The Cabaret Club, Club Sunrise, was officially the second worst club Yugo had ever visited. There were these L-shaped couches strewn about, all with this red fabric that’d seen much better days. The walls were dark brown with quilted gold and brown leather accents and these dated lamps that were like the ones back home. They even had a disco ball in the center of the ceiling! At least the food and drink were good… overpriced as they were.
Speaking of prices, he’d made a passing comment about them to one of the girls, doing his absolute best to sound as polite as possible, just for the girls to call the bouncers on him and scramble out of the store with the other patrons! Sure, he’d expected as much given the nature of Saikou’s Shogun, but he was a paying customer! Oh well.
Left with no other option, he did what he had to do. Yugo dispatched the bouncers and waited politely at his seat for the boss to show up. The Historian had sensed his presence the moment Yugo walked in, and given how high his level was Yugo knew he had to take care of him before he got to his students. Futakuchi-Onna, despite her presumably high level, wasn’t as big a threat as the Silent Hand likely thought she was. This guy, though? Yugo had no clue who this person was. The last thing he wanted to do was put one of them in a deadly situation this early into their journeys. He’d take care of this guy on their behalf.
Mina, who’d been silently watching over the unconscious bodies of the bouncers strewn about the empty Club Sunrise, suddenly swam through the air towards the door. She stopped in front of it, furiously pointing with her body to alert Yugo of the newcomer’s presence.
Guess it’s showtime.
The quilted leather door swung open, revealing first the woman who’d been his tour guide around town. Behind her was a man dressed in an expensive 5-piece suit with a gold watch and gold-framed glasses. He had short black hair, a scarred right eye, and a permanent scowl etched onto his face.
“See!” The woman shouted. “I told you he was crazy! He just burst in here and started gettin' all weird with me and Yukiko! The bouncers stepped in and he started goin’ crazy!”
Yugo rolled his eyes.
And here I thought we were friends…
“Surely you aren’t that delusional, Master Yugo.” The Historian questioned in his Mindspace. Yugo ignored him.
As the woman continued complaining to the boss about how evil Yugo was, coming up with some admittedly interesting-sounding stories, he decided to scan the gruff-looking man. The Historian ran his full analysis and dictated the information in his mind while the blue-white screen popped up in his vision.
Masamura Manzo
Myth User
Level 298
*NOTE - There is a 97.3% chance that this Myth User is Contracted to TENJOU KUDARI. To learn more about MYTHS IN THE AZUMA SAIKYO REGION, please check the BESTIARY tab in your System Interface.*
According to my records, Manzo Masamura is a renowned soldier from the Typho-Gorgon War. He served alongside Nori Knight and her legendary squadron that helped take down the fabled Demogorgon for good. Following the war, Manzo retired to Saikou and launched this very club. It ran peacefully for the next forty years, only to fall under hard times under the previous Shogun’s rule.
This is where my records become hazy, so this is pure speculation; but it can be assumed that Futakuchi-Onna and/or her Contractor have promised him a financial stimulus in exchange for his service with the Honor Guard.
“Thank you, Miyuki,” The bossman, Manzo, said. He nodded towards the door, still maintaining eye contact with Yugo. “Leave me alone with this man, will you? I’ll take care of him.”
Suddenly, the bouncers Yugo had knocked out rose to their feet, groggy and disoriented. Rather than continue the fight, though, they also stumbled for the door, using the walls and tables for support. Once they approached the boss, they and the girls suddenly put on the most exaggerated puppy dog faces Yugo had ever seen.
“B-but… I’ll be outta work!” Miyuki squealed. “I don’t have any money to pay rent!”
“Yeah! You weren’t here to stop us from getting our asses beat by him!” One of the bouncers agonized, pointing an accusatory finger at Yugo.”
Manzo shook his head, finally taking his eyes off Yugo to look over his crew. “Paid vacation for the rest of the week. Now leave me to my business.”
