Edit: The rest of the story takes place in 1885, seven years after the start of the main RK series in 1878. Kenshin was 28, after 7 years he's 35. Kaoru is 25. Yahiko is 17. Megumi is 30. Sano is 26. Saito is 41. The time travelling onna-bugeisha from 1848 is 35 (if she'd survived back in her time to present 1885, she'd be 72). Hiko Seijuro XIII is 50. "Before" happens a week or so before the events of the Kenshingumi coming to Kyoto after Saito invited Kenshin to come check out these sick murders y'all.

Before

The air of the place was wrong. It felt strange and hard to breathe all of a sudden, like there was a sudden and unexpected change of pressure, her lungs completely vacating of air and then refusing to refill. She opened her mouth to breathe, found that she couldn't. She squeezed her eyes shut, tried to limit the mounting panic, and tried again. Her mother, when she was still alive, had met her end from lung sickness. As the years went by the onna-bugeisha had fared well until she began to experience the same episodes. She began to convulse, sucking and sucking soundlessly for reprieve, coughing violently to clear her airways. After the initial shortness of breath, she lay there and took large lungfuls of air until she calmed herself.

These episodes had started to come at random, unpredictable intervals. Soon, they would become more and more regular, and to some sense, the onna-bugeisha knew this. Though this did not worry her. By her calculations, she would be long dead before the lung sickness could become truly debilitating. People in her profession, and especially, people in her line simply did not live long lives. At thirty five years, lung sickness was the least of her problems.

The onna-bugeisha just lay there and breathed.

The atmosphere was different, like feeling resistance when moving one's limbs underwater, submerged and adrift. When the adrenaline of her episode had worn off, the onna-bugeisha's senses came speeding back into lurid, crystal clarity, and she was hit almost violently with the cold. There was a certain kind of coldness that hurt, creeping from the fingertips and toes and then sinking into the flesh like a sickness, and it was too hard not to notice the way numbness made her feel like her bones had vanished from her. She pulled her cloak close, shivering a little.

The ground beneath her arms was muddy and rough, not nearly dry and dusty enough for the weeks of sun and drought she'd survived and certainly not the one she had been walking on for days. Her surprise only magnified when rain began to wet her face, then began to thud all around her, on rooftops like a damned ceremonial drumroll — she could have believed she was dead at her own funeral. Only, she knew no one would play drums for her.

Before the onna-bugeisha had even opened her eyes, she knew she wasn't out in the fields in the middle of nowhere anymore.

Lifting herself up and rubbing her neck, she swung into a sitting position, shaking a little to get rid of the dizziness. The back of her head felt ominously heavy, like the end of a particularly bad migraine, or waking up from a long dream. It was a dull sort of throb that beat through from the middle to the ends, more of a phantom pain than anything else, as there was no real pain. As soon as she came to, really came to, she blocked out the sound of the rain. Up ahead, the small village dotted upon the horizon caught her sight. Behind her, there was rain for miles. Beside her, there was nothing much but a series of closed wooden huts and open farmland.

The cut on her hand from the blade of grass was still fresh and raw. Her sword and her pouch and her things and her money were right where she left them. The buddha statue, however, was nowhere to be found.

She had no idea where she was or how she got here. The onna-bugeisha supposed she had just landed from one kind of middle of nowhere to a different kind of middle of nowhere, but the mysticism of how she managed to black out and move herself here or why the rain gods suddenly decided to show mercy didn't really matter. She had more important things to deal with than her irritating lungs or black out session.

The onna-bugeisha was going to walk it off and continue searching for what she was looking for.

"Excuse me — Sir?" came a kindly voice, which caused her to flinch and fly to her feet.

She wanted to blame her slow reaction on the rain. She'd been concentrating too hard on her surroundings that she'd effectively stopped concentrating on her surroundings. The old man yelped like a startled mouse in the night, and she immediately reached for her sword, slashing at the air twice in warning.

