Storythread

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Rikugun-Shoi Fukui Aya leaned against the wall, exhausted and boiling in his bones.

"Spirits be damned..." Someone muttered below him. "How long are they gonna be at it?"

Aya took a bit to remember that Taisa Sayuri was trying to assault the bell tower. The irregular, staccato crashes and bangs of a chokepoint battle had long since faded to background noise.

"Fukui-sama. Shouldn't we be going in after them?" Sako(Aya remembered, dimly, he'd never given a family name) was nervously bouncing back and forth on his heels. He seemed to be the only man in the courtyard with the energy to stand. "It's not like they'll try attacking this way again."

"Taisa's orders, Sako. Not like he can stuff us in there, he's got little enough room to manuaver as is." He thought a bit more. Then he grinned nastily. "Besides-"

The double doors banged open. He launched himself to his feet, drawing his sword with a panicky speed.

Then he saw who he was drawing on.

"-SIR!" He re-sheathed the sword, bringing himself to attention. Behind him, armor clanked and clunked as his troops did likewise.
The Demon Samurai, Kashiko, walked through those doors with heavy footfalls. His right hand hung, seemingly unconcerned, though his left was brushing his katana's sheath. His honor guard scanned the compound from behind him with matchlocks.
Aya was acutely aware that he was glaring at him as the black armored samurai ground to a halt.

"Well." He grumbled, after stretching the pause out just long enough to make Aya sweat, "I trust you have an adequate explanation of why you attempted to draw your sword on me?"

"Sir!" Aya had to blink, multiple times, under the furnace heat of that glare. The sweat pooling over his eyes wasn't helping. "I mistook your entry for another Rebel assault, sir!"

"And you did not post sentries to forewarn of my arrival? Or, more to the point, to forewarn of more such assaults?"

(Forgot my name)

Aya nodded his head towards the stretch of wall beside the gate. Three bodies with the white masks laid dead-with arrows in their backs. "I did, but they kept getting shot dead. Sir, they've got an curst good archer-or several- up in that bell tower behind me. We'd have had it cleared before your arrival, but there's close to fifty of 'em barricaded on the ground floor."

"And so you stayed here as a rearguard while your betters moved to assault the bell tower." Despite the bite of the comment, the glare seemed to cool to a less infernal heat. His hand had stopped caressing his katana and now hung down over the sheath.

"I did, Sir. On Taisa Sayuri's orders." Seeing that the Samurai wasn't about to kill him today, he decided to press his luck just a bit. "We've not been idle, though. They tried to break out through this corridor, twice, back when they had a hundred fifty. We stopped them, both times."

The Samurai's reply was interrupted suddenly by a shout from the bell tower.
"FEAR NOT THE SHOGUN! STAND, MY BROTHERS!"

"Grandiose of them." Someone muttered behind him, as the unseen speaker launched into an unbelieveably cliched tirade. Aya had spun to face the belltower, which was facing most of his boys, so not them. Maybe one of the honor guards.

"...Lead me to the bell tower."

"Sir?" Aya looked over his shoulder, twisting his body around to do so.

"If they know no fear of the Shogunate,"The Samurai said, drumming on his katana's hilt, "they must be taught it. Understood?"

"....Yes." Aya conceded, thinking -oh shit!-. "Sir."

"Good. Now lead me to them."

"Sir!" Aya untwisted to face the tower again, and started walking up. "Soldiers, fall in!"

for some reason I am sure that those skellies are playing Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini

youtube.com/watch?v=w9lQuLRxsqs

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...I don't have anymore right now. Feedback?

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