RK and Buffy ain't mine. Heck, I can't even manage an entertaining disclaimer this time. Neeeed sleeeep. Or caffeine. Or possibly both, though not simultaneously.
Edodale
by wombat
Chapter 20
Megumi thought the lilac-point Siamese from her front yard looked more like a girl than a neutered male, but it was probably still safer to think about her as an it. As their bicycle rounded another corner, the cat leaned sideways to compensate, peeping over the edge of the handlebar basket with its ears up and alert. "You're really such a nice kitty," Megumi told it. "Too bad Kei doesn't like other cats at all, or I bet he'd like you." It turned toward her but stopped mid-motion, tilting its head at a yell from a passing side-street..
"Hey, wait up!" Sano's voice sparked a weird feeling in her, not quite as strong as the dizzy swirl when Hiko had caught them kissing, but somewhere in the same direction. She supposed whether that was clockwise or counterclockwise would depend on which side of the equator. As she braked, he skidded right past them, escaping full pavement wipeout with a wheels-off-the-ground midair twist before bouncily hopping back to the corner on both tires. But when he noticed the cat, he yelped and attempted some evasion maneuver that ended with his shoes dangling from his wheel spokes and the rest of him on the pavement.
"Show-off," she greeted him. "Don't worry, it's not Kei up here, see?" Still quietly perched in place, the cat twitched its whiskers at him on cue. "I thought you went home, or did you change your mind about going back to the shrine again? Inari partytime awaits, so we'd better finish cleaning up everything from last night in there before the festival crowd arrives."
Having disentangled himself from gravity, Sano flexed a bruised elbow and peered into the basket, where the cat did its cute little mini-meow and paw-touch greeting at him. "Yeah yeah, kawaii," he said grudgingly as they started off again. "My parents left the garage open, but the rest of the house was locked up. And by the time I got back to the gallery for my keys and lockpicks, it looked like Yumi already took off on her moped."
"She's supposed to stay back there with Kenshin," Megumi frowned.
"Yeah, well, I figured that Kaoru took over, and I didn't feel like knocking on the door to interrupt."
"But Kaoru left even before Hiko and me."
Sano scratched his head. "So either Kenshin or Tomoe woke up, and Yumi figured she could leave whichever one there to watch the other? I guess we can ask her once we meet up at the shrine."
They were nearly there already, not quite in view but within earshot of some sharp glassy taps. Once they turned the last corner, they saw Hiko standing next to his car, knocking on the window of the only other car in the lot. Inside behind her steering wheel, Kaoru's mom was fiddling with something in her hands but otherwise just sitting there as if he didn't exist. Hiko's voice resonated in a subterranean growl. "Ms. Summers, if you would be so kind as to resume a dialogue on the subject, perhaps our combined efforts might--"
He snapped his head up at them as they wheeled into his peripheral vision. His pre-volcanic cloud gave Megumi an unpleasant flash of deja vu from right after he found out Kenshin's sword was missing. At least Yumi was around to smooch him out of it again, or was she? The cars blocked Megumi's view of the bike rack, so she wasn't sure if Kaoru was here yet either. "Um. Mr. Hiko? Where's everyone else?"
"Miss Kamiya-Summers is already in the main shrine. Are we to expect any further unexpected reinforcements aside from Mr. Harris?"
"Isn't Yumi here too?"
A light haze of steam appeared inside Hiko's glasses, prompting them to be cleaned with disproportionate intensity. "Er. Miss Komagata? I haven't seen her since setting out this morning."
"Well, she wasn't at the gallery," Sano said. The cat pricked its ears at him and meowed again.
Ironically, the cease-fire attracted Joyce's attention. Her car door opened, making Hiko step back very suddenly. It didn't exactly slam shut, but it returned to its frame with a certain emphatic solidity as she addressed Megumi and Sano.. "Kaoru told me everything."
"Um. You mean all kinds of everything, or just--?"
"Oh jeez," Sano interrupted, wincing. "You won't tell my parents, will you?"
"Ms. Summers," Hiko repeated right behind her.
Calmly, Kaoru's mom turned to look up at him. "Unless you can find some way to explain yourself, I intend to contact their parents, their school, and your council of elders back in Okusofodo."
With some relief, Megumi watched the cat scramble out of her handlebar basket and leap down, giving her an excuse to follow it away. It headed toward the entrance torii, jumped onto the pedestal of one of the stone foxes, and meow-touched the statue while Megumi settled her bike into the rack. "You're just saying hello to everyone today. Aren't you the best-behaved kitty?"
As if to contradict her, the cat sprang back off the pedestal and dashed straight up the stairs. Megumi glanced at Sano, who was still fidgeting beside the human cold war, and motioned for him to join her in the great escape.
---
The koi weren't hibernating after all. As sunrise brushed the pond with golden scales, finny ripples broke the bright surface around the gazebo. Kaoru knelt on one of the benches, resting her arms and chin on the railing while she stared out over the water. She'd found a half-spilled box of various sharp things on one of the stair landings, and then several more fishbones among the leaf-drifts in the courtyard. After spreading the leaves around again, she'd come back to where she'd waited with Kenshin yesterday for Megumi's ritual that never happened, or at least not the way anyone expected.
And that was all there was to it, really. He'd told her over and over again what was going to happen eventually, even if he'd been wrong about how. He hadn't needed her for that, or even the sakabatou. But if he was really dead now, then maybe she could start scraping her life back together, probably not into anything that would ever really be normal again but at least looked like it if you didn't check too closely, like homogenized plastic slices of processed cheese food compared to real live cheese. Maybe it was happening already, because if her heart felt any closer to Swiss cheese, it would melt into a fondue.
She wrapped Kenshin's coat closer around her, shivering. The coat itself was warm enough, but it couldn't help with the windblown tear-tracks down her face. Not unless she pulled the hood all the way over her head, just like when they'd been kissing here last night. Miserably, she tucked her nose down into the collar. A few strands of hair were snarled around the top button, where she and Kenshin had gotten tangled while they were trying to unbutton it. Her scalp and mouth both twinged in memory. She closed her eyes tightly and stayed that way for a while, until she heard Megumi's voice coming from the courtyard.
"There she is-- hey, come back here. You better not try to eat the koi. C'mon, kittykittykitty...." This feline invocation coincided with a soft thump onto the gazebo bench, followed by an even softer meow and the barest hint of a touch on her elbow. Surprised, Kaoru looked at the cat as it rested one paw on her arm, meowed again, and leaped up onto her shoulder.
As Kaoru nervously leaned sideways, Megumi appeared with Sano in tow. Although he never used lip balm like the girls always did in winter, his mouth looked suspiciously shiny, with a waft of artificially cherry-scented petroleum product when he spoke up. "Hey, so where's Yumi?" He completely missed Megumi's reaction as he started to poke around in the box.
"At the gallery, isn't she? I thought you went home."
"Been there, done that, forgot the lockpicks. Maybe she just went on a grocery run or something when I went back. Guess I'll have to try a stripped-down fishbone on my front door-- even if it doesn't work, my parents will probably wake up from the noise and let me in. Or wake up, anyway. Maybe."
Kaoru leaned even further as the cat looked into the box from its perch, unfurling its tail for balance. Megumi shook her head. "Typical Siamese. Sometimes they figure their masks give them a dashing piratical air and they try to make like shoulder parrots. Did she say hello to you already?" The cat meowed as if in confirmation and deliberately sat inside the coat hood, sliding it backwards into a hammock and pulling the front opening up against Kaoru's neck.
Still ignoring Sano for now, Megumi added, "She was just hanging out near my house and I didn't want to just leave her there to get hurt or run over. Sometimes when stupid people move, they dump their pets onto the street, but I don't think anyone would do that to a purebred Siamese. She's awfully young, too-- not really a baby kitten anymore, but she's not looking for a boyfriend right now, if you know what I mean." She stopped very suddenly, biting a smear of cherry-scented balm off her lip. "So, um, Kaoru, do you think we need to do any more cleanup stuff?"
"I checked around everywhere I could think of, so we can just take this box and go unless you want to tidy up the booths a little more. Did you get your bookbag from that miko locker room?"
"Not yet. I'll catch up with you, okay?"
As Megumi headed further back into the shrine complex, Sano tucked the box under one arm and followed Kaoru down the stairs. "So what's with her?"
Kaoru gaped at him over her shoulder, awestruck by the power of male obliviousness. "Jeez, Sano, why do you think Megumi might be upset?"
He shrugged. "The Enishi thing, I guess, but actually I meant the cat. Looks like she's found some kind of snack down in your hood."
"She's probably hungry if she's lost."
"I guess. She isn't chewing on it nearly as fierce as your mom's tearing out Hiko downstairs."
