Traces 2
It began with a sense of wrongness.
—KAGAGANG!
The sword of the wolf-masked ninja brimmed with killing intent. It was a pure murderer's blade, without a single trace of mercy to be found in it.
And yet, a discernible sword path ran through it.
There were movements that could rightly be called forms, and footwork that shifted to match them. Drawing on the teachings of the sect it inherited, it carried out the wielder's will.
These movements... I know them.
It was motion steeped in deeply rooted martial learning.
It was, without question, a sword art of the Central Plains.
From that moment on, Ash stopped trying to actively subdue his opponent and instead set the rhythm of their exchange, giving the ninja room to show what he had. The ninja, convinced he was overwhelming his foe, twisted and thrust his blade forward as though he'd been waiting for just this, pressing Ash hard.
And the deeper they went, the thicker the wrongness grew.
The instantaneous shifts of stance and transfers of weight. Thrusts that seemed painted on before they were fired, vertical cuts that split the air clean in two.
Taken one by one, each movement felt alien — but strung together in sequence, they were achingly, unmistakably familiar to Ash.
That's my sword art, no doubt about it. The next strike will be... a thrust.
Right on cue.
The ninja's blade tore toward Ash in a single streak of light.
Ash brushed the attack aside with ease. The ninja, apparently expecting his guard to hold at least this much, immediately swung low in a cut aimed to sever his ankle.
But Ash made no effort to block it.
Because it's a feint.
A deception dressed in exaggerated motion, meant to hoodwink the opponent's eyes — and the ninja before him was performing it word for word, as if reading from a script.
Sure enough, once Ash recognized the follow-up as a feint, he finally understood the identity of the wrongness that had been itching at his main core.
...The Cloud Dragon Thirteen Swords.
The Cloud Dragon Thirteen Swords. The introductory sword art that every disciple of the Kunlun Sect — the sect he had devoted his entire life to — learned before anything else.
It was no earth-shattering supreme art.
But the principles of variation contained within it were inexhaustible, and it lent immense aid in comprehending the higher mysteries and ultimate teachings — for which reason it was called the root of all Kunlun martial learning.
It was a sword imbued with subtleties so profound that the common rabble wouldn't so much as dream of mastering it.
And yet.
How had that hallowed sword come to be wielded in the hands of this grotesque killer?
Worse — with every shred of its inherent mystery scoured away, leaving nothing but raw bloodlust behind.
An absurd situation, inexplicable from beginning to end. And the first thing to seize Ash as he gripped his blade amid it all was a whirlpool of emotion that churned like molten lava.
There was gladness in it.
Because in a world plated over entirely with steel, he had found a trace of home.
There was rage in it, too.
Because that trace was smeared thick with the stench of blood.
And there was a deep bewilderment besides.
Why was a sword of Kunlun hanging in the hand of such a butcher?
The clashing emotions swirled together into an indescribable hue. It was a state of mind too tangled to be pinned down by any single word.
"Truly, your sword is remarkable, sir."
It was at that exact moment the ninja chose to speak.
One could hardly have picked a worse timing.
"But as you can see, it's meaningless."
Whatever pleased him so, he kept chattering on, low laughter laced through his voice.
"Bewildered, are you? Your edge seems a touch dulled."
"...Bewildered. You're not wrong."
Ash parried the man's blade and leapt high and back in a single bound.
Then he spoke.
"I have one question. Will you hear it?"
"If it concerns the rapid regeneration, I'm afraid I can't answer—"
"No."
Ash shook his head.
"I've no interest in such trifling acrobatics. What I'm curious about is your sword. Nothing else."
Perhaps it was the churning emotions.
Ash, who ordinarily addressed everyone he met with meticulous courtesy, was not himself now. His teal optical sensors flared with a steely glint as they bore into the wolf mask.
"So I will ask."
In that instant.
An explosive aura surged out from Ash's body. It was nothing like the qi of their crossed blades a moment ago — a pressure so ferocious it seemed capable of blasting the man apart on its own.
The ninja took an involuntary step back.
But that hardly mattered.
Ash spoke.
"Why does a man I've never met wield the Cloud Dragon Thirteen Swords of my own sect?"
Everyone stopped moving.
Santa and Siren, mid-chase after their opponents. The ninjas they'd been hunting. Jack and Dullahan, still administering emergency aid to the wounded Rudolph. Even Akina, cradled in Ifrit's arms.
