********
Chapter Fourteen;
********
Sometimes the beauty is easy.
Sometimes you don't have to try at all.
sometimes you can hear the blow of the wind in a handshake.
Sometimes there's poetry written right on the bathroom wall.
-Ani Difranco
********
It had been two days since the Kanryuu incident, as the residents of the Kamiya Dojo had taken to calling it. The Oniwabanshuu had found lodgings of their own, but could normally be found somewhere about the dojo either doing odd jobs (cleaning, fixing things, and hiding from Misao in Aoshi's case) or visiting with the regular inhabitants.
Megumi had moved her clinic back to the basement under the Kogane but she still lived at the Dojo and walked over every morning.
Kaoru was back in exile, back in one of Megumi's kimonos, and under orders not to move from her prescribed spot on the veranda on pain of divine retribution. She had passed two days there and was now thoroughly bored.
The only difference was that this time she had a guard/companion.
"...and she is not allowed to walk -at all- for the next week, if anyone shows up spoiled for a fight (kami forbid) you sic those ninjas of yours on them!" Megumi lectured Aoshi, who had apparently drawn the short straw that morning. Yesterday Beshimi had been her guardian and the day before that, Shikijo. "I'll be home around lunch to change her bandages and if I see any swelling around that bullet wound then I'll know who to go after!"
Aoshi, to his benefit, didn't talk back but nodded politely to the preaching doctor. "I understand." he said simply.
Megumi was in one of her plain kimonos (kami knew she had a million of the damn things). Sanosuke stood behind her with a medicine chest strapped to his back, looking bored as Megumi delivered her instructions to Aoshi.
"I swear, if she budges so much as an inch ... I'll sic that Misao girl on you!" Megumi threatened.
"There's no need to be nasty." Aoshi groused, more than a little put out over the idea of being talked down to by someone he could kill without breaking a sweat (not that he would).
Megumi smirked slightly but dug a packet out of her sleeve. "Here, give her some of this tea in a few hours. It will help with the pain but for Buddha's sake don't drink any yourself."
Aoshi made the packet disappear. "Nothing will befall her in your absence." he promised her with a special emphasis on 'absence'.
He watched Megumi make her good-byes to Kaoru (which involved a suffocating hug and required Sanosuke to pry her off) and then trapise off to work.
"I thought I had problems with Misao." he shook his head.
Kaoru didn't reply until she managed to haul the air back into her lungs. "It can always get worse..." she gasped.
Aoshi eyed the pack of tea given over into his keeping dubiously. "Does this work?"
Kaoru made a face. "It tastes awful and puts me to sleep, but yes. I can only have every other day though."
"I've got tea for you both, Kaa-chan!" Kaori chirped as she approached the two adults, bearing a tray of tea and tea-cakes... which, unfortunately looked as though she'd made them herself (apparently the cooking thing was genetic).
"Thank you, musume." Kaoru said gratefully and let her daughter set it down between them. "What are you up to?" she asked, noticing her daughter was in her gi and trousers.
"I'm gonna train at the Ujika Dojo downtown today, Sano-kun says the fighters there aren't as pathetic as every where else." she explained and kissed her mother on the cheek. "Beware, Enishi's gotten it into his head that he's gonna cook tonight. Do you want me to stop by Tae's and ask her to bring over something cold?"
"Please?" Kaoru shuddered in rememberance of last night's fiasco (it had involved black tofu).
Beside her Aoshi flinched, he had been there that night (having somehow been hauled there by Misao who had been invited by Kaori). Most likely he would be there again tonight since most of the Oniwabanshuu had taken to having their meals at the Dojo (thankfully they also sprang for most of the groceries). He took a sip of his tea. "What style do you practice?"
"Technically jujitsu." Kaori replied flippantly. "but the style I learned was so personalized that it can hardly be called Jujitsu anymore."
"She was raised at the Iron Mountain Monastery, in the summers while I travelled she would train with the monks there and in the winters I would stay there with her and teach her kenjutsu... I'm afraid the jujitsu is what stuck." Kaoru explained, but she smiled proudly at her daughter. "She's quite good at it."
"Next time you see Hanya or Misao, I'm sure they'll spar with you if you're having trouble finding good opponents." Aoshi said quietly.
"Hey, thanks!" Kaori said brightly and then took a glance at the sun. "Oops, gonna be late!" she leapt off the veranda and trotted out of the courtyard.
