Rurouni Yahiko
A Rurouni Kenshin Fan Fiction Continuation by Chester Castañeda
Several characters in this story are in for a rude awakening.
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 26: The Heaven Sword
Hindsight was supposedly twenty-twenty. It certainly was the case for Kaede Morinaga, who for the longest time believed herself to be a boy care of Mizuki Morinaga's white lie. Her adoptive parent made her think she was a boy so that she wouldn't follow the prostitute's footsteps.
Little boys could go into a life of prostitution too, but Mizuki worked hard and saved a lot of money so that, according to her, Kaede could make something out of herself other than becoming an oiran (courtesan) at one of Japan's largest pleasure districts.
She also understood why Mizuki insisted that she was her foster mother. No matter how much she considered her as her real mother, the oiran didn't want her to think that she was the child of a whore.
One day, after accidentally peeking on her mother while she "serviced" her client, Kaede asked, "Mizuki-san, if I'm a boy, why don't I have that thing between your customers' legs?"
After a long period of silent contemplation, the Elder Morinaga answered, "Silly Kaede-chan. That's because yours hasn't sprouted yet." Like any child her age, the Younger Morinaga accepted that explanation as truth.
For most of her childhood, she actually believed that she'd one day sprout a penis even as she roughhoused the (literal) bastard kids of Yoshiwara: A tomboy who wore fundashi as her underwear, spat on the ground, and flicked away her boogers with the grossest of the neighborhood boys.
Kaede was particularly good with stick fighting, which came in handy whenever her orphan friends... the abandoned children of oiran... pretended to be samurai and battled each other with sticks and tree branches. She proudly made many boys cry with her fighting prowess at the time.
Around when she was seven, she was once dared to do a pissing contest to see which boy in her gang of friends could pee the farthest in the river.
Luckily, Mizuki overheard the conversation, and when Kaede complained about her penis not sprouting yet, the oiran told the child the truth about the latter's womanhood just in time.
Kaede didn't talk to her foster mother for a week afterwards.
Mizuki made Kaede swear two things after the child's anger passed: To not reveal that she was a girl while she was in Yoshiwara and to leave that district when she was around fourteen years of age so that they could live in comfort with relatives in Tokyo. However, the tragic incident that took place when she was almost of age ended that pipe dream.
Yahiko Myojin didn't need to witness for himself the tragedy that befell Kenshin as he accidentally killed his wife or the bastardly love of Shishio as he used the body of his lover as a means to stab Battousai in order to realize how horrible these circumstances were. Hearing about them was enough.
'Never again. I won't let Akahori's daughter become Psycho-Kid's Tomoe or Yumi!'
"What are you planning to do now, Myojin-kun?" asked Rin Akahori. "You applied as my father's bodyguard to keep Amakusa from killing him, yet you saved Amakusa from getting shot by my father as well. You haven't done a damn thing to save us from the Battousai of Speed."
She pushed her face to his until their noses were touching. "Whose side are you on? Who are you protecting this time around? Do you honestly think you can save everyone here from dying, including my father's two assassins? There should be a limit to being naive."
Yahiko didn't know what to answer to that, and Rin took that as her cue to again push Soujiro in the right direction of enlightenment, even at the risk of her own life.
'Kenshin would've done so. He would've saved everyone's lives,' was the answer that couldn't leave the spiky-haired teenager's lips.
Soujiro and Kaede crossed swords right in front of the Rin's face, which made her creamy hair bangs billow.
"You don't need to suffer like this, Seta-kun. Don't blindly follow the truths that Shishio Makoto and Himura Kenshin discovered. Don't change or limit yourself for the sake of fitting in with an uncaring world. Set yourself free," said Rin.
Soujiro again backpedaled then charged with the Shukuchi, and the Fake Battousai thusly countered with the Crypsis and Crabwise Stalk as soon as he entered her striking range. However, the Ten Ken actually attempted to move to the side to intercept the sidestep before a counter in the form of the Deathstalker Stab or the Swarming Barbs could happen.
"You fool," said Moringa.
As Akahori predicted, the forced and awkward hairpin turn from the high-speed Shukuchi... even at reduced speeds... made the Ten Ken stumble around and lose his balance. All Morinaga needed to do was execute another Crabwise Stalk dodge to avoid the human missile that slammed into the nearby bookshelf.
"I apologize for losing my cool, Ten Ken. I have no quarrel with you, only your boss. It was an honor battling a worthy opponent like you. It's too bad we're on opposing sides," said Morinaga in direct contradiction to her earlier ravings.
This again gave Kaede the opportunity to attack either Rin or Tetsuo in an instant before Soujiro recovered. Perhaps she could kill Shogo's mortal enemy first then keep waving the spoiled little rich girl in front of the Ten Ken as bait until she finished him off for good too.
However, before she could fulfill any of her goals, Yahiko had already pounced upon her, his sword flying off of its metal scabbard and his mouth curled up in a snarl.
After a long while, because the Heaven Sword's weaknesses were exposed one after another, the Son of Tokyo Samurai had finally decided to cross blades with Amakusa's apprentice, the crossdressing Battousai of Speed.
How he hated her and the way she besmirched the Hitokiri Battousai name by resorting to such cowardly tactics as using hostages as shields. How he hated the fact that even when staring at her up close, she still looked as though Kenshin himself was peering at him with wary eyes.
"W-What do you want?" Kaede barely had enough time to perform the Crabwise Stalk evasion and the Deathstalker Stab counterstrike, but Yahiko deflected the combo with his iron sheath. 'Why is he so angry?'
"I can't stand your cowardly tactics! You'd resort to hiding behind an old man and a girl to win a fight?" asked Yahiko.
"It doesn't matter to me. This isn't a duel. This is an assassination attempt. Anything goes. Besides which, it's not any worse than what Akahori Tetsuo would've done in order to save his hide," answered Kaede.
"I won't excuse what the Oyakata and his puppet said or did to you. I think they were scum for doing that myself. But I won't let my friends die in vain or allow your cultish terrorist organization to win!"
"It's touching how honor-bound you feel in regards to the deaths of people you've just met in a day or so. However, I won't allow the sacrifices Shogo-sama went through to become fruitless either."
