Chapter 14

The man was older, with grey-white hair in the neat up-do of a samurai. He also wore a navy hoari and grey hakama, with shoes like Jin's on his feet and a long and short sword at his belt, if anyone doubted he was a samurai. He seemed very vaguely familiar to Fuu but, for the life of her, she couldn't place where she'd see him before if she had.

While he was not a bandit, or any other clear threat, Fuu couldn't help but feel there was something dangerous about this man. She backed away from him.

"Who are you?" Mugen snarled at him. "What do you want?" The man looked calmly at Mugen's raised sword. "Who I am is of no consequence. But I am here to test your skill." He smiled slightly at Mugen, his grey eyes devoid of emotion. Mugen stared back at him for a moment. "Then bring it on." He smirked, his eyes cold. "Very well." The unknown samurai unsheathed his sword and took a waiting stance with his sword held next to his hips.

Mugen ran at him and as he sliced downward, as the samurai brought up his sword swiftly in a ringing clash of steel on steel. Mugen flipped over him and swung again, but the man turn so quickly he blocked the strike. Jumping away backwards, the samurai smiled again. "Not bad. Unorthodox, as I've heard, but you're quite a good swordsman." Before Mugen could respond, the man was looking around the clearing. "Oh dear. We seem to have company."

Sure enough, ragged, unkempt men had emerged from the surrounding woods, to surround them, the steel of their unsheathed swords gleaming in the sunlight. Fuu tried to hide behind a tree as they converged on the two swordsmen in the water, grinning with cracked or rotted teeth as they advanced. Although she was worried, she felt the bandits were probably no match for Mugen. It was the samurai who worried her. While he had proven himself equal to Jin, and could handle most swordsmen, she knew full well there had been some men out of Mugen's league. She hoped this man didn't fall into that rank.

She looked around for a tree to climb; knowing it was a bad idea for a pregnant woman to attempt, but she felt it would be safer for her and she could watch the fight easier from there.

"Hi." A rough voice said as she turned. A towering bandit inched towards her, leering. Backing up, she turned to run, and ran straight into another large torso. Rubbing her nose, she backed up only to be grabbed by the first bandit. The one she ran into had a mean look on his face and a long scar running vertical from his right cheek past his temple into his hairline. Fuu struggled against her captor, knowing he was much too strong for her. "Feisty in'she?" He captor growled amusedly. "Sure is. She's been knocked up. I bet she's a cat in the sack." The scarred one leered, holding relaxedly onto the ends of his sheathed katana, which rested across his broad shoulders. Fuu paled even though she knew this was what was coming; it always was. The scarred bandit reached out to touch her face and she tried to bite his fingers but missed as he yanked them away in time. "See? I told 'ja." He guffawed. She looked over to where Mugen was battling both the bandits and the samurai, who also was battling the bandits in a whirl of steel, but he hadn't seen her plight. She opened her mouth to yell, but her captor wrenched her arms with one hand so tight that her eyes watered, and used his now spare hand to cover he mouth. "Bad girl. Not like it matters; yer man's too busy with our boys, but we'd like to take our time with you." The scarred bandit patted her cheek, grinning as she tried to move her head away in protest. Then his hands were roving down her sides to the bottom hem of her kimono.

She kicked out at him and her foot hit him squarely in the balls. Doubling up, he screamed in rage and pain, clutching his crotch. "Motherfucking bitch!" She felt a hard slap hit the side of her face so hard that her ear was ringing and she was disoriented. "Tha's just messed up. We'll haf to punish you." Her captor growled in her ear. He slapped her again and dropped her. She fell to the ground dizzily, trying to figure out which way was up. She knew she was in trouble, and Mugen was too busy to get to her. She did the only thing she could and curled into a ball to protect her stomach. Just as the world was righting itself again and she started to push herself up, she felt an agonizing pain and screamed as the bandit she'd kicked punched her in the stomach. She could tell something was severely wrong. It felt like something ripped inside her when he hit her. She cried out in pain. "You bitch! You're going to fucking regret that before you die!" He kept punching her face, stomach, any part of her she could reach. She tried to push him off, or to block his punches despite the numbing pain, but the more she tried and the more she cried out in pain, the harder he hit her. She felt his fist snap her arm. She couldn't see; the pain was so intense that her eyes rolled back in her head. She was losing consciousness and could no longer tell what was happening around her, and couldn't even feel the blows raining down on her any more as darkness fell over her.

