Ronin Kaoru; Kyoto Arc
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Chapter Two; Grasping at Shadows
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He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare,
and he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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AU- single reviews only, people! That was a lovely, heartfelt review Tinsel, but damn I got it the first time, honey! FF.Net must have had a hiccup when processing it!
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Tendou.
The word fairly hummed in the air between them.
Kaoru bowed slightly, never removing her eyes from her opponent, yet her bokken remained in her belt.
He returned the bow, likewise keeping her within his sight. The katana and wakizashi at his side remained under his haori.
"We meet again, Kamiya." he knocked the kasa off his hand with one bracer-clad arm. It fell to the cobblestones behind him taking the black wig he'd worn before with it. Kaoru's eyes remained stubbornly fixed to the bandage on his face. It was as Megumi had said. There was a pink flush of blood seeping through the absorbent fabric; only it wasn't at the right angle. It started under the corner of his eye and ended near the lobe of his ear.
His scar was now cross-shaped.
A cloth appeared from the chest of his gi. He spoke as he used it to wipe the yellow stain from his pale cheeks and hands. "My wife neglected to introduce us when last we met… although I doubt we need such formalities between us. Tomoe told me much about you, I imagine she also told you something of me."
"She did." Kaoru allowed. "I also know of you by reputation."
As he tucked the cloth away, he did something strange; he smiled at her. Amber eyes glimmered at her through the curtain of his bright red hair, but there was no malice in them. He produced no killing-ki at all.
"As I you, Raiden no Onna."
Kaoru scowled. "I hate that name."
"A coincidence, I hate the name Battousai." he observed. "We are very alike, you and I."
Kaoru's eyes narrowed; where was he going with this? And what was with the sudden change in his manner?
"You could say that," she agreed cautiously.
He nodded. "In fact we are very similar… we both have lost someone precious to us. For Tomoe's sake, I wish you to know that I bear no grudge."
NANI?
"Y-you're not after revenge?" she squeaked. "Then what…"
"What was I doing when I was pretending to rob your friend? I wished to attract your attention and get you alone." He tossed back the side of his haori covering his swords. "Prepare yourself."
"Nani!?" this time she said it out loud. "You just said…"
"I know what I said, so please do not take this the wrong way."
Silver fire erupted from the sheath at his hip; instinct was the only thing that kept Kaoru from being sliced in half.
The maneuver Kenshin employed on her was one of Hiko's preferred 'teaching moves' and when she'd stayed with him after her accident, which resulted in Kaori, she'd become very familiar with it. Her body could counter this in her sleep and Kenshin was no Seijuro Hiko.
The famous hitokiri was on his ass in a puddle of unidentifiable muck so fast that the human eye could barely trace the movement.
Kaoru blinked… that hadn't been what she'd expected…
A startled smile edged onto his mouth. "I thought so." was all he said as he picked himself up and brushed off the street filth from his clothing. Then he was upon her again.
This time neither of them let up.
To the observing eye, it seemed the laws of physics took a cigarette break for that fight. The two fighters moved so quickly that they became but blurs of color.
For the first time in a long time, Kaoru found herself pulling out all the stops. She stopped restricting her use of ki to the tokkan inazuma. She expanded into the enkakusousa. This technique allowed her to control the environment surrounding their fight within the bounds of her strength and concentration.
On Kenshin, she used the version of enkakusousa called gyakufuu. In plain words, she turned the winds that swirled in the narrow alley so that they were at her back and pushing against him.
'I can't match his shinsoku, not without having trained in it as early as him. However I can slow him down so that he's vulnerable to my denkousekka!' She gave a vicious little smile that echoed on Kenshin's face.
He flickered out of sight, but Kaoru hadn't spent x-odd years as a spectator to her Kenshin's fights not to know what that meant.
She stepped left just in time for Kenshin's Ryu Tsui Sen to impact with the cobblestones where she'd been standing and send stones flying.
Kaoru deflected the ones that came her way with the enkakusousa and got ready to jump when she saw Kenshin switch his grip on the sheathed blade in order to execute a Ryu Son Sen.
Hold it… he'd used his trademark attack on her with his sword sheathed?
Kaoru evaded both strikes of the Ryu Son Sen, both sword and sheath, and vaulted onto a fire escape to buy herself a little breathing space.
'Unless I saw wrong, Kenshin just used his Ryu Tsui Sen with the sword sheathed. That would definitely not have killed me, maybe bruised me up a little but I'd have survived it. What the hell is going on here? Did I misunderstand the meaning of 'Tendou'?'
