[FFML] [fic][rk][cont] Rurouni Yahiko Chapter 26: The Heaven Sword

[Abdiel]

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Rurouni Yahiko
A Rurouni Kenshin Continuation Fan Fiction
By Chester Castañeda
chester.castaneda at gmail.com
http://www.fanfiction.net/u/223441/

Several characters in this story are in for a rude awakening.


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Chapter 26: The Heaven Sword

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Hindsight was supposedly twenty-twenty. It certainly was the case for
Kaede Morinaga, who for the longest time believed herself to be a boy
care of Mizuki Morinaga's white lie. Her adoptive parent made her think
she was a boy so that she wouldn't follow the prostitute's footsteps.

Little boys could go into a life of prostitution too, but Mizuki worked
hard and saved a lot of money so that, according to her, Kaede could
make something out of herself other than becoming an oiran (courtesan)
at one of Japan's largest pleasure districts.

She also understood why Mizuki insisted that she was her foster mother.
No matter how much she considered her as her real mother, the oiran
didn't want her to think that she was the child of a whore.

One day, after accidentally peeking on her mother while she "serviced"
her client, Kaede asked, "Mizuki-san, if I'm a boy, why don't I have
that thing between your customers' legs?"

After a long period of silent contemplation, the Elder Morinaga
answered, "Silly Kaede-chan. That's because yours hasn't sprouted yet."
Like any child her age, the Younger Morinaga accepted that explanation
as truth.

For most of her childhood, she actually believed that she'd one day
sprout a penis even as she roughhoused the (literal) bastard kids of
Yoshiwara: A tomboy who wore fundashi as her underwear, spat on the
ground, and flicked away her boogers with the grossest of the
neighborhood boys.

Kaede was particularly good with stick fighting, which came in handy
whenever her orphan friends... the abandoned children of oiran...
pretended to be samurai and battled each other with sticks and tree
branches. She proudly made many boys cry with her fighting prowess at
the time.

Around when she was seven, she was once dared to do a pissing contest to
see which boy in her gang of friends could pee the farthest in the
river.

Luckily, Mizuki overheard the conversation, and when Kaede complained
about her penis not sprouting yet, the oiran told the child the truth
about the latter's womanhood just in time.

Kaede didn't talk to her foster mother for a week afterwards.

Mizuki made Kaede swear two things after the child's anger passed: To
not reveal that she was a girl while she was in Yoshiwara and to leave
that district when she was around fourteen years of age so that they
could live in comfort with relatives in Tokyo. However, the tragic
incident that took place when she was almost of age ended that pipe
dream.


===


Yahiko Myojin didn't need to witness for himself the tragedy that befell
Kenshin as he accidentally killed his wife or the bastardly love of
Shishio as he used the body of his lover as a means to stab Battousai in
order to realize how horrible these circumstances were. Hearing about
them was enough.

'Never again. I won't let Akahori's daughter become Psycho-Kid's Tomoe
or Yumi!'

"What are you planning to do now, Myojin-kun?" asked Rin Akahori. "You
applied as my father's bodyguard to keep Amakusa from killing him, yet
you saved Amakusa from getting shot by my father as well. You haven't
done a damn thing to save us from the Battousai of Speed."

She pushed her face to his until their noses were touching. "Whose side
are you on? Who are you protecting this time around? Do you honestly
think you can save everyone here from dying, including my father's two
assassins? There should be a limit to being naive."

Yahiko didn't know what to answer to that, and Rin took that as her cue
to again push Soujiro in the right direction of enlightenment, even at
the risk of her own life.

'Kenshin would've done so. He would've saved everyone's lives,' was the
answer that couldn't leave the spiky-haired teenager's lips.

Soujiro and Kaede crossed swords right in front of the Rin's face, which
made her creamy hair bangs billow.

"You don't need to suffer like this, Seta-kun. Don't blindly follow the
truths that Shishio Makoto and Himura Kenshin discovered. Don't change
or limit yourself for the sake of fitting in with an uncaring world. Set
yourself free," said Rin.

Soujiro again backpedaled then charged with the Shukuchi, and the Fake
Battousai thusly countered with the Crypsis and Crabwise Stalk as soon
as he entered her striking range. However, the Ten Ken actually
attempted to move to the side to intercept the sidestep before a counter
in the form of the Deathstalker Stab or the Swarming Barbs could happen.

"You fool," said Moringa.

As Akahori predicted, the forced and awkward hairpin turn from the
high-speed Shukuchi... even at reduced speeds... made the Ten Ken
stumble around and lose his balance. All Morinaga needed to do was
execute another Crabwise Stalk dodge to avoid the human missile that
slammed into the nearby bookshelf.

"I apologize for losing my cool, Ten Ken. I have no quarrel with you,
only your boss. It was an honor battling a worthy opponent like you.
It's too bad we're on opposing sides," said Morinaga in direct
contradiction to her earlier ravings.

This again gave Kaede the opportunity to attack either Rin or Tetsuo in
an instant before Soujiro recovered. Perhaps she could kill Shogo's
mortal enemy first then keep waving the spoiled little rich girl in
front of the Ten Ken as bait until she finished him off for good too.

However, before she could fulfill any of her goals, Yahiko had already
pounced upon her, his sword flying off of its metal scabbard and his
mouth curled up in a snarl.

After a long while, because the Heaven Sword's weaknesses were exposed
one after another, the Son of Tokyo Samurai had finally decided to cross
blades with Amakusa's apprentice, the crossdressing Battousai of Speed.

How he hated her and the way she besmirched the Hitokiri Battousai name
by resorting to such cowardly tactics as using hostages as shields. How
he hated the fact that even when staring at her up close, she still
looked as though Kenshin himself was peering at him with wary eyes.

"W-What do you want?" Kaede barely had enough time to perform the
Crabwise Stalk evasion and the Deathstalker Stab counterstrike, but
Yahiko deflected the combo with his iron sheath. 'Why is he so angry?'

"I can't stand your cowardly tactics! You'd resort to hiding behind an
old man and a girl to win a fight?" asked Yahiko.

"It doesn't matter to me. This isn't a duel. This is an assassination
attempt. Anything goes. Besides which, it's not any worse than what
Akahori Tetsuo would've done in order to save his hide," answered Kaede.

"I won't excuse what the Oyakata and his puppet said or did to you. I
think they were scum for doing that myself. But I won't let my friends
die in vain or allow your cultish terrorist organization to win!"

"It's touching how honor-bound you feel in regards to the deaths of
people you've just met in a day or so. However, I won't allow the
sacrifices Shogo-sama went through to become fruitless either."

