Upon returning to the ship, Hasekura calls the other samurai together to discuss our next move. "You'll leave for Baler at first light," Hasekura decides, "Matsuki, you lead the expedition. Kawaguchi, you'll join them as the translator and guide. Kajiwara, I need your sword most of all. Make sure everyone leaves this situation unscathed."

"Not a problem, captain." I reply, "But will we really be negotiating with the pirates?"

"Of course not, Kajiwara. Do you take me for some sort of fool? There's no negotiating with lawless thugs." he replies.

Matsuki sighs and slowly crosses his arms before speaking. "We should approach this with more caution, Hasekura-sama. We don't want to endanger that monk."

"If you think you know better than me, then I suggest you figure it out when you get there Matsuki!" Hasekura scolds, raising his arm, damn near hitting the guy in the process, "It doesn't matter how you do it, I just need that man back alive in one piece! Understood?"

"Understood." he replies with a subtle bow.

As the first light of dawn sets the clouds aflame with morning embers, Matsuki, Kawaguchi, and I set off towards Baler on foot. The journey is quiet when we're alone, but we fill our words with air thick as the stratosphere so as to not create tension in the wake of passersby. Our eager fingers rotate our jingasa progressively around our heads, and we travel with our thumbs pressed against the grips of our swords.

The terrain becomes increasingly rugged as we move inland, the lush jungle on either side of the path teeming with the sounds of monkeys and many varieties of sky rats. As we near Baler, the tension in the air mounts. It's nearing a couple hours since we've seen travelers on the road, and a couple days since we left Manila; a small settlement looms in the distance. As I look upon the shore, an oppressive fog deprives the shallow waters along the shore of their baby blue tinge.

"You got a plan yet Matsuki?" I say as a stone church surrounded by wooden shanties looms in the distance.

"Dunno yet; we should look for the monks first. Maybe they got some inkling of what's going on."

As we approach, the locals eye us with a dull curiosity, probably unaccustomed to seeing armed Asian guys with good intentions.

As we pass by the church, Kawaguchi steps aside to speak with a group of monks, tending to the small garden beside it, clipping rose petals and watering the orchids. The monks whisper to each other, exchanging worried glances before one of them, an older man draped in string-tied umber robes, steps forward. His weathered face winces until Matsuki informs him that we mean no harm. After speaking with him for a few minutes, he returns to give us the deets.

"He says the pirates travel along the coast by ship to extort money from the settlements. They were here just a couple days ago, but they don't come by very often."

"We ain't here to enforce the law," I says, "Wha'd he say about the Padre?"

"He says they came here first thinking the Padre was one of them, though they knew they couldn't get the ransom, because they had been draining their pockets for a couple months already. They were threatened and told to send one of their monks to post that ransom note on the church, thinking the Spaniards would pay up instead. They don't know where the Padre is, but he's not being held at the inn."

"If he's not at the inn, then he's either being held hostage on a ship or somewhere nearby." replies Matsuki.

"Think we oughta check the coves?" I ask.

"That sounds like a good idea, but we're being watched right now, no doubt. Kawaguchi, can you go and tell that guy that we're pirates or something? We don't want them thinking there's a search and rescue crew."

After Kawaguchi speaks with the monk again, we take off in the opposite direction, watching our backs to make sure nobody follows us; when we travel far enough we take a detour out of sight and head towards the coastline, cutting through dense forest until, at last, we rise to green hilltops overlooking the sea.

From our vantage point, we can see the coastline stretching out in both directions.

"We'll trace the shoreline and travel south," Matsuki decides. "Try to make as little noise as possible. Keep on the lookout for ships."

I nod, gripping my sword a little tighter. We move swiftly but silently, staying close to the cover of the trees. The hills and the shore are both rocky and uneven, making our descent slow and dicey. The sand collapses beneath our sandals and the tide occasionally sweeps towards us, turning our footsteps into splintering bits of clay. After thirty minutes or so of unbroken progress, Matsuki raises a hand, signaling us to stop. He points towards a secluded cove where a small ship is anchored. It ain't much larger than a fishing boat, but it looks pretty rugged and sea-worn.

"I think we found our guys," he whispers, before fetching a flintlock from the inside of his hakama.

Kawaguchi nods in agreement. "We should get closer, but be cautious. We don't know how many are in there."

"Kawaguchi, you got a pistol I can borrow?" I ask.

"What are you thinking Kajiwara?" replies Matsuki.

"We'll approach from both sides of the cave. Better if we try to get an angle on 'em. I'll signal you if I see somebody standing in yer way. Don't want your skull to get split like a watermelon do ya?"

He nods in return; the boat is anchored against the side of the cave and there are two walkways carved into the rock apart from each other.

"Just don't get any water in the barrel. You'll screw it up." replies Kawaguchi as he fetches his pistol before handing it to me.

"You think I never used a gun before?"

Matsuki motions for me to be quiet and I slip towards the edge before slowly dipping into the sea and making my way across the water towards the opposite side. The cold water laps against my skin as I wade, jumping through the fibers of my robe. Reaching the other side, I pull myself up onto the rocks, clothes heavy and clinging to the skin of my legs. I motion to Matsuki and we both begin to make our way into the cavern. Not very long after, I see the cave start to turn towards the right a ways away from where we are, but the way in front of Matsuki is obscured. I give him the signal to let me go first, while I wave towards Kawaguchi to watch the entrance; as I'm halfway through the walkway, I see something odd in the water, there's a white shape moving beneath the surface. I pause, squinting through the dim light to make out what it is; as it floats up I hear a ticking sound. It's a clock. What?

