========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996 22:43:19 -0500 Reply-To: "Sean A.Simpson" Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: "Sean A.Simpson" Subject: Shapes in Shadows 2/4 See part one for disclaimer and copyright notice. Shapes in Shadows by Sean A. Simpson Part Two "Not much. He's a very good man, and one of the best warriors of the past thousand years. He should be, considering who his teachers were. Angus was friends with MacLeod's first teacher, a man who was last known as Ramirez, and who was killed by the Kurgan. After learning of the Kurgan's death in 1985, Angus went to find MacLeod, to find out what kind of man he was. He came back a month later and said that he was satisfied." "Who were MacLeod's other teachers?" "Nakano, for one. Angus also studied with him." I nodded. "Anyway," Fei continued, "Nakano was killed around 1650. By who, only MacLeod knows. He didn't even tell Angus who it was." "Wait...I remember Angus mentioning that Nakano was born in 1250." Fei nodded. "Well, that would mean that he was a mere four hundred when he died, and only a little over two hundred when Angus studied with him. Isn't that kind of young for your kind?" "Not really. Seiichi, Angus, and I have all managed to survive for much longer than most Immortals. I'm nearly two thousand, Seiichi is nearly one thousand, and Angus is...one of the oldest of our kind. He says he's four hundred or four thousand, depending on who he's talking to, but I've always thought that he might be older than that." "'Depending on who he's talking to? What do you mean by that?" "Most of the oldest of our kind are very actively hunted by certain power-hungry others of our kind. Seiichi and I both receive more than our fair share of challenges due to our age, and we have been lucky so far. Angus is twice as old as I am, and there are only a few Immortals who have managed to survive as long as I have. Some have done so by remaining on holy ground, such as an Immortal priest I met once in Paris. Others have stayed alive because of skill and luck. But Angus...if anyone is a sure bet to be the last and receive the Prize, it's him. Blind drunk and armed with a dagger, he could probably beat me." She smiled at a memory. "He did it once already." "How?" "I'll be damned if I can ever figure it out. He made a boast in a bar where there were about six of us, took my dagger, and proceeded to beat all of us one by one." She smiled again. "That was shortly after the two of us left Shaolin. Personally, I think he was faking his drunkenness, but he did have an awful lot to drink that night." "What about you? What's your story?" "Angus found me in the Chinese wilderness when I was a baby, and took me to a nearby village to find a wet nurse. Knowing what I was, he decided to raise me as his own daughter and teach me about our kind when the time came. "I was about twenty when it happened. I was trampled by a runaway ox while working the fields. Angus found me and took me back to the house, where he explained the rules of the Game and what it meant to be Immortal. Then he gave me my first sword and taught me how to fight. "Two years later an Immortal came to the village looking for the young one he'd heard of. He challenged me. Angus did not interfere, although he knew very well that I could lose. I defeated the man and took my first head. Angus said that I was ready, then, to head out into the world and live on my own. "I didn't see Angus again until the beginning of the eighth century. By then I'd seen all of Asia and much of the Middle East and Africa, and studied under two teachers beyond Angus." "A question. Did you call him Angus back then?" Fei laughed. "No, when he raised me in China, he was known as Kwon Shen. I didn't start calling him Angus until after he took that name at the end of the sixteenth century. But he's always been Father to me. "Anyway, when I met Angus again, he was heading to Shaolin temple to study there. He'd heard of the fantastic arts being developed there and wanted to see the truth of it himself. He asked me to come along and I agreed. "When we arrived there we encountered an Immortal dressed as a monk at the gate. His name was Kei Li, and he's been at the monastery for ninety years, studying. He took Angus and me under his wing, seeing our way into the temple." "Didn't the people at the temple notice you weren't aging?" "Yes, but no one questioned it. Apparently Kei Li had told them of his nature, and that it had to be kept secret. That's why there are no stories of Immortals among the legends of the Shaolin. "Angus and I studied at Shaolin temple for two hundred years. After that, we traveled together for a while, and then we parted ways. He went eastward, to Japan, while I headed south, to India. In India I found my way to a yogi, who taught me yoga and inner peace, philosophy. After that I found my way to Southeast Asia, where I learned about boats and sailing. There was prejudice there because I was a woman, but I proved myself more than capable to them. "After that, I built my own small boat, loaded it with food, and set sail for a land to the south that Angus had told me about once. After four months of sailing I arrived on the coast of what we now know as Australia. "I lived and traveled in Australia for seventy years, learning the ways of the bush, and about the Dreamtime. It was a