A burly samurai far surpassing anyone in the room in size patiently awaited his audience with the Iron Shogun. Busybody servants of the Shogun buzzed about going through their day-to-day business while the gentle giant did his best to not get in their way. He even stood up to occupy less horizontal space in the busy castle hallway. The plain kimono-clad girl passing him by pushed her short hair behind her right ear and bowed with a buckle in her knees.
"You don't have to bother yourself so much for us commoners," she whimpered out with a mousy squeak.
"Nonsense, ma'am. Please go around with your day and let me know if my presence is a hindrance," the broad-shouldered samurai giant bowed his square-shaped head and rested on the bench while he waited for his audience once more.
He shouldn't have been here. He was wasting time here. While he sat around and spoke with the lords and strategists, scum of all shapes and sizes ravaged the Iron Country people and drained them dry of their willpower to devote their lives to serving the shogun. Even more disgracefully, they took away the lives of the shogun's servants by the dozens and weakened the shogun's power and influence throughout the land. Samurai were a more powerful military force than ninja, yet the continent already sought ninja as the most influential military and espionage force for a few centuries now.
Still, the Iron Shogun himself ordered Mibu to be here. No one would have dared to disobey the shogun's direct order. One's standing in the Iron Country depended entirely on where on the military chain of command one was and the Iron Shogun was at the very top. He could have ordered the entire Iron Country to raze itself to the ground and every peasant and even swordsman alike would have been expected to throw themselves into the pyre.
"The shogun will see you now," a swordsman with a long black ponytail and a dark grey kimono and trousers approached the hallway from a passageway that led deeper into the castle. The hallways where no one was allowed to be unless they had permission or the order of the shogun to be there. Without answering, Mibu stood up and leaned his head while moving past the frame and into the next hallway, then the next. Silently, he followed the samurai into the main room.
All the highest-ranking samurai lords stood lined up from both sides. A handful of the most influential and powerful ones, ones that shared their ranking with the rest but had significantly more accomplishment on the battlefield and the Iron Shogun's unwavering trust in their loyalty, stood by both sides of a crouched titan of iron armor. Mibu had seen the shogun without his armor before. He had been close enough to the shogun's stand during a celebration when the shogun dressed in celebratory kimono robes and not his armor. This cumbersome iron structure easily doubled the shogun's size and probably weighed a hundred and fifty times the man's weight.
The Iron Shogun wore a thick iron gas mask that obstructed his face underneath the classical-style kabuto helmet. The iron gas mask made the shogun's breathing into a heavy, mechanical wheeze while the red goggles beamed a fearsome crimson ray upon the line of the shogun's sight, making the feudal lord look like a midnight owl stalking its prey and inspiring a similar sense of dread in his subjects as an owl did to any mice lucky enough to see it before getting crushed in its talons.
"Okurimi Mibu," the Iron Shogun spoke with an artificially augmented voicebox tune. "I am glad that you have honored me with your presence here. From what Lord Mifune told me, you are to get married soon."
"Yes," Mibu cut it short with a nod. Some lords rustled with unease. Given how Mibu was facing the supreme military leader of the Iron Country, the absolute autocratic superpower of the region, he should have at least bowed his head regarding the man while Mibu spoke with all the manners of a caveman and the bluntness of a farmer.
"I understand my mask and armor are nowhere near as pleasant to look at as your fiancé's face, which is why the fact you've chosen to come here instead of spending as much time with her as you can mean much to me. You could say it was the final test of your devotion to me and you've passed it with flying colors," the Iron Shogun appeared to utterly dismiss what a lesser man would've seen as a challenge to his authority and blatant disrespect. With the armor or without, the Iron Shogun was said to have been a fine soldier on the battlefield and amongst the best swordsmen on the land, so he had no reason to fear the lack of a bow.
"A test, my lord?" Mibu replied with a straight-looking expression once again. His face showed as much emotion and shift between them as the Iron Shogun's iron mask.
"I'm putting a squad together. If you look at the men behind you, they would be your allies and comrades were you to accept joining this squad," the Iron Shogun pointed to the line of several rows of lines of eight behind Mibu. All of them were dressed in light blue haori and plain kimono and hakama underneath with a forehead protector, not unlike those of the ninja. Each one of them had the kanji for "Sen" proudly etched onto the plate.
"What is the purpose of this squad?" Mibu said perhaps the most words yet.
"The purpose of this squad is to, as they put it, "Slay-Evil-Now", it's an ancient mantra, yes, but I'm sure you would agree that there has been quite enough of bandits and brigands abusing my lightening grip around the country. The problem with military dictatorships isn't the military dictatorship itself, it's that people confuse lighter control and exercise of authority for weakness," the Iron Shogun gestured to ward the lined up forty-eight men, all of whom stiffened their backs. "This squad will teach those bandits and wayward ronin the meaning of the Heart of War that they have forgotten during the trying times of peace."
"I will join under one condition," Mibu turned back to the Iron Shogun.
