Rurouni Yahiko
A Rurouni Kenshin Continuation fic
by Chester Castañeda
Payback: This time, it's for real. Oh, and I hereby dub this the "true" flashback chapter.
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 11: The Peculiar Cocktail
Last midnight, just outside the perilous Shinshu cockpits, after the demented horde of cockfighting fanatics had already dissipated...
"What are you doing here?" Yahiko bluntly reiterated the question Soujiro posed to him earlier as he kept his distance from the insane and imbalanced swordsman.
In the short time Yahiko had known Soujiro, he could never make heads or tails out of the mysterious older boy's actions or intentions, as though the Ten Ken was the logical extreme of the concepts of honne and tatemae. 'What lies behind your mask? An angel or a devil?'
"Well, if you really must know, I'm still at work right now... kind of," Soujiro explained mischievously. "The hours aren't so good, but the pay is okay."
Yahiko's nostrils flared as he tried to interpret Soujiro's vague and patronizing answer. In the end, he came up with an out-of-the-blue, "You're working as a callboy or something?"
Though he didn't intend his query to appear as a joking insult at the ex-Heaven Sword's expense, Yahiko had somehow unconsciously combined Gan's raunchy wordplay and Minoe's non-sequiturs in his attempt to extract more information from the superior swordsman; either that, or he was just being an insufferable prick.
Had Soujiro been a lesser man, he would've sputtered and protested at Yahiko's crass allegations. Fortunately, thanks to his traumatic experiences as one of Shishio's elite army of assassins and mass murderers... as well as his mostly unhinged mind... he possessed a rather bizarre sense of humor.
At any rate, he chortled happily at Yahiko's jibe, much to the younger boy's chagrin. "You're a funny guy, Yahiko-san. Fine, I give. No more playing around. I'm here because I'm waiting for my boss. He went here on a whim, so I acted as his escort. He should be about done with his business by this time."
Though the information Soujiro provided was still a bit on the ambiguous side, Yahiko now had something to work with. "Y-Your boss? Wait, your boss has something to do with the false Battousai Group's complete massacre, doesn't he? I mean, he has to be involved in this, o-or else you wouldn't have bothered to snoop around the camp of those doppelganger terrorists three weeks ago!"
Being an unapologetically lesser man than, say, the svelte and dignified Soujiro, Yahiko sputtered, stuttered, and stammered his way throughout his "interrogation" of the older man in embarrassing fashion. However, he felt that his deductions were dead-on for the most part.
"I know that you killed Keisuke merely for Kyoko's sake and someone else killed the rest of his gang, but what bothers me is why a group of lowly criminals would call themselves the 'Battousai Group' anyway, especially considering the public death threats that the real Battousai Group has made," the sixteen year old deduced before adding, "This smells like a trap setup by your boss. Is it...?"
Soujiro shrugged, his features as forthcoming as when he first entered Yahiko's line of sight earlier. "For your information, I had to mercy-kill Keisuke-san because he was the only survivor of the false Battousai Group's massacre." Yahiko winced at the memory of Keisuke's head rolling on the ground like a wig-wearing watermelon. "The person or people who attacked the entire troop actually castrated Keisuke-san for some reason."
Yahiko didn't know that little tidbit. What an odd thing for the Battousai-looking assassin to do to a mere copycat band of smalltime crooks. Were they cultists of some sort? 'No, no. They were sending a message; a message to Psycho-Kid's boss.'
In any case, the Tokyo Samurai Descendant quickly realized that he was getting off-topic. "So your boss set the fake Battousai Group up as a trap of sorts to smoke the real Battousai Group out, but the genuine article got away scot-free and left a grisly souvenir for him to boot. What does your boss think of all this? What exactly are Akahori's stalkers trying to say?"
"Wow. You actually figured things out. And here I thought you were preparing to proverbially hang yourself on a noose with some of your more dubious deductions," Soujiro candidly yet smilingly assessed. "Well, if you really want to know what Akahori-san thinks about that topic, then how about you ask him yourself? He's already coming this way."
Yahiko turned and subsequently got his first non-shock of the early morn; it was a "non-shock" because he'd already had suspicions regarding the improbable coincidence headed towards him as his conversation with Soujiro drew on. The man who'd just come out of the cockpits was both the person whom Yahiko was looking for and the dignitary whom Soujiro was guarding.
"Ah, there you are, Seta-kun. Good. It's time for us to go," the Oyakata beckoned to Soujiro before spotting Yahiko. The bespectacled old man then addressed the Son of Tokyo Samurai, stating, "Oh, it's you. You came back. Well, if you're looking for Higashidani-kun, you just missed him; he's already left for his home. But if you go now, you might still be able to catch him."
"No, that's quite all right, Mister Akahori," Yahiko reassured the Oyakata with a casual wave of his hand. "However, you yourself really should be going back to your mansion or wherever; if Shishio Makoto's own right-hand man couldn't catch the real Battousai Group in action, then I'd be more worried about them if I were you. Your life is still in peril even as we speak." Yet again, the teenager acted like a real smug smartass after making his recent discovery.
Nonetheless, despite the sixteen year old's supposed bombshell, Tetsuo Akahori didn't even miss a beat as he asked Soujiro, "Is he a friend of yours, Seta-kun?" By friend, of course, he meant "former enemy that was within your fighting caliber" or even "former fellow Juppon Gatana member".
In turn, Soujiro giggled gaily at Akahori's loaded question. "He's that person, Akahori-san. The other prodigy I talked to you about, the one that I fought in the East Valley's forest of bamboo groves... Himura-san's prodigy, so to speak."
