telling it like it is

[kamiya_style]

When I first met Kenshin I was looking for the man who was killing people in the streets and saying he learned his technique from my dojo. Kamiya Kasshin-Ryū is a defensive style. It's not used for killing

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2/3

[crossshapedscar]

--This unworthy one was born into the farmer class. Then, his name was 'Shinta'... When he was a child, his entire family died in a cholera outbreak and being the only one left, he was sold to a slave caravan. A year later, while traveling through the mountains the caravan was attacked by bandits who went through and slaughtered everyone in their wake.

There were three sisters among the slaves that the caravan had picked up only the day before. He had thought at the time that he wanted to protect them no matter what... and so he took up one of the slaver's fallen katanas in an effort to defend them, but it was so heavy he could barely hold it steady. As the bandits came closer, one of the sisters, Kasumi-san, grabbed him and pulled him back so that the sisters were protecting him instead of the other way around... Why they felt the need to do this is a mystery to him, outside of the fact that they had just become addicted to bloodshed. But they kept coming toward us... Akane-san was killed first, running forward and pleading, "Spare the child." Sakura-san fell next, running to help her sister... But Kasumi-san remained shielding him, telling him not to watch... telling him that no matter what he needed to live... And then one of those monsters pulled her back by the hair... and he could do nothing but watch as she was run through in front of him...

He was frozen to the ground, looking with horror at the scene in front of him, not even paying attention as the same man came up, sword angled to pierce his heart--when another man entered the clearing.

"Who are you?" they shouted.

"There is little point to giving my name to one who is about to die," he said--and before this unworthy one knew what had happened all of the bandits also lay dead on the field...

That man told me to revel in the fact that he had survived and to go to the village nearby... and left him there among the bodies.

After the shock wore away... he decided to bury all of them and make markers for the graves... because after death there were no more slaves, slavers or bandits... just bodies... and a day or so later, when it was finished and he didn't know what else to do--that man came back. This unworthy one told him his reasoning behind the graves, and told him of the three sisters he was unable to protect... The man offered sake to the three stones he had marked the sisters' graves with and then asked his name.

"Shinta," this unworthy one had said.

"That's too gentle a name for a swordsman. From now on your name will be 'Kenshin.'"

That man who saved him from the bandits was Hiko Seijuro the 13th, who became his Shishou to Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu until this unworthy one abandoned his training to fight in the bakumatsu five years later...