Product Warning: Known to induce seizures from fans of Kenshin/Kaoru mush.
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The Null Hypothesis by IVIaedhros.
Disclaimer: Mind Asylum and AlsoSprachOdin have had their work cut out for them, let me assure you.
ZOMG, someone actually called the number…dude, I so warned them…I'm not even going to bother faking sympathetic pain
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"Things're bound to be broken when ya' invite the monsters in to play."
Aoshi very rarely dreamed. Though Aoshi's mind naturally followed a more creative bent, his occupation often demanded that he be what amounted to a human abacus. That he also seldom fretted over what he could not change and daily worked to exhaustion meant that what few journeys his subconscious took were never remembered. So when an angry merchant's voice pulled the sleeping Okashira from a dream while he lay motionless under a small bridge, he was extremely disoriented. For a second, Aoshi simply blinked and looked over the outside world with uncomprehending lantern eyes.
"…ass out of here you worthless scum!"
Aoshi's right hand moved of its own accord and intercepted the man's foot before the wooden geta he wore could do any damage: at best a nasty bruise and a bloody lip, at worst a broken nose. A fast twist to the striking limb further unbalanced the already destabilized man. Aoshi was on top of him in an instant, knees firmly in the man's armpits and weight bearing down on his chest. It was now the merchant, a small, wiry man of about forty dressed in a haori far too ostentatious for his station, who sported the stunned expression as he waited fearfully for Aoshi's cocked fist to snap forward and feed him his own teeth.
"Battousai, Battousai!" The man yelled.
The fist never came.
Aoshi stared at the shrieking man for a moment before standing up roughly and lurching forward with a heavy limp in his right leg, shivering uncontrollably as he did so. His night spent on the muddy ground of the Konan district had not been warm and the whole back half of his robes was soaked and caked in river scum. There was a temptation to speed up and try to warm his heat deprived body, but Aoshi did not move faster than a leisurely walk. It would be unwise to give the impression of guilt by appearing to flee.
Soon, a new voice was filling the air with its cries. Aoshi halted, reluctant, but resigned to deal with the situation as quietly as possible. As the cries grew closer and more articulated, Aoshi consciously allowed a miniscule slackness to enter his posture and expression while turning his side towards the oncoming noise. One hand, the one closest to the man approaching, hung limply in the open while the other was shifted back slightly and its fingers curled in preparation to receive the senbon that lay hidden up the sleeve of his robe. The Law had arrived.
"You there, stop!" A short, but still somewhat lanky police officer sporting a western style mustache and a newly pressed uniform of solid navy blue had emerged from an alley between houses. Upon catching sight of Aoshi, the supposed Battousai, he ran over as fast as his loping stride would carry him and immediately clamped his free hand around Aoshi's arm while the other rested on a saber hilt. Nursing his fatigue and wound as he was, Aoshi found it somewhat difficult to not to lash out at the police officer, especially since he had already complied with the order to stop. However, instead of fighting back, Aoshi took an additional moment to evaluate this newly appeared threat.
The officer was an older man, perhaps in his late thirties, though it was difficult to tell with his complexion prematurely damaged by a life evidently spent outdoors. His breath was somewhat short despite the relatively small distance he had probably traveled, but his grip was strong. Though the man seemed jumpy enough, no doubt due to the accusations of Battousai and assault, there had been had been no command to show his hands or otherwise clear Aoshi before contact had been made. Aoshi surmised the man was once a peasant. The slight twang with which he spoke certainly supported the hypothesis. Perhaps even once a low level footman in the army, though it was unlikely.
He looked nervous, inexperienced.
This would not be difficult.
"Can I help you with anything, sir?" Voice: quiet, but not difficult to be heard. Annoyed and sarcastic, but not directed at the officer himself.
The officer's grip tightened fractionally. The angle changed.
Aoshi's eyes laid a small grid over the man's body. He changed his own angle and evaluated the best way to adjust those lines to bring the man down as fast as possible.
The officer relaxed, his expression becoming a little less wary as the supposed assailant did not try to resist.
Aoshi relaxed as well. The situation was now his to manipulate.
"Why were you attacking that man? Tell me now, before I skin you alive." Aoshi's eyes narrowed imperceptibly at the little worm threatening him, but he did not take offence. If Aoshi played his part correctly, the worms would never know it was a bird they had passed. More importantly, however, Aoshi did not want to leave a trail for the other birds to follow him by. Mentally he thanked the officer's superiors for at least giving the man some sort of description to work with. The situation would have become more complicated if he had actually been suspected as the famous manslayer.
"Hey, listen, I was just napping over by that bridge," Aoshi reached out with his non-weapon hand and gestured broadly over to where he had been resting. "Before he," Aoshi angrily jabbed a finger towards the merchant, who was walking over to investigate his almost-assailant, "came and tried to kick me while I was sleeping. See," Aoshi made broad gestures from the bridge to the merchant's street-side vending stand, "he's way over there and I'm over there and then he just comes around to kick me because he says I smell! How can he smell me when-"
"He's loitering against the law, driving away my business! I-"
The officer's expression had become extremely tense and he had just unconsciously wiped his face.
