Note: Oro...don't hate me too much, but I've decided to make two changes. First is the date. I regret changing it to 1883. It is now back to 1885. This one is no take-backsies! (I will explain this quickly after the fic, for fear of spoilers.) If you're reading this now, chapter 3 has already been amended with more dialogue.

1885

Kyoto

The night smelled vaguely like incense fumes, distant cooking, and firewood after it had been smothered. Even though the days were still warm, there had been an uncharacteristic chill come nightfall for the last few days, as well as the odd spurt of rain. People had been using their fireplaces and coal heaters to stave from it. They blended pleasantly with aromas of grilled fish and hearty meals from a line of warm, residential homes. For this reason, no one had discovered the body for hours on end, which had only emitted as much smell as it did because it had been hacked into quite a few pieces.

More surface area, more smell, Officer Kamoda thought nauseously.

Kamoda stood at the wall outside the back gardens of those residential homes, filled with children, families, muffled chatter, and wondered what kind of animal could have pulled apart a person this cleanly and quietly behind their backs. The blood had spread evenly on the path, filling up four large flagstone tiles so that the pool was contained in a nice, clean square shape. Other than, of course, the spatter upon the wall. Kamoda kept as much distance as he could, not wanting to step into the gore. After a moment of deliberating, even he had to concede the clean lines and quick cuts could only mean the attack had been perpetrated by a man with a sword.

Kamoda counted the parts. At first he thought the victim had lost a finger in the attack, and the perpetrator took it as a trophy. That was less of a crime of passion and more of a premeditated murder. But upon closer inspection, Kamoda was pretty sure the victim had only nine fingers to start with.

He was too rigid and routine to know what to do in this situation. Kamoda was used to robberies and tax dodging, the odd blackmail and ransom on his hands, but now his commissioner was secretly an ex-Shinsengumi who threatened all the officer's lives daily if they did not hunt down criminals to their last breath good enough or catalogue everything about a dead body before he could get there to criticise them. The old commissioner, who loved nothing more than to keep his office pristine and his uniform pressed, had always delegated these cursory tasks of running after convicts and bagging up evidence to others.

Commissioner Fujita, however, was out on the streets as often as Kamoda, a low-ranked officer. When he was around, people were too busy being afraid of him to be afraid of bodies. What's more, the Commissioner loved nothing more than to do everything by himself, trusting no one to do their jobs right. That might have been an insult, if not for the fact that his first action as Commissioner was a thorough lodging of inquiries to weed out the corrupt. A lot of officers were let go. If he were here, he'd bark at Kamoda to get out of the away while he stared at the crime scene in silence until he worked everything out, and then came out with a list of precise orders for what the rest of them should do…

But thinking of what his boss would do in this situation was not helping Kamoda get through the shock of seeing…what patently looked like a human casserole. One that had been left outside in the elements until it turned soggy and rancid. Crawling with maggots. Kamoda sucked in a breath of air, trying to quell his climbing heartbeat, trying to push down his terror. And then he immediately spluttered it out, retching and hacking. The smell of blood was oppressive. His fingers quivered. He felt queasy.

"Calm down," a deep voice, low and rasped, said.

Kamoda slowly turned around. A man in an overly large cloak stood a couple metres away, still as a statue. Kamoda reached for his rifle. "Who — who're you?! You—"

"I did not do this," the man stated, nodding towards the square puddle. "Look at my footprints. They end right here."

Kamoda looked between the cloaked man and the mangled body. "…It's the middle of the night. How'd you find…"

"I was travelling. Walking home. I got here the same way you did. Followed my nose."

Kamoda turned to him fully, rifle held up as he stood between the man and the body. "This area is now under police custody! You need to leave, Mister!"

The man lingered. His eyes roved around the ground past Kamoda, not affected, before he simply sighed out loud and dropped what looked like a shopping bag. He took the time to stoop and gently lay down several jugs of sake. Then he strolled forward. He seemed to grow bigger and more imposing the closer he got, until he was almost looming over Kamoda. Kamoda put down his rifle, knowing he was never going to use it, and knowing that the cloaked man had deduced this. He rummaged around in his pocket to produce a police whistle instead.

"Stop. Stop! Stay where you are! I'm signalling for backup—"

Kamoda lifted the whistle to his mouth. Before it got there, he registered a sharp pain burn through his fingers. The whistle went flying out of his hand, clacking against the wall. Kamoda gasped, frantically searching for it on the ground. Instead, he found that the projectile that was launched at his fingers was the wooden stopper of a sake jug.

Freezing, Kamoda looked at the large man. The large man looked at him. The large man took a swig of his drink.

"Here," he said gruffly, shoving it into Kamoda's hands to busy him. "It's quality."

