Rurouni Yahiko
A Rurouni Kenshin Fan Fiction Continuation by Chester Castañeda
Writing the Gan versus Amakusa fight was fun. Also, we're nearing the climax of the present arc.
Disclaimer: All characters used in this fanfic (save some others) are the rightful property of Nobuhiro Watsuki, Shueisha, Shonen Jump, Viz, Sony Studios, Fuji TV, Studio Gallup, Studio Deen, and ADV. This disclaimer also covers all the other copyrighted material that are far too many to mention here. Don't sue me please, I'm very poor.
Chapter 22: The Second Coming of the Son of God
'I AM THE SOBA KING! GUWAHAHAHAHAHA!' the Gan inside Yahiko's head boasted, which spurred the stunned boy into action.
"...sealed with the blood of Christ, he may come before you free from sin. Amen," murmured the shining Amakusa before he weaved, bobbed, and bent backwards to avoid the Tokyo Samurai Descendant's wild strikes, sensing the boy's bloodlust.
"AMAKUSA! I'LL KILL YOU!" screamed Yahiko.
The shining, beatific Shogo harrumphed. "You should've decided that from the start."
In an instant, Yahiko sunk low in a spray of tears and sweat before delivering a stiff Ryu Sho Sen to Amakusa's chin as the shimmering Christian revolutionary straightened up his body to regain his balance, which sent him right into the middle of the nearest staircase in a mess of splayed limbs, dust, and wooden splinters.
'...W-What?'
Curiously, the golden halo of light around the insurgent's head and his flaming bodily aura flickered from the assault. However, he recovered and went back to a vertical base in a second, brushing away the debris on his shoulder then blocking the teen's subsequent strikes as they climbed the steps in a dance where blunt force and unbelievable sharpness collided.
Amakusa said, "Your name is Myojin Yahiko, isn't it? Give up. Your parents will surely be saddened to never see their son again because he has become part of a communal grave of unidentified corpses. If you don't want to end up like your friend or the Gunma and Kamiminochi Units of Akahori's Police Army, then you should stand down."
Yahiko answered, "My parents are both dead, and I have no intention of standing down!"
The Myojin kid continued his charge regardless, so Amakusa parried and rebuked him, stating, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men."
"I have no idea what a Satan is supposed to be. I am curious, though; did you give the same, 'You can leave now if you want,' ultimatum to Keisuke and his Fake Battousai Group when you massacred them too, Mister Battousai of Style? For someone who's allegedly been 'forced' to kill people, you sure have a real knack for it!"
"What? Fake Battousai Group...?" Amakusa mouthed with a raised eyebrow.
Yahiko's assault sputtered and lost momentum after hearing Amakusa's confused tone. 'He is the red-haired, cross-scarred man that wiped out all of Keisuke's men, right? Only a member of the Juppon Gatana or a one-man army who killed a thousand policemen like him could've done so.'
The Tokyoite then glanced around for any sign of Minoe; he found none. 'He's gone... Fine. It's better this way.'
'I'll call you Kitsune-chi, and I'll have you and hug you and love you because you're my little Kitsune-chi, Kitsune-chi!' The eye-patched man giggled inside Yahiko's psyche.
Every swipe Yahiko did, the kenki-infused Amakusa parried to the side with slashes of fluctuating strength and speed while he backed away, each of them aimed at the flat side of the sakabatou instead of its blunted part in order to prevent getting his katana broken by the God Hammer technique.
'I'm too slow. If only I could handle the weight of the sakabatou the same way Kenshin did when he was at his prime, then nobody would've had to die today. A year later, and it's still too heavy for me to handle. If only I were stronger... Dammit!' Yahiko thought, the outlandish memory of Gan hooting and hollering till his body fell apart piece-by-piece renewing his rage and resolve.
Meanwhile, Amakusa himself surmised, 'I get it now. This boy is the one who fought Akahori's head bodyguard on the night those criminals from Shinshu who pretended to be part of our Battousai Group were wiped out by Morinaga. This was the child who risked life and limb in order to break the Ten Ken's katana under the mistaken assumption that Seta Soujiro murdered all those people. Is this the reason why you're so intrigued by him, Morinaga?'
Yahiko's thousands of repetitions when it came to Kamiya Kasshin Ryu's unique brand of dodging, slipping, and blocking enabled him to weather the storm of whirling steel once Shogo decided to counterattack. However, Amakusa observed that most of the blocked hits were from his Ryu Sou Sen, while it took the boy sometime to figure out the one-eight-ten combinations from the sword school of his father, the late Tokisada Muto.
'Could it be possible that this boy is somehow connected to the real Battousai himself? Reverse-edged swords are hardly commonplace weapons, and he seems a bit too familiar with how Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu works, like that one annoying policeman from the Tokyo District who kept me from wiping out his unit because he knew what techniques I was using. Come to think of it, I think he and that copper knew each other.'
Even though he held his ground for the most part, the recent Kuzu Ryu Sen Yahiko received left him struggling to focus on his task, his muscles feeling wobbly, his legs throbbing, and his body stiffening like hardened plaster. Countless cuts, contusions, and half-blocked attacks still came through for Shogo.
'Does that mean that the rumor about Himura Kenshin taking up a non-killing vow and brandishing a reverse-edged sword was true? I thought that balderdash was a false lead! I hope Captain Ujiki's claims that Battousai is now a cripple are also false,' Amakusa debated inside his mind.
Before Shogo the Divine knew it, they'd reached the atrium of the ballroom's upper deck, his lackadaisical blocks and parries powerless against Yahiko's determination to land a hit, his fighting spirit pushing him back.
'Sure thing, Yoshi-boy. I'll stop just as soon as I lose all of my common sense and do whatever it is strangers tell me to do!' Gan had hollered at a livid Yahiko the other day during their momentous chase around Shinshu thanks to the hooligan's unpaid food tab.
'HEY, wait a minute! Yahiko! My name is Yahiko! YA-HI-KO! Who the heck are you calling 'Yoshi'? And what the heck's a 'Yoshi' anyway? I don't look like a 'Yoshi'!' Yahiko shot back at the time.
"I won't let you win," the sixteen-year-old teenager told Amakusa.
