Beneath the roar of the storm and the clash of men -- brave Samurai, Hida, Hiruma, Kuni, all preparing to once again perform the duty they had briefly forgotten -- preparing for war. Yakamo spoke in a soft whisper, eyes closed, jade light from his artificial hand dimmed, reaching outward. "Oh my brother," he whispered. "Oh, Sukune, we were such fools, such proud fools. We built up our own downfall, and then we sacrificed you to try and keep it away..."

The storm roared, and Yakamo fell silent, seeking for a communion with the brother he had lost.

Suddenly lightning cracked right outside the window, and when Yakamo's sight cleared, he no longer knelt inside his ancestral shrine. Instead, he walked in a form not his own down a dark corridor somewhere. There was someone beside him, speaking. He forced his senses clearer, and realised the voice he was hearing was that of Kuni Yori. He forced the alien head to turn and saw the black sorceror there, trailed by his zombie, the thing that had once been Hida Amoro. "...Yakamo will come for you," the maho-tsukai was saying. "He will seek you out in the fray whatever the cost, and that can be used to our advantage." Yakamo grimaced, and forced himself to master the alien body to speak...

"No, Yori. The oni is but a stepping stone. I will come for you, tainted one, and you will taste jade and steel. You are mine, traitor." The words sounded more like the grinding of steel than speech.

The sorceror's shattered visage contorted in fear. He fell back behind his dim-witted zombie slave muttering words of power while the once-Amoro looked slowly around for what concerned his master. Yori snapped out one word of power and Yakamo felt his final connection to the thing the sorceror had summoned snapping away. He fought his way back to his own body and opened his eyes to a room filled with jade light from his angry hand. There were bloody scratches around the base of it, and Yakamo guessed the Shadowlands creature, trapped in the same body as a thing of purest jade, had attempted to get the Hand off by any means possible.

Slowly, as Yakamo calmed, the jade fire in his arm subsided. He gently picked up the daisho of his brother and placed them in the rack just to the left of the shrine. Replacing his sweat-stained kimono with a clean one, he paused a moment to gather his wits then strode out of his quarters for the last time to oversee the final preparations for the Day of Thunder.

A week later, Yakamo strode into the large tent at the centre of the Crab clan camp. It was night, and the tent was lit only by the firepit at its centre. The flickering firelight cast strange and dancing shadows on the walls, and Yakamo wondered how closely some of the shadows he would encounter the next day would resemble the ones he was seeing now.

As he cast his gaze around the tent he noted the entire command corps of the Clan about their tasks. Kaiu Suman and Kaiu Utsu, the man who built walls and the man who knocked them down, conferred quietly over a plan in one corner. Hida Matyu worked at a table, transferring to maps the plans Yakamo and Kisada had laboured for weeks over. If he stepped outside, Yakamo knew he would find Hida Tsuru tending to the horses of the clan and preparing his cavalry commanders for the battle that lay ahead, and further out at the perimeter of the camp he would find the Kuni Witch-Hunters led by Kuni Sensin and Hiruma Kage protecting the camp from Junzo's legions. Scattered throughout the room were the other Hida and Hiruma leaders of the clan -- Tadashiro, Tampako, Unari, Osuno, even the greying but still iron Hiruma Yoshi. Near the fire, the wily Yasuki Taka and his cousin Yasuki Kojiro conversed, presumably about supplies and logistics. And finally, at the very centre of the tent, Yakamo's sister O-Ushi consulted with the Empire's mightest general, Hida Kisada, the Great Bear himself, mastermind of the Crab strategy. They were all hardened, they were all prepared, they were ready for anything. Except the swords their damiyo wore that day.

An awed silence descended on the room as Yakamo strode to the fire pit. Every eye was fixed on him. As he neared, Kisada spoke: "Yakamo..."

"Father," Yakamo answered, "I am, by your edict, champion of the Crab Clan. I will command our forces when we take the field against the Dark One tomorrow. And it will be my brother's swords that I will wear when I face Fu Leng."

Kisada smiled. "I know, my son, I know. Do them honor."

Together, the two of them turned and stared into the flickering fire, father and son, mourning those their foolishness had lost them.