Kaoru sighed. "She's growing up too fast."
"They do that." Aoshi agreed. "There are times when I walk into a room, I still expect to see Misao there crawling across the tatami so she can use my pants leg to pull herself up and have another go at walking."
"... and then she went and turned into a woman when you weren't looking." Kaoru said.
Aoshi drank his tea and didn't dignify that comment with a response.
***
"Men!"
Enishi casually blocked and countered Yahiko's head-strike and cracked his shinai over the boy's knuckles. Yahiko dropped his 'sword' and cradled his bruised digit.
"That hurt!" he accused Enishi... but his sensei wasn't watching.
He was staring off at the main haouse where Kaoru and Aoshi were quietly sitting together and chatting. Yahiko noticed that Enishi was gripping his shinai so tightly hair his knuckles were as white as his hair.
Uh-oh, white-hair was getting jealous again.
"You do remember that Megumi made him watch her, right?" Yahiko reminded his sensei.
"... he's too casual." Enishi said through gritted teeth. "He's acting like he has every right to be there!"
"Well, he -was- invited so he does, I suppose...." Yahiko cringed under the death glare Enishi leveled on him.
"Whose side are you on?" he growled.
"Your's! Your's!" Yahiko wiped some sweat off his temple with his sleeve. "What're you getting so worked up over? It's not like he's proposed or anything. If it bothers you so much why don't you start acting like a suitor instead of her old apprentice?"
"Eh?" Enishi blinked down at his student. "What are you talking about?"
Yahiko shook his head disparagingly. "You know, flowers, poetry, that sort of thing. I know it's asking a lot but try and being -charming-. Everyone knows how you feel about her, except perhaps her..."
"So you think I should do something about this attraction of mine, eh runt?" Enishi asked, leaning on the tip of his shinai. "All right, tell you what. I'll give you fifty -perfect- strikes to do and go talk to Kamiya-sensei."
"What? Wait, no fair!" Yahiko protested and recieved a rap on the skull for his troubles.
"Stop complaining!" Enishi ordered. "And do those strikes."
***
"That looked painful." Aoshi observed as he and Kaoru watched Enishi and Yahiko train. "That boy has a good presence, he'll be a fine warrior one of these days. It's a pity that this new era is working so hard to make fighters such as outselves obsolete. He won't have much to build a life on."
"Yahiko has skills and kenjutsu training is rebuilding his spirits." Kaoru told him. "He used to be an unpaid pick-pocket for the Yakuza because of a 'debt' his family owed them. As it turned out there never was a debt and Enishi brought him here, oh long before I stopped wandering."
"The Yukishiro-boy has something of your poise, did you train him?"
Kaoru blushed. "I met Enishi and his family when I was fifteen, I trained him in Kenjutsu for about two years before I had to move on. After that he trained under my father, we share the basics. I'm afraid my style has been somewhat tainted by my own tinkering." she cocked her head. "Perhaps when I'm allowed walk again I'll teach him the moves I made for the Kasshin style."
"Namu amida butsu." Aoshi said piously. "Then there will be two of you, the world will never be the same."
(Namu... translates roughly as 'Lord have mercy on me' but literally means; 'I sincerely believe in Amitabha (Buddha).')
Kaoru blinked at him. "Did you just... make a joke?"
"No." Aoshi said coldly.
Kaoru laughed anyway, she was still laughing when Enishi reached them.
"What's so funny?" he asked a little gruffly.
"Nothing, nothing." Kaoru chuckled and peered around him at Yahiko. "He's improving more and more every day." she said proudly and smiled at Enishi, who blushed.
"Yeah... well, he has it in him." the white haired kenjutsu intructor demurred. "Mind if I sit?"
Kaoru nodded to the spot beside her. "Go right ahead." she watched Yahiko move through his strikes. "How was the Festival? I never had a chance to ask before."
Enishi followed her gaze and grinned. "Yahiko spent most of his savings on winning prizes for Tsubame. She has a pet fish now as well as a porcelain doll from England and a indian black lace shawl. There was a Kabuki play as well they performed the 'Filial Daughter'. Then Kaori and I took turns winning prizes at the games while Yahiko and Tsubame took a walk in the municipal gardens." he carefully didn't mention the fact that Kaori had dragged -him- halfway through the gardens until they both got bored and then kissed him on the cheek.
