Posted on December 19, 2006 by Jenna
[LEGEND OF PERFECTLY DEFENSIVE SAMURAI]
Learning the secret of perfect defense, Tomo begins her career—here!
She impresses her master Kon.
She saves lovers Meg and Cho.
She establishes the standard special effects LIGHT and I’M IN UR FIGHT, BLOCKING UR ATTACKS!
And all things fill with righteousness—
But wait!
Wait!
Who is this running through the streets of LEISURELY VACATION CITY TURULL?
—
This is MASTER MERCHANT BAO!
He is portly and panting. He is waving an umbrella. He is chasing after two night-grim thieves.
They fear him, rightly.
Their third partner has already fallen to a tactical umbrella blow.
They slip into a back alley. They run left. They run right. They emerge onto the street.
They look left. They look right.
A shadow covers them.
They look up.
Master Merchant Bao descends!
LIGHT
For a long moment, the thieves aren’t sure what’s happened. They’d braced themselves for the afterlife; or, worse, to living and having the constable drag them off.
But that hasn’t happened.
LIGHT; LIGHT; LIGHT
and the puffing and grunting of Master Merchant Bao, and three great clamors of umbrella upon steel.
Their eyes clear.
And Tomo says,
I’M IN UR FIGHT
BLOCKING UR ATTACKS
“But they’re thieves,” protests Master Merchant Bao.
“Don’t make me repeat myself,” says Tomo. “I do that already.”
Master Merchant Bao hesitates.
One of the thieves performs the hook dagger insinuation. He waits, blade in hand.
LIGHT; the hiss of steel in air; and LIGHT
The hook dagger clatters to the ground.
“Also ur attacks,” Tomo says.
And she turns to look at the thieves. And they see the apples of her cheeks and the twisty hair that falls down over her brow; and her smile cuts them worse than any knife.
“What have we been doing with our lives?” they cry.
For what is thievery and night-grimness compared to the joy of the perfectly defensive samurai?
Master Merchant Bao’s lips are very thin.
He is not pleased.
“Can’t you be in someone else’s fight?” he asks. “Blocking their attacks?”
The wistfulness that washes across Tomo’s face almost makes him weep.
“O,” she says softly. “O. If only.”
If only! If only she could be everywhere! In every fight! A PARALLEL PERFECTLY DEFENSIVE SAMURAI!
But she shakes her head.
“It’s not to be,” she says.
“Forgive us,” cry the thieves, knocking their heads; and Master Merchant Bao sits heavily down upon the ground.
[LEGEND OF PERFECTLY DEFENSIVE SAMURAI]
—
Here is TERRIBLY OFFENSIVE SHOGUN—
DAIIMON.
He sulks in his mountain fortress. He chews bitterly on an old fish head.
He says, “Someone has disrupted the threads of fate.”
“Master?” asks one of the HUNDRED SHADOWS OF TERRIBLY OFFENSIVE SHOGUN DAIIMON.
“Two of my thieves,” he says, “have ‘repented.’ It is the influence, hmmm, of a powerfully defensive samurai.”
“Say no more,” says the shadow.
It dissipates into the mountain.
Tomo is bounding from rock to rock. She is running across the humans’ land. She is looking for a fight. She is also looking for sake.
Often, Tomo has found, she may satisfy these urges together.
Two seagulls are squabbling over a bit of food washed up on the shore—the dried-out prince, she suspects, of a distant kelp kingdom. She blocks their attacks; she maketh them to reel; but it is not much to block the attacks of seagulls.
She thinks of the wars of the stars above; and a part of her wishes she could be there, soaring the sky, parrying the twinkles that must be blades of light—
But she has made her peace with being a creature of the earth.
“Oh no,” says FIRST DUPE, on the strand up ahead. “I feel a strange urge to fight.”
“As do I!” says SECOND DUPE.
“Have at it!” they say, together.
They are jolly-seeming dupes in white masks. Tomo’s heart quickens with joy. She kicks off her right foot’s rock, moving just a little bit faster now.
The blades blur forward.
LIGHT.
The dupes move past one another. They wait to see which of them will explode in blood—assuming that it is not both.
It is neither.
I’M IN UR FIGHT,
BLOCKING UR ATTACKS
They turn on Tomo.
“What?” says the first dupe.
“You would block AR attacks?” the second dupe protests.
Two blurs of outrage; laughter on the sea, and—
The world goes still. Tomo sees everything moving very slowly.
Not two blurs. Three.
She flicks her attention sideways. Something is rising from the water, something black and sea-dead, something moving very fast.
She breathes out a puff of air: haa.
Three lines of death converge on her; there is a sound like the screaming of the vultures that eat Prometheus’ flesh; and—
I’M IN UR FIGHT,
BLOCKING UR ATTACKS
says Tomo with deep joy.
The shadow of the shogun Daiimon staggers back. It is pale with shock. The two dupes are quivering upon the beach.
“But how?” asks the shadow.
“I am Tomo,” she says, clippedly. “I am the PERFECTLY DEFENSIVE SAMURAI.”
And the wind catches up the salt scent of the sea and makes all things that were bad and sorrowful now fairly well once more.
Next time on Legend of Perfectly Defensive Samurai:
LEGENDARY KNEELING LIEUTENANT
Categories: Legends, Hitherby, A Terrible Light, Legend of Perfectly Defensive Samurai