Rurouni Yahiko
A Rurouni Kenshin Continuation fic
by Chester Castañeda
Man, it's about time this chapter got released.
Disclaimer: All characters used in this fanfic (save some others) are the rightful property of Nobuhiro Watsuki and Sony. Don't sue me please, I'm very poor.
Chapter 6: Enter the Tiger
Gan gave Yahiko a livid look before exploding in boisterous laughter. "You jest, punk. Go home."
Whispers and jeers soon followed.
"Yeah, go home, punk!"
"You should go back to your futon and rest, instead of straining yourself unnecessarily, young man!"
"GO HOME!"
Yahiko wasn't quite sure what to make of what was happening. However, he still looked irately at the gathered crowd with half-lidded, skeptical eyes.
'Great. Figures. Here they go again. The whole Battousai incident just happened three weeks back, and they already forgot about it. What a bunch of ingrates.' To Gan, he remarked, "Look, Mister... Gang or whoever, I don't..."
"WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY? What did you mean by 'Afraid you'll lose because you can't take another serving, lard butt?' WHO ARE YOU CALLING A LARD BUTT? This means war! Waitress! Another serving for me and this upstart!"
The crowd groaned as they moved away from the pair, unwilling to make any more bets, but the Great Gan had it all covered. "Make your wagers now, folks! It's going to be all or nothing this afternoon!"
The rowdy man pretended to grunt as he rubbed his abdomen. "I don't think I can eat another bite. What do you think?" Gan's stomach did groan in agony, much to his surprise, but he chose to ignore it amidst the wild cheers of his audience. After all, the Great Gan was about to make himself more money.
Sickening soba soup be damned, Gan was still able to hook another prospective sucker into his scam, so what was there to lose? 'Just one more meat bun and I'm through! No. Soba. SO-BA. I meant soba, not meat bun.'
Yahiko dumbly sat at his stool as Kyoko subtly replaced his half-eaten food with a fresh and significantly larger bowl full of soba. "What the hell's going on?" was all he managed to say.
"You don't know what you're doing! He wiped out half of those 'patrons' of ours during the last hour! That guy's a monster!" Chizuru murmured as she put down Gan's bowl of noodles.
"I DIDN'T MAKE ANY BETS WITH HIM! He's lying! He started saying some crazy stuff and now I'm stuck with a stinking bet that I didn't make in the first place! And nobody's..."
The cheers of the crowd drowned out most of Yahiko's objections. "...Even listening to me." The boy sighed in resignation. 'Wonderful. Damn it all to hell.'
"LET THE CONTEST BEGIN!" Gan roared as he parted his chopsticks with fanfare usually reserved for Kabuki. "And now... LET'S EAT!"
A petite young man with an overly large eye patch covering most of his left face hummed a merry tune as he made his way through the unusually busy streets of Shinshu, a tray full of freshly steamed meat buns at hand. "The smell of fresh meat buns in the morning should be enough to soothe the troubled and terribly irate souls of Raedo-sempai and his men!"
"What the hell are you blabbering about, you moron? It's already three in the afternoon!" a passerby helpfully divulged.
The eye-patched man blinked innocently. "Really?"
A second passed, followed by a minute.
"Dear Kami-sama in heaven! I'm LATE!" the frail-looking man cried in utter despair as he ran as fast as he could towards his destination, clumsily trying to balance his tray of goodies. "Feet, don't fail me now! I hope sempai and the guys won't beat me up... much."
And so, the eye-patched man was off.
"Who was that weird guy?"
"Why didn't he just wrap all those meat buns up instead of putting them on a tray?"
'I feel like puking,' Yahiko mused to himself, struggling to take another bite out of the wound-up noodles on his chopsticks. He glanced over the Great Gan's direction. Sure enough, his opponent was nearly done with his bowl of soba. 'I can't eat another bite. Only the likes of Sano could finish off Sakaguchi-san's extra large special! Come to think of it, it is kind of strange for him to be as thin as he is.'
Yahiko took a look at his bowl. To his surprise, it was nearly empty. 'Oh man, I really was hungry, wasn't I? Maybe I could win this after all.' Another wave of nausea threatened to overwhelm him. It took nearly all of his high-level kenjutsu training on concentration techniques to quell his urge to gag and vomit. 'Or maybe not. Damn, I only have a few more bites to go!'
'My losing streak has finally ended!' Gan considered gleefully as he gorged upon the remaining soba in his bowl. 'After this, I can now collect my winnings and prove myself to be the man! No more begging on the streets or performing old folk songs for loose change! The Great Gan is no longer a loser like... What's that I see?'
A heavenly, eye-patched angel suddenly swooped down the soba shop entrance, carrying the tray of delights that the Great Gan so longed for: white, tender, and steaming-hot meat buns just begging to be munched upon.
"SEMPAI! I'msosorryI'mlateIdidn'trealizethetimebut...! Wait, what's with the large crowd? Where'd Raedo-sempai and the others go? Uh, hello, mister...? Hey! Those aren't for you! What are you...? AHHHHH!"
The eye-patched man numbly held the tray of steaming pork buns at arm's length as the Great Gan charged. The burly man attacked the plate with deranged gusto, snatching the savory foodstuff and cramming them into his mouth in a frenzy of motion and sound. He savored the tasty, flavorsome treats, at times swallowing some of the meaty delights whole before relishing their sheer delectability as he chomped on them all at the same time. Their meaty, porky goodness melted in his mouth, caressing his taste buds like nothing else.
"WAH! I can't believe you ate each and every last meat bun on the tray! That wasn't very nice at all! Raedo-sempai isn't going to like this one bit!" the eye-patched man whined and whimpered pathetically.
'Hmmm. It somehow feels like I'm forgetting something important,' the nikuman fanatic pondered in the middle of his gluttony.
