Rurouni Yahiko

A Rurouni Kenshin Continuation fic
by Chester Castañeda

More of the same, but better.

Disclaimer: All characters used in this fanfic (save some others) are the rightful property of Nobuhiro Watsuki and Sony. Don't sue me please, I'm very poor.


Chapter 7: The Peculiar Chicken


"..." was Yahiko's witty quip-retort-comeback-catchphrase-snappy-reply to Gan's amazing feat.

"That was so cool, Gan-chi!" Minoe appraised with a grand flourish after freeing himself from batty nuisances care of the multipurpose fish that Gan stole and used to ambush Yahiko with. "Three cheers for the Great Gan!" the man-boy shouted, hopping up and down in his garish purple and black costume and waving the fish and a confused bat around for good measure.

"..." was Yahiko's droll wisecrack-rejoinder-riposte-teasing-response to Minoe's... whatever. What he meant to think was, 'Oh man, I'm stuck with a couple of psychotic dunderheads that almost make Psycho-Kid seem like a nice, happy, and well-adjusted human being... and that's saying a lot,' but was too flabbergasted to do so. And who could blame him?

"BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I like you, Patches! You're all right," Gan hollered boisterously, grabbing Minoe's ditzy head and petting him like a stray puppy. "Ours were quite the magnificent performances. Weren't they, Yoshi-boy?"

Not bothering to "hear" out Yahiko's predictable four-dotted answer, Gan did an idle follow-through twirl with his weapon that ended with a rather loud thunk on the crater it helped create. Unwrapping the dusty, torn, and withered tarp, he revealed the mystery object to be a sizeable metal stick twice as long and ten times as thick as Yahiko's sakabatou.

"Mine's bigger than yours," Gan predictably sneered at the boggling samurai. "And guess what? I've given your little offer some thought, and I've decided that I'll be the one who kicks your ass from here to Sunday and pay my food tab when I feel like it. I came here to kick ass and eat meat buns, and I'm all out of meat buns."

"Quit acting like that's a spur of the moment decision! You were going to do that anyway!" Yahiko screamed incredulously. He also gulped, but smirked to cover up his hesitation and keep up his confident facade. 'First Psycho-Kid, and now this delusional food bandit. It just never ends.'

Minoe looked adorably troubled for a moment before he put the fish and the bat away and struck his palm with a closed fist of enlightenment. "Meat buns. That was why I was chasing these two. I forgot."

And so, a few metallic clangs, testosterone-filled pose-downs, and lengthy jeers later, the fight finally started.

After getting an initial feel of Gan's rhythm and attack pattern, Yahiko assaulted his languid opponent with Advanced Kamiya Kasshin Ryu Forms Twenty-Four, Fifty, Twelve, and Eighty-Eight with unnerving precision. He landed a chain of unerring combinations that served as both offensive and defensive strikes that took advantage of Gan's sloppy form and lackadaisical approach in combat. In regards to pure sword-fighting skill, Yahiko had the inelegant brute beat.

"You sure you're good enough for this match? We can stop before it gets really humiliating," Yahiko heckled, his confidence slowly rising despite his Psycho-Kid-related wounds.

The slightly battered Gan chuckled, balled a fist up, and struck his face outright. Straightening his bleeding nose and blowing on it loudly, he drawled, "Now, that hurt. On the other hand, those little mosquito bites of yours didn't. You should've sharpened your sword first, boy; it's as blunt as a rock. Maybe if you hit me about seven times with your strongest strikes, then I might start to feel it." Afterwards, in true smash-mouth fashion, Gan smashed Yahiko's mouth.

Then the real fight started.

Gan weathered the storm of Yahiko's effective counterstrikes and bull-rushed the boy with his whirling dervish of a huge metal stick. Looking at the club up close, it was indeed one of the strangest weapons the young man had ever seen. It had controllable range depending on where Gan slipped his hand, enabling him to switch from attacking with a quick yet bearable blunt strike to a ponderous yet crushing blow in a moment's notice.

'It's annoying, that's what it is,' Yahiko complained in his head as the bulky hooligan kept his strike patterns circular and narrow; even though the Tokyo Samurai Descendant was on the defensive, he still didn't have the opportunity to use the Judo-like Kamiya Kasshin Ryu Defensive Ougi, and doubted he would even have a chance. The downward strike needed to activate the move just wasn't happening. 'Yet.'

Yahiko immediately rectified the situation by striking hard with a calculated Ryu Sho Sen wallop that started somewhere near his ankles and exploded on Gan's hefty jaw. The ruffian reacted as expected, retaliating with a cumbersome yet irresistible finishing blow aimed at the boy's head.

Yahiko crossed his wrists as the metal bat approached his kabuto-covered cranium. "Defensive Ougi... HADOME!"

Gan countered by slipping the metal staff a few notches from his grip and missing Yahiko's head and wrists by mere inches. Consequently, he struck the ground in between the both of them and roared words of rumbling thunder: "HAPPA!"

"Oh bother," Yahiko murmured as he saw the resulting mushroom cloud of utter destruction form in front of him. A few moments later, he found himself sprawled on a pile of rubble and debris from the wall where he had his head stuck into just a minute ago: deja vu and all that.

Had Yahiko not just fought with Soujiro Seta three weeks ago and procured a variety of injuries... and had Gan not just took out a big metal stick that Yahiko couldn't exactly apply his sword-snatching or sword-breaking expertise to... the boy might've had a fighting chance. Hell, he could barely keep up with the plump, brawny man during their impromptu marathon across Shinshu. 'No excuses. A fight's a fight, and I've got to fight smart.'

