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gabriel-gabdiel · 11 months

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【Draft】 Rurouni Yahiko Chapter 58: Déjà Vu

For this chapter, we’ll be harkening back to things like “The Mark of Zorro (1940)” and the impressive on-screen duel between Captain Esteban Pasquale and Don Diego Vega.

Yahiko is feeling a bit of déjà vu from battling The Faceless. What is it about him that’s so familiar anyway?

Yahiko Myojin remembered the first time Yutaro "Cat Eyes" Tsukayama came back to Japan and the Kamiya Dojo after years of living abroad to seek treatment for his arm injury.

Yutaro was supposed to be injured by his traitorous "master", Raijuta Isurugi. He went overseas for treatment, which enabled him to regain use of his right arm for the most part but he still went "southpaw" or left handed during sparring matches.

Yes, that was right. Mr. Tsukayama had decided to still practice kendo instead of retire.

Inspired by this, Mr. Myojin promised to give his rival the match of his life, showing off his skill honed by his past battle experiences.

When they had their first sparring match in years, Yahiko expected to blow the one-armed Yutaro out of the water, only for Yutaro, with a one-handed handicap, end up making the fight close.

The goddamn magnificent bastard really was a kendo prodigy. Yutaro's careful counters from Gedan-no-Kamae (Earth Stance)`made Yahiko second guess his shots and miss his attacks from the Jodan-no-Kamae (Fire Stance).

Feeling indignant by these turn of events since he went through so much more than him after they last met, Yahiko dug deep into his soul to summon his past battle experiences into the match point blow that literally blasted Tsukayama's helmet off of his head.

He rocked his socks off and then some.

However, to Myojin's annoyance, he still had to do his best against the one-armed student.

Not only did Yutaro remember what little kendo instruction he got from Kaoru Kamiya. He expanded his knowledge somehow when he went overseas to get his arm treated.

He did not waste his time while undergoing treatment and rehabilitation for his nerve-damaged right arm that Raijuta had nearly lopped off.

The cunning "Cat Eyes" somehow added western martial arts and weapon techniques to his solid kendo arsenal, somehow merging east and west together to form a truly unique repertoire.

His approached his kenjutsu like fencing, fighting at a controlled tempo then bursting in speed at the right moments with fluid motion.

It took some time for Yahiko to figure out how Yutaro bested him half of the time, but he eventually realized that Cat Eyes was using mind games and what was known as the "Tactical Wheel" to outsmart him at every other match.

It was from this flashback that Yahiko figured out what this Brigands Guild member's sword techniques reminded him of.

***

Rurouni Yahiko

A Rurouni Kenshin Continuation Fan Fiction Story by Chester Castañeda

Yahiko has seen the sword style of The Faceless before.

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 Gallup, 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.

***

Chapter 58: Déjà Vu

***

Back at a narrow alleyway in the Yokohama Chinatown near the Minakata moneychanger offices…

Multiple things happened at once. Like a hurricane of events.

Meanwhile, the lion dance mascot full of martial artists retaliated against Gan by stretching itself like a snake around him and kicking him with spiked shoes and hidden daggers.

Like a wounded animal fighting for its life, even though it was actually multiple men wearing a costume.

"AUUUGH!" cried The Distressed Gan, who did his best to parry and block the slashing and lacerating kicks with his metal bat.

"GAN!" cried out Yahiko Myojin and Munenori Minoe at their comrade.

Because Fabian La Cerca lost his dagger, he thought fast, grabbed hold of Tatsuya Minakata, and threw him through the already broken windows of a probably abandoned house in Chinatown.

This distracted Yahiko long enough for him to withdraw his thin rapier sword before the frightening strength of the eye-patched Munenori beside him could break his weapon in twain as well.

Then, for a split-second, a shocked Myojin and a pale-faced Minoe stood and stared at each other and the violent scenes before them, this brains barely registering what had just happened.

"H-Hey. Thanks for saving me, Minoe," said Yahiko, sheathing his sword and slipping it back on his cloth belt.

"N-No problem," stuttered Munenori. "You better go, Yahiko-chi! We'll keep the mercenaries occupied while you retrieve, uh, Kinta-chi's uncle."

"Of course. Thanks again. I owe you one! Thank Gan for me too!" answered Myojin before both turned and went opposite directions.

Or they would've had the lion mascot not suddenly appeared beside Munenori and snatched him off the ground with its unhinged puppet jaws, like a real lion biting its prey.

From behind the mascot hobbled the Gasping Gan, spurts of blood making small fountains on his legs and calves.

"AH! Minoe!" yelped Yahiko, intending to run after the eye-patched dual wielder but Gan stopped him cold with an outstretched hand and an open palm.

Without looking at him, Gan said, "Don't worry, Yoshi-boy. I'll take care of Patches. Go after The Masked Rider instead. Time is running out!"

"…Fine. Make sure you finish that mascot off!" said Yahiko, who finally sprinted towards the abandoned building where The Faceless threw Tatsuya.

Their brief hellos and goodbyes kept them from realizing how naïve their presumptions were.

***

Back at the exterior facade of the Minakata moneychanger office building…

The cackling Kai Hidaka briefly distracted the two brothers from the same mother.

One was a Eurasian bastard child who somehow ended up as part of the Brigands Guild of international mercenaries.

The other was the grandson of a samurai turned pharmaceutical tycoon with generational wealth and significant government clout as an oligarch.

They then realized that somehow, the high-flying spidery ninja somehow defeated the formidable shinobi that the bastard with the bastard sword couldn't finish off.

"…You know what? I don't hate you, mate. You're a fine bloke to me," Lucas Grant said to his estranged half-brother, Kinta Minakata. "You spared me from having to deal with both you and that troublesome ninja bodyguard of yours so this ends up a fair fight."

Kinta spared a glance at the motionless Zan, whom he presumed had critically injured Lucas, but was actually somehow like a steam train running on fumes.

Maybe they should've double-teamed the bloody Prodigal Son while they had the chance. Maybe he was too "honorable" for his own good.

Their pattern from before resumed. The wounded but aggressive Luke plodded on, only blocking the most bone-cutting of sweeping slashes from Kinta to avoid getting his limbs lopped off.

Meanwhile, on Minakata's part, every last chopping blow or lunging stab from Grant was potentially a one-hit kill. He also had to watch out for his half-brother's pommel strikes too.

This was confirmed with how, despite outlanding Lucas in strikes, the Sanada Demon Zan succumbed to internal bleeding from a blow or stab.

Nevertheless, like with most of his fight with Zan, Luke couldn't land a significant blow on his big brother and his superior swordsmanship skill.

However, the bastard son of the Minakatas had started clipping and slicing bits and pieces of Kinta's flesh.

"It kind of irritates me that you're as good as you are despite being given everything in the world," confessed Luke.

They clashed swords again. The Akatsuki held true, but it could not stave off the longer reach and thicker steel of Lucas's bastard sword and its superior steel.

"I didn't know what to expect. A spoiled little rich boy, maybe? Someone who has no idea how cruel the world can be. An entitled dishrag of a man drowning in wealth and privilege. But you're something else, Big Brother."

Like a lion to a gazelle, Lucas stalked his prey, his strikes that previously whiffed and got countered slowly clipping and slashing his tiring brother, wearing him down.

However, like a gazelle to a lion, Kinta evaded Lucas. The bastard child of the Minakatas had yet to land a significant blow on him even as his collection of flesh wounds increased.

Even when Luke blocked the Mangetsu O Tsuku Nari (Full Moon Slash) with his much longer, sturdier bastard sword, Kinta's Akatsuki (Red Moon) katana could still penetrate the block and leave cuts on him.

Deep cuts. Cuts that almost dug deep into his bone. His nerves. His veins. Or even his very soul.

Like a dashing stag's horns piercing through the lion's hide from mid-pounce. The prey fighting for its life, injuring its predator.

'Of course it wasn't going to be that easy,' thought Lucas with a smile that formed on his bloody mouth, his teeth dyed red. 'Fine. Anything that's worth anything should be this hard to get!'

***

Inside the nearby abandoned warehouse building…

Yahiko wandered into the area where The Faceless threw Tatsuya Minakata into, the banker's body messily crashing through the structure's western-style windows.

His slippers stepping on shards of glass that glistened in the moonlight, crushing them under his soles.

"HEY! Thin Man! Where are you? Are you still alive?" called out Yahiko, referring to the V.I.P. he was guarding.

Tatsuya Minakata, the banker son of the famous hatamoto-class samurai oligarchs of both the Shogunate and the Meiji Government, the Minakata Family.

One of the heirs of the huge Minakata Zaibatsu (Conglomerate), Tatsuya was next in line to inherit his family's vast fortune after his mother kicks the bucket. Or so Myojin heard.

He was followed by his younger brother the lawyer and their swordsman nephew, the former member of the Shogunate's special guard.

These people were so filthy rich, they'd make Chizuru Raikouji's family look poor. Or the drug dealer Kanryu Takeda look downright middle class. Or fellow oligarch Jusanro Tani quaint.

'Wonder what that's like,' thought Yahiko with a smirk and a head-shake, repressing memories of him pick-pocketing for the mob to help pay for his family's debts.

Even just one of the trinkets or heirlooms here, like a painting or a suit of armor, would've been enough to pay for his parents' debt with the yakuza. Maybe. It looked like they wanted to have him for keeps.

He maneuvered his sandaled feet through the glass shards like he were walking on eggshells. Shiny, sharp, painful eggshells.

He found Tatsuya in the nick of time. He lay there but not in a pool of his own blood, though he did receive several cuts from going through the window.

"Whew. Thank goodness I found you before The Faceless could get you, Thin Man," said Yahiko, his voice barely above a whisper. "…Uh, Tatsuya-san? You okay, bud?"

"…Y-You're fired," groaned Tatsuya. "I'm going to have my brother sue you for the injuries I've sustained, you teenaged brat!"

Myojin sighed in both relief and exasperation. "Yeah, you're welcome. Save your life? No prob. Think nothing of it."

"Save my life? My assassin just threw me through a window! I almost died!" yelped Kinta's uncle.

Yahiko then barely had time to parry and back away from the attacking Faceless in his next breath, its tip clipping his clavicle, drawing blood.

He cursed under his breath. If John Rathbone could get away with it, he'd kill him with a thousand cuts.

"You didn't kill Minakata Tatsuya yet?" accused Yahiko. "You had every chance to do so."

"I like to play with my prey," answered The Faceless, who now wore a different mask than before. "Half the fun of my assassination missions is the thrill of the hunt and triggering the primal instincts of my victims. Fight or flight."

Yahiko groaned, realizing he now had to deal with this pantomiming foreign invader with a mask shtick worse than the late Hannya from the Oniwabanshu (Castle Guardians).

Tatsuya himself said to The Faceless, "Forget the kid. Whatever your sponsor is paying to assassinate our family, I'll double it! Triple it, even! Stay and become our bodyguard and you could earn a fortune!"

"Watch your filthy mouth, my little piggy bank," said the master fencer. "Once the kid dies, I have no reason to let you live either."

"What a coincidence. I feel the same way about you, Faceless," said Yahiko, surprising even himself with the boldness of his words.

The Faceless smirked. "O-ho. You wouldn't care to translate that feeling into action, would you?"

"I might be tempted," the Son of Tokyo Samurai said.

"Would you, now?" The Faceless proceeded to put his right sword arm forward, pointing his rapier at Yahiko's face while his other hand rested on his hip, his left arm bent on its elbow.

He also had his right leg bent forward, his lead foot pointed at his opponent while his left rear leg and foot pointed to his left side.

The Faceless—who now decided to refer to himself as John Rathbone instead of Fabian La Cerca—told the samurai kid, "Didn't realize you brought your friends along. I miss my dagger. Now I can't show off Fabian's sword and dagger technique."

'Good,' thought the teenager, resisting the urge to stick his tongue out at the fencer lest he cut it out. 'I can barely land a hit on you with that dagger around as is. Thanks, Minoe.'

As the moonlight touched the naked blade of Yahiko's inherited sakabatou, The Faceless remarked, "What is with that sword of yours? Is it a sickle you're wielding or a sword? The blade is on the wrong side. You can't cut someone down like that."

Yahiko then said, "It's not for cutting down people. It's for saving people. It's the sword of life."

***

Kinta Minakata didn't mean to retreat. He got forced to do so.

Like sheep being herded back to their corral by a farm dog. Or a pack of wolves picking the herd apart for lunch.

Was he really luring his half-brother to a trap or was he being herded by him instead? It depended on which one of them would ultimately survive this encounter.

He'd actually been waiting for a counter opportunity that never came. Instead, he faced constant, unrelenting pressure from his supposed half-brother.

The literal Minakata bastard.

He didn't know what to think about it. His mind whirled of memories of being bullied and made fun of by his peers for having his father cuckolded or invaded by a foreigner, stealing away his wife who birthed a bastard.

The child whose father ruined his parents' marriage and led his own father to commit sepukku (ritual suicide) by hara-kiri (disembowelment) and later decapitation.

This devilish blond man was like all that past trauma of his personified. This son of a bitch.

