Kenshin Himura vs Mugen

The Arena

Mugen had been told there was a red-haired swordsman on the Kyoto road who had once been the deadliest killer of the revolution. He did not care about history. He cared that someone, somewhere, was supposedly faster than him.

He found Kenshin Himura sitting on a stone by the road, sharing rice balls with a stray cat. Mugen kicked the rice balls into the bamboo. Kenshin looked at the scattered rice, then up at the wild young man with the strange curved blade, and sighed. “Oro. This one supposes you will not go away.”

Round One

Mugen attacked like nobody Kenshin had ever fought. He spun on his hands, kicked from the ground, slashed upside down, his sword flickering from angles no school of swordsmanship would recognise. Kenshin’s reverse-blade sword met each strike with a clean, ringing parry.

For a minute the bamboo forest rang like a temple bell. Mugen’s blade nicked Kenshin’s cheek, opening the old cross-shaped scar. Kenshin’s blade, its sharp edge turned inward, cracked across Mugen’s ribs and sent him tumbling through the stalks.

Mugen came up laughing. He had never been hit by a sword that would not cut him. “You’re fighting with the wrong side of the blade, idiot.” Kenshin smiled sadly. “That is the point.”

The Turn

Mugen’s style became wilder and faster, a storm of kicks and slashes that came from everywhere at once. Kenshin was forced back, step by step, bamboo stalks falling around them, a long cut opening across his forearm.

For a heartbeat Kenshin’s eyes turned amber, the look of the killer he used to be, and his speed doubled. He slipped through Mugen’s storm as if it were standing still, and Mugen, for the first time in his life, could not follow an opponent with his eyes.

Mugen felt the danger like cold water. He laughed louder, because fear was the most fun he had had in years.

The Finish

Kenshin sheathed his sword. Mugen hesitated, thinking it was surrender, and charged with his most unpredictable attack, a spinning, upside-down slash from a handstand.

Kenshin drew. Amakakeru Ryu no Hirameki: a sword-drawing technique so fast it creates a vacuum, pulling the opponent into the second strike. Mugen’s attack was swept aside by the first stroke, and the second, with the dull back of the blade, caught him across the chest and dropped him into the leaves.

Mugen lay staring at the moon through the broken bamboo, ribs aching, grinning like a fool. “What the hell was that?” Kenshin offered him a hand, and a fresh rice ball. “The end of a long road,” he said. “Eat. Then go and find a better reason to fight.”