---
Delayed by a last-minute fishbone spill on the stairs, Sano rehefted the box in his less hurty arm and returned to the parking lot, where Hiko was still multitasking grim resolve with apologetic courtesy. Or was that apoplectic courtesy? Oh, to heck with those SAT words for now. Either way, Kaoru's mother wasn't buying it. "I'm sorry, Mr. Hiko, but I really don't think there's anything else to discuss. Kaoru, are you ready now? Let's go home."
"But mom--"
"Ms. Summers, may I remind you that--"
Before Joyce could intensify that scary polite freeze-out mode, Sano shoved the weapons box at Hiko, who produced his own Titanic-sinking glare but went to stow it in his car trunk as Kaoru made another try. "Mom, we really need to figure out what happened last night, and maybe you can help us with that. Please? Besides, I have a cat inside my coat hood."
Shaking her head, Joyce repeated firmly, "Let's go home. And you know that Yahiko's allergic to cats, so we can't keep it. Sanosuke, could you please give it back to Megumi?"
"I would, but I've got this allergy to getting shredded into hamburger. Psycho Kitty Keisuke already tried to track out my veins this morning." Sano rolled up his jacket sleeve and flexed his arm in demonstration, bleeding another palimpsest layer into his shirt. He'd been hiding the evidence from Megumi so she wouldn't get distracted into first aid instead of smoochage, which more than made up for the discomfort, but he didn't have nearly as much incentive to go fishing for felines.
Joyce reached into the coat hood herself, but was faced with some civil disobedience as the cat clung to the fabric with its claws. As Hiko rejoined the group, he raised an eyebrow and a semi-helpful hand, but the cat didn't appreciate being lifted by the back of its collar any more than Sano usually did, at least judging by the strangled yowl. Kaoru winced, hands to her ears. Within seconds, Megumi hurtled from the stairs with her bookbag lurching behind her. Sano yanked his sleeve down again before she noticed. "Mr. Hiko, don't do that, you're choking her. Kitty, calm down, no one's going to hurt you," she soothed. "Now come on out, okay?" Tentatively, the cat put one paw onto Kaoru's shoulder, then scrambled out all at once and dropped to the pavement, where it started to make pitiful retching noises.
"I feel your pain," Sano told the cat, as Hiko began to polish his glasses with an abruptly subdued air.
"It's okay, she's just coughing up a hairball." The cat ejected a spongy lump of confirmation and poked at it quizzically. "Kitty, that is not a toy," Megumi sighed.
"Kaoru," Joyce said again, motioning toward their car. Kaoru shook her head. "Kaoru, I know you're unhappy about Kenshin, but if he's truly dead, then nothing can bring him back. And if that means that Battousai is gone forever, then maybe it's best that way. Here, I untangled the necklace he gave you, so let's go home and we can talk about this after we've both had more time to think."
As the silver fishbone dangled in midair, the cat leaped up and snagged the whole necklace onto the ground. "Hey! That is not a real fish, so spit it out. I'll find some real food for you soon, I promise," Megumi coaxed while looking around at the others. "Does anyone have something she could eat? Only no green tea mochi or chocolate for her because caffeine is really bad for cats, and-- yikes."
"Holy crap," Sano echoed. "What the--?"
Obediently spat out, the necklace had landed on the hairball, sending a gout of steam into the air. As the moisture boiled away, a curl of smoke replaced the steam. Hiko kicked the fishbone aside, nearly head-butting Sano as both of them bent to examine the remains with Megumi.
Even all mooshed together and damp, the filaments were obviously too long to be cat fur and their colors didn't match. All three of them looked over at Kaoru, crouching nearby to retrieve her necklace. She yelped in protest when Hiko yanked a few strands from her ponytail, but stopped immediately when she saw their exact match to the hairball, or at least the intact matrix holding it together. The rest of it had half-crumbled into ash, burning the shape of a fishbone and chain from the background of Kenshin's distinctive dark red.
---
Halfway back to the gallery, Hiko glared aside at his passenger. "I do hope my ribs didn't injure your elbow, Mr. Harris."
"Nah, it isn't any worse than my other one. Uh, I mean, sorry." Sano was still watching Joyce's car veer away. "But why are we letting the girls off the hook? It's great to be all manly and stuff, but why do just the two of us get to go back there?"
"Yet again, evidently I have wasted several minutes of my life in attempting to explain this before we set out. Unlike schoolwork, you will not always have the opportunity to copy your classmates' notes. But if I must repeat myself, Miss Yukishiro has already displayed a certain rapport with Miss Rosenberg; if that vulnerability still exists, we had best minimize her role in combat."
"So let me get this straight. We're figuring that Tomoe didn't really kill Kenshin last night or at least brought back Battousai this morning? But if the whole shrine didn't stop Tomoe last night, how is Kaoru's house supposed to be any safer?"
"If Ms. Summers' information is correct, their house has old and formidable protections surrounding it. She also may have more heirlooms akin to the sakabatou. However, as she has not been trained for combat, her daughter had best stay with her as a safeguard. As you have already noted, that leaves only the two of us to deal with the situation."
Sano still wasn't convinced, but somehow felt paradoxical relief that Hiko didn't sound that confident either. "Holy Dynamic Duo, Batman. So what about Yumi?"
Grimly, Hiko said, "You said that her vehicle was gone. If she were fleeing, she ought to have met with us at the shrine. We must surmise that either she was unable to stop them from taking it, or that she also has been affected and went elsewhere." One last turn brought them into the gallery parking lot, which was still as empty as the weapons box in the car trunk wasn't, at least until they finished gearing up.
The gallery door turned out to be even more locked than usual. Sano's pockets clanked with fishbones as he crouched down to inspect it. "Someone snapped off the key, so what's left of it is still stuck inside. I can get it out, but without my tools it'll take time."
"We don't have time," Hiko said, and kicked the door down. The building rang with his battle challenge as he charged into the entrance hall, sword drawn. "Battousai? Where are you?" Reluctantly, Sano charged right behind him, nearly skidding a fishbone into Hiko when he stopped on the threshold of the main gallery room.
The pottery was mostly fine, at least the stuff that was elevated onto pedestals or otherwise tucked out of the way. But from ground level to about two feet up, the place was trashed. The countertop sagged over the remains of the main display case, from which several long, blood-stained shards lay scattered across the floor. But the blood had come from somewhere else. Namely, the large gelatinous pool in one corner, haloed by the blurry prints of hands.
"Miss Komagata?" Hiko called out. "Are you here?"
Uneasily, Sano edged over to the half-open door of Yumi's room, which had a much lower Kenshin quotient than before. "Doesn't look like there's any Battousai action in here. Whatever was left of his clothes is gone too-- it's not like enough was left in one piece to wear, so any idea what he'd want with them?" Sano's ex-jacket was gone too, he realized, with all the stuff from its pockets. So much for his lockpicks and snack break.
He had just extracted a particularly mysterious piece of underwear from one drawer when Hiko's voice distracted him, in an odd tone which Sano had never heard before. It was just as quiet as librarian mode, but sounded very different. "Damn him to every realm of hell. Yumi..."
By the time Sano reached him, Hiko had nearly finished cutting her free. Thrown aside, the silver wire from his sword blade lay across his coat. The long shreds of fabric tying her down to the workbench were unrecognizable beneath their clotted overlay, but they had to be Kenshin's former wardrobe. They'd been useful for something after all.
The sword slipped on one of the last few knots, pricking her skin beneath it. Her hand twitched, reminding Sano to breathe. "Is she okay?" He winced at the unspoken response, which might as well have been the award trophy for Best Display of Total Idiocy, and backed away as Hiko scooped her off the table.
A sigh breathed out from the dried mask of gore on her face. "I tried-- tried to stop him, but I couldn't--"
"Don't try to talk yet. First, let me tend your wounds." He had already reached her room, where he laid her on the bed before shutting the door in Sano's face.
---
"Since when did we have a basement?" Kaoru asked, incredulous.
Joyce put down her side of the bookcase and wiped her forehead. "When your grandmother died, she asked us to seal it off with her things inside. I couldn't use them because I was never trained as a miko, and she said they shouldn't be destroyed or passed on to a stranger. Besides," she added, pulling the bookcase farther away from the door, "I know this is one place where we won't have to worry about Yahiko's cat allergies later."
As the girls descended, their footsteps swirled up a fine layer of dust from the stairs. Kaoru grabbed the strap of Megumi's bookbag to steady her from a sneeze, while at the forefront, the cat squeaked from the sneeze-tightened grip. Megumi turned around when they reached the bottom. "But if there's major miko mojo down here, are you sure it's okay for me to sit around with all this stuff? If Tomoe can still get to me, she could end up using it against us."
"I don't think so," Joyce called down. "From what I know, these are mostly for information and defense, not attack. So even if she can touch them, she can't use them to hurt us."
"If you say so," Megumi said doubtfully. "At least that means my body will be nice and protected when she's using it to stick pointy things into yours. So when do we know it's safe for me to come out?"
