"It's not fair."

In a sterile, professional looking tatami room lay a short, aged man. Mitsunari Tokugawa, owner of the Tokyo Dome Underground Arena , a place that had many times throughout history decided the strongest man alive, felt incomplete. He lay atop a cushion in his usual spot, puffing his smoking pipe, musing over the events of the last few weeks. The light from the morning sun streaked in through the paper, illuminating a light film of dust, and forcing his eyes shut as he found himself consumed with thought. With the sealing away of Musashi back to the afterlife, he had found the competition he was able to drum up for the current reining champion a little lacking. Whether it be dangerous criminals, previously undiscovered new talent, old masters coming out of retirement, they all seemed to collapse under the weight of the young Baki's near infinite technical prowess and vast fighting experience. the boy had truly conquered his small frame, and now towered above even the mightiest fighters. It had taken the strongest swordsman in history to truly reignite some amount of passion for fighting that the youngster was known for, although perhaps he had gone a step too far, losing the very incarnation of Chinese Kenpo in the process.

It had been growing into quite the headache for him. Truly, in terms of worthy opponents, Baki had been left with very few residing in this era. Musashi was a flicker in the grand scheme of a career that was sure to last another 2 or 3 decades at the least. The question of how to keep the champion fed remained a pressing issue.

Tokugawa got up to stretch his old joints, perhaps he should go feed his Koi. Focusing on something a little more menial might help get some ideas running through his head. He stepped outside of his home for a moment, making his was to his pond.

The old man tossed some fish food to an eager crowd that had gathered around the pond's edge. Tokugawa tried to refocus his mind on the issue at hand, drumming up some competition for Baki. There was Pickle, the ancient human whose raw strength rivalled Yujiro Hanma, perhaps Katsumi, now having healed completely from his bout with said prehistoric man, although even such an opponent might not be the kind of battle to truly excite the crowd. The overgrown fish snapped eagerly, expecting more, their ravenous hunger not satisfied but the pittance they had been offered.

But still, Tokugawa was in an awkward position. Pickle, frankly, was missing, a point of great shame for the man who had hoped he could springboard a new era in the arena. Of course, there was one man who could always be relied upon to push Baki to his absolute limits, and that would be the boy's father, but Yujiro was an unpredictable fellow who hated playing to the tune of others. Even the mere suggestion of setting up some kind of spectacle fight between him and his son would likely send the Ogre off the rails. He'd be lucky to survive even uttering those words.

Perhaps Retsu would have made a good opponent for the now quite seasoned champion, a rematch long in the making, but he had passed on in one of the most vicious fights to have ever come out of the Tokyo Dome arena. He still felt guilty for tarnishing the arena with its first death in its long history.

Was Tokugawa really left with no other choice than to continue feeding "world champions" of their respective arts to Baki, only for the boy to completely devour them? It was a waste of otherwise good talent frankly, good meat thrown to a starving tiger, such men were better suited for fights they might have even a chance of winning.

And then there was the separate issue of the Ogre. Tokugawa cursed himself for even thinking such things, but Yujiro Hanma had recently passed the age of 40, and while he was still the same savage man as ever, Tokugawa could see the cracks beginning to appear in his seemingly invincible ego. Whether it was when he had practically forced him to go to the hospital, saving him an early diagnosis on a tumor in his lungs, or the time he seemed increasingly concerned with spending doing "fatherly" activities with his son, whether that be having a meal together or just talking, the two were getting far too chummy for his liking. Baki and Yujiro were meant to be sworn rivals, the son was meant to overtake the father at the peak of his strength and continue the Hanma legacy of domination through sheer violence. The mere thought of a Hanma living a long life, raising his son to be a man, and then passing away peacefully felt fundamentally, cosmically wrong. Perhaps the abundance of prey these two had encountered had dulled their competitive instincts. Baki was more concerned with spending time with his girlfriend and at school, and Yujiro seemed content to relax for the time being. What they needed was an opponent that could genuinely threaten their lives, to remind them that the only true desire lying in their hearts was to be the strongest man on Earth.

Tokugawa could feel an eerie grin spreading across his face, his love of the game becoming far too evident. Baki had made it pretty clear he had no respect for the questionable practices occurring in the sky tree, and that it was an insult to a great warrior that Musashi had been resurrected, but what choice did he have? The Hanmas needed strong opponents in order to refine their strength, so anything short of world war 3 would lead only to the slow decay of their power, Japan's pride and joy was on the line here, if anything he was doing his country a favour! Even if no one appreciated his efforts.

