</B>
Emergency Assembly of the Council of Nobles
Grand Chamber of the Imperial Diet
Raiden no Me, Kaminari no Kuni
...0900 hours
“ORDER! ORDER!! I WILL HAVE ORDER FROM THIS COUNCIL!!” bellowed the Speaker, smashing his gavel against the wooden sounding board so hard that the handle broke from impact and sent its wooden head flying off into the distance. Ordinarily, this would have prompted quite the reaction from the amassed Council of Nobles, but today the faux pas went unnoticed, drowned out by the cacophony of discussion, negotiation, and argument overtaking the room. It had been three days since the last assembly, and today would be the day that determined the legitimate successor to the Shogun’s throne at Raiden no Me, and thus who was the ruler of Lightning Country. Daimyo Amakusa Ryuu beamed in his seat, Baron Tsukahara Daiki seated next to him. He had already dressed in a three-piece tuxedo, and wore his favorite pair of white kid gloves, and was adorned with the full regalia of his line – clothing that a newly appointed ruler would normally wear on the day of his coronation. And in truth, without any evidence that the previously decided-upon Crown Prince was alive, it would likely be the day of Ryuu’s coronation.
Countess Oishi Bakunin, thirty-seventh in her line, attempted to drown out the insanity-inducing levels of noise and utter disregard for protocol at first with her hands, and briefly considered committing public seppuku just to make the noise stop. Her emotions were mixed – last night, Ami had come to her in tears, an event as rare as a dragon sighting, and the two had engaged in an intimacy that neither thought possible between two women. But today, if Ryuu were made Shogun, it meant Ami was in danger. He would likely strip her of her position, and once that happened, as a non-noble, she would be no better protected from his wrath than a bug against the Raikage. He had once threatened to hang her alongside the common criminals in the city’s square, and if anything, Ryuu kept his grudges. The countess had spent the remainder of the night formulating a plan to save the Chancellor; according to the law, it was already illegal for two men to marry, but the laughably misogynist writers of those original edicts had completely forgotten to mention the marital rights of women, thus making it possible for two women to marry. And the best thing about this legal oversight was that no one had ever sought to correct it, even when women had married in the past, for fear of exposing it to the public and prompting an explosion of lesbian marriages. Ami could come under her legal protection through matrimony, Bakunin had realized. And if they retreated to Kumo swiftly, avoiding the inevitable assassin squads, then there was nothing Shogun Ryuu would be able to do about it. Ami’s expression as she stood at the Chancellor’s podium maintained her trademark serenity, but the façade was visibly starting to crack.
“Marshal General, if you would allow me to borrow that,” said Bakunin to Nobunaga Kouhei, who stood nearby. The general raised an eyebrow when he realized that she wanted to borrow his pistol crossbolter, but shrugged and handed it to the petite, blue-haired woman.
A sharp and unmistakable crack sounded through the room as the hand-arbalest discharged, carving a fist-sized hole in the ceiling of the chamber and causing all present to immediately duck and fall silent. All eyes in the room shifted immediately to the countess, who held the weapon in the air, its barrel still smoking from the friction of the bolt’s passage. The Speaker immediately cleared his throat, taking advantage of the disruption.
“Order in the Council! Countess Oishi, please refrain from further discharge of weaponry in our chambers, thank you.” he said, emphasizing the last part before turning to the crowd. “I hereby continue the previous emergency session of the Council. I will take…motions for new business,” he said, sighing.
“I move that we make a formal vote of no confidence against Chancellor Tachibana, recognizing Daimyo Amakusa Ryuu ro Kaminari as the new Shogun of Lightning Country!” said Daiki, followed by a chorus of ayes and seconds as well as nays, but fewer in number than three days ago.
“The motion passes. This vote must be conducted by roll call, and is by plurality,” said the speaker. “Very well…we will start with Baron Anzu of Yasogami Province…”
“The votes have been tallied,” announced the speaker. Ami closed her eyes. This was the end… “Of two hundred present, there are one hundred and twenty ‘aye’ votes, seven abstentions, and seventy-three ‘nay’ votes.” He looked over at Ami. “The ‘ayes’ have it. Madam Chancellor, you are hereby relieved of your position…”
Damned right, you heinous bitch! Oh, I won’t just hang you, I'll also crucify your corpse and let it rot on the gates of my palace. I'll even keep the damned birds from eating it just so I can enjoy your humiliation longer! thought Ryuu, grinning maliciously. Bakunin shot a glance over at Ami, and brought out the two engagement bands she had purchased...