"Quiet, both of you! You," the officer commanded, however, it was useless. The merchant, who had regained his confidence, decided to move up into Aoshi's personal space and speak directly into his face. Aoshi immediately mirrored him. In no time, the merchant was trying to drown out Aoshi through volume alone while Aoshi pulled out every insult upon the merchant's manhood that he could think of. Though Aoshi found the whole affair laughably childish, the tactic was working marvelously.
"Stop it right now, both of you!" The officer had clearly reached his breaking point as he whipped his crude European saber out of its sheath and beat the two with the weapon's pommel guard as an improvised set of brass knuckles. Aoshi was leery of the unsheathed cutting edge, but satisfied that the policeman wouldn't try to slash him. Aoshi took the ineffectual, though bruising strikes without protest. The man looked to be more of a danger to his own health in any event.
"Both of you, shut up, or else I'll skin you alive!" The saber point waved threateningly in the air as a warning. "The Battousai is loose nearby and we have to find him, so no more trouble from either of you!" The policeman was already beginning to run off with his saber still waving in his hand, even as he yelled at the two from over his shoulder.
Aoshi and his nameless irritant both watched as the officer quickly disappeared behind a nearby corner, doubtlessly to join his comrades in the search for the supposed Hitokiri Battousai. The moment the officer had left, they both turned to regard the other, one with angry disdain, the other with an intense apathy not at all contrived. The merchant affected a sneer and threatened Aoshi with harm from "his friends" if he didn't clear out immediately, but left for his abandoned stand without further word. Perhaps he had deduced that he no longer held the advantage in their pointless contest of gamesmanship. Aoshi didn't care. He was free to continue on unnoticed.
This was crucial. Aoshi's mobility was impaired by a badly rolled ankle and he could not afford additional delays with Kanryuu's associates out for his blood. It was likely that two or three among the policemen currently swarming the area for the Battousai were also secretly under orders by the drug lords to find him.
Aoshi hissed in pain as he turned a corner and found the newly stretched ligaments in his ankle rolling again on a pathetically small bit of gravel in the road. The abrupt shock of pain initiated a fit of nausea that had been building in his gut since he'd first awakened on this wet and cheerless day. A fresh wave of shivering followed and Aoshi grimly noted how the air had changed; becoming lighter, cleaner and faster. It was going to rain again.
Mouth compressed into a firm, thin line like a barricade against discomfort and weakness, he walked on.
His grand vengeance against Kanryuu had been flawless. After depositing a strangely subdued Megumi Takani near the Kiyoto Oniwaban's headquarters at the Aoiya, Aoshi had immediately left for another part of town and began calling in a few key debtors. He wasn't long in Kiyoto. Aoshi had no wish to see anyone from the Kiyoto cell and they had doubtlessly searched for him once the former doctor was questioned. Aoshi then moved directly into Kanryuu's home territory, a scant three kilometers from the manor. The remaining month was spent in observation of both his target and all those who regularly visited the manor. Two weeks ago, in the final days of a bitter March, he had moved. The night prior to the death of Kanryuu was spent waiting for a bribed servant to saw open five key heating gas mains in the basement of the manor. The pipes were lead based and yielded easily under a hack saw purchased in the same shipping district of the deadly ambush that had almost killed him. The night prior, Aoshi had stolen a key to the basement. Once inside, it was a mere five minutes work to saw open several minor heating gas pipes. It wasn't long before highly flammable gas circulated throughout the walls of the manor. Kisagara Motoko had then provided an easy way in with his control over the patrol schedules, but more importantly, he unwittingly gave Aoshi mastery over his audience.
And what a show he had given them. The men who had meant to capture Aoshi had instead watched in rapt horror as the avenging demon from hell arrived and apparently stole away with the body of his betrayer in a storm of fire. In reality, Aoshi had simply made careful use of make-up to create for himself a visage truly worthy of nightmares. Layers of whitish/grey powder and black ink had given him his pallid, lumpish complexion and tracery of poisoned veins while the thinnest layer of wax added the desired sheen. The last touch had been extremely viscous oil containing trace amounts of copper. Brushed liberally over his kodachi and ignited, it gave the appearance of sickly green light. The end effect had been garish and over-dramatic, but well suited to the darkness and confusion of Kanryuu's room.
Yes, it had all been flawless, except for his own stupidity: to escape the burning manor, Aoshi had planned on taking the only route available to him: the window. As a ninja, he had leapt from countless heights greater than the second story of the Takeda manor, yet here his own ingenuity had come back to bite him. The gas-fed flames had spread even faster than he had anticipated and wreathed the chosen exit window in fire. Before he might have even paused to think about taking another window, Aoshi had cleared the burning window frame in a rushing leap. However, instead of an easy landing in grass that he had already seen swept clean of large debris, Aoshi had gone further and hit the roots of a nearby tree perhaps five feet from the wall. The Okashira had come flying down onto the sides of the roots and immediately twisted the ankle on his right foot. His instinctive roll forward had saved him a much more crippling injury even if it had still left him battered and bruised.