Yahiko did a quick kip-up, sprinted towards Gan, and when he was just about to crash into the big lug, used his momentum to execute the Kendo version of the Ryu Sou Sen, striking the man down with a Men strike to the top of the head, a Sayu-Men and Yoko-Men to the left and right side of the head, a right Kote to the wrist when Gan struck back, a mocking left Kote when Gan reverted to his guarded position, a Do strike to the torso, and a handle-first Tsuki thrust to the neck within two eye blinks.

As Gan promised, once Yahiko hit him about seven times, he sure did feel it. He fell onto one knee, feeling a bit winded and headachy by the unexpected assault. "Ouch."

Wincing through the agony that chose to make its presence known at that particular exertion, Yahiko fell back and slipped on his heels in sheer exhaustion. He cursed under his breath. 'I should have sat this one out and made Chizuru handle this moronic lug herself, dammit.'

The two combatants shook their heads off of their remaining cobwebs, but alas, Gan recovered his senses first. "I've said it before and I'll say it again, Yoshi-boy; I will not let you take away my baby! Not EVER!" He lifted his steel staff once more over Yahiko's head, this time with the intention of not missing its the proper target due to a feint.

Yahiko's metaphorical Sword of Damocles had reappeared, hanging over his head like a specter of death. 'His baby?' he thought through his haze of pain. 'Does he mean the big metal stick?'

Minoe had seen enough. "You can't do that to Yahiko-chi, Gan-chi! You still have your nikuman tab to pay to me!" the effeminate boy whined as he gracelessly hit Gan with the overused and trite fish, the edible water-dweller exploding upon impact. "Huh. I don't know my own strength."

"Ick," Gan blubbered after wiping his face and spewing fish entrails out of his mouth. "Jeez. Honestly, Patches! Get out of my way, because I need to conk this latest debtor of mine out cold and call it a day!" the thug waxed poetic as he unceremoniously took Minoe by the scruff of his gi and heaved him off like a wayward house pet.

As Minoe went flying, he pondered aloud, "Then again, the fact that the Great Gan-chi can make Yahiko-chi's head cave-in has nothing to do with the meat bun tab. I saved Yahiko-chi for nothing." He sighed and shrugged in midair. "Oh well." Tragically, due to the fact that he just destroyed his "Bat-Swatting Fish of Doom", the...

"THEY'RE BACK! AHHH! THE BATS ARE ALL BACK!" Minoe screamed as he soared into the sky.

With bored, half-lidded eyes, Gan cleared his throat. "Now where were we? Ah, yes. Sorry, Yoshi-boy. Life can be such a bitch, y'know?" the muscle-bound goon apologized as he hefted his mighty metal club and let it fall down towards the chicken perched on top of Yahiko's kabuto-covered head with all the inevitability of a falling star.

Wait a second. Something wasn't right.

Gan backpedaled hard as he used every muscle in his arms to stop the forward momentum of his metal club, exploiting every last possible loophole of all known laws of physics and gravity by his sheer willpower alone.

With that done, physics and gravity retaliated with a vengeance by bouncing back all the pent-up energy that Gan used to stop his club's descent, which made his arms hyper-contract. The man bit his lip amidst his self-induced torture. "That was close. Ow. So worth it, but ow."

Yahiko... blinked. And blinked. There was some strange human reaction to surprise that demanded him to blink many times to clear his eyes and assure his brain that, "Yes, you did just see the muscle-head stop his own club from turning your head into a second kabuto." It also gave him something to do other than sit like a statue, which was visually uninteresting. "Um, what's up, Gan?"

Bird poop fell on Yahiko's nose. The boy crossed his eyes towards the brim of his hat and saw even more drippings and an upside-down chicken head staring right back him... a funny-looking chicken, at that.

"MY BABY! Oh, please don't hurt my BABY!" Gan begged with completely inappropriate and disturbing motherly tones. "I'll do anything... anything... to get him back! I'll... I'll even sell you this big metal stick for scrap metal! Actually, this technically is scrap metal, but a blacksmith doesn't care about those details! Metal is metal! I'm sure it's good enough to pay at least half of my food tab!"

"W-Wait. The chicken is your baby? I thought that stupid metal stick was your baby!" Yahiko confusedly remarked as he wiped the bird feces off with his wristband.

"Oh, this hunk of junk? I love it just a little more than a cheap four-by-four plank, and only because it doesn't chafe my palms and splinter on impact," Gan admitted. "I also buried it here to guard my precious treasure better. But back to our discussion: Come on! Please give me the chicken back! I'll be your best friend!"

Yahiko exhaled loudly and caaaarefully slackened his body to give the poultry atop his head a false sense of security so he could catch it and use it as Gan-bait. Still, the boy couldn't but help feel a bit out of the loop. "So let me get this straight. You made us run the entire length of Shinshushin, hit me with a fish to the face..."

"It was actually for the chicken," Gan elucidated.

"...had my head stuck to a rock wall, talked to my butt, and nearly killed me with your metal version of a four-by-four because of a... chicken?" With amazing dexterity, Yahiko suddenly grabbed hold of his one leverage against the Elusive Gan by its legs. It struggled and squawked. He eventually held it by both wings and it stood still. "Are you really that hard up on drumsticks, sunny-side ups, and chicken wings?"

"Don't be silly, Yoshi-sama," the Humbled Gan soothingly cooed, amiably addressing the young man by adding a special suffix to the name he gave him but still missing the part that annoyed Yahiko the most, which was the name itself. "He's a rooster, so he can't lay any eggs. Also, he's not here to be eaten, or else he'd be long gone..."

"Tell me about it," Yahiko idly interjected.

