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 58: The End
When Kenji arrived at his destination, Aoshi and Misao were already there, talking in hushed tones about something. The room was white and there were shattered mirror fragments all over the ground. "Hey!" He called out to his two seniors, who immediately turned their heads up in surprise to look at him. Evidently, they had not felt his aura. "Have you seen Soujirou?"
Aoshi and Misao had gotten over their initial shock by now. "Soujirou?" Misao was the first to speak. "Haven't seen him for a while. Enishi's late, though." She shrugged. "Even later than you, which is quite a feat!" She grinned mischievously.
"Why are you looking for Soujirou?" Aoshi asked, after Misao had said her piece.
"He was there with Saitou and me, helping out with the final puzzle," Kenji replied. "Then he disappeared when the police reinforcements came, so I thought maybe he'd come here to look for Enishi too." The glint in his eye grew slightly perplexed as he continued, "But... judging from how he's been behaving just now, I think he already /has/ met Enishi. He even has his sword!" Kenji pointed out to nobody in particular. Aoshi lapsed into a thoughtful silence. Misao frowned.
"Who has whose sword?" The kunoichi asked Kenji, wanting to be sure.
"Soujirou," Kenji turned to face Misao, "has Enishi's sword. You know, that huge, long sword with strange, Chinese patterns on its hilt?"
The two adults lapsed into an even more solemn silence, broken only by Misao's strained suggestion that, "I guess we'd better find Yukishiro Enishi soon."
Aoshi agreed, with a grave nod.
"What's wrong?" Kenji asked.
"Kenji," Misao looked at him evenly, "...no matter how good Yukishiro Enishi is with his fists, he knows /better/ than to walk around enemy terrain without a weapon that can at least prove to be of some resistance against the opponent's superior weaponry." She looked at Aoshi. "Something must have happened."
A loud whine proceeded to be heard from a remote corner of the room. As the trio in the room turned to look at the source of the noise, they saw the by-now familiar figure of the silver fox, scratching furiously at a particular spot on the wall. The creature whined again, looking in Kenji's direction, demanding his attention. Rolling his eyes, the young redhead strolled up to the fox and loomed before him with his arms akimbo. "Now what?"
The fox whined, then scratched at the wall again. By this time, Aoshi and Misao were already close behind him, staring at the scene with a combination of amusement and bemusement. "I think the thing's asking you to break down this wall or something," Misao giggled. "Maybe there's a secret tunnel behind."
Kenji knocked experimentally on the wall, which produced a hollow sound. "Why am I not surprised?" He sighed. The fox scratched its ear complacently.
"How should we take this wall down?" Misao asked, knocking on it as well. The sound it produced was hollow, but when she tossed hard punch at the wall, she only ended up with a few sore knuckles. "Ouch," she blew at her smarting fist. "...guess we can't try to knock it down then-!"
She was interrupted when the huge sound of crumbling walls exploded from beside her, filling the room with dust and debris and giving both Aoshi and her a shock. As the smoke slowly disappeared, Kenji removed his fist from out of the hole in the wall, shaking it slightly to flick off the bits and pieces of plaster and cement that had gotten on his knuckles from his sudden attack.
"Hey, this wall isn't so tough after all!" Kenji turned his bright eyes upon his two elders, and they were glinting with glinting with innocence. As if he did not know he had kist done something that was frighteningly awesome. "Let's break it down together!"
While Kenji happily proceeded to punch the rest of the wall down, with the fox bouncing about and barking happily beside him, Misao carefully withdrew a kunai from her pouch. She took aim at the wall, and flung it with abject force. The kunai bounced off the wall like it was a rubber ball. "Kaoru-san," she said, while shuddering, "...your legacy of brute strength has found itself an inheritor."
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Somewhere in Tokyo, someone sneezed.
