Chapter 5: The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Kenji
They waited along the side of the trail, for the third time that morning, after Kenji had declared an emergency.
"I think I was overly ambitious in how much longer our travel to Kyoto would be," Soujiro said, conversationally. "By a week."
"It's not Kenji's fault," Yahiko defended. "He's six! I'm just glad he finally sleeps through the night."
"Glad I wasn't around for most of that," Sano said, chewing on stick that had earlier held part of his breakfast.
Kaoru smiled and laughed. "Kenshin and I had the hardest time toilet training him, Sano…"
"Hey, hey, hey. I wasn't asking for information. I was making an observation," Sano protested, looking slightly ill at the reference to anything as domestic as potty training.
"Yare, yare," Soujiro muttered, mostly under his breath. "If there is anyone else along our path, they'll certainly hear us coming!"
"Kenji!" At Kaoru's shriek, Soujiro, Sano and Yahiko turned towards the tree Kenji had retreated behind to do his business. "You come down from there this instant."
"Sugoi…" Sano muttered under his breath. "Hey, Yahiko, look what the kid's doing with that stick. Does it remind you of the same thing it does me?"
Balanced precariously on a single limb, Kenji's small face was scrunched in an expression of concentration as he slowly moved from one form to another.
Yahiko slapped a hand over his eyes, torn somewhere between panic, awe, and exasperation as Kenji attacked the trunk of the tree with a surprisingly fast battou-jutsu. The six-year-old version of the powerful attack resulted in a bit of chipped bark, but little damage to the tree. "We have got to stop telling the kid old war stories."
"His father's style," Soujiro noted clinically, looking back to smile at the other two as Kenji went after the tree again with a two-handed overhead strike. "And ... one I haven't seen before."
"Kamiya Kasshin," Kaoru provided. "Though he's actually seen Yahiko, me, and our students practicing."
"Are you suggesting he's never seen Hiten Mitsurgi Ryu?" At Kaoru's nod, Soujiro snorted. "Impossible. Even for a gifted child, it would be impossible to recreate Himura-san's style without seeing it." Kaoru's face went blank. "Oh, my…"
Just as soon as Kaoru realized it, Yahiko grasped the answer. "Kenshin takes Kenji with him when he uses the dojo space. He didn't think…."
"That his six-year-old would start picking things up?" Sano shook his head. "Damn. Kenshin never practices around any of us, but he will around Kenji?"
"Kenji's the only other one awake at that time of the morning," Kaoru grumbled, then sighed and grabbed the ex-gangster by the jacket-front to haul him closer to the tree. "Give me a boost, Sano."
Sano dropped to one knee to give her a foothold, and Kenji decided to abandon the tree. "R'tsu'sen!" was the only warning they got before a blur of red wielding a stick leapt, full force, heading for Sano.
Sano twisted and held his hands up to intercept the hurtling six-year-old. Kenji crashed into him with all the grace of a barrel of bricks. Sano rocked back, and grunted as Kenji flew forward and cracked his head against Sano's jaw. He managed to grab Kenji by the back of his gi just as the boy slumped into unconsciousness. "Damn it, kid. I didn't mean to knock you out."
"Good form," Yahiko muttered. "Not necessarily effective…"
"It would be hard to have the strength for that particular move to be effective when you're six," Soujiro muttered. "Kenji knew that. Otherwise he wouldn't have risked your life, Sagara-san."
"Risking my life will be telling Kenshin I knocked the squirt out," Sano said. "And what are you talking about? Kenji wouldn't kill anyone!"
"Not intentionally," Soujiro said quietly, with a dark weight to his words.
"Sano's right, Soujiro-san," Kaoru injected, pushing between the two before the annoyance in Sano's stance translated itself into taking a swing at the ronin. "Kenji will be fine, and he will not kill anyone, intentionally or no. Sano, you'll just have to carry him until he wakes up, and we won't mention it when we find Kenshin," Kaoru pushed Kenji against Sano's chest and started back down the road, fully expecting the others to follow her.
"What about Kenji?" Yahiko demanded, jogging to keep up with her.
"We'll discuss trees, Ryu Tsui Sens out of them, and attacking family members when he comes to," Kaoru said briskly.
"My greatest fear is that a talking-to will not be sufficient, Kaoru-san. He'll have to be trained."
"He will be. When he gets big enough, we'll teach him my style." Soujiro raised his eyebrows. "It appears that your Kenji-chan is already in the process of learning your style… and melding it with his father's. Kaoru-san, if you don't teach him… There's more to being a swordsman than technique. Someone has to instill in him the power of the technique he's creating."
"He's six!" Kaoru whispered fiercely.
"A very smart six," Yahiko muttered, keeping his eyes on the ground, not feeling it was his place to say anything.
"He can't go around attempting moves from Kenshin's technique without instruction, Kaoru," Sano said gently. "Sooner or later, no matter how you lecture, he will hurt someone."
Kaoru walked on in silence for several long moments before sighing and nodding her head in defeat. "All right. When we get to the next town, we'll stop long enough to find Kenji-chan a shinai. A very small shinai. That will have better balance than a stick and I can start him on the basics when we stop for the night."
Kenji loved town. There was hustle and bustle. New sights, new sounds, new people, all moving at lightening speed with total disregard for anything but getting their business done. At the moment, his Kaasan was bargaining with a shop owner over a shinai. Rubbing his aching head, still pounding from the knock Sano had given him, Kenji found himself, in the manner of his father, well… wandering.
