The Right Question

[rix_scaedu]

I recently finished watching Samurai Champloo and tonight I watched a movie called Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen.  The fragment below is the result.

“You know how it is, Colonel Yamaguchi,” the young woman in front of him was a prisoner, her hands in cuffs behind her, “when you have a war to fight, you hire a few ronin.”

“What would you know about war and honour, you foreign coin counter?” He practically spat in her face. Normally she wouldn’t be worth his time, but this peasant spawn seemed to be at the centre of the problems they were having in this sector.

“You’re the foreigner here, not me,” she corrected quietly. “As a merchant’s daughter I may not know much about war and honour, but I do know how to get value for money. I’m also not stupid; I left instructions about what those I hired were to do if I was captured.” She cocked her head slightly at a sound from outside the room, possibly from outside the building. “Of course, they may not have followed those instructions to the letter…”

A series of sharp explosions punctuated the end of her sentence.

“How many ronin did you hire?” He slapped her across the face.

She smiled back.

“Rather ask,” interrupted the elderly man seated in the corner, “who did she hire?”

“Your government has eliminated a lot of feudal lords in the last few years,” she smiled even more broadly. “You’d be amazed who was prepared to work for their keep and board alone.”

Part 2 is here.