DISCLAIMER: We both know I don't own Soujiro, ShiShiO, Kenshin, Senkaku, Udo Jin-e, or any of the other characters that are making Watsuki Nobuhiro and his corporate sponsors/affiliates rich. If I did, I would be getting money for writing fun stuff, not grades for writing boring dribble. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. If not ... chikushou, aku baka!
That reminds me ... my Japanese is next to nonexistent. Don't fault me for it. At least I'm trying.
Happy reading!
ANTI-DISCLAIMER (would that be just a "claimer?"): Some of these characters ARE my own creation, as well as many elements of the setting; the town of Ichibou, Kim Young-eun, Karachi Hoebu, Yamashina Ito, Genji Taku, and several other minor characters are my own ideas. Use your head. If it never appeared in anywhere in the Kenshin series, then it's probably mine. Not that anyone cares but me.
SPOILERS/BACKGROUND: To Kenshin TV ep 61, "Remaining Ju Pon Gattana, Choice of Life."
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CHAPTER 10:
THE IRON MINES
The plaza around the town hall of Ichibou was deserted. The guards had vanished, and there was not a single passerby in sight. Even the stars were still hidden from view. Soujiro immediately wondered at that; it was not all that late in the evening. Genji had probably ordered the area cleared during his escape, but that didn't explain why. It didn't matter, anyway.
Soujiro leapt lightly to the ground and scanned the area again. He was relieved to see a few passersby moving to and fro further down several of the streets leading away from the town hall; that probably meant that there weren't a few score of soldiers lying in ambush nearby. Maybe no one was near the town hall simply because no one wanted to talk to Senkaku. Soujiro couldn't blame them. More likely, Genji had told everyone, or had had the soldiers tell everyone, that the town hall was closed for the evening. Whatever the case, the few citizens that Soujiro could see were paying him and the town hall absolutely no mind whatsoever. Soujiro grinned wryly. *See no evil,* he thought sardonically. *Of course they don't want to think anything's wrong. If they did, they might feel they had to do something about it.*
The trek to the western gate was surprisingly uneventful. Soujiro stayed hidden simply on principle, but he saw very few watchmen or soldiers either stationed or patrolling. Most of them were simply ordinary town guards, no different than what he might have seen in Kyoto or any other town. There was no sign of Senkaku's soldiers or Yamashina's Yakuza agents. Most of the people he passed were just ordinary citizens scurrying from place to place. The sight of them actually irritated Soujiro slightly. His mind flashed back to the little Korean girl every time he looked at one of them; there was someone who was a more direct target of the corrupt, powerful figures in the town than any of these people, and yet she somehow managed to bear it more proudly than any of the nameless people that he passed. That was something that touched a deep nerve in Soujiro. That was something that commanded respect.
He had heard the western gate of Ichibou referred to as the Iron Gate, because the road that led out of it was a dead end, branching out into a number of small trails that led up to the entrance of the individual mineshafts. The main road itself, of course, ended at the mouth of the main entrance to the mines. Despite the fact that it was a dead end, however, the Iron Gate was the most secure of Ichibou's gates, because most of the workers at the mine were not there of their own accord, and anyone trying to escape would be forced to either come through the Iron Gate or scale nearly slopes so steep as to be suicide for inexperienced climbers. Thus it was at the Iron Gate that Soujiro met the first significant group of guards he had seen since arriving at the town hall.
Soujiro was not really interested in fighting at the moment, however. Well, that was not entirely true, but he was not interested in fighting gate guards. He had no doubt that he could take every last one of them, but he did not have time to waste on diversions. Playtime could wait.
Instead, he slipped along a northbound side street a block or two before reaching the small plaza in front of the Iron Gate. Once he had gone far enough north that the light from the gatehouse no longer reached the wall to the west, he turned his attention back to the wall. The western wall of Ichidou was in even worse disrepair than the southern one. There were footholds and crags everywhere, and they were easy to find even in the dark. Within moments, he was on top of the wall, and in the midst of a thick patch of shadow. Guards patrolled the top at odd intervals, but they were few and far between, and all of them carried torches that made them stand out long before they would be of any consequence. That was always one of the problems Soujiro had had with carrying torches; your enemies could see you long before you could see them.
Getting down on the other side of the wall was a little trickier. He was a good distance north of the gatehouse, so he was not looking at an effortless drop onto a smooth surface. Ichibou had been built on a hill, and so it was a longer drop on the far side, and much more uneven as well. If it had been the southern side, he would have attempted it here anyway, but the southern side of Ichibou fell onto a fairly gentle grassy slope. This was much steeper and rockier; it fell sharply away from Ichibou for almost fifty feet below the base of the wall. The land began to slope upward after that, following a small canyon into the hills, but that was a long way to jump onto uneven and unyielding stone. There was one soft spot in the rocky armor of the land below, however. Unfortunately, it was on the south side of the gatehouse.
The canyon that led into the hills and ultimately to Yamashina's iron mines had been formed by a small stream that had been diverted along the base of the wall. It flowed out of the canyon on the south side of the road, and then flowed south along the base of the wall after reaching the base of the wall. Soujiro knew that it had to have an outlet somewhere; very likely it was diverted under the wall at some point to be used in Yamashina's iron foundry, but this was of no consequence. The river looked more than deep enough to cushion the landing, if he could only get to it. There wasn't time to go back down into town, circumvent the gatehouse, and climb the wall on the other side, however. He was going to have to go through the gatehouse after all.
"Yare yare," he sighed to himself as he thumbed his sword free of its sheath.
He had no intention of taking down every soldier in the place. He had no doubt that he could have; he and Usui had both taken out larger and more professional groups than this before. However, he had no reason to waste time with them. They were not going to be able to catch him, and they wouldn't be able to do anything if they did. He didn't care if they sounded every alarm in the city and kept the entire village awake all night. He wasn't going to be sleeping much tonight, anyway.
He kept low to the ground, and stayed in the shadows of the outer parapet until he was so close to the gatehouse that the northern door was within striking range. There wasn't any decent shadow any closer than this, anyway. His eyes narrowed. It was close enough, and there were only two guards between him and the door of the gatehouse atop the wall. If he could get in and out of the gatehouse on the opposite side quickly, he might be away into the shadows on the far side before any of the guards not on the wall knew what was happening.
Of course, he had no intention of letting even those guards know, either.
Most of the best fighters Soujiro had seen, even ShiShiO, had a battle cry of some kind. Himura and Saitoh both did. Most of the rank and file amateurs that he had seen and fought did. Soujiro had never used one. He was a cold, silent, deadly wind descending upon the unsuspecting guards. Soujiro knew how to strike and keep the enemy from crying out. He hit both of them in the lungs simultaneously, one with the hilt of the Oh-waza-mono, one with the front of the sakaba. The breath left their lungs before the fact that they had been hit even reached their brains. The most either of them could manage was a startled gasp, and those were lost in the folds of their clothing as they collapsed like wet rags.
Moments later, Soujiro was inside the gatehouse. The upper level had only two more soldiers in it, both of which became instant target practice. One actually managed to get his sword halfway out of its sheath, though. Soujiro made a mental note to be more careful next time. He was getting soft.
He was already opening the door on the far side of the gatehouse before the two unconscious soldiers had even hit the floor. That was a failing of too many of the best samurai he had ever seen--they always seemed to want to stop and admire their work. The only men Soujiro had ever met who were capable of moving on after a strike the way he did had been Shishio and Usui. On the other hand, both of those were dead. That was a disquietingly morbid thought.
Apparently, he had not been quiet enough, or the guard outside had somehow sensed that something was amiss. There was only one, but he not only had a pistol drawn, but he also had a whistle already to his mouth. He blew it as soon as Soujiro came into view; the burst was cut abruptly short, but the damage had been done. The only shot the guard managed soared harmlessly into the stratosphere, as his arm was jerked upward as Soujiro knocked him backwards with the sakaba on his way by. Whistles began sounding and officers began shouting in the gatehouse behind him. Of course, by the time all the guards had drawn their weapons, Soujiro was already a long way south along the wall. The guards gave him even more time than necessary by preparing for an attack from the town for a few moments before they realized that none was coming.
As soon as Soujiro reached the point on the parapet where the mountain stream flowed into the base of the wall, he stopped for a quick breath. He smiled inwardly for a moment. He hated to admit it, but he had enjoyed that. Using a sakaba meant he could be a little less restrained and still not kill the guards; he was still not sure how well he was taking to Himura's pacifistic ways, but the sakaba was definitely a help. It also kept him alert, which could help keep him from getting rusty or complacent down the road. He could see why Himura was so attached to his. And the fun part was that, since he had not killed them, he could do it all over again on the way back.
*OK,* he thought sardonically, *Maybe I'm not COMPLETELY pacifistic. But they started it.*
He actually laughed softly as he vaulted over the outside edge of the wall and into the waiting waters below. He wondered what Yumi would have thought of that. She would never have believed that he hadn't killed them in the first place, of course, so she probably wouldn't have known what to say. ShiShiO probably would have broken the sakaba sword the moment he saw it.
The stream was not as deep as it looked, but Soujiro was light, and he knew how to break falls, even in the water. He had leapt from worse heights before. The water was colder than it looked, though, too. Fortunately, it was getting on into the summertime, so it was not frigid, even coming out of the mountains, and the summertime air outside was still fairly warm. Part of the reason he had come north for the summer was to avoid the sweltering heat of the plains to the south, but he was neither that far north nor that high into the mountains yet.
Soujiro quickly clambered out of the stream on the far side and started flitting up the rocky slopes into the canyon that led to Yamashina's iron mines. The breeze out of the mountains was chilly, but it was far from arctic, and it was dry. Soujiro figured that his clothes would be dry again long before he reached the mines, and cold had never seemed to bother him that much. He had never slept by a fireside twice in the same week as a child. The bitter cold of the night had become a part of him long before he had been old enough to realize exactly how cold that was.