It wasn't just that Kaoru was Kaori's mother... Enishi still wasn't sure how he felt about the younger girl so blatantly showing her affection for him. She was only ten years old, dammit.
Of course, Enishi had no way of knowing that Kaoru already suspected the parts he'd left out and was reserving her own doubts; not about her daughter's early decision, but about her choice in men. He couldn't know that despite everything Kaoru still couldnt bring herself to wholeheartedly trust him.
She could still feel the curiously painless sensation of sharp steel sliding into her heart and the dead expression in those dull red eyes that never left her own until the last shreds of life fled her body.
Her hand drifted up to cover uncertainly over her heart and she looked away from Enishi, much to his distress.
"I'll... uh... go supervise Yahiko." he muttered anmd fled back to the practice ground.
"... and then he went and grew up into a man when you weren't looking." Aoshi quoted Kaoru. "It seems we are in the same boat."
Kaoru looked at him and the expression in her eyes silenced the onmitsu. "Not quite Aoshi, not quite."
***
Raven sighed with sympathy for her friend from her post in the Aether where she could watch over the happenings in Kaoru's reality with impunity. Aiden was with her again but this time he was sitting quietly beside her, watching on his own.
"That boy killed her in her home-line, didn't he?" he asked suddenly.
Raven nodded. "Rather gruesomely at that." she confessed. "He stabbed her through the heart after giving her that scar she carries. It affected her so badly that the wound carried over into this dimension. It isn't a mortal scar, you see? Its even a part of her temporal body."
"Ouch." Aiden said succiently, then a playful gleam lit up in his eyes. He leaned in close to Raven and started to slip and arm around her awaist but she waved him away in annoyance. She was too focused on her work, but perhaps if she'd been watching she'd have developed a few more concerns about the black expression that flitted through his normally vibrant eyes.
Jealousy is a horrible motivator and when the power to bend time and space rests in your hands tempation is awfully hard to withstand.
***
Lunch time came and went.
A harried Megumi appeared at the dojo to inspect Kaoru's leg and deliver the same lecture to Hanya (who had taken over the watch) that she'd given to Aoshi that morning.
The Okashira was last seen jumping over the wall just in time to avoid being caught by Misao, who was looking for someone to go shopping with her (read: A guy to carry her bags for her).
When Hanya appeared, Kaoru rather wished she was in shape to do the same. She now wholeheartedly regretted using the Jinkourai on the onmitsu because unfortunately he had now become obessed with figuring out how she'd done it.
Already he had explained many variables of the Jinkourai to her (as if she hadn't developed the technique herself, mou!) A. She'd used it through her bodken which was made of wood. B. She hadn't used anything to generate the electricity. and C. Wood didn't carry a charge. Technically it was impossible for her to have done what she had... only she had indeed done it.
And that was driving him insane.
"... the only thing I can think of is that you had some sort of metal rod concealed in the..."
"Not even close." Kaoru informed him between bites of her lunch (which Hanya had been nice enough to help her prepare) "You do the Jinkourai by..."
"No!" Hanya leapt to his feet and pointed at Kaoru in a rather overdramatic manner. "I want to understand this on my ownm..." he sat back down. "Now where was I...?"
Kaoru sighed, it was points like this in her life when she truly understood the need for a word like 'oro' in the japanese language. 'Too bad it's reserved for men... then again, women should be too smart to get into situations like this in the first place. No wonder I keep getting mistaken for a man.'
It was bad enough that she'd lucked a uni-sexual name like 'Kaoru', but now that she was older her features had lost their rounded 'cute' look and had become 'handsome' there were starting to be times when she doubted her own claim to the female gender. The clothes, facial scar, and sword didn't exactly help.
'... maybe if I don't bind by breasts so tight.' she wondered. 'Or I could devise an outfit like Megumi's... or at least a tighter gi... Mou! Kenshin didn't have problems like this. All he had to do was let his gi hang open in the front an -nobody- was going to accuse him of being a woman.'
Now there was a thought!
Kaoru chuckled. 'Then again, if -I- let my gi hang open in the front, no one is going to accuse -me- of being a man either!' One definate benefit of having born a child was the figure she'd developed during her pregnancy... too bad no one could see it under her baggy gi and hakama. Maybe an outfit like Megumi's wasn't such a bad idea.
