Rurouni Yahiko
A Rurouni Kenshin Fan Fiction Continuation by Chester Castañeda
Shogo Amakusa is coming to town.
Disclaimer: All characters used in this fanfic (save some others) are the rightful property of Nobuhiro Watsuki and Sony. Don't sue me please, I'm very poor.
Chapter 15: Maniac in the Mansion
Yahiko's body froze before he leaned towards Minoe and whispered, "Did I hear the Oyakata right? Today is the date of that insurgency that the government quelled in Shimabara?"
"No," Minoe shook his eye-patched, wig-topped head. "The date for the Second Shimabara Rebellion is November the sixth, not November the fifth; tomorrow, which is just a few more hours anyway. Why? Didn't you already know?"
"Of course I didn't know!" Yahiko stomped his feet to emphasize his point while he let his arms hang in front of him like rigid, quivering bamboo canes. "I wouldn't ask you about it if I did!"
"I-I thought you knew because you said Sakaguchi-chi told you everything about the Second Shimabara Rebellion! Give me a break!" Minoe protested as his exposed eye traveled from Yahiko to the growing throng of his Togakudan cohorts. "Do we have time to talk about this?"
"We'll make time! Mister Sakaguchi only informed me about some minor details regarding the event. He hasn't told me the whole story." Yahiko grabbed hold of the front of Minoe's baggy kimono, which made the presumably older boy freeze and crane his neck back in sweat-filled reticence. "Although I am wondering why he'd know about Shimabara in... Is that Sakaguchi-san waving at us right now?"
Sure enough, right across the ballroom, a smiling Satoru Sakaguchi waved at both Yahiko and Minoe with a gloved hand that was included in his full Kanagawa police uniform after recognizing the two Sanbaka members from the crowd of law enforcement officers and spies. The flabbergasted Tokyoite guessed that Kyoko Sakuguchi's father had lingered around the foot of the stairs in order to meet with his supposed "idol", Tetsuo Akahori.
Yahiko and Minoe weakly waved back at the policeman before facing each other again. The sixteen-year-old boy then let go of his eye-patched associate. "I guess this is the reason why Sakaguchi-san went all the way from Yokohama to Shinshushin, huh?"
After a few seconds, the spiky-haired youth blinked. "Wait a minute. Are the police compulsorily assigned here or is it on a voluntary basis? I thought that since the Oyakata made a fuss with that apologetic speech of his, everyone here are either government volunteers or paid goons... er, no offense."
"None taken. But you're half-right." Minoe straightened his rumpled wardrobe out and adjusted his disheveled wig. "Even though it was compulsory for all of the neighboring Kanto district police stations to assign their cops to this meeting, each station had a limit on the number of officers to be sent here because of the fairly recent Chichibu incident; they simply had their hands full. As such, it's most likely that Sakaguchi-chi volunteered himself here because of a vendetta. On the other hand, it could just be because his family is located here in Shinshu. I'm not sure; I'm supposed to spy on Amakusa-chi's business, not Sakaguchi-chi's."
'Mister Sakaguchi might have volunteered to join this screwy little mission from the get go instead of being forced into it by his superiors. He could even have an honest-to-goodness vendetta against Amakusa, which explains why Akahori has seemingly brainwashed him in terms of what really happened back in Shimabara.' Yahiko also wondered if there were any would-be Enishi Yukishiros present in Akahori's audience who longed to bring about their own brand of earthly justice against the Christian because their loved ones couldn't do so from beyond the grave.
'Come to think of it, I'm guessing this Shimabara business happened during the same time that Enishi and his Five Comrades attacked Kenshin and all of us linked to him. Looks like the government screwed up again, seeing that Kenshin was too busy fighting the demons of his past to bail those filthy politicians out.'
Although aware of the absurdity and improbability of involving Kenshin and the rest of the "Kenshingumi" into this Shogo Amakusa debacle, Yahiko nevertheless speculated what could've happened were they tasked by the Meiji Government to deal with this religious rebel. 'Maybe Kenshin would've stopped this Battousai wannabe from supposedly killing a 'thousand' men... Huh. I guess Amakusa really is a Battousai wannabe, what with the stolen name and the ability to mimic Kenshin's talent in killing a veritable army all by himself.'
Yahiko felt someone tap his shoulder. He turned and saw Minoe urging him to join the Togakudan line. The young man sighed and strutted right behind his insistent companion. "By the way, Minoe: what's the limit of police officers per Kanto station?"
"Well, there's a limit of ten, so that's ten from Gunma, ten from Kanagawa, ten from Tokyo, and ten from here in Kamiminochi. Add us thirteen Togakudan members and you two fine gentlemen, and there're about fifty-five of us protecting Oyakata-dono-chi's hide, so to speak.
Yahiko shuddered. Fifty-five. As Sanosuke eventually told him after Shishio's coup d'etat failed, any member of the Juppon Gatana... especially Soujiro and some other blind swordsman Saito probably slaughtered... could murder fifty police officers in a row if given enough time. "Broom Head" Chou could probably do so in a couple of hours, while "Psycho-Kid" Soujiro could accomplish that in under an hour; thirty minutes if he were motivated.
Yahiko had another epiphany; he'd been getting so many since he'd arrived at this mansion that he wondered if Tani's house had been built on Buddhist holy ground or if a mummified "Sokushinbutsu" monk had been buried underneath where they currently stood. "Minoe, did you or didn't you recognize Akahori to be the same Oyakata we betted against at the Shinshu Market cockpits?"
Minoe waited for all three seconds before stating, "Nope. I'm glad you brought it up earlier, or else I would've never known." He giggled as he adjusted his eye patch.
