Chapter 7 - Dead Man Walking

"What?" I asked in barely amused response to a very sour frown from miss ninja as I continued, "The worst she can do is reject my proposal...and how exactly would that be worse?"
"Perhaps I misjudged you," she said with a look of utter disappointment.
"Yeah, well it's mostly her fault I'm in this mess and she said she'd make it up to me if I survived...so are you going to deliver it or not?" I asked, growing slightly desperate to see this woman doubting my one and only possible plan.

"At least let me read it," she said, extending her hand.

Dear Heartless Bitch,

You owe me.
I'm going to be executed because of you.
You owe me.
I'll pay you to stop the execution and protect me afterwards.
Everything I own is enclosed in payment.
Oh, and you owe me.

Creditorfully yours,
R. Joseph Marston

P.S. You owe me

"What do you think?" I asked dryly.
"I think I don't need to worry about the village being in danger from her trying to rescue you. But if you truly wish these to be the last words you write, I'll deliver it," she admitted.
"I know it's hopeless. I'm almost hoping the letter pisses her off enough to get her here. If I had another option, I'd take it...but you told me there's nothing you can do. I don't have to like it, but if you know that you'd save more lives to let me die, I can't exactly argue the point without sounding completely worthless."
"That is sadly the case. I will speak to the council on your behalf as well, though I doubt it will do much good," she said with a slight frown.

"So why are you helping me?" I asked, suddenly wondering what I could have done to earn this otherwise positive treatment.
"That katana you carried with you belonged to my family and proved that the 'honorable' master has been disarming the citizens of the village, likely to take control."
"Isn't she already in control?" I asked as I looked around again to make certain I was still in a cell.
"Not as such. She has nearly absolute jurisdiction over her own household, but her position in the village is otherwise mostly ceremonial."
"So then...she wasn't just giving weapons to the mercenaries…" I mumbled as I started to put it together in my head.

Nodding at my supposition, she gave me a grin as she finished that thought for me, "You catch on quickly. Yes, she has been making certain the people of the village have no way to contest her rule."
"Damn it, so that's why she needs me to die. I saw the detailed information on the village weak points too...so does that mean she was planning to pay the mercenaries to attack this village?"

"I think so. If there is a crisis-especially one in which the village council was attacked or killed-she would have to step up and take power. The council suspected that she'd been planning such a coup for the last decade and I entered into her employ to determine the truth of it," she confessed as she nodded.

"Well then there's probably no chance I'll see a rescue. If the mercenaries were already paid, then I doubt they'd take up my ridiculous contract...even if I had more to offer than a single gold piece.
"Sadly, that is likely the truth of it. I cannot risk my position to carry out your rescue myself...I am truly sorry."
"Shit. The good stuff always happens when my life is hanging in the balance."
"This has happened before?"
"I...guess I don't know. My memories are pretty much shot to hell. Though...if somehow I make it through this, I'm going to make enough new memories to forget that I ever lost the old ones."

Blinking in confusion, she finally conceded, "I have no idea what you're talking about, but after the day and a half you spent with Tsukiko, you should probably get some rest."
"If you get a spare moment, could you make sure she's okay?" I asked, hoping the young Tsukiko wouldn't end up involved in these dirty politics.
"When she was carrying you to the inner shrine, I saw her truly smiling for the first time I can remember. Who knew that peeping on her in the bath would leave such a positive impression?"
"That was mostly accidental."
"And agreeing to have sex with her?"
"That was me...but I thought she might decide against it. It's not like I was the least bit seductive with it or anything."
"I see. And so violently teasing her reversed scale was-"
"Hold on!" I interrupted, "That was totally unintentional! She had my feet tied to the bed!"
"I do not believe I heard any words of protest…"
"I know you think you're messing with me, but fucking that sweet girl was the only upshot of this entire experience. And you know what? Even with the broken ribs and questionable legality, I'd do it again too."
"The young mistress deserves an honest man like you, though perhaps one that is less...whorish?"

With a harumph, I crossed my arms with a grimace and closed my eyes, "Whatever...just because I think you're getting prettier by the moment doesn't make me a whore."
"It...most certainly does!" she said with a slight blush before vanishing in a flash.

Until she vanished, I didn't realize just how much I wanted her there. She seemed interesting enough, but the only thing that really mattered was that she was somebody.

