Rurouni Kenshin belongs to Watsuki Nobuhiro. Buffy belongs to Joss Whedon. I'm just
messin' around with them.
Edodale
(or, "Kaoru the Battousai-Slayer"?)
By wombat
Chapter 3
Back at school, Kaoru felt like everyone was walking on eggshells around her. She'd
missed two weeks of classes, but they were mostly the catch-up reviews of what they'd
learned last year to remind them of everything they'd forgotten over the summer. The
new classwork had really just started, so she hadn't fallen too far behind.
When the lunch bell rang, she headed straight for the library wing. Mr. Hiko wasn't in his
workshop, but as she'd suspected, its other door led to the main library. Megumi and
Sano were already there, talking to him at the front desk. He was in full "I'm just a timid
librarian" mode again, scrunched up into his chair and looking about half his actual size,
but he straightened up a bit when he saw Kaoru coming toward them.
In a low voice, she said to him, "I want to know just what you were talking about and
who it was, because even if you're right and the police can't do anything, I'm going to
find this Battousai guy and make him pay for killing my dad."
"Just so. I had hoped to broach this subject in a more leisurely fashion, but as you say,
events have dictated otherwise. Would you come along with me, please?" He stood up,
signalling to a student aide to take his place at the desk.
Back in the workshop, he shouldered a tray of damp grey lumps. All three of them followed
him down the hall to a small room where despite the open window, the scent of wood smoke
lingered in the air. He slid his tray into the kiln, then donned enormous hot mitts to take the
lid off a large metal trashcan half-filled with burnt sawdust. With a pair of tongs, he
rummaged through it to pull out pieces of pottery and drop them into a bucket of water,
which hissed and simmered at each new addition. When he had finished, he drained the
bucket into the sink and laid out the finished pieces. The raku glaze had taken on gorgeous
peacock hues, glistening and shimmering on the drying rack. However, Kaoru was in no
mood to admire them. "Well?" she demanded.
Hiko waved them to sit down on a workbench while he closed the window, then leaned
against the wall, setting the hot mitts aside. "Well. It's a story that began long ago, long
before your time or mine...."
---
During the wars of the last century, a mighty warrior became possessed by an evil spirit
of fire. Spears and arrows burst into flame and ordinary swords melted away before they
could reach him; the touch of his hand left black burns on his enemies' flesh.
Finally, a young student of the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu school vowed to stop him, setting
out in mid-winter so the cold would help quench the fires. When the monster's own
katana fell steaming into the snow, the boy took it up and killed him with it. And then,
burned and bleeding, he took his enemy's weapons home as trophies.
His master had warned him against the confrontation, but the boy had been too brave or
foolish to listen. He had been a sweet, gentle youth, loved by everyone. But once he
returned with those hellwrought blades, his character changed forever. He became proud
and quarrelsome, killing others without provocation, and finally he was driven from his
dojo and his village, with his proper name struck from his family's scroll.
---
Hiko took off his glasses and polished them on his shirt. "After that, he became known
only as Battousai, the manslayer. He came here to the city and killed for the sheer joy of
it, an angel of death whom everyone shunned and feared."
"Tenshi muyo," Megumi murmured.
Kaoru looked at her. "What?"
"Oh, nothing."
"After ten years," Hiko continued, "his old master came to the city and saw him as a
passing shadow in the night. Battousai had not aged a day since he left the village. The
katana drew life from those it killed and gave it to its wielder. In striking down the fiery
demon with it, he had only destroyed the outer body, you see, and its evil poured up
through the blade straight into his heart.
"The other weapons he'd taken were also cursed. He'd already given some of them to a
few lost souls who followed him for the promise of eternal life. So his master returned
home, where he joined powers with a swordsmith and a priestess to make the sakabatou,
which he brought back here to use against Battousai and his followers."
"Didn't work very well, did it?" Kaoru snapped.
"But it did, as far as anyone knew," Hiko said. "The Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu master wrote
that when he struck them with the sakabatou, the evildoers vanished like dust, leaving
only their cursed weapons behind. He gathered those up and brought them back to his village
shrine for safekeeping. He gave the sakabatou into the hands of the shrine's priestess, who passed it
down in her family, mother to daughter, until it came to the Kamiya family." He grimaced. "I
would have found you more quickly if genealogies didn't pretend that daughters vanish from the
earth when they get married."
