"Never violate the bushido. Violators are to repent seppuku."

Fortunately, nobody seemed to take this rule seriously, otherwise, half of the group should have died because of heavy blood-, head- and bowel loss caused by harakiri. In fact, neither did the creator of the rule think that he would ever order anyone to commit this ritual, which was, by the way, quite a show and had to be performed in white (who knows, why, maybe to make some spectators faint). Anyway, the creator wasn't a sadist, he just didn't want to have crowds to join his group, and this rule was made to prevent it happen.

The scent of blood could be felt in the air. And the scent of hamburgers, since some still had an appetite, despite the aforementioned blood (my respects for them). And since there had been a small, neon-lighted American fast-food restaurant in this alley of Kyoto, where the whole story happened. But this is not the best time to discuss the black ships', commodore Perry's and the evil American's effect on Japanese consumer society, so let's get back to the alley, where six men were lying on the ground. Not because they wanted to lie there, of course, still, they were not able to smell the typical scent of American fast food any more. They were wearing the same type of clothing - dark hakama, kimono, light blue haori with bright white stripes on its sleeves - and this uniform was anything but creative. The people of Kyoto knew this clothing very well, since there was no other military group in the whole world with such a horrible taste as the Shinsengumi. The uniform was like a predecessor of high-visibility vests, which made the group ridiculous throughout the entire history. Thus the hitokiri, who was cleaning his sword, had fun just looking at the uniform that conveyed the message of 'hey, here I am, come and kill me!'. He gladly acceded to this request, for which he also got overtime pay and danger money. He would love to join the Choushuu-supporting spectators, who were sitting in the restaurant and were rooting for him, but there were still two fools waiting for him. The taller one of the two suicidal guys took a step forward. But before he did so, he had asked for a brief pause.

'Hey, aren't you forgetting something?', he asked the scriptwriter, who was sleeping on her desk and was waked up from her best dreams of parody ideas.

'Like what?'

'Like, I'm the smaller one.'

The scriptwriter flung some books of historical researches at him.

'According to these you are quite tall, so shut up.'

'Okay, okay', retreated the critic, 'I just thought I would give you a warning since it's a fan something, and according to my appearance in the original work, I should be small and everything...'

'I don't give it a damn', grumbled the scriptwriter and put a Rurouni Kenshin Kanzenban and a VIZ Big Edition under her head to serve as pillow. 'Stupid mangakas...', and with this comment, she fell asleep again.

The complimenting character shrugged his shoulders and went on with the play.

The taller one of the two suicidal guys took a step forward and drew his sword. But his fellow began to harrumph loudly, so he glanced back as if asking what his problem was.

'What's your problem?', he asked it directly. His friend began to whistle innocently and looked around, but then he realized he should explain himself.

'I'd rather you didn't have a fight, Okita-san. It's just turned out that you have syphilis.'

The hitokiri was shocked. He started to quickly clean his sword in tears.

'They told me I'd fall because of that, but I don't want to catch it, I'm too young to die!'

'Who the hell told you that nonsense?!', shouted the mangaka from his seat. He was mad because he was just about to draw the 50th act of his work, yet somebody had already leaked spoilers about the end of the story, which should have been a mystery even for him.

'Sony...'

The hitokiri blew his nose depressed in his kimono's sleeve. His creator retreated.

'Oh, I see...'

The mangaka looked around to check if anyone had heard his outburst. He didn't want to get in trouble with Sony. Then he left.

The two Shinsengumi-members only saw the hitokiri's long face and were surprised by it.

'What? You know, it's a small group, so inbreeding is inevitable...'

The hitokiri kept cleaning his blade with even faster movements. He carefully cleaned off every slice of Shinsen-meat from it.

'I don't want infarction...', he said, freaked out.

'You mean, inflection?', his opponent asked politely, but showing great ignorance in medical questions. The other Shinsen-guy made a facepalm.

'That's infection, you idiots...'

'Wow, Saitou-san, you're so smart!'

'I don't really want to interfere', the hitokiri said, 'but why did you pick on me? I'm just using my right of self-defense, you attacked me in the first place, and I would really like to know, why.'

Okita looked at him like the hitokiri had lost his mind. He even stepped closer to him to check if he had fever, but the hitokiri shoved him away.

'So?'

'Well... You know... Hitokiri Battousai... Red hair, blue eyes... Your genetic attributes are quite unique...'

Okita pointed at the uncredited staff, who were trying to get away from the battlefield, playing the Kyoto crowd. All of them had a combination of dark eyes and dark hair to deceive foreigners. And to later make Tom Cruise seem totally out of place with his blue eyes, as the last samurai, who revised Japanese history, replacing the XXXL-sized Saigou Takamori with a handsome bald guy. But that's another story and shall be told another time. Anyway, visual-kei and such styles hadn't yet showed up, which later drove Japanese crazy, making those seem odd who had dark hair.

'You have a point...', the hitokiri grumbled. He started to think about dying his hair, and buying a pair of contact lenses.

The guy called Saitou, being a man of intelligence, had been previously knocked out by the other two's idiocy, and just managed to pull himself together. He took a step forward.

'Anyway, you are ill, you shouldn't fight! I, 斎藤 一, captain of the 3rd 新選組 unit, will kill the 人斬り抜刀斎.'

The hitokiri started to harrumph, totally ruining the showy scene of the Shinsen-guy.

'I'm sorry, but wouldn't it be a lot easier and more logical to shout at least with Hepburn-romanization? It's difficult to read kanjis...'

The lecture made his opponent's face turn bright red, which was quite a look, his head being in contrast with the turquoise haori. Even small flames surrounded him.

'No! We don't like foreigners, and we would never ever use their lame alphabet! Our writing system is a lot more sophisticated!'

The hitokiri didn't want to go in a dispute about the sophistication of Japanese, Chinese and such syllabaries, but once again, he dared to interrupt his opponent.

'I'm sorry, but why don't you just use kanjis the whole time then?'

This comment offended deeply the over-sensitive Shinsen-member. Saitou ran away, crying, violating at least 8 rules of the Shinsengumi. The hitokiri looked at the only opponent left. Okita - aside from the haori - was wearing tutu, a goofy smile, chucks size 44 and had little flowers drawn on his blade with a marker.

'Geez, do I really have to fight with you? Is this serious?', the hitokiri bursted out, showing his discriminative attitude. In the 21st century he could have easily been stoned to death by an organization that fights against such behaviour. But in the 1860's no such thing existed, and people killed each other for different, minor matters and did it in a humane way with swords, following the rules. So the result of the question was only a Jump-anthology that the mangaka threw at the hitokiri.

'We have to keep the reader's attention! Don't you dare to go on strike at this crucial moment!'

'Do I really have to do this? My work time is long over, I'm worn out, and even salarymen get more freetime than I do... ', his character begged.

The mangaka might have ignored these complaints, but the fanfiction's writer doesn't want to get any angry comments for being off-topic, so Okita came with a sentence.

'Hey, we have this nice restaurant placed here by the writer, so why don't we just call it a day?'

His idea was instantly accepted by the hitokiri, so they entered the restaurant, surrounded by the Choushuu-supporters, who all wanted autographs. And as a result, they drove the mangaka to despair, and made the latest Jump unsalable.

Aaand gardening...