Masakado

Curiosity killed the cat(burgler).

In Tokyo, there was a cat-burglar known only as The Masakado. He was active for over a decade, and then he seemed to vanish, as suddenly as he came. Content with his ‘personal collection,’ the man also known as Matsumoto Toshida (although this was also not his birth name) maintained his job as curator of the Tokyo museum (he had even stolen from his own museum in his career, to eliminate himself as a suspect), raising his single daughter alone after his wife’s sudden death from lung cancer.

While Mr. Toshida was ‘retired,’ his daughter was an inquisitive sort, and found a cache of climbing gear and thieving tools, that he had concealed away against future need. She taught herself to use these items, and was nearly caught on her first actual outing. Her father was outraged, although she was considered guilty of nothing more than violating curfew, and he shouted at her for what seemed like hours.

The next night, as she plotted ways to get out of the house unspotted, she was surprised when her gentlemanly father arrived at her door in a black jumpsuit, holding a similar suit custom-fitted for her smaller frame. He did not say a word, but waited for her to change before taking her out into the night and showing her how to do the thing that he had loved for so many years. He truly had retired, and he did not long remain active again, only waiting until he felt that his daughter knew enough to make her own mistakes, or to choose not to, before retiring his gear once again and returning to his life of leisure. His daughter however left behind the trademark signs, and was soon know as The Masakado, and tabloids claimed that ‘he’ had come out of retirement and was active again.

The Tokyo police department was powerless to catch the brilliant young thief, until she took an item that was beyond her ability to hold. The honor sword of Clan Morimatsu was requested by a contact in service to a rival family, that intended to present it back to the aggrieved Clan at a public function, claiming to have liberated it from a deceitful cleaning servant, and so place shame upon their rivals, and put them in their debt.

The Masakado accepted the challenge and managed to wrest the sword from the sanctum that held it. But she took something else with her. The spirit of the blade (or perhaps some fragment of one, or several, of its past owners, she isn’t exactly sure) was angered by this act, and yet also frustrated by his own Clans lack of honor in this modern age, more concerned with matters of commerce and personal acquisition than honorable deeds or the administration of justice. The spirit within the blade found itself outraged to be carried by this honorless woman, this thief in the night. And until she drew the blade, thinking to admire her acquisition before turning it over, the spirit was powerless to affect her. Once she gazed upon it, her body ceased to be wholly her own, and the spirit of the blade moved her far away from both her clients and its own unworthy descendents. When she regained control of her faculties, she found herself on a plane, headed to the United States, to the town of Paragon City, where the sword sensed that it could find honorable combat, and ancient foes, or at least their descendents, incarnated in the sorcerers of the Tsoo.

She has tried to fight the sword, but it is too strong, and she has often found her previous thiefly skills unavailable, somehow suppressed by the spirit in the blade, which considers them dishonorable. Slowly she regains control, and someday she will be able to be her own woman again, but for now, she is forced to do the swords bidding. It hones her skills and familiarizes its own long-disused fighting abilities in her much different body, sometimes taunting her that it is the blade that uses the wielder, that it is the sword that sharpens its holder. And yet she finds that she resists out of principle more than a desire to return to her old life. Pitting the skills granted her by the samurai soul against the criminal element of Paragon City is every bit as challenging and exciting as being a thief ever was, and the recognition came as a great surprise to her. The first time someone thanked her for saving her from a mugging, the spirit in the sword accepted that with a grunt, as its due, but she was flabbergasted, having never been able to acknowledge her deeds, or be recognized for them, save by her jaded father, who had done it all before.

She thinks now that even when she breaks the will of the sword (and it is a matter of when, not if), she may yet remain in Paragon City, as she is loathe to return to Tokyo, where she is now hunted by her former clients, as well as the police and her victims, to a life of secrecy and caution and paranoia, when she could remain here, and find far greater challenges, and be thought of as a hero by the people, a warrior of old with fighting skills that she could never master in her own lifetime, all brought to her mind by the spirit of a samurai whose time is long past.