Abstinence Education | By : MadameManga Category: +. to F > Blade of the Immortal Views: 11959 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0 |
Disclaimer: I do not own Blade of the Immortal, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story. |
I adore feedback. All kinds! Please consider posting a review, or email me at MmeManga@aol.com. My Livejournal is the site where all my stories are posted first; there you can read many comments about this and other stories and add your own.
I pay close and grateful attention to comments and crit; IMO, that’s the only way to improve as a writer.
Squick warnings: Sex in various forms, including quasi-incestuous themes and a 16-year-old female paired with an adult male. Violence will eventually rear its head as well; hey, you have to separate at least one body part from its owner in any BotI story.
Note: The names of Tsukue Ryonosuke and O-Hama are those of the the protagonists of a classic 1960s chambara film, Sword of Doom.
Abstinence Education
by Madame Manga
Part Thirteen
“OK, this is about it for the warm-up routines. We’ll do it twice more. Once at half speed, then go for it as fast as you can strike.” Manji held up his wooden bokuto and beckoned to her. “Neck, torso, leg, torso. Go!”
Rin swung and met his blocks, her bokuto moving with graceful flicks, arcing smoothly from one attack to the next.
“Good. Again!”
This time she swung with all her might, rapping her weapon against his with loud cracks. Again he blocked her strikes with lightning moves, but at the last she feinted to the head and threw in another lunge straight to the belly. Manji’s sword thwacked her hard across the back, but he let out a grunt and stood up smiling.
“Nice shot.” He rubbed the side of his ribcage. “I felt that.”
“I got you?” Rin laughed and clapped her hands. “I got you!”
“Sort of—you scraped a little skin off me and got your spine split in return. Remember you have to defend your openings all the way through the pass.” He demonstrated, crouching low and tapping her solar plexus with the end of the bokuto. “Don’t get yourself over-extended with nowhere to go from there. Of course, that’s easier when you’re fighting two-handed...and that’s what we’re going to introduce today.” Manji straightened up and made a gesture; one of his forked shido slid from his sleeve and impaled itself point-first in the ground. He picked it up and brandished it, then tossed the wooden sword aside and drew his katana left-handed.
“How do you do that, anyway? I’ve always wondered where you keep all those big sharp things…”
“It’s a gift.” Manji grinned at her and spun the shido on his forefinger. “Now, the ways I use this to back up the long blade—”
“Manji, who’s that?” Rin pointed over his shoulder, and he turned to see. A young samurai in crisp formal hakama came striding up from the road with a belligerent air, aiming right for them. He came to a halt a little distance away, puffing as if he had run the entire distance from the village.
“You!” said the samurai in the rudest possible sense, and pointed straight at Manji. “You’re the scum I’m looking for!”
“Huh? What’s up your crack?”
“I am Tsukue Ryonosuke!” He tapped two fingers on the hilts of his twin swords. “You will speak respectfully to me, or suffer the consequences!” He looked no more than twenty years old, his face smooth and boyish.
“You started it, asshole. Don’t whine when you get it right back.” Manji winked at Rin, who suppressed a laugh. Who was this idiot to shake his swords at Manji? Judging by his expensive clothes and pampered appearance, he might be a son of one of the richer samurai whose country estates ringed the village.
“You upset my O-Hama! My favorite girl! Last night when I arrived to see her, the whole house was still in uproar. She told me she was deliberately insulted by an unkempt customer with one eye and a manji symbol on his back. Can you deny that you are the miscreant responsible?”
Manji had made a disturbance at the brothel? Rin covered her mouth to try to hide her astonishment. He had hinted at some kind of trouble...
“What the hell’s the matter with you, boy? You go on errands for whores as a general thing? Get outta my face.” Manji hawked and spat on the ground right between the intruder’s sandals.
He took a step backwards. “I promised her I’d punish you for what you said to her! I spent hours drying her tears, and bought new hair ornaments at the festival to console her.”
“Oh, I see. Plays you like a bamboo flute, doesn’t she? Wise up, dumbass.” Manji laughed.
“How dare you characterize our love that way?”
This young samurai loved a brothel girl? She’d heard accounts of such mismatches, which usually ended badly, at least in plays. Arranged marriages without love naturally led to love without marriage, but Ryonosuke’s passionate anger struck Rin as far out of proportion. This was a man who didn’t regulate himself and his emotions as a warrior should.
“Love?” Manji made an obscene gesture out of sticking his shido in the ground again. “Not worth the expense, boy. Let me give you a clue. Blow your cash on saké instead of women—hell, gamble it all and you’ll come out way ahead.”
