I am still looking for a beta, so please bear with me.

Collateral Damage

Chapter 6: The Wreak

Saitou 1879

With a harsh exhale of startled breath, Saitou jerked awake. His eyes darted around, jittering over the bare walls of his office, the edging around the doors, and the clutter of papers, pens, ink pots, and blotting papers on his desk. His head snapped around to glance behind him then he sprang uncoordinatedly out of his chair to put his back against the wall.

Calm, calm, calm. He chanted to himself, trying to banish the feeling of being grabbed, held helplessly vulnerable as something or someone breathed on his neck. But his senses still quivered in alert, registering every creak of settling boards, every flutter of shadows.

Calm.

The air of the office seemed full with the scent of blood, his blood. He could nearly taste it on his tongue.

He couldn't stay here. He snatched his katana from its place and his jacket from the back of his chair, trying to ignore the quiver of his hands. He shivered as he reached to open the door then flattened himself against the wall and carefully opened it. The door swung open with a minute squeak that seemed as loud as a scream. He forced himself to stay still, listening to the sounds of the station.

The day shift was over and most of the night officers were now out on patrol. A solitary duty officer and a boy were probably the only ones in this section of the building. He carefully edged out the door and scanned around. The office was covered in gloom. The normally bustling place was now hushed and quiet with only a gas lamp at the front desk lending any form of life to the room. Upstairs, he could hear the rustling of papers as someone thumbed through a report. In the back where there was a tiny table, feet shuffled and the slight tap of chopsticks against wood could be distinguished, probably the boy eating his dinner. He took a second to analyze these sounds for threats before he flickered out to the street and flashed into the shadows of the nearby buildings.

Calm.

It must have been later than he thought. The streets were only sparsely peopled. A noodle cart with a paper lantern swinging in the slight breeze stood at the corner. Its vendor, half concealed by a cloud of steam served an old man. Farther away, a trio of people, two men and a woman, paused by an inn, inspecting its exterior, debating in soft voices its merits.

He ducked away into an alley that ran behind the street front stores. The smells of rotting garbage and urine wafted around him in vapors as he darted, light-footed, through the gloom. Sounds became more muffled, quieted by thick doors and walls. A husband and wife argued over sweeping their shop. A boy called a question about twine. A honey bucket man cursed a leaky pot. The shadows were thicker here too, but gentler, more comforting. The sharp dangerous lines of the office and the harsh brazen light weren't allowed back here after sundown and only grudgingly accepted during the day. He knew these shadows. They were old friends and would keep him safe.

When he reached the residential area, he paused a moment, his senses shuddering, before he stepped onto the street. An overgrown wintergreen offered sanctuary in its draping branches, so he slipped into its shelter. Its fragrant leaves brushed his shoulders and head in a comforting caress. A dog barked down the street. By its voice, Saitou could tell it wasn't alarmed. More likely it was only a spoiled pet wanting attention. Lingering traces of meals still haunted the street as he ghosted down it, his eyes scanning fence lines, brush, and the sway of shadows nervously.

When he came to the gate, he paused a second before flickering up the walk and through the door. Inside, there were no lights. No smells of cooking lingered in the rooms he searched through in a quicker and quicker pace. Futons were rolled neatly away, but blankets and clothes were missing. The kitchen was stripped bare, except for a few stacks of dusty bowls and tea cups that sat on an unsteady counter.

He slumped against a wall.

Gone.

She was gone.

His breath seemed to shiver in the empty air.

You knew this would happen…

Gone.

Kamyia Dojo

"Owwww. It hurts." Tsutomo whined, picking at the medicated plaster that Megumi had just patiently dabbed on his arm.

"Leave it alone." Megumi tapped his hand warningly. "It takes awhile for the sting to go out."

"But it hurts!" Tsutomo scrunched his face into a Saitou like scowl.

"What are you complaining about?" Eiji, his temper frayed by his own plasters, growled. "You only got stung once. I got stung twice."

