The Village Disciples

The sun had started to drop in the sky, a yellow and orange hue mixing with the natural blue tint. Hours had passed since Yuso and his accompanying soldiers departed for the youngest Takuetsu's induction, leaving red-headed siblings, Katashi and Hina, anxious at the silver steps of the Takuetsu compound edifice. Yuso was tasked with silencing a handful of villages that opposed the Takuetsu rule—mandated by Lord Shuji himself. 

However, neither the troops nor Yuso have returned. His absence aroused bewilderment among the villagers living in the Takuetsu compound, as well as compiling rage in the heart of the current crimson-haired patriarch, Shuji Takuetsu. It was supposed to be a quick mission; nobody could match the Takuetsu's might.

"It's strange." Katashi spoke with an unsure tone, his arms crossed over his chest. "Neither us nor Father could even detect Yuso and them, even from here. That should be impossible." 

Hina twirled a red Genso-Kyu between her two hands, a pensive expression etched on her face. It was her younger brother's first mission—his big induction day—and his return has yet to be documented. Yuso simply getting lost was not a possibility since his Aura Sense would still be traceable to the other Takuetsu relatives. 

The red-haired woman stared into her miniature Genso-Kyu deeply, a thought flashing through her head. 

"Didn't Father also say that Commander Ryouiki suddenly vanished?" Hina queried, her faint movements slackening.

Katashi clicked his tongue irritably and said, "That creep? Yeah. He's probably with Father, discussing how big of a failure the induction is turning out to be."

The sister felt as the breeze brushed against her face, causing her hair to sway gently. Typically, the wind felt like a soft hand cupping her face, offering comfort and stability. But this time, the wind felt as if it were warning her, telling her to get up and figure out what was awry. 

"He wasn't at the induction." Hina revealed, holding her red Genso-Kyu still. 

The brother exhaled, glancing at the darkening sky. "We weren't either, Hina. We were busy getting yelled at by Father."

Hina shook her head slowly, the Genso-Kyu hovering between her palms and starting to pulse. "No, that's not like him. You know how obsessed he was with Yuso's induction. He never cared about any of our ceremonies until Yuso was born. He constantly rambled about how he would be present for his induction—how he'd even come bearing gifts…"

"He was clearly being sarcastic, Hina!"

"Katashi!" Hina suddenly yelled, shifting her gaze to her brother. "Why did Yuso and Ryouiki go missing on the same day?"

The red-haired male blinked, a glimmer of realization surfacing in his eyes. "You're not… accusing Ryouiki, are you?"

"We need to tell Father!" Hina shouted, crushing the Genso-Kyu by slamming her hands together and standing up. 

Katashi shook his head, stepping closer to his sister. His heart started to race at the idea of accusing the commander himself. Ryouiki had been with the Takuetsu family since Reiwa was around—there was no possible way Lord Shuji would take the idea lightly. 

"No! We'll send troops out after Yuso! Look, I don't want anything to happen to our little brother, but we don't have the freedom to do jack shit yet! Father and the other villages are on our ass twenty-four seven!" Katashi refuted, staring his sister in the eyes. 

The wind started to blow through the air roughly, shaking the nearby trees and cooling the air significantly. Hina felt encouraged by the forceful air, clenching her teeth. 

"We have to find Yuso!" Hina declared, preparing to push her brother out of the way. 

Before Katashi could argue, something caught his attention, his eyes darting just over his sister's shoulder. Hina was thrown off by his sudden distracted state, prompting her to also cast a glance behind her. Upon turning around, the sister's breath was seemingly pulled out of her throat, her eyes widening instantly. Somebody was here.

Katashi was the first of the two to race forward, jumping over the silver steps of the Takuetsu edifice.

"Yuso!" The brother hollered, briefly using a hint of his Aura Sense to speed over to his younger brother in less than half a second.

Katashi halted just a few feet away from Yuso, acknowledging the immensely weird atmosphere that suddenly put him in a chokehold. Something was wrong. Yuso's Aura Sense was altered. It was definitely his; Katashi remembered what his younger brother's presence felt like, especially before he had left for induction. Yuso's Aura Sense felt oppressive, like a thick wall of air that would make any normal civilian tremble. It also felt incredibly unstable, with the potency of the youngest Takuetsu's magic wavering. 

Hina slowly stepped down the silver steps of the edifice, ambling toward her two younger brothers hesitantly. She had felt the warped presence of Yuso before Katashi. How did Yuso, the most inexperienced of the Takuetsu family, manage to get so close to them without being detected until now? 

