All The Difference

By Sagara Sanosuke

Chapter 2:

The Complex Web

"Hey!! Put me down NOW Zanza!! What do you think you're doing?!" Kaoru shrieked indignantly.

Zanza ignored her and put two fingers to his forehead. He closed his eyes and concentrated…

A second later, Kaoru's jaw dropped as she saw Zanza and herself flicker and vanish into thin air, and not a moment too soon either, as a group of police barged through the door and saw the unconscious men, the gambling mats, and the swords strewn on the ground.

~*~

They landed, rather ungracefully, on a pile of garbage down a side street. Fortunately enough, Zanza was underneath, thus resulting in two things:

1: Kaoru landed on something soft, so she was uninjured. The same could not be said for Zanza, who was rather squashed. Who could've known that that petite frame weighed so much?

2: Kaoru didn't land on the garbage, thus sparing Zanza from an even worse fate for dirtying her new kimono.

Frantically flailing his limbs around, trying to get the weight off him, Zanza rested his hands on something soft and warm. And round.

Whoops.

"ZANZA NO HENTAI!!!!!" Kaoru yelled in fury and embarrassment, smashing an empty sake bottle over his head and scrambling off him.

"That was definitely uncalled for," Zanza muttered, rubbing the bruise on his head and pulling himself (and his spear) out of the trash. "So I accidentally groped something I shouldn't have. It's not like you're that endowed anyway…"

The branch Kaoru had dropped lay only a few inches away from her.

THWACK!

~*~

I hate my job.

Zanza gingerly touched the enlarged bump on his skull, glaring at Kaoru who was leaning against the wall in a sitting position. She had a rather serious, albeit thoughtful, look on her face.

Maybe she's finally accepting what I've told her. Thank Kami-sama…

"You said that you came from 'Tengoku'. Is that why you can teleport like you did earlier?" she asked out of the blue.

Zanza nodded. Good, she was starting to understand.

"But why are you here? And what happened to the dojo…and everyone else?"

He sighed and massaged his forehead. Wasn't she listening earlier?

"Look, you wished you'd never been born, right?"

A hesitant nod.

"Well, as I said earlier, Kami-sama's given you your wish. My job is to show you around the world…without you, that is… throughout the next 24 hours before you are to be sent to the sky, given a new body, reincarnated, yadda yadda yadda. You see, wishing for 'non-existence' basically means wishing for death. So technically, you're 'dead'."

"…I see…" Kaoru breathed quietly. "Maybe it's for the better…I shouldn't even have been born in the first place. Nobody needs a tomboyish, rough and hot-headed person like me anyway. It's not like anyone'd miss me. Kenshin would take care of Yahiko, Sanosuke would probably go off on his own, and everyone else would go on with their normal lives."

Zanza was silent.

"Well…lead on, then."

The guide mutely stood and waved his spear in an arc in front of him. A violet gash materialized , forming a sort of portal. Wordlessly, he motioned for Kaoru to follow him.

~*~

They arrived at an unfamiliar street in the slums of Tokyo. There were some huts here and there, most likely inhabited by either yakuza or people who couldn't afford to live in safer districts. All was quiet. That was strange, Kaoru thought. There were always at least a few people walking in the streets, Ruffian Row* or no.

While Kaoru was busy contemplating this matter, Zanza was checking out a hut at the end of the street. Through a peephole, he noted no one was home.

"Huh. Looks like he ain't in. In that case…" Zanza perked up. The sounds of a brawl could be heard from about two blocks down. Cocking a grin, he ran towards the source of the noise.

Kaoru pursued him, then screeched to a halt and blinked.

Sanosuke?

Indeed, it was the real spiky-haired fighter in the middle of the fray that caught her attention. He was picking off his opponents with casual ease, the same way he'd thrashed the thugs in the Akabeko the first time she'd met him. His zanbatou was wielded effortlessly; it seemed like a third hand for him.

Wait a minute…zanbatou? Hadn't it been destroyed in the fight with Enishi?

"Not bad, not bad at all. I didn't think he was this good," Zanza commented quietly behind Kaoru. She jumped in surprise, then turned and glared.

"Don't do that! You almost gave me a heart attack!" she whispered indignantly, careful not to attract any of the brawlers' attention.

"Sorry." Zanza adjusted his glasses and continued observing, Kaoru following suit.

Sanosuke's eyes gleamed with a savage intensity Kaoru had never seen before in any of his previous fights. She was taken aback by his ruthlessness as he swung the massive blade at a trio of swordsmen, smashing them into a wall. All of those people on the ground, Kaoru discovered, were bleeding from numerous deep gashes on random parts of the body.

It's like he's gone mad…

The kenkaya stepped forward, nudging a man at his feet, who groaned weakly.

Sanosuke grinned manically.

The zanbatou was raised into the sky, where it stayed for a moment…

…before it smashed its victim into a bloody pulp.

The rest of the remaining attackers and Kaoru were shocked. Some threw their weapons away and fled.

