Rurouni Yahiko
A Rurouni Kenshin Fan Fiction Continuation Story by Chester Castañeda
This chapter is in honor of a(n) (in)famous GIF of from a video entitled "Welt der Wunder: Katana Versus Greatsword".
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 40: The Mark of a Sinner
Back at Hakata, Kyushu; on the northwestern part of what would soon be known as Fukuoka City just five years after 1884, in the middle of a thicket of forest just beyond the port...
The Hakata Bay... in reality a bay composed of Imazu, Fukuoka, and Hakata Bays... was surrounded by the Western Itoshima Peninsula, the Genkai Island of the Northwest, the Shika Island and the Umi no Nakamichi Shoal of the North.
It was also bordered by five wards of Fukuoka City, which was why it was sometimes labeled as Fukuoka Bay by some maps after 1889. In short, it was the perfect training ground for samurai from "Samurai" City.
Yahiko Myojin put his arms on his hips, breathed in, and breathed out. "All done." Before him stood a tent he learned to build on his own during his training trips away from the Kamiya Dojo, mostly straight to places like Nagano and anywhere in the East of Japan.
"OOOOOH!" chorused the trio of the Great Gan, the Mysterious Munenori Minoe, and the Tagalong Chizuru Raikouji while doing a small-scale round of polite applause at Myojin.
"I don't get it," admitted the Forthright Gan afterwards, even though he didn't stop clapping. "It's a tent. What's so special about a tent?"
"I'll be living here for the next few days," said Yahiko.
"...Why?" of all people, even the usually supportive Minoe had to ask. "You have enough money to go to an inn, Yahiko-chi."
Myojin shook his head. "If I keep sleeping in inns, I'll grow soft. I need to train. Experience the wilderness. Get bitten by a few mosquitoes from time to time, even. Like a real man."
"I'm not following your logic, Yoshi-boy," said the Practical Gan. "Even samurai in the olden days have roofs above their head. You know who didn't? Peasants. What's so manly about being bitten by mosquitoes and maybe contracting a disease?"
"Say what you will, but I've made up my mind," stated Yahiko while putting a pile of twigs on the side of the tent. "I'm all set for my morning jog. You three can do whatever you want, since I never invited you to go with me in the first place."
Chizuru crossed her arms. "Did you even plan any of this out? You said you went to Captain Shura for a job, but did you think about what you're supposed to do after that's done?"
"Naturally! After making my stop in Fukuoka, I still have a long way to go until I reach Kyoto. I may have to take stops in Hiroshima. Oh, and Osaka! I've never been there before either!
"What is this, an extended vacation?" said Chizuru with a raised eyebrow.
Yahiko wagged his finger at Raikouji. "No, no, no. It's Musha Shugyo! A warrior's pilgrimage. Like during olden times, in the Edo Period."
The Meta Gan blinked. "Mushi Bugyo?" Myojin slapped him with a fish, except the fish was his sword and it was more a three-hit pummel than a slap.
Without missing a beat, Yahiko continued while the Lumpy Gan remained face-down on the ground, "I'm serving as a shugyosha. I'm going to travel to different sword schools, train with them, or maybe make money on the side as a bodyguard or something. Like with what happened with Shura."
"What's in Kyoto?" asked Minoe while blowing air on the lump forming on Gan's cranium and patting him on the back. "I mean, what are you supposed to do there, Yahiko-chi?"
The Tokyo Samurai Descendant stared straight into the blue skies. "Meet up with Kamiya Kenshin's master, the 13th Successor of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu. I want to learn more about Kenshin's sword style for the sake of improving mine."
That quieted everyone down. From Chizuru, who didn't even know the sword style of the "vagabond", to Munenori, who had... issues with Himura's most infamous alias, so they all had some sort of reaction to Myojin's revelation.
Even the Prone Gan let out a muffled, "KYOTO!? I wanna go too! I wanna taste Kyoto-style Kaiseki Ryori, Shojin Ryori, or Obanzai Ryori!" although that had nothing to do with Yahiko's announcement to train with Himura-Kamiya's "shishou".
Chizuru harrumphed. "It would've been easier for you to take a train or a boat ride to Kyoto! Instead, you had us stuck in the middle of nowhere in Kyushu, many miles away!"
Minoe, to Yahiko's surprise, answered Chizuru's complaint. "He's facing someone who's quite possibly even more powerful than Himura Kenshin himself. If he could somehow prepare for the meeting, then training beforehand makes sense."
"That's right! Exactly like he said. I won't rest till Kenshin's sakabatou is as light as a feather in my hands! Then I'll be worthy enough to face his master. Thanks for understanding, Minoe!"
"M-Mochiron," said Munenori with a wan smile while Yahiko stretched and paced himself for the long 10 kilometer jog ahead (he'd run five kilometers across the coastline, then return to complete the remaining five kilometers) on the long stretch of sand of the Hakata Bay.
"If you'd be so kind as to look after my tent while I'm away, I'd appreciate it," said Yahiko to the three before he went off.
However, Gan decided that moment to pop out from his face-down position and said, "Nu-uh, Yoshi-boy! I'm running with you, like when we first met!"
"AH! Wait! I'm not your tent keeper! Don't leave us... Dammit, they're gone," said Chizuru to the cloud of dust that used to be Yahiko and Gan.
Back in the back alleys of Yokohama's Namamugi Fish Market...
"You all look like inbreds! HAHAHA!" mocked the tall, dark-haired, blue-eyed foreigner.
"WAITO PIGGU GO HOMU!" said the lanky Officer Horio Shimizu.
"AUGH!" screamed the heavyset and stubble-bearded Officer Masaya Ishimaru, whose sword shattered and whose beefy body went down against the taller but stockier European serial killer.
The second officer of the squad of seven went down in a pool of blood. Before the serial killer could finish the downed copper off, he got shot at by Captain Kuniumi Yamada, whom he also threw his dagger at. This resulted in a nick on the captain's cheek.
The criminal scum sprinted fast enough to retrieve the clattering knife then backpedaled while Kuniumi reloaded his gun.
Captain Yamada harrumphed. He couldn't get a clear shot of the raven-haired rapscallion, who used the captain's own officers as meat shields against his pistol.
Kuniumi also would've ended up breathing through his neck had Lieutenant Yusuke Nishimura and Sergeant Satoru "Sarge" Sakaguchi not double-teamed the foreign devil in time.
'This gaijin is... sloppy. A novice swordsman,' came Lieutenant Nishimura's observation. 'There's no rhyme or reason for his technique. He just swings and swings, desperate to get a hit. He can cut flesh well enough, like a butcher would, but butchery isn't swordsmanship. Pieces of beef or pork don't fight back. However...'
Sure enough, the one-handed Western longsword that the Gaijin Battousai wielded chipped at the Yokohama police's two-handed katana like they were brittle chalk or pieces of clay.
