Fan Fiction ❯ Inochishirazu ❯ *~Prelude~* ( Prologue )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Hmmm. My first fanfic, so I guess this’ll be the prelude. It’s nice being able to create a world of my own, with unlimited control over what happens. To have the freedom to curse, be foul, and be a baka-hentai. Life is good. As I have had this story beta read by several “buddies” o’ mine, I noticed that some things caused confusion. In Japanese, San (normal), Chan (cute), Kun (looking down upon), Sama (high respect), and just a name without these attached (anger or familiarity) all mean something different. I guess I could say that they are equivalent to the English “Mr” and “Mrs”. Also, the vocabulary used is somewhat confusing, as was some of the dialogue. Aisai means beloved wife. Ojii means grandfather, Obaa means grandmother. Since Obaa is the grandmother and Ojii is the grandfather, I hope you all conclude that when Aisai-san is said, it means Obaa-san. Seppuku is another favorite Japanese word of mine meaning suicide, and if you can’t figure out the Obaa/Aisai predicament, it is something I strongly recommend. Itoshigo means beloved child. I hope this will stop the bitching where it starts. All characters are mine. I own them. I created them. I don’t give a flying fuck if you use them or not (I had to say fuck at least once…^_~) , but if you are a horrible writer and decide to use them, I will personally circumcise you with my katana. All that being said, enjoy the prelude.

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Abandoned by his clan long ago, the Ronin warrior walked down the cold Edo road. Feeling a brisk gust behind him he tightened the sash around his kimono and shuddered. He continued down the dark and lonely road, the trees shifting around due to the breeze. Half a mile upwind, the sound of running footsteps were heard.
The Ronin kept on walking, keenly aware of the menace that was coming ever closer to its goal. He stood still for a moment, pondering, then sat on the road and unsheathed his katana, asking for the power of the Gods to be bestowed upon him, begging that they once again give him the grace to defeat his opponent, as they have thousands of times before. He continued the spiritual cleansing of his sword, making many quick and sporadic motions, chanting thanks.
The warrior stopped, and muttered to himself, “What fool would approach me upwind?” The wind gradually came to a halt, but for some reason the trees were still shifting.

“DISTRACTION!?!”

Dozens of shuriken blazed through the air, directed towards him. He dodged most, but could not escape. He was clipped on the temple, forearm and elbow by the throwing stars, and quickly stumbled. This fault was all the ninja needed to proceed with the attack. They dropped out of the trees like bats escaping from a cave at dusk. Six ninja ran at the Ronin with all of the fury of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
As the first ninja swung his sword, a swift “swish” was heard and nothing connected…..except his upper torso and the ground. The Ronin grabbed the lower torso of the slain ninja and flung it at its comrades, causing instant disruption in the formation. He used this disruption to begin his offense. He quickly swung his sword four times, yielding five cleanly cut pieces of ninja carcass on the ground. He stabbed upward and twisted his katana, hastily and efficiently disemboweling the third ninja.
The fourth ninja proved a little harder to eliminate, the scythe he swung on his eight foot chain gave him quite an advantage over the Ronin wielding a forty inch katana. The Ronin waited to attack, attempting to grasp the pattern used by the ninja. He made a quick dodge to the left and received a straight blow to the chest by the staff section of the scythe. Seeing his opening, the Ronin ran at the ninja accepting several slashes across his body, and cut upward creating two half-ninja standing before him. The two pieces fell to the ground with a sickening thud. Ninjas five and six used this ordeal to their advantage, and knocked the katana from the Ronin’s hand with shuriken.
Knowing he was utterly defeated, the Ronin looked toward the dimly lit night sky, and thanked the gods for aiding him in his private battles. He begged them to forgive the atrocities he had committed in the past… and he begged them to forgive him for what he was about to unleash.
The Ronin’s eyes rolled back into his head as he violently spasm‘d. His neck shot back, causing his now colorless eye sockets to stare towards the sky. Quick and violent movement spread from the small of his back up through his spine and then to his limbs. A deep voice that was not his own began to speak.
“Filthy assassins have no hope against me, strike now and be ended quickly, or wait and feel pain.” The ninja looked at each other and nodded. They both swung their sword at the Ronin in unison. With speed equivalent to lightening, the Ronin grabbed the blades between his left and right thumb and forefinger. Snapping both blades with his finger he crammed them through their black cloth masks, and into the ninja’s mouth. As they choked and gasped for breath, inhaling only blood, the ninja slowly fell to the ground and died.