While there was noise and conversation, I'd been able to forget about my predicament. Once the oppressive grip of silence laid its pall upon me, however, I started to quickly fall apart.

"By this time tomorrow...I'll be dead…" I mumbled, hoping that even the echo might keep me company.

It was hard to argue that I didn't deserve this. Beyond the holes in my memory, the last thing I'd done was try to end my life anyway. When I tried to think of what forgotten series of events it would have taken to convince my stubborn ass how stupid I'd been, I couldn't stop the tears. Choosing to give up my memory, and realizing that I didn't awaken surrounded by people that knew me meant that that was just another decision to throw an entire life away. I knew why I'd thrown myself off that bridge, but I didn't know why I'd given myself this new death.

Would anyone care that I was gone? Would anyone even notice? What would happen to me once my heart finally stopped beating?

The questions came louder and louder in my mind with the answering silence taking the wind from me every time. My thoughts had become a discordant rabble without a real purpose.

I didn't see the ninja girl again and the two meals that were brought for me went completely untouched even though the second looked to have been prepared by Tsukiko especially for me.

The slight hope that I had remaining was the spare glimmer of a single distant star within the sable lake of the sky above, its light impossible to see unless stared at directly. And stare I did. In the minutes that felt like days, I let my imagination run wild with every possible scenario I could imagine in which I got to walk away from this village.

Like backhanding an unruly child, however, the suddenly present rational majority of my mind responded with excessive force in crushing each fantasy with the sickeningly stark image of looking down at my own beheaded or dismembered body twitching in its feeble death throes.

Even if my execution was stopped, the chances that such a prideful woman as the master would let me go in peace seemed slim. I gave a sardonically biting inward chuckle as I realized I'd never even heard her name.

For the first time I could remember, I was glad to have been so exhausted as a fitful slumber dragged my overwrought mind into the relative peace of oblivion.

-
-The following day

The walk to the center of town was so dreamlike that I remembered nothing of it beyond the tentative touch of Tsukiko's hand upon mine as I passed her. I doubted that my attempt to force a smile was anything less than horrifying given her saddened reaction.

A small crowd had gathered around an unremarkable central venue for this public spectacle. In my drab, washed-out perceptions, they appeared as silent, faceless statues. What did it matter who was watching if the result would be the same?

Lead up to the elevated pedestal with nothing more than a small mat upon which to kneel, I took one last desperately hopeful look at the edges of the crowd for any sign of deliverance and was left wanting. I let my gaze fall back to to my feet with the taunting thought that this final, painful insult only came because I had dared to hope.

As numerous charges were read off, I continued to defy my pessimistic self-hatred as my eyes shot to any place from which my salvation might arrive. Even as each look dredged up little more than a steadily escalating despair, I couldn't let myself give in.

Jolting me sideways from my preoccupied thoughts, a question was shouted in my direction.

"Does the condemned have anything he wishes to say before the sentence is carried out to preserve his honor?"

Perhaps it was the last of "me" that hadn't been crushed flat by the irresistible weight of melancholy upon my mind, or an attempt to turn that dejection into something with which I could more easily cope, but as I looked at the haughty, self-important Ryu that had passed judgement upon me...something snapped.

"You know what? You can take your honor and cram it down that shit-swilling throat! Before long it'll be your turn, bitch, and the decades you're stealing from me will be a drop in the bucket against the hundreds or thousands of years that you'll never see. Fuck honor and fuck YOU!"

Certainly not the Braveheart tribute I intended, to be sure.

My angry outburst did not give me the satisfaction for which I was hoping, but the horrified look on the woman's face, coupled with the loud gasp of astonishment from the assembled crowd brought a small smile to my grief-weathered face.

"Executioner! You may proceed with the-" the master's flustered voice began before another vaguely familiar one cut her off.

"I wouldn't do that!" another voice shouted as the sound of intentionally noisy footsteps approached from the nearby edge of the crowd.
"Who are you to disrupt these proceedings? This man has already been found guilty and there is nothing you can say that would-"

Coming into view was not the person I hoped or expected to see. Nevertheless drawing a sigh of relief to see her, I saw the fox girl from before, looking no worse for the ridiculous fall she somehow survived as she approached carrying the shirt that she'd unintentionally torn off of me.

