Authoress's notes: Hey, hey, hey. I'm happy to bring another chapter. My job is so getting in the way if this. I have the whole darn story planned out and not nearly enough time to get it out of my system. But I have to say that the first paragraph of every chapter is always the hardest to write.

Thanks so much for the people who wrote encouraging comments. It's for those people that I continue with my story.

Anyhoo. Ennuffathat. Enjoy!

Wayward Ransom, Chapter 8.

The sounds of sorrow and torture swirled around Bankotsu as he made his way towards the nexus point. The humid air hung in his lungs, and he couldn't imagine how anyone had the energy to scream as much as he heard. In between screams and wails was only horrifying silence. Such as it was here on this side of Paradise.

What was strange was that there were no guards along the way. Continuing to walk, he was intrigued as to why there were none trying to stop him. There were various cells and cages and other means to detain people here, some were full, some were empty. But no one watching them.

He came to a particularly disturbing sight. A black metal enclosure. It seemed to contain some sort of vertical black metal cage, with claws shaped like a man's ribcage. Just large enough for holding one man by encircling him around the torso. The ends were sharp, crossed each other in the front, and were covered in crimson. There were various other locks and chains to hold the extremeties and the neck. He came closer to examine it, and found almost everything was covered in crimson.

Horrified, he started walking away...and for a second, thought he saw a vision of someone in there.

Himself.

He tried to pick up the pace to a run, but was soon overcome with a short bout of dizzyness. He would have to stop and rest soon, as physically he was close to being worn out. Amazing...there were so many things in this place to keep people from escaping...including that horrible cage, which he didn't want to even think of himself being contained in for ten years.

Sarcastically, he forced himself to look on the bright side, and managed to crack a wry smile.

At least there were no ants here.

He remembered when ants were meaningless...Like when he was a young child. Like when he and Jakotsu had just met, with Bankotsu flatly but kindly refusing Jakotsu's young and hopelessly flawed romantic advances. He had seen Jakotsu being trained before, and though Jakotsu was several years his senior, Bankotsu was already way ahead of him in strength and agility. Without even exchanging names, his new tagalong had invited himself to practically everything the reserved, thoughtful Bankotsu did and everywhere he went, making him talk and drawing him out of his shell, bringing a welcome relief to constant training.

Sitting on the steps to a town inn, which lay right on the main street of the town, Jakotsu had asked to know the other's name first and its meaning. Bankotsu had the answers he grew up with, one of which would have been "courage", on the tip of his tounge, but Jakotsu interrupted and mentioned something about barbarians and bones, "oo"ing and "ahh"ing. He was amazed that his new friend would have such a neat and fear-instilling name. When Jakotsu finally decided to tell his own name, he took Bankotsu's name as a template, and finished it off with the reference to his favorite animal, the snake.

Fascinated by this alternate meaning, Bankotsu thought about it, and told his tagalong that when he became a great warrior, he'd tell people it was that particular interpretation. But secretly, he also promised himself he'd keep the word "courage" close to his heart.

Then he saw the carriage...holding indebted and incarcerated women driving by...and a flash of brown-orange hair...

Jakotsu made a messed-up face at the carriage and mentioned lots of things he hated about women, but Bankotsu thought he saw something disturbingly familiar. However, he wasn't sure, so didn't dwell on it for very long.

Meanwhile, an ant found its way up Bankotsu's foot, so he flicked it away, while continuing to sit and talking meaningless, but wholly entertaining jibberish with Jakotsu.

Ants took on a whole different meaning ten years ago...

Continuing to walk along the path before him, the material under his feet changed, and the path became manicured looking, as opposed to the wild, haphazard pathway that went through a desert of nothingness and pain. He looked down, and the path and its border seemed to both be made of marble. The marble was cooler than the dirt path, and Bankotsu sighed in relief at the feeling.

