Moshi moshi UwU!

The feedback made me blush, I am the most thankful you all enjoyed my work. :) Sadly this chapter is more slow-paced than I would like, hopefully, it isn't off-putting. To my reviewers who appreciate my little tidbits on already established characters, thank you. They aren't mine to claim, but they are the little ways I take back the creativity from the original creators and make it my own. I'm very glad - and how did you all know Kitsune-chan was Megumi?

*tears*

For many who wonder where Kenshin's honorific "dono" disappeared to, I intended to have them added on in this chapter as I feel like there was a lot more bonding to allow for the honorific to appear. I'm not Japanese, but to my understanding, dono is high up there on honorifics used as a sign of respect. Now they've made their debut, I'm hoping the irks - if any - that you may have had will reduce.

It's a long intro, but now, into the story!

BaNza.

That was the name of the ship that served as the mobile residence of bounty hunters Battousai and Zanza. Kenshin had been the one to christen the old but reliable model; Sanosuke had thought the name was dumb. The great space ship held the two's fighter-type jets: Kenshin's ReverB Mach 3, and Sanosuke's racing Zanbatou 2.0.

BaNza was the mothership they had received as a reward during one of their earlier days in the hunting career. Kenshin was more fond of the mothership than Sanosuke was, but even he found himself thankful for its convenience some times.

Like that moment, for example. He couldn't imagine being so unoccupied and yet being cramped up in a smaller vehicle; at least the mother ship allowed for space to wallow in idleness.

'Himura.' He was repeatedly tossing a ball up in the air as he laid on the couch, trying to see if he could throw high enough to hit the ceiling of the ship. When he saw that his partner did not respond, he tried again. 'Himura~' Kenshin let out a sigh as he turned the page of his paperback novel - an archaic literature medium the redhead had read at least four hundred times in their time together. Sanosuke ignored the pointedness of the expression, even with knowing it meant Kenshin was in no mood for dialogue. 'Kenshin?'

'Sanosuke-san,' the reply was patient and calm, even though he was adding honorifics to his name - the redhead's subconscious indication of discomfort. 'Is there something you would like?'

'I'm bored.'

'So am I, my dear friend,' Kenshin offered him a small smile and held up the book he was reading. 'Hence my need to occupy myself, so if you'll excuse me-'

'Why do you keep reading the same thing? And how do you even have a paperback, those things are bloody rare these days, yeah?' Sanosuke pondered out loud, still focused on getting to hit the ceiling with his toy. 'And we've not been able to get a crook in a while. Why don't you just get an e-book reader to get new literature and pawn that old thing? It'd cost a pretty dime for at a collector's auction or something, then maybe we'd get something to eat.'

'Sanosuke-san,' Kenshin inhaled deeply and closed his eyes, his patience giving no signs of waning. 'You know that is not a suggestion I can appreciate, so I would prefer if you would not keep making one like it again.' He opened his eyes and quirked a testy brow at him. Sanosuke stopped his mindless tossing to raise his both hands defensively.

'Didn't mean to hit a nerve buddy,' the mumbling was loud enough to reach Kenshin, who simply ignored it and returned to his reading. Frustrated, Sanosuke threw the ball with a lot more force and it struck the ceiling hard before falling back into his hand. 'Damn it this is so boring!'

'I agree,' Kenshin's eyes never left his book as he spoke, his lips pursed as he hummed in agreement. 'Dreadfully dull, that it is.' Sanosuke shot the ginger-head a sour look as he rose to his feet and made his way to the fridge.

'Okay I knew things weren't peachy, but how is our fridge empty?' his voice rang with disbelief as he sorted through racks of nothing but bottled water and half a bottle of ketchup from takeout dinner. 'Not even a Dango stick?' He stood back up immediately and leaned out to look at a still reading Kenshin. 'How are you okay with this?! How did this happen?'

'I do not know how this happened, Sanosuke-san, but I am most definitely not okay with this.' Kenshin turned another page in his novel, somehow still fully engaged in a plot he knew by heart now.

'We need to do something about the way we keep running out of food!'

'I concur.'

Sanosuke groaned out loud and slammed the fridge door shut, before charging over to the piloting section. He leaned over enough to glare at Kenshin, who lowered the book down just enough to meet Sanosuke's smouldering hazels.

'Gee Kenshin,' the brunette spoke wryly, a scowl on his face. 'I do wonder how that happened.' He made a show of stroking his freshly shaved skin before narrowing his eyes at his partner. 'It couldn't have been because we spent so much on dango, almost half of our earnings!' Said partner blinked slowly, before smiling wistfully and stroking his chin in thought as well.

