What if the Seven _hadn’t_ taken the bet?
Disclaimer: The Eagle-Shooting Heroes belongs to Louis Cha, since he wrote the book, which is in Chinese. All I own is this fanfic.
Pairing: Evil x Red
Timeline: When the Seven take the bet with Sage Cho
Title: Survivor
… “Hold on.”
Evil looked at Red in surprise, leaning on his steel staff, confused. “What do you have to say, Red?”
“This bet doesn’t sound like a good idea to me…”
“You have a better idea?”
Red shook his head. “Sage Cho, I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“You have
no honor?”
“Did I say that?!” Red’s eyes
sparked angrily as he grabbed his fan. “Remember that _you_ lost to _me_ at
that wine shop!”
Sage Cho colored angrily himself. “Then what do you say we do?”
“I don’t care, just not this! I have no desire to spend six years searching in a desert for someone I don’t even _know_, train him, and then get bumped off because he pissed off the wrong person who was _very_ good at martial arts!”
“?”
“Since when could you tell the future Red?”
“Ever since I robbed that fortune-teller?”
“…”
“But we have to compete!” Jin declared. “I know! Let’s do horseback riding!” That’s a guaranteed win for me…
“We could have an eating contest.” Sheng added. * There’s no way he can use inner strength to get rid of food. *
“Woodcutting.” Ren said, using the least number of words possible to convey his message. “Fishing!” Glow added. “I won’t lose at that!”
Red and Evil sweatdropped…
“We might as well have a thieving contest while we’re at it.”
Sage Cho smiled. “I know! Why don’t we play Survivor!”
“… Survivor?” Far looked confused. “Isn’t one against seven unfair?”
“Why are you so sure you’ll win?”
“Sure, let’s take that.” Red grinned. “When do we start?”
“First we need to find a desert island…”
After a few days searching, a desert island was found. Sheng was seasick. Everyone kept a good distance away, to spare his or her own life… and health, for that matter. Glow had caught several nets worth of fish, so at least they wouldn’t starve. Pity Sheng only liked red meat.
Jin was busy gutting the fish with his whip as practice, Sage Cho was looking away, as he didn’t want to get sick, and Ren was meditating.
The island loomed in front of them. It was small and desert-like all right. Sand covered the two square miles of surface. Luckily, there was a small spring so they wouldn’t dehydrate, a few palm trees, and strangely enough, a grove of bamboo.
Hm.
Sage Cho set up camp on one side of the Island, and the Seven on the other.
“Our first test will be to survive three days without food.”
The first day stretched long ahead of them. Red and Evil were meditating – at least that’s what it looked like. Ren, you could never tell, since he didn’t talk unless absolutely necessary. Far; he was busy counting grains of sand.
“If you need six thousand grains of sand to make one brick, and I get paid two fen a brick, then how much money can I make with all the sand on our part of the island?”
“One grain of sand… two… three…”
Glow tried to tune him out as she unsuccessfully tried to meditate. She wasn’t a quiet person.
Sheng was already groaning. “I’m hungry.”
“Well, if you had eaten the fish on the boat, that _I_ cooked, we wouldn’t be having this problem!” Glow snapped back.
“Are you insulting my sister’s cooking?” Jin yelled. In an instant, his whip was flying at Sheng. Sheng managed to dodge clumsily, tripped, and fell face forwards in the sand.
Jin huffed and went to sit by Glow.
“… Two hundred and sixty-six grains, two-hundred and sixty-seven grains…”
“I need to go to the bathroom.” Sheng muttered, clutching his stomach.
“Don’t do it here! There’s a lady present!” Jin protested. He immediately covered Glow’s eyes with his hands. “Go behind that tree over there and hurry!”
“… Yes, I don’t like having my eyes covered.”
After four minutes, Glow could see again. She began attempting to meditate again. But since the sun was getting hotter, a drink of water at the spring came first.
“Four hundred and eighty-nine grains of sand…”
“Far, you’re driving me insane.”
“Would you rather I count silently?”