“You're the best, boss!” They all said in unison, hugging the man who’d returned to mugging Yugo. His scowl was a bit deeper now.
One by one they shuffled out of the room, finally leaving Yugo alone with Manzo Masamura. The man walked slowly towards the back room, completely ignoring Yugo as he retrieved an expensive bottle of whiskey and a glass cup from his office. He sat to the right of Yugo, on the horizontal part of the “L” on his L-shaped couch. There was a moment of silence that was eventually broken by Manzo himself, the man speaking as he opened the whiskey bottle.
“You could’ve attacked us at any time just now, yet you didn’t. That says a lot about you,” Manzo said. He nodded. “You are more noble than most men that enter my club.”
“Thank you,” Yugo nodded back. “I suppose I could say the same for you. You could’ve run in here guns blazing, but here you are pouring a drink.”
“It isn’t nobility. I simply dislike fighting. It’s why I became a club owner. In my youth, I enjoyed the thrill of battle but…” He shook his head. “No more. Yet, when Shogun Hana sees me, she doesn’t see the passionate club owner. She sees the decorated soldier. It’s why she put me on the Honor Guard, despite my protests.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“You didn’t try to refuse?”
“Of course I did. She demanded I fight her for my autonomy, and I lost. Perhaps it was my lack of training. Perhaps she’s simply more experienced than I. Perhaps I was a fool to challenge her, considering the violent path one must walk to become Shogun.”
“Why would she need you on the team so bad? Saikou’s been a peaceful little city for as long as I can remember.”
“She wants to expand. The first thing Shogun Hana did when she became Shogun was kill everyone from the old Shogunate’s rule and replace them with her family. Next, she began training the Honor Guard to fight and she wanted me to lead that effort. Her goal is to expand Saikou into Oni Prefecture, slowly taking it over until it’s all her’s.”
Yugo suspected as much, given the stories he’d heard growing up about Futakuchi-Onna. She had a deep patriotic love for Saikou due to it being the birthplace of her and her two sisters. As Shogun – a position she earned at age 12 –, she’d expanded Saikou from the very city they were staying into the vast Prefecture it currently was. It made sense that she’d want to continue expansion efforts the moment she reincarnated. Given the unique insights he had on the Onna sisters, though, Yugo suspected there was something different about her motives now, but her kept that to himself.
“So,” Manzo said, pouring the expensive whiskey into the glass cup. “That’s enough about me. Tell me about you, now.”
Yugo shrugged. “What do you want to know?”
“Your name, to start.”
“Yugo.”
“Just ‘Yugo’? No family name?”
Yugo twitched. “No. No family name.”
“Ah. Sore spot?”
“...Something like that.”
Manzo clicked his teeth. “That’s fine. Won’t pry.” He finished pouring the drink and offered it to Yugo.
“We aren’t here to drink, are we?”
“No, we’re not.” In one impressive swig, Manzo downed the entire bottle, leaving the filled cup on the table. “We’re here to fight, but I'd rather be running my club. I would’ve liked to drag this out more, but…” He shook his head. “We can’t. Thank you for humoring me, but I still have a job to do.”
Manzo, who’d just been sitting at the end of the couch, vanished in a blink. Just as quickly, he appeared behind Yugo with a pistol drawn. Yugo dodged it, using his short-range teleportation to avoid the sudden attack. Manzo tried that technique a few more times, teleporting to Yugo’s back and shooting, but Yugo was too experienced to fall for such a trick.
When Manzo finally understood that that technique wouldn’t work on Yugo, he resorted to hand-to-hand combat. The man hit surprisingly hard. After exchanging a few blows, Manzo finally managed to land a disorienting punch to Yugo’s face. Yugo recalled one of his master’s many lessons: Levels only show how much aura one can draw out of their Rogue. It was not an indication of skill. Recalling that, Yugo decided to take his opponent a bit more seriously.