The Tokyo Samurai Descendant snarled, but Morinaga's remark hit home. Up
until a few days ago, Gan and Munenori Minoe were nothing but strangers
to him. However, he didn't care how self-righteous he appeared,
especially if his suspicions in regard to the Battousai of Speed were
proven correct.

"Where did you get that short sword? Why is its edge on the reverse side
of the blade? It doesn't look like it belongs to an assassin like
yourself," asked Yahiko.

"That's none of your business. Go away if you want to live."

"I've heard that line before from your idol. My answer to that is still
the same. No, I will not."

"Don't push me. I'll really do it. I already finished off most of
Akahori's spies, for example."

"That was _you_?

Yahiko's face crunched up as though he ate something sour. All that
time, he thought those Togakudan corpses were Amakusa's doing.

"I won't let you kill anyone else."

"What makes you think you can stop me?"

"Maybe I can. Maybe I can't. I have no idea. I don't care. But I do want
to know one thing from you."

"What's that?"

"Did you kill the owner of that wakizashi you're holding?"

As though she couldn't help herself, Morinaga laughed out loud at
Yahiko's question till her battle-torn sides hurt worse than before.
"You have no idea how funny that sounded."

The image of the wigged, eye-patched Minoe getting ripped to shreds by
the Scorpion Nest of the demented Battousai look-alike sent Yahiko to
the edge.

"YOU SADISTIC BITCH! Don't disrespect the dead! He was my friend! I only
knew him for a short time, but I know him to be a good person! You have
no right to judge whether he lives or he dies, you bastard! TSUI GAMI!"

The God Hammer ripped through the air and blasted the Vice Grip apart
the same way Soujiro's desperation battoujutsu did a while back.
However, all she needed to do was to flip the blades and clamp them
together so that the curved part of the swords faced each other via the
Scissor Grip.

"Cancer Stance: Crisscross Claw." Morinaga slashed her blades outward
into overlapping slashes that tore Yahiko's upper garments apart and
threw him across the room. "Sleep now. It'll be over soon," she said as
she turned her back on the samurai kid.

"Where the hell are you looking at?" asked Yahiko as he stomped his
foot, skid to a halt, and launched a leaping strike aimed at the Fake
Battousai's hands and wrists. "SHIPPU JINRAI DOTOU NO KEN!"

Kaede countered Yahiko's attempt at disarming her by making her arms
disappear into a blur of white and gray. It looked like she had a
hundred disembodied arms with swords in her arsenal, with some of her
slashes moving as blindingly fast as the Heaven Sword's vaunted
Shukuchi, grinding the immediate landscape into fragments and particles.

However, the Kamiya Kasshin Ryu had elements of aikido and judo in its
teachings, so it had moves specifically designed to use the momentum of
the attacker against him by quick turning and parrying movements. That,
coupled with Yahiko's self-imposed shirahadori training, allowed him to
catch, deflect, and keep Morinaga off-balance enough to not land a
single stab.

'What's with him? I can't sense his presence even though he's right in
front of me! Even my Antennas aren't finding the right range to strike!
Was this the reason why Shogo-sama had such a difficult time with him
earlier?' thought Kaede.

Even though his muscles and joints still hurt like hell, the Myojin boy
persevered. Like when he battled Soujiro to a draw, his heartbeat pulsed
in cadence with Morinaga's movements. No, it wasn't just his heartbeat.

The rhythm of his breathing, his eye blinks, his minute muscle twitches,
and so forth became one with the Battousai of Speed's every move as he
emptied his mind and allowed his instincts to take over.

In the middle of the flurry of hands and metal, Morinaga sneaked in her
finishing blow, the Deathstalker Stab, after figuring out how Yahiko was
able to hide his emotions and his planned moves: He emptied his mind and
reacted to whatever she threw at him.

She let him fall in the rhythm of blocking her continuous stabbing
attacks so that he couldn't tell the difference between the Swarming
Barbs and the crushing blow of the Deathstalker Stab. However, he saw
through her ruse and reacted thusly.

In an instant, the spiky-haired boy seemingly decided to fight fire with
fire by going into the Offensive Fire Stance or the Jodan-no-Kamae, his
sword raised above his head as he reacted to the subtle shift in
Morinaga's movements. This time around, the one who was able to strike
first should be the victor.

'Fine by me. I'm faster than him.'

"Kamiya Kasshin Ryu Defensive Ougi! HADOME!"

'...What?'

Yahiko bent his knees and ducked under the overhead, scorpion-tail-like
stab and crossed his wrists over the blunt side of the blade to catch
it.

"Kamiya Kasshin Ryu Counterstrike Ougi! HAWATARI!"

Yahiko snatched away the blade and flung it behind him. Kaede intended
to stab him with the wakizashi in order to get enough time to retrieve
the lost katana, but a simple flicking strike to her gloves with the
Shippu Jinrai Dotou no Ken put an end to that plan, the short sword
clattering on the floor.

'N-No way. This kid... This kid that almost died in the Ten Ken's hands
disarmed me completely?' thought the defenseless Morinaga as Yahiko
raised his sword again for a second strike.

She used her heightened senses for any sign of Soujiro as well, because
he could've decapitated her right then and there, and she wouldn't be
able to do a thing about it.

Yahiko glanced at the reverse-edged wakizashi for a second before moving
to attack Kaede. However, his blade passed right through her as though
she were a ghost. 'Oh shit, I forgot about that move! Was it called the
Crypsis or the Crabwise Stalk? Ah, whatever! She's gone!'

Actually, using the Crypsis (her camouflage technique) and her Crabwise
Stalk (a move where she used her natural talent in dashing quickly
across small distances to scoot into her enemy's blindside) in tandem
made her appear like she could do the Shukuchi, seemingly teleporting at
will.

By the time Yahiko turned around to face her, she'd already retrieved
her uchigatana and feinted a strike at him. They crossed blades and she
allowed Yahiko to push her back, which then enabled her to jump backward
and grab hold of her short sword as she squatted down and skidded to a
halt.

"Yahiko-san. Be careful. She's tougher than she looks."

"What...? Psy-Psycho-Kid!"

"Heaven Sword. You can still talk. But can you stand?"

Both Yahiko and Kaede turned in time to see Soujiro literally crawl out
of the woodwork, or rather the rubble from the hole he made on the wall
after his spectacular, Shukuchi-driven crash.

"Shut up! Don't tell me you've forgotten that I'm also serving as the
Oyakata's bodyguard!" Yahiko said, although even he knew that the Heaven
Sword could see through his bluster.