"Win? This isn't a contest. You don't even have anything to do with why I'm here. If you people had let me kill Akahori from the very start, then none of this senseless bloodshed would've happened. I was willing to compromise. You weren't. You only have yourselves to blame."
"BASTARD! How dare you? Don't pin your crimes on your victims! It's insufferable, shameless assholes like you whom I hate the most! SHIPPU JINRAI DOTOU NO KEN!"
A technique Yahiko learned from the Joetsukan Dojo's Shibata Ryu in Yokohama that was incorporated into his personal Kamiya Kasshin Ryu arsenal, the Gale Thunderclap Billow Sword was a quick and sharp disarming move aimed specifically at the Left or Right Wrist or "Kote" as well as the "Yoko-Men" (Upper Right Head) and "Sayu-Men" (Upper Left Head) of the opponent.
Amakusa parried the Shippu Jinrai Dotou no Ken with ease, but Yahiko kept shifting from that move to the sword-breaking Tsui Gami, which forced Shogo back in order to keep his wrists safe and his blade from getting chipped or outright shattered from the varying attacks. 'Annoying little brat.'
Just beyond this sakabatou-wielding amateur was Akahori: Amakusa's last chance at redemption. He'd cross the bridge leading to the Battousai once he got there. Right now, he had other issues to take care of and prioritize. He'd become God once more for the sake of defeating his personal Satan.
Yahiko's back ended up against the same railing Akahori held while delivering his speech to encourage his troops a short while back, the reopened injuries he'd suffered thanks to experiencing the Nine-Headed Dragon Flash twice within a three week period limiting his movement.
Was this what Shogo meant by claiming himself a force of nature? He used the same techniques as Kenshin and Hiko had, but possessed none of their grace or deliberateness. He could be faster than the ex-vagabond... the boy found that debatable... but he sported none of the Battousai's battle-tested savvy and cunning, in the Tokyoite's opinion.
Also, the Christian leader was about as violent and dominant as Seijuro Hiko the Thirteenth, but he didn't possess the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu master's complete control over his unfettered might. Endless aggression, wasted power; a formidable opponent, but a different animal altogether.
'I will not fall to someone inferior to either Kenshin or his master. No way.'
"Come now. No speech about me having delusions of grandeur or being some sort of hypocrite? I've heard them all. What's your take?" The transfigured Shogo increased the pressure by pouring every last offensive technique in his arsenal, from the Ryu Tsui Sen to the Ryu Kan Sen to the Dou Ryu Sen that sheared the flooring Yahiko walked on to a metaphoric needlepoint.
"I'm done talking. Let me show you what I mean." A metal sheath to the rejuvenated Amakusa's eye woke him up from his reverie, followed by multiple counterstrikes to the body that compounded the damage that warriors like the late Sergeant Isao Askikaga, Lieutenant Okami Yamazaki, Captain Mitsuru Ujiki, and Gan had already contributed.
'What in the world...?' Although Amakusa's brain didn't register any of the pain from the counterassault... his robust lungs breathing without any trouble while his oxygen-rich blood clotted his wounds and reinvigorated his tired body... the facade of health made him even more cautious.
"Ryu Sou Sen Garami!" said Shogo.
"Tsuka no Gedan: Hiza Hijiki!" retorted Yahiko, ducking under the one point that the technique concentrated on attacking.
Amakusa's knees buckled from the counterattack before the move he used to finish off Gan could even hit the nimble Yahiko.
The last Rai Ryu Sen Shogo executed served as his version of master-level Hyoki no Jutsu, otherwise known as self-hypnosis. A Nikaido Heiho expert could deploy Hyoki no Jutsu unto himself in order to trick his body into functioning at peak performance and unleashing dormant potential without regard of dire consequences such as wear and tear.
Even though his body didn't register pain, it didn't necessarily mean he was invulnerable. The only thing that his Rai Ryu Sen did was turn off the alarms in his mind and removed his biological safeguards that kept him from worsening his critical condition.
His midsection remained a mess. His body was still battered to a pulp. If the boy could tee off on him at will, his mission could be put into jeopardy regardless of his lack of pain. His endorphin rush could only do so much. The interloper before him must go down.
Yahiko's mouth remained a thin, flat line while his eyes appeared glassy thanks to their dilated pupils. His mind went blank. His heart slowed its beats. His body was at its limit. His muscles remembered that perfect strike against Soujiro... the indefinable technique that was neither Kamiya Kasshin Ryu or Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu in nature... a move he could call his own.
'How harsh! I was only trying to help,' the Minoe within Yahiko's tired heart bemoaned as he fluttered his eyelids and stretched his hands towards the boy like a scorned lover.
Amakusa willed his faltering yet pain-deprived body to move forward and bombard Yahiko with a composite version of Nikaido Heiho kanji strikes and Ryu Sou Sen slashes, the smooth calligraphic movements meshing well with the hard, sharp, and accurate slices of the Dragon Nest Flash.
The spiky-haired teenager blocked and parried the nonstop volley, which left the rebel's sword seemingly trembling with fear. 'Fear? Nonsense. He's hitting my katana so hard and accurately, he's turning it into a tuning fork. It could break at any moment!'
Amakusa reacted in kind by mixing up his offense and increasing his amount of angles to minimize sakabatou-to-katana contact. Yahiko neutralized this with the dual Kamiya Kasshin Ryu Ougi of Hadome and Hawatari, his heavy, Hawatari-assisted body shots against Shogo piling up slowly but surely. Even the Nikaido Heiho techniques that Yahiko had trouble with earlier were countered.
They were at the exact same impasse they experienced back when they first clashed swords at the Shinshushin Manor's open yard; the irresistible force versus the immovable object. In real life, there were no irresistible forces or immovable objects; something always had to give, and earlier in their battle, that something was Yahiko Myojin.
Shogo bided his time, adjusting the direction of his strikes against the teenager's impenetrable defense so that Yahiko would be forced to move his body in compromising positions that aggravated the wounds he already had. The rebel's red and white light shone through with each strike, overwhelming the darkness within the boy's raging heart.
