Author's notes: Thanks tovarious name sites including About dot com, for help on naming some charaters. If I named a character stupidly please tell me, I know NOTHING about Japanese! I'm just trying to keep a consistent feeling with Bankotsu's name. I'm really flying by the seat of my pants with this fic.
I'm also learning that this boy is HARD to keep in character. No wonder there's so little fanfic about him.
Also, in the previous chapters, I forgot to mention the disclaimers. I got lots of info from inuyashaworld dot com for episode help. And I'm not doing this for profit. I don't own Inuyasha. I don't want to own Inuyasha anyway, I want to own Bankotsu. But I don't and I can't. Sigh. Please don't sue me.
Wayward Ransom, chapter 5.
He had to stop poling for a moment, and resting the bottom of the pole on the deck, he allowed the ferry to go forward under its own inertia for a moment. He placed his firmly furrowed brow on the pole, his hands circled around it. Everything familiar torn away...again. But this time, he realized, he did it only to himself. Not by fate, or circumstance, or through manipulation by others. By himself. There was no one else on which to lay the blame this time.
His friends, his comrades...people who have died for him were there...on that lovely shore. What an insult to their honor. Bankotsu figured he might have as well spit on their graves he himself had made for as many of them as he could when he was in the above world. He might have as well pissed on them instead of drowning himself in sake and contemplating spirituality as he tearlessly mourned for them.
He had given up his friends so he could search for something as undefined, as purposeless, as intangible and unattainable, as...his soul. The hell could he possibly be thinking with that?
At that point, he figured he could not even trust himself. Just like he was not able to trust so many around him...except maybe Jakotsu...but Jakotsu, strangely, was like a pure, innocent child. He wore his heart on his sleeve, and Bankotsu was sure he didn't even know how to lie. Bankotsu knew how to lie, but never would stoop to do it. It was simply wrong. It wasn't real.
Just like souls weren't real.
He thought about when he met the pretty shrine girl in the woods. She seemed to see right through him...right through his soulless body. She was one of the very, very few people that seemed to be able to. Did he really believe the things he told her? Or was he lying then? Or maybe he was telling half-truths to protect himself? Or, maybe even to protect her...from himself? He wasn't sure anymore.
Nevermind. He couldn't control the memories. They flashed back again and again, entering the precious space which he worked so hard in his brief resurrected life to maintain, keeping them beaten down...when necessary. The old seer was right. She was right...she was always so damned right.
At three years old, it was a common custom for everyone in the village where he had been born and grown to get a formal appointment with an elderly seer woman by the name of Maemi. The whole thing started as a joke when Maemi amused herself in the more magical arts and gave fortune readings to her friends which were surprisingly accurate. That was many decades ago.
Even though now she was older, Maemi was at her heart of hearts, a great woman. And most of her predictions tended to ring true over the years. Because of this, she insisted only to give predictions once for a child, and made it a very big to-do, where a few children, all the same age, would be given their fortunes in small classes like a school. If she did not have this stipulation, and did not give it such a formal air, she was sure that everyone would be on her doorstep every day of the week, which she knew would irritate her.
Since in her readings, she merely said what came to mind, and only was half-consciously aware of what she was saying when channeling, she made a great effort to explain to parents that her predictions were not set in stone; a child's fate could be changed at any time. She only merely gave a snapshot as to the potential present. In spite of the parents knowing the loopholes in her predictions, and trying to explain them to their children, all the children really thought Maemi's formal gatherings were something very special, and looked forward to them. Maemi herself loved children, so she didn't really mind doing this much anyway.
However, Bankotsu's prediction was different from everyone else's. When touching his forehead, she half-awakenedly muttered things about "a living weapon", "demons" and "will lose everything he loves".
Maemi was stunned. She never channeled something so serious in all her years of doing this. On the positive side, everyone ended up in laughter at the ludicrous thought. Even Bankotsu's parents laughed. He himself wanted to laugh, but the "losing everything he loves" part stopped him. But he himself knew he was no demon, and so did everyone else. He was always so small, so serious, and so completely inept at everything intellectual...especially reading and writing.