"When we hear from the guys, I guess. Or until the cat really needs to go to the bathroom. Are you sure you want to keep her down here with you?"
"She'll keep me company, and maybe she can even help me out with another magic hairball. But I don't know when was the last time she ate anything, so could you maybe bring some kibble and a box of kitty litter later on?"
"Is there anything else you want for lunch?"
"Kaoru, really," Joyce said, beckoning her up again. "Megumi, if there's anything you'd like to eat, just let me know. The power socket is over there-- oh good, you found it already-- so you'll have the radio and a lamp to read by, and we'll tell you as soon as we get any word from the others."
---
It had been a good night for business at the Yoshiwara, Enishi saw. There was barely space enough to park his car among the rest, even with a gap so narrow that he had to leave his coat and weapons behind for squirming out. His passage stripped the velvet layer of frost from the chrome beside him, leaving a thin cold trickle of grime and ashes. He might not've found Jineh again last night, but he'd certainly found every sinkhole of rats and swamp gas down in the tunnels. Perhaps it had been a bad idea to light a cig down there. And even before that, he'd been wounded with fire, steel, and grief from losing Tomoe. All the same, he felt oddly light-headed from having salvaged some good of it after all.
For one, he'd never have to deal with that git of a doorman again. While Enishi hadn't held much personal grudge against him, it seemed a poor management decision to retain an employee who'd started off by cutting his throat. Then again, at least the door had always had a good watch on it, unlike right now with whoever was standing in for him. By now, it should've been opened up with a greeting, or at least a request for ID. But perhaps the girls on the dance floor had worked up something special that was worth an extra look. He shrugged and let himself in.
Instantly, he knew something was wrong. The thump of music was audible from here, as always, but it was tinny and garish without anyone talking under it. Even when the girls were practising routines on their own, they'd giggle and chat together. With all the cars out front, there should've been enough audience for normal conversation to carry, even if no hoots and cheers were forthcoming.
He dashed back to his car to arm himself. Sword poised and ready, he stepped back through the door and strode into the depths of hell.
---
Left to loiter on his own, Sano aimlessly poked around the main gallery space, chewing on a fishbone and occasionally glancing at the closed door of Yumi's room. The taps in there had run until the pipes made that hot-water sound, and then they shut off again just before a solid creak of bedsprings announced Hiko sitting down to clean her up. It was nearly as good as a whoopee cushion.
Since then, it'd been mostly quiet, except for some muffled random noises from which Sano had deliberately edged out of earshot. He wasn't sure if some of them were repeat bedsprings, but he figured he might as well move away on general principle. Besides, he still didn't have much idea of what happened before they got here, other than Jineh's sword going AWOL with Battousai. Hiko hadn't even gone to the now totally empty sword case while looking for Yumi, since it wasn't like she could've fit inside it except in snack-sized bites. For once, Sano was a step ahead of him, though he would've preferred to trade it for the bliss bonus of not having to know about this yet.
The big pool of blood nearby wasn't exactly happy-making either, but at least it was more interesting than pottery. After staring at the edges for a while, he could figure out some other shapes from the smears around it. The handprints at one end were really clear, but the other end looked more like a scuffle of feet and knees. Off to the side, a some narrow pits were shaped like the point of a blade that'd been stabbed hard into the walls and floor. So Yumi must've put up a good fight with her knife, even while Battousai was cutting her down. And then he'd dragged her to the table back there and--
Sano frowned, looking from the corner to the doorway. Even when Kenshin was being Battousai, could he really carry Yumi? Well, maybe he could, but there wouldn't be any point in doing that instead of just grabbing her arms and legs to haul her along the floor. There weren't any drag marks, though, just overlapping footprints. Battousai staggering back and forth with a heavy load? But were all of those prints in Kenshin's shoe size?
Following the trail into the workshop, he ran smack into the table where Yumi had been tied down. While he held onto it for balance, Sano's eyes adjusted to the dim light. The footprints weren't making any more sense yet, because their first pass went right past the table and across the room. Maybe she ran for the window? It was pretty high, but she could've tried for a boost up the wall from the cot. He meandered along with the footprints until they dipped under a dark fold of the coverlet, reappeared from further down the bed, and doubled back again.
Several things occurred to him in random order. The last time he'd seen that cot, Tomoe had been napping on it, wrapped up in Kenshin's coat and a set of white sheets. Despite the mess all over Yumi, the table she'd been tied to was clean and dry. In fact, the weird chicken-liver smell of way too much blood lying around was stronger over here. Gingerly, he poked at the cot with a fishbone, drawing the sheet aside to reveal what lay beneath.
When he recovered some sense of aplomb, he felt relieved that neither Megumi nor Kaoru was around to hear the embarrassingly girly squee he had just made, though it might've carried far enough to be heard in the rest of the building. Hoping it hadn't, he ran to the front room and wrenched the door open. "Hey, I think something's wrong in here."
Yumi raised her head from Hiko's and smiled. Spilling across both their faces, her hair had the same dark sheen as the blade in her hand, including the fresh crimson highlights. In its exciting new location on her knife hilt, the emerald from her old naginata was swirling with an inner green flame, as bright as her golden eyes. "I don't know about you, kid," she said, "but this looks just fine to me."
---
"Mom? It's been a while since we got home. Shouldn't we have heard from the guys by now?"
Joyce smiled and shrugged, but Kaoru could tell her mother was uneasy. She shifted her posture at the far side of the living-room sofa. "I'm sure that Mr. Hiko can look after himself, and Sanosuke as well. Otherwise I would've let you go with them, no matter what they said about having you guard me."
"I think what Mr. Hiko was really worried about was me going soft on Kenshin. I don't know why, since it's not like I didn't kill him before."
"Oh, honey. It sounded more to me as if he wanted to spare you from fighting Battousai this time, since he knew how hard it was for you before. You've already been through enough just since last night to deserve some rest now."
"But--" Unable to stop fidgeting, Kaoru nearly twitched one shoe off. She wrapped Kenshin's coat more closely around herself to keep everything else contained. "Even if that's what everybody else wants, I can't just sit here and do nothing. I should at least go check on them to find out what's going on."
"No."
"But Mom--"
"Kaoru, I said no," her mother repeated, still calm and clear. "Mr. Hiko had no right to involve you in this in the first place."
"But Dad and the sakabatou--"
Joyce's words wavered now. "I know. But it should have ended there. If Jineh and Enishi had found Kenshin and killed him with the sakabatou, they would've lost any chance of recovering their former abilities. But now that Battousai is awake again...."
Mutinously, Kaoru stuffed her hands into her pockets, feeling the silver fishbone necklace dig into the seams. "Okay, I'll let the guys take care of it this time. But speaking of Enishi, shouldn't we try to track him down too? He might have some connections to the Yoshiwara besides that guy who kidnapped Megumi for him. And I'm the only one of us who he hasn't already met, so he won't recognize me on sight. And he should be pretty easy to spot, right? Sano-type hair, big-ass sword?"
"Kaoru...."
"It's just a short bike ride there and back," she wheedled. "And besides, school is kind of on the way, so I can fetch more books for my test on Monday. C'mon, Mom, pleeeeeeeeease?"
Joyce visibly counted to ten before sighing. "I'd rather drive you there, but we really shouldn't leave Megumi by herself. Do you have any weapons?"
"Huh? I thought you didn't want me to fight this time."
"I don't. So if you don't have any with you, you'll try harder to stay out of trouble, or at least I hope so."
Kaoru stood up and waved her arms around like an airport security victim. "You can go get the metal-detector magnetic bloodhounds. No swords, no crossbows, no pointy sticks, no nothing," she said, not saying anything about the necklace. It wasn't like it had been made to be used as a weapon, so technically it didn't count.
"No fighting?"
"If I even see any thumb-wrestling, I promise I'll turn around and run. Otherwise, I'll just ride to the Yoshiwara, take a quick look around, and then call you from the school library on the way back. Okay?"
---
Well, crap, Sano pondered thoughtfully. If his libinidal checklist was going to keep coming true in weird ways, maybe it was time to develop a fetish that involved having lots of really excellent weapons around. Even as he retreated into the main gallery, he couldn't help but feel conflicted about the present circumstances. Because okay, Yumi wasn't wearing much besides a smile right now, but it was accessorized with an evil soulsucking knife and various scary bloodstains. Not only that, but there was the question of how she could've hidden her knife earlier, considering that she hadn't been wearing much more when they found her. Dang it, why did his exposure to girl parts have to keep being from Yumi splashing blood around?
Her lack of wounds had been covered up earlier by the dried pints plastered onto her, wherever those had come from. She must've been desperate to stick Battousai with her knife in self-defense and get possessed all over again, so maybe she'd been wounded enough that some of it was hers after all. But after that, they'd gone to the back room to slice Tomoe into bits, leaving enough mess for several more coats of type-AB body paint. Maybe that was payback for Tomoe cutting Kenshin into the same kirigami pattern last night, but if so, Yumi and Battousai had definitely paid her in large denominations without sequential serial numbers and told her to keep the change.