Kaoru pondered the merits of Megumi's Kenshi outfit for a good ten minutes, but having already thought of Kenshin's gi and childbirth in nearly the same thought it was only a matter of time before she thought the most dangerous of thoughts.
'I wonder what Kaori would think of Kenshin? My Kenshin that is.' the idea brought a wave of homesickness. 'Not that she'll ever meet him, Kenshin would adore her. I... I wish...' she shook her head to stem the oncoming depression in the making.
She groped for her bodken and used it to lever herself to her feet, ignoring the warning pains from her leg. She needed to be moving anyway, otherwise her muscles would stiffen up and it would take weeks to get the strength back into her leg.
"You shouldn't be up." Hanya protested half heartedly, he knew she needed to move as well as she did. "Just don't over do it and don't let Kitsune-sensei see you." he warned her and went back to his ponderings before he lost his train of thought.
Kaoru nodded absently and headed for her bedroom, it was a good place to be alone. A better place was an ancient tree in the back corner of the dojo, but she could hardly climb that right now.
"Kaa-chan!"
She flinched as her daughter came charging towards her from the kitchen, looking mighty p.o.ed.
"H-hello, musume!" she laughed nervously. "I was just... just..."
"Up and walking when you're supposed to be resting!" Kaori snarled. "I thought Zombie-san was watching you."
Kaoru coughed discreetly at Kaori's pet-name for Aoshi. "Ah... Zombie-san had pressing business elsewhere."
"Oh." understanding lit Kaori's eyes. "Misao found him." she translated.
"Please Musume, don't make me go back on the veranda!" Kaoru begged her child. "I'm bored silly!"
Kaori crossed her arms over her chest and gave her mother -that- look. Kaoru held her hands up in defeat. "I'm going, I'm going." she sulked.
Hanya clucked sympathetically as Kaoru limped back to the veranda under the hostile glare of her daughter.
"I know who wears the pants in your family."he commented.
***********
End Chapter Fourteen
***********
Seuyuu; Okay, that chapter took too long to write and has little to show for it. The Writer's Block Fairy has been real cozy at DD's house. T_T
Chapter Fourteen;
********
Sometimes the beauty is easy.
Sometimes you don't have to try at all.
sometimes you can hear the blow of the wind in a handshake.
Sometimes there's poetry written right on the bathroom wall.
-Ani Difranco
********
It had been two days since the Kanryuu incident, as the residents of the Kamiya Dojo had taken to calling it. The Oniwabanshuu had found lodgings of their own, but could normally be found somewhere about the dojo either doing odd jobs (cleaning, fixing things, and hiding from Misao in Aoshi's case) or visiting with the regular inhabitants.
Megumi had moved her clinic back to the basement under the Kogane but she still lived at the Dojo and walked over every morning.
Kaoru was back in exile, back in one of Megumi's kimonos, and under orders not to move from her prescribed spot on the veranda on pain of divine retribution. She had passed two days there and was now thoroughly bored.
The only difference was that this time she had a guard/companion.
"...and she is not allowed to walk -at all- for the next week, if anyone shows up spoiled for a fight (kami forbid) you sic those ninjas of yours on them!" Megumi lectured Aoshi, who had apparently drawn the short straw that morning. Yesterday Beshimi had been her guardian and the day before that, Shikijo. "I'll be home around lunch to change her bandages and if I see any swelling around that bullet wound then I'll know who to go after!"
Aoshi, to his benefit, didn't talk back but nodded politely to the preaching doctor. "I understand." he said simply.
Megumi was in one of her plain kimonos (kami knew she had a million of the damn things). Sanosuke stood behind her with a medicine chest strapped to his back, looking bored as Megumi delivered her instructions to Aoshi.
"I swear, if she budges so much as an inch ... I'll sic that Misao girl on you!" Megumi threatened.
"There's no need to be nasty." Aoshi groused, more than a little put out over the idea of being talked down to by someone he could kill without breaking a sweat (not that he would).
Megumi smirked slightly but dug a packet out of her sleeve. "Here, give her some of this tea in a few hours. It will help with the pain but for Buddha's sake don't drink any yourself."
Aoshi made the packet disappear. "Nothing will befall her in your absence." he promised her with a special emphasis on 'absence'.
