The first gray-silver drops laid a damp fringe in the dust, flattening the grass at the edge of the clearing as the leading trail of dark clouds turned into rain. Elongated teardrops of rain fell from the sky, fast thickening into a downpour.

A boy stood alone in the rain, dusty hakama beginning to cling to his legs as the rain soaked into the threadbare fabric. He looked up with wide eyes, empty of all thought save instinct. The water that coursed down his cheeks was indistinguishable from the rain.

Seta Soujirou had had this dream before.

Unlike other dreamscapes, where the boy insisted that he wasn't crying, then smiled and walked into the growing darkness, the boy vanished. The dusty clearing was replaced by a river that wove through grassy banks but the rain was the same. It slanted down from the slate-gray skies. Each drop fell, clear and discrete, into the swells of the choppy gray water. The rain poured down faster, thicker. The color turned dark, though the sky above was the shimmering silver-gray of a sword's blade.

The river ran red with blood. It coursed sluggishly through its banks. A kingfisher startled up from the tall grass.

Seta Soujirou had seen this river before.

He stepped toward the edge of the river, through the grass, and the coolness of the moisture slid down his face. A murmur of sound rose above the slap of the water and Soujirou quickened his pace. He couldn't hear it distinctly over the liquid coursing of the river. Closer. There was something bulky seated at the river's edge. Soujirou ignored it.

Beneath the blood-slick swells of water, a body lay on the stones of the riverbed. Soujirou stood looking down. It was a young boy. It was him, from that time, that night of rain and blood. The boy's eyes snapped open, and he was weeping blood.

"The strong survive, and the weak die."

Luminescent kingfisher feathers drifted on the wind, crossing Soujirou's wild gaze, falling into the red river where they were swept away.

***

The afternoon was hot and ripe with the scent of flowers in full blossom as a carriage sped down the road to Nagoya.

At the halfway point between Tokyo and Osaka lay Nagoya, a mid-sized town. In days past it had been the stronghold of a daimyo, and it had been the seat of the Tokugawa clan for a time, but over the years since that castle had fallen into disuse the village had flourished on the steady trade of its port and the rising industry that sprang up within the town itself.

It was spring in Nagoya, that particular niche of the season when the sakura were in full, luxuriant bloom, the period that prompted spring festivals and poetic comparison to life's short glory. Sometimes, though -- especially for the old warriors -- the only reminders that drifted down were those of blood, and the days when it had flowed freely.

For Saitou Hajime, riding braced on the jolting seat of the carriage, spring brought with it those reminders of renewal, but also of death.

The driver of the carriage knew his passenger as Fujita Goro. That was the name known to most of the regular police and those affiliated with them; indeed, it was the name he took among the general populace. Even while he used it, Saitou still considered himself to be Saitou, as he still considered himself to be governed by the code that had guided him in those days. It was simple, and it did not change. *Aku, soku, zan.* Evil, swiftly slay. The things surrounding him might change -- the name he used, the uniform he wore -- but the truth was the same.

He looked out the window, marshaling his thoughts in rapid review. Soon, they would enter Nagoya. He had been brought here for a reason, the same that brought him to many places in such a frantic haste of rattling carriage wheels and the stir of dust behind him. He was ostensibly dispatched to uphold the justice of the Meiji law. As one who moved as a secret policeman, Saitou was in the perfect position to uphold his true calling as well -- evil, swiftly slay. He policed the corrupt inner workings of the Meiji government as much as he took care of the problems that plagued it.

The problem that brought him to this particular town in this instance was more of the usual -- Meiji bureaucrats were dying, and Saitou's Meiji-bureaucrat superiors were sending him in to find the cause and swiftly dispose of it. Thus far the unknown killer had delayed several crucial discussions and agreements involving port usage, industry taxes, crime regulation, and land disposition...it was having a huge impact on the economy of Nagoya and, of course, the revenues of Meiji officials.

For Saitou, it was the typical scenario he was accustomed to. They sent him in; he took care of their nastiest problems and cleaned up the mess. The officials probably thought they were holding him to some kind of atonement for his involvement on the "losing side" of the Bakumatsu, the bloody revolution. Contrary to their probable expectations, for Saitou it was a convenient path for him to continue doing what, for him, was a way of life.

He looked down at his lap. There was a letter pressed beneath his hand, folded in thirds. He did not need to read it again to remember what it said.

I am grateful for your letter, and explanation of your absence during the
Year's End festival. Your duties are many and keep you well-occupied; they
keep us well-fed and housed and we are happy.

Eiji is growing tall and strong. He is like a son to me. Of course he does
not say so but I am sure he looks forward to your return. He attends school
now with the rest of my students and he has started martial arts at the dojo down the street.

The weather is pleasant. My students are doing well, though distracted by
the exceptionally beautiful season. I will see you upon your return.

Fujita Tokio

As far as letters from his wife went, it was positively cordial. Without saying as much, she prodded him for his absence, since he had told her her would raise the boy, Eiji. As for her closing statement...Tokio was a completely self-sufficient woman. Though she was probably pleased to have the company of a boy she had taken in as her own, she had never once indicated by word or behavior that she missed Saitou during his long, frequent absences, nor wished as Eiji might for his swift return.

Their marriage at the time had been prompted for convenience's sake, and it was for continued convenience that they upheld the union.

He folded the letter over one more time and stowed it in his pocket. The carriage was slowing, bringing them from lush countryside into the outskirts of town. Saitou set his chin on his hand and regarded the passing scenery out his window with composed eyes. Her letter reminded him of something else -- Fujita Tokio had been born Amiya Tsubaki -- and the name, 'tsubaki,' reminded him in turn of days long past.

