Mulan: A Parody-Chp5

CHAPTER 5 – A LONG & DREADFUL PLACE FROM HOME

“Ohayo, Master Hanamichi!! Wake up now! Rise and shine!!”

Sakuragi groaned as he pulled his blanket over his head. He didn’t sleep too well what with his hungry stomach and all and it took him till 1 in the morning to be able to fall asleep. Mido came over and pulled the blanket off his master and shook him awake.

“Come on, Master Hanamichi! You’re in the war zone now. There’s no time for beauty sleep! Come on, I’ve got you some breakfast!”

“Breakfast?!” Sakuragi was immediately awake. Mido showed him proudly a nicely done of a breakfast set fit for Sakuragi’s appetite: peanut butter toast, eggs and bacon, noodles, fried rice and orange juice and they all came in second helpings. His mouth watered at everything before him and while he gobbled up the food, he asked, “Where did you get all these?”

“Oh, I had a little help,” Mido replied as he undid the clasp of his collar. The collar soon materialized itself into a very fat and round palm-sized cat that has eyes that narrowed into slits. It mewed at Sakuragi and licked some of the crumbs on Sakuragi’s lap as the redhead bit onto the toast. Mido gestured at the cat smaller than he was and said, “Meet Takamiya, my little helper. He has always been the food provider for me and your ancestors. We can’t exactly eat food of the living, so his job was to materialize the food offerings you gave us so that we can eat them properly. Of course, he can also provide food for the living too. Every candle holder has them.”

“Cool!” Sakuragi replied as he finished his food within minutes. As he drained his orange juice, Oukutsu kept on whinnying frantically. Mido turned around to find out what’s the problem.
“Uh, Master Hanamichi. I seriously think you should hurry up. The troop has already gathered up front.”

Sakuragi was shocked. With lightning speed, he dressed up in his woman training garments and rushed towards the troops who were already standing in line. The evil threesome looked at him and gave him a Look-who-just-slept-in kind of look. Haroko gestured him to stand beside her.

“You’re in luck. Captain Rukawa hasn’t arrived yet.”

“Unfortunately he has,” Rukawa’s voice suddenly came from behind, taking Sakuragi and Haroko by surprise. He ignored the growl of Sakuragi calling him ‘Kitsune’ and moved towards the front of the troop. He gave a small speech on being lucky to be chosen ones to fight the war and all that nonsense. His voice sounded cold and unconcerned and his blue eyes were truly piercing, like one glance and he’ll render you shitless. Sakuragi glared at him with a grudge and a vengeance. He seriously thought that this kitsune is nothing but words and crap. He would sure like to see him do some action and show him a thing or two. He also couldn’t help thinking that this kitsune captain would be better off sleeping at home than being in the battle field.

“Right, now we’ll start off with our first training,” Rukawa said as he took a bow and arrow. He raised it high, pulled the string and shot the arrow—almost as quick as Legolas in LOTR—sending it right to a very tall pole, maybe about 5 or 6 stories high. He turned around to face the women before him and with his piercing eyes, chose Sakuragi to go and retrieve the arrow, saying, “Since you’re late, you might as well make up for it. You know what to do.”

Sakuragi scowled at Rukawa and glared at the evil threesome who was sniggering. He spit on his palms and started to climb onto the pole. Before he had his hands on the pole, he felt his back being poked. He turned around and saw that Rukawa was holding two iron weights, one in each hand, and tied them on Sakuragi’s wrists without a word. He then held each of Sakuragi’s hand and said, “This means strength and this means discipline. You need both to get up there and get the arrow.”

“That’s way too easy,” Sakuragi snorted. His strength and stamina are unlimited; how hard can this be? He started climbing and was in the middle of the pole when he was splashed by something oily and smelly. Immediately, he felt himself slipping down the pole. No matter how hard he tried to hold on, he kept finding himself slipping lower and lower towards the ground. As he fell onto the grass with a hard thud, he realized that his whole body smelt of oil. Cooking oil as a matter of fact. He shifted his angry copper-brown eyes at Rukawa who looked back at him with his cold, unconcerned blue eyes. He took off the weights from Sakuragi’s wrists and turned to the girls.

“Anyone else want to try this ‘way too easy’ piece of training?”

As predicted, no one was able to make it. All of them fell either due to the slippery pole or the heavy weights or both. The same goes with all the other training Sakuragi had to go through. First, one of the evil threesome slipped a cockroach into Sakuragi’s shirt and made him squirm everywhere, hitting everyone in line in the process, including Rukawa (luckily he didn’t aim for Rukawa’s ‘down there’). Then he was caught cheating when they were supposed to shoot tomatoes in the air (well, Mido was the one who stuck the tomato in the first place—blame him!). Later in bare hand fish-catching, he caught Yuki’s leg instead of a fish and he wasn’t able to hit incoming stones thrown at him while balancing the bucket of water at the same time. The only thing he was good at was the weight-carrying while jogging up hills. Although his stamina and strength outmatched every girl present in this camp and could do everything that was bombarded at him if only given more time, our dear Captain Rukawa didn’t seem to be impressed or encouraging at all, which made Sakuragi hate him even more. Sometimes, when things get pretty rough, you can see Sakuragi lashing his tongue at the cold, unconcerned face of Rukawa.

