Rurouni Yahiko
A Rurouni Kenshin Fan Fiction Continuation by Chester Castañeda
The conclusion to the story that happened five years before the events of Rurouni Yahiko.
Disclaimer: All characters used in this fanfic (save some others) are the rightful property of Nobuhiro Watsuki, Shueisha, Shonen Jump, Viz, Sony Studios, Fuji TV, Studio Gallup, Studio Deen, and ADV. This disclaimer also covers all the other copyrighted material that are far too many to mention here. Don't sue me please, I'm very poor.
Chapter 33: The Black Book
Within the Sapporo Agricultural College Library paced Tetsuo Akahori back and forth while several old and new books were opened across a table. A blackboard from behind him featured chicken scratch text and charts concerning his findings.
Some of the numerous tomes contained financial records. Others were history books. Still others were newspaper archives from ten to twenty years ago. A special pile of books he hid inside an imported carpet bag made during the Reconstruction Era of the American Civil War contained classified documents he had to pilfer straight out of the Hokkaido Colonization Office of Governor Kiyotaka Kuroda himself.
'Just what exactly is the hanbatsu up to, I wonder?' he asked himself while attempting to form a timeline of sorts and gathering as much evidence as possible to uncover the conspiracy that was afoot.
'The Jiyu Minken Undo is after me? Really? Give me a break. Who do they think they're fooling?' Akahori chuckled to himself.
Ever since the group's inception by its leader, Taisuke Itagaki, back in 1874, the Meji Oligarchy had been using the Freedom and People's Rights Movement (also known as the Liberty and Civil Rights Movement) as a political boogeyman of sorts in order to influence popular opinion and remove those who've fallen out of their favor by accusing them of being part of the "extremist" party.
With that said, there was no way the Meiji Oligarchy would refer to themselves as an oligarchy (the rule of the privileged few) because it painted them in a negative light even though they really were an oligarchy in every sense of the word.
He knew it was one of the members of the Meiji's most powerful political factions (particularly the Satsuma and Choshu Ishin Shishi from the bygone Tokugawa Shogunate) who ordered those assassins to eliminate him and his daughter while putting the blame on a party that had long been exposing their graft and corruption to the public at large.
Although Tetsuo and his family's Togakudan had long been serving as an intelligence liaison to the Ishin Shishi and the Choshu and Satsuma hanbatsu (political faction) since the Bakumatsu, he still made them mindful of him the same way Makoto Shishio and his rebellious faction, the militant members of the Kakure Kirishitan and their leader, Shiro Amakusa the Second, and the Jiyu Minken Undo, did.
Even though the Akahoris helped the Ishin Shishi (who were now mostly part of the Meiji Oligarchy) win the war against the Bakufu and gain the highest seats in the land while reinstating power to Emperor Meiji through intelligence and counterintelligence support, those very same reasons made him a dangerous enemy to them; a target they so desperately wanted to eliminate like Shishio, Amakusa, and even Satsuma's own Takamori Saigo.
He knew the Meiji Government's strengths and weaknesses. He was aware of all the skeletons in the closets of every Choshu and Satsuma clique member. He knew their secret shames, the lies they said, the promises they broke, the propaganda they spread, the people they betrayed, the self-serving crimes they committed against the country, and the dishonorable lengths they went through in order to attain power,
He had this treasure trove of classified information and data compiled in one of four volumes of a single, eye-opening tome. Threatened by the influence of western imperialism, four secret clans were instituted decades earlier by Emperor Komei (the predecessor of Emperor Meiji) himself at the behest of his shogunate. These volumes were shared among these spies.
The clans were supposed to protect the Japanese way of life from foreign influence. Now they had become a weapon that could undo everything that the short-lived Meiji Restoration had achieved so far.
It couldn't be helped. Japan deserved something better than replacing a flawed government with another, more corrupt one.
'Ah. I found what I was looking for. Now I know what those oligarch pigs are planning.' Akahori sat down, put his elbows on the table, and clasped his hands in front of his bespectacled, bearded face as he leaned forward and smirked. 'Looks like I'll get to add another chapter in my own volume of the Black Book.'
The Meiji Oligarchs were distinguished by military control, family ties, domain ties, wealth, and rank. During the Meiji Restoration, the only way a politician could advance his career was to win the favor of the Meiji Oligarchs, particularly the influential Satsuma and Choshu Hanbatsu. Conversely, the surest way for a statesman or minister to commit political suicide was to anger or otherwise get in the way of the goals of a former Ishin Shishi official.
In particular, the Home Minister and a premier member of the Choshu and Satsuma clique, Hirobumi Ito, had been breathing down the neck of his closest rival, Shigenobu Okuma, with a variety of disagreements ranging from the establishment of a constitution and securing foreign loans.
Not coincidentally, if ever Okuma were to step down, Home Minister Ito would gain unchallenged control of the Meiji Government. In fact, he gained the "Home Minister" position right after Toshimichi Okubo was assassinated.
'I know what they're planning, but I still need solid evidence to prove it. They know I'm looking though, and they want to get rid of me as soon as possible.' Tetsuo pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. 'They have every right to be afraid of me. I represent the bad karma they have coming for a long time.'
Akahori looked out the window in time to see the flames and the plume of smoke coming from the same direction as his residence. Those bastards. Those sons of bitches did it. Just like with Shishio, the Ishin Shishi would literally burn him up in order to remove all evidence of his existence and their past sins.
The daijin (state minister) had other, more important things in mind, though.
"Rin... Dammit, Rin! RIN! RIN!"
He abandoned his papers, his books, and his carpet bag full of top secret documents in favor of a Colt Single Action Army Revolver and a bandolier of ammunition. He didn't even bother informing his security detail of where he was going as he drove his four-horse Concord carriage straight to his burning mansion.
After thirty minutes of going to and fro the burning wreckage that used to be an inn, searching each and every last room within the flaming building for any sign of life and trapped people, Soujiro came upon what he hoped was the final person he had left to rescue.
A second later, the entire second story of the west wing collapsed right before the Sapporo Fire Department was finally able to control the blaze and spare the east wing from considerable damage.
There were tearful reunions everywhere Soujiro looked. Happy faces. Relieved laughter. He did good, didn't he? He hoped Kenshin Himura could see him now. Would he be proud of what he accomplished?