The weapon that many in Japan waved off as simple huge bars of metal with barely an edge when they first saw it proved more sophisticated when pitted against Japanese steel in actual combat.
No wonder the other Yokohama officers went down or outright died against the foreigner, what with their inferior standard-issue flimsy sabers and katana.
It was like using bronze weapons against iron ones during 1,000 B.C.E. Or like using Japanese armaments against British ones during the Bombing of Kagoshima by Great Britain a mere two decades ago. Or a fist in a knife fight.
The foreign Battousai wannabe served as a one-man army against the Yokohama police because Meiji Era Japan had a long way to go technology-wise, even in terms of swords.
"How appropriate! Dwarfish, pig metal swords for a dwarfish, piggish people! They match your tiny, uncircumcised penises, I bet!"
None of the officers before him spoke the Queen's English, so the "Bahtowsai" pointed towards their crotches and made a pinching gesture with his finger to make his statement clearer.
At 30 inches in length, the double-handed katana truly was small compared to the single-handed 35-to 43-inch longsword with a cruciform hilt.
"You worthless piece of shit," said Officer Shimizu, his weapon approaching the breaking point.
"Jerk," said Officer Atsushi Dankichi, which made the rest of his fellow coppers stare at him blankly. "...What?"
"Is this all you samurai got? How disappointing," the black-haired, long-nosed foreigner mocked before dispatching Dankichi with a chop that would've disemboweled him had Captain Yamada and Lieutenant Nishimura not run interference with their respective sword styles.
"'Shyamurai'? We're not samurai, we're law enforcers, you ignorant gaijin pig!" Officer Shimizu nicked the ducking Englishman Battousai's scalp, only to be stabbed in the leg with the dagger.
"Don't you dare underestimate the Japanese spirit, gaijin!" said a blue-faced, rasping Officer Shuichi Hasegawa before stabbing his broken sword into the boot of the serial killer.
This only made the murderer cackle and shudder instead of scream, though.
Nevertheless, that was the chance Captain Yamada was searching for. He shot the serial killer on the chest and torso after seeing him hobble, unable to hide behind other officers or the alleyway shadows.
"Nishimura-kun! Sakaguchi-kun! Attack him while I reload!"
"Way to go, Hasegawa-kun!" cheered Satoru, only to see his fellow officer heave and hurl all over the street. "Hasegawa-kun...?"
"Let's go, Sarge! For Hasegawa-kun! Remember, YAMATO DAMASHI!" called out Nishimura.
"Yessir! YAMATO DAMASHI! BANZAI!" echoed the sergeant.
Sergeant Sakaguchi, student of Musou Madden Ryu (a variant of Hasegawa Eishin Ryu, a historically famous sword-drawing school) and Lieutenant Nishimura, student of Nakanishi-Ha Itto Ryu (a branch of the original Ono-Ha Itto Ryu, one of the oldest sword schools in existence) attacked in tandem, doing fewer blocks and parries in favor of finding openings on the crippled Englishman.
"Interesting. You're now posing more of a challenge to me than China ever did against those cheese-smelling French monkeys, you bloody Japs!" said the gaijin, referring to the Tonquin War.
Faced with a more cautious set of officers from the Yokohama District than earlier, the dual-wielding Englishman who dubbed himself Battousai (or, as he pronounced it, "Bahtowsai") swung at them in wide arcs, his sword's direction hidden behind or beneath the swish of his cloak while he occasionally pierced them with his dagger.
"Are you okay?" Lieutenant Yusuke asked Sarge after avoiding another stab.
"He only scratched me, like earlier," Satoru reassured. "How about you?"
"About the same. He's very amateurish, even with that super-hard blunt sword of his," said the lieutenant. "It's simply not as sharp as a katana."
While European steel was stronger, purer, more rigid, longer, and had more carbon pound-for-pound than Japanese steel (which required pouring a layer of carbon powder on top of the smelted bar prior to folding it two hundred times), the katana had a sharper edge than, say, a Western longsword.
The heavy blade required chopping motions, momentum, and gravity in order to sever (not slice) its targets. In contrast, a curved Japanese sword could slice through flesh and veins at the subtlest of slashing movements as well as cut through bone with enough strength behind the strike.
The katana, with its multi-folded soft metal forged with powdered carbon, was sharp but "brittle" when compared to the thick but blunt carbon-enriched longsword.
Learning their lesson from before, Nishimura and Sakaguchi (with occasional assistance from Yamada by gun or swordplay) outright avoided parries from the gaijin that could chip away at their swords or even be countered with counter parries).
They made the serial killer look slow. Clumsy. His one-handed longsword appeared no sharper than a tonfa when swung without power or gravity to assist it. It could cut a katana in half with one swing, but every swing required more arm strength than the much shorter, curved blade.
With blood running through his coat and boot, the Englishman Battousai's movements slowed, unable to parry slashes coming at him from all angles by swordsmen that didn't require full strength to cut his flesh, veins, and arteries (though they hadn't hit deep enough to do an artery cut... yet).
Nishimura missed with a top-down slash from the Fire Stance or Jodan-no-Kamae that would've cleaved the serial killer from head to crotch, but Sakaguchi picked up the slack with his out-of-nowhere slash that shined like the crescent moon to the foreigner's stomach.
A gunshot exploded from behind the "Bahtowsai", and Captain Yamada hit the perverted prostitute murderer for a second time with a bullet. He then moved in for the kill, his sword strike intended to decapitate (or at least lacerate) the jugular of the cloaked man.
After all, he himself was a one-slash Mizugochi-Ha Itto Ryu student (yet another branch of the original Ono-Ha Itto Ryu, older than Nakanishi-Ha Itto Ryu).
The death blow never came. Instead, the captain dropped his sword and felt his face go numb, his body going into seizures while his mouth bubbled with an excess of saliva.
"YAMADA-TAICHO!" screamed Satoru, to which in the Gaijin Battousai's foreign ears, sounded like, "YOUR MOTHER TOUCHED YOU!" prompting the serial killer to grab his aching, bleeding sides and laugh. And laugh. And laugh some more.
"What's so funny, you beak-nosed, limey...!?" said Lieutenant Yusuke, only to trail off and drop his sword, losing all feeling in his arm. A headache, arguably a migraine, stabbed his cranium, his tears burning through his eyes.
As for Satoru, he saw the world spin around him. The downed policemen who were still alive.. Officers Hasegawa, Dankichi, Shimizu, and Ishimaru... convulsed and writhed on the ground. Some of them weren't even moving anymore.
Sarge attempted to sheathe his sword to attack the gaijin with iaijutsu. He lacked coordination to put the tip into the slot of his saya, the katana clattering on the floor. His body wouldn't listen to him.
"17 minutes. Took long enough," said the Gentleman Battousai after looking at his pocket watch. He himself almost stumbled from all the blood he lost from battling experienced Japanese swordsmen.
"Oh, did I forget to mention? My blades are dipped in neurotoxin. From one of Japan's finest fish delicacies, at that. You're all about to die. It's a shame none of you can speak English."