After two kilometers Aoshi turned westward. He was about to duck into one of the many cramped alleyways when two harsh commands whipped over his back.
"You there, stop, stop right now!"
"Hands where we can see them!"
Aoshi stiffened in reflex, caught in momentary disbelief that the police would choose to interrogate him again only moments after the first incident. However, the police were not interested in Aoshi, which he discovered as soon as he turned around-
"I'm sorry, but what have I done? I've done nothing wrong, that I most certainly have not."
-and came as close as he ever did to gaping like a fool.
"Kid," and this was truly laughable to Aoshi, "you're either gutsier'n hell or you're the stupidest guy I've ever met, and that's saying something." Aoshi found that he was too dumbstruck to move on, wiser though that choice might be, for there in front of him was Kenshin Himura, the true Manslayer and hero of the Mejii Revolution. Aoshi recognized him instantly from profile sketches the Oniwaban kept. Though he wore the bumbling manner and idiotic apparel like a cloak, the man said to be an invincible demon made flesh had hardly changed from the blood bathed nights of the revolution.
"And I'm seriously leaning towards the second given that not only is the legendary manslayer Hitokiri Battousai back from wherever he was hiding, but you're walking around with a bloody samurai sword when they've been outlawed by the Meiji for years." Aoshi watched as one officer grabbed Kenshin by the collar while the other snatched away the lone sword that hung by his side. Expecting violence, Aoshi moved himself fully into the shadows and continued his observations.
"What's this?" The second officer asked in disbelief as he unsheathed a truly strange blade: a sakabato; a katana with the cutting edge on the reverse side. "Wahaha, what do you think you're going to do with this thing, boy? Gonna try and club your opponent to death before he sticks you?"
"AhHhHh, no sir, that I would not," Kenshin replied as he comically flailed his arms in an attempt to grab his sword which the young officer had taken to holding above his head. "But please, give it back. It has great sentimental value."
"Sorry kid, but rules are rules," the first officer replied as he wrenched the struggling man away from his partner, "We're confiscating this weapon and taking you into custody until this whole Battousai thing blows over and we know what to do with you."
The change was so quick that even Aoshi almost didn't see it until it had already happened. The flame haired assassin's face lost all hint of comical panic, and the deceptive strength that had been hidden from all but those with the eyes to see it was unleashed. Himura took one small step behind and inside the stance of the officer holding him by the collar and moved.
One of the officers let out a sort of high pitched yelp as the two found themselves ingloriously deposited on their backsides sans one Battousai and sakabato.
"I'm truly sorry, that I am!" Kenshin warbled as he made his escape. "But I really must be leaving right now!" Egos bruised, but determination still firmly intact, the two officers took off at a sprint, dead set on capturing the fleeing redhead.
"Uwaaah, you think can get away from us?!"
"Just you wait until we catch you!"
The trio soon disappeared behind a corner in a massive cloud of dust.
Aoshi hobbled off in the opposing direction, head still shaking at the irony of life. Obviously the description given out to the police was…faulty.
Or perhaps they simply cannot see what they will not believe.
Two hours past with Aoshi plodded along the muddy alleyways and streets, first west, then southwest. Aoshi wondered just how many worms had been fooled by that particular bird's act. It had been truly wonderful: the manner and the clothes perfectly complimented the assassin's preposterously youthful features to create an impression that was both affable and disarming.
And yet, as Aoshi passed by a curiously deserted strip of open-air food stalls, he couldn't help but wonder if what he had seen was indeed an act. It had almost been too perfect, too natural in a way that surpassed even his practiced façade, technically proficient as it had been. The image of the reverse blade sword floated clearly into his mind.
Suddenly the wind changed and the sky loosed itself in like a slow, cold waterfall.
That irritating shivering Aoshi had noted in passing upon being woken up returned with redoubled vigor while his clothes managed to defy all known laws of mass and volume by soaking up yet more water. The world and his sense of time faded as Aoshi's consciousness narrowed to putting one foot in front of the other, one after the other, after the other, after the other.
omahae
So focused was he on driving through his physical weakness and maintaining his direction and speed that Aoshi almost missed the worn red paint that signified he had arrived in the Tomahae district. Maps and impressions of half-remembered travels scrolled through his mind while Aoshi took a moment to ascertain his exact position. He'd begun the day's journey approximately three hours ago, four and half kilometers east and northeast. This would put him at the northern edge of the Tomahae district...only a few hours east from Shoto, the first of the eta or outcast districts.
Kanryuu's documents had pinpointed several key members of the syndicate to be in that district.
The pain and weariness fell off of Aoshi as surely as if he had stripped off his soaking clothes, and even as the rain seemed to poor harder, Aoshi felt the muted, effervescent thrill of knowing beyond all uncertainty that he would never stop.
I'm coming…
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Kaoru's breath sounded like a pair of billows a smith was working far too fast. She was a highly accomplished kendoist, yes, but you only moved in short bursts for a kendo match.
