Author's Note: I have returned! However, I'm despairing over my FMA fic. It'll be on hiatus until further notice – perhaps permanently. Then again, I may be randomly inspired, like I am now.
I noticed while re-reading my works, that some of my quotations marks have been lost. It only hits certain chapters. I don't feel like re-loading all of them, but I apologize. I think Fanfiction's reformatting messed things up.
I've played with the RK timeline in a 'what if' idea.
The Fine Line
Chapter 1: It Came to This
She hurt. The adrenaline from the fights that gave her the cuts and bruises all over her body made her hands tremble. Wounds gathered from those who used to be her family, injuries that were etched into flesh and soul.
One left – then it would end.
Anger burned in her chest. Anger that had been burning for so many years would be finally put to rest. She paused, her hand on the white wooden door.
Her mind flickered briefly back in time before she pushed the final barrier away.
"Aoshi Shinomori, I am here to finish the Oniwaban."
She almost laughed at the sudden drop in temperature in the room. She took in the bare wooden floor, the sweeping and elegant chandelier above, and the graceful staircase wings. In the center of the great hall stood her target. The man she had followed, loved, and now loathed.
Eyes the color of sky clashed with those reflecting snow. She thought she had been prepared, but even now, something in her chest cracked. Aoshi Shinomori, once the pride of the elite, had become the dog of the corrupt. There was nothing of the person she had once worshiped as a child. He wore a mask though she could see nothing of a man beneath it; he faced her with disinterest even though he knew his comrades were no longer able to support him. If anything, it appeared that he wasn't even concerned. It was an abomination that she would eliminate.
"Misao Makimachi, you have no authority to make such a statement."
She raised her own short sword and had the satisfaction of seeing a flicker of surprise cross his eyes. "I do – with the entire Oniwaban clan that stands behind me."
"I am the Okashira of the Oniwaban."
"You are the leader of a rouge band of ninja. You have brought shame to the name of Oniwaban. We do not claim you as our own – and we do not accept your actions as ours. We are here to end this." She sneered. "What did Kanryu seduce you with, Aoshi? Money? Drugs? Women?" She took a step closer, blade ready. "What turned you into this thing?"
"I am making the name Oniwaban one to be feared."
Misao shook her head, eyes fixed on her one-time hero. "No, Aoshi, you have made it one to be spat upon. And I won't forgive you for it."
Aoshi slowly drew his own blade, cold gaze taking in the battle stance of the woman before him. "You're too young to understand. I left you behind for a reason, Misao, to keep you from all this. I don't need your permission or your forgiveness."
She snarled. "Are you stupid? You did this to me. Your brilliance backfired on you, Okashira." She spat the name like it was poison. "You didn't factor in how much I loved you. You thought you could just slip away… And now," she leapt forward, her sword crashing with his, hilt to hilt. Over their crossed edges, Misao gave him her best glare.
"Everything is lost."
Aoshi tried to twist his sword away, only to find his own tangled and pushed aside. He recoiled only to find his one-time ward following his every move with a speed that caught him off guard.
It began three years ago.
Despite the objections that bordered on an order from her grandfather, Misao had left home in search of the Okashira. She had wandered from town to town, chasing the leads, the whispers, and the assassinations. She used the old spy networks to gather information that only confused and deadened her hopes. She had departed with the rosy image of returning with her childhood companions in tow. Those roses now drowned in blood.
A giant that breathed fire.
A devil that vanish into thin air.
Poisons that slowly kill.
A beast bearing a ball and chain.
And one man – one cold being that had led them down a path of fear, hate, and death.
These things she knew, but had never seen for herself. They were scary stories, told to make her squeal and laugh as a child. She had trained under them – been taught, been loved, and been betrayed.
Misao had first crossed paths with the stories before she even left Tokyo. Police were investigating a scene of gruesome mass murder in the lower city. A businessman and his colleagues had been hacked to pieces in their office. The police were calling it a gang rivalry that had gotten out of hand. They tried to track down the killers, but the only survivor died from poison in his jail cell. The man had been hit with a spiral dart.