Sano retreated back into the gallery, crunching the ex-display case under his boots. As Yumi slid across the bed, she squeezed incoherent grunts out of both him and Hiko for very different reasons. Maybe. Probably once Hiko cleaned her up enough to realize she wouldn't need bandages, she didn't want them to go to waste. Whatever those cloth strips were made of, he must've been hella strong to tear them up in the first place, considering how well they were tying him down now. Yumi hadn't been so good at applying them in the bandage department, though. Hiko didn't look exactly dead yet, but if he entered a marathon right now, he'd probably reach the finish line somewhere between Christopher Reeves and Stephen Hawking. At least Hawking had wheels.
Crap, Sano philosophized further. Here she was, as babelicious as he had ever conjectured, but she was in the middle of being evil. But she was naked! But she was evil!! On top of that, the really good weapons were either in the workshop or on the other side of Yumi, all he had on him was some bent-up fishbones, and why did she have to be both naked and evil at the same time anyway?!
"Where're you going? Come on in and join the party," she whispered silkily. "You don't have to wait until his turn's over-- I've got plenty of love to go around." She adjusted her grip on her knife, wrapping fingers around the hilt and blowing a kiss from it in a way that milked cold sweat from Sano's neck and dropped the fishbone from his mouth. The metallic clatter distracted him, but her laugh was even more silvery and sharp-edged. "Just lie down and give it up. I promise it'll feel better than trying to throw anything in your condition-- though whatever you did to your arms, I promise I can do it better."
Oh great, the cat scratches were bleeding all the way through his jacket now. Perversely, Sano hurled the nearest vase, but it hurt him a lot more than it did her. For that matter, most of it smashed off the wall into Hiko instead, except for one nice sharp piece straight into her neck. All that did was add a funny squiggle to her smile and walk. As casually as if pulling a loose strand of hair out of her collar, she pulled it out with a droplet of pale flame. The wound healed over even before the discarded sliver of clay hit the floor.
Nevertheless, she stopped, glanced down again, and changed her angle of approach. That was weird, Sano thought at first, before realizing that the debris wasn't just ex-pottery. The broken display case had been mirrored. As such, it provided new and interesting perspectives of Naked!Yumi, but the reflective coating must mean the glass was really silvered with real silver. He couldn't throw it any better than pottery, but at least it was already scattered around her bare feet. Quickly, he stomped the nearest piece of mirror into smaller pieces and kicked them toward her, then fled into the workshop to free up his strategic planning from visual distraction.
Okay, so he had an evil naked babe on his hands. So to speak. If Sano remembered the basics correctly, then the only way he could kill her was by thwacking her evil naked weapon into her to make her evil naked jewel blow up. Obviously this was some kind of mid-season animation-budget flashback episode because they'd already done that before, so why was she evil again?
Maybe Megumi could figure it out, especially now that Tomoe was too dead to do anything to her. But if he called in the girls for backup, that would leave Kaoru's mom on her own with Battousai wandering around unless they brought her here with them, which wasn't any better, and besides by the time they got here, it might be too late. Yumi had started humming lap-dance music out there, with the melody drifting farther away as she returned to Hiko. Dag freaking nabbit!
This was no time to think about strategy instead of just plain fighting, he decided. He considered the mochi napalm and ofudized crossbow bolts in Hiko's coat pockets, but they'd probably set the place on fire and Yumi was a lot more likely than him to reach the exit first, or at all. Even if she didn't, she might just do that Terminator-style walk out of the flaming wreckage to come get him, and anyway he'd have to hold her knife down through her into the ground to make sure she was un-undead again.
He picked up the discarded silver wire and dumped it onto the table along with everything else from Hiko's coat, then topped off the pile with his remaining fishbones. Some of them briefly tangled in his pocket before snapping loose; he hadn't just cut through it and killed off the second jacket this weekend, had he? Nope, it was some weird boingy lace straps. What the--?
Oh. Great. Even Yumi's underwear was out to get him. Okay, he was going to get through this fight anyway. Either that, or at least it might be fun being evil and naked with Yumi afterward if she didn't cut him into bits instead.
---
After Enishi turned off the music, the Yoshiwara was silent except for his footsteps and the monotonous drip of leaky plumbing. Unfortunately, the plumbing had consisted of the circulatory systems of everyone in the building. He glanced up at a tattered sleeve hanging from the ceiling, then muttered a curse as more blood splattered straight onto his glasses. At least he hadn't bothered washing up before coming in, or that would've been a real waste of effort.
Battousai had come here for a grand old time, that much was clear. He must've walked straight through the front door after blocking all the others from the outside and starting on the blokes in the audience. They were the lucky ones, though. He'd kept the girls alive for longer.
The back corridor was a bit tidier than the dance floor, if only because it was elevated. Two or three more bodies-- it was hard to get a count just by mentally jigsawing the bits-- were cluttering it up, but he could pick his way through the less squishy bits of the carpet all the way down to his office. Still no lizard; the brat must've come and gone.
Well, there was nothing to be done for it now, and plenty of plans to be sorted out anyway. Enishi shook his head, laid his sword across the top of the desk, and sat down to catch up on paperwork. About halfway through the stack, more noises started up from the front, probably the morning shift coming in. He considered going out to meet them, but if they were anywhere near as jumpy as he'd been, he'd end up with random bits of metal stuck into him, and he'd had enough of that for one day.
By the time they'd made their way to the office door, he was all finished up and ready to go. Tired of waiting, he called out to them. "Just me in here, so come on already."
Nervously, the desk's previous occupant peered in at him from the midst of armed brawn. "Oh. Right. After we saw what happened in here, we tried to reach you, but we couldn't get to your new place, and the guy we sent to your old one called back and said it was empty."
"Not much of a lookaround if he didn't spot at least one dead body in there."
"Well, he did mention Kujirinami. Or what was left of him, anyway. Is there another syndicate moving into town, or anything like that?"
Enishi shrugged. "Nothing I can't settle myself. I'll be away longer than we planned, since I'll have more to do than just the move-in. But I reckon while you're filling in for me, your first order of business can be finding a new lad for the door. That, and getting fresh carpets laid in. I'll let everyone know they'll be dealing with Wu Heishin again, at least for now."
Wu sidled in with his bodyguards, to the extent that bodyguards could be considered to sidle. As Enishi stood up and strolled toward the door, Wu cautiously edged toward the chair, keeping the desk between them. "So all of the stuff out there-- that wasn't a... mass downsizing on your part, was it?
"Not quite my style. I'll take care of it, I said. But if you try anything with my new sword besides bringing it to my car, I'll sack your bum into individually wrapped packets of bum bits, so come along now."
With a nervous laugh, Wu took the sword from the desk and squished behind Enishi toward the parking lot. "I was just admiring the fine details on the hilt, that's all. I've never seen anything like it-- did it come from our jewelers' network?"
"Nah. Picked it up at a place I found last night. Hole in the wall in the middle of nowhere, you might say. One of our rock shops sent a note this morning you should look into, though-- they lost a big gemstone from out a locked safe, they claim. Reckon we should make sure no one there accidentally swallowed it, coz that sort of thing's likely to be bad for the digestion. Now, just stand aside with the sword until I'm out of that costive clench of a parking space, and then you can give it over and go back inside."
He noticed Wu polishing his fingerprints off the hilt with a sleeve before handing it through the window. Enishi grinned, encouraging Wu to bolt back into the Yoshiwara instead of lingering beside the car. Quickly dropping the sword onto the other seat, Enishi rubbed his hands against each other, blowing on his fingers as if for warmth. Instead, a fine powder of ash sifted off his skin, erasing the silvered imprint of the sakabatou.
-----
chapter title: http://www.cs.pdx.edu/~trent/ochs/lyrics/highwayman-orig.html
Psycho Kitty Keisuke (belatedly): Megumi's family contains at least one fan of the Talking Heads. Run run run, run run run away.
Terminator: I have no idea whether the T-1000's firewalk in T2 was replicated by the more Yumi-shaped upgrade to whom Ah-nold gave a swirly in T3, which I have not seen.
*fret* Ack. My narrative keeps sliding into inner monologue, endangering the maxim of "show, don't tell" even when the dialogue isn't turning into "As you know, Bob" forced exposition. And it *still* hasn't started on the fight scene(s) that I'd hoped to fit into here but decided not to after checking the current length against the previous chapters. All this after wading through different drafts for a year before finally getting this one to hang together at all, and it still doesn't have any structure unto itself as opposed to just being a roughly chapter-sized chunk of stuff.
Oh well. At least the next chapter should simply bridge over into FotN, from whence "Edodale" will just re-emerge out the other side with enough backfill to preserve continuity for those who opted out of the E/K smut. On the other hand, that's what I've been thinking for the last several chapters too. Feh.
