Neither Rurouni Kenshin nor Buffy belongs to me, although random assorted ickiness is
probably my fault instead of Watsuki Nobuhiro's or Joss Whedon's.
Edodale
By wombat
Chapter 12
Sano moved the little table to the center of the mini-dojo, on top of a tatami mat Megumi
had laid out after preparing the floor beneath it. She was washing her hands and face at
the sink in the corner. "You sure this isn't going to hurt anything? That fish burn on
Kenshin's arm was pretty heinous."
"Well, at least we finally got him out of the school so we could try this again," she said
between splashes. "Maybe it won't be as dangerous if he's outside the ofuda ring. Not to
mention actually planning this out instead of you just deciding to pop a silver fishbone
down onto his sword's blade. Shouldn't Yumi be here with it by now, anyway? Don't tell
me she's walking all the way here from Hiko's raku gallery."
"Nah, she bought this cool little moped that can zip through traffic. She still won't let me
try it, though." Yumi's little black knife was sitting on the mat beside him. He flicked the
hilt to make it spin around. "Funny how she doesn't seem to've changed nearly as much
as Kenshin. I mean, she can't've been like this before she got demonized, but it looks like
she's staying this way. Not that I'm complaining," he grinned.
Megumi snorted damply as she returned with a pitcher of water. "She was probably
mostly changed by staying in the brothel a few years before that. It doesn't sound like any
of the others had a huge personality leap like Kenshin's Battousai thing, even if they did
get a little weird. The whole soul-drinking thing must give them a major head rush. But
they all changed in the first place because of Battousai, and Kenshin got changed into
Battousai by the sword, so there has to be something we can do to the sword to change all
of them back. We know it really doesn't like silver or ofuda, but maybe we can find
something else that will counteract it without setting anything on fire."
"Fire bad," Sano agreed. He was gaping at Yumi, who had just entered from the hallway.
Her hair had been further disarranged by the helmet tucked under her arm, and she was
wearing enough leather to launch several PETA protests.
"Hey there," she said, giving Sano a funny look. "Oh, the dead cow? Hiko can say all he
wants about looking professional, but if I hit the road without protective gear, I'll look
like professional roadkill." She unstrapped the black katana from her back and handed it
to Megumi, who waved a hand in front of Sano's face.
"You can tack up that last section of shimenawa now. Come on, you're the only one of us
tall enough to reach that high, so get on up, drool-boy." Reluctantly, Sano went over to
the length of rope beside the doorway, strung with folded paper strips between straw
tassels. He'd already hung the rest of it around the room, just below the ceiling, and he
tacked up the loose end now to complete the loop.
Yumi spread out a white cloth on the table, checking a compass to make sure the corners
were pointing in the right directions. After putting the sword on the cloth, Megumi
surrounded it with various items she'd already prepared and set by the wall: a large empty
bowl, a much smaller bowl of dry rice, a plate of salt, and two tiny lidded jars of sake.
Before Sano could sit back down next to Yumi, Megumi passed him a little stone lantern
and a vase with a fir twig. "Put those down on the corners," she said, and decorated the
corners that were closer to her in the same way.
"Shouldn't you be decked out in the latest mikowear?" Sano asked.
Megumi twisted her hands together. "I thought about it, but if something goes wrong
again, it's awfully flammable. You know, long flappy sleeves, yards and yards of
hakama. I don't think it should make a lot of difference, or at least I hope not. I mean, if
we have to, we can try sneaking into the shrine in the middle of the night, but it was hard
enough explaining Yumi's knife to the chief priestess. I don't think she even took me
seriously anyway, but at least that made it easier to get it back. I'm wearing red and
white, anyway, so I hope that's good enough." She tilted her head at the other two, Yumi
in sleek black leather and Sano in blue denim.
"Okay," she finally said, "after I go all the way around, Yumi should be at the north
corner, and Sano should be at the east, and I'm going to be kind of halfway across from
both of you at the middle of the southwest side. So we might as well get started."
---
"Did you put on too much wasabi?" Joyce asked sympathetically. "That was quite a jump
there."
Kenshin attempted a reassuring smile, leaning forward and squirming slightly to keep
Kaoru from slipping her hand any further into his right front pocket. "Terribly careless of
me," he said, gulping water. Yahiko was too busy shovelling beef-bowl into his mouth to
notice anything, but Hiko had that glint in his eye that made Kenshin think another kick
might be coming under the table. It would probably hit Kaoru's foot instead of his. This
was not a comfort.
When he turned toward her, she was demurely holding tempura with her chopsticks, in a
clear demonstration of her right hand claiming culpable deniability for whatever her left
hand was up to. He knew perfectly well what her left hand was up to, which was about
halfway between the second and third knuckles of her fingers. He had a terrible feeling
that despite the excellence of the Akabeko's kitsune-zushi-- why did Megumi have to
keep being right?-- he was going to associate it henceforth with the torments of hell.
Kaoru glanced at him sideways, letting her tongue linger on the piece of carrot she was
nibbling on, and followed that with the most innocent smile imaginable. He would have
preferred her to be sticking knives into him until he looked like a clockwork hedgehog,
but no, she had to be doing this while they sat across from her mother! And Hiko! And--
Oh no, she'd successfully distracted him from blocking her. By rights, his entire blood
supply should have been splattering out arterial gouts through his nose, and its only
reason not to was that it had better things to do right now. Momentarily channelling Sano,
he muttered under his breath, "Oh, sweet freaking oro." He was going to survive this
dinner somehow, even if it killed him. Either that, or he was going to throw Kaoru onto
the table and do unspeakable things to her.
No, that was a very bad idea. He heard a muffled snap and opened his eyes again to see
his hand bleeding around his broken chopsticks. Yahiko looked even more impressed
than the combined quantity of Joyce's concern or Hiko's suspicion. "I'm terribly sorry,"
Kenshin apologized, wrapping his napkin around the damage. "It's just that I'm just a bit
tense. Perhaps I'll just step outside for a breath of fresh air, if you'll excuse me."
"Of course. Kaoru, why don't you go with him and make sure he's all right?"
"Please, there's no need for her to--"
"Don't be silly," Kaoru said kindly, already standing up to lead the way as if her shoes
had stayed on all this time. "Of course I'll come with you."
Hell. Pure unadulterated organic free-range hell. And she was pulling him into the alley
beside the Akabeko, too. That settled it, there would be no apology to Megumi
whatsoever.
---
Megumi finished circling the table, shaking a set of little bells at each corner of the cloth.
"You can put the knife in there now. You're really sure it isn't directly linked to you?"
Yumi dropped it into the large bowl. "Yeah, we all had a bunch of these little dinky
weapons. They weren't keyed to us like the major ones, so any of us could use them to
get snacks. Not as much power transfer, but more convenient when you wanted to throw
stuff around."
"Great," Megumi said. She knelt, clapped twice, and recited the ritual purification chant
as she sprinkled the knife with salt, rice, and sake before dripping water onto it with a fir
twig. Nothing alarming happened. She took a longer fir branch hung with linen strips and
waved it around over the knife, with the same lack of result.
"Um, okay then. Sano, can you hold the sword over the bowl?" He was wearing Hiko's
silver gauntlets, which Yumi had also brought from the gallery, and the black sword
looked even blacker by contrast against them, except for the crimson ruby at the top of its
hilt. This time, Megumi reversed the order, first stroking the blade with the damp twig,
then following it with sake. The rice and salt clung to the moisture, pale against the
metal's darkness. She handed the pitcher to Yumi. "How about you pour water down the
sword into the bowl while I wave the onusa around? Let me get the chant started first,
and then we'll see how things go."
---
"Miss Kaoru, please stop now. We ought to return to the others immediately." Kenshin
had followed her far enough into the alley that only a faint reflection of light reached
them from the street. This was exactly the sort of place where Battousai had loved to
hunt, even aside from Kaoru playing with him tonight like a cat's prey. It gave him a cold
trickling feeling down the back of his neck. "Why are you doing this?"
She sounded surprisingly forlorn. "Megumi said she had to try really hard to convince
you to come out tonight with us. I thought-- I thought maybe I could make you love me
again."
"I must ask you not to force me into doing something we'd both regret. Kaoru, I do love
you, more than I can say. But this is madness. You must stop doing this to me. To both of
us. You know this can't last, and afterward, you must forget about me."
"I don't want to forget you," she whispered, her voice breaking. "I want you to make me
remember you forever."
"Forever is a very long time." Carefully, as if approaching a dangerous animal, he stroked
her hair, ready to leap back at a moment's notice. "There are too many things I remember
that I don't want to happen to you. So please, let's go back, and we can discuss this again
in daylight. All right?"
