Ah, Saturdays. They never failed to change every one of Heishiro Mitsurugi's emotions suddenly into joy. This day was no different. The best part about this day was that the sun was shining brilliantly through his bedroom window, and onto his face.
Come to think of it, this wasn't his bedroom window; it was his living room window. How did his mattress move out of his room and into his living room while he was asleep? He never sleepwalked, and even if he did, he doubted he would be able to bend down and pull his mattress through his narrow wooden door and past the kitchen into the tiny living room.
The front door opened. Mitsurugi didn't realize he was so close to the door, and due to his lack of coordination in early mornings, he didn't immediately realize the door was opening until it swung all the way and pinned his head against the wall. He pushed the door slightly open to allow himself to rub the bruise on his skull, but only then realized that he couldn't move his arms. The blanket was tucked very, very tightly under the mattress. He had to wait until whoever stood behind the door decided to close it.
Apparently, whoever lurked behind it did not like Mitsurugi very much. The door closed minimally, then slammed back on his head, quite harder than the last time. Now he had two pain-inducing bruises on his cranium.
He steadily cracked his tear-filled eyes open to look up at his neighbor, Taki, looking quite infuriated down at him, not wearing a ponytail. This was extremely rare. Mitsurugi barely even recognized her, and didn't remember ever seeing her hair down before. He stopped thinking about her crazy hair and concentrated on the reason for which she had come.
Taki held up a small, brown dog by the scruff in her right hand, her teeth grinding together. "Is this your dog!" She screamed so loud that it gave Mitsurugi a horrible headache.
"No," he managed to leak out of his mouth. Taki snarled and chucked something at his face before storming out the door with the little dog still in her fist. Mitsurugi, still incapable of moving his arms out from under the blanket, was forced to push whatever was on his face, off of it with his tongue. Once it had landed on the floor beside the mattress, Mitsurugi turned his head, avoiding putting his neck in any more pain. He looked down what had fallen off his face to discover his wallet lying beside his head. He could clearly see the picture on his license showing in it of him as a sixteen-year-old, with his eyes closed as the picture was taken. He recalled how stoned he was back then. How did his wallet get into Taki's hands?
He decided he needed to find out. He gathered all his strength and rolled over, pulling the mattress with him. He used his teeth to bite parts of his carpet and pull the rest of his body forward, until he was out the door. Well, only his head made it out the door, as the mattress didn't fit in the doorway. Taki noticed him very quickly. A smoke bomb exploded in Mitsurugi's living room and sent smoke in through his nostrils and into his sensitive lungs. His eyes were tearing once again, so he couldn't see Taki enter through the smoke.
He did, however, hear Taki unsheathe one of her kunai knifes and cut the elastic straps that held the blanket so tightly to the mattress, finally freeing him. Before he had the opportunity to thank her, she grabbed Mitsurugi by his shirt collar and tossed him into his bedroom. "Get dressed. Your dog ran up a tree."
"It's not my dog! Honestly, sometimes you're such a bi-"
Taki yanked Mitsurugi by his ponytail and held her other knife against it, the evil-spirit-possessed knife, named Pekki-Maru. Or was it Mekki-Maru? Rekki-Maru?
"Finish that sentence and your beloved hairstyle dies." Mitsurugi froze, barely even moving his eyes. Taki released him and closed the bedroom door. He put on his armor and met Taki outside, ponytail regained, who ordered him to follow, under penalty of hair removal.
Why is she acting like a damn nazi? Mitsurugi thought to himself, not realizing he thought it out loud. One of the worst mistakes of his life.
Mitsurugi suddenly felt shaving cream on his face, then felt it being stripped off in a downward motion. He touched his face with both hands and found his trademark beard eradicated. His lip quivered and his eyebrows shot up, glimpsing Taki wiping shaving cream and stray hair off her blade. How the fudge did she do that? He didn't even see her raise a finger.
She glared back at him and gave him the evil eye. Mitsurugi dared not even think anything slightly negative about her.
"You're hair is ugly and graying!" he blurted out without thinking.
