Emissaries - A Kai Side Story

Chapter 2.5: Blood on Nishinoseki

NOTE: This is rose. It's a little late, but here's the second chapter for this week. Expect the next two chapters to come in the coming week.

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Night 12, Fort Gakenomisaki

The past two days have been very hectic for everyone. I'm unsure where to start narrating what happened, but I think that event yesterday would be a good point to begin with.

Immediately after we recuperated from the visions our long-eared native friends had imposed on us, the majority of us on site, including me, were taken in for questioning. I remember the good sergeant with whom I was left alone in a room during the questioning. He was also there when the visions occurred, and him not taking it well was the understatement of the... day? I don't know; things have been pretty much baffling and surprising left and right for the past two weeks. He was supposed to be the one questioning me about what I'd seen, but he was more distraught about it than I was. The sight of alien, almost unrecognizable, bloodied-from-head-to-toe monsters of all sorts of hideous descriptions was more than too much for many of us. The long-eared natives who showed us the visions were almost killed by some of the more distraught men armed with nothing but their sharp bayonets and pale eyes had it not been for the intervention of our commanders.

As for our commanders, they were equally horrified as the rest of us, but they recovered faster than we did–probably because they were the first to ponder if our lead bullets and high explosive shells could do something against them. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think that was the actual thought process, for what followed lent credibility to my assumptions.

After the so-called 'questioning', they recruited some iron-stomached artists from us and the civilians to draw what we've described for dissemination among the troops. The reception was–suffice to say–just as one would expect. The soldiery could be roughly split into two groups based on their reaction: one half was skeptical and believed it not while the other wanted to opt out of this entire "divine mission" shindig. Before we could get down to our work (or in others' cases, trying to find a way to skip to the afterlife), our commanders announced that they were forming a regiment to go west and fulfill our divine mandate of "driving away the evil." This was on top of them sending a battalion and a couple of hundred settlers down south to establish a mining settlement to get more coal and oil (and perhaps some minerals and ore).

Back at our bunks, the other four were part of the skeptical group. Matsuoka and Aso, the more level-headed ones, were hopeful that good old bullets and explosives could wipe them out. Kunieda was scared, but he believed in the divine mandate we've been given. As for Kanda, well, he wasn't at all bothered–I mean, can you blame him? He got eaten by a crocodile for crying out loud. This just leaves me–the only one who's actually seen the visions. I could still hear the helpless woes of the ones about to be eaten; the head-crushing force exerted by the claw that gripped the face of the person I saw the vision through. It was, if anything, hell on earth... or this world? It really made me wonder if our all-powerful boom sticks could make short work of them.

Unfortunately for me, it turns out I'll be answering that question. Not long after we finished our short dinner, we were approached by an officer. According to him, our company would be part of the regiment that'll be sent west. Sure enough, the more eager of us to get our hands on a rifle again and start blasting out demons were up in celebration; everybody wanted to finally do something meaningful besides hauling lumber and stone and digging trenches. I'd be lying if I wasn't the least bit excited about finally getting some action myself. To be honest, I've already forgotten what it feels like to fire a gun; back in China, we've gone through perhaps months without any of us firing a single shot from our rifles.