The Ronin stood still, torso slashed and hands bloodied. “That was close, thank the gods it was not my time yet.” He tested his functions, first twitching his fingers to see if there was anything broken or torn. “No injuries there…” Next, he slowly moved his limbs in small circles, starting with his left arm, then his right, he leaned onto his left leg and grunted in pain. “This is troublesome.” The Ronin had a broken shin and needed a place to rest. He picked up his katana, and limped down the long, dark, and lonely road in search of the nearest roadside inn.

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“Hold on sir, just a moment!” said Mizuki-chan, “Ojii-san where are the dumplings?”
“Can you please just tell that customer to shut up, he’s been complaining for ten minutes and he only ordered 350yen’s worth of food! It’s people like him that drive people like me to commit murder/suicide!” The inn owner then smiled to himself at his little joke. “Heh, murder/suicide, who else but me could be that funny?”
“Jii-san can I please have those dumplings, the customer’s about to leave!”
“Mizuki I swear if you don’t shut that gaping hole in your head you call a mouth I’m going to--” He didn’t have enough time to finish his sentence before he got a quick chop-to-the-throat by his wife. “Christ Aisai-san ,” he gasped, desperately trying to breathe, “Why do you have to be so rough? It’s just tough love…”
“That girl has had enough problems in her life without you adding to it, we didn’t adopt her to be your verbal beating post!” With that observation Ojii-san’s mouth fell open, “Did it sound like that… I didn’t mean for it to… I love that girl… gomen Aisai-chan…”
“OJII-SAN WHERE ARE THE DUMPLINGS!?!”
“Right here itoshigo …” When his eyes came upon her he smiled, glad that she was a part of his life.
“Umm, Jii-sama, are you felling well?”
“Yes dear…” he said, quickly regaining his trademark smirk, ”Just serve the baka… I mean customer his plate of “Special Dumplings” made especially just for him, with a super secret ingredient…heh heh heh ”
“…Jii-san you can’t keep spitting in the food whenever you don’t like the customer!” Mizuki hissed, “We’ll lose all of our business!”
“What… what are you… I didn’t… I’d never… not in the food…” He stared the girl intently in the face. “How did you know I spit in the food?”
“…Well, you kind of make it obvious… that, and every night after you do it you brag to Obaa-san “
“I DO NOT SPIT IN MY CUSTOMER’S FOOD!” Everyone in the dining room stared at the old man, and then slowly looked towards their plate, feeling very queasy…
“Gomen everyone, just a joke to lighten up the atmosphere, enjoy your meal!” Aisai-san addressed the crowd with a laugh. She proceeded to storm towards the kitchen very angrily.
“I’m out of here!” Jii-san said as he crawled army-style under a table and ran out of the back door.
The rest of the night continued in somewhat calm, interrupted only by bad jokes by Jii-san and reprimands from Aisai-san. Many customers came and went, and unfortunately complainee’s to the chef suffered a horrible bout of food poisoning …
After another several hours of hard work, it had finally reached closing time. “Mizuki-kun, would you mind closing up, after all of the cooking… and abuse…. I’m pooped.” Ojii-san sighed heavily and looked around the room. He looked at his gingerly positioned dark wood floors, every grain of wood with its own imperfection. “Without the imperfect, nothing would be perfect, ne?” he mumbled. He then turned his attention to the shoji screens all around him. Their simple paper and bamboo appearance made him smile, they were unsophisticated and yet they were exceptionally pleasant on the eyes, and also remarkably strong. Last he looked to the most vital thing set before him, the meal he had made himself before bed. A bowl filled with rice and garnished with daikon radish and ginko nuts. “Oh my darling, how I have waited for you to become one with me…” he said as he smacked his lips in anticipation.
“It’s amazing how much a poet you become when you’re hungry.” Obaa-san had stealthily snuck behind her husband, giving him both a pleasant surprise, and a slight coronary. “I swear the only thing that makes you as happy as food does is Mizuki-chan.” Chuckling to herself she teased her husband,” So, where am I in your pleasure list?” After he thoughtfully reflected upon the right answer…“Ribe’ afda’ da dakon’ radiss‘.” Jii-san was desperately trying to speak while mounds of rice were being shoved into his mouth.
“Dear, you amaze me, after fifty-five years of a harmonious and blessed marriage, fifty-five years of learning from each other and becoming one, after untold days of just speaking with each other, you still always find a way to have the wrong answer.” She smiled at her husband and gave him a big hug. “But you know that I could never be happy living with anyone who’s smarter than I am.” Both husband and wife giggled at this and grinned.
