-Leigh's pov-
Breathing deeply, nervous to the point of shaking, I approached the doorway, reminding myself that salespeople aren't jumpy—walking up to doors and selling things is their job, after all. And for right now, it was my job as well.
Gathering up all of my courage, I stepped up the walkway and knocked.
As soon as the door opened, just a crack, a small nose popped out, followed by lips and the most beautiful pair of eyes I've ever seen, besides, of course, Ronin's. I knew she was Toklata, the little kidnapee, right away. I don't know why—Ronin hadn't said much about her appearance; but maybe it was the way she kept sparing glances to her left, like she knew she shouldn't have opened the door for me and didn't want to get caught.
"Um…Can I help you?" she asked, and I realized that while taking in her shaggy, less-than-impressive appearance that I had forgotten to say a word.
That sounds horrible, but it was true. In fairy tales; in any story, the Damsel in Distress is a full-lipped, curvy-figured helpless blonde with flowing locks and gorgeous blue eyes. Toklata had the helpless part down pat, and her sea-colored eyes were even better than deep blue, but that was it. Her hair was the kind that isn't really a color at all, but that people called "brown," just to be able to call it something, and it was messy and uneven. She was dressed in a t-shirt that came to her knees, and nothing else.
"Er…is your, ah, father home, young lady?" I asked, making sure I wasn't pulling myself into some trap. If Kono-whatever wasn't here, I could just take her back to Ronin and be done with the whole mess.
"He…He's sleeping," she mumbled, looking down at the ground.
I smiled. "Well then, listen to me." I kneeled down to Toklata's height. "You need to come with me—Ronin is in that forest over there"— I motioned towards the row of trees and shrubs—"Now come on. We'll get you home."
I extended my hand to her, expecting her to take it with gratitude and make a quick escape, but instead, she slapped it away.
"Ronin would never do anything that cowardly; he would come and save me himself!" she snapped at me, her voice a little too loud for comfort, with her kidnapper sleeping close by. I made a frantic gesture for her to be quieter, which she ignored completely. "This is some kind of trap, right! Well, I'm not falling for it! I'm not going anywhere unless Ronin carries me there!"
True, Ronin hadn't told me to play rescuer if Toklata happened to answer the door, he had simply asked me to make sure it was the right place…but he couldn't be so stubborn that he would risk his life when we could get away so easily, right? (I was wrong, by the way.)
"Listen, Toklata," I hissed desperately, holding the door open as she tried to close it in my face by throwing her entire weight against it (which wasn't saying much). I knew exactly what to say to her to make me believe me, at the very least, but…
"Oi, Brat, what's all that noise for?"
Too late. Konosuke stepped into the nearby kitchen, not sleepy in the slightest, and eyed me with the same snobby look I had given Ronin earlier.
"Who is this?"
"Like you don't know," Toklata snapped at him.
He sighed. "Don't be rude, girl. At least listen to what she has to say before you go slamming the door on her. Not that you look like you could slam the door on her, with those sticks for arms." He came over to the door as well, and I couldn't help but shudder at his muscular form and cold eyes. "Can I help you?"
Toklata's eyes got wide and her hand flew up to cover her mouth, as she realized I hadn't been lying.
"I…um…" In the face of danger, I forgot all of my lines, and struggled to speak at all. "I…I'm selling something…and…And what's that for!" Between my pathetic salesperson/acting skills, Konosuke's hand had rushed up to cover his nose. At that, my temper had flared (I certainly did not stink!) and I had, of course, screamed at him.
"Sorry, ma'am," he said politely, still covering his nose. "It's just that…you reek of Vampire."
Before I could even try to make sense of that, he continued, only confusing me more. Maybe I should have run or something, but in the cartoons, the heroes always stay to listen to the villain monologue. So I did too.
"Takoda is sending women to do his dirty work? Tsk. That's not something I would expect out of him, scum or not. Still, I guess he didn't bet on Toklata being so loyal, now, did he?" Konosuke put a hand on the girl's shoulder, mocking a loving gesture, who cringed and looked down at her feet. "Go tell him to get his sorry ass over here and fight me like a man."
"Or what?" I challenged him.