He watched Megumi make her good-byes to Kaoru (which involved a suffocating hug and required Sanosuke to pry her off) and then trapise off to work.
"I thought I had problems with Misao." he shook his head.
Kaoru didn't reply until she managed to haul the air back into her lungs. "It can always get worse..." she gasped.
Aoshi eyed the pack of tea given over into his keeping dubiously. "Does this work?"
Kaoru made a face. "It tastes awful and puts me to sleep, but yes. I can only have every other day though."
"I've got tea for you both, Kaa-chan!" Kaori chirped as she approached the two adults, bearing a tray of tea and tea-cakes... which, unfortunately looked as though she'd made them herself (apparently the cooking thing was genetic).
"Thank you, musume." Kaoru said gratefully and let her daughter set it down between them. "What are you up to?" she asked, noticing her daughter was in her gi and trousers.
"I'm gonna train at the Ujika Dojo downtown today, Sano-kun says the fighters there aren't as pathetic as every where else." she explained and kissed her mother on the cheek. "Beware, Enishi's gotten it into his head that he's gonna cook tonight. Do you want me to stop by Tae's and ask her to bring over something cold?"
"Please?" Kaoru shuddered in rememberance of last night's fiasco (it had involved black tofu).
Beside her Aoshi flinched, he had been there that night (having somehow been hauled there by Misao who had been invited by Kaori). Most likely he would be there again tonight since most of the Oniwabanshuu had taken to having their meals at the Dojo (thankfully they also sprang for most of the groceries). He took a sip of his tea. "What style do you practice?"
"Technically jujitsu." Kaori replied flippantly. "but the style I learned was so personalized that it can hardly be called Jujitsu anymore."
"She was raised at the Iron Mountain Monastery, in the summers while I travelled she would train with the monks there and in the winters I would stay there with her and teach her kenjutsu... I'm afraid the jujitsu is what stuck." Kaoru explained, but she smiled proudly at her daughter. "She's quite good at it."
"Next time you see Hanya or Misao, I'm sure they'll spar with you if you're having trouble finding good opponents." Aoshi said quietly.
"Hey, thanks!" Kaori said brightly and then took a glance at the sun. "Oops, gonna be late!" she leapt off the veranda and trotted out of the courtyard.
Kaoru sighed. "She's growing up too fast."
"They do that." Aoshi agreed. "There are times when I walk into a room, I still expect to see Misao there crawling across the tatami so she can use my pants leg to pull herself up and have another go at walking."
"... and then she went and turned into a woman when you weren't looking." Kaoru said.
Aoshi drank his tea and didn't dignify that comment with a response.
***
"Men!"
Enishi casually blocked and countered Yahiko's head-strike and cracked his shinai over the boy's knuckles. Yahiko dropped his 'sword' and cradled his bruised digit.
"That hurt!" he accused Enishi... but his sensei wasn't watching.
He was staring off at the main haouse where Kaoru and Aoshi were quietly sitting together and chatting. Yahiko noticed that Enishi was gripping his shinai so tightly hair his knuckles were as white as his hair.
Uh-oh, white-hair was getting jealous again.
"You do remember that Megumi made him watch her, right?" Yahiko reminded his sensei.
"... he's too casual." Enishi said through gritted teeth. "He's acting like he has every right to be there!"
"Well, he -was- invited so he does, I suppose...." Yahiko cringed under the death glare Enishi leveled on him.
"Whose side are you on?" he growled.
"Your's! Your's!" Yahiko wiped some sweat off his temple with his sleeve. "What're you getting so worked up over? It's not like he's proposed or anything. If it bothers you so much why don't you start acting like a suitor instead of her old apprentice?"
"Eh?" Enishi blinked down at his student. "What are you talking about?"
Yahiko shook his head disparagingly. "You know, flowers, poetry, that sort of thing. I know it's asking a lot but try and being -charming-. Everyone knows how you feel about her, except perhaps her..."
"So you think I should do something about this attraction of mine, eh runt?" Enishi asked, leaning on the tip of his shinai. "All right, tell you what. I'll give you fifty -perfect- strikes to do and go talk to Kamiya-sensei."
"What? Wait, no fair!" Yahiko protested and recieved a rap on the skull for his troubles.
"Stop complaining!" Enishi ordered. "And do those strikes."