"Ah, so he is." Akahori nodded once, lowered his tinted spectacles and, for the first time since they'd met, gave Yahiko a real good look, his scrutiny bordering on a full-body inspection with clothes on plus a wordless cross-examination of sorts.
What were the chances that the charge of Kenshin Kamiya (nee Himura) himself, the original Hitokiri Battousai, was the same vindictive, foul-mouthed, irritable, yet proud youngster he'd met just minutes ago? What a turn of events this was! But then again, Shinshushin was a small town, so the chances for this happening were greater than they would seem.
The middle-aged politician's eyes wandered towards the cloth-wrapped sword that Soujiro reported to be a reverse-edged katana, which prompted him to think, 'So Battousai's influence on the boy extended right down to his accessories.'
Even with all of Yahiko's inborn sass, skepticism, and insolence, Kenshin's impact on him was still quite apparent. Sticking with two intolerably eccentric characters through thick and thin because his sense of duty urged him to instill responsibility upon at least one of them and fighting a superior opponent for the sake of a girl's troubled feelings were actions that had the earmarks of naive rurouni idealism all over them, whether the boy was aware of it or not.
More importantly, something else about Yahiko intrigued Akahori. He'd remembered overhearing the boy and his friends' backtalk about him in the arena. Why was this significant? Well, sure, it'd be ridiculous to attribute their "camaraderie through hatred" and "the power of friendship against tyranny" as anything more than the asinine musings of bitter youngsters.
On the other hand, like a butterfly whose gentle wing flaps were able to alter the course of a raging storm, the trio's determination to figure out their androgynous chicken's gender led to the inauspicious downfall of the luckless, amorous Suzaku.
Sanosuke was somehow able to strike down the infatuated and wide-open Suzaku even though it looked downright scared to death right before the match. Through a series of unconnected and inopportune events, the peculiar chicken was swept up by twisting winds created from Yahiko's petty malice, Minoe's relatively good intentions, Kamishimoemon's boredom, Akahori's scheming, and Gan's stupidity and greed.
This was the notion of determinism in action, otherwise known as "fate", "destiny", "karma", and "luck" to the more superstitious masses.
Just then, Akahori had an epiphany. What if he found a way to harness probability, even random probability, to his advantage? Not exactly control it at will, like some sort of mythological deity with magical powers, but more of influence it by identifying the root cause of chaos... the butterfly that averted the storm.
It was a novel concept that the intellectuals would scoff and laugh at, the religious would call blasphemy, and the layman would call insane, but Akahori saw himself as way ahead of these simpletons and fools in terms of understanding the inner workings of nature.
As such, it was then and there that Tetsuo Akahori decided to make Yahiko Myojin and his comrades a factor in the equation that was his impending assassination. "Can I interest you in a little proposition, Myojin-kun?"
The next morning, in the town of Shinshu, after Gan and Minoe went straight inside the kitchen of the Sakaguchis' soba shop, the peculiar chicken in tow...
"Okay, I'm back! What did I miss?" an out-of-breath and eye-bagged Yahiko announced as he sashayed his way into the bustling restaurant. From what he could see, the others had already started their mock trial of the Great Big Idiot Gan, with Chizuru acting as judge, jury, and executioner of the whole proceedings.
Still, she was more of a judge and executioner than the jury, what with jury duty being nonexistent during that particular timeframe (plus, any future attempt at incorporating jury duty into the Japanese justice system was met with apathy and disapproval).
"YOSHI-BOY! Get your crazy-ass girlfriend away from me! Please, if you have any sense of decency left in you at all, then you'd stop her from harassing me or coming anywhere near me!" Gan pathetically pleaded as he went on all fours and begged the Tokyo Samurai for some respite. He was even doing that lip trembling thing that the seven-year-old Kenji was so fond of; on him, it simply looked revolting.
"Buck up, Gan! You only reap what you sow." Yahiko bent down and patted the groveling thug on the shoulder as the rest of the people in the room nodded in joint agreement. Gan glared in kind at his so-called comrade's betrayal before the latter stuck his tongue out in response. Undoubtedly, there was no love lost between Gan and Yahiko.
"About time you came back," said the girl whom Yahiko viewed as Nagano's Kaoru stand-in, complete with the penchant to hide her concern in such a way that it could easily be misunderstood as irritation. Either that, or she really was feeling annoyed at the time; one could never tell from combative yet well-meaning girls like Kaoru Kamiya or Chizuru Raikouji.
"So? What's the plan now? Gan still owes the restaurant a hefty five yen. I say we make Gan do manual labor or something until he pays off all his food debts. Or until the whole police precinct that's acting as some dumb politician's escorts goes back to work so we can have brainless here arrested. On the other hand, he could just pay for his crimes through some street justice; that's always a popular choice for criminals of his ilk."
Yahiko scratched the side of his cheek ponderously at the Kaoru-look-alike's suggestions, feeling as though she were making too big a deal of Gan's debt dilemma.
Hell, Sanosuke Sagara (the man, the myth, the legend, and not Gan's androgynous fowl) pulled this sort of crap all the time on Tae Sekihara and the Akabeko, and he never suffered from this sort of backlash. Just because Gan looked like the bastard child of a warthog and a pirate didn't mean that he should suffer more for relatively the same crime as Sanosuke.
Gan even started trying to make amends for his sins in his own misguided way by attempting to resolve his gambling debt using a rooster he'd just found to gamble some more. Sure, he tricked Yahiko into a betting contest, and yes, the trouble that the big lug caused the recently injured sixteen-year-old was not worth the effort, and they were nearly mauled by a hate-filled mob because of that damned hen-cock, not to mention the fact that Gan hit Yahiko with a large fish... "Y'know what, Chizuru? Screw it. Let's just lynch him."
