Kage Zuki
You may wonder who I am, why I was to be found in that godforsaken inn so far from my birth place, who my strange companion was and why I have chosen to go under the name of Hachi Zuki, and I will tell you, but only if you truly wish to know. Do you want to know? Then allow me make one thing clear before I begin my story: this is no tale of love, or happiness, or loyalty or any of those feelings that makes for a happy story. This is a tale of questionable morals, revenge and more than anything it is the story about: a warrior, a boy and a legendary blade.
I guess it all started when a woman in the East had a child, the woman was poor, and the baby was me. My mother left me on the doorstep of a temple when I was about 3 months old. An old priest lived alone in the temple and he decided to take me in as his helper and perhaps successor when the time would come. I was given no name for I was a servant to the god, not an individual. He came to call me Tatzumaki though; it means Tornado, it was because I had a habit of spinning in the same place when I was happy. My next 8 years was spent praying to some god whose name the river of time has removed from my mind. But that god was my life, both awake and asleep for those 8 long years. When I was awake I prayed to him, when I was asleep I dreamt of him. I knew nothing of birth at the time, and I guess I thought that I had been placed on the earth by the god to help the old priest. The priest was a nice man, he was considered, friendly, but also old and paranoid, he never told me of the outside world and when visitors came to pray at the altar I was send to the other side of the temple to clean. There were frequently visitors at the temple, people coming to offer gifts to please the god, but it was not till after I had reached the age of 8 that I saw them for the first time. I remember it clearly: I was washing the floor around the offering circle when they walked in: two small girls, a boy at my age, a mother and a farther. I hid behind a pillar as they prayed, I didn’t dare to move for it was a mortal sin to interrupt a praying man. The kids played around the room, laughing and yelling, I guess they were too young to know how to behave in a church. They stayed for 20 minutes or so, and in that time they managed to completely destroyed my world. I saw the feelings of love between the parents and the kids, I saw how they played together and how they prayed together, and I saw that even though they were 5 bodies, they were but one being.
After seeing them, seeing their union sort to speak, I could no longer be the same, I could no longer live my life for a god who never spoke to me, never met my gaze with loving eyes, I realized that I needed a family, I needed… love. I knew that these thoughts were forbidden by the god, those who live in the temple cannot fall for the temptation of the outside world, and so I hid my feeling from the priest and hid them well. For the first few months the old priest noticed no changes in my behavior, but my need for a family and the guilt of those thoughts was eating me up from inside. Eventually he noticed that I no longer slept peacefully at night, and that I could no longer find inner peace in our prayer. He confronted me with the problem and I answered him trustfully and told him how I had started to long for a family and the world beyond the temple. Of all the possible reactions he could have chosen he chose the worst, he simply signed and told me that I was not meant for the life in the temple. He told me that I had been left at his doorstep years before and that he had tried to raise me into the life of a monk, but that even the teachings of the god could not change the fundamental nature of a man. Then he packed the few belongings I had, dressed me in fine clothes and told me to seek out my own destiny. I know now that he only wanted me to be happy and live a life of happiness, but when I was thrown out of the only place I had ever known I could not see things that way. I felt impure and unwanted, I felt like the god had left me, that I was no longer worthy of his grace, I felt like dying. For 2 days straight I knocked on the temple door, begging the old priest to let me in, but he ignored me completely and on the third day I finally left, never to return home again.
I am sure I would have died out there in the real world as they say, had it not been for the bandits that attacked me the second night after I had given up getting back inside the temple. They came just before nightfall, apparently thinking that one wearing such fine close as I, would be likely to carry something of value. I had not eaten for a whole day because the little food supply the priest had given me had already run out. I was walking through a wood, looking for a place to sleep when I saw them hiding in the shadows. At first I had no idea what they wanted, I had, living in a temple all my life, never heard of robbery or violence, but when one of them jumped out of the bushes and rushed at me with a knife in hand, my instincts took over and I did what every boy at the age of 8 would do: I ran. My mind decided that getting away was the best plan at the moment and since my legs didn’t seem to object against that plan all I could do was follow suit.
