Chapter Text
“Haza-dono, how come we never heard of you before your intrusion upon Kawanakajima?”
She looks up from her tea and over at Yukimura. The courtyard around the Takeda estate is being cleared, since Shingen had said something about training and treating their guests to some well earned exercise. “Some of it is what I told you before, women generals have a hard time making our names.”
The tiger cub sits beside her. She smiles and pours a cup for him and passes it over. He sips it and blinks in surprise at the taste. Water clearer than the sky bursts with flavor he hadn’t expected. “This is...excellent!”
“Trick of the trade..” She chuckles. “But why didn't I have much of a title before now? Well...some of that is my age too. I’m Masa’s age, but when I met them I wasn’t war ready, by the time we were moving into Oshu I was still a field medic and I didn’t have my element yet. After that I was still in training even on the war trail in the north on the rear guard.”
“Still, someone should have heard of your feats!”
“Yuki-chan, most people who fought me didn’t get to carry word back.” Haza smiles slightly. “I was in command of protecting our injured. If we got attacked, it was all or nothing, so there’d be so few survivors…”
He gazes at her in surprise, and maybe a little awe too. “Then, you moved from there to the front lines recently?”
“Mhm. As much as messing with your lord and the war god was meant to be Masamune’s throw into the bigger picture, it was also meant to be my debut in bigger tactics to start making my name.” She nods. “I’ve been on the frontlines, but nothing on that scale.”
Yukimura thinks back to how riled up she was, how eager to steal and challenge the glory of her brother, how hopeful for a rival for a match for a battle to get her blood going. He laughs. “Haza-dono, your first appearance on the field was much more bold than my first battle ever was!”
“From you! Yuki that’s impossible, you mean you aren’t always this excited?!”
“My first battle under Oyakata-sama? Sasuke barely left my side and surely no more confused boy has ever been seen in the Takeda army!”
When Sasuke finds them on the porch they’re both howling with laughter comparing first battles and the things intrinsic to early war in this era. “D-did you do the thing where you jump at like every order, even if it isn’t at you or your squad?”
“Actually he-” Sasuke can’t help but join in. He remembers those stressful days all too well.
“Don’t, Sasuke don’t tell her it was highly unbecoming of me! But...perhaps. I probably slept for two days after the whole ordeal.”
Haza rolls over and actually falls off the walkway and onto the ground and snorts as she dissolves into more laughter. “I’d sleep forever after a battle, gods, Koju had to drag me to keep doing my work!”