No, wait. He'd never call him that. He'd never shame his mother that way.

Rather, he was a son of a gun by the truest sense of the term. A "gun" referred to a foreign military person, he believed. Sons of guns tended to be children of navy sailors.

The phrase potentially originated in a Royal Navy direction that pregnant women aboard smaller naval vessels had to give birth in the space between the broadside guns to keep the gangways and crew decks clear.

He would've pondered on this more had his relentless half-brother gave him enough breathing room and time for his brain to process this bombshell of a revelation.

He'd nailed several counters at Lucas already but he wouldn't go down. As if him attacking while already bleeding and injured by Zan was a lie or ruse to get Kinta's guard down.

The man's stamina was impressive. Unlike his stamina, which was the complete opposite.

Lucas had been fighting, beating, and killing bodyguards left and right for what felt like hours and there he was, fresh like a daisy.

Or rather, the presence of blood seemed to sharpen his senses, activating his fight-or-flight instincts. Or a shark going into a feeding frenzy. Even if it was his own blood.

Luke's wild, beastly eyes shone in the dark, lit by a sliver of moonlight. Like the eyes of an animal ready to pounce. To prove that sometimes even the savviest of humans had to let nature take its course and succumb to getting mauled by a lion or bear.

Cunning and careful planning could only take you so far in the wild.

Kinta also had one serious problem. Try as he might, he couldn't bring himself to hate this stranger who tried his best to kill the entire Minakata Family.

He shouldn't feel this way, especially against such a dangerous man who already murdered so many of his family's elite guards as well as several of the Sanada Ninjas.

Everyone's lives were at stake against the Brigands Guild of assassins and mercenaries.

***

Yahiko remembered Kaoru's words like it was yesterday.

"The Kamiya Kasshin Ryu is a sword style that my father developed during the Meiji Era after surviving the turbulence of the Bakumatsu."

Her father and the founder of the Kamiya Dojo, Koshijiro Kamiya, didn't approve of murderous swords. With the ambition for swords that gave life, Koshijiro and his daughter Kaoru gave this sword style everything they had for 10 years.

"The sakabatou is a sword that gives life instead of takes it. A life-giving sword," said Yahiko, echoing what Kaoru and even Kenshin had told him in the past on why they chose to teach him Kamiya Kasshin Ryu instead of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu.

"A life-giving sword? What utter hogwash is that? Next you'll tell me you want a healing gun, or a bomb that puts your limbs back together!" mocked The Faceless.

"You're lucky because I follow a non-killing sword style. Even though I want to kill you to avenge the people you've killed, I'll settle on defeating you," said Yahiko while falling into his Water Stance.

He inwardly cringed at his audacity for saying those words but knew deep down that even though he didn't share Kenshin's past regrets, he also wasn't too keen to spill blood himself.

He promised both Kenshin and Kaoru he wouldn't. Let the endless murders end with the Bakumatsu, they said.

"You are aware that this is a duel to the death, child. I'm under no obligation to spare your life even if you're foolish enough to spare mine," said The Faceless.

"A sword is made to kill. Let me teach you that painful lesson, boy."

"Spare me the speech. I've heard it all before. 'Swords are weapons.' 'Swordsmanship is the art of killing.' But even if you think I'm sugarcoating the truth, I can and will show you what a life-giving sword is all about."

Myojin wondered if he could back up his bluster or if he wasn't merely bluffing. A sword that gave life instead of taking it away was patently ridiculous and totally contradictory.

What pushed him to say such things? What made him choose to believe Kaoru's flowery words and her father's idealistic beliefs like Kenshin did when they first met?

"Heh. Is that so? Spoken like a child who has never gotten blood in your hands," harrumphed the masked Faceless, his mask-covered nose seemingly upturned at Yahiko.. "You're a child."

"Yeah, and? So what?" said Yahiko. "I'd like to keep it that way. I don't want to be a murderer. I just want to beat you."

Yahiko did a Simple Attack from the Jodan-no-Kamae (Fire Stance) of having the sakabatou raised high up over his head, his muscles tense and his shuffling footwork gauging the distance by feel.

Whether it was a slash or a thrust after a miss from any of the eight directions as shown in the Kuzu Ryu Sen, it didn't matter.

He expected the Parry Riposte to happen and was actually baiting him to strike to do a combination strike or Compound Attack (attacks with feints) or even a Counter Attack (responding in a way that avoided the riposte while landing the counter).

Patiently, Rathbone's riposte turned into another circular parry as he danced around Yahiko's probing swings and answered with blocks and deflection, as though figuring out the kid wasn't committing fully to the strikes enough to land an effective counter to the counter or Counter Time.

Yahiko did more feints to draw out a possible counterattack from John Rathbone that he could counter or do his own Counter Time. Or he even countered an obvious feint from Rathbone, hoping to react fast enough to counter the resulting Counter Time with his own Feint in Time or a feinted counterattack.

'So he's another samurai who knows the Tactical Wheel,' thought Rathbone. 'Fascinating. Kenjutsu isn't the primitive, ineffective martial art I thought it was.'

The Faceless then read and parried all his feints until he found an angle where he could do an off-time riposte before Yahiko could react.

The thrust didn't stab the teenager in the heart, but only because John slashed at the last second to avoid Myojin's Hadachi (Sword Catch) technique.

"You're a funny fellow, kid," said Rathbone with a chuckle while wiping Yahiko's blood from his triangular blade. He then turned towards the injured Minakata and declared, "You have a champion with you, Minakata Tatsuya. And what a champion."

For his part, Tatsuya Minakata managed to crawl to the nearest boxes and rest his back there, sitting away from these two dueling fools.

He'd give a king's ransom to have both of these dangerous idiots beheaded.

***

Judging by the additional wounds Kinta Minakata gave his bastard brother, the gulf in skill between the two was apparent.

So why didn't it matter? Why didn't the long-lost "Takuto Minakata" crumple down and die from his strikes?

Did he really need to cut him through the bone, lop off his limbs, or decapitate him to kill him? Otherwise, he wouldn't die?

He still kept standing. Biding his time. Parrying endlessly, like his (presumably) sword master The Faceless would, in order to find an opening.

Luke's defense was practically nonexistent compared to Rathbone. However, he more than made up for it with his limitless stamina and out-of-this-world resiliency.

In comparison, the only blood staining Kinta's clothes were that of his brother's or any of the Brigands Guild he'd faced off against so far.

And yet a he felt a sense of gloom at the back of his head. He had to keep his guard up as long as Lucas kept moving.

The blonde foreign devil looked injured but to be honest, none of his bleeding wounds were fatal. They were just flesh wounds.

Also, Lucas noticed that he hadn't landed a significant strike on his brother for quite some time. Injured and bleeding, Luke charged forward, cutting the distance between them and making it harder to land full-strength counters.

Like he'd been prolonging this fight to memorize his older brother's tempo, range, tells, tactics, techniques, tendencies, and rhythm. As though a war of attrition favored him the most.

Now every time Kinta attempted a Full Moon Slash, Luke braced himself to block the strike with a two-handed parry before it could reach its apex.

He also sidestepped the slash with a blade deflection. He even minimized the impact of an unblocked or belatedly blocked technique by hopping backwards and letting the arcing slash push him away.

And just like that, Kinta's ultimate attack had been sealed. He couldn't even do a Blue Moon Slash anymore because Lucas wouldn't let him even land one Full Moon Slash.

On his part, Luke didn't relent on any of his attacks either, with every slash, stab, and chop of his with the potential to maim, bisect, dissect, draw, or quarter anyone it hit.

Again, Minakata felt like a helpless child dodging carriages or a stamped of spooked horses in open traffic.

His brother really swung for the fences. And even if his full commitment to his strikes left him wide open, he was more than willing to take a shallow slash to land a deeper one.

How very Japanese of him for a gaijin. He embodied the very definition of the Japanese saying, "Let them cut your flesh, and you will break their bones."

***

By the age of fifteen, Yahiko had become a national champion level swordsman feared and revered in Tokyo as "The Catcher of a Thousand Blades" thanks to his shirahadori (blade catching) mastery.

At that time, he had also mastered Kamiya Kasshin Ryu, proving as much with the feat of stopping the first five attacks from Kenshin's Kuzu Ryu Sen (Nine-Headed Dragon Flash) technique once.

Nevertheless, Myojin grit his teeth as he faced off against The Faceless' comparatively tamer yet more methodical attacks.

Having to deal with an elusive opponent who picked his spots, took his sweet time to attack, you couldn't hit, could read all of your attacks and feints felt like pulling teeth.

Or a thousand paper cuts while submerged in a lemon bath. These little nicks that were shallower than a wound yet somehow felt worse, like you'd been set on fire.

The difference between death and torture, even.

"We have a hero with us," mocked Rathbone, daring Yahiko to strike all the way with circular parries and inviting thrusts. "I'll gladly play the role of the villain now. Don't disappoint me, hero."

John Rathbone really was the spirit and image of Yutaro Tsukayama's fencing-like kenjutsu, right down to slowing the pace to a crawl in order to peck and prick the enemy to death.

Or at least anger an opponent enough to make him charge recklessly and commit with full bone-cutting slashes then make him pay for his recklessness.

'…How did this gaijin defeat the echolocation ninja anyway?' Yahiko thought as they again exchanged parries and dodges. 'A ninja who could detect and react to him instantly. And could mess with his rhythm. What is his secret to solving those problems?'

Yahiko observed that no matter how hard he feinted or attempted to interrupt The Faceless' rhythm, he'd find a way to recover, parry, or dodge then reset the assault or counter off any of the samurai teen's attempts at charging.

He had a safety zone he could shell up into or retreat towards to cover up any gaps or openings in his stance or his actions.

Even when the Sanada Demon interrupted his rhythm, he could still counter off any openings presented to him by a charging opponent.

He always set the pace and countered at more flexible or awkward angles compared to the comparatively frigid stances of kenjutsu.

He was one step ahead every time and did mind games on what he'd do next. His wait-and-see strategy also allowed him to adapt and counter any tactics thrown at him.

Just like Yutaro's modus operandi.

Because of his injured hand, Tsukayama relied more on an overall strategy that used his opponent's strengths against them instead of relying on tactics and discovering his opponent's weaknesses throughout the course of the battle.

However, this persistent sense of déjà vu (French for "already dreamed") merely pushed Yahiko further, his curved sword clashing in sparking flashes with Faceless' thin straight blade with endless probing parries to find openings or to create them.

Fortunately, Yahiko's newly acquired skills of dodging, blocking, parrying, and cutting the distance from a retreating opponent limiting the amount of thrusts and ripostes from John.

His endless drills with May Brooks/Satsuki Sakaguchi had paid dividends. Otherwise, he would've been skewered by the Faceless long ago.

The Kamiya Kasshin Ryu master also remembered why he went into his Musha Shugyo (Warrior's Pilgrimage) in the first place. To defeat his rival, Yutaro, and his defensive kendo skills.

***

You shouldn't let his crimson mask of blood deceive you. Lucas Grant was more dangerous now than he was before he started bleeding.

It could be that Lucas was stronger and more durable than Kinta the same way Luke's bastard sword could break the samurai's katana because of its higher grade, carbon-rich steel.

However, it didn't necessarily matter.

Kinta was no mere injured animal fighting tooth and nail for his life by letting his base instincts take over either.

The Mimawarigumi Battousai was as dangerous to his fellow men as men were to animals.

Humans were weaker than most animals yet they somehow ended up becoming the dominant species in the world.

Kinta was no mere beast. He was more than a lion. He was a man. A hunter. The human animal that was on top of the food chain. The apex predator of apex predators.

Granted, a human wasn't faster than a cheetah. Nor stronger than a gorilla. Nor more brutal than a tiger or lion. His nails weren't as sharp as bear claws. Without clothes, he was as exposed as a naked mole rat or a chick that fell off its nest.

By all accounts, in the animal kingdom, a human should be prey instead of the apex predator.

However, humans weren't as weak as one would think.

They had opposable thumbs like apes and monkeys, allowing them the ability to make tools and tightly grip sharp weapons to make up for their lack of claws and raw strength.

They were long-distance endurance runners. While animals could outrun any human at any given time, a human was adept at stalking and tiring such animals down with unrelenting determination.

Any animal could beat humans in a race but they'd tire out trying to outpace a human in a marathon race.

Humans could also sweat, which allowed them to efficiently cool down and prevent themselves from overheating due to activity.

Most animals did not have as effective of a cooling system as humans, so any exertion of commensurate effort on their part, like fleeing or fighting for their life, will leave them more exhausted compared to the self-cooling human.

However, the weapon Kinta had in between his ears was what made him the most dangerous.

The human weapon of intelligence.

A human was able to plan, work with groups of other humans, and make tools. He was no mere animal acting on instinct.

The most intelligent and methodical of humans could turn hunters like any of the big cats into the hunted by springing traps on them or using projectiles against them, from rocks to spears.

Humans could also communicate with each other through language. They could take down even huge animals like elephants, rhinoceroses, and hippopotamuses by tactics, traps, subterfuge, and cooperation.

