Crow's Forest

’s Shogunate. Hiro Gracenaught had been born in Tokyo long after the land had slipped into the darkness and he’d never missed it. Now, running for his life with the odds of successfully eluding

le samurai as an honorable Japanese man could get. There were no roads, only paths, most of them grown over with a wildness that Edo would not have tolerated, but Hiro had no real way to know what Edo had or had not been.

e and the benefit of non-human lives. That was all well and good. He wasn’t supposed to be running down the path, disrupting the little lives of rabbits, cats, and crickets that he’d neve

rld to the Galaxy Peace Academy when he’d been fifteen. There had never been anything to fri

d embedded IDs and his scans were unable to even identify species. Ninety-eight percent of the interstellar traveling community was peaceful, finding cooperation, trade

e classed that way, but Hiro was sure that classification had been made on a pack of humans from fifteen thousand years ago, not Japanese men who had never been

is onboard strategy augmentation was suggesting without emotion that he had five minutes left in his life and he hadn’t even seen his enemy yet. He was going to die

y be sent once. The main office would have someone here fast, hopefully fast enough. Grimacing, steeling his nerves, he waited to make sure that all his prey, it felt more powerful to think his hu

on the lights in the courtyard and the first floor of the building as the doors opened for him. Inside was nothing like the plain grayness of the vast courtyards ded

a ferocious samurai had always been more elegant than he felt as he made the leap up to the reception counter. As a boy reading comics, the idea

l. From inside his haori he pulled his badge, the physical symbol of his authority. “In the spirit of galactic peace I ur

have looked like piles of black leaves and twigs, rotting and more dead than threatening. They weren’t still though. They seemed to move on a thousand little talon shaped legs, moving right ove

ying you that you are not welcome on this

eir color shifting to a more of a human skin tone with dark green hair and emerald green eyes. Now wearing a frock coat and tight breeches, the creature looked very like the myth of European elves or yōsei. As beautiful as it h

his own being to send, that would leave not even ash from his being. It wasn’t painful as it built up with him. With a sense

even when he’d had a head start. He couldn’t fight them. In less than a second he’d be no more. The last thing he saw was a branch, so slender and pointed, just at the edge of his vision. He never felt the 18th cen

ce

s conti

a lot of fucking work too.” The voice was flippant, casual, and

r with. His eyes opened with a jerking flutter. A man of unknown age leaned over him. Shoulder length blue hair wi

is the Galaxy Pea

t all that nasty tech though. It had no privacy filters. Did you know that? I don’t know

are

late afternoon sunshine. He looked back over his shoulder and smiled, a radiant smile that made

ssins! I have

hem.” That smile only

ead, but he didn’t