Honor Thy Masters

by gabriel blessing

Kenichi never really had much going for him. However, there was always one way Kenichi excelled: he was lucky in his Masters. A shame that those of Ryouzanpaku weren't the first he called his Master though.

3. Chapter 3

Honor Thy Masters

Author's notes: Here's the third chapter of Honor Thy Masters. I've been getting some reviews for the story, but none that really need a lot of attention in the author's notes, so I'll just let that usual section go by.

Once more, I'm still experimenting with the theme of 'there is a higher power out there, and it hates you', so expect more general malice from the entire universe in this chapter. In particular, I'd like to take a moment to engage in what I refer to as 'writers angst' over whether or not I managed to get some scenes properly done. What I wanted to express during the confrontation with this chapters monster was a scene of helpless horror. I wanted to grow tension and unease mostly through dialogue and innocuous actions, to make a horror scene without resorting to violence or butchery.

Problem with that is as an author you have to deal with a variation of the trope 'Faux symbolism?'. More like 'what do you mean its not scary?'. I know that I thought the scene managed to express the appropriate amount of tension, but I was seeing the scene in my head, rather than just reading it on the screen, so I might not be the best judge. Just give a shout whether or not this chapter manages to be freaky or fall flat.

Now, another brief note...

*Spoilers*

Here it is, what every wannabe anime fanfic writer inevitably comes to: a nine tailed fox. I think there's some sort of internet law that requires all writers to at least contemplate using one at one point or another. Some writers end up using it as a major plot point... cough*Naruto*cough. However, I wanted to keep the kyuubi to be at least someone in touch with the original legends unlike some works... cough*Naruto*cough... and thus tried to keep the original source work in there.

One, nine tailed foxes are generally all vicious creatures.

Two, they have a lot of power, but rarely in a one on one fight.

Three, they are most certainly not named after cheesy eighties shonen comics... cough*Naru...

Ah fuck it.

Naruto, you used one of the most evil creatures in existence as a potential protagonist and ended up nerfing the hell out of it and not even using a name which is vaguely appropriate for serious consideration. Seriously. Kuruma? What the hell were you thinking?

Naruto, you are dead to me. Go and be the fangirl bait you were always destined to end up as.

*End Spoilers*

Now, here's chapter three, wherein Kenichi and Shigure confront an ancient creature of pure malevolence and have several heartfelt talks before getting nekkid together, more ominous foreshadowing occurs, and a mouse with nunchuks somehow becomes a major plot point.

*Story Start*

It was the fox that set me on the path of destruction that I was most likely inevitably destined to follow.

The meeting took place four months after the meeting with the wolf. Four months of battle and bloodshed and pain. It had been three weeks after that spiteful meeting that Miu had been taken by Junazard Silkwat. After that it had two weeks before we had managed to discover the general location of where the Demon God Fist had taken our precious Miu. From there it had been another month of desperate searching in the kingdom of Tirat before we had managed to locate her, and I had rather ingloriously been kidnapped just the same as she had been. From there, the blur of battle was so intense that it seemed to have lasted forever, and revelation after revelation was made to me.

How Junazard had used forbidden techniques and drugs to force the normally gentle Miu into his desired role as potential Disciple of the Satsujin Ken. How he had then decided to use me as Miu's first kill, a way to irrevocably destroy any possibility of recovering the girl we once knew. The desperate battle, first between the still hesitating Miu and then that mad beast of a swordsman, Sankan Pengulu. Then, of all things, the meeting between myself and Miu's long estranged father…

Anyway, I don't know all the details about what occurred in the stronghold of the Demon God Fist. The fight that I had undergone with Miu and the assassin had been too hard, the both of them too skilled, and the damage I had taken during it was enormous. I do know that by the time I recovered enough to not be running on hazy instinct, the strong hold had been destroyed and that the Demon God Fist was no more. I also know that it was another week before I had recovered enough from the beating I had received to get out of bed and another week after that before I was tentatively allowed to resume training again.

If this was a storybook, then that would be the end of that. The good guys won, the kidnapped princess was returned, and they all lived happily ever after.

Unfortunately, this isn't a storybook. Long experience had taught me a few things, and one of those things was that nothing ever worked out as neatly as it should.

When Miu's fist struck me in the gut hard enough to lift me off the ground and force blood from my mouth that would be a very good sign of just how un-right the world still was.

I tried to hold the blood in, to swallow it back, and nearly choked on it for the effort. Desperately, I brought my hands up, trying not to let my Seikuuken waver despite the pain, but it was a losing effort. Even if it had been two weeks since I had been pronounced well enough to train again, that didn't mean that I was in anyway completely healed. When I had been fighting against Pengulu I had taken a lot of damage. Some of that damage had been from fighting against the mad swordsman myself. Other damage had been taken when I had tried my best to protect Miu from the beast's attacks, even going so far as to deliberately try and trap his blades with my body. And even more of the wounds I had received had been from none other than the brainwashed Miu, who had attacked me without mercy even when I was protecting her.

Cracked ribs, bruised organs, torn muscles and ligaments, fractured radius and ulna, severe concussions… the list just went on and on. It was a miracle I survived at all, and probably a testament to the dark and evil powers that Akisame wielded as a doctor feared by all sane physicians as well as the innumerable ancient Chinese remedies that Ma could call upon that I was well enough to be participating in a spar at all after only a month of recovery after my ordeal.

I regretted none of them, because I had received them in the name of my oath, my self-appointed task to be strong enough to protect Miu when no one else could. And I had done so, having reached through the darkness to pull Miu's innocent personality back despite the brainwashing and drugs she had received.

But it looked as though not all the darkness was gone from her soul. I could actually see the moment when Miu's eyes dimmed and unfocused, when her breathing changed. I could see the kick she was about to chamber, a slicing attack which would be aimed at my neck and designed to crush my larynx and kill me.

I nearly cringed as her foot cut through the air on a lethal course. But despite all I could see, what I couldn't see was the Elder as his body seemed to appear from nowhere, one gentle hand stopping the kick with ridiculous ease.

For a moment Miu's eyes stayed empty, and then the light returned to them. She blinked, looking confused, and then her gaze focused on her own foot as though she had never seen it before.

"Ah!" she gasped, and her eyes darted to mine, a horrified look in them as she searched my face to see if maybe I hadn't caught what had just occurred.

Despite myself my eyes trailed away, unable to meet bear the sight of such shame on Miu's beautiful face. Her eyes moved to my lips and the drops of blood on them, and then down to my stomach where her fist was still embedded.

"I…" Miu began, her eyes darting wildly like a spooked horse for a second, before they drew inexorably back to foot which had nearly killed me. "That was…!" it looked like she was trying to say something, though whether it was an apology or an excuse I don't think even she knew. "I think I…" struggling, she couldn't seem to decide what it was she actually wanted to say. "Excuse me!" she finally blurted, and then pulled free from her grandfather's grasp and darted, decorum forgotten, from the inside of the dojo. I stumbled briefly as she pulled free, but the Elder caught me, supporting me as I tried to get the breath back in my lungs

"She lost it again," Sakaki noted from where he was leaning against the wall shoji screen door, a decapitated beer bottle clasped loosely in his hand as he did so. The expression on his face was serious, the bulky man's eyes narrowed as he reflected on the scene he had just witnessed. It was a far cry from his usual cocky grin that he tended to favor when he was relaxing in Ryouzanpaku, but it wasn't a face I hadn't seen before.

It was just, usually when Sakaki wore his business face, it was only when he was fighting the most dangerous of opponents.

Sakaki was almost always grinning, even in the midst of heated battle. My Karate Master was what he was, and he didn't make any excuses for it: he was a battle junky, someone who could not only fight, but loved it when he got the chance. Every once in a while though an opponent would push him a little too far, like when Éclair had tried to roughed up Miu and I during my first Underworld field trip, or when Congressmen Ishida had tried to kill the members of the Shinpaku alliance when the one responsible for the Okinawa trap exposed himself. When that happened, well, there was a reason I sometimes considered Sakaki to be the most bestial of my Masters, and one who would no doubt do as well in the Nightworld as he did in the Underworld.

It looked like seeing Miu nearly launch a killing technique against me was something serious enough to qualify for Sakaki to truly focus himself. I doubted it was Miu that anger was focused at though.

I think that if Junzard wasn't already dead, then Sakaki might just be willing to abandon the Katsujin Ken just to get the chance to deal with the Demon God Fist himself.

"She did better this time," I managed to gasp out, feeling the ache in my ribs and the sting in my gut where Miu's fist had found me. "I'm sure she would have stopped on time," I defended the girl I admired, and I was even able to ignore just how hollow the words sounded even to me.

Sakaki eyed me for a moment, and I had little doubt that he knew just how much doubt I actually had in those words, but despite that his face softened and his mouth twitched up a small imitation of his normal cocky grin.

"Oh?" he leered, a teasing tone in his voice as he apparently decided to steer the conversation back into more pleasant tones. "Trusting in the power of love to see you through, Kenichi?" He drew out the word 'love' in a sing song voice, and I couldn't keep a slightly exasperated grin of my own from forming at just how many characteristics my Master seemed to share with the typical kindergartner.

And then I winced as the till then gentle hand of the Elder tightened for a moment, not enough to hurt but enough for me to know that he too had been paying particular attention to the 'L' word when it came to his granddaughter. I could almost feel when the older man forced himself to relax, for once not going into a tirade about how he would only approve of someone who had defeated him for Miu.

It was a touching sign in its own way of the approval the Elder had in our relationship, however tentative it was.

"I don't like this," a new voice chimed in, and I glanced up to the rafter where the final occupant of the dojo rested. "Kenichi should be…. resting."

I was pretty sure I had checked the rafters before the spar between Miu and I had begun and found them empty, but I guess Shigure had snuck in at some time during the very brief fight between the two of us. My weapons Master looked the very picture of ease as she reclined, back propped against one of the roof beams, her pet mouse Tochumaru held in her hands as she did something with him involving miniature umbrellas and a bouncy ball. Despite that, I could tell that the nonchalant woman wasn't nearly as relaxed as she appeared.

"If you're that concerned," Sakaki threw back the rest of his beer, before pulling another bottle out of one of the inner pockets of his frayed vest. With a quick move, he swiped his open hand at the bottle top, cleanly slicing through the glass without so much as chipping the rest of the bottle. "Maybe you should let up a bit on those training sessions of yours?"

A Master of Ryouzanpaku advising someone on easing up on training? If the situation wasn't what it was I would think it one of the signs of the apocalypse. I perked up at that, hoping against hope that Sakaki's words might be enough to sway Shigure.

"He has a lot of catching up to do, so…no," Shigure casually denied, and I slumped down in despair.

"You're just lucky you keep winning at those paper, rock, scissor contest," Sakaki grumbled before throwing back his bizarrely opened beer and taking a swig.

I wasn't certain about the details, and honestly I wished I didn't know what I did know, but apparently even though I was still recovering from the majority of my wounds, it had been deemed by the Masters at large that I was capable of doing some minor training. 'Minor training' in this case meant that they'd only give me to one Master a day instead of to multiple ones. Beyond that, training was pretty much the exact same as it normally was: insane. Despite the grueling routines which most often bordered on 'cruel and unusual' still occurring, they were limited to only an hour or so a day rather than being a constant thing like they usually were.

And also, apparently, they decided who would get to have the day's training by paper, rock, scissor. I mean, honestly. Using a game like that to decide who would get to train? Sakaki wasn't the only one of my Masters who obviously never matured emotionally past kindergarten.

And also surprisingly, it appeared as though Shigure was really, really good at paper, rock, scissor. I had mixed feelings about that particular development. On one hand, it was turning into a good chance to make up for the year and a half of unintended neglect I had dealt the surprisingly insecure Master. Also, at this point I had advanced physically enough so that Shigure was able to focus on techniques with the kusarigami, and because of that I was progressing rather quickly at learning a variety of ways to swing a sickle attached to a chain around.

But on the other hand…

Weapons are scary!

Besides the constant training by Shigure, there was only one other event where I was allowed to practice martial arts at the moment:

The spars with Miu.

And what a mess those were turning out to be.

"Shigure's lessons aside," the Elder finally broke in, his voice just barely touched with amusement, "it looks like todays practice is done for now." Even as he finished his sentence, the amusement had already drained out of his voice. "Once again, Kenichi," he turned to me, giving me a small smile just barely visible through his beard, "thanks for your efforts."

"It's the least I could do," I assured him, though I couldn't quite bring myself to smile completely. It wasn't a topic that could be spoken of with any amount of humor, after all.

When Junazard had kidnapped Miu, it had been because he had wanted to raise a Disciple that was both a user of his own martial arts style, Pencak Silat, and a follower of his path, the Satsujin Ken. To do that, he had done away with a few minor things which might get in his way. Things like her personality. Or her memories. I wasn't certain how he did it, probably through drugs or hypnosis or maybe some bizarre martial arts technique for all I knew. Whatever it was, he had somehow completely managed to block out everything that made Miu, Miu.

The end result was an empty vessel for him to pour his ideals into. Just like with me and Shigure's weapons lessons, if the foundation is strong enough learning a new art is incredibly simple. And for Miu in particular, who was an unnatural prodigy and the result of generations of careful breeding, that potential was much higher than mine even with the endless hours my Masters had put into adjusting my body.

More than that, Junazard hadn't just been focusing on martial arts when he taught Miu. He had fed her anger and hate as well. He had manipulated her until her rage had been magnified, and then he had set her loose. And Miu had always had a lot of rage. Kanou Shou had been the first to see it there, and he had nearly unleashed it himself before he died. But no matter how much potential for wrath Miu had it had only been magnified under the careful tutelage of Junazard.

In the end, though I might have helped, Miu had proven a stronger person and managed to recover herself. But that didn't make the rage go away nor did it make her forget the endless hours of training in the killing arts that the Demon God fist had drilled into her. There was a part of Miu that was very different from the gentle soul of the girl I respected and cared for: a part that howled its rage and bloodlust to the heavens, and that delighted in bloodshed and pain and longed to kill.

And now that that part had been released, there was no putting it back in the can it had come from. It was out there now, stronger than ever, and it needed to be dealt with or else at the wrong moment it could come out and someone's blood would stain the ground. If that were to happen then there would be no coming back for Miu. Not again.

And that was what led us to this scene here, where Miu had nearly killed me under the watchful gazes of her grandfather and two Masters of Ryouzanpaku. Miu had a scar in her heart now, and in typical Ryouzanpaku fashion, it had been determined that that scar had to be done away with.

"Is this really alright?" Sakaki asked his expression once more drifting back to serious.

"Is what alright, Sakaki-kun?" the Elder asked, feigning ignorance again as he drifted towards the door of the dojo. Sakaki gave the older man a direct glare, not liking the apparent disinterest in the topic that the Karate user had brought up.

"You know what I'm talking about, old man," Sakaki retorted rudely. "It's bad enough that both Kenichi and Miu have had to go through so much already. I'm asking if it's really alright to just go ahead and make it worse."

"It worked… with Kenichi," Shigure pointed out, her gaze drifting back to Tochumaru even as she answered. Somehow, however improbably, the mouse had managed to assume a handstand position, and was now using his little feet to turn the miniature umbrella in such a way that the ball was rolling along the top as though he were a circus performer. After a quick glance, I made sure to deliberately turn away.

There were some things just too weird, even for me.

"But that was different," Sakaki retorted, also apparently refusing to look at the performing animal. With another angry sip at his beer he continued. "I mean, this is Miu we're talking about!"

"So it's perfectly alright to do terrible things to me," I noted, giving Sakaki a flat look as I summed up the argument that he was having trouble voicing. "But when it comes to doing terrible things to Miu it's another matter?"

"That's not what I meant," Sakaki grumbled, glaring at the ground with a sheepish expression at my accusations. Despite myself I smiled, not able to hold up the accusatory look. I had forgiven my Masters a long time ago for that particular event.

"Sometimes," the Elder spoke up, his voice somber and with a touch of sadness. "In order to overcome a wound to the heart, an even greater wound must be used."

"But how long until it works?" Sakaki shot back, drinking from his beer again, impatience and aggravation in his voice. "With Kenichi it only took one trip. We've been doing this for weeks now for Miu."

"For however long it takes," the Elder said, his voice firm despite the message behind his words.

It was almost heartbreaking to hear the old man affirm his decision, but in a way I understood it. Miu had a scar on her heart now, and Ryouzanpaku already had an established history of dealing with those in a straightforward matter.

For me, the scar had come after I had been killed by Koukin. In my case, the wound had been fear and the treatment had been more fear. For Miu, the scar had been dealt by Junazard, and the wound was unrestrained violence. In her case, the treatment was more unrestrained violence.

Violence on me.

There was no way of knowing when the conditioning of Junazard might kick in these days. Whenever Miu started to practice Martial Arts, there was always a chance that she might slip back into the lethal training she had received. So in order to combat that response, the Elder has asked me to be her target during those moments. It was probably a request that indicated the Elder was aware of just how close the two of us were, and was a mark of just how ruthless the old man could be when he needed to be.

Because even though the Elder made sure to step in and stop Miu whenever she slipped used a lethal technique, it didn't change the fact that Miu was left with the realization that she had just tried to kill me: me, the one who cared for her, who had sworn to protect her, her first friend, the one who had defied a kingdom to rescue her. Maybe it was presumptuous of me to assume it, but me, the one who she maybe, probably, kind of lov… had feelings for.

Each time she slipped, she was left with the horrifying realization that if it hadn't been for the diligence of her grandfather she would have killed me right in front of the watching Masters. The shame of the action, the cold reality of what she almost did must be like a knife in her heart, and today hadn't been the first time that she had left the dojo almost in tears.

And it was those feelings that the Elder was counting on to help combat the violent instincts that she now had. Like some sort of Pavlovian experiment the Elder was trying to ingrain new instincts into Miu yet again, instincts that made her more aware of when she was about to slip into dangerous techniques or when she was about to use lethal violence.

It was a cruel treatment. It was cruel to Miu, forcing her to bear the knowledge of what the consequences of her lack of restraint would have had on me. It was cruel to me, because regardless of the reasons, I was going to have to bear with Miu hurting me, nearly killing me. It was cruel to both of us, because even knowing that, and knowing that the memories of this training will never leave and could even become a strain on our friendship, we had both volunteered for this course of action.

It was cruel to the Elder, because it was him who had come up with this plan. I had seen before how hard it was for parents or family to train their children in Martial Arts. Martial Arts were by nature dangerous and physical demanding activities, and in order to fully train young Disciples it was often necessary for the Master to do cruel things. For parents to do such things to their children was often hard, and often parent Masters would have to make hard choices in order to raise their children Disciples. This was probably the hardest of such choices I had ever seen, or most likely ever will.

It was cruel to the other Masters of Ryouzanpaku, because it meant that they would have to stand by, unable to help as both I, as their Disciple, and Miu, as their beloved family member, were put through this painful experience.

It was cruel to just about everyone, in the end. But then, what other choice was there? Ignore the damage that had been done to Miu, hope for the best, and pray that there never came a time when she lost her self-restraint in battle? That was a sure fire recipe for disaster. Or merely train her normally, seeking to rewrite the new instincts she had acquired through regular exercise and hope that the new lessons will stick? But without the negative association with her new killing urges then there was no way of knowing when she might get tempted by them when things got heated.

In the end, the best way was the cruelest way: a way where everyone suffers and no one is left happy at the end. How nostalgic. Those types of endings do have a way of popping up around me, don't they?

And despite it all, there was that little fear as well, one I harbored secretly. 'How long?' Sakaki had asked, the desperation for assurance from the Elder unsaid in his voice as he tried to learn just how much time it would take until Miu was alright, until this painful experience was over and the cheerful girl which was half daughter and half little sister to the Karate user, to all the Masters of Ryouzanpaku, would return to normal and things would be alright.

The lingering doubt in my head, reaffirmed through personal experience: that there were some wounds which you never truly recovered from. That there was some pain that never went away, some scars which never faded. There were events which indelibly marked the soul, which changed a person's life forever with no hope of ever truly going back to the way things used to be before.

"She might never recover."

"Oi, oi!" the voice in my ear startled me, and I glanced up from my thoughts in surprise to find Sakaki's huge form looming over me. I nearly stumbled when the larger man threw an arm around my shoulder, and the Karate user grinned arrogantly down at me, his cocky grin wide. "Now that's quitter talk! What happened to believing in the power of love?"

"Eh?" I blinked, only then realizing that I had spoken the last thought out loud. Backtracking, I forced a more confident smile to my face. Then, realizing what Sakaki had been hinting at I blushed instead. "Sakaki-shishou!" I yelped, my ears red as I realized what he the older man was hinting at.

"I should go check…on Miu," Shigure also broke in, though I wasn't certain if her statement was in response to anything in particular or if she had just decided then and there for no particular reason on that course of action. Though the incident with the Satori had first made me aware of it, long hours of training with Shigure had helped affirm in my head that there was often a lot going unsaid in Shigure's mind.