The Tokyo Samurai Descendant snarled, but Morinaga's remark hit home. Up until a few days ago, Gan and Munenori Minoe were nothing but strangers to him. However, he didn't care how self-righteous he appeared, especially if his suspicions in regard to the Battousai of Speed were proven correct.
"Where did you get that short sword? Why is its edge on the reverse side of the blade? It doesn't look like it belongs to an assassin like yourself," asked Yahiko.
"That's none of your business. Go away if you want to live."
"I've heard that line before from your idol. My answer to that is still the same. No, I will not."
"Don't push me. I'll really do it. I already finished off most of Akahori's spies, for example."
"That was you?
Yahiko's face crunched up as though he ate something sour. All that time, he thought those Togakudan corpses were Amakusa's doing.
"I won't let you kill anyone else."
"What makes you think you can stop me?"
"Maybe I can. Maybe I can't. I have no idea. I don't care. But I do want to know one thing from you."
"What's that?"
"Did you kill the owner of that wakizashi you're holding?"
As though she couldn't help herself, Morinaga laughed out loud at Yahiko's question till her battle-torn sides hurt worse than before. "You have no idea how funny that sounded."
The image of the wigged, eye-patched Minoe getting ripped to shreds by the Scorpion Nest of the demented Battousai look-alike sent Yahiko to the edge.
"YOU SADISTIC BITCH! Don't disrespect the dead! He was my friend! I only knew him for a short time, but I know him to be a good person! You have no right to judge whether he lives or he dies, you bastard! TSUI GAMI!"
The God Hammer ripped through the air and blasted the Vise Grip apart the same way Soujiro's desperation battoujutsu did a while back. However, all she needed to do was to flip the blades and clamp them together so that the curved part of the swords faced each other via the Scissor Grip.
"Cancer Stance: Crisscross Claw." Morinaga slashed her blades outward into overlapping slashes that tore Yahiko's upper garments apart and threw him across the room. "Sleep now. It'll be over soon," she said as she turned her back on the samurai kid.
"Where the hell are you looking at?" asked Yahiko as he stomped his foot, skid to a halt, and launched a leaping strike aimed at the Fake Battousai's hands and wrists. "SHIPPU JINRAI DOTOU NO KEN!"
Kaede countered Yahiko's attempt at disarming her by making her arms disappear into a blur of white and gray. It looked like she had a hundred disembodied arms with swords in her arsenal, with some of her slashes moving as blindingly fast as the Heaven Sword's vaunted Shukuchi, grinding the immediate landscape into fragments and particles.
However, the Kamiya Kasshin Ryu had elements of aikido and judo in its teachings, so it had moves specifically designed to use the momentum of the attacker against him by quick turning and parrying movements. That, coupled with Yahiko's self-imposed shirahadori training, allowed him to catch, deflect, and keep Morinaga off-balance enough to not land a single stab.
'What's with him? I can't sense his presence even though he's right in front of me! Even my Antennas aren't finding the right range to strike! Was this the reason why Shogo-sama had such a difficult time with him earlier?' thought Kaede.
Even though his muscles and joints still hurt like hell, the Myojin boy persevered. Like when he battled Soujiro to a draw, his heartbeat pulsed in cadence with Morinaga's movements. No, it wasn't just his heartbeat.
The rhythm of his breathing, his eye blinks, his minute muscle twitches, and so forth became one with the Battousai of Speed's every move as he emptied his mind and allowed his instincts to take over.
In the middle of the flurry of hands and metal, Morinaga sneaked in her finishing blow, the Deathstalker Stab, after figuring out how Yahiko was able to hide his emotions and his planned moves: He emptied his mind and reacted to whatever she threw at him.
She let him fall in the rhythm of blocking her continuous stabbing attacks so that he couldn't tell the difference between the Swarming Barbs and the crushing blow of the Deathstalker Stab. However, he saw through her ruse and reacted thusly.
In an instant, the spiky-haired boy seemingly decided to fight fire with fire by going into the Offensive Fire Stance or the Jodan-no-Kamae, his sword raised above his head as he reacted to the subtle shift in Morinaga's movements. This time around, the one who was able to strike first should be the victor.
'Fine by me. I'm faster than him.'
"Kamiya Kasshin Ryu Defensive Ougi! HADOME!"
'...What?'
Yahiko bent his knees and ducked under the overhead, scorpion-tail-like stab and crossed his wrists over the blunt side of the blade to catch it.
"Kamiya Kasshin Ryu Counterstrike Ougi! HAWATARI!"
Yahiko snatched away the blade and flung it behind him. Kaede intended to stab him with the wakizashi in order to get enough time to retrieve the lost katana, but a simple flicking strike to her gloves with the Shippu Jinrai Dotou no Ken put an end to that plan, the short sword clattering on the floor.
'N-No way. This kid... This kid that almost died in the Ten Ken's hands disarmed me completely?' thought the defenseless Morinaga as Yahiko raised his sword again for a second strike.
She used her heightened senses for any sign of Soujiro as well, because he could've decapitated her right then and there, and she wouldn't be able to do a thing about it.
Yahiko glanced at the reverse-edged wakizashi for a second before moving to attack Kaede. However, his blade passed right through her as though she were a ghost. 'Oh shit, I forgot about that move! Was it called the Crypsis or the Crabwise Stalk? Ah, whatever! She's gone!'
Actually, using the Crypsis (her camouflage technique) and her Crabwise Stalk (a move where she used her natural talent in dashing quickly across small distances to scoot into her enemy's blindside) in tandem made her appear like she could do the Shukuchi, seemingly teleporting at will.
By the time Yahiko turned around to face her, she'd already retrieved her uchigatana and feinted a strike at him. They crossed blades and she allowed Yahiko to push her back, which then enabled her to jump backward and grab hold of her short sword as she squatted down and skidded to a halt.
"Yahiko-san. Be careful. She's tougher than she looks."
"What...? Psy-Psycho-Kid!"
"Heaven Sword. You can still talk. But can you stand?"
Both Yahiko and Kaede turned in time to see Soujiro literally crawl out of the woodwork, or rather the rubble from the hole he made on the wall after his spectacular, Shukuchi-driven crash.
"Shut up! Don't tell me you've forgotten that I'm also serving as the Oyakata's bodyguard!" Yahiko said, although even he knew that the Heaven Sword could see through his bluster.
