Prelude - Genji, Hakusa, Kenji

Seeing the first two undead samurai taken care of, Genji spots the last one crawling out from under the wreckage of a stall. He moves towards the yorei we steadfast determination, and attempts to slam it into the ground once and for all.

Having dealt with one foe, with Saito delivering the finishing stroke, Genji turned to the other still standing in order to deliver his signature barreling denshamichi to knock it over. However he was caught off balance as he expected the zombie to press its attack on Kenji, and did not anticipate it turning away.

The curious matter persisted: the yurei had followed Kenji here, but the two still moving now appeared to have their attention redirected. The one Hakusa dealt with had slid away, and it looked like this one might do so as well, even though they were still aggressively likely to attack anyone in the vicinity.

He had trained exceedingly when he awoke in the temple to compensate for his loss of arm, remembering some of the masters who spoke of the Ichi-Ryu style. But those moves focussed on a regular-length katana, not so much the extended odachi, Kenji's heirloom, which he was used to wielding. The sweep of the enormous blade scythed through the air, carving all around the undead warrior, but failed to connect.

The zombie samurai, no longer interested in Kenji, now turned in a different direction, seeming to move northerly towards the river bridge just as its other surviving one did. It found the hulking form of Genji blocking its way, and stabbed madly at him in order to remove the obstacle in its path.

Recovering from his unbalanced attack, Genji sees the undead samurai stabbing toward him, and trys to side step the blade.

It was a wild slash with a thankfully tarnished blade left too long in the earth that birthed the foul samurai, but it was still sharp enough to leave a ragged cut across Genji's chest. With that sweep, it lumbered away, leaving none of them in immediate danger. But their existence still posed a threat to the general folk who had by now cleared away from the main thoroughfare of the road and the bridge. None of the undead made it to the teahouse, but that was not their destination.

Their threat remained though, for they were not yet vanquished, and what new destination they were diverting to was a mystery. Was Kenji the key to figuring out where they were going, now that they no longer followed him? Or did Hakusa have more insight because he was the one who trailed after him from the slopes?

For the moment the immediate danger to the travellers at the bridge waystation had passed, because the two undead samurai had turned towards the riverbank, presumably towards a new destination. Hakusa still stood where he was when he descended from the slopes; likewise Genji and Kenji were still at the staircase leading up to the teahouse.

The threat still remained though, fits was certain from their behaviour that the yurei would continue to harm anyone who stood in their path. The surest way to maintain safety was to go after them, either to stop them from reaching their destination, or to find out where they were headed so that something could be done about that.

Kenji, not accustomed to having such poor control over his weapon, growled with rage. But his training, drilled into him since he was but a child, came to the forefront of his mind. Train the mind as well as the body, maintaining focus and clarity.

His sword may have failed him, but he was more than his sword. He was a samurai.

He turned, saw his opponent slash at the big sumo, and sprinted toward the exposed back of the yurei, who was lumbering away, toward an unknown destination. It did not matter to Kenji, for he would not walk away from combat until the enemy was vanquished.

Surely the zombies were too big a threat to allow to rampage onwards. Kenji gave chase, easily catching up with the one that turned away from him that had begun to cross the bridge. He considered hewing it down with his odachi, but felt uncertain that he could wield it well, choosing to barrel forward instead. The undead warrior, while slow, retained much of its former skill, and swiveled around to meet Kenji's charge!

Lumbering along with his heavy armor proved to be too loud to surprise his enemy, but Kenji was committed. Face to face now with the zombie samurai, he held up his odachi to ward off the attack of his opponent!

Hakusa limps along after the yurei, curious as to what could drive a corpse. He was grateful as he plunged into the icy water that his nerves were dead from the leprosy.

Hakusa

The sight of the bridge that connected both banks of the river helped Hakusa keep his bearings as he plunged into the slow moving river. Were it any shallower he could have forded his any across, but the depth didn't appear to bother the yurei before him, for it walked across the riverbed, whereas Hakusa still needed to swim to keep himself afloat. He could tell that they were moving in a direction diagonally away from the bridge, on which he could still make out the one-armed samurai attempting to defeat the other still-standing zombie.

And while the perpetual overcast greyness of the sky kept everything a muted black, Hakusa couldn't help but sense that dusk fell sharply as he swam forward, and a light rolling mist began to roll over the surface of the water as he neared the opposite bank. The yurei had reached first and trudged out of the water, disappearing into the beginnings of an evening mist. To his left, near a small bend, Hakusa could see a small fishing shack, with nets hung to dry, and what was likely a small cluster of domiciles. To the right was a forest that loomed very quickly near the bank. Genji, Kenji

They were equally matched! The undead warrior's rusty katana was a swifter weapon than Kenji's odachi, but Kenji's was sturdier. The blades clanged, and there now was an opening for Kenji to deliver his counterslash. More and more Kenji could draw the conclusion that this fighter, and the other two that attacked the waystation, originated either from the same battle in which he had fallen, or rose from the same temple in which he was interred. Solving the mystery of their appearance would explain Kenji's own revivication, and he could only speculate on what dark art or demonic being might have caused this to happen.