Chapter 7: The Further Road
"He's a bit scrawny to be training," Hiko noted, as he watched his student's wife correct her son's stance. The group had stopped for the night, and Kaoru had immediately whisked their youngest member to an open space and began instructing him in how to hold the (in Hiko's opinion) ridiculously small bamboo blade the boy had been proudly carrying as they traveled.
Soujiro smiled slightly in reply. "Kenji-chan has left us with very little choice."
Hiko snorted, and drank a bit of his remaining sake. "Stubborn, is he?"
"More like precocious," Yahiko muttered, kicking a stone absent-mindedly as he joined them. "Kenshin's not going to be happy."
At Hiko's raised eyebrow Yahiko hesitated, but Soujiro continued in a quiet voice, "I believe Himura-san has assumed that Kenji-chan will train in his mother's sword style."
"Exactly what the sword-girl over there is doing," Hiko pointed out. "Even that idiot isn't going to be stupid enough to tell the boy he can't pick up a sword."
"It's not the sword," Yahiko said. "It's the style. Kenshin wants Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu to die with him."
"It is not the style that became the Hitokiri Battousai," Hiko said. "It was the idiocy of a young boy with an even more foolish master," he muttered in a much quieter tone.
"Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu is very effective," Sano pointed out dryly, "and in the wrong hands, it becomes a weapon capable of destroying…. Anything."
"Swords are for protecting life, yes," Hiko said, looking straight at Yahiko. "Sometimes we must take life to protect another. This vow of no killing is dangerous idiocy."
"It's not idiocy," Soujiro defended quietly, folding his hands into the trailing ends of his gi. "It is survival in a world that is phasing out the old ways of the sword. Adaptation is strength now."
"Yeah, but will that be enough for Kenji? Kamiya Kasshin doesn't include things like the Do Ryu Sen Kenji pulled off," Yahiko said flatly.
"Kenji-chan!" Kaoru's irritated voice carried over the group. "Just the basics, please. You can't become good without the fundamentals."
"Impatient," Hiko mused. "And is that is something he inherited from his mother or his father?"
Sano laughed. "Both, poor kid. He got the best and worst of both worlds."
Hiko snorted and rose to his feet. "The little dragon didn't get the worst of his father. He just caught Kenshin's temper."
Kaoru signaled a halt and smiled at her small pupil. "That's enough for today, Kenji-chan. We've got to be rested enough to walk tomorrow."
"Hai," he answered, dropping his shinai from the ready stance he had been holding. As they walked back to rejoin the men, Kenji reached up to scratch at his hair, and then scratched at his nose, and arms and neck before making a huff of irritation and attacking his scarlet rat's nest of hair again.
"Oi, you okay?" Yahiko asked, noticing the small boy's frustrated scratching.
"Itchy!" he pronounced, trying to maneuver the hilt of his shinai to get an illusive place on his back.
"If we could stop someplace and have a bath, that would be great," Kaoru said, almost dreamily. "Some of us are getting almost unbearable to be around," she added, with a pointed look at Sano.
"What? I'm not the one that went eel diving!"
"I don't know how you ever think Fox Lady's going to notice you if you go around smelling like week-old garbage all the time," Yahiko teased.
"Hmph. Like I should listen to advice about women from you, Yahiko-chan. Do you smell pretty for Tsubame?"
"Hey!" Yahiko shouted and jumped to his feet.
"If either of you think I have the patience to listen to two idiots argue about a subject neither knows anything about, you're sadly mistaken," Hiko said, taking a gulp of his sake.
"Oh yeah? What are you going to do about it?" Yahiko asked before he could stop himself.
With a quick flick of his wrists, Hiko sent their heads flying together, and both whirled dizzily before falling to the ground. "Don't ask stupid questions, boy."
"I know of an inn a short distance from Gisu," Soujiro said, with an unexpected twitch to his lips of a real smile trying to break through. "We can base our operations out of there and stay out of the range of the slave ring until we're ready to do something about them."