“I’d do anything for my sweet O-Hama! I’d even commit seppuku if—”
“Manji, what is he talking about? Seppuku?”
“I dunno, little sister.” Manji raised a brow. “I think he likes sappy bunraku shows a little too much.”
“I’m talking about how you insulted my O-Hama! You called her a—”
“I called her a greedy little bitch because she got pissy when I didn’t fork over a big tip. I did ask for the best girl in the house, but that broad thinks she’s a first-rank oiran or something.” Manji snorted.
“She’s the highest-ranking courtesan in the entire district! And…and you not only called her greedy, you said flat out in front of everyone that a…a skinny virgin could have satisfied you better! How DARE you?”
Rin looked wide-eyed at Manji; his mouth opened and closed and he self-consciously scratched his jaw. “Well…yeah, maybe I mentioned something on that order.”
“O-Hama is the most beautiful woman of my acquaintance, and skilled in every art of love! She sends me to heaven every night I can see her!” Rin wondered if Ryonosuke was going to cry. “And you tell her that a raw girl—”
“Crap, I should have just picked up a yotaka! Way cheaper, and probably a hell of a lot more fun than your finicky bitch. Well, excuse me—I thought the girls would be cleaner at a house.” He looked the young man up and down. “But if she sleeps with you, she’s probably got every pox known to man or dog.” With a careless motion, he thrust his katana back into his scabbard as if Ryonosuke wasn’t worthy of notice. He picked up his shido and started to put it away.
“You…you dare compare her to a streetwalker? Call her diseased? That’s unforgivable! I demand satisfaction!”
Rin backed cautiously away; this wasn’t so funny any more. The exchange had become overheated and outright ugly. Manji still had a naked weapon in hand, Ryonosuke was almost certainly going to draw, and she didn’t want to be in the way of either of them when the fight began.
“Demand whatever the hell you want, because you won’t get it. Then go home and buy your raddled twat some more cheap trinkets, you cunt-licker. The greedy little bitch is only angling you for presents, but I guess you’re too damp behind the ears to figure that out.” Manji reached in his sleeve and flipped something at Ryonosuke; it arced through the air, hit him in the chest and landed at his feet. Rin looked and saw that it was a single copper sen. “There, you can give her my freakin’ tip too, because that’s at least double what she was worth in the sack.”
Red-faced and spluttering, the young samurai whipped out his katana and charged. With a negligent swipe of his shido, Manji disarmed him and spun the sword several yards away. Rin avoided the flying blade and retrieved her own sword from the porch. Of course Manji didn’t need help against such a weak opponent, but she had a bad feeling about this Ryonosuke, and especially about the wild look in his eye.
“I said, go home. You won’t get another warning.” Manji turned his back. Ryonosuke drew his shorter wakizashi, but instead of attacking Manji again, he darted past him and attempted to grab Rin by the hair. She dodged him and shed the sheath from her sword. Manji looked around, but he didn’t move; he watched with an alert expression and a ready stance, as if waiting for her to deal with the problem herself before he took action.
“Apologize or your little sister pays for my O-Hama’s humiliation!” Ryonosuke apparently took Manji’s lack of reaction for paralyzed fear. He waved his wakizashi at Rin with a theatrical gesture. “She’s at my mercy!”
“Oh, yeah? This I’d like to see.” Manji stuck his shido under his arm and took out his pipe. “Guess you prefer fighting women, little boy. Let’s see if you get anywhere.” He nodded to Rin in an encouraging way.
Rin swallowed hard and held up her sword in a defensive pose, starting to circle her antagonist. He made a scornful face and a pass with the short sword; she parried and returned to her defensive stance.
Manji laughed. “Go on, ‘sister’—it’s OK. Scratch his pretty face and he’ll run bawling home to his mama.”
She gritted her teeth, cursed Manji under her breath and lashed out with her sword. The longer reach of the Chinese blade kept Ryonosuke at a distance, so there she had an advantage. But he blocked her strike and side-stepped, then lunged. Rin evaded him. Her heart raced, though the blow hadn’t come very close; they reversed positions and struck simultaneously.
Her blade lodged against Ryonosuke’s; he pinned her in place. This was a dangerous spot—he could take control if she let him make it a struggle of muscle versus muscle. She broke the block and skipped backwards; he followed. Rin changed directions and scrambled around a tree, panting. “Manji!”
“Come on, he’s leaving his left side wide open, and he’s got no follow-up. You can take him easy. Skewer the little bastard, and let’s get on with what we were doing.” Manji stooped over the hibachi and lit his pipe.
