Prologue is set as Kenshin's train of thought. Ken and Kao's POV will be alternating in chapters.

M for violence, gore, language, and sexual content. Bwah.

Rurouni Kenshin and its characters are not mine. Nobuhiro Watsuki is the mastermind behind RK. Bow to him.

Raven and Red

By Izzy

Prologue:

Ten Years Earlier…

My teeth tear through soft flesh and my jaws work in desperate pulls as I suck and shudder and moan against the small weight in my arms. My mouth floods with heavy nectar, strengthening and revitalizing every inch of me, every void that craves and demands to be fed and filled and I'm rapt and delirious and drunk off it. I've reached an almost incorporeal state, detached from everything else except this high and this healing, and as I continue to suck and drink and feed, a horrible wave of recognition finally hits me.

Haiku Baiku. White Plum.

The scent grabs hold of me, breaks through the barriers of my consciousness and I remember and I realize who it is I'm holding, who I'm hurting, and with great effort I finally pull away but it's too late.

I cry as I look down at her, repeating her name over and over again, asking for forgiveness that I don't deserve as my tears fall on her and mix with the blood trickling from her mouth. There is a hint of a smile in that lovely mouth, and even as the end draws nearer and nearer and her breathing becomes shallower, she still looks as calm and beautiful as ever and I cry harder.

But I can save her.

I try to save her, to give back what I just took but she refuses and I beg "please, my love, please drink," but still she refuses and instead takes the dagger she carries everywhere and hands it to me, nodding. For the first time in years my hand shakes as I hold a blade and she looks at me acceptingly and nods again, smiling and says "It's alright.":

I know she's right, and I dread what I must do.

The blade comes down.

Chapter One in Battousai's POV: Intrusion

Present Day…

The boy cried out as I dug a wooden stake into his shoulder, purposely missing his heart from inches above. He looked at me through slit eyes that burned a feral silver.

"Are you ready to talk?" I asked, pinning him to wall from his throat. He had been resistant to my questioning; therefore I had chosen another method to pry answers out of him, a method that is not at all pleasant to either human or vampire. The boy was a newly Turned, an infant in vampire years, and I doubted he ever had experienced this amount of pain before, both in this lifetime and in the previous one. He would soon give in.

His lips curled back from his teeth as he spat out the next words."Screw you half breed."

I reached for another stake from underneath my jacket, where I kept a variety of specialized weaponry to kill the preternatural, specifically vampires.

His expression changed instantly, eyes expanding as I bared another stake. "Wait!"

"Yes?"

He shut his eyes, pained at having to betray his own sect. For a youngling, he was very loyal to his sect, which I had learned was called Katana, led by a tall-haired, sword-collecting enthusiast called Chou. But even the most loyal eventually succumb when tortured.

"Yes?" I asked again.

He opened his eyes and tried to chomp at my neck. I elbowed him on a side of his face, and dug my fingers further into his shoulder bones. He screamed what seemed to be every known profanity in the Japanese language.

I brought my gaze close to meet his, pronouncing every word sharply as I spoke to him. "With or without your help, I will find your coven and dispatch of them as they need be. Spare yourself any more suffering and indignation and give me even the slightest of clues. Or else I will have to find another one of your brothers and follow the same protocol, but much worse. My mood worsens as time ticks by."

To emphasize my point, I peeled back several of the protective layers reigning my chi and let it slide down from my arm to the young vampire's frame. This of course would grab unwanted attention from other creatures of the night, but I was running out of time.

The young vamp gasped and shivered beneath my grip, his mouth stuck in a silent scream.

"In-incredible. You're more powerful than my master."

His shoulders slumped, the red light draining in his eyes. He remained silent for several minutes, and then slowly began to speak, his tone resigned. "There's a warehouse district just passing downtown. You may be able to get more information there from the others. I otherwise don't know where to find him."

I looked at the boy for several more seconds. He couldn't be more than 17. Were it not for me about to end his life, he would've remained 17 for as long as he could survive. Foolish young boy. Trading his humanity for a prolonged but amoral existence. I was doing him a favor.

"Is there anything else you would like to add?"

He shook his head. "Just get it over with."

I unsheathed my blade, and let it slide quickly across his neck.

Going against several road rules and regulation, I got to a neighboring district in only 20 minutes, leaving my motor-bike there so as not to draw attention with its roar. I traveled the rest on foot.

Upon arriving, I immediately began searching for vampiric wavelengths, seeking out for any hint or vestige of their demonic ki that would lead me to the one particular warehouse.

As I progressed, the traces got stronger, until finally it was like hitting a wall of power.

