Takouba Megan II

As he turned around, he was greeted by a hollow, empty smile; one he was unfortunately already acquainted with.
"Bonan Matenon" the smile said kindly enough, but the overwhelming hint of menace was impossible to ignore. "You seem to be missing something." This was said without irony. The figure, of course spoke of Megan laying uselessly in the dust. However, this was not a threat. Not an immediate threat in any event. But he knew that he would need to use his takouba before this little exchange was complete. The way this figure spoke, the way he looked, and most of all, the way he moved, made him uncomfortable. No. That wasn't the right word. He had to admit it; he was scared. Back at the pub, his normal mortal blow, the one that had sent countless hollow people scattering headless had been as a troublesome to this figure as a light breeze. It was almost as if the blow had not come close to finding its mark…
Work had seemed as though it had been increasingly difficult lately. Most of the time it only took one quick swing; an almost imperceptible amount of energy and force for a profitable pay day. But sometimes he had had to gauge a little more force. Sometimes he had to correct his swing the moment before impact. Sometimes a mark he knew he had struck would have time to make a final lunge at him that it shouldn't have been able to make. Sure, the mark would fall, but instead of dying where it stood, he would have to move to avoid being struck by the falling body. And there had even been a time or two when he had been forced to strike twice. He always made it look easy, and anyone watching would have thought that he was deliberately toying with his quarry. He had even told himself that that was what he was doing at the time. But the truth was that he was having to try harder to complete the contracts he had been given lately.

Oddly enough, this was only in this province, and more specifically, in the northernmost sectors in the Northern Central (or NorCen) province. There were fewer people here than there were, say, in the South, and far less people than in the West. Pockets of settlement were sparse in NorCen, but when one came across a settlement, once usually found them to be teeming with people, and most of those people were of the seedier variety. No one went into the regions north of NorCen, so it was about as frontier as you could get. Thugs, prostas, gamblers, and assassins were all in abundance, and it was for this reason that most of his work was in this region. There was always someone who needed to be taken care of, or more likely, a group of people who needed to be taken care of. Just a few contracts ago, he had been paid very well to dispatch a den of almost 30 hollows. 27 hollows and one head, to be exact. The head always took a little extra effort, but you could spot a head a mile away, and you knew what to expect. But 5 of the hollows had been surprisingly fast and powerful, and the head… He shuddered at the thought of how close that one had been…

Even though most of his work lately had been in NorCen, he was always on the move, and had spent time in the South and East, and had even spent some time in the SouCen province over the last 2 years. And as he thought about it, his trouble dispatching contracts had been confined to his marks in NorCen. After "The Fall", people had been slow to come back to this part of the continent. The meteor had fallen in NorCen, but at the time of The Fall, that had seemed like a rather meaningless event. How could you worry about a falling rock when you had ten thousand people dying of starvation and war every month? Especially when that rock hit in the sticks, a hell hole with a total population of less than 25 thousand permanent residents. It might as well have been uninhabited, with maybe 1 person for every 5 square miles. Outside of NorCen, the hollows dropped like flies just as always, but he couldn't just decline contracts here where they were the most lucrative. What the hell were those people doing in NorCen before The Fall anyway? The region was rich with natural resources, but the continent was rich with natural resources, so no one ever saw a reason to wander into the badlands and face God-Knows-What just to make a dollar. And with the inherent greed of his countrymen, that was a strong statement indeed.

A gentle clearing of the throat brought him back to his current situation. The stranger had made the noise, but didn't seem to be paying any attention to him, which irritated him. Didn't this "person" know who he was? He was actually offended at the thought that someone who was to die at his hand wasn't paying him the proper respect. Then again, he didn't know how long he had been lost in thought.

It seemed as though this mysterious figure was waiting for something to happen. He made no movement except to occasionally shift his weight from one foot to the other, but he was obviously in no hurry to complete his business, whatever that was. Eventually, he spoke. "You must be Rien Xifeng. I've been looking for you for some time." Again the unsettling smile danced across his face. "Why is Megan laying there so unceremoniously in the dirt? She doesn't belong there. Go ahead. Pick her up."
"That smile of his starting to piss me off" Rien thought to himself as he edged toward his blade.

