Kenshiro vs Yujiro Hanma

The Arena

In Kenshiro’s world the cities are dust and men wear the ruins like crowns. When a giant with a red mane walked out of the haze on the old highway, the raiders who had been following Kenshiro for days scattered without a word. They knew a monster when they saw one.

Yujiro Hanma had heard there was a man here who could kill with a single finger. He wanted to see it. Kenshiro, who had buried more friends than he could count, simply asked him to leave the village behind him alone. Yujiro promised he would, if Kenshiro could make him.

Round One

Yujiro attacked first, because Yujiro always attacks first. A fist that could stop an earthquake crashed into Kenshiro’s crossed arms and skidded him fifty metres down the road, boots smoking. Kenshiro set his feet and came back walking.

They traded blows on the cracked asphalt. Yujiro was stronger, and he knew it, and he laughed every time Kenshiro absorbed a hit. But every time Yujiro struck, Kenshiro touched him somewhere, lightly, almost politely: a finger below the collarbone, a knuckle beside the spine. Yujiro barely noticed.

The Turn

Yujiro’s left arm went numb. Then his right knee buckled for a heartbeat, and he caught himself, frowning. Kenshiro had found his pressure points, the hidden paths that Hokuto Shinken reads like a map, and the damage was happening inside his body where no muscle could protect it.

Yujiro did something no opponent of Kenshiro had ever done. He flexed every muscle in his body at once, a cracking sound like trees splitting, and forced the points closed through sheer will. The demon face rose on his back. He hit Kenshiro so hard the road behind them split open for a hundred metres.

The Finish

Kenshiro stood up out of the rubble with blood running from his mouth, and for a long moment the two men simply looked at each other. Then Kenshiro moved, and for the first time the Ogre could not follow him.

Hokuto Hyakuretsu Ken. A hundred strikes in a breath, each one finding a different point, faster than Yujiro could tense against them. Yujiro forced closed the first dozen. The next eighty went through. He felt his body stop obeying him, piece by piece, the strongest creature on Earth suddenly made of sand.

Kenshiro could have finished it. Instead, with the last strike, he pressed a point that sealed the damage rather than letting it run its course. Yujiro sank to his knees on the highway, unable to rise, and began to laugh, a long helpless laugh. “Again,” he said. “When I can move, again.” Kenshiro walked back toward the village without answering. He has learned that some men are only happy at war.