"Aaaaahhh..." came the contented sigh of a very satiated Yahiko. "I never thought I'd actually finish off one of Sakaguchi-san's extra large specials! I almost threw up on that last bite!"
A thunderous roar of approval and congratulations surrounded the young swordsman.
The Gawking Gan could only stare and gape, dumbstruck and ashen-faced at the heartbreaking scene before him.
"What an upset! I won back all the money I lost before!"
"Ha! I won that and a little extra!"
"Dammit, I thought the big guy was going to win."
"Tough luck, Wataru-kun."
"Heh. Hey, kid. You're all right. Here's your share of the winnings."
"Whoa. I won some money too? Gee, thanks! WOHOOO!" Yahiko cheered as he pocketed the amount given to him. "To think, for a while there, I thought I was going to go into debt!"
"WAIT A MINUTE!" Gan shouted in between mouthfuls. "Best two out of three! I can still lick this!"
"HA! You don't have any money left on you, you big galoot! You're the one that betted 'all or nothing'. What will we bet on next? Your pants?"
"You're on!" Gan agreed as he began undoing his slacks.
"You will do no such thing in front of my daughter!" Nonoko admonished, incensed, as she covered Kyoko's eyes.
The gathered multitude laughed jocularly as they started to make their leave.
"Hey, wait... You! Wataru-san, right? Don't you want to earn back all that money you lost?"
"No way! Uh-uh. I lost enough money as is."
"You're the one who blew it, now face the consequences."
"Aw! Come on, guys! Wait! Come back!"
But by then, most everyone in the crowd was already gone.
"..."
Gan heaved a dejected and miserable sigh. 'Not again. This always happens. Just when I think I've already won, this happens.'
"Well, no use crying over spilt milk," the over-muscled man consoled himself, immediately perking up from his brief moment of utter melancholy. "I'll just have to pick myself up and move on. Like I always do." He grinned carelessly. "Besides, I did get a free meal or two out of the whole betting thing, so I'm happy. I should get going."
Insistent coughing caught Gan's attention before he made his exit. "Uh, yeah? Miss...?"
"That's Miss 'friend-of-the-restaurant-owner-you-mooched-from' to you, bud. Now what's that I hear about a 'free meal or two'? Hmmm?"
"Ahehehehehe. Oh yeah." Gan sheepishly rubbed the back of his head before altogether waving good-bye, stating, "Sayonara!" and making a run for it.
"HEY! You can't just eat and run! YAHIKO!" Chizuru beckoned.
"Eh? What now, old hag? OW!"
"Don't you go calling me 'old hag', young man! Now shut up and go follow that big, dumb oaf! It's the least you could do for getting free lodging, food, and treatment from the Sakaguchis! Now GO!" Chizuru insisted as she relinquished her hold of Yahiko's ear and pushed him towards the direction the Galloping Gan went.
"What? You've got to be kidding me!"
Unnoticed by the rest, the eye-patched man piteously whimpered, "Sempai's meat buns... all gone..." over and over.
Yahiko woke up, quickly realizing he was sucking on a dead fish.
He spewed the vile thing out, resisted the urge to vomit, and looked up. A hundred pairs of eyes inquisitively stared back at him; soulless bat eyes that glinted crimson underneath the blanket of shadow before him.
Yahiko closed his eyes, calmed himself down, and carefully thought things through. What'd happened to him this time?
Well, for starters, he was feeling quite nauseated with dizziness, which was probably caused by the cramped, tight space his head was currently stuck in. The rest of his body was located on the other side of the rock wall he was jammed onto.
What else? Oh, his mouth was saturated with the taste of raw fish that wasn't sushi or sashimi, and there were hordes of fanged, leathery monstrosities hanging above his head... a veritable arsenal of creepy Swords of Damocles glaring back at him.
However, knowing his oriental circumstances, Yahiko wouldn't know what a Sword of Damocles was even if it happened to cleave right through his scalp. But with one look at his reaction to the bat pack, it was a safe bet that he had a pretty good idea.
There was a lesson to be learned here: next time Chizuru bullied Yahiko into doing something he didn't want to get involved with in the first place, he would damn well tell her to stick her nose right up her...
Yahiko blinked as something else occurred to him. It just so happened that Chizuru's fool errand involved chasing after a certain man... a big, bulky, hairy, gluttonous, and thuggish type of man, to be exact.
"Gan?" he cautiously whispered. "Minoe? Anyone?" He paused, rolled his eyes, then tried again. "The 'Great' Gan? Soba King? The Round Mound of...?"
"Right here, Mister Yahiko," a voice murmured back.
"Gan?"
"Uh, no."
A pause. "The 'Great' Gan?" He struggled to move his head towards the sound of the other person's voice.
"I'm afraid not. It's Minoe. Minoe Munenori. Remember me?"
Ah, yes. It was the eye-patched, pirate-like, insane, and effeminate young man with the purplish getup and long front-and-side bangs. Minoe was stuck at another junction of the crevice or crag or whatever, just right beside Yahiko.
"Uh, yeah. Very good." Yahiko sighed forlornly and swallowed. "There are a lot of bats over us, huh?"
"Please don't remind me, Yahiko-chi," the eye-patched man implored as he involuntarily shivered his timbers.
Yahiko bit his lip. "They're looking at us, Minoe."
"They sure are. Still, in the right light, I'd bet they'd look so cute!" Minoe enthused effeminately... no, scratch that... femininely. Gaily even, for Yahiko had never seen a happier man. "I mean, look at the expression of the third one to the left! From this distance, doesn't he look like a cuddly little fox?"