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Later found the trio crossing the threshold of the broken down wall, and walking down the dark, winding secret tunnel. The only thing keeping them from bumping into the walls was the silver fox, whose fur seemed to shine all the more brighter in the dark space. After a short trot through the nothingness, Kenji finally sighed. "I can't take it anymore!" He screeched, and his voice rebounded off the closed walls to form eerie echoes. "What is /up/ with this fox anyway! It's been following me around since I left the dojo in Tokyo! It seems to know everything that we don't!" He pointed at the fox, who continued leading the way and remained nonchalant. "I can't close this episode of my life without at least knowing what's going on with that thing! Aargh!"
Aoshi was staring off into space. Misao stared at Kenji. It was Aoshi, however, who first spoke anything to break the silence that followed Kenji's question. "Do you know which shrine we are currently located under now, Kenji?"
Kenji narrowed his eyes slightly at the older man. "We went down from Azumamaro Shrine, so I'd assume we're still underneath it, although..." he pondered, "...what with all the tunnels, bridges and mazes we've had to go through all this while, I wouldn't be surprised if we're now in a completely new area."
"You are right," Aoshi confirmed. "We are now beneath the Fushimi Inari Taisha."
Kenji was taken aback. "The folklore god who travels around with foxes in his entourage?" He whispered, more to himself than to anybody else.
Ahead of him, the fox turned around, and flashed its audience a wide, toothy grin.
Aoshi nodded curtly, then reached his hand out to allow it to sweep against the walls they were travelling through at the moment. "From the looks of the structure, though messy, this underground complex was only recently built. Perhaps around the same time the Yuugure started to really force a stranglehold on the Japanese weapons black market..."
"That would be about five years ago," Misao quipped. "...right?"
Again, Aoshi nodded. "Although we still are not quite sure of the reason behind Yuugure's heavy investment in this overseas project - one fact remains constant. The local police was obviously not the only one offended by their miscreant acts," he paused and shot the trotting fox a glance, "Someone else, somewhere out there, was displeased as well."
"Therefore the fox?" Kenji fingered his chin. "No wonder Soujirou mentioned something about divine intervention just now..." He walked up to the fox and tugged on its tail. "Hey fox, you got nothing to say to that? Are you really here to help drive out the bad guys from the Inari underground?"
The fox turned around, yipped happily, and leapt onto Kenji, licking his face. Then it hopped back to the ground and continued running along the tunnel.
Kenji remained frozen for quite a while. Then realisation crept in, and with a shriek of indignation, he pursued the playful fox all the way down the rest of the tunnel in a ferocious game of tag - complete with barking and much colourful swearing, much to the amusement of the two adults in the tunnel behind them.
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"Well, Saitou my man, this has got to be one of the greatest haul-in we've had for a few years at least," Kamatari was seated on a well-lit area of the room with Saitou and Chou, while the rest of the minor police scurried around busily, having broken down the wall blocking their way to the auto cannon mechanism and currently trying to disable the device permanently. Kamatari looked at the book in his hands again. "Names, places, transactions, dates, events..." He snickered. "Isn't it such a good thing that the Chinese mafia are so organised and meticulous in their record keeping?"
Saitou glanced at the book. "Keep it well," he grunted. "We need to get it to a translator after we make sure all the traps and mechanisms are disabled in this ridiculous underground weapons ring."
"I don't get what you're so upset about from since just now," Chou came in from the sidelines. "We closed this case beautifully - without losing a single soldier. You're gonna get a grand promotion or at least a fat pay raise. Stop lookin' like you just lost the whole police force or something!"
"Speaking of translators," Kamatari closed the bamboo covered book and glanced at his two companions, "...what about Yukishiro? He's been in this trade for years - he should know all the mumbo jumbo they use better than any of us in the police force do." He stared intently at Saitou. "I could contact him for you, since I know you're all about beauracracy and all that official business thing-"
"You," Saitou cut Kamatari short, "are both idiots." This, of course, did not elicit a particularly favourite response from both parties in question. "Just because you don't see or hear about it, doesn't mean that there were no sacrifices in the process," his eyes took on a wistful, nostalgic look. "It's been like that since the dawn of man. It'll go on being like that until man's twilight." Knowing that he probably did not make sense to his younger subordinates, Saitou removed the cigarette stub in his mouth and quashed it evenly against the wall beside him. "Yukishiro Enishi..."
