December 1884; in the relative present, inside a carriage on its way to a certain Yokohama household...
"Yo! Kinta-sama! Wake up, we're almost there!" greeted the girl midget (gidget) Abelia La Cerca with a nudge of her elbow, her other hand rifling through a bag of local sweets (mostly Kintaro-ame) on her lap.
She then giggled when the silent Kinta Minakata shuddered at his new nickname. "Would you rather I called you Señor Minakata?"
"..."
Abelia's lower lip quibbled. "It's no good, Minakata-oniichan?"
Kinta covered his mouth, looked away from the gidget, and had his back turned on her while his shoulders trembled.
La Cerca blinked repeatedly, batting her eyelashes. "Are you having one of those coughing fits again?"
With his mouth still covered, Minakata turned and pinched Abelia's button nose with his other hand.
"Owie. Okhay, okhay! Leggo, mweanie!" said a nasally La Cerca. After he released her nostrils, she added, "Anyway, we're already at your ancestral home, Minakata-san."
Kinta nodded, then looked away and covered his mouth again after Abelia made her cheeks balloon while pouting. Like an angry squirrel.
She reminded him of his dog, an Akita inu (dog) named Moriya. She'd probably be angry if she knew that, though.
Rurouni Yahiko
A Rurouni Kenshin Fan Fiction Continuation Story by Chester Castañeda
And now we get to see more of the Mimawarigumi's version of the Battousai. The Battousai of Skill, Kinta Minakata.
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 43: The Mimawarigumi Battousai
November 1884; after the Chichibu Riots and the Shinshushin Siege as well as before Shogo Amakusa's attempted assassination of his hated archenemy, Tetsuo Akahori; on a steamboat from Hong Kong to Tokyo, Japan...
"Is Hidaka on board? Is he riding with us, Luke?"
"He said he'd take another boat to Japan and rendezvous with us later, Old Man. He's probably still sore that I got the best of him in our last duel."
Two men, a half-breed Eurasian who could pass himself off as Caucasian and what appeared to be a Chinese merchant unloaded their luggage into one of the posh quarters of the first class cabins of the luxury ship they'd hired.
"I'm surprised you were able to put in Lentz on board without paying extra for the added weight," joked Seth Merrick. "I would've put the brute in the bay along with the rest of the cargo if it were up to me."
Lucas Grant shook his head and smirked. "I'd love to see you say that to that big lummox's face. That would be an interesting sight to see. He'll rearrange your face so much, you'd actually end up with a face, Mister Faceless."
Seth "The Faceless" Merrick harrumphed, disguised in "yellowface" at the moment (of course, if Lucas called it that, Merrick would consider it an insult that insinuated his artistic skill was nothing more than theatrical makeup for stereotypical, racist vaudeville).
He was currently masquerading as a tall, white-haired, and middle-aged Cantonese herbal medicine merchant complete with the epicanthal fold on his eyes, a broad face, a flat nose roof, more protuberant eyes, a lack of brow ridges, shallower mandibles, and less hairiness per square centimeter of his body.
"Lentz should be the one named Merrick. If there's anyone who should be called the Elephant Man, it's him." Merrick adjusted his skin mask and Hong Kong ensemble. He had to stalk an old Chinaman and rifle through his drawers for three days straight to get this new identity right.
"So who are you now? Mister Sum Ting Wong, Tai Ni Wang, or Ho Lee Fuk?" asked Luke, tongue firmly on cheek.
The aged Master of Disguise rolled his eyes. "Quaint. If I wanted to be caught by customs faster, I'll keep those names in mind, ol' chap."
Seth checked himself out with a mirror to see if there were any loose seams or other telltale signs of his masquerade being undone.
"Usually, it's the name that occurs to me last in a new disguise. I'm already being sloppy by talking to you in English while posing as Cantonese."
"Oh please, like anyone from Japan could tell the difference," said Grant.
"Exactly. We're going to Japan, not some seedy pub in England," reminded the Faceless. "Leave your drunkard jokes about Orientals there."
Grant's smile then disappeared when he asked, "I wonder what happened to your son, Cain. He should've reported back to me months ago. You'd think his psychotic turn for the worse would be to our advantage..."
"I'm not my son's keeper. Also, if he believes I'm no father of his, then he is no son of mine either," said Merrick in reference of his son's biblical name before he opened up a jug of Chinese wine and took a swig.
Lucas backed off with his hands raised while he left Seth to seethe about Cain. He had his own bad blood to deal with.
December 1884; in a private Yokohoma mansion owned by the Minakata Family (or rather, the Minakata Foreign Trade and Pharmaceuticals Conglomerate)...
An overweight (probably obese by 21st Century standards), overdressed man who literally overshadowed Kinta and Abelia like a huge boulder or a mountain that had the sun setting from behind it waved a tubby arm at them, beckoning them to come in his western-eastern fusion mansion.
His residence was home to a koi pond and a Grecian replica of the Venus de Milo as its centerpiece fountain. Or alternating sliding and hinged swing doors. Or a knight's armor beside a samurai's armor.
"For Buddha's sakes, you're late!" said the sweaty middle-aged man who, ironically enough, appeared like one of those fat Laughing Buddha statues (actually, "Budai" in Chinese and "Hotei" in Japanese, the statue represented as a Chinese folkloric deity and considered an incarnation of Maitreya, the future Buddha, in East Asia).
"Uncle Kaneda," said Kinta, bowing. From behind him, Abelia hid at the back of his leg and gripped his hakama, but also bowed at the rotund Minakata regardless.
"Oh, I remember you! You're the sweet little girl who saved my life by... sticking a tube down my gullet and pumping my stomach. Ehehehe."
Kaneda Minakata chuckled, the rest of his jiggling body moving along his guffaws long after he'd stopped, licked his lips, and put his hand over the brunette's head before she snapped her teeth at his fingers, almost biting his pinky off.
His jowls flapping just short of saying "Preposterous," Kaneda composed himself and smiled a crooked, doggish grin. "What an adorable li'l tyke. Reminds me of your dog from when you were a kid, Kinta. Or one of those small rat things from China."
Abelia growled. "Dios mio! I'm not a little tyke; I'm probably older than you! And I'm not a dog either!"
"'D-Dios'...? Uh, sure you are, sweetheart." The fat Buddha wiped his wet eyebrows, face, and multiple chins. "Anyway, have the Yokohama Police already solved who it was that poisoned me? Was it really a serial killer gaijin pretending to be the Battousai, of all the nonsense? Did you get your sources from the dirt sheets?"
Abelia and Kinta looked at each other before La Cerca herself spoke. "Y-Yes. It's true. If it makes you feel any better, Señor... I mean, Minakata-ossan, you can wave it off as some crazed assassin. What the police wants to know is why a foreigner is after you."
"You're not hiding anything from me, are you? Little girl?" asked Kaneda with a blank look, a single raised eyebrow, and crossed arms.
La Cerca's features seemed to shrink, her gaze going downward with an expressionless look on her face.