Is…is this really Sagara Sanosuke? He never killed before…he always insisted that the decision to live or die was for his opponent to decide.

The man who had always freeloaded off Kaoru, teased her and helped her out like a big brother was gone. In his place was nothing but a cold-blooded murderer with the skill and coldness of any hitokiri.

What happened next was no battle.

It was pure slaughter.

~*~

"Ugh. Hey, you alright, Jou-chan? That's a lot you threw up here…" Zanza grimaced at the mess in the ditch.

Kaoru weakly wiped her mouth and leaned against a wall, taking deep breaths. While the kenkaya had been brutally mutilating his adversaries, Zanza had turned around and pulled her away from the sight. When they had reached a side alley, her stomach heaved, a delayed reaction to the carnage.

"I just saw my friend killing…no, DESTROYING… a group of men, and you're asking me if I'm alright?" Kaoru shot back. "Why…why was he like that, anyway? It's like he's a completely different person…"

"He is. This is Meiji 12, after all…he's no longer the guy you met at the Akabeko 1 year ago."

"…Explain."

"In this present time, Kamiya Kaoru never existed. Koshijiro and Miyaki Kamiya passed away without an heir, leaving the Kamiya Kasshin Ryu to one of Koshijiro's students. When Gohee Hiruma came into the scene, the dojo was taken over, and thus Himura Kenshin had no permanent refuge in Tokyo."

Kaoru folded her arms. "What does that have to do with Sanosuke's personality?"

"It's sorta like this…" Thrusting his spear into the ground, Zanza weaved an intricate diagram in the air with his fingers, with lines crisscrossing, joining, overlapping and blending. Kaoru started a little at this…spell, she thought, but didn't say anything. A blue point of light glowed in the center of the image.

"Imagine that this is you." He pointed at the light. "Now watch what happens if I do this."

Retrieving his spear, he sliced one of the strings attached to the blue speck and pulled it. Part of the image shifted to become a different picture.

"That's what happened when you weren't around; a chain of events, in a way. It's like a complex web…Remove one bit, and the whole thing changes. No Kenshin, no Kenkaya Zanza changing his ways, no good ol' reliable Sanosuke."

Kaoru was slightly stunned, yet curious. "If the present as I know it has changed…what's going to happen in the future?"

Zanza was hesitant in replying. He seemed almost reluctant to tell her.

And with good cause, too…

She folded her arms and tapped her foot impatiently, an extremely typical gesture. The guide sighed.

"Sagara Sanosuke…or rather, Higashidani* Sanosuke, will die at the age of 35 in Tokyo due to a disease known as 'stomach cancer' in the West. As advanced medical treatment will not available at the time, he had no chance of survival. Alcohol poisoning and numerous fights took a toll on his body over the years."

Zanza nearly flinched at the mixture of horror and sadness on his client's features. Sighing, he ran his fingers through his hair.

I hate this job. Oh, it's all fine and well when people have NORMAL requests like money, power, fame and so on, but when people get depressed…

Yup, this assignment definitely sucked. If it weren't for the fact that he needed it, he wouldn't even have considered it. He should've left it to the girls…after all, at least they'd understand her.

I'm gonna have a few things to say to Urd when I get back, goddess or not. I knew her sister would probably have been able to handle this…

"---his disease…Zanza, are you listening?"

"Say what?" Zanza snapped back to attention. "Sorry…daydreaming. What did you say?"

Kaoru sighed in exasperation. For someone who claimed he wasn't, he certainly was a lot like Sanosuke.

"I said, you mentioned no one treated his disease. What about Megumi? Or Gensai-sensei?"

He actually snorted. "Think, Jou-chan. He was an old man. He never lived long enough. And Takani Megumi? That's the next person we're gonna see," Zanza informed. Opening the portal once again, he stepped through, Kaoru following behind, silent once more.

TBC…

A/N: Finally, an update on this fic! ^_^ I suppose I've been pretty lax in the writing department lately. However, Yahiko's taunting got a biiit too much for me -_-++ Remember to click on the review button!

A/N 2: 'Ruffian Row' is a phrase I've seen in quite a few fics. Apparently it refers to the area of town where my house is (my REAL one, not the dojo, though I suppose it could be my second house…). I considered the phrase to fit the scene, so why not use it? ^^

A/N 3: This takes place after the Enishi thing, as most of you probably guessed. And no, this is NOT a Sano/Kaoru fic. I'm not really an advocator of alternate pairings, so sorry for those who do support those.

A/N 4: 'Higashidani' is my real surname. Won't be mentioned till manga no. 20-something, though ^^

Disclaimer(I know it's supposed to be at the beginning, but anyway…): RK belongs to me. Especially Megumi. She's mine ^_^ I wish. The three sisters that are gonna make a cameo later on are property of Kosuke Fujishima (is that his name?)

All reviewers will be honored at the end of the fic. There's just too many ^_^

Next up: Takani Megumi.

(ALERT! I need the help of an A+M expert for a future chapter. E-mail me at rid_hershell@hotmail.com for more details.)