CHAPTER FOUR

Disclaimer: I do not own Rurouni Kenshin plot or characters.

The curious thing about knowing he was going to die was the fact that Seta wasn't frightened of it anymore. He'd been terrified as a child when his half-brothers tried to kill him. He remembered running from them, wide-eyed, screaming for help from someone, anyone at all.

But no one heard.

No one came, not even Shishio, who was hiding in the storage barn only a few steps away.

In the end Seta took up the wakizashi Shishio gave him and saved himself by killing all those who'd tormented him, including the women of the family.

He'd cried after it was over, but hid his tears in the raindrops, and by smiling at Shishio. Shishio, impressed by his smiling denial that the killing bothered him at all, had taken him in and groomed him as his personal weapon. He was called the Tenken, heaven's sword.

A weapon doesn't feel anger or pity or fear.

Emotions were weaknesses, and as Shishio's tool, Seta couldn't afford to feel them. Now that he was no longer a tool, Seta still didn't feel them, at least not the way other people seemed to feel.

He smiled because it was considered a pleasant thing to do, not because he was happy.

He worked because he needed money to live, not because he liked to help people. He didn't dislike it either, it was just something he had to do, so he smiled as he did it, in order to fit in.

He was willing to die now because it was justice that he pay for his past crimes. Justice was the balance between right and wrong. Kenshin made him see that there was a difference between right and wrong, that being strong and winning didn't automatically make you right.

Seta got that. It was brought painfully home to him when he lay on the floor of the practice hall after Kenshin defeated him, and realized that Kenshin wasn't going to kill him. Kenshin turned everything on its head by showing mercy, something Shishio didn't believe in.

He'd admitted then that Kenshin's victory proved Shishio wrong. He admitted it to himself, and out loud. And Kenshin, being Kenshin, denied it. The red-headed swordsman never seemed to do what Seta expected him to.

Kenshin said that just because he'd won their battle didn't mean he was right. He'd told Seta that he'd have to find his own answers. Seta had tried to do that by following Kenshin's example and wandering, living a virtuous life.

Yet still he couldn't seem to get the hang of it.

Two servants passed by his room. By the sound of it, one was carrying a basin of water, which sloshed about, forcing them to walk slowly.

As they walked, they whispered together. Seta's hearing was sharp. He heard every word.

"What shall we do? Master Muneiwa doesn't look well at all." It was a servant girl, too old really to be called a girl, but her voice was younger sounding than the other woman's voice, which answered.

"Shh! If anyone asks, we're to say that the Master has the flu." Though quiet, the older woman's tone was worried.

"But his face! The one side is all slack, and he can't move that arm either."

"It's the flu. Just remember that."

Their footsteps stopped abruptly as they were joined by a rushing pair of footsteps.

"We're nearly out of sake." The new voice was higher and shrill with agitation.

"Why tell us?" the older woman's voice asked reasonably.

"Just go and get some more from the storage area," the younger woman suggested.

"But there isn't any more in the storage area! The rain kept Miyagi from making his delivery..." The shrill voice broke off as another set of footsteps padded softly towards them.

Seta realized that the new footsteps sounded familiar. No, not the footsteps, the clinking noise that accompanied them. So Chizuru hadn't found a way to discard her pebbles yet.

"Chizuru-san!" The shrill voice rounded on her. "We're out of sake, what are we to do? Where will we get more with the bridge washed out?"

"Why do you ask me this? Grandfather makes those decisions." The girl's voice was low, hesitant.

"Yes, but your grandfather can't answer my questions he…"

"Has the flu!" interrupted the older woman's voice.

Seta could hear the irritation in the old woman's words, and could imagine her glaring at the tactless shrill-voiced serving woman.

Chizuru sighed. "I don't know what to…." she sighed again as her words trailed off. "I'll go look for some more sake," she said desultorily, and her footsteps faded as she walked off.

"Fool!" hissed the younger woman. "How can you bother her now when she's been…you know."

The shrill voice harrumphed. "Who else can I bother with the steward dying last month, Master Uriu dead, and Master Muneiwa sick with the FLU?" she ended loudly, over-emphasizing the last word for effect.

