The Faerie Chronicles of Kenshin & Kaoru: Immortality, a Rurouni Kenshin fanfic by Raberba girl
Chapter 7
"...Kaoru-chan."
"Mm," Kaoru mumbled, still completely asleep.
"Kaoru-chan!"
The shaking grew more insistent, and Kaoru cracked her eyes open to find her mother bending over her, looking almost as bleary-eyed as she felt. "Wha...?"
"It's a boy. He wants to talk to you." Mrs. Arai pressed the phone into Kaoru's hands and then stumbled out of the room, presumably back to bed.
Kaoru scrunched her nose up in confusion for a minute, then dragged the phone to rest against the side of her face. "H'lo..?" she said, rather accusingly.
"A-Arai...hey, I- I need to talk to you."
Kaoru blinked. "Ishida-kun?" she said incredulously.
The next words came out in a rush. "Look, tonight's off, I'm sorry. I had to call and tell you, but I don't want to ever talk to you again. I'm sorry."
"What?!" She bolted upright in bed, but Yamato had already hung up. Shocked, Kaoru double-checked her clock, which told her that it was six o'clock in the morning, a rather odd thing considering the fact that Yamato claimed to "sleep in" on weekends. Furiously, Kaoru dialed his number, but got nothing other than what she was pretty sure was the sound of him picking up the phone and immediately dumping it back into its cradle. "Ooooohhh!"
She was so angry that she felt like marching straight over to Yamato's house in her pajamas and chewing him out, but that was a ridiculous thing to do. So she paced around her room like a caged bull for a while, then stormed down to make breakfast.
Happily for their health, no one remembered to eat breakfast when they switched on the television. The chancellor had been assassinated just hours earlier.
'Ishida-kun,' Kaoru thought as she sat, stunned, with her parents, staring at the TV screen as if they could not believe their eyes. 'Was this why you called it off?' It would have made sense, except for the note of terror in Yamato's voice and the 'I don't want to ever talk to you again' part. 'What is going on?!'
o.o.o.o.o
"Kaoru-chan!"
Kaoru hurried to meet Mika at the school gates. Her friend looked wide-eyed and frightened. "Mika-chan! Are you all right?"
"Yes. I mean, as much as anyone is. Did you know that half the students haven't shown up, and some of the teachers, too? I stopped by Mimi-chan's house on the way to school, but she said her mom wants her to stay home. Oh, Kaoru-chan! Can you believe all this is happening?"
"It's...sudden," Kaoru said, though she was suddenly feeling sick. Bad things...to our enemies... Kenshin hadn't - Kenshin wouldn't kill the chancellor, would he?
School was pretty pointless that day. Only one of Kaoru's teachers attempted to carry on as usual, but the rest either had the news on or just sat and talked with the class about what had happened, or both. Kaoru felt alternately numb and shaky, wondering if her parents were worried about her and if she should just go home. 'But I have to...I have to at least talk to Ishida-kun...the world is falling apart, and I don't know what to...'
There he was, trudging along to the cafeteria. Kaoru blinked, looked around for the nearest clock, and realized it was lunchtime. "Hey, Mika-chan - go save me a seat, all right? I'll be back."
Yamato did not notice her until she had slipped through the cafeteria doors, was walking right next to him, and said, "Hi."
He jumped and shied away from her like a startled deer. The pile of books in his arms went flying all over the floor. "Arai?! What are you doing here?"
Kaoru gestured around soberly. "Mom and Dad were worried, but I really wanted to come to school today. If nothing else, to talk to you."
"We have nothing to talk about, Arai!" he cried harshly, though from the direction of his panicked eyes, he seemed to be addressing the ceiling and the corners of the cafeteria rather than her. "I told you, we're through." He quickly knelt to snatch up the books that he had dropped - distracted, Kaoru glanced down and saw that a lot of them had weird fantasy covers, and titles like Feast of Fair Folk, An Encyclopedia of Mythical Creatures, or The Little People: Faeries, Sprites, and the Other Realm.
"You can at least tell me why!" she said in exasperation as she bent down to help him. "Did the assassination really freak you out that much?"
"What...assassination?"
"You know, the assassination," Kaoru said pointedly. "Or did you not hear that the chancellor died last night?"
"Oh, yeah." Yamato did not seem very interested in the subject. Rather, he looked at the last of the books that Kaoru handed him and shuddered a little before adding them to the pile in his arms.
"So, you like fairies?" Kaoru said skeptically. Something about this whole thing was weird (as if nothing else had been recently).
"I just...picked up a sudden interest," Yamato mumbled, looking more stressed out than embarrassed. The two of them slowly stood up, staring at each other. "Hey, Arai," he finally said, looking nervous. "Are you...are you okay? Not that I could help you AT ALL if you're in trouble," he added hastily, "but...I mean, are you in trouble?"
Kaoru blinked. "I- What? Why would you ask that?"
Yamato drew in a deep breath. "I've been reading like crazy all night," he said woodenly. "They...um, they don't like salt."
"Huh?"
"It's a fae-bane - it hurts them, or some of the books say that you can use it to bind them or make barriers against them or something. Crosses, too, at least for some of them; same with iron and sometimes silver, and there's also some kind of wood...rowan, I think? But I don't even know what it looks like-"
"Ishida-kun, what are you talking about?"
They stared at each other again. "Arai," he finally said heavily, "I can't help you, it's too dangerous, and I'm really sorry about that. But you're really in a mess with this...these fairies...and I'm just saying, if you haven't read up on this stuff yet, you probably should. That fairy king is one creepy guy." He shuddered. "You know those pictures they keep trying to get of Battousai, where it looks like his eyes are glowing? That guy has the same eyes."