Chizuru nodded in curt affirmation as she lassoed Gan's neck with the noose she'd just prepared.
"YOSHI-BOY!" Gan beseeched a second time to Yahiko during the moment when the boy expected the hooligan to either make a run for it or try to make his last stand then and there. This had the Tokyoite thinking... Gan wasn't acting like the conceited jerk-ass punk Keisuke was when he was alive, even though the goon could play the part thanks to his thuggish appearance.
Mostly, this monster of a man was silently accepting his punishment... well, not silently, and definitely not willingly, but he wasn't trying to muscle his way out of this quandary he'd created either. Yahiko just had to at least give him credit for that.
"Okay, wait. On second thought, let's not hang him," Yahiko decided after much deliberation... as in a lot of deliberation, to Gan's chagrin. "There's a better way of handling this situation... um, obviously. No hanging. I was kidding earlier. Really."
Chizuru shrugged as she used the rope she had on Gan to hogtie the enormous yet emasculated brute. "I'm way ahead of you, Yahiko. I'll just borrow the Sakaguchi family sword 'Fuyutsuki' while we all force Gan to disembowel himself with a kitchen knife. At least then he'll still have his honor intact."
All the rest of the people in the room started to edge away from the Raikouji granddaughter because of her macabre and extreme proposal, but she didn't even seem to notice.
"No, NO! I don't what to commit genpuku!" Gan whined as he struggled and, rather easily, broke through his binds with a simple flex of his muscles. Chizuru recoiled in surprise.
"Seppuku, Gan-chi," Minoe calmly corrected.
"Whatever!" At that point, Gan was truly prepared to bolt, his supposed sense of honor and shame be damned. Not that Yahiko could blame the man for doing so... certainly not at that moment. Regardless, the Son of Tokyo Samurai had to act fast.
"No. Just... no. Enough. I'll... I'll be the one to pay the tab," Yahiko declared sullenly, as though he'd just lost a bet or something.
"W-What?" Gan sputtered as he did a double-take and a triple-take. He rubbed his eyes as though he were dreaming. Yahiko Myojin... the person who jinxed his otherwise successful food bet, the one who opposed Sanosuke's eventual and rather successful entry into the cockpit scene because he thought he/she/it was a hen, and the boy who kept on shooting down each and every last idea the hooligan had ever made since the time they met... had just bailed him out. "W-Why are you doing this?"
Through grit teeth, Yahiko elucidated, "I... l-lost our bet. You were right about Sanosuke as far as cockfighting is concerned. If she, er, he can win a cockfight, then that makes him a rooster," Apparently, Yahiko did lose a bet.
In the background, Satoru excitedly ventured, "So that makes the chicken an Onnako, doesn't it? A rooster that looks like a hen? Guess that means you owe me one, my Tamamo-no-Mae!"
"You're still fixated on that, dear?" Nonoko queried with a rather girlish pout for a woman with a seventeen-year-old daughter. It was so saccharine sweet that it compelled her husband to forget about their debate.
Minoe tugged Satoru's sleeve to get his attention. "Actually, this came fresh off Sano-chi." He handed the egg that Sanosuke laid earlier, which made the police officer's shoulders slump in defeat.
Nonoko did a joyful jig and announced, "Guess what, darling? Looks like I'll be the one who'll handle your paycheck for this month, thanks to my Otome prediction! Don't worry, I'll make sure to give you a big enough allowance for your trip back to Yokohama!"
"You're still on to that, honey?" Satoru inquired with an inappropriate-and-not-as-adorable pout that begged his wife to forget their continuing bet through his comically inept attempt at cuteness.
Um, yeah. Uh, in your face, Yoshi-boy," Gan halfheartedly cheered once he recovered from his shock, then grabbed the sixteen-year-old teenager by the scruff of his shirt and whispered, "What are you playing at? I'm not buying this sudden act of kindness one bit."
"Then don't. Jeez," Yahiko mumbled back. "I'm not doing this for you. I'm not doing this for the Sakaguchis either. And I'm definitely not doing this for Chizuru! I'm doing this because I have more important things to attend to, and I don't want anymore distractions." Unfortunately for the boy, his murmured denials weren't silent enough for Chizuru's sharp ears to miss.
"Oh, excuse us for imposing on you, mister freeloader whom we took care of after you'd nearly gotten yourself killed," Chizuru needled, laying down her guilt-trip upon Yahiko in thick helpings despite the fact that it was the Sakaguchis, not her, whom the boy should be most thankful to. "But I hardly believe that... What? Fifty, sixty sen tops... is enough to pay for the Goober Gan's debt. As I recall, that's more than four yen short, even if you do add your pathetic rurouni travel money with it."
"But Yahiko-chi only betted ten sen on the championship cockfight that Sano-chi just won! It had high odds, so it should have given him enough money to pay for Gan-chi's tab had the crowd not... rioted... because of the... controversial win afterwards. Hehehe," Minoe unthinkingly mentioned, which he soon regretted after he felt a withering stare or two pierce into the back of his head. "What's that thing they say about hindsight?"
"You WHAT?" Chizuru exploded as she pushed the one-eyed wimp aside and confronted an indifferent Yahiko. "Were you condoning that big galoot's actions? My goodness, Yahiko! I expected better from you! Not only did you take your precious time in catching this hooligan, but you also went to a cockfight and bet good money on it! You clueless hypocrite! No wonder you and this big goof have become bosom buddies the minute you've caught up with each other! You should get a room together! But before you do that, you better force your BOYFRIEND to pay his DEBT first!"
