Blue: So I came up with this one on the 10th of October when we were reading 'The Devil and Tom Walker' by Washington Irving in my literature class. I was all, "Buddy, this totally reminds me of Shaman King!" -laughs wickedly- I'm a sadistic person like that. Anyway, even though I came up with the idea in October, I just now got the chance to write it. So it's like way late. And I have no idea if anyone has done this already. If they have, I certainly haven't seen it. It's a total crack fic/parody kind of thinger. And yes, I am still working on my other story. It's progressing slowly due to school.

Disclaimer: I don't own Shaman King. And the plot is The Devil and Tom Walker, so I don't own that either.

Warnings: This is rated for language, and it might be kind of confusing at some parts depending on who you are.

The Hao and Yoh Asakura

A few miles south of Nowhere in Particular, there is a thing that winds several miles into another thing from a Bay with No Name, and it stops within a swamp with many trees covered in moss…so it's icky…icky like most swamps probably are but the writer wouldn't know since the writer never actually set foot in one. Work with it. On a single side of this inlet was a…adjective, adjective…nice (?) grove. Yes, it was a nice grove. A grove filled with things that make groves pretty, whatever the heck a grove is. Yes, it's full of flowers of every color of the rainbow and it seems kind of out of place considering it's right next to a swamp and…Anyway…On the opposite side the land rises like a big, mountainous, hilly…side of rising land. No, it's not flat. It goes up and is kind of like a rollercoaster of ground and rock which is much safer than a regular roller coaster but you still wouldn't want to fall off of one made of rock and…It rises abruptly from the water's edge even though nothing was said about water before. Apparently there's a waterfall somewhere…Right next to the spot where the land rises and the out of place grove. What the hell?

Then rested upon one of the cliffs there sits a cemetery of many trees…As if that makes much sense. It doesn't. There sits a cemetery with many trees—oak trees. The trees literally reach the sky and this is even more out of place because it makes one wonder exactly what kind of landscape includes a swamp, a grove—a nice—grove, a waterfall, and a cliff covered in oak trees all within such a close proximity of each other. Under one of these oak trees sat a tombstone of pure magnificence even though there shouldn't be much magnificence when the one under the thing is dead unless he was a horrible, horrible, person. There are many stories surrounding this tombstone, all of which concerning the…the…adjective, adjective…peerless (?) samurai, Amidamaru. Yes, Amidamaru was a peerless samurai; one no one could ever hope to match up to and you should write that down because it's not everyday that parodies teach you something. One of the many tales surrounding this particular tombstone was of the samurai Amidamaru's treasure buried beneath it. Unfortunately, no one knows the fool who told the world that a samurai named Amidamaru chose to bury a treasure under his tombstone, which apparently he had before he died and that same person didn't bother to explain what in the world a samurai was doing with buried treasure. Perhaps it was a matter of a confused occupation.

Because Amidamaru was a selfish and mad—and not mad as in, "Roar. I am positively angry and will therefore, destroy you!" Mad as in, "Roar. I am positively crazy and will therefore, destroy you! Kuku kuku!"—he killed men mercilessly and ravaged the country-side, stealing much gold along the way. Though, last time the writer checked, samurai had some kind of code of honor so that much doesn't make a particular lot of sense. Eventually, the mad samurai Amidamaru was caught by the emperor or something and put to death by hanging. Yes, he was hanged. Not hung. Hanged. Dangled from a rope and his neck went snap, that kind of hang--not hung.

In about the year of [insert year here, right at the time that earthquakes occurred often in Nowhere That is Known, and shook many tall people down and onto their knees because tall people had it coming, there lived near this place a hopelessly lazy yet…adjective, adjective…dream-driven (?) man by the name of Yoh Asakura. However, he wasn't entirely a man. He was still pretty young really, so there's not much to really qualify him as a man but…

"I have chest hair!"

Too much information…You're lying, by the way. Besides, that doesn't make you a man, just a hairy boy.

Back to the point, this dream-driven 'man' had a wife…At least, she wasn't so much his wife as she was his fiancé. His slave-driving, dictator of a wife who loved money. She often conspired to cheat her own husband. Whatever this fiancé could get her hands on that was actually worth something, she'd hid it away from him. Yet her fiancé didn't seem to pay it any mind. As a matter of fact, the poor boy was totally oblivious to it. Never mind the fact that whenever he got home with a new day's pay, it'd suddenly disappear into thin air, as he would say despite seeing the girl walk straight up to him and snatch it out of his hand. It just disappeared!