magical experience, but eventually I grew homesick. I returned to the spot where I had first landed, only to discover that my boat was gone, destroyed by the ravages of time. I constructed another boat and set sail for the land to the north, Asia. "It was now the beginning of the thirteenth century. I reached the Chinese mainland after five months on the ocean. I wandered westward, toward the village I had known a thousand years previous, only to find that it was long overgrown, the village abandoned, destroyed by raiders. I set off to see the lands further west. "I met Angus in Constantinople, which was where he reencountered the Kurgan. I don't know what happened, or how that fight ended, but I do know that Angus had had him beaten and would have killed him. But the Kurgan escaped -- how, Angus has never said. "We spent twenty years together in Constantinople. Angus taught me of the arts of the ninja that he had learned in Japan, and told me of his friend there, Seiichi. After those twenty years, I set off to see the rest of Europe. "In many places I was rejected and treated as a foreigner, which I was. I didn't have the good fortune Angus had, to be able to blend in in many countries. He has been able to pass for European, Asian, and even Native American. He was able to pass himself off as a Japanese due to his behavior and utter lack of an accent when he was there in the sixth century BC, in the first century BC, and in the eleventh century BC. When he lived in China, no one questioned that he was Chinese; now, no one questions that he's Scottish." "What about his eyes?" I gestured vaguely. "You mean the folds? He used a little bit of some kind of makeup; no one ever noticed. Beyond that, there is more to him than mets the eye. When he was in Australia, he studied with someone called 'Dreamwalker.' When he was in the Americas, in the sixteenth century BC, he studied with a shaman, and then again in the eighteenth century, he studied with an old Aztec sorceror. He's also studied with an Immortal Egyptian sorceror who was reputed to be able to control men's minds, and he studied with Nakano, whom you already know about." "Are you saying that Angus is some kind of sorceror? That magic is real? Angus called Nakano an 'illusionist,' but I thought he meant..." I gestured like a stage magician. "Magic is very real. How do you explain...us?" Fei gestured at herself and the two men in the living room, who were bawling some lusty-sounding Irish ballad that my grandfather used to sing. "I have seen some strange things, and nothing is so powerfully, frighteningly magical as the Quickening. If you ever see it, be prepared...it is truly something unique." Fei got up and replenished our tea, and then continued. "As for Angus being a sorceror... who knows? Nakano's magic was very real, although it was illusion, and Angus studied under four other people of a mystical bent. The shaman may have just taught him to heal, and Dreamwalker might have just taught him philosophy and life in the bush. But I do know that Angus is virtually impossible to track, even for the best of us, and that he can move with nearly superhuman speed. "To abruptly change the subject, do you know how to use the weapons you sell?" Fei led me into Angus' practice room, where I had only been once before. The room was lined with weapons -- Japanese, Chinese, Irish, Scottish, English, Spanish, German, Italian, French, Polish, Russian, Indian, Arabic, and others I couldn't name. Fei selected a rapier and main-gauche, and I picked my favorite weapon, paired wakizashi. I thought I was pretty good -- I've won awards for martial arts and fencing in New York, and I led my college's fencing team to a championship. But Fei was incredible. I could barely block her blows, and a couple did sneak through my guard and came close to touching me, while I couldn't even touch her. After a few minutes, Fei called a halt, dropped her weapons, said she'd go easy on me, and told me to attack her -- with my weapons. She dodged my first attacks, then suddenly I found myself lying flat on my back with one wakizashi lying three feet from my hand and the other in Fei's hand, pointed at my throat. "And Angus is better than you?" I said as I got up, utterly amazed. "Much. Now, do you know staff forms?" she asked with an evil grin. An hour and a half later, I staggered out of the practice room with Fei behind me, looking about as winded as if she'd walked down to Tony's to pick up a pizza. We walked into the living room to find Angus looking only slightly drunker than he had been when we'd left, while Seiichi was snoring on the couch. Angus saw us and said, "You know, he never could hold his drink. Now, why don't you take him home?" Angus smiled slightly. Fei sighed and picked up Seiichi as if he were a child, then made her goodbyes and left, carrying Seiichi over her shoulder. Angus laughed. "She's stronger than she looks." ======================================================== Sean A. Simpson -- Trekkie, X-Phile, Highlander, etc. stsas02@moravian.edu http://www.moravian.edu/people/students/stsas02 Rogue FW for Duncan and Methos Head DFW for the first Highlander Gathering bearing a @}-`--,--- and a /| O====[]=====================-- \| "rathlaHebj wa' neH" (There can be only one -- Klingon) "Pat Buchanan is somewhere between Archie Bunker and Hitler's Bunker." --- Michael Feldon