Whatever the reason for it, Shigure wasted no time in putting action to words as Sakaki continued to mercilessly tease me in what was most likely an attempt to lighten the mood my accidental statement earlier might have helped set. The weapon user swung down from the roof beam she had been resting on, though unlike the rest of the world it wasn't so she could walk out of the dojo on the floor like a normal human. Instead, she somehow managed to find footholds on the completely flat roofing beam she had been laying on earlier.

The end result was her hanging off the ceiling like some sort of lavender bat. Her hair fell down around her in a dark wave as it succumbed to gravity. Somehow though, defying all the laws of physics, the edge of her too short lavender kimono remained in place, and I could only wonder if it was some bizarre martial arts technique, or perhaps some secret womanly art which allowed for the preservation of her modesty as she neatly walked out of the room via the ceiling.

Honestly, I was kind of glad to see her go. It made what I was planning to do next much easier without her watchful eyes on me.

"Now, now," the Elder's voice brought me away from watching my youngest Master leave. "That's enough teasing for now, Sakaki-kun. Ken-chan is still recovering, after all."

"Tch," the Master who was probably purposefully crushing my head between his biceps and his forearm tsked, before releasing me with feigned reluctance. "Fine old man. Kenichi," he turned his attention to me with forced casualness. "You should probably head back to your room to get some rest. It looks like dinner will be up to Kensei again."

"Actually," I began, rubbing the back of my head sheepishly and hoping that I would be able to pull off innocent long enough for me to accomplish my goals. "I was thinking of visiting my family for the night."

"Eh?" Sakaki grunted, giving me an odd look as cocked his head to the side slightly. "You didn't mention that before." The Elder patted his beard slightly as he cocked one of his bushy eyebrows at me.

"Well," I admitted sheepishly, one hand coming up to rub the back of my head. "It's been a bit since I'd been able to see them, after all. I haven't exactly been in the condition for it."

And wasn't that the truth. My father was leery enough about me staying at Ryouzanpaku as it was. The one time he had come by to check on me and seen just what kind of training I was undergoing he had been disturbed enough by it to pull a shotgun on the Masters and then tried to rescue me while shooting that shotgun in broad daylight with lethal intent. Even if he had finally relented to allowing me to undergoing the strict daily training I had always made it a point never to let him see me after some of my more dangerous Underworld trips. I wasn't quite sure how he would react to some of the injuries I had received during some of my more strenuous battles.

Considering just how wounded the trip to Tirat had left me, I had to be doubly sure that I was properly healed enough to pass inspection before meeting him again. In fact, in order to keep even Honoka from visiting the dojo we hadn't even told my family that I had returned from the trip until just a few days ago.

"Hmph," Sakaki grunted, turning his head away gruffly. "Meh," he shrugged. "Well, it's not like you can do anything else without dying at the moment. Might as well get out of the house for a bit then."

Despite the harsh words, I knew my Master well enough to understand his tactic approval to my idea. In fact, his response was downright encouraging in his own coarse way. Sakaki might be a roughneck to the core, but he was a man who took his responsibilities seriously. One of those responsibilities had been to keep me safe during the search for Miu, and that had resulted in me being kidnapped and beaten half dead. I could hazard a guess that giving me a little family time without complaint might be part of his roundabout way of trying to apologize for his perceived failure.

Well, that was one Master down. With Shigure off to comfort Miu, both Ma and Akisame busy at their respective practices, and Apachai off doing who knows what it was he got off to when he left the dojo by himself, that left only the Elder to convince.

"That sounds like a fine idea, Ken-chan," the old man nodded as well, a small smile appearing behind his beard. "It is important to spend time with family."

Good. It looked like his concern for Miu was making this easier for me. With his own family recently endangered, it seemed that he was more aware of the importance of me spending time with my own kin as well. Actually, that made me feel a little worse about my deception, especially in the case of the Elder.

I hadn't mentioned just who it was that had stepped in to help Miu and I in those last moments before Sakaki found us. I didn't think mentioning that I had met Miu's father, the Elder's prodigal son, would accomplish anything more than making the already tired old man even more hurt.

"Thanks, Masters," I bowed, and the internal relief I felt probably leaked out a bit in my external behavior. With my head still down I tried my best to restrain myself from any further reaction.

I had worried that it might be harder for me to get away from Ryouzanpaku. My Masters did have a history of keeping me from departing on occasions. Sometimes it was to keep me from shirking my training, while other times it was to try and keep me from getting involved in anything dangerous.

What I was planning on doing tonight was definitely among the latter.

*Scene Break*

Despite my intentions, I did end up going to visit my family a bit after I left Ryouzanpaku. I had told the Elder and Sakaki that I might be home a bit late tonight and that they shouldn't worry if I did but even though I implied that the reason I would be late was spending time with my parents and sister I only spent about an hour with my family, just enough time for me to have some dinner and then change my clothes.

After that I departed into the night, telling my family that I was heading back to the Ryouzanpaku. I felt a bit like a naughty child at that point who had told his parents he would be spending the night at a friend's house while the friend did the reverse so that the two could sneak out and spend the entire night away doing mischief. The comparison was probably accurate in that mischief was most likely the least of what I was about to get into.

The thing about Tokyo is that it is a big city. Sometimes it's hard to comprehend just how big it really was. It was officially split up into a number of different suburbs, and each of those suburbs, while not so big on their own, generally tended to have a population which could qualify it as a city all by itself. While most of the time I spent my day to day life in one of the outlying suburbs of Tokyo every once in a while, usually due to Underworld field trips, I would find myself taking trips into some of the more lively areas of Tokyo. Generally, those areas were the ones pretty rife with crime or corruption, as otherwise there wouldn't be much need for Masters like those that inhabited Ryouzanpaku to go there.

With that in mind, the area I was heading might loosely be called a red-light district.

It's a bit of a misleading term, when taken in perspective. Most of the time when people think of red-light districts in Tokyo they think of Roppungi or Shinjuku. Both those districts were famous for their nightclubs, Roppungi typically catering to the older business crowd whereas Shinjuku was favored by the seedier or more desperate types. However, each of the districts of Tokyo could be considered a city unto themselves, and with that in mind it was logical to assume that each individual city might have its own den of iniquity just waiting to be discovered by the desperate or lonely.

The one I was heading to was in Asakusa. Asakusa was one of the older and more historic sections of Tokyo, and typically was more well known for its tourism then it's nightlife, though that hadn't always been the case. It was once considered the premiere spot to spend an evening, probably about eighty years ago.

An older, more historic area, with an outdated record of unsavory activity: it wasn't quite where I had been expecting to find her, which was probably why it had taken me nearly a month of looking, but found her I had.

"Now I just got to hope that this works out," I muttered, closing my eyes and slumping forward as best I could, supporting myself from the hanging strap as well as my neighbors on the crowded train. The Tokyo public transportation system was a mostly effective one, and could generally be counted on getting you to your destination on time. However, that didn't always mean the trip was comfortable.

Due to the vast number of people living in the city there was generally a lot of people using the trains during the day, but at two times, the morning right before general work hours began and night right after those hours were over, you could always count on the trains to be packed. Right now was the very end of the second busy period, but even though the crowds were starting to thin it was still so crowded on the train that I could feel contact on every side of me as I patiently rode. I was thankful I wasn't the claustrophobic sort as I was hemmed in by the human mass in the train beside me.

Generally, in these kinds of situation you could count on the Japanese to do one of either two things. Either the other people surrounding you would do their best not to make eye contact and pretend that they too weren't butt to crotch with complete strangers all around them, or they would take advantage of the situation to start groping whichever traveler they found particularly attractive. Sadly, despite the immorality of the second option, it still tended to happen way too often. Luckily, I wasn't the gender that typically had to fear that kind of attention, so I had expected my soft words to just be ignored by the rest of the populace.

So when someone behind me spoke up in response, I actually blinked in surprise.

"Hope what… works out?"

No way.

Despite how crowded it was I managed to crane my neck to look behind me and came eye to eye with none other than Kousaka Shigure.

"Aiii!" I let loose a manly, albeit high pitched shout of surprise, and promptly received the annoyance of just about everyone else around me as I tried to jump away from the unexpectedly close Master only to find myself rebuffed by the wall of travelers blocking my escape. In a funny kind of way, I managed to make a few inches headway into the soft bodies until like a spring that had been pushed tight they expanded, forcing me back into the patiently waiting Shigure, this time facing her.

I blushed bright red when the collision with Shigure ended up leaving me feeling like the second type of train rider, the kind that didn't just wait patiently. Still, it wasn't my fault! It was Shigure's fault for having such enormous breasts, damnit!

"Hello…Kenichi," Shigure told me in her usual blank voice. She endured my sudden contact with herself with her usual stoicism, though I was willing to suspect that she was secretly finding my antics amusing.

"Shi-Shi-Shigure-san!" I yelped, still blushing as I tried to once more find my happy place where I was able to ignore the physical contact that was typical on crowded trains. It was made extremely hard when standing so close to my Master. "What are you doing here?"

"Nightworld…field trip," she told me directly, and I froze as I realized what she was saying.

"Nightworld field trip?" I repeated, my voice incredulous. "By yourself? Shigure-san, are you sure you should be doing that?" I asked, worry starting to seep in. Realizing that my concerned question might be misunderstood, I hurriedly continued, wishing I had the space to raise my hands in a placating gesture. Well, I could raise my hands, but giving the situation it probably wouldn't come off as placating and more as perverted. "I mean," I hastily added, "I know that you're a Master and all, Shigure-san, but you should know by know how different the Nightworld is from the Underworld. The Nightworld can be really dangerous in ways the Underworld just can't understand."

"Shouldn't I be saying that to you then?" Shigure's response was still stoic, but the same recently acquired familiarity that had let me identify her earlier amusement let me pick up the slight edge of chastisement in her tone. "Weren't you planning… on doing this alone too?"

"Oh," I managed to get out, deflating. I found myself glancing to the side ashamedly at having been caught by Shigure. Then I blinked, realizing the implication of her accusation. I had thought that I had managed to get out of Ryouzanpaku without raising any concern. Heck, by the time I had made my excuses and left Shigure had already gone after Miu. "How did you know?" I couldn't help but ask, trying to figure out how the older woman had managed to ferret out my secret excursion.

"When you're planning something dangerous…" she began, blinking once as she did so, "…your mole turns red."

"It does?" I yelped, completely shocked at the fact that my body apparently had a tell that I hadn't even realized. And one that was so obvious and uncontrollable too! Then it was my turn to blink again. "Wait," I began feeling completely confused. "I have a mole?"

"Just…joking," Shigure told me, and it was probably because I was so physically close that I was able to make out the faintest twist of her lips as she gave one of her miniscule smiles. "Miu fell for that one… too."

"Shigure-san," I sighed, not sure what else to say at that statement. I was becoming increasingly aware of just how playful the poker faced woman really was, but a joke that straightforward was just a little too much to swallow even now. As though she had had enough fun at this point, Shigure's smile faded back away to her normal expression.

"It's the duty of the Master… to know the Disciple," she gave me her real explanation without any further prompting. "I know Kenichi enough by now to tell when something is bothering him. If something was bothering you about Martial Arts… then you would have already asked Akisame. Since you didn't… that meant the Nightworld."

I think I would have preferred having the mole as the real reason. It was somewhat unnerving sometimes to realize just how well my Masters truly knew me. Like when they seemed to know before I did when I was about to make an escape attempt, or like how they knew when my body was fully healed even before I realized it. Still, despite the concern I had at being too well understood, it was somewhat comforting as well, especially since it was Shigure that was displaying the knowledge.

"I guess I can't fool my Master," I sighed, though it wasn't an entirely unhappy sound either. I had been worrying that maybe Shigure had been left out of the general relationship I had with my Masters, but here was proof that even if she had been originally she was quickly making her own place in my life.

Shigure seemed to think this too, or maybe she was just happy that I had referred to her as my Master, because I swear she managed to preen herself a bit, despite the fact that she didn't move her body or change her physical expression at all.

Well, aside from her bringing one of her fists up in her trademarked 'Yes!' gesture; something which was extremely noticeable, considering our current physical proximity.

Of course, then the otherwise heartwarming scene was interrupted as I recalled just where I was going, and who I was planning to meet.

"Shigure-san," I began, my nervousness already returning. "It would be best if you were to just go home now." Still in mid hand clench, Shigure paused, her eyes drifting down to meet mine. "I don't want your help for this one. No," I shook my head, firmly convinced of myself. "You SHOULDN'T get involved this time."

"Kenichi," she cut me off, an edge to her tone that was pretty rare for her. It was the same voice she had used when she had scolded me for stepping on the edges of the tatami mats back when we had gone sword hunting together, a tone she saw me doing something dangerous enough to warrant immediate correction. "It isn't safe for you to be alone. Even if Kushinada promised not to involve Yomi… there's no way of knowing how long that will last."

It was an unusually verbose statement for Shigure, which was making this trip one of the few times where I had ever seen my youngest Master depart from her usual stoicism. It was something I noticed before, but for all that Shigure rarely spoke her silence usually wasn't because she disliked speaking. It was more that Shigure only really spoke up when she felt she had something to say. If the situation was different, I might have been moved to hear her speaking so much on my behalf.

However, this wasn't time for that sort of emotion.

"Shigure-san," I began, trying to keep my voice reasonable. "I'm not going on a trip for Kushinada-san. This time the trip is personal."

Shigure blinked at my confession, but that was the extent of her reaction. It was once more due to how close we were that I could make out the tiny movement of her head as it cocked slightly to the side as though to say, 'So?'

"I know that you like to go on these trips with me," I continued, trying to keep my voice level and reasonable. "But doesn't Ryouzanpaku have a 'right to privacy' policy when it comes to personal things like this? Like when you go on your sword hunting trips, no one else tries to interfere with them. This is kind of like that."

For a moment I thought that the argument might work. Then Shigure spoke up. "Next time, you can come along…. on my trips," she offered, and I would have slumped at the complete missing of the point if I had the space to do so.

"Thank you for the offer," I mumbled out, though inside my thoughts were a little less calm.

Why on earth would I WANT to go on another of those trips? Weapons are scary!

"And even if it's private," Shigure added after that, "Kenichi often… asks private things too." I winced again, knowing now that my prying into Shigure's history along with my butting in on Sakaki's grudge match with Hongou were no doubt coming back to bite me. And that time with Ma's brother. Or that time when I had asked about Miu's parents…

I suppose this could be considered karmic retribution for my nosiness.

"Okay," I acknowledged, trying not to let my nervousness show, but judging from the coolness in my hands it wasn't a battle I was winning. I wasn't certain if the sweat was coming from my nervousness over the way this argument was going, or my concerns about what was about to happening, but I could feel the moisture gathering in my palms and under my arms. It was warm enough in the car that most people would simply assume that I was just being affected by the heat of the press of bodies, but I wasn't certain if Shigure would make that assumption herself.

Still, I continued, trying to talk Shigure into going back to the dojo without me through well-reasoned arguments. "Even if that happens sometimes, I'd still like to have the chance to take care of this on my own. It's just a little errand that I have to run, and then I'll be back to Ryouzanpaku in no time!"

I gave Shigure my best smile, trying my hardest to be convincing. For a moment Shigure was silent, and I had the brief hope that I had managed to persuade her to head on home without me. Finally, she spoke up again.

"Kenichi," she began, her voice even slower than it normally was. "Is it going to be… dangerous?"

"No!" I quickly assured her, glancing briefly to the side as I did so. "Not at all!"

"You're… lying," Shigure noted instantly, and I felt my eyelid twitch at how quickly she had managed to see through me. Okay, having someone know me that well was definitely feeling less of a relief then it did earlier.

"Okay," I hastily backtracked, talking a little too quickly as gave a shaky laugh. "It's going to be a little dangerous, but not that much. It's nothing that I can't handle on my own and even on the off chance that things do get a little rough it shouldn't be that hard to calm every one down…"

"You're still… lying," Shigure interrupted me again, and this time I could definitely make out her eyebrows as they narrowed a little.

"And just how do you know that?" I snapped, a bit aggrieved that she was proving so apt at reading me when I could barely make out her facial expressions.

"When you lie… your mole…" she began and I couldn't stop myself from interrupting her.

"Not that again!"

"…Miu did that too," she noted, sounding slightly amused at the same process that Miu and I apparently shared. It only lasted for a moment before she was back to her blank face again. "Kenichi," she started, this time giving me a forward look that I knew meant she was being serious. "You are my… Disciple. The Disciple of everyone at Ryouzanpaku. After what happened… with Miu, everyone is very worried. If this is going to be dangerous, then I want… to go with you. No one could stand… having something like that happen again."

Despite my frustration at her intractableness, for a moment I glanced to the side in shame. I knew what she was saying. For so long Ryouzanpaku was like a haven to me, a place where nothing could go wrong and I would always be safe no matter how dangerous the rest of the world was. All of the Masters were so strong, so confident, that it seemed impossible that anything could ever do more than inconvenience them. Miu had been like that too. Ever since that day when I had watched her stand up to those Yakuza, she had been an inspiration to me. She had been a pillar of strength, unbowed before the weight of the world and willing to risk everything to stand up against evil.

And then, right beneath the nose of her Grandfather and Sakaki, she had been taken away as simple as that. She had been maimed, not her body but her mind and soul. And now, no matter how much I tried to deny it, every time I saw her I saw just how intransient the safety of Ryouzanpaku was.

And not just Miu either. Before, when Apachai had almost died right in front of my eyes, or when Sakaki hadn't been able to eke out more than a draw against his lifelong rival; the seeming invincibility of my Masters wasn't as true as I had come to believe. The worry that had been displayed when Apachai had almost died, the pall that continues to hang now that Miu was trying to recover; it was a sign, I suppose, of how much everyone at Ryouzanpaku cares for each other.

It was a comforting thing to know that I too counted among the numbers of Ryouzanpaku. But the truth was I was also the weakest of the dojo, the most likely to fall. Because of that the same worry I had for the safety of my Masters and my other Disciple must be something that they too feel for me. It shouldn't surprise me that Shigure, after she managed to figure out what I was planning, had gone out of her way to keep an eye on me before I did something dangerous.

Despite that comfort, it didn't change the fact that I absolutely did not want anyone along with me on this Nightworld excursion.

"Shigure-san, please," I begged, not even trying to argue anymore. If she had managed to figure this much out, then lying anymore wasn't going to change anything. "I know you're worried, but this trip is too dangerous for someone as inexperienced as you to come along." Shigure blinked again, and I got the distinct impression that she was somewhat insulted that I had just claimed that something I was about to do was too dangerous for her, a Master, to do as well. Well, tough. "This isn't like the other times. I only have a vague idea what's going to happen this time. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to get myself out of this in one piece if something goes wrong, much less anyone else. Please," if there had been more space I might have gone to my knees to beg for this request, "please just go home and let me do this."

"If it's that dangerous…" Shigure began, her eyes narrowing again. "Then I won't… let you go alone."

"Shigure-san," I continued, grimacing. "If you come you might make it even more dangerous." It was the truth. I had certain advantages in what was going to happen, not the least of which being that I was well aware of who I was going to see, and what they were capable of. It was a cold comfort that I had at least a chance of a positive outcome. But Shigure had no idea where I was going, or what might happen, and there was no way I was going to explain it to her.

Mostly because if she really knew what I was planning she would most likely knock me out, tie me up, get the rest of the Masters to help guard me, and never let me out again. Either that or commit me to an asylum.

This little adventure ranked even higher than 'approach the Shikome and hope it runs' on the list of stupid things I have ever done.

"If it's that dangerous…" Shigure repeated, her eyes narrowing even further, "then maybe… you shouldn't go."

"I can't," I hissed, my frustration getting to me as I felt my temper fray. The simple part was supposed to be me just getting to my destination. All the hard stuff wasn't supposed to happen until I was there. This was exactly the reason I had tried to sneak away while Shigure wasn't around in the first place. "This is the only chance I'll probably ever get to meet her!"

"…Her?" Shigure repeated, and I caught the telltale signs of curiosity in her voice. I bit my tongue, cursing myself for having let that slip. For several long moments the silence between us stretched on, me not wanting to let anything else slip and Shigure…

Well, who knows what Shigure was thinking.

Finally, my Master spoke.

"Is it about…the name?" she finally asked, head still cocked to the side as she watched me.

"The name?" I repeated, the change in subject actually catching me by surprise. Shigure continued to study me closely as my brow creased. "What name?"

"The name you won't… speak," she elaborated in typical Shigure fashion. "The one the wolf… mentioned."

"Oh," I said, my face tightening briefly. Shigure didn't have to be a Master to make out the change in my expression. Considering how close our faces were anyone could have seen it. I bit my tongue again, not wanting to say something I'd regret later. It was a mark of just how sore that subject was that I very nearly said something I'd regret in response to even one of my Masters mentioning that subject.

