A/N – This chapter was split into two parts. The second part has been posted along with this one.
Disclaimer – I don't own Ruroken.
Chapter 6 pt I - Preliminaries
It was a perfect circle, a killing circle, set in the middle of a great cement and concrete hall: twenty metres wide, the surface hard, flat dirt. Rather than twisted rope, the boundary was a barbed wire fence – there was no escape, and no mercy.
These games were to the death, and Yukishiro made no attempt to disguise it.
Sano was no stranger to illegal fights. Tough and savvy street fighter that he was, he'd participated in a number of underground matches before, fighting bare fist to bare fist, no rules: pounding his opponent mercilessly into the ground for the pitiful reward of a few thousand baht. It hadn't taken him long to discover that it was a game for fools and young boys desperate for any kind of money or glory – if they died, then there were always more where the poor, gullible bastards came from.
But the competitors here were no desperate, untrained boys, and the spectators were far from drunken street scum, looking for nothing but blood, guts and gore. No, competitors and spectators alike were the elite – the fighters were all killers, masters of their brutal arts, and the spectators were drug czars, arms barons, and shady heads of billion-dollar corporations.
They had been promised a show such as they had never before seen, a tournament starring the very best fighters in the world, the most brutal killers in the underground –
And the star attraction, the prize draw, was Sano's sad, gentle friend…
"I'm sorry, Ken. I didn't expect them to make us so quickly. I should have put up more of a fight, tried to knock out one of the guards so you could run –"
A shy, rueful smile, a slim, delicate hand on his shoulder – and real strength in that powerful grip, restraining him from jumping up and doing something stupid. "No, Sano. There was nothing either you or I could do."
"But I should have –"
"What?" The smile disappeared, and Ken's voice sharpened. "Attack trained gunmen with your bare hands? With Miss Kamiya by your side, and her brother at Enishi's mercy? I know you're hot-headed, Sano, but I've never thought you foolish."
That stung. Sano bridled a moment, but then took another look at Ken, at his wan, too-pale face and his dark, strained eyes. As a last insult, Yukishiro had returned Ken's sword, saying – in that insufferable, jeering tone – that he trusted Ken would not try to escape, not with Yahiko and the beautiful Miss Kamiya as hostages for his good behaviour. Since then, Ken had gripped the sword against him like a lifeline, his hands playing restlessly over the sheath and hilt, as if he were reminding himself – or reacquainting himself – of its presence, and of its ultimate function.
And as his hands grew more and more confident, his speech grew curt, his eyes gradually lost their warmth, and he seemed to reach within himself and remember the cold, trained killer that he had once been…
The spectators shifted and murmured, their mingled voices echoing in the concrete hall, the constant offers of wagers and odds contributing to a rising excitement in the atmosphere as they waited for the games to begin. These men were connoisseurs of blood sports, vicarious thrill-seekers who took exquisite pleasure in violence and killing, raising it to an art that they prized above all else –
"I assure you, gentlemen, this time I will provide you with something extraordinary. A supreme predator: a killer with guns, weapons, his bare hands – even a katana. Perhaps you have heard of Battousai?"
An urban legend. A myth. A killer who had single-handedly destroyed most of his rivals and competitors on the Mekong, dominating the smuggling routes for close to four years before suddenly disappearing – yes, it was an intriguing prospect. And this deadly killer, this supreme predator, was a small man, slight, who moved with the sleek control of a mountain cat. Seated, coiled, in a clear glass holding cage with his friend, the tall American GI, he somehow drew all eyes towards him in a kind of terrified fascination…
"You're going to make him fight match after match, opponent after opponent, until he's dragged down by exhaustion and injury… What did he do to you, Yukishiro?"
Personal – and very public – vengeance was nothing new to them. So long as they were entertained in the process, they were more than willing to watch a man destroyed; it was difficult to find true amusement, after all, when most of them had more money than they knew what to do with.
Watching the crowd, tasting the humming, electrified atmosphere that he had created, Enishi reveled in his triumph over Himura, the bastard who had murdered his sister, the only woman he had truly loved and trusted. For so many, many years, he had dreamed over and over of that last night, when the maddened killer had broken free of his bonds and began to slaughter his guards, of the moment when Tomoe had moved to stop him from killing General Trang, throwing herself in front of his sword –
And that bastard had run her through to get to Trang, so caught up in his frenzy that he'd cut through anything in his way.
Whatever happened to him today, whatever wounds he took, whatever agonies the other competitors (promised bonuses if they could make it painful) inflicted on him, it would never, ever make up for the one mad, frenzied stroke that had destroyed Enishi's life…
"You're enjoying this, aren't you, you bastard," the Kamiya girl accused him, her eyes dark and fierce. "I hope Ken kills all your goddamned fighters and then kills you –"
"Shut up!" he hissed, the lovely warm sense of triumph evaporating under the stinging lash of her scorn.
"I won't shut up," she snarled. "You kidnapped my brother and dragged me into a feud that has nothing to do with me; you used me as a hostage to force a man into this tournament that will kill him –"
He took a step closer, looming over her. "Shut up!" he shouted, his fists clenched and a vein in his neck bulging. "One more word out of you and I'll wring your fucking neck!"
She swallowed. But she did not back down.
Infuriated, he swung back around to the capacity crowd and the perfect killing circle, but all his pleasure in it was gone.
"A sword is a weapon."
Ken's grandfather, old, dignified, seeming eternal with his dark, narrowed eyes and his curt, staccato Japanese, had pounded those words into him over and over during the course of his training. Ken had never really thought much of it, secure in the knowledge that lethal swordsmanship had gone out with the last century –
Until the first time he'd killed a man with his katana, a swift, vicious battoujutsu, a reflex move practiced thousands of times over, and he'd realized just how personal it was, how intimate, compared to rifles and machine guns. Years of practice and unrelenting work, all leading to that one effortless stroke – instinct, really, and then the blood was spilling out over his hands in a way that long-range bullets could never bring about.
A refined, exquisite work of art, that first death and all the others – Hiten Mitsurugi was like an ink painting, sleek, elegant, the ultimate killing style. And Ken was creator and creation in himself.
Put on exhibition, here, for Enishi's twisted pleasure.
The killing circle drew his eyes, focused his attention to the extent that the rest of the hall faded away. The crowd, the opponents lined up and staring avidly at him, even Sano and Miss Kamiya and her brother – nothing mattered, only the resounding knowledge that today he would have to kill, and kill, and kill, as he had sworn he would never do again…
