No agonized screams of the doomed heralded the arrival of Death. The world around Himura Kenshin just faded, blurred, and reformed itself into a forsaken stretch of desolation. Kenshin instinctively put a hand to the sword hanging from his left hip, and caught a fistful of silk instead. A formal kimono, crossed right over left and with no hakama ties to hold his sakabatou met his downward look of confusion.
"The sakabatou blade was enshrined with your ashes," Death said, planting the end of her reaper's scythe in the dull ashes at their feet. Wind he couldn't feel tugged at the layers of translucent darkness forming her cowled robe, with the suggestion of eyes glowing in the darkness and her blade lowered until he could see himself in the polished metal. Wide purple eyes, set between familiar scars and scarlet hair, stared back at him in the reflection of the blade. The voice of Death was not hollow or booming or even male, but a softly-accented alto that floated out of the shadows around them like the keening toll of a distant bell.
"You are ..."
"Mmm?" She didn't look up from the black book that had appeared in one of her skeletal hands, but motioned with a circle of the scythe-bearing hand that he could keep speaking. "I have a schedule to keep. Are you ready to leave?"
"You are a girl, that you are!"
Now she looked up from her book, which evaporated when she shut it. "My dear Battousai ... whatever gave you the impression I was male?" Death glided past and motioned for him to follow. After an appraising glance at the ashy desolation surrounding them, Kenshin fell quickly into step with his afterlife guide, staying well clear of the wicked edge of the weapon. "I will be to the point and honest with you, Himura-san."
"Death is honest?" he asked cynically. He was clearly already in Hell, there wasn't a lot she could do to him now.
"Death is always honest," she said, waving a dismissing hand, the skeletal bones clicking softly against each other. "One of the most honest things in the world; mortal or otherwise. You, however, are not. Anyone who has taken and destroyed as many lives as you have would, by all rights, be in a handbasket right now."
"Blunt as well," Kenshin muttered. She ignored that.
"By all rights," Death repeated with a sigh. "But, Himura-san, you don't belong in Hell."
Kenshin blinked at her and stumbled to a stop. Death slowed and looked back over her shoulder, giving the impression of quizzical impatience even without visible features. Kenshin lurched back into motion and followed her like a supplicant. "I ... what? Oro... I am afraid I do not follow you, that I do not."
"Despite what you've talked yourself into believing, and that there was a time of your mortal existence I took up residence near you just to cut down on my nightly commute, you don't belong in Hell. Unfortunately, I think you'd protest if I sent you to Heaven."
"Heaven!" Kenshin panicked, seeing blood and uncounted lives taken flash through his memory. "Death-dono! I ... I don't ..."
"You're not going to Heaven, Himura-san," Death placated. "You're correct. You don't belong there. Despite what an inherently good person you are, no Master of Hiten Mitsurugi has ever gone there. Normally, I'd just send you along for reincarnation, but there was a petition against that." She seemed almost amused by that. "So, Himura-san. I can't send you to Heaven, They would rather I don't reincarnate you, and I won't send you to Hell. We seem to have a quandary of what to do with you."
"Oro ..."
"Exactly," Death said dryly, stopping. "Stand back, if you would." The scythe slashed down, lodging the tip in the stones and ash. The ground fissured, spreading a spiderweb of cracks over the grey earth and buckling as something began rising. Rocks and ash slid over hewn stone as the monolith rose. Death pulled her scythe's blade away as the top passed their heads and continued rising. When it stopped, a stone gate towered over the pair and the air between the two sides shimmered. Death waved him forward.
Kenshin looked skeptically at the doorway, then shrugged and stepped through. It could be an elaborate trap, but he couldn't think of a single reason for it. Sable darkness, like a scribe's finest ink, held him for a breath before parting into a different world. Death emerged beside him, her robes still moving restlessly in the unfelt wind.
Stone cracked and groaned as the gate behind them sank back into the ground, leaving behind only a few displaced mossy rocks. In front of the pair, a winding narrow pathway stretched, leading through moonlit grass (though without a visible moon) and trees to the base of a towering castle.
"Death-dono? Where are we?"
"The Library." Death led the way down the path. Kenshin trailed after, thinking that scrambling after Death in a confused haze was becoming a strange habit of his. Death glided over the grassy path, and into the trees. "You seem surprised."
"The Afterlife has a Library?" Kenshin asked pointedly. "I did not expect that, that I did not."
"Aside from the occasional would-be sorcerer that summons one of the forbidden grimoires to Earth, we can't run without records. Mortal kingdoms invariably figure out some way to mark down how much rice their subjects produce in a year. When a scholar finally catches on to something that has been in front of him his entire life, but unobserved, he can't help but write it down so everyone can marvel at how clever he is. And you are surprised that the Underworld has a designated place to store information? We have access to more information than your former world imagines."
"That does not answer what I am doing here, that it does not," Kenshin observed as the castle doors swung open before them and they stepped into the echoing halls filled floor to vaulted ceiling with shelves. Books, scrolls, tablet stones, and even knotted or notched sticks, filled shelves and cluttered tables. A book popped into being on a near shelf, and glowing numbers wrote themselves into the spine, burning just long enough to etch themselves there permanently before dulling to leave a neatly written number behind. Kenshin caught glimpses of movement near one window and saw a misty figure reflected in the glass for a brief instant before the window frosted over.
"Since we can't get rid of you," Death noted wryly, "we've decided to employ you."
AN's: Yes, I know. "Kat! Stop tormenting other fandoms, and go work on your long fic!" Um ... I wanted a break? So, my first RK fic, and it's a certifiable Crack-Fic. I am so blaming this on ... well, you probably already know who you are. All your fault, isn't it?
Let's see. Stuff that is not mine here include Himura Kenshin (and he is thanking random dieties for that, no doubt). The idea that Death had to move in to cut down on her commute (lifted that from Vathara, I think.). And the Death Note, which I borrowed from the manga "Death Note".