Yahiko yawned as he tried his best to keep the retort brewing inside his throat in check. He had no time to defend his actions to either his supposed "girlfriend" or "boyfriend"; he had more important plans and engagements to attend to. "Fine, fine. Whatever. But with that said, I can safely assure you that I have enough money to pay for Gan's debt and then some." In a more resentful tone, he supplemented, "Because he's the one who won our bet anyway. It's his money."
Gan raised an eyebrow at that. "I'm really happy with you acting so generously and all, but I have to ask: Where did you get the money?"
"The reason I'm late is because I went back to check on Aka... Oyakata-dono and Kami-what's-his-face, right? Well, by the time I arrived outside the Shinshu Market, 'God' had already left the building, but the Oyakata was still there. Surprisingly enough, he'd already straightened out the whole mess with the angry mob. I don't know how he did it, but I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. So when I met with him, he personally gave me the money that I... well, you won from the championship cockfight. And so here we are."
Gan seemed to brighten up for a second before his expression turned dour and bleary once more. "That's all well and good, but I remember how much you bet on Sanosuke. That's ten sen, Yoshi-boy. I don't know what the hell the odds were, but there's a slim chance that you'd win more than five yen from your joke of a vote of confidence."
"Oh, I don't know. How does a sixty-to-one-odds payoff plus the money I won earlier sound to you?" Yahiko rhetorically asked as he produced a bag of coins and gave it to Nonoko as payment. "There you go, ma'am."
The Sakaguchi Matriarch could hardly contain her glee. She'd been blessed with enough money from her husband and from the food bandit to weather the storm of low soba demand from their recently terrorized village. It was a fitting New Year's Gift for her and the soba shop. However, since it was still autumn, she couldn't tell if it was an advanced present or a belated one! Nevertheless, this was all thanks to Sanosuke the Otome, her personal purveyor of good fortune!
Yahiko heaved a sigh of relief as he gave the remaining one yen to Gan. 'And that's that. No more peculiar chickens, cockfights, gambling, food debts, and whatnot. No more Chizuru and her Kaoru-ish, raccoon-like ways. No more Minoe, his fake wig, his eye patch, and his mind-screwing speeches. Finally, no more Gan. Just... no more Gan.' The boy was about to make his leave when he felt someone tug his shirt. "What?"
"YOSHI-BOY!" Gan screeched merrily as he threw his arms around the flabbergasted teenager and tackled him to the floor. "You're so good to me, even though I did all kinds of nasty things to you! I never had a friend like you! Come here, you foul-mouthed, spiked-haired angel! I could kiss you! Not that I would, but I'm so happy, I'm leaving it as an option!" stated the bulky, hairy, sweaty, and altogether scary thug as he easily manhandled Yahiko with the gentlest of unintentional gropes, if "gentlest" meant "most bone-crushing".
"Hey, let go, you lummox! I don't swing that way! It's still not too late to lynch you, y'know! ARRRRGGGH!" Yahiko remonstrated while being smothered with violent, testosterone-filled affection. As it was, he could barely keep himself from expelling yesterday's large servings of soba all over Gan's face in revulsion.
"Okay, since you've gotten your boyfriend to pay his debt, you can now get yourselves a room or something," Chizuru quipped as she helped the giddy Nonoko count her money. "Everything is okay now, Yahiko. As far as the food debt is concerned, Gan's off the hook!"
Gan let go of Yahiko and started to make a beeline towards Chizuru. "YAHOO! Thanks for your support, KAORI-NEE...!" Unfortunately for Gan, instead of getting to embrace "Kaori-neechan", he instead had a whole lot of "Kaori knee" stuck to his severely abused groin.
"Since you like naming stuff so much, how about we call that little maneuver the 'Two Balls, One Knee Special'?" Chizuru sneered as she disdainfully looked down on Gan's crumpled form on the floor.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the nearby village, a timid young boy sneezed, then hit his palm with a closed fist as he came up with yet another new moniker for Yahiko's "Wrath of the End of the Era" crotch kick technique.
"W-What about me?" Minoe meekly interjected amidst the raucous celebration. He then cowered and retreated to a nearby corner of the room after everyone's attention became focused on him. "N-Ninpou: Kakuremi no Jutsu..." he pathetically moaned to no avail; he wasn't able to disappear like the stealth ninja he wished he was.
Just a little while ago, Minoe was somewhat feeling kind of low because he had nothing significant to add to the conversation. On that same respect, Kyoko started attending to the few customers the soba shop had, unnoticed by everyone else.
"What about you, Patches?" Gan tilted his head and narrowed his eyes in an intimidating fashion at Minoe's "shrinking violet" pose. "Do I also owe you money, Patches? DO I?"
"M-Mochiron! That's the reason why I chased you and Yahiko-chi in the first place! You ate Raedo-sempai and my other comrades' meat buns, remember?" Minoe was nearly in tears as Gan invaded his personal space some more until they were both talking face-to-face. "That was a whole plate of dumplings you ruthlessly gorged upon in one sitting! Have a heart!"
"Well, the fact that I lost my highly successful food bet because of those tempting, scrumptious morsels is payment enough, I believe... OW!" Gan flinched and rubbed his head gingerly after Yahiko hit him with a short-range Ryu Tsui Sen care of the cloth-wrapped sakabatou.
"Pay the man," Yahiko demanded Gan with dead seriousness. "He helped you take care of Sanosuke up until its big fight in his own wacky way. Though we can all agree that the whole 'winning the championship' thing was more of a fluke or an Act of God than anything else, Minoe deserves better. Simply put, don't be a jerk. Pay up."
