House of Maxwell Productions
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Samurai Banzai RELOAD

Volume 1 (Overture - Chapter 5)
Children of Destiny

Based on the webcomic Samurai Banzai
Copyright 2005 Briana Higgins

Prelude

The ice-cold rain fell in ferocious sheets from the total darkness that enveloped the sky. Wide plains of long grass swept back and forth in the night as the wind blew through the nearby hills, howling like a maddened beast. Despite the overwhelming presence of the harsh winter storm, rapid footfalls echoed in the distance.

Tanizaki Izumi felt as if her body was sinking further into the ground with every step. The heavy rain coupled with gale-force winds battered against her thin black clothes as she ran full-tilt into a rocky outcropping overlooking the plains. Sheltered for the moment, she swept a lock of jet black hair out of her eyes and desperately hoped that she had outrun her pursuer.

Everything had gone wrong. The target was supposed to be some drunken half-witted ronin accompanied by a comparatively skilled swordswoman. Keeping that in mind, Izumi had waited until the absence of the swordswoman before making an attempt on the ronin's life. That encounter had been . . .

Izumi's eyes involuntarily widened in the near total darkness. She remembered each stroke of that battle because each one had nearly killed her. That ronin . . . he was some kind of madman . . .

>>>

"Takashi!"

Noriko's voice, though quite loud when she decided to use it, was all but silenced by the raging tempest.

"Takashi! Where are you!"

She was soon forced to bow down before the heavy rains, her straw hat failing miserably as a makeshift umbrella. It was no use. Wherever Takashi was out there, Noriko wasn't about to risk her life looking for him. He was a former samurai, after all. Surely he knew how to find shelter during a rainstorm.

Noriko suddenly realized that she herself possessed no viable protection from the torrential weather. She and Takashi had chased the ninja quite a distance from Hokusei Town. Getting back was out of the question; Noriko doubted even her own impeccable sense of direction when hampered by this kind of weather.

"Samurai-san!"

The voice was faint but definitely there. Noriko turned to see an elderly man standing outside a farmer's house.

"Samurai-san! You must take shelter!"

Walking calmly through the rain towards the glow of a fireplace inside the house, Noriko stopped just before entering. The elderly farmer looked up at her with great impatience displayed on his grizzled face.

"What are you waiting for? You'll catch your death out here!"

Noriko nodded. "My thanks to you."

>>>

Izumi knew what she had to do now. Failure was not an option. First, she would wait for the storm to pass, then renew her mission. She grimaced slightly at the storm raging just outside the shallow cave she had found. That attack on Ueda Takashi was sloppy. She had underestimated the target and paid the price in efficiency. Such mistakes could no longer exist for the Iga clan. Things had been bad enough since the clan's near-total defeat at the hands of Nobunaga Oda. They would now need a spotless record of success to regain their former business. Of course, if that were not motivation enough for a ninja on assignment, the penalty for returning to the Iga Castle in failure was death.

A strange feeling crept into Izumi as she sat down to rest. She had long ago learned to separate her personal feelings from her profession, but she harbored another reason to fight for the revival the Iga clan. A wistful look crossed her young face as she gazed into the torn night sky. If the Iga clan dies, she thought as pain lanced through her side where the ronin had struck her with the flat of his blade. Images flashed through the ninja's mind, images of a time long since past when she and her sister had been nothing but lowly beggars in the streets. Megumi . . . I won't let it happen again . . .

The sound of a footstep outside the cave brought Izumi to her feet faster than one would think humanly possible. The ronin? How could he have . . .

There was no time to think. In the breadth of a second, Izumi made a mad dash for the cave entrance. At her breakneck speed, there was no time to dodge the shadowy figure that materialized out of the falling rain. The butt of a sword scabbard rammed into Izumi's midsection with a force that blew the wind out of the female ninja and redoubled the pain in her side. Pain was nothing, however; Izumi had to escape or all that she had done would be for naught. Breathless, she rebalanced and lunged for the exit.

