Disclaimer: Rurouni Kenshin is the exclusive property of people who are much richer and more creative than me.
Be warned: The Narrator is not responsible for what she says/write/does under the influence of caffeine, sugar, boredom, etc.
Well, I know this isn't the expected continuation of What If? because the basis for that one-shot was entirely too implausible for me to carry through with any hope of coherency. Instead, I have decided just to do a series of random ficlets and see what happens.
Sake?
"Go on, pour me anudder one."
"Ano…I'd do it, but you keep on movin' the *hiccup!* darned saucer!"
"Tee hee! I am not! You're jus' haluseeing…haruschneyin'…halu…halloo…you're jus' seein' things!"
"Oh, okay. *Hic!* But the saucer's still movin'…wait, is it jus' me or is the room startin' to *hiccup!* go up 'n down?"
"Stop bein' silly! Here, jus' gimme the darned jug already!"
"Oi, Hiko-shan sen' this'n here jug to the *hic!* Aoiya, Kaoru-shan, so you bes' not be getting' all grabby! Hiccup!"
Kaoru eyed her drinking partner through bleary eyes while making a rather valiant grab across the table for the sake jug under dispute. Her equilibrial faculties being something less than nominal, however, she only succeeded in clutching the air a good two feet to the right.
*WHUMP!*
"Oi, Kaoru-shan…where'd ya go to?" Misao asked, rather perturbed by her friend's sudden disappearance. She looked around vaguely, wondering if Kaoru was hiding in the darkened corners of the room.
"All righ,' who was the jerk who wen' and pushed me?!" Kaoru's voice demanded angrily, somewhat muffled.
"Kaoru-shan? Hic!" Misao called out. It seemed that the shihondai's voice was coming through the table! Misao rapped on it experimentally; maybe it was hollow and Kaoru fell into it…
"Whoo!" Kaoru's head suddenly popped up from the end of the table, her face flushed a dangerous scarlet. "Was the big idea, shovin' me like that?!" she yelped, shaking a finger at Misao, "That's mean! You shouldn' do stuff like that to your friends! Especially because tatami's really hard!" She patted her abused cheeks mournfully. "I'm gonna have tatami prin' on my face and Kenshin won' even wanna look at meeeee….!" She started bawling, maundering on and on about how a woman just could not go out in public with a red face, and how it was not fair that she could not have a room entirely made of pillows, and how soft it would be, and she could just curl up in the pillows like a fluffy kitty, and how she liked little kitty's, she had one when she was a little girl, she named him Sekitan because he was all black and…
"You want anudder saucer of sake *hi! hic!* or what?!" Misao interrupted.
"Yes, please!" Kaoru burbled, shoving her saucer at Misao. The young Okashira of the Oniwabanshu carefully picked up the ceramic sake jug and delicately tipped its clear contents into the small drinking vessel.
"Oh, no, all gone. Hiccup!" she announced mournfully, shaking out the last precious drops.
"So that means…" Kaoru's eyes went wide in horror, "we only have two jugs left!"
"We bes' be careful then," Misao said sagely, nodding her head. She picked up one of the remaining jugs and wagged her finger at Kaoru. "Maybe you should jus' go to bed now, Kaoru-shan; you shouldn' be drinkin' like this at your age!"
"What're you talkin' about?!" Kaoru growled, suddenly leaning heavily on the table. She glanced behind herself, hoping to catch whoever it was doing the shoving. Seeing no one there, she frowned mightily before refocusing on the matter at hand. "I'll have you know that I'm twenny…I'm twenny…" She frowned and hastily did some calculations on her fingers. "I'm twenny-one years old, Misao-chan! I can hold my sake!" She frowned again. "Besides, you're a year younger'n me! I'm the one who should be holding the sake jug!"
"Good point," Misao agreed. Then, a Brilliant Idea occurred to her. "How'n about you get *hic!* this here jug, and I take the other one, and we see who can drink the most in one go?"
"Bring it on!" Kaoru boasted, grabbing the jug.
"…and I don' know why Aoshi-sama won' pay attention to meeeee! I got all nice n' purty and he didn' even say *hiccup!* anything!" Misao sobbed, holding her head in her arms and knocking over her now-empty sake jug.
Kaoru moved to hug her, but found this to be quite impossible, as her legs suddenly seemed to have walked off without her knowing. She settled for affably punching the young ninja woman in the shoulder. "Don' get all down like that!" she admonished, "If he makes you fell crappy, you should make him feel crappy!"
"But *sniff! hiccup!* how do I do that?" Misao wanted to know, raising her tear-streaked face out of her arms.
Kaoru smiled wickedly.
Kenshin woke early to the sound of birds twittering their dawn songs. Sleepily, he rolled over on his side, and reached for Kaoru…and his hand met empty futon. Instantly, his hitokiri-trained senses went on full alert and he sat bolt upright on the futon. 'Not good!' his brain screamed, and in exactly 7.98 seconds, he was dressed and wandering the Aoiya complex in search of his wife.
'Where could she be? I could have sworn she said she coming right to bed after she talked with Misao-dono!' he thought anxiously, peering into various bedrooms, wardrobes, and broom closets.
After a good twenty minutes of frantic searching, he caught sight of Aoshi standing in the doorway of a room he had not checked yet.
"Aoshi, have you seen Kaoru?" Kenshin asked politely as he approached.
Aoshi did not reply, but only remained standing stock-still, one foot in the room, one in the hallway. Kenshin noted that it was Aoshi's office, where the ex-Okashira processed incoming intelligence reports and attended to other ninja-type administrational duties. Aoshi appeared to be staring up at the room's ceiling, completely and utterly fascinated by what he saw there.
Kenshin's left eyebrow quirked up. 'Is it just me, or Aoshi acting unusually strange today?' "Aoshi, sessha doesn't mean to be rude but…"
"Battousai, do you see what I see?" Aoshi interrupted him in a perfectly even voice, still not breaking eye-contact with the ceiling.
Kenshin's right eyebrow quirked up. 'Must be one of those Zen question things you're supposed to ponder for hours on end,' he observed before replying, "If you mean in the cosmic sense, Aoshi, sessha doesn't really have time to be having a philosophical discussion right now because Kaoru is…"
Aoshi clamped a very large, very strong hand on Kenshin's head and forced the smaller man's line-of-sight upwards. "Oro! Aoshi, what are you doing…?!"
Kenshin stared.
Then he blinked three time, once slowly, and twice more quite rapidly.
Then he rubbed the heels of his hands very hard into his eyes and blinked again before resuming his staring.
The view did not change.
"Ano, sessha recalls hearing that shishou left some of his sake stash here at the Aoiya de gozaru…"
The two warriors exchanged glances, and by mutual agreement, took off, searching for their respective significant others.
Kaoru and Misao never were able to explain how they were able to steal all of Aoshi's clothes and tack them to the ceiling of his office with kunai.
Narrator here. We all know what happens when Kaoru gets drunk, so it just led me to wondering what Misao was like drunk, and then it led, "What if both of them were drunk at the same time?"
Yep, pretty scary.