Kuroi Itezuru

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“When you strike, you must strike as one. When you fight, your whole being must be united behind you. If you lash out in anger, fear, jealousy or emotion, you will not succeed. The memorized patterns of the most potent sword school alone will also result in failure. When your heart knows just reason, when your mind has become all techniques but none, behind every strike your soul will be focused, and you will not fail to triumph.”-Kuroi Itezuru

That night there was a terrible storm over the capital, the likes of which had not been seen for decades. The rain battered the houses like waves, while the wind howled like a banshee. Night turned to day for the briefest of moments throwing new shadows among the old and the roar of thunder followed soon after. Yet there was at least one unfortunate soul braving the weather. The twin gates of House Yagyu were drawn wide open, and a solitary rider stormed out, turning sharply and galloping down the narrow streets of the capital.
Lord Senjuro Yagyu, head of Clan Yagyu, cursed the weather under his breath, all the while focusing to keep his horse in rein. Galloping at top speed down the capitals mostly narrow and cobbled streets in the middle of a story night was hazardous to say the least. He wondered why he, head of one of the most powerful clans in the empire, was riding hell bent in such ridiculous weather, to personally visit a small shack on the edge of the city and almost at once, the answer came to him.
In the dim glow of the paper lanterns, a woman lay prone on the floor, surrounded by cushions and attended by an elderly midwife. The woman was young, in her twenties, although her face belied a soul that was no stranger to pain, even now: She was in labor. The midwife patted the lady’s brow with a damp cloth.

‘There darlin, don’t you worry none. It’ll all be over soon. Hold my hand and push, that’s a good girl.’
Putting her hand into the older woman’s, the girl whimpered and bit her lip in pain, looking fearfully into her eyes for comfort. Suddenly her eyes widened and she started screaming, gripping the midwife’s hand until both were white, throwing her head back in agony, her hair unkempt and damp with moisture. The midwife urged her on, and spoke soothing words into her ear.

The lady’s name was Mei, and she was a geisha; A female entertainer of many talents. The affair between her and lord Yagyu was nothing short of scandalous, hence the clandestine conditions of the birth. Through the white haze of pain, she grimaced and wondered if he would make it in time. The birth was taxing, and she could already feel herself slipping from the waking world, spots of dark beginning to obscure her vision. If she could just hold on a little longer…
The door burst open, rain and cold rushing in over through the threshold, and with it the drenched yet imposing figure of Senjuro Yagyu. He rushed forward to cradle the limp figure of his lover, and heard the cries of his newborn son, in the arms of the midwife.

Senjuro, stone still and dripping wet, kneeled beside Mei, cradling his son. Outside in the rain, all noise was drowned out in the fury of the storm.

It was a nice sunny afternoon as a group of children played in the spacious courtyard of the mansion. Adults sat on the wide pinewood verandah, chatting, having tea and keeping an eye on them.
“Mother, can we go down to the fountain?” asked the eldest boy, the unofficial leader/ambassador of the motley group.
“Yes, but don’t push each other in like the last time!” was the mock stern reply. The children whooped with joy and rushed off, the vague notion of a promise already fading in their minds.
Very soon, they got bored with the fountain and the fish they couldn’t catch. The leader, by virtue of age (and size), rambunctious and rowdy, suggested a mock duel with his younger brother, to show off his latest sword skills. The boys themselves were all dressed like miniature versions of their parents: samurai warriors. Complete down to wooden katana, all they lacked was the topknot, symbolic of manhood. Only the leader had a real, steel blade. Borrowing a wooden one from the nearest boy, the duel commenced, to the joy of the juvenile audience. He easily proved his superiority over his sibling and, ego inflated, looked about for more game.
“Magatsu!”

Suddenly they were all silent. Pale, white haired and gray-eyed, Magatsu was small for his age. He usually kept to himself, a silent follower out of boredom. His features resembled the other children’s, sharp and delicate, yet different, and somehow less defined, though not unpleasant. Hearing his name, he slowly looked up from the cricket perched on his hand.

“Come! Haven’t you learnt some swordplay from uncle Sendo? Show us!”
Of course, what he really meant was ‘I just don’t like you, so now I shall humiliate and hurt you, with a valid excuse.’

Magatsu shook his head.