Shigure continued to study me for a second, and then gave a brief nod. "I thought… so." Somehow, it seemed to me that Shigure was almost sad at that moment. I wasn't certain why I thought that, seeing as there was no real indication of any kind of emotion in her placid expression. Despite that, I still couldn't quite keep that thought out of me head.

"Kenichi…" Shigure began to continue, before trailing off midway through one of her customary pauses. I saw her eyes glance to the side briefly, before they settled back on me. Finally, she spoke again. "Is this another of your… zebras?"

"Zebras?" I repeated, before remembering what she meant. The word for 'trauma' in Japanese was originally from another language, English actually, and because of that it sounded a bit different from more traditional Japanese words. Most of the time when a Japanese person said 'trauma' it instead came out like 'tora-uma', or tiger-horse, the word for 'zebra'. Understanding just what Shigure was asking, it was my turn to look away. "Yeah," I muttered, wishing I could keep my voice more firm. "It's about one of my zebras."

Shigure gave a brief nod at my confession, before her expression changed slightly. With the narrowing of her eyes and the pressing of her lips, I could definitely tell just how determined she was.

"Then just like… before. I want to help Kenichi get over his… zebra." And with that declaration I realized my chances of getting rid of Shigure had effectively been reduced to zero. With a sigh of helpless frustration I leaned back, finally putting space between Shigure and me as I ran a damp hand through my hair. This did not bode well for how the rest of the night was going to go. If escaping the dojo unnoticed, the supposedly easiest part of the trip, was going this wrong then how was the rest going to end up?

Wait… Why did I have space around me?

Giving my surroundings a quick look I realized that despite how packed the train remained, everyone around Shigure and I had somehow managed to pull back, giving us about a foot of space between themselves and us. It looked really uncomfortable as salarymen and careerwomen as well as teenagers and party goers all packed themselves closely in order to avoid being near the two of us. Even as I looked around, I realized that everyone else in the train car was avoiding my eyes.

Thinking back on the conversation that I was just having I felt a slow flush forming on my face as I realized just how crazy it must sound to those who had no knowledge of either the Nightworld or the Underworld.

Burying my head in my hands, I sighed again. This night just wasn't going to go well. I could feel it already.

*Scene Break*

"Kenichi…" Shigure began, for once sounding a little bit nervous as I folded my arms in front of her. "Are you sure… about this?"

"Absolutely," I said, not backing down in the slightest. When Shigure turned to look at me directly I unfolded my arms to point purposefully at the topic of our discussion. "No, giving me the puppy dog eyes isn't going to change my mind." I told her, and she slouched a bit more. Truthfully, Shigure's puppy dog eyes most fully resembled her normal expression, but once more experience with interpreting the miniscule changes in her facial features managed to give me the edge. "If you're going to come along, then there's no way you're bringing your father's sword."

Shigure turned to follow my fingers to the locker I was indicating. It was pretty common for most train stations to have a wide selection of coin lockers available for the travelers to use at their convenience. A lot of time salarymen or students would make various side trips before they completed their trip from their jobs or schools to their homes. Because of that, while they were out drinking or shopping they would often have a lot of different baggage that they didn't want to lug around like their briefcases or their backpacks. The coin lockers ended up being convenient places to store those kinds of things, letting them pick up their belongings when they returned to catch their next train.

Though I doubt that the lockers were ever used to conveniently store a three feet long masterwork katana, there conveniently happened to be lockers large enough to store even that ungainly thing.

"But I don't… want to," Shigure said, somewhat plaintively as she clutched her father's sword to her chest much in the same way Miu tended to cuddle kitties whenever she managed to catch one.

"Then go home," I told her, hoping that despite everything she had said earlier she would back down. Honestly, I could understand her reluctance. Her father's sword was one of the most sought after blades in the Underworld. It was crafted using metal-smithing techniques that had been lost for centuries until her father had managed to resurrect them through years of experimentation. There were members of the Satsujin Ken that regularly tried to kill her in order to obtain it for themselves.

Leaving a priceless artifact like that in a coin locker in the middle of Asakusa was definitely not the smartest of ideas. But having something like that on her when we got to where we were going was even less an intelligent choice.

For a second I hoped that Shigure would back down, but then she took a deep breath and selected a locker. It took a little bit of effort, but eventually she managed to wedge the enormous katana in. Before she shut the door, she paused and turned to look at me.

At least, I thought it was to look at me. "Tochumaru," she said, and I yelped as I felt a sudden wiggling emerging from the center of my back.

"What the-!" I got out, before the wiggling managed to make its way up to my shoulder and to my amazement Shigure's pet mouse emerged from between my jacket and my shirt, giving a soft 'Chiu!' noise as the sneaky little rodent gave a cocky salute. "When the hell did you get in there?" I demanded, so nonplussed by Tochumaru's sudden emergence that I couldn't help myself.

"I asked Tochumaru… to watch Kenichi," Shigure explained, and I blinked, wondering just when the mouse had started following me around. Actually, that was a little freaky. I hadn't even noticed when the pet had managed conceal himself in the clothes I was freaking wearing.

"Are you some kind of ninja?" I couldn't stop myself from asking. I swear, the little guy actually put his paws together, two digits extended with the rest wrapped around each other, and then made another noise which sounded disturbingly like he was saying 'Nin! Nin!'

When the hell did my life get this weird?

Even as I was trying to wrap my mind around what I had just witnessed, the little guy scampered down my arm before leaping a surprisingly long distance in order to land on Shigure's waiting palm. Nodding to herself slowly, Shigure placed the mouse in the locker with her Katana, and once more the mouse saluted before reaching behind himself and pulling a miniature set of nunchucks that he had improbably managed to conceal in his fur. With one last salute, Tochumaru settled himself down while Shigure closed the locker, removing the key from the door and pocketing it quickly.

"It will be safe… with Tochumaru," she concluded, giving another slow nod before she turned to face me, an expectant look on her face.

"…Right," I finally said, concluding that there were some things I was probably better off not thinking about too much. "Time to go then." Woodenly, I turned around and began walking away into the city, Shigure following beside me easily.

For a while the two of us walked in silence, and not for the first time I was reminded of just how peculiar Shigure really was. If it had been anyone else that had forced their way onto my trip then I had little doubt there would be quite a few questions being directed at me almost immediately. Things like 'where are we going', and 'what are we doing' would have been the most obvious of questions, and probably pretty important ones too. I had already revealed that the errand for the night was going to be dangerous and that this trip would involve elements of the Nightworld. Those two facts would be enough to draw curiosity, if not the caution, of anyone else.

Despite that though, Shigure seemed content to just walk quietly beside me as I began leading us through the maze of buildings that made up the district of Asakusa. It struck me again just how odd a couple we must look to the casual observer: me, still a highschooler, dressed in a thin long sleeve shirt and light jacket, and her, still the age where she could be mistaken for a student dressed in a short kimono and long trench coat.

Actually, when put that way we probably didn't look that odd at all. A young man and a young woman, dressed up in semi-formal clothing out together late at night: we probably looked more like a couple going out together for a date then we did a Martial Arts Master and Disciple combo or a Kai specialist and his unwanted bodyguard.

The thought was actually a little unsettling, and I gave Shigure a quick look from the corner of my eye. She looked just a little off without her customary katana though I knew that with her trench coat she was nowhere near disarmed. Despite the concealing nature of her outer garment her inner kimono was still bordering on obscenely short, and I could make out flashes of her legs as she walked with a long stride to keep up with me.

It was then that I realized that Shigure was actually shorter than me. My youngest Master was only about average height for a Japanese female, and even if I wasn't particularly tall myself I still managed to have about an inch or so over the swordswoman. The fact that I was actually taller than one of my Masters, well, other than Ma, triggered a strange feeling of vertigo for a few moments.

"What… is it?" Shigure's voice broke me away from my wondering thoughts, and I blinked, realizing that at some point while I was studying her I had turned my head in her direction. Though Shigure didn't turn her head herself, I could make out her own pupils as she watched me from the corner of her eye in return.

"Nothing!" I instantly defended, half lifting my hands up in a defensive gesture before realizing that both my quick response and my sudden movement probably just made me look even more suspicious. Shigure's eyes lingered on me for a few more moments before they slowly turned back towards the front. I fought the urge to release a sigh of relief as she apparently let the topic drop until she spoke back up again and I re-tensed.

"Why… my father's sword?" she asked, and I blinked for a second as I tried to figure out what she meant by that question.

"What do you mean?" I asked, feeling less guilty about looking at Shigure now that we were actually engaging in combat.

"I have many other… weapons," she elaborated, and she briefly plucked at the hem of her coat. I could make out the metallic chink as some of her weapons clinked against each other at the shaking. "Why just… my father's sword?"

"Oh," I nodded, realizing what she meant. It must seem strange to her that I would insist that she remove only that particular weapon when she was aware that I already knew just how well armed she was even without it. I looked down for a moment, debating in my head just how to answer her question without tipping her off to just what I was planning on doing.

She was still well armed enough to knock me out and tie me up, after all.

"Because it is precious to you," I finally answered, still looking at the ground. It was my turn to be glancing out of the corner of my eye again as Shigure turned her head slightly so she could look more directly at me. I waited a moment to give her time to ask the questions that response would no doubt raise, but instead Shigure just waited patiently. I wasn't certain if it was because she just expected me to continue without prompting, or if she just didn't think that voicing her questions was actually worth speaking over.

Whatever the reason, I continued on. If the chances of both of us getting out of this alive and in one piece were going to be anything other than zero, than I would have to tell her at least a little of background.

"What do you know about kitsune, Shigure-san?" I asked her, giving her the first real clue about what it was we were going to see tonight.

"Kit…sune?" Shigure repeated slowly, head cocking to the side slightly. "They are… delicious," she finally concluded.

Unable to stop myself, I turned and gawked at the completely unexpected response. "Delicious?" I repeated, my voice squeaking with the absolute shock I was feeling at her answer. Okay. That wasn't anything that I had been prepared for, not even remotely.

In retrospect, I guess it kind of made sense. Shigure was raised in the wild by her aesthetic father after all. I suppose they wouldn't be too picky about just what kind of animal they caught for the night's dinner pot. With just the two of them it wasn't like she had much opportunity for reading any books about the mystic species, nor a chance to really hear anything about them from any other type of media. And from what I remember from Akisame's story about her father he really didn't seem the type to go out of his way to tell bed time stories or fairy tales or anything.

The man had thought the best thing he could do for his daughter was die in a horrific way right in front of her to serve as a warning about what happened to those who lived evil lives, after all.

Still.

Delicious?

"Really?" I finally asked, not quite sure how else to respond to the bizarre answer. I think Shigure was aware of just how strange her answer really was because she nodded briefly before making sure to carefully look away, obscuring her face with her bangs as she did so. "Huh," I finally grunted, wondering if foxes really were as tasty as she seemed to think before I shook my head.

"That aside," I began again slowly, "you do know some of the other myths about them, right?"

"Only… a little," she told me slowly, still looking away. "I don't know everything about this like… Kenichi does."

"I don't know everything," I told her absently as I still struggled with Shigure's unexpected ignorance. "I only know what I know."

It was only a second after I finished speaking that I froze, missing a step and nearly falling over in my shock.

Why the hell had I said it like that? I grimaced, my eyes closing as hearing Hanekawa's trademarked catchphrase from my own lips put a dagger through my chest. Breathe, I told myself. Just breathe. It will pass. It always does.

It only took me a second to recover from my self-inflicted paralysis, but I had been dealing with those memories for nearly three and a half years now and getting over moments like these was becoming easier as time went on. Still, even as I recovered and continued walking I caught sight of Shigure watching me, her eyelids narrowed slightly as she took note of my reaction.

"Kitsune," I began immediately, not giving her time to ask a question she probably wasn't going to voice anyway, "like wolves, and tankui, are one of the species of animals that were commonly thought to have magical powers back in the old days."

"Like… that wolf," Shigure nodded slowly, and a glance at her was enough to confirm that my suspicions of her distaste were dead on. It looked like Shigure remembered well the encounter with the wolf, and it looked like she still didn't like the creature.

"Somewhat," I nodded, slowly. "But in legends most wolves didn't have much to do with humans. They either guarded them or ate them, and that was about it. Kitsune on the other hand, they tended to like humans a lot more, or at least spend more time around them."

I shook my head, and tried to find the best way to sum up dozens, even hundreds of legends involving kitsune into a quick lesson that I could finish up before we made it to our destination.

"For the most part, kitsune tended to be mischievous and mostly harmless. They liked to play tricks on humans, but every once in a while they would grow genuinely attached to people as well. They have the ability to make illusions, or change their shape, and they could even possess people as well if they wanted to. Generally, if they didn't like someone they would trap them in an illusion that would end with them doing something embarrassing afterwards. But if they did like someone they would go out of their way to protect and help them.

"There are two kinds of foxes," I continued, "the 'zenko', the good foxes, and the 'yako', the field foxes. The zenko were also called the 'Inari-Kitsune' and were thought to be in the service of the goddess Inari, the patron of blacksmiths and warriors. They are generally benevolent and serve as messengers to the kami. The yako, also called the 'nogitsune', were free creatures and can be either benevolent or malicious depending on their personal nature."

I paused for a moment, trying to collect my thoughts. Shigure continued to just watch me patiently, and I felt a moment of annoyance at her passive role in the conversation. If it was anyone else they would no doubt be asking various questions throughout the explanation, and I would have to respond in kind in order to answer. It would help give this whole monologue a more conversational feel to it. With Shigure though, it was just a matter of her waiting for me to say everything I needed to say, and it kind of made me feel like I was just lecturing her instead of talking with her.

"Now while the zenko spent their lives in service to Inari," I resumed my explanation, "the nogitsune tended to live free lives. However, every once in a while a human would try and, well for lack of a better word, court them to try and convince them to become the human's servant. These people were called 'kitsune-tsukai', fox using witches. Fox witches could use their fox servants to cast illusions or to possess their enemies. Since foxes were also so tricky by nature the witch could also have the kitsune use their abilities to find out secrets. It was said that to the kitsune-tsukai there was no secret, past or present, that they could not learn."

"So we're going to see a kitsune-tsukai… about Kenichi's zebra," Shigure finally spoke up, nodding slowly as she took my explanation to the next logical step given everything she knew already. It was a good deduction, but I shook my head, a small frown on my face as I corrected her.

"If I could find a kitsune-tsukai, I would," I admitted, "but that's next to impossible these days." Shigure glanced at me, a silent encouragement to continue. "Nowadays kitsune-tsukai are like exorcists or priests," I explained. "There are a lot of people who claim to be them, but in the end they're just normal people carrying out old traditions. Most exorcists have never even seen a ghost, most priests have never met a god, and most fox witches have never seen a genuine kitsune." I pursed my lips recalling with annoyance just how hard I had looked for an actual fox witch. "As far as I know the nearest kitsune-tsukai is living in Nagano, and there's no way of me knowing if they're a genuine fox witch or just someone who acts like one. No," I shook my head slowly, "instead of a fox witch, I'm going straight to the fox itself."

Shigure again gave a brief, slow nod as she followed the logic I was using. It would make sense to her to be direct, seeing how direct she tended to be most of the time herself. Still, after a slow blink, there was still one thing that Shigure seemed uncertain about.

"How is this… dangerous?" she asked, no doubt wondering just why it was that I had tried so desperately to keep her away in order to protect her. It made sense in a way. If I was just going to somewhere to ask a few questions, then my errand probably didn't seem that difficult at all.

"It's pretty hard to find kitsune themselves these days," I explained, shrugging uncomfortably. "And it's even harder to find one that cares enough about humans to have a good chance of knowing the answer to my questions. And, well, the one I did manage to find…" I shrugged again, not knowing how else to put it. "Well, she's not very nice."

"Not… nice?" Shigure repeated, blinking as she tried to figure out just why something like 'not nice' would translate over to 'extremely dangerous'.

"Really not nice," I elaborated helpfully. "And the problem is that I'm about to ask her a favor."

When Shigure was silent again, I took that as a cue to continue my explanation.

"If it was just a matter of fighting the kitsune, or driving it away, then I could probably manage to do that on my own," I admitted, one hand coming up to rub the back of my head. "If I caught her completely by surprise, and attacked without warning, probably while she was asleep or sick," I added in a mutter that I was pretty sure Shigure managed to pick up anyway. "But if I did that, then it isn't very likely that she would be willing to answer any of my questions, or if she did that she would be telling the truth. Besides that, afterwards unless I was willing to kill her then there would be a fox out there with a pretty big grudge against me. And foxes can get creative when they're paying back a grudge."

Really creative. Some of the stories I've heard…. I suppressed a shudder. Yeah, attacking was right out of the question. Killing wasn't an option for me either. I was a member of the Katsujin Ken, after all, and attacking and killing someone for information was definitely against the tenants of my philosophy.

Besides. The fox was a girl. I didn't hit girls.

"So you have to be polite to someone who is… rude," Shigure summed up my explanation. It was a pretty simplified explanation of the situation, but I was willing to believe that my Master's understanding was a bit more complex than her brief statement indicated. Still, it looked like there was something else bothering Shigure as she continued a moment later. "So why is it more dangerous… if I come?"

You know, it almost sounded like she was pouting for a moment there. But Shigure, the unflappable prodigy of swords and weapons pouting over something like that?

Nah. Couldn't be.

"Shigure-san," I began, slowly, partly because I was trying to find a way to be polite about this and partly because I was having trouble believing that she would actually need an explanation. "You throw shuriken at hotel employees. When Yasunaga-sensei came for a home visit, you pulled a sword on him. When my dad came as well, you attempted to hunt him down when he tried to rescue me. When the Valkyrie squad came to ask for help, you attacked them with a game controller…"

I trailed off, not because I was running out of examples but more because Shigure had assumed a slumping position, the collar of her coat pulled high as she hung her head down a bit. Realizing that I may have been a bit rough on the deceptively sensitive Master, I hastily held my hands up, trying to think of a way to correct myself.

"I mean," I glanced away for a second to try and find a more diplomatic way of explaining why I considered having Shigure around to be inherently dangerous. "You tend to have a very straightforward way of dealing with situations like these," I finally settled on. "And since this particular meeting involves not letting things escalate into a fight, it just seemed safer... I meant simpler!... to not involve you this time around, Master!"

"…Really?" Shigure turned her head to look at me, giving me an expression which I could identify as 'hopeful' but most of the world would think of as 'empty and soulless'. I think I really was getting the hang of interpreting her various expressions if I was able to successfully comprehend that particular one.

"Really," I nodded enthusiastically, and hoped that Shigure's ability to tell when I was lying wasn't developed enough to see that I was doing so now. Then I paused, narrowing my eyes a bit. "You won't do anything like that this time, will you Shigure-san?" I prompted, hoping that I had managed to make enough of an impression over why attacking the fox would be a bad thing to do. "You won't have your father's sword so it should be easier, but you won't use any of your shuriken, or kunai, or kusarigami, or kodachi, or your sansetsukon…" I trailed off not sure just what some of the other weapons I knew she had stored away in her coat were actually called but knowing that they were there anyway.

Shigure continued to give me a stoic look for a second before she glanced to the side slowly. "Of…course," she assured me in a tone which actually did nothing to reassure me at all.

"No matter what," I told her firmly, hoping that maybe if I just repeated myself enough it would sink in. "No matter what the kitsune says, no matter what happens, please Shigure-san… Master," I corrected myself, hoping that the more formal title would help it stick better. "Please. Whatever happens, don't let it get to you and just let it go. Please, Master?"

"O…kay," Shigure nodded again, still looking away. It wasn't a promising reaction.

For a moment, I gave very serious thought to calling this whole debacle off, going back to the train station, retrieving Shigure's katana, and going back to Ryouzanpaku. It wouldn't be that hard. It would mean a return to the life I had made for myself ever since I joined Ryouzanpaku. That life was a good one. I had friends, my Masters, and a sense of purpose, a direction in life.

But I found that despite thinking about it, I couldn't. The warning of a wolf was in my head, and more than just his ominous hinting there were the penultimate words it had told me, a question which had no doubt been meant in equal parts to help me, as the wolf's reward for services wrought to it, and to hurt me, as a final show of scorn for what it considered to be an abomination.

'The one you thought was dead; just how sure are you of that?'

The truth was, I was pretty damn sure. Considering what had happened, I hadn't really seen any other answer besides the one I had accepted and moved on with: that she was gone; that they were all gone. But the other possibility remained, the doubt the wolf had wanted to put in me festering like an open wound.

What if I was wrong?

I wanted an answer to that question. No, I NEEDED that answer. And I would do just about anything for that answer.

Even go to see the kitsune, despite knowing what I did about her.

I would even bring one of my Masters, unprepared and not knowing just who they were going to see or what they were getting in to. I was even prepared to lie and deceive anyone who might get in the way of my quest for the truth.

'Not nice' was what I had called the kitsune. Honestly, 'not nice' didn't even come close.

Despite that, I continued to lead Shigure into the night. I couldn't help but wonder if this was how Sakaki had felt when he had taken me on my first Underworld field trip. Back then I had no idea just how dangerous the Underworld could be. I had been wounded, and very nearly died on that trip, but in the end I had survived and come to a new understanding of both my Masters and the path in life that I was beginning to walk down.