It was spring again, and the scent of those camellias was now thick on the air as they rode into Nagoya, speeding past startled peasants and sleepy farmers bringing in produce for sale.

The scent, the flower itself reminded him of many things; beauty, springtime, life's brevity. As sake reminded him of blood with its sharp clear taste, the camellia made him think of one thing overall. To him it was inextricably linked with Okita Soushi, first division captain of the Shinsen Gumi. Okita had been many things; beautiful, dangerous, short-lived. He had been like the flower, poised and glowing in the night, falling from the branch still in full bloom. It was ironic that the true name of his wife should remind him of the nature of his former lover.

Petals scattered past his open window as they blew past and Saitou's eyes narrowed. For a moment, he almost thought he *had* seen Okita under the overhanging bows with their cloying scent...

The moment was gone, and remembrances too as the carriage swept up the street and came to a halt before the police station.

***

Seta Soujirou opened his eyes wide, startled from sleep. "Wha--?" Fragrance was thick in his nostrils and for a brief dizzy moment he was sure it was the smell of blood. As his eyes adjusted to the light he saw petals drifting down, sakura settling down around him like rain. He felt, crazily, as if he had never left the dream and so in that surreal moment it seemed entirely natural to reach for the katana lying beside him.

His hands touched a cool sheath and his mind spun. Had the years fallen away? Was he traversing Japan for Shishio's sake once more, the Norimune at his side?

"Oh..." He remembered now. Soujirou rubbed at his eyes, squinting into the daylight. How long had he been lying beneath this tree, sleeping?

It had been a handful of days since he had arrived on the outskirts of this town, parched and running out of supplies. Soujirou recalled this in bits and pieces, waking from the dream, drifting to reality. He had stumbled across a family under attack, beset by bandits, and the father must have been formerly samurai, or at least been in the militia of one side or another...he had lost his katana; it had fallen to the ground.

In a moment of breaking rage, Soujirou had snatched the weapon up. But he had not killed them. That was one thing he could fix on, when he felt he had lost himself.

Afterward, the family had been so grateful they had taken him home, fed him and cleaned him up, and replenished his supplies. He hadn't noticed in the heat of the moment but they had been dressed nicely...they lived in a nice district of Nagoya; they owned a wholesale business and were well-off.

For an instant even, it was nice to have a sense of belonging.

Across the face of Japan, Soujirou had made his way by the kindness of strangers. It gave him something else to believe in. Still, he could not entirely relinquish the ideas absorbed over eight years' time.

When he parted from the kind family, they gifted him with the katana, an offering that propriety did not allow him to refuse, not under the circumstances. That had been this morning, and now he was here.

Soujirou checked over his pack and got to his feet, brushing away stray petals that clung to his skin and hair. The weather was warm and pleasant and so he wasn't surprised he had fallen asleep. His dreams lately had been troubled with nightmare and memory, and a full night's sleep was impossible to come by.

He dreamed of days gone by, before Himura Kenshin had cleaved his sword in two with a reverse-blade, flipping his life around.

*The strong survive, and the weak die.*

Soujirou shivered as he left the shade of the trees, though the day was warm. Even now, he could not dispute that Shishio's words had enabled him to survive the most difficult trial of his life. He would have died...there was no solution that could have ended in peaceful niceties.

With the katana by his side, and the dreams fresh in his mind, Soujirou felt as though he were being dragged into the past he had left behind. Hadn't Kenshin shown him the wrongness of his ways? The sword that protected was the strongest...

Still, someone like Soujirou needed a sword to be able to protect anyone. He was fumble-fingered with just his own two hands.

He stepped from the stand of trees by the road, inhaling the scent of camellias as he moved from the grass toward the dusty strip that wound back into town. He had come to Nagoya to banish the past. At Yukimura-ko, he'd felt that he was unraveling, that the sight of death and blood brought him close to being the old Soujirou, awakening the side of him that could kill without remorse. The only way to stave it off, he had thought vaguely, without much premeditation, was to revisit the place where he had first killed.

As he had traveled south, the dreams had come faster, the nightmares becoming stronger.

A carriage thundered past in the road, and Soujirou looked up with a quick spooked motion. He had been so thoroughly wrapped in his thoughts he hadn't even noticed its approach.

"Foolish, I'm being so foolish!" Soujirou murmured, tapping his own head, but he looked after the carriage with a considering frown. For a moment, he'd thought he had seen a familiar lean-featured face peering out the window.

As always, the thought made apprehension trickle like ice-water down his throat on a hot day. Another reason he had crossed this island from one end to another had been to avoid the police...he had, after all, been Shishio's right hand in an attempted government coup. Even Saitou Hajime's assurance meant little in the face of that fact.

Anji might be content weathering his penance in a jail cell, but Soujirou knew he could only move forward if he were free to do so.

The now-persistent dream plagued him, returning nearly every night now. Soujirou wanted to be rid of it. The only way, he reasoned, was to return to that place where Shishio had first taught him to be strong...where Soujirou had lied with tears and rain streaming down his cheeks...the night the wakizashi given to him by Shishio had protected his own life at the cost of others.

That had been here...in Nagoya.

Soujirou stepped over fallen camellias that littered the side of the row like a line of sodden, severed heads. He ignored the flowers and focused on his surroundings. He had started out in the quiet of the morning and now he made his way in the bustling heat of midday, streets packed full of vendors and mothers with their children and men in uniform and workers hurrying about their trade. It was strange to retrace his steps in Nagoya.