Even as Lucas pressured Kinta to retreat from an endless barrage of decapitating strikes—knowing his large chunk of steel he called a sword could withstand a strike better than the thinner though sharper katana—the samurai conserved his energy.

He'd memorized Luke's tactics, which kept him safe from even the wildest strikes through pattern recognition. Like a human stalking his prey and memorizing their movement and habits before going in for the kill.

Even as Kinta panted and sweated from the effort, his intelligence kept him from succumbing to wild beasts like his reckless brother.

Even as he tasted the rusty tang of his own blood in his mouth after clearing his throat, his brother still could barely touch him.

Alas, his brother was no mere beast either. Lucas also resembled the human animal, particularly in terms of his tireless stamina, quick recovery, hand-eye coordination, and ability to outlast his prey like an ancient hunter-gatherer.

A modern human with caveman-like strength and instincts.

***

"…In the next attack, I'll parry thrice then do a riposte," said The Faceless all of a sudden, alarming Yahiko. "Pay attention now."

Was he going to really do it? Was he going to tell him his next attack and still land, confident that Myojin couldn't come up with a counter? Or was he lying about doing that and he'd counter a different way?

And so Yahiko attempted to fly and bash Faceless on the noggin, only for him to get parried.

He then attempted to break the sword with the Tsui Gami (God Hammer), with got neutralized with two parries, followed by a riposte that he tried to counter with the Shippu Jinrai Dotou no Ken (Gale Thunderclap Billow Sword) to the wrist.

However, the riposte ripped through regardless, with Rathbone turning his wrist to parry the blow with his elongated sword handle. He was landing at will now.

Damn you, Cat Eyes. Oh wait, this wasn't Cat Eyes. This was The Faceless.

Rathbone said, "Wipe yourself, kiddo. You're bleeding."

"…I needed that scratch to awaken me!" responded Yahiko.

Fine. Whatever. He'd been planning to use this technique against Yutaro but… what the hell. He might as well use it on this mirror image of Yutaro's kenjutsu.

Yutaro's swordsmanship was such that it didn't matter if you used your best techniques at him, he'd use your strengths as your weakness with a strategy that figured the whole essence of your own kenjutsu out.

Yahiko was different. He was the Yang to Yutaro's Yin. Or vice-versa.

Instead of figuring out a strategy to take out an opponent, he'd rather wing it or improvise, like when he figured out the weakness of the high-flying Hennya Kariwa was someone who could fly like him.

Any strategy Yahiko exhibited was purely incidental. He was more a think-on-your-feet kind of guy who relied on gut instinct to think up new tactics on the fly.

And his gut instinct told him that The Faceless had the same fundamental weakness as Yutaro.

"Next we'll do a Beat Parry Riposte," bragged Rathbone, only for him to frown when Yahiko charged at him. Like an enraged bull annoyed by all the cape waving of the matador.

'Huh. Fine. If he wants to play to my strengths, I'll indulge him,' thought John, preparing to do a Beat Parry Riposte regardless of what attack, counterattack, or feint Myojin had in mind.

Yahiko instead responded with a Counter Time. So it was a feint.

'No problem, time to adjust…?!' thought John before getting blindsided by a simple head strike, the blunt end of the sakabatou hammering his noggin and leaving a crack on his mask.

To himself, Rathbone wondered, 'What just happened?'

"Maybe next time, you'd have the common sense to not tell me what you're about to do next, old man," the petulant teenager answered back.

***

Back after The Faceless recently faced-off against Kinta Minakata, he relayed the following information to Lucas Grant.

"...I didn't notice it at first since I'm no a spring chicken myself, but Minakata Kinta has stamina problems. He slows down the longer you prolong a fight. Just like me, because of my age. Your youth will win out as long as you can withstand his extensive swordsman experience."

"Does he now?" Luke had asked with a twinkle in his blue eyes. "That's fascinating. Tell me more about Niisan (Big Brother)."

"Make your duel into a war of attrition. I haven't met anyone who has ever outlasted you in a fight. Turn it into a brawl. Throw away all technique. Don't bother outthinking him, just keep on striking. Take him into deep waters. Drown him. Show him how you've survived after all these years."

And thus Lucas did just that. Running high on adrenalin and testing the limits of his monstrous stamina, Luke kept his breathing low to conserve his energy.

He kept his frenetic pace by taking breaks while Kinta second guessed his next move and using twitch reflexes to counter or respond without thought in the middle of his rest period.

Boy, was his big brother a tough nut to crack. Most other swordsmen would've succumbed to him by now. However, the Minakata boys were apparently built different.

He'd thrown everything at him but a kitchen sink, and all he had to show for it were minor scratches and bruises.

Like he'd merely been roughhousing him on the playground like his childhood bully instead of doing his best to assassinate him then and there.

He'd poured the pressure on him, each of his full-power strikes killing blows in their own right, but the high-ranking hatamoto samurai remained cool under pressure. He had ice water in his veins.

The plan was to push his half-brother to his limits and run him ragged, knowing full well that he had respiratory problems stemming from his time with Hidden Christian rebels.

However, the red-faced Luke himself ached all over. He had a splitting headache as well. He underestimated the toll of exerting himself so much, yet he ended up swinging at nothing but air every time.

That cunning bastard. Even as Grant attempted to tire Minakata out, Minakata turned the tables on him and tired him out instead with all his missed swings and over-exertion.

His threshold for pain might be high, but he was testing its limits with all the cuts and lacerations he kept barely blocking from the Mimawarigumi Battousai.

He was also left to wonder: Was Kinta's deadpan face the look of someone out of breath and dying from his effort? He couldn't tell.

Kinta looked like he just went through a light jog. He'd broken a sweat, finally, but what of it? Did it compare to the buckets of blood Luke had already spilled?

Which one of them really was the more tired of the two?

Luke gulped hard, bracing himself for a long volley of attacks to come just to break apart his half-brother's clam shell defense and counters.

He had to do this though. Kinta Minakata was the biggest hurdle towards him getting his revenge against the family that abandoned him and his mother. That turned his life into a living hell.

Even with The Faceless' cunning strategy in mind, everything was still going to go down to the wire. Survival of the fittest.

'No hard feelings, Big Brother.'

***

Yahiko fell into his neutral Water Stance once again.

A basic kendo stance that invited all sorts of fencing attacks or counters at every corner from the more mobile sword style.

The Faceless' sword arm swung like a pendulum again, ready to parry, slash, or thrust at a moment's notice, with it serving as his means of gauging his opponent's next…!

The floor buckled beneath him. In a second, Yahiko had struck the ground with a Dou Gami (God on Earth).

Dammit. That technique had a wide berth and swing! Why couldn't Rathbone anticipate it this time?

Caught flatfooted, John Rathbone hopped to stable ground, away from the sudden explosion of rubble and debris, his sword ready to preemptively attack or counterattack.

Yahiko emerged from the smoke with a running start. Rathbone did a counter thrust that turned into a parry at the last second.

They ended up pushing off against each other with the strength of their swings, John's rapier trembling from Myojin's attempt at a blade-breaking Tsui Gami.

"The Faceless's blade is not so firm," the samurai kid said in jest.

The Brigands Guild member answered, "Still firm enough to run you through."

"Is that right? Make sure to keep your wrists safe from harm, then."

"What…?"

While Myojin was initially intimidated by The Faceless calling out his attacks, he realized it was no different from kendo matches calling out the part of the armor they hit when they were having formal matches.

It was up to the opponent to register what was said and respond. And respond he did.

"KOTE! DOUTOU NO KEN!"

As Yahiko's original signature move as a child—the Gale Thunderclap Billow Sword—landed on Rathbone's wrist, disarming him, the samurai teen inwardly grinned.

That was the weakness of The Faceless. Same as Yutaro Tsukayama.

When push came to shove, they'd wait for an opportunity to counter rather than attack 9 times out of 10.

Even when they attacked, they tended to bait a counterattack first to make their attack a counterattack.

The only time they attacked was when they had run out of options, but at that point they become vulnerable to counterattacks themselves.

Timing a Counter Time right in a way that they didn't see it coming was the key to success.

To John's chagrin, he heard Tatsuya holler at him. "Well, well, well. The fencing master has met his equal."

'My equal, you say?' thought the indignant Faceless while rubbing his wrists. 'Excuse me? Him? My equal? Balderdash.'

***

From the high-pace exchange of slashes and parries, the fight between blood brothers ground to almost a halt.

They paced themselves equally, with Luke pushing for the action while Kinta defended and kept an eye out for counter opportunities.

Their breathing was heavy. They panted like tired dogs in the middle of a summer heat wave. Their fight that lasted minutes felt like hours of nonstop trench war.

Neither willing to give ground. One fought to salvage his honor. The other fought to enact revenge upon the family who abandoned him.

On one hand, there was Kinta Minakata. He glistened with light perspiration from the effort and a couple of cuts and bruises, but his breathing was as ragged as his half-brother's.

The only blood on him was his brother's, among others. As expected of the sole Mimawarigumi survivor given the same moniker as the Ishin Shishi's own Battousai.

His wheezing and occasional coughing belied his pristine condition. He also looked paler, perhaps even bluer, then usual.

On the other hand, there was Lucas Grant. He was supposed to be named Takuto Minakata, but his blond hair and blue eyes after he was born gave him away.

He looked like he'd gone from hell and back after taking on two of three Sanada Demons. However, his movements looked somehow sharper and livelier than his brother from another father.

For someone who looked like he was tortured, there remained a spring in his step. As though the blood on him was not his own. Or perhaps bleeding somehow invigorated him.

Which one of them was more exhausted? Which one of them was on the verge of death? The one who looked like he was almost dead or the one who sounded like he was almost dead?

Those were the thoughts filling Lieutenant Satoru Sakaguchi as he cradled his daughter near him while warily giving the side eye on the other remaining Brigands Guild member.

For his part, Kai Hidaka himself watched the bullfight of a match between fellow brigand Lucas and his brother, Kinta. If he were unmasked, perhaps he'd show an agape mouth.

Neither of the three moved from their positions as tensions rose between the panting, gasping Minakata Brothers.

The heavy breathing and groaning soon relaxed and slowed until they stopped altogether.

The two Minakata Brothers then stood up at the same time. They had saved up all their strength for this last salvo.

They controlled their breath and measured the distance between them by eyesight. They seemed to breathe almost in cadence with one another.

Slowly but surely, Kinta sheathed his blade. Meanwhile, Lucas kept his hunk of sharpened iron stabbed into the ground, waiting for the right moment to pull it out and lift it for an attack.

***

Yahiko thought about running after or even stomping on Rathbone's rapier on the factory floor to break it apart, but its owner had already dove to get a hold of it.

Oh well. Thusly, the Tokyo Samurai Descendant said, "For my next trick, I'll break that sword of yours apart."

John harrumphed. So now the kid was calling his shot as well? "You dare use my own gimmick against me, Myojin Yahiko?"

"Yessir. I sure do dare." The Tokyo Samurai Descendant fell back to his familiar Water Stance.

Rathbone himself fell into his En Garde fencing stance in kind, bouncing on his heels and measuring the distance with probing rapier thrusts.

Knowing what would happen next. They both knew, actually.

Rathbone had figured out how Yahiko was landing his strikes. The samurai kid used the same preparatory stance to initiate all of his offense, transitioning suddenly to other stances from the basic kendo stance if he had to.

This way, he gave no "tell" or "signal" to what he was about to do next. His stance remained neutral at every exchange.

All of his techniques, from the Revisal Techniques to the original Kamiya Kasshin Ryu and even his imitation Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu moves could be done from the Chudan-no-Kamae.

Making Rathbone second-guess which attack to counter allowed Yahiko to react to his belated counters in time and do the appropriate Counter Time.

In this scenario, even a "telegraphed" attack like Dou Gami could land, because if John were to notice it in time and counter, Yahiko had enough time to react and turn the strike into a feint and Counter Time.

"Genei Gami (Phantom God)," Myojin whispered.

Hiding all his techniques' preparatory movements from the neutral stance to better read his opponent was the next step of his Revisal Techniques.

And as the blocked Dou Gami finally gave Yahiko enough room to execute the Tsui Gami, Rathbone's rapier finally broke into two pieces.

Alas, this was what Rathbone bet on.

With a gloved hand, he grabbed hold of one piece of the broken sword and dual wielded the blades, blocking the samurai kid's follow-up strike with the bottom half and stabbing him in the shoulder with the top half.

"My equal? Really? ¡Qué huevá más grande! (What an annoyance!)" said John Rathbone, who'd transformed into the Spaniard Fabian La Cerca at the last second upon finding a way to turn his rapier into his favored sword and dagger weapons.

"AUGH!" said Yahiko, who had gripped The Faceless' wrist in time to keep the rapier from reaching his vital organs, his face twisted in anguish.

"You're 100 years too early to be facing me, child."

***

To Lucas's surprise, it was Kinta who spoke first after his katana slid to its scabbard with a click. He had one question for him.

"What happened to Mother?" asked the heir to the Minakata Zaibatsu fortune.