Kinta gripped Abelia's shoulder tight in support of her, remembering that she was talking about her brother here, the one she was conjoined with and somehow separated from. Her insane twin.
Kaneda raised his hands up in surrender. "Hell if I know! Isn't it the job of the investigators to know? Let them investigate it or I'll sue them for not doing their job!"
"Uncle." Kinta stared straight into Kaneda's beady, bulging eyes, which made the older, portlier man gulp.
"O-Okay, Minakata Foreign Trade and Pharmaceuticals was Father's... may the gods bless his soul... brainchild business filled with extensive contracts and buyouts with merchants everywhere, including foreigners."
Minakata Pharmaceuticals was part of what should've been called the Minakata Zaibatsu (a family-controlled vertical monopoly consisting of a holding company, a banking subsidiary, and several industrial subsubsidiaries dominating specific market sectors), but the term "zaibatsu" hadn't really caught on back then; it only became commonly used around World War I.
Abelia put her hands on her waist and stared from underneath a(n adorable) frown, her chin knotted and her head tilted forward. "Is that the only connection your family has with gaikokujin (foreigners), Ossan?"
The "Hotei's" handkerchief ended up drenched by then. "As with any powerful, self-made man, Father might've stepped on some toes and made a lot of enemies. From all over the world, even. However, it's hard to narrow down who'd actually try to harm us, really."
Kinta bit his lip, a vertical furrow forming between his eyebrows. He remembered one other connection that the Minakatas had with gaijin.
Meanwhile, Kaneda opened his mouth as if to say something to his nephew, but he closed it after his eyes darted towards Abelia's direction and her own curious gaze.
Something about family matters, perhaps.
"A-As long as my safety is assured and you're here to showcase your legendary swordsmanship skills, my heart will certainly rest easy, my dear nephew," said the sweaty Kaneda. "You are, after all, the upholder of the Minakata Family's honor. An Edo Era samurai and war veteran, just like our grandpa! Your father would certainly be proud of you for giving the Minakata name prestige again."
"But what about my mother?" asked the younger Minakata with neutral, relaxed brows and a flat-lined mouth. This only made the older Minakata sweat more.
"Now, now, Nephew..."
"One last thing, Uncle."
"My, you're rather talkative today, aren't you?" said Kaneda, his face turned away from Kinta ever-so-slightly.
Regardless, Kinta asked, "What do you know about the Seiryu Clan?"
The blood draining from Kaneda's face, the tubbier man chuckled and said, "It's the Blue Dragon, right? From the Chinese zodiac or something? What about Seiryu? Since when was there a clan of Seiryu anyway?"
"Thank you, Uncle," answered Kinta before he tapped Abelia's shoulder and beckoned her to come into the Minakata's Yokohama property, with the uncle quickly following suit, trailing behind them like a huge, jittery shadow.
During the early 1860s, in Yokohama, more than half a decade after Commodore Matthew Perry's forceful entry into Japanese territory with his kurofune or black ships in 1854...
A relatively young Kinta played around with his Akita dog, Moriya, the two of them running across the expansive hallways full of servants young and old of an otherwise empty house.
"Hello, Kinta-sama! Hello, Moriya! Good boy!" greeted the recently hired servant girl named Tomomi, petting the dog and letting it lick her fingers. She was always so good with animals, but the canine licked her with fervor.
Usually, the tyke had little (or, in a certain point of view, a lot) to look forward to whenever the rest of his family (actually, relatives) came home.
Like his scary grandmother, the Grand Matriarch of the Minakata Family, Grandma Mieko. He'd never forget the tongue lashings (and literal lashings) he got after peeing his futon when he was six.
Nor the threats of being thrown out of the household, disowned and abandoned. A little kid couldn't even imagine what it was like not being able to support himself.
Or Uncle Kaneda, who always had a different woman with caked-on makeup and powerful perfume in his arm whenever Kinta saw him and who grew bigger and rounder every year. Or maybe even every month.
Or Uncle Tatsuya, who always stunk of booze and once gave his nephew a black eye after he thought the "little shit" was laughing at him, but he still didn't frighten Kinta half as much as Grandma Mieko did.
He'd rather spend time with his aunt and uncle from his father's side of the family, especially his gentle aunt. She made him laugh more than his mother ever did.
However, in that particular, inauspicious day, Kinta didn't want any of those three demons to come back home anytime soon. While chasing Moriya, the dog nudged and ended up breaking a priceless and genuine Satsuma vase.
"What are we going to do?" Tomomi, who bore witness to everything that transpired, said to her young master, "I'm going to get blamed for this! I don't want to get fired! There are no other job openings in Edo in the middle of a brewing war! I'm just a country girl who only got here in the city!"
His legs shaking while grabbing hold of Moriya, Kinta promised the tearful Tomomi, "Don't worry. I'll take responsibility."
Tomomi went completely red. "W-W-What are you saying, you little brat!? You're too young for that!"
He overheard one of the guards tell this to a sweetheart of his. As expected of a preteen, he didn't know what it meant.
And so his grandmother went home. Oh boy.
Mieko went livid enough to break the rest of the vases.
"You li'l ingrate! After I took you in, this is how you repay me? Like mother, like son! Like father, like son! This is the reason why your father had to commit seppuku! You and your father are a bunch of failures! Neither of you deserve the name of Minakata!"
From one broken earthenware, it became hundreds. Thousands, perhaps millions, of yen down the drain right then and there.
Of course, all the blame went to Kinta, as he'd promised.
"Lie down," ordered Mieko while holding a taut bundle of straw that was typically used to practice swordsmanship. The same kind of bundle that once marked the young boy's buttocks raw and kept him from wetting his bed ever again.
However, she made him kneel down on the shattered vase he and his dog broke while she whipped his buttocks raw. She wouldn't stop, even while the servant begged her to.
Moriya growled and barked at Mieko. Unmoved, the grandmother kicked the dog away.
"Milady, please! The young master is bleeding all over! Please forgive him! He had enough!" Tomomi threw herself at Mieko's feet.
Tears and blood flowed from all over Kinta, but he didn't relent. As long as he practiced gaman (endurance), no one else had to get hurt but himself.
"LET GO! Let go of me, or I'll fire you! You're the one at fault for letting that worthless, no-good child run amok! He brings nothing but disgrace and dishonor to this family! I should've sent him packing like his whore of a mother!"
There was no way an innocent young lad like him would even know what that word meant, but by instinct, the half-naked and sore Kinta glared at his demonic grandmother, making her pause and back away.
He had no idea what sort of face he made, but it must've been fearsome enough to make even his youkai of an obaasan take pause. Moriya took that opportunity to bite the grandmother's ankle for kicking him, snarling and gnashing his teeth.
"ENOUGH!" Everyone went quiet instantly. Whatever courage Kinta had gathered went out the window after Mieko revealed her true nature once more. "I see what's going on here. The boy is lying. He's covering up for the true culprits."
Grandma Mieko called up the biggest, burliest of her servants she could find in the huge mansion (she didn't have to look far, since they'd all gathered around after she made a scene), then had them hold both Kinta and his little Akita dog down.
