From: Tatsuko Hi again! ^_^ Haha Told you my muse has been working overtime. I think it's turning into a slave-driver. -_-;; Many thanks go to Serizawa Kamo-san for answering my "door" question - you don't know how much easier it was to write the beginning of this fic after I had the answer. ^_^ As you'll find out, I chose to give her bedroom a door to the outside too. I used a few martial arts terms in the fic, and those are defined in the text of the story instead of at the end to make it easier to follow... As always, comments, criticism, flames, corrections, suggestions, etc. are welcome and encouraged. Go ahead, be harsh. I need it to get better. I'm also taking suggestions for the title... ~*****~ The next morning, Kaoru woke to find that the futon where the girl had been laying was empty. She searched the doujou grounds, but there was no sign of her. After about a half hour of looking on her own, Kaoru realized that Kenshin wasn't up yet, even though he usually was by that time. So she went to his bedroom and called in, knocking on the wooden frame. When she got no response, she slid the door open a little and peeked in. The room was empty. The girl - and now Kenshin - was gone. ********************************************************* What Times May Come Chapter 4: ???? By Tatsuko (Tatsuko@xoommail.com) 6/12/99 ********************************************************* Disclaimer: All Rurouni Kenshin Characters belong to Nobuhiro Watsuki-sensei (all hail). All other characters belong to me. Please just ask before posting somewhere. ^_^ < > = Thought / / = Written ***** Note: This occurs the night before the morning Kaoru wakes up to find Kenshin and the girl gone... It was another night of little sleep for Kenshin, and he found himself once again keeping a tired watch by Kaoru's bedroom door. He was even in the same position as the night before - slumped over, long red bangs covering his face, sakabatou resting on his shoulder. The soft sound of Kaoru's door sliding open ever-so-slightly, then closing again, was enough to bring Kenshin to alert. He heard very faint footsteps coming from in the room. Kenshin got to his feet. Another sound drifted to him: Kaoru's other door, the door to the outside, sliding open. Kenshin quietly made his way outside and around to the other side of the house, where he spotted a flicker of movement headed towards the gate. Kenshin followed her silently, he himself becoming one with the shadows. She left the doujou, paused for a second, then headed down the road towards Tokyo. She kept off the road itself, staying a foot or so within the shadows of the trees. When she reached the area where the "incident" happened the day before, something seemed to catch her eye, and she moved slightly deeper into the forest. A few minutes later, she once again took to the edge of the trees, and now she was carrying a rather large sack slung by a strap over her left shoulder. But that didn't catch Kenshin's interest as much as the kogatana swinging from her hip. (Note: A kogatana is a small katana. See the note after the fic...) The girl and her shadow reached the main part of Tokyo in no time. The girl still stayed hidden in the dark as before, but now her pace slowed, and her movements became wandering and erratic. It was as if she didn't know where she was. Or, she was looking for something or someone. Eventually, she ended up leading Kenshin to the bad part of town. And he got a _bad_ feeling about it. Nothing happened for quite a while, and Kenshin was beginning to think that maybe they were going to be able to get out of that section without too much excitement. But then she accidentally caught the attention of some street thugs, and minutes later mistakingly took a turn into a dead-end alley. Bad combination. The street fighters, bearing all sorts of miscellaneous weapons from swords to staffs to chains, had her cornered. "Hey, check this out, guys, a little foreign chick who thinks she's a samurai!" the leader called out, and the rest of the gang burst out laughing. "What're ya doin' playin' around here, little girl?" The gang moved in closer and brandished their weapons. The girl didn't respond. "What's the matter, don't ya understand Japanese?" No response. They moved in closer. Too close. The girl let her bag drop to the ground and her hand moved toward her sword. "Whoa, this outta be fun. I won't even have to break a sweat!" Kenshin was about to put an end to this, but what the girl did next stopped him in his tracks. As the leader readied himself to attack, the girl stepped forward with her right foot, curving her back slightly toward the man. Her right hand hovered over the hilt of her sword. Kenshin instantly recognized it as a battou jutsu kamae (stance), and he had the feeling the street thug didn't know exactly what he was dealing with. He was right. The leader raised his sword in a vague imitation of joudan (high position), then rushed forward and aimed for men (head/high). He didn't see the girl step forward. He didn't see her draw with lightning-fast speed. He didn't see her elegant upward cut connect cleanly with his blade. What he did see was his sword go flying as it was knocked out of his hands, then fall to the ground with a series of loud clangs. The girl gracefully replaced her sword in its saya (sheath). Noone