Edodale
by wombat
Chapter 20
Megumi thought the lilac-point Siamese from her front yard looked more like a girl than a neutered male, but it was probably still safer to think about her as an it. As their bicycle rounded another corner, the cat leaned sideways to compensate, peeping over the edge of the handlebar basket with its ears up and alert. "You're really such a nice kitty," Megumi told it. "Too bad Kei doesn't like other cats at all, or I bet he'd like you." It turned toward her but stopped mid-motion, tilting its head at a yell from a passing side-street..
"Hey, wait up!" Sano's voice sparked a weird feeling in her, not quite as strong as the dizzy swirl when Hiko had caught them kissing, but somewhere in the same direction. She supposed whether that was clockwise or counterclockwise would depend on which side of the equator. As she braked, he skidded right past them, escaping full pavement wipeout with a wheels-off-the-ground midair twist before bouncily hopping back to the corner on both tires. But when he noticed the cat, he yelped and attempted some evasion maneuver that ended with his shoes dangling from his wheel spokes and the rest of him on the pavement.
"Show-off," she greeted him. "Don't worry, it's not Kei up here, see?" Still quietly perched in place, the cat twitched its whiskers at him on cue. "I thought you went home, or did you change your mind about going back to the shrine again? Inari partytime awaits, so we'd better finish cleaning up everything from last night in there before the festival crowd arrives."
Having disentangled himself from gravity, Sano flexed a bruised elbow and peered into the basket, where the cat did its cute little mini-meow and paw-touch greeting at him. "Yeah yeah, kawaii," he said grudgingly as they started off again. "My parents left the garage open, but the rest of the house was locked up. And by the time I got back to the gallery for my keys and lockpicks, it looked like Yumi already took off on her moped."
"She's supposed to stay back there with Kenshin," Megumi frowned.
"Yeah, well, I figured that Kaoru took over, and I didn't feel like knocking on the door to interrupt."
"But Kaoru left even before Hiko and me."
Sano scratched his head. "So either Kenshin or Tomoe woke up, and Yumi figured she could leave whichever one there to watch the other? I guess we can ask her once we meet up at the shrine."
They were nearly there already, not quite in view but within earshot of some sharp glassy taps. Once they turned the last corner, they saw Hiko standing next to his car, knocking on the window of the only other car in the lot. Inside behind her steering wheel, Kaoru's mom was fiddling with something in her hands but otherwise just sitting there as if he didn't exist. Hiko's voice resonated in a subterranean growl. "Ms. Summers, if you would be so kind as to resume a dialogue on the subject, perhaps our combined efforts might--"
He snapped his head up at them as they wheeled into his peripheral vision. His pre-volcanic cloud gave Megumi an unpleasant flash of deja vu from right after he found out Kenshin's sword was missing. At least Yumi was around to smooch him out of it again, or was she? The cars blocked Megumi's view of the bike rack, so she wasn't sure if Kaoru was here yet either. "Um. Mr. Hiko? Where's everyone else?"
"Miss Kamiya-Summers is already in the main shrine. Are we to expect any further unexpected reinforcements aside from Mr. Harris?"
"Isn't Yumi here too?"
A light haze of steam appeared inside Hiko's glasses, prompting them to be cleaned with disproportionate intensity. "Er. Miss Komagata? I haven't seen her since setting out this morning."
"Well, she wasn't at the gallery," Sano said. The cat pricked its ears at him and meowed again.
Ironically, the cease-fire attracted Joyce's attention. Her car door opened, making Hiko step back very suddenly. It didn't exactly slam shut, but it returned to its frame with a certain emphatic solidity as she addressed Megumi and Sano.. "Kaoru told me everything."
"Um. You mean all kinds of everything, or just--?"
"Oh jeez," Sano interrupted, wincing. "You won't tell my parents, will you?"
"Ms. Summers," Hiko repeated right behind her.
Calmly, Kaoru's mom turned to look up at him. "Unless you can find some way to explain yourself, I intend to contact their parents, their school, and your council of elders back in Okusofodo."
With some relief, Megumi watched the cat scramble out of her handlebar basket and leap down, giving her an excuse to follow it away. It headed toward the entrance torii, jumped onto the pedestal of one of the stone foxes, and meow-touched the statue while Megumi settled her bike into the rack. "You're just saying hello to everyone today. Aren't you the best-behaved kitty?"
As if to contradict her, the cat sprang back off the pedestal and dashed straight up the stairs. Megumi glanced at Sano, who was still fidgeting beside the human cold war, and motioned for him to join her in the great escape.
---
The koi weren't hibernating after all. As sunrise brushed the pond with golden scales, finny ripples broke the bright surface around the gazebo. Kaoru knelt on one of the benches, resting her arms and chin on the railing while she stared out over the water. She'd found a half-spilled box of various sharp things on one of the stair landings, and then several more fishbones among the leaf-drifts in the courtyard. After spreading the leaves around again, she'd come back to where she'd waited with Kenshin yesterday for Megumi's ritual that never happened, or at least not the way anyone expected.
And that was all there was to it, really. He'd told her over and over again what was going to happen eventually, even if he'd been wrong about how. He hadn't needed her for that, or even the sakabatou. But if he was really dead now, then maybe she could start scraping her life back together, probably not into anything that would ever really be normal again but at least looked like it if you didn't check too closely, like homogenized plastic slices of processed cheese food compared to real live cheese. Maybe it was happening already, because if her heart felt any closer to Swiss cheese, it would melt into a fondue.
She wrapped Kenshin's coat closer around her, shivering. The coat itself was warm enough, but it couldn't help with the windblown tear-tracks down her face. Not unless she pulled the hood all the way over her head, just like when they'd been kissing here last night. Miserably, she tucked her nose down into the collar. A few strands of hair were snarled around the top button, where she and Kenshin had gotten tangled while they were trying to unbutton it. Her scalp and mouth both twinged in memory. She closed her eyes tightly and stayed that way for a while, until she heard Megumi's voice coming from the courtyard.
"There she is-- hey, come back here. You better not try to eat the koi. C'mon, kittykittykitty...." This feline invocation coincided with a soft thump onto the gazebo bench, followed by an even softer meow and the barest hint of a touch on her elbow. Surprised, Kaoru looked at the cat as it rested one paw on her arm, meowed again, and leaped up onto her shoulder.
As Kaoru nervously leaned sideways, Megumi appeared with Sano in tow. Although he never used lip balm like the girls always did in winter, his mouth looked suspiciously shiny, with a waft of artificially cherry-scented petroleum product when he spoke up. "Hey, so where's Yumi?" He completely missed Megumi's reaction as he started to poke around in the box.
"At the gallery, isn't she? I thought you went home."
"Been there, done that, forgot the lockpicks. Maybe she just went on a grocery run or something when I went back. Guess I'll have to try a stripped-down fishbone on my front door-- even if it doesn't work, my parents will probably wake up from the noise and let me in. Or wake up, anyway. Maybe."
Kaoru leaned even further as the cat looked into the box from its perch, unfurling its tail for balance. Megumi shook her head. "Typical Siamese. Sometimes they figure their masks give them a dashing piratical air and they try to make like shoulder parrots. Did she say hello to you already?" The cat meowed as if in confirmation and deliberately sat inside the coat hood, sliding it backwards into a hammock and pulling the front opening up against Kaoru's neck.
Still ignoring Sano for now, Megumi added, "She was just hanging out near my house and I didn't want to just leave her there to get hurt or run over. Sometimes when stupid people move, they dump their pets onto the street, but I don't think anyone would do that to a purebred Siamese. She's awfully young, too-- not really a baby kitten anymore, but she's not looking for a boyfriend right now, if you know what I mean." She stopped very suddenly, biting a smear of cherry-scented balm off her lip. "So, um, Kaoru, do you think we need to do any more cleanup stuff?"
"I checked around everywhere I could think of, so we can just take this box and go unless you want to tidy up the booths a little more. Did you get your bookbag from that miko locker room?"
"Not yet. I'll catch up with you, okay?"
As Megumi headed further back into the shrine complex, Sano tucked the box under one arm and followed Kaoru down the stairs. "So what's with her?"
Kaoru gaped at him over her shoulder, awestruck by the power of male obliviousness. "Jeez, Sano, why do you think Megumi might be upset?"
He shrugged. "The Enishi thing, I guess, but actually I meant the cat. Looks like she's found some kind of snack down in your hood."
"She's probably hungry if she's lost."
"I guess. She isn't chewing on it nearly as fierce as your mom's tearing out Hiko downstairs."
---
Delayed by a last-minute fishbone spill on the stairs, Sano rehefted the box in his less hurty arm and returned to the parking lot, where Hiko was still multitasking grim resolve with apologetic courtesy. Or was that apoplectic courtesy? Oh, to heck with those SAT words for now. Either way, Kaoru's mother wasn't buying it. "I'm sorry, Mr. Hiko, but I really don't think there's anything else to discuss. Kaoru, are you ready now? Let's go home."
