Subject: [FFML] [fanfic][samuraishodown] And Giving Fuji: Prologue
From: Vincent Diamante
Date: 12/13/1998, 4:33 PM
To: ffml@fanfic.com

This is my first real work in eons.  I beg of you...C&C!
I just don't see fanfics based on Samurai Shodown and am
in dire need of any comments or critiques which you can
give me.  Thanks a bunch for reading it (and a pox on
both your houses if you don't. ^_^ )  Actually...forget
the pox thing; this is a strange fic.  Most of the inspiration
for this comes from Virginia Woolf and Mishima Yukio; it
was written while listening to Scriabin sonatas.  It is
also an experiment in stream of consciousness.  I have
no idea how well (or poorly) this will be recieved...so...
if you can comment on this...please do so, publicly or privately.
Thanks in advance...

And Giving Fuji - diamante@cs.analog.org
---------------
-  - - --p r o l o g u e-- - -  -

   "I'm so...so tired.  So tired..."  Rimururu stared at the fire in
earnest, struggling to keep her eyes open.  It was a beautiful sight,
hypnotic dance of red and orange reaching up and kissing the black sky
with their embers.  She poked around her knee and winced.  Rimururu
slid herself a bit closer to the fire.  Her older sister was telling
Shizumaru a story which she had not heard before, so she tried her best
to sit upright and listened attentively over the crackle of flaming
wood.  Nakoruru began to recount an encounter she had with a warrior
on a small island to the south.  He was a man of great movements who
allowed himself to be filled with anger and evil to complement his
strength in motion.  For Genjuro, for that was indeed his name, there
was nothing in death which could affect the being as death was simply
a lack of feeling.  No good, no evil could come about through death,
he reasoned, and so he focused on the physical and emotional, bringing
about suffering upon those he met and relishing in what he brought
to both commoners and those able with sword.

   "He wasn't living, and he doesn't live," Nakoruru said.

   Shizumaru shuddered at the thought.  To face a man who desired pain
and suffering and dealt in its barter!  No, no he would never meet such
a person, no, no, a monster.  Nakoruru exaggerates...no!  She speaks
truth in all cases.  A demon who floats on clouds.  A giant who wielded
a pillar of stone.  A fish's back upon which a person could stand and
travel from land to land.  Oh yes, this story was far more plausible.
A murderer, a killer.  Yes, far too plausible.  As eloquent as
Nakoruru's description was, he still was one who killed.  No,
tortured.  Torture was infinitely less preferable to death.  He knew
that from personal experience.

   "I really don't know why, but I've not seen Genjuro for two years,"
Nakoruru said, "but he!  He was a giant man of little leverage!
Mamahaha!"  A falcon darted from a nearby tree and alighted on a
nearby log.  "We'll be home soon," she said.  "I'm sure you know what
I want to say."  She stared at the bird as it raised a considerable
ruckus.  "Mamahaha, you know I need to stay here with them."  He (for
Mamahaha was, indeed, a he) flew to Nakoruru's shoulder and chirped
almost silently into her ear.  "Yes.  There.  Don't worry."  He flew
out of sight and northward.

   Shizumaru shook his head.  "I'll never understand what you can
hear.  How they talk."  He laid his head down, using his umbrella as a
stiff pillow.

   "I hear chirping," she said.

   Rimururu yawned and stood and walked away from the fire.  "No more
stories," she said.  She walked until a great wolf, a gray wolf lay
before her.  "Shikuruu?" she whispered.  The wolf's ears perked up.
Rimururu knelt down beside him and lay her head upon his warm belly.

   She slept until, a fire burned.

- - -

   He wailed and wailed and wailed.  He was to die, and die that day.
Scurry, he thought, scurry through the wall.  Consigned to flames of
wall, consigned to walls of flame.  No, he would escape with his life.
A burning house, a life ripped away, he could create another.  Yes.
Yes.  Run away.

   The burning ceiling fell upon him and he screamed his scream of
life.  Images of his flesh burning away to bone filled his head and
left as he threw his body through the door.  A body, a body, a
soldier, a body, a soldier, a sword.  Another burning house, a soldier,
an arrow in a body, a body consumed.  He threw himself to the wind,
to life and nature.  A sword buried itself in him and he fell, quick
quick! into the design of the world.

   Jealousy is what surrounds him, and control is what takes them and
they burn a village to the ground.  "I am jealous," he said.  Pillage
and death, death and life.  "Death and life.  Same thing."  He turned
his head and looked upon and old woman crawling toward him.  He drew
his two swords and stared at her.

   Fear too her and she pleaded for mercy, but a strange tongue leapt
from her mouth and she was incomprehensible.  Japanese samurai do not
like the Ainu tongue.  She screamed for all to hear and she was heard
and cut short and never to be heard.

   He saw her head on the grass and said, "I am not honorable."  He
then stared at his two swords and said, "I am Yagyu Jubei."  He took
this to mind and decided that one sentiment must win over the other
and the latter filled his mind, filled his mouth to the point where
he needed exclamation.  He shouted.  He screamed.

   And all heard his name.

   Soldiers under him marveled at this outburst.  They had upset him,
these Ainu people.  They must die.  They must pay to us what we are
owed.  They must give of themselves for a scream.  They must give of
themselves for a name.  A soldier asked of the rebel leader.

   "We poisoned him, at the peace talks," said another warrior.

   "Never say that."

   "Yes."

