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Chapter 3: She's Got the Look
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I have eaten your bread and salt.
I have drunk your water and wine.
The deaths ye died I have watched beside,
And the lives ye led were mine.
Was there aught that I did not share
In vigil or toil or ease,
One joy or woe that I did not know,
Dear hearts across the seas?
-Rudyard Kipling.
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They waited patiently in the darkness surrounding the Dojo, much like jackals about a wounded doe. Unlike Jackals however, they had forgotten that even a wounded Doe could kick.
The doe in question lay in wait in the main practice hall, Enishi and Yahiko had gone to bed long ago... suspecting nothing.
She preferred it that way; there were complications that could be avoided if she could do away with the intruders without a dashing display of heroics.
That and she was just getting too damn old for dashing displays of heroics, they took more energy than they were worth.
'Thirty is not old.' Kaoru chided herself, although waiting in the darkness to be attacked by a gang that didn't stand a chance in hell did tend to make one feel a little jaded.
It was almost exactly midnight when they moved in, Raven informed her directly and Kaoru was waiting in the courtyard for them when they scaled the walls.
She stood directly before the front entrance to her new and old home. Her bokken was still safely in her belt on the off chance that they would get smart and run away... they didn't.
"Who's the bitch?" one thug hissed to another.
"I dunno." the other muttered back. "She doesn't look scared, looks like we're expected."
Gohei was the last over the wall, his landing was a little shaky and from behind the safety of her concealing bangs Kaoru grimaced. He was more than half drunk.
"You..." he steadied himself and clapped a hand to the sword at his own belt. "Why do I know you?" he demanded.
"You don't know me." Kaoru said quietly, one could almost mistake her voice for the wind whispering on the trees.
The moon chose that moment to emerge from behind a concealing cloud and bathed the courtyard in silver light. Kaoru lifted her kin to shake her hair away from her face and the motion gave the illusion that her face was wreathed in white fire.
Her pale hand dropped down to the bokken at her belt and she drew it out, agonizingly slow. "you should leave, you're trespassing."
"Kill her!" Gohei ordered his men.
Kaoru sighed and lazily unlimbered her muscles, seemingly unaware that more than a dozen men were rushing her all bigger and stronger than she. They all struck at the same time in a tight circle...
Gohei howled with laughter. "You can't get... away..."
From the heart of the knot of men came a flicker of movement, a black blur of pure motion that the naked eye could barely register. The bearded giant nearly convinced himself that it was a trick of his mind until Kaoru skidded to a halt a few steps away from him and all his men collapsed in a haphazard pile.
Gohei fell on his butt and scrambled away from the woman. "Wha- what kind of demon are you!?"
Kaoru shook her head. "If I had a sen for every time I heard someone say that..." she brushed her bangs out of her face again as they had fallen right back in her eyes during her brief burst of activity. She spun her weapon in the fingers of her left hand and then brought it back to the ready. "Are you prepared?"
Gohei whimpered and cringed. "Spare me!" he begged. "I've done nothing to you!"
"You don't have to have done anything to me, any decent person would have tried to save that child you tried to murder yesterday." Kaoru said coldly. "That same child that you would have killed tonight. Draw your sword and face me or are you afraid of engaging someone who can put up a fight?"
Tears started to emerge from the behemoth's eyes as he contemplated his own end... he shook his head numbly.
"Do it and the fact that you're attempting to dishonor my father's name and sword style with your bastardized technique need not even enter this battle." she hissed. "Get UP!"
***
Enishi snapped out of sleep at the first sounds of conflict. He leapt out of bed and wrestled himself into his trousers.
Grabbing his own bokken he barreled into the hallway pausing only the pound on Yahiko's door. "Get up! The Dojo's under attack!"
Frenzied scuffles ensued inside the room and Enishi went for the scene of the battle...
***
"Kamiya-sensei!"
Kaoru's head snapped around to see the source of Enishi's bellow. He was standing outside the sleeping wing of the Dojo near the pile of comatose thugs.