"...But, but, his true purpose is far more, shall we say, rewarding." Gan put his little whacking club away, hunched forward, and wrung his hands in a show of good will, unaware that his body language was giving his true intentions away quite as easily as a pencil-thin moustache, a maniacal laugh, and a buxom beauty tied to the rails of a looming train would.

"I was half-expecting you to say 'sinister' instead of 'rewarding'," Yahiko accentuated his implicit suspicions.

"Anyway, since you look like a good, intelligent, handsome young man who'd sooner give me my precious baby back than add to my troubles," Gan expressed the complete opposite of what he thought, even though he hoped the last parts of his lie were true, "I'll tell you the story of how I caught that little moneymaker... er, baby of mine."

Yahiko crooked his mouth to a disbelieving half-frown, closed his eyes, then nodded for Gan to go ahead with his story.

"Thank you. Y'see, I was just around the neighborhood of Suwa, minding my own business, when I heard the rapid flapping of wings. I turned in the direction of the sound and saw these two chickens fighting at the far end of the field. Beak against beak, claw against claw; it was a spectacular fight to the death in a whirlwind of feathers and dust! This rooster... the one you're holding now, anyway... won the fight with a spectacular finish, which had me thinking, 'If I caught a rooster like that, I could get rich in the cockpit.' So I caught it and planned to use it in the local cockfighting circuit. What? Don't look at me like that, that's the whole story, I swear!"


Going back, Shinshushin... "Shinshu", in short... wasn't just well-known for its Shinshu Soba and Silk-Weaving. The unmentionable things it wasn't known for... some questionable, some mundane, some innocuous, some controversial, and some even outright illegal... well, one of them was cockfighting. Or, as the Spaniards called it, "The Poor Man's Bullfight" but only imagine it in Spanish: "Toreo del Hombre Pobre" or something. Of course, such a title could only be used metaphorically, for it was indeed quite the popular gambling game.

The quick and dirty facts: A cockfight was a betting bloodsport that pitted a pair of specially conditioned roosters against each other inside a ring or cockpit. The cocks or gamecocks were well-bred fighting machines trained to have better power and endurance compared to normal chickens.

Hoods were usually planted on the combatants' heads to pacify them before their match began. Therefore, their wattles and combs were sliced off to fit these hoods easier and to reduce the risk of wounds and infection in those fleshy areas.

Gamecock training also took advantage of and increased the congenital aggression that all roosters had against fellow males of the same species. Furthermore, bets were made on the result of the cockfights, with some of the battles ending up in the death of one or both birds.

The Origin of Cockfighting in Japan was a bit unclear, but cockfighting in general was a murky business to begin with. Nevertheless, it was known for a fact that the "Shamo" or the "Ou (King) Shamo"... a distinctively bred and prized species of gamecock most associated with Japan along with the "Shokoku" and "Satsumadori"... was introduced into the country from Siam way back during the heydays of the Edo period two to three centuries earlier.

Seeing that cockfighting should have been around even before that, the deadly bloodsport was indeed a very old tradition rooted into the very heart of Japanese Underground Culture.


"How typical of you to use a stolen chicken to aid to your gambling addiction," Yahiko drolly commented as he took a closer look at the fowl in question. He blinked, tilted his head to the side, and chortled.

"I'm afraid lady luck isn't smiling upon you at all, you dolt. I doubt she's even in speaking terms with you. Karma has struck again! You can't use this chicken to get into the cockpit because this chick's a chick! It's a hen, you moron."

"What's the matter with you?" Gan asked in disbelief, nearly slapping the boy for making such ridiculous claims. "Is the heat making you sick and confused?"

"No. If anything, your body odor should be making me sick and the bumps on my head should be making me confused. Still, listen to reason. I mean, look at its head. It has no comb or wattles," Yahiko pointed out. "I'm no expert in chickens, but I've never heard of a rooster that doesn't have a comb or wattles."

"Well, you're right about one thing; you're no expert in chickens," Gan retorted as he attempted to requisition his stolen bird from Yahiko, but the boy still saw it fit to move the prized possession just out of the hoodlum's reach. "No comb or wattles! HA! Who cares about its comb or wattles? You're just saying that because you didn't see it fight! Besides, who's to say this wasn't an escaped professional gamecock whose combs and wattles were already cut off prior to us finding it?"

"Okay, fine," Yahiko relented in the most condescending, disparaging tone he could muster; intonations he usually reserved to get Kaoru/ Sanosuke/Yutaro/probably Chizuru, since he'd already met her/Misao/some random, irritable stranger all riled up. "Let's presume, for the sake of argument, that this hen kicked another chicken's behind. Fine. I'm all for that. Woman power. I've seen ferocious moms that are scarier than thugs like you, so I still say that it doesn't prove anything and this chicken is still a hen."

"A hen! Did you ever see a hen with spurs like that? Or a hen with a tail like that?" the Livid Gan enumerated for Yahiko, now more interested in proving that the big snag in his harebrained moneymaking scheme was all in his skeptical debt collector's cynical, untrusting, and generally mean imagination than getting his prized hen/rooster/ren/ hooster back.

"Okay. Keep your pants on. We'll talk about the chicken's sex on our way to the Sakaguchis. If you can convince me that this chicken is a rooster, then maaaaaybe I'll let you get it into the cockpit so that you can win back the money you owe my friends. If I prove that this chicken is a hen, then it's either we barter it for something more profitable, sell it to a chicken breeder, or have it for breakfast just before you work your soba debt off by washing dishes at the Sakaguchi Soba Shop. Understand?" came Yahiko's ultimatum.

After a few minutes of harried pacing, nail biting, and contemplative brooding, Gan ultimately assented, "Fine! Fine. But if this is a trick to somehow make me lose my baby bird, then you're in for a world of hurt, bandage boy."

