The fires of Mount Hiei left not a physical marking, no scars or burn wounds around her body. All she could recognize from the earlier events was the pain, the inferno he had burned in, black smoke and soot flaying her alive. Sleep could only come to take her in the early hours of the morning, a brief reprieve.
She was crying, tears of bitter regret dripping down on the wooden floor. But her strong emotions weren't motivated by sadness, oh no, but were those feelings of pent-up anger. She was furious at the world, her family, and worst of all, herself. Ice cold stares, glaring and piercing her vulnerable state, judged her from every corner of the room, disdain obvious from the way everyone looked at her.
After seemingly an eternity, she brushed past all the finely dressed men and women to earn her privacy. Breathing heavily, she slammed a fist on the wall, barely making a dent on it, reminding her of her weaknesses. It hurt her a lot, stinging like a wasp on the fist that she pushed into the wall, but the pain was irrelevant. She was used to it at this point, and so she continued bashing the poor wall into oblivion, finally smashing the wood furnishings wide open.
The fury she felt to the world had watered down slightly, rage and adrenaline no longer filling her every being. She concentrated it to more appropriate targets. She barely knew the man she had cursed, after all, the man called 'father' only shared his disapproval the majority of the time. Not once did she remember a point in time when she had been seen as anything but a disappointment. A waste of space smearing the Oda name, dishonoring it by her mere existence.
Her mother, her siblings, her entire family stayed away from her. The last time she had seen the jackass of a father, all he had done was titling her of all people as the new Oda clan head, to the looks of horror from her friends and family. Why her, why her, why her... "WHY DID IT HAVE TO BE ME...!" She shouted to herself, mind finally losing its grip from her unbridled rage.
Why... Why the most useless child, the so called 'Fool of Owari Province'!? She cursed everyone once more; her father, her mother, her family, everyone! She had nothing to gain, and everything to lose, so why make her take the banner!? After releasing the volley of curses, everything she wanted to say to the silent courtyard and the poor wall she had torn apart, all that was left was a tired smile. Grinning widely all of sudden, she sat down, legs crossed, palms leaning on the floor behind her.
It was the first time in a long while that she had such a smile of content. And it wasn't to be the last. When she cut her treasonous Uncle's head clean off, she was a devil in the night. When she crushed the other fools in Owari, and became its sole leader. When she had laid low her foe's armies, their divided regiments followed her every command. When she had kindly told the Shogun she was in power, and when she saw the potential of foreign weapons and armaments, guns and the change they could represent. When she would burn Mount Heiei to the ground, every living person who had lived there died. When she watched clan leaders commit suicide before her, their skulls taken from their corpses and repurposed for drinking utility. And when she had finally died, her sword lodged into her chest as the temple of Honnouji burned, melting her flesh and killing her slowly, still smiling gleefully.
As it is, however, there wasn't much else for her to do. The disapproving whispers surrounded her everywhere she went, vicious words from faces that she couldn't see directly. 'Nobunaga the fool, Nobunaga the daft, Nobunaga the idiot', they said, and over again. Bah! They would learn the folly of their words. Either they learn to respect their betters, or barring that, fear them. If they still wished to spit on her face and bark like the dogs that they were, then they may also learn the meaning of death. She stood, and planned to make her next move.
***
Hyoudou Issei woke up with a smile on her face. She had a dream, but very quickly she forgot what it was. She tried to grasp at the images still within her mind, but even that was a lost effort as they slipped away from her as well. Rubbing her eyes, she yawned, and walked over to the chest to get dressed, but not before landing her eyes on the uniform and cap left behind from the previous day. Confusion turned to horror, as she took a quick look down, and finally everything clicked.
She froze, and suddenly feeling weakness on her legs, landed on the ground as her knees bent inwards. Whimpering quietly, tears were ready to fall to the floor once again, but were interrupted by a sudden loss of feeling, a numb sensation of being puppeted by a third party. She suddenly pushed herself back up and shed her tears, and faced the window, sunlight pouring through.
"Boy," her mouth moved. "We all die someday. All the pain that defines who we are leads us all to the same destination. If I killed your parents, and I won't, there wouldn't be much to be done about it, because at the end of the day, they'd keel over long before you would. Remember that." Issei didn't have much to say in response, and could only move her head slightly downwards.