The Fake Foreign Battousai limped towards the foaming-in-the-mouth Captain Yamada and lifted him by his collar. "Ever experienced internal bleeding? It means bleeding from the inside without any blood spilling out from your body... like with a punctured lung, for example."
His animalistic intuition (the swordsman's sixth sense, perhaps) kicking in, Battousai the Serial Killer threw Yamada towards the approaching shadow he saw saunter in the corner of his eye. He grinned after recognizing the new arrival.
"Well, well, well. I've smoked you out, at last. I would've killed your whole family by now if only you hadn't interfered, Kinta Minakata."
The redheaded, coat-wearing ex-samurai who, despite laws prohibiting it, had gotten hold of his own sword, gently put the gurgling Yokohama Captain down on the ground.
"You can stop pretending to be someone you're not... Cain Merrick," said Kinta in Japanese, pronouncing Merrick's name as "Kein Merriku".
"Oho. What a hypocritical thing to say, coming from a Kagemusha," said the (apparently bilingual) Cain in English, pronouncing the Japanese word as "Kahgaymyusha".
The Wheezing Gan glared at Yahiko, who was way ahead of him at the first five kilometer mark. "You're too slow, Gan! You can only go fast if you have debtors hot on your heels because you didn't pay your food bill!"
"SHADDUP AND RUN! Wait till we get back to your tent, ya little runt!" the Sweaty, Heaving, and Ragged Gan told the Son of Tokyo Samurai off.
Back in Namamugi Fish Market's back alleys in Yokohama, Kanto...
Captain Yamada had enough presence of mind to come to and realize that Kinta Minakata, the nephew of that lawyer who was poisoned with arsenic, had just saved him from bleeding on the inside, as promised by the psychotic Battousai wannabe.
However, he could do little else because he couldn't move. He was among those who tasted the venomous blade of the cheating foreigner the most, and the neurotoxin left him paralyzed with seizures.
Some of his officers were either blue in the face (cyanosis) or outright knocked out. Hopefully, not in comas. Hopefully, not dead.
"K-Kinta-kun..." stuttered Sergeant Sakaguchi, recognizing Kinta and calling him by what he used to call him as a young lad.
The Englishman wiped the blood on his blade with his cloak, took another glass orb, and smashed it on the naked blade, re-dipping it with the same toxic venom he used to take down even the most experienced swordsmen with one swing. A nick to the skin was all it took.
"Or perhaps you'd rather I call you by your other alias, the 'Mimawarigumi Battousai'?"
Several of them stirred at the announcement. Even with his thick English accent, the name, "Mimawarigumi Battousai" rung true. Some of them knew Kinta and the Mimawarigumi's equivalent of Kenshin Himura were one and the same (like Sakaguchi and Hasegawa) and some didn't (like Dankichi and Shimizu).
To those who didn't know Kinta was formerly Mimawarigumi (a special police corps like the Shinsengumi, except instead of ronin, their squadrons were composed of actual high-ranking samurai and hatamoto-class retainer swordsmen), the name and the face suddenly clicked.
Minakata had red hair. If one peered at his face hard enough, they could see the faint scar that "crossed out" his face. Most importantly, like Sakaguchi, this particular Battousai knew the modern version of battoujutsu... iaijutsu... under the umbrella of Musou Madden Ryu.
Instead of adopting the back-facing-forward iaijutsu stance of Satoru, the Mimawarigumi Battousai opted to do a more traditional frontward sword-drawing pose, with his eyes wide open and his hand hovering over his sheathed sword's handle.
"You don't waste time, do you?" Cain pointed his blade, which dripped with neurotoxin, around the nearest quivering bodies at his feet. "Careful, now. Me hand might slip."
Tense as a taut string, Kinta held his ground, ready to let his sword fly at a moment's notice.
"Don't you have any questions for me? Why I'm doing this? Why I almost killed your fat slob of an uncle? What I'm after? I certainly want to know how you knew my name."
"No."
"Tch. You're no fun. Whoops." Merrick's hand "slipped" and his toxin-soaked longsword almost ran through Hasegawa, the police officer who stabbed his ankle.
Immediately, Minakata's blade flew so quickly, Cain couldn't even see a glint of it, his heavy sword whirling back towards him. He caught the longsword by its handle; if he hadn't, it might've amputated his arm clean off.
By the time Merrick refocused his attention on Kinta, the latter had already sheathed his sword. Did that fragile katana break or get chipped from its contact with his sword, the Durandal? Cain had no idea.
"Amazing. You can give even the real Battousai a run for his money, can't you? But you're not the Mimawarigumi Battousai anymore. The Mimawarigumi is dead and the shogunate fell. You're instead the... Battousai of Skill, are you not?"
Had Hasegawa known more than a rudimentary knowledge of English... and were he not in dire straits from being poisoned by a neurotoxin... he'd go "apeshit" over what Merrick had implied.
"Did Akahori send you?" asked Kinta, but Cain didn't answer.
"So how is Shogo Amakusa's Battousai Group doing, Mister Kinta Minakata?" The gaijin's grin grew wider. "Does any of these fine policemen know that you weren't only part of the fallen shogunate, but the Hidden Christian rebellion too? How many cops and soldiers did you kill back then as Amakusa's double?"
'A-Amakusa...?' Instead of Hasegawa, Sakaguchi... Kinta's fellow Musou Madden Ryu student... heard the mention of Shogo's name.
Meanwhile, instead of answering, Kinta's eyebrows furrowed, the contorting of his face making the x-mark intersecting right at the bridge of his nose even more visible than before.
"I can see your scar as plain as day. I hit a sore spot, didn't I? In a manner of speaking," said Cain before he threw his dagger at that cross-marked target of a face to give himself the window of opportunity to attack.
Kinta avoided the dagger with a tilt of the head, not bothering to block or deflect it, his sword still in his scabbard. Also, curiously enough, the Battousai of Style flipped a coin between himself and Cain.
"If you're the Battousai of Skill, then I should be the Battousai of Sin! Make me an honorary member of your quaint little secret club of Battousai Impersonators, won't you?"
"...Minakata-san!"
Distracted by the womanly cry, Minakata hesitated long enough to delay his unsheathing of his curved blade. Realizing this, Merrick held his sword up high, intending to clash their blades together so that he could destroy the Battousai of Skill's katana and chop him up with one strike. Like killing two birds with one stone.
"C-Cain...?"
Wait. That voice. Merrick recognized that irritating, high-pitched, and whiny voice.
It was the tumor. His tumor. His parasite. The bane of his existence. Still alive.
Instead of allowing them to clash swords, Kinta adjusted the "flight path" of his blade and not only avoided the seemingly indestructible cruciform-hilt longsword, but also the rotating, falling sen coin he flipped earlier, even while his slashes became a tidal wave of steel.
By the time the flipped coin landed back on Kinta's palm, it was all over.
