"Who's the next hunt?" Seth asks, propped on a tree, crushing the grass under his feet to pass the time. Nixon thinks to himself for a moment, counting money between his fingers.
"We'll just have to find out - visiting the sheriff's office will do."
A voice comes from behind them, "Hey, are you guys, poachers?"
Seth turns around with a casual turn as if nothing was wrong, "Nope, we're just waiting here, contemplating." The man was Japanese, his expression filled with solace, his short black hair slicked back with oil, a small goatee sitting in the middle of his chin, his jaw visibly tense. "You're Japanese right?"
Nixon arches an eyebrow, chipping away at some wood he found, "You can tell?"
Seth points to his hip, then motions to the Japanese man, Nixon nods in affirmation, "Yeah, I'm Japanese," The man shakes the katana on his hip, wearing a black military uniform with white lining, the symbol of a hawk on his right breast. "Tsukiyama Matsumoto," He bows, "Nice to meet you two."
"Seth Alpheus Hunt."
"Nixon Driver."
"You two can call me Tsuki." He bows once again.
Seth cracks his neck, "You speak good English, were you born here?"
"Yeah, I was, but I was raised in Japan." Tsuki carefully looks around his environment. "What do you guys do as an occupation?"
Nixon spits up a loogie, "Bounty Hunters."
Tsuki spaces out for a few seconds and points to his eyes, motioning at Seth, "Why do you have your eyes closed?"
Seth chuckles lightly, "It's so I can see in the dark."
"Are you a soldier or something?"
"Used to be."
Nixon laughs, "Yeah, it was the Spanish-American War."
"How old are you two?"
Nixon smiles, "Thirty-Two."
"Twenty-Two." Seth didn't know why he knew his age here, but the thought of knowing suddenly came to mind.
"You guys were young huh...?"
"Yeah." Seth sighs, sitting down with his legs crossed, "What do you do Tsuki?"
"I was also a military man, participated in the Russo-Japanese War, I was in its second division."
"Looks like we were all military men."
"You've been going longer than, 'I' though." Tsuki laughs.
"I guess?" Seth says with an eyebrow cocked, "The thing is though, the Spanish-American War only lasted a few months compared to the Russo-Japanese War, which went from 1904 to 1905. Almost a whole year."
"I meant combat-wise."
Nixon nods, "He's right on that front. We've been bounty hunters longer than we've been military men, ever since we left I believe."
"We were considered geniuses you know?" Seth comments.
"What do you mean?" Tsuki arches an eyebrow.
"We got nicknames," Nixon goes on, collecting wood for a fire, taking sticks surrounding them, and pulling rocks from the ground. "I'm called the Mad Jackal while Seth is called the Black Fox. My nickname has less significance than Seth's though. Seth prefers close quarters combat so he'd sneak up against enemy lines without anyone knowing and only use a small revolver, the enemy's weapons, and swords, excluding his knowledge of combat of course. That was when there were serious battles at least. My name Mad Jackal, as I said before, holds no significance but I was popular for how good of a sniper I was. We aren't popular anymore though." Nixon places stones around the sticks gathered. Nixon lights it with a rusted lighter, giving it a few tries before it finally worked.
"We had people like those as well..." Tsuki said in almost a sigh. Tsuki sits around the campfire Nixon made, Seth doing so as well. "Have you heard, there might be another war brewing?"
"What do you mean?" Seth asks, he knew what he was going to talk about but back then, they never thought that it'd became the way it was in the modern-day, World War 1.
"I don't know, it's just my suspicion. Tensions are getting high in Europe so I assume there might be a war, plus, the Ottoman Empire and Italy are going at it right now so I have no doubt that there might be something even more serious after."
"Oh yeah... it's almost 1912..." Seth mumbles to himself.
"Hm?" Nixon perks up.
"Nothing, just thinking that this year is coming to an end."
"Reminiscing? That's unlike you."
Seth... would rather accept this reality than the real one, so he doesn't debate with the world. He doesn't know why things happen naturally, why things are repeating a history that never existed in the first place. Why is he here in a reality wherein he was still a child when that war was going on. In this timeline, he wouldn't be sixteen by the time he'd join World War 1... this time, he'd be in his late twenties or even thirty years old. Seth prefers this reality. There is no point in trying to go back into the ridiculous reality that he was once in, no... this was his ideal world. There is no better place than here for him.
"Seth?" Nixon waves his hand in Seth's face, Seth snaps out of his thoughts, back to what was in front of him. "You okay, you spaced out, what happened?"
"Sorry, just thinking."
"About what?"
Seth shrugs, "I don't remember."
Tsuki gets up, "I'll be back, I forgot my things over in a shack I live in. I'll hunt for some food while I'm there as well."
Seth sighs, "Okay, you have fun!" He waves to Tsuki as he leaves into a dark forest, snow falling from branches, adding more mass to the crystalized ground below. Water, frozen, and clumped together.
Seth's eyes widen as he pushes Nixon off from a small cliff edge near their campsite, Seth jumping off shortly after, landing on Nixon. "AAgh!" Nixon groans as he lands onto him. A female voice yells, "外国の犬をクソ!" (Fucking foreign dogs!) A gunshot rings out, some of the snow shooting up into the air.
Another voice speaking Japanese protests, "やめて,ミナミ!" (Stop it, Minami!)
"Looks like Tsuki's woman is fucking crazy," Seth says, groaning.
"Why the hell would his woman be out here...?"
"I don't know man, it's my only guess."