Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Journeys We Make

Testing Out The Threads

The face of Trujano Kuroda shriveled from the sadistic smile he wore proudly to something that resembled a shrunken raisin. This sudden shift of expression assisted the swordsman in spitting the iron needle he chewed on. Lord Mifune lowered his head, putting the beak of his helmet forward to absorb the whistling projectile, but instead of absorbing it, the chakra-infused needle punched right through the tip and bit into Mifune's forehead. This released a couple of bloody trickles down the face of the elder samurai.

While this disrespectful move did nothing in inflicting bodily harm upon Lord Mifune, the diversion and the bloody aftereffects sprinkling into the samurai's eyes from under his helmet made the elder and more respectful of the two samurai flinch and surrender the initiative of making the first move. Using the advantage of his move, Trujano Kuroda charged forward his superior with his katana held in a reverse grip while his free hand moved behind his jacket.

With a husky grunt, Mifune answered Kuroda's call for violence and the two samurai clashed their blades on Mifune's side of the arena. Kuroda turned his entire body, revealing a second katana drawn from a scabbard attached to a belt tied around the bulky body of the adopted samurai. With a distraught and bloody expression, Mifune began scrambling back. Despite the relentless and ruthlessly aggressive advance, bold and uncompromising in its thirst to draw blood, Mifune maintained a proper defensive form and impeccable footwork even if he surrendered all of his ground and retreated frantically. This retreat was necessary to answer all of Kuroda's ruthless blade swings.

Swinging both of his swords at once, Kuroda smashed his katana at Mifune's forcing terror into the eyes of the elder armored samurai as all three colliding blades spewed chips of hardened tamahagane steel in all directions, and scary cracks littered all three edges. Aghast Mifune refused to clash with the final hammering smash of Kuroda's blades into the ground, instead stumbling back and falling on his rear to avoid taking any damage from the crushing swing and rolling back to regain a properly balanced sword fighting stance.

"You sure fight like a pussy..." Kuroda spat to the side while tapping his shoulder with the bag of his chipped sword, all the while grinning at his opponent like a cat that was as mad as it was prophetic. "I thought you put all that armor on and take those stout stances to hold the line."

"You fight like a barbarian punk!" Mifune scolded the sadistic warrior who, despite his quirks and blatant disrespect to the ancient warrior tradition, earned the name of samurai and was brought up and trained as one. "Swinging your blessed sword like builder swings a mallet. Such despicable disrespect to the swords of the stars and the warrior lifestyle doesn't deserve a dignified response of a proper defense. If you intend on shattering your swords, battering your enemies with them, and embarrassing yourself, so be it. But I will not allow you to dishonor the samurai any longer."

"Talk is cheap, geezer," Kuroda cracked his neck. "I'm yet to see one cut. A pansy like you probably couldn't even cut me, to begin with. Your girly dancing is good only for cutting handkerchiefs."

Lord Mifune kicked off the ground, shattering the tiles underneath his feet and sending a rabid wall of dust in the direction opposite to his movement. The sudden outburst of speed and power forced Kuroda Trujano to stagger back, but the brutish samurai didn't raise his swords to defend himself. Instead, he swung them crossed to counterattack with no bother for his own well-being. Mifune pushed his sheathed sword horizontally upward and placed it in the way, letting the brutish swing crack through the scabbard and click against the chipped backside of the blade.

In a single stroke, the elder samurai drew his blade and slashed Kuroda once on the chest, extending a bloody streak horizontally by the man's core. The whited-out adopted samurai staggered back, spitting blood up from his mouth, but his superior wasn't finished. Instantly switching to a reverse grip, he slashed again by slashing in a directly opposite direction and adding another deep cut straight on his opponent's body.