As a child, his life had been the complex of the wholesale business and its house. The most he remembered of its streets were some of the nearby alleyways, the route from house to some of the warehouses, the path from house to market. There had been one night, in the dark and the rain, when he had traveled from the house with Shishio, threading a path through its misty-dim streets.

It was no small wonder Soujirou did not remember the journey of that night.

He stopped, twice, to ask for directions. Things had changed. Businesses had gone under, new restaurants and shops had sprung up to take their place. Westerners thronged the streets, and Soujirou even spotted a Western building or two. He was the subject of many pointed stares for the katana he wore at his side, but no one troubled him and he felt as if perhaps one thing could go right.

The second man he spoke with was in the rice business, and pointed him in the right direction.

"The old wholesale business? From eight years ago?" The man squinted at him and scratched his belly, which bulged out over his tightly-tied obi. "I remember it..." More than simply giving Soujirou directions, he took out a brush and a piece of parchment, refreshed his ink, and sketched a quick map to point Soujirou in the right direction.

"Thank you!" Soujirou said with a smile, stowing the paper in one sleeve. He bowed. "I appreciate it...I have such a poor sense of direction, I might not have found it if not for you."

The man simply grunted, giving a nod before shouldering a bale of rice.

Soujirou smiled a moment longer, then extracted the map from his sleeve, flipping it open with one hand. He was closer than he had thought...his aimless steps had brought him within two streets of familiar alleyways. He was only a street away from the market he had known in his childhood.

Though the path he traced should have been familiar, the streets were not. Soujirou moved through this new Nagoya with eyes narrowed against the dazzling sights. The market he remembered was overflowing with noodle shops and sukiyaki restaurants, old sights replaced with the new and the esoteric. Women drifted up the street in floridly colorful prints, their black hair bound up with delicate combs. Men swaggered back and forth with an arm tucked into their kimono top, or clutching sake bottles by the neck. It was a rougher street than he remembered.

No one troubled him. No matter how sake-bleared the eye, Soujirou's katana was in plain evidence. In the days before, Soujirou's harmless appearance usually caused one or two attempted interventions if he walked anywhere bearing a katana -- which had led him to the practice of not carrying one about if he was not going to use it right then.

Fortunately, the merchant's gift was not causing him trouble yet.

In an alleyway bordered by a tile-topped wall on one side, a building on the other, Soujirou stood for a moment staring at the splotchy dirt. Bloodstains would have long since faded, taken into the ground by rain and time, but he could still see the place where the stains had been, like a visual echo. There, he thought, a man had died...there he had seen Shishio cleave a man in half.

The first word that had escaped his mouth had been "He's strong..."

Shaking himself free of the morbid thoughts, of the strength of memory, Soujirou continued on his way, confident in his steps now. The idea that had seemed good before was foolish now. What was he doing here? What would it accomplish, revisiting a place of so much misery?

Perhaps instead of washing away a blemish, he was only reopening a wound.

***

The carriage was slowing as it moved deeper into the city, approaching Saitou's destination. He continued to gaze out the window almost absently, though his sharp amber eyes missed nothing. He had given in to the nicotine craving that sharpened the longer the carriage traveled, and a cigarette dangled from his long fingers. He held it carefully outside of the carriage window in between drags, not so much out of consideration as convenience. Though he was a heavy smoker he despised the smell of it lingering on his uniform.

He had thought briefly, earlier, that he had seen the shade of Okita beneath the camellia tree but Saitou was not a superstitious man. He did not hold onto such things for long. After a few minutes more as the carriage rattled through the streets of Nagoya, he had drawn a cigarette. It helped introspection, sometimes.

Since it had not been Okita Soushi, since that was patently impossible, then it had been someone who looked like him.

A sardonic smile quirked the corner of Saitou's mouth.

Were he to set his men to it and search the length and breadth of the land himself, Saitou was sure he would not be able to find Seta Soujirou on purpose. Yet now, twice, he had encountered him by chance.

For a moment Saitou found himself tempted. It would be easy to seek the boy out, detain him perhaps. But for what purpose? Simply because he wanted to speak with him? When last they had met, Soujirou had expressed the desire to continue on a non-killing path, similar to the way of the wanderer that the Battousai had taken. Seta Soujirou was of no use to the secret police, and Saitou brushed the thought aside as casually as he flicked aside the ashes that had collected on the tip of his cigarette.

The carriage ground to a halt.

Saitou Hajime emerged, tossing his cigarette to an early death by the carriage wheels, unfolding his lean body and resisting the urge to stretch in public view. It had been a long, cramped ride.

The headquarters of the Nagoya police were before him. It was a Western-style complex of buildings, brick and mortar, though inside it, most of the cells were still made of wood and not steel bars. Appearances were maintained, but inside costs were held down. It was a very Meiji-era way of thinking.

As he entered, a dark-uniformed man with broad shoulders and a gangly look about him rose hastily from his desk, squinting at Saitou despite the thick glasses perched on his nose. "F-Fujita-san?" he faltered.

"Fujita Goro," Saitou said pleasantly, eyes narrowed to the merest of slits as he presented a polite smile. "Nice to meet you."

"We didn't expect you until tomorrow," the officer stammered, coming out from behind his desk, casting a look around. The two clerks in the outer office ignored him, hunched over their work desks.

"I'm early," Saitou replied with aplomb. "And you must be...?"

"S-sorry...Kinomoto, sir. Officer Kinomoto, I'm second in command here," the policeman told him, adjusting his glasses with one finger.

"I see." Saitou looked around the cramped outer office. "I'd prefer to get right to business. Where are the files?"

"F-files?"