I could only hope that the same could be said for Shigure at the end of this trip. The other options that awaited both of us were nowhere near that pleasant.

*Scene Break*

There's a certain ambience which appears in red light districts that definitely takes some getting used to. It was unfortunate that I hadn't been around enough of those kinds of places to be properly acclimatized yet, because I was pretty sure I was flushing noticeably at being in one now.

Maybe if it had been a different district I might have been able to bull through without letting it get to me. If it was someplace more modern like Roppungi or Shinjuku then it would probably have been much louder and brighter out. If it was like that I would have been able to let the noise and colors distract me and been able to ignore the seedier aspects of the street around me. I had been to a number of different loud places during my time at Ryouzanpaku after all. The bright night life that would accompany one of Sakaki's bodyguard jobs and the trips to the underground fighting rings or the somewhat dirty atmosphere that went along with visiting Ma's uncle in Chinatown were actually scenes that I was getting used to.

But this, this was something different all together.

It was quiet, almost relaxingly so, in the belly of Asakusa's sin district. In the more modern parts of Tokyo it would have been easy to convince myself that I was simply in the heart of a loud and disreputable party where some people were just making bad choices and the rest were just trying to have a good time. Here though, among the soft spoken crowds of intent men and distant women there was no atmosphere of enjoyment, no air of distraction.

Just about everyone here but Shigure and I were here for one reason and one reason only. Lining the streets were booths that set only a dozen or so feet back into the rest of the buildings with doors that led deeper into the structures. In those pseudo parlors women waited, dressed in all manner of costumes ranging from the casual to the provocative to the just plain depraved. The men who had come to this district walked down the street, quiet for the most part though every once in a while one or two would have drunk a little too much and speak artlessly loud as they continued their merrymaking to the next logical conclusion.

And every once in a while those men talking to those waiting women would come to an agreement, and the women would take the men by the hands and lead them into the back where they would no doubt…

I flushed even redder.

Okay. No need to think any further about just what would happen next.

Despite the unsettling nature of the quiet atmosphere, I was actually a little thankful that this wasn't a raucous sort of place. Earlier I had thought that Shigure and I probably looked like nothing more than a couple out on a date. Here, with Shigure's too short kimono and my slightly formal outfit, we still looked like we were together though now the association had less innocent overtones to it. If this was one of the livelier districts in Tokyo then I might have to worry about other revel makers making assumptions about Shigure's line of work and maybe getting to forward.

Yeah, Shigure would probably be more than enough to put any one who thought her a woman of the night in their place fairly easily, considering just how well armed and just how competent she was in a fight, but then we would probably have to do a lot of running from law enforcement after she was finished with an overly forward wannabe lothario.

Here the worst the two of us received was idle looks of curiosity from the working girls, and a few appreciative glances from those who hadn't yet selected the company they would be keeping for an hour or so.

Despite my discomfort I could sort of understand why it was that the kitsune had chosen a place like this to set up residence for a bit. Asakusa's red light district had a definite feeling of age to it, a quiet sort of atmosphere that lent the streets a mysterious feeling. It felt like this was the kind of place where strange encounters and unusual things might happen, as though the buildings and the pedestrians alike were some sort of cover, a façade which concealed the true nature of the district while unknowable things were happening just out of sight and hearing.

That didn't mean I wanted to stay here any longer than I had to though. If anything it increased my urge to find the kitsune and complete my business with her so that I could get the hell out of here and get back to someplace which didn't unnerve the hell out of me.

Now if I could just find that fox, I would do just that.

"Have you found it… yet?" Shigure asked again, just as she had every five minutes for the last three quarters of an hour. I wasn't quite certain just how the swordswoman was handling the scene we had made our way onto herself, seeing as she was once more in her 'stoic Martial Artist' persona. Though she didn't appear the least bit uncomfortable, that didn't necessarily mean that she wasn't feeling discomfort.

On one hand, she was a Master class fighter, someone who regularly made their way into ambushes and fought armed killers. There was no way of knowing just where some of the hunts for her father's swords had taken her. For all I knew she had visited scenes which put even this one to shame when it came to indecency.

On the other hand, she was also a young lady who was currently walking down a place where most of the other young ladies were being paid to do various unsavory things just out of sight. If it hadn't been for the fact that Shigure herself had forced herself onto this trip against my will then I would be feeling immensely guilty about having her be exposed to this kind of thing in order to accompany me.

As it was, despite my unwillingness to have her along I was still feeling a little guilty anyway.

"Not yet," I told her, having trouble looking directly at my accompanying Master. It just felt way too uncomfortable at this point. Instead, I focused my eyes on the streets around us: specifically, at the various signs and names which generally hung directly above the booths where the women working waited.

"What are you… looking for?" Shigure added when I didn't continue. If I were to hazard a guess it would seem that even she was starting to get a little impatient with having to walk the streets as I searched. Truthfully, we had been up and down the narrow alleys of the Red Light district three or four times by now. Asakusa didn't exactly boast the biggest selection of this sort of… entertainment… as it was, and it didn't take long at a moderate pace to be able to cover most of the streets that were part of this district.

Despite that, I still hadn't managed to locate our final destination.

"I'll know when I see it," I told her, trying not to grimace at the vague answer. At least, I hoped I would.

It wasn't like it was easy to track down and locate a mystic creature in the middle of a city with a population that boasted millions after all. It's not like I could just go to the yellow pages or make a google search. Actually, I had tried that once out of curiosity. 'Where can I find a kitsune?' in the search box had yielded a rather large selection of otaku stores that sold a great deal of merchandise that involved foxes that stared in a number of animes, but no convenient location of consulting magical creatures. It was equally pointless to ask people as well. I could just imagine the reaction of Niijima if I had tried to consult any of the Shinpaku Alliance about that kind of thing.

In the end I had to resort to less conventional means of searching. I'm pretty sure Ma had been surprised when I asked him to teach me the divination technique he had used to locate Niijima after the alien had been kidnapped by Loki of Ragnarok. I had been able to pass it off as curiosity, seeing as I had still been bed bound and recovering from the injuries I received while searching for Miu.

I wasn't the best at that kind of thing, but I had seen various types of charms and spells in use before. I wasn't exactly the best at things like ofuda or mystic arts like some of the people I had come across were, but I knew they were real and I wasn't exactly a normal person myself so that gave me a bit of an edge. Besides that, even if a direct search wasn't very helpful the internet still had uses for that kind of thing. The Shinpaku alliance had a pretty effective information gathering division that was even able to find info on the movements of Yami given enough time. If you knew the right places to look online then you could find a surprising number of things concerning the Nightworld.

In the end I had managed to find what I was looking for, get information on just what I could expect, and even managed to find a general location to search.

It's just that the difference in general and specific was starting to get a little bit annoying, that was all.

"Do you see it… yet?" Shigure asked, and I was just about to sigh at yet another example of how so many Masters tended to behave like kindergartners when I paused, something catching my attention completely unexpectedly.

"Actually…" I began slowly, not able to take my gaze off this particular sign. "Yes. I think I do."

Shigure glanced at me before coming to stand beside me so she could follow my gaze. "Kaisou No… Niwa?" she read out loud a hint of confusion in her voice.

"The Garden of Seaweed," I repeated, narrowing my eyes. Well. As signs go, that was a little obvious actually. How had I missed it before? Looking around, I double checked the street we were on. Yeah, it looked familiar. I could recall seeing the establishments on either side of the Garden of Seaweed at least twice while we were wandering up and down the district. Despite that, I couldn't recall having seen this particular sign at all.

It was wooden, the words engraved with black ink and looking slightly faded. It was lit from the side with a genuine old fashioned chouchin, a lantern made of thin red paper and holding an actual candle inside of it. Beneath it, unlike the other parlors which were open to the night, there was only an equally old looking sliding door in the traditional style open only a few inches. A soft yellow glow illuminated the paper of the door from the inside, giving the establishment a warm looking feel to it. Compared to the glaring neon or faded plastic of its neighbors this particular place looked old fashioned, almost respectable even.

"Is this the… place?" Shigure asked, still studying the strange sign and old fashioned door. Pulling my eyes away from the same sight I glanced around the street. It still looked the exact same as it did earlier, quiet men pacing to and fro as they eyed their surroundings and patient women lounging idly as they waited for their next liaisons. It took me a second before I realized that besides Shigure and I no other soul on the street seemed to notice the innocuous door, not the women who were waiting on either side or directly opposite it, or the men who were passing it by from either direction.

In fact, I realized that just like the door no one seemed to be paying any more attention to Shigure and me either.

"Yeah," I said slowly, fighting off a brief chill. "Yeah, this is the place."

Taking a deep breath I stepped forward, one hand coming up before pausing before it touched the old looking wood of the screen. It's not too late, I reminded myself halfheartedly. You could still turn around and leave.

Instead of following the very good advice, I forced my hand to finish the trip, pushing the door the rest of the way open with a soundless slide and entering immediately afterwards.

It was like stepping back in time, the difference between the street outside and the inside of the Garden was so great. The room itself was rather thin but a bit long, the first half of the foyer floor composed of grey bricks. A few feet into the room the floor raised and changed to a soft brown wood, marking the delineation where guests were expected to remove their shoes before entering the rest of the building proper. Beyond that there was a thin silk screen printed with delicate peonies which partially covered the doorway into the rest of the building. The corridor was dimly lit with low burning candles set at irregular intervals throughout the corridor.

There was only one other person present in the corridor as Shigure stepped in behind me, closing the door behind her as she did so and cutting us off from the rest of the world. They were kneeling a short distance in on the wood on a thin looking pillow, and like the rest of the room it looked as though they were a throwback to the old days. Dressed in a simple yukata with a yellow and green pattern on it, they had long black hair set with hair pins in it, the waiting person bowed as we entered, placing both hands on the floor in front of them and lowering their forehead until it touched the floor.

"Greetings, honorable customer," they intoned using the honorific form of address. I couldn't help but eying the greeter carefully, doing my best to try and get a read on them.

Honestly, I was also trying to determine their gender too.

When I first saw the greeter I originally thought that they were a man, judging from their facial structure. They had a rather sturdy chin, and pretty thick cheekbones as well as a prominent brow. It was hard to see anything else about them, seeing as they were wearing their yukata fully closed in the traditional fashion and with a thick obi securing it tightly. However, when they spoke it was with a surprisingly high pitched voice, a soprano which sounded extremely feminine, and using female speech patterns. I briefly considered that it was still a man who was just changing their tone, but the voice sounded too natural for it to be an affected one. When my eyes tracked down to the greeters throat to search for an Adam's apple in order to confirm its gender I found that they were wearing a thick chocker of lace which fully concealed their neck.

"I welcome you to this lowly establishment," the androgynous greeter continued. "Though this place is humble, I invite you in, Shirahama Kenichi-sama, Kousaka Shigure-sama. Please avail yourselves of the comfort of this establishment."

It would have been a disarming greeting, if it wasn't for the fact that not only had they known my full name, but also Shigure's as well. I could understand if maybe the one within had managed to determine that I had been looking for her ahead of time, but even I hadn't known that Shigure would be coming as well until I was already on my way here.

Well, I thought with another brief shiver, I had been searching for someone who would have knowledge that should be impossible to locate. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised that that knowledge would extend to other areas as well.

It didn't change the fact that it was creepy as hell though.

"Thank you," I told the greeter, still not sure what its gender actually was. Hastily, I remembered to bow back, my mind racing for the proper response to such a formal greeting. "We are honored to be received."

"It is us who are honored," the greeter finally raised their head, resuming a perfectly still sitting position. Again, I took in their features, trying to determine if the set of its eyes and cheeks were masculine or feminine. I just knew this particular mystery was going to annoy me. As though they didn't notice my intense scrutiny the greeter continued, still sitting perfectly still and with a placid and bland smile on their lips. "In what way may we be of service tonight?"

I honestly wasn't certain just what the intention of the question was. On one hand, the one responsible for this establishment had known who and how many were coming, and probably the exact time as well. If that was the case, than they probably knew damn well just why I was here.

On the other hand, well, considering where this place was located maybe there were other services that were offered.

Clearing my throat, and trying not to think about those other services lest my blush increase, I announced my intentions. "We're here tonight to meet with the Lady of the Front."

Behind me, unable to properly stand beside me due to the narrowness of the corridor I felt Shigure shift slightly as she responded to my statement. I wasn't able to tell precisely why she would react like that, and I hoped it wasn't because she had recognized who I was asking to see. I was using only her title, after all. The greeter on the other hand merely smiled a little wider, the vacant look in its eyes remaining unchanged.

"Please," they told me, bowing formally again. "The Lady is expecting you. By all means: enter."

I hesitated for a moment, though that was more because I wasn't certain whether or not the greeter was going to stand to lead the way as was typical in these kinds of polite settings. Instead, they simply remained with their head pressed to the floor, not moving. Finally, I cleared my throat and started to make my way down the corridor, pausing only long enough to remove my shoes as I did so.

"The Lady… of the Front?" Shigure repeated softly, and when I glanced back I could make out some curiosity in her voice but no alarm. That was good.

"Just remember," I reminded her, also keeping my voice soft. "Be polite. No matter what happens, be excruciatingly polite."

I think most people might become a little nervous at my insistence on the place of manners here, but Shigure just nodded again slowly, following behind me closely. Despite her calm exterior I noticed that she had both of her hands resting on the inside of her coat, probably within grasping distance of any of a number of her weapons despite my earlier insistence that she not attack for any reason.

Well, it was Shigure. Maybe she just liked having her hands on her blades.

It wasn't a very long trip to find ourselves in the presence of the Lady. In truth there only appeared to be two other rooms in the entire building, the one waiting directly behind the peony screen and a set of doors on the opposite side of the room which I noted only distantly. The room itself was exquisite.

It was in the old style, just like the rest of the building had been so far and was far wider and more spacious than the hallway had been. In the very center of the room was a brazier set deep into the floor, the heat of the glowing coals inside seeping into the rest of the room. There were silk veils of various shades of green hanging down from the ceiling, which made the ceiling seem lower than it really was. It took me a second to notice that they were apparently hung in particular fashion, tracing strange geometric shapes across the ceiling in a dizzying cacophony of colored cloth.

Set all along the walls of the room were yet more screen arranged to follow the outline of the room. There was another motif in these screens: they all seemed to depict various underwater scenes set with schools of brightly colored fish. However, despite the locations they were meant to depict the plants in each of them appeared to be various flower bushes. I realized that if I squinted at them they seemed to change, and that instead of fishes the bright colored spots were instead flowers and the blues which had first made me think of water could also be interpreted as the sky.

'The Garden of Seaweed' indeed.

Keeping with the motif, two pillows were set directly in front of the brazier, both in cool shades of green and blue, which were no doubt meant for Shigure and I to seat ourselves on. Already placed between and a bit in front of the cushions was a tea set and delicate looking cakes, the cups made of delicate porcelain and already full of prepared tea. There was a haze to the air, partially I think from the smoke rising from the brazier but the smell of it was off. It had a slightly aromatic scent to it, and I realized that either the coals had been set with incense or that there were censors burning somewhere in the room, maybe hidden behind the screens.

There was only one other occupant to the room. On the other side of the brazier from where we were apparently supposed to sit a fox lounged.

There was nothing to reveal that the woman was a kitsune. Despite that, I just knew, the same way as I had when I had just known that the Shikome was watching Chikage and that the wolf was going to be trouble.

The fox was…

Well, the fox was hard to describe.

The first impression I had was of the long black hair, shining with distinct luster in the dimly lit room. Her hair was long, falling in a wave down over her shoulder and across her back. She was half laying half leaning on the only other piece of furniture in the room, a low slung nagaisu, a chaise that was used in the old days when a woman in full kimono needed to recline but couldn't quite manage it while wearing restrictive kimonos or similar dress. One side was raised enough for a user to lean on while the other had no such end cap so that the legs could be stretched fully. Despite the fact that the Nagaisu was meant as a method of relaxation for those wearing restrictive clothing, the fox didn't seem to need it for quite that reason.

Her clothing didn't look restrictive at all, as a matter of fact.

She was wearing a yukata as well, a dark blue shade with a pattern of red flames that started at the bottom and lightened to yellow as it branched in irregular swathes upwards. However, instead of the proper method of wearing it the yukata was far too loose. It hung low on her shoulders, opening wide down the front and was similarly disarrayed on the bottom so that it opened high enough for one of her legs to peak out at the knee, a flash of white skin among dark fabric. .

The only other thing that stood out was the thin fur stole she was wearing settled just as loosely around her shoulders as her kimono was. The fur of the stole was a dark auburn, a shade between brown and red, and very thick.

It was so obviously suspicious that I didn't even bother to speculate on just what kind of animal the fur came from.

She was reclined on her side, one arm peeking out from beneath billowing sleeves as it rested on the cushion, the other up and holding a delicate fan with a hydrangea pattern on it open in front of her head, concealing all but the smallest portion of her face. I could make out a flash of her profile, high cheek bones and thin eyebrows, and then the fan moved and even that portion of her face was concealed

I wouldn't be surprised if the rest of her face was thin, and her eyes were set close as well. That set of features was called 'kitsune-gao', or fox faced. It was considered a rather attractive build among Japan actually, seeing as our women tended more towards 'heart shaped' faces rather than angular ones. It was also, according to legend, one of the indicators that a woman might actually be a fox in disguise.

The fox giggled, four low throaty noises rising gently. "Well?" she began, her voice languid and throaty. "Won't you please sit down?"

I realized that I had been staring, and that I had lost track of time while doing so. Behind me, I heard Shigure draw a soft breath herself and realized she too had frozen when she had entered the room.

Slowly, I forced myself to move, feeling awkward as I moved to take a seat on one of the offered cushions. It took an act of will but I finally managed to drag my eyes away from the waiting kitsune. I caught sight of Shigure as well as she seated too, and realized that she was also having the same trouble I was.

I just couldn't stop looking at the fox. She was just too beautiful.

And the funny part was, I couldn't tell WHY I thought she was beautiful.

Yes, the fox's human form was attractive, but not in a way which would inspire abject staring like both Shigure and I had been doing moments ago. Her proportions were apparent even beneath her kimono, but her body wasn't in any way spectacularly developed: her hips were thin rather than lush or prominent, her waist was small but not hour glass, and while her bust was apparent due to the dipping nature of her yukata it wasn't anything particular to take note of. Shigure's was actually far, far bigger than the fox's, and my Master tended to show almost as much of her chest as the fox was at the moment. Similarly, the fox's skin was pale, very white in the dim light, but not so pale as to be outstanding there either.

However, when all of this was taken together, there was something mesmerizing about the lounging Lady before us. Perhaps it was more than just her physical features. The absolute ease that she held herself in, the poise that was present even while she was simply reclining, the personality that was apparent in every minute motion she made, it all added together to give the fox a presence that was so hard to ignore.

Or perhaps, I reminded myself forcefully, it has something to do with the fact that she's a creature renowned for its abilities with illusion and ensnarement, and maybe it was using those on you right now, Kenichi.

As though she was sensing my thoughts, the kitsune giggled again, those same four ascending notes as she continued to hide her face behind her fan.

"Please," the Lady of the Front spoke again, and the fan shifted enough to give a glimpse of red lips and white teeth presenting a small smile as she spoke. "Be at ease, Shirahama-kun, Kousaka-san. Help yourself to the refreshments that have been prepared."

"Thank you," I responded again, bowing from my seated position. It was a stiff movement, one I had a bit of trouble performing properly considering the circumstances.

"Such a formal young man," the fox noted, the fan drifting back down to cover her mouth, and in doing so revealed an elegantly trimmed eyebrow. I found my eyes drifting to the newly revealed portion of her face, and couldn't help but note how dark the thin eyebrow was, how well cared for it seemed to be. The fox giggled again, and I realized that I had begun to stare without realizing it.

"Tell me, Shirahama-kun," the fox began, her tone mischievous and light hearted. "Do you know the different between a fortune teller, a seer, and an oracle?"

I blinked not having expected such an unusual question. I narrowed my eyes, trying to figure out what the fox had intended with the question. "Well," I began, "there are some who would say that all three are the same thing."

"Some?" the fox prompted, her fan slipping back down to conceal her face completely, waving idly as it did so. She sounded like she was disappointed in my answer, and despite myself I found myself wanting to give a better answer.

"I suppose that fundamentally, all three are the same in that they produce similar results," I elaborated. "All three are diviners, professions gone to by people who want answers about something. The difference between the three is how they go about doing so."

The fox's fan paused, and it moved again to reveal a small portion of the fox's face. "Oh?" she hummed, sounding more interested in this answer. "And how would you say that what all three do are different?"

"All three are gone to when someone needs a question answered," I elaborated, pursing my lips as I considered my answer. "But the way that they do so is different. For the fortune teller, they can answer questions about the present or future by reading the signs of a person, or by analyzing certain aspects of someone's life in order to find answers. They use things like the stars or palms in order to divine answers."

