Shura the Crimson Captain had her hands full this time around. The Wokou, thanks partly to the training of sanjiegun expert Xuan Wu (the Chinese Genbu of the Si Shen or Su Shen), had more than enough experience when dealing with multi-sectioned staffs.
They had tools to keep the sansetsukon (what the senjiegun was called in Japan) from overwhelming them. Furthermore, they had intel straight from the former Kairyu pirates in regards to Captain Shura's fighting style, which they utilized by acquiring chain cutters, hooked swords, and metal gauntlets that would allow them to catch and destroy the weapon.
They trained to deal with a six-sectioned Chinese stave that could be retracted and turned back into a long pole, which was a far superior weapon to an ordinary Japanese three-sectioned staff.
'That's what they think,' thought Shura before nullifying the Wokou's anti-sansetsukon strategies with a fighting technique they didn't expect from her.
Captain Shura made it all the way into the bridge of the ship, near the captain's cabin and the cockpit, leaving behind her a multiracial pile of devastation all across Asia.
Rurouni Yahiko
A Rurouni Kenshin Fan Fiction Continuation Story by Chester Castañeda
The Su Shen/Si Shen/Four Gods will test the mettle of two of the Three Stooges.
Disclaimer: All characters used in this fanfic (save some others) are the rightful property of Nobuhiro Watsuki, Shueisha, Shonen Jump, Viz, Sony Studios, Fuji TV, Studio Gallup, Studio Deen, and ADV. This disclaimer also covers all the other copyrighted material that are far too many to mention here. Don't sue me please, I'm very poor.
Chapter 37: When It Rains, It Pours
Back in the lower decks of the Hizoku...
A whipping strike that the Vigilant Gan blocked with his trusty metal studded bat cracked against the blunt steel, its recoil nearly tearing apart the hooligan's pinky finger. "Ow! Who's there? Which one of you two Sushi did that?"
"How's the ankle, you hairy Japanese hog?" said Xuan Wu (Genbu), emerging from the darkness of the cabin, his angular features illuminated by the nearest oil lamps. "I can't wait to teach another clueless dunderhead a lesson on who is his better. I've beaten up to a pulp bigger, beefier, and brawnier men than you."
"Hey, look, pal. What you do with bigger, beefier, and brawnier men than me is none of my business," the (Mis)Understanding Gan said with one of his slab-like hands raised before he blocked Xuan Wu's stave too late and ended up with a fat lip. "HEY! You're starting to piss me off here, Sushi!"
Xuan Wu snarled then smiled the Four Gods' signature grin. "Oh, I see. You're only mouthing off now because I twisted your ankle and cut down your mobility! You're buying yourself time! You're a sitting Peking duck waiting to be served with wonton!"
However, the Inattentive Gan neglected to pay attention to what the Chinese Genbu talked about because he remembered something else about the warrior. Something hilarious.
"Hey. I remember you! You're the guy that Yoshi-boy claimed to have defeated when he was only ten years old, right? You're the weak link of the Sushi! Did you prepare for all your rematch by visiting local playgrounds, champ?"
That set the Si Shen off. A storm of whiplashes greeted the Craven Gan. "I. AM. NOT. THE. SI. SHEN'S. WEAK. LINK!"
"Was it something I said?" the thug couldn't help but quip before drowning in a sea of multi-section snake staff strikes that ripped his skin apart and drew blood even while he hid behind his metallic club, using it as his shield of sorts.
The Scourged Gan was about to charge headlong into the whirling dervish that was Xuan Wu's sanjiegun when a kick from out of nowhere landed on his favored weapon, the tetsubo, making it fly off and clatter on the floor of the lower decks of the Hizoku.
The bandanna-wearing hoodlum realized at that moment that he'd been had by the "Chinese" Byakko, the hand-to-hand combat expert Bai Hu (Byakko) of the Si Shen (also known as Su Shen).
However, instead of leaving himself wide open to attack against the growling Xuan Wu and his flickering stave, Bai Hu also stopped the six-sectioned staff from hitting the Hapless Gan any further.
"HEY! What's the big idea?" said Xuan Wu. "Let me go at him, brother. I can take that loudmouthed foreign barbarian any day of the week! Or if you wish, we can take him on together, as the Si Shen!"
"No, I won't fight this bow-legged naozhong as one of the Four Gods. I instead want to fight him as one of the Four Stars," said Bai Hu, calling Gan a coward in Chinese.
By that, the White Tiger meant that instead of fighting cooperatively in Si Shen (Four Gods) mode, he wished to go up against Gan in a one-on-one match while in individual Si Xing (Four Stars) mode, like when they fought Hajime Saito, Sanosuke Sagara, Aoshi Shinomori, and (of course) Yahiko Myojin.
"You're chui niu bi! If you wish to be a Four Star, then I'll be a Four Star myself and beat that ren zha to submission!" said Xuan Wu.
Incidentally, chui niu bi literally meant "blowing air into a cow's vagina", or, in other words, bragging. As for ren zha, the Chinese Genbu was merely referring to the lout as a worthless scum.
"If you wish to shake off your reputation of being beaten by a ten-year-old boy, then go after that boy instead of this bum!" said Bai Hu. "He's yours for the taking. Leave his muscle-bound friend to me."
Xuan Wu grumbled, but ceased his complaining after he elected to sit this battle out by sitting down on a nearby barrel. "I'll face the kid later, when he's done with all of the Wokou above."
Bai Hu harrumphed. Again, his quadruplet sibling fought dirty and allowed his opponent get softened up. 'No wonder you got beaten down by a child.'
"Are you girls done chitchatting? I'm ready when either of you two pinheads are," said the Bored Gan, hopping around and pretending that the throbbing pain on his left leg was nothing more than a Charley horse.
Bai Hu cracked his knuckles, each finger fitted with a brass ring. This allowed him to have brass-knuckle-like weapons without limiting the mobility of his fingers.
Using his physical prowess in Wing Chun, Shaolin, Lau Gar, Hung Gar, Choy Lay Fut, and many other famous Chinese martial arts disciplines he studied and mastered during his stint as part of the constantly traveling Wokou, Bai Hu attacked the Flatfooted Gan.
The Immovable Gan telegraphed his swing that the Si Xing ducked under and countered with haymakers to the head and body. Gan didn't budge an inch, which prompted the White Tiger to do knees from up close. Bai Hu considered doing a leg sweep to the ruffian's bad leg, but thought the better of it.
'I'm not like Xuan Wu. I don't need to cheat to win.' He fought the Flabbergasted Gan face-to-face, in close quarters to keep him from having enough space and leverage to swing that iron bat of his.
