Dragonball M, Chapter 1: Silent Menace Aproaches!

[Yun Lao]

The Brickhouse diner in Brick City was one of the city's oldest establishments and was said to be the first restaurant built on these lands. This factoid wasn't anything Charco had learned, but rather it was hard not to know considering it was written on the walls amidst the colorful murals painted by various artists throughout the years. Despite the outer appearance of the diner reflecting the conservative values of the city, the Brickhouse diner had always been more for the artsy types and while he probably couldn't paint a fence to save his life, he appreciated the atmosphere it gave. It didn't remind him of the troubles the city had given him throughout the years.

To be fair, things were improving, although in extremely minute ways. Roughly three and half months since Fife's defeat, his parents had called him, asking to meet him and while the meeting was still tense, they appeared to have made some leeway for the next time they met. He was still disappointed that the real reason they called him over was that he had received some mail from a strange figure. They never told him what was so strange about the messenger, but it was enough for them to be visibly spooked.

BGM: "Big Iron"

The music playing from the jukebox changed to a different genre, the first song featuring the tired voice of a weathered man singing a dark ballad. Although it wasn't something he generally listened to, his communicator was on life support, plugged into a nearby outlet. Charco figured it was time for him to finally look at the piece of mail he had ultimately come into town for. The envelope it came in was dirty and grimy as if it had been dropped in the mud, dirt, and sand constantly before being wiped "clean". It tore upon the slightest touch, revealing a book bound in dark, rough leather. Opening it confirmed his suspicions; it was written by Jorg Fourmen. Unlike the other books, notes, and tomes authored by the man, this one was completely different. It wasn't about techniques or philosophies, but rather it was a simple journal that he had started fairly recently, but had managed to accumulate enough material that it completely filled the book.

They told me Gris Gris Bayou was an evil place, devoid of nothing but blood and sin. I was skeptical at first, but now I find my sentiments towards these vile lands mirrors what was I told. My instincts tell me to run and never look back, but I know I cannot leave this be. This place must be cleansed and the monsters that dwell within must be put down. Only then can those lost here truly find peace...

The door opened, setting off the whimsical wind chimes that lined the threshold with the jingle of metal and glass. The newcomers spoke and laughed loudly and much to Charco's displeasure, he recognized the voices. Unfortunately, they also recognized him.

"Well, well, well..." Declared one of them, whom he knew as the loudmouth Limon. They had had some confrontations before, yet it seemed that Limon had never learned his lesson, as demonstrated as he slid into the booth seat across from Charco, "If it isn't our old friend, Charco. Where ya been, buddy? We haven't seen you at school and word on the street was that you finally got arrested." That annoying, ****-eating grin crossed Limon's face.

"Hey man, you sure you wanna do this?" Came the cautious words of Limon's friend, Tajin, who stood a respectable distance from the booth with his girlfriend, Chile. Both had seen the results before, yet there was little they could do to keep their friend from doing what he was doing; it was like he was a moth who kept approaching the flame.

"Oh... I get it. He was featured at the World Tournament, oh what a badass," Limon said, mockingly acting as if he were shaking in fear, "Oh please! Am I supposed to be afraid of some dropout who can't even read? Heh, seems like the only thing he's good for is being the bodyguard for that slut Hibachi--?!" His words were silenced as Charco seized him by his chin. Standing up, he forced the other one up to his feet before effortlessly lifting him off the floor.

"You never learn..." Charco said, doing his best to keep himself under control. Limon knew better than to bring up Hibachi, but the punk couldn't help but try and get a rise from him. "Whoa! Calm down, you know Limon likes to talk ****, but he doesn't mean to!" Tajin said, going into damage control mode. Charco glanced back to him before looking back to his captive, "You know, I've been holding back against you for a long, long time. Today, I'm gonna correct this." Tightening his grip, he could feel Limon's lower jaw reach the breaking point before it collapsed under the force, prompting a muffled scream and trickles of blood seeping down his hand from between his fingers. Dropping him, Charco turned to Tajin and Chile, both of which could only look on in horror at their friend's ruined mouth. Collecting his things, he stepped outside as the staff within quickly called for emergency services.

"****..." Charco muttered to himself. He didn't want to stir any more trouble, but he had ended up losing his temper and no doubt the police were going to become involved in this soon enough. Glancing to Jorg's journal, he sighed, "Well, looks like I'm headed to this Gris Gris Bayou..." Climbing onto his motorcycle, he sped off toward the highway.

----

Meanwhile, many miles away, there was a land in which the sun could not shine upon. Obscured by the tangled treetops, the murky waters of the swamp were pitch black, save for the lights that were reflected off of its surface by a transversing pontoon boat. Dirty lanterns were held by hood figures wearing makeshift robes of burlap and rope with symbols crudely stitched across every available surface. Coming to a stop, one of the figures crouched down toward the center of the boat, where a child, barely a pre-teen, lay bound and gagged.

"We give praise... and offer upon you our sacrifice..." The figure, a man said, his voice raspy and nasally and he hoisted the child up into the air. "May the blood of this child quell your anger for another night so perhaps we may earn your forgiveness..." Tossing the child into the dark waters, muffled cries and splashing filled the air as the victim thrashed against the water, yet it would soon be over as something seized their sacrifice, dragging the child beneath the dark depths of the swamp.

DRAGONBALL M, Special Chapter
Dead Depths

[grampagen]

“Th'outside world musta continue'd to dissapoint yeh if y'come up here t'steep s'more, Ocha. I could use th'company!”

Ochazuke cast his gaze around the muted light of the shadowless cave. A cool, dark place, rows of moon-white mushrooms blanketed the wet garden inlaid on the rock wall. He twist one off, and its sick-sweet rotten scent crept over his palate when he inhaled.

“Thirsting only for knowledge, sensei,” he said, sinking his teeth into the moist flesh of the fungus and savouring its acrid, musky flavour. The old hermit had sworn this was the secret of his long life.

Kuki retched, grumbling as he sidled off the stalicite and swung toward the cave wall, the hollow thump spreading to an echoing boom that disturbed a host of somethings that whispered and shrieked in the deeper shadows of the cave. Suspended sideways on his planted, bare feet, he slid down the sheer surface of the cave wall and the old hermit landed on the floor, this time with scarcely a noise. His right hand – his only hand - centred over his chest and his body tensed on bent knees. The force from the fall sunk silently through the cave as the whole chamber shook and the mushrooms swayed.

“Is'sa shame, feh. Well what c'n I do f'yeh?”

As soon as he spoke, without so much as a further whisper Kuki resumed the course of his training in the muted light of the cave. Wisps of coarse hair shift atop his shaded crown as he shift in his rooted stance, a beardless countenance fell to skin like corked bark, hanging aged and loose, betraying twisting piles of muscle within his limbs. Ochazuke was silent as he observed the shift the hermit's stony frame, dumbstruck for the moment as he observed him move.

A perfect balance, he thought, watching Kuki shift his single arm across his chest, sink low with a soft footfall which shook the wet garden that grew upon the walls. Where language was softly forgotten in Kuki's isolation, his conversation through his motion conveyed a thousand qualities words would fail. As far as he had journeyed before returning to this point, there still remained a mysterious end to the hermit's structure conveyed through his gradual aloof pace. Not a movement taken for granted under total control.

Ochazuke expanded the contents of his capsule and presented something the old hermit had not seen for perhaps thirty years, enough to arrest his movements completely.

“...iss'at a plastic bag?”

“Canvas. I thought I'd bring you some real food from the outside.”

The wild man wound down, shuffling silently toward Ochazuke. Reared to his full height Kuki would scarcely reach his chest. Ambling low in his examination, Ochazuke sat upon his knees as he shift his hand through the contents of the bag. Cabbage. Ginger. Tofu. A small pot and two bowls.

“I got n'use f'that, ech!” The hermit cried. “Whassat smell?”

“Negi. Mirin. Miso.” Ochazuke replied.“It's not a luxury to eat proper, Sensei.”

“Don't sass me! A man'll be entitled only to th' produce of his labourin'! Oughta eat only what he put in th'time for! S'no time for luxury when every moment's a refinement of skill!”

Ochazuke blinked hard, a low sigh escaping him. Perhaps the produce of Zaofan's kitchen had spoiled his palate, and what meagre lesson he'd imparted by observing his brother would be lost on a man devoted only to the pursuit of himself in a singular vision.

“Thats th'martial way! In everythin' y'do, draw y'hand up and raise y'self by it!”

A low chuckle escaped Ochazuke as he wordlessly dared to pluck another mushroom. Kuki's sunken mouth became unhinged.

“That's hardly the only pursuit that has value, sensei,” he replied as he made his preparations, “Yet there is the deeper matter I'd come here to discuss with you.”

Ochazuke passed the five training manuals and the last testament of Zxu'ro, still held in their casements, to Kuki. The old Turtle Hermit held the top of the ancient scroll, as he tilt his head and pored over the matter.

“Mmmrgh...s'intrestin', never seen anythin' like this,” he murmured.

“What do you make of it?”

The Five Animals were offshoots from the same source. Cloistered in the hidden ruin, a man had built a testament to himself as the Master of Masters. Kuki's eyes were squint, dark pools as he read over the matter.

“...after all this time” Kuki started, before lowering the scroll with a snort, “...y'can't figure out a man can't read in th'dark, Ocha?”

A small chuckle escaped Ochazuke. In his zealous pursuit for answers he'd tripped up over so small a thing. Where the artifacts did nor suffice, his words would have to do, and so he spoke of Balon's discovery there in the hidden Temple of the Chimera.

“...s'a matter to discuss over dinner, but if y'gonna cook, y'need some tinder, n'I need somethin' I can keep down.”

By the time the two had wandered out of the passages, the short northern day had ended. Ochazuke had forgotten was Kuki's custom that when the day ended that he would venture outside the meagre comforts of his cave to tend to his gardens. Without saying so much as a word, the old Turtle had maneuvered him into place. Under the cover of darkness there's be even fewer prying eyes in the wilderness. By the glimmer of the stars above and the shifting aurora, Kuki, clad only in the stained saffron of his dishevelled robe ambled his way silently on bare feet across the floodplain of melted snow along the cracks of the earth outside his lair. Plucking shoots out of the ground and brusquely tossing them to Ochazuke as he followed, after some time, he continued to press the matter.

“The legacy of the master passes to you as well as it does to me, but the truth, there, it has always been hidden, like a secret shame,” he said, the north's produce gathered in a bag in one hand, kindling in the other. “You know this, and you opened my eyes to this truth as well when you taught me.”

Kuki parsed the sickly matter through a gutteral sound from his throat. “S'a fickle thing. We all got four limbs same's anyone else. A man c'n think he's a bird, or a turtle, or a dragon, s'still a man.”

“For two-thousand years people have been staking their lives on honours based on lies. Now that I have the truth, the feud can end.”

A small smirk stretched across Kuki's face, exposing a gap-toothed grin. “People're stubborn, and s'got little t'do with martial arts, I'd say,” came the Hermit's reply. “M'days of th'Turtle r'mostly spent fightin' t'keep people offa m'back. Then fightin' t'keep people content to b'stayn' where they are.”

“But if we have the insight of the true master-”

“Masters! A master'll pull y'up n'teach ya! S'not supposed to be a matter of castin' a shadow behind ye so's t'leave a shady spot t'be pushed from behind. Burden y'self t'keep everyone else cushy, feh!”

Kuki knelt by a shrub balancing precariously between the frost and a steaming crack over the hearth within the earth, plucking its emaciated fruits carefully, one-by-one.

“Y'seen it too, have ye? As long as someone's at th'top pressin' down, it changes nothin'. Y'change hands, yeh, but it keeps things as th'stagnant way they are.”

[grampagen]

The echo of providence was as ever an irritating mote twisting in Ochazuke's thoughts. The savage natural order of things in this universe was such that force became the only justice, truth writ in spilled blood. In the days gone by since the fallen Guardian emerged, Ochazuke had seen this course converge into a mass that threatened to dye the oceans of this world a quickened red, but for their group's timely intervention.

