A/n: Well, it seems to be about time to continue this little saga yes?

8.

Sanosuke didn't waste any time in pulling Megumi aside and telling her about Kenshin. At first, Megumi tried pulling away from him by telling him that she was busy, which she was, but she really didn't want to listen to the man's babble. The more she listened, however, the more intrigued she became. At the end, she stood with him in the hallway, looking around at the people casually passing by. Megumi never gave any hints that Kenshin was actually her patient. She stood by the rules of confidentiality, but that didn't stop her from taking matters into her own hands.

"You're listening, right?" Sanosuke asked. She nodded faintly, her mind thick with thoughts.

Even after Sanosuke had finished speaking, he still stood in front of Megumi, some sort of pleading look on his face. "I understand your concern," she said rather robotically. "There may be something that I can do," she added. A grin once again came on Sanosuke's face. "If you don't mind, though, could I ask you a question?"

"Of course."

"Why are you doing this?"

It was a simple question, but it was usually simplicity that stumped the human race. "Well, it's...it's because of law," he said, fumbling for his words. "Why else would I?"

"You'd be risking an injured man's life, assuming that I even do anything."

"He risked it by saying he was human."

Megumi put her hand to her chin, lowering her head to think. "I see," she looked Sanosuke over once again. He wasn't anything extraordinary, in fact, he was hardly interesting. It wasn't the appearance of him that caught her attention, but instead it was his fervor. "What happened to you when you were young, to make you think this way?"

It was a shot in the dark, and her psychology was a little rusty, but she knew she could manage to get at least one response out of him. "Huh? What the hell's that suppose to mean?"

"Most people wouldn't risk another's life on a hunch."

"I know it isn't," he assured her. He pulled out the ID, unaware if he had actually shown it to her or not. "See this, this is a creation's ID, and it's that same man. I wouldn't do this unless I was absolutely sure."

Megumi, though still curious, decided against creating a scene in the hallway. She could already see where he was becoming extremely tense just by her one question.

She took the ID from Sanosuke, looking it over to see the face of her patient on it, and she nodded, putting it in her pocket. "I'll need it if I decide to do anything."

Sanosuke was convince she would. He could tell by the look on her face.


Megumi made no immediate move. She planned to do something eventually, but not until she was sure that Kenshin wouldn't end up being killed in his weak state. She would visit him, like she would visit Sanosuke, and she would make sure he was doing all right. He was none the wiser to the conspiracy that was about him, but at the same time, she could sense a tenseness within him each time she would come around.

It isn't surprising, she thought. If he really was lying, it wouldn't be surprising for him to be a little tense around her now and again.

Despite this tenseness, she noticed a strange recovery pattern in him. At first, he was like any other patient. He was sluggish, nauseous and not all that talkative. All he wanted to do was sleep. Now, after three or four days, he seemed to be more lively, a lot more lively than any ill man should be.

Megumi came into his room that day with no preconceived notions about why he was feeling so well. She walked in, surprised to see him moved into a chair that was nearby, his hands over his lap and his leg elevated. He sat a little lopsided because of a pillow beneath his hip, but there was a meager smile on his face. "Well, good to see you up."

"The nurses put me here," he replied. "The bed is stiff."

Megumi pulled up a chair and sat down beside him. "You feeling a lot of pain?"

He shook his head. "It's dull, but probably because of this?" he said, lifting the arm that a tube slithered into. "I know you aren't really allowed to tell about patients, and I'm really not asking, but...I know there has to be a girl here who was on the train. I was talking to her, and...I was trying to help her." He lowered his head, his memory still blurred. "I, I didn't know her name, but I know she had to have been brought to a hospital."

"Without a name I couldn't tell you anything anyways."

"She was about twenty, with long black hair. Like raven's hair, and she was wearing a bow," Kenshin said. "I wisht I had gotten her name, that I do."

"You never know, you might meet her again," Megumi said thoughtfully. "Coincidences happen all the time."

Kenshin blushed mildly. "It's not...much like that. I really didn't know her. We only spoke a few times. She seemed nice enough."

Megumi began thinking about the ID that Sanosuke had given her. She knew the answer to the question she was about to ask, but she stillw anted to see how he would respond. "Did you ride the night train a lot?"

He nodded, but seemed hesitant. "I must be wasting an awful lot of your time, doctor. You must be busy," he said. He looked her straight in the eye.

"I make time," she said, and about reach out to touch his hand, only to stop. She contemplated to herself a moment. If she knew he was human, she would have touched his hand without qualm. But she wasn't so sure. Still, why did that stop her from touching his hand? "You mind if I take a look at something?"