He was already half a mile up the canyon before any torches even began to fan out from the gatehouse he had left behind. He was making good time, but they were still moving slower than they probably should. They were probably still trying to make sense of what had happened to them. Either that, or they were afraid he was still somewhere close by to them. Unlike them, he was not carrying torches to announce his presence.
It took him less than two hours to reach the iron mines. He was making good time; the road was empty, and though it was after nightfall, the cloud cover had parted, and the lights of the nocturnal sky were all he needed to find his footing. In addition, it wasn't as if the mines were hidden or anything; as soon as the canyon began to narrow, he began to hear the echoes from the miners' work dancing down the canyon walls to meet him. Furthermore, the road led right to the mines. It turned out to me more a question of which road to take, because at a certain point, the road began to split and head off to lesser mineshafts secluded in the rocks some distance away on either side of the road, close to the canyon walls. It was not that difficult to tell which road was the main one, however, and for lack of better direction, Soujiro decided to stick with the main road for now.
Soon afterwards, Soujiro came into sight of what had to be the main mine entrance. The canyon ended suddenly in a steep, rocky slope, the top of which was nearly high enough to be considered outside the foothills. The mountain stream eddied forth from an opening high in the stone slope; it was not quite a waterfall, because the canyon's end was not quite vertical, but it was close enough. The bottom of the cataract had been hollowed out, apparently partly by men and partly by nature, to form a large pool up against the bottom of the incline. And on the north side of the pool, the main road ended in a large, gaping hole into the hillside. Enough fires burned around it to call it to Soujiro's attention long before he was close enough to make out the details of the cataract. In fact, there was practically a small village around the mine entrance. Actually, it was more like a military camp.
As Soujiro got closer, he was able to make out at least a dozen buildings, one of which was almost as big as Yamashina Ironworks back in Ichibou. It was probably a smelting center, where the iron was extracted from the raw ore. Two of the others were probably barracks, and two more were probably warehouses, if the number of supply wagons at their immense doors said anything. The others, though, had to be prison buildings. They were surrounded by a high wooden stockade and guarded even at this hour, when most of their inhabitants were probably being put to work in the mines. Soujiro's blood began to simmer again at the thought, but he forced the heat down.
There were guards at the perimeter of the mining camp, but he realized with a start as he got closer that they were barely paying him any attention at all. Their primary purpose, he realized, was not to keep hostile people out, but to keep them in. If those prison buildings were full, then there were probably over a hundred people here that didn't really want to be.
Eventually, they noticed him, but Soujiro was not really making any pretense at hiding. A small shout went up, but Soujiro made no move at drawing his sword yet. There were only eight or so this far out, but there were more closer to the camp. He guessed that these guards were more runners than fighters; there were four horses picketed nearby, a short distance off the road. If a riot ensued among the camp prisoners, they would be sent to get reinforcements from among the guards at the other shafts Soujiro had passed, while the guards further in did what they could to contain them.
"Konnichiha!" Soujiro called. He decided to take a gamble. "Anou ..." He was going to have to swallow his pride for a moment, but he made a mental note to collect the bill for it later. "Is this the way to find Genji-sama? This is my first time in the mountains." Emotions or no emotions, he almost choked over the "sama."
The guards relaxed slightly. "Messenger, huh?" said one.
"Must be from Senkaku. He always sends little boys," said another.
"Hai," Soujiro agreed quickly, not wanting to start a fight. Yet.
Those guards that had slid their swords partly free of their scabbards replaced them. "He should be somewhere around the mine entrance."
"And watch your step, kid," one of the others added. "He just got here a couple of hours ago, and he looked pissed as hell over something. Just watch what you say."
"Arigatou," Soujiro said as he continued on. *I hadn't planned on doing much talking, anyway,* he thought as he continued through the denser inner circle of guards a few hundred feet further away. None of them seemed to take any notice of him. Incoming traffic was not their responsibility, and Soujiro kept his face low, to prevent anyone from getting too good a look at his face. He still thought it odd that no one asked more questions than they did, and no one seemed to take any notice of his swords, but he decided to take what he was given. It was going to turn interesting if they had a trap planned for him.
*I hope they try something,* he found himself saying to himself. ShiShiO had developed a special affinity for escaping traps after surviving the betrayal by his former employers. He had whittled it down to both a science and an art, and had passed much of that affinity along to Soujiro. ShiShiO had knowingly walked into traps dozens of times since that fiery night, enjoying the satisfaction of catching the spiders in their own webs.
As Soujiro drew further and further into the camp, there came to be more and more guards. There had to be at least sixty of them all told. He stayed in the deepest patches of shadow that he could find, but he was trusting more to the darkness of night and to keeping his distance from the roaming soldiers than actually hiding. There wasn't much good cover here. It had probably been cleared and flattened as much as possible as soon as a prison had been erected in the area.
Soujiro took a route that led around the rear of the stockade around the prison buildings. There were simply too many guards at the front. At least half of the guards in the camp were either stationed at the front gate of the prison complex, or were within sight of it. Even more were within hearing. There were no egresses from within the camp in the back, so it was much less watched. He could hear the voiceless sounds of people suffering inside, but he could not afford to blindly rush in and reveal his presence. He would probably only succeed in getting a lot of people hurt, excluding the ones that he intended to hurt himself. The only guards that could see him now were those that were a good way off and protecting other places that just happened to be within sight. There weren't more than three, save for those at the mine entrance itself, and he didn't stand out at this distance.
The entrance to the mine was less than three hundred yards away now, and Soujiro had a good look at it. He was cloaked in the shadow of the wall, so they had absolutely no chance of seeing him. However, he could not make out any sign of Genji, either. He might not be able to pick out the man's face at this distance, but he should have been able to pick out something simply by the way people would act around him. He was some kind of captain, after all.
Suddenly, from on the other side of the prison complex wall, Soujiro heard the sound of people shouting, and heard a familiar voice cry out in pain and defiance.
"Bastard!" the voice rang out. "Don't you ever come this close to me again! Guards or no guards, I'll keep your spleen as a trophy!" The tirade was cut off in a muffled grunt, accompanied by the sounds of several men laughing.
"Ukita-san!" Soujiro's eyes widened. Then they narrowed again. "OK, plan's changed," he hissed to himself, coiling himself and drving himself upward into the starry darkness.
He could have cleared the stockade, but he chose not to; he landed softly on top of it, his feet settling effortlessly between the wooden spikes on top of it as though it were a polished wooden floor. His eyes quickly came to rest on two figures twenty feet apart, one of them being held upright by two burly men on either side of him. Ukita had taken a beating, that was plain, but the fire in his eyes was as bright as ever. Standing across from him him was the half-crazed Shinsen reject that had so recently and unexpectedly burst his way free of the town hall.
Soujiro was glad he had taken the short stop on the top of the stockade. That allowed him to add that much extra height to his next jump, and to line it up correctly.
He did not jump straight for Genji, though he dearly wanted to. However, he was not that incautious, and he had not practiced attacking from high in the air nearly as much as the Battousai had. His aerial attack was nowhere near the strength of the Ryu Tsui Sen. He was used to jump attacks off of walls, but not coming straight down at opponents' heads. So he wasn't about to risk it on Genji. On the other hand, the four men holding Ukita were another matter.
Soujiro was at least two and a half times the height of the wall off the ground before he began his downward plunge.
"Aoi Denkou Ryu," he called as he closed in on them. "Go Gufuu-no-Batsu!" (1)
They looked up at the last minute, but all they ever saw was a dark sihouette plunging straight for them, seeming to come straight out of the moon. Two of them fell immediately, and the impact jarred Ukita loose from the hands of his captors. Ukita went sprawling, and his left arm was roughed up a little bit, but Soujiro had a feeling that he didn't mind, and if he hadn't knocked the man away, one of the other guards might have put a blade into the blacksmith's ribs. The two other men that had been holding him were knocked back, but stayed on their feet.
"Ukita-san!" Soujiro called as the ex-Ishin began to pick himself up off the ground. "Catch!" Still on his hands and knees at the time, Ukita managed to get one hand into the air long enough to catch what Soujiro had sent in his direction. His eyes widened, and he gasped.
"Oh-waza-mono ...?" he whispered, almost reverently.
Soujiro was not in a sentimental mood at the moment, however, and his attention was already turning to Genji. "You take those two!" Soujiro shouted at the blacksmith. He squared himself to face Genji. "This one's mine."
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CHAPTER 11:
ANGERING THE TENKEN
Genji slid his sword free of its sheath with an almost maniacal grin. "You've got guts, boy." He raised his sword in Soujiro's direction, adopting an offensive stance. "Let's see what they look like." There was no more posturing or wordplay. With those words, Genji lunged to the attack.
Soujiro dodged the first thrust and parried the second, but they kept coming. Soujiro's eyes widened. It was six strokes into the fight before the man finally left an opening. Darts weren't the only weapon he had mastered. Even the opening he left wasn't that much; all he allowed Soujiro to do was jam Genji's sword downward, bruising his wrist. It made the man a little more cautious, though.
"Well well," he sneered. "You're not as weak as you look."
"Arigatou," Soujiro answered.
Genji lunged at him again, and once again another furious flurry of blows followed before Soujiro could get in a lick. This time he got a little better of an opening, but Genji was quicker than he looked; what should have been a hard crack on the back of Genji's left thigh turned into a minor scratch. Genji was clearly annoyed that none of his shots were getting through; Soujiro simply smiled and let the irritation build. Soujiro was moving just fast enough to keep away from Genji's sword. He didn't want to give Genji a chance to rest, and if the man thought that he almost had him, he wouldn't back down to catch a breath. Eventually, he would make a mistake, or if he did back down, it would mean that he needed a breath--and then Soujiro could become a little more aggressive.
Genji was using a rare style that Soujiro had never seen in action before; he was certain he had heard of it somehow, because it looked familiar somehow, but he usually remembered the fighting styles of just about any skilled fighters he had ever fought, and this one was not something he had faced in person before. Soujiro was somewhat puzzled by it, but it was not the time for thinking now.
