The Red Hand

Chapter 259 – Doubts.

"So, did the two of you have fun?" Akagi had summoned Yuzu and Suzu to her audience hall to have a chat with them about their recent activities. It wasn't a particularly formal event given that she was in cat mode sitting on the floor across from the two of them, though both were afraid nonetheless.

"Y-Yes..." (Yuzu x Suzu)

"Good, good, good!" Akagi's smile was anything but happy from their perspective. "And Mika had fun, too?"

"I think so?" Suzu started turning red. "She seemed happy..."

"Yeah..." Yuzu was also similarly embarrassed.

"Excellent!" Akagi smiled again. "That's all that matters! Just be warned that if Mika ever stops having fun, you will have to deal with me."

{Why is she acting like Mika's Mom?!?} (Yuzu x Suzu)

_____________________________________________________________________________

<Amakusa POV>

"Hmmm. Hmmm. Hmmm." After a hardy dinner and a nice hot bath, Shiroe decided to give her Katana a much-needed cleaning and was sitting at the edge of her bed while rubbing the blade down with some oil and humming a tune.

{Who's a good girl? You are!} (Amakusa)

"How is that? Are you feeling better, Inori?" She smiled as a knock came at her door.

"Shiroe? It's me, Kanato." Kanato's voice came through the door.

{What does he want this late at night?} (Amakusa)

"If you're here to try and add me to your harem, you can go away." Amakusa sighed as she flicked her rag to get some grime off her sword.

"I'm not... I'm here to talk. Do you have a minute?" Kanato's frown was audible through the door.

{He's too easy to tease.} (Amakusa)

"Fine. The door is open, so come in. But if you try anything funny, I'll give you the big snip." Amakusa snickered.

"The sad part is that I know you would." Kanato sighed as he entered the room. He was wearing his sleeping ware, and his face told Shiroe that he'd been having trouble sleeping. As he closed the door, Amakusa made a scissor motion with her fingers while continuing to snicker.

"You wouldn't be losing out on much." Amakusa laughed.

"Listen, if you actually did something like that, then I can guarantee that you'd get a few angry women breathing down your neck." Kanato shook his head as he took a seat on a desk chair.

"So, what do you want to talk about?" Amakusa said as she put her sword on a blanket and set it on the floor. "Is it about our upcoming mission?"

{Is he feeling nervous?} (Amakusa)

Kanato didn't immediately answer her and it took a minute for him to finally speak his mind. "Tell me... Did we do the right thing?" His question caught her off guard.

"What do you mean?" Amakusa wanted clarification, though she already had an idea of what this was about.

"During the war... I..." Kanato looked conflicted as to whether he should continue speaking, but ultimately decided to continue. "Do you remember the time we took the village of Toyama?"

"Yeah, that was one of the first combat operations we did after training." Amakusa nodded as she fixed her hair. "What about it?"

"Do you remember the looks those villagers gave us?" Kanato said, biting his lip. “Do you remember their faces, and how they...”

{How their eyes looked...} (Kanato)

"Of course I do. They hated us." Amakusa replied. "It makes sense that they would. After all, we burned their home and killed so many of their people in the fighting."

{If they didn't hate our guts that would be even stranger.} (Amakusa

"Yeah... Every time we went to a new battle, there were always so many who looked at us like that." Kanato continued, this topic clearly being painful for the young man. "We were supposed to be the Heroes who saved this world, and even though the Spirits were the ones destroying the world..." He paused for a moment before looking into Amakusa's eyes. "They looked at us as if we were the villains."

{It was as if... As if WE were the ones destroying the world...} (Kanato)

"What's your point?" Amakusa asked as she pulled out a nail file and started working on her fingernails. "Isn't it only natural for them to hate us if we were thwarting their plans?" She was trying to see just how deep his doubts went before she opened up regarding her own opinions.

"Their plans... Yeah... The Gods told us they wanted to destroy this world with their magic and that the only way to stop it was to destroy them all..." Kanato shook his head, almost as if he no longer believed what he'd been told.

"I remember how much you argued with Elariel when she told us that was our mission." Amakusa laughed. "You kept saying that it wasn't right to destroy them all if only their leaders were causing the chaos."

"Yeah, but in the end... I caved..." Kanato's right fist clenched tightly.

"It couldn't be helped." Amakusa shrugged. "The Gods told us that too much damage had been done to the world and that if the Spirits were allowed to roam freely one of them might finish the job in the future." Most Spirits were killed by the Coalition armies, but many were taken as slaves as well, especially where Kanato was involved. "Your pleas spared many from extermination, so it's not like you mindlessly slaughter them."

{It seems that I'm not the only one with doubts about our 'mission', but lets poke him a bit more.} (Amakusa)

"They were made into slaves, Shiroe." Kanato scoffed at her insinuation that they'd been spared. "They may be alive, but we both know they aren't exactly having a fun time." He knew what happened to slaves in this world, and it was a practice he'd been pressuring governments to end, to little success. "Even Neiline and the others... They don't seem to understand why becoming slaves isn't exactly a mercy..."

