I walk down the street, a large brown trenchcoat hiding my daisho, which was rearranged to be entirely vertical as to not stick out from underneath-though I feel the tsubas dig into my side uncomfortably. It’s quiet, and to be honest, I only see the occasional drifter as I round a corner into an alley leading to the building I was to enter. That being said, there’s no way I’d just get in easily.

The alley was not well lit by the sun, the shadows producing an almost oppressive and intimidating tint on an otherwise bright day. If snakes lived in cities, this is likely where they would rest between hunts, or so I’d imagine.

Just on cue with that thought, someone’s standing in the way of where I need to be. He looks like just another thug, not even particularly beefy, though a bystander might mistake his jacket for being intimidating.

“Hey, where do you think you’re going?” The thug steps into the center of the alleyway, crossing his arms.

“Past you.” I had no misconceptions about this being a peaceful encounter, and I accordingly draw my tessen from my pocket, keeping it concealed in my sleeve for the moment.

“You think you can just walk past me, you little shit?” I notice him draw a pocket knife, flicking it open casually. “You best turn around and go somewhere else.” For some reason, this annoyed me. I can’t explain why, but I felt a wave of indignant irritation from this man taking me for an easy target.

“A toothpick won’t scare me, you imp.” Maybe it was on Nick’s behalf, but I felt mad for some reason. I start walking forward, readying my tessen in hand.

“Taking that tone with me, you bitch!? I’ll show you...” He starts walking towards me as well. A typical thug, not used to backchat.

I’m already formulating a plan of action. I figured he’d either try to grab me first or go for a stab immediately, so I need to plan around both actions.

As he steps into range he makes a grab for my jacket with his off-hand, which I respond to by stepping in deeper and thrusting the tessen at his neck. It lands, and he drops his grip, stepping back, sputtering for breath. I barely even blink as I advance again, swiping across his head and sending him to the floor, now dropping his knife with a pathetic clatter.

I think I also see movement near the door where I was planning to enter-was I being watched?

It’s only afterwards I realized that what I did was an unnecessarily risky play that easily could’ve backfired on me, but I set the thought aside as I slide the tessen back into my pocket. I open my coat, pulling it off and tossing it aside as I reposition my sayas to their proper positions as I near the entrance.

I pause; what had gotten into me back there? I’d almost call it arrogance, but it felt more like a malicious disdain… which, to be fair, could itself be the result of a sense of arrogance. Still, Lenny had sent me, and me alone. I couldn’t help but wonder if that meant he thought of me as something more than just being the best in a sea of bad options.

We’ll see, I tell myself. Then, I open the door and step back quickly, waiting for something…

And I got something, alright, because I see a man charge out the door with a knife. I sidestep and swiftly draw my sword, slashing into his side as he passes. He falls to the floor with a yell, and I catch his face kicking up some dirt at the edge of my vision.

Another man jumps out of the door, running forward with a metal bat. I make a downward strike as to deflect his own, but he does something different; he blocks the shot, holding either end of the bat for maximum stability, and keeps going forward, driving me back in an unfavorable bind as I do the same with my own sword, adjusting my stance to stabilize myself; anything to desperately hold back his advance like a crewman plugging holes in the Titanic with cork caps. The man grunted with effort, suddenly encountering significant, but hardly insurmountable resistance.

I’ve bought some time, but he’ll run me into the wall and smother me if I’m not quick. I’m not strong enough for this, shit…

But I realize, I don’t have to be.

As he leans forward I step right, disengaging my weapon and leaving him ramming into the wall at full speed as I move my off-hand back to my hilt, and I decide to do something unconventional; I strike the back of his head with the spine of my sword. I feel the sword recoil as the blade shakes slightly, partnered with a light crack as he falls unconscious, his bat clattering to the ground beneath him.

I exhale, looking back to the door to find no motion from within. I let my secondary ears flick up briefly as I approach the door, still not hearing any major movement from within. So, I let them back down, wiping my sword off yet again before I see it back into the scabbard.

Striding into the building, I quickly rotate my vision, ensuring that nobody’s hiding in the corners in my immediate presence, and then rotate back around to the corner in front of me. I note briefly the mostly-empty shelves that line the walls and end up in rows around the center of the room.

I hear the sound of a chair being knocked over as I round the corner, to see a man, tall and muscular, wielding a sledgehammer, and clearly highly displeased to see me, as well as another man tied to a chair facing away from us. Looking closer, he’s built… almost like a bull, and I can imagine with a weapon like that he’s got a temperament to match.

“Useless punks...” He grumbles, before stepping forward with his hammer in both hands, raising it up over his shoulder. His boots pound the concrete floor. I draw my katana in turn, and ready myself as he doesn’t even slow down, apparently being a man of few words.

I pace around the man within the building, stepping away from swing after swing from his sledgehammer. His swings are relatively ‘slow’, yes, but I have little doubt an incorrectly warded swing would blow right through my guard, and I’m not sure if I’m ready for that gamble. In addition, I was hoping to potentially wear him down with his own energy, since even with his bulk a sledgehammer has to be incredibly tiring.

Around the sixth swing he starts to tire out, his breathing deepens, he becomes a little less eager to chase me, but I also notice something which disturbed me: He’s getting smarter with where he chases me towards, getting closer to cornering me with each move.