Bai Hu pummeled the big... huge... lout around his size (if not more than that), with brass-knuckled fists, and Gan couldn't move forward or back. 'It doesn't matter how big this lummox is. I'll cut him down to size if I had to.'
The Smothered Gan retaliated against the endless barrage of iron fists with a left of his own to the Chinese Byakko's jaw, but the Si Xing ducked low to avoid the counterpunch while swinging a looping overhead right that smashed the nose of the incoming thug.
However, Bai Hu wasn't done yet. A deep-dish beauty of the One-Inch Punch left straight came soon after the Impatient Gan finally let go of his heavy club and chose to pummel the Four Stars member with his more dominant right hand.
Gan staggered. He would've kept standing had his throbbing ankle not gave out and made him trip all over himself while he went off-balance. This fact irritated Bai Hu a little, like the knockdown would've been more legitimate without Xuan Wu's prior assistance.
For more than half a decade, the Chinese Byakko had been training that left of his until it became as deadly as his right hand while he fantasized about the day he'd square off once more time against the reed-thin Japanese waif that handed him his most humiliating loss.
A right-handed Futae no Kiwami from Sanosuke would've doubled the impact of Bai Hu's left hook counter. Even someone as tough as nails as Sagara wouldn't have been able to take the impact.
However, Gan thumbed his nose at the Si Xing and sneered. "Come on, baby girl. Is that all you got?"
The Si Xing member would've finished off the Genuflecting Gan with a running high knee had he not spotted the hoodlum pick up his club and swing it at his jaw. The metal bat clipped his chin and had enough impact to make his nose bleed, prompting him to snap his body back to avoid the rest of the blow and back off.
Was the Wily Gan playing possum? He recovered way too fast for the Four Stars member's tastes. 'His fists and his bat swings are still alive with power!' A cold sweat then formed on Bai Hu's forehead.
The Downed Gan clucked his tongue on the roof of his mouth. He knew that "Vicious Tiger Claws" strike that made his bat seemingly bend because of its velocity would've knocked the fisticuff fighter down for the count.
Even though it hurt, the Resilient Gan stood up while using his club as his crutch, his legs still shaky from the knockdown. However, instead of running forward to press his advantage, the spooked Byakko conversed with his brother in Mandarin.
Were they joking around? Because now, Xuan Wu was openly laughing at Bai Hu. The In-The-Dark Gan didn't speak a word of Chinese, but he could tell the urgency in the White Tiger's voice as well as the mirth in the Black Tortoise's voice. Well, the ruffian did recognize one word in the conversation.
Sushi. Or rather, Si Shen. Wait, wasn't Bai Hu supposed to be fighting as Su Shin or Si Xing (Four Stars) or whatever, which meant he'd fight alone with no outside interfere...?
That little pledge went out of the window after Genbu sat up, unlocked his multi-section staff, and commenced whipping it around the Vulnerable Gan's face for good measure. "...You cheating bastards! You say one thing and do another thing! Fight like men, you fucking cowards!"
Bai Hu spat back a tooth while wiping the blood off his nose. "Say whatever you want. I'll do anything to beat you, even forsake my pride for victory!"
Unbeknownst to Gan, Byakko bounded off his feet to hide the fact that his knees still trembled after the jolt of getting his chin clipped by the hooligan's tetsubo.
The sneering Xuan Wu added, "Ah, so now you're thinking more like me, brother," which only made the Chinese Byakko scowl deeper.
While the Welted Gan covered up and bore through the pain of being lashed around by Xuan Wu like it was Sixteenth Century Japan and he was a Hidden Christian being tortured by Japanese authorities, Bai Hu waited in the wings, his arms raised parallel to his body while he bobbed and weaved to avoid stray whiplashes from his brother's sanjiegun.
"What the hell...?" The gangster couldn't believe his eyes. Without looking, Bai Hu entered the multi-section staff's striking range and went straight for the Miserable Gan while at the same time avoiding the whiplashes, letting them land on their intended target instead of himself. Was this the "psychic" power of the Four Gods?
The Bemused Gan's eyes widened as the bobbing and weaving Chinese Byakko reached all the way inside his guard before delivering an uppercut that destroyed his defense and left him wide open to the Si Xing's... no, Si Shen's martial arts prowess, specifically a left faint followed by a crane kick.
The Durable Gan remained standing, but the attack opened his face up to countless strikes from Xuan Wu's king-sized nunchaku. There wasn't any power from the whipping blows, but their combined force was dealing more than simple cosmetic damage to even the implacable man.
The Damaged Gan pawed at the nearest of the two... Bai Hu... with his Vicious Tiger Claws, then plodded forward into the eye of the storm of wooden whiplashes... Xuan Wu.
For someone who'd recently scored a knockdown on him, Byakko remained conservative with his offense, without him rushing in to finish the lout off.
"What are you afraid of, Byakko Sushi? Did my Vicious Tiger Claws spook you out? Is that why you're fighting like a yellow-bellied, lily-livered pussy?" asked the Supercilious Gan.
However, Bai Hu continued his methodical assault. He seemed to take the bait when he charged within striking range of Gan's fists (not his bat, though... the Si Shen was way too close), but that ended up as a feint. Byakko immediately pivoted away to the hoodlum's left (which meant the Immobile Gan couldn't follow suit since his ankle was all twisted).
This allowed Xuan Wu to pepper the plodding statue with more endless shots while Bai Hu assisted the onslaught with elbows, knees, kicks, and punches of his own. Indeed, the only thing on the Chinese Byakko's mind was winning: In his mind, the visage of a sneering, pointy-chinned Sanosuke superimposed itself on Gan's ugly, lantern-jawed mug.
'I won't waste all that time I've retrained myself since my defeat, only to be beaten by some random thug before facing that thin man with the character of 'Evil' behind his back.' Whether in Chinese or Japanese, the symbol for "Aku" meant the same thing.
The Confused Gan got kicked at the back of the head by Bai Hu in time to get his head whipped around with more of the Chinese Genbu's shots. Indeed, the hoodlum's face swelled so bad, it looked like he'd been stung by a thousand bees.
'Wha...?' thought Xuan Wu before his mouth got smashed by a fist. Meanwhile, Bai Hu himself cursed in Mandarin and charged straight for the pair.
In a second, the Tunnel-Visioned Gan (who, at that point, was like a horse with his blinders on), got near enough to pummel the hapless Genbu into submission.
'Fuck it,' Bai Hu decided, sweeping the leg on the affected ankle of Gan. As soon as the off-balanced hooligan teetered, the Black Tortoise took advantage, drove his staff right into the gut of the hoodlum while he lumbered forward, using his own power against him.
