Authoress' notes: Edited this 10/30/05. Got rid of those offensive capitals. Wow, I went caps-lock crazy here.

I also have to say that if some words are smushed together, that must be the program used to upload and view the text. As soon as I unsmush some words, other words are jammed together. It's kind of annoying. S, it's unfortunately just impossible to fix it all.

Wayward Ransom, Chapter 6.

Bankotsu resumed poling after letting the memory slip by. He was getting better at that, now that the damned jewel shards were removed from his body, not there to attempt to paralyze him in hate anymore. Or maybe he always paralyzed himself in hate, and the jewel shards only took advantage of that, magnified it, and the harder he tried to kept it under control, the harder it wanted to break out. With the rest of his comrades, the hate seemed uncontrollably channeled to whomever was near after their resurrection. Some were like that even before that. With Bankotsu, it was only channeled to the people who orginally caused the problem. The jewel may have been dark in his neck, but he refused to let the fragment take away his basic humanity. Maybe that's why he managed to live so long all the time...karma was kind to him in the long run.

But keeping all that hate under control took a lot of effort. Sake helped a bit with that.

It didn't take much more poling to get back to the other shore. Being careful not to touch the acidic liquid, he leaped off the raft, keeping the katana he had with him at his side now constantly...just in case. He turned around briefly, only to see that the whitish glow of the opposite shore was now too far away to even be seen.

The opposite shore, with his friend on it, blissfully unaware of his presence inches in front of him. That was all now a memory, too.

The next memory...another old one...howled in his head. It reared up like an unbroken stallion. It insisted on invading the precious space. It was one of the worst memories he had.

Several months later-

No.

Several months later-

"No, damn it!"

Several months later, in the darkening twilight, he arrived home from doing an errand for his parents. Upon sliding the front door open, he saw his parents sitting on the floor with two strangers. They looked like very important men, armor-clad, with weapons laid next to them respectfully on the floor.

His mother gave him a horrible look. It was of utter resignation. A total emptiness.

"Bankotsu...these men are here for you."

The boy was...confused. He didn't like the men.

She insisted. "Bankotsu...go with these men. It's for your own good. Your father and I discussed this for a long time until we reached the decision that this was right. Go...get your things and go with them."

Bankotsu was shocked. They went so quickly from fawning over him...just yesterday...bought him an expensive outfit, fit for a court appearance...they suddenly went to this?

"No, I won't leave..." it wasn't the fact that the men wanted to leave with him that bothered Bankotsu. It was the fact that all this came completely blindsided to him. And the fact that everyone now insisted he was something other than human...which he absolutely knew he wasn't.

His father decided to try and convince him. "Bankotsu, you have a demon..."

"I am not a demon."

"Bankotsu..."

"I am not a demon! I don't have anything to do with demons!"

His parents looked toward the men. His father supplicated them. "Just take him..please. Beat it out of him if you have to."

The two large men got up off the floor, and walked over to him.

"No!" Bankotsu did what any other confused child would. He made for the door and ran.

One gruff gentleman got up and started folowing him out the door immediately. "After that boy!"

He ran all over town for at least a half hour, dodging, ducking, running, and leaping over things in his way. The two men followed him wherever he went, amazed at his inherent physical abilities. They followed him on foot, and soon after, on horseback. They followed him outside the village. They followed him to the woods.

As he was running in the near-darkness, hardly able to see by now, he heard something snap under his feet, and slid...down, way down, tumbling over himself the entire time.

He had fallen into what was a shallow, abandoned well. His perfectly slicked back, short, tied-back hair now a complete mess, to match the rest of him. Dirty and sweaty, he tried to get up. He winced and cried out. His left ankle was broken.

Hoofbeats, and horses braying above.

He heard the men circling about the entrance to the cave, one speaking about how he knew he had seen him fall down there, and the other grunting in agreement.

They called down to him. "Boy! Get back outta there! You can either die down that hole, or you can get yourself out. If you get yourself out, we know we found the right boy. If you don't, we know we must keep looking!" He seemed to speak to his partner now. "We'll wait here for him for a while. If he doesn't show up soon, we'll go back to the old woman and ask her to describe the boy herself."

Bankotsu was in tears...not actually crying, but in tears. They ran down his cheeks and soaked into the cold, moist ground. Somehow, he miraculously kept himself together. To calm himself, he kept his eyes closed for a long while, repeated the mantra "I am not a demon..." over and over and over.

He could either die there, or find a way out...and live.

He looked around. He noticed that the well was narrow. Very narrow. He tried a few times to brace himself up with his arms and a leg, and sort of shimmy upwards. It worked until his ankle screamed at him. Insult added to more injury as he fell back down. His forehead got sraped deeply as he tumbled and slid, and later on, he noticed the two scars merged in the perfect shape of a cross. It would be an all-too-obvious scar he would carry for the rest of his life.

He let out an exasperated scream, beating his fists on the ground.

One last time he'd try to shimmy up...and succeeded. He amazinglycrawled out under his own power.

When one of Bankotsu's dirty hands showed up on the surface, the two men were speechless. When they saw his cobalt eyes come up from the hole, they were astounded. He gritted his teeth and threw the rest of himself over the lip of the hole, onto the grass.

They now spoke with a sympathetic tone to their voices. Not that they would have been sympathetic if he would have died in that hole, though.

"Holy crap, boy, are you a survivor! That'll come in real handy. Come with us. Let us show you what could be done with your skills. We will take care of you. We promise."

Bankotsu, who had been sitting on one side on the ground, his ankles trailing behind, and one of them getting quite swollen. Breathing through his little teeth, he quietly acquiesed, and got placed on one of the horses after being patched up by the men.

The little boy had a new look on his face. And a new attitude. Both were stern, cold, resigned.

I guess it's time to make everyone happy...and become the demon everyone...thinks...I...am.

Maybe he was getting better at letting the memories slip by rather than keeping them out...

...Nah.