But it was not Yuso's Aura Sense that disturbed her the most, nor was it Yuso's greatly shortened hair. Hina still remembers the feeling of running her hands through Yuso's long hair from before he left, reminiscing about how proud she was that her youngest brother had such long hair. 

Yuso's eyes were what bewildered her. Katashi, too. They both stared at their younger brother's eyes with concern and fear. His once heterochromatic eyes, one previously being blue and the other green, were now black with crimson-red pentagrams for irises. 

"Yuso…?" Hina called out to her brother hesitantly, still a good distance away. "What happened to you out there?"

Yuso's eyes shifted to Katashi, the closer of the two. Horrifically, the pentagrams in Yuso's eyes began to rotate in a clockwise motion, alerting the older Takuetsu siblings. 

*SMACK!*

Without much warning, Katashi was suddenly forced to block an impending punch thrown by Yuso, the youngest sibling's knuckles ramming into Katashi's forearm painfully. Yuso's attack was a surprise, leaving both Katashi and Hina perplexed. Were they seriously about to be forced to apprehend their younger brother?

"Yuso! What are you doing!?" Katashi yelled, pushing his brother back a few feet. 

Wordlessly, Yuso dashed forward once again, his right hand glowing red as he reached out to grab Katashi. In a state of panic, the older brother stretched both of his hands forward and discharged a thick wall of light—*SHMMMMM!*—causing Yuso to halt.

Hina jumped back as she realized what Katashi did. 

"Katashi! You're using your aura print!?"

Once the light eventually dimmed, a giant, four-legged beast made completely out of red magic was visible. A giant hound glared at Yuso murderously, its height dwarfing all of the buildings around it. Intense heat radiated off of the colossal hound, with its claws penetrating the ground with ease. 

Sitting on the hound's head was Katashi, whose eyes were shimmering with shock. His life had flashed before his eyes and instinctively spawned his aura print to put anything between him and Yuso. 

"I… suddenly got the feeling that if he touched me… I was going to die." Katashi mumbled, but his older sister still heard him with her heightened hearing. 

Hina's eyes flitted between her two brothers, panic brimming within her. Katashi stared death in the face multiple times and never shielded himself from it so fearfully, meaning that Yuso had something new in his arsenal. Something malignant. 

An idea formed in her head. 

"Keep him distracted!" Hina yelled, pointing her hand at the ground. 

*SHMMMMM!*

A red beam of light surrounding Hina in seconds, coiling upward several feet in the air. After taking shape, the light could now be seen as a translucent snake that was similar to Katashi's aura-printed hound in terms of size and heat that radiated off of it. 

Yuso witnessed the materialization of the two aura prints silently, his face rigid with monotony. 

*WHOOSH!*

The youngest Takuetsu craned his head and he noticed Katashi's hound lifting one of its claws and ramming it into the ground, directly where Yuso currently stood. 

*SHRRMMM!*

Before the claw could flatten Yuso, he formed a pentagram at his feet and slipped inside, disappearing immediately after. Katashi was stumped, realizing that Yuso had abruptly vanished without a trace. Neither he nor Hina could sense him anymore. 

"Where'd he go!?" Katashi hollered, his gaze snapping in every direction. 

*SHRRRMMM!*

Hina's eyes locked onto a bright light appearing above Katashi.

"Katashi, above you!"

The brother threw his head upward, spotting a pentagram that had formed in the sky several feet above him. A second later, Yuso dropped from the hovering pentagram with red chains in his hands, throwing them downward to hopefully restrain Katashi. 

Katashi let the chain wrap around his right arm, feeling his skin burn slightly due to the chain's heat, and forcefully pulled back. Yuso felt the chain become taut as Katashi pulled on it, increasing the velocity of his descent tenfold. 

"Don't make me hurt you, Yuso!" Katashi yelled, forming a red Genso-Kyu in his left hand. 

As Yuso fell down toward Katashi, a stone spike protruded from the pentagram embedded in his palm, ready to impale the older male redhead. As the two grew closer, they both saw a bright red light in the corner of their eyes. 

It was Hina's snake, which boldly lunged at Yuso with an open mouth, quickly biting down once the youngest Takuetsu was trapped inside of its jaws. Katashi eased up slightly once he saw Yuso be swallowed by his sister's aura print, letting the red Genso-Kyu in his left hand dissipate. 

"Good job, Hina—!"

*SLICE!*

Katashi's celebration was cut short as a pentagram sliced the snake's neck all the way around, lopping its head clean off. A moment later, Yuso dropped from the snake's dispersing head, falling toward Hina instead of Katashi. 

