Once upon a time, there lived a little girl.
Um. Gomen. Once upon a time, there lived a little BOY. (Even though he looked like a girl, very bishounen, ne?)
A little red-haired boy, and even though his name was Himura Kenshin, everybody called him Akazukin Chach--
No wait...wrong name. Everybody called him...Chibi Akagami: "chibi" because he was a little boy who, because of natural shortness of height, was rather small for his age, and "akagami" for red-hair. Of course, if you delve into things deeply enough because you either have to write a paper for English on hidden meanings and messages or you happen to speak Japanese, you'll find a secret hidden meaning that the author didn't realize was there for quite a while: "akagami" could also mean red-god, which refers to Kenshin's godlike speed and...the redness of blood that stained his hands when--
Oh. That doesn't happen anymore, gomen nasai.
Red-god because of his godlike speed and because he had...red hair.
It so happened that one day, he was visiting the nearby village to pick up "vital supplies" that his poor sick Shishou couldn't live without: sake, sake, and a needle and thread because there was a tiny little rip in his mantle that he wanted immediately mended. Because Chibi Akagami was a good little Himura-Kenshin-Chibi-Akagami-baka-deshi, he bought the supplies for Hiko Seijuurou and started back down and up the long winding trail that would lead him to his Shishou's little cottage in the forest-covered mountaintops.
On the way there, a Miburo no Ookami (Wolf of Miburo) stepped out on the road to confront him, complete with katana at his side and cigarette hanging from his fingertips.
"Ahou. Where are you going, Chibi Akagami?" the Wolf demanded, taking a long drag on the cigarette and exhaling slowly, eyeing the package the red-haired boy was carrying.
Chibi Akagami blinked ingenuously, scratching the X-scar on his cheek. "I'm going back to my poor sick Shishou, to bring back to him these things that he cannot live without." He took the package off his back and opened it, displaying two bottles of sake and a little sewing kit complete with needle and thread.
"You would not happen to be the Hitokiri Battousai, would you?" the Wolf demanded again, dropping the cigarette and crushing it with the heel of his boot.
"No," said Chibi Akagami with as much dignity as he could muster, and shoved on past the Wolf.
The Wolf, however, was not so easily dissuaded; he had seen the X-scar on the boy's face, and knew the rumors about the red-haired assassin, and also was smart enough to figure out that Akagami could also refer to godlike speed which the Battousai supposedly possessed--and besides, he had fought the Battousai before, and it hadn't been THAT long ago.
So he took a shortcut through the woods and reached the little cottage far ahead of Chibi Akagami. He knocked on the door politely, because his resources as a police officer had informed him that the man living here was a very great swordmaster, and it would only do to be polite to him.
The door opened a crack and the poor sick Shishou that Chibi Akagami had so generously decided to help peered out, sneezing into a soggy handkerchief.
"What do you want?" the poor sick Shishou growled, blowing his nose. "I'm only a poor sick potter who caught a cold when training his baka deshi out by the waterfall."
The Wolf refrained from pointing out that there was no reason for the "potter" to have caught a cold simply from being out by the waterfall, this being near summer and all, and instead bowed politely. He still needed to gather information in the supposed Hitokiri Battousai, and finish the fight from years ago, after all.
"I am here to--"
But the poor sick Shishou was rather smarter than the Wolf, and already knew who he was and why he was there and what he wanted with his baka deshi, and wasn't about to give in. But the Wolf wisely bribed, uh, offered the poor sick Shishou a keg of sake in exchange for wearing his mantle for the rest of the day; another bottle insured that he would remain nowhere near the cottage. The poor sick Shishou already had a pretty good idea of what the Wolf was going to do, but said nothing, figuring that his baka deshi was baka enough to deserve what was coming to him and it would at least be amusing if nothing else.
So when Chibi Akagami entered the cottage, the first thing he saw was his poor sick Shishou lying on the futon, with his mantle still on, and a blanket covering that. Chibi Akagami may have been a baka deshi, but he was rarely ever given credit for when he wasn't stupid and so people most often underestimated him--as the Wolf was doing now, but Chibi Akagami declined to make any comment yet.