Although he was six years old, he was very small for his age, a fact that alternately pleased and irritated the young boy, depending on the situation and his ability to use his size to his advantage. At the moment, he was darting through crowds quickly. He knew he was fast, as even his "uncles" and "aunts", full-grown, highly-trained swordsmen had trouble catching him.
Not that they were trying to catch him right at that moment, or even paying more than passing attention to him. Kaa-chan was content so long as he was in sight. Sou-san had disappeared into the crowds with a quickly muttered apology almost as soon as they had arrived. Sano and Yahiko had been sent off by Kaasan and were busy talking to other grownups at the other end of the market street. And he was going to stay in sight, he told himself. The cart with the toys was in sight of the wood-worker's shop, and he would return in time enough that Kaasan would never notice he was gone.
The man at the cart was bent in the way of older people. His time-worn face was still kind as he smiled at the crowd of youngsters surrounding his cart. "Feel free to look, young ones," he said with a laugh. "Handmade these myself, might as well have them tried out before I sell 'em, hey?" When the children shouted with delight, he echoed them with a laugh of his own.
Kenji drew hesitantly closer to the man, standing on the tips of his toes as he tried to see over the heads of the other children. Making an irritated huff, he realized that being a small six year old was better for evading grownups than seeing over the shoulders of other children. He couldn't see anything! Kenji glanced over his shoulder to see where his mother was – still testing shinai in front of the wood-worker's shop – and then headed for a stack of barrels just behind the man holding the cart.
Studying his object for a moment, Kenji smiled and rubbed his hands together. Fortunately, though they were stacked four high, they were arranged in a manner that left him plenty of handgrips. From that height, he would be able to see the brightly painted toys, and maybe convince his Kaasan that he needed one to keep him entertained on the trip.
Jumping up, he landed on the flat edge of one barrel, then pulled himself up on the second one by bracing his forearms against the edge and lifting the rest of his body. The smoother surface of the barrel made climbing it slightly more difficult than climbing a tree, but he managed. Soon, he realized that he stood near the top of the stack. Just one more to go. As he pulled his weight on the top of the barrel, he had a sinking sensation, and felt the whole stack lean slightly to the left. His eyes widened, and before he could do anything more, the barrel tilted.
Kenji pulled back, trying to steady the barrel and it wobbled precariously before settling back on its base. With a grin of triumph at a disaster averted, he reached for the top of the final barrel again, careful to keep his balance this time. He reached and snagged the rough top with the edges of his fingers, then jumped to make the final wriggle, when the nearest shop door opened, swinging out to clip the other side of the barrel Kenji was half-dangling from.
He just had time for a startled "meep!" before the barrels toppled, the groaning clatter sending the children scattering with startled screeches, and the toy maker ducking behind his cart to avoid the briny fallout. Kenji clung instinctively to the one he had been perched on as it fell forward, launching him briefly into the air with an escort of flying eels.
Kenji was only in the air a few moments before he landed hard on the ground, covered in eels and seawater, next to a pair of warn boots. Kenji worked his way up to his knees and looked up, up and up to the face of a very disgruntled looking man.
"Hmph," the man scolded, picking Kenji up by his gi and dangling him in midair while Kenji flailed about. "Hold still, moronic one, while I look to see if you've managed to acquire any injuries while on your quest to become Japan's youngest mountain climber."
"Oro?" Kenji blinked wide, astonished blue-violet eyes as he looked at the face of the being that held him. The man was enormous! With dark eyes and hair and strong features framed by a massive red-lined white mantle that covered his broad shoulders. Kenji could feel the stiff edges of leather pressing against his back where the man's hand fisted in his gi.
The man blinked. Once. Then twice. "Well, are you hurt?" At Kenji's frantic shaking head, Kenji's captor nodded. "Good." Kenji gave another twisting wiggle and yelped as the man dropped him unceremoniously on his feet. "Find your idiot father, little dragon." Kenji wrinkled his nose and stared up at the strange man. "Kenji," he corrected.
A mocking smile touched the man's lips. "Kenji, eh? Of course. Not a speck of originality. But that's to be expected."
"Kenji!" Kenji's attention snapped up at the sound of his mother's voice. She did not sound pleased. When he looked back, the man in the white cloak was gone, vanished into the crowd, or back into the shop he had come from.
"What happened to you?" Kaoru demanded, dropping to eye level with Kenji and brushing ineffectually at the splotches and foam covering his clothes. "Mou! You were supposed to stay close, not go swimming with eels!"
Sano appeared suddenly, slowly chewing a piece of grass. "Hey, kid. Looks like you took a dip, eh?" He sniffed, then grimaced. "In the sea."
Kenji opened his mouth. "Sano-nii, I…" From across the street, he saw the mysterious man hold a finger over his lips. "I fell," he finished lamely, for some reason feeling like he should obey the broad-shouldered man.
Something about the way the man who knew his father reminded Kenji of his father ... With the sudden emotion of a six-year-old, Kenji suddenly and very keenly missed him.
Instantly, Kaoru knew something was wrong, and she knelt in front of her son and saw his tears. "Where does it hurt, Kenji-chan? Show Kaasan, and she'll kiss it away."
Kenji jumped into his mother's arms and buried his head in her shoulder. "Kaasan," he whispered, "I miss Tou-san."