Rurouni Yahiko
A Rurouni Kenshin Fan Fiction Continuation Story by Chester Castañeda
After this short arc of sorts, the next major arc... Seiryu Arc... is about to start.
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 38: The Eye of the Storm
Captain Shura arrived at the bridge of the ship, near the captain's cabin, leaving behind her an international pile of devastation from all over Asia... with blood, teeth, pieces of skin, and mangled bodies strewn across the Hizoku's deck for good measure.
Atop the quarters of the cabin awaited the hooked-nosed, sallow-skinned second-in-command of Ginjo, a Blue Lantern (Uninitiated Member) of the Three Harmonies Society or Sanhehui, and an ex-shipmate of Shura.
"Gekki," said Shura, her chained sansetsukon clattering behind her, covered with pirate blood after striking into submission an entire navy of Wokou and several 49ers (Initiated, Ordinary Members) of the Shanghai Mafia.
"It sickens me that you've founded another Kairyu, Captain. The only real Kairyu are now part of the Wokou. Your sorry little crew of privateers can't hold a candle against us originals," said Gekki while he slipped on his gloves with claws on each finger. The right glove sported longer talons than the left glove.
"I'm more disgusted with how you've soiled the Kairyu name, becoming nothing more than common criminals after you betrayed the ideals set by my father in favor of becoming drug mules," said the good captain, whirling around her chained staff like a baton. "Where is Ginjo? Let that yellow-bellied coward out now."
"As expected of a naive little princess who only became captain because of nepotism instead of actual skill!" hissed the fundashi-wearing, rat-faced Gekki while he grabbed a rope, swung on it, bounded over the railings of the Hizoku, and went straight for Shura.
To the ex-Kairyu's surprise, his clawing strike that would've removed her clothing and exposed her body to his lecherous eyes missed by a mile, the acrobatic Crimson Captain showcasing nimbleness he'd never seen before even during her peak as the martial-artist captain of the old Kairyu crew.
With her left leg bent inward, right leg extended, both arms drawn, and sansetsukon held up diagonally, she dodged. The Scourge of the Pacific read Gekki's malice and bad intentions by instinct and perhaps female intuition.
She thusly punished the old man's lecherousness by springing up and pummeling him with rotating and alternating left-and-right shots while he remained in midair. Gekki covered up in time to save his face and keep himself from getting his teeth knocked in before he even landed back on deck.
'...So that was why she beat up so many Wokou! The bitch learned Chinese martial arts and combined it with Japanese martial arts!' concluded the bruised and battered Gekki, falling into a boneless, bloodied heap after his ex-captain finished her aerial strike with a pummeling (instead of a whipping) blow.
Captain Shura blinked after Gekki somehow found enough strength to get up. 'He's tougher than he looks!'
His time as part of the Wokou and working under the Shanghai Mafia had probably paid off. "Good. You're still conscious. If you don't want to have an impromptu nose job, tell me where Ginjo is!" she said.
"Right here, darling," said a voice from behind Shura that prompted her to lean forward and do a one-legged donkey kick at the person behind her. As she expected, Ginjo blocked her assault one-handed with his iron gauntlet.
However, to her amusement, he'd gotten pants and armor over his fundashi to protect his family jewels. "Huh. An old seadog can learn new tricks. Nice codpiece, Ginjo," she said.
"If you'd like, I can take off the codpiece and show you the party inside my pants, Captain," came the crass invitation of the 432 Straw Sandal (Liaison Officer) of the Sanhehui as well as ex-first mate of the Kairyu before he cocked his battle axe back in order to slice his former commander in half by her waist.
The Crimson Captain easily dodged the telegraphed swing, only for her to end up stabbed at the back of her right thigh by Gekki while grabbing hold of her leg ankle with his other clawed hand, its talons digging deep into her flesh.
"AUGGH! Gekki, you son of a BITCH...!"
"I'm a pirate, poppet. You should've expected as much."
The Kobayashi Maru Captain cursed at herself. Gekki was right. She should've known better.
While Gekki mocked Shura, the captain barely had time to block Ginjo's axe with all three pieces of her three-sectioned staff bundled together.
The armored pirate almost chopped her head open like a coconut. Due to the weapon's weight, it managed to partly splinter the sansetsukon, much to the Crimson Captain's chagrin.
Gekki called out, "CHOP HER AGAIN, YOU ONE-EYED BASTARD! KILL HER NOW! Let's finish this whore off and take back the good name of the Kairyu from those privateer frauds of hers!" while he kept Shura down with his claws.
"It's a damn shame I couldn't get it on with you before your impending demise. I would've sent you to heaven in a different way," said the eye-patched Ginjo before he took another swing at Shura.
The captain of the Kobayashi Maru grabbed the handle of her katana when a black, white, and blue blur appeared before her and intercepted Ginjo's axe strike with his... or rather, Kenshin Himura's... blunt signature weapon, the sakabatou.
"...M-Myojin Yahiko-kun!?"
"It's the Sword Breaker! Use ropes and polearms instead of our blades on him!" Yahiko Myojin heard at least one Wokou say in Japanese before the others shifted to Mandarin or whatever else Chinese or Asian dialect they knew.
"They got me surrounded again. Those poor bastards."
The rate of his God Hammer or Tsui Gami "casualties" rose from breaking every third blade he encountered to shattering every second blade: A coin toss's chance of success.
The rate then dropped as word about his weapon-destroying skill spread amongst the throng of Wokou, with the pirates opting for more ambushes and gunplay.
For him, that was fine. He loved a challenge. As for the ancient pirates of yore, to them, he was the young samurai warrior who destroyed swords: The Sword Breaker. 'Hmmm. I kind of like that name.'
While Yahiko swung his blade around and practiced the God Hammer, he remembered the words of advice imparted to him by the Intrepid Gan.
The Tsui Gami was a technique best used on rigid, solid objects, and it involved applying enough force on one concentrated point to help it reach its breaking point in the shortest amount of time possible.
Easer said than done, but he soon had a 50/50 chance of breaking swords at every attempt, his three-swing recoiling combo happening so fast they appeared like one swing.
Myojin then proceeded to break the rest of the dozens or so swords they had lying around. Actually, it was more like sixty-nine blades, provided that one counted butterfly swords as two separate swords and included knives into the mix.
Yahiko should know. He kept count.
If what the Goofy Gan said to him back in the East Valley proved true, then he might find the opportunity to again do the Dou Gami technique he used to end the fight between the Battousai of Speed and the Heaven Sword sooner rather than later.
'If only I could get the timing right...'