Splash
Splash
Splash
The ground was really muddy. Kaoru had chosen not to wear her old pair of getas in favor of speed, but as she ran and the rain showed no signs of letting up, Kaoru wondered if that might have been a bad idea. Her stockings were completely ruined and though she hadn't fallen, Kaoru had already slipped twice.
"That..side stitch…is…really starting..t'hurt," Kaoru gasped out as she slowed involuntarily.
No, come on. You need to get going faster!
Shaking her head in frustration, Kaoru took off at full speed again. If the Battousai wasn't stopped, the dojo would die and so would the Kamiya Kasshin, her father's legacy. And Kaoru would be damned if she was going to lose this last piece of her family's pride. So she kept running, kept going despite the fact that her legs felt like a bunch of little sword smiths were pounding them with their hammers. She kept going, but never saw any sign of the Battousai, or any people at all for that matter.
Despair filled her at the thought of running around aimlessly. She had thought she had knew where to find him when she'd taken off from the dojo, but now, it was starting to look like she'd been very, very wrong. Kaoru was almost ready to turn back towards the dojo and start again when she noticed a tall, dark haired man slowly making his way through the rain. Willing herself to go faster just one more time (yea, right…just one more time?), Kaoru caught up to the stranger just as he passed under a big tree in the middle of a large street intersection.
"Sir," Kaoru tried to yell, "pl-…" Kaoru skidded to a halt right next to the tall man who had kept walking; either having missed her yell or choosing to ignore it. Kaoru nearly fell over as she lost her footing on the slick layer of fallen leaves that blanketed the ground, instinctually reached out and grabbed the man by the arm. He quickly stabilized himself, but as he tried to pull away from Kaoru, who's weight he was still partially supporting, he gave a sharp grunt before they collapsed together on a carpet of wet leaves.
"Sir…" Still thoroughly winded, Kaoru took a deep breath. "Sir, I'm really, really sorry-"
"It's nothing," he tried to reply, but Kaoru was already up and grabbing him by his right arm, nearer to the wrist, so that she might pull him up. And as she did so, she felt it: the distinct shape of a long-blade tanto concealed beneath the sleeve. Instantly alert, but still startled from the fall and the sudden change in the situation; Kaoru kept pulling.
"I said, it's nothing," the man said before jerking himself up so he could prop himself against the tree. By then, the fact that this man was carrying an illegal weapon had fully registered in her brain. Still, she didn't quite know what to do with him so she decided to keep it cool for the moment.
"Are you sure you're alright? I hope I didn't hurt your foot," Kaoru said, nodding towards the limb he kept off the ground while leaning against the thick tree trunk.
"Oh, no, don't worry about it," the man said with a casual wave of the hand, pronouncing that it was only a minor injury that he'd already had. Kaoru believed him on that point at least: she remembered how slow he'd been walking and how he'd collapsed as soon as he'd tried to push off with the foot in question.
"Ah…well, I'm really sorry…er?" She wasn't sure how she was going to continue this.
"You were going to say something to me?" The man asked, helpfully.
Kaoru stared at him for a moment, hurriedly searching for an excuse to be questioning him about the Battousai. For some reason, perhaps the awkwardness or possible danger of the circumstance, it seemed important to have one.
"Have you seen the Battousai?" Oh well, so much for being indirect about it. "He's tall: as tall two men and as strong as twenty. He's dressed in all black and carries a huge katana."
The man stared at her inquisitively. "Have you seen this man?" he asked.
"That's what I was asking you," Kaoru replied as she pushed several wet tendrils of hair that had fallen over her eyes out of the way.
"No, I haven't seen him," the man responded as he began to stand up and take his weight fully off the tree trunk.
"Oh…" Kaoru was running out of options.
"I'm sorry," he began, "but I really must-"
"Do you work for him?" Kaoru blurted out, desperate not to lose her only lead and perhaps hope to save her dojo and the Kamiya legacy.
"Who?" The man asked her with a slight tilt to the head.
"The Battousai," Kaoru answered.
"No." The man kept staring at her, looking for all the world like any normal person would after being assaulted by a crazed woman in the rain, except normal people don't carry around illegal weapons in their robes; normal people didn't hide fourteen inch tantos up their sleeves. Normal people didn't send chills down her back just by acting friendly.
"Well," Kaoru said as she began walking along the edges of the tree's roots, paralleling the stranger across from her, "it's just that there're all these men in town who are working with him and no one else is out and- WHOA!" The fall was very convincing, probably because it wasn't entirely faked.
Kaoru found herself steadied before she'd begun to really fall. Fearlessly, she held her head up to look her "rescuer" in the eye before quietly saying, "-you have really good reflexes and a knife that's pretty far from legal."