Yahiko kept his cool and his machismo in check, remembering the near-loss (or was it "loss"?) he had against his fight with the Blustering Gan and absently rolling down his shirtsleeves to hide the aforesaid bandages.

'If I weren't so busted up because of Psycho-Kid, I would've made mince meat out of you, you two-bit hoodlum,' he griped. Aloud, he scoffed, "Whatever, dude. Pick up your metal stick, wrap it up, and let's get moving."


A short while later, on the same debris-ridden outcrop of wasteland that used to be a safe haven for bats and birds alike...

"Helloooo? Gan-chi? Yahiko-chi? Anyone-chi?" the scratch-marked, bite-marked, and generally bat-marked Minoe whispered carefully, earnestly, and desperately at... no one in particular as he crawled on his belly, hid behind some bushes, and checked out the quiet graveyard. Catacombs. Surroundings. Same difference, if you asked him.

It was early afternoon, and the sun remained up, but because of a wayward bunch of uninvited clouds and the accursed shadiness of trees, Minoe's immediate environs soon gave the young-looking man-pirate the impression of a chilling, ominous menace.

"Are you two still out here? Because I still need to get the payment for all the meat buns you ate, Gan-chi. Cash-on-delivery would be preferable, but miscellaneous goods and products that are ready for bartering are okay too."

He heard a startling rustle in the distance. "Gan-chi? Yahiko-chi?" He gulped. "Mister Myojin? Mister... Gan? Mister Mojo Risin? Mister Anybody? Please?" He raised his eye patch to get a better look.

Hundreds of pairs of glowing eyes curiously looked back at him. His dearest friends had returned, and none of them were either Gan or Yahiko.

And so Minoe did scream like a little girl amidst hundreds of similarly hypersonic screeches and leathery wing-flaps. Then again, in contrast to his far more emasculating reaction, he ran away like a stampeding horse hooked on heroin.


Back inside the Sakaguchi Soba Shop...

"Welcome to the Sakaguchi Soba...? Ah, Sakaguchi-san! What the hell are you doing here?" Chizuru exclaimed before covering her mouth in shame, muttering a mellifluous, uncommitted apology in regards to her apparent brashness to the visitor that had just arrived at the doorway. "Welcome back, Mister Sakaguchi."

Kyoko Sakaguchi's face brightened like a fireworks display as she set aside the empty serving tray she was holding. "Daddy!" she greeted giddily as she ran towards the rough-shaven man in police garb and gave him a warm embrace. "What are you doing here? I thought you were still stationed over there in Yokohama!"

"I still kind of am, honey, but as soon as I heard that Akahori-san's police escorts for his special Daijokan meeting in Shinshu were a bit shorthanded, I volunteered immediately," Satoru Sakaguchi grinningly explained to his diffident daughter as he hobbled towards her with his cane and patted her head.

"I'm sorry I haven't been able to visit you and your mother earlier. Things have been hectic in and around Yokohoma, what with politicians getting their noses in our business and all. Still, the good news is that the Kaishinto Conservatives had finally toppled that silly Jiyuto Liberal Party... I'm boring you with all this talk about politics, aren't I?"

Kyoko playfully pouted, but couldn't keep it up as it quickly melted into a delighted smile... a shy, tentative, yet happy one that said, "Even though there weren't many police volunteers in Akahori-san's meeting because of the very real danger of an announced assassination attempt right here in our sleepy little town, and you're in danger too for volunteering, I'm just glad you're home." She snuggled closer to her father. "How long are you going to stay here, chichi-ue?"

Kyoko's father scratched the back of his ear and looked at the ceiling. Just like his daughter, he wasn't very good at maintaining false pretenses, so his open-book discomfiture earned him a not-so-playful and heartbreaking scowl of daughterly disappointment.

"The restaurant business is doing well, I hope," Satoru hastily changed the subject as he reluctantly let go of his sweet and precious child. Indeed, their reunion could have gone better.

"It'd probably fare a lot better if Nonoko-san were just a bit more practical with the way she handles customers. She's a patient wife and devoted mother, but those things have little to no bearing with the food industry," the granddaughter of the Sakaguchi's old family friend, Chizuru Raikouji, nonchalantly related... more like tattled... to the Sakaguchi Patriarch in typical roundabout Japanese fashion.

Usually, Chizuru was above such notions of coy backtalk, double entendres, and guerilla conversations. In fact, she had been accused several times of being a pushy, candid, half-Gaijin demon spawn with the sheer amount of brazenness, insolence, disrespect, and moxie she usually brought to the table, as seen with how she dealt with the fake Battousai Group's terrorist activities.

However, she felt that her erudite un-Japanese-ness was only applicable on a case-to-case basis; she didn't think that either of the two elder Sakaguchis would take her seriously with her usual uncouth approach. Raising a big stink, confronting Nonoko's husband in regards to his wife's culturally ingrained doormat submissiveness, and demanding immediate change and action would only make things worse, burn bridges, and reinforce her bad reputation of being a pushy and rude girl.

There were times when even an independent woman like herself had to learn to adapt to the kind of culture she was born in, even if it went against everything she believed to be true in her heart. When in Rome, do as the Romans do; play by other people's rules and learn to respect their opinion as much as you would want them to respect yours and all that jazz.

'Sorry, Kyoko-chan. I can barely stand hearing myself talk like this, but a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. This is for Nonoko-san's sake, not mine.'

"Still, I'm slightly unnerved about all these unpaid tabs, customers gambling over food, and unsightly characters inside a family restaurant. It's very surprising, to say the least," Chizuru let out in due course, hating every last calm, prying, and hypocritical word she spewed out of her mouth.

