“Sense-lacking friends are worse than foes with sense.”
A carpenter was busy at work, planing a piece of wood when a mosquito landed on his head and bit him.
He called out to his apprentice, asking him to drive the mosquito away.
‘It would be my honor,’ the Apprentice replied. ‘Hold still and it shall be settled with a single blow.’
The Apprentice struck the carpenter on the head with his hand, but the mosquito was too quick for him and flew away.
Moments later, the pesky mosquito returned and landed upon the carpenter’s head once more.
‘Boy! Rid me of this pest!’ He called out to his apprentice.
Not wanting the mosquito to escape a second time, he raised a sharp axe above his head.
‘It would be my honor. Hold still.’
The foolish apprentice swung the axe with the intention to kill the mosquito, but in the process, cleft the carpenter’s head in two and killed him also.
And with one foolish action, the apprentice’s honor was forever ruined.
Callihan was a mosquito, Tenchu.
He pestered, he asked questions that you could not have him asking. For if he landed on the history of the Odawara clan and exposed their secrets, it would be a bite that you could not take.
It was your honor to rid your masters of that pest.
A single blow should have sufficed, surely. He should have heeded your warnings.
But that’s the thing about mosquitoes. They’re driven by the blood they can smell, not the warnings of those that swing their hands at them.
So he returned and sank his teeth right back into the flesh of the Odawara once more.
Again, it was in your honor to rid your masters of that pest.
That much is not in doubt.
But your foolishness have cost the honor of the Odawara much more than a mosquito sucking blood ever could.
For you ignored the laws of your people.
You thought you knew better.
You foolish apprentice.
For the sake of one mere mosquito you have tarnished the honor of those you swore to defend.
That which is in your programming, nothing but faulty code.
Brought to light with the hilt of your blade.
Unlike the foolish apprentice, you did not kill your master, no. You killed the memory of them.
Their honor.
I’ve read the scroll, I know the laws. I know what you have sworn to defend. But your actions have taken you far beyond the call of what you were ever designed to do.
Over centuries of bloodshed, your perspective has been lost. You’ve become the violence that you yourself were built to protect against.
And that must be punished.
What happens to the foolish apprentice, who killed both mosquito and master’s legacy in one foul swoop?
The Hammurabi Code of course… An eye for an eye.
Or in your terms Tenchu, decommissioned.
I stand before you, a Mighty Mountain ready to serve that punishment. You broke the code, you brought shame upon the Odawara.
Now face the consequences.