The announcer's voice echoed around the arena. The skies were completely covered with dark ominous clouds.
He stood at the arena's edge, arms spread, robes catching the evening wind as he addressed the crowd in the practiced cadence of someone who believed every word he was saying.
"The Shadow Dragon had watched with patience. Had allowed the sinner to persist, round after round, as testament to divine mercy. But mercy," he reminded them, "was not absolution. Tonight, under the full moon's eye, judgment would be rendered completely and finally."
"The Dragon's will was not cruelty. It was order. It was love."
The crowd received this with mixed responses.
Those who believed in Saint Bankei pressed their hands together, lips moving. Some wept already. While the martial artists in the upper tiers leaned forward over the rails, loud and restless, for the Demon Bankei. Vendors moved through the gaps between bodies. Children sat on their fathers' shoulders.
On the balcony above it all, Master Mangūsu sat with two other Masters flanking him and ten Martial Seniors arranged behind. He held no tea this time. His hands rested on his knees, eager to see his old master.
Below, the far gate opened.
Bankei walked out wearing a black dougi and his signature demon mask—the one the crowd had named him after, carved dark, wrathful, with large, terrifying eyes. He moved without hurry across the black stone floor, footsteps steady, and stopped at the center of the arena.
He looked up at the cloud-covered skies, then turned his eyes to the balcony.
Three Masters... Ten Seniors, he counted as they were faces familiar to him. Well, not really by their faces, but by their masks. Also, their auras were each distinctly unique.
He exhaled through his nose and looked at Mangūsu specifically, who wore his surprisingly simple mask that looked like a smiling man with razor sharp teeth. He already bore a deep and terrifying aura exclusive to the Master realm, but he also had a distinctly absurd amount of ki.
A fellow shadow dragon arts user, albeit at a much higher realm.
What exactly are you planning, Merun?
He hadn't seen the boy in three days. Three days of an empty cell and training alone and the anxiety of knowing something was in motion that he hadn't been allowed to know the details of. He'd reached out with his senses repeatedly and found nothing—no ki signature, no presence, no tail curled somewhere.
Either Merun was dead, which he doubted, or the boy had gotten genuinely good at hiding himself.
He wasn't sure which possibility was more concerning.
The opposite gate groaned open.
They came out in a loose group, blinking against the torchlight.
Blue dougi beneath battered tatami breastplates, the armor of the Shinken clan reduced to dented, poorly maintained shells. They were young, most of them—younger than Bankei had expected. Some moved with visible stiffness while others looked hollow and gaunt... people who hadn't eaten properly in weeks.
The crowd's noise shifted. Even the martial artists in the upper tiers quieted slightly at the sight of them.
Bankei read their conditions as they spread across the arena floor. Whatever the clan had done to them in the cells below, it had been thorough. Were they experimented on?
One of them glanced at him sideways.
A quick, deliberate look.
Bankei kept his face still.
Hmm?
Another did the same. A young woman near the back, moving with a slight limp that didn't make sense to him. He could clearly see her ki, there was no disruption. She's definitely uninjured... why limp?
He looked more carefully.
They were all doing it. Brief, coordinated glances at specific points around the arena. The distant shuffling and stumbling had a rhythm underneath it that didn't match genuine disorientation.
These people were not out of their minds.
And then he felt it—a ki signature so faint it was barely there at all, pressed flat against itself, sitting somewhere in the middle of that group.
Something in Bankei's chest that had been very tight for three days released slightly.
You absolute brat.
One of the prisoners near the center turned just enough. A masked face. Unremarkable armor. And beneath the mask, Bankei knew, an expression that was almost certainly insufferably pleased with itself.
The masked face tilted upward slightly.
A wink.
Bankei looked away before his expression could do anything he'd regret.
———
On the balcony, behind his mask, Mangūsu watched the prisoners file in and surround Bankei.
In truth, he was excited.
He remembered the first time he'd seen Bankei fight.
He'd been a newly ascended Martial Squire himself, full of the confidence that came with finally attaining his martial body that matched his martial path. During his first mission, he'd watched from the side as a single man held a pass against nineteen Martial Squires for forty minutes. No, he was not holding the pass, rather he was slaughtering the Squires that dared to approach him.
He was making it look so easy that Mangūsu himself felt like he could do the same—only to get nearly killed as the enemies swarmed the newcomer. Thankfully he was rescued by the man in the demonic mask.
