The Variable

by Reffster

"Order will be restored to this once great country. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the Democratic Republic of Amerana will once again be a shining beacon to all those who value the virtues of strength, character and purity of blood. Power shall be restored to those who deserve to wield it, while peoples of lesser worth will be relegated to their rightful place on the fringes of our restored nation.

"Yes, that's right. Might may be our watchword, but there will still be a room for mercy in our brave new order. Streets will need to be swept, rubbish will need to be removed and fields will need to be tilled. There will be roles for even the lowliest citizens of Amerana.

"With one obvious exception. There will be no place for the lowest of the low. The most miserable scum. The sub-humans whose very name I can hardly bear to have sully my lips. The samurai. Now that power has been wrested back from these beasts, we must ensure that they are never again in a position to threaten their betters.

"Rest assured, as Amerana is rebuilt, these monsters will find no place in our glorious republic. They will be registered, they will be imprisoned and they will be. . .dealt with.

"The process is already underway. All samurai are required to report to their local processing office. Republican forces have been tasked to locate and capture those who refuse. Harbouring samurai is a treasonable offense. If you know the whereabouts of a samurai, your civic duty is to report their location to the authorities. Failure to do so is also a treasonable offense. If you-"

Ishida's father switched off the audio-box. He turned to his family. "The day we feared has finally come. Gather your belongings, but only the most bare essentials. Tonight, we flee."

His mother and two sisters bowed their heads and scurried to obey, but Ishida remained where he stood. His father glared at him. "You heard me, boy. Go! Do as I command."

Ishida turned dark eyes towards the man who had raised him, the man he loved and admired and had one day hoped to emulate. The man he had always obeyed without doubt, without question. Until this day. "I am no boy."

His father snorted derisively. "Then do not act like one. Go, collect your things."

"I will not. I will not flee, like a criminal. Our forefathers won this land from the Chinese, just as they won it from the Americans. We have earned our right to stay."

"Bah! Pretty words, boy. But that is all they are - words. Once the world trembled at our might, but those days have passed. The samurai's time has passed. Now, we must run."

Ishida smiled. "We must? No, Father. There is always a choice. I choose to stay."

"Then you are a fool. You will die!"

"As will you, father. I hope it will be peacefully, lying in your bed, many years from now. But for most of our people, it will not be that way. They will die in their thousands, before their time, afraid and forsaken, all in the name of the Republic." He almost spat the word. "All to satisfy the whim of the power-crazed madman who has seized control of what was once our land."

His father scowled at him. "And what can you do? What can one boy do to stop the might of the Republic? What can one boy do to save our people?"

Ishida drew himself up to his full height, and looked directly into his father's face. Behind the bluster and the anger, he could see the shame in those haunted eyes.

"I can fight."

****

Beneath the crumbling statue of a long-forgotten president, the unifier of a long-vanished nation, in catacombs dark and desolate, Mori was waiting for Ishida. He greeted him with a question.

"Your family?"

"Run. Yours?"

Mori shook his head. "Soldiers came. The Republic has them."

After a moment's silent contemplation, Ishida gripped his friend's shoulder. "They will be avenged."

"Yes," agreed Mori. "Yes, they will. Come, the equipment is this way."

"It is ready?"

Mori smiled, grimly. "Tonight, we will see."

****

In the dark of the night, masked and robed, the two ronin emerged from their lair. The hour was late and they expected to find the streets deserted, but they could not have been more wrong. The Republic was nothing if not efficient, and their agents had been working throughout the day and into the night. Long queues of cowed samurai shuffled abjectly past, harangued and abused by the hated greenshirts of the SPF, the Special Processing Force.

Keeping to the shadows, Ishida and Mori seethed, but remained out of sight. Each of the young men had resigned themselves to their fate and knew full well they would not survive their campaign of resistance. They had no fixed goals, but they would certainly sell their lives for a far higher price than the fleeting satisfaction of slitting a few SPF throats.

Or so they told themselves. It was only a short while later that Ishida was stopped in his tracks, as a heart-felt cry rent the night. Mori, traveling just ahead, turned to look back at his friend. "Come," he hissed. "We must keep moving."

Ishida held up his hand. "Wait." The cry was repeated, descending into heart-rending sobs. "That voice. I. . .I must see."

"This is madness," whispered Mori, but his friend was already loping away in a half-crouch, darting from shadow to shadow. Grimacing in frustration, he followed.

Hidden behind the wreckage of an armoured personnel carrier, abandoned after any one of the innumerable wars that had raged over the last century, Ishida searched for the source of the voice. Mori darted into the shadows beside him. "Well?" he demanded, his voice hoarse with indignation.

