Chapter One: Fighting and Dreaming

        Tetsu sat in the garden of his masters' dojo, meditating on the nature of his ability. The young boy with the flaming red hair was known throughout the dojo as demon touched, a cursed child left on the doorstep of the dojo when his parents were murdered. He'd cried for hours before the masters finally opened the collossal doors and took him in. His parents were rumored to be Scottish immigrants that had fled the destruction of their homeland when the IRA started burning and pillaging it. Other rumors said that he himself was the one who killed his parents and that he'd done it to lie in wait until he could murder the masters in their sleep. As if that was even possible.



        The masters slept softly in this dojo. Many had once been soldiers or street thugs before, and they were all a little twitchy. Even the stealthiest students had trouble engaging the masters in their sleep. Tetsu had no designs on his masters. They were the only family he had, the only people he knew that accepted him and who taught him and spoke with him freely. Even as a child, teachers in the area had given him a lot of "thinking space" because of his red hair. The truth was, Scottish immigrants were rare in Japan.



        Most of the Scotts leaving their homeland went to the ruins of what used to be the United States. Even further, many Scotts went to Greenland and tried to make a living as mercanaries and bodyguards; those that didn't fancy mercenary work or eking out a living in the nuclear wastes very rarely went to the orient, so his story was sketchy at best. The fact that the boy was only three when the masters found him didn't help much, either. Even with all of that, there was one final thing that made Tetsu strange to his fellow students.



        As each student trained, built up their body, their spirit, and their mind, pushed by the extreme standards of the masters, each found that, in a perfect battle-trance, they gained animal like properties. Ears and tails, mostly, but some would do a full transformation into a two-legged animal, savage and cunning, and more deadly than any of it's kind found in the wild. The form went away once the battle was over, the declining adrenaline slowing the heart and mind down enough to prevent permanent transformation. However, in one of his first full-contact sparring sessions with one of the masters, Tetsu had entered that battle-trance and his body had changed into that of a lanky, slightly starved-looking feline. His trance lasted throughout the combat, and after it was finished, his eyes, green as emeralds beforehand, somehow retained their cat-like slits.



        No other martial artist in recorded history had managed to keep anything from their animal state, and most didn't look nearly so hungry during their transformation. Thanks to this permanent change, the other students persisted in their whispers of his being demon touched, cursed, and dangerous. As his training had persisted, and Tetsu climbed in the ranks of the dojo, his animal form became less and less frail-looking, and began to look ever more fleshed out and strong. By the time he was fourteen, the boy's feline grace stuck to him like glue. He took up parkour to help him relax and his battle-trance form looked like it had undergone the most hellish training imaginable. Muscles that felt like corded wire; strength that surpassed most human beings; a quickness and alertness of mind and eye that even the dullest of the new students easily picked up on. These kinds of traits were not uncommon among animal forms, but his seemed to improve and become more savage and deadly, rather than matching his own improvement.



        By the time Tetsu was seventeen, he'd left the other students behind. His body, though not as heavy and bulky as some, was stronger and faster than almost any person alive. There never seemed to be any answers when Tetsu was concerned, just more questions. Now, nearly eighteen years old, Testu's entire life was devoted to training and to martial arts. The other students regarded him with disdain and mistrust, and his only solace was in sparring with his masters. His masters, for their part, never treated Tetsu any differently. He was like a son to them, and they could see him swiftly becoming a master in his own right. But it was never enough for Tetsu. To him, to the boy with no parents, no real life outside of the dojo, and increasingly freakish talent, the only thing he saw was the horizon. And on the horizon was becoming stronger, faster, and more skilled, no matter how good he already was.