Yahiko looked at Minoe oddly, almost worriedly, then quietly edged away, or at least did the best he could to do so given his circumstances. "Do you mind, Minoe?" he hissed once the bats started to stir, even the third, "cuddly little fox" one to the left... especially the third, "cuddly little fox" one to the left, ironically enough.
Minoe flushed. "Real sorry, sir. But they just are."
"Yeah. They're regular 'lost, upside-down little puppies', they are," Yahiko mumbled.
"Well, well, well; look at what we have here," another voice boomed from behind the Tokyo Samurai Descendant and his buccaneer-like companion. "It's Yoshi-boy and Patches, out to hunt me down. Well, I guess the tables have turned, eh?" The arrogant, boisterous voice couldn't possibly be mistaken for anyone else's.
The Garrulous Gan's unexpected arrival was at least a good start in uncovering whatever mystery was behind Yahiko's predicament. And if not, this was a good point to make sense of it all, at the even lesser least. But at the least of the lesser least, it was more interesting at the moment than anything else.
How did everything come to this? How did events conspire against Yahiko in such a way that he'd be left in a rather compromising position? Who was this Minoe fellow and how did he meet him? Why was he acting so "chummy" with him in the first place, like he already knew him from the start? And what was with that ridiculous, oversized eye patch anyway?
Come to think of it, what about the "Great" Gan? Wasn't there supposed to be a chase going on, where Yahiko was the pursuer and Gan was the pursued? And for goodness' sake, what the hell was a fish doing in his mouth?
Meanwhile, three months later, back in Tokyo...
"Oops," Tsubame muttered as she put down the pieces of paper she was holding. "Wrong page."
Droplets of sweat trickled down on all the foreheads of everyone present in the Kamiya Dojo's living room.
Kaoru shook her head clear of the bizarre mental image that featured the Kamiya Kasshin School's Acting Master sucking on a fish and having an army of bats hanging over his head. It was easier said than done.
"Oro, you left off during the part where the bandanna-wearing tough guy ate-and-ran. My wife's long-lost sister then ordered Yahiko to run after him, and Yahiko begrudgingly obliged."
"Thanks, Kenshin-san!" Tsubame thanked as she scrambled for the pages she obviously skipped.
There was a brief pause, followed by a shinai whack.
"Very funny, dear. Long-lost sister my foot."
Kenji's snoopy, six-year-old head popped from behind Tsubame's shoulder like a blossoming pansy, quickly catching the older girl's attention. Both of them eyed each other suspiciously for a few seconds.
"I won't twouble you with anymo questions if you'll wead the west of big bwotha's lettas weal good," Kenji proposed.
"Deal," Tsubame beamed as she shook on the casual verbal agreement using hers and Kenji's pinky fingers.
With a soothing sigh that calmed her initial bewilderment, Tsubame gathered all of the pages of Yahiko's letter, put them in the correct, chronological order, picked up from where she left off, and started reading them again.
Three months before, back in Shinshu...
It had already begun. The circular black-and-white go pieces were at last arranged on a grid-like battlefield; or, if shogi were more to your taste, then the pentagonal shogi pieces were finally setup upon a checkered war zone. The meat buns had been steamed to perfection, the udon was ready for serving, the director was bracing himself to scream his lungs out, and the overacting Kabuki actors were all awaiting their respective musical cues.
The wind blew softly through the woods, making the leaves on the ground scatter in an assortment of reds, yellows, and oranges. There was also a delicate chill to the air; cold enough for a person to notice, but not so cold that he couldn't bear it. Autumn was starting to relinquish its hold on the weather, it seemed.
As the gust continued, it blew leaves onto a path that went through the forest. Though this trail was usually well-used, today it only held two people: a young man and a slightly older man.
The unlikely duo wore striking outfits that differentiated them from each other even from a great distance. The younger, bandaged one wore a white hakama and blue gi while sporting a wrapped-up bundle at the side of his cloth belt and a flat straw hat atop his head; the other wore an off-white bandanna that covered his entire scalp, a red top that proudly showed off his upper-body musculature but hid nothing of his abdomen's slight stoutness, and well-worn olive pants.
Both of their sandals looked frayed as well, but with good reason: they were presently chasing each other across the countryside in a rather frantic pace.
Yet another gust of wind caused the two men to quiver. By chance or pure coincidence, they stopped simultaneously and looked at each other and the ten-foot gap between them for a minute, seemingly checking their current progress. Afterwards, they wordlessly started running again, this time quicker than ever before.
And so the chase ensued. Gan and Yahiko traveled many miles within a mostly barren area while passing by the occasional rustic hut or two, kicking off a cloud of billowing dust that trailed after them like a filthy war banner of sorts.
When the Tokyo Samurai last visited the rural province... the hometown of one of his two star pupils, Outa Higadishisomething-or-the-other, y'know, Sanosuke Sagara's little brother and their hard-to-pronounce family name... Shinshu was still the definition of a backwater province: there were lots of trees, and shrubs, and dust, and rocks, and dirt roads, and shanties ad infinitum. He wished he could say more, but that was about it.
Now, despite appearances to the contrary, a lot of things could happen in six years. Why, Outa himself was once upon a time a shy, silent young brat who constantly hid underneath his sister's skirt for protection whenever trouble was afoot.
Lately, although the boy was still as shy, still as talkative, and still as influenced by an overprotective sister as ever before, at least he now had a nifty "Aku" sign at the back of his shirt like his older brother did, and he could kick the "Aku" out of anyone below a First Dan in Kendo. Certainly impressive for a thirteen-year-old boy who was as noisy as Kenji Himura was quiet.
In regards to Uki, Outa's sister, there was no way in hell Yahiko was going to meet up with that obsessive-compulsive, domineering, and mountain-peak-haired (think widow's peak, except it's in the shape of Mount Fuji) crazy girl even if she lived just a few kilometers away from Chizuru and Kyoko's quaint little village.
