A towering, vaguely human-shaped, legless behemoth rumbled in a patch of the arena it had occupied for itself. The black Cursed Warrior monolith flexed its clay-like body and emitted destructive rays of blue light from the glowing patterns and glyphs decorating its statuesque body. A samurai clad in a black and red gi with waist-length spiky black hair hanging around his back in a streaming ponytail dashed aside from the spray of destructive rays of light that permeated the scorched ground in walls of blue flame. A splash of the cerulean flame caught on to the samurai's white and red fox mask, forcing the warrior to toss it aside to burn up to cinders.
A small band of warriors from various teams seemed dead-set on attacking the human fortress and doing whatever it took to eliminate it and free up some space in the arena for everyone but a storm of kunai slipped into the tiles just mere centimeters away from their feet. The warriors looked up at the unmasked samurai in a black and red robe who stared at the clay behemoth with a fussy pout and had his arms raised and spread to the sides, betraying that it was him to threw the knives to stop the warriors from attacking a foe he had chosen as his target.
"Hey! Just who does that guy think he is?" a lean young man with two swords and a heavy-gear backpack hanging over his mud-colored cargo jacket bittered his expression with spite. "This titan is clearly a monster, so it's up to us, the Exterminator group, to deal with him!"
"You must not know Ishikawa Bando then," another samurai in a plain blue dogi and a red robe hanging over his shoulders snickered before spitting out a twig he had been chewing on for a while now. "Damn, I thought cutting this mountain-man would've been a nice warm-up for the upcoming tournament, but all this fire he's spitting out everywhere must've gotten on Bando's bad side."
The plain samurai with messy black hair and a stubby goatee sheathed his sword and turned around, closing his eyes with tranquility and shutting off his senses from the rampaging goliath completely. The Exterminator looked bewildered by this behavior.
"Wait, do you mean that warrior is in fact a samurai and not a ninja? Why then does he wear a mask and can throw kunai with such impeccable accuracy without even looking?" the Exterminator called out to the samurai who was nonchalantly walking away.
"Because Ishikawa Bando is a ronin who found the Secret Ninja Tribe of Iga and trained himself there before returning to the Land of Iron. He is an above-average swordsman but a peerless ninja, or so I've heard…" the shaggy-haired samurai waved his hand in dismissal of the Exterminator and found himself another battle to partake in, charging at the half-headless giant and the archer lady spewing arrows all across the battlefield.
Ishikawa Bando vanished in a blink. Not a second later, blinding crescent slash arcs began littering the entire body of the clay-man goliath of the Cursed Warriors. Despite the widespread slashing flurry, the Cursed Warrior neither flinched nor showed any signs of pain, instead throwing his hand in a backhand slam and catching Bando in mid-air while he was in high-speed movement and invisible to the naked eye. Surprised by the crash, Bando grumbled and flew back down like a tiny meteor with a radiant tail. The samurai crashed into the tiles, leaving a crater, and fractured crackles across the region of the arena.
With a thunderous grumble, the cursed monolith turned around and raised its hammering fist to smash it down to where the annoying gnat swordsman was. Within the first traces of movement, the fist became engulfed by flames and surrounded by a sonic boom shockwave that threatened a devastating crash. Silence reigned in when the blow collided with the ground, then a deafening howl and a disastrous whirl of gust and airwaves spread in all directions. Just as it seemed like Bando was done for, the white, flashing slashes rotated around the giant's arm. This time leaving shallow indentations as Bando buzzed upward like a mad slasher and hovered right in front of the head-like dome at the top of the fortified monolith warrior.
Sheathing his sword and adopting an Iaido stance, Bando flexed his muscles until they became so adamant they tore out from the sleeves of his robe. The samurai's skin became swollen red from the incredible physical fatigue and tension he put his body through to prepare for his ace technique. "Gorokizu!" he bellowed out, drawing his blade with so much physical force that he became a core to a horizontal pot-shaped concussive boom. Bando drilled into the core of his opponent before giving up in a snap and vanishing without a trace. Having abandoned all the relentless hyper-tension force permeating his entire body, Bando switched to the sneaky and hi-speed dash of a shinobi and appeared behind his foe, right where the nape of his neck would've been, and let him have it with a downward thrust.