His muscles ached like hell from all the sword breaking he'd been doing, though. The weight and legacy of the sakabatou... of Kenshin Himura-Kamiya's legacy... rested in his hands, after all.
'Even after all this time, after a year of training, this sword still feels heavy. Dammit, when will I be worthy enough to wield Kenshin's weapon?'
However, he didn't have time to wax pensive. Once he made a right turn into the starboard side of the bow of the ship, he saw right before his eyes the dirty, cheating ex-Kairyu double-teaming their former captain.
The witch-nosed, rat-faced one stabbed her thigh and held her down while her long-haired, muscle-bound former first mate wailed on her with his axe even though she only had her tri-section staff to defend herself.
His body moving on its own accord and his muscle memory remembering all the times it executed the Tsui Gami, Yahiko blocked the incoming axe chop with a combination of his God Hammer (that chipped part of the ginormous weapon) and the Defensive Ougi of the Kamiya Kasshin Ryu, the Hadome.
Everyone went quiet by the display. Yahiko then heard Shura call out his full name while a growling Ginjo punched him with a knuckle duster to the face, which prompted the Tokyo Samurai Descendant to turn his Hadome into a cross-armed block.
"Get the fuck out of here, you little turd! You're in my way!" said Ginjo.
The punch left a blue mark on Yahiko's forearms after he skidded across the Hizoku's deck a whole yard away. He then opened his guard in time to see the white face of Gekki come at him from out of the blue with his asymmetrical short-claw and long-claw gloves.
Nevertheless, Shura finally had her revenge by wrapping her sansetsukon over the bird-looking pirate's thin neck and throwing him wholesale at a mouth-agape Ginjo.
Reacting by either instinct or his inherent treachery, the armored Ginjo swatted his comrade away and charged like a bull inside a china shop at both Myojin and the Crimson Captain.
"I could've taken him down," said Yahiko with a smirk.
"Yeah, well, I could've taken them both down," returned Shura.
"You're welcome," they both chorused at each other and laughed before they split off and charged at the two remaining Wokou. However, contrary to the Son of Tokyo Samurai's expectations, the Kairyu Captain headed right into Ginjo's path instead of Gekki's.
"Are you sure about this? I know this is personal for you, but Ginjo's got an axe and all you got is a three-section wooden staff!" called out Myojin, only for the Scourge of the Pacific to point at her sword under her belt.
"You wanted to see that, right? Then keep your eyes peeled, 'Yoshi-boy'," came Captain Shura's promise while she went straight to work at wrapping her sansetsukon over Ginjo's ankles, making him trip low enough for her to knee his face.
"Fine. Whatever," Yahiko said with a roll of his eyes and a smirk.
He then fell into the Water Stance (Chudan-no-Kamae), holding his sword in front of him while his wrists and fingers itched to quickly switch into his favorite posture, the more aggressive Fire Stance (Jodan-no-Kamae), with the blade raised over his head.
Myojin waited for the growling, prostrate Gekki to stand up, unaware of what the devious pirate had behind his back. Had Yahiko bore witness to the final battle between Kenshin and Shura versus the original Kairyu about six years ago, he would've figured out what happened next.
During the first stanza of their battle, Shura proved that she herself could fight dirty by utilizing the superior reach advantage of her tri-section sansetsukon in order to do whipping shots of her snaking stave to blind the one-eyed monster before her the same way Xuan Wu made the Hapless Gan's eyes swell shut with his own six-sectioned sanjiegun.
This resulted in Ginjo's depth perception to become out of whack. She poured on her offense with countless shots to his unprotected face, biceps, and even legs and knees, the fabric of his pants torn apart by the intensity of her constant strikes.
Meanwhile, Ginjo himself moved slower than molasses and swung away at nothing, blind as a bat.
However, after impatiently chopping up everything around the Hizoku, from turnbuckles to pulpits and masts to the floorboards of the deck, the blurry-eyed Wokou and Straw Sandal calmed down enough to cover up and let the sansetsukon only hit the armored parts of his body.
The Wokou then charged at her in order for him to grab her and make it easier to hack her to pieces. This forced the Crimson Captain to go on bullfighting mode, with her serving as the bullfighter and Ginjo as the bull.
Also, even though he was practically blind at that point, the small slit he called an eye could espy blood continue to run across Shura's leg from the wound that Gekki gave her. He only needed to hang on for a few minutes more before she lost enough blood to slow down.
Sure enough, after countless lashes from her sansetsukon and even more numerous near-misses (or were they near-hits?) from Ginjo's axe, Captain Shura's pace slowed down to a crawl.
The fact that she had to work extra hard to get those hits in thanks to the male pirate's tekko and heavy metal plated armor only aggravated her ankle and thigh injuries.
His axe also worsened her wound because he relentlessly aimed it at her thigh while also punching the injury with his gauntlet for good measure. Lacerations lined her body while parts of his tri-section chained stick got splintered and torn from being hit too often by the heavy polearm.
Then, the moment that Ginjo had been waiting for happened: A moment of inattention on Shura's part after she got distracted by a sudden explosion on the port side of the Hizoku.
Immediately, the liaison of the Japanese pirates and the Wokou grabbed hold of the tri-section staff and chopped it up into a million pieces with his axe. He then used all of his weight to bring the weaponless, helpless Shura down underneath him, pinning her with his throbbing, swelling arms.
He grinned in anticipation, licking his lips. "It's about time you learned your place. Don't worry. I'll make a woman out of you yet!"
The slavering Ginjo licked Shura's soft neck and glistening sweat, then he tore open her red vest and the sarashi that bound her breasts.
The explosion that rocked the ship blew Yahiko all the way back into the starboard-side bulwarks. He then leaped away from the additional bombs that the bastard Gekki threw at his feet.
As for the pirate in question, he scuttled along the portside gangway (or gangplank), which prompted Myojin to meet him halfway by charging towards the forecastle of the ship. The pirate followed suit.
Sparks flew after blunted blade clashed with steel claws. "Are you out of your mind, you hook-nosed freak of nature? If those bombs of yours got anywhere near the ammunition or the gunpowder room, we'd all blow up sky high!" said Yahiko.
"What's the matter boy? You can't swim or something?" Gekki mocked then scratched the boy's chest and arms with lacerating strikes. "You'll never take me alive! If I have to, I'll blow you up and take you with me!"
The Blue Lantern Wokou threw even more fuseless bombs at Yahiko's feet while he ran the other direction. Resisting his instinct to duck or jump for cover, Yahiko... the same boy who faced down another hook-nosed explosives expert without a hint of fear in his eyes... sprinted alongside Gekki while the bombs exploded one after the other behind them in succession.