He'd rather have a lecturing care of Kaoru's long-lost twin sister or awkward moments of stillness with the sword-cane-toting girl than spend even just one minute with the manic Hi... Hida... Higashidani (HA!) woman. Even Yahiko's patience had its limits. Speaking of stretching the limits of one's patience...
The spiked-haired teenager groaned, tipping his recently acquired woven straw hat up and staring at his sandaled feet after realizing that he had just stepped on a pile of dog feces. Once again, as he wiped the intestinal catastrophe on the dirt-filled ground, he secretly longed for his comparatively uncomplicated life back in Tokyo.
The bottom line was that Shinshu as a territory had developed quite a lot from being the infamous Zanza's one-horse hometown to a bustling, if still a bit remote, community center for trade and commerce. They rebuilt this province on rock and roll. And mortar, and bricks, and cobblestones. Wood too.
The proof in the tofu? The recently established wet market in between the "Outa" village and the "Chizuru" village that currently sold a variety of goods and foodstuffs from vegetables, to fish, to poultry and meat products. It was a wonderful turn of events for a formerly impoverished region whose main livelihood was silk-breeding.
"Come back here, Gan!" Yahiko shouted at the bulky man as they pursued one another in the maze-like junctions of several rice paddies, sparrows flying off in their wake. "If you're not going to pay for your food tab, then at the very least work your debt off, you bum!" To himself, he fumed, 'This is the sort of advice that I'd give to rooster head, but this big, fat lout needs it more.'
"Sure thing, Yoshi-boy. I'll stop just as soon as I lose all of my common sense and do whatever it is strangers tell me to do!" Gan mischievously hollered back, his hefty mass undulating as he ran a good ten feet away; he was surprisingly fast for a portly person, Yoshi reckoned. They were nearing the aforementioned wet market now, and even from afar, they were quite the sight to behold.
"HEY, wait a minute! Yahiko! My name is Yahiko! YA-HI-KO!" Yoshi admonished both the unseen narrative prose and the Grubby Gan in sheer exasperation. But before he broke the fourth wall any further, he screamed at his immediate target, "Who the heck are you calling 'Yoshi'? And what the heck's a 'Yoshi' anyway? I don't look like a 'Yoshi'!"
"But you do look like a 'Yoshi' to me, Yoshi-boy!" Gan conversationally yelled out as he barreled into the fresh meat section of the wet market, to Yo... shiko's chagrin. And while Yahiko glared... at nothing in particular, Gan tilted his head just to the left of the furious teenager and queried, "Doesn't he look like a 'Yoshi' to you, mister pirate?"
To Yahiko's surprise, an eye-patched, boyish-looking young man suddenly appeared jogging beside him from out of nowhere and gave him a quick once-over. "Y'know what, Gan-chi? Yeah, he does look like a 'Yoshi' to me," the man appraised with a sage nod.
"WHO ASKED YOU? And while we're on the topic, who the hell are you?" Yahiko demanded, bewildered that the one-eyed man could still keep up with the frenetic pace of his sprint without even breaking a sweat.
"My personal name is Munenori and my surname is Minoe, and every time you meet me, you'll meet someone new!" Minoe introduced himself readily, his long bangs and loose clothes bouncing in cadence with his inexplicably relaxed gallop.
"Uh..." Yahiko wittily rejoined.
"Oh, that didn't come out right. Let me try again. Hello, I'm Minoe Munenori! In this wonderful nineteenth century, how is everybody feeling today? What's your name? How old are you? What's your favorite color? What's your favorite animal? Do you like drawing?"
Startled by the rapid-fire questionnaire, Yahiko meant to say, 'What is this, Twenty Questions? Go away!' but it somehow came out as, "Um, Myojin Yahiko, age sixteen, elephant, and I'm terrible at drawing."
Minoe whistled. "Your favorite color is elephant? Well, you like what you like. Anyway, so sorry that I startled you, Yoshi-chi, but I'm also glad that I did; it means that my concealment technique is actually working! I'm so happoof! MMMPH!" the eccentric oddball enthusiastically blabbered before giving the marketplace's sticky cobblestone floor an inadvertent kiss after he slipped face-first onto it.
Yahiko groaned as he stopped and helped Minoe get up on his feet. 'And he was doing so good with his impressive jogging too! Too bad he's a complete and total klutz who's incapable of doing two things at the same time,' the teenaged swordsman evaluated in his head, adding, 'What is with that concealment technique crap of his anyway? Does this guy think he's some sort of stealth ninja trapped in a sea pirate's body or what?'
At the back of Yahiko's mind, he noted to himself that Minoe seemed like a mediocre fusion of Takae and Soujiro. Unconsciously, he fingered his still-fresh sword wounds and flat straw hat in remembrance. He then bristled in seething anger. 'No need to remind myself of good ol' Psycho-Kid. I have enough scars to remember him by for a lifetime.'
"Ugh. That was gross. But anyway, time to go! Ninpou: Kakuremi no Jutsu!" announced the aghast and befuddled Minoe once he regained his vertical base. He straightened himself up as he put his hands together in a bizarre gesture and concentrated hard in making his entire body disappear into unseen obscurity using only his purposeful willpower. The repetitive redundancies, of course, were beside the point.
Through savvy use of the dull hues of his clothing... in colors that could absorb as much light as possible and complement his supposedly feline reflexes... Minoe should have been able to execute an undetectable camouflaging skill that didn't exclusively depend on shadowy concealment. His dark wardrobe and stealthy actions themselves would serve as his mantle of invisibility.
That was the idea, anyway; besides, it wasn't as if Minoe were executing a perfect replica of Takae's Minamo Gakure trick. With half-lidded eyes and a raised eyebrow, Yahiko deftly caught the completely visible Minoe by the scruff of his shadowy hakama and tugged the pirate-ninja hybrid backwards. "And just where do you think you're going? Honestly, moving like an epileptic flea while covering your head with your top as if it were about to rain..."