Evidently not pleased with the reaction she was getting from the other two servants, she harrumphed again and stalked off, her feet pounding defiantly on the wood floorboards as she went.

"A house needs a strong master, or it can not stand," muttered the older woman.

"Especially with fools like Tomi about," agreed the other.

Then their footsteps faded as well, and Seta was left with his thoughts and the uncommunicative samurai who sat like a rock, guarding him.

Later that night, Shimizu came to take the late evening shift.

Sitting up, Seta smiled and greeted him.

Shimizu nodded curtly.

Ah. So he still hadn't forgiven him for touching Chizuru. What a pity. Shimizu was the only samurai who'd bothered to talk with him.

What small strides he'd taken to win Shimizu's confidence disappeared after the incident in the garden. Shimizu had even taken Seta's sword back when a new samurai came to take over guard duty.

However, Seta noticed as Shimizu came in that the Nagasone Kotetsu was thrust through Shimizu's obi along with Shimizu's own sword. Shimizu took them out and laid them on his left side as he sat.

The message wasn't lost on Seta. He'd gone back to being distrusted. There'd be no more walks in the garden for him.

Sighing, he wished Shimizu a polite 'goodnight' and lay back down to sleep.

Stealthy noises in the garden woke Seta.

The rain was a mere drizzle again, and he heard the rasp of wood on stone. Someone with a sheathed katana was climbing over the back wall of the garden.

Seta thought idly that someone should tell him to tuck his katana in the back of the obi when scaling a wall.

He lay face upward on the floor and continued to listen. There were at least five of them, trying to be quiet as they landed in the damp earth of the garden, but the dirt was sodden and the unmistakable squelshing noises they made when they landed couldn't be masked. In the cold night air, the sound carried distinctly over the pond.

Curious, Seta sat up and opened his eyes and saw that Shimizu was on his knees at the shoji screen which separated Seta's room from the engawa leading to the garden. In his left hand he grasped his katana by its sheath. Seta's sword was tucked in Shimizu's obi.

Shimizu glanced at Seta, who held his gaze calmly.

Another intruder landed in the garden. That made six.

From what Seta had seen and heard since his capture, the daimyo only had five samurai at his disposal. Most daimyo had more, and Seta supposed that many of Muneiwa's men had been killed during the Bakumatsu over ten years ago.

Of the five remaining, Seta figured that some were probably sleeping.

"Looks like your friends are coming to get you." growled Shimizu softly.

"The bandits?" asked Seta curiously.

Shimizu nodded grimly.

This was odd. Why would the bandits attack Muneiwa's compound? "Oh, they're no friends of mine." Seta told Shimizu cheerfully. "I doubt they're coming to rescue me. Besides, even if they were I couldn't go with them."

Shimizu drew his grizzled eyebrows together and frowned.

"I promised I wouldn't try to escape, remember?" Seta laughed softly. "I'm stuck here with you!"

Shimizu tensed and he raised a hand to quiet Seta, while placing his eye against the crack between the shoji screen and the doorframe.

Listening intently, Seta heard it too, the whispered conversation between the intruders.

"Where do you think they're keeping Gombei?"

"Who cares, just kill everyone who isn't him. That'll make it easy." A second bandit answered the first with a hate-filled voice.

"Let's grab the girl again. Even if he's not here, they'll make the trade to get her back. Maybe even give us the ransom too."

"Shut up you two," hissed another voice, closer than the first two.

At the mention of Chizuru, Seta's breath caught.

Shimizu, moving back from the shoji to quietly draw his sword, caught Seta's eye.

The look that passed between the two was something only two warriors would understand. They measured each other, assessed each other's fighting spirit, and approved.

Without a word, Shimizu pulled Seta's katana, the Nagasone Kotetsu, from its place tucked into his obi, and tossed it to him.

Seta caught it, and smiled, the genuine happiness that filled him at the familiar weight in his hand surprised him. He got to his knees and joined Shimizu.

The older samurai placed his left hand on the shoji screen, and jerked his head to the left, indicating the direction Seta was to attack.