"Pain, Injury, and Hurting shouldn't mean anything to you by now. They don't feel so good, correct?" She continued, staring motionlessly at the glass. Her right arm moved to pinch the left, and it didn't hurt that much. It stung, sure, and once before in her life it might have been very painful, but compared to what she felt in that infinite hellfire, it was nothing. "Doesn't hurt much anymore, does it? Sometimes, Issei, hardship could make us stronger. I'm proud of you handling the pain so well back then, even if I wasn't very proud of it. But let yourself learn from this, and you can adapt, and overcome any obstacle. Become harder, faster, and stronger than you ever were. You can do that, can't you?"
Issei wordlessly nodded her possessed neck slightly, even with the iron fist control that moved her entire body. Satisfied, Oda Nobunaga smiled for a bit, but suddenly her face contorted in irritation. A frown moved her features, as she would suddenly move her hands in a clapping motion in an attempt to kill from what Issei could gather to be a mosquito.
If Issei had any real control over her body at this point, she would have palmed her face in exasperation. As it is, however, she could only resign her fate to watching a grown woman in her childhood body attempt to kill a particularly persistent insect. Finally killing the offender, she moved back to her original position and realized what she had just done, potentially losing the tension and respect she had earned in the room. Facing the mirror once more with a hastily made serious look on her face, she continued despite the bead of sweat rolling down on one side of her body.
"Oh right, something about pain. Um..." Oda Nobunaga said, continuing her monologue as if she had never stopped. "I believe you fear me because I possess power to hurt you and your loved ones, correct? Then what should you do?" She asked.
Issei thought over what she had just heard, mind racing to find a solution, but to no avail. Her left eye teared up in frustration as she waited for her answer, all out of words she could say. Nobunaga realized as much, and with exuberance, replied.
"You should get stronger!" Nobunaga advised cheerfully, then immediately took a serious tone. "Do you actually believe that crying or living in fear would solve your problems? Will you escape your despair, or suffer inside the cage you've constructed for yourself? Everything you've gone through so far would have all been for nothing, if you actually plan on doing exactly what I've said, Issei, and don't dare deny that!" With the last words said and done, a fuzzy feeling spread across Issei's left hand. A whirring sound was heard, and suddenly the sword and sheath flew from their positions into her hand.
She points the blade towards the window, posing coolly like every good Shonen protagonist should. Taking a moment to breathe, she resumed her speech. "You hold great strength within yourself, experiencing the burning embers of hell melting your skin, and nothing in this world could possibly compare. Make the most out of this curse you've gained, Issei, because nothing is earned for free. The opportunity you have is far beyond what most people will give you in everyday life. Your future must be seized, and conquered like all the lands I've united!"
Nobunaga's voice grew with every sentence, the passion in her eyes sending Issei into a state of awe. Her words echoed and bounced all around Issei's mind. She gave her a goal, a destination, and most importantly, an answer. She had almost given in earlier, the fear in her mind replaced by a feeling of shame and ingenuity. Feeling Issei's burst of inspiration, she grins, satisfied that her words finally got to them.
Nobunaga lowered the sword, content. She adds, "Well, if anything Issei, you should think of me less as a jinx and more of a boon. Why should I hurt your parents when I could help protect them, right? There's nothing for me to gain, you know, and it might be an interesting new experience. I've seen too much wanton slaughter in my lifetime, anyway." Smiling happily, a moment of calm was shared between master and servant.
Suddenly, three knocks banged on the bedroom door. Nobunaga was taken aback, falling into a heap on the floor and ruining the air of awe she had carefully cultivated. She very quickly puts the sword in sheath back where it flew from, and took her sweet little time to fix herself up.
"Is there something wrong, dear?" Asked Issei's mother, concerned by the sound of tumbling that she had heard inside her son's room. Nobunaga jumped off the bed and replied, "Nothing, ma, just playing around with my voice..." Standing straight, she returns control to Issei, but not before saying one last thing.
"Don't disappoint me." Nobunaga whispered. Expecting the change now, Issei was able to keep herself from slamming face down on the floor. Pushing down her tumultuous feelings, she took a deep breath and stood up straight. The phantom pains were crushed under her foot, motivated by a feeling to get stronger, but even more by her drive to make Nobu proud. It all comes down to this, it seemed.
Sighing deeply, she runs down the stairs to join her parents on the dinner table, her mother moving to the side to let her jump down. When the sound of a feminine yelp reaches her ears, she palms one eye and coughs to hide the giggle that rose up her throat while a fuzzy feeling embraced her chest. Even if the girl wasn't quite the same Issei anymore on the outside, she felt closure knowing that she was pretty much the same person on the inside. Moving to help the girl who had fallen and couldn't get up, they walked towards the dining room.