Disclaimer: Don't own KOF, Fatal Fury or related character. I'm just borrowing them for some non-profit entertainment.
Sore ga Ai, Deshou?
Chapter Nine: A Spare Hanky
Andy had taken to walking with a pendulum suspended a foot in front of him. He had used one of the trip wires from one of the many traps he'd unwittingly sprung tied to the end of a stick and a small stone for the pendulum. He did this because most of the traps he'd come across so far were sprung by small tripwires carefully concealed in the underbrush of the forest, whenever his pendulum touched something that wasn't obviously a raised tree root, he would stop and examine the path for possible danger. It had worked so far but this was only his second day, who knew what else the Shiranui had set-up to train their younger members.
His stomach growled loudly and he hoped he was close to the villa. Andy didn't think he could go through much more of this, at least, not for a while. To the mind of the twelve-year-old this was like marching through the jungles of Vietnam.
He paused when his pendulum caught on something. Bending down the boy carefully cleared away the fallen leaves and twigs that concealed a thin wire, pulled thought just a centimeter above the ground. Andy sighed and back up from the trap until he was satisfied that he was a safe distance away. He then picked up a semi-large stone from the ground and tossed it at the wire. What looked like a large wooden cage came crashing down over the stone, the bottoms of the posts it was made from had been sharpened down to spikes so that it would dig into the ground and make escape difficult. Andy was quite happy he hadn't been caught in it.
His relief was short lived when his stomach gave another gurgle of emptiness. He hadn't eaten anything really substantial since swimming to shore, he knew that there must be sources of food on the island as well as there was water (how else did the Shiranui expect their trainees to survive?). The problem was Andy had no idea what plants were edible and what were not. Back in South Town it was easy to know what was edible and what wasn't.
If it was something half-eaten and pulled from a trashcan you had a fifty-fifty chance of getting sick, if it was stolen off a hotdog cart on the corner it was perfectly edible, if it had fur growing on it, it was not, if it was lifted from a pastry shop, it was, if it was offered to you by a convicted pedophile it was definitely not. Things just seemed so much more complicated here in "nature" than they did in the big city.
Andy supposed he might give hunting a try. Meat was almost always edible, provided it was properly cooked. But then that brought up the problem of him not having any means of starting a fire to cook said hypothetical meat. Little by little Andy was beginning to realize that when he'd been spending the past three years training for the Course he might also have given a thought to how he planned to actually survive the trial. A ninja was always prepared and it seemed that he was shaping up to be a very sorry ninja indeed.
'You always leap without looking?' His master had asked one evening when he had first arrived, when he was still learning the language, practicing on what came to be known as the "Kanji Poles".
Andy had replied that he didn't and up until that point he hadn't. Back in South Town on the streets before life with Jeff, jumping into a situation before you knew what you were getting yourself into most often got you killed. Neither he nor Terry survived by being reckless. But here, now, he had done just that, jumped into something before being properly prepared. He had been reckless. Andy hoped this wasn't going to become a habit.
It was probably because he had felt so secure living at the Shiranui dojo these past three years. He felt safe, like a wide safety net had been spread out beneath him to catch him if he fell. But it was a false sense of security and Andy mentally kicked himself for it. After his training was done, after another seven years had past, and he returned to South Town, that safety net would be gone. He couldn't allow himself to become comfortable in this temporary security. Once he left he would be gone and that was it.
Andy's stomach gave another loud growl. It, apparently, didn't appreciate his reflections on comfort and security. It wanted to be fed and it wanted to be fed yesterday.
"Alright, alright." He said to his disgruntled and neglected digestive track. "I'll see what I can fine."
And for three days he trudged on like that, at a cautiously slow pace with his trap detecting pendulum held out in front of him and not a clue of what could or could not be eaten.
…
Mai wrapped a thin flesh colored bandage around her ankle. It was just a stupid sprain and would be gone in a few days but it still needed to be wrapped if she was going to train on the field with the rest of the family. She wished she were running the Course with Andy or that he didn't have to run it at all this year and he was here to spar with her.
Since their bout three years ago her grandfather had taken to pairing them up for spars rather often and (she didn't want to flatter him but) he was the best training partner she'd ever had. He used all the familiar Koppouken and Shranui-ryu ninjitsu that she was used to but there was a certain viciousness to his moves, as if he really meant to kill his opponent. He hadn't always fought like that, though. It had actually taken him a very long time after their first spar for him to agree to a second one and even longer after that for him for do more than just defend.