They lived in a very poor looking house on a pathetic excuse for a farm that seemed to be isolated from most of the town they lived in. No one ever visited the 'welcoming' home, no smoke ever emitted from the chimney, and there were few trees near the house itself. They owned one miserable looking horse that not only seemed miserable but also pissed, for this animal stalked about the barn as if plotting some kind of assault on its owner. Never mind the idea that whenever his owner left the barn, it went back to sharpening it's horseshoes into finely pointed death tools, because frankly, no one expected it to have the intelligence for that.

The occupants of the house weren't very popular amongst their fellow townspeople. Oh, they didn't mind Yoh all that much. It was his fiancé, also known as the 'Ice Queen,' who was the problem. She was a power hungry tyrant disguised as a little woman with a presumably calm demeanor and packed a mean and devastating slap which she'd probably use on the writer lady if she knew she was talking bad about her. Writer lady does not want to bitch slapped by the Ice Queen. Yet one must feel sorry for her future husband; she made the poor man—guy train on a daily basis for heaven-knows-what and forced him to do near to impossible tasks. Obviously, Yoh Asakura was not the one wearing the pants in this relationship; he cooked, he cleaned, he sewed and on top of all that he had to sprint around the globe and fetch a hen from China then set it free somewhere in Africa and steal the tail hair from a lion while avoiding being trampled in a stampede of irked gazelle in three minutes. Was she crazy?!

One day after Yoh Asakura completed one of his three minute sprints and didn't even make it out of town and suffered the penalty for it, he wandered into a distant part of the town where the Ice Queen had told him to go as a double penalty for not doing his training right, and on his way back he decided to take this little short-cut, which may or may not have been a very good idea. He found himself in a swamp that was thickly grown and—icky should be the best term for describing a swamp really—with large and sad looking pine trees that loomed over things and—Ugh! The writer lady is tired of all this unnecessary description! He was in a swamp, okay?!

Somewhere in this swamp, Yoh Asakura decided he was tired of walking because apparently his little 'short-cut' wasn't as short as it should have been, and he had a seat on an old and rotting tree. When Yoh scanned his surroundings, he realized he was in fact surrounded by trees—no sarcasm, let the sentence finish itself first!—all of which appeared to have been cut at by an axe. Many of these trees were barely still standing on their own, connected by mere fractions of their own trunks. Even the fallen tree Yoh had set himself on had appeared to have succumbed to an axe in the past. Carved within the bark of this one and many of the other axed at trees were the names of people Yoh didn't know.

He sat there for a while, but there's no telling why he had sat for so long. By the time he was ready to get up and continue on his way, dusk had already begun to fall. The Ice Queen would not be pleased with his lateness. A slap would probably be in order. Or even worse, a new and utterly impossible training method. He had to get home!

Just as he went to stand, he heard a crunch beneath his foot and his foot sank deep into the soggy earth.

"Let that skull a—aw! You already crushed it!"

"Skull?" Yoh repeated. He looked down to his foot and moved it so he could see what he had stepped on. Indeed, it was a skull. Well, if he pieced it all back together, it was a skull. "Oh, sorry!" He grinned apologetically to no one in particular. "Wait a minute. What?!"

Yoh's eyes went across the way from him to see a black man—

"I'm not black!"

Fine. To see a man who looked extremely effeminate…

"I take offense to that."

…but still looked totally bad-ass…

"Alright!"

…but still looked like a flat-chested girl with extremely well-kept hair and big unnecessary star earrings that looked like they could weigh down his head and was dressed like a cowboy…

"I wear chaps!"

…wielding an axe and was having himself a nice seat on a newly fallen tree. "What are you doing on my grounds?" The bla—erm, out of place cowboy, asked with a scowl and a gruff… "No. I don't scowl and I don't speak in a gruff tone." … Okay. He asked in a pleasant tone with a friendly smile. "Ah, much better dear." If you complain one more time…

"Your grounds?" Yoh repeated with a sneer—this is getting on writer lady's nerves!—He repeated curiously with a blink of his lazy chocolate colored eyes. "I'm sorry! I didn't know they were yours!"

