It was early evening when a group of three trucks arrived at the base of a tall, green mountain. The old, narrow street, they had arrived, on winded its way through a narrow valley surrounded by overgrown mountains covered in wild and primal forests.

The sun was about to disappear behind the top of the mountain when a group of 14 people their way away from the street and up a narrow, barely visible path that lead up the mountain. The strange group consisted out of twelve burly, armed men surrounding the pair of a younger man and a small women.

“This path has been used by my grandmother when she left the village more than 70 years ago.”, the small women quietly spoke to the young man while they wandered beneath the ancient trees of the forest surrounding them.

He only nodded in response, to tense and to excited to truly pay attention to her words.

They continued to follow the path as it wound itself on the mountains base and finally ended in a small gorge, only a few meters wide, that seemed to be cut into the mountain itself. A creek flew through the gorge and a few small, colorful fish swam through the clear water.

Not hesitating at all the group walked into the cold but refreshing water and followed the creek through the gorge. As the sun was about to truly vanish from sight, the walls of stone surrounding them finally ended, and they arrived at a small pond at the center of a clearing.

It was located on the other side of the mountain, a small hill that overlook the rather wide valley that was limited by another mountain range in the distance. The scenery there was not much different than the one on the other side of the mountain, at least if one did not spot the far away dots and tree-free area’s that were a faraway village and its fields.

“That’s it.”, the young man mumbled to myself, his excitement rising even further.

The young women also seemed very happy to have arrived at the ancestral land of her maternal family, even though she also seemed very nervous.

“Let’s go.”, she grabbed his hand and gently dragged him along.

Hearing this the small group continued towards the small settlements and the billows of smoke that told of the busy human activity that was going on there. On the way the young man gave the men surrounding him a signal to ready their weapons.

If possible, he wanted to avoid any violence and hostile actions, but he could not guarantee how the villagers would react at the sudden arrival of unknown strangers. It was always better being save than sorry.

The sun had already disappeared behind the mountains and the remaining light was also dimming further when they finally arrived at the first houses. They were beautifully handcrafted single-story buildings similar to the traditional Japanese style, but with a few elements that seemed native and unique to the local people.

Just as they encountered the first houses, they also encountered the first villagers.

A tall, muscular man, about 1.8m tall, was walking along an adult woman that was even a little smaller than the already small woman belonging to the other group. Both, the man and the woman wore loose clothing reminding of casual yukatas, but to their relative surprise the woman had taken her arms out of her sleeves and freed her shoulders. Then using the empty sleeves she had tied them around her belly. Essentially, she had uncovered her upper body and especially the pair of flat, but enticingly shaped breasts that had two small, golden piercings attached to the nipples.

Both were shocked to see to see this group of unfamiliar strangers and began to panic.

“Wait!”, the young man called out in standard Japanese.

According to the information they had gathered the people of the village were speaking a somewhat modern Japanese due to their members going out to the outside world from time to time. It seemed like they wanted to stay in touch with the outside world even though they lived in this isolated valley who few even knew of.

“We don’t want any harm. If you could please bring us to the important village members!”, the young man spoke in very polite Japanese and even made a slight bow. He would rather try to be overly polite than have to resolve all of this with guns and blood.

The two villagers hesitated.

“You are from the outside.”, the man said with a relatively difficult to understand dialect. Then his eyes fell on the young women next to him.

“You… your family came from this village?”, he sounded surprised.

She nodded.

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“My grandmother was called Kagura and belonged to the Fuka-family.”

The man curiously mustered her and finally nodded.

“Follow me.”, just as they had asked him to, he directly led them through the settlement to the very center of the village, a small square surrounded by larger buildings and strange, tribal totems carved from wood. Along the way the group saw even more villagers, all of whom were very surprised to see them, but remained surprisingly cool after seeing that they remained passive.

Interestingly many of the women we saw either wore their yukata fully or had uncovered their breasts, who mostly bore at least one nipple piercing. Some of them, wore golden harnesses jewelry beneath their regular clothes, while others actually only wore the harness, walking around essentially naked.

The young man could also observe that it seemed like the younger the women were, the less likely they would wear something.

While women in the 20ties would partially wear a yukata or a beautifully looking arrangement of cloths tied around their hips and sometimes breasts, girls that looked like 18 only wore something reminiscent of panties and girls younger than that mostly wore nothing or only a see-through cloth.

