A year passes.

Maverick welcomes Raiden back with open arms in spite of all the events that transpired. With nowhere else to go, he returns to his old job and is refitted into an upgraded version of his original cyborg body complete with a new cybernetic eye. The whole image is far more presentable to the public eyes and allows him to act as a liaison when he's deployed overseas for peacekeeping missions. He wears a suit, too. Can't go running around naked no more, Jack. No more nightmarish spikes, no more eyepatch, no more zandatsu-ing electrolyte fuel packs from enemy cyborg soldiers in a mindless, vengeful frenzy.

Everything is long since over, but Raiden still can't move on.

He has never been the poster boy for introspection, but the feeling that encompasses him is even more difficult to describe than his usual array of unbalanced emotions. There is an emptiness, a lingering incompletion that's more than just the occasional case of malaise. Raiden can't help but feel as if there is something more to all of this, as if a large part of the picture has been left out from his line of vision. He's missing something, he knows it.

He still can't let go. And until he comes to terms with everything, he remains stuck in this rut.

In the day-to-day meaningless of working for a PMC he can no longer be dedicated to, his mind drifts to the past more and more often.

If Raiden were to honor the memory of every single person whose death was somehow connected to him, his calendar would be stuffed full of memorial visits to graveyards. He allows his mind to dwell on some of the more meaningful deaths—Snake, of course, Emma Emmerich, Olga, and sometimes Fortune. Olga's memory resurfaces on a regular basis these days. He has been visiting Sunny a lot over this year, and there's no denying that the 13-year-old girl genius is growing up to resemble a miniature version of her mother.

Raiden rarely puts in any effort paying heed to the enemies he cut down. There's no need for it; they plague his unconscious thought far too often during the night. He's grateful that Sam haunts him less than the other ghosts do. The Brazilian has the distinction of being a diurnal phantom rather than one that prowls around in the dark. Sam is in the tiny section in the middle of the Venn diagram of comrades and enemies, the tiny sliver that overlaps the realms of both camaraderie and antagonism.

The memory of Sam evokes mixed feelings: blunted anger peppered with apathetic distaste and a flicker of respect. It's funny how Sam dismembered and semi-blinded him and acted as the springboard to send him down the spiraling path of vengeance—yet Raiden has never been able to fully bring himself to hate the samurai.

Sure, Sam was an enemy. He was guilty by association, by the simple fact that he took orders from Desperado and World Marshal. Yet his body's mutilation at Sam's sword came as a result of Raiden's own slipshod skill rather than an underhanded tactic on the samurai's part. Both of his duels with Sam were among the few battles Raiden engaged in that had been devoid of theatrical gimmicks or tricks. There were no dwarf gekkos, magnetic fields, explosive shields, hammerhead helicopters, or nanomachines to unbalance the playing field—Sam was simply better than him as a swordsman.

It had taken Raiden a long time to come to terms with that fact. He had originally dismissed his failure to win against Sam and stop Sundowner from killing N'mani by pinning the blame on everything other than his own lax ability. His outdated cyborg body from 2014 couldn't compete against the cutting-edge technology of Sam's model supplied by Desperado. Sam's sword-style caught him by surprise. Sam's head games threw him off. Sam relied on cheap tricks like that stupid trigger sheath to achieve victory.

It was almost juvenile how Raiden's unconscious mind scrambled to find ways to belittle threatening truths so that his porcelain self-schema wouldn't crumble. Rose could probably compile a whole laundry list of coping strategies waiting in the wings of his mind, ready to pop up at any given time to provide refuge from reality. At the end of the mission, when the dust finally settled and revealed that no, Sam wasn't a cyborg and Sam wasn't any easier to defeat in their second duel—the only defense mechanism Raiden could conjure up was rationalizing that Sam had formal sword training as a child, whereas his own skill was self-taught. So there.

Even to this day, he harbors a deep jealousy toward Sam. But it's hard to be jealous of a dead man—one who was cut down by Raiden's own two hands, no less.

