[Hajime POV]
After returning to Kage Tower, several of my clones and I got to work immediately.
I spoke with many of the prisoners, and only a handful wanted to leave. They were the most desperate, such as one guy who was taken from his fiancée, or a teen taken from their family. Though I offered to bring their families over to ensure everyone's safety, they rejected it, saying they were done with the supernatural.
It was a foolish decision if you asked me, but I didn't stop them. If I did, the others who chose to stay might have felt uncomfortable. I did, however, get them to agree to a memory wipe, and with the help of one of Yasaka's most talented mind mages, any evidence of what they'd seen was gone.
As for the other former prisoners, I let them choose whether they wanted to stay in Kage Tower or move to a town on Tsushima. The younger ones chose to stay here; the older ones chose to live somewhere else.
They didn't leave the island, understanding the danger, but also wanted to live somewhat normal lives. All of them had a talent for magic or knew it, since that was why they were prisoners, but they didn't want to be involved if they could help it. Though the choice was similar to those who left, I could respect it.
Everyone who stayed on Tsushima had agreed to join Silent Echo, but those who wanted to avoid the supernatural asked for jobs that were either mundane, like running a restaurant, or mundane-adjacent, like helping with the logistics of supernatural goods.
The kids were easily the most excitable.
Several of them had been taken within the last few years or so, so they all wanted to learn magic. Many had decent reserves for their age, which meant they would be competent magicians with the right training.
For those 10 and younger, I put Monet in charge, mainly because of her experience. Despite her sociopathy, she knew how to keep children in line better than anyone else I had in my employ.
The only exception was Shirone, who stayed with her sister under my and Yasaka's watch.
Luckily, Yasaka was willing to help me keep everything a secret and also agreed to help teach the cat sisters how to use their magic properly. Kuroka was a genius who had reached ultimate-class, but most of what she knew was scattered knowledge from books or her mother's teaching, leaving gaps in her skill set and knowledge that needed addressing.
Shirone was different. She was 7 years old, but her mother had died years ago, leaving her that hairclip with information about the experiments. Kuroka was usually busy with tests or missions, leaving Shirone alone most of the time; when they did spend time together, Kuroka usually played with her to distract her from everything going on.
That didn't mean she was completely uneducated. She knew the basics of magic and senjutsu, but not enough to train properly.
This lack of knowledge likely caused her canon self to avoid it after Kuroka's meltdown. She didn't know enough about senjutsu to understand that Kuroka was probably sane- just the basics, which included the warning about absorbing negative energy- so she avoided using it at any cost.
Yasaka planned to teach them both personally. Nekoshou were as rare as a nine-tailed fox, so Yasaka wanted them to use magic properly to protect themselves in the future and avoid a similar occurrence.
She even delegated a clone to do her paperwork, wanting to be there personally to avoid any mishaps. Though senjutsu wasn't as dangerous as Shirone would've eventually believed, that didn't mean it was safe either. Mastering senjutsu is what made Sun Wukong so powerful. It was estimated that he would drop from peak-supreme to initiate-supreme if you took away his senjutsu, and that gap was larger than the gap between a peak-ultimate and an initiate-low. So yeah, it was important.
They didn't spend all their time training. Kuroka and Yasaka both took the opportunity to properly educate Shirone, who, in many ways, was less educated than a 5-year-old.
Needless to say, every time Yasaka heard how badly the two were treated, she wanted to flood the leyline's energy into an army of clones and send them to the underworld to finish off the Nebiros. It was only thanks to centuries of restraint that she managed to keep her composure, knowing that she'd get an opportunity for revenge eventually.
Over the next few weeks, I helped everyone settle in, even using funds from selling materials to other factions to buy mundane businesses on the island to hire people to work at. With Yasaka's help, it didn't take long. Tsushima, like many places in Japan, was dealing with a shrinking population, so there were plenty of properties for sale or willing to sell for a little above market price.
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[Kuroka POV]
I woke up in my new room with Shirone sleeping next to me. She had her own bed on the other side of the room, but she felt uncomfortable in this place we were brought to; she still missed her old room, no matter how much of a prison it was.
It had been a few days since Shirone and I were saved, and it still feels like a dream. I'd been living in that damned facility for years and wondered if we'd ever escape. On a few occasions, I'd imagined myself grabbing Shirone and breaking out, coming to Japan under one of the Yokai leaders for asylum.
I admit I was surprised that our savior was technically part yokai, despite my senses telling me he was completely human. Even more surprising, however, was that he somehow knew Yasaka, Queen of Kyoto and the strongest yokai alive.