"And what of it?" the man asked in turn, his voice also low, so low it was nearly lost in the rain. "These are dangerous times." Now so close, Kaoru could make out the details she had once missed with the haze of distance and the torrential downpour. The man, who seemed to positively tower over her, was wearing a loose, formless set of nondescript brown robes and a light haori that had definitely seen better days. Shortly cut hair of lightless ebony highlighted a pale, angular face splashed with the unnatural color of a fever while shadowed auburn eyes betrayed fatigue. His expression, which had fallen into a blank slate at her accusation, now had shifted back to the somewhat earnest, moderately puzzled and concerned look he'd worn when he had first helped her up. That particular feeling of being cold that had absolutely nothing to do with the rain got a little stronger.
"Not all of us are so skilled that we can defend ourselves and our families with nothing more than a bokken." The man gave her a light grin as he nodded towards the wooden sword that Kaoru had strapped on her left side. His expression changed again, becoming more somber. "I may have been fortunate enough to have never met the Battousai, but 'age of peace and prosperity' or no, my sister and I were almost killed by yakuza a year ago," his eyes narrowed slightly before he continued. "My neighbor was not so lucky." The man held out his right arm plainly in Kaoru's sight so she could watch as he pulled out the tanto out somewhat. It was a standard concealed weapon with the entire blade, sheath and grip disguised as an overlarge dowling rod and no cross guard to speak of. The blade glittered as the gathering raindrops bent the steel blade's reflected light. It was extremely well maintained.
"I was a soldier for the Revolution, long ago. I may be a simple trader now, but that doesn't mean I'll just let myself be killed by some young punk who managed to escape the Mejii's sword ban, which as you've seen, is extremely easy to do."
Kaoru listened carefully to the man's explanation and felt the heat rising in her face at what she'd just done. She was embarrassed, heck; mortified that she'd nearly attacked an innocent man. As it was, she'd still managed to make him fall down once, almost twice, and she'd probably hurt his ankle even more, and that was assuming he wasn't being polite and just making up the whole, "I'm already injured" bit. She'd definitely goofed up on this one…but still…that feeling...
"I am truly sorry, sir," Kaoru apologized formally as she bowed toward the man in deep supplication. "Please, forgive my rudeness."
"Really, there's no need," replied the man as he made to start walking again.
"Are you going home sir?" Kaoru asked, praying to Kami that she wasn't dragging this out too long. The man seemed very patient though, especially considering how long they'd been standing in the soaking rain.
"No, I am here for several weeks on business and I'm staying at one of the nearby inns." Kaoru's thoughts were flying a mile a minute and she could practically feel some of them falling off even as a whole slew of new ideas and thoughts came to her. She crossed her fingers and hoped he wasn't really from around here.
"Oh, so you're staying at the 7th Heaven? That's pretty famous. I always wanted to stay there."
"Yes," the man replied, impatience finally beginning to show, "I've been there two nights. Now, if you'll please excuse me…" Shoving off from the tree that had supported him, he haltingly began to walk away from the tree and towards the nearby alleyways.
"The 7th Heaven burned down a week ago."
The man shrugged without any pause in his step.
"Ah, I must have been mistaken then."
Kaoru watched as the man slowly began to dissolve into the rain, her muscles tense and her heart racing. Practiced hands unhooked the bokken from the belt around her robes. If she wasn't right…
"Stop, Battousai!"
Both of them stiffened and turned towards the source of the noise in time to see an immense masked and black clad figure burst out from behind one of the buildings and into the intersection, a pack of armed officers chasing at his heels.
"Get him, get him! Don't let him get away!"
'Go around the s-AH!"
The officer's blood curdling cries persisted even after the man was effortlessly felled by the towering manslayer.
"I am the Hittokiri Battousai!" the black clad manslayer shouted as his sword scythed through another set of officers. "All who face me: DIE!" The killer stopped running and nearly fell over just as Kaoru had done, but managed to regain his balance. He then planted himself in the middle of the street, rounding on his pursuers like a feral wolf squaring off against the farm boys that had robbed it of its meal.
With the suspicious stranger completely forgotten, Kaoru stood rooted under the tree for a moment of complete paralysis, cowering under the terror of the manslayer. However, as the bloodstained sword fell again on another officer, an electric jolt seemed to race through her. Kaoru truly felt the hot acid of anger and battle rage for the first time in her life. Raising her own weapon to her side, the last heir of the Kamiya Kasshin rushed forward into battle.
"Battousai, prepare yourself!" Kaoru cried in challenge as she flew towards the carnage with her trusty bokken off to her side, heedless of the stinging raindrops that splattered against her face. Her shout somehow carried above the rain and the battle prompting the manslayer to look upon her in open astonishment even as the last of the policemen fled.
With adrenaline fueling her movements and fully recovered from running after the long conversation, Kaoru made it over to the fight in seconds in order to leap over the fallen officers and attack the Battousai directly, all in the motion. The killer's over-confident strike against her head whistled inches over her even as Kaoru's own attack crashed into the vulnerable knee cap.
With a pained cry, the manslayer's knee bent and dropped, almost touching the ground. Kaoru executed a faultless spin, this time aided by the wet earth, and sliced horizontally at the murderer's face, intent on breaking his jaw, his nose, or both. Instead, the wooden blade collided with his right hand even as he raised it to protect himself. The resulting impact numbed her own hands even as the telltale crackle of broken bones and torn ligaments told of the blow's damage. However, this did not seem to slow the huge man at all and neither did it force him to drop his sword; instead, it seemed to simply enrage him.
