A handful of mounted and armored swordsmen rode through frozen rocky wastelands at the southern edges of the Land of Frost. The party of men was sizeable, yet only a handful of them intended to join the Battle Royale in the Land of Wind. The rest were expendable bodyguards. Swords looking to make a name for themselves protecting their shogun or die trying.
"Are you sure that your man will be here?" Konishi Gokojin, a veteran samurai with silver hair and a distinguished ledger of exemplary service, asked, turning to Lord Mifune, the right hand of the Iron Shogun himself. "We are taking double time and wearing out the horses roaming these rocky fields and the south of Land of Frost may not be near as frigid as the rest, but it makes little difference when the rocks wear out the hooves of our mounts and we have nothing to bolster our rations because nothing grows on rocks."
"Who can say?" Lord Mifune shrugged. "The man is an outlaw, so he may as well be just about anywhere. Though I have it on good authority that Soragen Hanamuro and his band operate in this area. With this many horses and looking like a billion ryo, armed to the teeth, we're bound to run into him, eventually. As you've said, nothing grows here. That makes bandits like him desperate."
"Desperate enough to attack the Iron Shogun even?" a one-eyed samurai with spiky and unkempt brown hair and a black headband that had a spot for covering the swordsman's right eye alongside the rest of the upper right side of his face asked, turning to Lord Mifune. "I find that hard to believe. Even if your bandit can't recognize you or me, or any of the other fine swordsmen in this company, it's impossible to mistake the Iron Shogun's armor for anything else. I've heard even the Kazekage pays homage to the fabled figure of the Iron Shogun, his name is that well-known."
"Oh, Soragen knows just about anyone who's anyone in terms of swordsmanship. He would know you or me, he'd name any swordsman in this company who's a worthy challenge to him. He just doesn't think much, at all, in fact," Lord Mifune closed his eyes, realizing that he wasn't portraying the tenth member of their faction in the best of lights.
"If he is so thoughtless, why do we need him? There are plenty of fine young swordsmen who would take his spot. Any of the New Shinsengumi captains or the vice-captains…" Gokojin didn't let up. Though his tone suggested that he wasn't trying to change Lord Mifune's mind about picking up this swordsman. He just wanted to understand the thought process better.
"None of the New Shinsengumi come with a personal recommendation from Tamasatsu Hashin himself and he's fought most of them. The only reason they are alive is because they were never his target, only in his way," Lord Mifune replied.
"Really? Young man Hashin recommended this man?" Gokojin exclaimed with a look of grand surprise. "It's not like him to request things or to pay compliments. Young Hashin is as stoic as they come. This Soragen must have truly made an impression."
"What is that?" the Iron Shogun wondered, raising his right arm, and pointing at a curious scene atop of a rocky peak canyon over a frozen creek. The canyon had a handful of trees with sprouted leafage and thick, almost scaly roots that burrowed into the stone and held the mountain peak together from collapsing and impounding the creek. On one of those tree branches, over the canyon, dangled a man with shaggy black hair.
"Figures…" Lord Mifune shook his head and covered his face in embarrassment. "He's already being hung for his crimes."
"H-Hung!?" Gokojin exclaimed. "That's no punishment for a descendant of a samurai family, even if he is disgracing the name of his bloodline. "Buddha Chop!" he chanted. The old man drew his sword and grabbed the hilt with both hands while performing a broad stroke. A powerful influx of kenki surged through the sword of the veteran samurai and went off, slicing the rope off and leaving the hanging man to plunge all the way down into the frozen creek.
A handful of unimpressive-looking men armed with plain swords, axes, and hammers began shouting something unintelligible off of the peak of the mountain, waving their guns and clamoring for blood and heads of those that would free the man they were hanging. Gokojin positioned his sword to the side, ready to strike the air again, and split the mountain alongside the boisterous crowd of commoners. That was when they began pointing at the Iron Shogun and the expensive armor and weaponry that the interlopers lugged around, causing the loudmouthed party to scatter.
It was up to Lord Mifune to navigate his horse around and over the rocks with the utmost care if he sought to pull the fallen swordsman out of the creek. Even though the hanging man soared for well over a hundred meters and punched through a thick layer of ice with his head, if he wasn't sturdy enough to survive such a fall, he'd have been useless to the samurai, anyway. Hanamuro Soragen pulled himself out from the brisk creek and panted, sprawled out on the snowy rock side before noticing Lord Mifune leaning over him, still mounted.