"What the hell are you doing, kid? Get off me!" screeched the ex-Kairyu, throwing even more bombs at Yahiko's direction while they made their way to the portside gangway, the explosions ripping apart the black ship piece by piece.
As they reached the railings, Gekki only had one bomb left. Thinking quickly, he grabbed the sakabatou by his claws and pulled it along with Yahiko overboard. Then, for good measure, he threw his last bomb at the boy. "Bon voyage, landlubber! Rest in pieces!"
While Yahiko fell to the waters below, his memories of his battle with Henya surfaced in his mind, particularly the part where he did a midair assault on the bat-winged, dynamite-throwing member of the Ten Swords.
It was through this past experience (and recent experience in improving the accuracy of his strikes to the point of being able to break weapons by pummeling them three times fast) that allowed him to bat the bomb thrown at him back at Gekki before it exploded.
The last thing the ex-Kairyu saw before Yahiko stabbed his reversed-edge blade into the portside hull of the Hizoku was a miniature barrel of a bomb rotating towards him. A sudden conflagration of fire and ash then followed suit after the bomb exploded.
A heavily sweating Ginjo wailed and gnashed his teeth after the snarling Scourge of the Pacific lived up to her bloody reputation among the Wokou and the Shanghai Mafia alike, his pants dyed crimson.
The so-called Wokou liaison cried and whimpered so much that the captain almost took pity on him. Almost.
The ex-Kairyu stood up, his teeth biting down his lower lip so hard, it drew blood even while color slowly returned to his pale face. His beads of cold sweat evaporated into steam when realization dawned on the 432.
"You fucking wench! YOU'LL PAY FOR WHAT YOU DID TO ME! I'll tear your maidenhead up with this axe's handle and show you what you're missing out!"
Wordlessly, Shura grabbed hold of her sword's handle... an unusual katana with a chained weight attached to it... and wiped off the blood on it with one swing of the blade.
"You can barely see and you've lost a lot of blood, Ginjo. Haven't you learned your lesson already? Stand down or face my wrath. This is your final warning."
"YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME! Not since the mutiny, you're not! In fact, you've never been the boss of me! I never recognized you as my captain! You're just a post turtle who got a job you couldn't handle! You were in over your head!"
To punctuate his point, the deranged, welted, swelling, broken-boned, and bleeding pirate waved his battle axe at all directions with a surge of adrenalin and desperation, to the point that it could very well break apart the Crimson Captain's katana with one swing.
As Ginjo cocked back his axe with bad intentions, the Kairyu Captain held her ground and her blade in such a way that its tip pointed at the deck. From there, while he swung his axe, she countered by swinging her own weapon upwards and kicking it to amplify its force, thus resulting in a chink in his armor as well as a split face that removed the bindings of his eye patch.
"Shuugeki Tou Sei!"
Shura remembered that her father robbed Ginjo of his sight on one eye when she was a mere kid. However, even as his swelling face split apart vertically, the Straw Sandal of the Three Harmonies Society hollered, "Your martial arts is no match against my thick Western-style armor!"
Ginjo completed the arc of his swing, only for it to be blocked by the hilt of the sword of the former captain of the sunken Kobayashi Maru.
Transferring the pirate's lost momentum into her own strike, Shura endured the pain in her ankle and thigh and pivoted on one foot while raising the other foot high to send a counterstrike thrust into the Wokou's chest.
"Kaishi Tou Sei!"
The eye-patch-less pirate attempted to block the stab with his gauntlet, only for it to shatter against the whirling dervish of the Kaishi Tou Sei.
With one hand, Ginjo raised his axe high, intending to bisect Shura then and there while she unstuck her blade from his arm and pushed forward with another skewering assault.
At this point, Yahiko climbed up the black ship's deck in time to see what he'd been dying to witness since he accepted this mission from the Crimson Captain: Wattoujutsu.
"Gou Tsui Tou Sei!"
"That's not going to work! My armor is way too thick...!"
To Ginjo's shock and awe, Shura did to him what he couldn't do to her: Penetrate right through him. Assisted by his forward motion and the dent on the plate armor caused by the Shuugeki Tou Sei, the Gou Tsui Tou Sei pieced right through the pirate's abdomen.
The Scourge of the Pacific then used her entire body strength to lift the huge Wokou up so that gravity could assist in making her stab go deeper, until her sword drove itself all the way through Ginjo's back, its tip protruding amidst a fountain of blood. She then threw the gurgling man off of her blade, letting him drown in a pool of his own blood.
"...I didn't hit you anywhere that's fatal. Be thankful. You have a second chance to live your life correctly," said the Crimson Captain. She again swung her blade to clean it off of Ginjo's blood before sheathing it back into its scabbard.
"That was badass, Shura!" said Yahiko while climbing over the railings, sheathing his own sword, and running to congratulate his old friend from the days when Kenshin and Kaoru Kamiya weren't married yet.
Speaking of which, thanks to Kaoru's letters to Shura updating her about the latest happenings in their lives (particularly after Enishi Yukishiro first attacked them for the sake of "Jinchu"), the captain got the idea to search for scrolls and books about the ancient art of wattoujutsu.
Like Enishi before her, Shura eventually found a treasure trove of knowledge regarding the combination of Chinese and Japanese sword arts after she went back to her life of piracy (or anti-piracy) as a government-sanctioned privateer.
She couldn't help it. She was also curious about this mysterious oriental martial art that somehow defeated the undefeatable Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu of Himura.
"YOU WERE ALWAYS WEAK, SHURA! Even with your mixed martial arts, you never had any balls on you!" screamed the Ginjo without irony after throwing a knife into the Kairyu Captain's uninjured thigh. "You should've finished me off when you had the chance!"
Even after losing buckets of blood, Ginjo willed himself to stand with his axe on hand.
This made Yahiko run towards the knife and snatch it up before it reached Shura, only for a second knife to end up in his own thigh care of the devious Ginjo.
"Yahiko-kun!" blurted out the Crimson Captain while she brandished her blade, deflected the knife headed towards her, and aimed her weapon's tip at her former first mate's face. "You two-faced son of a BITCH! There's no low you'd stoop to!"
After he pulled out the dagger in his thigh and threw it away, Myojin rebuked, "You call Shura weak, but unlike you, she has the strength and faith of her crew to back her up! Who among the Wokou can you trust? It's you who've grown soft."
"..." was Shura's wordless response while she looked at Yahiko in a new light. 'Kenshin, that boy you've been watching over is growing up so fast. He now sounds like you.'
