Shaman King Fan Fiction ❯ Shaman King 2498 ❯ First Blood ( Chapter 5 )

Step, shield, hook, thrust. Step, shield, hook, thrust. Step, shield, hook, thrust. Step, shield, hook, thrust...

So passes my time. Rukh is taking a slightly different approach then I imagined: he's teaching me the basics of his spear fighting technique. His theory was that I needed to learn how to fight if I was ever going to be able to integrate with me properly. I personally find the decorative spear to be unwieldy with one hand, and am uncomfortable using the heavy oak shield with the other. But beggars can't be choosers, so I keep training.

I used to watch the mock shaman fight matches, or try to summon up some minor spirit, but now my training days are dedicated to the never-ending pattern of step, shield, hook, thrust. The cornerstone of Impi tactics, its purpose was to catch the enemy's weapon or shield with your shield and impale them as they were unable to counter. I have my doubts about its actual effectiveness, but I don't voice them.

"You're not doing this right at all!" Rukh proclaims wearily, slapping his forehead. "You're too slow with the shield, and you'll never get the enemy with your spear if you're holding it like that."

"Well excuse me," I snap back, feeling a sudden well of anger build up. "I don't quite have the arm strength to carry these two heavy weapons and dance around and hit forward perfectly after a week of training."

"Bah," the ghost moans. "Children today have no muscle. Too much junk, too little meat."

I toss my weapons aside, causing Rukh to fly into a near panic. I'm tired of his moaning and bossing me around. "Well maybe you should do something instead of just yelling! Why don't we try integration?! This is the Shaman Fight, not the crappy-African-spear-shield-pattern fight!"

Rukh's face turns red in anger. "Boy! How do you expect to be useful to me if you don't even know how to fight! I might as well just possess some schmuck to get my goals done!"

"Your goals?" I yell back. "I'm the shaman here, you're the ghost! You don't have goals! You already lived, and got killed! Now it's my turn, and you're the one who's going to help me!"

I exhale, my voice beginning to grow hoarse from yelling. Rukh mutters a curse and turns into spirit ball form, then flies away. I glance around angrily, ready to tell off anyone gaping at our little spat. Damn savage, still holding a grudge after all these years... he didn't understand... To my surprise, no one was watching our shouting match. I blush for some reason, and I wonder if this is commonplace. Then I see what they're watching... one of the mock fights.

A loud boom echoes through the gym, suddenly. I clutch my ears, and then wondered what happened. That... had sounded like a gunshot. I knew there were quite a few shamans who used guns as weapons, but the prospect of fighting them still made me kind of uneasy. I hurry to the crowd, to see what happened.

It's worse than I imagined. Laying at the edge of the circle is the young (she can't have been more than ten years old) brown haired girl I'd seen around here before, a yo-yo laying beside her, unnoticed. Her small body is mostly unhurt, however there is a small but bloody hole in her chest. The girl is screaming in pain, and rocking her body back and forth. A tengu [1], presumably her spirit, floats nearby, trying to ease her pain to no avail. The high-pitched shouts and the crowd are beginning to give me a headache, but I stand and stare in a perverse stupor.

Who did this? I tear my eyes away to look at the rest of the circle. Darui is standing there, looking displeased and a bit angry, but reluctantly raises his hand. "Yukito Asakura is the winner." The young man near nods emotionlessly.

I level a glare at the shaman, but he doesn't seem to recognize it. He has shoulder length brown hair and pale green eyes which don't seem to see anything. He is wearing the CIASOSM uniform, but it seems to be more clean and neat than most people's. In his right hand, this Yukito is holding a dangerous looking rifle. I notice an intense spiritual energy around the gun, as if a ghost is actually gripping the weapon.

"Her spinal cord's severed," he speaks softly. "The usual." He turns to walk away, and the crowd seems to part despite the angry looks... except for one.

"You bastard!" Janna cries, and I wince in fear for the blonde. "How could you do that to a little girl like her? You know that she won't be able to walk again, just like all the other shamans you've fought!"

"She was my enemy," says Yukito distantly. "I did what I had to so that I could defeat her."

Janna fumes. "She hadn't even integrated yet! You're not strong, like they all say. You're just a coward!"