Gohei snarled and pulled out his sword. "You're mine!" he yelled as he went for Kaoru's unguarded back.
"Look out!" Enishi cried, but he might as well have not bothered.
Kaoru stepped nimbly to the left and Gohei's supremely sloppy overhead cross strike went benignly by. One tabi and sandal-clad foot darted out and knocked Gohei's legs out from under him.
"That's more like it!" She praised him. "Fight me like a man."
Gohei hit the ground and the air whooshed out of his lungs. Kaoru administered a judicious nerve tap to the back of his neck and he was down for the count.
"That was too easy." She said to herself. There should have at least been some effort in taking down this man, the one who had once sought to burn her dojo down around her ears, preferably with her in it once he and his men had finished with her body.
Something was just not right. She didn't even feel the hate that had burned in her heart when she thought about him as short as a year ago.
"Kaoru-san!"
"Kamiya-sensei!"
Kaoru looked up at the two boys running up to her and slipped her bokken back into her belt. "Forgive the disturbance, Enishi, Yahiko." she nodded to each. "I was trying to keep the noise down."
"Keep the..." Yahiko turned an angry red. "You were going to fight them all by yourself?!"
"Correction." Enishi cuffed Yahiko lightly on the head. "She -did- fight them all by herself." he frowned at Kaoru. "Although, you could have woken us up when you heard them come over the wall."
Kaoru ducked her head and hid her face behind the curtain of her hair. "I did not want to wake either of you and there wasn't much time." she said by way of apology... and caught herself on a yawn. "Oh dear, I'm still sleepy!" she yawned again and patted her mouth in the customary gesture of drowsiness.
She patted both of her friends on the shoulder and walked past them to the bedrooms. "I'm going back to bed! Good night!"
"But what about these creeps?" Enishi shouted after her, "Shouldn't we get the police."
"You do that." Kaoru called back. "If they need a statement from me tell them to come back in the morning."
Enishi and Yahiko watch her kick off her sandals, hop onto the wood boardwalk and go into the middle bedroom.
"You heard her." Enishi said to Yahiko. "Go wake up some night watchmen!"
"Why me!?" Yahiko complained.
"Because I'm older than you and I say so!"
Kaoru could hear them bicker even as she unfolded her futon and quilt, luckily Enishi hadn't come into this room or he'd have known that she'd never gone to sleep.
She shucked off her shabby travel clothes and grimaced at them, they were already sweat-soaked and grimy from hiking to Tokyo from Hakone the day before... now they were just disgusting. The one change of clothes she had in her pack was nearly as bad.
'I'll borrow some practice clothes from Enishi in the morning and do laundry.' Kaoru promised herself. Then she stopped and hung her head, little oni-bis appeared around her shoulders and her cheeks turned blue.
'I really am turning into Kenshin!' she thought dully. 'Next thing you know I'll be saying Oro and calling every one -dono!'
She shook herself and pulled the cord out of her ponytail and let her hair spill around her shoulders. Loose, it nearly reached her calves. 'I'm not going to think about that anymore!'
Kaoru kicked her futon open and crawled underneath the quilt... she was asleep before her head hit the pillow.
***
The police did indeed want a statement and not only that, they also wanted to wake Kaoru up and take her down to their headquarters to file a report, but after Enishi carefully explained (with his hands around the offending officer's throat) that Kamiya-san had just returned from a long journey that morning and had spent the night fighting thugs who really should have been the police's responsibility. It would be the gentlemanly thing to do to give her a few days to rest up and then they would gladly receive an officer to the Dojo and give them their explanation.
A bespectacled officer (notably, not the Chief of Police) arrived the next afternoon when Enishi and Yahiko were out corralling up their old students.
Kaoru was alone in the dojo and hard at work trying to restore her old garments to something vaguely respectable looking... no luck so far.
The officer entered through the back without asking for permission to enter and stalked up to Kaoru without introducing himself. He came to a parade rest before her. "Kaoru Kamiya, I presume?"