She had justified the brutality with the fact that the businessman had also been trading in slaves. They had gotten only what they deserved. She ignored the desperate pleas of her family and pressed on with her plan to find the other half of the Oniwaban. She thought herself as the link between their home and the darkness of the underworld. They had become lost, yes, but she would find them and bring them back.
So she left.
It wasn't long before she found a pattern. The pattern wove around one name: Kanryu Takeda, businessman to the civilized world, crime lord of one of the most ruthless undergrounds known in Japan.
She tracked, gathered intelligence, and for months only found cold traces. She couldn't trust the rumors, though often the rumors were her only source of information. If it had been anyone other than another member of the Oniwaban, she wouldn't have stood a chance. However, she was able to find the threads of truth, sometimes as faint as a fourth-hand drunken encounter, and string them together.
The information led her into the kinds of places she knew her grandfather would die from a heart attack if he ever heard she entered them. She saw acts of depravity, cruelty, and desperation that turned her stomach. It took only one personal encounter to break her of any do-good attempts. A scar ran across her chest, just below the edge of her chest bindings that was given by a dirty blade. A prostitute had been screaming in the doorway of a scummy alley while a hulking man took out his price in more than the usual flesh. When Misao tried to confront him, he had sneered and asked if she wanted to take the other woman's place.
Misao had crouched into a kempo stance and waved him on. The fight ended when she cracked his head into the building wall, but not before he managed to catch her with a back-swipe of his knife. Clutching the bindings, Misao had returned to the motionless figure of the prostitute, only to find her blood covering the steps and terrified blank eyes looking out into the night.
The police had wanted to arrest her for assault. She ducked away as soon as the rookie officer turned his back.
Now she was on the track of another rumor.
Her family would have sought her out and dragged her kicking and screaming home if they knew her information. She couldn't help but wonder in the bitter corners of her mind that perhaps they already knew and were just content to leave their members lost to the underworld.
They were ninja. Their way of combat was considered to be one of shame in a world where honor was claimed by straightforward confrontation and not a knife in the dark. Yet they had their own code of conduct. They found honor in their purpose if the means were shaded. They fought for a greater goal, and only the naïve believed that all success came from the battlefield.
But this… This was not honorable.
Misao sat alone in her tiny room. A single candle flickered its weak yellow light across the futon. Occasionally a flare would outline a bent shadow on the dirty wooden walls. Trembling fingers carefully held tiny scraps of rice paper to the flame. One caught too quickly and singed her hand. She flinched.
Assassination.
Human trafficking.
Weapons trade.
Drugs.
All of this was for the wealth of a single individual with no expectations except to expand his scummy empire. There was no greatness to be found – at least, not yet. She hadn't found concrete proof, and until she held that evidence in hand, she refused to believe.
Misao dusted the ashes off of her bedding and stood. She bit her lip. Wrapping old, but clean rags around her hands, she began donning her city costume of a faded yukata that had been deviously re-designed to hide the cuts that allowed for access to hidden weapons and greater mobility. Her hair was piled into a messed knot, the falling strands making a veil to hider her face. Over it all she drew a beaten straw cloak that was almost bald along the shoulders.
Reaching under her futon, she loaded her arm and leg straps with kunai before tucking a tanto into her obi. The night was no longer old, but the city life warranted even a local to carry obvious protection to deter a drunken would-be thief. The fact that she was a small female was something she couldn't disguise, so she'd stick to the little-used back streets that she'd memorized a week ago.
Two days ago, she'd managed to glean information from a gangster who had been determined to impress a shy shop worker. She had been drifting from part-time job, to part-time job, fishing for hints from all the locals. The man had boasted that his gang was strong and wealthy enough to hire experts to do their cover work. When she innocently inquired as to the kind of person who'd hire themselves out, the man had laughed and tried to persuade her along a different channel of conversation.
Now she silently slipped from her tiny, rented lodging and stepped out into the cold early hours of morning.