He did it. He saved about all the remaining residents of the inn... he lost count how many... from being burned alive, a lot of them coming out of the harrowing experience with only minor, first-degree burns at worst.
"I can't believe this kid. You're not supposed to reenter a burning building once, much less multiple times! What if something exploded? What if the building collapsed sooner than it should have? Aren't you scared of dying?" admonished one of the firemen.
However, Soujiro couldn't even hear him. This was one of the few times that the smile plastered on his face felt genuine. "No. I'm not. I don't care if I die," he confessed in all honesty.
He saved them all. Or, he saved everyone that he could. And, as soon as he saved Rin Akahori too, he'd successfully prove her wrong as well. He had finally found his life's true calling.
He checked to see the condition of the man he saved, only to have his heart caught in his throat, even though his smile showed no hints of a negative reaction.
"Thank you for saving me, young man," said a familiar man with a swelling face. In fact, he was the same alcoholic Seta beat up in a fit of blind anger after he almost killed his wife for allegedly cheating on him.
"Hey, you kind of look familiar..." the man said, his eyes mere slits thanks to the severe assault he went through just hours ago.
"Oh, thank the gods! Jo! I'm so glad you're safe, you drunken lout!" a tearful woman with a black eye told her scuffed-up husband. "Thank you so much, sir! How can I ever repay...?" Her face went blue with shock. "Y-You! You're the kid from earlier who...!"
"Yes. I'm sorry about beating up your husband earlier. I shouldn't have interfered with your personal problems." Soujiro bowed low at the clingy wife of the abusive husband he rescued earlier.
The wife, Junko, became a stuttering, sniveling, and flabbergasted mess. "A-After everything I said to you, y-you still... I-I... b-but why would you even...?"
Soujiro bowed again at the couple. "I hope by rescuing your husband, you'd forgive me for assaulting him." He turned his back before either of the two could respond to what he said.
He exhaled through his nostrils while dusting himself off and wincing at the superficial burns left on his person.
"Hidenori-san, it's been more than half an hour! Why is the mansion near SAC still burning from the distance? I thought we had the fire brigade dispatched to that place as soon as the fire started!"
"I don't know myself. If it goes on any longer, the whole place will be beyond saving. Let's finish up here and go take a look at what's going on!" the firefighter called Hidenori suggested.
Soujiro's blood turned cold. 'Oh no,' he thought as he dashed towards the Akahori Residence, hoping against hope that his decision to save the people at the inn didn't come at the cost of Rin's own life.
'I don't care anymore if I'm wrong or right. Just please keep Rin-san and her father safe. Please.'
Twenty minutes since the fire started inside Akahori's Sapporo Mansion...
"...RIN! RIN! RIN! RIN! RIN! RIN! RIN! RIN...!"
The front entrance of the mansion was already engulfed in flames, so the father of one decided to go to the backdoor near the kitchen instead, only for him to end up facing a familiar, unwanted face.
"Reach for the sky, Akahori. We've been expecting you."
The police-cap-wearing hooligan from before, Toshiaki, came to greet the panicked Tetsuo with a Murata Rifle aimed right at his head. "Don't move and hold your hands up, Mister State Minister. Let's make this nice and neat, like an accident involving lead poisoning."
"Where's your other companion?" Akahori asked, not bothering to heed the assassin's command, his hand twitching around his pistol's grip.
"That's really none of your business, old man," Toshiaki answered.
"Where's my daughter?" the daijin further probed.
"Burning alive inside her room, probably. Maybe you can join her later. Get your fucking hands up."
While Toshiaki talked, Akahori aimed and pulled the trigger of his pistol while it was still inside its holster, shooting the Jiyu Minken Undo assassin right through his flapping maw without bothering to draw his gun, producing a hole on its holster. Tetsuo then drew his weapon outright and fired two more shots right between the assassin's eyes just in case.
Without missing a stride, the politician holstered his weapon, took Toshiaki's rifle, went to the well just beside the mansion, and filled a pail with water.
He then put the bandolier, pistol, and rifle to the side, took the bucket, and drenched himself from head to toe. From there, he armed himself yet again, kicked open the backdoor, and charged into the flames to save his daughter from certain immolation.
"Welcome to Hell," the multiple tongues of flame hissed at him.
The smoke was thick, and he'd heard that it wasn't usually the fire that killed the people inside a burning building, but the smoke. As such, he went on all fours and crawled on the floor along with the stolen Murata Rifle as though he were a young cadet going through army training.
For once, his decorative tinted spectacles were of use during the night as well as the day, allowing him to peer through the blazing inferno without hurting his eyes from the glare or making them tear up from the smoke.
He entered the pits of hell... specifically around the parts where there was only fire and brimstone... crawling on his belly like a serpent, and heard the roar of Cerberus in the form of crackling flames. He didn't dare walk upright for fear of the smoke suffocating him. His short hairs were singed away from his exposed skin. His face felt like it was melting.
He soldiered on, Murata Rifle on his hand, trying his best to discern where he was even as the flames redecorated his home timber to timber, post to post, turning it into another dimension altogether.
After what seemed like an eternity, he found his daughter's room... or what was left of it, the roof collapsing in a fiery heap in front of the ajar door.
"RIN! Rin, are you in there? ANSWER ME!"
Coughing up black phlegm that accumulated on the surface of his throat, he then hissed as he got too close to the flaming debris, producing blisters on his arms and hand. He shouted his daughter's name again.
She could be anywhere in the house. She could've escaped already. He could be trapped there alone instead.
He didn't care. Even if he had to search every flaming nook and cranny of his home until he found Rin (or until he burned to a crisp), he would not stop. Even it was an empty room, he'd just move forward...
Using the bayonet-fitted Murata Rifle he retrieved from one of the Jiyu Minken Undo terrorist he killed earlier, he stabbed at the bonfire before him to give him enough room to open the door to Rin's room.
His ears picked up an indistinct sound from the roaring flames.
"Father... Father..."
What it his imagination? Was it willful thinking? Regardless, he used the bayonet attached to the rifle to pick apart the wreckage that was in front of his daughter's room, hoping against hope for her safety.