Rautt. Battersea. Evangeline. And then there's the Parasite.

The world turned under the darkness, countless threatening eyes blinked behind the shifting light suspended above the snows. Here in under the black silhouette of the frozen summit, the shadow of the Obushi-sennin cast itself upon Ochazuke's path as he stepped forth into the darkness, chasing a mad hope. He examined Kuki's response, found and was wordless.

“S'a struggle f'the sake of no point, nothin' at all. So I sloughed it off'n came here.”

He'd come north to seek Kuki's counsel, within it he found only an echo of another life he left behind.

Aiko. Chahan.

He stopped in his pace, tinder scrap and dripping fronds in his hand as he watched the hermit crawl upon the ground picking dull red motes out of the crab grass with his single hand.

“Conduct more befitting a Snake than a Turtle.”

Kuki's shoulders sloped, rolling with hissing laughter as he stood to his feet. “S'nonsense t'bear a weight y'can't take with yeh. It'll crush yeh, kid.”

Straw and kindling snapped where Ochazuke gripped it.

Kenshiko.

“I suppose even for an aesceic a life of dedication is worth nothing, then?”

“S'cuse you? I consider m'self a thinkin' man, thank'ye.”

“We've chosen the apostate's life, for better or for worse, Sensei. The doctrines have broken apart what should be whole. As the days pass, more is lost.”

“Pity, but'sa way of things. S'got nothin' t'do with us, let it go.”

“Then what good will come from cultivating your skill in isolation?”

“F'what, power?” Kuki cast his single hand before him, even the mildest gesture carried with it the shadow of menace. “The warrior's hand c'n only push, grab, 'r pull. Pushn' others outta th'way'll only make'm seek a way 'round yeh. T'hold on'ta someone else between you n' y'troubles, y'squeeze th'life outta'm. Pull'n em towards ya, s'only as good as you cn' keep 'm there. N'on an'on it goes.”

“Maybe, but nothing will change from idle knowledge, and then in the end it will ultimately be lost,” he said, “You may be contented to stand aside, but I can't do that while there remains a great many things to do.”

The night Ochazuke pulled himself from succumbing to death's shadow by burning away the time left to him to survive the moment, after he held quiet vigil over Kaibyo he began his penitant march. He'd survived there in the nadir, fallen and weakened. A dead man drifting without purpose, he'd walked north until there was nowhere further to go. There in the shadow of the Frozen Fall did he cast his gaze upward at the unassailable summit, and finding no answers, that was day he was set ready to die.

Then Kuki had reached down to pull him up. He'd never understood why, it simply seemed that it was lonely at the peak. Now in the face of change, the hermit's motives, immovable, were ever more a mystery to him.

Every day since then, the welling pain in scar over his heart reminded him of what was left to him. Forever ago it seemed to sever him from his potential.

Stoked by the will and intent of others until he was brought back, there was a debt Ochazuke had to pay still for all those that came before him, including this recluse.

“I'd come here to sever what little kept me suspended over the abyss. But you reached down and pulled me back up.”

Kuki placed the fruits of his frozen garden in a satchel bandied about his tatters. “S'pose I did. What about it?"

“There will be nothing to cease the world of turmoil, to stop this if men who are able to impart change do nothing.”

The Hermit stood at his full height and walked toward him. Reeling his gaze upwards, a glint withing the dark pools of his eyes illuminated a spark of vitriol within. Kuki snatched the fronds from Ochazuke's hand.

“Oh, s'you gonna fight m'off, n'prove yeh better'n them by shovin' em outta th'way?”

With a great leap Kuki bound back towards the mouth of his hermitage. Ochazuke kept pace of his evasion flying in tandem with him.

“I've allowed enough to fall away into shadow and memory. Surrendered to chaos that which should have remained. The insights I've gained from my meditations have shown me that much.”

“Boy, I taught you meditation,” Kuki replied brusquely. Ochazuke's gaze narrowed as the Old Turtle slid his right foot forward, leading with his single hand. Years training in the wilds in isolation had not left him wanting; rather, they seemed to carve new inhuman shapes in his torso where mortal frame no longer suited him.

It was then Ochazuke became increasingly aware of the invisible force filling the field outside the cavern as if the consensation and steam had thickened the air to water. Kuki's energy came in waves, crushing against his soul, coax meaning from his movement and press intention from of him. The Turtle master dragged him under the water and sought to drown him.

Ochazuke took a step back and raised his hands in the classic Crane fashion, igniting in a subtle clash of resistance. And then the fire grew, fed by the iron wind casting off the Hermit's snare.

“Oh! S'a little somethin' new! Hmm...Dragon, isn'it?”

Ochazuke said nothing, pushing against the old master's force with Karura no Kaen, the memory of a dead art given life through his pulse and breath. The expanse of their energies began to clash silently, one apostate set against the another in deadlock.

“Th'outside world's still fulla strife, but y'seem a lil' more relaxed, yeh? ” Kuki shrugged, wet snow parting to powder underfoot and Ochazuke moved toward him. “B'sides, y'left just when y'got interestin'! Show me what else y'learned!”

Ochazuke smirked as he faced down the old Tortoise's challenge, he kept in mind that small riddle Kuki would often ask and he'd been short of answers for.

As a rock breaks the surface of the water, surrounded from all sides on the base of the river bed, which shall move first?

[grampagen]

He found it hard to breathe, though whether it was the crystallization of the sulphuric vapour rising from the cracks of the earth into the dry, frozen atmosphere, or the crushing spirit that emenated from the withered shell that stood before him across the ice. The diminutive Kuki, his single arm held before piercing eyes in a half guard held an unblinking gaze.

I've faced down worse. Battersea, Fife...seen the Golden Eyes gazing back behind the burning darkness, he thought to himself, So why?

The Garuda's Flame relented and in a snap between seconds, the expanse of his sense-awareness resumed, and the spread of his meditation field crashing into the territory of a self-same counterpart cast from the Hermit. Roiling in a deadlock there, each combatant was only aware of the anticipatory knowledge of the other at a neutral distance. Yet both warriors knew that is the change, the moment held in flux between warriors that shifts before the clash that decides the outcome.

Why can't I find an opening?

The Northern Winds howled, the boiling pit seeping from the cracks of the wild garden spat steam, the fog resolved and freezing where it formed into ephemeral crystals swirling upward. Ochazuke was aware of all as he initiated, and Kuki shift his elbow inward. Stepping forward into a lead straight aiming to sink into the Hermit's face, his fist connected with the wrinkled, corked surface of his nose, yet he did not feel contact with the substance beneath the flesh as he pushed forward. Kuki was one step ahead of him, and the impact was made insubstantial as the Hermit rolled backward, dropping his guard entirely as he was lifted off the ground. Drawn up from below, a short leg corded with muscle shot forward as he twisting with the impact, rolling off of Ochazuke's fist and kicking through the absent guard at full extension.

Ochazuke pressed his aura against this with Shoshin Hiei voiding the blow by the smallest distance as he aligned his movement to his, maintaining his offensive balance shuffling backward as Kuki moved with his extension into a landing. Ochazuke struck as he landed, throwing his leg into the crook of the hermit's knee. Sharper still from a movement done countless times, this time he felt the impact as it fell.

I felt it connect! And yet...

Again he felt neither flesh nor bone, rather it was like clashing against a cloth that ambled through the air; impact made insubstantial as the joint folded with the smallest motion, carrying Kuki forward without an effort. Ochazuke was suddenly aware of steely fingers seizing his leg, weighing down as Kuki pressed to the inside.

“Mm, s'another new one!” The Old Turtle's spit-spackled laugh held him, relaxed in the reprieve, curious. “Y'been practicin' hard Ocha! How'dya find this'n?”

“One of my own.”

A surge of energy blast into the ground with a fierce kiai radiating from Ochazuke. Kuki was carried away, parting effortlessly like a leaf ambling in the breeze, carried to where he may land viewing the path as it came. Holding a palm to his chest, the hermit's hollow eyes glowed as he fell.

"Nichirin Odama!"

Casting three palm strikes forward from a single hand, the Old Turtle cast a series of ki orbs before him. Against the field of Ochazuke's meditation, he'd remembered these familiar shapes well as they fanned out and expanded. It came in a different shape but even apart from its user, he recognized the Kamehameha separate from its user burst in volleys of light and power that cut through the icy sheet and made the aurora in the skies above wick out from the disturbance. Instinctively, the root of the Turtle Hermit's technique was answered by his own incandescent red as a Dodonpa flashed, bolted, and smashed into brilliant blue.

To his surprise, he'd managed to match Kuki's attack force-for force, a feat he could hardly imagine a scant year ago. The second fired, and he risked to venture striking upon it with his palm and the energy wave split apart, the impact of the blow shaking the very firmament of the Northern expanse. Snow thawed underfoot as the earth split and sulpur-scented dew drops gathered, thousands upon thousands of tiny diamonds rising in a sheet between the two combatants, rippling in the dark air where their force clashed against one another. Kuki pushed forward, the third Kamehameha held close to his chest, swelling in power with every moment.

“Kame-”

The danger so close, Ochazuke faced the terrible power of the Northern Warrior as he crept forward in the darkness.

Shoshin

“Hame-”

His nightly countenance bathed in blue from the purity of the ki gathered in Kuki's right palm, he saw there his opportunity. As every strike carves a path forward, so does it offer an opening. He charged forward to meet him.

Mushin

The two still saw each other clearly through the clash of their rendered will. Kuki moved his hand to cast the wave, a ruinous echo of the way Evangeline did long ago to announce her presence to the universe.

"HA--!"

Ochazuke took to the air, twisting forward and inward around the Kamehameha. He cast a high kick aiming to take the hermit's temple from the outside, when the old man could not guard.

I have you now. Zanshin Touki!

BGM - Tai Chi Master

The iron wind cast around the old hermit and the totality of spirit clashing against him, the second impact held within a second strike. The curtain of mist around them was blown into steaming puddles on the hot rocks, and in the basin outside of the Frozen Fall, the warriors' clash made the North forget its wintry image, emptying the field of resting snow. The stars appeared to unvert themselves upon the earth as a sheet of cold, crystallized white burst upward and around them in the darkness.

Yet even as the energy cast off towards the dark of the sea, Ochazuke's leg never met the Hermit, pressed against an invisible force in guard held fast, invisibly. Kuki shift through the air and Ochazuke felt only something resistant, yet pliant where his strike rest upon the Hermit's neck. He felt it then as the force rolled over him and his balance gave, Kuki sinking in his stance and his ki returning in spite of its expenditure, coalescing in a curtain of sparks like illuminate lotus flowers dancing over water where the two met.
“Turtles live'a long life 'cause we're always watchin' out, yeh!” the garbled voice replied brightly as he jerked his neck back and forth. “I learnt this'un from you, Ocha!”

Too late Ochazuke realized that his blows had indeed struck true, however Kuki ever so aware was slowing the limbs where they struck. He could not dodge, and so simply adjusted his stance where his feet met the exposed muskeg peat. Where he met the Hermit searching for an opening, the Old Turtle gave him nothing, and in that waiting nothingness, a subtle counter matched move-for move. It was not just an internal expression of ki to root the stance, but a defensive field set to disperse an attack.

With a sharp horizontal twist, Kuki stamped his heels forward in pistonlike succession. The impact was neutralized and the full force of Ochazuke's blow rolled into Kuki and cut into the earth, flowing down his back foot and cutting a trench into the earth that swallowed snow into a fissure and spat the subterranean steam upwards. Breaking the engagement, the Crane returned to his stance and took a step back, bolstering the focus of his meditation to divine the method from the Hermit.

Kei'i ken!

Kuki started forward and raised his elbow. Ochazuke reached forward to trap his arm, rooting him to the ground, he snaked his arm forward in a Dragon-style strike towards his shoulder when he felt his hold over Kuki dissolve. The wily old hermit did something, a small shift, seizing the momentum and causing him to miss his strike entirely and he felt himself take to the air.

