Don't own no vampire slayer,
Don't own no Kaoru.
All I got is a wing and a prayer
That somebody might review.
I got the fanfic-writin', rights-disclaimin',
And where is my hentai goin' blues.
(twangy guitar fade-out)
Edodale
By wombat
Chapter 18
After the initial awkwardness of nose collisions and getting lips mashed between her
teeth and Sano's, Megumi decided that this kissing thing really was pretty nice. She still
felt mildly dubious about this tongue action Kaoru had told her about, especially
considering some of the stuff she'd seen Sano put into his mouth over the years, but
chocolate he'd just been eating would probably go a long way toward alleviating the
possible horrors of fishbone breath. She was just about to test this theory when Hiko
cleared his throat above their heads.
Sano's reaction time was usually faster than hers, so he must've been that much more
absorbed not to notice Hiko immediately. For a split second before her "Eek!" emerged,
she got some tongue data after all: yup, chocolate-flavored, and weirdly wiggly but not in
as bad a way as she'd thought. Actually, it made her feel kind of woozledy again, unless
that was just nervousness about what might happen next.
"I beg your pardon?" Hiko enquired with punctilious courtesy. He extracted a pair of
fresh handkerchiefs from his pockets and dropped them over the edge of the display
counter to flutter into their laps.
"Eek," Megumi meekly repeated, and sat back to make enough space between them to
deploy chocolate-removal measures, as well as decorum recovery.
The only thing Sano did, though, was float up a cocky grin. "You know, it's kind of
insulting that you look so surprised at us."
"I beg to differ. I am astonished. It is you who have been surprised." Hiko leaned to the
side to keep Tomoe from sliding off the chair he'd put her onto. "Miss Rosenberg, will
your presence still be required at the shrine this morning?"
She fidgeted away from Tomoe's general direction. "Well, I was thinking about calling in
sick for the actual festival, but it might still be a good idea to head back there before they
start it up this morning. That way we can look around to see whatever we might've
missed last night, in terms of general cleanup and figuring out what happened to Enishi.
We wouldn't want him to suddenly beam back into the middle of the shrine once the
festival's going full blast."
Hiko pulled a box of mochi balls from a coat pocket and set them on the counter. "Indeed
not. Mr. Harris, would you care to join us?"
Having tilted the box's edge to grab some of the contents, Sano resumed talking around
mouthfuls of jelly. "Nah. Festivals just aren't my thing. But it would be great if you could
drop me off partway home, at least if there's enough room in the car. Is everyone else
going too, or is someone going to stay here and keep an eye on Tomoe?"
"I am hoping that she will choose to accompany us. As for transportation, Miss
Komagata and Miss Kamiya-Summers have their own, as does Miss Rosenberg. If you
have no objection to Kenshin or Miss Yukishiro as fellow passengers, then I imagine a
small detour could be made."
"But what if she doesn't want to go, or doesn't wake up in time? I mean, we need to get
there before anyone else does. And how is Kenshin doing, anyway?"
"He is still indisposed for the moment, but either he or Miss Komagata can remain here to
tend Miss Yukishiro, should that be necessary." Hiko restabilized Tomoe's balance on the
chair before pushing it into the workshop, squeaking away on its wheels. After a brief
pause, the empty chair came rolling back out as if propelled by the clay-thwapping noises
that started up behind it.
"There's an extra cot back there for naps. He probably parked her there," Sano explained,
and snagged the whole rest of the mochi box. "Here, want one? Don't try to take little
bites out of it or the jelly squirts out-- just put the whole thing in your mouth and chew."
Megumi followed his directions and promptly refused a second mochi ball. While she
went back to slowly sipping her coffee, he kept scarfing down mochi until Yumi emerged
from her room. She came over to the counter, peeked down at the eating noises, and then
sat in the empty chair on the other side, dropping out of the zone of visibility from the
floor.
Out of politeness, Megumi felt obliged to rise to her feet to maintain eye contact, though
Sano was staying down to finally wipe chocolate and jelly off his face. "So," she
ventured, "I guess Kenshin must be feeling better, now that Kaoru's here to cheer him
up."
With a shrug, Yumi folded her arms on the back of the chair and rested her chin down,
lightly kicking against the floor to provide some random rotation. Hiko's shoulder had
reappeared about halfway down the workshop door, near the sound of his pottery wheel
whirling into action as well. "Let's just say he's not getting any worse."
"Well, if he stays to watch Tomoe, I bet Kaoru will want to stay too. So maybe I can
borrow her bicycle to get home." Sano stuffed the last mochi ball into his mouth and
stood up, but Yumi shooed him back from the door before he could take a second step in
that direction.
"Is everything okay in there?" Megumi asked. "Are they having an argument or
something?"
"They're awfully quiet in there for an argument, unless she's sulking him out. You know
the way Kaoru gets mad-- first there's the yelling and smacking upside the head, but after
that, she can get too upset to even talk, much less move. Either that, or they're just having
some kissy-face time." Megumi wrinkled her nose up at Sano and kicked him slightly,
but Yumi's expression didn't change at all. In fact, she'd barely had any expression at all
since she came out of her room, as if she were trying not to cry.
"Um." Megumi squirmed. "There's a first-aid kit in the patrol box, if someone brought it
in from Mr. Hiko's car. If you think it might help, I can try to duct-tape Kenshin together
a little more. Though last time, it was like his body completely rebooted, down to
restoring chewed fingernails and everything. Did something go wrong this time?"
Abruptly, Sano dusted some mochi powder off his shirt and detoured past Yumi toward
the exit. "You know, I think I'll just head home on my own. Hand me my jacket?"
Yumi unfolded her arms from over the back of the chair, picked up the lump of denim
draped across it, and tossed it to him. "You mean this one? What about the thing you're
already wearing?"
He'd already removed his old jacket and tossed it back to her as he headed out. "Trading
it in for the new model. It's pretty far gone unless one of you wants to adopt it and get
Kenshin to patch it back up all pink and girly-like."
"Hey, Sano? Go ahead and take my bike if you want. I'll just hitch a ride with Hiko."
"Thanks-- I'll leave it at your house and walk the rest of the way. See you Monday,
Megumi."
Both girls watched him leave, and kept staring at the hallway for a while instead of
resuming their conversation. Back in the workshop, it sounded like Hiko had finished
dealing with his first lump of clay and shut down the wheel to prepare another one.
Finally, Megumi concluded, "So it's that bad, huh?"
"Want to take a look?" Stretching, Yumi dismounted from the chair. "Whatever Kaoru's
trying, I figure it's either worked by now or it hasn't. Maybe if she teams up with you or
Tomoe, it'll work a little better, but we might as well see how she's doing by herself."
---
She couldn't believe how cold Kenshin felt. It wasn't just the ordinary chill of windblown
skin that would have quickly blushed back into warmth beneath her touch, but a
profoundly thorough sensation that soaked all the way through the covers between their
bodies and down to her very bones. Carefully avoiding his remaining wounds, Kaoru laid
her cheek down on his shoulder and closed her eyes. "Hey," she whispered. "You have to
wake up, you know. If you stay dead, you'll miss that test next week and fail history.
Besides, you never finished knitting that scarf for me, and if you don't get back up and tie
off the end, the whole thing is just going to unravel. So wake up, okay?"
For a wild moment of hope, she thought his heartbeat had finally resumed. But as she sat
up to see his face, she heard the soft rhythm again, louder instead of softer. She went to
open the door. "Oh, hi, Megumi. Sano came to the shrine last night when I was leaving.
He wanted to talk to you about something?"
"Yeah, I know. He just left." Like Yumi, Megumi edged up on tiptoe to peek over
Kaoru's head. "Yikes. Well, at least Kenshin looks a lot better than the last time I saw
him. Is he breathing yet?"
"No. And the way you guys keep saying he started off a lot worse, it almost sounds like
you found him oozing out the back of a wood chipper."
"At least then we could've just hosed him into a bag and waited for him to crawl out. Any
change yet? I can't see any from here." Kaoru simply shook her head in response as she
stepped aside, letting the other two come in. "Well, crap. So in that case, all the
improvement since last night is still from Tomoe."
Megumi looked even more uneasy from that statement than Kaoru felt. "What did she
do?"
"Oh, you know. Stuff." With a vague wave, Yumi stepped forward to peel the sheet back
from Kenshin by way of demonstration.
"Holy kamoley," said Megumi.