moved. A moment of stunned silence passed, then two gang members decided to team up on the girl. Her movements were swift, graceful, instinctive, almost cat-like, her long braid whipping around like a lion's tail as she easily disarmed those two challengers as well. They had gravely underestimated this girl, and she had used that to her advantage. But now they were going to get serious. They teamed up on her, coming after her in twos, threes, even fours. The girl held her own at first, but there was no doubt she was in trouble. Kenshin decided it was about time to make himself known. He jumped into the fray, taking out three thugs with hardly any effort at all. The rowdy group, as tough as wanted to seem, were no match for someone with the skills of a highly trained swordsman. And they knew it. As Kenshin unleashed his awesome talent on those foolish enough to fight, the others turned tail and fled. When the alley cleared out, Kenshin went through the habitual movements of chiburi and noto, then turned to the girl. (Note: chiburi is flicking the blood off of a sword, and noto is returning the sword to the scabbard. see comments at the end of the fic...) She looked at Kenshin wide-eyed, with a mixture of fascination, awe, and most of all fear. When Kenshin took a step forward, she stepped back, her hand tightening on her sword. "Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you," Kenshin reassured her. The girl only looked at him blankly. Kenshin saw that she was wounded on her left arm. "You're hurt. I can take you to a doctor. Do you understand?" The girl's eyes went from his face to his sword and back, and still she said nothing. Then she did a rather odd thing - she pulled a few times on her earlobe. "Oro?" Kenshin was quite confused. And then it dawned on him: she hadn't responded to the gang members or to him because she was deaf. He saw how she was focused on his sword. She assumed a battou jutsu kamae, ready to fight him even while injured. Slowly, carefully, Kenshin took his sword, still in its saya, in his right hand and offered her the hilt. The girl's eyes narrowed and she glanced from his sword to his face and back again. Ever so slowly, keeping a wary eye out for any sudden movements, the girl closed her hand around the hilt of the sakabatou and drew it. Her eyes immediately widened in surprize. She looked around at the unconscious thugs around her and an even more startled look crossed her face, as if she just realized that they weren't dead, only out cold. It took a few moments for everything to sink in, and even then it didn't look like she could quite believe it. But she returned the sword to Kenshin and visibly relaxed. She looked thoughtful for a moment, then knelt down and wrote something in the dirt. Kenshin looked over and read: /What's your name?/ written in scrawled Japanese letters. He smiled a little and wrote: /Himura Kenshin. What's your name?/ The girl responded: /Nazotoki Ami./ Kenshin thought he remembered the name "Nazotoki" from somewhere but let it pass for the time being. There were other things to worry about. He wrote: /I'll take you to a doctor./ Ami nodded and threw her sack over her right shoulder, and they headed for the clinic as dawn began to arrive. Kenshin thought, And he hoped that Ami would give them to him. tsuzuku... (to be continued...) ***** Coming up in Chapter 5: Ami's Story ~*****~ So, any ideas for a title? I'm open to suggestions. ^_^ HehHeh... If you remember, the name of the shrine in the prologue was the "Nazotoki" shrine... Connection to Ami? Maybe. *grin* Nazotoki isn't a real Japanese family name, nor does the shrine actually exist, I merely made them up for the purposes of this fic. The "nazo" part means "enigma/mystery." Fitting, ne? A "kogatana" is a small katana: the exact same shape, design, make, and form as a full-size katana, only scaled down. Being only 4'6" tall, Ami can't effectively use a regular katana, especially for battou-like techniques, so I gave her a smaller version of the normal sword. As mentioned in the fic, chiburi is the flicking of blood off the sword and noto is returning the sword to the scabbard. I got the idea for Kenshin doing it out of habit (i.e. even though he didn't have any actual blood on the sword) from the fic "A Telling Gesture." Apologies to the author. (Gomen! *bow*) Kenshin's chiburi (actually, the _way_ he does it) it _part_ of what scares Ami so much. What else scares her, and what's been running through her head, will come out in the next chapter, when I give Ami's point of view on things thus far... You'll notice that when Kenshin offers Ami his sword, he takes it, still in its saya, with his _right_ hand. This is important, because when a sheathed sword is held in the right hand or is on the right side, it is considered a deliberately passive/non-threatening position, mainly because the sword is hard to draw from that position. (It's obviously usually placed on the left, where it is easy to draw.) This chapter was very fun for me to write - I love action scenes, especially when swords are involved. (hehheh) Can't wait to write a scene when Kenshin or Ami come up against _real_ swordsmen... Unfortunately, slave-driving muse or not, I don't know when I'll have enough time to write chapter 5... Gomen! Ja, enough rambling from me. Tatsuko zzzzzzz.....