"Are you sure?!" Hina asked the midwife angry and confused
"Yes my Lord, I'm cert....
"Give me my child you idiot you don't know what your talking about!" Hina snapped.
She grabbed the baby from from the midwife and a wave of despair washed over her as she saw her child.
"No" she cried softly. Hina with a psychotic look in her eyes, flung the baby across the room as if it was nothing but garbage.
But before anything could happen Nobu caught her.
"Hina!! Are you mad?! How could you throw our child like that!" Nobu was furious.
"For years and years you've not only been a righteous leader and fierce warrior risking your life for your people, you've been a great husband, you took care of me, granted my every wish and never asked for anything in return. Look at us we're old now, you're 69 and I'm 64, you need an heir to lead the clan towards the future. There's been rumors for years now that I'm barren and I will never give you an heir. I finally give birth and it's a girl? All I wanted was to give you a son and I couldn't even do that. Can't you see? Their right, I'm cursed. I can't decide who I hate more, myself, or that thing in your hands."
"Hina shut the hell up!! Don't ever say anything like that ever again! What do you think is more important to me? An heir? Or a child? My family has led the clan for hundreds of years, maybe it is time we give others a chance, they're many talented young warriors here. We can hav- "
"Do you hear yourself? You just plan to give up leadership? That would cause chaos not just in our small city, news like this would spread throughout all Japan."
The baby began crying again.
Nobu approached Hina, preparing to hand the child over.
"She might be hungry" he said softly
"Get her away from me!" She snarled
"Hina" Shin began, it was the first time he spoke since entering the room.
"I understand you're disappointed, but she's your child."
"Shut up Shin" she glared at the small man with rage flowing through her.
"It's fine. I'll try to find a healthy woman with a newborn in the village and pay her to care and breastfeed her.
" your just going to let a random woman care for her? " Hina asked.
"What do you care? Believe it or not that random woman will probably love my child more than you would. Or are you just worried that the villagers Will find out you hate your child too much to feed her?" Nobu asked.
Hina looked away.
"Your a monster." Nobu said as he walked away. Shin went along with him.
"Hey Nobu, in all that excitement I forgot to ask. What're you gonna name her?" He questioned.
Nobu looked into the baby's shining green eyes that were just as beautiful as her mother's.
"Gwyn"
As the years went by the burning hatred in Hina's heart for her child would only grow, Nobu noticed this and tried to keep them both apart as much as possible.
When Gwyn was three years old she started training with the other young girls in the clan, for all women were trained in the art of combat so they would be able to defend their households if need be, though they weren't trained to the extent that men were. She quickly rose to be the strongest of them all, she learnt different techniques and fighting styles seemingly overnight while others would take months, physically she was also In a league of her own, competing with even her masters in feats of strength from that young age, though she would lose, her being able to keep up any at all was quite impressive.
At the age of seven she started pestering her father to train her. He would always put it off or send her along to play, but a year later he finally broke.
"Fine" Nobu sighed, both annoyed and impressed at her perseverance.
"Wait, can't you go fight with the women or something?" He asked with small smile on his face.
"Papa I can beat them all with my eyes closed...literally. Please train me, I wanna be a samurai like you"
"Uh ok, how about you ask Shin to give you a few lessons in hand to hand combat and pressure points?"
"Already did"
"Ok, I'll teach you but like I've told you before it will be very dangerous and cruel. And you'll have to forget about becoming a samurai, your a woman after all."
But that she would never do.
For the next year, Gwyn's training with her father consisted of mostly war strategies and combat tactics. She also had to do at least 200 pushups, sit-ups, pull ups etc. per day, but that was all quite boring to her. Nobu tried his best to keep her away from more dangerous things and tried to convince her that becoming a samurai was impossible, for he truly loved her, but she was determined.
"Papa! Why won't you actually teach me? I know you didn't earn the title of Japan's strongest by learning stupid tactics!"
She was frustrated, her jet black hair gently swaying in the wind. She had a small cluster of long blonde strands to the left of her face which instantly reminded anyone who saw her of her mother.
"No. But I've held it for years because of that knowledge, sometimes brute strength and raw power isn't enough."
They stood at the edge of their village, beyond the walls.
"I know you want to be like me, which is one of the most amazing things a child could say to their father, I've told you that you can't but your determined. No true father would stand in the way of their child's dream, even if he doesn't agree with it. My father held me back when I was young, told me I wasn't ready. Girl or not I won't do the same to you."