“INVALID!” roared a new voice from the entrance to the chamber. It was ragged and betrayed a lot of pain, but it was also strong and clear. As the nobles turned their heads toward the new arrival, a collective gasp went up throughout the room. “Crown Prince Shiro Amakusa Yuuto vi Kaminari invalidates this result!” shouted Shiranai as he hobbled into the chamber. The boy looked to be a complete mess – face covered in bruises, wrists bound heavily with gauze, and an intravenous line still in his arm, into which a unit of blood still ran in. Wearing a patient’s gown, he supported himself painfully with a crutch, favoring his right leg.
“This council has already determined that I am the legitimate heir to the Shogunate of Kaminari no Kuni, and therefore Daimyo Amakusa’s claim to my position is overturned! The vote of no confidence is null and void!” he bellowed over the avalanche of shouts, curses, hoots of approval, and new orders relayed to subordinates.
“He is correct! The vote is invalid! Motion does not pass!” said the speaker now, excitedly, prompting an avalanche of noise and raised voices throughout the hall.
“Bullshit! You’re supposed to be DEAD!” screamed Ryuu, rising from his seat and clamping his hands down on his desk in rage.
“God dammit, SHUT UP, Ryuu!” retorted Shiranai, hobbling toward the Speaker and the Chancellor. Ami fell to her knees in shock, her lips quivering, prompting Mizuki and Yui to rush to her side. She waved them off, however, as Shiranai now knelt in front of her, losing his grip on the crutch and causing it to clatter to the floor.
“Madam Chancellor, I’m sorry I’m a bit late. I had to say goodbye to Tama and Senna at the hospital. They’re both going to be fine…” he said, catching his breath. “I know it’s a bit inconvenient, Ami, but will you help me rule this country?” he asked, clasping her hands in his own. Ami smiled brilliantly now, her expression suffused with a never-before-seen joy.
“With pleasure, Your Highness,” she said, pulling him into a tight embrace as tears coursed down her cheeks.
Previously...
<i></i>Unknown Location, Kaminari no Kuni
...???? Hours
“Out of the fire and into the frying pan, eh, Mochizuki?” quipped Shiranai as he sat next to the girl on a stack of bodies while flames licked at their charred-black feet. Tama turned to face him, grinning in response – or at least, her bare skull did, still draped by the panda-hoodie. Senna now tugged at his arm, causing him to look over at her. Giving him a seductive look, she pressed his hand to the bolt-sized hole right above her left breast, still pumping out arterial blood...
With a start, Shiranai opened his eyes, fighting the urge to vomit. Ice-cold water ran down his face and chest, from where he had been splashed moments before. The world spun crazily, much as it had done aboard the Raiden’s Breath in the final moments of the train’s fiery death. But this time, the spinning was coming from the fact that he was suspended in the air via a chain that connected manacles on his wrists to a ceiling above. As far as he could tell, he was imprisoned in a windowless chamber of some sort, its features hidden in darkness save for a single overhead light that shone fiercely from above and was trained on his head, forcing him to avert his eyes to avoid being blinded. There was no way to tell where he was – no geographic clues or landmarks, and not even a means to tell if he was above or below ground level. Wherever he was, it was also cold, and he shivered violently, having been stripped to a loincloth and drenched. Clenching his teeth, he breathed deeply, attempting to utilize his mednin knowledge to control his physiology and get his body to start warming itself. He looked upward at his bindings, lamenting that his hands were spaced just widely enough to prevent the completion of handseals. Unfortunately, he did not possess the talent for one-handed seals, preventing that option.
“Greetings, Shogun. I apologize for the rather austere accommodations,” now said Hayata Makoro, who emerged from the shadows, hands behind his back in a scholarly pose.
“Why?! Why are you doing this, Makoro?!” growled Shiranai, now straining at the manacles in vain.
“I’m impressed, Your Majesty,” said Makoro, clapping his hands as he paced a circle around the chained mednin. “You’re probably the first person who’s directly asked me that question. You see, my servants – the various lower-ranked trash that call themselves nukenin, do what I tell them to because in their simplistic minds I am the strongest and therefore I must be correct. The mercenaries and various professionals I employ do my bidding because I pay them well. Amakusa Ryuu gladly accepted my offer of aid in his plans to take the country because of his own greed, and never cared about what my motivations were. The simple and underwhelming truth is that I have labored for the last thirty years in pursuit of a singular purpose: revenge. The irony, which is not lost on me, is that the man I seek revenge on is long-dead. He is, or was, Hayata Takama, my brother.”