The Grand Matriarch of the Minakata Family then handed the tightly woven bundle of straw to Tomomi. "Let the punishment fit the crime. The dog was the one who bumped on the vase, was he not?"
Tomomi froze while holding the bundle of straw. "A-Actually, n-neither of them are at fault! I-It was all my fault, so please...!"
"Punish the dog. Hit him until I'm satisfied," said Mieko, and Tomomi ended up at a loss for words.
"NO! Chigau! (You're wrong!)" said Kinta, even though the flesh of his butt had already been lacerated at that point.
"I-I..." Tomomi stuttered. "Please, just fire me and spare them both!"
Mieko crossed her arms. "Oh really? Are you willing to pay for all the Satsuma yaki (Satsuma ware or Satsuma porcelain) that was broken? I doubt one lifetime of servitude is enough to pay for all this."
"N-No way...!" said Tomomi, and the grandmother repeated her demands. "Hit the dog. Hit him until I'm satisfied or be in debt for life. You can end up in Yoshiwara (a red-light district) for all I care."
"Chigau!" repeated Kinta.
The red-eyed, shaking Tomomi relented, holding the bundle of straw tight and raising it high. Even the manservant holding Moriya down had to wince at the following strike.
The dog cried and yelped in pain.
"CHIGAU!"
Unimpressed, Mieko said, "Again."
"B-But..."
"Again."
And so Tomomi did it again. The cries of the dog just got louder, along with Kinta's cries that they were mistaken. Over and over, the words "Again," "No," and "Chigau!" echoed along the tomb-silent Minakata Household.
After dyeing the tatami mats and the straw bundle with the canine's blood because Mieko still wouldn't relent with her commands to whip the dog, Tomomi dropped on her knees and beseeched, "Please, no more! I-I'll pay for the vases somehow, j-just don't make me hit him anymore!"
The grandmother took one look at Tomomi, the listless Kinta, and the twitching Akita inu, uncrossed her arms, and said, "Okay. That's enough. You're dismissed."
To Kinta, his grandmother said, "You're a born liar, just like your mother. You're nothing more than a product of your parents' failure. It was a mistake to expect anything from you."
Tomomi was fired shortly after, but at least she didn't pay for all the expensive, broken vases strewn all over the floor, some of which were two centuries old and made all the way back in the 16th Century.
The next morning, in the early 1860s...
After Tomomi was done packing and leaving the Minakata household, the last thing she expected (or wanted) to see in the front gates was an unconscious Kinta in a fetal position, grabbing hold of a heavily bandaged Moriya in a tight embrace, the dog's fur coated with ruddy brown dried blood from yesterday's... kafuffle.
She almost walked past them, unsure of what to say. She stopped short of walking through the front gates when she sighed, dropped her bags, and went towards the pair.
"I'm so sorry, young master," she said to the unconscious young Minakata while brushing back his hair that was every bit as ruddy as the dried blood on his Akita pooch. She attempted to pet the dog, only for Moriya to wake up, growl, and almost bite her fingers off.
This also woke up Kinta, and the very first sight he saw after spending so much time bandaging his pet up was the girl who hurt him suddenly breaking down and bawling in front of them. "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry too, Moriya!"
Kinta tugged at the hysterical Tomomi with one hand, his other hand still holding the growling Moriya back lest he decide to attack her. "It's okay. He bit me too. Don't cry."
Wracked with sobs, Tomomi wiped her tears and saw Kinta point at his arms and hands. Sure enough, they were covered in dog bite marks.
"He's angry now, but not for long," he said, ruffling the back of the growling Moriya's ear to calm him down.
Tomomi covered her mouth with a hand and giggled, which made Kinta smile. "You're an amazing kid."
"Will I see you again?" he asked.
"I don't know. Probably not," Tomomi said, her voice hoarse. "Take care of yourself and Moriya. You're like the kintsukuroi (golden repair) of a broken heart, young master."
"'Kintsukuroi'?," repeated Kinta.
Tomomi ruffled the Minakata boy's head, only to back away when Moriya growled at her again. "If I could afford it, I would've had all that Satsuma yaki repaired with gold or silver lacquer. That way, even though they're broken, they're arguably better than ever before because they were broken and fixed with gold."
Kinta held the growling Moriya in front of Tomomi. "Like Moriya?"
Tomomi dared pet the Akita dog at the risk of biting (and rabies). After he smelled the blood from her own hand wounds from gripping the bundle of straw tight, Moriya licked her blistered fingers.
Getting licked stung her a bit, but she couldn't stop smiling afterwards. "You really are, kintsukuroi, Kinta-sama," she told him before brushing his hair back and kissing his forehead. "Thank you."
Kinta said, "I won't let this happen again."
"What...?" trailed off Tomomi.
"I will bring back honor to the Minakata name. With kintsukuroi."
Shortly thereafter, Kinta began training with the Minakata Family's allies, the Sakaguchis, under Musou Madden Ryu, a variant of Hasegawa Eishin Ryu, an iaijutsu koryu founded by Chikaranosuke Eishin Hasegawa from 1716 to 1736 in the Late Muromachi Period.
Musou Shinden Ryu, a 1932 sword-drawing school founded by master swordsman Hakudo Nakayama, would also be derived from Hasegawa Eishin Ryu and, as such, had many similarities to the 19th Century Musou Madden Ryu.
In the relative present, on December 1884 in the Minakata's Yokohama mansion...
After Uncle Kaneda bunkered himself in his room (probably figuring the safest place in Yokohama for him right now was near his nephew, a skilled swordsman of much repute in the Bakumatsu), Kinta offered to give a (mostly silent) tour of his childhood abode to his companion, Abelia.
"WOW! Look at all the doggies!" said a beaming Abelia before catching the stare of Kinta and stopping. "N-Not that it's a big deal or anything."
Even after the Shiba inu puppies congregated around her, she pretended not to care... while petting them and letting them lick her hand.
She went red after Kinta turned, covered his mouth, and "coughed" in a way that sounded more like withheld laughter.
"ABERIA-CHUUUAAAN!" said one of Yokohama's Finest, Sergeant (formerly Officer) Atsushi Dankichi, after spotting the gidget he met way back in August 1884.
"EEEEK! You guys, SIC 'EM!" ordered Abelia, and to the sergeant's chagrin, the pack of Shiba dogs obeyed, growing, snarling, and snapping their jaws shut at him like sharks on a feeding frenzy.
The retreating Sarge took note of all the Satsuma vases lining the hallway near the Shiba inu kennel. "Hey, these are pretty neat! Are these golden lightning designs on these things or are they supposed to be spider webs? They're quite enchanting."
"Actually, they were shattered some twenty years ago, because I was being careless," said Kinta, his eyes never leaving the vases. "I kept their shards and had them fixed with gold lacquer."
"Wow, that sounds expensive!" was all Atsushi could say while one of the Shiba pups gnawed on his hand. "Amazing how you were able to fix trashed vases and made them more valuable than ever before!"
