Mari sank slightly deeper into her seat, her second hour of watching Emi the Younger at work nearly over. The sandy-haired twentysomething girl’s body language and tone of voice didn’t tell her quite as much as she’d hoped, but on this occasion, Mari had a secret weapon. For in another time, another place, Inoue Mariko had been an innkeeper’s daughter, and nowhere did a person’s personality reveal themselves more than in how they ran their inn. The Firefly Inn was as much Emi the Younger as the girl in front of her was.

In another time, another place, Mariko was never discovered as a potential ninja. She grew up among friends, learning everything she needed to know along the way, and one day took up the torch and carried on the proud traditions of the Open Hearth. She stood behind the counter in a simple white dress, with a bright red choker like Miss Konishi’s around her neck, and bowed as the guests came in, and said a few kind words to help them relax, and given hearty meals to the hungry, drinks to the tense, and rooms to those in need of a home away from home. In the mornings, when business was quietest, she’d balance the books, and restock the larder, and send the maid (with Mariko in charge, they would of course be rich enough to afford a maid) to clean every corner and make sure the H hadn’t fallen off the end of the sign again. Her friends would be sick with envy, and Mum would be ever so proud, and Uncle Kazuhiro—

Mari stood up sharply. Only a rank amateur would allow themselves to be distracted by personal feelings during a mission, and Usami-sensei had taught her better than that. Assets. Opportunities. Angles of attack. She’d think better in the fresh air anyway.

​ o-o-o-o

Emi was once again distracted by the customer in Room Three, whose violent coughing she could intermittently hear even through the ceiling. She should probably brew him some honeyed tea to help his throat—complimentary, of course. To be sure, that man could afford anything she had to throw at him, but reputation was daimyo in her business, and a little charity could go a long way.

She was already reaching for a mug when the ringing bell announced a new arrival.

“Welcome to the Firefly Inn!” she called out almost reflexively.

It didn’t take her long to register that something was off. The second she could tear her eyes away from the newcomer’s magnificent bosom (bad Emi; no thinking lecherous thoughts about potential customers!), she became aware of the slightly-too-wide eyes and the rapid breathing. The woman walked—nearly ran— up to the bar, and dumped the entire contents of a money pouch on it.

“I need, need a room. For the night. P-please.”

Emi took in the situation. Dirtied clothing. Aura of desperation. The money (all local coinage, she noted). A fresh bruise across the woman’s cheek. Emi made herself keep smiling as her stomach began to tighten. She was getting a feeling that this was a “don’t worry, I just walked into a door for the third time this week” bruise.

The woman wasn’t carrying a travel bag, or anything at all. Emi glanced down at the pile of money again. Yes, in fact, that was the kind of sum you’d get for selling a horse in Sarubetsu without bargaining. (Akutagawa the trader had a gift for selective deafness which sometimes drove Emi mad, but even so she took care to soak in everything she could whenever veterans like him visited.)

“Please,” the woman leaned in, incidentally exposing more of her fascinating cleavage. (No thinking lecherous thoughts about the customers! This isn’t that kind of inn, and besides, I can’t afford a scandal right now. Nobody would have to know. And it has been over a year since… Shut up, Inner Emi.) Then the motion exposed another bruise, and any inappropriate thoughts that may have been crossing Emi’s mind disappeared immediately.

“Please, is it not enough?”

“It is more than enough,” Emi smiled sweetly, sliding the appropriate amount off the table (and deciding in passing not to charge extra for breakfast). "I hope you enjoy your stay."

Then, to her alarm, the customer leaned in close and whispered to her. “If… if someone comes looking for me, could you tell them I’m not there? Please?”

Emi glanced around the room. How many customers had seen her come in?

She made a quick calculation, noting the number of patrons, the overall mood in the room, and the fact that the Irisu siblings had started their shift, and the new girl Yuri was still here. The youngest of the Irisu had a good head on her shoulders; she should be able to man the bar for half an hour as long as Emi was back in time for the evening rush.

Emi tapped her fingers together as the decision crystallised, a handclap without the noisy palms.

“Rei, would you mind taking over while I show this lady to her room?”

“Yes, Miss Emi!” Rei bounced, but somehow managed to keep the tray in her hand perfectly still.