The old man found himself pinching his temple in frustration, the many lines on his forehead and cheeks from decades of high octane spectacle and the constant stress that came with putting himself so frequently close to human time bombs showed across his face. So, what? He was gonna flip through a history book and look for other strong warriors? Maybe bring back Sasaki Kojiro next, or perhaps the hero of the Trojan war, Achilles? No, Achilles was more legend than history. He needed a lead on some new absurdly powerful figure who could reignite the ambition of his two very bored Hanmas. Morals be damned! Those two needed a good fight, and soon!

Tokugawa's mind wandered back to Musashi. The added threat of a blade had clearly awoken something in the fighters that was previously suppressed. The necessity to reciprocate the danger they put themselves in had brought out new techniques, an unseen ferocity in many, and a far greater tolerance still to bend the idea of fair play. Many still remembered the fight between Motobe Izou and Miyamoto Musashi as an incredible spectacle. No holds barred, a fight that had completely redefined the idea of a strong fighter, for a man who was not widely considered to be in the conversation for greatest grapplers in the arena had put up an incredible showing against history's strongest swordsman. Was this the answer, after all of the bloodshed the arena had already seen? Did the champion need another fearsome killer to bring back out his instincts as a Hanma? If the only solution was another proper solider, where would he even look for such a man?

Perhaps the answer lay outside of Japan. He was satisfied that the greatest warrior of all time was one of their own, he'd met him in the flesh after all. Maybe the second strongest lay at rest elsewhere? He could look to the old famous stories of invincible warriors for inspiration. Perhaps a mighty Spartan, a Jaguar Warrior descended from the ancient Aztecs? Ideas kept pumping through his head, but the mere fact he was comparing their possible strengths meant he was on the wrong track. No, he needed a warrior from the most turbulent, violent era in history. Even more ruthless than the Sengoku era, or anything remotely comparable. Someone he could call an undisputed champion. There were stories of such a time, equally absurd as the most fantastical myth you could find out of a storybook, yet there were historians willing to bet their careers on its existence. Even still, could such ridiculous legends have any real basis in history? If they did, storybooks would have to be exactly where he looked...


The old man found himself back in his library before he could think too much, after all it was only a short walk from the main estate building. It was an old place, less well kept than the domicile. The hardwood floors showed signs of wear, which was a great testament to how many times members of his family had walked its aisles. The towering shelves that nearly reached the ceiling had collected a fair amount of dust where no one could reach to clean them. Tokugawa reminded himself to hire a cleaning service to give the place a sweep, after all, this library contained an abundance of knowledge, but with an obvious bias towards the collection of works of history. His family had been rather involved in some famous pieces of history after all, and he himself had been lucky enough to witness the spectacle of Baki vs The Ogre. He did not need to search very long to find what he was after. In fact, he would never admit this to another living person, but he had always been somewhat fascinated with tales of incredible warriors from ancient civilizations, even the rather absurd stories that reeked of exaggeration and bias. Perhaps it was just in his nature to revere such figures. As such, he had a dedicated shelf comprised of the more famous stories, only a few rows down from the old sliding door he had entered from. The exact volume of books he was looking for was just within reach, despite his small frame.

The Legends of Midland

Midland. It was a well established part of medieval history at this point. Many debated its exact location geographically, but other famous preserved texts from old civilizations documented its existence. It was also a land shrouded in an absurd amount of myth. Compared to retrieved stories from other, nearby areas around the same time period, the people and scholars of midland seemed to speak almost unilaterally about fantastical happenings as if they were real. No obvious satire or attempts to separate fiction from reality were present. It was still a very hotly debated topic that could very well send two professors of history into a toil at the very mention of. Some believed it was an aspect of some predominant religion in the area, others believed it was a cultural practice, and even fewer still believed that perhaps a grain of truth was hidden in the fantasy. One thing all agreed on was that this area was probably home to the most violence a country had ever been subjected to not including more recent history, maybe only rivaled by ancient China during the Three Kingdoms Era. He dusted the cover off, flipping to the table of contents. There, as a sub-chapter inside a larger portion, was the keyword he had been looking for,

IV.

iii. The First Appearance of the Black Swordsman