Sano chewed on his fishbone. "So now he's back? Wait, how did you know to come
looking for the sakabatou anyway, and what does he want with it? And how do you know
it's him?"
"He had a cross-shaped scar on his face. He was never known to mark his victims, but
this must be his way of telling us he's returned. The sakabatou is the only thing that can
banish him again. As for why I set out on this quest-- do you remember the earthquake
we had a few years ago?"
"Yeah, but it was just a little one," Megumi said uncertainly.
"It cracked the weapons' seal in the shrine. By the time we discovered the damage, the
weapons were gone."
"What do you mean, 'we'? You don't look like a priest to me." Kaoru folded her arms, not
reassured at all by anything he'd said so far.
"I'm not," Hiko said with a wry grin. "I'm the present master of the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu
school. I also have a degree in library science and a sideline in pottery. It pays to be
versatile in today's economy."
"As fascinating as this career-day talk is," Kaoru said, "I still want to know how we can
find Battousai and what we can do when that happens. How many followers does he
have, minus the guys my dad took out before--" Her voice broke, but she refused to let
herself cry in front of everyone. Megumi rubbed her back comfortingly as Sano glared
at Hiko, who did his best to look meek again.
When Kaoru felt steadier, Hiko said, "The attackers at the dojo are a sign that
another of his followers is back. One of them could reanimate the dead as crude puppets,
but they remained dead bodies. But the wielders of the cursed weapons had never died,
though I don't know what the sakabatou did to them. At the height of their numbers, there
were at least five and as many as ten. Not all of the weapons were used, though all of
them were recovered. Now that all of them are gone again..." He shrugged helplessly.
"Great," Kaoru said. "So there could be ten maniacs out there and the entire cast of
'Thriller', and there's nothing we can do to stop them without the sakabatou?"
"There's nothing we can do to kill them," Hiko corrected. "We can keep them from
creating more corpse puppets by patrolling the non-cremated cemetaries at night, and we
can ward them off from entering certain buildings by putting ofuda on the doors."
Megumi beamed. "Ooh! Ofuda! I can do those! 'Aku ryou taisan' and stuff like that,
right? We covered that in my miko training at the shrine."
"Excellent," Hiko said, looking relieved. Glancing at Sano, he said, "I suppose it would
be too much to hope that you're a swordsmith?"
The fishbone whipped out of Sano's pocket again and flicked straight at Hiko, who
caught it. "Check it out," Sano said proudly. "Made it in shop last year when the teacher
wasn't looking."
With genuine admiration, Hiko ran his fingers down the edges of the fine bones. "This is
a truly nasty piece of work. Cut from a single piece of metal, was it? Ouch!" He whipped
his hand away and sucked a bleeding fingertip. Around it, he said, "You've kept the bones
perfectly parallel throughout, and they're really quite sharp on this side."
In a jumble, Kaoru and Megumi protested at Sano, "You've been combing your hair
with something that sharp? And walking around with it in your mouth, too! Do you want
some nice sharp scissors to run around with while you're at it?"
"Girls, girls, there's plenty more where that came from," he grinned. "I've got a whole set.
The ones I bring out most of the time are usually the wood or bone ones. Needed the shop
tools for that one, though."
"Well then, we're better off than I could have dared to hope." Hiko handed the fishbone
back. "We don't have the sakabatou, but we should be able to make smaller weapons that
will do them some harm. If I'd thought it would be stolen before I found you, I would
have asked our village elders to prepare something, but there's no time to wait for them
now.
"First of all, the weapons can't be made of iron or steel. Those metals won't hurt them.
Silver would be best, but perhaps we can make do with copper or wood.
"Secondly, the part that strikes them can have a point, but not an edge. I believe it's to do
with showing the gods that we bear no grudge against the human bodies the evil spirit has
taken, or the human souls that it replaced."
"As long as we don't have to keep resharpening a silver edge," Sano said, "because that'd
be a royal pain. It's a good excuse, anyway. How about the third thing? Is there a third
thing?"
"A third thing," Hiko said, thoughtfully. "No physical descriptions of them survive, but
the blades of their weapons are pitch-black. You can recognize them by that, if nothing
else. Don't let them strike you, or they'll feed on your life force. But even more importantly,
don't use their own weapons against them, or you'll become possessed as well. And
meanwhile, I believe these should be finished." He put his hot mitts back on to take the tray
back out of the kiln. The three friends leaped off the workbench as he turned around to set it
down there. This batch of pottery wasn't nearly as spectacular as the quenched raku ware. In
fact, all of these pieces looked exactly the same as before they went in: grey lumps, only
smaller and paler.