Andy's "I don't hit girls" rule was really annoying. But he had eventually gotten over it, Mai still wasn't sure how, it had been a gradual thing. And she was glad he had, he was probably the strongest fighter in their age group (not that she would ever say so out loud) and while she was marginally jealous, she couldn't help but be proud of him. She really wanted to be out there doing the Course with him right now or wished that he was here for her to train with.
There was one nice thing about the Course, however. Koinosuke was also out running it and so Mai didn't have to put up with being pared up with him for a sparring partner. That, at least, was nice.
Mai spent three days training with the other members of her extended family until the afternoon of third day when Shizune returned from the Course, dragging Kazutaka with her. He wasn't in all that bad a condition; really, he just happened to be bleeding uncontrollably from a wooden stake that had been driven through his leg.
"S'nothing." Kazu slurred as the family's medic elevated the leg and cut his hakama to get a clear view of the wound.
"'Touchan!!" Mai all but screamed when she came out to see what the commotion was. She rushed to her father's side, interfering with the medic's work and being generally annoying (as people in a panic tend to be).
"'M fine. Just a flesh wound." He tried to give her lighthearted smile but only managed a grimace. "I've had worse."
"Mai!" Hanzo's rough, authoritative voice cut the air. The crowd parted to allow the head of the family through. He stood above Kazutaka, his arms crossed over his chest, not the image of a concerned father but of a collected leader appraising an injured subordinate. "Give the doctor some space to work." He ordered Mai before turning his attention back to said doctor and his injured patient. "How much blood has he lost?"
"Not as much as he would have if I had pulled the stake out like he wanted me too." Shizune piped up, perfectly ready to seize the opportunity and place herself as the hero in the eyes of the rest of the family.
"Hn." Hanzo just nodded that he had heard.
"'M okay. Really." Kazu insisted.
"Well, he's talkin' so I don't think he's gonna be dyein' on us any time soon and the bone ain't broke just fractured, muscle's torn to pieces, though." The doctor informed him.
"Will he be able to walk again?" Hanzo asked just a bit of emotion filtering through his detached façade.
"'Walk'? Sure." The doctor side with all confidence. "Fight? Well, that'll be somethin' to see."
"I'll leave him in your capable hands then." Hanzo strode back into the house after Mai. Before disappearing behind the sliding screen he turned to Shizune and said, "Congratulations on being the first one back. I'm sure Nagare will be very proud."
He found Mai upstairs in the chrysanthemum room, the room that Kazutaka and Andy stayed in during while at Hagi. She was clutching one of his haori and crying into the collar.
"Hey, kitten." He said, taking a seat next to her. "Don't worry, Kazu's gonna be just fine."
"There was so much blood!" She wailed. "Now he's going to go be with Okasama and leave me here!" She buried her face back in the collar of Kazu's haori.
"That oaf's not going anywhere." Hanzo assured her. "He's not hurt all that bad. Why, back in Manchuria I once new a guy who had a hole blown clean through his shoulder." The old ninja attempted a comedic smile. "He used to carry a spare hanky in there. Can you just imagine Kazu sneezing and pulling a handkerchief from his calf?"
To spite her current state of distress, Mai couldn't help but chuckle at the mental image.
"Kazu's gonna be fine, Mai-chan." Hanzo assured her. "Your mother's not gonna be calling him up to heaven any time soon." He kissed his granddaughter on the head before standing. "Stay up here as long as you need, I'll call you back down when your 'Touchan can see people."
"Okay."
…
Andy held a struggling squirrel in his hands, unsure of what to do next. The creature flailed wildly in his vice like grip, clawing and biting at his fingers in an attempt to get to freedom, its beady black eyes staring up at him in wild dread.
Obviously, his next step should be to kill it and then find a way to cook and eat it, but it was at that step that he found himself reluctant to continue. When he was younger he used to pull the legs off spiders or tear the shells off snails, but he stopped after Jeff had adopted him, he said it was cruel. How was this any different? If Jeff thought killing spiders and snails was cruel, what would he think of killing a cute, fluffy squirrel?
His stomach growled loudly, urging him to continue.
But then again, everything needed to eat. Jeff had always served meat at his dinner table, didn't the animals said meat came from have to be killed first? What was the difference between killing something yourself to eat and eating something that someone else had killed for you? You were still consuming another creature. Was the difference in how it died?
And moved his thumb to the side of the squirrel's head. Just a little bit of pressure and he would snap the creature's neck, it would be it and painless. Just a quick snap… That wasn't cruel, was it? Jeff would understand, wouldn't he?
