WARNING: Spoilers! If you don't know who Kenji is, please read at your own risk! POSSIBLE CHARACTER DEATH AT END OF STORY.
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 55: Unspeakable
The entire room remained frozen in position until the echoes of the gunshot dissipated into nothingness.
Soujirou grit his teeth in silent pain, his free hand reaching out to hold the new bullet sized hole through his lower right thigh, injured near the knee. With quite a bit of difficulty, he rapidly withdrew his sword from Ming's left shoulder, causing the man to be momentarily distracted with the searing pain.
Once his sword was completely free, he stepped backwards and leapt as far away as he could, finding solace near a stack of crates, using it as a shield between Zheng's weapon trajectory to himself. He kept his awareness at peak level, but the pain was beginning to interfere with his thinking.
Looking down at his legs, he realised that he had to stop the blood from gushing out before he could consider doing anything else. This seemed highly impossible, considering there were two enemies in the room out for his neck. He doubted if they were give him a break of any sort. Not especially when he was slightly more disabled now.
Soujirou cursed internally at his predicament, trying to sneak a peek out of the space in between the crates. He had also suffered another bloody wound to the left ankle from his previous encounter with the spiked walls, and though he had bandaged that one up already, it was starting to throb in painful synchronisation with the new wound.
Though it was truly a miracle that he had escaped with just an ankle wound against those walls, he knew.
After removing the trigger wires that had entangled themselves with his feet, he had to quickly tie them to new holders, so that the cannons were not triggered. That did not work completely, as he knew he heard at least one cannon go off. But by the time he was done with those, he only had a narrow yet long space left to traverse in record time that, had he succeeded, would have made Shishio very proud of him.
Or perhaps the narrow space was yet another one of the mafia's optical illusions.
No matter what it was, by the time he had reached the hidden door and struck it down with a Shuntensatsu, the walls had closed in completely, goring his left ankle from both sides while they were at it. He had to hack down a couple of spikes, then pull them out of his foot to salvage the situation. And to the mafia's credit, but to Soujirou's absolutely horror, he then found out that the spikes were smeared from tip to tip with poison as well.
After tending to the wound to the best of his ability - removing the poison and binding it up, Soujirou had set off with his borrowed time to defeat the mafia bosses as soon as possible. He had really hoped to finish his job in the shortest time possible, because the longer he dragged the battle, the more disadvantageous it was for him. It looked like that plan had not worked out all that well after all. It was time for a new line of thought.
"Oi, Tenken!" The previously droning voice in the background suddenly jumped sharply into focus, scaring Soujirou out of his wits and causing him to nearly leap out of his skin. Enishi was perched on a crate above, looking down at him with an irate expression on his face. "I've been calling for you since just now. What's gotten into you?"
"Umm..." Soujirou's head reeled. "Bullet wound to the leg?" He pointed.
Enishi's first reaction was to blinked. Then he narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "Who are you and what have you done with Tenken no Soujirou?"
The younger wanderer resisted the urge to poke the tip of his sword into Enishi's eye there and then. "It's a long story, Yukishiro-san." A pang of sharp pain jolted through his foot, as the residue poison started working up again. "What happened to the both of them?" He asked, as he slowly got to his feet with the help of the crates that surrounded him.
Enishi tilted his head slightly in a random direction. Looking there, Soujirou saw that Ming and Zheng were both somewhat out cold on the ground. At least, he could tell that they were not exactly moving about. This caused the heavy weight upon his shoulders to be lifted. He welcomed this respite gladly. Slowly, quietly, he limped into an area where he knew had more light, so that he did not need to explain his situation further to Enishi.
The white-haired wanderer stared for a very long time. "Long story indeed," he shook his head to indicate that he did not want to know. "Sit down," Enishi gestured at the wall behind. "We need to get that bullet out first before you can bandage the thing up."
"I don't think there's a bullet in there, Yukishiro-san," Soujirou tried to laugh, but ended up coughing. He pointed to the wound, "The thing went right through my leg. Wasn't it sweet of them? I've got a nice new orifice on my body!"