“If he’s long dead, are you not satisfied?” asked Shiranai, gritting his teeth. It was more obvious now than it had ever been in the past that Makoro was truly mad. “I’ve heard the stories. You’re the only missing nin who has ever been able to disappear from all of our records. Why throw that away?!”
“A man’s death does not absolve him of the burden of sin,” said Makoro, darkly. “As long as I, the aggrieved, still live, he must pay. And if he cannot render payment, his son will.”
“You’re talking about the Raikage, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Shin, my nephew. At first I thought he would have no future, being too much like his father, and be an easy target. But over the years, as he became a well-rounded man and a more powerful shinobi and eventually the Raikage, I was forced to also expand the scope of my plans. I knew I could not wait for longer, so I acted.”
“The Raikage will never give in to the demands of a terrorist,” spat Shiranai, uselessly straining against his bonds.
“Oh, but I think he will. He is, after all, a Hayata. Not that he won’t need some convincing, though,” said Makoro, now waving his hand lazily in the direction of a darkened corner of the room. A group of five henchmen, their eyes flinty with malice, now approached bearing ominous-looking tools in their hands; a large wooden crucifix, more chains, and three very large nails. One of them pulled on a nearby lever, loosening the manacles that held Shiranai to the ceiling and causing him to drop to the ground. Before he could formulate a plan for escape, two of them roughly hoisted him under his armpits and laid him on the cross, spreading his arms. Another now took up a hammer and a nail, and started to poke at the flesh of the mednin’s wrist. At this point, the future Shogun of Lightning Country realized what was in store for him.
“It’s really not personal, Your Majesty,” said Makoro as he exited the chamber, leaving behind the boy’s screams and the intermittent clanking noises of hammer on nails.
Emergency Assembly of the Council of Nobles
Grand Chamber of the Imperial Diet
Raiden no Me, Kaminari no Kuni
...0800 hours
The high-roofed, palatial Grand Chamber was abuzz with activity and the competing volumes of hundreds of separate conversations at once, only calming down slightly after a series of furious raps of the gavel issued from the Speaker of the Council. He was a graying man in his sixties, and a samurai by birth with the rank of Marquis. It was his job to enforce the complex rules of protocol that governed assemblies of the Council of Nobles, and he had occupied the role for a very long time.
It had been only two days ago that the Raiden’s Breath had met its fiery end and the Crown Prince and future Shogun of the land, the mednin Shiranai, had been captured by the missing nin Makoro. Already, Ami had weathered a stream of nonstop hearings, and now she stood at the Chancellor’s podium, bleary-eyed and increasingly, undeniably desperate. Kumo, with the lone exception of Countess Bakunin, had been silent since Shiranai’s capture. Her letters to Hayata Shin had gone unanswered and she had been informed that the ANBU Vice Commander was still recovering from a severe injury and was unable to reach her. As she looked over the assembled nobility, the only friendly face she beheld was the blue-haired countess’s, who had come of her own accord, as opposed to by any direction of the Raikage. Nearby, Ryuu grinned triumphantly.
“Esteemed peers of the Council, you have heard the testimony and seen the results of Chancellor Tachibana’s failed political gamble, intended to trick you all into endorsing a no-name shinobi of Kumo as your rightful leader, for the sole purpose of undermining our influence and placing the country’s governance into the hands of the Raikage Hayata Shin, a known radical and heretic who does not endorse the Glory of Raiden! As a nation, we cannot tolerate more selfish misadventures such as these from our leadership. Therefore, I formally move to hold a vote of no confidence against Chancellor Tachibana Ami!” declared Daiki, prompting a cacophony of blended shouts of approval mixed with equally strong booing and calls for his expulsion.
“I second the motion,” responded another voice from the crowd, belonging to a well-dressed but intimidating man in his thirties, the Marquis Lee Kuan Yew, who had always been a longtime enemy of the woman. The Speaker now furiously rapped his gavel against its wooden sounding block.
“Baron Tsukahara, you cannot simply call for a vote of no confidence against the current head of state without nominating a replacement,” he warned Daiki, who rolled his eyes.