Not yet five minutes, and Saitou was ready to be rid of the second in command. "Yes, Officer Kinomoto, the files. Or have I traveled from Tokyo to your office to discover you've been keeping no files on the recent murders?" His fingers wanted to reach for another cigarette, but Saitou refrained. He preferred to indulge his habit when not around other officers.

"Ah...yes...of course...the bureaucrats," Kinomoto stumbled over himself. "This way, Officer Fujita. They're in my inner office."

Saitou raised a brow at this, but followed the second in command from the outer office. The inner door opened on a long narrow corridor, rows of doors on either side.

"Very sorry...Inspector Takai is out...increased security measures in the financial district..." Kinomoto was gabbling, seeming out of his depth. "Didn't expect you until tomorrow..."

"We made good time," Saitou inserted into that gap. "Just show me the files, Officer Kinomoto, there's no need to apologize excessively." He followed Kinomoto up the corridor.

"Y-yes sir." Kinomoto gulped and stopped before the third door on the left. "It's an important case, and I assure you we have done the best we could with--"

Saitou lifted a hand in a dismissive wave. "I'm sure you have. Now, the files? Please."

Kinomoto's eyes glinted under his thick glasses. "Of course." He opened the door to his office.

The room within, though cramped, was Spartan, both spare and precisely organized. Saitou felt the first glimmer of approval...Kinomoto might seem a distracted mess, but his office was well-kept. Perhaps there was some hope for the files after all.

"You can use my desk, of course," Kinomoto continued, sweeping a white-gloved hand in its direction. He turned to a Western-modern wooden file cabinet, opening the top drawer. "Would you like me to brief you? Or..."

"I would prefer to look at the files myself, first," Saitou replied in scrupulously polite tones, giving Kinomoto another of his most disarming Fujita smiles. "I would like to form my own opinions before questioning you or anyone else."

"O-of course." Kinomoto shut the wooden cabinet with a snap, and lined up the files precisely on the desk blotter. "Would you like refreshments, sir?"

Saitou considered briefly, then nodded. "Green tea, if it's possible, Officer Kinomoto."

"Yes, sir." Kinomoto looked as if he might salute, given the slightest prompting. "Then, please excuse me."

"Thank you very much," Saitou told him, still smiling in his utmostly pleasant Officer Fujita fashion. The key to getting off on initial good footing was to give the impression of how harmless he was...so that the officers he worked with wouldn't dislike him instantly. Saitou had found that sometimes that approach obtained better results, which was surely the case with someone as obsequious as Officer Kinomoto.

He seated himself at Kinomoto's desk, scraping his chair back to reach one long arm for the window. He pushed the sash up as far as it would go and withdrew a cigarette. Then, eyes narrowed in concentration, he cracked open the first file one-handed.

After several minutes he was down to shirtsleeves in the stuffy heat of the inner office and on his second cigarette as he went through the last file, the most recent murder, with a critical eye.

Whomever had prepared the files had established the crime scene well; they had included all relevant details before clearing the scene in a series of reports both precise and succinct. There was a pattern in the deaths from one crime scene to the next...the bodyguards or secretaries or those accompanying the bureaucrats had been dispatched with physical force, blunt trauma to the head, strangling, broken necks. The bureaucrat himself at each and every murder had been killed by a blade to the throat, perhaps a tanto or wakizashi -- a quick, clean thrust, spurt of blood, then death.

The report itself did not draw any conclusions, which caused Saitou to expel a plume of smoke in sardonic appreciation. His experience with most inspectors was that they tended to slant the report to pin the blame on the most convenient explanation, so as to close the case and alleviate public fears and tension as quickly as possible.

This case had not been solved, and Meiji officials were still dying, and so Saitou had been called in.

The door cracked open, then paused; a belated knock echoed through the room. "Excuse me, Officer Fujita."

"Come in," Saitou responded, flicking the spent hand-rolled cigarette butt out the window and pushing his chair back. He spread the report out over the blotter. Nagoya's police were not only concise, they were modern...photographs of the dead, dark and sepia-toned, were included in each file.

Kinomoto pushed open the door, carrying a tray with two cups of tea which caused Saitou to frown momentarily at the presumption, then he gave a mental shrug. He was ready to question the second in command. Kinomoto's eyes strayed to the files lying open over the blotter like a gory collage, then back to Saitou. "Sir?"

"Sit down," Saitou invited, and was briefly amused by his own arrogance, giving the second in command orders in his own private office.

Kinomoto set the edge of the tray on the very end of the desk, removing tea and placing it before Saitou, then placing the other cup before the empty chair opposite Saitou. He set the tray on its side against the desk and seated himself with an inquisitive expression, pushing his glasses up his nose once more.

"Did you have much involvement with the crime scenes?" Saitou asked. He had been wondering if the eye for detail was Kinomoto's, or the Inspector Takai he had spoken of.

"No, n-no," Officer Kinomoto was quick to correct him, waving a hand. He continued deprecatingly, "Not me. I have been handling public relations during this difficult case, to ensure that the citizens in affected areas are reassured with our swift response to this crisis." As he spoke in those measured phrases, obviously rehearsed, his mawkish behavior became more self-assured, confident.

Saitou raised his eyebrow, but let it stand as his sole comment. "In looking through the files it would be easy to conclude that there is not one, but two killers."

"Oh?" Kinomoto looked startled. "That was Inspector Takai's assessment, as well."

Saitou nodded, tapping the last photograph and hiding a slice of satisfaction when Kinomoto's eyes drifted toward it and he flinched. "Yes, there are two different kill styles...the one requiring brute force and muscle, the other requiring the precision strength of one accustomed to wielding a short-sword. The two kinds of force are quite different, you know, in the way they are carried out, and in the kind of physique the attacker must have had."

