Hypnotic grasshopper snapping spread far into the night. Alongside the soothing burn of the paper lanterns hanging on the side of an abandoned wooden building in the rural area of the Iron Country, these majestic insects formed a captivating impression of summer tranquility. One could have picked their songs up even in the background of a network of near-freezing waterfalls washing the shores of the district from nearby mountain rocks.
The broad-shouldered colossus with slicked back greasy black hair slid the paper door open, terrifying the gathered men that sat around a pot of bubbling broth and made the women wrapped around their shoulders whimper and hide behind their company. Asking no questions, the vice-captain of the New Shinsengumi, Okurimi Mibu, drew his sword and raised it all the way until its tip touched the paper ceiling.
"What is going on? Why is the New Shinsengumi here?" one man asked. There was a certain bitterness to his voice. As a member of the civilian population of the Iron Country, he didn't enjoy the same political rights as the military class, but it was unheard of that a band of merchants would be attacked by the justiciars of the Iron Country indiscriminately and without just cause. He had no probable grounds for outrage, but the sense of being treated unfairly still dripped from the tip of his tongue.
Without answering, Okurimi Mibu lowered his sword, causing a hail of arm-long, thick arrows the size of javelins to rip through the building walls and perforate the distraught merchants and their company, pinning them to the walls or blasting them out of the building entirely and sending them screaming and flying off the valley waterfalls or pinning them to stone or one of dozen thick apple trees.
With a methodical and slow step, Okurimi Mibu advanced across the first floor of the building. His blade danced with invisible to the ordinary eye swiftness, shredding and filleting man and woman alike into fist-sized cubicles of muscle in a split-instant and splattering blood across the white fabric in quantities so hefty that they tore through and raked the paper walls down by its density alone. With the blood-soaked paper walls ripping apart, the terrified eyes of the New Shinsengumi squad observing their vice-captain's carnage and giving each other stray stares revealed themselves. Some lawmen of the Iron Country dropped their bows from their shaking hands.
"I-Innocent people… Did we really sign up for this?" a swordsman of the New Shinsengumi teared up with a wrinkly hand covering his face. Even the cruelest of the samurai had an excuse for butchering entire settlements of peasants when they felt like showing off the mightiness of their blades and their immovable will. Not even psychopathic samurai, with no respect for the rights or lives of peasants, dared butcher merchants.
"Innocent…?" Okurimi Mibu turned his head to his trusted right-hand man Soji, who stood with his sword drawn in his hand on the front lines of the New Shinsengumi squad. A lifeless body of a woman impaled on Mibu's sword and raised over his head smashed through the ceiling into the second floor and broken at the same time as the butcher drained her of her blood and stabbed through her heart, killing her in a dozen ways at once slipped lower on the blade holding her up. With one yank, Okurimi Mibu pulled the blade out and caught the woman's limp body before positioning her on the floor.
"What does he mean by innocent, Soji? I thought this was an insurgent hideout…" Okurimi Mibu addressed his most trusted brother-in-arms while kneeling by the side of the woman he had just slain. The haunting face of death was forever frozen in her expression, her robe soaked with blood to where the color of her robe was impossible to determine and her well-done hair sprawled across the floor like a stomped jar of ink.
"No, this was merely an evening meeting between merchant families. The women were courtesans, so I suppose you could say they weren't entirely innocent, though their wrongdoings are more of a moral nature rather than criminal. Then again, sometimes it is tough to say what exactly you consider evil, vice-captain, that which is illegal, or that which is merely morally wrong…" Soji shook his head before becoming entranced by his confusion over his superior's stumping philosophy. "Sorry, vice-captain. You've taken this crusade of yours too far. What you bring about isn't justice, it's retributive, mindless carnage. For the sake of social peace with the civilians, the Shogun and the other captains justified your execution."
"Soji…" Okurimi Mibu blinked in disbelief. The entire gang under vice-captain Mibu's command poured down at the confused swordsman at once. They plunged their swords in or merely tackled their leader with brave shoulder charges, intending to bring the man down rather than be the ones to take him out. "All of you… Evil…"
A sharp, metallic hiss echoed through the bloody site of bloodshed, splattering the surrounding New Shinsengumi swordsmen into a shower of gore and body parts. A handful of their swords remained stuck through Okurimi Mibu's body with the detached arms of their wielder still locked around the hilts of their trusted swords long after the bloody demise of the swordsmen.
"Neither of the captains approved bloodying their hands with this matter, but all of them agreed it had to be done. If the Shogun or one of his Inner Circle did it, they'd have gone back on the word that they personally gave you the day you joined the group. The Shogun cannot afford to dishonor himself like this. It had to be me, meaning that I needed something to slow you down. None of these fine swordsmen would've laid a hand on you unless you wanted them to kill you for the sin of having slaughtered innocent people. It's over vice-captain. I'm sorry," Soji took a low sword-fighting stance and pulled the hilt of his sword back while aiming the tip of the sword at his superior, preparing for the finishing blow.