"...Mister...?"
The change in Ash's bearing froze them all where they stood.
That alone told how far from ordinary the aura radiating off him was.
It felt nothing like the flesh-cutting killing intent they knew.
It was more like a great mountain settling down upon their shoulders — a pressure binding their whole bodies so tightly they could scarcely move an inch.
And so a sudden, unnatural silence fell over the rest stop's back lot.
It was Ash who broke it.
"Why the silence? You were chattering away quite happily not a moment ago."
At that electronic voice, low and rumbling like the growl of some great beast, the wolf-masked ninja facing him shuddered finely.
"I... have no idea what you're talking about. What in the world is this 'Cloud Dragon Thirteen Swords'?"
Ash stared at him in silence for a long moment, then let out a short sigh.
"Ha."
His optical sensors glowed colder still.
"Don't tell me you've been swinging that blade without even knowing what it was?"
Only then did the ninja realize that the 'Cloud Dragon Thirteen Swords' Ash spoke of was the very sword art he himself had been demonstrating.
"I believe you're mistaken, sir. This sword art has no name. I simply learned it from my Elder Brother."
"...You learned it from an 'Elder Brother'?"
A dry electronic tone drifted from Ash's voice module.
"How amusing."
"What is?"
"That a man who never grasped its principles — who doesn't even know its name — claims to have taught another."
"···!"
It was an unmistakable insult.
The ninja's voice turned glacial with warning.
"Consider this a warning. Do not insult my Elder Brother."
"You insulted me first. With that sword. Against me."
Ash dragged his blade into a middle vertical guard and sank low into his stance. Somehow, that posture bore a striking resemblance to the one the ninja had shown only moments before.
"I have no intention of swallowing insults. What about you? Will it be nothing but warnings this time as well?"
Slowly, the wolf-masked ninja took his stance.
"Hardly."
"Then come."
As if the word had been a signal, the ninja lunged. Closing the distance in a breath, he drove his blade down in a vertical strike.
Ash did not block it.
He simply took a single step to the side.
That alone sent the ninja's blade cleaving through empty air.
"Wrong."
His sword moved.
The exact same trajectory, the exact same form the ninja had shown moments ago — but the substance was utterly different.
Just as Ash had done, the ninja tried to slip away from the descending blade. But that descending cut had never been anything more than a stepping stone for seizing the line of defense.
Mid-motion, the sword changed its orbit and drew a line across the ninja's abdomen.
"Cloud Dragon's Searching Claw. When a dragon roaming the heavens extends its talons, it is not to rend its prey. It is to probe for an opening — and to draw the shape of the next move."
The ninja, words failing him, simply thrust his sword straight out.
"Impatient."
Ash flicked out one leg and hammered it into the man's shin.
The kick wove seamlessly into the shift of the ninja's center of gravity from his botched thrust, and the man toppled straight to the ground.
"Kugh!"
But the ninja did not stay down.
Springing back to his feet in an instant, he caught sight of a thrust already upon him, cried out in alarm, and threw his sword up to meet it.
—KAANG!
He succeeded in parrying the thrust that had shot out before he even saw it coming — but deflecting its full force was another matter entirely.
A thrust backed by a fathomless depth of power. Under that staggering might, the ninja was flung backward in a headlong retreat.
Ash did not pursue.
He only let his electronic voice carry across the lot.
"Parting the Cloud Sea pours the entirety of one's force into a single point. A stable stance is therefore essential — and an attack launched unready is worse than none at all."
The ninja gritted his teeth.
The sword Ash wielded now was, beyond any doubt, the same art he himself used. And that was precisely what made no sense.
The same, and yet not.
And every time the difference eluded his understanding, Ash would dutifully append a remark. To the ear, it sounded half like mockery.
So the ninja roared.
"Shut up!"
He bellowed and hurled himself forward again, unleashing the sword art his Elder Brother had taught him.
"Were you never taught the doctrine of the Unmoved Heart either?"
At Ash's murmur — part lament, part lecture — the ninja kept swinging. And each time he did, his own blade was stopped dead, while what looked like the very same sword path came crashing in at him.
A true sword, carrying an entirely different meaning beneath its surface.
Some strokes sealed his path; others bedazzled his eyes.
