Thug King

The pressure emanating from Kenji was a physical entity. It was a dome of killing intent so pure and concentrated that it seemed to warp the very air in the hallway. Dust motes ceased their dance. The hum of the building's electricity seemed to die.

Maruyama Jiro, a man who had faced down national champions and charging biker gangs, felt a terror so profound that his breath hitched in his chest. He had felt his Senpai's power before, but that had been the power of a master asserting dominance. This was different. This was the silent, absolute rage of a natural disaster about to be born. It was the stillness before the entire world shatters.

"Senpai..." Maruyama managed to whisper, his voice trembling.

Kenji didn't respond. He unfolded his clenched fist and looked at the crumpled note. His eyes, usually placid or analytical, were now chillingly empty voids. They were not the eyes of a human being experiencing anger. They were the eyes of an executioner whose target had just been acquired.

"They touched what was mine."

The thought was not born of arrogance or possession. It was a simple, fundamental truth. Yui Amano, with her quiet kindness and her offerings of peace, had become a part of his world, a part he had decided was worth protecting. These creatures had violated that decision. They had broken the most important rule of all.

"Grandfather's Final Lesson, Rule #1: There will be those who mistake your mercy for weakness. There will be those who threaten the innocent to leverage you. When you encounter such people, you will afford them no quarter. You will not wound them. You will not teach them a lesson. You will erase them from your path so completely that they may never threaten anyone again. This is the one time when you are not to hold back. This is the Dragon's Wrath."

For the first time since leaving the mountain, Kenji was no longer bound by the constraints of being a "student" or a "problem solver." He was now an instrument of that final, terrifying rule.

He turned, his movements unnervingly calm. "Maruyama-senpai," he said, his voice a dead, flat monotone that was more frightening than any shout. "Go to my apartment. Stay there. Do not leave until I return."

"But Senpai, let me come with you! I am your shield!" Maruyama protested, his loyalty overriding his fear.

"No," Kenji's voice was absolute. "Your presence will be an inefficiency. This is not a battle. This is an extermination."

He walked past Maruyama. The sheer cold radiating from him made the giant judoka flinch. Kenji didn't take the stairs. He walked to the end of the hall, opened a window, and stepped out onto the fire escape. He flowed down the metal steps with the silent grace of a falling shadow and vanished into the twilight.

The abandoned district by the docks was a graveyard of forgotten industry. Rusted warehouses stood like skeletal remains against the blood-red sunset. The air smelled of salt, decay, and stagnant water.

The old dojo stood at the end of a pier, isolated and decrepit. Inside, it was dark, the only light coming from a few bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling, casting long, dancing shadows.

Yui Amano sat tied to a chair in the center of the room. She was terrified, but she wasn't crying. Her fear had been honed by her time at Seiryu, and now it was a cold, hard knot in her stomach. Her captors were rough, scary men, but they hadn't harmed her. They had just dragged her here and left her.

Standing a few feet away was an old man. He was bald, with a wiry frame and a long, white beard. He wore a simple, traditional gi. This was Master Uesugi, a living relic of a bygone era of martial arts. He looked at the girl with disinterested eyes. He was merely fulfilling a debt to the Yakuza. His part was to guard her and to face the boy, should he arrive.

"He's here," Uesugi said, his voice raspy with age.

His Yakuza handlers, a group of ten men armed with swords and knives, tensed up, turning to the entrance. They saw nothing.

"What are you talking about, old man? There's no—"

The main shoji screen doors at the entrance did not slide open. They exploded inwards, reduced to a cloud of splinters and paper dust.

Kenji Tanaka stood in the ruined doorway. He was a silhouette against the dying light, and the pressure that rolled in with him was so potent it felt like the ocean itself was flooding the room.

The Yakuza thugs, men who lived by violence, felt their blood run cold. This was not the presence of a fighter. This was the presence of Death itself.

"Release her," Kenji said. His voice was not human. It was the sound of grinding stones at the bottom of a frozen sea.

One of the thugs, trying to overcome his fear with bravado, brandished his katana. "You came alone, you idiot! You're surrounded!"

He charged.

Kenji did not move to meet him. As the thug swung his sword in a vicious downward arc, Kenji's hand, moving faster than the eye could follow, shot out and caught the blade itself between his thumb and forefinger.

The Yakuza's eyes bulged in disbelief. The sword, swung with all his might, stopped dead, inches from Kenji's head, caught by two fingers.

Kenji tightened his grip. With a sound of screeching, tortured metal, the hardened steel of the katana blade began to bend, then twisted, crumpling in his hand as if it were aluminum foil. He then flicked his wrist. The ruined blade snapped, and the broken half spun through the air, embedding itself deep in the charging man's shoulder.

He screamed and fell.

The other nine thugs stared in horror. Then, rage and desperation took over. "KILL HIM!"

They swarmed him from all sides, a storm of flashing steel.

And the Dragon was unleashed.

Kenji became a whirlwind of absolute, merciless violence. He moved through them, his hands and feet becoming blurs of destruction.

He broke a man's arm in three places with a single, flowing block.

He sidestepped a knife thrust and drove his knuckles into the man's throat, crushing his windpipe with a sickening crunch. The man fell, gurgling, clawing at his neck.

He seized another by the head and slammed his face into the wooden floorboards with enough force to shatter both.

He caught a sword swing, wrenched the weapon away, and used the hilt to systematically shatter the man's ribs, one by one, with a series of short, brutal jabs.

There was no mercy. No restraint. No holding back. Every move was crippling. Every strike was designed for maximum, permanent damage. He was not disabling them. He was destroying them, turning them from men into broken piles of meat and bone.

In less than fifteen seconds, it was over. The nine Yakuza lay broken, moaning, or dying on the dojo floor. Blood stained the old wood. The air was thick with the smell of it.

Kenji stood amidst the carnage, not a drop of blood on him, his breathing perfectly even. He turned his dead, empty eyes to the last man standing.

Master Uesugi.

The old master had watched the entire massacre, his face a mask of stone. But inside, his martial artist's soul was reeling. This was not a style. This was a force. This was Ryujin Kankotsu-jutsu in its purest, most terrifying form. The legends were true.

"So," Uesugi said, his voice steady despite the horror he had just witnessed. "The young Dragon has come. I am Uesugi. I am your final opponent."

Kenji looked at the old man, then at Yui, still tied to the chair behind him.

He took one step forward.

And the entire dojo seemed to cry out in protest.