"You were stinking up the joint, Psycho-Kid. I had no choice but to save your butt, because if you were defeated by Amakusa's fangirl, then I'd also look bad by default."
"Is that so? Then thank you for your help, Yahiko-san." With his smile not leaving his face, Seta attempted to stand up, but found that he couldn't. 'Huh?' His legs throbbed, specifically his thigh that Amakusa injured earlier. 'Oh. So that's how it is.'
The Tokyoite winced upon seeing the Heaven Sword had not yet fully recovered from his exertions against the Battousai of Speed. He hated the thought of him buying time for Soujiro the same way Hajime Saito, Sanosuke Sagara, and Aoshi Shinomori did for Kenshin when they all fought against Makoto Shishio, but he himself had no idea how long his own battered body could hold out.
'If you hate being the distraction, then beat this Morinaga chick then and there. Defeat her and come closer to doing something Kenshin himself would've accomplished ages ago,' Yahiko berated himself.
What Kaede said afterwards woke Yahiko from his musings. "I felt your ki and read your intentions during that second strike. You hesitated at the last minute. You had me right where you wanted me, and you couldn't finish the job, just like with Shogo-sama."
"S-So? What's your point?"
"Like Shogo-sama said, you haven't killed anyone. Do you really think that you can afford to let me live at such a critical juncture? Only the Battousai can get away with such foolishness, and even he had to pay the price of being naive."
"You don't know a thing about Himura Kenshin! Even if you do look like him, dress like him, or name yourself after him, you're not even half the warrior he is!"
Even though he had married into the Kamiya Family (his name included in the register and all), Yahiko still referred to him as Kenshin Himura. In the boy's eyes, the bumbling Minoe was closer to being Kenshin-like than this imposter.
"I know enough. That sakabatou you're holding was his, wasn't it? He let you inherit it after he realized that he couldn't do kenjutsu anymore because of his failing health."
Yahiko cursed under his breath. The old ninja he defeated, Masahiro Takae, also knew as much. How many more people out there had discovered the truth behind the Strongest Manslayer's ultimate fate? At the corner of his eye, he saw Soujiro stir. Even he wanted to know what happened to Kenshin. "What's it to you?"
'Failing health...?' thought Soujiro as he gingerly rubbed his aching limbs, willing them to move.
'Seta-kun, have you decided which truth to follow? Because if you don't decide soon, Myojin-kun will die,' thought the pale Rin as she clasped her hands together and narrowed her eyes at the kneeling blur in the distance.
Kaede nodded to herself. "My hunch is correct. For whatever reason, Battousai had been defanged and turned into a hitokiri that wouldn't kill. Because of the wars he waged against Shishio Makoto and the leader of the Shanghai Arms Dealers in his later years, he eventually became a manslayer that couldn't kill either."
"How the hell did you know about Shishio? Enishi? Just who the hell are you?" Yahiko fell into the Fire Stance again while espying both Rin and Tetsuo Akahori with darting eyes. Morinaga was positioned dead center in the room, so she could attack either of her two hostages at will with her Flying Tail Stinger.
"I am the Battousai Group's Battousai of Speed, and I will now take the Battousai's place as the Strongest Hitokiri. His existence may have caused me pain before, but by becoming what he once was... an assassin beyond peer... then perhaps it will give meaning to what I've gone through. If he's not willing to kill, then he has no right to be called Battousai, even if he was the one who originated the name."
Akahori chuckled even as his wounded arm froze up and trembled from his mirth. 'What an arrogant bitch. She's going to become the new Battousai? Does she even hear the tripe she's spewing out? Or did Amakusa brainwash her into thinking that way? She doesn't know what she's talking about. She should know her place.'
"It's too late for the sickly, weak Himura Kenshin of today to return to his former glory as a hitokiri. He was a wolf that became a mongrel, tamed by time and circumstances, so now I'll turn into the wild, bloodthirsty wolf he once was. He's become a joke because his unrealistic ideals killed his killer instinct. You inherited his toy sword? I'll inherit his strength and infamy."
'Strength...' mused Soujiro as he massaged and kneaded his legs. Both the auras of Yahiko and Morinaga were unreadable at the moment, the former a blank slate, the latter a dam of rage ready to burst.
"That shows how little you know about him. Kenshin chose not to kill. He, more than anyone else back in the Bakumatsu, understood what kenjutsu is all about, yet he still chose to follow a thorny path no one else could take and showed his true inner strength by doing so. Kenshin is not weak! His ideals are not a joke! They're not his weakness! He's stronger than you ever will be, you mindless Amakusa fanatic and murderer!"
'Weakness...' The big toe of the Heaven Sword's sandaled and socked feet started to twitch. Seta understood what Yahiko was talking about. He himself experienced the great strength of Kenshin Himura the Vagabond firsthand. He didn't need to revert to being Battousai the Butcher to defeat Makoto Shishio. However...
'Even though Himura-san defeated Shishio-san, he had to sacrifice his kenjutsu and health in order to do so. Which one of them was right in the end?'
"Let me prove you wrong, then." Morinaga shifted to her Cancer Stance as her response to Myojin's Fire Stance, her lazy-eyed yet sharp glare daring him to attack.
Yahiko took the bait and initiated the exchange with a Gale Thunderclap Billow Sword and God Hammer combo that loosened and altogether broke the expected Scissor Grip defense. Kaede almost lost her hold on the blades once again, but she persevered through the pain of hands that might or might not be broken.
'I knew it. I should've seen it as soon as he started countering all of Shogo-sama's moves back in the ballroom. His Kamiya Kasshin Ryu is like my Cancer and Scorpio Stances. He's been timing my shots and countering them. He's a counterstrike expert, just like me. Which means...'
The whole scenario of the exchange played out inside the Myojin kid's head even before he moved a single muscle. He'd break through Morinaga's defenses and, as she attempted to counter his counter with the Scorpion Nest, Swarming Barbs, or Deathstalker Stab, he'd grab the katana, break it apart using the Hadachi, and then shatter Minoe's reverse-edged wakizashi with the Tsui Gami. He'd seen how she fought against Soujiro. He knew all her moves.
Nevertheless, as Yahiko reached for Kaede's katana with the goal of snapping it in two, she shifted stances. Her sword was now at waist level and her dagger was held high up the air. With tears in her eyes that came unbidden, Morinaga declared, "Sasori Gatame."