"It's not over as long as you still draw breath. As long as those treacherous captains, the nobles, and the Iron Shogun draw breath. I declare I refuse to die until I see justice for the lives of these people you treated as sacrificial lambs for a mere chance at my life," Okurimi Mibu pulled a sword sticking from his chest out and grabbed its blade with his right hand, squeezing it until he filled an entire sake bowl full of his blood and sealed this oath of his.
"This is lunacy! You would treat with those monsters? They have no honor, they'd cut their own mothers' heads off and piss into their skulls just so they could gather us all in one place and snuff us out!" a man dressed as a vagabond with rough facial features, rugged and rich facial hair, and shoulder-long messy brown hair grumbled at his brothers in arms.
"Honor is one thing they take pride in. Whenever one of our own was captured or slain, it was either in proper combat or silence and surprise. Never once has a samurai tricked us. They consider it something disgraceful. Deceit is one thing they keep accusing us of, it's the thing they never trust ninja for, remember?" another brigand replied to his worked-up friend.
Hearing horses and yelling outside, the mercenaries, armed farmers and self-made soldiers, and insurgents of different breeds from many varied groups with different demands guiding them along scurried outside to meet their fates. The Iron Shogun had ridden to this remote location accompanied by all eight of the current captains of the New Shinsengumi. After riding close enough, the Iron Shogun picked up a polearm and cut a bound body his horse had been dragging all this way. Stabbing it with the tip of his weapon, the Iron Shogun raised the cumbersome body to show the insurgents, and the disgruntled civilians and tossed it at them.
"This is the body of the vice-captain of the New Shinsengumi, Okurimi Mibu. He's the one you call the Mad Dog and the Devil's Reject. Do with him what you will. He is no longer suited for military service after his own men betrayed him. After you're done with him, get back to work. The next time I hear of your treason, I'll see that you meet the same fate as this rabid demon in human skin, except your punishment will be public," the Iron Shogun explained his part of the deal.
"So, you've had some ambitious swordsman cut your own man up and labeled him unfit for military service just so you could feed him to us as a peasant, as one of our own?" a masked man in a dirty farmer's getup looked up at the red torchlights beaming from the Iron Shogun's helmet.
"I'd pick your next words carefully, scum," captain Kondo warned the insurgent. "If you insult the honor of the Iron Shogun, whatever deal you've struck with the nobles will no longer keep you safe. The fact of the matter is that Okurimi Mibu is unfit to serve as a soldier, meaning that he is one of you - a peasant. A warrior does not owe lowlife drones his honor."
"This… This man is the Mad Dog?" another insurgent couldn't pull his eyes away from the bundle of swelling and blood twitching in front of him. "The Devil's Reject?"
"More like a man the devil disowned… Look at him, after all that beating, he's still kicking. He's still alive…!" another insurgent noted, poking the thrashing pile of blood and gore with his fork.
"Not even the devil will take this monster in!" someone from the bustling crowd cheered with a meat cleaver pumping into the night sky.
"And what of the man that captured this monster? Have you killed him?" one of the leaders of the insurgents standing in front of the bundled group of misfits and self-made rebels asked.
"It was a fellow New Shinsengumi officer who captured Okurimi Mibu, however, he captured the vice-captain through trickery and betrayal which, even if he was tasked by his superiors to capture Okurimi Mibu, is not the way of a samurai. Because the young man succeeded in a mission handed down to him by his superiors, he secured his life and military service, however, because he dishonored the warrior's path and admitted to it, he now lives as a ronin and will remain one until the end of his days," the Iron Shogun answered. "Don't bother trying to reach out to young Soji. He remains loyal to my government and chose dishonor instead of failure. He was a true soldier, able to choose that which was necessary over that which was right. His only flaw was his weakness that prevented him from overcoming his trials honorably."
"I don't think I will ever understand this Bushido of yours…" a round-bellied insurgent scratched his neck with a baffled look on his face.
"As I've said, I'm washing my hands off this peasant. Beat him, torture him, kill him, burn the body if you like. This is as much a quarter as I will give you traitors. Have your fun and go back to your furrows, your stinking cows, your ginger wives, and snot-nosed brats. If you don't, you'll become the enemy of the Iron Country and face the full might of a country defined by its ruling military class. Entire countries and villages folded against us, you'll fare no better than Okurimi Mibu here," the Iron Shogun reported with a stern, cybernetically augmented tone and turned his horse around.
Without saying their farewells, the Iron Shogun and the rest of the New Shinsengumi leadership took off, leaving naked, cut-up, beaten, and bloodied Okurimi Mibu at the mercy of the villagers he had scorned by treating as nothing more than loathsome criminals whose crimes, petty and grave alike, Okurimi Mibu punished with the full severity of his blade.
"You heard the man," an insurgent raised his woodcutting ax over his head, encouraging the rest of the insurgents, most of which had rebelled specifically because of the excessive savagery of the very man laying underneath their feet. "The devil won't take this demon back in, so it's up to us to fuck him up so bad that the devil won't recognize his favorite bastard anymore!"