   Jubei looked upon his creation and deemed it successful and he
walked away from the blazes.  The moon shone full and he blinked once,
twice as the light entered his eyes.  No more beauty, and thoughts of
beauty, and lazy dreams and bears, and peace and war.  Just the sun
and moon and birds of the sky to bear witness.  Only loss and knowing
loss and giving loss.  Plates of nothingness he would bear to his
liege!  Plates of nothingness!  Imagine!

- - -

   In the morning they would go north and not south and backward and
not forward and Shizumaru would see a room.  And Rimururu would see
a room.  And Nakoruru would have no room, no place to lay herself, for
she was she and Ainu and everything except Japanese and Shizumaru.
She would talk to Mamahaha and hear voices and she would ask why she
wasn't home and she would answer and he would answer.  And answers
were never quite so sufficient as to fulfill, only to whet.

   The three would give everyone a place to rest.  

   "Don't cry," she said once to her younger sister.  She brought earth
upon earth.  Rain fell from Nakoruru's eyes and there was naught to be
grown beneath her.

- - -

   There are no simple phrases.  No one knows that here.  "I am here."
All hear that and all accept that.  Simple inn, bedroom above, bar
below, luxury of rest.  Rest and thoughtfulness.  A sword beside him
and a pillow under him.  Another day of rest, he was sure the caretaker
would not mind.  He did not eat and had no wish to.  A sword beside him
and a scar beneath him.

   How it longed for another like it in every way! Genjuro thought.

   Longing!  Such unfulfillable longing!  Turning retreat into advance,
turning loss into victory!  Longing!  He didn't desire the longing,
only that it be implanted and that he lose responsibility.
Responsibility!  What brings about loss!  What destroys death...
responsibility of all things!

   A window to the north and a sight of Fuji revealed being to him and
he thought of being and shoved it out of his mind.  Stop looking at me.
"Stop looking at me!" he said.  A few birds flew by and he cursed them.
He cursed them heavenward and commanded them to look at the god.  Never
will they see the darkness he has seen and never will they enjoy that
satiable emptiness, that longing!  That longing!

   Great loss never affected him for he never experienced such.  Simple
loss he did see far too much of.  Such simple losses.  He thought of
them and tormented himself again and again and battered himself again
and again.  Simple loss is incredible loss.  That he should experience
but overwhelming victory or the narrowest of defeats...

   Fire cursed him and water cursed him and earth cursed him and air
cursed him.  And he cursed them back to what they have always been.
"Go and look at your god!  Go and laugh with your god!" he said.

   He planned for victory that day.

- - -

   The sunlight from the shack's lone window immersed Rimururu as she
slept beneath a single, heavy cotton sheet.  Shizumaru did love her. He
did love her.  Nakoruru knew this and walked to where he lay and woke
him.  She filled his vision as he drifted out of slumber.

   "Dreams are never this beautiful," he sighed.

   Nakoruru lightly slapped his cheek.

   "I'm up."  He sat up and quickly dressed.  He went to a wall and
picked up his sheathed sword and brought the strap over his shoulder.

   "She needs her sleep," said Nakoruru.

   "She is beautiful," Shizumaru said.  He gazed at her as she rolled
over under the sheet.  It covered her petite figure and more as she
dreamed dreams of burial and life and lack thereof.  She had worked
until noon the day before to give everyone a proper burial.

   "I know."  She knelt down and picked up her sheathed sword and tied
it around her, behind her waist.

   "I know," he said.  Rimururu was pretty, had been pretty for as long
as Shizumaru laid eyes upon her.  She spiraled around his head for
eternity and laid in his thoughts.  Shizumaru knelt close to her and
asked her to wake up.  She was pretty.  She rolled under the sheet a
bit, then sat up.

   "I'm awake, I'm awake."  As Shizumaru turned toward the door,
Rimururu threw the sheet off and brought her only attire over her.
It still smelled a bit of the sweat which had soaked in the day before.
She had worked hard to put earth over those who deserved it, and those
who warranted it.  She tied her sheathed sword around her waist just
as Nakoruru had done.

   She was aged seventeen years, her sister two more, Shizumaru one
less.  She never did feel comfortable about being with a boy younger
than she.

   An open door from a dirt floor with light glaring at the three,
Rimururu looked upon mounds of earth and shook.  Before her was death
and he scared her, perhaps only her, perhaps her sister as well.  She
followed and walked around ground.

   "I walk among dead."  There were thoughts of death in her head and
she wished them alive that she might find them dead from her hand.
Moments were few for want of death but she wanted that of death, or
of thoughts of death.  They filled her and she choked on saliva.
Tears moistened her coat.  She choked on saliva.  Rimururu called to
her sister and she came in sullen steps upon experienced earth.

   "Nee-chan?"

   "Yes?"

   "We changed the shoes?"

   "Yes."

   "Why?"

   "They step backwards.  They go back."  Nakoruru dried her
sister's tears with her hair.  "Everyone goes back."

   "I cry mountains."  She looked into her sister's eyes and they
were far too gentle.  They should be stern and taut and unforgiving!
"I cry Fuji.  I scream and shout Fuji!"  The volume engulfed Nakoruru
and she was moved.  She knelt and felt her heart as it beat a rhythm
into her head.  "And Fuji is dead!  And Fuji is dead.  And Fuji is
dead."

   "Fuji is dead," Shizumaru said.  There was no thought, him, only
fact and fact was Fuji's death.  "I gave her."

   Because none disputed him, it is easy to understand why they
traveled to Edo.


-   -  - -- -  -   -
That's the prologue...I hope someone is reading this.  :)  As
I said before, I'd really appreciate any C&C as I've not seen
any Samurai Shodown fics (outside of multi game based fanfics).
Thanks in advance...

SKlathill