Now that it's a year later, Raiden can admit to himself that yes… yes, perhaps some part of him does yearn to cross blades with Samuel Rodrigues once more. Challenging enemies are encountered during every mission, but genuine, bona fide swordsmen on the 21st century battlefront are a scarce species. The craving for an authentic swordfight is something Raiden gets hit by every now and then like a hunger pang. No gimmicks. No high-tech weaponry. No gigantic pieces of architecture or machinery chucked at his face every five minutes. Just two men and their blades.

("One thing I can't stop wondering about Kev...")

On empty-planner-page days, Raiden lets his thoughts deviate to unresolved questions from the past year. Why didn't Sam just kill him during their very first encounter? 37. He had counted. 37 seconds passed between the time he was relieved of his body parts and the time they reached the end of the tunnel. 37 seconds would've far exceeded the time Sam needed to cube him into steaming cyborg chunks and call it a day. But rather than deliver the final blow, the Brazilian had merely thrown some light slices in Raiden's direction and taunted him as he weakly tried to retaliate. It was almost as if Sam had put up the pretense of letting the other swordsman escape with his life without really trying to. Why? What does he have to gain from letting you live?

"I...I don't know..."

And their final duel at the badlands… how he had managed to beat Sam when Sam was clearly superior to him in skill and technique. Had the Brazilian sacrificed his life on purpose? To what end?

No… it's not that.

It's something he's never going to figure out, he bets.

Raiden is at the UN one afternoon in early May, suited up to the nines and tens and playing bodyguard to the foreign minister of Angola. Another minister, another African country—better not fuck this one up, blondie... but as it turns out, the national language of Angola is actually Portuguese, and now Raiden is entirely convinced Sam's ghost continues to troll him from the depths of hell. Just to be on the safe side, he keeps his eyes peeled for potential bald warmongers that want to minister-nap his client.

Dialogue on the Doha Declaration, while indispensable for the financial development of Third World countries, is utterly unfascinating beyond the surface level to a mercenary cyborg ninja.

The conference drags on with little excitement and Raiden takes up checking his emails to pass the time. He's flipping through his PDA's calendar to mark the date of John's graduation from elementary school when all of a sudden—it strikes him. Staring at the boxy calendar on the screen, he's struck with the dawning realization that the world is a week away from reaching the one year anniversary of Samuel Rodrigues' death.

Memories inundate his mind.

Raiden remembers the nuances of Sam's expression, the velvet anger and maliciousness. The subtle nuances indelibly etched into his memory of the man, in the fractions of seconds where their blades has crossed, edge to edge and eye to eye. It was in these moments that Raiden observed, his gaze tracing over Sam's every feature, every hair, drinking in the details of slight muscle twitches and tremors…

("Hey, uh, Raiden? You know, Sam... He looked...almost happy."

"Yeah... Crazy bastard. He put everything he had into that fight. Wanted to kill me so bad... But once he saw how the fight would turn out, it was like... the thought made him smile."

"Course I guess if he didn't mess with you in Denver, you wouldn't have... Well, you know..."

"Monsoon would have killed me. I would've never lived to fight Sam."

"So why'd he do it? Did he think he'd break you for good?"

"Who knows? Maybe waking me up was his plan all along."

"Yeah, I don't know... But there was definitely something going on. He had plans for you. I guess now we'll never know."

"Yeah, he's gone. But I'm not, and there's still work to do.")

...

After much consideration, Raiden decides that just this once, just this one time he will pay homage to the fallen Brazilian. Hopes are it'll help him get out of his rut. Maybe if does this, it'll relieve him of his guilt.

Stilted applause erupts from inside the conference hall, shaking Raiden out of his reverie.

Sam had no funeral procession or pallbearers hauling an empty casket for a memorial service; only heroes got those, not the bad guys. Sam's name isn't engraved in any stele by a park, no obituary in the newspaper… and something holds Raiden back from returning to where the samurai's rotting cadaver is buried in the Colorado badlands.

So Raiden does the only thing that feels appropriate.

He buys a plane ticket to Brazil.

Ever since Kevin relayed that piece of trivia about Sam's dad once owning a kenjutsu dojo, Raiden has tried to visualize how it looked like. His unconscious mind drew on bits and pieces of his anthropological studies in Japanese history and culture to piece together a picture of the dojo.