She held his hand against her damp cheek. "All right," she finally sighed. "I'm sorry. It
was stupid to think I could make you want me."
His fingers clenched tight around hers, pulling them to run her nails' edges against his
mouth. "You have no idea how badly I want you. And that is exactly why we must stop
this right now."
"You have changed, haven't you, Battousai?" They both jerked toward the tall shape
silhouetted against the street, standing a few paces away from them with a sword in
hand. "Time was when you would've had her up against the wall in a minute and dead in
two. Thought you'd come back here sooner or later, and here we are."
Slowly, Kenshin pushed Kaoru behind him. "Good evening, Jineh."
"Or is that little scrap your replacement for Yumi? I know you killed her. I think she
needs to be avenged."
"Miss Kaoru, get out of here through the far end of the alley."
Between his shoulderblades, his shirt bunched together in her hands, just as when she
kissed him. "I can't just leave you here. You don't have any weapons at all, do you?"
His eyes still fixed on Jineh, Kenshin pulled a little box out of his left pocket and passed
it back to her. "At least you weren't sitting on my other side, or you might have found this
already. I was going to give it to you at the end of the evening, but I think you had better
take it now. Tell the others I've taken ill and have gone home, if you like. No doubt my
body will be lying here afterward, waiting to be collected. Now go." She went, taking
much of his apprehension with her. "Jineh, what do you want from me?"
Jineh still seemed to be watching Kaoru recede behind him. "I think I've seen that girl
before. With you, standing near Yumi's body. Is that what you killed her for? It doesn't
even seem to've reawakened your powers, so she died for nothing, and at the hands of a
little nobody like you. You were born from nothing, and I'm going to send you back to
nothing, the way I should have last time."
"You were never anything but a cold-blooded mercenary," Kenshin said. "When Yumi
came back with you, she said you'd caught her in an alley-- was it this one?-- with not
enough room to use her naginata when you attacked her. And you always wondered why
she never wanted you to touch her again. Or why Enishi kept Tomoe from being too kind
to give you the benefit of the doubt. Where are they now, and what did you do with the
sakabatou?"
"So you know about that, do you? Don't worry, I'm not going to use it on you yet. I want
to make you suffer first before I put you out of my misery."
For all his belligerence, Jineh still wasn't moving forward to attack He certainly didn't
have the sakabatou with him, though he could have left it nearby. Either that, or Enishi
had it. Yumi had been left to watch Tomoe the night of their raid on the Kamiya dojo,
and she'd barely caught a glimpse of the silver sword before the two men hid it away, but
she'd said enough of the arguments between them that there could have been a falling-out
by now.
Watching Jineh study his stance, Kenchin realized the other man wasn't sure whether he
was wearing his own sword hidden behind his back, the way Enishi sometimes did. He
tested this by taking a step forward. Jineh took one step in retreat. "You couldn't kill me
last time," Kenshin said. "Why do you think you'll do any better now?"
Jineh's sword floated toward the stained napkin around his hand. "Because it seems that
now, you bleed like any mortal. So maybe you can die like one too. Just like your little
scrap back there, so your ghosts can keep each other company."
The sword whipped back when Kenshin casually folded his arms, one hand concealed
from sight at his waist. "I don't think so. I think you should turn around and take
advantage of the head start I'm going to give you to make this more challenging." Would
the bluff work? Jineh was wavering, on the edge of turning away. "What number would
you like me to count to first? One hundred? Fifty? Ten?"
The standoff was broken by a noise behind him, a thin metallic crash and a cry of pain.
Kaoru? Instantly, Kenshin turned to see what had happened to her, but the only thing that
met his eyes was the dirt of the alley floor. The taste of blood and ashes filled his mouth
as Jineh trampled over his unscabbarded back.
---
Kaoru fumbled the box open as she ran, dumping its contents into her palm: something
that felt cool and faintly serpentine, sliding against itself with a metallic rustle. It wsa a
silver chain linked from the same sort of little wire rings he'd sewn onto her gloves, with
a tiny silver fishbone suspended from it. Though without a clasp to open the continuous
loop, it was still long enough to wrap around her throat several times, or maybe even go
around her waist as a belt. The fishbone would hold the chain closed with its own weight
if dropped through the other end. She poured it back into the box and tucked it into her
sash.
Looking up, she nearly skidded into a chain-link fence blocking that end of the alley from
the vacant lot behind it. There was barely enough light to outline the wire mesh from
where she was, much less from where the other two were still standing. She hoped there
wasn't enough light to outline her, either.
Her shoes may have come off easily under the table, but they stayed on as she climbed
up. Unfortunately, she hadn't been able to see the strands of barbed wire at the top, either,
and leaped back down clutching her hand, making the fence rattle against its posts. The
noise attracted the others' attention. As Kenshin began to move toward her, Jineh stabbed
him from behind, twisting the blade as he fell. Jineh stepped over his body and advanced
with all deliberate speed.
---
The bedsheets flowed like water, drowning her. Strange creatures nudged at her through
the pale linen foam, calling her name. "Tomoe. My own lovely, my sweet dove."
She opened her eyes, dazed. Enishi was lying beside her, on the other side of the
bedspread but with his face buried in her hair. His lids were shut tight as he pressed
against her hip again, whispering endearments. With a startled squeal, she rolled away.
He sat up to put his glasses back on, his breathing still labored. "Ah, you're awake again.
Have nice dreams while I was out?"
Pulling the sheets all the way up to her chin, Tomoe stared up at her brother. "Jineh's
sword made a nasty sound between my ribs. It turned all about, like it was cleaning cake
batter from a bowl. And then I was lying on the cold ground, with a little bluebird all
trapped in a cage behind me. The pavement tastes like broken glass."
"That doesn't sound nice at all. I'm sorry, pet." He stroked her cheek and kissed it, the
familiar lines of fraternal concern settling over his face. "I'll help you get dressed again, if
you like. Or would you rather make a go of it on your own while I fix up some supper for
us?"
---
Tonight was definitely not turning out as well as Kaoru would have liked. Just a little
while ago, she'd been sitting inside, blissfully enticing Kenshin into proving he loved her,
and now she only had a minute or two to come up with some way to fight this jerk who'd
killed him out here in the dark. And she'd thought Hiko was rude for interrupting them.
There didn't seem to be anything remotely weapon-like within reach, unless she could
somehow pull pieces off the fence. She'd already whipped the scarf off her ponytail
holder and tied it around her hand to bandage the cut she'd gotten from the barbed wire.
Wire? The little rings of silver wire on her gloves had burned Battousai, so she should be
able to use Kenshin's chain as a weapon against this guy. It needed something to make it
easier to handle, though. With a grimace at dragging more of her clothing into combat,
she unwrapped her sash and loosely braided it through the chain. Jineh was almost in
range already, so she whipped it out at him in warning. The little fishbone glinted at the
end as she caught it back. He laughed scornfully but didn't come any closer, and lashed
out with his sword when she flung her chained sash forward again.
---
Megumi put down her little bells again. "Well, this isn't working at all. Do you think we
should we just give up for the night?"
Flexing his fingers, Sano said, "I'm getting a cramp holding this thing, so if you're done,
I'm done. Unless Yumi has any ideas. Hey, you still awake over there?"
With her eyes still closed, Yumi said, "Shut up, I'm thinking. It's all about the jewels,
y'know? While my emerald was parked on that sword, I couldn't do squat until it popped
back into my naginata, but once it wasn't attached to anything, I was free. So what we
really need to do is get the jewels outta there." She looked back up at them again from her
cushion on the floor. "We've been messing around with the blade all night, but we haven't
done anything with the user-friendly end. How about we try one last round on Bats' ruby
in the kashira?"
"All right," Megumi said, without much hope. "Sano, can you keep it balanced upright so
help keep stuff from falling off the top of it?" She sprinkled sake onto the surface with a
fir twig, helping the rice and salt adhere. Yumi stood back up to pour water over the ruby
when Megumi resumed waving her onusa and chanting.
Sano yelped, his gauntleted hands twitching around the hilt. "Hey, when did you put hot
water into that pitcher?"
Yumi stuck her finger into the stream of water as she poured it out. "It's just the same old
water. What's with you? Jeez, did you cut yourself or something?"
"How would I cut myself just wearing these stupid glov-- what the hell is going on down
there?" The liquid falling from the tip of the sword was bright red and steaming hot, but
vanished as it struck the clear liquid in the bowl below it, where Yumi's knife gleamed
darkly at the bottom amid grains of rice. The ruby in the kashira seemed to be melting
away, bleeding down the blade.
