TW: child trafficking is the subject matter of this chapter.
Another refresher for ages: Eiji - 17. Misao - 23. Aoshi - 33. Kenshin - 35. Hiko XII - 35. Saito - 41. Hiko XIII - 50.
The Warehouse.
Aoshi took one step into the storage warehouse and immediately planted his boot into the squelching innards of a fish. The smell exploded, and he put a gloved fist to his nose in pure defensive agony. His sense of smell was more than three times as sensitive as the average person's, thanks to Okina's Five-Sense training regime in his youth, which had over the years helped him recognise and avert various poisons in people's dinner plates by fragrance alone. This, right now, was not ideal, as he struggled not to retch and throw up in front of the onnabugeisha. She was already not amenable to him.
Putting a knife to her throat had not helped…but Aoshi supposed her connection to Battousai was second in priority to finding the missing disciple. He was not clear on how he was possibly going to keep this from Misao: it was too important, too critical not to report he had spent the night running alongside the woman impersonating Battousai. But that also meant he had to admit he'd taken on a private mission without her authority…
And Hiko Seijuro. Why did that name sound familiar to him?
Twelfth of her name? Just how many of these masters were there?
The air inside of the warehouse held a slight sea-salt tinge to it, being on the harbour, but the odour of days-old gutted fish and perpetually damp wood was completely overwhelming. A rickety hole in the roofing let in a bright spot of moonlight that illuminated a damp floor and plenty of evidence of rats. It seemed one side of the warehouse was reserved for the processing of wet catch, fisheries and shellfish, stored temporarily before the lot needed to be discarded for spoilage, and the drainage was not optimal.
The other side of the warehouse was packed to the roof with crates and crates of dry goods — either arrived from the ships coming into Kyoto or stored to set sail elsewhere. Possibly the crates were international shipments, going to Japan's best traders in Europe or the South China Sea, resting only a day or two at most between business. None of those musings explained why they were kept in such poor condition. Nor why this foul hole was so heavily guarded by Yakuza thugs. There seemed nothing of immediate value in the half-empty warehouse.
Hiko Seijuro had already strode ahead of him, whacking open the first box with her wakizashi. Kicking the crate over, a number of brown sacks slid out listlessly. Aoshi watched Seijuro slit the sack, spilling a tide of fine sand out of it. Aoshi could smell it through his fingertips.
"Salt," he uttered.
Seijuro ambled over to the next crate, cracking it open as well, and more sacks fell out, which she also slitted.
"Pepper kernels."
She slit the next one.
"Salt," Aoshi said again.
Seijuro disappeared then, walking a perimeter of the warehouse and going deep between the fish gut aisle, shifting around crates to make a path; and with every dingy hole she checked the more harried she became, the more enraged, until she kicked an empty crate across the warehouse to shatter against the wall. But then Aoshi held his breath, jumped in front of the crate and stopped it with his boot. If it cracked against the walls someone could hear and come running.
The flare had already been shot. The police whistles already singing. How much left of a covert operation this was, Aoshi wasn't sure, but quite simply he could not handle the loud banging that would reverberate around this airy warehouse right now.
"There's nothing here." Seijuro said it quietly at first, a soft realisation. Then she sheathed the wakizashi, accusing, to non one in particular, "There's nothing here!"
They've been moved, Aoshi thought, but he didn't want to open his mouth. His throat was so dry. Seijuro stomped across the warehouse, sat down on a crate, and held her palm over her eyes. Usually this was where a person would offer a hand on a shoulder. A voice of calm. Some steady comfort, some consolation. But Aoshi did not know how to be that person. On most days he was barely a person at all.
Aoshi dropped his hand. He breathed in the putrid air, putting away his kodachi and getting ready to flee the scene. The mission had been a failure.
Something rolled in his mind.
Aoshi grimaced, tilting his head in its direction; there was something in the air that he recognised, something fighting to come to mind. What was it?
"…Seijuro," Aoshi said. "…I smell milk of the poppy."
Seijuro lifted her head. "An opiate?" Her shoulders rolled back, unimpressed. "Probably in one of the boxes. I would not be surprised."
