All "InuYasha" characters belong to Rumiko Takahashi and associated copyright holders. No money is being made from this fan fiction. No infringement is intended. This was a parody of a scene from "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" by Tom Stoppard, which I make no claims to. I might be that talented, but am probably not.
Parody of a scene from Tom Stoppard's fantastic movie for "Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead" in which the two title characters come upon a travelling troupe of actors, who also whore for their dinner if need be – make a bet – and lose. Their loss thrusts them into the play "Hamlet" with great confusion and surreal effect. It is a fabulous play and a wonderfully underrated movie featuring Gary Oldman as Rosencrantz (the stupid one) ,Tim Roth as Guildenstern ( the smart one ) and Richard Dreyfuss as the head Tragedian. If you like theater of the absurd, linguistic and logical acrobatics and/or either of these three actors – I highly recommend this film. I own absolutely nothing to do with either Stoppard's works or Takahashi's – I am merely a fan. No infringement is intended. Just flexing some creative muscles.
A/N: I was watching this film the other day and somehow was moved to put the characters of InuYasha within its roles… just to see if I could make it work.
"So it was luck that we found you, then?" the silver demon sharply queried the scruffy, motley being before him, one who affected such an imagined and well-practiced air of command and ego it was easy to believe such was true… almost.
The dark haired hanyou cocked a wicked red eye and grinned knowingly, "It was ordained by Fate!" he said conspiratorially with an expansive wave of his well-worn staff. The cloudy pink jewel at its crown was as road-worn as its master, who, turning, began to stride off, calling stage commands to the various beings tumbling, shifting in their equally various imagined tasks.
"It was Fate, then?" the tall silver being raised his voice in search of a plausible explanation of their chance encounter with this ragged band of travelers, players, murders and thieves.
Something very nearly flimsy wavered under the proud inugami's words – was it vague uncertainty?
The richly garbed, yet highly road-worn hanyou slowly twisted his head back to his impromptu audience with a steely carmine glance. This one was going to be trouble.
"It could hardly be one without the other." He deadpanned in a flat voice, deadly serious despite the sloppy, canny grin that flew with practiced ease across his limber face.
"It was Fate then." The statuesque demon, safe in his now well-ordered universe declaimed to all and none. His traveling companion, silver-haired and somehow more of the earth and less of the heavens continued to muse in the middle distance, rusty cogs turning dry gears within his less than a steel-trap-like mind.
"Well met! And you catch us at the very height of decadence – by this time tomorrow we might have forgotten everything we ever knew."
The tall unimpressed demon in dusty traveling garb narrowed his yellow eyes.
His stupefied companion was picking his teeth with a claw and was contemplating picking his nose – all in due time.
"We'd be right back where we started…" the expansive ringleader spread his clawed hands in overabundant emphasis at his milling subordinates with a callous wink for his upcoming wit, "…improvising."
"Tumblers are you?" the lesser of the two silver-haired travelers spoke up suddenly, forgoing his excavations at the last minute.
A surprised red-eyed blink passes and the salesman remembers where he left off. Waving the suggestion off with indifferent hand, the motley hanyou plows on despite interruption.
"We can…ah, give you a tumble if that's your taste and times being what they are..." he leads on without stating the obvious, turning to supervise the furious ant pile of settling and construction.
"And what are they?" the more intelligent of the pair raises his clarion voice in undeniable cynicism.
Turning at a dead stop, the hanyou Naraku engages his impromptu heckler with a gimlet glare and deadpans, "Indifferent."
"Bad?" his better spars with a leering smile.
"Wicked." He hisses back immediately and disappears into the surrounding chaos, worn cape fluttering in his wake.
Suddenly there is a stage before their feet. Where did that come from? Sesshoumaru sees a beautiful wind demoness powdering her pristine face, another corner shows him two demon slayers in full battle dress, stretching, limbering up. A pale ghost of a girl floats past, arms loaded with theater detritus: clothes, instruments, a battle shield, a make-up kit and then is gone. Their somewhat raunchy host appears from nowhere and with a florid gesture of his open arms, bids them the evening's entertainment.
"Tragedians – at your command!"
The shorter inu, now on more familiar ground, pipes up to introduce themselves.
"I'm Sesshoumaru and this is InuYasha", he waves between them amiably. The taller demon shakes his head minutely and says nothing.