"And you will be getting another one soon, if you don't shut up and sit down right now," Enishi's threat was coupled with the steady metallic 'shing!' of a blade being pulled out of its sheath. Figuring that now was really not a good time to be picking on a fight with Enishi, Soujirou quickly did as told. He could squabble with Enishi when he was more healthy and actually had a chance of outrunning the white-haired man after pressing a button or two.
"All right, Yukishiro-san, all right already," Soujirou winced, as he struggled to sit against the wall without aggravating his wounds too much. It took a while, but he succeeded eventually. "It just hurts a lot, but I don't think I'm going to die from it. Remember the one that almost got my heart five years ago? Now /that/ is what I'd call a real close shave!" He beamed.
"I would punch you, if you weren't already so injured," Enishi growled. Soujirou simply grinned in response. After checking through both wounds, Enishi snatched a roll of bandages out from under his overcoat. He gave it to Soujirou, who then tended to the wound on his thigh. While he did that, Enishi looked at the injury on the ankle. "Where the hell did this one come from?"
"Some room with a lot of spikey walls," Soujirou shrugged, not noticing that Enishi's face grew steadily darker. "It's amazing, all these Chinese optical illusion tricks! I would never have found that room if I hadn't been marking the way I came!"
"That means you've been poisoned."
"Well, I was," Soujirou nodded in agreement. "But I've removed the poison methodologically." He glanced questioningly at Enishi. "How did you know? I never told you about the poison."
Enishi said nothing, until he finished unwrapping the by now bloodied bandages around Soujirou's ankles, and spied upon the wound, confirming that the poison had been purged. "I designed most of the traps in this labyrinth," he eventually muttered, under Soujirou's curious, watchful eye. "Including that one. A long time ago."
It did not take a genius to figure out which particular one Enishi was referring to. Soujirou stifled a giggle. "That's a strange way to be admitting you're feeling guilty over my injury, Yukishiro-san!" He said, loudly and brightly. Enishi glared at him feebly - feeble, compared to his usually lethal ones, and slapped him on the injured ankle, causing his partner's cheering to become a hoot of excrutiating pain.
Standing up while Soujirou retracted his foot in pain, Enishi threw another roll of bandages down to Soujirou. "Since you're so full of energy, you can fix your ankle yourself!"
"Don't worry, Yukishiro-san, I intend to do just that," Soujirou had caught and unrolled the bandages, slowly bringing his ankle to within distance of his outstretched hands. "You're much too sour for your own good, Yukishiro-san! Cheer up before you get wrinkles! And you're nowhere near wrinkle-age yet, too!"
"Hanging out around you, it'll be a miracle if /Kenji/ doesn't get wrinkles," Enishi snorted. He took a look around the room. "/This/ room I have never planned before." He walked up to the walls and furniture randomly, to take a closer look at them. "I'll see if there are any traps to disable. In the meantime, if you're well enough, you could help look around for incriminating documents for Saitou. We shouldn't make this a wasted trip."
While he said this, he poked at a portion of the wall, and with a mechanical sound, three arrows shot out from the opposite wall, directly at Enishi's head. Soujirou watched with surprise and admiration as Enishi simply side-stepped coolly, causing the arrows to come to their demise by hitting the wall and falling limply to the ground thereafter.
Tying the final knot in his new round of bandages on his wounded ankle, Soujirou clambered carefully to his feet, with the help of the wall and his unsheathed sword. Taking a few baby steps, he was surprised to find that, though his injuries still throbbed and sent shocks of pain up his spine when he moved, the pain was not something he could not handle.
He sighed with relief, knowing that he was running on adrenaline at the moment. As Enishi disabled more traps, Soujirou slowly made his way over to the furniture in the room, rummaging through whatever paperwork there was to rummage.
He noticed that the bandages around his thigh were rapidly getting soaked with blood from front to back. It was also with slight dismay that he realised he seemed to be losing sense of his right leg. The bullet may have severed a vital nerve somewhere. While his foot still obeyed him, all sensation appeared to be getting gradually numb.