Somehow, Izumi found herself unable to take another step. Something was wrong. Her leg wasn't moving. The ninja's wet body hit the hard ground with a slap. She slowly turned her head to discover a sliver of sheer white bone sticking out of her right calf. As deep red blood gurgled from the wound, the pain hit her all at once forcing a scream out of the ninja's lungs that soon turned into a hoarse croak from lack of air. Even with ninja training, this pain was beyond anything Izumi had experienced and completely immobilized her.

She quickly swallowed the shock of the wound as the tip of the ronin's scabbard struck the ground next to her ear. Izumi looked up into the dark eyes of Ueda Takashi as he knelt in front of her. They looked cold and black as the night outside; his tanned face was cemented in the visage of a killer. Izumi knew that look well. It was the same expression that an Iga ninja gave to an opponent who was going to die, if the opponent even got the chance to see the ninja's face.

Realizing that the ronin did not intend to end her life at this particular moment in time, Izumi painstakingly pulled herself into a crouch that leaned heavily to the left. Takashi stayed in the same position; his hand lay relaxed on the handle of his katana but ready to strike at any moment. Izumi had just managed to get the weight off of her injured leg when the ronin's voice flatly questioned her.

"Who sent you?"

Izumi winced at the sharp pain that continued to shoot through her leg, glaring at the ronin in defiance. "Kill me or leave."

Takashi's hand trembled warily on the katana. "Answer me first."

Izumi looked hard at the swordsman. Takashi's eyes were not those of a fool. He must know that sparing her life would result in the eventual loss of his own. That only left one remaining destiny for the female ninja. If Izumi had to choose between dying with or without honor, the choice was clear.

"I shall not reveal our client's identity. Kill me if you must, but believe me when I say that I will not be the last to seek your life. The Iga clan has changed since its confrontation with the Oda. They will kill you, even if it takes every last ninja to do so."

Takashi leaned right into her face. "Is that supposed to scare me? Tell me who sent you and I'll alleviate your clan of their task in the simplest way I can!"

Izumi responded with a ball of saliva to the ronin's face while her left hand toyed with her obi. This Takashi was hesitant to kill her, and that was all a skilled kunoichi needed.

Takashi wiped the offending mess from his face and yelled, "Answer me, now!"

Izumi smiled. "Go to hell!"

The smoke bombs on Izumi's belt exploded and immediately filled the cave in a roiling cascade of black mist. Takashi felt the ninja disappear from in front of him like wind. He slashed at the air wildly a few times before the smoke settled. Izumi was nowhere in sight. The ronin sighed and slid his katana back into a matching sheath that had been secured to the obi on his left side. There was no point in tracking the ninja now. Rocky ground didn't yield footprints in heavy rain, not even clumsy ones made by a ninja with a broken leg. Takashi made his way out of the cave and down the slope towards a farmhouse he had seen earlier, untying his topknot of black hair more out of frustration than functionality. That encounter in Hokusei Town had been far too close. Despite the fact that he had eventually defeated the ninja, Takashi could still feel the rapid beat of fear in his chest. In a way, he knew it was only natural, but truthfully, he was ashamed of his anxiety.

"Funny how it is," the ronin thought aloud. "Wonder why my life's worth so much all of a sudden?"

>>>

Noriko squeezed the last drops of rainwater out of her medium-length black hair and began reforming it back into the functional style she usually kept it in. The elderly farmer secured the front door to his humble abode and turned to the girl with a warm smile.

"There's no need for formal thanks to a peasant like me, samur-" The man paused upon looking at Noriko without the hat and cloak that normally covered her feminine features, green kimono, and gray hakama pants. "Oh, you're a woman."

Noriko all but scowled in the warm light of the fire as she replaced the white ribbon that held her hair in place. "So, no more 'samurai-san', huh?"