"Indeed," the fox definitely seemed pleased by the response. She shifted, rolling a bit until she was more on her back then her side. As she did so, she raised the leg that was partially exposed by the hem of her kimono, placing her foot on the ground so that her knee was raised. The movement caused the tail of her yukata to fall open, the dark fabric trailing down her pale skin. It was a move that seemed designed to call attention to the shape of her leg as dark blue silk whispered as it fell open.

"In the case of a seer," I continued, my eyes lingering on the newly exposed shape of her calf, "they answer questions through the use of visions. The two most common types of visions are either of events that either already have or someday will happen, or visions that use metaphors to answer questions."

"Very good, Shirahama-kun," the fox praised me, sounding delighted by my elaboration. As though to reward me, her fan shifted again to reveal even more of her face, the line of her cheekbone peeking out from behind the silk. The movement seemed to shift her arm enough, and the sleeve of her yukata shifted like the hem had, another wave of silk revealing inch after tantalizing inch of white forearm before it pooled on the inside of her elbow. "And an oracle?"

"An oracle is different from the other two in that they receive answers directly, usually given directly to them from some other source," I started to pick up speed in my explanation, partly because I was starting to warm up to the topic, and partly because of thoughts of how the fox might move in response to my next answer. "A fortune teller reads signs from the world around them, while a seer uses their own power to divine answers. The oracle though, they are given the answers to a question directly."

"Marvelous," the fox tittered, giggling her four pitch giggle again, The fan shifted, and I the shape of her cheek became the line of her jaw, a hint of her lips just barely peeking out in a smile. "I've heard many things about you, Shirahama-kun, and it seems that they don't disappoint!" The foxes back arched slightly, and the front of her yukata shifted, a patch of the delicate arches of her collarbone that hadn't been visible before becoming bare as she did so.

My throat felt a little dry, partly from speaking and partly from the ache that each new movement inspired in me. With fumbling hands I managed to find my tea, bringing it to my lips and sipping it quickly. The movement pulled my head slightly to the side, and I saw Shigure doing the same. The stoic swordswoman didn't seem to mind the fox's provocative movements. If anything, it looked like she was just as captivated by them as I was.

Captivated….

I felt like I should be paying more attention to that word, but the fox spoke and instantly all my attention was on her.

"Now, Shirahama-kun," she spoke, her voice a purr, and the movement of her chest caused her yukata to shift, more of her pale skin exposed with each breath. "You came to me seeking answers, did you not? Answers that you wanted so badly you would even come to one such as I?" Her fan shifted, more of her smiling lips being bared, and she giggled again. "So what sort of diviner do you suppose I am? A fortune teller? A seer? Or an oracle?"

"I know you're not an oracle," I admitted immediately, shaking my head. "Only a zenko kitsune would qualify as an oracle. It's possible that you are a seer though: you have the power for it." The fox preened at my estimation of her skin, and she rewarded me yet again by shifting her fan even more. I could just make out the very edge of her eyes now, just the slightest tip. I found myself wanting to see more, to be able to tell what color those eyes were. They must be beautiful…. "But you're not quite a fortune teller either. I know you don't need things like the stars in order to find information out: you can learn things with far less."

"Mmmm," the fox hummed and the hem of her yukata fell lower, revealing her creamy thigh. My throat felt dry, and I reached for one of the cakes that had been supplied, using it as a way to distract myself from the vision of beauty in front of me. "You honor me, with such praise," she murmured. I could see more of her eyes now, the pale white of her sclera. "I am so pleased to have such a knowledgeable guest in my house," she admitted, and her voice sound both coy and coquettish as she giggled again.

"It shames me to have such humble offerings for such esteemed company. However, I must do my best as a host," she added, her voice a diffident musing. "Why, if I was a less fortunate host, I would have nothing to offer my guests but sewage water and the maggoty corpses of rats!"

But that was ridiculous, of course. Why, the cake in my mouth was positively delicious, and the tea had been just as marvelous. It wasn't like my senses would lie to me about….

I froze, mid chew. Beside me, Shigure continued to snack away just like I had only moments ago, but across from me the fox's fan paused in its ceaseless shifting.

Oh. Oh that bitch.

It was said that the illusions of fox's were so life like that to the senses they were indistinguishable from reality. Sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste: those under the illusions of a fox experienced only what the fox wished them to.

'Sewage water and maggoty corpses of rats' the fox had said….

Slowly, deliberately not thinking about what I was doing, I chewed the bite in my mouth and then forced myself to swallow. With forced calm, I put the rest of the cake down on the plate I had taken it from. Shigure didn't seem to notice, but the fox most certainly did. Sitting very still, I waited until my still unaware Master reached to take her tea cup again and then firmly caught her wrist. Shigure, who had been staring at the fox with an unusually intense gaze despite her stoic face almost jumped at the contact, her free hand making it halfway to the hem of her coat before it froze as she realized what she was doing.

"We are exceedingly lucky that you are indeed a most generous host," I told the fox, doing my absolute best to keep my voice polite.

And not throw up.

For a moment the fox remained still, and then her fan began its restless twitching again, a movement which so naturally covered her face that if I hadn't been watching for it I would have thought it nothing but coincidence.

And again the fox giggled.

When had the fox bewitched us? It was actually impossible to tell at this point. Had it been when she had begun speaking? Or when it had started shifting? Maybe it had been before, when we had first entered the parlor? Or before, when I had first caught sight of something that no one else seemed able to see?

It didn't matter at this point. I had known that this would happen the moment I had made up my mind to come visit this creature. I had prepared myself to receive its attention.

It was still less disgusting then when the Shikome had kissed me. There had been maggots involved in that too, after all.

The fox giggled, and she brought her other hand up to help grasp her fan. The movement did noticeable things to the open front of her yukata, and despite the fact that I had managed to recover a bit of self-control I couldn't stop myself from looking. Still holding Shigure's wrist I felt her stiffen as she too reacted to the sight, and I found the fact that even a Master like her couldn't quite shake off the spell the kitsune had us in to be equal parts reassuring in regards to my own capabilities and disturbing at the realization that I wouldn't be able to rely on the super-powered Martial Artist to save us if things took a turn for the worse.

"But I have been rude," the fox exclaimed, and though her face was still covered I got the distinct impression that it wasn't me she was looking at now. "It is shameful to neglect one guest for another. Are you enjoying your time in my house, Kousaka-san?"

"…No," Shigure said, and I had the impression that if it hadn't been for her deliberate pause the answer would have been immediate. I winced, and the waving of the fox's fan increased. For a moment I couldn't tell if the fox was upset or pleased by the swordswoman's usual bluntness.

Then the fox giggled again, and I realized that despite the normally cheerful sound I still couldn't get a read on the fox's mood. I was beginning to suspect that giggle to mean something more sinister for the fox than that kind of noise meant for others.

"Oh, how terrible of me, as a host," the fox murmured, and from the corner of her fan white skin peaked again. "It seems that I shall have to endeavor to more properly fulfill my role." The fox cocked her head to the side. "Perhaps I shall be able to redeem myself after I have answered your questions, Kousaka-san."

The offer startled me almost as much as it seemed to startle Shigure. The thought that the fox might treat my Master as a supplicant the same as me had never even crossed my mind.

"What kind of… answers?" Shigure finally asked, and I gave her a quick look to try and get a read on her mood. The swordswoman looked even more unreadable than she usually did and I realized that I couldn't make heads or tails of what she was thinking. "I don't have any… questions."

"Oh?" the fox hummed, and her fan moved again as she rolled back over onto her side, leaning closer as though to get a better look at Shigure. "I could have sworn you did," the fox continued, giggling again. "Perhaps a question of how to grow closer to your …Disciple?" The fan moved enough for me to see the corner of her eyes again, just enough of them so I could see where they were pointed.

Shigure followed the fox's gaze down to where my hand was still holding her wrist. I had actually forgotten that it was still there, and it seemed that Shigure had as well as she quickly pulled her arm free.

"Leave that… out of it," Shigure's voice was unusually low and slow, even for her. It looked like despite the progress the two of us had made as Master and Disciple, our relationship was still a sore spot for my youngest Master.

Which was why the fox had naturally chosen to bring it up.

It hadn't been coincidence that the fox had only bothered to ensnare the two of us long enough for us to eat what had been offered, and that the moment we had the fox had let slip what she had about the refreshments. And when I had broken free enough from her ensnarement to react to that information it wasn't weakness in her power that had let me do so, or kept her from doing it again.

After all, she had already gotten what she wanted from the offered food. She had already seen the reaction I had when I realized what we were most likely eating. Just like now, as the fox turned away from Shigure to refocus her attention on me, the fox had obviously been satisfied with her prying into Shigure and mine relationship. The only reason the fox had done either of those things was because she had wanted to hurt us, after all.

The Lady of the Front enjoyed hurting things.

"Shirahama-kun most certainly has questions," the fox continued as though she hadn't heard Shigure at all. "It was why he decided to search for me, after all." She giggled again, the fan giving a glimpse of those full lips once again so that we could make out her smile. "I was so excited when I learned of his interest," she continued. "After all, it is so rare for anyone to seek me out so deliberately, and even rarer when they seek me for answers, rather than other things."

"Legends of your wisdom remain, even in this day and age," I admitted, hoping that a little shameless flattery might be appropriate. The fox giggled again, and then dashed my hopes that I kindness might be enough to make her relent.

"There are many other wise ones still remaining, Shirahama-kun," she reminded me, a flash of her lips as she moved her fan accompanied by a flash of her thighs as she resettled her leg. "But then again, how many of those would have anything to do with a thing like you?"

'Thing like you.' She spoke the words so casually, as though she was just commenting on the weather, or the furniture. As though I wouldn't understand the underlying meaning behind it as I flinched, my eyes falling to the floor briefly. My body felt hot as something which wasn't quite shame but not quite regret flooded through me.

"After all, what would a fortune teller do if they were to see the signs marking you for an abomination?" she continued, her voice whimsical as she continued to launch barbs at me. "Or how would a seer react if they were to have a vision of your freakish nature? And what oracle could possibly have a god kind enough to answer the questions of a monster?"

The fox giggled again as I reacted to each vicious dig. My eyes closed, and I grimaced as she spoke. A part of me wanted to shout at her, to deny her words. Another part of me wanted to storm out, to leave this vicious bitch behind and go somewhere, anywhere, where I could be assured that I would never come across her again. Another part, a part that was hot and vicious, desperately wanted to abandon myself imposed rule about never striking a woman and to slug the mouth fox straight in the kisser.

I didn't do any of that though. I had known what the fox was like before coming, had known what she would most likely put me through before she would answer my questions. And I wanted those answers, even if it meant having to deal with this thing in front of me.

Besides. It wasn't as though she was wrong either. I wasn't human, not really. Sure, I was infinitely close to being a human, but that closeness didn't make me a human. Nothing would change the fact that I had been eaten by a vampire, and that I had become one for even a brief time. There had been only one way for me to have returned all the way to being just a man again.

I missed that chance a long time ago. Considering what it would have meant, I didn't even regret the decision to let it go.

Because of that, I continued to remain quiet as the fox giggled that wicked laugh of hers, her fan shaking with repressed mirth.

Unfortunately, my attempt at stoicism was interrupted by something I really should have seen coming.

"Shut… up," the voice next to me interrupted the fox's amusement and I glanced up to find Shigure with narrow eyes glaring at the creature across from us. I had actually almost forgotten that my Master was present for a moment. The reminder that she was nearby helped a little, pulling me back from my bleak thoughts.

"Oh?" the fox hummed briefly, her fan covering her face again as she did so. It moved, and a flash of white teeth was briefly visible as the fox let us see its leer. "But that's just what Shirahama-kun is, after all: an abomination. Surely you've heard this by now? From that grizzled old god of that mountain, perhaps?"

It didn't surprise me in the least that the fox already knew about that encounter and what had happened there. If she wasn't so good at knowing these kinds of things I never would have searched for her in the first place. Despite that, it sent a brief chill down my body, interrupting the heat of shame that was still lingering, at hearing the casual way the fox spoke of things that it should be impossible for it to know.

"I don't… care," Shigure responded back, her sentence still choppy but her speaking speed a bit faster than her normal pace. The fox giggled again, and I was really beginning to hate that sound.

"Ah, but Kousaka-san," the fox went on in a sing-song voice. "Would you still not care if you knew? About the secrets that your so-called Disciple is keeping? The ones he doesn't trust you, or anyone else to know? It's hardly fair, is it? After all, you tried so hard to tell him your secrets, even using your old…friend," the fox teased the word 'friend' out slowly, as though she found the word amusing, "to tell your beloved Disciple, but he never did the same…."

"I said… shut up," Shigure repeated, and it was with a small bit of alarm that I realized that the volatile weapons mistress was becoming noticeably angered. It didn't even take my developed 'Shigure translation' skills to hear the growl in her voice this time.

"Shigure-san," I began, trying to interrupt and cool down my Master before she did something that would ruin everything, but I felt vaguely sluggish as the fox interpreted.

"But then again, perhaps it is to be expected," the Lady of the Front continued, her frame shaking with repressed laughter, causing her midnight yukata to slide across her bare skin again. "After all, it's not like there's any real connection between the two of you. You're naught but a Master and a Disciple, and barely that in the end. And how long would such a fragile bond last? In the end, you are just a swordswoman, Kousaka-san," the fox's voice was still teasing and light despite the hateful things she was saying, "and he is the Wicked Blossom, an abomination, a monster. A wretched, spoiled and useless thing…."

"Shut up!" Shigure snapped finally, unable to hold herself back in the face of such spite. I could only watch, knowing there would be no way possible for me to move fast enough to stop her as my Master pulled two shuriken from within the sleeve of her coat and launched them with inhuman speed at the fox.

They missed the fox, no doubt on purpose. Shigure probably only intended for them to be a warning, a means to get the fox to be quiet. They spun past the lounging female's head, coming close enough to her neck that I would have been freaked out if it had been me. The fox didn't even flinch. However, the shuriken continued past the fox, heading towards the wooden frame of the door where they would have embedded harmlessly.

Until the door opened right before they struck, the androgynous greeter from earlier having moved it aside from the classical kneeling position as they prepared to enter the room, and the shuriken instead buried themselves into their neck, cutting through lace chocker and flesh in a spray of crimson blood.

"No," I whispered, frozen in shock as the person fell. I could make out the shine of the steel for a moment before a spray of arterial blood erupted from the vicious gash, a red geyser the likes of which I had only ever seen in movies before. "No!" I repeated, and despite the lingering lethargy from earlier, I realized I was moving, throwing myself across the room and past the still reclining fox so that I could catch the wounded person as they fell with one arm. The other reached up instinctively to the shuriken before I stopped myself, not sure if I should pull out the weapon or if I should leave it in, or if it would even matter at this point. Another spray of arterial blood erupted, in time with the wounded one's heartbeat, splashing across my panicked hand and my cheek.

I had to do something, anything, or this person was going to die right here in my arms. Half remembered medical facts and emergency treatments flashed through my mind, and I finally settled for trying to clumsily pinching the still spraying vein shut, hoping that it would be enough. The blood on my hand felt hot, and it made my fumbling fingers slippery.

"Shigure-san," I snapped looking towards my Master and hoping she would know anything that would help in this situation, but when my eyes found her it was to discover that she was still kneeling on her cushion, hand still outstretched as she remained frozen. There was shock on her face, so obvious that anyone off the street would have been able to read it for what it was. I called again, "Shigure-san!"

My voice seemed too loud as panic gave it force, and it seemed that the second call was enough to pull her from her shock. Shigure's eyes moved from the body in my arms, meeting mine for a moment, and then they widened even more as horror began to set in as she seemed to grasp the enormity of the situation. She flinched, her hand dropping lifelessly to her side as she looked away, quickly, a sick expression on her face.

And between us, where she continued to rest without moving, the fox giggled again.

"Oh my!" the creature tittered. Those four throaty little noises, rising in pitch at a controlled pace: I was really beginning to hate the fox's laugh. "So much concern! Why, there's no need for such an expression, Shirahama-kun" she told me, and I glared at her, unable to maintain my stoic receptiveness to this thing's cruelty while someone was bleeding out with my hands were covered in their blood. "Why, cradling my old furisode to your chest like that. It's almost as if it were a real person!"

Furisode? A type of old kimono with long sleeves? What was she…?

My thoughts froze as when I glanced back at the dying person I realized that there was no one there. Instead of a warm body there was only cool cloth. My fingers were no longer slippery and stained with blood, and the gaping wound I had so desperately been attempting to close was nothing more than a small slit made where a thrown shuriken had slid through easily.

My body was once more slick with cold sweat, though my head felt hot and clouded as I tried to figure out what had happened. I had seen the shuriken strike, felt the warm spray of blood strike my face and on my hands, smelt the coppery odor of the life fluid as it stained the air. Yet it was all gone in a heartbeat, and now there was nothing but the cool feeling of silk and the musty smell of old clothes.

It clicked.

Oh. Bitch wasn't a good enough word for the fox.

I was really beginning to hate fox illusions.

My mind raced as I dumbly turned to look at Shigure, the outline of events being made clear in my muddled head. The fox hadn't just been insulting me in order to take cheap shots at my inhuman status, though it had no doubt enjoyed that aspect of her plot as well. She had been doing it to goad Shigure as well. She had wanted Shigure to react, to do what it was the weapon Master normally did: launch a warning strike. Then the fox had made us think that Shigure had just killed someone.

She had made a Katsujin Ken think they had just ended a life. More than that. She had made sure that it had happened where the Katsujin Ken's Disciple would witness it, all the while after having attacked the Master/Disciple relationship ruthlessly. The horror in Shigure's eyes when she had thought she had taken a life, compounded by the realization that she had apparently betrayed her ideals right in front of the one she was supposed to be leading, to be an example too…

Shigure was still frozen, though now her expression was unreadable even to my highly trained Shigure-interpretation skills. My Master was sitting statue still, arms still down at her side, staring at me as I held a moldy and ripped garment and stared back.

When the fox giggled again, I realized that I had been wrong. The sound didn't make me angry.

It frightened me.

I let the furisode slip from my sweaty grip, falling backwards on my backside as one hand came up to shakily wipe more cold sweat from my forehead. My legs felt weak, and I could feel them shaking slightly as I panted, trying to come down from the surge that the adrenaline had put through me.

"You should calm down, Shirahama-kun," the fox advised me as I buried my head into my palms, trying to slow my racing heart. "It was just some ratty old clothes. It's not as though I would do something so crass as change a corpse into a kimono, after all. What a poor host I would be if I were to deceive my guests in such a manner."

She said it so diffidently that the implication took a moment to sink in. Which was it? What was the truth here? Had the fox merely made us think that the kimono was a body in order to play her evil tricks, or was it the reverse? Was the fox making us think that the corpse was just clothes in order to reveal it again later, to let us have a moment of hope before she dashed it ruthlessly into pieces? Were the hands cradling my head as clean as they felt, or were they even now smearing even more blood across my face?

I had known what the Lady of the Front was like, but I had thought I could endure her games. I had been wrong. This was so much worse than anything I had imagined possible.

And then I glanced up, my body still feeling weak, and found the fox on all fours, fan missing, staring me dead in the eyes from only inches away.

I tried to back up, to flail away, but I realized that the weakness in my legs wasn't recovering, that it was only getting worse. I couldn't support my weight, and fell painfully onto my back, my arms like jelly as my head struck the floor. The strange lethargy and weakness combined with the sudden pain in my head, and I found that no matter how hard I tried I couldn't make my body move anymore.

I barely even noticed the realization that my body would no longer obey my command as I finally got my first unimpeded view of the fox's face.

It was definitely kitsune-gao, thin cheeked and close set eyes. Just as before, there was nothing special about her individual features. Her face was attractive, but not in any particularly outstanding way.

Despite that, I couldn't take my eyes off of her. Her eyes…. They were just normal eyes, no slits or anything else to reveal her animal heritage. They didn't gleam in the dark, nor were they any exotic shade. They were just dark eyes, the likes of which could be found on any other Japanese person throughout the country.

I still couldn't look away though.

The fox giggled again, and began crawling towards me, slowly moving over my body. Her lose yukata hung open, and if I could look anywhere other than the fox's eyes I would have been treated to a sight which would have had Miu covering my eyes in a heartbeat. All I could make out of it though was pale flesh, dark cloth, and that obvious auburn stole.

"Hmmm," the fox hummed, her voice throaty as she continued to climb over me. "Oh, this has been such a marvelous night," she sighed happily. "It has been ages since I've had guests as accommodating as you two."

When she was fully over me she sighed again, before letting her upper body slump collapse forward in a graceful heap on top of me. She dropped an elbow onto my chest, using her hand to support her chin as she smiled down at me. Her free hand came up to my face, her fingers resting lightly against my cheek as she spoke. I could feel her nails pressing lightly against my skin, dimpling my flesh slightly as she began to trail her hand down. My body felt even hotter than it had as I lied there helpless, feeling a cloud settle over my thoughts. Her hand continued down, tracing my neck slightly.