"What are you talking about?! A fairy king?!" Kaoru paused. Well, she was one to talk, wasn't she? "Are you saying a fairy king is after me?"
Yamato gulped and backed away. The words tumbled out of him in a rush. "Like I said, salt, crosses, silver, rowan, there's probably more I keep forgetting, but...Arai, I'm sorry!"
"Ishida-kun!" she yelled as he was rushing away. He paused and glanced unhappily over his shoulder. "Just - just tell me one thing. You're not dumping me because of anything I did, right?"
For the first time, he gave her a very small, but genuine smile. "I still think you're cool, Arai. I... I'll keep reading up on this, maybe I'll be able to find something that can help without me actually getting involved..."
She managed a weak little smile in return. "Thanks." There seemed to be nothing else to say, so Kaoru trudged away again to rejoin Mika.
o.o.o.o.o
"Good morning, Kenshin!"
Kenshin, staring at the three simultaneously ringing phones on his desk and really wishing that he didn't have to answer them, looked up to find the Faerie King lounging in the doorway, surrounded by most of the children in the castle. "Enishi," he greeted dully. "You seem unusually cheerful this morning, that you do."
Enishi grinned, shifting his young niece's weight so that he was carrying her more comfortably. He could not in good conscience directly insult Himura Kenshin in front of a bunch of children who adored them both, but there were more roundabout ways of gloating. "Heh, it usually puts someone in a good mood when a guy he doesn't like makes a complete fool of himself."
"...Is our past history the only thing that concerns you at a time like this? A man died last night, Enishi," Kenshin said softly.
Enishi shrugged. "After becoming head of a country that's really under Niisan's control? It was only a matter of time."
Kenshin frowned, but the children were needing attention by then. "Uncle Ken," the Sagaras' oldest daughter said worriedly, "is everything going to be okay? All the grown-ups are running around like crazy, and we couldn't go to school today."
Kenshin only had to lean forward and lift his arms a little, and suddenly the children were crowding all around him.
"That broom-head guy got in a fight with Daddy this morning!"
"Yeah, Mom broke 'em up and now they're all yelling at each other..."
"Aunt Tomoe's, like, in a coma! I tried to wake her up, but her bracelet bit me."
"Aya-nee and Suzumi-nee won't answer the phone!"
"Yeah, and one of the fairy ladies said that Kensuke-nii got grounded for trying to sneak out-"
"Uncle Ken, is Aunt Kaoru gonna be okay?"
"We should bring her here," Yahiko's seven-year-old asserted in frustration. "I keep telling everyone, and they say it's up to you, Uncle Kenshin."
Kenshin sighed, holding the youngest in his arms and wistfully remembering when his own daughters had been her age. "Ken-jii," the child said softly when she saw him looking at her, "Usa-chan's scared." She lifted her stuffed bunny so that Kenshin could kiss it and hug her tighter.
"This one admits, we do have a problem right now," he said, so that most of the children hushed and looked at him intently. No one had had the time or the heart to sit down and fully explain things to them. "You all know that the chancellor passed away last night?" Due to his own stupid, stupid negligence.
"It was on TV," Katsu said, and grinned a little. "Dad said some bad words when he saw it, and then Mom smacked him."
"Katsu, don't be stupid!" his sister scolded. "The chancellor's dead, you have to be serious!"
"Uncle Enishi's not being serious," Tomoe's daughter observed, looking uncertainly between Kenshin and the grinning Faerie King.
"There's nothing to worry about," Enishi told them, now lounging comfortably on the floor with Tomoe's other daughter curled up in his lap and Tsubame's daughter curiously trying to see if his spiky hair was braidable. "The castle is very well protected, and you've all got a bunch of big bad warriors to fight and keep you safe."
"Then why are all the grown-ups so mad and stuff?" Megumi's daughter challenged.
Enishi shrugged. "They're scared of my brother. Of Shishio."
"But Uncle Kenshin will punch him in the face, and everything will be okay again," Yahiko's son said proudly.
Kenshin shook his head with a little smile, and Enishi gritted his teeth. "This hero-worship ticks me off so much," he grumbled, in such a low voice that only Kenshin heard.
"Hey," Tomoe's son said suddenly. "You're the Faerie King, Uncle Enishi. Why don't you just blast Shishio to bits?"
"Hm, could I?" Enishi mused. "Maybe. But he's Oberon's son, too...it's not like he doesn't have magic of his own. Besides," and here he raised his head to look each child directly in the eyes, "would you really want me to be killing my own brother? It'd be like," he pointed at Katsu, "if you tried to knock off Tsunan or something."
The kids were quiet for a moment, all looking at each other solemnly.
"But," Megumi's daughter said finally, "Tsu-kun isn't trying to take over the world."
"In any case," Kenshin finally said, "you children shouldn't worry about things like this, we're all taking care of it. You're right, though, about Kaoru-dono and Kensuke and the girls...we should try to get them here as soon as possible."
To be continued...
Author's Notes: Yamato dumping Kaoru - think Back to the Future, "Last night, Darth Vader came down from Planet Vulcan and said that if I didn't ask Lorraine to the dance, he'd melt my brain!"
What I managed to write of Immortality came to 15 chapters total (including the prologue and the extra scene at the end). Update frequency will depend on reader feedback, though probably not more than a week between chapters at the most, I'm not sure yet. (Ftr, all the available chapters are ready to be posted, I am not writing them as I go.)