"RIN! If you're inside there, knock on the wood so that I can hear you!" he shouted with a sandpaper voice. It certainly felt like he was choking on rough horsetail.
Hindsight told him that he should've gotten a shovel or an axe with him, but it was too late for regrets. Just beyond the door lay the depths of inferno.
His body moved on its own as soon as he heard the faint knocks on the other side of the door. He stabbed the bayonet like a pickaxe, an iron crow, into the burning debris as though it were the belly of a beast, a fire-breathing dragon.
The metal of the bayonet glowed orange. Sparks flew everywhere. However, a stubborn beam remained lodged on the door, forbidding entry. Using the Murata Rifle to handle all the ruins was as unwieldy as using oven mitts to pick up bits of salt.
It was taking too much time.
"Hold on, Rin! Hold on!"
His front teeth cut right through his lower lip as he clenched his jaw. The fire burned right through his skin as he grabbed hold of the beam with his bare hands. Bullets of sweat flowed from his forehead to the rest of his body. The sweat reached his eyes, making them water.
The fire might have burned through the very bones of his hands. He didn't dare look.
He used the butt of his acquisitioned gun to loosen the grip of the latch bolt and kicked the door down afterwards. He saw his daughter sprawled in the middle of the room, knocking weakly on the floor.
Tetsuo's hands smoking and bloody, Rin's thin, frail body was made to rest on his forearms, which almost made her slip from his grip. He took a firmer grip of her with his damaged hands, which produced a strange feeling... or rather, a lack thereof.
He couldn't feel his hands taking hold of her small person at all, as though he'd lost his appendages and replaced them with something else that held her in place.
He didn't want to think about it. He merely held his child while discarding the damaged Murata Rifle that helped open the locked door altogether.
She wore a singed yukata as white as her complexion, staining it red, pink, and brown with his bleeding handprints. He could barely hear her breathe. He draped her over him the best he could, for fear of letting her go and seeing her shatter all over the floor like a ceramic plate.
"Father... The sun... The sun got too close. I'm burning all over."
"Hush now, my darling. Daddy's got you."
The next three words from Rin pierced through his haze of numbness.
"Let me die." She let go of his neck and stared sightlessly into the roaring flames and the building smoke, the memory of the prickling heat from behind her neck triggering her nightmares.
"No. Never. What the hell are you talking about, Rin? The fumes must be getting to your head."
"If you love me, you'll let me die."
"Sleep now and stop talking. Daddy will take care of everything. By next morning, everything will be back to normal."
"This is wrong. Let me be with Mother."
"Stop trying to break your father's heart. You still have a lot to live for."
She dug her fingers into his clothes and skin before shaking her head. "No. No, I don't. Please stop making me force you to do horrible things."
"Please don't leave me behind! I'll do anything... Sakura...!"
"Father, I'm not Mother."
Regardless of her rebuke, Rin nevertheless clutched her arms around her daddy's neck as he gave her a piggyback ride to safety, the two of them rushing through the flames and suffocating smoke of a collapsing house. At the very least, a piggyback provided the least amount of strain on Akahori's burned hands.
The ceiling above them gave way, and the Elder Akahori sprinted for dear life to keep himself and his daughter from being buried inside a fiery "cave in" of sorts. He jumped, sparks and soot flying everywhere, the flames eating at his wardrobe while he did what he could to shield Rin from the flaming debris.
The nimbus of smoke thickened, turning into plumes of black, gray, and red. They were breathing nothing but smoke now.
Tetsuo soldiered on, holding his breath even as Rin started coughing uncontrollably. The entire mansion was a mess now. His head jerked from the left to the right, his mind racing as it tried its best to discern where they were. He could barely recognize his home anymore.
He soon found the stairs around the time he felt his nostril hairs burn from the intense heat of the converging fire.
His eyelids fluttered closed and the room spun. He swallowed, and it felt like his throat was filled with grit, as though he ingested charcoal powder. Were they going to make it?
They barely made it a couple of steps down the stairs before Tetsuo collapsed, coughing and vomiting black phlegm while writhing around, his subconscious desperate to take himself and his child out of that burning house long after his body gave way.
As the flames engulfed them, Tetsuo... with sweat that somehow ended up in his eyes... embraced his child and used his body as her cocoon against the converging, forked devils' tongues.
Fifty-five minutes later, as the entire Sapporo mansion owned by Tetsuo Akahori got overwhelmed by what seemed like the fires of damnation itself, Soujiro arrived at the scene.
He was in fact twenty-five minutes too late.
To the young man's chagrin, Rin proved him wrong. Proved Kenshin Himura wrong. And it only cost her life to do so.
The entire house was engulfed in flames. The firefighters back at the Sapporo inn told him that it only took thirty minutes to an hour to burn down the foundations of a two-storey house and make it collapse in its own weight.
Even with the Shukuchi's top speed, he still wasn't going to make it in time. 'No. This can't be happening. No. No... Why?'
She was a stranger; someone he met for less than a day. Why should he give a damn about her? Why should he care whether she lived or die?
He knew why he wanted to save her. Perhaps it wasn't the most altruistic or selfless of reasons, but it was a reason nonetheless.
Kenshin proved Shishio wrong in regards to the weak being food for the strong. However, what had tonight's events proven in regards to Battousai's principles of trying to protect everyone in need?
Just when he thought life was beginning to make sense, his beliefs betrayed him once more.
'What did I do wrong? Was I not supposed to save all those people back in the inn?' He shook his head. 'No. If it were Himura-san, he would've saved them all and the Akahoris. He would've found a way. He always did.'
'Don't be afraid to question your principles. Your ideals. Don't just follow them blindly without knowing what they are. Think for yourself for once,' was what Rin more or less told him yesterday.
But could Kenshin really have saved everyone? Did Soujiro really believe that? Should the Heaven Sword have gone further and sacrifice himself for the sake of protecting everyone before them just like he knew Himura would?
'Was I not strong...?' He caught himself in mid-sentence. Matters of strength were of no concern to Himura Kenshin.
It wasn't Kenshin's voice from inside his mind that responded to his questions. It was instead Shishio's.
'You believe that I was wrong to follow the Laws of Nature after just one fight with the Battousai. Did his unrealistic beliefs help you save the Akahoris? Were you supposed to save that abusive husband from the fire? Or did you just help damn them all to oblivion instead?'