"However," the fox continued as her wondering fingers finally reached the edge of my shirt. "It simply wouldn't be proper for me as a host if I were to ignore the reason for my guests to visit." Her nails paused for a moment before they continued to travel downward. The nails which had traced me so gently did not hold the same regard for my clothing, and I gasped as they parted my shirt effortlessly. Slowly, the fox continued to cut through my shirt, revealing the lean muscles beneath.

"Hmmm," the fox hummed again, and then she giggled once more. "Oh, if only you hadn't come to me for answers," she noted, her voice sending a new heat into my body. "The things I could have done to you…" she trailed off, and I had a brief irrational moment of pride at the apparently positive reaction my body had drawn from the creature before I remembered some of the stories I had heard. When I shuddered, the fox just giggled again. "It would have been marvelous," she added, before glancing away from me to the side, a sly smile on her face. "Just as that one would have been."

'That one'. When the fox looked away, I found myself free of the spell of her eyes. My body still wouldn't respond, not properly, but I was able to look to the side. There.

My Master was still on the other side of the room, though she was no longer sitting. Instead she had sprawled forward, one hand out and extended towards me. It looked as though whatever paralysis I was under had befallen her as well. Despite that, I watched as the collapsed Shigure somehow managed to force her body into action. The fingers of her extended hand were grasping, plucking at the floor as though Shigure intended to pull herself forward using just those digits.

"Get away… from Kenichi," my Master managed to get out, her voice as weak as my body felt, and the fox giggled again. As though in response to her ineffective order, the fox finished cutting open my shirt and in one languid motion brought her hand up, resting her fingers against my chest. I felt goose bumps rise from her touch.

Then, without any warning, the fox adjusted her middle finger until the nail was poised over the flesh of my chest, and then pushed. The nail sliced into me as easily as it had my shirt, digging into the dense muscles of my pectorals. I gasped as the fox cut me, feeling warm trickles as blood began to flow once more.

Across the room Shigure's fingers stretched again, and her body shook as my Master continued to try and force herself to move as she watched a monster carve into her Disciple.

Slowly, the fox continued to press her nail deeper and deeper into my flesh. I grit my teeth, trying to endure. The pain was unexpected, and all the more unavoidable because of it. My breath was ragged as I tried to deal with the sudden feeling of being slowly cut open, and knowing that there was nothing I could do to stop it. It should have been a horrifying experience, something unavoidable and unstoppable, and it should have been the pain which was inspiring the fear I was feeling inside.

Instead, the terror was coming from the fox's expression as she continued to hurt me for no other reason than to hurt Shigure. If there had been some sign of sadism on the fox's expression than I would have felt some form of relief. For humans who enjoy causing pain there is always some source of their enjoyment. Whether it be the satisfaction of having violated a rule, over having broken one of the taboos of human society, the feeling of power of having someone helpless in their grasp, there was always some realization that causing harm to others was in some way wrong even if it was being enjoyed. Even if the wrongness was what they enjoyed, a human hurting almost always had an expression revealing that they understood at some fundamental level that what they were doing was wrong.

The fox had no such tell. The expression on its face was bemusement at best, an innocence found only on the very young or the completely insane. For the fox, this whole scene was nothing more than one to be idly enjoyed, just some way to pass the time for a little while.

Lying here, in the arms of a beautiful woman-shaped creature, I found myself wishing I could trade back for the Shikome. However ugly it had been, at least its feelings had been benevolent.

"Now," the fox told me as she finished pressing her nail all the way into the muscles of my chest. I could feel the tip of her finger resting flush against my skin. "You came to me for a reason, Shirahama-kun. What is it you want?"

Well. Here it was. What I had been waiting for, what I had risked everything to get. I forced my tongue to work, and though my words felt thick in my mouth they were still understandable.

"What is the situation of Oshino Shinobu, once known as Kiss Shot Acerola Hearts Under Blade, and how can it be improved?"

I had to know. More than anything else, I had to know. From the mouth of this creature, who would know, and who would delight in giving me the answer. Just tell me the truth, so I can move on. Please…

The fox giggled, and the stole on her yukata twitched. With hazy eyes I watched as it pulled itself free from the cloth, twisting as it moved, somehow expanding as it began to unwind itself with no visible cause. One, then another, and then more, the stole separated into the individual tails of the fox. Yeah, I had called that one the moment I saw it.

As soon as they were free, all nine of her tails twisting and weaving in the air above me, the fox leaned forward, putting her lips next to my ear so she could whisper her answer to me.

If I hadn't already been unable to move, the answer to my question would have paralyzed me. If I hadn't already collapsed, then I would have then and there.

When the fox pulled back, she smiled at me, a wicked little grin, and then she leaned forward so she could force her lips onto mine. Unable to help myself I opened my own mouth, maybe in response to her kiss, maybe in shock, my head was too fuzzy for me to be sure anymore. I felt something warm and wet flow into my mouth and I couldn't stop myself from swallowing reflectively. The bitter taste of copper and iron lingered on my tongue.

Then, with one smooth motion the fox unsheathed her claw from me, bringing the digit up to her mouth so she could lick it seductively.

"There you go, Shirahama-kun," she told me, tittering again. "Exactly as you wanted, exactly as you've earned." Unable to move, I felt my consciousness growing dimmer as my body burned, hotter now than even before. I felt as though I was about to catch fire and immolate, as though my limbs had been replaced with lead, stone, and magma. I couldn't even move as the fox turned away, a smile on her face as she focused on the other occupant of the room.

"And now it is your turn, Kousaka-san," I heard the fox announce, and though I tried to stay awake, to move, to do anything, the last thing I saw before I passed out was the nine tailed fox as she began to crawl her way towards my helpless Master.

I knew I should have insisted she stay out of this.

*Scene Break*

It was a high pitched scream which pulled me out of unconsciousness. Well, somewhat out of unconsciousness. My head felt like it was stuffed full of wool, and my thoughts were fuzzy. It was bad enough that I couldn't quite remember what it was I had been dreaming but that whatever I had been seeing in my sleep had been horrible. Unremembered night terrors when combined with that screeching noise was enough for me to both begin and continue my journey back into consciousness.

Despite the strange ache in my head and the restless slumber, it was still harder than it should have been. For all the unpleasantness going on in my head, my body felt rather comfortable. My bed was unusually warm today, and my pillows especially soft, though it felt like I might have been resting on my arms too long: they had the typical numbness that only came after I had been sleeping on them for too long.

Still, I wished that I had remembered to pull my blankets up more. My back felt a little too cool, as though I had kicked my sheets off at some time during the night. Or maybe knotted them together somehow. There were noticeable bands of warmth across my shoulders and settled around my hips. I tried to shift to cover the rest of my body, but discovered that no matter how hard I tried I couldn't force my body to move.

How odd, I thought to myself fuzzily. Well, at least I'm comfortable…

"Holy shit!" another voice joined piped up as the high pitched voice began to trail off. Despite my sleep addled state it was one I recognized.

"Sakaki-sensei?" I muttered, before grimacing as the taste in my mouth hit me. God, what had I been eating last night?

"W-wow, midget," I was somewhat blearily realized that Sakaki of all people had somehow managed to develop a stutter at some point. "I didn't know you had it in you!" The tone of his voice was somewhat stunned, and had a note of awe in it. What the hell was he talking about?

"Forget that!" the high pitched voice came again, and I realized that when it was forming words I could identify it better. That was definitely Miu. "Shigure-san! What do you think you're doing?"

Shigure? Was she here too? What was going on again?

"This isn't what it… looks like," Shigure's voice sounded like it was genuinely nervous, which ordinarily would have been enough to make me sit up and take notice. Well, sit up and take notice if I could move my body at all, which I still didn't seem able to manage. But what really caught my attention about Shigure's voice was where it was coming from:

Right next to my ear.

I finally managed to pry my eyelids open, and when I did I sincerely wished that I hadn't been able to. Well… I guess that explained why my pillows were so soft:

Because my head was currently lying on Shigure's naked chest.

With that particular observation enough to force even my addled brain to work I began to get a better feel for the situation. Which, afterwards, I sincerely wished that I hadn't managed to do. Get a feel that is…

It appeared that the shock of my present position was enough to only further reduce my beleaguered brain's already meager capabilities.

It wasn't every day that you woke up to realize that you were bear assed naked, lying on top of your Master who just happened to be a young and very attractive woman who was also bear assed naked, with your arms wrapped around her while both her arms and her legs were wrapped around you.

Somehow, the two of us had ended up back in my room in the annex near the dojo of Ryouzanpaku in a position which could generously be called 'compromising' but more accurately should be labeled 'lewd and raunchy as hell'. And standing at the door to my room was none other than Sakaki, one of my other Masters, and Miu, the girl I was in love with.

What the hell had happened last night? Desperately I tried to remember how this had ended up happening while simultaneously struggling to pull free and come up with an excuse which would somehow magically manage to explain away this whole thing in a way which would make Miu understand that this definitely was not what it looked like…

And then I remembered just what had happened, and I groaned. Yeah. I suppose this would be just the perfect end to an already horrible experience.

If that fox didn't scare the hell out of me, I might just have hated her even more.

"Shigure-san and Kenichi-san," Miu was muttering to herself, one of her eye lids twitching as she did so. She was still dressed in her pajamas, the cat print ones that she like so much, and she had both of her hands raised in front of her. "Shigure-san and Kenichi-san," she repeated, as her hands seemed to alternate between making a triangle shape in the air in front of her and simulating a strangling motion that made me very, very nervous.

"W-well," Sakaki on the other hand looked like he was equal parts embarrassed as he was impressed. "Congratulations, Kenichi, Shigure," he continued, his cheeks red as he rubbed one hand behind his head, looking unusually awkward for someone who was normally so straightforward. "But are you two sure about this?" Hastily he held his hands up in front of him as though he was trying to ward off something. "I mean, if the two of you are together, that's fine," he quickly added. "But was now really the time to be making those kinds of decisions?"

"Together…" Miu repeated, her eyes starting to glaze. "Kenichi-san and Shigure-san… Together…." She trailed off as her arms slowly fell to her side. "Sakaki-san," she continued, her voice toneless. "I'm going to kill them both now."

"Whoa!" Sakaki snapped out, and just barely managed to grab a hold of Miu as the young girl started to stalk forward, the disturbing light that only showed up when the girl was about to give into her killer impulses shining in her eyes. "See what I mean about timing?" the karate user snapped as he struggled to hold back the much smaller girl. I'm sure he would have no trouble stopping her normally, but it looked like he was trying to be extra careful not to hurt Miu this time around.

Ugh. Yeah, I totally saw what he meant.

"Sakaki-sensei," I began, and grimaced as my voice slurred due to my body still not properly responding to my orders to it. "Help," I finally managed to get out.

"Kid, if you need help at this point than you should probably be going to Ma," Sakaki told me, still struggling to hold back the enraged Miu. I was beginning to hear other noises from around the dojo as the rest of Ryouzanpaku's Masters began to take note of the developing scene.

I decided to ignore the blunt karate user's misunderstanding to focus on more important things: getting clothes on Shigure and I before everyone else saw us like this.

"Can't move," I managed to get out next, and Sakaki's eyebrow rose in response.

"Damn," he whistled, sounding impressed. "I guess Shigure really must have gone hard on you last night then." While that particular interpretation just seemed to raise my Master's admiration, it also caused Miu to start trying a little harder to close the distance between herself and our still paralyzed bodies.

"We were… drugged," Shigure managed to add, and I glanced reflexively up at the face which was only a few inches above mine. Despite the fact that for the most part Shigure's expression seemed to have returned to her stoic norm, her cheeks looked a little red and she was making a point to keep her eyes looking anywhere but down at me.

"Drugged?" Sakaki repeated, and his eyes narrowed as he began to get the picture. "Are you two alright?" he finally asked, and Miu started to slow down in her attempts to kill the two of us.

"No," both Shigure and I told him at the exact same time. Shigure paused afterwards and then purposefully turned her head so it was looking away from me. I realized absently that it was morning, a time that usually accompanied a very embarrassing condition for a guy, a condition which was compounded by being on top of a very attractive woman, and that in my present state it wouldn't be hard for Shigure to notice the same problem that I was only now realizing I was having…

I felt a blush of my own forming.

"Just get Akisame-sensei," I sighed, and tried to think about calming things. Like baseball, or arctic glaciers.

It was just gonna be another one of those days. I could tell already.

*Scene Break*

"Well," Ma began, the smaller Chinese man's hands feeling strong and rough as they continued to massage the sore muscles of my left arm. "It looks like whatever it is is finally starting to wear off."

"Joy," I muttered, not having the energy to raise a more enthusiastic response. Gingerly I shifted, and for the first time in hours I felt as though my body was actually listening to me as I managed to raise the arm not being treated by Ma.

"This is most fascinating," Akisame noted, sounding clinically interested as he studied his patient from behind the curtain. I heard Shigure grunt once, though whether it was at the jujitsu user's words or in response to some unseen action I had no idea.

"So it's starting to wear off then?" Sakaki asked, sipping his beer as he did so. The karate user was giving me the same kind of look that he had given Miu yesterday, the look that said he was damn well upset about something, and it was only the beer in his hand which was keeping him from going out and doing something drastic.

"Well, it appears that way," Ma nodded before picking up another bottle of the tonic he had been applying to me. "I would have to double check the results on Shigure-donno though…"

That was as far as he got before a shuriken dropped and rolled its way across the floor to finally rest at his feet, apparently having been thrown without the force to make it far enough to actually fly. Ma looked down at the lackluster attack, and then back up at where it had originated from.

"Never mind," he sighed, sounding a strange mixture of disappointed and worried. "Maybe later." With another sigh, the lecher put the bottle of salve down and then without a word of warning grasped one of my legs, his strong fingers once more beginning to work at my muscles.

After the scene this morning had been sorted out and the fact that Shigure and I hadn't been caught in the middle of a secret tryst and did genuinely need assistance the dojo had quickly been conscripted into a makeshift infirmary for the two of us. With two outstanding Master doctors in the house the only original concern anyone had had been keeping Ma away from Shigure while she was incapacitated. Though the Chinaman had originally been rather enthusiastic in his offers to treat the female Master the duty had been split up so that Akisame would help Shigure and Ma would look after me.

What had started as a light hearted treatment had gradually grown more serious when both doctors realized that they had no idea just what had been used on the two of us. Honestly, even I wasn't sure what the fox had done to Shigure and I. I had no idea if the inability to move my body was some sort of drug or chemical, or maybe some application of the fox's magic, or whether the evil creature had just broken our spines and left us paralyzed for her own sick amusement.

Whatever the case, the situation had quickly moved out of the area of constant teasing and humiliation to semi-serious once the realization that we really did have a problem had been made.

However, once that problem was fixed there was no guarantee that it wouldn't return to that state at some point or another.

Miu ducked back under to my side of the screen that had been set up to provide privacy for Shigure as Akisame continued to treat her. Miu had at least calmed down at this point, though the Elder standing in the corner was making sure to keep his eyes on his granddaughter, a fact which I appreciated. Considering that Miu was still dealing with sudden and uncontrollable impulses to murder having the safeguard of the Invincible Superman was a somewhat comforting thing to have around.

"I'm so sorry about this morning," Miu addressed me, the apologetic look in her eyes enough to let me know she was being serious. I smiled at her warmly, and though the one she sent back was somewhat hesitant, I still treasured it. It was one of the first I had seen on her since we had begun our deprograming spars.

"It's fine, Miu," I assured her, and her smile grew less tentative as she gave me a quick look to reassure herself that I was being honest.

"Hmm," it was the Elder who spoke up this time. The enormous old man was kneeling with a cup of tea in the corner of the dojo, an area which let him split his attention evenly between myself, Shigure, and Miu as the Master continued to study each of us carefully. "While its good news to see the both of you recovering, I think it's about time we started talking about how the two of you ended up in this state to begin with."

"Damn straight," Sakaki muttered as well, before casually slamming a fist into the tatami next to him. I jumped a little at first, thinking the sudden motion a sign of the volatile karate user's temper. "And keep your hands off my drinking snacks," Sakaki grumbled, and I realized that he had just been thwarting Apachai's attempts at his beer nuts.

"Apapapa," the gentle giant mumbled, looking entirely too depressed for having simply been denied cashews.

"Secret… Underworld field trip," Shigure supplied, her voice coming from behind the screen. Beside me Ma sighed slightly as he continued to use one of his bizarre ancient Chinese techniques in order to help restore movement to my leg. It was a straightforward enough answer, and in Ryouzanpaku it was probably a decent enough excuse to brush our earlier situation under the carpet.

"Again?" Sakaki muttered, taking another swig on his beer. "Man, you've been hogging all the field trips lately, Shigure," he complained. If he was an any less intimidating figure then the look on his face would probably have been best described as 'pouting'. Instead it managed to come off as a scowl. "Don't you think you should let the rest of us have turns?"

"Hmm," Akisame let loose another contemplative sound before a sudden and horrific sounding series of pops emerged from behind the screen. "No," the mad doctor muttered. "It looks like that didn't help out any more. Strange. Resetting every joint in your leg should have increased your mobility by at least five percent. Maybe I should try again…"

I heard Shigure grunt once calmly afterwards, and shuddered. Akisame tended to get a little creative when he had a new puzzle to work on, and it appeared that he was taking his inability to instantly cure Shigure's paralysis somewhat personally. I was glad it was a fellow Master under his care, because if he tried something like that on me I would probably end up dying again.

"You have been taking Ken-chan out rather often lately," the Elder noted, stroking his beard slowly. "Are you sure that you are giving him enough time to recover between trips, Shigure-san?" It looked like the frequent excursions that the two of us had been taking for Nightworld business had finally started to draw attention from the rest of the dojo in general.

"More sword hunting…. in a week," Shigure just responded, and I remembered the offer she had made on the train about taking me along on more of her Underworld expeditions and shuddered briefly. Ma seemed to catch my physical reaction and gave me a sly smile of commiseration. I was pretty sure that the lecherous Master had decided that Shigure's sex appeal might have something to do with my recent increase in activities with her.

Actually, I was also pretty sure that the only reason he hadn't begged me for details yet about this morning was because Shigure still wasn't able to throw a Shuriken properly yet. It was strangely chivalrous, but it looked like Ma was waiting until the swordswoman was able to once more defend herself before he started engaging in his usual mad hijinks. I think the old man liked the chase almost as much as he did the prey.

"Again?" Miu moaned, sounding particularly aggrieved as she turned to glare at the screen separating us from Shigure. "Shigure-san, don't you think it's time you let Kenichi rest a bit? Hasn't he been through enough already? What if he were to get seriously hurt on one of your crazy trips?"

It was oddly comforting to hear that kind of worry from Miu. In the past she had always had a kind of 'protective big sister' thing going for her when it came to particularly dangerous elements of the Underworld. Lately, with the general awkwardness of our injuries and the dangerous spars we had been undergoing I hadn't had much a chance to spend with my fellow Disciple.

"Shigure-san," Akisame interrupted my thoughts, a note of worry in his voice. "Are you alright?" He paused for a moment, before continuing. "Maybe I shouldn't have bent that joint so far backwards after all…"

I shuddered again.

"I won't let anything happen to… Kenichi," Shigure finally responded to the still fuming Miu, and though the rest of the room seemed to take her words at face value they made me sit up straight. Ma paused, giving me a searching look as I interrupted his treatment. "Not… again."

It looked as though the rest of the Masters were appeased by the swordswoman's words as I glanced around the rest of the room. It actually took me a second to realize that they didn't hear the underlying tone in her voice. It was somewhat shocking to me to realize that it looked like out of all the Masters of Ryouzanpaku, I was the only one capable of interpreting Shigure well enough to hear the undercurrent of pain and regret in her voice.

Another little dagger sank into me, and I chalked up another notch on the list of reasons why I was the most insensitive jerk in the history of insensitive jerks.

"It is kind of cold to interrupt the kid's trip back to his family so that you could drag him off on another Underworld field trip," Sakaki noted, though his voice was carefully diffident as he did so. I had told the karate user that I was just going back to visit my folks before I had snuck out, and so to his eyes it must seem that Shigure had ambushed me and dragged me out into something against my will. I was at least glad that Sakaki was trying to be polite about his chastisement. For all his bluntness, the man did have a surprisingly good grasp of subtlety, or at least cunning, at times.

"…Sorry," Shigure added a few moments later, and I grimaced again.

"It wasn't her fault," I spoke up, dragging the attention of the entire room to me. I couldn't meet the curious eyes of my Masters, and stared resolutely at the futon I was resting in, my hands clenching in the loose medical scrub I had been dressed in while I was being treated. "It was my field trip."

I couldn't just sit here and let Shigure take the heat for this one. If I just stayed quiet, then all the blame would slide to her, and I would get off without even being noticed. All the Masters would just chalk it up to another field trip gone bad, quietly chastise Shigure for endangering their already wounded Disciple, and that would be it. But Shigure didn't deserve that. Not right now.