"No," Aoshi stepped in a circle, floundering, as if feeling around in the dark. "I would have caught the scent in seconds if this were a drug ring. It is not." He remained standing, trying to press his nails into his palms to force concentration, but the fingerless gloves were armoured, lined with metal to catch swords. Aoshi's lips parted, involuntarily, as he realised what he was smelling. "…When I served in defence of Edo Castle at the eve of the war's end," he said, "I was personally involved in the security of the official Junichiro. He was a siege strategist of the Shogonate's. A user of opiates. It was commonly used then as a remedy for sleeplessness."
Seijuro peered up at him, her cloak unbearably white in the moonlight, making her look quite like a spirit. A kami, weighing judgment.
"The point is, I was the only one able to tell he'd been poisoned before the battle. A dosage of opiates higher than a mare could survive. And I could tell because of the smell of it that emitted out of his very pores, hours before he would succumb."
Aoshi spun, spayed his fingers at Seijuro. "Get off the crate."
Seijuro's brows pulled, her face falling into a frown. But she jumped from the crate, and with another flash of battou-jutsu, carved the top clean off the container. Aoshi and Seijuro peered in.
There, contorted into the crate, was a sleeping girl.
From her every pore came the smell of opiates, keeping her unconscious.
Shinomori Aoshi: the man more attuned to the smell of poison than the clues of an entire, living girl, kept in a box.
Seijuro's eyes were wide as saucers. She ripped apart the crate, sitting the girl up in her arms, easing her awake. "Hey. Hey! Little one! Please."
Aoshi got to work. He pulled his kodachi, opened the next crate smelling of opiates. He grimaced, opened the next one, and the next one, revealing child after child packed into these — these suffocating shipping crates. Folded neatly like rag dolls. Their limbs weren't even bound: there had been no need with the strength of the poison in their bloodstreams. The horror of the situation had yet to catch up with him; Aoshi felt as though he were merely going through motions, pulling children out of boxes and checking their weak pulses. There were nine children in total. He wondered which one was Seijuro's deshi.
Soon Aoshi turned and saw that the first girl was awake in Seijuro's arms. "Hey, little lady. Can you tell me your name?"
"…Rin." The girl, Rin, looked around, spotted Aoshi in his towering Western coat and unamused face, holding a glinting kodachi, and cowered.
"Hey!" Seijuro said, and her voice — her voice had utterly changed — into something kind and forgiving. "Don't look at him. Look at your Auntie Seijuro. Tell me what happened."
"He's—" Rin's face twisted as she buried it into Seijuro's forearm. "He's going to hurt us! He's sending us away! I'm so sorry! I just wanted to take my sister to play at the fountain! I didn't mean to leave the memorial park! Where's Doa?! I don't know where Doa is!"
Aoshi backed away from them. He crouched by the other children, trying his best to wake them. But the smell of opiates was cloying — they'd been given a fresh dose not too long ago, and it would keep them in slumber for at least a few more hours. Maybe that was the better outcome. Better to wake up in a clean hospital bed rather than to Aoshi's unfeeling, unconsoling face. When he returned to the two, Seijuro had gotten the full story out of the girl and managed to calm her out of her crying.
"I dunno know a Miki," she was saying, shaking her head.
"Are you sure?" Seijuro said softly, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear, "No big brother with a ponytail?" Seijuro leaned in, a little desperately, "He's a little older, twelve. He may have been wearing arm vambraces. Maybe…"
"There's Azumi, Daisuke. There's a Taku and Iida…but no Miki. I've met everyone here — we've been together for days…no Miki."
She wasn't crying anymore. But the tears on the girl's face remained, full of the drug. In the dim light she looked almost like Misao, fat-cheeked and button-nosed and so small: a vision of her the day Aoshi left her behind for Kanryu's mansion. Like discarded goods.
"Okay," Seijuro praised, lifting her to her feet. "That's fine. You've done well. We're getting you out of here. Big brother Aoshi here and I are going to have a little talk. Just a little talk. Can you stay with your friends here, see if any of them will wake? I'll be just a moment."