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"...is dead...?" Kenji's tone was incredulous. Disbelieving.
The moment he had emerged from the tunnel, the fox had led him directly to a crumpled form in the middle of the room, whose head was covered with a torn piece of blue cloth that had been soaked to the bare threads with blood. For a few stunning seconds, Kenji had been numbed - rooted to the spot. It was not until Aoshi, with professional ease, removed the cloth covering the body, did Kenji finally release the breath he had been holding.
Of course, in the next instant, a new kind of shock seized him, rooting him to the spot once again.
"Aoshi-sama!" Misao's voice was a harsh, panicked whisper. She was crouched beside Aoshi as her leader proceeded to check the fallen man for signs of life. He flinched, but refused to say anything. Upturning the torn piece of shawl so that it no longer covered Enishi's face, he looked around rather frantically for any clues that would enlighten him as to what had transpired in this room. He could deduce that a fight had occurred in this room - that much was obvious by the various weapons lying on the ground and arbitrary holes in the ceiling and in the walls. Eventually, however, his eyes came to rest upon an object that glinted against the dull lighting in the room.
"Kenji, pick that up," he instructed, pointing at the object that Kenji was currently nearest to. Kenji immediately obeyed. As he stooped over to collect it, recognition washed over him. Picking the article up, he gasped loudly.
"It's Soujirou's sword," he turned to look at his seniors, confusion brimming in his eyes. "The old guy at the hut gave it to him."
There was a moment of grave silence.
"You mentioned you last saw him with Enishi's sword, didn't you?" Misao frowned. "Maybe they exchanged swords?" She frowned further.
"I have a feeling it's nothing as simple as that," Kenji gulped, the sword growing steadily heavier in his hands. "Soujirou was indeed holding Enishi's sword, but it was wrapped in..." he glanced downwards, at the cloth that had been strewn aside by Aoshi. "...the same cloth as that one down there. I didn't realise it then, but... but Soujirou did smell of blood when he stepped into the room..." He paused to shake his head before his imagination got the better of him. Breathing, then calming down, he continued. "And Soujirou... his hair. His hair was no longer long. He cut it - or someone did it for him, sometime in between him crossing the crevasse bridge and his subsequent arrival at the room Saitou and I were in..."
Misao alone was listening, for Aoshi seemed to have found something more interesting to observe on the ground. He reached out towards the article, while Misao's chilled voice informed them that, "I don't believe anybody could have reached Tenken no Soujirou fast enough to cut any part of him. Not with his permission, anyway."
"I thought so too," Kenji mumbled. Aoshi carefully felt the blackish lump he had swept up from the ground. Kenji continued, "...so my only other logical guess can be that he cut it himself. He didn't say anything when I asked him, but..." the boy's saddened eyes lowered to the body lying on the floor before them. "...I think... I can almost guess why now..."
The same time Kenji pronounced this, Aoshi realised what he had picked up from off the ground. It was a lock of hair. A lock of long hair that had been recently severed from its roots. Rustling it in his hand, he let the long strands fall between his fingers, so that they slowly fell back to the ground - piece by piece, away from each other. He now noticed that there were other locks of hair, scattered sporadically around the area Enishi was laying on. He frowned, Kenji and Misao's discussion becoming but a drone in the background. Pondering over it for just a little while longer, the tall ninja eventually rose to his feet. This action alone captured the attention of Kenji and Misao, who stared at him with expectant eyes.
