Saitou passes his cigarette over, and Aoshi nods once more before he shuts the doors. He takes no care with the movement, allowing the soft click of the latch to echo. As he'd intended, the scent of tobacco smoke begins to fill the passage.
"Inspector, if you would consider putting that out," Komagata says without turning around. The tone and phrase are polite, but only a fool would mistake those words for a request.
Aoshi replies with a passable imitation of Saitou's voice. He's not a good enough mimic to feign real speech — at least, not by Oniwabanshuu standards — but the tone of this particular disdainful grunt is simple enough.
"If you insist, Saitou-san," is Komagata's answer. Polite though the words are, there's a hard edge in her voice. She doesn't like being dismissed.
He doesn't bother with a reply. Instead, wanting his hands free and needing to complete the illusion, he lifts the cigarette to his lips. He lets the smoke pool in his mouth, unwilling to draw it into his lungs. It feels hot and dry, resting heavy on his tongue, like chewing tobacco leaves while dying of thirst.
Komagata reaches the opposite end of the hallway first. She flings open a pair of western doors — Aoshi hears her hand on metal, hears the squeak and click of the mechanisms. But no new light floods in.
His memories of this part of the fortress have dimmed with the time that elapsed. None of it mattered much to him at the time. But he has some vague recollection —
"Uonuma Usui," Komagata snaps, and that shakes his thoughts loose.
The blind one whose bloodthirsty madness had made Aoshi's own seem a mere child's temper. After all, Aoshi had merely been unable to forgive himself enough to find some way to live in a world without his men and thus taken refuge in an obsession. In contrast, Uonuma had been simply deranged. He'd nurtured a taste for blood — and death, and fear, and the power that those things meant — in the revolution, or perhaps even earlier.
Aoshi stops to consider the cigarette in his mouth, Saitou's request, the fact that Uonuma had died on this day in the previous life, and finds yet another missing piece of a puzzle he'd thought he'd solved. He takes a heartbeat to imagine punching Saitou for leaving him in this position.
But he accepted necessity too long ago to start complaining now. The moment he agreed to conceal Saitou's disappearance, he accepted the duty to execute Uonuma.
Aoshi steps fully into the room and shuts the doors behind himself. As Komagata and Himura turn to face him, he drops the cigarette to the ground and steps on it, crushing it beneath his boot. Not many have a sense of smell that can pinpoint location, but there's no reason to make this fight any harder on himself.
A low, hoarse thread of laughter rasps in a darkened corner. Aoshi turns to face it, drawing the first of his kodachi as he does so.
"This will be unpleasant," he says to Himura. "You should move on."
Komagata huffs, stamps one of her feet against the floor. "He'll do no such thing. Shishio-sama has ordered that you'll all move room by room."
Himura, by contrast, remains calm. "Aoshi. You don't intend to kill him, that you surely don't." His voice is gentle in the smoky, too-thick gloom, and Aoshi spends a moment wanting to shout. He doesn't need mercy from this man; he needs space, so he can be effective. So he can act in the best interests of his clan, if not Japan itself.
"I do what's necessary. If you can't allow it…" He trails off. There is so little use in finishing that sentence when he knows Himura will hear what he leaves unsaid.
"Debating whether I should live or die?" Uonuma steps forward as he speaks. He draws some sort of bladed weapon — but not a sword. The sound isn't right. "You insult me."
"Himura," Aoshi says, allowing a slight edge of annoyance into his tone.
And Himura relents with a sigh. "I suppose I'll have to trust your judgment. Come, Yumi-dono; I believe we would rather not see this fight. And if I am not present, I cannot be tempted to interfere, that I can't."
"Don't think I haven't noticed that Saitou-san has disappeared," is Komagata's tart response. She steps toward the opposite end of the hall. There's a soft clicking sound, and a half dozen gas lamps flicker to life. The sudden brightness forces Aoshi to close his eyes, blinking rapidly as he re-opens them to force himself to adjust; Uonuma doesn't react to it at all.
The door out shuts behind Himura.
Aoshi nods to himself and discards the idea of his second kodachi. The blade in his enemy's hand is a short spear with some sort of weight at the end. It looks familiar — something he saw once or twice in his earliest training, perhaps. There had been so many exercises in countering unfamiliar weapons.
Uonuma studies him for a moment that drags on. Eventually, he makes some decision, and says, "You're not frightened at all, are you?"
There is no pressing reason to reply, so he doesn't bother. Instead, he shifts his grip on his kodachi and waits.
"Not much for conversation? Is it that you're intimidated, or is that you think you're that much better than me?"
So now the goading has begun. Aoshi tips his head for a moment, considering. Uonuma wants some kind of emotional reaction from him. Of course he does, Aoshi realizes. The man wants something to listen to, some sharp breath, some shift of his feet. Without it, his blindness will hamper him too much.
Better to have this over with, he supposes, and says, "A swordsman who talks is just a man who fights poorly." The same thing he'd told Sawagejou.