"Wo—ah! Forgive me!," the old man cried, hands raised. "Forgive me, Madam," he corrected embarrassedly, turning a bright shade of pink. "I swear these eyes get worse each year, Madam, I apologise." His paper umbrella flew to the side, rolling away and rocking to a standstill like a spinning top. The curved centre of it started to collect rainwater. She was certainly not dressed like a madam, and her straw hat had rolled off her head, exposing her scandalously short hair.

The onna-bugeisha frowned inwardly, keeping her face blank. She slapped her wet hat back on. "Simple misunderstanding, I apologise as well." The day she started terrorising old men with her heirloom sword was the day she should end the onna-bugeisha class by retiring. "My condolences," she said, fixing a small smile.

Upon the change, the old man dropped his hands and smiled widely. "I couldn't help but wonder what you were doing in the rain."

She too, was dying to know the answer to that question. But she also knew not to broadcast to strange people she just met her stupid weaknesses and embarrassing shortcomings.

"It's calming. The rain," she blurted instead. "Ambient."

"On the floor?"

"I was tired. Resting."

"Carrying a sword?"

Her smile turned sour as she fought the urge to roll her eyes. "Clearly," she said, "a lone traveller needs the capacity to defend themselves."

The old man blinked once and nodded gravely. "That is wise. Especially considering the state of affairs these days. These are dangerous times, Madam."

The onna-bugeisha agreed privately and said nothing. She stepped aside, letting him take back his umbrella, but to her surprise he held it out for her instead. "You've made it to Kyoto, Madam. Please, allow me to escort you the rest of the way."

That took her aback. She turned to see the village again, grip tightening on her sword. Now the tiny village she'd first hazily glanced seemed more like a great, sprawling city, with long walls and tiled roofs and distant pagodas.

"That's Kyoto city?"

The old man's brows lifted. "Yes."

She'd been on the way to Kyoto city, planning to go there to look for her boy. It was an old, run down city formed from a few conjoined villages back in the day. But now suddenly it had enlarged into metropolis of a place? She hadn't been away that long, had she?

The old man kept staring at her with a chagrined, sympathetic expression.

The onna-bugeisha decided this was not the time to ask questions, lest she wanted to fully convince the man she was concussed. In all honestly, she probably was in some way or another. But that was nothing to fret about now. Her boy was still missing and hell if she was going to leave him to starve in some hole. She'd abandoned her part of the mountain to play search party. There were no other sizeable cities but Kyoto, and following her intuition, her boy should have crossed here.

Now, the onna-bugeisha picked up one corner of her cloak and began wringing the water that had soaked into it from the ends. She took the umbrella from the old man — what with her being about two heads taller than him.

"Thank you, Mister. Please, tell me how this part of Kyoto got reconstructed in such a short time."

Now

"Commissioner Fujita?! Commissioner Fujita!"

This hollering was repeated successively.

The Commissioner didn't look up from his lounging. Paperwork littered across every available surface, samples of evidence layout in the open, and an ever-mounting pile of confiscated swords and pistols tied up with a string sat in one corner of the Commissioner's office. As the hollering got closer, he managed the exhausting work of dipping his chin, awoken from a speed nap, and crossed one boot over the other on his desk. When there was no further yelling, he shut his eyes.

"Get in, Kamoda."

'Fujita Goro,' a man who's existence only went back publicly for three years, had enjoyed a successful and colourful career as an undercover police agent. He had been unceremoniously promoted from 'non-existent government cronie' to 'Commissioner' when no one knew what to do with him after the national list of highly wanted finally dwindled enough to warrant think tanks on how to keep the man busy.

And he had indeed been kept very busy.

Kamoda, a rather young and yet greying officer rattled his door loudly as he came in. As he entered, he froze abruptly, hit suddenly by the haze of smoke in the room, which was enough to form clouds and rain ash from what was quickly becoming a little self-contained ecosystem.