Not surprisingly, he said, "Or I'll kill you…or, possibly, the girl." One hand was still on Toklata's shoulder, and his opposite hand also found it's way to her other shoulder. Then they both moved enough to straddle her neck. Not strangling her quite yet, but I got the point.
Toklata looked fairly calm, actually, but I didn't stick around. Without even thinking about keeping Ronin's hiding place concealed, I rushed towards the woods, calling his name.
"Leigh," he hissed from somewhere behind me, before I even saw him. "Be quiet! Do you want to get caught!"
"Too late," I groaned, not turning to face him.
Ronin gave a half-smirk. "Ah, so I was right. Konosuke can smell my scent. Unless, of course, you said something that simply gave you away?"
My jaw hung open. "You're saying that you used me as bait! I could have been killed!" I bit my tongue to stop myself from bursting into tears. Was that why Ronin needed me? Because I made good bait?
He must have noticed my distress. "No, Leigh. You wouldn't have been killed. You were the messenger. Konosuke needed you to deliver orders to me. If there was even the slightest chance that your death could come about, I wouldn't have risked it."
"But there was a chance, Ronin!" I whined, sounding slightly pathetic.
He just laughed and shook his head. "I hate to admit it, but I can understand how Konosuke's mind works. The two of us aren't so different."
I didn't want to hear him say things like that, but I really couldn't be sure of whether this was true or not. I didn't know much about Konosuke, except that he was completely coldhearted…and Ronin was shrouded in mystery, too, at that point. With a regretful sigh, I reported to Ronin what Konosuke had told me—the whole, freakish incident.
--
-Ronin's pov-
Decisions, decisions.
I was supposed to fight Konosuke. His demands suggested that the sooner I could do this, the better. Still, walking out into the sun to fight him weaponless probably wasn't the best choice. Fighting in the very forest clearing in which I was contemplating things was better for the both of us. I'm sure he didn't want his furnishings all bloody (snicker) and there wouldn't be enough space in his tiny home.
But how to communicate that? I couldn't walk right to his door and make that request. Sending Leigh was the best option. I was sure that if he hadn't even made a move to harm her before, he wouldn't attempt to if she came a-knocking a second time, but…
"Leigh, do you want to do a favor for me?" I asked. "Another favor? You're not bait, I told you already."
She stared angrily at me. I sighed inwardly. I had hoped it wouldn't come to this.
"Please, Leigh, please?" I widened my eyes pitifully and took her hand in mine, gently rubbing the back of hers with my thumb. She looked surprised for a split second, then adopted a fierce scowl.
"Don't try to charm me."
"I'm not trying to," I insisted in a soft voice. It was funny because she knew that I was. And I knew that she knew that. And she knew that I knew that she knew that I was, in fact, trying to charm her into being my letter carrier.
That's it! "You've got paper, right? Why don't you jut write a note. Tell Konosuke that he can come and fight me right here in this clearing—"
"Why should I!" she barked, finally managing to pull her hand out of my own. "Write it yourself, you're not illiterate!"
"Of course I'm not illiterate!" I snapped. I was lying; at that point, I was illiterate. But she didn't need to know that. "How about this? Go get Konosuke and Toklata packed up and lead them here. He won't dare hurt you because he won't know where to find me without your help. No tricks. Tell him that." I was being sincere there. No tricks, nope, absolutely not. I could beat him without tricks. "Honestly, I don't think that he really wants to hurt you horribly anyway. That reminds me—I forgot through all of your complaining—how did Toklata look? Did you see her?"
Leigh blinked at my suddenly eager tone. "Yeah. She looked fine. He threatened to kill her if I didn't get you…but now that I think about it, even when he had his hands around her neck, she looked kind of bored."
I breathed a huge sigh of relief, but then raised my tone to get to Leigh. "Good! That means he won't hurt you! Now just go get him to meet me here."
Before she could protest, I pushed her out of the trees. She gave me a rude gesture, and mumbled some very unladylike words, but continued walking along, carrying herself with an almost arrogant stride.
I could tell that she was scared, even through that. But, she had been the one who insisted on tagging along. And had I already told her once: If there was more than a ten-percent chance that she would get seriously injured, I wouldn't have even considered the idea.
