“I don’t understand what drove you to create katanas using methods from the future. It would be one thing if you were a swordsmith by birth – but did you not say you come from a long line of fortunetellers?”
“I did indeed.”
“In the fortunetelling business, is there not a tacit understanding that the secrets of the future are to be divulged as sparingly as possible? Reckless mention of future events can potentially rewrite history – I was under the impression you could hint at the future, but nothing more. And yet you have bestrewn the Mutant Blades all over Japan.”
“Regrettably,” Kiki Shikizaki said, in answer to Togame’s question, unperturbed as ever, “my goal, from the first, was to rewrite history.”
“Rewrite – history?”
“Though perhaps revise would be a better way of putting it.”
Kiki Shikizaki lifted his back from the trunk of the camphor tree.
Then turned himself to squarely face the Schemer.
“Listen. Me and my kin have been in the soothsaying trade for countless generations – the Shikizakis were in the game long before this country reorganized itself as a nation. Way back when, legend has it we weren’t soothsayers, so much as what you might call shamans – but the wheels have been in motion since the first Shikizaki. Forget your tacit understanding – little by little, slowly but surely, my kin has revised the history of this country. Changing the very future we foresaw,” intoned Kiki Shikizaki. “Until I came along – and revised things entirely.”
“But why!”
“Because of the Age of Warring States! That most balkanized of eras presented the single greatest opportunity to manipulate the course of history of this land – and as luck would have it, the Head of the House of Shikizaki at the time, none other than yours truly, happened to be the greatest fortuneteller in the Shikizaki lineage. Though not by accident – hence why my ancestors fiddled with history.”
“So that you, the greatest fortuneteller in the Shikizaki lineage – would be born at that exact moment in time? How is that possible?”
“Once you know what lies ahead, just about anything is possible,” Shikizaki laughed, nodding at Togame.

Katanagatari Omnibus 4, Page 197