Rurouni Kenshin belongs to Watsuki Nobuhiro. Buffy belongs to Joss Whedon. I'm just
messin' around with them.
Edodale
(for lack of a better title yet)
By wombat
Chapter 2
As soon as she got home after cheerleading tryouts, Kaoru could tell something was
wrong. Her parents' car wasn't in the driveway. Yahiko was sitting on the front porch in
the fading afternoon light with his backpack beside him, engrossed in his Game Boy. He
looked up as she came near. "Oh, I forgot my key again. Shouldn't Mom be home by
now? It's not your turn to cook again, is it?"
Kaoru unlocked the door. "I cooked last night."
"That's why I was so hungry this morning."
She ignored that. "She didn't say anything about lessons running late at the dojo tonight,
but why don't you call them while I get the rice started?" She measured out a few scoops
of rice and washed it, rinsing and pouring out the water until it ran out clear from the
grains. It always took longer than she expected, or maybe she just wasn't doing it right.
By the time it looked ready to her, the sun had fallen all the way to the horizon.
"Yahiko," she called back over her shoulder to the tv room, "did you call the dojo yet?"
He yelled back over the sound of his cartoons. "Yeah, I called them before Dragonball
started. They didn't answer. They must be on their way home already."
Kaoru poured the rinsed rice into the cooker with some water and flipped the switch, then
joined Yahiko on the sofa. "Is that Dragonball or Dragonball Z?"
"It's Z. Why?" He giggled and poked her. "Get it? Z? Y?"
She smacked him out of habit at the same time as she realized something. "But that
means you called them more than half an hour ago. It shouldn't take a half-hour for them
to drive home."
"It shouldn't take a half-hour to rinse rice, either. Look at your hands, they're all pruny."
Kaoru rubbed her pruny hands together nervously. "Something's wrong. Maybe they
stopped on the way home to get groceries?" She heard a car pulling into the driveway
outside, jumped up, and ran to the door. But when she opened it, her words of relieved
welcome stopped dead. It wasn't her parents. It was Mr. Hiko, from school.
He looked tidier without his long labcoat/smock thing, though when he extended his
hand, his fingernails still had clay under them. "Miss Kamiya-Summers?"
"Oh gosh, I forgot to come back and talk to you, I'm sorry," she said, remembering too
late. "Can this wait until tomorrow? It's almost dinnertime for us."
"I'm afraid it can't wait," he said. "But as long as I'm here, perhaps I can speak to your
parents instead."
She hesitated, worried about safety precautions, but this was the school librarian, after all.
"They're not home yet. I thought when your car pulled up--"
"They're not?" As he turned back to look down the dark street, empty of any other
headlights, his whole posture seemed to change. Kaoru took a step back, worried, but he
didn't move toward her. "This could be catastrophic. Can you give me directions to their
dojo?"
"Hey Kaoru, who is it?" Yahiko came up behind her. "Jehovah's Witnesses or
something?"
"It's Mr. Hiko, the high-school librarian," she told him.
"Is that your brother? You must be the heir to the Kamiya Kasshin Ryuu school, then,"
Hiko said to him, but Kaoru bristled.
"He's only been training with shinai for a few years. I'm way more ahead in our training
than he is. I can take on my dad with a bokken any day."
Hiko looked startled. "I see. Apologies for my rude assumption. But where were we-- it's
imperative that you tell me how to get to their dojo at once, before-- " He broke off,
biting his lip.
"It's kinda hard to find," Yahiko said. "You have to make all these little turns around one-
way streets, and then there's the unmarked alley and stuff. It would be faster if we just
showed you."
"Yahiko!"
He grinned up at her. "Hey, this guy knows he's dealing with two advanced students of
the Kamiya Kasshin Ryuu school. He's not going to do anything stupid."
Kaoru glowered at him. "What do you mean, two?"
Yahiko took on the wounded-cherub look that usually meant their parents were walking
up behind Kaoru when she was yelling at him. "You weren't going to let me go all alone
with him, were you?"