"She's dead," said the Prodigal Son matter-of-factly. "Your family killed her. Called her a traitor to her nation. A whore to the gaijin invaders. Disowned her. Cast her aside. Banished her as their black sheep. Forgot about her altogether, like she didn't exist. Does that answer your question, Big Brother?"

"…."

Despite himself, Satoru murmured, "So the rumors were true. Damn."

Beside him, the officer's daughter stirred, pretending to be asleep but clearly hearing what Kinta's yonger brother said.

Azuma Minakata committed ritual suicide after his wife slept with a foreigner and bore their bastard son. Afterwards, Aoi Minakata was never heard from again.

The Minakatas pretended she never existed and thus she didn't. Until now.

The two finally addressed the elephant in the proverbial room, clearing the air between them.

It was the very thing that held them back and kept them from going all out. It left them wondering what they were even fighting for.

Now they know. The Minakatas committed an unforgivable sin and their unknown grandchild had come to collect.

Also, like cowards, they used their precious heir to the throne to defend themselves against retribution, making him implicit to their crimes. An accessory to murder.

Lucas would've rather drawn and quartered his cowardly Uncle Kaneda. Or tortured the pride out of his arrogant Uncle Tatsuya before beheading him.

Maybe even mercy-kill his Grandmother Mieko. Then piss on the grave of his late Grandfather Toshiro.

Luke had been disguising himself as their bodyguard all this time for a reason. To gauge whether they deserved retribution or if they changed from their evil ways. What he saw of them steeled his resolve. Most of them deserved what was coming to them.

Alas, their honorable nephew or grandson Kinta was in his way from committing justified familicide.

It couldn't be helped. They were both victims of circumstance.

The two then charged at each other, Kinta waiting for the right moment to draw his Akatsuki (Red Moon) katana and Lucas preparing a full two-handed swing of his bastard sword.

***

The Faceless's body stood up in attention, as though preparing to march. He then shifted to his fencing stance, his free arm settling on his hips, his jousting or fencing hand moving in circles in front of him.

Yahiko was now faced with two problems. One, his shoulder got injured, so his reaction time had been physically diminished.

Two, The Faceless was back to using two swords, so even the Genei Gami's ability to hide which attack he was using could not overcome Fabian La Cerca merely blocking or parrying with his other arm.

They were back to square one. Only this time, the game of cat and mouse was over. The cat won and the mouse ended up too injured to still play with.

The cat was about to eat him now.

'Oh yeah? Well screw that!'

Throwing caution to the wind, Yahiko shifted to the offensive Fire Stance this time. His true signature stance—an all-offense one focused on striking at the precise moment.

He feinted and baited the dual-wielding fencing master for all he was worth.

However, he couldn't land a counter-counterstrike this time because Faceless had one other trick up his sleeve other than the broken tip of his rapier. He also broke his rhythm.

He stopped. Paused. Avoided committing into a regular tempo or pattern to allow himself to react even at the last second in case he again misread an attack or feint from Yahiko's Phantom God.

He shifted from fast to slow at irregular intervals, like the clumsiest and drunkest dance partner determined to step on your feet at every turn.

For, unbeknownst to Myojin, this was how La Cerca ultimately beat the tempo-altering, echolocating techniques of the bat ninja Baku.

Furthermore, La Cerca could shift between attacking and defending with either sword arm. He could turn his swords into dual shields or shift between sword and shield on either hand at a moment's notice, depending on the exchange.

The Faceless outclassed the injured and slower samurai in every single way.

However, before the fencer could finish the samurai off with another stab or even an arterial cut to make him bleed so much he'd pass out and die, he had to deflect shuriken from out of the blue and retreat.

A certain ninjutsu master just came back from retrieving the horses and carriage that got spooked earlier by paid Chinese mercenaries.

The steadfast ninja arrived just in time and almost blinded La Cerca with twin kunai to the two exposed eye slits on his mask.

"Kinta! I mean, Kaita!" said Yahiko, mixing up the names of these people he only recently met. "You came back! I thought you abandoned us!"

"Of course I did," said Kaita with a shrug. "I still have a mission to complete, Yojimbo (Bodyguard)."

"Where's the carriage?" asked Myojin.

"It's parked near an open field. The horses are tied there," answered the shinobi. "I originally wanted to run The Faceless over, but then you entered this building."

"A shadow dares defeat me?" said Fabian, his chuckle echoing from underneath his plain white face mask. "Mierda (Shit). The only shadow allowed to defeat me is the Kagemusha (Shadow Warrior)."

Kaita looked at Yahiko then at La Cerca. "You're right. I am but a mere shadow. And that's how we'll defeat you."

The next thing they knew, like a magic trick, Tatsuya had disappeared, prompting The Faceless to action. He had no choice, they took away his bargaining chip.

***

Just like with Yahiko and his Genei Gami, Kaita's invisibility trick made it tough to predict the trajectory of his projectiles.

Thusly, Kaita disappeared from their midst, melting into the darkness of the already dimly lit building in order to attack in the shadows like the coward that he was.

Such was the deviousness of these so-called oriental assassins. They were the yellow peril for a reason, or so Fabian thought.

Either warrior proved tricky for The Faceless to handle on their own, but now they'd decided to join forces, they were double the trouble.

Fine. He'd take them both on at the same time, if need be.

Yahiko and La Cerca clashed blades once more, only this time the kid samurai wielded his iron sheathe like a second blunt sword but with a reverse grip to counteract Fabian's sword-and-dagger technique, just like before in the narrow alleyway.

Interesting. But what about The Faceless' broken rhythm?

Yahiko answered the baits to counterattack by simply attack. He didn't need to dance to the broken rhythm of Faceless' tempo. He'd rather force Faceless to move to his own beat or get smacked by a wayward strike.

A Simple Attack. Or a series of simple attacks. No Compound Attacks. No feints. No parries. No counters. Nothing fancy. Just pure relentlessness.

His offense was his defense (along with occasional dodges and whiffs).

However, it wasn't all predictable. He swung for the fences using slashes that changed levels from high to low. Head to body. Or even hips, thighs, and knees.

His adrenalin rush allowed him to persevere, his shoulder throbbing from the stab earlier.

"Good effort, Faceless-san," said Yahiko with a smirk after Fabian countered another God Hammer with a crisscrossing double-bladed block.

The Faceless answered, "My next will be even better, my fancy clown."

Yahiko's unrelenting attacks and chase down then became unintentional counterattacks because he wasn't timing them to counter any responses from La Cerca.

He merely overwhelmed him with his own responses, like a talkative person talking over and silencing someone else with his endless stream of words. He did multiple Dou Gami blasts on the floor to mess with his footwork or Tsui Gami attempts to break or disarm what was left of his rapier.

The Faceless couldn't even parry anymore due to rough state Yahiko's sword-breaking techniques left his swords at. However, Fabian couldn't be easily overwhelmed.

He reestablished his broken tempo by finding counter opportunities from Yahiko's own overwhelming offense. Like slipping in side comments or sarcastic quips here and there that silenced even the chattiest fellow.

He also upped his reaction time, knowing he was basically taking on a tiring one-armed young man, before figuring out his tempo and countering the attacks in kind but stopping short from getting baited into a Counter Time.

He also bided his time, knowing full well Yahiko had to exert more effort to land his strikes than he did, who in contrast merely had to react to him and his frenetic pace.

"Are you tiring, Yojimbo?" asked Kaita from the shadows.

"Just sit tight and I'll take you on in a moment!" retorted Yahiko with a bloody grin.

To himself, he wondered if this was how a duel with "Cat Eyes" Tsukayama would've unfolded at this point. A tug of war between timing and tempo.

The Faceless, on his part, had also been dodging shuriken, spikes, nails, and other projectiles from the shadow ninja's guerilla tactics and assistance to slow him down and give Yahiko more opportunities to strike.

His broken rhythm that saved him from even Baku's screaming tempo-dictation technique and Zan's echolocation accuracy also made him a reactive mobile target that avoided both Yahiko and Kaita's shared attempts at swatting him down.

For an attack to land, it needed timing and positioning. The purely instinctual Yahiko made up for missed or whiffed strikes with even more strikes or follow-throughs.

Combinations on top of combinations to the head and torso that forced Fabian on the defensive in an endless series of parries and blocks.

'Ah. He fights just like Luke,' The Faceless realized. 'An endless stream of follow-through attacks and recoveries.'

It really was feast or famine with this child. No middle ground.

Hesitation was what increased the effectiveness of La Cerca's broken rhythm. Yahiko counteracted that by not caring if he missed and simply striking in bunches, using the misses to adjust his range from the target better and correct the miss with successive blows.

However, the untouchable Fabian La Cerca started figuring Yahiko's tempo out while avoiding or parrying Kaita's shuriken from the background with his makeshift dagger like it was an afterthought.

He danced around both Myojin's close-quarter strikes and the Sanada Ninja's long-range projectiles, while sneaking in cutting counters that stopped the samurai kid's charge cold.

Like with Baku, La Cerca assimilated and countered off of his opponent's rhythm completely while dodging their attacks and counters at the same time.

Everyone had their own rhythm. However, everyone else couldn't counter The Faceless in kind because of his own broken rhythm that changed in accordance to the circumstances.

Unrelenting offense was no solution to his broken rhythm because it only made the attacker vulnerable to his counters.

Their dance of parries and thrusts continued as Fabian swooped in for the kill, with him completely memorizing Yahiko's tempo and countering at every turn.

Beat. Parry. Beat. Parry. Parry. Dodge. Counter. Over and over. Predictable. How utterly predictable.

Yahiko started looking pretty rough, like the bloody Lucas did after facing off against Zan.

The kid's tight mini dodges, constant head movement, sword-stealing attempts, and his own school's cross-armed parry and riposte (Hadome and Hawatari) kept him in the match, though.

Yahiko, Kaita, and even Fabian noticed a small window of vulnerability whenever he shifted from defending against the ninja's projectiles and the samurai's swings from his sword and sheathe.

A fraction of a fraction of a second. It was a small window, but the Tsui Gami also used a small window of reverberation to strike the same point three times fast. It was in Yahiko's bag.

Confident he was landing his sharp counters and ripostes at will at this point, Fabian went ham and stopped hesitating.

He indulged in continuous counterattacks without fear of any traps or counter times from Yahiko while having that vulnerability in his mind. Determined to do a parry and riposte if that happened.

A shuriken flew from overhead instead of straight-on to La Cerca's head, which he deflected by reflex. For that split-second, his timing was predictable. Yahiko thusly attacked.

However, expecting this, The Faceless feinted a counter (Feint in Time), only to get smacked in the head with a simple attack. His knees buckling slightly, he sidestepped a follow-through and did a riposte.

He knew Yahiko's pattern by heart now, errant attacks that slipped through aside.

However, his every riposte and counter got blocked and parried themselves with the Kamiya Kasshin Ryu succession technique, the Hadome (Sword Halt) and Hawatari (Sword Crossing).

Myojin couldn't time him while he was waiting for a counterattack, so he baited him with a predictable pattern while spring-loading his own counter time.

It took his shuffling feet and upper-body movement to get out of range of Yahiko's counters and ripostes, with him figuring out that the kid had timed him by baiting him and drawing out his counters.

Thusly, he paused and waited to see if it was bait or a real attack.

Kaita attacked again at that moment, triggering La Cerca's reflex. At the same time, Yahiko attacked again.

On this toss-up, he predicted another bait-and-switch from Yahiko and got a face-full of sakabatou for his trouble.

He then defended again with his footwork and mindless stab to keep the kid off of him, only for his dagger to get stuck inside the samurai's waiting sheathe.

Yahiko pulled the fencer towards him within his range and then wrenched out the dagger from his hands.

Meanwhile, La Cerca himself smiled behind his cracked mask. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been this excited to complete a mission. Who was this Yahiko Myojin character anyway?

If it were up to him, he would've devised a proper plan to take him out, just like with Kinta Minakata. The boy proved himself a formidable foe in his own right.

The fencer dodged, slipped, parried, riposted, and countered Yahiko's strikes even at close range, bewildering him.

Then everything went dark, his mask shattering from a concussive Tsui Gami to the side of his temple. Perhaps his skull might've cracked as well.

He fell in a boneless heap at the scratched-up and bleeding Yahiko's feet, his vision swimming as if underwater.

What just happened?

***

To Be Continued...

The dialog between Yahiko and The Faceless is based on the banter between Captain Esteban Pasquale (played by Basil Rathbone) and Diego Vega/Zorro (played by Tyrone Power) during their duel in the movie "The Mark of Zorro (1940)".

Also, naturally, all this shadow talk is based on Tetsuya Kuroko. In my mind, I've transformed the original Kaita from the Rurouni Kenshin Black Knight filler arc into a Kuroko-like ninja.

Danke, Abdiel

#yahiko myojin #the faceless #rurouni kenshin #rurouni yahiko #mark of zorro #zorro #tyrone power #basil rathbone #fencing #poppinjay #deja vu

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gabriel-gabdiel · 1 year

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Rurouni Yahiko Chapter 56: The Sanada Demons

The Sanada Demons have come to save the day. Can these shinobi take on the likes of the Prodigal Son and the Swordsman Bibile?