"Already been done once!" He screamed before unleashing a wild, downwardly arching swing against her defense. Kaoru blocked quickly and near to the hilt so as to break his momentum. However, the injured hitokiri's rage was such that the blow had enough power through the hardened wood of her bokken and burry itself messily in the top of her right shoulder near her neck.
Letting loose a vicious snarl, the manslayer smashed the back of his injured right fist into her nose, instantly breaking it and throwing Kaoru to her back in a haze of tears and pain.
"Oh-ho, I've waited so long! "He yelled, even as he punched her square in the face.
Whatever else the murderer said was lost to Kaoru as the Battousai cruelly beat her with the pommel of his katana, first her temples then her face. An explosion of stars and pressure accompanied each blow to the head. The heir to the Kamiya Kasshin style thought her head might have broken with that final blow. Remarkably, Kaoru managed to avoid completely blacking out, instead grudgingly fighting for her hold on reality as if she would not allow herself to become completely helpless before her opponent, no matter how useless the gesture might be.
And as the Battousai flipped his katana upwards into a killing position, it did indeed look useless.
At least, until a tanto suddenly sprouted as if by black magic from the side of the killer's arm.
-))—((-
Kaoru's first conscious thought upon waking up was to wonder why she couldn't see. Her next thoughts in order were one: "I'm an idiot. My eyes are closed," two: "Why does my head feel like a smith is trying to beat it in with a very large hammer?"
After several half-hearted attempts, Kaoru managed to pry her eyes open. Her vision did not immediately come into focus, rather it was more like a sailor who would squint into the fog as it slowly faded away to reveal the appearing shore.
"Good evening, or should I say good morning; I suppose it's all subjective."
Kaoru's vision at last focused enough to where she could barely discern the faint shapes of her room. Almost immediately, she wished her vision hadn't returned: the muted orange and red light streaming in through her window seemed blinding to her. Kaoru became unhappily aware just how badly her head hurt. And that her mouth was literally tied shut with a piece of silk and hurt like hell.
"Father always threatened to do this to me, but I never figured it would actually happen."
The slightest movement sent a horrendously painful jolt running through her skull that made any thought outside of cursing impossible. After several long moments where she did nothing but concentrate on breathing deeply and not moving, Kaoru managed to work up the energy to investigate whoever her caretaker was. With infinite care, the injured young woman turned her head over to the side so that she was able to clearly make out who was next to her.
Comfortably kneeling in seiza was a tall man, lean though not what Kaoru might describe as gangly. His pale, angular face was framed by soft, ebon hair that appeared to have once been cut in a western style. With a shy and somewhat bemused smile he returned her silent inspection through brown eyes so dark that they seemed almost black. She knew this man somehow and it was not reassuring her.
"I'm glad to see you awake. Tell me, what day of the week it is: the first, the fourth…" The unknown man made a motion with his hand to signify continuing on. Puzzled, but still too disoriented to go against him, Kaoru tentatively held up her own hand with four fingers.
"Ah, good, I'm glad you're able to get that at least: you had us worried for a little bit." The man paused in what Kaoru thought was an exaggerated manner before he asked if she might be comfortable sitting up and taking some broth. Kaoru winced at the thought of having to move her jaw even the slightest, but she was extremely hungry and thirsty. Nodding carefully so she didn't jar her poor brain even more, Kaoru watched as the stranger departed. The time waiting for his return was spent trying to slog through the haze of her memories with no apparent success. It didn't take long before the man had returned.
"Here, try this," the man said as he offered her one of the bath spongers. Kaoru glanced first at the sponge then at the bowl of warm broth he held in the other hand, completely confused. The man noted her confusion. "You have to suck the broth from the sponge," he instructed. Suddenly, his expression became positively evil. "You know, kinda like a squid kiss."
Kaoru chocked/gagged in mortal embarrassment as the stranger burst into laughter. She could feel herself turning red. "What?" the man asked her with an irreverent smile before going along like an arithmetic teacher, "It is an excellent illustration of the action required to drink from a sponge."
Kaoru was thoroughly unimpressed by his logic and let him know the exact extent of her by pinning him with a glare that would have reduced even the Battousai into a quivering pile of mush. Her anonymous caretaker, however, seemed to delight in potentially lethal situations.
"I bet you even have a few…visual aids around here."
"Nmmmnnnnn!!" Kaoru couldn't remember being so mortified in her life. It wasn't just that she'd been accused of having knowledge of perverted acts (which she did, courtesy her only friend, Tae Sekihara) and owning fish porn (she'd only skimmed it, briefly) or that it was an unknown, annoying and irritatingly handsome man (who was still laughing) making said accusations. It was all of them together and somehow that it made everything worse.
Eventually the laughter faded and the stranger's expression became serious again. "I'm sorry if I've offended you. I tend to joke around when I don't know what to do…" A slight look of embarrassment crossed his face before he continued on in an earnest tone.