Seisui Tensho!

He strike landed, yet even as he felt the force melt from his palm, it sunk through his opponent, then resolve itself behind him. Kuki picked Ochazuke up and smashed him into the ground, returning all the force imparted to him in a single motion. Thermal vents hissed as blood hot water seeped upward. Dizzied from the impact, he could not tell if he was bleeding or sinking in a pile of filth on the plateau. Snow returned to the ground, shrinking to its previous position as the earth spat from slow, burning geysers where he landed. Grumbling to himself, the Old Turtle folded his legs and took a seat, breathing low, exhausted.

“'m still keepin' score, for th'record. River beats rock two hundred fifty f'r two hundred fifty.”

[grampagen]

The smell of earth and rot and sweat was given a reprieve udner the delight of dengaku skewers under the hiss and crackle of the fire within the cave.

BGM - Cave Man

“I missed y'e m'boy. Wolves, eagles, abominable snowmen, s'just not right.”

The host made conversation, busying his mouth for his wild eyes darted and studied the singed morsels on the skewer he held with a reluctance and curiosity. His guest, silent, rolled blackened fungus under the heat of miso and ginger over his palate as he chewred, contemplating the course of their battle with idle attentions paid to the idle tortoise crawling on the floor, pecking at cave worms by fire light.

“'course s'not a thing t'consider 'mong animals. They can't help t'be what they are.”

Scarfing down the mealy produce, Ochazuke could only think of how Zaofan's fare had spoiled him, though this echo of his martial brother's efforts would satisfy him now.

“Instinct is not inuition,” he replied curtly, and tofu and cave fungus are hardly meat.

“Y'got it! N'got no sense, fightin' a dumb thing that can't think, yeh?”

“The same could be said for people."

“Heh, like peas'n a pod. Looks' deceivin'! Jus' 'cause a thing looks ferocious s'not a cause for challenge, yeh?

Swallowing the rest of the blackened mushroom-and-onion, Ochazuke, restored, at last spoke to the purpose of the reunion. Now by the light of a fire, he offered the recluse the scrolls once more.

“I came here to ask you about the history of our martial brethren. About the Obushi-sennin,” he began.

“Did I ever tell ya th'one about the Tengu?” Kuki continued, “Th' Komuso monks, thassa weird 'n esoteric bunch! They'd hidden their faces ta mute th'ego, then they got infiltrated by demons. Tengu started wearin' the tengui! Gyeh heh!”

“I had heard the Master was rumoured to have aided the monk Yoroi,” Ochazuke replied, casting a glance to the ancient scroll. “Here's the matter that proves there may be more to it than just a legend.”

“Gyah-hkkk-!” Kuki loosed a missile of seasonal phlegm through the crooked gap in his teeth. “Jus' 'cause th'stories wrote it that way doesn't mean is'sin a proper way.”

“They said the same thing about Yetis. I had the pleasure of meeting not one, but two some time after I left.”

“...point. Well, y'd not b'here if it weren't somethin' serious,” Kuki replied, reading through each of the Five Foundations outlined. “s'go on.”

“This senseless war between the Five must come to an end. You said it yourself, as I learned from you, you also learned something from me,” Ochazuke said. "The reason why I departed months ago, it was because I had come to an epiphany."

Leaning over the floor of the cave, Kuki gummed away at a grilled mushroom as he pored over the Crane mechanics of Sanchin, as ever affixed two-thousand years ago to the form Ochazuke used today.

“Hidden as a heresy, the words, the forms, these are ideas which sit unrealized. I wish to become a vessel for this truth, so it can no longer be buried, no longer be denied.”

“What'll you do when y'figure it out?”

“Separations of the same art warring against each other is as senseless as the fingers of one hand competing for prominence,” Ochazuke replied without hesitation. Raising a hand before him, he folded them into a fist.

Kuki, miso glazing his face as he mulled onion and tofu mash about his prickly teeth, nodded slowly. The dark portals of his eyes briefly seemed to flash with a luminous quality as he looked upon Ochazuke, seated at full attention, apostates of a violent religion in kind colluding in the shadows. A little more than a year ago, they'd joined one another at the end of the earth. Only the one who returned to the world was able to rise upward and look past the confines beyond.

“When y'left here y'could see a bit about me, 'cause that's th'only thing y'were lookin' for,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

Kuki sighed in his aged, wheezing way and the light died from his eyes as his neck craned forward. He raised his hand up and point upward. Steadying the field of his sense-awareness in that direction, Ochazuke crept ki through those fallen forms, rock worn from centuries of condensation and drips peeling away at minerals within the cloister.

The dragon-head of the Chimera, its wings weathered by time, its armoured carapace, its claws, and poison tail sunked deep in this ancient place in the cave wall. Ochazuke beheld his teacher and widened his eyes.

“...are you Zxu'ro?”

“GYAAA HAA HAA HAA HAA HAA!”

Ochazuke's face fell flat in a stony expression before joining the Turtle Hermit in a round of raucous laughter that echoed through the humid sanctuary. The noise echoed through the halls of the ruined temple and the hallowed space shook as Ishii feast on the worms underfoot.

“Y'got a way, boy, y'got a way,” Kuki chortled. “N'I hear what'cha sayin. But y'need th'vision t'bridge the gap.It'll be a long road t'go for yeh. I'll show y'what fer, but y'gotta go th'rest of th'way,”

With wild, hurried scarfing, the Old Turtle ate the rest of the morsels, and part of the skewer. Standing at attention, he bound up and clamoured up the cave wall and shouted, “Meet me at th'top!”

Ochazuke turned about face and ascended to flight, only to be summarily reprimanded.

“Do't th' proper way, Ocha! Outside! With y'hands n'feet!”

___

BGM - Silent Hill

Even at the end of the world upon an unassailable monument to the unchanging, things are hardly stagnant. The Frozen Fall emptied its ice into the ocean, and the tide carried with it the shaking winds cast inward. Ochazuke started scaling the summit near where he first found the wall, bleeding in its shadow before the snows fell from its sheer face to claim him. Now with newfound strength, upon a smoothed, icy surface that stretched to a pinnacle eer upward, he dashed his fingers into the ice, rending holes into a face once unchanged. Irrational as it was, especially with the new gift Evangeline had bestowed upon him there in his brief training upon the Lookout, Ochazuke conceded to the cloistered master's instruction.

He had failed to conquer the impossible once, but within the renewed dedication to see his will come to fruition, with all that was at stake, for all that was to come, he would work to ensure that was a stricture he would never fall to again. With each moment of reach between hand and foot, the vertical surface of the mountainside ceased to be insurmountable; only, in the end, a mere obstacle to a higher plateau. Every pull upward was met by a strident awareness in all his faculty, the exacting strength he would need to exert control and ascend.

Gruelling shifting moments gave way to the perfection of that flightless pace upwards. So immersed in the task, Ochazuke soon met Kuki at the top, hurling himself up on the edge and stood upon the peaks facing the black oceans as the sun rose.

“Perfection means nothin' without th'conquest of failure,” the Old Turtle said, “Y've become strong, but Th'key to becoming stronger is t'remember what it means to be weak, and never lose mindfulness of this.”

He had seen the world from Heaven above, miniscule and shrouded beneath a sea of clouds. Living among that small sight in the life he had ever known - the life he had run from - had set his mind to shame, and brought another to ruin. Even now she was in his thoughts.

“It took y'a year t'start meditation. That's so y'could get th'sense of things b'fore y'can act. I mean, standin' stubborn is a thing, but not if y'wanna do somethin' about your situation. Keekoohoos make a big statement, I wanna make sure y'don't just flash out t'nothing.”

Things had changed drastically on the face of this world. Once there was the only the fear of losing everything, the denial of jealously guarded secrets, held fast to codes of honour built on lies. Here, at the summit at the edge of the world, Ochazuke found another height to ascend, an opportunity to make due recompense, and within that the faintest hope for the future.

“I would be honoured, Sensei.”

“Blah, Sensei,” his counterpart replied, “this ain't a dojo!”

“But we do have a goal in kind. Show me how I might reach it, I am ready.”

“Boy, flattery'll getchu everywhere. F'now, we got work to do!”

[grampagen]

All his life the hermit had aspired to reach the summit, but he had found there alone at the top of it all that there was nothing. Transcended the limits of his soul and fortitude to stand astride the the peak, he'd thought he'd find new levels of mastery there once he was able to look at the world below. Yet to his aged eyes before which had passed countless conflicts, very little had changed, and he'd become another notion set affixed to this place of stagnant death-in-life.

The young man he found there looking up from the bottom was little different from the multitude of others who felt those from the top pushing down. Perhaps it was novelty that moved his single hand that day, reaching beneath the fallen powder and into the heated pools as his rescuer. Likely, it was simple loneliness of the centennial Turtle sensei. For thirty years he'd cultivated mushrooms and internalized the style in the shadows, prolonging his life in an endless stretch that would remain the same ever after.

Perhaps it wasn't for nothing after all, if the teachings imparted to that young man pushed aside fear and apathy. Maybe, having seen the edge of earth and heaven, he had a different vision. It would better suit a Crane, he supposed, to spread his arms between the sky and the ground and create a pillar of support.

Though the rock may be tossed by the river, the water must first spring from the earth, upon which it shall rest, and be called 'river' in the first place. The realization struck Kuki just as he noticed it began snowing. Within the cave. Turning a curious glance to the right as light began to fill the chamber behind the fall, he was unprepared for the severity of what cam next.

Ymir, the Ice Giant had been reawakened.

And with a roar that shook the ground itself, monstrosity of ice appraised its would be vanquisher. And then with a sound like an avalanche, the entity began to speak.

"Who dares to wake Ym- ..."

In the end however, whatever it intended to say was silenced, as Ishtar propelled herself forward with her powerful legs, and landed a blow that vaporized the creature's torso. The Oni's only offering of explanation, a proclamation made to herself, and her alone.

"Excuse me, but I have been out in this cold, in what Sarada calls 'booty shorts' all day."

Severing the the now dead Ymir's head then, before it could fall and sink beneath the waves of its bed-turned-tomb, Ishtar returned quickly back to Emma, and her Arcane Forge ...

The glazed surface of the Frozen Fall began to crack, and a great rumbling split the earth, twisting the foundations beneath and folding in the range of hollowed chambers held fast only by the ice within. Stalicites shook and fell into the rush of boiling springs that tore away the frozen mortar of the mountains, and the cave-in was complete.

Ruinous, the complete descent of Kuki's hermitage fell on the earth, only the leaning monument of Zxu'Ro's Dragon-head standing a ruined obelisk in the snow. The rumble echoing loudly across the empty plateau until sound stretched so thin that no living thing, sparse as they were, would hear so much as ripple. Nor would they hear the thunderous strike that followed from below.

“...Ishii m'terrapin friend, we're leavin',” Kuki said simply as he rose. Steadily, he began overturning rocks in search of the small natural affectations that was his substance for the past three decades.

One night of howling yetis smashing each other over the horizon made a hermit's long sleepless night ever bleaker, but still confirmed his solitude in his retreat away from the troubles of men, only the primal howl of untamed nature. Now that ancient things began to stir beneath the blanket of snow, just waiting to be exposed, however...

“Nope, n'thanks. Pack y'things, buddy.”

“Gyeck.”

Ishii sighed and leapt to the air. Pulling in his face and stumpy legs, gouts of blue fire emerged from the gaps in his shell as he began to spin with such force that he began to levitate. After packing the letters, and folding in of his favourite roots, shoots, nuts, pupated larvae and various fungi gone to spore. Kuki tied a bundle over his chest and took one last look at his hollowed abode, examining from top to bottom the lost legend. Unopposed, never changing, stagnant, nothing was left but the exposed surface of a boiling pool and glassling protrusions sinking into the ocean beyond the cliff.