Last night she had volunteered to walk into the den of a monster with me, had refused to let me do it alone. And because she had tried her hardest to look after her Disciple she had been drugged, insulted, and hurt. The fox had deliberately implied that Shigure would never be a true Master to me, arranged an elaborate incident where it appeared as though Shigure had killed an innocent bystander, and then casually cut me while she had lain helpless watching. The fox had attacked everything Shigure held dear to herself: her bond as a Master to me, her ability to protect me from danger, and even her status as a Katsujin Ken.

And now Shigure was going to accept even more censure from her peers in order to help protect my secret for me. She didn't deserve any more injuries, not after what she had already had to go through last night. I had taken up Martial Arts in order to have the strength to stand against the evils of the world that no one else would respond to. If I let this happen, then I would be nothing more than a hypocrite that could hit hard.

"Kenichi-san?" Miu asked, turning away from where she was still glaring at Shigure's shadow on the screen so she could give me a confused look. Ma's hands paused in the middle of their massage, before they continued as though he hadn't noticed my announcement at all. Still looking down, I did my best to give the confused girl a smile as I forced myself to continue.

"I had heard about a dangerous information dealer who had made their way into town," I continued. "After I visited my folks, I was planning on seeing them. Shigure had Tochumaru keeping an eye on me, and when she found out what I was planning, she refused to let me go alone."

"As well she should," Akisame chimed in to the silence that greeted my word. I couldn't see the jujitsu user's face, but from the tone of his voice it seemed he thought my actions were pretty upsetting. "If the information broker you were going to see was dangerous enough to even get the drop on Shigure-san, than perhaps it would have been better if you had simply reported their existence to the rest of us as well." The disapproval was obvious in his voice. "Just who was it that you went to see anyway?" he continued, now with a note of curiosity. "I'm familiar with a number of different dealers, but I've never heard of anyone who uses a compound like this."

Ah. Trust Akisame to focus on professional curiosity. Still, I suppose I could answer his question. I had already gotten what I wanted, after all, and there was damn near no chance in hell that I would ever seek out the fox again.

"The Tamamo-no- Mae," I answered simply.

"Apapapa," Apachai broke in, sounding confused. "What happened before the seaweed?"

I was actually surprised that the gentle giant had made the connection. Tamamo was spelled with the kanji for 'ball' and 'seaweed' but considering that most reading of seaweed was pronounced 'kaizo' it was kind of unusual for the non-native speaking Japanese Apachai to make that kind of connection. The appellation '-no-mae' typically meant 'before' but 'in front' was also another translation.

"Not before-seaweed," Akisame told the gentle giant, and judging from the tightness in his voice it seemed that the philosophical Master was well aware of just how big a bomb I had dropped with my confession. So far, it seemed like he was the only one if I could judge the confused looks on the rest of the room. The Elder also seemed to recognize the title, and his eyes narrowed as one enormous hand came up to stroke his beard. "The Tamamo-no Mae. The Lady Tamamo of the Front. Yet another dangerous name," he added with a dark tone to his voice. "It seems kids these days really do like using auspicious titles."

"Tamamo of the front of what?" Sakaki asked belligerently, his eyebrows furrowed as he searched his mind for some memory that had to do with the name.

"In the days during and after the Heian period, station was often indicated through the use of a direction," Akisame explained, and I heard a rustle from behind the screen as Shigure reacted to the information. She had heard me use the Tamamo's title, but it seemed like she had no idea what it had indicated either. "For instance, in the Tales of Genji many of the characters were spoken of by their titles: the Minister of the Left, or the Secretary of the Right. The direction was used to indicate their importance or favor to the Emperor's court."

"So what? Some girl decided to use some old court title to make themselves feel important?" Sakaki snorted, and took another sip of his beer. "Doesn't sound that bad."

"It's not the title, it's the name," Akisame corrected, sounding bemused at the younger Master's indifference. "The Tamamo-no-Mae was the nine tailed fox that, according to legend, nearly destroyed all of Japan once."

Sakaki blinked. "Well, in that case, I suppose it is a pretty ominous name," he admitted.

"Destroyed all of Japan?" Miu chimed in, adopting a confused expression that actually resembled Sakaki's pretty closely. She brought one hand up to her mouth as she too furrowed her brow and tried to recall where she had heard the name before. "How did she do that?"

"Am I really the only one here who knows the legend of the Tamamo-no-Mae?" Akisame asked, and he sounded equal parts exasperated as he did amused at the ignorance the rest of the dojo had of such a significant legend.

"I know it," I muttered with a sigh, though it looked like I was summarily ignored by the rest of the dojo, save for Ma who continued to quietly treat my condition.

"As do I," the Elder rumbled out a second later. I glanced at the older man to find him studying me carefully, an unrecognizable look in his eyes.

"Well I don't," Sakaki grumbled, looking somewhat annoyed at being left out of the story.

"Me… neither," Shigure added, and I heard Akisame rustle as the female Master did something I couldn't make out from behind the screen. "Please tell us… Akisame."

"Well, if even Shigure-san is interested," Akisame seemed surprised at Shigure's insistence, or maybe by something that she had done while out of sight. "Well," he began, his voice slow as he most likely gathered his thoughts. "The Tamamo-no-Mae was originally a courtesan that appeared in the court of the Emperor during the Muromachi period and began to gain favor. According to legends, she was considered the most beautiful and intelligent woman in all of Japan. There was nothing that she didn't know, no matter what the topic was, and she was so lovely that even the Emperor fell in love with her. It was why she received the title 'Of the Front'.

"However," Akisame continued, "shortly after the Emperor began courting her, he fell deathly ill. No doctor that was called could find any reason for his illness, and no medicine would work. Finally, the Emperor called for an astrologer by the name of Abe no Yasuchika, who discovered the reason for the illness: that Tamamo was actually a nine tailed fox who had been hired by an evil daimyo in order to kill him. Immediately afterwards, Tamamo-no-Mae disappeared from the court.

"The Emperor sent his two strongest warriors, Kazusa-no-Suke and Miura-no-Suke, to hunt Tamamo down, and eventually Tamamo appeared to Miura-no-Suke in a dream." I heard another set of pops coming from across the screen, though this time it sounded less like Akisame was performing horrible experiments of Shigure and more like the jujitsu Master had simply shrugged and cracked his shoulder. "The fox told the warrior that she had seen her own death at his hands, and tried to beg him to spare her. Miura-no-Suke refused, and the next day he shot the fox down. Tamamo's body turned into a cursed stone called the 'Sessho-seki', the killing stone, and afterwards her spirit became known as Hoji and haunted the stone. The spirit killed anyone approached it until it was finally exorcised by a wandering priest named Genno."

"Oh yeah," Sakaki muttered, rubbing the back of his head idly. "I remember that place. It's out in Nasu isn't it? The killing stone?"

"Indeed," Akisame sounded pleased that someone at last recognized a part of his story. "It's a rather famous legend," he added. "There are quite a number of plays about it, and even a few movies."

"That's one way the legend ends, anyway," I interrupted, and even though I was still staring at the futon I could make out that I had once more caught the attention of the Masters. "There's another legend, one that isn't so well known."

"Really?" Akisame responded, and I could hear a touch of curiosity in his tone. "I hadn't heard of any other ones," he admitted, and it came as a bit of a shock to me that he was being honest. Akisame had always been the Master most steeped in the classic arts. He enjoyed calligraphy and sculpting, and was regarded as one of the premiere masters in the areas of classic art. The realization that I actually knew more than he did about something that was in one of the areas of his explanation was a little jarring.

"According to the other legend, when the Tamamo-no-Mae appeared to Miura-no-Suke, the warrior wasn't able to resist her seduction," I elaborated, my voice bemused. "In the end, the warrior agreed to aid the fox, and when he shot the arrow he missed on purpose. The Tamamo-no-Mae used her magic powers to fake her own death, cursing an innocent nearby stone in order to keep anyone from being able to investigate. Afterwards though, when the Miura-no-Suke returned back to the court and received such praise from the Emperor the warrior was ashamed of himself. He was unable to deal with the shame of his deception, and once he died it was HIS spirit which returned to the stone, denouncing the name that had received false accolades in life and assuming the name 'Hoji' instead.

"And afterwards, the Tamamo-no-Mae was free to continue her wicked deeds, laughing her malice at her vicious prank for the rest of her days." My voice was soft as I delivered the alternate ending to the old legend, and it was greeted by a moment of silence as the rest of the room took in the less pleasant option.

"Well, that's a bit screwed up," Sakaki finally grunted, taking a sip of his beer as he did so. "I think I like the first one better."

"Interesting," Akisame had a different opinion on the alternative. He actually sounded like he was intrigued by the possibility. "According to legends, foxes have always been rather deceitful. Especially the nogitsune." It didn't surprise me in the least that Akisame was already familiar with the different types of kitsune. "And nine tail foxes have always had a bad reputation according to legends."

"Maybe in Japan," Ma broke in, sounding rather smug as he added his own input to the conversation. "In China foxes were considered spiritual beasts, celestial beings in the service of the gods. Even the nine tails were considered benevolent." It sounded like the shorter Master was actually enjoying having the opportunity to brag about his own culture for a bit. Still, I turned to give him a blank gaze.

"Daiji and Baosi," I told him bluntly, and I was treated to the sight of my Master cringing sheepishly.

"Ah," he rubbed the back of his head, pushing his hat up so he could rub his palm against his bald scalp. "So you've heard of them?" he asked guiltily.

"Who were those two?" Miu asked, looking even more confused as she tried to keep up with this peculiar conversation of legendary foxes. It looked like the oddness of the conversation combined with the very good excuse of having been drugged so badly we still hadn't recovered had managed to calm down the killing rage she had been in earlier, and I was thankful for that much at least.

"Daiji was the nine tailed fox instructed by the goddess Nuuwa to bewitch the evil King Zhou and force him to ruin for his crimes," I told her. "She was ordered to do no harm to anyone else, but in the end she was responsible for creating hundreds of new tortures so horrific that they caused the kingdom to revolt and over throw Zhou. Afterwards, she was punished for her excessive cruelty. Baosi was another nine tail that did nearly the exact same thing in order to overthrow the King You."

"It's just a legend," Ma shrugged, still looking a little sheepish over having been caught out in his bragging.

"Yeah," I sighed. "Just a legend. But in every legend that nine tailed foxes appear in, they are always monstrous. Even Korea has legends about them too, the Kumiho, where the foxes have to eat the livers of humans in order to survive. I've never once heard the story of a benevolent nine tail."

"That's a rather impressive knowledge on the subject," the Elder noted, nodding his head slowly. It seemed that just like with the wolf the Elder was surprised by the depth of my knowledge of various legends.

"Mhm," Miu nodded, giving me a wide eyed as I apparently once more successfully impressed her with an ability which didn't resolve around books or being beaten up. I managed to give her a small smile in return, and she returned it happily.

"So if you were so knowledgeable about the subject," the Elder continued, "why did you risk going to meet someone who had such an ominous name?"

Miu's eyes widened in surprise as she realized what the Elder was implying and then they narrowed at me suspiciously. I cringed and looked away.

"Oi," Sakaki interrupted, waving one hand idly. "It's not like the kid went to see the actual Tamamo-no-whichimacalit," he defended me. I had trouble fully suppressing another wince. "It's just someone using the name to try and be melodramatic," he dismissed. "Even if there really were magical foxes, that nine tailed one would be long dead by now."

"Y-yeah…" I nodded, suppressing a swallow. Honestly, I had no idea if the fox last night was the original Tamamo or not. Foxes, especially the nogitsune, kept their own secrets well. No one really knew just how long a fox could live, or how the internal working of their titles worked. For all I knew, 'Tamamo' was just a title that was passed along, or maybe the fox last night was simply an ancestor of the original Tamamo.

I ignored that little twinge of instinct, the one that seemed to pop up whenever I was dealing with the Kai that told me that I was just lying to myself. In the end, it didn't matter. The original 'Tamamo' or not, it didn't change the fact that the Tamamo from last night had been a wicked and cruel creature.

"Even if it was just a pretender," Akisame added his own opinion, "it is disheartening to hear that Kenichi-kun would do something so reckless. Unless of course, he had some reason to believe that the reputation this 'Tamamo' was seeking to cash in on was somehow unfounded?"

I knew what Akisame was doing. He was trying to give me a way out, a chance to excuse myself and explain my actions. Unfortunately, I couldn't make use of that escape.

"No," I admitted softly. "I was aware of the Tamamo-no-Mae's reputation. It's unpleasant."

"How unpleasant?" Sakaki prompted me, his eyes narrowing as the fact that I had deliberately exposed myself to a dangerous situation became clear.

"Very unpleasant?" I offered, hoping that the vague answer would be enough.

Turns out it wasn't.

It had been a while since my Masters had released their combined ki against me in such an intimidating manner, but then again it had been a while since I had done anything stupid enough to warrant it. However, the angry aura which somehow simultaneously sprung from everyone present save for Miu and Apachai made my throat go dry as I tried to keep my heart from stopping in shock. Miu seemed vaguely affected as well as she let loose a cute little 'eep', though Apachai just glanced around, looking surprised by the sudden show of force.

I swear to god. Did they have some sort of prearranged signal for this kind of thing? How the hell do they synchronize it so well?

It was particularly effective this time around. I had been receiving this kind of ki pressure for years now during my time living in Ryouzanpaku. However, the extremely ominous feel that I could clearly identify as Shigure's was on a whole other level from what the others were producing. It seemed that as the only other participant in the debacle with the fox, she was particularly upset.

Under the combined pressure of my Masters I shamefully folded like a cheap card table.

"She likes to torture people until their minds snap and they can never recover!" I admitted hastily, my arms up as I tried to force the pressure away from me. "The only things she enjoy more than causing people pain is making people enjoy the pain they receive and destroying their sanity entirely! She's the most vicious, evil, ruthless, and cruel thing to ever walk the face of the earth! She tortures puppies and eats kittens! Now please don't kill me!" I begged shamelessly.

"No!" Miu gasped, her hands coming up to her mouth as the pressure finally relented. I swallowed hard, trying to ignore the cold sweat that had broken out all over me. Well, most of the pressure anyway. I was very nervous to note that Shigure hadn't quite seemed to quell her ki completely at this point. I glanced over at Miu, feeling ashamed of myself now that she knew just how dangerous my expedition last night had been.

At least, I was until Miu continued in a breathless voice. "You mean she actually kills kittens?" she demanded, outraged at the potential damage to her favorite species.

If this was an anime, I probably would face fault right now. Instead I just let myself fall back onto the futon with a groan.

"Yes," I said slowly. "She literally kills kittens." Though in the case of the Tamamo, that had less to do with deliberate cruelty and more to do with the fact that she was a fox and kittens were probably just the right size for a meal.

"Unforgiveable," Miu vowed, and I was pleased that the unholy light that promised murder that was shining in her eyes again wasn't being focused at me this time.

"Now, now, Miu," it was Ma who spoke up first, and despite my confession he seemed vaguely amused by the scene he was witnessing. "We all know how much Kenichi-kun likes to exaggerate."

"Indeed," Akisame added, and he also sounded like he was suppressing laughter. "I doubt that this Tamamo was really that bad." Sakaki snorted as well, and I realized that apparently the rest of the Masters honestly thought I was just overreacting, and that it really hadn't been as dangerous as I had described.

All except for Shigure. Instead, I felt her ominous ki increase just a little more. It looked like after having met the fox she at least was willing to accept the truth in my words.

"Still," the Elder chimed in this time, and even he seemed like he was suppressing a chuckle at the sight of his granddaughter preparing to go avenge kittens everywhere. "If you knew she was that dangerous, Ken-chan, than why would you take a risk like going to meet her?"

I sighed again, and even though my body was finally starting to feel like it was my own again I just flopped one hand up so I could cover my eyes with my forearm. "Because the Tamamo-no-Mae knows everything," I reminded the Elder. "And there was something that I was willing to risk it all to know."

"Ah," Akisame sounded as though he had come to a realization. "Yes, in the legend Tamamo was purported to be able to answer any question, no matter the topic," he allowed, still sounding amused. "But I hardly think that someone who was just using her name would be able to do the same."

"No," I corrected him immediately, and I heard a shuffle as the rest of the room reacted to the dark surety in my voice. "Even if it was just a faker using the name, the Tamamo-no-Mae can find out anything, about anyone, at any time. It's the reason that nobody has ever come back at her for vengeance after some of the stunts she pulled: either they know that they might someday need her for information themselves, or they're just too worried about the blackmail she has on them."

It was a unique position that the Tamamo had managed to find herself in, though knowing that cunning fox it was most likely by design she had ended up there. No matter what she did, no one would move against her. She had been spot on when she had taunted me with the fact that most other diviners would probably not have anything to do with me, and I wasn't the only creature of the Kai that had that problem. Even with the legends of her true nature being whispered, there were always those who would seek out the nine tailed fox, the Kyuubi-no-Kitsune, who would endure her tender machinations, and if the need arose again they would go back willingly for more.

The fox probably enjoyed that fact just as much as she enjoyed her other cruelties.

"Come on now," Sakaki at least still seemed amused by my assertion. I didn't know whether the fact that I had no credibility with my Masters when it came to this kind of thing was an annoyance or a relief. "It's not like some haughty lady with delusions of grandeur can be that good."

"She managed to drug Shigure and I, strip us naked, sneak into Ryouzanpaku, arrange us into a compromising position, escape, and none of you even noticed her coming or going, or even discovered that we were back until she had been gone for hours," I pointed out, and my ears were greeted with another shuffle as the rest of the room realized I was right. The fact that the fox had gotten past even the Masters of Ryouzanpaku, some of the strongest and most powerful fighters in the world, without them even knowing was ominous enough on its own. "If she wanted to, the Tamamo could do the exact same to anyone else, even to Yami if she wanted to. She probably already has."

"Is it true, Shigure-san?" Akisame was the first to speak up, and it seemed like even he needed some verification after having that particular fact pointed out to him. Shigure didn't respond verbally, but I heard her shift and a moment later Akisame continued. "That is rather troubling indeed. Was she a Master?" There was another shift from Shigure, and the room got quiet again.

"Ken-chan," the Elder finally spoke up, and I managed to shift my arms enough to look at him. The Elder was still stroking his beard again, a solemn look on his face. "You mentioned how you went to this girl for information. Just what was it you were trying to find out?"

I let the arm slip back down over my eyes. I felt… tired. Worn out. Like even if my body was almost completely recovered at this point it didn't even matter.

"Its personal," I told the Elder, and didn't elaborate any more than that.

"Oh? After you admitted that you deliberately went into a dangerous situation to get it, you think that you can just brush it off so easily?" Akisame seemed vaguely amused by my reticence, and I grimaced as I could already see where my Master was going with that train of thought. "Perhaps some training might…"

"Oi," surprisingly it was Sakaki that interrupted Akisame, and the jujitsu user paused. "Let it go, meddling mustache," the karate user continued, and the serious tone of his voice caused me to peak out from behind my arm again. "Everyone in Ryouzanpaku has a right to their privacy."

Sakaki was still leaning against the wall of the dojo, beer in hand, but I noticed with surprise that the karate user was deliberately looking away from where I was still being treated. A quick glance around the room revealed that Miu was looking uncomfortable, that Ma was refusing to meet my eyes, the Elder was looking at the floor, and that even Apachai had stopped trying to steal Sakaki's beer snacks.

I wasn't quite certain just what was going on until I caught sight of Akisame peering past the screen, the man's intense gaze studying me for a moment. When after a moment his eyes narrowed and he ducked back to tend to Shigure without a word it made me wonder just what was going on for a second.

Then it dawned on me, and I let my arm fall back on my face with a scowl.

I hated it when my Masters proved they knew me better than I knew myself. Or when they did those weird super insightful moments where they managed to ferret out all my secrets without me even noticing when they did it.

Nobody asked me whether or not I had gotten the answers I had been looking for last night.

I had originally thought that one of three things would happen when I went to the Tamamo-no-Mae. The least likely option would be that she would just kill me out of hand. She hadn't been lying when she reminded me how few iviners would like me, and I knew just how vicious the fox could be. However, I had thought that one of two other options would occur:

Either the fox would just toy with me, taking advantage of my desperation before leaving me without answering my questions, or the fox would toy with me, taking advantage of my desperation before leaving after having answered my questions.

Either way, the fox would get her fun out of me. In the end, I had gotten the answers I wanted, though it looked like the joke was on me again.

The only reason the fox had probably told me was because she knew just how much the answers would hurt to hear.

"Well," Ma spoke up, interrupting the tense atmosphere as the rest of the room purposefully didn't comment on my probably plane to see misery. "At least it looks like your body is healing well, Kenichi-kun." It sounded as though he was being purposefully bright, most likely hoping that the change in subject would cheer me up. "Why, it looks like that hack Akisame was also mistaken about your previous wounds," he continued, taking a cheerful jab at the other doctor in the room. "You're much further along in your healing than he seemed to think you were. You'll probably be fully healed by the end of the week."

