The man's long ivory fangs greatly contrasted his dark pseudo-silk attire, but not his pale skin. His hungry red-tinged eyes gazed at the maiden beneath him, who was fangless and fair-skinned, with a scattering of freckles and exotic markings visible on her body.
The woman had short pink hair, and she gazed up at him with adoring brown eyes. Her skin was decorated with a variety of body art -- some were old-fashioned needle-and-ink, while others had been applied with lenticular paint, and their colors and shapes changed and seemed to move depending on lighting and viewing angle.
Flickering candles surrounded them in the darkened room, and he whispered to her in an affectionate voice. "You have served me well for decades. In return, I have preserved your youth and beauty, and given you a taste of my immortal power. Tonight, the ceremony will be complete, and at last you will experience not a taste, but the full feast. Tonight you will become ... a vampire."
As she lay on the long table, she leaned her head to the side and exposed her neck to him, and he lowered his fangs to her throbbing jugular. His breath was hot on her neck as he prepared to sink his teeth into--
The skylight above them shattered, raining down glass shards and a security guard, who knocked over several candles upon landing. The woman screamed and crawled out from under her vampire master. Hopping off of the table, she sought shelter in one corner of the conference room.
"Dammit!" Matthieu the vampire shouted, rising to his feet and towering over the guard. "Can't you see I'm in a meeting?"
Then he saw that the guard had a samurai sword impaled through his heart. As the guard was a vampire as well, his body was being incinerated from the inside out.
Glancing up through the skylight, he glimpsed three more figures fighting on the rooftop, and he pulled the sword out of the guard's corpse.
The fire from the candles spread across the carpeted floor, and the flames on the table mingled with the ashes of the impaled vampire guard. The bright, flickering fire illuminated the fighting figures -- two more guards and an Asian man wielding another sword that sliced one of the guards in half. The Asian man was by now infamous in the vampire community; it was Blade, a vampire who had taken it upon himself to slay every other creature of the night.
Matthieu cursed in an ancient language and shouted to the conference room's computer, "reactivate sprinkler system!" He'd deactivated it earlier it so that he could light the candles for the ceremony. Now, he clutched his sword and adopted a defensive stance. He took a step backward, toward his female consort. He felt a bit protective toward her, considering she was in his thrall; she was his property.
The remaining guard on the roof tackled Blade, causing the vampire hunter to lose his sword and sending the both of them into the burning room through the jagged hole in the skylight. They managed to miss the table, and instead crashed to the floor as the sprinkler system extinguished the last of the flames. The burly guard managed to land on top, and he used this advantage to pummel Blade about the head and neck area.
The guard failed to notice Blade removing his pistol from his leg holster and raising it to the guard's temple. The pistol beeped as the safety was taken off of it, and the alerted guard grabbed Blade's wrist and held the gun away from him.
Blade drove the small dagger in his other hand through the soft flesh under the guard's chin, and straight into his brain. Rolling the guard off of him, Blade held the pistol to the man's chest and fired a bullet into his heart.
Turning to face Matthieu, Blade pointed the pistol and prepared to fire, but Matthieu sliced the gun in half with the sword. "Monomolecular-thick cutting edge," Matthieu observed about the sword as he locked eyes with Blade. "Very effective. It'll cut through you just as easily as it'll cut through anything else."
Unimpressed, Blade held up the bloodied dagger he'd used to penetrate the guard's brain. "We'll see."
"There are more guards where that came from."
"No, there aren't. All the human ones have gone home for the night, and this is the last of the vampiric ones."
"All of them?"
Blade nodded. "It's just you and me now."
Matthieu chuckled as he held his ground. "So be it. I can see it now ... the legendary Blade ... carved into pieces with his own katana. And no tiny little dagger is going to prevent that. Your other sword is still on the roof. Think you'll be fast enough to pull another sword?"
Blade threw his dagger at Matthieu's head with minimal movement.
Matthieu deflected it with a flick of the sword. "Now what're you going to do?"
Two seconds later, Matthieu Talbot -- head of Stark-Fujikawa's corporate branch in Dallas, Texas -- fell to the floor, with Blade's katana impaled through his heart. "How...?"
Blade simply smiled as the vampire's heart and lungs burned in a fire that spread to his entire body.
A scream behind him caught his attention, and turned just in time to see the naked, tattooed woman -- all one-hundred pounds of her -- launch herself at him and attempt to claw his eyes out. "You killed him! He was going to make me immortal! He was going to--"
Annoyed, Blade grabbed her wrists and shoved the pink-haired woman off of him. It took some effort; her strength rivaled a vampire's. "I saved you from him."
"Saved me?!" she howled, swinging thin fists at him. "I was going to live forever! Now I'll only live a hundred more years at most!"
"If you had become a vampire," Blade replied as he blocked her punches, "I guarantee you wouldn't have lived another night."
The woman just kept raining punches.
***
"You gotta be kiddin' me," VJ Daywalker exclaimed, chuckling once Blade -- formerly the bounty hunter known as Chen -- had recounted the evening's events. "You got your ass kicked by a girl? A naked girl?"
Frowning, the Chen hung up his sword harness and removed his crimson armored chestpiece. "Those were not my words."