The Tokyo Samurai Descendant turned to face the crooked criminal and Shanghai Mafia stooge after he stood up one more time. His jaw then dropped once he saw something fly from behind Ginjo and blow around with the strength of a storm surge.
"...I-Inoue-sama!?" croaked Ginjo.
"G-Ginjo...?" said a hesitant Shura.
Afterwards, the split face of a paling pirate turned into a split head, then a split body, his innards, blood, brains, and internal organs splattered and strewn all over the deck of the Hizoku. He'd literally been split in half by an unknown force.
After Ginjo's body parted like a curtain, from behind his fountaining carcass stood a bearded man in black clothes and an ornate uniform full of stretchy ropes and conical weights underneath his shoulder pads and his belt that he wore like an open oversized skirt or kilt.
"Is this what constitutes as modern Japanese piracy nowadays? I'm ashamed. The Wokou are clearly superior in every way, shape, and form. Piracy has become a joke in Japan ever since your nation opened up its closed doors to the rest of the world."
"Who the hell are you?" demanded Yahiko.
"I should ask you the same question, boy. Nevertheless, I'll humor you. I believe introductions are in order. I am Captain Inoue Masakichi Hananuma, the commander of this vessel you're trespassing on like little stowaways," introduced the man with his nose upturned at the two. As though he were looking at insects.
With that said, Captain Masakichi Hananuma Inoue of the Wokou and the Sanhehui made his presence known to Captain Shura of the Kairyu and Yahiko Myojin, the Son of Tokyo Samurai.
"Waaait, this is the pox-faced, dress-wearing blaggard you were talking about earlier, Captain Shura?" asked Myojin, which made even the pained Crimson Captain smile a bit while she nodded.
"And who are you people supposed to be?" asked the Wokou Captain.
"I'm the captain of the ship you've sunk, ya skirt-wearing scurvy dog. And this is my... associate, Myojin Yahiko," said the Crimson Captain, rising on unsteady, bleeding feet, her blood dyeing the lower parts of one of her pants' legs as red as her top vest.
"Ah, yes. The Scourge of the Pacific, I believe? My, my, you're more like the Pearl of the Orient in my eyes, milady," purred Captain Inoue while taking a closer look at Shura.
"Damn shame about the Kobayashi Maru. I'd hoped you'd learned your lesson and became a barmaid instead of a pirate, but some children need to be punished before they could understand their wrongdoing, it would seem."
Yahiko went into his Water Stance and eyed the Wokou captain all the while. "You're Japanese yet you're part of the Modern Wokou and the Shanghai Mafia. Why is that?"
The bearded captain of the Hizoku shrugged. "I'm actually Chinese-born. Not that your nationality matters if you're a Wokou or part of the Three Harmonies Society. With that kind of brotherhood, you're a child of the world; an offspring of the land, air, and sea. Besides which, my name is nothing more than a title in and of itself."
"...Whatever, ya creepy old fart. You're going down!" said Myojin while inching towards the portside of the Wokou Captain with blood dripping down his pants while the Kairyu Captain herself decided to face her nemesis upfront while she winced and tested the limits of her flexibility.
"I'm giving you the chance to surrender yourself to the authorities, Captain Inoue. You're under arrest for distributing contraband and dangerous weapons across Japanese shores as well as murdering the crew of the Kobayashi Maru," said the privateer captain, measuring up the towering, black-bearded pirate.
This only made Captain Masakichi Hananuma laugh. "You're giving me the chance to surrender, privateer? It would seem you're not aware of whom you're dealing with. I'm no ordinary Wokou commander working for the Sanhehui. I'm the 415. A White Paper Fan. An administrator and representative of our group. The Alchemist of the Brigands Guild. I have many affiliations. I will not dishonor any of them by surrendering to a woman and child."
"Well, there's a first time for everything!" said Yahiko before he leaped into action, his sword brandished and his spiky hair whipping against the sea breeze. He intended to test out the knockout properties of the Tsui Gami on the thickset Hananuma's head, like he did earlier with his Wokou crew.
Captain Inoue whipped something with a flick of his wrist that stopped the Son of Tokyo Samurai dead in his tracks. The familiar feeling of having something lodged into his body that wasn't supposed to be there allowed Myojin to use his sword to keep the rope with the pointed counterweight from penetrating deep into his sternum.
"UGH!"
"YAHIKO-KUN!"
The Hizoku Captain pulled the heavy spike out of Yahiko and whirled it around like a lasso, then scourged the boy like Xuan Wu did with Gan.
Myojin grit his teeth and bore through the pain of being whipped apart before he flipped his blade and wielded it like a scimitar, intending to cut the ropes holding the weights.
"You're not the first man to come up with that idea, I'm afraid."
"!?"
The flipped blade rebounded against the cord that snaked its way unto Yahiko's back, stabbing him near the wound of his recently healed shoulder.
The Son of Tokyo Samurai hissed in agony after he then got whipped back and forth by the seemingly endless barrage of roped spikes that could either stab him or rupture his skin.
Like the bamboo stalks he couldn't break apart with the Tsui Gami thanks to their flexibility and shock absorption, Yahiko had trouble cutting through the tough, intertwined braids of stretchable rope that Inoue tied to weighted spikes.
'He's like an octopus! Or even a kraken! Those ropes with weights on them are like extensions of his body or something! I... I can't keep up with them!'
Yahiko's ankle then got lassoed by Captain Masakichi, which allowed the Wokou to pull him upwards, whirl him overhead, and then throw him headfirst to his (the captain's) cabin (which was where the Hizoku commander stayed a moment ago) with a momentous crash.
Meanwhile, the Kobayashi Maru Captain herself charged to save Yahiko from further harm, which made the black-bearded captain throw the roped, spiked weights at her like grappling hooks or miniature anchors, despite her sprint causing her bleeding legs to cramp.
Deflecting those extendable implements on cords that Inoue threw upfront and above him (so that gravity would assist his attack and let his multiple lines "spear" his intended "fish"), the self-taught wattoujutsu practitioner stabbed her blade on the floor, stepped on it, ignored the pain while she sprung upwards, then tugged at her sword by its weighted chain, plucking it out from where it was stuck.
"Chou Ten Tou Sei!"
She slashed the falling weights away and soared above the black-bearded captain's head, intending to cut it apart along with its fancy hat like he did to her ex-shipmate Ginjo. She combined one technique into another, transitioning from the Chou Ten Tou Sei to the "Shikkuu Tou Sei!"
She cursed under he breath after her sword ended up blocked by the gauntlet-wearing Captain Inoue. Ginjo might have been taking cues from the Wokou Captain when he began wearing plated armor and tekko to defend himself against rival pirates and the coastguard.
