Samurai Champloo Fan Fiction ❯ Heart of a Warrior ❯ Chapter 1 ( Chapter 1 )

Nope I don't own Samurai Champloo or any of its characters. The girl in this fic IS my character though.
On a side note. Be jealous. My boyfriend is a real-life Mugen. A hot and sexy tough guy with a hidden away loving streak who's an amazing fighter. He even has the tan and the sexy hair style. *win*

Chapter 1

I wonder where they've been all these years, he thought. I wonder if I'll ever see them again.

The brown-haired ronin looked up at the sky as he walked through the town he'd taken up residence in most recently, listening to the flow of people around him. He caught snatches of conversations as he passed by people, barely listening to them.

"I can't believe it! She really..."

"Oh yes, you wouldn't believe the rumors! I've heard he's very handsome..."

"A brown haired girl and a samurai with glasses you say? "

"Yes, and I hear tell they are headed to the next town over... Looking for jobs and a place to stay they say. The samurai is supposedly a master swordsman with no peer..."

Mugen started at the last one and grabbed the man who was speaking. "Where's this town? Tell me the quickest way to it..."

"The quickest way is through the forest... But no one goes there anymore, it's too dangerous. Most go around..." the man replied quickly, shaking in fear of the rugged pirate that held him.

Mugen dropped him and stared off into the distance, ignoring the man as he edged away.

Fuu. Jin. If it's them, I could see them again. Maybe... I wonder if flat-chest has grown up any these past three years. Maybe Jin would spar with me. No one's been able to keep up with me in awhile, it's been so boring...

He looked around the small village. Nothing to keep him here. No family to hold him back. No friends. His job was shit, he only kept it to feed himself and get a place to stay.

Well, why the hell not?

And with that thought in mind he began walking along the road that led out of town.

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He paused at the cross roads that evening. Didn't that man say that the quickest way was through the forest? But it was too dangerous for normal people... He smirked. I'm hardly normal. If whatever it is is killable, maybe I can even collect a bounty. And I could see Fuu again. He'd never wanted to admit it, but he missed her more than the fish-faced samurai. Maybe he'd had a tiny crush on her. That's why he'd always been the first to rush to her aid, the first to protect her. Maybe she'd have grown up some more in these past three years since they had parted.

Jealousy shot through him. They said she was with Jin. Had they been together all these years? Had she chosen him after all?

He had to know. Had to find out.

He needed to know if what he thought was a chance at love was a lie or not.

Back then he'd thought maybe she'd learned to love him. Him. The outcast. The pirate. Scruffy and lean, ill-mannered and impolite. Jin had seemed a much nicer prospect for her... He'd been scared and had parted with them quickly after his promise to Fuu had been fulfilled, not wanting to be tied down any closer than he already was. Not wanting to chance that either of them would throw him away, as the other friends in his life had...

Maybe he was ready now. Maybe I could have the life I don't deserve. I could make one. He tried to picture it. A family, a wife, a home... Not needing to fight for everything. He came up blank. Especially the not fighting part. Battle was too much a part of him. He needed to fight like he needed to breathe.

When he fought, he could be at one with everything. He could do nothing but feel. Feel the muscles under his skin tensing and releasing. Feel the sweat trickle down his skin. Feel the heat of movement. He could be. He'd fought for everything since he was born on those islands. Fought for mere survival in that hell hole. His spirit remained indomitable and untamed, no matter how he was beaten or starved. He taught himself to fight to shield himself. To hide himself behind a spinning wall of steel, behind a whirling wall of kicks and punches. Fighting was the only way he had to express himself. And no one else seemed to realize that. Not Fuu, not even Jin.

Shrugging to himself, he chose the forest road.

Golden eyes watched him from the forest, and disappeared into the evening shadows under the trees.

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It was night and he was looking for a place to stop.

Sensing something he stopped and craned his head around, loosening his sword in its sheathe as he did so.

A voice emerged from the darkness surrounding the road. It was female, deep and musical, yet full of command. He'd never heard a voice like it before. "Why are you here, human? I cannot protect your kind if you wander headfirst into danger. I won't hold your hand just so you can pass through here, for then I'd be obliged to do so for every fat merchant that wanted a quicker road to the next town over. I don't have time to baby you. Why are you here, courting your death on this abandoned road?" she said from the trees.

Mugen bristled in response. "I don't need you to baby me, bitch. I'll go where I damn well want to, and you're not stoppin me."

A figure separated itself from a branch above him and to the left, dropping down lightly into the shadows in front of him. "Did you not understand, human? This is not the place for your kind. This forest is a place of demons and hells, monsters and other creatures. It is a deathtrap. I do everything in my power to merely keep the demons from overrunning your villages and towns nearby, it is death for a group of humans to pass through here, let alone a lone man."

He grunted in response. "I grew up in a hell of my own," he replied gruffly. I couldn't care less what she has to say. I need to get there fast. If he doesn't have Fuu yet, he might have her now... I can take care of myself just fine, I don't need to worry just cause some tree-hugger bitch and some old man said this place was dangerous.

