Forging ahead

Posted on Tue Mar 22nd, 2016 @ 4:47am by Lieutenant Taro Ishakawa

Mission: Talosian Perversions
Location: Holodeck 5

ON

The case was long, it could have been for an instrument; it was in a manner of speaking, Ishakaway was in the traditional attire of a Japanese workman. One might think that a samurai would not lower himself to this level yet this is what had happened. The fact he was allowed to do this is another matter. The Wakashi hung on his wall in the scabbard with an empty slot above where the Katana should have been. Yes, it was a sore place to have no sword up there, only the wood fashions scabbard waiting the blade.

WHile on Earth he took great pains to study the Katana and the men that worked the blades; he could by his honor alone have conscripted one to be made. Yet he could not as he had been weak; he had failed and he did not feel the Honor had been fully restored. This is his way of atonement; his method to make his Sword and his Honor one.

Entering the programmed simulation he was in a blacksmith style shop with a forge, tools with a strong anvil all waiting. It had taken him a few weeks to get the program correct and past the counselors in his rehabilitation. They saw it more as a weapon than an instrument; he had fought many battle to get it past the powers that be. The small simulation was approved and the special metals brought to his recovery area.

Bending it was the part that he had to slowly master; in the bending it gave more strength to the blade; the flow of the chi was directed in a single direction an long the blade from tang to tip; it was a single piece of work. The heat of the forge not unlike the heat of adversity added to the creation process. The sweat and hurt muscles that came from the process made Ishakawa stronger like his blade. Concentration and slowness of purpose; the focus that is from the center of one's being with each swing of the hammer to the steel. One thousand bends at minimum; the number seems simple to understand yet difficult to execute.

Placing the case down Ishakawa brought out the once raw metal; just a piece of ingot that would one day be something more; through teh training under a master it would be forged into something great. With time and efforts spent it will be able to protect those behind the blade and strike down those in front of it. Like that man who took the blade to the forge; under the hammer and cooling it when that one bend was completed. The redundant process of practice and doing it over and over is what forges both a body and a blade.

Ishakawa had the Master of the blade; the computer simulation in the form of an old man with knurled hands from the decades of building the weapons; the accumulated knowledge showed in the wrinkles of his face. The gruff and sand paper voice from the breathing the air around a force and drinking the heat of the process during the simulated lifetime. This image was the accumulation of all Ishakawa thought would be the master of a blade; the way in his mind a Master would look like to guide him through the process. The computer program was created in Japan; by the sacns and written knowledge passed along through generations of sword makers into the final database.

A computer could have formed the sword with great precision, the data of thousands of hours of study adn the scans of the whole of the Katana poured into the creation of a simulated blade to be wielded by a master swordsman. A man who had studied the blade since he could walk; held more practice swords than toys as a child. Summed his existence as a weapon for his master, a servant of those to have mastery over him and the sharpness of his honor like the edge of the blade.

The fires were hot as Ishakawa tightened his Hachiman headband. removed his over shirt ad put the gloves upon his hands. He had come to work; his meditations for the day cleared his mind so he could give all his fighting spirit to this task in front of him; he would put his ow will and physical might into the blade.

"You -are-progressing..." The raspy voice of the Blade Master complemented; his eyes being the sensory network of the Holodeck through the special triciorder Ishakawa fashioned and programmed solely for this project with the parameters and processed results from completed swords to compare. Years of working the blade and the man went into the program.

Years had gone into making Ishakawa a Samurai and months bringing him back from wallowing as a Ronin. The blade was as raw an ingot of metal as the twisted ego and sorrow of the Ronin, both had their flaws to be worked out; the forging process metaphorically and physically required seemed insurmountable at the beginning yet Ishakawa had taken step-by -step and blow-by -blow with a hammer to make the progress

Heating the metal Ishakawa could only ponder the task ahead; his focus was on working the blade to make it stronger; the weight of the hammer was one thing the replication of an actual tool so closely matched the real thing Ishakaway had to strain to use it and it also worked the metal of the blade as a real hammer would. Like the simulation his training was not real yet affected a real item. With the first blow of the hammer to the metal; the echo of the ping that moved and bounced all around him was like the satisfaction of working his body to a fine tooled edge.

He would forge the blade one hammer blow at a time; it was hard work but well worth the effort. Going through the counselor and the retraining of his body in a dojo he would be as ready as the blade when all is said and done.

This is the way of a Samurai and his faithful Katana.

OFF

Lt Taro Ishakawa
Chief of Operations
USS Hera