"No, go right ahead."

She touched his shoulder, pulling his long red hair out of the way. She stared at the back of his neck a moment, her fingers running along the nape of it. Her lips thinned. There was no mark.

"I don't know how long you'll be here. We've been worried about the accident victims, naturally."

Kenshin nodded. Megumi had moved away, and looked ready to get up. "Is something wrong?" Kenshin asked, noticing Megumi's curious glance to him. "Doctor Takani?"

"I hope you don't mind if I draw some blood?" she asked, going around to a drawer in the room. Kenshin shook his head. "I just...want to see something. We've been having cases of internal injury that...don't show up immediately."

Kenshin furrowed his brows. "How is that possible?" he touched the back of his neck, his heart pounding heavily.

Megumi didn't answer him, only commanded him to make a fist, which he did, and drew the blood. Kenshin had to look away, somewhat disgusted by the whole procedure. He also couldn't bring himself to look at Megumi, afraid that his con was up already. "I hope there's nothing too terrible," said Kenshin. "I like my insides where they are, that I do."

Megumi laughed. "It's only precaution. It may be a little bit before the results come back so...just stay comfortable all right?"

Kenshin nodded.


After the Professor's mild explanation of their being "unauthorized, but unnoticed" creations out in the world, Megumi was more than a little bit curious as to what he meant. She considered, for a moment, that it could have been some type of prototype system, though for some reason, she doubted that logically reasoning. She knew the only way to get answers was to confront the Professor on the matter, but after the last time she was in there, she didn't really want to go back and hound him.

Between two things she had to do, she stood outside his door, looking at him sitting with his legs pulled in and what looked like a magazine in his hands. There was another doctor in there, an oncologist she recognized. Megumi ran her fingers through her hair, sighed lightly, and moved on.

Her answers always laid in science, because her results couldn't lie to her, while her patients were more than capable of doing so. Still, it took a long time to get information through research and tests, and she preferred the speedy approach. It seemed like she was out of luck. The Professor was most likely going to be drawn in a stupor of denial, depending on whatever the oncologist told him, and Aoshi was still somewhat lost after being told what he was told, not that Megumi felt that she got good information out of him anyways.

Megumi moved on. There was only so much that she could do, and it seemed that waiting was her best option.


Kaoru was better in the following days, and she seemed back to her old self. Everyone tiptoed around her despite this. She had been speaking with a psychiatrist about the ordeal, and didn't seem willing to want to talk to anyone else, except for Sanosuke.

He was with her one day, alone, and she started telling him about the incident, but only vaguely. She started by saying that she didn't hate the night train, and that there was nothing else that could make her stomach roll worse than the train. "I get that feeling," Sanosuke said. Kaoru stood up from the bed, much to Sanosuke's displeasure, and sat in a chair.

"You remember that one worker I was talking about?" she asked.

"That one that gave you a weird feeling?"

"Yeah, that one," she crossed her arms over her chest. "I think I owe my life to him."

It was the first time that Sanosuke had heard her say anything like that. His eyes bulged, but it took him a moment before he could drum up something to say to her. "Why...why would you owe your life to any of them?"

Kaoru bit her lip, realizing that what she said wasn't something that was usually a good thing to say to Sanosuke. "The night of the accident," she said, looking him in eye. It was the best she could do to try and assuage his temperament. "He was working and...he came up to me when he realized that it was going to crash and he tied his jacket around me, to hold me in place, like."

"Was...was that how they found you?" he asked, his mind sifting back to when he was in the train and saw the black jacket hanging from one of the poles.

"I don't know. I blacked out pretty quickly. I think my head bounced against the window," she said, reaching back. "I really don't know what happened. All I wonder is...what would have happened to me if I didn't have that thing tied around me."

Sanosuke was naturally conflicted when wanting to say something. He could feel his stomach spasming the slightest bit. He wanted to tell ehr that she owed nothing to a race like that, but at the same time, he could only wonder what exactly would have happened if she didn't have the jacket tied around her either. He'd seen some of the other "survivors" of the crash, if he could call them such. Kaoru was extremely mild compared to them.

"You don't have to owe them anything," Sanosuke said, as his persona forced him. "Whether or not he did it, you owe nothing to a creation."

Kaoru was once again looking him in the eye curiously. Sanosuke could see where she was trying to break a smile, but couldn't quite bring herself to do so. "I guess," she said warily. "I would think it would show that they're not all...how you seem to think they are."

Sanosuke put his hand on Kaoru's shoulder, his grip rather tight. "Kaoru, you're really good at putting me in these weird positions," he said, a strained laugh escaping his lips. "I don't really care what you think of them. That's your...decision."