"I'm going to talk to Hiko again while you do show and tell, okay?" Still averting her
eyes, Kaoru made her escape out to the main gallery and back to the workshop, where
red-hot rakuware was migrating into the familiar barrel of burnt sawdust. Prudently, she
decided not to interrupt the process. When Hiko finally turned off the kiln and clamped
down the barrel lid, she cleared her throat behind him. His initial reply was muffled by
the welder's mask he'd put on as protection against the heat. "What did you say?" she
asked him.
He removed the mask and set it down on the matching gloves, beside the tongs. "I trust
Kenshin is in good spirits to see you again."
"Um. Well, he's about the same as before."
"In that case, I'd like to have a word with both of you, if you don't mind." He was already
leading the way back out.
"Fine with me. But you know, that only averages out to a third of a word for each of us,
though really more like a half-word right now since Kenshin won't be needing his." Her
voice broke, making Hiko stop in the doorway. He turned toward her as she continued
even more shakily. "I meant he's about the same as before I got here. Yumi says she and
Tomoe think it might be kind of a permanent thing for him this time."
"Nonsense," he said, though even he sounded startled. "He may have been very gravely
injured, but surely he couldn't have been killed even temporarily without his own sword
or the sakabatou."
"Well, it made sense when Yumi told me about it, but I can't really explain it back to you
because I was trying not to listen to her. She and Megumi are in there poking at him still
being dead, so if you want to go talk to them about it, there they are, even if his sword
isn't."
"I beg your pardon?" He stepped back into the workshop to tower straight over her.
Kaoru suspected that if she'd been one of the boys, he would've picked her up by the
collar as punctuation.
"Sword. Kenshin's. Gone. Or that's what Yumi said. You didn't know?" It certainly didn't
look like it.
"Once we'd removed all the passengers from my car, I returned straight there to stay on
guard. Would you be so kind as to remain here with Miss Yukishiro?" He was talking to
her over his shoulder while heading back across the main gallery space, not leaving her
with much of a choice, so she looked around the workshop to figure out where Tomoe
was. There she was, on a stark cot against the back wall, rolled up in Kenshin's coat and
nearly motionless. Kaoru still would've given anything right now to see Kenshin himself
breathing that lightly, though, or at all. What did Hiko expect her to do with Tomoe,
anyway?
Kaoru sighed and sat down on the floor. Like the cot frame behind her, it had absorbed
enough heat from the kiln to reach a reasonably comfortable temperature. She'd taken off
her own coat when she arrived and left it in the other room, but she certainly didn't need
it in here. In fact, she wondered if Tomoe might be too warm from the extra layer, but if
it was, it wasn't bad enough to wake her up.
She could hear Hiko talking with the other girls now, but Yumi's door muffled the sound
too much for the actual words to carry over. Tucking her head down onto her clasped
knees, she closed her eyes again and waited for someone to fetch her.
---
"I told you," Yumi protested, "I tried to wake you up, but you were already out cold. Any
colder and you would've been like him." She jabbed her thumb at Kenshin's body. "Look,
I'm sorry Tomoe and me didn't think about his sword sooner, but if you knew you were
that wiped out from fighting Enishi, you should've let me take the first watch instead."
"Miss Rosenberg, what do you make of this?" Hiko's eyes were still narrowed, though the
virtual thundercloud seemed to be breaking up.
Megumi unsquashed herself from her attempt at invisibility against the wall. "Well, the
general idea seems to make sense. But it's funny that nothing got left behind. I mean, I
could see the ruby going poof with his sword, but what about the other two jewels that
were still on there with it? Are they gone because Jineh and Enishi are dead now too, or
did they zap back to their own weapons? Or actually, Jineh's sword didn't get its amethyst
back, but it didn't disappear either, so something weird is definitely going on."
"We had best return to the shrine as soon as feasible."
"Since the kid already took off, that just leaves us three. Or four, if Tomoe's awake yet. I
figure Kaoru's going to want to stay here with Kenshin, right?"
"Where is she right now, out in the main room?" Megumi quickly asked. As soon as Hiko
walked in, a distinctly crackly vibe had started up between him and Yumi, and she
wanted to get out of there.
"She and Miss Yukishiro are in my workshop."
"Oh. Well, I'll go ask her anyway." She darted out, but then just loitered in the main
gallery space for a few minutes while collecting her nerve enough to get anywhere near
Tomoe again. When she felt ready, she tiptoed into the back room, but she didn't hear or
see anyone at first. Tomoe hadn't taken off again, had she? "Kaoru? Are you in here?"
"Megumi?" Sitting in the rear wall's shadows, Kaoru raised her head from her knees and
wiped a sleeve across her face. "Is Kenshin any better yet?"
"Well, no, but Mr. Hiko thinks we should go back to the shrine pretty soon. Do you and
Tomoe want to stay here or come along? And where is she, anyway?" Megumi had been
about to sit down on the edge of the cot, but suddenly changed her mind when Kaoru
pointed over her shoulder at Tomoe lying in the middle of it. "Okay, so she's not going
anywhere either, but how about you?"
"My mom's expecting to meet me there, so I'd better go. Are those Yumi's pajamas you're
wearing?"
Self-consciously, Megumi looked down at herself and tugged at the baggy tee-shirt.
"Yeah. Maybe I can get Mr. Hiko to make a detour to my house so I can change into my
own clothes. And feed Kei. Without anyone else around since yesterday, he's probably
shredded my room into kitty litter by now. I'll probably have to scritch his ears until my
fingers fall off to get him purring again."
If Kaoru was wondering what had happened to Megumi's clothes from yesterday, she
didn't ask. She stood up, but then just blinked at Kenshin's coat down on the cot and
sniffled again. Megumi tried to distract herself from her own case of nerves by cheering
her up. "I bet Kenshin will be okay eventually. Maybe that's just how it works-- every
time one of the others gets neutralized, his time-out gets a little longer. And even if he is,
well, you know, at least you won't've had to kill him any more." Kaoru looked up at her.
"Uh, forget I said that part. Come on, I think Sano left behind some chocolate, so let's go
get revenge on him for always mooching our desserts at lunchtime."
Obediently, Kaoru trooped behind her into the gallery again, and sat on the floor with the
same blank stare. Still worried about her, Megumi perched on the chair and rummaged
through the pockets of Sano's old jacket until she found another candy bar. She passed it
to Kaoru, who unwrapped and nibbled it with as little enthusiasm as if it had been a
particularly dubious cafeteria burrito.
By this point, Megumi wasn't hungry herself, but she kept going through Sano's jacket
anyway, wondering if all of the stuff from inside its pockets might pile up bigger than the
jacket itself. A small knife, some half-whittled wooden fishbones, more candy, pencil
stubs, his set of lock picks, a book of matches, loose change-- the inventory never seemed
to end. Meanwhile, she'd left the door to Yumi's room partly open, so while she hadn't
been planning on eavesdropping, the conversation inside kept floating out through it
anyway.
"Boss, I really think you guys should wait for Tomoe to wake up before you go."
"Unfortunately, I don't believe our schedule can accommodate much more delay. If she
revives within the next hour or so, then we'll bring her with us when we return to the
shrine. If not, I would like you to remain here with her and Kenshin, if you have no
objection. Perhaps Miss Kamiya-Summers might keep you company."
"I still have to debug our site's search engine anyway, so I'm fine with staying. But
Tomoe's got the best chance of any of us to straighten this mess out without anyone else
getting hurt the way you did last night. You could've gotten killed, you know."
"Miss Komagata, I assure you I will do my best to prevent further injury to any of us,
including myself."
Still trying to engage Kaoru's attention, Megumi poked her arm. "Hey, ever notice how
Hiko calls all of us by our family names now, except for Kenshin? Did he decide one day
that the rest of us are all grown up, or did he figure he'd better stop being on a first-name
basis with us before we started calling him 'Rupert'?"
The response was hollow and meandering, but at least Kaoru was talking again. "Kenshin
doesn't really have a family name any more, not since he was disowned. He noticed the
name thing too, though, and he thought the switchover probably happened after Yumi
moved in here. Something like if Hiko kept addressing us by our personal names, he'd
probably have to do the same thing with Yumi since she's pretty close to our age, and
Kenshin didn't think Hiko wanted to get that personal with her. Or at least, he didn't think
Hiko would think it would be proper with her living here and working for him. So if he
calls us Miss and Mr. Whatever and we're younger than her, that's all the excuse he needs
to keep holding her off by calling her 'Miss Komagata' instead of 'Yumi'."