Uonuma laughs again. It's the same low rasp from before, if more grating. He says, when he's finished, "And a man who orders his life according to Kansai platitudes is a fool."
Aoshi's only response is to take a careful step forward. That spear is short, barely longer than Uonuma's own forearm. Uonuma will need to close with him to bring him in range — and, more dangerously, that spear will have a swing speed almost as quick as a kodachi's.
"Not even a skipped beat. No scent of sweat. Just that cigarette-stench. Are you cunning, or just a fool?"
Saitou had never mentioned how much Uonuma liked to talk. Nor had he mentioned that Uonuma had such precise senses. Aoshi curls his lip in a sneer for an instant, and watches as the muscles of Uonuma's face twitch. It's hard to say what that twitch might mean, thanks to the blindfold that covers his eyes.
Uonuma evidently mistakes Aoshi's expression — likely more a sound of muscles moving, to him, than anything else — for a smile. He steps closer, demanding, "You think this is funny? You don't get to laugh at me."
There. Strength and weakness in one reaction: now he knows the extent of Uonuma's senses, and why the word Eye of Heart is written on his blindfold. And, also, he's seen vanity, pride, or both. There lies the fatal flaw that Aoshi will quite gladly use to crack Uonuma open, digging the point of his kodachi into the gap and prying with his fingers and all the strength in both wrists.
He shouldn't be surprised at the flaw that has shown itself, or how swiftly Uonuma has displayed it. This is a man wandering around with eyes embroidered on the collar and hem of his gi. Despite being blind, he's as conscious of his image as Komagata, or Okon, or any of the oiran of Shimabara.
Misao would find a great deal of hilarity in this fight, he thinks, if Uonuma's enhanced hearing didn't worry her beyond humor.
Rather than raise his kodachi, Aoshi raises his left hand and clenches his fingers into a fist.
Uonuma is wise enough to pause at that, backing up a half-step, before he charges in. He strikes with both the tip of his spear and the blunt weight at the end, in motions that start as jabs and then become sweeps. Aoshi dodges, drifting backward and sideways before falling instinctively into the Ryuusui no Ugoki, flowing like water, like shadow, out of Uonuma's way.
A lesser opponent would overbalance from flinging all that weight around and hitting nothing. Uonuma merely turns on his heel, tilting his head to listen as he tries to track Aoshi's movements. But listening to Aoshi's footsteps and heartbeat will tell him little — though the style of movement focuses on visual camouflage, it's equally confusing to the ear in a room full of echoes.
Aoshi takes the opportunity to swipe at Uonuma as the water-flow takes him near again. Uonuma pivots once more, raising the spear's weighted end to stop the kodachi at the tip. Metal clangs against metal, and the hollow ringing sound scratches at Aoshi's eardrums. Uonuma flexes his arm, deflecting the blade entirely.
Disappointing. Annoying, even. Aoshi retreats, still in the footwork of the water-flow, and considers his options. Drawing his second blade may not improve his chances with that weight. He'll have to break it somehow, cripple Uonuma's ability to defend.
Thankfully, it's not a solid sphere. It can't be, he realizes. It would slow that spear's swing speed too much, if it were solid iron.
Aoshi flexes his fist and considers his options again.
"You're thinking hard over there." Uonuma sounds amused. "Have you guessed why I'm so feared?"
"I haven't bothered trying."
"So you haven't wondered what the Eye of the Heart is?"
Aoshi says, flatly, "It's obviously your hearing."
"Clever." And Uonuma sounds genuinely pleased, as though he's complimenting Aoshi.
Shikijou would be laughing right now, and Hannya, too would be amused. Beshimi would roll his eyes and fake a pitying tone. He thinks he's special, he would say, and Hyottoko would try to stifle his laugh and end up snorting it through his nose instead.
But Aoshi does none of those things. It would take too long. He moves closer to Uonuma, dropping out of the water-flow movement when he's a few steps away. The disadvantage of his single kodachi style is its lack of range; if he wants to hurt his opponent, and he does, he's going to have to get in very, very close.
Aoshi lashes out as soon as he's in range. He doesn't bother with his hand; instead, he strikes out with a kick. It lands, the blade of Aoshi's foot crashing into Uonuma's face. He feels Uonuma's cheek and jaw move beneath the force of it.
Uonuma backs up again, snarling as he grabs his chin, levering his jaw back into position. "Do you want to hear the story?"
"No," he says, darting forward. He has to duck underneath a swipe of the spear and ends up changing direction to avoid being stabbed. At the very last second, he reaches out with his left hand to grab the spear's weight, and strikes with his right.
The kodachi cuts clean through the spear's shaft and the weight drops harmlessly to the floor.
Uonuma recoils, and then his mouth hooks down in a frown. "Unexpectedly skilled of you. But then, you've been helping the Battousai. Perhaps I should have expected as much." A pause, and Uonuma adds, tone suddenly canny, "There was an entire group of people moving the way you do on the night of the Fire."