"AMAKUSA! EAT THIS!" Although Yahiko missed his chance at shattering the surprisingly tough blade, his horizontal slash formed a welt at the flat part of Amakusa's cross scar, the thudding blow producing a spray of red and white not unlike the rebel's mystifying aura.
"You Philistine...!" Just as the angelic Shogo prepared to unleash the onslaught of another Kuzu Ryu Sen, his body went inert, his muscles paralyzed from the neck down. From there, like a vacuum would to light, he felt his kenki get sapped by his opponent's complete lack of living energy; an blank void of immeasurable depth and denseness.
"T-The Lord is good. When trouble comes, he is a strong refuge. A-And he knows everyone who t-t-trusts in him. But h-he sweeps away his enemies in an overwhelming flood. He pursues his foes into the darkness o-of... night!"
Yahiko aimed at the vibrating blade, and Amakusa compelled his numb and paralyzed body to block the thrice-hitting Tsui Gami with his arm, dislocating it.
The lustrous Amakusa felt the wind knocked out of him as he set the jutting, out-of-place bone back into place with a stomach-turning crunch. It didn't hurt, but it exhausted his numb body. With the strength of his indomitable willpower, he forced his injured arm to move.
The follow-up body strikes that should've ended the match right then and there never came; the blinding agony and blood loss from the Nine-Headed Dragon Flash had rendered Yahiko's legs into a rubbery mess. The first one to rise to the occasion and deliver the final blow was the winner.
A minute passed, followed by another. After the fifth one, the gasping combatants stood as one and charged at each other.
"KUZU RYU SEN!"
'Ugh. That was gross. But anyway, time to go! Ninpou: Kakuremi no Jutsu!' announced the frowning and retching Minoe in Yahiko's mind's eye as he did a poor impersonation of a ninja attempting to become invisible in order to sneak away and escape.
"..." Yahiko's eyes adjusted itself, the flowery rainbow afterimage morphing into Amakusa's first strike as though time slowed itself down for his sake. At that point, his body moved on his own, his muscle memory remembering the same state of emptiness he experienced when faced against Soujiro Seta's Shukuchi.
In an eye blink and a sigh, the real Minoe appeared in front of Yahiko and did something that the Tokyo Samurai Descendant had only seen one other time in his lifetime: He blocked each and every last strike of the Nine-Headed Dragon Flash with a blunt wakizashi, the sparks from the high friction exchange igniting all at once like an ornate fireworks display. Enishi Yukishiro himself took a while before learning to block the powerful technique.
"M-Minoe! You came back! Thanks, I..." Yahiko sputtered, but he trailed off after his rescuer invaded his personal space and addressed him with a bright, dilated eye that reflected his flummoxed face back at him.
"Goodbye. Please forget that any of this ever happened," the eye-patched effeminate man requested before pushing the teenager off the ledge of the vestibule and turning his back to once again confront Shimabara's One-Man Army.
"Minoe, please be safe!" Yahiko cried out to the petite secret agent, but he never heard a "Mochiron!" back from him as he blacked out on the floor down below with a resounding crash.
An hour and fifteen minutes past midnight, inside Akahori's designated study...
"Father?" the wind whispered.
Tetsuo Akahori limped into the hall even as the sounds of battle down below his study's veranda continued to erupt like fireworks at New Years' Eve. He grabbed hold of his face with a gloved hand, his spectacles glinting in the lamplight.
'Is this yet another one of those hallucinations caused by Amakusa's Rai Ryu Sen? No, that technique wasn't the Rai Ryu Sen at all; I've stolen the true Rai Ryu Sen from Amakusa many years ago.' Akahori did his best to stand up using the nearby table as leverage. He'd stabbed himself a little too deep with his letter opener earlier in order to wake up from the hypnotic, suffocating stupor Shogo left him in earlier.
'That... thing Amakusa did doesn't deserve to be called Rai Ryu Sen. Using drugs to simulate a technique he could no longer do by himself is beyond pathetic.' Every other breath of Akahori's had a whistling wheeze, so he knew that the effects of Shogo's Rai Ryu Sen (watered-down as it might have been) remained in his system.
"Father," came another soft, unmistakable sigh.
'There it is again. It's faint, but I can hear it. Why won't it leave me alone?' the sweaty, middle-aged man demanded as he stumbled over the bookcase and let loose several tomes on the floor, his legs unbalanced and burning with a fire he couldn't put out no matter how hard he tried.
His hands. His hand smoldered in memory of the past. The incorrigible Meiji Government (or rather, the Ishin Shishi who eventually became part of the hanbatsu) attempted to erase him from their midst the same way they did with Makoto Shishio, the Sekihoutai, the Shinsengumi, Hajime Saito, Kaisho Katsu, Shinsaku Tagasuki, Kogoro Katsura, Toshimichi Okubo, and Takamori Saigo.
He remembered that, even in the middle of the infernal conflagration of hell, his little girl mewed the same word over and over again without panicking... like a true Akahori. He grabbed hold of the door where she lay there calling for him over and over the roar of the raging blaze, without any regard to the flesh-eating flames on the crackling door. He burned from the inside out.
"Father, it's me."
However, that was merely a memory. He had more important issues to attend to at the moment. He rifled through his desk drawer, discarded his Colt Single-Action Revolver, and picked up a firearm that earned more widespread use among the old Satsuma forces and the signature weapon of the famous Bakumatsu hero, Ryoma Sakamoto: A Smith and Wesson Army Number Two. He also took two bandoliers full of speedloaders for his revolver and tucked them inside his coat.
His sweaty head snapped up in attention after hearing several knocks on the wall. "Are you in there, Father?"
They'd set their trap, hadn't they? The bastards. Like Tagasuki and Saigo, he had no intention of going down without a fight. Not after everything he'd done and sacrificed for the Ishin Shishi and the hanbatsu.
The best years of his life were wasted all for the sake of maintaining stability in an inherently corrupt nation. If he were to perish, then he'd make damn well sure that they were going to go down with him.
No. Wait. That wasn't it. It wasn't the leaders of the Meiji Government that he should be afraid of. What was he supposed to do again?