She leapt off the rail just in time to miss being sliced in half; the rail wasn't so lucky however.
This time, she was watching him as he attacked… was that a bit of hesitation she saw? Was he ever so slightly slow in that strike because of the gyakufuu or because he was intentionally trying to keep from inflicting damage on her?
'One way to find out.' She reasoned and stopped using the gyakufuu.
There was no change in Kenshin's speed, if anything he seemed to be holding back even more now.
Kaoru scowled. 'He's going easy on me!' she realized with a burst of adrenaline. She kicked the gyakufuu back into full gear and used it to vanish behind him and kick him in the ass.
Kenshin pitched forward and tumbled to his feet. Gymnastics, it seemed, were his specialty as well. However, he found the tip of Kaoru's sword at his throat when he regained his stance.
"You win." he chuckled.
"Only because you held off." she shot back through gritted teeth. "Were you afraid you'd hurt a girl?"
He smiled sadly. "You have a temper," he told her. "And it's impairing your judgment, otherwise you'd know better than that."
"And you have an ego." She countered.
"You certainly aren't a romantic, like other women," he observed. "Anyone else might think I'd taken an interest in you."
"Three weeks after your wife's death? And in the woman who…" Kaoru started to say incredulously, but as she started to indicate herself as Tomoe's murderer Kenshin vanished from his kneeling position on the ground and was suddenly pressing her up against the wall.
"Never say that again," he growled.
Abruptly he released her and picked his kasa up off the ground. "Sayonara, Kaoru. We'll meet again soon." he said as he tucked his ponytail back under the black wig.
"Now wait!" She started to ask him why he'd left the 'Tendou' not if he wasn't out to kill her, but then his last comment caught up with her. "Did you just call me 'Kaoru'?"
He grinned. "So I did." and ducked around a corner a vanished into the market day crowd.
Kaoru didn't follow him. She knew she wouldn't find him.
"Now he starts using my first name." she grumped.
***
Kaoru stepped inside the dojo gates with the sun sinking into the horizon behind her in a blazing glory.
Megumi and Enishi were standing side by side in front of the door awaiting her.
Neither looked happy with her.
She stopped in her tracks just a little ways into the courtyard then swallowed and waved nervously. "Um, hi?" they didn't look any happier. "Ah… I didn't do it!"
"Oh but you did, Kao-san." Megumi said with saccharine sweetness. "Not three weeks after we get home and you're already getting in trouble."
"Now, that wasn't what it looked like." Kaoru pleaded.
"Then what was it?" Enishi asked coolly.
She winced, Megumi she could handle, but Enishi wouldn't let himself be placated so easily. Dealing with bother of them at once was just impossible!
Then something occurred to her. She glanced at Enishi. "You weren't even there, how do you know…" she scowled as something occurred to her. "You followed me didn't you!?"
Enishi lost his bluster as he realized his blunder. A blush covered his cheeks. "Um…" he suddenly found pushing the tips of his index fingers together very interesting. "Well, I was worried when you ran out of here and…"
Megumi shot a disgusted look at him. "That's not the point!!!" she hissed and glared back at Kaoru. "The point is that Kao-san went out and challenged Battousai the Hitokiri after three weeks of convalesce!!!"
"I didn't challenge him!" Kaoru cried defensively. "He challenged me! Or… uh… well actually he attacked me in the middle of civilized conversation…"
"That was how it looked to me…" Enishi volunteered, earning him a dirty look from Megumi.
"Whose side are you on anyway?" she demanded indignantly but shook her head as he opened his mouth to answer. "Never mind, I already know! Why do I put up with them?" she cried to the sky while tugging her hair.
Kaoru was about to make an insincere promise to stop fighting but the tension suddenly drained from Megumi's shoulders. She flicked her Kuchinashi fan open and fanned herself while a resigned smile eased across her lips. "I give up," she said while shaking her head. "You won, didn't you?"
Kaoru shrugged. "I honestly have no idea. He just suddenly quit fighting."
"Um… didn't you have you bokken at his throat?" Enishi asked.
"That's not winning, Enishi." Kaoru said absently, automatically slipping into 'sensei mode'. "You don't win a fight until your opponent loses his reason to hurt you."
'And in this case, I'm wondering if he actually had a reason to hurt Me.' she thought in the privacy of her own mind. 'I should tell the others about this, but… this feels private; like it's just between me and Kenshin.'
"Um… did anyone start supper?" she asked, to change the subject. She sniffed the air; she could smell cooking fish and the popcorn smell of nearly finished rice.