Merrick froze for a second before his clothes exploded into small strips while his wounds sprayed blood everywhere as though he were a thief scourged during Roman times. With bullwhips.
"CAIN! MINAKATA!" Abelia La Cerca... or perhaps Abelia Merrick... cried out. From behind her, the rest of the Yokohama Police Squad arrived.
Abelia. They even named her after him. After the biblical siblings, the sons of Adam and Eve: Cain, the world's first murderer and Abel, the world's first murder victim.
Half-blinded by the blood squirted into his eye, Minakata did a double-take at Merrick's belly.
He saw the huge, indelible Mark of Cain.
Kinta took a handkerchief and went into a coughing fit. The next thing he knew, Merrick had already run away, his blood dripping all over the place.
Meanwhile, from behind Abelia, Officers Shigeru Michisige, Kazuki Matsura, and Yukio Sugiura came forth with their own lamps, rifles, and sabers.
"After him! The killer is getting away!" screamed Sugiura.
"No, wait! We don't have time for that! Everyone is down! The captain and the others are all hurt!"
"D-Doctor... I mean, Minakata-san. Are you all right? Were you hurt?" Abelia asked Kinta. "Cain... He used poison, didn't he? And the Gadamer Gem..."
Minakata nodded, his hand covering his wheezing mouth. "He said something about a poisonous Japanese delicacy."
La Cerca's eyes lit up. "Pufferfish. That's why he's in this fish market. He must've bought or stole pufferfish and soaked his blades with their poison."
Officer Michishige repeated, "'Pafafisshu'? You mean fugu? He poisoned them with fugu?"
"'River pig', huh? Appropriate name. Anyway, how long have they been exposed?" she asked.
"About twenty minutes or so," shouted Satoru. "Some of us as long as thirty minutes. With repeated stabbings."
"What do we do? Do you have an antidote handy, little girl?" asked Officer Matsura. "Uh... I mean, ma'am."
"There's no antidote." Seeing the paling faces of everyone around her, Abelia reassured, "Don't worry. I have some activated charcoal in my bag. If they can survive within the day, they should recover with residual effects within the next couple of days."
"Um, we're just supposed to feed them charcoal?" asked Yukio.
"Yes, please! Or leeches to suck out the bad blood! Also, get some more helpers here. We need to haul them to the nearest hospital as soon as possible to stabilize their condition!"
As everyone started mobilizing and feeding the paralyzed officers with charcoal to absorb the poison and wipe away the blood from their wounds, Abelia turned towards Minakata.
"How about you, Minakata-san? Were you slashed by Cain too?"
Kinta's legs gave way, going down on one knee, his coughing fit turning violent. His handkerchief he used to wipe Merrick's blood away filled with his own.
"MINAKATA-SAN!"
Yahiko glared (and wheezed) at the Grinning Gan, who was way ahead of him during the remaining five kilometer return trip to his tent.
"You're too slow, Yoshi-boy! What's the matter? You're faster at running your mouth than running with your legs? Youthful vigor my ass, you must make your Tokyo girlfriend sad all the time!"
"SHADDUP AND RUN! Wait till we finally get to spar, you pot-bellied dope!" the Son of Tokyo Samurai told the Smug, Arrogant, and (Apparently) Long-Lasting Gan off.
Back at Hakata, Kyushu; in the middle of a thicket of forest just beyond the port...
"What's this?" a sweaty Yahiko asked after he came back to his tent in the nearby woods adjacent to the coastline. A picnic blanket was spread out, containing boxed lunches full of mentaiko (marinated roe of pollock and cod) and onigiri.
"Local cuisine. I bought it back at the port while Minoe-chan insisted that... he look after your tent. I've already had tonkotsu before getting back here, so help yourselves," said Chizuru.
"Don't mind if I do!" said the Hungry Gan, about to swallow everything in one gulp, only for Raikouji to stab his eyes with her fingers. "AAHH! MY EYES!"
Chizuru coughed primly and looked away from Yahiko. "D-Don't misunderstand. It's not as if I did it for you or anything."
Myojin blinked. "Huh. Well, that's okay. I don't really want it."
"WHAT? I spent good money on this, you li'l ingrate!" said Chizuru while pinching and turning Yahiko's ear.
"OWOWOW! Fine. But don't bother buying me food again," said Myojin.
"Hey, what's with all the racket...?" asked a sleepy Minoe with a disheveled wig on his head and his sword guard eye patch on the wrong eye, which Myojin immediately placed on the correct eye before everyone noticed the cross-shaped scar. "Wow! Mentaiko! Onigiri! Whose birthday is it?"
"Help yourself, Minoe-chan!" said Raikouji.
"Mochiron! Itadakimasu! Also, happy birthday!" said Minoe before stuffing his face with foodstuffs. "Yummy!"
"...Anyway, I can hunt for food on my own. Feel free to buy your own food, though. Or lodging. Maybe you can even go back to Tokyo and leave me in peace," Yahiko said to Chizuru.
With half-lidded eyes, the heiress said, "You can't be serious. You're trying too hard, Myojin-kun. Mushi Bugyo..."
"...Musha Shugyo," Myojin corrected.
"...Musha Shugyo doesn't even exist nowadays. Neither do samurai. Relax for a bit, Yahiko! You're too high strung." She waved the younger boy off.
"Nope. I'm not trying hard enough," said Myojin while munching on his cod roe. "Hey, Gan! Let's run again in the afternoon! And evening! I'm gonna beat you this time!"
With cheeks as chubby as a tanuki's, the Ravenous Gan said, "Mrrf? Mm mmm mmm mrf mmmfhng mmf mmm mmm, Mrrmf-mmm! (What? I'm done with my running for the day, Yoshi-boy!)"
"Fine by me." Yahiko shrugged and ate another onigiri, somehow understanding the Marble-Mouthed Gan.
"You're going to run again?" asked the incredulous thug.
"...Well, yeah. How else am I going to beat you stamina-wise otherwise?" Myojin pointed out.
"I'm going to save my stamina and rest, if you don't mind." The Skeptical Gan rolled his eyes.
"Suit yourself. Don't go crying to me when I end up becoming stronger than you."
"Sure, kid, sure..."
To Chizuru, the Reclining Gan whispered, "Hey, Neechan. Aren't you using up your wages from Captain Shuriken a little too fast? I know I'm not one to speak, but if you're not careful, you might end up more penniless than an ugly hooker."
After punching his throat for implying she'd end up in prostitution, the rich girl whispered back, "I got a wire transfer from gramps. But don't tell the brat. No way I'm going off on some island cruise in the middle of nowhere without some sort of cash on me. I'm not stupid."
"Hehehe. You never told us you were loaded, Neechan," said the Hoodlumish Gan in a hoodlumy sort of way.
Seeing the leer on the hoodlum's face... a food bandit and gambler who could outrun Yahiko when food or money was involved... Chizuru immediately hid behind Minoe for safety, glaring at him.