“Yes, that would help.”
Far quit counting out loud, and instead took out his abacus. Click, click, and click… But the click of beads monotonously was far worse.
“… Never mind, you can count out loud.”
Jin waved his hand in front of Ren’s face. “Are you there?”
No reply.
“Hello?”
Did he honestly expect Ren to talk? With a sigh, he turned around after one more wave got another drink of water, and began drawing horses in the sand.
“I’m hungry.”
“For the last time, the purpose of this game is to survive being hungry for three days! Evil, can I hit him?”
“… Certainly.”
Jin’s
attention snapped to Evil and Red. They hadn’t moved at _all_. They just sat
there with their hands together. “… What are you two doing?”
“Channeling inner strength.
We’re doing meditation as partners.” Red said. “Or we would be doing better if
you weren’t so _noisy_.”
Jin huffed and went back to drawing horses.
Glow had fallen asleep for a few hours. Once awake, she availed herself of the facilities behind a different tree – Jin kept guard in front of said tree, just in case _anyone_ dared come close – and began trying to compose poetry.
“We are seven stranded on an island, it’s all that stupid sage’s fault… shoot, that doesn’t rhyme…”
By the time night fell, everyone unanimously voted to go to sleep. They piled some palm leaves on the sand, spread their extra clothes over, and then went to bed.
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
Sometime in the early morning, a shout woke all present.
A seagull had taken Sheng for a rock, and had, well… pooped on him.
Most of the Seven went back to sleep. Ren took out his axe, chopped down another tree, and started a fire – it was pretty cold…
Hopefully the fire would keep any wild animals away too.
Sleeping was very good. It saved energy. Therefore, they slept as much as possible when they weren’t meditating.
On the morning of the fourth day, Glow prepared a feast with eight different types of fish. It was a pity there was no rice on the island, but oh well. Better something than nothing…
Sheng was so hungry that he swallowed the fish, bones and all. What a strong stomach!
Least now he wasn’t complaining about fish.
Sage Cho hadn’t shown up, so they went looking for him. Soon, they found him single-handedly fighting a lobster – and losing.
“What _are_ you doing?” Red asked.
“Trying to get food.”
“Is that our next test?”
“Sure…”
“Then we’ve already won! We had breakfast. Do you want some?”
It wasn’t in the heroes code to let other people starve… unless they _chose_ to.
Sage Cho pried the lobster off his hand after five minutes and glared at it. “… I suddenly feel I don’t want to eat this. All right.”
“We won again.” Evil said. “Do you have any more brilliant ideas?”
“I refuse to admit defeat! I’ll think of something else!”
Evil couldn’t exactly slam his staff into the sand, but it didn’t matter. The Seven went back to their side of the island.
“Can you eat seagulls?”
“… It’s easier to fish.” Glow replied.
“Fortunately, we’re surrounded by the sea. The sea has an inexhaustible supply of food.” Red yawned. “The only problem we might have is laundry… I trust everyone brought extra clothes?”
Glow nodded.
“Did I?” Jin asked.
“I pack for you, remember?”
From his carrying bag, Far took out his abacus, his scales, a few silver pieces, and four robes. “I’m good.”
Sheng blinked.
Ren did not give a verbal reply as he opened up his carrying bag and started pulling out clothing mixed with bundles of wood.
Red himself had what is commonly known as subspace pockets, therefore, it was not a problem for him. He carried Evil’s stuff as well…
“Sheng, don’t you ever think ahead?”
“Well, I’m not sleeping next to him!” Glow exclaimed.
“No one had better sleep within twenty feet of her!”
“… Jin is overprotective…”
Sheng harrumphed.
“You want to make something of it?” Jin proclaimed, grabbing his whip.
“No!”
“Good.” That was exactly what Jin had expected Sheng to say.
Red and Evil set up camp, hanging a sheet over a rope between two palm trees – where the rope and sheet came from is anyone’s guess.
“You’re sharing a tent?”