"Maa, Shishou," Chibi Akagami said, setting his package of sake, sake, and needle-and-thread-for-mantle-repair down in the corner before turning around and facing his "Shishou". "What narrow eyes you have."
"The better to see you w--uh, I mean, that's because of my cold."
Chibi Akagami took a step closer, one hand casually resting on the hilt of his sakabatou. "Maa, and what long thin narrow crablegs of hair you have hanging over your face, Shishou."
The Wolf frowned at that, but said anyway, "Being sick has not left me with time to properly comb my hair."
"And, Shishou," said Chibi Akagami, drawing yet closer, eyes glinting a sudden icy yellow, "what an interesting new saya and tsuba you've gotten for your katana!"
The Wolf was totally thrown off by this one. "Nani?"
He barely had time to leap aside as the Suddenly-Gone-Battousai-Chibi-Akagami did reduced the blanket to threads with a Sou-Ryuu-Sen. The Battousai turned around, eyes glowing golden, hair the perfect neon-red only achieved by going Battousai or spending hours with a bottle of cheap hair-dye, and said, "Shishou's katana has a shirasaya, white wood, not black lacquer with a regular cord and tsuba and hilt!"
It seemed odd to the Wolf that the sword would be the give-away and not anything else, but he said nothing, merely drawing his sword and taking a Gatotsu stance, and Battousai and Ookami began their charge at each other, with the sudden lights flashing in the dark room and a dramatic excerpt from Warrior's Suite playing and their hair flying back and their swords glinting, sakabatou raised to meet katana--
"OI! NANI O?!"
Chibi Akagami and Wolf were flattened by the sheathed katana of the poor sick Shishou crashing across their heads, as he had returned because he'd finished the sake the Wolf had given him and wanted to see if his baka deshi had returned with more. He stepped into the cottage and glared at the two would-be combatants. He picked up the Wolf and pulled off his mantle, swinging it around his shoulders and dropping the Wolf at the same time, then stepped on Chibi Akagami as he crossed the room to retrieve the package of vital supplies that had resulted in the confrontation between red-head and police officer in the first place.
"Don't fight in the cottage," the poor sick Shishou said to his baka deshi, sneezing, and then, addressing the Wolf, "don't you DARE do anything that might rip MY mantle further." He turned back around and nudged the prone Chibi Akagami with a foot. "Oi, when you wake up, fix the rip in my mantle, baka deshi."
And so it was that Chibi Akagami had to fix the rip in his poor sick Shishou's mantle, the Wolf went back to report to his superior officers that Chibi Akagami was, indeed, the Hitokiri Battousai, and that the poor sick Shishou got a good laugh out of everything at the expense of everybody else.
The End. ^_^;;
Notes:
Shirasaya is the type of sword-covering that Hiko has and that Shakku's sakabatou "holy sword" was covered in, white wood, generally used for decorative purposes, I think--which shows how cool Hiko thinks himself, using a decoratively set katana like that. ^_^
Tsuba = the handguard on regular katana, the round metal-thingies that the swordblade itself goes through and is just above the hilt. That's another reason why Hiko is sooooo arrogant; he fights using the shirasaya, which does not have a tsuba, therefore provides less protection. Does anybody know how to say "hilt" in Japanese, because I've forgotten?
Saya = sheath
Akazukin Chacha = "Little Red Riding Hood Chacha" or something; it's the title of another anime that I've never seen, but heard of, though I really don't know much about it.
Warrior's Suite = a track on the Kyoto Kessen RK OST 3, I believe. It's the music that plays during bits of Kenshin's fight with Shishio and sometimes during his fight with Soujirou, and when he learns the Ougi, and in various other bits. Believe you me, it's worth it to buy the CD just for that track alone!!!!!
I know the lil' red Kenshin-hood thing has been done before, but I generally like them, so that's why I wrote my own. ^_^ Kenji-chan should be next in line for the story!