~ 3 Days Ago
Tedate had stopped counting hours somewhere around day four.
They were underground, after all. Their cell had no windows. A single torch burned outside the bars at all times. You measured time by guard rotations and food deliveries and the sounds of the compound around you. If he had to guess, they were almost two weeks here.
The cell gate opened.
Two guards dumped a man inside like a sack of potatoes and the gate clanged shut.
Tedate was already moving. He rolled the man, Renji onto his back on the floor and the cell went quiet.
Renji's veins ran dark from his wrists to his shoulders, branching upward in thin black lines. His breathing came in shallow uneven pulls and every few seconds his body twisted involuntarily against whatever was working through his system.
"What the fuck did they do to him," someone said.
Tedate pressed two fingers to Renji's neck. His pulse was sporadic and weak.
"Prop his head up. Keep him on his side." He stood and looked at the faces around him. Nine of them, haggard, thinner than two weeks ago. Some of them injured, having already suffered experimentation similar to Renji's. "Talk to him. He needs to hear familiar voices."
"We can't treat this," Daisho said quietly. She wasn't wrong. They were martial artists. None of them had ever needed to handle poison nor even came close to treating it.
"We don't need to treat it. We keep him calm. Remind him what he's going home to."
Someone moved to Renji's side and started talking low and steady.
Tedate sat in the corner, back against stone.
He'd been rethinking the mission over every day since their capture. It was only supposed to be simple bodyguard work—protect a noble's carriage, from point A to point B. A job they'd done a hundred times. Just a small catch that they had to cross another clan's territory... but it was barely on the border, and they even had a noble to bail them out. It was supposed to be easy money. That was until Oni Clan Martial Masters showed up out of nowhere. What were they supposed to do? They were just Martial Squires!
The worst of it? As they lay unconscious and injured, one of the Martial Masters opened the carriage and revealed... nothing. Just a doll covered in esoteric material that mimicked the aura of a person. The noble had never been inside. They were never escorting anyone.
Scapegoats. Handed to the Oni Clan wrapped in Shinken colors. He didn't have a single clue on why it happened to them.
Upon capture, experimentation had started almost immediately. Not to break them—just to use them to further the Oni clan's inhuman techniques.
They had been terrible days but he was still here. All of them were still here.
Tedate looked at his nine clansmen and held onto that.
Then he felt the breeze.
There were no windows, not even a gap large enough to explain it. And yet the air shifted.
A masked figure suddenly dropped from the ceiling.
The Shinken Martial Artists immediately moved. Bodies stood between the figure and Renji, stances low, every angle covered. Working together came naturally as bodyguard missions made a group more cohesive as there was nothing else to do but to walk and to talk.
The figure started to walk toward Renji.
Tedate assessed quickly. Medium build. The aura barely registered—faint, civilian, nothing that should concern a room full of Shinken martial artists.
Oh well, he was asking for it. His clansmen started attacking.
BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM
And yet the strikes weren't working.
He watched his clansmen hit the figure from multiple directions and watched the figure walk through it. Each thud was clear, he was not dodging nor blocking. Just continuing forward like the impacts were nothing.
Tedate stepped up.
"Not a step further."
He dropped into his stance. His Martial Path, Unmovable Object wasn't complicated—his body optimized for one thing, to be a thing that did not and could not be moved. He had stalled a Martial Senior once before (for a about half a minute). It would stop this.
Step.
Step.
"Excuse me," the figure said, and touched his shoulder.
Tedate grabbed the arm immediately and pulled, aiming to throw the figure away.
Normal throws work by using your own body as a fulcrum. You redirect the opponent's momentum or apply force against a joint using your body as the anchor point. The throw only works if your anchor is stable enough to generate that leverage.
Tedate's technique takes that principle and pushes it to an extreme. His unmovable body is the most stable anchor in any room he's in. So when he grabs someone's arm to throw them, he isn't relying on momentum or technique the way a normal grappler would. He's essentially saying—I am a fixed point. You will move because I will not.
But... nothing moved.
He pulled harder, this time, his arm shook as he used all of his Squire-level strength to move the man. But the man simply did not budge.
Terror washed over him. Not only because the figure seemed invincible to attacks, but that this 'civilian' was more unmovable than he was.
It was a slap to himself as a Martial Artist!
A disgrace to his martial path!
He heard himself yell and grunt. His body had stopped understanding the situation, doing everything in his power to move the man. Appearances be damned.
The figure simply sighed and pushed his chest, almost gently.
BOOM
Tedate hit the back wall.
The gasps told him everything about how that had looked. He pushed off the wall and watched the figure kneel beside Renji while four of his clansmen grabbed on—arms, shoulders, clothing, full bodyweight. The figure knelt under all of it without appearing to notice.
It seemed to just observe Renji, ignoring all of the commotion around him.
Suddenly, the figure straightened his fingers and made two quick cuts along Renji's arm.
"STOP—"
Dark blood ran from the cuts, thick and wrong-colored.
