Disclaimer: RK isn't mine
AN: I was watching Ghost in the Shell on the 10 hours of flight to my new place, and I thought about what that phrase (ghost in the shell) means. So I came out with this short fanfiction, taken from the time when Kanryuu killed the Oniwabanshu members with Gatling gun. Originally, I only wrote a small paragraph about how ghosts are lurking in bullet shells, but then I decided to turn it into a fanfic. So here I am, alone in a foreign airport, checking facebook and posting fanfic, lol. Bear the mistakes since I wrote this in a plane and I didn't bother to crosscheck everything. I know shells are usually used to describe shotgun ammo, but I think all kinds of ammo have shells, so I just take it generally. Also, I know that shooting requires skills as well, but I just want to write something like this. I hope you like it, and don't forget to review for me!
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Shells
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Himura Kenshin never really liked guns.
Obviously, when he was still in Ishinshishi, he had learned a little bit about firearms. Organisations all over Japan at that time competed against each other go get their hands on those guns, even the Shinsengumi, who was famous with their Japanese ideals. He might be a conservative man without he, himself, even realizing it, but guns made him feel as if the discipline of a blade, and the wisdom in it was no longer valid in the future. It was true that he hated killing, but he liked kenjutsu, the discipline and the teachings it brought.
He hated the sound of explosives, which reminded him about his own mistakes that cost him the most precious person in his life. Moreover, he hated the blank expression of the gun shooters on the battlefield. Their ki no longer showed the spirit of true assassins, let alone true warriors. They looked like little kids who watched a pretend murder in a kabuki show rather than men who bravely marched into the war field, betting all their lives and their death for their principles.
He hated that a tiny, cold cylinder could determine a human's life. He hated that it was as simple as pulling a trigger, or turning the handle.
He always thought that there was a vicious ghost lurking in every bullet shell.
These ghosts, they whispered comforting, misleading words in your ears as you pulled the trigger and released the bullet. They covered your eyes so that you didn't see the agony in the eyes of the man desperately breathing his last air, or how his muscles tightened in pain when the bullet piercing in, or how the blood gushed out of the tiny hole of the body like a grand fountain, covering the sweating body as the dying gasped in endless torturous sensations and slowly felt the numbness and coldness taking over.
They made it in such a way that killing a soul is so easy and so quickly that without realizing it, you have lost respect towards life. When you take a life without any effort, you never realized that your hand was black, drenched in rotten blood. It was too easy that you hide yourself behind the power of the shells, and before you know it, you have turned into a coward, and those who have died in your hands will die in vain, because you never learned anything from their death, other than the knowledge that with technology, killing had become an easy job and life became even more worthless that it already was.
But from all, he hated a person who killed with a gun and then laughed as if they owned the world.
When you never felt how the skin and flesh was gruesomely torn open, or how the veins and muscles popped out one by one, or how the human bones crushed against the sharpness of your blade, you never really killed someone.
When you didn't have the blood of a dying man covering your skin and your clothes, leaving a strong, nauseating and horrifying stench behind for the rest of your life, you never really killed someone.
When you didn't feel the last blast of emotion coming out of the spirit within a brave man right before he passed, you never really killed someone.
And that was sad, because the frightened guy in front of him had caused four honourable men to die, and he even laughed about it.
He would never let their death be in vain. He would make sure the coward knew that the four Oniwabanshu members had defeated his Gatling gun.
"H… Help…"
Kenshin ran towards the coward, anger filled him up, and he actually tried so hard not to flip his sakabatou blade, which he was sure would glide smoothly against his neck, severing it completely from his head.
No, not for him. He wasn't worthy of death.
"GO BEG TO YOUR MONEY!" He screamed and with a quick swing, the guy was unconscious, on the floor.
Himura Kenshin never really liked guns, a killing machine that seemed to be more effective than swords and spears. He decided that he would hate it more than other killing devices, until someone could manage to put his heart into it, so that if someone had to die because of them, his death could teach his assassin a little more about life. After all, that was the art of killing he learned before.
He looked at the four lifeless bodies, and Aoshi, frozen in the middle of the room, wondering what that young man's life would become.