Moving past the dazed Kamoda, the man walked right into the square pool of blood. Then he bunched his cloak up, and crouched to look at the body.

Kamoda took a sip of the drink, the strength of it shooting straight up his nose. Intense as it was, the man was right: it was quality. The young yet greying officer hadn't seen much of the dead himself, despite being trained as a shooter, and wasn't even allowed clearance into the room that held wound cleanings for victims at the station. His stomach felt heavy and uncomfortable.

Kamoda went towards the man. He eyed the dismemberment over the man's high collar with a faint sense of curiosity. What was he seeing that Kamoda could not?

"Nine-fingers — likely — likely to be Yakuza. The serial killings. It's the — it's the same one," he piped up over the man's shoulder. "It must be the Hitokiri Battousai."

All of a sudden, the man turned on him. His brows furrowed like he took personal offence.

"Don't cry wolf." He squinted, lips thinning into a straight line. "Not every random killer is Battousai just because it happened to happen in this damned, cursed city," he said, surly. "Besides, when did 'Hitokiri Battousai' become 'The Hitokiri Battousai?' A travesty. That baka does not deserve the courtesy."

He huffed tiredly.

The cloaked man got up to move. Kamoda watched him wade around in the pool of blood, his face betraying no reaction as the contents beneath his feet sloshed around like a wet street after a monsoon. His black, cloth boots soaked up the blood. The experience, to him, had been no more off-putting than walking into a puddle.

Kamoda dropped to a knee at the man's side, finally unbalanced by the situation. The shaking seemed only to kick in now, a disturbed chill running up his spine after it. "The other officers…they talk about — battou-jutsu," he managed to say. "Calling cards…Tenchuu…"

The man looked at him, brows creased. He looked extremely irritable. He seemed to be irritated by the presence of the body more than anything, like it was such an inconvenience. A blight on his eyes. Ruining his good day. "Calling card? What calling card. Don't fret, your boogeyman did not come here tonight. This is nothing but humans killing other humans, the usual conundrum. A fact of life." He looked at Kamoda harshly, as if he were put off by his shaking.

"No matter how civilised and advanced society begs itself to be seen, it is powerless to stop vermin from crawling out of the woodwork to do this…It creates it's own infestation, diseasing the streets with scum like this, scum who do such things as this." He snorted. "Incurable."

The man got hands-on with the body, actually rolling the torso to face the other way.

Kamoda immediately pushed past the cloaked man, throwing up. The man was so staunch he hadn't even registered the push as a push, Kamoda just bounded off him in time to decant. Over the sounds of Kamoda spilling his dinner all over the path, the man's eyes went alert for the first time.

"This was nine strikes to the body — a dashing attack…all nine vital spots hit exactly…"

There was a very specific kind of fragility in the air that shattered, overwhelming Kamoda's senses; of seething, pouring anger, so concentrated Kamoda could feel a physical reaction in his skin, the ends of his hair turning up in an instance, his entire body bracing involuntarily against something. He'd felt this before. The specific kind of something in the air when Commissioner Fujita ousted a corrupt cop by relieving them of the burden of having arms.

The cloaked man got up. "It's Kuzuryūsen." His voice reduced to a whisper. "It…is Battousai."

"Kuzu-wha?" Kamoda pushed himself off the ground, getting up weakly. "You know…know the style?"

The man did not answer him. He began to mutter to himself in a quiet, subdued manner. "Kuzuryūsen? Really? On some backwater bastard like this? In the bleeding suburbs?" He grunted. "How many?"

Kamoda blinked, hard.

"I said — how many of these murders have there been?!"

"Ahh — twenty!"

"Twenty people?!"

"—Nearly twenty attacks! Maybe — I don't have full clearance — maybe forty deaths?"

The cloaked man stared blankly at the wall.

Kamoda stepped about nervously, not sure where to look. Out of chance, he spotted his red whistle on the floor. He snatched it up. When he looked at the cloaked man again, the face that turned to him was full of anger.

"Call your reinforcements, Officer. Clean up. Do not bother clamouring to your death, going after the perpetrator. Tell whoever is charge they don't have what it takes to stamp out this disease." Then, inanely, he picked up his groceries. He picked up his jugs of sloshing sake, and, with more care than he used handling the dead, he tied the sake back to his belt. "Leave the killer for me to deal with."

Kamoda was not prepared to ask him to please stay for questioning. The man fixed his cloak and then left the scene much more gracefully than Kamoda could think, having squelched around in someone's innards.

The police whistle echoed over the silence he left behind.

Little did Kamoda or Hiko Seijuro the Thirteenth know — elsewhere, another body had been discovered. Kamoda's whistle was not the only shrill call for aid that had come far too late, ringing cold and empty in the night.