"AH! Oh no! You can see me? My goodness, I'm so embarrassed! You weren't supposed to see me, you see. Or maybe you don't see, but then again, you did anyway. It's all so confusing," Minoe blubbered pitifully as he worked himself up to a storm, scratching his head and checking his quite opaque and dense self from top to bottom for any signs of transparency.
"This is so surprising! Raedo-sempai and the others assured me that I went completely invisible whenever I used this technique. Although they did keep asking each other what the difference was otherwise... Anyway, please, you've got to believe me! I was invisible, right? Right?"
Not knowing how to respond to Minoe's rhetorical questions and run-on sentences, Yahiko opted to stick with the most relevant subject and reply, "Just because you press your hands together and call out, 'Kakuremi no Jutsu' doesn't necessarily mean that you'll just..."
Somehow, even with what Yahiko deemed as a logical, sensible answer, Minoe maintained his specious, spurious, and non-sequitur edge on the nonsensical conversation.
"Hey, I know! How about I strip my clothes off? Then we'll see if my Ninpou powers do work!" the one-eyed weirdo suggested to Yahiko, but by the way Yahiko's eyes glazed over, Minoe might as well have been talking to thin air. All the same, he made good with his threat, fiddling with his hakama's tightly knotted belt and...
Exhaling irritably, Yahiko straightforwardly interjected, "Have you ever been punched in the face?" before the peculiar little screwball got any further with his dubious plans.
"Not since this last hour, why'd... OH GOB, MY NOWSE! NOB AGEYN! WRY, GOB, WRY?"
'Maybe that's why he has the eye patch: to cover up the black eye he got for not shutting up,' Yahiko fumed as he shook his clenched fist in rage at the howling Minoe. "Stop following me and the Gross Gan, you, you, costumed clown! You're distracting me! I still have to catch that ballooned-up food bandit and... Oh, shiitake mushrooms, I almost forgot. GAN!"
As if on cue, a nearby vendor irately screamed, "HEY! Give that back, you ballooned-up food bandit!" just as Yahiko roused himself from his extensive musings. The young samurai looked up, only to see that Gan had already dashed a good distance away from him, heading towards another forested area.
"Catch me if you can, Yoshi-boy!" Gan gibed, wiggling and slapping his posterior in a mocking manner. Yahiko took umbrage at both the taunt and his newest moniker... which he swore was just inches away from overtaking "Yahiko-chan" on the top of his list of annoying nicknames... but stopped himself cold. Gan was counting on him to do that, he reckoned.
Actually, Yahiko had Gan's simple plan all figured out. Even though he let the wildcard Minoe distract him for quite a bit, his legs did get the unintentional benefit of rest. Besides, the overgrown oaf was still in sight; in the corner of his eyes, at least.
Furthermore, Gan, being Gan, acted on his natural instincts and usual modus operandi when he stole yet another food item from one of the stalls in the wet market. With him acting so predictable, it was only a matter of time before Yahiko caught the troublesome ruffian.
Nevertheless, though he might not look much, the Goofy Gan was quite the street-smart thug in his own right. If he had succeeded in angering Yahiko, the Tokyo Samurai would have called him out and inadvertently made themselves look like accomplices to the nearby vendors, thus delaying their already drawn-out chase even further. The oafish boor almost got away scot-free. It was an admittedly devious but ultimately futile plan.
Cautiously, Yahiko opted to distance himself from the crying Minoe and the gathering crowd as he ran around the back of the wet market to head Gan up at a nearby pass and herd him into a rock-walled dead end. Although he barely visited Shinshu anymore, he still knew this particular area like the back of his hand. He was the man with the plan; the guy who was always one step ahead of his opponents.
Because of the multitude of adventures he had with the infamous Kenshin "Battousai" Himura, Sanosuke "Zanza" Sagara, Kaoru "Tanuki Girl" Kamiya, and Megumi "Kitsune Lady" Hayashibara... no, Oogata... no, Takani... yeah, definitely Takani... he already had a lifetime of fight experience under his belt at such a relatively young age. Hell, he was (more or less, give or take) able to defeat the "Ten Ken" of the Juppon Gatana. This "Great" Gan should be a cakewalk in comparison.
Soon enough, as Yahiko predicted, Gan had already arrived at the aforesaid junction; by his estimations, with just a few sword swings and his notorious forbidden technique, the "Wrath of the End of the Era", Gan was as good as caught.
Then again, no amount of preparation could have prepared Yahiko from being bitch-slapped by Gan care of a very large fish.
The hooligan didn't even give Yahiko a chance to breathe, much less recover. "You will NOT GET MY BABY!" the Great Gan enigmatically screamed as he stuffed the big fish into Yahiko's mouth, grabbed his head, and slammed it against the nearby wall hard enough to cause him to see stars and put a ragged hole onto the rocky crag.
Apparently, Gan's maternal... paternal... parental instincts kicked in and he was now defending the supposed life that he, er, carried. Mo one could fight desperately for his or her child like a parent. The last two sentences made absolutely no sense whatsoever even when considering the context, just like Gan's puzzling motivations.
Anticlimactically, Yahiko heard somebody suddenly scream, "Don't worry, Yahiko-chi! I'll save you! Ninpou: Bunshin no Jyuurk!" followed by a crashing sound on the wall he was stuck in. Before long, the dusty, rubble-strewn, and eye-patched head of Munenori Minoe accosted the sixteen-year-old with a lucid yet paradoxically incoherent, "Things are looking bleak, but we can still burn the river once we cross that bridge over the rainbow-colored bush with the two birds in glass houses," rant before fainting altogether.