“What? We’re both guys…”
“… … … No comment on what has happened in the past and I shouldn’t reveal.” Red muttered, as Evil laughed.
“Indeed.”
There was no further conversation from that corner.
“… Seventy hundred thousand and eighty four grains of sand…”
“Far!”
“What?”
“What good is counting sand going to do?!”
“I’ll make myself a house out of sand bricks.” Far said, investigating the sap on some of the logs Ren had just chopped up. “Excellent! I need about four ounces of sand per brick!” He immediately began building a sand house.
“I’m digging a hole.” Sheng declared.
“_What_?”
“I don’t have any better ideas.”
“You can live in my hole with me.”
“NO!” Jin exclaimed. “She is not living with you! You’re a bad influence! She could gain weight!”
“What?” Glow demanded. “Who said that? If I gain weight I can’t wear my armor anymore!”
Sheng sighed.
Looked like his flirtatious attempts were being spurned once again…
Glow looked thoughtful. “Jin, see that grove of bamboo over there? We could build a boat house like we had in Jiang Nan.”
“Sounds good.”
The two of them borrowed Ren’s axe and went a-cutting. Luckily, bamboo is a very light and sturdy material and soon they had their boat. They wove a net of bamboo fiber and went fishing again.
After all, they didn’t want to eat seagulls for dinner!
“We’ll probably be stuck on this island until that bull-stubborn Sage actually wins.” Evil sighed.
Thus, shelter was a good idea… everyone was getting set up anyways.
So what was Sage Cho doing during this time?
Sage Cho was sitting in a hammock he had industriously made himself. Okay, so it wasn’t shelter, but he didn’t know that storms were notoriously common in this area…
Two days later, the hammock, the hole, and the house built of sand were all gone. It was lucky the bamboo boat had been securely tied with Jin’s whip to a few trees so it hadn’t blown away.
The tent wasn’t in good shape either.
Red looked
at the tattered remnants of cloth and sighed. “Well, we still win! The boat’s
still there!”
“It is?” Evil asked in
surprise. “Shouldn’t it have been blown away?”
“Jin’s whip is _very_ strong…” Thoughts of Jin and Glow yelling ‘help’ as the boat sped past the island and out to open sea flitted through both their minds.
Sheng was still trying to dig his way out of the sand he was now buried in. It was a wonder he didn’t asphyxiate.
“… There goes all my money.” Far sighed, looking at the ruins of the house he had been sharing with Ren. Only a few drifts of sand were left.
“Next we try _wood_.” Ren proclaimed. “That’ll probably hold up better.”
“Hope you’re right…” And so, they went back to work.
Sage Cho had nearly been blown away himself, but he had managed to cling on to a tree.
Lucky it was a strong tree…
He went over to see how the Seven Stars were doing.
“So, how’s it with you?”
“… No comment.” Cho muttered.
Sheng burst out of the sand and gasped for air. “Maybe the hole wasn’t such a good idea.”
“_You_ were living in a _hole_?”
“Why not?”
Glow sighed. * Why _does_ _he_ have to be the one who flirts with me all the time? Argh. *
“Our boat’s still here!” The third proclaimed. “So we win this bet as well!”
Cho ground his teeth. He took in the piles of sand lying around and blinked. “You were living in sand?”
“It _was_ sand brick.” Far sighed. * Better not count any more sand, I’ll just get depressed. *
He was using his scales to hammer rocks into the logs Ren was currently building into a building. It’d be small, but that was okay. At least they would have shelter.
Evil had erected a framework of bamboo for their tent, and now they were putting it back up. The stakes had been driven deep in with the help of some inner strength and a heavy staff…
They were using Evil’s staff as the center pillar of their tent. No wind would blow that heavy thing away!
Red was now brushing layers of clotted sand off both of their clothes with his fan. Evil had gone back to the spear.
At least the staff was being put to good use… right. Whatever that meant. Evil had Red as his eyes anyways…
“Our next bet will be a poetry-writing contest!”
“… Poetry?”