"Oh, really? I see," Satoru idly commented as he lifted his cane to his armpit and gently sat down on a nearby bench, making his words as undecipherable and indistinct as possible lest he was within his wife's earshot and he inadvertently made a negative remark about her or betrayed any sort of ill-will and pandering to the concerned/busybody granddaughter of their old family friend. Keeping the peaceful status quo during these very sensitive discussions was the way to go.

Kyoko frowned a moue of consternation, narrowing her eyes ever-so-subtly at Chizuru and her brownnosing but not saying a word about it. Two could play this game.

"Actually, daddy, Chizuru-san just met a boy three weeks back. He's slightly younger than her... by about eight years... but he has already come of age. I do hope I'm not being too brash and all, but in just a year or so, if Chizuru-san were to fail in landing a husband, she'd be at an unmarriable age." The statement was unabashedly non-sequitur and insultingly ad hominem, but it would do.

A pulsating vein popped up on Chizuru's forehead as her face reddened to a slight pinkish color. Truly, the sweet smile that was currently plastered on her burning face would have done Soujiro Seta proud. Kyoko grinned at the much older woman in kind, knowing full well that she'd just hit a nerve.

The Raikouji Heiress refuted, "Speaking of May-December romances, how is Minakata Kinta anyway?" She tossed her luxurious black hair and smirked. "That's a wonderful theory you got there, Kyoko-chan, but Yahiko just isn't my type, I'm afraid. Oh, by the way, didn't you help bring Yahiko back here to us after that incident with the fake Battousai Group? The same Yahiko you've suddenly brought up for no particular reason? You two looked so cute back then!"

Chizuru meant, 'Butt-off, Kyoko. I'm only doing this because Nonoko-san literally had her inventory emptied by a mooching, two-ton brute, and she's doing diddly squat about it. Well, if she won't, then I will, and I'm sure 'daddy dearest' wants to hear more about it.'

The young soba waitress giggled daintily and responded, "I'm sure that Kinta-sama is doing fine, as is Satsuki-neechan, grandfather, and all the rest of our friends back in Kanagawa. Yahiko-san has his own rugged charm, I admit, but if you insist that you don't see him as anything other than a friend, then it's all right. You probably have the same attitude towards him as you do Seta Soujiro-kun anyway. Always the cold shoulder, the insults, the tirades... no man seems ever good enough for you, Chizuru-san. I suppose you were really smitten by that 'vagabond' Battousai you always kept telling everybody about."

Kyoko meant, 'At least I actually have prospects. What do you have, Chizuru-obaasan? Besides, mom knows what she's doing. Unlike cynical, bitter you, mother actually has faith in other people. Besides, until she allowed in Gan-san and his gambling troop, we've never had that many customers. True, most of them weren't paying customers, but... You'll never get married, so nya!'

All the same, taking into consideration both literal and implied meanings of Kyoko's statement, Chizuru now appeared like a human kettle that was just about ready to burst and let steam out of her ears.

"Oh yes. I've met that boy during my last visit here. He and his boss had been up and about the whole Kanto and Chubu regions all month long, as though they were on a long campaign trail or something. Akahori-san's been a very busy bee," Satoru nervously interjected to the rather strange, tense conversation, inwardly cringing at all the hidden female hostilities. "Anyway, from the few times I've talked to him, Soujiro-kun seems like a nice, happy young man, though he usually keeps to himself."

"Speaking of the Seta boy," Chizuru "innocently" interrupted, ignoring Kyoko's wide-eyed glare of warning, "he's a swordsman and a bodyguard to that Akahori person, isn't he? Well, I heard he was actually involved with the sudden demise of an entire gang of gangsters that claimed to be the notorious Battousai Group. Not that he actually did it per se; the remaining Shinshushin police who bothered to do an investigation stated that Keisuke, the fake Battousai Group's leader, was killed in a slightly different manner than all the rest of his deceased comrades. And, knowing how close your wife was to Seta-kun, she might have mentioned to him what happened between Keisuke and your daughter."

Chizuru meant, 'Damn girl, you're better at this than I am, but I won't give up just yet. So yeah, I went there. I tattled on Psycho-Kid.' The Kaoru look-alike watched Kyoko's reaction, expecting yet another round of sweetly acerbic doubletalk, but one look at the girl's eyes told her that she had indeed said too much.

Kyoko waxed melancholic as she remembered Keisuke's last words, her own questions, and Soujiro's regret-filled response.

"Girls, girls," Satoru declared in all seriousness, putting his heavy, sword-calloused hands on both their shoulders and leaving all pretenses of willful conformist tolerance aside, replacing it with a more universal fatherly worry. "What's this I hear about some boy, a fake Battousai Group, Seta-kun, that bastard Keisuke, and a food bandit?"


It was already in the middle of the afternoon when Gan and Yahiko got back to the town of Shinshu, but they still couldn't agree on what determined the gender of a chicken.

If the animal in question had been a cow, it would've been simple. All they would have to do was to look at the cow... or even look under the cow, to be completely sure. They would've wasted no time at examining its tail, hooves, or horns.

They would simply have looked at the animal straight in the face, and if that wasn't enough (or if they were blind and stupid), then they could check if it had a brass on its nose. If so, the cow would undoubtedly be a bull. But chickens were not like cows. So the argument went on in the semi-bustling streets of "the village that was previously under siege" all the while.

When they passed the marketplace... with Gan carefully avoiding the stall of the merchant he stole fish from... Yahiko bought a tether with the money he just made during Gan's last gambling spree. He was planning to tie the fowl on a peg when they got back into the Sakaguchi's residence. Of course, Gan wasn't feeling too keen about the idea; not the tethering part, but the going-back-to-the-Sakaguchi's-residence part.