"Whoa." Megumi set her onusa back down. "Do you think it worked?"
"Beats me." Yumi gave the hollow indentation a good rinsing to make sure it was
emptied out. As the last red droplets fell into the bowl, all of the liquid flashed crimson
and began to boil.
Sano jerked the sword away and dropped it. "Holy freaking crap," he proposed, and dove
for cover. All three of them ended up crammed under the sink as the steam cascaded up,
followed by the reek of burning rice. When the flames died down, they crept back out to
peek into the bowl.
Yumi promptly seconded Sano's motion. "Holy freaking crap." The center of the cloth
was scorched. The bowl was empty, except for a thin residue of rice ash sparkling with
salt. The black knife was gone. The two of them looked at Megumi questioningly.
"Ooh," Megumi said, biting her lip. "I have a really bad feeling about this."
---
Why couldn't Hiko come out and look for them? Kaoru furiously thought. She'd gotten
Jineh to back off a few more yards from the fence, thanks to some strategic hits to his
face, but he'd cut up her sash a bit too. At least the silver chain hadn't come apart yet. The
alley was narrow enough to mostly limit his attacks to forward stabs or direct overhead
swings, but that was still enough to do some serious damage if he hit her. It meant she
couldn't really attack his off side, either, because the only side she could get to was the
one with the long pointy metal poking out at her.
She prepared to attack him again, holding her left hand forward to distract him with the
fluttering scarf while she poised the sash over her right shoulder, half-coiled. His katana
hovered dangerously close to her wrist. He was trying to tempt her into trying to grab the
unsharpened side of the blade and force it away, but she knew he'd just flip it around to
cut through her hand. At least she had the slight advantage of seeing his outline against
the distant streetlights, but he had the huge advantage of having long pointy metal to poke
at her. Tonight had definitely become the suckiest date ever in the whole history of
suction.
His words were slightly distorted from the burn she'd cut across his mouth. "Why don't
you just give up now and let your blood join Battousai's on my sword? Or do you want to
finish cleaning his off it first with your rag?" Her sash did have bloodstains on it near the
cuts. She couldn't think about that now.
"Shut up." She feinted to the right and leaped out of the slantwise path of his katana. A
bouquet of sparks bloomed from his blade as it skittered across the wall, and she whipped
the sash across at him from the left. It would have clipped him in the ear if it hadn't been
blocked by his hat. She had quickly formed a passionate hatred for that hat, which was
either very tight or held on with a chin strap, because she couldn't knock it off his head.
"Yumi didn't get a grave, but I think she deserves funeral offerings anyway. Blood is
thicker than water, and much richer than sake."
She dodged again, moving back a few steps. If Kenshin hadn't told him Yumi was still
alive, Kaoru supposed there had to be a good reason, but right now she was getting
awfully impatient for Kenshin to pop back up and do his share of the fighting. At the
least, he could go grab Hiko, who was sure to have something dangerous in his car.
Jineh came at her again, with a low running stab that would swing up and slice her in half
if she let him get the sword's point between her ankles. The best she could do was to
flatten herself against the wall and let it go past her, then jump over it when he struck
sideways. The chained sash went out again, striking the side of his neck.
He swore at her, but by that time, she'd gotten past him. Her shadow poured toward him,
a dark dagger in a sea of red light. For some reason, Jineh was just standing there staring
instead of starting to chase her. She could live with that. She turned and ran, with the sash
draped around her neck like a scarf.
When she got back to Kenshin, she grabbed his arms and tried to drag him toward the
street on his back, out of the pool of blood he was still lying in. There was something
weird about the blood, though. It looked like something had fallen into it just before she
got there, a little black knife, and glowing ripples were spreading out around it. When
they reached the edge of the pool, the ripples began to move backward, and so did
Kenshin's blood. It was all glowing now, an avalanche of pale fire in reverse, tumbling up
and over itself into his body. He pulled one hand from her grasp to grope for the knife,
and his eyes opened like windows of flame.
"I've been looking forward to this," Battousai said. Seizing the dangling ends of the sash,
he pulled her head down for a bruising kiss, deftly throwing another loop of cloth around
her neck to form a noose he could drag her by. He stood up, keeping a firm grip on the
ends with his napkin-bound hand so the silver chain didn't touch his skin. "But first, some
unfinished business with Jineh."
---
"Megumi, a bad feeling is what you get from cafeteria chili. This is more like what
happens when you eat potato salad that's been sitting out all weekend. I know you've
never done that, but trust me on this one." Even with Hiko's gauntlets still on, Sano had
edged away about ten feet from the sword, which he'd left lying on the mat. "What just
happened, and what do we do now?"
"Um, well, I think we just transferred the main Battousai-making demon into the knife,
and it's gone to find Kenshin. This is bad. Really bad. Maybe not as bad as your common
sense for 'can I eat this?', but really darn bad."
Grabbing a gauntlet from Sano, Yumi put it on and poked the hollow of the kashira.
"Weird. None of the jewels down in the tsuba headed into the penthouse up here. But I
guess they know which weapon they belong to, so if you tried to chase out the sapphire, it
would zap straight back to Enishi's watou. But this sword is the ruby's home base, so it
shouldn't have anywhere else to go. Wonder what would've happened if my knife hadn't
been down there?"
"We can find out next time, if Hiko or Battousai don't find us first and send us on the all-
access tour of Wide World of Pain. How about we finish up the damage control on this
time before we worry about that, okay? Megumi, you don't have an 'undo last action'
button for your ritual, do you?"
"Not really, but if we chased the demon out with the purification ritual, then maybe we
could get it back by making the sword all, I don't know, skanky or something? Yell bad
words at it? Take it to the bathroom and give it a swirly?"
Yumi grinned. "Nah, it's gotta be much easier than that. Or at least I bet I know a good
way to skank it up. Know what one of the most universal get-outta-my-house-of-worship
ritual uncleanliness conditions is?"
"What?"
Megumi sat back from Yumi's whisper. "Oh. Yikes. I mean, good call, but it's not really
in my timetable, if you know what I mean."
"What?" Sano repeated, more impatiently.
"I'll take care of it. Gimme that little bowl." Leaving the gauntlet behind, Yumi headed
off to the sink corner.
"What?!" Megumi got up and moved directly between Sano and Yumi to block his view.
"Hey!"
"Trust her on this one," Yumi called back. "Guys can get really funny about having their
romantic impressions shattered, you know?"
---
Battousai pulled Kaoru with him as he moved toward Jineh, step by step. Her instant
reflex had been to fight him off, grabbing onto the sash to create some slack around her
neck, but he'd simply slid his blade along her wrist, barely scratching the skin. Only a few
narrow beads of blood had welled up, but it had felt horrible out of all proportion. She
was afraid she was going to throw up and choke to death as he dragged her into
stumbling behind him, with her scratched wrist still caught up beside her neck inside the
noose.
With the hand not holding her leash, he was flipping the little black knife. It looked
almost like Yumi's, except for the ruby at the end of its hilt. The blade was less than a
foot long, a tiny thing compared to the full length of a katana, but Jineh still didn't seem
to like the looks of it. There was a flicker of fear in his face, and the faint reflection of red
and golden flame.
"Put down your sword and I might let you walk away. Otherwise, I'm going to take you
apart and leave with some of the pieces, so you'd have to wait for them to grow back on
their own. And since this knife isn't very big, cutting you up with it could take a long
time."
Jineh considered this warily. "And holding it in your left hand is supposed to make things
more challenging again? Or is that just because your right hand is hurt? I think you're still
bluffing."
"Try me."
The katana flashed forward. The black knife blocked it, shoving it into the wall. With
vertiginous disbelief, Kaoru felt the leash yank her around, forcing her into a stumbling
run at arm's length to knock Jineh over. Somehow, she kept her balance, but it didn't help
when Battousai leaped hard onto Jineh's hand to break his fingers around the katana's hilt,
then dragged her a few yards further back to tie her leash to the fence. As he returned to
Jineh, he shook the napkin loose from his healed right hand and stuffed the cloth into the
other man's mouth to muffle the groans of pain.
"Well, now you can practice swordplay with your left hand too. Though without a sword,
perhaps you don't need a sword hand at all." The katana sliced down, severing the
mangled flesh at the wrist. Battousai scooped it up with the point and deftly hurled it over
the fence as if playing lacrosse. "You mentioned bluffing, didn't you? Ever hear of a
game called 'Blind Man's Bluff'? Maybe we can try that, if I take out your eyeballs
before I let you try to run. Spin you around a few times first, too. And I've always
wondered, if one of us were cut exactly in half, could both halves regrow themselves over
time? Or could I just take one of them and roll the cut side in salt to find out what half of
a scream sounds like?"