Once it was dead he would cook it and eat it and everything would be fine.
But how was he going to cook it? He hadn't brought a lighter with him, nor any matches or tinder or whatever else a person needed to start a fire. He didn't know how to start one from scratch, that wasn't the sort of thing a person learned on the streets of a big city.
Andy thought of those with whom he and Terry had shared their abandoned warehouse home with before Jeff's adoption. The cast-off of human society. He remembered the empty oil barrels and trashcans they would light on fire and huddle around for warmth in the wintertime. He thought of the heroin addicts with their little candles and spoons they used to melt their crack. He'd never paid attention to how they got their fire, now he was wishing he had.
Andy looked back down at the creature struggling in his hands. What was the point of killing it if he didn't have a way of cooking it? If he ate its raw meat he's just make himself sick. The poor creature locked eyes with him, as if agreeing 'Yes, sick! That's right, I'll just make you sick!'
Reluctantly, Andy extended his hands to the nearest tree branch and let the squirrel go. He would find something else to eat.
…
"If he wasn't a ninja before, he certainly isn't a ninja now." Nagare was saying. He paced back and forth before Hanzo while the aged master and head of the family sat in lotus position, deep in thought. "You do know that he'll never fight again, Ani-ue, not with that injury. Not that he ever fought much before." That last part was spoken in a whisper.
"Do you mind? I'm trying to meditate!" Hanzo snapped.
Nagare paused in his pacing to glare at his elder brother. "Well, forgive me for attempting to care for this family! I thought, at least, one of us should!" Was Naga's venomous reply. "That boy of yours is useless to us Ani-ue, and he has been for a very long time. This family grows weaker with every generation. We need to form a strong alliance while we still can! It makes perfect since to pair Mai-chan with Koinosuke! The two of them-"
Hanzo held up a hand for silence. "Kazutaka will never let you marry his daughter off for your own ambition."
"Kazutaka is barely a member of this family any more!" Nagare roared. "His opinions should have no effect on how we conduct our affairs! Have you forgotten how he so readily abandoned us to be with that woman?"
"Kazutaka is my son and will always be a member of this family, Nagare!" Hanzo stood, a vein pulsing beneath the skin of his forehead. "And I'll not have you insulting the mother of my granddaughter so close to the Lantern Festival! You should know that its not wise to speak ill of the dead so soon before Obon."
"You're straying from the point." Nagare waved off Hanzo's superstitious warnings. He only held to old customs and beliefs when it suited him and that was something that had always bothered Naga. "The point is that you and that son of yours need to stop fighting the betrothal between Mai-chan and Koinosuke. Or do you want this family to tear itself apart after you're gone? The Shiranui will need strong leadership, not the idealistic whims of a pacifist's daughter."
"That is enough, Nagare!"
"Ani-ue!"
"I will consider your words." Hanzo moved to leave. "Now I'd like to see how my son is doing."
"But, Ani-ue!"
"I said I would consider it! Do not vex me further!" He snarled before slamming the shoji screen behind him.
…
Mai knelt beside her father and set the tea tray she had brought with her down off to the side. She pretended not to hear her grandfather and Nagare arguing from all the way down the hall. She knew it had something to do with her father's injury, Uncle Nagare was probably using the accident as grounds for discrediting her father in the eyes of the rest of the family or some other devious thing that would get Naga exactly what he wanted in the end.
"How are you feeling 'Touchan?" She asked with a strained smile. It was hard to be cheerful in this house with so many selfish motives and hidden agendas.
"Better than I was a few hours ago." He sat up and smiled sweetly at his daughter. "The Doc says I've gotta stay off my feet for a few days and after the wound heals I might need a cane to help me walk. Can you imagine me walkin' around like one of those ritzy million dollar troopers?"
"Huh?"
"Never mind, kitten."
From down the hall they clearly heard a roar of rage from Hanzo followed sharply by a shoji screen sliding open and then slamming shut with enough force for the sound to continue ringing through out the whole house. Hanzo entered shortly after that, looking tired and old, as if he had just aged another forty years in the past ten minuets.
"I suppose you both heard that."
"Only the parts where you two were talking, Chichi-ue." Laid up with an injury and faced with losing any standing he might have had in the family, Kazu could still manage to crack a sarcastic joke.
"What are you going to do, Ojisama?" Mai asked, standing.