“And Yuri, take some honeyed tea to Room Three.”

“Yes, Miss Emi!” Yuri happily took the opportunity Emi had given her to extricate herself from a customer (who seemed like he was starting to get grabby, and was one warning away from a lifetime ban).

​ o-o-o-o

Emi watched the customer sit down heavily on the bed (which sank a little too low—she’d have to Have Makina show Yuri how to restuff the mattress), then delicately sat down next to her.

“Forgive me if I’m overstepping my bounds,” she said, “but would you like to talk about what happened to you? I promise I won’t tell anyone.”

Silence reigned for a while, which was not the same as a refusal. Emi waited patiently, silently wishing she’d taken the chair in the corner instead, because while her position made it easier to build rapport with the customer, she was also in close proximity to a really attractive woman and Inner Emi kept making the most incredibly appealing inappropriate suggestions. And Emi was increasingly sure that, were she to act on any of them, she would be taking advantage of an emotionally vulnerable person on top of everything else, so no.

At least, unlike Emi, the customer seemed to be benefiting from the quiet, and no longer on the verge of tears.

“I used to be an innkeeper like you,” she began. “My brother and I ran an inn together. I managed the staff and the premises, and he handled the budget and negotiations. But then he got married, and his new wife… well, she hated my guts. I don’t know why, but she really did. She poisoned him against me. And one day, when a ninja was passing through the village…”

The customer swallowed. Her eyes glistened.

“He… he sold me. Like an animal. Like I wasn’t human. What kind of person does that, to their own sister?”

Emi’s eyes widened. “That’s horrible!”

She’d heard rumours that the slave trade was being revived again in some dark corners of the world, maybe in the south where people would do anything for money, but for it to be happening so close!

“He sold me,” the customer repeated. “To be a… a…”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Emi said softly.

“A comfort woman,” the customer forced out, as if saying it was an act of rebellion.

“She would keep me with her, and leave me in some nearby town when she went on missions,” the customer recounted. “And when she came back… she did things.”

Emi really didn’t want to hear the details. She had vivid dreams, had done ever since she was a child, and there were some things she was keen to keep out of them.

But the customer’s needs took priority.

“You don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to,” she said. “But if you want to, I’ll listen.”

“She wasn’t always bad,” the customer said, not looking at Emi. “When she had her red powder, she could be almost friendly. She wasn’t a bad person, deep down. But then she’d go on a mission, and when she came back…” she hesitated, “she’d be angry, and cruel.

“I tried to run away, once before. She tracked me down within a day, and punished me, and said she’d turn me into a ‘test subject’ if I did it again, and that it would be worse than death.”

Emi nodded sympathetically, keeping her emotions off her face. They were strong emotions, red hot and calling for blood. Some people, the thought was running through her head, simply shouldn’t be allowed to exist.

“But I couldn’t stand it anymore,” the customer said after a pause. “Not after she…

“So when we stopped in a village to the west, and she was passed out from her red powder, I stole a horse… and I ran.”

The customer looked up at her. “She’s going to find me and kill me. I know she is. But I couldn’t stand it anymore.”

Emi forcibly unclenched her fists. “Not in Sarubetsu she isn’t. I know somebody here who can help you.”

“You think someone can help me?” the customer asked in heartbreaking disbelief.

Emi nodded. “Emiya Manako, our mayor. She’s spent her life protecting people like us from the ninja. I know she can figure out a way to deal with the woman after you.”

“Oh,” the customer said. She looked at Emi with the beginnings of a new light in her eyes. “Please, tell me more. Tell me everything about her!”

Emi could feel herself relaxing at the question. She gave a light smile as she collected her thoughts.

“Manako is always very grounded. She’s the kind of person who’ll take a problem and break it down into bits until she finds a bit she can fix, and then before you know it, she’s got the whole thing figured out. And she pays attention to everything. That’s why she’s so good at her job. She puts all the little things she notices together, and then she manages to outsmart ninja. She’s not very patient when she thinks you’re wasting her time, but she’ll forgive you if you can make her laugh, and she has the most wonderful deadpan sense of humour.”

Emi closed her eyes as she conjured an image of Manako in her mind’s eye.