December 1884; a few weeks after the police squad massacre at Akahori's Mansion in Shinshushin, Nagano; inside the guestroom quarters of the expansive Yokohama property of the Minakatas, particularly near the koi pond with a Venus de Milo fountain...
The surviving members of the Yokohama Squadron led by the late Captain Kuniumi Yamada were all present and assigned to guard the family of a former hatamoto-class retainer, the late Toshiro Minakata (whose portrait was hung in the background of the huge dining hall).
This was roughly the same squad (give or take a few deceased or missing members) that dealt with the Gaikokujin Battousai who terrorized the Namamugi Fish Market, injured and killed countless officers with a poison-drenched western sword, and mutilated oiran (courtesan) from the pleasure district.
The officers shared booze and cigarettes while the sun set in the background.
"No shit, Sarge! So Minakata Toshiro's grandchild was the Mimawarigumi Battousai, is he?" said the chain-smoking Officer Yukio Sugiura to Satoru Sakaguchi, who just happened to be studying under the same sword school as the aforementioned Kinta.
"It's true. Also, it's Lieutenant now, thank you very much," said Lieutenant Satoru, who also got a promotion after Captain Yamada's death. "I was roughly the same age as Kinta-kun... or, as I called him back then, Minakata-san... when he got accepted into the Kyoto Mimawarigumi. As expected. He was a genius swordsman through-and-through."
Sugiura covered the ear he lost thanks to Shogo Amakusa with longer hair and his missing finger with a metal prosthetic he got from a sailor. "Jeez, with all the Battousais we know, you'd almost think anyone can become Battousai!"
"If the Hitokiri Battousai and the Mimawarigumi Battousai fought, who would've won?" asked the smiling, eye-crinkled Officer Shigeru Michishige while scratching his stubbly chin, his knee laceration now a mere scar.
"Who cares? The Shinsengumi is way better the Mimawarigumi!" insisted Yukio, who belched a smog of cigarette smoke while talking. "The Shinsen Group fought in the front lines, along with the commoners and shopkeepers in the middle of the city, while the Mimawari Group lived cushy lives protecting only the Bakufu's heads of state in the Kyoto Imperial Palace and the area around Nijo Castle!"
Officer Kazuki Matsura, who still had bandages for his multiple-stitch cut on his side (yet reported for duty regardless), chimed in, "Yeah, and they were in beast mode when they stormed Ikedaya and assassinated key supporters of the patriots! The Ishin Shishi were blown the fuck out by the Shinsengumi! Where were the great Kyoto Mimawarigumi when that happened?"
"Yukio-kun just told us! Protecting heads of state, ya moron!" said the "tipsy" Michishige, who "ribbed" (as in hit his ribs with an elbow) Matsura's side, but then had to apologize after hitting Kazuki's (literal) sore spot.
"Minakata-san is even more of a Battousai than the Battousai himself! Think about it. Even though Himura is feared for his battoujutsu, every last move of Minakata-sama is battoujutsu. Or rather, modern-day iaido," came Lieutenant Sakaguchi's two "sen" on the matter.
"So how should he be named?" asked Shigeru.
"What do you mean?" asked the new lieutenant in return.
"Battousai is named after his battoujutsu. However, Minakata-san doesn't use battoujutsu. He uses the modern version of that, which is iaijutsu. Shouldn't he be named Iaisai instead of Battousai?" proposed Officer Michishige.
"It doesn't exactly roll off your tongue easily, does it?" said Yukio with a roll of his eyes.
"How about Iaidosai? Or Iaijutsusai?" asked Matsura.
"If Iaijutsusai is allowable, then Himura should've been called Battoujutsusai instead of Battousai!" said a chuckling Michishige, who slapped his scarred knee.
"'Battousai' is a portmanteau of battoujutsu and the name Ito Yagoro, the father of Itto Ryu, became famous for, 'Ittousai'," informed the new captain of the police squad, Captain Yusuke Nishimura, student of the Nakanishi-Ha variant of Itto Ryu, after taking a swig of sake.
"Besides which, let's not forget that the Mimawarigumi assassinated one of the manliest samurai to have ever lived, Sakamoto Ryoma. He was killed by their top members, Imai and Sasaki."
The captain of course meant the confession that Noburo Imai made in 1870 before a Military Judiciary Panel that he and his coconspirator, Tadasaburo Sasaki, killed Ryoma Sakamoto in 1867.
"BAH! That's what Imai claimed, but that was never proven! It's hearsay!" said Sugiura while smoke billowed all around him like swirls of thunderclouds ready to pour.
Kazuki also took a drink and waved the captain off. "With all due respect, Cap... That's bullshit. There's no evidence that Imai and Sasaki murdered Sakamoto. They're glory hounds who wanted to make their worthless group seem on equal ground against the real badasses of history, the Shinsengumi."
Kinta's strongest supporter in the squadron, Satoru, pointed out, "While Himura Battousai dealt with the badass Shinsengumi, especially Captain Hajime Saito of the Third Shinsengumi Unit, Kinta-kun of the Mimawarigumi had a different set of nemesis that are every bit as fearsome, if not more so, than the Hitokiri of the Ishin Shishi."
"Ah, I know who you're talking about...!" said Michishige with a huge grin on his face.
"Yes. The Four Hitokiri of the Bakumatsu other than the Battousai. The Shidai Nikuya."
A hush befell the Yokohama officers. "...The Four Butchers."
20 years ago, on 1864, hot on the heels of the upcoming Ikedaya (Ikeda Inn) Affair or the armed raid of the shogunate's special police, the ronin-based Shinsengumi, against ronin from the Choshu and Tosa Han (Clans)...
Contrary to the belief of the Yokohama Police, Kinta didn't face all four of the Shidai Nikuya. He was only about ten years old or so when the quartet was still alive. By the time he joined the Mimawarigumi at the tender age of 14 in 1864, Shinbei Tanaka (Hitokiri Shinbei) had already died the year before, on July 11, 1863.
A hitokiri under the command of Hanpeita Takechi (leader of the Patriots of the Tosa Han), Shinbei committed seppuku after he was given back his sword that was found at the scene of the assassination of Anenokoji, a senior official of the bakufu.
This left the young Mimawarigumi recruit to (possibly) do battle against Gensai Kawakami (Hitokiri Gensai), Izo Okada (Hitokiri Izo), and Toshiaki Kirino (Hitokiri Hanjiro, based on his other name, Hanjiro Nakamura).
Around the 1850s, during the turmoil of the ending of Sakoku (National Isolation Policy), the Anti-Shogunate and Pro-Shogunate factions began forming.
The Japanese people were shamed and angered by how the Great and Powerful Shogun was kowtowed into signing the "Treaty of Peace and Amity" between Japan and the United States by Commodore Perry during the Convention of Kanagawa on March 31, 1854.
This eventually gave rise to the Sonno Joi ("Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarians") movement, because the bakufu was now viewed weak by various samurai clans.