"You were stinking up the joint, Psycho-Kid. I had no choice but to save
your butt, because if you were defeated by Amakusa's fangirl, then I'd
also look bad by default."

"Is that so? Then thank you for your help, Yahiko-san." With his smile
not leaving his face, Seta attempted to stand up, but found that he
couldn't. 'Huh?' His legs throbbed, specifically his thigh that Amakusa
injured earlier. 'Oh. So that's how it is.'

The Tokyoite winced upon seeing the Heaven Sword had not yet fully
recovered from his exertions against the Battousai of Speed. He hated
the thought of him buying time for Soujiro the same way Hajime Saito,
Sanosuke Sagara, and Aoshi Shinomori did for Kenshin when they all
fought against Makoto Shishio, but he himself had no idea how long his
own battered body could hold out.

'If you hate being the distraction, then beat this Morinaga chick then
and there. Defeat her and come closer to doing something Kenshin himself
would've accomplished ages ago,' Yahiko berated himself.

What Kaede said afterwards woke Yahiko from his musings. "I felt your ki
and read your intentions during that second strike. You hesitated at the
last minute. You had me right where you wanted me, and you couldn't
finish the job, just like with Shogo-sama."

"S-So? What's your point?"

"Like Shogo-sama said, you haven't killed anyone. Do you really think
that you can afford to let me live at such a critical juncture? Only the
Battousai can get away with such foolishness, and even he had to pay the
price of being naive."

"You don't know a thing about Himura Kenshin! Even if you do look like
him, dress like him, or name yourself after him, you're not even half
the warrior he is!"

Even though he had married into the Kamiya Family (his name included in
the register and all), Yahiko still referred to him as Kenshin Himura.
In the boy's eyes, the bumbling Minoe was closer to being Kenshin-like
than this imposter.

"I know enough. That sakabatou you're holding was his, wasn't it? He let
you inherit it after he realized that he couldn't do kenjutsu anymore
because of his failing health."

Yahiko cursed under his breath. The old ninja he defeated, Masahiro
Takae, also knew as much. How many more people out there had discovered
the truth behind the Strongest Manslayer's ultimate fate? At the corner
of his eye, he saw Soujiro stir. Even he wanted to know what happened to
Kenshin. "What's it to you?"

'Failing health...?' thought Soujiro as he gingerly rubbed his aching
limbs, willing them to move.

'Seta-kun, have you decided which truth to follow? Because if you don't
decide soon, Myojin-kun will die,' thought the pale Rin as she clasped
her hands together and narrowed her eyes at the kneeling blur in the
distance.

Kaede nodded to herself. "My hunch is correct. For whatever reason,
Battousai had been defanged and turned into a hitokiri that wouldn't
kill. Because of the wars he waged against Shishio Makoto and the leader
of the Shanghai Arms Dealers in his later years, he eventually became a
manslayer that _couldn't_ kill either."

"How the hell did you know about Shishio? Enishi? Just who the hell are
you?" Yahiko fell into the Fire Stance again while espying both Rin
and Tetsuo Akahori with darting eyes. Morinaga was positioned dead
center in the room, so she could attack either of her two hostages at
will with her Flying Tail Stinger.

"I am the Battousai Group's Battousai of Speed, and I will now take the
Battousai's place as the Strongest Hitokiri. His existence may have
caused me pain before, but by becoming what he once was... an assassin
beyond peer... then perhaps it will give meaning to what I've gone
through. If he's not willing to kill, then he has no right to be called
Battousai, even if he was the one who originated the name."

Akahori chuckled even as his wounded arm froze up and trembled from his
mirth. 'What an arrogant bitch. She's going to become the new Battousai?
Does she even hear the tripe she's spewing out? Or did Amakusa brainwash
her into thinking that way? She doesn't know what she's talking about.
She should know her place.'

"It's too late for the sickly, weak Himura Kenshin of today to return to
his former glory as a hitokiri. He was a wolf that became a mongrel,
tamed by time and circumstances, so now I'll turn into the wild,
bloodthirsty wolf he once was. He's become a joke because his
unrealistic ideals killed his killer instinct. You inherited his toy
sword? I'll inherit his strength and infamy."

'Strength...' mused Soujiro as he massaged and kneaded his legs. Both
the auras of Yahiko and Morinaga were unreadable at the moment, the
former a blank slate, the latter a dam of rage ready to burst.

"That shows how little you know about him. Kenshin _chose_ not to kill.
He, more than anyone else back in the Bakumatsu, understood what
kenjutsu is all about, yet he still chose to follow a thorny path no one
else could take and showed his true inner strength by doing so. Kenshin
is not weak! His ideals are not a joke! They're not his weakness! He's
stronger than you ever will be, you mindless Amakusa fanatic and
murderer!"

'Weakness...' The big toe of the Heaven Sword's sandaled and socked feet
started to twitch. Seta understood what Yahiko was talking about. He
himself experienced the great strength of Kenshin Himura the Vagabond
firsthand. He didn't need to revert to being Battousai the Butcher to
defeat Makoto Shishio. However...

'Even though Himura-san defeated Shishio-san, he had to sacrifice his
kenjutsu and health in order to do so. Which one of them was right in
the end?'

"Let me prove you wrong, then." Morinaga shifted to her Cancer Stance as
her response to Myojin's Fire Stance, her lazy-eyed yet sharp glare
daring him to attack.

Yahiko took the bait and initiated the exchange with a Gale Thunderclap
Billow Sword and God Hammer combo that loosened and altogether broke the
expected Scissor Grip defense. Kaede almost lost her hold on the blades
once again, but she persevered through the pain of hands that might or
might not be broken.

'I knew it. I should've seen it as soon as he started countering all of
Shogo-sama's moves back in the ballroom. His Kamiya Kasshin Ryu is like
my Cancer and Scorpio Stances. He's been timing my shots and countering
them. He's a counterstrike expert, just like me. Which means...'

The whole scenario of the exchange played out inside the Myojin kid's
head even before he moved a single muscle. He'd break through Morinaga's
defenses and, as she attempted to counter his counter with the Scorpion
Nest, Swarming Barbs, or Deathstalker Stab, he'd grab the katana, break
it apart using the Hadachi, and then shatter Minoe's reverse-edged
wakizashi with the Tsui Gami. He'd seen how she fought against Soujiro.
He knew all her moves.

Nevertheless, as Yahiko reached for Kaede's katana with the goal of
snapping it in two, she shifted stances. Her sword was now at waist
level and her dagger was held high up the air. With tears in her eyes
that came unbidden, Morinaga declared, "Sasori Gatame."

