WARNING: Spoilers! If you don't know who Kenji is, please read at your own risk!
WITH DUE CREDIT: This fic was loosely spun off from two fics - "Over the Sting" by sasori and "Chronicles of a Rurouni", one of my earlier fics.
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Yesterday's Shadow is Tomorrow's Twilight
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Chapter 1: Enter Soujirou
The day was comfortably warm when Kenji removed himself from the ruined hut
in search for food. By some stroke of chance he actually had some money on him
when he ran away from the dojo, so he was going to put it to good use. The fox
he had seen the previous night was nowhere to be found when Kenji awoke from
his restless slumber that morning, leaving him with slight doubts as to the
real existence of the creature.
After all, it wasn't everyday you got to share a shelter with a silver fox, was it?
Mornings along the streets were a vibrant experience. Children ran alongside each other in loud, cheerful voices, discussing the latest game one person or another had recently created, without a care for anything in the world. Mothers gathered around roadside hawkers, who peddled their goods cheerfully, and fathers tagged along with detached interest, preferring to stare further down the lane where the larger shops were located.
And as Kenji wandered slowly along the dirtpath, he did not fail to notice that this was a scene he had never enjoyed before, when he was younger. He was always either alone in passage, or was too busy running an errand to notice how what was around him.
Despite being normally glum, Kenji found himself warming up to the surroundings.
He found a roadside snack store with relatively few people, and gravitated towards it in search for something to fill his hungry stomach with. After a tough session of elimination, he settled for a simple fare of fishballs, and brought his purchased food to the bench provided just outside the store, sitting down and sighing slightly. Directly opposite where he sat was a shophouse smithy. The sound of clanging metals and sight of billowing smoke caught his attention, as he marveled at the scene.
He had seen swords in the dojo before - but they were always only on display. Yahiko hadn't allowed him to touch them at all. Although Yahiko himself had a sword, Kenji hadn't seen the older boy use it much. Apparently it was a gift from his father to the boy, so it was possibly only around for sentimental's sake, and all that schmuck. Kenji scoffed internally and gulped a fishball down with a frown.
As he lowered the pick into his bag of fishballs, an abnormally loud sound from opposite him halted his actions. Glancing up from his food, he saw that he hadn't been the only one who noticed the sound. A small crowd gathered just outside the smithy's doors, peering into the pitch-dark entrance, trying to make out what had just happened.
They didn't have to wait long, however, for a burly man in gi and hakama waddled out arrogantly, a smirk on his face. He dragged a large sack of wares from behind him, which, by the sound they made, had to be quite a bit of metal ware. Just as he stepped clear of the smithy proper, another man - considerably scrawnier in build, rushed out with a metal rod in his hands, eyes glazed and form wheezing.
"Hold it!" The scrawnier man was saying, as he raised the rod in an attempt to strike the bigger man. He missed largely and stumbled onto the dirt instead, conjuring up a large cloud of dust.
The larger man said nothing, although the smirk remained on his face. He took one disdainful look at the man sprawled all over the floor and turned to walk away.
"Stop!" The scrawnier man took hold of the edge of the other's hakama and shouted. "Don't think you can run away after you come into my shop, hurt my workers and steal my wares-"
He was silenced quickly by a violent kick in his guts, and the blacksmith doubled over in pain, although he still clasped onto the rod in his hands with stubborn determination. He tried to breath, but was knocked over by yet another kick, this time aimed for his chest. By then a large crowd had gathered around the smithy and were pointing fingers and mumbling to one another.
Kenji's view was blocked soon after he heard the larger man saying in a scruffy voice, "Consider it your blessing that your things will be used for the greater good by the Yuugure!" The violet-eyed boy shrugged, and poked at another fishball, meaning to swallow it when the same large sound which had attracted his attention in the first place was heard again - this time louder and more intensive than the previous.
The boy glanced up just in time to see the residue smoke from the contraption the large man was holding slowly ascending into the air. There were several gasps from the crowd as many quickly fled the scene or took many steps backwards with horror visible on their faces. Whispers of 'a gaijin's weapon!' and 'it breathes fire!' rose among the chaos that was developing, and Kenji found himself getting a clearer view of what the man was holding.
Although he had not seen many of such weapons, the lean device the man held was definitely a gun. According to what he knew, it shot a small object out from the barrel when you squeezed the trigger that was connected with such great force that, should you have been standing in the way of it's passage, you would have been seriously wounded if the object, called a bullet, hit you in a non-vital spot, and fatally injured had it found a vital spot.
