The Last Samurai

Prologue: I'm Just A Street Rat

"Oi, brat. This will be the last thing I'll teach you so you better listen good. That sword on your hip isn't something you swing around to kill, it's something you carry as a promise that you won't let that power prevent you from killing. We, samurai, begin to dwindle as war cries fade into the back mind of history. And even to this day more and more of us are disappearing. Sometimes I think that no 'true samurai' exists anymore. But if you have decided to pick up that sword, it doesn't matter why you'd pick it up. The only thing that does is you don't live a life you'll regret"

Those were the last words before everything went blank. Quite literally, he kicked me in the testicles causing me to faint. The man that taught me how to wield a sword was neither a good man nor an evil one. He was just trash. Hopelessly gullible to obvious advances made by women, worthless at anything but getting drunk, and worse than horrible at swordsmanship despite calling himself a samurai.

I was living in the slums on the outskirts of Edo before he picked me up and took me in. Life in the slums was what one expected yet far worse than you could imagine. The agony of getting up every day from sleeping on prickly straws, not knowing if I would survive until tomorrow was a tiresome feeling. The origin of my birth was one that I did not know nor was it one that interested me. I was no more than one person out of thousands. My life ending would not cause trouble nor would anyone grieve over my death. Despite my indifference to my death, I fought hard to survive the slums. Dying of hunger, of being beaten to death, such painful ways of dying didn't interest me even for a second. Call it human instinct that I hung to my thin strand of life like an old man trying to prevent his wife from leaving him with their children and money after finding out he cheated on her with their neighbor.This is an account of my unfortunate life living as a samurai. I look forward to all of you bashing me for my boring life.