To top it up, every time Sakuragi failed in one part of the training, he was given hard chores to do, like cleaning the pots and pans after meals, washing clothes (to the evil threesome’s delight), shining the weapons and stuff. And the most irritating part was that every time the chore was given to him, Rukawa would say, “You got the extra energy. You can do it better than those lousy performances of yours in training.” Sakuragi practically could memorize and predict when he was going to say that. He felt so mistreated; the other girls didn’t do as well but he was the only one doing all the chores. Haroko, Fujii and Yuki did help him out a little but that wasn’t enough and it’s not everyday they were allowed to help him. Even a little secret help from Mido and Noma still wasn’t enough.

Finally, after another long day’s training and chores, Sakuragi was about to head off to his tent when he was called by the ever familiar cold voice of Rukawa.

“Sakuragi Minako.”

“Yes, captain,” Sakuragi replied in clenched teeth. “What do you want?”

“Pack up,” Rukawa said briefly, folding his arms across his chest.

“Pack up? What do you mean ‘pack up’?” Sakuragi looked at him suspiciously.

“I meant what I said. Pack up, you’re through. You’re not needed here anymore.”

“Wha…What?! Doushite?! Doushite nayo?? I was so close! So close to mastering everything that you throw on me! Why are you kicking me out now?!” Sakuragi shouted, his face going red.

“You may be strong and stand out just like the rest of the team but you are no fighting material. You have never mastered anything here except carrying weights while jogging up hills. You don’t do your archery right, you can’t keep a bucket of water in balance and you darn right can’t even catch a fish. You don’t belong in the army. You should be in town hanging out with the boys, do’aho.”

“Do…Do’aho?!” Now Sakuragi was really mad. He clenched his fists and aimed it real hard at Rukawa’s face, shouting, “You kitsune! YOU DAMN FUCKING KITSUNE!!! How dare you do this to me?! I was so close!! You never gave me a chance to prove myself! You never even tried!!! I could’ve done better than the rest of the girls put together! How dare you?! HOW DARE YOU??!!”
His outburst has caused a commotion throughout the camp. All the girls who were doing their things came out of their tents and were horrified at Sakuragi who was sending his fists over and over again onto the captain. Surprisingly, Rukawa didn’t attempt to fight back. He just let the feisty redhead give him blow after blow of non-stop pain. He was even able to endure Sakuragi’s famous head-butt (Ouch!) and still remain standing, although his forehead bled a little. All the other girls tried to go forward and pull him away from Rukawa, but they, too, earned a serious head-butt or a kick or a punch. Even Haroko, Fujii and Yuki were powerless over him.

Finally, when Sakuragi stopped to take a breath, Rukawa coolly wiped off the blood from his forehead and walked over to the panting redhead. Without a word, he aimed a hard slap onto his cheek and glared at him with his icy cold blue eyes. Sakuragi stared back at him, his face full of surprise and shock and his hand on the slapped cheek. He was so taken aback that he didn’t know what to do at first. Haroko walked over to him and tried to pick him up.

“You have no self-control, and you have no discipline. You still can’t even climb up that oil-covered pole and get that arrow. So get out of here, you do’aho. You don’t belong here,” Rukawa said coldly, then turned to the girls after looking up when he heard the thunder rolled and said, “Get inside, people. It’s raining. There’s nothing to see.”

Everyone went back into their tents. Haroko wanted to lead Sakuragi back to his tent but he refused to budge. She had no choice but to go back to her own tent. Sakuragi sat there on the grass letting the rain pour on him. He was drenched from head to toe but he still remained sitting there without a word. His mind was blank through and through and he couldn’t think over anything else. The only thing in his mind was that why he just couldn’t get through Captain Rukawa and make him see that he was better than all the other girls in this camp. Why? Why can’t Rukawa see that he could do this? Why, why, why?

He shifted his gaze towards the arrow still perched up on the pole. He then looked at his hands and the way it was all wet and drenched. Suddenly, something came through his mind. He looked around and saw that everywhere was practically wet. He stared at the two weights that were placed beside the oily pole. Mido, regardless of the rain, went over to Sakuragi and was about to lead him back to his tent but he found him tying the weights on his wrists and was attempting to climb the pole. At first, Mido was surprised that he even do such a thing but when he looked at all the wetness and stared at the oily pole, he understood that his Master Hanamichi has found a way to get up the pole.

Soon, as the rain stopped and the dawn approached and as the girls woke up from their beauty sleep and stepped out of their tents for their breakfast of the day, they found Sakuragi, drenched as he was, climbing slowly and was actually making his way up the pole and closer towards the arrow. It turned out that Sakuragi had figured out that water was the solution to keep him from slipping off the oily pole and that he has used the strings hanging from the weights to pull him up the pole. Finally when Rukawa has awakened and came out of his tent, he found the arrow at his feet and Sakuragi sitting comfortably and smugly on the pole. Rukawa stared at him for a moment or two before looking away and walking towards the food court.

“Alright, Sakuragi Minako, you made your point. Come down from there and have your breakfast.”

Sakuragi jumped down from the pole niftily and was applauded and cheered by the other girls, especially the impressed Haroko, Fujii and Yuki. The evil threesome glared at him grudgingly. Everyone clapped his back and gave him a praise or two and he was the hero for the day.

Things are going to be fairer from now on.