Megumi and Enishi exchanged glances. "I didn't," they said simultaneously. "Then who…"
Three faces blanched simultaneously. "Kaori!!!!"
Kaoru got to the kitchen first.
She skidded to a halt, practically leaving streaks in the veranda from her sandals. She gaped at the scene inside the kitchen; in fact she was fairly sure that her jaw had hit the ground.
"… Less salt, omaesan. You can always add more, but you cannot take it away." Kenshin deftly caught the salt Kaori had enthusiastically poured onto the fish in the palm of his hand before it could spoil them.
"Wow, Himura-san! You're a good cook!" Kaori chirped. She noticed her mother then. "Konnichiwa, Kaa-chan! Himura-san stopped by and helped me start supper!"
"Uh… hello again, Himura." she said hesitantly.
He smiled beatifically at her and waved once, while dumping the salt he'd caught back into the jar from whence it came. "Hello, Kamiya. What took you so long? I was here fifteen minutes ago."
Kaoru shook her head with a strained smile. 'ARRGGHH!!!! What is with you!?' she wanted to say, but instead she knelt down beside the rice pot and used her sleeves to protect her hands as she moved it off the fire. "This smells done."
"So it does. No, no Kaori… the radish goes on after it's cooked." he glanced up as Enishi and Megumi caught up with Kaoru and displayed similar reactions as she had.
"Himura is joining us for supper." she said blandly. "Could you please set out an extra tray, Enishi?"
"Um… 'Kay. I didn't see you arrive, Kenshin," the Shinhondai murmured, slightly in shock.
"That's 'cause I caught him sneaking around in the back. I figured he ought to at least make himself useful!" Kaoru said cheerfully and gave Kenshin a playful elbow nudge and wink. "He was looking around Kaa-chan's room."
"Nani!" Kaoru turned hot red and burst to her feet. "What in the Kami's names did you think…"
"Just kidding!" Kaori giggled. "Mou, somebody had to break the tension here! He came in the front like a normal person, Enishi was just so busy being a worry-wart that he didn't notice, and Himura-san even said hello!"
Kaoru shot her daughter a disgruntled look, which Kaori returned with an angelic smile. "'Curtness' does not a lady become," she said primly.
The reprimand rolled right off Kaori's indefatigable back. "Looks like I'm in no danger, huh Kaa-chan?" she said, blinked up at her mother with soulful eyes.
"Neither of us are, aijou." she sighed with a smile and ruffled her daughter's hair.
"I never get tired of watching you two." Megumi commented, momentarily taking her attention off Kaoru. "Could I see you outside, Himura-san?" she asked the hitokiri politely.
"Indeed." he answered coolly.
Suddenly the old Himura was back. At some point when her back was turned, Kenshin had stiffened up and his eyes had gone dead.
Kaoru's mouth hung slightly open as they left and went into the back yard. Enishi waved Kaori away from the forgotten fish and picked up a paper fan to breath new life into dying embers under them.
"What was that?" Kaoru asked him. "One minute he was here all smiling and relaxed and the next minute…" she made an expressive gesture in the air.
"He was stiff like that when he got here, but he loosened up as I took utter advantage of him." Kaori mused from her exile out the kitchen door. "I think he's just shy."
An image of her Kenshin doing the 'goofy Rurouni' routine, knocking over vendor stalls and falling in puddles just to seem harmless, sprang violently into her mind. The man that would humiliate himself on purpose in public for no apparent reason could never have been shy.
"No, I don't think that's it." Kaoru murmured, waving a hand in the air in front of her as though dispelling the very idea from her mind.
"Actually, that's very true." Enishi commented.
"Nani? Battousai the Hitokiri? Shy?" Kaoru shook her head. "I just can't grasp that."
He shrugged in response. "Well, perhaps its because I'm related to him that I can see these things. If you think about it though, it makes sense. He spent his childhood on a mountain in Kami-forgotten nowhere with only Seijuro for company, and after that very few people could know about his very existence. To top it off, he's lived out in the sticks since the revolution; one doesn't exactly get out much in rural Japan."
Kaoru followed Enishi's logic easily even though it shocked her.
'Come to think of it, Enishi is right.' She thought. 'If you spend a couple of years killing every stranger you happen to come across, even if it isn't an enjoyable experience, it certainly doesn't do very much to sharpen your social skills.'