"You are of honorable descent from the Hanamuro bloodline of samurai. You are the tenth generation of samurai in your family. I don't believe that these commoners would invoke the wrath of the Iron Shogun by meting out such an embarrassing punishment to an esteemed member of his elite warrior clan, even if you haven't acted like one for dozens of years," Lord Mifune scolded Hanamuro Soragen for withholding such vital information from the men that tried to hang him like some common marauder.
"Yeah? Well, maybe that doesn't mean jack shit to me and maybe I deserve to hang like an ordinary horse thief? Did you ever think about that?" Soragen scrambled back to his feet and began wringing his drenched clothes.
"Hashin was right. You truly don't think ahead at all," Lord Mifune squinted with ire blazing in his eyes. "Come with us. We are riding to Wind Country on a mission to fight in a tournament in the Sun Disc arena for the prize of the entire Agbarah Sheikhate. If you fight and help us win that patch of land for the Iron Shogun, all of your crimes will be forgiven, and the Iron Shogun will grant you any available military position. You might still redeem yourself in front of your family."
"Any military position? Shit… You mean I could just become the Shogun's bodyguard or some shit and just kick back, breeze through the easy street, screw hot courtesans, gamble, drink, and kill any commoners to my heart's extent, leaving all the warring to the samurai while I babysit the Iron Shogun?" Soragen seemed to cringe at the very idea, despite making it sound like quite a lucrative offer.
"I wouldn't have put it quite as crassly as you did, but yes. I imagine you could," Lord Mifune looked at this wringing and stretching vagabond as if he was contemplating if he shouldn't just cut him down himself right there and now and just tell the rest of the company that Soragen didn't survive the fall.
"Huh… Man, I'd have really fucking loved that some time ago… But that just ain't me anymore. Right now I'm just looking for penance, understand? You just took away the one thing I wanted and you're essentially telling me to work hard so that I can get something I no longer give a shit about," Soragen grumbled out, rolling up his trousers and crawling back into the creek. With his arms plunged to the elbows, he sought for his sword until he found it at the very bottom stuck to some rocks.
"If it is death you seek, there will be plenty of warriors that can give it to you. Wouldn't you rather die a warrior's death in a tournament rather than be hung like the worst form of degenerate lowlife?" Lord Mifune felt himself plunging down to the level of filth his conversant was splashing around in and flinging in all directions. Soragen had this quality of reducing any interaction down to his level of degeneracy.
"Huh? Haven't you heard me, you pretentious prick? I don't deserve a warrior's death! I deserved to hang over the canyon with my guts let out, but nobody amongst those merchants was man enough to slit me open," Soragen straightened his back and gave a death-inducing stare to Lord Mifune. Even though the shaggy-haired samurai didn't as much as flinch his hand toward drawing his sword, Mifune had never felt in this much danger of sudden and absolute murder in his entire life. The intensity to which Soragen brought this situation with his bestial eyes alone made the heartbeat of the right hand of the Iron Shogun skip a few beats.
Just as Lord Mifune leaned for the naginata hanging on the side of his horse, he heard cheerful clamoring behind him. Exhaling, he turned to witness the entire Iron Shogun's company gathering behind him. Lord Mifune caught himself fearing that they came here only to see him get murdered but when he turned back to the shaggy-haired vagabond, all his violent intent looked snuffed out and the sniffling swordsman began dragging himself onto the rocky platform over the creek while pulling his wet clothes that kept getting stuck on jagged edges everywhere.
"Good! Soragen is alive!" the veteran samurai Gokojin exclaimed. "Did you brief him in yet?"
'He did," Soragen waved at the company. "I'm supposed to help you guys fight in some tournament, right? I get any available military position if I win."
"Does that arrangement suit you?" the one-eyed, brown-haired samurai crossed his arms. Despite only having one half of his face able to see, this one seemed to be more perceptive than the rest and he must have gotten some semblance of a whiff of the unrest that existed between Lord Mifune and the shaggy-haired samurai misfit.
"Beats getting hung with your guts in," Soragen shrugged. As he was walking past Lord Mifune, the officer's firm hand slammed over his shoulder and stopped him while the rest of the company turned to continue their ride so that they made it to the registration in time.
"If you fight alongside us, you fight like a samurai. You cherish and protect your honor and you kill anyone who would question it. You may not look like it, but you're a tenth-generation samurai. Dishonor against you now dishonors your entire family and, given your record, it's tough to say how long your old folks will last against the wave of dishonor before resorting to restoring the family honor with their own blood," Lord Mifune hissed at the scoundrel who dared feel embarrassed by a legacy that anyone in the Iron Country would commit the worst kinds of atrocities imaginable for.