Kaoru really did think she was going to throw up. "Stop it. Let him go."
"You've already interrupted my meal once tonight. If you do that again, you'll regret it."
As Jineh tried to struggle up, Battousai sat astride his chest and snapped the man's elbows
backwards, one over each knee, then lifted the maimed arm almost tenderly and began to
peel off the skin with the little black knife, leaving it to dangle in long strips. With each
cut, a soft glow swirled through the ruby, illuminating an incongruous expression of bliss
horribly similar to the one she saw whenever she scritched the back of Kenshin's neck.
He'd left the katana on the ground beside him, and his attention seemed distracted from
her, to say the least. Or at least she hoped so, because she didn't want to look too closely
at him right now either. Surreptitiously, she loosened the sash around her neck. Could she
slip it off and run past him, or would that be too dangerous? She tugged at the sash a little
harder and felt the fabric start to give at one end, where Jineh had slashed it before.
Without looking up, Battousai said, "I can hear the fence rattling, you know. Oh, you can
take that off now, but you're not going anywhere yet. Not without me. And you know
what will happen to you if you use that katana on me, don't you?"
Damn! She'd forgotten about that. Jineh's eyes swiveled toward her, but Battousai said, "I
don't like the way you're looking at my little bluebird," and cut them open. Kaoru yanked
the loop off her head and fell to her knees, losing her tempura.
Slowly, she hauled herself back up the fence to finish untying the sash. The silver chain
braided around it was still intact, though she wished now that it had been cut in half. She
wrapped the chained sash around her right hand, hoping her practice with Hiko had
strengthened her wrist enough for this. When she bent to pick up the katana, Battousai
didn't stop her, merely smiling up over his work. He'd started to gut Jineh now, and all of
the organs were still squelching and pulsing, separately alive. "Do you really think that
will prevent you from becoming one of us when you cut me?"
"I don't know," she said, her voice shaking slightly. "But I have to try."
"You do, don't you? You'll put that willpower to better use at my side. Cut me, then." He
raised his hand to the blade pointing at him and ran his thumb along the edge. Pale light
trickled out and shot up the blade toward the hilt, and Kaoru's sash-bound hand around it.
The silver chain flickered like lightning.
---
"Oh, man," Sano said, backing away from the little bowl Yumi brought back from the
corner. "It's bad enough seeing the ads for all the gear on tv. I just don't want to hear
about wings and dams unless it's a bombing-raid game, you know? What's next,
propellers?"
"Told you." She held it out to Megumi, who waved it off to indicate that she was
perfectly willing to let Yumi handle the rest of the process as well; similarly, Sano
handed the gauntlets back to her. She set the bowl back down so she could put them back
on. "I don't know why menstrual blood is such a huge taboo, but I guess kami don't feel
any better about it than Rooster-Head here."
He hunched his shoulders down, making his hair flop around in the loose points it clung
together in. "Can I just say this is not the introduction to practical gynecology that my
manly parts have hoped for?"
"Though at least it's easier to deal with now than the old days," Yumi blithely continued.
"All these cool ultra-absorbent things, though actually I like this little rubber cup that just
dumps out-- good thing too, or I would've had to squeeze stuff back out into the bowl."
Even Megumi looked uneasy. "Um, can we just get on with this? I have no idea what a
re-skanking ritual should be like, so why don't you just dump it in and see what
happens?"
"Sure thing." Yumi held the sword steady over the large bowl and poured the contents of
the smaller one into the concavity where the ruby had been. From their seats on the floor,
the other two watched her as she stood over them, her brows furrowed with concentration
to avoid spilling anything over the gauntlets and down into the ash. In a low voice, she
said, "You guys should take a look. This is wicked cool."
Sano stayed down, but Megumi was curious. "Whoa," she said. "So what happens now?"
The blood was rising up beyond the dome that simple surface tension would create, into a
form that suggested cut and polished facets, though it was still rippling in a liquid
shimmer.
"Dunno." The two girls watched the last drops pour down into it, completing the shape.
"I've got a hunch, though. Grab some of that ash down there and sprinkle it on top."
Though still liquid, the blood began to glow. Sano braced himself to head back under the
sink.
---
Kaoru couldn't move. The pale fire was lapping at the sash around her right hand, soaking
up into it and flaring out in little plumes around each silver link. Sliding his thumb further
up the katana, Battousai gripped it just under the hilt as he stood directly before her,
tracing her throat with his knife before sliding it down the neck of her dress. The blade
was cold against her skin, with only the small hand-guard hooked over her collar to keep
it from falling all the way in. He contemplated the chain. "Perhaps it's enough after all.
But you only have it wrapped around one side."
His kiss bit into her lip, drawing the salt taste of blood. She couldn't free herself from it
any more than she could stop him from pulling at her left hand, protected only by the
scarf from her hair. Before touching it directly to the sword, he pressed it against his own
hand, forcing the blade even deeper into his thumb. She could feel the scrape of metal
against bone through his flesh, and then he was nudging her hand up to the hilt. It never
got there.
A warm splash fell between them, soaking into both their chests. It had fallen from his
knife. She pulled away from him, because she could, and saw blood still dripping from
the empty hollow at the top of the hilt. She'd let go of the katana, too, and it clung to him
for a moment, held by simple friction, before falling away from its own weight.
When he reached out, she stepped back. He looked back up from the sword to her, with
blood throbbing out of the deep cut in his thumb. The golden light in his eyes had snuffed
out like a candle, leaving only smoke-rings of grief around them.
"Miss Kaoru, I think I had better return home. Please give my regrets to the others."
"Kenshin?" she said tentatively. "Kenshin, what just happened?"
"I don't know, but I have no wish for it to happen again. Especially with you so close by."
He removed his sweater, painfully clenching his wounded thumb in his fist to keep from
bleeding into the dark red wool, and handed it to her. "Perhaps if you wear that, it will
conceal most of the damage to your lovely dress. I'm very sorry."
By the time she'd taken the knife out of her neckline and pulled the sweater over her
head, he was halfway back to the street. She scooped up the weapons and chased him.
"Wait, don't you want to take these back with you? What about Jineh?"
He closed his eyes and shuddered. "I believe he'll be incapacitated for some time.
However, it seems imprudent for me to be armed under these conditions. Perhaps you can
hide them beneath Mr. Hiko's car for the moment and have him deal with them later.
Good night."
"But your hand," she insisted. She untied the hair-scarf from her hand, but he pushed it
away.
"They'll notice you're not wearing it. Perhaps what's left of your sash?" He helped her
unwind and untangle it. While she wound a piece of the dark cloth over his wound, he
shook out the silver chain, still miraculously intact, and wrapped it around her neck a few
times before dropping the fishbone through the end loop and tucking all of it against her
skin, beneath his sweater. "Miss Kaoru, I almost wish--"
"Yes?"
He sighed. "I should go. It's a long walk back." She still wouldn't let him, fiddling with
the knot around his thumb..
"Are you sure? Hiko can drive you back if you wait around."
"With the weapons nearby? I'm afraid not. Miss Kaoru, I regret being brusque, but what
do you want from me right now?"
"The same as before this happened." She brought his hand to her lips. "I want you."
The torn piece of sash nearly fell off as he jerked away. "Even after that? You could have
been killed tonight, or worse."
"But Battousai isn't you, Kenshin."
"I don't even know that. How can you know?" He stepped back. "Miss Kaoru, I've
already hurt you enough, and the closer I come to you, the more danger you're in. I
couldn't protect you from Jineh, and I can't protect you from myself."
"I was perfectly capable of protecting myself from both of you tonight," she retorted, but
he shook his head.
"No. If my reversal hadn't occurred when it did, you would have been one of us by now. I
wanted it to happen. Part of me still wants it to happen. I can still taste your blood in my
mouth, and it makes me want to--" He turned away and left her, nearly running. When
she emerged from the alley, he was gone.
She slid the weapons under Hiko's car, as he'd suggested, and tied the scarf back into her
hair. Kenshin's sweater was dark enough that the bloodstains didn't show, and long
enough to hide her missing sash. She went back into the Akabeko. The hostess handed
her two takeout boxes and an envelope. "You're Joyce's daughter, right? They've gone to
the theatre around the corner to see a movie. Your tickets are in here."
Well, that took care of one set of explanations. If only everything else could be so easy.
-----
Megumi's setup and supplies: http://www.mii.kurume-u.ac.jp/~leuers/shime.htm ; also
Stuart D. B. Picken, _Shinto: Japan's Spiritual Roots_, Tokyo: Kodansha, 1980.
little rubber cup: http://keeper.com/
probably my fault instead of Watsuki Nobuhiro's or Joss Whedon's.
