On to Part Four. This chapter didn't want to come so easily—took a bit of work. Oh, well. Thanks for reading and thanks for all the reviews. Enjoy.

Part 4

He is sitting on a rock at the shore, legs dangling in the water. The ocean salt stings the cuts on his feet but he likes the feeling—it means he's alive. Koza is next to him, a hand's width away, eyes distant and focused beyond the horizon she seems to be staring at. The wind blows the raged strands of her black hair so that they tickle his cheek. And then her voice breaks into the sound of the waves slapping the sand: "Let's run away together."

She's asked him this so many times and he knows she will many more. As usual, he doesn't answer and doesn't turn to face her, but he knows her eyes look sad. They always do. She wants to get away from here, and so does he. But when he leaves, it will be for good, and he will leave every bit of Ryuukyuu behind.

Including her.

He wants no reminders, nothing to make him look back. All he wants is to go forward.

"Mugen."

A woman's voice was calling to him through the fog of unconsciousness. Smiling, he rolled over onto his side, holding on to the lingering comfort of sleep like a blanket. The right half of his face hurt. Must have been a rough night. He smiled wider.

"Mugen."

There was something about that voice he thought he should notice, but he was too intent on resting to force his brain into enough awareness to figure it out. He grunted softly.

The voice wasn't satisfied with that.

"Mugen you lazy bum, WAKE UP!" It was a sharp whisper projected directly into his ear that sliced his blanket of sleep into shreds.

Suddenly awake, Mugen knew what it was he was supposed to notice about the high-pitched, young voice. It was Fuu's.

His eyes opened to slits and he saw her sitting there, on her knees next to him, an angry expression narrowing her large eyes and twisting her mouth, made strangely ominous by dim lighting. She was still dressed in the same clothes he'd seen her wearing in the casino, and from this close he could tell that she was wearing make-up. Her lips were blood red.

"What d' you want?" he growled at her. He tried to scowl, but the right side of his face jolted him with throbs of pain. He reached up to touch it and felt that his cheek was swollen.

In reaction to his discovery, Fuu's countenance softened, and she looked away, gaze focused somewhere behind him. "Sorry about your face," she said.

He remembered then. The fight. Fuu interrupting. Him taking Jin down. Fuu taking him down…

There was a rumbling inside him that wasn't hunger. With sudden movement he sprung up and pushed Fuu backwards, tackling her to the ground. He found himself on top of her, with his elbow pressed to her pale throat. The other arm held her shoulder against the ground, his fingers pushing hard enough into her clothing that he could feel her collarbone underneath.

He focused his gaze steadily down on her. "You ever do that again, and I will hit you back."

She was staring up at him with terrified eyes. Eyes that reminded him of a child he'd seen once on Ryuukyuu, recently abandoned by its mother and sitting in an alleyway with knees drawn to chest.

Rolling off her suddenly, he flipped to his feet, cursing. For some reason, that look she gave him hurt more than the bruise on his face.

Back turned to her, he waited for Fuu to yell at him, but she was silent. Fuu was never silent.

"Sorry," he mumbled. He wasn't sure if she could even hear him.

Either way, she didn't respond, and he was afraid for a moment that maybe he had hurt her. He turned halfway to glance at her. "Yo, you okay?"

She was sitting on the floor, hands in her lap, staring angrily down at them, face almost as red as the fabric of her kimono. She looked up, brown eyes attacking his. "You're such a jerk."

She was fine. "So?"

"And you wouldn't hit me anyway. I'm too adorable to hit." She still seemed shaken, but she was falling back into the familiar patterns of their usual conversations, and he found that somehow comforting.

Scoffing in reply, he glanced around at the small room they were in. There was nothing but a lonely chair along one wall, next to a low table with a cluster of candles, and a cot along the opposite one. Jin was lying on the cot, his long hair draped over its edge, eyes closed and face relaxed. Why does Jin get the cot? Mugen wanted to ask, but instead he said:

"Where are we?"

"In the rooms above the casino." She stood, the heavy cloth of her kimono swishing quietly about her legs. He thought she looked older without the bright pink and orange of her usual attire.

Above the casino. He suddenly remembered the prize he should have won for fighting Jin. "I lost my money because of you," he said accusingly.

She gave him a smug look that made him want to tackle her again. "Technically, it's my money. I won in the end."

But before he could shout back a colorful retort, a new voice entered the argument: "Did Fuu really knock you out?"

It was Jin. Mugen whirled around to face the other samurai, who was now sitting up on the cot, looking at him with just the slightest flavoring of curiosity in his typically bland expression. Mugen thought for a moment about how best to respond and then settled on cursing Jin out and telling him to shut up.

The corners of Jin's lips were turned up into something that looked like a cruel smile. "Your whole cheek is purple."