Appealing to a higher court in the face of his unsympathetic audience, Tsutomo raised his voice and wailed, "Momma, it hurts!"

"Shush." Megumi pulled the little one's hand away from where it was again picking at the plaster. "Your mother isn't feeling well."

"Yeah." Eiji frowned. "She got stung a whole bunch of times. You shouldn't bother her."

Tsutomo's lower lip thrust out belligerently. "I want momma."

"Your mother is asleep. You need to let her get better." Kenshin nudged open the shoji screen, looking at the wolf cub scowling at him a moment before he turned to Megumi. "Dinner will be ready in a few minutes."

The little wolf, intent on taking his displeasure out, sunk him teeth into Megumi's arm as she pulled him onto her lap to hold him still.

The doctor grit her teeth and pried him loose. "I want Tokio-san to remain asleep, but please put something aside for her to eat later so Sano won't devour it all."

Kenshin nodded. Like Eiji and Tsutomo, he had his own small plaster lumps. When the hornet's nest that Sano had knocked loose from the rafters had erupted into a cloud of furious insects, he had been slowed by a potted maple that he'd been lugging to the back garden. He had been swarmed, stung, entangled by a possessed tree, and tripped by a pile of laundry that Tokio had been trying to save from the dust of reroofing before he could put his godlike speed to good use by escaping the flying menaces.

It was all Saitou's fault. He wasn't sure how, but he was sure the wolf planned that whole humiliating episode.

Kenshin walked gingerly down the hall trying to not bump the bite that bothered him the most. It was in a most unfortunate area.

Saitou's fault. If those hadn't been Saitou's hornets, they would never have flown up my hakima and stung me there. Damn Saitou! He really is a pain in the ass.

Karou, who had been planning on surprising her guests with an old family recipe of chicken- eel stew and was still upset that he had still made dinner despite his…incapacitating….injury, was sitting down on the porch, keeping an ear open for Tokio. "Have you seen Yahiko?" She whispered as he waddled past.

"No. I think he's out by the well. He says he doesn't wish for help, that he most definitely did." Kenshin gave her a bland grin trying not to notice how both of her cheeks had swollen making her look even more like a tanuki.

"He's being silly." Karou muttered. "He really needs to let Megumi look at that sting."

Kenshin hummed noncommittally. "This one needs to get back to the fish before it overcooks."

"You didn't use the eels, did you? I'm still going to make everyone dinner tomorrow" Karou gave a painful but cheery smile. "You will all just adore it!"

Kenshin waddled faster, as if he could somehow escape from the looming meal. For the last week he'd managed to save their guests, but it was only a matter of time. Perhaps, if he did let her cook tomorrow, Tokio would still be recovering from the hornet attack. While he was starting to plot his now quite attractive duel with Saitou, he did not want the wolf to come after him for the loss of his wife and child, not if the recent happenings really were the Shinsengumi's way of evening up thirty year old debts.

"Hey, Kenshin." Sano was sitting scrunched into a corner of the kitchen. "How's everyone doing?"

"Karou-dono looks like a tanuki." Kenshin waddled over to check his fish. "Eiji and Tsutomo only got a couple of stings, though they are complaining. Yahiko might never forgive you, and if he ever marries, he might have some explaining to do. Tokio-dono is sleeping, but Megumi-dono said she should be fine in the morning. She gave her some special tea that Doctor Genkai made that has helped."

"Saitou is going to kill me." Sano pulled his knees tight against his chest. "I ain't kidding, Kenshin. I'm dead." Sano looked doomed. "Man! Honestly Kenshin, I checked yesterday for things like that. It wasn't there then."

Kenshin, not feeling too forgiving since he was already feeling tired and laying down was a painful experience not to mention sitting, frowned gently at his friend, "You need to check more carefully, that you do."