In a heartbeat, her stolen wakizashi plunged into Yahiko's right shoulder, his already damaged body stiffening as his mouth seemingly unhinged itself in agony. She followed through with a Claw Strike similar to the one she gave the Fake Battousai Group's leader that disemboweled him. The boy fell into a wet heap on the floor a moment later, his blood pooling underneath him. Such was the might of the Scorpion Death Lock.
The faces of Gan, Minoe, Ujiki, Kusaburo, Kyoko's father, and Kenshin flashed before Yahiko's eyes. 'I'm sorry, everyone. I failed.' Before the darkness swallowed his consciousness in a blur of golden hair and cold, snow-white hands that took hold of his convulsing body, one final thought occurred to him. 'Why was Morinaga crying?'
There were large patches of Morinaga's life she couldn't remember at the time of Mizuki's death, or even to this day. Sometimes she recalled those memories, sometimes she didn't.
For months, she'd wake up in a cold sweat, and she wouldn't know why. For the first few weeks after her mother was killed, her eyes would tear up while her mind remained blank. The fact that her foster parent died took weeks to register in her brain.
At the time, Kaede had no way of knowing whether Doraku Akatsuki was lying or not in regards to him accidentally killing Mizuki. Her mind wouldn't let her remember what happened to her back then.
In regards to her true gender, Akatsuki didn't let on that he knew she was a girl for months on end, but she suspected that he knew since they always took separate baths. He also wordlessly let her go whenever she had to answer the call of nature.
Nevertheless, old habits died hard, so she remained and acted a boy for most her life, or at least a tomboyish girl. The opportunity to escape remained aplenty, but she stayed with Doraku regardless. At first, it was for the sake of revenge, but soon it was because she couldn't imagine living without him.
Furthermore, during the time she ended up in the mysterious Akatsuki's care under the (mistaken) assumption that he killed Mizuki, Morinaga decided to keep up the facade of being a boy because that was the last promise she made to her foster mother.
The duo even took advantage of that little fact by making her shift from gender to gender in order to do little spying expeditions for her master. She almost always escaped virtually undetected. This undercover work helped quite a lot during those lean times when her master was lacking of bounty hunting, assassination, or mercenary gigs.
Instead of caring about what gender she was, Akatsuki treated her as though she were a boy... or rather, as though she were someone else entirely. She figured out who that someone was the first time he got drunk around her and spilled the beans concerning his past life.
He described to her a boy who would've been her age had he lived. A clumsy, weak, optimistic, yet well-meaning young man whom he wanted to turn into a real man's man like himself but couldn't because of the kid's untimely demise.
Even though her memories of the unforgivable incident remained locked in her mind, the name "Battousai" continued to surface in the murky depths of her subconscious. She became obsessed about the man behind that name: It became as much of a priority for her as finding a way to kill her unkillable master.
Again, in hindsight, she realized that she always wanted to become someone else, and her master offered her an opportunity to do so. There were times when she even forgot about her promise to kill him for revenge. She even wondered if she still wanted to kill him, at that.
However, her (at the time inexplicable) obsession with Battousai remained. She'd eventually discover the truth behind Doraku's lies, forcing her to part ways with him because of them.
But the men who did that unforgivable act were already dead, killed by the same master she grew to hate and love and hate again, so the only people she could lay blame for her wrath at the time was the lying Doraku Akatsuki and the nomadic Kenshin Himura.
Her master did save her, and for that she was grateful regardless of his intentions. However, he used her and turned her into nothing more than a test of his strength and a replacement for someone in the past. Besides, she couldn't stand to look at his face and be reminded of a memory so horrible, her mind did its best to forget it ever happened.
Betrayed by the soldier of fortune who hid the awful truth behind the pain in between her legs and the revolting sliminess of her body during that inauspicious night, she left and tried to find meaning to her life by learning more about the faceless (or not so faceless, since he allegedly looked like her) man that changed it forever: The Hitokiri Battousai.
Unbeknownst to Soujiro Seta, she had already known about him and his notoriety prior to crossing swords with him in Shinshushin. In fact, she found out the truth behind the Hitokiri Battousai and the lies her master told her around the time Makoto Shishio's Faction made its move to conquer Japan and challenge the vanguards of the Meiji Era, the Ishin Shishi.
After Moringa parted ways with her lying mentor around 1877 (from what she heard at the time, he went straight to Yokohama to partake in the Seinan War led by the great Takamori Saigo, otherwise known as the Satsuma Rebellion), she became part of a spy group her master consulted with from time to time for one sole reason: Their connections to Makoto Shishio.
She'd learned about Shishio through her research into the history of the Bakumatsu no Douran and the Hitokiri Battousai. Like with Tetsuo Akahori and his Togakudan, the shogunate and their Oniwabanshu, and the Meiji Government and their secret service, the spy group Kaede joined was an undercover network designed to gather intelligence for the sake of Shishio's brewing coup d'etat.
It was through Shishio's spies that she learned where the wandering Kenshin Himura had settled in... somewhere in Tokyo... after ten years of being an incognito vagrant. They also helped her learn more about most of his history as the strongest hitokiri and his later exploits as a vagabond whose past kept coming back to haunt him, although the story behind his cross-shaped scar, his reversed-edge sword, and his non-killing vow remained a mystery to her and everyone else.
She watched Battousai all that time in the sidelines, stalking him because that was the job she was paid for. She learned his mannerisms and marveled at how alike his gentler nature was to the personality of Doraku's dead relative. She eventually figured out why those customers of Mizuki (hidden weapons experts by trade) were so miffed by Battousai. These assassins were defeated yet left alive by a vagabond that wouldn't kill.
Had he stayed a hitokiri, none of those assassins would've lived to tell the tale of the Battousai. Had he killed them, they would've never had the chance to murder her foster parent and make part of her soul drown in the murky depths of shame. Like with Doraku, she appreciated the Battousai's well-meaning actions and hated them at the same time. Why did he stop murdering people after doing so countless times?
She also vaguely remembered info about Himura's friends: The street fighter Zanza turned ally named Sanosuke Sagara, a bull-headed female kendo instructor, an illegal drug chemist turned doctor, and a ten-year-old street urchin pickpocket.
Who knew she'd actually meet and confront the same pickpocket at Tetsuo Akahori's Shinshu Mansion six years later?
