Two men stand on the sides of a bridge that arches over a small stream, fast flowing. Eash has assumed the stance of a swordmaster, one in the blue of the kakita focusses his breath for the single strike, his opponent, in the gold of the Dragon, takes the stance of Ni-ten, ready only for the moment of reaction. Between them is just a short length of weather worn wood, and beneath it the water running to the sea long distant.
The Kakita rests his eyes lightly on the breast of his opponent, gauging the tensing of the muscles, the pattern of his breathing. He does not allow himself to focus too heavily on one spot, to miss the movement of the whole, aware even without looking of where his sword hangs at his side and how the stroke would arc outwards.
The Mirumoto, Eishu, follows in his mind the road that has led here, far from his homelands. The long training in the dojo of his sensei, learning the secret moves of the falling rain style. The day he had crossed the land to challenge the students of the Kakita academy, and how their champion had fallen before him, the stinging blows of the bokken bring more pain to the defeated than the cut of a Katana. The day, most of all, as the snow of winter had begun to fall across the mountains, when he had returned to the master's dojo and found him dead, a victim of students of the kakita who had come to challenge him for his insult to their school, and outnumbering him, cut him down. That was the day he took his sensei's sword for his own and vowed to end the life of every Crane assassin who had crossed the cold mountains that day.
In Kakita Shiko's mind was the day he had stood as champion for his school and fell to the blows of the Dragon's bokkens. The honour of the school had rested with him, but he had shamed it with his actions. He could not allow this defeat to be repeated, it would bring great dishonour to his master. Instead he had taken the challenge to the house of the master Mirumoto Kagori, and he had fought him in the falling snow of early winter.
Even now Shiko could feel the cold ground beneath his feet, the cries of the students at his back.. 'For the honour of the Tsunami school!' and the way his blade slipped past the Old man's guard to wound him, an honourable victory, till he slipped, and fell amongst the stones and the snow below, never to move again. Kakita and Mirumoto, this was always the way of it. Two styles, one duel, and the matter never resolved, till now. The falling rain would not challenge the kakita after this day, it would exist no longer.
On the bridge in the hot sun of summer the two Samurai face each other, their armour carefully put aside on the banks of the river. The two samurai still their breathing, not a single sound or movement blemishes the stance, and then as one they rush forward, as one the swords are drawn and the air is cut, at once they strike home, steel into flesh. And the Crane's eyes go dull and grey with suprise as the cold steel in his belly steels his life away and he falls across the dark wood. Eishu steps back and bows, shortly to the corpse, that was the last one.