A wild whoop echoed through the wilds of the Frozen Fall one last time. The ice of the surface surged and cracked as water flowed from that place for the first time in millenia, filling the temple chamber and coursing out to sea. Standing his left foot on Ishii's back, balanced by the dynamic forces of his technique to keep himself centred, the old Turtle Hermit and his companion took off to a fresh new horizon. As they rose into the clouds a mechanical scream railed overhead, and he broke off, Old and Little Turtle landing with a rough thump on the tail of an airplane.

BGM - Days of Old

“Time t'find a new home,” he mused openly to his companion, nestled silently under shell in the crook of his lap. “I wonder if th'old Dojo s'still up'n up n'this age?”

The hermit leaned back, secure in the idle flow of ki that anchored him on the alminium-alloy tailfin, as he bowed his head, resting immovable against the whipping drag of cruising distance, adrift on the slipstream wherever on this earth it may carry him.

[grampagen]

A thunderous footfall broke the air and with a sharp crack the rope unfurled where the fist split the board. The novice laughed to himself to the astonishment of his peers in the dojo as he unfurled the fist, shrouded in a roiling glow of energy. “I did it!” His spirit burned with a heat he'd never known before this training. Sweat welled as he trembled, his voice wavering between his deep breaths. “Hell, it doesn't even hurt!”

“Oh yeah? Check this out!”

Thunk-thunk. Two preparatory blows checked the form as the nubile expert rest his hands on the wooden dummy and, under scores of watchful eyes, the follow-through snapped wooden limbs from their sockets and pushed splinters from the imaginary guts of the lacquered mannequin.

“One-shot, one kill!” The two students, green as their stiff-starched belts, flexed the energy about their fists, amusing themselves by the hypnotic ripple left in the wake of their fingers. This was it, the awe-inducing mystery of ki! To harness the power of the spirit it was a struggle, but at last they finally did it! Crowded murmurs filled the expanse of the hardwood hall, and the Gifted Ones received their adulation there, struggling on quaking legs to stand upright over pooling perspiration. They had found the proof of their strength, and perhaps that their time spent at the Thousand Crane Centre was building up to-

BGM - Mai Shiranui

“WHAT DID YOU DO IN HERE?!”

Though the sliding screen had opened silently behind them, it shut with such deathly ferocity the novices immediately knew the length of their error. The spiritual fire upon their green hands collapsed to cool embers as the fold of white gis parted like the sea before the cutting wind. They knew her well from her broadcast matches, and among the shattered wood that fell upon the polished planks underfoot, they all of them went pale as they recalled the shape of the reprimand to come.

Aiko Fukuhara, heir to the Crane School, widened her deep brown eyes and immediately any celebration was cut apart. The loose collar of her backless high-cut dress seemed to stretch under a subtle presser, and her free-flowing twintails rose like radiant fire behind her, her frame flickering with the self-same energy that dwarfed their heightened efforts of the Green Novices. Her mouth screwed into such a twisted shape the lips blanched, a pert whimper betraying the emotional boiling within as she shuffled forward noiselessly through the parted body of prospects. They hushed and formed lines before her, warily examining her every move as she dashed back and forth, stammering and lifting pieces of splintered hardwood, eyes glazed and unblinking.

“Do you think if we just back away she'll notice?” The Green-Belted Novice replied to his counterpart. “Maybe if we just step back and...”

Silence fell over the room and the conspirators were left alone on their side of the room as Aiko point a finger at them. With a panicked start they raised their futile guards against that familiar posture.

The Dodonpa! They had no chance against that!

Instead, she turned her hand over, four finger fanning inward calling them to stand at attention. One green-belted novice quickly stood apart from the other.

“Hit me.” Shakily, he stood tall and bowed nervously as Aiko moved on him, eyes reflectionless, wrathful pools. “You seem confident in your ability to punch. Show me now!”

Just as he had done to break the makiwara, the student surged forward, making his mark as she came closer.

Closer; He reared his fist back. Closer; with a grunt the heat pushed a flood of sweat through his skin as he charged his steely, clammy hand shrouded with the power of his spirit as he bolted forward to smash through the target. Closer; Aiko with a half-step to the outside voided the blow entirely before it even reached full extension.

The charged fist cut a ripple through the empty air. Struck so completely, and so futilely, the Novice helplessly felt his head turning over his shoulder where he found Aiko staring daggers into him point blank, and everything outside of his fist tightened as he knew he was completely exposed, bracing for the response. Yet during the entire span of that listless she did not follow through, as the fist twist, the flame sputtered out, and he felt the ball of his foot slip on the cold, wet surface underfoot. Rather, she turned her attention and caught the silent partner creeping away in her peripheral vision.

“Counter!” he second Green Novice in a panic wheeled about as she closed in, her hands aglow as she seized upon him to strike, leaving him with no recourse but to cross his arms about his face - to no avail as her small, cold hand clamped about his chattering jaw and stilled it under the grip of iron nails. Releasing him shortly, Aiko dropped her hands to her sides loosely and shook her head. “Everyone at attention!”

White uniforms all fell in behind her in neat little rows, pushing the partners of martial excellence to the front. In a silent span, she tied a straw rope about a hardwood plank and set it upright in a reinforced strut of the dojo floor. Setting herself at a proper distance, she raised her hand, unshrouded, and pound it forward, impacting bare knuckles into the frayed cushion, displacing the plank body with a twist as it bent, warped, and returned in the feedback.

“Learn how to strike properly.” she said. “Distance makes a huge difference in execution! Try harder! 1000 with each hand.” One after the other, she pounded the post with fist, palm, extended knuckle, knifehand, and Crane's bill. “All five hands.”

Next she picked the limbs of the mokujin off of the floor, and set them back into their place on the dummy, shaking her head as she brushed off the frayed bits of the lacquered surface beaten inward on its mast body.

“If you wanted to break something, there's plenty of stones in the yard. That's not what this stuff is for, you guys.” As she spoke her pouting intonation was soft, heavy with a weary disappointment. The youth who countered by clamming up felt his face burn red; By the sound of edged hands pounding into the post-body of the dummy, his fugue of boyish shame was swiftly unclouded. Aiko moved her hands into a familiar guard, winged hands twisting around the set limbs. Finding angles as she put her footwork around, she shift her distance based around the tactile feedback. “Learn your distance, and feel out your angles. You can learn a lot from touch, just by establishing kakie. Try it out.”

As she set the two to their task, she addressed the rest of the room. “Listen up! New rule! If you don't know how to use the training equipment-”

Pursing her lips with a frazzled sigh, she busied her fingers with sweeping the length of her bangs from her eyes and teased the stray length that hung on her shoulders between her fingers.

“...please don't? If you have no respect for the dojo, that means you have no respect for the technique, and in the end that means you'll only be disrespecting yourself.” Her stern eyes melted, narrowed, and an airy simper framed a vibrant, glowing face. “If there's something you don't understand...well, you can ask me, okay?”

The green-belted novices – set deep in their tasks as given - were the first to respond, “YES SENSEI.”

Smiling brightly, she rolled her head back in relief, before falling her hands at half guard with a sharp “Osu!”

The first of five-thousand strikes began to rapidly fall into the post, echoed by footfalls and the hollow impact of elbows shifting around on wooden limbs. Aiko thumbed the rope-button upon her collar, loosening with a gentle sigh as she nodded.

They are always so high on their power once the instructors give them their first taste of ki! she thought to herself, heart pounding and nerves elevated. Like kids with candy...!

She pressed he lips tightly as she forced a smile, and with a great effort, lightened her expression, and with renewed vigour, her students redoubled their efforts.

No, it's fine, you can do this, and they can do this. Stay positive!

[Yun Lao]

BGM: "On The Run"

For some time he found the road to be lonely. It had been hours, maybe even days since he'd last seen another vehicle on the road, leaving only him and his motorcycle roaming down the highway. The lush jungle flora surrounding his path eventually gave way to temperate forests of milder climate. The comfort lasted for what felt like a brief moment before the humidity was cranked up to nearly unbearable levels. Gradually, with each mile, the landscape around him grew overrun with kudzu and the cries of cicada rivaled even the thunderous hum of his bike's engine. He could have flown the distance much quicker, but even now, he could feel it.

The land was sapping him of his energy.

The Hexlands is what they call it; the region surrounding Gris-Gris bayou. The taint of that wicked place has warped everything around it and if seeking to fill the void from which that abyss has created, the Hexlands drain those who wander within their boundaries of any energy they may have...

Charco had held some doubts about Fourmen's journal, having chalked it up to the delusions of a weird man or a strange piece of fiction, but it appeared there was a grain of truth to this. A wave of lethargy crept up on him from either his body trying to conserve energy or the very land itself trying to keep him still to suck him dry. Regardless of the reason, he was relieved to see a sign for the next exit. The sign itself was a poor sight for it was struggling to stay above the sea of kudzu with only its top half peeking out from the wild growth. What was visible, though, was a dented and graffitied piece of sheet metal.

[EXIT 13: Jinxburg]

Hexlands, Jinxburg... all he needed now was a Curseville and he'd have the whole set. No matter; if it had fuel and food, then they could call it whatever they wanted. The road quickly went from asphalt to gravel to dirt in under just a mile, causing his bike to kick up a trail of dust clouds with his passing. Despite what the sign said, there was very little to suggest there was a town anywhere around save for an occasional shack or two of untold age, deserted and barely standing against the cruelties of time. Just as the thought of turning around and returning to the highway grew appealing, Charco spotted what looked like a lonely gas station on what looked like a cross roads. It was hard to tell, but he recognized the familiar shape of a stop sign on the ground near the rotten wooden post it once hung from.

Pulling up next to one of the pumps, the teenager dismounted and took a look around, stretching his body as he did. From a glance, a few brick buildings lined the road further on past the cross roads, so it appeared he had found some sort of civilization. The unnatural quiet and encroaching sense of dread told him that he didn't want to get too involved with the locals. Reluctantly, he stepped into the gas station where he was greeted by the cheerful jingle of a cowbell tied to the door. For a moment, he thought the place was out of business, as the shelves were empty save for an occasional bag of some obscure-brand chips. The building was well lit by the noon sun, make one wonder why they even bothered using the pitiful flickers of fluorescent lights. Deciding that he would pass on getting something to eat here, he approached the counter and his presence was finally acknowledge as someone stirred from the back.

"Howdy, hun! What can I do fer ya?"

He was surprised to see a girl of his age manning the station, seemingly by herself, but the shock quickly faded as he reached for his wallet, "I just need seven on that first pump over there," The teenager said, gesturing to the bike, "I didn't see a price listed."

"That'd be 776 zeni, darlin'."

Charco was taken back, "Are you messing with me? That's almost a hundred zeni per gallon?!"

"I'm sorry... is that too much?"

"No... no... that's fine." More than fine, really, for it usually cost around 2218 zeni most anywhere else. Pulling out his payment, he held it out for her to take, only to find her gazing out the doorway, as if waiting for someone. After a few moments, she realized he was waiting and with a quick apology, quickly began making change.

"Ya know, there's a dinner just up the road if yer hungry. We got a few coupons here if ya want one."

"Oh no, I'm good... really."

"Hun, I know ya probably been ridin' fer a while and I can tell ya that yer not gonna find a better place to eat for a coupla hundred miles."

The two of them turned as the sounds of tires skidding across dirt came from outside. A gaudy, raised pickup truck slid near the building and several men began to climb out from the open bed. The matching leathers and denim said bikers, but the lack of bikes said backwoods hoodlums.

"Bindi!" One of the men howled, causing the girl to flinch, "Damn girl, whatja know! Looks like ya gots yerself a lil' visitor!"

Charco groaned inwardly. No matter how the scenery changes, douchebags were always going to be douchebags. Unfortunately for them, he still had plenty of energy to wreck their metaphorical ****. "Know these asshats?" He asked, only to find that the girl had fled into the backroom.

"Whut was that?!" One of them called out, "Hey, Larv! I think dis lil' bitch called us asshats!"

"Don't worry about it, Mag! He's headin' to tha same place no matta wut."

"Ha! Good ting they dun care if we rough 'im up a bit!"