Mugen took a threatening step toward him. "I'll make your whole face purple. I beat you last night, remember?"

"Only because I was distracted. It wasn't a fair fight."

"Don't give me that. I ain't interested in your wimpy excuses. There's no such thing as a fair fight."

"Then Fuu is right, she won. I, at least, wasn't beaten by a girl." Jin raised an eyebrow and gave Mugen a meaningful look.

The rumbling inside was back. Mugen took another tense step toward the cot.

"Oh, would you guys give it up already? This is getting so old. You aren't going to kill each other, so just get over it," Fuu interrupted

Both men looked at her. "How do you know?" Mugen said defiantly, hearing his words mimicked by Jin in unison.

She sighed, exasperated, throwing her hands in the air. "Why do I bother? You're both such idiots."

They fell silent for a moment, the three of them forming a triangle in the small space. It occurred to Mugen that there were no windows in the room and he had no idea what time of day—or night—it was. There was only a single door that was doing a mediocre job of blocking out the noise of people yelling from somewhere outside. He listened and noticed they weren't yells of anger…

"This is one of the whoring rooms, isn't it?"

Fuu looked at him, and it seemed like she was trying to decide if he meant it as some sort of indirect insult. Eventually she gave a little shrug and said, "Yeah."

He nodded. This time the rumbling inside of him really was hunger. "Got any food?"

"You pick the strangest moments to think about eating," she said, but she was already turning toward the door. "I'll be right back." Light poured in from the hallway candles for a brief moment, and then she was gone with a swish of fabric and a dull thud of the closing door.

"This from the walking stomach," he mumbled to himself, before turning to inspect Jin more thoroughly. He was sure he must have left Jin with some sort of injury from their fight, but nothing was readily noticeable.

The samurai's face looked as pale and porcelain as ever—not even a smudge of dried blood. Mugen stretched upward to loosen his tense muscles, enjoying the satisfying pops his back made as he did. It must be the poor lighting. The guy had to have at least a bruise somewhere. Maybe it was just hidden under his clothes.

"So, Fuu really punched you out."

Mugen growled. "Shut up, and wipe that stupid grin off your face."

"But I'm not smiling." It was true, Jin wasn't.

"But you're thinking about smiling and that's close enough." Mugen tried to reach for his sword, but found it wasn't there. He gave Jin an alarmed, angry look.

"Weapons aren't allowed up here. House rules." Jin stood, smoothing out his clothing, hands lost in his sleeves.

That made Mugen think. If they were technically in a whorehouse, did that make Fuu the whore? He grinned wickedly.

"No," Jin said simply.

Mugen tilted his head at him, rubbing his face as he did. "No what?"

"Fuu is simply renting this room for us."

Mugen was still smiling. "How do you know?"

"I've been staying here for several days."

"Really now? What is Fuu, your girlfriend now?"

Again, Jin said, "No." He gave Mugen a firm look over the tops of his glasses that Mugen thoroughly enjoyed.

"Then what're you doing here?" Mugen was hoping to get another "look" out of Jin, as proof that he was annoying the other samurai.

Instead he got Jin's matter-of-fact answer: "We met here accidentally the night after we parted ways. She came here to find a job, and I came for… other reasons."

Ah, the suspense. "Other reasons?" Mugen questioned.

"Yes."

Raising his eyebrows and widening his eyes, Mugen tried to prod more information out of Jin with his expression. It didn't work

So then he tried asking again, "Come on man, tell me?"

Jin took off his glasses and began wiping them clean on his sleeve. "Your cheek is still purple."

Mugen snarled. It was an impressive imitation of a rabid dog. "You stupid idiot. I'll—"

He was cut off by the sound of the door creaking open. "I leave you two alone for five minutes and you're already at each other's throats again." Fuu was back. She kicked the door closed behind her with a foot and rolled her eyes, as she carried a plate of food over to the table.

Mugen considered responding, but decided food was more important. He practically dove for the tray as Fuu set it gently down. On it were two sets of chopsticks and a bowl of some sort of stir-fry: rice, vegetables, and… meat. His mouth watered. Then he noticed something, half the bowl was empty.

"Hey, some of it's gone!" Mugen complained, looking up at Fuu accusingly as he did. She was standing right beside him, so he was able to get a pretty good glare in.

Her cheeks reddened, but only slightly. "I got hungry," she responded defensively. "You two are so exhausting, it makes me want to eat."

He rolled his eyes and turned from her back to the food. There was the smell of honey mixed with spices that he recognized as distinctly Fuu.

There were no chairs in the room, so Mugen grabbed the bowl and a set of chopsticks, and walked to the middle of the floor, plopping down with it. Jin walked by him and came back a moment later, sitting facing him. "You are going to share that, right?"