"Ah. Wattoujutsu. Do you really think you could beat me using the technique our old boss from six years past used in order to become the head of the Three Harmonies Society?"
The Wokou Captain harrumphed. "So many of our own 49ers have copied the moves of that school that nearly everyone in our brotherhood have memorized them all, especially those of us who actually knew our young boss from six years' past."
As Captain Masakichi Hananuma Inoue threw Captain Shura back, he retracted all his roped spears then threw them all en masse at the falling captain in order to stab her with multiple spikes.
"You're too injured to do wattoujutsu techniques. You'll end up crippled if you continue this madness. Surrender now and I'll show you mercy. I'll let you become part of the Wokou."
Captain Hananuma then frowned after Yahiko kicked several empty barrels and crates at the spikes before they could latch themselves unto Shura's body. "She's not a pirate anymore. She's a privateer. A sailor. She wants to make an honest living to honor her father, unlike you scoundrels!"
To Inoue's surprise, unlike before, the fast-learning Myojin dodged the multiple weighted cones with ropes tied to them thrown at him. The boy even managed to bat one of the spikes back at the captain, which the pirate king deftly caught with his gloved hands.
"If she wishes to be a lapdog of the government by becoming a privateer, then so be it. She can die like the bitch that she is, and so will you," said Masakichi before, in the next second, the spike he held crack in half, which got him to flinch while Yahiko chuckled.
"I'm going to break all the weights on your skirt until you have nothing left to throw around but rope, you... walking umeboshi!" said Myojin while keeping his blade in Fire Stance instead of Water Stance in order to anticipate and break apart the irregular patterns that the spikes traveled in.
'The boy is more dangerous than I thought,' mused Hananuma before he had to duck from behind and unleash his cords of doom at the pirate-like (i.e., deceitful and backstabbing) maneuver of the bleeding Shura.
The Kairyu Captain then held her sword by its own weighted chain that was connected to the hilt of her blade's handle and whirled it around like she would her signature sansetsukon to deflect the incoming cones away.
This technique of hers was something not even Enishi knew of when he learned wattoujutsu; it was a move she herself came up with, which impressed Captain Hananuma.
'Or rather, the both of them are dangerous. They're indeed quite the interesting specimens.' The Alchemist chuckled to himself while he took turns hurling his roped conical daggers at both Shura and Yahiko. 'I can't wait to empty their carcasses, stuff them, and hang them on my mantle as trophies.'
Although both Yahiko and Shura hobbled at that point thanks to their injuries from their battles with ex-Kairyu Ginjo and Gekki, they still found ways to cut the distance between themselves and the huge, barrel-like Hizoku Captain.
The armored Masakichi bared his fangs and fought hand-to-weapon against the swordsman and swordswoman, his forearms bearing the same tekko that Ginjo and Banjin Inui had and his fingers fitted with the same plated-glove talons that Gekki wore. Also, underneath his jacket was a thick iron breastplate of European design.
The triple-threat defense of the roped spikes, body armor, and forearm gauntlets prevented either the Tokyo Samurai Descendant or the Scourge of the Pacific from landing any significant offense at the Captain of the Wokou.
The stretchable cords draping over Captain Masakichi's legs like a sarong could not be cut by either sword (reversed edge or normal edge) of the two challengers, so they had no choice but to evade every fanning wave of the Hizoku captain's unique hardware: His ultimate defense and offense.
"Goddamn you, you cross-dressing umeboshi! Stay still!" said the young Sword Breaker while batting away an endless barrage of conical weights, the constant pressure from Inoue too much for him to apply a well-timed Tsui Gami.
"Who do you think you're dealing with? Who is it that you think you're fighting against? Do you think this is a game? That I'm some ordinary pickpocket of the sea? That's I'm a conniving, pathetic loser like Ginjo and his band of Wokou wannabes? No. You're sadly mistaken."
As for the Crimson Captain, none of her attempts at the Gou Tsui Tou Sei... the same technique she defeated the armored Ginjo with... could penetrate through the Wokou Captain's armor, gauntlets, claws, or spiked "skirt".
Yahiko and Shura then felt their ribs shift and their heads snap back at kicks they couldn't see. It didn't help that because of the crippling effects of the traitorous thigh stabs done unto them by Ginjo and Gekki respectively, they moved in slow motion. Wide open like sitting ducks.
"...The fuck is going on?" said the captain after she spat out blood in her mouth.
They both then figured out what happened. Every time they avoided a wave of roped spikes hurled at them like a peacock fanning its tail feathers or a crane unfurling its wings, Captain Inoue followed suit with a kick hidden beneath his deadly apparel.
It was the Wu Ying Jiao or the Shadowless Kick. Also known as the Ghost Shadow Kick or the No Shadow Kick, the Wu Ying Jiao was a signature move of Chinese folk hero Fei Hung Wong (i.e., "Wong Fei Hung") stemming from the Hung Gar school of Chinese martial arts. This allowed the Alchemist to attack the people double-teaming him even while they avoided his fanning waves of spines.
Yahiko then had an idea. Using his mastery of shirahadori (sword blocking or weapon snatching by hand), he caught and threw Hananuma's spikes back at him, causing him to do the Wu Ying Jiao less and block more with his gauntlet while also getting a taste of his own medicine.
This then made him more susceptible to Captain Shura's kick-assisted Shuugeki Tou Sei and punch-assisted Shou Ha Tou Sei (i.e., she used her kicks and punches to hit the backside or inside curve of her katana to make her swings even harder than normal).
It then became a three-way dance of death, with both combatants fighting the bearded captain toe-to-toe instead of at the mid-range where his pointed weights or his Wu Ying Jiao could become be used to great effect.
Finally building momentum, the Scourge of the Pacific varied her attack, feinting with one last ineffective Gou Tsui Tou Sei before embedding her sword into the deck and executing the Chou Ten Tou Sei.
Using the bottom of her weighted hilt as her stepping stone, she leaped to the air while pulling her sword from the ground using the chain attached to the hilt.
She then dragged her katana upwards along with her using the weight and chain connected to its handle. She went airborne before smacking the blade right into the only part of Captain Hananuma that remained unprotected: His hat-wearing head.
Inoue blocked in time with his gauntlet, his headwear split in half, but Yahiko assisted the blow with a strike of his own to the Hizoku Captain's spine, which resulted in Shura breaking through the plated tekko, twisting Masakichi's arm, and drawing blood with a laceration.