What with the fish in his mouth, the rock wall around his neck, the insane food thief behind him, and the ninja/pirate/idiot-savant just beside him, Yahiko couldn't help but follow suit and lose consciousness as well. It was only natural.
Shinshushin... "Shinshu", in short... wasn't just well-known for its Shinshu Soba and Silk-Weaving. Well, actually, it was just well-known for those two things; more for the type of soba than its other export product by many an average Japanese.
In any case, even though this remote region that had just recently learned the potential of commerce and industry was well-known for only those two exports, the things it wasn't known for... some questionable, some mundane, some innocuous, some controversial, and some even outright illegal... were still quite the popular pursuits nonetheless. More on this later, though.
Three months ago, in Shinshushin, Kamiminochi District, Nagano Prefecture, Japan...
To be even more specific, in the dead end inside the woods near the marketplace in between the towns of Suwa and Nojiri...
Something was wrong.
Yahiko could sense it; a contorting, anxiety-inducing feeling in his gut; a forewarning, almost. It wasn't the same awareness that he used as a swordsman... the sensitivity he'd cultivated that alerted him of his enemy's intent or attacks during battle. It was more of a...
Dammit. It was on the tip of his tongue. It was... an impression of an imminent catastrophe; a suspicion that something was amiss. A feeling like, at any moment now, his world would turn upside-down.
Perhaps it was just the disgusted feeling Yahiko got from sucking on the salty, fishy taste of, well, fish that left him so... discombobulated. Yeah, that was probably it. Or maybe he was just exhausted. Whether it was the aftereffects of his battle three weeks ago or massive internal bleeding, Yahiko couldn't tell. He simply felt tired, weak, and otherwise kaput.
So he spewed the fish out, gagged a little bit, and then opened his eyes. Hundreds of bats looked curiously back at him. To say there was an awkward pause would have been a grand understatement.
Yahiko shut his eyes, counted to twenty, stopped his hyperventilation, and then took stock of the situation. He seemed to be alive. From the motion he could feel, he was either lost at the endless sea or feeling very nauseated with lightheadedness thanks to the cramped space his head was currently wedged in. He guessed it was more the latter reason than the former.
What else? Oh, his mouth was filled with the taste of raw fish that wasn't sushi, sashimi, or pleasant. There were also hordes of scary, grisly bats hanging above his head, but he ultimately decided to handle things one problem at a time. Anyhow, he wanted to wipe the sickening taste of cold-blooded aquatic vertebrate out of his tongue, but his hands and arms were presently "out of reach" at the moment.
There was a lesson to be learned here. Next time Chizuru Raikouji bullied him into doing something he didn't want to get involved with in the first place, he would damn well tell her to shove her nose right up her butt. Yep, he really thought that, because he was "hardcore".
He stirred as another thought came to mind. It just so happened that Miss Raikouji's orders involved pursuing a certain target... a huge, hulking, shaggy, voracious, and brutish type of target, to be more specific. "Gan?" he warily whispered. "Minoe? Anyone?" He stopped, took a breather, then tried again. "The 'Great' Gan? Soba King? The Round Mound of...?"
"Right here, Mister Myojin," a voice whispered back.
"Gan?"
"Uh, no."
A pause. He struggled to move his head towards the sound of the other person's voice before letting out his barrage of name suggestions. "Mister Muscle? Meat Bun Maniac? Man-Tits? Sperubin Jorju? Yamada Taro? Nanashi-no-Gombee? Puringe Warutaru? The Paper? Lizard King? Mister Mojo Risin? Isumisee Aran? Dozaemon?"
"Er, I'm afraid I'm not any of those gentlemen, sir."
"Heh. I got a bit carried away there, huh?"
"Mochiron." The yet-unidentified man coughed primly. "Anyway, it's Minoe, sir. Minoe Munenori. Remember me?" Ah, yes. It was the eye-patched, pirate-like, ninja-like, weird, wimpy, slightly deranged, and definitely effete young man with the gaudy wardrobe and long bangs of fake-looking hair. Minoe was stuck at another junction of the crag or crevice or whatever they were lodged in, just right beside Yahiko.
"Uh, yeah. Very good." Yahiko looked up and gulped. "There are a lot of bats over us, huh?"
"Please don't remind me, sir," the eye-patched girly man implored as he instinctively trembled in dread.
"They're looking at us, Minoe."
"They sure are. Still, in the right light, I'd bet they'd look so cute!" Minoe cheered, his eyes gleaming with childlike wonder. "I mean, look at the expression on the third one to the left. From this distance, doesn't he look like an adorably charming vixen?"
"Um, do you mind, Minoe?" Yahiko shushed after the bats started to move, even the third, "adorably charming vixen" one to the left; especially the third, "adorably charming vixen" one to the left, fittingly enough.
Minoe wasn't listening, though. "I'll call you kitsune-chi, and I'll have you and hug you and love you because you're my little kitsune-chi, kitsune-chi!" The eye-patched man giggled.
Yahiko looked at Minoe bewilderedly, almost nervously, then silently edged away from him, or did the best he could given the circumstances.
Meanwhile, the third bat to the left shrieked happily in response to Minoe's cooing and name-calling... either that or it was simply showing how much it loved the possibility of chewing their noses right off their faces and sucking them dry.
"Well, well, well; look at what we have here," another voice boomed from behind the immobilized Tokyo Samurai Descendant and his brigand for a companion, which would mean that the owner of the aforesaid boisterous voice was currently talking to their backsides. "It's Yoshi-boy and Patches, out to hunt me down. Well, I guess the tables have turned, eh?" The arrogant, egotistical voice couldn't possibly be mistaken for anyone else's.