Several more quick bouts followed, usually ending with Soujiro scoring a minor scrape or bruise on Genji before the other readjusted. The best he managed was a crash on Genji's upper arm, where he caught Genji's sword with his own and pushed it into the man's shoulder.
Eventually, Genji pulled back, but his breathing did not seem out of control yet. Frustration was beginning to boil in his eyes now, but there was a crafty glint in those orbs as well. *He's not out of tricks yet,* Soujiro thought. Quickly, Soujiro pressed and darted back into the fray, not wanting to give him any opportunity to bring any of those darts to bear, if that was what he was hiding.
Genji backed down before Soujiro's attack, noticeably more defensive now than earlier. He had not lost any confidence, however, and Soujiro did not buy into it as a defensive stand by a wearying warrior. Sure enough, moments later, he was validated.
Soujiro pounced when Genji apparently gave him an opening, sending the man reeling back. His arms apparently flew up above his head to steady himself. At the last second before Soujiro would have moved in for a finishing blow, he pulled back. Suddenly, Genji's blade came at Soujiro again, from behind his head ... and in his left hand. Soujiro pulled back even more and twisted his sword around to block the blow, and succeeded in stopping the man from driving the blade through his shoulder, but nonetheless suffered a small incision just below his right shoulder.
Soujiro flinched, and cursed himself for not reading the man better, but he did not intend to miss this opening. This was the real opening in the Kouji no Jutsu (2). He had Genji caught with his sword in his left hand and his arm overextended. Since he was already in close and underneath Genji, he simply slipped in and drove the hilt of his sword into Genji's armpit; it was too close range for work with the blade itself. He was not finished, however. At the same time, he planted his left foot in Genji's stomach and spun himself skyward. His right foot came up and clocked the Shinsen reject hard under the chin. Genji staggered backwards and almost fell on his back; he caught himself with one hand and quickly clambered back to his feet, returning his sword to its proper hand.
"Where's Young-eun?" Soujiro demanded.
Genji snarled a string of choice obscenities at him that reminded Soujiro of his former Ju Pon Gattana comrade, Cho. As he did, he quickly set himself into the familiar stance of the Gatotsu. Soujiro deliberately gave him his most innocent expression, as though he had no idea what was coming. If the man was determined to be thickheaded, Soujiro wasn't about to stop him.
"You're dead, Seta!" Genji shouted as he lunged.
The man was clearly trying to do his best imitation of Saitoh, and the man was fairly quick, but he was far out of control as he closed on Soujiro, and his momentum would not allow him to change direction. Almost contemptuously, Soujiro stepped to the inside the attack and parried it outward; at the same time, he simply raised his sheath in front of him and held it there. Genji was going too fast to stop, and the tip of the sheath crashed straight into Genji's nose. Genji's feet flew out from under him, and he crashed to the earth.
Soujiro actually grinned. "No wonder they wouldn't let you in," he laughed.
Once again, he knew he had pushed the right button. Genji let out a terrifying howl of anger, and threw himself off the ground at Soujiro. Even from a prone position, the strength behind the attack was so fierce that it knocked Soujiro back a stride, though there was no danger of it connecting; it was a wild shot, and Soujiro was more than ready for it.
Genji was on his feet again, and the anger was so visible in his eyes that they practically glowed red. "I don't know who you are, or why Yamashina wanted you dead the moment he heard your name, but if you have such a deathwish anyway, I'll be happy to oblige." His eyes blazed in anger.
Suddenly, Soujiro felt a stiffness coming over his limbs. He tried to move into action, but found that he was only going slower than most normal soldiers. The sudden stiffness brought his focus out of the fight enough to realize that there were even more soldiers in the prison complex yard now, and that only half weere standing around to watch the fight. The rest were pursuing Ukita, though the man looked as if he could actually handle himself against the group. He had backed into a doorway where they could only come at him from the front, and at most two at a time, but he had trapped himslf by doing so. Soujiro swore an inward oath. At first, he thought that Genji had somehow slipped a poison dart into him in the thick of the fighting and that he had somehow missed it. Then it dawned on him that this attack wasn't physical in the slightest, and his eyes widened in surprise. That blaze in Genji's eyes right before the stiffness came ...
Genji was already in the Gatotsu stance again, and a maniacal grin split his face. "Poor, pathetic boy," he chuckled evilly. "It's a shame, though. I would have liked for you to be alive when I sink my hands into that soft flesh of hers. As soon as Yamashina-sama's done with her, of course. Of course, I'll probably be a little rougher than him. Do you think she likes it that way?"
For the second time this month, raw anger burned its way to the surface of Soujiro's mind. With a burst of passion and rage, Soujiro shook off the stiffness that had settled over him. A scream of anger burst loose from his mouth. More than that, it burst loose from his heart. So much for fighting in silence. Genji lunged with the Gatotsu, but it was too late.
Suddenly, however, Genji propelled himself to one side in mid-attack. Soujiro quickly turned in that direction, wondering what on earth the man was doing; he had actually put more distance between himself and Soujiro, and he skidded to a stop when he landed. Soujiro puzzled over that for a moment. It took an incredible amount of effort to break off the Gatotsu early, and Soujiro was less ready for that one than for the last one. Nonetheless, Soujiro did not counterattack. He was still wondering about the last attack Genji had used. Things were starting to come into focus. The off-hand attack. The partial insanity. And the attack of pure spirit. Not just everyone could use that technique.
"Shin no Ippou," Soujiro breathed wonderingly. "Your cousin ... the loose cannon ... you're Udo Jin-e's cousin!"
Meanwhile, Genji was almost beside himself with both frustration and amazement. He set himself coldly into the second stance of the Gatotsu, but he did not lunge yet. "Of course," he grated. "I was at least as good as he was, even being five years younger, but they took him and not me. I worked as hard as I could ever since I was seven to be one of them, and they turned me down because of someone I barely knew."
"Your techniques are almost the same," Soujiro noted.
"We had the same sensei in Kyoto," Genji replied, "but we never attended the same classes. That was until Jin-e killed him, of course. He thought that sensei was teaching me secrets that he never revealed to him, and that was enough for a death sentence. He couldn't accept the fact that I just learned faster, and worked harder."
"But they turned you away because of him anyway," Soujiro ended. *No wonder he's pissed,* he thought to himself.
"You're getting the idea," Genji responded. "But I've talked enough. That aura won't hold me back this time." With that, he sprang at Soujiro again, trying the second stance of the Gatotsu. Nonetheless, Soujiro was so out of focus for a moment that he almost didn't get set for his counter. *Aura?* he thought as he flowed into motion.
Soujiro had seen Genji's technique before, though, and ShiShiO had taught him how to counter all of them. ShiShiO had fought more than plenty of the Shinsen Gumi during the Bakumatsu, and had seen almost every trick in their books. Of course, as he was fond of saying, they didn't have many.
The secret of the Gatotsu's second stance was the changing angle of the attack, which made it difficult to block successfully, because it could slip around all but the best of parries. Soujiro knew that ShiShiO could stop it cold, but Soujiro had a different counter, drawing on the Shuku-chi. It was time to let that out of the bag, anyway. The man was clearly running out of tricks. Soujiro blurred into action, nearly fading from sight as he blocked the blow. He actually parried the lethal thrust twice in the same instant, once to trigger the change of direction, and once to use that change to throw Genji off-balance and spin him away. Soujiro was surprised that the man even stayed on his feet, but it was plain that Soujiro had disoriented him, at least for a moment. Of course, since Soujiro had not set himself completely correctly for the attack, it took him a precious moment to regain his balance as well, or he could have stepped in for a counterattack there. Nonetheless, it was clear that Genji had taken the worse of the exchange.
"Tenken Ryu," Soujiro announced coldly. "Meimei Shubi." (3)
"Tenken Ryu, eh?" Genji growled. "You fight with two different styles? What's the difference between the Tenken Ryu and your Blue Lightning Style?" (4)
An emotionless smile crept across Soujiro's face. "I thought you'd never ask," he said, as he slid the sakaba back into its sheath and adopted the Battou stance.
"So you want to get serious," Genji answered with a wicked grin. "Getting angry are we?"
"No," Soujiro answered calmly. "Getting tired."
The anger welled up in Genji's eyes again. "Then I'll be happy to put you to sleep, Seta," he snarled, readying his sword to attack again.
Soujiro closed his eyes for a moment. He would know if Genji sprang at him, but he needed to clear his mind. The last time he had tried this, he had ended up flying through the air, complements of the Battousai's succession technique. The Battousai's words before that final blow came back to him.
"Yes, very fitting," he heard Himura-san say. "It deserves the name. But can you do it with your emotions in turmoil?" Himura-san had then proved that he couldn't. But Soujiro was wiser now. Furthermore, Genji was not the Battousai. And he had just pissed off the Tenken.
Soujiro called up memories of the previous evening, the evening with Young-eun on the roof of the blacksmith's home. He had felt awkward there, but he had also been calm. Even with the guard on his emotions partially down, he had been calm. That was what he needed here. The anger slowly faded into the back of his mind, and his muscles relaxed.
"You've been a worthy opponent, Seta Soujiro," Genji called. "One of the best I've ever faced. But you'll have to be more than good to survive the Nikaido Heiho succession technique." He shifted his stance forward slightly, and his sword dipped aggressively. "Kaiten Hadou!" (5) He was moving forward as soon as the last word crossed his lips.
Soujiro felt the grip of the Shin no Ippou clench at him again, but this time he was ready for it, and he shook it off with a furious cry. Too late, Genji realized that the Kaiten Hadou had been compromised.
"Shun," Soujiro hissed as he dipped into the Battou stance again and planted his foot behind him.
"Ten," he cried as vanished from human eyes, unleashing the full speed of the Shuku-chi to crush the distance between him and the samurai Genji, who was already helplessly off the ground and in the midst of his rotating attack, his back to Soujiro.
"Satsu!" he cried as he struck.