His parents figured the first requirement to becoming a living demon was some sort of ability to do demonic things. Like contemplate taking over the universe and..well, things like that. He was somewhat a disappointment to them. His parents shared quite often with others that they wanted a child for a very, very long time, and they felt extremely fortunate in being granted a boy for the first child. They often admitted to enjoying doting on him a bit. However, the older he seemed to get, the more they wished to trade him in for another but laughingly knew they could not...half out of love, and half out of sheer duty So in spite of his quirks, they did their best with what they had, and bit their tongues when necessary. They couldn't seem to train him to take up a literate profession, and they didn't even bother ever putting a weapon in his hand. Not only did his father want him to be intellectual and work for a court or something very special rather than slinging katanas on a battlefield, his son just always seemed too unimpressive to wield anything effectively. His father eventually figured his son was named after the virtue of "courage" because it would take courage for him to simply find something he could do in life.
The only other child in the room smaller than Bankotsu was a very strange, somewhat plainly pretty girl named Akiko. She no doubt had some unusual blood in her, as her eyes constantly exuded a yellow inner light. She was tiny, pale, and had bright orange-tinted brown hair, done up in two little buns out of which streams of more hair flowed.
Having no idea where she came from naturally, the only information anyone had about her was that she was adopted by a wonderful, loving couple, who treated her like one of their own. Other children stayed away from her, but in spite of this, and because of her parents' influence, she was obviously going to become a very loving person.
Every other child in the room expected Maemi to say something completely bombastic about Akiko. She was just too strange for them. She was meant to transform into horrible things and eventually want to take over the universe, the other children thought. But when her head was touched, Maemi smiled broadly. She mentioned beauty, and harmlessness, and serenity. She mentioned having a destiny meeting a supportive man, seeing many different lands, and et cetera.
The other children, excepting Bankotsu, laughed at that one, too. The parents just couldn't be cruel to Little Akiko, as she was often called. Seeing no reason to hurt her feelings, they stifled the laughter they only knew that wanted to make. Even just that slight bit of laughter that did manage to escape from some of them, he remembered, actually made him pretty angry. He never had any preconceived notions about who was "better" than anyone else, and didn't even ever care, so the other childrens' reactions at her fortune bothered him. Didn't she have the right to those things just like everyone else? And so she looked unusual. Lots more people looked even MORE unusual and still ended up leading relatively blessed lives.
Problem was, Little Akiko was considered too strange by others. Too nice, too quiet. Those eyes. It went unspoken that her looks would never endear her to marry anyone wealthy. So they all figured, one day she might snap and begin devouring their little friends, or something. Some even hoped she would tranform into an angel or something and just fly far away. If anyone were to have a truly ground-shaking fortune, it should have been her.
She just smiled calmly, and respectfully said thank you, and the last thing Bankotsu remembered was Maemi moving onto the next child.
Bankotsu shuddered, coming back to the present. That's exactly what he was in the battlefield. A living demon. A creature of hell. He didn't start out that way at least intentionally...but that's where fate took him. Because he had no where else to go. He continued to pole as the involuntary reminiscences came rising like bubbles, like those around the pole in the searing liquid whenever he used it to move forward.
Going home after their little fortune telling session was over, Bankotsu happened to see Little Akiko was cornered by some rude children. The same ones that smirked and giggled at the idea that she'd have any semblance of a happy ending. They were trying their best to get on her nerves, and, they seemed to have been trying to annoy her for a while, because she was furious, and everyone knew what an incredibly long fuse she had. Bankotsu decided to hang out and watch. Things like this really caused a strange "protective" streak to awaken. After all, the same boys irritated him earlier, and to see Little Akiko upset was a really, really rare thing. She kept insisting that all she wanted was to be left in peace, and these few boys couldn't seem to do that. He remembered the boys saying they were positive that the woman had accidentally switched the fortunes of her and Bankotsu, or at least, she should have had his...and he should have had a more mediocre, less intimidating fortune, to match his mental abilities and his stature. Akiko fired back, naturally, that that was the stupidest thing she'd ever heard.
She defended herself well, until one started to pull on her hair. That was it. Bankotsu had watched enough. And always the type to literally run headlong into things quite recklessly, he resolved to get himself involved and do something about this. He checked his person, and not finding anything to use for offense on him, he ran across the street into the nearest blacksmith's shop, and into its display window. He scanned the store for the easiest thing to...uh...borrow, which was the huge ceremonial nodachi that ran the entire length of the display window, kept in a beautiful green sheath with long red tassels, showing off the blacksmith's exceptional skills. He promptly helped himself to the expectionally long, very heavy blade. The shop owner was stunned the little boy could pick the thing up, let alone run out the threshold with it, so didn't even think to stop him. And, seeing his unusual strength, didn't want to, either.