Mangūsu later learned his name. Demon Bankei, the others said, in an almost fanatical tone. The strongest Martial Squire in Sekigahara.
He'd dedicated the next decade to getting close enough to learn from him. Another decade after that to surpassing him—or trying to. He'd fought several wars at Bankei's side. He'd studied the way the man moved, the way he read a battlefield, the way his ruthlessness was too much even for a person in the Oni Clan. His command of the famed Shadow Dragon Arts had reached such heights that even Martial Seniors would seek his guidance!
He was truly unstoppable. He had such a bright future as a Martial Artist!
...And then Bankei had simply stopped.
He put down his rage and wrath. Picked up a god-forsaken medical book. Started healing people with a smile on his face... a smile so different that it was like the Demon Bankei had died and the wretched Saint Bankei stole his rotting corpse and defiled it.
Mangūsu had tried reasoning with him. Then arguing. Then finally, when nothing else worked, he took it upon himself to rise through the realms... just high enough to join the main family and start a proposal that took two years of political maneuvering to execute.
That's right, Mangūsu's martial drive all revolved around "reviving" the Demon Bankei—his friend, master, and idol.
While doing so, he built Bankei's cage himself. Brick by careful brick.
As well as the 'executions' that Bankei had to go through.
He knew it wasn't possible for Bankei to lose to any of those no-name Squires.
All of it, every piece of it, because a world where Bankei refused to be Demon Bankei was a world that had stopped making sense.
He needed to see it again. Those eyes. That quality of intent that made experienced fighters take half a step back before they realized they'd moved.
What he'd gotten instead was a quiet old man who sat facing walls, healing wretched little rats and stubbornly refused to fight.
Maybe this is it, could the Demon Bankei return to Ise after all?
———
Below, the announcer finished his speech to extended applause as the prisoners had surrounded Bankei completely.
The arena settled into silence.
Bankei stood at the center, unmoving.
The prisoners spread around him at uneven distances.
The silence stretched long enough to become its own kind of pressure. Mangūsu leaned forward slightly, elbows on the rail.
Then a masked figure broke from the prisoner group and ran directly at Bankei. They sensed it was just barely a Martial Apprentice.
The crowd made a confused sound.
Bankei turned, shifted his weight, and struck.
BAM.
The punch landed clean. The boy left the ground, crossed the width of the arena, and hit the far wall with a sound that made several people in the crowd flinch. He stayed there for a moment, embedded in the cracked stone, then went still.
But it wasn't over yet. Suddenly, a large arc of lightning exploded from Bankei's fist, following the trail of the masked man. In a split second, it landed.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM.
The arena was completely silent.
The dust cleared as they only saw a large heap of rubble and bits and pieces of a mask. It looked like he had been vaporized!
Mangūsu's eyes sparkled. "That's it! That's the Demon's Judgement!"
He recalled the demon's Martial Path, Pervasive Erasure. According to him, fighting was to remove any and all enemies he faced from existence, at any cost. He was feared for exactly this, even sparring was extremely dangerous!
Still, this wasn't enough to rattle the prisoners as they charged at him.
They came at Bankei one after another, some in pairs, cycling through with the sustained pressure of people who had discussed this. And Bankei met them. He redirected, absorbed, turned momentum back on itself, his defensive ki was glimmering after every strike he tanked. Strike after strike landed against it and accomplished nothing. The prisoners hit the arena floor and stayed down convincingly.
The crowd found its voice again.
"Kill them, Demon Bankei!"
"Judgement!"
"Saint Bankei, you mustn't use violence, you promised!"
The martial artists were on their feet in the upper tiers, loud and delighted. Even the Seniors behind Mangūsu were leaning forward, murmuring to each other. As Martial Seniors, a whole realm above Bankei, they were obviously much stronger than him, and yet they still couldn't help but be impressed with the destruction he showed on his first strike.
"Was that a glimpse of the legendary Demon Bankei?" Seniors said to each other.
Mangūsu's hands tightened on the railing.
As the battle went on, he started to get confused.
Why hasn't he attacked again?
He looked through the mental states of the prisoners one by one and found the same thing in each of them—suppressed focus, controlled breathing underneath the performance of exhaustion. What the hell are they planning?
He moved to Bankei.
He felt sadness, anxiety and rage.. but there was something else. And he was doing a good job hiding it.