"TIMBER!" declared Xuan Wu, driving his weapon into the Suffering Gan's heart and throat for good measure before the thug crumpled down face-first unto the floor with such impact that he split several floorboards with his carcass.
The reinvigorated Chinese Genbu told his brother, "Come on, Bai Hu! Let's finish him off before he gets up!" while stomping and stabbing his staff on Gan's prostrate form.
"...Wait, be careful! Keep your distance!" warned the Chinese Byakko before his quadruplet found himself kissing the roof of the cabin after Gan hurled him (Xuan Wu) upwards with a "BUNNAGE!"
The Japanese hooligan would've bashed the Chinese Genbu's brains in with a "KATTOBASHI!" had Bai Hu not intervened with a foot stomp followed by a temple punch with his brass knuckles.
Ergo, Xuan Wu only ended up doing a tumble and landing on his feet like a cat after everything was said and done. "KILL HIM! Let's pour every last bit of offense on that walking meat slab until he turns into a cripple!"
The Grotesque Gan's swollen face wore a crimson mask after that temple punch busted him wide open. Wordlessly, the Si Shen went to work, clobbering him with everything that they got. As his eyelids swelled up to the point that he could barely see anymore but blurs, it appeared like his fate was sealed.
Finally recovering use of his legs, Bai Hu attacked with renewed fervor, taking longer turns in battering the Plodding Gan like a storm, tsunami, or whatever else natural disaster existed out there. The Unstoppable Gan soaked it all up like a sponge.
Roundhouses, uppercuts, hooks, knees, elbows, headbutts, and even flying kicks made him reel or even outright fall from time to time. However, the Great Gan never stayed down for long. He kept getting up, as though asking for more punishment.
In Mandarin, Bai Hu said to Gan, "I don't know who the hell you are, so that's why I didn't want you to knock me out or defeat me earlier. I didn't want to lose once more before I face that man again, but now I realize if I beat you, then I might as well have beaten him! I'll bring you down if it's the last thing I do!"
Naturally, the Unilingual Gan understood none of what the bilingual Bai Hu said while he again walked into another one of the Chinese Byakko's shots, some of which could've broken an ordinary man's jaw.
The aggressive Si Shen followed through more and more of his fancy, knuckle-duster shots that came at all angles even as his feverish yet defensive-minded sibling poured on his own attacks. 'That fool Xuan Wu is too complacent! Don't let me do all the work, filling in all the gaps of your offense! You should be aggressive yourself, you lazy, good-for-nothing coward!'
The Determined Gan swung his bat everywhere, looking for just one punch or tetsubo strike to land, and they did, but none of them impacted solidly enough on either Si Shen thanks to Byakko's adept dodging and the waiting sanjiegun of Genbu.
To their chagrin, the hooligan didn't stall under pressure, as though he patiently waited for the momentum to shift.
"WHY WON'T YOU STAY DOWN?" cried Xuan Wu while he, for a change, charged into the striking range of the one-eyed, one-legged, bandanna-wearing thug, ducked underneath the predictable bat swing, and shoved his stave into his gut again, which made him heave with bubbling saliva.
"You can barely see, you can barely move, and you've become nothing more than a punching bag! How much more will it take?" said the Black Tortoise before falling back and renewing his snake-like volley with his collapsed sanjiegun.
"I've been through worse. Hell, Amakusa Kumamoto came closer to killing me than any of you Sushi dickheads have. Even Mister Force of Nature and Son of God couldn't bring me down, hypnosis or no hypnosis. I fear no man. I fear no god."
"ENOUGH!" Bai Hu flew out of his corner and pummeled every inch of Gan without letting up, which prompted Xuan Wu to stop his whipping motions with his weapon since they also hit his brother.
"What are you doing? We're chopping down that tree just fine! Don't take any more risks than you have to!" admonished the Chinese Genbu in their native tongue.
"That kind of mentality is why you were defeated by a child, Xuan Wu! I'm going in! He has no legs and no eyes left! If I can't take him down now, then nothing will!" retorted the Chinese Byakko in Mandarin.
The Cunning Gan took advantage of the distraction and smashed his studded metal bat into Bai Hu's liver while at the same time hammering the other side of the Four Gods member's side with rib-cracking strike: His Raging Tiger Bite.
This only seemingly angered the Si Shen... no, the Si Xing. The Stunned Gan could only marvel at how the White Tiger shrugged off his last-ditch effort like nothing happened at all with ringed knuckles that made his teeth shift with every blow.
The momentum shifted back and forth between the two fighters. Bai Hu took more risks to get in solider shots at Gan, who also did the same. They delivered knockout blows and Sunday punches as frequently as jabs. Both men seemed at death's door. Both men seemed immortal. However, thanks to the damage the limp yet still standing Gan sustained, the advantage firmly rested in the Si Xing's favor.
"It's that all you got, Sushi? Is that it?" whispered the Half-Blind Gan.
'I'm going to make your heart stop, you bow-legged bastard,' thought Bai Hu, setting up the Unsuspecting Gan up with a feint that would make him use his Raging Tiger Bite while he himself delivered another One-Inch Punch right to the heart (with his dominant right hand this time around) to finish the fight.
The setup was perfect. The Crude Gan fell for it hook, line, and sinker. Bai Hu delivered a perfect heart-stopping shot that would've killed the ox then and there. However, he moved too slow, his muscles flowed like tar. Then it hit him: The Raging Tiger Bite from before hurt him more badly than he realized, and his own adrenalin kept him going all that time.
Then another thing hit him: A clubbing blow to the head followed by a jaw-breaking left hook. The last thing he saw before the Great Gan punched his lights out was the image of Sanosuke delivering a two-handed Futae no Kiwami at him. This was why when he fell down on the floor, he kept on punching at the air... at an invisible opponent... by reflex.
The Wheezing Gan slowly but surely turned his huge, muscular, and bleeding back at the other member of the Four Gods or Four Stars or Four Chefs or whatever while grinning a broken smile of his own, the swelling on his face subsiding enough to get a clear picture of what he stared at.
Xuan Wu gulped. Up close, the Towering Gan appeared like a colossus or a juggernaut, his form covered in shadow, his silhouette illuminated by lamplight and the sparkle of settling dust.
"My brother was foolish to fight you head on. I'm no such fool, though!" Motivated by his survival instinct and adrenalin, the Chinese Genbu pulled together his sanjiegun so that it would transform into a stave instead of an extra-long, multi-sectioned nunchaku.