The ephemeral 'Hitokiri Battousai' would have had to been in two places at once to have done what he will be accused of in the morning. Yet he will still be accused, and none would be the wiser.

In the Aoiya

The morning appeared. Soft light streamed through the paper windows and attractive painted panels of cherry blossoms and rolling mountains in the Aoiya Inn, which was roaring back to life as patrons filled its living areas and restaurant tables once again. It was a busy place, full of travellers, visitors, and foreigners of all sorts — a rather happy house where bands of musicians loved to play on the first floor for its guaranteed audience, airy hall, and well reception.

Many floors above the chatter and bustle of the inn was a closed off wing where the doors were made of hard wood and not thin balsa panels, with reinforced walls to keep conversations held within them secret. It was the part of the inn that, if paid detailed attention to, revealed undercurrents of the shinobi underworld of the Oniwabashu spies. Outside this wing, on every floor down to the last, were staff who were trained shinobi, ninja, who prided themselves on espionage, deception and waging covert warfare. This was once deemed dishonourable and beneath the honour of the samurai, but where the samurai were long gone, ninja houses like the Aoiya survived solely because of their existence being under the radar.

Now, sitting in rooms that technically did not exist, Kenshin spent the morning cluing in his family and friends about what had transpired at the crime scene he toured. Leaving out the gory details, he told everyone the conclusion he'd come to. Sano, Yahiko, Megumi and Kaoru stared at him, pin drop silence in the room as Kenshin told them all that had happened.

"…Well, we're coming with you," Yahiko offered, when Kenshin finished.

"There's no need for that," Kenshin said, beginning to sweat a bit. "This one can make the trip up the mountain myself, that I can."

"Kenshin," Sano started, "that's…that's really heavy, man. Your old man really was behind the killings?"

"It doesn't matter!" Megumi said over him, with surprising emotion. "Ken-san didn't do it. That's all we need. That's all they needed to hear. Who cares who did the killings or not! Not everybody who happens to be killed in this city is Ken-san's fault!"

Kenshin chuckled bitterly. "Megumi, Sano…this lowly one appreciates your concern, but I have to…" he trailed off, sighing. "…This one must find out why Shishou is doing this. If nothing else, I need to give Saito an answer."

Yahiko shook his head, looking calmly at Kenshin before his emotions boiled to the surface. He was older now, seventeen and taller than Kenshin, but his sense of justice and loyalty was ever strong. "Can't you see? This is all Saito's doing. It's all that guy's fault! Kenshin, can't you see he's just trying to make you do his dirty work for him? He's too scared to go to Hiko Seijuro himself—"

Before Yahiko could finish, Sano put a comforting hand on his shoulder. A calm, anchoring rip. While the others were more concerned with Kenshin being asked to fix other people's mistakes once more, Sano was more worried about the effect of the previous day's revelations on his friend. Hiko Seijuro had been his master, after all.

Sano shook his head at Yahiko. "…Yeah, you know I'd have been on your side yesterday. But this changes things. Hiko Seijuro changes things."

Kenshin sat back, regarding them all with a solemn look, and said nothing. Just thinking.

After a while, he spoke up softly. "The fact is, Saito did not need my confirmation whether it was the Mitsurugi ryu that saw the end of those men. He was already certain. This one thinks," Kenshin said, to himself more than anyone, "that he realised he needed an ally."

Those words hung in the air between everyone, strangely out of left field for exactly the reasons they all knew. Saito and Kenshin were like oil and water. If left without supervision, without the sobering eyes of civil society, they risked a grease fire tempered by cold water. Left to their own devices, the two tended to bring out the other's worse habits.

Yahiko, Megumi and Sano, who had argued exactly this in the market yesterday, exchanged knowing glances.

"No matter his intentions, he was the one that pulled you into his mess. If he knew it wasn't you then he didn't need to alert the authorities," Megumi began. She had the grace to give the benefit of the doubt yesterday, but that grace had run out; she looked as petty as ever with that poisonous scowl on her face.

"You're forgetting he basically is the authorities." Sano crossed his arms, equally irked when it came to the wolf.

Kenshin sighed. He tilted his head sheepishly to the side. "This one knows this is hard for you to hear, but I want to make things right. As the only other practitioner of Hiten Mitsurugi ryu, is it not my duty, to do something?"

Kenshin stopped abruptly. Something came over him. A soft, yawning chasm, an ever-growing terror. Was this what Hiko Seijuro the Thirteenth had thought and felt, when Kenshin abandoned his training, turned his back on his master, left for war? Did Hiko Seijuro ever feel duty-bound to fix his mistake?

