K-shugenja (D4, MA, Expecting)

[Kitsu Kanna]

The cat café was apparently becoming Kanna's second workplace. Well, it was a neutral location with quiet, good lighting, comfortable seats, tea but no alcohol. So perfect for a casual interview.

Also, cats.

Dressed in the usual "professional wallflower" look of a journalist (nice enough to not offend a uptight lord, modest enough to not damage their pride), the Kitsu had sat at a two-persons table and was waiting for her interviewee of the day while browsing her densai for interesting articles about the concrete ramifications of the Crab-Scorpion alliance on the World of Dreams. A technical subject full of figures, some known, some guessed, some mysterious.

[Kuni Koyuki]

Koyuki arrived in her usual garb, kimono-shirt top and pants that looked ready for the rigors of activity finishing off with some duty oriented boots that tied her somewhat casually intimidating presence up neatly. Stopping just by the door to mentally prepare herself for sifting through the space of prowling felines she takes that breath. Checking herself over once more to be certain there wasn't any lingering blood from earlier the results come up clear enough. Allowing her the freedom of mind to approach Kanna, only a slight acknowledgement in the directness of her visual contact as she approched.

Bowing first upon arrival, "Kuni Koyuki, shugenja serving as an attaché at the embassy. This was an unexpected invitation to be sure, Kitsu-sama."

[Kitsu Kanna]

"Is it really? I've made no mystery I was on world to interview samurai of exception outside of the Lion clan, and rapprochement between the Crab and the Lion is still the order of the day. We do share a common enemy in the CMS alliance after all.

Plus, there's a Kuni-born Matsu lodging a few rooms away from me in the embassy, which I take as a hint that the moment is right for the Lion public to learn more about your family."

She handed Koyuki a menu.

"Do you want anything? My treat of course."

[Kuni Koyuki]

"Well, I haven't known. I keep my head down while I work. Though, that's really where the surprise is. Feels like a somewhat random pick for you to choose me, I'm sure there are far more far public Crab you might have interviewed. Still, I'll play my part. I appreciate that you found me worthy of consideration, Kitsu-sama," she said, taking the menu in hand while she settled into her seat and got as comfortable as she could. Eye glancing toward one of the prowling cats in the room.

"Only if you intend to get something yourself. Not to force, but I do hate to drink or eat alone if I don't have to. Old habits are hard to kill," she remarks, glancing over the menu briefly.

[Kitsu Kanna]

"If I am to be honest, I picked you because I wanted a Crab that was refreshingly not making the news in all the worst possible ways at the moment. Some people say they are no bad publicity, but in matter of honor that definitely isn't true."

She tilted her head in approval.

"Of course. I'll take a simple cup of green tea for myself. Too stuffed with all the petit fours the Scorpion throws at us during their innumerable parties to even think about sweets."

[Kuni Koyuki]

Koyuki merely nods at the first, there is a moment of a glance of appreciation for the reasoning. An understanding of sorts. However, it was not something she had any intent on broaching vocally. Thus, the conversation moved on...

"We may not be exactly of the same mind on the reason for the choice, but that is what I will wind up with as well," she says. Settling the menu down that it might see its way back to whatever original position it had held. From across a small way, on a pillow nearby, Ugly seems to watch Koyuki intently. Intently enough that it grabs her attention for a moment before seeing it's just a cat and turning her head back. Place had far more movement than she'd normally like, but she could manage.

"What is it that you might want to ask me, Kitsu-sama? Or, should I leave the pace for you to dictate?" she asks, with an earnest needing to understand how this interview situation works.

[Kitsu Kanna]

"The formal interview is a lengthy process, that includes true privacy, paperwork, a recorder, and time. For a first contact, I prefer something more casual, to determine your character better and make sure a portrait of you would fit well in our Heroes from the distant stars collection.

To that purpose, I like to start with two quite generic questions that are, in my experience, quite good at quickly painting a first image of person. You are free to answer the two, only one or neither, and with the degree of precision you feel is the most appropriate."

Kanna switched her densai to note-taking mode.

"First, which action of yours you would say has, so far, brought the most honor to your clan? Generally it's some sort of a military, academical or artistic achievement, and something you've received praises and awards from your clanmates for.

Second, what is the personal achievement of yours you're the most proud of? Something you did or help with that might not have had much of an impact in the grand scheme of things but that's important to you. No good or bad answer there, can be anything, an amateur art piece, graduating first of your class, volunteer work at a temple, anything really."

[Kuni Koyuki]

Those were weighty questions, ones that brought Koyuki immediately back to some of the roughest moments she'd ever lived. So it was with great willpower and concentration that she merely froze in they're asking, Koyuki's neutral disposition looking a touch displeased but not outwardly angry. Enough to cause the easily unsettled to worry a moment. Swallowing down the pain that it dredged up, Koyuki reaches out on the table and shifts something with her hand, that young cat from among the group coming up at her leg and purring as it rubbed its adorable little body across her lower leg.

"I cannot say much," she says, her tone is severe but not suggesting rebuke. "I served in the expeditionary forces for the Crab, and was lost to another world for a time. When I returned, I received acknowledgement for my will to survive and return to the Crab. I accepted it, spent my time in recovery, and returned to service. That should be adequate," she spoke with the clip of a professional negotiator but without the grace of one. There was a personal defense in that way she spoke that couldn't have been trained into the best of speakers.

"Surviving," she says simply. "That is my greatest personal achievement, and all I have," but there was a falsehood. No pride, not even a whiff, seemed present in the answer she gave.

[Kitsu Kanna]

Kanna took a small sip of her tea. Then, softly:

"I don't do lies.

You're perfectly allowed to refuse to answer me, to explicitly skip over some passages of your history that you would rather not disclose, for any reason whatsoever.

But no lie. Never.