Between the drawls and accents, Charco wasn't sure if he was just being prejudiced or if he should call the authorities to report the butchering of a language. Stepping outside, he took note that there was seven of them, one of them still seated behind the wheel of the pickup. Spotting a symbol on the truck, he recognized it as one of the bits of graffiti from the sign on the highway.

"You bunch got some beef with me?"

One of the men guffawed, "Heheh! Boy! If only ya knew wat waitin' fer ya! It's not beef, tho. We're talkin' bout dat otha, otha white meat! Sum good ole long pig!"

"Shut da hell up, Flea! He dun need ta know dat! Just git his ass so we can git paid!" Nodding, the one called Flea and several others began to approach him.

Charco chuckled to himself at the absurdity of the whole situation. Casually, he took a step back, avoiding the glacier-paced punch one of them lobbed out before he reached out and seized the man by his face. Pushing his weight forward, he launched the hoodlum backward like a rocket into the side of the truck, denting the passenger door. "My truck!" The driver wailed.

Going on the offensive, he planted his fist into another man's face, directing it downward so the force of the punch slammed the man into the dirt with a bounce. "Geh... the **** is this?" Charco bitterly blurted out, "I've fought Battersea and this is all I get?" Whoever was paying these guys was really underestimating him. Even with his power being drained, this was like beating up a bunch of children.

"Dammit all!" The one named Larv said, "Use tha runes!"

The remaining four who were still conscious began to convulse as if undergoing seizures, their eyes rolling back into their skulls and snapping jaws frothing with red foam as their tongues were repeatedly bitten. Runes of an unknown language shone from their foreheads with a sickly yellow light and their bodies grew more muscular. He couldn't feel their ki signatures rising, so he could only guess they were under the effects of some sort of magic. The closest one to him ceased his convulsions, lunging at him with a sucker punch that stung his jaw.

Such an increase in strength...

Still, it wasn't enough. Grabbing the altered man's wrist, Charco struck an open palm against the other's elbow, dislocating the limb like a chicken bone. The man barely noticed, no doubt an effect of the rune, and he quickly tried to grab Charco with his working hand. Stepping back, the teenager slapped the hand aside and drove a jab into the other's throat, crushing the windpipe. Wheezing and gasping, spurting bubbles of spit and foam, the lack of air was enough to given the berserker pause yet it was that inaction that caused him to be knocked aside as the other three fought to reach their opponent.

Invoking his chi, Charco's terrible claws sliced across their eyes and throats, sending a spray of blood across the ground. The rune's power seemed to wade as their bodies returned to their previous states, and only now would the pain they once ignored return to them as shrieks and cries could be heard from those blinded and maimed. The driver, passive throughout all of this, quickly roused the ones knocked unconscious earlier and orchestrated their retreat by piling the injured into the back of his pick up before peeling off, kicking up dust and dirt as they fled to some unknown destination.

Alone, save for the throbbing pain from his jaw and confusion over the whole situation, Charco turned back to the inside of the gas station, where Bindi, the girl from before, stood white as a ghost in shock. "I-I-I didn't mean ta, I swear! I had no choice!" She began to sputter, realizing she was alone now with the one she had betrayed.

"You're going to tell me what this is all about...now."

[grampagen]

They are always so high on their power once the instructors give them their first taste of ki! she thought to herself, heart pounding and nerves elevated. Like kids with candy...!

She pressed he lips tightly as she forced a smile, and with a great effort, lightened her expression, and with renewed vigour, her students redoubled their efforts.

No, it's fine, you can do this, and they can do this. Stay positive!

She stood at ease among the familiar sounds of martial practice. Sleeves and cuffs snapped in crisp movements following the sharp, twisting squeak on the planks underfoot. Paired off for the bunkai training, form ceased to be abstractions and, with a thousand repetitions drilled into their movements, the Crane pupils were on the cusp of realization. Among the uniforms Aiko stood apart as she observed her juniours, and the rhythm of deep, slow breathing slowed the rattle of her nervous disposition.

It was at that moment that the dojo's door slid open and a dark-haired man dressed in green hakama walked across the way to her. His smooth-shaven, shadowy face was sharply divided by hollow cheeks, and though his eyes were concealed behind dark glasses, the begrudging, downturned mouth spoke wordlessly of business.

Ah geez. “What do you want, Jitori?”

“Aiko-”She cleared her throat.“Aiko-sensei.”

Hearing him say it was always a small victory, and her eyebrow twitched laughingly behind her bangs.

“I'll be overseeing the lessons for the next hour. The Grand Master wants to see you, and he is most displeased.”

“I don't see why he would be,” she shrugged, raising a pointed finger to highlight her thought. “After all, the Crane's never been to the forefront so much since-”

“And you know that's exactly it.” Jitori removed his shades and stared at her with his one narrowed eye. Seeing the scar cross his other socket, Aiko neatly folded her finger behind her thumb. “Time is short. I would not keep him waiting.”

She fell her head forward, and the joy on her face melted as she slowly left the hall. Hurriedly affixing leggings and slippers, she left the warm echo of the dojo and passing through the sliding curtain of its door, popped a small paper umbrella beneath the beating sun and the salt-spray ocean air.

It was days away from monsoon season around the island. This splendid training hall affixed to the weathered rock face had always been her sanctuary, for beyond the stone tiles of its ancient roof was only the dregs of a world Aiko had never managed to make familiar. Tanchozurujima, the Island of the Red-Crown Crane! What a curious name for a place dotted with stone castles adorned with the wide grin of Shisa! Surrounded by ocean on every corner, the Island of Fish, maybe; the Archipelago of Rain Storms, perhaps. Even Sugar Cane Crescent had a nice ring to it. Crane Island, however? She hadn't seen a bird of any particular height since the days before she crossed from the East Coast off the mainland. You would think family ties would be more accommodating than this.

Skipping down one stone step at a time, with a bound she set off on a gentle flight over the swaying Uji forests. The rush of moving air washed out the sound below of feckless gawkers. To them, she was now that girl from the TV, and they kept staring. It was better than the whispers, of that Foreigner from across the strait, but it had been long since that had bothered her.

The heart of the Senbei kingdom long since vanished once dwelt here. The Founder Lady Nomi came from the mainland with Thirty-Seven students to aid their king in turbulent times. When their work was over, they stayed here and cultivated their arts, earning a place in the fixture of the Senbei people, who saw their freedom as the legacy of heroes. Now, among the old castle wall, a moss-eaten lattice of interlocking stones of uneven sizes, the heart of the Crane beat in the small citadel that stood apart. She set foot there before the gate of the Grand Master's estate, a sparse kingdom of red walls and weathered, green roofs, set atop the rock and wave.

It was so unlike the humble halls that dotted the corners of the island, hallmarks of the Senbei kingdom. This was an ancient site like the ones she saw back home, steeped in centuries of tradition. Without really even knowing why, she always stopped short of flying over the south-facing gate, always taking great pains to push slowly through the centre door. It was what was expected of her at this point.

Resplendent sights were made dull by the small ceremony that greeted Aiko every time she made this journey. The lilies were closed over the still, clear pond, and the throngs of colourful carp swam as she walked over the arch bridge - ornamental fish swimming up to the mercy of whichever cranes would pass by. Without wind, under the open roof the palms and fronds drooped over the edge of the water garden, as if the foliage kowtowed to those the garden received.

After this lenthy trek at last Aiko would make her way into the main building. A three-story residence for a single man, a small pagoda raised in reverence of ego. The first floor was a training hall, but unlike the dojo which was now hers, the immaculate condition of the cedar planks seemed stilled in time from five years agi, and she felt only a cold life-in-death as she passed under the the carved wooden boss on her wait to the stairs – 'Meibukan,' the house of the pure-minded warrior' – even on the hottest days she could swear she'd see her breath. On the second floor was, by contrast, a modern office filled with sparsely used furniture – and used only whenever the Grand Master would receive a guest, which these days seemed limited to herself and Jitori. Conspicuously, he was not here.

She passed up to the third floor, and the walls made way to an open air chamber with a single enclosed room in the centre. There were two shrines here, one dedicated to the Founder, Lady Nomi, her mottled visage caught as spontaneously as the gracile water-brush. The greatest of their number started her journey wildly swinging at a crane with a laundry-drying pole; she never hit it once. The second was a bust set next to a placard that held a name: Fezzan. She used to look in and gaze back fondly, but while Fezzan was enshrined - and Sensei was not – her interest in this cloister waned to nothing. In the long adjoining walkway, Aiko continued deeper into the residence, and found she'd become near breathless as she felt a piercing ki signature surround her.

Just as she knew he was there, so did Grand Master Chahan.

A pair of great folding screen doors blocked the way, a weighty resplendent enamel work depicting some ancient battle that tore the sea apart and sundered the winds to hurricanes. Aiko entered, facing foward to the deathly shadow at the far end of the room, and found herself unable to turn around even as she shut the door behind her. Obscured in the darkness, the only indication that the dread presence was indeed human was the slurp of hot sencha that lightly perfumed the air.

“Grand Master.” She spoke only to the dead air. In the darkness she felt a crushing weight of a refined spiritual presence in the air. She felt a lump begin to well in her throat, and but for propriety she did not yet swallow the nerves.

[grampagen]

Within the Grand Master's shaded cloister there was only one way in or out, and the shadow sitting with his back to the wall in that dread, lightless atmosphere was always facing forward to meet whoever met his private summons. That ancient Father Crane, deep within the highest chamber of his stronghold, had but to will it and his children would find their wings. He reached out to Aiko, and she backed into the warlike embroidery of the chamber door. The thump of a heavy cane struck the ground, punctuated by a hand wrapped so tightly atop its head it seemed the bones would burst from the calloused skin.

“The hand that sows is also the one which reaps.” Chahan's low gravelly voice reverbed through the chamber, sweeping along the walls and making its way behind her. “You let them get away with far too much. When you left, you let rank weeds sprout among us, chasing your celebrity. Cheh!”

Aiko saw the shadow lurch and stretch upward. “Each according to their own ability, Grand Master.” Without thinking, she'd repeated the words of a different sort of mentor altogether. As Chahan stood the room seemed to tremble and the air about him darkened.

“They are not even worthy fodder for Kikojutsu,” he spat back. “You, on the other hand, are far too eager to cast your life aside despite all which you now hold upon your head. ”

Aiko's eyes widened. She squirmed, setting her hands before her in a polite, futile barrier as if it would stymie the approach. “You...uh. You watched the tournament, Grand Master?”

She hadn't ever known a man of Chahan's station to concern himself with matters outside of the Crane. Indeed she'd never seen him stand before any screen that wasn't made of wood or paper. “A chance moment, standing next to a fraudulent actor, is a mighty image seared into the memory of the foolish,” Chahan said, a basso “harumph” that shook her bones, even as she remained stock still. “The Crane is now in the public eye, and your face is a beacon, drawing all eyes toward us. I suppose you think this excursion plot of yours was terribly clever.”

“I don't see why should they be afraid of us, Grand Master?” she asked. “Isn't that what you wanted? The more people know who we are, the greater the share of glory of our esteemed House-”

“What glory awaits a dead girl? Idiot child!” His hoarse reprimand stilled her lips, and she felt her nerve evaporate. “A Master knows when to stake their life to their cause. And your soul still bleeds.”

As much as she wanted to talk her way out of this, any charm fell away before Chahan. He was privy to the sublime things she did not know she had need to hide.

“Why did you use the Kikoho? Did you seek your glory through usurping the laurels of a man who'd call himself Champion?”

“It wasn't for the Tournament.” She explained, swallowing the lumps that blocked the words. Aiko hurriedly recounted the strange struggling that converged over Turtle Island that day, her words pressed through a sieve of compulsory truth. That she found herself among strange companions before the stars fell from the sky into the Earth. How the battle brought her above the clouds to face a creature from beyond the skies. It was twisted and fantastical, the length of the story rising and twisting down strange trodden paths; and yet there was little she could say but the truth under these circumstances.