'I just wanted to do the right thing...' he thought as he clenched his fists.
"You've made a big mistake by letting me live, boy."
The waves of bloodlust beckoned Soujiro's legs to move by pure reflex before he even figured out who had said those trite words.
Before he got shot from behind... a tactic many a policeman and bounty hunter had tried against him when he was still serving as Shishio's personal assassin... he dodged without thinking and ended up behind his attacker who sported a gun he himself sliced apart with his blade.
"You. You're the Jiyu Minken Undo terrorist from earlier," observed Soujiro with a smile as the man on horseback turned his ride towards the boy.
"And you're a creepy son of a bitch," countered the horseman as he reloaded his shotgun and ushered his horse closer to the boy so that he could shoot him easier before he could get away. "You have mighty fast legs for a young brat. Such a waste..."
"And what was your name? Tokugawa? Tokushima? I didn't catch it the last time we met."
The gun-toting renegade rolled his eyes. "Tokuyama, but it doesn't matter whether or not you know my name. Dead men tell no tales." He got as close as possible to the kid in order to prevent him from escaping his shotgun's wrath in an eye blink.
"You're the one responsible for this? You were the one who started the fire? What happened to the firefighters who were supposed to get here and put out the flames?"
"I'll be the one asking the questions, if you don't mind," Tokuyama said as he leveled his scattergun right towards the Ten Ken's face. In response, Soujiro smilingly raised his hand while peering from behind the supposed rebel.
The firefighter's carriage was there. They made it in time. However, all that was left of them now were several bloody corpses with their heads blown off. The bobbed-haired boy's jaw clenched shut as he put two and two together, his involuntary grin making his captor wary.
"What's so funny? Why are you laughing?"
"I'm not laughing. I'm smiling."
"Then stop smiling, you crazy bastard!" Tokugawa rebuked before cackling, "Or have you gone mad because the Akahoris have been roasted to a crisp?"
Tokuyama wiped his happy tears from his eyes. "That gaijin-loving asshole, Akahori, killed one of my men earlier, but he still leapt into the flames to try and save his daughter from the fire anyway. What an idiot! He should've saved himself. He instead saved me the trouble of killing him."
Before Soujiro became aware of what he was doing, his hand fell on his sword's handle. He heard an audible click from the gunman's halved rifle that kept him at bay.
"That was a neat trick you did back there, getting the jump on me when I'm the one who's supposed to sneak up on you. Just who the hell are you anyway? Are you part of the Keishicho? What was your connection with Akahori?"
'Keishicho?' thought the dazed Soujiro before remembering it referred to the Metropolitan Police Department that Hajime Saito worked for. "No, I'm not. I'm a simple wanderer. That time when I foiled your plans to assassinate Akahori-san and his daughter was the first time I met those two."
"Bullshit. You expect me to believe that you're some sort of clueless, naive do-gooder who tried to save someone who was already damned to hell? I wasn't born yesterday! TELL ME WHO YOU ARE, BOY!"
Maybe the arsonist was right. A simple wanderer? What was he saying? Was he supposed to be Kenshin the Rurouni now?
No, he wasn't. If it were "Himura-san" who handled this case, then things would've been different. 'Would they have been? Would he have managed to save all those people back in the inn and the Akahoris too?'
Nevertheless, the fact remained that he failed. The Akahoris were trapped inside their mansion, doomed to die in a fire.
What was Soujiro supposed to do now? As the bespectacled man with the sliced-off gun continued to interrogate him, the Akahori Mansion continued to succumb to hungry flames that reminded him of Shishio and his all-consuming ambition.
'The strong live, and the weak serve as food for the strong. They were weak. They deserved to die,' said the Shishio in his mind.
'No, they don't. I don't want them to die. They were the ones I wanted to save...'
"LISTEN WHEN I'M TALKING TO YOU, BITCH!" barked Tokuyama as he aimed the business end of his weapon at Soujiro's forehead. "Who the fuck are you anyway? Who sent you? Tell me before I blow your brains out, you smiling, psychotic freak!"
Did he not try hard enough? Was he not willing to make the sacrifices required from him to redeem himself and become a hero after blindly serving under a "villain" for so long? Was he really willing to do what he had to do? Could he make that leap of faith?
'I can. I'm not afraid to die. Since that rainy day nine years ago, I've ceased fearing death.'
The Amakakeru Ryu no Hirameki was a succession technique that lay in the middle of life and death. In order to straddle that line and do such a dangerous, destructive move, one must have a strong will to live.
'I didn't want to die back then. But I didn't want to kill my adoptive family either just so I could survive.'
The will to live: Did he even have that? Did he value his life enough to graduate from being able to do the Shun Ten Satsu to executing his own Amakakeru Ryu no Hirameki?
He couldn't. Not even after a year of wandering, he still couldn't. He saw no reason to save his life.
So much for him trying to follow Kenshin's footsteps. To think, even the Battousai himself had admitted that Soujiro was faster than him, and yet the teenager still failed to protect the people he wanted to protect. 'Wait. I'm... faster than Himura-san?'
He saw the Akahori Mansion start to collapse the same way the inn that he was staying at earlier had also burned down. His feet moved in cadence with the flames. He made his decision then and there.
'If this life of mine is truly worthless, then...'
A vision of Rin and her father being engulfed in flames prompted him to act.
As Tokuyama's patience ran out, which got him to pull the trigger of his shotgun, two things happened. Soujiro ran the fastest he ever ran... and time slowed down.
The split-second it took for Tokuyama to shoot his scattergun was all Soujiro needed in order to accelerate to Shukuchi speed on the first step he made.
The boy didn't know if it was his imagination or not, but he even saw the buckshot leave slowly from the sliced-off barrel of the shotgun and disperse mere hairbreadths away from his face and head.
Could bullets slow down to the point that you could see them with your naked eye? Perhaps the assassin's weapon misfired, or the gunpowder didn't ignite. Soujiro wasn't sure. He didn't really have any idea of how guns worked anyway.
He ran as far as his legs could allow him, but for some reason, it appeared as if he were running at a normal pace, without the assistance of the Shukuchi. He didn't dare look back. He merely hoped that the gunman he left behind wasn't going to somehow shoot him from behind.