With his hand still in a mitt, Hiko picked up one lump and smacked it against the tray. It
broke open, hatching a mouthwatering smell. "Cornish game hens baked in clay," he said,
dumping the contents onto a raku plate. "Would any of you like one?"
---
Several Cornish game hens later, Kaoru felt much better. She stacked her empty plate on
Megumi's. Sano was still licking the juices off his. Hiko checked his wristwatch. "It's
nearly time for your classes to resume. I do hope you'll remember this time to stop by the
library at the end of the day?" He said this last sentence to Kaoru rather tentatively, with
more regret than reproach. She nodded, and he smiled.
Outside the kiln room, they split up; Megumi had biology class at the other end of the
building, and the other two were off to history to reclaim Kaoru's desk. When they were
halfway up the stairs, they heard someone coming up behind them and looked back, but it
wasn't Megumi, it was the aide from the library. Sano poked Kaoru with his elbow and
hissed, "Come on! Run for it!"
"But--" He was already running ahead of her; exasperated, she caught up to him at the
classroom door, but he kept going until he slid behind his desk. She sat down beside him
and he flashed a grin of triumph at her, then at the door, where the library aide was
coming into view. Belatedly, Kaoru remembered Sano's description of her desk's
usurper: a girly-man with long red hair in a ponytail?
She supposed it matched up with the boy walking in now, but he looked nothing like the
tall, wiry Bill Weasley type she'd expected. His hair was dark red, brightening nearly to
gold where the sunlight struck it through the window, and it was tied back to trail over a
slightly faded shirt whose color she couldn't even identify-- fuschia? puce? she knew
she'd seen it before in a nail polish bottle-- and which should have clashed horribly, but
somehow didn't. The hems of his jeans were ragged, and a hole in his sneakers showed
socks that were nearly the same color as his shirt, but not quite. He didn't look much
taller than she was, and he had fine, delicate features that were faintly clouded with
bewilderment as he reached her. "Oro?" he said.
"I told you before, it's her desk," Sano said. "Find another one."
The room was still only half-full. The newcomer put his bookbag at the desk in front of
Kaoru and looked at Sano with mild blue-violet eyes. "This must be Miss Kamiya-Summers,
of whom you've spoken," he said quietly. "Would you do me the honor of introducing me to
her?"
Sano rolled his eyes. "Okay, okay, if it'll make you shut up. Kaoru, this is Kenshin.
Kenshin, this is Kaoru. Are you happy?"
Kaoru extended her hand to meet Kenshin's, but instead of shaking it, he held it in his and
bent low toward it. His mouth didn't quite touch her skin, but she could feel his warm
breath and the touch of his hair for an instant, before he straightened up and let her go.
"I am at your service. Please accept my condolences for your recent loss," he said, and sat
down at his new desk, facing forward.
"See, I told you he was a weirdo," Sano stage-whispered to her. "You'd better close your
mouth before bugs fly in."
Belatedly, Kaoru snapped her slightly gaping mouth shut, still staring at the brightly-clad
shoulderblades in front of her.
-----
(This chapter is mostly infodump on how the background setup diverges from both
sources. And Megumi just up and volunteered to be a miko as part of the whole Willow
package. I'd feel better about this if I had more solid background info on miko-- it looks
like it's hereditary through the female line, the same way I had the silver sakabatou
passed down to Kaoru's father-- and Shinto in general, because I feel funny about using
people's religions as a plot device. Meanwhile, the black soul-sucking weapons were
inspired by Michael Moorcock's Elric series, now that I think about it. Next chapter
should be home life again, followed by the first night patrol. Hoping to goose the pace
back up or the entire project is going to take forever @_@ )
(Fresh note: S/R'ed "Zanza" to "Sano" throughout, because the former just keeps looking
funny to me; also added dashes as internal section-divisions, not just extra spaces. Fixed the
raku-finish details. Need to come up with a word that's shorter to type than "people using
cursed weapons"-- they're not classical vampires, but they're not the Mouseketeers either.
Don't think I have Kenshin's voice down yet-- trying to make his diction old-fashioned and
terribly polite, but instead he feels more like mini-Giles. Oh well, at least I have the excuse
that he and Hiko came from the same place.)
messin' around with them.