Aoshi, taking the cue, went to one gut-strewn corner with Seijuro.
"You need to leave," he said strongly. "You killed those Yakuza. I would say that is a service — however it will be the fuel that indicts Battousai. Now, they are soundly under the impression that you are him. I say you—"
As fast as a battou-jutsu draw, Seijuro unsheathed her wakizashi, bringing it viciously to Aoshi's throat. Aoshi reacted in instinct, snaking a hand to shield his jugular, the edge of Seijuro's blade cutting into the metal guard in the palm of his glove.
"…What are you doing?" Aoshi hissed. Even at this hour, with a knife to his throat, he felt compelled to use his inside voice — concerned to look truly like a villain in the girl Rin's eyes.
Seijuro stared daggers at him. It was not lost on Aoshi that this was a grim reversal of what he'd pulled on her about twenty minutes ago. Should he be so surprised?
"You're Shogunate," she spat.
Aoshi blinked.
"What?" he said, weakly.
The Harbour.
The sky was strangely light, a night of bright moon partially veiled behind cloud, but the still-damp, muddied street glowed a sickly yellow that was illuminated by a few stuttering lanterns. It felt odd to be running down the same path where Misao had traversed not so long ago, making a fevered getaway while catching her own blood to prevent leaving a trail. In the very same spot she'd hidden to stake out the patrols, Misao slid a kunai from her belt. Judging from the position of the light, she slowly positioned it around the corner in a way that did not catch a glint that could give away her position.
In the reflection of the kunai, lying strewn across the wet muck, were the very patrols that had been very much alive days earlier. "Oh Kami."
Misao ambled out of the hiding spot, out into the light, into the bare, open street. There was suddenly no point in hiding. From behind Misao the light was abruptly obstructed, sending a chill down her back, and Misao turned to see Hiko Seijuro the Thirteenth ogling at the same thing she was. The moon seemed to release back into the sky when Hiko stooped to see the first body.
"Stay behind me, Kunoichi," he said. "Whoever did this is not far. The body is still warm."
But Misao had barely heard him. She ran ahead, bobbing to the next Yakuza, touching for a pulse. When there was none she moved to the next, then the next, ready to save anyone still alive. Even if they were slaving Yakuza they deserved to get a trial in this world. But there was also a more practical reason for her frenzy — she needed one to talk. Misao rushed to the next man up, tugging them to face her when — when only one half of him gave, and the other half slopped apart and fell in the opposite direction.
Misao slapped both hands to her mouth, muffling a horrified, high-pitched yell. She stumbled, about to fall on her back when her shoulder hit something hard. Hiko had appeared, at top speed, from a ten metres away, to her side, bracing her fall with his knee.
"Calm yourself. He's already dead."
She could see that. She could see both halves on him were quite dead.
Misao breathed heavily through her nose, in shock from seeing the state some of the bodies were in. "…All the other imposter Battousai victims were just slashed at the throat or stabbed," she said. "These people were dismembered." She would have thought they'd been taken apart by an explosion if not for the clean-edged cuts.
Misao stared up at Hiko as if he had answers she couldn't find for the life of her. "Why the difference in pattern? A pattern that has pretty much gone on unchanged for weeks? It makes no sense."
Hiko stooped again, pulling back pieces of garment and examining further.
"And these people — they're not the usual type of victims either. They're Yakuza. And I know they're Yakuza, I staked them out. My intel tells me the fake Battousai works for the Yakuza. What on earth happened?" She kept turning to Hiko even as he looked decidedly away from her, too enthralled by his own selection of severed limbs. "Did they have an internal falling out?! Did they — did they stage this to get us off their tail?! Did they do a purge?!" Misao put her hands in her hair, then whacked them down, "And where are the calling cards, then?! That's supposed to be their specialty!"
"Calling cards?" Hiko finally piped up, an eyebrow rising.
Misao waved around her arms, unable to speak without gesturing. "Yeah? You know? From the Bakumatsu. Tenchuu. Heaven's justice?"
