Wasteland :
Chapter 01: Daybreak
"Whats that you've got there, Itachi?" The blue skinned, shark man, named Kisame, inquired glancing at the large bulge under his partners cloak.
"Its my new apprentice..." Itachi replied, revealing the face of an unconscious young girl. "I'll be training her from now on."
"Like we don't have enough problems right now..." Kisame complained. They both knew well that they were in no position to take on another mouth to feed. Since the all too recent "Third coming of Christ" Itachi and Kisame's organization had one by on been wiped out. With only Kisame and himself left, life in the wastes was difficult, even for survivalists like themselves.
The complicated part was that the worlds super powers passed a world law of antiwar, that made it illegal for anyone, except peace keeping authority, to carry firearms. Any police officer that saw a civilian was given the authority to shoot to kill.
For their personal defense, civilians were permitted to carry wooden swords, or Bokuto. Many good things came from this right. Obesity became almost extinct, people ate better, they became more self aware, many schools of swordplay and martial arts were developed during this period. Crime was at an all time low since the victims of violence were now capable and permitted to defend themselves.
But for unknown reasons, an unnamed third world country destroyed every major city with a newly developed secret weapon. Reducing seventy-five percent of the earths land mass into ash and ruin waste land, with many places still burning a whole generation later.
So the predicament now is that there is a lot of uninhabitable land, with a lot of skilled bandits, and relatively few settlements that have found safety and security. It was blatantly obvious that the two ex-criminals were not in any predicament that allowed for them to adopt a rat, much less a human. But Itachi recognized the look in the girls eyes. Only himself and two others had eyes like that. If he could raise her properly, then they would have a very powerful ally indeed... Such an ally might even give them some direction, instead of aimlessly wandering the wastes...
1/13/2008: This is the first chapter of a story that I was writing for my own amusement while at work. The concept of arming civilians with Bokuto (what some call the Bokken, which is grammatically incorrect as "bo" (stick; 棒) and "ken" (sword; 剣), I bokuto (木刀) means wooden sword rather than stick blade. a grammar thing...) came from my teacher who believes that this would be a great thing. I too believe it to be good, and think I, myself, would love it (suddenly all our sword training amounts to something!) but I suspect that there is a downside to this...
4/4/2019: Update from 2019: Now that I am a researcher of classical Japanese martial arts, the above assessment is for the most part accurate, though many Japanese say "bokken" as well. Needless to say, fifteen years later, much of my ideas have changed.