The warehouse itself was squat and in fairly good condition, the façade a contemporary design with a minimum amount of high-up windows. It included a double-door entrance and a roll-up garage door. My guess was that it had once been utilized to store merchandise for whatever business or corporation that had gone bankrupt, and was found and gutted by some bloodsucking enterpriser as a way to make bank off fellow sect members.

There were two guards standing at the doors, one small and peroxide-blond and the other tan and athletically built, standing shoulder-straight as if they mattered. Neither one of them was of impressive power or build, good enough only to keep out non-sect members or inquisitive mundane officials.

I approached them casually. They saw me, standing on alert, their hand on the hilt of their guns, which were likely to have silver bullets. Silver is the preternatural creature's bane. No other chemical will harm them upon entering their system , save for this particular element.

The first guard spoke to me, not seeming to recognize me. My red hair, a trademark of mine, looks brown in shaded areas.

My sword was responding with a subtle, unearthly pulse from where it rested strapped onto my weaponry belt, eager for the taste of more blood.

"Hey you. Where do you think- "

His head was off his shoulders before he even knew it. His body wizened into a flaky corpse, collapsing into a sooty pile of dust

"Shit." The other vampire, the one with the spiky, peroxide-blond hair aimed his gun at me, his face and posture tense and uneasy. I grabbed his wrist before he had a chance to pull the trigger, hearing his bones crunch beneath my grip, and thrust the blade into his heart. He disintegrated and vanished, leaving his clothes and dust as the only remnants of his existence.

With a quick flick of my wrist the blood cleaned off from the blade. Battousai pulsed ominously with the anticipation for more blood, its eagerness shooting through my bones. Sword in hand I stalked towards the doors.

The music rose from a muffled pounding to a loud bang of noise when I opened the doors, the beat pounding inside my chest like a second pulse.

Rogue vampires and humans alike were on the dance floor, pumping to fast-beat rhythms, the lights playing across their bodies like ecstatic butterflies. To the side were couches where clusters of vampires huddled around the humans, sniffing them with their prying noses, tasting their skin with their tongue. Some were already digging in. I could smell the tang of blood in the air, mingling with the stench of vampires.

The music booth was on the further side of the floor where the DJ stood between giant speakers, setting the morbid atmosphere with his tunes.

I estimated the amount of leeches, around 350. A fair amount. Most of them were newly Turned and had unimpressive ki, and I doubted many of them were armed with weapons that did not grow out of their gums and fingers. This would be easy.

A few of the partiers looked towards my direction, their gazes pausing to where I held my sword, freezing in their pose. I smiled, not kindly, at them.

"Your leader. Where is he?" I asked, already knowing they would not make this any easier for me than it would be.

Someone yelled,"Battousai!" and a wave of startled and confused gasps, yells, hisses erupted.

I threw several shuraken at some of their throats to shut them up, the star-shaped weapons digging in their throats. Unsheathing my sword from its case, I awaited the onslaught.

They came at me spontaneously, armed with teeth and claws. Some had knives out, others guns, which I avidly disdain. Bullets, most likely silver-plated, rained upon me, whizzing by millimeters of my body as I dodged and ran, hitting a few other fellow vampires in their path. They were doing some of the work for me.

I leapt at one of the gun-toting leeches and cut him across the torso, splitting him into two halves. I killed the rest of the vampires with guns when their bullets ran out.

A few vampires tried to escape, but I blocked their path, letting only the surviving, screaming humans pass as I removed vampire limbs and heads with my blade. Parts that were not heads fell and hit the floor in squishy, wet noises, trying desperately to find their owners, crawling and leaving trails of blood like gruesome slugs.

A group of vampires tried to ambush me in a circle. I did a 180, splitting their throats as I spun from several inches in the air, blade extended.

Parts of my jacket, which was made of the strongest leather, had been shredded, parts of my skin cut. None of them, thankfully, had managed to cut my face. The young vampires weren't as weak as I thought they would be, but they were inexperienced and untrained.

A loud growl erupted from the direction of the main entrance, and we all momentarily took a chance to look at the direction from where it came.

Three dark shapes stood by the doorway.

The first was a small female wearing a tight-fitted black suit that covered all of her body. She had hair like rope- long, braided and strong. The other, which I immediately recognized as the source of the growl was a shapeshifter, in his half-wolf, half-man form, his silhouette monstrous and towering over the two. In between the two was another female dressed like the first, this one with gently sloping curves and dark hair that spilled from a high ponytail. For the briefest second I thought I saw her eyes spark blue.

Next Chapter: Kaoru's viewpoint, more blood and more ass-kicking.