On the airplane, Raiden finalizes his mental picture until the whole landscape is perfectly mapped out in his head: first, there will be an outdoor zen rock garden with foam-white gravel raked into patterns suggesting rippling water and rocks arranged in a way that mirrors the formation of green-misted mountains. A koi pond probably rests somewhere in the outskirts of the garden, and maybe if he's really lucky, he'll stumble upon a neighboring kamidana. The dojo itself will be one of those classic Japanese dojos, complete with the sliding shōji doors and tatami flooring.

Everything will be old and falling apart, Raiden reasons hastily as an attempt to rein in his imagination from heading down fantasy alley and overinflating his expectations for what he's going to see. Sam's dojo isn't going to be this perfect replica out of an Akira Kurosawa movie because it's abandoned and has been abandoned for over a decade, according to Kevin's sources. It's going to be dirty. There might be some windows broken.

The Rodrigues dojo ultimately is nothing like Raiden envisioned it to be.

Half-destroyed commercial property, flaking paint chips and rust—the dojo is little more than an outdated gymnasium.

It's not rice straw with brocaded edging that lines the floors, but dark green interlocking mats in a jigsaw puzzle formation, moldy and reeking of rust and made of a hard foam material similar to what they have in exercise facilities. The walls are a dreary eggshell color, bruised with scuffs and dirty smudges and sporting scotch tape residue. Small, faded posters are displayed at random, accompanied by a handful of stickers: one of some martial arts logo, another of the Brazilian flag. Electric fans with dust-laden blades, some plastic shelving, and the long defunct clock sandwiched on crumbling plaster in between two dirt-caked windows removes the would-be antiquity of the scene. The room next to the hanging wall scrolls is stuffed with weight training equipment, heavy bags and pads for striking.

A row of Plexiglas wall mirrors further lends to the appearance of a home gym, and Raiden is thankful for the film of grime that hampers him from seeing his own reflection. I'm not sure I'll like what I see.

Raiden's capacity for self-delusion takes a hard beating right there and then. All these hints and traces of mundane normality obliterate his fantasy of Samuel Rodrigues growing up in one of those traditional Japanese dojos he's seen so often in the movies.

In contrast to his own high-dollar, high-tech facilities and VR training, Raiden is practically humbled by Sam's modest origins.

This… this isn't what he expected to come to, not by any stretch of the imagination.

Yet as Raiden tours the place, he stumbles upon suggestions of Japanese influence scattered around the dojo. An ornate sword rack mounted on the wall with a steel fan displayed on the top shelf. Kakejiku depicting misty mountains that echo those he envisioned in his daydreams.

What is he even looking for? Traces of his ex-rival's past? Raiden half-expects to stumble upon a dog-eared photo of a young gi-clad Sam standing shoulder-to-shoulder with his father.

It's an uncomfortable feeling: the fact he's lending a human spin to his dead rival.

In the backyard rests a stone monument nestled among weeds and untamed grass. The engraved words are in kanji, but Raiden can guess what they say. 新陰流.

"Shinkage-ryū…"

The New Shadow School.

This is probably the closest thing he's going to get to a tombstone.

Inhaling a breath, Raiden produces a small, slender bundle from his duffel bag and starts to unwrap it. It's a set of store-bought, commercialized incense sticks.

Raiden hadn't thought to bring along a censer. In his fantasies, Sam's dojo automatically had a censer because it was Japanese and Sam was Japanese and therefore he burned incense and stuff because that's what Asians did.

Sinking down on one knee, Raiden pushes the sticks into the soil at the feet of the monument. The incense is lighted, and the intertwining aroma of agar and sandalwood is picked up by his artificial olfactory senses.

Raiden stays in that kneeling position for several moments, doing nothing more than watching the smoke curls dissipate in the air. He had no eulogy to say back in the badlands, and none here either. Finally, Raiden utters the only thing that feels right.

"Adios… amigo."

(Somewhere in Colorado, Sam is rolling over in his grave.)