"What are the rules for disturbing me at this hour?" The Commissioner said flatly, in the middle of the day, and the officer looked about ready to sweat. The Commissioner took a long drag on his cigarette. "You can bust down my door at any time I should be talking to suspects, filing out paperwork, talking to the higher-ups, pulling a bullet from between my eyes, laying in my coffin before my funeral — remind me, what is the exception?"

"…When you're smoking," Kamoda replied shortly.

"What am I doing?" the Commissioner asked lightly.

"Smoking."

"Smoking," he said, blowing out a sheet of white from between his lips, where it wafted up to obscure his face. His brows lifted inquisitorially.

Officer Kamoda's eyes darted to the clutter beneath the Commissioner's boots on the table. He fidgeted, having never caught the strict, tense, downright frightening Commissioner in such a lax position, and feeling like he was seeing something he really shouldn't be allowed to. It was an open secret that Commissioner Fujita had no work-life balance, but to see him actually-kind-of relaxing and enjoying himself was a bit alarming.

No matter what sort of fresh horrors the young police force was met with, Commissioner Fujita was always calm and unimpressed.

"It's urgent, Sir."

The Commissioner blew out a last puff of smoke, savouring it wantonly, eyes going half-lidded. This unknowingly made the officer even more uncomfortable, but he had no impression of this. "Who's dead?"

"No—"

"Who's dying?"

"But—"

"Get out."

"—It's the man you've sent for, Commissioner Fujita!" Kamoda said, taking a brave step forward. "He's arrived in Kyoto early."

At that, the Commissioner leaned back with a frown. Smoke curled between his fingers before he waved his cigarette in a little circle. He stubbed it down on a plate full of a week's worth of cigarette butts, perfecting a completely round boarder with the final one. "Send him in."

The officer swallowed, trying to blink the thick smog out of his eyes, which were actually starting to get teary. "All of them? He's not alone, Sir."

Fujita Goro pulled his boots off the table, leaned forward and shut his eyes hard. When he opened them, Saito Hajime rose from the desk, kicking his chair back, and every horrible investigation he'd slaved over the past week flooded back to him at once. He sighed again, making an effort to open the window. This action seemed to break the fabric of reality in his office, as a whole bonfire's worth of smoke funnelled out like a vacuum.

Officer Kamoda stood in the centre, coughing a little and trying to hide it. Saito crossed the room. Kamoda cowered. Saito went past him.

"Good job, Kamoda."

"Saito," Himura smiled in greeting. He hesitated for a second, but then held out a hand.

"Battousai."

It was the new acceptable formality, the Western way of greeting. Forced bodily contact transmitted through hand touching. Saito peered down at the outstretched hand, ignored it, looked up again, and scowled. "It seems you've managed to get here with less dithering than I thought possible. Commendable, Himura."

Kenshin withdrew his hand, smile not faltering. "This one came as soon as you contacted me," he said, and added quietly, "It…isn't something you would do lightly."

"By this one did you mean, those ones?" Saito squinted, tilting his head to one side.

"Saito!" Sagara called from the side, like old friends reunited. "See? Told ya' he'd miss me, didn't I?"

This was the longest Saito had went without a headache induced by the rooster head. His record was officially, inevitably, broken. Saito did his best to ignore him.

"Sano…" the Kamiya girl said weakly, holding him back, and he thought the girl must have been some hulk to deal with that rooster abomination all day.

"Whatever," the kid with the attitude said, though that term could be reserved for any one of them. He digressed. "It's Myojin Yahiko — no doubt the Third Unit Shinsengumi leader would remember my greatness—" yada, yada, yada.

Wait — since when did that kid learn that information, anyway? Kamoda shuddered in the doorframe behind him. Kamoda did not know that information. Kamoda's hand had flown to his mouth, shocked. Saito sighed, touching two fingers to the bridge of his nose. "I don't need this. A parade," Saito said, more than a little stressed. That was taking into account it was the third day he'd had no sleep.