He came to a massive black wrought-iron fence, the same fencing he saw that surrounded the horrible cell with the metal enclosures and projections. The fence seemed to stretch endlessly, until it became tiny and disappeared into the horizon, both to the left and to the right. Immediately in front of him, though, the path went downhill, and the marble border became higher and higher until it came to a huge, heavy gate, guarded by two massive statues in the shape of fighters in white marble above, and at least four heavily armed real guards below. The marble path was flush with the bottom of the gate, which was much lower than the fencing surrounding it.

Knowing that going through the gate would be a bad idea, he veered over to the extreme left of the gate. Using the patterns in the iron to climb over and back down, he saw there was a sort of pit in the ground, completely lined with marble. The pit was very deep into the ground, and also stretched to match the length of the fence surrounding it. Hundreds of soldiers...like ants...were in the pit. Waiting for him.

Now he knew why there were so little forces on the path to this place. They were all here.

He saw a flash of blue light in the background, and tired-looking, angry, and sad people were sparsely coming in to the pit from it; he knew this was the portal he needed to get to to go back to the above world.

Having no other choice, Bankotsu dizzily half-climbed down, half-fell down to the unforgiving marble floor below, right in front of the massive gathering of soldiers guarding the portal. Not being able to judge anything well because of his fatigue, he landed hard on his left hip...he feared it was almost too hard, considering how long he had to pause before getting up, and having to limp a bit afterward. That was going to leave a nasty bruise.

There was no where to hide, so soon after he hit the ground, the horde of soldiers knew he was there.

Someone made a loud shout toward the shimmering, magical mass of energy at the back of the crowd of soldiers. Bankotsu narrowed his eyes and only then could see other people, in dark shrouds, standing on either side of the bluish-white light. They seemed to be magicians, stationed on either side, whose job it was to control the portal. He could tell they were furiously trying to close it. Succeeding in beginning the shutdown, the light slowy, ever so slowly, began to shrink in size.

The young man knew there was only one way to get to the portal in time...go right through the crowd, to the other side. He had to smirk. Yeah...this is the type of thing he was used to, not that espionage, spying crap. Bankotsu always preferred the direct approach, even though it cost him some skin more often than not.

He readied both legs, and both katanas. He crossed his forearms in front of him, leaving his eyes framed on the top by his dark hair, and the bottom by his crossed forearms. The blood-stained katanas trailed behind him, edges out. The darkness and whiteness of his eyes burned as he faced the soldiers.

Faltering a bit, he had to close his eyes, and shake his head...the blood loss was getting inconvenient and his fatigue was getting less and less ignorable. His hip and arm were getting to him. He forced himself to recover and blend all the multiple images of the same soldiers into one again.

Patiently, the solitary warrior waited for that one soldier on the opposite side to make one wrong move. That would have had to have been the man in the front, closest to Bankotsu, who seemed to be a very high-ranking officer. He drew his fan, made a signal, and immediately hundreds of men rushed toward Bankotsu.

Bankotsu rushed back.

Both sides clashed, and Bankotsu seemed swallowed up by the swarm of underworld soldiers. He knew he had not a moment to waste. The portal behind them was almost closed.

For a few moments, there was a pause. The troops on the sides to the extreme left and right of the crowd started getting confused...they didn't really see anything happening, could not find the headstrong prisoner, and looked lost as to where to attack.

The portal barely open, there was a moment of silence...and after it, Bankotsu shot out from the side of the troops closest to the portal, and made himself tumble right through it.

The portal sealed itself shut.

Realizing their former prisoner had in fact gotten away again, the higher ranking officers bellowed loud curses at the closed portal, then turning on each other, they hurled insults at the magicians on either side of it for being too slow, then lastly, abusing the simple soldiers around them for being so stupid as to let him get away again.

Then they heard the most horrible sound. Everyone looked in the same direction.

The whole crowd of soldiers went quiet, and there was a stillness in the center of them. Right in the path where the young man streaked through, the soldiers who had been struck so quickly they were paralyzed as he ran, began to fall over one another like dominoes, gutted and slashed with the utmost precision.

A trail of fresh blood led right up to the portal. When the soldiers were done blaming each other, and began cleaning up their dead, some noticed it looked almost like a sickening version of a red carpet, laid out for royalty.