“She hates liars, and she can really hold a grudge, but she’s a good judge of character. So if you’re a good person, she’ll give you the benefit of the doubt when you need it. Her favourite colour is pink, but she says it’s green, even though she’d look really beautiful in pink. It’s impossible to win an argument with her because she has a way of taking what you’ve said and repeating it back to you so you suddenly hear all the flaws in it. She has a wonderful voice, and she could have been a singer, but her parents talked her out of it because they said there was no money in singing. She still sings to herself when she thinks she’s alone, and we all pretend we don’t know. She loves watching the rain, but she’s always got something important to do in the basement when there’s a thunderstorm, except when the Kurogane boy got lost in the woods and she led everyone to look for him even though she had to hold my hand the whole time…”

She caught herself. Opening her eyes, she looked at the customer, who seemed to be staring at her with a curious expression.

“Don’t get the wrong idea!” Emi said quickly, aware that her face was going red and trying to hurriedly move the blood back down into her body through sheer force of will. “We’re just childhood friends. And anyway, we’ve hardly seen each other at all since she became mayor!”

The customer gave her first smile.

“She must be a very busy woman,” she mercifully changed the subject.

Emi returned the smile wryly. “That she is. She even sleeps in the office on weekdays. She says she needs to be able to do the paperwork first thing in the morning while she’s got the willpower. Then she spends the whole afternoon out, and the evening taking visitors. I don’t know when she finds time to breathe.”

“You said she looks out for people in trouble with ninja,” the customer said warily. “Does that mean she doesn’t have any ninja of her own?”

“Oh, she does,” Emi said, then hurried to clarify at the customer’s expression. “She has the Trinity, with a ninja bodyguard from each of the three clans in charge of Sarubetsu. That way, they’re constantly keeping an eye on each other so nobody can seize an advantage, and they’re always giving their best because if anything happens to her, the balance of power’s going to collapse, and they’ll be the scapegoats.” She’d learned a great many things from Hinago Isshin, both from listening to him babble happily the night after his tryst with that Murano girl, and from the very audible goings-on during it.

“I don’t know if I want to talk to her with other ninja standing around,” the customer said worriedly. “What if they take that… that person’s side?”

Emi gave this the consideration it deserved.

Finally, she tapped her fingers together.

"We'll make it a favour from her to me," she decided. "She'll talk in private to an old friend.

“Everything is going to be all right,” she said, looking into the customer’s entrancing blue eyes (You know, if you pull this off, she’s going to be very grateful to you. Inner Emi, I swear I’d kill you if you weren’t a figment of my imagination).

“Yes,” the customer agreed, “yes, I think it is.”

​ o-o-o-o

​ “Hazō-sensei!” Ishihara exclaimed. “We didn’t expect you to join us so early.”

Kagome winced to hear her loudly use Hazō’s real name in hostile territory. Somebody—but absolutely not him—really needed to sit her down and have a talk about SOPs.

Hazo’s face said much the same thing. The boy was growing.

“We talked to Haruo the Stickler,” he said, “but it was like running into a brick wall.”

Maybe not growing that fast, then, if he gave up at a solid obstacle without even trying to blow it up (granted, Kagome wasn't sure what the diplomacy equivalent of high explosives was, but Inoue at least proved that it existed).

“We tried, but we couldn’t think of a single way to change the subject without being suspicious,” Wakahisa explained. “It’s like my brain just locked up. I was at the point where I had to rely on Mr Mew here for social tips.”

“Excuse me?” Hazō snapped. “If you’d bothered studying my flowcharts before we headed out—“

“You mean the flowcharts that had such gems as ‘ask him if he knows who’s responsible for the recent disappearances, because that totally doesn’t sound like we suspect him of aiding and abetting a serial killer?’”

“That’s not what it said! I was just looking for clues in a—“

“Boys,” Mori said flatly. “Did you acquire any useful information?”

“No, miss,” Hazō and Wakahisa shuffled their feet like they'd just been caught carving interesting shapes into their school desks with a pocket knife.

But there was one person missing. Why was she missing? Wasn’t she supposed to be rendezvousing with them alongside Hazō and Wakahisa? Had she been caught? Assaulted? Immobilised and then plied with Vermilion Sigh until she turned into one of those drug zombies they used in the southern countries?

