They dashed through the lanes, following marks they had left on the stalks on their way out, quickly leaving the skirmish behind them. They could hear Jammu shouting, and that was a good thing, his way of telling them that he was not too badly injured to keep fighting. The Jin family all had water affinities, and that gave them an advantage over fire cultivators like the Gomen, though an elemental affinity didn’t mean much until a cultivator earned their first star, so Jammu’s younger brother’s did not share in that advantage.

Still, Sunwhisper was relatively confident they would get out of this without serious harm. The girls were not panicking, and Suna’s face bore only determination as she ran. Her older sister, Janna, was scanning the lanes with intensity, keeping just ahead of them. They had been conserving their energy for this moment. Sunwhisper dropped behind, keeping an eye on the side lanes, and they did not wait for him.

It was because of this growing distance that he was able to see what they could not.

"Janna! Watch out!"

Father Gomen had come into the fields with his sons, he hadn’t ever had Father Jin’s bad luck with the wasps. He appeared from behind a particularly thick Soma stalk, the air shimmering with heat around him. A fire-aspected technique had helped to disguise him, Mirage of the Deceiving Desert.

Janna reacted in time to block him from snatching Suna, and she was rewarded with a knee to her gut that doubled her over. Suna, foolishly, stopped running, wanting to help her sister. Father Gomen casually knocked her to the ground.

An adult, especially one nearly skilled enough to earn his second star, should have been too full of shame to attack unstarred children. If Father Gomen felt ashamed, he did not show it.

Sunwhisper took stock of their surroundings as he continued to jog forward, mentally noting a group of Hachi bugs that were surfacing nearby. Father Gomen sneered at him as he approached.

"I know who you are," he said, "the honorable guardian's useless cousin. Do not interfere, and you will escape this unscathed. I have no quarrel with the Makoto family."

"I was adopted by the Jins," Sunwhisper said factually, and slapped his hands together on Father Gomen’s face. The man was so surprised by the pointless maneuver that he did not dodge or block it, and when he thrust Sunwhisper away with an open palm strike to the chest he was left with a film of sticky sap on his cheeks from the younger man’s climbing gloves.

"You will pay for that," he said. Janna had recovered enough to attempt a counterattack, and Father Gomen was briefly occupied with putting her down. He parried her strikes with ease, and swept her legs from under her as Suna began to run again.

He would have gone after her, but Sunwhipser leapt on his back, actively attempting to slather the cultivator with sap.

"What are you doing?" Father Gomen ripped Sunwhisper off his back and hurled him into a nearby stalk. "You think a little sap will put me to sleep? You are a once in ten thousand year idiot."

Sunwhisper hit the stalk hard, and it took him long seconds to recover. His body was more durable than a normal human’s. His bones were as dense as steel, and anyway, Father Gomen was holding back out of respect for the border guardian. Still, he was not accustomed to this kind of fighting, and he could not help but recall how little the armor of his fathers had availed them against a cultivator. This one wasn’t nearly as strong as the border guardian, but there were wide gaps of power even within a single star rank.

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Father Gomen made to go after Suna, but again he was thwarted, this time by Janna. The girl had a bloody nose that made her expression all the more intense. She attacked recklessly, aiming for vital areas, and Father Gomen was forced to defend himself.

"I would rather not kill a young woman," he said. "You might breed good reapers for the village one day, but I don’t have time to waste being soft with you."

He struck her once, in the throat, and she stopped breathing. Janna went down in a heap. Sunwhisper threw a heavy shard of bark at the Hachi bugs that were scuttling toward their skirmish, and sprinted into Father Gomen’s back,

The man stumbled at his unexpected weight, and the wasps unfurled their wings. It was late enough in the day that they could fly, and the buzzing was suddenly loud among the stalks. Sunwhisper had only seen three or four at first, but there were easily a dozen rising into the air.

"What have you done?" Father Gomen flipped Sunwhisper over his shoulder and stomped on him, cracking something inside of him. Ignoring the pain, he had the presence of mind to take off his gloves and fling them at Father Gomen, who caught the pair without thinking.

"My apologies," Sunwhisper said, "but as I stated, I was adopted by the Jin family. Their interests are mine."

Then the wasps descended on Father Gomen. One or two, he could have dispatched without worry, and indeed, flames burst from his hands to incinerate the wings of the first of the Hachi to reach him, but that only served to further agitate the rest. He struck one out of the air as another, thrust its stinger into the meat of his thigh. He ripped off its head, but its abdomen continued to pulse venom into his body.

Janna was curled in on herself a pace away, and Sunwhisper ignored his protesting body to help her, half carrying her after Suna. Father Gomen continued to battle the swarm behind them.

It was a quarter of an hour before they reached the edge of the fields and saw that Suna had made it there before them. The Soma had already been cleaned and packed away, and there would be no more ventures into the fields that day for the Jin family.

Janna was still struggling when they joined her parents, and Father Jin took her aside to perform a water technique to aid her recovery. After a few minutes of his attention, she was breathing normally again.

It was half an hour more before the Jin brothers came stumbling out of the fields to the cheers and sighs of their family. Jammu was bruised, and his arms were splotched with minor burns, but he carried himself with pride. Meku had a broken arm, but that was the worst of their injuries.

"We have been fortunate," Father Jin said, and Mother Jin took the leather chest filled with their harvest to the officiators of the Reaping to have their contribution counted and their share distributed. Ten percent of what they had gathered was still a sizable sack of fruit, and the whole family forgot their pain and exhaustion when they saw it.

They retired to their home, a modest building of two stories with enough rooms for all the children to have their own. That night there would be a celebration at the center of the town, and the Jin family was already preparing for it, washing themselves and picking out their best clothes. They had made a good showing at the Reaping, lost no children, and shamed another family. It was as successful a day as they could have asked for.

Father Jin got the story from Jammu, Janna, and lastly, from Sunwhisper.

"I will not forget what you have done for us," he said. "And neither will the Gomen family."

"You took me in," Sunwhisper bowed, "so it is only right that I fight as one of you." From his reading, and from the week he had spent in Fringe Town, it had become obvious how important both family and honor were to these people. He wanted to make the best impression he could, and had taken the opportunity to do so.

"I will take this into consideration when we divide the fruits," Father Jin said.

Sunwhisper bowed a second time. There was nothing else for him to do. He had no desire to join the festivities, and he needed to channel as much as he could.