The Shun Ten Satsu did not normally have the upward force nor the impact that Himura's Ama-Kakeru, Ryu-no-Hirameki did, but Genji was already in the air. Thus, what should have been a powerful upward slash into a more balanced opponent's chest instead crashed into the base of Genji's spine while the man was in midair.
The result looked almost exactly like Soujiro had just pulled the Ama-Kakeru, Ryu-no-Hirameki himself. Genji went flying and tumbling high over Soujiro's shoulder with a loud groan. His sword flew from his grasp, and Soujiro quickly kicked it away in the opposite direction.
Only then did the guards that had been gathering reenter Soujiro's awareness. They had been standing clear of the battle, terrified to step in. They did not seem to be any more daring even now, and when Soujiro readied his sword for battle again, at least half of them backed up a step, though.
The sounds of fighting still rang out in the yard, however, as Ukita Shimiro still held on for his life in the doorway of the tiny storage shed in corner of the yard. Soujiro was impressed; no fewer than seven guards lay either dead or wounded around the door. Soujiro could see that Ukita had not had as easy a time of it as he or Himura-san would have. He was both getting tired and fighting hurt.
Immediately, Soujiro charged the circle of guards, and they gave way before him. A moment later, he was upon the guards still clustered around the door of the storage shed; there were only five of them left by this point, and only one of them looked back in time to see him.
Shots began to ring out behind him by the time he got to the fifth and last of Ukita's remaining assailants.
"Can you run?" Soujiro asked.
A renewed spirit entered Ukita's eyes. Soujiro guessed that the man had to have been pretty good in his youth; now that he had been fighting for a little bit, his long-dormant battle aura was beginning to make itself known again. There was still fire behind those eyes.
"Can I run? Why run when you can fly?" he asked, stepping forward, turning, and springing onto the roof of the storage shed. From there, he turned and sprang up and over the wall. Soujiro hoped that he knew how far down it was on the other side, but Soujiro wasted no time in following. Shots rang and ricocheted off the stones around him, but none found their mark; one came close, tearing through the bottom of his sleeve, but none bit flesh.
Soujiro landed only inches from Ukita.
"Easy, lad," the samurai replied. Soujiro made a mental note that he would try not to think of him as a blacksmith anymore, regardless of whether he was holding a sword or a hammer.
"Where is she?" Soujiro asked.
Ukita was already running towards the perimeter of the came. "Come on!" he shouted.
"Wait!" Soujiro cried. "We can't leave her here!"
"She's not here!" Ukita called back. "She's with him!"
Soujiro understood. Genji had said something along the same lines, and Soujiro had somewhat suspected that she would not have been sent to the mines, or at least not kept there. Yamashina had shown too much interest in her to be after a mine worker. If what Genji had said was true ... angrily, he pushed the thought away, allowing his emotions to fade into the silence of his inner consciousness again.
Soujiro desperately wanted to push the pace, but Ukita was going as fast as he could, and Ukita had taken far worse of a beating than Soujiro had. Almost of the guards had converged on the prison complex, however, so the perimeter was nearly unguarded. The only guards remaining were the four with horses, who would be sent in the incident of a major riot.
"Can you ride a horse?" Soujiro asked as they drew near to the remaining guards. They had come forward from their horses slightly, their weapons drawn, sensing that something was amiss but not realizing exactly who the two people coming toward them were.
"Of course," Ukita replied. Soujiro was a little offended by that. What did he mean, of course? No one had ever taught him to ride. That was the one thing ShiShiO knew that he refused to teach Soujiro. ShiShiO himself only rode because he would never expect Yumi to walk, and because the effort of walking irritated his burns. He had never ridden during his days with the Ishin Shishi.
Soujiro decided to worry about that later. Quickly, he dispatched the guards around the picketed horses, and then quickly cut the lines of the one horse that seemed to be taking all of the fighting around him in stride. The other three were clearly getting agitated. Of course, even the last one seemed to get a little antsy when Soujiro started swinging his sword around near his throat.
"Here, let me handle him," Ukita offered, and Soujiro quickly backed away. Within moments, Ukita was mounted, and though the horse whickered uneasily under him, it made no move to pitch him off. "Come on," Ukita said, offering Soujiro a hand.
Soujiro shook his head. "I'll keep up, trust me." Ukita looked at him askance.
"If there's trouble, I need to be on the ground," Soujiro replied. "I can't fight from horseback."
"OK, but if I start going too fast, just give me a yell."
Soujiro actually laughed. He did not believe there was any such thing as too fast. "Same to you," he answered lightly as he took off down the rocky canyon road.
Soujiro and Ukita's horse kept slowing down and speeding up until eventually they managed to get in sync with one another at a brisk trot. Soujiro could have gone faster, but he didn't want to risk the horse getting either tired or injured, and he wanted enough breath to talk as he ran.
"What happened?" he asked as soon as he was comfortably able.
"They brought us both here," Ukita answered. "But then they separated us, and I didn't see her until she was leaving. Yamashina came to pick her up himself. I only got to see her from a distance, and the only thing she got to say to me before they took her away was, 'I'm sorry.' She didn't even sound like she meant it, though."
"Nani?!" (6)
"Not like that!" Ukita called back earnestly. "I mean, she didn't sound like anything. It was like an icicle talking."
*Like a star,* Soujiro thought to himself.
"I mean no offense, but you probably didn't help, either."
"Sumimasen?" Soujiro answered, though he guessed that he knew what Ukita was about to say, and he was right.
"You got through to her," Ukita answered. "If things had gone any other way, I could have thanked you for that more than anything I've been grateful for since my wife was alive. But when they came that night, she was more vulnerable than she had been in years. They came only minutes after you left. I didn't get a chance to talk to her much after that, but I think the strain ... I think something snapped in her. I don't know. I don't know how to explain it."
"I think I may know what you're talking about," Soujiro answered. His tone was neutral, even light, but his mood was grim. He had hurt, even killed, a lot of people, but he had never before hurt someone that he had not intended to get hurt. Soujiro wondered if Himura-san's life was ever this complex. If this was part of a rurouni's job description, Soujiro was already thinking about early retirement.
However, he had gotten her into this, so it was his responsibility to get her out. That much he was sure of; that much came from both ShiShiO and Himura. The idea of leaving a job unfinished would have infuriated ShiShiO to his very core. "If you start it, finish it," ShiShiO was fond of saying. "The pathetic government is full of people who start things and never finish them, leaving the country to clean up their mess." Himura would have simply said that Young-eun-chan needed protection. As Himura's friend had burst out at ShiShiO's headquarters, Himura had made it his life's mission to protect the weak and helpless.
That was all very well ... Soujiro had not entirely bought into Himura's protective philosophy, but he was starting to understand it, at least ... but the thought triggered another thought in the back of Soujiro's mind. The weak and helpless.
His mind drifted back to that long-ago rainy night when everything had collapsed for him. Soujiro had been been in a state of almost continual depression, deprived of food or sleep or warmth night in and night out. Then a new face had appeared in his life, a man whose words gave him a faint spark of hope, a hope of being strong someday. Less than a day later, Soujiro's family had tried to kill him. Soujiro had put up with a lot of abuse from them over the years, and had become used to them hurting him. He had known that they were not nice people. Nevertheless, the trauma of someone actually wanting to kill him was simply too much for someone so young. Before ShiShiO had arrived, Soujiro might have simply laid down and died. He had never attached much importance to his own life. But ShiShiO had given him just the faintest spark of a dream for the future. So Soujiro had not given up, not so soon after allowing a small spark to bloom inside himself. Instead, he had ... as Ukita put it ... snapped.
Soujiro was not a complete idiot, nor did he completely forget the past. Physically, Young-eun had been conditioned by long hours of work at multiple jobs, one of them in a blacksmith's smithy. Emotionally, she had suffered over many years; he had not suffered completely alone in the way that Soujiro had, but Ukita was apparently her only support, and Young-eun constantly had to watch him getting weaker and weaker, wondering when her last support would crumble. Mentally, she had clearly been feeling depressed and withdrawn from society; even at the Red House, the people who made lewd remarks about her somehow felt pushed away from her if they ever sought to approach her. She had not had a friend to her house in years. And Soujiro had just recently entered her life and given her a chance to hope, had put fuel in the fireplace, so to speak. Less than a day later, her worst fears were realized, and at the one moment when she had felt better than she had in years.
It had not been the inspirational sword master that had done the killing that rainy night, however. ShiShiO had simply stood back and watched. It had been a smiling eight-year-old boy. The result had been a cadre of bodies staring lifelessly at the stormy sky, and one little boy still standing with a wakizashi in his little hand. The result had been the birth of the Tenken.
As Soujiro trotted on alongside the blacksmith's mount, he kept casting looks at the diamonds of the night sky. Cold. Distant. Dark. An uneasiness began to grow in the back of his mind, a feeling that the girl he intended to rescue from the Yakuza overlord might not be anyone he knew.
* * * * *
(1) Attack of the Cold Hurricane
(2) Lure Technique
(3) Invisible Defense
(4) Aoi Denkou Ryu
(5) Whirling Burst
(6) What?!
COMING SOON: Chapter 12, "The Stronghold," and Chapter 13, "Past and Passion." As before, this is a tentative itenerary, and I'm not completely sure how and where I want to end this, but the end is indeed approaching.
My sincerest apologies for how late this is in coming! I wrote the first five installments in less time than it took me to write this one from the last, but college is starting to keep me very busy. I promise I'll get it finished, though.
Ukita is in no position to help in penetrating Yamashina's palace, so Soujiro will enter Yamashina's inner demesne alone. Fortunately, Young-eun is not that difficult to find; unfortunately, Yamashina doesn't exactly feel like letting her go. Yamashina's bag of surprises is nearly limitless, and his fighting style is unique and powerful. Furthermore, Yamashina knows a lot more about Soujiro than Soujiro knows about him. Yamashina and Soujiro have more in common than Soujiro would have guessed.
(Don't worry, I'm not going to have Yamashina turn out to be Soujiro's real father or some sappy slop like that.)