The shogunate had been dishonored by Perry, and in light of the brewing conflict between fellow samurais, Kinta recognized that the Kyoto Mimawarigumi and the ronin-based Shinsengumi were the bakufu's gold and silver lacquer to seal the cracks in its image.
The ones who actually crossed swords with all the living members of the Four Butchers and lived to tell the tale were Kinta's iaijutsu masters, the blacksmith swordsman Genzo Sakaguchi, Kinta's father Azuma (prior to his ritual suicide in disgrace), and the "Sword of Death" Kyo Kojima.
Those were huge slippers to fill.
On top of the three remaining Shidai Nikuya, there was also a fourth one, a Choshu Han Hitokiri working in the shadows, making a name for himself, referred to as Kogoro Katsura's attack dog the same way Izo Okada was Hanpeita Takechi's attack dog.
He was Kenshin Himura, the Hitokiri Battousai, the unofficial young replacement of the crucified Okada, thereby again completing the Shidai Nikuya.
Gensai Kawakami was also considered Shinsaku Takasugi's right-hand man, especially during the formation of Shinsaku's Kiheitai, which was an army full of commoners instead of samurai.
A rookie of the recently formed Kyoto Special Police Force, Minakata was only one of approximately 200 high-ranking samurais authorized by Shugoshoku (The Office of Kyoto Protector) Katamori Matsudaira to restore public order in Tokyo.
There were two companies that divided the 200 samurais. Hirotaka Maita's Sagami-no-Kami-Gumi and Yasutada Matsudaira's Izumo-no-Kami-Gumi. Kinta belonged to the latter.
"Hey, isn't that...?" Kinta overheard one of his fellow Mimawarigumi whisper.
"Yeah. Minakata Azuma's kid. You know, the son of the samurai who got cuckolded by a gaijin. The one who committed seppuku when he found out?"
"Daaaamn, man. That's rough. You don't think he switched sides with the Choshu Clan and took up the banner of Sonno Joi to get his family honor back, do you?"
"If he did, I wouldn't blame him. Sure, we'd be fighting in opposing sides, but at least he'd have a chance at an honorable death!"
"Or he could go rogue and join the Shinsengumi with the rest of those ronin hicks and low-class samurai wannabes!"
"I'm surprised he even got recruited as a Mimawarigumi, to be honest."
"Jeez, to think the Minakatas are hatamoto. Now the shogunate would never want to associate with such a dishonored family, what with the anti-gaijin climate we have nowadays."
"Hey, kid! You're not feeling like screaming 'Sonno Joi' and joining the patriots to bring down the bakufu right now, are you?"
"Are we sure he really is Minakata's kid? I mean, with the red hair and all, it's not a stretch of the imagination for him to be... Y'know..."
The samurais laughed it up at Kinta's expense, but the face of the Minakata heir-apparent remained neutral.
He only had one thing in mind: Bring back honor to the soiled Minakata name that not even his father's seppuku could atone for.
Azuma had been bested by a gaijin. His woman was stolen from him and so was his honor and his pride as a man. In light of all this, what was Azuma's son supposed to do?
"Hey, kid! Lighten up! We were just joking. You're not a virgin or anything, are you?" said the one samurai who gave up talking behind Kinta's back and just told him outright what he thought.
"Whoa, dude! How much has he drunk? He's red up to the tips of his ears! As red as his hair! BWAHAHAHA!"
The beefy, boisterous samurai hollered, "Zero bottles, but he's already drunk in embarrassment!" More leering samurais gathered, laughing. Even the nearby waitresses and geisha (the oiran were... somewhere else more private) gathered to look at the curious spectacle.
"How old are you, kid?" asked one of the samurais.
"14 years old," answered Kinta while shrinking back to his western-style jacket's collars as if to hide his head like a turtle.
"Oh wow! Really? You're big and tall for a boy your age!" the hearty, barrel-shaped, and bearded samurai told Minakata with a slap to the shoulders, guffawing all the while.
"Did you hear that, ladies? Only one more year, and this pretty boy will be celebrating his genpuku (coming of age ceremony), if you know what I mean!" said another swordsman with a wink.
At that point, Kinta couldn't even meet the demure gazes of any of the (giggling) females present there, whether she be a waitress, patron, or entertainer.
"Better genpuku than seppuku!" said the same man who insinuated that Kinta wasn't really his father's son. The boy didn't like that man.
"Ah. The innocence of youth! It's times like these that I'm confident that this unrest among samurais will pass, the shogunate will rule forever, and the barbarians will fold in recognition of the might of the bakufu!"
Another fellow hatamoto to the Minakatas, the upper vassal known as Wakamoto, raised his glass to cheer his samurai bodyguards. "Let's have a toast to the future! To the young samurai out there and to a prosperous Japan ruled by the bakufu! KAMPAI! (CHEERS!)"
A geisha with a tonfa-like folded umbrella approached Wakamoto to pour him a drink, but she never let go of what she held.
Kinta narrowed his eyes; he and several other samurais wondered in unison why this girl wouldn't put the umbrella back into the umbrella rack, or why its handle had an extra grip to the side of the handle.
Their questions were answered as soon as the geisha unsheathed the blade hidden in her umbrella by the tonfa-like reverse grip and did a harakiri (i.e, the same type of belly cut done during seppuku) on Wakamoto with one stroke, his intestines spilling out all over the table full of food like a bundle of uncooked sausages.
"A toast to the future? Don't make me laugh. After becoming the whipped dogs of gaijin, you expect us to believe the bakufu still has what it takes to lead Japan? Bullshit. The Emperor will rise again and take Japan back to its old ways. Sonno Joi."
"WAKAMOTO-SAN!" screamed the burly samurai who teased Kinta earlier, he eyes bulging, his face as white as the geisha's who killed the hatamoto, and his mouth agape.
Women screamed. Men screamed. Patrons from the restaurant got up and stampeded towards the door while the Mimawarigumi went and retrieved their swords at the reception area.
"You bitch...!" the samurai who implied that Kinta was of gaijin ancestry attempted a sword-drawing attack to the geisha's head, but the woman ducked in cadence with the upward strike and did a tonfa-grip, bone-cutting strike that sliced off his legs and made him tumble backwards much shorter than before.
"Are you a kunoichi (female ninja) traitor allied with the Patriots?" said another samurai with an upcoming Men (Head) strike, only to have his own severed head tumble on the table like a ball.
"A dead man doesn't need to know my name," said the geisha, whose wig came undone and whose obi loosened enough to reveal a lithe form with no breasts underneath and an obvious Adam's apple on his neck.
"Wait! That's no geisha or onmitsu! It's a man!"
"Shit! Kill that goddamn okama (homosexual)!"
The crossdressing manslayer made quick work of the two approaching Mimawarigumi while he backed away, holding his tonfa sword by its perpendicular handle from behind his back, and doing out-of-left-field slashes and stabs to veins and aortas.
By the time Kinta had retrieved his unused weapon, most of his Mimawarigumi comrades had fallen against this monster before him; a lightning-fast youkai worthy enough to challenge his grandmother in terms of fearsomeness.