He was curious what they would do once it became winter and the temperatures dropped.

While they were observing the female villagers, the other tribal members had contacted their leaders and a group of elderly men walked out from one of the bigger buildings surrounding the square. They appeared to be apprehensive, but not hostile as they calmly observed the unknown group.

“My name is Heki and I am an elder of this village. Why have you come here stranger, what do you seek from our small village?”, the eldest amongst the elders stepped forward and introduced himself to me.

The young man politely nodded and breathed in deeply.

“My name is Ryan Lewin and as you might already now I have come from the outside world. This”, he pointed at the young woman standing next to him. “Is my fiancée Shiina White, the woman I am going to marry. Her grandmother left this village 70 years ago.”

The elders curiously surveyed Shiina and nodded.

“As you might know the outside world is governed by a country called Japan, which owns all the land on this island; including your village. A few months back my father-in-law happened to buy this valley and the entire mountain range surrounding it and then gifted it to me.

This land, this village legally belongs to me.

Now I don’t want you to misunderstand. I don’t want to take your land or harm you in any way. I am a scientist, a scholar of sorts, and as such I have great interest in your unique bloodline and especially the bloodline passed along amongst your females.

My only wish is for you to let me settle here and allow me to research your bloodline. Of course, I will expect you to help me do this in any way I need you to, as this is my land.

I don’t want to appear cruel or evil, but in case you will not comply despite my earnest request and attempt to treat you as equals, I will have to forcefully suppress you using violence and get what I need myself. Please understand that if I have to take this road, your people will have to life under my rule from there on.

So chose, will you try to fight me over nothing but a mere request, or will you comply and remain my equals?”

He had chosen my words with careful thought. On the one hand he could not be too demanding and arrogant, meaning that he couldn’t just claim control over their land without a reason, on the other hand he had to make clear that there was no real choice for them.

If necessary he was ready to use force to achieve his goal.

Silence reigned for some time as the villagers stared at him in stupor. They could not quite comprehend what this crazy stranger had just said. It was to ridiculous for them to believe and also too scary for them to believe.

The twelve armed men on the other hand reached out for their guns and were prepared to defend themselves at any moment.

The young man was still waiting for the elders to respond.

The old men carefully stared at me, astonishment plastered all over their expressions. Despite that they somehow still managed to remain somewhat calm as they wordlessly thought about my words.

Finally, Heki, the leader of the eldest, shook his head.

“Men, arrest those fools.”, he stepped back and calmly walked towards the building behind him, unconcerned by any potential sneak attacks I might plan.

The young man sighed, yet he was also relieved. It was always easier to reign with a bit of fear involved rather than to have to argue and reason on an equal basis. This was just what the famed philosopher Machiavelli had said a few hundred years ago and it still held truth until the present.

Just as he expected a whole troop of tribal men wielding long spears and bows seemed to appear from nowhere and encircled us. They had been hidden behind the crowd of spectators and waited for this very moment.

“Warning shots!”, the young man calmly ordered the men behind me.

They aimed their guns right on the ground in front of the armed enemies and fired one shot.

The sound echoed for quite some time and it was sure to have remained in the villagers’ heads for even longer. The ground in front of this warriors was torn apart by the bullets and they retreated, scared from the sudden sound they heard.

“A single bullet can kill you, so I would not recommend any resistance.”, the young man calmly stated.

“I do not wish to injure anybody, but if your warriors don’t drop their weapons I will have no choice but to tell my men to shoot their legs and arms. If this doesn’t help I will have to kill people.”, his voice was ice cold and threatening and coupled with the unknown danger of the gun’s in his men’s hands it was enough to scare the villagers, who had never encountered weapons before, to death.

As he thought the warning was effective and elder Heki, who had already turned around to walk away, slowly turned around, profound shock deeply emblemed into his eyes. He stared at the young man called the unfamiliar name Ryan, then looked at the even more unfamiliar weapons in his subordinates’ hands. His face trembled a little as he seemed to be about to fall into rage, but then he calmed down again.

Finally, he just sighed.

“Lord.”, saying this simple word he bowed at the waist until his head almost reached the ground.

“Please forgive your subject.”

As he spoke those words the other elders also began to bow, fear and frustration mirrored in their shocked expressions.

A few moments later the weapons of the warriors fell to the ground and every single villager in the village was bowing towards the little group.

“Fine.”, the young man spoke cooly.