Saito ran a hand through his gelled hair and faced Himura. "Let's walk, Himura."

Himura opened his mouth, closed it, and then looked to his friends.

"Oh," Sagara started, "So I walked all the way here to drop off a wanted man with a policeman? Yeah right," he scoffed. "I came here to catch a murderer! Show me the blood! The bodies!"

"Sano," Himura said reassuringly, "please."

"The blood has already dried up. The bodies are in the midst of decomposing." Saito trotted a few steps in the direction of a busy street. "But the crime scene was kept intact." He looked back to eye Himura. "Are you coming or not?"

Himura nodded, looking back apologetically to his friends. Sagara put his hands up. "Fine. Fine. We'll meet you back here in whenever."

"There's a market up ahead," the doctor, Takani Megumi said, pointing. "We'll use our time there and meet you before sundown. Alright, Ken-san?"

Saito rolled his eyes. Himura waved at them, smiling. "Yes, Megumi-dono! Yahiko, Sano." He walked up to the Kamiya girl, saying something to her that Saito couldn't make out.

"Fine, Kenshin. Just don't be late. And tell us what you learn." Then she stepped away and waved rather tensely.

Himura turned and fell in step with Saito. They walked down the main street without speaking for some distance. Saito ached for another cigarette, but stifled the urge since he'd already had one in the office. Was he stress smoking? Saito huffed and turned his hand out of his pocket, away from caressing the lighter lying there.

"What was that about?" Saito started.

"Oro?" Himura blinked. "What was what?

"Kamiya girl."

Himura's eyes narrowed. "You mean, Kaoru-dono," he corrected.

Saito lifted a brow. "Gods. Kaoru-dono, then," he scoffed again. "If you're dying from some rare disease, now is the time to tell me. Save me some trouble with this case, would you not. Lessen one suspect."

Himura stopped in his track. "This lowly one is a suspect?"

Saito had ambled a couple steps ahead of him before he stopped too. A sea of people flowed between them, people carrying about their daily groceries, their street food and shopping, chattering carelessly as if tragedy hadn't struck these very streets so recently. Himura seemed to be taking these sights and sounds in, the peaceful normalcy of it. He seemed to be weighing his own presence here among them where he was within and without, mundane and extraordinary; his role in shaping these very streets and people was so visceral and so violent they remembered him, they all remembered him, they knew of him and have heard of him, and that was why they had so simply and yet logically brought into the accusations Saito was about to lay bare.

Himura seemed also to be intently aware of the fact that Saito, the man who sent word to him after years of silence, after abandoning the last fight he'd hungered for, did not buy into the accusations.

Himura waited for a group of kimono-wearing women to pass before he blanked his face and caught up to Saito.

"You are," Saito said curtly. "A suspect."

"I see."

They walked a couple of steps again before Saito shut his eyes hard. Almost as if in pain. "That was my doing. I identified the marks at the scene immediately. Naturally, that made you the prime suspect. But of course it didn't make any wretched sense." He smirked darkly, voice low and raggedy. It was as close as an apology as Himura was going to get.

"I was in Tokyo."

"Unless the Hiten Mitsurugi manages to grant you wings when I'm not looking then, yes, you were in Tokyo."

Himura laughed, a surprisingly high pitched, unguarded sound. He shook his head in humoured chagrin at Saito and shrugged. "No matter, Saito. It was good of you to call me — the sooner we disprove these allegations, the better."

He smiled up at him honestly. He'd said the word 'we,' and Saito didn't tell him to take a hike.

It hit Saito, all of a sudden, that this was rather unsightly. The last Wolf of Mibu walking basically hand-in-hand with Hitokiri Battousai down the long, public main street. He frowned, flicking away a non-existent cigarette away as he did, realising a bit too late that he was getting too dependent on those things these days. His habits really did seem to be getting worse. Eiji, the kid he'd taken in and apparently committed to, had problems with it and he'd suggested hiring a secretary for the express purpose of helping Saito quit, but Saito knew he would be putting that secretary's life in danger if he really hired one.