He started unsheathing his sword, but he got pushed back by the hammy hands of the huge Mimawarigumi samurai who asked him about his virginity. "Go find back up. I'll handle this, kid."
The giant Mimawarigumi charged at the assassin with wide swings that cut whole tables and tatami apart, swarming the retreating hitokiri with slashes that kept him on the defensive. "FOR WAKAMOTO-SAAN!"
Minakata followed the two, his sword at the ready, but he once again underestimated the speed of the hitokiri, who ducked out of a wide slash and did a vertical cut that sliced the huge bear of a man from crotch to face. In an eye blink.
Dammit, Kinta wasn't even able to ask the man his name. The boy dashed forward, his sword at the ready, but the mountain-sized burly Mimawarigumi shouted at him, "DIDN'T I ORDER YOU TO GO, ROOKIE? I'm already done for. You still have your whole life ahead of you!"
The crossdressing hitokiri feinted a strike, but it was Kinta instead of the bleeding, sumo-sized man who reacted. "Listen to him, kid. Turn your back and run away. It's not worth it," said the pretend geisha.
A tear fell from Kinta's eye after he heard his fellow Izumo-no-Kami-Gumi member gurgle to the manslayer, "Thank you." The manly samurai thanked what would be his murderer for sparing Minakata.
And so Kinta turned his back on them as per request of the two... and unsheathed his blade while doing so, falling into the Waning Stance of the Musou Madden Ryu to execute the Full Moon Slash.
"KIIIIIID!"
"Iaijutsu? Is this Hasegawa Eishin Ryu, or...?" murmured the hitokiri in geisha makeup before his dodge and parry proved insufficient, the out-of-left-field slash penetrating his flesh.
Kinta finally broke it in. His sword had at last tasted blood.
The manslayer geisha then riposted with a stab to the side that Minakata himself barely dodged. "No. Musou Madden Ryu. I've faced this sword style before. Are you Old Man Sakaguchi's kid?"
Twenty minutes later, inside a high-class restaurant within the area around Nijo Castle in 1864...
Kinta wheezed and gulped down blood. He might be internally bleeding.
"Fascinating. You're like Katsura's kid hitokiri that everyone from the Choshu Han wouldn't shut up about. You even use the same sword-drawing techniques that he does," said the geisha hitokiri with the tonfa blade.
Minakata didn't go down in one strike like the rest of the Mimawarigumi did. However, aside from a small cut on the geisha assassin's left cheek, Kinta couldn't even touch the hitokiri that wiped out his Izumo-no-Kami-Gumi unit almost completely.
"If that Battousai kid weren't on the same side as me, I would've loved to test out his Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu against my Shiranui Ryu. I'd bet the results would be the same as this fight, though."
'Shiranui Ryu...?' Kinta thought before returning to the Waning Stance of the Musou Madden Ryu and countering from out of left field in order to avoid having his head exposed to the head-hunting, crossdressing geisha assassin.
Speaking of heads, he was in over his head right now. Why was he fighting this war of attrition against a bloodthirsty hitokiri anyway? For what purpose?
'Know your place in this household. You have no right to backtalk me or even glare at me. The only reason you're still here is through the kindness of my heart, nothing more,' Kinta remembered his Grandma Mieko say to him one day. 'Why can't you make yourself useful instead of being such an insolent leech?'
The veteran hitokiri reacted to facing the awkward, backwards-fighting iaijutsu expert by leaping or circling over every semicircular iaijutsu strike while blocking, thus allowing the geisha manslayer to end up face-to-face with Minakata from the more straightforward Waxing Stance, leaving the kid more vulnerable to head-on attacks.
'Oh dear gods, what have I done to deserve this?' his grandmother had wailed to the heavens countless times. 'With you here, all the neighbors won't stop gossiping about us! I wish you were never born! I wish you weren't related to me! I should've banished you along with your worthless mother!'
Kinta parried the hitokiri's combination slices the best that he could, but in terms of aggressiveness, his simple one-strike iaijutsu left him susceptible to the swarm of whirling blades that came from all angles, particularly when he had retreat to sheathe his sword.
'Get out of my face. You look so much like your old man, it pisses me off. You're a piece of shit like your shitty parents. You know that, kid?' said his drunk Uncle Tatsuya, a banker, one night after throwing his sake bottle (and missing) at Kinta's head.
'Thanks to your spineless cuckold father and my whore of a sister, Minakata Pharmaceuticals is getting fewer investors every day. If the family business goes belly up in debt thanks to that scandal, it'll be the fault of your honorless parents!'
The thick tonfa handle also served as an excellent method of blocking sharpened steel, more so than blade-to-blade contact. All the while, the hitokiri proceeded to bide his time while the Mimawarigumi rookie slowly bled to death.
'Hey there, sport! Here's some money, go buy yourself some candy or toys or something,' his sweaty Uncle Kaneda, a lawyer, once said to Kinta after the boy caught him rummaging through the alcohol cabinet of his Uncle Tatsuya with an oiran by his side.
'This will be our little secret, okay? Uh, Kintaro? I must be your favorite uncle, because unlike mean Uncle Tatsuya or Grandma Mieko, I'd never call you anything hurtful, right? I'd never insult your parents or bring up you-know-what, would I?' continued Kaneda.
What the hell was honor anyway? What did it mean? Was it worth salvaging the "good" name of the Minakatas?
Kinta threw a saucer of sake in the air as a distraction and attempted another Tsunami technique (multiple waves of strikes), but the geisha manslayer blocked and countered every one of the initial whirlwind strikes before they built up enough momentum for a big tidal wave finish.
The saucer crashed and Minakata collapsed, only to roll away from the follow-up stab to his jugular that would've finished him off. The broken ceramic reminded him of the broken vase incident between him, his dog Moriya, his grandmother Mieko, and the servant girl Tomomi.
Kintsukuroi. Gold repair. To make what was broken even better than before. To erase cracks with gold. To undo mistakes and make everything better again.
The Minakata Family wasn't going to be known for all eternity as victims of the gaijin invasion, with a loose woman for a daughter and a cuckold for a son-in-law.
Kintsukuroi proved that even something that was broken and deemed useless could become better than ever before.
Kinta sheathed his blade and gave himself some running room. Unfazed, the geisha hitokiri placed his tonfa blade from behind him while facing the last Mimawarigumi standing head on. "Give me your best shot, Mimawarigumi."
From the more aggressive Waxing Stance, Minakata dashed forward and delivered the Musou Madden Ryu's Full Moon Slash, a flesh-cutting initial slash followed by a centrifugally powered bone-cutting slash from the Waning Stance on the same spot, creating a complete and perfect circle that flashed and shone like the full moon.
However, the maai (space and range) master swordsman had already seen the technique in Kinta's opening salvo, cutting his cheek because he didn't avoid it completely in time. At this juncture, he knew how to counter it, blocking both double strikes with his tonfa handle in order to stab Kinta again while his back was turned.
"What the HELL...!?"