Just as Kenji decided it was time to high-tail out of danger zone, a flash of something large dived past his ear, straight into the stall behind him. It collided into the stall with an ear-splitting crash, and the low moan that followed it's collision alerted the young boy to the fact that this 'flash' was the very man who had been trying to resist the burglar just now. Said burglar stood, with one foot raised, apparently admiring his footwork, which had obviously been the cause of the blacksmith flying into the food store behind Kenji.
Another second later, the metal rod came clanging onto the ground before Kenji, its' owner having dispossessed it during the course of flying towards the food stall.
"That'll teach you lowlifes not to cross paths with the Yuugure!" The burly man snorted, pointing the gun in his hands at the crowd around him, succeeding in sending people running away screaming. His glance soon landed on the metal rod which had fallen on the ground before Kenji, however, and he stepped forward to retrieve it. "This shouldn't go to waste," he mumbled, still with a smirk on his face.
But as he bent down and reached for the rod, another hand got to it first. The burly man quickly rose and pinned the person who had the rod with a glare. After all, being fourteen and small didn't exactly fit the bill of looking intimidating enough to scare people off, did it?
Kenji tested the rod by tapping it lightly on his left palm several times, eventually lifting it vertically to prop it against his shoulder. He stared back at the increasingly angry man with oblivious eyes, a hand on his waist in a 'what-is-your-problem' kind of pose.
The man fumed for a while more, perhaps hoping that he could scare the young boy into handing the metal rod over. Kenji, however, was completely unaffected, and was about to move off from the scene entirely when the man shouted, "Give it back, brat!"
The litte red-head turned around to spare the man a sparse glance. "Give what?" He quirked an eyebrow in question.
The burly man held a hand out, "The metal rod! It's mine!"
Kenji eyed the man suspiciously. For a while he didn't speak, like it wasn't really worth his time. Then he simply stated lazily, "It isn't."
The man's blood vessel on his forehead literally burst, and his face flushed with anger. It appeared he seldom got 'no' for an answer. He gave an animalistic roar and spared no further words, taking hold onto the pistol in his hand and aiming the barrel at the young boy.
Immediately the people circling the duo began to clamour and gasp in horror. Kenji's eyes widened quickly, then narrowed instinctively. He saw the man about to pull the trigger; he knew the man was nearly an entire length taller than he was. The facts began to swim in his head, as the words of Yahiko flashed quickly past his mind.
/He would hold his sword loosely in his hand with the right side upwards, and support the blade with the other hand.
/With a strong jump he can reach opponents double, even triple his height. The point of aim is the neck - for obvious reasons. That way, the taller you are, the bigger you are, the easier you become to defeat./
In the eyes of Kenji, the man was but moving in slow motion. With deadly calm, he positioned the rod the way he knew his father used to when dealing with suchlike opponents.
/And he called this move, the Ryuushousen./
"Ryuu... -!!"
Before Kenji could begin executing the move he had heard and known to be a rising sword tackle, a whirl of blue wind knocked him off his feet. The dust it swept along in it's trail flew upwards and obscured the boy from seeing anything for a while. "What in the..." Kenji spat, peeking out from his arms that were shielding his face. He had made a very ungraceful fall onto the dirt and was currently feeling the pain on his backside. He was so going to get the person who bowled him over.
"Dangerous!" The clear, tenor voice of the blue whirlwind stood silouetted against the morning sun, raising high in the skies. "Very dangerous!" He had his back against Kenji, so the boy couldn't make out the features of his face. He could, however, see that the man sported a short ponytail, was dressed in tattered blues, and had a seasoned shinai held loosely in his right hand.
On his left hand, however, was the gun the larger man had previously been holding.
"You!" The burly man shouted, and attempted to point. He stopped when he realized that his hand was hurt and sore, and was in no condition to point. Still he glared at the other person, hatred in his eyes.
"You shouldn't be pointing dangerous objects at defenseless citizens!" The person spoke again, and Kenji could almost hear the laugh in his voice. Slowly, he picked himself up from the ground and dusted the dirt off his hakama and gi, eyes transfixed on the stranger in blue all the while. "What if you hurt somebody?" The stranger continued saying in his sing-song tone, which did nothing to placate the already furious man.
