URASHIMA THE FLOOD, a fan fiction by Omega Warrior 42
Summary: Powerful and noble, he willingly lives through a painful hell for them. But when a Fox stumbles on the truth, the truth sets more than just them free… Kei x Kit, rated M for good reason
Disclaimer and Notes: This is AU only in the sense that Keitaro knows advanced martial arts to a greater extent (and much sooner) than he does in the regular series. I don't use major OCs if I can help it, so most or all characters, names, places, original plot points, some passing references, and assorted gibberish are owned by the makers of Love Hina. Also, though this is pretty much strictly a Love Hina fic, I use many random references to other works not my own for small details, chapter title ideas, etc. Hence, I apologize to: Bungie; the late Frank Zappa and the late Douglas Adams; the makers of Red Dwarf, Ghostbusters, Final Fantasy, Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, and Trigun; and probably others as well.
If there is something in what I write that you do not like or have a problem with…well, there's really nothing I can do about that! Just enjoy it for what it is if you can. Read and review at your own leisure.
*UPDATED NOTES: Hello, all. As I work on (stall for time in writing) the remaining chapters of the story, I've decided to return and revise the ones I've posted as well. Expect changes as little as a fixed typo here and there and as big as entirely new and expanded scenes. Enjoy.
Chapter 1: Deep Fried Electric Sheep, Part 7 and Forty-two Thirds
Keitaro Urashima, second-year ronin and male manager of the all-girls inn-turned-dormitory the Hinata-Sou, was used to pain.
Indeed, in the last year or so it had been his daily companion, introduced to him in new and inventive ways as a direct result of his new-found position as the owner and manager of a residence full of very touchy, volatile, and often paranoid women and girls his age and younger. Meek, gentle, and clumsy when he got nervous (which he usually was around the opposite sex), his work as a male kanrinin of an all-female dormitory was rarely done and never easy on him. Truth be told, his existence was a tenacious and continuous hell. Saddled with most of the chores for seven people, his studies, and the painful consequences of having two left feet around a harshly critical and vindictive group of tenants, he was perhaps the most pushed-around male in the whole of Japan.
Keitaro, however, was no weakling. Quite the opposite in fact.
For starters, he had mastered advanced martial arts at an early age, and had only improved his skills with time. In spite of his own peaceful nature, he had the spark of a warrior in him that was fueled by the flame of his tenacious spirit. It was this hidden strength and skill, in fact, that kept him alive. He had been severely injured more often and in more ways than most people ever experience in a lifetime during his tenure as kanrinin alone; he had endured more personal pain both physically and emotionally than most people could survive, and had done it in secret and in silence.
Not once had he sought to defend himself against his tenant's all-too-frequent wrath, though it frequently ended with him being literally hit halfway across town. He was incredibly strong for his average-looking size and build, and far more skilled at what he did than he ever got credit for. He had repaired or rebuilt much of the inn on his own several times over, as his body had been sent through walls, doors, windows, and other parts of the structure more times than he could count. Everyday, he faced this hell and kept going, refusing to give up or turn on those he counted as his friends as much as he considered them his responsibility, whatever they might think of him in the process.
Keitaro Urashima had no desire to cause harm to his six tenants, and willingly bore the pain they freely dealt to his existence so they wouldn't have to bear it in their own.
The six girls living under his roof, however, had far fewer qualms and concerns about returning the favor.
To Naru Narusegawa, herself a second-year ronin like Keitaro, he was at best a tolerable friend and study partner, and at worst a stupid, clumsy, perverted baka put on this Earth to (she believed) make her life that much more miserable. To Motoko Aoyama, an up-and-coming kendoist swordmaiden of the Shinmei-ryu school, he was male and barely tolerable as such, if not damned entirely from the outset. To the much younger and hyper-energetic genius foreigner Kaolla Su, Keitaro was a convenient playmate, target, and test subject. To Sarah McDougall, he was a hapless dork over twice her age that happened to be a friend of her adoptive father, who had brought her to live at the Hinata so she would have a more or less permanent place to live out her childhood. To Shinobu Maehara, the shy young resident chef of the dormitory, he was the object of an unreachable but ever-growing crush, a sempai she dearly wished could be more but knew deep down would never be. She was, perhaps, the only one in the bunch that would freely admit to giving a damn about his well-being; though her deeper and more personal feelings embarrassed her to no end in his presence, she was the only one that sympathized with him for how the others treated him on a daily basis.
