The sun shined down on The Colony, baking it with a pleasant warm aura. Throngs of people milled about the marketplace, merchants hawking their wares to the many tourists passing through; genuine Japanese style silk, woodcarvings, sushi, sake, and other such products. Business was booming in the tourist season; and with good reason. With the crusades over and tournament complete, people actually had the time and ability to travel about without having to worry about marauding Gears or bandits or monsters. As a matter of fact, it seemed as if the world was returning to a state of relative normalcy.
Of course, much as light cannot exist without shadow, and much as good requires evil, the term 'normal' needs something to oppose it in order to be truly defined. Thankfully, on that particular day, there was quite a degree of anti-normal in the Colony. Most of that anti-normal culminated in a one-armed, one-eyed, red-haired, heavily drinking swordswoman tucked away in a corner of a dingy sushi bar. A collection of cheap sake bottles piled up on the table, the collective volume of their contents somewhere around the 'enough booze to kill a horse' category.
A big horse.
Thankfully for all equines and equine lovers in the area, the sake could not be not used to murder some unfortunate horse, as the one-armed, one-eyed, red haired, heavily-drinking swordswoman made it a note to relocate the lethal alcohol to a far safer (for the horse, anyway) location.
Her stomach.
Now, drinking alone is a sad, sad phenomena. Drinking to such raucous bits of excess is far better as a social activity; that way, there's someone there to make sure one doesn't do anything lethal, to remember the embarrassing things one did and promptly forgot while under the influence, and (perhaps most importantly) to provide backup vocals in impromptu karaoke sessions.
Thankfully for the one-armed, one eyed, red-haired, heavily drinking swordswoman, she wasn't alone.
"Baiken…don't you think that's enough?"
"You saying I can't hold my liquor?" Baiken fumbled with one bottle, only to drop it with a clatter to the floor. "…Dammit."
"Well, I'm not one to be sarcastic, but-"
"Piss off, Anji." Her voice possessed just a slight drunken list to it; but the animosity still shone through. Anji wasn't sure if he should've been reassured or intimidated. At least Baiken wasn't drunk enough to forget about the occasional desire to murder him.
On the other hand, Baiken wasn't drunk enough to forget about the occasional desire to murder him.
Anji sighed, adjusting his spectacles in a force of habit as he regarded Baiken, feeling a flutter of emotions going through his body. She was so bitter, so violent, so antagonistic towards the outside world. By all means, it'd be far easier to let her go, to allow her to go on her way…but it still stood that their two paths were intertwined, that their roads had the same destination; it's just that Baiken had far more violent plans of when she got there.
Even still, Anji did all he could to get beneath the woman's bitter exterior, to look past the scars, the missing limbs, the heavy drinking, and the numerous injuries she inflicted on him. After all, he figured that beneath all her emotional barriers, there was just a delicate Japanese flower, one that just needed a bit of love to truly blossom.
Baiken belched.
Well, at least she had a nice rack. For as deep as Anji tried to dig into the swordswoman's psyche, to find her inner softness, he was coming to the conclusion that she didn't –HAVE- a feminine side. Perhaps this night would be a little bit different; perhaps the booze would loosen Baiken's chapped lips and let her finally show some sort of emotion besides annoyance and rage. Maybe even…love?
As if on cue, Baiken tossed away another empty bottle, and leaned across the table. Anji blinked, then attempted not to look down her kimono, failing. "Hey, four-eyes. Stop looking at my boobs and listen to me already." She accidentally knocked a few more dead soldiers from the table. "I'm gonna tell you something that I've been meaning to tell you for awhile now…"
"Yes?" Anji perked up and snapped his eyes back to Baiken's monocular gaze- perhaps this was the breakthrough he waited so long for. Somewhere, a stringed quartet worked a melancholy tune from their violins and violas. A sudden breeze swept through, casting a flurry of cherry blossoms through the window of the bar and over the two Japanese.