He heard a creak from above the ceiling. He turned. Hanging feet greeted him back. Familiar, socked feet. The stench invaded his nostrils and seared his lungs. He howled and nearly pulled the trigger of his handgun while its barrel was in his mouth.
'I need to wake up. This is a nightmare. I need to wake up in order to deal with Amakusa once and for all. Get a hold of yourself, Tetsuo.'
He swung the door open and hobbled right in the middle of the hall, his revolver cocked and ready. Before him stood the apparition of a milky-haired, alabaster-skinned, and slate-gray-eyed ghost from beyond.
"Father, it's me. Rin."
"You don't fool me! My daughter is in the safe hands of my bodyguard, Seta-kun." He aimed his Smith and Wesson at the ghoulish specter. "I want to wake up. I have no time to waste on you, spirit. Leave me be!"
A gunshot resounded in the hallway; from an outsider's perspective, the muffled bang didn't stand out from all the other, louder, and unremitting rifle blasts from within the yard.
Yahiko woke up staring at the ceiling after hearing a thunderous boom that shook the entire manor and rendered the staircase a couple of yards away from him into a rickety mess. He then concentrated on clearing his double vision, his head pounding like a drum. What happened exactly? What time was it? What was he doing lying in the middle of a stranger's house?
Was he protecting his mother from one of her rougher customers again? No, wait, she was already dead. Was the yakuza beating him up again? No, wait, he was already freed from the yakuza by Kenshin. Was he blown away by that man who flew like a bat and threw dynamite around with reckless abandon? No, wait, he already defeated him. How about the man with a mouth of a whale? Or that bald guy with the multi-section stick? He defeated them too, although Kujiranami was more of a... draw, if anything else, since Kenshin was the one who put Whale Mouth down for the count.
Was he involved in a carriage accident? Trampled and knocked out by horses? Nearly killed by Psycho-Kid? How long had he been asleep? Minutes? Hours? Days? Years? Well, maybe not years.
He then realized he'd fallen. More importantly, he was pushed by a certain wigged, bandaged, and eye-patched "land pirate" spy known as Munenori Minoe. He looked around. The remains of the murdered Togakudan was beside him. In fact, one of them helped break his fall. He resisted the urge to hurl.
The bodies hadn't stiffened yet, so he deduced that he hadn't been down and out for long. On that note, who knew that being friends with Chief Uramura and Officer Kosaburo would have its benefits, such as knowing how rigor mortis worked?
Breathlessly, Yahiko thought, '...Minoe!' after remembering that Amakusa's former fan had essentially substituted himself for the Tokyoite in order to confront the humanoid typhoon that wanted some random politician (albeit someone with connections to Shinshu cockfighting and Sanosuke's father) dead.
He gaped at the whittled railing where he had stood while battling it out against Shogo Amakusa: the same place where Minoe teleported from out of nowhere, shoved him away, and saved him from receiving the full brunt of the third Kuzu Ryu Sen he'd seen that week. He was lucky to survive with his limbs intact the first and second time it was used against him.
What did he just witness the last forty-five minutes or so? What did his eyes see and his mind comprehend after seeing so many deaths in his midst? Blinded by his own rage, he could barely remember how he forced Amakusa up to the upper deck above, much less figure out what had happened beforehand. All he could recall was his feelings over Gan's... then his mind blanked out with visions of his time together as part of the short-lived Three Stooges.
The sword clangs from above him compelled him to try to stand up and return to the forefront of Amakusa's one-man war against the Japanese Government, but his legs wouldn't listen to him at all, as though a demon mounted his chest, digging his claws deep and crushing his heart and lungs like citrus fruit.
Subsequently, all the color from Yahiko's face faded to nothing, his skin's pallor resembling that of the Togakudan corpses beside him: blood-soaked from the outside, blood-drained from the inside.
Minoe popped out of nowhere like a daisy and spoke nonsense like a madman: a womanish hobo with a small sword to protect himself, but was otherwise harmless. Or not so harmless, because he was going to kick Amakusa's butt, and after the feeling in Yahiko's legs came back, they'd battle the zealot two-on-one and at the very least save the lives of everyone who'd survived so far.
On that note, Yahiko couldn't believe how skilled Minoe was up until the time when he first saved his bacon. In many ways, the pirate man and Kenshin were alike in the sense that they were more than what they appeared. They even shared the same inflections and quirks, come to think of it.
Then, a mound of humanity exploded into a menagerie of appendages, bone fragments, giblets, vital organs, and limbs: a sea of flesh and blood heading right towards him.
"M-Minoe?"
It rained crimson during those early hours of the morning.
The boy's stomach churned after he heard the person-sized silhouette from above him splatter and break with a voluminous series of muted viscous chops, like a whole cabbage patch being cut apart and shredded by the thousand-armed Goddess of Mercy herself, Kannon.
"..."
Judging from Kenshin's descriptions when he recounted how he first got his cross-shaped scar, it rained the same way as the Battousai's bloody meeting with Tomoe Yukishiro did. Yahiko bathed in warm blood other than his own, its pungent metallic smell assaulting his nostrils, stinging his watery eyes, and souring his tongue.
Afterwards, it rained appendages, severed limbs, and entrails, which prompted Yahiko to at last gain the strength to move away from the remains and expelling what was left of the Sakaguchi Soba he ate previously.
Hope against hope, Yahiko looked back. He knew it sounded horrible of him to think that way, but he wished the raining appendages were the remains of the exhausted Amakusa, killed by self-defense of the unlikely hero known as Munenori Minoe, the Master of Blocking.
The mangled cadaver was unrecognizable, but the shredded purple-and-blue ensemble it wore wasn't. Yahiko's heart skipped a beat, his whole body shaking as he retched on his spit and mucus.
A glimmer of optimism entered Yahiko's mind. 'No. No, no, no. Wait. This could be another person's corpse!' Yahiko was a terrible, terrible person to desire the death of a stranger in exchange of the life of someone he knew, but he also realized that he didn't care.
'Relax. Patches... I mean, Minoe... has made his choice. He's on our side. Even though Amakusa was his idol, he chose to fight him for the sake of his deceased comrades and Gan's sacrifice. He didn't turn tail and betray the Sanbaka after all.'