Kenshin, for a moment, wondered, why didn't he?

Kenshin got up. "This one is going up the mountain. I will speak to Shishou, that I must."

"Kenshin?"

Kaoru's voice drew all the attention in the room. Kenshin turned around, facing her fully to find a morose expression on her face.

"Kaoru-dono?"

Kaoru bit her lip, opened her mouth, closed it, and then opened it again. "Kenshin, I know you trust Saito for something as serious as this, but…" her voice trailed off. She swallowed, seeming inordinately nervous, tensed-up. She even looked away as Kenshin came up to her.

Taking her hands, Kenshin squeezed them tight. "We have our differences. This one may never call ourselves friend to one another, but, for those who have fought and toiled through all those years, there is an understanding. If he wanted to take my life, he would tell me openly. And I would have met him openly. Saito knows this. He will not take victory over me in a way such as this, that he would not."

Suddenly, Kaoru weaved her fingers into Kenshin's, squeezing him tight. She looked him in the eyes, tense. "Saito is wrong, or lying."

Kenshin blinked, taken aback. Kaoru removed her hands, walked away, and poured herself a cup of tea. She drank quickly. Megumi looked like she didn't know how to react to Kaoru's admission, but Yahiko and Sano's feverish marketplace thoughts were looking strangely vindicated.

"Kenshin," she started, "I met Hiko Seijuro the Thirteenth in the market yesterday. His belt was adorned with sake jugs, express from Osaka. He'd been travelling. He told me himself that he arrived back that day, probably in the morning if not right then. Hiko-sama —Hiko couldn't have committed the murders because he hadn't been in Kyoto!"

Kenshin's eyes lit up, going wide and thoughtful.

"When we first heard that someone was using the Hiten Mitsurugi ryu, the first conclusion we all jumped to was it was an impersonator." Kaoru started gesturing wildly. "Even if Saito is the one who confirmed the use of your style, there are a lot of things that could go wrong — marks on a body are subjective. It had rained so much the crime scene couldn't possibly be accurate. And, hasn't it been years since Saito has seen Hiten Mitsurugi ryu? More than a decade since he's last seen a body downed by it? What if he just — just remembered it wrong? What if he's just seeing what he wants to see?" Kaoru paced to and fro in a small spot, collecting her thoughts as if there were too many grappling to be heard.

And to defend an innocent man.

"Please hear me, Kenshin. You never once considered the idea that Hiko could be behind this."

Kaoru spun around to address everyone.

"It makes sense — he just returned from Osaka yesterday, he isn't the type to do something so brash like this, no matter how he uses his sword. Kenshin, if you don't think Saito is wrong, Saito must be lying about something."

For a moment, Kenshin believed every word she said. It was as if a great wave of relief had come over him, his eyes going bright with relief, lips turning up, muscles relaxing mercifully, before it was overshadowed with a great wave of doubt. His want to believe in her was spread all over his face, but he could not discount the truth his own eyes had witnessed. She, in her reverie, had not realised she hadn't just questioned Saito's intuition, but Kenshin's also. Kenshin loved her. He loved Kaoru for how hard she fought for him, how hard she fought to defend his honour, acquit him from sad, horrible thoughts when he could not keep them at bay. Kenshin did not deserve any of this, but Kaoru gave it freely. Kenshin loved her, but he could not tell her right now that people — people like he and Saito — did not just forget things like this. Kenshin remembered.

The faces of his victims came like moths to a light. His mind was sharp like that, conveniently so. He used to think about people, lying dead in their own blood, while he wiped down his sword serenely, a job well done weeks or even months ago. Years ago. A decade ago. When he first became a wanderer, he couldn't stay in one place because the worst parts of the revolution kept playing back in his head like a twisted lullaby…the only reprieve was to keep moving. Keep running. Sleep little. Think little.

There were some things one couldn't forget, even if they so wanted to. Like how one's sword style looked in someone else's corpse.

Kenshin shook his head.

"I'm sorry, Kaoru-dono, that I truly am." He moved to sit down, placing the sakabatou down at his side. "This one has seen the evidence with his own eyes. It does not lie."

Kaoru's pursed her lips, hurt and frustrated. "I'm vouching for him. It's not Hiko Seijuro."

"I don't know, Kaoru." Their heads turned to see Megumi, looking pensive in her seat. Her voice had come out uncharacteristically small. "…We don't know Hiko Seijuro well."

"I'm sorry." Kenshin looked up sadly. "Kaoru-dono, it is as it is. There are only two practitioners of Mitsurugi ryu on this earth. If it was not this one who committed the murders, there can only be one answer—"

Before Kenshin could finish, the sliding door began to shudder and jiggle.

