Swords and Guns of L'Amour

Prologue

It was a hot day. In fact, that might be an understatement—it was blazing hot, like an open-air oven. Men who were wearing their native clothing—Chinese and Japanese—toiled in the hot sun working on something that was quickly changing the landscape—railroad tracks. They sang and discussed in their native languages to pass the time away. A Chinese man stopped for a bit to wipe the sweat from his brow. But suddenly he felt the sting of a whip on his back. The man screamed in pain, as the man who whipped him, wearing Japanese clothing, prepped to whip him again. "No breaks!" He said in Chinese. The other workers stopped what they were doing to watch this. He was just about to strike the man again when suddenly an arm reached up and grabbed his. "What's this?" He said. He noticed a younger man, around the age of 20 look up at him. The young man, wearing blue kimono top with white hakama and orange hair glared at the man with his red eyes. "I know you!" The man with the whip said. "You're that Kazuma Yagami person, aren't you?" Then the man felt his arm being twisted behind him by said person.

"If you whip him again," said Kazuma, "I will make sure you feel more pain than any whip can ever deliver. Is that clear?"

"Y-y-y-yes, it is!" He said. "Now let me go!" Kazuma did so, and the man with the whip grabbed his arm, holding it in pain.

"You should feel lucky I didn't use my katana or my wakizashi," he said. "Now leave. And tell your boss not to hire abusive foremen." The man with the whip ran away from the scene with his figurative tail between his legs. With the foreman gone, the grateful workers immediately cheered and gravitated to Kazuma, mobbing him. Kazuma smiled as the men surrounded him.

"Thank you, Kazuma-sama!" One Japanese man said. "If it weren't for you, we'd have no hope!"

"Please, I'm just happy to help," said Kazuma.

"Please, take this payment in our gratitude," said another man, this one Chinese.

"Thank you," Kazuma said in response. The man gave him a silver coin that Kazuma accepted gratefully. "I appreciate your kindness, as you appreciate mine."

"If you are scamming us, we won't be kind," said one skeptical worker.

"Please, don't think of it that way," Kazuma said in response. "I think of other first, payment last."

"We know you're as poor as us, Kazuma-sama," said another man. "That's why we help."

"Thank you," said Kazuma. "Now I must leave. My fiancé is probably worried about me." The men surrounding him laughed in response, as they opened up a path for Kazuma to leave. The men waved goodbye to him as he walked to his horse and put his conical kasa on. "So long!" He kicked the horse in the side and it galloped away while the men waved goodbye. Soon, the men got back to work on the railroad to improve the desert and plains.

But wait, this isn't feudal Japan or imperial China. It's the American Old West, circa 1880. The location is California near the town of L'Amour in San Bernadino County. There are millions of stories in the Old West, from the early days of Lewis and Clark, to the end of the 'Wild West' period in the 20th century. From the tales of cowboys to gunslingers to outlaws to great tribes, these stories, whether fictional or not, have been told many times over in books, films, and TV shows in a genre called the Western. The Western has influenced storytelling and cinema across the world from Japanese cinema to Star Wars.

There are millions of stories in the Old West. This is one of them. It is the story of two worlds, both eastern and western. Four people, one story--and this is where it begins.