Daywalker shrugged as he reclined in a chair, his legs draped over one of its arms. "No, but that's the main feed of that story, man."
"The main idea was, I located and slew that den of vampires and its leader."
"But you got beat on. By some chick."
"She was one of his thralls, on the eve of becoming one of them. She was human, but her strength was comparable to a vampire's."
"So why didn't you kill her? Was it 'cause she was hot?"
Chen avoided his gaze. "I ... just didn't have the heart."
Daywalker sat up. "You serious? Dude, c'mon, you're supposed to be Ruthless McBadass, or somethin’!"
"Am I supposed to lack compassion?"
"Well no, but gettin' slapped around is just gonna ruin your cred. How're you gonna strike fear into the hearts of vampires everywhere when they find this out?"
Chen scowled and turned away. "That is none of your concern."
The video jockey stood up from the chair and followed him. "You could've at least banged the chick! Spoils of war, and all that!"
"You're disgusting."
"Can I bang her, then?"
Chen stopped and turned to him. "What?"
"If she's still alive, and she's still naked, then why not?" Daywalker turned on his heel and headed toward the exit door. "I'm gonna go see if I can get some. Maybe she's on the rebound."
Chen shook his head and waved a dismissive hand. "Do whatever you want.”
“Well, I would,” Daywalker admitted, “but the sun’s about to rise, and I do mornings about as well as you do.”
“So be it. Regardless, I'm going to meditate." Their current base of operations was Daywalker’s giant RV that served as his touring bus when he took his video jockey services on the road. These days, it stored Blade’s vast arsenal of vampire-slaying weaponry. There was very little space left for him to meditate, but it was important for him to be able to achieve a zenlike state of existence. Without it, he feared he would give into the vampiric bloodthirst that gnawed away at his body.
It had been bad enough that he’d been turned into a vampire months ago, and that the Alucard Corporation had forced him to serve as one of its privately-owned warriors. But when Alucard’s CEO, Claymore Valentine, had starved Chen of blood for a week and manipulated him into feeding on his daughter Xu that had been the last straw. Chen had rebelled against Valentine, renamed himself Blade – after the legendary twentieth-century hunter – and dedicated his life to a war against every other vampire he could find. He adamantly refused to become one of them, refused to ever feed on the blood of another human being. His vow was becoming harder to live up to with each passing night.
He closed his eyes, letting his mind relax. Images flashed through his consciousness. He saw flashes of his childhood and his parents. He saw flashes of his training in the martial arts. Flashes of his wife Rin, gentle and beautiful. Flashes of his daughter Xu, spirited and cheerful. Even flashes of himself through his daughter’s eyes, which he still found strange.
Flashes of his daughter’s death at his own fangs.
“Hey, Blade?” Daywalker called after him.
Chen snapped out of his meditation, irate. “What is it now?”
“Looks like we’ve got company.”
Standing up quickly, Chen grabbed his sword harness and wrapped its belt around himself. He gripped the handle of his sword as he approached the door leading outside the RV, warily extending his vampiric senses to determine what kind of company Daywalker was referring to. He could hear two heartbeats: the frantic one belonged to Daywalker; the other was much calmer. He could also hear his friend and the stranger exchanging words … and the latter’s voice revealed he wasn’t actually a stranger after all.
Chen opened the door, stepping outside of the RV, with his hand still clutching the handle of his katana. <You>, he spoke in Japanese.
<I see you remember me, Minamoto-san,> the visitor replied, turning to him. He was a Japanese man who wore silvery metal armor over a baggy dark blue uniform. Both the armor and the uniform were adorned with corporate logos identifying his allegiance to Stark-Fujikawa. He was the corporation’s elite samurai, the Specialist.
<Of course I remember you, Ikegami-san,> Chen replied. <Much has happened since our youth, but I am the man you knew. I have not forgotten my brother-in-arms.>
<Okay, look,> VJ Daywalker interjected, also in Japanese. Surprisingly, his American accent was almost completely absent. <I’m not as ignorant as I look. I mean, three of my ex-girlfriends were Japanese, and I’ve been going to raves in Chiba City and Kyoto for years. So I’m fluent in Nihongo, and I know everything you two are saying. So can ya please show a little respect and speak some English while you’re around my RV? I don’t wanna feel like you two’re trying to talk over my head.>
“My apologies,” the Specialist, Ikegami, answered in English with a bow. “I merely have business with your esteemed partner.”
“Any biz you have with him can be done with me standin’ here.”
Chen shot Daywalker a glance. “Regrettably, this is a private matter.”
Daywalker shrugged. “Then I’m packin’ up my rig and pulling outta here while you two sort things out.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Chen replied. “But I believe I will take a walk with my old friend, to catch up on old times.”
“We will speak in English,” Ikegami asserted. “I would like to practice.”
“Uh, the sun’s comin’ up,” Daywalker pointed out.
Chen smiled. “Then we will keep to the shade.”
***
“I still have difficulty thinking of you as ‘Chen’,” Ikegami Satoru admitted minutes later as the two walked through a park. Luckily it was early enough in the day that they had plenty of long shadows to keep Chen out of the sun. “To me, you will always be Minamoto Jin.”