Yahiko's train of thought derailed into a multi-passenger tragedy mourned for years to come after realizing he'd referred to himself, the late Gan, and Minoe as the Three Stooges without any provocation, derision, or sarcasm whatsoever. 'What the hell am I thinking? I should stay focused! I am not part of that village idiot troop! Not at all!'
Also, for some reason, Yahiko remembered him and Minoe getting their heads stuck inside the crevice of a bat cave while Gan talked to both their hindquarters... and he didn't know why.
A flapping and bloodied eye patch flew right into Yahiko's face. He lost his balance and fell on the seat of his hakama, even though the light slap of leather didn't really hurt him.
Once realization set in, Yahiko wailed and bit his own wrist to keep his whimpering sobs at bay, multiple streams of salty water flowing from beneath his eye bags as his eyes turned red and his airways were clogged with screams too loud and too hoarse to pass through his throat all at once.
He tried screaming Minoe's name, but his sniveling rendered his words incomprehensible, the tightness in his chest forcing his head to the ground as he pounded the floorboards as though he were knocking on heaven's gilded gates themselves. 'Bring him back,' he would've demanded to the heartless gods.
An hour and twenty minutes past midnight, across the hallway where Akahori's designated study was located...
Rin didn't even flinch as she felt a fleck of some invisible destructive force the size of a pea whiz past her hair, her scalp and her skin pores throbbing after she heard a loud pop from behind her while her father aimed a smoking gun at her.
"Are you all right, Father?" she deadpanned as she brushed her hair back, the smell of gunpowder lingering in the air. "You don't look so good."
The wrinkled, grit-teeth Noh mask her father wore as his face melted into a different expression altogether, the eyes behind his spectacles glinting in recognition of his lone daughter with a flame she was intimately familiar with. His lips twisted into a smile, his laughter exuberant and tearful. Heartbreaking.
"Father, you're limping. Are you hurt? Did Amakusa hurt you?"
"Rin? Rin! RIIIIIIN! I'm so glad you're safe!" As his tears and nasal expulsions streamed across his face-splitting grin, Akahori ran towards his daughter, hugged her, and swung her around until dizziness set in, his bellowing laughter making her bite her lip and cling unto him for a little longer. However, the prickly part of his chin made her flinch and move away, as though stung by a cactus.
"Did Amakusa hurt you, Rin? Did he do anything else to you? I swear, if he dared...!" the hypocrisy of Tetsuo's thought processes didn't bother him in the least, especially in light of the fact that she was kidnapped by her temporary coachman for the sake of minimizing fatalities.
Tetsuo using a police army, the Togakudan, and hired bodyguards as cannon fodder for Amakusa made him more dangerous than the rebel in many ways.
"You and I both know who and what Amakusa is, Father. His convictions won't allow him to do any such thing. He only brought me here, nothing more," Rin reassured. She presumed her irises shook as usual with the way her tearful father stared at her with quivering lips, which amused her in the sense that it looked to him like she was about to cry even though she wasn't really.
"I don't trust him. That man is a hypocrite. He doesn't only create widows and orphans, he also finishes off the loved ones of the people he killed as well, all the while claiming himself to be a god and a god-fearing Christian. What a joke."
"It was your fault why he was forced to do that."
"He had the choice not to kill. He had the choice to fail. If divine retribution is important enough for him to willingly turn into a charlatan and a fraud, then I reserve the right to condemn him for it."
"Father... I can't breathe."
"Oh, sorry. Did I hurt you? I forgot that you bruise easily. I thought that I'd lost you when Amakusa first showed your body. Just like... Anyway, where's Seta-kun?"
Her father cleared his throat and relinquished his solid grip on her, but first he gave her a parting porcupine kiss on the lips as an apology of sorts. She licked her mouth, tasting the bitterness of tobacco and the sweetness of wine.
"I was forced to leave Seta-kun behind. He'll be here shortly." Rin focused her eyes on Akahori and saw a shaking, trembling, gaunt, and haggard mess of a man. If Amakusa were to come there shortly, he'd finish him off in an instant. This was not the man she referred to when she told Shogo that he didn't stand a chance against her father.
"Wait, what are you doing back here? Who brought you here in the first place?" Akahori asked, his doting facade morphing into a countenance that Rin was more familiar with. The Noh mask returned, the bespectacled man transforming into Enma Daio, his thick brow ridges touching the tips of his glasses and his gloved hands forming a steeple of sorts below an unimpressed sneer.
"I don't know. I was left here by another Battousai." Rin fidgeted and bit the tips of her thumbs in remembrance. "He was a doppelganger Battousai that looked nothing like Amakusa Shogo yet also sported red hair, a cross-shaped scar, and imperceptible speed. He had the build of a little girl and he was able to catch up with Seta-kun."
"Honey, Daddy doesn't have time for your little riddles."
Tetsuo waved his daughter off, which prompted her to reply while rolling her partly lidded eyes, "I meant what I said. There are two Battousais in this mansion right now. The one who brought me here had a twin scar under his eye and Tokugawa Era clothing. He smelled of blood."
"Two Battousais...?"
Her father grabbed hold of her shoulder, pinched the fabric off of her skin, and gripped it tight (probably to avoid further bruises) as he exhaled deeply while his eyes darted to and fro the floor the same way her eyes would've done so involuntarily.
She then realized something. Her genius father, the architect behind the Modern Shimabara War that virtually wiped out Shimabara's Hidden Christians right off the face of Japan, had not anticipated her capture at all.
"I haven't figured out why Amakusa's Battousai Group left you here when they could've killed you and used that fact to their advantage." Her father's words didn't mesh with the expression on his face, which had downtrodden eyes, a faraway look, and a thin, constricted line where his lips should be. "It doesn't matter anyway, since Seta-kun will be here to finish the job."
"Father," Rin ventured.
"What is it, darling?" Her daddy queried while running his gloved hands over her creamy white hair.
"You aren't angry at me for falling into Amakusa's trap?"
"Of course not, sweetheart. I was so busy with all this Battousai Group business that I've neglected you and your needs. It's not your fault, but mine."
"Then I've realized something."
"What is it, honey?"
"I am your weak point."