Edodale
(or, "Kaoru the Battousai-Slayer"?)
By wombat
Chapter 3
Back at school, Kaoru felt like everyone was walking on eggshells around her. She'd
missed two weeks of classes, but they were mostly the catch-up reviews of what they'd
learned last year to remind them of everything they'd forgotten over the summer. The
new classwork had really just started, so she hadn't fallen too far behind.
When the lunch bell rang, she headed straight for the library wing. Mr. Hiko wasn't in his
workshop, but as she'd suspected, its other door led to the main library. Megumi and
Sano were already there, talking to him at the front desk. He was in full "I'm just a timid
librarian" mode again, scrunched up into his chair and looking about half his actual size,
but he straightened up a bit when he saw Kaoru coming toward them.
In a low voice, she said to him, "I want to know just what you were talking about and
who it was, because even if you're right and the police can't do anything, I'm going to
find this Battousai guy and make him pay for killing my dad."
"Just so. I had hoped to broach this subject in a more leisurely fashion, but as you say,
events have dictated otherwise. Would you come along with me, please?" He stood up,
signalling to a student aide to take his place at the desk.
Back in the workshop, he shouldered a tray of damp grey lumps. All three of them followed
him down the hall to a small room where despite the open window, the scent of wood smoke
lingered in the air. He slid his tray into the kiln, then donned enormous hot mitts to take the
lid off a large metal trashcan half-filled with burnt sawdust. With a pair of tongs, he
rummaged through it to pull out pieces of pottery and drop them into a bucket of water,
which hissed and simmered at each new addition. When he had finished, he drained the
bucket into the sink and laid out the finished pieces. The raku glaze had taken on gorgeous
peacock hues, glistening and shimmering on the drying rack. However, Kaoru was in no
mood to admire them. "Well?" she demanded.
Hiko waved them to sit down on a workbench while he closed the window, then leaned
against the wall, setting the hot mitts aside. "Well. It's a story that began long ago, long
before your time or mine...."
---
During the wars of the last century, a mighty warrior became possessed by an evil spirit
of fire. Spears and arrows burst into flame and ordinary swords melted away before they
could reach him; the touch of his hand left black burns on his enemies' flesh.
Finally, a young student of the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu school vowed to stop him, setting
out in mid-winter so the cold would help quench the fires. When the monster's own
katana fell steaming into the snow, the boy took it up and killed him with it. And then,
burned and bleeding, he took his enemy's weapons home as trophies.
His master had warned him against the confrontation, but the boy had been too brave or
foolish to listen. He had been a sweet, gentle youth, loved by everyone. But once he
returned with those hellwrought blades, his character changed forever. He became proud
and quarrelsome, killing others without provocation, and finally he was driven from his
dojo and his village, with his proper name struck from his family's scroll.
---
Hiko took off his glasses and polished them on his shirt. "After that, he became known
only as Battousai, the manslayer. He came here to the city and killed for the sheer joy of
it, an angel of death whom everyone shunned and feared."
"Tenshi muyo," Megumi murmured.
Kaoru looked at her. "What?"
"Oh, nothing."
"After ten years," Hiko continued, "his old master came to the city and saw him as a
passing shadow in the night. Battousai had not aged a day since he left the village. The
katana drew life from those it killed and gave it to its wielder. In striking down the fiery
demon with it, he had only destroyed the outer body, you see, and its evil poured up
through the blade straight into his heart.
"The other weapons he'd taken were also cursed. He'd already given some of them to a
few lost souls who followed him for the promise of eternal life. So his master returned
home, where he joined powers with a swordsmith and a priestess to make the sakabatou,
which he brought back here to use against Battousai and his followers."
"Didn't work very well, did it?" Kaoru snapped.
"But it did, as far as anyone knew," Hiko said. "The Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu master wrote
that when he struck them with the sakabatou, the evildoers vanished like dust, leaving
only their cursed weapons behind. He gathered those up and brought them back to his village
shrine for safekeeping. He gave the sakabatou into the hands of the shrine's priestess, who passed it
down in her family, mother to daughter, until it came to the Kamiya family." He grimaced. "I
would have found you more quickly if genealogies didn't pretend that daughters vanish from the
earth when they get married."
Sano chewed on his fishbone. "So now he's back? Wait, how did you know to come
looking for the sakabatou anyway, and what does he want with it? And how do you know
it's him?"
