>>6001064“I’ve never understood the ninja's predilection for involving kids.” He says. “Every time I see your genin, it makes my stomach turn. That you’d turn them into sacrificial pawns and then have the gall to blame your enemies for their deaths when it was your own choice to put them on the board. And the way you’re looking at me! Ha! As if it’s my fault you brought them to this place, to sick them on us like yapping little dogs! Why? So you could have some fake moral high ground when I kill the bastards? What did you think was going to happen? Honestly!”
“They have to grow accustomed to bloodshed while they’re young enough to adapt. Some losses are inevitable.” You respond, echoing your father.
“If you believed that you would have struck with your pawns at the stand. I would have killed them, but it would have served as a distraction. You would have won. Instead, you’re going to die.”
You return his evil smirk with a more legitimate smile, remembering a rhetorical phrase Otomo often uses. An Otomo-ism “I have questions.”
“Heh. Fine. Shoot. We have all the time in the world.”
“Do you honestly believe in your cause, or is this just a means to an end? Either way, it seems the four of you are out of your mind. Even if you win here, how can you expect to succeed in the long run? You’re a dead man walking. It’s only a matter of time.”
“You and I both know that living is far from the most important matter in our lives. I do believe in our cause… Though maybe a bit less embellished for the rabble. This world is fucking sick. Ninja are a disease. You need to be eliminated. I don’t expect to handle you personally, because I’m good, but nobody’s that good. Look at it as a cry for help. Someone needs to light the fuse, start the timer, set a clock that counts down to the end of your days. In the last twenty years I’ve watched your kind go from mercenaries to soldiers to something else entirely. Our replacement. An existential threat to the possibility of an honorable way of life.”
“Is that all? Some political blather about the woes of the world?”
“Hey, you got me!” He says, the grin sliding off his face. “I just fucking hate you. I hate what you do. I hate what you stand for. I like killing people that I hate. That’s it. I don’t need anything else.”
The clearing goes silent as the two of you stare each other down. You wait for some kind of trigger, a release in the tension before conflict starts. If you moved first, you would have initiative, but if he was good (And he is.), you could also tip your hand too early. A single mistake could be lethal, and you couldn’t be sure exactly what he was capable of.
The daimyo’s bodyguards were secretive about their abilities, so you didn’t know much. As for you, you had the pleasure of being largely irrelevant. There’s virtually no way he’s ever heard of you.
The wind rustles in the leaves overhead.
A branch falls.