Of all the residents, there remained one that stood out for being the most on-the-fence toward Keitaro: the free-spirited but frequently drunk beauty Mitsune "Kitsune" Konno. Unlike the others, she was not at all shy about flirting with him (or anyone else, for that matter); even though her mind usually was set on either conning money out of him or playing a practical joke at his expense, she was never one to directly cause the hapless kanrinin personal harm and often welcomed his company. Her cleverness was equal to her beauty, but so was her laziness. Unlike Naru or Motoko, she found his incredibly bad luck in getting himself into awkward positions and situations with young women to be amusing as hell. Whatever else she really felt about him in her heart of hearts she kept (mostly) to herself.
Such was life as Keitaro knew it: a young man playing housekeeper, punching bag, target, repairman, wallet, and a half-dozen other roles for six girls under one roof.
Then one night, in the span of perhaps half an hour, everything about it began to change.
It was already getting late as Keitaro continued to sweep the second floor hallway one Friday evening near the end of the summer. Though he was, for the moment, free from the extra burden of his studies (as everyone was on break around this time of year), life had still been pretty rough for him lately. He'd been relatively lucky so far today in that he was nearly done the chores he had left to accomplish and no one had put him through a wall for anything he had done, at least not up to this point in time.
Unfortunately, as he bent over to adjust a dustbin, his rare bout of luck was about to run out for the evening. From a room down the hall behind him, Kaolla Su crept out with an oversized barrel-shaped contraption in tow, using it to take careful aim at the kanrinin's exposed rear end. Though he heard the loud CHOONG made by her newly designed Super-Powered Mark II Laundry Launcher's firing mechanism, it wasn't until the mass of hot bedsheets, brightly colored shirts, and socks still smoldering near the edges from the blast hit him that he realized what the sound had been. By then, he was flying face-first through the banister, tumbling down a flight of stairs to land unceremoniously with his face on top of something warm and somewhat soft to the touch, covered in cloth and only too familiar to his senses.
As he got up, he realized that the cloth was the front of a shirt that hadn't been in the bundle that had hit him. Unfortunately, he also discovered that the shirt belonged to (and was being worn by) a startled and very irate Naru.
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING, YOU STUPID PERVERTED BAKA!" she immediately yelled at the rapidly backpedaling kanrinin. Not waiting for an explanation, her fist hooked at high speed to connect with his jaw. The raw force of the impact sent him flying backwards; burnt linens flew off his back in all directions as he sailed past them toward the doorway leading to the inn's hot springs.
Or rather, toward the door itself.
As his body ripped through the barrier in a flurry of wood and glass, his near-horizontal flight promptly ended in a pool of steaming hot water with the rounded end of a rock wedged painfully into the small of his back. Dazed from this latest battering, he made the mistake of looking around to get his bearings as he sat up. He saw a pair of long bare legs first, the kind that suggested the athletic nature of their owner; surprised, he looked up to see the toweled form of Motoko glaring at him, her sheathed sword already in hand. Not hesitating to ask why he was suddenly there, Motoko reacted as she always had in any questionable situation involving the hapless manager: on pure instinct.
"URASHIMA!" she yelled at him as he tried to stumble to his feet, "YOUR PERVERSIONS TRULY KNOW NO BOUNDS! PREPARE TO MEET YOUR END!" Her sword, the katana named Shisui, was in motion even as she spoke the last words, a charged blast of her ki focused and expelled through the shape of the metal. The tip sliced across his chest at a precision angle that maximized the length of the cut; the blast that followed its path rocketed him backward at a steep angle through the fence right behind him.
