"Hey, Jas! Over here!"

He picked his way deftly through the bar's evening crowd, quicky reaching the table where a number of the young men of the village, including most of his own friends, were gathered. Taking a seat in an empty chair, he mock-glared at the friend who'd shouted his name, a large, solid man with a head of fiery red hair. "Alright already, Raff, they can probably hear you all the way in Harmonia..."

"Hell, then it'd be a welcome change for them, wouldn't it? Something to listen to other than their prissy priests for a change!" Appreciative laughter erupted all around the table.

"Ah, whatever..." Jas grabbed one of the many half-full mugs that littered the table and took a swig. It was cheap beer, of course; they couldn't afford anything else in the quantities they drank. And like cheap beer everywhere, it tasted just a step up from sewer water. But it was wet, cold, and alcoholic, and that was all they asked for. After all, Banner Village was a nice place to live, but it wasn't exactly known for it's creature comforts.

"Oh yeah... you people heard?" That from Tath; he had a job loading and offloading cargoes for one of ships that ran between Radat and Banner. He was lean, but not in the way Jas himself was lean; his leanness made his look shifty, rather than lithe. The way he looked practically screamed "I am a crook!", which couldn't have been further from the truth -- Tath was very big on morality and such, though Jas privately doubted Tath'd meet many crises of faith lugging grain sacks. He was a rather nice guy, though, if a bit too excitable.

"You daft or something, Tath? How would we know what you're talking about 'less you tell us first?" Raff bellowed good-naturedly. The big man had a sharp tongue and not nearly enough self-control, but the residents of Banner Village were more or less used to him. The children adored him. "So the heck is it, man? Spill it!"

"It's big news, Raff, big news." Tath's eyes shone with excitement. "Everyone's talking about it up in Radat. They say.." He licked his lips. "..they say Jowston and the Highlands are going to war with each other again."

The dark-haired man sitting opposite Tath raised an eyebrow. "For the fifth time this week? Impressive, even for them.."

"Ha, ha, Kayne. So you did hear?" Tath seemed a bit sour, but it passed just as quickly as it came. Kayne usually heard all the rumours first anyway, what with him being a trader out of Gregminster. Whenever he was in Banner, the dark-haired man would stop by and have a few rounds of beer with "the boys", as well as join in the occasional bar brawl.

"I've heard that rumour four times in as many days, Tath. Depending on which version you want to believe, Toto's been razed, Kyaro's been razed, half of the Highland First Army was ambushed and killed, or giant purple wolves have invaded Muse and are currently making merry with Mayor Annabelle." Loud chuckles all around. Droll sarcasm was Kayne's forte.

Tath's eyes were shining again. "Ah, but I heard what really happened!.."

Jas chuckled softly at Tath's enthusiasm, and couldn't resist tossing in a verbal poke of his own. "That's what they all say..."

"Aw, shaddap, Jas.." Laughter, in part due to the distinct whiny tone of Tath's rejoinder. "..anyways. I heard from this guy up in Radat name of... was it Rikmon? Rachman?.. whatever. Anyway, he told me that neither side's really done anything yet, mind, though contact with Toto's a tad iffy or something, but they're definitely gearing up for something, something big. Cost me a pretty penny, too," he said, shaking his less-than-full purse to emphasize the point.

"You had a pretty penny, Tath? Will wonders never bloody cease!" More laughter.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever... anyway, I heard from this other guy, some soldier from further up north, about what the whole thing's about. Apparently.." Tath leaned forward, and lowered his voice, which had the effect of making him look and sound a bit silly. "..the city-states ambushed some Highland brigade up at Tenzan Pass, wiped 'em out almost to a man. The townsfolk up at Kyaro and L'Renouielle are crying bloody murder over it."

Silence for a moment. "Must admit, it sounds more plausible than most of what I've heard.." Kayne mused, taking another quaff of sewe-- erm, beer. "..but it still doesn't sound quite right. What did this soldier say was the name of this brigade?"

"Eh?" Tath tilted his head, sifting through his (sieve-like, according to Raff) memory. "Uhh.. the Unicorn Brigade, or some such.. why are you laughing?"

