Chronicles of TheFili: Chapter 2 - The Dealing of the Hands[]
Now for something different. I have decided to chronicle all possible Kongai Fan Fiction that still remains (given that the official Kongai Forum also had fanfic that was now sadly purged) on this website so that none may further succumb to destruction. The reason I decided to name these blogs "the Apocrypha Games" is that firstly, Kongai is a game (duh!), secondly, "apocrypha" refers to the fact that these stories are at best dubious to Sirlin's official "canon" of Kongai (even tough there isn't that much in the first place) and finally, "apocrypha" also means that these stories are not canon to my attempt at fan fiction (Project Kongai). I have neither used any ideas from these stories (hopefully mere coincidences if any similarities ever show up), since my story has 1. The concepts have been planned out meticulously long ago before I found these. 2. Features original characters from my other concepts Mavericks. And 3. Most of these stories would have some direct conflict with any lore I would have proposed (I've made it very clear in Project Kongai: 1 that Amaya is a female in my work, she will be playing Sweet Polly Oliver to evade any confrontations, whereas she's a straight up dude in most of the stories that features her here).
Also, I try to avoid clichés in all of my work (and sometimes deconstruct them), usually going against the grain of character trends and stereotypes, something that many of the authors here don't usually have here in mind. While articulacy may be something I should works on (Autism does that), I believe my ideas can work well, given some polishing.
Note that the fanfic here has been unaltered, except for a little bit of tweaking here with symbols.
Anyway, here's the 5th book of the Apocrypha Games, originally written by Kongregate's TheFili (Jul 23, 2008), sourced here.
Scroll 1[]
“If you were any slower, the snails would rush past you.”
Rumiko had faced three dozen foes at once. She had danced blindfolded on a tight rope – above the Nokaro Falls. She had spent a night meditating in a tiger’s cage. But this was as close as she had ever got to losing her temper.
For two weeks, Yoshiro had been badgering her, and there was no way to shut hi up. Sometimes she suspected that his mouth woke up two hours ahead of the rest and used its tie away from the brain to get going. Sometimes he only seemed marginally more intelligent than the mule carrying their baggage.
“He is about half a day ahead of us,” she told him. “I say that’s a good distance.”
“Oh, and how do you intend to stop him if he tries anything stupid?”
With just a hint of sarcasm she replied: “The Master himself sent him on this mission, so he won’t do anything shameful, right?” This bought her a few minutes of silence, Yoshiro practically worshipped the ground Higashi walked on.
But Rumiko was convinced that Onimaru would make a mistake, and in secret she longed for it. There was no love lost between the two, there never had been.
When he had joined the Circle, Onimaru had lost his first fight against Rumiko, only to later claim that it hadn’t been a fair one. But then Onimaru’s idea of a fair fight basically consisted of two heavily armoured men (emphasis on men) standing in front of each other and taking turns to slash each other with their swords.
She on the other hand was a ninja, so he only added to the long list of stronger (and more stubborn) enemies she had brought down with cleverness and dexterity.
And the Circle needed them all, all the warriors, all their styles. Some even said that the three smaller circles in its emblem represented the different approaches to battle: the Hidden, the Steadfast, the Knowing. She had never been one to go for all the philosophy; in her opinion things were difficult enough already and it was all she could do to keep up with the official creeds of the Circle.
That was another reason for her to resent Yoshiro. He clung to every bit of philosophy and sage talk like a drowning man to driftwood.
They now entered a region of rolling hills, where the sky seemed to cut into the landscape and for valleys like a sculptor’s chisel. Trees and bushes gave them a lush green colour and framed the sides of the road. It went straight ahead without any junctions worth speaking of, but Onimaru didn’t do anything to cover his tracks anyway. Following him came down to glancing at the ground now and then.
“You really think he will mess it up, don’t you?” Yoshiro asked after a few more minutes.
That question was uncommonly serious, so she deigned an answer: “I do. He is not just stupid and brutal, he also has no self-control whatsoever. He is useful, but only like a raging bull is useful. You point him in the right direction, let him destroy what needs destroying and then you lock him away again. Here, he has far too much freedom.”