Tedate surged forward as his clansmen yelled in panic, but the figure was already pressing a palm over the first wound.
All of a sudden, the bleeding slowed.
Stopped.
The martial artists seemed to calm down as the figure moved to the second cut. Same stillness. A few seconds passed. That one closed too. The dark lines on Renji's skin were fading, retreating slowly back toward his wrists.
"Let go of him," Tedate said.
"What?" Daisho said.
"All of you. Let go."
They released the figure one by one and stepped back. Nobody spoke. The figure still just observed the man. Renji's breathing, ragged since they'd brought him in, began to even out. The seizing stopped. The dark lines disappeared entirely.
Renji's face went slack. His breathing deepened into actual sleep.
Tedate crouched beside the figure.
The figure sat back on its heels.
Then punched its fist into the air.
"FUCK YEAH! I'm a genius! I knew I just needed that desperation!"
Several of his clansmen looked at each other.
The figure seemed to remember where it was.
"Ah. Right."
The mask came off.
He was young and handsome in an unfinished way. His pitch black eyes currently bright with the satisfaction of someone who had just proven something to themselves.
He stuck out his hand and smiled.
"Sorry 'bout all that. My name is Merun."
———
The silence lasted longer than Tedate expected.
Daisho spoke first. "Sorry, but what was that?"
"A bit of healing," Merun said. "Sort of. I'm still working on it."
Tedate had been a martial artist his entire life. He'd never encountered something he couldn't categorize.
He couldn't categorize this.
The man had walked through ten Shinken martial artists like they were nothing. Had tossed Tedate with one casual push. Then closed wounds with his bare hands.
His aura still read as barely anything.
He still looked young... could he be someone from a higher realm suppressing his energy to an absurd level?
"Can I look at the rest of you?" Merun asked.
Tedate immediately nodded, sweat forming at his forehead.
Merun went person to person, crouching to examine injuries almost nonchalantly. Some he helped on the first try, even small fractures healed quickly! Unfortunately, other he attempted twice and gave up with a quiet noise of frustration, and occasionally burning the skin instead. Daisho's wrenched shoulder was fixed on his second attempt, she inhaled sharply as the pain faded. A week-old bruising along one man's ribs—sadly no effect and it had burnt him. However, a gash on another's forearm closed cleanly.
No pattern Tedate could identify... Still, healing that quickly, he was someone powerful... a noble?
"My lord, it has limits?" Tedate said.
"Yeah." Merun didn't seem bothered by the honorific. "Still figuring out which ones."
When he finished he sat cross-legged on the floor and looked at them all.
The others heard Tedate call him lord and he didn't react, so they knew he was someone of noble stature, someone they needed to listen to.
"Three days from now they're sending you up to fight."
Nobody moved.
"Death match... in the arena." He paused. "You'll be fighting my teacher."
Tedate's face drained of all color. If the student is already this strong, what about his teacher?
"His name is Bankei. Saint Bankei, some call him. Demon Bankei if you ask the martial artists." Something shifted in Merun's voice on the name. "He's been imprisoned here for months. They keep making him fight to break his will. He doesn't attack. He endures."
"Why," someone asked.
"He made a decision a long time ago about what he'd do with his strength." Merun picked at his sleeve. "He's the most principled person I've ever met."
"I see, what's the plan, my lord?" Tedate said.
"Pretend to fight him. Make it look real—he'll play along. At some point things are going to get very chaotic." He said this deliberately vague. "When it does, you move with him. There'll be an opening."
Tedate looked at his clansmen. Nine faces waiting.
He thought about it carefully. There was no way they'd be escaping this hellhole. Not only were the guards assigned to them Martial Seniors, but with the threat of Martial Masters also roaming this underground dungeon, a place where they experienced the most painful and senseless torture, there was no other option. He'd also accepted that the Shinken clan had thrown them away.
Their options had been narrowing for a while.
"What led to your capture?" Merun asked.
Tedate told him. The mission, the carriage, the ambush. The moment of realization that they'd been betrayed. Merun listened without interrupting, and when Tedate finished the young man was quiet for a moment.
"Political scapegoats," Merun said.
"Yes."
Merun's jaw tightened briefly. "Fuck, that really sucks. You did your best."
Tedate hadn't expected it to land the way it did. It felt honest.
He looked at Renji sleeping soundly. At Daisho rotating her shoulder slowly, testing it. At the rest of his clansmen watching this strange masked boy who had appeared from nowhere, healed what he could, and was now sitting on their cell floor like he had nowhere else to be.
Tedate extended his hand.
"Thank you, my lord Merun" he said. "For Renji. And for the others."
Merun took it and shook it once, firm.
"Don't thank me yet," he said. "Thank me in three days."
Tedate almost smiled.
"Now, why don't you help me practice some more healing?" Merun smiled.
"Uh, sure, my lord."
A/N:
Back from Japan! Nagoya was really really pleasant.
Didn't get to write at all, so after this chapter, the next will be on Friday. Thanks!