Twenty-first century Tokyo, Japan. A sultry midsummer night. Rainbow-colored neon signs advertising beer and cologne and all sorts of useless trinkets. Nightclubs alive with flashing lights, with pulsating beats blaring from loudspeakers, with trendy young socialites--girls in short flared skirts and low-cut T-shirts with cute phrases splashed across the front, young men with dyed blonde or red or russet hair slicked skillfully back from their foreheads. Glitz and glamour, liqueurs and wild dancing, perfume and diamonds.
In the middle of this exotic and dangerously alluring underworld moved the Sekihou Tai, a notorious Japanese mob set apart from other gangs by the bold scarlet sashes its members wore tied around their foreheads...
...Then again, it wasn't as if every single member of the Sekihou Tai had to look notorious. Take one Sagara Sanosuke, for example, who was, strangely and ironically enough, the leader of this mob. Lounging well past midnight at a gangster club with his feet lazily propped up on a table, the tall and darkly handsome mob boss looked more immature than threatening as he waited impatiently for a burp that just would not come. Seated primly beside him with her long, slender legs carefully crossed and her hands folded demurely in her lap was his beautiful associate, Takani Megumi. Not only was the lithe, ivory-skinned young woman one of the most skilled mob doctors in Eastern Asia, but she also supervised the manufacture and transportation of illegal drugs, one of the Sekihou Tai's prime money-makers (the gang's other major cash flow came from accepting hits on prominent characters).
Unfortunately for Megumi, that evening she was also in charge of supervising Sanosuke, to make sure he didn't fall into a drunken stupor or do something very naughty. He couldn't, at least not on this night. This night was far too important for even Sano to screw up. For years, the Sekihou Tai's biggest rival and deadliest enemy had been the infamous Juppon Gatana gang of Kyoto, the most powerful mob in all of Japan, under the leadership of Shishio Makoto, who in turn was the most powerful gangster in all of Japan. The very mention of either of these names--Shishio or the Juppon Gatana--was enough to send shivers down the spines of every respectable mob boss in town (especially those missing vital chunks of their flesh, thanks to certain unpleasant encounters with one Shishio Makoto).
Strangely enough, however, after all these years, the Juppon Gatana was now seeking out the Sekihou Tai with an olive branch in hand, so to speak. Megumi was especially suspicious as to why Shishio and his associates suddenly seemed interested in peace. Perhaps he'd simply gotten tired of being the enemy of virtually every other mob in Japan--who knew what went on in that demented mind of his? Either way, the lady doctor was especially suspicious on that night, which only burdened her to be especially watchful of Sanosuke.
Megumi frowned, darting a veiled wary look at the Juppon Gatana representative sitting across the table from herself and Sano. Seta Soujiro was his name; he was Shishio's very own second-in-command, and for the past half-hour he had not stopped smiling gleefully at Megumi and Sanosuke as though the very sight of the two's faces was enough to drive him to merry peals of laughter.
"If you want to laugh, go ahead," Megumi huffed irritably when she could no longer take that creepy jolly smile. Around them, the nightclub throbbed with the mind-numbing yodel of a pathetic William Hung wannabe dancing around the karaoke machine and warbling out the world's worst version of "She Bangs." Soujiro, still grinning with unholy glee, leaned forward and indicated with an apologetic shrug of his small shoulders that he hadn't heard a single word, forcing Megumi to repeat her sentence in a near-shout so as to be heard above the glass-cracking racket.
"If you want to laugh--" Sanosuke's burp finally came to him--"go ahead," Megumi finished, shooting a look of disgust in the taller man's direction. She was beginning to wonder which of the two male gangsters would drive her crazy first--Soujiro with his creepy million-watt smile, or Sano with his hopeless stupidity.
Soujiro, for his part, was beginning to wonder just how big an asset Takani Megumi would be to the Juppon Gatana if she happened to be "persuaded" to join. After all, not only would she increase their revenues with her knowledge of opiates and other drugs, but her medical expertise could also prove to be invaluable when it came to treating Shishio's unique...er, "condition," the young Tenken thought woefully. Besides, all this talk of peace and alliances was depressing Soujiro--how were the members of the Juppon Gatana supposed to show off their superiority over everyone else if they had to get along with all the other mobs? He just had to do something evil to rectify all this goody-goodness, and getting Megumi to decamp the Sekihou Tai was a good start. And anyways, how hard would it be, really, to steal Megumi away from a mob boss who seemed more concerned with harassing the bartender than with organized crime?
It was with a guileless, wide-eyed smile that Soujiro innocently proposed a drinking game to Sanosuke.
It was a mere fifteen minutes later that a happily, roaringly drunk Sano hit the stage with the William Hung wannabe, and together the two proceeded to butcher Queen's "We Are the Champions."
With Sanosuke now out of the way--Soujiro didn't think too much of the taller man in the first place, but the Rooster Head was substantially bigger than him--the mischievous little Tenken focused on luring Megumi away to the Juppon Gatana side. Well, he could always profess an undying love for her--weren't women supposed to be big suckers for that true love crap?--and promise to romantically whisk her away to Kyoto for a better and happier life. Then again, a love affair with Megumi seemed rather laughable in light of the fact that little Soujiro barely came up to the tall lady doctor's shoulders! So Soujiro opted instead for the oldest trick in the book.
He leaned across the table, pointed at a spot directly behind Megumi's head, and whistled innocently, "Hey, what's that over there?" When Megumi obligingly turned around to humor the deceptively childlike Tenken, Soujiro promptly reached over and dropped a strobe light on her head.
When the nightclub bouncer shot a weird look at the rather curious sight of a small and ingenuous-looking young man dragging an unconscious and much taller woman out the exit with him, Soujiro turned on the full power of his happy-sunshine-hearts-and-pink-stuff-of-glee smile on the intimidating guard.
"My girlfriend can't handle her liquor at all," he nonchalantly lied through his teeth.
As Sanosuke continued to dance around the nightclub in a drunken daze and tried to pick up an insanely muscular, bald-headed security guard whom he'd mistaken for a beautiful girl, Soujiro and Megumi arrived at the Tokyo harbor, where a high-speed Juppon Gatana yacht was conveniently waiting to whisk them away to Kyoto.
Notes and Ramblings:
Well, here's the start. In case anybody's curious, here's the cast list as far as I can figure it out. I had to drop out virtually all the characters except the main ones (but honestly, would anybody really miss Chriseis or Clytemnestra or any of those others?)
The Juppon Gatana--the Trojans
Soujiro--Paris, the pretty lover-boy prince
Shishio--Hector, his noble (yes, noble!) older brother
Yumi--Andromache, Hector's wife
The Sekihou Tai, the Kenshingumi, the Oniwabanshuu, and the Shinsengumi--the Greeks
Megumi--Helen, most beautiful woman on Earth
Sanosuke--Menelaus, her luckless husband
Kenshin--in the dual role of both Achilles, Greece's mightiest hero, as well as Agamemnon, the king who led the Greeks against the Trojans
Aoshi--Odysseus, king of Ithaca
Saitou--I guess he can be Nestor, the wise and ancient Greek advisor (you can tell that I need to brush up on my Iliad)
Comments, reviews, critiques, etc. are welcome. Outraged Trojan War purists can feel free to send their flames to gotsenseofhumorlightenup.com