If he had been hoping to comfort me, he was probably surprised when his words had the opposite effect on me. I stiffened, and a new chill went down my spine that had nothing to do with the fox.

*Scene Break*

I wasn't certain how I managed to get out of Ryouzanpaku after that. It was shortly after Ma realized that his attempt at encouragement had fallen short and the rest of the Masters had drifted away to do their own business that I was announced fit enough to move on my own power. Training had been called off for the day as well, though I wasn't certain if that had to do with my physical condition, my mental condition, or whether the Masters just wanted to meet among themselves to discuss the new development of their Disciple without said Disciple hearing them.

Whatever the case was, when I threw on a sweater, jeans, and shoes and walked out the front gate of the dojo, no one came to stop me. Maybe they had decided that I needed some space, or maybe they felt that since there was no training for the day I could do what I pleased, or maybe I had just been the wrong escape method in the past and I always could have gotten out this easily if I just had taken the straightforward method in the past.

I didn't know, and most likely wouldn't ever know the real reason. Whatever the case was, I left unimpeded. I already had a destination in mind for the day, and though it would have been quicker to take the bus to get there, I chose to walk.

It was late afternoon when I arrived at the only working lamp in a far off corner of a park whose name I could never remember. Gently, I reached out to touch the lamp post, the feel of cold iron and rough paint under my hand as I ran my fingers down the post.

It had been what, four years now since the last time I had been here? And yet, it felt as though it was only yesterday.

With a sigh, I turned so my back would be to the lamppost and collapsed so I could sit myself propped up against it. I brought my arms up, wrapping them around my legs as I did so, tucked my head into my knees, and lost myself in thought.

I don't know how long I was there, but when I heard a scuffle noise from directly above me I glanced up to find that the sun had once more traveled a significant portion of the horizon and was edging its way down out of the sky. This time, at least there had been no belligerent mountain god responsible for my loss of time.

"Dinner will get… cold," Shigure pointed out from where she was crouching. The older woman had curled herself up like a cat about to pounce on top of the extending arm of the lamp, her eyes locked on me as she studied me like a hunter watching their prey. She was dressed in another of her short purple kimonos, though she didn't have her trench coat anymore. The coat, along with all the weapons and the kimono she had been wearing yesterday were all lost at this point, tribute to a fox. I had never seen her wear anything other than that kimono before, but I suppose the fact that she apparently had several identical sets didn't come as a particular surprise to me. The only weapon she had today was her father's sword, once more strapped so that it rested loosely on her back.

"Yeah," I nodded to her earlier announcement, stretching one leg out in front of me and folding my arms on the still bent one. Despite my agreement, I didn't stand or make any move to return to Ryouzanpaku.

Slowly, a silence built between the both of us, one that didn't quite feel comfortable but didn't quite seem wrong either. I suppose I just didn't know what to say at this point. What kind of conversation do you have with someone after a night like yesterday? Or a morning like this one?

I suppose it was a mark of just how out of sorts I was that I barely even blushed at the memory of just what Shigure's body had felt like against mine. The last prank of the fox, putting us like that; it was such a disconcertingly innocent trick that it was hard to correlate it with the creature that had deliberately cut me while Shigure remained helpless, or had arranged a fake death in order to attack the ideals of a Katsujin Ken.

All things considered, just leaving us naked felt like something a college frat kid would do. Maybe the fox had just run out of material at that point?

Whatever the case, though I only flushed a little at the memory, I still found myself not able to look directly at my Master. If she hadn't been with me, if she hadn't been trying to look after me then she never would have had to experience something like last night. A part of me blamed myself for the way she was carefully holding her father's sword and how she too seemed to have trouble looking at me directly.

"I warned you," I blurted out finally, voicing what the other part of me felt. "I warned you that you shouldn't have come." That other part of me told me that it had been Shigure's fault, that if she hadn't forced herself along then nothing would have happened to her, and that I shouldn't feel guilty in the least.

I didn't like that part of me very much, but it didn't change the fact that it was right in a way.

"Yes. You… did," Shigure answered, her voice in its usual dispassionate tone. Again, a silence stretched between us. Just like I had noted before, after the Shikome, Shigure made no other motion to try and start a conversation. She probably had a right to at this point. There must have been a thousand questions going through her mind considering how fast she tended to think. Probably a thousand more rebukes, both to herself and to me for what had happened.

Despite that, she didn't speak a word. She made no move to chastise me for what I had put her through, or any demand for answers. Truthfully, she probably didn't need to. I was most likely berating myself far harder than even she could. After all, one of the things the fox had deliberately used to taunt her was how closely I guarded my secrets. The Tamamo had laughed over how even though Shigure had tried so hard to open up to me, I had never done the same to her.

It's just... I didn't want to. Open up that is. The secrets I were keeping weren't just being kept from Shigure. They were being kept from everyone else as well. There wasn't a soul left alive, save for that nosy fox perhaps, that new the whole story at this point besides me.

"This was the place where I died." I forced the words out, not giving myself time to hold them back or back out. If I hesitated for even a second, than I never would have been able to say them again, I think.

Shigure was silent for a moment in the face of my sudden confession. I wasn't certain if her silence was just her usual customary reaction or if I had somehow managed to shock her into silence with my bluntly delivered line. I couldn't force myself to look at her to find out, staring fixedly at a point somewhere beyond my knee.

"The first time," Shigure finally spoke. "You said that the first time you died… was when you entered the Nightworld." I nodded, not knowing what to say. Finally, Shigure continued. "How did it… happen?"

I gave a small laugh that came out more bitter than I intended. "I killed myself."

This time, I was fairly certain that the silence was shock. "Sui…cide?" Shigure asked, her voice unusually soft even for her.

"No," I shook my head in the negative. Suicide, that wasn't the right way to describe what had happened here. "Sacrifice."

Shigure made no response to my correction, and I was grateful for that. Now that the words were out, I found it was growing easier to talk. If she had interrupted, I don't know if I would have been able to continue my momentum.

"Sometimes, it's so hard to be around you Masters," I admitted. "Not just the Masters: everyone involved in the Underworld. Ryouzanpaku, Yomi and Yami, even the Shinpaku Alliance. It seems like everyone I know these days is so strong." I sighed, pausing, and this time Shigure spoke up.

"Kenichi is… too," she said firmly, and I smiled despite myself.

"No," I disagreed, shaking my head. "No I'm not. Not like everyone else. I have no talent for Martial Arts, and I always try to escape when the training gets too hard. Even though I have such amazing Masters, I can barely continue to scrap along, and there were times when the only reason I didn't give up was because none of you would let me. But no one ever has to force any of you Masters to continue, or Miu, or Tanimoto, or Takeda, or any of the others. Even Niijima keeps doing his best on his own. And here I am," I held one hand up to wave at myself, "just me."

"Just being you is enough… Kenichi," Shigure insisted again, and I could make out a bit of heat in her voice as she seemed to grow angry at my monologue. "You have your conviction, and that is… enough."

"Conviction," I repeated, tasting the word. "The only reason I have that is because I met Miu." I clenched my fist in front of my face, watching the digits contract and release in turn, seeing the way my forearms strained as the muscles underneath my skin moved accordingly. "Do you know," I began again, "that I was held back once, in school? That I should actually be graduating this year?"

Shigure made no response to that, and I continued anyway. "My first time through high school I didn't do too well. I'm not very smart, and back then I wasn't very strong or motivated. I didn't have any friends either. I just kind of drifted through the first half of the school year, doing only the smallest amount to get by. And you know what?" I felt a crooked smile forming. "I was fine with that. I didn't really think that there was any need to stand out or excel. I didn't even care that much that I didn't have friends. Back then, I always thought that friends were useless, that they didn't really exist. In the end, even if you get along with someone eventually there would be a day when you would grow apart from them and move on with your lives. I figured that it would be easier to just not get to know anyone in the first place, and then I wouldn't have to deal with people moving on."

Shigure was silent as she listened to my confession of a past that seemed like a whole other life at this point. I unclenched my hand and let it fall back to my knee.

"Then came the spring break of my first year," my voice was soft. "I was wandering away from the ceremony, by myself, and I realized that there was nothing special in my life. All the other students were going off in groups, and I just walked out by myself, not having anything else to do. Well, almost by myself. I met someone then, by coincidence, and we ended up talking for a bit."

That had been the day I had first talked with Hanekawa. I still remembered just what her panties looked like back then, even to this day.

"It was later on that night, when I was out…." I trailed off, and decided not to mention that I had been out looking for some ero-books, "running some errands, that I started thinking about my life. About how it was going, and how it could be going if I had done things different. It was then that I took a shortcut through this park. It was right here that I met… her."

"Your zebra," Shigure confirmed, her voice once more toneless. "The one called… Shinobu."

It looked like even in that desperate situation under the fox's spell, Shigure once again proves just how sharp Masters really were. Even in those circumstances she had caught that name.

"Yes," I nodded, my eyes losing their focus as I remembered a different time at this very scene. "She was laying right here. She had been wounded, badly. She was dying, and desperate. And she was…" I trailed off. How did I describe the first time I had laid eyes on Shinobu? No, on who Shinobu used to be: Kiss Shot Acerola Hearts Under Blades. At the time she had been maimed, missing her arms and her legs, nothing but ragged stumps that looked as though they had been gnawed off. She had been sitting here, where I was right now unable to move, unable to do anything. And even then she had been beautiful, beautiful in a way that I couldn't articulate even to this day.

"She was real in a way that I didn't think I could ever be," I finally finished. I didn't know how else to put it. For a moment silence settled back down on the two of us.

"What happened… then?" Shigure finally spoke up, pulling me from my thoughts of Shinobu.

"She asked me to die for her," I said simply. "Selfishly, without a second thought, begged me to give up my life for her so that she could live. And at the time, I couldn't think of any reason not to." I sighed, stretching out my bunched leg and feeling it pop slightly before I brought it back in. "I remember thinking that if someone who was living such an insignificant life like I was could die for someone like her, then in a way I would live on through her. That dying like that would have made my life have meaning, and that maybe in the next life I could do a better job, do all the things I hadn't been brave enough or smart enough to do this time."

"How did you… recover?" Shigure prompted me again, this time almost immediately. From the sound of her voice it looked like my Master was captivated by my story.

"She repented her actions, and got me the treatment I would need to survive," I hunched lower. "It was dangerous, but I very nearly recovered completely. But then…" I trailed off, and brought my other leg back up so I could hunch closer to them both. "Then she did something horrible, something which I could never approve of. And in return, I did something terrible back to her."

I didn't elaborate any further. When I heard Shigure shift above me, I finally forced a breath out and continued.

"I don't like this story," I admitted softly. "In the end, it was just two foolish people doing careless things to each other."

I had no idea what Shigure was thinking about when I finished my confession. Finally, she seemed to reach a conclusion and spoke again. "What was the relation between you… two?"

I glanced up for the first time since I started talking to find that Shigure had shifted at some point during my story. She was laying on her back, still balanced on the arm of the lamppost. She had both hands back behind her head, and her legs propped up much in the same way mine were. It was an odd position, especially considering that the lamp looked far too thin for someone to be resting like that so casually. It also was a position that made it impossible to see Shigure's face, and I found I couldn't quite identify what she was feeling from her voice either.

"What do you mean?" I asked, and Shigure shifted slightly again.

"Were you two friends… or enemies… or lovers?" my Master elaborated slowly, and I let my gaze drop back down to the ground.

"She was…" I began, not knowing how to describe my relationship with Shinobu. She had been my mentor, and my Master, and my subordinate, and my enemy, and my ally, and my friend. She had depended on me to live, and hated me for it, and had tried to die for me. And in the end, I had thought she finally had done just that…

"She was the one existence I can never forgive," I finally settled on. It was just like she had declared when she finally started speaking to me again after months of stony silence. It was the only way to describe the relationship between Shinobu and I: two foolish people who had done unforgiveable things to the other, regardless of the reasons why. I have had many friends and enemies, people I have loved and hated, but there was only one person in the world that I could never truly forgive.

Shigure didn't seem to understand, and I heard her shift again, but I had a feeling that if it was Sakaki here he would. I didn't know the full extent of their history, but I think that for Sakaki it was Hongou who held the same title that Shinobu did for me.

"What happened to… her?" Shigure finally prompted me, and I let my head fall back against the lamp with a 'clank' noise, ignoring the small sting the motion gave me. I closed my eyes and continued.

"We moved on," I admitted. "Made friends, and dealt with the things that got in our path. I tried to help many people with their problems, and ended up getting deeper and deeper into the Nightworld." I felt a small smile form as I let myself reminisce on those other times. The smile faded.

"And then they all died, and I learned the hard way that in the Nightworld all debts are repaid, one way or another."

Shigure didn't seem to know what to say to that. That was fine. I didn't really want to talk about it anymore either.

"You never mentioned any of this… before," she finally pointed out, and I felt another small bitter smile form.

"No one ever asked." The moment the words left my lips I grimaced, realizing how flippant and accusing they probably sounded. "No," I shook my head, correcting myself. "Even if anyone would have asked, I wouldn't have answered, or lied about it." I shifted again, feeling uncomfortable with trying to explain why I never spoke about the things I never spoke about.

"It was really hard, right after it happened," I elaborated, my voice steady. "I had a lot of trouble dealing with their loss. It got so bad that I ended up flunking out of the high school I was going to back then. Eventually, I managed to get everything back together, and when I reentered a new high school I just repeated my freshmen year.

"After I had first started making friends, I realized how important they were," I continued. "And even though I lost my first ones, I ended up making new ones as well. I worked harder at my grades too. Even if I was still weak, and stupid, and not that good looking, I started trying harder to improve myself. And then…" I smiled, the first real smile I probably had the entire conversation, "I met Miu, and the rest you already know."

If I had never met that blonde girl who moved like an assassin, I wondered just how my life would have gone. Would I have managed to build myself back up as well as I had? Would I be able to protect the things I cared about, or would I have anything that mattered to me at all like I once did?

"You two really do… get along well," Shigure said, and I noticed that she sounded a bit sad. It looked like she might be regretting having heard my story now. Then, as though changing the subject, she continued. "So with this you've died… three times."

I guess Shigure really wasn't that good at changing subjects.

"Actually, four times now," I corrected, eye still closed as I felt the last warmth of the sun on my face.

"In… Tirat?" Shigure asked, and I nodded again. It wasn't that hard to figure out where my newest encounter with death had occurred.

"This time I was helped by a stubborn ghost who wouldn't let me forget a promise to him." There had been a few moments in the pit with Miu and Pengulu where I had been beyond the edge of even my incredible endurance, and those few moments were long enough for me to have a meeting with someone who had gone on ahead. I was thankful to Kanou Shou for that. If it hadn't been for his words, then I don't know if I would have been able to gather enough strength to pull myself back from the edge I had teetered on.

I frowned momentarily, coming to a decision. "Don't tell Sakaki-sensei or Miu-san," I asked Shigure. I don't think it would be easy for those two to hear that little tidbit. For Sakaki, learning that his Disciple had died on his watch might be a bit of a blow to him, and for Miu…

Well, having someone die for you was hard. It was something I understood all too well.

Shigure made no response to my request, but I think I knew her well enough by now to be able to tell that she most likely would grant it. Still, it seemed like there was something else on my quiet Master's mind.

"Do you ever think about telling… the rest of Ryouzanpaku?" she asked, her voice unusually slow even for her.

"No," I shook my head immediately, eyes still closed.

"Why… not?"

"Because the Nightworld is different from the real world and the Underworld," I said slowly. "You know that now. The rules, the inhabitants…" I trailed off trying to think of a way to explain just how divorced from the rest of the world the Kai were. "It's like all of reality is a play," I settled on, "and the Nightworld is everything that goes on backstage. Once you know the secrets that happen behind the curtains, you can never look at the play the same way."

"Is that so…bad?" Shigure prompted me, and I got the impression that she was dissatisfied by the answer. "It feels like you are trying to protect the rest of us… Kenichi," she continued. "But I don't think that they… need that protection."

"Would it change anything, if they knew?" I countered, shaking my head again. "Would it make them any safer? It would just put them in danger. More danger than even a normal person faces when they are welcomed to the Nightworld."

"That's not… true," Shigure countered, but her voice sounded troubled.

"A normal person would never have thrown shuriken at the Tamamo-no-Mae," I pointed out, a touch of rebuke in my voice, and I heard Shigure shift slightly at the accusation. "For people of the Underworld, Masters in particular, they're so used to living by their own rules that they can't adjust to the new ones. All it would take would be Sakaki-san trying to bull through the wrong Kai, or Akisame-san or Ma-san trying to treat one of them like they would a normal human, and then…"

I trailed off, but I think that Shigure understood. She didn't seem to like it though.

"I just think they would be… happier," Shigure offered, sounding vaguely petulant. "Being able to share in their… Disciple's life."

"After what happened last night, are you happier, Shigure-san?" I snorted bitterly. She hadn't deserved what the fox had done to her, and I think I will always regret not just calling the whole thing off the moment she had appeared behind me on the train.

"Yes," Shigure's voice startled me when it came from directly in front of my closed eyes. When I opened them with a start it was to find that once more she had chosen to perform her bat impression. She was hanging from the arm of the lamppost by her toes, her hair falling down around her like an obsidian curtain despite the fact that her kimono was again defying gravity to preserve her modesty. I was startled when I saw how close her face was to mine, and I flushed slightly as the proximity triggered a memory of this morning.

I was never going to get over that. Or live it down once the shock wore off and the rest of Ryouzanpaku deemed it appropriate teasing material.

I was drawn back from my thoughts as Shigure surprisingly started to reach out for me, her hand moving slowly with frequent pauses. I blinked, not sure what she was planning to do, but held still to give her time to do it. Eventually, Shigure nodded to herself, and her hand came out to rest on my shoulder, palm flat. I glanced down at it, a little shocked at the gesture. Shigure was never a very tactile person. She had touched me before, yeah, but only in regards to Martial Arts when she had to correct a stance or demonstrate specific movement. This was no such gesture, something which was more casual, and strangely more intimate.

"I am happy that I got to see… a part of your life," Shigure continued, though it looked like she was blushing slightly herself as she forced herself to use the unfamiliar gesture. She tilted her head so she could look away slightly, but continued. "I think the others would be… too."

With those words she flexed her legs slightly and dropped to the ground in front of me in a smooth flip to land on her feet. "I'm going back… now," she announced, her back to me in what was most likely an effort to hide her own embarrassment. I wasn't certain if she was embarrassed because of the unfamiliar contact, or whether the events of last night were still affecting her, or if it was the way the two of us woke up, but I found such an obvious display of emotions from my stoic Master to be oddly heartening. "Are you coming…too?"

"There are still a few things I need to deal with," I told her, my voice soft. "I'd like to be alone for a bit, if it's okay." Watching her straight back as she nodded once briefly.

"Then come back when… you're ready," Shigure told me, and without a glance backwards she turned and left.

It was only after she was gone that I let out another sigh. Well. What do you know? It looks like even someone as talentless as I could improve quickly if the situation called for it.

This time not even Shigure had noticed when I lied to her.

Unless…

A quick search revealed that this time I was free of mouse infestation, and I breathed out in relief.

The park was empty, and with no one around to watch I slowly brought one of my hands up, and ran my index finger gently across my teeth. It moved easily, sliding across the porcelain of my molars and my incisors, dimpling slightly at the pressure.

However, when it reached my canine it pricked, ever so slightly, and I felt my skin tear as they caught on the unusually sharp tooth.

"Damn," I muttered, pulling the bleeding digit out so I could watch it. A small drop of blood was already forming there, but before the drop could gather enough mass to start dripping it paused.

Slowly, the liquid that had escaped my body began to dissolve in front of my eyes, flaking into red specs that drifted and then vanished into the air. As though in rewind I watched the blood seemingly reversed its flow, forcing its way back into my veins and then even the small tear repaired itself.

The whole event took nearly ten minutes, but I didn't move the entire time it was occurring. I had thought that trait of me was gone, bled out at the same time that I had thought I had lost my instincts, when I thought I had finally escaped the Nightworld for good.

How on earth was I going to explain this to my Masters? My body was already nearly fully recovered from the injuries which had lingered after Tirat, and with the way my Masters knew me there was no way I would be able to conceal this unnatural healing to them.

"Damn that fox," I muttered, but the words were hollow. Even without the scene this would cause at Ryouzanpaku, it was also the final evidence I needed in order to confirm what the fox had told me. She must have known, just what response her actions would provoke from me. She must have known just what it would mean, just how I would react.

Which was probably the reason why she had told me in the first place, the bitch.

It looked like the gods weren't the only jerks around.

With one last shaky breath I stood, and started to make my way into the growing night.

However, it wasn't to Ryouzanpaku that I was heading, or to my home. I wouldn't be returning to either place for what could possibly be a very long time, if ever.

There was something which I needed to do first.