Cautiously, Megumi gave the conversation a booster shot. "The funny thing is, Kenshin
does almost the same thing, only different. It's always 'Mr. Harris' and 'Miss Megumi',
but he never uses any formal titles at all for his old gang. Is it because he doesn't respect
them anymore?"
Kaoru shrugged. "I asked him that once. He gave me that 'oro' look and said he just
couldn't think of them on a formal level after everything they'd been through together.
And especially with Yumi and Tomoe, that covers a whole lot of ground." She clammed
up again, in an even more stressed way than before. Guiltily, Megumi followed suit and
went back to emptying Sano's pockets.
After offering Kaoru a sticky packet of formerly hard candies, Megumi excavated the
fossilized remains of a peanut-butter sandwich and gingerly shoved it to the far edge of
the pile while still half-listening. Yumi and Hiko didn't seem to've overheard them out
here, and the audible tension level had definitely improved since when he'd first walked
in before. "I still don't think it's a great idea for you to head back without Tomoe," Yumi
said, almost apologetically.
Hiko sounded unusually subdued as well. Megumi could almost see the library desk
materializing in front of him. "Nor do I, but it's the best we can do for now. Perhaps that
will be just good enough."
"I really hope so. I mean, okay, you are pretty good at the fighty stuff-- I don't think I
ever saw anyone except for Bats hold out that long against Enishi in the old days, at least
once he got serious instead of playing around-- but I still worry about you anyway."
There was a pause, a rustling noise, and an indrawn breath. "Miss Komagata, while I
appreciate your concern, it is perhaps somewhat unseemly for you to take such a personal
interest in my own welfare. After all, there is a common amount of risk that affects each
one of us, and--"
"Oh, unseem this."
Kaoru's eyes snapped into focus again as she and Megumi exchanged silent wide-eyed
speculation. That had sounded like a body-block, with the muted impact of hurled weight
and a low oof from the target. And that wasn't the sound of smooching, was it? Kaoru got
up and headed for the exit, but Megumi scooted her chair to block her, if only to hand her
the latest thing she'd pulled out of Sano's jacket.
The fishbone pendant was tangled in its chain, a labyrinthine whorl of silver. "Here," she
said quietly. "I guess Sano stuffed it into his pocket on our way back, after I fell asleep. I
think Tomoe must've left it with me last night, because Kenshin wouldn't've done that. He
gave it to you, and you'd better take good care of it.
"And you have to keep taking care of yourself too, okay? He wouldn't want you to be so
sad about him that you can't do that anymore, you know that. At the least, if you leave
without your coat, you're going to catch a cold. Where is it, anyway?" Wordlessly, Kaoru
glanced toward Yumi's room. "Oh. Well, I'm sure he wouldn't mind if you borrowed his
instead. Why don't we go unwrap it off Tomoe? It sounds like it's time to wake her up
anyway, so maybe that'll do it. And after that, you can go on ahead to the shrine, and I'll
come meet you there whenever Yumi decides Mr. Hiko is ready to leave."
---
Kaoru breathed a sigh of relief as the shrine parking lot came into sight from the road. It
was still empty, so she and the others wouldn't have to worry about sneaking around
other people while looking for more leftover stuff from last night. Just as she started to
relax, though, a car came up from behind, passed her bicycle, and then stopped. The
driver's window rolled down, and her mother craned out at her. "Kaoru? I thought you
said you were coming straight here, at least an hour ago. Where have you been since
then?"
"Um, hi Mom. Where's Yahiko?"
"He decided he'd rather go to a friend's house to play with whichever card set they're
collecting now. But you didn't answer my question."
"Can we get all the way into the lot first?" She zipped down the rest of the entrance lane,
but by the time she got to the bike rack to take her helmet off and put her locks on, Joyce
had caught up and parked nearby. She opened her door and stood behind it with that
patient look that Kaoru recognized as the signal to get into the car herself, right now. She
did.
As soon as the doors closed on both of them, Joyce gave the key a half-turn to keep the
heater running. Kaoru winced. This was going to take a while. "Didn't you say you were
coming here to meet your friends? It doesn't look like they're here yet. At the least, Dr.
Gensai said yesterday that he and the rest of Megumi's family were going out of town, so
she would've had to ride her bicycle to get here. But it isn't on the rack."
"Well, no. Actually, I think she's hitching a ride with Mr. Hiko this morning."
"Mr. Hiko certainly takes quite an interest in your group. Will he be driving Kenshin here
too, as usual? He left his bookbag behind at our house last night, so I brought it along
with me."
Kaoru tried very hard not to fidget. It didn't work. "Kenshin isn't feeling too good, so he's
staying home. I went to visit him first, but something got spilled on my coat, so that's
why I borrowed his."
"Was this before or after you climbed down the trellis from your bedroom window last
night? You left footprints on the siding." Her mom's voice was still soft and gentle,
maybe a little too much so. "Honey, is there anything else you want to tell me right now?
Because I think that it's about time we had a talk about something very important."
"Do you mean right now as in now now? Because I don't know if this is a really good
time for this. Can it wait until we get home?"
"No, I'm afraid it really can't." She was absently rubbing the square gem of a ring Kaoru
didn't remember ever seeing her wear before. "Your father and I had planned to talk to
you about this together when you were a few years older, but so many things have
changed lately, and you've had to grow up so fast. And I've been a little selfish too,
keeping to myself with the excuse that you and Yahiko would come talk to me if you
needed to. But I don't think we can keep up that level of privacy any more and still stay
together as a family. Are you sure there isn't anything you want to tell me? Because
otherwise, I'll just go ahead and start." She paused, but Kaoru couldn't think of anything
to say.
After more uncomfortable silence from both sides, Joyce continued, "All right then. This
situation with Kenshin-- he's a very nice boy, and I don't think he would ever deliberately
do anything to hurt you, but I don't want you to rush into something you're not ready for,
especially if you're completely unprepared. You do know what I'm talking about, don't
you?"
"Mom, it's not what you think. At least not all of it. He's been really sick, but now it's
gotten a lot worse that usual, and I don't think he's ever going to get better." Kaoru
choked back a sniffle, then let another one get by for the sake of strategic diversion.
"It isn't contagious, is it?"
"Not from anything we've been doing." That hadn't sounded too bitter, had it?
If it did, her mother seemed to misinterpret its direction. She sighed. "I'm sure you think I
can't possibly understand any of this myself, but I remember when Koshijirou and I
started dating-- did he ever tell you how we first met?"
"It was your first year at UC Edodale and you were out for a walk when a dog tried to
bite you, but he came by and chased it off, right?"
"I had a feeling he would've left some things out."
This was getting squirmier by the second. "Mom, I think that's actually the exact level of
detail that's on a need-to-know basis for me, if you know what I mean. I really have to get
up to the shrine and take care of some things for Megumi, so if--"
"Kaoru." The way her mother said her name made her flinch away from the door handle
and fold her hands in her lap. "This is important, and I want you to hear this. That night
when I met your father, I was actually out on a date with someone else. And Koshijirou
didn't just chase off the animal that attacked me. He killed it."
"Whoa," Kaoru said, startled out of her embarrassment. "I never would've pegged Dad as
a puppy-killer. So your other boyfriend just wussed out and ran away?"
"Not exactly. You see," Joyce said, and laid a hand on Kaoru's shoulder, "it turned out
that my date for the night had been a werewolf."
---
The crypt's silence was broken by the shuffle of footsteps through the debris. "So it is
you. What're you doing back here?" The familiar growl was punctuated by a toe-nudge in
the ribs. Enishi stared blankly at Jineh's boots until one of them kicked him out of his
semifetal curl and onto his back, sprawling his long coat open.
Jineh didn't look very well himself. Beneath the familiar shadow of his hat, both eyeballs
were filled with the ghastly black of curdled blood, and framed by a jagged piecework of
scars. As he leaned down, only a brittle tangle of bone emerged from the end of his right
sleeve. Before it could touch him, Enishi whipped his arm up from under his coat. Jineh
leaped nearly out of reach, but not quite. Even sheathed, the watou snapped his leg to the
side, leaving splinters of bone protruding at an awkward angle.