Takouba Megan

The wheels of his stolen transport ground slowly to a halt.
"Shit. I should have known better just by looking at that heap of junk. Just my luck I'm a chump for a fancy paint job." It was true. He was. And this wasn't the first time something like this had happened. IF only he had taken the sensible and sturdy, if only a little plain, plus-drive wheeler he would still be on the road, putting distance between him and what he was currentlyrunning from. Then again, that was part of the problem; he needed something "here and now", and he needed something fast. Sure, he had planned on this impressive-looking number failing eventually, but the four chargers each feeding both of the engines has guaranteed him the benefit of getting out before his pursuer could discern where he was going or which route he was going to take.

His blade, while far above average, was failing him more and more frequently since he had taken this last assignment.
That was almost 7 months ago today.
In the early months he was sure that he had graduated to the big leagues, and that he would have to up his game. Was this an entirely new breed of quarry? Could so much have changed with the simple signing of a contract? In the time directly after that, he became certain that he was losing his edge. Most of the agents he's encountered since then looked, felt, even smelled the same as those he'd been dispatching for the last 39 years. And he was good. He knew that. But something was different... He just didn't know what is was. Unfortunately for him, he wasn't going to have much, if any time to find out before it was too late.

"This is no time to reminisce." he said out loud, although he knew, he *hoped* that there was no one around for at least 15 sections. "What the hell happened back there?!" he screamed to himself. He desperately wanted something to blame for what had happened. He hadn't been forced to disengage from a battle for nearly 40 years. When he was a punk kid. Those in The Tower wouldn't even have considered him at that age; not for at least ten more years. Since then he had honed his skills, placing a tick on the gnarled handle of his Takouba for every one of themhe had vanquished. Currently it was hard to tell where the ticks began or ended, and the marks had spread from the handle itself, halfway up the length of the blade itself. And at this age, he should just have been entering his prime...
"What the hell happened..."
It began like any other job; five felled before the rest of the patrons in the seedy and foul pub could even pull their faces out of the large containers of disgusting woodfuel they used to minimize the despair they were so accustomed to since things had changed. By the time anyone knew anything was amiss, 4 more were down, and the two he had just engaged were only a matter of moments. But after those two had fallen, legs and arms dismembered and still falling toward the ground, he knew there was a problem. The last of this company to be dealt with was something different. His Takouba Megan-Espashould have sailed through this one just as it had thousands of times in the past, but just before the critical strike was to made, something made him hesitate. This wasn't like the difficulty he had had lately; they all fell, it just took a little more effort. The realization of whatever had momentarily stayed his hand this time gave him such a shock that he nearly dropped Meganin disbelief. The commotion in the pub has risen to a fever pitch, as bar fights seem to do. As fortune would have it, some drunken patron had thrown a chair, knocked down a lantern, ans started a fire that distracted his opponent just long enough for him to make the decision to "fall back."

"We never retreat. We Fall Back. Regroup." He said to himself bitterly. It was something he's picked up along the way... Something people said to make themselves feel better about having to flee. It didn't make him feel any better...

He continued to assess what had happened. He left the pub and chose his transport; the one that he was sitting in the dirt next to wondering how he was going to get to his destination. He had one eye in the mirror until the transport had failed, and he never once saw any sign that he had been followed. He would rather have still been driving, but he was alone.

At that moment, he thought he knew what had happened; why he hadn't cut this one down like he had all the others. Again he laughed bitterly to himself, and even stood up, contemplating walking back to the bar he had fled to finish his business. But as he stood up and turned around, he was greeted by the face of the "man" he had left in the fire at the pub. Megan was in the dust at his feet. Stupid.
"Shit."

Problems Shifting ^^

Hello! I am very new to this... I write a LOT, but most of it is technical/academic. I hope to start writing in a way i would liketo, but I'm not sure where to begin... Hopefully later tonight I will get something going.

Sorry. This post is boring!