"Sounds good, Soujiro-san," Kaoru said with a yawn, setting up her futon, with Kenji's smaller one laid beside it. The others picked their way to their chosen sleeping places as she did. Yahiko and Sano set to a quiet argument over who got closest to the small campfire, while Soujiro curled himself in the shadows of a nearby tree. Hiko stepped away from the group entirely and walked with eerily silent movements to the peak a knoll well beyond the firelight. He dropped comfortably into the tall grasses, and settled in to take the first watch. "Kenji-chan?" Kaoru asked softly. "Do you need to go before I tuck you in?"
"Kaa-san!" Kenji whined, looking scandalized and jumping away from her as if he'd been attacked. "Not in front of… everyone!"
Kenji stalked away with the air of an affronted kitten. As soon as the boy disappeared behind a tree, the group dissolved into laughter.
Hiko waited for the moon to drop below the tree line before returning to the encampment. Bundled lumps of shadow, just slightly lighter than the ground, marked the forms of his baka deshi's family. The former gangster snored and the young, would-be samurai drooled, and Hiko wondered, again, why he was even bothering. Looking at the smaller set of bundles, and beyond them to the curled up form of Seta Soujiro, he found his answer. Even committed to a ridiculous quest and wearing that silly parody of a katana, the Tenken was still the Tenken and no one in their right mind left a heavenly blade unsheathed around children.
He crossed to the tree the ronin was propped against and nudged the younger man's sandal-clad foot with a boot. The ronin's eyes opened, senses wary for any threat even as his eyes began banishing the fuzziness of sleep and he looked up at the giant towering above him. Hiko waited until they made eye contact, and Soujiro registered who had awoken him, before turning and wordlessly walking back to the campfire.
Surveying the rag-tag group once more, he found a tree near the fire and settled against its trunk, katana within reach. With a sigh, he stretched out one leg, but kept the other bent and close to his body, so he could rise quickly. His eyes settled in their customary half-closed position for only a moment when he heard the movement in the trees. Ah. It was the half-pint brat. The child had the smallest bladder he'd ever encountered, and would probably outdo his father, who had wet the bed until his eighth summer.
He had once again relaxed when he sensed the brat's approach. His destination appeared to be Hiko himself. "Hey, kid. Save yourself the trouble. Go sleep by your Kaa-san."
Kenji blinked wearily and shook his head, moving Hiko's katana slightly and settling himself in Hiko's lap. Hiko grumbled in irritation as he scooped the child up, climbed back to his feet, and unceremoniously dropped the boy to his own bedroll. Kenji landed with a muffled thud, and blinked up and him. Ignoring the child, Hiko returned to his own sleeping place and settled back in.
A short time later, Hiko awoke again to find the child curled up next to him. Struggling against the irritation and amusement rising in his chest, he took a deep breath. "Don't you know it's a stupid thing to piss off the master of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu?" he whispered to the boy. All he received in reply was a gentle snort. "All right. If you're going to be stubborn about it, there's no need to freeze." Carefully, he rearranged the blankets for optimum warmth and settled his arm around the sleeping child. "If you tell anyone about this, I'll kill you without hesitation."
Sunlight filtered through the trees, casting dancing shadows across Kaoru's face and warming away the early morning dew. She could smell the woody tang of crushed grass and damp earth along with wood smoke and hear the appetizing sizzling of what smelled like fish. Blinking blurry eyes open, she saw Soujiro and Yahiko crouched beside the fire, with a cluster of trimmed branches braced in front of them, each skewering a scaly prize. Clearly, someone had been awake long enough to make use of the lines and hooks stowed in their supplies.
Shaking her head in an effort to wake up, Kaoru checked the camping area again. Soujiro, Yahiko, Sano… all here. Kenji's bedroll wasn't next to hers anymore. Panicked, she sat fully up.
"Good morning, Kaoru-san," Soujiro called cheerfully. "If you're looking for your son, I believe he has joined Hiko-san for practice this morning."
"He did WHAT?"
"Hiko took Kenji with him this morning. They went walking off by the river… They were up early enough to catch breakfast, though."
Kaoru breathed out a sigh of relief. At least someone had been keeping an eye out for Kenji in the early morning hours, a task that usually fell to… Kenshin. It seemed as though Kenshin's master, who had once denied any master-apprentice relationship when Kenshin refused to take the Hiko Seijuro name couldn't avoid his affection for Kenshin, or even Kenshin's children. "I knew it," she whispered to herself.