Stretching, I got out of bed, leaving Shirone to sleep in. Normally I'd want to sleep in myself, but now that we were finally free, I had dived into training as much as I could. I was completely helpless during the last few years, only able to give Shirone vague promises of future outings and fun. Now that we were free, I planned to get strong enough to protect her if it happened again.
I got dressed in one of the new kimonos Yasaka and Hajime got for me, took one last glance at Shirone, and headed toward the training grounds.
As I walked through Kage Tower, I saw that the walls and many rooms were bare. Unlike the Nebiros facility, this place was empty because so few people were here, not to maintain professionalism.
I entered the training room and saw a few of Hajime's clones, each working on something different. Nearby, I saw Monet practicing creating a clone. I'd talked to her the other day, and she said that she was learning the clone skill so she could help lighten Hajime's workload. That girl made it hard to tell whether she worked out of love, dedication, or professionalism, since everything she did seemed to be aimed at helping Hajime in some way.
Apparently, her situation was similar to mine, where she was trying to help her sister and was willing to do anything to protect her. When I asked where she was, Monet avoided the topic, which was confusing. It didn't seem like her sister had died, but she also didn't seem to be able to see her. I didn't pry. I knew there was probably a complicated reason.
When one of Hajime's clones saw me enter, they created another one and sent it my way. I was grateful, since it was helping me learn to clone myself, just as Hajime showed Yasaka. It was his personal technique, one only yokai could use since we could utilize chakra.
Technically, anyone could utilize chakra through touki, but that was strictly limited to physical enhancements. Only yokai could use chakra in ways beyond touki, making his clone technique extremely valuable. It could not only speed up training, but also help yokai finish their work more easily, giving us more time to train or enjoy ourselves.
I had learned from Crawforde that yokai were recruited by almost every faction purely because our senjutsu techniques are so valuable and only usable by us. Add in this clone technique, and I could easily understand his disgusting obsession with experimenting on me. I was literally his best subject.
I shook my head, trying to clear my mind. I had been making good progress with the clone technique, and I wanted to finish learning it as soon as possible so I could keep training while also spending time with Shirone.
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[Third Person POV]
Over an hour later, back in the Toujou sisters' shared room, Shirone finally woke up. Originally, she wanted to sleep in, but after feeling around for her sister and finding nothing, she had no choice but to open her eyes.
Seeing her sister wasn't in the room, Shirone got up and dressed before heading to the kitchen for breakfast. She wanted to eat with her sister, but Shirone hadn't trained her senjutsu's ability to sense other life forces, so she didn't know where her sister was. As she left the bedroom, she paused to remember where the kitchen was, still unfamiliar with the building's layout.
Heading toward the kitchen, Shirone couldn't help but reminisce about the last few days in this new, unfamiliar place. The facility that had housed her for her entire life, which was destroyed if what Hajime told her was correct, didn't feel the same as here. A few paintings now hung on the walls, which hadn't been there when they first arrived.
Hajime had bought some to liven up the walls so they wouldn't look as barren as the facility, while the rest Pam made in her spare time. Some of her works were portraits of her colleagues and family; others were of the group she was now part of; and still others were simply landscapes she visited in her free time.
Shirone looked at the paintings and felt a strange mix of sorrow and optimism. At the very least, her sister seemed much happier in recent days. She tried asking Kuroka about it, but was always brushed off with the excuse that she would wait till she was older, something that frustrated the young nekoshou to no end.
After finally reaching the kitchen, she saw two people, Blake and Jenny, eating. Blake was eating a sandwich that her senses told her was tuna. Jenny ate an omelet and a bowl of fruit.
Blake turned to Shirone when she heard her enter.
"Good morning."
"Good morning!" Jenny chimed in immediately after.
"Mmm," Shirone hummed in greeting, never being the most talkative person.
Heading to the cereal cabinet, Shirone grabbed a box of the sugariest cereal she could find, got Jenny to grab the largest bowl possible, and poured the entire box into it. Carrying the large bowl over to the table, an amusing sight for the two onlookers, Shirone placed the bowl down before digging in, not caring to use a spoon.
About halfway through her meal, a loud, piercing voice interrupted her, calling her name.
"OH, SHIRONE!" The familiar voice rattled the room as the door burst open, revealing her sister, covered in sweat and wearing her favorite kimono. Behind her, Hajime and Monet entered.
"Morning, Shirone," Hajime greeted.
"Good morning," Monet said curtly.
Shirone nodded at them, completely ignoring her hyperactive sister. Her sister had been a lot louder than she was before, but though it annoyed her, Shirone couldn't say she was upset. She could feel how much happier her sister was and buried her face in her cereal bowl before anyone noticed her smile.
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Author's Note:
Thanks for reading; I'll see you next time!