It was only when both halves of the Gorokizu revealed themselves to be ineffective and the rumbling Cursed Warrior emitted another low-pitched croon that trembled the ground underneath his legless bottom. Just as Bando almost resisted the shockwave and quake emanating from the Cursed Warrior's low-pitched croon and avoid the beaming rays of cerulean flames spouting devastating and scorching light in all directions, what the Cursed Warrior took for a light jab blasted him away and etched him into the mountainous ridges in the center of the stage, blowing a path through the crowd of warriors.
The Cursed Warrior crooned again, flexing its massive yet limber and flexible arms about. It raised them up to the central pattern of glyphs right in the middle of the head-like dome atop of its shoulders. An intense cerulean light began emanating from the diamond-shaped space between its clumped fingers and a very distinctive thumb. A beam of cerulean energy, a horizontal pillar of blue light that spat flames in all directions and ignited the surrounding ground from its concentrated heat, locked and drilled its way right toward the trapped and devastated samurai warrior.
A rowdy metallic clang and a thunderous rumbling intercepted the scorching, hissing, and sizzling that the wave of blue flames normally emitted. Ishikawa Bando collided with the front of the beam, pressing his sword into it and splitting the blue flames into two halves that then splintered into smaller branches, barely brushing past Bando's body with nasty burns. Despite avoiding certain obliteration, Ishikawa Bando's shoulders, sides, and thighs began roasting merely from the proximity to the splintering blue flame rays. Still, the wincing and mean-faced samurai warrior clinched his position, and his prized sword didn't budge one step back.
"You dumbass… The nightmares of my past haunt me, but this is just getting ridiculous now…" Ishikawa Bando found it within himself to wheeze out some mean-worded language. The blinding blue light of the radiant flame wave he was splitting apart with his resistant, kenki-infused blade robbed him of clear sight and began singing the hair and smell receptors in his nostrils with a hot sting to it while the deafening clamor of two clashing forces robbed him of hearing. Struggling against an insurmountable force of cursed flames, Ishikawa Bando found himself deprived of all his senses.
This was where mean memories and associations that were so livid in his mind ever since he saw this monster's flames began blowing out the hinges and crawling their way up to the surface. The despair that Ishikawa Bando felt after finding out about his son's failure and the Iron Shogun's demand that his son takes his own life to redeem it, his own pride that burnt away to cinders while he pleaded with the Iron Shogun to let his son become a ronin instead. Everything went white and became too intense to bear!
"A ronin?" the Iron Shogun's voice spread through the hall of his castle while Ishikawa Bando pressed his forehead to the wooden mat. "The issue is that the boy had soiled the shame of a family that has none. You have outlived your lord and yet you did not choose death after his passing, casting a shadow upon the Ishikawa clan. You must have known that it would be up to your descendants to wipe the filth clean of your banner, yet your lone descendant only repeats your mistakes."
"The mistake of outliving an old man?" Ishikawa Bando sat up on his rear. He could feel his face bubbling up, despite his knowledge and resonant mantra that he kept chanting in his mind that showing his displeasure to the Iron Shogun would all but doom his entire bloodline to ruin. "Gobei lost the battle and cost his lord some land. That is the type of failure that casts shame upon a family of swordsmen, but the way to rid yourself of shame is not to spill your guts, it is to correct your mistake!"
"Is that what the Secret Ninja Tribe of Iga taught you, Bando?" Lord Mifune standing by his shogun's side with arms crossed, clad in armor except for his helmet that'd have blocked off the sight of his disapproving scowl. "That is not our way. The way of a samurai has been to follow the bushido and avoid dishonor. Only an honorable death redeems shame. That has always been the case, and both you and your son knew this when you took up the way of the sword. By pouting here like a petulant child, you only further dishonor your bloodline that has served the Land of Iron for centuries. Be the man I mistook you for, Bando. Not the one that cursed the Ishikawa clan to be forgotten in the tides of history."