'Of course, you're right, it couldn't be our dango expenses,' Kenshin was completely oblivious to the sarcasm in his partner's words and he nodded in agreement. Sanosuke just rolled his eyes and threw his hands up in exasperation, walking back to his couch.

'Why did I even try?' He groaned out loud as he plopped back onto the couch and stretched his legs out, having the heel of his feet strike the decoder to turn the tv on. Idly, the taller bounty hunter surfed through the available channels, before dropping the remote in the space beside him and groaning loudly. 'Where are we anyway?'

'Tohoku Region,' Kenshin replied absently. Sanosuke gave up on the idea of eating anytime soon and yawned, stretching his arms before lying down on the couch and letting out a groan.

Tohoku Region was one of the many Galactical divisions housing several sectors in space. Travelling between regions and even sectors was done via the Astral gates, but the men were in fairly unfamiliar territory. Their business ventures usually spanned between Kanto and Kinki regions. Most likely the autopilot function of the mothership BaNza had cruised through Astral gates to get this far at all. This did not exactly make Sanosuke feel any better.

'We have nothing to do, nothing to eat and you're just seating there reading ancient literature - is that thing even readable or is the language archaic and fun to look at or something?' he asked, half expecting Kenshin to cut back at him. No reply came through and he raised his head to see what the redhead was doing. To his surprise and amusement, Kenshin was looking out the windshield and into the vast and great beyond of black space and luminous burning gas balls. 'Hey man, I wasn't being that serious, don't mope on me now.' Sanosuke let his head fall back against the armrest.

'I'm not moping,' the response surprised Sanosuke, who had given up on the idea of holding an actual conversation with his partner. Kenshin turned to smile at him.

'So what are you doing?' The brunette raised a brow questioning brow when Kenshin's smile turned devious, growing cautious.

'I just thought of a way to alleviate our boredom.'

...

Kaoru hummed as she made her way back to her home from her well-earned afternoon onsen, the faux-Battousai fiasco long behind her. She had plans to practice her cooking that day - a choice that was chosen only because of the food poisoning she had caught at the beginning of the week. Kaoru was an awful-to-God cook, but God knew she was better off consuming her edible condemnables than risking patronizing another hygiene-unbothered restaurant. But she was aware that she would have to seriously improve in cooking if she planned to live long at all. She stretched as she strutted contently; at least she had recovered from the food poisoning - she had just completed the prescription her doctor had given her. And the onsen was just what she had needed to complete her recovery to health.

Hopefully the food she would make later wouldn't set that recovery back a month.

She soon arrived at the Kamiya compound and decided to take the dojo's entrance to visit the family shine on her way in. The compound had a two-way exit as the back of the home and dojo faced each other and consequently the entrances apart. Seeing as she lived alone, the idea of walking through the first door never appealed to her. She often found herself expecting someone to welcome her home and she was always disappointed. Taking the dojo's entry point to her home helped her get used to living alone. She made her way through and slid the shoji open.

'Eat ass Kenshin!'

'I'm afraid those are not fetishes to my tastes.'

Metal struck metal and the two jumped apart to size themselves up again. Sanosuke quickly resumed attacking Kenshin, who took up full defensive against the original Zanbatou. Kenshin moved with speed ascribable to fabled ninjas and spirits, weaving in and out of his partner's attack range with his reverse blade sword.

Kaoru gaped, stunned frozen by the curious predicament and all her grocer shopping fell to the floor in her shock. The noise stopped Sanosuke just short of wielding his Zanbatou and Kenshin dodge - ready stance left him so imbalanced he fell on his butt. Both broke into a sweat as they slowly turned to meet their unprepared host, but it was Sanosuke who feared her wrath less and took the unwitting step of breaking the silence, going over to offer Kaoru a handshake and a sheepish smile.

'Welcome back... Kaoru?'

...

A soft and sweet humming sound left the kitchen of the Kamiya's residence, an accompaniment to the sounds of knives and chopping boards, low burning fire and running tap water. It reminded the bounty hunters of life before their past, a life of warm miso nights and bright sunnyside up chocolate mornings. Kenshin had barely gone halfway into chopping up the cabbages, too distracted to finish. He watched as Kaoru continued to make wordless melodies under her breath as she cooked, drawn by how ethereal she seemed to his world: a daily grind of chasing wealth, luxury and dango.

