Fro Ninja; Hello my beautiful people! Yes, I know I've been gone with this series for a while, and I heavily apologize for that. I'll definitely try and get out updates a lot quicker after this one, so just bear with me. On that note, let's see who left a comment.
hueyfan; Thank you for reading! Although that wasn't my intention, thanks for making that reference my friend. I hope you continue to check out this series despite my negligence with updating.
Okay! Now that we took care of that, let's get right into it!
A few hours later
Third person perspective
Though he wouldn't rather do it, Huey find himself pacing in front of his door, eagerly grasping his knapsack with unwavering anxiousness. He stopped every minute or so to take a breath, and then go back to pacing in front of the door, opening it and closing it every few seconds. A thousand thoughts raced through his mind, ranging from 'what would happen if I open this door to begin my true journey', to 'did I remember to make breakfast this morning?'
This was to be his one his first real steps in his journey to mastering the sword, and to get closer to recognition by his master. He took a moment to withdraw his sword, and stare at his reflection in the blade. His focused expression stared right back at him. The unsureness showed up in his eyes before long as the impact of this assignment dawned on him.
"Am I really ready for this? Is this what my training has prepared me for?" He asked himself several times. Even to this day, the bonds of slavery still shackle his hands. Three years had passed since he freed himself from the bonds that held him down since birth, but in the back of his mind, the question still stuck at him. The chains are gone, but is he really free? He constantly deliberated about this through meditations, and focusing on perfecting his swordcraft, none of which seemed to merit him any answer. Freedom was a hard thing to define to young Huey.
Was it indeed the absence of chains? The sense of liberation with nothing tieing the individual down, or the natural right to do whatever you wish to do? If that's the case, then did he have a right of not being incarcerated like he was for the majority of his life? No. It didn't. He was slowly learning the fact that because of the circumstances, humans, no matter their status do not a say of what they are born into, but can choose what to become. As cliche as it sounds, this is an illusion. Everything a person does and becomes is based on a primary instinct to be, similar to an animal. Was it his primary instinct to become a enslaved warrior in a world where a black individual is given no choice but to be what his/her masters demand them to be? Only time would tell until he would find the answers to these questions.
Huey had stopped pacing in front of the door and began to extend his arm out to grab the knob on the door. His arm stalled for a few seconds before slowly pulling it back. In that moment, he then felt a hard slap across his head that knocked his head to the side.
"Ow!" He grunted in pain. He turned around to see an elderly old man staring at him with a grunted and displeased face.
"Dammit Huey! In or out boy! Pick one, you lettin' all the damn flies in!" The old man barked at him. This was Huey's grandfather, Robert Freeman. Like his grandson, he was also born into the bonds of slavery, but because his desire to not be killed, lynched or worse, he seemingly accepted his place in the world for most of his life. His saying was always 'There's no need to reach to for a plate of steak and chitlings, when you know a bear has shitted all over it', a saying to this day that makes no sense, but has kept him alive to this day. As the years passed for him, and he began to create a family of his own, he began to accept that eventually he was going to die, and it was going to be as a slave, and so maintained an amicable perspective on life, became satisfied that they are things you simply can't control.
"Granddad, I'm trying to weigh my options at the moment." Huey responded while rubbing the afflicted spot on his head.
"That's something you should have done years ago boy! You wanted to go with that nasty wandering hobo with the nappy fro and the hoop earrings! What kinda nigga wears hoop earrings?!"
"His name is Afro."
"I don't give a flying fuck what his name is! With his constipated looking ass!" Granddad than wandered off to the living room, and sat down on the tatami mat floor in front of a small round table. The smell of green leaf scented tea filled the room with its aroma. Huey followed him in, and took a seat across from him. Granddad grabbed an age old teapot from the nearby cupboard, and a small cup, and began to pour water into the pot."The only reason I let you go off with him, was so that you can find out some good trading routes for us, so that we can get this business set up! Do you know how long I've been drawing up business plans for this thing boy?!" He says to him while mixing his water with tea leaves with his brush.
Huey sighs as he lays his sword down next to him.
"Granddad. I've already explained this to you before, I can't and I won't spend the rest of my picking up cabbage from a burrowed cabbage field. I don't want to go back to that lifestyle." Huey said calmly.
"You make it seem like you had a choice of what life you were born into boy! Remember what happened to your parents?! They thought they could be something more than what they were told to be, now look at them! Dead!" Granddad began to mix even faster with his brush, furiously scrapping the cup from the inside. "Face it boy! This world needs a lot of things, but a nigga samurai ain't one of them. Now do me, and your brother a favor to stop chasing this bullshit dream!"