The old ninja wrapped one arm around his granddaughter, pulling her close in a forlorn hug. "Mai-chan, can I ask you to make a sacrifice for your family?"
The little ninja girl looked up at her grandfather. "Ojisama… you can't be asking me to… I don't like Koinosuke!"
"I know, kitten." Hanzo ruffled the girl's hair, setting her ponytail askew. "But if you don't… perhaps I should ask a different question: Do you want to take over as head of this family once I'm gone?"
"Not if it means being forced into a marriage against her will!" Kazutaka interjected. "I won't allow it! We're people, not pawns and Uncle Nagare needs to learn that!"
"You have even less say in this matter than Mai does, Kazu!" Hanzo snapped. "Since you had to go and bust up your leg, now there's no doubt in anyone's mind that you'll never be a proper ninja ever again!"
"Mai is my daughter!"
"And she is my granddaughter!"
"Its her life! You can't make any decision for her!"
"That is precisely why I'm asking her!"
"Stop it, both of you!" Mai shouted over her father and grandfather's bickering. "'Touchan, I can handle this, I'm a big girl. I'd be a terrible ninja if I had my daddy holding my hand forever. Ojisama," she paused, "how long do I have to decide?"
"There's no decision to make, you're not doing it!"
Mai and Hanzo both ignored Kazu's statement.
"You should probably to come to some sort of decision by the time Koinosuke returns from the Course and Naga starts his ranting again." The aged master replied. "If you don't want to be my heir I will have to assign succession to Shizune or Koi-chan."
Mai wrinkled her nose at the idea of having to bend to their conservative and narrow-minded rules. She didn't see the family going very far with either of them as leaders. Shizune was to vein, far to self-involved to be a responsible leader and Koinosuke was shaping up to be no different.
"Thank you, Ojisama." She bowed. "I would like to talk to Koi when he returns before I give you my decision."
"I think that's fair." He nodded.
"What's fair is letting people live their own damn lives!" Kazutaka snapped.
…
Andy fell to his knees, clutching his midsection, his stomach heaving its meager contents out, up through his throat. 'Note to self: that plant I ate was poisonous.'
What he thought would be a simple obstacle course was really becoming an arduous test of survival. The Shiranui's traps seemed to have become insignificant when compared to his immense hunger, especially now that he had his little trap-detecting pendulum. His biggest problem was food. He hoped the villa was close, very close, like within the next day (if not closer) close…
…
Koinosuke returned latter that evening after dinner had ended. He swaggered in sporting a cut on the side of his head that left blood trailing down that side of his face. The cut was small and the blood dry. Mai had the feeling he had left it that way in an attempt to look tougher or stronger than he was.
Mai pulled him aside after his mother had finished fawning over his apparent 'success' at completing the course.
"Oh-ho, she wants to congratulate him in private." One of her cousins commented as she was dragging him away.
"Hey, shut-up. They're just kids." Another one admonished.
Mai pushed Koinosuke unceremoniously into the garden-side tearoom and shut the door behind her. "We need to talk."
The boy crossed his arms over his chest in a show of defiance. He refused to be ordered around by a woman, especially not one his own age.
"Fine, I'll talk. You just stand there and glare for all the good it'll do you." Mai snapped at his insolent gesture. "Your granddad wants us to marry, and I'm pretty sure neither of us wants that to happen. But ya know what, tough! Because we don't get to make that decision, so here's the deal: I don't like you and you don't like me, so, we agree to get married, fine. But however long down the line one of us finds someone else, we don't get in each other's way. We'll stay together to keep the family happy but you don't interfere with my boy friends and I wont interfere with your girl friends. Deal?"
"You talk allot."
"Do we have a deal?" Mai snapped.
"Yeah, fine." Koiosuke shook Mai's hand to seal the deal. "What brought this on so suddenly?"
"Nothing." She answered. "I just finally figured out that if I'm gonna take over after Ojisama I have to stand on my own to feet."
"Great. Except, I'm going to take over the family after Hanzo-sama."
Mai suppressed the urge to face palm. "I can see this is going to be allot of work." She groaned.
…
The contract was drafted that night and before everyone went to bed both Hanzo and Nagare had signed in place of Mai and Koinosuke whom were to young to sign for themselves. Mai felt as if her life had been signed away and she wondered what Andy might think of her for it.
Would he condemn her for her weakness or praise her for devoting herself to something larger than herself like he had resigned himself to bringing his father's murderer to justice? Why did his opinion even matter so much anyway? He wasn't one of them…
…