Myojin then attacked low with the Tsuka no Gedan: Hiza Hijiki (the knee-breaking technique Kaoru Kamiya used to defeat Kamatari Honjo) while Shura attacked high with the Ryu Tsui Sen equivalent of wattoujutsu, the Shikkuu Tou Sei.
"Fools. You will learn to fear my name like many others before you have." While gripping his injured arm with talon-bearing gloves, the Pirate King of the Wokou rotated his body and made his cape of roped spikes spiral around him, which staved off both planned attacks from Yahiko and Shura.
As the Son of Tokyo Samurai and Daughter of the Kairyu backed away, bleeding and slashed from the full arcing waves of heavy metal ripping at them like a saw blade, the spikes and ropes wrapped themselves around the Brigand Guild's Alchemist like bandages would an ancient Egyptian mummy or a cocoon would a moth or butterfly.
They then realized they hadn't retreated far enough.
"EYE OF THE STORM!"
Like an uncoiled industrial spring after building enough torque and tension with his initial somersault, Inoue spun around the opposite direction, creating a vortex of destruction rivaling an actual natural disaster that turned the bow of the Hizoku into a mess of splinters and sawdust.
What was worse was that the wheel of bad fortune headed straight towards the defenseless Myojin and Shura.
'...That's the technique that was able to slice apart Ginjo, armor and all!' Yahiko realized as indeed, the spiraling human death machine came at him with enough unleashed energy to tear apart flesh and bone.
He defended the best he could with the Tsui Gami, and his hammering blade shattered into pieces several of the whirling weights.
However, the sheer number of consecutive hits per second by the now razor-sharp cones, the added full-body torsion, and the sudden release of these cords produced a force too powerful for a mere swordsman to handle.
Soon enough, the sakabatou clattered on what was left of the deck while the boy himself skidded across it, the floorboards buckling underneath his heels while he left a trail of blood. The only reason why Yahiko didn't end up like Ginjo was the sakabatou and the Tsui Gami.
As for the Kairyu Captain, she fell from midair and would've burst right through the deck and into the cramp cabins below like the Great Gan and several Si Shen did with his Happa had she not landed on her feet.
Something inside her stirred while she faced down the black and gold tempest before her: Something that compelled her body to land with her right leg extended and both arms drawn:
The memory of her fallen comrade who went down with her old ship so that the rest of the Kairyu could fight another day.
As the loopy and slightly lightheaded Yahiko got up and proverbially licked his wounds from the battle, he saw through his blurry, wincing eyes the image of Enishi Yukishiro superimpose itself on the crouching form of the Crimson Captain.
"...Shura! Captain SHURA!"
She screamed with a pitch so high, it pierced through the howl of destruction from the untouchable Masakichi Hananuma Inoue and his funnel cloud of whirling stretchable cords with heavy brass spikes on their ends.
"SEN RAN TOU SEI!"
She then extended her blade and spun around on one heel towards her opponent with a whirling centrifugal power of her own: The technique that Enishi used to counter the Ryu Kan Sen of the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu. In fact, it possessed many times more force than the Dragon Wrap Flash in terms of spinning ability.
It was an irresistible force versus another. Which one was greater?
The ominous whir of the black and gold maelstrom suddenly stopped, resulting in an impact that caused wooden debris and crumpled metal to fly everywhere. Hananuma landed and deployed his belt weights all over the deck to keep himself upright, anchoring him and tethering him erect at the same time.
Captain Shura wasn't as lucky, with her bleeding feet and ankles creating a splintering rut on the wooden floorboards while she stabbed her sword on the ground and used it as her brakes to keep herself from going overboard.
Her stabbed leg then froze up, since the thigh that Gekki injured from behind was the same one she used in order to spin on her heels and deliver that corkscrew blow that managed to stop the seemingly unstoppable Eye of the Storm.
For her trouble, her blade penetrated through Masakichi's armor with a paper-thin cut on his skin.
She collapsed and grabbed her leg, gnashing teeth hard in order to resist the darkness and the building frustration boiling from within. What more would it take to bring this monster down? What could she do with her leg like this?
"I am the captain of not only the Hizoku, but an entire fleet of Wokou. I have enough wealth in my coffers to fund a war and conquer a country. The Sanhehui has even more advanced weaponry than even the United States of America does: The same country that turned your little island nation upside down with the arrival of Commodore Perry's black ships thirty odd years ago. Do. Not. Underestimate. Me."
Captain Inoue plucked the tethers keeping him erect one by one then winced: The wound on his chest spurted a spray of blood, the cut ending up much deeper than he anticipated.
Incensed that a mere woman dared injure him this grievously when no man could, he threw all of his spikes at her at the same time, intending to turn her into Swiss cheese.
Again, Yahiko went for the save, clambering for Kenshin's sword and limping towards the roped spikes that looked like uncoiled snakes with their fangs bared.
He heard Kaoru's voice from within him say, 'Relax. Anticipate the strike. Conserve your movements. Let your opponents waste their energy, then make them pay.'
He did the Tsui Gami on the nearest conical weight. However, that particular God Hammer... sounded and felt different.
While normally, his three strikes that appeared like one strike could shatter even metal like glass, this time around, his strike crushed the spike so hard, it became powder.
The shockwave of the assault also killed the momentum of the rest of the weights, making them clatter on the floor: The whimper after the bang.
"You haven't learned your lesson yet? Then this will be your final one. There is no shame in surrendering to the Wokou or Captain Inoue Masakichi Hanannuma," said Captain Inoue.
The Wokou Captain proceeded to coil himself into ready position for anything the two could throw at him, confident that his Eye of the Storm could counter anything they had in their arsenal, including his former boss's wattoujutsu.
Yahiko went right beside the balled-up and fetal-positioned Shura who denied her tears the same way she denied her femininity for the longest time. "Can you still stand, Shura?"
"...Didn't I tell you to call me Captain Shura?"
"I'll only call you that if you can still stand, Shura."
And so Shura stood up, her throbbing thigh muscles be damned.
"What now, Captain?" he asked while the Scourge of the Pacific noticed that the stab wound on Yahiko's own leg made the limb jittery.
She doubted he could move three more steps, much less face down that frightening technique from the man with many titles to his name.
"I remember earlier you implying that I only became strong because I've learned wattoujutsu," said the Crimson Captain.
"Yeah?" prompted Yahiko, Captain Hananuma inching closer and closer.
"Don't misunderstand. Wattoujutsu didn't make me strong," said Shura. "It was the other way around. I was able to showcase the strength I've always had through wattoujutsu."
