The forest was silent and dark, save for the fire lit by the river, the four fishes that were being roasted, crackling nicely in the fire's embrace, and of course, two warriors softly bickering among themselves. "What about this, this can't be fake too!" Kenshin exclaimed, holding up a slender bangle, which shined and gleamed like gold. It ws so thin that it was actually almost weightless, and Kenshin dared not fathom what measely little sum he would get for this.
"This, baka, is Shishou's wedding present for me!" Miryu shouted back, and snatched back the little strand of gold and cradled it. It was the only strand of gold that Hiko Seijurou XIII had ever bought, and it took him months and months' work to purchase. Although she knew that he had spent most of the money on Sake, and that he knew that she could get any gold item she wanted, he still got it for her, and gave it to her in her private wedding ceremony held before him and him alone. "If you sell this, I will not hesitate to kill you..." Her threats were true, and Kenshin knew that from the flecks of amber that started to appear in her sapphire eys.
Sighing reluctantly, he said, "Maa, Miryu, I was joking..." He stole a look at Miryu, whose back was turned towards him, curled into a ball, and to make things worse, she seemed as if she was crying. Was it because she had been separated from her husband for too long, or was it he had said something that he should not? "Miryu..." Still, he was being ignored. He walked over to her, and found her face tucked between her knees, concealed from him. "Miryu?"
Then, what happened was what Kenshin could never see coming in a hundred years. Miryu took him by the wrist and flung him into the river, soaking him indefinately. Seeing that he was drenched, she started to laugh uncontrollably. "You should have seen your face, Kenshin," she giggled, handing him a towel that she had brought along.
"You are worse than Shishou is!" Kenshin shot back, earning another amber-eyed glare from Miryu. And as the night continued, the former hitokiri slipped back into a time when they had not known blood, war, guilt and sorrow. In short, they found themselves in a state of mind before they were tainted by the darkness of the Bakamatsu. Laughter came freely, and they were watched by the stars and the hidden moon, the children of the world, in the embrace of their mother, eating their smoked fish admist many reminisces.
Their mirth was interrupted, however, by the sound of men laughing, and a woman, with a highly seductive dulcet voice, one that Miryu could never dream to compare with. Immediately, their instincts kicked in, and they took their weapons with them and decided to inspect what was going on.
Four men, armed, and by the looks of them, they could be anything from vicious killers to random thugs, surrounded a woman. The men were holding bags of money, stolen, obviously, and were approaching dangerously close to the woman, if she could be judged as one, given her petitte stature.
"Do you have the money?" the woman asked, her face concealed by the hood of her cloak. She would be deemed as a fool, to be around these men, but she would have tremendous courage as well, to be dealing with them, not to mention be demanding money from them.
One of the men grinned, and said, "Yes," and it was the only answer that the woman needed.
She removed her cloak with much gusto, revealing herself to be no more than a teenaged girl-child, in the barest of clothings that revealed her status as a kunoichi in training gear. Miryu's eyes lit up when she saw the child, and knew immediately who she was. "She needs no assistance, this one," Miryu told Kenshin, her voice little more than a faint whisper. "She will handle herself well."
And as it turned out, it was exactly as Miryu had predicted, the fiesty teenager indeed could take out the four thugs. "Just use a sexy voice and the money will come rolling in!" the girl told herself gleefully before Miryu stepped into the clearing with a smile. "Miryu-san, what a coincidence it is!"
"Yes, a coincidence indeed, Misao-chan," the older woman replied. "And the last time I found you, you were in Tokyo, trying to steal the Emperor's tea."
Misao, as the girl was called, quickly built up her alibi, stating, "How was I to know that the Emperor was staying in a retreat, and not the Imperial Palace?"
Kenshin decided to make himself known, and said, "The thing is, we thought that those men were about to rob you, not the other way around..."
Miryu introduced the two of them to each other. "Misao-chan, this is Himura Kenshin, a very good friend of mine," she spoke to Misao, and to Kenshin, she said, "Kenshin, this is Makimachi Misao..."
"Hey, since the both of you are having katana, can I sell them instead?" Misao asked, almost angelically, her night blue eyes gleaming with as much innocence as she could feign.
"You can take Kenshin's," Miryu replied, and showed which one it was. Of course, Kenshin was loth for Misao to take his sakabattou, resulting in him absorbing blows from her. It gave him a chance to assses her prowess, which was actually above par, but given her small, small stature, they came to nothing at all, to a swordsman of Kenshin's calibre.
Kenshin then gave her a lecture about returning the money, which she would not heed at all. "If its stolen, it has to be returned de gozaru yo," he said, running away as fast as he could with the money, leaving Misao and Miryu behind, the latter trying hard to suppress a chuckle.
A few moments later, they were back in Odawara city, in front of the bank where the bags of money had come from. "It seems that they did not even know that they were robbed," Miryu commented, with Kenshin nodding in conformation. Without any sound, the two of them leapt onto the rooftop, leaving Misao on the ground below.
