Author's Note: This is going to be a story of Kid (and as a result, Tetsuma), following their progress from before joining the Wild Gunmen all the way through to at least the Hakushu game. If there ends up being interest or I get inspired, I'll go to the World Cup. Any reviews are very appreciated!
Chapter 1: The Man Called Kid
"Come on Shien!" Rang the cry of his irate father, echoing around the otherwise empty shooting gallery. A teenage Shien Mushanokoji flinched back from his dad's reprisal, holding his revolver lightly in his right hand as he pushed the sound-proof covers back from his ears. Sound-proof they might be, but I don't need to be a lip reader to figure out what father's yelling at me. Shien thought, brushing a lock of dark brown hair away from his eyes. "I didn't raise you to shoot like that Shien!" His father bellowed, not even bothering to remove his own ear protection while he berated his son, who was trying his best to hide his irritated expression. A tall (at least to Shien) man with a pencil-thin moustache that quivered with his latest tongue lashing. "We are the Mushanokoji family! My grandfather was a pistol expert who passed the tradition down to me, and I am trying to continue the family tradition with you, but you just seem to…." His father's voice faded out in the background as Shien tuned his father out. His chocolate eyes rolled skyward.
In the background behind his father's left shoulder, the family's enormous manservant loomed silently. Tetsuma Jo senior was an enormous ever-constant presence in the young charge's life, tasked with keeping Shien in line while his father went from shooting competition to shooting competition, winning awards and prizes to please the sponsors. In addition to keeping the young charge in line, he was also tasked with making sure Shien absorbed everything his father was trying to teach him, so his brief examination of the rest of the room earned Shien a withering glare from the butler who jerked his chin silently towards Shien's still-chastising father. Sighing in a resigned sort of fashion, Shien returned his eyes to their original position.
"Yes, of course." Shien replied, bowing his head meekly "I understand I need to focus and shoot as well as I can."
"Do you?" His father sneered, reaching into his coat pocket for his cigarettes out of habit, and scowled upon discovering their absence. "Tetsuma!" He snapped at his butler, who sprung to attention suddenly.
"Yes, sir?" The butler intoned in a deep voice, stepping forwards in a subservient fashion as he bowed slightly, his suit crinkling as he did so.
"I'm having a craving again." Spat the elder Mushanokoji, as he fidgeted with the lapel of his suit. "Get me some sunflower seeds from the kitchen, would you?" Orders given, the butler took off with a one-track mind bent on obtaining sunflower seeds.
"Father, I understand-" Shien began before he was cut off just as quickly.
"No. You don't." His father scowled ferociously at him. "You don't understand what it's like to be an Olympic gold medalist, to have sponsors hounding you night and day, put money and time into training your son each and every day to be a thoroughbread pistol shooter, promise them that he's going to be the next big thing and then at his very first major pistol competition take fifth place." Fifth place. The words rang in the air with a kind of dull weight to them, bludgeoning at the young Shien more effectively than had his father actually struck him. Fifth place. That was where it had all began to go downhill, for both him and his father.
His father was three time gold medalist Hajime Mushanokoji, a genius in the speed shooting world, claiming the title of best in the world three consecutive times in a row at the Olympics. Having passed his prime in the shooting game, he had settled down to retire from the pistol world with a pregnant American woman named Maria and all of the money from sponsorships he could possibly want to support his wife and kid-to-be; not to mention the support and loyalty of his constant companion and supporter Tetsuma Jo Senior. But of course like tragedy always tends to do, it struck right at the moment where everything was going right in Hajime's world. Maria died during child birth, only leaving, as Hajime would tell everyone after her death, her mark on this world in Shien and his incredibly agile brain. That may not have been entirely accurate though, as her death left another mark much more prominent on the brow of Hajime Mushanokoji. Driven by the death of his wife, he started to train Shien early on in the art of pistol shooting, drilling the young kid from the time he was able to raise a light gun to a target, determined to not let Shien be a failure in the eyes of his wife's spirit. Every day since he was of age to attend, Shien would wake early in the morning to go to school, sit in class and absorb everything he learned quietly, earning top marks in his classes. For all intents and purposes he was an above-average kid with a well-to-do father and he didn't make any waves or friends. At night, after dinner and his homework, he would return to the manor to engage with his father in everything from marksmanship tests with guns of every caliber to rapid-fire quizzes and activities designed to heighten reaction time and analysis speed. The result was the birth of a spectacular shooting genius, with a brain designed to analyze and react in less time than the lid of an eye took to close while also shooting a hummingbird out of the air at fifty feet. Using his quickdraw brain he was going to dominate the shooting world.
At least that had been the plan.
His father, running out of money from his days as a superstar invested everything into the young Shien, promising sponsorships and business deals with all of his contacts and friends from his glory days once the child had risen to stardom, just like his father. And at first Shien seemed to be up to the task, at all of the regional pistol competitions he decimated the competition in spectacular fashion, handily disposing of his rivals and generating a buzz surrounding him as the next big thing in the shooting world. 'Like Father Like Son' and 'Mushanokoji Does It Again' boomed the articles in the local sports magazines. But at the Inter-Japanese Shooting Tournament, against the shooters from Kansai, Shien underwhelmed. To say he had choked would be an understatement. Not only were the shooters faster than him, but they were also calmer as Shien, with the weight of the Kanto shooting world's and his father's expectations weighing heavily on his back, crumbled underneath the pressure taking a fifth place finish that would have been a respectable placing for anyone else's first time, to his father and the press that came to watch him it was nothing but abject disappointment. He was labled a 'bust' and all of the hype surrounding him disappeared and along with them the offers of sports deals and endorsements. Becoming embittered, his father continued to train with him, but he became detached, almost disinterested in his son's fate, his reputation in the shooting world as a trainer shot and almost broke, he had to resort to training rich youths in order to make a living. None of them would be of any note.