Bankotsu ran between the offensive boys, carrying the huge weapon quite comfortably in his small hands. One of them saw Bankotsu running towards them, and had every intention of calling his bluff as he ran toward them. "Hey! Here comes the good-hearted, heroic dunce!" As Bankotsu ran closer to them, they spied the oversized nodachi he was carrying. And when they saw the weapon, their comments became more cutting. "What do you expect to do to all of us? And with that thing? You're not that much bigger than her!"
Some got knocked over just from the weight of the weapon as Bankotsu, not-quite-accidentally, hit them with the sheath as he ran through them. The others cowered in fear after Bankotsu turned around, threw the sheath aside to uncover the shining metal, and quite unconsciously brought it to a completely proper attack position. He swung it around effortlessly, and purposely, just out of reach of the boys' noses. And once or twice, he even did it one-handed.
And he really, really...enjoyed it. He raised half of his mouth in a wicked, charming smirk and...and found himself...chuckling! Yeah. Screw the books and the learning and the courts; this was quite comfortable. This was something he could do. Must be pretty cool to be trained and hack it out in a good duel with a skilled opponent once in a while.
Their eyes became wide with terror when they saw the smirk on his face, and experienced how agonizingly close he swung the weapon to their faces without hitting them. Some of them thought the wiser. "Holy shit...he's not bluffing...let's run!" They grabbed each others' collars, trying to drag the slow children along with them.
The boys turned and ran. One boy picked up a sharp rock and lobbed it hard at Bankotsu, smacking him right in the middle of the forehead with it, and created a long horizontal gash. Another boy chided the first for throwing the rock; he was silly for not running away from someone so strong.
Still having no truly refined fighting skills, Bankotsu was knocked backwards and off his feet by the rock. The nodachi dropped to the ground with a deafening clang!. His seat and hands also hit the ground, and a trail of blood started to run from the gash.
Little Akiko peered over Bankotsu. With those strange eyes. Bankotsu blushed.
She laughed.
"That was so neat!" she said as she clapped her hands and smiled at the dark, handsome boy. "Next time make sure you actually hit them for me! Or maybe I could hold them down for you...or...something!" she laughed louder. She was always thought of as odd, but since no one ever talked to her, no one knew she could be so spunky! She fumed as the boys ran away. "They really made me mad." Remembering her hero, she knelt down aside of him. "That looks like it hurts," she said to Bankotsu. "Thank you." She threw her arms around him, and planted a kiss that was supposed to be on the mouth, but missed entirely because Bankotsu, embarrassed, turned his head at the last moment. The kiss landed on his jawline by his ear and knocked him even more off balance than before. It made him forget all about the feverish rush he got from challenging someone with a weapon in his hands.
Bankotsu quickly got up off the ground and held a sleeve to his forehead. Absolutely not knowing a darn thing to say, he picked up the blade and sheath, and with the weapon cut the crimson tassel from the sheath. "Here. It's for you. It'll...uh...remind you that there's always someone that's ready kick their asses for you."
Little Akiko thanked him again, and went off, turning around to wave goodbye. She carried the tassel in her other hand close to her as if it were made of solid gold. Bankotsu waved back himself, puzzled. What did he get himself into, now?
And getting absorbed in the action, he never even noticed the crowd gathering around him. The entire town soon heard of Bankotsu's fortune...and now that they saw him so effortlessly weilding a weapon so heavy that he shouldn't have even been able to pick up yet...it crossed their minds that maybe the fortune was true. The boy certainly must have had a demon inside of him, giving him such unusual strength, and skills he shouldn't even have had any notions about.
Two men serving the current daimyo were in the back of the crowd. One, the son of the much aged and expiring daimyo, was interested very, very much in Bankotsu. The other, his first in command, couldn't help but stare at the strange girl. The daimyo's son couldn't help but wonder why the other found the girl so fascinating, but didn't question. But neither said anything right now. They had both heard about the boy's fortune, too, because as everyone knows, gossip always moves faster than the fleetest military horses. The first man would know the time would come when the boy would have to move on and give their leader much use of his skills. After all, they saw what he could do at three. Imagine what he could do, fully trained, at thirteen!