Chapter
2
Kaoru shifted uncomfortably on the hard, stone floor. Her vision exploded in white fireworks as she sat up and groaned. For a moment all she could do was hold her head and close her eyes. She felt like she had the worst hang-over of her life. Reluctantly she opened her eyes again, but that didn't make her feel any better. She appeared to be in some sort of basement. One meagre candle burning feebly in the corner closest to her illuminated a room - if that's what you'd call it - made of stone slabs that glistened faintly from chronic damp. A short flight of granite steps led up to a threatening-looking door. The other side of the room was in darkness. Kaoru relaxed a bit; she may be a prisoner, but she didn't seem to be in any immediate danger. It was time to think about this calmly and rationally, and find her way out. The only exit she could see was the door that, upon closer inspection, looked unfortunately like some kind of reinforced steel. There were no windows.
Kaoru was just about to attempt kneeling when she heard a sound like chains clinking in the opposite, darkest corner. She froze, eyes slowly turning to search the oblivion for signs of life. No light reached the corner, it was impossible to see anything at all, but if she squinted, and used her imagination, she could just about make out the form a person sitting propped against the wall. It looked sinisterly as if it was watching her. Kaoru was just trying to decide if she was really seeing this half-image or not when it moved. Not much, just a slight hand adjustment, but suddenly the wavering indentations in shadow that had made up the figure became solid and undeniable lines. Kaoru screamed.
The
person darted forward, reaching towards her, as she scooted up
against the wall as far away as she could manage.
"Please, I
won't hurt you." said a light voice. He - Kaoru could see now
that it was a he - had come within the reach of the tiny candle's
light and Kaoru had a chance to examine him properly. His hair was
longer than she'd ever seen on a man, and a red-brown colour, tied
back in a ponytail at the base of his neck. His eyes must have been
some kind of blue but in the dusk of the cell they looked violet. He
also had a deep scar on his cheek in the shape of a cross. He was
naturally pale and had a slight build, and Kaoru could tell he'd
only just be taller than her when he stood up, but Kaoru was most
surprised by his clothes. He was wearing a gi and hakama, which was
very unusual for twenty-first century Tokyo. The hakama was white,
and the gi was probably red, but again it was hard to tell. He looked
generally concerned.
"That's okay" said Kaoru, lowering her hands slowly, "You just startled me." The man began to settle back in his corner but Kaoru motioned to him to stop. "Wait, er , don't go back there again. I can't see you like that." she said unsteadily. He looked at her for a moment with an expression of simple-minded surprise, before he smiled slightly and crawled more towards her. As he moved, Kaoru could hear a heavy chain scrape along the flagstones, and when she looked she could see that his ankle was in fact shackled to the wall.
"How come you're chained up?" she asked, wondering for the first time how he ended up being taken captive by vampires. Kaoru knew she'd been kidnapped by vampires because a) she hadn't seen or heard them sneak up on her and b) that was a risk you ran in her line of work. But then, it could also be werewolves.
"Oh, I suppose they just don't want me escaping." he replied, smiling at her again. "Well, that door looks pretty secure to me." said Kaoru, nodding at the door in front of them. He didn't say anything. "So do you know who's kidnapped us?" she tried again.
"His name is Makoto Shishio." he said, tensely. Kaoru waited for more but none came. This stranger wasn't being very helpful. It was time she figured out an escape route. She pulled herself to her feet and dusted herself off.
"What's your name, anyway?" she asked, looking down at him.
"Kenshin Himura." he said, with a slightly curious tone.
"Right, Kenshin, it's time we got ourselves out of here, don't you think?" she said without expecting an answer. She walked around the walls of the cell and Kenshin watched her do it. Finally, she came to the door. She stood looking at it for a moment, rapped at it with her knuckles a couple of times. She pressed her ear against it but she couldn't hear anything so the tapped it again.
"Sounds pretty solid." she said to Kenshin behind her. "Do you know if they're any cameras in here?"
"Cameras?" he said, sounding puzzled.
"Yeah you know, surveillance."
"No, I don't think so." he replied.
"Okay, so right now that's our biggest advantage, that they don't know what we're doing in here." An idea was forming in her head, but she couldn't be sure it would work. "Do you know if there are guards outside?" she asked Kenshin.
"Yes, the shifts change every four hours." he answered, watching her closely.
"How do you know that?" she said, startled by how much he appeared to know about their cosy little dungeon cubicle.
"I hear them." he replied. Hmm, must not be as thick as I thought, thought Kaoru, referring to both Kenshin and the door. Of course this begged the question just how long had he been here, but Kaoru decided to let it slide. She would ask him once they were free.
"Do they ever open the door? For food or water?" Kenshin seemed unsure on how to answer, but after a pause he said,
"The first time was when they brought you in." Kaoru thought hard about this, turning everything she knew over in her head, trying to find a loop-hole, a weak link where they could slip through. But her thoughts were interrupted by Kenshin,
"I'm sorry you're in here." he said, looking melancholy and bowing his head.
