Mushi Warren

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Skull Dragon 2
 

Mushi Warren

Unread postby Skull Dragon 2 » Fri Feb 07, 2003 11:08 pm

This is a story I started years ago, stopped writing 17 months ago, and finally reworked and started again. Here's chapter one, which I just finished yesterday. I am not interested in having it torn asunder.

A resounding bang echoed through the grassy hills, over the fields, and into the town. People stopped what they were doing and looked around, taken by surprise. Birds left their perches and dogs jumped to attention, a couple of them growling in the direction of the noise. The elderly looked at each other, (half of them pretending it was an omen and the other half just dazed), the middle-aged scratched their heads and spoke in soft voices, and the children tugged on their parents' clothes and asked what was going on.

Well, most children. Two boys had been playing in a field north of town before the noise, swiping at each other with "swords" made of sticks. At the bang, both, with typical juvenile curiosity, ran to investigate. Neither spoke during the trip, which lasted slightly longer than a minute but to them seemed much longer as they silently considered all the different possibilities. Was it some monster about to invade the town? Was it a crashed mail ship? Was it some scientific experiment gone awry? With all the different, exciting ideas running through their minds, it almost seemed anticlimactic when they found that a wall had just collapsed. Almost. It would have been anticlimactic had this been any other wall. In reality, it was a lot better than they'd thought.

The town of Alamdine really had little spectacular about it. It was near the northern edge of the continent of Corumdum, which of itself wasn't a very interesting continent with an even less interesting northern edge. The only city of more than one thousand people on that half of Corumdum was Jacinth, with was separated from Alamdine by a mountain range. Alamdine had no exports or imports; the town was entirely self-sufficient. It was no source of long-forgotten, ancient knowledge since the median age of the barely five hundred citizens was in the early to mid-thirties. It almost didn't even register as a stop on the weekly mail routes. In fact, Alamdine only had one feature that made it different, and that feature was enough to have it marked on every map made in the last century. Alamdine was the town built just south of the tomb of Mushi Warren.

So when the two boys ran to the top of the hill and saw that not only had the heavy stone door to the tomb been blown apart, but a young man with a gun was standing in the doorway, they were pretty excited.

The boys could tell at a glance that this man was slightly unique. First, he was holding a gun, a tool rarely seen and never used in or around Alamdine. Second, he had managed to destroy the stone door, which had stood up to every physical and magical attack from demon and humankind alike for roughly one hundred years. Third, he looked unusual, what with the shoulder-length, wavy green hair framing the hand he was using to rub his face.

The boys watched in slight awe as the man grumbled something to himself and looked up. He looked at one boy, then the other, then repeated that two or three times. Eventually he raised his right hand, the one not holding the gun, and waved. "Hi?" And there was another unusual feature, in that he could talk without a mouth. While we're on the topic, he didn't seem to have a nose or ears, either. His face was one pitch-black piece broken only by two slightly-glowing red eyes.

The boys cautiously waved back, then turned to each other. One nodded his head at the man. "Do you think we should report him?"

"Report him?"

"Yeah, for breaking the stone door. That's like destroying other people's property."

"Are you gonna try and report a guy with a gun? He'd kill you before you got down the hill."

"What if he's a demon?"

The second boy looked at the man again. Suddenly, it all fit. The strange hair, the gun, the facelessness, the fact that he destroyed the door, everything came together. "You think we can beat him?"

"Well he doesn't look that strong."

The man raised a finger. "At this point I would like to state that I can, in fact, hear you. You're only ten feet away."

The boys, caught up in the excitement of the moment, either opted to ignore the man or simply didn’t recognize that he has spoken. After all, how does anybody talk without a mouth? “Maybe we should throw something at it.”

“But what if it gets angry?”

“It won’t if we hit it hard with a big enough rock.”

“Okay, fine, you do it.”

“Me? I’m not gonna do it. You do it.”

“It was your idea.”

The man opened his arms. “I can still hear you!”

Further ignoring. Hey, he didn’t have ears either. “Let’s both attack him at once. We have our swords.”

“We do?” The first boy held up the stick he had been using earlier. “Oh, yeah.”

“Okay, I’ll go low and you go high.”

“Why do you get to go low?”