Interrupting the imperious Ryu, the increasingly attractive youko shouted, loud enough that everyone assembled could hear, "So you're in the habit of executing foreign dignitaries? Does Lord Kioko know? Should I tell her when I meet with her in a few days?"

This young woman was certainly not long on humility as she beamed with a confident fire that seemed to push people away from her as she advanced upon the center of this spectacle.

"Please, this man is an outworld commoner and he has broken several of our laws. What about this man could be so important that Lord Kioko would even acknowledge his passing?" the cruel judge loudly countered.
"You mean aside from his absolutely wonderful cock?" she began with a wide grin, adding, "Ah, I see the princess knows what I'm talking about!"

No. She hadn't just said that, right? While she managed to shout color back into my world, all of that color was red.

About to throw my hands up in anger, I blushed fiercely as I angrily whispered at the brash youko, "What the fuck are you doing?! You're not helping!"
"Shut your mouth, Joe. I want it ready to thank me later," she replied with a wink as she continued her shouting, "This man is a well known whore from Alnor!"

God damn it, this woman was pissing me off. If she was going to distract the crowd with random bullshit, she could have at least tried saying I had some kind of plague or death curse placed on me. She did have the crowd distracted, however, and I was half-tempted to try and make a break for it. The fact that she knew my name and that she had shown up here meant that she had to be following me. That witch told me that there were at least two ravenous monsters that might be after me and I worried at my fate if this was one of them.

Though, being honest about how I felt, if she'd offered me a contract of eternal servitude in that moment as an alternative to my current pending fate, no amount of pride could have stopped me from taking it.

"If you continue these outbursts, then you may share in his punishment. Whores do not enjoy diplomatic immunity and certainly wouldn't be considered 'foreign dignitaries' in any part of Kioko's realm."

Now looking like she was grandstanding for the benefit of the crowd, the fox girl countered, "Except that this whore is on official business for the Alnor Brotherhood of Upstanding Gentlemen, the charter of which nearly every respectable Alnor brothel now operates! We were to meet with Lord Kioko in less than a week to discuss possible prostitution reforms for her own lands."

"You are lying! Why wouldn't he have mentioned something so important?!" the Ryu shot back in a visibly growing anger, tempered with a likewise growing seed of doubt.
"Did you ask him? Or...were you more concerned with that spider you sent to kill him?" the fox responded in an accusatory tone.
"Kumori was a defender of this village! She was a-"
"Real pain in the ass to beat the rest of the way to death after she tried to kill Joseph here," the girl interjected with a darkening edge to her jovial smile, adding, "Let me just say that it is in your best interests to let this man free this very instant. If not, perhaps we could simply discuss your recent business in Amarante?"

I could already see it written on the esteemed Ryu's face. However much bullshit this fox was throwing, enough of it was apparently sticking to give the master pause.

Apparently not satisfied, the fox girl struck her reeling opponent again as she shouted, "In addition, before he could be executed there is also the matter of unpaid activities that demand compensation. By all accounts that includes nearly nine hours of 'nurse' play, twelve hours of 'dungeon' play, and some twenty-seven hours of womb-pounding, virgin-breaking fun. Since he's technically on paid leave for this diplomatic trip, that also entitles him to twice his normal rate per hour, not to mention the exorbitant penalties that come with actually killing a provider. His last transaction on record came to precisely 80,000 gold for one hour. Perhaps now might be a great time to mention our 'Super Saver' payment plan. Let me just draw up the-"

Finally succumbing to the unending sales assault with an expression that instantly pulled the wretched weight from my shoulders, the Ryu bowed her head slightly in defeat as she angrily proclaimed, "Just take the whore and go!"

"I thought you might see it that way. Come on Joe, we have a very important sex-related meeting that we really don't want to miss," my foxy rescuer said with a coy smile as she reached toward me.

Overcome with an elation I couldn't describe at the feeling that I was but centimeters from the freedom offered by that delicate hand, I was physically yanked in an entirely different direction.

Leaping up to the raised platform and easily tossing me over her shoulder with a single hand, the cloaked figure took a long pull from a familiar kiseru. With a trailing cloud of billowing smoke coming from beneath the hood a moment later, the large woman shouted.

"I'm not too late am I? I'll take it from here!"