Thanks to everyone who read & reviewed any/all of the first five installments! I'm glad that people are showing a little interest in my work, and I hope to hear your thoughts on this section as well! Thanks for waiting! Viva Soujiro!!
That reminds me ... my Japanese is next to nonexistent. Don't fault me for it. At least I'm trying.
Happy reading!
ANTI-DISCLAIMER (would that be just a "claimer?"): Some of these characters ARE my own creation, as well as many elements of the setting; the town of Ichibou, Kim Young-eun, Karachi Hoebu, Yamashina Ito, Genji Taku, and several other minor characters are my own ideas. Use your head. If it never appeared in anywhere in the Kenshin series, then it's probably mine. Not that anyone cares but me.
SPOILERS/BACKGROUND: To Kenshin TV ep 61, "Remaining Ju Pon Gattana, Choice of Life."
* * * * *
CHAPTER 10:
THE IRON MINES
The plaza around the town hall of Ichibou was deserted. The guards had vanished, and there was not a single passerby in sight. Even the stars were still hidden from view. Soujiro immediately wondered at that; it was not all that late in the evening. Genji had probably ordered the area cleared during his escape, but that didn't explain why. It didn't matter, anyway.
Soujiro leapt lightly to the ground and scanned the area again. He was relieved to see a few passersby moving to and fro further down several of the streets leading away from the town hall; that probably meant that there weren't a few score of soldiers lying in ambush nearby. Maybe no one was near the town hall simply because no one wanted to talk to Senkaku. Soujiro couldn't blame them. More likely, Genji had told everyone, or had had the soldiers tell everyone, that the town hall was closed for the evening. Whatever the case, the few citizens that Soujiro could see were paying him and the town hall absolutely no mind whatsoever. Soujiro grinned wryly. *See no evil,* he thought sardonically. *Of course they don't want to think anything's wrong. If they did, they might feel they had to do something about it.*
The trek to the western gate was surprisingly uneventful. Soujiro stayed hidden simply on principle, but he saw very few watchmen or soldiers either stationed or patrolling. Most of them were simply ordinary town guards, no different than what he might have seen in Kyoto or any other town. There was no sign of Senkaku's soldiers or Yamashina's Yakuza agents. Most of the people he passed were just ordinary citizens scurrying from place to place. The sight of them actually irritated Soujiro slightly. His mind flashed back to the little Korean girl every time he looked at one of them; there was someone who was a more direct target of the corrupt, powerful figures in the town than any of these people, and yet she somehow managed to bear it more proudly than any of the nameless people that he passed. That was something that touched a deep nerve in Soujiro. That was something that commanded respect.
He had heard the western gate of Ichibou referred to as the Iron Gate, because the road that led out of it was a dead end, branching out into a number of small trails that led up to the entrance of the individual mineshafts. The main road itself, of course, ended at the mouth of the main entrance to the mines. Despite the fact that it was a dead end, however, the Iron Gate was the most secure of Ichibou's gates, because most of the workers at the mine were not there of their own accord, and anyone trying to escape would be forced to either come through the Iron Gate or scale nearly slopes so steep as to be suicide for inexperienced climbers. Thus it was at the Iron Gate that Soujiro met the first significant group of guards he had seen since arriving at the town hall.
Soujiro was not really interested in fighting at the moment, however. Well, that was not entirely true, but he was not interested in fighting gate guards. He had no doubt that he could take every last one of them, but he did not have time to waste on diversions. Playtime could wait.
Instead, he slipped along a northbound side street a block or two before reaching the small plaza in front of the Iron Gate. Once he had gone far enough north that the light from the gatehouse no longer reached the wall to the west, he turned his attention back to the wall. The western wall of Ichidou was in even worse disrepair than the southern one. There were footholds and crags everywhere, and they were easy to find even in the dark. Within moments, he was on top of the wall, and in the midst of a thick patch of shadow. Guards patrolled the top at odd intervals, but they were few and far between, and all of them carried torches that made them stand out long before they would be of any consequence. That was always one of the problems Soujiro had had with carrying torches; your enemies could see you long before you could see them.
Getting down on the other side of the wall was a little trickier. He was a good distance north of the gatehouse, so he was not looking at an effortless drop onto a smooth surface. Ichibou had been built on a hill, and so it was a longer drop on the far side, and much more uneven as well. If it had been the southern side, he would have attempted it here anyway, but the southern side of Ichibou fell onto a fairly gentle grassy slope. This was much steeper and rockier; it fell sharply away from Ichibou for almost fifty feet below the base of the wall. The land began to slope upward after that, following a small canyon into the hills, but that was a long way to jump onto uneven and unyielding stone. There was one soft spot in the rocky armor of the land below, however. Unfortunately, it was on the south side of the gatehouse.
The canyon that led into the hills and ultimately to Yamashina's iron mines had been formed by a small stream that had been diverted along the base of the wall. It flowed out of the canyon on the south side of the road, and then flowed south along the base of the wall after reaching the base of the wall. Soujiro knew that it had to have an outlet somewhere; very likely it was diverted under the wall at some point to be used in Yamashina's iron foundry, but this was of no consequence. The river looked more than deep enough to cushion the landing, if he could only get to it. There wasn't time to go back down into town, circumvent the gatehouse, and climb the wall on the other side, however. He was going to have to go through the gatehouse after all.
"Yare yare," he sighed to himself as he thumbed his sword free of its sheath.
He had no intention of taking down every soldier in the place. He had no doubt that he could have; he and Usui had both taken out larger and more professional groups than this before. However, he had no reason to waste time with them. They were not going to be able to catch him, and they wouldn't be able to do anything if they did. He didn't care if they sounded every alarm in the city and kept the entire village awake all night. He wasn't going to be sleeping much tonight, anyway.
He kept low to the ground, and stayed in the shadows of the outer parapet until he was so close to the gatehouse that the northern door was within striking range. There wasn't any decent shadow any closer than this, anyway. His eyes narrowed. It was close enough, and there were only two guards between him and the door of the gatehouse atop the wall. If he could get in and out of the gatehouse on the opposite side quickly, he might be away into the shadows on the far side before any of the guards not on the wall knew what was happening.
Of course, he had no intention of letting even those guards know, either.
Most of the best fighters Soujiro had seen, even ShiShiO, had a battle cry of some kind. Himura and Saitoh both did. Most of the rank and file amateurs that he had seen and fought did. Soujiro had never used one. He was a cold, silent, deadly wind descending upon the unsuspecting guards. Soujiro knew how to strike and keep the enemy from crying out. He hit both of them in the lungs simultaneously, one with the hilt of the Oh-waza-mono, one with the front of the sakaba. The breath left their lungs before the fact that they had been hit even reached their brains. The most either of them could manage was a startled gasp, and those were lost in the folds of their clothing as they collapsed like wet rags.
Moments later, Soujiro was inside the gatehouse. The upper level had only two more soldiers in it, both of which became instant target practice. One actually managed to get his sword halfway out of its sheath, though. Soujiro made a mental note to be more careful next time. He was getting soft.
He was already opening the door on the far side of the gatehouse before the two unconscious soldiers had even hit the floor. That was a failing of too many of the best samurai he had ever seen--they always seemed to want to stop and admire their work. The only men Soujiro had ever met who were capable of moving on after a strike the way he did had been Shishio and Usui. On the other hand, both of those were dead. That was a disquietingly morbid thought.
Apparently, he had not been quiet enough, or the guard outside had somehow sensed that something was amiss. There was only one, but he not only had a pistol drawn, but he also had a whistle already to his mouth. He blew it as soon as Soujiro came into view; the burst was cut abruptly short, but the damage had been done. The only shot the guard managed soared harmlessly into the stratosphere, as his arm was jerked upward as Soujiro knocked him backwards with the sakaba on his way by. Whistles began sounding and officers began shouting in the gatehouse behind him. Of course, by the time all the guards had drawn their weapons, Soujiro was already a long way south along the wall. The guards gave him even more time than necessary by preparing for an attack from the town for a few moments before they realized that none was coming.
As soon as Soujiro reached the point on the parapet where the mountain stream flowed into the base of the wall, he stopped for a quick breath. He smiled inwardly for a moment. He hated to admit it, but he had enjoyed that. Using a sakaba meant he could be a little less restrained and still not kill the guards; he was still not sure how well he was taking to Himura's pacifistic ways, but the sakaba was definitely a help. It also kept him alert, which could help keep him from getting rusty or complacent down the road. He could see why Himura was so attached to his. And the fun part was that, since he had not killed them, he could do it all over again on the way back.
*OK,* he thought sardonically, *Maybe I'm not COMPLETELY pacifistic. But they started it.*
He actually laughed softly as he vaulted over the outside edge of the wall and into the waiting waters below. He wondered what Yumi would have thought of that. She would never have believed that he hadn't killed them in the first place, of course, so she probably wouldn't have known what to say. ShiShiO probably would have broken the sakaba sword the moment he saw it.
The stream was not as deep as it looked, but Soujiro was light, and he knew how to break falls, even in the water. He had leapt from worse heights before. The water was colder than it looked, though, too. Fortunately, it was getting on into the summertime, so it was not frigid, even coming out of the mountains, and the summertime air outside was still fairly warm. Part of the reason he had come north for the summer was to avoid the sweltering heat of the plains to the south, but he was neither that far north nor that high into the mountains yet.
Soujiro quickly clambered out of the stream on the far side and started flitting up the rocky slopes into the canyon that led to Yamashina's iron mines. The breeze out of the mountains was chilly, but it was far from arctic, and it was dry. Soujiro figured that his clothes would be dry again long before he reached the mines, and cold had never seemed to bother him that much. He had never slept by a fireside twice in the same week as a child. The bitter cold of the night had become a part of him long before he had been old enough to realize exactly how cold that was.
He was already half a mile up the canyon before any torches even began to fan out from the gatehouse he had left behind. He was making good time, but they were still moving slower than they probably should. They were probably still trying to make sense of what had happened to them. Either that, or they were afraid he was still somewhere close by to them. Unlike them, he was not carrying torches to announce his presence.