“What about Inoue?” Kagome demanded. “Is she safe? Where is she? Why isn’t she here?”

“Inoue-sensei is fine,” Hazō said. “She’s decided to carry out her plan today instead of taking extra observation time. But she told me in advance that she wouldn’t be able to extract until late tonight, after everyone at the inn had gone to bed. So we shouldn’t worry if she’s late to the rendezvous point.”

Kagome gave a reluctant nod. “If those stinking stinkers lay a finger on her…”

“Inoue-sensei is the greatest infiltrator I have ever met,” Ishihara said seriously. “As members of her team, we have to trust in her skills. We must rely on her to do her job, just like she’s relying on us to do ours.”

Kagome didn’t have much to say to that, so he just grunted in response.

One thing he really liked about the genin was how they didn’t expect him to waste time on pointless words, the way his old team had back in… no, there was no need to think about that now. All in the past where it belonged. Even Ayako.

“If we are quite done questioning Inoue-sensei’s abilities,” Mori cut in, “perhaps we should attend to our own tasks?”

“Right,” Hazō said. “What have you guys learned?”

​ o-o-o-o

​ It wasn’t the worst town he had ever had to plan his way out of, Kagome reflected as he listened to Mori summarise their discoveries to the newcomers. There was a clear escape route over the slum roofs abutting the northern wall. Obviously, the local ninja would have trapped it to hell and back, but that kunai cut both ways—if he could detonate a few of those traps from range, the chain reaction would wipe out enough buildings for the team to escape in the chaos.

Then again, his teammates didn’t seem to like collateral damage much. Too soft, but that was why it was Kagome's place to be the realist among them. They did things he couldn’t—gave him things he couldn’t—and for that he’d squeeze every last drop from his own hard-won skillset.

So if they wanted to go down the soft route, that would be the southeast. There’d been some recent demolition going on that way (they’d heard at the market that some old buildings had been taken down as unsafe), which meant clear terrain with no civilians to get in the way. All those lines of sight, though… he didn’t fancy trying to cross open ground with missiles raining down on him.

No, better to hit the enemy hard and get out before the locals put together a security response at all. Mori had the right idea with those narrow, maze-like slum alleyways—if they scouted them out first, then led the enemy in, they’d have a huge terrain advantage, and his explosives would sing with those walls focusing the blasts. Though he’d decided not to mention this last part in case Ishihara started blathering about civilian casualties again.

Above all, they needed to stay out of the west. Rich people’s houses, meaning plenty of patrols and tight defences. Unless they could frame Arikada for the destruction and draw the patrols down on her so she had to split her fire… no, that was a fool’s game. Kagome was ashamed for even thinking it.

That left the question of priority targets, which for some reason everyone was looking to him for. Then again, he’d done this before. Central well. Granaries to the south. Warehouses to the southwest—he’d try making one of Hazō’s experimental seals if at least some of those weren’t yakuza property. Given a day to mine the place undisturbed, he could probably wipe this town off the map in infrastructure terms, without touching a single inhabited building.

Of course, “undisturbed” was always the hard part…

“Hold it right there.”

Kagome glanced left and right.

One end of the street contained four ninja in red. The other contained three in blue. He’d let the team be cornered. He’d let the team be cornered.

“Your hunch was right, Minori,” one of the ninja in red said. “Looks like waiting has netted us the entire team.

“So,” he looked Kagome in the eye, “you’ve been wandering around town noting points of strategic importance, haven’t you, my dear little spies. I thought it was just a coincidence at first, but then you were so blatant about it that even the Hinago over there,” he gestured contemptuously, “weren’t blind enough to miss you.”

“Is barking all you can do, Irie dog?” a woman in blue snapped. “This is our territory, and the spies are our prisoners. We don’t need your help, so why don’t you slink off to whatever kennel you came from?”

Kagome would never let his team be taken prisoner, to be tortured and experimented on and used as lupchanzen fodder. Never. And as luck would have it, right now the enemies were focused on each other rather than on him. There wouldn’t be a better chance.

Kagome thrust his hands into his pockets, slipping on the rings with a practised smoothness. The range was right. If he could just raise his arms in time—