The words that had been drilled in Soujiro's subconscious... the ideal that Kenshin proved wrong yet was also proved right by how the Meiji Government dealt with foreign policies and its constituents... resurfaced from the bowels of his mind.
'The strongest shall survive and the weak are merely food for the strong.'
'Lord Shogo was again correct. We're assassins; killers by trade. If I am to inherit that damn Battousai's name, then I must not act as inexperienced as Myojin Yahiko is when it comes to taking a person's life.'
Kaede squeezed her moist eyes shut and clenched the handles of her weapons. With Yahiko down and Soujiro crippled, she set her sights on Amakusa's original goal: Tetsuo Akahori. 'We're almost there, Shogo-sama.' However, her Antennas warned her that something was amiss.
Morinaga barely had time to block Soujiro's seated battoujutsu strike to the torso as soon as Yahiko fell down into the waiting arms of Rin, the injured boy's blood pooling underneath both him and the Akahori daughter.
She also had a mere fraction of a second to dodge and escape as her Vise Grip broke apart from the power, speed, and momentum produced by the Ten Ken's strike. 'Something's different about him,' Kaede thought.
Had it not been for her four layers of defense in the form of the Vise or Scissor Grip, Crpysis, Antennas, and Crabwise Stalk, Kaede would've become half the woman she once was, sliced in twain at the waist. 'I couldn't sense him at that last minute. What happened?'
"You've gotten slower, Morinaga-san." Soujiro smiled, his legs trembling as he stood, but his face indicating no pain, which wasn't unusual for him. "Or perhaps it's the other way around, and I've gotten faster? Let's find out, shall we?"
Her eyes dull and glassy, Morinaga looked on as Rin had Yahiko lay down on her lap and covered him up with her own pale body, his complexion nearing the hue of the creamy skin of the porcelain doll girl.
Kaede wiped away her remaining tears and turned her back on Yahiko and Rin. She had more important things to worry about. 'I should relax. Nothing's changed. His legs are still injured and the Shukuchi itself is a flawed technique. Pull yourself together, Kaede.'
"Is there something the matter?" asked Seta with a pleasant grin and closed eyes.
Morinaga snorted as she threw her short sword like a dagger. The blood of Yahiko hadn't even been wiped off yet, and she was already using it. It couldn't be helped. She was facing the Divine Blade of the Ten Swords, after all.
She wondered if Soujiro knew that the reversed-edge wakizashi she possessed was actually the same blade he sliced apart when he first crossed blades with Battousai back in Shingetsu Village about six years prior, before she met Shogo Amakusa and the Hidden Christians.
Midway in the short sword's flight, before it even landed on anything, it spun around in midair as though deflected by some invisible force and went straight for the cross-scarred, lazy-eyed girl's face.
She blocked it in time with her uchigatana, only for her to feel the cold bite of steel on her abdomen. By reflex, she stopped the blade from outright gutting her by parrying it with the wakizashi, moved out of its way via Crabwise Stalk, and countered her attacker using the Deathstalker Stab.
She hit nothing but air. She turned in time to see Soujiro still standing on the same spot he occupied when she first saw him. There was no indication that he even moved save for the slight ruffling of his bobbed hair.
'What's going on? Is there something wrong with my Antennas? What happened to the vibrations on the floor? The smell of blood on his body? He was even exuding sakki earlier on!' deliberated Morinaga as she covered her abdomen with one forearm while she nibbled on her blood-caked thumb.
Akahori stood up and moved as close as he could to get a better view of the action. He rubbed his eyes as though they were deceiving him. 'In all the years he's served as my bodyguard, this was the first time I saw him move so fast. Was the No-Step Shukuchi he demonstrated earlier not the perfect form of his technique? What changed in him?'
"I remember that you were going to use the Sasori Gatame against my Shun Ten Satsu, correct? Now that I've seen how it works, what do you think are your chances at countering it?" asked Soujiro.
"You can't fool me. I know your legs are at their limit. How much longer can they hold out, I wonder."
"And what if they'll hold out long enough to make your head fly?"
She licked her lips. "Then I'll slice them off for you."
It was a shame that she and him had to duel for the lives of the Akahoris. Like Amakusa when it came to the policemen army gathered at the mansion, she too had no grudge against Soujiro Seta himself. He was certainly more honorable than his snake in the grass of a boss.
It was nothing personal, and being able to fight against a swordsman so powerful that he gave the Battousai himself a run for his money was a real honor for her. However, this wasn't the time to be impressed with the Ten Ken.
Her intuition told her to not bother attacking Soujiro with any more charging moves even for the sake of luring him into one of her booby traps. Instead, she stayed in place, gauged the distance and his speed using her Antennas, and tensed her legs for multiple iterations of the counterclockwise movement of her Crabwise Stalk in order to avoid the Ten Ken's dominant hand and his right-handed strikes.
Seta blasted off with the Shukuchi once more, and Morinaga winced as he arrived within her striking range at one-seventh of a second instead of one-sixth of a second. Also, for one reason or another, his footfalls weren't as thunderous as before, as though his feet were so fleeting, they left less of an impact and impression on the ground.
Nevertheless, her hand speed compensated for her Antennas' slight miscalculation, and her Crabwise Stalk allowed her to get out of harm's way and deliver stinging, left-right Scorpion Nest combinations at the Ten Ken, which he barely avoided using his Shukuchi backpedal.
Soujiro attempted to turn and pursue Kaede, but that forced him to slow down because the momentum he gathered from the Shukuchi left him off-balanced whenever he moved laterally. It left him open to blistering counterattacks from one of the fighters with the fastest hand speed he'd ever seen.
He couldn't do sudden stops with the Shukuchi either because of the damage they'd do to his internal organs. In order to make his turns, he had to slow his Shukuchi down in the middle of his sprint, which also left him open to attack.
'I had nothing to fear. He can only fight moving forward or evade attacks by moving backwards. He can't use the Shukuchi while moving side-to-side. As long I can keep turning him, I'll win. He can't do anything while I keep making him do turns!'
Akahori scowled and squatted back down. 'Even though Seta-kun has become a hair faster than before, Battousai-dono can still sense him or use his distance to gauge when he'll arrive to cut her down even though she can't see him. She really does act as though she has an insect's antennas.'