“Because you’re taller.”

“Oh, for cripes’ sake.” The man stomped over to the boys, grabbed both of their sticks, and snapped them in two. “You don’t go around just randomly attacking people!”

About half a second later, the boys would have run screaming for the town, except that as soon as they turned to go, they ran into another young man. He staggered back a step, then bent over and started breathing heavily. He looked at the boys over his glasses. "What are you two doing here? Come on, let's go back home. Granny's worried about you two. I had to run all the way out here to get you."

The second boy grabbed the second man's leg. "The demon was going to attack us. Beat him up, Malcolm!"

The first young man decided to ignore the obvious rebuttal to the “beat him up” comment (Malcolm virtually radiated an aura of “nerd”, and with no other knowledge of him, the first man was fairly certain that any beatings would not be in Malcolm’s favor) and instead pointed at the boys. "Okay, you were talking about attacking me first. That's provocation."

Malcolm adjusted his glasses and looked up, as if seeing the faceless man for the first time. He looked around, taking in the open tomb, the rubble littering the ground, the gun in the man's hand, everything. Then, in one sudden motion, he freed himself from the younger boy's grasp and dashed over to the other man. He grabbed the hand that wasn't holding the gun and pumped it vigorously, grinning like he'd won a lottery. "Mister Warren, it's a pleasure to meet you!"

The first boy looked at the second. "He's Mushi Warren?"

The second boy looked at Mushi. "You're Mushi Warren?"

The man looked at Malcolm. "I'm Mushi Warren?"

Malcolm gestured to the ground. "Look! All of the rubble is on the ground out here! That means some force had to be exerted again the stone door from the other direction such that when it shattered, its pieces flew this way. Thus the force came from inside the tomb, and the only person who's been in the tomb for the last century is Mushi Warren, so if you broke the door, you must be he. And green hair, black skin, red eyes, blue shirt, khaki pants, grey robe...you fit the description of Mushi Warren to the letter." Malcolm gasped. "And this gun! This is the legendary Delta! Do you still have the sword?"

The man looked at Malcolm. "I'm Mushi Warren?"

Malcolm stepped back. "Are you okay?"

"Apparently not. I don't remember anything before I walked outside and got hit by sunlight, and then these two boys started discussing their plan of attack."

The boys stepped forward. "We weren’t going to hurt you!"

Mushi pointed at the two. "Okay, here's what I heard. You-"

"Come on!" Malcolm grabbed Mushi's free hand again and started pulling him down the hill. "We have to go see Granny. She'll know what to do. She knows more about the legends than even I do." With a confused Mushi in tow and the two boys following at a safe distance, Malcolm dashed back to Alamdine.


<center>* * *</center>

Twenty minutes later, Mushi was really starting to wonder. Malcolm had pulled him through town at a good speed, but not fast enough that he didn’t catch the eye of everybody he passed. It was as if he was a celebrity, what with everybody within sight watching at him in the town streets. Even when he was pulled inside one house and placed in a chair at a table, the two boys who had followed him in sat on either side and wouldn’t stop staring at him. He wasn’t sure he liked all the attention he was getting.

Malcolm reentered the room and sat in another chair, beaming. “Granny will be down in a few minutes. She sure was surprised when we told her we had Mushi Warren in our house.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.” Mushi looked around the room. It seemed pretty nice. Wooden floors, white walls, wooden furniture, a bunch of pictures hanging around, and a plant in the corner. Light was provided by the sun streaming through the window behind Mushi, leaving the lamps on the wall temporarily unnecessary. A couple of long half-tables stood against the longer walls of the rectangular room. It certainly wasn’t the house of a poor person (though, from what Mushi had seen from the streets through which he was whisked, none of the people or houses looked poor), but it wasn’t the most stylish place in the town. Then again, it didn’t look like the house of anybody named “Granny” either. He found out why when she entered the room.

For one thing, she moved a lot more quickly than one would expect from a grandmother. Before Mushi could blink, her face was hovering an inch from his, looking it over. She ran a hand through his hair and lifted it, checking the roots, then pressed all over the bottom part of his face. She grabbed his arm, felt it for a second, then pulled him into a standing position. Her hands quickly slid into his robe, pulling the gun and a silver sword hilt from two inside pockets, both of which she placed on the table. Finally, she grabbed Mushi’s chin, holding his face steady, and poked two fingers right into his eyes. However, instead of blinding Mushi, her fingers disappeared up to the first knuckle in the red aura and came back out totally unharmed.

