UNTITLED *Note: This was rewritten after that discussion at SASS on whether Hiko had any other students other than Kenshin. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Disclaimer Let's take care of some of the legal stuff first. ^_^ I don't want to get sued.. Heh! Heh! All characters that appear in this fanfic come from the series 'Rurouni Kenshin' and are thus the property of Nobuhiro Watsuki. Hey, he created them. (Everyone -erect a shrine in his honor and bow low now while chanting- "we're not worthy! we're not worthy!) These RK characters are being used w/o permission for the sake of free entertainment and do not in any way mean to infringe on any copyrights, blah, blah, etc. All other characters introduced in this fanfic are mine, and as such, I shall do with them as I will(meaning that I'm going to be very nasty to them later on... All C&C's welcome!Don't ask me what Takashima means, I have no idea, it's just the name of one of my penpals.Heh! Heh!.. If anyone has a better name than please mail me or does anyone know the translation in Jp for vengeful heart( I know it in mandarin.......) Oh and for all you ppl who want to pick at my grammatical errors, go ahead and tell me. Please? Oh and does anyone have an idea for a title?? ^_^X ----------------------------------------------------------------------- PROLOGUE The memories uncurled in her head like a venomous serpent, uncoiling slowly. She groaned and stuffed her head under the blankets. Drinking six bottles of sake was not helping her achieve anything, much less forget her past.. She closed her eyes and tried to forget.. The snicker of steel meeting steel crept into her mind.She was watching her older "brothers", Okita Souji and Hajime Saitou, practice in the dojo yard again. A small group of students had gathered to watch the masters at work. *No, I don't want to remember.....* Blood trickled from the numerous cuts the two opponents had scored on each other. They were grinning like idiots while she tried to tally up the number of times they had managed to "kill" each other. "Baka ni", Okita finally said with a chuckle. "You can't even count pass ten and you trying to keep score for us," he added as he ruffled her dark brown hair. Takashima looked up at him, eyes filled with the goofy look of a child in the midst of hero worshipping. Light toyed with her hair, turning it from shadowed brown to the dark red of dried blood. That was when the chaos began. The dojo wall shuddered then collapsed revealing a squadron of Ishin Shinin fighters. "Ishin Shinin..", someone snarled before blood and screams erupted from the beginning of a quiet morning. Bodies collapsed with the sickening crush of bone, Takashima screamed as the body of a soldier thudded in front of her as she crawled her way out of the melee. His head was turned towards her , his eyes glazed over, his face caught in a hideous death-grin. The cord of life had been sliced from him by means of a wicked gash slicing open his jugular resembling a second smile. Dimly she remembered Hajime-kun parrying with this man seconds before. The sounds of battle washed over her like the blood of the corpse seeping into the ground, turning her hakama blood red. Then strong arms scooped her up, carrying her away from the corpse and waking her from her trance. Strangely she had never noticed when the battle had ceased but it had not. The Ishin Shishis' were retreating and a single man held their retreat. Purple eyes flashed yellow and a swirl of red blood hair marked him before he disappeared into the glare of the morning sun. Bodies littered the compound,of friend and foe alike. She held on tightly to Okita-kun's hakama and listened to the sound of battle fade away. She closed her eyes as the tirade of what could have happened to a child in the middle of a scuffle washed over her. In her mind's eye she remembered all the kills, the screams, the cool glitter of her older brother's nihontou entering his opponents and the blood that gushed forward when Hajime's katana met throat. But what she remeberd mainly was the swirl of red hair and a purple gi and the flash of purple eyes in sequence to the cold glow of a nihontou. The memory was still as bright as if it had occured yesterday. It had been the first time since she had seen death who had now become an old friend. She closed her eyes and tried to forget everything again. The only difference between then and now was that she knew the name of the red-haired swordsman. Himura Kenshin, otherwise known as Hitokiri Battousai.. Silently slipping through the tendrils of time, another memory sank its fangs into her mind as conciousness fled like a frightened sparrow. Jien himurabattousai@hotmail.com