Another basso 'harumph' and the beat of the cane. Scarce noises put the heavy pulse Aiko felt heaving inside her chest and the sharp, short inhale that passed her nostrils as she fought to maintain composure. Shortly her words began to blurt out.

“There is another thing I wanted to tell you, grandmaster. The Tiger school still lives...”

A harsh rattling wheeze rattled from the shadows. On the Lookout, she'd overheard part of her Sensei's conversation with the Red Raider.

“You let Inari, Natto and Edamame go on that mission that day. They never came back, and neither did Sensei. When I saw him-”

The twist of the cane caused a creak in the floorboards, and Aiko suddenly found her lips stilled and her heart seized.

“...so Ochazuke is still alive? Hrmm-ah...?”

Questions railed in her thoughts. What did your know about that night in Ori City? How long? This wasn't his plot to kill one of their own. Surely, there was no honour in that?

The words pushed inside her, and she wanted to speak, but as the words formed in her mind they never moved from figments, never were given the air to form speech. As the length of her short breaths extended, she became acutely aware there even as Chahan's words fell, even a mere blink of her eyes was made difficult, and each chamber of her heart seemed to beat separately, agonizingly slowly.

“You are my heir. More, you have my blood. If that should not be enough to dissuade you from the side of a traitor who fails his duties even in death, you will remember the will of two-thousand years guides your hand.”

After each word poured into her ears, whatever the Grand Master had done was unmade, and in a rush sensation seemed to forcefully right itself all at once in her. Aiko collapsed to her knees, clutching her hands to her mouth. She was at once desperate to gulp for air, and yet the sickness felt worse than any liver shot or illness pouring through her.

“Soon, soon, you will come to understand. One day, you shall choose between your passion and the survival of your charge. Only when you know loss in service to duty, then perhaps you might have a hint of what exactly what it means to be Grand Master.”

The retired Crane in his hermitage still had ways to answer a challenge without striking a blow; Hers was not received kindly. So disturbed, she stood up on shaky legs made a small bow, looking at the floor instead of that shadow in the heart of the room, shakily pushing past the heavy scene of war that adorned Chahan's dark door.

“Do not waste your life with frivolties,” the voice called out to her as she began walking crookedly back down the steps. “That is not your burden to bear.”

The hall, the water gardens and the popping mouths of fish amid the twisting head of ferns came in a rush and a blur, until at last Aiko found herself standing outside of the gates of the red fortress. At once the immensity of the spiritual pressure seemed to cease and she found her wings again as she leapt to the air. As she moved out from the heart of Tanchozurujima, she absently minded the ruined remnants of the Senbei Kingdom, the ancients the Crane School built their monuments on top of. A ruin of disparate, mismatched stones held fast together without a single gap to surrendered movement. It was uneven and timeless, immovable. Yet this structure raised centuries ago was slowly sinking, the old kingdom roads below her slowly breaking apart into the blown sands of the beachhead past the forests.

She needed to be alone. Even as she floated down from the centre of the island to the white sand on the coast, her racing mind felt only the eyes everyone set upon her, and it even freed from the pull of the Earth below she heard all the past voices dragging everything down, descending until she sunk her feet onto the sands before the waves. Aiko started running, aimless, away.

The words of the Grand Master haunted her. Duty! The old man sat shackled to his corner, lauding tradition as he stood on top of a fixed piece of the past. Was that the legacy she had inherited?

She sensed a few small villagers on the ridge across from her, remarking as she passed by speaking some idle nothingness about a strange fore of habit, and she could feel the memory of isolation creeping in. No peers but for power, no friends but for fear, and potential enemies all around. The honourable Crane, the mightiest of the Five, now carried on the back of the Grand Master's foreigner grand-neice.

She didn't ask for this, but she was the only one left.

Her step fell into a recess in the sand and she slipped, falling hard on that gleaming powder surface. The tided ebbed, and the rhythm of the sea seemed to wash away the panic, if not the pain. Slowly, Aiko lift herself up and discovered a discoloured stone, a tile arrangement upon a shallow pit lined with stone tiles, surrounded by sun-bleached clay jars with mouths just wide enough over the neck she could wrap her fingers in over them.

She rolled onto her side slowly and stood in the middle of this hidden stage, surrounded by ceramic shards and swaying palms fashioned with straw rope.

She knew this place well, but it brought no smile to her face as the tides bloomed and withdrew just as they did eight years ago.

[grampagen]

Ever since the Crane had risen to their heightened position, numerous pretenders would presume to usurp a place among the lauded Five without truly understanding the stakes of their shared Legacy. This new arrival from across the Western Sea was a victim of that hidden feud. Some ambitious party struck out and took the family of the girl, a familiar story many had known which stoked vengeful hunger. Yet this ruddy, knock-kneed child of fourteen had none of that fire in her heart. Anything that would convey that distant blood relation to the Grand Master would be just that, distant. This was pronounced further in the back ranks of the dojo, so placed at the wish of her elder relation.

Aiko, the Grand-Niece of the Grand Master. She was not immune to the expectations people held of her, nor was she deaf the mocking echo behind her back in the wake of her lacking delivery.

Fezzan, a large summit of a man, was the Head Crane in those days. His balding pate bore the scars of incense, furrowed over a heavy, hairy brow that hung from the fringe over his temples that was as brittle as it was greasy, tracking its bristly sheen from where met his twisted, sneering lips. His purpose was to train and test warriors, by example and by force, and so he refined those under his tutelage in his own way: Ikken Hissatsu – to kill in one strike. If a pupil could not do this, they were no Crane, and he took a sadistic pleasure in breaking their wings.

Whenever the mood struck him – by cruel necessity or by fickle offense – Fezzan would call for a Kumite, pushing the limits of Ikken Hissatsu ten students at a time. Excellence is tested by competition among the unrefined, but to start one needed to be a competitor to start with. Thus Fezzan would never acknowledge Aiko. He could do little to dissuade her, but every time she asked the purpose of one move, or the nature of ki, she would never get an answer. He would not bother with her for fear of the repercussions, so she was ignored, a living ghost at the back corner.

Aiko the Untouchable Princess, regarded with neither applause nor contempt. Her Great-uncle's presence was a shield, her clumsy limbs her leaden anchor. As time passed, the ranks pushed forward and she remained standing still.

It was during a heated day of Fezzan's testing where another pupil dared to disobey when ordered him to come at him. He had a streak of rebellion in those young days, and from the rear of the dojo Aiko took notice of him during his almost fanatical training after session hours, seeing from afar a solitary, silent hunger that came over him. She remembered Ochazuke had the merest words in response to the challenge. “If you injure your students what do they learn?”

“Their place,” came the sneering reply, “and the rest will catch on.”

He spat on the floor of their common dojo before him. “You're a disgrace. You should've kept your head tucked inside the broken shell the Grand Master found you in.”

Bringing up his past was a sure way to enrage Fezzan, and when he did so, ki armored his countenance with his specialty, Tetsuzan no Kamae - the Iron Mountain stance. In disputes between Cranes it was usually Fezzan who walked away. He was eager to prove his strength on the pulpit of the dojo floor, and nine students were quickly fallen to prove his loyalty to the cause. When he came for Ochazuke,without so much as a blink his junior evaded him with lateral steps, staring directly in the his eyes, never retaliating until he ceased his violent swings.

“Come at me! All talk and no guts! Can your technique back up your words?!”

“We do it your way,” Ochazuke replied, “and the rest will catch on.”

“So you admit it. You'd stand no chance against me.” Fezzan shook his head. ”But I will not tolerate this insolence. We'll settle this with a proof of theory. Jitori will represent me. You will train a white-belt...”

The frizzy hair on his upper lip bunched as Fezzan bit his teeth into a wide, spiteful grin.

“Little Aiko! But I am ever a magnanimous senior. Pick the time and place!”

“The beach. Late noontide. Three months is all I'll need.”

She swept the sand off of the stone, and stood silent to waves of nostalgia. Not a moment past the and Ochazuke pulled Aiko aside to train. The first thing he gave her was a shovel. How she struggled to stand on the soft beach sand and pulled a pit out of it! But that was easy next to the task of fitting it with the level platform of stone tile. She'd done an adequate job as she stood firm upon it in the present. On the stony stage, she found familiar wide-necked ceramic jars. Setting them upright she heard the familiar rattle of gravel within and she chuckled silently to herself.

“Fit form to function,” she mused. “It's not a matter of power, but refined expression...”

Clamped her fingers about a pair, she pulled her shoulders in, effortlessly lifting them to her sides. Eight years ago she didn't have the strength to do this, but through the strain she refined her stance, and after countless failures emerged perfection. No longer did she feel the strain on her wrists and tendons; The method worked itself into her bones. A single geta sandal fell clunkily on its side as the winds picked up, and the memory of falling countless times from the elevation, as she raised them up to kick and lost her balance.

“Why are you using me in your wager?”

“The effect will show itself in time.”

“I'll tell you the effect! It's pissing me off! My Great-Uncle is the Grand Master!”

“And you have neither his experience or understanding. So you will refine your condition.”

“Well I can't do any of this!” She picked up the Geta that flew off her foot and threw it to the stone floor, then smashed her shin through a hollow clay jar. “You can go fight Fezzan if you have it all figured out!”

“Why do you think he picked you?”

She had no answer, only angry tears that welled further.

“Because he thinks you are nothing.”

She felt her face redden. The memory of her Great-Uncle's dismissal drew a hollow within her today just as this revelation stuck her back then. She swallowed a swift inhale, raised the jar to her side, and slid a step forward with a quick breath out. Only the cutting waves broke the silence then as it did now as she stood alone on the beach.

“Are you nothing, Aiko?”

“I didn't ask for this! I'm only here because I have no place else to go!”

“And yet the Grandmaster requested your presence. He saw a spark in your spirit. You move by yourself, but not alone.” he said to her then. “Two thousand years and sixty-six generations of Cranes guide every hand on this island. We will fan that spark into a fire together.”

Completing the motions of her Sanchin without a thought in her nostalgic revelry, Aiko set down the jars and paced across to a palm wrapped in rope. Sensei had taught her when you focus on one thing only, you muddle your understanding of the whole. That was also the day that she discovered the Founder knew this much as well, a noble lady of martial relations who had only to find her method. As she doggedly progressed in her training, in absent moments she would turn her gaze to the shore and see Sensei's back as he walked into the tide and stood unmoving against the waves.

It was around that spot that she had her duel with Jitori.

As agreed the fight was on the beach at a bit past noon. Fezzan brought the rest from the dojo, and Jitori was lean and unblinking, staring through her, but as long as Sensei stood behind her, she would prove her worth to the Head Crane. Without so much as a bow, Jitori stuck out, reaching full strength behind each blow. Aiko reached her guard out and targeted the soft tissues around his wrist, smashing the bones at the base of her hand with a twist into the soft bell of his forearm. Each interception visibly pained him, and the repeated agony of his efforts grew slower and more predictable. Soon she saw her chance and with a quick sidestep and palm to the nose, she watered his eyes and took awareness away from his guard. From there she threw a simple kick, and felt the rope of the phantom sandal gripped between her toe forcing them to a point that sunk into his diaphragm. Seizing both ears as he buckled over, with a short twist she forced him to yield.

“There is your Ikken Hissatsu, Fezzan,” Sensei said, his expression flat as always. Despite the redness around her hands and arms, when she saw her opponent recede before her, her limbs never felt lighter.

The response came with a glower and that dreaded word. “Kumite.”

Gusu fought next, he was always a cautious one, waiting for initiation as he sought to counter. So concerned was he with the distance between their fists that he didn't notice when she restrained his footwork and cut off his breath at the neck and sternum. Then Kamo and Nakard came in from either side of her and she felt only hot pain in the flashing darkness,until an iron wind shook the sand from the shore. Sensei had fallen the Dodonpa on the two and stood before Fezzan. Breaking the rules of the challenge he invited dishonour on them both, but she'd never seen him so cold and incensed. When Jitori rose up again, Ochazuke loosed a the beam into his eye and struck it blind before turning towards the Iron Mountain himself.