By the tenth swing I realize I’m running out of space with only 10 feet (at best) behind me and no outlets on the sides. I ready my sword to ward him so I can circle around and step forward to threaten him, but he just swings again, sending the katana flying out of my hands while my grip is loose and into the nearby wall. I immediately step back, rapidly trying to think of a plan as my hand naturally wandered towards my wakizashi… and indeed, that would have to be my new plan, as he’s already winding up for another swing and another chance to flatten me.

I duck the next diagonal swing, stepping in under his sledgehammer as I’m drawing my wakizashi. In turn, he tries to kick me-probably in the head- and I dart right, keeping my footwork light as I rotate, slashing upwards into his arm where his elbow was, and rotating my wrist to cut into his side for a second pass, both cuts letting loose another spray of blood(thankfully not black this time) as he shouts, dropping his sledgehammer and clutching his side before looking at me, clearly not pleased by losing the upper hand so rapidly.

He then lets out another yell, stepping forward and trying to floor me with a savagely committed uppercut. Lucky for me, though, he’s lost all sense of technique at this point and I have ample leverage to predict his trajectory and sidestep. In spite of this, he’s still quicker than he looks and I’m forced to resort to ramming the endcap of my wakizashi into his head instead of counter-cutting immediately, eliciting another loud groan from the man as he stumbles, and then drops to the floor.

After pivoting to make sure he didn’t have any other underlings lining up to shank me, I wipe off my wakizashi and see it into its scabbard, before retrieving my katana. The tsuba’s rim is a little scuffed up, but the blade’s edge held up remarkably well and nothing has snapped yet. I take one last look at the Bull on the floor. Somehow, I’m not even that mad at at him for scuffing up one of my favorite katanas.

I just hope he stays down.

I look around as I walk through the warehouse, making sure nobody else was hiding in the darkest corners of the building, approaching a man tied up in a chair. Looking closer, it’s Nick, but the fact that he’s just in the open like this gives me a pause for question, as to why they’d have their hostage just sitting out there.

Perhaps more curious, is that he’s facing the wall, strapped in. I could only assume that they wanted to unnerve him. I couldn’t complain, I admitted, since at least they didn’t start pulling his teeth or anything… probably.

“Is this the part where I die? It would figure that I’d have multiple people walking over each other trying to get a chunk out of me.”

“It’s just me here now. Don’t worry, we don’t live in a drama TV series...” I sighed, slightly tired. I did have to do a lot of work fighting all the grunts from earlier, and it was just now starting to hit me.

“Oh, shit, it’s you?” Nick’s relief was notable in his voice. “Where’s Lenny?”

“He didn’t come, didn’t want to be spotted from a mile away.”

I don’t know why, but as I work at the bindings I feel a sudden paranoia bringing both my ears and my tail straight up, as I lean forward and feel something fast and hard scraping against the back of my head, and then an explosion of pain as I force myself to turn around despite my suddenly protesting nerves, staring down the Bull, winding his sledgehammer back up with one arm for another downward swing as his left arm hangs limply at his side. I raise into a high ward, with only one plan emerging in my suddenly clouding mind, though even that lay dim in the face of the fact that he had the nerve to get back up to try and kill me with a cheap shot. Was my body fighting on behalf of my mind, or was my mind so conditioned that swordsmanship was in my basest natures?

He huffs and puffs, his body protesting its own injuries-I can see him shaking from the pain, and probably the rage, his indignant response to being cut up like he was by an opponent of inferior strength-as he finally swings downward, but even with my nerves clinching up it’s much slower than his initial swinging speed as I beat it aside, the sledgehammer’s head sailing into the concrete with a solid sound as he suddenly finds himself off-balance. I should have had him right then and there, but even with the end so near my nerves stick and fight my will to rotate the edge to face him properly, at a point where a second feels like an hour, I finally rotate the edge all the way and swing all the way up into his neck, getting the blade stuck in it.

Damn me, I can’t even cut correctly as I am. That should’ve taken his head clean off, but it just gets stuck in his throat instead, wedged like an axe into a stump, with blood leaking around the flats of the blade where it’s embedded. I can hear him choking too, as he drops his sledgehammer and reorients his arm, presumably to try and strangle me in turn.

Yet again I find my body less than forthcoming to the task, but I twist my whole body and rake the sword deeper into his throat, then pulling it out entirely, stepping forward as he falls over and a violent spray of blood hits the ground and my face alike… it’s still warm. I finally let my tail and ears back down...

I move my hand to the back of my head to inspect the damage, and there’s an indent, and some sort of soft material that I can’t find feeling in. I turn to Nick, who’s currently staring at the scene I caused in complete horror. Or was I hit that bad?

“Hey, did you catch where the rest of my skull went?” I speak quietly, looking around at the edges of the floor to no avail. Through my personal haze, I let my hand trail around the back of my head before I encounter something hanging off of my head. I make a guess, and pulling it up, I slide it around the back of my head before I slide it back in the gap in my skull, fitting perfectly. Then, I fumble for a cleaning rag and then give up as I find my hands shaking terribly, settling for wiping with a clean area of my jacket instead, as the pain in the back of my head begins to flare up.

Lastly, I see the sword back into its scabbard-why is this taking so long? I swore I could’ve had this done in a few seconds before, and now it takes over a minute. All I can think to do now is take a seat and let the approaching void take me in as I finally black out.