Hitokiri in Training
A/N: Hey everybody! This one came to me as I was wondering something I've thought about on-and-off since I first saw the series: How the hell did a samurai-trained fourteen-year old learn to stalk people silently in the dark? I don't think any of the previous Ishin Shishi hitokiri exactly took him under their wing… I hope you enjoy it!
Summary: Hiko taught Kenshin to be a master both of the blade and of himself, but no one ever taught the redhead how to be a shadow hitokiri. So how did he learn? Trial and error mostly. And the legend of the Demon of Kyoto has stranger beginnings than you may have thought…
Leaping from rooftop to rooftop was a simple affair. At least, to the boy who would soon be known far and wide as the Hitokiri Battousai it was. He had been trained in balance, leg strength, and sheer, unparalleled speed for years—it came as naturally as breathing to him. And he could do it all silently, as quiet as a whisper of a breeze, just as Katsura-san had said he must. It certainly came in handy as he fled the scene of his second ever assassination assignment.
Well, it came easily in the light. In the middle of a cloudy, new moon night…
"Ah!" Kenshin gasped as his foot slipped on an unseen fault in the tile of the roof he was currently perched on. The damaged tile slid awkwardly under his foot, fell to the ground below with a sound like a shot—that he really didn't need right now, thank you very much—and forced him to flail wildly to maintain his precarious perch.
He ended up in an odd position, right arm in the air and body bent over sideways, but thankfully stable. Unfortunately, his newly acquired wakizashi was not as steady. He had not yet gotten used to the weight or responsibility of a second blade and hadn't sheathed it properly after finishing his… nightly activities. As if in chastisement, it slid easily from its sheath with a quiet shing of metal on wood. Kenshin watched in horror as it fell to the ground below with a great metallic crash.
"Kuso!" Kenshin cried, before realizing that he had in fact just screamed, and clapped a hand over his mouth. Unfortunately, he had used his left hand—the hand keeping him stable—and he proceeded to topple inelegantly backward over the side of the roof.
Straight back down to the blood spattered bodies he had only just fled from.
He was able to flip himself over in time to land cat-like on his feet, but even more unfortunately—seriously, it was like the universe was trying to tell him something—the commotion had caught the attention of a squad of Bakufu guardsmen and they had converged on the scene quickly.
The men, well trained and well used to the assassinations that had overtaken the Kyoto nights, immediately took notice of the corpses behind the slight redhead.
Oh crap, Kenshin braced himself, this was it…
"What happened here?" The front-most guard demanded.
And… They weren't going to immediately attack? Kenshin blinked and relaxed back into a stance that approximated neutrality.
Ah. Katsura-san was right. Being a tiny redhead with big eyes did make one appear substantially more innocent than the average citizen. But that didn't mean they wouldn't pick up on the fact that something was wrong soon enough. And he was still carrying a katana, if not a wakizashi... With mounting dread, he fished for a reasonable response, "Um…"
"Well?" The obvious leader of the squad demanded with narrowed eyes. In the distance, he could hear the pounding feet of another unit of soldiers running to their location.
Oh, Kami, they were going to figure it out and then he was going to die. Quickly, he coached himself, make something up, make something up! Struck by blind panic, Kenshin went with the first thing that came to him: blind panic. "A demon!" he screeched like the shades of hell were at his heels, gesticulating wildly, "It was a demon, come from hell to bathe in the blood of the innocent! With eyes like fiery death!" Hey, he never said it was a good plan.
Another of the soldier's eyes narrowed and he commanded sharply, "Enough of that. This is no time—"
"Be calm," a solder to the right cut the other off, "The lad's no more 'an eleven—" Now that was just uncalled for, Kenshin thought grumpily, I might be a little short for my age, but… "—and he just saw something terrible. Can't you see the boy's terrified?"
In an unrefined example of raw the acting talent that would one day become legend, Kenshin immediately dropped his expression of affronted teenaged pride and adopted the look of a traumatized kitten, complete with wide eyes and a quivering lower lip. He didn't know whether to be relieved or insulted when they all bought it immediately.
As one, the rest of the solders turned disapproving glares on the first man, who cleared his throat awkwardly and apologized. "I'm sorry, lad—"
Aw, screw it. Time to blow this takoyaki stand. "Nevermind. Gotta go. Bye!" Kenshin rattled off in one breath before hightailing it passed the circle of guards and down the street at top speed.
The guards blinked after him for a second before the one second from the left ventured, "Should we just let him go like that?"
Another waved him off. "Let the child go home before he gets himself in real trouble. There's killers out there, you know!" As one, they turned back to look at the gruesome, blood soaked scene behind them.
The tallest guard, a man with a narrow face and fierce golden eyes, rubbed his chin speculatively, "A demon…"
End.
A/N: Yay! Well, I had fun with it. :D How about you?