"Damn you, I just got these boots." With a vexed grimace, Jineh leaned against the wall
to massage his shin back into place, then reclaimed the sword he'd briefly set aside. "I
thought I heard you yowling Tomoe's name up here. I haven't seen her anywhere since
you took her off, so I'm not going back on our deal."
"She's gone away from me. Just like Yumi."
"Battousai killed her, too?"
"She's not dead, neither. Saw them both last night."
"You mean he took Tomoe back? That's greedy of him-- he already has a new girl he
calls his bluebird. Feisty thing."
"Not Battousai. Saw his bluebird girl flying down the stairs last night just as I got to
where the little vixen said he was hiding, or at least that's who Yumi said she was."
Jineh kicked him again. "You're as bad as Yumi was about not calling people their real
names. What do you mean, that's who Yumi said she was?"
"Kamiya's girl, I reckon. The little vixen said she has blue eyes, just like her mum. Oh,
and the fox-miko's some other bint entirely. Rosenberg, that's what she said her name
was."
"I was talking about Yumi. You saw her last night?"
"Yeh. Bleeding lively, she was. Still has that funny birthmark and all, just below her--"
"She's alive?" Jineh demanded. "Where?"
"Didn't hear me, did you?" Enishi levelled his watou back up. "In the bloody bleeding
flesh, I said. Yumi's mortal now. We can't get her back, not the way we are now. Nor
Tomoe. My little dove'll wither away and die without me, and she'll be gone forever."
Jineh pondered this. "Well, I promised to leave Tomoe alone in exchange for the
sakabatou, and I did. Don't expect me to give it back to you now. I kept saying all along
you should've made a batch of fresh, pretty flesh-puppets for us to play with instead.
They'd've been more fun than her." After more mutual glaring, Jineh added, "Battousai
was bleeding too, when I saw him a few weeks ago. I killed him and everything."
"Killed him? So the fox-miko was lying to me about him being at the shrine?"
"Well, he got better. But I did kill him. And then he got up and tried to return the favor.
The little bastard didn't even have his sword with him, just a short knife like Yumi's. It
had his ruby in it, though, so he must've found some trick of moving the jewels back and
forth."
"That must've been what she meant by saying he didn't have his sword. What a
weasel that vixen was."
"So," Jineh said after another long glare. "Ready to help me hunt down Battousai?"
Enishi jabbed at him again, but he evaded the watou easily. "That means 'no', doesn't it?"
"You wanking bloody sod. You've already killed him, you said, and it didn't take. What
makes you think you'll do any better now, with or without me?"
"This time I won't rush into it without the sakabatou, for a start. Are you sure you didn't
see Battousai last night?"
"Told you, mate. Nary a single red hair of his, or I would've got a good grip to take him
apart and dance on the bits."
"Then why was this lying next to you?" Abruptly, Jineh lunged down, skewering Enishi
with the katana in his left hand. Before the wound's impact fully registered, Enishi only
felt an instant of scorn-- how many times had they had this sort of pointless argybargy
before?-- but then the scorn and everything else within him seemed to tear out from their
roots, drawn up into the ravenous vortex of the blade.
Jineh twisted the katana, casting distorted shadows around the crypt. Pale light swirled up
and around the black blade, like pain made visible, refracting from the hilt's jewels into
intense sprays of color: Enishi's familiar sapphire-blue, Jineh's dark amethyst, and
Battousai's vivid crimson. "Did you make some kind of deal with him to get Tomoe
back?" Jineh demanded. "You'd act as bait to draw me out, so he could leap out and use
his sword on me. So where is he? Where are you, you little coward?" he called out.
Only the echoes answered. The light seemed to be waning now, unless it was just Enishi's
eyesight fading out. But he could still see Jineh's sword-hand recovering the flesh around
its bones, almost like a bare tree bursting into leaf. And while the sapphire seemed to be
going dim as well, the ruby and the amethyst seemed to be burning more brightly than
ever.
Even the pain was leaving him now. Perhaps this was what it was like to die and be
reborn into life, as Tomoe had. Perhaps it would all be worth it, if he could join her again.
With that thought, he closed his eyes, only to open them again at one of Jineh's more
colorful phrases and a searing violet flash.
Cor. The amethyst had exploded, or at least something had happened so Jineh couldn't
get any more use out of Battousai's sword. It didn't hurt any more either, Enishi realized,
and shoved it away with a whack from his watou. The katana's blade tore up through his
ribcage and out through his shoulder, but he didn't care. Well, maybe he'd have to care for
a few minutes, until his collarbone could patch up enough for him to use that arm. But
once it did, he decided, he was going to put some major hurt onto Jineh. Maybe Jineh's
old scars had vanished now, but that just made room for a whole set of new ones.
From the way Jineh was backing off, he seemed to have the same idea. While Enishi
levered himself up against the wall to finish healing, Jineh turned tail and raced down
into the tunnels again.
---
"Stupid meta tags," Yumi muttered to herself. She leaned back from the laptop and
partway into the workshop, shaking the cramps out of her trackball hand. Hiko and
Megumi had left a half-hour ago and she still didn't see any movement from Tomoe on
the cot back there, but at least she could expect her to wake up eventually. She was
gradually losing whatever hope for revival that she'd retained about Kenshin.
For the first few days after she'd revived as an ordinary human, she'd kept expecting him
to drop his quiet facade and go on a rampage. She'd seen him do that so many times
before that it seemed inevitable. But she'd tested him the day after he'd met up with Jineh,
when Hiko and Megumi had stepped out for a break from all the exorcism rituals they'd
been dumping on him in the school's mini-dojo. When she'd pressed up against Kenshin
for a good kiss, his only response had been a rather dazed "Oro?". After that, she never
tried anything on him again. It freaked her out too much. But he was still a sweet kid, as
long as she managed to avoid thinking about him as Battousai.
Through all the chaos they'd spread throughout the city in the old days, Battousai had
protected her as her father hadn't. Not in a smothering way that made her feel like some
kind of useless thing, the way Enishi got sometimes, but letting her fight for herself,
teaching her all kinds of new skills, and if she really needed it, stepping in to tip the odds
just enough for her to do the rest. She missed that, as well as some of the other things
they'd done together. Okay, not the random killing, but the sense of freedom from
boundaries, a sense that she'd never be trapped in a cage again. Oh, and the scromping.
Man alive, Bats had been good with the scromping. Maybe he was saving that for Kaoru
these days, but the girl probably didn't know how lucky she was. Or maybe had been. If
Kenshin couldn't be bothered to wake up for Kaoru, what were the chances he'd do it at
all?
She sighed. Well, at least she was making progress with the site code. And maybe with
Hiko. In some ways, the boss gave her the same sort of vibe as Battousai had, though he
was sure to be a lot heavier. And he definitely seemed interested before he left, even if
she hadn't gotten to demonstrate any of the techniques she'd dusted off for Enishi last
night. She'd have to wait until he got back to see what would happen next, though.
Possibly just digging a big hole behind the parking lot and putting Kenshin into it.
As she zapped the screensaver, an electric crackle came from behind the laptop. "Oh,
crap," she growled, but the screen display came up intact. There wasn't something funny
going on with the surge protector, was there? She saved her code, just in case, and then
started checking all of the cables and auxiliary gadgets.
There was a whiff of ozone on the other side of the counter, but it didn't seem to be
coming from anywhere near the computer. In fact, it seemed to be drifting from some
distance away. The boss hadn't burned out his pottery wheel or anything, had he? She
followed the faint scent away from the workshop and along the wall, until she was
standing in front of the sword case. A quick glance showed that Jineh's sword was still
there, but Battousai's hadn't come back, so there wasn't any reason for anything weird to
be going on in there. Maybe she was just brain-fried from an overdose of PHP.
She was about to turn back toward the counter, but a shoulder-tap from the opposite
direction made her twist around so quickly that her legs just coiled up beneath her,
dropping her onto the floor. From that vantage point, she had an excellent view of one of
her pairs of cropped jeans, except on shorter legs that dropped the hems closer to full-
length over a pair of shredded pink socks. Relieved, she said, "So you got up after all?
Kaoru's going to be pissed that you waited until she left." Her gaze moved up over Sano's
torn jacket, one of her tee-shirts, and the tail-end of a dark red topknot before finally
meeting Battousai's burning eyes.
-----
surprised/astonished: attributed to various lexicographers (Noah Webster, Samuel
Johnson, or Emile Littre), but certainly not my own invention.
I have no idea why this chapter took even longer than the last one. My brain cell was on
strike for most of the month. Burble.