"Please, Gan-chi? The reason I chased after you all this time is because I couldn't even come back to my group's camp, even up till now. I'm sure I'll get my butt kicked once they see me come back empty handed! I beg you! Can you at least pay your tab now that you have the money? I'm in enough trouble as it is," Minoe implored yet again, which made everyone present feel repulsed at how much of an insufferable asshole Gan was, Gan included.
"I'm sorry! I didn't realize that I've put you into so much trouble," Gan bawled as he used his bandanna as a handkerchief of sorts to wipe his ironic tears and to blow his nose on. "Hell, I didn't even realize that you were in some sort of group. To think, you could have called upon them and had me lynched for real! Instead, you gave me the chance to pay you back! Let me make it up to you now; how much do I owe you, buddy?"
"Seventy-two sen, please," Minoe informed as he thrust his waiting palms over Gan's face.
"FUCK YOU! I'll only have twenty-eight sen left from my big win, you one-eyed, wig-wearing imp! Like I'm going to use my stash up to... OOF!" Gan was hit again, this time by means of Chizuru slamming the tip of a broomstick right into the hooligan's gut.
"One more wrong answer, and this goes straight to your backside. And just so you don't get any ideas, I will make sure you won't enjoy the experience. Don't try me, Gan."
"Urk. Fine, fine. Just stop hitting me, the both of you. Or any of you, for that matter. Here you go, Patches," the Beaten-Up Gan relented as he at last paid Minoe with his one measly yen. "I'm done here. If you'll excuse me, I'm now off to the next district to flaunt my prizewinning cock to the gambling public!"
"Don't go showing off that cock just yet! What about me, man?" a gruff voice queried.
"You've got to be kidding me. Another debtor? Just who...?" Gan started, but he was quickly startled into submission by what... or who... greeted him.
All eyes turned towards the figure that had emerged from the entrance of the kitchen. The wooden floorboards groaned in distress at every step of the fifty-something newcomer as he approached the small crowd. Although his friendly, Buddha-like face bounced in cadence with his portly frame, the butcher knife he gripped tightly on one hand showed that he meant serious business. Combined, Gan and the stranger cast huge shadows over Yahiko and the others as though the pair were both grownups in the presence of mere children. Sumo wresters took up less space than them.
Unused to looking at another person eye-to-eye, the hooligan appeared out of sorts as he took a glance at the latest old man to grace his presence for the last twenty-four hours. Pointing dramatically and shouting, "YOU!" at him, Gan then tilted his head to the side and asked, "Who the hell are you?"
Both Yahiko and the newest old guy to introduce himself to the three stooges walloped Gan on the noggin simultaneously, but for different reasons altogether. "Don't pretend you know the guy just to take back what you've said a second later!" the Tokyo Samurai Descendant berated in annoyance.
For his part, Gan merely looked at the man with a blank expression on his face. "But I've never met this person before in my life."
"I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU DON'T REMEMBER ME! The nerve of you! I'm the fish vendor whom you stole a fish from, you goddamned punk!" the corpulent, middle-aged merchant rambled, frothing in the mouth in completely justified anger.
Gan's mouth slackened in comprehension. "That was you?"
"Yes, that was me! What the hell happened to my merchandise, you fat, stinking fish thief?"
Gan sweated the way pigs didn't, despite the popular saying. "W-ell... Hehehe. Funny story..."
Just yesterday, inside the Shinshu Wet Market...
Gan sneered as he looked over his shoulder, but raised an eyebrow and slowed his pace down after seeing Yahiko take his sweet time in chasing him. He would've picked up his pace again, leave his pursuer, and go straight to the nearest cockpit with his newly discovered moneymaking chicken in tow had he not noticed the look of utter smugness in the boy's face; man, did that look piss him off.
However, as his bare feet thudded on the ground in a manner that'd make a bull wary, he felt his stomach churn. All that running he'd done so far after enjoying a feast fit for a king was taking its toll on his body. He couldn't keep on running much longer without risking having an "accident" of sorts.
Knowing that Yahiko probably knew something he didn't... which was why the brat appeared confident about catching up to him despite giving him a head start... Gan made a beeline towards the stall of a nearby fish vendor.
Ignoring the merchant's friendly greeting, he grabbed hold of the biggest fish he could find and sprinted straight to the woods where his tied-up chicken was hidden before vomiting the contents of his hefty lunch behind a bush. He soon realized that, aside from meat buns and soba, he had dried eel for breakfast.
From there, Gan waited for the insufferable, kabuto-wearing boy to arrive, gripping his stolen fish tightly. If Yahiko didn't get there in fifteen minutes or so, he'd feed the fish... well, some of it... to his chicken later before he'd eat the rest of it for dinner. If Yahiko did get there in time...
There he was. Gan licked his lips in anticipation. So the know-it-all Tokyoite thought that he had him figured out, huh? That he was just another hoodlum out of a hundred or so hoodlums he was used to bullying? Well, screw that.
To some people, what Gan did next made absolutely no sense whatsoever. To Gan, it made perfect sense to slap Yahiko with a humongous fish, shove the very same foodstuff into his mouth, and ram him into the brittle wall next to them. If anything, the look of bewilderment on the arrogant little snot's face was well worth the effort. It was this unique kind of viewpoint that made Gan call himself "Great".
Back to the relative present...
"Oh yeah. Before all this Kami-sama nonsense, I used to call myself the Great Gan. Huh," the Gan formally known as Great reminisced fondly.