Anyone passing by that place at that time was lucky for the cover of night, doing its best to preserve the sanity of any outsider beholding the lynch mob doing what lynch mobs did best. Ironically enough, plunging themselves into the same depths of debauchery and scapegoating as an excuse to let their inner ogres out and be as violent as their humanity compelled them to be. Nothing but wet thumps, cracks, and thuds, the smell of sweat and blood in the air, and crazed, bloodshot eyes all around. Not even when their chosen tools of inflicting pain and death broke did it stop the insurgents from laying their hearts out upon the bound and crushed manslayer rendered unrecognizable by the punishment laid out upon him. They simply employed their boots or bare feet, fists, and stones for the monumental task of delivering a man to hell whom hell wanted to have nothing in common with.
The struggle between the land of man and the realm of hellfire and malice for who got to keep Okurimi Mibu raged through the night with each plane of existence doing its best to force the other to keep the Man the Devil Disowned.
"Evil… Now!" Okurimi Mibu bellowed from the bottom of his chest, throwing his arm up and swinging a chipped sword to answer the glide of the Exterminator that targeted his head for the taking. The sword cracked through the triangular kite and collided with the radiator head of the Exterminator, smashing into the center of the Exterminator's head and spitting out sparks in all directions.
"Wh… What!?" the Exterminator had the time to bark out before Okurimi Mibu's sword chipped off in half and his broken kite led to the radiator head slamming headfirst into the ground and digging out a ridge in the arena floor. "B-But… I'm killing monsters… I'm not evil… You know it yourself!"
"Slay… Evil… Now…" Okurimi Mibu wheezed with malicious intent, approaching the fallen and crawling Exterminator one step at a time, slowly, methodically, knowing that there was nowhere that his opponent could've run or hidden while still competing in this battle royale. For the rest of the tournament, Okurimi Mibu had his hands all over anyone in the bounds of this ring.
"You would raise your sword against an innocent? You're so far gone in your mad quest for punishing the wicked?" the radiator head scrambled back to his feet, drawing two plastic gadgets from the pouches crossed around his waist and pushing the triggers on the sides with his thumbs. These triggers forced thin retractable blades to pop out from the plastic gadgets. The Exterminator swiped his swords to the sides and ripped his beige exterminator's jumpsuit apart as twin wings of retractable blades appeared from underneath the shoulder blades of the human body hiding underneath the radiator head.
"Just what sort of quirky warriors are these Exterminators!?" the announcer grabbed his head in a wild reaction. "That body seems equipped with all sorts of gadgets needed for slaying monsters, but it's impossible to say where the human ends and where extermination equipment begins!"
Truthfully to the announcer's statement, the pale body of flesh and blood underneath looked as if it couldn't have belonged to the radiator-headed Exterminator in the first place but was instead just another skinsuit stitched together from strips of flesh and suited over a skeleton of retractable blades. The extending wings of thin steel hooked to the pale skin and unraveled it like twisted angel wings. The pipes sticking out from the back of the radiator head vented white fumes and shot the Exterminator into the air while it employed its skin-suit wings spread over a frame of retractable blades to assist in his gliding.
Grumbling and possessed, with visible difficulty bending underneath his waist, Okurimi Mibu leaned and picked up the chipped-off upper half of his katana, wrapping his cut-up rotten hands around each end of his sword's half. A deafening clang shot out when Okurimi Mibu drove the broken sword half straight into the radiator head like an improvised saw and, where his sword folded, his adamantine will to inflict punishment upon the wicked persevered.
The folded steel sang while forcing its way through the radiator head and splitting it in half. The radiator-head Exterminator split in half by the middle vertically after collision with the chipped half of Okurimi Mibu's sword which the brutal serial killer forced all the way through. Brain matter sloshed from within the split and broken radiator while the skeleton of retractable construction knives flopped in a bag of pale, dead skin. Grabbing hold of the grisly scene and wrapping it all inside the torn beige exterminator's jumpsuit, Okurimi Mibu swung the sash of viscera and flung it off the arena bounds with a vocal splash of the pool out of bounds.
"Slay… Evil… Now…" Okurimi Mibu grumbled, grabbing a broken retractable blade edge off the ground and beginning to advance forward toward the chaos brewing in the arena one step at a time.
"Ow! You just can't avoid seeing this kind of carnage in such a brutal, high-stakes tournament with so many utterly unhinged warriors taking part, but that doesn't make it any easier to witness every time it happens!" the announcer covered up his face and reeled back. "Okurimi Mibu, the serial killer from the Iron Country, exterminated if you will forgive me the pun, the Exterminator Model: Retractable Blade! With this shocking elimination, there are 102 competitors left in the battle royale!"
A howl of mixed reactions echoed through the audience stands. Some of them may not have come for this sort of bloody carnage and exotic sights, but they reveled in them when they got them. Others still may have waited in deep anticipation of each such instance and reveled in them. There were ample those that covered their eyes and looked away from types of blood and carnage that wasn't a usual sight in an arena that served as hallowed grounds for martial arts for so long.