"But I did!" Sano glanced quickly toward the dojo's main gate, checking for rampaging police captains wanting to know why his lovely, beloved, and very pregnant wife was now suffering from hornet stings from a mysteriously appearing hornet's nest. "Why does everyone think I didn't?"

"Because, at heart, you are a lazy slacker?" Megumi stepped into the kitchen and put a tray of used tea cups down on the counter. She nodded sweetly to Kenshin, then put a thoughtful finger to her lips. "Or perhaps we're still remembering other small incidents…like, that grand idea you had in Kyoto that landed you in jail…"

"Or running after Jenea after I said not to." Kenshin mumbled to the fish he was inspecting with tremendous diligence.

"And wasn't there that time that…" Megumi tipped her head and turned to consult Kenshin.

"Fine. Fine." Sano waved his hand. "But, I don't have a death wish. Do you think I don't know that Saitou is going to flay me alive because Tokio-san got stung?"

"I'm sure he won't flay you alive." Megumi snickered as she walked out the door. "As a representative of justice, law, and order, I'm sure he'll kill you first."

Sano moaned and dropped his head to rest on his knees. "That ain't funny, fox. He's going to blame me for this, just you wait."

"I'll bring flowers to your funeral, Sanosuke." Megumi's laugh trailed after her as she went back to check on her patients.

Chou

Saitou looked up as his office door opened. He'd come back after his discovery that his life was indeed over, and had done as he always did, bury himself in work. If he didn't think about it, if he just kept his head down and focused on the parade of mindless idiocy that sloshed across his desk, he could pretend that he was still alive.

"Hey, guess what?" Chou stood in his doorway with a smirk on his face. "I found our killer."

"You did." Saitou went back to filling out the report about a petty theft from a fish monger's stall that he had been blessed with.

"Yep. It was that guy with the music place. You know…" Chou made a sawing motion like he was playing violin. "The dead cop guy was sleeping with his daughter and the old man found out and while our boy was walking his beat, drinking his cup of tea, the music guy whacked him with a log, shoved his body into a cart and hauled it away and dumped it." Chou puffed up proudly. "I got a confession and everything."

A part of Saitou's mind ran through that scenario and promptly found enough holes to sink a black ship. An old music teacher managed to kill a police officer that was twice his size with a log that was just handily laying about? The old man then put the officer, who had to be twice his weight, into a cart and pulled that cart across town? The old man then pulled the man out of the cart and dumped him in a back alley? And he did this by himself? Weren't there two sets of footprints? Did the daughter help? Could a music teacher really make this look so…so…professionally done?

But what did it matter to the dead?

He shrugged. "Good work. Fill out the forms and get them on my desk."

Chou's grin faltered. "Good…" He glanced around, checking to see if this was some kind of joke. Saitou couldn't have just said that, could he? "Yeah, right. Okay. Good. I'll get right on that."

Saitou didn't look up. The pen he was writing with kept scratching lightly over the page in front of him with smooth even, unhurried strokes.

"You want to know how I did it?" Chou shuffled nervously, eyeing his boss.

"Put it in the report." Saitou reached out for another form, not even looking up from what he was doing.

Chou shuffled a bit more. "Forms, right, forms. When do you want them."

Scarily, Saitou just shrugged.

"Errr…" A hesitant voice interrupted causing Chou to jerk around to face a pale, ting boy wearing a neatly pressed uniform. "So sorry to interrupt." The boy bowed nervously. "But the commissioner would like to speak with you, Captain Fujita-san."

Putting the paperwork neatly aside, Saitou nodded. "Of course. I'll be right there."

No grumbling. No irritation. No proper and annoyed straightening of the uniform. No glare at the peon who dared to interrupt his work. Nothing.

Chou backed away wondering if someone had managed to get the drop on Saitou and replaced him. Ninjas could do some freaky thinks like making people see what wasn't there. Maybe one, or a whole bunch of 'em had taken the wolf and some freaky ninja guy (or maybe it was a girl!) was wandering around pretending to be him.

