It's alive! I have readers! I dance! Oh hooray! I can do author notes! I'm excited. :)
A. Nonny Mouse - Interesting but simplistic? I'll see what I can do. Are you still reading?
Vilja - I appreciate both the fact that you have supportive comments and that you've said
something twice. I love attention. I need attention. Thank you.
Houshi Lover - Wah! I love you! I kiss you! You really like it? I post more for you! Thank you so much. :)
Morelen - Er...some of the chapters are longer than others... It'll get better! I update! I'll put up another chapter later today too.
SangoLancer200 - Thank you very much, both for your support and for your vote. ;) And I won't tell. I'm glad you thought to comment too - it really means a lot to me.
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5- The Black King
"[W]e know how dangerous people are who don't need anything." -Stephen Dunn
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First there was nothing. Desert. Sand. Some cactus and a nuclear sun before they even started testing the bombs just a few hundred miles south of here.
And then there was Naraku.
Demons have always been in this world. Unless they're quite remarkable or conspicuous in appearance -as InuYasha is with his dog ears- they blend fairly well...until the snap and the bloodbath or the curse.
Ah, curses.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Naraku was someone you didn't screw with long before he came west, but most of the people who knew him then met a number of creatively gruesome deaths. No one really knows what made him leave the eastern seaboard, and no one asks. What is known is that he settled down in the dead earth and built Spiderwebs, a haven for poker players who wanted to try for big money and not get in trouble with the law. Fine by me, fine by everyone. Because cards is the one thing on this little blue planet that Naraku will be fair about. The legend goes that the only woman he ever loved (and yes, she was a human, the rumors call her "Kikyou") taught him how to play, and in her honor, he has never cheated, rigged the cards, or killed an opponent at the table.
After leaving the table, all bets are proverbially off, but the stories mostly say that unless the bet is life or death, he's honored every gamble.
But that's because Naraku tends to always win.
It's a demon city, Satan should rule, right?
Right.
So time skipped rope until 1974, when Naraku decided to draw the attention away from the newly glamourous Sunset Strip and put Spiderwebs back on the map. He declared the World Poker Series, and at that time it was really just him and a few of his cronies -because can you really say that demons have friends?- and a few scattered humans, one of which just happened to be my grandfather, Miyatsu McHoushi.
My grandfather and Naraku had a long, dangerous rivalry, so needless to say the chance to finally end it once and for all was an intriguing prospect for both of them.
Final round, final table, final two, Naraku upped the ante with an all-in and a threat: if he won, he'd place a deadly curse on my grandfather that wouldn't be broken until one of his line won the tournament. If my grandfather won, he could kill Naraku.
Who could resist a gamble like that?
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There's a rhythm to the cards, a pulse. It swoops up and down, and you have to catch it, you have to get into it, you have to know how to read it or you'll never make it past the first deal.
It's this pulse that finally brings me out of my funk and into the game, the siren song of the cards, the endorphin rush of a good hand, the testosterone levels that skyrocket when you draw that ace and you know, you just know with a seventh sense that yours is the winner.
A winning hand was the first thing I fell in love with, when I was four years old and my father started teaching me the very basics of the four suited gods that would rule the rest of my life.
There's nothing like it in the world.
Except being with and/or making love to Sango, but we're not thinking about that right now
No, we're thinking about how no one else at this table deserves to get into the final showdown as much as I do. We're thinking that "Juuryomaru" or whoever across the table needs to stop drooling all over his cards and start betting something that matters. We're thinking that "Jaken" needs to stop muttering that my grandfather got what he deserved and start calling. We're thinking that no one else has a better hand or a better concept of the game, no one else knows for certain that his genetic code doesn't run A, C, G, T, but diamonds, hearts, spades, clubs.
At midnight, I have to go to the bathroom, I have to call my wife, I have eat something or I'm going to pass out, but I also have more than half the chips on the table, $10,000, and there's one guy between me and the big show.
His tag says "Bankotsu," and he's got a smile that I've seen in the mirror - he knows he knows. He's fast and smart, and the flash of red in his eyes says he's more than willing to bleed chips until I'm gone.
And he picks up his cards with a shit-eating grin, and says "Where's your wife, McHoushi? I thought she was a fair player herself. Reading about you two in Card Player, I would have thought you were inseparable."
"She's pregnant." I hear myself saying. "The stress would have been too much for her. We decided she should stay at home." That's something like the truth. My hand is two black queens, and if he doesn't have kings or aces, I could have him on this turn. "All-in."
"Congratulations, man." Bankotsu raises and eyebrow, looks at his hand, and then checks me. "All-in yourself."
I show him my hand, and he doesn't register any surprise or terror -damn those demons and their perfect poker faces- and he puts down the king and ten of diamonds.
He's playing my card.
And I won't stand for that.
My fingers are stroking my wife's photographed face as the dealer turns over the flop.