"Don't talk about it like it happened seven years ago! You were calling yourself that just yesterday, you numbskull!" Yahiko protested earnestly. "You're also focusing on the wrong thing! You hit me on the face with a fish you stole, and now karma is letting even more bad things happen to you! It serves you right!"
"I guess you're through with your flashback, you bad cliche of a hired goon," the over-muscled yet still unnamed fish vendor ironically scoffed (Hint: Which of the two looked more like the bad cliche of a hired goon... Gan or the fish vendor?). "Give me back my fish or pay for that stolen merchandise! That was an eight kin fish, and I charge thirty sen per kin! Do the math!"
"Er, I'm good for it..." Gan assured as he backed away from the one man in the room that made him look downright scrawny.
Last night, unbeknownst to the cockfighting cohorts, the Sakaguchis and friend, or the nameless fish merchant, the by-then rotting fish they were having an argument over was surrounded, strangely enough, by bats.
Of course, the bats weren't eating the fish, but were instead gorging on the large amount of flies surrounding it. There were so many insects swarming it that it looked more like a wriggling, fish-shaped mass of black and gray.
The Minoe-dubbed "Kitsune-chi" screed in delight at the disgusting feast before summoning his brethren to join him into one last midnight flight into the overcast skies, homing in on a familiar, eye-patched prey of theirs.
Minoe shuddered for a moment, slightly ruffling Sanosuke's feathers as a sudden memory of Kitsune-chi and company's predatory bat eyes, bat claws, and batwings bubbled to the surface of his mind. On that note, the fish vendor's upturned nose and overbite kind of resembled his flying rat friends' features despite his jolly appearance.
However, the merchant was by-and-far more threatening because there wasn't a hint of mercy in his eyes; all they held were murderous fury. Then again, it would've been easier to be intimidated by the hulk of a man had he not have a valid reason to feel such fiery wrath.
"Uh, can't I just pay in mon instead of yen? The government sucks, you see. Down with the Meiji Government, right? Right?" Gan warily reasoned, a dog's fake smile plastered on his face.
"Please don't tell me you're planning to give me phased-out currency," the fish merchant "pleaded" in a "Please don't make me hurt you," manner. He afterwards closed in on the trapped hooligan.
"How about me paying you back in sen? Or in rin? You'll still get the same amount, only there are a lot more coins... and counting... involved," came another one of Gan's attempts at swindling.
"GIVE ME MY MERCHANDISE BACK, YOU THIEF!"
So, as the fish vendor loomed over Gan like a youkai-oni hybrid from hell, the thug pathetically bleated, "Come on! Give me a break! I thought that was just a throwaway gag! Hitting a guy with a fish is supposed to be funny and consequence-free! Besides, I could barely even remember you complaining or making your presence known during my flashback sequence! Granted, that's because I ignored you, but still! I bet you're so unimportant in the grand scheme of things that I don't even need to know your name!"
"Oh no, you didn't. Now you've said too much. HEAVENLY RETRIBUTION!" the fish vendor announced as he wrenched Gan's head in a tight grapple hold.
Gan gasped for breath several times before commenting, "In retrospect, being suffocated by beefy arms and man-stink is only slightly worse than Kaori-neechan's unhealthy fixation on my nether regions."
"HEAVENLY RETRIBUTION!" Chizuru and the fish vendor unanimously chorused before looking at each other in shock.
Just then, without warning or reason, Yahiko laughed long and hard. He couldn't quite explain it, but he found the whole state of affairs outrageously hilarious for some reason. He didn't know if he'd gone completely bonkers by Gan's antics or not, but the randomness of it all just made him cackle until there were tears in his eyes and his sides ached.
Unexpectedly, everybody else followed Yahiko's lead. Everyone started laughing so hard that they failed to notice Chizuru try to strangle Gan anyway despite the growing hollers. The keyword here was tried, as the Raikouji Heiress couldn't bring herself to do it properly because of her own growing mirth.
The thug thrashed around momentarily, pleading for assistance from the others, but everybody else was sniggering too much to muster a coherent response. Even the fish vendor began to holler for a spell. Before long, his grip on Gan's throat eased for a second and the thug was able to wheeze out, "All right! I'm sorry! I mean... What the hell is so funny anyway?"
Chizuru tried to choke Gan once more, but her second attempt was far less successful than her first one... by this time, she herself was tittering too hard to be able to even get a proper grip around the ruffian's neck. One look at Gan's confused, bluish face was all it took; she completely lost it. After a short period, all of them were in whooping bundles on the floor, rolling around in uncontainable amusement.
At that point, Kyoko and several customers in the restaurant had to see what was happening inside the kitchen, with the youngest Sakaguchi smilingly inquiring, "Why is everybody laughing?"
Minoe demurely giggled, "Because Gan-chi's evil and stupid, and everybody hates him."
From then on, somberness became a distant memory. It had transformed into one of those epic attacks of uncontrollable mass hysteria that lasted for what seemed like an eternity. Whenever it showed signs of abating, one of them would breathe out, "Gan-chi", "Stupid", or "Evil", and all of them would start howling again.
After a while, they began to draw a larger gathering from even outside the restaurant, and sometime later, several officers out for breakfast arrived to demand what was happening.
However, none of those originally gathered were lucid enough to answer back, and eventually the patrolmen trudged away in stumped disbelief. In fact, the only one inside the kitchen who wasn't laughing his or her lungs off was a scowling, petulant Gan; his attitude, paradoxically, aided in furthering everyone else's laughing fit.