"You would demand your shogun of some conditions?" Lord Mifune scanned this presuming giant with his eyes, figuring where he'd start the daunting task of cutting him down if the Iron Shogun demanded the giant's execution for his insolence. "As a samurai, you should feel honored to be chosen by the shogun for such an esteemed task–to exercise his power, in the first place."
"Now, now… I gave Mibu-san a choice, didn't I?" the Iron Shogun raised his right hand, silencing Lord Mifune's scolding at once. "Please, let me hear your terms and see if they are agreeable."
"The problem with the brewing chaos in the land isn't just in bandits and brigands. It's in samurai as well. They see themselves as superior to commoners and whenever one group of people sees themselves as inherently above the other, that makes the cruelty inherent in each member of that group rear its head. If I were to join your squad, I want to know that this resurrected Shinsengumi of yours will have the authority to cut down samurai and bandits. There is no place for social hierarchies in "Slay-Evil-Now". Your band will be the most effective if I compel them to cut down any trace of evil wherever they see it," Mibu replied, showing himself to be quite eloquent when he deemed necessary.
"That was always the idea…" Iron Shogun replied without skipping a beat. "I have no use for rabid dogs in my service. You would be free to deal with rabid samurai as you would rabid dogs–put them down, if you even can, that is…"
"In that case, I humbly accept your proposition!" Mibu stiffened his massive body and bowed halfway, surprising the present samurai lords who stood uneasy in the presence of this gentle giant who proclaimed his intent in cutting any of them down if he deemed them to be "evil" as he would some lowly peasant trash. It was the fact that Mibu was so wholly defiant with his body language that his low bow surprised the samurai elite present in the shogun's court that day.
"Ew… What is that?" a peasant teen with messy and curly hair pinched his nose and reeled back from the stench coming from his friend's sealed basket that appeared to be causing trouble even for the teen who had been bolstered by the difficult village life.
"My dad butchered a pig last week. This is what I soaked up from that scene alongside a bit of slurry and fresh pig shit," the other chuckled. A handful of younger kids, who seemed frightened by the deed that they were all about to commit together, joined the two.
"I don't know… Do you think it's such a good idea?" an eight-year-old kid dragged his boot across the ground and scratched the back of his head. "What if the samurai see us?"
"They won't if you keep your whiny voice down," the first of the most daring teens pressed his hand against the brat's head and turned it down. "Besides, if they see us, we'll just split and scatter and they won't be able to chase us down in that clunky armor of theirs anyway," the young man snickered.
"I understand being afraid. We've all lived our entire lives being afraid, but that's quite enough of living under the Iron Shogun's boot as second-rate citizens. I've heard that in ninja villages, the commoners have their representatives in the administration, that they are just as involved with all sorts of military decisions and stuff as the ninja. Don't you want to be equal? Haven't you had enough of this stupid dictatorship? I know I have," the one wielding the smelly package handed one handle of it to his snickering friend while another one grabbed it by the bottom of the basket, and the brats prepared to dump the stinky all over the outermost wall of the shogun's castle.
"This is for all the commoner blood you've split, you monster! We want equality, we want our say!" one teen shouted while all together the bunch flung the stinky pig guts, blood, slurry, and feces all over the front wall.
A thud distracted the bunch before they could split. With wavering stares and jarring mouths, they turned to see their friend twitching and spraying blood as the tip of a sword was sticking out from his chest. Lifting the jerking soon-to-be corpse off the ground, Okurimi Mibu of the New Shinsengumi swung him over his head and smashed the boy into the wall and the shit he smeared face-first, splattering him wet and mixing his entrails into the revolting mix he was responsible in slathering the wall of shogun's castle in.
One by one, the kids attempted to scatter, but they were met by the sight of Okurimi Mibu dashing directly in front of them and chasing them each down in a blink with a case of seemingly demonic possession. The fiendish justiciar cut each one of them into pieces with swift and ruthless one-handed swings and reduced each rebellious wanna-be revolutionary teen to head-sized chunks of bloody meat and severed limbs resting on the floor. Bending his arm, Mibu wiped the blade of his katana off the children's blood and returned to the scene.
A pale eight-year-old boy quivered with piss-drenched trousers held by the other members of the New Shinsengumi. While initially, the boy fought for his life with meek attempts to wrestle and fight his way out of the gentle hold of the criminal-hunting squad of Iron Shogun's dogs, once he saw the fiendish sight of blood-drenched Mibu before him and remembered the horrid in their casualness ways in which this giant had dispatched his friends and neighbors just now, the boy collapsed in his piss puddle. His eyes turned in both directions and began twitching, his mouth dropped and he began hyperventilating. At that moment he stopped being human and gave in to the primal instinct of a cornered rabbit, his mind turned off so that it didn't need to face the horror and pain of what was about to happen.
The pain wasn't the worst part, nowhere near as bad as the anxious wait for his grisly end.