“I was trained by a great master, you scum!” Ryonosuke turned to shout at Manji, and Rin scored the tip of her sword across his hip. He yelled and grabbed for his hakama; she had cut the ties at the waist, and the wide pants fell to his knees. Tripped up in the voluminous folds of cloth, he stumbled, and Rin made a backhand cut that caught him across the cheekbone. She moved backwards, meaning to let him reconsider now that she had drawn blood.
Instead, Ryonosuke dropped his short sword and scooped his katana from the dirt. He yanked his pants up and knocked the sword from her hand. Rin gasped—she was defenseless!
An elongated blur hurtled towards her and she instinctively grabbed it by the hilt. Manji’s shido. It was very heavy and felt somewhat unbalanced, but she whirled it over her head on the backswing of the catch and brought it down on the blade of Ryonosuke’s katana. He kept hold of the hilt, but Rin’s blow forced the blade into the ground. The tip hit a rock and snapped off a good hands-length from the end.
“My sword! I paid a hundred and fifty ryo for this sword!” Ryonosuke flung it down and looked for his wakizashi. Rin chased him away from it with the shido and backed him up to a tree. She brandished the point in his face.
“Surrender and beg for your life!” she shouted.
“What for?” Manji shook his head. “You’re letting him off lightly.”
“Well, I…do you surrender?” She had to brace the weighty weapon with both hands, but held it steady at the base of his throat.
“I…I surrender.” Ryonosuke clenched his jaw and looked down, sweating. Blood trickled from the shallow cut on his face. “I beg you…don’t kill me.”
“Then go, and don’t bother us any more.” Rin lowered the shido and wiped her perspiring palms on her clothing. Ryonosuke slowly picked up his swords and replaced them in their sheaths. He found the broken tip of his katana and flung it away in disgust.
“You clumsy peasant—” he began. Manji whacked his pipe against the edge of the porch and let it drop.
The next instant, Ryonosuke sprawled prone with Manji’s foot grinding his face into the dirt. Manji thumped a knee between his shoulder blades, grabbed him by the topknot to pull his head back, then pressed his side-hooked knife to Ryonosuke’s throat. It bit into the flesh and opened a small wound. The young man screamed in terror and Rin started forward at the murderous look in Manji’s eye.
“No—I said I’d spare his life!”
“Squeamish, huh? About time you got over that.”
“No! Please! Let him learn from his mistakes—he’s so young…” Rin clapped her hands to her mouth.
“Aw, crap. You’re not gonna cry, are you?”
“P-p-please don’t kill me,” blubbered Ryonosuke. “I apologize! I—”
“No…” Tears welled up in her eyes. “Manji, please!”
Manji leaned down and spoke in his ear. “OK, I’ll teach you what happens when you insult MY little sister. You’re damn lucky she’s here, asshole, because if she hadn’t been, I’d have done a lot more than—”
He thrust the wicked hooked blade upwards and yanked it to the side; Ryonosuke screamed again, his voice cracking high. Blood spewed from his nose, or what was left of it. Manji had slashed off the tip from below and left it hanging by a thin strip of skin.
“Get out of here, you whore’s pussy.” He stood up and the young man writhed on the ground with his hands clamped to his face. “Pathetic. Don’t even breathe the air in my vicinity again, or I’ll finish the job no matter what she says.”
Rin reclaimed her sword and stood ready, but Ryonosuke stumbled to his feet, keeping his pants up with one hand and holding on his severed nose with the other. Even after he disappeared around the bend in the road they could hear him crying.
“Eh, not too bad.” Manji clapped Rin on the back. “Kinda sloppy for a real duel, but passable.”
“What do you think he’s going to do?” Rin looked apprehensively at the road. “He might come back with some friends…” Shaking all over from ebbing adrenaline, she buried her face in the front of Manji’s kosode.
“Oh, now you worry about that? Ahh, forget about him.” He gave her a brotherly squeeze around the shoulders. “You think even that poor excuse for a samurai is going to complain to a bunch of men about getting his sword busted by a woman? He’ll be laid up for a month before he can show his face in public, anyway.” Manji laughed uproariously and moved away to pull up a tuft of dry grass.
“Can a doctor sew a nose back on?”
“Beats me.” He kept laughing and wiped his blood-streaked knife. “Think I’d like to be a fly on the wall when he tries it, though!”
“Eww…” Rin stuck out her tongue and gingerly cleaned the blood from her own sword.
Continued…
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