"Do you mean it pa? "
"Of course lil rascal" he smiled, his smile vanished just as quickly as it appeared.
"Now's when your real training begins"
"But first, there's a small test, you see those? I want you to clear that small forest over there. You'll have a week"
he said pointing to a small crop of large unusual looking trees.
"But Pa, those are the native trees of our clan."
"And?" Nobu asked
" There known to be as hard as steel It takes three men about a day to cut one of them, you want me to clear an entire forest in only seven?"
"Exactly" he said handing her a Katana
She took it excitedly.
"I'll do my best!" she smiled.
"I'll check on you later, I'm going to see your brother." Nobu told her.
Gwyn felt an unpleasant feeling when her brother was mentioned. Four years after she was born her mother gave birth to a son. He was her pride and ' *only child* ' as she would often say, she oversaw his education and contracted instructors from far and wide to teach him. Though he was young he was being trained quite vigorously. Hina would always say she pushed him so hard to make up for her 'mistake', that mistake being Gwyn. Gwyn was always treated as something beneath her brother by her mom, he was taught to hate her from a young age. Needless to say, they didn't get along. Their father loved them both dearly and tried to make them closer, the hate instilled In his son's heart by his mother however, was just too strong.
"Run along now" Nobu said. As she gleefully dashed towards the trees.
"You know. Your an asshole Nobu, that sword you gave her has never been sharpened, matter of fact I doubt it has an edge at all. You've essentially given her a metal stick, and she's so eager she hasn't even realized." Shin said
"If she can't she can just forget becoming a lead samurai in my ranks, besides, I believe in her."
"By the way, are you serious about allowing her to become a samurai?" Shin inquired
"Yes, a soldier is a soldier after all. As long as the person's strong enough and is willing to fight and die for a cause, they're an honorable warrior, it doesn't matter if you're a Lord or a peasant. I don't think it matters whether your a man or woman either. Death comes for us all, and on the battlefield creed nor class holds no value. The only thing that has any meaning is strength, there's a simplicity to it that I love. Anyway I have to go" Nobu stated.
Gwyn ran towards a tree and swung her blade with all her might, landing a full blow in the tree's large grey trunk, nothing happened to it, it just stood there. The force of the blow was redirected back into the Katana and into her hands.
"Ow! " Gwyn yelped
"Hehehe" she giggled
She tried again, this time swinging harder but the result was the same.
'I need to think of some sort of plan. Doesn't master Apo have a specific technique for cutting extremely hard objects? Too bad he doesn't wanna tell me yet. Wait could this test be about all that thinking is just as important as fighting nonsense Pa was talking about?'
She sat before the tree lost in her mind. She decided to observe the trees, maybe she would find some sort of weakness or figure out the right technique needed to take it down, she thought. After walking through the 'steel woods' as it was called and closely inspecting trees, she found nothing except that the trees had a diameter of about 5 ft and were hard as shit.
"There has to be some sort of technique used to do this...
WAIT!! I got it! I just gotta swing my sword really hard! That sounds dumb but it's like opening a bottle of wine, there's a definite way to do it but if you just smash the bottle, voila! It's open. It'll be spilled but that's not the point. With enough strength, technique becomes unnecessary
( ' if papa or any of my masters heard me say that they'd have a stroke and lecture me on how brains and precision are just as important as brawn ' )
I just need more force and these trees will fall. But how? I'm not even strong enough to scratch them. " she stood there talking to herself
Then it came to her, a special technique she briefly heard her father mention. It wasn't well known and even among those who knew of it's existence it was hardly used. It is said that if a warrior achieves a perfect sense of calm for long enough, he could restore his energy and temporarily multiply his strength. His mind and soul must be clear and at complete rest, many warriors never attempted this for it is near impossible to achieve this state, especially during battle.
It's hard to be perfectly calm with hundreds people trying to kill you for some reason.
She sat down in a specific position, preparing to meditate, she laid her sword in her lap and closed her eyes. Nightfall was steadily approaching. There were only a few streaks of sunlight that fought there way through the stormy looking sky to assault the earth with oppressive heat...
For the following 5 days Gwyn didn't move from where she sat, not to stretch her legs, not to eat. Whether the sun unleashed hellish heat or the rain pounded the earth she sat there. She could gradually feel her strength growing over time.
80%
90%
95%
100%
110%
When Gwyn acquired a hundred and sixty percent she grabbed her Katana and sped off, her slipper Instantly burning away from the explosive move.