Yukito chuckles, and raises his gun to Janna's eye level. "I shot her in the spine," he says in a soft, yet threatening voice. "I could have shot her in the head. I could have killed her. I could kill you right now."

Janna stares down the barrel of the rifle for a few seconds, and I think she's evaluating her chances if she fought this guy. Finally deciding that it wasn't worth it, she pivots on her heel and stomps away in rage.

Disclaimer:Shaman King belongs to Hiroyuki Takei, Shueisha, Viz, and others. I neither own it, nor have the owners' consent. This chapter contains graphic violence and swearing. (The above scene is about as far as it gets.) Later chapters may contain sexuality and shounen-ai/shoujo-ai.

The dragon loomed up in front of us, a large scaly red beast. I winced as the end boss struck first, slamming his head down into the ground with flying daggers of teeth leaping up wildly into my face. I manage to jump back, being relatively unencumbered, but the dragon's hot (and smelly) breath makes me nauseous. Lu Han rushes in to fill my place in line, slashing the dragon along the neck with his broadsword. No blood flows out of it-- there's just a ripple and a white floating '131' popping up out of the wound.

I call over the third member of our party, Leiara, a cleric, and instruct her to heal the wounds I had accumulated from earlier in the battle. Leiara is an NPC, as no one really likes playing the healer. As she does so, I ready my own spell. Let's see... it's a red dragon, which means a fire element... so... "Blizzara!" I cry out. Chunks of ice fly up on a gust of freezing wind at the dragon, who moans and apparently takes 203 damage.

The dragon lunges again, and strikes Lu Han. His image warps too, and takes 89 damage. The Korean grunts in pain, even dulled as it is, but then slashes again as I cast a lower level ice spell. Over the next several minutes, we whittle the dragon down, with it taking a good chunk out of our HP as well, but Leiara heals a lot of it away. Eventually, we're exhausted, but we get an intuitive sense that the dragon is close to death.

The dragon rears up its mighty head, and a puff of flame smokes out. The dragon then flaps its wings, as if trying to flee from the cavern, but really just getting a superior angle before shooting a veritable explosion out of his mouth. "SUPER FIREBALL!" the deep voice of the game announcer cries as it roasts me mildly. Pain, on the "dull" setting, strikes me all over, until the tinge that signifies that I've hit zero HP.

Though my game status is technically KOed, I am still conscious as I fall to my knees. Our party has not been defeated yet because the other two members are still drawing breath, if looking a bit beat up. But that could work in our favour. Lu Han raises his sword, now glowing with energy. "Nice try," he taunts. "But let me show you some of this. THETA BLADE!" The fighter snaps forth at great speeds, slicing the dragon along its sides eight times. He moves back to the rank and file of the party, and eight numbers-- all in the triple digits-- pop up around the dragon's skin. It disintegrates into a cloud of pixels, and the battle state is over.

Being able to move again, I wipe my brow and stand up on wobbly legs. "Nice Limit Break there, Lu Han."

"Thanks," he replies genuinely, searching through the treasure that mysteriously appeared when the dragon died. "Let's see... about two thousand gil, a weapon none of us can use, and that dragon scale we need for the quest."

"All right," I say tiredly. "There's probably some big plot event coming up ahead, so let's save and exit now. We can play this again tomorrow."

Lu Han nods, and I sense him getting weary as well: we've been playing since training let out a few hours ago. Not that Final Fantasy EX XXVII isn't an addictive game, but RPG isn't my favourite genre, so I get bored easily. Lu Han communicates with the computer, saving our progress, and then we exit out. The VR illusion retracts suddenly, going back into the box, leaving a shell-shocked pair for a minute or two before we take off our nodes and get up to stretch.

"So, what now," Lu Han says. "There's a bit of time left before supper..."

"Dunno," I shrug. "Say, Lu Han... what do you know about that Yukito guy?"

"Who, Asakura?" he answers, intrigued. "I don't entirely know what's up with him either. I didn't actually see what happened today, but he's done that sort of thing in every one of his trial matches. None of his opponents has lasted more than a minute, or hasn't spent weeks in the hospital."

Torrus emerges again, to speak softly. I barely seem to notice the ghost most of the time, so silent is he in his vigil of his shaman. I feel a brief pang of jealousy. "To be a shaman is to walk the line between the world of the living and the world of the dead. It is a path fraught with danger, and too many go insane along the trek."