Although he gave a vigorous nod, Kinomoto still looked uncertain. "Two killers...so they will be twice as hard to catch."

A hint of wolfishness showed through in Saitou's smile now, and he picked up his tea at last, draining half the cup. "On the contrary...I look forward to the challenge."

***

*The river ran red with blood.*

Soujirou remembered this river, it was familiar to him, he had been here a hundred times before if only in dreams. In dreams...? The thought niggled at him persistently for a moment as he moved through the long grass and emerged on the dusty strip of earth that bordered its bank.

*A boy stood alone in the rain.*

The scene of the rain and the boy standing alone in the cold dark as droplets streamed over his face mingled with that afternoon by the riverbank. The sun was gone, but the birds still chattered. The electric-bright blue of the river had gone dark, its waters gray and choppy.

*The strong survive, and the weak die.*

Feathers drifted on the wind, and the river ran red with blood...a body sat motionless by the riverbank. It would sit motionless until carrion-eaters picked it clean. Soujirou's sword had done this.

Soujirou had...

The sound of screaming punctured Soujirou's dream.

He sat up, eyes wide open in the dark, reaching reflexively for the katana by his side. It was strange how easily he had slipped into an abandoned habit. For a moment he couldn't remember where he was, and then as the dream receded like fog rolling back from the morning, Soujirou realized he was inside the old rice warehouse, the one he used to sleep in as a child on his crude mat. It was late afternoon...it was hot...he had come to put old memories to rest by showing himself today's reality.

The dreams made it clear to him; if he did not come to terms with his past, he was in danger of becoming an indiscriminate killer once more. Yet this time, with emotions running to the surface like a reopened wound, he knew he was unstable.

The screaming, which he had thought to be a remnant of the dream, had not stopped.

His heart thumping mad triple-time against his ribs, Soujirou left the warehouse, going up the narrow alley in counter-intuitive instinct, heading for the place the screams came from. He had done this before, ten years before, when his life had no value and dying would have been relief from his cycle of labor and abuse. At the time, though, he couldn't have given a reason for what drew him toward the screams when every part of him blanched from the threat of violence.

The setting was the same...the alleyway, the old rice warehouse behind him, the mingled fear and curiosity driving him forward. The ten years intervening might never have passed at all, if not for the weight of the katana on his hip.

"Help...someone...please HELP ME!"

The terribly cry cut off at the end, becoming a wet gurgle that Soujirou was only too familiar with, a sound he had produced many times himself. Urgency seized him, because there was still a man screaming...Soujirou ran, but he knew if the attacker had any skill then there would be no one left alive by the time he got there.

The alleyway was dark and the moon was gone, unlike the night ten years before. Even though it was hard to see, Soujirou could make out the outline of a tall figure, a big man standing over the body of another. It looked as if the big man had him by the throat.

Shrilly, in the distance, Soujirou heard whistles blowing.

"Stop," Soujirou ordered, hand on the hilt of his sword. Would he draw? *Could* he, stalled between half-absorbed pacifism and the familiar threat of violence?

He was afraid if he unsheathed, he would kill.

The ink-shadow shape turned, letting the body crumple to the ground of the alleyway. Then, slowly, a hoarse voice spoke from the darkness, "Interfering little..."

Soujirou clicked a thumb-length of blade free. He was not the helpless, cowering boy of ten years ago who faced down another monster in the alley. Soujirou would strike if he had to, but feared the necessity. It wasn't a reverse-blade that hung at his side, and there was a distinct possibility that he would kill the killer, then shoulder the blame for all the deaths.

So much death...from behind the mass of clouds above, a slice of the moon was peering out. Soujirou could see now that the alleyway was strewn with bodies, at least four of them. Soujirou grasped the hilt of the sword tightly, beginning to draw more blade.

The whistling grew louder, closer, like a peal of escalating screams.

"Maybe later, boy," the man told him in a gutteral voice. The moon drew behind the clouds again, and in less than the flicker of an eyelash he was gone.

Soujirou spared no time to kneel stupidly by the bodies; he knew if he were caught in the alleyway he would take the blame. Since he had made a career of avoiding the police, he clicked his small length of sword home in the sheath and turned swiftly, heart singing the familiar rhythm of reaction, of bloodshed and flight. He could smell the metallic tang of iron in the air.

He made it barely to the end of the alleyway before he slammed into someone and hard hands grabbed him, biting into his shoulders.

"That's far enough!" Soujirou looked up into an implacable face over the collar of a police uniform. "What have you done to Minister Ueda?"

"Who?" Soujirou replied in genuine bewilderment. He thought he'd known all of the important Meiji officials...but then, much could have changed since then. Knowing it was futile, he said, "I haven't done anything!"

The moon was shining down again, spilling pale light over the entire alleyway, rendering blood into ink-blotches swiped by a careless brush. The policeman's hands tightened on him, and the disbelief in his face was visible in paper-white relief as he took a look at the katana that hung at Soujirou's side.

He wouldn't get away without more killing, and one thing Soujirou felt sure of was that his hands had already spilled enough blood trying to prove he was strong.

"You're coming with me."

This time to prove he was the strongest, Soujirou would not run or fight.

***

It was late, and the sun had already set. The camellia spread its sweet fragrance in the evening streets as clouds went scudding across the sky. The color of the moon as it rose had been ominous, a swollen red, but the higher it climbed, the paler it became.

Saitou had been waiting at a tea-house across from a boisterous nomiya for hours. The time was no great loss to him, because the kake-soba was good and the delay gave him a chance to mull over what he knew of the case.