"My son will face justice. The Ishikawa bloodline is a clan of warriors, we spill our blood on the battlefield and not on sheets and mats…" Ishikawa Bando stood up and stared at the cold, metallic faceplate of the Iron Shogun's helmet that concealed his face. The idea behind this ridiculous show was to portray that the shogun was more than just a man. He represented power and justice itself; therefore, not a single patch of humanity could've been seen from the outside. It was unfortunate that meant that this shogun had purged his humanity from the inside as well.
"This is outlandish!" Ishikawa Bando objected, shattering the façade of etiquette and rushing out in front of his solemn-faced son and putting himself in between the Iron Shogun and the court of lords that had decided his fate. "Death by burning? That's a method of execution meant for heretics, not warriors! I've long since suspected you weren't punishing my son, you were punishing me for training with the Secret Ninja Tribe of Iga. This finally proves it!"
"My Lord!" Lord Mifune turned to the Iron Shogun with a respectful bow of his head. "As outlandish as Ishikawa Bando's transgression is, he speaks a semblance of truth. Even if the boy refused to die an honorable death by seppuku, this is not a method of execution we use for dishonored warriors."
"You didn't let me finish. Ishikawa Bando will join his son for speaking against the Iron Shogun's decision, would you care to join him too since you're second-guessing the Iron Shogun's judgment, Lord Mifune?" Iron Shogun flared the red lights gleaming underneath his helmet through the split for eyes at Mifune.
"I apologize, My Lord. I did not intend to question the Iron Shogun's judgment, merely to ask you to clarify it to help us understand it," Lord Mifune bowed his upper body with a stern expression, unmoved by the prospect of being burned alive, it seemed, as much as the thought of dishonoring the Iron Shogun moved him.
"I intended on beheading your boy, as is customary to dishonored warriors sentenced to death, though I knew you would dishonor yourself and your family further by preventing the execution, Bando. It is because I knew of your attempt to oppose my judgment that I prematurely sentenced both you and your son to death before we even began this trial," the Iron Shogun pointed his finger at Bando. The samurai, clad in a black robe, turned to his son, who had a broken and pale composure to him. It was evident that the young man feared death coming here, though he looked absolutely terrified of this method of execution and what it meant for the Ishikawa name. Worst of all, the boy's eyes shined with a certain gleam of malice to them. Blame directed at his father for their fate.
"Though, because I know how unorthodox such a judgment is, I've decided to not burn you at the stake as the heretics that preceded you in the flames. To do your job as your family patriarch, I've taken it upon myself to salvage your sullied family name, Bando. I've chosen a warrior's death in flames for you and your son!" the Iron Shogun turned behind him and waved his hand with metallic clinks to his armor. By his invitation, a shinobi clad in a black samurai's robe not to stand out in the Land of Iron and wearing a full red heavy armor atop of his chest with golden ropes tightening it around his body appeared on the stand without as much as a noise.
"Hiroyuki Ogata!" Ishikawa Bando exclaimed, identifying a fellow ninja from the Secret Tribe of Iga. "What are you doing here?"
"While a ninja is a lowly breed of warrior, an assassin that sneaks around and strikes from the shadows, it is more than you and your son deserve. Some ninja possess the ability to breathe fire and the Secret Tribe of Iga assured me that Ogata here is the greatest fire-breather amongst them. He'll rend the flesh from your bones in seconds and you two shall have your warrior's death you want," the Iron Shogun waved for the shinobi from the Secret Tribe of Iga to do as they contracted him and paid him handsomely to.
"Before this begins, My Lord!" Ishikawa Bando extended his hand as if attempting to block the wall of flames that was about to consume him and his son with his bare hand. "Please, allow me one last request!"
"Very well," the Iron Shogun nodded.
"If Ogata-san does his best and yet the Ishikawa survive the flames, I beg of you to declare that proof of our worth to the Land of Iron and permit my son to serve you as your retainer!" Ishikawa collapsed to the floor and pressed his head to the ground in a most humbled request.
"Very well, if, somehow, your son survives the Fire Style flames of a shinobi hailing from the Secret Tribe of Iga, whose prowess you yourself can vouch for, I shall permit your son to serve me as my retainer and the shame soiling the good name of the Ishikawa family shall be burnt away by these flames," the Iron Shogun nodded. "However, if I see that this ninja here is pulling his punches with his fire-breathing, I'll just boil all three of you and toss your wife into the pot for good measure."