However, it was a ruse. This was not the Full Moon Slash. Rather, it was the more difficult succession technique of the Musou Madden Ryu, the Blue Moon Slash. As the saying went, things that were rarely seen were only seen "Once in a Blue Moon."
A smile from a grumpy old man came once in a blue moon. So did a mistake from a form-perfect master swordsman. Or an argument-free night between a loveless old married couple on the verge of separation.
A real blue moon wasn't a moon that was literally blue, but an extra full moon that appeared in a subdivision of a year, like the second full moon in a month of the common calendar.
In this context, the Blue Moon Slash was a follow-up Full Moon Slash right after a Full Moon Slash.
Normally, the 360-degree rotational sword-drawn slash left a Musou Madden Ryu practitioner wide open to counters after the follow-through. Furthermore, doing two consecutive Full Moon Slashes should have a gap of at least a full second.
However, when executed perfectly and with enough centrifugal force behind it, the second Full Moon Slash could appear almost instantaneously with the first slash. This Blue Moon Slash could cut even faster and deeper than the first one did, at that.
The initial supersonic strike parted the air, giving the even faster and difficult-to-execute second strike a fraction of a second where the blade met zero wind resistance, thus allowing it to double its centrifugal force, speed, and momentum.
This caused the second strike of Kinta to cut deep into the hitokiri's body when the latter attempted to do a kaeshi; it was Minakata's only other strike to land, and it almost finished the geisha assassin off.
Almost, because again, the reflexes and footwork of the crossdresser proved otherworldly. Also, instead of fearing for his life, the effeminate man's wide eyes shone while he licked his lips and grinned like a shark at Kinta.
"It's been a long time since a sword had cut this deep into me."
The man wearing geisha makeup and wardrobe cackled while wiping his face with the cloth usually reserved for wiping blood off of a blade. He then pressed the same rag into his wound.
Exhausted beyond belief by the thirty minute duel, the bleeding Kinta nearly collapsed, held up only by the sword his master, the blacksmith Genzo, forged named Akatsuki (Red Moon).
"You've used your best technique on me, didn't you? Let me show you mine."
The two gasping combatants just stared at each other before the pretend geisha crossdresser dashed forward first while Kinta unplucked his sword to sheathe it and do another Blue Moon Slash.
"GENSAI! What's taking you so long?" said another swordsman after flinging flyers with the word Tenchu (Heavenly Retribution) written on them on every last corpse he could find inside the decimated restaurant.
The man identified as Gensai growled. "Not now, Master Teizo. I'm a little busy."
The man identified as Teizo warned, "Stop playing with that kid, the Shinsengumi are coming along with the rest of the Mimawarigumi! We better leave now, or we'll be outnumbered with both bakufu forces breathing down our necks!"
Hitokiri Gensai harrumphed before sheathing back his tonfa sword in its false umbrella scabbard.
Even without the makeup, the manslayer had the soft features of a (barely legal) preteen girl. And the eyes of a killer.
"Wash your neck till we meet again. I want your decapitation to be a clean cut, Mimawarigumi Battousai."
Only after the two Ishin Shishi samurai left did Kinta allow himself to collapse in exhaustion and lower his defenses. Did he do it? Did he accomplish kintsukuroi with the soiled and shattered Minakata name?
A few minutes later, the half-conscious and anemic Minakata would hear screams of "SHINSENGUMI DA!" and matter-of-fact statement of "We're the Kyoto Mimawarigumi. Make way."
A brown-haired man in the Shinsengumi's blue-and-white signature uniform whistled at seeing all the carnage before him. "Wow. This is horrible. Was anyone left alive by the Ishin bastards who did this?"
Another Shinsengumi member of lower ranking than the person who spoke first reported, "Yes, Captain Nagakura. A boy and an older man from the Mimawarigumi."
Overhearing this, Kinta turned towards the bear of a samurai whom he saved from the wrath of "Gensai", only to see him kneeling down in a pool of his own blood, his eyes glassy, his body completely white as marble.
He wasn't the older man they were referring to.
"..."
"Any other witnesses?" asked the Shinsengumi captain. Before his subordinate could answer, one of the higher-ranking Mimawarigumi told both Shinsengumi members off.
"This case isn't in your jurisdiction, Shinsengumi. It's in ours. We'll take it from here."
Nagakura flashed a grin and backed off. "As you wish, Mimawarigumi-san."
The older man they were referring too that didn't die of blood loss was the samurai whose legs the hitokiri amputated.
"T-That kid... H-He went toe-to-toe with the geisha-disguised hitokiri with a tonfa sword! I've never seen iaijutsu so quick and precise! He was like a surgeon! The manslayer even called him the Mimawarigumi Battousai!"
As medics bandaged Kinta's wounds, the high-ranking Mimawarigumi officer who told Captain Nagakura off knelt down beside the 14-year-old and grasped his uninjured shoulder tight.
"You're an asset to the Kyoto Mimawarigumi, rookie. What's your name? What unit are you from?"
His voice hoarse, Kinta whispered, "M-Minakata Kinta. F-From the Izumo-no-Kami-Gumi."
"Oh. Minakata, eh?" The high-ranking hatamoto's eyes lightened up in recognition, but instead of an uneasy smile and pupils that traveled elsewhere, he stared at Kinta straight on and said, "Your family would be proud of you. You brought great honor to them and the bakufu today. We need your power for the battles ahead, understand?"
Kinta's eyes traveled from pillar to post, his gaze soaking in what was left of the restaurant, with blood and guts spilled everywhere.
The bodies of his fellow Mimawarigumi were covered in white shrouds, freshly stained by their bodily fluids.
Minakata wondered, 'What honorable thing have I done today, exactly?'
"...Boy? Minakata-kun, can you hear me?"
Were all these deaths necessary for the sake of improving the reputation of the Minakatas? Were his efforts all worth it?
Kinta would later find out that this was the Gensai Kawakami of the Shidai Nikuya, whom some Bakumatsu historians considered to be even more skilled than the supposed Strongest Hitokiri, Kenshin Himura.
Meanwhile, the man Kawakami was with, Teizo Miyabe, was his mentor. Only a few months later, Gensai would lose Teizo thanks to the Shinsengumi raid in the Ikeda Inn on July 8, 1864.
This restaurant massacre would remain an unconfirmed mission of the infamous Hitokiri Gensai, who'd later on showcase the deadliness of his Shiranui Ryu with his one confirmed assassination of scholar and politician Shozan Sakuma, whom he killed with one stroke of the sword in broad daylight on August 12, 1864.
Kinta and Gensai would again cross swords later on, with Minakata as part of the bakufu's elite samurai army and Kawakami as one of the leaders of Takasugi's Kiheitai or commoner army, from the shogunate's Choshu Expeditions up until the hitokiri's arrest in Kokura by Kumamoto forces.
Kawakami wasn't released from captivity until the Bakumatsu ended in 1868. The Mimawarigumi Battousai would then hear about Gensai's second arrest and execution for harboring Kiheitai stragglers on January 13, 1872, a good four years later.
December 1884; back in the Yokohama Minakata Residence...
