The camp had become a forge.
Every heartbeat hammered steel. Trucks roared in endless convoy, loading ammunition crates stamped with the rising sun. Young faces (some barely shaving) drilled until their boots bled. The air tasted of cordite, diesel, and the metallic promise of death. Seventy-two hours shrank to sixty-eight, sixty-five, each minute a blade against the throat.
I found Akira on the training mats at dusk, shirtless despite the cold, fresh blood seeping through the bandage on his ribs. He was running his platoon through close-quarters knife drills, voice a whip, eyes flat and merciless. When a recruit hesitated, Akira drove an elbow into the boy's solar plexus hard enough to drop him gasping.
I waited until the formation broke. Then I stepped in close, voice low. "Akira, you're bleeding again. Come with me. Five minutes. Ten. You'll kill yourself before the enemy gets the chance."
He didn't even look at me at first, just wiped sweat and blood from his brow with the back of his wrist. "They're watching me, Amane. Every second I show weakness, one of them dies for it later. I don't get to rest. Neither will you."
The words cut deeper than any blade. I swallowed the plea in my throat and tasted iron.
He was right. He was always right when it came to war.
So I left him there and walked to the range alone.
The crack of rifle fire was constant, a brutal heartbeat. Children (sixteen, seventeen) fired until brass casings glittered like golden scales across the frost. I picked up an issued Type 89, hands trembling with memory of the night I'd killed for him. The recoil punched my shoulder, spun my wrist, sent the round screaming into the dirt twenty metres wide of the target.
Useless.
I would never master this in three days. Not against men who had been breathing guns since they could walk.
A sergeant nearby laughed under his breath. "First time, girl?"
I turned to him, calm. "Tell me, Sergeant. In the middle of all this noise, is there still room for a sword?"
He barked a laugh that died when he saw my eyes. "Only if you're fast enough to ghost through bullets and cut throats before they notice. You'd need to be a good as samurai to win battles in front of guns.
I smiled, slow and sharp. "I'm both."
They kept antique blades in the armoury for ceremony (museum pieces, supposedly). I chose a live-steel katana, oiled and hungry. The weight settled into my palm like it had been waiting years for my return.
I stepped onto the empty hand-to-hand mat under the floodlights and began the old forms my grandfather had beaten into me before I was ten. The blade sang, a low metallic whisper that silenced every conversation nearby.
Muscle memory flooded back: the drop of the hip, the twist of the wrist, the breath held just long enough to become death.
I didn't hear Akira approach until his shadow fell across the frost.
He stood with arms folded, blood crusting the edge of his bandage, watching me the way a wolf watches fire (curious, wary, already burning).
"Planning to charge machine-gun nests with that relic?" Mocking, but his eyes were dark with something else.
I finished the kata, blade resting against my shoulder, and met his stare. "I was national junior champion three years running before… everything. Guns are new. This is family."
A slow grin cut across his face (dangerous, delighted). "Hajime," he called over his shoulder without breaking eye contact with me. "Throw me your blade."
A corporal tossed him a matched katana. Akira caught it one-handed, spun it once, the steel humming like a tuning fork.
"Then dance, samurai."
We bowed (shallow, military, no ceremony) and the circle of soldiers widened without being told.
Steel met steel with a sound like a temple bell shattering.
He came at me hard and fast, no holding back, testing. I parried high, riposted low, felt the shock of impact sing up my arms. We moved in a tightening spiral (thrust, block, circle, strike). Sparks spat where edges kissed. Breath clouded white between us.
He was bigger, stronger, favouring his left side only a fraction because of the wound. I used it. Feinted high, dropped, slid inside his guard like water. The tip of my katana kissed the hollow of his throat, stopping a hair's breadth from breaking skin.
The entire camp had gone still.
But in the same heartbeat his blade (impossibly fast) curved around and rested cold against my own neck. A perfect draw.
We stood locked, blades crossed at our throats, chests heaving, eyes burning into each other. Sweat rolled down his temple, mixed with fresh blood. I could feel his pulse under my steel, wild and alive.
A slow, feral smile spread across his face.
"Still got it, little samurai."
I smiled back, lips brushing the flat of his sword. "Told you. Blood remembers."
He withdrew first, sheathed the blade with a flourish, and turned to the watching crowd.
"Listen up!" His voice cracked like a whip. "As of this moment, Amane is assigned to my personal unit. Special reconnaissance. Close-quarters assassination. Anyone got a problem with that, take it up with me (after you beat her)."
Silence. Then someone started clapping. It spread like wildfire.
He stepped close again, voice pitched for my ears alone. "You just made yourself the most dangerous woman on this base. They'll fear you now. Good. Fear keeps people alive."
I leaned in until my lips grazed the shell of his ear. "And tonight, Captain, you'll fear me too. In bed. On your knees."
His sharp inhale was the only warning before he kissed me (hard, filthy, right there in front of half the battalion), claiming me louder than any announcement.
When he pulled back his eyes promised ruin and worship in equal measure.
"Welcome to the war, wife," he whispered. "Try to keep up."
I licked the taste of him from my lips and smiled with all my teeth.
"Try not to die before I get to kill for you again."
The blades went back into their sheaths.
But the real war (ours) had only just begun.