"Oh really? Then you get to prove your claim right now." Myojin went straight to the kendo Fire Stance without bothering to transition first into Water Stance. He only had one more shot left. It was now or never.
"You know as well as I that there's only one way to counter Captain Umeboshi's tornado of spikes. Your Zetsugi."
Shura hesitated, her lead leg throbbing anew. To put more pressure into her swelling, injured leg could mean she'd end up crippled for life. On the other hand, if she didn't do anything quickly, she and Yahiko would die anyway.
However, her doubts disappeared as soon as she saw the sparkle in Myojin's eyes.
"Did I tell you that the Kofuku Zettouei was what Enishi used to beat Kenshin's ultimate attack? Show me. Show me that move that beat the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu using the strength you claim you have, and I'll show you something special in return."
"...If you missed it the first time I said it, then let me reintroduce myself to you. I am Captain Inoue Masakichi Hananuma. I am the Captain of the Hizoku. I am the Commander of the Wokou. I am the 415 of the Three Harmonies Society. I am the Alchemist of the Brigands Guild. Learn the implications behind those titles before it's too late."
"All I know is that we're facing a guy in a beard and a dress. You can't stand being beaten by a woman and a child? Tough luck, Captain Umeboshi. That's exactly what's going to happen," said Yahiko, steeling his nerves for what was about to come next.
And with that, the Hizoku Captain again cocooned himself with his multiple long spikes bound to ropes then released all that torsion at once, turning into the physical manifestation of the Black Death itself: A cloud of whirling cords with spikes on their ends that destroyed everything in their path like a plague or pestilence would.
When he was nine to ten years old, Myojin confronted a giant with a sword as big as (if not bigger than) him. He also recently battled a pretty boy swordsman who could disappear in a blink of eye and slice him up before he could finish that blink.
As such, even in the face of the Eye of the Storm... Hurricane Inoue, to be sure... he didn't even flinch.
The Kairyu Captain exhaled. She didn't have a choice in the matter any longer. She went into the same stance she used to do the Sen Ran Tou Sei, with her tender right leg extended, her other leg folded, and her body sunk so low she appeared like a crouching tiger ready to pounce on someone.
The only difference between the Sen Ran Tou Sei and the Kofuku Zetsu Tou Sei in terms of preparation was the fact that instead of holding the blade upward in a diagonal angle, the Pirate Queen this time wielded the weapon with the hilt facing down and the blunt end of the blade parallel to the back of her arm.
Because she sunk her stance to the floor, she avoided the initial mid-range massacre from before the same way Enishi avoided the void that Kenshin created when he unleashed what was supposed to be the fastest and strongest battoujutsu technique ever created.
Instead of spinning on her heel, the Kofuku Zettousei involved the use of a counterstrike lunge that relied completely on the power of Shura's legs, which might be a bridge too far for her to cross if her thigh were to give out then and there.
And so lunge she did, her execution perfect but the power from her legs gone due to the Sen Ran Tou Sei aggravating Gekki's stab.
"...KOFUKU ZETTOUSEI!"
She didn't hesitate with her strike, though, pushing forward even if her legs could not. Just as the Eye of the Storm engulfed her rising form, Yahiko struck the deck three times fast instead of two times fast, making it explode with the force of a bomb and giving Shura the push that she needed to compete her Zetsugi.
"DOU GAMI!"
"?!" was Shura's only reaction while she received an extra boost from below; her metaphoric wind beneath her proverbial wings.
With the same amount of force that knocked Yahiko through the wall and out of the Akahori Mansion a few weeks back, an explosion occurred from underneath Shura's extended leg, jettisoning her forward with an upward slash that decimated Inoue upon impact.
The combined forces of the God on Earth and the Ultimate Wattoujutsu Technique did the trick.
The torque of the Hizoku Captain's twister didn't help stop the Kofuku Zetsu Tou Sei, with Shura's sword hitting the "eye" of the "Eye of the Storm" and using Hananuma's own momentum against him. The impact that Inoue released returned to him all at once, to the point of nearly breaking him in half.
"AAAUGGH! CURSE YOU, KAIRYU...!"
The wheel of destruction went out of control, with Inoue destroying the rest of the boat with his blood, sweat, tears, and several other pieces of himself flying everywhere before he went overboard altogether with a hard, bone-breaking splash that turned into a whirlpool in the middle of the sea.
"...Captain!" the Wokou shouted in Mandarin while several of them went straight for the spare boats to rescue their commander. Not many were left on board that were conscious, though, thanks to the earlier efforts of Yahiko, Shura, and her Kairyu who came on board the Hizoku.
Pandemonium erupted on the warship. Like the residents of the Tower of Babel, everyone spoke in tongues: A mixture of Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, and several East Asian and Southeast Asian dialects.
"Man overboard! MAN OVERBOARD!"
"Where's Gekki? Where's Ginjo?"
"Omigod, G-Ginjo? GINJO...!"
"I saw it all! The Captain killed Ginjo!"
"You murdering bastards! We had a deal!"
"The Kairyu! The Kairyu are coming!"
"It's the coastguard! The Japanese coastguard has spotted us!"
"A-Abandon ship! There are too many goddamn sailors and privateers...!"
"...I feel like puking out my insides," said Yahiko, his legs finally buckling underneath him while several of the Kairyu privateers formed a perimeter cage of themselves around their captain and her comrade-in-arms to protect the tired fighters from anymore Wokou sneak attacks.
"You've already done your share of puking. I don't think you can puke no more," said the smiling Shura, the wind blowing over her undone hair, her pride the only thing that kept her from collapsing like Myojin.
Yahiko guffawed before he heaved, which prompted him to sit up while the captain rubbed his back, much to the envy of the other Kairyu. "You all right, kid? You sound pregnant."
"Shut up," said the Tokyo Samurai Descendant while blanching. He looked around. More and more of the crew of both the Akibatsu and the sunken ship Kobayashi Maru had boarded the Hizoku, carrying ropes, cords, and other binding tools in order to capture the Shanghai Mafia's personal navy of Wokou. "It's finally over, huh? You got your revenge?"
"...Yeah. It won't bring back the dead, but hopefully they can rest in peace after we've conquered the ship that helped killed them."
The Crimson Captain heaved a sigh and sat down beside Yahiko, her face twisting in pain from the throb of her thigh while she did so. She turned towards him, who was at that point looking at the moonless sky. "Yahiko-kun?"
"Hmmm?"
"Did you see what you wanted to see when you took the job? Also, did you have a bomb with you? What was up with that crazy move you pulled from underneath me?"
The reddened face of Yahiko and the averted gazes of the surrounding, whistling Kairyu made the Kairyu Captain rethink her words.