--
-Toklata's pov-
There was a knock at the door. I was peeking out of the window, and saw that it was that lady again. I reported this to Konosuke, who didn't look too happy when I told him that Ronin wasn't with her.
He had been resting on the couch, and now he stood up to answer the door, whipping it open and giving the woman a demanding look.
"R-ronin wants you to meet him," she snapped. "Now. In a clearing in the woods. I'll lead you there. And the girl has to come too."
She had a strong tone that I could only admire in that situation. Konosuke didn't seem to like it so much. To my surprise, he agreed, asking the woman to give him a few minutes to get ready. He drifted into his room almost lazily, nonchalantly, as if he were going on a picnic instead of to a death match.
When he came back, he had a more purposeful stride—this may have had something to do with the hulking weapons he carried; on his back, his belt—pretty much everywhere. I felt a little empty-handed, and so I tried to think of something, anything, that I had brought with me. Nothing of my own came to mind, besides my tattered clothes (which were in the dryer), but there was something I needed to return to Ronin.
--
-Leigh's pov-
Just as my role of a messenger was reaching its peak, Toklata let out a small "Wait!" and rushed down a hallway to the right of what I assumed to be the den.
I couldn't believe what I saw when she came back. It was like some beautiful, holy thing, despite the horrid condition it was in. There was no question of whose it was, and that wasn't because of the nasty look Konosuke sent towards the inanimate object. It's metal just seemed to radiate Ronin's aura or something weird like that.
"Don't run with that thing, you'll stab yourself," Konosuke warned, though he didn't really seem to mind her bringing it along (still, he didn't offer to carry it for her). Konosuke chose to take the back door outside, in case we attracted unwanted attention, so I stepped into his home and closed the front door behind me. For a few moments, I was completely vulnerable, but the man didn't seem to have much of an interest in me, and didn't even look as threatening as he had earlier. This was a good thing. If he had killed me, I would've killed Ronin for lying to me.
Anyway, that thing was taller than Toklata was, with one blunt side and one sharp side. She was finding a huge difficulty in carrying it, trying not to drag it across the ground or slice her fingers to ribbons. It seemed a little ridiculous to me that she would even think of Ronin's sword at such a time. Was it possible that she knew him better than me?
-
I led them to the clearing, my heartbeat growing faster with each step. When I had been walking towards the small house, it had certainly seemed like a much longer trip. The clearing was in the forest at the back of Konosuke's property, and a little ways in. It had been easy to sneak past the house during the night, and in the morning because he had been asleep, but I had this odd feeling, like he had known that I was back, without Ronin, before Toklata had even mentioned it to him.
All these weird people around me! I'm going insane!
When we finally reached it, Ronin was calmly sitting up in a low branch of a pine tree, biting his nails. It didn't look like it was from nervousness anymore, just kind of like he was trying to give himself a manicure with his teeth. I resisted the urge to call him a pussy and rushed over to the base of the tree.
He hopped down and…walked right past me, without even sparing a glance (jerk), to head in Toklata's direction, before Konosuke stepped between them with an instigating kind of grin.
"Move," Ronin growled. It wasn't his usual cool voice or a barking one, just soft and dangerous.
"Over my dead body."
"That can be arranged."
"Don't be so eager," Konosuke laughed, looking again at me. "Before we start, though, I'm curious: who is she?"
Next thing I knew, Konosuke was hunched over, choking up blood.
--
-Ronin's pov-
I hit him. Hard and fast. But just the way he had said "she," it was like he was suggesting that Leigh was a prostitute or something, and my current state of mind couldn't tolerate it.
I guess I should've thought about it a little more before I actually struck him (he certainly hadn't been expecting it), as Leigh was looking absolutely dazed. Konosuke, though his coughing fit, noticed that.
"Never seen the vampire that mad, then?" His voice was still joking.
"V-vampire? What?" Leigh droned. Konosuke looked up at her, surprised. I looked over to her, exasperated. Even Toklata covered her hands slowly with her mouth when she realized that Leigh didn't know.
"He didn't tell you, then?" Great, now he was going to take advantage of the situation. I tried to give him a warning growl, but he only raised his voice, speaking each word slowly and clearly for the poor, clueless Leigh.
"Ronin Takoda is a vampire."