Back to the point. Saito had indeed called Battousai here to clear his name, honest intent and all. He'd never managed to quell that deeply embedded whim to snap his ugly sakabatou and make him fight like he should be fighting — in some obscure alleyway where only one of them would leave with the most of them intact. It was an unpredictable world they lived in. Had this incident blown over a little later, he might have reached out and shaken his hand, just back then…

"And about Kaoru-dono — Kaoru-dono and I are married."

"That's nice."

Saito flinched. "That's…Nice," he said again, processing what Himura had said.

"We invited you to the ceremony," Himura said quietly.

Saito's mouth actually fell open in disbelief. "—Why?"

Himura kept walking, and now it was Saito trying to play catch-up. Saito accidentally walked into two men crossing to the next store, and one spat an obscenity at him. He ignored it and rushed to step in line with Himura again.

"No reason," Himura said. "We were compiling lists and wedding invites and thought to send one to you. Though none of us really knew which name to put it under. Fujita Goro or Saito Hajime. Or where you were. Last we heard, you were in Hokkaido."

Saito flitted a hand to his side, stopping the conversation there. Himura walked head-first into him. "Oro?"

Saito pointed to a narrow street. "There."

The place was wedged between two rows of houses. Each side was plastered with police tags — Do not enters and Do not passes, some washed away chalk scribbles here and there." 'Place immediately evacuated after this little…debacle. This street is empty. Do as you will."

Himura stepped into the abandoned place.

Before

The skies had quickly darkened, rainfall still pattering over the grounds like a symphony. The onna-bugeisha treaded lightly, trying not to splash too much dirt onto the ends of her cloak.

"So what are you doing in Kyoto at such a time?" the old man said over the rain.

She thought it wasn't suspicious to tell him. "I'm looking for a boy." The statement came out a lot more bitter than she'd imagined, causing her to frown at her own admission. "Kid ran away from me the second I looked away," she admitted. "Little baka."

The old man chuckled, still trying to hold onto the umbrella despite the fact that the woman was so much taller than him. "I'm sure he's just lost. These young ones, they're too full of fire and fury. I've had one just like yours back in my day. Filled from head to toe with hot air and something to prove. Still haven't managed to make him stay," he went on.

"O…oh," the onna-bugeisha said, stifling herself. She was not particularly open to conversation. And especially not to a conversation opener that grim. "Well. I hope you have more luck with him."

"Ahhh, doubt it," the old man said, waving a hand, "he's a grown man now and gets into double the trouble he used to stir up. But since he'd turned to meditation, it's calmed him down a bit at least."

She could feel him sigh in exasperation next to her, his own guilt and sadness so similar to her own she felt a sting of kinship with the man. But the old man shook away his own woes and smiled up at her. "Anyhow, good luck with your son, then."

"He's not my son."

"Oh. Forgive me."

The onna-bugeisha grimaced. "Hey now — I don't go looking for lost boys for the sake of it. I'm searching for my deshi — my disciple."

There was a sudden and alarming change in the old man. He must have remembered the katana at her side. He, as with most generous people who acted wilfully blind to her oddness, he nodded in simple agreement. Yes, I know a lordless onna-bugeisha travelling alone is strange, and I am tired of people pointing it out. Yes, I know you are strange, and I am being polite by not pointing that out.

The old man started. "Madam, the rain doesn't look like it's going to let up. Why don't you spend the night at my inn?"

He had an inn? That would have sounded great, if not for…

"No, I don't believe that's a good idea. I best be going my way, Mister. Thank you for the umbrella. And thank you for the conversation." She shifted the umbrella sideways, fully sheltering the old man. When he refused to take back the umbrella, she bent, physically peeled his hands open, and placed the handle back into them.