It took him less than two hours to reach the iron mines. He was making good time; the road was empty, and though it was after nightfall, the cloud cover had parted, and the lights of the nocturnal sky were all he needed to find his footing. In addition, it wasn't as if the mines were hidden or anything; as soon as the canyon began to narrow, he began to hear the echoes from the miners' work dancing down the canyon walls to meet him. Furthermore, the road led right to the mines. It turned out to me more a question of which road to take, because at a certain point, the road began to split and head off to lesser mineshafts secluded in the rocks some distance away on either side of the road, close to the canyon walls. It was not that difficult to tell which road was the main one, however, and for lack of better direction, Soujiro decided to stick with the main road for now.
Soon afterwards, Soujiro came into sight of what had to be the main mine entrance. The canyon ended suddenly in a steep, rocky slope, the top of which was nearly high enough to be considered outside the foothills. The mountain stream eddied forth from an opening high in the stone slope; it was not quite a waterfall, because the canyon's end was not quite vertical, but it was close enough. The bottom of the cataract had been hollowed out, apparently partly by men and partly by nature, to form a large pool up against the bottom of the incline. And on the north side of the pool, the main road ended in a large, gaping hole into the hillside. Enough fires burned around it to call it to Soujiro's attention long before he was close enough to make out the details of the cataract. In fact, there was practically a small village around the mine entrance. Actually, it was more like a military camp.
As Soujiro got closer, he was able to make out at least a dozen buildings, one of which was almost as big as Yamashina Ironworks back in Ichibou. It was probably a smelting center, where the iron was extracted from the raw ore. Two of the others were probably barracks, and two more were probably warehouses, if the number of supply wagons at their immense doors said anything. The others, though, had to be prison buildings. They were surrounded by a high wooden stockade and guarded even at this hour, when most of their inhabitants were probably being put to work in the mines. Soujiro's blood began to simmer again at the thought, but he forced the heat down.
There were guards at the perimeter of the mining camp, but he realized with a start as he got closer that they were barely paying him any attention at all. Their primary purpose, he realized, was not to keep hostile people out, but to keep them in. If those prison buildings were full, then there were probably over a hundred people here that didn't really want to be.
Eventually, they noticed him, but Soujiro was not really making any pretense at hiding. A small shout went up, but Soujiro made no move at drawing his sword yet. There were only eight or so this far out, but there were more closer to the camp. He guessed that these guards were more runners than fighters; there were four horses picketed nearby, a short distance off the road. If a riot ensued among the camp prisoners, they would be sent to get reinforcements from among the guards at the other shafts Soujiro had passed, while the guards further in did what they could to contain them.
"Konnichiha!" Soujiro called. He decided to take a gamble. "Anou ..." He was going to have to swallow his pride for a moment, but he made a mental note to collect the bill for it later. "Is this the way to find Genji-sama? This is my first time in the mountains." Emotions or no emotions, he almost choked over the "sama."
The guards relaxed slightly. "Messenger, huh?" said one.
"Must be from Senkaku. He always sends little boys," said another.
"Hai," Soujiro agreed quickly, not wanting to start a fight. Yet.
Those guards that had slid their swords partly free of their scabbards replaced them. "He should be somewhere around the mine entrance."
"And watch your step, kid," one of the others added. "He just got here a couple of hours ago, and he looked pissed as hell over something. Just watch what you say."
"Arigatou," Soujiro said as he continued on. *I hadn't planned on doing much talking, anyway,* he thought as he continued through the denser inner circle of guards a few hundred feet further away. None of them seemed to take any notice of him. Incoming traffic was not their responsibility, and Soujiro kept his face low, to prevent anyone from getting too good a look at his face. He still thought it odd that no one asked more questions than they did, and no one seemed to take any notice of his swords, but he decided to take what he was given. It was going to turn interesting if they had a trap planned for him.
*I hope they try something,* he found himself saying to himself. ShiShiO had developed a special affinity for escaping traps after surviving the betrayal by his former employers. He had whittled it down to both a science and an art, and had passed much of that affinity along to Soujiro. ShiShiO had knowingly walked into traps dozens of times since that fiery night, enjoying the satisfaction of catching the spiders in their own webs.
As Soujiro drew further and further into the camp, there came to be more and more guards. There had to be at least sixty of them all told. He stayed in the deepest patches of shadow that he could find, but he was trusting more to the darkness of night and to keeping his distance from the roaming soldiers than actually hiding. There wasn't much good cover here. It had probably been cleared and flattened as much as possible as soon as a prison had been erected in the area.
Soujiro took a route that led around the rear of the stockade around the prison buildings. There were simply too many guards at the front. At least half of the guards in the camp were either stationed at the front gate of the prison complex, or were within sight of it. Even more were within hearing. There were no egresses from within the camp in the back, so it was much less watched. He could hear the voiceless sounds of people suffering inside, but he could not afford to blindly rush in and reveal his presence. He would probably only succeed in getting a lot of people hurt, excluding the ones that he intended to hurt himself. The only guards that could see him now were those that were a good way off and protecting other places that just happened to be within sight. There weren't more than three, save for those at the mine entrance itself, and he didn't stand out at this distance.
The entrance to the mine was less than three hundred yards away now, and Soujiro had a good look at it. He was cloaked in the shadow of the wall, so they had absolutely no chance of seeing him. However, he could not make out any sign of Genji, either. He might not be able to pick out the man's face at this distance, but he should have been able to pick out something simply by the way people would act around him. He was some kind of captain, after all.
Suddenly, from on the other side of the prison complex wall, Soujiro heard the sound of people shouting, and heard a familiar voice cry out in pain and defiance.
"Bastard!" the voice rang out. "Don't you ever come this close to me again! Guards or no guards, I'll keep your spleen as a trophy!" The tirade was cut off in a muffled grunt, accompanied by the sounds of several men laughing.
"Ukita-san!" Soujiro's eyes widened. Then they narrowed again. "OK, plan's changed," he hissed to himself, coiling himself and drving himself upward into the starry darkness.
He could have cleared the stockade, but he chose not to; he landed softly on top of it, his feet settling effortlessly between the wooden spikes on top of it as though it were a polished wooden floor. His eyes quickly came to rest on two figures twenty feet apart, one of them being held upright by two burly men on either side of him. Ukita had taken a beating, that was plain, but the fire in his eyes was as bright as ever. Standing across from him him was the half-crazed Shinsen reject that had so recently and unexpectedly burst his way free of the town hall.
Soujiro was glad he had taken the short stop on the top of the stockade. That allowed him to add that much extra height to his next jump, and to line it up correctly.
He did not jump straight for Genji, though he dearly wanted to. However, he was not that incautious, and he had not practiced attacking from high in the air nearly as much as the Battousai had. His aerial attack was nowhere near the strength of the Ryu Tsui Sen. He was used to jump attacks off of walls, but not coming straight down at opponents' heads. So he wasn't about to risk it on Genji. On the other hand, the four men holding Ukita were another matter.
Soujiro was at least two and a half times the height of the wall off the ground before he began his downward plunge.
"Aoi Denkou Ryu," he called as he closed in on them. "Go Gufuu-no-Batsu!" (1)
They looked up at the last minute, but all they ever saw was a dark sihouette plunging straight for them, seeming to come straight out of the moon. Two of them fell immediately, and the impact jarred Ukita loose from the hands of his captors. Ukita went sprawling, and his left arm was roughed up a little bit, but Soujiro had a feeling that he didn't mind, and if he hadn't knocked the man away, one of the other guards might have put a blade into the blacksmith's ribs. The two other men that had been holding him were knocked back, but stayed on their feet.
"Ukita-san!" Soujiro called as the ex-Ishin began to pick himself up off the ground. "Catch!" Still on his hands and knees at the time, Ukita managed to get one hand into the air long enough to catch what Soujiro had sent in his direction. His eyes widened, and he gasped.
"Oh-waza-mono ...?" he whispered, almost reverently.
Soujiro was not in a sentimental mood at the moment, however, and his attention was already turning to Genji. "You take those two!" Soujiro shouted at the blacksmith. He squared himself to face Genji. "This one's mine."
* * * * *
CHAPTER 11:
ANGERING THE TENKEN
Genji slid his sword free of its sheath with an almost maniacal grin. "You've got guts, boy." He raised his sword in Soujiro's direction, adopting an offensive stance. "Let's see what they look like." There was no more posturing or wordplay. With those words, Genji lunged to the attack.
Soujiro dodged the first thrust and parried the second, but they kept coming. Soujiro's eyes widened. It was six strokes into the fight before the man finally left an opening. Darts weren't the only weapon he had mastered. Even the opening he left wasn't that much; all he allowed Soujiro to do was jam Genji's sword downward, bruising his wrist. It made the man a little more cautious, though.
"Well well," he sneered. "You're not as weak as you look."
"Arigatou," Soujiro answered.
Genji lunged at him again, and once again another furious flurry of blows followed before Soujiro could get in a lick. This time he got a little better of an opening, but Genji was quicker than he looked; what should have been a hard crack on the back of Genji's left thigh turned into a minor scratch. Genji was clearly annoyed that none of his shots were getting through; Soujiro simply smiled and let the irritation build. Soujiro was moving just fast enough to keep away from Genji's sword. He didn't want to give Genji a chance to rest, and if the man thought that he almost had him, he wouldn't back down to catch a breath. Eventually, he would make a mistake, or if he did back down, it would mean that he needed a breath--and then Soujiro could become a little more aggressive.
Genji was using a rare style that Soujiro had never seen in action before; he was certain he had heard of it somehow, because it looked familiar somehow, but he usually remembered the fighting styles of just about any skilled fighters he had ever fought, and this one was not something he had faced in person before. Soujiro was somewhat puzzled by it, but it was not the time for thinking now.
Several more quick bouts followed, usually ending with Soujiro scoring a minor scrape or bruise on Genji before the other readjusted. The best he managed was a crash on Genji's upper arm, where he caught Genji's sword with his own and pushed it into the man's shoulder.