Nothing lasted forever, though. Yahiko reeled back, grasping his abdomen and holding back yesterday's lunch inside his throat. Soon enough, the others were slowly able to gather their wits back before they gasped for air in a euphoric manner.
"Wow," gasped Yahiko in the end. "Thanks, Gan. I needed a laugh."
"Asshole," Gan spat as he squatted in the corner of the room, his large, wide back turned at everybody like a petulant child who'd just been teased and bullied by his playmates.
"In all seriousness, I'm just about to open shop at the marketplace. Can't I get some temporary payment from this Gan clown? Something I could pawn at least?" the fish vendor requested. Just then, Sanosuke flew towards his head and sat on it. But instead of getting angry, he became intrigued by the strange livestock. "Is this his? Because I'm willing to accept this bird as payment."
"You will NOT GET MY BABY!" Gan copy-exclaimed like he did yesterday, when he first hit Yahiko with a big fish he stole from the very same vendor who was presently demanding payback from him for the very same fish. Karmic mockery ensued.
"I'll be the one to pay Gan's tab with the fish," both Yahiko and Nonoko answered in unison, which startled not only Yahiko and Nonoko, but Gan as well; what was it with these people who interchangeably acted like jerks and saints at random intervals?
"I can't pay the whole tab, but I'm willing to pay part of it for Gan's sake," Yahiko proposed, but Nonoko gently pushed the boy aside and solicited to the vendor, "I can pay the whole tab, but on one condition: I get to keep the Otome... er, the chicken, I mean. Sorry, Gan-san."
"Wha...?" Gan's jaw dropped in dismay. Even the seemingly nice Nonoko Sakaguchi wanted in on his golden chicken's moneymaking ability.
"But dear, why would you do that?" Satoru asked his wife, genuinely perplexed.
"Because we've gotten all sorts of blessings ever since that chicken had come into our lives, honey!" Nonoko clarified primly as she gently took hold of the chicken and let it rest on top of her bosom. "She's our lucky charm of sorts, so paying a little over two yen for her is a bargain."
"It's actually two yen and forty sen," the fish vendor clarified, to which Nonoko responded by wordlessly handing her payment. Well... Okay. As long as I get paid, then everything's settled," the large man yielded before unceremoniously leaving for his stall in the Shinshu Market, whistling a happy tune.
"Is this all right with you, Food Bandit-san?" Nonoko none-to-subtly beseeched as she mustered up her best pleading pout while stroking the chicken on her chest like a feathered and beaked baby.
Gan exhaled dolefully after much consideration. "As long as Sanosuke is happy, then fine. You can keep him." He knew that there was no way in hell the cockpits would allow a half-rooster, half-hen compete once word got out of its victory against Suzaku... but damn, he could have at least sold the chicken to a circus or something. Oh well; at least he had a clear tab. "So how about I get a bowl of breakfast on the house?"
"Hahaha... No," Chizuru firmly vetoed, and that was that.
Minoe patted Gan's shoulder. "You may be evil and stupid, but you did the right thing, Gan-chi. I'm proud of you," the girly man remarked with an impressed tone. In effect, he was so impressed that he didn't mind being on the receiving end of a Gan-type pounding afterwards.
"I hope you're all happy, damn... Hey, Yoshi-boy! Where do you think you're going?" Gan asked after catching Yahiko sneak his way out of the kitchen using the backdoor.
"Somewhere... else. I kind of have an appointment later in the evening. Thanks for the laughs, though," Yahiko replied to Gan without, surprisingly enough, any sarcasm or malice in his tone before heading out into Shinshu's bustling, police-infested streets, his head filled to the brim with all sorts of plans and expectations.
Earlier, just beyond the violent Shinshu underground cockpits, after the insane throng of cockfighting maniacs had disappeared...
"Ah, there you are, Seta-kun. Good. It's time for us to go," Tetsuo Akahori summoned his cheerful bodyguard as he leisurely emerged from the secret exit of the Shinshu cockpits. After that, in the corner of his eye, he spotted Yahiko, which prompted him to idly note, "Oh, it's you. You came back. Well, if you're looking for Higashidani-kun, you just missed him; he has already left for home. But if you go now, you might still be able to catch him."
"No, that's quite all right, Mister Akahori." Yahiko waved off the Oyakata's offhanded comment. "You yourself should really be going back to your mansion or wherever, though. If Shishio Makoto's own right-hand man couldn't stop the real Battousai Group in action, then I'd be really concerned about them if I were you. Your life is still in peril even as we speak."
As per usual, the inwardly self-satisfied Tokyo Samurai displayed the subtlety of Commodore Perry charging through the ports of Japan with his recent discovery of Akahori's true identity.
Despite Yahiko's announcement, the Oyakata didn't even seem in any way fazed as he inquired, "Is he a friend of yours, Seta-kun?" By friend, he of course meant "an old opponent who was your equal in battle" or even "part of the now-defunct Juppon Gatana". Somehow, Akahori had a feeling that the boy was neither.
Soujiro snickered giddily at Akahori's meaningful inquiry. "He's that young man, Akahori-san. The other prodigy I talked to you about, the one that I fought in Shinshu's bamboo grove forest... Himura-san's prodigy, in a manner of speaking."
"Ah, so he is." For once, Akahori gave the boy whom he barely spared a second glance to earlier an almost intrusive inspection. Yahiko and his cohorts were an interesting bunch, but he hadn't imagined the child to be this fascinating.
Yahiko's shirt and hakama suddenly felt several degrees less comfortable than before under Akahori's sharp scrutiny. Tugging at his collar, he worriedly asked, "W-What is it?"