Then he threw open the shoji screen and burst out into the night with a yell that woke the household.

Dimly, from the back of the house, came another sort of cry, one of terror and pain. Seta realized, even as he burst forward, that there were more bandits than he'd thought. Another group must be attacking the other side of the house.

Then the battle was on. Shimizu was attacking a smaller man on the engawa. The old man's downward cuts were strong and sure, and the bandit was having a hard time blocking them.

Realizing it was only a matter of time before Shimizu broke through the bandit's defenses, Seta stepped out on the porch and prepared to fight his own battles.

The five other bandits were rushing to their friend's rescue in a mass. Seta bounced lightly on the balls of his feet, and ran forward.

As his feet left the porch, he drew his sword, battoujitsu style, and sliced one of the bandits in half as he plunged into the garden. Whirling, his bare feet skidded in the mud and he had to windmill his arms for a moment to catch his balance.

Another bandit foolishly tried to cut him with a downward stroke.

Seta raised his Nagasone Kotetsu above his head in a downward diagonal slant. The bandit's blade struck it mid-center.

By shifting his blade slightly, Seta used the bandit's forward momentum to force the man's blade to slide down his own.

As soon as the man's point of balance was focused down his blade, which was now imbedded in the ground, Seta cross-stepped left, and as his left foot touched the ground, he swung his right sword arm across horizontally, taking off the bandit's head at the neck.

By this time Shimizu had dispatched his own opponent and was crouched low, his sword held tilted down at his side, eyes watching the two bandits with drawn swords confronting him several paces down the engawa.

Seta was just looking for the last bandit when a shot rang out.

He flinched; he couldn't help himself. Gunfire always startled him.

More noise now, as Shimizu went crashing through a shoji screen several rooms down from Seta's room.

Shimizu had been hit!

Pivoting, Seta found the gunman standing by a tree with a satisfied grin on his face, his pistol still raised and smoking.

Grin, and the head attached to it, were quickly separated from the man's body by another horizontal slash from Seta's blade.

Now for the last two.

They'd followed Shimizu through the broken shoji screen.

When Seta gained the impromptu doorway, one of them had already slashed his sword downward at the fallen samurai's head.

Shimizu was half lying, half sitting on his back on the floor of a storage room, in the wreckage of the shoji screen. Incredibly, despite the gaping bullet hole in Shimizu's chest, the man had his sword up, blocking the bandit's katana.

The second bandit was just preparing to thrust his blade through Shimizu's vulnerable belly.

Seta hissed through his teeth as he tilted his blade sideways and thrust it through a gap in the bandit's ribs, feeling the impact as his blade reached the spinal cord, signifying that the heart area had been reached.

He took a step back and pulled his blade out, then lunged forward slashing, his toes stopping right at Shimizu's side as he took the last bandit's head with a horizontal stroke.

The head went flying across the room, while the body slumped off on the floor to the right, away from Shimizu.

Shimizu.

Seta tossed his katana on the floor and dropped to his knees by the dying samurai.

Shimizu's eyes were glazing over. His chest was covered in blood from the bullet wound.

Seta gently pulled the man's head onto his knees and held him resting there, copying what Yumi, Shishio's concubine, had done for him when Kenshin fought him to the breaking point, to the point where all Seta could do was lie there and wait for the end.

Kenshin hadn't finished Seta off as expected. Seta had lived, but Shimizu…

Shimizu's eyes focused on Seta, hovering over him.

"You did good, kid." Shimizu whispered, and tried to raise his hand.

Seta reached across to grasp it, but even as he did so, the hand fell lifeless at Shimizu's side.

The samurai was dead.

o-o-o

They found him sitting on the floor of the storage room a few minutes later, Shimizu's body still lying in his lap. Seta's hands, covered once again with another man's blood, were resting on the samurai's shoulders.

He looked up when Beppo, the younger samurai, ran in, household servants clustered behind him.

He saw Beppo's eyes drop to Shimizu.

"I'm afraid he's dead, Beppo-san," said Seta, and dropped his own gaze to the peaceful face of the only man in Muneiwa's household who'd treated him like a fellow warrior.