His limbs throbbed from the effort, but he nevertheless moved away from Tokuyama and went right inside the collapsing mansion... except the blazing home wasn't breaking down at the moment.
He couldn't believe his eyes. The house that was on the verge of collapse held itself together... rickety, yet intact. It was as if the burning structure was bearing with the heat and waiting for him to come inside.
He looked down on his feet. The dirt didn't so much as explode but slowly bloom into dust clods, the pebbles and rock shards floating behind him long after his feet left the ground.
The earth he stepped on had a delayed reaction to his every stomp. It was like he was traveling underwater. His heavy legs felt as though there was extra resistance from his every movement.
Even his lungs felt as if he were submerged under the sea. No matter how many breaths he took, he had trouble breathing the air that surrounded him like a heavy blanket. It was like trying to breathe hair or wool.
Moreover, he felt the temperature around him rise to sweltering levels. He was nowhere near the burning house yet and he was already feeling the heat.
Usually, when he galloped around using the Shukuchi, the wind blew around him like a cool storm. This time around, it felt like his skin scraped through the air as though it were made out of gritty sandpaper.
It didn't make any sense to him. This was the first time this had happened to him.
Why was he headed towards the Akahori Manor anyway? Weren't the Akahoris doomed to a fiery death many minutes ago? Wasn't he already too late? Was he really this desperate to prove Rin Akahori wrong? What was the point in doing all of this?
'Because I can. Because I choose too. Because I'm the only one who can do this. Even Himura-san couldn't...'
After what seemed like forever, his skin stinging with prickly heat before even stepping on the flaming house, he finally arrived inside the residence in question. He slashed apart the door with his battoujutsu, his momentum allowing him to shatter it into pieces.
He couldn't hear himself scream with a misplaced smile as he got into the house. As soon as he entered the gates of the hellish abode, it seemed like he was dropped into a vat of boiling water or acid after being skinned alive.
He persevered. It'd be pointless to quit now. He wasn't quite sure what had happened, but he was probably exploring the fullest potential of his Shukuchi at the moment.
Everything had slowed down because he was going way too fast. He was outrunning the impact of his explosive steps. He even outran bullets headed straight for his face.
Were he to stop at that moment, he wasn't sure what the consequences would be. Even though his body and internal organs were by now used to the intense shock and backlash of halting in the middle of the Shukuchi, he had a feeling even he couldn't take the sudden stop.
He dodged the slowly undulating flames and the hovering debris, taking great care not to touch them and instead swatting them around with his blade, fully aware that at the speed he was going, they might as well be bullets or landmines waiting to tear his body apart if he were to come into contact with them.
His muscles throbbed. Even he, who trained his body daily to hone his Reduced Earth craft, was putting himself at his limits, his muscles and tendons straining themselves from the effort.
Why was he doing this? Was this one good deed of his that went above and beyond his self-imposed call of duty supposed to make up for all the people he killed in the name of Shishio's rebellion?
Probably not. It was too late for him to regret anything anyway.
He searched everywhere of the flaming home for those two people he was supposed to rescue. Mere strangers, at that.
He saw various unidentifiable burning bodies here and there, some of them still alive, screaming. Maybe one of them was Tetsuo or Rin Akahori.
Even if they were neither Akahori, what about those other people living in this residence? Didn't they deserve rescuing as well, regardless of whether or not Soujiro met any of them?
Could Kenshin have saved them? Could Kenshin have gotten here in time? Wasn't Soujiro faster than Kenshin? If he couldn't save any of them despite his gifts, what more the Battousai, who barely bested him in a speed contest?
Then Soujiro saw her. Rin Akahori. Draped around her was her father. Tetsuo's clothes were slowly eaten away by the converging flames as he shielded Rin from them.
Her eyes stared into nothingness. The fire illuminated her white skin. She looked like a statue if not for the gradual shutting of her eyelids.
He passed them by. When he had enough running room, he forced his body to slow down. He needed to. He couldn't risk picking the Akahoris up at the speed he was going. He'd rip them apart.
His body cursed at him for doing so. Screamed obscenities in a language every nationality on earth understood: Pain.
His recklessness came back to haunt him all at once. Every part of his body throbbed. His head pulsated as though his brain had turned into his heart. If his anguish had sentience, it'd be ringing multiple alarm bells.
The drops of perspiration on his skin evaporated into steam. Was it that hot inside there?
As he slowed his pace, the rest of the world finally caught up with him... like a veil had been lifted. He still couldn't breathe thanks to all the noxious fumes and his recent exertion. The fire roared to life.
Most importantly, Rin's eyes fluttered open. Her face, as usual, was a frozen mask. Her metallic eyes, however, told him everything. "Seta Soujiro-kun...?" she rasped.
He smiled in response before grabbing hold of both Rin and her coughing and mumbling father.
"Were you really that desperate to prove me wrong?" she whispered to his ear.
"I don't know myself," he admitted as he snatched the two up from the fiery jaws of death. "I don't think this proves you wrong at all, though."
"...What do you mean?"
"Brace yourselves. Hold on tight."
He didn't have time to tell her that he couldn't live up to the example set by Kenshin Himura the same way he failed to uphold the teachings of his former master, Makoto Shishio.
He ended up following the latter's philosophy of "Might Is Right" in order to hypocritically achieve the idealistic objectives of the former, which only served to prove that neither was absolutely right nor wrong.
He couldn't tell her about the people he had failed to protect or had to sacrifice in order to save her and her father. He couldn't tell her about the abusive husband he had to save even though his wife would probably be better off without him.
All he could do now was to see to their rescue at the expense of life and limb, with nothing to show for it in the end.
All his attempts at becoming a hero like Kenshin Himura was met with spectacular failure, sticky situations that he only made worse by trying to help, and no-win scenarios. He was too naive. Rin was right all long.
With that in mind, he did the only thing he suspected he was good at. He ran. He blasted off from damnation with the barely conscious politician and his daughter in tow as the Akahoris' Sapporo Mansion was burned to the ground.
In the blink of an eye, the strange teenager who could somehow keep up with riders on horseback and a horse-drawn carriage while on foot disappeared right in front of Tokuyama as soon as he pulled the trigger.