The ground receded below him as he flew in the air. Fifty feet up, time slowed in his mind, making the world around him seem to flow almost as though he was underwater. Shards of wood tumbled as they flew aimlessly in his wake. The pain was only slowly beginning to register with his mind, its familiarity all too apparent to his consciousness. He almost laughed to himself, as he noticed his broom, miraculously still in his hand; as drops of his own blood floated in the air in front of his face, he found himself thinking about the angle of his flight, realizing he would not land very far away this time. To his mind, that was a good thing; at the very least, he wouldn't have far to walk tonight.
In the brief moment of freefall, he considered what it might have been like to act in his own defense as he could have easily done; Kaolla's creative missle might have still connected, but he could have easily dodged or blocked Naru or Motoko, even dazed as he'd been at the time. Yet in the split second his body had wanted to react, he'd fought his instincts instead, as he'd always done.
His musings halted promptly, along with the broom handle, the arm he was holding it with, and finally the rest of his body, in a wide gap between two branches thirty feet off the ground. Pain lanced through his arm as he felt his shoulder pop out of its socket; his hand, still clutching the handle that had wedged against the branches, flew open with the sudden shock in the limb's root. He dropped almost straight down, barely registering two further stabs of pain in the back of his thigh as it connected with the jagged ends of a branch below him. The tree limb snapped immediately under his weight, and he dropped the rest of the way to the ground with parts of it buried in his flesh underneath him.
The last thing he saw, before the symphony of pain overwhelmed his consciousness and made the world slip into blackness, was the tip of the broom handle embedding itself next to his head in the dirt.
Friday nights usually didn't end this early, at least not for Kitsune. Yet tonight, she'd miscalculated her funds at what was (to her, anyway) the least desirable time, and her excursion through the town's bars ended hours earlier than it otherwise would, with her less drunk than she might have liked.
Still, the decision to head back to the Hinata, however disappointing, was not just because of her finances (or lack thereof) at the time. It had been one of those nights where the company was unusually lacking, and what company was to be found out and about hadn't been the type she cared to associate with. The last bar she'd been in had been the worst; there'd been a group of surly characters that most people wouldn't want to meet in broad daylight, let alone run into alone late on a Friday night. A few of them had been giving her looks even she hadn't been comfortable with, and she'd left soon after they'd arrived.
As she half walked, half stumbled along a shaded path leading back to her place of residence, she aimlessly thought about her own existence in a bemused way, and the situations she seemed to find herself in as it went. Her "career" as a freelance writer (which mostly involved making a few extra Yen writing the occasional article when she felt like it, just to look like or claim she was actually doing something) suited her well, but wasn't always enough to cover her lifestyle. As for her other main source of income…
At that moment, she was pretty sure she had just heard it crashing through a tree somewhere off the path to her right.
She chuckled to herself. 'I wonder which one got to him this time?' she thought. Indeed, she had no question as to what the noise had been; Keitaro had more airtime without an airplane than a thousand lemmings got in their lifetimes combined. Of course, she'd never sent him flying like that, at least not personally, though she had often set the poor guy up for it to amuse herself every so often, or at least in the attempt to finagle a bit of extra cash from him by tricking him into "copping a feel" on her, as they say.
For a moment, she paused. It had been a relatively boring night so far, and a little company back to the inn wouldn't be such a bad idea. A sudden spark of curiosity, too, ignited in her mind: though she'd always seen him at the beginning or middle of his impromptu trips over town, she'd never seen him land. It had been something of a running joke in the Hinata that the guy was more or less immune to harm. Hell, he faced down fists, swords, secret techniques, haywire experiments and explosives, and plenty more on a daily basis, and spent as much time airborne as he did on the ground. He'd always return looking relatively unhurt after being hit cross-country through a wall, and did it so often that Kitsune had begun to wonder how he managed it herself.
Of course, she could always just ask him, but where was the fun in that? Better to take the more challenging route, and figure it out by observation and deduction; at the very least, it would be a little more fun than spending the rest of a Friday evening with nothing good to do!