"H-He's your own boss and...? N-Never mind." Yahiko closed his gaping mouth shut with a push of his knuckles, palmed his forehead and slid his hand across his face, slumped his shoulders, and exhaled in due acceptance.
The absentminded Minoe tried getting Akahori's attention by bending his torso to the side of the Togakudan line and waving at him like a demented, costumed monkey, but the Oyakata proved far too busy speaking to the leaders of the different Kanto-based police groups to notice him.
"With all things considered, including his creepiness, he's a nice guy all-in-all, isn't he? I mean, he even helped us escape that mob of angry gamblers yesterday!" Minoe remarked in the middle of his frantic gesticulation.
Yahiko harrumphed. "A 'question mark' is more like it."
"Who's the question mark? Who are we talking about? The Oyakata or Officer Daddy?" Gan somehow weaseled into Yahiko and Minoe's private dialogue, listening in the whole time.
"Maybe both," Yahiko replied, ignoring Gan's use of his head as a chin coaster and the urge to knock the big lug out because he had far more important issues to mull over. 'Are you putting your ass on the line to stop some deluded Christian nut or are you covering it up by using the vengeful loved ones of the Shimabara army, Oyakata-dono?'
After everybody had formed their lines and the drone of the congregating masses had died down, Akahori spoke, thanking the leaders and captains of the respective hired bodyguards and volunteer policemen for indulging his request for assistance.
Meanwhile, Yahiko couldn't help but glare at the bungling yet flippant attitude of the gathered Kamiminochi Police. Seeing their lack of earnestness throughout Akahori's elaborate ceremonies, the youth reckoned that most of them were just rent-a-cops and fakers jockeying for better positions in major Kanto police headquarters by currying favor from the presumably powerful politician.
If only they'd done their jobs instead of begging Akahori for scraps like tongue-wagging dogs, then perhaps the real Battousai Group wouldn't have bothered to put Keisuke and his band of minor bandits out of their misery. Maybe Kyoko wouldn't have been forced to see so much blood and murder. Most of all, Yahiko hated the fact that he wouldn't have been riddled with three-week-old injuries had the Kamiminochi Police done their duty. He squeezed his right hand into a ball, imagining the feeling of connecting his knuckles onto the cheekbone of the Kamiminochi District's Chief of Police or Captain.
Minoe nudged Yahiko, which woke him up from this revenge fantasy and compelled him to stand up in attention. "Uh, thanks, Minoe. What's happening?"
"The police captains and Raedo-sempai are starting the introductions, Yahiko-chi," Minoe informed as he smoothened his pleated hakama and straightened his fake hair with a casual toss. Once the eye-patched fellow noticed Yahiko's lingering stare, he covered himself with his arms and shot back a questioning glance. The Tokyoite shook his head in assurance that nothing was amiss and focused his mind on the proceedings.
The back of Yahiko's bushy head somehow managed to form a large bead of sweat despite his hair's denseness. The Oyakata elected to have each and every one of the gathered multitude briefly introduce himself by telling everybody present his name, his place origin, and his personality traits.
Soon, because of tired legs and the sheer amount of people in attendance, Akahori allowed everybody to sit down and listen to the introductions. Yahiko's brows furrowed over his squinted, tired eyes as the extensive show and tell progressed, up until the point that it hooded over his face like the brim of a hat. The whole situation felt so droll to him that he could barely remember the names of his fellow bodyguards anyway.
If Yahiko were forced with a knife over his neck, maybe he could name a couple of those faceless strangers. Or perhaps they weren't so faceless; the Tokyo contingent, as he expected, were composed of assholes and bullies cut from the same cloth as the all-bark-no-bite Raijuta, with the sole exception of his student and fellow survivor from the wrath of Hyogo "Whale Mouth" Kujiranami, Kosaburo. He also deemed it a shame that none of the other motley crew of Tokyo officers that helped him face down Enishi's cannon-wielding subordinate were part of the Tokyo police contingent.
In stark contrast, the Gunma District's band of brothers served as the beta-males and sycophants of the Tokyo group, which made them no better than the backstabbing Kanryu or the strange Houji fellow that Sanosuke kept telling Yahiko about. People like those annoyed him to no end, as though they lacked the spine to be their own man... their own men... or something. As for Kanagawa's finest, the boy felt rather ambivalent towards them, especially considering the fact that Satoru Sakaguchi was part of their ranks. Finally, the Togakudan troop's collective cold shoulder of the purported "Sanbaka" didn't surprise Yahiko in the least, since Gan bested them in a dog pile "contest" a while back for Minoe's sake.
In terms of the superiority food chain, Yahiko reckoned that Tokyo was on top, Kanagawa was in second place, then came Gunma, then maybe either the Togakudan or the Kamiminochi Police occupied the last spot, much to the Togakudan-grouped samurai's chagrin.
Then again, generalizations aside, Yahiko did bother taking note of the names of the captains of each division. The Tokyo branch had the aforementioned Ujiki, the Gunma branch had the overly optimistic and short-for-a-captain Kujo, Kanagawa had the normal-to-the-point-of-dreariness Yamada, Kamiminochi had the pudgy and aloof Nakayama, and the Togakudan had Mikio Nagaoka's cousin, Raedo.
Also, even though everyone managed to keep their introductions brief enough to consume only thirty minutes, by the fifteenth minute, it felt to Yahiko like an hour had already passed by.
