Kaizoku, Boa, and Tsume confront the strange old woman Aguri at her hut in the woods. They negotiate for the fate of the children who were wandering in the forest.
The woman, Aguri, beckoned the ronin to have rice and tea with her. Suspicious of her, the ronin began to question Aguri. All of her answers seemed strangely convenient. Kaizoku pretended to eat the rice and Tsume flat out refused. Boa on the other hand graciously accepted the food, and hungrily bit into one of the rice balls. He immediately began to feel exhausted and his limbs grew heavy. Ignoring the old woman’s pleas, Tsume peeked inside her hut. Against the distant wall, he saw two figures, a boy and a girl roughly 12 years old, bound and knocked out.
Aguri shrieked in anger and unwrapped the towel she had wrapped around her head, revealing a large second mouth on her forehead with rows of snake-like fangs. She ran to Tsume and bit him, wounding him. Kaizoku unslung his yumi, but couldn’t line up a shot due to Aguri’s surprising agility. Meanwhile, Boa struck her, forcing her onto the defensive. Tsume drew his katana and struck her, cutting through layers of thick robes to reveal a hardened carapace of scales growing across Aguri’s body. Tsume’s sword bounced off her monstrous hide, chipping the blade.
The old snake woman withdrew into her shack with Kaizoku, Tsume, and Boa in pursuit. Their assault overtook Aguri when one of Kaizoku’s arrows sliced off a section of her scaly hide, opening her up to attacks. She lashed out one final time, striking Boa and wounding him, but the three ronin soon defeated her.
Coming to the aid of the two children, the boy was quick to claim that he would have easily beaten the monster if he just had his bokken. Stubborn and bullheaded, it was definitely the missing child, Kai. The ronin discovered the girl’s name was Sora. She was Kai’s best friend and the two children, unhappy with life in the village, decided to run away together to live in the forest.
As Kaizoku, Tsume, and Boa were talking to the children, a small mob of peasants led by a willful ronin congregated outside Aguri’s hut. The ronin, a woman named Ryoko, explained that she was hired by the leader of Nestled Village to return Sora. Ryoko was not expecting to find Kai, a latchkey kid who ran away some time ago to live with bandits, but she figured she should return him too, saying that his mother, Hina, would be happy to see him.
Suddenly, everything clicked. Hina. It was a name Boa hadn’t heard in a very long time. But when he did hear it, it confirmed his every suspicion. The boy looked just like him. Bullheaded and strong like him too. With rumors of his father being a samurai? A half-truth. Because it wasn’t Otomo Nobu who was the father-- it was him.
Never turning down the promise of an even greater reward, Kaizoku suggested taking the children home, abandoning his commitment to Ichiro. Upon returning to Nestled Village, the village leader, Sayaka, graciously paid each of the ronin for the danger they faced rescuing the children. The parents of the children were soon brought in. Sora embraced her parents, crying, while Kai refused to speak to his mother, Hina. “I don’t want to be here, there’s nothing for me here,” Kai protested.
Seeing an opportunity, Boa suggested that Kai could come with them. Hina’s face went ghost-white as she recognized the man she was looking at. They made eye contact, neither one saying a word. Finally, Hina spoke, “I will not allow my child to run off with strange men from the forest.”