I was staring at perhaps the ugliest being I'd ever seen. Seeing him brought on flashbacks of one of my childhood girlfriends who was more than a little hairy and, at the time, a sight that would bring up bile as I struggled to force a smile. It goes without saying, she was the village elder's daughter and frightfully rich.

However, I was soon brought back to reality when one of my captor's got a little overenthusiastic with that knife. Then it spoke. It's voice reminded me of a mixture of someone clawing the chalkboard and what I'd imagine chewing rocks sounds like, in other words, hard to bear or understand.

"Welcurm Jorul, welcurm strengur. I murst reskurst thut yoe rerteurn whet yoe'va sturlen," he grated.

I just stared at the grotesque (kobold apparently) thing. It/he/she was covered with dirty brown fur and was covered with scars from many battles (or many failed embroidery classes). In addition to his hideousness, he also was the evilest looking feller I had ever had the misfortune to get abducted by. I was surprised that it could talk and it took me awhile to ask, "Um, pardon me...but could you repeat that?" He glared at me like I was something he scraped off one of his huge, ugly feet. I felt like it too. My head still throbbed and I couldn't remember ever feeling worse, except for the time when someone bet that I couldn't down a keg of sake, I was bedridden for days and it was weeks before my mother convinced me I wasn't a fish.

Jowal translated, "His name is Don Kumacho Gergun. He is the head of the kobold mafia and he said 'welcome Jowal, welcome stranger. I must request that you return what you've stolen'." It was about then that I decided that we were indeed going to die (I've always been the optimist <very much sarcastic>). Then I really made this Kumacho fellow angry. "Um, what exactly did we steal," I asked hesitantly. After getting pummeled for a few minutes, he answered me, almost as an afterthought, (translated) "MUWAHAHA! That is very funny man! What did you steal?! This boy has stolen THE TURTLE PLANS!"

Now I was getting pretty confused. I ran it all through my mind. Ok, my little friend here has stolen some plans named after a rather slow animal, I'm being held captive by a very ugly and very evil-looking dog/man who happens to be the leader of an underground organization who, I hear, aren't renowned for their courtesy, and was feeling close to sneezing (for those of you who don't know, I've a mild allergy to dogs).

Then Jowal and Kumarcha (or was it Kamichu?) had a lengthy conversation in which the gist was, "Give me the plans!", "NO!", "Give them to me NOW!", "Are you DEAF. I said NO!" and so on to infinity. I was shocked at how much steel was in Jowal's voice. He really meant it! The plus to all this was that I could understand what Kurmarcha (Kamichu or maybe Kobacha) was saying. It was now that two very bad things happened. Firstly, Kumarcha (Kamichu, Kobacha, Kechico, or whatever the heck his name was) walked over to me and said to Jowal, "Return them or I shall torture your friend until he begs for mercy and then I shall personally devour his body while he is yet living!"

All in all, not something you want to hear unless, of course, you are a masochist with a death wish. This close it was near impossible to avoid gagging. I know it was definitely impossible to not sneeze so, being the second bad thing, I managed to only blew snot all over his face. He wasn't happy at all.

"No, I can't. Sorry Amada, but many others would die if I were to hand the plans over," Jowal responded without hesitation. I wasn't exactly ecstatic to hear those words and I made a slight mention of how I felt about that. "WHAT! We're talking about ME! Getting eaten! You bloody little punk," I stated as calmly as I could, which is to say, not very.

Kumacho (imminent death really does wonders for jogging your brain, ya know) frowned, which wasn't a very pleasing sight since it included a glimpse of his blood-stained teeth. I guessed (correctly, I might add) that he had a weakness for Amada medium rare. "I shall give you time to think over your decision boy or, as I have sworn, your friend will be nothing more than human jerky," Kumacho explained quite clearly. "I am prepared to deal with that consequence," Jowal responded coldly as he was dragged away.

Well, needless to say, I certainly wasn't prepared to be sliced, diced, and garnished as a meal for a kobold, especially not one so ugly. Kumacho gestured to my two new friends, the one with the knife and the one with the wicked kidney punch. They tossed me in a dirty, cramped cell and locked it. I could see my two guards, the friends mentioned earlier, messing around with my oar. Basically, they were playing a game similar to one I played in my childhood. It was called Besinaren and what you did was sneak up on a total stranger, hit 'em, and run away as fast as you could. It's more fun than you'd think, really.

Anyway, the kobolds were taking turns. One of them would bash the other and then he'd hand the oar over to his bud. His friend would then proceed to beat them. You had to give them credit. They could take it as well as give it out. After about an hour of this, one of them fell asleep/unconscious (not sure which really). Being deprived of anything to do, the one still capable of movement left the room.

I gathered some of the smaller bones (simply put, there were quite a few) in my cell and cast them onto the floor. Someone told me that you could read the future that way. All I could read was that I was on my way to losing my mind in the near future. I heard a heavy thud and a large figure came in, dragging an incapacitated kobold behind him. He threw the kobold over by his buddy and fetched the cell keys. He came over to the cell opened it up and said, "Nice to see you again, sir."

I blinked. I stared. No way ... it couldn't be. "Bleary?" Impossible. "What ... are you ... doing here," I managed to ask. Bleary replied simply, "Taxes. The government doesn't like to lose any money if it can help it." He passed me my oar and walked out of the room. As fond as I was of my cell, I got up and followed him. He looked like he knew his way out so I just let him lead the way. Bleary sure did look different though. Instead of the gray uniform he'd been wearing at my house, Bleary was wearing plate mail and lots of it. He also had a huge nodachi sword strapped to his back. (nodachi = a huge samurai blade, very nasty, I must say).

Ahead three guards appeared to be playing chinichiron. Bleary was able to get pretty close with all the growling and barking covering all the noise he made. He waved his left hand and all the guards collapsed. I assume he must have used a wind rune or something. So, for lack of anything better, we continued onward.

We came to a closed door and I could hear some people shouting and running towards our door. Using my brilliant mind, I concocted an idea. When the footsteps were close, I kicked the door as hard as I could, which was pretty hard indeed. It connected solidly and my victim hit the floor. Bleary ran out, saw some kobolds, and charged 'em. I confronted the guy I had doored and was fairly shocked to see Jowal lying there. Out of the corner of my eye, I could hear Bleary laughing, parting heads much like I did firewood. By the time I helped Jowal up, Bleary was finished.

We ran down the hall, which was away from the gruesomely decapitated kobolds, Bleary led us up some stairs and we all ran like heck, dodging waiters and customers alike, not caring that we were now in a rather high-class restaurant. We paused outside, glad that the only thing pursuing us now were glares and rude hand gestures.

I looked around and tried to think of why this place looked familiar. As we all leaned gasping against a wall, Jowal managed to clarify everything, "Two....River....City..." Some people shot us suspicious glances and Bleary responded with a wanna-see-my-sword-up-close look. Mysteriously, the crowd thinned pretty quickly.

We had a quick discussion and decided it would be a good idea to get the heck out of here. Five minutes and four unconscious guards later, we were heading for the hills.

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"Amada" and "Suikoden 2" are (C) Konami. This chapter was posted before January 30, 2000