She made her way toward the sound of the crash. There were quite a few trees this far off the path, so she had to pick around them carefully and quietly in the dark. Though clouds were forming on the horizon, the moon was shining brightly that night; even under the cover of the trees, there was just enough light to make her way through without running into anything or tripping along the way. She soon happened upon one spot that looked especially promising: a break in the tree cover that let the moonlight shine in like a dim spotlight over one small area. She giggled to herself, imagining the hapless kanrinin crashing through the branches to land in a disheveled heap, twigs and debris in his unruly hair with a dazed expression on his face. A few ideas about how she could tease him already began to pop into her head as she made her way closer to the area.
They left promptly, however, when she actually spotted him.
She was still about twenty feet away from where he lay when she began to realize something was horribly wrong. His right knee was splayed outward and upward, his ankle twisted at an unnatural angle underneath him. A large broken branch lay underneath him; she could already see a small, dark wet pool begin to form under his left thigh where parts of the wooden tree limb had embedded themselves into his thigh. His right shoulder was unnaturally low, the arm itself twisted almost backward. A huge, clean-edged gash across his chest dripped blood freely, quickly staining the now-torn remains his dark-colored shirt. Almost inexplicably, a broom he used nearly as often as his trusty mop stood almost straight up in the dirt next to his head.
His jaw was slightly swollen, and blood dripped from his lip freely. His eyes were closed, and he wasn't moving. He barely seemed to be even breathing. It would be a miracle if he was even alive.
Shock and sudden anguish gripped Mitsune like a vice, bringing her to her knees. "K-Kei!" she stammered, trying to get up and move closer to him. Her stomach lurched like a broken amusement park ride, the combination of alcohol and the sight of someone she'd known and lived with for over a year lying in such a horrific state triggering off waves of nausea. Diving toward the nearest tree just in time, her stomach emptied its contents into the dirt at its base in one massive spray. For half a minute, her body continued to wretch until she felt weak from the heaves. Crawling away, she peered out at the broken, bleeding form of her kanrinin's motionless form in horror.
She began to shake, wanting to cry, to run and get help, anything but stay and stare at the wretched sight before her. She almost fell backwards, however, when his eyes shot open and his body lurched forward to a sitting position. Relief washed over her; he was still alive!
Impossibly, he was starting to stumble up to his feet. His eyes clenched shut and his teeth gritted in pain, though he barely made a noise as he rose using his only good arm and the trunk of the tree for support. A moment later, his back was leaned (with a visible jolt of pain) against the tree, his bleeding left leg supporting his weight at a heavy angle. Mitsune wanted to rush out to help him, but the will to move left her when he awoke. That part of her mind she so often ignored, her conscience, held her there. 'Watch and see what you have ignored for so long," it told her, reflecting her desire to know his secret of survival back at her like a curse.
So she watched, and learned.
She watched him as he grabbed the two sticks still embedded in his thigh, wincing as he yanked several inches of blood-stained wood with a sickening squelch. She watched him barely flinch as he did this, as though the pain was nothing new to him. She saw something like an afterimage glow form around his hand as it gripped the still-bleeding holes; this time, he almost grunted with pain, as though he were holding a branding iron to his own flesh.
From where she stood, she could see the wounds as they were, two holes the size of bullet wounds in his leg. When his blood-covered hand moved away from them, however, both were gone. She blinked, stunned. 'What the hell did he…?'
Before she could ponder what he'd done, he began doing the same to his chest. Again, his hand glowed as it ran the length of the foot-long oozing gash; once more, his face twisted in renewed agony. To her shocked amazement, the wound stopped bleeding immediately, as though it was closing itself up!
'What is he doing!' she thought to herself, unable to comprehend what she was witnessing. Slowly but surely, in front of her eyes, he was systematically addressing each injury in turn. Squatting down, he straightened the twisted ankle, rubbing it slightly a moment in the same manner before testing it. To her surprise, it was quickly able to bear his weight without too much difficulty; by all rights, it should have been broken or sprained, the kind of injury that would keep the average person laid up for weeks! His jaw was next, a small twitch in his eyes the only indication of pain she could see as he wiped his bleeding lip clean and stroked the swollen area until the angry bulge had subsided to nothing more than a fading red welt.