The farmer chuckled heartily as he knelt on a straw mat beside a table that had been set for a modest soup-based dinner. "I've never heard of any female samurai, but you are still welcome as a guest in my house." Noticing the sour look that lingered on Noriko's face, he added, "Is it normal for a woman to be journeying alone in the traveling clothes of a samurai with a katana at her side? You can't blame me for making a mistake."

Noriko finished with her hair and was about to reply when a sharp knock rattled the wood-framed door. The farmer stroked his medium-length white beard and creased his wrinkled brow.

"Who is it now, so late in the evening?"

"The former servant of a great feudal lord." a young man's voice replied from beyond the door. "Feeds me, or I shall shamelessly die on your doorstep as a testament to your inconsiderate . . ." There was a pause. "-ness."

Noriko almost smiled at hearing it. "That's my traveling companion. Would you mind too terribly if he came in as well, sir? We can leave if you wish."

"Nonsense." the farmer succinctly responded as he undid the latch on the door just in time to let the sopping wet ronin slosh his way inside.

"All my thanks to you, good sir . . ." Takashi mumbled wearily before flopping down near the fireplace opposite of Noriko. With his strangely violet kimono clinging to his skin and his jet black hair simply hanging over the entirety of his white headband, Takashi shook violently and splashed water all over the newly dry swordswoman.

Shocked for only a second as the farmer began to laugh, Noriko quickly regained an aloof pose. "So, it looks like you'll survive the storm after all. Guess you couldn't die before fulfilling your promise."

Takashi gave a withering look. "Yeah, I'm glad to see you too, sunshine."

Noriko promptly smacked Takashi in the back of the head upon hearing the hated nickname, extracting a satisfying "Ack!" from the hapless ronin.

The elderly farmer gave a cackle at the pair's antics while preparing two extra bowls of miso soup. "So tell me, young ones. What brings you to the outskirts of Hokusei Town in the midst of this terrible weather?"

The rain pounded along in its endless deluge upon the roof of the house as Noriko and Takashi began to relate their tale.

>>>

Izumi continued to receive the brute force of the rainfall as she sat panting on top of the cave where she had met defeat against the target ronin. A voice pierced the blackness of the night, nearly causing the ninja to instinctively vault several feet into the rocky hillside below.

"Why has it taken so long for you to notice me? Are your trained ninja senses failing you?"

Izumi turned to look but only saw a vague outline of a person in the darkness. "You didn't trust me to complete the mission, even now?"

A very long silver blade glimmered in the falling water. "You know the penalty for failure, Tanizaki-san."

Izumi smiled raggedly through her pain and exhaustion. "I was prepared for that fate from the moment I left Iga Castle. But you are not a ninj-"

There was a crack as Izumi's severed head split on a rock below. The shadowy figure cleaned the blade of an eight-foot tachi in a single swipe and sheathed it without a sound. As the shadow faded back into the night from whence it came, its eerie lilting voice sounded in the air.

"It is a truly sad thing to lead a life that is only useful in death."

The rain began to relent at last, but a stream of fresh blood flowed down the slope beyond the cave, beckoning to the hungry stomachs of scavenging animals from all around. As the feast began, an Iga medallion rolled down the hillside and into the plains below.

It was in this manner that death visited the hills outside of Hokusei Town in the Ise Province of Japan on a rainy December night. It was Tensho Year 9 of the Sengoku Jidai, or as western civilization would come to know it, the year 1582 of Japan's Age of Warring States.

(End Prologue)

Japanese Dialogue and Terms (in order of appearance):

ronin - a former samurai.

san - indication of respect. Translates loosely as "mister", "miss", or "missus".

katana - a Japanese sword with a curved, single-edged blade 24-36 inches long. Traditional samurai weapon. Blade on outside.

obi - the belt or sash worn around the waist and underneath the hakama. It is 2-3 meters in length and made of bleached cotton.

kunoichi - a female ninja.

kimono - a Japanese coat-like garment, many variations.

hakama - pleated trousers often worn by samurai.

tachi - predecessor to the katana, curved blade with single edge on the inside, often longer than katanas.