“In that case, I move that we formally recognize Daimyo Amakusa Ryuu as hereditary Shogun of Kaminari no Kuni,” responded the redhead, prompting an overwhelming chorus of raised voices, cheers, catcalls, applause, and banging of geta against wooden desks.
“Absolutely not!” roared Kouhei, now dressed in his full military splendor and flanked by Naoto and Princess Miyu.
“Seconded!” shouted various members of the Diet. Ami now cleared her throat.
“May I remind the Council that until we have conclusive evidence of his death, His Majesty Shiranai vi Kaminari is still the Crown Prince of Kaminari no Kuni?” she stated.
“You have no proof that he is alive, either!” jeered Ryuu from his seat.
“Daimyo Amakusa, in the event of the disappearance or presumed death of the Shogun or his immediate successor, our custom demands a one-week period of search be conducted before he is presumed dead,” responded Ami.
“Very well, I make the motion that we table this emergency session to concentrate our efforts of verifying the whereabouts and status of Crown Prince Shiranai. We will resume in three days,” said the speaker, about to rise from his seat.
“Seconded!” piped the Countess Bakunin from her seat, followed by a ripple of “ayes” from the room.
“And when we do, we will resume the vote of no confidence with Daimyo Amakusa as Shogun-nominee!” shouted Daiki, prompting a chorus of affirmatives from the room.
“Yes, of course,” said the speaker with obvious distaste, before slamming the gavel down.
Office of the Raikage, Torre Celeste
Kumogakure no Sato, Kaminari no Kuni
…0900 hours
A neatly hand-written letter lay on Shin’s desk, its contents obvious for all to see.
Attached to the letter was a picture of a crucified, wild-eyed Shiranai, his face haggard and bloody. It was obvious that there was not much time left.
...???? Hours
“Out of the fire and into the frying pan, eh, Mochizuki?” quipped Shiranai as he sat next to the girl on a stack of bodies while flames licked at their charred-black feet. Tama turned to face him, grinning in response – or at least, her bare skull did, still draped by the panda-hoodie. Senna now tugged at his arm, causing him to look over at her. Giving him a seductive look, she pressed his hand to the bolt-sized hole right above her left breast, still pumping out arterial blood...
With a start, Shiranai opened his eyes, fighting the urge to vomit. Ice-cold water ran down his face and chest, from where he had been splashed moments before. The world spun crazily, much as it had done aboard the Raiden’s Breath in the final moments of the train’s fiery death. But this time, the spinning was coming from the fact that he was suspended in the air via a chain that connected manacles on his wrists to a ceiling above. As far as he could tell, he was imprisoned in a windowless chamber of some sort, its features hidden in darkness save for a single overhead light that shone fiercely from above and was trained on his head, forcing him to avert his eyes to avoid being blinded. There was no way to tell where he was – no geographic clues or landmarks, and not even a means to tell if he was above or below ground level. Wherever he was, it was also cold, and he shivered violently, having been stripped to a loincloth and drenched. Clenching his teeth, he breathed deeply, attempting to utilize his mednin knowledge to control his physiology and get his body to start warming itself. He looked upward at his bindings, lamenting that his hands were spaced just widely enough to prevent the completion of handseals. Unfortunately, he did not possess the talent for one-handed seals, preventing that option.
“I’m impressed, Your Majesty,” said Makoro, clapping his hands as he paced a circle around the chained mednin. “You’re probably the first person who’s directly asked me that question. You see, my servants – the various lower-ranked trash that call themselves nukenin, do what I tell them to because in their simplistic minds I am the strongest and therefore I must be correct. The mercenaries and various professionals I employ do my bidding because I pay them well. Amakusa Ryuu gladly accepted my offer of aid in his plans to take the country because of his own greed, and never cared about what my motivations were. The simple and underwhelming truth is that I have labored for the last thirty years in pursuit of a singular purpose: revenge. The irony, which is not lost on me, is that the man I seek revenge on is long-dead. He is, or was, Hayata Takama, my brother.”
“If he’s long dead, are you not satisfied?” asked Shiranai, gritting his teeth. It was more obvious now than it had ever been in the past that Makoro was truly mad. “I’ve heard the stories. You’re the only missing nin who has ever been able to disappear from all of our records. Why throw that away?!”
“A man’s death does not absolve him of the burden of sin,” said Makoro, darkly. “As long as I, the aggrieved, still live, he must pay. And if he cannot render payment, his son will.”