"Oh, come on! I'm not gonna steal from you! I just wanna get free food! That's totally different!" said Gan.
"Eh? EEEH?" said Minoe, looking back and forth at Raikouji and the hoodlum.
Kinta woke up to shining lamplight. He winced and looked at the ceiling, then turned his eyes towards the wall, the window, and the grandfather clock beside it.
Five o'clock. 5:04, to be exact. The sun hadn't risen yet, but he'd been asleep for about four hours since one in the early morning, after battling against Cain Merrick.
Beside his futon lay the sleeping Officer Michishige, who slumbered cross-armed while sitting up. After he stirred, so too did the copper. "Oh, you're awake."
Minakata looked around. On the other futon lay the rest of the poisoned squadron composed of Yokohama's elite, from Captain Yamada to Sergeant Sakaguchi.
"You don't say much, do you?" said Shigeru. "Thanks for saving so many officers' lives, though."
"..." Kinta responded, then began getting up. However, the copper stopped him.
"Don't go yet until the doctors see you! You had different symptoms from all the rest of the officers! You were coughing up blood! Did that... um, 'Merriku' guy use a different poison on you?"
Minakata shook his head, and Michishige sighed. "Of course not. The doctors searched you from head to foot. There wasn't a scratch on you. Are you by any chance suffering from kekkaku?"
By "kekkaku", the officer meant tuberculosis. The same disease that killed Souji Okita of the Shinsengumi.
Kinta shook his head again.
The scowling Shigeru then asked, "Are you deaf or mute?"
"No," Minakata answered.
"Glad to hear it," the officer grinned. "Goddamn, that gaijin serial killer was chopping up cops left and right, and here you are, wit his blood on you instead of the other way around! As expected of the Mimawarigumi Battousai! I would've loved to see you and the Hitokiri Battousai fight!"
Absently, he touched his cheek, expecting to feel crusting blood on it. His face was wiped clean.
"Oh, that little gaijin kid said that the other gaijin's blood is full of antivenin or something from handling so many poisons, which means it must have made you sick. The doctors agree, but they still asked me to ask you if you had any preexisting conditions or whatever."
The ex-Mimawarigumi's eyes searched around the room for a familiar face.
"Oh, if you're looking for Abelia-chan, she went out to buy more medicine for the rest of the Yokohama police. Boy, if she hadn't found you and everyone else, we'd be preparing the graves of the captain and the others instead!"
"Is she with another officer?" Kinta asked Shigeru.
"N-No. There's no one left. Everyone in the precinct is on a manhunt for the serial killer. Which reminds me, how did you know his name...? Hey, wait! I just told you, you can't get up!"
"I'm fine. The coughing had nothing to do with poison." Minakata took the nearest pen, ink, and paper on a nearby table and wrote down several addresses.
"Go to the police station and send any officers you can find there to these addresses. These were the places where we went earlier to look for Merrick."
As he took his coat and wrapped it around him like a cloak without bothering to check out of the hospital, Kinta remembered the little confession the childlike Abelia told him about her "brother", Cain.
"My father, Seth Merrick... Fabio La Cerca... he is known by many different names, really. That's the nature of his job as part of the Brigands Guild. Anyway, the reason why I'm called Abelia La Cerca is because..."
Later in the afternoon, after taking a bath at the local Hakata public bathhouse, Chizuru went back to check on her "traveling companions" (the rest of her possessions back in the inn)...
She changed into an older, more worn kimono of hers (her "travel clothes") on her way back to Yahiko's sad excuse for lodgings, because the thicket where he stayed wasn't exactly paved and made for normal trekking.
The tent still stood. The occupants were nowhere to be found, though.
Groaning, she walked on until she saw, in the middle of the forest, Gan and Minoe on their knees peering at something behind some bushes, their wiggling posteriors facing her.
"He's still going at it, isn't he?" Chizuru said to the two before kneeling down and joining in on the Yahiko watching.
"It's amazing, Chizuru-chi. We saw it all. Four to six hours after running 10 kilometers with Gan-chi earlier, he did kendo kata exercises. Then he ran again for another 10 kilometers. Then he did 1,500 repetitions of his cross-wrist succession technique. Now, it's..."
"His new technique. The Ryu Tsui Gami thingy," said Gan. Raikouji moved the bushes to get a closer look, only to see a shirtless Yahiko placing chunks of wood on a tree stump for him to chop.
"Hey, Kaori-neechan. Are you blushing? I didn't know you were into teenagers. Think of your age... OW, NOT THE EYES AGAIN!" cried the Clueless Gan.
"As if I'd fall for a little brat like him!" Chizuru harrumphed.
"Sorry for being a little brat," answered Yahiko, which startled Raikouji. He then hammered the log and cracked it apart.
"He's probably been doing hundreds of swings to get it right," said Munenori, his eye focused on that one shoulder that... a certain someone had injured.
"It's actually supposed to be 1,500 swings too, alternating between chopping wood blocks or pounding them with the God Hammer," Myojin explained without looking at his audience.
The teen alternated between using the sharp edge of the 30-inch sakabatou blade to chop the wood, then flipped it to its blunt side to attempt to obliterate them.
Some log pieces exploded into a stub of sawdust. They never saw him turn the whole block of wood into powder, though.
"I can't believe this kid. It's almost sunset and he's still doing this nonsense?" Chizuru shook his head. "Come on, Minoe-chan. You're coming with me."
"Huh? Where are we going?" asked the blinking Minoe.
"Back to the inn, of course. There's no way I'm going to let you sleep with a bunch of brutes like...!"
It was only after Munenori covered Raikouji's mouth that she realized what she almost said. However, the Unfazed Gan remained... unfazed.
After a minute of waiting, the hooligan said with a thumb's up, "Not bad, man. You got a rich old dame going after you? Good job... DAMMIT, WOMAN! DON'T KICK MAH BALLS!"
It was a dark and stormy night inside a villa somewhere in Spain.
A blond man with a ceramic mask sporting eyeholes and no face, dressed in nobleman clothes, held in one arm a crying baby while gripping a rope made of bed sheets with his other gloved hand with long claws attached to its brass knuckles.
The mother wailed and cried. Someone was stealing her baby, the baby she'd just given birth to, and she was too weak to do anything.
Her midwife slumped to the wall in shock, her face as white as the sheets the masked man was escaping with.
There were high up a multistory villa overlooking the sea. Guards came to shoot at the kidnapper, but the mother, in Spanish, told them to hold their fire, for her baby was in danger.
The masked man removed his mask, only to reveal that he was the Lord of the Manor and the father of child he held in his arm: Count Fabian La Cerca.
Had he gone mad? Was he going to kill himself and the baby?
The guards asked, "Why are you doing this, Count? Why are you stealing the baby?"
"Because he is not the count! He is the devil! He impregnated our dear mistress with the Son of Satan! A monster!"
