I'm not sure why I like this guy so much instead of most of the girly characters, being that I'm a girl, too. This is the start of a few one-shots I'm going to do based on certain periods of the characters' lives. This is about why Mitsurugi decided to go on his first quest.

I do not, nor do I claim to, own the rights to Namco's Soul Calibur.


Things inside Heishiro Mitsurugi had been changing. It was a slow change, but it was there.

The farm was changing, too. The land around it was claiming more and more crops each year, and the responsibility of it all was beginning to weigh heavily on Mitsurugi's shoulders. He wasn't sure exactly why he kept it up anymore -- he lived alone. He came from a long line of Japanese farmers but all of his immediate family had been taken by sickness. It wasn't like his father, Hayato, had made his son promise to continue the work on his deathbed, but still Mitsurigi felt an obligation to the accomplishments his family had made.

If it weren't for the dreams, he probably would have continued that life.

They were increasingly violent. Visions, disturbingly clear, of swords clashing and lives being taken. Though these were gory, scary visions, a majesty somewhere within them tempted Mitsurugi. Visions of traveling across miles and miles, seeing all of Europe, living a life of glory and esteemed conflict. Being a part of history.

For months, Mitsurugi kept these thoughts locked in his head, safe. Until the night he would always remember.

He had been lying in his bed, and to this day he can't determine whether he was asleep, awake, or somewhere in between. The bright harvest moon shone outside, casting a thin silver glow onto his bare floor. The loneliness, all of these years of silence and solitude, hung thick over the room and pressed onto his chest. He let his eyes drift around the empty room and suddenly they landed on a gleaming object under the moon's glow. It had not been there before, Mitsurigi was sure of that.

He rose and made his way to the object. A sword. It was unfamiliar, foreign, and yet something about it made him unafraid. He grabbed it swiftly.

Something about the room and the sword changed. The familiarity with which Mitsurugi gripped the object startled him. He rose, and, steadying himself under the glow of the full moon, raised the sword as well. Echoes of sounds, dim and far away, rang in his ears. He began to move, in a way that was familiar to him yet that he had never seen or done before.

He moved around the room, almost dancing, the sounds of a battlefield rising around him. He thrust and swerved with the strange imaginary sword, striking and impaling equally imaginable foes.

A farmer's stanima on the battlefield proved to be wearing, and so in the climax of this strange dream he slipped. The sword flew out of his hands and landed on the floor, catching in the light once more.

And it was morning, and he was awake, in his bed, and the sword was gone.

And Mitsurugi knew he had to leave.