It shuddered again and again, with sudden knocks as if being kicked, prodded, under attack. Before anyone could answer, it was slid open by Omime, the tallest of the three Oniwabanshu women with long, sweeping hair. From between her legs, a young child about four years old dashed into the room, making a beeline to Kaoru. "Mama!"

"Kenji, baby! You're awake?!" Kaoru braced for impact, making exaggerated motions of being unbalanced before falling back on cue when Kenji pressed into her arms. "Isn't it a little too early for you to be up?"

Kenji, wild hair all over the place, just laughed as Kaoru lifted him off her with a big, "Oof!" Then she touched his nose to hers and cooed, "Who's an early riser? Who's a busy bee?!"

"Kenji?!" Kenshin dropped to the floor, also cooing after the boy, "What is that on your head? Oro? Is that a bird's nest, Kenji? Is that bed-hair? Come, come, let Papa fix it up!"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Omime laughed, her hair waving from side to side behind her. "When little Kenji woke up in an unfamiliar place and couldn't see his parents, the little tyke freaked! So I brought him over — Misao-sama would have killed me if I made him cry!"

"Thank you, Omime." Megumi got up to thank her since the parents were obviously busy. "And thank you so much for looking after him yesterday. We really appreciate it."

"Oh please," Omime said, waving her hands as if waving away the gratitude, "it was barely a request. I'm amazing with kids."

Sano stared at Kenji with a face of slight concern. "…That kid slept almost the entire train ride from Tokyo to Kyoto to the Aoiya and only gets up now. He was dead for like fourteen hours. What do you mean he's up early? Megumi, you're a doctor. What's wrong with him?"

"He has a case of being-three-years-old, Sano," Megumi said flatly. "The same disease you have, apparently."

As Sano and Megumi engaged in a stare-off, Kaoru conversed with Omime while bouncing Kenji in her lap. "He's about to turn four in a few days. We were going to celebrate at the Akabeko back home in Tokyo. Auntie Megumi had taken time off her practice. Yahiko nii-chan paused his sword training." She continued to bounce Kenji to his delight. "Uncle Sanosuke even stayed at the dojo all day, refusing to get into any fights," Kaoru said, like that was the most impressive feat out of all of them.

"Please don't call me Uncle." Sano broke eye contact with Megumi. "It makes me sound old."

"Uncle Sano!" Kenji began to chorus. "Uncle Sano!"

Sano dropped his head defeatedly while Kenji chanted. Kaoru, Megumi and Omime laughed at his expense. It took for Sano to make comically threatening gestures towards Kenji for the chanting to stop — and be replaced with giggling.

"We were all back together," Kaoru went on, "planning to celebrate Kenji's fourth birthday in a few days. But that was when we got the summons from the Kyoto police."

"A letter from an acquaintance," Kenshin added. His troubled expression, heavy and shadowed, seem to wipe off his face immediately when Kenji separated from Kaoru to run over to him instead.

"Oro?!" Kenshin gesticulated just as wildly as Kaoru had done as he let Kenji bowl him over. Kenji climbed all over him, reaching for his hair. He pulled on it as soon as he could grab hold of it, fistfuls of his favourite toy. "Ouch! Orororo, Kenji, that grows out of my head, that it does…you always bully me…Thank you for looking after him, Omime-dono. He is full of energy."

"Full of energy, Pa!" Kenji repeated, pulling on his hair.

"Yes, yes, he is!" Omime chuckled. "Are you going to bring him out with you today, or should we go out and play with shuriken with Grandaddy Okina later," Omime asked, partly to the parents, partly to Kenji.

"No!" both Kaoru and Kenshin chorused together.

Omime put her hands up in embarrassment. "Oh no, I didn't mean real shuriken! I swear I meant origami ones!"

"No, no, that's not it, Omime-dono," Kenshin started. Kenji had crawled over him and was now eyeing the sakabato with a beady eye.

As if sensing the parents being overwhelmed between talking seriously, cooing at their three-going-on-four year old, and trying to brush the boy's hair with their fingers, Yahiko stepped in.

"Heeeey! Kenji, come here. You don't want Papa to do your hair, look at his." Yahiko dangled a sash in his hands. The gesture was enough to send Kenji scuttling over the low tea table to jump into Yahiko's arms. Megumi crossed the room to hand Yahiko a comb. "Let Big Bro Yahiko fix it, yeah?"

"Yeah! Yahiko!" Kenji did his best to stay still as Yahiko, well-practiced now, brushed the kid's hair. It was darker than Kenshin's, more brown than red, and his eyes unmistakably his mother's. Yet his likeness to Kenshin was almost startling. He looked so much like him. Too much like him.