“Stop playing with that stupid thing and come fight like a true warrior! Or maybe you are scared of a little wood, freak…” He edged in, closing the gap between them.
‘It’ll be a long, long time before you are one,’ thought Magatsu, long used to being taunted for his half-breed status. Being the family bastard didn’t help things along that line either. Yet Magatsu couldn’t ignore the very real threat behind the taunts, or the cruelty apparent in the bully’s eyes. As he hesitated to reply, the wooden kata struck out suddenly. Magatsu withdrew his hand and avoided it easily, as the blow was not aimed at him.
His pet however, was not so lucky. The cricket was stuck as it hung suspended in the air for the briefest of moments, and flung to the ground, a jumble of legs and innards, scrabbling around feebly in the dirt, until finally a foot closed down on it, mercifully.

I watched it for what seemed like an eternity, one of the few treasures of my childhood, before I crushed it under my heel. I do not look at the remains of my pet. The torrent of anger rises inside me like a geyser, threatening to seize control and turn me into a raging, thrashing maniac. To destroy my tormentor no matter what the cost, but I fight it. I will not die like the insect, panicked and grasping the air uselessly in its death throes.

“Come, now that’s out of the way, we can continue! Or do you still insist on being a coward?”
The tormentor hefted his kata and gave a self-satisfied sneer. Magatsu watched him, his fists clenched and shaking in anger, the knuckles white. His face remained placid normal. He closed his eyes momentarily, and sighed to himself, squaring away his anger like so many times before. Growing even more agitated that his normal tactics were not working, the tormentor fell back to violence once more.
Magatsu snapped out of his thoughts and reacted, sidestepping just in time to avoid the blow, which undoubtedly would have caused grievous injury, feeling the swish of the kata as it narrowly missed his face. A new assault of vicious but unfocused blows followed. His natural agility and the blinding rage of his opponent notwithstanding, Magatsu could not evade forever, and with a loud thwack! A blow landed squarely on the side of his face, but he did not flinch.
Magatsu reacted faster than his opponent could ever have expected. His enemy had made the grave mistake of letting his weapon linger after the attack. In his triumph he left his kata outstretched, within Magatsu’s easy reach. Magatsu gripped the kata with both hands, twisting it to the side, bringing both the wooden sword and its owner towards him. A well-placed kick separated the two, and the bully tumbled back into the dirt, a sandal-print on his now dusty blue kimono.

Now thoroughly enraged, and determined to avenge his humiliation, the bully scrambled back to his feet and drew his steel blade. A collective gasp issues from the audience, any thoughts of intervention now completely erased by fear. The bully explodes into a flurry of vicious, unfocused slashes. Magatsu parries each, slapping the blade sideways with his own or just by stepping away. He moves, while his opponent is in mid-strike, suddenly closing the distance, to stand in front of his opponent almost face to face. Shocked, the bully tries to draw back his overextended sword, but before he can, Magatsu’s heel is locked behind his ankle and he is falling to the ground again with a slight nudge on the chest.

He lands hard this time and cries out in pain. I pick up the katana that dropped as he fell and throw it into the nearby pond, before someone gets seriously injured. I myself have no fear of it, but swords do not always listen to their owners. He is soon charging at me again, screaming in rage. I wait for him to get close again dropping low at the last moment and he grabs air, hunched over my back. I grip the front of his tunic with my right hand and shove him upwards with my shoulder, flipping him over with his own momentum. It takes only a second or two, and he crashes squarely on the ground again. Actually it seems as if he has just mirrored lying positions rather than being tossed head over heels. This time he does not get up, and lies there moaning and dazed. I hand the kata back to its donor, and retreat quietly into the mansion.

On a balcony overlooking the pond, two men enjoy the view. They stand there silent, having just witnessed the juvenile conflict below. The elder of the pair, clad in a simple black robe, speaks first.

“Do you believe me now Senjuro?”

He gives only a disgruntled grunt in reluctant agreement. Sendo Yagyu studies his brother’s face but it is unreadable.

“That will not change what he is.”

With that Senjuro turns and walks into the mansion.

 

WOW
, innovative and well-written, amazing story!!

 

You should definetly continue this

 

Thanks for the positive feedback!
If youre new to this, Kuroi Itezuru is also a characted featured in Shura's story (http://www.sorcerers.net/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=12;t=000153)

 

Great stuff, this, great indeed!

However, I felt that the sudden changes of tense (past to present) and style (all-knowing author to 'I') were a little confusing. Of course, it's still probably better than anything I could ever come up with...