Conscience cleared, Raiden rises to his feet, ready to go home and put all this behind him. Huh. Funny. He assumes the heavy burden that's been pressing down on his chest all this time to be gone, but it's still there.

Suddenly, a presence emerges from behind him.

"Raiden." A beat. "I did not expect to find you here as well."

The blonde slowly retracts his arm from his sword. "Bladewolf…"

In all fairness, he didn't expect to find himself here either.

The mechanical AI looks vastly out of place in this setting, its sleek, jet-black frame denoting high-tech mechanics contrasting with the old tech of the late 90's. The canine trots forward until it's in sufficient proximal distance to Raiden.

"What are the chances we both thought of the same thing, huh…" Raiden remarks, looking the AI up and down.

"Samuel… he was my friend."

Raiden refrains from snorting. "…you knew too, huh?"

"A year ago, Samuel died on this day."

Raiden tips his head back, breathing a quiet "yeah" at the sky.

Bladewolf's pointy head gears towards the offering Raiden created. "Traditional Japanese incense sticks. It is very fitting. Samuel would have appreciated it."

"You brought anything?" Raiden asks, half-joking.

The canine's eyes light up. "Yes."

With that monosyllabic utterance, Bladewolf turns around and starts for the pathway. It disappears behind the dojo for a moment before trotting back with a familiar object clenched in between its jaws.

"Sam's sword… ...the Murasama," Raiden utters, unable to keep the surprise out of his voice.

"I have no need for such a weapon. And I would rather not see it fall into the wrong hands."

Wordlessly, Raiden kneels down at Bladewolf's level and grasps the hilt of the sword. The Murasama is deftly slid from its sheath with a metallic whistle and rested on the back of Raiden's wrist, allowing cerulean hues to graze over the blade and examine its craftsmanship. The katana quivers in his still grasp, a low hum permeating through the silence of the two companions.

"Raiden. There is something I must show you. Before Samuel's death, I recorded the last conversation we shared."

Wolf's comment jogs something in Raiden's memory and his gaze flicks away from the sword to look at the AI. "…yeah, I remember. You played it to me during my fight with Armstrong."

"Affirmative." A beat. "But there is more."

"More?" Raiden echoes.

There is no 'more'. Sam is dead. His story ended on that day at the Colorado badlands. The world doesn't stop for the dead and chances are it doesn't stop for Samuel Rodrigues either.

"I waited a year to show you this," Bladewolf elaborates.

Raiden bares his palms to illustrate his curiosity. "Why?"

A long pause seizes the canine's words. It almost seems as if it's taking deep pains to formulate just the right answer.

"Samuel... he did not know I was recording him at that time. I was conflicted whether or not this would tarnish Samuel's image in your eyes. I did not want your impression of him to change… but now, I think you are ready to know the whole truth, Raiden."

Even in death, Samurai Mcglowy Sword fostered enough of Bladewolf's trust to have the mechanical AI retain secrets from Raiden—his would-be owner, the guy who rescued it from Desperado's evil clutches and took it under his wing. Chalk that up as another reason among the many Raiden's grateful Sam is dead. But the prickle of annoyance and subdued jealousy that rises in Raiden's mechanical heart is quickly usurped by a famished curiosity. 'The whole truth'.

"Let me hear it."

Several more beats pass before Bladewolf's red eyes illumine.

"Begin playback."

365 days has passed since Raiden last heard Sam's voice, but it feels more like a life time. He's heard a lot of Portuguese-laced accents since then—but none of them can exactly match Sam's particular timbre and vocal quality. His Brazilian drawl is comforting.

"—changes with the times. The enemies of today are your comrades tomorrow… it's ironic, isn't it? In all my years of dispensing justice to criminals, I never thought one day I'd end up siding with those I once sought to destroy."

Raiden lowers his eyes to the ground.

So that's how it is, huh? Once upon a time, Sam was also a proponent of the whole frontier justice thing. Had Sam's recruitment into the PMC been forced as well? Raiden always wondered about that. The Brazilian was fully human—except for his right arm. It was the only part that was marked with the Desperado LLC logo. Sam's arm... did he lose it in a fight against Armstrong?