"Misao must not have told you." Kaoru faced Omime, a little dishevelled. "…We're not taking Kenji anywhere in Kyoto. With these allegations about, we have to think about his safety. I'm embarrassed to say, I've been used against Kenshin before. But I'd have my wooden bokken sword with me. But Kenji…" She swallowed. "Kenji's safety is all that matters."

Omime's mouth propped open, shocked by her words. But then she reigned herself in, understanding.

Kenshin rose. "Only Okina-san, Misao-dono, yourself and a few others in the Aoiya know about our son." His eyes darted to Megumi, Sano and Yahiko. "As Kaoru-dono wished, I did not let Saito know about him."

Kaoru, lips pursing, shrugged. She looked a little guilty, but not enough to regret it. "I didn't let Hiko Seijuro know about him either."

Kenshin nodded. "So, Kenji won't be known to the police, nor anyone outside the Aoiya. Kenji must be kept safe, so it's best for now that no one in Kyoto knows he is my son…or that I have a son at all."

For as they all knew, there was a second perpetrator — or perpetrators — leaving the calling cards. And they had no idea who they were.

Omime nodded vehemently. "I understand. I'll make sure Kenji stays right where he is, then." She swiped a hand to her brow. "Luckily you told me now, before I thought I could take the little tyke on a walk for dango, or something."

"Thanks, Omime," Kaoru said again.

"Thank you, Omime-dono," Kenshin bowed.

Another knock at the door sounded. Omime knocked back, tilting her head as she chastised them, "Go away, not now. Some people are trying to spend some quality time with their boy!"

But the door slid open anyway. Omime had been leaning on the door; she fell backwards into another Oniwaban member's arms. It was Shirojo, with his signature bandana tied over his forehead, who caught her on pure reflex. Then he looked up haphazardly to the guests. "I'm sorry, Himura-san, Himura-san," he said to both Kaoru and Kenshin respectively, "But it's the Commissioner."

"Saito?" Sano stood up, looking confused. "Here? What's he doing?"

"He's demanding an audience with Himura-san…er, Kenshin-san," Shirojo said.

"But they just spoke yesterday."

"He is, er. He is…threatening to come in to find you."

"Seriously, Shiro?" Omime straightened up, beginning to tie up her hair as if squaring up for a fight. "How dare he. He knows who we are — Okina-sama and Misao-sama won't just let him break into the Aoiya. How dare he threaten to come in?!"

"Please," Kenshin said, trying to diffuse the situation, "Please, don't think ill of him. He is always threatening."

Kaoru sighed at that while Sano rolled his eyes. Typical of Saito, they supposed.

"If you will, I would like to invite him in."

At that, Yahiko spoke up in a mismatched, playful voice. "Ohhhh, would you look at that, Kenji, I think we should go hang out in the other room, kay?" Yahiko said on cue. "Who wants to be here with these stuffy old adults, with their ninjas and their revolutionaries and their Shinsengumi…ew." Without looking or speaking to the others, Yahiko made his point. A point to be careful not to stir a keg that could only blow. To be careful letting a wolf into their den. He slowly got up, causing Kenji to roll out of his lap with glee.

"Katana!" Kenji cried, bounding after him. "I wanna play with katana, Yahiko nii-chan!"

"Now? Nooo, not now. Where do you think this is? Not everyone's house is a dojo."

"But you promised! You promised, Yahiko nii-chan!"

"No I didn't."

"Yea you did!"

"No, I didn't."

"You! Did!"

"When?"

"Nii-chan said," Kenji mumbled in his toddler voice, "—if Kenji can go to sleep on the train, then you let me play with your katana!"

"Yeah," Sano crossed his arms from across the room. "He did, didn't he, Kenji-chan?"

Yahiko spun on him, giving him an annoyed look. "Thanks, Uncle Sano."

Unaffected, Sano scooped up Yahiko's wooden sword and threw it to him. Yahiko caught it with ease. The smooth catch impressed Kenji into a rare instance of silence. His eyes, dark like Kaoru's, sparkled.

"Okay, let's go play with my katana. I hear Omime onee-chan had paper shurikens too."

"Oh yeah! I'll go make some, yeah?!"

At that, Omime and Yahiko ferreted Kenji away. Meanwhile, Shirojo went back down to receive Saito.

"Weird, what would Saito want now?" Sano pondered aloud.

A cold, hard knock sounded upon the door, and Saito let himself in.

Behind him, another set of footsteps trailed after him. Another officer. But Saito had already turned around and begun shutting the door in their face. "Guard, Kamoda."

Saito turned on them.

"…Quite nice quarters up here," he commented, eyes roaming around the room. "I would never have known."

