Tales of the Mitsurugi Dragon: Shadow of Shadows

By: Hitokiri Gentatsu

Chapter Seven: Damnation

"Himura?" Katsura looked at his young hitokiri, concern in his voice.

Kenshin blinked in response, his mind obviously elsewhere. Then Katsura saw a mask drop over the boy's features.

"Hai, Katsura-san?" The cold voice was full of deference for his lord but the hitokiri neither bowed not took his eyes from the shadowed path ahead of them.

"Are you well?" Katsura looked into the golden amber of Battousai's eyes, studying them.

"Hai." The reply was curt and held a note that clearly warned off further questions.

The three other bodyguards looked between them and then back to Katsura, wondering what he would do. They all found the red-haired young samurai to be a bit unnerving, though they were not quite sure why. There was something, a feeling of danger about him and they were on edge because if it. He obviously had Katsura's trust, for no one was allowed to get near him who did not, but none of the three knew anything about this Himura or where he had come from.

Katsura nodded at the young man and walked silently on, giving the young man no sharp words or repremands for his seemingly rude actions. One of the guards could not take the supposed slight to the lord his family had served for generations and attempted to draw his sword. The other two guards gasped in surprise, while Katsura stood unmoving, watching the events unfold before him and hoping that Himura would not kill his most trusted bodyguard.

The guard, whose name was Shouji, blinked in surprise and only his training prevented him from crying out in fear. In less than a minute, his sword had been taken from him and he found himself face to face with the red-haired samurai. The young man had his katana across Shouji's throat, its deadly edge digging into flesh. The samurai's face was just inches from his own and that face was a mask of barely contained rage. The young man's eyes where glowing pits of amber fire that held only death in them. Shouji took a gulp of air, very sure that it would be his last.

"Do not ever draw a weapon on me." The man's soft voice was cold and deadly. "If you do so again you will be dead before you could defend yourself with it."

His eyes bore into Shouji's, demanding a response. Shouji gulped again and nodded and the young man released him, flicking the end of his blade before resheathing his own katana in one smooth motion. Shouji felt himself go limp with relief and he returned to his position behind Katsura.

The party continued down the alley, Himura in the lead. Battousai's narrow-eyed gaze took in everything around him. He searched the shadows for enemies and kept his sense open, seeking threats hidden by the shadows of a moonless night. Battousai felt his thought beginning to stray again and he looked up at the stars briefly while looking at the roofs of buildings around him, remember another night.

--Kenshin's chores for the day were finished and the evening meal had long since been eaten. The stars made a blanket overhead and Kenshin lay on his back, grass waving over his head, his violet eyes trained on the starry expanse above. The stars twinkled like so many distant fireflies and Kenshin felt at peace just watching them, even if his days of late where not so peaceful.

"Shisho doesn't understand...so many are suffering...Yet he insists I stay here...that we leave the world to suffer."

His master, Hiko, was somewhere around the place but Kenshin did not feel like dealing with the man right now. They would only end up fighting again and there had been to much of that of late.

"He never understands me. He tells me that the Hiten Mitsurugi's first principle is to protect other people from the pain of the times but he refuses to do so."

Normally he would already be asleep, to tired from his training to stay wake but not this night. Instead of train today, he had been sent to the nearby village to buy supplies for the winter that was fast coming. He had heard the news of war while there.

"I want to fight...I have to...I can't just stay here. But I am not ready...not yet. Someday soon though...Someday I will join the battle even if Shisho will not. I have to...its a matter of honor."

He narrowed his eyes at the stars above as he made this vow. --

*

Battousai tore his eyes away from the stars and his mind away from the memories they brought. Dwelling on the past would serve no purpose here. What was done, was done and nothing could change it. Still, there was a part of him that wondered why things between his master and himself had changed.

"I couldn't allow the suffering I had seen and experienced go on. People should not suffer, they should be happy as I once was. I had to do something and yet..." Battousai's hand unconsciously began to rub itself across his hakama, as if to remove dirt from them. "Was there a better way than this?"

He could clearly hear his master's voice, the words ringing in his ears. 'You would slaughter thousands so that a few may live.'Battousai frowned as he watched the road in front of him, wishing an enemy would appear so that he could release some of his frustrations in a fight but none did.

Katsura arrived at the meeting without incident and he and his guards went inside. Kenshin took up a position near his lord, sitting just behind Katsura as part of the ring of guards around him. Unlike the other guards, Battousai sat in a lazy position, with his head bowed and his sword at his should. The other bodyguards looked at him strangly but wisely decided to remain silent about it.

Battousai paid very little attention to the meeting and even less to the other guards around Katsura. His covert attention was on the other people in the room and the possibility of threats from outside. He kept his senses tuned; looking for anything out of place, while his thought turned inward. It was already to late for him to turn from the path he had chosen to walk. Kenshin knew that all to well. No matter what he tried to do, the smell of death and blood would always cling to him. He resigned himself to the short and bloody life of a hitokiri for the hope of creating a world were children would not have to live in fear. That was his purpose and thus, for what remained of his life, he would serve as the hitokiri even at the cost of his soul.

The room began to feel chill but he ignored it and turned his thoughts to the secret he was hiding from Katsura. His mind had been debating over whether or not to tell him.

"I cannot. I must never let him know that I am not the master swordsman he believe me to be. I will just have to compensate for this lack by excelling at the battoujutsu and mastering the art of reading my opponents weaknesses."