"Yeah, yeah, I was a samurai for seven years, you know. I know how it goes…" Soragen brushed Lord Mifune's gauntlet away and began leisurely strutting after the horses.
"Don't you want a steed of your own?" Lord Mifune scoffed at Soragen's method of travel.
"I've had enough steeds, I think. It's because of those cursed animals I had to kill my comrades. People I ate a pound of salt alongside of every day would have slit my throat for a couple of horses' worth of ryo," Soragen became sullen and extended his hands toward Lord Mifune. "If you want to make up for ruining my penance, tie my arms or feet and drag me all the way to Wind Country."
A deafening smack echoed through the rocky creek canyon. "Which part of protecting your honor at all costs is tough for you to commit to that ringer of yours?" Lord Mifune seethed, pulling his arm away from a backhand smack position and riding off after the company. "If you run off, we'll replace you with one of the bodyguards. There are dozens of promising young swordsmen who would offer their own eye for the chance you were given," Mifune hissed after briefly turning back to Soragen's disgruntled expression and riding off again.
"Fire Style: Burning Heart!" Jinko drew a mass of air into her lungs after completing her healing process. Her chest inflated several times over before the tension forced her to breathe out a pyroclasm of flames. Jinko's hands formed a heart shape and as the blob of flames sifted through it, the firestorm adopted a heart-like shape on its path, racing toward Soragen.
Blowing air out through his mouth and closing his eyes, the unkempt swordsman vanished in a sky-blue hypersonic dash. The tunneling airwave burst with a shockwave just around a meter short of collision with the fireball while Soragen vaulted over it with a graceful yet reckless backflip. His sword remained by his side and lowered. It was as if the shaggy-haired vagabond had absolutely no qualms about staying defenseless and invested none of his swordsmanship efforts into self-defense.
Jinko's eyes blanked out as Soragen landed on the ground with a light tap of his sandals. "Spirit Art: Gorgon!" Vatee hissed, sending a resonant telepathic pulse while her eyes beamed an ephemeral crimson laser directly at the exposed back of the swordsman. Somehow, Soragen had enough perception to not blindly dash straight at Jinko and get caught in Gorgon. Immediately after landing, he vaulted with an overhead roll to the right side and began shuffling around the arena, eluding the repeated Gorgon blasts that would have petrified him if they connected.
Mana, still trapped in her collapsing stone prison of a body, charged forward, goring the Burning Heart fireball head-on and charging for Soragen alongside it. Instead of trying to nail her illusive opponent with a precise and deadly attack, Mana planned on hitting as wide of a range as possible with an explosive aftermath that would've made it impossible to evade harm through being acrobatic alone. It would be difficult for the raggedy samurai to move so effortlessly with without the burden of excessive thoughts when his entire body was aching with bruises and burns.
With a glint of light emanating from the crystal-clear eyes of Soragen, the unimpressive-looking swordsman drew half of his sword, deflecting a blast of Gorgon coming right at him at the Burning Heart fireball and causing it to petrify while still stuck to the cracked head of Mana's Five-Tails statue body. Despite Mana's most stalwart demands for her body to keep going, her over-encumbered head and front slammed down on the ground while the cracks present all over the statue form threatened to finally make her body cave in and crumble.
With fists blaring with blue chakra flames, Jinko charged forward, having caught on to Mana's idea of causing widespread and calamitous destruction that was impossible to entirely avoid with precise and flawless evasive movement. Sheathing his sword back, Soragen shuffled his feet and brought his body toward the attacking medical kunoichi rather than fleeing her brutish offensive. With his sword still sheathed, the shaggy-haired swordsman answered every blow with a punishing smack of his sheathe, slipped blows that wouldn't threaten him, and intercepted those that would have by halting them with a precise thrust to the joints.
"Damn it!" Jinko cursed, her face was overflowing with emotion, and in her adrenaline rush, she felt unstoppable. Pulling her right fist back, she transformed the blue chakra flare of the Herculean Strength of medical ninjutsu into a fiery flare, rotating with blazing jets with a scorching, red-hot core surrounding her fist with heat so intense that it was glowing with a bright white outline around the fist. "Heat Beat!" she clamored, thrusting the charged fist and shooting out a tunneling wave of flames drilling outward toward her punch.
It was as if Soragen moved in stopped time. Even though that was not even remotely the case, his unruly ability to begin a perfect counter at the same time that an attack was coming his way meant that just about any potential attack was useless against him. In the same way, shuffling his feet with impeccable footwork, Soragen slipped the Heat Beat and moved in from Jinko's side before slipping behind her. The terrified eyes of the medical kunoichi followed her the entire way.