"I mean, the sword technique you had! But not that kind of sword! The one where you exploded like a bomb! I mean, the deck did! GODAMMIT, STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT AND TAKE YOUR MINDS OFF THE GUTTER, YA SCURVY DOGS! You know what I mean, right?"
"...Yeah, yeah. I know. I get it. That technique I did was something I recently came up with: The Earth God." Yahiko closed his eyes and cleared his throat. "Thanks. You don't even have to pay me off for this mission. I got what I wanted."
"And what did you want?" Shura asked, brushing her hair back.
"To see how the Wattoujutsu's Zetsugi defeated the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu's Ougi."
The shocking memory of seeing Battousai's ultimate attack countered remained as clear as day to the Son of Tokyo Samurai's mind. However, this was the first time he figured out how it worked.
"The Amakakeru Ryu no Hirameki hits upward, in an arc, so it's open to low attacks even though it has a follow-up strike in case it misses. The Zettousei can even use the momentum of the person it's hitting against him."
"Wow. So that's the technique that beat the unbeatable Himura. I mean... Kamiya. Kamiya Kenshin," said Shura with a wistfulness that ended on a flat tone, her features unreadable.
Studying wattoujutsu was her own way of learning more about the man that helped bring her life at its crossroads.
"As for the Dou Gami, it's my all-original technique that should help me master using Kenshin's sword properly," explained Yahiko further with a grin, inwardly celebrating that he'd proven his technique to not be a fluke.
"...Really? Why? What's wrong with the Kamiya Kasshin Ryu?" Captain Shura asked, curious as to why the young samurai would abandon his mastery of the kendo art passed down to him by Kaoru Kamiya. "Is it too defensive a sword school for your personality? Would you rather train in Himura's... I mean, Kamiya's Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu?"
"...There's nothing wrong with the Kamiya Kasshin." This time, Yahiko's face went neutral, his gaze fixated elsewhere. "In fact, I want to beat it and Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu someday. With my own techniques."
"...What are you talking about? Why would you want to beat your own sword school?" asked Shura while looking at Yahiko like he were wearing a more ridiculous dress than the one the "blaggard" Captain Inoue sported. A pink one with lots of frills.
Yahiko waved her off. "Never mind. Forget I said anything."
"Captain, come quick!" said Shura's new first mate, who was once her second mate until he was "promoted" after his predecessor kicked the bucket, sinking along with the Kobayashi Maru.
"Ah! Good work securing the Hizoku. We've made quite a haul, and those bastards back in the government should reward us handsomely for this successful mission," the Crimson Captain greeted her underling before she caught his grim expression. "What's the matter, lad? You look like you've seen a ghost."
"I-It's Sarujiro, Captain. He...!"
Back at the Akibatsu cargo ship, after the Kairyu Privateers and the Akibatsu's crewmen commandeered the fallen Hizoku battleship and rounded up the members of the Wokou and the Sanhehui or the Three Harmonies Society...
Minoe's eyes... well, eye... fluttered open in time to see the Humongous Gan hauling him on his back. From below them, beyond the rails, several boats from the Japanese coastguard had the Hizoku surrounded while naval officers escorted a whole boatful of Wokou in chains.
'Eh? What's going on?' The eye-patched dual wielder shifted, which alerted the gentle brute that he was awake.
"Good evening, Patches," greeted the Tired Gan, as though his usual boisterousness and liveliness had been sucked out of his body. "I see you're awake now."
"G-G-Gan-chi...!" While the former Togakudan almost slipped off, his dainty hands accidentally feeling rock-hard abs, scars, sticky blood, and welts all over the hooligan's body, he said, "You're hurt, Gan-chi! Put me down before you strain yourself!"
"I'm fine. I'm super strong, after all! I drink milk and shit!" Gan's back popped like a walnut. "Okay, maybe you have a point."
The thug did as the spy told him, which finally allowed Munenori see an unfortunately familiar sight: The spectacle of someone crying.
"What's going on, Gan...?" Minoe began, only for him to be shushed by the kindhearted hoodlum with a gesture of his finger and a hand on the spy's wigged head.
It took a minute for the scene to register in the childlike ninja wannabe's head before his own exposed eye welled up. 'Oh.'
In front of them sobbed Chizuru Raikouji, who cradled the limp body of Sarujiro in her arms while surrounded by Kairyu and Akibatsu sailors alike.
"Sarujiro...?"
The rest of the crew froze up and the bawling Chizuru immediately went silent at hearing the Crimson Captain's uncertain voice.
From behind her, Yahiko stood, slack-jawed, unable to utter a single word. Still as a statue.
"W-What's going on?"
Captain Shura, the Crimson Captain, hobbled towards the still form of Sarujiro... her last remaining loyal comrade from her days as a Kairyu Pirate... and the crying, hiccupping visage of Chizuru Raikouji, her sheathed sword with a weight attached to it serving as her crutch.
"What happened to Sarujiro? Sarujiro, answer me!" demanded Shura, her adrenalin rush keeping her upright while dread crushed her insides.
As for Raikouji, she couldn't bring herself to look the captain in the eyes, all color draining from her face.
"I-It's all my fault! S-Sarujiro saved me even though he didn't have to! He kept me from being assaulted by that creepy, perverted pirate, but then he... he...!"
The blubbering Chizuru flinched as Captain Shura grabbed hold of the rich girl's shoulders tightly. Raikouji expected a slap in the face. She deserved as much. Instead, she got an embrace.
"...C-Captain?"
"I only went ahead with this ambush to avenge the Kobayashi Maru and my dead crewmates! I didn't mean to... Sarujiro... I'm so sorry..."
Her eyes dull and cloudy, the captain pushed Raikouji aside... or rather, she set her aside, like she would a mug of rum or a saucer of sake.
"C-Captain... S-Shura?" said Chizuru. However, Shura paid her no heed. The only tings anyone could hear at that point were the creaking of the boat and the waves of the ocean.
The Captain... the Scourge of the Pacific... knelt down, genuflected, on all fours before the unmoving form of Sarujiro, her body wracked with muffled sobs that she swallowed down harder than her pride.
Myojin stared at the ground and inhaled, finally remembering to breathe. Finally remembering Kenshin dropping down on his knees the same way that Shura did after being tricked into thinking that Enishi had killed Kaoru.
Next: Reemerging shadows of the past.
I for one am excited for the upcoming Seiryu Arc. At any rate, yes, in this universe, Shura has learned Enishi Yukishiro's wattoujutsu. That actually happened.
Tayo na at makipagsapalaran,
Abdiel