He stood up and away from the tree, wiping his hand off on the bark. She saw him look at his dislocated shoulder and visibly sigh to himself. "Figures," she thought she heard him say before he began propping his right arm straight against the trunk.
Her stomach lurched all over again as she realized what he was about to do. 'Oh, no…he can't be serio—'
A sickeningly wet pop and his heavily strangled cry of pain accompanied the swift rejointing of his dislocated shoulder. His good hand glowed again, clutching the area of the joint itself; the cry itself briefly became a muted howl. She saw his knees buckle under him, and he fell to them with his re-socketed arm still propped against (and sliding down) the trunk.
She shuddered violently, remembering a time in her childhood when she'd dislocated her left shoulder. Pulling it out had hurt, but putting it back had been unbelievably excruciating. She'd nearly passed out when the doctor had reset the ball in its socket, and her shoulder had been sore and hard to use for a week afterwards.
Keitaro, though, could now move the arm freely, and his right hand now moved over an area of his lower back near the base of his ribcage. It glowed as his left had done, and he shuddered involuntarily as it touched several spots on his back. He did the same on the left, and finally stumbled to his feet once more, looking exhausted but otherwise uninjured.
Apart from the holes and the blood staining his clothing, he looked fine.
Tears welled in her eyes as she saw him sigh and sit under his tree, the broom handle pulled from the ground and across his lap in a casual manner of rest. He no longer showed any pain on his face, though he had to be feeling it still. He sat silently, almost casually, as though what he had just been through was nothing new to him at all; he didn't call for help, or cry, or even act like he'd been hurt. He seemed to just sit and collect himself again, almost as though…
'…as though it had never happened,' she realized to her own horror. Suddenly, the truth of Keitaro's reality hit her square in the face: he had been through this before. He'd been through it many, many times, and had come back acting as though nothing had happened to him.
He wasn't immune to harm; he was just good at fixing it up before he got back.
Belatedly, she realized that if this was what he went through every time he was punched skyward, then the pain he must be going through on a daily basis was beyond all comprehension. She'd seen car wrecks where people had died from less, and done so in agony. How could he do that, and say nothing?
Worst of all, she realized, it was his tenants that were putting him through it. That included herself, in spite of never being the one to physically hit him; she had set him up for this very fate on an almost daily basis, out of a desire for money or entertainment. The thought that her own actions would cause anyone that level of agony, much less someone as hapless and kind-hearted as Keitaro, made her stagger sideways.
Unfortunately, it also made her stagger right out from behind her cover.
She saw his head whip around, startled by her appearance. "Who's there?" she heard him ask, already on his feet with the broom in hand. Guilt and panic overtook her mind; she turned and ran back toward the way she had come, not waiting to see if he followed her or not. She couldn't think as she stumbled half-blindly back through the trees, only try to get away. She couldn't handle this, not yet; she couldn't look him in the face, not after what she'd just seen him go through. The clouds overhead grew ever more ominous; thunder began rolling in the distance, announcing a coming rain. She couldn't see where she was going, didn't really care. Single-mindedly, she rushed back toward what she hoped would be the "safety" of the inn, where she could at least hide herself before he got back or spotted her again. She couldn't face him, not now.
Suddenly, the trees broke, and she was back on the path. Unfortunately, she quickly found out that she was not alone on it.
A fist to her stomach halted her mid-stride. Gasping, she doubled over and fell backwards. A foot connected with her side, sending her sprawling face first into the ground.
Coughing from the unexpected assault, she looked up to see a group of men she recognized from earlier that night, ones she had gone well out of her way to avoid like the plague. They must have been following her, because when she'd reappeared on the path they'd been waiting for her.