The most devious and defensive of the Four Gods then proceeded to slip, block, weave, and dodge from the Slow Gan's bunches of punches and bat swings, the ones that were able to slip in not having enough power since his main point of leverage... his left foot... remained injured. Only two of five of the Compromised Gan's strikes were shot at full power.
However, that didn't matter to the ruffian. While Bai Hu was a true warrior willing to fight toe-to-toe with him, the piece of trash known as Xuan Wu, Gan had no respect for. He took the easy way out, whipping him from a distance while his brother did all the work.
He deserved hell.
Xuan Wu didn't know what hit him. While the Chinese Genbu blocked another haymaker with his stave, the Magnificent Gan snatched the weapon, twisted it until broke apart in his hands like a cheap toy, grabbed hold of the Si Shen by the ankle and lifted him up, threw him in the air while shouting "BUNNAGE!" then finished him off with a "HAPPA!" instead of a Kattobashi.
However, the gangster wasn't done quite yet. As soon as Xuan Wu crashed back down on the floor, the Vicious Gan mauled him with the Violent Tiger Maul to make up for all the hits that Bai Hu had to take because the Chinese Black Tortoise was too much of a pussy to fight man-to-man.
"GYAAAGH!"
The lout only stopped as he heard laughter from behind him, leaving the Si Xing he mauled like undercarriage roadkill.
"What so funny? Are you really laughing at your brother's pain?" asked Gan while looking at the wrong direction, his vision still blurry.
"You're something else. I didn't expect to fight a powerhouse like you today," said Bai Hu, spitting out a tooth. "You may have defeated me here, but rest assured, there's someone better than you out there, and I've already fought him. He took me out sooner than you did."
The Great Gan harrumphed and turned his back on Bai Hu while rubbing his sore head. "Someone out there is better than me? Good. I want to be the kind of guy that keeps on climbing and reaching high. You know what I'm saying?"
Gan swayed back and forth, the impact from the blows to his head rendering him out of sorts enough to sway around along with the rise and fall of the battleship.
Fifteen minutes later, after Munenori Minoe first engaged Zhu Que (Suzaku) and Qin Long (Seiryu) of the Si Shen (Su Shen) in battle on the poop deck of the Wokou warship known as the Hizoku...
Their "signature", face-splitting smiles long gone on their faces, both the Crimson Sparrow and Blue Dragon looked on, unable to penetrate the solid defenses of this eye-patched, wigged, and diminutive defensive wunderkind who rendered every single attack of theirs moot.
Occasionally, Wokou would arrive to interrupt their little sword-and-lance handicap match, stacking the odds against Minoe, only for the intrepid spy to slip past them and let them end up in the receiving end of the Si Shen's wrath, as though they were meat shields.
It got so bad that both Zhu Que and Qin Long barked at the rest of the 49er Wokou to stay away from the battle, because they'd just serve as hindrances rather than assistants in eliminating the elusive Minoe.
The dual-wielding Zhu Que said to Qin Long in Mandarin Chinese, "Ta made (Fuck)! Haven't you figured out that damn island monkey's weak point yet? We've been fighting him all this time!"
Qin Long snarled back at Zhu Que, "And what about you? Have you figured out his techniques yet so that you can copy them and use them against him? I thought that was supposed to be your specialty!"
As the two Chinese bodyguards from Shanghai bickered in their native tongue, Munenori slipped into striking range, struck Qin Long on the neck with the blunt part of his wakizashi sakabatou, then did the same on the forearms, wrists, and elbows of Zhu Que.
Then, before two of the Four Gods could retaliate with their polearm and butterfly swords, Minoe had long ago zipped out of their striking range with a Crabwise Stalk, his side-to-side movement and ghostly grace allowing him to seemingly disappear into thin air while moving right into their blind sides.
Even the long and wide full-length striking range of Qin Long's reclining moon blade could not catch Minoe unawares thanks to the latter's sneakier ambushes.
'As expected of the alter ego of the Battousai of Speed,' Yahiko would've thought had he stayed there to watch the action.
"Qingwa cao de liumang (Frog-humping son of a bitch)! I can't catch him off-guard at all!" Zhu Que placed both his nandao in one hand while he flapped his throbbing, reddened arm and wrist. "He's making a mockery of us Si Shen! He doesn't even have the courtesy to finish us off in with one strong blow, instead choosing to drag the fight out as long as possible! He pisses me off so much!"
Meanwhile, Qin Long himself was hacking and coughing after suffering another blow to the throat. He eyed the stationary Minoe with watery eyes. "Is he really doing that to mock us, though?" wondered the Shanghai Mafia's Seiryu while rubbing his lantern jaw.
"What do you mean, Qin Long?" asked the Chinese Suzaku.
The Chinese Seiryu answered Zhu Que with a raspy voice, "Instead of making us appear foolish, perhaps he couldn't mount any stronger an offense than the ones he'd been giving us all this time. Strong defense, weak offense."
Zhu Que nodded at his sibling's deduction with a smirk. "That makes sense. It's taking him an awful long amount of time to take us down. Maybe his fighting style really is like Xuan Wu's."
"Watch carefully. I'll show you what I mean instead of simply telling you, brother." And with that, Qin Long aimed his long pole weapon right at Minoe's heart and charged while Zhu Que followed close behind him, his twin blades tucked from behind his weary, quivering arms.
Using his mastery of maai or fighting distance, Munenori again fooled the eyes of his adversaries by making them misjudge distance and lunge too soon.
Even with the superior range of Qin Long, Minoe cut the distance between them, slid his short, reverse-edged sword over the stick to redirect it away from him, and hit the Seiryu warrior on the gut then attacking his trachea again.
While Minoe did his Crabwise Stalk sidestep, his single exposed eye widened while he saw Zhu Que duplicate his sidestepping maneuver, throw his double blades at him, grabbed them in midair, and spun around in quick succession in a spiraling sword dance that Munenori had never seen before.
However, this was the same mop-haired "kid" that blocked the Kuzu Ryu Sen by himself. Such a feat hadn't happened before since, as far as Yahiko's memories were concerned, Enishi Yukishiro himself did it in his momentous final battle against Kenshin Himura.
Both Munenori's reflexes and otherworldly senses allowed him to react in time to twist one wrist of Zhu Que and crack the other with his sakaba wakizashi before any of the blades could touch him.
"Too slow, Suzaku-chi."
Minoe's Antennas (his enhanced five senses along with the sixth sense that allowed him to sense murderous intent or bloodlust from an opponent) then allowed him to unsheathe the Japanese sword he stole from one of the Wokou and block an incoming strike from behind after the gasping Qin Long decided to play dirty and stab him in the back.