“You’re talking about the Raikage, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Shin, my nephew. At first I thought he would have no future, being too much like his father, and be an easy target. But over the years, as he became a well-rounded man and a more powerful shinobi and eventually the Raikage, I was forced to also expand the scope of my plans. I knew I could not wait for longer, so I acted.”
“The Raikage will never give in to the demands of a terrorist,” spat Shiranai, uselessly straining against his bonds.
“Oh, but I think he will. He is, after all, a Hayata. Not that he won’t need some convincing, though,” said Makoro, now waving his hand lazily in the direction of a darkened corner of the room. A group of five henchmen, their eyes flinty with malice, now approached bearing ominous-looking tools in their hands; a large wooden crucifix, more chains, and three very large nails. One of them pulled on a nearby lever, loosening the manacles that held Shiranai to the ceiling and causing him to drop to the ground. Before he could formulate a plan for escape, two of them roughly hoisted him under his armpits and laid him on the cross, spreading his arms. Another now took up a hammer and a nail, and started to poke at the flesh of the mednin’s wrist. At this point, the future Shogun of Lightning Country realized what was in store for him.
“It’s really not personal, Your Majesty,” said Makoro as he exited the chamber, leaving behind the boy’s screams and the intermittent clanking noises of hammer on nails.
Emergency Assembly of the Council of Nobles
Grand Chamber of the Imperial Diet
Raiden no Me, Kaminari no Kuni
...0800 hours
The high-roofed, palatial Grand Chamber was abuzz with activity and the competing volumes of hundreds of separate conversations at once, only calming down slightly after a series of furious raps of the gavel issued from the Speaker of the Council. He was a graying man in his sixties, and a samurai by birth with the rank of Marquis. It was his job to enforce the complex rules of protocol that governed assemblies of the Council of Nobles, and he had occupied the role for a very long time.
It had been only two days ago that the Raiden’s Breath had met its fiery end and the Crown Prince and future Shogun of the land, the mednin Shiranai, had been captured by the missing nin Makoro. Already, Ami had weathered a stream of nonstop hearings, and now she stood at the Chancellor’s podium, bleary-eyed and increasingly, undeniably desperate. Kumo, with the lone exception of Countess Bakunin, had been silent since Shiranai’s capture. Her letters to Hayata Shin had gone unanswered and she had been informed that the ANBU Vice Commander was still recovering from a severe injury and was unable to reach her. As she looked over the assembled nobility, the only friendly face she beheld was the blue-haired countess’s, who had come of her own accord, as opposed to by any direction of the Raikage. Nearby, Ryuu grinned triumphantly.
“I second the motion,” responded another voice from the crowd, belonging to a well-dressed but intimidating man in his thirties, the Marquis Lee Kuan Yew, who had always been a longtime enemy of the woman. The Speaker now furiously rapped his gavel against its wooden sounding block.
“Baron Tsukahara, you cannot simply call for a vote of no confidence against the current head of state without nominating a replacement,” he warned Daiki, who rolled his eyes.
“In that case, I move that we formally recognize Daimyo Amakusa Ryuu as hereditary Shogun of Kaminari no Kuni,” responded the redhead, prompting an overwhelming chorus of raised voices, cheers, catcalls, applause, and banging of geta against wooden desks.
“Absolutely not!” roared Kouhei, now dressed in his full military splendor and flanked by Naoto and Princess Miyu.
“Seconded!” shouted various members of the Diet. Ami now cleared her throat.
“Daimyo Amakusa, in the event of the disappearance or presumed death of the Shogun or his immediate successor, our custom demands a one-week period of search be conducted before he is presumed dead,” responded Ami.
“Very well, I make the motion that we table this emergency session to concentrate our efforts of verifying the whereabouts and status of Crown Prince Shiranai. We will resume in three days,” said the speaker, about to rise from his seat.
“And when we do, we will resume the vote of no confidence with Daimyo Amakusa as Shogun-nominee!” shouted Daiki, prompting a chorus of affirmatives from the room.
“Yes, of course,” said the speaker with obvious distaste, before slamming the gavel down.
Office of the Raikage, Torre Celeste
Kumogakure no Sato, Kaminari no Kuni
…0900 hours
A neatly hand-written letter lay on Shin’s desk, its contents obvious for all to see.