Edodale
By wombat
Chapter 12
Sano moved the little table to the center of the mini-dojo, on top of a tatami mat Megumi
had laid out after preparing the floor beneath it. She was washing her hands and face at
the sink in the corner. "You sure this isn't going to hurt anything? That fish burn on
Kenshin's arm was pretty heinous."
"Well, at least we finally got him out of the school so we could try this again," she said
between splashes. "Maybe it won't be as dangerous if he's outside the ofuda ring. Not to
mention actually planning this out instead of you just deciding to pop a silver fishbone
down onto his sword's blade. Shouldn't Yumi be here with it by now, anyway? Don't tell
me she's walking all the way here from Hiko's raku gallery."
"Nah, she bought this cool little moped that can zip through traffic. She still won't let me
try it, though." Yumi's little black knife was sitting on the mat beside him. He flicked the
hilt to make it spin around. "Funny how she doesn't seem to've changed nearly as much
as Kenshin. I mean, she can't've been like this before she got demonized, but it looks like
she's staying this way. Not that I'm complaining," he grinned.
Megumi snorted damply as she returned with a pitcher of water. "She was probably
mostly changed by staying in the brothel a few years before that. It doesn't sound like any
of the others had a huge personality leap like Kenshin's Battousai thing, even if they did
get a little weird. The whole soul-drinking thing must give them a major head rush. But
they all changed in the first place because of Battousai, and Kenshin got changed into
Battousai by the sword, so there has to be something we can do to the sword to change all
of them back. We know it really doesn't like silver or ofuda, but maybe we can find
something else that will counteract it without setting anything on fire."
"Fire bad," Sano agreed. He was gaping at Yumi, who had just entered from the hallway.
Her hair had been further disarranged by the helmet tucked under her arm, and she was
wearing enough leather to launch several PETA protests.
"Hey there," she said, giving Sano a funny look. "Oh, the dead cow? Hiko can say all he
wants about looking professional, but if I hit the road without protective gear, I'll look
like professional roadkill." She unstrapped the black katana from her back and handed it
to Megumi, who waved a hand in front of Sano's face.
"You can tack up that last section of shimenawa now. Come on, you're the only one of us
tall enough to reach that high, so get on up, drool-boy." Reluctantly, Sano went over to
the length of rope beside the doorway, strung with folded paper strips between straw
tassels. He'd already hung the rest of it around the room, just below the ceiling, and he
tacked up the loose end now to complete the loop.
Yumi spread out a white cloth on the table, checking a compass to make sure the corners
were pointing in the right directions. After putting the sword on the cloth, Megumi
surrounded it with various items she'd already prepared and set by the wall: a large empty
bowl, a much smaller bowl of dry rice, a plate of salt, and two tiny lidded jars of sake.
Before Sano could sit back down next to Yumi, Megumi passed him a little stone lantern
and a vase with a fir twig. "Put those down on the corners," she said, and decorated the
corners that were closer to her in the same way.
"Shouldn't you be decked out in the latest mikowear?" Sano asked.
Megumi twisted her hands together. "I thought about it, but if something goes wrong
again, it's awfully flammable. You know, long flappy sleeves, yards and yards of
hakama. I don't think it should make a lot of difference, or at least I hope not. I mean, if
we have to, we can try sneaking into the shrine in the middle of the night, but it was hard
enough explaining Yumi's knife to the chief priestess. I don't think she even took me
seriously anyway, but at least that made it easier to get it back. I'm wearing red and
white, anyway, so I hope that's good enough." She tilted her head at the other two, Yumi
in sleek black leather and Sano in blue denim.
"Okay," she finally said, "after I go all the way around, Yumi should be at the north
corner, and Sano should be at the east, and I'm going to be kind of halfway across from
both of you at the middle of the southwest side. So we might as well get started."
---
"Did you put on too much wasabi?" Joyce asked sympathetically. "That was quite a jump
there."
Kenshin attempted a reassuring smile, leaning forward and squirming slightly to keep
Kaoru from slipping her hand any further into his right front pocket. "Terribly careless of
me," he said, gulping water. Yahiko was too busy shovelling beef-bowl into his mouth to
notice anything, but Hiko had that glint in his eye that made Kenshin think another kick
might be coming under the table. It would probably hit Kaoru's foot instead of his. This
was not a comfort.
When he turned toward her, she was demurely holding tempura with her chopsticks, in a
clear demonstration of her right hand claiming culpable deniability for whatever her left
hand was up to. He knew perfectly well what her left hand was up to, which was about
halfway between the second and third knuckles of her fingers. He had a terrible feeling
that despite the excellence of the Akabeko's kitsune-zushi-- why did Megumi have to
keep being right?-- he was going to associate it henceforth with the torments of hell.
Kaoru glanced at him sideways, letting her tongue linger on the piece of carrot she was
nibbling on, and followed that with the most innocent smile imaginable. He would have
preferred her to be sticking knives into him until he looked like a clockwork hedgehog,
but no, she had to be doing this while they sat across from her mother! And Hiko! And--
Oh no, she'd successfully distracted him from blocking her. By rights, his entire blood
supply should have been splattering out arterial gouts through his nose, and its only
reason not to was that it had better things to do right now. Momentarily channelling Sano,
he muttered under his breath, "Oh, sweet freaking oro." He was going to survive this
dinner somehow, even if it killed him. Either that, or he was going to throw Kaoru onto
the table and do unspeakable things to her.
No, that was a very bad idea. He heard a muffled snap and opened his eyes again to see
his hand bleeding around his broken chopsticks. Yahiko looked even more impressed
than the combined quantity of Joyce's concern or Hiko's suspicion. "I'm terribly sorry,"
Kenshin apologized, wrapping his napkin around the damage. "It's just that I'm just a bit
tense. Perhaps I'll just step outside for a breath of fresh air, if you'll excuse me."
"Of course. Kaoru, why don't you go with him and make sure he's all right?"
"Please, there's no need for her to--"
"Don't be silly," Kaoru said kindly, already standing up to lead the way as if her shoes
had stayed on all this time. "Of course I'll come with you."
Hell. Pure unadulterated organic free-range hell. And she was pulling him into the alley
beside the Akabeko, too. That settled it, there would be no apology to Megumi
whatsoever.
---
Megumi finished circling the table, shaking a set of little bells at each corner of the cloth.
"You can put the knife in there now. You're really sure it isn't directly linked to you?"
Yumi dropped it into the large bowl. "Yeah, we all had a bunch of these little dinky
weapons. They weren't keyed to us like the major ones, so any of us could use them to
get snacks. Not as much power transfer, but more convenient when you wanted to throw
stuff around."
"Great," Megumi said. She knelt, clapped twice, and recited the ritual purification chant
as she sprinkled the knife with salt, rice, and sake before dripping water onto it with a fir
twig. Nothing alarming happened. She took a longer fir branch hung with linen strips and
waved it around over the knife, with the same lack of result.
"Um, okay then. Sano, can you hold the sword over the bowl?" He was wearing Hiko's
silver gauntlets, which Yumi had also brought from the gallery, and the black sword
looked even blacker by contrast against them, except for the crimson ruby at the top of its
hilt. This time, Megumi reversed the order, first stroking the blade with the damp twig,
then following it with sake. The rice and salt clung to the moisture, pale against the
metal's darkness. She handed the pitcher to Yumi. "How about you pour water down the
sword into the bowl while I wave the onusa around? Let me get the chant started first,
and then we'll see how things go."
---
"Miss Kaoru, please stop now. We ought to return to the others immediately." Kenshin
had followed her far enough into the alley that only a faint reflection of light reached
them from the street. This was exactly the sort of place where Battousai had loved to
hunt, even aside from Kaoru playing with him tonight like a cat's prey. It gave him a cold
trickling feeling down the back of his neck. "Why are you doing this?"
She sounded surprisingly forlorn. "Megumi said she had to try really hard to convince
you to come out tonight with us. I thought-- I thought maybe I could make you love me
again."
"I must ask you not to force me into doing something we'd both regret. Kaoru, I do love
you, more than I can say. But this is madness. You must stop doing this to me. To both of
us. You know this can't last, and afterward, you must forget about me."
"I don't want to forget you," she whispered, her voice breaking. "I want you to make me
remember you forever."
"Forever is a very long time." Carefully, as if approaching a dangerous animal, he stroked
her hair, ready to leap back at a moment's notice. "There are too many things I remember
that I don't want to happen to you. So please, let's go back, and we can discuss this again
in daylight. All right?"