Eventually, Genji pulled back, but his breathing did not seem out of control yet. Frustration was beginning to boil in his eyes now, but there was a crafty glint in those orbs as well. *He's not out of tricks yet,* Soujiro thought. Quickly, Soujiro pressed and darted back into the fray, not wanting to give him any opportunity to bring any of those darts to bear, if that was what he was hiding.
Genji backed down before Soujiro's attack, noticeably more defensive now than earlier. He had not lost any confidence, however, and Soujiro did not buy into it as a defensive stand by a wearying warrior. Sure enough, moments later, he was validated.
Soujiro pounced when Genji apparently gave him an opening, sending the man reeling back. His arms apparently flew up above his head to steady himself. At the last second before Soujiro would have moved in for a finishing blow, he pulled back. Suddenly, Genji's blade came at Soujiro again, from behind his head ... and in his left hand. Soujiro pulled back even more and twisted his sword around to block the blow, and succeeded in stopping the man from driving the blade through his shoulder, but nonetheless suffered a small incision just below his right shoulder.
Soujiro flinched, and cursed himself for not reading the man better, but he did not intend to miss this opening. This was the real opening in the Kouji no Jutsu (2). He had Genji caught with his sword in his left hand and his arm overextended. Since he was already in close and underneath Genji, he simply slipped in and drove the hilt of his sword into Genji's armpit; it was too close range for work with the blade itself. He was not finished, however. At the same time, he planted his left foot in Genji's stomach and spun himself skyward. His right foot came up and clocked the Shinsen reject hard under the chin. Genji staggered backwards and almost fell on his back; he caught himself with one hand and quickly clambered back to his feet, returning his sword to its proper hand.
"Where's Young-eun?" Soujiro demanded.
Genji snarled a string of choice obscenities at him that reminded Soujiro of his former Ju Pon Gattana comrade, Cho. As he did, he quickly set himself into the familiar stance of the Gatotsu. Soujiro deliberately gave him his most innocent expression, as though he had no idea what was coming. If the man was determined to be thickheaded, Soujiro wasn't about to stop him.
"You're dead, Seta!" Genji shouted as he lunged.
The man was clearly trying to do his best imitation of Saitoh, and the man was fairly quick, but he was far out of control as he closed on Soujiro, and his momentum would not allow him to change direction. Almost contemptuously, Soujiro stepped to the inside the attack and parried it outward; at the same time, he simply raised his sheath in front of him and held it there. Genji was going too fast to stop, and the tip of the sheath crashed straight into Genji's nose. Genji's feet flew out from under him, and he crashed to the earth.
Soujiro actually grinned. "No wonder they wouldn't let you in," he laughed.
Once again, he knew he had pushed the right button. Genji let out a terrifying howl of anger, and threw himself off the ground at Soujiro. Even from a prone position, the strength behind the attack was so fierce that it knocked Soujiro back a stride, though there was no danger of it connecting; it was a wild shot, and Soujiro was more than ready for it.
Genji was on his feet again, and the anger was so visible in his eyes that they practically glowed red. "I don't know who you are, or why Yamashina wanted you dead the moment he heard your name, but if you have such a deathwish anyway, I'll be happy to oblige." His eyes blazed in anger.
Suddenly, Soujiro felt a stiffness coming over his limbs. He tried to move into action, but found that he was only going slower than most normal soldiers. The sudden stiffness brought his focus out of the fight enough to realize that there were even more soldiers in the prison complex yard now, and that only half weere standing around to watch the fight. The rest were pursuing Ukita, though the man looked as if he could actually handle himself against the group. He had backed into a doorway where they could only come at him from the front, and at most two at a time, but he had trapped himslf by doing so. Soujiro swore an inward oath. At first, he thought that Genji had somehow slipped a poison dart into him in the thick of the fighting and that he had somehow missed it. Then it dawned on him that this attack wasn't physical in the slightest, and his eyes widened in surprise. That blaze in Genji's eyes right before the stiffness came ...
Genji was already in the Gatotsu stance again, and a maniacal grin split his face. "Poor, pathetic boy," he chuckled evilly. "It's a shame, though. I would have liked for you to be alive when I sink my hands into that soft flesh of hers. As soon as Yamashina-sama's done with her, of course. Of course, I'll probably be a little rougher than him. Do you think she likes it that way?"
For the second time this month, raw anger burned its way to the surface of Soujiro's mind. With a burst of passion and rage, Soujiro shook off the stiffness that had settled over him. A scream of anger burst loose from his mouth. More than that, it burst loose from his heart. So much for fighting in silence. Genji lunged with the Gatotsu, but it was too late.
Suddenly, however, Genji propelled himself to one side in mid-attack. Soujiro quickly turned in that direction, wondering what on earth the man was doing; he had actually put more distance between himself and Soujiro, and he skidded to a stop when he landed. Soujiro puzzled over that for a moment. It took an incredible amount of effort to break off the Gatotsu early, and Soujiro was less ready for that one than for the last one. Nonetheless, Soujiro did not counterattack. He was still wondering about the last attack Genji had used. Things were starting to come into focus. The off-hand attack. The partial insanity. And the attack of pure spirit. Not just everyone could use that technique.
"Shin no Ippou," Soujiro breathed wonderingly. "Your cousin ... the loose cannon ... you're Udo Jin-e's cousin!"
Meanwhile, Genji was almost beside himself with both frustration and amazement. He set himself coldly into the second stance of the Gatotsu, but he did not lunge yet. "Of course," he grated. "I was at least as good as he was, even being five years younger, but they took him and not me. I worked as hard as I could ever since I was seven to be one of them, and they turned me down because of someone I barely knew."
"Your techniques are almost the same," Soujiro noted.
"We had the same sensei in Kyoto," Genji replied, "but we never attended the same classes. That was until Jin-e killed him, of course. He thought that sensei was teaching me secrets that he never revealed to him, and that was enough for a death sentence. He couldn't accept the fact that I just learned faster, and worked harder."
"But they turned you away because of him anyway," Soujiro ended. *No wonder he's pissed,* he thought to himself.
"You're getting the idea," Genji responded. "But I've talked enough. That aura won't hold me back this time." With that, he sprang at Soujiro again, trying the second stance of the Gatotsu. Nonetheless, Soujiro was so out of focus for a moment that he almost didn't get set for his counter. *Aura?* he thought as he flowed into motion.
Soujiro had seen Genji's technique before, though, and ShiShiO had taught him how to counter all of them. ShiShiO had fought more than plenty of the Shinsen Gumi during the Bakumatsu, and had seen almost every trick in their books. Of course, as he was fond of saying, they didn't have many.
The secret of the Gatotsu's second stance was the changing angle of the attack, which made it difficult to block successfully, because it could slip around all but the best of parries. Soujiro knew that ShiShiO could stop it cold, but Soujiro had a different counter, drawing on the Shuku-chi. It was time to let that out of the bag, anyway. The man was clearly running out of tricks. Soujiro blurred into action, nearly fading from sight as he blocked the blow. He actually parried the lethal thrust twice in the same instant, once to trigger the change of direction, and once to use that change to throw Genji off-balance and spin him away. Soujiro was surprised that the man even stayed on his feet, but it was plain that Soujiro had disoriented him, at least for a moment. Of course, since Soujiro had not set himself completely correctly for the attack, it took him a precious moment to regain his balance as well, or he could have stepped in for a counterattack there. Nonetheless, it was clear that Genji had taken the worse of the exchange.
"Tenken Ryu," Soujiro announced coldly. "Meimei Shubi." (3)
"Tenken Ryu, eh?" Genji growled. "You fight with two different styles? What's the difference between the Tenken Ryu and your Blue Lightning Style?" (4)
An emotionless smile crept across Soujiro's face. "I thought you'd never ask," he said, as he slid the sakaba back into its sheath and adopted the Battou stance.
"So you want to get serious," Genji answered with a wicked grin. "Getting angry are we?"
"No," Soujiro answered calmly. "Getting tired."
The anger welled up in Genji's eyes again. "Then I'll be happy to put you to sleep, Seta," he snarled, readying his sword to attack again.
Soujiro closed his eyes for a moment. He would know if Genji sprang at him, but he needed to clear his mind. The last time he had tried this, he had ended up flying through the air, complements of the Battousai's succession technique. The Battousai's words before that final blow came back to him.
"Yes, very fitting," he heard Himura-san say. "It deserves the name. But can you do it with your emotions in turmoil?" Himura-san had then proved that he couldn't. But Soujiro was wiser now. Furthermore, Genji was not the Battousai. And he had just pissed off the Tenken.
Soujiro called up memories of the previous evening, the evening with Young-eun on the roof of the blacksmith's home. He had felt awkward there, but he had also been calm. Even with the guard on his emotions partially down, he had been calm. That was what he needed here. The anger slowly faded into the back of his mind, and his muscles relaxed.
"You've been a worthy opponent, Seta Soujiro," Genji called. "One of the best I've ever faced. But you'll have to be more than good to survive the Nikaido Heiho succession technique." He shifted his stance forward slightly, and his sword dipped aggressively. "Kaiten Hadou!" (5) He was moving forward as soon as the last word crossed his lips.
Soujiro felt the grip of the Shin no Ippou clench at him again, but this time he was ready for it, and he shook it off with a furious cry. Too late, Genji realized that the Kaiten Hadou had been compromised.
"Shun," Soujiro hissed as he dipped into the Battou stance again and planted his foot behind him.
"Ten," he cried as vanished from human eyes, unleashing the full speed of the Shuku-chi to crush the distance between him and the samurai Genji, who was already helplessly off the ground and in the midst of his rotating attack, his back to Soujiro.
"Satsu!" he cried as he struck.
The Shun Ten Satsu did not normally have the upward force nor the impact that Himura's Ama-Kakeru, Ryu-no-Hirameki did, but Genji was already in the air. Thus, what should have been a powerful upward slash into a more balanced opponent's chest instead crashed into the base of Genji's spine while the man was in midair.