"I don't think he's *insane,*" I say, trying to find the right wording for my feelings. "If anything, he seems too sane."

Torrus glances at me in surprise. "That could be said as well. Because, in its own way, sanity is as bad as insanity for the soul."

"Whatever," Lu Han says, and I can sense that he doesn't want to talk about it that much. "So, what's up with you and Rukh? You two have another spat?"

"I don't know," I huff. "I still need to get stronger, as this shaman thing is just about the only thing I have going for me, but he doesn't want to make me a shaman... he wants to make me a Zulu."

Lu Han frowns. "You need to get to know your ghost, though. I've heard in more powerful forms of spirit usage the shaman's combat experience matters more than the ghost's." I notice, not for the first time, the matching bald heads of the pair and wonder why this Roman monk looks more like a Buddhist one. (I only know this because a part of training is optional classes on religion and other matters of importance to a shaman. I go to them because it's easier than working out.)

"Whatever," I respond again, thinking of something to change the subject to.

"Well," Lu Han says, "you'll have to reconcile with him soon. I talked to Darui today, and he says you're in the match schedule they're announcing this evening."

"Really?" My eyes go wide with the news. "I'd better go down there and see what's happening, then."

"Tao Kun?" I ask, probably mispronouncing something. It's after dinner, and me and Lu Han are reading the matches Darui just posted for the next few days.

Lu Han nods. "Chinese kid, green hair, ninja-type ghost, apparently the heir to some sort of dynasty? Doesn't ring a bell? S'okay, I don't really know him either."

"Hmm..." I puzzle. "Let's see, I'm pretty screwed without Rukh, aren't I?"

"Only slightly," he replies sarcastically.

"Hi guys," another voice, this one sounding somewhat depressed, says from behind me. I turn around to see Janna, a sobering expression on her face.

"Hey," Lu Han responds softly. "What's up?"

"Oh, nothing," says Janna. "It's just that guy is still around, looking vindicated, and..."

"Actually, I don't see Asakura around much," Torrus corrects, earning a Glare of Death from the Jovan girl. "I believe he mostly keeps to himself."

"Whatever," Janna says, standing next to Lu Han. "So, are you boys doing anything tonight? I'm in the mood for some Tetra Legacy, and Shi isn't too good at it, so you could at least give me a challenge." Tetra Legacy is a puzzle based multiplayer game that Janna happens to be the local champion at. It's fun sometimes, but it's an acquired taste, and neither Lu Han nor I like it that much. [2]

I try to come up with an excuse. Rukh. I needed to go find Rukh. "Sorry, I'd love to, but I have to find my ghost. He ran off again." I groan. This is becoming a pattern.

Janna smirks. "Well then, how about you, Lu Han?"

"Uh..." he stutters, and it seems strange to see him being so awkward. "Of course I'll play with you."

As Janna drags the Korean boy off to her room, I turn back to my own thoughts. I really do have to train with Rukh for my match tomorrow. It's strange, at the same time I want to do well at the shaman fight, and yet I can't help but think this feels frivolous. I suppose the last one is from being a student for so long: going from computers and tests to ghosts and combat is a jarring transition not helped by the week in the asylum.

Apparently Soun has his own office, which is located completely apart from the dormitories. In the end, I wound up having to ask a couple of shamans who've been here for a long time for help, and even then I got a bit lost in the administrative wing of the building before reaching a simple door.

I knock, and the metal door swings open. Soun stands there, dressed in his monk garbs, looking nonplussed. His office is dark behind him, besides a small candle lit on a desk. He stares at me. He's expecting a question.

"Er, my spirit-- Rukh, that's his nume-- ran off, and I was wondering if it wouldn't be too much trouble for you to--" I am cut off when the brown haired boy shoves his hand to my face and walks back to his desk. Curious, I step a few feet into his office. My eyes are already adjusting to the dim light. It looks like a gothic version of your typical office-- a dark wood desk, files stored on bookshelves, and no windows. I see he has a shelf of things that look like miniature tombstones, each with its own inscription.

He picks up one almost casually, and tosses it towards me. I fumble for it, fearing that it may be fragile. Luckily, I manage to catch it, cradling the stone in my hand. "It's a memorial tablet," Soun explains, sounding tired. "You can keep ghosts in it, and call them out. Very handy. Oh, it has your Zulu inside as well."