Don't own no Kaoru.
All I got is a wing and a prayer
That somebody might review.
I got the fanfic-writin', rights-disclaimin',
And where is my hentai goin' blues.
(twangy guitar fade-out)
Edodale
By wombat
Chapter 18
After the initial awkwardness of nose collisions and getting lips mashed between her
teeth and Sano's, Megumi decided that this kissing thing really was pretty nice. She still
felt mildly dubious about this tongue action Kaoru had told her about, especially
considering some of the stuff she'd seen Sano put into his mouth over the years, but
chocolate he'd just been eating would probably go a long way toward alleviating the
possible horrors of fishbone breath. She was just about to test this theory when Hiko
cleared his throat above their heads.
Sano's reaction time was usually faster than hers, so he must've been that much more
absorbed not to notice Hiko immediately. For a split second before her "Eek!" emerged,
she got some tongue data after all: yup, chocolate-flavored, and weirdly wiggly but not in
as bad a way as she'd thought. Actually, it made her feel kind of woozledy again, unless
that was just nervousness about what might happen next.
"I beg your pardon?" Hiko enquired with punctilious courtesy. He extracted a pair of
fresh handkerchiefs from his pockets and dropped them over the edge of the display
counter to flutter into their laps.
"Eek," Megumi meekly repeated, and sat back to make enough space between them to
deploy chocolate-removal measures, as well as decorum recovery.
The only thing Sano did, though, was float up a cocky grin. "You know, it's kind of
insulting that you look so surprised at us."
"I beg to differ. I am astonished. It is you who have been surprised." Hiko leaned to the
side to keep Tomoe from sliding off the chair he'd put her onto. "Miss Rosenberg, will
your presence still be required at the shrine this morning?"
She fidgeted away from Tomoe's general direction. "Well, I was thinking about calling in
sick for the actual festival, but it might still be a good idea to head back there before they
start it up this morning. That way we can look around to see whatever we might've
missed last night, in terms of general cleanup and figuring out what happened to Enishi.
We wouldn't want him to suddenly beam back into the middle of the shrine once the
festival's going full blast."
Hiko pulled a box of mochi balls from a coat pocket and set them on the counter. "Indeed
not. Mr. Harris, would you care to join us?"
Having tilted the box's edge to grab some of the contents, Sano resumed talking around
mouthfuls of jelly. "Nah. Festivals just aren't my thing. But it would be great if you could
drop me off partway home, at least if there's enough room in the car. Is everyone else
going too, or is someone going to stay here and keep an eye on Tomoe?"
"I am hoping that she will choose to accompany us. As for transportation, Miss
Komagata and Miss Kamiya-Summers have their own, as does Miss Rosenberg. If you
have no objection to Kenshin or Miss Yukishiro as fellow passengers, then I imagine a
small detour could be made."
"But what if she doesn't want to go, or doesn't wake up in time? I mean, we need to get
there before anyone else does. And how is Kenshin doing, anyway?"
"He is still indisposed for the moment, but either he or Miss Komagata can remain here to
tend Miss Yukishiro, should that be necessary." Hiko restabilized Tomoe's balance on the
chair before pushing it into the workshop, squeaking away on its wheels. After a brief
pause, the empty chair came rolling back out as if propelled by the clay-thwapping noises
that started up behind it.
"There's an extra cot back there for naps. He probably parked her there," Sano explained,
and snagged the whole rest of the mochi box. "Here, want one? Don't try to take little
bites out of it or the jelly squirts out-- just put the whole thing in your mouth and chew."
Megumi followed his directions and promptly refused a second mochi ball. While she
went back to slowly sipping her coffee, he kept scarfing down mochi until Yumi emerged
from her room. She came over to the counter, peeked down at the eating noises, and then
sat in the empty chair on the other side, dropping out of the zone of visibility from the
floor.
Out of politeness, Megumi felt obliged to rise to her feet to maintain eye contact, though
Sano was staying down to finally wipe chocolate and jelly off his face. "So," she
ventured, "I guess Kenshin must be feeling better, now that Kaoru's here to cheer him
up."
With a shrug, Yumi folded her arms on the back of the chair and rested her chin down,
lightly kicking against the floor to provide some random rotation. Hiko's shoulder had
reappeared about halfway down the workshop door, near the sound of his pottery wheel
whirling into action as well. "Let's just say he's not getting any worse."
"Well, if he stays to watch Tomoe, I bet Kaoru will want to stay too. So maybe I can
borrow her bicycle to get home." Sano stuffed the last mochi ball into his mouth and
stood up, but Yumi shooed him back from the door before he could take a second step in
that direction.
"Is everything okay in there?" Megumi asked. "Are they having an argument or
something?"
"They're awfully quiet in there for an argument, unless she's sulking him out. You know
the way Kaoru gets mad-- first there's the yelling and smacking upside the head, but after
that, she can get too upset to even talk, much less move. Either that, or they're just having
some kissy-face time." Megumi wrinkled her nose up at Sano and kicked him slightly,
but Yumi's expression didn't change at all. In fact, she'd barely had any expression at all
since she came out of her room, as if she were trying not to cry.
"Um." Megumi squirmed. "There's a first-aid kit in the patrol box, if someone brought it
in from Mr. Hiko's car. If you think it might help, I can try to duct-tape Kenshin together
a little more. Though last time, it was like his body completely rebooted, down to
restoring chewed fingernails and everything. Did something go wrong this time?"
Abruptly, Sano dusted some mochi powder off his shirt and detoured past Yumi toward
the exit. "You know, I think I'll just head home on my own. Hand me my jacket?"
Yumi unfolded her arms from over the back of the chair, picked up the lump of denim
draped across it, and tossed it to him. "You mean this one? What about the thing you're
already wearing?"
He'd already removed his old jacket and tossed it back to her as he headed out. "Trading
it in for the new model. It's pretty far gone unless one of you wants to adopt it and get
Kenshin to patch it back up all pink and girly-like."
"Hey, Sano? Go ahead and take my bike if you want. I'll just hitch a ride with Hiko."
"Thanks-- I'll leave it at your house and walk the rest of the way. See you Monday,
Megumi."
Both girls watched him leave, and kept staring at the hallway for a while instead of
resuming their conversation. Back in the workshop, it sounded like Hiko had finished
dealing with his first lump of clay and shut down the wheel to prepare another one.
Finally, Megumi concluded, "So it's that bad, huh?"
"Want to take a look?" Stretching, Yumi dismounted from the chair. "Whatever Kaoru's
trying, I figure it's either worked by now or it hasn't. Maybe if she teams up with you or
Tomoe, it'll work a little better, but we might as well see how she's doing by herself."
---
She couldn't believe how cold Kenshin felt. It wasn't just the ordinary chill of windblown
skin that would have quickly blushed back into warmth beneath her touch, but a
profoundly thorough sensation that soaked all the way through the covers between their
bodies and down to her very bones. Carefully avoiding his remaining wounds, Kaoru laid
her cheek down on his shoulder and closed her eyes. "Hey," she whispered. "You have to
wake up, you know. If you stay dead, you'll miss that test next week and fail history.
Besides, you never finished knitting that scarf for me, and if you don't get back up and tie
off the end, the whole thing is just going to unravel. So wake up, okay?"
For a wild moment of hope, she thought his heartbeat had finally resumed. But as she sat
up to see his face, she heard the soft rhythm again, louder instead of softer. She went to
open the door. "Oh, hi, Megumi. Sano came to the shrine last night when I was leaving.
He wanted to talk to you about something?"
"Yeah, I know. He just left." Like Yumi, Megumi edged up on tiptoe to peek over
Kaoru's head. "Yikes. Well, at least Kenshin looks a lot better than the last time I saw
him. Is he breathing yet?"
"No. And the way you guys keep saying he started off a lot worse, it almost sounds like
you found him oozing out the back of a wood chipper."
"At least then we could've just hosed him into a bag and waited for him to crawl out. Any
change yet? I can't see any from here." Kaoru simply shook her head in response as she
stepped aside, letting the other two come in. "Well, crap. So in that case, all the
improvement since last night is still from Tomoe."
Megumi looked even more uneasy from that statement than Kaoru felt. "What did she
do?"
"Oh, you know. Stuff." With a vague wave, Yumi stepped forward to peel the sheet back
from Kenshin by way of demonstration.
"Holy kamoley," said Megumi.