---
For such a tall man, Hiko's car was tiny: some kind of little British zoomy thing that
looked like the Austen Powersmobile. But Yahiko was still small enough to cram himself
into the nominal back seat, and there was plenty of legroom for Kaoru in the passenger's
seat up front. Yahiko kept pointing up between the seats to give directions, getting
smacked by Kaoru every time his finger got too close to her head. "Okay, take the second
left there-- look for the little turn lane two cars long-- and just when the road bends,
there's a driveway across from the speed-limit sign, which is why people always miss it,
'cause they're looking at the sign."
The lot was still nearly full. Hiko parked beside their parents' car. "Maybe they went out
for dinner and that's why they didn't answer the phone?" Kaoru guessed. "Yahiko, did
you check for messages when you called?"
"Didn't see any," Yahiko said.
Mr. Hiko laid a hand on their car's hood. "It's cold," he said. "It hasn't been driven for
several hours at least. Let's go inside. Do you have a key?"
"No, but if they're inside, they'll let us in." Kaoru went to the door and pushed the buzzer.
They waited a few minutes without an answer. She pushed the buzzer again, and Yahiko
knocked on the door. The door swung open from the light pressure of his knuckles.
Inside, catastrophe awaited beneath fluorescent lights.
The reception desk had been smashed. The phone's cord had been ripped out from the
wall, and the dead receiver lay in a bloody hand. Kaoru gasped, but forced herself to
look. The body didn't belong to her mother; it was one of her father's students. She
pushed Yahiko from the door, stepping to block his view of what lay inside.
"Hey!" he said, his voice shaking. "What was that?"
She bent to look at him face to face. "Yahiko, you know that grocery store we passed on
the corner? I want you to run there as fast as you can and use their phone to call the
police. And then stay there until either we fetch you or the police come. Got it?"
"But Kaoru, I--"
"Don't argue. Just go!" He went, his sandals slapping against the asphalt. Mr. Hiko had
already gone inside, and she followed him.
"Don't touch anything," he warned her. "They'll want fingerprints, and it doesn't look as if
we can help this unfortunate woman now."
Kaoru swallowed hard. The door to the dojo proper had been left ajar, and she eased it
open with the tip of her toe. The entrance corridor had more bodies. Most of them wore
the uniforms of her father's school, but some of them did not: ragged, fetid carcasses that
looked like they'd escaped from that old Michael Jackson video. And finally, the training
room, which had always been a haven of gleaming wood, where the ceremonial sword of
their family hung in a place of honor. None of these things was true now.
Joyce Summers lay bound and unconscious, her breathing harsh but steady. She was
covered with fine pinpricks and lines of blood, as if someone had been delicately poking
and sliding a sharp blade all over her body. The sword's locked case was empty, with
starbursts all over the reinforced glass where someone had tried to break it before it had
been unlocked. And the former keeper of that lock's key, Koshijirou Kamiya, sat slumped
against the wall, with a knife through his heart and a cross-shaped wound cut into his
cheek.
Kaoru whirled away from this sight, choking. "Did you know this was going to happen?.
Why didn't you talk to them-- them, not me!-- while there was still time?"
Hiko's face was grim. "I knew they might be in danger, yes. But I never thought he'd go
this far, or strike this soon. I wanted to talk to you first to see whether you'd overheard
anything, if they even knew what could happen to them. That way I could learn what they
knew without alarming them."
"Well, it's too late to worry about that now, isn't it?" She was nearly in tears, her head
spinning with the injustice of it all. "And who is 'he'? Do you mean you know who did
this?"
"What did you know about your family's sword?"
She stared up at him, disoriented by this tangent. "The sakabatou? It's an heirloom, but
it's useless. Not only does it have the sharp edge on the wrong side of the blade, but it's
made of pure silver. It's too soft and heavy to fight with. Maybe you could sell it to be
melted down, but it's not worth enough to kill ten people for. Why would anyone--"
"No one could fight a human opponent with it. But in the right hands, with the right
training, you could kill the undead."