"It's not your fault, don't worry about it." she replied, making him look up at her in surprise. Then he turned away again, looking even unhappier.
If only I could get them to open the door… thought Kaoru in frustration. Supposedly, if there were guards outside, then they would come in if they thought she was in danger. She had to be there for a reason, didn't she? She could scream, but maybe that was too crude, they might see through it, and if they did then any other attempts would be useless. She could bang something heavy against the door, or the wall, and they would come to investigate, but she didn't have anything like that. The only other moveable thing in there was Kenshin's shackle, and that didn't look like it was going anywhere anytime soon. She could try knocking some stones out of the wall, make them think she was trying to dig a tunnel or something, but would they hear it?
"They won't come." Kenshin's firm but somehow melancholy voice rose out of the darkness, answering her thoughts as if he could hear them. Kaoru chose to ignore him.
She sighed, she wasn't going anywhere anyway. The door was too solid, the walls were too thick, and she was too weak. There wasn't anything she could do for now. She walked back to where her cellmate was sitting and flopped down next to him. She tried not to take the way he stiffened personally.
"I don't suppose you have any better ideas on how to get us out of here, do you?" she asked.
"The third and fourth stones to the left from the door are loose. If I knocked them out, the gap would be just big enough to allow you through." he said. Kaoru stared at him in amazement.
"Why are you only telling me this now?" she screamed as soon as she found her voice.
"Oro? I didn't know I was supposed to, that I did not." he replied, sounding worried. Kaoru's eyebrows went up. What was that? What the hell did 'Oro' mean? This guy sure is strange, she thought to herself.
"Okay, so here's the plan. When they next change the guards, you push the stones out, and I'll crawl through, got it?" she said. Kenshin nodded dumbly. "So you listen up, okay? Now the next problem is, what do I do once I get out? How do I open the door?" she said.
"Oh, the door's not actually locked, you just can't open it from the inside, there's no handle." Kaoru felt like wringing his little, effeminate neck. What was with this guy? Well, at least it was going to be easy. Now all she had to do was wait.
"So, Kenshin,… er,… where are you from?" she asked, trying to make small talk that didn't sound horribly forced and uncomfortable. And failing.
"Japan." he answered vaguely. Silence filled the space between them. Kaoru began to get antsy. Megumi used to say that she couldn't bear silences because there wasn't much going on in her own head, but that wasn't it. Kaoru just didn't like them, she needed noise, life. She remembered when she used to play hide and seek as a child, she was never any good at it because she would always go looking for the other children after a few seconds of hiding. She was always afraid they'd forgotten about her, afraid that she'd wait for them for hours and they'd never come. So Kaoru had some abandonment issues, that's what you get when you lose your mother at six years old.
She cast her eyes around the room as she tried to think of something to talk about. They fell on Kenshin's shackle. She scooted round so that she was sitting in front of him.
"What are we going to do about this?" she said, reaching out to touch the metal ring. Suddenly, so fast that she didn't see him move, Kenshin's hand was around her wrist, gripping tightly.
"Don't touch it." he snapped. Kaoru stared at him in shock. The hand on her wrist was cold as ice, his grip just this side of painful. Was this the same not-the-sharpest-knife-in-the-draw man as before? It was hard to believe, but as she watched whatever it was, the harshness in him, sinking back into the depths of his soul in his gold-flecked eyes, she couldn't doubt it. His grip loosened and he let go steadily, one finger at a time.
"Forgive me," he said slowly, "What I meant to say was my ankle is very sore, and I will take care of the chain myself." Kaoru withdrew her hands and, noticing that her mouth was open, shut it. No doubt there was more to it than just that he was afraid she would hurt him. But looking at his innocent face now it was almost as if none of it had ever happened, as if she had just imagined the death-grip on her arm and the frightening severity in his voice. Almost. The lingering shade of guilt in the way he covered his eyes with his hair told her that it was real, and that maybe there was a reason this man was chained up.
The silence was back, and this time Kaoru let it come. Once again she was faced with the question ' Who is this man?'. Could she even trust him? What if he turned on her as soon as they were back in the outside world? But Kaoru knew she could never leave him behind. He was a prisoner of the vampires just as she was, and the enemy of her enemy was her friend.
"What is your name?" he asked in a low voice. Kaoru steeled herself and sat up a little straighter. She would face him head on, Kaoru style.
"Kaoru Kamiya." she said, enunciating carefully while trying to look down her nose at him without actually looking down her nose at him, which she had never been very good at.
