Hikari unfolded some clothes for him and smiled at him, "If you walk everywhere, you won't get very far. I know the journey's the thing, but it's a much more difficult journey when the ground runs out."

Kenshin took the clothes as they were offered and began to dress himself, Hikari catching him when he lost his balance, "Is any of this going to be explained?"

"Does it need to be?" she asked in reply. She watched him dress, and noted his lack of discomfort with her presence. Kenshin looked up at her at the thought.

"I guess, well, which question do you want answered first?" Kenshin asked her.

She shrugged, "So Redemption, hmm?"

"You wanted me to be happy," was his reply.

She nodded, "I like it."

When everything was tied, Kenshin pushed the unruly and untied hair from his face. He looked at her and smiled, then the thought crossed his mind, "I thought I was supposed to have split in two."

"You did," Hikari said, "I moved him out of here before I woke you up. He will be Sano's responsibility to teach him how to fit in here. You are mine." She said the words with a surprising possessiveness. The entire process around that thought, which Kenshin saw clearly, was fascinating. His new sense could barely keep up with the layers of thought over that one sentence.

"When do we go to where we are supposed to be?"

"Now, if you like," she answered him. "God-willing and the creek don't rise, I won't have to teach you to fly either. I know there's a connector around here somewhere."

"God what?" Kenshin asked.

"God-willing and the creek don't rise. An American saying. Oh you're going to love America. It's so much fun. It's messy and wild and is like this screaming toddler in the world's political arena. It'll be a good contrast for you," She started around the room in circles, and Kenshin felt her consciousness working its way outward, looking for something.

"When do I learn to fly?" he asked.

"When you least expect it," she answered, her voice a little distracted as she continued to reach around with her mind.

"Why would I only need to learn to fly when I least expect it?" Kenshin asked.

Hikari smiled and turned for the door, "Aha."

"Oh," he said, following her.

He had hoped this change would at least allow him to understand her sense of humor. The only thing he really understood right now was that it wasn't what she was that gave her that strange sense of humor. It was who she was.

She shuffled down the hall, raising a flock of birds around her as she walked. She turned out into the garden under a soft purple night sky. She turned around and grinned at Kenshin. He saw her wings snap out wide and rustle the grasses around her.

She was barefoot. Kenshin stepped into the zori before stepping out into the grass. He tried the same maneuver as she had done. He tried to snap out his wings, but found he could barely move them, and frowned in disappointment. Then he realized why she wasn't going to teach him to fly, he wasn't strong enough yet.

"Aha." She said again with an enigmatic smile. She led him away from the palace and into the gardens where they passed an island that was shaped to look like a turtle. She took that on the left and passed by the entrance to the second palace, then turned left and moved along the edge of the wall, "Yeesh, it's cold out here," she almost complained. But the complaint came out more like a statement.

She stopped suddenly, and groped her fingers along the wall, her fingers closed over something and she smiled again, with what was now becoming an almost irritating, "Aha."

Kenshin almost melted with exasperation at her manner. If he were another person he would roll his eyes at her or make a face. Rather, he found the resigned sigh a fitting tribute to her odd behavior. So he sighed, and then gasped when he was yanked into the wall, hard.

He shut his eyes, waiting for an impact that never came, and then stumbled forward into soft grass. When he opened his eyes, there was familiar golden light suffusing his world, and Hikari was pulling a large stone door shut behind her.

As he looked around, he saw a lot of doorways. The whole affair was like some huge garden, and archways, doors, windows, even flaps of hide were arranged in the most flattering positions that could be found.

"The portal garden," she said as he wondered where he was, "It's our way of getting from one place to another in a hurry. The doors open all over this realm and the mortal one. I mean sure, you can fly from Brazil to Spain. But if time is an issue, and you have to remember that time passes there, so it usually is an issue, all you have to do is find a connection point. You find the door and it opens here. You go to the door that opens into the place you are going to, and it takes you there. Make sense?"

Kenshin shook his head, "Why would I ever need to get around so quickly?"

Hikari smiled a little, "You want to see why?" She was already stripping out of the kimono, which bloomed into purple crocuses as they touched the ground. From nowhere she pulled on her shirt, and then hopped around trying to get into her pants.

Kenshin watched her and smiled. Even when she fell forward and rolled over into a flip to get back on her one foot again, he managed to keep it down to a snicker before answering, "So that you can look like a wounded duck hopping around here?"

She pulled her pants on with a dramatic straightening of her body and a resumption of her balance, "People in glass houses," she said.

Kenshins eyes widened in innocence, drawing her nearly indignant gaze into the depths of them. She definitely liked the eyes. Such a warm and wonderful difference from her own. She hated her eyes. As she thought about that, she pushed Kenshin in the shoulder and watched him fall over.

Kenshin was actually caught off guard, he had been so occupied sharing her thoughts. He propped himself up on his elbows and slipped her a mysterious smile under the tousled curtain of hair that covered his eyes now, "Aha."

She smiled, "Finally, you get it."

"How could I not, with such a persistent tutor?" He took the hand she offered for him to get on his feet.

She smiled at him again, a little brighter this time, "I thought it would be because I had such a brilliant pupil."

She was beginning to understand Firrin's attachment to her. She wondered for an instant if Kenshin would ever turn away from her as she had from Firrin. Well, she supposed, things happen as they happen. She still had that promise to keep. Even if he turned away from her, she would always be there for him.

"Hiko used to think otherwise," Kenshin said, "But that was his nature. He was afraid to get too attached to anyone or anything," he blinked at his own words, "I remember my life."