Soujiro's smile grew wider even as Kaede sliced him up. Despite the wounds and his stuttering speed thanks to the continuous counterclockwise turns of the Crabwise Stalk, he was able to weather the storm. In fact, a lot of those hits were shallow, skin-cutting slashes instead of bone-cutting ones that could've ended the fight in one stroke.
Then, for the first time in the fight since Morinaga began using her Antennas technique, there was a split-second where she had no idea where Soujiro was.
"Have you really gotten slower, or have I gotten faster? I wonder..." Soujiro mused after slicing Kaede vertically on the stomach in the middle of her circular evasion.
The cut would've vivisected her then and there had her Crypsis not fooled the Ten Ken's eyes into making him midjudge the distance of his battoujutsu strike.
'Was that the Shun Ten Satsu? No, he drew his sword in mid-turn, so it wasn't Shukuchi-assisted.'
She didn't have time to ponder further, because he followed up the slash with another aimed at the top of her head. Her heart almost leaped out of chest as her short sword barely deflected his Kikuichi Monji blade, which caused her to get a cut on her left brow ridge above the eye nearest her cross-shaped scar.
In desperation, she bumped heads with the Ten Ken (a common tactic that her master deployed against her charges), her blood flowing into both their eyes while their feet and legs go entangled upon each other. She then crossed her swords together, pushed him off her using the Crisscross Claw, and let loose Swarming Barbs that forced him to retreat.
The blood that entered and stung her left lazy eye distracted her from the right-handed rib strike at her blindside that grazed a bone on her ribs. She staggered and, against her better judgment, charged at him with Swarming Barbs while using her Antennas as her only means of locating him.
She crouched low and landed a couple of pinpricks and scratches at the retreating Ten Ken from awkward angles, which set him up for a leaping Scorpion Nest combination that shredded his torso and legs.
However, she didn't look as sturdy now as before. The strain of focusing on both her attack and her remaining four senses (her sight was compromised by the cut above her eye and Soujiro's bloodlust was as absent as ever) took its toll on her body.
She stumbled backwards when Soujiro feinted a shallow battoujutsu slash and turned it into a hard stab to the throat that she avoided and instead tore the top of her shoulder and her kimono. The cut on the outside of her left eye could pose a big problem in the long run.
"You are quite strong, Morinaga-san. I was pleasantly surprised. I must admit that I underestimated you. Sadly, I'm much stronger than you. As Mister Shishio said, the strong live and the weak die. You're not all that weak, but you are when facing me."
'I understand now. Seta-kun's rage has also reached past the boiling point, it would seem,' Akahori thought. Who knew that the grave injury of that spiky-haired boy in the hands of the Battousai of Speed would trigger such a response from the stone-cold assassin of Shishio's Faction?
'The version of the Ten Ken I got was one who allowed some impudent kid to break his sword apart because he didn't have the heart to finish him off immediately. Had he acted like the Heaven Sword that Shishio Makoto knew, he would've dispatched of Myojin Yahiko with no hesitation.'
Was this how Soujiro Seta originally behaved before his fateful meeting with Battousai Himura shattered his single-minded belief in Darwinism and the Survival of the Fittest? Tetsuo couldn't wait to find out, his eyes peeled at the proceedings before him.
"Beware, Battousai-dono. The Heaven Sword has finally awoken from his six-year slumber."
After the death of Shishio, the failure of his coup d'etat, the fall of his faction, and the arrest of his Juppon Gatana, Kaede went on into hiding and greener pastures. In particular, she heard of the rebellion brewing in Nagasaki that was spearheaded by two men in particular: Kaio and Shiro Amakusa the Second.
She originally intended to confront Kenshin face-to-face after his death match against Shishio. However, she had no idea what to do at the time. Should she make him take responsibility over what happened to her when she was a child? Did she want to shake hands and become friends with him? Did she want to fight the Strongest Hitokiri of the Bakumatsu?
She didn't know what to do. She hadn't thought things through. After stalking him for so long, she realized he was no monster even though his unwillingness to kill unleashed the monsters from his past unto others. Although Himura's mere existence made her life a living hell, she couldn't for the life of her imagine killing the man for what he didn't do. How could she hate her "other self"?
She looked so much like him that she had to dispose of assassins who were after the Battousai and mistook her for him. 'The Battousai. The other me,' she would think to herself. 'What if I became more like him?'
One thing for sure, she wanted to know more about him so that she could make sense of what her own purpose in life was. According to her old spy allies, Shiro Amakusa... also known as Shogo Muto... knew Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu. In light of the might of Kenshin's school, particularly apparent in the unbeatable nature of the Amakakeru Ryu no Hirameki succession technique, she decided to go to Shimabara to study how to counter the swordsmanship school firsthand.
If anything, learning about Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu would help her learn more about the enigma that was Kenshin Himura. Around this time, she heard that the Battousai and his friends were being attacked by another sponsor of Shishio's rebellion, the leader of the Shanghai Arms Dealers.
In fact, a lot of Amakusa's actions while he was at Tokyo and Kyoto seemed like thinly veiled challenges to Battousai Himura. Were Kenshin not busy with yet another shadow from his past, would he and Shogo have fought for the right of becoming the true successor to Hiten Misturugi Ryu? Who would've won?
Thanks to various circumstances, all one could do was speculate about the eventual outcome (although she had her money on Shogo once she got to know him and his talents better).
By the time Morinaga arrived at Shimabara to offer her services to the Kakure Kirishitan rebels, Amakusa's sponsor and advisor, Kaio, had been exposed as a fraud who planned to betray the movement to the authorities.
According to Amakusa's sister, Lady Magdalia, Kaio formed a conspiracy against Shogo wherein he planned to have Shimabara's Son of God killed by government officials like the historical Shiro Amakusa and turn him into a legend. The dark priest would then return to Shimabara years later as the sole leader of a new faith.
Shogo knew about the conspiracy from the start, and with the help of his sister, he preemptively derailed it. The mad preacher and his crew (save for an obese dog trainer named Genemon) were executed personally by Amakusa himself as traitors to the faith before a mass evacuation of his eighty-eight Hidden Christian followers took place on the Day of the Holy Spirit.
Shiro Amakusa the Second, several able men wielding farming implements, and his Soldier of Christ, Shozo Lorenzo, held the Meiji Government's execution squads at bay.