“Well, he seems real enough.” The woman stood back, giving Mushi a good look at her. She was dressed in creased brown pants, a white sweater, and black shoes, and was about as thin as Mushi. She had apparently aged very well. Her faced showed few wrinkles, and she kept her light yellow hair in a bun. Even her voice lacked the crackle or wheeze of old age; she spoke like a person merely thirty years old. Mushi noted that her glasses were almost identical to Malcolm’s, but had thinner lenses and were worn lower on her nose. She put a hand to her chin and said, more as a statement than a question, “And you say you came from the tomb.”

Mushi’s eye shaped changed, showing confusion. “Yes?”

She walked to the opposite end of the table, and sat, facing his seat. Mushi eventually caught on and sat himself. She sighed. “No memory of anything before you came out of the tomb.” She phrased it more like a statement than a question. Apparently, Malcolm had told her as much as he knew.

“No, ma’am.”

Finally showing some emotion, she smiled. “Please, call me Granny. Everybody else in town does.”

Mushi tilted his head. “Why? You look younger than a lot of the people we passed on the way here.”

She grinned and leaned back in her chair. “Oh, I like him.”

Malcolm looked at Mushi. “Granny’s one of the oldest people in town, seventy-five one month ago. But everybody calls her Granny because she has so many grandchildren.” He gestured around the table. “Alex, Ben, and I are three of them.”

Mushi looked back and forth from Malcolm to Granny, continuing until Granny smiled at him again. “Just for reference, don’t go around asking woman their ages. It’s just different for me since it’s such common knowledge. Malcolm is bright, but he sometimes forgets his manners, right?” She looked at Malcolm, who interested himself with the weapons on the table.

Mushi leaned forward, resting his arms on the table. For some reason, he felt more comfortable around Granny than he had been since he could remember. You know, thirty minutes. “While we’re discussing it, how many grandchildren? Are they all in this town?” Granny leaned back and looked at the pictures on the walls “Oh, heavens, no. They’d have taken over by now. I just always liked big families and told all seven of my children how great it was, so they had big families of their own. Last time the mail came in, I had thirty-eight grandchildren and one on the way. Only six are here. Six of my children left Alamdine for different towns, leaving only Hannah with me. I miss seeing everybody, but we do manage to get together once every year or two. And when we do, the whole town knows it.” She grinned again.

“Wow.” Mushi rubbed his chin. “Guess that explains all the pictures.”

“I try to keep some mementos around. Someday I’d like to let you meet all of them. I know they’d love to see you.”

“Why?”

Granny looked at him. “Why what?”

“Why would they like to see me?”

“I’m sure they have some questions they’d like to ask you. Everything we know about you is based entirely on legend, since during the time you were around, precious few people were documenting anything. Most everybody was too busy with the war to keep records. So the things we do know about you have been passed down mostly by word of mouth over nearly one hundred years.

Mushi tilted his head. “I’m a legend?”

“More or less.” Granny leaned forward. “Right before you showed up, the entire world was taking part in a massive war between humanity and demonkind. The demons are beings from another world, and when they started invading towns one by one with their magic and powers, humans from every town on every continent banded together to try and drive them back. Despite having a technological advantage over the demons, eventually, humans were pushed farther and farther back, losing more and more of their own with each battle. They were nearly ready to surrender, because fighting an unknown foe with unknown abilities and tactics seemed utterly hopeless.

“That’s when you came along. During one large fight, the last one for the continent of Sardonyx, the demons were slowly pushing the humans back to a large cliff overlooking the ocean. The general of that branch of the demon forces was riding on a flaming horse to the front lines with his generals, and they were all going to cast some dark magic spell to finish off the hundred or so remaining humans. Suddenly, you came up from the ground with a glowing white sword and, with one slash, cut off the general’s head. While both sides were still confused, you came back and got rid of all of his generals with the same weapon. Then, you ran between the humans and demons, pulled out that gun, and started firing white magic into the demon army. Every time the beam touched them, they would disintegrate. In one minute, you knocked out half of the demon forces and left the rest confused and afraid. You rallied the remaining soldiers and led them back into the fight, winning the battle for the humans.