Mugen was already stuffing his mouth full. "No," – or at least that's what he tried to say. It sounded more like a muffled moan around the food he was swallowing, occasionally taking the time to chew a bit.

Jin attacked the bowl with his own set of chopsticks, picking at the pieces of meat. Aside from a few chopstick battles, they managed to share pretty evenly. Or at least, Mugen thought it was even. He ate faster, so it seemed fair that two-thirds of the food ended up in his stomach.

Fuu was sitting down next to them, legs tucked under her and hands in her lap. "What are you doing here anyway, Mugen?"

"Huh?" he grunted, picking at his teeth.

"We all took separate roads."

"Hung around Nagasaki for a few days, checked out the night life." He shrugged. "I heard there was fighting for money here." He paused, looked at Jin. A nagging annoyance was back at having run into them again so soon after separating. He wondered about how to define it, how to explain it. "There, I told my story, now what's yours?"

Jin sighed, eyes cast down into his lap. "I'm here for revenge."

"Eh?" Now this was interesting.

"My master, Mariya Enshiro, was ordered to kill me by Kariya Kagetoki. But there was someone higher up giving him orders. He was a government official, but someone was over him. Many of Nagasaki's top officials frequent this casino."

Mugen blinked. "Do you even know who you're looking for?"

"No, but I'm slowly finding out."

Mugen turned to Fuu. The light from the candles was flicking fireflies into her hair. "Can you believe this guy? He wants to take on the whole shogunate." It actually didn't sound like such a bad idea. He surely had a score or two to settle with the government.

"Well, it is corrupt. I mean, they killed my father for being a Christian. And besides, the officials keep trying to feel me up when I roll dice." Her brow wrinkled in disgust.

"But you've got nothing to feel," he said lying back on the wooden floor.

She yelled at him for a few minutes, but he zoned her out, thinking about this anti-shogun quest Jin and Fuu seemed to suddenly be on. They'd be killed if they were caught. But he'd been there before. He looked down at the blue lines that encircled his wrists and ankles. Those tattoos were permanent and set him apart as an outcast no matter where he went. They spoke words that he couldn't silence: 'You're a criminal.' He wore them proudly because he had no choice but to do that. He wore them proudly because he refused to wear anything with shame. He hated them. Reminders of Ryuukyuu he never wanted.

"Are you listening."

He didn't look at Fuu, but responded absently: "No."

She made a frustrated noise.

And why did she want vengeance? Because some government guy had come and killed her father—a man she'd claimed to hate anyway? It bothered him somehow—the three of them having a common enemy. It was an enemy he never really intended on challenging directly, but he certainly wasn't opposed to it. The whole idea even sounded fun.

Then why did it make him so angry?

"You two are hopeless," she sighed. A pause, then: "I guess it's just fate that I'm stuck with you guys." Here tone wasn't plaintive, but had become slightly endearing.

That was it. Fate. That was what made him angry. Fate had boxed him in. Fate had forced him to come full circle back to Jin and Fuu. Over and over, no matter what his intentions, no matter how much he tried to choose a direction and go in it, there were always things out of his control. Fuu called it fate. He called it a curse. It had been his enemy many times before, and he'd never been able to defeat it.

It wasn't that he minded so much being with Jin and Fuu. Their presence was oddly comforting. He could say they were his friends but he wasn't sure he understood what that meant. What he didn't like was the uncanny way they ended up back together even when he was trying to walk away. What he didn't like was fate.

He cursed outwardly.

"What's wrong?" Fuu asked.

He continued looking at the ceiling but he could feel both her and Jin's eyes on him. "Nothing."

"You're lying, I know there's something. We traveled together for three months. I can tell by now." Her voice was insisting and familiar.

He didn't like that she could read him. He didn't like that both she and Jin had come to know him so well while not really knowing him at all.

Mugen stood then, rolling onto his feet. He felt like fighting. Or finding a girl. He wasn't sure which yet. "I'm going out for a while," he said. "I wanna check this place out a bit."

"Mugen…" her voice was soft, like a feather drifting on the wind, unsure of itself and its direction. It surprised him.

He looked at her. "Yeah?"

She seemed a little embarrassed, and confused too, like she didn't know what she was trying to say. "Be careful. Okay? I mean, some of the people here are trained soldiers… and I don't want to have to sew you up again."

He wasn't sure what she meant at first, but then he realized. Only two weeks ago she'd seen both he and Jin almost die at the hands of a trained government soldier.

He looked at Jin, saw her admonition backed up in his eyes—well as much as anyone could see any form of emotion other than solemnity in Jin's eyes.

"I'll see you guys later," he said simply.

And then he turned and walked out the door.