"Okay, so far there's Raiden-sempai, Big Eyes, Gay Playboy, Baby Face, Chinese Dumpling Man, Frog Lips, Shaolin Reject, the Bulldog, Mister Forgettable, Dead Kid, Pumpkin Head, Speckle Nose, Tumbleweed Hair, and Patches!" Gan enumerated while again using Yahiko's spiky hair as a chinrest of sorts.
"Hey, Yoshi-boy; how about I call you Spike from now on? You know, because of the hair! I think Spike suits you. Or maybe Dandruff," Gan supposed as he scratched his itchy neck.
Yahiko headbutted Gan's chin and reclaimed his personal space from the bulky invader. "What are you doing?"
"Huh? Oh, I'm trying to memorize everyone's names here in the Togakudan group." Gan rubbed his jaw while pushing Yahiko's face down on the floor with little to no effort. "Since the Oyakata has grouped us with them, then I might as well get to know them. It's the polite thing to do."
Yahiko struggled to get the Tubby Gan's frying-pan hands off of his head and bit the brute's fingers. "Those aren't their names! No wonder they're all glaring daggers at you right now; those are playground insults, not names!"
"Shush, it's already Patches' turn to introduce himself," Gan declared as he sat up straight and hooted alongside Minoe's other tormentors, the insensitive lout. Unbeknownst to Yahiko, it was nearly his and Gan's turn to introduce themselves as well, and Minoe had already started his introductions.
"I'm M-Minoe. Minoe Munenori. I'm pleased to m-meet you all, guntai-tachi-chi..." the effeminate Minoe squeaked the last word out amidst the Togakudan's mocking shouts of, "Minoe-chi is so cute! Sing to us, Minoe-chi!", "Boo! I don't like this show! Give us back our money!", and "Take it off now!" His ears then perked up as he heard Yahiko shout, "Come on, Minoe. That wasn't what you said to me when we first met!"
The whole room became very quiet as both Yahiko and Minoe turned red then blue at the implications of what the samurai boy blurted out.
Just as the room erupted into boisterous guffaws and uncontrollable giggles at the pair's expense, Minoe met Yahiko's eyes, grinned, and shouted, "My personal name is Munenori and my surname is Minoe, and every time you meet me, you'll meet someone new!" amidst all the noise. Yahiko groaned yet managed to smile back all the same for the diminutive and frail man's sake.
"Hey lover boy, what's your name?" some of the rowdier officers in the Gunma and Tokyo groups hurled taunts at Yahiko while both the embarrassed Sakaguchi and Kosaburo looked away and pretended to not know the young lad.
Yahiko stood up and posed as dramatically as he could despite his flustered face, quivering lip, and inward cringing. "It's Myojin Yahiko, and don't any of you forget it."
A long, condescending chorus of "Oooooooooooooh!" filled the spacious room, which was quickly followed with more laughter. Minoe, on his part, scuttled behind Yahiko and used his tempestuous savior as a shield of sorts. "Thanks for standing up for me," the eye-patched eccentric murmured.
"Er... Yeah. Sure." Even a smart aleck like Yahiko had no comeback for that. 'At least I didn't have to come in front of the group and introduce myself. I guess," he reassured himself. The two afterwards stared forward as the third member of their jury-rigged team cracked his knuckles and licked his chops from behind them.
"Guess it's my turn. Stand aside, Yoshi-boy! Patches! I'm coming through," Gan announced as he stood up and did some stretching exercises.
"Nobody wants to know who you are. Sit back down." Yahiko's unenthusiastic reproach fell on deaf ears.
The Gargantuan Gan barreled between the Togakudan and Gunma lines, slid into position at the center of the ballroom just below the arched balcony, and proclaimed while pointing at nowhere in particular, "Hello. I am the Great Gan. I've been known as the Soba King as well as the Dumpling Emperor. Thanks to those two lovebirds you just saw, I have the potential to become the Cockpit God too. I've once eaten the entire stock of a restaurant in one sitting, and I've broken ten chairs in ten sittings. I am capable of playing the biwa for money, except I don't have it with me right now, so you'll have to take my word for it. I admire the Shinsengumi and loathe the Meiji Government."
"What is he talking about?" Yahiko asked Minoe.
Minoe replied, "I have no clue."
Yahiko palmed his face. "He's going to get us killed even before the Battousai Group gets here."
The Vociferous Gan continued. "I'm not averse to a brawl, but I hate it when people resort to low blows, eye pokes, and nipple twists to get an edge. I'm not saying I'm all about fair play, but I can beat anyone in a fair fight. I'm great at turning your mundane names into something awesome. I've also been humiliated, beaten down to a pulp, had my heart served on a pike, and had my dignity shat upon by the realities of the world. With that said, I'm ready for anything, even the end of times. Again, I'm the Great Gan of Okinawa, and I'm here because I want to become the Great Gan of Everything Under the Sun, whether it's eating or guard duty. Howdy."
"No, we're not with him. Don't listen to him; I swear, he just followed us here. Ignore him," Yahiko desperately pleaded to the nearest Togakudan member beside him and Minoe. The temptation to destroy the wooden floorboards in order to make the ensuing wreckage swallow him whole and let him escape from the increasingly mortifying circumstances grew by the second.
About four hours before midnight, the Three Stooges...
"STOP CALLING US THAT!" Gan and Yahiko screamed at the cluelessly gawking Minoe.
"But I didn't say anything!" Minoe protested.
The pair scratched their noggins and blinked unanimously.
In any event, a few hours before midnight, Yahiko and the others...
Gan and Minoe glared at Yahiko.
Yahiko was taken aback by the sudden hostility. "What?"