"That's not nice, Seiryu-chi."
Just like the Heaven Sword of the Juppon Gatana had witnessed, Minoe had eyes at the back of his head. Earlier, Qin Long did the commonsensical thing and attacked from Munenori's blind spot (the area hidden by his eye patch), but to no avail.
Meanwhile, Zhu Que scrambled for his Chinese butterfly swords, his hands experiencing the beginnings of what modern medicine referred to as carpal tunnel syndrome. Just how many times was Minoe going to disarm him?
However, from that one exchange, both the two Chinese enforcers understood the method behind Minoe's madness.
'None of his counterattacks are particularly as impressive as his defensive prowess. He makes up for it by pinpointing his offense at certain body parts, but that also makes his attacks easy to read and defend against,' appraised Qin Long.
'He drags fights out as long as possible to compensate for his weak and unimpressive offense. All the same, his heightened senses, his awareness of his surroundings, his quickness at the short range, and his impressive hand speed make him formidable despite his shortcomings,' assessed Zhu Que.
Instead of taking advantage of their distraction and possibly leaving himself to counterattack, the disciplined and cautious Minoe reset his stance and lay in wait for the next time he'd set his traps or ambushes.
'I want to expose all of his weaknesses,' thought the grinning Qin Long.
'I want to steal all of his techniques,' mused the salivating Zhu Que.
From there, Zhu Que attacked first, throwing his nandao at Minoe's face. The spy blocked it with ease, only to blink at a second nandao hidden behind the first. 'Clever.'
The second short sword flew past Munenori's head, grazing his cheek and marking it up with blood. However, Suzaku caught the first short sword he blocked earlier. What was worse was that Seiryu chose that moment to attack with his Chinese naginata, while Minoe was distracted.
As the hidden Chinese kodachi embedded itself on one of the masts of the ship, the combined forces of Zhu Que and Qin Long forced Minoe to unsheathe his stolen sword all the way and block both of their attacks with his daito (an uchigatana and a wakizashi combo).
"That stance... I've seen that before, from one of our Wokou. What stance is that?" asked Qin Long.
"It's a stance I taught myself. I call it the Cancer Stance," said Minoe with a smile and twinkling eyes, his left hand raising the wakizashi that blocked Zhu Que's high attack to his head and his right hand wielding the uchigatana that deflected Qin Long's low attack to his legs.
"Yes, I've seen it used before in Southeast Asia. A sword-and-dagger martial art, I believe," observed Qin Long before he retracted his staff and attempted to wallop Minoe with a strike too powerful for one sword to block.
The diminutive "youngster" (actually the second oldest of the Sanbaka next to the Mature Gan despite his looks) reacted by shoving Zhu Que's nandao away and doing a full Cancer Stance block known as the Scissor Grip, with both crossed swords keeping the polearm from hitting its mark, chipping part of the wooden pole in the process.
As for Zhu Que, he danced around Munenori at varying speeds like a flowing river with only one sword instead of two. In the Chinese warrior's estimation, being armed with only one sword was a good thing, because it at least allowed both his arms to rest while switching his blade from one hand to another.
However, true to the Cancer Stance's name, Minoe blocked each and every strike from the Chinese Suzaku with his Protective Shell before ending the defensive kata with a Crypsis camouflaging ability.
The technique made him seemingly blink out of existence in the middle of the exchange. This also allowed Munenori to duck under another skewering attempt from behind by the Chinese Seiryu.
'He can even do that? This guy has a tougher defensive shield than Xuan Wu by leaps and bounds!' noted Qin Long while Zhu Que's grin grew even wider, which stretched his face like rubber. 'He disappeared by moving into my blind spot! That means...!'
'These guys are tougher than I thought. They're making me empty my bag of tricks,' reflected Minoe before he deflected a rising uppercut slash from down below by an observant Zhu Que with the Vise Grip, which meant he blocked the blade using the inside curves of his crescent blades.
This allowed Minoe to disarm Suzaku and attack his arms again, but this time around, Qin Long turned the tables and blocked Munenori's offense for a change. "You'd be almost unstoppable if you had decent attacks along with your superb defense. Unfortunately, you're a flawed fighter. A crab with a hard shell on the outside and a soft interior on the inside."
As for Zhu Que, he tumbled and flipped in time to catch the falling nandao before it fell on the deck. He then sauntered towards the mast and plucked out his other Chinese sword. "From one dual wielder to another, I admit, I respect your skills. Now let me show you what they look like in the hands of an expert."
And with that, Zhu Que the Crimson Sparrow disappeared from Munenori's view while Qin Long the Blue Dragon utilized the superior striking range of his weapon to attack the luckless, eye-patched swordsman from a distance.
It was only thanks to his Antennas that Minoe countered Zhu Que's cross-bladed attack with his own, the Crisscross Claw, their swords marking their surroundings with twin cross flashes.
"!?" was Minoe's wordless reaction after he realized that Zhu Que had just done... mimicked... the Crypsis, which finally allowed the Shanghai Mafia assassin to penetrate his defenses.
Munenori backed away and attempted to move into the darkness and Zhu Que's blind spot, but Qin Long was waiting from behind his identical brother, as though figuring out how the technique worked.
"From up close, it looks like you're disappearing like a ghost, but from a certain distance, your little magic trick doesn't work as effectively," Qin Long pointed out, intercepting Minoe and slapping Zhu Que's back for a job well done.
Again, Munenori's Protective Shell, the Crypsis, and the Antennas saved the day while both Qin Long and Zhu Que missed him by mere inches or had every one of their strikes blocked and parried. However, once Minoe moved in for the counterstrike, he realized that their strikes were shallower than before.
The lack of commitment from their initial offense allowed them to react fast enough to Minoe's eventual counterattack. The ex-Togakudan blocked the attacks in the nick of time with a five-way crossing of the blades, but he got nicked by the blades' edges in the process.
Minoe allowed them to push him back so that he could use the leverage to get away from them. He circled around them with his Crabwise Stalk while peppering them with stabs from his sword and dagger.
Nonetheless, to his alarm, Zhu Que copied his Protective Shell as well after seeing it used so many times. He got a taste of his own medicine, so to speak.
"We have nothing to fear from you in terms of attacks," said Qin Long, and indeed, Minoe's every attempt to mount an offense, Zhu Que thwarted, As expected of the Copycat Fighter of the Su Shen. "Once we figure out how to break your defense, it's all over."
"Into the boiling pot you go, crab!" said Zhu Que with a spring in his step, shifting stances and moving with unpredictable liquid fluidity that none of Minoe's stabs and slashes could get through.