"We won't be able to find out what happened here by mere wild speculation." He announced firmly, finding himself the receipiant of two guilty and sheepish faces. "Come on," when he next spoke, his voice was calm, but strained. In a tone which made clear he would entertain no resistance or question, he said, "We have to move Yukishiro out of the room before the police finds him."
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It was a while later, when they had successfully gotten out of the labyrinth and were standing atop a cliff edge, that Kenji realised the sun had yet to set fully, even though the moon had already ascended the skies.
Perhaps struck by the etheareal surreality of the scene, or perhaps overwhelmed by the dreaminess of the recent events he had gone through, Kenji remarked wryly, to nobody in particular, that, "I never knew the sun and moon could share the same sky."
It was Misao who laughed, and delivered the words he desperately needed to hear. "Obviously," she said, "you live in your own little world, where the sun doesn't shine and the moon doesn't wax." She gave him a strong pat on the back. "Time to get out of the well, little frog! Some things in life aren't merely black or white!"
Kenji remained silent for a while. A few weeks ago, he would have blown up at Misao - nevermind she was his senior.
Then again, a few weeks back, he was still an insecure, pompous and selfish boy who thought the world was out to get him.
Now, however, the only thing he could feel inside of him was a buzzing sense of understanding. It was pleasant. Therefore, "You know," he smiled, "I have a feeling you just may be right after all."
"Of course!" Misao chirped along. "When am I ever wrong?"
Kenji grinned, taking no offense. He opened his wide, violet eyes, took a deep breath, and looked far out at the land beneath his feet. A land he was in but was never close to. A land that was so near, yet so far.
"Hey," he finally said, his back facing his two seniors, his arms akimbo, and his silouette imprinted against the last glow of the setting sun. He pointed into the horizon.
"Which way is Tokyo...?"
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"Kaoru!" A tall, well-tanned, youth rushed into the kitchen, stopping short just before the only person in the room at the moment, who was slicing up some onions. The youth paused. "Kaoru, there's...! Oh, my goodness! What poison are you going to feed us with this time!"
"Shut up, Yahiko!" The cook, Kaoru, sobbed, as she accidentally smashed the onion that was in her fist. "You're always eating and never helping out in the kitchen. You have no right to be yelling at me like that! What do you think we're running, some high-class, posh ala-carte tavern!" She pointed her large chopper at the properly terrified Yahiko. "Get out of here and go be useful somewhere else!"
"Don't be so touchy!" Yahiko snapped back, once he had recovered enough to realise that he could outrun the blade if Kaoru was mad enough to fling it at him. "There's a letter!" He withdrew said letter from within his sleeves and waved it about. "From Misao in Kyoto!
"...Kenji is with them!"
Kaoru paused in the midst of aiming the chopper at Yahiko. "Kenji?" She half whispered in disbelief. Wordlessly, she took the letter Yahiko held out to her.
"Oh, and one more thing..." Yahiko's voice became calmer and more serious. Kaoru looked at him questioningly. The young man took a deep breath.
"Seta Soujirou at the main hall." He announced. "He says he needs to speak with you as soon as possible. Before Kenji comes back."
There was a numb silence.
Broken only when Kaoru replaced the knife on the counter and undid the cloth that held her hair up.
"I see," she let the piece of cloth join the chopper on the counter. Turning around, she clutched the letter firmly against herself and walked towards the exit. "It's about time that silly Kenji came back home. And Soujirou'd better not be asking me for /another/ bamboo sword, or I'll really get the students to wallop him good this time!"
Yahiko shrugged, and helped Kaoru close the kitchen door as she walked out. "Never had a doubt if Kenji'd be coming back, did you?" He asked, as they both sauntered down the wooden corridors of the dojo, towards the main hall.
Kaoru shook her head. "Of course not!" She beamed, amidst tear streaks - though it was now no longer clear if they were onion-induced or not. "Himura Kenji is my son. And like his father," she looked up at the skies.
"...he knows where he truly belongs."
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The End
1/4/05
tougenkyou . net / xd