Hina grunted and created more snake heads that grew from the original snake's body, leading to Yuso maneuvering around them mid-air and throwing several small pentagrams that cut through every snake aura print coming his way. 

"Hold still!" Hina shouted angrily, manipulating the snake heads.

Fortunately, one snake head managed to catch Yuso by surprise and wrap itself around him, restraining his body. The youngest Takuetsu thrashed around in the snake's grip, unable to break free. Slowly, Hina lowered the snake's head to her level, enabling her to get a good look at her youngest brother. 

"Yuso… what has happened to you? Why are you doing this!?" Hina cried out, clenching her fists to maintain the snake's strength. 

Oddly, Yuso stopped struggling, his body going limp. His head tilted downward as his hair fell over his eyes. His hair may have been much shorter than before, but his crimson-red strands still reached down to below his ears instead of his shoulders. 

"Wake up, Yuso! Please!" Hina exclaimed, tears welling up in her eyes. 

She then pulled the snake closer, stretching her hand out to brush Yuso's face. His skin was incredibly warm due to his flared Aura Sense, but it did not stop the sister from trying to break her brother out of whatever trance he was stuck in. 

"Please! Brothers don't do this!" Hina shouted, placing her other hand on his shoulder. 

Yuso lifted his head, his Shirugeto eyes glaring at Hina. 

"I'm not your brother."

*SHINK!*

Hina gasped as she felt a stone spike pierce through her gut, blood seeping from the wound and her mouth simultaneously. The muscles in her body became weak as her falling tears mixed with her blood. She did not have the strength to fight back and heal herself—she did not have the courage to fight Yuso, her little brother. 

"I… I k-know you don't mean this… but I'll a-always be with you, forever and always." The sister said with a groping voice, her eyes becoming hazy. 

*SMACK!*

Katashi's fist made contact with Yuso's cheek as he suddenly appeared next to him, knocking the youngest Takuetsu out of the snake's hold and launching him into the earth. 

As Hina's aura-printed snake vanished, Katashi caught his sister and landed on the ground gently, placing her up against the nearest building. 

"Hina! Stay with me! Heal yourself, please!" Katashi fretted, putting pressure on her wound. 

She shook her head, her hazy eyes softening. "I… can't fight him."

Katashi stared into his sister's eyes with desperation, his jaw clenching tightly. He could not formulate a single sentence; a million emotions were running rampant within him. He held Hina's hands delicately, watching the life fade from her body. 

"She was mistaken to let her guard down." A familiar voice rang in Katashi's ears. 

Standing behind Katashi was Yuso, who looked down at the two distraught siblings. Katashi let a single tear roll down his face, turning his head slightly so he could get a glimpse of his younger brother. Yuso's appearance was the definition of menacing, his tattered kimono stained with blood and crimson-red eyes in the shape of pentagrams instilling hopeless fear in the middle child. 

"I'm not going to fight you, Yuso." Katashi spoke weakly, breathing heavily. 

Yuso narrowed his Shirugeto eyes. The warriors that guarded the compound did not put up much of a fight, either.

"Pathetic." Yuso said coldly, extending his right hand outward, grabbing the back of Katashi's head. 

A cold chill ran down Katashi's spine as he felt Yuso grab his head, his mind sending off alarms all throughout his body. 

"Before you kill me, let me say one thing…" Katashi began, mustering a stern voice. "Do not ever submit to another's will…"

Yuso reflected on Katashi's words, remaining motionless for a few seconds. Do not submit. Obviously, Yuso refused to submit, especially to those who were weaker. 

"In this case, you are the one who will submit." Yuso declared, his grip on Katashi's head getting tighter. 

Yuso's Shirugeto proceeded to spin in a clockwise motion, his right hand glowing brightly. As the youngest Takuetsu prepared his finishing blow, he gave Katashi one final parting message.

"Accept your death and… submit."

*SHRRMM!*

With a flash of light, Katashi's head vanished, his body falling sideways and colliding with the cold stone ground. 

Yuso inhaled, turning his head to gaze at the Takuetsu edifice. He finally purged every person that could possibly stand in his way, meaning that Yuso could now execute his master's plan. Walking toward the edifice, Yuso left the red-headed siblings to rot, removing them from his mind. 

"Lord Shuji's execution is imminent." 

XXX

Yuso's backstory is kinda morbid, but I needed a way to show why he is the way he is! I hope you enjoyed this chapter and are excited to see the next, which will include Lord Shuji and Yuso! It will be the finale to Yuso's backstory and the novel will continue at its usual pace! 

Have a Great Day!

Peace - Cr1ticalz_