 

Good, gripping stuff there

 

Finaly, its here. The long await story of Kuroi

 

Kuroi drew his straw cloak about him, more to conceal himself than to keep out the light drizzle. His conical sandogasa hat shadowed most of his face. Dipping it slightly so that it sat comfortably on his head again, he continued to weave his way through the crowded streets.
Despite the weather, people had turn out in full force for the festival. They called it Autumn’s End, but as with many festivals, its true reason had been lost, and it became a festival just for celebrations own sake. Gods, monsters, heroes and monumentuous events had come, gone and past for thousands of years with their memory only in sweet cakes and lanterns. These thoughts were in Kuroi’s head as he slowly navigated his way through the capital’s streets in the rainy night, as he had done many times before. Just as his father had, on a stormy night 23 years before.

Leaving the main street Kuroi turned into a small byway between two shop- houses. It was so narrow he had to shuffle sideways to get through. After a few meters it ended and the byway opened up into the small space between the rear of a large mansion in front of him and the shop-houses behind. This would have been another small alley, but barricades of tall wooden poles to deter intruders blocked off both sides. After all, assassins, thieves and other assorted lowlifes always came through the back. These walls, as well as the back wall of the mansion, rose up about four meters, give or take a few feet. Kuroi stood back and sized them up. Blocking off the street had certainly discouraged any casual intruders, but in Kuroi’s case they would actually assist his efforts to get inside.

‘If not this then its the roof. But not such a good idea on a festival day when the streets are all brightly lit,’ Kuroi thought to himself. The bustle of the festival would help him avoid capture later on, but now it was just hindering him.
Kuroi dumped his hat and cloak and hid them behind some weaved baskets in the corner of the closed alley. He was clad head to toe in body fitting black cloth, loose enough to afford good mobility of the limbs. His forearms and shins were bound with leather strips, covered in mystical kanji, hinting to their supernatural quality. Kuroi adjusted the shoulder straps of his leather harness, which held his weapons. A pouch on his belt carried the rest of his equipment. From a pocket he produced his black facemask, dark burnished metal framing steel mesh. He drew it over his head and tied it tightly behind his head, then secured it again with a black scarf. Now he was covered in black, from head to toe, leaving only his eyes. He concentrated for a brief moment, and his gray pupils faded slowly, leaving his eyes milky white, all the more to conceal his identity and terrify his opponents. Kuroi positioned himself at the far side of the alley, near one of the barricades while facing the other a few meters away.

He stood still for a few moments, concentrating again. Taking a deep breath he broke into a sprint down the alley towards the barricades. Focusing his chi he took a massive leap, twisting to change direction in mid-air to kick off against the barricade, finally vaulting sideways over the mansion wall. He noticed the shrub just in time and twisted sideways to avoid colliding with it, landing heavily. A broken limb would have been certain if he not broken into a roll immediately to disperse his momentum. Kuroi squatted in the shadow of another shrub catching his breath. Jumping over walls without knowing what was on the other side was never a good idea, but he didn’t always have a choice. More than once he had almost jumped directly into hairy situations such as fish ponds and armed guards. Only his uncles immaculate shinobi training had saved him from those. He wondered jokingly if nobles would ever plant their yards with plain grass or bales of hay, rather than ninja-endangering trees and stones. Gathering his thoughts again on the task at hand, he found an unlocked screen door in the nearby kitchen and slipped inside the mansion, past a sleeping cook.

The house was a maze of paper screens, tatami, wooden pillars and sliding doors. Kuroi knew the target would be in his bedroom, somewhere deeper inside the mansion. He stuck close to the walls and crept silently through the passages like a shadow. Most of the corridors were lit, some more than others, with scatterings of guards here and there. The security was definitely more than usual, but a few extra guards couldn’t hamper him much. He crouched low through the next brightly lit corridor, to avoid projecting his silhouette on paper screen walls, and heard voices and footsteps from an adjacent room. He sprung straight up into the air and perched on a ceiling beam like a gargoyle, all but invisible to any in the corridor. A door slid open, and two armed samurai retainers stepped out.
“Hurry up will you Daisho, Shinji will get paranoid if we’re late.”
The other samurai just yawned and stretched discontentedly as they walked on down the hall. Kuroi followed them silently, a shadow flitting from beam to beam.
After twisting and turning further through the myriad passages and halls, they stopped and turned left into a large hall, the largest so far. Kuroi dropped down to the floor and peeked inside. This hall had a plain, closed ceiling, so he could not follow them as he had. It was completely lit up. At the end of the hall sat a giant pair of double, solid wooden doors decorated with the crest of Clan Shimoda.
“Very strange. A pair of reinforced doors in the middle of a house. He’s inside,” Kuroi thought to himself.
Dull thuds echoed through the hall as one of the retainers rang the ornate brass knocker on the doors.
“You got anything to eat Ichimon?” said the yawning retainer suddenly.
“What?! We just had supper! You’re always hungry. If you practiced swordplay as often as you ate, you’d be able to beat Bu-Shin hands down..”
He was cut off by a muffled voice behind the doors.
“Who is it?”