Then the onna-bugeisha went into the rain, eager to put distance between them.

"Wait!"

She looked back, bewildered. "You should hurry indoors. It's getting dark, Mister."

The old man began to look worried. "Yes. But the weather…it really isn't kind today." His eyes flitted to each side of her, a taut look on his face like he knew something she didn't. Like he didn't know what she already knew.

"I need to get going, Mister," she said reassuringly. The onna-bugeisha bowed her thanks in the rain. "You shouldn't show a stranger back to your inn. These are dangerous times, aren't they?"

With that, the old man blinked, taken aback by her words. "Very well." Repositioning his umbrella, he bowed politely and departed with a few nervous glances behind his back.

The onna-bugeisha went on her path. She didn't get too far before ducking into a alley and leaning her back against a wall under a small bit of shelter. The rain hadn't let up, still pelting the ground and sending a stream of water to run down the alley. The ends of her hakama had collected so much water they couldn't retain the moisture anymore. Under the bit of dry roof, the wet hakama dripped onto her already drenched feet.

"So," she said to the open. "Have we fallen so low that we have to resort to ambushing a frail, old man?"

The sound of water splashing sounded from the corner. A man appeared around the bend, weapon at his side and men at his heel. She glanced down, eyes darting from one barely armoured man to another: some holding machetes, some with nothing, and a few with katanas.

"He was supposed to be an easy target," the lead man huffed. There was a sense of irritation in his voice as he sighed again, shaking his head. "You tipped him off, didn't you? Knew it the moment he scampered."

"Hah, you've got nerve!" one of them whooped from the back. "Got a lot of nerve! You know who we are?"

The onna-bugeisha brightened a bit at that. "Let's hear."

"The Yakuza," he enunciated slowly. He leaned back, smug. "And we take orders straight from the Hitokiri Battousai himself."

This elicited no reaction from her. The rain pelted down the side of the roofing over her, and she stepped out of the way, repositioning her conical hat and flicking a hand to draw back bangs slicked to her face. She was not impressed by a name that had never crossed her mind.

"Never heard of you."

The leader and the second in command exchanged glances.

"Pppfft!"

"Don't try to play coy, lady," one of the men said, shaking his head seriously.

Another nudged him in the shoulder, bending over overdramtigcally to rest his hands on his knees. "I don't know what's funnier. Acting tough, a girl this sheltered, or just a dumbass!"

She frowned, running the name over and over in her head. "Alright. Yakuza," she said, tasting the word. "Yakuza. I'll remember it if it's worth remembering."

A few whispers broke out deep in the middle of the small crowd.

"Anyway," the man at the leader's other side unsheathed his katana, bringing it into position. "We're about to fall lower," he lamented, taking no joy in it, "to attack a woman."

"Hn?" She arched an eyebrow, lips drooping in a comical expression. Judging from the way the man had drawn his weapon and the control he had with the grip, these weren't just any old ruffians. She knew the samurai had been at a decline for ages and the Lords were losing the power they once wielded with might. But it wasn't like she was doubling over whining over it like everyone else was. Then again, she lived just around the middle of nowhere, in a hut on a mountain.

"Check her for valuables," the head of the group said as he cocked his head. "Kill her. Leave our calling card. Get home before dinner." One of the men from the back came sauntering forward, slow and much more sure of himself than she thought he really ought to be, but his bad judgement was not her problem.

"I don't have anything valuable on me," she recited, used to being stopped at random in dark places.

The man scoffed, closing in. "That's not for you to decide." He reached out, grasping her cloak.

Then he was on the floor, with seemingly nothing in between to suggest retaliation. The machete clattered loudly on the paved ground, the metal starting to spot with more rain. The leader blinked, mouth twitching as he reacted, putting a hand on his neck and beckoning to his lackeys to move. One moment, one of the machete-holding men was pouncing on his target, and then he was not.