Now she was caught, winded and already in a bad state of mind, in the middle of their gang. A total of eight partly ale-sodden, lecherously leering faces surrounded and circled her with a dangerous, animalistic look in their eyes. Their leader, a surly and ugly-looking bastard built like (and closely resembling) a heavy brick shit-house, jeered at her misfortune cruelly. "That wasn't very polite of ya ta take off on us like that, pretty thang," he snarled through a drawling sneer. "Me 'n ma boys were jes lookin' ta be enjoyin' yer company, and we don't take th' cold shoulder too kindly, DO WE!" The others hooted and wolf-whistled their agreement. "So we came after ya ta fix that…an' this time, we insist."
Mitsune couldn't think. She was surrounded, stunned, and now mortally afraid to top it all off. These weren't the type of people you could reason with, or easily get away from; they were more the sort to get what they wanted, when they wanted it, by whatever means they felt like getting it.
Right now, they wanted her, and chances were they'd take what they wanted from her if they had to kill her to do it. In all likelihood, they'd kill her one way or the other without a second thought, and probably enjoy doing it.
Bitter irony, that.
The one in front of her was already moving toward her, like a predator about to pounce on its prey. She opened her mouth to scream…
But he beat her to it.
To her surprise, he stopped mid-lunge, eyes crossing and voice squealing like a soprano, clutching his own groin. As he dropped to his knees, his scream was swiftly silenced as the rounded end of a smooth wooden pole twirled and reversed from between his legs to come crashing down over the back of his head. The thug dropped like a stone, out cold; behind him stood the silhouette of the pole's wielder, his identity concealed in the swiftly deepening darkness.
The figure growled in a low, dangerous voice, "You…will…not…touch her!"
Their leader blinked, turning to face this new threat angrily. "The fuck do ya think ya are, ya shit!" He nodded at the three thugs standing nearest the newcomer, saying, "Kill 'im."
The nearest, and biggest, of the group moved to grab him, only to discover he'd already moved out of the way. The handle of the pole struck the top of his fingers first, breaking several of them; before the heavyset thug could register the sudden pain, the other end of the pole hit the side of his head with enough force to snap something attached to it off in a flurry of splinters. The bristly-looking end flew off into a bush; the thug dropped like a sack of potatoes on top of the one already on the ground.
Dropping the broken end, the figure switched to hand-to-hand as the next two thugs moved in. One tried to punch him to the left, the other to kick him from the right. The figure moved forward, grabbing the flying fist and sending the thug stumbling into his partner's kick, which caught him in the ribs and sent him stumbling back. The figure lashed out extremely quickly at the latter while the first was stunned, hitting him about five or six times with his fists, palms, and fingertips before he could blink. As he stumbled back, the figure's foot slammed on top of his knee, breaking it. The foot doubled back, kicking the thug in the chest twice and sending him into sprawling unconsciousness. By then the other thug had recovered, and was already about to tackle the man from behind. The figure turned, however, and delivered a punch to a pressure point near the base of the thug's ribs, packing the full force of a full-swing strike in the space of an inch.
The criminal crumpled at his feet, his entire side alight with paralyzing pain.
The entire thing happened in the space of about fifteen seconds, in which the remaining three thugs and their leader had thought to pull out their weapons and surround him. The one in front had a long, serrated hunting knife, while the one behind had donned spiked brass knuckles; to his right side, the third had pulled a length of heavy iron chain, while the leader sported a heavy bar of iron. The leader was now royally pissed; in his mind whoever this bastard was, he'd make sure he was dead. The knifeholder moved first, followed a fraction of a second later by the spiked fist of the second. The chain moved third, arcing to wrap around the figures neck; the leader raised his bar like a cudgel to bludgeon the figure's brains in.
Their target was, in less than a second, faced with attacks on all four sides. But the man only had to deal with one: the first attacker.
Instead of blocking or dodging into one of the other attacks, he stepped forward, into and just to the side of the oncoming knife's attack. Like lightning, the figure's hands raised, open-palmed, into the thug's wrist, lifting it slightly as it moved forward but not stopping it in the slightest. At the same time, he spun at the hips, his hands turning to grip the wrist the way one might grip a sword handle for a two-handed vertical swing. Indeed, that was exactly what the figure did with the thug's forearm, sending it (knife extended and pointing slightly downwards) flying straight past him and into the opposite shoulder of the brass-knuckled thug's attack. Said brass knuckles, meanwhile, connected with the knifeman's face as he continued to fly forward into it.
