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 21: Shocker
Kenji knew that voice sounded too, too familiar for him to be comfortable anymore.
His position behind Soujirou, who was slightly behind Enishi, however, gave
him no leeway for greater insight.
Enishi shifted first. He lowered his finger and appeared to be contemplating something. "So," he began in a slow, deliberate intone, "ninja-brat's finally decided to retire and do something more lady-like? Nice priestess uniform there, by the way." He finished his sentence just in time to knock an amok kunai away with his longsword.
"Who're you calling a brat?!" The girl seethed, and Kenji's eyes grew saucer-wide with recognition. He took an involuntary step backwards. "I'll show you," the voice continued, as she flung kunai after kunai towards the white-haired ex-mafia boss, "what this," who, however, was not too concerned, knocking each and every kunai away without even deigning to shift his weight, "brat..." she braced herself for her final bout of attack, a storm of eight kunais all at once, "can do!"
Immediately sensing danger, Enishi knocked the barrage of the first four kunai away, where they clinkered messily onto the ground, and spun sidewards away from the next set of four kunai. Being the one standing directly behind Enishi, Soujirou's smile vanished when the whistling of sharp objects through the air forced him to pay more attention. It was back quickly, however, as he side-stepped easily, out of danger's way.
Which left Kenji to deal with the problem at hand.
"Eeks!" The boy immediately lifted the metal rod he had been holding loosely in his hands. He managed, with much success, to knock three of the ferocious kunais away, but as it was, that was his best shot. He watch in slow-motion horror as the last kunai continued on its path of doom towards his head.
Of course, the kunai never made it that far.
"Oh dear," Soujirou was saying, his hand having easily caught the flying dagger, "you shouldn't let children play with sharp, tiny objects, Misao-san!"
Kenji stopped covering his eyes and found himself confronted with the very sight he dreaded confronting. Nevertheless, he was quite unable to stop his voice from crying out, "O-... Obasan!"
Finally noticing the redhead, Misao breathed sharply. "Kenji!" She was in no lesser state of shock.
Overhead, the birds stopped chirping, and a light breeze picked up. Kenji's jaw was slack as he stared at Misao, who was staring back with an equally baffled expression on her face. Neither of them appeared to understand what was going on.
While at the sidelines, Soujirou's smile became a grin, and Enishi was trying hard not to burst out laughing.
"Obasan..." Kenji finally broke the silence. "... Obasan... your style of greeting people... hasn't changed at all!" He exclaimed. All around him, the adults bodyfaulted. "Must you always throw kunais everytime you see me?" The boy, however, paid no heed to them and instead chose to stare at the daggers lying across the pathway. "I swear, if you weren't such good friends with my mother, I would have thought you were out to murder me!"
Misao picked herself up from the floor and laughed nervously. "Now now, Kenji, I was training you! How could you ever have survived Yahiko's drills if you hadn't had to always be on the lookout for my daggers?"
Before Kenji could make his intelligent and sarcastic reply, Soujirou's loud whispering interrupted the duo. "Yukishiro-san... did you /hear/ that??" He was iterating his words carefully, while deliberately throwing furtive glances at Kenji and Misao, "Himura-san called Misao-san 'obasan' and she didn't throttle him into next week!"
"Yes, I heard that," Enishi's respond, although not as dramatically played out as Soujirou's, was tinged with the same kind of amusement.
"Do you /suppose/ they're related??!" The boyish wanderer's smile was absolutely evil.
"I suppose," Enishi shrugged and looked away. Yes, he had an evil smirk on his face as well.
Their conversation evoked two different reactions. Kenji quite literally turned white in his face, fear and confusion gripping him from inside. Did they perhaps already know about his lineage? Misao, on the other hand, was almost glowering with disbelief.
"You guys," she took a step forward, one hand on the temple broom and the other on her waist, "don't tell me you don't know who-"
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!" Kenji's screak drowned out whatever Misao was going to say next. "Yes! All right! Good! Great! Very nice!" He made mad waving motions and threw himself in between the three others. "What were we here for again? Ahah! Information!" He pointed up at the skies, then turned to face the taken aback Misao. "Obasan, information!!"
A crow flew overhead with a loud cry.