"Trust me," he said as he held the sponge back up to her lips, "you'll get at least half of your meal on your lap if you try and drink it." When Kaoru still remained unresponsive, he jiggled it slightly in front of her, as if to tempt a child with its vegetables, his smile growing regaining its old luminosity. "And I'm pretty sure you don't want to open your mouth more than necessary."
Kaoru frowned, still hesitant. The perverted attitude might be gone, but they were still dirtying one of her precious and annoyingly expensive sponges. Kaoru adored her baths and anything that went with the bathing experience was deemed sacrosanct.
"Oh well, I guess it can always be washed out later." Reluctance successfully set aside, Kaoru slowly propped herself up against the nearby wall and took the proffered bowl and sponge. The man, whose presence still spooked her because of the complete blank he occupied in her memories, thankfully avoided looking at her. Instead, he picked up a nearby scroll of paper and began to write in a slow, but steady hand.
Meanwhile, Kaoru's grudging acceptance was soon forgotten as she hesitantly took the sponge sucked the lightly flavored water out as best she could. Besides being absolutely famished and dehydrated, even the simple act of trying to suck soup broth out of sponge had her nearly screaming with the pain in her jaw. Kaoru didn't even want to think about trying to drink from a cup or bowl, much less eat solid food with the proper utensils.
And yet, as the minutes crawled on, Kaoru felt as if something very slimy and still very much alive was slowly waking up in the middle of her gut. Because halfway through her third sip, she'd begun to remember…
"Oh, so you're staying at the 7th Heaven? That's pretty famous. I always wanted to stay there."
"Yes, I've been there two nights. Now, if you'll please excuse me…"
"The 7th Heaven burned down a week ago."
The details of that rainy day were hazy in her mind. Portions of it were blotted and smeared into one another in confusing jumbles, like inked paper left under leaking roof. Other moments were disturbingly blank while fewer were preserved in full clarity. The only two scenes that were so crystalline were the memories of her walking out of the dojo with fire in her veins, bent on bringing the manslayer to justice and saving her father's legacy and that brief exchange between herself and the man before her. Kaoru knew that she had not trusted him, first because she had mistaken him as the Battousai and then because of the evasion she had somehow sensed in him.
Battousai, prepare yourself!
And then a giant blank slate of absolute nothing and damn it all if that wasn't frustrating.
Kaoru was in the middle dipping the sponge back into the much diminished bowl when the rhythmic padding of footsteps alerted her that there someone else in her dojo. Kaoru's undetermined apprehension immediately vanished when the shoji doors slid open to reveal stocky, aged frame of Dr. Gensai.
"Dr. Gensai!" she called out, though really it came out more like "Drrdnndsnss!' what with her mouth being tied shut and all. The inability to speak was frustrating as was the pain that went along with the attempt, but it was all shoved aside in her delight at seeing the grandfatherly old man again. Dr. Gensai hovered over her for a while, clucking his tongue as he asked her repeated questions about how she felt and whether or not she was comfortable. Dr. Genzai was just finishing up when Ayame and Suzumi burst in. Ten minutes of their questions and teasing was more than enough to wear her out and Dr. Genzai soon had to usher the two girls out. When he returned, he was muttering a long stream of exasperations about youth, his weathered face lit by the evening glow and a wide smile.
"So Kaoru, I take it you've met Mr. Minoru." Kaoru nodded slowly, taking in the name.
"Ah, pardon my lack of manners," Minoru cut in with a conciliatory air, "I never did get around to telling you my name. I'm Minoru Yoshiro, a rice trader from Hiroshima." Yoshiro then handed her several blank sheets of paper from the booklet he'd been writing in along with a calligraphy brush. "I'm sorry that we couldn't meet under better circumstances. I was very impressed by your fight with the Battousai. My little sister Misao dreams about becoming a fighter every day. I bet she'd think you were the greatest thing ever."
Kaoru smiled as best she could at the compliment with only her face, but the action felt stretched and artificial. Then again, she never was a good actor.
"Hoho, Kaoru's always been a fiery one. I remember her father dragging her in by the ear into my clinic because she'd been roughing up the older boys. 'Disgracing the name' he'd call it, though he'd always laugh about it when you weren't around." Gensai affectionately patted Kaoru near her calf. "He wanted you to grow up to be a proper lady you know."
Minoru laughed before adding to Dr. Genzai in low undertones, "And just look at how she turned out now."
Kaoru growled. She hadn't even gotten over the injuries from her potentially lethal confrontation with the legendary Battousai and the men were tag-teaming her. Life was so unfair.
While the two males laughed it out at her expense, Kaoru made use of the given writing materials to ask the question that had been burning in the back of her mind ever since she'd first awakened and begun to remember the events of the past days. Kaoru hastily painted on the characters and held up the scroll for the men to see.
What happened yesterday?
Dr. Gensai immediately lost his good cheer while Minoru became somber at the recollection of the previous day. The two turned to one another and shared a look. Kaoru didn't know what she was supposed to feel about how comfortable Dr. Gensai seemed to be around Minoru.