"But mom--"
"Ms. Summers, may I remind you that--"
Before Joyce could intensify that scary polite freeze-out mode, Sano shoved the weapons box at Hiko, who produced his own Titanic-sinking glare but went to stow it in his car trunk as Kaoru made another try. "Mom, we really need to figure out what happened last night, and maybe you can help us with that. Please? Besides, I have a cat inside my coat hood."
Shaking her head, Joyce repeated firmly, "Let's go home. And you know that Yahiko's allergic to cats, so we can't keep it. Sanosuke, could you please give it back to Megumi?"
"I would, but I've got this allergy to getting shredded into hamburger. Psycho Kitty Keisuke already tried to track out my veins this morning." Sano rolled up his jacket sleeve and flexed his arm in demonstration, bleeding another palimpsest layer into his shirt. He'd been hiding the evidence from Megumi so she wouldn't get distracted into first aid instead of smoochage, which more than made up for the discomfort, but he didn't have nearly as much incentive to go fishing for felines.
Joyce reached into the coat hood herself, but was faced with some civil disobedience as the cat clung to the fabric with its claws. As Hiko rejoined the group, he raised an eyebrow and a semi-helpful hand, but the cat didn't appreciate being lifted by the back of its collar any more than Sano usually did, at least judging by the strangled yowl. Kaoru winced, hands to her ears. Within seconds, Megumi hurtled from the stairs with her bookbag lurching behind her. Sano yanked his sleeve down again before she noticed. "Mr. Hiko, don't do that, you're choking her. Kitty, calm down, no one's going to hurt you," she soothed. "Now come on out, okay?" Tentatively, the cat put one paw onto Kaoru's shoulder, then scrambled out all at once and dropped to the pavement, where it started to make pitiful retching noises.
"I feel your pain," Sano told the cat, as Hiko began to polish his glasses with an abruptly subdued air.
"It's okay, she's just coughing up a hairball." The cat ejected a spongy lump of confirmation and poked at it quizzically. "Kitty, that is not a toy," Megumi sighed.
"Kaoru," Joyce said again, motioning toward their car. Kaoru shook her head. "Kaoru, I know you're unhappy about Kenshin, but if he's truly dead, then nothing can bring him back. And if that means that Battousai is gone forever, then maybe it's best that way. Here, I untangled the necklace he gave you, so let's go home and we can talk about this after we've both had more time to think."
As the silver fishbone dangled in midair, the cat leaped up and snagged the whole necklace onto the ground. "Hey! That is not a real fish, so spit it out. I'll find some real food for you soon, I promise," Megumi coaxed while looking around at the others. "Does anyone have something she could eat? Only no green tea mochi or chocolate for her because caffeine is really bad for cats, and-- yikes."
"Holy crap," Sano echoed. "What the--?"
Obediently spat out, the necklace had landed on the hairball, sending a gout of steam into the air. As the moisture boiled away, a curl of smoke replaced the steam. Hiko kicked the fishbone aside, nearly head-butting Sano as both of them bent to examine the remains with Megumi.
Even all mooshed together and damp, the filaments were obviously too long to be cat fur and their colors didn't match. All three of them looked over at Kaoru, crouching nearby to retrieve her necklace. She yelped in protest when Hiko yanked a few strands from her ponytail, but stopped immediately when she saw their exact match to the hairball, or at least the intact matrix holding it together. The rest of it had half-crumbled into ash, burning the shape of a fishbone and chain from the background of Kenshin's distinctive dark red.
---
Halfway back to the gallery, Hiko glared aside at his passenger. "I do hope my ribs didn't injure your elbow, Mr. Harris."
"Nah, it isn't any worse than my other one. Uh, I mean, sorry." Sano was still watching Joyce's car veer away. "But why are we letting the girls off the hook? It's great to be all manly and stuff, but why do just the two of us get to go back there?"
"Yet again, evidently I have wasted several minutes of my life in attempting to explain this before we set out. Unlike schoolwork, you will not always have the opportunity to copy your classmates' notes. But if I must repeat myself, Miss Yukishiro has already displayed a certain rapport with Miss Rosenberg; if that vulnerability still exists, we had best minimize her role in combat."
"So let me get this straight. We're figuring that Tomoe didn't really kill Kenshin last night or at least brought back Battousai this morning? But if the whole shrine didn't stop Tomoe last night, how is Kaoru's house supposed to be any safer?"
"If Ms. Summers' information is correct, their house has old and formidable protections surrounding it. She also may have more heirlooms akin to the sakabatou. However, as she has not been trained for combat, her daughter had best stay with her as a safeguard. As you have already noted, that leaves only the two of us to deal with the situation."
Sano still wasn't convinced, but somehow felt paradoxical relief that Hiko didn't sound that confident either. "Holy Dynamic Duo, Batman. So what about Yumi?"
Grimly, Hiko said, "You said that her vehicle was gone. If she were fleeing, she ought to have met with us at the shrine. We must surmise that either she was unable to stop them from taking it, or that she also has been affected and went elsewhere." One last turn brought them into the gallery parking lot, which was still as empty as the weapons box in the car trunk wasn't, at least until they finished gearing up.
The gallery door turned out to be even more locked than usual. Sano's pockets clanked with fishbones as he crouched down to inspect it. "Someone snapped off the key, so what's left of it is still stuck inside. I can get it out, but without my tools it'll take time."
"We don't have time," Hiko said, and kicked the door down. The building rang with his battle challenge as he charged into the entrance hall, sword drawn. "Battousai? Where are you?" Reluctantly, Sano charged right behind him, nearly skidding a fishbone into Hiko when he stopped on the threshold of the main gallery room.
The pottery was mostly fine, at least the stuff that was elevated onto pedestals or otherwise tucked out of the way. But from ground level to about two feet up, the place was trashed. The countertop sagged over the remains of the main display case, from which several long, blood-stained shards lay scattered across the floor. But the blood had come from somewhere else. Namely, the large gelatinous pool in one corner, haloed by the blurry prints of hands.
"Miss Komagata?" Hiko called out. "Are you here?"
Uneasily, Sano edged over to the half-open door of Yumi's room, which had a much lower Kenshin quotient than before. "Doesn't look like there's any Battousai action in here. Whatever was left of his clothes is gone too-- it's not like enough was left in one piece to wear, so any idea what he'd want with them?" Sano's ex-jacket was gone too, he realized, with all the stuff from its pockets. So much for his lockpicks and snack break.
He had just extracted a particularly mysterious piece of underwear from one drawer when Hiko's voice distracted him, in an odd tone which Sano had never heard before. It was just as quiet as librarian mode, but sounded very different. "Damn him to every realm of hell. Yumi..."
By the time Sano reached him, Hiko had nearly finished cutting her free. Thrown aside, the silver wire from his sword blade lay across his coat. The long shreds of fabric tying her down to the workbench were unrecognizable beneath their clotted overlay, but they had to be Kenshin's former wardrobe. They'd been useful for something after all.
The sword slipped on one of the last few knots, pricking her skin beneath it. Her hand twitched, reminding Sano to breathe. "Is she okay?" He winced at the unspoken response, which might as well have been the award trophy for Best Display of Total Idiocy, and backed away as Hiko scooped her off the table.
A sigh breathed out from the dried mask of gore on her face. "I tried-- tried to stop him, but I couldn't--"
"Don't try to talk yet. First, let me tend your wounds." He had already reached her room, where he laid her on the bed before shutting the door in Sano's face.
---
"Since when did we have a basement?" Kaoru asked, incredulous.
Joyce put down her side of the bookcase and wiped her forehead. "When your grandmother died, she asked us to seal it off with her things inside. I couldn't use them because I was never trained as a miko, and she said they shouldn't be destroyed or passed on to a stranger. Besides," she added, pulling the bookcase farther away from the door, "I know this is one place where we won't have to worry about Yahiko's cat allergies later."
As the girls descended, their footsteps swirled up a fine layer of dust from the stairs. Kaoru grabbed the strap of Megumi's bookbag to steady her from a sneeze, while at the forefront, the cat squeaked from the sneeze-tightened grip. Megumi turned around when they reached the bottom. "But if there's major miko mojo down here, are you sure it's okay for me to sit around with all this stuff? If Tomoe can still get to me, she could end up using it against us."
"I don't think so," Joyce called down. "From what I know, these are mostly for information and defense, not attack. So even if she can touch them, she can't use them to hurt us."
"If you say so," Megumi said doubtfully. "At least that means my body will be nice and protected when she's using it to stick pointy things into yours. So when do we know it's safe for me to come out?"
"When we hear from the guys, I guess. Or until the cat really needs to go to the bathroom. Are you sure you want to keep her down here with you?"
