The Red Samurai (CANCELLED)

Chapter 3: The Village of Robbing Bandits

The next morning, Kikuko made breakfast on the table for the samurai while she planned to stay in her room. After eating breakfast, the red samurai walked out of the dojo gate, down the stone steps and into the village. People of the village backed away into their store stands when the red samurai walked right past them. Then a bunch of rice paddies farmers came with their tools for weapons and surrounded the red samurai.

"You! Leave our village." said a farmer, "We don't have anything that you want and we already have problems of our own, so leave or we make you leave." The men were ready for whatever comes their way, but before the red samurai could attack the men an old woman came and whacked the man in the back of the head with her fist.

"OW!" shouted the man.

"You should be ashamed of yourselves. You don't even know if this person is even a bandit." said the old senior and she turned her head and smiled at the red samurai. "Hello. My name Mrs. Shizko. People call me Shizuko but you can call me granny if you like." The samurai was silent for a moment and nodded in agreement.

"Well, now that we know each other. What is it that you are here for ?" The red samurai did not respond, it looked away for a moment and raised both of her hands. The men raised their weapons and the red samurai started to communicate through hand signs. No one could understand what the red samurai is trying to say until Mrs. Shizko said.

" You want to know if we have any herbs and soap." The red samurai nodded.

"We don't have herbs bit we do have a little bit of soap if that's alright." The red samurai nodded and followed Mrs. Shizko.

"I'm terribly sorry for our villages behavior. It wasn't what it use to be." The red samurai started to hand sign.

"Why the village looks gloomy and the villagers were cautiously stern about you ?" said Mrs. Shizko. The red samurai nodded.

"Well, you see, our village used to peaceful and if anyone dared to attack our village Kazuo will always come to stop them." The red samurai hand signed again.

"Who was Kazuo ?" said Mrs. Shizko "Oh right, Kazuo was our village's martial artist who recently left to serve our country against the Emperor of the East which leaves his younger sister to watch over our village and train his pupils, but when he left our village his sister she did train the pupils but she never left the dojo as she still waited for her brother to return. But, with Kazuo gone our village was taken over by a bunch of robbing bandits and they come now and again to take our rice, produce and everything we have in our village." The red samurai hand signed again.

"No, I'm afraid that his sister was too grieved that she hid in the dojo still waiting for her brother to come home and also believing that her brother was out there defeating bandits as if nothing has changed for past years." The room was silent and Mrs. Shizko turned to leave the store until the red samurai hand signed one last time.

"What was the name of the sister ?" said Mrs. Shizko. "Her name was Kikuko."

....

"Hmm, I thought it was here," said Mrs. Shizko searching in the shelves while the red samurai looked in the crates. They found nothing in the past hours, but the red samurai opened one of the crates and found a black sakura patterned kimono.

"Oh, here we go. I found it," said Mrs. Shizko as she walked to the red samurai.

"Beautiful is it not. Some merchants came to our village and gave up that box because nothing was selling." The red samurai nodded still mesmerizing the black, cherry blossom kimono.

"Here you go," said Mrs. Shizko, handing the bar of soap to the red samurai, "If that is all you need I will be on my way and if you need anything else you can always come to me to help you find what you're looking for, okay." The red samurai nodded and as Mrs. Shizko left the store, the red samurai looked at the kimono one last time.

"Beautiful." said a feminine voice.