Anyway, a few hours before midnight, Yahiko, Gan, and Minoe were assigned to guard the top of the stairs leading straight to Akahori's chambers.
Learning from the mistakes of the politicians Amakusa killed beforehand six years ago, Akahori decided to give his bodyguards... policemen, spies, and two other strangers he met in a round of cockpit betting... some unusual orders hand-in-hand with the usual ones involving the places they were assigned to guard so that all five teams could spread out across the mansion yet would also converge on the enemy at a moment's notice if needed.
In particular, Togakudan members like Minoe were all assigned to wander around and act as the policemen's eyes and ears, alerting a given group whenever an intruder enters the property.
Suzuki "Raedo" Nagaoka elected to place the three at the ballroom's atrium in order to minimize any Minoe-related bumbling in a contained area. Yahiko and Gan, being the outsiders that they were, followed Minoe along. After all, from their point of view, Akahori had given them carte blanche to wander anywhere they wanted, and the ballroom was as good a place as any.
"What the hell is curtain-beard thinking, making us do all sorts of embarrassing games and 'ice breakers' with the police and the Togakudan! I mean, we're not going to a festival, we're trying to protect him from some religious nut!"
"'Group Development', he called it," Gan recalled. "That'd never catch on."
Minoe put his hands together, tilted his head to the side, and left his mouth open in a manner wherein there was more tongue than teeth present. "Well, it did help everyone get to know each other better. We've become so much closer!"
Gan and Yahiko dolefully stared at Minoe. "What? I didn't even mention the 'Sanbaka' in that last sentence!" The eye-patched man-boy pouted and waved his arms and legs around, swinging back and forth the floor like a pendulum.
Yahiko massaged the throbbing vein on his temple. "No, no. We're staring at you because you were bullied by both the Tokyo and Gunma police as well as your own Togakudan members! They were calling you names behind your back, tapping your shoulder then looking away, and... well, it seems like you've somehow unleashed the playground bully in all of those men, Minoe! It's nice to be optimistic, but you shouldn't turn a blind eye over that!"
"Then again, Yoshi-boy, those Tokyo hotshots were all acting like Grade-A shit wagons. Do all Tokyoites have their heads up their asses?" Gan supposed, somewhat upset that the spies and the officers weren't terribly impressed with his earlier introduction.
"Hey! You should talk, you country bumpkin!" Yahiko yelped with wide-eyed indignation. "The way you barreled across the Togakudan line and embarrassed yourself in front of everybody is beyond words! I mean, honestly! Who cares how many chairs you've broken with your big, fat ass? Have some dignity, man! You give yokels and hillbillies everywhere a bad name."
"Who cares? I'm from Okinawa!" Gan looked at Yahiko as though the boy had just flaunted a pus-filled zit on his nipple. "Personally, I think the Oyakata should have asked the Osaka Police to come here instead of those Tokyo or Gunma chumps," the heavily built man reckoned while picking his nose. "Take it from someone who has traveled far and wide the entirety of Japan; the people from the old capital have manners and lack airs, unlike you higher-than-thou city slickers and your over-inflated sense of entitlement!"
Yahiko's mental image of the Immodest Gan who used him as a means to win a bet... and get out of one... was unquestionably at odds with the same man who had the gall and the over-inflated sense of entitlement to criticize others' over-inflated sense of entitlement. Because his mind was boggled enough to scramble his thoughts to gibberish, the boy just closed his eyes, slapped his forehead, and left things at that.
Sensing the tension in the room, Minoe reproved his fellow Sanbaka members. "Let's leave those policemen be. We're all on the same side here. Besides, you two shouldn't compare the Tokyo police with the Osaka police anyway. Both of those teams have their respective pros and cons."
Yahiko followed Minoe's lead, stating, "I agree. Let's drop the subject, Gan. Comparing those two districts is like comparing apples to oranges anyway; they couldn't and shouldn't be compared."
Minoe chuckled a bit while self-consciously adjusting his eye patch and rubbing his bandaged arms. "Thanks for the vote of confidence, Yahiko-chi, but what you said just now is such a silly thing for anyone to say! Of course you can compare oranges and apples. First off, they're both fruit. Secondly, they both have an outer shell. Thirdly, they both have seeds inside."
"I kind of forgot what we were arguing about, but Patches does have a point," Gan remarked as he rubbed his lantern jaw in impressed agreement.
'Ow, my head. These two will be the death of me,' Yahiko lamented as he did his best to ignore the Two Stooges' attempts at being philosophical. Once he got over the mentally scarring effects of yet another Sanbaka comedy skit, his breathing became shallower than before. Out of the blue, at this unholy hour, the gravity of the entire situation dawned upon him.
Yahiko and his questionable cohorts were about to help an army of policemen and spies confront a man who might or might not have killed a thousand soldiers exactly six years ago (give or take a couple of hours) plus his other followers; he'd soon find out firsthand if what he'd been hearing about this Amakusa person was hogwash or an unbelievable truth.
'Stronger than Shishio? Stronger than Kenshin? Bullshit. I bet even Psycho-Kid can beat him to a fine red mulch when given the chance.' Yahiko snorted, but his derisiveness soon became pain as his old wounds after battling Soujiro flared anew. Since he hadn't been straining himself, he believed the pain was all in his head. He hoped. 'I better get my priorities straight, though. There are now fifty-four warriors and a politician's life under my watch.'
'Fifty-five,' the Kenshin in his mind reminded him. 'You have a responsibility for protecting yourself as well.'