Ishida simply pointed. A group of greenshirts had circled around a lone samurai, a slight figure with a tear-streaked face that glistened in the faint moonlight. The Republican men were slowly advancing on the figure, several of them stepping over the prone, motionless body of another samurai.

"Nakano," breathed Mori.

Ishida nodded. "And the body is her father. The greenshirts wish to have their way with her, and he tried to stop them. Brave. Foolish and pointless, but brave. At least he was samurai, in the end."

"Come," said Mori. "I have no desire to watch this."

Ishida stared at the shivering wretch, whimpering in terror as the greenshirts drew near. Almost unrecognisable as the laughing girl he had teased at school, so different from the breathless young maiden with whom he had shared his first kiss.

"No," he agreed. "Nor do I." It would be folly to interfere. They would waste their lives and achieve no more than delay the inevitable. The virtue of a single girl counted for nothing in this land of pain and sacrifice. To die in her defense would be madness.

Slowly, silently, Ishida drew his sword. Sometimes, in a world gone mad, madness was the only valid response. He turned to Mori. "I am sorry, my friend. I cannot watch, but nor can I walk away. Go on without me."

Mori grinned a crooked smile as he also drew his sword. "Ah, Ishida. Your always were one for the ladies. Come, brother." Bolting out of the shadows, he yelled "Bonsai!" at the top of his lungs and sprinted towards the greenshirts. Briefly stunned, Ishida followed a moment later.

Frenzied with lust, sure of their power, convinced their captives were broken, it took the greenshirts valuable seconds to realise they were being attacked. Few guns were drawn and even fewer bullets fired, before the two samurai were upon them. Within moments, four heads rolled on the ground, as blood fountained from the necks of the collapsing corpses. More shots were fired, but the samurai fought on, their blades glimmering electric blue in the gloom of the night, their victims twitching and convulsing as every stroke severed flesh and sinew and bone.

And then, it was over. The last greenshirt fell, head cleaved almost in two by a blow from Ishida. The samurai straightened from their fighting stances, the blue of their blades fading away. Slowly they turned, taking in the slaughterhouse of carnage they had wrought. Shrugging out of his robe, Ishida raised his blood streaked visor, and grinned at Mori. "They worked my friend. They worked!"

Slowly, Mori also removed his robe. "Which? The plasma-charged blades, or the graphene armour?"

Ishida inspected the ornate cuirass and intricately interleaved gauntlets and greaves that protected his body. Multiple tiny divots were the only evidence of the bullets that had struck him. "Both!" he exulted. "You are a genius, my friend. They both worked, perfectly."

Mori raised his visor and gave him a weak smile. "Not quite. Not quite perfectly." He wavered slightly, and for the first time Ishida noticed the steady stream of blood flowing across his friend's cuirass, black in the moonlight. Mori fell to his knees. "The neck. I didn't have time to find a way to protect the neck. I am sorry, Ishida. My journey ends here." His smile became a grimace of pain. "Don't forget about me." Face-first, he fell and was still, lifeless as a rag-doll.

Ishida rushed to his friend, but as his blood pooled around them both, he soon realised Mori was far beyond any earthly help. Gently, he rolled him onto his back, and closed his staring, sightless eyes. "It's 'banzai'," he said, softly. "A bonsai is a tree, you fool. How can you be so clever, and not know that?" He hung his head.

Only moments later, his reverie was disturbed by a hand on his shoulder. "Ishida?" He looked up into the red-rimmed, tear-stained eyes of Nakano. "You must go, Ishida. More are coming."

He became aware of the sound of shouts and running footsteps, carried faintly on the cool night-breeze. Dully, he regained his feet and drew his sword. "Then I will greet them."

A short, stoutly built man picked up one of the fallen greenshirts' guns. "As will I."

Nakano's mother, kneeling by the lifeless body of her husband, looked up at Ishida, her face stricken but her eyes dry. She stood and retrieved another of the guns. "And I."

More samurai armed themselves with the remaining weapons, while others found sticks, rocks, and bricks, or anything else they could use to fight. Together, they turned to face the oncoming enemy.

The battle was brutal, bloody and short. The carnage among the samurai was terrible, but the advantage of numbers, combined with the pent-up rage engendered by years of subjugation, granted them victory.

Breathing deeply, sword dripping, Ishida looked down at the fallen body of Nakano. The foolish girl should have run. With no weapon, no skills, little in the way of strength and no hope of survival, she had thrown herself into the battle, without a moment's hesitation. And she had died.