***
"That looked painful." Aoshi observed as he and Kaoru watched Enishi and Yahiko train. "That boy has a good presence, he'll be a fine warrior one of these days. It's a pity that this new era is working so hard to make fighters such as outselves obsolete. He won't have much to build a life on."
"Yahiko has skills and kenjutsu training is rebuilding his spirits." Kaoru told him. "He used to be an unpaid pick-pocket for the Yakuza because of a 'debt' his family owed them. As it turned out there never was a debt and Enishi brought him here, oh long before I stopped wandering."
"The Yukishiro-boy has something of your poise, did you train him?"
Kaoru blushed. "I met Enishi and his family when I was fifteen, I trained him in Kenjutsu for about two years before I had to move on. After that he trained under my father, we share the basics. I'm afraid my style has been somewhat tainted by my own tinkering." she cocked her head. "Perhaps when I'm allowed walk again I'll teach him the moves I made for the Kasshin style."
"Namu amida butsu." Aoshi said piously. "Then there will be two of you, the world will never be the same."
(Namu... translates roughly as 'Lord have mercy on me' but literally means; 'I sincerely believe in Amitabha (Buddha).')
Kaoru blinked at him. "Did you just... make a joke?"
"No." Aoshi said coldly.
Kaoru laughed anyway, she was still laughing when Enishi reached them.
"What's so funny?" he asked a little gruffly.
"Nothing, nothing." Kaoru chuckled and peered around him at Yahiko. "He's improving more and more every day." she said proudly and smiled at Enishi, who blushed.
"Yeah... well, he has it in him." the white haired kenjutsu intructor demurred. "Mind if I sit?"
Kaoru nodded to the spot beside her. "Go right ahead." she watched Yahiko move through his strikes. "How was the Festival? I never had a chance to ask before."
Enishi followed her gaze and grinned. "Yahiko spent most of his savings on winning prizes for Tsubame. She has a pet fish now as well as a porcelain doll from England and a indian black lace shawl. There was a Kabuki play as well they performed the 'Filial Daughter'. Then Kaori and I took turns winning prizes at the games while Yahiko and Tsubame took a walk in the municipal gardens." he carefully didn't mention the fact that Kaori had dragged -him- halfway through the gardens until they both got bored and then kissed him on the cheek.
It wasn't just that Kaoru was Kaori's mother... Enishi still wasn't sure how he felt about the younger girl so blatantly showing her affection for him. She was only ten years old, dammit.
Of course, Enishi had no way of knowing that Kaoru already suspected the parts he'd left out and was reserving her own doubts; not about her daughter's early decision, but about her choice in men. He couldn't know that despite everything Kaoru still couldnt bring herself to wholeheartedly trust him.
She could still feel the curiously painless sensation of sharp steel sliding into her heart and the dead expression in those dull red eyes that never left her own until the last shreds of life fled her body.
Her hand drifted up to cover uncertainly over her heart and she looked away from Enishi, much to his distress.
"I'll... uh... go supervise Yahiko." he muttered anmd fled back to the practice ground.
"... and then he went and grew up into a man when you weren't looking." Aoshi quoted Kaoru. "It seems we are in the same boat."
Kaoru looked at him and the expression in her eyes silenced the onmitsu. "Not quite Aoshi, not quite."
***
Raven sighed with sympathy for her friend from her post in the Aether where she could watch over the happenings in Kaoru's reality with impunity. Aiden was with her again but this time he was sitting quietly beside her, watching on his own.
"That boy killed her in her home-line, didn't he?" he asked suddenly.
Raven nodded. "Rather gruesomely at that." she confessed. "He stabbed her through the heart after giving her that scar she carries. It affected her so badly that the wound carried over into this dimension. It isn't a mortal scar, you see? Its even a part of her temporal body."
"Ouch." Aiden said succiently, then a playful gleam lit up in his eyes. He leaned in close to Raven and started to slip and arm around her awaist but she waved him away in annoyance. She was too focused on her work, but perhaps if she'd been watching she'd have developed a few more concerns about the black expression that flitted through his normally vibrant eyes.
Jealousy is a horrible motivator and when the power to bend time and space rests in your hands tempation is awfully hard to withstand.
***
Lunch time came and went.
A harried Megumi appeared at the dojo to inspect Kaoru's leg and deliver the same lecture to Hanya (who had taken over the watch) that she'd given to Aoshi that morning.
