From: <Coorlim@yahoo.com> Subject: [PW!] Man and mankey Date: Wednesday, July 28, 1999 7:12 PM Two figures truged through the torrential downpour, hand in hand. The figure on the left was a young man, his brown hair plastered to his face by the falling rain. He wore a simple black pancho. The shorter, hairier figure on the right wore the man's straw rainhat, frequently glancing up at his friend with a simple, happy, admiration. There was a simple reason the man had given his friend the hat. Few things smell worse than a wet mankey. The man called the mankey Ming Tiao after his lumbering, capering, gate. The mankey didn't mind. He saw the man as the leader of his tribe, a tribe that numbered from two to six as pokemon came and went. Several months ago, the man had found the mankey near death in the woods, severely beaten by a pokemon who's trainer had been looking to wean his pokemon near the mankey's home. The man had taken the mankey in and healed him with a mixture of acupuncture and herbal remedies. Predictably, the mankey had bonded with his savior and had accompanied him ever since. The mankey called the human "Mankey", because that was all he could say. The man's name was Ikaru Moujuu, and if you asked him what he did for a living, he would have told you he walked. He walked for his health, and he walked because he was in no particular hurry. He was a wanderer with no particular place to go. Most of the time he went it alone, but from time to time he traveled with a pokemon or two. He was not a liscensed pokemon trainer, and had never used a pokemon, but he had an erie empathy with animals that made them at ease around him. A flash of lightning illuminated the man's face momentarily, revealing and old scar running from his jawline to his eye. He pointed with his free hand towards a roadside shelter up ahead, and the Mankey grunted its agreement. The pair headed towards it. Under the protective roof of the lean-to, the mankey handed the straw hat back to the man, who put his pack on the ground. Smiling at the mankey, he took a few pieces of wood from his pack and began to build a fire. "Well, Ming, what shall we have for dinner tonight?" asked Ikaru. The mankey jumped up and down excitedly, making a vauge hooting noise. "Rice it is." Ikaru removed an earthen jug and a coffee from his pack. He held the can outside the shelter for a bit to get some water, then placed it on a grate above the fire. The mankey ate a bug it had found under a bench.