Hiko's brow went down as he turned privately to scowl.
Misao wandered around the scene, eyes piercing the grounds for clues, a mistake — anything, when a familiar glint took her attention. Misao ran up the street where she pulled a kunai from the ground. There was a small dent in it — with a speck of gunpowder — as though it had connected with a bullet. She turned it in her hand, tested its grip.
This was an Oniwaban kunai. What was it doing here?
A cold, weighted paralysis came over her. She did a headcount of each of her ninja: Okina was at standby in the home front. Omime was looking after Lil' Himura. Okon was running the Aoiya. Shirojo was employed in wholesale goods delivery, doing counter-racketeering, and Omasu was currently planted in the local rail office. The rest of her ninja were mostly in training, and trained to use shrunken over the kunai, which were more easily concealed. But someone in the Oniwaban had been here. Someone she did not authorise.
Who had known the information to come here before Misao did?
Was Misao being betrayed?
A gust of wind fluttered by, whipping her braid in front of her. Suddenly a lantern detached, fell and bounded over a few metres ahead. Misao's eyes settled on the lit entrance of the warehouse.
"Hiko-san," she alerted. "Whoever did this is still inside." Misao strapped the kunai to her side.
Hiko's eyes flickered up. "Behind me," he said as he rose, in a tone that presented no argument. "This is not a killer you can handle. Let me speak to him. I am going to give him one chance — exactly one chance to explain his sloppy murders and his esteemed self. And if I don't like the answer," Hiko kept on saying, "you will stay out of what happens between us."
Misao's eyes were already narrowed, offended slits by the time he'd finished. But the cogs in her mind were whirring, joining dot to dot, until she exhaled and let out in disbelief, "…Do you…do you know who the fake Battousai is, Hiko-san?"
But suddenly a low thundering sound of footsteps echoed from behind. Without thought, without any regard for jumping suddenly on the armed, heavyset master of Himura, Misao grasped Hiko's vambraced wrist and dragged. The action did absolutely nothing. Misao just dangled off of him.
But Hiko, still realising the gravity of the situation if they were both found by cops in the middle of a murder scene, conceded. He grasped Misao's wrist back — a hard iron clamp — and nearly threw her behind an alley before getting out of sight himself.
"I know you're there," a tight, wolfish voice came.
Without even looking, Misao knew immediately who it was. Coming plainly around the corner from the main street, with his boots clanking every time they hit the jolting sword at his side, was the Commissioner of Kyoto Central Police Force.
"Get out, Aoiya girl. One would have to be deaf not to recognise the trill of your voice."
The Warehouse.
"Why this secrecy?" Hiko Seijuro the Twelfth said in Aoshi's face. "Why this subterfuge, when your kind are in power? You should be able to order a whole castle of men to your aid. You work for the Shogunate!" she accused. "You did nothing!"
For some reason this was the very first time Aoshi felt pinned by this woman. Some part of him believed the words she said: he had been out of the game too long. He hadn't been…doing anything, these past months, these past years. Aoshi once thought he could step away from his old life, step away and rejoin society as a respectable man with a respectable job, and without his looming, choking shadow, the Oniwabanshuu would be free to take their mission in a new light. With a new head, one that was not stuck in his ways as he was. As Okina was.
He surrendered his title of Okashira.
Would there be less children in boxes had he not stepped away?
Seijuro was still staring at him. He found himself wanting to explain, despite his own confusion.
"…I do not deny it," Aoshi said. "…In a bygone time. I served the Shogunate in wartime."
Seijuro's lips thinned even further. "What war?"
"What war?" Aoshi echoed.
Either the smell of fish and drugs was getting to his head, turning his mind to mush, or Aoshi had been at the brief beck of a very, very confused woman. He was too befuddled to even retaliate, get the sword currently aimed at his throat away from him.
"The War." When still no recognition came to Seijuro's eyes, Aoshi caved and said dryly, "The Bakumatsu."
"What does a small, regional scuffle mean to me?" Seijuro said, with the complete confidence of a lunatic, and added just as vainly, "I do not trust any affiliate of the Tokugawa Shogunate's."