In a heartbeat, her stolen wakizashi plunged into Yahiko's right
shoulder, his already damaged body stiffening as his mouth seemingly
unhinged itself in agony. She followed through with a Claw Strike
similar to the one she gave the Fake Battousai Group's leader that
disemboweled him. The boy fell into a wet heap on the floor a moment
later, his blood pooling underneath him. Such was the might of the
Scorpion Death Lock.

The faces of Gan, Minoe, Ujiki, Kusaburo, Kyoko's father, and Kenshin
flashed before Yahiko's eyes. 'I'm sorry, everyone. I failed.' Before
the darkness swallowed his consciousness in a blur of golden hair and
cold, snow-white hands that took hold of his convulsing body, one final
thought occurred to him. 'Why was Morinaga crying?'


===


There were large patches of Morinaga's life she couldn't remember at the
time of Mizuki's death, or even to this day. Sometimes she recalled
those memories, sometimes she didn't.

For months, she'd wake up in a cold sweat, and she wouldn't know why.
For the first few weeks after her mother was killed, her eyes would tear
up while her mind remained blank. The fact that her foster parent died
took weeks to register in her brain.

At the time, Kaede had no way of knowing whether Doraku Akatsuki was
lying or not in regards to him accidentally killing Mizuki. Her mind
wouldn't let her remember what happened to her back then.

In regards to her true gender, Akatsuki didn't let on that he knew she
was a girl for months on end, but she suspected that he knew since they
always took separate baths. He also wordlessly let her go whenever she
had to answer the call of nature.

Nevertheless, old habits died hard, so she remained and acted a boy for
most her life, or at least a tomboyish girl. The opportunity to escape
remained aplenty, but she stayed with Doraku regardless. At first, it
was for the sake of revenge, but soon it was because she couldn't
imagine living without him.

Furthermore, during the time she ended up in the mysterious Akatsuki's
care under the (mistaken) assumption that he killed Mizuki, Morinaga
decided to keep up the facade of being a boy because that was the last
promise she made to her foster mother.

The duo even took advantage of that little fact by making her shift from
gender to gender in order to do little spying expeditions for her
master. She almost always escaped virtually undetected. This undercover
work helped quite a lot during those lean times when her master was
lacking of bounty hunting, assassination, or mercenary gigs.

Instead of caring about what gender she was, Akatsuki treated her as
though she were a boy... or rather, as though she were someone else
entirely. She figured out who that someone was the first time he got
drunk around her and spilled the beans concerning his past life.

He described to her a boy who would've been her age had he lived. A
clumsy, weak, optimistic, yet well-meaning young man whom he wanted to
turn into a real man's man like himself but couldn't because of the
kid's untimely demise.

Even though her memories of the unforgivable incident remained locked in
her mind, the name "Battousai" continued to surface in the murky depths
of her subconscious. She became obsessed about the man behind that name:
It became as much of a priority for her as finding a way to kill her
unkillable master.

Again, in hindsight, she realized that she always wanted to become
someone else, and her master offered her an opportunity to do so. There
were times when she even forgot about her promise to kill him for
revenge. She even wondered if she still wanted to kill him, at that.

However, her (at the time inexplicable) obsession with Battousai
remained. She'd eventually discover the truth behind Doraku's lies,
forcing her to part ways with him because of them.

But the men who did that unforgivable act were already dead, killed by
the same master she grew to hate and love and hate again, so the only
people she could lay blame for her wrath at the time was the lying
Doraku Akatsuki and the nomadic Kenshin Himura.

Her master did save her, and for that she was grateful regardless of his
intentions. However, he used her and turned her into nothing more than a
test of his strength and a replacement for someone in the past. Besides,
she couldn't stand to look at his face and be reminded of a memory so
horrible, her mind did its best to forget it ever happened.

Betrayed by the soldier of fortune who hid the awful truth behind the
pain in between her legs and the revolting sliminess of her body during
that inauspicious night, she left and tried to find meaning to her life
by learning more about the faceless (or not so faceless, since he
allegedly looked like her) man that changed it forever: The Hitokiri
Battousai.

Unbeknownst to Soujiro Seta, she had already known about him and his
notoriety prior to crossing swords with him in Shinshushin. In fact, she
found out the truth behind the Hitokiri Battousai and the lies her
master told her around the time Makoto Shishio's Faction made its move
to conquer Japan and challenge the vanguards of the Meiji Era, the Ishin
Shishi.

After Moringa parted ways with her lying mentor around 1877 (from what
she heard at the time, he went straight to Yokohama to partake in the
Seinan War led by the great Takamori Saigo, otherwise known as the
Satsuma Rebellion), she became part of a spy group her master consulted
with from time to time for one sole reason: Their connections to Makoto
Shishio.

She'd learned about Shishio through her research into the history of the
Bakumatsu no Douran and the Hitokiri Battousai. Like with Tetsuo Akahori
and his Togakudan, the shogunate and their Oniwabanshu, and the Meiji
Government and their secret service, the spy group Kaede joined was an
undercover network designed to gather intelligence for the sake of
Shishio's brewing coup d'etat.

It was through Shishio's spies that she learned where the wandering
Kenshin Himura had settled in... somewhere in Tokyo... after ten years
of being an incognito vagrant. They also helped her learn more about
most of his history as the strongest hitokiri and his later exploits as
a vagabond whose past kept coming back to haunt him, although the story
behind his cross-shaped scar, his reversed-edge sword, and his non-
killing vow remained a mystery to her and everyone else.

She watched Battousai all that time in the sidelines, stalking him
because that was the job she was paid for. She learned his mannerisms
and marveled at how alike his gentler nature was to the personality of
Doraku's dead relative. She eventually figured out why those customers
of Mizuki (hidden weapons experts by trade) were so miffed by Battousai.
These assassins were defeated yet left alive by a vagabond that wouldn't
kill.

Had he stayed a hitokiri, none of those assassins would've lived to tell
the tale of the Battousai. Had he killed them, they would've never had
the chance to murder her foster parent and make part of her soul drown
in the murky depths of shame. Like with Doraku, she appreciated the
Battousai's well-meaning actions and hated them at the same time. Why
did he stop murdering people after doing so countless times?

She also vaguely remembered info about Himura's friends: The street
fighter Zanza turned ally named Sanosuke Sagara, a bull-headed female
kendo instructor, an illegal drug chemist turned doctor, and a ten-year-
old street urchin pickpocket.

Who knew she'd actually meet and confront the same pickpocket at Tetsuo
Akahori's Shinshu Mansion six years later?