'Psst, Kenshin!' the whisper was pressed and urgent. The redhead replied with an absent-minded grunt, his eyes still on an oblivious Kaoru. 'Hey! Psst, Kenshin!' The top of a carrot bounded of his forehead, and Kenshin, less than pleased, reluctantly turned his attention to his partner who was meant to skin the sweet potatoes. Sanosuke, sporting huge bandaids all over his face and arms, leaned over the counter to warn his partner, occasionally glancing at the sensei. 'Don't fall for it! She's a rabid one, that tanuki!'

Sanosuke's whispers were sadly not quiet enough. Kaoru lifted her head from the onions she was slicing to glare at them, her eyes red from the stinging onion vapours. He was short of letting out the most feminine yelp ever and he quickly leaned back to finish skinning the potatoes. Kenshin smiled uneasily under the look and returned to cutting cabbages as well.

Kaoru, after attacking the hunter who approached her in the midst of her trying to temper her rage, threatened to report the two for trespassing on her compound. Sanosuke tried to counter-threaten her with assault charges, but Kenshin had stepped in as the voice reason to plead with Kaoru and offer to make it up to her. Kaoru, suspicious, had demanded they helped her prepare dinner, admitting that she would prefer if she did not eat her bland cooking.

Kenshin had gratefully accepted, promising not to trespass again. Sanosuke had been completely indignant in stating that he had made no such promises. But the both of them had set to work in her retro-esque kitchen, which used very old-fashioned technologies such as timed burners with actual flames, separate oven and microwave and lacked a multipurpose kitchen slicer/blender/grinder/whisker robot.

Satisfied to see her trespassers had focused on their tasks again, she reached for the tomatoes and began to cut them as well, resuming her humming. She sliced her vegetables into small separate piles of tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, garlic, ginger and green bell peppers. She made to gather them together, but before she could a hand gently caught her right wrist. Another hand reached around her for the soy sauce on her left. Kaoru stiffened on realising how close Kenshin was to her, so much so she could tell he was smiling.

'Kaoru-dono~,' he sang mischievously in her ear as he took the sauce. Without moving from his position behind her, he placed the spice in her hand and guided it to sprinkle the thick dark sauce over the tomatoes. 'If you want flavour in your food, you must learn to use your spices with your vegetables.' He lectured gently and guided her hand to drop the spice. 'Tomatoes are bland by nature you know.' He tilted his head so she could see his cocked brow and coy grin as he guided her hands to combine the garlic and onions. 'And when you want to mix your ingredients, be sure to know what goes well together. Ginger and onions are a terrible pair since ginger takes longer to cook. Bell peppers and tomatoes though are an easy blend, like milk to honey and tanuki to peaches.'

As he spoke he guided her to combine the ingredients according to his dictates. At the tanuki comment, he winked and Kaoru found herself both scowling and blushing. Kenshin peered over her shoulder to inspect the chopping board and satisfied with his work he let go of her hands and stepped apart from her. She found herself slouching with instant relief - and was that longing? She shook her heads to straighten out her thoughts and turned to meet his expectant facial expression. For the life of her, she couldn't think of one sensible thing to say to him, and she hated it.

'So~' she drawled out as her faculties scrambled for something intelligible to say, 'it's dono now, is it?' She mentally winced at how redundant she sounded and felt, but stilled her exterior into as much calm as she could muster.

Kenshin made a show of bowing respectfully to her as he spoke, wiggling his eyebrows.

'Well as you are now playing host to me and my humble partner, I believe the extent of our acquaintanceship has changed, as has the honour due onto you Kaoru-dono. I assure you it is an expression of my utmost gratitude at your generosity.' He winked as he straightened up and headed back to his cabbage station. He salted the vegetables and spiced it with oregano before meeting Sanosuke's amused expression. The brunette was entertained.

'Where did you earn your culinary degree?' He teased, laughing at his partner.

'I'd rather not say,' Kenshin shrugged casually and started to hum as well. Kaoru, too flustered to put up a show of still being upset with either of them, wordlessly went round the stations to gather up the ingredients and head to the cooking counter. Sanosuke went over to his partner to comment quietly on their recent interaction.

'You've done fried the poor tanuki's brain, Himura,' he muttered to the redhead and shook his head. 'Just bed the girl and be done with it.'

'I'm a man of honour, Sagara-san. I could never,' Kenshin raised a brow in warning at Sanosuke, who simply shrugged and leaned back, choosing to save his jesting for another time. 'But even at that,' a complacent grin crept onto the redhead's face, 'it's always fun to play before the party starts.' The brunette snorted at the comment and pat the shorter man on the shoulder before, deciding to give the two space.