Kaoru could sense his hesitance. She half-lidded her eyes and looked at her knees, knowing that looking at Sanosuke would only prove that he was lying to her. She knew he was trying his hardest to pretend that he was okay with her thoughts, but she could see past it. She gave him a little credit for effort. "I always wondered why you thought like that. I always thought that it was just...best not to ask."

She stood up, her legs shaking some. Sanosuke stood with her, holding her steady. She could feel a little bit of pull in her stomach, and she knew that it was going to hurt after they had performed surgery. Sanosuke put her back into bed, knowing that was where she wanted to go. "You know you can ask me anything," he said softly.

Kaoru could tell how lackluster he was in that statement. Still, he offered. "Why...why don't you even...tolerate the creations?"

Sanosuke stood up, moving the chair that he was just sitting in closer to the bed so he could hold Kaoru's hand. Once he got comfortable he said: "Because."

"That's not really the answer I was looking for."

Sanosuke cupped her hand, and with that one motion, Kaoru could sense fear within him. "Look, it's complicated alright? I really...don't like to try and explain it. It'll take...too much time..."

"We have a lot of time," Kaoru said. "So...start from the beginning."

Sanosuke grit his teeth and looked away from his girlfriend. Truthfully, it wasn't all that long of a story. It was hard for him to tell, and really, he'd never had to tell it before because his actions never needed to be justified, not even in a court of law. "They came out ten years ago, right?" he asked. Kaoru nodded. "I was about eleven, when the riots happened. Me and my family...my father and my little sister, Uki and my brother, Ota, were out at the market. It was relatively calm that day. I was wandering away from Dad...just looking at stuff. It came...kind of like a stampede. I didn't know what had happened until it did. For a few minutes I was panicked, I couldn't find Dad or my siblings," he paused, sighing. "I ended up finding them where I had left them. How I got across that stampede, I would know. I ended up...falling over his body."

Kaoru, who was listening with a little bit of concern, now had her full attention to Sanosuke. She couldn't quite cough up her voice, but she managed to look concerned enough that he continued. "He wasn't dead, just knocked out. Ota was underneath him, Uki at his side, pushing his shoulder. He had blood on the back of his head. I asked Uki what was wrong.

"'They hit him with a baseball bat,' she said. I asked her who 'they' was. 'The creations' she said. It took Dad a few minutes to come to. He was always resilient. He picked Ota up and took Uki's hand. I was behind him, looking at the mess. Dust was kicked up...people were fighting, sirens were going off. It was all overwhelming, like shell shock.

"'We're gonna be okay,' Dad kept saying; he chanted it as we worked out way down the street. It didn't seem like we were going to be bothered. The creations were too busy fighting amongst themselves and with the police to want to do anything to us. We got up to an intersection, and there were a bunch of humans waiting at the blockade set up by the police. They were only letting a few through at a time, so there wasn't a second stampede. I remember looking up and seeing creations jumping from windows, joining the fray.

"'Get down!' Dad yelled, and I didn't know what he was talking about. I saw the creations that had gotten through the barrier. They were still fighting the police, and some of them had gotten guns off of the officers and started to shoot into the crowd."

Kaoru put her hand to mouth, a few tears brimming in her eyes. "And..."she tried to push out more, but found it difficult.

"We got down, me and Uki, but before Dad could, he was hit in the chest, and one got Ota in arm. Hit him in one of the arteries...I don't know how long me and Uki laid there, looking at Dad as he faded out. We weren't the only ones on the ground. It was safest place at that point. It took until nightfall to get everything under control, and by that point we were all exhausted, and me and Uki thought that Ota and Dad and fallen asleep. We were keeping watching. Finally, the police came up to us, knelt down, picked me and Uki up and asked 'Are you kids all right?'. I looked down to Dad, pointing to him. The police prodded a little, picked Ota up. His head flopped back."

Sanosuke was looking toward a blank wall. Kaoru was having trouble keeping her eyes to Sanosuke. Her hands were wringing in one another.

"They...died didn't they?" she asked. Sanosuke nodded.

"From bleeding out. Me and Uki were taken to a hospital and checked out. We didn't have parents...Mom had died of illness a little after Ota was born. We needed someplace to go. It seemed to all fall on Uki when she realized that we were going to be put into foster homes. I guess it had been building up in her until then. After that...she sort of detached from the world. They put her in a hospital, the government taking care of her. I don't go and see her much, but...last time I was there...she was doing pretty well."