She held his hand against her damp cheek. "All right," she finally sighed. "I'm sorry. It
was stupid to think I could make you want me."
His fingers clenched tight around hers, pulling them to run her nails' edges against his
mouth. "You have no idea how badly I want you. And that is exactly why we must stop
this right now."
"You have changed, haven't you, Battousai?" They both jerked toward the tall shape
silhouetted against the street, standing a few paces away from them with a sword in
hand. "Time was when you would've had her up against the wall in a minute and dead in
two. Thought you'd come back here sooner or later, and here we are."
Slowly, Kenshin pushed Kaoru behind him. "Good evening, Jineh."
"Or is that little scrap your replacement for Yumi? I know you killed her. I think she
needs to be avenged."
"Miss Kaoru, get out of here through the far end of the alley."
Between his shoulderblades, his shirt bunched together in her hands, just as when she
kissed him. "I can't just leave you here. You don't have any weapons at all, do you?"
His eyes still fixed on Jineh, Kenshin pulled a little box out of his left pocket and passed
it back to her. "At least you weren't sitting on my other side, or you might have found this
already. I was going to give it to you at the end of the evening, but I think you had better
take it now. Tell the others I've taken ill and have gone home, if you like. No doubt my
body will be lying here afterward, waiting to be collected. Now go." She went, taking
much of his apprehension with her. "Jineh, what do you want from me?"
Jineh still seemed to be watching Kaoru recede behind him. "I think I've seen that girl
before. With you, standing near Yumi's body. Is that what you killed her for? It doesn't
even seem to've reawakened your powers, so she died for nothing, and at the hands of a
little nobody like you. You were born from nothing, and I'm going to send you back to
nothing, the way I should have last time."
"You were never anything but a cold-blooded mercenary," Kenshin said. "When Yumi
came back with you, she said you'd caught her in an alley-- was it this one?-- with not
enough room to use her naginata when you attacked her. And you always wondered why
she never wanted you to touch her again. Or why Enishi kept Tomoe from being too kind
to give you the benefit of the doubt. Where are they now, and what did you do with the
sakabatou?"
"So you know about that, do you? Don't worry, I'm not going to use it on you yet. I want
to make you suffer first before I put you out of my misery."
For all his belligerence, Jineh still wasn't moving forward to attack He certainly didn't
have the sakabatou with him, though he could have left it nearby. Either that, or Enishi
had it. Yumi had been left to watch Tomoe the night of their raid on the Kamiya dojo,
and she'd barely caught a glimpse of the silver sword before the two men hid it away, but
she'd said enough of the arguments between them that there could have been a falling-out
by now.
Watching Jineh study his stance, Kenchin realized the other man wasn't sure whether he
was wearing his own sword hidden behind his back, the way Enishi sometimes did. He
tested this by taking a step forward. Jineh took one step in retreat. "You couldn't kill me
last time," Kenshin said. "Why do you think you'll do any better now?"
Jineh's sword floated toward the stained napkin around his hand. "Because it seems that
now, you bleed like any mortal. So maybe you can die like one too. Just like your little
scrap back there, so your ghosts can keep each other company."
The sword whipped back when Kenshin casually folded his arms, one hand concealed
from sight at his waist. "I don't think so. I think you should turn around and take
advantage of the head start I'm going to give you to make this more challenging." Would
the bluff work? Jineh was wavering, on the edge of turning away. "What number would
you like me to count to first? One hundred? Fifty? Ten?"
The standoff was broken by a noise behind him, a thin metallic crash and a cry of pain.
Kaoru? Instantly, Kenshin turned to see what had happened to her, but the only thing that
met his eyes was the dirt of the alley floor. The taste of blood and ashes filled his mouth
as Jineh trampled over his unscabbarded back.
---
Kaoru fumbled the box open as she ran, dumping its contents into her palm: something
that felt cool and faintly serpentine, sliding against itself with a metallic rustle. It wsa a
silver chain linked from the same sort of little wire rings he'd sewn onto her gloves, with
a tiny silver fishbone suspended from it. Though without a clasp to open the continuous
loop, it was still long enough to wrap around her throat several times, or maybe even go
around her waist as a belt. The fishbone would hold the chain closed with its own weight
if dropped through the other end. She poured it back into the box and tucked it into her
sash.
Looking up, she nearly skidded into a chain-link fence blocking that end of the alley from
the vacant lot behind it. There was barely enough light to outline the wire mesh from
where she was, much less from where the other two were still standing. She hoped there
wasn't enough light to outline her, either.
Her shoes may have come off easily under the table, but they stayed on as she climbed
up. Unfortunately, she hadn't been able to see the strands of barbed wire at the top, either,
and leaped back down clutching her hand, making the fence rattle against its posts. The
noise attracted the others' attention. As Kenshin began to move toward her, Jineh stabbed
him from behind, twisting the blade as he fell. Jineh stepped over his body and advanced
with all deliberate speed.
---
The bedsheets flowed like water, drowning her. Strange creatures nudged at her through
the pale linen foam, calling her name. "Tomoe. My own lovely, my sweet dove."
She opened her eyes, dazed. Enishi was lying beside her, on the other side of the
bedspread but with his face buried in her hair. His lids were shut tight as he pressed
against her hip again, whispering endearments. With a startled squeal, she rolled away.
He sat up to put his glasses back on, his breathing still labored. "Ah, you're awake again.
Have nice dreams while I was out?"
Pulling the sheets all the way up to her chin, Tomoe stared up at her brother. "Jineh's
sword made a nasty sound between my ribs. It turned all about, like it was cleaning cake
batter from a bowl. And then I was lying on the cold ground, with a little bluebird all
trapped in a cage behind me. The pavement tastes like broken glass."
"That doesn't sound nice at all. I'm sorry, pet." He stroked her cheek and kissed it, the
familiar lines of fraternal concern settling over his face. "I'll help you get dressed again, if
you like. Or would you rather make a go of it on your own while I fix up some supper for
us?"
---
Tonight was definitely not turning out as well as Kaoru would have liked. Just a little
while ago, she'd been sitting inside, blissfully enticing Kenshin into proving he loved her,
and now she only had a minute or two to come up with some way to fight this jerk who'd
killed him out here in the dark. And she'd thought Hiko was rude for interrupting them.
There didn't seem to be anything remotely weapon-like within reach, unless she could
somehow pull pieces off the fence. She'd already whipped the scarf off her ponytail
holder and tied it around her hand to bandage the cut she'd gotten from the barbed wire.
Wire? The little rings of silver wire on her gloves had burned Battousai, so she should be
able to use Kenshin's chain as a weapon against this guy. It needed something to make it
easier to handle, though. With a grimace at dragging more of her clothing into combat,
she unwrapped her sash and loosely braided it through the chain. Jineh was almost in
range already, so she whipped it out at him in warning. The little fishbone glinted at the
end as she caught it back. He laughed scornfully but didn't come any closer, and lashed
out with his sword when she flung her chained sash forward again.
---
Megumi put down her little bells again. "Well, this isn't working at all. Do you think we
should we just give up for the night?"
Flexing his fingers, Sano said, "I'm getting a cramp holding this thing, so if you're done,
I'm done. Unless Yumi has any ideas. Hey, you still awake over there?"
With her eyes still closed, Yumi said, "Shut up, I'm thinking. It's all about the jewels,
y'know? While my emerald was parked on that sword, I couldn't do squat until it popped
back into my naginata, but once it wasn't attached to anything, I was free. So what we
really need to do is get the jewels outta there." She looked back up at them again from her
cushion on the floor. "We've been messing around with the blade all night, but we haven't
done anything with the user-friendly end. How about we try one last round on Bats' ruby
in the kashira?"
"All right," Megumi said, without much hope. "Sano, can you keep it balanced upright so
help keep stuff from falling off the top of it?" She sprinkled sake onto the surface with a
fir twig, helping the rice and salt adhere. Yumi stood back up to pour water over the ruby
when Megumi resumed waving her onusa and chanting.
Sano yelped, his gauntleted hands twitching around the hilt. "Hey, when did you put hot
water into that pitcher?"
Yumi stuck her finger into the stream of water as she poured it out. "It's just the same old
water. What's with you? Jeez, did you cut yourself or something?"
"How would I cut myself just wearing these stupid glov-- what the hell is going on down
there?" The liquid falling from the tip of the sword was bright red and steaming hot, but
vanished as it struck the clear liquid in the bowl below it, where Yumi's knife gleamed
darkly at the bottom amid grains of rice. The ruby in the kashira seemed to be melting
away, bleeding down the blade.
"Whoa." Megumi set her onusa back down. "Do you think it worked?"