"Ah! It's the man of the hour! How are you doing, Minakata Kinta-san? It's been a while!" Captain Nishimura greeted with a bow, which made Kinta bow in return.
"We're more than happy to serve you and offer police protection against these assassins who are after the Minakata Family's lives!" said Officer Michishige.
"Thank you," said Kinta.
"Ay caramba..." said a slumping, blue-faced, and face-palming Abelia while being led to the dining hall by hand by a grinning, red-cheeked Dankichi.
Like how a father would dote on is daughter, or how an uncle would play with his a favored niece.
However, some of the other officers saw things differently when looking at Atsushi blush like that.
"SARGE! She's too young for you!" teased Officer Shigeru while the others did catcalls on Atsushi, who only went redder while putting a hand behind his head. "I-It's not like that...!"
Rather than again complain about how she was older than the coppers in the room, the so-called living teratoma asked Sergeant Dankichi. "Wait. You're Sarge? I though Sakaguchi-san is Sarge."
Abelia blinked when the room went quiet and a flustered Atsushi said, "Ah, well... You see. Hahaha. I got promoted. Sakaguchi-kun is now a lieutenant and I'm not sergeant."
"WOW! Why didn't you say so? Congratulations!" La Cerca hugged the new Sarge and kissed him on the cheek, which made him freeze with a complicated kind of feeling. "You too, Sakaguchi-san! Congrats on the promotion!"
"Uh... Ah! Yes! Thank you!" said the seemingly shy Officer (Lieutenant) Daddy, whose hand trembled when he raised his half-filled sake saucer while he got congratulatory pats on the back by the other officers.
However, something felt... wrong. Abelia couldn't quite put her finger on it.
Maybe it was the way the Yokohama Police Squad went quiet when the promotion was mentioned. Or perhaps the way their eyes went straight to the floor while sightlessly offering Sakaguchi pats on the back for moving up to a higher position.
'That's strange,' she thought. Was it her, or were the pats on Satoru's back more consolatory than congratulatory. 'Did someone get fired from the job for him to get the position or...?'
Minakata turned towards the other gathered police officers that day, scanning the room and recognizing the familiar faces of about a few months ago almost immediately.
Like Officer Michishige, who was with him after recovering from the Foreigner Battousai's nighttime attack. Or Lieutenant Satoru, whom he knew since the days when he first trained in Musou Madden Ryu under Genzo Sakaguchi as a young lad.
There were a few unfamiliar faces, though.
"So this is the big, bad Mimawarigumi Battousai, huh?" the diminutive Yukio smirked, flaming cigarette on the side of his mouth, before he hunched over, walked forward with his gloved hands in his pockets, and sized up Kinta with a tilted head and bulging eyes, like how a hawk or a vulture would stare at its prey.
"If you really are someone who can go toe-to-toe against Hitokiri Gensai to the point of him calling you the Mimawarigumi's version of their Hitokiri Battousai, then what do you need us for when protecting your family members?"
"..."
Although the towering Minakata made the already short Sugiura look like a child (even more so with his body slumped down), the latter still blew loops of smoke on Kinta's face, which made Abelia bark, "HEY! He has breathing problems, you rude midget!"
"You're such a fearsome fighter on your own that you can probably take on any assassin by yourself! You're a one-man army! Hell, I was even there when you took out that psychotic gaijin bastard who poisoned your uncle. We haven't heard from 'Bahtowsai' since then!"
Before Kinta could answer, Captain Nishimura put the smaller Sugiura in a headlock and rubbed his knuckles on his subordinate's noggin. In the struggle, the remnants of Yukio's cigarette dropped from his mouth.
"Don't be a dumbass! Even Kawakami Gensai or Himura Battousai can end up overwhelmed and outnumbered! Minakata-san and the rest of the Minakatas need us right now because he can't be at multiple places at once! Isn't that right, Mister Minakata?"
Kinta nodded and murmured something along the lines of "Sumimasen," which Abelia translated in head to mean "Thank you," and "Sorry for the trouble," at the same time.
He's a good guy, that captain of theirs.' She blinked. 'Un momento. Speaking of captain...'
"LEGGO, NISHIMURA! You've only been captain for a few weeks! Don't let it go to your head! And stop sucking up to that damn redheaded samurai!" complained a coughing Officer Sugiura before biting his superior's arm like one of the Minakatas' Shiba inu would.
After Yusuke karate-chopped Yukio's face, Kinta asked, "Captain? You're the captain now, Nishimura-san? What happened to Captain Yamada?"
A shroud of silence draped itself across the wide dining hall. The clink of sake saucers and bottles ceased. The murmurs of conversation faded. Even the cicadas dared not to break the overpowering dark mood of the gathered officers.
It was Kinta's childhood friend Lieutenant Satoru instead of Captain Yusuke who broke the news.
"Kinta-kun, Captain Yamada died back in Shinshu protecting your uncle from getting assassinated by the Christian rebel, Amakusa Shogo. Officer Shimizu and Officer Ishimaru didn't make it either."
The blood drained from the Mimawarigumi Battousai's face. "Because of Tetsuo-ojisan... Shogo... Amakusa Shogo...!"
The invisible cross-scar that intersected on the bridge of his nose became clearer and more apparent as his face contorted upon hearing the news.
Incidentally, Tetsuo Akahori was the younger brother of the deceased Azuma Minakata, who prior to marrying into the Minakata Family was born Azuma Akahori.
One moonless midnight of November 1884, Lucas Grant traipsed into the less-foggy-than-he-was-used-to (and not as cold as London either) Port of Yokohama (opened back in June 2, 1859 in accordance to the Treaty of Peace and Amity, serving as the Hong Kong of Post-Isolationism Japan in terms of foreign trade), hunting for an old "friend" of his.
In short, another member of the Brigands Guild.
According to Yokohama police reports a few months ago that Seth Merrick (unwillingly, dragging his feet all the while) pilfered through his multiple disguises (first as a criminal, then as one of the officers), a "Gaikokujin Battousai" ran amok around Namamugi who killed and mutilated prostitutes.
He was linked to the food poisoning of one Minakata (Kaneda) and a sword duel with another (Kinta). The serial killer was last seen in the gaikokujin bochi (foreign cemetery) of the Yokohama Foreign General Cemetery, located in Naka Ward.
A familiar someone named "Aberia Ra Serusa" (in katakana, as many gaijin names were spelled) had saved the life of the poisoned Minakata and was subsequently rescued by the other, younger Minakata.
Interesting.
To Be Continued...
Yes, the real-life person Kenshin Himura is based on, Gensai Kawakami, exists in this fanfic universe. Why not? Having the Four Butchers actually become part of the Rurouni Kenshin universe makes me feel all giddy and nerdy inside!
Also, the dog being named "Moriya" is a Last Blade reference. Moriya Minakata is the same character Kinta is based on, incidentally. Along with Ukyo Tachibana of Samurai Shodown fame and the historical legend Kojiro Sasaki, Musashi Miyamoto's rival.
Arrivederci,
Abdiel