If the gritty guest -house where she had been staying was in the low end of the metropolis, her directions took her to the poorest district of Kyoto. Putrid smells drifted out of the shadows and she had to refrain from covering her nose and mouth. She was severely tempted to jump to the rooftops, but that would destroy her cover as a local bottom dweller.
A city never truly sleeps, but the best hours for those with ill intent fell between midnight and sunrise. Her timing was perfect. The sound of fighting erupted into the night. An orange glow a few yards away gave a position. Misao rounded the corner cautiously, focusing past the fallen lantern that was merrily burning away in a pile of garbage.
Beyond the flames she could see three figures engaged in battle while one simply bled out at their feet. It was very clearly an assassination strike, though the target was still standing. Misao watched with grudging admiration as the attacker, cloaked in slightly baggy black cloth, twisted and spun through the blows of the last bodyguard.
The fight lasted only a few moments longer. In one quick motion the assassin slipped his short sword around and under the katana of the guard. It snaked up to bury its tip in the man's throat. Before the man had time to crumple to the ground with his hands futilely trying to stem the blood flow, the sword had sliced through the wrist of the second opponent. His screams were muffled by a gloved hand and a quick jerk ended the entire battle. A masked face turned abruptly in her direction.
Misao heard the familiar hiss of a knife slicing air. She instinctively snatched the kunai aimed for her left eye and snapped it back to its owner. He caught the blade with a hint of surprise. In the dying firelight they stared at one another before the assassin released his mark and let the body thud to the ground. Dark eyes held hers unwaveringly, measuring her up as he fished around in the dead man's cloths. Finding what he was searching for, the assassin tucked it into his own pocket and straightened.
Misao finally broke the silence, "What's your name?"
The dark eyes hinted at a smile. "Little girls shouldn't be out in a place like this." His muffled voice was light and teasing. "And they most certainly shouldn't be asking questions."
She waited, biting her tongue with one eyebrow raised. His only answer was to vanish.
Misao let out a very uncultured curse. She recognized a challenge. Stretching out her senses, she followed the faint traces of ki along the rooftops. As good as he was, he hadn't covered all his tracks. Perhaps he expected her to chase him out in the open. Instead, she sprinted down the back alleys, jumping boxes, piles of trash, and one prone drunk. She let a smug smile cross her face at the widening of her opponent's eyes when she sprang up to face him on the roof of a fish shop.
He had taken off his mask. Misao felt a small twinge of disappointment, realizing that there could be no possible way that he had been Beshimi. His stature and weapon choice had said as much from earlier, but she still clung to hope. Regardless, she examined him the same way he had analyzed her.
He looked only to be a few years older than her. His face was actually rather plain and unimpressive except for a curved scar that ran parallel to the line of his jaw. In the dim light, it carved a black shadow along his face. Choppy hair danced wildly in the light wind, spiked into gleaming points from the earlier fight.
Misao held her hands out from her sides in a gesture of peace. "Look, all I want is to know if you've heard of any groups or gangs working in the area."
The man smirked. "Girlie, have you looked around?" He shrugged. "The place is full of gangs. It's the only family system worth having."
Misao snarled at the nickname. "I think we're both able to acknowledge that our business doesn't involve children." She pressed on. "This one works for a drug dealer. There are five of them – all with different techniques."
He ran a hand through his hair, flicking drops from their ends like a wet dog. "Why do you want to know?"
She glared. "That's my business."
"And none of mine. But no, I have not heard of any five-man gang."
Misao struggled to keep the disappointment from her face. "Alright, then, what do you know of the name Kanryu Takeda?"
The man stiffened. He drew his mask back over his nose. "Don't throw that name around lightly. Those who work for him, and those who hate him would both cut your throat without asking."
Her hand slipped to the tanto at her waist. "And you?"
He gave her a smile behind the cloth, his eyes turning up at the corners. "I'm a freelance kinda guy."
With that, the assassin dropped off of the roof and into the dim morning. Misao sighed, taking the time to watch the pale fingers of the rising sun creep into the sky.
Author's Note: I'll need a lot of review support on this one. I have the ideas, but not always the motivation.