Chou sat at his desk weighing the benefits of having a freaky ninja as a boss as Saitou trailed sedately after the boy and disappeared into the commissioner's office. The rest of the station bustled about noisily blocking Chou's ability to overhear the conversation taking place behind the door. He even got up and ambled over to a cabinet next to the office to get some important ink blotters, but the most he could make out was Saitou's voice blandly agreeing to something.

Frustrated and wondering if freaky ninjas could hide entire conversations, Chou sat back at his desk and started gnawing on the dried fish he'd brought for lunch. By the time Saitou stepped out from behind the commissioner's door, Chou had devoured his lunch and was contemplating if he could sneak out to get roast fish at the vendor's on the corner. If it was Saitou, he's have instantly abandoned the idea, but with a freaky ninja…

"The fish cart moved."Saitou walked past Chou. "We're leaving. Go get a carriage."

Damn, no freaky ninja.

"What's up, boss?" Chou got up and lazed around the desk to Saitou's door, watching him scoop his paperwork up and put it away.

"There had been a rash of suicides among former samurais of the area and their estate managers outside of Tokyo. The trend is now spreading south." Saitou picked up his hat and katana. "The commissioner wants this investigated before it lands on our doorstep." He looked up at Chou. "Where's the carriage?"

"Hey, I had to know where we were heading." Chou spread his hands innocently while shrugging. "I was just trying to do my job."

Saitou shrugged. ""Fin. Get a carriage."

Saitou 1870ish

"We are proud samurai." Kurasawa stood on a stump that had been cut flat in the middle of a muddy field. The tree had fallen over during the torrential rains and winds from an unseasonable tsunami that had struck the region in May. "We may not be what were once were, but that does not mean we are less!"

Saitou felt Tokio shiver next to him and shifted his weight subtly so he could block more of the wind from reaching her. She shouldn't have been out in this weather. It was too soon. The wind was too chilly, the ground too damp. It was bad enough that Kurasawa demanded that they leave their fields, shops and work to hear his self-important blathering, but did the man's ego really need to see even the sick in attendance?

"Yes, times are indeed difficult to bear in this new era." Kurasawa struck a heroic pose as he continued.

Saitou quickly glanced over to check his wife. She was standing quietly with her hands clasped in front of her and her head bowed. Her normally well combed and cared for hair hung in limp tendrils hinding her face. He knew if she looked up her eyes would be sunken and dull, her skin ashen, and her lips pale and thin from strain.

"I have seen…"

Others around them looked equally bad. For the second year storms had destroyed seedling crops, killed cattle, and scattered even the wildlife many had come to depend on for food. Tanma, his closest neighbor, had lost two children during the last winter. His wife, a solid, sturdy woman, had taken their remaining child and returned south to live with her parents. News had come a week ago that both had been killed by bandits wearing uniforms, well kept, well pressed uniforms.

"…endurance under hardship! That's the core of a samurai's heart."

Yashika, who was the youngest unmarried man in the area, stood shuffling with hunched shoulders. He'd been a hereditary gate guard for a minor daimyo, proudly serving his doddering old lord until the Meiji had liberated the area from tyranny. Now as punishment for his crime, he had to eek out a barely adequate living as a honey-bucket man and as the village's mortician. Any chance he had of a wife and children were long vanished in this wasteland. Saitou wondered if the kid was lucky. Lucky to not live as a disappointment and see his family die."

"…the corrupt…"

Tokio shivered again, wrapping her arms tight around her too thin body. She never spoke even one syllable of reproach to him. Not for the miserable years he had abandoned her to scrabble a living together in the chaos following the revolution as he was in Echigo, not for taking her way from the comfortable life she had been raised in, not for the decaying hovel they called home, for the meager food that hadn't been enough to sustain their unborn child, who now lay under a pathetic stone at the far end of their blighted fields, for the casual brutality of their lives as petty scum, flotsam from the revolution, roved through town.