Taki turned back at him, fire blazing in her eyes. "You just lost your ponytail," she whispered, her voice shaking with fury. In an instant, Taki vanished and reappeared in the same spot and Mitsurugi's hair fell down his back.
After following her for a few more minutes, every step on each blade of grass making Mitsurugi more and more nervous of what Taki's next action would be, she stopped. She spun around to face Mitsurugi and pointed her left index finger up to the sky. "Your dog's up this tree. Get him down so I can kick his ass."
"I told you, it's not my dog!"
Taki responded by grabbing Mitsurugi's sandal and yanking it off, then tickling the sole of his bare foot. Mitsurugi thumped on the ground with his fists, crying in pain, err, ticklishness.
"I'll get the dog down! I'll get it down! Please stop!"
Taki grabbed his ankle and flung his body over her shoulder. He landed on his stomach on a thick tree limb and suddenly remembered that he was severely acrophobic. How would he possibly be able to climb this tree? He steadily inhaled and exhaled several times before reaching for the next branch about a foot above him. He tightly wrapped his fingers around it and pulled the rest of his body up onto the branch.
"Could we… take a break? Please?" he panted, out of breath.
"You're three feet off the ground! How is it possible for a samurai to lose his breath after climbing one branch!"
"It's possible if you're afraid to die! Why can't you do it? You can teleport."
"It's your dog."
"No it's not! Stop saying that!"
In a burst of smoke, Mitsurugi suddenly appeared at the top of the tree, where he met the little brown dog, crouched on the top branch, gazing at his beardless face. The dog waited for a few seconds before hopping down each branch individually until it descended to the green earth and nonchalantly strolled away, leaving Mitsurugi to hug the tree limb, desperately trying to keep himself from crying. He calmed his quivering lip and kept his eyes wide open to keep them dry from tears.
He called down to Taki on the ground, speaking quickly to avoid her realizing that his voice was trembling, "The dog's gone! Can you bring me down now?"
Taki responded by shouting back, "I'm going to get a chainsaw to cut you down!" and calmly strolled away, as if thinking that Mitsurugi could handle himself at the top of the tree, beardless.
Mitsurugi hugged the branch as tightly as ever, with his eyes clenched closed. What was taking her so long? He could count the clouds moving by while waiting. Two he noticed were shaped like Soul Edge and Soul Calibur, and disappeared when they collided. And just for them to move together took ten minutes. He could see his fingernails growing, which was technically a good thing, since if his fingernails were growing, that meant that his hair was growing back, too. Still, he would much rather be waiting on land.
Especially after what happened next.
In the distance in the direction of where Taki had gone, he could see something flying towards him that looked like a phoenix. Only the bird part of the flame-bird was what appeared to be a leather suit. Also, the flaming leather suit couldn't fly, so it landed on a tree. Mitsurugi's tree to be exact.
In less than a minute, the entire tree burst into flames. It was clearly evident to Mitsurugi that the blaze was crawling upwards ever steadily, and would soon reach his branch, then him. He could feel the heat of the fire increasing every second, sweat pouring out of his pores. He held his head up high to escape the heat, and doing so led him to notice the little brown dog sailing through the air across a football field. Hurry up, Taki!
Taki finally came back with a chainsaw, price tag still attached. She turned it on, not even noticing that the tree was on fire, and commenced slicing at the base. The tree was cut all the way through, and it toppled over onto the ground, missing Taki by a few inches, who didn't budge. Mitsurugi hopped out of the tree, sighing in relief, then thanked Taki, who replied by saying nonchalantly, "You're on fire."
Mitsurugi looked over his shoulder to see that his back was in fact, on fire. He shrieked and dashed through the streets, still shrieking. His worst fear was coming true. He finally tripped on the pavement, and a man with a moustache and thick, thick glasses ran out of a small building with a fire extinguisher and extinguished the fire on Mitsurugi. He could feel Taki's hand on the nape of his neck, pulling him by the shirt, before he passed out and woke up… somewhere else.
Next Chapter: Taki's Story