From behind Beppo, the servants' voices broke out in furious conversation.

"Shimizu's dead!"

"What?"

"Who killed him?"

Beppo stepped further into the room, allowing the servants to cluster in the doorway like a bunch of indignant hens.

Ignoring them, Beppo walked over to stand by Shimizu's feet, his eyes taking in the wound, and the man's face. Seta had used his fingertips to close Shimizu's eyes, and his bloody smudge marks remained on the lids.

Beppo resheathed his sword and kneeled.

"Why are you still here?" he asked in a flat voice.

Seta shrugged. "I'm sorry, Beppo-san. I know I'm probably the last person you want to see right now, but I promised Shimizu-san that I wouldn't run away. So I guess you're stuck with me."

Though he knew it was inappropriate, Seta smiled, the defense mechanism kicking in almost unconsciously.

Beppo's eyes hardened.

There was a scraping noise as a barrel of rice began to slide across the floor.

Beppo and Seta's heads swiveled left at the same time as Chizuru stood up.

Moving awkwardly around the wooden barrel, she clutched the fabric of her sleeping Yukata at the neck and came into the center of the room.

"Chizuru-chan?" Beppo asked incredulously, using the diminutive form, commonly used with children. "You were hiding in here?"

Chizuru didn't seem to notice the question. Her eyes were on Seta. She walked forward as if there was no one else in the room but him.

"Did you really kill my brother?" she asked.

Her hair was tumbling unbound around her shoulders. Her eyes were big and pleading, framed by her heart-shaped face.

There was the question. Seta hadn't killed her brother, but he could have saved him and didn't. Just as he could have saved Shimizu if he'd been faster, if he'd thought to look for guns instead of katanas, and picked his targets accordingly.

Seta bowed his head as he thought about all that he'd done, and all that he hadn't. Then he raised his head and smiled.

"I am responsible for your brother's death, Chizuru-san. I am sorry."

Tears pooled in her eyes and began spilling down her face. She covered her face in her hands and ran at the servants in the doorway, who immediately began clucking over her, reinforcing Seta's earlier impression of them as hens. An older servant woman placed her arm around the girl's shoulders and began leading her away.

Beppo was staring at him as the servants' chatter washed over them.

"Poor dear!"

"Imagine, a battle going on in her favorite childhood hiding place."

"Do you think she saw everything? The killings?"

"Shut up, Tomi!"

"Well, I would have loved to see Shimizu killing all those bandits."

"He killed six of them, I'll wager! I counted the bodies outside before I came."

Beppo's gaze dropped from Seta's face to the swords lying scattered across the bodies and bits of shoji screens littering the floor. There were the bandits' two sword lying by their corpses. Shimizu's was properly at his side where it had fallen from his hand, and Seta's was across the room, blood still dripping from it.

Beppo focused on it, then brought his face back around and stared even harder at Seta.

Smiling back cheerfully, Seta spoke quietly. "I think it's best if Shimizu killed all the bandits, don't you? That way everybody will be happy."

A grimace of disgust crossed Beppo's face. Beppo didn't like it when Seta smiled.

He stood. "Go back to your room and stay there," he ordered.

"Certainly, Beppo-san, I'll go right now." Seta answered.

Gently supporting Shimizu's head and shoulders, Seta scooted backwards and laid the body on the floor. Then he rose to his feet and went to the doorway leading to the hallway to his room. As he passed through the doorway, he glanced back and saw Beppo staring down at his dead friend.

"Kuso, Shizuru. Why did you have to go and die? There's few enough of us left to protect Muneiwa-san as it is."

Seta lowered his head and went back to his room.

Note to Reviewers:

Loise – I promise you'll find out Soujiro's fate soon. This story only has five chapters. I'm glad you like the O.C.s – it's been challenging trying to recreate a daimyo's household in an age when the feudal system was being dismantled, and the old ways were dying off. As for parody, I've done one on 'X 1999' because its plot drove me nuts, but right now I'm liking Souiro too much to parody him!

