Chapter 69
---
In the morning I stood alone on the rocky shore. From this spot there opens a breathtaking view of the sunrise. Master Sotama had loved this place. He had loved greeting the dawn here with a bottle of the local spirits — Awamori. A powerful thing, its proof ranging anywhere from eighty to a hundred and twenty, nothing like that warm Japanese piss they call sake. Sake is sake. I never understood that drink. Then again, I never fully understood the Japanese either, even though I'd spent considerable time in close company with some of them. A few I even count as friends.
Master Sotama. This is the very spot where I buried him. I didn't spare the effort — I chiseled a grave into solid bedrock, which for some reason is especially hard in this particular place. I broke three crowbars in the process. And three pickaxes.
The truth is, Okinawa has a very involved burial custom — a two-stage affair. First, the body is sealed in a cave for anywhere from one to five years, and after that time has passed, the decomposed and partially mummified remains are retrieved from the temporary resting place for the ritual called senkotsu — the washing of the bones. And it's exactly as it sounds: remnants of whatever the flesh and organs have become over the intervening years are scraped from the bones with special sticks or sickles, the bones themselves are carefully washed with Awamori, and then arranged in a prescribed order inside a ritual urn, which is afterward placed in the permanent burial site.
A complex ritual. A lengthy one. One I never quite understood.
Master Sotama. He was a damned son of a bitch — in character, in fate, and literally. The son of a port-town yujo who died young, from syphilis or some other "unpleasant disease." The Master never specified, and I never asked. His whole life had room for nothing but combat, blood, war, and Okinawa-te. And yujo. And Awamori.
He never started a family of his own. Never knew his children. I'm certain he had them, given his attitude toward carnal matters, but he didn't know them, didn't know about them, and never tried to find out.
A classic Hard Son of a Bitch. In some ways reminded me of Sakaki Shio from an anime in Vasya-Sensei's world, only far harder, far darker, far more frightening, and nowhere near observing any kind of Katsujinken. Spilling blood and taking lives was as natural to him as breathing.
So — no relatives, no children, no friends. Only students. And even those students didn't particularly like him. He was difficult to be around. The old drunk.
So I was the one who buried him alone. Not even Yui and Tatsumi came to help. On the other hand, nobody argued with me about the rituals, or about following the rules.
As for me — I chiseled out the pit, lowered the body in. Hauled fertile soil over the top and planted a local tree above it — tokkulikiwata. In life, Sotama had loved to admire its pink blossoms.
The pit I cut into the stone was a generous one: five meters by five meters in area, and two and a half meters deep. An additional recess in the center for the body itself — one meter by two, and half a meter deep. Well, why not? I've never been short on stubbornness, and when the crowbars and pickaxes gave out, I started digging with my claws. And honestly, things moved considerably faster after that. My claws turned out to be harder than the rock.
Now I stood at that spot and looked at the enormous tree, covered entirely in blossoms from root to crown. I hadn't even known they could grow so large. But apparently, in the Marvel world, stranger things are possible.
Well, Master. You were not a good man. Not that it matters — as a person, I'm garbage too. But you were my Master. And I am grateful to you for that. We spent thirty-five years side by side. Though, in truth, it was difficult to call our relationship a classic teacher-and-student bond. By the time we met, I had a good fifty percent more years on me than he did, and I was no novice in the martial arts — I'd already been called a Master myself in Muay Boran by then. So our relationship was more one of equals, really. He learned from me, I learned from him. And we cut down Japanese soldiers together. But he was, and remains, my Master.
I stood under the flowering tree for roughly an hour, watching the dawn rise. Then I poured Awamori over the roots from a bottle I'd bought in Naha specifically for this purpose, bowed with respect, and left.
---
Natasha. Yes, I had a direct conversation with her. The evening after the celebration. She didn't try to dodge anything.
The Red Room had existed, after all. And she wasn't twenty-nine years old, as she had said on the plane — she was thirty-nine. The Red Room had been a Hydra project. A Soviet cell of Hydra. Yes, that turned out to be a thing as well — they'd managed to take root and dig in before the war even started.
So, the Red Room. It was discovered in fifty-three, right in the middle of a new wave of Stalinist purges. Natasha was twelve years old by then. Her uterus had already been removed. And Romanova was by that point already a well-trained, effective killer. And as it happened, some version — significantly weakened, but still — of Schmidt's super-soldier formula had been applied to her. A number of physical abnormalities had resulted. Which ones exactly, Natasha didn't say, and I didn't press. Especially since, once she was transferred into Erskine's dietary experiment program, those abnormalities gradually corrected themselves. Yes — they didn't throw away "promising material." They simply folded her into the project. The diet regimen still needed to be tested across different conditions and different groups anyway. And it was useful to determine the effective upper age limit in practice, not just on the basis of Erskine's theoretical projections.
She had been the oldest subject in the program. Twelve turned out to be the ceiling. That was part of why she gradually rose to a leadership role. And she had proven her loyalty more than once, in blood. That was the story.
So we flew off Okinawa quiet and thoughtful. Romanova lost in her grim reflections. Me occupied with considerations of where exactly I was going to install the Vita-ray apparatus. And who else I'd run through it while I was building the thing anyway.
---
Back in Tokyo, Howard had arrived, and he and Shingen were deep in negotiations, hammering out the details of a future agreement. Mariko and Logan were preparing for the wedding. The negotiations to establish the Soviet Aikido Federation were waiting for me — as the authorized representative of the Soviet side. Great. Nobody wants to do their own work. They always find a way to dump it on me.
---
The wedding took place a week later. Conducted according to local Shinto traditions, with all the particular nuances and customs specific to the Yakuza. Dignified, beautiful, refined.
Though someone did attempt to ruin the celebration. The Red Omega appeared. He positioned himself in front of the assembled guests and, like a seasoned exhibitionist, threw off a long brown cloak, then burst into laughter and reached toward the guests with his tentacles.
A mistake. What Erik proceeded to do to him with his own whips was not an appetizing sight — something resembling a lump of ground meat oozing and spilling out of a tangle of metal cables.
After apologizing to the impressed guests, my brother and I dragged this meat-and-carbonadium roll around the nearest corner, from which we relocated to a steel mill, where we burned every last trace of organic matter from the mass in a smelting furnace. The freed metal, Erik asked to have sent to his institute for study — apparently the alloy was particularly interesting. My brother has always had a fondness for curiosities.
The whole affair took half an hour. We still made it back in time for the banquet.
---
If You Like The Story Drop a Review
~Read Advanced Chapters on: p@treon/Amiii_
~Every 150 PS = Bonus Chapter!
~Push the Story forward with your [Power Stones]