His hands are wet again.
Claret eyes shift listlessly downward to glance at the upturned palm of his sword hand. He rubs his fingers together and the feeling between them is wet and dry and sticky and slippery all at the same time. It's a familiar sensation that elicits nothing save for the mild irritation that comes with knowing he'll have to bathe when he returns to headquarters.
This fact causes him to sigh. He'd just bathed this morning.
He casts his gaze around and his eyes settle on a swatch of dark gray fabric. It's the haori of a dead man sprawled atop a haphazard row of trash bins. It'll have to do. He wraps his fingers around the hilt of his katana and plucks it from the hardpacked earth where he'd lodged it. He sheathes it with his left hand, a skill he's perfected through practice, before closing the distance to wipe his palm on the corpse's back. What's left behind is a streak of gore.
It's not as if the dead man will care.
There are those who preach that life is precious. Sometimes he thinks about that when he's alone and surrounded by the corpses of samurai he's killed. A life is a heavy thing, they say. He disagrees. Lives aren't heavy. Heavy things are hard to move. He moves lives like Hijikata moves cancer sticks.
His sister wasn't heavy. She was tiny and frail and taken by the wind.
Movement out of the corner of his eye draws his attention. Four more samurai have arrived on the scene. They're watching him with fury and their hands grip their swords with vengeful intent. Lazily, he again lays his hand atop the hilt of his own sword. His fingers drum the scarlet threads of the grip as he sizes up his new opponents. It's good that they've shown up. Now he won't have to go hunting for them.
"Shinsengumi bastard!" one of them snarls, and all four charge at him with murder in their eyes.
He only moves to lower his body into a ready stance. He knows how this will go. The men rush him like idiots always do, and in seconds they're not men anymore but litter on the alley floor.
No. One of them is still standing. The man had seen through his intent and fallen back before he his chest could be sliced open like his comrades'. His grip on his sword has become lax. He's trembling, having realized the futility of their assault.
Instead of trying his luck at another suicidal gambit, the man takes a terrified step backward. His eyes are wide as they study the bodies of the samurai who just a moment before had been moving and breathing and alive beside him. His expression is one of disbelief. How? He doubtless wonders. How had his comrades been snuffed out so quickly? He can't understand it. He's the sort who believes lives are heavy things.
An odd philosophy for one in his profession to have.
A purposeful step forward has the samurai's eyes back on him. The man makes a noise that sounds like a squealing sow and his knees knock together in fright. "Wait!" he cries, holding up a shaking hand. "Please! I have a daughter at home! Let me live and I'll turn my life around! I'll live honestly, I swear!"
It's a speech he's heard a hundred times. To him, it's no different from the rustling leaves of a tree about to be chopped down.
There are too many trees in the forest for one to move him.
He finishes his business swiftly and wipes his blade on the man's back. Edo is a city of killers. People kill other people to live. That's how it was for that man and that's how it is for him.
"…Sa…yaka…"
He turns away from the corpse and sheathes his sword. The dead man's final, pitiful plea is no doubt to his aforementioned daughter. So he hadn't been lying about that.
He's a little surprised. Most men are only honest when they've had a sword stuck in them.
Life is precious. The weight of this man's life is his to bear now, too.
That's fine. Lives aren't heavy at all. He's carrying hundreds already and he can carry more.
He leaves the alley and finds a patrol car waiting. The big boss is leaning on it, examining his watch, but he looks up when he sees him. Director Matsudaira gives him a wry smirk and when he's near enough places a grizzled hand on his shoulder and gives it a pat. "Ah, Sougo-kun. Good work as usual."
The passenger door opens and Sougo slips inside. He decides, as the car speeds away, that he's changed his mind. He wouldn't mind another bath.
Killer
Chapter One
The day was hot. Blisteringly, boilingly hot. The fan at the Yorozuya was blasting air at its highest setting but even that did little to offer relief from the sauna-like temperature of the main room. It was all Kagura could do to sit upright and remain attentive as their client, dabbing sweat off his balding head as he spoke, explained the job he wanted them to do.
"So, you see, I really need a beautiful woman to be my son's date to the amusement park tomorrow."
On the sofa beside her, Gintoki crossed his arms and nodded his head like this was the gravest of matters—on par with guarding a high-level government official or making a secret, high-stakes deal for a mafia boss. Kagura knew he was only behaving this way because they were direly hurting for money this month. Otose had finally managed to corner him for rent and now it was either get paid fast or starve.