Without missing a beat, Tetsuo affirmed, "Yes."
Rin tilted her head to the side. "It doesn't bother you?"
"I don't care. People weren't meant to be perfect anyway. My weakness is my strength." He held her close, to the point that she could smell the stench of alcohol and cigarettes and see the streaks of red lightning in the corneas of her father's bloodshot eyes.
She drew imaginary circles around her father's stomach while resting her head on his chest. She stopped once she realized what she was doing. "You yourself said that burning houses should be looted. I'm the fire that leaves you vulnerable to thieves and your own enemies. Are you okay with this?"
"It doesn't matter. Making a bright future for you... for us... is what compels me to act. Some people in our country aren't willing to face the changes of the new age. They continue to live in the past, as though stuck in some sort of time warp. I'm here to bring about change for the next generation because the old must always make way for the new."
Her father's hands trembled as it massaged her back and petted her head like a stray cat, his warmth and his smell either nauseating or intoxicating her as his musk overpowered her. Tentatively, she embraced him back. She felt him tense up and keep her at bay afterwards.
"I will erase the sins of our fathers to make way for a brighter tomorrow. A New Japan awaits us, and I will not let the ghosts of the past come in the way of its fruition."
Akahori held his daughter by the shoulders, pushed her towards his side, and held one of her dainty hands. "We need to find an appropriate hiding place until the storm has passed. Even though my plans have suffered several setbacks, it's still moving along nicely. Before the break of dawn, this Battousai Group issue will be put to rest."
After what seemed like countless hours or what could've been mere minutes... Yahiko didn't care anymore...
Instead of watching the backs of his two companions who lent their strength to him in order to subdue the beyond-reasonable Amakusa, Yahiko ended up endangering his comrades and ultimately leading them to their deaths. They had sacrificed their lives for his instead of the other way around.
Honestly, who was he kidding? Minoe, the Master of Blocking? Blocking strikes wasn't enough to win against that monster, Amakusa. Even he barely lasted a couple of minutes at a time against Shogo's Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu, while Gan... He'd rather not talk about Gan at the moment.
Dammit, he couldn't see.
"K-Kenshin... Kenshin, what am I supposed to do now? What would you have done if you were in my sandals?" Yahiko already knew the answer to that. Had Kenshin been the one who handled this mission, then none of those people would've died. The problem would've been settled as soon as he and Amakusa crossed swords. That was how great Kenshin was.
Come to think of it, had Kenshin met Amakusa earlier on... six years earlier, to be exact... would those one thousand policemen and soldiers be spared their gruesome fate? Yahiko believed without a shadow of a doubt that that would've been the case.
As the Hitokiri Battousai, Kenshin was a butcher without peer who paved the way to the new era and painted it with the blood of the Ishin Shishi's enemies. As the vagabond, Kenshin was a pacifist who had the power and ability to stop conflicts with both his mind and his body: a hero through and through. He was perfect: Yahiko's idol to Minoe's Amakusa.
How was he supposed to compete against that? Forget about him being ten years too early to reach Kenshin's level; at this rate, he might as well have been a thousand years too early.
"I've inherited your sword, but I haven't inherited your strength to come along with it. I'm so... weak."
'Unlike your other so-called allies, are you prepared to kill me?' was what Amakusa told Gan, not Yahiko.
The Tokyoite bit his lip and wiped away his tears. Kenshin was strong enough to afford to not kill his enemies and face the repercussions of doing so. That wasn't the case for Yahiko, a former yakuza lackey.
Didn't he as a ten year old swear to the insane Enishi Yukishiro that if he killed Kaoru before he and Kenshin fought, 'Then, in place of Kenshin the non-killing rurouni, I WILL KILL YOU!' with nary a stutter? Did he not face down a giant back in Aoiya, convinced that Kenshin would come back and save them all? Where was that courage of his now?
'I guess I know better now than before. Ignorance is bliss.'
To the Myojin boy himself, Shogo concluded, 'You've never killed a man, have you? Foolish child. This is no place for you.'
Amakusa was right. Yahiko never did kill a man. He'd like to think that it was a choice he made rooting from his strong moral fiber or, like in Kenshin's case, regret and atonement.
However, it just happened that he hadn't had the opportunity or ability to kill anyone. It wasn't a conscious effort on his part, although the non-killing nature of Kamiya Kasshin Ryu also came to play in regards to that circumstance.
Wasn't he just abiding by the pacifistic vow that Kenshin made for himself merely because he wanted to follow the ex-rurouni's example without regard to whether or not it applied to his current situation?
Would the outcome of this incident be a lot more different if he had executed Amakusa like some sort of wandering vigilante? Was it really a matter of choice on his part, or was it more because he didn't have the strength or skill to kill the rebel?
He remembered chasing the backs of both the sprinting Sanosuke and Kenshin in his dreams: a recurring fantasy that defined his goals up until this juncture. Right now, in his mind's eye, their backs were so far away he could barely see them anymore.
The hemorrhaging light of the sunset shone as they all dashed to an unknown destination, so the long shadows of Sanosuke and Kenshin that covered Yahiko's path remained his only other indication that they were still there. No matter how fast or how hard he ran, he could never catch up to them.
If it were Kenshin guarding Akahori, he would've found a way to overcome the opponent without leading to any casualties or collateral damage whatsoever. He would've defeated Amakusa and made him realize the errors of his ways, or at the very least prevent him from hurting anyone else. Had Yahiko killed Amakusa when they first fought, then...!
"If only Kenshin were here. If only Kenshin's weakened body still had the strength to wield this sword I'm not worthy of inheriting..."
"JEEZ, SHUT UP AND STOP WHINING! Kenshee this, Kenshee that. Can't you let a guy rest in peace here? If you want your Kenshee so bad, then why don't you marry him? Honestly."
Yahiko whirled his head so hard at the source of the familiar voice that he'd almost snapped his own neck. He screamed, fell on his knees, and crawled to the safety of the Togakudan's dismembered corpses after seeing the chopped head of Gan speak to him with a sneer and an unimpressed stare.
"Shit. I'm going crazy! What the hell is going on?"
"Well, if by crazy, you mean that you're getting whinier by the minute, then yes. Yes, you are."