'Fine,' he assured his imaginary idol as he rubbed the troublesome sword scars all over his body. 'Fifty-six, actually, if Psycho-Kid is still around,' he corrected as an afterthought. Right then, a second passed, followed by a minute, followed by a half hour.
Thirty minutes after midnight, while the Sanbaka struggled to keep themselves awake, an altercation happened right at the front yard of Akahori's rented mansion.
Everything became a blur. At least, that was how the baggage-totting man viewed the situation. Even while carrying his awkward luggage, he could probably handle the ten guards posted at the iron gate with little to no problem. A dismemberment here, a beheading there, and everything would be all right. Then again, thanks to his important package, perhaps he didn't need to dehumanize in his mind his enemies just to get the job done after all.
The ten-man-strong Gunma contingent was ready for anything, including a one-man army capable of slaying a thousand men by himself or any of his zealot followers who'd sacrifice life and limb for their leader. Instead, they were treated with the spectacle of a cloaked figure leaping across treetops and passing over the mansion walls while carrying a sack of potatoes or something.
Gunma's representative Togakudan assistants sounded the whistle alarm to inform the rest of the manor of the Battousai Group's expected arrival. Meanwhile, the Gunma policemen aimed their guns and fired at the figure. However, since they had no choice but to shoot four rifles at a time thanks to the narrow bars of the gates, the fleet-footed stranger was able to escape by running away from their limited line of fire.
Some of the officers helped each other climb the ten-foot wall while the rest of the men reloaded their firearms. Kujo, the diminutive Gunma captain, had enough common sense to fire his load at the locks so that the gate would open. However, because he had no prior experience in busting locks, he mistakenly fired his custom, bayonet-fitted Murata bolt-action rifle at the padlock to little effect. As such, he opted to break through the gate the old-fashioned way: striking the lock with his gun's butt.
"I've always heard that you can shoot a lock out, but I guess I heard wrong!" he quipped to a subordinate, who in turn could only shake his head in exasperation.
By the time the gate was opened and the scrambling Gunma police were able to gather themselves into a more cohesive fighting force, the supposed Battousai doppelganger had already made a beeline towards the center of the yard, right in front of the lamp-lighted balcony leading straight to Tetsuo Akahori's private quarters.
"AKAHORI! Come out, you conniving bastard! How dare you use these people to keep your worthless hide safe!" More and more policemen crawled out of the woodwork, yielding their bayonet-equipped rifles and firing hot lead in droves. In response, the man unleashed an earth-shattering avalanche via a one-handed strike. He didn't even bother unsheathing his stark-black weapon or letting go of the carry-on luggage he slung over his shoulder.
"Amakusa Shiro, is that you? I've heard you've changed your name. I was afraid you've gotten a representative from your 'Battousai Group' to kill me, but it's nice to see that you're as predictable as you've always been," Tetsuo Akahori called out minutes later as he emerged from his room to the balcony while the smiling Soujiro tailed right behind him.
"Have you abandoned your god yet? You're no closer to killing me than you were six years ago, regardless of what historical figure you're trying to impersonate this time. Before, it was Amakusa Shiro. Now, it's Himura Battousai. Let me tell you right now, it won't make a difference whatsoever."
"Tell your goons to stand down. I haven't abandoned my people, and I will not abandon my God. I concede nothing. I've prayed for a long time to get to this moment. You're the last person standing in the way of my followers' salvation," Amakusa announced as the dust cleared.
The rest of the police came out with loaded guns and twitchy trigger fingers. Raedo and his troop efficiently led as many of the spread-out law enforcement as they possibly could. The much-lauded and fully experienced Tokyo group were followed shortly by the Kanagawa reinforcements. The heavy resonance of moving artillery could be heard inside the mansion as several Togakudan assisted in carting a cannon and a Gatling gun to the foyer.
"They're not my goons. They're volunteers as well as officers who've sworn to uphold the law and protect the innocent. What's more, a lot of these gentlemen are related in one way or another to the people you and your followers slaughtered back in Shimabara," Akahori disclosed as he regarded Amakusa with mirth while putting his elbows on the railings of his terrace and hiding his face behind interlocked hands. "Feel free to reacquaint yourselves."
The ominous click-clack of dozens of cocking guns were heard as one of the other captains... the rotund Captain Nakayama from the Kamiminochi District... confronted the religious rebel alongside two of his men.
"You bastard! I've heard of your newly formed terrorist organization. You're an enemy of honor and a mass murderer to boot. Christians are holier-than-thou hypocrites that deserve to be butchered into mush!"
From there, the good captain dashed with his saber in hand while his two subordinates launched their own respective attacks... one firing his rifle while the other charging with his gun's bayonet. With every swing of his blade, Nakayama screamed, "This is for Hiramatsu! And Ryuzoji! Remember those names, because they're not just insects to be squashed! Flies to be swatted...!"
"You and your government were prepared to ethnically cleanse my people! I did what I had to do." With his face contorted with an unknowable emotion, Amakusa parried Nakayama's first few strikes, flung his baggage high up in the air, grabbed hold of the stout captain's saber, pulled him in, and used him as a shield for the approaching bullets.
"Father, forgive them. They know not what they do," Amakusa murmured in prayer as he kicked the injured officer away, jumped straight up to avoid a bayonet strike, and sliced the offending weapon in two as he rose.
The eyes of Tokyo's Captain Ujiki dilated into saucers as a wave of reminiscence engulfed him; the sight of the acrobatic yet deadly Amakusa reminded him of someone very familiar. In fact, his spine flared in pain anew in remembrance of those sweeping sword arcs delivered in blinding speed. 'So that's why he formed himself a Battousai Group.'