"You'll pay for that!" The man lunged at the stranger with the shinai, determined on hurting him. Kenji took a step backwards in fear of being caught in the struggle, but he hadn't had the need to worry at all. Nobody could really tell what happened next, for there was yet another blur of movements, and the next thing anybody knew, the bigger man was twitching away on the ground, face contorted with pain.
"You don't even deserve to be knocked unconscious from the pain..." An icy edge crept into the normally sunny voice of the stranger. Just at that point of time, police whistles begin to blow from further down the lane, and the people who had gathered quickly dispersed into doing their daily affairs, like the drama had never happened before. The stranger spun around and grinned at Kenji. "Hello! I hope you're not-"
The stranger gasped, the moment he laid his eyes on the younger boy. Kenji dare say he had never seen anyone look so shocked before in his entire life. But the stranger recovered quickly, and before Kenji knew it, he was being towed along the streets at an incredible speed. The policemen arrived at the scene of carnage and shouted at the duo, probably asking them to stop, hold it, come back, or something. Kenji groaned. It had not been a good day for him at all.
Eventually he was led into a narrow back alley, where there were more cats than humans, prowling the area for food. Kenji was nearly bent over with exhaustion from running too quickly, but the stranger in blue hardly seemed affected. He spun around to face Kenji again, looking solemn.
"?" Kenji could only raise an eyebrow in query. He was slowly regaining his breath, but still very wary of what the stranger wanted from him. He didn't notice the stranger step closer until he could see the stranger's palm in his face.
Just as he was about to take a reflex step backwards, the stranger's hand disappeared from his view and he felt something tug from his wrist. When he looked downwards, he saw that the packet of fishballs he had previously tied to his wrist was gone, and the stranger had it. Not only did he have it, he was eating it, and practically dumping everything in the packet down his mouth like it was cheap river water!
A flicker a silver caught the stranger's attention as he turned to look at the fox seated regally beside him. "Hello there!" He bent down and pat the surprisingly docile animal on his head. Even Kenji hadn't noticed the little animal with its' grinning face until his attention was drawn to it. "He's so adorable! Is he yours?"
"No."
"Ah. I see." The stranger was still smiling. "Here you go, you must be hungry!" The man threw the last fishball he had at the fox, who gulped it down gleefully and whined.
Kenji's jaw dropped and he held a hand out. He could not say anything, however, for there was obviously already no more food as the stranger threw the empty packet into a box along the alley, likewise filled with other unwanted junk.
"H-Hey!" Kenji found his protesting voice. "That was MY food!"
The stranger paused. "It was?" He wondered aloud. "It was!" He breathed in deeply like a revelation had struck him. The stranger then smiled nervously, "Ahahaha... I'm really sorry about that," he sheepishly put a hand on the back of his head, "you see, I wanted to see if you were all right, but the policemen are going to be such a bother, but then again your packet of food was very distracting too!" He turned slightly resigned as he continued, "Saitou-san doesn't pay us very well, as I'm sure you can see..."
Kenji did raise the rod he still had in his hand slightly, as if he wanted to attack the moron in front of him. But after some struggling with his internal self, he lowered his hand and shook his head, sighing. "Nevermind," he grumbled, "I'm all right, thanks for just now," he put a hand up, turning around, "bye."
"I'm Soujirou," the man called out from behind him, face plastered with a smile that didn't quite seem there, "Seta Soujirou. You?"
Turning back to look at Soujirou, Kenji was mostly surprised at the question. People had seldom asked for his name from since he could remember. Either his mother would introduce him, or Yahiko, or someone else would.
"Kenji," the boy muttered, almost in a whisper, "... Hi... Himura Kenji."
"Hmm... So Himura-san," Soujirou's eyes twinkled with interest, "what are you doing all alone by the streets at this time of the day?"
Kenji's heart palpitated. Before he could muster up a reply, however, someone else did it for him.
"It doesn't matter, Seta Soujirou," a neat, affluent looking gentleman stepped into the alley, with a band of sneering bandits in tow, "for both you and him will perish here in this alley today, for being a dog of the government and going against the Yuugure!"
... to be continued
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3/7/03
xd@tougenkyou.net
Notes:
I remember Watsuki-sensei mentioned that Kenji was able to know how to execute
moves of the Hiten Mitsurugi just by hearing about it from other people. Please
correct me if I am wrong so I can adjust my thinking, but the fic will remain
as it is. Thank you! :D
The title was very helpfully provided by Joerg. Many thanks!