Even an oblique reference to his clan — Misao — his men — the Aoi-ya cell — from this lunatic's mouth leaves a knot in Aoshi's gut. The knot seems almost to burn. How dare he. How dare he.
If Aoshi hadn't already planned on killing Uonuma, that would have turned him into a threat to the Oniwabanshuu that Aoshi could never tolerate.
"Did I strike a nerve?" Uonuma laughs again, low and hoarse and self-satisfied. He tilts his head as if regarding the fallen weight, then reaches behind himself, drawing something from his back.
A tortoise-shell shield.
That nagging sense of familiarity returns, stronger than before. He has seen this. At some time, during his earliest training, Aoshi was pitted against a similar pair of weapons. Shield and spear? Shield and short sword?
He'd had a knife. He hadn't been expected to win — he recalls that clearly, Okina-sensei's calm voice, startlingly warm for such a cold order: we expect none of you to win — just survive.
But beyond Okina's voice and the way the knife had felt too small in his fist when he looked at a shield that seemed to block out the sun, he recalls nothing. He hadn't yet learned to keep his head and his memories in battle; it had been all been a desperate blur until the gong had rung, and for several minutes after.
"Something about the tinbe troubles you?" Uonuma evidently permits himself a smile. It's slow and thin, teeth barely visible. "Have you never heard of the weapons of my ancestors, who were kings among the Ryukyu?"
Tinbe. The word sounds familiar enough to jar yet more memory, but not enough that everything comes clear.
Uonuma's smile widens again, and it annoys Aoshi enough that he jerks his head. The other man's questions are irrelevant and he's unwilling to expend any more energy than necessary on this lunatic. There are other, more dangerous madmen to kill today.
Aoshi's unwillingness to engage seems to remind Uonuma that they are enemies, that this is an actual fight, not some sort of performance, and Uonuma charges. He extends the shield, raising it as if he wishes to block Aoshi's vision.
Rather than stand still for that, Aoshi dodges, whirling off to the left. He moves into the footwork for the Kaiten Kenbu, adjusting it so that it carries him away in unpredictable arcs. As he steps, he hears the subtle shift of the iron weight on the ground, and he leans down for a heartbeat.
"Stop running and fight, will you? Can it be that you're afraid?" A note of annoyance in Uonuma's smug voice.
He might as well get this over with. "Come at me then," Aoshi says.
So obvious a goad shouldn't work. If he hadn't spent the rest of this fight denying Uonuma the emotional reactions he'd needed, if Aoshi hadn't moved so unpredictably, he's sure that Uonua would have kept his distance or approached with more caution.
But the words send Uonuma over an edge of rage, and the blind Okinawan races for him.
Aoshi whirls in place, relaxing the fingers of his left hand at the last possible moment. The weight whistles through the air, and Uonuma is too committed — and too focused on tracking Aoshi's movements — to recognize the danger to his shield in the moment.
He recognizes it at the moment of impact, stopping where he stands. His feet skid on the wooden floor, but he keeps his balance, and Aoshi watches as Uonuma raises the hand holding his spear to run the backs of his fingers over the shield.
The moment Uonuma touches the fine webbing of cracks, and then the chipped-out dent, is obvious. His expression shatters for an instant, brows arching above the blindfold and mouth falling open to reveal his shock.
Aoshi twitches his mouth into the confident smirk he sometimes gave — gives — his men. Uonuma may not realize it yet, but the fight just ended, and Aoshi can finally move on. He raises his right hand, shifting his grip on his kodachi, and throws it in the style of the Onmyou Hasshi while he's still drawing his second blade.
Uonuma raises the shield immediately, despite the damage, and outright snarls when the kodachi pierces it and stays. He raises his spear again —
And Aoshi slides smoothly into Uonuma's range, stepping even closer to raise his left-hand kodachi and strike the hilt of the first with it. The blow drives the bite of the steel even deeper into the tortoise-shell.
The sound as the shield splits reminds Aoshi of breaking porcelain.
"It's over," Aoshi says, and uses Uonuma's moment of horrified distraction to kick him again.
His foot makes contact once more, this time with Uonuma's breastbone. He gives a satisfied nod at the wheeze, then lashes out with his right fist — usually his defensive hand — and strikes Uonuma twice: once in the nose, and once in the throat. Another kick to the sternum, to force Uonuma to try to breathe through a collapsed windpipe, and he crumples.
Aoshi wrests Uonuma to the ground and cuts the blind man's throat with his left hand kodachi. Uonuma doesn't stop struggling until he stops bleeding, trying at first to buck Aoshi away and then to escape his grasp. Still, it's a better death than Uonuma might have otherwise expected, and Aoshi waits until the body stops twitching before he moves on.
It's not wholly about respect; he would not be Okina's student if he walked away from an eney without being certain of their fate. But it does seem like the least he can offer a creature as pitiable as Uonuma.
Then he steps through the great doors. He turns the dial on the wall that Komagata had used before. After another series of soft clicks, the lights gutter out.
The doors shut behind him, and Aoshi lets out a breath.