"I suppose it would be best if I can tell it, though you two feel free to chime in if you remember anything I miss." Gensai nodded his assent and Kaoru set aside the scroll and brush and focused in on listening to the young man. She wanted to be sure that she caught any inconsistencies.
"I had just finished closing a deal in the market district with East Side Imports company and was looking for the inn I was staying at when …"
-))—((-
Kaoru was beyond tired. Minoru's recollections had lasted almost an hour and she had insisted on scribbling out repeated questions. What were the names of the people he was going to visit, oh, but doesn't your family miss you? About those cousins…? Kaoru had never thought of herself as a very shrewd woman. She left that for the tittering maids in the market place, the ones who mocked her for her physical profession, muscular build and lack of a husband. But right now, as Kaoru looked back on her efforts to give her apparent a cross-examination on the sly, she found herself wishing she had a little bit more in the way of womanly wiles.
Minoru's story had held up perfectly. That didn't reassure her at all though because as she replayed the conversation in her tired, scrambled head, all of her attempts seemed far too obvious, too clumsy. How could he not side-step them? And that look he'd given her...
Kaoru something uncomfortable, probably guilt, squirm in her stomach. Conspiracy theories and gossip rumors always explained everything. The problem with them was you had to change something that was fundamental to the truth in order to make them work.
Kaoru shook her head in frustration and tried for the hundredth millionth time to go to sleep. She was tired, so tired, but the late evening sun seemed like it was determined to piss her off and stay exactly where it had been. The monotony was so bad that she almost missed the door sliding open as Minoru limped in.
"Miss Kamiya," he greeted her courteously with a slight bow before kneeling beside her bed, "it's good to see you still awake." Minoru's ankle had obviously improved little, but otherwise he looked a great deal better than her last memory of him. The merchant washed his worn robes and bathed. It even looked as if he might have trimmed his hair.
"Dr. Gensai is off shopping at the moment for some tofu, but he'll back soon. Once he is, I'll be leaving myself to return to my inn." A tiny, almost embarrassed smile appeared on his lips. It made him appear like a little boy for a moment and Kaoru found the image hopelessly endearing. "After Dr. Gensai treated you, I got a little…bored." Minoru shrugged helplessly and his sheepish grin became somewhat larger. "I'm something of a closet workaholic so I took the liberty of cleaning your dojo and preparing some simple stews which you may heat up later. You should be able to eat them with little trouble."
Kaoru felt that guilt (it was definitely guilt) squirm just a little bit more and she bit her lip. Suddenly, an idea came to her. Feeling better than she had in recent memory, which admittedly wasn't much because of the concussion, Kaoru managed to push herself upright before grabbing the nearby brush and writing out a hasty message.
Stay here
Minoru looked very surprised by the suggestion. Hastily he waved her off. He was obviously struggling to not offend her, but Kaoru would have none of it.
Much cheaper here-just help cook and clean-leave whenever you want
This time, Minoru did not protest. Curiously, he just stared through her, lost in his own thought.
"Yes…it might work."
When he looked back up at her, that shy smile still on his lips and a gleam in those incomprehensibly dark eyes, Kaoru couldn't help but smile back.
Fini
Glossary
Bokken: A practice sword carved from solid wood or bamboo. The bokken, unlike a shinai, is shaped exactly like a real sword and will not shatter as easily as the less solid shinai. On a note towards the battle, though steel is preferred for obvious reasons, wood can indeed be hard enough to with stand direct blows from objects such as a katana. For those of you bored enough to look it up, the American Revolutionary War vessel, the USS Constitution, aka "Old Iron Sides", repeatedly shrugged off British cannonballs despite being only wood.
Eta: Used to refer to the districts where those deemed undesirable and unfit for mixing with society at large were sent.
Geta: Traditional Japanese footwear: sort of flat wooden sandal with an elevated base to help with travel in muddy ground.
Haori: A light Japanese coat that typically runs to mid-thigh or knee level. Cut in the same manner as a kimono, it was worn by both civilians and military as it could accommodate armor if necessary.
Senbon: A large metal needle used as a weapon.
Seiza: Kneeling with both legs bent.
Shoji: A light wooden mobile barrier that often served as a door.
Squid Kiss: Referencing a squid's suction cups and the previously mentioned Dream of the Fisherman's Wife and the associated tentacle sex genre.
A/N
Final Fantasy VII reference FTW. I hope ya'll have enjoyed this little venture as I certainly have. Lord knows it ate up my inspiration and time for a couple of months (apologizes profusely to Teen Titan's fans), but it's something that I just had to get out of my system. Originally this was supposed to be an uber-long epic where I actually would stick Aoshi w/Kaoru and Soujiro w/Megumi, but the more I wrote it, the more it seemed lacking in…something…what you might call soul. Technically it's proficient enough, but I guess after I had a chance to take a good long look at what I'd written, I just couldn't fall in love with it. Ah, well, such is capriciousness of the muses, eh...so, erm, how about pressing that little review button?
-Updated to include rating change and several minor edits.