He slammed his brush on the table and gulped the unfinished tea down in one go, and spit it out a few seconds later. "Goddammit! This is some nasty ass tea! Why the hell I gotta be making the tea for?! I'm an old man! RILEY! Get yo lazy ass up and make me some tea, and don't forget to check on the crops! Mr. Hyuga is supposed to be stopping by today, and I think he wants to do business! Hoo-whee!" His mood shifted from upset to happy in under a minute as he threw the tea cup on the mat out of frustration."Anyway...what was I saying again?"
"Listen Granddad, I've made my decision. I'm going along with Master Afro on this assignment."
Granddad put on a rather stern face as he struck Huey on the head once again. The strike didn't seem to bother him much as he simply shook it off.
"Dammit boy! Didn't you just hear what I said about this little...shit farce you doing?!"
"I heard what you said, and I've understood everything of where you're coming from with it."
"Then you-"
"But regardless, this is something that I have to do for myself. I have to figure out whether or not if I'm ready for this kind of path in my life. The odds are against us, but surely me being there can make some kind of difference!"
"There is no difference to make!" Granddad retorted. "Three nigga samurai walking around on Japanese soil trying to create some kind of diplomatic honky donk with some foreign ass country with the head of the empire is not gonna make a damn bit of difference!"
"It will if we succeed..."
"Oh yeah? And what happens if you DON'T succeed? Hmmm? What then, boy?"
Huey remained silent for a few seconds before responding. He then stood up with certainty and determination.
"Then we WILL succeed! That's the only way we can be sure that it can make a difference! Granddad, you told me and Riley after our mother and father died, that we were two little black negroes in a white dominated world, and that we weren't shit, and that we were never going be shit. You have no idea how much that turned my veins ice cold that day, how much I thought that no matter how much I would struggle, squirm and crawl, I won't even be considered at least half as good as the next man. It made me afraid...So afraid, that I actually told myself why bother with anything, if all I was destined to go through was failure in the long run."
Huey then grasped his fist tightly. "But that day when we left the plantation...that day we decided to run and never look back...I was...convinced. Convinced that where we were going, me, you, and Riley would be able to something more that what we were born into, or what we were told we could only be. And the first time..." He then gripped his sword tightly, as he looked at his grandfather with assured eyes."The first time I picked up a sword, and Sensei named me his apprentice, everything had just started to make sense to me. I knew what my calling was in life finally."
Granddad slowly got up from where he was sitting and walked over to Huey. He placed his hand on his shoulder and punched him square in the face. The punch had knocked Huey directly into the wall, knocking down several pictures on the wall, and a vase on the nearby cupboard. A loud crack could be heard throughout the house.
Loud footsteps could be heard pattering on the other side of the house, and they soon got closer to the living room.
"Yo! What the hell was that?!" Suddenly a young boy had showed up a handful of radishes in one hand and a pitchfork in the other. He had a half dressed kimono on, along with messy cornrows and scowling expression on his face, which was rather unusual for a boy his age. He then scanned the room to notice the broken vase on the floor and the scattered pictures. "Oh man! You niggas just had to start fighting and shit?! I just bought that vase yesterday, and now y'all are gonna break the shit?! Can't you stand to see a nigga trying to get a little Feung Shwee up in this peace?! Damn, niggas got to ruin everything! I can't get nothing in here!"
Granddad then turned to the young man and then snatched the pitchfork away from him.
"Riley! What the hell did I tell you about coming in the house with your farming gear on?! You leaving mud tracks all up in the house boy!"
"Wha-? So even when I'm the one complaining, I'm still getting yelled at?! Man that's that ol' bullshit Moe!"
"Boy you better watch yo goddamn mouth! And where's that tea I told you to get me?!"
"Granddad, you don't even like green tea! The first day we got here, you said it taste like water mixed with cat piss!" Riley yelled out.
"I ain't said no shit like that! I said it tasted it kind of like tasted like cat piss! That don't mean the same thang!"
"It does mean the same thing. Just because you imply something is possibly like what you say it is, you're still giving an implication based on your opinion or observation." Huey calmly said.
"See! I told you!"
"Boy if you don't get the hell on...!"
As soon as Riley heard his voice jolt out, he rushed out of the room at top speed. Once again Huey and Granddad were left by themselves. The room grew even quieter as both of their eyes darted around the room in awkwardness, waiting for the other to ssay anything.
