In the untamable South, there is a region where even the most ambitious Daimyō and Samurai failed to plant their banners.
The surrounding houses that rule over the vast mountainous area refer to themselves as No Iga (Of Iga).
At the peak of this shadowy hierarchy sits the Hattori. This is the greatest assassin clan feared throughout Nihon, and at the peak of their helms sits the patriarch who bears the name Tsuku no Hattori.
To the outside world, the Hattori line is an unbroken chain of male heirs, a biological impossibility that became their legend.
But the truth is a hidden ritual.
"Keshin Kanjo"
If the firstborn is a girl, she is subjected to a transformative rite that allows her to shift between sexes at will, and the same goes for the male. This was not for tradition alone, but for mastery of their unique clan technique, which requires perfect equilibrium between the male and female spiritual polarities.
"ECLIPSE!"
Shion's roar shattered the silence of the Kekkai. As she leapt into the bruised sky, Shion began to warp. Her frame expanded, shoulders broadening into a powerful, masculine silhouette, yet maintaining the fluid grace of her previous form.
In her left palm, a blinding, celestial radiance ignited. In her right, a void of absolute darkness pooled, an abyss that seemed to swallow the air.
"HA!" Harumichi glanced up. His hands came together in anticipation of the incoming attack.
Shion slammed her palms together.
Within the heartbeat of the impact, every source of light inside Harumichi's Kekkai vanished. The orange fires of Yorimitsu, the blue pillars of the Fūin-jin, all danced with a grey glare.
The domain was plunged into a sensory-deprivation void. In this darkness, eyes were useless.
SPLAAAAASH!
"Ha?! What is this... did I get cut?" Harumichi's voice was a panicked rasp that seemed to vanish as soon as it left his throat. "I can feel my blood leaving my body, but there is no pain... what is going on here?"
SPLAAAAASH!
THUD.
Something massive, perhaps one of his mutated limbs, hit the bone floor with a heavy, wet sound.
"Tch. This is bad. I'm getting weaker, I can't sense her anymore. Did she awaken to the next rank?!" Harumichi stood paralysed, his eyes darting through a void that offered no information. He reached for his charms, his fingers dancing to pluck a note of salvation, but the Eclipse swallowed the sound.
"Shit... is fortune dead in this darkness?!"
Yorimitsu stood like a statue in the centre of the void. Even he was blind to Shion's movements.
'What is this darkness?' he wondered. 'It's incredible. If she were my enemy and used this... I would be dead before I knew the fight had started.'
His heart thundered against his ribs, but the void was so absolute that he couldn't even hear his own pulse. 'Huuuuu... focus. Do not waste this chance on useless thoughts.' Yorimitsu clenched the hilt of Dōjigiri.
He stopped trying to see Harumichi. Instead, he poured every remaining drop of his Reiryoku into the blade, waiting for the one signal that the void was ending.
CLENCH.
"HAaaa... I GOT YOU!" Harumichi's voice roared as the darkness finally shattered.
Colour and light flooded back into the Kekkai with the violence of a physical blow. The scene was gruesome: Harumichi was a ruin. Most of his limbs had been hacked away by Shion's invisible strikes, leaving him a bleeding, jagged torso.
But he hadn't lost yet.
In the final second of the darkness, his prehensile tail had lashed out like a blind viper. It was now wrapped tightly around Shion's neck, lifting her off the ground. Shion, still in her powerful, masculine frame, was gasping, her face turning a bruised purple as the tail squeezed with merciless, demonic strength; her body began to break, losing her frame.
QAAAAAAAAAA!
The sound of vertebrae snapping rang through the domain. Harumichi's tail uncoiled, tossing Shion's limp body to the ground like a broken doll. Her neck was twisted at an impossible angle.
From the pile of severed limbs Shion had carved away, a thick, cloud-like miasma erupted. The limbs were physically pulled across the bone-floor by the invisible threads, slamming back into Harumichi's torso and re-fusing with a sickening squelch.
"Grrrrrmmmmm... puuuuh!" Harumichi's jaw unhinged, saliva stringing between his teeth as he spat a mass of calcified remains onto the ground. It was the skeletal structure of one of the sisters he had swallowed a long, jagged neck and bleached ribs.
"Ha... I can't remember the last time I was pushed this much," he rasped, his eyes bloodshot and wild.
"AHHHHHHH! YOU KILLED HER! YOU BEAST!"
Watanabe roared; he charged, his sword movements erratic and violent. Harumichi didn't use the Koto this time. He reached into his own chest and pulled out a straight-edged Eastern sword, a Jian-style blade adorned with shimmering metal rings that rattled with every motion.
SHINGGGG!
The blades vibrated as sparks flew with each sword movement that Watanabe performed. Another set was returned in kind, from Harumichi; both of them were equally beautiful and heavy.
SHINGGGG!
The rings vibrated once more, and this time the frequency paralysed Watanabe's nervous system. He froze mid-swing, his muscles locking up.
"He got me?!" Watanabe's eyes were wide open, frozen in place.
"That's the sixth one," Harumichi whispered, thrusting the straight blade forward.
SPLASSSH!
Watanabe managed to twist his torso at the last millisecond. The blade missed his heart but buried itself deep into his shoulder, and shadows detached from him, going back to the ground.
"Ha? You managed to move," Harumichi mocked.
"Thank you... for the opening... Shion," Watanabe gasped. He didn't pull away. Instead, he slammed both hands onto the blade stuck in his own flesh, anchoring Harumichi in place.
Ppppppppssssh!
….
The temperature in the Kekkai plummeted to absolute zero.
"I hope this works!" Watanabe screamed. White frost raced down the length of the demon's sword, jumping to Harumichi's arms and instantly encasing the demon in a massive, jagged block of black ice.
"DO IT NOW, YORIMITSU! I CAN'T HOLD HIM LONG!"