"Gan," Yahiko fumed through grit teeth as he fiddled with the hilt of his inheritance... Kenshin's sakaba blade. Then, with a grand flourish that would've made the ex-rurouni proud, the trapped young lad insolently asked, "What is with you anyway? Are you really this desperate to skip your food tab? Even if you did eat your own body weight in soba, this is just too much! What's your motivation?" knowing full well that those series of questions were exactly the type he needed given the present state of affairs.
Taken aback by his quarry's gumption, Gan went silent before answering, "I'll pay you the tab when I get the money! You know I'm good for it! Look into my eyes. They're as clear and cloudless as the midday sky, I swear!"
Yahiko couldn't exactly follow Gan's request... what with his head currently stuck to a wall and everything... but he'd bet good money that the massive thug probably had the cloudiest, most unclear eyes he would ever see in his lifetime.
"Uh, okay, so don't look into my eyes. But still, the money's coming, so stop bugging me about it, Yoshi-boy!"
"You don't fool me at all, Gan. If you're good for it, then hand me the cash now! I wasn't born yesterday," Yahiko sneered, egging Gan on with an exaggerated gangster tone as he called the older man's bluff. Formerly being part of the yakuza, even as a mere street-rat pickpocket, had its benefits. At quite an early age, the boy had learned to smell bullshit from a mile away.
"Oh, come on, Yoshi-boy! Have a heart. Besides, I'm... just on my way to, uh, get the money to pay you and your friends back! Yeah, that's right!" Another transparent lie; Gan was already falling apart in panic. "Okay, okay! I'll cut you a deal with my precious baby, but you've got to understand my situation! Y'see..."
Hook, line, and sinker... because of Yahiko's special "interrogation technique", he'd cunningly made the wily Gan confess his sob story of a life in just a few minutes. He was that good. It was just a matter of time now.
Adjutant Master... or if you'd prefer, "Mistress"... Kaoru Kamiya drilled into her premiere and, during a certain period of time, only students (the both of them) the importance of being observant during and outside of combat. Yahiko, being such an ever-diligent and well-versed pupil of Kamiya Kasshin Ryu, was indeed very observant; observant of Kenshin's past battles as well as his mannerisms, quirks, techniques, and maxims, much to the irritable Kamiya Matriarch's chagrin.
"If you're really that fascinated about Kenshin and Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu, then you should have married him before I did, YOU FRUITY KAMATARI WANNABE!" the raccoon woman would retort whenever Yahiko gushed about most anything Kenshin-related and pointed out how much cooler Kenshin-related topics were compared to Kaoru-related ones.
Ergo, Yahiko long ago learned from Kenshin the importance of knowing how to defeat your enemies before the fight even started. The mental and psychological edge that people like, say, Soujiro "Psycho-Kid" Seta had over their enemies was nothing short of mind-boggling, pardon the pun.
"Tell me why you are doing this (and variations thereof)," was the key sentence in any critical face-off against villains, thugs, bandits, corrupt authority figures, most any arrogant, higher-than-thou snobs, bigots, and whatnot; those seven little words, exaggerations aside, could conceivably save a person's life.
One might retort, "That's a completely stupid idea that only works in old wives' tales and rural folk songs, you gullible mouth-breather!" Well, as "stupid" as the concept might sound, stroking your enemy's ego by humoring their eccentricities and imploring that they reveal their secret motives and agenda behind their dastardly actions such that they'd voluntarily give you information they wouldn't give otherwise was a sound, non-stupid strategy.
Villains, i.e. The Great Gan, when given the opportunity, would often take a moment to gloat in front of the hero, i.e. Yahiko, whom the villain believed would soon meet his demise and defeat. Commonly used in union with the deathtrap, villains had a nasty habit of pontificating about how their victims were as good as dead. They might also give away details of their evil plots, on the rationale that the hero would die soon. This speech almost always resulted in giving the hero time to escape the trap, providing him the critical information he needed to defeat the villain, or filling in background plot that had not yet been revealed to him.
Occasionally, villains would have motives for their speeches: they felt the hero regarded them as inferior and wished to point out, in detail, the marks of their superiority, or they desired to have their plan admired by the one man who could appreciate the cleverness involved. Most of the time, however, villains just liked hearing themselves talk. In any case, Yahiko had every intention of exploiting this convention... um, weakness.
"...thinks I'm a no-good, worthless buffoon! So I've made it my life's quest, if you will, to prove him wrong and make something out of myself. But he still thinks I'm a failure! I try, and try, but nothing is ever good enough for him! Is getting his approval just too much for me to ask? Tell me that, tell me!" the Great Big Blubbering Gan whined, prattling continuously while trying not to think about the absurdity of ranting to some guy's wiggling butt.
'Damn,' thought Yahiko; Gan was already near the end of his miserable soliloquy, and the boy had just nearly missed it. The Acting Master of the Kamiya Kasshin School had been far too busy thinking about the virtue of tricking villains into doing monologues that he had just distracted himself with his own internal monologue regarding villainous monologues. 'The irony of this situation is just sickening.'
Worse, Yahiko was fairly certain that Gan had just related his life story to him when he wasn't listening. Missing out on that would be truly awful since there might have been something in the man's past to point out to him the error of his villainous ways. That sometimes happened with disinclined villains who eventually went over to the side of justice.
Nonetheless, Yahiko lent an ear to the burly man's plight and caught the last few parts of his speech. "All I wanted in life was four square meals a day, a soft futon, the ability to stomp anything to the ground... specifically to get meals and a soft futon... and approval for my kind of lifestyle! To seek adventure and excitement and really wild things, but not this wild! Not 'Some debt collector wearing a funny hat and his eye-patched pirate friend are chasing me into the wilderness for some funny business' wild!"