Attached to the letter was a picture of a crucified, wild-eyed Shiranai, his face haggard and bloody. It was obvious that there was not much time left.
And now...
Emergency Assembly of the Council of Nobles
Grand Chamber of the Imperial Diet
Raiden no Me, Kaminari no Kuni
...0900 hours
“ORDER! ORDER!! I WILL HAVE ORDER FROM THIS COUNCIL!!” bellowed the Speaker, smashing his gavel against the wooden sounding board so hard that the handle broke from impact and sent its wooden head flying off into the distance. Ordinarily, this would have prompted quite the reaction from the amassed Council of Nobles, but today the faux pas went unnoticed, drowned out by the cacophony of discussion, negotiation, and argument overtaking the room. It had been three days since the last assembly, and today would be the day that determined the legitimate successor to the Shogun’s throne at Raiden no Me, and thus who was the ruler of Lightning Country. Daimyo Amakusa Ryuu beamed in his seat, Baron Tsukahara Daiki seated next to him. He had already dressed in a three-piece tuxedo, and wore his favorite pair of white kid gloves, and was adorned with the full regalia of his line – clothing that a newly appointed ruler would normally wear on the day of his coronation. And in truth, without any evidence that the previously decided-upon Crown Prince was alive, it would likely be the day of Ryuu’s coronation.
Countess Oishi Bakunin, thirty-seventh in her line, attempted to drown out the insanity-inducing levels of noise and utter disregard for protocol at first with her hands, and briefly considered committing public seppuku just to make the noise stop. Her emotions were mixed – last night, Ami had come to her in tears, an event as rare as a dragon sighting, and the two had engaged in an intimacy that neither thought possible between two women. But today, if Ryuu were made Shogun, it meant Ami was in danger. He would likely strip her of her position, and once that happened, as a non-noble, she would be no better protected from his wrath than a bug against the Raikage. He had once threatened to hang her alongside the common criminals in the city’s square, and if anything, Ryuu kept his grudges. The countess had spent the remainder of the night formulating a plan to save the Chancellor; according to the law, it was already illegal for two men to marry, but the laughably misogynist writers of those original edicts had completely forgotten to mention the marital rights of women, thus making it possible for two women to marry. And the best thing about this legal oversight was that no one had ever sought to correct it, even when women had married in the past, for fear of exposing it to the public and prompting an explosion of lesbian marriages. Ami could come under her legal protection through matrimony, Bakunin had realized. And if they retreated to Kumo swiftly, avoiding the inevitable assassin squads, then there was nothing Shogun Ryuu would be able to do about it. Ami’s expression as she stood at the Chancellor’s podium maintained her trademark serenity, but the façade was visibly starting to crack.
A sharp and unmistakable crack sounded through the room as the hand-arbalest discharged, carving a fist-sized hole in the ceiling of the chamber and causing all present to immediately duck and fall silent. All eyes in the room shifted immediately to the countess, who held the weapon in the air, its barrel still smoking from the friction of the bolt’s passage. The Speaker immediately cleared his throat, taking advantage of the disruption.
“Order in the Council! Countess Oishi, please refrain from further discharge of weaponry in our chambers, thank you.” he said, emphasizing the last part before turning to the crowd. “I hereby continue the previous emergency session of the Council. I will take…motions for new business,” he said, sighing.
“The motion passes. This vote must be conducted by roll call, and is by plurality,” said the speaker. “Very well…we will start with Baron Anzu of Yasogami Province…”
An hour later…
<i></i>“The votes have been tallied,” announced the speaker. Ami closed her eyes. This was the end… “Of two hundred present, there are one hundred and twenty ‘aye’ votes, seven abstentions, and seventy-three ‘nay’ votes.” He looked over at Ami. “The ‘ayes’ have it. Madam Chancellor, you are hereby relieved of your position…”
“This council has already determined that I am the legitimate heir to the Shogunate of Kaminari no Kuni, and therefore Daimyo Amakusa’s claim to my position is overturned! The vote of no confidence is null and void!” he bellowed over the avalanche of shouts, curses, hoots of approval, and new orders relayed to subordinates.
“He is correct! The vote is invalid! Motion does not pass!” said the speaker now, excitedly, prompting an avalanche of noise and raised voices throughout the hall.
“Bullshit! You’re supposed to be DEAD!” screamed Ryuu, rising from his seat and clamping his hands down on his desk in rage.