"Are you completely nuts?" Kaoru screamed. "My father is lying here dead, and you're
talking about things that go bump in the night?"
Hiko remained unruffled. "Look behind you. Look at the creatures that attacked him.
They look like they've been dead for months, don't they? They were. I'd say they broke in
while everyone else was out, perhaps last night. And this morning-- do your father's
students usually arrive before he does, and wait outside for him? Indeed so. When your
parents arrived, they all went into the dojo together and found the intruders trying to
break into the case. His students forced them down the corridor in an attempt to call for
help, and bought him enough time with their lives to open the case and get the sword out.
Then the creatures forced their way back here, where your father killed several of them
before they forced him to surrender by threatening your mother. And then they took the
sakabatou and killed him. I think that by the time I tried to speak to you, it was already
too late."
Before she could ask him to explain anything else, she heard Yahiko's voice from the
reception area. "Kaoru? Are you okay in there? Mr. Hiko? The police and the paramedics
are here. Can you come out and talk to them?"
"Are you going to tell them any of that?" Kaoru demanded.
Hiko's smile was a little sad. "If you don't believe me, why should they? And like those
students, they wouldn't have any hope trying to fight Battousai and his followers."
Kaoru glared at him. "And who's Battousai?"
"I'll explain him to you later. Let's go."
---
Having gotten a better look at the reception area, Yahiko was busy being sick in the
parking lot. Kaoru went to his side to hug him tight. Without making it obvious, she tried
to listen to what Mr. Hiko was telling the police, in case she wanted their stories to match
up later, but it was hard to concentrate. Something about her leaving her bookbag at the
library, and as it was on his way home, he'd dropped it off at her house, where she and
her brother were worried about their parents not being home yet, so he'd given them a
ride here. It wouldn't stand up for a moment if she wanted to deny it.
She wasn't sure she trusted Hiko. For all she knew, he was an accomplice of these thieves
and murderers. Maybe he'd driven them here so their house would be empty, and it was
being robbed too, right now. She wanted to stand up and denounce him. She wanted to
cry in her father's living arms. She wanted her mother, lying pale and unconscious on the
ambulance gurney, to feed her fresh mochi and tell her everything would be all right.
Yahiko had stopped throwing up. Sniffling, he wiped his face on his sleeve and leaned
against her in a rare moment of brotherly love. "Kaoru?" he said after a moment.
"Yes?"
"The rice is going to be all dried out by the time we get home."
"I know."
---
The next two weeks were a blur. Joyce's injuries were extensive, but superficial. After a
few days in which Kaoru and Yahiko lived more in her hospital room than at home, she
was released, and began to make the funeral arrangements.
The service seemed to go on forever, but Kaoru tried to make it stretch out even longer to
herself, because this was the last time her family would really be together. The endless
prayers and ringing bells, the parade of her parents' friends, the rich incense smoke
pervading everything, and finally the transfer of her father's last remains into the funeral
urn.
Megumi and Sano were there, looking pale and drawn. Kaoru hadn't seen them for a
while, since she hadn't been in school since the first day. They drew their circle of
friendship around her and murmured words of meaningless comfort, because it was the
only thing they could do.
After everything was over, Kaoru stayed behind with them while Joyce took Yahiko
home. The three friends sat together in the temple garden, watching the koi dart through
the water lilies. "I heard Mr. Hiko drove both of you to the dojo that night," Megumi said.
"He hasn't said anything about it, though. I mean, you expect librarians to be quiet, but
this is way more quiet than that. He said--" she hesitated, fumbling for his exact words,
"it's a terrible tragedy, and he doesn't want to increase the burden on you by violating
your privacy. And that's about it."
"The newspaper said the dojo was robbed," Sano said. "They've issued a lookout with
the Antiques Roadshow types for heirloom swords, but I don't think anything has turned
up."
"No," Kaoru said dully. "It wouldn't."