Bright eyes glared out at him from the dark silhouette ahead. They seemed like a cat's eyes almost, reflecting the light of the full moon in the darkness, what little of it filtered through the trees to the road. She moved forward slightly and moonlight glinted off her hair for a moment, wreathing her head in light before fading back into the darkness. She moved forward just a little bit, so that he could see her face. What part of it was visible. Her mouth and nose were hidden under a black cloth mask. Her eyes glared at him above it. "Turn around now, human, I won't be responsible for you if you don't," she said.

"Won't be the first time no one's been responsible for me but me, lady. Also won't be the last. Now get out of my way before I make you move!" And he drew his sword smoothly, stepping forward. His body relaxed into his fighting stance as he waited.

She laughed at him. He was seeing red as she chuckled into the night. How dare she laugh at me?! "No human could keep up with me. None of my kind has even been able to keep up with me since...," she paused, "Needless to say, a human most certainly couldn't since my own people cannot!" She shrugged, "Either way, you have written your own sentence, so be it." The shadow-woman crouched and sprung into the brush surrounding the road, looking back only once. She turned around and disappeared with nothing more than a parting glint of her moonlit hair, melting in to the shadows like a feline.

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What an infuriating human. ALL of them are infuriating. You warn them away, and what do they do? Send more of themselves out to harass you! Do they ever listen to the warnings? Not until a death or disappearance. Not until I have to bring back another half-eaten body. Not until that reminds them WHY this forest is to be avoided. Then they listen. Until they forget again.

Her eyes scanned the ground in front of her as she sprinted through the trees, the moonlight as bright to her eyes as the noon sun. She was in her domain in the forest. This was what the elements created the People for.

When she ran, when she fought, her constant grief and loneliness were washed away for a little bit. They always came back though.

Kai, I'm so lonely without you. Why did you have to leave me here, alone? You knew you were my only friend among the People. The only one who would even talk to the half-blood. The "mutt". You helped me train, to find teachers. No one else wanted the abandoned one, once her mother had left her to die in the forest, once she'd gotten bitten by the demon... Of course, now they all talk to me, fawn on me. Only because I am the strongest now. Only because I trained, even when they were resting. I became the best. WE were the best, Kai. I miss you, my friend.

The familiar sorrow returned to her. For many years now it had been her constant companion, along with the familiar loneliness that haunted her soul. Desperately, she turned her thoughts back to the human. Her oath to protect the humans of this area required that she at least check in on him. Usually her warnings to turn back were heeded. The recent attack on a merchant train that snuck by her into the forest helped to remind people why they were asked to take the longer way around the great forest. She shuddered. There wasn't much left of those merchants when I found them. At least the villagers knew who they were from the personal items and records she'd managed to bring back...

Why do I do this? she thought. They don't deserve the protection, and they breed like mice. If one gets killed off its replaced by three more...

You protect because it was what you were born to do, another part of her answered.

But it doesn't matter if I'm not strong enough to bother. Her grief threatened to overwhelm her as she thought this. It wasn't so bad when Kai was here. It wasn't so bad being half a soul, with no soul twin. Being the oldest of the People who still wasn't Whole. Fifty years alone... she thought, no one deserves this. No one wants to be with me. Even if my soul-mate was born, he'd probably refuse me. No one would want to be twinned to a mutt. Bright, hot tears began to trickle down her cheek as she thought that.

She'd been orphaned by a mother who didn't want the shame of raising her. Demon blood ran in her veins from the bite she'd received as a child, when her mother left her in the woods for the hell beasts to kill. She'd killed the one, and survived the bite - barely. Raised by the Ryuu*, because none of the People wanted a mixed blood orphan that was demon-touched. At least the Ryuu-mother that had adopted her had not cared that she was demon-touched. The venom in the beasts worked best on full humans or full blooded People. Her mixed blood had allowed her to survive... but changed. Her hair, once a brownish color, had become like flame. Her eyes, liquid gold, changing color to suit her moods...

She looked down at herself. And the power that woke in her blood that night. The power that had almost killed her. The flame-bright energy that wound its way through her blood, the very power of it showing in the change in her appearance. There was no way to stop it. There was no way to change it. No one had ever seen its like before. The magic of the People didn't usually manifest itself in half breeds. The mixes tended to be hot-tempered and tended to fight well. Usually, when such a child was born , it was given to humans to raise, since its powers would never show anyway... But hers had. The demon venom had awoken the magic of fire in her veins, among other abilities. It was strong in her blood. They couldn't give a child like her to humans. She would destroy them without training, without control. They didn't want her themselves either.

So the Ryuu-mother Farai had taken her in. Had trained her in her power. She had grown strong, despite what everyone believed. They'd thought she'd be weak. That she would die from the power. That she would never become much of a warrior.

And now she was the greatest of them.

She made her way into the cave she'd claimed as home, heading to the back "room" and falling asleep quickly on her mat.

Tomorrow she had work to do.

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*Ryuu is the Japanese word for "dragon". However the dragon's I'm thinking of when writing this are sort of a western-oriental style combo; webbed wings and western-style bodies with oriental-style hair/mustache-things and horns and five claws per "hand" or "foot".