Preposterous. He turned his horse around, expected again to see the boy seemingly teleport from behind him like earlier. He wasn't there at all. He vanished into thin air. Did he escape? Did he run away?
The next thing he knew, the Akahori Mansion he set on fire to lure out Akahori (or kill his daughter; whichever worked) had started to break apart. He holstered his shotgun. He'd deal with the interloper later. Right now was the time of celebration!
Even though his police-hat-wearing comrade, Toshiaki, had to sacrifice himself to get Akahori inside the flaming house, the end result remained the same. Mission accomplished.
The traitor to the nation had been eliminated. The goddamn foreigner lapdog had finally gotten his just deserts. There was no way he'd let Akahori live. He was too much of a threat to national security. He had to go down.
Tokuyama offered a small prayer to Akahori's deceased daughter. She had the misfortune of being related to a traitor and a fiend. Perhaps in another life, she'd be rewarded with better circumstances.
Just as the hitman thought about where he'd spend his rewards for this particular hit, something further shattered the open doorway of the burning wreck in an explosive blaze of sparks and flying embers.
Wait a minute.
Were his eyes deceiving him, or did something just come out of the crumbling mansion?
'What the hell is going on here?' he thought as a blur followed by what appeared to be a rising cloud of dirt traveled away from the flaming structure and out the yard of the manor.
His instincts were on high alert as he spurred his thoroughbred horse into action, making him gallop after the localized sandstorm. If this proved to be a false alarm, then so be it. He could always check back to the mansion and search for corpses.
However, he was no fool. That boy who saved the Akahoris earlier... the one who could outrun horses and horse-drawn carriages... had disappeared right in front of him, and a minute later, something came out of that burning house with a trail of rising dirt. It was easy to figure things out.
The kid used his speed to enter the mansion and exit it with the Akahoris in tow. Tokuyama knew this to be true because he'd seen how fast the boy was with his own eyes.
The gunman cocked his gun, but he remained too far from the boy to shoot his sawed-off weapon. He couldn't catch him even though he was on horseback. It was crazy. This was the first time he'd ever seen anything like this.
If the boy had rescued the Akahoris again, they might actually escape this time around. Months of planning wasted.
No. Even if the kid were the fastest man in the world, there was no way he'd outlast a horse. The Jiyu Minken Undo "member" was already too close to victory to give up now.
And so he didn't give up. He tailed the blur that he knew was the boy he held at gunpoint mere moments ago, betting on the fact that even someone as fast as he had to slow down sometime soon. No human alive was built to go that fast.
And soon enough, the young man did slow down and made himself visible.
However, the blur Tokuyama was following wasn't the kid and the Akahoris, but the shockwave created from how fast the bobbed-hair boy was running. The arsonist's targets were actually ten yards ahead of the sandstorm behind them!
'This kid is amazing,' Tokuyama thought as he forced his horse to gallop faster and took a shortcut through the Sapporo woods so that he and the kid would meet halfway. 'It's a shame I have to cut his bright future short.'
Once the gunman peered through his gun's viewfinder and had a better look at the kid who dragged along a middle-aged man and a pearly white little girl on either arm, he flinched.
The boy was going so fast, his skin looked as red as a drunkard's cheeks or a sunburned man's complexion. Not a drop of sweat was on him. Instead, steam rose from his pores. He was at his limits. He was paying the price for going faster than any human had any business of going.
Their eyes met, and as Tokuyawa pulled the trigger to his scattergun, the boy pulled his sword free from its scabbard. The white flash coalesced with a splatter of crimson.
After Soujiro let go of his precious cargo and cleaved through Tokuyama's horse with a battoujutsu strike, he saw the blood that was supposed to be traveling in high velocities suspended in midair as individual droplets instead of a spray of scarlet.
He took a life. An animal's life, granted, but he did so in an attempt to take another human's life.
He himself floated between heaven and earth as he slowly slid his sword into its sheath. As he stayed there in limbo, his perception accelerated in a pace that made a second seem like hours, he collected his thoughts.
Kenshin didn't kill. He protected the weak. Soujiro claimed he was wrong, and the flesh of the weak was nothing more than nourishment for those stronger than they were.
'I didn't want to kill them. When Shishio-san asked if I was crying in the rain, it wasn't the rain drops that was falling from my eyes, but my own tears,' Soujiro reminisced.
During his battle with Kenshin, Soujiro demanded, "If what you say was right, why didn't you protect me?"
The Ten Ken was eventually and soundly defeated in a fight that proved the rurouni right. Strangely enough, now that Soujiro was following the footsteps of the former hitokiri, he now had an answer for his earlier question.
For every life that was saved, someone else had to die. For every person that gained happiness, someone else had to suffer. As noble as Kenshin's desire to protect everyone was, it was also futile. He couldn't protect everyone, even if he tried. Someone would always suffer.
'If both Shishio-san and Himura-san are wrong, then who am I supposed to believe?'
The droplets of blood then turned into a red mist, and with a sudden jolt, he found himself facing the starry night. Father Time had finally caught up with him.
The next thing he knew, he was lying on his back, his skin prickly hot, his body feverish.
He tried getting up, but his legs wouldn't respond. Had the gunman... Tokuyama... somehow managed to shoot him on the legs? He looked down in time to see them throbbing and swelling. The buckshot didn't reach his legs at all.
He had literally dodged the bullets. The blood that covered his hakama wasn't his own, but from the horse he'd killed. Sure enough, the horse's head lay mere inches beside his feet, while a trail of its guts and blood reached far and wide from where the animal's headless corpse crashed and splattered into ground horse meat.
However, he felt a stabbing sensation in his gut. There was something warm on his stomach. He felt a hole in his kimono, as well as the warm, sticky sensation of blood gushing forth. He'd actually dodged all but one buckshot, and it ended up at the side of his abdomen.
As blood continued to flow from the hole in his midsection, his throbbing legs began to respond, their swelling subsiding.
He sat up and turned to see the Akahoris sprawled a few yards away from him. Four of them, actually. His loss of blood was probably making him lightheaded, resulting in double vision.
He couldn't remember the last time he was shot. Oh, that was right. That was literally the first time he "ate" hot lead. He didn't like the feeling.