"Holy Enlightened Buddha, are you for real?" Yahiko rubbed away the tears in his eyes. Even though he'd already bade logic and reality farewell, there was still no way he'd allow... Gan's ghost the satisfaction of seeing him so vulnerable and pathetic.
After comprehension sunk in, Yahiko ranted, 'What the hell am I doing? I'm talking to a dead guy's decapitated head! I'm losing it! I'm cuckoo! I'm loopy! Pull yourself together and stop doing something that Psycho-Kid does on a regular basis, Yahiko!'
To Gan, Yahiko begged, "I'm so sorry I wasn't able to protect you! Now please rest in peace! Spirit, leave me be!"
Gan's head snorted at the incoherent Yahiko as the boy flailed around and smashed his head on the floor to... cure himself of his supposed psychotic episode? Who knew?
"Wait, come again? Protect me? Isn't it the other way around?" Had Gan still possessed hands, he would've cupped his face with one of them to mime his disbelief.
Yahiko stopped bashing his troubled brains out in time to relent, "All right, fine! For some reason, you were the one who saved my life because I was too weak to take Amakusa on my own! Happy?"
"Oh, so this time, you owe me a life debt, huh? Funny, it seems that I've wasted my time trying to save you after all," Gan needled, which made Yahiko growl. That insipid, open-mouthed grin and wide, mischievous eyes tempted the Tokyoite to play ball with the insufferable talking head.
Yahiko confronted the Chatty Gan with his own furrowed eyebrows and a toothy, half-agape mouth. "What do you mean?"
"If you're going to whine about how helpless you are during a time of crisis, then I might as well have pushed you into Amakusa's rotating blade strikes and watch you turn into ground meat."
Drool began falling out of the severed head's mouth. "I wish I had my stomach. All this talking about food is making me think I'm still capable of hunger!"
Ignoring the gruesome fact that he was talking to the remains of a dead muscleman he met a day or two ago, Yahiko inquired, "What am I supposed to do now?"
"Are you afraid to die? Are you afraid of Amakusa?" Even now, the beheaded head of Gan continued to mock, arguably haunt, Yahiko with his accusing words.
"No. No on both counts. But what's the point of fighting him now? I've already failed so many people. I failed both you and Minoe. I'm helpless."
"Failed to do what? Protect everyone?"
"Yes. If Kenshin were here... or even Sanosuke..."
"Fuck Kenshee. Fuck Harada Sanosuke. You're the one who's here, Yoshi-boy." Gan guffawed the same death rattle of a hearty laugh he shared before his body fell apart from Amakusa's attack. Yahiko shivered in remembrance. "You sound just like him, you know."
"...What?" Yahiko muttered.
The Disembodied Gan clarified, "You sound just like Kumamoto." He then sneezed and spewed out bloody mucus. Or snot-covered blood. He wrinkled his nose. "My nose itches. Can you be a dear and scratch it?"
"No. That's disgusting." Yahiko slapped himself several times over in an attempt to wake up from his guilt-wracked fever dream. "You're a figment of my imagination. Also, you might fall off. Amakusa sliced you up real good."
"Fine." Gan's head rolled his eyes. "Anyway, didn't you hear the awesome dressing down I gave Kumamoto earlier? It was all true. The great expectations he shouldered has turned him into a deluded rebel murderer with a god complex, which is sad. You're acting quite like him right now, judging from what you're bitching and moaning about."
Yahiko turned away after his vision blurred and his eyes were flooded with salty bitterness. "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't have a god complex. Besides which, I've only so far hit Amakusa a couple of times and broke his sword's sheath in three places! Big whoop! I can't stop him the way I am now. He might as well be a god, considering how little damage I've given him."
Gan heaved a low howl of a sigh even though he lacked half a windpipe and both lungs. "Amakusa didn't listen to a goddamn thing I said. My sage knowledge went from one ear to the other without ever registering in his dumbass brain. Will you do the same thing, Yoshi-boy?" the bandanna-wearing "zombie" snarled, which jolted Yahiko awake.
"Kenshee is Kenshee. Yoshi-boy is Yoshi-boy. Don't be like Kumamoto, who's burdened by the shadow of some imaginary Amakusa he could never hope to compete with. You should also step away from the shadow of the Battousai you idolize and create your own path. Show everyone here, Amakusa most of all, the limits of your true strength."
Yahiko punched the floorboard in front of Gan so hard, the resulting sharp wooden shards skinned his knuckles raw. He felt his face and ears grow warm as his gums bled from how sudden he slammed his jaw shut and bared his teeth, his tense neck thick and rigid from all the increased blood flow to his head.
"Bullshit! My true strength? Don't make me laugh! You're dead, Minoe's dead, the Togakudan are finished, most of the police troops have been neutralized, and none of these... 'events' would've happened if we just let that damn lunatic zealot kill that damn Oyakata from the get go!"
"Fuck, listen to yourself, man. If you focus on what you've left behind, you'll never be able to see what lies before you!" Gan boomed, and Yahiko froze in place. In the boy's skewed perspective, the animated head looked more alive than he did at the moment.
"Aren't those policemen stuck inside that smashed, debris-filled entrance still alive? Are you going to let Amakusa run amuck and kill them too because you failed to save the lives of the other officers in the yard? Or the Togakudan inside this ballroom? What about them? What about the Oyakata, who I heard has a daughter? Or his daughter, come to think of it? Aren't you going to save them too? Or are you going to helplessly drown in your own guilt?"
"Shut up. I've heard enough." Yahiko's shoulders slumped down while his neck, grit teeth, trembling hands, heartbeats, and breathing slowed down to a crawl. He stood, sheathed his inheritance from Kenshin, and used it as his crutch of sorts to keep him from toppling over.
Gan queried, "Where do you think you're going?"
Yahiko replied, "Like you said, I shouldn't get too wound up about the past. On that note, dead people shouldn't interfere with issues that don't concern thems anymore."
"Oh, fuck you! If I had a body, I would've headbutted you to the ground like a railroad spike," the bodiless Gan threatened.
"If you had a body, I'd kick you in the crotch," the unimpressed Yahiko countered.
