[RK][FanFic] Holding the Bag
Jan Story
A Rurouni Kenshin (etc.) fanfic by Jan Story
Standard Disclaimer: all the characters in this story belong to
Nobuhiro Watsuki, Shueisha, Sony, etc. EXCEPT for the little old man,
who is the brainchild of none other than Rumiko Takahashi. And so...
A man was hanging out laundry. An unusual sight in the Tokyo of 1880,
even if the man was small and slim as a girl. As unusual as a girl
leading kenjutsu lessons. But this was the dojo of Kamiya Kasshin Ryuu,
and the neighbors had long since gotten used to its eccentric
inhabitants and the mayhem they sometimes attracted.
This fine spring morning, the only mayhem seemed to be what the dojo's
shihandai was inflicting on her first student. "Men, men, tsuke, pick
it UP, Yahiko-CHAN!" she shouted to the rhythm of shinai against shinai.
"Tanuki-hag," he grumbled, but did the drill again, faster.
Out in the yard, Kenshin smiled and picked up the next garment.
It happened so fast he didn't even have time to blink! No sooner had
his ki-sense picked up *something* than a blur streaked through the
yard and the piece of laundry was snatched from his hands, disappearing
over the wall. A voice floated back to him, an old man's voice,
cackling in unholy glee. "Dai-ryou ja! Dai-ryou ja!"
/*That was Kaoru-dono's...*/ His sakabatou flashed in the morning sun
as he sprang high into the air, over the wall, after the fleeing
thief. "Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu -- Ryuu-tsui... oro?" His quarry was gone,
and below him...
With cries of "Thief!" and "Pervert!" a mob of women surrounded a tall,
thin figure covered in white, pummeling it with brooms, rakes, ladles
and other domestic implements. Kenshin sheathed his blade, came to a
graceful one-point landing, and pulled one of the white objects -- a
woman's underkimono -- off the figure's head.
"Oro?" Kenshin's eyes widened. The women's victim was revealed as
Hajime Saitou, once of the Shinsengumi and now of the police. The
inspector's hands were filled with filmy white garments...
"Oro yourself," Saitou growled. "They think I stole their underwear!"
"That's mine!" "Give it back, thief" "Pervert!" The women attacked
again, snatching at their stolen belongings, pounding Saitou and
Kenshin with equal ferocity.
"Oro! Oro!"
"Honestly, Kenshin!" exploded Tae Sekihara. "I expect the police to be
perverts, but what are you doing with our underwear?"
"Oro?"
"What do you mean, you expect the police to be perverts?" Saitou
sputtered.
"Hmm, does Tokio know about your little hobby?" a new voice asked.
Sanosuke peeled himself off a tree and sauntered over, obviously
delighted to catch the policeman in an embarrassing situation. He idly
picked up one of the filmy garments, but when he saw how the ties had
been torn away from the fabric... "Why you... this is Megumi's!" His
amiable manner vanished and he started for Saitou, eyes blazing and
fists clenched.
"Dai-ryou ja!" Something snatched the robe from his hand and the rest
of the underthings vanished in a blur. The blur stopped moving and
became a small, elderly man, his bald head fringed in white
hair. "Thanks for taking care of my silky darlings for me!" He bounded
off.
"After him!"
"Che, Kenshin, that guy's faster than you!" Sano panted.
"He's faster than Soujirou!" Kenshin retorted.
"Heh heh heh, you whippersnappers are a hundred years too slow to catch
me!" the little man taunted.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
They finally ran him down in an open space next to the river. Face to
face, he didn't seem very formidable, just a little old man with a long
Dutch pipe in his hand, kneeling on the bank and clutching a bundle
nearly as large as himself. His huge eyes glistened as he looked from
one swordsman to the other, from the grim and forbidding figure of
Saitou to the amber flickers in Kenshin's eyes. "I'm just a poor,
unarmed old man. There's no need for you swordsmen to destroy my simple
pleasures."
Sano cracked his knuckles. "That's right. Don't need swords to deal
with your kind, kuso jijii!" He charged at the old man.
"Ahou," Saitou muttered.
The old man rose to his feet, pipe in hand. His eyes narrowed.
Kenshin's widened in surprise. /*That's no ordinary old man!*/ "Sano,
don't -- " he shouted, but too late. Sanosuke's body flew spinning into
the air, to land with a splash in the river. On the far side.
Saitou stepped forward. "Old man, you're under arrest for stealing
underwear. Now, are you going to come along quietly? I warn you, I'm
much stronger than that rooster head."
"Heh heh heh, you may be stronger, but you're still a hundred years too
young to catch me!"
"We'll see about that." Saitou drew his katana and dropped into the
deceptively awkward-looking Gatotsu stance with his right hand drawn
back, left foot forward and left hand reaching almost to the tip of his
shorter-than-standard blade. "I have only one response to those who
threaten the peace, whether they are revolutionaries or... underwear
thieves. Aku. Soku. Zan."
"Fine talk, sonny. Can you back it up?" Ki flared around the old man's
tiny body in a blue cloud, growing brighter and shaping itself into...
the heads of multiple dragons!
/*What in the world?*/ Kenshin wondered. /*One, two, three, four...*/
Saitou moved, almost faster than the eye could follow. The dragons
struck at almost the same instant.