"She'll keep me company, and maybe she can even help me out with another magic hairball. But I don't know when was the last time she ate anything, so could you maybe bring some kibble and a box of kitty litter later on?"
"Is there anything else you want for lunch?"
"Kaoru, really," Joyce said, beckoning her up again. "Megumi, if there's anything you'd like to eat, just let me know. The power socket is over there-- oh good, you found it already-- so you'll have the radio and a lamp to read by, and we'll tell you as soon as we get any word from the others."
---
It had been a good night for business at the Yoshiwara, Enishi saw. There was barely space enough to park his car among the rest, even with a gap so narrow that he had to leave his coat and weapons behind for squirming out. His passage stripped the velvet layer of frost from the chrome beside him, leaving a thin cold trickle of grime and ashes. He might not've found Jineh again last night, but he'd certainly found every sinkhole of rats and swamp gas down in the tunnels. Perhaps it had been a bad idea to light a cig down there. And even before that, he'd been wounded with fire, steel, and grief from losing Tomoe. All the same, he felt oddly light-headed from having salvaged some good of it after all.
For one, he'd never have to deal with that git of a doorman again. While Enishi hadn't held much personal grudge against him, it seemed a poor management decision to retain an employee who'd started off by cutting his throat. Then again, at least the door had always had a good watch on it, unlike right now with whoever was standing in for him. By now, it should've been opened up with a greeting, or at least a request for ID. But perhaps the girls on the dance floor had worked up something special that was worth an extra look. He shrugged and let himself in.
Instantly, he knew something was wrong. The thump of music was audible from here, as always, but it was tinny and garish without anyone talking under it. Even when the girls were practising routines on their own, they'd giggle and chat together. With all the cars out front, there should've been enough audience for normal conversation to carry, even if no hoots and cheers were forthcoming.
He dashed back to his car to arm himself. Sword poised and ready, he stepped back through the door and strode into the depths of hell.
---
Left to loiter on his own, Sano aimlessly poked around the main gallery space, chewing on a fishbone and occasionally glancing at the closed door of Yumi's room. The taps in there had run until the pipes made that hot-water sound, and then they shut off again just before a solid creak of bedsprings announced Hiko sitting down to clean her up. It was nearly as good as a whoopee cushion.
Since then, it'd been mostly quiet, except for some muffled random noises from which Sano had deliberately edged out of earshot. He wasn't sure if some of them were repeat bedsprings, but he figured he might as well move away on general principle. Besides, he still didn't have much idea of what happened before they got here, other than Jineh's sword going AWOL with Battousai. Hiko hadn't even gone to the now totally empty sword case while looking for Yumi, since it wasn't like she could've fit inside it except in snack-sized bites. For once, Sano was a step ahead of him, though he would've preferred to trade it for the bliss bonus of not having to know about this yet.
The big pool of blood nearby wasn't exactly happy-making either, but at least it was more interesting than pottery. After staring at the edges for a while, he could figure out some other shapes from the smears around it. The handprints at one end were really clear, but the other end looked more like a scuffle of feet and knees. Off to the side, a some narrow pits were shaped like the point of a blade that'd been stabbed hard into the walls and floor. So Yumi must've put up a good fight with her knife, even while Battousai was cutting her down. And then he'd dragged her to the table back there and--
Sano frowned, looking from the corner to the doorway. Even when Kenshin was being Battousai, could he really carry Yumi? Well, maybe he could, but there wouldn't be any point in doing that instead of just grabbing her arms and legs to haul her along the floor. There weren't any drag marks, though, just overlapping footprints. Battousai staggering back and forth with a heavy load? But were all of those prints in Kenshin's shoe size?
Following the trail into the workshop, he ran smack into the table where Yumi had been tied down. While he held onto it for balance, Sano's eyes adjusted to the dim light. The footprints weren't making any more sense yet, because their first pass went right past the table and across the room. Maybe she ran for the window? It was pretty high, but she could've tried for a boost up the wall from the cot. He meandered along with the footprints until they dipped under a dark fold of the coverlet, reappeared from further down the bed, and doubled back again.
Several things occurred to him in random order. The last time he'd seen that cot, Tomoe had been napping on it, wrapped up in Kenshin's coat and a set of white sheets. Despite the mess all over Yumi, the table she'd been tied to was clean and dry. In fact, the weird chicken-liver smell of way too much blood lying around was stronger over here. Gingerly, he poked at the cot with a fishbone, drawing the sheet aside to reveal what lay beneath.
When he recovered some sense of aplomb, he felt relieved that neither Megumi nor Kaoru was around to hear the embarrassingly girly squee he had just made, though it might've carried far enough to be heard in the rest of the building. Hoping it hadn't, he ran to the front room and wrenched the door open. "Hey, I think something's wrong in here."
Yumi raised her head from Hiko's and smiled. Spilling across both their faces, her hair had the same dark sheen as the blade in her hand, including the fresh crimson highlights. In its exciting new location on her knife hilt, the emerald from her old naginata was swirling with an inner green flame, as bright as her golden eyes. "I don't know about you, kid," she said, "but this looks just fine to me."
---
"Mom? It's been a while since we got home. Shouldn't we have heard from the guys by now?"
Joyce smiled and shrugged, but Kaoru could tell her mother was uneasy. She shifted her posture at the far side of the living-room sofa. "I'm sure that Mr. Hiko can look after himself, and Sanosuke as well. Otherwise I would've let you go with them, no matter what they said about having you guard me."
"I think what Mr. Hiko was really worried about was me going soft on Kenshin. I don't know why, since it's not like I didn't kill him before."
"Oh, honey. It sounded more to me as if he wanted to spare you from fighting Battousai this time, since he knew how hard it was for you before. You've already been through enough just since last night to deserve some rest now."
"But--" Unable to stop fidgeting, Kaoru nearly twitched one shoe off. She wrapped Kenshin's coat more closely around herself to keep everything else contained. "Even if that's what everybody else wants, I can't just sit here and do nothing. I should at least go check on them to find out what's going on."
"No."
"But Mom--"
"Kaoru, I said no," her mother repeated, still calm and clear. "Mr. Hiko had no right to involve you in this in the first place."
"But Dad and the sakabatou--"
Joyce's words wavered now. "I know. But it should have ended there. If Jineh and Enishi had found Kenshin and killed him with the sakabatou, they would've lost any chance of recovering their former abilities. But now that Battousai is awake again...."
Mutinously, Kaoru stuffed her hands into her pockets, feeling the silver fishbone necklace dig into the seams. "Okay, I'll let the guys take care of it this time. But speaking of Enishi, shouldn't we try to track him down too? He might have some connections to the Yoshiwara besides that guy who kidnapped Megumi for him. And I'm the only one of us who he hasn't already met, so he won't recognize me on sight. And he should be pretty easy to spot, right? Sano-type hair, big-ass sword?"
"Kaoru...."
"It's just a short bike ride there and back," she wheedled. "And besides, school is kind of on the way, so I can fetch more books for my test on Monday. C'mon, Mom, pleeeeeeeeease?"
Joyce visibly counted to ten before sighing. "I'd rather drive you there, but we really shouldn't leave Megumi by herself. Do you have any weapons?"
"Huh? I thought you didn't want me to fight this time."
"I don't. So if you don't have any with you, you'll try harder to stay out of trouble, or at least I hope so."
Kaoru stood up and waved her arms around like an airport security victim. "You can go get the metal-detector magnetic bloodhounds. No swords, no crossbows, no pointy sticks, no nothing," she said, not saying anything about the necklace. It wasn't like it had been made to be used as a weapon, so technically it didn't count.
"No fighting?"
"If I even see any thumb-wrestling, I promise I'll turn around and run. Otherwise, I'll just ride to the Yoshiwara, take a quick look around, and then call you from the school library on the way back. Okay?"
---
Well, crap, Sano pondered thoughtfully. If his libinidal checklist was going to keep coming true in weird ways, maybe it was time to develop a fetish that involved having lots of really excellent weapons around. Even as he retreated into the main gallery, he couldn't help but feel conflicted about the present circumstances. Because okay, Yumi wasn't wearing much besides a smile right now, but it was accessorized with an evil soulsucking knife and various scary bloodstains. Not only that, but there was the question of how she could've hidden her knife earlier, considering that she hadn't been wearing much more when they found her. Dang it, why did his exposure to girl parts have to keep being from Yumi splashing blood around?
Her lack of wounds had been covered up earlier by the dried pints plastered onto her, wherever those had come from. She must've been desperate to stick Battousai with her knife in self-defense and get possessed all over again, so maybe she'd been wounded enough that some of it was hers after all. But after that, they'd gone to the back room to slice Tomoe into bits, leaving enough mess for several more coats of type-AB body paint. Maybe that was payback for Tomoe cutting Kenshin into the same kirigami pattern last night, but if so, Yumi and Battousai had definitely paid her in large denominations without sequential serial numbers and told her to keep the change.