"Well, Kaoru-dono, our guards have just left their post. The time has come to exercise our little plan, that it has." he said. He moved his hands down to his ankle and wrapped them around the heavy shackle. Closing his eyes, we went very still, then, with a little jerk, the metal snapped and fell to the floor. He pulled himself very deliberately to his feet and walked over to the door-side of the cell, limping slightly as he went while Kaoru could only stare in open-mouthed amazement.
He laid his hands on one of the stones of the wall, and after a pause while he listened for movement outside, he pushed. The stone fell away with a loud grinding noise and hit the ground on the other side with an even louder crash. He repeated this with the second stone, then gestured hurriedly for Kaoru. She shook herself free of her astonishment and mounted the steps. She felt Kenshin's hands around her waist and she braced herself on either side of the gap, and slid through feet first. It wasn't graceful, but Kaoru didn't have time for grace, there were more pressing matters to attend to. Someone would've heard the noise and would be running to intercept them that very moment. She doubled back to the front of the mammoth door, wrapped her hands around the iron handle, and wrenched with all her might. The handle came up and the second it was free the door swung open, supposedly having been pushed violently by Kenshin from the other side.
Kaoru could already hear footsteps, and she turned to start running, but she stopped because Kenshin wasn't with her. He was still standing in the doorway of the cell looking faintly stricken.
"What are you waiting for, come on!" she cried, running back, grabbing his wrist and pulling him after her. She could see the guards now, they had rounded the corner at the end of the long corridor. They ran together away from the guards, but their pursuers were soon right on their heels. Kaoru was running as fast as she could, faster even. She was fitter than most thanks to her swordsmanship training, but she knew she wouldn't be able to keep this up much longer. Suddenly she found her self yanked forcefully into a room off the corridor. Kenshin kicked the door closed and pushed her away from him in a second. Kaoru's head was swimming, but she took in the room around her. It was dark, and the walls were lined with guns, spears, weapons of all shapes and sizes, but predominantly swords. There were scores of them, sheathed and unsheathed, placed carelessly in racks, mounted tenderly on the wall, and just leaning patiently against it. Kaoru watched Kenshin grab a sword and its sheath that had been leaning against the wall. It didn't fit in with the others, somehow, it was a different colour maybe, it looked older. She had a second to wonder why Kenshin chose that particular one when the door burst open.
Seven or eight vampire guards, all wearing the same, black uniform, flooded the room. They paused when they saw the sword in Kenshin's hands. They all drew theirs and charged as one. Once again, Kenshin moved so fast Kaoru didn't see him do it, but at the end, Kenshin was sheathing his sword and the guards lay motionless on the ground. Kaoru stared in amazement, he wasn't even out of breath. She was suddenly glad he was on her side.
"We should be going now, Kaoru-dono." he said, breaking her out of a trance she hadn't known she was in. He held out his hand and Kaoru took it. Then they were running again. Except Kaoru's legs didn't want to work properly.
"May I carry you?" asked Kenshin, mid-run, and without waiting for a reply he scooped her up in his arms. Kaoru stiffened, her face pressed into his chest, she'd never been held like that before, and under normal conditions she would have freed herself and slapped him across the face, but they were now going at twice, three times the speed they had been going before, and Kaoru felt a little embarrassed. She was distracted however, when she noticed just how fast they were going. Kenshin was fast, inhumanely soHe wasn't a big man, and carrying her should have slowed him down quite a bit, but the world around them was wizzing past at an incredible rate. Not only that, but Kaoru hardly felt a thing, he was keeping her steady and comfortable throughout.
Kenshin also appeared to know where they were going, turning here and taking those stairs, until they burst out into the night through some sort of emergency exit. Kenshin didn't put her down or stop running until they were a good way away from the compound. He stopped in one of the smaller streets that eventually led back to the city and put her down gently.
"You will be safe here." he said. Kaoru suddenly felt the need to say something, but what? 'Will I ever see you again?' sounded like something out of a cheap movie, and inviting him back to her place to introduce him to all her friends seemed too forward.
"Thank you." she said after a brief pause, wincing slightly as she realized how dumb she sounded.
"You're welcome. It's time for me to go now. Please go straight home, Kaoru-dono." he replied with a slight smile, though he was nearly invisible in the unlit alleyway. He turned to go, but Kaoru stopped him,
"Wait," she cried, "Will you be… okay?"
Another smile, "Don't worry about me, just make sure you get home safely." and with that he was gone. Kaoru wandered back to the main road and hailed a cab to take her home. The whole trip she just stared out the window at the rising sun, running over the night's events in her head and puzzling over the man who was Himura Kenshin, who had rescued her, and was the singularly strangest person she'd ever met. And the sad thing was that she would probably never see him again.
Okay, So there you go. Please review and all that. Also, does anyone want to be my beta on this? I'd send you new chapters and you'd tell me how they could be better. I'm not promising to listen to you all the time, I will keep some things the same, but it would help and be appreciated. You'd get a credit...
I've already written up to chapter 15, and I'll post a new one every two weeks.
