The smell of fire was burned into Mugen's nose. There was no way that he could ever forget the smell of human flesh roasting away in the flames. Screams came from the women of the brothel while those who could run ran away from the scorching inferno. Mugen raised his sword, his gaze transfixed on the man across from him, the bespectacled man.

"What's wrong?" Mugen sneered, "Is the heat getting to little Four-eyes?"

"No, but you could back out of this if you want, bastard." The man shot back. Then, in the two clashed swords, letting the metal bite against metal, solving their differences the only way they could: a sword duel.There was no other way it could have been done, this was, after all, the Edo period of the nineteenth century.

Men were frantically dousing water onto the flames, trying to scour what was left of their once grand city; no one was left to interrupt the two.

Mugen recklessly thrust his lithe blade, grinning with satisfaction as it whipped into the other man's skin, causing his blood to trickle down his chest. "Is that the best you've got, Jin? I expected more from a experienced samurai like you."

"Shut up. Were you this talkative when you raped my fiancee before you killed her?" Jin fought back, his blade slicing through the air and down onto Mugen, who blocked the move with his steel-plated sandals.

"Look, you dimwit, I told you that I didn't do any of that!"

"Stop talking and die, bastard!" Jin roared with anger as he ran towards Mugen, the tips of his clothes were burnt as the flames licked at them, turning what was once coarse silk into nothing more than ashes. "And you ran away too! After you pried her heart out of her body, you ran away, like a coward!"

The last move was unexpected; Mugen hardly noticed the dull sword until it flashed before his eyes. Soon after, Mugen felt a wave of intense pain as the blade sliced across his arm. Blood began streaming out steadily from his newly created wound, and his inflamed senses were numb as his eyes glanced over to the damage. His skin was blood crusted.

Red blood, almost as red as the sunset sky, if not more intense.

His body tensed as his eyes narrowed and Mugen stared at Jin, who looked back with a satisfied grin on his face

"Now," Jin wiped the moist blood from his blade before he pointed it towards Mugen, "to finish you off, then I can finally die in peace."

Mugen's eyes were bloodstained, his senses numbed even further by the large amount of blood that had already left his body, and his heart was beating frantically as his mind raced.

A voice within him chanted, "Kill, kill, kill or be killed!"

Like a demon, Mugen charged towards Jin, his sword was already embedded into the Jin's abdomen before he fell to the ground. It was now he who was bleeding. Jin's breath was slow and shallow, each breath deflated his body as it left him, one by one.

"No, you were the one who was supposed to die." Jin muttered, his eyes staring distantly towards the night sky which was glowing from the embers of the fallen city. The area was quiet now, all signs of life had already left or burnt to death. Mugen rested his hand on the hilt of his sword, feeling unnerved as he swiftly tore his sword out of Jin's dying body.

Jin let out a heavy sigh as the pain rushed back to him, his hands inching closer towards the void that was now consuming his body.

Then, without warning, Mugen purged the sword into Jin's chest and blood all came out like a mad rush. Mugen then finished him off as Jin watched with his dying eyes.

Notes- If you're confused... you should be. I'm confused too. But eventually, this will tie into the first chapter and in the end, everything will work out. If anyone notices something wrong with this chapter (like grammatical errors or spelling erroes), please let me know. Maybe if I'm feeling slightly grotesque, I'll churn out another chapter before the end of July. (Only because I don't write according to a schedule; I write only when I'm inspired to.)

I ... felt bad about having it end so abruptly, so I decided to continue this.

-- EDIT 7/14/2005

I think might have been mad at me making this so gruesome (it had me read the guidelines, again), so I edited this version. Email me if you want the unedited version.