The rest of the chapters of my Rurouni Kenshin fan fiction are available here. Enjoy.

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Back inside the moneychanger affiliate offices of the Minakatas...

The Faceless fenced and stabbed his way out of the small room where he couldn't kill that one samurai boy and his sword-catching move. Hadome (Sword Halt), was it?

He'd heard of samurai catching blades by their bare hands before, but he thought it was all hype and myth. Until now.

Sure, the kid was on the verge of losing against the masked man anyway and ended up no match against him or the likes of Kinta Minakata. However, his unique sword skill did intrigue The Faceless regardless.

Maybe he could mimic Hadome down the line...? 'However, first thing's first.'

The Faceless's duelist personality or disguise—John Rathbone—had specifically been parrying and thrusting with his trusty rapier against a trio of surprisingly strong ninjas.

Ah yes. Ninjas. Shinobi. The Japanese version of government spies or secret agents.

Even in an era where war was waged with guns, rifles, trenches, and bombs, spies and intelligence gatherers remain the most important warfare weapon.

Especially all these shinobi before him who could fight in the most underhanded of ways.

The ogre, the snake, and the bat.

He couldn't quite explain it but somehow, the bat ninja manhandled him in close quarters with his blades and distracting screams, the snake ninja snake-whipped him with explosive whip cracks from long range, and the ogre stabbed at his blind spots with frightening accuracy using his war fork.

They intended to push him into a corner and triple team him from there.

The Faceless chuckled. As if.

"What sort of gutless kenjutsssu (ssswordsmanship) is thisss? You're doing more running away than ssstriking! Fight like a man, coward!" said the lispy snake ninja of the swordsmanship bible's impenetrable defense and elusive movement.

"This isn't kenjutsu. This is fencing," calmly explained Rathbone to the most violent and rambunctious ninja of the trio. "And this is a rapier. An elegant weapon for a more civilized age. Far better than a brittle katana."

He'd been through tougher battles than this. He survived entire wars and accomplished more dangerous political assassinations that paid even more handsomely than this personal grudge his protégé had over the family that abandoned him.

More than a king's ransom, even (because he'd been paid for a king's head instead).

However, using his Tactical Wheel and his mind games, he pushed the trio away enough to exit the room and pursue the escaping Minakatas.

Maybe even kill that other shadow ninja he faced off in the Minakata's East-West Fusion Mansion. Or finish off the blade catcher samurai boy.

The Faceless proved especially dangerous when he combined forces with either Kai Hidaka or Lucas Grant, which he supposed was what the Minakatas were intending to prevent in the first place.

The unified force of the Brigands Guild.

The pile of rubble and debris where Luke had been buried into then stirred.

The Prodigal Son awoke.

"Dammit. I'll be back," said Ren the snake ninja, who ran back into the room to deal with the strong, tall, and half-blooded swordsman with the bastard sword. "Take care of the other gaijin (outsider) for me!"

"Why is there only two of you now?" The Faceless mocked in fluent Japanese, knowing exactly why one of them had to leave. "I miss the other guy. Bring him back."

Because the Prodigal Son was now on the prowl, the Sanyoukai (Three Demons) of the Sanada Ninja Clan had to split up to prevent the Brigands Guild from joining forces.

With all things considered, Kinta Minakata could probably handle either The Faceless or Grant alone.

However, even he—the Kagemusha (Shadow Warrior) and the Mimawarigumi Battousai—would be pushed into the corner himself when facing off against two or more Brigand Guild members at the same time.

"Are you sure you can take me on with only the two of you? You need all three just to keep up," needled Rathbone further, who could now pick apart the occasional stabs and strikes from long distance that the ogre ninja did now that the snake ninja didn't put the pressure on with his constant whiplashes.

"Do we now?" said Zan the oni (ogre) ninja with the red ogre mask and war fork. "You sound full of yourself for a gaijin piece of shit. If you truly can take us on by yourself, I better see it first with my own eyes. Don't just tell us about it."

Instead of echoing Zan's retort, Baku the bat ninja merely screamed what John could only describe as a banshee's wail at his face, distracting him enough to nearly lose his rapier from the hard parry he had to do against Zan's twin-pronged war fork.

***

Rurouni Yahiko

A Rurouni Kenshin Continuation Fan Fiction Story by Chester Castañeda

The foreign invaders of the Brigands Guild discover that it's not so easy dealing with the persistent warriors of Japan, particularly their noble samurais and their backstabbing ninjas.

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 Gallup, Studio Deen, and ADV. This disclaimer also covers all the other copyrighted materials that are far too many to mention here. Don't sue me please, I'm very poor.

***

Chapter 56: The Sanada Demons

***

At the gates of the Minakata affiliate office...

Yahiko Myojin and Kaita served as Tatsuya Minakata's escorts, only for them to find out that the nearby stables had all their horses released and all the carriage drivers missing.

Maybe even dead.

Dammit. Now what? Were they supposed to escape Chinatown on foot?

Whoever the Brigands Guild were, they really had it in for the Minakatas. Wait, what was Yahiko even thinking?

'Of course they have it in for them. Their leader or whoever is the bastard child they disowned and threw away along with his mother,' thought the Tokyo Samurai Descendant, berating himself.

This Takuto Minakata or Lucas Grant character kind of reminded him of himself.

Yahiko wasn't abandoned by his family or anything, and he was no bastard son either, but it certainly felt like the world abandoned their whole family instead during the Bakumatsu.

Regardless, so many people were dying to save two of the V.I.P.s they were supposed to protect. Was all this effort even worth it?

Kaita reappeared behind them and said, "It might be best for us to stay in the office after all."

"What are you talking about, Shorty?" asked Myojin.

"Yes. Why in Buddha's fat ass should I stay there where the assassins are?" demanded Tatsuya. "Let me out."

Kaita sighed. "There might be more of them outside and you're safer here because we have the Sanada Demons on guard."

"D-Demons? Are you out of your mind, you costumed freak?!" shouted Tatsuya. "This isn't the Edo Period! Spare me this talk of superstition and ninja lore! Get me the police and have those murderers arrested!"

This gave Yahiko pause. Wasn't Kaita one of the Minakatas' trusted ninjas? Why was Tatsuya resistant to the ninja's advice? Why didn't he know about the Sanada Ninja Clan's Sanyoukai?

***

Meanwhile, while Ren kept the Prodigal Son at bay inside that room next to the main office...

Luke's body was already in rough shape before he got whipped and scourged like a criminal or a slave by the boa constrictor taxidermy whips of the creepy snake ninja.

It only got worse from there when he went one-on-one and face-to-face against the snake shinobi.

Grant laughed. This guy again. The costumed freak who blasted him straight into a wall. What an annoying prick.

"For a snake-themed ninja, I'm surprised you don't use poison in your arsenal," Lucas said in remembrance of his fellow Brigands Guild member Cain Merrick and his own poison-based gimmick.

"Are you a child? Just because I'm a sssnake ninja, it doesn't mean I use sssnake venom like some sort of coward!" scoffed Ren, getting angrier by the minute.

The Prodigal Son didn't know how to retort to that, mainly in light of how cowardly he thought Cain was for using poisons, venoms, and toxins as his main means of "fighting". He was every bit as underhanded as any of these ninjas, though.

Regardless, Ren kept whipping Lucas from afar and every time he got near, he used that technique again. A ranged attack that struck the ground that sent earthen debris with knockout force.

Grant managed to stab Ren once with his longsword, only for it to get deflected by the thick snakeskin hide of his leather armor. It was like trying to stab a helix of coiled snakes.

How did the snake man keep doing it? That strange, explosive attack?

Wait. It was like an extra-large whip crack. A whip produced the cracking noise whenever it traveled faster than the speed of sound.

The snake ninja combined his bullwhips (or snake whips, in his case) together to create twin whip cracks strong and fast enough to break the sound barrier in resonance and create a blast of air powerful enough to tear through the ground.

A resonant sonic boom.

Essentially, Ren whipped his twin weapons together with resonating shockwaves from extra large whip cracks, so their resulting combined air vibrations exploded like twin lightning bolts blasting the ground like roaring thunder.

Moreover, his snake armor probably kept Ren from tearing himself apart with his own whip vibrations. It helped him survive the bone-crushing force of his induced earth-shattering shockwaves.

Impressive. The snake man's fighting technique was more straightforward than most ninjas he'd encountered or heard about, who were infamous for their dirty tactics.

Regardless, Lucas grabbed hold of his bastard (or one-and-half-hand) sword and started parrying the cracking whips away with one-handed swings so that he wouldn't get further ripped apart by them with flesh-cutting slashes.

He then crossed his arms together and braced himself for the reverberation of air that tore through the floorboards and walls like consecutive exploding landmines. Or the dust storm version of a tidal wave. One after another.

'What a tough opponent,' thought Lucas. 'I thought murdering the Minakatas was going to be a cakewalk, but my brother found himself some decent shinobi for me to play around with. Thanks, Aniki.'

Lucas thusly split the shockwave in half by slicing his bastard sword into the floor so fast he also broke the sound barrier himself, thus neutralizing the attack with his own sonic boom.

"What the hell...?" yelped Ren. "SSStupid gaijin. Learn to accept a lossss!"

Lucas attempted to chop instead of stab the thick armor with his bastard sword, only for Ren to wrap himself in his snake whips, thus shielding him from the cutting power of the high-grade steel.

'Dammit,' thought Grant, his sword again bouncing off the snake ninja. 'Stop playing dirty!'

The smirking Ren then jumped, twisting his body to unwind the whips around him. This resulted in a spiral of whip strikes that assaulted Lucas like a razor-sharp cyclone.

Lucas bathed in his own blood from the whiplashes. However, proving himself more cold-blooded than the dead reptiles Ren used for weapons, he managed to wrap one of the snake whips around his arm.

The way Ren fought reminded him of the way Kai Hidaka fought. 'You've seen one ninja, you've seen them all.'

He then pulled hard at Ren's snake whip, intending to catch him flat-footed so that he could chop him in half.

However, Ren stopped resisting and allowed himself to get pulled intentionally. He did a flying headbutt on the gaijin's noggin, who didn't expect the sudden release that snapped the whip back towards him like a rubber band.

"Don't you dare underestimate Japanese ninjutsu, you gaijin piece of shit!" shouted Ren.

He knew he had the upper hand now! He'd become a hero of the clan for taking out this monster!

***

As for the double team of Baku and Zan against The Faceless...

These underhanded Japanese spies were up to something.

A little while ago, John Rathbone still feinted, countered, and landed with regularity against the Sanada Demons while he himself used his footwork to slip, parry, block, and outright evade their own attacks from high and low.

He kept making them second-guess his next move using the Tactical Wheel of Simple Attack, Parry and Riposte, Compound Attack, and Counter Attack.

However, the three also kept intercepting the riposte thrusts and counter slashes of his rapier to save one other. Whenever he zeroed in on one of them, the other two either blocked or countered as well.

Now there were only two of them, which meant he could pressure them further to move back, allowing him enough breathing room to chase after the Minakatas. The lack of a third man cut their offensive power by a third.

However, something strange happened.

His attacks kept missing. Every thrust and slash from various angles somehow missed or wasn't timed to hit its target.

It didn't help that his normally 20/20 vision blurred from time to time, like some sort of haze came over it.

His attacks missed before because of how fast both Zan and Baku reacted to his stabs even though he kept breaking his rhythm to keep them guessing when he was going to attack with his Beat Parry Riposte.

Rathbone also noticed how Zan kept banging his war fork unto the ground to make it vibrate like a tuning fork. Did this help the ninja dodge his fencing attacks better?

Dammit, and he was just getting their timing down pat the longer they fought, thus allowing him to counter them as they charged.

Only for him to start missing during those brief vulnerable moments as well. His timing was off somehow.

His breathing also became more erratic even though he hadn't exactly burned out his stamina yet. He hadn't even broken a sweat yet he had trouble taking breaths now.

He glared at the twin ninja demons. "What did you do to me?!"

"I was worried for a minute there," said Zan to Baku. "The gaijin has no concept of sakki (bloodlust) and how to read it, so I was worried for a minute that his swordsmanship could deal with your high-pitched sound technique."

Baku chuckled. "Even if he can't detect bloodlust, his moves are all rhythm-based. Break his rhythm and his so-called fencing will end up like trash."

What did they mean by that? What was going on? They were doing something to The Faceless, but he didn't quite know what. Did they poison him or something?

No, wait. It was the bat ninja and his screams that were doing this to him! Whatever this was.

Baku kept distracting John with his high-pitched screeching. Or so the duelist thought. 'So it wasn't just a distraction...?'

Something about those sounds Baku produced made Rathbone miss his Simple Attacks or Compound Attacks (attacks with feints or switching a missed attack to a parry or a different attack).

"Just a little more," said Baku to Zan. "He's on his way to self-destruction. Finish him off as soon as he makes a mistake."

Zan harrumphed. 'Easier said than done.'

