The Yamucha Chronicle

ooxoo

Part 2: Bandits

By age 13 I was a bit of an archer, a decent martial artist and a dangerous swordsman. The tribe sent me off on a spirit quest. It was a traditional rite of passage. The tribe sent any kid who was thirteen years old off on a spirit quest. I was supposed to wander around in the desert to find inner peace, my purpose in life and so forth.

I found a guy working on his car. Kind of weird, since there wasn't a road nearby. But there he was - this stranger and his car. The vehicle had apparently broken down and he was trying to repair it. I didn't know much about cars but I offered to help anyway. The man accepted my offer. And then, almost immediately, he tried to rob me at gun point. The thief was disappointed to discover that I didn't have much with me that he considered worth stealing. No jewelry or money or capsules. In fact the only possession he considered worth taking was my sword. Which the guy had conveniently failed to notice until the edge of the blade was against the back of his neck.

The guy was so impressed with my ability to threaten his life that he decided not to rob me. He decided to kidnap me instead. Of course I put up a fight. But I wasn't bulletproof. So I lost. Being shot remains one of the clearest memories of my life. For a long moment, the world seemed to move in slow motion. I remember seeing the bullet impact and being surprised that it didn't hurt more.

When I regained consciousness - I have no idea how long I was out - I found myself inside a rocky hideout. I was faced with the choice of either becoming a desert bandit or dying. So I became a bandit. With every intention of leaving the place as soon as I'd regained my health.

The man who shot me went by the name King Viper. He was fairly rich by then and preparing to retire. He explained that it was a tradition for the desert bandit to find a replacement before they retired, that it was a legacy. Centuries of desert bandits, one after the other, building on the criminal record and then passing it on. In this way the hideout was always taken care of and the fearful bandit reputation was never forgotten. King Viper spent the next month teaching me the basics of car repair and lock-picking, as well as constantly threatening to shoot me again if I tried to escape. He never asked for my name - he insisted on calling me Hyena because he thought it was a good name for a bandit - and he never mentioned his own real name. After the month, King Viper retired. He left early one morning without saying a word.

I could have left. I could have walked out of that hideout and gone back to the tribe. I could have gone anywhere. But I didn't. I'd spent a month despising the hideout, a virtual prisoner there. But on the day King Viper retired... Suddenly, I had the entire hideout to myself. It was small and a bit cluttered but it was mine. I had a car, a flying scooter and an arsenal of weapons. I had a tiny kitchen, a bedroom and a garage. For the first time in my life, I felt as if I had a home. A place. My own place. I felt as if I belonged there. And for once, there no one was around to tell me otherwise.

The main problem with staying at the hideout was the location. Being roughly in the middle of the desert, there were no nearby grocery stores or farms or anything. I really hadn't intended to become a desert bandit but sometimes when hunting was bad, necessity demanded it. I suppose I could - and perhaps should - have left the hideout but I didn't. I felt responsible for the hideout. I'd never owned a place before. Still. I made a point of not taking more than I needed. Which meant that usually I was only stealing food, water, bandages, tools and ammo.

Yea, ammo. At first I was reluctant to use the guns around the hideout. But I gradually convinced myself that it'd make my life a lot easier if I learned how to shoot. Martial arts and sword fighting are more useful for self-defense than hunting. Archery is basically a joke when hunting some of the larger animals. Having been shot made me very cautious with the guns. That's probably the main reason I survived learning how to use the weapons. Eventually I was bringing down dinosaurs. Since the average sized dinosaur lasted a while, I didn't have to steal as much after that.

Age 14. I'm sick of eating dinosaurs by then so I shoot at other animals when I have the chance. Unfortunately other animals tended to be smaller and a lot faster. I was usually stuck with dinosaur since I could shoot dinos more easily.

While out hunting one day, I saw the absolute strangest thing. A fish. A giant fish. Right in the middle of the desert. Floating in midair. And just as I was beginning to suspect that I'd been out in the sun too long, an amazing thing happened: the fish changed shape. Now it was a little blue-grey cat that drifted along above the sand. I could hear the cat from where I was. The creature was complaining of hunger. As the cat listed the things it was hungry for, it shapeshifted into those things. So while I was watching the cat became a chicken, an apple, a fish again, a dairy cow, a mouse, a bushel of rice and a fern.

It was so completely ridiculous that I couldn't help laughing. The cat - still in the form of a fern - finally noticed me and promptly asked if I could spare anything to eat, fish in particular. Imagine. A floating blue fern in the middle of the desert asks you for some fish. It was just so strange... I couldn't take the situation seriously. Hence I jokingly suggested that the cat should turn into a fishing pole and go catch its own fish. I even pointed out the direction of the river. Much to my surprise, the cat thought my suggestion was brilliant. The cat thanked me, shapeshifted into a fishing pole and flew off in the direction of the river. I decided that I had to watch this.

The cats name is Puar. She's a kitten about half my own age so I think she was seven when I first met her. She did actually manage to catch a large fish. Only after impatiently shapeshifting into a bear and diving into the river though. I dragged her out of the water. Puar decided to share the fish with me and I insisted on cooking the fish.

If you ever want to make a lifelong friend of a cat - offer that cat some cooked fish. I swear, I can't help but think that the main reason Puar decided to stay with me was because back then I knew how to cook and she didn't.

We were best friends in the first five minutes. By a week later, we considered each other family. Puar has become like a little sister to me.

Puar is the one who picked out the name Yamucha by the way. She didn't think much of my other names, 'Hyena' and 'Rosuto Sabaku', so she made up a different nickname to call me by and it just kind of stuck. That's why my name - Yamucha means end of the tea ceremony I guess - is sort of a pun on Puars name. Puar is named after a type of tea and no, I don't know why.

Time flies when you have someone to share it with. Puar and I spent the next two years having adventures. I taught Puar a bit of self-defense, she tried to teach me how to fly and we worked together to occasionally raid villages and rob people. I admit that on several of those raids, I was just looking for a fight. I wanted the practice, wanted keep my skills up to snuff. Because Puar wasn't much of a sparring partner. She could change shapes but she didn't change strength. In other words, looking like a bear didn't make her as strong as one. Besides. I could never really fight Puar. I couldn't stay serious enough to really attack her. She'd always do something ridiculous to make me laugh.

Her shapeshifting ability meant she could change into a key. That made breaking into places a whole bunch easier than if I'd tried to pick the locks. Also, strangely enough for a little flying cat, Puar knew how to drive cars. So she became my driving instructor. To this day, Puar will sometimes joke that the reason all her fur is grey is because I stressed her out when I was learning to drive.

Of all the things we stole the only things aside from food that we kept were ammo, tools, car parts, a small radio and a camera. We sold or gave away the rest and saved most of the money we made, hoping to eventually be able to retire from our lives as bandits.

Thanks to the radio I found out that the next Tenkaichi Budoukai - the 21st - had been put off. I had planned to go to it. I would have been age 15 in the year the next tournament was supposed to have been held. Even though I was disappointed by the delay, I didn't give up hope. I felt that I might have a shot at winning the 21st Tenkaichi Budoukai when it did happen. So I kept training. Just not as often as before.

ooxoo