In the heat of battle Mugen heard her scream. Of course the dumb broad would get in trouble; she always did. He fought his way out of the circle of the few bandits left alive, realizing that the unknown samurai had vanished, and rushed over to where he heard the screams come from. He expected to see her bound or being teased by some bandits, but he stopped short for a fraction of a second as he saw one beating her as she lay unconscious with blood pooling around her legs.

Mugen saw red. Her tormentors were dead before they realized he was there. Their fellows converged on him and he sliced his way through them, like a wind of furious death.

Then he flicked his sword to rid it of blood and sheathed it, his face as cold as stone as he turned to the unconscious girl. He checked her for signs of breathing with intense eyes and then, having a good guess as to the cause of her bleeding, lifted up the hem of her kimono. Seeing the squelchy mass of what used to be his unborn child laying there, his face took on a strange grey shade, but only his eyes betrayed the intensification of his rage. He unflinchingly and gently took the mass and wrapped it gently in a strip of his shirt he ripped, then laid the bundle on Fuu's stomach and picked her up carefully. He walked back to the road, debating whether he could make it anywhere in time if he ran. Deciding he had no choice, he ran down the road in the direction they had been heading, knowing the opposite way had yielded no towns for weeks.

After an hour on the road it began to rain, obscuring his vision as the mud sucked at his geta. Mugen knew he was running out of time. "I don't know if you exist, and you are probably out to get me if you do, but damn it kami; you had better not let her die! You already killed our kid, and you can kill me if you want, but she's not like me! She's innocent! She doesn't deserve to die now! If you take her I'll find you and kill you myself!" He muttered angrily and desperately out loud. If he wasn't already too late, then he had better find a healer soon, or it would be.

He ran for about fifteen more minutes in the rain, thinking of his appeal to kami as useless and silly, when he saw a light bobbing and drawing nearer in the dark rain ahead. Something clenched at the hard stone inside him. He ran up to the light, which turned out to be a man driving a cart, with a wood awning over his seat to protect him from the worst of the rain. He pulled the horse to a stop as he drove next to them. "She's hurt. We need to get to the nearest doctor or healer now!" He told the man agitatedly. "Oh! She's bleeding! Let me just turn around. I'm the doctor in the town you're heading for, but she needs to get out of the rain. There is a dojo not far from here!" He said over the sound of the rain. A dojo….When Mugen nodded and got out of the way, the man turned the cart around. Then Mugen swung up easily next to the man, careful not to tip the remains of the fetus off of her. As they rode off, the man who claimed to be a doctor asked him questions. "Was she pregnant?" "Yes. She was beaten by bandits." Mugen said cautiously. "She miscarried. That is bad. How long have you been carrying her?" "An hour or two." The man looked grim but didn't reply. "Can you help her or not?" He asked. The man pulled the cart to a stop. "I don't know. But we're at the dojo, so let me try." He told Mugen honestly. They climbed down and the man tethered his horse to a post at the foot of some stairs.

When they reached the top of the stairs it was clear something was wrong. The square building in the clearing ahead, though whole, had its doors knocked down and windows broken. "What has happened!" The doctor took in the scene with a look of dismay and a touch of fear. Mugen looked around but could not see or sense whoever might have done this, but he knew better than to walk into a building that looked like some people had forced their way into it. "Hold her. I'll check it out." He carefully transferred Fuu's unconscious body into the doctor's arms. "Don't lose that." He glared at the doctor, who eyed the package, probably guessing its contents.