“It’s the Dragon Empire Death Squad you fool, open up.”
Ichimon continued berating his comrade who just yawned again, as the sound of chains and locks being removed came from within. Kuroi listening intently, picked up the sound of at least three different sets of locks and chains, and an iron crossbar as well.
The doors creaked open. A fierce looking retainer emerged partially from behind the threshold of the doorframe and began chatting to the others. Kuroi saw that he did not venture beyond them.
He considered his choices: Middle of the house, so no balconies. No other entrances I know of. No false ceilings. Solid wooden walls.
Kuroi knew he had to do this one quick, passing up this chance could mean delaying his objective by hours.

 

Great, I must say...

 

This is really amazing

 

Have to agree here. Very good indeed.

 

Sorry for the delay in stories, here we are again!

A thump came from the outside corridor. Immediately all three samurai looked up, hands automatically on sword hilts. Ichimon and Daisho exchanged glances, then began advancing slowly, cautiously, to the hall entrance. As they reached the threshold they paused; listening, looking, feeling for a presence. Beyond the doorway light spilled into the dark corridor from the brightly lit hallway, making the shadows all the more deep. The two of them stood motionless at the entrance, Shinji behind them the same, all in the ready position. Sweat formed on their brows but none made a move to wipe it away.
Daisho narrowed his eyes, noticing something. Ichimon picked up quickly and followed his gaze to something on the floor.
“A mochi!”
To Ichimon’s horror Daisho had already sprung forward into the darkness in his attempt to retrieve the glutinous rice cake lying innocuously on the floor.
“Daisho! No!” Ichimon exclaimed as he dashed after him.
The last thing Daisho saw was the mochi, splattered with his own blood. The last thing
Ichimon saw was the shadows come alive and slit his throat.

“Ichimon! Daisho!”he called. Silence.
Sori didn’t like it one bit, he decided to close the doors first, and ask questions later. Stepping back behind the doorframe, he pulled the two doors together slowly, all the while eyeing the entrance to the hallway cautiously. The doors creaked laboriously and the gap between them disappeared rapidly.

Kuroi pressed himself to the wall and cleared his mind of thoughts. It was simple in principle, but certainly was no easy task : only years of practice had allowed him to do so. He felt the concentration of the last sentry upon the doorway, searching for him. He fingered one of the daggers in his belt.

With a dull ‘thunk’ the doors jammed. Sori, startled, flicked his eyes to see that one of the lower lock bolts stopped them from closing completely. There was a flash of movement from the outer doorway and Sori twisted sideways to avoid the dagger flying towards him. All this occurred within the space of a second.

“Amazing! He knew exactly when I lost concentration! If I hadn’t been..”
The second dagger cut short Sori’s thoughts.

Kuroi stalked forward quickly and made sure the last guard was dead. He then retrieved his daggers from the body and the adjacent wall. Within the inner sanctum was a normal tatami screen door. What lay behind it was obscured as it was dark within. Just then he picked up the sounds of lovemaking from within. He slipped silently into the bedchamber.

The target did not realize a thing until all but one of the small candles in his bedchamber had been extinguished, so intent on his carnal pursuits he was. Grunting in confusion, he looked around., and his heart leapt into his throat at the same moment his balls shrank back into his body. The lone candle in his bedroom was blocked by a shinobi standing at the foot of his bed, motionless. The girl continued to fake orgasm until she realized he had stopped, gasping in surprise and drawing herself into a ball at the corner of the bed when she saw the intruder.

 

Keep going! Wish your posts were longer though