The result looked almost exactly like Soujiro had just pulled the Ama-Kakeru, Ryu-no-Hirameki himself. Genji went flying and tumbling high over Soujiro's shoulder with a loud groan. His sword flew from his grasp, and Soujiro quickly kicked it away in the opposite direction.
Only then did the guards that had been gathering reenter Soujiro's awareness. They had been standing clear of the battle, terrified to step in. They did not seem to be any more daring even now, and when Soujiro readied his sword for battle again, at least half of them backed up a step, though.
The sounds of fighting still rang out in the yard, however, as Ukita Shimiro still held on for his life in the doorway of the tiny storage shed in corner of the yard. Soujiro was impressed; no fewer than seven guards lay either dead or wounded around the door. Soujiro could see that Ukita had not had as easy a time of it as he or Himura-san would have. He was both getting tired and fighting hurt.
Immediately, Soujiro charged the circle of guards, and they gave way before him. A moment later, he was upon the guards still clustered around the door of the storage shed; there were only five of them left by this point, and only one of them looked back in time to see him.
Shots began to ring out behind him by the time he got to the fifth and last of Ukita's remaining assailants.
"Can you run?" Soujiro asked.
A renewed spirit entered Ukita's eyes. Soujiro guessed that the man had to have been pretty good in his youth; now that he had been fighting for a little bit, his long-dormant battle aura was beginning to make itself known again. There was still fire behind those eyes.
"Can I run? Why run when you can fly?" he asked, stepping forward, turning, and springing onto the roof of the storage shed. From there, he turned and sprang up and over the wall. Soujiro hoped that he knew how far down it was on the other side, but Soujiro wasted no time in following. Shots rang and ricocheted off the stones around him, but none found their mark; one came close, tearing through the bottom of his sleeve, but none bit flesh.
Soujiro landed only inches from Ukita.
"Easy, lad," the samurai replied. Soujiro made a mental note that he would try not to think of him as a blacksmith anymore, regardless of whether he was holding a sword or a hammer.
"Where is she?" Soujiro asked.
Ukita was already running towards the perimeter of the came. "Come on!" he shouted.
"Wait!" Soujiro cried. "We can't leave her here!"
"She's not here!" Ukita called back. "She's with him!"
Soujiro understood. Genji had said something along the same lines, and Soujiro had somewhat suspected that she would not have been sent to the mines, or at least not kept there. Yamashina had shown too much interest in her to be after a mine worker. If what Genji had said was true ... angrily, he pushed the thought away, allowing his emotions to fade into the silence of his inner consciousness again.
Soujiro desperately wanted to push the pace, but Ukita was going as fast as he could, and Ukita had taken far worse of a beating than Soujiro had. Almost of the guards had converged on the prison complex, however, so the perimeter was nearly unguarded. The only guards remaining were the four with horses, who would be sent in the incident of a major riot.
"Can you ride a horse?" Soujiro asked as they drew near to the remaining guards. They had come forward from their horses slightly, their weapons drawn, sensing that something was amiss but not realizing exactly who the two people coming toward them were.
"Of course," Ukita replied. Soujiro was a little offended by that. What did he mean, of course? No one had ever taught him to ride. That was the one thing ShiShiO knew that he refused to teach Soujiro. ShiShiO himself only rode because he would never expect Yumi to walk, and because the effort of walking irritated his burns. He had never ridden during his days with the Ishin Shishi.
Soujiro decided to worry about that later. Quickly, he dispatched the guards around the picketed horses, and then quickly cut the lines of the one horse that seemed to be taking all of the fighting around him in stride. The other three were clearly getting agitated. Of course, even the last one seemed to get a little antsy when Soujiro started swinging his sword around near his throat.
"Here, let me handle him," Ukita offered, and Soujiro quickly backed away. Within moments, Ukita was mounted, and though the horse whickered uneasily under him, it made no move to pitch him off. "Come on," Ukita said, offering Soujiro a hand.
Soujiro shook his head. "I'll keep up, trust me." Ukita looked at him askance.
"If there's trouble, I need to be on the ground," Soujiro replied. "I can't fight from horseback."
"OK, but if I start going too fast, just give me a yell."
Soujiro actually laughed. He did not believe there was any such thing as too fast. "Same to you," he answered lightly as he took off down the rocky canyon road.
Soujiro and Ukita's horse kept slowing down and speeding up until eventually they managed to get in sync with one another at a brisk trot. Soujiro could have gone faster, but he didn't want to risk the horse getting either tired or injured, and he wanted enough breath to talk as he ran.
"What happened?" he asked as soon as he was comfortably able.
"They brought us both here," Ukita answered. "But then they separated us, and I didn't see her until she was leaving. Yamashina came to pick her up himself. I only got to see her from a distance, and the only thing she got to say to me before they took her away was, 'I'm sorry.' She didn't even sound like she meant it, though."
"Nani?!" (6)
"Not like that!" Ukita called back earnestly. "I mean, she didn't sound like anything. It was like an icicle talking."
*Like a star,* Soujiro thought to himself.
"I mean no offense, but you probably didn't help, either."
"Sumimasen?" Soujiro answered, though he guessed that he knew what Ukita was about to say, and he was right.
"You got through to her," Ukita answered. "If things had gone any other way, I could have thanked you for that more than anything I've been grateful for since my wife was alive. But when they came that night, she was more vulnerable than she had been in years. They came only minutes after you left. I didn't get a chance to talk to her much after that, but I think the strain ... I think something snapped in her. I don't know. I don't know how to explain it."
"I think I may know what you're talking about," Soujiro answered. His tone was neutral, even light, but his mood was grim. He had hurt, even killed, a lot of people, but he had never before hurt someone that he had not intended to get hurt. Soujiro wondered if Himura-san's life was ever this complex. If this was part of a rurouni's job description, Soujiro was already thinking about early retirement.
However, he had gotten her into this, so it was his responsibility to get her out. That much he was sure of; that much came from both ShiShiO and Himura. The idea of leaving a job unfinished would have infuriated ShiShiO to his very core. "If you start it, finish it," ShiShiO was fond of saying. "The pathetic government is full of people who start things and never finish them, leaving the country to clean up their mess." Himura would have simply said that Young-eun-chan needed protection. As Himura's friend had burst out at ShiShiO's headquarters, Himura had made it his life's mission to protect the weak and helpless.
That was all very well ... Soujiro had not entirely bought into Himura's protective philosophy, but he was starting to understand it, at least ... but the thought triggered another thought in the back of Soujiro's mind. The weak and helpless.
His mind drifted back to that long-ago rainy night when everything had collapsed for him. Soujiro had been been in a state of almost continual depression, deprived of food or sleep or warmth night in and night out. Then a new face had appeared in his life, a man whose words gave him a faint spark of hope, a hope of being strong someday. Less than a day later, Soujiro's family had tried to kill him. Soujiro had put up with a lot of abuse from them over the years, and had become used to them hurting him. He had known that they were not nice people. Nevertheless, the trauma of someone actually wanting to kill him was simply too much for someone so young. Before ShiShiO had arrived, Soujiro might have simply laid down and died. He had never attached much importance to his own life. But ShiShiO had given him just the faintest spark of a dream for the future. So Soujiro had not given up, not so soon after allowing a small spark to bloom inside himself. Instead, he had ... as Ukita put it ... snapped.
Soujiro was not a complete idiot, nor did he completely forget the past. Physically, Young-eun had been conditioned by long hours of work at multiple jobs, one of them in a blacksmith's smithy. Emotionally, she had suffered over many years; he had not suffered completely alone in the way that Soujiro had, but Ukita was apparently her only support, and Young-eun constantly had to watch him getting weaker and weaker, wondering when her last support would crumble. Mentally, she had clearly been feeling depressed and withdrawn from society; even at the Red House, the people who made lewd remarks about her somehow felt pushed away from her if they ever sought to approach her. She had not had a friend to her house in years. And Soujiro had just recently entered her life and given her a chance to hope, had put fuel in the fireplace, so to speak. Less than a day later, her worst fears were realized, and at the one moment when she had felt better than she had in years.
It had not been the inspirational sword master that had done the killing that rainy night, however. ShiShiO had simply stood back and watched. It had been a smiling eight-year-old boy. The result had been a cadre of bodies staring lifelessly at the stormy sky, and one little boy still standing with a wakizashi in his little hand. The result had been the birth of the Tenken.
As Soujiro trotted on alongside the blacksmith's mount, he kept casting looks at the diamonds of the night sky. Cold. Distant. Dark. An uneasiness began to grow in the back of his mind, a feeling that the girl he intended to rescue from the Yakuza overlord might not be anyone he knew.
* * * * *
(1) Attack of the Cold Hurricane
(2) Lure Technique
(3) Invisible Defense
(4) Aoi Denkou Ryu
(5) Whirling Burst
(6) What?!
COMING SOON: Chapter 12, "The Stronghold," and Chapter 13, "Past and Passion." As before, this is a tentative itenerary, and I'm not completely sure how and where I want to end this, but the end is indeed approaching.
My sincerest apologies for how late this is in coming! I wrote the first five installments in less time than it took me to write this one from the last, but college is starting to keep me very busy. I promise I'll get it finished, though.
Ukita is in no position to help in penetrating Yamashina's palace, so Soujiro will enter Yamashina's inner demesne alone. Fortunately, Young-eun is not that difficult to find; unfortunately, Yamashina doesn't exactly feel like letting her go. Yamashina's bag of surprises is nearly limitless, and his fighting style is unique and powerful. Furthermore, Yamashina knows a lot more about Soujiro than Soujiro knows about him. Yamashina and Soujiro have more in common than Soujiro would have guessed.
(Don't worry, I'm not going to have Yamashina turn out to be Soujiro's real father or some sappy slop like that.)
Thanks to everyone who read & reviewed any/all of the first five installments! I'm glad that people are showing a little interest in my work, and I hope to hear your thoughts on this section as well! Thanks for waiting! Viva Soujiro!!