The number of enemies the Meiji government had made was too numerous to count, so Saitou could hardly go through the profiles of those individuals to finger the killer in this situation. He had resources to call upon above and beyond police files, fortunately.

At length, when the lamps were lit up and down the street and honest, hard-working folk had cleared off the streets, Saitou kept a sharp eye out from his window seat. He smoked one of his freshly-rolled cigarettes, having spent a half-hour replenishing his supply. Then he heard a twang of raucous Osakan dialect up the street, and stubbed out the remnants of his cigarette. He paid, got to his feet, and returned his katana to his belt.

Sagara Sanosuke had once likened Chou's distinctive upswept hairstyle to a broom, and now Saitou could no longer look at his sometime-agent without making the comparison. He smirked as he crossed the street, joining Chou, who loitered at the entrance to the nomiya.

It was a rough place, boiling over with smoke that clouded its dim interior and men lounging about in the booths within. Women in threadbare, colorfully-printed kimono bussed the tables, bringing round after round of sake and clearing away the empties. In one corner, a dice game ground to a halt as Saitou approached in his uniform, halting near the entrance.

"What're you up to, then, Officer Goro?" Chou greeted him, lifting a hand in a casual two-fingered wave. "Nasty part o' town for a policeman t'be hangin' about."

"Could be better if we swept it clean of punks like you," Saitou agreed calmly. "You're late."

"Heh. Funny, coulda sworn I was early," Chou said, rubbing at the base of his neck, eyes glinting insolently. "Nice time o' year for Nagoya, innit?" He picked at one ear with a pinky, waiting.

"I didn't come here for the weather," Saitou responded, locating another cigarette and a match to light it with. He cupped one hand around it, sheltering the brief spurt of flame. "I'm looking for a pair of collaborators. One would be a big man, perhaps Iwanbo's size but well-muscled. The other would be a swordsman, bearing arms or not...I don't have any more details yet."

"That got anythin' to do with the high-up murders?"

Saitou narrowed his eyes at Chou. "How long have you been in Nagoya?"

Chou shook his head. "Not long enough t'lay eyes on those guys y'want. But I'll look around for ya."

Saitou let a brief snort escape his mouth with a curl of smoke. "Of course you will. As long as necessary."

Chou lowered his head, easygoing smile slipping a bit. "Someone's in a nasty mood. Takin' it personal?"

"I'm always in a nasty mood, Chou," Saitou said. "Happy swordsmen die young."

"'s true," Chou said consideringly. He switched hands, picking his other ear.

"-cer! Sir! Inspector Goro!" a voice called up the street. "Inspector Goro, sir!"

Kinomoto's voice. Saitou twisted to look over his shoulder, then back at Chou, flicking his cigarette to the side. His agent was gone. Saitou sighed and regretted the instant he had replied to Kinomoto's polite query on his way out the station door.

"What's going on, Inspector?" Saitou asked, sounding bored as the flustered second-in-command caught up with him.

"I'm sorry...sir...I would have gone for you earlier..." Kinomoto said hurriedly, "I'm sorry I'm late, the other officers are at the scene but we've caught a suspect!"

Another murder. "Let's go," Saitou ordered.

Kinomoto bent over slightly, hands on his upper thighs, catching his breath. "Where, sir? The crime scene, or the station?"

Saitou puzzled it over briefly, but reasoned in an instant that Inspector Takai surely had the situation well in hand and the place he was *really* needed was the station. He wanted to question the suspect personally. If necessary, he would extract the information he needed and then take care of the rest...as the occasion permitted.

"The station," Saitou said crisply. "When you're capable, Kinomoto."

Kinomoto waved a hand back and forth in front of his face, almost a gesture of apology, taking breaths somewhat more even but still slightly ragged. "I'm fine, I'm fine."

Chou had vanished before they could establish another time to meet, which was a slight irritation but Chou was resourceful; he would find him later, Saitou was sure. It was why Saitou had taken him on in exchange for his sentence, after all.

"Then let's go."

The clouds had passed before the moon. Saitou had a feeling it was going to be a long night.

With Kinomoto in the lead they strode back through the darkened streets. The station was not far from the more dubious district where Saitou had met Chou, but the most direct route was through the twisting mazelike corridors of alleyways, a path that Saitou had not taken before. On their way Saitou questioned Kinomoto flatly about the details of that evening's murder, but aside from the suspect brought in for retention, those knowledgeable were still on the scene.

Once they returned to the station, Kinomoto led him through the standard cell block, the area where the old-style wooden cells were lined up on either side of the block, like cages. Most were empty, save for some unshaven vagrants and one violently gesticulating drunk. They went through to the very back, the heavy concrete door reserved for the dangerous criminals who might merit heavier security. Saitou debated the necessity to dismiss Kinomoto after unlocking the door, then decided against it...if this man was the killer, he would have to take care of things later one way or another, but not this evening.

The door creaked outward, and Kinomoto grasped the oil lantern hanging from its hook outside the door, casting a swathe of light across the dusty concrete floor. "Here he is," Kinomoto was saying eagerly, "here's our suspect...we found him carrying a sword, even! Reprehensible, in these times...at such a place..."

Saitou's amber eyes widened briefly, narrowed, then he threw his head back in an unrestrained guffaw of laughter.

"Eheh." Seta Soujirou lifted his face into the reappearance of the light, giving them that patently innocent, closed-eye smile of his that was the boy's trademark. "Fujita-san, it's been quite some time."

The lantern swung as Kinomoto looked back and forth between his smiling suspect and the harshly-laughing inspector. "Eh? I-inspector...do you..."

