Hokuto no Ken Scrap Mountain

Scrap Mountain (北斗の拳イチゴ味 五車星GAI伝 其之二 SCRAP MOUNTAIN) is a one-shot published in 2015. Written by Kawata Yushi and drawn by Yukito, this story devoted to the childhood of Fudô is the second installment of the Goshasei GAI-den and is part of the series of end-of-volume gaiden from Ichigo Aji. It is collected in the fourth volume of Ichigo Aji.

Synopsis

Raoh threatens the children to force Fudô to become the beast he once was, for he needs that oni blood before his duel against Kenshiro...

The oni child

The story opens on the scene from the original manga. Raoh, who has never feared but one man, demands that Fudô become once again the savage beast of old. Fudô asks him whether he felt fear at the thought of facing Kenshiro. Raoh then threatens to kill all the children, and Fudô ultimately accepts the fight. The story then goes back to his birth. In a mountain village, an infant not yet seven days old is already as large as a bear, and it is said he tore open his mother's belly coming into the world. The villagers see him as an oni child and blame the fires and ill omens plaguing the region on him. No one dares kill him, as legend promises a curse upon the entire lineage of whoever would attempt it. The elder then decides to entrust his life to the mountain god. The bearers abandon him in the forest, telling themselves that an infant will not last three days there.

When night falls, a wolf descends upon the cradle. An old woman stops it and takes in the child. Cast out of her town as a witch because she was born with the gift of seeing the future, she tells the child that they are alike. She confirms that he is an oni and that his path will be stained with blood, but adds that the reason this blood will flow depends on him alone. Her gift also shows her what comes next: the world will meet its end, and it will be ruled by strength. She then leaves him with this instruction: "Never forget that this strength, you must use it for the sake of innocent lives."

The child grows up by her side along with the animals of the forest. She names him Fudô. At twelve years old, the boy still barely speaks; she, for her part, begins to cough and weaken. In the village, hunters keep disappearing, initially blamed on bears, until smoke spotted on the mountain betrays a fire. The elder realizes the oni child survived, and a hunting party sets out with every rifle in the village. The hunters find Fudô, wound him with gunfire, and are about to finish him off with a bullet to the head when the old woman steps in and takes the shot in his place. She orders Fudô to flee and dies on these words: in the end, she was not alone. Fudô then massacres the hunting party, a torn-up tree serving as a club, and not a single man returns to the village. The fire born that day burns for three days and three nights, engulfs the village, and vanishes along with the oni, so the legend says.

The world is then engulfed in nuclear flames, and the story returns to its starting point. Having become once more the oni that Raoh demanded, Fudô forces his opponent back, before the King of Fists' men cut him down. Before dying, he tells him that as long as fear remains etched into his body, he will never defeat Kenshiro, and that a man who knows nothing of sorrow will never achieve victory. Raoh then turns to the weeping children and tells them that their father has won. Fudô finally asks Kenshiro to take care of these children and of this era: this is the dearest wish of Fudô of the Mountains, and the final page reprises the old woman's words, for the sake of innocent lives, while a squirrel takes shape in the clouds. A bonus page closes the volume by replaying the canonical squirrel scene, using panels taken from the original manga.

The use of strength

Scrap Mountain is the second installment of the Goshasei GAI-den, after Red Blue. The story begins with the scene from the original manga before a long flashback. Where Red Blue told the story of two children promised a destiny they would never reach, this one shows a man who kept the promise made to the woman who raised him.

Everything rests on a single phrase and its final echo. The old woman never denies what Fudô is. She affirms, on the contrary, that his nature matters less than the use he will make of his strength. At the opening, Raoh demands exactly the opposite, the return of limitless brutality. Yet Fudô agrees to become that beast again in order to save the children, and thus keeps the promise at the very moment he seems to betray it.

The reversal affects Raoh as much as Fudô. The defeated man's final words shake the victor, to the point that Raoh himself declares to the children that their father has won. Fudô dies having passed on what matters most, and his defeat becomes a victory, that of a man who knew sorrow. The introductory page of the volume adds a lighter note, with Yukito joking about having chosen, after the handsome boys she is accustomed to, a hero whose childhood was impossible to imagine.