"It's polite to give your name first before asking that of another." Kaoru said benignly in that 'didn't your mother teach you anything?' tone. She didn't look up from her laundry.
"I need not give my name to a suspect." he spat, and so he became Officer Stick-up-his-ass.
"I am a suspect?" Kaoru asked curiously. "Whatever for?"
"I need not reveal that information."
She shrugged. "Then I don't need to tell you whether I am Kamiya Kaoru or not." Really, it was want for common manners that was killing this country, not the corruption in the government.
Officer Stick-up-his-ass whipped out a note and consulted it. "You match the description we have. A woman in men's clothing with long black hair and a facial scar."
"Is that all?'" Kaoru asked, cocking her head. "How to you know it's me then? How many black haired women are there is Tokyo? I'm in these clothes because, obviously I am doing chores."
"You have a facial scar." Officer Stick-up-his-ass pointed at the x carved into her cheek.
"So I do." Kaoru touched her cheek as if the scar had suddenly sprung to life. "We could avoid all this if you would introduce yourself." and she could mentally catalogue him as someone without a name that made her struggle to keep a straight face.
"Fukitaka." he growled. "You will refer to me as Officer Fujitaka, now are you or are you not Kaoru Kamiya?"
"I am an innocent woman." Kaoru said and wrung the water out of her back gi. "I am also Kamiya Kaoru, I don't suppose you know of a decent second hand clothing store in the area?" she asked, eyeing the spot on the gi where the fabric was dissolving around the seam.
Officer Fujitaka (who still had something if not a stick up his ass) snapped to attention. "Kaoru Kamiya, you are under arrest! You are to accompany me to the..."
"Oh this won't do at all!" Kaoru mourned as she picked at a patch coming off of her hakama. "I'm sorry, were you saying something?"
Officer Fujitaka turned an unhealthy shade of purple, turned on his heel and marched out of the yard.
"Wait!" Kaoru called after him. "You didn't say whether or not you knew of a good second hand clothing store!" when she got no answer she sat back on her heels and humphed. "Mou! Police have no manners anymore!"
He returned several hours later with several more police, which included among their number Police Chief Uramura and Hajime Saitou. Kaoru's clothes had dried and she was affixing yet another black patch to the sleeve of her gi.
"Hello, Officer Fujitaka!" she said warmly to the officer she'd previously harassed. "Aren't you going to introduce your friends?"
Officer Fujitaka ground his teeth and indicated the officers one after another. "Please recognize Officer Kinomoto, Officer Sawa, Officer Goro, and Police Chief Uramura." each bowed stiffly in turn even Saito.
Kaoru watched him carefully... but to her eye he hadn't changed at all. That was a comfort, after seeing Sano's drastic shift in character. But then again, Saitou was one of those immutable forces of nature, the Shogunate could have won the Bakumatsu and he'd still be the same lanky, Gatotsu welding agent of Aku Soku Zan.
Hmmm, they'd called in the Wolf himself. They must consider her a real threat, but to what?
"How can I help you, good sirs?" she asked sunnily.
"It would please me if you would answer a few questions about last night." Chief Uramura said politely.
Kaoru patted the floor beside her. "Please sit, I'll answer any questions you have to the best of my ability." she smiled winningly at Officer Fujitaka as if to say 'now this isn't so hard, is it?'
Chief Uramura took a seat beside Kaoru but the police officers with him ringed themselves around her, except for Saito who stayed back leaned against a roof support and lit a cigarette.
"It is partially about the disturbance last night. The men you apprehended breaking into your home have some... horrific tales about you."
Kaoru's eyes widened. "I should say not, what is the problem?"
"Well, we have been having some ... problems recently and the accounts given to us by these men made us believe we had a lead."
Oh, that's right... Kurogasa would be leaving something of a blood trail through the local government officials at the moment.
"Do you still believe that?" Kaoru prodded.
Chief Uramura made an almost imperceptible glance at Saitou who gave an equally covert shake of his head. "Apparently not, I still have some questions for you but they can wait until you have rested from your journey. That was the important matter." he stood and bowed. "thank you for your time and patience."