She was playing with him, somehow. Aoshi was the one who was lacking in these social riddles, these graceless games, and he knew it: she must be mocking him, in some convoluted way. If so, why in this fashion? What was she trying to achieve? Did she actually think she could make Aoshi believe she; one, did not know what Bakumatsu was; and two, did now know who Battousai was? In Kyoto City? Aoshi scanned her scornful face, dripping with disdain, trying to catalogue any physical tics and slips that could decidedly tell him she was lying. But there was no sense of deceit in her lines. Not a dram of jest.
Aoshi withdrew a moment. He had the facts. He did a quick stocktake.
Seijuro had never seen the likes of a standard rifle before, shocked at the speed and accuracy of the tool despite being fully able to evade. She was completely illiterate, unusual for an adult of any kind of status — not less one of such proficient swordsmanship skills. She had no concept of a handshake at all. She'd never seen a Western carriage, the way she stared at it go past in the market earlier. She hadn't heard of the Yakuza until lately. She genuinely seemed not to recognise the term Hitokiri Battousai.
That name brought hives to the common man. Adoration, hate in others. It brought nothing to her. Everything she said was like she lived in a different world than currently everyone else did in the modern reality.
Aoshi shuddered, fully showing his distress on his face as he looked right into this Seijuro's eyes. "I was in the employ of the Shogonate. This is the reason you have attacked me?"
When Seijuro gave no answer, Aoshi said, "The Tokugawa Shogunate has fallen for seventeen years, Seijuro."
The corner of Seijuro's lip twitched. "Now you're just being delirious."
…This could not be happening.
Aoshi's temper flared. He breathed in fish guts, pushed with his right arm, and elbowed her with the left, forcing her back. Seijuro was impacted by the push, but rather than counter with her weapon she disengaged and slid back three metres.
"Listen to me. You need help." Aoshi turned his whole body to face her squarely. "The Bakumatsu War is behind us. In it was the long demise of the Shogunate, the old ways, and you and me." Aoshi closed his eyes briefly, clearing his head. "There are no more samurai. That class was abolished. There are no shinobi — not the way it was. There is no such thing as onnabugeisha and kunoichi. There is no bakufu, there is no bushido — and there is no Battousai," Aoshi said, through slightly gritted teeth.
"Do not mock me," Seijuro countered him. "Stop accusing me of being Battousai! I don't care what that murdering brigand is to you, stop comparing me to the likes of slavers!" she cried, making Aoshi lose it a little inside and say louder—
"Do not pretend you do not know what it is you have done!" Aoshi seethed. "Your murders have framed Battousai. You ruin a just man's name who has spent ten years in atonement."
Seijuro took a step back. In her eye a new spark took root, a kernel of surprise and sharp understanding that spread quickly, like poison; she looked as if she'd grasped some indisputable grime on him, a mark on his character that could be leveraged.
She said, "You know Battousai personally."
Aoshi's lips went tight.
'Know' Battousai. What a strange way to put it. Aoshi did not know Battousai: Aoshi was just some man whom Battousai had grasped from the depths of depression and depravity, then deposited back into the real world with no sense of how to walk or talk or eat like a normal, well-adjusted member of society like he had somehow managed. He was just one of the twenty close friends of his martial sister, who sent a letter twice a year in distinctly formal language that addressed him once, distantly, in the letter opener. He was just some groom of a wedding he had attended, years ago.
No. He did not know Battousai personally.
But he did know that he owed Battousai more than he owed Seijuro.
Aoshi stared her down. Seijuro's eccentricities were too many and too precise to be some prolonged hoax. There was one very simple way in proving his hypothesis. That she had no idea who Battousai was because she frankly did not know what has happened in the past twenty years of national history.
Aoshi took one step forward. "Tell me the date."
Seijuro frowned. "What does that matter?"
"Just humour me. Tell me what year of the Emperor this day is, Hiko Seijuro."