Soun glares at me. He wants me out of the room. But I am still unsure. "Er, how do I call out Rukh?"

I blush as he gives me the glare one would give a total idiot. "If you can't figure that out, you don't deserve to be here." Sensing I'm not going to get any more of an answer, I step out and see the door shut in my face.

You know, for a place full of students in Japan-- a region even more densely populated than most of the world-- there are still a lot of private places at CIASOSM. Particularly since it's evening, and few people are training. I'm currently sitting on a small hill in the park, enjoying the sights in the reduced lighting-- they could never really do dusk right, so they just turn down the overhead lights.

I hold out the item Soun gave me, and remember his words. Well, here goes. I open up my body, freeing my soul. Cautiously, I go through the rites. I feel my soul stretching out, urging to touch, and direct its feelers to the memorial tablet in my hand. I reach out, feeling the small black item, and sense a powerful spirit encased in there. With one last pull, I free it, and snap my mind back to its normal state.

"Phew," Rukh says, wiping sweat from his brow. The motion is unnecessary to the spectre, but he still does it anyway. Ghosts keep the habits they had as living bodies. In a way, I suppose, all ghosts are trying to do is imitate their past lives. "It's cramped in there. And dark."

"Remember that the next time you want to run off," I say, authority creeping into my voice.

Rukh shoots me a glare, but says nothing. "All right then, shaman, what do you want to do to train? Your match is tomorrow, right?"

"Hey, how do you know?" I ask.

"These things get around. Things aren't exactly private if you're a ghost," he explains with a shrug.

I ponder what to work on next. The Impi drills obviously aren't working, I can't be trained to adapt a whole fighting style in such a short time. So it looks like Rukh will have to do most of the work. I feel a bit guilty about it, and I swear to become stronger soon. Wait, why am I feeling guilty? He's my ghost, I shouldn't have to get his approval. "We should do some integration."

"Whatever," says Rukh, and he poofs into spirit ball form. As with all ghosts, his spirit ball looks deadly but cute. It's a brown luminous head with two spears crossed behind it. I chuckle, and then reach out and grab it.

Okay, how did Lu Han say to do it... I visualize Rukh's spirit, and sense my soul as an entity as well. Then, slowly moving my hands, I press the spirit ball to my chest, trying to draw Rukh's soul into my own. My spirit shirks back at the invasion, but with determined will I force the Zulu spirit into it. Then, I hang there for a minute, feeling Rukh's soul and my own moving around inside of me.

It's like nothing I've ever felt before. It's like I have my mind, and then there's another one, thinking concurrently. Rukh's thoughts and mine flit between brains as if they are nearly overlapping. Small memories enter my mind... a young African girl, screaming and rocking back and forth, and feelings of helplessness... a small army of British soldiers, each carrying a musket, laughing and jesting as they walked over the hill, unaware of the ambush...

My head feels heavy, like I have a headache, yet the rest of my body feels lighter. Actually, it's more numb. My arms and legs feel distant from my brain, and it takes effort to loosely move them. At the same time, I can hear my heart beat fiercely, like it's right next to my head. The world around me spins, as one body tries to internalize two souls, and pain starts to creep through. Five seconds, or what seems like a lifetime, later, Rukh's soul unceremoniously popped out, the shock of the experience causing both of us to lose control.

The Zulu panted. "Wow, that was... interesting."

"Quite an experience," I agree. How can the other shamans even move, much less fight, with that much going on in their body?

The two of us are silent for a moment. "We'll have to practice some more."

And so we do. We integrate several times more, until we can hold onto it and still walk around. It's about then that the mechanical buzzer rings, signalling the curfew. We swear to get some more work done tomorrow, and I retire to my dorm rooms. Lu Han starts to ask me something, but as soon as I hit the bed I'm fast asleep.

The next morning, Lu Han and Janna wake me up, and I dash out to practice some more. Not as isolated as it was last night, but it's not like it's odd to see someone training around here. So what if it's something most of the kids here did long ago? Anyway, after refreshing our integration drills, me and Rukh go through the old spear routines, with him taking a front seat. Strangely, when we do it together, the spear and shield feel lighter, and our movements faster, as if I'm gaining the muscles of an athletic 20-something-year-old Zulu.