Sano retreated back into the gallery, crunching the ex-display case under his boots. As Yumi slid across the bed, she squeezed incoherent grunts out of both him and Hiko for very different reasons. Maybe. Probably once Hiko cleaned her up enough to realize she wouldn't need bandages, she didn't want them to go to waste. Whatever those cloth strips were made of, he must've been hella strong to tear them up in the first place, considering how well they were tying him down now. Yumi hadn't been so good at applying them in the bandage department, though. Hiko didn't look exactly dead yet, but if he entered a marathon right now, he'd probably reach the finish line somewhere between Christopher Reeves and Stephen Hawking. At least Hawking had wheels.
Crap, Sano philosophized further. Here she was, as babelicious as he had ever conjectured, but she was in the middle of being evil. But she was naked! But she was evil!! On top of that, the really good weapons were either in the workshop or on the other side of Yumi, all he had on him was some bent-up fishbones, and why did she have to be both naked and evil at the same time anyway?!
"Where're you going? Come on in and join the party," she whispered silkily. "You don't have to wait until his turn's over-- I've got plenty of love to go around." She adjusted her grip on her knife, wrapping fingers around the hilt and blowing a kiss from it in a way that milked cold sweat from Sano's neck and dropped the fishbone from his mouth. The metallic clatter distracted him, but her laugh was even more silvery and sharp-edged. "Just lie down and give it up. I promise it'll feel better than trying to throw anything in your condition-- though whatever you did to your arms, I promise I can do it better."
Oh great, the cat scratches were bleeding all the way through his jacket now. Perversely, Sano hurled the nearest vase, but it hurt him a lot more than it did her. For that matter, most of it smashed off the wall into Hiko instead, except for one nice sharp piece straight into her neck. All that did was add a funny squiggle to her smile and walk. As casually as if pulling a loose strand of hair out of her collar, she pulled it out with a droplet of pale flame. The wound healed over even before the discarded sliver of clay hit the floor.
Nevertheless, she stopped, glanced down again, and changed her angle of approach. That was weird, Sano thought at first, before realizing that the debris wasn't just ex-pottery. The broken display case had been mirrored. As such, it provided new and interesting perspectives of Naked!Yumi, but the reflective coating must mean the glass was really silvered with real silver. He couldn't throw it any better than pottery, but at least it was already scattered around her bare feet. Quickly, he stomped the nearest piece of mirror into smaller pieces and kicked them toward her, then fled into the workshop to free up his strategic planning from visual distraction.
Okay, so he had an evil naked babe on his hands. So to speak. If Sano remembered the basics correctly, then the only way he could kill her was by thwacking her evil naked weapon into her to make her evil naked jewel blow up. Obviously this was some kind of mid-season animation-budget flashback episode because they'd already done that before, so why was she evil again?
Maybe Megumi could figure it out, especially now that Tomoe was too dead to do anything to her. But if he called in the girls for backup, that would leave Kaoru's mom on her own with Battousai wandering around unless they brought her here with them, which wasn't any better, and besides by the time they got here, it might be too late. Yumi had started humming lap-dance music out there, with the melody drifting farther away as she returned to Hiko. Dag freaking nabbit!
This was no time to think about strategy instead of just plain fighting, he decided. He considered the mochi napalm and ofudized crossbow bolts in Hiko's coat pockets, but they'd probably set the place on fire and Yumi was a lot more likely than him to reach the exit first, or at all. Even if she didn't, she might just do that Terminator-style walk out of the flaming wreckage to come get him, and anyway he'd have to hold her knife down through her into the ground to make sure she was un-undead again.
He picked up the discarded silver wire and dumped it onto the table along with everything else from Hiko's coat, then topped off the pile with his remaining fishbones. Some of them briefly tangled in his pocket before snapping loose; he hadn't just cut through it and killed off the second jacket this weekend, had he? Nope, it was some weird boingy lace straps. What the--?
Oh. Great. Even Yumi's underwear was out to get him. Okay, he was going to get through this fight anyway. Either that, or at least it might be fun being evil and naked with Yumi afterward if she didn't cut him into bits instead.
---
After Enishi turned off the music, the Yoshiwara was silent except for his footsteps and the monotonous drip of leaky plumbing. Unfortunately, the plumbing had consisted of the circulatory systems of everyone in the building. He glanced up at a tattered sleeve hanging from the ceiling, then muttered a curse as more blood splattered straight onto his glasses. At least he hadn't bothered washing up before coming in, or that would've been a real waste of effort.
Battousai had come here for a grand old time, that much was clear. He must've walked straight through the front door after blocking all the others from the outside and starting on the blokes in the audience. They were the lucky ones, though. He'd kept the girls alive for longer.
The back corridor was a bit tidier than the dance floor, if only because it was elevated. Two or three more bodies-- it was hard to get a count just by mentally jigsawing the bits-- were cluttering it up, but he could pick his way through the less squishy bits of the carpet all the way down to his office. Still no lizard; the brat must've come and gone.
Well, there was nothing to be done for it now, and plenty of plans to be sorted out anyway. Enishi shook his head, laid his sword across the top of the desk, and sat down to catch up on paperwork. About halfway through the stack, more noises started up from the front, probably the morning shift coming in. He considered going out to meet them, but if they were anywhere near as jumpy as he'd been, he'd end up with random bits of metal stuck into him, and he'd had enough of that for one day.
By the time they'd made their way to the office door, he was all finished up and ready to go. Tired of waiting, he called out to them. "Just me in here, so come on already."
Nervously, the desk's previous occupant peered in at him from the midst of armed brawn. "Oh. Right. After we saw what happened in here, we tried to reach you, but we couldn't get to your new place, and the guy we sent to your old one called back and said it was empty."
"Not much of a lookaround if he didn't spot at least one dead body in there."
"Well, he did mention Kujirinami. Or what was left of him, anyway. Is there another syndicate moving into town, or anything like that?"
Enishi shrugged. "Nothing I can't settle myself. I'll be away longer than we planned, since I'll have more to do than just the move-in. But I reckon while you're filling in for me, your first order of business can be finding a new lad for the door. That, and getting fresh carpets laid in. I'll let everyone know they'll be dealing with Wu Heishin again, at least for now."
Wu sidled in with his bodyguards, to the extent that bodyguards could be considered to sidle. As Enishi stood up and strolled toward the door, Wu cautiously edged toward the chair, keeping the desk between them. "So all of the stuff out there-- that wasn't a... mass downsizing on your part, was it?
"Not quite my style. I'll take care of it, I said. But if you try anything with my new sword besides bringing it to my car, I'll sack your bum into individually wrapped packets of bum bits, so come along now."
With a nervous laugh, Wu took the sword from the desk and squished behind Enishi toward the parking lot. "I was just admiring the fine details on the hilt, that's all. I've never seen anything like it-- did it come from our jewelers' network?"
"Nah. Picked it up at a place I found last night. Hole in the wall in the middle of nowhere, you might say. One of our rock shops sent a note this morning you should look into, though-- they lost a big gemstone from out a locked safe, they claim. Reckon we should make sure no one there accidentally swallowed it, coz that sort of thing's likely to be bad for the digestion. Now, just stand aside with the sword until I'm out of that costive clench of a parking space, and then you can give it over and go back inside."
He noticed Wu polishing his fingerprints off the hilt with a sleeve before handing it through the window. Enishi grinned, encouraging Wu to bolt back into the Yoshiwara instead of lingering beside the car. Quickly dropping the sword onto the other seat, Enishi rubbed his hands against each other, blowing on his fingers as if for warmth. Instead, a fine powder of ash sifted off his skin, erasing the silvered imprint of the sakabatou.
-----
chapter title: http://www.cs.pdx.edu/~trent/ochs/lyrics/highwayman-orig.html
Psycho Kitty Keisuke (belatedly): Megumi's family contains at least one fan of the Talking Heads. Run run run, run run run away.
Terminator: I have no idea whether the T-1000's firewalk in T2 was replicated by the more Yumi-shaped upgrade to whom Ah-nold gave a swirly in T3, which I have not seen.
*fret* Ack. My narrative keeps sliding into inner monologue, endangering the maxim of "show, don't tell" even when the dialogue isn't turning into "As you know, Bob" forced exposition. And it *still* hasn't started on the fight scene(s) that I'd hoped to fit into here but decided not to after checking the current length against the previous chapters. All this after wading through different drafts for a year before finally getting this one to hang together at all, and it still doesn't have any structure unto itself as opposed to just being a roughly chapter-sized chunk of stuff.
Oh well. At least the next chapter should simply bridge over into FotN, from whence "Edodale" will just re-emerge out the other side with enough backfill to preserve continuity for those who opted out of the E/K smut. On the other hand, that's what I've been thinking for the last several chapters too. Feh.