BREAK FOOL
“Fools!” The warlord’s voice boomed from the top of the hill. He unsheathed his katana, and I admit, I figured he would have started running now that he didn’t have his army or muscle backing him up.
“You think something is wrong with him?” Little Sistah asked, as confused as I was by the warlord’s confidence.
“The era of the Sistah Samurai is over!” The warlord declared. “Honor and justice have no place in this world anymore. You are nothing but ghosts lingering past your time, and I will gladly be the one to exorcise you both.”
Then, the warlord pulled his arms out of his kimono, allowing the sleeves to drop to his waist to reveal his bare torso. Every inch of his skin, from arms to chest was covered with tightly-packed kanji characters.
Shit.
Injecting tamashii-ink straight into the skin was a dangerous and stupid thing to do if you valued your life. For several reasons. One: The danger of your tattoo artist accidentally needling a kanji incorrectly due to any minute hand wobble could kill you. Two: The pain of renewing the tattoo every time the ink faded. Three: The need to access a large amount of (probably inferior) ink. Four: Who the fuck had the time?
Despite all those flaws, a few still risked it because the resulting magic was exponentially larger and more powerful.
Cautiously, both Little Sistah and I backed up. The warlord laughed as he watched our retreat, and then he pounded down the hill toward us, falling for the bait to draw him away from higher ground. We separated, positioning ourselves at two different angles to ensure only one of us got caught in a potential attack.
I glanced backward at the field thick with the dead. We needed to finish this quickly. Eventually, demons would get a whiff of this place and they would start swarming.
The warlord came closer. He shifted toward me, and I tensed in anticipation as he raised his sword. The kanji on his shoulder began glowing gold and then—
BOOM!
I crouched against the force of the explosion. It swamped over me with a smell of burnt human flesh and hair. The thunderous boom left a ringing in my ears, and smoke trailed from the scorched earth where the warlord once stood.
There wasn’t much of anything left. Just the burnt bottom shell of his red rubber shoes and a scrap of his delicate silk kimono. The katana the warlord had stolen landed a warped piece of metal at Little Sistah’s feet, of which she kicked with a sad pout.
“Idiot,” I said, rolling my eyes and cleaning the blood from my katana.
Little Sistah shrugged. She said, “The tats did look cool, though.”
The blast had also shaken the cherry blossom tree, jostling it from its roots and giving it a permanent lean. Burns scarred one side of the tree trunk, and all the branches were stripped naked by the sudden detonation. Pink petals rained down with fragments of diamond shimmering in the air.
Huh. What a pretty view.