Inability to feel pain could come in handy during mind-wracking battles, but in the long-run, it could prove to be the bane of a wanted criminal's scot-free life such as himself. He sighed internally, deciding to search the next available spot for incriminating clues.
Which so happened to be the befallen criminals themselves.
From behind him, Soujirou could hear Enishi overturning a crate of weapons. The metal and plastic clattered messily to the ground, some eventually sliding to a stop near Soujirou's feet. For a while, the boyish wanderer was captivated by the small item. Having been a warrior for the most part of his life, he appreciated the uses, as well as sentimental value his weapon held out. The progress of the world, however, saw to it that weapons were getting more impersonal, and less useful - except in the art of killing.
Bending down and reaching out to take the short handgun that had come near his feet into his hands, he looked at the little item. So small, so cold, yet so powerful.
Was this perhaps where the world was heading as well?
His well-honed instincts alerted him suddenly to danger, which he knew he reacted accordingly by standing and quickly attempting to run out of the opponent's weapon range. Unfortunately, standing up was about as far as he could get. He might have gotten safely out of gunpoint of Ming's weapon - if his feet had been in better condition. As it was, therefore, he found himself staring into the seemingly bottomless barrel of an angry weapon, held shakily by an even angrier opponent. He grit his teeth, cursing his momentarily carelessness. His eyes immediately darted around in search of a possible escape route.
"Lao da!" Ming's jerky voice caused Soujirou to pause in his thinking and Enishi to turn his head immediately to look at the new change in situation. "He is the one, isn't he?" Ming asked in Chinese, much to Soujirou's discomfort, dismay, and displeasure. "The one Zheng said you cared for more than all the four of us combined... the one who's stopping you from returning to rule us!"
To Soujirou's further dismay, Enishi replied in the same tongue. "She doesn't know what she's talking about," the man was saying, a hard glint in his eye. "Why do you keep believing every single thing she says anyway?"
"She speaks with reason! That's why I...!" Ming suddenly paused, a jolt of pain suddenly rushing through his back, where Enishi had hit to knock him out just now.
Immediately, Soujirou caught the lapse of attention in the groggy mafia boss, and with a decisive flash of the flip side of his sword, knocked the gun out of Ming's hand. Without waiting to hear the man's cry of protest, Soujirou made his way, as quickly as his wounds allowed him, over to Enishi's side. Enishi said nothing, merely shaking his head in disapproval at Soujirou having been caught, even if for a while, as a hostage. Soujirou blew him a raspberry.
"Guess what, Yukishiro-san?" Soujirou brandished a bamboo bound book from somewhere within his sleeves, eliciting a stare of wonderment from Enishi. "Sometimes becoming a hostage for a while can be rather profitable, especially since we get to be in such close range with our target of incrimination!" He chirped, and to drive his point home, flung the book in Enishi's face.
The rattling the bamboo cover gave made Ming's heart skip a beat. He immediately felt around his pockets and clothing's concealed space to find the organisation record book he kept on him at all times. With a low, sinking heart, he realised that it was gone. With his entire organisation methods and members in the hands of the enemy, it would be near impossible for any of his subordinates to try to buy him out of a death or jail statement now. His countenance failed, and he reared his head angrily at the two wanderers.
"Woah," Enishi spoke up, this time in Japanese. He had been casually browsing through the contents of the bamboo book. "You've got quite an organisation under you, haven't you, Ming?" He asked, sarcastically. "I don't remember leaving such a big group behind in Shanghai. Do you still dare to deny that you were just using my name to gain more power?" He sneered at his former subordinate, watching with glee as he winced under the verbal attack.
"It was necessary to expand so that we could avenge you, lao da!" Ming countered. But the arguement was so weak, even Soujirou laughed.
"Avenge Yukishiro-san?" Soujirou managed to say after laughing. "But he's not dead yet!"
"Yes, he's not," Ming muttered, wistfully. Quietly. "But he's not alive either. Won't you agree?"
The entire room lapsed into a questioning silence. Enishi's eyes narrowed. Soujirou continued smiling.
It was almost as if Ming alone knew what he would say next.
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... to be continued
23/3/05
tougenkyou . net / xd