===


The words that had been drilled in Soujiro's subconscious... the ideal
that Kenshin proved wrong yet was also proved right by how the Meiji
Government dealt with foreign policies and its constituents...
resurfaced from the bowels of his mind.

'The strongest shall survive and the weak are merely food for the
strong.'

'Lord Shogo was again correct. We're assassins; killers by trade. If I
am to inherit that damn Battousai's name, then I must not act as
inexperienced as Myojin Yahiko is when it comes to taking a person's
life.'

Kaede squeezed her moist eyes shut and clenched the handles of her
weapons. With Yahiko down and Soujiro crippled, she set her sights on
Amakusa's original goal: Tetsuo Akahori. 'We're almost there, Shogo-
sama.' However, her Antennas warned her that something was amiss.

Morinaga barely had time to block Soujiro's seated battoujutsu strike to
the torso as soon as Yahiko fell down into the waiting arms of Rin, the
injured boy's blood pooling underneath both him and the Akahori
daughter.

She also had a mere fraction of a second to dodge and escape as her Vice
Grip broke apart from the power, speed, and momentum produced by the Ten
Ken's strike. 'Something's different about him,' Kaede thought.

Had it not been for her four layers of defense in the form of the Vice
or Scissor Grip, Crpysis, Antennas, and Crabwise Stalk, Kaede would've
become half the woman she once was, sliced in twain at the waist. 'I
couldn't sense him at that last minute. What happened?'

"You've gotten slower, Morinaga-san." Soujiro smiled, his legs trembling
as he stood, but his face indicating no pain, which wasn't unusual for
him. "Or perhaps it's the other way around, and I've gotten faster?
Let's find out, shall we?"

Her eyes dull and glassy, Morinaga looked on as Rin had Yahiko lay down
on her lap and covered him up with her own pale body, his complexion
nearing the hue of the creamy skin of the porcelain doll girl.

Kaede wiped away her remaining tears and turned her back on Yahiko and
Rin. She had more important things to worry about. 'I should relax.
Nothing's changed. His legs are still injured and the Shukuchi itself is
a flawed technique. Pull yourself together, Kaede.'

"Is there something the matter?" asked Seta with a pleasant grin and
closed eyes.

Morinaga snorted as she threw her short sword like a dagger. The blood
of Yahiko hadn't even been wiped off yet, and she was already using it.
It couldn't be helped. She was facing the Divine Blade of the Ten
Swords, after all.

She wondered if Soujiro knew that the reversed-edge wakizashi she
possessed was actually the same blade he sliced apart when he first
crossed blades with Battousai back in Shingetsu Village about six years
prior, before she met Shogo Amakusa and the Hidden Christians.

Midway in the short sword's flight, before it even landed on anything,
it spun around in midair as though deflected by some invisible force and
went straight for the cross-scarred, lazy-eyed girl's face.

She blocked it in time with her uchigatana, only for her to feel the
cold bite of steel on her abdomen. By reflex, she stopped the blade from
outright gutting her by parrying it with the wakizashi, moved out of its
way via Crabwise Stalk, and countered her attacker using the Deathstalker
Stab.

She hit nothing but air. She turned in time to see Soujiro still
standing on the same spot he occupied when she first saw him. There was
no indication that he even moved save for the slight ruffling of his
bobbed hair.

'What's going on? Is there something wrong with my Antennas? What
happened to the vibrations on the floor? The smell of blood on his
body? He was even exuding sakki earlier on!' deliberated Morinaga as
she covered her abdomen with one forearm while she nibbled on her blood-
caked thumb.

Akahori stood up and moved as close as he could to get a better view of
the action. He rubbed his eyes as though they were deceiving him. 'In
all the years he's served as my bodyguard, this was the first time I saw
him move so fast. Was the No-Step Shukuchi he demonstrated earlier _not_
the perfect form of his technique? What changed in him?'

"I remember that you were going to use the Sasori Gatame against my Shun
Ten Satsu, correct? Now that I've seen how it works, what do you think
are your chances at countering it?" asked Soujiro.

"You can't fool me. I know your legs are at their limit. How much longer
can they hold out, I wonder."

"And what if they'll hold out long enough to make your head fly?"

She licked her lips. "Then I'll slice them off for you."

It was a shame that she and him had to duel for the lives of the
Akahoris. Like Amakusa when it came to the policemen army gathered at
the mansion, she too had no grudge against Soujiro Seta himself. He was
certainly more honorable than his snake in the grass of a boss.

It was nothing personal, and being able to fight against a swordsman so
powerful that he gave the Battousai himself a run for his money was a
real honor for her. However, this wasn't the time to be impressed with
the Ten Ken.

Her intuition told her to not bother attacking Soujiro with any more
charging moves even for the sake of luring him into one of her booby
traps. Instead, she stayed in place, gauged the distance and his speed
using her Antennas, and tensed her legs for multiple iterations of the
counterclockwise movement of her Crabwise Stalk in order to avoid the
Ten Ken's dominant hand and his right-handed strikes.

Seta blasted off with the Shukuchi once more, and Morinaga winced as he
arrived within her striking range at one-seventh of a second instead of
one-sixth of a second. Also, for one reason or another, his footfalls
weren't as thunderous as before, as though his feet were so fleeting,
they left less of an impact and impression on the ground.

Nevertheless, her hand speed compensated for her Antennas' slight
miscalculation, and her Crabwise Stalk allowed her to get out of harm's
way and deliver stinging, left-right Scorpion Nest combinations at the
Ten Ken, which he barely avoided using his Shukuchi backpedal.

Soujiro attempted to turn and pursue Kaede, but that forced him to slow
down because the momentum he gathered from the Shukuchi left him off-
balanced whenever he moved laterally. It left him open to blistering
counterattacks from one of the fighters with the fastest hand speed he'd
ever seen.

He couldn't do sudden stops with the Shukuchi either because of the
damage they'd do to his internal organs. In order to make his turns, he
had to slow his Shukuchi down in the middle of his sprint, which also
left him open to attack.

'I had nothing to fear. He can only fight moving forward or evade
attacks by moving backwards. He can't use the Shukuchi while moving
side-to-side. As long I can keep turning him, I'll win. He can't do
anything while I keep making him do turns!'

Akahori scowled and squatted back down. 'Even though Seta-kun has become
a hair faster than before, Battousai-dono can still sense him or use his
distance to gauge when he'll arrive to cut her down even though she
can't see him. She really does act as though she has an insect's
antennas.'

Soujiro's smile grew wider even as Kaede sliced him up. Despite the
wounds and his stuttering speed thanks to the continuous
counterclockwise turns of the Crabwise Stalk, he was able to weather the
storm. In fact, a lot of those hits were shallow, skin-cutting slashes
instead of bone-cutting ones that could've ended the fight in one
stroke.