"I'm going to talk to Hiko again while you do show and tell, okay?" Still averting her
eyes, Kaoru made her escape out to the main gallery and back to the workshop, where
red-hot rakuware was migrating into the familiar barrel of burnt sawdust. Prudently, she
decided not to interrupt the process. When Hiko finally turned off the kiln and clamped
down the barrel lid, she cleared her throat behind him. His initial reply was muffled by
the welder's mask he'd put on as protection against the heat. "What did you say?" she
asked him.
He removed the mask and set it down on the matching gloves, beside the tongs. "I trust
Kenshin is in good spirits to see you again."
"Um. Well, he's about the same as before."
"In that case, I'd like to have a word with both of you, if you don't mind." He was already
leading the way back out.
"Fine with me. But you know, that only averages out to a third of a word for each of us,
though really more like a half-word right now since Kenshin won't be needing his." Her
voice broke, making Hiko stop in the doorway. He turned toward her as she continued
even more shakily. "I meant he's about the same as before I got here. Yumi says she and
Tomoe think it might be kind of a permanent thing for him this time."
"Nonsense," he said, though even he sounded startled. "He may have been very gravely
injured, but surely he couldn't have been killed even temporarily without his own sword
or the sakabatou."
"Well, it made sense when Yumi told me about it, but I can't really explain it back to you
because I was trying not to listen to her. She and Megumi are in there poking at him still
being dead, so if you want to go talk to them about it, there they are, even if his sword
isn't."
"I beg your pardon?" He stepped back into the workshop to tower straight over her.
Kaoru suspected that if she'd been one of the boys, he would've picked her up by the
collar as punctuation.
"Sword. Kenshin's. Gone. Or that's what Yumi said. You didn't know?" It certainly didn't
look like it.
"Once we'd removed all the passengers from my car, I returned straight there to stay on
guard. Would you be so kind as to remain here with Miss Yukishiro?" He was talking to
her over his shoulder while heading back across the main gallery space, not leaving her
with much of a choice, so she looked around the workshop to figure out where Tomoe
was. There she was, on a stark cot against the back wall, rolled up in Kenshin's coat and
nearly motionless. Kaoru still would've given anything right now to see Kenshin himself
breathing that lightly, though, or at all. What did Hiko expect her to do with Tomoe,
anyway?
Kaoru sighed and sat down on the floor. Like the cot frame behind her, it had absorbed
enough heat from the kiln to reach a reasonably comfortable temperature. She'd taken off
her own coat when she arrived and left it in the other room, but she certainly didn't need
it in here. In fact, she wondered if Tomoe might be too warm from the extra layer, but if
it was, it wasn't bad enough to wake her up.
She could hear Hiko talking with the other girls now, but Yumi's door muffled the sound
too much for the actual words to carry over. Tucking her head down onto her clasped
knees, she closed her eyes again and waited for someone to fetch her.
---
"I told you," Yumi protested, "I tried to wake you up, but you were already out cold. Any
colder and you would've been like him." She jabbed her thumb at Kenshin's body. "Look,
I'm sorry Tomoe and me didn't think about his sword sooner, but if you knew you were
that wiped out from fighting Enishi, you should've let me take the first watch instead."
"Miss Rosenberg, what do you make of this?" Hiko's eyes were still narrowed, though the
virtual thundercloud seemed to be breaking up.
Megumi unsquashed herself from her attempt at invisibility against the wall. "Well, the
general idea seems to make sense. But it's funny that nothing got left behind. I mean, I
could see the ruby going poof with his sword, but what about the other two jewels that
were still on there with it? Are they gone because Jineh and Enishi are dead now too, or
did they zap back to their own weapons? Or actually, Jineh's sword didn't get its amethyst
back, but it didn't disappear either, so something weird is definitely going on."
"We had best return to the shrine as soon as feasible."
"Since the kid already took off, that just leaves us three. Or four, if Tomoe's awake yet. I
figure Kaoru's going to want to stay here with Kenshin, right?"
"Where is she right now, out in the main room?" Megumi quickly asked. As soon as Hiko
walked in, a distinctly crackly vibe had started up between him and Yumi, and she
wanted to get out of there.
"She and Miss Yukishiro are in my workshop."
"Oh. Well, I'll go ask her anyway." She darted out, but then just loitered in the main
gallery space for a few minutes while collecting her nerve enough to get anywhere near
Tomoe again. When she felt ready, she tiptoed into the back room, but she didn't hear or
see anyone at first. Tomoe hadn't taken off again, had she? "Kaoru? Are you in here?"
"Megumi?" Sitting in the rear wall's shadows, Kaoru raised her head from her knees and
wiped a sleeve across her face. "Is Kenshin any better yet?"
"Well, no, but Mr. Hiko thinks we should go back to the shrine pretty soon. Do you and
Tomoe want to stay here or come along? And where is she, anyway?" Megumi had been
about to sit down on the edge of the cot, but suddenly changed her mind when Kaoru
pointed over her shoulder at Tomoe lying in the middle of it. "Okay, so she's not going
anywhere either, but how about you?"
"My mom's expecting to meet me there, so I'd better go. Are those Yumi's pajamas you're
wearing?"
Self-consciously, Megumi looked down at herself and tugged at the baggy tee-shirt.
"Yeah. Maybe I can get Mr. Hiko to make a detour to my house so I can change into my
own clothes. And feed Kei. Without anyone else around since yesterday, he's probably
shredded my room into kitty litter by now. I'll probably have to scritch his ears until my
fingers fall off to get him purring again."
If Kaoru was wondering what had happened to Megumi's clothes from yesterday, she
didn't ask. She stood up, but then just blinked at Kenshin's coat down on the cot and
sniffled again. Megumi tried to distract herself from her own case of nerves by cheering
her up. "I bet Kenshin will be okay eventually. Maybe that's just how it works-- every
time one of the others gets neutralized, his time-out gets a little longer. And even if he is,
well, you know, at least you won't've had to kill him any more." Kaoru looked up at her.
"Uh, forget I said that part. Come on, I think Sano left behind some chocolate, so let's go
get revenge on him for always mooching our desserts at lunchtime."
Obediently, Kaoru trooped behind her into the gallery again, and sat on the floor with the
same blank stare. Still worried about her, Megumi perched on the chair and rummaged
through the pockets of Sano's old jacket until she found another candy bar. She passed it
to Kaoru, who unwrapped and nibbled it with as little enthusiasm as if it had been a
particularly dubious cafeteria burrito.
By this point, Megumi wasn't hungry herself, but she kept going through Sano's jacket
anyway, wondering if all of the stuff from inside its pockets might pile up bigger than the
jacket itself. A small knife, some half-whittled wooden fishbones, more candy, pencil
stubs, his set of lock picks, a book of matches, loose change-- the inventory never seemed
to end. Meanwhile, she'd left the door to Yumi's room partly open, so while she hadn't
been planning on eavesdropping, the conversation inside kept floating out through it
anyway.
"Boss, I really think you guys should wait for Tomoe to wake up before you go."
"Unfortunately, I don't believe our schedule can accommodate much more delay. If she
revives within the next hour or so, then we'll bring her with us when we return to the
shrine. If not, I would like you to remain here with her and Kenshin, if you have no
objection. Perhaps Miss Kamiya-Summers might keep you company."
"I still have to debug our site's search engine anyway, so I'm fine with staying. But
Tomoe's got the best chance of any of us to straighten this mess out without anyone else
getting hurt the way you did last night. You could've gotten killed, you know."
"Miss Komagata, I assure you I will do my best to prevent further injury to any of us,
including myself."
Still trying to engage Kaoru's attention, Megumi poked her arm. "Hey, ever notice how
Hiko calls all of us by our family names now, except for Kenshin? Did he decide one day
that the rest of us are all grown up, or did he figure he'd better stop being on a first-name
basis with us before we started calling him 'Rupert'?"
The response was hollow and meandering, but at least Kaoru was talking again. "Kenshin
doesn't really have a family name any more, not since he was disowned. He noticed the
name thing too, though, and he thought the switchover probably happened after Yumi
moved in here. Something like if Hiko kept addressing us by our personal names, he'd
probably have to do the same thing with Yumi since she's pretty close to our age, and
Kenshin didn't think Hiko wanted to get that personal with her. Or at least, he didn't think
Hiko would think it would be proper with her living here and working for him. So if he
calls us Miss and Mr. Whatever and we're younger than her, that's all the excuse he needs
to keep holding her off by calling her 'Miss Komagata' instead of 'Yumi'."