"Wouldn't they be a teensy bit angry to see their food thief come back to the scene of the crime?" Gan ventured, airing out the source of his trepidation. Both Yahiko and the chicken gave him a blank look.

The bulky man made a resigned hissing sound with his grit teeth and exhaled. He clenched his hands together with a loud clap and rambled, "Shoot, okay! Okay! I get it. If I don't go with you, I don't get my rooster..."

"Hen."

"...Back. Fine. I'm going. I just ain't gonna be happy about it." And so they did just that, arriving soon after on the front porch of the Sakaguchi Soba Shop. Yahiko slid the door leading into the restaurant, entering with a cowed Gan and the tied-up chicken in tow. "We're back. I got your soba thief right here, Chizuru, and he has gotten us a chicken."

"Hello everybody!" Gan greeted, immediately recovering from his initial glumness and wiggling his fingers around in jolly salutation. He was then welcomed in return by a swift kick to the crotch.

"H-Hello to you too! Chizuru, isn't it? Yeah, I remember you," the thug squeaked and shuddered as he slumped down to his wobbly knees, his voice going up a pitch or two higher than before.

Chizuru put her hands on her hips and gave Yahiko a raised eyebrow of begrudged appreciation. "I'll give you this, little boy; you can at least get the job done. It took you long enough, though."

Yahiko tipped Takae's kabuto over his eyes and snorted.

Chizuru subsequently took the kneeling, bandanna-wearing ruffian by the scruff of his neck, gave him a 'Well, well, well. Look at what we have here,' type of smile, and then loudly inquired, "Hey, Nonoko-san! The damn food thief that cost us a bundle of money has come back with a chicken! He still owes us quite a lot, but would you like some chicken broth mixed with porridge anyway? We still have ginger in the kitchen!"

She blinked after she heard no response. "Oh, that's right. She went out for some groceries. Guess I'll just have to kill, pluck, chop, and boil the chicken myself with or without permission."

"HEY! Don't I get a say in all this?" objected Gan, still feeling the full effects of Chizuru's attack on his manhood. As a consequence, Yahiko warily slinked away from the two, knowing the rich girl's personality well enough to know when to back down, even though they'd just met for a short period of time.

Chizuru easily invaded Gan's personal space in a decisively threatening manner, her predatory grin appearing as if it had a second row of sharp fangs behind it. "Okay then. If you want the chicken to live, then how about I kill, chop, and boil you instead?"

"Er, thanks but no thanks?" Gan hazarded a reply as round globules of cold sweat drenched his taut head bandanna.

Satoru released a tired sigh at the Raikouji daughter's antics. Even though she meant well most of the time and was indeed one of the Sakaguchis' closest family friends, she had an indubitable tendency for overkill. "Stop scaring the food bandit, Chizuru-kun. Besides, you've never actually killed livestock before."

"Hey! No fair, Mister Sakaguchi! He didn't know that!" Chizuru pouted sullenly, then whispered to Gan's ear, "Well, there's always a first time for everything, so don't even think you're off the hook, pal." The robust man's face consequently paled.

The Head of the Sakaguchi Household cleared his throat with finality and motioned to all present to take a seat and gather around him. They quickly obeyed. Though he didn't look the part, Satoru Sakaguchi had an air of unmistakable authority surrounding him.

Once everyone had settled down, Satoru clasped his hands together, smiled congenially at each familiar and unfamiliar face, and announced, "So let's start from the top, shall we?" He turned towards the nearest person. "Who are you?"

Yahiko paused, stared about him, and then pointed towards himself in askance. After Satoru confirmed that it was indeed him he was talking to, the boy hesitantly introduced himself as, "Y-Yahiko. Myojin Yahiko. A descendant of Tokyo Samurai. I've actually started journeying Japan to further my training and..."

'Don't say 'stuff'! Don't say 'stuff'! They won't take you seriously if you talk like that!' he mentally berated himself before lamely adding, "...To widen my horizons. Yeah," taking off his kabuto in a decisively browbeaten and embarrassed manner.

"Oh, OH! Oh yes, I know you! Chizuru-kun and Kyoko-chan have been talking about you! So you're the one who kept my daughter from attacking her stalker and his gang, as well as stopping her duel with her friend! That Yahiko! It's so nice to meet you!"

Satoru beamed, grasping and shaking the Tokyo Samurai Descendant's hands vigorously. Before Yahiko could even utter a response, the older man effortlessly segued, "And you? What's your name, Mister Food Bandit?"

"Er... Gan. Just call me Gan, I mean. It's spelled with the character that looks like a broken, funny-looking chair instead of the one that looks like a crown balanced on a flat tray that's wedged on a wooden box."


After a nice, long chat concerning the last three weeks' events... and very careful repetition of certain unbelievable details... Satoru was still left confused and perplexed at the complexity of the seeming tall tale's happenings.

It was an understandable reaction. It was hard to wrap his mind around all these stories concerning his hometown of Shinshu being held under siege by a group of pretender terrorists led by his daughter's very stalker, Keisuke. It was like his personal nightmare came to life! God couldn't possibly be this cruel, could he?

Furthermore, just why and how in the world did the so-called fake Battousai Group come up with such an ill-advised name? It was also rather peculiar that a group of men named as such would gather in the very place where actual members of their more dangerous namesakes were reportedly on the prowl for an assassination mission. For the fakes, doing so was equivalent to suicide.

Or perhaps the whole thing smelled more of a setup than a simple bout of stupidity. What a curious debacle. If Akahori weren't shaking in his boots before, he should be right now.