Despite the fencer's exposure to Baku's screams that messed with his body in various indescribable ways, he kept following up his misses with ripostes in fluid succession, like he meant to miss in order to draw out his opponents' counterattacks.

His misses also became hits, which forced the ninja sharpshooter with the war fork to hesitate and not overextend himself for a possible counterstrike.

'So this is western kenjutsu,' thought the demonic ninja with a long-range weapon quite like Satsuki Sakaguchi. 'Fencing, was it? It's a legitimate bujutsu (martial art) in its own right.'

Rathbone frowned as a missed slash caused even deeper cuts to appear on his body. They weren't yet lacerations, but they sapped him of his strength bit by bit, which also made him more inaccurate with his strikes.

He could not afford having his ripostes or even his parries miss like this.

***

Back to Ren versus Lucas...

Lucas reeled, his head throbbing with a splitting headache. 'Another sneak attack! Curse the Japanese...!'

Another snake whip sonic boom hit Grant like an earth-shattering landslide. Or even an avalanche. However, he noticed that the repeated vibrations mostly traveled through the ground rather than in the air.

Predictably on the ground. Ren probably aimed his resonating whip vibrations directly back to earth for maximum impact, like the difference between a firework and a shrapnel bomb.

The sonic boom shockwave probably traveled a shorter distance in the air compared to the path of destruction it left on the ground, the concussive force turning everything in its path into a landslide full of sharp rock shards.

Therefore, attacking in the air made more sense than attacking on the ground.

Lucas grabbed his bastard sword with both hands and leaped into the sky, gliding towards Ren while the shockwave harmlessly traveled below him.

The snake ninja ground his teeth enamel to powder and wrapped his snake whips around his body again, intending to protect himself from the sword chop he knew was coming then retaliating with his topsy-turvy whirling typhoon of snake whips afterwards.

However, Ren letting Lucas hit him at all instead of dodging then countering with his whips proved to be a big mistake.

Instead of the bastard sword bouncing harmlessly off of his snake-coiled body, Grant released enough extra torque from his two-handed sword swing to drive the snake ninja straight into the ground.

Although the sword didn't cut through the snake armor, it broke Ren's arm and several of ribs by force of the impact alone. He couldn't uncoil the snake whips in time, which would've torn apart the jumping foreigner in a typhoon of whiplashes.

Ren struggled to get up, tied up by his own snake whips, looking the fool against this half-blooded bastard son with the bastard sword.

Lucas exhaled deeply and grinned at the snake man. "That was a good fight. Because of that, I'll spare you. Get strong and maybe we can fight again!"

"DON'T GIVE ME THAT BULLSHIT!" spat Ren before turning the handle of his snake whips, which retracted a hidden toxin-tipped blade that he stabbed right into the foot of Lucas.

"Ow! What the hell did you do, you cowardly ninja piece of shit!?" Lucas cried out in pain. "Also, what happened to your lisp? It's completely gone now."

"Shut up and die, basssssstard!" said Ren, overcompensating with how long he drew his 'S' sound on that last word. "That hidden blade is tipped with poison. You're as good as dead now."

"Hey, I thought you said you didn't use snake venom!"

"IDIOT! I'm a ninja! Of course I lied!"

Ugh. Ninjas truly were the worst.

***

At the gates of the Minakata subsidiary office building...

A rock and a hard place crushed the Fuuma Ninja Clan's Kai Hidaka between themselves, leaving him stuck there.

Well, no. Not really.

Rather, he got stuck between Lieutenant Satoru Sakaguchi (with his recovering daughter in tow) on one end and Kinta Minakata on another end.

The choice to where he should go couldn't be more obvious, but he also had a mission to fulfill.

Even though Kinta proved the more dangerous and immediate threat, he was also the Brigands Guild's biggest target.

Besides which, while murdering both the weakest Musou Madden Ryu practitioners should help him survive in the short term, Kai didn't want a master swordsman like Kinta hunting him down for revenge like the Kagemusha that he was in the long term.

He believed it was in his best interest to finish off the Minakata heir sooner rather than later.

Judging by how long his half-brother nurtured his grudge against their similarly vengeful family—his whole life—this desire for revenge was probably in their blood.

Perhaps even in-fighting among family members proved hereditary too, seeing how soured the relationship between Kinta and Tatsuya was.

Kinta and "Takuto" felt more like family than nephew and uncle.

Hell, Hidaka merely lurked outside and he could hear how much the two hated each other, judging from their shouting match earlier (or rather, from Tatsuya shouting alone and Kinta curtly shutting him down every time).

In light of his fight-or-flight instinct screaming at him to find an new avenue of escape, he willed himself to fight the Mimawarigumi Battousai instead, hoping against hope that either The Faceless or Lucas Grant would aid him sooner rather than later.

'Kinta-kun,' thought Satoru, holding his gasping daughter's shoulders firmly. 'Please finish that son of a bitch off!'

***

Back to Ren versus Lucas...

In sheer frustration, Ren attempted a whip crack at Lucas's face as he got up, but the blond swordsman caught it by his fist.

Lucas certainly looked like he was about to vomit. Or even shit all over himself.

As expected. Ren had his hidden dagger tipped with the concentrated "poison" (really, snake venom) of various local snakes all over Japan, like the mamushi that belonged to the family of pit vipers.

Stabbing a persistent enemy who survived Ren's whiplashes with the venomous dagger served as the snake man's ace up his sleeve. His trump card.

Typically, the stab site swelled and reddened with a huge blister. The victim then slowed down and fell ill, unable to continue fighting.

From there, Ren would've finished the person off with either grave injuries or lacerations compounded by snake venom coursing through his veins, killing him slowly but surely.

Ren could also bite the bullet and just choked the bitch with his snake whips. His enemies either died by his own hands or by the venom he injected unto them.

Just as Luke looked like he'd empty all the contents of his stomach unto the ground, he then grinned and winked at Ren. "Just kidding."

Luke grabbed the snake whip's tail and wrapped it around his knuckles.

"Jokes on you, asshole. One of the Brigands is an expert in poisons and toxins. He has helped me develop immunity to most deadly organic and inorganic chemicals for years."

From there, Lucas did to Ren was Ren did to Lucas earlier—he pulled the whip then allowed himself to leap along with the recoil or snapback of the taxidermy snake, hammering the injured snake man ninja's head with a devastating headbutt of his own.

Bam. Their heads smashed against each other with a heavy, sickening thud.

Ren felt his brain slosh inside his skull. Grant might've even cracked his noggin altogether, shattering his nose and drawing blood.

How strong was this kid?! He really did seem immune to the snake venom! Or to pain! Or to blunt-force trauma!

As expected of a Minakata spawn. Perhaps his bloodline from his father's side, the Grants, also had monstrous strength in their genetics.

Grant then gave Ren the coup-de-grace blow of driving him right into the nearest wall with a sword stab that finally penetrated through the snake armor, drawing blood.

The whole room soon collapsed all over the snake man, weakened by the numerous sonic booms produced by supersonic snake whips. The Prodigal Son had been baiting the snake ninja to blast him with shockwaves at strategic points of the room's pillars.

The final leap and blow then shook the room enough to make its already weakened and compromised foundations break and collapse directly on top of the ninja.

Before Ren knew it, it was already "checkmate" for him.

***

Back at the three-way impasse deep in the offices of the moneychanger building…

"You two don't fight like gentlemen at all. You're like savages instead," said John Rathbone to the animal-themed masked ninjas from the Sanada Clan with an upturned nose.

These honorless ninjas and their ambush-style attacks reminded John of the time when Britain colonized Africa.

Britain observed the rules of engagement against the African natives, declaring war on them and challenging them to war on the battlefield.

The Africans were supposed to engage them in battle on the trenches until a side won.

However, the tribes of Africa had no concept of how war was waged in the west and thusly ambushed the British camps without warning, like they would when they were fighting amongst themselves in tribal warfare.

These Japanese natives, or at least their ninjas, were the same savages as the African natives. To them, all was fair in war or love or some such nonsense.

Wait a minute. Samurais had bushido (the code of the warrior). Ninjas followed no such code of honor. They were so unlike their honor-bound samurai counterparts.

Both the oni (ogre) ninja Zan and John exchanged thrusts and stabs, probing each other's defenses.

Throughout the exchange, Rathbone noticed how Zan allowed his war fork to get parried by John's rapier, which made the unusual weapon vibrate like a tuning fork instead.

The demonic goblin ninja also only really attacked whenever he made his tuning war fork vibrate.

'Hmmm,' thought John. 'Curiouser and curiouser.'

Rathbone feinted a thrust one… two… three times at Zan and Baku, jabbing his undulating sword arm with motionless jabs of his rapier that went to and fro between the masked ninjas.

Like a pendulum on a Grandfather Clock.

He actually attacked the fourth time with a thrust but stopped himself short, intending to do a recovery afterwards as soon as either shadow warrior reacted and dodged.

They barely even blinked. Their hair-trigger reflexes remembered him doing the same "ultimate" feint earlier to draw out attacks he could counter, so they weren't fooled.

They moved a half-beat earlier than John, intercepting his attack before he could do his recovery and counterstrike.

Thusly, The Faceless had his sword thrust parried by Baku's metal arm bracelets with bladed hooks or claws on the side and countered by Zan's war fork.

However, Rathbone himself sidestepped in time to turn Zan's two-pronged stab into a slash that left a gash over his bodyguard vest.

Zan clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth. He almost finished off the slippery fencer. John Rathbone appeared every bit as evasive and untouchable as a medieval ninja from Japan!

The two attempted to follow-up their own Parry Riposte with a finishing chain attack but stopped short when they heard the rumblings of the other room, followed by screams.

It wasn't Baku's screeching. Nor was it Lucas.

They recognized the voice. It was instead from their comrade, Ren the Snake Ninja with the taxidermy boa whips.

The bat ninja then told the ogre ninja, "I'm fine, Zan. Go protect the Minakatas or help Ren. The Faceless is mine. I've figured him out."

"Oh, did you now, Baku?" said Zan, the ninja with the red ogre mask and war fork. "All right. Fine. I'll be right back to finish this gaijin off if you haven't killed him by the time I return."

Zan then made his exit, hiding himself in smoke bombs that Rathbone stabbed through regardless, only for his rapier to get blocked by Baku's hooked bracelets.

John harrumphed, stabbing repeatedly at the weaponless ninja to stave him off. "Do you really think you can take me on alone, you cowardly popinjay?"

The grim bat-themed shadow warrior merely shifted into a karate stance and said, "Come hither, gaijin. Get a taste of Yamato Damashi (Japanese Spirit)."

"You're delusional." Smirking, Rathbone murmured to himself, "Once more unto the breech, my fancy clown."

Baku then screeched like the legendary banshees of Irish folklore. A haunting, bloodcurdling cry that reached all the way to the pits of The Faceless' stomach. Or even the insides of his bones, right down to the bone marrow.

'Strange. Is his incessant, irritating screaming part of his trick?' thought Rathbone as he backpedaled from the bat ninja, only to end up back in his en garde position because Baku chased after him immediately.

What was worse was that John felt like vomiting until his stomach turned inside out the more he fought this ninja.

As sickening as these deceitful and sly cowards were when it came to their dirty tactics, it wasn't enough for him to literally feel like puking in disgust.

***

Back at the front portion of the moneychanger affiliate office building…

Kai Hidaka threw himself at Kinta Minakata, hoping against hope that Lucas Grant wasn't too busy to actually handle his business with the goddamn Mimawarigumi Battousai himself.

Sheesh. Kinta was Lucas's half-brother, not Kai's. Let Lucas handle his own sibling. He (Kai) was not his (Lucas's) brother's keeper, after all.

Nevertheless, a strange thing happened.

There was something different about the Kinta that Kai faced today compared to the one he clashed swords with at Kaneda Minakata's Eastern-Western Fusion Mansion.

As usual, like in their first encounter, Kai had to scramble, duck, and sway his body like a lithe dancer to avoid the surgically accurate slashes and attacks of the infamous Kagemusha (Shadow Warrior) of Shogo Amakusa.

Kinta's accuracy hadn't gone down. Not really.

Minakata merely missed Hidaka by hairbreadths or by a razor's edge, the fidgety ninja spurred by adrenalin and twitch reflexes to avoid the iaijutsu (quick-draw) sword strikes with the nimble elusiveness of a fly.

However, Kinta's hack and slash output had gone down drastically.

Even though Kai knew that Kinta favored accuracy over volume, the swordsman had nevertheless become more conservative with his attacks now.

Almost as conservative as The Faceless when he fenced under his John Rathbone persona. John barely ever missed because he never took a stab or thrust unless he was 100 percent sure he'd get the hit.

As though he was conserving his energy.

Wait a minute.

The eyes behind Hidaka's goggled mask narrowed as he let out a long exhale. 'Huh. So fighting Lucas had that effect on him too, huh? That boy is a persistent one, after all.'

Even Lieutenant Satoru Sakaguchi noticed something was amiss. 'Kinta-kun…?'

The lack of sword slashes and pressure allowed the nimble Kai to feint an attack, only for him to shoot his rope spear in between the eyes of Satoru.