'Kaoru can I go outside to stretch my legs a bit? This place kinda feels too cramped up.'

Both Kenshin and Kaoru looked at the hunter curiously, seeing that the kitchen was large enough to accommodate them just fine, but she shrugged. Sanosuke took that as approval and disappeared through the back door. With the two of them alone, Kenshin decided to close in on the space between them by stepping behind her again. He leaned in closer to whisper in her ear, and she found herself shivering from the huskiness of his low tone. She instantly regretted having Sanosuke leave them alone.

'Kaoru-dono?'

'Hm?' she managed to voice out weakly, not trusting herself to speak when she was so squirmish from his body language. His hands held the sides of her arms gently and gave them a long, firm squeeze. Her face grew red, flushed by mortification.

'You forgot to light the burner for your frying oil.'

...

'Did you write the recipe down? Is there more? Can we pack some? Can you make this again?'

Sanosuke had challenged her to a food eating contest, the earlier feud between them easily forgotten. Kaoru made an easy win, declaring her victory with a resounding burp.

'No, yes, yes and no not really.' Kaoru giggled at her defeated opponent in response. They ate in the living room, comfortably seated around their chabudai on tatami mats. It had taken another forty-five minutes to cook, but damn was it a worthwhile wait in Sanosuke's opinion. Kaoru couldn't disagree, half in shock that she had played a role in the making of this delicacy. She gave all the credit to Kenshin though, without whose help she was sure her food would not be unlike edible cardboard. He had given her pretty solid tips and guided her through the cooking process. If only he wasn't so touchy and handsy and close-y all the damn time. She turned to bow her head again to Kenshin in gratitude. 'At least I can't without your help, Kenshin. Thanks again.'

'It's no pleasure, Kaoru-dono~.'

And the way he said her name with the bloody honorific - it was damn too intimate and formal at the same time - how did that even work? The way he said it made her head buzz like a ditzy princessy school girl. She nodded stiffly and turned her attention to her meal. They continued to eat, the ambience of the room made more pleasant with the soft jazz that tempered quietly in the background from one of the more modern devices in the Kamiya residence, the radio. Kenshin hummed along, more than pleased with his decision to come by when the radio suddenly bleared loudly. Sanosuke winced as he made a motion on the volume's touch sensor to turn it down just low it enough to listen to.

'We interrupt this program to give you breaking news straight from the Tokyo Sector Space Police Station!'

'Ssshh! Maybe it's a bounty!' Sanosuke hushed the still humming Kenshin and the complaining ear-raped Kaoru.

'The infamous masquerading Battousai has broken out of detainment. Our sources have discovered that this fraud is, in fact, a member of the Yakuza mob, Hiruma Gohei! The mob is notorious for land dispute conflicts and terrorizing many sectors of the Kanto Division. Gohei is currently facing allegations of serial murders in the Tokyo Sector, the first major activity connected to the gang in the area since they first appeared on the radar! We advise our residents to please remain indoors and stay safe while the authorities work to bring the fiend of society to justice-!'

He turned down the volume as he grinned at his partner. Kenshin returned a less smug look, slightly disappointed that his day with the ravenette came to an end so quickly. The two turned to Kaoru to bow in thanks, eager to be on their way and get on the job. The dark-haired girl was more than disappointed, her expression crestfallen as they bid her farewell. She had enjoyed their company greatly, a nice change from the quietness of solitude she had become accustomed to.

'Well I'm afraid that is our cue to leave, but thank you once again for having us Kaoru-dono.' Kenshin took a hold of her hand and kissed it gently, his eyes peeking to meet hers. Her face tinted a deep red and she reluctantly pulled away, her breath softly hitching her throat. Sanosuke bid her a less intimate goodbye, and they both turned to leave the Kamiya residence.

The girl placed her hands in her lap, instantly realizing how long and dreadfully routine her life would be till one of them decided to come back to the sector on a whim. She would teach and cook and train and clean, rinse and repeat. She heard one of them slide the shoji open, and resolve bubbled into a solid conviction in her quickly.

'Where do you think you're going?' Kaoru took them both by surprise as she rose to her feet, her fists clenched in determination. 'Let's go bounty hunting!'

Hello! Two exams left this week and then I'm free to update as I please. :) Your reviews have made my exam season, you have no idea. =UwU=

I hope to keep updating on time for you all! Cheerio love!