I watch as the black hands slowly make their way around the bend. There's a big thump as the big hand strikes twelve. When I look down, I'm suddenly walking across the ledge of a large building in the middle of the night. My shoes and pants are covered in blood. It was new years, January, 2043. I stood there for several minutes watching the clock tick. For the first time, in maybe...ever...there was nobody on the street to celebrate the new year. Just the cold body of an old gangster lying on the floor of his brand new penthouse, having soiled himself. I keep thinking about what he said a few minutes beforehand.

"You can kill me, but you can never destroy my legacy, Kajiwara. All of your friends are dead. You'll never be anything but a ghost floating above an unmarked grave. You are a nobody."

I had cleaned out the entire penthouse, swiftly killing all of his bodyguards without blinking an eye. But as I held my gun pointed towards him, my finger suddenly slipped, and I pulled the trigger. Next thing I knew, Kikuji Yamada, head of the Yamada family, was dead. I had planned to kill him slowly, and with feeling, but as I stared at the bullet hole on the glass pane behind him, I realized that it had changed nothing. I tried to think about where I should go, what I should do now, but if I risked my life trying to kill the new dictator of Japan, it was certain that another puppet would just replace him.

There's nothing left for me now. As I put the gun to my head, I reflect back on my life; all the friendships I had, and...

"Kajiwara, what the hell are you doing?"

I stand there dumbfounded as Matsuki looks across from me with a horrified look in his eyes. I'm back to that cove in the Spanish-era Philippines.

"Matsuki, eyes ahead of you, don't worry about me." I say with my fingers. He nods and immediately looks ahead of him again as if the whole thing had never happened. When I scooch in further, I see a red light emanating from inside. There's nobody standing guard out front, just the glowing red light, pulsating and flashing. I give Matsuki the signal to stop and I start to move faster towards the source of light; it's not a fire, looks nothing like a fire.

Suddenly I find myself drawn towards the light, but when I enter inside, traversing through the space with my hands gliding along the cavern walls, I only see a white shape. But this time it's not a clock or a fish; this time it's the shape of a person, but it ain't a person. The thing, hunched over turns towards me and spreads it's large white wings, like some kinda freak angel, and looks at me with it's red eye. I stare deeply into the red eye; the red eye eats me alive and a voice says to me:

"You did a good job coming all this way, Harley."

I open my eyes and I'm on the floor. There's a cyclops in the cave, grabbing Matsuki and Kawaguchi like puppies at the pound, tearing them limb from limb with a flick of his thumb before eating them both and cleaning their remains off of the floor with his tongue. I raise my sword and the giant swipes it away, breaking my arm; taking my gun, I swiftly shoot him, but his thick skin bounces the bullet right off.

"You asshole!" I shout as the cyclops grabs me, pounding his arm repeatedly with my fist.

"What can you hope to do in a situation like this?" he laughs with his big hulking voice.

Then I see it; just before Matsuki was eaten he had thrusted his sword into the cyclops' neck without cutting too deeply into the skin.

"Fine. You wanna eat me fucker? Go 'head just make it quick."

He laughs and says nothing in response, and I point at his shoulder.

"Hey, ugly! My pal shit himself just before he got eaten. It's all over your shoulder! You gonna clean it up?"

The cyclops reflexively brings me closer to him as he looks; I grab the katana with my good arm, wrench it from his flesh and thrust it into his big fucking eye. He thrashes around like a mad cow as he cries tears of blood; he yells as he throws me against the wall. I fall to the ground and somehow muster the strength to get back up. I try to make a run for the entrance of the cave, but before I'm even halfway, he takes a giant boulder and hurls it against the entrance. Trapped in here with me, the cyclops, now blind, roars in pain and anger, running against the walls, stomping the ground, trying to kill me.

I scan the cave for anything that could help. My sight lands on a sheep pen far away, and I span the distance in a matter of seconds, the cyclops hearing me and chasing me all the while. As I land in the sheep pen on all fours, I look up and see a shape moving not very far from me that doesn't quite look like a sheep, but the pain from being thrown against the wall is just starting to get to me. I lie there for several hours, staring at the ceiling of the cave as the fuzzy shapes shift and move around, occasionally rolling over when I sense that one of them is about to shit on me. The cyclops seems to give up on finding me for a while, probably waiting for me to try and make an escape.

Lying among the sheep, my body aches from the impact against the wall. The cyclops, blinded and enraged, continues to roar and stomp 'round the cave, occasionally striking the walls in frustration. The sounds of the sheep blend with the cyclops' rage, creating a ruckus that doesn't allow me to close my eyes, not even for a second. I try to stay as still as possible, blending in with the sheep to avoid drawing the cyclops's attention.

Hours pass, and I can feel the tension in my body gradually subsiding. The cyclops's roars occasionally when he thinks he's found me, but the intensity of his rage has dwindled. I cautiously lift my head, scanning the cave for any sign of movement from the cyclops. It's lying on the ground, breathing heavily, seemingly asleep. Suddenly, I feel a hand touch my shoulder.