Angry Ikari

Diary

Before the Darkness Festival, Angry Ikari was a blade with nowhere to cut, a samurai who once meditated on stillness and now meditates on grudges, the vein at his temple pulsing like a war drum with no war left to answer. He walked into that festival overconfident, chest out, jaw set, muttering some borrowed line about how anger is the only honest emotion because it never lies about wanting to break something, and then he thought about women, and the whole fortress of his fury just quietly rugged itself off the floor. For one unbearable, blessed moment there was no enemy, no debt, no rice wine hangover screaming behind his eyes, just the soft ridiculous peace of a man distracted by something other than rage. He tried to claw his way back to discipline, tried to remember the breathing exercises his old sensei taught him, tried to be a warrior again instead of a grinning degenerate lit up by lanterns and bad decisions, and he failed spectacularly, the way he always fails, loudly and without regret. He has never felt better, which honestly, for Ikari, is its own kind of terrifying admission, the vein easing for once, still visible, still ready, but for the first time in years not screaming for blood.