/*...six, seven...*/
The fighters' moves were hidden in the blue glow of the old man's ki-
dragons. Then the dragons winked out. Saitou was on his knees, leaning
heavily on his blade, his uniform in tatters. The old man struck him on
the head with his pipe, and the Wolf of Mibu sprawled face down on the
ground, out cold.
"Heh heh heh, he was pretty good." The old man was breathing a little
harder now, and his bald dome shone with sweat. He turned to
Kenshin. "What about you? Want to play?"
"I don't want to hurt you, ojii-dono," Kenshin replied.
/*Seven dragons... eight opponents at once. Kuzu-ryuu-sen?*/
The old man seemed to swell, the glow of his ki brightening around him.
/*He's magnifying his own ki... using something like the One-Sided
Heart!*/ Kenshin's eyes flashed golden fire. Yelling a battle-cry, he
charged. The two met with the power of a lightning strike.
Kenshin slid to a stop and turned again to face his opponent. His
kimono was in tatters and he felt bruised all over. The old man wasn't
uninjured; one sleeve of his garment was half torn off and a trickle of
blood oozed down his arm.
"Omoshiroi," the old man puffed. "You look so much like a girl, I
didn't think you'd be this interesting." He took a puff on his
pipe. "Want to be a girl for real? I've heard of a place in China where
you can turn into anything you want."
"ORO?!!" Kenshin's eyes went wide with surprise and outrage, then
narrowed to mere slits. The old man drew himself up again.
/*I underestimated his strength,*/ Kenshin said to himself.
/*There's only one thing that will work now.*/ He dropped into battou-
jutsu stance, his left foot sliding forward...
"There he is!"
"We've got you now, old pervert!"
"Underwear thief!"
The mob of local women surged around the old man, hiding him from
Kenshin's sight. The rurouni let out a long breath and forced his
clenched hands open, letting his sword-ki flow away...
"*There* you are, Kenshin!"
"Oro?" He turned. Advancing toward him was a snarling youkai in kimono
and hakama, shinai held ready, sapphire eyes blazing fury. "Kaoru-
dono..."
"What did you mean taking off like that? I was so worried... I thought
you'd gone wandering off again!" Every word was emphasized with a blow
from her shinai.
"Sumanai... I never mean to make you worry..." He dropped to his knees
under the rain of blows.
"Kenshin no BAKA!!"
"Ororoo..."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Saitou cautiously raised his head. The mob was heading back to town,
having vented their anger on the thief and reduced him to a little heap
of discarded rags. Kaoru walked beside Tae at their head, dragging a
spiral-eyed Kenshin by the ponytail. Her recovered underkimono
fluttered from the end of her shinai like a battle flag.
One delicate garment lay on the grass, unclaimed. /*I wonder if
that's...*/ The little heap of rags began to move. The old man crawled
over to the undergarment, rubbed its folds over his face, inhaled its
scent. "Ah," he sighed. Then he jumped to his feet, apparently fully
healed -- or maybe never injured in the first place.
/*I can't believe that. Battousai wounded him. Those women beat him to
a pulp.*/
The old man noticed him. "You boys were more fun than I thought you'd
be, especially your red-haired friend. I wouldn't mind playing with him
again. Saraba!" He bounded away, gleefully waving his remaining
prize. "Dai-ryou ja!"
/*Why couldn't it have been something easy, like another maniac trying
to take over the country? One elderly underwear thief... I'm never
going to live this one down.*/ It was nice out here. Quiet. No
superiors to explain things to. No up-and-coming juniors who thought
the veterans of the Bakumatsu were getting too old and slow to be
effective in the streets. /*At least everybody got their stuff back.*/
/*Wait a minute. That old thief got away with one piece. One that
nobody claimed.*/
/*Because its owner wasn't here.*/
/*Because...*/
/*Oh no. Tokio's...*/
It was really nice out here. Quiet. Peaceful. Too bad it couldn't last.
Never mind headquarters. Sooner or later he was going to have to go
*home.*
Just a little longer...
-------------------------------------------------------------
NOTES, EXPLANATIONS ETC.
My husband and I were watching Mirror, Mirror, and as I sometimes do
with Happousai I started wondering what he did for an underwear-fix in
his younger days, before the invention of the brassiere, and before
Japanese women started wearing Western clothes. (Men adopted Western
dress long before women did, and the bra wasn't invented until the
1920s.) That led to the idea of him running around Meiji Tokyo
stealing underwear... hey, Kenshin does the laundry! I was originally
going to make Aoshi the patsy, but he just didn't fit... but a cop
would have reason to chase an underwear-thief, and Saitou does have
that mysterious and never-seen wife... it pretty much wrote itself
after that.
And now for the Japanese:
Shihandai: Kaoru's title as instructor. A student qualified to lead
classes in the master's absence (definition from a recent issue of
Blade of the Immortal).
Men, men, tsuke: I stole Yahiko's drill from somebody's Kunou fic, I
think it was Blue Thunder Rising by Rod M.
Dai-ryou ja! The Evil Master's infamous battlecry: What a haul!
Kuso jijii: Filthy old man.
Ojii-dono: I actually made this up. Ojii-san is a much more respectful
thing to say than jijii; changing -san to -dono made it sound more like
Kenshin.
Omoshiroi: Interesting, challenging, fun.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Share what you know. Learn what you don't.