Tenmichi's state to him."

"And what of you, Danjiki-san?" Aika asked, looking at the dark, jagged silhouette of the metropolitan prison in the distance, where her father awaited the rope.

Danjiki adjusted his collar, a sharp, cold light in his eyes that hadn't been there before. "I intend to scout the facilities where they are holding your father. And perhaps, I shall seek out a 'big shot' of my own. Even in this new world, some doors only open to the sound of an ancient name and the clink of old gold."

"I shall find him," Aika promised, her voice regaining its formal steel as she bowed. "I shall not let him fall to these city dogs."

"Godspeed, Lady Aika," Danjiki said, bowing slightly before disappearing into the mist in the opposite direction.

As they parted, the snow began to fall heavier, thick and silent, beginning to bury the footprints of the three mountain souls lost in the mechanical, blood-stained heart of the north. The clocks of Kanazawa chimed the hour—a cold, metallic sound that echoed through the empty streets like a countdown.