Satoru shook his head to help it sort out his priorities better. In the end, fatherly worry won out against political intrigue. After all, his dear sweet daughter had just risked her life and innocence to stop Keisuke's mad ambitions, as though the trauma he put her though all those years ago wasn't quite enough to satisfy him, that damn perverted asshole. "Honey, I'm so sorry. If I'd known, I would've made that trip back here in Shinshu months ago!"

"..." Gan interjected.

"You couldn't have known, daddy. That's why Keisuke took advantage of that... and the fact that all our local law enforcement had been asked to report to that cowardly politician's mansion... to terrorize our town," Kyoko reassured as she gingerly patted her father's gloved hands. "I'm so sorry for making you worry unnecessarily."

"Then again, you should have known better than to take your grandpa's sword and go off on your own to exact vengeance upon some hooligans and whatnot," Chizuru berated Kyoko in a bossy tone usually accompanied by finger-wagging and intense ladle-whapping.

Also, just to add to the list of people she'd so far affronted, she put her elbow over Gan's shoulder just as she delivered the "hooligans and whatnot" portion of her admonition. "If Yahiko hadn't shown up and stopped you, you would've committed a big, no, huge mistake."

"..." both Kyoko and Gan retorted.

Yahiko raised an eyebrow upon hearing Chizuru's sentiments. "If I hadn't shown up? More like if that mysterious, cross-scarred redhead hadn't shown up and killed off the entire band of Keisuke's goons before Psycho-Kid finished their head honcho himself, then Kyoko-san here would've been in a serious dilemma."

Kyoko furtively glanced at the younger man's direction, reddened like a lamp on New Year's Eve, looked down on the wooden floorboards near her socked feet, and nodded somberly. "If you put it that way, then yes, maybe I should be thanking Soujiro-kun and that stranger, in a manner of speaking."

Yahiko put his hands up defensively at Kyoko and her somber mood as though he were under arrest by the police or something. The very reason he even contended Chizuru's insensitive comments was to spare the mousy girl from delving further into her guilty feelings over Soujiro Seta's actions. The fact that she was acting so very much like a certain Tokyo girl he knew with short hair and a teeny voice didn't help matters either; cue the obligatory sneeze from faraway, if you would.

But then Satoru turned towards the Tokyo Samurai and grilled, "This redhead, what do you think of him, Myojin-kun? Between you and me, I get the feeling he's part of the real Battousai Group. I mean, sure it's a bit presumptuous of me to claim such a thing, but it'd make a lot of sense that such a notorious band of terrorists would send one of their representatives... a particularly obsessed Battousai look-alike fan, even... to finish off their pesky doppelgangers. This act of aggression can also be interpreted as a warning sign to Akahori Tetsuo-san, their intended target."

"I-It's just like you said, sir, but to tell you the truth, outside of that and other circumstantial evidence, I don't really know much of anything about this red-haired guy or the Battousai Group," Yahiko admitted warily, alarmed at Satoru's sudden outburst of inapt enthusiasm, feeling as though the policeman was more interested in the Battousai Group's activities than the trauma his daughter just went through simply because it had something to do with his job protecting the Ishin Shishi politician's life. Then again, Yahiko was supposed to gather more information about the massacring, cross-scarred redhead.

Unbeknownst to the spiked-haired boy, the squeamish Kyoko gave her father a shy but grateful smile for his earnest attempt at changing the very awkward and delicate subject: the dark side of the enigmatic Soujiro Seta. To discover such a murderous aspect from someone so familiar was unnerving to the young girl. The fact that he evidently killed Keisuke for her sake made her feel even more bewildered.

The mysterious Soujiro had always kept his distance from Kyoko and the Sakaguchis since day one regardless of his facade of amiability, all the while maintaining an air of secrecy behind his mask of bliss.

Satoru nodded to Yahiko's bemusement whilst distracting him from his daughter's own distress before asserting, "Well, what's done is done. There's nothing more that we can do about it. The Battousai Group is on the move and have revealed that they're about to strike two days from now. It's out of our hands." Yahiko flinched accordingly to that part of the announcement.

"I'm truly glad that everyone is safe, but now's the time we discussed our other agendas. Let's talk about that chicken of yours, Food Bandit-san."

The tethered chicken that Yahiko tied to a peg near a tree at the back of the Sakaguchi Restaurant in the middle of Satoru's cross-examination suddenly flapped its wings and crowed to announce the dawn of the afternoon sunset.

"Aha! Did you hear that?" Gan exclaimed triumphantly. "The chicken crowed! Only roosters crow, Yoshi-boy! 'Hen' my tight, hairy butt! I suppose you're going to tell me now that cows can fly."

Chizuru opened and shut her eyes animatedly at Gan's exclamation, her mouth slackening in confusion. She turned towards Yahiko and asked, "'Yoshi-boy'? Who the hell is he talking to?"

"Yoshi-boy" hurriedly growled a vague and irritated, "Who knows?" at Chizuru, which prompted the young heiress to pause in wonder before widening her eyes in gleeful realization and giggling to her heart's content.

"Aaaaah, so you're Yoshi-boy, huh? Come to think of it, you do look more like a Yoshi than a Yahiko to me! Hihihihihihihihi!" she annoyingly cooed.

"He does, doesn't he? He doesn't think so though, Kaori-neechan!" Gan piped up in kind, as though forgetting that the very same woman he was toadying-up to just recently put his fatherhood in peril. Then again, his unthinking commnet just earned him even more hostility from the aforesaid female.

To say that Chizuru was taken aback by the random name was something that the word "understatement" didn't even begin to cover.