With a flickering motion, Soragen thrust his sheathed sword into her solar plexus the moment Jinko tried to recover, turn around and protect herself. Jinko's eyes blanked out, and she spat out bile from her mouth while her knees crumbled. Drawing his sword, Soragen slashed at the young woman's knees, slipping the blade just under her kneecaps before flipping into a vertical roll and kicking her straight into the wound, then one into her chest and the back of her head.
Limp and visibly unconscious, Jinko flew spinning wildly toward the arena's edge. Feeling the cumbersome load on the front of her head lightening as Jinko's Heat Beat had shattered the massive petrified firestorm stuck on the horns of Mana's stone body, Mana charged to intercept Jinko but she felt a tight and restrictive pressure around her entire body. Vatee wrapped her serpentine, segmented body all around the joints of Mana's dolphin-horse stone body and put a squeeze on them to restrain Mana so that Jinko could fly out of bounds.
"What are you doing!? We could have saved her!" Mana hissed at Vatee with a spiteful telekinetic pulse.
"Yes, that's exactly what he was counting on," Vatee's soothing mind poured all over Mana's wildfire. "Look."
Just as Vatee said, Soragen's body had dipped down, as if the vertebrae of his lower back had buckled and it was heavy for him to keep both his hands up. His eyes were fully closed and his mouth was peacefully breathing in and out. He reminded Mana of the predators she saw in the Forest of Death, waiting for their prey to invest into a movement, at which point he would strike in the exact way needed to end their lives.
"Whatever we do, he has a perfect response. If we want to return to our original bodies and win this tournament, we need to consider if we want to fight every battle," Vatee tried to scope out the tension in Mana's statue body, looking for an opening to let go when she knew Mana wouldn't be doing something profoundly stupid.
"Well…" Soragen suddenly dropped his murderous state of giving free rein to his subconscious and straightened his back out. It genuinely looked like the gambling, womanizing, and drinking vagabond swordsman was back in charge of his own mind, rather than surrendering to some fighting instinct that drove his body into battle. "As I've said, I really wish she didn't insult my honor. Too bad I can't kill her now that she's out of bounds."
It only now occurred to Mana that he might not have even known that either she or Vatee could hear or understand him. In that case, whom might he have been talking to just now? It was as if this man was trying to fool someone more than himself. Evidently, he thought himself successful in that task, as he shoved his sheathed sword back behind the belt and turned around to leave.
"With Jinko gone, he's got no reason to fight either of us. He was hitting on her, then he got mad at her for shit-talking his honor as a samurai. Unless you want your crumbling body to fail you and your spirit to evaporate into thin air, leaving your body back at the Conductor's HQ for dead, you better not fight unless it is to protect this body and stay in this competition," Vatee warned Mana. "That young lady seemed like a fine and genuine person, but I won't sacrifice my chance to see my family over just some random nice person I meet. You're my key to seeing my family again, so start acting like it."
With Vatee slipping off her back, Mana looked around, trying to see where Soragen would wander off to but the man shuffled into the crowd of swooping Cursed Warriors and clashing armored giants, hurling fireballs and vicious lightning storms raging all across the arena.
"Against all odds, Soragen Hanamuro managed to eliminate Jinko Shinza and slip away with his life and his head still very much in this competition! With this incredible elimination, we now have 85 competitors left to determine the Top 16! When you think about it, half of those that have entered have already been eliminated! The competition for the spot in the Top 16 is only going to get fiercer from this point on!" the announcer made Jinko's elimination official.
Author's Note: It's that time of the year again. I think I'm currently at a good place to leave the story hanging and take a short break while I work on the 8th Annual. As always, I'll post it on the 25th of June. To those who are sick of this tournament arc already (which I assume is literally everyone who's stuck with the story up to this point), I can offer a little spoiler that the Annual story will have nothing to do with the tournament and will be a self-contained storyline centered around the mission to recover Mana's body from the Conductor. It's going to have the rest of the Stars working alongside some of Mana's old friends to investigate her alleged disappearance and recover her physical body from the Conductor's clutches. This is one of those rare cases where I've paced myself perfectly and according to my plan to get through half of the Battle Royale (technically a bit more than half, but I always planned to stop at 85 before transitioning into this important side story) and tell this story as an Annual. Usually, my dreadful pacing drags the story down and things end up lasting way longer than I expect, but this is pretty much the first time that I ended up exactly where I wanted to be at this point in time. Here's to hoping that the Annual will end up being a blast too!