Cautiously, Megumi gave the conversation a booster shot. "The funny thing is, Kenshin
does almost the same thing, only different. It's always 'Mr. Harris' and 'Miss Megumi',
but he never uses any formal titles at all for his old gang. Is it because he doesn't respect
them anymore?"
Kaoru shrugged. "I asked him that once. He gave me that 'oro' look and said he just
couldn't think of them on a formal level after everything they'd been through together.
And especially with Yumi and Tomoe, that covers a whole lot of ground." She clammed
up again, in an even more stressed way than before. Guiltily, Megumi followed suit and
went back to emptying Sano's pockets.
After offering Kaoru a sticky packet of formerly hard candies, Megumi excavated the
fossilized remains of a peanut-butter sandwich and gingerly shoved it to the far edge of
the pile while still half-listening. Yumi and Hiko didn't seem to've overheard them out
here, and the audible tension level had definitely improved since when he'd first walked
in before. "I still don't think it's a great idea for you to head back without Tomoe," Yumi
said, almost apologetically.
Hiko sounded unusually subdued as well. Megumi could almost see the library desk
materializing in front of him. "Nor do I, but it's the best we can do for now. Perhaps that
will be just good enough."
"I really hope so. I mean, okay, you are pretty good at the fighty stuff-- I don't think I
ever saw anyone except for Bats hold out that long against Enishi in the old days, at least
once he got serious instead of playing around-- but I still worry about you anyway."
There was a pause, a rustling noise, and an indrawn breath. "Miss Komagata, while I
appreciate your concern, it is perhaps somewhat unseemly for you to take such a personal
interest in my own welfare. After all, there is a common amount of risk that affects each
one of us, and--"
"Oh, unseem this."
Kaoru's eyes snapped into focus again as she and Megumi exchanged silent wide-eyed
speculation. That had sounded like a body-block, with the muted impact of hurled weight
and a low oof from the target. And that wasn't the sound of smooching, was it? Kaoru got
up and headed for the exit, but Megumi scooted her chair to block her, if only to hand her
the latest thing she'd pulled out of Sano's jacket.
The fishbone pendant was tangled in its chain, a labyrinthine whorl of silver. "Here," she
said quietly. "I guess Sano stuffed it into his pocket on our way back, after I fell asleep. I
think Tomoe must've left it with me last night, because Kenshin wouldn't've done that. He
gave it to you, and you'd better take good care of it.
"And you have to keep taking care of yourself too, okay? He wouldn't want you to be so
sad about him that you can't do that anymore, you know that. At the least, if you leave
without your coat, you're going to catch a cold. Where is it, anyway?" Wordlessly, Kaoru
glanced toward Yumi's room. "Oh. Well, I'm sure he wouldn't mind if you borrowed his
instead. Why don't we go unwrap it off Tomoe? It sounds like it's time to wake her up
anyway, so maybe that'll do it. And after that, you can go on ahead to the shrine, and I'll
come meet you there whenever Yumi decides Mr. Hiko is ready to leave."
---
Kaoru breathed a sigh of relief as the shrine parking lot came into sight from the road. It
was still empty, so she and the others wouldn't have to worry about sneaking around
other people while looking for more leftover stuff from last night. Just as she started to
relax, though, a car came up from behind, passed her bicycle, and then stopped. The
driver's window rolled down, and her mother craned out at her. "Kaoru? I thought you
said you were coming straight here, at least an hour ago. Where have you been since
then?"
"Um, hi Mom. Where's Yahiko?"
"He decided he'd rather go to a friend's house to play with whichever card set they're
collecting now. But you didn't answer my question."
"Can we get all the way into the lot first?" She zipped down the rest of the entrance lane,
but by the time she got to the bike rack to take her helmet off and put her locks on, Joyce
had caught up and parked nearby. She opened her door and stood behind it with that
patient look that Kaoru recognized as the signal to get into the car herself, right now. She
did.
As soon as the doors closed on both of them, Joyce gave the key a half-turn to keep the
heater running. Kaoru winced. This was going to take a while. "Didn't you say you were
coming here to meet your friends? It doesn't look like they're here yet. At the least, Dr.
Gensai said yesterday that he and the rest of Megumi's family were going out of town, so
she would've had to ride her bicycle to get here. But it isn't on the rack."
"Well, no. Actually, I think she's hitching a ride with Mr. Hiko this morning."
"Mr. Hiko certainly takes quite an interest in your group. Will he be driving Kenshin here
too, as usual? He left his bookbag behind at our house last night, so I brought it along
with me."
Kaoru tried very hard not to fidget. It didn't work. "Kenshin isn't feeling too good, so he's
staying home. I went to visit him first, but something got spilled on my coat, so that's
why I borrowed his."
"Was this before or after you climbed down the trellis from your bedroom window last
night? You left footprints on the siding." Her mom's voice was still soft and gentle,
maybe a little too much so. "Honey, is there anything else you want to tell me right now?
Because I think that it's about time we had a talk about something very important."
"Do you mean right now as in now now? Because I don't know if this is a really good
time for this. Can it wait until we get home?"
"No, I'm afraid it really can't." She was absently rubbing the square gem of a ring Kaoru
didn't remember ever seeing her wear before. "Your father and I had planned to talk to
you about this together when you were a few years older, but so many things have
changed lately, and you've had to grow up so fast. And I've been a little selfish too,
keeping to myself with the excuse that you and Yahiko would come talk to me if you
needed to. But I don't think we can keep up that level of privacy any more and still stay
together as a family. Are you sure there isn't anything you want to tell me? Because
otherwise, I'll just go ahead and start." She paused, but Kaoru couldn't think of anything
to say.
After more uncomfortable silence from both sides, Joyce continued, "All right then. This
situation with Kenshin-- he's a very nice boy, and I don't think he would ever deliberately
do anything to hurt you, but I don't want you to rush into something you're not ready for,
especially if you're completely unprepared. You do know what I'm talking about, don't
you?"
"Mom, it's not what you think. At least not all of it. He's been really sick, but now it's
gotten a lot worse that usual, and I don't think he's ever going to get better." Kaoru
choked back a sniffle, then let another one get by for the sake of strategic diversion.
"It isn't contagious, is it?"
"Not from anything we've been doing." That hadn't sounded too bitter, had it?
If it did, her mother seemed to misinterpret its direction. She sighed. "I'm sure you think I
can't possibly understand any of this myself, but I remember when Koshijirou and I
started dating-- did he ever tell you how we first met?"
"It was your first year at UC Edodale and you were out for a walk when a dog tried to
bite you, but he came by and chased it off, right?"
"I had a feeling he would've left some things out."
This was getting squirmier by the second. "Mom, I think that's actually the exact level of
detail that's on a need-to-know basis for me, if you know what I mean. I really have to get
up to the shrine and take care of some things for Megumi, so if--"
"Kaoru." The way her mother said her name made her flinch away from the door handle
and fold her hands in her lap. "This is important, and I want you to hear this. That night
when I met your father, I was actually out on a date with someone else. And Koshijirou
didn't just chase off the animal that attacked me. He killed it."
"Whoa," Kaoru said, startled out of her embarrassment. "I never would've pegged Dad as
a puppy-killer. So your other boyfriend just wussed out and ran away?"
"Not exactly. You see," Joyce said, and laid a hand on Kaoru's shoulder, "it turned out
that my date for the night had been a werewolf."
---
The crypt's silence was broken by the shuffle of footsteps through the debris. "So it is
you. What're you doing back here?" The familiar growl was punctuated by a toe-nudge in
the ribs. Enishi stared blankly at Jineh's boots until one of them kicked him out of his
semifetal curl and onto his back, sprawling his long coat open.
Jineh didn't look very well himself. Beneath the familiar shadow of his hat, both eyeballs
were filled with the ghastly black of curdled blood, and framed by a jagged piecework of
scars. As he leaned down, only a brittle tangle of bone emerged from the end of his right
sleeve. Before it could touch him, Enishi whipped his arm up from under his coat. Jineh
leaped nearly out of reach, but not quite. Even sheathed, the watou snapped his leg to the
side, leaving splinters of bone protruding at an awkward angle.
"Damn you, I just got these boots." With a vexed grimace, Jineh leaned against the wall
to massage his shin back into place, then reclaimed the sword he'd briefly set aside. "I
thought I heard you yowling Tomoe's name up here. I haven't seen her anywhere since
you took her off, so I'm not going back on our deal."