Seijuro flicked a few strands of loose hair out of her face before finally replying. "If I've calculated correctly since the day I lost Miki, it's the ninth month of 1848, Edo Era. The second year of Emperor Komei."
Aoshi closed his eyes lightly. He took a single, weary breath, and remarked politely, "It is indeed the ninth month. The ninth month of 1885. In the seventeenth year of Meji Era."
The Harbour.
The Aoiya girl, who could not have dressed herself more suspiciously in black ninja vestments and combat gear, slipped out of hiding, slinking by into the middle of the street with long, languid strides as though she was the star of an insipid kabuki play.
"Commish," she said, swinging her arms as she walked, "Fancy seeing you here! Do you come here often, or?"
Saito ignored her and bent, hovering a gloved hand over the massacre. Lack of footprints. Aerial attack. Single clean severance. Hiten Mitsurugi ryu's ryūsuisen.
Saito moved onto the next one—
"Hey!" Makimachi came clambering over, peering over his shoulder. "Are you — are you ignoring me?"
"The flares went off not half a stick of incense ago—"
Saito cut himself off. He didn't ask, but he had given away what he was thinking: how did you get to the scene so fast?
But there was no time for dawdling — things were too dire for that — so Saito simply straightened up and asked her outright, "What are you doing here?"
His tone of voice hit her where it needed to. She straightened up as well, eyes going slim, measuring. It was clear Makimachi's head went whirring, in a frenzy, trying to think up some excuse that didn't sound obviously fabricated. But when she opened her mouth Saito had already turned away. He didn't actually care.
The killer was close by; she was in jeopardy. What could he do to get her away from—
"You don't think…you don't think I did this, do you?"
Saito's eyes flickered down, meeting hers. There was something suddenly cutting about them, and Saito found himself wanting to take the completely deranged, totally brainless thing she had said seriously.
Saito scoffed. He looked away, huffing. "Clearly not."
But Makimachi rose, holding his gaze all the while. "Then, you don't believe Himura did this either, do you?"
Saito barely managed to contain the bulb going up in his head: she knew something. Forget his slip of the tongue, she was an idiot to serve this up to him on a sliver platter. He doubted she knew just how valuable her blabbering could be to him — she was a direct line to the Oniwabanshuu's Okashira, that old man Okina. Yet she could be tight lipped when the occasion arose. Saito took some time to answer her.
"…Who else could it possibly be?" Saito started, a grin settling into the corners of his mouth.
Makimachi Misao was protecting someone, and Saito wanted to know why. He would do well to lay out the playing field and test the waters. Some provoking on his part wouldn't hurt.
Himura, she'd named. What is it about Himura that makes you need to puff out your chest for someone?
"I suggest you stay away from Himura Battousai." Saito tuned his grin away, looking darkly at ease. "Another murder spree, and in the same part of town. You think this is a coincidence?"
Makimachi's jaw clenched, her hands balling immediately into fists. It really took so little to put her off balance. After all these years, she was still just a girl.
"Battousai comes back to Kyoto and blood begins to return to the very streets they were once washed from." Saito dipped his head, watching the shadows move on her face. "Is this not an omen?"
"You don't believe that." Makimachi's voice was small when it next came. "You don't believe that, Saito."
"Do I not?" Saito couldn't help it. He began to pace. He began to pace the width of the street, left to light, his head staying eerily in place as his body turned. It was a predatory move, an animal stalking something within its reflective sight.
"What do you know of Battousai?" he started. "Battousai who wears different faces to suit his purpose. Who plays a simpleton with a stick so others can underestimate him. Who wears red on the outside, who makes silly noises to be laughed at. Like a caricature of himself. Now he's returned. Now he's…" Saito paused. "Do you know Himura, no — Hitokiri Batt—"
"—DON'T CALL HIM THAT!"
Saito stopped in his track, his teeth showing.
Makimachi's breathing had quickened. She shook her head slowly, piecing something together in her head. "You're the one who summoned Himura back to Kyoto in the first place!" she outright yelled, furious, "In the middle of all these — all these lies! These allegations! It's not his fault!" she breathed. "He never should have come back! He shouldn't have come back to this stupid, superstitious…"
She stopped.