“’Kay Jii-san, shop’s all closed, I think I’m going to go to bed early.”
“Goodnight itoshigo, see you when the sun comes up, bright and early. Remember it’s rush-day tomorrow and I need your help preparing for the meals.”
“Okay, ‘night Jii-san, ‘night Baa-san” Mizuki went upstairs, gracefully opening and closing the sliding shoji doors.
“Aisai-chan I honestly don’t know what I would do without that girl.” Jii-san stated with a distant look in his eyes. “…I’m so glad we adopted her. She has been the pride and joy of our lives for the past two years. But an amazing girl like that doesn’t deserve the misfortune the gods gave her. She deserves a real family, brothers and sisters, a young mother and father… It just makes me so sad when I see what a great girl she has become without a family… I just wonder how wonderful she would be with one…” Ojii-san looked quite depressed.
“The reason she has become the great woman she is, is because for the last three years she was in contact with my brains, and your …“ Obaa-san fumbled around, looking for the right word to use. “…Spirit. You shouldn’t beat yourself up for what you had no control over. She didn’t ask for what happened to her, but just imagine what we would all be like if we didn’t take her in, the position we would all be in right now.”
“Well… all I know is that I would give anything just to make her happy. If I could only return a fraction of the joy she has given us, my soul could forever rest in peace.”
“Baka, you don’t see the way she looks at you? You don’t notice the love she puts into every action she makes, in every word that exits her mouth? You don’t notice how every time you make a stupid mistake that she laughs the most pure and true laugh a person could ever laugh? Baka, you are everything to her, probably more so than she is to you.”
“… I am so glad I married a woman who could make me feel so stupid… I’m really considering promoting you above the daikon…”
After their heartfelt conversation the old couple finished cleaning up the kitchen, and then set off upstairs to bed. They kissed each other goodnight, and crawled into their respective futons. That evening was unusually windy. Blossoms from nearby Sakura trees continually fluttered by the window. The inn was unusually quiet at night, yet even so it had an air of liveliness and love about it. Combined with the blossoms fluttering and wisping in front of it, it seemed an almost divinely peaceful and beautiful place, a place that drew people towards it… and a place that answered the prayers of a limping warrior desperately looking for aid.
Along his walk it had become evident that not only had he broken a shin, but a rib had also splintered and pierced one of his lungs. He also had dozens of little cuts and bruises across his face and torso. All of the factors added together made for a very weak and homely looking man. He had grown so weak, the only way he could of continued down the road was to drop his katana, his warrior’s soul. “It is of no consequence. After this evening I can no longer be thought a warrior any longer. I vowed he would never appear again… and as a result of my failure he is becoming active once again…” the Ronin was in a state of deep mental recession, letting his body find the place of aid while he fought to subdue the beast that lay dormant within him. As he continued towards the front entrance of the inn he spasm’d several times, due to the chill of the wind that seemingly blew right through his bones, and the increasingly hard battle to control his mind.
After what seemed like hours the Ronin finally reached the front door to the inn, and rudely banged on the front door. “At a time like this, there is no time for formality… how regrettable…” Upstairs he heard some rustling, and then saw a lamp turn on. He heard light and elegant footsteps travel down the stairs and halt a few foot from the door. “Ummm… Gomenazai Sir, the inn is closed. Could you please come back tomorrow…?” Mizuki nervously stared at the shoji screen of the front door wondering what kind of discourteous and senseless person would disturb the wa (spirituality of a dwelling) of the inn in such an appalling fashion.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
“Sir please come back tomorrow.”
Boom. Boom. Boom.
“I won’t tell you a third time Sir, please come back later!”
Boom. Boom. Boom.
“That’s it Sir, what could possibly be so important that you have to…” As Mizuki went to open the shoji door the Ronin fell into her arms. He looked up at her and stared into her eyes. “An angel…” he whispered, then drifted out of consciousness.



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And that was the first installment of my story. Please review, the more you do, the faster the rest of the story comes about!