"A beautiful woman, hmm?" He uncrossed his arms to scratch his chin with a serious expression. "A request like that is going to cost you, Ossan. Beautiful women don't come cheap."
The client bowed his head in a resigned fashion. "I know," he answered heavily. He looked up again and a willful glimmer appeared in his eyes. "I'm willing to pay. How does fifty-thousand yen sound?"
At once, the three members of Odd Jobs Gin-chan straightened in their seats. As if they were a single unit, Gintoki, Kagura, and Shinpachi swiveled to look at one another. The words fifty-thousand yen echoed like an alpine yodel between them.
Quickly, before their shock could become apparent, the three turned back to face the client and Gintoki cleared his throat. "Well," he said, putting on his serious voice again, "fifty-thousand yen can get you a decent girl, but for a real beauty you're going to be looking at eighty or ninety-thousand."
Shinpachi's glasses flashed. His lips pulled back like a fish and, covertly, he gave Gintoki a look that said, "Nice, Gin-san!"
The client sighed, once again in a resigned fashion, and Kagura knew they had him. "I suppose I have no choice. I'll pay you anything. Just please arrange for a beauty to accompany my son tomorrow."
Score! Kagura thought, rubbing her hands together greedily. This oji-chan must be seriously loaded! Lifting her hand into the air, she said, "In that case, I'll personally—"
She was cut off by Gintoki. "Hey, hey! Don't insult our client, Kagura. He's paying for a real woman here. You're worth two or three-thousand yen at most."
Kagura's mouth fell open in outrage. A couple thousand yen? Her? The nerve! She made to lunge at Gintoki but was stopped by Shinpachi who grabbed her in a full nelson.
Both the client and Gintoki ignored her violent attempts to dislodge Shinpachi as they ironed out the details of tomorrow's job. It was only when they were finished and the client was walking back down the stairs to the street below that she was finally released.
Kagura rounded on Gintoki. "How dare you call my gorgeous body worth only a few thousand yen, you old-man-haired bastard!" she screeched, climbing up his back and latching onto his head with her legs. "Be crushed by the weight of a maiden's fury!"
Gintoki's eyes bugged out of his face as Kagura attempted to squeeze the life out of him with her calves. In a bid to get her to let go he raised a hand and began smacking her leg. "Oy! Let go! This is exactly why you're worth only a few thousand yen, you violent monkey brat!"
"I don't want to hear that from a lazy, irresponsible freeloader!"
Kagura did eventually release him, but only when he was purple in the face and about to keel over. She patted off her hands and glared at the man she'd been living with for just shy of two years before turning on her heel and stomping out of the office. Fine. If he wanted to use someone with a more traditional womanly appeal like Sarutobi or Tsukuyo or Zura he could be her guest. It's not like she cared.
"It's not like I'm the heroine or anything," she grumbled as she strutted away down the street. "Che!" She kicked a pebble to vent her frustration and it shot like a bullet through the window of a restaurant, shattering it. Surprised shrieks followed as patrons came pouring out of the establishment. Her ire fled and she winced. "Oops."
She looked left and right, hoping nobody had seen her kick the rock. The last thing she needed was for one of those shifty, tax-robbing cops to catch her breaking property again. All she saw were passersby wearing bewildered expressions as they stared at the now-empty window frame. It looked like she was in the clear.
She was about to carry on, putting the incident behind her, when…
"Aaa-ah. Making a scene this early in the day…" a flat voice spoke directly behind her.
Kagura stiffened. A bead of sweat rolled down her neck. Uh oh.
Before she could even think to make a run for it, a pair of metal cuffs latched around her wrists with a resounding click.
Her sweat increasing, Kagura turned around to look at the owner of the voice. Okita Sougo looked back at her with apathetic crimson eyes. Behind his deceptively soft-looking, sandy fringe, his eyebrows sat high upon his forehead as he stared coolly down at her. The key to her cuffs was swinging around his index finger.
Of all the cops to show up at that exact moment, she lamented in the privacy of her mind, it had to be him. The gods of Kabuki-cho had forsaken her.
"H-hey," she stammered. "What are you doing, tax-thieving bastard?"
Sougo quirked one of those neatly manicured brows at her as if she were stupid. "Arresting you for property damage and disturbing the peace. What does it look like?"