"She's gone away from me. Just like Yumi."
"Battousai killed her, too?"
"She's not dead, neither. Saw them both last night."
"You mean he took Tomoe back? That's greedy of him-- he already has a new girl he
calls his bluebird. Feisty thing."
"Not Battousai. Saw his bluebird girl flying down the stairs last night just as I got to
where the little vixen said he was hiding, or at least that's who Yumi said she was."
Jineh kicked him again. "You're as bad as Yumi was about not calling people their real
names. What do you mean, that's who Yumi said she was?"
"Kamiya's girl, I reckon. The little vixen said she has blue eyes, just like her mum. Oh,
and the fox-miko's some other bint entirely. Rosenberg, that's what she said her name
was."
"I was talking about Yumi. You saw her last night?"
"Yeh. Bleeding lively, she was. Still has that funny birthmark and all, just below her--"
"She's alive?" Jineh demanded. "Where?"
"Didn't hear me, did you?" Enishi levelled his watou back up. "In the bloody bleeding
flesh, I said. Yumi's mortal now. We can't get her back, not the way we are now. Nor
Tomoe. My little dove'll wither away and die without me, and she'll be gone forever."
Jineh pondered this. "Well, I promised to leave Tomoe alone in exchange for the
sakabatou, and I did. Don't expect me to give it back to you now. I kept saying all along
you should've made a batch of fresh, pretty flesh-puppets for us to play with instead.
They'd've been more fun than her." After more mutual glaring, Jineh added, "Battousai
was bleeding too, when I saw him a few weeks ago. I killed him and everything."
"Killed him? So the fox-miko was lying to me about him being at the shrine?"
"Well, he got better. But I did kill him. And then he got up and tried to return the favor.
The little bastard didn't even have his sword with him, just a short knife like Yumi's. It
had his ruby in it, though, so he must've found some trick of moving the jewels back and
forth."
"That must've been what she meant by saying he didn't have his sword. What a
weasel that vixen was."
"So," Jineh said after another long glare. "Ready to help me hunt down Battousai?"
Enishi jabbed at him again, but he evaded the watou easily. "That means 'no', doesn't it?"
"You wanking bloody sod. You've already killed him, you said, and it didn't take. What
makes you think you'll do any better now, with or without me?"
"This time I won't rush into it without the sakabatou, for a start. Are you sure you didn't
see Battousai last night?"
"Told you, mate. Nary a single red hair of his, or I would've got a good grip to take him
apart and dance on the bits."
"Then why was this lying next to you?" Abruptly, Jineh lunged down, skewering Enishi
with the katana in his left hand. Before the wound's impact fully registered, Enishi only
felt an instant of scorn-- how many times had they had this sort of pointless argybargy
before?-- but then the scorn and everything else within him seemed to tear out from their
roots, drawn up into the ravenous vortex of the blade.
Jineh twisted the katana, casting distorted shadows around the crypt. Pale light swirled up
and around the black blade, like pain made visible, refracting from the hilt's jewels into
intense sprays of color: Enishi's familiar sapphire-blue, Jineh's dark amethyst, and
Battousai's vivid crimson. "Did you make some kind of deal with him to get Tomoe
back?" Jineh demanded. "You'd act as bait to draw me out, so he could leap out and use
his sword on me. So where is he? Where are you, you little coward?" he called out.
Only the echoes answered. The light seemed to be waning now, unless it was just Enishi's
eyesight fading out. But he could still see Jineh's sword-hand recovering the flesh around
its bones, almost like a bare tree bursting into leaf. And while the sapphire seemed to be
going dim as well, the ruby and the amethyst seemed to be burning more brightly than
ever.
Even the pain was leaving him now. Perhaps this was what it was like to die and be
reborn into life, as Tomoe had. Perhaps it would all be worth it, if he could join her again.
With that thought, he closed his eyes, only to open them again at one of Jineh's more
colorful phrases and a searing violet flash.
Cor. The amethyst had exploded, or at least something had happened so Jineh couldn't
get any more use out of Battousai's sword. It didn't hurt any more either, Enishi realized,
and shoved it away with a whack from his watou. The katana's blade tore up through his
ribcage and out through his shoulder, but he didn't care. Well, maybe he'd have to care for
a few minutes, until his collarbone could patch up enough for him to use that arm. But
once it did, he decided, he was going to put some major hurt onto Jineh. Maybe Jineh's
old scars had vanished now, but that just made room for a whole set of new ones.
From the way Jineh was backing off, he seemed to have the same idea. While Enishi
levered himself up against the wall to finish healing, Jineh turned tail and raced down
into the tunnels again.
---
"Stupid meta tags," Yumi muttered to herself. She leaned back from the laptop and
partway into the workshop, shaking the cramps out of her trackball hand. Hiko and
Megumi had left a half-hour ago and she still didn't see any movement from Tomoe on
the cot back there, but at least she could expect her to wake up eventually. She was
gradually losing whatever hope for revival that she'd retained about Kenshin.
For the first few days after she'd revived as an ordinary human, she'd kept expecting him
to drop his quiet facade and go on a rampage. She'd seen him do that so many times
before that it seemed inevitable. But she'd tested him the day after he'd met up with Jineh,
when Hiko and Megumi had stepped out for a break from all the exorcism rituals they'd
been dumping on him in the school's mini-dojo. When she'd pressed up against Kenshin
for a good kiss, his only response had been a rather dazed "Oro?". After that, she never
tried anything on him again. It freaked her out too much. But he was still a sweet kid, as
long as she managed to avoid thinking about him as Battousai.
Through all the chaos they'd spread throughout the city in the old days, Battousai had
protected her as her father hadn't. Not in a smothering way that made her feel like some
kind of useless thing, the way Enishi got sometimes, but letting her fight for herself,
teaching her all kinds of new skills, and if she really needed it, stepping in to tip the odds
just enough for her to do the rest. She missed that, as well as some of the other things
they'd done together. Okay, not the random killing, but the sense of freedom from
boundaries, a sense that she'd never be trapped in a cage again. Oh, and the scromping.
Man alive, Bats had been good with the scromping. Maybe he was saving that for Kaoru
these days, but the girl probably didn't know how lucky she was. Or maybe had been. If
Kenshin couldn't be bothered to wake up for Kaoru, what were the chances he'd do it at
all?
She sighed. Well, at least she was making progress with the site code. And maybe with
Hiko. In some ways, the boss gave her the same sort of vibe as Battousai had, though he
was sure to be a lot heavier. And he definitely seemed interested before he left, even if
she hadn't gotten to demonstrate any of the techniques she'd dusted off for Enishi last
night. She'd have to wait until he got back to see what would happen next, though.
Possibly just digging a big hole behind the parking lot and putting Kenshin into it.
As she zapped the screensaver, an electric crackle came from behind the laptop. "Oh,
crap," she growled, but the screen display came up intact. There wasn't something funny
going on with the surge protector, was there? She saved her code, just in case, and then
started checking all of the cables and auxiliary gadgets.
There was a whiff of ozone on the other side of the counter, but it didn't seem to be
coming from anywhere near the computer. In fact, it seemed to be drifting from some
distance away. The boss hadn't burned out his pottery wheel or anything, had he? She
followed the faint scent away from the workshop and along the wall, until she was
standing in front of the sword case. A quick glance showed that Jineh's sword was still
there, but Battousai's hadn't come back, so there wasn't any reason for anything weird to
be going on in there. Maybe she was just brain-fried from an overdose of PHP.
She was about to turn back toward the counter, but a shoulder-tap from the opposite
direction made her twist around so quickly that her legs just coiled up beneath her,
dropping her onto the floor. From that vantage point, she had an excellent view of one of
her pairs of cropped jeans, except on shorter legs that dropped the hems closer to full-
length over a pair of shredded pink socks. Relieved, she said, "So you got up after all?
Kaoru's going to be pissed that you waited until she left." Her gaze moved up over Sano's
torn jacket, one of her tee-shirts, and the tail-end of a dark red topknot before finally
meeting Battousai's burning eyes.
-----
surprised/astonished: attributed to various lexicographers (Noah Webster, Samuel
Johnson, or Emile Littre), but certainly not my own invention.
I have no idea why this chapter took even longer than the last one. My brain cell was on
strike for most of the month. Burble.