Chen chuckled as he shifted the pair of sunglasses that protected his eyes from the sunlight.. “To be fair, I do miss that name. But that was a lifetime ago.” He paused as they walked, thinking back on the past. “How long has it been for us since our youth, training in the art of samurai? For the honor of becoming Stark-Fujikawa’s Specialist.”
“Far too long. We were the … best of them, weren’t we? The top students in a competitive school, all with the same dream. In the end, that fate was decided for us.”
Chen nodded gravely. “When it was discovered that my great-grandmother was of Chinese descent.”
“I never agreed with that rule … that only those with pure Japanese bloodlines may earn the title of Specialist. Your expulsion was … unjustified; you’d had no knowledge of your mixed heritage, or the fact that your records had been falsified to cover it up.”
“What’s done is done.”
“It is still—“
“It is done, Satoru-kun. It is past. I had spent my entire life training for that path in life; as a result, was left without a direction. I changed my name to Chen in order to embrace the Chinese heritage which my masters had shunned, and I became a bounty hunter to support myself and my eventual family. In the end, my expulsion led to a better life.”
Ikegami nodded. “Yes. I have kept tabs of you in the years since you’d left the dojo. I have kept myself informed of your life’s progress, and I deeply regret that we could not have continued to train together, or that I was not able to meet your wife or daughter.”
“If you’ve kept tabs on me,” Blade began, returning the conversation to the topic at hand, “then you know what has happened to my family.”
“Yes. Your wife Rin, and your daughter, Xu. Both gone long before their time. Especially your daughter.” He paused. “Forgive me if this is a sore subject.”
Chen waved a dismissive hand. “It’s all right. There was a time when no topic under the sun was off-limits for us. But I’m certain that’s why you’re here in the first place.” Turning to Ikegami, he commented, “after all, it has been a rather … unfortunate year for Specialists. There was Inoue-san, who committed seppuku at Fujikawa-sama’s behest for his failure to defeat the Moon Knight. Before him, there was Takahashi-san, whose throat was cut months ago by the Spider-Man.”
A faint smile crossed Ikegami’s face. “I see you have stayed informed of the Specialists’ affairs as well, Minamoto-san.”
“Of course. I have been anticipating the day when you would take your rightful place as Fujikawa samurai. Further, I have looked forward to the day when our paths would cross again. It seems that day has come.”
“It has indeed. You have attacked and slain a Stark-Fujikawa executive. True, you have ultimately done the corporation a favor by ridding us of … vampire infestation … but now you have been identified as the same man who was once expelled as a samurai initiate.”
“Word of mouth has spread about my exploits,” Chen reasoned. “It was only a matter of time before they made the connection.”
Ikegami stopped walking. His jaw was clenched. “You are a vampire now, Minamoto-san. Before, they were content to allow you to live out your days as a hired sword, so long as your interests did not conflict with Stark-Fujikawa’s. Now, you are an unknown quantity … a potentially dangerous one that must be removed from the equation.”
“So they have sent you to do the honors.”
“No. It is much worse than that. The Hand have been sent to slay you.”
“Who are the Hand?”
“A clan of ninja assassins. Fujikawa-sama bought them out late last year, and he has used them for … clandestine killings ever since.”
“Then why are you here?”
“The ninja are honorless dogs. Death by their hands is a fate unbefitting a samurai … even an exiled ronin like yourself.”
Chen flashed his fangs. “Vampirism is no better, I would think.”
Ikegami nodded. “Perhaps. That is what I have come to find out. I wish to challenge you to a duel. I wish to determine for myself whether or not you still possess samurai honor.”
“Are your superiors aware of this?”
“They are not. I act without their consent or knowledge.”
“Then they will kill you for your disobedience.”
“So be it. One way or another, I will not live to see another day. But I will die knowing I have followed my conscience. I will die having followed your example.”
Chen’s brow furrowed. “How do you know I won’t simply bite your neck and make you immortal?”
Ikegami gripped the handle of his sword, preparing to draw it. “As I said, Jin-san: I have been keeping an eye on you.”
Chen’s fingers wrapped around the handle of his own katana. He held Ikegami’s gaze.
The two samurai shifted their positions to bring themselves within striking distance, but neither moved beyond that. Each studied the other. Each waited for the other to make the first move.
“Hey, are you guys gonna have a duel?” VJ Daywalker interrupted, nearly out of breath as he ran up to them.
Chen and Ikegami glared at the video jockey. “I said, this was a private matter.”
“Yeah, but c’mon, Blade! Two samurai goin’ at it, swords clashin’! He glanced at the two of them. “I … ruined that moment you two were having, didn’t I?
Chen frowned, relaxing his grip on his sword. “Whatever could have given you that idea?”
Daywalker put his hands up in a placating manner. “Okay, okay! I’ll just … be over here, an’ you two can go back to your sword fight to the death … or dismemberment of whatever … an’ you won’t hear a word out of me….”
“You’re still talking,” Chen pointed out, casting pointed glances at Ikegami to ensure that he wouldn’t disembowel Daywalker for the intrusion. “Furthermore, I thought you detested mornings?”
“I kinda figured it’s worth staying up past sunrise to see!”
“In that case, be silent,” Ikegami ordered through gritted teeth.