Saitou's eyes glinted as he gave Kinomoto a look of cold composure. "Kinomoto."

"Y-yes?"

"Bring me the sword this boy was carrying."

"Eh...ah..." He seemed as if he might question Saitou's word, then took another hard look at Saitou's grim countenance and gulped. "Ehh--um, r-right away, sir." He hesitated, then extended the lantern in Saitou's direction.

Saitou took it, and watched impartially as Kinomoto retreated backwards, bobbing his head as he did so. The second-in-command shut the door behind him, but did not lock the door.

For an instant, the dark head bent in consideration, then Saitou squared his shoulders, giving Soujirou a calm look. "I'll assume you have a good explanation for all of this."

"Ah, as to that...well, no, not really!" Soujirou admitted cheerfully, shrugging his shoulders. His hands were immobile in the lap-folds of his hakama, slender wrists locked into a crude wooden stockade.

Saitou exhaled. It was a quick, irritated noise. "But you didn't kill him."

"Well, as to that...I wonder..." Soujirou said thoughtfully, tilting his head to the side, pupils hugely dilated in the dim interior of the cell.

"Don't joke around," Saitou barked, sizing Soujirou up. He was a little more unreadable than he had been upon their last meeting, as if a part of him had reverted to the role of the emotionless killer he had played in Shishio's carefully-orchestrated drama. "Did you kill someone tonight, Soujirou?"

"It was like that time," Soujirou continued in a strangely dreamy tone. "Ten years ago...that night...the moon was red, and I woke up with someone screaming." He gave a sudden start, shook his head, and looked up at Saitou. His lips were slightly parted; his eyes, huge and faraway.

"Soujirou," Saitou uttered, looking down upon him with a frown. "You..."

"Did I kill someone, Saitou-san?" Soujirou said, and shrugged. "Not tonight." He looked down at his locked wrists.

The concrete door grated open and Kinomoto edged into the cell, a sheathed katana clutched in his hands. "Inspector, the sword."

"Yes." Saitou traded the lantern for the sword, glancing at Soujirou from the corner of his eye. The boy was round-shouldered, head lowered as he gazed at the bound hands in his lap. What had happened in the short months since he had seen him? That look, though, wide-eyed, lips parted...for an instant it was as if he had seen Okita Soushi, his memory or perhaps his shade, superimposed over Soujirou's darkened features. That was only in his mind...a visual echo.

He unsheathed the katana and held it up to the flickering light of the lamp, holding the blade between his left thumb and forefinger as he peered at it closely. "Kinomoto...you said this boy was your suspect?" Saitou queried.

"Y-yes, sir," Kinomoto said hesitantly, perhaps sensing something wrong in Saitou's tone.

"I'm afraid you're going to have to keep looking for our suspect," Saitou said brusquely. "This boy is not the killer...this sword of his hasn't been used in years. If you'd care to look at it, there's no patina of blood on this blade, and it certainly hasn't been used since the last time it was oiled." He rammed the sword home into its sheath and extended it to the side, ignoring Kinomoto as he scrambled to accept the blade and juggle his lantern into the other hand.

The light wavered.

"Moreover, I know this boy," Saitou continued. "He's harmless, though I don't know what he's doing with the blade. If I were to guess, the officers who delivered him from the crime scene were under orders from Takai to hold him as a witness...and must have drawn the mistaken conclusion that he was to be treated as a suspect."

"Eh..." Kinomoto clutched sword and lantern and looked embarrassed. "But...Inspector, the sword..."

"It certainly is curious," Saitou admitted, then addressed Soujirou directly. "Boy, where did you get the sword?"

"Eh? The sword...?" Soujirou said, blinking up at him heavily. Then his face transformed at once into the mask of his polite smile. "Fujita-san, I stayed with a merchant family the day before yesterday...I performed a favor for them and they gifted me with the sword."

"A dubious gift," Saitou said dryly, "in these times."

"A likely story," Kinomoto countered. "Boy, what was the name of this family?"

"Let's see...I think they were formerly samurai..." Soujirou tipped his head back. "Ah! Ryujoji! That was it. Ryujoji Noboru gave me that sword."

Kinomoto inhaled sharply, and Saitou's brow contracted in a frown. He should have known, from the quality of the sword -- though unused for years, it was quite good.

"Ryujoji Noboru...he...he's quite a respected member of the community," Kinomoto said in entirely different tones. "Ryujoji-san gave you this sword?"

"At any rate, obviously this boy is not our suspect," Saitou said coolly, placing his hands in his pockets. "It would be easy enough to verify with Ryujoji that he gave Soujirou the sword."

"Ah...eh...surely you're not suggesting we let the boy go?" Kinomoto said, turning toward him.

Saitou raised a brow. "And why not? He's done nothing wrong. He was at the scene, but all that makes him is a witness. Clearly the boy is an innocent."

Soujirou looked back and forth between them, smiling. "Mm-hmm." A canny glint, a certain awareness of the situation, lurked in his eyes. He was letting Saitou handle this.

"Well...that's..." Kinomoto hedged, clearly reluctant to release Soujirou when the boy had been placed in his care as a prisoner.

"I'll take him into my custody," Saitou said with an air of calm inevitability. No one contraverted his orders. "I will be personally responsible for him, Inspector. He won't leave Nagoya so long as he may be useful as a witness."

The man looked at him and gulped again. From the side, Saitou's narrow amber-eyed gaze was intimidating. "I-in that case..." He sighed and lowered his head. "I leave him up to you."