Attacks he thought he'd blocked turned out to be feints, repurposed as groundwork for the next move. A cut aimed high would drop suddenly to the low line, and a stroke that looked purely defensive would morph into a thrust of blinding speed.
What... what is this?
The sword strikes, each pregnant with meaning and intent, wove themselves into a single flowing current. And that current was maddeningly subtle.
Even as he was being driven back without mercy, he couldn't grasp it clearly — it felt almost like wandering lost inside a thick fog.
This... is the true face of my sword art?
Even in this moment, the ninja's body was being carved and pierced without respite. But that no longer mattered.
Because from a corner of his heart that had been full of rage and bewilderment, something else was blooming — the pure awe of a swordsman, and a burning competitive pride.
More than that, the sword his opponent Ash wielded was strikingly close to his own. And Ash was annotating it stroke by stroke, explaining each principle as he went.
At some point, the ninja's movements changed.
He began receiving Ash's words not as mockery but as instruction, striving little by little to put them into practice.
Not that Ash's blade ever showed his wounds any mercy for it.
Even so, the wolf-masked ninja gave everything he had to absorb Ash's sword, willingly paying for it in blood.
At that change, Ash's optical sensors flickered with interest.
...Oh?
The ninja's transformation was something even Ash hadn't anticipated. Drenched in the agony of a body being cut and pierced a hundred times over, the man was still straining to watch, to learn, to take in his opponent's blade.
It remained a sword steeped in bloodlust.
He was still hunting for vital points, still trying to take Ash's life. But at the same time, it was a blade struggling — desperately — to link its forms together and grasp the principles beneath them.
A wounded, earnest sincerity, one might call it.
At the sight of it, Ash — without quite realizing he was doing it — eased off a fraction of the force he'd been putting behind each strike.
And before either of them noticed, their clash had taken the shape of a sparring match.
Truly, an absurd thing.
A sudden sparring session with an assassin who had stormed in at midnight?
Ash found it ridiculous himself — and yet he could not stop his sword.
To be precise, he didn't want to.
It had been far, far too long.
A bout like this — Kunlun steel against Kunlun steel — had been far too long in coming.
The training grounds of Mount Kunlun, where the clouds came down to rest.
The days when he would sometimes spar with his fellow disciples drifted up from memory.
Precious memories, buried under an aeon of years.
Those peaceful days he hadn't known to treasure at the time — days that would never come again.
...It was always like this, back then, too.
The figures of disciples swinging their swords for all they were worth — to beat him, or to learn just one thing more — overlapped in his mind's eye with the ninja before him now.
But that was an ill-timed indulgence, no more.
The fierce blade-dance playing out in the rest stop's back lot declared its end without warning.
"Got you, you rat bastard!"
Because Santa's steel fist had come down and shattered the rat-masked ninja's shoulder. He'd crushed it outright, it seemed — making sure no regeneration could ever take hold again.
On the other side of the lot, it was the same story.
"Haaap!"
Siren's sword punched clean through the rabbit-masked ninja's chest. Dead center, where the heart should be — and yet, thanks to the uncanny rapid regeneration the man had displayed all this while, it didn't feel like a killing blow.
The tide of battle had flipped in the span of a breath.
And that reversal yanked the wolf-masked ninja back to reality.
At some point, Ash had let his sword hang loose at his side.
"Well? Care to continue?"
At the electronic voice tossed out so casually, the ninja slowly shook his head.
"...No. I suppose this is where today ends. I can't leave my brothers and sisters to die out there."
"You must all be close. Unusual, for an assassin."
"I hear that often. And..."
The wolf-masked ninja slowly lowered his sword, reached into his breast, and drew out a single capsule not unlike a healing elixir.
"I'm not an assassin. I'm a ninja."
He smashed it against the ground.
—FWOOSH!
A deep blue smoke billowed out in an instant, swallowing sight whole — foe and ally alike.
"Gah—!"
"Damn it!"
While Santa and Siren — poised to finish their opponents off that very instant — floundered in the sudden blindness, Ash spoke toward somewhere within the blue haze.
"Come to think of it, I never caught your name."
A moment later.
"I've nothing that would rightly be called a name, but..."
A faint voice drifted out from the smoke.
"My brothers and sisters call me Zero."
With that, nothing more was said.
By the time the blue haze finally scattered on the night wind, no trace of the ninja remained to be seen.