Okay, okay,” Daywalker relented. “File received. I’m zippin’ my lip, to use a twencen – HEY!” He flinched as he saw Ikegami leaping for him anyway, thrusting forward with his blade.
“Daywalker!” Blade shouted as he saw that Ikegami’s target had not been Daywalker, but rather a ninja assassin garbed in blood red who’d crept up on him from behind.
The Hand ninja gurgled as Ikegami removed the blade which he’d pierced through the ninja’s neck. By the time the ninja slumped to the ground, spraying blood everywhere, six more ninja emerged from hiding, while Daywalker hid in a row of bushes.
“I believe this means our duel will have to be postponed,” Chen commented as he studied the ninja with intense eyes.
“It will at that,” Ikegami answered as he blocked two sword slashes with his own blade. “But it seems our duel was sufficient to draw the Hand from hiding.” He attempted to behead both ninja with a single slice, but they proved to be elusive, slipping out of range like a curtain being blown by a moderate breeze.
Chen felt one chain wrap around his neck, and the other wrap around the forearm of the hand holding his sword. Two ninja were standing outside the shade, attempting to tug Chen out into the sunlight. Clearly, they knew this was fatal to vampires.
Opting to use his vampiric strength, Blade pulled back on the chains with all of his might, tugging them off their feet and toward him. Unfortunately, they both turned their forward momentum into flying kicks to the chest that sent Blade reeling backward from the impact. He found himself rolling toward another patch of sunlit concrete, so he unfolded from his rolling posture and adopted a crouching stance mere inches from it.
The chains were still around Chen’s wrists, so the two ninjas each pressed a button on the chains. Electricity surged through the chains into Chen’s body, and the vampire convulsed from the voltage. Coming to his senses a moment later, Chen found that they had wrapped both chains around them, and they were moving in for the kill, swords aimed at his heart.
“Jin!” Ikegami shouted, using Chen’s Japanese name. Like a force of nature, he battled his way through four of the Hand ninja on his way to the pair who were about to assassinate his best friend.
He was too late. Two gunshots rang out, drilling the pair of ninja through the backs of their heads. The two of them dropped to the ground, as both Ikegami and Chen glanced over to the bushes. Daywalker emerged from his hiding place, spinning his pistol on his index finger like a gunslinger and looking pleased with himself.
Clouds of smoke began to issue from the robes of the downed assassins, whose flesh began to dissolve. It wasn’t quite like the spontaneous combustion of a vampire being staked or exposed to sunlight, but the ninjas’ bodies were being consumed all the same. “Ikegami-san,” Chen said. “What … is happening?”
“Their outfits secrete a lethal chemical into their skin when they are defeated,” Ikegami replied, walking toward Chen as the cloud spread. “Once in their bloodstream, the chemicals dissolve their bodies to leave nothing for interrogation or autopsies. Truly a dishonorable way to perish.”
But as Ikegami reached them, one of the fallen ninja behind him emerged from the smoke cloud, apparently having not yet been defeated. He aimed a forearm-mounted crossbow at the back of Ikegami’s neck, preparing to fire. Seeing the movement, Blade struggled to free himself from the chains encircling him. “Satoru!”
Too late. The crossbow dart had been fired, and it struck Ikegami in the back of his neck. Ikegami felt the dart and attempted to pull it out, but he began to lose his balance as poison filled his bloodstream. Turning around, he sliced at the ninja with his sword, but his speed was greatly diminished. The ninja evaded the sluggish attack, slipped around to Ikegami’s back, then readied his shortsword.
Free of the chains, Chen tried to reach them, but Ikegami and the ninja stood in the sunlight. Chen could only watch as the ninja impaled Ikegami from behind.
Summoning a burst of strength and clarity, Ikegami reversed his grip on his katana and thrust it behind him at the ninja. The ninja was unable to evade in time, and the blade punched straight through his ribcage and out his back. Smoke billowed from the ninja’s robes.
Breathing blood-soaked breaths, Ikegami crawled from the sunlight into the shadowed area, where Chen was waiting. “Minamoto-san … Chen,” he wheezed, “it appears we will not … have that final duel … after all. But I wish for you to grant your old friend … one last request.”
Chen, crouched by his side, nodded in understanding. “It will be done, Ikegami-san.” Grasping the sword that he’d discarded in his struggle with the Hand, Chen stood up. Raising the katana, he quickly brought it down and beheaded Ikegami with a decisive stroke, ending the Specialist’s suffering.
<Farewell, old friend,> Chen whispered in Japanese. <You were a noble samurai to the end. May you find peace in the next life.>
After a few moments, he glanced around, seeing that the shadows were growing shorter with each passing moment. “It appears I will be unable to return to the RV without burning up.”
“I got you covered, man,” Daywalker replied, taking off his long coat and tossing it to Chen, who was only clad from the waist down.
Once Chen had wrapped the coat around his upper body like a shroud, the two men walked from the park to Daywalker’s RV. “So … sorry ‘bout your buddy. Seemed like a jagged guy.”
Chen frowned. “He was, at that.”
“You two were close, huh?”
“We were brothers-in-arms. But it seems now that I am a vampire, I have been given the immortal’s curse: to outlive everyone I’ve ever known.”
Daywalker snickered, trying to lighten the mood. “Yeah, right. I plan on living forever. Somebody’s gotta be around to annoy the shock outta you, right?”
