Shigure's Story: Irony

Characters: Shigure, Hiei

Pairings: None

Continuity: English Anime

Summary: He is the Storytwister. Oneshot.

Author's note: Heh, meta. He's quite the character.

Shigure was the greatest surgeon the demon world had ever seen.

There was no question of that.

He could make a blind man see, replace lost limbs—or just limbs that the owner was tired of—with even better ones, grant incredible upgrades of power. Under the right circumstances, he could even bestow the gift of telepathy.

His specialty was transplants, and he could do all that and more with little more than a sharp knife and his own dexterity.

So, yes, he was an incredible surgeon…but he didn't feel that that was his true calling.

He considered himself an artist.

And as skilled as he was in shaping flesh, that was only the means to an end.

For a time, true, he had charged more conventional prices for his services.

But eventually, as his reputation had grown, he found that he already had everything he needed, and decided to start asking for what he wanted instead.

Rather than the usual prices of gold or power or protection—or even less common prices, like information—Shigure chose to request a rather…personal cost.

If someone wanted to gain something for their life, they had pay in kind.

Shigure would take a piece of their life as his own, requiring or forbidding certain actions, and ensuring that his price was paid.

The first demon tried to cheat him.

The fool had asked for power, but when Shigure heard his story, he knew that that it was only a means to an end.

Though he didn't say it—perhaps didn't even know it—what the fool really wanted was fame.

So Shigure gave him what he asked for, at the price of what he really wanted.

He offered him unimaginable power, on the condition that he change his name, completely divorce himself from his previous identity, and never again admit that he was the same person.

The fool agreed readily enough, greedily accepting what Shigure offered.

What the fool didn't realize was that Shigure was entirely serious in his price, and that he had certainly anticipated cheating.

Shigure even warned him.

He warned him never to try to break his promise, or he would deeply regret it—though he failed to mention the second implant he'd added free of charge.

The fool didn't listen.

He became powerful, and even famous as a mysterious demon whose origins no one knew…but, eventually, he succumbed to the temptation.

He wasn't even subtle about it. Shigure had rather more expected him to contact an old rival with the news, but he did far more than that. He arranged for a public announcement where he would reveal his identity.

Indeed, he planned it far enough in advance that Shigure made the trip to see the spectacle.

Shigure had to snort at the idiocy of the fool. Really, he needn't have bothered making any special preparations—the fool had left himself wide open, and Shigure could have killed him by his own hand if he'd so desired.

When the fool spoke his old name out loud, it was followed almost instantly by a scream—the last sounds he would ever make.

Shigure smiled.

The story might not have gone on as long as he would have liked, but at least he had been there for the rather satisfying conclusion.

Shigure turned back, already eager to start the next tale.

The fool's face was forever engraved in the Tree of Deception that now stood where he had been.

Demon botany could do almost anything one desired, even if one was not a plant-user.

Most of the stories ended like that, sooner or later, depending on the willpower of the asker.

But almost all came seeking power in one form or another, and eventually Shigure became bored with hearing the same story over and over.

So he became more selective, only selecting those candidates whose stories provided the most potential for his favorite sorts of twists.

There was the bird demon, who had requested mind reading so that he could expand his trade in secrets—Shigure allowed him to listen, but never to use his telepathy to communicate his own thoughts to others.

And the woman who asked for the ability to transform into a more powerful state, so that she could defeat a group she had a grudge against—she could never use her abilities against anyone else.

Then there was the creature that requested a replacement for the limb it had lost in a fight with its sibling—it must accept the banished sibling back into the family.

There were a few, though, who managed to surprise even him.

One night, a man knocked on his door, dragging a wounded companion, and demanded that he save his partner. That gesture was surprising enough on its own—friendship that didn't end the instant it risked one of its principals was rare in that cruel world.

So Shigure granted the man's request, at the cost that neither one could ever see the other again.

When the man heard the price he turned instantly to leave, surprising Shigure to no end. Was the wounded one not merely a valuable partner, then? What good could a partner do if you couldn't even see them?

Curious, Shigure had called the man back, and told him that he must also take the mark of the price he had promised.

He had forced the two to stay apart, fully expecting them to be dead within the year.

They were still both very much alive, having held to the man's word.

And then there had been the Forbidden Child.

He had come the Shigure, barely out of childhood, and requested a Jagan eye.

Shigure had refused out of hand. He had no interest in assisted suicide.

But the boy had surprised him, first with his tolerance to pain, and then with his story.

Shigure had to admit that it was the most interesting story he had ever heard.

Try as he might, though, he could not think of a suitable price. He made it a policy never to take away something that was already part of the story—no, if a candidate had the self-awareness to know what he wanted, and the honesty to tell him about it, then he would not take it away. So he couldn't forbid the boy to look for his birthplace, or his heirloom.

So, instead, he deferred his payment, gaining only the boy's promise that he would return when he found at least one of the things he was looking for.

He went ahead and tried the implant. After all, he lost nothing if the boy died, and, if he somehow managed to survive, this might be the greatest story he had ever had the pleasure of twisting.

The boy did make it, somehow enduring the agony of the Jagan implant.

Shigure even kept the boy on long enough to regain some energy, and taught him the fundamentals of swordsmanship.

After all, he certainly didn't want the boy dying before he could receive his payment.

Once the boy found his birthplace, he returned to Shigure to update him on the story.

He had a sister.

That was certainly a twist.

Shigure did so love a good twist.

The boy wanted to find her, that much was clear, though he did not say so. Still, Shigure didn't want to forbid him from looking for her…no, where was the irony, the dramatic tension, in that?

No, he would be allowed to find her, all right.

He could find her, he could meet her, he could get to know her…but he could never tell her who she was to him.

Shigure's smile grew.

Yes, that would be a fitting price.

That story did indeed prove to be the most interesting one of all.

Not only had the boy survived the Jagan implant, not only had he survived and grown tremendously stronger in a very short time, but he found his sister—acted as her personal guardian angel, even!—and never once even hinted as to why.

And then, through a twist of fate, Shigure found himself facing off against the boy.

Or was it a twist of fate?

It might well also be the machinations of a storyteller to rival even himself. Who knew what lurked behind those all-concealing bandages?

Either way, Shigure was satisfied.

The story had come full circle, and all that was left was the wrapping up of loose ends.

So he did something he had never done before.

He offered to free the boy from his promise.

The only cost for that was beating him at this battle. That way, he would be sure that the boy was giving it all he had—and what good was the story otherwise?

The boy managed to kill Shigure.

That, he thought as he fell, was more than enough to fulfill the terms of the deal…though the boy himself had only moments to live.

Fortunately for the two of them, Alaric had the most advanced healing technology of the countries of demon world.

Thus each survived their death at the hands of the other.

To Shigure's surprise, though, the boy did not immediately take the chance to reveal himself to his sister.

He found that it annoyed him, niggling at the back of his mind like a toothache, the story begging to be completed.

Even by the Demon World Tournament, he still had not told her, and was showing no signs of doing so.

It frustrated Shigure to no end.

He was supposed to be the one manipulating the threads of fate…and here, this mere amateur was interfering with his own story!

So when Shigure was beaten by the plant-user, he finally realized the truth.

He had come to the end of his story.

He had spent his whole life playing people's lives like instruments, twisting their stories into forms that pleased him and him alone—forms that always involved a dramatic use of irony.

He should have known that his fate would come in kind.

Now that his own twist had come, courtesy of his best project ever, he had nothing else left to live for.

So when his opponent refused to kill him, he took matters into his own hands, and jumped.

Congratulations. You have bested me, Hiei.