“Over the next year, you joined the human armies and taught them how to beat the demons. You gave them knowledge of magic of light and dark elements, so the demons could no longer overpower them by using dark-aligned soldiers immune to the elemental magics. You showed humans how demon minds worked, and from there they could anticipate tactics and fight back. You rallied the nonhuman races, like the centaurs and merpeople, against the demons, giving humanity the advantage in numbers. Within a year and through your leadership, the demons forces were scattered throughout the planet with no leader or organization, and the humans and their allies settled back into their old ways. You built yourself a tomb by digging a cave with your gun and sealing it with that stone door, which according to your dying wishes was the sealed by the most powerful magicians of the time. No force, human, or demon, had been able to break that door until you opened it from the inside.

“This town, Alamdine, was built near the tomb as protection in case some demon armies did manage to get together and try to storm it, but after a few decades of peace and quiet, that aspect of it died and we became a quiet farming town. Also, a few humans have become demon hunters, people who seek out demons and either subdue or kill them. No big armies have existed since the war ended, and everybody’s seemed pretty content to just let the demon hunters work since they seem successful. People are happy, and it’s all because you came up that one time and led the way.”

Mushi nodded for a few seconds, lost in thought. “If everything’s so nice now, why have I come back?”

Granny blinked. “You don’t even remember why you woke up?”

“Nothing.”

“I don’t know. The mail hasn’t come yet, but we haven’t heard anything yet about demon troubles. I doubt that any would even show their face around human towns in today’s world.”

“Mushi Warren!” An impossibly loud voice echoed through the town streets. “I know you’re awake! I challenge you to a fight! If you’re not here in five minutes, I’ll level this pitiful hole to the ground!”

Suddenly aware of some strange presence not far away, Mushi looked around the room, then out the window, then back at Granny. She stood up. “Come on, you heard it. Get your weapons and let’s go meet the thing. You’re about to get a crash course in demon fighting.” Leaving the room, she pointed at the boys. “You three stay here.”

Mushi grabbed the hilt and gun, stuffing them into his pockets, and jumped from the table to meet Granny at the house’s front door. “I thought you said they wouldn’t come near human towns.”

Granny shrugged. “I’m seventy-five years old. I’ve been wrong a lot.” She pushed him out the door and closed it behind her.


Thank you. <p><div style="text-align:center">The triumphant return of the Noseless Bishounen
<span style="color:white;">I am the schizoid serpent.</span></div></p>Edited by: Skull Dragon 2&nbsp; Image at: 2/7/03 10:16:12 pm

User avatar
Besyanteo
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Posts: 4612
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Re: Mushi Warren

Unread postby Besyanteo » Sun Feb 09, 2003 1:00 pm

Nice. Do more!


JoshuaDurron
 

Re: Mushi Warren

Unread postby JoshuaDurron » Sun Feb 09, 2003 1:29 pm

o.o

OMG, nifty. ::senses more than one or two anime influences::

You will do more, or I bring pain. <p>

Victory to the strong of will
Death to pretenders</p>

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pd Rydia
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Re: Mushi Warren

Unread postby pd Rydia » Sat Feb 15, 2003 2:22 pm

And interesting and good story. Could work on the execution a little bit, sometimes the story gets bogged down in awkward or superfluous text. Since you don't want the story "torn asunder," I'll leave it at that.


Image <p>
<span style="font-size:xx-small;">-=- "Why must my flaming debris be so delicious and edible? ;_;" -- FlamingDeth
-=- "oye KoD! tu griego me rockearia, si fuera griego de verdad..." -- ikozaedro
-=- "Seriously. The undead just don't stop. Great, aren't they?" -- Dirk (Skull Dragon)
-=- "Kelne's a natural magnet for everything, from lovers to planetary destroyers to carrots." -- End Reshiki</span></p>Edited by: [url=http://p068.ezboard.com/brpgww60462.showUserPublicProfile?gid=pdrydia>pd]&nbsp; Image at: 6/11/05 17:22


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