Kaoru returned the bow with a nod. "Anytime. Wait!" she said when the Chief turned to go. "I asked Officer Fujitaka a question earlier, but he must not have heard me."
chief Uramura raised an eyebrow and Saitou straightened up a little to listen. "And that would be..."
"A second hand clothing store in the area?" Kaoru pressed. "I've been out of Tokyo for a long while and everything I remember seems to have changed."
The Chief of Police developed a rather large sweat drop but shook his head. "I'm afraid not."
"A pity." Kaoru sighed.
"There is an establishment two blocks from here to the north, on Flower Street." Saitou said gruffly. "There are clothes to be had there for reasonable prices."
"I am much obliged, Goro-san." She bowed. "I'm am sorry to have caused you all trouble."
The officers bowed themselves out of the yard and Kaoru put down her mending and retrieved her wallet from her bedroom.
Unless she'd missed her guess, Saitou had asked for a meeting in the clothing store on Flower Street.
***
He was standing underneath the red awning of the store when she arrived, predictably with a cigarette lit and dangling in his gloved fingers.
"Hajime Saitou." he introduced himself as she approached.
"Kaoru Kamiya." Kaoru replied. "Thank you for pointing out this place to me!"
He shook his head. "It was nothing." his eye drifted down to the bokken on her belt. "Is there a blade in that?"
Kaoru laid a hand on the hilt and rested her arm along the cool length of the wood. "No, it is a simple bokken. I have no need for a killing edge, do you not know the Creed of the Kamiya Kasshin?"
"It was the reason I asked you here." Saitou admitted, taking a drag on his cigarette. "One of the men apprehended last night was the one who has been roaming the streets at night killing under the name Battousai. What do you know of him?"
Kaoru surveyed the clothing shown in the window of the shop. "Hmmm, Gohei Hiruma is his name and other than the fact that he was a student at our Dojo eleven years ago I cannot tell you more than that."
"Think you that he might be the real Battousai?" the police officer pressed.
"You and I both know he isn't." Kaoru murmured, fingering her scar. "You know it because the Kasshin style isn't an offensive sword style and Battousai was an assassin. The two do not add up."
"True." he allowed. "I knew the last master of the Kasshin style, we were good friends... even if I was the better of us."
Kaoru smiled. "Some are meant to teach and some are meant to practice. Tell me, how good are you at teaching?"
Saitou chuckled mirthlessly. "I'll let that go." he told her. "Koinosuke often told me of his wandering daughter, would that be you?"
"It seems that way." Kaoru agreed. "but I never wandered, I always knew exactly where I was going."
"That leads me to my next question." Saitou exhaled a lungful of smoke. "I have heard unsettling stories of a dark haired woman who doesn't kill but doesn't need to. She has a facial scar much like yours, some people say she has the knowledge of Buddha."
"An amazing woman." Kaoru said. "Who is she?"
"I would believe that woman is you, and I'd like to know why you've settled down here and now. Your father passed away two years ago."
"It was time." Kaoru told him. "To all things there is a time and a place. For my arrival home the time was now and the place was here."
"Can I be expecting any trouble from you?" Saitou asked, taking another drag off his cigarette then dropping it to the ground and grinding it underneath his heel.
"Not from me, no." Kaoru demurred. "But, as you say, I seem to have acquired something of a reputation in the underworld. There are those who might wish to exploit that, we shall see."
"We will." Saitou agreed. "If you look in the very back there's a rack of clothes that are discounted because of a few rips and tears. The cloth is usually durable but for that." and he left.
Kaoru went into the store and bought new clothes.
***
Enishi and Yahiko returned with the dusk to grilled fish and Kaoru in a new black gi and blue hakama.
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End Chapter Three
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Seiyuu; I have a horrible, horrible Compaq keyboard. So if occasionally a letter vanishes, please bear with it. I can't catch all of them.
I'm on the prowl for a good beta reader, anyone interested?