To be clear, the rope spear flew at longer distances compared to his rope darts, which he used for closer targets.

The flying acrobatic ninja figured out that Kinta decided to conserve his strength after going through the stamina monster that was Lucas.

When Kai first met the half-breed, he couldn't touch him with a bastard sword, a longsword, or even a shortsword. Hidaka moved too fast and too nimble for the kid to take down.

However, like a hunter-gatherer caveman during the Stone Age, Lucas took down faster prey like gazelle by tiring them out and pursuing them ceaselessly. Over and over. Like an unstoppable force of nature you couldn't outrun.

No wonder Kinta looked like he'd just run a marathon despite having not one mark or cut on him.

While under pressure, Minakata probably worried about the wellbeing of the Sakaguchis at the back of his mind. He would've gotten the adrenalin rush needed to save father and daughter.

However, when Kinta himself was attacked, he let his guard down and became unaware of his surroundings.

Kai noticed as much when he fought the swordsman the first time. This went double now that he'd been tired down by the implacable Lucas Grant.

How ironic for the Sakaguchi Family to end up being liabilities even though they were supposed to be there to protect the Minakata Family.

That split second of distraction and scrambling towards Satoru and Kyoko was the window of opportunity Hidaka needed to finish what Lucas had started.

***

Back at the rear exit of the moneychanger affiliate office building…

John Rathbone switched tactics yet again. He couldn't counter Baku's attacks, who patiently lay in wait and ambushed him in the darkness at every turn.

If one or two probing strikes with his rapier weren't enough, then a complicated series of them—a truly Compound Attack—was in order.

Only problem was that Baku danced around the strikes with the same deft skill that Kai Hidaka, a true-blue ninja in his own right, did.

Even though the bat ninja favored projectiles more when compared to a weapons expert like Zan, he combined the rain of kunai (daggers) and shuriken (ninja stars) at John with karate punches and kicks.

John got nailed with a couple of meaty strikes while dodging the shuriken and kunai. He'd rather get punched or kicked than get slashed.

Muscle memory forced him to do this, remembering how his own estranged son Cain Merrick would use bladed weapons to poison him and others.

The duelist scowled and narrowed his eyes. What was this walking freak show doing to him and his twitch reflexes?

It was the screams, wasn't it? Baku was shrieking like a black cloud of bats all this while. Shrieking like a bat.

In fact, Baku turned the tables on John, with him dictating the pace and forcing him to attack at every turn, only to block with his hooked arm bracelets, blind him with smoke bombs, or injure him with knives and metal shards.

They two chipped away at each other's defenses, but Baku had the upper hand. And the momentum.

Thankfully, Rathbone's uncharacteristic aggression with close-call near-misses (or near-hits, as the case might be) and follow-throughs served as his defense against a significant blow or counter.

"You'll never figure out what I'm doing to you in a million years," boasted Baku after nailing the fencer with an elbow this time, followed by a slash from his arm brace hooks.

Blimey. Screw ninjas and their stupid gimmicks! At least ordinary thieves and ruffians were too unskilled and straightforward to pull the wool over John's world-weary eyes.

Ninjas, on the other hand, thought just like him. Who knew honorless secret agents would have something in common with a gentleman thief like him?

Again, Baku hid in the darkness. He screeched, avoided, or blocked a myriad of ripostes and sword thrusts, and then kicked, punched, or threw Rathbone around like a rag doll to open him up to a fatal stab wound or slash.

Meanwhile, Rathbone could barely hit him back himself. He always somehow missed by a nose hair or cilia. Like his internal rhythm or reflexes were off.

***

Meanwhile, at the entrance of the moneychanger building, near the stables where the Minakata's carriage was parked…

"I found a horseman!" said Kaita, who popped out of nowhere with a previously escaping driver of the Minakatas whom he held at kunai-point (or ku-knife-point, as Gan would say).

"I found one of your horses!" said Yahiko, who held the reins of the beast of burden, pulling him back to the stables. Thankfully, this stallion wasn't too spooked.

"There's a horse-drawn carriage here that hasn't been sabotaged or had its wheel axels removed!" confirmed Tatsuya Minakata, pale as a bed sheet at this point. "Perfect! Let's go! I don't want to spend another minute at this hellhole!"

"Wait, we're just going to leave? Your nephew is still out there," pointed out Myojin, only for him to get taken aback by Tatsuya's glare. "Okay. You go home to Mommy with your personal ninja. I'll stay here and look out for your nephew."

With a sourpuss look reminiscent of someone biting into a lemon or smelling garbage, Tatsuya looked back and forth between Kaita and Yahiko before relenting, "Ugh. Fine. We'll wait for my stupid nephew to come back."

The Sanada Ninja and the Tokyo Samurai exchanged looks. Should they have escaped with the uncle or were they making a mistake?

Yahiko took a deep breath. He'd deal with the consequences later. The cast was drawn. They'd made their decision, whether it was the right one or not.

They slightly regretted not escaping then and there when the doors, doorway, and walls burst forth rather than swung open before them in splinters like a carriage crash.

***

The kunai slashes and shuriken cuts were getting closer, sharper, and deeper. Death by a thousand cuts. Or maybe a million.

While hearing what sounded like a million bats shrieking, clawing, and biting at him in the darkness of the mansion.

Bats, huh? Baku even shot his kunai to snuff out the flames of every last candle and lamp in the vicinity, thus covering them in darkness with the barest sliver of moonlight from the windows.

He really was bat-like. He wasn't blind as a bat but he didn't need his vision as much as a bat would.

A punch from Baku cracked The Faceless' mask.

Aside from distracting him with loud screeches, Baku the Bat-Man might also be using supersonic screams to locate John's position every time.

Rathbone had read about this before. Bats were able to exist nocturnally and move in low light through echolocation.

These animals screamed at high pitches to judge distance or what they were flying through by the amount of time their screams bounced back to them.

In other words, the Baku and Zan tandem read through or perceived Rathbone's change of pace or sudden counters and ripostes from the steady rhythm of his pendulum-swing jabs by their hair-trigger reflexes and superhuman senses.

Come to think of it, didn't Zan have a two-pronged war fork that could've doubled as a tuning fork? He might've used the vibrations from that fork as his means of sonar or echolocation too.

Also, judging by the obliterating vibrations done by the snake ninja known as Ren, that ninja also probably used resonating whip cracks to create a sonic boom as his means of attack.

Ren, Baku, and Zan. They were animal-themed ninjas but they had another thing in common—their supersonic sound and vibration abilities.

They were sound ninjas.

Jesus Christ. These goddamn ninjas fought dirty but their tactics required such a high skill level that you couldn’t help but bitterly laugh at it all.

They were consummate cheaters that would stab your back like the cowards that they were. They did anything to win.

"Kill all invaders! Protect the emperor from the barbarians! All hail to the Empire of Japan! Sonno Joi!" rambled Baku, his terseness disappearing as he smelled blood and went into a feeding frenzy.

Rathbone again did his strongest feint—an actual attack cut short then recovered into a different follow-up counterattack—but this time while armed with the knowledge of how Baku made him miss.

Baku again blocked with his arm bracelets to do an early Parry and Riposte of his own to cut off the follow-up Recovery Attack.

However, Rathbone expected that and countered off of that counter instead, swaying his body at an awkward angle and slipping from the arm bracelet guard to skewer the ninja right in his heart.

He felt vibrations in his body and a second later, he missed Baku's chest and merely left a flesh wound on it instead of a stab before getting kneed in the gut for his trouble.

Bloody hell. John winced and gnashed his teeth.

Why did he miss this time? Baku was wide open! He fell for his bait! His supersonic trip-mine could only tell when he actually attacked instead of what sort of attack he'd do! It was perfect! Why did he fail…?

Wait a minute. Baku wasn't just using echolocation, was he?

'That was close,' Baku the Bat Ninja admitted in spite of himself. 'This man, The Faceless, is too dangerous to be left alive!'

John Rathbone—or rather, The Faceless—chuckled to himself. "I understand your secrets now, you Yellow Peril!"

"You don't understand a thing. Go back to the barbaric west where you belong, waito piggu (white pig)!"

***

In between the realms of the conscious and unconscious lay a subconscious Kyoko.

She'd almost been hung to death by the Brigands Guild ninja, Kai Hidaka of the Fuuma Clan.

A forgotten memory from her childhood surfaced as she swam between the converging seas of wakefulness and slumber.

It was one where she insistently asked his grandfather about how dashing the samurai were when he was a child.

Were they as honorable, loyal, noble, and heroic as the hatamoto-class samurai they worked for, the Minakatas, were?

To be more specific, were they as handsome and dreamy as Kinta Minakata? Or his silent but kind father, Azuma Minakata? Or even his scary grandfather, Toshiro Minakata?

Chuckling, her Grandpa Genzo Sakaguchi told her while she sat on his knee, "Not all samurai are like Kinta or Azuma. They're more like politicians or policemen. Some good, some bad. Maybe even more bad than good.'

'Huh. So samurais were more like Mr. Toshiro then?' was the question Kyoko had enough sense not to ask her own grandfather.

The old man then turned serious and said, "Samurais aren't what they're all cracked up to be, Kyoko-chan."

Kyoko tilted her head in askance. "What do you mean?"

"For example, there's such a thing as Uchi-sute."

"'Uchi-sute?'" repeated Kyoko. "What is that?"

"It's also known as kiri-sute gomen."

"Kiru… Nani? (What?) Gomen? (Sorry?) Eh?" Kyoko's blew her cheeks up like a chipmunk. "So? What does it all mean, Grandpa?!"

This only made Grandpa Genzo chuckle.

Uchi-sute (To strike and abandon) or burei-sute (To offend and strike) were concepts dating back to the feudal era collectively known later on as kiri-sute gomen (The right to cut and leave).

This concept referred to an old Japanese expression about the right to strike or the right of the samurai to kill commoners for perceived affronts. Samurai had the right to strike with the sword anyone of a lower class who compromised their honor.

"It's the right of a samurai to kill commoners if they were embarrassed by them," was how Genzo phrased it. "We live in a society where a military aristocracy had the license to kill another human being just because he's of a lower class than him."

Naively, Kyoko blinked and said, "But isn't it okay for samurai to do it? Are we not samurai?"

"Listen carefully, child. For my money, no one has the right to kill another, whether they're kings or paupers. The emperor himself or the village idiot. Murder is murder. You have no right to kill someone over a slight as though you're better than them."

Kyoko's eyebrows furrowed cutely. "But higher class samurai like Kinta-chama can kill me because I'm lower class than him, right?"

"The courts would rule it as self-defense, but no. I don't believe he has the right to do it. You can defend yourself as a lower class samurai with a wakizashi, but the whole thing is bogus, if you ask me. If an affront has been committed, let everyone equally have their day in court instead of having samurai get the automatic right to kill anyone who annoys them, I say!"

Nonoko chided in the background, "Father, what are you teaching that poor kid? Sheesh. She's just a child."

Genzo cackled in an "old mannish" sort of way and told Kyoko's mother, "I'm teaching her about real life."

***

Earlier, just as Rathbone almost finished off Baku, he felt the silent vibrations seep deep into his very bones, making his joints ache.

The Faceless realized that aside from shrieks he and Baku could hear, the ninja screeched sounds beyond the human range of hearing.

Humans could only hear sound waves between 20 Hertz (Hz) to 20,000 Hz. However, sound waves below that threshold could affect any person.

Even if you sat in front of something producing a frequency of 19 Hz or infrasound level, even if you couldn't hear anything you could still feel its vibrations. Like how the deaf could feel sound even if they couldn't hear it necessarily.

At 19 Hz, humans could end up with wonky vision because 19 Hz was the resonant frequency of the human eyeball.

When exposed to 177 dB sound waves at 0.5 to 8 Hz, it could start messing with your lungs. Your breathing could end up erratic as your bones start shaking around.

Short-term exposure to such sounds could damage your joints even. Chronic exposure to them could result in visual impairment or outright nausea.

However, these effects to infrasound weren't uniform to all people exposed across the board. It'd take constant resonant exposure to the sound to mess with your internal organs, joints, or vision.

Besides which, it wasn't as if Rathbone was sitting still while getting exposed to the supersonic screeches of Baku. He dodged and moved around a lot, plus they were making a lot of other noises that covered the infrasound as well.

Baku used his shrill shrieks for another purpose, its effects being more immediate than making Rathbone's various organs feel "funny" or "off".

There was also the fact that countering and hitting a target was all about having your body memorize a rhythm and timing to align your attacks to every last opening the opponent had.

Whether you were an expert marksman with a gun, prizefighter with thudding fists, or a swordsman with a sharp blade, hitting the target involved timing your shot, punch, or slash at the right tempo or rhythm.

If you were off by a hair or an inch, you'd miss badly.

And Rathbone missed all thanks to Baku's supersonic or infrasound screeches.

Like a singer who was off-tune, Baku kept hitting the wrong notes even though he was close to the right ones, creating a dissonant if almost accurate tune.

This also created dissonance to Rathbone's own tempo.

Over and over Baku kept getting away with it, so John slowly got used to the rhythm of the bat himself.