"The moment I made my first kill under World Marshal, I knew I was gone for good. There was no turning back for me. Time crawled by in a mindless haze of bloodshed. I killed without meaning."

"…I wasn't sure why I was even alive."

...

[Why…? Why didn't I take my own life that night? Why did I continue on...?]

[They stood for everything I had fought against up till now. So why did I join them?]

[Why did I disgrace myself by allowing myself to be enslaved…]

[Why did I continue living?]

…

Silence. Raiden can hear the sound of gravel.

"Meeting blondie for the first time was a surprise. Swordsmen are rare encounters these days. His skill was rough and unrefined yet, he was fairly decent for someone of self-taught origins. I was excited to see how he would fare against my blade. … But then he had to go and say it, how his sword was a 'tool of justice'."

Sam eased into a low, throaty laugh, his face twisting into a cruel sneer that exposed his true intentions—

"I wanted to break him."

And all of a sudden—whole dimensions, planes, and sides of Sam sprang up that Raiden has never seen before.

Sam was human himself. Beneath his suave and confident exterior, the Brazilian was brimming with flaws and insecurities like every other man to walk the earth. Sam's unconscious mind wholeheartedly utilized its own set of defense mechanisms to shield the ronin from reality.

Raiden had been more than just a mere rival. The existence of the cyborg ninja with a crude blade and self-taught form embodied everything Sam had been denying for the past two years. That night on World Marshal's helipad impacted the Brazilian in more ways than just the physical; he was robbed of more than just an arm. Sam's defeat at Armstrong's hands left him disillusioned and critical of his simple-minded views of ridding the world of criminals as if his actions could actually accomplish anything.

He abandoned his old views, forsaken his father's memory—all for the sake of continuing to live. No longer was he a good guy. Sam had trudged through two hazy years of bloodshed when out of the woodwork comes this fresh-faced pretty boy cyborg, waving around his mass-produced knife and sprouting clichéd comic book one-liners about justice like an overzealous child.

There are few things more painful than seeing a mirror reflection of your younger self.

And so Sam lashed out. All of the samurai's malicious taunting was a projection of his bitterness onto the man that held the same deluded notions as his younger self. It was no coincidence that Sam marked Raiden the same scars that mirrored his own. After all, it had been the loss of an arm that caused Sam to lose faith in his convictions, hadn't it?

"I really thought he'd call it quits after our little encounter in Africa. By the time I escaped, blondie was down an arm and an eye and bleeding out all over the train... even if he did survive, I figured he'd be incapacitated for at least a couple of months."

Sam drew a breath and slowly let it out.

"But no... he had to go and get himself a shiny new body. Had to get revenge on all those bastards who ambushed him and butchered his client. He was a man on a mission." A chuckle. "Say, Wolfy… do you know how powerful a thing like revenge can be?"

Sam was all too familiar in that area. He had been a man bent on revenge himself.

"In each progressive encounter, I kept taunting him... a few jabs here and there to wind him up..."

The motive behind all of Sam's manipulation, the taunts, the constant pushing for Raiden to continue—it finally began to come together. It had been both a means of warped self-deprecation and a subliminal test to see if the blonde would be able to retain his principles when put under pressure. Sam was out to demoralize him, to tear Raiden down to be just like Sam.

[But he didn't break. The more I watched him, the more I began to recognize why my body and mind refused to let me die that night. Why I still couldn't leave this world.]

[...I was secretly searching for someone...]

[My job wasn't done.]

Sam had been unconsciously waiting. Sam had unconsciously waited for someone to come and kill him for two whole years. Sam was blazing through life, searching for someone who possessed the same ideals of justice that he had cast aside. Someone who could receive the baton while striking a knife through his heart with the other hand. Sam sought redemption, hope, and legacy from his killer.

[Somewhere along the way, I must have realized it…]

[He was it. This was the one.]

"You know, I don't think I've ever met a man as stubborn as blondie, Wolfy."