The Day of Thunder dawned dim and gloomy, the sky wrapped in clouds, as if Amaterasu withheld her light in anticipation of what was to come. It was not a good omen.

Yakamo stood with Kisada, O-Ushi, and Hiruma Yoshi atop a small hillock overlooking the wide plains outside Otosan Uchi. To their left, Doji Kuwanan moved among the ranks of the Cranes, inciting them to new heights of purity and Crane honor. To the right Kitsu Motso's Lion army and Togashi Yokuni's Dragons prepared their spirits and themselves for battle. Yokatsu's Unicorn irregulars moved about the field carrying messages and refreshments to all the soldiers while Otaku Kamoko's elite Battle Maidens meditated near the Cranes. Toturi's rag-tag ronin clustered here and there across the field polishing their weapons and waiting for their leader to call them together. Finally, away from the clans, the small samurai contingent of Shiba Ujimitsu, the much larger gathering of Ujimitsu's Shugenja, and the Scorpion forces clustered together to discuss their own strategy. Kisada smiled wryly. "They call this the Plain of Fast Troubles. There will be many troubles this day." Yakamo's gaze scanned the middle distance, picking out the faint shapes of standards and spears of the army of undead and of Ikoma Tsanuri's imperial loyalists, and he slowly nodded. He knew one of those faint shapes he could see would be the Terrible Standard, the thing from which he and his father had hung Sukune in their foolish pride. "That," he whispered, Jade Hand clenched in a fist, "will be my first prize." The hand flared and pulsated with holy light.

Yakamo looked down then, and noted four figures coming up the hill towards them. One wore the sky-blue armor and mon of the Crane; another, armor of iridescent green that gleamed even in the absence of the sun. The third wore simple brown armor, and the fourth, who had the walk only total fatigue can bring to a man, was clothed in a tattered kimono that might once have been golden. Yakamo walked down the hill to meet the other generals of the army of the Seven Thunders -- and what seemed to be a somewhat unexpected guest.

Doji Hoturi, Kakita Toshimoko, and Toturi all bowed deeply to Yakamo, who returned the bow. The fourth, who Yakamo could now identify as a youth -- 'Fifteen summers, no older,' thought the Crab Champion to himself -- attempted to bow with the courtly grace he had obviously once possessed, but he was clearly in pain, and stumbled. Toshimoko put a hand on his shoulder to keep him from falling. The Grey Crane looked to his lord as if asking permission, and Hoturi inclined his head. "Yakamo-sama," the Emerald Champion said quietly, "this is my son, Ichiro. He has just last night escaped from Otosan Uchi and brings us news of the preparations." Yakamo noted that the pommel of the katana in Ichiro's obi was slick with sweat and blood, and saw the fire that gleamed in the young man's eyes. 'There is something of Toshimoko's fire in his courtier son, then, it seems,' thought the Crab. "He carries a wound from the duel he fought with a Lion as he left," and at this there was no mistaking the enormous pride in the old Crane's eyes, "but what he tells us I think you too should hear." Yakamo nodded, turned towards the Crab camp, and bellowed "MEDIC!". Then he took the wounded Crane around the shoulders and led him up to the camp, saying "Come, lean on me." The youth looked at Yakamo with grateful eyes, and passed out. Abandoning proprietry, Yakamo swept the youth in his arms like a child and raced to deliver him into the care of the medics.

An hour later, Hida Yakamo, his sister O-Ushi, Doji Hoturi, Kakita Toshimoko, Shiba Ujimitsu, Doji Kuwanan, Mirumoto Sukune, Mirumoto Yukihira, Kitsu Motso, Shinjo Yokatsu, Otaku Kamoko, Bayushi Hisa, Toturi, and Toturi's lieutenant Takuan all clustered around the young man's bed as Ichiro told his story. Fu Leng, he said, was gathering the forces of the elements and of corruption to prepare a rebuff to the Thunders. Kachiko had kept her promises, and the Dark God's battle plans were in disarray. But soon, Fu Leng would be ready. To this, Ujimitsu added that Shiba Tsukune, Yoritomo, and the Naga had engaged Yogo Junzo's reinforcements.

Yakamo scanned the room, and expressed the feelings of every man in it: "We must move now, or not at all."

