Title: Identity
Rating: PG and Squickfree!
Words: 494
Genre: Introspective (for a not so bright zombie)
Summary: We are what we do best.


Real legends always have to make themselves, the young man thought as he looked around him. Wasn't that always the way it went? He stood still and pondered it, turning the thought over in his head musingly. It struck him as quite profound and the idea of anyone thinking of him that way made him grin.

He really had never been much of a thinker.

Each day dawned with its own special shadows, hiding places to be explored. We are as we are born, we are what we are born to do. The priests said live a virtuous life, the rich men said get richer. He liked money, having been born without it. For that matter, he wasn't even greedy, it wasn't thoughts of wealth that drove him to hire himself as a mercenary.

He'd been raised dirt poor, shamefully poor even by the standards of a shamefully poor village. His father drank a lot, so did many of the men of the village. When there was no work, men drank. When there was was no food, men still drank. And his father had been no exception. And, as no exception, when he drank he came home and abused his wife, abused his son. And they learned to live with it as best they could, never having known any other life.

Money didn't change who you were. But it was more fun than being poor.

Bankotsu liked to have fun. He liked being who he was, he liked what he did. And he was very proud to say he did it better than most. Other people thought the same, it seemed. He and his little band of comrades has acquired a fearsome reputation. People whispered stories about them, stories that grew with each telling until it was no longer ten men he'd slain with a single blow, it was twenty, it was thirty. Stories have a way of doing that.

He was awfully young to have acquired such a legendary status.

But it wasn't a bad thing to be the best at what you did. Better than toiling for years in the fields, or hunched over a workbench. It was better than money, it was better than sex with the finest whore. It was identity. It was what he wanted to be.

Now he stood in the middle of a dirt road while ribbons of blood mapped the earth and pooled around his feet. The dry sandy soil drank in the gory stain, thirsty for any hint of life in this barren place. A light wind stirred the back of his hair, made the clothing on the corpses flutter, a broken banner waving in the breeze. It beckoned to him, already he was thinking of the next time. There would always be a next time, a next job, another opportunity to make his legend grow.

Planted in grave soil, nourished by blood and fed by his own brand of confidence, yes. It would grow.

Sorry forgot my lj-cut the first time. I should be spanked.