"It also said that judging from the ones who were killed, the guys who broke in seemed to
be really skanky street people or something. You wouldn't think they'd know enough
about antiques to go after something like that, but maybe it's a drug gang. There've been a
couple more weird murders in the past few weeks, and I heard at the Akabeko that the
bodies all have an X scratched into their faces, just like--"
"Sano!" Megumi stopped him. "Sometimes I think you couldn't get any more tactless
unless you became the square root of negative tact."
"Me?"
"Actually, 'i'. But never mind." Megumi squeezed Kaoru's hand. "You're coming back to
school tomorrow, right? Are you okay?"
"I guess so. Yahiko looks fine. I think he's been putting all his energy into training harder.
He broke at least ten shinai against that big tree in our back yard last week. Mom says he
obviously won't grow up to be a tree surgeon, but maybe he has a future as a lumberjack."
"But that's Yahiko. What about you?"
Kaoru looked at them both now, full in the face. "Mr. Hiko didn't say anything about
what happened? At all, really?"
"He won't say anything more than what the newspaper said. He drove you two there, and
the robbers had already come and gone."
She exhaled. "He said he knew who did it. That's what he wanted to talk to me about the
first day of school when we were leaving his workshop, remember? He said he wanted to
warn me. But he didn't tell me who it was that night, and I haven't seen him since then."
"Do you think he was in on it?" Sano asked, concerned.
"I thought about it, but I don't think so," Kaoru said slowly. "Why would he have tried to
warn me at school, and why did he take us there afterward? Mom says she doesn't
remember anything that happened that day. They hit her on the head pretty hard, so if she
saw any of them in the first place, it must've been knocked back out of her. So if I want to
know anything, I guess I'll have to ask him. Unless either of you has ever heard anything
about someone called Battousai." Both of them shook their heads.
In an attempt to brighten the mood, she asked them, "So, what's new at school? What
kind of exciting mystery meats and pop quizzes have I missed?"
"There's a new transfer student who got your desk in history class while you've been out."
Sano scowled. Kaoru's history desk was next to his. "His hair is even redder and longer
than Megumi's, but he wears it in a ponytail." He flipped a loose wing of Megumi's hair
and she smiled a little wistfully at him, but he didn't notice, as always.
"He acts kinda goofy when he's not being all quiet, but I think he's okay," Megumi
defended the newcomer.
"He's a total girly-man!" Sano scoffed. "He's in your home ec class, isn't he?"
"The teacher says he has the best knifework she's ever seen. He can peel a daikon into
this cool continuous paper scrolly thing in two minutes flat, and the other day he made
the most awesome okonomiyaki--" Megumi's praise was interrupted by all three stomachs
growling in chorus.
Kaoru grinned despite herself. "I think it's time we got some ramen on the way home,"
she said, and stood up. "So, what's the name of our new Iron Chef?"
Sano pulled the fishbone-thingy from his jacket's pocket. He always had it with him
somewhere, and the girls had never figured out what it was-- a comb? a toothpick? a
weird version of the Darwin fish?-- and now he ineffectually ran one side through his hair
before sticking the point of its head between his teeth. Around it, he drawled, "Iron Chef?
I say we call him 'Rusty' and leave it at that."
"His name is not Rusty," Megumi chided. "His name is Kenshin, which is a perfectly
good name. Unlike 'Sanosuke', or we'd actually call you that sometime."
Sano snorted. "Rusty, Kenshin, whatever, as long as he gives Kaoru her desk back."
"And anyway, you shouldn't chew on that thing. Even normal people can choke on a
fishbone, and that's big enough to kill a horse."
Sano made a pelvic thrust and a whinnying sound before recollecting himself. "Hey, I'm
insulted-- did you just call me normal people?"
The three friends strolled together off the temple grounds, not noticing the small British
car parked down the road from the gate, or the librarian watching them from inside it.
-----
(Okay, it's looking pretty obvious to me that this isn't going to be a straightforward
retelling of either series, though it's going to draw heavily on both. Thanks to all the
reviewers so far, esp. Jason M. Lee for pointing out that "Battousai" doesn't need an
article. Where am I going and who put me into this handbasket? --wombat)
messin' around with them.