"Beats me." Yumi gave the hollow indentation a good rinsing to make sure it was
emptied out. As the last red droplets fell into the bowl, all of the liquid flashed crimson
and began to boil.
Sano jerked the sword away and dropped it. "Holy freaking crap," he proposed, and dove
for cover. All three of them ended up crammed under the sink as the steam cascaded up,
followed by the reek of burning rice. When the flames died down, they crept back out to
peek into the bowl.
Yumi promptly seconded Sano's motion. "Holy freaking crap." The center of the cloth
was scorched. The bowl was empty, except for a thin residue of rice ash sparkling with
salt. The black knife was gone. The two of them looked at Megumi questioningly.
"Ooh," Megumi said, biting her lip. "I have a really bad feeling about this."
---
Why couldn't Hiko come out and look for them? Kaoru furiously thought. She'd gotten
Jineh to back off a few more yards from the fence, thanks to some strategic hits to his
face, but he'd cut up her sash a bit too. At least the silver chain hadn't come apart yet. The
alley was narrow enough to mostly limit his attacks to forward stabs or direct overhead
swings, but that was still enough to do some serious damage if he hit her. It meant she
couldn't really attack his off side, either, because the only side she could get to was the
one with the long pointy metal poking out at her.
She prepared to attack him again, holding her left hand forward to distract him with the
fluttering scarf while she poised the sash over her right shoulder, half-coiled. His katana
hovered dangerously close to her wrist. He was trying to tempt her into trying to grab the
unsharpened side of the blade and force it away, but she knew he'd just flip it around to
cut through her hand. At least she had the slight advantage of seeing his outline against
the distant streetlights, but he had the huge advantage of having long pointy metal to poke
at her. Tonight had definitely become the suckiest date ever in the whole history of
suction.
His words were slightly distorted from the burn she'd cut across his mouth. "Why don't
you just give up now and let your blood join Battousai's on my sword? Or do you want to
finish cleaning his off it first with your rag?" Her sash did have bloodstains on it near the
cuts. She couldn't think about that now.
"Shut up." She feinted to the right and leaped out of the slantwise path of his katana. A
bouquet of sparks bloomed from his blade as it skittered across the wall, and she whipped
the sash across at him from the left. It would have clipped him in the ear if it hadn't been
blocked by his hat. She had quickly formed a passionate hatred for that hat, which was
either very tight or held on with a chin strap, because she couldn't knock it off his head.
"Yumi didn't get a grave, but I think she deserves funeral offerings anyway. Blood is
thicker than water, and much richer than sake."
She dodged again, moving back a few steps. If Kenshin hadn't told him Yumi was still
alive, Kaoru supposed there had to be a good reason, but right now she was getting
awfully impatient for Kenshin to pop back up and do his share of the fighting. At the
least, he could go grab Hiko, who was sure to have something dangerous in his car.
Jineh came at her again, with a low running stab that would swing up and slice her in half
if she let him get the sword's point between her ankles. The best she could do was to
flatten herself against the wall and let it go past her, then jump over it when he struck
sideways. The chained sash went out again, striking the side of his neck.
He swore at her, but by that time, she'd gotten past him. Her shadow poured toward him,
a dark dagger in a sea of red light. For some reason, Jineh was just standing there staring
instead of starting to chase her. She could live with that. She turned and ran, with the sash
draped around her neck like a scarf.
When she got back to Kenshin, she grabbed his arms and tried to drag him toward the
street on his back, out of the pool of blood he was still lying in. There was something
weird about the blood, though. It looked like something had fallen into it just before she
got there, a little black knife, and glowing ripples were spreading out around it. When
they reached the edge of the pool, the ripples began to move backward, and so did
Kenshin's blood. It was all glowing now, an avalanche of pale fire in reverse, tumbling up
and over itself into his body. He pulled one hand from her grasp to grope for the knife,
and his eyes opened like windows of flame.
"I've been looking forward to this," Battousai said. Seizing the dangling ends of the sash,
he pulled her head down for a bruising kiss, deftly throwing another loop of cloth around
her neck to form a noose he could drag her by. He stood up, keeping a firm grip on the
ends with his napkin-bound hand so the silver chain didn't touch his skin. "But first, some
unfinished business with Jineh."
---
"Megumi, a bad feeling is what you get from cafeteria chili. This is more like what
happens when you eat potato salad that's been sitting out all weekend. I know you've
never done that, but trust me on this one." Even with Hiko's gauntlets still on, Sano had
edged away about ten feet from the sword, which he'd left lying on the mat. "What just
happened, and what do we do now?"
"Um, well, I think we just transferred the main Battousai-making demon into the knife,
and it's gone to find Kenshin. This is bad. Really bad. Maybe not as bad as your common
sense for 'can I eat this?', but really darn bad."
Grabbing a gauntlet from Sano, Yumi put it on and poked the hollow of the kashira.
"Weird. None of the jewels down in the tsuba headed into the penthouse up here. But I
guess they know which weapon they belong to, so if you tried to chase out the sapphire, it
would zap straight back to Enishi's watou. But this sword is the ruby's home base, so it
shouldn't have anywhere else to go. Wonder what would've happened if my knife hadn't
been down there?"
"We can find out next time, if Hiko or Battousai don't find us first and send us on the all-
access tour of Wide World of Pain. How about we finish up the damage control on this
time before we worry about that, okay? Megumi, you don't have an 'undo last action'
button for your ritual, do you?"
"Not really, but if we chased the demon out with the purification ritual, then maybe we
could get it back by making the sword all, I don't know, skanky or something? Yell bad
words at it? Take it to the bathroom and give it a swirly?"
Yumi grinned. "Nah, it's gotta be much easier than that. Or at least I bet I know a good
way to skank it up. Know what one of the most universal get-outta-my-house-of-worship
ritual uncleanliness conditions is?"
"What?"
Megumi sat back from Yumi's whisper. "Oh. Yikes. I mean, good call, but it's not really
in my timetable, if you know what I mean."
"What?" Sano repeated, more impatiently.
"I'll take care of it. Gimme that little bowl." Leaving the gauntlet behind, Yumi headed
off to the sink corner.
"What?!" Megumi got up and moved directly between Sano and Yumi to block his view.
"Hey!"
"Trust her on this one," Yumi called back. "Guys can get really funny about having their
romantic impressions shattered, you know?"
---
Battousai pulled Kaoru with him as he moved toward Jineh, step by step. Her instant
reflex had been to fight him off, grabbing onto the sash to create some slack around her
neck, but he'd simply slid his blade along her wrist, barely scratching the skin. Only a few
narrow beads of blood had welled up, but it had felt horrible out of all proportion. She
was afraid she was going to throw up and choke to death as he dragged her into
stumbling behind him, with her scratched wrist still caught up beside her neck inside the
noose.
With the hand not holding her leash, he was flipping the little black knife. It looked
almost like Yumi's, except for the ruby at the end of its hilt. The blade was less than a
foot long, a tiny thing compared to the full length of a katana, but Jineh still didn't seem
to like the looks of it. There was a flicker of fear in his face, and the faint reflection of red
and golden flame.
"Put down your sword and I might let you walk away. Otherwise, I'm going to take you
apart and leave with some of the pieces, so you'd have to wait for them to grow back on
their own. And since this knife isn't very big, cutting you up with it could take a long
time."
Jineh considered this warily. "And holding it in your left hand is supposed to make things
more challenging again? Or is that just because your right hand is hurt? I think you're still
bluffing."
"Try me."
The katana flashed forward. The black knife blocked it, shoving it into the wall. With
vertiginous disbelief, Kaoru felt the leash yank her around, forcing her into a stumbling
run at arm's length to knock Jineh over. Somehow, she kept her balance, but it didn't help
when Battousai leaped hard onto Jineh's hand to break his fingers around the katana's hilt,
then dragged her a few yards further back to tie her leash to the fence. As he returned to
Jineh, he shook the napkin loose from his healed right hand and stuffed the cloth into the
other man's mouth to muffle the groans of pain.
"Well, now you can practice swordplay with your left hand too. Though without a sword,
perhaps you don't need a sword hand at all." The katana sliced down, severing the
mangled flesh at the wrist. Battousai scooped it up with the point and deftly hurled it over
the fence as if playing lacrosse. "You mentioned bluffing, didn't you? Ever hear of a
game called 'Blind Man's Bluff'? Maybe we can try that, if I take out your eyeballs
before I let you try to run. Spin you around a few times first, too. And I've always
wondered, if one of us were cut exactly in half, could both halves regrow themselves over
time? Or could I just take one of them and roll the cut side in salt to find out what half of
a scream sounds like?"