A few moments later, after he caught his belongings in midair, landed, and set it down on a nearby tree, the red-haired cult leader charged right on top of his third attacker and cut apart his clothes with a mind-bogglingly sharp scabbard before the policeman could reload his gun or opt to charge with the bayonet as well. The rest of the Kamiminochi police force knelt down and began firing at will as the long-haired assassin backtracked into the shadows.
In a flash, Amakusa somersaulted towards his package just as Nakayama attempted to open it, the former's unsheathed blade just inches away from the latter's face after it implanted itself unto the ground.
The portly Kamiminochi captain scrambled to his feet, grabbed hold of his hemorrhaging side, and bared his teeth as he spat, "I've been waiting for you and you alone, Amakusa! All of my men have. You're going to pay for your crimes against this nation and the people that you've killed, you arrogant son of a bitch."
Amakusa narrowed his eyes into slits so thin that it looked like he'd winced instead of glared. Meanwhile, Captain Kujo and his Gunma contingent eventually caught up, flanking Amakusa at the rear and cutting off his nearest route for a possible escape. "Captain Nakayama! Please tell your men to stand down! We're going to fire on the rebel assassin, and you're all in the way! You can't win against him through a swordfight! We have to pursue him through gunfire and our sheer numbers!"
"NO! It's my men who will pursue him! We've been practicing for months' on end with how to best kill him! We will have his head on a pike before daybreak!" Captain Nakayama signaled three of his men to ready their rifles, three others to ready their gun's bayonets, and the remaining men... including the two whose guns were destroyed... to brandish their sabers. The Kamiminochi captain himself readied his own blade.
"If any of us here fails to finish Amakusa off right here and now, feel free to shoot at him anyway regardless of whether or not we're in the line of fire!" Nakayama declared with certainty even as a murmur of uncertainty and dread filled the Kamiminochi party.
"You moron," Captain Kujo intoned, but he nevertheless signaled his Gunma contingent to stand their ground and ready their guns for firing also.
With no time for them to stage a mutiny or even express their lamentations, the mad captain signaled his nine cohorts to do their respective tasks as he engaged against Amakusa via a duel to the death. "AMAKUSA! I'm going to shake you down your pedestal and bring you back to earth even if I have to risk my life! We all feel the same way! I'll make you understand the gravity of your sins! You think yourself as some sort of savior? You're a god to your people? Then bring back to life the cops and soldiers you've murdered, zealot!"
Amakusa smashed the flat side of his scabbard into the perspiring and bleeding Captain Nakayama's face as he was again forced to leap away because of the bayonet-wielding officers. However, that left him vulnerable to rifle shots from not only the assigned three gunners, but also from the three cops who attempted to run him through. A spray of blood emerged from the rebel's left forearm as the saber-brandishing policemen waited for him to land back to the ground.
Praying under his breath, Amakusa twirled and evaded the waiting sabers before slashing his sword-carrying attackers from behind with enough force to knock them down. As he touched down on the ground, the riflemen and the bayonet chargers exchanged places, the latter loading their rifles while the former charged with their spears. From behind him, Amakusa heard Captain Nakayama decree, "You can't bring back the people you've killed, can you? That's why we're here."
"You came here to get killed too? I thought death cannot be undone. What you say makes no sense to me," Amakusa retorted as he ducked and dodged the ensuing gunfire, but the officers managed to hit him at the side and at the elbow all the same. To the surprise of the Battousai Group's founder, Captain Nakayama somehow stabbed the tip of his saber into the rebel's free hand.
"Get off your high horse! My men and I are here because we're willing to risk our lives to put down monsters like you! These warriors you've indiscriminately killed and even the men you've killed just now have names. Identities. Lives. Souls." Nakayama twisted his blade and pushed hard just as his remaining men began their attacks anew. "Once they're dead, they cannot be brought back. They cannot be replaced or substituted. It disgusts me that you probably have no idea who among the hundreds you've killed are Hiramatsu and Ryuzoji!"
Amakusa struggled to remove his hand from Nakayama's sword, but he didn't have time to do so. From all corners, men brandishing either blades or bayonet-equipped rifles swarmed him like bees from a disturbed hive, so he had no choice but to parry and use the ranting captain as his shield of sorts.
"Ryuzoji, who had an aloof personality that belied his subdued kindness! Hiramatsu, who loved to cook for his pregnant wife when she could not! What gives you the right to kill them? You were protecting your people? Bullshit! You're a criminal who has damned your two-faced flock to a life of eternal persecution because of your absurd, dishonorable ways!"
Nakayama stared at Kujo meaningfully, which the Gunma squadron took as the signal to fire, regardless of who would serve to become the collateral damage in the ensuing shootout. At any rate, it would be the surest way to kill a man allegedly capable of killing all of them in mere minutes.
Everything became crystal clear at that moment. At least, that was how Amakusa saw things as his mind went into overdrive to tackle the worsening situation at hand. In normal circumstances, he would have been able to handle this ten-person circus with little to no problem, even if they were to join forces with the other teams who waited for their turn to kill him. A sliced-off leg here, a gutted abdomen there, and all would be resolved.
The bodyguards flew across the exploding debris, but no evidence of fire or gunpowder was present. To the long-haired figure before them, everyone became a nameless, soulless statistic during times of strife and war. As the Meiji Government would itself attest, unless you were important enough to protect, you were nothing more than mere cannon fodder.
However, he didn't need to go through the trouble of killing these men whom he owed a sinful debt that could never be repaid. He didn't need to, he didn't have to, and he didn't want to: he already had the situation under control even before he arrived at the mansion, anyway.