Not missing a beat, "I'm sorry – his name is Sesshoumaru and I'm InuYasha." The mistake and the difference mean nothing at all to the younger demon. It's a common everyday occurrence to misremember your brother's and your own name, is it not?
"We've played to bigger, but quality does count for something…" the unimpressed hanyou confides to his rabble upon the makeshift stage.
"We can give you a tumble if that's your taste - otherwise we can do you a selection of gory romances pirated from the Chinese for a jingle of jewel shards and it doesn't take much to make a jingle – even a single shard has music, should it be Shikon." The ringleader effuses, glancing from one traveler to another, hoping for a bite.
"Tragedians; what exactly do you do?" The travelling Sesshoumaru asks somewhat rhetorically with a cocked and disbelieving eyebrow.
Ah yes, an interested one! The hanyou Naraku begins his spiel, certain of a hooked fish. They would rob these poor fools blind, regardless of their wary or perhaps imbecilic manners. Cuing the first set of players upon the stage with a well-practiced gesture he calls the scenes.
"Tragedy, sirs! Transvestite melodramas!"
A small red-haired woman in beautiful kimono gracefully bows before a pike barer with a cunning pig demon mask.
"Dénouement!" the head Tragedian commands, red eyes blazing.
The "woman" rips off her kimono revealing a young male kitsune, who wags his tail suggestively at the audience and the pig-faced pike man goes through an exaggerated show of surprise and anguish at such a ruse.
"We transport you back into a world of intrigue and illusion", the suddenly too-close hanyou whispers suggestively into the taller demon's pointed ear, earning an instinctive warning growl.
"Deaths and disclosures, both universal and particular. See anything you like?" the smarmy ringleader oozed at his marks, thin brows raised in endless question.
The ragged troupe assumed the well-oiled position: hands on thrust-out hips and bent forward asses, the wind witch going so far as to throw a long, sexy leg over the hip of the young slayer next to her, who licked his whisker-less lip and batted his long-lashed eyes at the surprised inugami before them.
Insects hummed in the still night.
Filling in the dead air with practiced ease, the hanyou Naraku continued as though hordes were clamoring for his autograph, "Lucky for you we came along." His droll voice held unspoken promises of lewd and private "performances" for the road-weary audience.
"We can give you ghosts…"
The shrouded form of a great Inu general materialized in cleverly draped paper armor.
"… Tormented lovers…"
A silver figure in a flowing wig wrapped a suitable crimson arm around a sad and tragic priestess… who happened to have a wolf's tail poking out of her cleverly engineered hakama.
"We can give you battles…"
Two slayers suddenly leapt and spun – chain-whip and bone boomerang clashing and whirling… and hitting the boxes of cargo not so well hidden over their heads. Papers began slowly raining down upon the combatants and audience alike. Cartoonish inu-hanyou ranted and argued with assorted characters in strip after strip of well-wrought manga, flowing over page after drifting page.
The hanyou Tragedian looked rueful and did his best to cover it.
"Well… on the skirmish level, that is." Waving it off as water under the bridge, the dark being rounded the bases for home.
"By all means, faithless wives and ravished virgins…" he enthused, signaling the company to comport themselves appropriately, that is to say – as seductively as possible.
An angry samurai confronts his beloved and tears the kimono from her body in jealous rage – exposing a very surprised and comical houshi clinging under her skirts, the climbing position of his wandering hands leading the eye to behold her soft white ass in all its delectable glory.
"We can do you rapiers…" The courtesan and samurai begin to battle with silver shenai –
"We can do you rape…" The samurai hoists the courtesan to grind suggestively against her struggling body as she vainly attempts to stave off his lustful advances – her fluttering hands and unconvincing moans for help suggesting outright complicity in her plundering to great comical effect. Naraku was inwardly proud of that little bit of business. The whores were in rare form tonight. They'd better be if they wanted to continue to lead miasma-free lives!
"Or both!", he challenged them, both the players and the audience, who looked the vaguest bit pole-axed and green around the gills. No matter – it was probably the fire-light from the blazing torches about the stage.
The leering samurai held the courtesan by her hips to his crotch as she leaned back comically and crossed shenai with a second warrior. It was sheer improvised madness. Naraku wanted to clap but he needed to hook these two fish and bring them in fast before their Shikon shards swam away! He could sense they had some and he wanted them!