It was like Munenori slashed at a pool of water. Meanwhile, he himself got struck around with a punch or a shallow slash from either the feverish offense of Suzaku or the opportunistic lunges of Seiryu.
'I should calm down. Attacking without waiting for an opponent to open up first isn't like me,' Minoe thought. He again held back and countered Suzaku's water flow movement with the shadowy actions of his Crypsis, resulting in countless near-miss counterattacks from both opponents.
Munenori shuddered after discovering another thing about the Su Shen: Their ability to read each other's minds. This time around, they switched roles, with Qin Long doing the offense while Zhu Que covered him with his fluid movement.
Before, Minoe could disarm Zhu Que at will while punishing Qin Long every time the Chinese quadruplet overcommitted with a stab or a lunge. Thanks to their teamwork, none of his counterstrikes could penetrate their defenses... or rather his defenses, since it was his Antennas, Crypsis, and Protective Shell that the Chinese Suzaku used.
In the next five minutes, the Si Shen poured in more offense than the initial fifteen minutes of their bout, the high pace robbing Minoe of breath while he went into the defensive, his offense at this point nonexistent.
His nicks from before became deeper and deeper as the rain of attacks from his enemies continued, and he couldn't answer back with a proper counterattack since every time he made an attempt at one, the Chinese Seiryu saw through it and the Chinese Suzaku blocked it.
With an upturned nose, Qin Long said, "I'm sure you're smart enough to understand how much trouble you're facing, right? Zhu Que here isn't only capable of copying every last defensive technique of yours. He also knows offensive techniques from past opponents superior to whatever you have in your arsenal."
A voice from Minoe's subconscious mocked, 'What the hell are you doing, Minoe? This is beyond pathetic. You should've finished them off fifteen minutes ago instead of playing the waiting game, you sorry excuse for a man!' while the Si Shen cornered him at the edge of the steamship.
Munenori blocked the alternating spiral of slashes from Zhu Que hard, his Vise Grip stopping the assault cold. However, when he countered, the Chinese Suzaku countered his counter, blocking the stab and shoving his second nandao into the other first nandao to make it thrust right through Munenori's parry.
The eye-patched Kirishitan spy ended up with a nasty gash on his shoulder instead of an outright stab to the heart after he slipped underneath the assault, his sword guard eye patch slipping off of his face in his panic, only for him to land right into Qin Long's waiting stab while he (Minoe) moved into Zhu Que's blind side.
Qin Long clucked his tongue and lifted the small Munenori up with his long-pole blade, the blood gushing forth his weapon while Zhu Que roared in triumph.
'This is our first significant blow against this annoying Japanese pest, and I missed his vital organs,' he thought, gripping his guandao tightly and pushing Minoe all the way into the nearest mast, the wood splintering from behind the wigged mole, his blood splattering all over the ship's deck.
While Zhu Que was dangerous in his own right with his ability to copy techniques from sight, the person who exposed the weaknesses of Minoe's fighting style was ultimately Qin Long. "Even your defense has failed you. You've lost, you Japanese marmoset. Surrender to the might of China now and acknowledge your betters."
Minoe couldn't hear Qin Long. All he could hear a cackling girl mocking him and his past decisions like a mother-in-law.
'What are you doing in this stupid pirate ship anyway? What are you going to get from following around this Myojin Yahiko kid? Are you really all doing this for Amakusa-sama? Or is it his connection with the Battousai that made you track him down?'
Who was the girl talking to Minoe at a time like this? He then realized the answer. He murmured her name. "...Morinaga Kaede-chi."
"...Who the hell is that?" asked a surprised Qin Long in Mandarin.
As for Zhu Que, he remarked, "What is this? A wig or a dead animal? I thought that was your natural, goofy hair!" while snatching away Minoe's toupee and tossing it aside like garbage.
The Si Shen took a good look at their opponent. The makeup on the now-exposed left eye of Munenori had long ago been washed off by his own sweat, exposing his cross-shaped scar on his cheek. As for his hair, its henna dye hadn't faded altogether (a month hadn't passed yet), but it did start to get rust-colored highlights.
That wasn't the weird thing about his appearance, though. Qin Long wasn't quite sure of what he saw, but as soon as Minoe's top became undone from the assault... with part of it slipping down his shoulders... it revealed a sarashi-covered chest with suspicious bumps on it that weren't supposed to be there, forming a cleavage above the bandages.
Or maybe they were pectorals. He could barely see the swell on Minoe's unimpressive chest at all. He then reconsidered his viewpoint after Munenori spoke again.
"...You wanted to know who Morinaga Kaede is?" drawled the wigless "man" with the missing eye patch at Qin Long with half-lidded, droopy eyes, "his" boyish voice replaced with the unmistakable higher-pitched intonation that wasn't a falsetto at all. "Let me... introduce myself to you."
"W-What? You're a...!" realized the Chinese Seiryu too late, the diminutive Battousai of Speed pulling the guandao out of her abdomen and shoving the muscle-bound freak all the way to the edge of the ship with her own, "Deathstalker Stab!" to the stomach that nearly cast him overboard.
"Damn. What a fine mess you've gotten me into again, you stupid femboy," said Morinaga to her(him)self with a scratch of her hair and a yawn. "You owe me one, Minoe."
"...A WOMAN! Like the legendary Hua Mulan, she's a woman pretending to be a man! Jeez, if Xuan Wu hears about this, we'd never hear the end of it!" rasped Qin Long, grabbing hold of his spurting wound.
"We've been fighting a woman all this time? No wonder she has no offense to speak of! Her frail, dainty hands and small wrists aren't made for plunging swords all the way through men; she's the one who should have swords plunged into her!" came Zhu Que's conclusion.
The Suzaku from the Continent placed his blades from behind him and charged towards the injured Kaede, intending to blindside her with a tackle to the ribs before attacking with blades from directions she'd have trouble judging from up close.
As someone who experienced Kaede Morinaga's strength firsthand, Qin Long warned Zhu Que, "No, you fool! Don't rush in! There's something different about that Japanese harlot this time around!" while he noticed the girl move her dagger low and her sword high.
"Scorpion Nest!"
"I have nothing to fear against her puny, insulting attacks!" was what Zhu Que would've said had he not ended up gurgling in his own blood.
The Scorpion Nest appeared like the Protective Shell because it used the same arm movements, but once those slashing moves were used offensively, it appeared less like a shell and more like shoving oneself in a nest full of scorpions (hence its name).