"Yoh, that's not the line."

"It isn't?"

Forget it! Writer lady knew that once she got to the dialogue that this story was screwed.

"S-Sorry," Yoh laughed with a small bit of embarrassment. "Um, I meant to say that these grounds aren't yours. They belong to Deacon Tao En. Better?"

"Much," smiled the effeminate cowboy. "Not that it matters. I just killed that guy." That was mighty blunt of you.

"You WHAT?!" Yoh sputtered.

"I killed him," the stranger spoke as he stood from his seat, slinging his axe over his shoulder. "With these magical trees and my trusty axe!"

"That doesn't make it okay!" Yoh shrieked. "You shouldn't use magic to kill people! ...Or an axe."

This suggestion made the stranger laugh, and laugh hard—insanely hard. "I didn't use the axe on this magical tree!" He told Yoh Asakura.

The young man blinked his eyes that were swirling with numerous emotions at the moment, mostly confusion though. "T-Then who did?"

"Him."

"Him wh—HOLY FRIGGIN COW!"

"Tis no cow," the other looked over his shoulder. "Tis my friend, SOFfy!" The extremely large creature that was now looming behind the effeminate cowboy bent low, its form swirling with orangeness…That's not a word by the way.

"Y-You named the Spirit of Fire S-Sophie?"

"No!" the other shook his head quickly. "I named him SOFfy."

"W-Why?"

The cowboy laughed one of those insane laughs again. "Because he didn't like SOFia. SOFfy makes him feel cute, like fluffy white bunnies."

There's really nothing cute about the Spirit of Fire, but whatever.

"If it makes you feel any better, Yoh, then Deacon Tao En isn't really dead."

Yoh felt relief begin to sweep over him, but it's going to be short lived. "T-Then what happened to him?"

"He's…" the other's eyes shifted back and forth before they went to the ground. "…down there."

Yoh blinked a bit as his eyes slowly widened. "D-Down there?"

"Down there."

"HE'S IN HELL?!"

"Hey now, I could have been implying that he was six feet under…"

"But you said he isn't really dead!"

"I said no such thing, otouto!" Don't call him that. It hurts the flow of the story. "This story went downhill already. Can't hurt it anymore now." Perhaps…

"You contradict yourself, and you're a liar, Hao!" Oh, you're not supposed to call him that yet.

"Pretend he didn't!" The still going to be referred to as 'stranger' even though Yoh and the title ruined it already, composed himself and said. "I go by many names…"

"Old scratch!"

"I ain't old!" How do you two keep doing this? Honestly. "Look at me! I'm still as sexy, young, and appealing to fan girls worldwide as I've ever been! And I don't have a scratch on me!" Hao, 'Old Scratch' is another name for the devil. "Yeah? Well I'm not him either!"

"Hao…"

"You will refer to me as Hao-sama!"

"I hope you die. I'm going home before Anna gets even more irritated with me."

Just as Yoh Asakura began to walk away…No, he's running. He's starting to run away. Hao, you'd better try and save this story, like right now preferably.

"Wait Yoh!" Hao called after Yoh's retreating back, which kept on retreating. "YOH, LISTEN TO ME!"

"Leave me alone, you nut!"

"Yoh, I know that your fiancé loves money! Perhaps I can somehow aid you in preventing that fire from burning you later on!"

That seemed to do it; Yoh quit running. Maybe this fiction stands a chance of being saved after all.

"H-How?"

"Hey, that's my name!"

"Hao!"

Hao!

"Okay, okay. I can give you the buried treasure of the samurai Amidamaru!"

Yoh pondered this offer for a brief second before his eyebrows came together. "What is a samurai doing with buried treasure?"

"Good question…" You shut up.

"I-If you do that then, what do I have to do for you?" Yoh asked. Little did he know that every Asakura twincest fan girl that just read that line had some very dirty thoughts. Shame on you.

"You will join forces with me in exchange."

"Not happening."

"But otouto!"

"I'm going home! You creep me out!" Then Yoh began to run away again. So much for that, eh Hao?

"My offer will remain standing, Yoh! At least consider it!"

"Bite me!"

Yoh's running form disappeared into the trees, leaving Hao on his own. Maybe that first encounter was a bit on the weird side. "Yeah, maybe a little. SOFfy, pick me up."