It was then that the swaddling clothes of the child came undone, revealing a baby within a baby, his twin's face growing out of his abdomen.
Finally, the man removed one last mask, which was the face itself of Fabian La Cerca.
"Madre de dios!" said the midwife, doing the sign of the cross before she altogether fainted.
From beneath that mask came a visage that stunned the guards and had them kneel down to pray to their God, begging Him not to forsake them. They prayed for Him to cast Satan away from their midst. They prayed for deliverance from the Man with No Face.
And so the fake, faceless count swung down from the mansion, carrying with him his two-faced hell spawn.
Little Abelia La Cerca opened her eyes, only to squeeze them tightly yet again, her button nose reeling from the smell of chemicals and rotting flesh, her hands tied up and raised over chains in the ceiling while her tiny feet were shackled with even more chains and metal ball counterweights.
Right before her was Cain Merrick. And many other unspeakable horrors. Dissected human corpses. Organs in jars. Venoms and poisons extracted from snakes, scorpions, jellyfish, insects, plants, and many other sources. Also, drugs and chemicals the world over.
A mad scientist's laboratory straight out of Mary Shelley's Gothic Novel, Frankenstein, in short.
He was her twin "brother", the demented serial killer of prostitutes and grave robber extraordinaire.
"So you've found a replacement for the dead doctor, have you?" said the slashed and scourged Cain, his stinging sweat mixing with his coagulating blood on his shirtless body, his Mark of Cain visible on his abdomen like an appendectomy or C-section scar. "You've gone from one father figure to another."
"The doctor is not my father! I'm his wife! H-His... widow."
The male Merrick of the family slapped his female counterpart. "You're a daffy bint! You thought you were his wife? Look at you! You're not even supposed to be alive! I can barely call you human!"
Cain held up what appeared like a spherical glass snow globe full of swirling white powder to Abelia's face. "You even named this... 'invention' of yours after him. The Gadamer Gem, is it?"
"They weren't made for you and your perverted crimes! They were made for...!"
Cain again slapped his sister. "It's because of your support for that Christian rebel that you've been labeled a traitor by them. Not that I expected any less from you. The doctor himself had to be executed thanks to such treachery. Serves him right."
Abelia's tears flowed from her big, wide eyes. "How could you speak ill of the man who saved both our lives? The one separated us from each other? I even heard you were the bastard who volunteered to assassinate Doctor Gadamer!"
"I DIDN'T WANT HIM TO SAVE YOU TOO! I WANTED YOU TO DIE! I wanted you removed from me and discarded as medical waste, not turned into this... abomination you are now! A genius surgeon, huh? He's too much of a genius! A madman that should've gone to a mental asylum for turning my tumor into his little girl! That goddamn German son of a bitch!"
"I'm not his little girl, I'm his wife!" Abelia reiterated. "I may look like a child, but I'm much older!"
Cain silenced Abelia's sobs by sticking his neurotoxin-coated dagger to her throat. "I would've poisoned you too if you weren't as immune to poisons as I am."
Merrick sneered at La Cerca. At his parasitic twin that, for one reason or another, the mad genius Doctor Hansel Gadamer had made into the female version of Pinocchio. A puppet that wanted to be a real girl, but couldn't.
"They called you Abelia and called me Cain, but it should've been the other way around. Although if it were up to me, I'd rather you died. Never existed. But we can't have everything we want, can we?"
He pricked her neck with neurotoxin that, while it wouldn't kill her, would keep her numb and in place like anesthesia would. Directly inside a vein, at that, so the toxin would travel faster.
"I had no idea you hated me that much," she said, holding back her sobs to avoid getting hit by her twin brother again: Her other self that was once part of her. "If only father met Doctor Gadamer earlier, then he wouldn't have had to leave the La Cercas..."
Cain cackled so hard, he doubled over as though he busted a gut. "You say you're older than you look, but you're still gullible enough to believe that tall tale from Old Man Merrick?"
"W-What...?" trailed off Abelia, gulping while the effects of the pufferfish poison kicked in.
"Everything the Faceless told you about being born from a noble family and having us... me... stolen away when it was found out that he was impersonating a deceased nobleman was a lie. A complete fabrication. Like Santa Claus."
"N-No... I couldn't be... You took in one of Father's many names, and so did I! Father is one of us! A... a f-freak of nature, like us! That's why we ended up...!"
Cain pulled Abelia's hair back so that her face looked directly into his. Her twin could've been a handsome devil if he weren't a complete lunatic.
"I was already a young man when you were removed from me by the doctor. Before the Faceless adopted you and told you lies about who you really are."
"Stahp cawing Father thath!" She couldn't feel her tongue. It was already numbing up. Her neck slackened as well, which was why Cain had to pull her head up to face him.
"He's not your father, nor is he mine. That professional charlatan duped you like many other people he fooled. It's about time you found out the truth, my dearest little sister. My living teratoma. I was born from a impoverished Whitechapel whore. You were my parasitic tumor."
"No. No, no, no, no, thath can't be twue! I don't bewieve it! Father would never lie to us!" Abelia shook her head, tears spraying around her eyes like small, glittering liquid diamonds.
"Yes. Some drug-addicted, cock-sucking slut was our mother, and most anyone within the confines of Whitechapel or even London could've been our father. We're bastards by every sense of the word. The Brigands Guild then took us... well, me... in."
"Come on! It must've been a wie by Inoue to... EEEK!" the startled Abelia shrieked.
Cain had taken the glass orb... the Gadamar Gem... on the table and smashed it on his face, breathing in the powder and letting it make contact on the open wounds he got from Minakata's tsunami-like sword technique.
"I was supposed to be cannon fodder. A homunculus among many striving homunculi to be like the oh-so-great Alchemist of the Shanghai Mafia. One of his pitiful doppelgangers. But I proved myself to be more than just his shadow. His 'Kagemusha', as they call it here in Japan."
"...W-What d-dwug's that?" stuttered Abelia. Something about the way Cain's pupils dilated bothered her. She winced when Merrick raised his hand towards her face again.
"DON'T INTERRUPT ME WHEN I'M SPEAKING! Where was I? Oh yes. Soon, I earned the right to have you removed, but I never imagined the man who'd do the surgery would prove himself madder than the Mad Hatter."
He licked and snorted the thin sheet of the powder from the orb that fell on his operating table. He chuckled to himself. "Would you believe that this tonic is legal and opium isn't? It can treat toothaches. Depression. Sexual impotence."
La Cerca screamed when Merrick shifted moods again and grabbed her by her thin, unfeeling neck. "I was your victim. You were the parasite. You almost killed me. Whispered things to me. You made me want to die. To suffer like you did. You made me what I am today. You're to blame. You made me impotent. You made me less of a man than I was supposed to be."
"I'm sowwy," said the tearful Abelia, whose tongue had numbed so much she spoke like someone half the age of what she appeared to be. "I din't mean t-toh... I onwy wanted to stay awive... W-Wait. W-Wat're you pwanning to do now?"