While Kaede ripped the Crimson Sparrow apart, she laughed long and hard, her eyes shining and her scar seemingly glowing from the faintest glint of the moonless, starry sky.
'She shifted stances! This time around, it's a European sword-and-dagger sword style, with the blade thrust high and the dagger waiting to strike from below,' assessed the most worldly and experienced of the Su Shen, Qin Long. 'She went from an all-defense stance to an all-offense one!'
"You were saying, big boy? How do you like my Scorpio Stance?" giggled Kaede while wiping her bloody blades on Zhu Que's frayed uniform. "You claimed that women were only meant to be penetrated by men, right? Well, do you feel like a woman now? I've been inside you so many times, you might as well be my bitch!"
Zhu Que attempted to cover up, defend, then counterattack, but due to his damned muscle memory and the fight pattern he'd been following up until that point, his mind failed to fathom a "Minoe" that fought back with combination attacks that didn't seem to end or have any discernable gaps in them.
"Swarming Barbs!"
For example, he expected the Swarming Barbs... the stabbing version of the Scorpion Nest... to have openings he could exploit since it should involve Morinaga having to lunge at him with stabs because his thin wrists shouldn't be able to deal that much damage without lunging.
However, Kaede didn't need to resort to charging full force in order to penetrate Zhu Que hard, deep, and often. She sacrificed accuracy for volume, thus allowing her to land constantly even while the Chinese Suzaku attempted to escape from the rain of steel with his elusive, watery movements. Her thrusts were everywhere.
'That tramp! She's been playing possum all this time! We thought she had no significant offense to speak of, only to unleash her secret weapon at the last moment!' realized Qin Long.
'Divide and conquer, Minoe. You should know at least this when dealing with multiple enemies,' berated Kaede to the "sleeping" Munenori in her mind, stepping on the head of the bleeding, minced, and tattered heap that was once Zhu Que. 'You better be listening, you wimpy ninja wannabe weirdo!'
To Seiryu, she said, "I've been called the Hitokiri Battousai countless times in my journeys across Japan because of what I look like. I hated being compared to him. However, for once, I have a name connected to him that I could be proud of. I am the Battousai of Speed of the Battousai Group. Remember that name before you die."
'...Battousai? Why does that name sound familiar?' Qin Long thought and gripped his stave, aiming its blade at the face of the approaching Morinaga and her unstoppable offense.
'Wait a second. If she were to have a different hair color, she looks exactly like Yukishiro Enishi's mortal enemy from six years ago! Complete with the cross-shaped scar! Is she a relative of that man?'
The Chinese Seiryu decided to fight fire with fire. He immediately regretted that decision.
He bled everywhere. She beat him to the stab or the slash every time. She lacked brute strength, but her speed gave her enough momentum to do huge damage despite her diminutive stature. Like a bullet of concentrated force.
"SCORPION SWARM!" she screamed using an ear-splitting tone and a face-splitting smile like the ones the Si Shen wore, cackling all the way while she painted the black ship red with Qin Long's blood.
This technique combined the slashes of the Scorpion Nest with the stabs of the Swarming Barbs. She varied her offense with a split-second reaction time. He grasped at openings that weren't there. He might as well commit suicide by fighting her toe-to-toe. Kaede went to town against the Blue Dragon.
"BLEED! Bleed rivers for me, you filthy pig! I want to pump you full of holes and empty out the filthy blood in your body until you're nothing more than a white husk!"
If this younger version of his former boss's nemesis could use both her Cancer Stance and Scorpio Stance together, she'd be a force to be reckoned with indeed: Ultimate defense combined with ultimate offense.
As the bloodied and leaking Seiryu charged with his guandao, he became aware of a pattern. Kaede didn't bother to dodge, block, or do any host of things that would've made Munenori untouchable. She instead grabbed hold of the polearm by her armpits and stabbed at the Blue Dragon at close range.
'Hmmm,' thought Qin Long, shoving a barrel in front of Morinaga to keep the wakizashi stabs from getting near him while snatching his Chinese naginata away from her other arm by swinging his weapon in a wide arc and shaking her off.
'This... 'Morinaga' whore didn't react the same way as that 'Minoe' fairy would. Come to think of it, she didn't merely shift stances from Cancer to Scorpio Stance earlier. She sounds, acts, and reacts way differently than she did before when we first thought she was just a queer boy.'
Kaede's offense was her defense, thus it appeared she provided no opening. However, that was all a ruse. She was actually open to attack every time, except she could punish whomsoever attempted to assault her tenfold as soon as they were within her striking range (which they had to be in order to attack her).
The correct way to fight an aggressive foe was to use his aggression against him. It was this insight and quick thinking that allowed Qin Long to wait patiently and evade Kaede every time she attempted a Scorpion Stance or Swarming Barbs, although the sheer volume of both techniques never left him completely unscathed.
He deflected her advance at every turn by keeping his distance, circling counterclockwise away from her Deathstalker Stab, and doing potshots whenever she chased him. 'It's foolish to fight her aggressively and hope you can outgun her. Let her waste all her ammunition while you instead take cover and bide your time!' he told himself.
His hunch proved correct. 'Her defense is terrible. All the backstabbing I did that 'Minoe' blocked like a pro, she couldn't handle at all. She fights like the complete opposite of her alter ego: All offense, no defense.'
Taking a page out of Munenori's playbook, the Blue Dragon started to exclusively pinpoint that one big abdominal wound he inflicted on Minoe earlier on, picking at it like a child would a scab.
Qin Long chipped away at the Battousai of Speed's injury until he managed to bring enough damage to her to do riskier lunges and deeper skewers while fatigue started to set in on the lazy-eyed rebel's small frame.
"All a scorpion has is its sting. Once you take its stinger away, you can squash it like the bug that it is!" said the Chinese Seiryu.
However, as Qin Long was about to move in for the kill... with Kaede staggering and her stamina-eating Deathstalker Stab, Swarming Barbs, Scorpion Nest, and Scorpion Swarm appearing less and less often as the fight dragged on... he himself stopped, his legs shaking.
It had only been five minutes since Kaede Morinaga emerged, but it felt like it had been a whole hour. Why were his knees buckling at this critical moment? Did all those partially blocked attacks take more out of Qin Long than he had anticipated?
Ugh. He couldn't breathe. He was rasping and wheezing even more badly than Morinaga was.
Wait.
Didn't Minoe concentrate all his attacks on his rib cage, midsection, and throat? Didn't Seiryu long figure out that Munenori attempted to interrupt his respiratory function with those body blows and slashes at those critical areas?
Only now were those oxygen-sapping attacks paying dividends. Qin Long now suffocated from cyanosis (the appearance of a blue or purple coloration of the skin because the tissues near its surface were low on oxygen).