"Shit, now you got me depressed. I don't have a crotch anymore either. Oh, ladies! You're all going to miss out!" Gan sniffled. "Between you and me, Yoshi-boy, I hope I don't turn into some sort of earthbound ghost like Okiku and the Nine Plates; cursed to an eternity of me trying to pick up the pieces of my sliced body. That'd suck!"
The Soba King and the Kid Samurai stared at each other before they burst into energetic, if morbid, laughter, with Yahiko tumbling posterior-first onto the ground anyway despite his sakabatou "support" and slapping his knees with whooping titters at a joke that probably wasn't as funny as he thought it was. Meanwhile, Gan's head stretched his mouth so wide with his sniggers, he could've swallowed his fist whole.
Yahiko wiped away his tears, his bloodshot eyes now clear and cloudless thanks to his own grim mirth. "Thank you, Gan. No offense, but I hope I won't be seeing you around anytime soon. I still have some work to do and the rest of my life ahead of me."
The head didn't answer back, which Yahiko took as his cue to leave.
'Who I am right now isn't enough to surpass Amakusa or Psycho-Kid, much less Kenshin during his peak. That doesn't necessarily mean I can't keep that deranged cult leader and his posse from doing whatever they want.'
Every step felt like stabbing knives and every breath stung like glass dust in his lungs. Regardless, he gingerly made his way through the less damaged of the two staircases, wincing at every footfall, his head feeling like it was about to burst at any minute.
He felt a soft tuft of something underneath the sole of his sandaled feet by the time he reached the railing where he faced down Amakusa's second Kuzu Ryu Sen head on. The place where Minoe had pushed him, to be exact. He raised his foot and looked down. It was a raven-haired wig.
He chuckled again, laughing at something that wasn't funny at all. He wondered if this was also Psycho-Kid's coping mechanism as he entered the two-floor dining hall beyond the corpse-filled ballroom.
Two hours and thirty minutes after midnight, within the humongous confines of the Akahori Mansion's guestroom...
After a quarter of an hour of searching through the different rooms of the labyrinthine mansion, Amakusa found his quarry hiding inside the guestroom along with his milky-white daughter way before the Ten Ken could return.
"Rin, move to the corner. Daddy has some business to attend to," the Oyakata ordered the Porcelain Doll of the House of Akahori as he went into position, and true to her reputation, she obliged his request. She stood stock-still by the shadows of the moonlit window while staring, unblinking, at the events that unfolded before her, her shaking irises hinting emotions that she might or might not have felt.
"Akahori. We meet again. Let me say hello to you properly." The gleaming Amakusa's aura of sword-ki whirled around him anew, summoning a gust of wind from out of nowhere that made his clothes and hair flutter as though he were in the middle of the storm of the century.
The Oyakata slowly backed away into the windows and flapping curtains while keeping his distance from Amakusa's striking range, making sure that Rin was always within his field of vision lest the zealot became desperate and struck her down like the coward that he was.
"I was wondering whether or not that cannon shot to your shin even fazed you because you managed to finish off a squadron or two. But judging by that bleeding hole on your abdomen and the fact that you look as haggard as you were after you took out a thousand men, I'd say it affected you immensely after all."
Tetsuo squinted his eyes, his glasses flaring from the bright beams that emanated from the wounded but indefatigable Amakusa's body as the insurgent slipped into his battoujutsu stance and roared. The forty-something-year-old politician then placed his right hand a hairline away from his holstered pistol, ready to draw and fire at the slightest hint of movement.
Amakusa made the first move, leaping forward with a charging battoujutsu strike that nearly cleaved in half the curved part of the wooden scabbard that housed his shining blade. Because it wasn't a reverse-edged sword, the katana slid even faster than the original Battousai's sword-drawing technique; perhaps fast enough to cleave bullets in half.
Akahori tested that theory by drawing his gun, aiming it right between Amakusa's eyes, and firing. An instant later, Shogo split both the projectile and the fraction of a second it took to release his sword from its borrowed sheath in half, the two metal halves of the bullet traveling in different directions while singing the cilia of both his ears.
'His skills haven't deteriorated at all, but the sheath he's using isn't the same sheath he had before. It's a scabbard from another sword instead of the black steel one with the sharpened edge,' Tetsuo noticed after witnessing that one sword-drawing slash from Shogo. 'Even though most swords are shaped the same, I doubt that his sword is a perfect fit with that sheath. It has made his unsheathing strikes a mite slow.'
As the Oyakata evaluated Amakusa's skills, he kicked a couch right at the Kakure Kirishitan in order to block off the follow-up scabbard strike of the Hiten Mitsurugi School's Double Dragon Flash.
Meanwhile, Akahori remarked, "I take it that even now, you're suffering from a god complex, am I right? Tell me, did the invisible man up in the sky command you to murder all those policemen, or are you now pretending to be your magical imaginary friend made flesh?"
"Blasphemer! How can you who are evil say anything good? You're a philosophically inept charlatan with an imperfect understanding of how the world truly works. The minds of men are incapable of fathoming God's ultimate plan."
The entirety of the couch collapsed into a mess of broken wood and stuffing, the centrifugal force afforded by Amakusa's sword-drawing stance giving him enough momentum to imbue the hollow sheath with bone-crushing power without it breaking like a matchbox.
"I'm imperfect? Good. God doesn't exist because god is defined as perfect, and there's no such thing as perfection. The concept of perfection is a lie; a fantasy of idle minds wishing for something better than this imperfect world."
With that said, Akahori released the remaining four rounds of his firearm.
To be Continued...
Next: Murdering god.
Almost forgot to note that the Gadamer Gem Amakusa used in the last chapter was based on the same weapon that Shiro Amakusa of Samurai Shodown (or Samurai Spirits) fame used. The "Invisible man in the sky" paraphrase is a quote from the late George Carlin's skit about how religion is bullshit.
Also, the "Focus on what you left behind" quote was taken from Pixar's Ratatouille, while the "Burning houses should be looted" quote was lifted directly from "The Thirty-Six Stratagems" of Zhuge Liang. All rights reserved, as per usual.
Taas noo kahit kanino,
Abdiel