Soujirou cruised the last few miles to Kyoto on No-Thought Mode, purposefully keeping his mind as blank as possible for a number of reasons.

1) He had not been sleeping very well at night due to a growing sense of anxiety

2) and he barely recognized the gnawing emotion for what it was, so unused to feeling it was he,

3) and also there seemed to be an awful lot of stupid chirping bugs around that were driving him absolutely insane.

Before, when he'd been an unthinking puppet who happily danced to whatever song Shishio-sama ordered, he'd never really, truly, actually NOTICED how IRRITATING insects' chirping could be...it was amazing, really, how a few torn-down immense emotional barriers could result in realizing...how much little things affect...affect...affect bigger things. Like your sleep, for instance.

Waking with the sun was something he did everyday, regardless of how much sleep he'd actually had, but this morning seemed worse than any other he'd ever had in his life: though it was rapidly approaching summer the air was a miasma of damp heat reminiscent of the one swamp he'd passed through, little black nameless flies were constantly biting his already tenderly-sunburned skin and raising itchy red welts, he'd gotten maybe about three hours of sleep...the list went on and on.

He was sweating like a foundering horse only an hour after he'd woken, the damp warmth nigh to driving him to slicing some trees into skewers just for something to take his frustration out on...and he would have done that too, had done it before, except never in such humid weather; it would only make him feel worse.

Maybe, he thought doubtfully, this was a sign of some kind. An omen that he shouldn't return to Kyoto. All of this was to discourage him from going there, from making a grave mistake, something was trying to save his life...

And maybe Himura Kenshin would return to being a hitokiri, Shishio-sama would rise from the dead, and Aoshi Shinomori crack a smile. One was as likely as the other since Soujirou decided right at that moment that he did not believe in any such thing as foreordained destiny and ill-omens.

Wiping the sweat from his brown on his sleeve, Soujirou grimaced and seated himself on the edge of the road, panting slightly, inclining his head to one side as a muffled noise gradually resolved itself into the dull clopping of a horse's hooves. He stood and moved entirely off the road as it was narrow and he had no wish to add being trampled by a horse's hooves to his list of bad things for the day. It was rather muddy, though he stood carefully so as to keep the mud from decorating his somewhat worn clothing.

The earlier analogy to a foundering horse was definitely correct, Soujirou decided, as he watched the poor beast trudge by, white lather liberally spread across its flank. The rider was in no better shape, swathed as he was in a heavy cloak with the hood drawn up. Why would somebody wear such a garment in such hellish weather?

The rider turned suddenly as the horse clopped by, staring at Soujirou.

"Anata!" the rider gasped, flinching back slightly; the hood fell back and revealed a girl's face, covered in a sheen of sweat, large blue eyes and wings of dark hair. Her hands dropped the reins and came up again bearing three kunai each, their blades glinting brightly even in the sunlight diffused by the fog.

"Ah," said Soujirou, blinking disarmingly, trying to recall the young girl's name as she leapt from the horse and sent it cantering away with a slap to its rump, glaring at Soujirou all the while with eyes that could have been chips of ice. "Misao-san? Is that you?"

Six streaks of steel were his answer; he avoided them easily, leaning away from the wicked blades that would have skewered him like meat on a stick. He brought up his sword and deflected the next round of knives with the same ease. Misao was evidently outraged that he should protect himself with such seeming carelessness, as the kunai flung at him grew in number until they littered the ground around him like fallen leaves on the ground during fall, until the tree immediately behind him was so liberally covered that barely a scrap of bark could be seen for all the blades buried into its wood.

I wonder where she keeps all of those knives, Soujirou mused, batting another several rounds away.

"Misao-san, onegai, stop," Soujirou called out, watching the vague form in the mist fairly dancing around, the rain of missiles never ceasing. "I don't want to fight you."

"HAH! You lackey of Shishio! I thought Himura put you down a long time ago! What are you doing heading in the direction of Kyoto? I'll show you never to mess with the Oniwabanshu again!" A solid bar of kunai were flying straight at his head; he bowed his head and felt the rush of air signaling their passage stir his hair. "Take THIS and THIS! THIS is for Aoshi-sama! And THIS is for Jii-ya!"

Soujirou sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose with a finger, ever-present smile widening at the girl's impetuous, imperious attitude; it was possible that she could see him through the mist, because as soon as his smile grew the array of kunai flung at him doubled. He really didn't want to spend the rest of his day standing here on the muddy shoulder of the road trying to determine when Misao would run out of knives, however, so he jumped and dodged the steadily flung glinting blades and simply swept his (sheathed) sword down at about ankle-level, sending a surprised Misao flying back to crash against the damp earth.

He took a step back, grounding the katana and resting his weight on it, and offered the furious girl a friendly smile. "Misao-san, I really do not want to fight you. Yes, I am traveling to Kyoto, but I am going there simply because I wish to...go back and see how things are. I swear to you that I am in no way going to try to rouse trouble; besides, I am a rurouni myself, now. I protect people, not harass them."

Unspoken but implied was the suggestion that Misao was doing a perfectly capable imitation of the latter. This was not missed by the girl, who was still trying to catch her breath.

Soujirou offered Misao his hand as she started to get up, and gave a mental sigh of relief; one of the hardest things about returning to Kyoto would be to deal with the people there that he had affected, directly and indirectly. And he'd already dealt with one of them; he took courage in the fact that the only thing that had happened was to have several hundred kunai thrown at him.

Maybe he wasn't having such a bad day after all, he thought, as he watched to see what Misao would do.




Note: Kunai are the throwing knives that Misao uses (if you haven't figured that out already ^_^). And no, Misao and Soujirou are NOT going to become a couple; it simply doesn't work into the story, I will say that I am neither against nor for it, and so shall we leave it at that?