Upon returning home and being served with a strict regime of chores to do right that night and never getting a chance to explain himself to his fiancé so it'd have to wait until morning and when morning came, he had even more chores to do so she wouldn't actually let him talk to her until mid-afternoon, Yoh told his fiancé about the encounter he'd had with Hao the previous night. He didn't think much about simply telling her right off the bat. But he also suggested, somewhere in his explanation, that she not delve too much into the whole samurais having buried treasure thing. However, since he had suggested that much, he completely neglected to mention not to go anywhere near that swamp. How could something like that slip your mind?

At some point in time while her fiancé was in the midst of one her extremely impossible to do training exercises, Anna ventured on her own to the swamp Yoh had met Hao in before.

"Yoh! You've returned to…oh," he accidentally welcomed her when she arrived. "What might I do for you?"

The Ice Queen stood before him with that ever-so intimidating stance of hers that sends shivers down the spine and puts dread into the heart. "So you're Hao?"

"I most certainly am, madam."

"Hm. I heard you tried to get my fiancé to work for you by offering him the treasure of a samurai." She said flatly in her Ice Queen tone.

"I did. And what're you gonna do about it?" Bad move, Hao! Bad move!

Later that same day after his fiancé hadn't returned home quite yet and he'd just stopped doing the training he pretended to do when she wasn't around, Yoh Asakura got a little curious and headed for the swamp. Why that was the first place he decided to look for her can easily be explained as thus: he suddenly remembered he hadn't told her not to go there, so he was about to tell her now.

But when he arrived there… "What happened to you?"

Hao was barely standing on his own. He really looked tore up from the floor up, and that's putting it mildly. SOFfy was at his side and lifting him up to sit in the palm of its massive orange hand. "She kicked my ass man. She kicked my ass!" he cried.

Before Yoh bothered to ask whom Hao was referring to, he managed to figure it out on his own. His head went to and fro in search of anyone else in the area, but he couldn't see anyone. He turned his attention back to Hao. "Where is she?"

Hao's exhausted hand gestured up to a tree limb that hung above Yoh's head. "Only luck helped me get away from that."

Yoh's eyes widened when he heard the sound of a liquid dripping from overhead. That definitely could not have been good. He was very right on that assumption and, despite having hesitated to look up, he did anyway and his eyes widened in horror. There, above his head, dangling from a tree branch was the red scarf that he always found his fiancé wearing. And it was carrying something, Yoh wasn't curious as to what, mostly because whatever was nestled inside that scarf was creating the wet stain on the bottom of the scarf and made it drip a liquid crimson in color. Somehow, the poor dear managed to keep himself from fainting. "ANNA!" He screams like a girl, dude.

"Be grateful," Hao spoke up after straightening himself up and concealing his deep bruises and scrapes (cough! Make-up! cough!). "I've freed you from that woman's reign…And maybe some other people too."

"YOU KILLED HER!"

"Yep!" You're so proud of it too…

"BASTARD! HOW COULD YOU?"

Hao laughed triumphantly. "Well it most certainly wasn't easy. She yanked out some of my hair. It'll take me forever to grow that back…"

"I'LL KILL YOU!"

Hao coughed at that one. "Wait a second, you're supposed to be glad I did her in!"

"Yeah right! She may have been a tyrant, but I still loved her, man!"

"Aw, I'm sorry," Hao feigned sympathy. "Welp, since she's gone, how about joining me now?"

"HAO!"

Crap, this isn't how the story is supposed to go. Okay, since Yoh is emotionally unstable now, let's replace him.

"What?!"

Yeah, writer lady is replacing you with…drum roll please…Tao Ren!

"Ren? In that case, should we change the title to 'The Hao and Tao Ren?' That doesn't flow as nicely."

Shut up, Hao. This replacement is only temporary. Let's get this story moving please.

Hao cleared his throat. "Um…er…Now that your fiancé is out of the way Y-er-Ren?" Call him whatever! Writer lady is so annoyed right now. "Okay, Ren, what do you say to my offer from before?"

Y—Ren (ugh, this is going to be so confusing) pondered the offer from before because even though he's acting as a temporary replacement, he does in fact remember that offer. Please do follow the actual plot though, Ren. "Fine. I accept." Good Tao, good!