He seemed to think about it for a moment, then nodded. “I see your point. He knows the third circle but doesn’t understand it.” It was just like Yoshiro to clothe a simple matter into philosophy again.
She was just about to say as much when a movement caught her eye. Anyone less attentive would have missed it, and for a moment she wasn’t sure she had seen it. But her creed was to trust her own instincts, and so far she had survived.
Without changing her gait or missing a single step, she told Yoshiro in the same conversational tone as some seconds ago: “Walk on, just like you did before.”
He looked at her. “Sure. Do you want me to keep breathing normally, too?”
She had to fight her agitation so it didn’t show on her face. “Listen, you idiot, there is someone following us, and we can’t let him know that we know. Do you understand?” The last three words were spoken slower and more deliberately.
“Yes, I think I know what you mean,” Yoshiro answered. He obviously wanted to seem unaffected, but in Rumiko’s opinion, he was overacting. To her trained eye, his walk had just become a slight bit too nonchalant, his voice an ounce too loud and carefree. Still, if they were lucky, their observer would’t notice.
“Go on for a bit. I will go after him, once an opportunity presents itself.”
“Funny you shoud mention it. In fact, I do know one about a samurai and a ninja walking into a bar…” Rumiko’s urge to strangle the young man became stronger than ever. The whole idea of making the enemy think you weren’t saying anything special instead of basically shouting “It’s all right, we’re not suspicious at all” was beyond him.
Still, she would do this the right way. She reacted as she would have even without the observer: she let herself fall back and left Yoshiro walking beside the mule and talking to the air.
While they continued on their way, she slowly fingered one of the poison darts out of her belt, one she knew to be coated with a frightening hallucinogenic. In her mind, she counted up to three hundred, and then with the merest flick of her wrist, she let the dart fly and hit the mule.
The animal reared in pain and confusion, he drug taking effect seconds after the dart pierced the skin. Baggage flew around, scrolls unrolled and boxes crashed to the ground. Then the mule decided to take flight and dashed off into the bushes.
“What was that?” a startled Yoshiro asked.
Uttering a curse, Rumiko ran after the beast of burden. Her ruse had worked out perfectly, and now that she was off the road, she allowed herself to survey her environment more thoroughly.
Thousands of tiny leaf movements screamed for her attention. She dismissed them all, looking for something that didn’t belong here. Ahead of her, the mule was still crashing through the undergrowth. Its noise blocked out all other sounds as she went after it.
Nothing in the bushes, no suspicious movements behind the big roots. Where was he? Was he following them or walking a short distance ahead of them? And what did he want? Their purse, or a chance to kill them in their sleep? Or was it another member of the Circle, sent by Higashi to spy on his own spies? Rumiko had no trouble believing that.
“You lost something?” a voice whispered, barely audible over the rustling of the leaves. Her head shot around at the first word, but she was only just enough to see a shadow disappearing out of the crown of a tree. She followed her ninja instincts and tried to fade into the background. No ordinary foe had ever found her; some had even walked past her at a foot’s distance.
“Ooooh, neat. But I can see you. The left oak tree, just under that big branch,” the hoarse whisper came again. “My turn.” She had no idea where her opponent was now. The sound of his voice seemed to rise from the ground like fog. “Can you see me?”
A branch moved on her right side. She spun around and a second later the tree looked like it was bearing shurikens as its fruit.
“Sooooo close.” This time the sound seemed to originat just a hand’s breadth above her head. “That was fun. But we don’t want to keep Yoshiro waiting, do we? You two have a mission, after all. So I suggest you take your little muley and be on your way.”
The noise Rumiko had almost forgotten grew louder again. The mule broke through the undergrowth and would have trampled her won, had it not been for her reflexes. She caught just a glimpse of its face. The animal was in mortal terror, far worse than anything her poison could have done to it.
“See you.” And just like that, he was gone. Rumiko felt it as she lay on the ground where she had dodged the mule’s rampage. From one moment to the next, a presence she hadn’t even known she had felt disappeared.
She kept quiet for a minute. Then she got up and followed the animal. Whoever the stranger was, he knew his business. And apparently, she and Yoshiro would have to live with the knowledge of his presence.
At least for the moment.