{I love my wives to death, but on this one issue they refuse to listen to me and it drives me nuts.} (Kanato)

"You won't be able to easily change people's stance on slavery, Kanato." Amakusa figured that it was a lost cause and had long given up hope of changing things. "This world sees it as a normal thing. It was like that on Earth in the past too, so don't get too bent out of shape over it."

"I know, I know." Kanato sighed as he ran his hands over his face. "Can I tell you something? Something that stays between us?" His gaze turned sharp. Something that Amakusa had only rarely seen during their time together.

"Go ahead." Amakusa put down the file and turned to look him dead in the eyes.

"I think... I think we might have made a mistake, Shiroe" Kanato's words were laced with anxiety.

"What do you mean?" Amakusa tried to feign ignorance but only half heartedly committed to it, which Kanato easily saw through.

"I do not doubt that this world was and is in danger." Kanato wanted to clarify that important point before continuing. "I've spoken to a few fairies during my time in the Whistlewoods, and they confirmed that Enoris is experiencing instability and that it could collapse." He was skeptical and decided to go to an 'unbiased' source of information, and since fairy were a simple and politically detached group he figured they were his best bet.

"But?" Amakusa figured there was more and wanted him to continue.

"But... I have my doubts as to whether the Spirits were truly the ones behind it." Amakusa could feel the air get colder as he spoke those words.

"That's some dangerous stuff you're saying right there." Amakusa noted that such doubts could easily see one jailed or even killed. "It means you doubt the word of the Gods, and as we've seen that's not a good idea for your long term health and well being." A few people they ran into during their travels had said similar things and most had 'disappeared.'

{Good thing that he put up a barrier to prevent eavesdropping before we started, otherwise things could get difficult.} (Amakusa)

"I... I don't want to doubt them, Shiroe." Kanato shook his head. "But... It's just that ever since the Spirits disappeared that day, I've had a knot in my chest... A feeling that I've done something horrible... and it won't go away no matter how much I try and ignore it." He gave a defeated laugh. "When we came to this world... I was so excited. I'd always wanted something more than the boring school life that I had, and being given a chance to be a hero like the stories I'd read... Maybe that made me easy to manipulate..." He ruffled his hair. Kanato was only barely fifteen years old when he was transported, and as the youngest of the group he was incredibly impressionable and naive, something that had gotten him into trouble over the last decade. "Looking back at the explanations the gods gave us and the 'proof' that was provided when I asked for it... Something tells me that I allowed myself to look past obvious lies just because I was so excited to be here."

{I heard the words, Isekai, Hero, Gods, and Magic and my stupid kid brain just went along with it because it was cool! Dammit!} (Kanato)

"So then you think the Gods lied to us all about the Spirits?" Amakusa asked how far up he thoughts things went.

"That's the problem." Kanato shook his head, unable to affirm or deny whether that was how he felt. "On the one hand, I do. But on the other, I just can't understand why the Gods would need to lie about this." He figured it made no sense for them to lie about this.

"Maybe they just hated the Spirits and wanted them gone?" Amakusa gave a possible answer.

"Maybe, but I couldn't find any evidence to support that claim. The Spirits were outsiders in a sense and had issues with other races and clashed with them at times. But nothing in their history gives me any reason to believe they had a hostile relationship with either the other races or the Gods." Kanato thought some simple disagreements or racial tension couldn't be the reason for the Spirit's extermination. "Hell, they even fought alongside the other races and the Gods when the time came to defeat Demon Lord Vikes. So you can't tell me they were completely at odds with the rest of this world's people."

{That battle nearly destroyed this world, so why would the Spirits help then only to collapse this world now?} (Kanato)

"Well, they must have a reason, right?" Amakusa figured that the Gods wouldn't do something like this on a whim. "They wouldn't just condemn an entire race to death for no reason. That makes no sense and since this world was genuinely in danger of being destroyed, why would they waste time and resources on the wrong target?"

{The Gods need this world to keep existing, so saving it and its people is in their best interest. Thus, I can't imagine any scenario where they deliberately lie when THEIR OWN ass is on the line.} (Amakusa)

"That's what keeps me from saying that I'm positive the Gods are lying to us." Kanato put his head in his hands and groaned. "I just can't understand the logic if that was the case."

"So what do you propose we do?" Amakusa asked. "I can assure you that asking them to their face will get you nowhere, and you might even annoy them."

"Yeah, and I don't want to anger beings that could make me vanish without a trace." Kanato gave a nervous laugh. "I have a family to protect. The last thing I need is to anger the Gods just because I have these doubts." He figured that they could and would remove him if he became a liability.

"Then how about we ask a different source?" Amakusa smirked.

"Funny, I have a feeling we're thinking about the same one." Kanato smirked back.

{That other world is outside of the Gods' jurisdiction, and who better to ask about the Spirits' role in all this than the Spirits themselves? Though if the Gods truly have lied to us...} (Amakusa)