Kaoru couldn't say anything. Her voice now seemed fully lodged in her throat, and she was sure if she tried to say anything it would simply sound like she was croaking at Sanosuke. She just sat and pondered all that Sanosuke had just told her, her hand at her mouth. She looked at Sanosuke occasionally, but offered no sort of comfort. Finally, after several moments of discomfort, she said: "I'm sorry."

"You don't need to apologize. You grew up ignorant, that's all."

"I guess I did. I knew about the riots and everything, but I never actually...thought..."

"You couldn't have known. I don't go around telling people things like that everyday," he replied. He went to stand up, Kaoru's mother coming into the room. Before he left Kaoru asked:

"You think that...maybe it came down hard on you, too?" she asked. Sanosuke shoved his hands in his pockets.

"I retained my sanity didn't I?" he asked back. He walked away after that, leaving Kaoru to reflect. Her mother sat down beside her, asking her what that was about. She didn't say anything, only shook her head and started up another conversation so her mother wouldn't worry so much. She had to think about Sanosuke's question. Sure, maybe he was considered sane by a normal standard, but she wandered if the experience warped him to something more than he truly was.


Misao came back to the Professor, sitting on the end of his bed, staring at him while he read. Neither spoke to the other, at least not verbally. the Professor put the magazine down and rested his hands on his knees. "You're back?" his voice had drawn to a somber tone.

"You didn't think I would be?"

He shrugged. "Curiosity killed the cat," he said. "Where did we leave off in our story?"

"Are you all right?" Misao asked. The Professor paused, looking at Misao critically.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Why?"

"You sound different," she said. "Like you just got bad news."

"I'm tired. The nurses have been poking and prodding at me all night. I didn't get much sleep."

Misao accepted the answer, but she really didn't believe it. "You were about to tell me how he was Aoshi but not Aoshi."

The Professor nodded. "You know how a creation is made?" he asked. Misao shook her head. "Most are ignorant to that. Except scientists, of course, but...they're a different breed all together; anyways, what happens is there is an artificially created DNA based around a small sequence from a donor, like myself. It's sequences may be altered, to fit the way the creation be built. There is also a manipulation of chromosomes...if they're male or female, things like that. It's like making a doll. These DNA make cells...those cells multiply and voila, a being is created after a long enough incubation period. The thing is, at first, we couldn't do that. We understood that there could be a rapid growth, just using the manipulation process, but we didn't, for a while, understand how to control it and make an entire human entity."

Misao sat, thinking everything over, calling upon her old science classes to explain some of the things that the Professor was telling her. "How cna you do that? Isn't it itty-bitty?" she asked.

"Mircobiology is hard but...not impossible," he said. "As a prototype, we tried to figure out how we could renew the cells, give them life. Like when they were trying to use them to create artificial organs so people wouldn't have to wait for a donor. This was somewhat like that, but different. We used many subjects in this manipulation, and often times, it was done either without consent, or after the point that consent was necessary."

"Like in death," Misao said.

"Exactly," the Professor paused a moment. "In the case of Shinomori Aoshi, once he was pronounced dead I had him taken and put on a life support system. It kept his heart and lungs working so the blood would be flowing properly, the body, despite being dead, was not dead for sometime. We prepared a sample, taking his DNA and manipulating it. When it was getting ready to reproduce, we took one of the strangs and matched it with another. This hadn't worked too well before, but we figured we had nothing to lose. Once the process was complete with the strands, we put it back into the subject and let it do its work. By letting this happen, we were hoping for a quick repair of the organs that we ourselves could not fix. It's why they consider creations now to be very hard to kill, because they can heal so quickly."

"And...it worked in Aoshi?"

"It took time, but we didn't give up. There was improvement in his pancreas, and most of the chest cavity. After about two weeks, we gave it a shot at seeing how well his body had adjusted. We took him off the life support system and waited. After seven hours, he was conscious, with his heart beating fine, and his pancreas nearly intact."

Misao was a little dumbfounded. "So why not tell us?"

"Because as far as you and your family was concerned, he had been dead for two weeks. You had probably held a ceremony, and been given...ashes...that weren't his." The Professor sucked a in breath, looking at Misao curiously.

"That's...that's fraud!" she yelled.

"Yeah well, even if he'd have come back with you. Even if he had been a miracle, or whatever you want to call him. He wouldn't have been who you knew him to be. The procedures...the...duration of time for everything. The life support, possibly even the treatment had caused brain damage in him. It had severly wiped his memory, and some of his basic motor function. Whoever he was before wasn't who he had become."

"And...we were going to stay in the dark, all this time?"

The Professor simply nodded.


A/N: Basic science mumbo-jumbo and Sanosuke's reasoning...now...will Megumi act or not? Till next time, KenSan out!