"KAORI? Who the heck is this 'Kaori'? She sounds like an annoying little witch with the vocal range of a baby parrot! And what's with this irritating habit of yours of giving people names that they don't like?" the Kaoru... not Kaori, just to be clear... look-alike lectured with a sharp undertone of "And if you disagree with me, you'll taste my Fist of Death."

Chizuru's outburst earned her bullets of perplexed sweat from a rather baffled Yahiko. 'So it's okay for him to do it to me but not to her? Jeez. Talk about your double standards!' the Tokyoite mused.

"Oh, pipe down, the both of you." As cross-shaped veins popped all over his head, Yahiko did his best to bear with Chizuru and Gan's behavior. "And more to the point, I don't care if your pet chicken crows or not. She's still a hen. If you want to pay back your tab, give the hen to the Sakaguchis for payment and then get a damn job to even out the rest of your balance!"

"Bullshit, that rooster of mine is going to make me lots of money at the cockpits, so I don't need no stinking job!" Gan rowdily rejoined, pointing madly at the tethered fowl's direction. "What I could make in a month doing construction work I can make in a day with my super fighting rooster! So there!"

"It's a hen," Yahiko insisted straightforwardly, his eyes half-shut and his arms crossed. "Give it to the Sakaguchis to either make a stew with or get eggs from."

"Why should they get eggs from it? It's not a hen," Gan persisted, grinding his teeth in aggravation. "It's a rooster. It crows, it's hardcore, and it has the earmarks of a champion. Are you blind?"

"I'm not blind. And that's not a rooster."

"Shut up. It's so a rooster."

As it was, Gan remained as focused on the argument as an arrow was on a target. Or a metal bat to a target, as the case may be. Vigilant and ready to do battle, to lock horns and prove his mettle. Ready to smash a swift path to victory... but so was Yahiko.

"It's not!"

"It's too!"

"Oh, that's real mature."

"So you're admitting defeat?"

"Who's admitting defeat? It's a hen!"

The Sakaguchi Patriarch and his beloved daughter watched on in awestruck fascination as the bizarre dialogue concerning poultry declined into churlish and juvenile prattle.

As they turned their heads back and forth from Yahiko to Gan while the ping-pong exchange escalated, they pondered to themselves, 'Have these people really met each other just recently? The way they talk to one another makes it seem as though it's the other way around.'

"I don't see what the problem is, you two. I mean, if you really wanted to know what gender that chicken is, all you really have to do is... well, y'know... look underneath and see for yourself," Chizuru pointed out awkwardly but bluntly, her cheeks pink yet her eyebrows raised in wonder at how Yahiko and Gan could miss out such an obvious answer.

Typically, the entirety of the somewhat diffident Kyoko's face turned bright crimson after realizing what Chizuru was suggesting. "Y-You don't mean...?" She gave Yahiko and Gan a quick glance then hid her burgundy face beneath her hands after her eyes involuntarily traveled southward. "Eek! Chizuru-san! That's so embarrassing!"

"Chizuru-kun! Wash that potty mouth of yours with soap, young woman! There are children here!" Satoru protested as he pointed at both Yahiko and Kyoko, which earned him looks of exasperation from the very same people.

A vein popped on Chizuru's forehead as she snapped, "Lift the chicken up and see what it has got underneath its knickers. Yeah, that's what I said. So what? Kyoko should know the difference between a bird and a bee by now, and so should Yoshi-boy."

Yahiko scratched his cheek in vexation and sighed. "Boy," he supposed condescendingly, "where in the world do you get these silly ideas? I guess you really are a spoiled little rich girl. Right, Kaori-neesan?"

"Wha...? Watch that tone of voice of yours! What does that have to do with anything?" Chizuru demanded. "And if anybody calls me 'Kaori-neesan'... or whatever variation thereof... one more time, I'll... I... well, you'll damn well wish you hadn't, that's for sure."

Gan boomed and rumbled with baritone laughter. "Chickens don't have any obvious limp noodles or pink oysters underneath them, Kao... I mean, neechan." He cleared his throat. "Chickens have no external sex organs. Male and female alike only have one opening for everything: egg, pee, poo, and sex all carry on in the same place... in their special little 'vents,' so to speak."

"Ew! Gross!" Kyoko girlishly cried out as she made a face. "I'm not quite sure I wanted to know that, Food Bandit-san."

Chizuru stuck her tongue out in kind. "That's disgusting. Informative, but disgusting." Coughing primly, the Raikouji Heiress relented to some extent, "So I guess it really is tough to tell a rooster from a hen outside of wattles and crowing, huh?" which was her roundabout way of admitting, "I was wrong. I went on and on about that rooster-hen thing even though I really had no idea what I was talking about. Sorry about that." Or at least that was the way Gan interpreted it.

Gan roared with even more misplaced mirth. "Ah, don't worry about it! It's a common mistake for city folk to make about chickens, Kaori-neechaark!" the thug-like food thief choked as his umpteenth thoughtless remark of the day caused his brief schlep with Chizuru's goodwill to come to a grinding and painful halt.


To be Continued...

Next: A rooster or a hen?

Credit for most of the framework of the story goes to a, er, local "bard" this time. Hearty thanks and salutations to Alejandro R. Roces for providing most of the material on which this chapter was based on. "My Brother's Peculiar Chicken" is a fascinating and funny story I've read in my childhood.

And though I'm probably going out on a limb here with the "Yoshi" references, I don't care. My nostalgic bias of the (in retrospect, mediocre at best, horrific at worst) Sony dub of "Samurai X" demands that I put it in there. Expect references to "Kenshi", "Kaori", and "Sato" in the near future.

Salamat sa pagbabasa!
Abdiel