The meeting around him began to break up and he took his place at the head of the guards around Katsura still deep in thought.

*

The night was still and the moon overhead was only partically visible but Battousai paid little heed of it or the stars blanketing the sky. Instead his mind was occupied with the hunt. The coppery smell of blood clung to his nostrils and his mouth was set in a narrow frown. The body of his latest target lay in a pool of blood three alleys over from where he now sedately walked, the wind making his high ponytail move as if it had a life of its own. He walked quietly, showing no sign that he been doing anything other than returning late to his home. He could hear the whistles of a patrol and he smiled coldly, knowing they had found his handywork already. This did not worry him though, for they would never suspect him.

Three months had passed and it had added some height and weight to his body. He would never be tall but he was looking less like a boy now then when he first came to Kyoto. There were other changes as well that even Katsura who hardly saw the boy noticed. Kenshin was colder and more ruthless than he had been before. His ability to kill had increased; his targets barely had time to react or even to scream anymore and he was usually able to dispatch them in one attack. Never one to do much talking to begin with, he had become totally silent unless spoken too first and then he would speak in a flat monotone that carried no emotion whatsoever. Whatever he was thinking was completely masked.

Katsura worried constantly about the mental state of his young hitokiri, believing that somewhere deep inside Himura was agonizing over each kill. Somewhere he realised what he was doing and becoming and Himura had locked that part of himself away. It mattered little to Katsura that Himura was acting as of nothing was wrong and as if his conscious was not being stained by the deaths he caused. Katsura was sure the coldness the hitokiri showed to others was just an act, a mask he was employing to protect that part of himself that was regretting his actions but there seemed to be no way of reaching that part of Himura anymore. What was even worse was the fact that Himura insisted on taking only the most dangerous of assignments now. It was almost as if the young man was asking for death to come and claim him.

Katsura stared out of the window of the current safe house but saw nothing there. Perhaps he had been wrong to involve someone so young in the dirty work of a hitokiri. Maybe he should have chosen someone more hardened to war, someone older. Himura was extremely skilled and his sword technique was by far the strongest Katsura had ever seen but he was still not much beyond a child.

"Perhaps it would have been better for one of lesser skill to do this," Katsura shook his head, knowing it was far to late for either of them.

*

Battousai continued to walk down the alley and then to the main street, which was empty at this time of the night. He walked unhurriedly passed the closed shops, ignoring the coolness of the night air around him, his senses atuned to to area around him. He wanted no further distractions this night; there was still a great deal of work for him to do. His next target was supposed to be returning from a meeting in about an hour and he had a half hour to get in place and prepare.

The black envelopes of his calling were coming in greater frequecy now and contained more names then they had previously. When he had first started, he would receive maybe one envelope in two weeks time and the paper inside would contain one name. Now he went out on his business almost nightly and often killed five or six men plus their guards. His importance to the cause had grown threefold and his status as a hitokiri had increased tenfold. He was even being credited with kills not his own.

Battousai smirked mirthlessly and took a little comfort in the fact that though his name was public knowledge now, his identity remained a mystery. The people of Kyoto talked, whispering his name with fear never knowing the object of their fears, the very person they spoke of, was sometimes in their midst, listening to them. He didn't mind the talk as long as his identitiy remained secret.

He ducked into another narrow alley, using it as a shortcut to his destination, and arrived there with time to spare. He selected a shadowed corner on which to hide and waited. It wasn't too much later that his target arrived on the scene. Battousai crept farther back into the shadows and waited until the men had passed so that he could get a count. There were five men plus the one he was assigned to kill. A cold smile crept onto his face as he slipped out behind them and called out...

*

He stood, staring for a moment at his work. The walls and ground were covered with blood but none of it was his. Only the blood of the foolish was spilled here. These men had been foolish enough to draw the battle out. A cold smile lurked in the corners of his his mouth but his eyes were sad.

"Five lives needlessly wasted and for what?" He muttered and looked up at the sky, his hair fluttering out behind him.

Then he began walking. How long he walked, he wasn't sure but he stopped when he found himself crossing a bridge over one of Kyoto's rivers. He paused on the other side and walked across the moon dappled grass to stand by the water's edge. He stared into the water, then up at the sky and back to the water. The face that looked back up at him from the water was becoming one he did not recognise. The eyes were flat, cold and dead, his mouth seemed to be set in a permentant snarl and the hair, which used to remind him of a sunset, now seemed to be as blood. He was no longer sure who he was: Himura Kenshin or the Hitokiri Battousai.

He covered his eyes with his hands to block out the sight of his cold visage and dropped to his knees in the grass with his head bowed.

"Kamisama what am I becoming? I don't feel anything anymore." He looked at his hands and clenched them into fists. "Everyday I slip further away...everyday its harder coming back to myself."

He sat motionless there for sometime trying to find some shred of feeling, some emotion within himself bit there was nothing.

"It's so cold here," he muttered as he wrapped his arms around himself and laid his head on his knees. "Shisho, why didn't I listen to you. You tried to warn me but..."

He tried to muster the ablility to cry but tears would not come. He tried to get angry but all he felt was a numbing cold. He shivered and stared across the river at the city but saw none of it. He longed to run away from it all, to leave Kyoto and the name of Hitokiri Battousai behind him but he knew that it was impossible.

"I will never be free of this. Never." He looked at his hands and saw them stained with blood. "I cannot ever go back."