Evil blushed slightly. * I hope Red’s not getting any ideas… *
“Poetry?” Glow asked. She reeled in her line, a flopping silver fish on one end as she expertly gutted and filleted it with her sword. “Why poetry?”
“You could forfeit now.”
“Never!” Jin called. “I’ll say a poem right now!”
Cho’s eyebrows rose. “Oh?”
“I never knew you were a poet.” Far said, giving a particularly stubborn piece of wood a hard whack to drive in the hinges on their door.
Nice!
They _were_ civilized after all.
Evil leaned
on his spear as Sheng coughed, rubbing his eyes to get the sand out of them.
“Sure, we won’t lose!”
Jin cleared his throat, stood
to his full height of three feet, and began to recite. “There once was a
bull-nosed sage, of a more than respectable age, who challenged the Seven Stars
to a bet, and I might mention he hasn’t won yet!”
Cho colored, anger rushing to his brain and turning his eyes red as the Seven laughed.
“How dare you!!!”
“What? You said a poem…”
“Why…. Why…”
“It’s a poem, isn’t it?” Red asked, tapping Cho on the forehead with his fan. “So we win again.”
Cho ground
his teeth. “I’ll think of something else!”
“I just hope we won’t be
spending the rest of our lives on this island.” Glow remarked, sotto voce.
Cho stalked back to his side of the island.
“You know, I wonder how he’ll survive.”
“He’s a sage, he can meditate.”
“… That’s true.”
Red tossed something up in the air, sparkly. “Pity this won’t be any good here.”
“What have you got, Red?”
Red flourished a strand of silver coins. “Pity.”
“That was a good poem Jin.” Glow smiled.
“Ah, spur of the moment.” He said modestly.
Ren smiled.
Sheng’s eyes popped up. * She’s flirting with him! They’re _cousins_! *
Did he even know what flirting was?
Cho was drenched when he trudged back to shore, but he did have an armful of clams. Hm. Wonders why he hadn’t bothered to take all his heavy robes off. Oh well.
“Fish again?” Sheng asked.
“If you don’t want it, don’t eat it!” Far glared. “We don’t want to waste precious natural resources!”
“…?”
“Think that went over his head.” Evil said, helping himself to a piece of fish. “Wish we had rice.”
“Me too.”
“This is like some kind of weird diet…” Jin gulped down an entire herring. “Oh well. You’re a great cook, Glow.”
“At least we’re not having you-know-whats…”
“Shrimp?” Evil asked. “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t get mad at you.”
Red gave Evil a suspicious look, then placed a coconut in his hands. “Enjoy.”
Coconuts = milk. It wasn’t as good as ten-year-old red wine, but considering they didn’t have wine on this rock…
Where was the boat that had taken them here anyways? They hadn’t seen hide or hair of it since.
Hmm…
“…”
“Shoot!”
“What?”
“That
bloody ignorant Sage took the boat apart to build his hut! How are we supposed
to get home?”
“We could go on our boat… but
it only fits three people.” Jin said.
“Maybe his next test is getting off the island?”
“Knowing him, I wouldn’t put it past him.”
“…” Far studied the boat. “If we attach an addition here, we can fit six people.” Everyone glanced at Sheng.
“What?”
“This is like Survivor.” Red stated. “I’ll put it this way. You’ve been voted off.” He paused. “Actually, on. The rest of us will be leaving. That way, if Sage Cho beats you, he can claim he won and calm down.”
They immediately went to work on the boat.
“…” Sheng was still in shock.
“Glow! Let me have your spot!”
“Never!!!!” Glow hid behind Jin, who glowered.
“Trying to hurt my cousin?! DIE!!!!!!”
Well, unconscious Sheng can’t fight, can he? They buried him in the sand, and then the next morning, embarked back home via boat.
“Good-bye Island!”
Sage Cho was surprised when he found Sheng, but concluded that since _he_ had survived, _he_ had won! He immediately built himself a raft and left the island.
The end.
Completed 9/11/04
Yeah, there are a few smirky Chinese jokes in here…