Roses are Rojos

The blade began to twirl at the edge as it fell out of his sand brown hands, slipping from his grasp like the pebble from the sling shot.

The sound of a Colt 45 Revolver being used.

Another exchange of ammunition, a bullet scrapes his ankle roughly before he can jump out of the line of fire. Here goes nothing he thinks to himself as he makes a desperate tackle into the ground, landing on the dirt in a wind blowing flop but not before grasping onto those two black leather clad knees and ankles of the assassin. With only a Ronin’s instinct to rely on he tugs at the bounty hunter’s legs delivering a crude judo-influenced takedown with the westerner landing face up, ass-down on the desert floor. Keji’s climbed ontop of him, assuming an knee-on-stomach position. He placed his knee on the Canarian’s torso, and extended his other leg for balance, it slid against the terrain causing more sand to puff out into the air. He had obtained great side control simply by putting his bruised left knee against his opponent’s stomach and rising up slightly with the leverage provided by his right leg. His enemy squirmed, teeth clenched, trying to struggle out of his current physical predicament. Keji grinned, his plaque-filled teeth being revealed, a tidbit of saliva squelched onto the downed man’s nose causing him to squint in disgust, yelling in anger at the pure entrapment he was under. Keji had been practicing this simple hold for years, the Uki-Gatame or “floating hold”. The man had come alone and law enforcement was as scare that afternoon as any other lazy Rohanian Sunday. They tended not to even concern themselves with matters of criminal violence if it didn’t compromise the amount of bribery that would be taking place for there benefit. Needless to say, Keji had plenty of time to waste, once he nailed the floating hold it was quite difficult to display any free will what so ever that wasn’t to his liking, so he took this recent advantage to recite a poem to this scraggly hired killer that he had read in a magazine along the boat ride through Marina trench. His English was outlined by the thick accent of a Japanese foreigner attempting to sound like Sam Elliot reading Shakespeare. He took his time because of this impediment, slapping the man’s right cheek between stanzas.

“Roses are Reds
Moons are blues
My heart is bloodless
How about you?”

The man’s eyes bulged as Kenji sporadically propelled himself with his right foot and taking both legs off of him as he hopped off, freeing the man for a quick minute before the Bushido-broken wanderer clutched his sword handle and in one swift motion brought it off the thick sand. He then rushed it into the bounty hunter, and drove the sword into the attackers stomach in a combination of motions that seemed to flow in an obvious pattern like some sort of deadly drum roll. Blood oozed from the small quarter sized hole as Keji began to pull the katana out of his dying aggressor. Dark-red liquid tainted the beige land inside the trembling, downed body’s radius as it’s muscles were involuntarily sent into hysterical colic spasms. Respect was for the men, not for the wounded beats of exile and hellfire. This is what Keji thought as he began to walk towards his frightened horse but not before spitting on his opponent’s motionless body and sheathing his sword. The temporary joy of toying with the hired gun‘s anxieties and physical limitations subsided , it transitioned into apathetic nothingness and then changed into frustration.

When would this end? When would he be able to proceed without a barrage of pale-faced gunslingers blocking his winding, lonesome path? Only time will ask, only death will answer.

The scrapes and cuts would continue to sting until Keji could reach a temporary resting place. His odyssey would continue as well, fore home was no where near. Home being his karma equaling out in a certain manner of speaking in a certain moment in his life, not the purchase of a house or being welcomed (more like allowed) back into his father’s living quarters in Osaka.

No, Keji Muta had no home, this he knew, and thus was the very reason he was a Ronin. A master less samurai and a homeless survivor in a place called the west. Where the gold coin’s king and the whorehouse more abundant than the white picket fence. How Keji came to these parts is a story for another time and place, and where one man searches for a home, another man will most certainly lose his. This Gaijin named Keji would come to accept both.

This post has been edited by ThatNinja on Jul 12 2009, 10:59 PM