Edodale
(for lack of a better title yet)
By wombat
Chapter 2
As soon as she got home after cheerleading tryouts, Kaoru could tell something was
wrong. Her parents' car wasn't in the driveway. Yahiko was sitting on the front porch in
the fading afternoon light with his backpack beside him, engrossed in his Game Boy. He
looked up as she came near. "Oh, I forgot my key again. Shouldn't Mom be home by
now? It's not your turn to cook again, is it?"
Kaoru unlocked the door. "I cooked last night."
"That's why I was so hungry this morning."
She ignored that. "She didn't say anything about lessons running late at the dojo tonight,
but why don't you call them while I get the rice started?" She measured out a few scoops
of rice and washed it, rinsing and pouring out the water until it ran out clear from the
grains. It always took longer than she expected, or maybe she just wasn't doing it right.
By the time it looked ready to her, the sun had fallen all the way to the horizon.
"Yahiko," she called back over her shoulder to the tv room, "did you call the dojo yet?"
He yelled back over the sound of his cartoons. "Yeah, I called them before Dragonball
started. They didn't answer. They must be on their way home already."
Kaoru poured the rinsed rice into the cooker with some water and flipped the switch, then
joined Yahiko on the sofa. "Is that Dragonball or Dragonball Z?"
"It's Z. Why?" He giggled and poked her. "Get it? Z? Y?"
She smacked him out of habit at the same time as she realized something. "But that
means you called them more than half an hour ago. It shouldn't take a half-hour for them
to drive home."
"It shouldn't take a half-hour to rinse rice, either. Look at your hands, they're all pruny."
Kaoru rubbed her pruny hands together nervously. "Something's wrong. Maybe they
stopped on the way home to get groceries?" She heard a car pulling into the driveway
outside, jumped up, and ran to the door. But when she opened it, her words of relieved
welcome stopped dead. It wasn't her parents. It was Mr. Hiko, from school.
He looked tidier without his long labcoat/smock thing, though when he extended his
hand, his fingernails still had clay under them. "Miss Kamiya-Summers?"
"Oh gosh, I forgot to come back and talk to you, I'm sorry," she said, remembering too
late. "Can this wait until tomorrow? It's almost dinnertime for us."
"I'm afraid it can't wait," he said. "But as long as I'm here, perhaps I can speak to your
parents instead."
She hesitated, worried about safety precautions, but this was the school librarian, after all.
"They're not home yet. I thought when your car pulled up--"
"They're not?" As he turned back to look down the dark street, empty of any other
headlights, his whole posture seemed to change. Kaoru took a step back, worried, but he
didn't move toward her. "This could be catastrophic. Can you give me directions to their
dojo?"
"Hey Kaoru, who is it?" Yahiko came up behind her. "Jehovah's Witnesses or
something?"
"It's Mr. Hiko, the high-school librarian," she told him.
"Is that your brother? You must be the heir to the Kamiya Kasshin Ryuu school, then,"
Hiko said to him, but Kaoru bristled.
"He's only been training with shinai for a few years. I'm way more ahead in our training
than he is. I can take on my dad with a bokken any day."
Hiko looked startled. "I see. Apologies for my rude assumption. But where were we-- it's
imperative that you tell me how to get to their dojo at once, before-- " He broke off,
biting his lip.
"It's kinda hard to find," Yahiko said. "You have to make all these little turns around one-
way streets, and then there's the unmarked alley and stuff. It would be faster if we just
showed you."
"Yahiko!"
He grinned up at her. "Hey, this guy knows he's dealing with two advanced students of
the Kamiya Kasshin Ryuu school. He's not going to do anything stupid."
Kaoru glowered at him. "What do you mean, two?"
Yahiko took on the wounded-cherub look that usually meant their parents were walking
up behind Kaoru when she was yelling at him. "You weren't going to let me go all alone
with him, were you?"