"I know I made a mistake. I'm sorry. But I have no intention of paying for it for the rest of my life. I need to move on. I need to fight to survive. I need to push forward for the sake of my followers."
Amidst the chaos that he'd just unleashed, Amakusa walked calmly towards the tree where his valuable package lay. "I want one thing and one thing only... I want Akahori Tetsuo dead. That's all I ask. Standing in my way, as you've seen, is utter foolishness."
It was three hours before midnight, and Gan yawned. The tragic thing about the current circumstances was the fact that that was the most exciting thing that happened all night. "Dammit, where is that Amakusa Kumamoto bastard? I'm bored, and he's a liar. He promised to get here in time, and he's already late. Is he going to blow us off at the last minute? What a jerk. What, does he intend to be fashionably late?"
"Maybe his watch is set at the wrong time?" Minoe purred as he curled up into the corner window and idly scratched his neck.
"Maybe he got the date wrong?" Yahiko chimed in, but immediately regretted it. Damn, he'd been hanging out with the Gan and Minoe Manzai Comedy Tour for too long; he was getting infected by them or something.
"I have dibs on the three o'clock shift." Gan stretched and reclined himself idly like one of those famous Buddha statues, except he looked more like the fat Buddha.
"You'll take the three o'clock shift, then?" Minoe asked with a yawn.
"No. I'll be sleeping by then. You two go ahead and stand on guard," Gan mumbled as he scratched his buttocks.
"You're half-asleep right now! Pick a time to stand guard and stick with it! You can't have your cake and eat it too!" Yahiko covered his mouth, realizing too late that he had added more fodder for the nonsense-spewing Minoe to nitpick upon. He pointed at the eye-patched Togakudan and ranted, "And you! Not one word! Don't you dare say, 'What's the point of having cake if you're not going to eat it anyway?' You know what I meant!"
Minoe blinked at Yahiko and tilted his head sideways. "Everybody knows what that saying means, Yahiko-chi. 'You can't have it both ways'. Please stop acting so childish."
"Uh, yeah. Uh-huh. It was so obvious, Yoshi-boy. Duh," Gan weakly echoed Minoe's sentiments while inwardly wondering about the logic of having cake and not eating it.
Yahiko turned away from the two and mused, 'Why do I even bother? You can never win with these two.'
About thirty minutes passed, then an hour, followed by another hour. After the third hour, the trio felt fatigue creep in and force their eyelids to succumb to the inviting darkness. Minoe curled in a fetal position, Gan swayed back and forth using his metal club as a swivel, and Yahiko bit his lip in order to stay awake and aware.
Half-asleep, Yahiko harrumphed to no person in particular, "We might as well turn in for the night," as he stretched out his arms and shook his hands all about, surprised that it was he instead of Gan who uttered that specific line of discourse.
"I mean, it's rather unlikely that the Battousai Group would arrive at this late an hour. Looks like your precious Togakudan and Mister 'I'm right all the time, fear my beard!' Oyakata made Kanto's men-in-blue bark at the wrong tree."
Minoe shrugged and snuggled closer to the nearby corner to keep himself warm. "Not that it will matter anyway. For a month, the policemen that arrived here earlier on even before the business at Chichibu happened have been following false alarms in order to ensure that no sneak attack happens, and they entertained each and every last one of them all the time. Batch per batch, district per district, more officers came to this place. We're up to our third and fourth batch: the Kanagawa and Gunma contingents."
The Togakudan runt rubbed his hands together and blew on them. "If only there weren't an earlier rebellion, we may have gotten a whole infantry from the National Police or the Imperial Army. Today's an important date, so if the Battousai Group doesn't arrive now, it's a lost cause for both the terrorists and the government. Akahori-dono-chi, even before we met him, had already planned everything from the start."
"Oh, so you're still awake?" Yahiko questioned, surprised at how light a sleeper Minoe was. "So what do you think about that, Gan?"
Gan replied with a resounding snore.
"Right. Of course you'd already be asleep and snoring like a hippo, you swine." Yahiko harrumphed before unleashing his own guttural yawn and smacking his lips to taste his tiredness. He shouldn't have wasted so much time playing coy with Akahori's request for assistance yesterday. "Dammit, I should've taken the earlier shifts instead of the later ones. Damn brute beat me to it..."
"I could take this shift if you want, Yahiko-CHIIIII!" Minoe offered before yelping as Gan took him by the neck and shook him like a toy rattle. "Oh, Weasel-chan! I knew you weren't a boy! Kiss me now and prove your femininity!"
"Hey, let go of him, Gan! You're just having a nightmare!" Yahiko yelled as he did his best to extricate Gan's grubby fingers from the swirl-eyed and suffocating Minoe.
"Eh?" Gan murmured, wiping the drool off of his chin. "Is it morning already?"
"Since you're awake, Minoe and I are giving this hour's shift back to you. Good night," Yahiko declared, propping the surprisingly soft and sweet-smelling Minoe on the wall before he slammed his head against said wall.
'What am I thinking? Damn, I didn't know Gan's hidden preferences were contagious! Not that there's anything wrong with it.' To Minoe, he asked, "Are you all right?"
Minoe shrunk away from Yahiko and blurted, "Y-Yes, Y-Yahiko-kun."
Yahiko raised an eyebrow at Minoe. "Yahiko-kun?"
"Chi. Yahiko-kun-chi. I mean, Yahiko-chi. Chi. Hehehe."
Gan whistled low, grabbing the back of his bandanna-wearing head with his hands. "So should I leave you two to 'sleep' or what?"