The setup was perfect; but like many other such romantic confessions throughout history, it was ruined before the romance could play out. At the source of it all was the traditional scourge to young lovers everywhere.
The Ninja.
It's a little known fact that, amongst the various functions of the ninja (such as flipping out and killing people) is a tendency of theirs to utterly ruin romantic moments due to their sudden arrival. It's not a skill they really train at; it's just part of being a ninja. It's as ingrained as decomposition to a zombie or greed to a pirate.
And so, proving this theory to be true, a lanky, spiky-haired ninja with a scythe on his arm stepped into the sushi bar, humming "I'm turning Japanese" beneath his breath. Spying Baiken and Anji, he zeroed in upon the pair, exclaiming a "Konichiwa!" in horrifically pronounced Japanese. The stringed music quit, Baiken's one eye lost its certain glint, and the cherry blossoms fell to the floor, where they were promptly swept up and dumped into a trashcan by a passing janitor.
"Fancy meeting you two here!" he bubbled, roughly forcing himself in beside Anji. "I mean, like, who'd of thought of it?" he grinned in that certain way that only the blissfully unaware can manage.
"Can I murder him?" Baiken lapsed into her native language, confident that Chipp wouldn't understand.
He didn't.
"Oooh! Japanese! I know some! Konichiwa!"
Anji sighed. "What do I tell you every time you start getting violent?"
"Kawaii!"
Baiken glared at Chipp. "Please, no, don't stab me in the face?"
"Besides that."
"My hand slipped?"
Anji's face flushed. "No, not that, either."
"Baka!" The ninja continued to throw out random Japanese words, each mispronounced syllable building up Baiken's urge to fight. Chipp failed to notice.
"…That violence is not the answer?" Baiken said the words slowly, the concept sounding utterly alien coming from her mouth.
"That's it!" Anji smiled, attempting to soothe his female companion.
"Domo Arigato, Mister Roboto!"
Baiken blinked a few times, then proceeded to renew her murderous glare at the Ninja. It was only the large amount of alcohol in Baiken's bloodstream that kept Chipp alive, as her reflexes weren't as good as they should have been. Spying Baiken going for that sword, Anji flicked one of his fans beneath the table, rapping her sword-hand before she could fillet Chipp. He'd have to think fast, however, lest Baiken go for that sword again and get to fighting anew.
"Uh…hey Chipp!" he switched back to English. "You ever had sake before?" Anji snatched up a still filled bottle, smiling falsely. "It's Japanese!"
"Oh, really? Cool!" The mention of a certain J-word was all that that was needed to convince Chipp to drink; so he did. He threw his head back and chugged down the entire contents of the bottle in a decidedly non-Japanese manner. "Good stuff." Chipp gasped.
Anji blinked. "Err, I'm that's not quite what I meant…"
The ninja shook his head. "Nah, I can handle-" it was at that particular moment that the potent effects of the alcohol hit Chipp's bloodstream fully, causing him to drop to the floor, comatose.
Baiken snorted in amusement. "Lightweight." This said, she got to her feet and ambled off, pleasantly intoxicated for the time being, leaving Anji with a drunken ninja and a considerable bar tab.
In short, the usual.
"What the hell was that?"
"What?"
"That wasn't very romantic."
"…I tried!"
"No you didn't! If you really did, they'd be naked and crying by now?"
"Who?"
"All of them!"
"Hey, I did what I could, alright? It's not my fault that they went off on their own!"
"Yes it is! I mean, you were going somewhere with the drunk in a bar bit…but then nothing happened!"
"No, then a Ninja showed up. That's something. You wanted him to show up anyway."
"Well, true…but…but…someone was supposed to fall in love there!"
"Who? The only woman you gave me to work with is insanely murderous. I mean, I had to get her pretty well soused so she wouldn't just murder everyone; myself included."
"…Whatever. We'll just have to move onto a different set of characters then, hrrm? And we'll keep on going until you fulfill the requirements of THE SLASH CLAUSE!"
"Did you have to yell that last part? I'm right here, you know."
"Shut up and write."