It didn’t take them long to give chase luckily I was born pretty fast and agile, but my hunger was not exactly needed for my escape. I guess they had chosen to hide in this forest because it was thick and therefore easy to hide in, but it ended up being a bad idea since it gave them a hard time fighting through branches as they chased me. I myself had it a lot easier since I was able to run under the worst branches and get through the small holes in the bushes. But they had the advantage, they were bigger than me, faster than me, had knowledge of the woods and had me outnumbered 5 to 1. But in the dark wood I should have been fast enough to get away with only a couple of bruises, but I hadn’t eaten all day and as a result of that I could barely move not to mention escape from a group of bandits. The adrenalin kept me going for close to an hour but in the end I ran out of energy. I used the last of my remaining strength as I stumbled out of the wood. I fell to the ground in the moonlight knowing that this was the end, my lungs were burning, my legs was scratched open and my vision was somewhat blinded by the blood spilling from a wound on my forehead. The bandits came running out of the wood a few seconds later cursing under their breath.
“I tell you little man…” one of them panted “I am going to kill you for making us run like that.” I didn’t even have enough energy to scream, reply, beg for mercy or say a prayer as he approached me with his knife raised, ready to plunge it into my chest. But a low voice carried through the darkness and made him stop in his tracks.
“You know… just out of curiosity… what does 5 honorable bandits like yourself have to gain from attacking a little moneyless kid like that?”
The bandit spun around trying to pinpoint the location of the voice. It took him almost 20 seconds to spot the woman sitting with her back against a tree smoking on a long thin pipe. She had a small bag hanging on a branch besides her and a thin sword in a simple but beautiful sheath with a single word written on it: Kage-ken.
“Moneyless? What do you mean “Moneyless”? Look at the clothe ye’ crazy old hag, with clothe that fine his old man must be as rich as a king. So stay quiet if you don’t want to end up dead.”
“Now don’t be as stupid as you look.” She replied calmly smiling a smile that never reached her eyes “I mean… look at that kid, his hair have been shaven off, his clothes is a mess, and there is old dirt on it.”
“SO?” growled one of the bandits angry.
“So… he must have been walking in that outfit for some time. Oh yeah, there is also the fact that he wears old worn out shoes. Besides young monks have their heads shaved, and should they ever leave the temple they are given fine clothe so they can travel with dignity. This is no rich kid, this kid is a monk.” She smiled pleasantly, blowing a simple smoke ring.
The bandits looked furiously from me to her before the one with the knife started shouting: “Are you telling me that we have been chasing A MUNK for the last hour!?“
“Yes that seems about right.” she answered lightly “Wait, how long were you chasing him?”
The bandits ignored her, arguing about what to do in light of the new information. “Okay I got it!” said one of them. ”we kill the kid and take the woman’s things… and body.” The bandits agreed through a disturbing laughter, the woman just kept smoking her pipe as if what they said had nothing to do with her. “You just sit tight lady I’ll be with you in a sec, I just got to kill the little rat here first. “ My vision was starting to fade as he came walking towards me, I saw him raise his knife for the second time, and I saw him get stopped by the woman’s words… for the second time.
“You know… if you really chased him for an hour… then I can’t just let you kill him can I?”
“What the ‘ell do you think you can do to us?” a bandit grinned. “We are five men and you’re only one woman. Hell will freeze over before you can stop us. “
“Well” she said, standing up, emptying her pipe on the ground and picking up the sword. “Then I hope you brought warm clothe.”
I could barely see as the bandits roared and rushed at her, in the last second before I passed out I saw her drawing her sword and calmly speaking two words: “Kage Zuki”*
*Shadow blade
Det er sådan en pipe her hun ryger.
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