It was then that they all became aware of the Grand Master Chahan's shadow, looming over the scene where he bore witness to this clash.

The next day Sensei held rank in common with Fezzan, despite being ten years his juniour. Aiko stayed by his side, happily training others in the bunkai. The mysteries of their shared history slowly revealed themselves though perseverence, and as Grand Master Chahan believed in them, so they too began to see something of worth within themselves and for the Crane School. It was simple, for they were no longer alone.

[grampagen]

BGM – Shima Uta

Aiko took a look at the waves, washing out in a consummate rhythm as they reached out and dragged a small piece of the beach back with it. Abandoned and forgotten things set upon the shore disappeared into the great blue.

Even as she fought to stay conscious, the ferocity of her spirit lashed to the surface. He certainly did not teach her this. That spark of hope in her, a seed of a dream she spoke of, was the very thing she threw her full strength behind. That was something that would not fall today.

"Then you know your responsibility is not just to fight," Ochazuke said, rising to his feet as he left her to recover, "The legacy of the Five Schools is a cycle of vengeance awash in blood. One day, you'll have the power to decide a new course for its destiny. And so you have a duty to live on, Aiko."

So brief was their reunion, and yet even after that span of time she still felt she owed him the respect of that conferred title. She hadn't lost her way as he had feared, but was so stubborn that Chahan could not turn her away from the hand that had guided hers. Ochazuke looked up with a small sight, before reaching around her shoulders. The battle having ended in the skies above, her helped Aiko to her feet so that that she may at last stand beside him instead of chasing his shadow.

"Cheh. 'Sensei'," he muttered darkly, "If you're still calling me that, then it's a meaningless word, for our paths diverged long ago."

Where are you now, Sensei? Will we ever meet again?

Turning away from the sea and returning inland, Aiko started slowly back on the path towards the training hall, taking the long way through the shrubbery and forests off the main road. In the swaying green of the treetops, she gazed idly upward and noticed the wild red flowers in bloom twisting in the wind. This calm would pass, and soon it would be monsoon season. The storms would be upon them when the winds arrived. As she walked under the faint scent of blossoms, it seemed that the flowers had become more vivid than they did only a year ago. The momentary life of so delicate a thing stood all the more brilliantly. Perhaps it was exactly because they would not last, made all the more precious so long as their memory was held near in an atmosphere of strife.

Two thousand years. A few more and she would lead the Sixty-Seventh generation of the Crane School when it passed to her. For all those who came before her, she took some small solace in the knowledge that she was never truly alone.

[grampagen]

He nods.

“Give me ten minutes and I’ll get you your copies.”

Some minute alter he returns and hand sthen over.

“As to her location....here, Capital City. The correctional facility is housing them in their special K-Wing. Here, take these credentials.”

He hands Ochazuke a paper.

“That will authorize you to get in to see her, but only for a few minutes. Good luck.”

BGM - Ordinary Vanity

Ochazuke looked upon Kenshiko, garbed in her new uniform of burgundy, one like all of the rest of Capital City's maximum security inmates. Alloyed irons bound her wrists and ankles, tethered at a fixed distance to her waist like some beast. Doubtless, it was an effort to blunt the edge of a living weapon, and with her spirit mechanically dampened by that same repression collar on her neck placed there months ago, it would be a pitiable sight, but for the dark piercing eyes that gazed back at him.

The silence resumed where the two had left each other, black walls cloistering the view through shatterproof glass, that claustrophobic, unbreachable gulf that separated Tiger from Crane. In the silhouette of her judgmental frame Ochazuke saw the stirrings of his reflection where their visages intersected in the glass. At last he lift the receiver.

“Kru.” he spoke. “You're looking well,”

Her bound hands stretched lazily forward, clad in rags, tied in the familiar knot-loop pattern like the hemp ropes they'd used in training. dropping the phone gracelessly before her in a clatter. The receiver lay on its arm upwards. Straightening up, she seemed to look down her nose at him, her eyes then following something in the air above even as her sigh fogged the glass.

The ceiling was full of cameras, their glassy eyes trained to the proxy view of studious personnel. It was adamantly clear the words they spoke in artificial intimacy did not go unheard.

“Why is it always you?” She sounded like she was miles away where she stood, two feet behind transparency. “What do you want, Ochazuke?”

His gaze fell on her, and for a moment he lost himself in the bright, burning eyes cast down through the glass, still holding the shape of warmth he'd known long ago. Strips of torn linen looped and knotted around each finger of her fingers with an acquired stain, and the months that had passed pushed up black roots of her hair, framing her features with an uneven stripe. From the way she looked he could not tell she'd ever been brought to the edge of death. There was that resplendent strength he'd longed to see again.

Held captive so to what he wished to see, he'd lost perception of the moment. He'd returned to her side before to recapture a figment of his past, as if to see her would validate what had brought them to this point and make whole what had been lost.

Vanity to soothe a guilty conscience...what was done cannot be undone.

Today, he sought the insights of one of the living heirs to the legacy of the Five Schools where it lay in war-hewn hands. Once again he stood before Kenshiko, the Tiger Master, and shed of falsehood and pretense sought her counsel anew.

We cannot return to what was. But perhaps through this small truth, what deeds were rendered may be mitigated.

Ochazuke emptied the folio into the transaction drawer before him. Sliding it forward, the documents went over to Kenshiko's side of the glass.

“I find there is little to do in cloisters like this but think,” Ochazuke said. “One's thoughts seldom lead anywhere but inward in isolation. I brought you something from the outside.”

Her hands sift through the paper archive, an affixed pair peeling them slowly apart from the top to expose the ancient diagrams of men bending in mimicry of animals. The five training manuals and the letter he'd asked Jinzi to reproduce for him. Her eyes flit from the Crane Suparinpei form and narrowed.

“I found these while helping another at the end of his dream. He's a man not unlike you, and it took great efforts for him to realize that.”

She sagged her shoulders under the weight of a short, joyless laugh. “You're always looking to the past.”

“I suppose these days the past is about all we have in common.”

Ochazuke straightened, rigid as the words left him. Kenshiko leaned on her elbows as she clumsily leafed through document. Crane. Turtle. Dragon. Snake. Soon she found the familiar Tiger she'd inherited and sworn to uphold.

“This the legacy, the words written by the Master of the Founder of the Tiger School. The legacy of the Five started from the One.”

“What of it? it's never stopped any one of the Five before.”

“Here is the proof, it is what we need to end the feud.”

“There's no we in this equation, Ochazuke. What will this change?”

Chains rattled as Kenshiko fumbled with her bound hands to read the last testament of the Master:

Six scrolls lay within, each in perfect condition. Five are the foundation scrolls of each school, with the basic forms and techniques. The sixth is a letter.

“To all who read this, hear my words: When the crane flies, the tiger strikes. When the turtle crouches, the snake is lost. Above all, the Dragon is summoned, and the time shall come. Find me when the five are one, find me at the place of birth. Find me, and let your belief be cast against my own.”

—Zxu’ro, Founder of the Five, Grandmaster of the Chimera.

With an effort on her bound hands, she set the facsimile scroll on the table before her rough-hewn fingers, an understated fury flickering in the turn of every page, rattling the chains. Kenshiko laughed to herself as she shook her head.

“Is this small piece of paper supposed to blot away two-thousand years of bloodshed? Really? This is what will bring your peace? This is a bad joke.”

“No, not without hardship, but I am prepared to face it," Ochazuke replied. "I sought your counsel that perhaps you would remember yourself, kru-”

“How dare you call yourself a student of mine.” A dark grin split her lips. “Heh. Even the privates that washed out of Raider basic learned more than this ****.”

Her fingers slid out, feelers gliding over the illustrated Nak Muay's deep rolling stances and double-thrusting arms.

“Footwork's all wrong. Look. All of this **** telegraphs. The side-teep is off-balance, unrooted. The load of the round kick is immobile. Chambering from the outside is only good for signalling your opponent for something to grab, I don't know how many times-”

Her hollow smile crumpled over those sharp, spiteful fangs, as she gasped and shuddered. Ochazuke looked at her flatly. “You and your sister...”

“Kaibyo. Me. Our family improved it. That's how we started winning. That's how we earned our respect,” she said. As Kenshiko spoke her sister's name, a vital glimmer filled her eye before fading tp the present once again. “And that's when our students washed out. All of them just like you. they couldn't keep up.”

Ochazuke fell wordless until the drawer slammed back to his side of the glass and rocked back on its roller bearings.

“A seal and a date doesn't make useless **** any less, Ochazuke. This 'Master of Masters' should know you don't recklessly throw out power. But if you can't discern this I've taught you nothing.” She said looking pointedly at him through the glass. “These scrolls are useless. They started a war back then, and they have nothing to show for it now! There's our great legacy, it belongs to us both!”

[grampagen]

BGM - Theme of Laura (Reprise)

Ochazuke was silent at this revelation, pulling back from the window. His image separated where it intersected with Kenshiko's. She spat barbs at the martial heritage that she'd devoted her life to, and nothing could mend her heart as it bled. But for the man who sought the counsel of the teacher he'd known, it only beckoning further questions.

“If you have nothing then why are you still fighting?”

“I won't give them the satisfaction. They think this collar will keep them safe, heh,” she glowered at him. Beneath the sleeves of her prisoner's garb lay a hint of her steel-knit frame. “Way I figure, starting from zero is better than remaining a bought man.”

Ochazuke thumbed the Capsule Corp cuff links in his loaner jacket sleeve. The very same logo marked every piece of technology in the prison. Even as he looked at her, he felt the leaden weight well in his chest. When she left him the last time, to face justice and testify to her own, Ochazuke thought it would end there. Late, as ever, he made his move to reach into the darkness after her. He held the receiver to his ear and pressed his hand to the glass.

“I suppose that I am. But this is a matter outside of our mutual friend. Involved as he is in the discovery of the words of the ancients, he's still on the outside looking in. It's all just data to him, a hobby,” he said. “But for us it is so much more. We live it.”

“Big words from the man who ran from everything,” she sneered.

He lowered his gaze, his outstretched arm tightened to the shoulder as her words cut sharper than any blow he'd endured so far. The sting upon his soul was as much as he deserved, and he would endure it for she that would take any opportunity to chip away at him, and break him off. She'd deny their shared past to sever the connection until he became nothing more than a memory, for the wounds that pained them both were held open by solitude, bled empty by pride.

Looking through the glass at the remaining Tiger Twin he found a poor reflection seated there overlapping within his own. Deeper than lineage and blood, Kenshiko bore in her person the very face of the departed.

“No, truly, I suppose I don't know what it means to be Master,” he confessed “The truth is I've only ever sought to the privilege to learn.” His eyes softened, wandering back to the darkened visage.

Kenshiko recoiled at the gesture. “Well listen up: I couldn't care less. If my words matter to you as much as you say they do, then I want you to remember what you did.” Deep brown eyes narrowed around his within the reflection; as he stared into those eyes, he felt his insides knot as he saw the visage of Kaibyo stare right back at him. “I want you to remember everybody you left behind!”

He felt the creep of cold blood through deep veins. His hand on the glass, he could easily reach in to the chamber, shatter her bonds and rip her from this prison. But doing so would to little to alleviate the shackles about her soul. Before the transparent screen he continued his confession.

“At that time, I'd been searching for mastery as a means of power. But there's something else to that station which I am only beginning to grasp,” he said. “I can only imagine what it meant for you at the outset.”

Ever since he'd left exile and heard where she was, he'd been chasing her. Since they met that was all he had done. Running up the crest of the rusty elevated range in the hilly outskirts of Ori city, the foundation of the Tiger's technique was the grit and tenacity to push forward through critical condition. Above the bay, they would descend from the thinnest heights into the thickened air of the banyan trees, and where breath fell short the knots underfoot would ensnare their feet and drag them down.

