They moved a few more feet, weaving past tables. A man grumbled and looked up when they moved by, then did a pronounced double-take. Kenshin felt his heart sink.

"Ahh… hello there, girl!" He reached out a hand, pulling Kaoru from behind Kenshin. Sano grabbed at her as she was pulled, but the man had already wrapped her in his warm arms.

"Let her go," Kenshin said, fighting to keep his voice steady. His hand clenched into a fist, though he kept his fingers from touching the smooth handle of his sakaba. The Battousai clamored in the back of his brain, screaming for him to take action immediately.

The man smiled, showing yellow and blackened teeth interspersed with gaping holes. "Make me!"

PART 2

"Goro-san!" The voice was overloud in the silence of the night.

Saitoh took a deep dragon on his cheroot before tossing it into the dirt and crushing it beneath his heel.

"Goro-san," the voice repeated urgently.

"Idiot," Saitoh said contemptuously, under his breath, before stalking out of the shadows of a large tree. Across the road squatted the dingy bar where even now the murderer was seeking out his next victim.

"There's a problem, sir," the idiot babbled.

He was young, carrying less than twenty years of life on his still-narrow shoulders. The child barely knew what a problem was!    

"What is it?" Saitoh asked. He was tired, and he wanted nothing more than to finish this dismal day and turn to the arms of his loving wife.

"The red-haired man is *not* wearing the pink gi, sir!" The child-man pointed to wildly to the bar, babbling on about colors and people.

Saitoh brushed by him, slipping silently into the shadows underneath a window. He glanced inside the tavern, hiding himself out of habit rather than some conviction that it was necessary. Those inside were drunkards, not killers.

He cursed, disbelieving, as he saw the drama playing out within. What kind of an idiot takes a woman into a bar? He blinked, and his vision was confirmed. Kamiya Kaoru was indeed in the bar, and she was wearing the dirty, tattered gi that the foolish rurouni clung so mutinously to. The gi that was even now clutched in the meaty hand of some drunken fool who didn't realize who he was testing.

He glanced once at Himura, and then whirled away. The rurouni's hand had already settled on the hilt of his ridiculous sword. Behind him lurked the gangster that he had chosen to call friend.

Those idiots were going to ruin all his plans!

"Idiot Battousai!"

"Goro-san?" The boy spoke as he stalked back into circle of armed policemen that he had picked so carefully for this very sensitive operation.

"Get in there boy," he growled, plucking another cheroot from his pocket and lighting it. "Make sure that that fool's woman doesn't die."

His skill might save him if Kamiya were killed, but the clutch of young, eager policemen that surrounded him would have no chance against the Battousai's aroused blood-thirst. 

The boy was shifting, his hand shaking on the hilt of the government issued blade.

"Hurry!" Saitoh took a long draw on the cheroot, and watched the boy slowly enter the bar.

*     *     *

The man's hands were touching Kaoru.

Kenshin-the-rurouni reminded himself that he had agreed to play this farce out completely – as had Kaoru and Sano. The Battousai wasn't convinced.

I didn't agree to this!

Kenshin ignored the dark voice and kept his eyes trained on the man who held the woman he had sworn to protect. The man's ki reeked of blood, of death, and of cruelty. He had killed before. There was no doubt he was the murderer that Saitoh had sent them to find. He hadn't expected it to be this easy. Kaoru had brushed against the man by accident, not by the plan's design. Saitoh's plan had dovetailed nicely, but in an unexpected way.

The man's fingers, fat and sausage-like, danced around Kaoru's neck, touching her nape and brushing her hair from the shoulders of her kimono.

When were the police going to step in?

The plan is simple, Kaoru had said. Go in the tavern, get the man, and get out of the tavern. The Mibu Wolf, the man responsible for this whole mess, was waiting outside.

This is stupid – and Kaoru should *not* be here.

The rurouni agreed.

The man was snuffling at Kaoru's shoulders now, his nose brushing against the soft, sweet skin at her collarbone. Kaoru herself looked disgusted, but she bore the ill treatment with grace. She had known what her part was since the beginning, not that knowing that there was a point to such manhandling made it any easier to go through.

"Come on, I have a room," the man slurred out, grabbing Kaoru's hand to lead her off.

That wasn't part of the plan.

"Please, stop," Kenshin said, trying to sound innocent and impotent. The Battousai growl in his voice told him that he hadn't completely succeeded.

Kaoru's eyes flashed in warning, even as the man stuck her slender fingers in his mouth and began to suck on them. Kenshin watched Kaoru gag, though she covered it was a hearty cough.

The Battousai didn't like the sight.

Even the rurouni had known that this wasn't a good plan from the very beginning, but Kaoru had owed a favor. It was only honorable to allow Saitoh to collect his debt.

The Wolf planned it this way.

Kenshin brushed the Battousai's angry statement away. It didn't matter if he agreed wholeheartedly. The only thing important now was Kaoru's safety.

The man was pulling at her, tugging her toward the door.

Kenshin's hand touched the pommel of his blade.

The man's eyes shot to it with the movement.

This man is not a fool.

"Oooh, pretty boy thinks he's a samurai." Looking directly at him, the murderer made a show of licking Kaoru's palm.
The Battousai roared at the challenge. Kenshin managed to contain his anger, to bottle it and feed it into his suffering patience.

"Do you want to fight me, Samurai?" The man grabbed the sake bottle he had been drinking from and swung it, liquor dripping out all over and creating puddles on the floor. Kenshin saw the waitress' hand fly to her mouth at the sight.

"Hey, what's going on here?"

Finally! Kenshin forced his hand to leave his sakabatou. Though he didn't look much, the child who approached was clearly a policeman. How much had he been told?

"This man has taken my woman," he managed to say. Two days of practicing hadn't made the words any easier to say.

The flicker in the boy's eyes told him that the message had been understood.

"Is this true?" The boy's gulped as he spoke, a sure sign of nervousness.

The drunken man laughed, lurching on his feet. "He's a liar." The man burped loudly. "She's mine for the night." He patted Kaoru's arm. "That's a good girl."

The boy looked lost. The Battousai stirred. This doesn't look good.

His response should have been something calm, some phrase that would soothe the drunken murder and coax him to release Kaoru. Not an inflammatory comment, by any means.

Kenshin eyed the man's grasp on Kaoru. Though he was clearly inebriated, his hands remained steady and firm. Too firm, perhaps, where they brushed the undersides of Kaoru's breasts through the worn gi. A habitual drinker. A man prone to violence. The situation made him more dangerous, not less.

Saitoh had, no doubt, expected it.

I'll cut off every other finger, Battousai mused, and Kenshin forced himself not to wince at the graphic, bloody picture that popped into his mind.

We don't have time for this, he told himself…

END PART TWO