Hiroyuki Ogata went through a collection of hand seals before drawing a vast amount of air into his lungs, inflating his chest to the point of hilarity. "Fire Style: Great Fire Destruction!" the Iga shinobi chanted out before expelling from his mouth a massive stream of intense flames that set the entire stand where the accused and his father stood. Ishikawa Bando crossed his arms and coated his entire body with the energy these ninja called "chakra". Ishikawa Bando drew his sword and transferred the chakra into a coating covering it, smashing its blade against the sea of flames and feeling the blaze surrounding him.
Heat. Uncontrollable, uncompromising. No air to breathe, just fire to burn one's body from the inside. Feeling his armor popping out and falling apart, his robe burning away and patches of burnt skin forming on his body, Ishikawa Bando held his own against the tide of the flames and forced his coated sword to stand like a beacon, like a lighthouse and a pillar against the sea of flames. Hiroyuki Ogata didn't make the Iron Shogun question his intentions for a second. What might have lasted eight minutes felt like eight whole hours to Bando. Then, when the flames stopped and Bando collapsed on his knees, plunging his sword into the mat just so that he could remain on his knees before the man sentencing him to death, he glanced back only to see a charred skeleton of his son behind him.
"This is an unexpected turnout…" the Iron Shogun sighed. "Your son died, yet you survived. That wasn't in our deal now, was it? It doesn't feel like the Iga shinobi held anything back either… State your terms, Ishikawa Bando, your family's honor is preserved in the sacrifice of your son and your resolve triumphing over the fire itself."
"It is my understanding that I am a criminal, sentenced to death right now," Ishikawa Bando muttered, taking an uncomfortable pause to regain his composure and to raise his smoldering, hairless body off the mat to face his shogun. "I'd like my earlier status as a ronin restored."
"Ronin?" Lord Mifune raised his eyebrow. "You could request becoming a samurai again, you can pick any lord from amongst the Iron Shogun's court and you can even request to take your son's place as Iron Shogun's retainer instead. You would choose to remain a purposeless vagabond instead?"
"I would. My loyalty now lies with the Land of Iron, not the Iron Shogun who had my son killed," Ishikawa Bando straightened his back and flipped his chipped sword over his shoulder while casting a mean look the Iron Shogun's way. Some lords in the court grabbed the hilts of their swords at the tremendous disrespect this scoundrel showed, but the Iron Shogun's raised arm silenced their wrath.
"Very well, you can have your status as a ronin back. Though if the Land of Iron still needs your services in the future, I'd like to know where I could find you. Will you join the Secret Ninja Tribe of Iga again? If so, I'd like to know you won't charge me Iga rates for what is your duty as a ronin of the Land of Iron," the Iron Shogun said.
"I shall do what we expect of ronin. Wander. I shall not be a part of a tribe that burnt my son for pardons and gold, nor do I consider them my comrades any longer. I'm afraid I cannot tell you where I'll be when you have need of me, My Lord. That is because I myself do not know that yet," Ishikawa Bando turned around, still smoldering on the shoulders and grievously burnt on the back where the flames converged after being split and immolated his son. The wounded ronin left the palace surrounded by silence from the flabbergasted noblemen and samurai attending the trial.
With a sense of new life ignited in him, Ishikawa Bando began crying aloud, though he himself could not hear the volume of his hearty clamor. Powering through the wave of cerulean flames, the swordsman slashed with a crescent-shaped projectile and split the wave apart, snuffing the flames out except for where they've ignited the tiles and the ground and covered the stage in merciless blue flames of curse energy. With whited-out eyes and his burns aggravated all over his body and made far worse by the much more powerful wave of flames, Ishikawa Bando stared onward, without realizing that the golem of obsidian and cursed chakra he was facing found squads of other warriors jumping it from the side.
Despite the torment, despite the aggravation, the area behind Ishikawa Bando was safe and untouched. Almost a little cool as the trace of air trying to escape permeation with the blaze fled in a sweet spot of shade behind him where the mountainous ridge loomed and helped the cool air grow and prosper in its cover. Even if it was eight years too late to protect that spot…