"Hahahahaha!!.. oh, sorry.." Kayne choked back a stray giggle before continuing. "The Unicorn Brigade... heeheehee... well, now I know you're wrong, Tath. The 'Unicorn Brigade' is a Highland training cadre!..haha.. it's full of nothing but young volunteer teens. Oh yeah, Jowston's going to attack that brigade.. hahahahaha!!.."

Most of the table had joined Kayne in laughter, with the exception of Tath, who was wearing the faintly bemused and resigned expression of someone who's just realized he's made a fool of himself as he downed his thirteenth mug of beer. Beside him, Raff seemed to be saying something to Tath, which Jas couldn't make out; undoubtedly more teasing. And Tath, of course, just replied the way he always did in this situation, once past his tenth mug of cheap beer. He sighed, then hit Raff.

The bar brawl that followed was pretty much like all the others before it; fast, furious, amazingly localized, and of varying durations for different participants. Kayne extricated himself from the mess after throwing a few punches, whereas Tath would likely be in it to the bitter end. The stupid thing was that Tath was usually one of those still standing at the end of the fight, mostly because the thin guy was tougher than he looked, and because once past his tenth mug of beer, not even a 'moral paragon' like Tath was above a few groin shots.

This time, the brawl lasted less than a minute for Jas; in the midst of the free-for-all, he (good-naturedly, of course) punched Raff, and Raff (just as good-naturedly, and with a wide grin on his face to boot) punched Jas right back, sending him stumbling right out of the fracas. Once he'd recovered his balance, he took one look at the ongoing fight, gingerly prodded his jaw, and decided to just head for the bar and get a drink instead.

Motioning to the barkeeper, Jas took a seat near the end of the bar. He prodded his jaw again, and was rewarded only by a stabbing pain that told him that his jaw wasn't exactly broken, but was definitely going to make itself felt for the next few days. Raff always got too bloody overenthusiastic in these things.. which is why, he thought wryly, he should have known better than to throw a punch at him. But what the heck, if you didn't get into the spirit of things, where was the fun in it?

He turned to the barkeeper, about to order, only to be interrupted by a soft female voice from his right. Before he fully registered this fact, the barkeeper was already nodding and turning away. He blinked, then looked to his right.

The woman was still facing straight ahead, hunched slightly over the counter her elbows were resting on, but her eyes were turned towards him as she sipped from a glass of red wine. She had platinum blonde hair, cut close to her head, disheveled; her clothing, all in snowy whites, seemed cut along similar lines as the shoulder-shrouding half-cape and tabard-like overshirt favoured by the Matilda Knights up north. By her side, she wore a fine sword with an intricately carved design on the hilt that seemed to shift in his field of vision, such that he couldn't quite make out what it was supposed to be a design of. But even disregarding that oddity, it seemed too fine a weapon for even most prosperous adventurers or mercenaries to be holding. Briefly, he toyed with the idea that she might actually be a Matildan White Knight, but quickly dismissed that idea as total idiocy; even here in Banner Village, the prejudices of Lord Gorudo of Rockaxe were well-known. There were probably other possibilities, but even two mugs of watery beer had some kind of effect on his thought processes, and he knew it. He gave up and mentally labelled the woman "mystery".

A heavy thud -- the barkeeper setting a bottle down beside him -- startled Jas out of his mildly alcohol-fogged contemplation. He'd poured himself a glass and raised it halfway to his mouth before it occurred to him that he didn't know just what he was drinking; and he almost sprayed out a mouthful of wine when he read the label of the bottle. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the "mystery" smiling -- a faint, sleepy smile that, had he been more sober and less shocked, would probably have reminded him vaguely of an amused fox. Disbelieving, he turned towards her, an eyebrow raised.

She just raised an eyebrow back. "What, you really wanted to keep drinking that sewer water?"

Some of his shock subsiding, Jas replied, "You've drunk some of the beer before?"

She leisurely shook her head, taking a sip of her wine. "Nahh. But I could smell it all the way from here. Didn't think the walking wounded like you would really want that kind of swill to drink, ne?" That smile was still on her face.

"So you buy me Scarlet Moon red wine instead." He shook his head, but drained his glass anyway. "You are paying, right?"

Still smiling, she nodded. He grunted in acknowledgement.