Chen smiled. “Something to look forward to.”
***
END
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The woman had short pink hair, and she gazed up at him with adoring brown eyes. Her skin was decorated with a variety of body art -- some were old-fashioned needle-and-ink, while others had been applied with lenticular paint, and their colors and shapes changed and seemed to move depending on lighting and viewing angle.
Flickering candles surrounded them in the darkened room, and he whispered to her in an affectionate voice. "You have served me well for decades. In return, I have preserved your youth and beauty, and given you a taste of my immortal power. Tonight, the ceremony will be complete, and at last you will experience not a taste, but the full feast. Tonight you will become ... a vampire."
As she lay on the long table, she leaned her head to the side and exposed her neck to him, and he lowered his fangs to her throbbing jugular. His breath was hot on her neck as he prepared to sink his teeth into--
The skylight above them shattered, raining down glass shards and a security guard, who knocked over several candles upon landing. The woman screamed and crawled out from under her vampire master. Hopping off of the table, she sought shelter in one corner of the conference room.
"Dammit!" Matthieu the vampire shouted, rising to his feet and towering over the guard. "Can't you see I'm in a meeting?"
Then he saw that the guard had a samurai sword impaled through his heart. As the guard was a vampire as well, his body was being incinerated from the inside out.
Glancing up through the skylight, he glimpsed three more figures fighting on the rooftop, and he pulled the sword out of the guard's corpse.
The fire from the candles spread across the carpeted floor, and the flames on the table mingled with the ashes of the impaled vampire guard. The bright, flickering fire illuminated the fighting figures -- two more guards and an Asian man wielding another sword that sliced one of the guards in half. The Asian man was by now infamous in the vampire community; it was Blade, a vampire who had taken it upon himself to slay every other creature of the night.
Matthieu cursed in an ancient language and shouted to the conference room's computer, "reactivate sprinkler system!" He'd deactivated it earlier it so that he could light the candles for the ceremony. Now, he clutched his sword and adopted a defensive stance. He took a step backward, toward his female consort. He felt a bit protective toward her, considering she was in his thrall; she was his property.
The remaining guard on the roof tackled Blade, causing the vampire hunter to lose his sword and sending the both of them into the burning room through the jagged hole in the skylight. They managed to miss the table, and instead crashed to the floor as the sprinkler system extinguished the last of the flames. The burly guard managed to land on top, and he used this advantage to pummel Blade about the head and neck area.
The guard failed to notice Blade removing his pistol from his leg holster and raising it to the guard's temple. The pistol beeped as the safety was taken off of it, and the alerted guard grabbed Blade's wrist and held the gun away from him.
Blade drove the small dagger in his other hand through the soft flesh under the guard's chin, and straight into his brain. Rolling the guard off of him, Blade held the pistol to the man's chest and fired a bullet into his heart.
Turning to face Matthieu, Blade pointed the pistol and prepared to fire, but Matthieu sliced the gun in half with the sword. "Monomolecular-thick cutting edge," Matthieu observed about the sword as he locked eyes with Blade. "Very effective. It'll cut through you just as easily as it'll cut through anything else."
Unimpressed, Blade held up the bloodied dagger he'd used to penetrate the guard's brain. "We'll see."
"There are more guards where that came from."
"No, there aren't. All the human ones have gone home for the night, and this is the last of the vampiric ones."
"All of them?"
Blade nodded. "It's just you and me now."
Matthieu chuckled as he held his ground. "So be it. I can see it now ... the legendary Blade ... carved into pieces with his own katana. And no tiny little dagger is going to prevent that. Your other sword is still on the roof. Think you'll be fast enough to pull another sword?"
Blade threw his dagger at Matthieu's head with minimal movement.
Matthieu deflected it with a flick of the sword. "Now what're you going to do?"
Two seconds later, Matthieu Talbot -- head of Stark-Fujikawa's corporate branch in Dallas, Texas -- fell to the floor, with Blade's katana impaled through his heart. "How...?"
Blade simply smiled as the vampire's heart and lungs burned in a fire that spread to his entire body.
A scream behind him caught his attention, and turned just in time to see the naked, tattooed woman -- all one-hundred pounds of her -- launch herself at him and attempt to claw his eyes out. "You killed him! He was going to make me immortal! He was going to--"
Annoyed, Blade grabbed her wrists and shoved the pink-haired woman off of him. It took some effort; her strength rivaled a vampire's. "I saved you from him."
"Saved me?!" she howled, swinging thin fists at him. "I was going to live forever! Now I'll only live a hundred more years at most!"
"If you had become a vampire," Blade replied as he blocked her punches, "I guarantee you wouldn't have lived another night."
The woman just kept raining punches.
***
"You gotta be kiddin' me," VJ Daywalker exclaimed, chuckling once Blade -- formerly the bounty hunter known as Chen -- had recounted the evening's events. "You got your ass kicked by a girl? A naked girl?"
Frowning, the Chen hung up his sword harness and removed his crimson armored chestpiece. "Those were not my words."
Daywalker shrugged as he reclined in a chair, his legs draped over one of its arms. "No, but that's the main feed of that story, man."
"The main idea was, I located and slew that den of vampires and its leader."