Those were the days when there were two true Tigers, but only one would rise to lead them. He remembered well, chasing her back from on the sun-scorched summit, the still, humid air on the descent that carried her scent on the path she forged behind her. She'd tend to run her paces backward, calling out to those who followed her to keep going, to never give up. The first time he saw that glowing face, held fast to a reluctant smile that promised guidance to great things, he thought only to seek the crucial moment where he could at last kill her. Month after month following in her footsteps, he soon found himself running next to the Tiger, kin to a deeper legacy he'd never known before.

Five years had passed since then, and he pushed on after her still. Now, seated before him she was finally in his sight again. He would not let her escape him this time.

“If our lives is are to be judged on deed and not intention, then you know more than I how much this master's path is a part of you.”

Four years ago, he stopped following her as he pulled himself from the pit of death his master had thrown him to, wandering off aimlessly to face a weightless penance. Ochazuke supposed she saw nothing behind her, alone in the maze of torment and struggle. Nothing but the echoes of the dead calling her forward in her fight.

“The duty you and Kaibyo had put upon you was enough to weigh you down. The desire is so strong you fight to avenge them, even still”

“Shut up.”

“Push me away and you really will have nothing left.”

“Too bad for you, then. Wish I could help you, but...” she stretched her lips mirthlessly, listlessly rattling her chains.

“You wanted me to remember? I haven't forgotten them, and I know for certain you haven't. Do you want me to say their names as well?”

“Stop.”

“Sanphet. Naung.”

The crimson facade fell. Kenshiko lowered her face and looked away, and a small smile reached the corner of her mouth. “Barom. Dieselnoi.”

“Vireak” “Phejeetja.” “Yanin.”

Ochazuke traded precious moments for their names, the lost children of the Tiger School; The fallen students of Kenshiko and the martial brethren of Ochazuke. Her eyes flit towards him for just a moment, parting reluctantly with a bitter tremble.

“We found you, Kenshiko, and as long as you are alive, so is the Tiger School. And you would tell me it all meant...nothing?”

Silence there beyond the glass.

“What can you tell me about the Master of Masters? Does the name Zxu'ro mean anything to you?”

She shrugged, and slowly turned her head to face him.

“The teacher of Bya Kau took a different name in the Southeast. The old Kingdom called him Rama. He stood opposed Girimekhala the Demon Elephant King, and taught the Founder the skills of a Tiger,” she said, “Rather than kowtow to corruption, Bya Kau cut Girimekhala's legs and seized his ivory to bring peace to the land.”

She sighed, brushing red and black out of her eyes. “Folk tales. What's it got to do with that shoddy technique in the scroll?”

“You said it yourself. The old stories aren't veiled in metaphors. Neither was his art first formed to fight people. The first mark in the history of our art was to strengthen humanity to fight for itself. Against the darkness of this world, the Five would stand as pillars of light to guide others.”

He slid the cargo drawer, slowly until it reached Kenshiko on the other side once again.

“We can reunite the Five as it should have been, and to end this conflict I shall see to this challenge. But you've shown my plainly that there's things you know that even the Master did not,” he continued. “I know the limits of my understanding, and I know as well as you I haven't finished your training. ”

She looked at the papers before her and softened her glance as she asked, “Why do you keep looking back, Ochazuke?”

Why indeed.

“A worthy successor does not deny a master, only carry their teachings forward. I suppose I wish to do right by you. What you've given me is part of that greater legacy.”

“A fat lot of good it did for Kaibyo.”

Ochazuke tensed and grit his teeth, the memories welling in the hidden scar on his chest. “You don't know what happened that night.”

“I heard it from Fezzan right before I fed him to the fish.”

“She defeated the Grand Master Chahan.”

“What?”

“By herself she could not defeat the Crane. But by weaving the techniques together, we nearly stopped him,” he said wistfully. “Perhaps in a way, the bondage of doctrine killed us both. That is the price of loyalty without reason, and that is why we must change all this. ”

The buzz of the alarm cut through the air between them. Ten minutes had passed far quicker than they thought.

“If you wanted a way to do right by all those we've survived, start writing. I hope you will have time yet for another meeting, Kenshiko. I promise you, I will return when I am able.”

As he stood up to leave, she folded her bound hands before her and fell her head forward. It was a small gesture, but Ochazuke knew the reason for it. The first and last lesson of each session was always punctuated with a wai. No weapons but their empty hands armed with the spirit within. As she was pulled back into custody, left alone within the walls of the prison they seemed to close in around him, and he felt only the length of isolation in the air about him. The sooner he left, the better. Pushing his way out of the double-doors, the darkness within gave way to an all-consuming brightness when he rejoined the outside world.

[grampagen]

BGM – Rain of Brass petals (Three Voices Edit)

Cold, white lights illuminated the cold, white room, one just like all the rest in the K-Wing of Capital City Penitentiary. Here the refuse of the world was swept away and forgotten, locked away in a small, immaculate corner of the world. Walled off in a windowless chamber, the inmates held nothing of the world outside, and none suffered to gaze back in at the horrors in the purgatory. As most await death, the wittled their hours alone almond standard-fit fixtures of white porcelain and chrome-nickel. The very same lined the wall of Kenshiko's cell measured to their optimal place, and the only things that came and went were the air in the narrow ceiling vent and the water down the drains.

Shattered shards of the mirror dotted the sink next to a worn toothbrush, its distal filed to a fanged, rust-coloured point. The second week she came here, the guards attempted to pull her out for a head examination. They never replaced that mirror. They never replaced the camera either; the mirror saw to that as well when she shoved a piece of it into the silent eye in the corner of the cell. She'd like to think that she, the guards, and the one-eyed doctor had reached an understanding of three squares and no questions.

Whatever leniency Pantaloon had claimed he would offer, Kenshiko was ever wary that the playboy wouldn't come through. Everywhere Capsule tech goes, the WG would find a way to make it their business, all to the rhythm of PM Grinthorn spinning a fresh pile about peace on Earth as they reached to the stars. As long as they were looking in, while the man with his honeyed words and empty promises continued to stand on top of the people he'd sworn to protect, the Tiger in her cage found no rest, and accordingly she put the bed to better use when she threw it up against the wall.

The mattress angled clumsily against the corner, and the remains of the topsheet hung in torn, knotted strips over the metal frame. Folding her knees in, she cleared the floor just barely as she pulled up on the leg of the bed. Seething, it was a difficult task, and every time Kenshiko lift herself upward she felt a struggle she hadn't known in years. The prison's reach never felt so complete as when she strained to bear the weight of her own flesh and bones; This damn thing around her neck sucked away at her spirit and the any strength that flowed from it within.

Futile. No excuses. The advantage was her Eight Limbs were weapons that could not be apprehended, and time was her whetstone. Her breath laboured as the air seemed to grow hotter and thinner, sapping her strength further as she struggled to rise..

Chin over the bar and a slow breath. Her limbs shook as her closed fists touched her collar as slowly, she let herself down. She felt only the self-same weakness for the past one-hundred-twenty days.

Forty-three.

She pulled again. Joints ached and the blood pumped beneath the skin. The fire kept her mind on her the task before her and brought her mind to ease.

Kaibyo told her this wouldn't work. Just as she'd predicted it had been a fruitless tour. All they wanted to see out of an exhibition was somebody break some bricks, boards and baseball bats. A free perfomance to be snapped and recorded, a novelty of the moment. Hardly a cent she'd seen, much less any prospective students. They understood forms, choreography, but the applications, that wasn't spectacle enough.

She was always right. Maybe that little edge is why they chose her to be Master over her. They'd have to make do with what little they had, and Kenshiko supposed she'd have to accept that. As long as they had each other, for all the pains and intimate jabs, they were still family. They'd had their spats before but they'd always figure it out when she came home.

When she saw the Mongket laid to rest above the hill of upturned earth in the grove she feared the worst. Knees leaden under the weight of her sinking heart as she fell to the ground as she began raking her nails into the earth and tearing it aside. The rankness did not strike her until she had uncovered her own face staring back at her with whitened, bleeding eyes. No blessing crafted by mortal hands could assuage the hollow within her. Her sister lay discarded to rot. By then the despair fell with the hammer of sickness through her, and she couldn't bear to be by Kaibyo's side any longer. It reached within Kenshiko and pulled the life out of her. Sustenance turned bitter bile as it fell from her into the darkness, and when she could give no more, the horrifying truth faced her that there was no end to the stark numb that overtook her.

Day after day Twin Tigers saw countless vagrant children come to their den. Displaced, they knew they had someone who'd fight for them. In this refuge, the two had become an inspiration, a guide, and the protector of all they held dear.

And where were they now?

As she descended slowly, beads of perspiration gathered as she clenched her grip and pulled again, just like the previous repititions. The rung slipped and bent noieselessly as it suddenly broke off and threw her down upon the floor of the cell. Seething, she rose with a hollow grunt, pulling herself up by the metal frame, only to feel the corner buckle, losing her support as she fell again. Kenshiko stood under her own power as she furiously ripped the box frame apart, throwing broken metal across the room as the shake and clatter fell all around her.

The bones of Cranes lay in heaps from lobby to top. Tori Tower may as well had been a chicken coop to a Tiger, and locked in the top floor office Kenshiko found the bird with the heaviest plumage. The thirtieth floor was a poor roost for a flightless bird, but when cornered, even the dullest prey-beast springs to the habit of violence. This one called it “Ikken Hissatsu,” its shape “Tetsuzan no Kamae”.His name was Fezzan, the self-proclaimed master of the Iron-Mountain stance.

When he took that stance his skin became too heavy for her knees and elbows to piece. She struck true as she knew she always had, and the returning limbs stuck back like steel rods threatening to smash through her bones. Darkness funneled her vision as Kenshiko was brought low to the floor. The taste of blood welled in her throat, dyeing every hateful memory as she saw the Crane look down on her. She stood at his level again and faced him.

“I always heard Tigers were solitary hunters. I should thank you for giving me the chance to wipe out your pitiful lineage once and for all.”

So assured of his victory, as Fezzan reared his hand for the fatal strike, Kenshiko found her opening as she pushed forward. Slamming her foot atop his during mid-swing, by instinct she anchored the full weight of his strike to a single point and twist the fluid joints of the iron-mountain's leg around itself. His girthy foundation crumpled, and all she had to do was shove him over. Steel skin bent like pale flesh and the bones withing crumpled like tissue, trapped with nowhere to go. She stood over him then, and fell the Tiger's Crushing Fist upon him over, and over, the waterfront bathed in a sickly golden glow as she smashed Fezzan's metallic flesh into a fixed concave shape. Sabre fangs plucked steel feathers and she forcefully peeled layers of truth from him.

“All of them are dead but one.” Kenshiko's shoulders quaked, exhausted speech coming in a breathless stammer. “Where's Zosui?”

Begging for his life, sputtering through the hole ripped around his broken jaw, he told her that day.

“He's one of ours!”

She smashed her heel into his collar and his shoulder buckled from its socket with a wet snap.

“Don't **** with me, fat man. Let him go!”

“He's the one you want! His name's Ochazuke! We sent him after you and he failed! He paid the price!”

Despite Fezzan lying near dead as his gob spilled from the beaten hollows of his face, Kenshiko felt something tighten and twist, winding short breaths tight within her.

A shallow, seething gasp escaped her in a hollow, burning hiss. “I told you all I know! Have mercy, please!”

But if he was gone, then who was it that buried her sister? She squeezed her bloodied fist, and the swell of every bruise and wound shook with hot blood.

It was a nice view from the high-rise. That is, until she had set Fezzan to join the scenery. As the glass fell down onto the night streets, she heard only the bone-chilling wail of the wind. The black banks of the Devata river swallowed the wreck of the Iron Mountain whole.

Every night she killed him again in her dreams, and there it was as numb and dissatisfying as it was the first time. The flock likely had numbers in more places she could possibly know. As the last Tiger stood alone, breaths choking silently as her heart bundled within her. It was then she came to know her life, her city, her family, even that small hope in her revenge was all a struggle in vain.