Then, for the first time in the fight since Morinaga began using her
Antennas technique, there was a split-second where she had no idea where
Soujiro was.

"Have you really gotten slower, or have I gotten faster? I wonder..."
Soujiro mused after slicing Kaede vertically on the stomach in the
middle of her circular evasion.

The cut would've vivisected her then and there had her Crypsis not
fooled the Ten Ken's eyes into making him midjudge the distance of his
battoujutsu strike.

'Was that the Shun Ten Satsu? No, he drew his sword in mid-turn, so it
wasn't Shukuchi-assisted.'

She didn't have time to ponder further, because he followed up the slash
with another aimed at the top of her head. Her heart almost leaped out
of chest as her short sword barely deflected his Kikuichi Monji blade,
which caused her to get a cut on her left brow ridge above the eye
nearest her cross-shaped scar.

In desperation, she bumped heads with the Ten Ken (a common tactic that
her master deployed against her charges), her blood flowing into both
their eyes while their feet and legs go entangled upon each other. She
then crossed her swords together, pushed him off her using the
Crisscross Claw, and let loose Swarming Barbs that forced him to
retreat.

The blood that entered and stung her left lazy eye distracted her from
the right-handed rib strike at her blindside that grazed a bone on
her ribs. She staggered and, against her better judgment, charged at him
with Swarming Barbs while using her Antennas as her only means of
locating him.

She crouched low and landed a couple of pinpricks and scratches at the
retreating Ten Ken from awkward angles, which set him up for a leaping
Scorpion Nest combination that shredded his torso and legs.

However, she didn't look as sturdy now as before. The strain of focusing
on both her attack and her remaining four senses (her sight was
compromised by the cut above her eye and Soujiro's bloodlust was as
absent as ever) took its toll on her body.

She stumbled backwards when Soujiro feinted a shallow battoujutsu slash
and turned it into a hard stab to the throat that she avoided and
instead tore the top of her shoulder and her kimono. The cut on the
outside of her left eye could pose a big problem in the long run.

"You are quite strong, Morinaga-san. I was pleasantly surprised. I must
admit that I underestimated you. Sadly, I'm much stronger than you. As
Mister Shishio said, the strong live and the weak die. You're not all
that weak, but you are when facing me."

'I understand now. Seta-kun's rage has also reached past the boiling
point, it would seem,' Akahori thought. Who knew that the grave injury
of that spiky-haired boy in the hands of the Battousai of Speed would
trigger such a response from the stone-cold assassin of Shishio's
Faction?

'The version of the Ten Ken I got was one who allowed some impudent kid
to break his sword apart because he didn't have the heart to finish him
off immediately. Had he acted like the Heaven Sword that Shishio Makoto
knew, he would've dispatched of Myojin Yahiko with no hesitation.'

Was this how Soujiro Seta originally behaved before his fateful meeting
with Battousai Himura shattered his single-minded belief in Darwinism
and the Survival of the Fittest? Tetsuo couldn't wait to find out, his
eyes peeled at the proceedings before him.

"Beware, Battousai-dono. The Heaven Sword has finally awoken from his
six-year slumber."


===


After the death of Shishio, the failure of his coup d'etat, the fall of
his faction, and the arrest of his Juppon Gatana, Kaede went on into
hiding and greener pastures. In particular, she heard of the rebellion
brewing in Nagasaki that was spearheaded by two men in particular: Kaio
and Shiro Amakusa the Second.

She originally intended to confront Kenshin face-to-face after his death
match against Shishio. However, she had no idea what to do at the time.
Should she make him take responsibility over what happened to her when
she was a child? Did she want to shake hands and become friends with
him? Did she want to fight the Strongest Hitokiri of the Bakumatsu?

She didn't know what to do. She hadn't thought things through. After
stalking him for so long, she realized he was no monster even though his
unwillingness to kill unleashed the monsters from his past unto others.
Although Himura's mere existence made her life a living hell, she
couldn't for the life of her imagine killing the man for what he didn't
do. How could she hate her "other self"?

She looked so much like him that she had to dispose of assassins who
were after the Battousai and mistook her for him. 'The Battousai. The
other me,' she would think to herself. 'What if I became more like him?'

One thing for sure, she wanted to know more about him so that she could
make sense of what her own purpose in life was. According to her old spy
allies, Shiro Amakusa... also known as Shogo Muto... knew Hiten
Mitsurugi Ryu. In light of the might of Kenshin's school, particularly
apparent in the unbeatable nature of the Amakakeru Ryu no Hirameki
succession technique, she decided to go to Shimabara to study how to
counter the swordsmanship school firsthand.

If anything, learning about Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu would help her learn
more about the enigma that was Kenshin Himura. Around this time, she
heard that the Battousai and his friends were being attacked by another
sponsor of Shishio's rebellion, the leader of the Shanghai Arms Dealers.

In fact, a lot of Amakusa's actions while he was at Tokyo and Kyoto
seemed like thinly veiled challenges to Battousai Himura. Were Kenshin
not busy with yet another shadow from his past, would he and Shogo have
fought for the right of becoming the true successor to Hiten Misturugi
Ryu? Who would've won?

Thanks to various circumstances, all one could do was speculate about
the eventual outcome (although she had her money on Shogo once she got
to know him and his talents better).

By the time Morinaga arrived at Shimabara to offer her services to the
Kakure Kirishitan rebels, Amakusa's sponsor and advisor, Kaio, had been
exposed as a fraud who planned to betray the movement to the
authorities.

According to Amakusa's sister, Lady Magdalia, Kaio formed a conspiracy
against Shogo wherein he planned to have Shimabara's Son of God killed
by government officials like the historical Shiro Amakusa and turn him
into a legend. The dark priest would then return to Shimabara years
later as the sole leader of a new faith.

Shogo knew about the conspiracy from the start, and with the help of
his sister, he preemptively derailed it. The mad preacher and his crew
(save for an obese dog trainer named Genemon) were executed personally
by Amakusa himself as traitors to the faith before a mass evacuation of
his eighty-eight Hidden Christian followers took place on the Day of the
Holy Spirit.

Shiro Amakusa the Second, several able men wielding farming implements,
and his Soldier of Christ, Shozo Lorenzo, held the Meiji Government's
execution squads at bay.

At any rate, Kaede couldn't make heads or tails out of Shogo Amakusa in
the beginning.

Reports of the man varied from him being the rebel leader of a sect of
Hidden Christians who were militant and armed to a messianic figure
leading his own cult of brainwashed followers (she didn't even know what
a "messiah" meant until later on).