"Ahem," Soujirou cleared his throat and took a step forward so he stood just next to the flustered Kenji. He did not address the boy, however, smiling benignly at the shrine-maiden-for-the-day instead. "Misao-san," there was no humour in his voice anymore, "I think you should know what we're here for."
There was a long pause, in which the ninja tapped the edge of her broom against the floor. She stared long and hard at her audience, especially at Kenji, who refused to catch her eye. She had not really been expecting the wanderers to drop by today, per se, but she knew they would be coming sooner or later. Okina had told her as much. Still, it was a little more than a bad surprise to find Kenji included in the package. There were many things Misao wanted to ask the boy at the moment, but the atmosphere didn't seem to permit it. She decided that she would drag the boy off in private later and interrogate him until she was satisfied with the answers. In the meantime, however, she had some queries to clear. She lowered her broom and sighed.
"I've told you," the girl began, tucking the handle of the broom under one arm and waving the other around, "many times now. I only know as much as you do about 'them'. Whatever information I have, you have them all."
"Somehow that's not very convincing," Enishi's eyes narrowed.
"Misao-san," there was obvious panic in Soujirou's tone, "there's no need to hide it from us anymore. Kamatari-san has told us all about it - for the sake of the people, please, tell us everything you know. You know better than we do, how serious this matter is, don't you?"
Misao had turned to look away after that, frowning ever so slightly. Her grip on the broom tightened and, as she seemed to consider something, her expression changed from that of determined denial, to a torn look of battling loyalties. Neither of the others spoke, preferring to grant her the space for the consideration she appeared to badly need at the moment. Finally, they were rewarded, when the girl turned and afforded all of them a hard stare.
"This," she motioned for them to come closer, which they did, discreetly, "stays here." When all of them gave her a confused blink, she continued quietly, "I'm not actually in charge of the information gathering for the event this time round."
"..." Enishi glowered, "That police spy told us you were."
"Yes," the ninja closed her eyes and shrugged, "that's why Jiiya wanted you to believe, it seems."
"The Oniwabanshuu doesn't appear to like the police very much," Soujirou remarked wryly.
"It's either that," Enishi rolled his eyes and huffed softly, "or they don't favour certain individuals who are also participating in this scheme."
Although Kenji maintained his tranquility throughout the discussion, his curious eyes were already darting to and fro his companions, quietly assessing the fresh assault of information. As such, he noticed that when Enishi finished that particular statement of his, Soujirou's breathing hitched slightly, and the boyish wanderer turned to glance in horrified wonder at his closer comrade. Kenji knew Enishi was aware that Soujirou was staring, but the older person chose to act nonchalant.
Soujirou was about to open his mouth to ask Enishi something, when Misao's next words stopped them all.
"Aoshi-sama," her voice was audibly restrained, "is the one in charge this time."
Kenji could smell the astonishment.
"Shinomori-san??" Soujirou's tone was that of amused disbelief.
"That block of immovable temple stone??" Enishi's tone was nowhere better sounding.
"Ojisan?" Even Kenji balked. When Misao shot him a glare which promised Terrible Things, he took a step backwards and laughed nervously. "But... but, Ojisan hardly ever says two sentences at a go... and I've never seen him go anywhere but at the Aoiya and the dojo..." He caught the Look of Doom on Misao's face and resisted the urge to burst into tears there and then. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to say all that! I'm sorry, Obasan!! Please don't peg me to the clothesline overnight again!!!"
With Soujirou trying with desperate disability to calm the presently bawling boy down, and Enishi staring with a slack jaw at the scene, Misao flicked her hair behind her with calm poise. "Watch your words next time, Kenji, or I'll throw you into the winter well next," her pleasant voice, coupled with her soft, gentle accent, made the boy bawl louder.
Enishi turned to face Misao. "You big bully," he deadpanned.
"Bully?" The ninja grinned, "I call it discipline, actually."
"Same difference, when /you're/ the one administering it," Enishi shook his head.
"Anyway," Misao returned to donning a serious countenance, "it's true." A sigh. "Aoshi-sama is wholly in charge. To be perfectly honest, I was very surprised too, when he offered to take up the project when we were approached. Since then, I can tell that he's been on the fly like never before. He either really enjoys gathering information about this gang..."