The Akahoris stirred, which made Soujiro exhale the breath he didn't know he was holding. For someone who looked so frail, Rin was able to survive the sudden stop for the most part, although the multiple bruises she had on her pale skin seemed to suggest otherwise.
Tetsuo himself appeared all right too, although he was favoring his hands for some reason. Did he suffer a nasty fall and broke them?
"Are you all right?" Soujiro asked. "Is Rin...?"
Tetsuo nodded before going to his daughter's side to tend to her. That was the point where the Ten Ken's vision cleared enough to see how badly damaged Tetsuo's hands were. He must have lifted entire beams of burning wood to save his daughter.
"She's breathing. I think she's going to be all right, Seta-kun," assured Tetsuo with a relieved smirk.
Thankfully, by the time Tokuyama had caught up with the trio while on horseback, Soujiro had slowed down considerably from the time-dilating speeds he achieved, which allowed him to release the Akahoris from his grasp without them ending up as bloody stains on the ground.
Speaking of which, they heard a gun click. 'Speak of the devil.'
There, covered in horse guts and internal organs, stood Tokuyama, the sawed-off barrel of his shotgun pointed first at Soujiro, then at Tetsuo and Rin. "You better freeze, or else I'll make sure you'll never run again," he warned Seta.
The smiling Soujiro disobeyed the gunman's orders by attempting to get up, which prompted the latter to stomp on the boy's legs repeatedly.
Despite his wooziness, Tetsuo reacted in kind to the threat by rising up to a kneeling position and grabbing hold of his pistol. However, his grasp on the weapon slipped, his hands too injured to get a firm hold on its handle. 'Dammit.'
"How the mighty has fallen," said Tokuyama as he aimed his gun at Tetsuo, then at Soujiro.
"I don't care if I have to take you both out. That foreigner-loving cocksucker has what's coming to him."
To everyone's surprise, the Elder Akahori started to laugh, mouthing the words, "foreigner-loving cocksucker" as he chuckled.
"And what are you laughing at? Have you gone insane with fear?" asked Tokuyama.
"Is that what the Choshu and Satsuma Hanbatsu told you? That I needed to be dealt with because I'm going to somehow sell Japan to the foreign powers?" asked Tetsuo.
"W-What...?" Tokuyama sputtered. "I don't know what you're talking about." He took his shot, and Tetsuo pushed Rin out of harm's way while ducking away from the brunt of the buckshot.
"AKAHORI-SAN!" Soujiro called out while the staggering, burned, and bloodied Tetsuo continued to shield his unconscious daughter from Tokuyama using his body.
"T-The hanbatsu likes to paint itself different colors depending on the season. Back when they were known as the Ishin Shishi, back when their revolution against the Shogunate started after the Namamugi Incident, they proclaimed to Japan that they're out to 'Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarians.'"
"Shut up, you gaijin lapdog!" barked the gunman while reloading and cocking his rifle in two motions. "Shut up or I'll blow your mouth off!"
Unfazed, Tetsuo continued, "However, did you know that was a rather ironic battle cry due to the fact that the Satsuma Domain eventually made great ties with the British in light of how swiftly their navy demolished ours at the time?"
Indeed, the Namamugi Incident... the event wherein Satsuma Domain samurai assaulted British Nationals on September 14, 1862... led to the Anglo-Satsuma War and the Bombardment of Kagoshima, which served as a huge blow to national pride at the time because it proved that Japan was no match against foreign powers.
The Ishin Shishi's slogan of "Sonno Joi" (Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarians) happened right after the brief Anglo-Satsuma War. It served to weaken nationwide trust of the Bakufu, which was forced to shoulder reparations to other countries because of the actions of the rebellious Choshu and Satsuma Provinces.
Even though the Ishin Shishi used the Sonno Joi movement to great effect in rallying troops to their cause during the Bakumatsu, they were also among the first ones to abandon it, opting instead to bolster ties with Britain so that they could ask for their military assistance during the Boshin War.
"Let me remind you, that whole incident was instigated by the Satsuma Domain itself, plus the money they borrowed from the Bakufu for the sake of reparations was never repaid as well, like the manipulative bastards that they are," added Akahori.
"LIES! The Jiyu Minken Undo doesn't tolerate turncoats who ingratiate themselves to barbarians. We'll expel you the same way we did the foreigners a decade ago!"
Tokuyawa took another shot, but Akahori batted the sawed rifle aside by its barrel with his forearm. "Spare me! You're no member of the Jiyu Minken Undo. You don't even know what they stand for. You're acting more like a blind follower of the Ishin Shishi from a decade ago!"
The killer of the British National... Charles Lennox Richardson (who was slashed by a Satsuma bodyguard thanks to the samurai's legal right to strike or "kiri sute gomen" and despite exemptions from the Extraterritoriality under the Anglo-Japanese Friendship Treaty)... involved in the Namamugi Incident was never produced or identified by the Satsuma Domain.
Furthermore, the Satsuma Domain continued to work under the Sonno Joi movement while never strictly adhering to it because of how impressed they were of the Royal Navy and how much they wanted to emulate its strength. Even though they accused the Bakufu of being weak against foreign influence, they were the ones who embraced it wholeheartedly.
Once the Meiji Emperor had been symbolically restored, the Sonno Joi slogan was replaced with "Fukoku Kyohei" instead, which states, "Rich Country, Strong Military" as the government's new rallying call.
"It's time to face facts. It's your true masters who are the gaijin lapdogs. They've replaced 'Sonno Joi' with 'Fukoku Kyohei'; they replaced principles they never adhered to in favor of money and militaristic might. These are the kind of people you're following!"
With a grunt and flaring nostrils, Tokuyama grabbed hold of one of Akahori's burned hands and squeezed them hard, which sent blinding shockwaves of pain into the state minister's body.
Tetsuo screamed hard enough to wake his daughter from her slumber.
'W-What's going on? Weren't we inside the mansion? Why...? FAHTER!' she thought while still half-asleep.
"You blind Ishin Shishi sycophant! You're a hypocrite for praising the Hanbatsu for doing something they allegedly loathe and changing their beliefs as it suits them!"
Tokuyama spat, "That's different from all the gaijin cock-sucking that you've been doing; adopting foreign ways, clothing, and thinking while serving as an ambassador to those barbarians! The Satsuma and Choshu Hanbatsu are out to preserve our unique culture and traditions while still turning Japan into a superpower... and so will I!"