"Ever since I lost you because of that damn surgeon, I've lost a part of myself. If Sigmund Freud were to be believed, all this time, I've probably been searching for that missing part of me. Looking to fill that hole by murdering all those prostitutes. Choking them to death. Carving them up like ham. Eating them. The police reported only a few whores dead, so I suppose they hadn't found them all. Yet."
Cain undid the clasps of the shackles on Abelia's feet and hands, catching her paralyzed body in his arms as soon as she fell. He then placed her on his operating table.
"We're about to become one again, sister. I missed you. You're the missing piece to my puzzle. You're the Abel to my Cain. You complete me. I'm going to cut you up and put you back where you belong. Inside me."
Abelia tried to scream, to struggle, and to escape, since her "host" twin she was removed from didn't even bother shackling her down. However, the reason he didn't was because there was no need to. She couldn't feel anything from the neck up or down. She couldn't even make a sound.
'Please. Anybody. Help me. Minakata-san. Doctor Hans...!'
The door leading inside the secret basement underneath the Yokohama Foreign General Cemetery in Naka Ward burst open, and out from above ground descended Kinta Minakata, his trusty sword tucked inside his obi while his cape-like brown coat fluttered from behind him.
Incidentally, the gaikokujin bochi (foreign cemetery) housed the grave of Charles Lennox Richardson, who was murdered during the September 1862 Namamugi Incident that led to the Bombardment of Kagoshima by the British Royal Navy in 1863, around 19 years ago.
Other foreigners buried there include John Carey Hall, Ludovicus Stornebrink, Charles Wirgman, and the Boshin War's French military advisors (Auguste Pradier, Jean Marlin, and Francois Bouffier).
The Battousai of Sin grinned, all his senses running in full throttle while his adrenalin mixed with the white "tonic" (actually, 19th century high-grade cocaine) that he caked all over himself, allowing him to wield his Durandal longsword like it were a lightweight epee instead of a heavy sidearm.
The Battousai of Skill had finally arrived.
"I've been waiting for you, Kinta Minakata. I do wish I had already reabsorbed my precious twin by the time you got here, but beggars can't be choosers. En garde."
Again, Minakata went into his front-facing iaijutsu stance, acting more like a Battousai than his fellow Battousai wannabe did. He even had his coin ready. Meanwhile, his opponent bounced on his feet, his right hand gripping his cruciform-hilted longsword and pointing it forward.
Kinta flipped his coin then unsheathed his blade, letting it fly in all directions save for the downward path of the tumbling circular piece. Like a rising upsurge prior to the irresistible crash of the tides. His "Tsunami".
Unlike before, where Cain stood like a statue and let the waves of steel hit him full force, he dodged the initial flurry, his bobbing and weaving turning him into an elusive target. Having already seen the technique, he expected the slashes to build momentum.
The Gaikokujin Battousai parried the katana in mid-swing, batting it away from him in a spray of sparks, then used the opening to scratch the Mimawarigumi Battousai's sword arm before backing away and slicing the coin in half for good measure after it landed on the floor.
"What's the matter, Kagemusha? Can't do your fancy sword-drawing move any longer?" Cain mocked while whirling his own poisoned longsword around the retreating Kinta, his blade knocking over a whole bunch of beakers and Petri dishes containing various dangerous agents.
Thinking fast, Minakata took his bloody handkerchief and tied his numbing hand to the handle of his sword before sheathing it again. He choked on his spit and started a coughing fit that left him wheezing by the end of it.
"O-ho. Is that blood on your lip? Are you by chance dying of consumption or something similar? Maybe even pneumonia. A neurotoxin in your bloodstream certainly won't help matters if you already have some sort of respiratory condition from the start." By "consumption", Cain meant the 19th century name for tuberculosis.
Kinta wiped his mouth and slowed his breathing. It took at least thirty minutes for the poison to take effect. However, he heard some cases wherein a fatal dose of neurotoxin could kill a man within 17 minutes.
If he didn't die by fugu poison, he could instead die by coughing up blood. The stuffy room they occupied full of rotting meat and chemicals worsened his chances.
He only had one shot. He tensed up, willing his body to move forward.
"You're going to do another sword-drawing technique? Oh, please do surprise me!" Cain snorted the remaining powder on his hand, then raised his Durandal, his dilated irises shaking inside his eyes. "I can't wait to break your sword. And you. Come on. You have no time left."
Minakata cleared his throat, tasting the metallic tinge of blood swirling inside his mouth. His hand had already fallen asleep, the only thing gripping his katana's handle was the bloody handkerchief he tied around it.
He had no time to waste by anticipating the Battousai serial killer to react. He attacked first, his scar turning visible the more he tensed his body.
"Big mistake. Huge, in fact."
The triumphant Merrick anticipated the flight path of the invisible sword strike, arresting its slash midway with a hard block and an explosion of sparks that merely chipped his Durandal (and probably destroyed the Japanese swordsman's blade, like what happened with the Yokohama Police's sabers and katana).
Then the Durandal broke in half.
And Cain himself didn't fare any better, because Kinta's sword, the super-sharp "Akatsuki" or "Red Dawn" (could also be interpreted as "Red Moon") blew him back and hit a vein that made him spray high-pressure blood worse than when he suffered the power of the "Tidal Wave".
Instead of hitting the edge of the double-edged blade, which meant having to slice through carbon-rich steel by its thick cross-section, Kinta chose to slice the flat of the steel itself so that he'd cut through the thinnest part of the thick longsword.
Minakata followed through his centrifugal-force-powered 360-degree slash, its completed arc resembling a full moon, hence the name of the Musou Madden Ryu Technique: "Full Moon Slash".
He then avoided the antivenin-laced spray from Cain's fountaining, tainted blood lest he got another allergic reaction from it.
One more spin was all it took to cleave the serial killer in half. However, Kinta hesitated at the last minute, unable to take advantage of the small and exact window of opportunity.
A memory of a brunette running towards him, coughing up blood in her mouth like he did, filled his mind. He remembered her last words to him.
'Please don't kill my brother, Minakata-san.'
'Sayo...'
"This is not yet over! Finish me off now or I'll make you regret not doing so!" screamed Cain, who arrested his bloody flight by stabbing his broken "short" sword and dagger to the ground.
However, the knocked over beakers, test tubes, and Gadamar Gems resulted in ammonium nitrate powder and zinc powder to mix together with hydrochloric acid, producing a chemical fire that quickly turned into a full-fledged inferno that spread across the piles of rotting meat full of body oils and fat that fueled the flames like gigantic wicks.
"Spontaneous" combustion at work.
Kinta ignored the rants of the bleeding gaijin in favor of rescuing the paralyzed girl on the operating table. He lifted the limp body of Abelia over his other, non-paralyzed shoulder then turned his back on the black-haired, stocky, and stark-raving mad serial killer, whose lab could soon become his funeral pyre.