For a moment, Kenshin thought he looked more like a cop than he did a wolf, a respected officer with a warrant. Searching for illegal goods that, for all his intensity, might appear in the room out of thin air, ripe for arrest. But he was ever the predator scanning for prey all the same. Without so much as a greeting or hello, Saito strutted to the window and leaned casually out, seeing how far up they were. He acted as if he were savouring a novel experience, being allowed inside the Aoiya on invitation.

"Did you enjoy your stay last night, Battousai?" He leaned out, rather like a child on the rails. A cat on a high surface.

There was something about his voice that told Kenshin he was distinctly not being kind to him — not that Kenshin expected from Saito a normal human response. Saito stalked around the room, boots clonking about. He hadn't bothered to take his shoes off. Nor the disingenuous smile he had on his face.

But the smile, no matter how forceful it was, could not hide the dark, tired bags beneath Saito's eyes. He had the lymphatic complexion of someone who hadn't slept in days, where it was starting to show in quite spectacular ways. It was clear he hadn't shut his eyes for a blink in the hours they'd last seen each other.

"Yes. It was very comfortable. The Aoiya is too kind to us."

"Hm. They quite are, aren't they?"

"They are treasured friends."

"Conspirators happy to house a wanted man. Nice of them." His eyes flickered to the far side. "…And this room. So spacious."

"Enough for the entire Kamiya dojo household."

"How about your ego?"

Kenshin finally narrowed his eyes. "Good of you to ask. This lowly one would be happy to advise on how to house your own."

Saito nodded sarcastically. He seemed almost pleased Kenshin could still produce such a cutting remark.

"And your no-kill oath. How is that holding up?" He stared at some of the room dividers, tasteful furnishings, admiring the embroidery. "Does it include deaths caused by obstruction of justice, pray tell? Does it include deaths caused by proximate means? Wilful blindness? Pure idiocy? I should ask, see if it's all inclusive, or if conditions apply."

"That's enough." Sano got up, fuming.

"What are you trying to say?" Megumi squinted, unable to listen to the unkind tone anymore.

But Saito ignored them. "Did you sleep well, last night?"

"Supremely," Kenshin said acerbically.

This was about to go on for a few minutes more when Kaoru came between them. Her eyes held Saito's crossly before she tipped her head up, confronting him overtly. She looked to him seriously. Then she entered the game. "What is it, Commissioner? Did something urgent come up? What can we help you with?"

She dipped her head. "Have you eaten?"

"Ah," Saito tilted his head towards her. His long, spider-like bangs that couldn't be gelled down if his life depended on it, quivered in front of his meekly closed eyes. "Kamiya girl. Nice to make your acquaintance again. Nothing is wrong. I'm not hungry. I just need to talk to Battousai."

Kaoru flared at that word.

Kenshin went up to him, his eyes open and quizzical. They stared at each other, but Saito just smiled incessantly, refusing to drop whatever act he was trying to put up. He regarded Kenshin completely at arms-length.

Kenshin gestured to the table. "Fine. Please sit, Saito. This one will make us some tea while we talk."

Moments later, Kenshin, Megumi, Sano and Kaoru were sat around the table with their guest, Saito, sipping tea.

"What is so urgent you had to come in person so soon?" Kenshin asked. He leaned forward, pouring him tea.

Saito slid a hand into his uniform — and Sano actually retaliated by beating a fist on the table in warning, Kaoru tensed up, holding her empty teacup like a rock. But Saito just took out a small slip of paper, a harmless motion, prompting them to both to look slapped.

"What's that?" Kaoru asked.

Saito's lip twitched. "You didn't tell your wife, Battousai?"

"I did. Kaoru-dono has never seen it before." Kenshin turned to his wife and friends, explaining to them. "This is a calling card. The replica calling cards that emulate what the Ishin Shishi employed in the aftermath of an assassination."

"Tenchuu: Heaven's Justice," Megumi read. "By the hand of Himura Battousai." She turned the paper over, revealing the strange symbol on the back. "What is this?"

"I don't know. What is that, Battousai?"

Kenshin frowned. He finally matched the hostility toiling off Saito like he'd just smoked a twelve-pack cigarette box right before coming in, and looked at Saito with accusing eyes. His ki was so hateful that even Sano and Kaoru, people who were not skilled at reading ki, had felt it and reacted involuntarily. Only Megumi, who could not sense any ki at all, seemed fairly oblivious to the tense atmosphere.

"This one has already told you," Kenshin said politely. "This one does not know the source of this symbol." He took another look at it, smoothing out the paper. Two fans in symmetry, or two shells opened up… triangular blotches. "It means nothing to me."

Saito nodded patiently.