Tokuyama pushed Akahori down on the dirt, stepped on his other hand, and aimed the shotgun at his head.
Rin scrambled blindly towards her father, unsure of what to do, when suddenly a familiar voice broke through the haze of her mind.
"Rin-san... May I save you and your father's life?" asked Soujiro. The struggle between Tokuyama and Akahori had allowed him to recover enough of his strength to stand and adopt a battoujutsu stance.
Rin looked at Soujiro as though he'd lost his mind. "Pardon...?" Her slate-gray eyes then lit up in understanding.
"Yes. Yes, you may."
"As you wish."
"NO, YOU MAY NOT!" screamed the arsonist as he shot at Soujiro's legs from a distance. This time around, despite the shorter range of his barrel, some of the buckshot hit their mark.
As Tokuyama reloaded his gun, Soujiro made his move, only for him to stumble and nearly fall thanks to blood loss from his stomach wound and several newly formed leg wounds.
The Jiyu Minken Undo imposter said, "I have nothing to fear from you. No assassin would ever fear someone who cannot kill."
Soujiro smirked... or smirked more than usual... remembering how he shared the same sentiment about Kenshin when he first fought him.
"I have one named move. The Shun Ten Satsu. It can kill..."
"Yeah, yeah. Sure, kid..." was the dismissive statement Tokuyama said before taking aim and firing at the stumbling swordsman.
The next thing the gunman knew, he was sprawled on the ground, looking right up at his kneeling legs and posterior as it knelt down with half of its torso missing. Half of him missing.
Once his legs had dropped down, its innards spilling out for the crows and maggots to feast on later, Tokuyama raised his head at Soujiro and asked, "When did you hit me with that attack?" his voice nothing but a gasp.
"When I stumbled and nearly fell," confessed Soujiro.
The government-sponsored terrorist coughed, hacked, and wheezed. A minute later, everyone realized the man was trying to laugh.
"Y-You're a piece of work, kid. I bet you're feeling like you're some sort of b-big-shot hero now, saving that s-scumbag from harm. You even asked your damsel in distress politely if you can save her."
Tokuyama vomited blood, his breaths becoming shorter. "But you're no honor-bound samurai. You're just like me, aren't you? No matter how much you deny it, you're just another killer like m-me."
After a year since Soujiro took on the same non-killing vow as Kenshin did, he broke that one rule to save another's life.
However, it was all right, because...
"I'm no samurai. I'm not a hero. I am not Himura Kenshin," the Ten Ken answered.
Kenshin Himura? What did the Battousai have to do with anything? "T-Then who the hell are you?" gurgled Tokuyama. These words proved to be his last.
"I am Seta Soujiro. The Heaven Sword of the Juppon Gatana."
For every life that was saved, another had to be sacrificed. For every happiness gained, someone else had to suffer.
A week after the assassination attempt on the Akahoris, late at night...
"A bodyguard?" was the deadpan question Rin asked Soujiro as he helped her pack her belongings... her new, recently brought belongings she acquired while staying at the intact portions of the same Sapporo inn Soujiro was at. "Seriously?"
"Why not? Your father seems to approve of the idea," beamed Seta. "Besides, it gives me a perfectly legal reason to keep my sword around."
"The only bodyguard I liked was this silly old man that was friends with my father, and only because I considered him my substitute grandfather," informed Rin.
"So I can't?" asked Soujiro with a playful pout.
Rin rolled her eyes as she folded yet another kimono of hers and put it inside her luggage. "If Father wants it, then I have no say on the matter."
Soujiro remarked, "You almost sound as if you don't want me here."
Rin batted her eyelashes as she avoided the Ten Ken's probing gaze. "So how are your legs doing?"
"They're fine. I'm going to need to walk in crutches for a couple of more weeks, though. That was the fastest I've ever gone, so both my legs are still cramping. That sawed-off shotgun did them no favors either."
She turned her back on him even though she was half-finished packing and asked, "Why did you come back for... us?"
Soujiro shrugged and sat on the bed. "Back then, you asked me a question that I needed to hear, so I came back in order to find out its answer."
"What question was that?"
"I can't remember the exact words, but I think you asked me if I feel like I've saved myself by saving other people."
"What was the answer you got?"
"No. I don't feel like I'm saving myself at all. Some of the people I saved didn't even want or need to be saved. I can't make up for past mistakes by committing new ones. I was naive."
"I see. Tell me more."
With a wistful gaze at the ceiling, Soujiro recounted, "I went back because I wanted to prove you wrong and show that I could save everyone and become a hero in order to save myself. Ironically, I almost sacrificed myself in the process."
"If you had died while saving me and my father from that fire, we would've been finished off by that maniac who started that fire in the first place, so your sacrifice would've been in vain," Rin pointed out.
Soujiro chuckled, thinking, 'Even if I managed to save everyone, who would save me? Shishio-san would probably say only I could save myself, but I can't follow every one of his beliefs in good conscience anymore. I don't want to feed on the weak to become strong or protect them from harm when they don't want me to.'
The Heaven Sword felt a hand around his shoulder... a heavily bandaged one, which meant its owner was none other than Tetsuo Akahori. "That's a fascinating discussion you two are having. Are you both ready to go?"
After they told him, "Yes," in unison, he prompted the pair to head on out into the courtyard where a Concord Carriage awaited them. However, as they made their way down the stairs of the recently burned building, Akahori said to Soujiro the following words:
"If you bet your entire being on an ideal, you'll have nothing once you lose that ideal. Also, more often than not, it's not the ideal that's the problem, but the imperfect people who follow it."
Soujiro blinked and nodded. Maybe he needed to adjust himself to the ideals he'd already discovered. Maybe he didn't necessarily need to follow just one ideal or absolute truth. Maybe he needed a truth that he would never lose whatever the circumstances he faced.
Even though his legs remained tender after all from the exertion he put them through last week, he joined the Akahoris inside the stagecoach with a smile on his face, his crutches and cane sword in tow.
He gave one last look at the outskirts of Sapporo, Hokkaido as they drove into the night.
Next: Minoe's secrets.
There you go. The reason why Soujiro is now the Akahoris' personal bodyguard.
Say my name,
Abdiel