Yahiko just... bent over quietly for a brief moment before shaking his head in bewilderment. Screw the monologue, the hooligan was obviously a moronic buffoon who loved to blather utter nonsense! What the Tokyo Samurai Descendant needed was to act and act now.
Subtly slipping his sheathed weapon out of his obi and using it to pry his head off of the small fissure, the young boy successfully freed himself from his embarrassing posture, picked up Takae's kabuto on the ground and wore it on his head, and made a beeline towards his hefty, preachy quarry.
Unbeknownst to the spiked-haired young lad, the admittedly forgotten Munenori Minoe had also been freed from his hole in the wall care of Yahiko's effort, but was in a state of panic and distress because of the fact that their sudden escape had caused some considerable damage to the home of their bat friends.
"Oh no! I'm so sorry, my poor little bat friends! Let me help you fix your considerably damaged home!" came Minoe's heartfelt... although stilted and seemingly scripted... pledge.
The small cave ultimately collapsed into dust care of Minoe's well-intentioned yet clumsy ministrations. "Er... Ehehehehe. Perhaps you'd rather move into a nice birdhouse instead? OW! BATS! BATS ALL OVER MY FACE! STOP IT! STOP WITH THE SCRATCHING! I THOUGHT WE WERE FRIENDS, KITSUNE-CHI!" Led by "Kitsune-chi", the flying mammals swarmed the one-eyed goofball's face with vengeful frenzy.
Meanwhile; "...Sure, I drink a lot, eat a lot, gamble a lot, get into debt and fights a lot, and a few other unmentionable things that a little kid like you has no business in hearing, but still... Hmmm. I seem to have forgotten the point I was trying to male," Gan obliviously carped, unaware of the charging Yahiko in front of him.
"Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!" Yahiko groused as he quickly unsheathed his reverse-edged sword and prepared to wallop the hoodlum from here to Sunday. "I haven't even heard half of what you're saying, and I'm already tired of listening to it! So if you're not going to go quietly with me, then I have no choice but to beat you senseless and force you to go back to the Sakaguchi's Soba Shop!"
Just as Yahiko was about to make a short leap towards the Great Gan for a Ryu Tsui Sen strike on the head, he abruptly bumped face-first into the man's massive girth. The boy reeled from the unexpected move, more surprised than hurt. "Wha...?"
He then felt it; a sense of foreboding. Because of his extensive sword training, battle aura and violent intentions were like signal flares for him, and he was getting a very familiar tingle between his eyes that told him that he needed to get away from the muscular man as soon and as far away as possible.
The relative calm of the forest was disrupted by, well, Minoe's frantic screams as a flock of bats continued to scratch and claw at his face and, more importantly, a resounding boom from a fist that completely obliterated the ground where Yahiko was standing on just a second ago.
"Hoo boy, that was close," the young samurai muttered, wiping the cold sweat off of his brow.
Once the dust settled, the Son of Tokyo Samurai couldn't help but laugh at what he saw; Gan's arm from the elbow down was now stuck on the rocky earth as though wedged in a foxhole. "HA! Gotcha! Karma strikes again! Now it's you who's stuck in a compromising position! You're a strong lummox, I'll give you that, but you're none too bright. And you're now wide open." Yahiko chuckled as he leveled his sword at the erstwhile threat.
"Oh really now, Yoshi-boy? That's interesting," the Grinning Gan passive-aggressively scoffed at Yahiko's insinuations with a self-satisfied smirk of his own. "If I were you, I'd be careful with where you're pointing that toy sword of yours, lest you suddenly find yourself choking on it."
Yahiko countered Gan's self-satisfied smirk and scoff with a dismissive snort and a Kaoru-esque roll of the eyes. "Like I'm afraid of a yapping little Spitz's bark." He subsequently made a grand show of sheathing his mostly blunted blade back into its scabbard. "Besides, it's unbecoming of a proud descendant of Tokyo Samurai like myself to strike an unarmed man down... relatively speaking, of course."
"Heh. Don't make me laugh. Like I was actually 'armed'... literally speaking, of course... when you first tried to nick me with that kitchen knife of yours. Give me a break. You're seriously becoming a hypocritical prick, Yoshi-boy." Gan raised Yahiko's derisive snort and Kaoru-esque roll of the eyes with a knowing look of utter smugness and an eyebrow raise to end all eyebrow raises.
"Fine. Sorry about that. To make up for it, I'll just sit here and wait for you to come at me when you're ready," Yahiko obtusely offered as he yawned, squatted on the ground, and crossed his arms in open, double-dog-dare challenge.
"As you wish, your highness," Gan mocked as he let out a feral grin of the I-know-something-you-don't-punk-so-nya-nya variety. From there, the ground shook and rumbled as he shifted his weight to one side.
With a loud grunt and a mighty pull, Gan yanked his arm free from its earthen prison to reveal a large, long, vaguely phallic, cylindrical, and tarp-covered something in his hand that was buried in a shallow grave of sorts. Because of the large man's violent exertions, the ground burst out, sending dozens of debris and hundreds of sharp small stones everywhere.
Yahiko observed in shock as the onslaught threatened to smash every bone in Gan's body... but didn't. The fragments harmlessly pelted the recently retrieved weapon that the powerful thug whirled in front of him like a windmill amidst a monsoon gale.
To be Continued...
Next: A cock's tale.
In regards to what's coming up: No, it's not a lemon chapter involving Sanosuke. Jeez. Also, I've added several quips taken from the ever-hilarious "8-Bit Theater". I love that webcomic.
Note to self: Please include Outa Higashidani and Kosaburo Shinichi in future chapters. Not that I forgot to include them in the earlier chapters, it's just that the Kamiya Dojo was closed at the time. For cleaning. So they couldn't attend classes and stuff. Yeah.
Salamat sa pagbabasa!
Abdiel