Posted on Sat Jan 5th, 2019 @ 5:01am by Lieutenant Commander Nolan Marc & Taran Willeg
Mission:
Back Post
Timeline: Occurs sometime during "A Misguiding Hand"
Tags: Nolan,
1131 words - 2.3 OF Standard Post Measure
The life of a half-white swordsman is not for the faint of heart.
The waves crashed against the rocks, as the boy stood with his back to the Toshiki coast. Long had he waited for this day. The moment that he would face the one who killed his parents, leaving him for dead when he had been cast from the cliffs of Maeda Point.
Except he had survived. Lived to exact his revenge, one death at a time. Working his way meticulously up the list, until there was only one last name to scratch off.
The boy wore a coarse weave uwagi wrap-around tunic. A long, skirt-like hakama shifted over the tops of his feet, which were clad in a pair of straw sandals. A pair of swords hung off his belt, the larger at his left hip. His left hand came up to rest against the scabbard.
Across from him, standing in the courtyard of the temple, the fiendish samurai lord maintained a smug atmosphere of his own self-assured superiority.
Then the man dropped his center of gravity. In a flash, he stepped forward to close the gap between the two of them, as his right hand flew to the handle of the katana.
Kicking his left foot back, the boy's hakama flared out from his slight form with a flourish, even as he brought his right hand across his body to seize the handle of his own katana. The draw was a smooth motion, power driven through the hips as the dirty blond urchin slid forward.
The two blades connected as both drew their swords. A stalemate existed for a brief second, before the samurai used his greater mass to push the boy away.
Sliding back on the balls of his feet, Nolan dropped to one knee as he tried to recover his balance. Snapping his head up, the spry Okinawa boy pitched to the right, rolling up to his feet as he ducked and dodged a strike by the samurai. Rising up to his feet, the boy made a strike of his own. Before long, the temple courtyard was ringing with the chimes of their deadly dance.
The blades connected, the screech of metal singing loudly as the boy tried to push out and then down in order to leverage the attack into the shihonage throw of Aikido...
...the samurai pulled away, popping back in with a quick chop that smacked the sword from out of the boy's hands.
The katana were sliding across the ground.
The samurai swung back with an attack.
The boy pitched forward into a roll. Spiraling up from the ground, the youth drew the wakazashi from out of it's sheath. Without hesitation, he slid forward into a thrust at the same time that the samurai came rushing at him.
He skidded to a halt, the short sword held low as he prepared to pivot...
...and felt the cold steel of the samurai's katana as it hovered over his shoulder, the edge just an inch away from his neck.
"Kimatta," he heard the samurai declare, in a low gravely voice.
The youth raised his short sword so that the steel gleamed in the sunlight. Red blood dripped from off the blade. "Omai wa mou shinderu," the child uttered darkly.
"NANI!?" the samurai demanded, before staggering backward. His katana dropped to the ground, as blood erupted in the classic Kurosawa cinematic trope of the exaggerated death throes.
His back to the samurai, the boy swordsman just stared out to the sunset. Slinging the blood from off his wakazashi, he sheathed the blade. The katana he had dropped was left on the ground, along with the body of samurai who had betrayed the loyalty of his family.
And he, the boy who lived, walked off into that quiet sunset with the crashing of the cold, unforgiving se...
[ "Willeg to Marc." ]
Blinking, the tawny haired Only found himself summoned from out of his imaginative play on the holodeck. This was the final chapter of Samurai Z: Rurouni Shonen. He'd been playing this holo-comic off-and-on since before he'd come aboard the Vesta.
Craning his head back, the boy announced, "Arch."
At the command, a doorway appeared inside what otherwise appeared as Toshiki Island during the feudal era of the Ryukyuan Kingdom. After another moment, the world itself seemed to melt away, until there was only a black-and-yellow grid outlining a single vaulted chamber. Stepping inside of the archway, the boy reached up to toggle the intercom controls. "Marc, here, sir."
The 'sir' was somewhat awkward here. Taran's dad was a non-commissioned officer, which meant that Nolan outranked him. But, still, it was his best friend's dad. That definitely required a sir.
[ "We're short for the next shift and I need to cover for this evening." ]
Some kind of flu had been working its way through the ship lately it seemed. It hadn't affected the astrometrics lab yet, but Xe'ceda's biology department had been decimated with all the scientists out sick earlier in the month. Apparently now, it was hitting where Taran's dad worked.
[ "Can Taran stay over with you tonight?" ]
So he was calling to ask if Taran could sleep over?
Did he expect Nolan to say no? "Hai!" the boy chirped brightly in response. Then sheepishly caught himself, and tacked on the obligatory, "I mean, yes, sir."
His eyes turned up to the chronometer. "If I go now, I can get him from school."
[ "Thank you. I owe you one... lieutenant. Willeg out." ]
As the channel closed, the boy reached up to key a sequence into the panel that was illuminated over his head. The door to the holodeck opened, revealing the corridor and the interior of the Vesta on the other side. As he started to take a step back into reality, the boy paused for a moment.
Raising his head up, Nolan asked, "Computer, how much holodeck time do I have remaining for this week?"
[ "Fifty eight minutes, forty eight seconds remaining." ]
So about an hour. "Is this holodeck available at twenty hundred hours?" the boy asked, wistfully.
[ "Holodeck four is reserved today at twenty hundred hours. However, Holodeck six is available for a forty minute time slot." ]
So they could go there after dinner...
"Please reserve holodeck six at that time," Nolan remarked, waiting for the computer to give a chirp of acknowledgement before he walked out of the holodeck and started to make his way toward the school.
Then he stopped.
He was still wearing his Samurai Z costume.
He should probably go change first.