Kaoru really did think she was going to throw up. "Stop it. Let him go."
"You've already interrupted my meal once tonight. If you do that again, you'll regret it."
As Jineh tried to struggle up, Battousai sat astride his chest and snapped the man's elbows
backwards, one over each knee, then lifted the maimed arm almost tenderly and began to
peel off the skin with the little black knife, leaving it to dangle in long strips. With each
cut, a soft glow swirled through the ruby, illuminating an incongruous expression of bliss
horribly similar to the one she saw whenever she scritched the back of Kenshin's neck.
He'd left the katana on the ground beside him, and his attention seemed distracted from
her, to say the least. Or at least she hoped so, because she didn't want to look too closely
at him right now either. Surreptitiously, she loosened the sash around her neck. Could she
slip it off and run past him, or would that be too dangerous? She tugged at the sash a little
harder and felt the fabric start to give at one end, where Jineh had slashed it before.
Without looking up, Battousai said, "I can hear the fence rattling, you know. Oh, you can
take that off now, but you're not going anywhere yet. Not without me. And you know
what will happen to you if you use that katana on me, don't you?"
Damn! She'd forgotten about that. Jineh's eyes swiveled toward her, but Battousai said, "I
don't like the way you're looking at my little bluebird," and cut them open. Kaoru yanked
the loop off her head and fell to her knees, losing her tempura.
Slowly, she hauled herself back up the fence to finish untying the sash. The silver chain
braided around it was still intact, though she wished now that it had been cut in half. She
wrapped the chained sash around her right hand, hoping her practice with Hiko had
strengthened her wrist enough for this. When she bent to pick up the katana, Battousai
didn't stop her, merely smiling up over his work. He'd started to gut Jineh now, and all of
the organs were still squelching and pulsing, separately alive. "Do you really think that
will prevent you from becoming one of us when you cut me?"
"I don't know," she said, her voice shaking slightly. "But I have to try."
"You do, don't you? You'll put that willpower to better use at my side. Cut me, then." He
raised his hand to the blade pointing at him and ran his thumb along the edge. Pale light
trickled out and shot up the blade toward the hilt, and Kaoru's sash-bound hand around it.
The silver chain flickered like lightning.
---
"Oh, man," Sano said, backing away from the little bowl Yumi brought back from the
corner. "It's bad enough seeing the ads for all the gear on tv. I just don't want to hear
about wings and dams unless it's a bombing-raid game, you know? What's next,
propellers?"
"Told you." She held it out to Megumi, who waved it off to indicate that she was
perfectly willing to let Yumi handle the rest of the process as well; similarly, Sano
handed the gauntlets back to her. She set the bowl back down so she could put them back
on. "I don't know why menstrual blood is such a huge taboo, but I guess kami don't feel
any better about it than Rooster-Head here."
He hunched his shoulders down, making his hair flop around in the loose points it clung
together in. "Can I just say this is not the introduction to practical gynecology that my
manly parts have hoped for?"
"Though at least it's easier to deal with now than the old days," Yumi blithely continued.
"All these cool ultra-absorbent things, though actually I like this little rubber cup that just
dumps out-- good thing too, or I would've had to squeeze stuff back out into the bowl."
Even Megumi looked uneasy. "Um, can we just get on with this? I have no idea what a
re-skanking ritual should be like, so why don't you just dump it in and see what
happens?"
"Sure thing." Yumi held the sword steady over the large bowl and poured the contents of
the smaller one into the concavity where the ruby had been. From their seats on the floor,
the other two watched her as she stood over them, her brows furrowed with concentration
to avoid spilling anything over the gauntlets and down into the ash. In a low voice, she
said, "You guys should take a look. This is wicked cool."
Sano stayed down, but Megumi was curious. "Whoa," she said. "So what happens now?"
The blood was rising up beyond the dome that simple surface tension would create, into a
form that suggested cut and polished facets, though it was still rippling in a liquid
shimmer.
"Dunno." The two girls watched the last drops pour down into it, completing the shape.
"I've got a hunch, though. Grab some of that ash down there and sprinkle it on top."
Though still liquid, the blood began to glow. Sano braced himself to head back under the
sink.
---
Kaoru couldn't move. The pale fire was lapping at the sash around her right hand, soaking
up into it and flaring out in little plumes around each silver link. Sliding his thumb further
up the katana, Battousai gripped it just under the hilt as he stood directly before her,
tracing her throat with his knife before sliding it down the neck of her dress. The blade
was cold against her skin, with only the small hand-guard hooked over her collar to keep
it from falling all the way in. He contemplated the chain. "Perhaps it's enough after all.
But you only have it wrapped around one side."
His kiss bit into her lip, drawing the salt taste of blood. She couldn't free herself from it
any more than she could stop him from pulling at her left hand, protected only by the
scarf from her hair. Before touching it directly to the sword, he pressed it against his own
hand, forcing the blade even deeper into his thumb. She could feel the scrape of metal
against bone through his flesh, and then he was nudging her hand up to the hilt. It never
got there.
A warm splash fell between them, soaking into both their chests. It had fallen from his
knife. She pulled away from him, because she could, and saw blood still dripping from
the empty hollow at the top of the hilt. She'd let go of the katana, too, and it clung to him
for a moment, held by simple friction, before falling away from its own weight.
When he reached out, she stepped back. He looked back up from the sword to her, with
blood throbbing out of the deep cut in his thumb. The golden light in his eyes had snuffed
out like a candle, leaving only smoke-rings of grief around them.
"Miss Kaoru, I think I had better return home. Please give my regrets to the others."
"Kenshin?" she said tentatively. "Kenshin, what just happened?"
"I don't know, but I have no wish for it to happen again. Especially with you so close by."
He removed his sweater, painfully clenching his wounded thumb in his fist to keep from
bleeding into the dark red wool, and handed it to her. "Perhaps if you wear that, it will
conceal most of the damage to your lovely dress. I'm very sorry."
By the time she'd taken the knife out of her neckline and pulled the sweater over her
head, he was halfway back to the street. She scooped up the weapons and chased him.
"Wait, don't you want to take these back with you? What about Jineh?"
He closed his eyes and shuddered. "I believe he'll be incapacitated for some time.
However, it seems imprudent for me to be armed under these conditions. Perhaps you can
hide them beneath Mr. Hiko's car for the moment and have him deal with them later.
Good night."
"But your hand," she insisted. She untied the hair-scarf from her hand, but he pushed it
away.
"They'll notice you're not wearing it. Perhaps what's left of your sash?" He helped her
unwind and untangle it. While she wound a piece of the dark cloth over his wound, he
shook out the silver chain, still miraculously intact, and wrapped it around her neck a few
times before dropping the fishbone through the end loop and tucking all of it against her
skin, beneath his sweater. "Miss Kaoru, I almost wish--"
"Yes?"
He sighed. "I should go. It's a long walk back." She still wouldn't let him, fiddling with
the knot around his thumb..
"Are you sure? Hiko can drive you back if you wait around."
"With the weapons nearby? I'm afraid not. Miss Kaoru, I regret being brusque, but what
do you want from me right now?"
"The same as before this happened." She brought his hand to her lips. "I want you."
The torn piece of sash nearly fell off as he jerked away. "Even after that? You could have
been killed tonight, or worse."
"But Battousai isn't you, Kenshin."
"I don't even know that. How can you know?" He stepped back. "Miss Kaoru, I've
already hurt you enough, and the closer I come to you, the more danger you're in. I
couldn't protect you from Jineh, and I can't protect you from myself."
"I was perfectly capable of protecting myself from both of you tonight," she retorted, but
he shook his head.
"No. If my reversal hadn't occurred when it did, you would have been one of us by now. I
wanted it to happen. Part of me still wants it to happen. I can still taste your blood in my
mouth, and it makes me want to--" He turned away and left her, nearly running. When
she emerged from the alley, he was gone.
She slid the weapons under Hiko's car, as he'd suggested, and tied the scarf back into her
hair. Kenshin's sweater was dark enough that the bloodstains didn't show, and long
enough to hide her missing sash. She went back into the Akabeko. The hostess handed
her two takeout boxes and an envelope. "You're Joyce's daughter, right? They've gone to
the theatre around the corner to see a movie. Your tickets are in here."
Well, that took care of one set of explanations. If only everything else could be so easy.
-----
Megumi's setup and supplies: http://www.mii.kurume-u.ac.jp/~leuers/shime.htm ; also
Stuart D. B. Picken, _Shinto: Japan's Spiritual Roots_, Tokyo: Kodansha, 1980.
little rubber cup: http://keeper.com/