"Flagrante delicto, for which there are special terms." He turned slowly to the two stone-still inugami travelers and began to weave his deal about their silver heads. "It costs little to watch and for a little more, you may participate!" He grinned suggestively, the low sultry growl of his voice dropping even further to stroke both mind and body. Naraku knew he was good at this part and laid it on very thick as he strode conspiratorially between to two males to enjoin them both to feast on whatever sick perversions he could make them pay to indulge.
The sharp snick! of sword blades being drawn deadly from sheathes stopped the dark hanyou in his tracks. He couldn't help but mimic such a dramatic action with his glass-tipped staff; if such had been loaded, the inu brothers might have been in some trouble but, alas.
The smarter of the two fixed him with a disgusted glare. "So this is it. No dignity, nothing classical. No mystery. Just this – a comic pornographer and rabble of prostitutes.
"You should have caught us in heady times – we were purists then." Naraku whispered bitterly to himself for both their benefits.
He got the hint, did Naraku and he changed his tune on a dime, going from leering carnival barker to wary-eyed business man in the blink of an eye. Sheathing his staff in a mimicking hand when his unamused and until recently, potential customers replaced their own blades back into darkness, the miffed Tragedian began to motion the troupe to pack up and move on. There was no more point in flogging the obvious, was there?
The stupider of the two demons, InuYasha, if that had been decided amongst themselves was his name – suddenly let a giant slow smile bloom across his blank face. The lame horse had indeed crossed the finish line at last. He had just gotten the hint.
"Oh, I had no idea! I mean – I'd heard… what exactly do you do?" he giggled in teenaged bashfulness over his hentai suspicions.
Unamused to have to repeat himself, Naraku rolled his eyes and talked deliberately over this idiot's dog-eared head.
"We keep to our usual stuff more or less…" he spat out with rancor. "Only we do onstage what is supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity when you look at every exit as another entrance somewhere else. Let's go, sluts! We don't have all night!" Turning away in dismissal the tall dark figure strode regally away into the busy horde of disassembly.
"Hey!" InuYasha called suddenly.
Naraku and Sesshoumaru both turned on him in angry confusion.
"Would you like a bet? Double or nothing I win?" he goaded and waved a large pink crystal shard at the disbelieving hanyou.
Naraku's red eyes widened a fraction into a smile that didn't reach his thin stern lips.
"Guess the number of shards in my hand and you win."
Walking close to the inu in the shadowed darkness, the dark cloaked hanyou cocked a brow in irritation. He studied the tightly closed fist that was held forth for his examination and decided to have a go.
"None."
The smug smile on the fool's face told him he'd guessed wisely and was justly rewarded when the younger demon grumbled and dropped the cool heavy shard into the Tragedian's waiting palm.
"Do you know any good plays?" a sarcastic growl challenged from the darkness.
Naraku had forgotten all about the smart one, dammit!
"Plays?" he mumbled stupidly as his spider's mind sought to recover the advantage. Finding his carnie bearings again quickly, the dark hanyou continued to talk fast and make it up as he went along. "Oh yes, of course…"
"You're familiar with the great homicidal classics of antiquity, then? Maidens aspiring to godheads and vice versa?"
"Ah… I can't say that I am really, you see we're more of the Blood, Love and Rhetoric School", Naraku freely admitted in an unguarded moment before remembering himself.
Sesshoumaru flexed a highly suspect silver brow and fingered his sword hilt.
Naraku spoke quickly to try and avert the oncoming storm of demonic irritation and subsequent bodily harm.
"We can do you Blood and Rhetoric – without the Love. We can do you Love and Blood – without the Rhetoric and we can do you all three, concurrent and consecutive but what we can't do is Love and Rhetoric – without the Blood. They're all Blood, you see." He waved proudly at his wary band of tramps, bloodslaves and thieves.
The wicked ended badly, the good – unluckily. That was what Tragedy meant to Naraku and he was going to see that such is what befell his road-worn interlopers… he was going to make them part of this Great Tragedy if it killed him. He knew exactly the tale to be told; a real blood bath – 12 dead all told. It was time to tell the Cycle of the Jewel again.
Some fools just could not remember their parts – but no matter, Naraku would remind them as they went…
"Action!"
InuYasha blinked blearily, finding himself pinioned to a large tree by a thick arrow in his chest and a strange and frightened girl across his lap… the girl… the Tree… the Shikon no Tama… again…again…