I could give you a lesson on how important the honesty virtue of bushido is. I kinda want actually. But I feel like you would rather hear the more pragmatic argument one of my teachers once told us:

Simply put, lies don't work. People can smell out a full-blown lie from one mile away. Oh, anyone can fell for trickery, for a technically true fact presented in such a way it conveys the opposite message of what really happened. But you cannot forego the truth entirely without also closing the connection to others that make them trust you in the first place.

Of course, one can choose to believe lies that they know are lies because they're convenient. But that's another subject entirely. All lies are paper thin. If you look straight at them at the light of the sun, you can always see through them."

[Kuni Koyuki]

Koyuki's eyes narrow on the woman slightly, tapping her first two fingers on the table top. Sighing, seen more in the movement of her shoulders than anything else she says, "I am not proud of anything I have done, Kitsu-san. That is all there is."

[Kitsu Kanna]

"Hmm."

Kanna pondered the answer.

"I feel this calls for a complementary question. As usual, you're not forced to answer.

So. Was there something you used to take great pride into even if you don't anymore?"

[Kuni Koyuki]

At some point, they'd gotten their tea, and Koyuki say with her hands now around the cup pondering the question she'd been posed. There was a dark look in her eye as she glances from the reflection in her tea to the woman opposite her. Uncertain of something she toys with the thought for a brief while before finally allowing herself the decision.

"My service," she says, letting out a slow exhale of breath. "I am sorry if that is not terribly entertaining of an answer, Kitsu-san. However, when I served in the expeditionary forces alongside my fellow Crab I was proud to serve. I still am proud to serve," but, it wasn't one she felt, and that was clear enough even if she wasn't keen on speaking the words.

[Kitsu Kanna]

"Entertaining, maybe not. But enlightening? Possibly."

Kanna looked at her notes, at the tea, at the cat that had jumped on her shoulder, then back at Koyuki:

"History rhyme quite a bit. Since the dawn of the Empire, there has been a recurring complaint from the Crab clan: That the other clans simply don't understand the magnitude of the horrors they're keeping at bay.

And I'm pretty sure that's still true today. There are things in this world the human mind cannot admit exist until it's facing them directly.

I cannot offer a perfect solution to that problem. However, I might be able to help a little, by offering the samurai of the Lion a glimpse of that reality through my articles.

What do these samurai, that might fight in the worlds of the Spider in the near future, need to learn about the darkness before it's too late?"

[Kuni Koyuki]

Koyuki's lip twitches at the thought, the method of the questioning. It irked her. There was a part of her spirit she couldn't help but feel like was being toyed with. Like she was being used in grand game or agenda, yet there was something she wanted to say that came bubbling up to the surface all the same...

"Monsters aren't what you expect. They come in the form the neighbor who does dark things for bad reasons. They come in the form of a friend who betrays you. They come from some unimaginable evil breaking down your door, whatever that might look like to you. Sometimes, it comes from not looking yourself in the mirror before you do something. Ask yourself if there was any other way to do it first," she says, and is about to turn from her seat when one of the cats hops up into her lap and nestles there, purring warmly.

Koyuki wasn't looking pleased about it, but she wasn't about to move the cat either.

[Kitsu Kanna]

So. Kuni.

"Inside each human a monster, I get it. But isn't society as a whole designed as a cage for our inner monsters? Laws, friends, family, all chains keeping the darkness bound where it belongs. Even in the direst situations where we're cut from the world, our ancestors are still with us, and our honor remains a guiding star in the sky.

It's an easy and technically true answer to say the darkness is everywhere. But it doesn't help in any way those who still have some light in them in their fight against those who have irremediably fallen."

[Kuni Koyuki]

"It reminds them to watch themselves. Those who have some light within them will find the path to survive. I cannot say something to whatever unique challenge one of these many samurai might face, there is simply too much to convey Kitsu-san. However, in every situation it can become easy to lose attention on guarding ones.. honor," not quite the word she'd use, but it'd convey it well enough for a Lion. "So, this reminder will serve them best. Don't forget to watch yourself, and be mindful of what you are truly setting out to achieve."

"That is what I have to say for it, Kitsu-san."

[Kitsu Kanna]

"So. I think you already know what I'm going to have to ask. A personal experience story exemplifying that.

People are bad at following generic advice, no matter how good it is. Make it a story about flesh and blood human beings, preferably one based on actual events, and suddenly the wisdom affixes itself in memory far more easily.

We, the samurai, need tales of heroes to better ourselves. It's so important to our identity it's one of the few things Leadership and the Tao manage to agree upon."

[Kuni Koyuki]

Taking up her cup, she takes a long drink from the tea. All the while she is making eye contact with Kanna. Thinking, perhaps, but when she sets her cup down it becomes quite clear she'd had her mind more or less made up. Just deciding on the phrasing.

"I am sorry, Kitsu-sama. Unfortunately, I do not have any such personal stories that would qualify for what you are seeking. Any that I do have, as you can imagine, are far too personal to share with the greater public. I am happy enough to speak of much, but there is a limit to how much I am willing prostrate myself before an unknown audience."

[Kitsu Kanna]

"I could offer you to tell your story under the guise of a pseudonym, with all names changed, but I don't think that's the true issue here, is it?"

Kanna closed her densai.

"Whatever the stories that shaped you and might shape others are... You aren't going to share them with anyone that hasn't earned your trust in the fullest, are you?"

[Kuni Koyuki]

Looking to the other woman, her face was that of a Kuni steel. At least, stereotypically so. However, Kanna seemed to have her number read and could tell how much she relied on that stereotype for her own personal insecurities, walls. When the gaze met for just a moment there is that moment of silent understanding between strangers.

Koyuki lifts her cup, and sips. There wasn't an answer she needed to verbalize.