A few minutes later, and Officer Shigeru Michishige had gathered enough of the local law enforcement to search through the Yokohama Foreigner Cemetery, but they couldn't get inside the basement of one of the mausoleums thanks to all the burning poisonous chemicals inside.
With closed, tearful eyes, Abelia whispered, "Doctor, I want to stay with you fowever," to Minakata's ear while he carried her out of the basement to safety.
Kinta delivered the stirring body of La Cerca to one of Yokohama's finest before he himself collapsed from fatigue, succumbing to the effects of the pufferfish poison circulating in his body.
Yahiko ran the last 10 kilometers for the day after a three to four hour rest from chopping/obliterating wood.
The sunset from his vantage point at the Hakata coast, at literal sea level, took his breath away.
The vision of Soujiro Seta and his damnable Shukuchi blasting forth faster than Yahiko's eye could see spurred the young samurai in Meiji Era Japan on. Even though the samurai class were practically dead, that didn't mean the spirit of the samurai had died. Or that Yamato Damashi and Bushido were no more.
Hell, even Gan, of all people, ended up outrunning him. Fuck that noise. He'd build his stamina. Even if Soujiro could outrun him, he'd outwork and outlast him. Same with the one other person who pushed him to the brink aside from Seta: Minoe.
Or was it Kaede Morinaga? Or the Battousai of Speed? He couldn't tell.
Was it wise for him to bring Minoe along, knowing full well what crimes he... she... had committed? Was it irresponsible for him to allow that man... woman... anywhere near civilians like Chizuru and Gan (even though the thug could probably take care of himself)?
Maybe. However, even though Yahiko trusted Kaede as far as he could throw her, he nevertheless allowed Minoe to stand guard along with Chizuru in his makeshift tent.
The same Minoe who saved his life by blocking all nine strikes of Shogo Amakusa's Kuzu Ryu Sen like he was Enishi Yukishiro himself.
Just then, twin clouds of smoke headed his way, the sandstorm almost blowing him over. "What the hell...?" He collapsed, his legs grateful for the reprieve, however brief. His vision refocused, realizing that the billowing blasts of dirt were Gan and Minoe respectively.
"What are you guys doing?" shouted Yahiko while getting up.
"We were watching you run 10 kilometers, and we got so annoyed, we just had to get off our asses and run too, Yoshi-boy!" said Gan.
"Gan..." A smiling, out-of-breath Myojin turned towards Munenori. "Are you going to run the full 10 kilometers?"
"Yes. Why?" asked Minoe, jogging in place.
'As expected of Miss Battousai of Speed,' thought Yahiko, chuckling. "I'll wait for you here till you run the lap. Then we three can all race at the same time back to my tent. Is that okay?"
The Great Gan flashed a toothy, doggish grin while doing a thumb's up sign. "No problemo!"
Munenori himself saluted Myojin. "Mochiron. See you in a bit."
Kinta Minakata opened his eyes. He saw a familiar ceiling. He lay inside a futon that appeared familiar as well.
A little midget girl... a gidget... the size of a twelve-year-old but was much older than that hovered around him like a bee.
"Oh, good! You're finally awake! I was actually more worried about your bloody coughs than the poison. Cain barely scratched you with his blade!"
"..."
"And you're as talkative as ever," said Abelia La Cerca before shucking a mouthful of activated charcoal into the silent Kinta's mouth. "You should be fine barring residual neurotoxin effects. It's almost been a day after you got wounded with a poison-dipped sword."
"Where's my doctor?"
"I'm your doctor for now. It's cheaper. The hospital admin is actually thinking of hiring me as a consultant, at the very least. It pays to be a multilingual pharmacist."
Kinta sat up and turned to see that the futons that the Yokohoma police were on had been put away, leaving him alone with Abelia.
"Oh, the captain and the others had already checked out. You're the last one here because you were Cain's last victim. Well, along with me, but you need higher doses of fubu poison to kill me."
Minakata was midway to lying back down when Abelia knelt down and embraced him, telling him thanks in three languages: Spanish, English, and Japanese. "Muchos gracias. Thank you very much. Arigato Gozaimasu."
Kinta ruffled the freckled girl's fire-ant-red hair, which was so bright it made his rust-colored hair look deep crimson in comparison. "Dou itashimashite (You're welcome)."
"So... who's Sayo?" asked Abelia while batting her eyelashes. "OW! OW! OWIE! OKAY, UNCLE!" she cried with beads of tears forming at the edges of her eyes after Minakata rubbed his closed fists on her temples. "Meanie."
Just then, Officer Dankichi and Officer Michishige burst into the room before they were shushed by both Minakata and Abelia, which drew huge dollops of sweat on their foreheads.
"The Mimawarigumi Battousai is alive! Thank goodness! I thought we lost another fine samurai!" said Shigeru, wiping his sweat off with a handkerchief. "I wish I could've seen you in action!"
As for Atsushi, he bowed right at the twelve-year-oldish-looking girl (who, unbeknownst to them, was a living teratoma in an artificial body), and said, "Please forgive us for treating you like a small foreigner child back at the precinct. If it wasn't for you, we'd all be goners!"
With half-lidded eyes and a catty smile, Abelia spared Kinta a sidelong smirking glance. "Hear that, Minakata-san? They don't think I'm a kid anymore! At least some Japanese here know how to show gratitude and respect!"
"With that said, here! A token of our appreciation!" said the squinting and grinning Dankichi before handing a bag of presents to La Cerca. "You have saved our lives! We are eternally grateful!"
"Eeeeh," said Abelia, mimicking that uniquely Japanese tic when acting shocked or taken aback over something. "Let's see what's inside..." She froze. "What is this?"
"Kintaro-ame! A national specialty! It's mass-produced hard candy with faces that contain the face of folk hero Kintaro! Foreigners love that crap!"
"DON'T GIVE ME CANDY! I'M NOT A LITTLE KID!" shouted La Cerca before kicking Dankichi's shin. She turned in time to see Minakata move his face away and cover his face, his shoulders shuddering. "And you! STOP LAUGHING!"
Regardless of her protests, the fuming teratoma doll ended up eating the whole bag of red-and-white mint candy with the cartoonish face on it.
"...Not a word. One peep, and I'm going to make your deaths look like accidents! You won't be able to pin it on me because of lack of evidence!" said the pouting Abelia before gobbling up the last piece of Kintaro-ame.
To Be Continued...
I'm referencing two things (both from gaming company SNK) with Inoue and his "doppelgangers" aside from the historical context behind his name: The King Leo and King Lion connection in Savage Reign, and the Clone Zero and Original Zero relationship in King of Fighters.
More and more Battousais are coming out of the woodwork, it would seem. From one imposter Battousai (Gohei Hiruma in the manga, and perhaps the filler episode Fake Battousai in the anime can also be considered a second fake), there's now a whole squadron of them. The infamous "Battousaigumi", if you will.
Arrivederci,
Abdiel