So, now we've got this mysterious Tao Kun up against a Zulu dragging the body of a teenage boy around. Lovely. Well, at least it's better than a day ago. But, as the announcement of our fight comes on, it still doesn't seem like enough.

"Our next match shall be between Tao Kun and Natsume Takenouchi!" Darui announces, and butterflies hit my stomach hard.

A small crowd begins to gather, and I step towards the combat circle. It looks a lot smaller than before. I swallow the lump in my throat as my new-found friends push me forward.

"Come on, you'll be fine," Lu Han advises.

"Kick his ass," Janna says. More to the point, I guess.

My opponent enters, and I notice he isn't accompanied by anyone. As described to me before, Tao Kun is definitely Chinese and has short green hair. He also stands a few centimetres shorter than me. He wears a black tank top that highlight well built muscles, and jean shorts that go down to about the knee. On the shorts are several notches designed to hold weapons-- and they are well equipped with shuriken and kunai. [3] I don't see his ghost.

Kun offers me his hand, and it takes me ten seconds to notice it. Hastily, I grab it, and shake it hard. He snaps it away, as if bitten, and glares. No words are needed. A bit awkwardly, the fight is on.

I see his ghost for the briefest of moments, a figure dressed in a black cloak, before it turns into an obsidian spirit ball form. Rukh does the same beside me, and we both press them into our bodies and initiate integration at about the same time. For the first time, the prospect that Kun could not be immeasurably stronger than me occurs to me.

We attack first, our spear already brought to bear. Kun seemed unprepared for the sudden attack, but at the last minute dodges to the right and grabs our right arm. From seemingly nowhere, he produces a kunai and stabs at our wrist with it. If he struck, it would disable our weapon arm, and likely render us unable to fight. However, we raise our shield and charge in with that, pushing the Chinese boy away.

We fall into the basic attack practice-- use the shield to pin his weapon, then thrust forward with the spear. Unfortunately, when we do so he draws a second kunai with his left hand and parries just as well with it. Shit! He's ambidextrous, or something like that. One of the kunai now stabs towards us, and we are forced to dodge backwards.

"We need to think of something," I whisper mentally, but can't talk too long. Kun is onto us with amazing speed. Still, speed has a price-- if he's that hard to hit, odds are he can't take too many blows. Still, it is of little use as he lays into us, a kunai stabbing our arm and drawing a spurt of blood onto it.

In response, we jab forward, managing to connect but not pierce with the Chinese shaman's skin. Kun leaps back, using the motion to propel himself into the air. And then we feel a ripple in the arena, like something big is trying to push through into reality. *"Ninjutsu technique!"* Kun cries out. *"Makabishi Hell!"* There's a puff of smoke, and suddenly spikes are raining from the sky. We duck under our shield, but miraculously none of them hit us.

We look around. There are spikes everywhere in the circle except for two spots-- where we're standing now, and a small circle which Kun lands in. None have flown outside of the lines, and we know that the attack was very precise. "Now what?" I ask. "He can't attack with us separated like this."

I get my answer as Kun draws three stars from the shuriken holders on his jeans. His hands moving like lightning, he tosses them straight at us. We manage to dodge the first, though there's not much room, and we block the second with a shield. The third, however, glances our ear, cutting it. We curse-- the wound on our arm is still slowly bleeding, and we can't move very well. We could throw the spear, but if he dodged that we'd be completely defenceless.

*"Do you want to quit? You can, you know,"* Kun offers, and his double voice sounds odd to me.

"What do we do?" I ask, worried.

It's a few seconds before Rukh produces an answer. "Hold your ground. He's got to run out of those things eventually."

*"No,"* we say, and blink at our double voice as well. Kun shrugs, and then produces another set of shurikens, and then another, and then another. We spend the next five minutes dodging, blocking, and getting small cuts all over our body. However, it seems like he's finally out of shuriken at least.

"All right, so what now?" I ask my spirit. It's then that something chills our blood. The various shuriken scattered around the circle begin floating in air-- and then return to Kun.

"Damnit! Ghost powers!" Rukh curses. Kun throws another shuriken at our feet, and we barely dodge. It's only a waiting game now. Maybe we should resign.