The chain of the third thug was only half a second slower than the first two; in the space of that half-second, the intended target of the third thug's swing (the figure's neck) had been replaced with the now-flailing right foot of the first. The leader had been slowest of the four; it wasn't until his pipe's swing was already past the point of no return that he realized whose head it was about to strike. To his sudden horror, the third was pulled clean off his balance toward the swiftly growing tangle of bodies before him by his own chain, bringing his head straight into the oncoming path of the iron bar!
The leader blinked as his final member fell in the growing heap in front of him, finding himself very suddenly alone against a man that had just dispatched seven of his best men in creative and painful ways. Rage boiled in his chest; he'd strangle the little shit for this! He lunged at the figure like a madman, arms outstretched to grab him and tear him apart.
The figure simply moved forward, right toward the leader's unprotected torso as he attacked. Five points of pain erupted in the center of the leader's chest, causing his eyes to widen and constrict in shock. The figure's palm was now pressed almost flat against the thug's chest, the tips of his fingers curled like claws and buried into the flesh between his ribs. The leader realized suddenly that they had never stood a chance; whoever the shit was, he was far stronger than he looked. The point was only driven home for him when he felt the hand twist, pulling and tearing the area its fingertips had embedded themselves in as it went. Gasping as the hand finally let go, he collapsed and curled into a whimpering ball, holding his now-bleeding chest.
Mitsune watched as the leader crumpled in a blubbering, gasping heap in the still-deepening semidarkness. The figure bent over and struck quickly, rendering the gang leader unconscious. The clouds overhead rumbled again, signaling the beginning of a downpour. Her savior stood, examining the collapsed heap of unconscious thugs quickly as the water soaked the earth around them. Looking around, she saw him retrieve something from a bush, and saw that it was the part of the pole that had broken off earlier. He pulled the piece that had broken off apart quickly, yanking off a thick length of twine near where the handle had attached to the head; what the head was, she couldn't see. The man used the thin rope to tie up the others as well.
Suddenly, he reached into one of the unconscious thug's pockets, pulling out his cell phone. Dialing a number, she heard him speak quickly and quietly with someone on the other end of the line, then hung up. At the last, she saw him tear off one of his own sleeves, using it to retrieve, gather together, and safely bind the fallen weapons of each thug and several others they had besides. A short distance away, he propped the bundle atop the broken pole, embedding the jagged tip into the ground. Tossing the phone near the base, he turned and began to approach her.
She stumbled backward, suddenly tired and afraid. She owed him her life, but that didn't mean she could necessarily trust him yet. "W-what do you want from me?" she stammered as he approached, feeling dizzy as the night's stress caught up with her.
"Are you okay, Mitsune?" his concerned and very familiar voice asked. Lightning flashed in the distance above him, revealing in a flash what she couldn't see before: the remains of a bloodstained shirt, sliced across the middle; the remains of a broom head in his hand; the bloody, torn holes in the left leg of his pants; and the look of concern on his bespectacled face.
"K-Keitaro!" she gasped, just before fainting entirely.
A.N.: First chapter of many more to come. Due to the way the story is developing in later chapters, this is a rewrite of the original chapter I had prepared. More to come soon; I've got something like 13+ chapters already written, but they'll be getting the same treatment I gave this one. References for those that were paying attention: Bungie's Marathon, Douglas Adam's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Cowboy Bebop, and possibly others. Inspiration from my own head and several of the better fanfics on this site in this category. Read and Review, or just read and enjoy, 'till next time…
U.A.N.: Chapter 1 revised! In the end, a few bits got slightly rewritten, others were just polished. As an aside, if there was any part of the story so far you feel could be expanded upon, clarified, or whatever, let me know. I'd be happy to add to the action as I fix up the rest and (eventually) continue onward...
