This chapter was actually written last week, but the document manager on my account hasn't been working right. What does this mean to you, my faithful readers? It means that the really funny running joke I had going on in this story had to be cut, ergo, not so funny a chapter. It saddens me. It was hilarious. See, it involved Jin and his search for answers in the village. And it was funny. And because document manager didn't want to run scripts right and give me my damn lines, you don't get to see it.

So, I hope that explained why I took so long to get this up. I was waiting to see if they'd fix it soon, and they haven't, so I finally redid it and uploaded.

Chapter Six: Ether Sings

A tiny little flute is whistling in the lips
Of a stranger on the corner
A tiny little girl ties flowers to her wrists
And the bees come round to adorn her

All the time spent dreaming is never lost
Dreams come back through the bells of trumpeting horns
Souls lost into the ether of death
Come back wise in the eyes and the arms of newborns

"Are you going to answer my question?"

Fuu ignored Mugen and his insistent gaze, preferring to concentrate on making dumplings for the crowd that even now echoed their noises through the kitchen door.

"Damn it, Fuu, I'm serious. Answer me."

"I am wearing underclothes, you fucking pervert!" Fuu yelled back at him, wiping a touch of sweat from her brow. It amazed her that in three years this man hadn't learned a single form of subtlety, and that his form of flirting involved asking intimate questions.

Mugen grinned. "Damn."

Fuu bared her teeth at him before gesturing to a large barrel of fish. "Since you can't seem to shut up, I'll give you something to do. Open the barrel, take out a fish, cut off it's head, repeat. Do that until there's no fish in there."

Mugen shrugged and walked over to the worktable beside the back door and got to work. Even working, he still found time to be nosy. "Who's her father?"

Fuu hesitated, before continuing the boiling of dumplings. "You don't know him."

"Doesn't matter."

She sighed. "Maybe this is a private matter, Mugen."

"We're friends, you can tell me."

"Maybe that was me politely telling you to mind your own business."

"Your business is my business. You're like a...three-time removed cousin of mine that I have slightly amorous feelings for."

Fuu took a second to sort that out, and then laughed. "This your way of telling me I'm cute?"

"You always knew you were cute. It's prolly what got you pregnant."

Fuu lost that carefree smile and turned back to her work. "No, it wasn't that."

"So who was he?"

"Why are you so damn insistent on knowing?"

"Why don't you want me to know?"

"Why don't I smack you and hope it addles you enough that you shut up?"

"Who's her father?"

"Why?"

"I just want my suspicions confirmed so that I can kill him without guilt."

Fuu laughed. "You? Guilt? Over killing? I doubt it."

Mugen glared over his shoulder at her, not paying attention and almost taking his finger off in the process. He swore and turned back to the fish. "I have guilt."

"Over many things, I'm sure. Death and destruction causing you guilt is something I doubt." The dumplings were done, so she put them on a plate and handed them off to one of the servers that came bustling through the door. She turned back to Mugen, watching as he deftly handled the butcher knife, taking off heads with ease. She wasn't surprised by his deftness. He'd used his sword for too long not to move with some grace, though the amount of which he had still amazed her. Watching him fight was like watching the wind blow. He moved so smoothly from one place to the next, it was a form of dancing. She'd spent months watching Jin and Mugen dance, together and apart, against each other, against others. She'd never known her place in that dance. Only when they returned to her, had she realized. They danced, but she was the music. She was why they'd done what they'd done. Even now, they sought to continue to dance to her beat, to move for her, to kill for her. It had taken her three long years to realize, that she never wanted to be someone's music again. She didn't want to be the reason why so many men died, just doing their jobs. Some of them, yeah, they'd been bad men, but some of them hadn't. Some had just been doing their job, trying to live, trying to survive in a time of great turmoil.

Mugen swore as he nicked his finger again, this time deeper, spurting blood on the table and his clothes. He stood there and watched as that blood dripped down, feeling the pain of it for the first time in a long time. So long he'd been cold to it, surviving without really living. Now he could feel again. He didn't know whether it was this place, or her, or even him, that made it that way, but he knew he didn't want to be cold again.