Shien noticed the bitterness in his father's eyes for the first time after that Inter-Japanese pistol competition, and it was a look he had to bear looking at every day since. A jostle at Shien's elbow alerted him to the presence of the one person he could really call friend, Tetsuma Jo Jr., son of the butler that worked for his father and just as much of a constant presence in Shien's life as that same man, whether his father wanted it or not. Tall and muscular, with short cropped black hair and an iron-clad expression, Tetsuma worked part-time as the groundskeeper under his father to help alleviate some of his butler duties. Doing so had established a firm bed of muscles to rest beneath his white-button up shirt, and a susceptibility towards obeisance that came with working for Hajime who required all servants to know one's place. Tetsuma's fraternizing with Shien had been frowned on at first, but when Tetsuma saved Shien from being crushed beneath the local train Hajime made certain the two boys spent lots of time together. Free health insurance, he had joked. Tetsuma Senior had objected, somewhat silently, but Hajime's word was final and he acquiesced in time.
Speaking of, Tetsuma's father was right on his heels, presenting Hajime with a sack of sunflower seeds that smelled as though they had been freshly roasted. (And indeed they had.) Hajime popped one into his mouth, chewing the shell lightly and eating the nut before spitting it into a container proffered by Tetsuma Senior. Cigarettes were expensive, sunflowers were cheap, and money was tight. No doubt that's another reason he's so sprightly. Shien thought bitterly, clearing his throat slightly to give himself an excuse not to tear up. "Yes father." Shien managed to get out, bowing lightly as he did so. "M-" He coughed to clear his throat. "May Tetsuma and I go now? We were going to go jogging."
"Do as you like." His father replied contemptuously, waving the boys away with a hand. All it took was one look to Tetsuma's never-wavering face and the two were off, putting into action a plan that had been pre-arranged the night before.
"I'm sick of it here Tetsuma." Shien had confided in his friend, talking as they usually did while throwing the football around. Shien tossed another wobbly pass in his friend's direction. Tetsuma tried and, as usual, failed to catch the floaty ball, letting it bounce to the ground. "I've said it before and I'll say it again." Shien admitted, frowning at Tetsuma as he motored over and retrieved the ball. "It's gotta be my bad passing." Tetsuma silently voiced his disagreement as he returned the ball to its thrower, resuming play in the same spot as before. "But really Tetsuma, I need to go. My father won't even miss me. I'm going to run away, head to Tokyo and try and make it on my own in the big city." There was a pregnant pause as Tetsuma looked towards Shien. "What?" Shien asked, frowning. "Oh no. No no no. No way. You can't come with me Tetsuma, your dad'd kill me." Another pause. "What will you do without me? I dunno, tend the garden?" A third pause, Tetsuma narrowing his eyes. "Alright! Alright, sheesh." Shien rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "You can come, you don't have to threaten to tell my father. We'll pack bags, and say we're going jogging, tomorrow night. We'll take them with us, catch a train for Tokyo, and be there by tomorrow morning. We can figure out what we're going to do then." That night, Shien had withdrawn all of his savings; between what his father had given him and what he had been left by his mother it wasn't a fortune but it was enough to live comfortably for a while on his own.
Holding onto their bags tightly, Shien's money stuffed in an envelope inside of his duffel bag, the two took to the streets, walking as quickly as they could away from the manor to get out of eyeshot as they would be conspicuous with them. It took until the bridge towards the train station for Shien to break down, tears running down his cheeks silently as he tried to compose himself. The rush of running away from home coupled with his father's vocalization of his abject disappointment of him overwhelmed Shien and he dropped his elbows onto the edge of the bridge, hands over his eyes in an attempt to block the tears from the world. "Tetsuma." Shien gasped, rummaging in his duffel bag to pull out the 5th place shooting plaque he had brought with, his face reflecting miserably in it before he hurled it out over the edge and into the water where it sunk heavily. "Dad doesn't praise me anymore. If I'm not number one then I'm useless." The tears continued as he once again covered his face. "There's only one true genius that will be able to win the championship. It's the fate of most to become just losers. Then why, until the end, why did I still look for this kind of dream?" Tetsuma, as was his habit, did not respond. Rather, he rummaged inside his own duffel bag and pulled out an American football, the first they had ever played catch with, beat up from days of tossing it back and forth. He presented it to Shien with a nod of satisfaction. "This… When we were playing together a long time ago. My first American football. You were always carrying it? Tetsuma…" Shien said, smiling for the first time. "You're right, this is no time for tears, this is the land of new opportunity we're in now buddy, the wild west of Japan." Shien nodded at that, thinking to himself. "The name of Shien Mushanokoji carries a lot of baggage with it. If I'm going to be on my own, I need to really start over and cast aside everything from my own life, starting with the name my father gave me. If he's going to think of me as nothing but a kid, then that's what I'll be. A nameless shitty brat with no title, you can call me Kid. Let's go Tetsuma." With that, the two of them headed onto the swiftly departing train that hissed as it pulled out of the station, heading towards Tokyo.