"You call yourself a man, running away from a little girl?" Kaede batted her eyelashes and licked the blood on her hands before spitting it out in disgust. "Man up for once."
Meanwhile, as the Chinese Blue Dragon went blue in the face (ironically enough), Kaede took the opportunity to recover from her wounds, take in as much oxygen as she could inhale, and let her reverse-edged wakizashi fly into the air right above the stationary Qin Long's head while she herself charged with a Deathstalker Stab at the same time.
Qin Long had enough energy to deflect the short sword headed straight for the top of his head, which Morinaga naturally caught. This then prompted him to circle around Kaede to avoid the sword stab from above and attack her open wound with a final death blow.
Or that would've happened had the gasping Qin Long had any stamina left to speak of.
They instead ended up with an impasse of sorts: Qin Long's guandao and Kaede Morinaga's uchigatana struck simultaneously. Seiryu's legs lost all power at that point, their energy robbed from him by Minoe's anti-respiratory attacks and Morinaga's Deathstaker Stab that might've caused internal bleeding and a hole in his lung.
This was why he was the one who crumpled down on the ground instead of her. "Chou biaozi...!" said Qin Long. Had Kaede known the Su Shen referred to her as a whore with a stinking cunt, she might have killed him then and there, like she did the members of the Fake Battousai Group or the Togakudan.
As the tired Kaede looked for her... well, Minoe's... wig and eye patch so that he could "take over" for her and deal with the throbbing everything on their shared body, Zhu Que jumped up in attention and attacked Morinaga head on.
"Come over here, you little Japanese cunt! Foreplay is over! I'll be the one doing the penetrating this time around! I'll stab you till you love it!"
Kaede rolled her eyes and indulged Zhu Que, only for her jaw to drop after his Swarming Barbs countered hers. "Oh shit...!"
She pressed forward, ignoring the gashes she got from doing so, and did the Scorpion Nest from up close, intending to combo it with a Scorpion Swarm as soon as Suzaku copied her moves again.
However, instead of a Scorpion Nest, Zhu Que did the Protective Shell. Morinaga then staggered when the stolen Crypsis allowed the Crimson Sparrow to hide some out-of-the-blue stabs in between all that parrying.
While she reeled, he shifted gears and attacked with the same Scorpion Swarm that she intended to attack him with.
"I have the best of both your styles now! I can attack you at will but you can't do the same to me! You don't stand a chance, ji nu (prostitute)!"
"I don't know what 'ji nu' is, but I'll make you regret calling me that, you impotent Chinaman swine."
Amidst the rain of blood and torn flesh, she countered the Crimson Sparrow by blasting the deck on their feet apart with the Swarming Barbs then attacking from below instead of up front, hidden by the wreckage, sawdust, debris, and smoke of the destroyed floor.
Alas, the Chinese Suzaku had also learned his own version of Minoe's Antennas, detecting and blocking the incoming onslaught from below with the Scissor Grip (he couldn't do the Vise Grip because he lacked curved blades).
"You can't do defense for some reason when you're 'Morinaga', can you? You can only do it as 'Minoe'. I know. I was watching you all that time when you were fighting Qin Long. You're not right in the head, lady," said Zhu Que, his superior strength and size overpowering Morinaga, bringing her down to her knees.
"As soon as I kill you, I'll be the sole master of the Scorpio and Cancer Stance, Morinaga Kaede or whoever the fuck you are at the moment! How many 'people' are living inside that fucked-up head of yours anyway?" added the last standing Si Shen atop the deck of the Hizoku while bringing his blades closer together towards Kaede's throat for a decapitating Crisscross Claw.
With a winking left eye as her... "his"... features became softer and more relaxed, the person before Zhu Que informed, "Actually, you're talking to Minoe-chi now, Suzaku-chi. Minoe Munenori-chi, to be exact."
The Chinese Crimson Sparrow practically squawked out in laughter. "So? Don't you have a personality in that demented brain of yours that can use both the Scorpio and Cancer Stance together like I can? Instead, you've left me with that someone that couldn't string together a decent combo even if his life depended on it!"
"Mochiron." As Minoe said his catchphrase, he twisted Zhu Que's taut, swelling arms, causing their bulging muscles to get torn apart from the sudden torque after being flexed for so long.
"OUUAAAUGH...!" came Zhu Que's incoherent cries before the blinding pain knocked him out altogether, his brain seemingly short-circuiting from all the intense stimuli it received.
Because of the excessive flex Zhu Que had on those arms, something had to give. The stress Munenori caused from targeting those limbs earlier on (that the unsuspecting Si Shen aggravated by using the demanding Scorpio Stance techniques) had caused them to self-destruct altogether with a simple double arm twist.
As for Minoe, whole patches of his memory disappeared (as usual). When he came to, he saw himself blocking the blades of a bloodied Zhu Que while an unconscious Qin Long lay in a pool of blood from behind him.
Only past experience from his previous blackouts allowed him to put two and two together, concluding that "Kaede" was behind the massacre.
'If I weren't there to help dole out some real damage against those Su Shen bozos, you'd be dead by now, eye-patch boy,' reminded Kaede from within Munenori's psyche. Or at least, that was what he expected her to say to him after everything was said and done.
"Yeah, yeah. Mochiron mochi," Minoe smilingly waved off his other self before searching for his wig and eye patch, putting them back on, and collapsing from where he stood, his back sliding against the damaged wood of a splintered mast, his body completely spent from the handicap match.
However, Zhu Que's words persisted in Minoe's mind before he blanked out altogether. The Si Shen talked about a personality of his... theirs... that could use both his Cancer Stance and Morinaga's Scorpio Stance.
The smiling face of someone he'd never met... a face that Kaede would've recognized as Soujiro Seta... emerged from the depths of his consciousness while he himself succumbed to unconsciousness.
Next: Masakichi Hananuma Inoue.
You've by now noticed that I'm using the Chinese names of Suzaku, Seiryu, Byakko, and Genbu. Yes, this is again fanon consistent only to what's presented in this fanfic. Yes, the four were referred to by their Japanese counterpart names in the manga, (although the same Chinese characters were used to refer to them).
I'm aware of all of that. Why did I do this anyway? Simply put, it makes perfect sense to me. Chinese bodyguards won't refer to themselves by the Japanese readings of their names... nor would they refer to themselves as Crimson Sparrow, Blue Dragon, White Tiger, and Black Tortoise (i.e., in English) save for the sake of translation convention.
Tayo na at makipagsapalaran,
Abdiel