"Knew what?" Hiko's voice interrupted her internal revelry.
"Kaa-san!" Kenji's happy voice called to her, followed by the Kenji himself appearing beside the towering figure of Hiko, and racing pell-mell out of the trees. His shinai was already strapped to his back, she noticed, and his face was flushed with excitement. Hiko approached at a more sedate pace, and settled beside Kaoru.
"Go attack the rooster, chibi-ryuu," he ordered with surprising mildness.
"Hiko-san!" Kaoru protested. "He's only a small boy. Sano's gentle, but he can't repress his instincts to defend himself."
Hiko snorted derisively as there was a muffled yelp from Sano, followed by a blistering curse and bell-like laugh from Kenji. Kaoru's eye twitched and she turned to nail the street fighter with a withering glare. Hiko pulled her attention back with a blunt question. "What ghost from that ill-conceived slaughter is haunting my baka deshi this time?"
"Excuse me?" Kaoru asked.
"The idiot is not here, and you are obviously chasing him. The only question that remains is, why is he missing?"
Kaoru blinked back a sudden onslaught of tears. "We don't know. He was supposed to take the train home from Kyoto, but he gave a needy woman his ticket and decided to walk home. He didn't make it to our dojo. We've lost him somewhere between Kyoto and Tokyo."
"And you now believe he's been sidetracked pursuing another of his idealistic crusades," Hiko said. "That moron will not allow the past to rest, will he?"
"Soujiro-san thinks Kenshin's been fighting the same slaver ring as he. Do you think… do you think that's possible?"
Hiko looked off in the distant. "I find it a very probable idea. Your husband has no great affection for slavers. For that matter, neither do I."
"I thought you weren't idealistic, Hiko-san."
"It's not idealism. It's experience. And I will say no more. If we wish to reach this inn of Seta-san's, we had best get started."
The tantalizing scents of cooking rice and frying vegetables reached them first. Sun glinted across the tiles on the roof, touching the bland grey of the slate with golden light and warmed the red-stained wood of the walls invitingly.
"Looks nice, Seta-san," Kaoru said, holding on to Kenji's hand firmly so he wouldn't get ideas about climbing the wall.
"It's a nice location," Yahiko observed. "Right outside the city, so people who don't want to have to fight the traffic can just stay here. Pretty smart, if you ask me."
"Kid, you don't know anything about being smart," Sano tossed out with a cocky grin, unable to put any real effort into the sting with the smell of food so close.
"I'm hungry!" Kenji announced, and grabbed his stomach. "Are we eating here?"
Kaoru hesitated for a moment, considering the contents of their money purse, and making a few calculations.
"We should arrive in time for the evening meal," Hiko said, interrupting her thoughts as he looked upward at the position of the sun above the trees. "I see no reason not to take advantage of the inn's full amenities."
"I suppose we can take advantage of a civilized meal while we're here," Kaoru mused aloud.
"Yes!" Yahiko shouted. "To the inn, and dinner!"
They moved very quickly through the final distance to the front of the inn, where the innkeeper met them at the door.
"Welcome!" she greeted them brightly.
"Thank you, Okami-san," they all chorused.
"Come in. Dinner's about ready, and we can have hot baths ready in a short while, if that interests you."
A quick look at Kenji and Kaoru nodded. "Sounds wonderful. Thank you, Okami-san."
"Right this way."
Words Chi had to learn for this fic:
Okami-san: female innkeeper
chibi-ryuu: little dragon.
baka deshi: idiot student/pupil.
Chi's Note: Oh, to be a fly on a tree when Hiko and Kenji had their "lesson", ne? I'm having a blast with this fic. Thanks for reading it!
Kat's Note: Chi insisted we call the mini glossary that name .: points above :.. Just in case you're new to this fandom, and are getting confused by the few Japanese terms. She also said she would write that outtake with Hiko and Kenji for lots of money. But then we'd probably get sued. So we'd settle for ... reviews? (Yes, I'm teasing you.) Seriously, I think we have like three outtakes planned for this thing now. We'll get to them eventually, ne?