"Or has a personal stake in the matter," Enishi finished for the girl, who nodded hesitantly. "How long have you guys been on their tail?"
"More or less since the same time you were asked to work on it, or so the crab-head tells us," was Misao's reply.
"That's one hell of a lot of time for an elite force to track down an organization that's the size of a prefecture," the white-haired man was singularly unimpressed. "And you're still telling us you don't know anything?"
"I've already told you guys everything I know," Misao looked like she was ready to throttle Enishi for insulting her people. "And I only know what Jiiya and Aoshi-sama tells me. Like I'm supposed to /question/ them about it?"
Always one to be rising to the challenge, Enishi looked at the ninja straight in her eyes, retorting, "You had your suspicions. You could have brought them up. Ninjas are supposed to be observant and highly perceptive. And they're supposed to trust each other," his eyes narrowed.
"I trust them," Misao's voice was steely, "and they trust me too. This trust, however, includes trusting that they will have a perfectly good reason why they do certain things that do not always seem right to those who do not have all the information."
The little staring competition continued.
Until someone from the corridor coughed for attention.
"Jiiya..." Misao relaxed when she saw who it was. Following her cue, everybody else took a glance at the old Okina, blending into the temple surroundings perfectly with his dark clothes and demure outlook.
The old man had not changed much from since his Aoiya days, except that he now moved around with slightly less nimbleness, the peace of the era evidently seeping into his being. Regardless, he gave everybody in the garden of the shrine a hearty smile, waving slightly at Misao. "Misao! How could you let the guests stand out there in the scorching sun?"
Misao made an 'are-you-serious?!' face.
"Whatever it is, the garden is no place for a talk like this," the old man started to walk into the dark interiors of the rustic temple, "this way, please, good gentlemen."
There was a slight pause, but Misao quickly threw her hesitation away and followed the old man into the hall, almost with a happy bounce in her step. Soujirou and Enishi exchanged a brief glance of wonderment, before the white-haired man shrugged and followed along, grabbing the semi-dazed Kenji along the way. The boy was too stupefied to protest the manhandling.
Soujirou, too, made as if to follow the rest. He stopped and turned, however, just in time to see the back of someone clad with the dark, blue shrine uniform slip quietly out of the main entrance.
... to be continued
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28/10/03
xd@tougenkyou.net
A/N
So I was just counting... this fanfic is going to stretch for at least 10 more
chapters... /at least/... Is that a good or bad thing?! O_Ox I don't know anymore...
Yes, this is a slow moving chapter. I was trying to get used to writing Misao.
_x I hope she turned out all right! *_*x
kenshin_admirer
Having travelled together for quite some time, I assumed Soujirou has used Enishi's
sword before, therefore the ease. :D His shinai is still with him, it's just
being unobtrusive at the moment. XD
jbramx2
Bahahahah I'm glad you found the chapter funny. XD I wasn't too confident at
first...
liemtenshi
Yes, it's Misao! XD
Shahrezad1
Coincidence eh? :D I think the fox thinks otherwise. XD Tee hee hee!
Veleda
I hope I didn't disappoint in my portrayal of Misao. O.Ox
April-san
Oh dear, now Enishi is really going to buy him that kimono. XD Soujirou with
hair down? Probably looks like Megumi... except he has bigger eyes and is...
cuter. XD *avoids rotten tomatoes from Megumi fans* Thank for the potato chips!
*munches*
EEevee
Yes, poor Sou. :D That's not all he's going to go through, though. *laughs
maniacally*
Sheeshasan
*huggle* I'm glad you're enjoying the story. Stay tuned! :D
Espi
Hmm... a cookie is okay... *passes Espi one* :D
Angrybee
Well the fox and the shrines are closely related, so it should be quite easy
to make the connection. XD Glad you're still with us! :D
Souten
Will do! :D Mystery of the fox... eto... unveilved... soon. XD
sasori
*glomp* I've been reading your profile and squealing with delight everytime
I do. :D~~~ Yes, twists aplenty. And don't starve me from your fics! *grovels
before sasori*
chibi-chan
Yes sir! Hope you liked this update!