---
For such a tall man, Hiko's car was tiny: some kind of little British zoomy thing that
looked like the Austen Powersmobile. But Yahiko was still small enough to cram himself
into the nominal back seat, and there was plenty of legroom for Kaoru in the passenger's
seat up front. Yahiko kept pointing up between the seats to give directions, getting
smacked by Kaoru every time his finger got too close to her head. "Okay, take the second
left there-- look for the little turn lane two cars long-- and just when the road bends,
there's a driveway across from the speed-limit sign, which is why people always miss it,
'cause they're looking at the sign."
The lot was still nearly full. Hiko parked beside their parents' car. "Maybe they went out
for dinner and that's why they didn't answer the phone?" Kaoru guessed. "Yahiko, did
you check for messages when you called?"
"Didn't see any," Yahiko said.
Mr. Hiko laid a hand on their car's hood. "It's cold," he said. "It hasn't been driven for
several hours at least. Let's go inside. Do you have a key?"
"No, but if they're inside, they'll let us in." Kaoru went to the door and pushed the buzzer.
They waited a few minutes without an answer. She pushed the buzzer again, and Yahiko
knocked on the door. The door swung open from the light pressure of his knuckles.
Inside, catastrophe awaited beneath fluorescent lights.
The reception desk had been smashed. The phone's cord had been ripped out from the
wall, and the dead receiver lay in a bloody hand. Kaoru gasped, but forced herself to
look. The body didn't belong to her mother; it was one of her father's students. She
pushed Yahiko from the door, stepping to block his view of what lay inside.
"Hey!" he said, his voice shaking. "What was that?"
She bent to look at him face to face. "Yahiko, you know that grocery store we passed on
the corner? I want you to run there as fast as you can and use their phone to call the
police. And then stay there until either we fetch you or the police come. Got it?"
"But Kaoru, I--"
"Don't argue. Just go!" He went, his sandals slapping against the asphalt. Mr. Hiko had
already gone inside, and she followed him.
"Don't touch anything," he warned her. "They'll want fingerprints, and it doesn't look as if
we can help this unfortunate woman now."
Kaoru swallowed hard. The door to the dojo proper had been left ajar, and she eased it
open with the tip of her toe. The entrance corridor had more bodies. Most of them wore
the uniforms of her father's school, but some of them did not: ragged, fetid carcasses that
looked like they'd escaped from that old Michael Jackson video. And finally, the training
room, which had always been a haven of gleaming wood, where the ceremonial sword of
their family hung in a place of honor. None of these things was true now.
Joyce Summers lay bound and unconscious, her breathing harsh but steady. She was
covered with fine pinpricks and lines of blood, as if someone had been delicately poking
and sliding a sharp blade all over her body. The sword's locked case was empty, with
starbursts all over the reinforced glass where someone had tried to break it before it had
been unlocked. And the former keeper of that lock's key, Koshijirou Kamiya, sat slumped
against the wall, with a knife through his heart and a cross-shaped wound cut into his
cheek.
Kaoru whirled away from this sight, choking. "Did you know this was going to happen?.
Why didn't you talk to them-- them, not me!-- while there was still time?"
Hiko's face was grim. "I knew they might be in danger, yes. But I never thought he'd go
this far, or strike this soon. I wanted to talk to you first to see whether you'd overheard
anything, if they even knew what could happen to them. That way I could learn what they
knew without alarming them."
"Well, it's too late to worry about that now, isn't it?" She was nearly in tears, her head
spinning with the injustice of it all. "And who is 'he'? Do you mean you know who did
this?"
"What did you know about your family's sword?"
She stared up at him, disoriented by this tangent. "The sakabatou? It's an heirloom, but
it's useless. Not only does it have the sharp edge on the wrong side of the blade, but it's
made of pure silver. It's too soft and heavy to fight with. Maybe you could sell it to be
melted down, but it's not worth enough to kill ten people for. Why would anyone--"
"No one could fight a human opponent with it. But in the right hands, with the right
training, you could kill the undead."