After a lengthy assessment of the current situation and circumstances, Akahori made a, for him, spur of the moment decision and requested, "Can I interest you in a little proposition, Myojin-kun?"
"What proposition is that, sir?" Yahiko urged the statesman; he had a gut feeling that he already knew what Akahori was going to say next.
"Since you were able to hold your own against the Ten Ken here... relatively speaking," Akahori gave a cursory glance at the bandages on Yahiko's body, finally figuring out that they weren't merely for show, "I've decided to offer you a job as one of my hired bodyguards for tonight's... heh... largely unattended gathering."
The Oyakata smirked at the so-far feeble turnout of his proposed meeting with his colleagues-in-office. The gathering was supposed to be a private one, focusing on talks in regards to the reports of a supposed alliance between the forces of the remaining anti-government factions still at large during the Meiji Era. But the public threats of the recently emerged Battousai Group changed all that.
Although the Meiji Government had held up quite tenaciously after what should have been the killing blow of Toshimichi Okubo's death and the continuous in-fighting amongst the twenty-person oligarchy (that Akahori was a part of, incidentally) responsible for national-level decision-making, a long-festering rebellion-to-be was obviously not in the best interests of the developing yet divided administration.
The Meiji Government had its legs, but it also had rust within its ranks so early in its barely two-decade reign. The government's wishy-washy wariness to completely abandon the old ways and embrace new ones, coupled with Japan's inexperience as a world nation after the previous centuries-old isolationalist regime had ended, made the government look weak and undecided to most of its constituents.
For example, one of the pressures that the early Meiji Government suffered from was the division between the bureaucrats who favored some form of representative government based on overseas models, and the more traditional parties who favored centralized authoritarian rule. It was all about the conservatives who wanted things the way they were versus the liberals who kept on clamoring for change. Since time immemorial, many regimes all over the world had gone through this type of conflict, and the Meiji Government was no exception to this rule.
To be quite frank, merely thinking about the continuous rise and fall of partisan politics between conservatives and liberals gave Akahori a, pardon the pun, splitting headache.
Sure, the Boshin War was all but a memory at that point, and the Ishin Shishi officials were able to quite deftly "micromanage" the hell out of Makoto Shishio's uprising, indirectly assigning the retired Battousai to do their dirty work for them. However, problems rarely ever solved themselves, and for every predicament that did get addressed, a new batch of hydra-headed troubles sprouted in their place.
Nevertheless, the assassination threats of the alleged Battousai Group had turned Akahori's meeting into a farce and a sideshow, with his fellow statesmen and underlings proving their cowardice... or perhaps simply having enough common sense to heed their self-preservation instinct... by making up all sorts of excuses not to be associated with the conference as much as possible.
"Don't you have more than enough guards already? My... someone I just met in Shinshu had her father travel all the way from Yokohama just to guard you, you know! That, coupled with all the law enforcement you've already taken from Shinshu, makes a veritable infantry of police escorts. Don't tell me that even they aren't enough to protect you!" Yahiko argued, rousing the Oyakata from his lengthy self-exposition.
Soujiro perked up. "Oh, you mean Kyoko-san's father, Sakaguchi-san? He's in town? My, my. It's like a reunion amongst the Seiryu Clan, almost," the ex-Juppon Gatana remarked, much to Yahiko's vexation. It was exchanges like this that made the younger boy feel unsure about where the enigmatic older boy's loyalties truly lay. Perhaps Soujiro did, in a twisted sort of way, finish off Keisuke more for Kyoko's sake than for the sake of his own psychotic tendencies.
'Wait, Seiryu? Seiryu Clan? What is Psycho-Kid babbling about this time?'
Akahori waved off Yahiko's protests in the same manner Yahiko did to him earlier on. "You shouldn't concern yourself with the number of my guards. Several members of the Council of Elders gave them to me as payment for the debt of honor they've incurred after taking a rain check on our appointment. There are still some heads of state coming here, so the security is still tight despite the turnout."
The Oyakata had actually told a half-truth; security was supposed to be tight when the meeting was still underway, but now that his fellow nobles had abandoned him because of the Battousai Group's open threats to his life, the gathering should have been called off altogether. Nonetheless, Akahori had other plans; reckless, all-or-nothing plans that his so-called peers heartily supported so long as they weren't directly involved in it.
"THAT DOESN'T MAKE IT ALL RIGHT! HUMAN LIVES SHOULDN'T BE BARTERED FOR FAVORS!" Yahiko screamed at Akahori before closing his eyes tight and mastering his temper. He felt so livid he could hardly see straight. A crimson haze kept hemorrhaging into the edge of his vision. After a while, he took a long, hard breath and opened his eyes to glower at the Oyakata.
The sinews of Yahiko's neck muscles bulged as blood pumped into his flustered, reddened face. "The huge number of guards you've stationed around you and your meeting is the very reason why Shinshu was besieged by common criminals claiming to be the Battousai Group! The sheer number of policemen should have handled those thugs easily had they not been busy guarding your little tea party!"
To be Continued...
Next: The silence before chaos?
Before I forget, Kenshin's adoption of the Kamiya name originated from "Tanuki to Ryuu" author ChaosBurnFlame. All rights reserved.
The fit of laughter Yahiko and company had is modeled after the very same bout of hilarity Dhiti and friends shared in a chapter of Angus MacSpon's epic "Sailor Moon 4200" fanfic. Seeing that Krista Perry-Fisk's "Hearts of Ice" has ended satisfactorily, I really do wish that Mister MacSpon follows suit. One hopes that he can finish his lengthy magnum opus within the next decade or so. :P
Maraming salamat po sa pagbabasa!
Abdiel