"Look, Granddad. I know you're against this whole thing." Huey said.
"Pshhh. You don't know what the hell I'm against boy. I carried you and your brother here to start a new life. To get away from things trying to kill us and put us down. Now when I turn my eyes, you going on some kinda rinky dink, samurai mission to the capital. That's some dangerous territory you walking into boy!"
"Granddad, every mission we go on has some kind of danger involved."
"Not like this. Do you know what these people do to outsiders here that don't keep their nose in their own business? They all about that honor thing...right? No need to to get up all in that nonsense. Just stick to what you know."
"And what's that? Farming. Tending sheds and taking care of animals in a blazing sun? What does any of this seem different from our old life? We're still doing the same thing we were back there."
"Nope! This time, we're getting paid for it."
"Granddad..."
"Face it boy. This is our livelihood right here! It's how we put food on the table! Plus it's what keeps both of 'yo black asses warm at night, and keep these fancy shmancy overlords from taking over this place."
He wasn't wrong about that aspect, Huey thought to himself. Despite the village they live in not being anywhere involved in the mainland's economic and political field, the villagers are still forced to give off their earnings and crops that they raise throughout the seasons. Because of the heavy drought, the farmers have an even harder time keeping up with the seasonal rotation, thus killing any profits they may earn. As for livestock, there have been many instances where animals that produced some kind of commodity for the community had mysteriously vanished or had been slaughtered in an attack.
Because of these various impediments that the village has been stuck with, there has been the formation of the mercenary group that Huey and company works for, in order to gain outsourced income for their people, but because of the short demand of their work, they are having a hard to time meeting ends on those parts. Huey knew that for a fact, this mission was some sort of miracle at work here, but there was obviously something bigger going on in the works here.
"Be that as it may, nothing is going to change if we keep just letting the shogunate keep pushing us around like this. If we didn't sit around deciding that the bare minimum is enough to get by without fault, we would try to be better for ourselves and others around us. We have to push forward Granddad. That's why I started training under Afro-sensei, to better myself and learn how to do just that, and provide that example for those behind me!"
Granddad stayed quiet for about a minute or two, but had the look astonishment mixed with anger.
"Boy, just what the hell kinda ganja you've been smoking?! That shit don't even make sense! Being a samurai means having others tell you what to do as well! It's a soldier! A pawn! Someone those fat cat lords send in order to take care of the shit that they can't even get up and do they damnsevles! Just what are you proving by doing this huh?! That young black boy can be stabbed up and hung just like the rest of them, in the name of "honor for their people"?!"
"That's right. There's nothing changing about what I was born into or what color my skin is, but the least I can do is give myself a chance to fight for the people that mean that much to me with this sword that I carry!"
"Well I gotta ask you then boy. Just who is your people?"
Huey had no answer to the question, and simply stayed silent for a few minutes. Clearly it rung him hard, as he couldn't even think of the most logical response. No. This was a matter of the heart. Something that young Huey had yet to fully realize the potential of.
He then got out of his seat and headed to the door, holding his sword in hand and tightening his bandanna. He then reached for the door in silence and opened it. He then heard rapid footsteps approach behind him.
"What the hell is 'dis shit?! A'yo Granddad! How come Huey get to leave the house without doing no work?! I even made that nasty ass green tea, while y'all was just sitting here talking some shit like those niggas with the bathrobes down the block! This is some bullshit! Ay, Huey man! That's not fair, I did my share of the work, you betta...mphhhh!" Granddad then covered Riley's mouth in the middle of his rant.
"Shutcho ass boy, before I put yo ass to work in the marsh!" He then looked out at Huey. His back turned to his family with his hand rested on the knob of the door. Waiting for the right words that would soon come out of his mouth. The ones that would let his family know that this was what was meant to be, and that it was going to come this soon. That despite being in a country that gives no love toward foreigners, this was the only way that he knew of that could prove what he wanted to move towards, and fight for.
But those words never came.
"I'll tell you this boy. You walk out that door now, you better not come back..."
Hearing the words his grandfather spoke, Huey finally opened the door that lied in front of him, which was the first of many he had before him. There wasn't much he could take with him, except those words, the question that he would have to find an answer for.
As he stepped outside, he took a deep breath in order to greet the new day. He then headed toward the office, tightly holding onto his blade and feeling the weight of each of his footsteps as they drew closer to his starting point.
Chapter 3 END
Fro Ninja; Thank you so much for reading, and I'm really sorry this release took so long, but I will attempt to fix the release rates for this series.
ONE LOVE!