A Train Full of Memories

The landscape rattled by her window in a rhythmic, undulating fashion. She knew her duty to her father and to her clan and she intended to fulfill it, but it made her sick to her stomach to see the unfamiliar hills rolling past and know that she would probably never see her home again. The orchards the train was passing by just now seemed serene, unaffected by the turmoil of the world. It was practically insulting for her life to be in such upheaval while these trees remained ignorant and unchanged.

"Assassins, Namie. They will send Assassins after you."

"But why?" she had insisted naively. She could be such a child sometimes. The reason would be her father's resistance to Goshi, of course. No one who opposed Goshi these days was safe. With the war on Goshi rarely bothered with threats, censures and trials. It was swifter and easier to eliminate any and all opposition with violence.

Thus Namie and her family had been snuck onto different trains, bound in opposite directions, under assumed identities. Even still, Namie's uncle had chided her, "You must trust no one but members of our clan. They may turn you in. And never forget that the Hei-Shi can show up anywhere at anytime..."

Not exactly words of comfort.

Nothing made sense anymore. Once she had been Amuro Namie, a mischievous little girl with a fondness for the oily men and women her parents called the Mechified. She had begged and pleaded with her father, using her doe eyes, the ones mother said to reserve only for matters of importance, until he relented and adopted a young Mechified boy. Moses, he'd been called, and she used to get into such trouble with him. He loved her and would do almost anything she told him to (father said he was simple). So she told him to do things like chisel her name into the walls of the family shrine. She had such a whipping for that.

The worst time had been when she stole a dusty old artifact from the clan vault and helped him screw it into place on his shoulder. The Difference Engine, it was called. A relic of the First Minds from the age of space empires and even earlier. They had tried and tried to get it back from Moses, but the Engine had somehow become so entrenched in his machinery that removing it would jeopardize his very life. Even father was not cruel enough to kill the boy to recover the artifact. "The will of the First Minds is inscrutable," he intoned in his sacred voice and then swore everyone to secrecy on the matter. Namie did not get off so easy. She had no sweet rice for a year after that.

Yet somehow her childhood companion had grown up to become one of the most dangerous men alive. She still remembers the almost physical shock she felt the day she read in the papers that Moses was wanted for the murder of a foreman on the job. Her own gentle Moses? She'd protested to her father that it was impossible. She begged her father to go to the court and have Moses exonerated. She'd used her doe eyes. It was no use. Father had already been questioned by investigators and the evidence he'd seen was overwhelming. Moses was indeed guilty of murder.

It was worse the morning that Moses broke into the Goshi Corp tower and that photo was taken of him hurling the hunk of concrete that caused the explosion. Namie wept and wept until she had no more tears and though the horrible news kept coming it got easier after that.

It had been a dark time of her life, because just two weeks prior to the explosion in the tower her fiance, a son of the respected Master of Washi San Academy had been fired from his position as a director at Goshi Corp. Daitokuji Kiyoshi. Even saying that name aloud now would get you interrogated. The man she once was sworn to wed was now worth 35years Dead or Alive. 35years!

And his case made as little sense as the case of Moses. If ever there was a man who was more rigid in defense of his honor, more scrupulous in his actions and more certain in his loyalties than Daitokuji Kiyoshi she'd never met him. She recalled with some mortification how upon first meeting him and being allowed a brief time alone, as per custom, in the tea garden, she had hoped to steal a kiss. Improper it certainly was, but Namie had been excited by the prospect of breaking this taboo and imagined (since she'd always heard that men were lusty) that it would pleasantly surprise her husband to be. Instead, he had avoided her awkward attempts and maintained a steely courtesy that shamed her and made her feel small.

Could such a man really be a traitor? She couldn't fathom it.

And worst of all she had heard rumors that these two men from her past had somehow made common cause. It tied her stomach in knots even thinking about it. Kiyoshi had as much reason as anyone to hate Moses, his own father had died in the blast Moses caused. Kiyoshi had been a loyal employee, a Director for goodness sake, of Goshi Corp and he would never work together with the violent anarchists of the UMA... would he?

The door to her cabin opened silently, but the motion caught her eye and she turned to see a young woman in black leather with a hot pink bob striding aggressively into the space. A pink blade of psychic energy flickered to life around her fist.

Namie, sighed. "You've read my thoughts, haven't you. Uncle said not even to think of Moses or Kiyoshi lest they find me."

The woman nodded.

"Then there's no point, my protesting that you have the wrong person. I could show you my tickets and my identification that says my name is Sakura of the Ruby Hawk Clan, but you wouldn't believe me."

The woman shook her head.

"Why wait then?"

She seemed to consider her answer for a moment and then said, "You're less beautiful than I expected."

Namie had no idea what to make of that and the sudden disconnect made her laugh, a light airy sound. "I suppose I'm not genetically perfect like you. Is that what you mean?"

"No. I knew you were an Allskin, but I guess... I guess I just imagined that the woman he would marry would be more beautiful than me."

Where could this possibly be leading? "Do you mean Daitokuji Kiyoshi? We were betrothed because it suited our families, not... not because of our qualities. But that is over now. He is a traitor and my clan does not ally with traitors." She had practiced saying those words over and over, but they still hurt.

The silence between them was extraordinarily awkward, but when Namie thought about it the flickering blade did not really frighten her. In fact, it seemed... like a relief.

"Listen," Namie spoke up since the assassin was silent, "I'd rather not sit here wondering whether you're going to kill me forever. Do you suppose..."

She never saw the pink-haired girl move, but she felt the blade slide under her chin and the world went black...