At the word arrest, sirens promptly began blaring in Kagura's head that sounded like evade, evade, evade. She couldn't afford to be arrested by Okita Sougo. He would make her life HELL. There was only one option available to her. Deflect. "I don't know what you're talking about! Y-you can't prove it was me!"
Sougo looked pointedly at the ground near her feet where a skid mark had been left behind from her kick. It was angled incriminatingly right at the shattered window. His large, red eyes found hers again and he wore an expression of mock surprise. "Heeh?" he drawled out in that loathsome, bored-sounding tone of his. "What a coincidence. I guess this mark was left by some other dimwitted, gluttonous, gorilla-faced, meat-for-brains, illegal immigrant muscle girl." He raised a hand to use as a visor and made a show of looking around the street. "Well, I don't know where she went, so I've got no choice but to take you in her place."
Kagura's mouth fell open in offense. Don't keep adding adjectives, you shitty asshole cop! She saw the corner of Sougo's mouth lift a few millimeters upward as he regarded her with eyes that said he knew exactly what she'd just called him in her head and she ground her teeth together in frustration. This—this insufferable, no-good, black-hearted Shinsengumi punk! If only she could kill him and make it look like an accident. "W-wait," she appealed to him. Why don't we make a deal?"
She regretted opening her mouth the moment Sougo's eyebrows arched high over his eyes and a diabolical smile stretched the corners of his mouth. He whipped the cuff key into the air and caught it in his fist. "A deal," he echoed, sounding almost gleeful and a lump of dread formed in the pit of Kagura's stomach. Of all the words to never utter to a sadist, she'd gone and picked the most dangerous. "Well, now. In that case—"
"Captain Okita!"
Her tormentor was blessedly interrupted when Yamazaki came jogging up the street toward them, waving his hand. Kagura let out a breath of relief. With any luck, the mangy chihuahua would be called away to some official Shinsengumi business and she'd be able to make a break for it.
Sougo turned to look at Yamazaki, his expression growing somewhat irritated. "What?"
"The chief has requested that you return to headquarters. Director Matsudaira has new orders for you."
A grin split Kagura's face. Score! The gods of Kabuki-cho hadn't forsaken her after all!
Sougo's eyes narrowed and he said nothing for a moment as his head swiveled to look back at her. Those impassive red eyes of his roved her face as if looking for something in her expression, then he made a noise that sounded like "Tch," and turned away from her to join Yamazaki. "Guess I have no choice. What a hassle."
As the two officers began to walk away in the direction of the Shinsengumi headquarters, Kagura sent a wave of mental gratitude to the gorilla for unwittingly saving her from whatever demeaning and likely highly unethical thing his subordinate was about to make her do.
It was only when the two had rounded a corner and left her sight completely that she remembered she was still cuffed. Her brow twitched. That asshole…leaving without bothering to take his stupid toy off… Not that it mattered. As if puny Earth handcuffs could hold her. With a "Hn!" of exertion, she yanked her wrists apart, calling on her Yato strength to break the chain…
…and was baffled when the chain held fast, giving no sign of coming apart. Huh? She tried again, this time giving the effort her full power, but again, the chain remained whole. The metal didn't give a millimeter.
Confused, she brought her wrists up to her face to examine the cuffs. That's when she saw a small engraving in the metal. It read 'Enjoy this token of my deepest affection. -Sougo'. Beside it was a serial number another engraving reading 'Anti-Yato adamantine handcuffs'.
Kagura's jaw dropped nearly to her collarbones and she let out a guttural croak. Her fingers balled into fists and then released before balling again.
She sucked in a breath.
"I'LL KILL YOU, YOU INCORRIGIBLE, LOW-LIFED, DO-S BRAT!"
oOo
A few blocks away, Sougo smiled to himself as he walked, once again twirling a tiny metal key around his index finger.
oO0Oo
End Chapter One.
A little context about the placement of this story: thematically, you can think of it as taking place after the Farewell Shinsengumi and Silver Soul arcs, although it ignores all the political ramifications of the events of those arcs as well as all the stuff with Utsuro. We're just going to pretend everything went back to normal after the attack on Kabuki-cho.
These are going to be pretty short chapters. Expect each chapter to be about the length of this one. My goal is to keep the pacing fast so as not to turn this into an unfinishable epic (as I'm wont to do). I predict the full story will be around 40k words.
Stay tuned for the next part!