Phoenix Spirit

[madimpossibledreamer]

Fight (chapter before this)
Background info for 'verse
Chairwoman/Natsukawa is Buffy (for which Miyamoto generally uses the respectful -sama).  -gumi is yakuza family. Akiyama is Willow.  Amaya-kai is the Amaya Clan which Natsukawa runs (also Amaya can be spelled with the characters for 'heavenly valley'...guess why they're called that.  Kumai is Jesse.  Miyamoto is Xander and genderfluid, which is usually not as accepted in Japanese society, even this other version--Buffy's just an exception.  (Also probably Akiyama but she's just She Is Spoken Of in this fic.)  Natsukawa Akeru is Dawn, the Matriarch of the Natsukawa-gumi, and Miyamoto refers to her with the less esteemed -san.  She talks about invoking the irezumi--talked about last time, but essentially letting the spirit within the tattoo possess your body and also about yubitsume, which is the Yakuza practice of cutting off all or part of one's finger and presenting it to a superior (at least in the Ryu ga Gotoku series, usually wrapped in cloth) as a symbolic act of penance.  You could think of it as a less dramatic version of seppuku.  It's less common in a world with magic and spirits, but it does occur.  Miyamoto is kicking herself that it didn't occur to her to pull a Xiahou Dun (search on youtube for Xiahou Dun losing his eye (warning: gross) if you don't know what I'm talking about.  It's a badass if creepy moment.

Main Points:
Buffy/Yakuza AU (Bloody Petals)
Chapter Summary: Follow-up to the fight between Kumai (Jesse) and Miyamoto (Xander).
Word Count: 848
Rating: Teen (aftermath of yakuza level violence, Miyamoto's lost an eye)

         Miyamoto-chan drifts in a daze of pain and no one hurts pack leader when words finally break through, insisting that no matter how much it hurts she has to think and respond.
         “I’m proud of you, Miyamoto-chan.”
         Her eye blinks open suddenly, as much as it protests, because surely this can’t be reality.  Except, with what little she can tell with her screeching pain and sudden lack of depth perception, it is.  She can’t help but gulp as her Chairwoman’s hand gently touches her cheek like she’s worthy of touching and being kind to and generally wasting precious moments of the Chairwoman’s time which should be spent healing.  “Ma’am?” she manages, strangled—it’s not near respectful enough but she’s still bewildered and in pain and there’s something wrong like she’s lost some precious part of her sanity and at any moment might be asking anyone nearby if they couldn’t help her retrieve some lost marbles from the floor and it’s all she can do to keep the strangled, unhinged laughter in her throat.
         “That kind of loyalty deserves the making of a new Matriarch, don’t you agree?  Of course, I can’t dissolve the Kumai-gumi, and we’ll have to watch them for rebellion.  Certainly I wouldn’t give you any of them as subordinates.”
         She blames the continual agony of her missing eye screaming “I’m gone I’m gone you must pay for losing me” for her next words.  “Far be it for me to argue with my Chairwoman but if yer serious y’might be as missin’ more screws ‘n I am.”
         To her surprise, Natsukawa-sama outright chuckles at that one.  “Blame Akiyama.  She’s been babbling nonstop about the fact that our playacting as Matriarchs when we were kids hasn’t come true when I’ve got the power to make it happen—but I didn’t want to take you away from a matriarch that you loved, who could be a bitca that I wanted to keep my eyes on.”
         Miyamoto-chan outright winces at that—she hadn’t expected them to still remember her, much less when they’d risen so much further—though it is kind of typical that they obviously remember the dumb things she’s said.  Twenty years ago.
         “We still haven’t found Kumai’s body,” the Chairwoman adds and, given the gentle push, agrees with Miyamoto-chan’s body’s assessment of the situation that she really, really shouldn’t get up despite the fact that her backstabbing matria—hang on to that thought, backstabbing former matriarch—could still be out there somewhere.  “I’d apologize for not getting here sooner to prevent more of the damage to you, or from stopping her from escaping, but am told No Chairwoman Apologizes in no uncertain terms.  I’ll have Akiyama’s best agents take point on locating her.  You’ve probably heard their rep as the best intelligence gatherers in the Amaya-kai.  If we find more than a body, though, that’s on you, once the healers are through with you.  And me,” she adds, rolling her eyes at one particularly angry-looking healer who had, apparently, been standing there, tapping her foot, during the entire conversation.  “You and the Miyamoto-gumi.”
         “Are you all right?” Miyamoto-chan manages, feeling suddenly vaguely ill.  If the Chairwoman had laid a trap—if she’d planned on dealing with treachery but found herself unable…
         “I faked my injuries—not that I had them, but the extent of them.  I didn’t think someone with ambition enough to attack me in my own home would stop at three, do you?  This way was the best to catch them out, and, I suppose, prove your own loyalty in the meantime.”  The Chairwoman stands a little shakily, holding her hand lightly to her side.  “Kumai was wrong about a lot of things, including your face, Matriarch.  I think you’ll look just as pretty—or handsome—with an eyepatch.  Add some sophistication, which as a Matriarch you’ll need if you keep refusing to shop for outfits that cost more than nineteen grand.”  Natsukawa-sama winks and hobbles away slowly under the watchful eye of a healer, and Miyamoto-chan tries valiantly to process: that she’s suddenly a matriarch, and one, from the sound of it, for a family that would have closer ties to Amaya-kai HQ than your average family just starting out, that it turns out Kumai-sama—no, no honorific, she shouldn’t, just Kumai—disapproved of her gender and probably also sexuality and who knows what else, and her new boss didn’t, that she was missing an eye now…
         “I was wrong, too.”  Natsukawa-san, the youngest Matriarch in the Clan, leans against the pillar in much the same way she’d done to Kumai in the beginning.  “I tracked it down from the money thing, which I didn’t think would be a thing the lieutenant didn’t know about.  But if you hadn’t invoked your irezumi you would’ve died, which is a situation I don’t think even a spy would put themselves in.  Yubitsume, sure, whatever, happens all the time, but dying and an eye?  Eurgh.”  She shudders theatrically, waves, friendly, and wanders off, hands in her pockets.
         Playing weak.  It just might run in the family.