She nodded, "Yep. All the muck had to be stripped away before you could be sorted out. Now it's more like topsoil for the garden of your eternity."

Kenshin widened his eyes at her in approval, "Very poetic, almost."

She widened her eyes at him, which just made them look ever the more creepy, when she relaxed, she said, "So do you want to see this or not? I mean there's a whole world of mortals out there to meddle with, and this is the important part."

Kenshin furrowed his brow and pursed his lips at her, "Won't somebody notice?"

She shook her head, "Here's your first real lesson. You have very finite control over certain things. You are there, or you are not there. Or you are there beyond sight. Or only parts of you are there. You can only ever show as much of yourself as you want to be seen. Unless you break a wing of course, but you should remember that."

He nodded.

"So what you do is no matter where you are, you think of how much of yourself you want to show. Visual is the easy part. It takes practice to learn to cover your smell or sounds or for particularly sensitive people, the force of your presence."

He listened, "So where are we going?"

She smiled, "Since you're remembering your life, and since you'll learn the lessons faster on familiar ground, I thought I'd go bother Saitoh."

His eyes widened for real this time, not just a raising of the brows, but as if he couldn't absorb that thought through his eyes, so he widened his eyes to help, "I don't know about this, do you bother him often?"

She grinned at him, "Every chance I get, actually. He's so borderline he needs a lot of attention. I'll help you in hiding for a little while. But remember that he can't see you unless you want him to. I doubt he could smell you, as much as he smokes."

She started walking through the garden, leading him to a huge blackish brown Tori arch. "The Meiji Shrine," she said, "It's not too far from where Saitoh is."

She turned from it suddenly, and raised her right arm. Kenshin felt the stretch of her consciousness and in a flash of blue, her right arm was covered in a bluish armor that seemed to flow and fit to her. Her fist was wrapped around a sword whose hilt and crosspieces were tongues of flames that wrapped around her hand and extended down and into the blade. Its twin was at her hip. Her hair arranged itself into the topknot that stuck out of the open-faced helm, and the shirt was gone in favor of such a fine torso covering of armor that it looked like fabric. She grinned at him, "I like to scare him. He likes to think he can't be scared."

Kenshin didn't bother to shake his head as he was drug through the arch. Sure enough, they were on the promenade for the fairly newly constructed Meiji shrine. Even more strange, no one seemed to notice them.

They passed through the streets, and Kenshin inhaled the scent of home to him. He almost immediately thought of Kaoru and wanted to see her.

"We'll see," he heard the voice in his mind.

They approached the police headquarters and Kenshin had to move fast to keep up with Hikari as she slipped through doors being opened. He knew that she couldn't open the doors herself, since that would just look haunted. He followed her through the winding hallways of the building until they came to a door. She smiled and winked at Kenshin and threw the door open with a bang.

Saitoh sat up at his desk and looked through the door. Hikari nudged Kenshin in first and then walked in behind him. Saitoh could apparently see her because he sat back and lit a cigarette, "Oh, you again. Why do you bother me?"

Hikari painted on her most pleasant face, "Well Saitoh, if you wouldn't do such questionable things, I wouldn't have to bother you."

"Don't you see that I don't like you?"

She leaned over his desk and blew his smoke back into his face, "You don't like anybody. Especially people who are right."

"I don't think you qualify as people," he replied.

"Neither do you," she said.

"Point taken," he said. "What do you want?"

Hikari fell back into the guest chair and dropped her feet on his desk, the metal of her shin guards clattering as she did so, "To further the cause of Justice and keep you from getting the punishment you deserve."

"Oh?" he said, feigning disinterest, "I'm going to hell now?"

"Jackass," she said, "There is no heaven and hell. There is like and don't like. And you can not possible like that money in your top left hand drawer."

He half nodded, "You're enough punishment for anyone. Why do my finances concern you?"

"Not your finances, Baka, the way you acquire them," she said, using one of the Japanese words she had learned.

"And that interests you how?"

"Policemen who takes bribes further the cause of corruption, not that of Justice. People who further the cause of corruption have to deal with me at some point in their lives. You just have to deal with me a lot more than other because you can't learn a damned lesson."

"So are you going to turn me over a knee and spank me?" He almost sounded hopeful.

"You should be so lucky. Until you fix what you did, you can't smoke."

"Huh?"

She wiggled her fingers dramatically, "Until you correct your mistake and further the cause of Justice like you are supposed to, you can't have a single puff off of a single cigarette. But you will always want one." She pointed at his chest, and as if on cue, he started to cough.

He couldn't stop coughing, in fact, until he extinguished his cigarette. That was about enough for him, "What do I do?"

"You know what to do. Just like you know just from not just. Fix it." She stood then, and turned away. Kenshin saw Saitoh's hand go for his sword, and before he realized what he was doing, Kenshin broke past Hikari and drew his own sword, slamming it down on Saitoh's fingers.

Saitoh cried out in pain and looked up, expecting to see her. Rather he was staring down the Battousai. The dead Battousai was looking at him, but not the ragged wanderer that had passed from the world months ago. This one was young and vital and alive, and in a way terrifying. His jaw was dropped in shock and pain. "You," he croaked.

Hikari's metal covered hand closed over Kenshin's and he vanished as suddenly as he had appeared. She touched Saitoh's hand and the pain vanished, "Think twice next time. You never know what's in the corner."

"Did he have wings?" Saitoh asked.

"Yup."