Fuu wrapped a small napkin around his finger, applying pressure so that it would stop bleeding. She smiled. "And here I was just thinking how smooth you are."

"I'm smooth."

"As a baby's bottom."

"You'd know," he snorted, blowing one of those oh-so-long strands of hair out of her face. Her big eyes stared up at him from that curtain of hair that'd slipped from her hair knot. He asked again, but now for different reasons. "Who?"

Her eyes lowered, she didn't want to look at him as she avoided the question. "Why?"

He used his uninjured hand to lift her chin and her gaze. "Because I want to know."

She smiled bitterly. "You already know, you just don't want to."

"Jin?"

She laughed, surprised. "No."

He glared at her in confusion. "Then who?"

She smiled, this time almost maternally. "Think on it. You'll figure it out."

There was a rap at the door, and the couple stepped apart as Jin opened the door. "Mugen, I need to speak with you."

Mugen nodded and spared one last unreadable glare at Fuu before walking out the door with Jin. Fuu watched them go, the two most important men in her life and sighed. They both knew the truth, somewhere in their minds, but the little innocence they still possessed wouldn't allow them to even think on it. It was amazing how life could twist in unexpected ways, but Fuu had long learned to look for the silver lining.

The sound of breaking dishes and long, loud swearing had her cursing and heading out the kitchen doors. Mugen and Jin stood outside, waiting for her to go before moving away to speak.

"I learned nothing," Jin said promptly and agitatedly. He was not in a good mood, having doors slammed in his face, sake thrown at him, and in one rare instance, a dead rat put on his head, and none in the course of getting information.

"I learned something," Mugen replied happily, before roping his arm around Jin's neck and pulling him close conspiratorially. "You're not the father."

Jin pulled back and raised an eyebrow. "I knew that."

"I didn't. I thought I was gonna have to hurt you."

"Why would I be the father of Kiyoko?"

Mugen dodged the heavy blow Jin sent his way, sidestepping it quite easily; in jest it had been sent. "Well...you and Fuu had this connection going on back then."

"We were...friends."

"She liked you more than friends."

Jin couldn't deny that, but he could send his own unassailable truths to fight with. "As you liked her?"

Mugen grinned. "As I like her."

Jin froze. "You still...for Fuu?"

"Always did," Mugen replied, before throwing his hands out to the crowded street before them. "I like her," he pointed, "and her," and again, "and her. Not to mention her, her, and her," Mugen explained before letting his arms fall to his sides.

Jin barely repressed the growl forming in the back of his throat. "Lust and love are two different things, Mugen."

Mugen smiled grimly. "Not for me."

Jin bowed his head. "And so shall be your loneliness, if you cannot learn that they are different."

Mugen grinned, evil on his mind as he turned back to the blue-clad warrior, Jin. "Hey, Jin...I wub you!"

Jin, having just assimilated the information of Mugen's theories of love and lust, barely suppressed a grimace. "Stop being a child, this is important."

"Take the stick out of your ass, and maybe I will."

"This is about Fuu. Her honor is gone. We must find the man who took it, and regain it for her."

Mugen scratched his scruffy chin, and spoke quietly to himself, though loud enough that Jin heard him. "She said that I already know who it is, I just don't want to know."

"You already know?"

"I thought it was you, but she said it wasn't."

Jin nodded, closing his eyes as he thought. "Then we shall just have to go over the list, and see if we can figure it out."

"The list?"

"Of the men we met on your journey together. It should not be too hard. Only a few of them dared to venture close enough to Fuu to show their interest."

Mugen laughed hardily, drawing more than a few ogles from passing matrons and a few blushes from the maidens accompanying them. "They were scared."

Jin nodded. "We were her protectors."

"You were her protector. I was there for the free food. What little there was."

Jin let that lie slip and sank down onto a bench outside Fuu's small establishment. Mugen sat beside him, slouching down until he was comfortable. "So where do we start?"

Jin shrugged. "Where else? The tea house where you met her, and eventually, me as well."