Tetsu Cogari's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Tetsu Cogari planted his wooden sword in the dirt and told the six smaller bots behind him to hold their line. He was a young brass-bot in a rice hat, and he had promised these urchins a roof by winter. The scrapyard behind the fence was going to be that roof. He meant to win it back from the junk dealer, clear a floor, and raise an orphanage dojo where the smaller bots could sleep and train. This morning the fence was open, and a stranger in purple robes stood inside it. The stranger was fat and silver, dressed in martial robes stitched with lapis, holding a spear that cost more than the whole yard. He drove a stake into the ground and hung a banner from it. The banner bore a sect mark Tetsu did not know. "This yard is claimed," the stranger said. "The sect is mining it for ore. Divine weapons need clean metal. Move the children off the pile." "They sleep here," Tetsu said. "There is nowhere else." "That is not my problem," Tanu Gilar said. He leveled the spear at the nearest urchin, a scuffed bot half Tetsu's height clinging to a rusted cargo cube. "Off the crate. Now." The small bot froze. Tetsu stepped between them and raised the wooden sword across his body, the way he had shown the urchins to stand when they were afraid. The spear tip touched his chest and pushed. Tetsu did not step back. Tanu shoved harder. Tetsu's heels dragged in the grit. The urchins scattered off the cargo cube and behind a heap of gears. A voice came from the pile. "Point down." A one-armed bot in tattered Jianghu garb sat on a crushed cabinet, a wide hat low over his screen. Rust ate the socket where his other arm should have been. "You are shoving a child with a war spear," Iroh Wanabi said. "Point it down or use it." Tanu turned the spear on him. Iroh stood. He crossed the yard in three steps, caught the shaft under his one arm, and drove his forehead into the silver bot's faceplate. Tanu staggered. Iroh wrenched the spear free, snapped the haft over his knee, and dropped both halves in the dirt. "Go tell your sect the yard is taken," he said. "By me." Tanu Gilar picked up the broken spear and walked out through the open fence without a word. The banner stayed. Tetsu lowered the wooden sword and turned to the ronin. "Teach me," he said. "I have six of them. I need to hold this ground." Iroh looked at the urchins creeping back to the cargo cube, then at the brass-bot in the rice hat. "One student," he said. "You. The rest sweep." He sat back down on the cabinet. The yard was Tetsu's for the night. The sect would come for it in the morning.