Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Journeys We Make

Uncomfortable Revelations

Baiso scratched his head, letting his hefty hand sink in the rough embrace of his thick, spiky hair as he pondered on where he should have looked next for the supposed informant dummy. The burly recruit sealed every few steps with a strong stamp of his foot at the metal door keeping something important away from him, or so it seemed, but every time he kicked down the door nothing of significance was there.

An ornery roar filled the air. Baiso tried to track the source of this dreadful noise instead of focusing on picking through the rubble and junk filling the prison quarters but only received a stiff, metal sole of a boot planting on his face which pushed him rolling aside with ground-shaking power as the crazed humanoid berserker landed on his two feet, just barely keeping the upper half of his body standing, judging from his stance.

"Hey, hey..." Baiso grinned with a smug look as he stood up and wiped his busted nose and cracked forehead, staining his boulder-sized fist with red. "You just don't know when to quit, do you?"

Araki Endo growled like an animal, his fists were shaking from the unnatural tonus present in them. The blood running down the young man's body passed right over the iron rod that he held in his hand and dripped off each of its long ends. The heaviness of the blood dripping off of the young man's body weighed his spiky hair down and his eyes were whited out. It appeared as if though the body of the apprentice samurai could fight long past the time when his mind checked out.

"Just what sort of training did you do at that God Sword's place, huh?" Baiso chuckled, cracking his knuckle. "Seems like a joint I'd like to hit one day..."

It didn't look like Baiso was going to take Endo's chances at brawling with him at this point seriously. He was, after all, a figure who reveled throughout his life at being the toughest and strongest bastard around and he loved nothing more than when his opponent's tried to contest that. Whenever some fancy trickster came knocking with some unnatural set of techniques and deceit, Baiso tended to struggle but he was fine with that because he knew his role. He knew all that he would amount for in this life which made things a whole lot easier.

No iron rod swinging pipsqueak was going to out-hardcore him and he had nothing to learn in the art of unadulterated violence but everything to teach the world that sheltered itself away from such things.

Baiso and Endo took off at the same time, Endo growled and snarled as he twirled, lighting his iron rod up with the faint blue glow of base chakra as it coated the weapon as it spun around the apprentice samurai's body and smacked into the soft and mushy right side of Baiso's jaw, halting the man-beast's advance and throwing him off his senses. The monster of a man struggled and shook his head, trying to get himself together as the sock had clocked all semblance of sense and reason out of him. It used to be just the way he liked it but...

This wasn't just mindless animal instinct working Endo through this. No... The youth's movements, the impeccable footwork, the complete control over the tide of battle. He was more aware, more skillful now than he ever was when he was mindful and awake. The boy had a heart of a swordsman pumping the blood of honor and discipline but an attitude of a self-righteous brat punk that got in the way of that. By putting that punk to sleep, Baiso liberated the pure will, the honor, and skill laying dormant within.

It was dark, too dark to tell where the storm of hits was coming from but it was coming. The scent of blood filled the air, painful twinges made it impossible for Baiso to see a thing even in the few flashes of light he could get to illuminate his blood-coated opponent. Such a mindless state of pure willpower and skill was only possible to warriors who were commonly rubbing their backs at the shaving limits of life itself. Araki Endo was a man who had been brought to the brink of dying daily and came back from it, something Baiso did not know because of the pride he had in being unbeatable and impossible to match blow to blow.