Hao and the writer lady were very relieved to hear that. From that point, the story flowed slightly smoother for Hao then told Tao Ren, now that he worked for him, to spend the rest of his life using the samurai Amidamaru's treasure to buy up land and rent it out to the townspeople. And whenever the townspeople couldn't afford to pay him rent, he was to mercilessly execute their eviction and kick 'em to the curb.

Tao Ren did this for the next forty or years (wow, talk about getting old, eh?) and made himself quite wealthy off of other people's misery. Throughout the years, he hadn't heard word from Hao and so the thought of the man escaped his mind and he kept on about his business.

Writer lady thinks this is a good stopping point. Thank you Ren.

"Whatever."

Writer lady knows Ren fan girls are pissed at her for not giving him a whole lot of air time, but regardless, with Ren's damage done, it's time to bring back Yoh Asakura.

"I don't want to do this anymore." Well that's just too bad, now isn't it.

For you see, after the forty or so years that R—Yoh spent getting rich off of the misfortune of others, he realized he was getting old and his life would soon be coming to an end…

"But I just got here!"

…and soon he remembered the deal he stuck with Hao many years ago and when he died, he'd most certainly be going…down there…

"I'm what?!"

With this in mind, Yoh Asakura began going to church in feeble attempts to save himself but with no real intentions of repenting for his sins and what not.

"Repent! Repent! Repent!"

Eventually, his time did in fact come. Since Yoh Asakura had put forth no real initiative to really try and save himself from his awaiting fate…

"I did too! You're not even giving me the chance to try!"

It's how the story goes, buddy. One morning as he slept…or rather, sat in a dark corner muttering to himself about unfair writer lady's trying to ruin his life via fan fiction, he heard a rap on the door. He stiffened. He must have known where this was going, so he didn't get up to answer…at first. You see, writer ladies have deadly authoress powers that can make stubborn characters like Yoh Asakura answer the door against his will.

"Damn it!"

Upon opening the door, Yoh swallowed the lump in his throat and his heart beat hastened immensely when he was greeted by…a giant black horse with red eyes and flaming feet. Oh no, it was just riding on SOFfy. Yoh's attention was taken from that to the horse itself which seemed to be coughing up soot causing Yoh to draw the conclusion that someone had taken this horse and actually rolled it in soot. Then his chocolate colored eyes went to the one actually riding the horse and he seemed anxious for some reason. "Hey there, otouto! Get on the horse!"

Yoh didn't hesitate to slam the door at that request. Unfortunately, it was a futile effort at sending the unwanted guest away for he used the giant horse to bust down the front wall of Yoh Asakura's home. "Damn it, Yoh! Get on the horse already!"

"Why are you in such a hurry?!"

"Because, dear little brother, this thing is stolen!"

Yoh, who had been about to escape out of one his windows, froze. "S-Stolen?"

"HAKUOH!(1)" That voice is familiar. "Kisama! Give me back my horse!" Oh crap! Hao, you stole Ren's horse?!

"And nearly got a Kwan Do in the ass in the process!" Hao jumped down from his stolen, soot covered horse…So you rolled him in soot too? "Yes!" You just love making bad moves, don't you? Anyway, he climbed down from the horse, snatched up Yoh bridal style—have your moment, twincest fan girls—and climbed back onto the stolen horse. "And we're off!"

With that, Hao and Yoh took off on the stolen horse, bursting through one of Yoh's house's remaining three walls that were still standing. They rode off into the sunset, oddly enough, with Kwan Dos flying at them from 33 airplanes that happened to be pursuing them from above. The townspeople ran and hid from the disaster around them that birthed the legend in Nowhere in Particular that is "The Hao and Yoh Asakura."

Thus brings an end to a tale of horror, betrayal and run-on sentences…Oh, and love. Love in there somewhere too.


Blue: (1) Yeah, I couldn't really remember the name of that horse. That is right, isn't it? Anyway, yeah, hope you liked it. Hope you laughed. If you didn't, I don't particularly care. I just really wanted to write this. And if you couldn't tell who was talking and when, the comments without quotations are yours truly. And between the characters dialogue...that should be fairly easy to distiguish. I tried to make it go with the plot as much as possible while keeping the Shaman King essence in it. Thus, it called for me to shorten the story a bit, those of you who have read the real thing. Such an easy story to parody though, isn't it? I had fun with this one. Thanks for reading. Have a nice day.