"But you got beat on. By some chick."
"She was one of his thralls, on the eve of becoming one of them. She was human, but her strength was comparable to a vampire's."
"So why didn't you kill her? Was it 'cause she was hot?"
Chen avoided his gaze. "I ... just didn't have the heart."
Daywalker sat up. "You serious? Dude, c'mon, you're supposed to be Ruthless McBadass, or somethin’!"
"Am I supposed to lack compassion?"
"Well no, but gettin' slapped around is just gonna ruin your cred. How're you gonna strike fear into the hearts of vampires everywhere when they find this out?"
Chen scowled and turned away. "That is none of your concern."
The video jockey stood up from the chair and followed him. "You could've at least banged the chick! Spoils of war, and all that!"
"You're disgusting."
"Can I bang her, then?"
Chen stopped and turned to him. "What?"
"If she's still alive, and she's still naked, then why not?" Daywalker turned on his heel and headed toward the exit door. "I'm gonna go see if I can get some. Maybe she's on the rebound."
Chen shook his head and waved a dismissive hand. "Do whatever you want.”
“Well, I would,” Daywalker admitted, “but the sun’s about to rise, and I do mornings about as well as you do.”
“So be it. Regardless, I'm going to meditate." Their current base of operations was Daywalker’s giant RV that served as his touring bus when he took his video jockey services on the road. These days, it stored Blade’s vast arsenal of vampire-slaying weaponry. There was very little space left for him to meditate, but it was important for him to be able to achieve a zenlike state of existence. Without it, he feared he would give into the vampiric bloodthirst that gnawed away at his body.
It had been bad enough that he’d been turned into a vampire months ago, and that the Alucard Corporation had forced him to serve as one of its privately-owned warriors. But when Alucard’s CEO, Claymore Valentine, had starved Chen of blood for a week and manipulated him into feeding on his daughter Xu that had been the last straw. Chen had rebelled against Valentine, renamed himself Blade – after the legendary twentieth-century hunter – and dedicated his life to a war against every other vampire he could find. He adamantly refused to become one of them, refused to ever feed on the blood of another human being. His vow was becoming harder to live up to with each passing night.
He closed his eyes, letting his mind relax. Images flashed through his consciousness. He saw flashes of his childhood and his parents. He saw flashes of his training in the martial arts. Flashes of his wife Rin, gentle and beautiful. Flashes of his daughter Xu, spirited and cheerful. Even flashes of himself through his daughter’s eyes, which he still found strange.
Flashes of his daughter’s death at his own fangs.
“Hey, Blade?” Daywalker called after him.
Chen snapped out of his meditation, irate. “What is it now?”
“Looks like we’ve got company.”
Standing up quickly, Chen grabbed his sword harness and wrapped its belt around himself. He gripped the handle of his sword as he approached the door leading outside the RV, warily extending his vampiric senses to determine what kind of company Daywalker was referring to. He could hear two heartbeats: the frantic one belonged to Daywalker; the other was much calmer. He could also hear his friend and the stranger exchanging words … and the latter’s voice revealed he wasn’t actually a stranger after all.
Chen opened the door, stepping outside of the RV, with his hand still clutching the handle of his katana. <You>, he spoke in Japanese.
<I see you remember me, Minamoto-san,> the visitor replied, turning to him. He was a Japanese man who wore silvery metal armor over a baggy dark blue uniform. Both the armor and the uniform were adorned with corporate logos identifying his allegiance to Stark-Fujikawa. He was the corporation’s elite samurai, the Specialist.
<Of course I remember you, Ikegami-san,> Chen replied. <Much has happened since our youth, but I am the man you knew. I have not forgotten my brother-in-arms.>
<Okay, look,> VJ Daywalker interjected, also in Japanese. Surprisingly, his American accent was almost completely absent. <I’m not as ignorant as I look. I mean, three of my ex-girlfriends were Japanese, and I’ve been going to raves in Chiba City and Kyoto for years. So I’m fluent in Nihongo, and I know everything you two are saying. So can ya please show a little respect and speak some English while you’re around my RV? I don’t wanna feel like you two’re trying to talk over my head.>
“My apologies,” the Specialist, Ikegami, answered in English with a bow. “I merely have business with your esteemed partner.”
“Any biz you have with him can be done with me standin’ here.”
Chen shot Daywalker a glance. “Regrettably, this is a private matter.”
Daywalker shrugged. “Then I’m packin’ up my rig and pulling outta here while you two sort things out.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Chen replied. “But I believe I will take a walk with my old friend, to catch up on old times.”
“We will speak in English,” Ikegami asserted. “I would like to practice.”
“Uh, the sun’s comin’ up,” Daywalker pointed out.
Chen smiled. “Then we will keep to the shade.”
***
“I still have difficulty thinking of you as ‘Chen’,” Ikegami Satoru admitted minutes later as the two walked through a park. Luckily it was early enough in the day that they had plenty of long shadows to keep Chen out of the sun. “To me, you will always be Minamoto Jin.”
Chen chuckled as he shifted the pair of sunglasses that protected his eyes from the sunlight.. “To be fair, I do miss that name. But that was a lifetime ago.” He paused as they walked, thinking back on the past. “How long has it been for us since our youth, training in the art of samurai? For the honor of becoming Stark-Fujikawa’s Specialist.”