"Are you completely nuts?" Kaoru screamed. "My father is lying here dead, and you're
talking about things that go bump in the night?"
Hiko remained unruffled. "Look behind you. Look at the creatures that attacked him.
They look like they've been dead for months, don't they? They were. I'd say they broke in
while everyone else was out, perhaps last night. And this morning-- do your father's
students usually arrive before he does, and wait outside for him? Indeed so. When your
parents arrived, they all went into the dojo together and found the intruders trying to
break into the case. His students forced them down the corridor in an attempt to call for
help, and bought him enough time with their lives to open the case and get the sword out.
Then the creatures forced their way back here, where your father killed several of them
before they forced him to surrender by threatening your mother. And then they took the
sakabatou and killed him. I think that by the time I tried to speak to you, it was already
too late."
Before she could ask him to explain anything else, she heard Yahiko's voice from the
reception area. "Kaoru? Are you okay in there? Mr. Hiko? The police and the paramedics
are here. Can you come out and talk to them?"
"Are you going to tell them any of that?" Kaoru demanded.
Hiko's smile was a little sad. "If you don't believe me, why should they? And like those
students, they wouldn't have any hope trying to fight Battousai and his followers."
Kaoru glared at him. "And who's Battousai?"
"I'll explain him to you later. Let's go."
---
Having gotten a better look at the reception area, Yahiko was busy being sick in the
parking lot. Kaoru went to his side to hug him tight. Without making it obvious, she tried
to listen to what Mr. Hiko was telling the police, in case she wanted their stories to match
up later, but it was hard to concentrate. Something about her leaving her bookbag at the
library, and as it was on his way home, he'd dropped it off at her house, where she and
her brother were worried about their parents not being home yet, so he'd given them a
ride here. It wouldn't stand up for a moment if she wanted to deny it.
She wasn't sure she trusted Hiko. For all she knew, he was an accomplice of these thieves
and murderers. Maybe he'd driven them here so their house would be empty, and it was
being robbed too, right now. She wanted to stand up and denounce him. She wanted to
cry in her father's living arms. She wanted her mother, lying pale and unconscious on the
ambulance gurney, to feed her fresh mochi and tell her everything would be all right.
Yahiko had stopped throwing up. Sniffling, he wiped his face on his sleeve and leaned
against her in a rare moment of brotherly love. "Kaoru?" he said after a moment.
"Yes?"
"The rice is going to be all dried out by the time we get home."
"I know."
---
The next two weeks were a blur. Joyce's injuries were extensive, but superficial. After a
few days in which Kaoru and Yahiko lived more in her hospital room than at home, she
was released, and began to make the funeral arrangements.
The service seemed to go on forever, but Kaoru tried to make it stretch out even longer to
herself, because this was the last time her family would really be together. The endless
prayers and ringing bells, the parade of her parents' friends, the rich incense smoke
pervading everything, and finally the transfer of her father's last remains into the funeral
urn.
Megumi and Sano were there, looking pale and drawn. Kaoru hadn't seen them for a
while, since she hadn't been in school since the first day. They drew their circle of
friendship around her and murmured words of meaningless comfort, because it was the
only thing they could do.
After everything was over, Kaoru stayed behind with them while Joyce took Yahiko
home. The three friends sat together in the temple garden, watching the koi dart through
the water lilies. "I heard Mr. Hiko drove both of you to the dojo that night," Megumi said.
"He hasn't said anything about it, though. I mean, you expect librarians to be quiet, but
this is way more quiet than that. He said--" she hesitated, fumbling for his exact words,
"it's a terrible tragedy, and he doesn't want to increase the burden on you by violating
your privacy. And that's about it."
"The newspaper said the dojo was robbed," Sano said. "They've issued a lookout with
the Antiques Roadshow types for heirloom swords, but I don't think anything has turned
up."
"No," Kaoru said dully. "It wouldn't."
