Silver Linings

Chapter One: A Kamiya Lives On

Disclaimer: Rurouni Kenshin and its characters don't belong to me...

Author's Note (1): It's my second RK fic...and quite short as well...More of character sketches rather than a real story...but I like doing character sketches for RK because the characters are so human, so real. Hope you'll like this one...thank you to those who reviewed my first fic...this goes out to you!

Author's Note (2): Edited in August 2009, mainly to correct formatting and tweak (i.e. improve) writing style.

Kamiya Kaoru was in the dojo – her family's dojo, around which her life had centred ever since she could remember. Ghosts of memories floated around her, and she could almost, almost hear the sounds of feet slapping against the wooden floors, of laboured breathing, of bokken striking bokken.

Now, however, all that was left of her family was just Kamiya Kaoru. Just her. Sole descendent of the Kamiya family, sole inheritor of the Kamiya Kasshin Ryuu. All alone.

Her fingers trembled slightly as she lifted the lid of the beautiful wooden box. Its polished wood was smooth to the touch, and shone as it caught the morning light. Inside, wrapped carefully in scarlet silk was her father's sword. A katana. Sleek, shiny, beautiful, but all too deadly. It was a work of art, but how many had been slain on its silvery edge? How many had their blood stain its metal blade? Beautiful, yet deadly.

Strangely similar to Kaoru herself. Fiercely determined, Kamiya Kaoru grew to have the skills to complement her straightforward nature. The katana was steel-strong, yet flexible. Reminiscent of her strength of character that enabled her to adapt, fight on, and survive.

The demise of the Kamiya dojo's reputation, the move to teach at other dojo's instead, the eking out of a miserable existence. But it was an existence – she was living, and her family was dead. That, in itself, painted her greatest responsibility: to carry on the beliefs and aspirations of the Kamiya family, expressed in kendo – the Kamiya Kasshin Ryuu. She was living, and while she was living, she would do it.

Her father's katana was a representative of the days gone by, of a past she did not want to bring up again. But felt she had to.

She had to first exorcise this ghost from the past before she could confront the living ghost in the form of this "Battousai", who still struck fear into the hearts of the townsfolk.

Even though it is the Meiji Era. Che.

She gripped the She had to revisit her father, the man her father had been, had become. She had to know. Know why he had chosen to save lives, not kill. Then, she would be able to do what was expected of her. To be a rightful inheritor of the Kamiya Kasshin Ryu. The key lay in the old, discarded, yet treasured, sword.