Mugen moved swiftly through the building, noting the large bloodstain on the floor of the dojo, the slashed rice paper walls, broken wood and toppled furniture. When he crossed into the back room, which was a kitchen on one side and looked like it had been a bedroom on the other side until something had smashed that corner in, he almost had exited the back door before noticing patterned cloth in the rubble. He cleared away the smashed wood to reveal an unconscious girl. She was younger than Fuu, but not quite a child either. She seemed to be breathing, but she had a nasty gash on her shoulder. The broad would bitch at him when she woke if he left the chick as she was. Sighing in annoyance, he sheathed his sword and picked her up. Bringing her into the dojo's main room where the doctor had already laid Fuu down on a mat and was checking her over, Mugen laid the girl down on the floor in the middle of the dojo.

"Can you cure her?" "Go boil some water and find clean cloth instead of distracting me! She's bleeding too heavily, can't you see that!" The doctor snapped at him impatiently. In any other circumstance Mugen would have told him where to stick it and beat the shit out of him, but instead he grumbled and walked away, both annoyed and worried. He went out the kitchen door and found a wood pile, with the wood sticks all knocked about the area. He gathered some, and then bent to the task of trying to start a fire in the kitchen's fire pit, trying not to think or feel, to just keep moving. Once it was blazing nicely, he found a bucket and went outside to what he thought was a well. It was. After drawing the water and setting it over the fire, he looked for the cloth the doctor had asked for. He didn't know much about this shit, but it was clear that the doctor was worried. He didn't want to think about it, but the images of Fuu getting beat up, and the bloody mess that was his dead kid kept flashing in his mind insistently as he handed the doctor the linens he'd found in a cupboard.

He wanted to sit by her, but he also knew doing so would be useless. If he wanted to try to save her he could only help the doctor. This was one way his sword skills would solve nothing. He went back to check on the water. "Waters done. What do I do with it?" he called. "Bring it and a cup to me." Mugen fished around for a cup and then also took a fat cloth thing he'd seen Fuu use at Mrs. Anno's house which she's set hot pots on to keep the table from burning.

He set the cloth thing down and put the water kettle on it. Fuu was very pale by now. Mugen watched as the doctor mixed some herbs and hot water in the cup. "Tilt her head. Gently." He tipped the mixture down Fuu's throat a little at a time to keep her from choking. When he was done, the doctor put some strips of the linen he'd ripped apart into the water and took them out, wringing the excess water from them. "Don't that burn?" Mugen quirked his eyebrow up. The doctor shrugged and leaned down between Fuu's legs. Turning around quickly, Mugen frowned, not wanting to see any man, not even a doctor who'd probably seen enough of women to not care, peeking between Fuu's legs. It made him mad. He resisted the urge to punch the man again, knowing whatever he was doing was the only thing that might save her.

Looking over, he realized he hadn't even thought of the girl he'd found in the wreckage until now. 'Dumb broad would throw a fit if I don't check on that other chick.' He thought and felt for her breath to see if she was still alive. "Yep. Alive." He muttered. He was no doc. Fuu always was the one to patch him up. He usually never bothered with doctoring himself after fights. He'd leave this chick to the doc, once he was finished with Fuu. She wasn't his lookout.

He scowled. Getting up, he took the wrapped up dead fetus and went outside into the night. He picked a spot at random next to the building, set down the package and began digging furiously. When he'd made a hole big enough, he knelt down and set the package gently inside it. "You're probably in a better place right now." He muttered angrily, not really aware he was speaking. "You're half Fuu's, so you've got half a chance of that." He shrugged, and touched the package lightly, feeling a connection with this dead kid. A piece of him had died long ago. It made perfect sense to bury it. "If you see yer mom coming, send her back, 'k?" He looked at the package for a bit, and then began to slowly cover it with dirt. He found a medium sized stone and placed it over the spot.