“God dammit, SHUT UP, Ryuu!” retorted Shiranai, hobbling toward the Speaker and the Chancellor. Ami fell to her knees in shock, her lips quivering, prompting Mizuki and Yui to rush to her side. She waved them off, however, as Shiranai now knelt in front of her, losing his grip on the crutch and causing it to clatter to the floor.
“Madam Chancellor, I’m sorry I’m a bit late. I had to say goodbye to Tama and Senna at the hospital. They’re both going to be fine…” he said, catching his breath. “I know it’s a bit inconvenient, Ami, but will you help me rule this country?” he asked, clasping her hands in his own. Ami smiled brilliantly now, her expression suffused with a never-before-seen joy.
“With pleasure, Your Highness,” she said, pulling him into a tight embrace as tears coursed down her cheeks.
The Lightning Country Saga
Produced by Takaki Masao
Written by:
Takaki Masao
Akira Saito
Santaru Rin
Hayata Shin
Nobunaga Kouhei, Izanagi Naoto, Shiro Miyu, Shiranai, Tachibana Ami, Tokugawa Mizuki, Gasai Yui, Amakusa Ryuu, Tsukarahara Daiki, Damashi Kenta, Seiji Souta, Kato Takumi, Kuro Shou, Reina Barchenowa, and Suzuki Jun are characters originally created by Akira Saito
Hayata Makoro, Morishima Haruka, Natsume Eru, Takaki Saeko, Daisuke Date, Senada Jacques, and Ayatsuji Haru are characters originally created by Takaki Masao
Nemoto Aran is a character originally created by Nemoto Senna
Shinobi Cast:
Hayata Shin
Takaki Masao
Isaski Kushin
Santaru Rin
Horo Danshi
Oishi Bakunin
Umeki Rai
Kato Haruka
Mochizuki Tama
Nemoto Senna
Kogami Ayumu
Tagiushi Moro
Hoshiko Gin
Hinote
Shinrya Kitsune
Asazaki Enma
Ouja KaiKai
Nakamura Akihiko
Gateru Risu
Gateru Rega
Hitoshirezu Akkeio
Kimura Rei
Akimichi Mitsuru
Heiwakaen Takumi
Gaidoku
S. Joukuu
Akahana Ryu
Itonami Ataeru
Inuzuka Gekido
Suzuki Kiyoko
Written on Location in Kumogakure, Raiden no Me, Sekai Yuki, the Democratic Kagoshiman Republic, and the Holy See of Tenouza.
Based on a story by Takaki Masao and Akira Saito
A Takaki Masao Presentation
In association with Cloud Council
The Lightning Country Saga
Produced by Takaki Masao
Written by:
Takaki Masao
Akira Saito
Santaru Rin
Hayata Shin
Nobunaga Kouhei, Izanagi Naoto, Shiro Miyu, Shiranai, Tachibana Ami, Tokugawa Mizuki, Gasai Yui, Amakusa Ryuu, Tsukarahara Daiki, Damashi Kenta, Seiji Souta, Kato Takumi, Kuro Shou, Reina Barchenowa, and Suzuki Jun are characters originally created by Akira Saito
Hayata Makoro, Morishima Haruka, Natsume Eru, Takaki Saeko, Daisuke Date, Senada Jacques, and Ayatsuji Haru are characters originally created by Takaki Masao
Nemoto Aran is a character originally created by Nemoto Senna
Shinobi Cast:
Hayata Shin
Takaki Masao
Isaski Kushin
Santaru Rin
Horo Danshi
Oishi Bakunin
Umeki Rai
Kato Haruka
Mochizuki Tama
Nemoto Senna
Kogami Ayumu
Tagiushi Moro
Hoshiko Gin
Hinote
Shinrya Kitsune
Asazaki Enma
Ouja KaiKai
Nakamura Akihiko
Gateru Risu
Gateru Rega
Hitoshirezu Akkeio
Kimura Rei
Akimichi Mitsuru
Heiwakaen Takumi
Gaidoku
S. Joukuu
Akahana Ryu
Itonami Ataeru
Inuzuka Gekido
Suzuki Kiyoko
Written on Location in Kumogakure, Raiden no Me, Sekai Yuki, the Democratic Kagoshiman Republic, and the Holy See of Tenouza.
Based on a story by Takaki Masao and Akira Saito
A Takaki Masao Presentation
In association with Cloud Council
The Lightning Country Saga
