Jin made his way dejectedly along the beach. He'd been poking around all day, reluctant to return to the little house to face Fuu's grief. He had killed Mukuro, but the one really responsible for Mugen's death was that girl, Koza. He would have killed her too, but she had disappeared while he faced her brother. How could he have been so blind? She had planned the whole thing-setting up Mugen to die, setting up her brother to take the blame, setting up Jin to strike the fatal blow. Setting up Fuu to lose the man she loved. True, Jin and Mugen had been planning to kill each other, but that was at some distant point in the future, not in the present from which there was no escape. He sighed, looking up to see Mugen's ghost approaching him.
Jin didn't know a lot about ghosts, but he was taken aback to see that it looked so….solid. He wasn't surprised that Mugen's ghost was ragged, oozing blood from small cuts all over its face and arms and legs, but he did wonder why it was dragging itself along, leaning heavily on a sword for support. Didn't such beings have more efficient methods of locomotion? He stopped, pondering why Mugen's ghost would appear to him of all people, and the apparition smirked.
"What, you thought I'd die before I killed you?" The Ryukyuan seemed to know exactly what had been going through Jin's mind and now he scowled. "I'm going to put an end to this thing once and for all."
Mugen was alive and Jin couldn't even begin to process his feelings. A combination of relief at his survival and happiness for Fuu contended with dread at the thought of the unfinished business between the Ryukyuan and himself. Could he really try to kill this man, knowing that his loss would devastate the girl who had become a sister? Could he back out with any honor, knowing that Mugen's pride would never let him forego the fight? The samurai shook himself-now was not the time to try sorting out this tangled web of emotion. "Mukuro is dead. I killed him."
Mugen snarled, "That was for me to do!"
"I was deceived. We all were, including Mukuro-by his sister."
The Ryukyuan's eyes widened at the level statement. He had never thought Jin had a sense of humor, let alone the kind that would make a sick joke like this. Little Koza, responsible for all the suffering and death and betrayal? He didn't have any illusions about her feeling for her brother-he'd probably have been doing her a favor by killing him….A favor. Mugen was not an educated man, but he was not stupid. He was actually a lot smarter than people gave him credit for and he was thinking even under the fury that was driving him. He remembered how Koza had begged him to take her away after he recovered from his near execution, and he thought of the look in her eyes when he walked away on the beach. He had always known Mukuro had no secrets from her, and he had sometimes wondered at her dependence on the man when she hated him so much. As Mugen pondered Koza's need for her brother and her desire to get away from him, it all fell into place. Heartless. She was completely heartless, and the fleeting thought that Fuu would not even have been capable of thinking of such a plan, much less putting it into effect, crossed his mind and gave him a small sense of pride in himself. Maybe he wasn't so bad at reading people after all-rejecting Koza and following Fuu.
Jin was silent, giving Mugen time to work through what he had said. When the Ryukyuan nodded, the samurai murmured, "This is one opponent I cannot kill."
"Because she's a woman?" Mugen shook his head disgustedly.
The samurai regarded his companion soberly. "Because it's your right."