"What the actual fuck, Mibu? You mean these revolutionaries you told us about were a bunch of village hicks?" a New Shinsengumi swordsman objected, letting go of the eight-year-old and stomping him into the puddle he made with a foot stomp. The New Shinsengumi swordsman couldn't vent his frustration directly at his superior, so he did so on the child he prevented from getting away.
"Slay-Evil-Now…" Mibu muttered with a stout tone that instilled submission in his fellows as much as it instilled terror in those that heard it as the last thing before being cut down. "Nowhere in this mantra does it say anything about the age of evil. The Iron Shogun is justice. Therefore, opposing the Iron Shogun is the opposite of justice. It is injustice. Injustice is a form of evil therefore, it must be slain."
"Mibu-san…" a younger swordsman from amongst the New Shinsengumi squad stepped out and bowed respectfully before fully addressing his superior. "We've spent four days collecting information and hunting down clues about this supposedly vicious attack on the shogun's castle. You never told us that this would be a bunch of kids acting out. Perhaps the amount of resources we've spent doesn't quite fit the crime we've tried to prevent here…"
"Soji-san, what is the mantra by which we, the New Shinsengumi, live?" Mibu approached the frail-looking swordsman.
"Slay-Evil-Now…" Soji rolled his eyes.
"Does anywhere in this motto it requests that we be proportional to our devotion to slaying evil with the amount of evil we slay?" Mibu barked out like a wolf staring down a young and hungry rival into submission.
"No, sir…" Soji sighed and walked back into formation, sheathing his sword. "All I'm saying is that this mantra of ours has been put together like 400 years ago and it's just three words long, I'm pretty sure even the original Shinsengumi had some additional laws and regulations to go along with it. Just food for thought…"
"Kid…" Mibu approached the fallen eight-year-old who quivered, writhed, and chuckled with a maniacal look on his face as he awaited his impending violent end and the reunion with the older kids that dragged him along this nonsense he wanted no part in. "You'll clean this wall up. I will see you finish it. The rest of you–dismissed."
"H-Huh?" the kid returned to life, confused why the man hadn't chopped him up into meaty cubes like all his friends. "S-Sir… I… I didn't want to do it… The other kids… They were the ones…"
Mibu stomped his foot down, stiffening the kid into the state that came dangerously close to the world's youngest recorded sudden heart attack victim. "Spare your excuses, criminal! You were too weak and young to hold the basket and you've expressed regret about your crime before you committed it. Most importantly, we need someone to clean this filthy mess you've left behind. Your punishment is to clean this wall."
"Sheesh, that vice-captain Mibu. He's tough on crime but…" a New Shinsengumi swordsman sighed while watching that scene transpire and walking away from it. He couldn't have been more excited to remove himself from this disgraceful scene that discredited his service to the New Shinsengumi and the Iron Shogun. "Sometimes he'll be cutting-up hardened murderers and crazed manslayers and sometimes he'll harass a bunch of farm kids with liberal ideas for the future of the country…"
"I hear you, when I found out I was going to work for the guy who got us the privilege of cutting down samurai and aristocracy, I was overjoyed. After all, this was Okurimi Mibu we're talking about, the guy cuts down criminals of all shapes and sizes. The downside is… He cuts down criminals of all shapes and sizes… You know?" shrugging and shaking his head, another swordsman of the New Shinsengumi squad walked off from the scene while Soji ran up to the nearest house, woke up the commoners, and got them to give them a bucket of water for the young kid to work through his punishment.
"Just three weeks ago, a special squad working under the vice-captain cut down the whole Choshu family. They've amassed their fortune from bribes taken from other countries for espionage. It's not like vice-captain is just after the small-fry or anything," Soji grumbled as if trying to get to believe this himself. "Before that, the Tosa and Higo families too… No one's torn apart more foreign spider webs than vice-captain Mibu. They can't all be world-shaking threats, sometimes it's just a bunch of kids being kids."
"But to cut down children like this…" a New Shinsengumi member shook his head as if he was embarrassed by what he was just a part of.
"At least he took the sword up himself, he doesn't leave stuff to us that often. If you're going to be a hard-ass about stuff like this, at least he's pulling his weight and not just bossing us around," another member secured his sword by his side as the New Shinsengumi were walking off their ways to report to the shogun the next morning.
"Sometimes I'd like to be the ones striking the criminals down. Sometimes I wish the vice-captain wasn't as vicious to kids as he is to manslayers and crazed fiends," Soji lamented with bitterness reflecting in his voice.
"What was that girl's name? Fubuki? Fumi…? The guy kicked her down, stabbed her to the ground, spilled kerosene all over her, and lit her on fire. The brat was six years old. The Choshu family may have taken money from the foreigners, but I'm pretty sure the kid wasn't in on it…" another New Shinsengumi swordsman struggled to recall all the details of the vice-captain's exploits.
"Choshu Fukka," Soji corrected his comrade. He wished with all his heart that he had more to correct him about than just the victim's name.