He looked to Kaoru and the others. "…Give us some privacy. I want to talk to Battousai alone."

Nobody moved. The way he spoke was like he was addressing another commander, telling the rest of their unit to buzz off while the superiors talked business.

Saito turned up a brow when no one bothered to move. "Please?" he said, teeth bared.

Kenshin turned, about to cave and ask everyone to please leave when Kaoru dropped her cup onto the table with rude force. She looked Saito squarely in the eyes. "Whatever you will say to Kenshin, you can say to all of us," she said flatly.

Saito just looked at her, lips a thin, taut line. Something changed, but Kenshin could only name it as a collection of small gestures, small tells — less tension in his jaws, less ki-induced quivering in his bangs, an imperceptible relaxation. Letting go. Acquiescing. These meant nothing, changed nothing, but the air between them went suddenly lax. Saito wasn't angry anymore. That bare, hungry look, with every bit of him arched for battle — subdued military poise, attack dog circling — seemed to just drift out of him. Like smoke dispersing, or pride being swallowed.

Calmly, he looked up.

"I was not born Saito Hajime."

Kaoru's eyes widened. Megumi and Sano shared a confused look. Kenshin just sat across from Saito, tea still in his hands. Without the barest ripple.

"When I was eighteen, I killed a hatamoto. An upper vassal samurai in the direct service of the Tokugawa Shogunate. This was in Edo. Tokyo, as you know now," Saito said. "It was a sparring match gone wrong. I do not pretend it was a faultless affair. I took responsibility. I was stripped of my title, my birthright…And I was cast out of my small family clan."

Saito said it with the air of someone having tea and brunch with long time friends, talking casual banter, a funny quip. "It was the Yamaguchi Clan. Soon after, I was afforded a second chance. Another chance to hold a sword again. Another chance to be a samurai. I would use the very skills that had earned me my banishment for a renewed purpose. This time, in the service of the Shinsengumi." Saito dragged his hands across the table, then turned them up, gesturing openly. "I was originally Yamaguchi Hajime."

An uncomfortable silence followed.

Kaoru seemed to sink back into her seat, her eyes drifting downwards to her withdrawn fingers. Saito's words seemed to sink into her too, awkward in its honestly. She looked compelled to look away for fear of trespassing in something private, in a confession so unbelievably soft. Megumi and Sano also startled. They both looked nervous, as if they weren't really sure they should be here at all, or be allowed to listen to this. Kenshin, however, watched on as if he really were at brunch with a long-time friend, and nodded politely at the interesting story he'd shared. He swirled his tea in his cup.

"Why are you telling this lowly one?"

Saito sat back. He chose this moment to sip his tea, enjoying the aroma. "So now we're even. So you don't feel the need to blush and shy like an adolescent girl to disclose to me all about your lowly self. Let's have a heart-to-heart," Saito said venomously. He picked up the calling card in the middle of the table, flipped it to the symbol on the back, and slapped it down in front of Kenshin with an air of finality.

"What — is this symbol — to you?"

Kenshin did not even look at it. "I do not know—"

Saito exploded.

He leapt up from his haunches, kicking the entire table vertical. Cups rolled onto the floor and shattered, hot tea ran down the edges. Megumi cried out and Sano pushed her out of the way, positioning his body to protect as much of her as he could.

Saito unsheathed his sword and charged his Gatotsu straight through the upturned, vertical table. An engineered blind spot. Then he aimed at Kenshin on the other side.

Notes.

Kenji exists! Hooray!

The main reason I changed the 'present' date is that I don't want Kaoru to have had her child so young. That's it! She's 25 here with a three-almost-four year old child (which is still very young).

The info Saito shared about himself is what I could glean from various sites about the historical figure he was based on. Historical Saito did change his name from Yamaguchi to Saito, though there is no real evidence that Yamaguchi was a 'clan' (I embellished that for this story). Saito's father was a gokenin, a low-ranked samurai. After he killed a high-ranked hatamoto samurai at 18 he either had to flee Edo, or was forced to leave. I tired to be accurate, but a lot of the sites about Saito's early life are fan sites for various manga/anime characters based on him. Some claimed he challenged the hatamoto for a duel and killed him. But others (including Wikipedia) suggest it was a sparring accident. This was all I had to go on with english language sites.

Anyhow, I like Saito as a character as you can probably tell. He would never be this emotional imo, but I'd like to blame it on the lack of sleep and utterly unhealthy work schedule and last night's murders. I really don't think RK Saito is supposed to have a backstory. He's just there. Ever the wolf. Born 39 years old. Immortal in his stasis.

But fic is supposed to be indulgent. So enjoy :)

Hiko 12 used kuzuryusen on that one guy because she CAN.

- an-earl