In fact, when they first met, Kaede had to do battle with the Christian
leader because he thought she was Battousai and she was there to settle
the score on who was the rightful inheritor of the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu.

She would've been _killed_ had they not (somehow) established that she
was not Kenshin Himura and she was a sword for hire for his rebellion.
The details were still blurry in her mind.

Annoyingly, because of her height, small chest, built, and diminutive
stature, Amakusa treated Kaede as his junior despite the fact that they
were actually the same age. Never mind that he technically served as her
boss, he could at least stop treating her like a little kid! It wasn't
her fault that despite her age, her body never matured past puberty.

She was accepted as part of Amakusa's band of rebels, serving as one of
the few followers he had that had assassination experience. To his
gathered flock, she was made to pose as the Hitokiri Battousai himself
in order to boost their morale, although the closest people in Shogo's
inner circle knew who she really was.

Having the "Strongest Hitokiri" and the "Son of God" side-by-side... a
match made in heaven, so to speak... did well to gather more recruits
and coverts to their growing religious movement.

As part of their bargain (aside from monetary compensation), Amakusa
sparred and dueled with Kaede to sharpen her skills and reveal to her
the secrets of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu. In return, she offered him her past
intelligence reports on Battousai and Shishio, particularly her
knowledge on how the shadow hitokiri set up his faction from the ground
up.

Amakusa also had a Kagemusha or body double who didn't only look like
Shogo, but also had a similar sword style involving copious use of
battoujutsu (or, in his case, the modern equivalent, iaijustu), although
for one reason or another, he drew his blade with his eyes closed and
his face turned away from his enemy.

With that said, the person whom Morinaga felt closest to at the time
wasn't Shogo, but Lady Magdalia. Sickly as she was, Lady Magadalia...
Well, she was also hard to describe. Kaede's earliest memory of her
involved countless prayer meetings and repeated recitation of sutra-like
chants (that they called the Holy Rosary) with monkish zeal.

During that time, Lady Magdalia was treated like a goddess of mercy and
compassion, the Guanyin of the Christian World. To Kaede, she looked
like a living Bodhisattva statue that the Kakure Kirishitan worshipped.

She'd later find out that Christianity, specifically Catholic dogma,
offered veneration (instead of worship) to Jesus Christ's mother, Mary.
Simply put, Lady Magdalia was the Mary, Mother of Jesus, of the
Shimabara Christians.

So it came as a shock to Kaede to later find Magdalia playing around
with the children of the villagers and seeing her blush like a
schoolgirl as they teased her in regards to the obvious romantic
feelings Shozo had for her.

Magdalia's red-faced, teary-eyed denials as an equally red-faced and in-
denial Lorenzo appeared and overheard the kids' teasing was quite the
sight to behold.

Kaede couldn't believe that the Magdalia she saw back then giggling with
little girls and boys and the Lady Magdalia that the Japanese Christians
all but worshipped were one and the same person.

It was around the time Magdalia probed Kaede with personal questions
such as, "Why are you wearing men's clothes? Lord knows you'd look
prettier in a kimono," and "Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord
and Personal Savior?" that the Kenshin look-alike started figuring her
out.

Yes, Magdalia figured out that Kaede was a girl on sight, while Shogo,
Lorenzo, and even Genemon the Dog Whistler were fooled into thinking she
was a man for the longest time.

They were both quite alike, in a sense. If Morinaga had to hazard a
guess, Magdalia, like her, killed any trace of herself whenever she was
in front of her people. For their sake, she'd become their Madonna,
Mother Mary, and the Mother of the Church.

Like Kaede, Magdalia's inner self surfaced from time to time and revealed
someone that was a lot more shallow, selfish, petty, childish, and
imperfect than what she appeared in public.

However, unlike Magdalia, Kaede couldn't even begin to imagine the many
burdens and responsibilities that Shogo's sister had. To the Younger
Muto, her duty to her people came first before her personal feelings,
although a vast majority of her personal feelings were dedicated to the
Hidden Christians as well.

These twin aspects of Magdalia's personality didn't only remind Kaede
of herself, but also of the late Mizuki Morinaga as well. Because of
her profession, Mizuki had to shut off her heart every night and become
another person entirely. However, the warmth of the inner selves of
both Mizuki and Magdalia shone through their facades regardless.

"You say turn the other cheek when someone slaps you. What if you
can't? What if that only invites people to abuse you some more? Can't
you defend yourself?" asked Kaede one day while Magdalia preached the
gospel to the children beside the riverbank.

Lady Magdalia answered, "Both Buddhism and Christianity believe that you
should never do unto others what you don't want them to do unto you,
right? We Christians believe in loving our fellow man as we love
ourselves. But turning the other cheek isn't a command to let your
enemies do whatever they want with you. It's instead a command to _not_
seek vengeance upon your oppressors. It's there to nip the cycle of
vengeance right in the bud."

Kaede didn't question this teaching any further in light of who she was
working for, even though she herself found some of its implications
baffling and disturbing.

In many ways, Magdalia and her pacifistic teachings were at odds with
what her brother was doing to protect their people from oppression,
which was to condemn those who have abused them as his way of demanding
equal rights between Kakure Kirishitan and other Japanese citizens.

A world without violence was a nice idea, but Morinaga knew better.
There were people who lived their entire lives never knowing what it was
like to kill someone, but she didn't live in their world any longer.

It was for this reason that Morinaga never took most of what Amakusa
preached seriously because he didn't practice what he preached at times,
seeing him as nothing more than a means to an end.

She saw his stories of a merciful, perfect, and benevolent god as
nothing more than empty words from a manipulative man who also saw his
followers as a means to an end.

There was one caveat to his hypocrisy, though. As long as his people saw
him as Shiro Amakusa reincarnated or even a god made flesh, his
execution of their enemies was seen as perfectly fine even in light of
Jesus Christ's teachings. As Amakusa the Almighty, he had he Divine
Right to vanquish their foes and deliver them to the Promised Land by
any means necessary.

However, there was more to Shogo than meets the eye. Known already as a
one-man army to many a soldier and policeman whom he fought and
suppressed on the Day of the Holy Spirit, he didn't only utilize
violence and rebellions to further his holy war.

He also sought allies from impoverished Nagasaki peasants and farmers
who had to deal with an industrialization program that hiked up their
existing taxes and the Land Reform Act of 1873 that led to the
confiscation of their lands because of their inability to pay new taxes.

It didn't matter if the underprivileged he helped out were Buddhists,
Shintoists, or Atheists either; he helped them all the same to remind
everyone what Christianity truly embodied.