"He had a cross-shaped scar on his face. He was never known to mark his victims, but
this must be his way of telling us he's returned. The sakabatou is the only thing that can
banish him again. As for why I set out on this quest-- do you remember the earthquake
we had a few years ago?"
"Yeah, but it was just a little one," Megumi said uncertainly.
"It cracked the weapons' seal in the shrine. By the time we discovered the damage, the
weapons were gone."
"What do you mean, 'we'? You don't look like a priest to me." Kaoru folded her arms, not
reassured at all by anything he'd said so far.
"I'm not," Hiko said with a wry grin. "I'm the present master of the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu
school. I also have a degree in library science and a sideline in pottery. It pays to be
versatile in today's economy."
"As fascinating as this career-day talk is," Kaoru said, "I still want to know how we can
find Battousai and what we can do when that happens. How many followers does he
have, minus the guys my dad took out before--" Her voice broke, but she refused to let
herself cry in front of everyone. Megumi rubbed her back comfortingly as Sano glared
at Hiko, who did his best to look meek again.
When Kaoru felt steadier, Hiko said, "The attackers at the dojo are a sign that
another of his followers is back. One of them could reanimate the dead as crude puppets,
but they remained dead bodies. But the wielders of the cursed weapons had never died,
though I don't know what the sakabatou did to them. At the height of their numbers, there
were at least five and as many as ten. Not all of the weapons were used, though all of
them were recovered. Now that all of them are gone again..." He shrugged helplessly.
"Great," Kaoru said. "So there could be ten maniacs out there and the entire cast of
'Thriller', and there's nothing we can do to stop them without the sakabatou?"
"There's nothing we can do to kill them," Hiko corrected. "We can keep them from
creating more corpse puppets by patrolling the non-cremated cemetaries at night, and we
can ward them off from entering certain buildings by putting ofuda on the doors."
Megumi beamed. "Ooh! Ofuda! I can do those! 'Aku ryou taisan' and stuff like that,
right? We covered that in my miko training at the shrine."
"Excellent," Hiko said, looking relieved. Glancing at Sano, he said, "I suppose it would
be too much to hope that you're a swordsmith?"
The fishbone whipped out of Sano's pocket again and flicked straight at Hiko, who
caught it. "Check it out," Sano said proudly. "Made it in shop last year when the teacher
wasn't looking."
With genuine admiration, Hiko ran his fingers down the edges of the fine bones. "This is
a truly nasty piece of work. Cut from a single piece of metal, was it? Ouch!" He whipped
his hand away and sucked a bleeding fingertip. Around it, he said, "You've kept the bones
perfectly parallel throughout, and they're really quite sharp on this side."
In a jumble, Kaoru and Megumi protested at Sano, "You've been combing your hair
with something that sharp? And walking around with it in your mouth, too! Do you want
some nice sharp scissors to run around with while you're at it?"
"Girls, girls, there's plenty more where that came from," he grinned. "I've got a whole set.
The ones I bring out most of the time are usually the wood or bone ones. Needed the shop
tools for that one, though."
"Well then, we're better off than I could have dared to hope." Hiko handed the fishbone
back. "We don't have the sakabatou, but we should be able to make smaller weapons that
will do them some harm. If I'd thought it would be stolen before I found you, I would
have asked our village elders to prepare something, but there's no time to wait for them
now.
"First of all, the weapons can't be made of iron or steel. Those metals won't hurt them.
Silver would be best, but perhaps we can make do with copper or wood.
"Secondly, the part that strikes them can have a point, but not an edge. I believe it's to do
with showing the gods that we bear no grudge against the human bodies the evil spirit has
taken, or the human souls that it replaced."
"As long as we don't have to keep resharpening a silver edge," Sano said, "because that'd
be a royal pain. It's a good excuse, anyway. How about the third thing? Is there a third
thing?"
"A third thing," Hiko said, thoughtfully. "No physical descriptions of them survive, but
the blades of their weapons are pitch-black. You can recognize them by that, if nothing
else. Don't let them strike you, or they'll feed on your life force. But even more importantly,
don't use their own weapons against them, or you'll become possessed as well. And
meanwhile, I believe these should be finished." He put his hot mitts back on to take the tray
back out of the kiln. The three friends leaped off the workbench as he turned around to set it
down there. This batch of pottery wasn't nearly as spectacular as the quenched raku ware. In
fact, all of these pieces looked exactly the same as before they went in: grey lumps, only
smaller and paler.