However, he couldn't achieve enough resonance in his counters to match Baku's rhythm, so he was the one who kept missing and getting his advance checked.

Baku's supersonic "singing" wasn't only a method of echolocation that acted like a trip-hammer or landmine on whether Rathbone was feinting or attacking for real.

The bat-man ninja also sung a song of the damned that ruined Rathbone's innate abilities to discover and exploit the rhythm of his opponent, solve them like a puzzle, and open them up to counterattacks or ripostes.

Baku mimicked the beat and tempo of Rathbone's own rhythm but was slightly off, creating dissonance in the fencer's movements. Like a terrible singer messing up a proper singer with his off-key singing in a duet.

So on top of having hair-trigger reflexes aided by superhuman senses and echolocation, Baku could also use his supersonic screeching to disrupt Rathbone's counterstriking rhythm.

A two-pronged attack if he'd ever seen one. Like the two-pronged war fork of Zan himself. Or like a classic pincer attack from Ancient Roman military strategy.

'Hmmm. Pincer, eh?' thought Rathbone with a growing smirk on the edges of his unseen mouth.

***

Satoru scrambled for his saber as soon as he saw the rope spear fly from behind the acrobatic ninja of the Brigands Guild.

Shit.

He had set his still out-of-breath daughter down on a nearby statue in a sitting position while looking for an appropriate avenue of escape for the both of them as afforded by the appearance of Kinta.

Only for Kai Hidaka to have other ideas.

The ninja's flight-or-fight instincts went into full gear, attacking Kinta for fear of him countering him if he had attacked the Sakaguchis. Only for him to use that feint as a distraction to attack the Sakaguchis anyway.

'He's slow,' thought Kai after the lieutenant deflected the rope spear with a sheathed saber, unable to draw his sword on time. 'He's easier to take down compared to the likes of the Kagemusha. He hasn't really changed much after all these years, huh? Still the weak link.'

However, as expected, Kinta leaped forward into action to save Satoru from harm even as Kai whipped his missed spear to redirect it towards Satoru's shoulder instead.

"AAUGGH!" Satoru cried out, which stirred the half-unconscious Kyoko awake.

This was what Kai wanted.

When he attacked Kinta in panic, he was the one at risk. This time around, he forced the surgically precise Mimawarigumi Battousai to attack him in panic instead.

Under his terms. In a very predicable manner. Open to counterattacks of his own.

"You're wide open, Kagemusha!" said Kai as he threw multiple rope darts at Kinta, intending to ensnare him into his web.

Meanwhile, waiting on standby from the sidelines was the "fish-hooked" Satoru, whom Hidaka could always tug towards him to use as a meat shield against Kinta's signature Full Moon Slash or Double Full Moon Slash (also known as the Blue Moon Slash).

To Kai's chagrin, the Mimawarigumi Battousai went above and beyond with his sword slashes.

Like a lightning strike, his sword flashed and streaked across the air as it got drawn out in supersonic speed.

"Tsunami (Tidal Wave)," Kinta murmured his words of malice, the glint of his blade becoming an afterimage of moonlight.

The first slash from the Waxing Stance—a Young Moon Slash—cut apart the first few strands of darts headed towards him before they could hook themselves into the ground or his flesh to form an ensnaring net.

The follow-up combo of the Waxing Crescent Moon to Waxing Half Moon (First Quarter) Slash came twice as fast as the first Young Moon Slash. These slashes ripped apart the flailing ropes into confetti.

However, Kai anticipated as much. As expected of the man who went toe-to-toe against Gensai Kawakami of the Ishin Shishi's Four Butchers and lived to tell the tale.

Hidaka had seen this technique before from Kinta's fellow Musou Madden Ryu practitioner, Sho Kojima. He thusly knew how the Tsunami worked.

The Tsunami was a series of slashes chained together from weakest to strongest that started slowly and went faster and faster in the final few slashes as its momentum increased.

Its timing went 1 (pause) 2, 3, then 4567. Like how the turning tides started as a shallow low tide weak only to end up becoming a deep and strong high tide at their apex.

There were several ways to counter this.

The first was to block, evade, or counter the first few slow slashes to not fall for the rest of the final supersonic slashes. If he confirmed the hit, he'd do the rest of the combo.

Like getting out of the beach during the low tide to get to higher ground or far away from shore to avoid getting swept up by the huge waves come high tide.

However, the Mimawarigumi Battousai solved this by gauging the distance and doing the first few slashes on the rope darts before charging forward exactly to where Kai dodged and executing the supersonic slashes like a building deluge of high-pressure waves.

Had Kinta acted this urgently back when he faced off against his half-brother, he might have even killed Lucas then and there. Maybe.

The second (more difficult) way to counter the Tsunami was this.

Using a "lifesaver" or boat against the upcoming tides to ride the waves.

"GET OVER HERE!" shouted Kai as he pulled and dragged Satoru towards the incoming whirling dervish of steel.

Dragging him deep into the waters of Kinta's unstoppable tidal waves of doom.

***

In response to getting nearly hit to the heart by his rapier, Baku the Bat-Man Ninja sunk into the darkness further, blending into his environment and hiding his presence.

He opted to ambush John Rathbone at blind spots or while unseen, with his cloak helping obscure his figure. Slowly cornering the duelist swordsman until he had nowhere to hide.

Thusly, Rathbone's depth perception got compromised by fighting blind with what little moonlight spilled through the darkness. He couldn't see the walls, floor, or anything, so when Baku backed away from the light, it looked like he merely shrunk.

And whenever he avoided the light altogether, it looked like he got swallowed by the sea of blackness.

So The Faceless decided to adapt a new personality the same way a normal person would discard one set of clothes to another set to fit the occasion. It started by taking off his masquerade ball mask and swapping it for a different face mask.

A plain all-white porcelain face mask with no mouth and eye holes. The mask of another swordsman. A Spaniard swordsman, to be exact.

He unsheathed a hidden dagger in his person, dual-wielding an espada y daga (sword and dagger).

"Hola. (Hello). We haven't met yet, but I'm Fabian La Cerca. You are a dishonorable coward. Tonto de culo (Idiot of the ass). Prepare to die."

Baku harrumphed, unimpressed. "So you 'transformed' yourself from one colonizer to another? You're all the same to me, gaijin," said the bat-man ninja before letting out another one of his dissonant screams.

Its vibrations reached La Cerca to his very core like a loud, deafening rumble of thunder after a lightning strike.

They clashed weapons with each other. It was then that Fabian decided to talk. While Rathbone would rather his actions speak louder than words, Fabian loved the sound of his voice.

"I understand why Japan instituted the Sakoku (Locked Country) policy. You didn't want foreign influence to taint your culture before being colonized. Every neighbor of Japan were colonized by western powers through religion or trade. Invaded and conquered by the superior civilizations."

"…."

As usual, like with Rathbone, La Cerca jabbed his sword and circled around blind spots whenever Baku decided to ambush him with hand-to-hand combat, grappling, throws, or projectile weapons.

Baku's perfect pitch went higher and higher until it seemed like the bat-man had lost his voice. But he actually didn't. The soundless scream vibrated through the air, beyond the scope of human hearing.

"The Tokugawas distanced Japan from the west, thinking them as a destabilizing force. And you know what? They were absolutely right. These colonizers used religious and/or brute force to divide and conquer pieces of the east from themselves."

However, Fabian managed to feel the infrasound resonate—or rather, dissonate—into his internal organs. Like tremors from an earthquake or vibrations within a carriage going through a bumpy road.

Or an extra loud heartbeat that pulsed all over his veins, from the center of his body all the way to the tips of his fingers and toes.

"Spain got Mexico and the Philippines. Britain got Hong Kong and India while also humiliating China for good measure with the Opium Wars. Even a young country like the United States of America was able to humiliate the Tokugawas, making them lose face and instigating the Bakumatsu (End of the Shogunate)."

Baku intensified his attacks, covering his shuriken or kunai throws with his cape or sleight of hand to make their trajectory less visible or predictable. The ninja also attacked from behind, forcing La Cerca to turn and pivot to delay his reactions.

"…Japan's justified fear of foreigners and all things foreign led to the country going under lock down or Sakoku, limiting contact with other countries. However, this also resulted in your nation becoming weak and backwards while the rest of the world progressed."

Baku couldn't believe it. Even in the cover of darkness, this La Cerca version of The Faceless kept catching his ambushes. Like he could see in the darkness himself.

What changed from before? The effects of his infrasound shouts to Fabian's ears should still leave him disoriented and out-of-sync with his counters. How was he able to do counters now?!

"In the world stage, Japan has been humiliated by the United States of America and Britain. You've been exposed as a backwards country with primitive technology. Japan could not defeat the U.S.A. Isolationism has left you frozen in time."

The Faceless's joints had started to ache from all his exposure to the bat-man's infrasound screams, but Fabian kept pushing forward regardless. His pseudo-arthritis be damned.

Baku then realized something.

The infrasound screaming disrupted Fabian's rhythm and tempo. However, the dissonance was only slight and he merely missed by mere inches or millimeters. Sometimes by a hairbreadth or fraction of a millisecond.

Also, was La Cerca talking all this propaganda garbage to disrupt Baku's infrasound screams as well? Did the fencer have echolocation abilities himself?

Or maybe Fabian gauged when Baku was nearby through sensing the vibrations of the infrasound screams himself, thus notifying him of when to attack!

How dare the gaijin use his own screams against him! He was a clever bastard, that Faceless person. Just like Zan.

"However, resistance is futile. Thanks to the black ships of Commodore Matthew Perry, your country has opened up to reality. Ninjas and samurais are relics of the past. The bygone age of just 20 years ago now feels like it was 100 years ago, wasn't it?"

Baku's pivoting, camouflage, and ambush tactics paired with his sonar echolocation paid dividends, with him delaying La Cerca's reactions enough to occasionally hit him with punches, kicks, projectiles, or stabs with his hooked gauntlets.

Fabian La Cerca answered by dancing around Baku in circles, chaining his attacks together, and reacting faster and faster, stabbing in the darkness and getting more hits than misses.

A stab to the thigh later and Baku understood what had changed in The Faceless.

Now that Fabian dual-wielded two weapons, he could use the first strike from his lead hand to gauge the distance and the second strike to his rear hand to make up for any misses.

His Fabian personality landed his counters now despite being out-of-rhythm because every time his rapier missed, his dagger on his other hand allowed him to fill in the gaps where he'd otherwise be open.

His rapier indeed served as his range finder to hit his target despite being a second out of beat.

"Don't you get it? The existence of the Meiji Era is proof that the West won. You are now a colony of Western Superpowers," said Fabian. "You played chicken with the West and blinked. Now you're our bitch."

An attempt to pierce a cornered Baku's eye with his rapier that missed ended up becoming a dagger slash to the belly. However, the ninja had one more trick up his sleeve.

Baku the Bat-Man flew. Or rather, he jumped and glided in the air, with his cape serving as both his wings and his parachute. The ninja couldn't get cornered.

"How about that? All your posturing is for nothing, outsider. You can't even hit me now."

This only made La Cerca chuckle.

"You think just because you can tell when I'm attacking, you can counter me? Or fly away? Fine. I'll do you one better. I'll tell you exactly what I'm about to do so you can stop me better. I dare you to stop me."

"Just shut up and fight! You talk too much, you foolish gaijin!" spat Baku, who sunk into the darkness once more to hide his presence and attack at a blind spot.

Fabian then said, "I'm going to corner you, which will make you fly. I'll then stab you while you're in midair, unable to dodge."

And then he did just that.

La Cerca predicted the ninja would feint attacking from behind, only to fly above his head and swoop down as he turned around, stabbing him at the back regardless.

He figured that the ninja would do something as tricky as set up an obvious pattern to counter as bait for him.

Regardless, Fabian pretended to fall for the feint and instead stabbed Baku as he flew. Just like he said.

"Now I'll fight you without the rapier. Just the dagger," boasted La Cerca. "I'm saving the dagger for a worthy challenger. Like that other ninja, Zan."

"DIIIIIIE!" cried the bleeding, desperate flying bat-man ninja, his gauntlets at the ready to block the dagger stabs, only for him to get run through with the rapier.

"Sorry, I lied," said the cheeky Fabian, driving the flabbergasted ninja out of the office entrance and into the exterior compound where Yahiko Myojin, Tatsuya Minakata, and Kaita stood.

"This is Manifest Destiny. Bow down to your superiors, small fry! I am the Western Superpower that Japan should fear!"

***

To Be Continued...

Remember the Sanada Demons? Yeah, me neither. Still, I'm going to attempt to squeeze out the best parts out of these infamous filler episode villains the same way I incorporated Shogo Amakusa as a major character in this fanfic.

That sounds on-brand for Rurouni Yahiko.

The trash talking of La Cerca is done as homage to the trash talking of Larry Bird, particularly when he told his opponents what he was going to do before doing it.

Danke, Abdiel

#batman #daredevil #snakeman #sanada demons #rurouni kenshin #るろうに剣心 #rurouni yahiko #るろうに弥彦 #fan fiction #fanfiction.net

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