But she had died as a true samurai. Ishida looked around at the motley collection of survivors. Many were nursing wounds. Some had fallen and would likely never rise again. But their sorry condition could not disguise the change in them. No longer were they hopeless, defeated wretches, shuffling off to oblivion. Their backs were straighter. Their heads were held higher. There was a new animation in their faces. They were samurai once more.

****

An hour later, Ishida crouched in the shadows of a long-dead oak tree, surveying the headquarters of the Republic, newly established in the long-abandoned home of the presidents of the old America. Decrepit and crumbling, the building could only have been chosen for its symbolic power. The new president, Randolph Miller, was fond of symbolism.

It was heavily guarded, but less so than usual, thanks to the riots that were breaking out across the city. Rumours of rebellion had spread like wildfire, and faced with the end of all they knew, a tiny spark had been it all took to finally kindle the fire that had long lain dormant in the souls of the samurai.

The effects of that tiny spark had inspired Ishida. If a tiny spark could provoke rebellion, what might a great blaze achieve? What better to burn than the very heart of the system that persecuted them? Ishida grinned, wolfishly. It was time for Miller to die.

Silently, efficiently, he dispatched four patrolling guards as he darted from shadow to shadow, gradually drawing nearer to the building. The front door provided his first serious obstacle. Four more armed guards stood watch, protecting an iron-clad portal, sealed shut with an enormous combination lock.

Sending a silent prayer of thanks for Mori's genius, he placed the blowpipe between his lips, and moments later, tiny silver darts protruded from various parts of the guards' anatomy. Absently, they swatted at them, feeling no more than the slightest tingle. Taking a deep breath, Ishida stepped from the shadows and into full view.

"Freeze!" bellowed one of the guards, as they each directed their weapons at the lone samurai. "Get down, scum!"

Smiling, Ishida pressed the button located on the side of the blowpipe. Instantly, each dart fired an electric pulse, tiny in its amperage, but exquisitely tuned to activate human pain receptors. To a man, the guards went rigid, dropping their weapons and toppling like felled trees, emitting incoherent grunts of pain from between their locked jaws. "You first."

After what he judged to be an appropriately educational period of time, Ishida released the button. "Greetings, gentlemen. Please tell me, which of you knows the combination for that lock?"

Unsteadily, the largest of the guards got to his knees. "You lowly samurai bastard," he slurred. "Soon we'll kill every last one of you. I'll never give you the combi-" He went rigid again as Ishida reactivated the darts.

The samurai shook his head sadly. "Your lack of manners saddens me. After all, I did say please."

Several bursts of pain later, after the other three guards had lost consciousness, the big man finally relented. Barely able to move, he gasped the combination that allowed Ishida to enter the domain of the man he hated most, in the entire world.

Expecting more guards, Ishida was surprised to find the interior of the building deserted, and strangely quiet. For want of any better options, he went up the first staircase he came to, reasoning that one such as Miller would want to look down on the world.

And so it proved. Several flights of stairs later, he came to a landing which encircled a simple wooden door, guarded by a pair of soldiers, who both raised their weapons at the sight of the samurai. Tiredly, Ishida drew his sword and smiled at the grim-faced pair. "As a friend of mine once said," -he raised the blade above his head, as he charged- "BONSAI!"

His graphene armour prevented the bullets from penetrating his body, but the guards were equipped with heavy-calibre weapons, and the projectiles still struck with enough force to drive the air from his body, fracturing several ribs as they did so. He faltered, but the momentum of his charge was enough to bring him within sword-reach. That was all he needed. Moments later, grimacing in pain and barely able to stand, he kicked aside the guards' severed heads, and slowly, opened the door.

Absorbed in paperwork, it took Miller a moment to acknowledge his presence. Looking up, his expression of annoyance slowly transformed into one of pure loathing. "Samurai," he hissed, as if the very word caused him physical pain.

Battered, breathless, but still with sword in hand, Ishida limped into the room. "That's right. I am samurai. And proud of it. Tonight I vowed to fight for my people. To die for my people. To kill for my people." He pointed his blade at Miller. "And now, I am going to kill you." Haltingly, but remorselessly, he advanced, studying the president, waiting for his composure to break, longing to see this monster terrified and begging for mercy, mercy from one of those whom he despised. To his astonishment, Miller smiled at him.

"Boy, how do you think I got to be in this office? By filling out forms and kissing asses?" He reached under the desk. "Only one thing got me here, boy." He stood up, brandishing an axe in one hand, and a chainsaw in the other. "And that thing is killin' samurai." With the flick of a switch and an evil grin, he turned on the chainsaw. "My final solution ain't got no room for variables. Let's dance."