He turned his nose up at the woman, where he had inexplicably fallen to the ground and broken all the bones in his left arm. The man, belatedly, screamed in pain.

"How did she…" someone started at the back. "What…?"

Unshaken and with a trace of smile of her lips, the onna-bugeisha moved, drawing back wet curtains of cloak as she revealed her own katana. "Maybe that's a lie. Forgive me. The most valuable possession I have is right in my hands," she said, cutting the katana through the rain, showing it off by catching the light. "Passed down from many generations. You're welcome to take it, if you can."

All eyes were on her or boring into the back of the machete man in the mud, screaming bloody Mary. Not even the cover of the rain could drown out the ugly screams, and the group seemed to get antsy.

The leader pulled his weapon immediately. There was a particular sound that it made, metal ringing above the crowd as it drew them to a silence. "An onna-bugeisha?" he said, impressed at the novelty. "Didn't think there were any more of things like you in this age."

He lunged. The onna-bugeisha banked, letting the sword slide by her left. With one foot forward, she kicked the wailing downed man into her attacker. Upon seeing the leader fly through the air and the two bodies thud weightily on the floor, the rest charged, much to her disappointment. The first two struck together, one aiming for her centre and the other to her head. The onna-bugeisha charged towards them, unrelenting. She seemed to flash away into nothing, appearing sharply in front of them, and then behind them. The two attackers were shaken to a stop. Then one wobbled to his knees as the other collapsed entirely, neither having the cognitive ability to follow her attack. Now the leader had regained his steadiness and scrambled to get up, katana held at the ready.

The onna-bugeisha sighed as they flocked to block the only way out. "Listen here. I'm cold, I'm wet, I don't know when this godforsaken city became a godforsaken labyrinth, but that old man was going to offer me a place to stay."

One of the least practiced ones, she guessed, lurched out of the crowd, coming right at her with no way to defend himself from an easy, open counterattack, "Bastard! You don't talk to us like—"

A blue flash glinted in the low light, blinding them for just a moment. The onna-bugeisha had unsheathed her katana fully, swiped it cleanly forward before flicking it to the side. She sheathed it. The man fell, knees hitting the floor and face hitting the mud and rain hitting his body. Red began to crawl between the ridges of the meticulously paved path, spreading out like the cracks of a puzzle piece.

"I don't get a roof over my head. And now I'm not going to get a hot meal until morning."

She didn't realise that she'd raised her voice when complaining, but some of the men began to back away, turning their machetes from hand to hand. The actually trained samurai from ex-samurai at the front looked to each other, exchanging glances.

Then she tilted her head, quizzical. "Ronin have grown desperate. You really didn't hesitate to try and kill me right then and there, did you, Ronin-san?"

"Tch," he scoffed, hands clenching around his weapon. His men circled him, two more regaining consciousness. "A brute like you — I wouldn't even lay with in a brothel." He broke formation, unsheathing his sword as he ran towards her. The others followed without hesitation this time. They were all going to come at her.

Her lips quirked upwards, and she shrugged a little. "If I were in a brothel I wouldn't lay with a dead corpse like you." The first man skidded to a stop to her side, changing directions at the last moment to catch her off guard. He was too slow, and all it took was an elbow jab in the ribs before she disconnected his right arm from his right shoulder and he fell with a yell that shocked everyone else. Then she did the same thing to his neck.

He was dead instantly.

The next man coordinated with another, machete pointing skyward as he bought it down. She parried once, and then slashed him straight through one stomach into the other, then applied a vertical slash to the second guy's back as he attempted to turn to run.

Someone had happened to get behind her back, and the moment she turned around it was already too late — they were all in range of a simple attack. Three in front and one behind. At her side was a stack of wet wood — probably stored for kindling. Looked like it wasn't going to get much usage. She jerked towards it, disappearing for a moment before using it as a foothold to jump.

"Where is she?!"