“Far too long. We were the … best of them, weren’t we? The top students in a competitive school, all with the same dream. In the end, that fate was decided for us.”
Chen nodded gravely. “When it was discovered that my great-grandmother was of Chinese descent.”
“I never agreed with that rule … that only those with pure Japanese bloodlines may earn the title of Specialist. Your expulsion was … unjustified; you’d had no knowledge of your mixed heritage, or the fact that your records had been falsified to cover it up.”
“What’s done is done.”
“It is still—“
“It is done, Satoru-kun. It is past. I had spent my entire life training for that path in life; as a result, was left without a direction. I changed my name to Chen in order to embrace the Chinese heritage which my masters had shunned, and I became a bounty hunter to support myself and my eventual family. In the end, my expulsion led to a better life.”
Ikegami nodded. “Yes. I have kept tabs of you in the years since you’d left the dojo. I have kept myself informed of your life’s progress, and I deeply regret that we could not have continued to train together, or that I was not able to meet your wife or daughter.”
“If you’ve kept tabs on me,” Blade began, returning the conversation to the topic at hand, “then you know what has happened to my family.”
“Yes. Your wife Rin, and your daughter, Xu. Both gone long before their time. Especially your daughter.” He paused. “Forgive me if this is a sore subject.”
Chen waved a dismissive hand. “It’s all right. There was a time when no topic under the sun was off-limits for us. But I’m certain that’s why you’re here in the first place.” Turning to Ikegami, he commented, “after all, it has been a rather … unfortunate year for Specialists. There was Inoue-san, who committed seppuku at Fujikawa-sama’s behest for his failure to defeat the Moon Knight. Before him, there was Takahashi-san, whose throat was cut months ago by the Spider-Man.”
A faint smile crossed Ikegami’s face. “I see you have stayed informed of the Specialists’ affairs as well, Minamoto-san.”
“Of course. I have been anticipating the day when you would take your rightful place as Fujikawa samurai. Further, I have looked forward to the day when our paths would cross again. It seems that day has come.”
“It has indeed. You have attacked and slain a Stark-Fujikawa executive. True, you have ultimately done the corporation a favor by ridding us of … vampire infestation … but now you have been identified as the same man who was once expelled as a samurai initiate.”
“Word of mouth has spread about my exploits,” Chen reasoned. “It was only a matter of time before they made the connection.”
Ikegami stopped walking. His jaw was clenched. “You are a vampire now, Minamoto-san. Before, they were content to allow you to live out your days as a hired sword, so long as your interests did not conflict with Stark-Fujikawa’s. Now, you are an unknown quantity … a potentially dangerous one that must be removed from the equation.”
“So they have sent you to do the honors.”
“No. It is much worse than that. The Hand have been sent to slay you.”
“Who are the Hand?”
“A clan of ninja assassins. Fujikawa-sama bought them out late last year, and he has used them for … clandestine killings ever since.”
“Then why are you here?”
“The ninja are honorless dogs. Death by their hands is a fate unbefitting a samurai … even an exiled ronin like yourself.”
Chen flashed his fangs. “Vampirism is no better, I would think.”
Ikegami nodded. “Perhaps. That is what I have come to find out. I wish to challenge you to a duel. I wish to determine for myself whether or not you still possess samurai honor.”
“Are your superiors aware of this?”
“They are not. I act without their consent or knowledge.”
“Then they will kill you for your disobedience.”
“So be it. One way or another, I will not live to see another day. But I will die knowing I have followed my conscience. I will die having followed your example.”
Chen’s brow furrowed. “How do you know I won’t simply bite your neck and make you immortal?”
Ikegami gripped the handle of his sword, preparing to draw it. “As I said, Jin-san: I have been keeping an eye on you.”
Chen’s fingers wrapped around the handle of his own katana. He held Ikegami’s gaze.
The two samurai shifted their positions to bring themselves within striking distance, but neither moved beyond that. Each studied the other. Each waited for the other to make the first move.
“Hey, are you guys gonna have a duel?” VJ Daywalker interrupted, nearly out of breath as he ran up to them.
Chen and Ikegami glared at the video jockey. “I said, this was a private matter.”
“Yeah, but c’mon, Blade! Two samurai goin’ at it, swords clashin’! He glanced at the two of them. “I … ruined that moment you two were having, didn’t I?
Chen frowned, relaxing his grip on his sword. “Whatever could have given you that idea?”
Daywalker put his hands up in a placating manner. “Okay, okay! I’ll just … be over here, an’ you two can go back to your sword fight to the death … or dismemberment of whatever … an’ you won’t hear a word out of me….”
“You’re still talking,” Chen pointed out, casting pointed glances at Ikegami to ensure that he wouldn’t disembowel Daywalker for the intrusion. “Furthermore, I thought you detested mornings?”
“I kinda figured it’s worth staying up past sunrise to see!”
“In that case, be silent,” Ikegami ordered through gritted teeth.
Okay, okay,” Daywalker relented. “File received. I’m zippin’ my lip, to use a twencen – HEY!” He flinched as he saw Ikegami leaping for him anyway, thrusting forward with his blade.