"It also said that judging from the ones who were killed, the guys who broke in seemed to
be really skanky street people or something. You wouldn't think they'd know enough
about antiques to go after something like that, but maybe it's a drug gang. There've been a
couple more weird murders in the past few weeks, and I heard at the Akabeko that the
bodies all have an X scratched into their faces, just like--"
"Sano!" Megumi stopped him. "Sometimes I think you couldn't get any more tactless
unless you became the square root of negative tact."
"Me?"
"Actually, 'i'. But never mind." Megumi squeezed Kaoru's hand. "You're coming back to
school tomorrow, right? Are you okay?"
"I guess so. Yahiko looks fine. I think he's been putting all his energy into training harder.
He broke at least ten shinai against that big tree in our back yard last week. Mom says he
obviously won't grow up to be a tree surgeon, but maybe he has a future as a lumberjack."
"But that's Yahiko. What about you?"
Kaoru looked at them both now, full in the face. "Mr. Hiko didn't say anything about
what happened? At all, really?"
"He won't say anything more than what the newspaper said. He drove you two there, and
the robbers had already come and gone."
She exhaled. "He said he knew who did it. That's what he wanted to talk to me about the
first day of school when we were leaving his workshop, remember? He said he wanted to
warn me. But he didn't tell me who it was that night, and I haven't seen him since then."
"Do you think he was in on it?" Sano asked, concerned.
"I thought about it, but I don't think so," Kaoru said slowly. "Why would he have tried to
warn me at school, and why did he take us there afterward? Mom says she doesn't
remember anything that happened that day. They hit her on the head pretty hard, so if she
saw any of them in the first place, it must've been knocked back out of her. So if I want to
know anything, I guess I'll have to ask him. Unless either of you has ever heard anything
about someone called Battousai." Both of them shook their heads.
In an attempt to brighten the mood, she asked them, "So, what's new at school? What
kind of exciting mystery meats and pop quizzes have I missed?"
"There's a new transfer student who got your desk in history class while you've been out."
Sano scowled. Kaoru's history desk was next to his. "His hair is even redder and longer
than Megumi's, but he wears it in a ponytail." He flipped a loose wing of Megumi's hair
and she smiled a little wistfully at him, but he didn't notice, as always.
"He acts kinda goofy when he's not being all quiet, but I think he's okay," Megumi
defended the newcomer.
"He's a total girly-man!" Sano scoffed. "He's in your home ec class, isn't he?"
"The teacher says he has the best knifework she's ever seen. He can peel a daikon into
this cool continuous paper scrolly thing in two minutes flat, and the other day he made
the most awesome okonomiyaki--" Megumi's praise was interrupted by all three stomachs
growling in chorus.
Kaoru grinned despite herself. "I think it's time we got some ramen on the way home,"
she said, and stood up. "So, what's the name of our new Iron Chef?"
Sano pulled the fishbone-thingy from his jacket's pocket. He always had it with him
somewhere, and the girls had never figured out what it was-- a comb? a toothpick? a
weird version of the Darwin fish?-- and now he ineffectually ran one side through his hair
before sticking the point of its head between his teeth. Around it, he drawled, "Iron Chef?
I say we call him 'Rusty' and leave it at that."
"His name is not Rusty," Megumi chided. "His name is Kenshin, which is a perfectly
good name. Unlike 'Sanosuke', or we'd actually call you that sometime."
Sano snorted. "Rusty, Kenshin, whatever, as long as he gives Kaoru her desk back."
"And anyway, you shouldn't chew on that thing. Even normal people can choke on a
fishbone, and that's big enough to kill a horse."
Sano made a pelvic thrust and a whinnying sound before recollecting himself. "Hey, I'm
insulted-- did you just call me normal people?"
The three friends strolled together off the temple grounds, not noticing the small British
car parked down the road from the gate, or the librarian watching them from inside it.
-----
(Okay, it's looking pretty obvious to me that this isn't going to be a straightforward
retelling of either series, though it's going to draw heavily on both. Thanks to all the
reviewers so far, esp. Jason M. Lee for pointing out that "Battousai" doesn't need an
article. Where am I going and who put me into this handbasket? --wombat)