Wyrd – Er, I hope you didn't get too attached to Shimizu! Sorry about that! Despite his bad sense of timing, he was a good samurai. Chizuru and Soujiro have a rocky relationship – it's hard for her to let herself like Soujiro while she still thinks he murdered her brother. Glad you liked the rain scene, rain is pretty meaningful for Soujiro, after all the major turning point of his life happened in the rain.

WolfDaughter – Shimuzu's actions may be unexpected, but he's an old school samurai. Honor is everything and since the symbol of a samurai's honor is his sword, and Soujiro's sword is a really cool one, I figured he'd be curious to see how honorable Soujiro actually was. Congratulations on your exams! Especially the Calc. III one – I im in awe of anyone who can figure out math problems!

Linay – You're actually reading my silly story? I'm so flattered! Soujiro is a favorite RK character of mine as well. Who can resist a guy with a tortured past trying to make things right?

Skenshingumi – Soujiro is only 5 feet 4 inches tall? Drat, that means he's taller than me. And he looks so short on the anime dvds! Thanks for the compliment on research – I spend way too much time on that when I should be doing more productive things! If you ever do decide to write a story, I'd love to review it! Until then, I'm just happy you're reading mine.

Supremecmdr.oftheweb – Thanks for the compliment, and thanks for reading.

MysteriousSamurai – Soujiro is indeed interesting, and I'm having lots of fun using him as my main character. I'm glad you liked the chapter!

Anonymous Freak – Soujiro is indeed the best! I'm having fun writing about him. I hope I'm remaining true to Watsuki's version of him.

Babygirl – No more crying? Good! Glomping Sou-chan is a much better use of your time – he's such a cutie-pie.

Another Baka – I'm glad you liked the chapter! Thanks for reading!

Applesoveroranges – If you want to own Seta Soujiro, I hear there's an owners manual on ffdotnet! Thanks for the compliment, you're too kind, but my 'talent' isn't completely natural. I was an English Major in college so I had to practice writing a lot!

Larie-chan – You're welcome! About your question, the answer is no. No romance here, never ever. I'm allergic to writing romance. Mostly because I stink at it! I agree, the muse analogy is getting a bit old. Want to switch to Baka Bokken's plot bunnies analogy instead?

Lolopopoki – One of the irritating things about writing from one character's point of view is that you can't show what's going through the other characters' minds. The reason Shimizu showed mercy by giving Soujiro back his sword is because he was testing him to see if he was honorable. Shimizu doesn't know about Soujiro's god-like speed, so he figured he'd hand back the sword and see what Soujiro did with it. He was also curious about how a mere kid got his hands on an excellent sword like the Nagasone Kotetsu. As for the ending…I'm not telling! I could email you a hint though…

Alilmatchgirl – Hi! Glad to see you're reviewing again, and I'm sorry your cnxn was acting up (what IS a cnxn anyhow?). I'm glad you like my take on Soujiro. Unlike Kenshin, he didn't wander in order to atone per se, but rather to find answers since his world view was knocked offkilter when Kenshin whupped him in battle. He's still emotionally distant as a result of his upbringing. Drat that evil Shishio! That guy needed some serious parenting classes!

Moeruhimura – About Senkaku, I REALLY didn't want to think that Soujiro killed him either. When Soujiro told him he didn't know enough to have to be killed, I was hoping he wouldn't, but then there was that awful sound of sword cutting flesh as the feathers were falling, and then the stream of blood appears in the water. After that the whole river turns red, presumably with blood, so I figured Soujiro must have killed him. On the other hand, when the river goes red, Senkaku is still sitting upright beside it, which didn't seem consistent with him being dead. I'd rather think he wasn't, but then where did all the blood come from? As for Shimizu, he's open-minded because he's older and wiser. Plus he considers himself a good judge of character, and he's testing Soujiro to see if he's honorable and trustworthy.

Sueb262 – Thanks for the review, and the email one too! It was incredibly helpful. Ah, Saitoh. If Soujiro is the ultimate in cuteness, Saitoh's got to be the ultimate in coolness. Tall, dark, handsome, and he loves soba noodles. What's not to like?