Saito stopped too. In a moment's breadth, Saito grasped where Makimachi was heading just before he saw it dawn on her in real time.
"You…I didn't understand why you put out the arrest warrant. You're framing Himura?"
Makimachi's fists were trembling, and there was a livid, wild, and all the while disappointed look in her eyes that Saito would never have known to expect. Her voice had undoubtedly turned the head of Saito's support, his second, in the area.
Saito waved a vague hand behind him, ordering his man not to act.
He hadn't expected disappointment, because he hadn't expected Makimachi to think that highly of him.
Makimachi fumed, but didn't shout any further. She looked at Saito with absolute venom. Like she could pull her kunai on him. He, a traitor.
"Himura…Kenshin," she said, "…Is a good man."
Saito's lips widened at that. "A good man," he remarked, "Or, a good killer?"
Makimachi's jaw clenched.
"I should hope, both," came a low, resolute voice.
Saito took his eyes off Makimachi to the tall man with the white coat, the man Makimachi was willing to defend with her life: Shinomori Aoshi.
Except it was not, Saito noted, Shinomori.
"If he were not a good killer, that would be the same as saying he were not a good swordsman; and if he were not a good swordsman, then I should be ashamed to admit I was that much a failure of a master."
This man, taller than even himself and Aoshi, near wider than them both combined under the illusion of that great, white cloak that hid an almost alarmingly muscular body, ambled out of hiding. If it could be called that, 'hiding,' at all — this man had just stood and listened with every intention to change his mind once he finished weighing his many options. It was an inevitability.
"And if that were so," he continued, taking a short, derisive breath, "Then I should lay down my mantle and sword, and beg my forebears to forgive my insolence…"
Saito couldn't afford to turn around, he only tipped his head with his eyes plastered forward, hoping desperately Makimachi could feel enough ki to know to run.
"…Thank goodness I do not have to do that," he said lightly. "Hiko Seijuro, Thirteenth of my line," he said, and it was not a greeting. It was a samurai giving his name to another samurai, so one could remember the other when they perished to them. But he did not bow, he did not tip his head, and he certainly did not dignify him with even attempting to hold out a hand.
All this running around in circles, and the imposter Battousai himself walks right in front of him.
Saito reached for his sword.
"Commissioner Fujita Goro," he said.
"Saito?" Makimachi started, at a loss. "What are you doing?"
There was a pause before Saito scoffed, tipped back his head, and laughed dryly. What was he doing? After all those words spent on needling Himura for being too naive and cowardly not to admit who he was, he introduced himself like this?
"You're right, Aoiya girl. —Apologies." Saito dipped his head. "Saito Hajime. Former Third Unit Shinsengumi," he corrected.
Makimachi ran from him back to the imposter Battousai. "Hiko-san — stop!"
But Hiko Seijuro lifted a brow, the only acknowledgement he afforded him. "Know this, Wolf of Mibu. Your precious war crutch Himura may be a good man and a good killer," he said, "but do not misunderstand. I, too, am a good killer. But unlike my guileless former disciple, I am not a good man."
Saito smiled. "Then we have more in common than either of us have with Battousai."
Notes.
Next chapter, Kenshin arrives fashionably late to the scene!
I just find it funny how out of all the emotionally constipated folks who got an invite to Kenshin and Kaoru's wedding, Aoshi was the one who actually came. Making myself feel so emotional over how many allies Kenshin really has. How many people love him or care about him or respect him enough to go through all these hurdles to protect him or clear his name or stop him if he ever crosses a line. And now I'm going to make them fight each other because they don't know. They don't know they're all doing this for Kenshin.
(Except Hiko. Who is doing this for Hiko.)
A fun detail in this fic: the ninja lean towards Shinto, and the samurai/Mitsurugi masters are more Buddhist. That's why Misao and Aoshi think 'kami,' and the Hikos and even Kenshin think 'tathagata buddha.'
Thanks, all, for commenting on the fic. Let me tell you they are always the highlight of my day.