At any rate, Kaede couldn't make heads or tails out of Shogo Amakusa in the beginning.
Reports of the man varied from him being the rebel leader of a sect of Hidden Christians who were militant and armed to a messianic figure leading his own cult of brainwashed followers (she didn't even know what a "messiah" meant until later on).
In fact, when they first met, Kaede had to do battle with the Christian leader because he thought she was Battousai and she was there to settle the score on who was the rightful inheritor of the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu.
She would've been killed had they not (somehow) established that she was not Kenshin Himura and she was a sword for hire for his rebellion. The details were still blurry in her mind.
Annoyingly, because of her height, small chest, built, and diminutive stature, Amakusa treated Kaede as his junior despite the fact that they were actually the same age. Never mind that he technically served as her boss, he could at least stop treating her like a little kid! It wasn't her fault that despite her age, her body never matured past puberty.
She was accepted as part of Amakusa's band of rebels, serving as one of the few followers he had that had assassination experience. To his gathered flock, she was made to pose as the Hitokiri Battousai himself in order to boost their morale, although the closest people in Shogo's inner circle knew who she really was.
Having the "Strongest Hitokiri" and the "Son of God" side-by-side... a match made in heaven, so to speak... did well to gather more recruits and coverts to their growing religious movement.
As part of their bargain (aside from monetary compensation), Amakusa sparred and dueled with Kaede to sharpen her skills and reveal to her the secrets of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu. In return, she offered him her past intelligence reports on Battousai and Shishio, particularly her knowledge on how the shadow hitokiri set up his faction from the ground up.
Amakusa also had a Kagemusha or body double who didn't only look like Shogo, but also had a similar sword style involving copious use of battoujutsu (or, in his case, the modern equivalent, iaijustu), although for one reason or another, he drew his blade with his eyes closed and his face turned away from his enemy.
With that said, the person whom Morinaga felt closest to at the time wasn't Shogo, but Lady Magdalia. Sickly as she was, Lady Magadalia... Well, she was also hard to describe. Kaede's earliest memory of her involved countless prayer meetings and repeated recitation of sutra-like chants (that they called the Holy Rosary) with monkish zeal.
During that time, Lady Magdalia was treated like a goddess of mercy and compassion, the Guanyin of the Christian World. To Kaede, she looked like a living Bodhisattva statue that the Kakure Kirishitan worshipped.
She'd later find out that Christianity, specifically Catholic dogma, offered veneration (instead of worship) to Jesus Christ's mother, Mary. Simply put, Lady Magdalia was the Mary, Mother of Jesus, of the Shimabara Christians.
So it came as a shock to Kaede to later find Magdalia playing around with the children of the villagers and seeing her blush like a schoolgirl as they teased her in regards to the obvious romantic feelings Shozo had for her.
Magdalia's red-faced, teary-eyed denials as an equally red-faced and in-denial Lorenzo appeared and overheard the kids' teasing was quite the sight to behold.
Kaede couldn't believe that the Magdalia she saw back then giggling with little girls and boys and the Lady Magdalia that the Japanese Christians all but worshipped were one and the same person.
It was around the time Magdalia probed Kaede with personal questions such as, "Why are you wearing men's clothes? Lord knows you'd look prettier in a kimono," and "Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Personal Savior?" that the Kenshin look-alike started figuring her out.
Yes, Magdalia figured out that Kaede was a girl on sight, while Shogo, Lorenzo, and even Genemon the Dog Whistler were fooled into thinking she was a man for the longest time.
They were both quite alike, in a sense. If Morinaga had to hazard a guess, Magdalia, like her, killed any trace of herself whenever she was in front of her people. For their sake, she'd become their Madonna, Mother Mary, and the Mother of the Church.
Like Kaede, Magdalia's inner self surfaced from time to time and revealed someone that was a lot more shallow, selfish, petty, childish, and imperfect than what she appeared in public.
However, unlike Magdalia, Kaede couldn't even begin to imagine the many burdens and responsibilities that Shogo's sister had. To the Younger Muto, her duty to her people came first before her personal feelings, although a vast majority of her personal feelings were dedicated to the Hidden Christians as well.
These twin aspects of Magdalia's personality didn't only remind Kaede of herself, but also of the late Mizuki Morinaga as well. Because of her profession, Mizuki had to shut off her heart every night and become another person entirely. However, the warmth of the inner selves of both Mizuki and Magdalia shone through their facades regardless.
"You say turn the other cheek when someone slaps you. What if you can't? What if that only invites people to abuse you some more? Can't you defend yourself?" asked Kaede one day while Magdalia preached the gospel to the children beside the riverbank.
Lady Magdalia answered, "Both Buddhism and Christianity believe that you should never do unto others what you don't want them to do unto you, right? We Christians believe in loving our fellow man as we love ourselves. But turning the other cheek isn't a command to let your enemies do whatever they want with you. It's instead a command to not seek vengeance upon your oppressors. It's there to nip the cycle of vengeance right in the bud."
Kaede didn't question this teaching any further in light of who she was working for, even though she herself found some of its implications baffling and disturbing.
In many ways, Magdalia and her pacifistic teachings were at odds with what her brother was doing to protect their people from oppression, which was to condemn those who have abused them as his way of demanding equal rights between Kakure Kirishitan and other Japanese citizens.
A world without violence was a nice idea, but Morinaga knew better. There were people who lived their entire lives never knowing what it was like to kill someone, but she didn't live in their world any longer.
It was for this reason that Morinaga never took most of what Amakusa preached seriously because he didn't practice what he preached at times, seeing him as nothing more than a means to an end.
She saw his stories of a merciful, perfect, and benevolent god as nothing more than empty words from a manipulative man who also saw his followers as a means to an end.
There was one caveat to his hypocrisy, though. As long as his people saw him as Shiro Amakusa reincarnated or even a god made flesh, his execution of their enemies was seen as perfectly fine even in light of Jesus Christ's teachings. As Amakusa the Almighty, he had he Divine Right to vanquish their foes and deliver them to the Promised Land by any means necessary.
However, there was more to Shogo than meets the eye. Known already as a one-man army to many a soldier and policeman whom he fought and suppressed on the Day of the Holy Spirit, he didn't only utilize violence and rebellions to further his holy war.