"Gone—"

"Ryusūisen."

The onna-bugeisha bought her blade square down the middle of the samurai.

"Zan."

He jerked once, twice. Then blood poured from his head, spurting from all angles, dousing the others with its warmth. The remaining ragtag group opened their mouths in horror, finally grasping the gravity of the situation. They'd ran head first into a fight they couldn't win, into tiny little alley where no one would find them, in the rain where their screams were muted, and there was only one exit.

All supposedly samurai or ronin, and the effect of witnessing her fighting silenced them. Paralysed, the men were rooted to the spot as the onna-bugeisha spun, pulling one long strike between multiple people, the centrifugal force backing the movement. Ryūkansen. She stopped in the middle, sheathing her sword. Blood had begin to run between the bodies, merging where the rain was collecting and then spilling forth from there.

The fight, if it could be called that, was over.

"You were really planning to kill the old man," she repeated, disgusted. She looked up, feeling the rain patter over her skin and stream down her face. She made her way towards the last man still alive. It was the leader, ironically. The onna-bugeisha smirked, flashing a toothy smile. "So don't act so surprised," she said. "Those who are ready to take lives should understand that it is invitation for their lives to be taken in kind."

"Who are you?" he said suddenly, voice reduced to a whisper as he tried to swallow and clear his throat. His fingers were vibrating, hair dripping with water and katana lowered in listless travesty of how he'd so proudly held it before. His breathing was heavy, and despite the fact that he'd only charged and fallen backwards, he was heaving with particular difficulty. He strained between huffs, not moving a muscle. "Who — are you? — there's no one," he heaved, swiping his katana through the air, "no one — who can fight like that."

The onna-bugeisha, awkwardly, was also huffing rather breathily, though she had the excuse of being genetically predisposed to lung sickness. She took deep, calm breaths before coming back down to normal. Then she contemplated his words. "Why should I give the name to someone who won't live long enough to remember it?"

The light faded in his eyes, dark, crippling fear overtaking them, and the samurai took a step forward, cornering him. They stared at each other for a short-lived moment. Then the man wrenched back, thrusting his katana at her solar plexus, silent and wild. With a quick jut of the sheathed sword, a lean away from the tip of his blade, she put a powerful jab at the foot of his thumb, breaking the thrust into a weak poke at the air. His katana clattered to the floor, defeated.

"Oh what the hell," she said suddenly, pulling her own sword out from beneath her cloak again, rainfall pattering against the steel.

"It's Seijuro," she said lightly, eyes narrowed into slits. "You have one minute to commit it to memory before you don't need it anymore. Hiko Seijuro."

He seemed to pull back at that. About to die in approximately one minute, and he was worried about the fact she had a man's name.

The Twelfth Hiko Seijuro of the school of Hiten Mitsurugi tucked her sword back behind the folds of her cloak, walked over someone's broken leg, and bent to grab at the leader quivering between her legs. Letting go of his bleeding thumb, he groaned as Seijuro lifted him up by the collar, close enough for her to see the blood vessels erupting in his eyes from the latest head injury.

"Now, you're going to tell me where I can find a missing person in this town, and you're going to use your manners while you're at it."

Hiko Seijuro the Twelfth dropped him limply into the mud, and he yelped as dirt splashed over his wounds.

"Where do missing children end up in this city? Where do slavers like to drop their illegal goods?"

The man wriggled back, his eyes enormous. Hiko Seijuro took out a piece of wet cloth and slowly, as if time were on her side, began wiping down her prized sword, Winter Moon.

"Well?"

Notes.

I promise the next chapters will have a lot more Kenshin and co - I just had to spend time setting up the first murders and Hiko 12 for later. The Hokkaido arc doesn't exist in this fic. 'Fujita Goro' is what historical Saito changed his name to in the Meiji era (this appeared in the manga too).

Also - Hi Rori77 and kokoronagomu! Good to see you again.