Something hit him.
He looked around the arena, the stands, even the people with him on the balcony.
He found nothing. No presence. No signature.
The railing cracked under his hands.
Something was definitely off.
The two Masters beside him glanced over. Mangūsu didn't look back. He was scanning the crowd now, methodical, moving through faces and intentions and the ambient noise of a thousand minds. Spies? Contacts? Someone coordinating from outside? There had to be an exit strategy, someone waiting, some arrangement he hadn't accounted for.
But... he found nothing.
Below, the last prisoner went down. It was obvious they were feigning unconsciousness.
Bankei stood alone at the center of the arena, breathing hard for the first time. He reached up and removed his mask.
The crowd erupted.
Mangūsu was about to end this farce when he stopped as Bankei made a strange movement.
He settled into a stance that nobody in the arena recognized—feet shoulder-width, knees soft, hands drawing back to one side, palms cupped together. His ki began to rise dramatically.
It was as if he was building toward something.
The crowd went confused and then silent.
Though it was already dark as the clouds covered the moon and the night sky, somehow the surroundings became darker.
Suddenly, a light erupted from Bankei's cupped hands. It was a bright blue and was shimmering.
He yelled.
KA
ME
HA
ME
The glowing energy contained in his cupped palms grew and compressed, cycling this over and over. The air was electric, literally, sparks flew out from Bankei's body.
Mangūsu couldn't believe his eyes. It's ki! Pure ki! But how? Where did he learn that technique?
Was he going to use it on them?
Though he was surprised, he wasn't afraid in the slightest. After all, while Bankei was unmatched in the Squire Realm, he was a mere ant when compared to a Martial Master. And so, he let him continue charging his technique with utmost curiosity.
Finally, it felt like the power contained in his palms had accumulated too much, Bankei's eyes suddenly tore open as he looked at Mangūsu in the eyes with grave peril.
Mangūsu smiled, "Interesting! Come then!" ready to take on the attack.
HA!!!!!
A beam of pure destructive energy blasted from Bankei's palms.
But the attack never came to Mangūsu as Bankei unleashed his kamehameha into the night sky.
The beam was three-feet wide, and even from afar, the crowd felt how destructive this attack was.
Immediately, everyone in the stands kneeled toward him as his technique greatly resembled a rising dragon against the night sky. To religious fanatics, it was easy for them to interpret this as a challenge to the Shadow Dragon.
For Mangūsu though, things were different in his mind.
...To show me a technique with such power? Was that the plan all along?
I... must learn that technique myself! If a mere Martial Squire could output that much ki and create such a destructive move... what about himself? As a Martial Master?
His blood boiled in excitement. He hadn't felt this rush in years.
He smiled. "I was right all along!"
As the beam ended, Bankei collapsed on one leg, he clearly looked drained, gasping for air.
A voice spoke from behind him. Mangūsu was in a good mood, "Impressive, Demon Bankei! You might need to work on your aim since you completely missed me, but that was such a technique! Did you come up with it during your time in prison?"
Mangūsu also looked at the surrounding prisoners, who, shocked by the attack, seemed to have forgotten they should be faking unconsciousness. "Before we continue our conversation, can you go ahead and kill these ones too, so you can officially win and serve the Oni Clan once more?"
Bankei, gasping for air, said "There are three things you should know."
"Tell me," Mangūsu humored him.
"First, I'm still not killing anyone anymore." "Second, I didn't invent the technique at all."
Mangūsu was confused. "Huh, what do you mea—"
But he was cut off by Bankei. "Third, I didn't miss."
Bankei stood in the moonlight as his attack dispersed the clouds that hovered over Ise, allowing the full moon to show its splendor.
Mangūsu took a good look at the moon. "A full moon, so what?"
Suddenly his instincts warned him of danger, but he couldn't tell where. Finally his eyes ended up on the rubble, there was a pair of black eyes shining, fully enraptured by the moonlight. If he could sense ki as well as Bankei did, he could see the violent burst of energy circulating within the boy.
Don't tell me... the rat? The rat taught him that technique???
Who the hell is this rat?
The rat started to transform.
Extra chapter since It's my birthday!
I really wanted chapter 50 to be the end of this arc, but there were just too many pieces I wanted to play with.
Temporary hiatus, as I'll be in Japan. Thanks for reading, have a great day!