He also sought allies from impoverished Nagasaki peasants and farmers who had to deal with an industrialization program that hiked up their existing taxes and the Land Reform Act of 1873 that led to the confiscation of their lands because of their inability to pay new taxes.
It didn't matter if the underprivileged he helped out were Buddhists, Shintoists, or Atheists either; he helped them all the same to remind everyone what Christianity truly embodied.
From the eighty-eight would-have-been martyrs that he saved, Shogo's followers grew to hundreds and, later on, thousands. More and more Hidden Christians were lured in by the promise of being able to practice their religion without fear of persecution and retaliation. He even got quite a few converts to the faith as well.
Because a lot of Kakure Kirishitan had come out of the woodwork while openly proclaiming their faith, it was only natural to expect a backlash of sorts from Japanese society at large for disturbing the status quo.
Whenever crosses were painted on the homes of Hidden Christians, exposing them to persecution in a given town, Amakusa would personally visit the neighborhood to comfort his brethren, preach the gospel, and hand out food and clothes as a peace offering to the wary citizens, encouraging them not to harass the exposed Kirishitan families.
The Messiah of the Kakure Kirishitan also set up spies to catch acts of Christian persecution... from "mere" discrimination by nonbelievers to authorities outright torturing them to renounce their faith... and thusly retaliated to show that when push came to shove, Shiro Amakusa the Second would push back.
Morinaga even helped him free many an incarcerated Kakure Kirishitan from prison as well. How could she hate a man like that?
The most important thing Kaede realized about Amakusa was that, like his sister, he too assumed a huge responsibility she couldn't even begin to fathom. He had to become god in order to rise above the hypocrisy of punishing and killing Christian oppressors for the right to practice a faith that didn't condone such acts from anyone except god.
However, that also meant that Amakusa had to take up a terrible weight on his shoulders: The great expectations of his people who believed him to be their savior before he'd done anything worthy of such praise was his cross to bear.
The Christian leader was probably thrust into the role of messiah at a young age, the enormous amount of pressure to succeed forcing him to develop a god complex, for better or for worse.
Nevertheless, Amakusa did all this because no one else could do it except him. It was through sheer willpower and his sense of duty to his people that compelled him to kill a thousand policemen and soldiers in the Modern Shimabara War in the first place.
Knowing this, Kaede finally understood why Shogo had followers who would follow him to the ends of the earth. Sadly, Amakusa's delusions of godhood helped lay the foundations for his defeat. Nonetheless, even when the odds were against him, he still did his best to serve his people and fulfill their unrealistic expectations of him.
Despite her initial misgivings and their double standards, Morinaga ultimately saw Amakusa and his followers as good people who wanted better lives for themselves. That was why she could never forgive Akahori and his manipulations that led to the downfall of Shogo's group back in 1878.
'For the first time, I'm getting a glimpse of the Seta Soujiro who didn't hesitate to kill anyone at all. His lack of self-restraint and his unrelenting belief in Shishio's words was what made him so dangerous back in the day.'
As a marksman who viewed his gunslinger skills as a martial art in and of itself, Akahori understood the value of restraint. Restraint in battle was known by anyone who practiced martial arts, even beginners. Human instinct also taught restraint in order to keep the body from harming others or itself.
Rules were set in order to prevent the worst possible outcomes in a fight. However, there were those who didn't understand or failed to put into practice this basic concept. Ironically enough, it was this lack of self-restraint that allowed Soujiro to perform at peak condition. No hesitation. No remorse. No regrets.
'Is this the true face of the Ten Ken?' thought Morinaga as she wiped the dripping blood on her eye while the room spun and warped around her. 'Is the Heaven Sword I've been fighting up until now just the watered-down version of the true thing, like Battousai's vagabond self when compared to his hitokiri form?'
Seta's next move answered that question for her. They traded blade strikes along the walls, and they both landed slashes on each other. However, the Ten Ken didn't relent at all with his self-taught Ryu Sou Sen onslaught.
'Is this the truth you've been seeking after all this time? The one you abandoned in the first place? Survival of the Fittest?' the Ten Ken imagined Rin say. In the corner of his eye, he saw that the real Rin was too busy stopping the flow of blood on Yahiko's punctured shoulder to pay attention to him.
What Soujiro lacked in hand speed when compared to Kaede, he made up for in relentlessness. In and out his Shukuchi went, which made it hard for her to time him with counters. She opted to combine her Protective Shell and Swarming Barbs together, which allowed her to block all Dragon Nest Flash slashes and stab at whatever opening she could find.
Even in the face of multiple stabs, Seta's fearless smile remained, his aggression backing Morinaga to a corner care of an instinctual Crabwise Stalk after she almost got her arm lopped off because she fired one Swarming Barb too many.
As Soujiro got in her face, Kaede retaliated at pointblank range with hooking swipes of her wakizashi. She felt a gash form on her neck and lost part of her ear as the Ten Ken fired off combination after combination. He got the better of the exchange by landing left and right slashes to her sword-tip stab to his gut.
Her Antennas were working perfectly fine, yet the Ten Ken still managed to land shots. What was going on? Did she slow down? Had he gotten faster?
Sure, he became a little faster, but she could still block him. The distance from where he disappeared and where she stood allowed her to estimate the fraction of a second it'd take to get from Point A to Point B.
So how was he penetrating the multiple layers of defense of her Cancer Stance?
"I can see your every move." Although his own wardrobe was tattered and torn like Kaede's, Soujiro cuts remained minor compared to the lacerations he gave her. "You can sense where I'm going, but are you fast enough to do anything about it?"
Soujiro disappeared in an instant, his thundering footfalls from before nonexistent. However, the tremors from his feet remained, and so did the smell of his blood mixed with Morinaga's.
The air resistance from his body as he traveled in what appeared to be the speed of light made Kaede's skin form goose pimples.
Next: Logic and insanity.
Kaede: (does the wrestling move) Sasori Gatame!
Yahiko: (taps out)
Yes, I named Morinaga's finishing maneuver after the professional wrestling move invented by Riki Choshu and popularized in the West by Bret "Hitman" Hart as the Sharpshooter and by Sting as the Scorpion Death Lock. Despite the similarity in name, Kaede's version of the move isn't actually a hold, but a pointblank sword-and-dagger counterattack.
Open our eyes,
Abdiel