"Heh, that will not stop me!" the girl shouted, and with a powerful leap that followed a well-known kempo stance, which astounded Kenshin about her even more. Who was she, and how did she come to know Miryu? It did not matter, Kenshin said, after he had forced her to return the money, they made to leave, although the child did so reluctantly. "How am I supposed to return to Kyoto without any money?"
Miryu patted her head and said, "Even if it is so, it is not right to steal, even if it were from common robbers..." By that time, all three of them were walking on a bridge, far away from the bank that had been robbed. Their goal was to get out of Odawara city before the thugs could get to them, after Kenshin guessed that they could be members of the local yakuza gangs.
"Use the money we gave you to contact your guardian so he can pick you up here de gozaru yo..." Kenshin instructed before pausing for a few seconds. "Who is your guardian, anyways de gozaru ka?"
Misao heaved a sigh and said, "He used to be a great friend of my grandfather, and took me in when I was an orphan... But there was this guy who lived with the man, and he used to take care of me as well, but he left during the Bakamatsu, so I went everywhere to find him..."
"Including the Emperor's summer retreat," Miryu interjected. "She was lucky that heika found her... amusing..." In truth, her presence shocked the young Emperor to no end, thinking that she was an assassin who followed him around the retreat for the entire day, only to steal a cup of tea from his imperial tea service.
Misao was about to defend herself when they were approached by at least thirty men from either side of the bridge. Indeed, it was as Kenshin predicted, the robbers were from the local yakuza. "Give us back the money and no one will get hurt," one of them shouted, drawing his katana, with the others following suit.
"Well, that would be a good idea," Miryu replied, unsheating hers as well. "But we do not have the money that you speak of... However, if you have any brains at all, you will withdraw your men from this bridge and allow us safe passage before any harm comes to you."
However, Kenshin put his hand on Miryu's. "Miryu, I do not wish to smell the stench of blood," he told her as the yakuza began to charge towards them. His companion only gave him a small nod, indicating that she would follow as he had requested. Despite not vowing to stop killing, Miryu was no bloodthirsty murderer, and that Kenshin knew more than anything.
Taking her place behind Misao, Miryu got into the same stance as Kenshin, and waited until the yakuza came into the center of the bridge. And when they did, the two of them cut the bridge once each. With that, the bridge began to crack, and Misao found herself to be floating in the sky, Kenshin holding her by the arm, and Miryu on the other.
"That was amazing!" the girl exclaimed to the two of them after they were a safe distnace away from the yakuza. "How did you do that?"
Kenshin was the one who told the tale, saying, "During the Bakamatsu, Miryu and sessha fought many battles on riverbanks and bridges. All we had to do was to wait for the enemies to gather their weight on the center of the bridge, and wait for the moment to cut it down with ease..."
Misao listened to their tales with much fascination and enthusiam. Hearing their words made her believe that she was actually witnessing those battles first-hand. She was only sixteen... When they were her age, they had caused and witness enough bloodshed that they were immune to gore that would make grown men retch and faint within seconds... And the difference was stark. Misao might be highly mischevious and skilled, but she was still a child... The two of them, they stopped being children after they left the safe haven that was Hiko's abode.
"Well, I think the people I'm looking for could do much better than you can," Misao said with aplomb. And when Kenshin enquired who they were, she said, "They defended Edo Castle from the shadows ten years ago, that was why they left Kyoto in the first place... All five of them are the best warriors I'll ever know... And do you know what? One day, I'll find Ao-sama and the others!"
Although Miryu knew who Misao was talking about, she did not expect Kenshin's expression to change so quickly from one of curiousity, to one of sheer horror. Had he encountered the Oniwabanshuu, and if he had, what had been exchanged between him and the team of highly trained Onmitsu? Shinomoro Aoshi had been a prodigy as much as she and Kenshin were, the Okashira of the famous leage of ninja only at the age of fifteen. However, it was only after the Bakamatsu that she had come to know that the famous soba restaurant in Kyoto was run by the Oniwabanshu. That was after she had met Misao, and sent her packing straight home following the incident with the Emperor.
"Shinomori Aoshi..." Kenshin murmured, catching Misao's attention.
"Himura, have you seen Ao-sama?" she asked, but without a further word, Kenshin darted away from her, with Miryu following close after, leaving her in a daze.
Miryu might have been connected to many in the world of politics, but as for what happened in the shadows of Tokyo, she had little knowledge... "Kenshin, you must know what happened to Shinomori Aoshi..." She had met the man once before, she had met him, and joined him in combat, and she almost gained an upper hand. But for the sake of the ninja, who were facing extinction for longer than her people, the samurai, she decided to end their battle... They had been on cordial terms after that encounter.
"Beshimi, Hannya, Hyotokko and Shikijou were all killed," Kenshin told her before Misao caught up with them. "They died protecting Aoshi from a Gatling gun owned by an opium dealer, Takeda Kanryuu..."
One of the big-shot businessmen liked it so much that he even bought one from us! She remembered someone saying those words... Colonel Bagley, yes, that American snake that was her husband's suprerior, before Algren had killed him. Could this Takeda Kanryuu be the businessman that Bagley had boasted about? But it mattered not, Misao would be utterly shattered if she was to find out the fate of the Oniwabanshuu's members, and they could not allow her to follow them any further.