They clashed fists, but Yugo’s was a Wraith Strike while Manzo’s was not. Manzo recoiled, and Yugo stepped in to hook the man’s stomach with a barrage of Wraith Strikes to the same area over and over again. Yugo finished the flurry with a Wraith Strike to the face, charging an Elemental Burst point blank to fully dispatch the man before he could gain any more momentum.”
“I was in the Typho-Gorgon war, y’know,” Manzo coughed. “I wasn’t Nori Knight or anything, but I wasn’t a slouch, either.”
“Is that so?” Yugo said, unwilling to banter with the man.
Manzo smiled as Yugo prepared to blast him point-blank with a fiery Elemental Burst. Thankfully it was aura-based fire and not actual fire like Rui’s version of the technique. If it were real, it’d burn this entire–
Boom.
The moment Yugo shot the blast at the downed Manzo, the Elemental Burst bounced off of Manzo and hit Yugo in the torso. He watched in stunned disbelief as his coin-sized technique expanded to fill the room harming only him, the caster. Manzo teleported behind Yugo during the confusion, camouflaging with the smoke and blasting him point blank with an aura blast strong enough to send Yugo flying into the far wall.
Damn!
“I told you he was Contracted to Tenjou Kudari! You should spend more time studying your Myths! If you’d been studying, you’d know all about Tenjou Kudari’s skillset!”
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll get on that after this. Promise.
Yugo adjusted, standing to his feet only to be met by a punch to the gut by Manzo. Rather than flinch, Yugo disregarded the hit and teleported to the center of the club. Manzo chased after him, teleporting behind Yugo only to be blasted by another Elemental Burst. Since this one wasn’t so telegraphed, Manzo didn’t have enough time to reflect it. It affected him, but not enough to take him out of the fight just yet.
They’d begun a dance around the club, teleporting and blasting one another in places where they would be and punishing any incorrect judgements the other made. It was less a fight, and more an elaborate dance mixed with a high-speed game of chess that Yugo couldn’t afford to lose.
It took a while for Yugo to finally defeat Manzo. They teleported around the room for what felt like hours, the dizzying dance starting to wear even him down. By the time Yugo had been approaching the limits of his patience, though, Manzo had long since passed the limits of his Auric Stamina. Yugo teleported behind one of those pink aura blasts Manzo had and Wraith Struck him in the face. He blasted Manzo with a weak Elemental Burst, then Wraith Struck him while his reflective guard was up. That was enough to send the man to his knees a wheezing mess. Yugo hadn’t used any conjuration during the battle, so him summoning a replica of one of Somnia’s pistols and aiming it at Manzo’s forehead was enough to shock his opponent into submission.
Manzo looked down at the gun, then up at Yugo, then finally relented. Yugo watched as the fight left the man’s eyes and decided not to stop him when he turned to lay on his back on the club floor. He wasn’t sure why, but there was something about Manzo that Yugo felt a certain kinship with. Whatever it was, it made him chattier than normal. As far as fights were concerned.
“You called me ‘noble’ earlier,” Yugo began, sitting cross-legged beside Manzo. “Honestly, I think you’re noble for taking on this Honor Guard role for Club Sunrise. I can tell you care about it and the people that work there.” He turned to Manzo. “Leave Shogun Hana to me and my students. You’re a club owner, not a fighter.”
Manzo scoffed. “Don’t patronize me, kid.”
“I’m not being sarcastic. There’s nobility in choosing pacifism. You made a choice years ago, and you shouldn’t have been forced to go back on it. Listen, we’ll have Futakuchi-Onna taken care of by the end of the night. This is m–... our battle, not yours.”
Manzo considered Yugo’s words for a long while. After a full minute, he sat up and extended a hand to Yugo. “I suppose that’s true nobility, isn’t it? Fighting an enemy with no relation to you.”
No relation, huh?
Yugo held back a laugh and accepted Manzo’s handshake.
“It’s what I do.”