Yahiko and Minoe were just about to protest Gan's insinuations when the shriek of a whistle was heard by all of them. After glaring at the darkness for a few moments, they followed the multitude of footstep thumps and the crackle of gunfire that echoed all the way to the ballroom.
'He's here,' was the unsaid sentiment between the three unlikely comrades.
"Have you grown soft, Amakusa? I've heard that you were able to topple fifty people within a half-hour without so much as a sweat from the survivors of the Modern Shimabara War... so much so that there are historians considering to rename it the Shimabara Massacre."
The wanly smiling Soujiro raised an eyebrow at Akahori's revelation, chiefly remembering that the best of the Juppon Gatana... himself, Usui, and Anji... needed to take the better part of an hour to finish off a battalion of fifty policemen. 'So Amakusa-san created the Battousai Group, eh? I get the feeling I know which one he is.'
Akahori chortled, though it came out more like a harsh, accusatory cough than anything resembling amusement. "Perhaps the killings have affected you mentally? Maybe some of your inconvenient Christian values are messing with your murderous, duplicitous head? You're certainly going out of your way to not kill my bodyguards. That's quite unlike the mass murderer that people knew you as."
Emboldened by Akahori's words, a second volley of shots was fired, which kept the Christian from getting to his supposedly prized possession. As usual, Amakusa leapt out of the way to avoid the shots, which was an action that the gunmen issuing the third volley anticipated. What they didn't expect was the rebel pirouetting like a top and avoiding the bullets with the grace of a humanoid tornado. Bayonets awaited him at his landing spot, but he did away with them with a sweeping arc of his lengthy shining blade.
"Can you stand to take another life? Or rather, are you capable of even doing that at this point in time?" Akahori wondered with a scratch of his beard. Meanwhile, the rest of the Togakudan were busy dragging back into the mansion the bruised, injured, but veritably living policemen of the Gunma and Kamiminochi districts. Even Captain Nakayama, who was at the epicenter of Amakusa's earth-shattering blast, was none the worse for wear.
More policemen fired off their rifles at Amakusa as their reinforcements arrived. They crawled from all corners of the mansion, riddling the landscape with holes. As expected of a man capable of facing down an entire regiment of Japan's finest soldiers, he backtracked right into the gunners' fellow police so that they couldn't risk shooting at him recklessly, with not one bullet touching him all the while.
Stray projectiles landed just inches away from Amakusa's bag, producing chips of flying wood and bark. This compelled the enigmatic cult leader to move right into the line of fire to save his luggage from being damaged. The hot lead seared into his flesh, but he remained steadfast in protecting his belongings. "You're right. I'm not here to harm any of you! I only came here for Akahori! Why are you all protecting him? Why are you willing to sacrifice your life for a scumbag like him?"
Akahori answered back, "They're not doing this for me, Amakusa. They aren't here to protect me; they're here to kill you. They're doing this for all the people you and your followers have murdered back in Shimabara six years ago! Regardless of your intentions at the time, the fact remains that you're a rebel, and you've killed cops and soldiers in the name of your disingenuous beliefs. I'm surprised you haven't turned you back against this so-called god of yours, because he has certainly turned his back on you."
"God will never abandon me. I am his instrument for change. He will never lead me astray. He revealed to me the truth behind your wickedness and the righteousness of my cause. He told me that your unholy ambition is the true aberration of nature, and extreme forces such as yourself should disappear from the face of the earth!" Amakusa orated as he did his best to dodge as many bullets as he could without harming a single thread on his duffel bag.
"God? I tried to kill a god, but he wouldn't die. So I did the next best thing. I humiliated him. Brought him down to my level and exposed him for what he truly is: A sad little man behind the curtain," Akahori disclosed in a moderate volume even as the sounds of consecutive gunfire threatened to drown his baritone voice. Soujiro was the only one who could hear everything that the elder statesman said.
Amakusa bravely stood in the middle of the manor's courtyard as the click-clack of firearms being reloaded chorused with the promise of death, the blood from his injured body spreading across his garments and dyeing them crimson. "If any of you have any common sense at all, then you won't dare fire at me while I hold this sack in my arms."
"Spoken like a true zealot. Now that you've been driven to a corner due to your failure, you've decided to lay your life on the line and finish me off in a blaze of glory," Akahori appraised as he looked down on Amakusa with glinting spectacles and a slight smirk. "The true reason why you've created the Battousai Group was because you wanted your own followers to be the successors of your failed rebellion. Once you're dead, you'll be worshipped as their messiah and savior, won't you?"
Amakusa undid the cords that held his bag together. "You're the last man standing in the way of my people's freedom. There's no need for us to overcomplicate things. It's you and only you whom I want dead. Tell your guards to stand down and let us settle things once and for all."
Akahori chuckled as he turned his back on Amakusa. "Why the hell would I want to do that? Bomb yourself to oblivion for all I care. These policemen will do everything in their power to see you burn in hell anyway." The curtain-bearded man stopped in mid-stride as he saw Soujiro's smile transform into a pale-faced maw of shock and disbelief.
Akahori turned. Right below him, he saw Amakusa cradling the unmoving form of his only daughter, her lifeless eyes staring right into the depths of his tortured soul.
"RIN!"
To be Continued...
Next: The plans of mice and men.
What is wrong with this picture? A mass murderer who's suddenly refusing to kill save for just one life? Is that the corpse of Rin Akahori he's carrying? How will the Sanbaka react once they see for themselves the demented twist and turns of this ongoing saga? Stay tuned next time for another installment of Rurouni Yahiko!
Wala na akong masabi,
Abdiel