Another thing occurred to her then. 'Then Kenshin I knew in my home timeline had spent ten years wandering around Japan, he'd had to have cured himself of that shyness long before I met him! Kaoru-no-baka!!' she chided herself. 'Kenshin did have a life before you met him, there's no reason think that his travels didn't change him as much as yours have you!'
… So this Kenshin was very different from her Kenshin. Well, it wasn't as if she hadn't known that would happen.
'But there's still so much I don't understand.' Kaoru stood and dusted herself off. "I'll go check on Seijuro and Kaneda, I haven't seen them since I got home. I'm wondering why they haven't noticed Himura is here?"
'He's still got that eerie silence to his emotion-ki.' Kaoru told herself. 'They might not have noticed him, I can still feel his life force and identify it but I'm way better at ken-ki than either of them.' she snorted softly. 'Hiko is about as psychically receptive as a rock and Kaneda isn't much better at his stage in training.'
"Actually, I think Hiko-oji went to buy new saké because Kaneda-nii watered it down…and, um, Kaneda's still unconscious." Kaori explained hurriedly.
"Kaneda can't have been so st… silly." Kaoru corrected herself before she said something hurtful, yet still-- messing with Hiko's saké… that sort of behavior bordered on suicidal.
"He's lucky he's alive." Enishi grumbled. "By the way, we need to get new shingles for the roof; Kaneda used his head to poke a hole in it with a little help from Seijuro."
Kaoru turned an amused smile at Enishi. "Are you worried about Kaneda? I thought you didn't like one another?"
"I do not! I am not!" Enishi cried, scandalized. "I'm angry about the hole in the roof! At this rate we'll have to replace it… it can't take many more patches!"
Mother and daughter smiled at him knowingly.
"Sure." Kaoru chuckled.
"We believe you." Kaori promised sincerely, without meaning a worn of it.
"I wouldn't waste a second of worry on that pervert!" he insisted.
Laughter was his only answer.
***
"Is that normal behavior?" Kenshin asked Megumi as the sounds of Kaoru and Kaori teasing Enishi reached his sensitive ears. Mentally, he smiled. This was the sort of thing he'd expected to find in Tokyo, thanks to Enishi's wonderfully descriptive letters about the day-to-day life in the Kamiya Dojo.
"Sadly." Megumi sighed as she produced a blue silk fan from her sleeve and fanned herself… he took it as a nervous habit; a lesser person wouldn't have picked up on it, not with her attitude, but whenever she was alone with any man Megumi radiated an edgy tension that bordered on outright fear.
Kenshin knew the source of this anxiety, of course. Among other things, Enishi had commented briefly on the rescue of a certain lady doctor from a local would-be drug merchant. Admittedly, most of the letters where Megumi (or 'Megitsune') was mentioned were rants about her inappropriate behavior around Kaoru (in whom Enishi had an interest of his own). Yet Kenshin had gather from bits and pieces that she'd suffered at this drug dealer's hands.
Not for the first time, he cursed his inability to relax around unfamiliar faces. While he was far from shy, he had never exactly recovered himself entirely from the emotional distance he had once been forced to maintain as an assassin for the Ishin shishi. He'd done it for so long that now it was more habit than anything else, but it certainly did little to help people ease up around him.
'She seems to be recovering though.' He thought. He caught a glint of steel along the edges of the fan blades; the fan was a weapon. 'That's probably Kamiya's doing, she seems to have that touch. I wonder what this woman has to say to me?'
Luckily, she got right to the point. He was rapidly learning that Takani Megumi was a straightforward type of female and didn't seem overly deterred from her goal by the stony silence he emitted. "I want to know why you're here."
He didn't speak right away and when he did. "That is between Kamiya and I."
"You attacked her out of the blue today, you can't be here out of the goodness of your heart. Not after Iz…" she wasn't allowed to finish the sentence. Kenshin's eyes blazed as she started to finish the word.
"I'm warning you once, Takani-san. Make no mention of Izu to me. Ever." He turned back towards the house. "None of you understand what happened there, not even Kamiya does. The reasons why I'm here now don't concern you."
"I can't let you endanger Kao-san's life!" Megumi protested. "None of us will!"
"I'm not the one endangering her life." Kenshin told her.
'I'm here to find out who is.' he finished silently. 'I promised Tomoe that I would.'
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End Chapter 2
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Seiyuu;
Gyakufuu - Adverse wind
Hiraishin - Lightning Rod
Shinsoku - God Like Speed
Denkousekka - Lightning Speed (slightly slower than the Shinsoku)
Enkakusousa - remote control || remote operation
Omaesan - you || my dear || hey