>From the eighty-eight would-have-been martyrs that he saved, Shogo's
followers grew to hundreds and, later on, thousands. More and more
Hidden Christians were lured in by the promise of being able to practice
their religion without fear of persecution and retaliation. He even got
quite a few converts to the faith as well.

Because a lot of Kakure Kirishitan had come out of the woodwork while
openly proclaiming their faith, it was only natural to expect a backlash
of sorts from Japanese society at large for disturbing the status quo.

Whenever crosses were painted on the homes of Hidden Christians,
exposing them to persecution in a given town, Amakusa would personally
visit the neighborhood to comfort his brethren, preach the gospel, and
hand out food and clothes as a peace offering to the wary citizens,
encouraging them not to harass the exposed Kirishitan families.

The Messiah of the Kakure Kirishitan also set up spies to catch acts of
Christian persecution... from "mere" discrimination by nonbelievers to
authorities outright torturing them to renounce their faith... and
thusly retaliated to show that when push came to shove, Shiro Amakusa
the Second would push back.

Morinaga even helped him free many an incarcerated Kakure Kirishitan
from prison as well. How could she hate a man like that?

The most important thing Kaede realized about Amakusa was that, like his
sister, he too assumed a huge responsibility she couldn't even begin to
fathom. He had to become god in order to rise above the hypocrisy of
punishing and killing Christian oppressors for the right to practice a
faith that didn't condone such acts from anyone except god.

However, that also meant that Amakusa had to take up a terrible weight
on his shoulders: The great expectations of his people who believed him
to be their savior before he'd done anything worthy of such praise was
his cross to bear.

The Christian leader was probably thrust into the role of messiah at a
young age, the enormous amount of pressure to succeed forcing him to
develop a god complex, for better or for worse.

Nevertheless, Amakusa did all this because no one else could do it
except him. It was through sheer willpower and his sense of duty to his
people that compelled him to kill a thousand policemen and soldiers in
the Modern Shimabara War in the first place.

Knowing this, Kaede finally understood why Shogo had followers who would
follow him to the ends of the earth. Sadly, Amakusa's delusions of
godhood helped lay the foundations for his defeat. Nonetheless, even
when the odds were against him, he still did his best to serve his
people and fulfill their unrealistic expectations of him.

Despite her initial misgivings and their double standards, Morinaga
ultimately saw Amakusa and his followers as good people who wanted
better lives for themselves. That was why she could never forgive
Akahori and his manipulations that led to the downfall of Shogo's group
back in 1878.


===


'For the first time, I'm getting a glimpse of the Seta Soujiro who
didn't hesitate to kill anyone at all. His lack of self-restraint and
his unrelenting belief in Shishio's words was what made him so dangerous
back in the day.'

As a marksman who viewed his gunslinger skills as a martial art in and
of itself, Akahori understood the value of restraint. Restraint in
battle was known by anyone who practiced martial arts, even beginners.
Human instinct also taught restraint in order to keep the body from
harming others or itself.

Rules were set in order to prevent the worst possible outcomes in a
fight. However, there were those who didn't understand or failed to put
into practice this basic concept. Ironically enough, it was this lack of
self-restraint that allowed Soujiro to perform at peak condition. No
hesitation. No remorse. No regrets.

'Is this the true face of the Ten Ken?' thought Morinaga as she wiped
the dripping blood on her eye while the room spun and warped around her.
'Is the Heaven Sword I've been fighting up until now just the watered-
down version of the true thing, like Battousai's vagabond self when
compared to his hitokiri form?'

Seta's next move answered that question for her. They traded blade
strikes along the walls, and they both landed slashes on each other.
However, the Ten Ken didn't relent at all with his self-taught Ryu Sou
Sen onslaught.

'Is this the truth you've been seeking after all this time? The one you
abandoned in the first place? Survival of the Fittest?' the Ten Ken
imagined Rin say. In the corner of his eye, he saw that the real Rin was
too busy stopping the flow of blood on Yahiko's punctured shoulder to
pay attention to him.

What Soujiro lacked in hand speed when compared to Kaede, he made up for
in relentlessness. In and out his Shukuchi went, which made it hard
for her to time him with counters. She opted to combine her Protective
Shell and Swarming Barbs together, which allowed her to block all Dragon
Nest Flash slashes and stab at whatever opening she could find.

Even in the face of multiple stabs, Seta's fearless smile remained, his
aggression backing Morinaga to a corner care of an instinctual Crabwise
Stalk after she almost got her arm lopped off because she fired one
Swarming Barb too many.

As Soujiro got in her face, Kaede retaliated at pointblank range with
hooking swipes of her wakizashi. She felt a gash form on her neck and
lost part of her ear as the Ten Ken fired off combination after
combination. He got the better of the exchange by landing left and right
slashes to her sword-tip stab to his gut.

Her Antennas were working perfectly fine, yet the Ten Ken still managed
to land shots. What was going on? Did she slow down? Had he gotten
faster?

Sure, he became a little faster, but she could still block him. The
distance from where he disappeared and where she stood allowed her to
estimate the fraction of a second it'd take to get from Point A to Point
B.

So how was he penetrating the multiple layers of defense of her Cancer
Stance?

"I can see your every move." Although his own wardrobe was tattered
and torn like Kaede's, Soujiro cuts remained minor compared to the
lacerations he gave her. "You can sense where I'm going, but are you
fast enough to do anything about it?"

Soujiro disappeared in an instant, his thundering footfalls from before
nonexistent. However, the tremors from his feet remained, and so did the
smell of his blood mixed with Morinaga's.

The air resistance from his body as he traveled in what appeared to be
the speed of light made Kaede's skin form goose pimples.


===


Next: Logic and insanity.

Kaede: (does the wrestling move) Sasori Gatame!

Yahiko: (taps out)

Yes, I named Morinaga's finishing maneuver after the professional
wrestling move invented by Riki Choshu and popularized in the West
by Bret "Hitman" Hart as the Sharpshooter and by Sting as the
Scorpion Death Lock. Despite the similarity in name, Kaede's
version of the move isn't actually a hold, but a pointblank sword-
and-dagger counterattack.

Disclaimer: All characters used in this fanfic (save some others)
are the rightful property of Nobuhiro Watsuki, Shueisha, Shonen
Jump, Viz, Sony Studios, Fuji TV, Studio Gallop, Studio Deen, and
ADV. This disclaimer also covers all the other copyrighted
material that are far too many to mention here. Don't sue me
please, I'm very poor.

Open your eyes,
Abdiel