"Do you have any powers like that?" I ask, as a shuriken strikes us on the arm and aggravates the kunai wound from earlier.

We pause, and I desperately hope the answer is in the affirmative. It is. "Yes, but you'll have to let me have complete control. And then we'll have to move very quickly after that. Understand?"

We raise our shield again, and feel another shuriken get stuck in the wood. "All right." And then I let go.

It's a strange feeling, not being in control of your body. I mean, it's like you're there, but you're paralysed. Only instead of just standing, you're doing things on your own, and you can feel things, but you can't react to them. We--I--no, Rukh slams his spear down into the ground. *"Tremor!"* I can feel his spiritual energy coursing through the ground, causing a small, localized earthquake. Several makabishi fly up into the air, and Kun stumbles in mid throw.

"Now!" My mind is snapped back to our body, and with long gaits we rush to where Kun is standing, currently flat-footed due to the tremor. The odd spike hits our foot, but at this point pain is far from our mind. Finally, we reach our destination. We shove our spear up towards Kun's head with great force. If we weren't still holding it point down, it would probably have impaled his brain. As it is, our momentum tosses him up into the air, and he slides out of the arena.

Darui throws his hand up into the air. "Natsume is the winner!" Rukh separates from me, and we're both exhausted from the fight. At the same time, a new kind of exhilaration is filling me: victory. Janna and Lu Han rush forward to congratulate me, but then notice the makibishi still scattered around the arena and stand back. A second's pause, then I laugh uproariously. Somehow, me and Rukh had won.

I finally get around to taking a shower after that, washing away the sweat and blood (the cuts were cleaned afterwards) from my body. My feet are still a pain to walk on, and that spot on my arm is sore, but other than that I'm mostly tired.

I walk out of the shower and find the boy who fifteen minutes ago was my opponent-- Tao Kun. He's just getting dressed, and seems mournful somehow. I should probably try to cheer him up. "Hey," I greet casually. Kun doesn't respond. "Hell of a fight you put up out there."

"Yeah, but I still lost," he says.

"You're missing the point," I remark. "I mean, hell, you were schooling me right up until the very end. I'm still not sure how Rukh pulled that shit off."

"Rukh?" Kun asks.

"My ghost," I explain.

Kun's face falls again, and I wonder why. "Say, what about your ghost? Did he teach you all that crazy ninja stuff as well?"

"No, I was taught by my father," the Chinese boy explains. "Ojiro... doesn't really talk that much. He's had it forced out of him. The Tao family doctrine is that spirits are weapons, and their goals are ultimately unimportant."

"Wow, I wish Rukh lived by that," I say, even though privately I think it's a little weird. "He's always arguing with me." My confidence falls halfway through that sentence. Truthfully, I can't imagine that we'd have been able to win that fight if Rukh hadn't trained me. And it would get kind of lonesome by myself. I remember again how Kun didn't have anyone supporting him in the match. Maybe I could...

I look up, to see that Kun has left already. Every day, I realize that this place is just full of enigmas. Maybe Torrus was right...

[1] Tengu are mischievous crow spirits in Japanese folklore.

[2] If the people in this story seem to talk about video games a lot, it's because of two reasons (not counting my own like for them.) One, they're more popular in general in the future, a media about on par with television progs. Two, the trainees at CIASOSM prefer them as they at least do a little to hone the mind and reflexes, while at the same time being a way to relax.

[3] These are ninja weapons. Kunai are basically a style of knives, and shuriken are ninja stars. Makibishi are essentially caltrops, or spikes to be thrown on the ground. Yes, I've been watching too much Naruto.Author's Notes:

Well, that's another chapter down. Two more characters introduced, with more on each later-- I swear, the character dump gets lighter after this! Plus, the first first-person fight scene. I thought that using first person plural while integrated was a pretty interesting way to express the perspective of the shaman. Also, I greatly hope that the fight scene was good. Feel free to tell me if it wasn't.

Sorry if this one took a while (not the distance from the last chapter, mind you, but from the last fanfic I did). It was crunch time at school, you see. Scary stuff. Chapter 6 should be done sooner, though maybe not that soon if it turns out to be as long as this one. This one feels longer than the others, anyways, I'm typing it up in an HTML composer so I'm not too sure about the page count.