He refilled the glass, watching the blood-crimson liquid splash and refract on it's transparent walls. "One of the most bloody expensive Scarlet Moon -- nah, check that, Toran wines. Emperor Barbarossa's private vineyard's bounty itself. Even more expensive now he's dead." He raised the glass and drank from it. "At least the old man left something behind in the history books. Best wine in history, just like the most incredible garden anyone ever saw. Both dead with him now, eh? We must be polishing off a good half of what's left."

The woman drained her glass, refilled, replied. "I heard President Lepant's been thinking of reopening the vineyards, though they aren't doing as well. Maybe there'll soon be Scarlet Toran vintage or something." They shared a derisive snicker. "But the garden's definitely gone, like the man himself. Like the whole Scarlet Moon Empire." She drained, replied, motioned for another bottle. In the background, Raff was letting out loud whoops of delight, probably as he clobbered combatants left and right.

Jas blinked. "How many of those have you drunk?"

The woman blinked. She took another sip, then mumbled, "Don't really know.. how many bottles've I got beside me?"

He peered past her and counted the empty bottles stacked on the bar counter. "Five."

"Then I've had seven. This'd be my eighth." So saying, she drained and refilled again. She shifted in her seat slightly; had he been any more drunk, he might have missed her slight wince of pain, or the way she favoured her right side for a moment.

"Something wrong with your side?" he asked; she tilted her head curiously for a moment, then the faint foxy smile returned to her face. "Nothing wrong a night's rest wouldn't fix," she replied. "This clothing's thicker than it looks." Someone let out a vaguely high-pitched yowl -- Tath's ruthless streak was showing itself again.

"So you got that injury from..."

"Got it as spoils of war," she cut in pleasantly, "Same as the cash I'm using to pay for all this wine. Speaking of 'war'..." The smile changed slightly, still sleepy, but now more catty than foxy. "...you lot are having your own little war back there, eh?" Drain, refill.

The rafters shook slightly as Raff slammed someone into a wall, eliciting a faint smile from Jas. "Yeah, I guess you could say that." Somehow, when he hadn't been paying attention, the one bottle in front of him had multiplied into three, two empty and one nearly so. He wondered vaguely if wine bottles could mate, especially endangered species of wine bottles. "But hell, war's everywhere these days, isn't it? Jowston, the Highlands, Toran, Faleena, Harmonia, those bleedin' Grassland tribes, the whole damn mess of the Nameless Countries..."

"Yeah... yeah." She sipped at her wine; her expression had changed somehow, but by now he was too drunk to tell exactly how and he knew it. Somewhere behind, Kayne could be heard taking a bet from some traveller on whether Raff or Tath would be the last man standing; a bet he was sure to win, since usually both were still standing at the end. "That's the real problem with war, you know." He turned back to the woman; if he hadn't been so drunk, he might have been able to read the complicated emotion that showed through her expression. But he was so drunk, so he just listened as she continued.

"That's the real problem with war... that's there's always too damned much of it." She drained the last of her tenth bottle of Scarlet Moon. Behind them, another high-pitched scream rang out as Tath struck again.

His only response was to toss back the last of his wine. Scuffling sounds continued to be audible in the bar, which had heard the same sounds many times before.

After a moment, the woman stood, tossing a bulging pouch onto the bar counter. The smile was back, that faint, sleepy, foxy grin.

"I've got a room upstairs. Coming?" With that, she turned and headed up the stairs, still smiling. A heartbeat later, a slow grin spread across Jas' face, and he followed, Raff's loud, booming laughter and numerous crashing sounds resounding behind him.

Behind them all, the barkeeper claimed the purse, and began clearing away the empty bottles. Barkeepers see and hear a lot of things, because people forget they are there. But barkeepers never say anything, never tell of what they see or hear. Because barkeepers, by and large, remember that they are barkeepers. It is not their job to worry about other peoples' lives.

After a while, you learn to laugh at a lot of things.

"Don't you all feel cold at all in that get-up?" The smile was on her face, confident, cocky, mocking.

"Damare!" Incensed, the three women in revealing Chinese battle dress rushed at her, quarterstaves at the ready.

*thwock*

*thwock*

*smack* *thwockthwockthwockthwock thwock*

"Heh.. got careless." She gingerly probed her side with her fingers and winced. No broken ribs, thankfully, and it felt like it'd be fine by morning. It still hurt like hell. But the smile was still on her face.