As the leaders filed out of the tent, Yakamo was the last to leave. He placed his huge jade hand over the small hand of Toshimoko's son, and whispered, "Your deeds today will be remembered. Rest." He rose quietly, turned to the medic, a small Hiruma woman, and curtly instructed her: "Care for him." The medic nodded soberly, and began to tend the man's wounds.

Outside, the commanders stood together atop the hillock. Yakamo shouldered his way to the front, pausing only to whisper to the Grey Crane, "We will care for him as though he were our own."

Yakamo barged forrward, and stood beside the descendant of Shinsei, looking down on the armies of Rokugan. He raised his left fist high and screamed to the sky: "WE ARE COMING FOR YOU, FU LENG! THIS DAY IS YOUR LAST!" His pulsating Jade Hand washed the ranks with the light of holy purity, and they cheered.

Yakamo turned to his fellow Thunders, and spoke softly. "Until we meet at the gates of Otosan Uchi." Then, without waiting for a response, he strode down the hill to the waiting Crab army, Jade Hand still flashing, a beacon in the darkness.

Blood, black and red, corrupt and human, flew. Steel sang its aria of death. Jade flared and burned. And Hida Yakamo danced the dance of war, in and out of the fray on the Emperor's plains, tetsubo and Jade Hand leaving destroyed abominations in his wake. From Junzo's command post near the walls of Otosan Uchi, the Terrible Standard of Fu Leng rose above the battle, the hideous remains of Sukune's body flapping in the wind. Yakamo fought his way slowly towards it, intent on bringing it down, the undead falling before him like paper in the wind.

To his left, Yakamo suddenly realised, there was another samurai, fighting like one who no longer cares for his life, with the same objective in mind: the Terrible Standard. Through the flurry of battle, he could see little of the other, but he caught hints of a deep red armor and a mempo --

But no other Crab Yakamo knew of had ever worn armor like that...

And then the zombies began to fall back, and Yakamo could see the one person who could not possibly have been there...

"SUKUNE!"

Two sad, ancient eyes alighted on Yakamo's face. "Greetings, my brother," Hida Sukune whispered.

"B... bu... how can you be here? We... we..." Yakamo stammered in confusion.

Sukune held up a hand, palm outward. Yakamo could see the walls of the Imperial City through it. "I am dead, my brother. I have been allowed to return for a time to attend to a task, but I am dead, and when my duties are done I will be gone again."

"T... task?" stuttered Yakamo.

Sukune's eyes swept the battlefield, alighting on Fu Leng's Standard. His face filled with hatred. "That." He turned slightly, sliding the katana he carried out of his obi, and Yakamo suddenly recognised it -- the Ancestral Sword of the Crab Clan! "Before I came here, I made my peace with our father. He sent this to you -- because I will need my daisho, and you must have a sword..."

Fumbling, Yakamo extracted Sukune's swords from his obi and handed them over, accepting his father's swords in return. As his jade hand closed around the saya, there was a roll of thunder in the distance. Sukune looked alarmed. "Time is short, my brother, but it would be my honor to have you at my side."

The Crab Hero looked at his dead brother, at the swords he clasped in his fist of jade, and at the abomination flapping in the wind as Junzo's forces fell back further before the army of the Thunders. In the distance, Yakamo heard Toturi's battle cry, joined a moment later by that of Kitsu Motso and Ikoma Tsanuri. Then he reverently slid the saya into his obi, drew the sword the Champions of the Crab Clan had carried ever since the first Hida a thousand years ago, and with his brother at his side charged after the ranks of retreating undead.

A zombie ended in a spray of corrupted black blood and shattered porcelain, and the two Crab brothers broke onto the hilltop where Fu Leng's Terrible Standard was raised. A single stroke from Sukune's katana cleft the pole it hung from in twain, and the ranks of zombies fell like chaff with a single massive sigh. Yakamo smiled as a full legion of Junzo's troops collapsed.

He turned back to his brother, but his words died unsaid as he saw the fading form of the Shadow Samurai raise its katana in salute. From a great distance, words drifted on the wind to Yakamo: "My task is done. Farewell."

"Rest, Sukune," Yakamo whispered. "Rest, my brother."

As Sukune's form faded from sight, Yakamo had to strain to hear his last five whispered words...

"I forgive you, my brother..."

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