The Okashira was last seen jumping over the wall just in time to avoid being caught by Misao, who was looking for someone to go shopping with her (read: A guy to carry her bags for her).
When Hanya appeared, Kaoru rather wished she was in shape to do the same. She now wholeheartedly regretted using the Jinkourai on the onmitsu because unfortunately he had now become obessed with figuring out how she'd done it.
Already he had explained many variables of the Jinkourai to her (as if she hadn't developed the technique herself, mou!) A. She'd used it through her bodken which was made of wood. B. She hadn't used anything to generate the electricity. and C. Wood didn't carry a charge. Technically it was impossible for her to have done what she had... only she had indeed done it.
And that was driving him insane.
"... the only thing I can think of is that you had some sort of metal rod concealed in the..."
"Not even close." Kaoru informed him between bites of her lunch (which Hanya had been nice enough to help her prepare) "You do the Jinkourai by..."
"No!" Hanya leapt to his feet and pointed at Kaoru in a rather overdramatic manner. "I want to understand this on my ownm..." he sat back down. "Now where was I...?"
Kaoru sighed, it was points like this in her life when she truly understood the need for a word like 'oro' in the japanese language. 'Too bad it's reserved for men... then again, women should be too smart to get into situations like this in the first place. No wonder I keep getting mistaken for a man.'
It was bad enough that she'd lucked a uni-sexual name like 'Kaoru', but now that she was older her features had lost their rounded 'cute' look and had become 'handsome' there were starting to be times when she doubted her own claim to the female gender. The clothes, facial scar, and sword didn't exactly help.
'... maybe if I don't bind by breasts so tight.' she wondered. 'Or I could devise an outfit like Megumi's... or at least a tighter gi... Mou! Kenshin didn't have problems like this. All he had to do was let his gi hang open in the front an -nobody- was going to accuse him of being a woman.'
Now there was a thought!
Kaoru chuckled. 'Then again, if -I- let my gi hang open in the front, no one is going to accuse -me- of being a man either!' One definate benefit of having born a child was the figure she'd developed during her pregnancy... too bad no one could see it under her baggy gi and hakama. Maybe an outfit like Megumi's wasn't such a bad idea.
Kaoru pondered the merits of Megumi's Kenshi outfit for a good ten minutes, but having already thought of Kenshin's gi and childbirth in nearly the same thought it was only a matter of time before she thought the most dangerous of thoughts.
'I wonder what Kaori would think of Kenshin? My Kenshin that is.' the idea brought a wave of homesickness. 'Not that she'll ever meet him, Kenshin would adore her. I... I wish...' she shook her head to stem the oncoming depression in the making.
She groped for her bodken and used it to lever herself to her feet, ignoring the warning pains from her leg. She needed to be moving anyway, otherwise her muscles would stiffen up and it would take weeks to get the strength back into her leg.
"You shouldn't be up." Hanya protested half heartedly, he knew she needed to move as well as she did. "Just don't over do it and don't let Kitsune-sensei see you." he warned her and went back to his ponderings before he lost his train of thought.
Kaoru nodded absently and headed for her bedroom, it was a good place to be alone. A better place was an ancient tree in the back corner of the dojo, but she could hardly climb that right now.
"Kaa-chan!"
She flinched as her daughter came charging towards her from the kitchen, looking mighty p.o.ed.
"H-hello, musume!" she laughed nervously. "I was just... just..."
"Up and walking when you're supposed to be resting!" Kaori snarled. "I thought Zombie-san was watching you."
Kaoru coughed discreetly at Kaori's pet-name for Aoshi. "Ah... Zombie-san had pressing business elsewhere."
"Oh." understanding lit Kaori's eyes. "Misao found him." she translated.
"Please Musume, don't make me go back on the veranda!" Kaoru begged her child. "I'm bored silly!"
Kaori crossed her arms over her chest and gave her mother -that- look. Kaoru held her hands up in defeat. "I'm going, I'm going." she sulked.
Hanya clucked sympathetically as Kaoru limped back to the veranda under the hostile glare of her daughter.
"I know who wears the pants in your family."he commented.
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End Chapter Fourteen
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Seuyuu; Okay, that chapter took too long to write and has little to show for it. The Writer's Block Fairy has been real cozy at DD's house. T_T