When he walked back inside he found the doctor washing his blood stained hands and drying them on a piece of linen. "She seems to have stopped bleeding, but she's lost too much. I don't know if she'll live or not, but we'll find out by morning." He gave Mugen a sympathetic look. "Whatever." The doctor ignored this. "I've got to get some sleep, but I'll come back to check on her in the morning. Meanwhile, give her a cup of the tea about every hour until she wakes…or doesn't." He said bluntly. "Mix a pinch of this in the cup and stir it before you give it to her." He handed Mugen a pouch of herbs. "And her?" Mugen nodded at the girl he'd found in the rubble. "Goodness. Did you find her here?" He felt her pulse and checked for abrasions and broken bones, not seeming to expect an answer. "Just the cut and some scratches, except for that bump on her head. She's just been knocked out." He swiftly cleaned out the girl's shoulder gash and bandaged it. "This one will probably be fine, but make sure to ask her questions when she wakes; like her name and other simple things she should know. If she doesn't seem confused or disoriented she can go home or wherever she likes." Mugen shrugged.

The doctor left him there with two unconscious women, but one was forgotten in a moment. Mugen knelt down by Fuu. "You're such a dumb broad." He muttered, watching her disturbingly pale face in the lamp light. Almost hesitantly, he reached out to stoke her cheek, but withdrew the minute his fingertips touched her almost icy skin. Something in him drew taut and threatened to snap. "You are dead, aren't you?" He spoke in a monotone, more to himself. "It's just as well." He muttered, feeling something strong well up in him. Something he recognized, but had never felt it this strongly; this raw. He nodded almost imperceptibly.

Then he got up and numbly tossed out the bloodstained water, refilled the pot and set it to heat over the fire. Taking the bloody rags, he tossed them in the fire. When the water had boiled, he poured some into the cup and mixed in a pinch of the doctor's herb. "Here's yer drink." He fed it to her carefully, the way the doctor had. He didn't look at her. Dead bodies didn't bother him, but hers did for some reason. That wasn't the Fuu who argued with him, ate like a starved glutton and made him feel…peaceful; ironically. Laying her back down, he felt a strange cold fire burning through him, different from the fierce burning of anger he'd have normally recognized. Everything was detached as if he was watching himself do what he was doing. Nothing was real.

As he placed the cup next to Fuu he had the distant feeling that he was crazy. 'Not so bad.' But as he thought it, he frowned. Part of him was screaming. He looked down at her again. Then he got up and walked into the yard. His eyes flicked instinctively to the grave he'd dug. He felt a blinding rage well up. It was safer than the other thing he felt. He grasped at its comforting familiarity. Picking up an axe next to the wood pile, he swung it with every emotion he felt at a large tree, as if the tree had caused all of this. The axe stuck so hard he had to strain to pull it free. "Mother fucker!" He snarled as he swung again. He swung again and again, as chips flew out with every blow, but he kept silently swinging at it, his eyes wide and tense, until his arms were burning with the effort. Breathing heavily, he leaned on the axes handle. Again he saw Fuu pale and unmoving. Again he saw the fetus that never had a chance to be more than that. Eyes blazing, he swung at the tree again; once, twice… On the third time he lowered his arms and dropped the axe, his arms screaming in protest. He sat down on the ground, breathing hard.

Once he had his breath back he remembered something. "Shit." He got up and walked back in to the kitchen. Seeing that the fire was still burning and the water was still hot, he refilled the cup, mixed in the herb, and walked back towards Fuu.

Hi, I know i said I'd update bi-monthly, but its been so crazy up till now. My life is snowballing (both a good and a tiring thing). But I have 2 more chapters already typed, so to make up for the late chapter post, I'm posting the next chapter also. Enjoy. I will post monthly from now on so I have less pressure with deadlines.

Hakama: Samurai pants. Loose and baggy.

Note: Those who have seen the show have seen the samurai I mention here that Mugen fights. But that's the closest to a spoiler/hint I'll give.