“Daywalker!” Blade shouted as he saw that Ikegami’s target had not been Daywalker, but rather a ninja assassin garbed in blood red who’d crept up on him from behind.
The Hand ninja gurgled as Ikegami removed the blade which he’d pierced through the ninja’s neck. By the time the ninja slumped to the ground, spraying blood everywhere, six more ninja emerged from hiding, while Daywalker hid in a row of bushes.
“I believe this means our duel will have to be postponed,” Chen commented as he studied the ninja with intense eyes.
“It will at that,” Ikegami answered as he blocked two sword slashes with his own blade. “But it seems our duel was sufficient to draw the Hand from hiding.” He attempted to behead both ninja with a single slice, but they proved to be elusive, slipping out of range like a curtain being blown by a moderate breeze.
Chen felt one chain wrap around his neck, and the other wrap around the forearm of the hand holding his sword. Two ninja were standing outside the shade, attempting to tug Chen out into the sunlight. Clearly, they knew this was fatal to vampires.
Opting to use his vampiric strength, Blade pulled back on the chains with all of his might, tugging them off their feet and toward him. Unfortunately, they both turned their forward momentum into flying kicks to the chest that sent Blade reeling backward from the impact. He found himself rolling toward another patch of sunlit concrete, so he unfolded from his rolling posture and adopted a crouching stance mere inches from it.
The chains were still around Chen’s wrists, so the two ninjas each pressed a button on the chains. Electricity surged through the chains into Chen’s body, and the vampire convulsed from the voltage. Coming to his senses a moment later, Chen found that they had wrapped both chains around them, and they were moving in for the kill, swords aimed at his heart.
“Jin!” Ikegami shouted, using Chen’s Japanese name. Like a force of nature, he battled his way through four of the Hand ninja on his way to the pair who were about to assassinate his best friend.
He was too late. Two gunshots rang out, drilling the pair of ninja through the backs of their heads. The two of them dropped to the ground, as both Ikegami and Chen glanced over to the bushes. Daywalker emerged from his hiding place, spinning his pistol on his index finger like a gunslinger and looking pleased with himself.
Clouds of smoke began to issue from the robes of the downed assassins, whose flesh began to dissolve. It wasn’t quite like the spontaneous combustion of a vampire being staked or exposed to sunlight, but the ninjas’ bodies were being consumed all the same. “Ikegami-san,” Chen said. “What … is happening?”
“Their outfits secrete a lethal chemical into their skin when they are defeated,” Ikegami replied, walking toward Chen as the cloud spread. “Once in their bloodstream, the chemicals dissolve their bodies to leave nothing for interrogation or autopsies. Truly a dishonorable way to perish.”
But as Ikegami reached them, one of the fallen ninja behind him emerged from the smoke cloud, apparently having not yet been defeated. He aimed a forearm-mounted crossbow at the back of Ikegami’s neck, preparing to fire. Seeing the movement, Blade struggled to free himself from the chains encircling him. “Satoru!”
Too late. The crossbow dart had been fired, and it struck Ikegami in the back of his neck. Ikegami felt the dart and attempted to pull it out, but he began to lose his balance as poison filled his bloodstream. Turning around, he sliced at the ninja with his sword, but his speed was greatly diminished. The ninja evaded the sluggish attack, slipped around to Ikegami’s back, then readied his shortsword.
Free of the chains, Chen tried to reach them, but Ikegami and the ninja stood in the sunlight. Chen could only watch as the ninja impaled Ikegami from behind.
Summoning a burst of strength and clarity, Ikegami reversed his grip on his katana and thrust it behind him at the ninja. The ninja was unable to evade in time, and the blade punched straight through his ribcage and out his back. Smoke billowed from the ninja’s robes.
Breathing blood-soaked breaths, Ikegami crawled from the sunlight into the shadowed area, where Chen was waiting. “Minamoto-san … Chen,” he wheezed, “it appears we will not … have that final duel … after all. But I wish for you to grant your old friend … one last request.”
Chen, crouched by his side, nodded in understanding. “It will be done, Ikegami-san.” Grasping the sword that he’d discarded in his struggle with the Hand, Chen stood up. Raising the katana, he quickly brought it down and beheaded Ikegami with a decisive stroke, ending the Specialist’s suffering.
<Farewell, old friend,> Chen whispered in Japanese. <You were a noble samurai to the end. May you find peace in the next life.>
After a few moments, he glanced around, seeing that the shadows were growing shorter with each passing moment. “It appears I will be unable to return to the RV without burning up.”
“I got you covered, man,” Daywalker replied, taking off his long coat and tossing it to Chen, who was only clad from the waist down.
Once Chen had wrapped the coat around his upper body like a shroud, the two men walked from the park to Daywalker’s RV. “So … sorry ‘bout your buddy. Seemed like a jagged guy.”
Chen frowned. “He was, at that.”
“You two were close, huh?”
“We were brothers-in-arms. But it seems now that I am a vampire, I have been given the immortal’s curse: to outlive everyone I’ve ever known.”
Daywalker snickered, trying to lighten the mood. “Yeah, right. I plan on living forever. Somebody’s gotta be around to annoy the shock outta you, right?”
Chen smiled. “Something to look forward to.”
***
END
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