Unknowingly, Sam had covertly paved the road for Raiden to walk down. Patched the potholes in the asphalt, snuck a trail of bread crumbs to lead the way, use whatever metaphor you want—except now there are no more metaphors, no more Desperado or World Marshal or Samuel Rodrigues—Raiden had butchered them all; there is only Raiden left, Raiden and Bladewolf and the present, the now, and the truth unfolding for all to see.

[He just needed to pass one final test.]

"Two years, I've been working towards this, and on the last day blondie has me doubting the whole thing. We'll leave it up to fate then, shall we Wolfy? A duel to the death, may the best man win. I cut him down, and that's that. Back to our regularly scheduled international incident."

"But if he beats me… if I die here… the lock on my blade will disable after a couple of hours… What happens after that is up to you, Wolfy."

Those fateful words. The fact Bladewolf entrusted the Murasama to Raiden had shifted the tides of battle.

"If I don't see it through to the end… do me a favor, will you, Wolfy? Keep an eye on that Raiden fellow. If that pretty boy cyborg ever loses his sense of justice and starts killing only for the kicks, lay it to him for me."

Sam breathed a content sigh.

"You'll do that for me, won't you…Wolfy?"

The recording cut off.

...

...

...

"Wolf…" Raiden is lost for words.

Wolf is at a loss for words too, if that's even remotely possible for an AI.

"Raiden. Do you understand now? Samuel entrusted me with his sword knowing that I would pass it to you. Samuel assigned you the job that he couldn't finish—to defeat Armstrong."

Samuel Rodrigues' last act in life was to orchestrate the downfall of the PMC from the inside. He refused to leave the earth until his final mission was completed.

Raiden understands now. In the end, Sam fell to Raiden's blade not because of a difference in strength or skill—but a difference in will. Sam wasn't fighting to win. He had no real desire to live, no reason to go the extra stretch to prolong his life. He had no wife or children to protect whose mere existence would suffuse him with the strength to continue on. He had no family, no friends. His comrades were all slain. Sam had nothing at all. Nothing but his sword and a bloodlust for violence that he could no longer validate as vigilante justice working under World Marshal.

Ultimately, it had been the discrepancy between Raiden's furious drive to finish the battle and Sam's disregard for his own life that led to the final result.

Their battle had been the final test from master to pupil. And Raiden had passed.

Knowing that he had a successor, Sam finally let himself fall.

("But once he saw how the fight would turn out, it was like... the thought made him smile.")

Sam… had died smiling.

Raiden had the willpower to stand by his beliefs the way Sam never did. The Brazilian emanated fearsome battle skill from every pore of his being, but all the skill in the world meant null without a strong volition as a catalyst to utilize it to its fullest. Sam's spirit had broken so much easier—perhaps it was because he was alone. Perhaps it was because he didn't have friends and family to support him in his darkest hours. Perhaps Sam was the one who truly had nothing.

In more ways than one, Samuel Rodrigues is in second place. He's the second one who gifted Raiden his blade as a post-death souvenir. He's the second one who asked Raiden, discretely or not, to end his life in combat. Raiden is the inheritor of dead people's weapons and dead people's beliefs, both on his side and against him. He doesn't get why it has taken him this damn long to realize that. In the end, his quest was never about revenge. It's about legacy.

("One must die and one must live. No victory, no defeat. The survivor will carry on the fight.")

Raiden is the new torchbearer.

Desperado's gone and World Marshal is up for sale... but the world is still filled with evil.

He reminds himself to call Boris. Tell him he's done. He's cutting his contract short, severing ties with Maverick for a second time to pursue a road he wasn't able to discover up to now with the help of an old rival. Boris will be sad to see him go, and the rest of them too. Kevin, Courtney, and even Doktor—they had a good run together.

And Rose—Rose will understand. Sorry, John. Dad's going to be gone a little while longer. You'll wait for him, won't you?

"I get it now, Wolf."

Imbued with renewed strength and a sense of purpose, Raiden tightens his grasp around the Murasama and raises it up to the heavens. Sunlight catches the edge of the sword, accentuating the crackling energy that shafts the blade like crimson thunderbolts.

"My sword is a tool of justice. I've got my own war to fight."

And don't you ever forget it, blondie, he can almost hear Sam say in that familiar Brazilian drawl.