She hunched down by the corpse at her feet, addressing it. "My, you're a real bleeding heart, aren't you?" she asked banteringly, her eyes on the bloody gaping ruin that was left of the woman's chest. In the midst of it, a pulsating red mass with numerous holes shredded in it was vaguely visible, it's movement slowing, crimson (black in the too-pale moonlight) staining the remaining shreds of cloth over the corpse's one intact breast, steam rising from the cooling remains.

"Well, I guess you won't be feeling cold any more.." Chuckling softly to herself, she divested the corpse of a bulging purse. She wiped her sword clean on the flap of cloth between the corpse's legs (the only cloth on the dead body not already stained by blood), and quickly relieved the other two dead bandits of their purses as well.

Then she walked away, in the too-pale moonlight, leaving three pairs of sightless, shocked eyes behind her. She was smiling, a faint, sleepy smile.

Behind that smile, perhaps three pairs of sightless, shocked eyes still stared. Or perhaps not.

Morning found Anita on the docks of Banner Village, paying a fisherman for passage to Radat.

"It'll be just about another twenty minutes afore we leave, so if you'll just make yourself comfortable or something, miss.." She nodded her thanks at the fisherman, whose words trailed off as he hopped back up onto the pier to load the last of the supplies he was bringing along. Resting her pack on her lap, she took a seat near the prow of the medium-sized boat, pulling up the hood of her short cloak to shield her eyes from the glare of reflected sunlight.

The river wasn't a particularly large one; from one bank to the other, it was barely seventy meters across, though it widened out closer to Radat. Most rivers of this size would never have been able to support a fishing village the size of Banner; especially a village that, like Banner, was otherwise landlocked and surrounded by badlands teeming with bandits of all descriptions. Trade with Gregminster helped, but Banner, for the most part, owed it's existence to the swift, turbulent current the river gained once past the Radat dam; a current that forced the larger fish that escaped the nets at Radat by staying near the deep riverbed to swim near the surface, a current the fluctuations of which speeded the transport of light- and medium-weight boats up and down the river; a current which just conveninently seemed to pacify not a hundred meters from Banner Village itself, providing easy docking for boats and a bountiful catch for fishermen. Without the plentiful fish and the shipping lanes from Radat that the river made possible, Banner would not survive. The river was Banner's lifeblood, flowing in a fevered stream, then slowing, peaceful, it's true urgency temporarily hidden.

And, of course, it was deep as well.

She wouldn't have known any of this just from gazing out over the calm, placid waters that seemed almost to spread out from the docks. The sunlight glinting off the water's surface did much to belie the depth of the river, water reaching down, down, down to where the sunlight could not reach. Still waters run deep, and do things when you least expect them to.

She felt vaguely drowsy; the gentle swaying motion of the boat and the soft caress of the incoming sea-breeze combined to lull her closer and closer towards sleep. A moment's vague consideration told her that the trip would take almost an hour anyway and was quickly swept away, her eyelids already closing as she leaned back against the sturdy side of the boat...

Low buzz of conversation, getting nearer.

"Wait, there's another lady who wants to go north with us... do you mind if we take her?"

"Sure! No problem with that, I guess."

Her eyelids flicked open.

"You know, you'd simply be useless at infiltrating enemy camps."

"...WHAT?! What the heck do you mean by that?! Are you trying to say I'm not good enough or something?!"

"Oh, not that, it's all that red hair of yours. Any enemy soldier'd be able to see it from a mile away, and then they'd all run away screaming from you. And then how would you infiltrate them?"

"...ahh, you're doing it again!! Anita, I thought I asked you to stop teasing me the last time!.."

"But it's just so much fun, Val!.."

"Miss? We've got another lady that's on her way to Radat... you don't mind if she comes along with us, do you?"

A small fraction of her mind wondered why the fisherman seemed to feel obliged to ask each passenger if they minded the other passenger. Most of her mind was frozen, locked, leaden at the sight of a head full of vibrant, flaring, luxurious red hair. Her voice answered for her, calm and even, seeming almost to spread out from her lips in a gentle flood.

"No problem... there's no problem with that at all."

Calm waters hide depth, and turbulent raging.

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