"… stand tall, proud of your heritage."

Why? Why didn't she leave him? Her father still held a position in Aizu, with the canny old lord who had managed to finagle a few favors from old friends to retain much of his former position. She could be living in comfort, in silk, eating fine food as servants fluttered at her merest gesture. Yet, here she stood with her dirty hair tangled in the northern wind, dying in slow drops of time.

"…one day we shall be hailed as heroes!" Kurasawa seemed to be winding up. His rhetoric was reaching a fever pitch. Not that his audience had the strength or the interest to care.

Satiou glanced towards the path that led back home. Perhaps it would be best if he carried Tokio on their return trip. It wasn't far. He could see their roof clearly from where they stood. He wasn't sure she was strong enough to make the trek back there though. He wasn't sure if he was strong enough to carry her the whole way, but…

He looked away, trying to not see her standing at his side. Just how much more shameful would it be to collapse under her tiny weight compared to watching her struggle along the path?

Why didn't she leave him when she had still been strong enough to do so?

Why hadn't he been strong enough to demand she go?

Research Notes:

I have to admit, when I reread this chapter, I had to go back and put in more notes. Some of these things I knew as a child. My mother was once stationed in Japan and I grew up knowing about Honey Bucket Men and the Eta. I would appreciate it if you sometimes point out things like this that you don't understand. I am not giving carte blanche to anyone who doesn't agree with the story to ream me, but if I add in something like the Eta and you don't know it, please let me know. I'll do my best to find a picture, a website, or another source to explain the odd point and stick them into the notes.

Honey Bucket Men- Honey bucket men had nothing to do with honey. Basically, Japan needed fertilizer. The soil in many places was of poor quality and livestock keeping was pretty minimal (which is why fish is such a staple in their diets). In an effort to counter balance the soil quality, they niftily turned to a dependable source of fertilizer for fields, human bodily waste. It was collected by people called honey bucket men and there was not only a thriving business doing this, but competition. There were "collection" urns along sides of roads and other convenient places where honey bucket men would pick them up on their routs. The waste was then allowed to compost until it was no longer considered dangerous, and then sold to farmers. It was considered a very low level job in the stratified Japanese society.

Clothes- I had a small brain freeze when I was trying to remember the Japanese name for pants. I remembered what it translated to "big mouth" but I couldn't remember the Japanese, so I had to look it up. I found this site, which I thought was well done and had some very, very nice information about Japanese clothing. I sort of wished I had read this sooner, then I could have used it to describe the clothes Tokio and Saitou would have worn. I was particularly interested in the seasonal change of colors and the way pattern can differentiate between formal and informal clothing. I'll put it to use someday. .com/japanese_

Hornets- these things are scary. They are huge and being stung is not something to be taken lightly. People die from it, even today. They secrete a nerve toxin and have no natural enemies. Happily, they tend to stay in rural areas and are relatively placid unless annoyed. Here's a link. Just thinking about these things is giving me the creeps. .org/wiki/Asian_giant_hornet

Tanuki- Just in case you always wondered just what everyone was going on about when they were calling Karou a "raccoon" or a tanuki, I wiki searched this while I was looking at the hornets. .org/wiki/Tanuki. But personally, I liked this better. ..

Handling the Dead- this was considered a very bad career to hold since you would be constantly contaminated by the dead (spiritually and physically). I am not sure if the Eta were still around (but there are rumors!). They were the lowest rung on the social ladder (many people would not even touch an Eta because they thought it would contaminate them) and would be the only ones to handle the dead since the higher rungs didn't want to be contaminated. No family of even slightly higher stature would allow a child of theirs to marry such a polluted person and even today the mere suspicion that you descended from the Eta class is enough to scare well off parents away from allowing their child to marry you. That is how disgusting being an Eta is, even your descendants are considered dirty. /~