To a certain point, Cor felt a splinter of empathy for Jecht’s internal struggle to remain focused on the immediate future, especially considering his increasingly obvious inability to maintain composure in the face of growing hunger. But when he started openly whining about the issue by calling the previous scent of food back to attention, it caused the Marshal’s own expression to change into one of subtle concern for his acquaintance’s sense of maturity, which he silently pondered over as he looked at Jecht with a single raised eyebrow.

With a small sigh, Cor spoke up with the intent to suggest, “If you’re really feeling that peckish, then we should skim the coastline and try to spear something to eat.” His shoulders bobbed upward in a brief shrug. “There might be mussels or oysters in the sand.” There was no way of knowing if this was true without going to comb the beaches themselves, but it was a reasonable hypothesis to consider here. He looked up to the treetops as he continued to move alongside Jecht. “Or there could also be fruit hidden somewhere above us. Coconuts or bananas, perhaps.” That might have been a stereotype, but this locale did look and feel highly tropical.

But, even with as many offers that had been verbalized, Cor had a gut feeling that his more rough-spoken counterpart wasn’t concerned with resolving the issue as much as he was just looking for an excuse to complain about something. Call it a soldier’s intuition (or just plain common sense) but the Marshal knew better. They would have both been unwelcome back there, given the presence of their weapons, and it was far more sensible for the two of them to take their chances with finding their victuals elsewhere.

Just as Cor was about to vocalize a solution to his companion’s hunger, he notices Jecht’s entire demeanor shift on a dime. The fingers that gripped Kotetsu’s scabbard tensed as the other man readied that humongous board of raw iron while he spoke in hushed whispers of a tail “slivering”—he probably meant to say slithering, but that wasn’t important right now—off into the bushes some couple of meters away from their position. The hint was sufficient enough to let Cor know that something dangerous was nearby, and should be regarded as such.

Hearing Jecht defer to him for instructions, the Marshal wordlessly lifted his right hand, the only free one he had, up and back so that the tips of his fingers caressed the hilt of his smaller blade, Kikuichimonji, with guileful suggestion. Steely eyes analyze the viridian landscapes with an almost laser-like intensity, searching for any signs of movement as he mentally assesses the options available to him. Cor alters the position of his touch on the weapon occasionally, as if considering how to best draw it for combat, while he determines other factors such as speed, force, distance, trajectory, and so on.

The tension grows thick as molasses in winter. Anyone else would find its influence to be suffocating, or unbearable to endure. Instead, the old soldier took a small number of steps forward, his posture both firm and composed in equal measure, visibly unfazed, even before the presence of a threat he could not directly see. He didn’t need to. The near-elusive rustling of leaves and branches had revealed the seemingly invisible entity’s presence to him.

No announcement is made, nor warning given, as Cor suddenly closes his hand around Kikuichimonji. A ringing flash of silvered steel erupts from the sheath as the Marshal draws the weapon, then whips his arm around until his hold on the sword could then be released in a single fluid motion, causing the two-foot blade to flicker and streak through the air in a perfectly straight line, as if it were an arrow just released from the bowstring.

Lacking a more eloquent way to describe it, Kikuichimonji was a throwing sword. And he had just chucked it at the shrubberies that served as a verdant veil for this hidden hostile, a ploy to strike preemptively before the concealed creature obtained a window to ambush them later down the road. He was no gambling man, as he had touched on earlier with his disinterest for Totomostro, but odds were pretty high that this was about to get much more complicated.

Jecht

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