With his hand still in a mitt, Hiko picked up one lump and smacked it against the tray. It
broke open, hatching a mouthwatering smell. "Cornish game hens baked in clay," he said,
dumping the contents onto a raku plate. "Would any of you like one?"
---
Several Cornish game hens later, Kaoru felt much better. She stacked her empty plate on
Megumi's. Sano was still licking the juices off his. Hiko checked his wristwatch. "It's
nearly time for your classes to resume. I do hope you'll remember this time to stop by the
library at the end of the day?" He said this last sentence to Kaoru rather tentatively, with
more regret than reproach. She nodded, and he smiled.
Outside the kiln room, they split up; Megumi had biology class at the other end of the
building, and the other two were off to history to reclaim Kaoru's desk. When they were
halfway up the stairs, they heard someone coming up behind them and looked back, but it
wasn't Megumi, it was the aide from the library. Sano poked Kaoru with his elbow and
hissed, "Come on! Run for it!"
"But--" He was already running ahead of her; exasperated, she caught up to him at the
classroom door, but he kept going until he slid behind his desk. She sat down beside him
and he flashed a grin of triumph at her, then at the door, where the library aide was
coming into view. Belatedly, Kaoru remembered Sano's description of her desk's
usurper: a girly-man with long red hair in a ponytail?
She supposed it matched up with the boy walking in now, but he looked nothing like the
tall, wiry Bill Weasley type she'd expected. His hair was dark red, brightening nearly to
gold where the sunlight struck it through the window, and it was tied back to trail over a
slightly faded shirt whose color she couldn't even identify-- fuschia? puce? she knew
she'd seen it before in a nail polish bottle-- and which should have clashed horribly, but
somehow didn't. The hems of his jeans were ragged, and a hole in his sneakers showed
socks that were nearly the same color as his shirt, but not quite. He didn't look much
taller than she was, and he had fine, delicate features that were faintly clouded with
bewilderment as he reached her. "Oro?" he said.
"I told you before, it's her desk," Sano said. "Find another one."
The room was still only half-full. The newcomer put his bookbag at the desk in front of
Kaoru and looked at Sano with mild blue-violet eyes. "This must be Miss Kamiya-Summers,
of whom you've spoken," he said quietly. "Would you do me the honor of introducing me to
her?"
Sano rolled his eyes. "Okay, okay, if it'll make you shut up. Kaoru, this is Kenshin.
Kenshin, this is Kaoru. Are you happy?"
Kaoru extended her hand to meet Kenshin's, but instead of shaking it, he held it in his and
bent low toward it. His mouth didn't quite touch her skin, but she could feel his warm
breath and the touch of his hair for an instant, before he straightened up and let her go.
"I am at your service. Please accept my condolences for your recent loss," he said, and sat
down at his new desk, facing forward.
"See, I told you he was a weirdo," Sano stage-whispered to her. "You'd better close your
mouth before bugs fly in."
Belatedly, Kaoru snapped her slightly gaping mouth shut, still staring at the brightly-clad
shoulderblades in front of her.
-----
(This chapter is mostly infodump on how the background setup diverges from both
sources. And Megumi just up and volunteered to be a miko as part of the whole Willow
package. I'd feel better about this if I had more solid background info on miko-- it looks
like it's hereditary through the female line, the same way I had the silver sakabatou
passed down to Kaoru's father-- and Shinto in general, because I feel funny about using
people's religions as a plot device. Meanwhile, the black soul-sucking weapons were
inspired by Michael Moorcock's Elric series, now that I think about it. Next chapter
should be home life again, followed by the first night patrol. Hoping to goose the pace
back up or the entire project is going to take forever @_@ )
(Fresh note: S/R'ed "Zanza" to "Sano" throughout, because the former just keeps looking
funny to me; also added dashes as internal section-divisions, not just extra spaces. Fixed the
raku-finish details. Need to come up with a word that's shorter to type than "people using
cursed weapons"-- they're not classical vampires, but they're not the Mouseketeers either.
Don't think I have Kenshin's voice down yet-- trying to make his diction old-fashioned and
terribly polite, but instead he feels more like mini-Giles. Oh well, at least I have the excuse
that he and Hiko came from the same place.)