***

His wrists were raw and scratched, bearing the red marks of restraints. Soujirou looked down at them in his lap as he knelt in the corner of the room Saitou had rented for them. Even here the smell of the flowers reached him, pursuing him like the ghost of the past that would not fade. He was tired, weary from a place deep within, and felt as thin and transparent as the rice-paper of the screen beside him.

From the corner of his eye he glanced as the inner screen slid aside, and Saitou entered the room. He was a tall man and had to duck his head to enter the room. He toed his shoes off at the wooden margin and sank to his knees on the soft tatami covering of the room's floor, expelling a long sigh and rotating his shoulders one by one. Soujirou averted his eyes quickly as Saitou's piercing yellow eyes turned in his direction.

The man had not said one word to him yet, though Soujirou expected it.

He knew he had acted stupidly. He had accepted Ryujoji-san's gift of the katana in a carefree manner, but more than that, he had gotten caught by the police. A sheer stroke of luck had saved him, for if Saitou-san and his discerning eye had not been present in Nagoya, Soujirou might have been left to take the blame for the murders in place of the true killer. After a certain amount of time had passed, the most convenient person would be sacrificed as an appeasement to rising public anxiety. Soujirou knew this well. Shishio had made use of the tactic several times to turn the blame from his own actions...and Soujirou had followed his example.

Soujirou was unsure of why he was so unsettled, so unbalanced at this time. He had not thought that coming back, seeing the place where he had lived -- and, ultimately, killed to leave it -- would be so hard. It was, though. He felt as though he were unraveling. It made him think, wistfully, that emotions were indeed a liability, but once his had been unlocked, there was no turning back from it.

Now the ghosts of his past had the power to haunt him.

"Um..." Soujirou exhaled more than he spoke, lifting his head.

"Hmm?" Saitou was looking at him straightforwardly, mouth quirked.

Soujirou felt a blush rising in his cheeks for no reason. He was suddenly, profoundly embarrassed. "I deserve a scolding, but once more you're being kind to me, Saitou-san."

Saitou made another wordless noise, not interrogative but considering as he looked at Soujirou again, his yellow eyes once again seeming to pierce right to the core of Soujirou while revealing nothing of himself. He shifted, hands delving into his pockets, and withdrew a cigarette and a matchbook, eyes never leaving Soujirou's as he lit the tobacco-stick and brought it to his lips. He finally looked away as he exhaled a gout of smoke.

"Saitou-san..." Soujirou said uneasily, and rubbed at his head.

"It's about time to eat," Saitou said at last, turning toward the door, where Soujirou could hear the "shuff, shuff" of screens sliding along wooden runners next door and across from their room. Pleasant female murmurings filtered in from the corridor. The secret policeman seemed abstracted, as if all his attention were not focused on Soujirou.

"Of course." Soujirou put on his most inscrutable smile. "Whatever you say, Saitou-san."

He remained silent as the serving-girl knocked, then cracked the door open wide enough to peep in and take the order Saitou placed. He looked into the corner of the room where Saitou's sword was propped along with the katana that had been given to him. Saitou continued to smoke, staring at the wall now with a considering frown. Soujirou began to feel self-conscious as well as embarrassed.

Like the worst novice he'd been caught...even in the days when he wielded a sword, he had been typically careful not to keep one about his person while he walked in plain public view. Now with Saitou-san here again, saving him in spite of himself...

Soujirou opened his mouth, but before he could speak the serving-girl had returned with trays of food and green tea. Saitou speared him with a narrow amber glance, tacitly inviting him to join him and eat.

"You're being too kind," Soujirou said, hesitating, before he slid over to the unoccupied tray on his knees. "Or...with such an important case...perhaps this is nothing but an obligation?" He knelt before the tray of food but kept his hands in his lap, fixing his eyes on the neatly-laid out chopsticks, bowls, cup of tea.

Saitou let him stew in silence as he finished smoking, eyes fixed on the wall.

Soujirou shrugged, put on a brief smile, and picked up his cup of tea. "Hm-hmm..." He raised it to his lips.

***

Saitou Hajime was a coldly analytical man who preferred to keep his reason and passion separate.

He had not lived for so long, and survived in so many guises, by letting emotions overtake him at inappropriate instances. The ability to think logically, to keep a cool head when others were fired up with anger or bloodlust distinguished a superior swordsman...and one who lived longer. He prided himself on his ability for clear thinking, discerning fact from fiction or lies, and above all knowing himself as a person and a swordsman.

Of course, there were exceptions. Even Saitou's calculating calm could be overset. The Battousai, for example, had made him forget himself on more than one occasion, losing himself in a singing rage of clashing steel and the hatred of a long-held grudge. More recently, Sagara Sanosuke bothered him like the persistent bite of an insect, whose stings he couldn't help but scratch. Now this...it wasn't so much that Soujirou troubled him with reminders of Okita. Soujirou troubled him in his own right.

He was a wandering child who thought he was grown, but had yet to realize how far to go he had.

It made Saitou want to do something about it.

This, he realized, was the result of a loss of objectivity. Yet Saitou had taken Soujirou into his custody, and he was responsible for the boy until he left Nagoya or until the case was over, whichever came first.

Saitou finished his cigarette and ground it out in the lidded metal tray he had taken to carrying about when it was impossible to dispose of his cigarette conveniently. He aligned himself in front of the tray, scooting on hands and knees, and glanced at Soujirou slurping his tea.

"Let's eat," he said shortly, flipping his chopsticks into position in his right hand.

"Aa," Soujirou replied laconically, head dipping as he bent over his food.

Saitou thought forward to the next day, when he would undoubtedly uncover more details of this case that had the local inspectors baffled. So far he had accomplished little, and he had been sent here to bring about a swift conclusion to the killings disrupting the economy and the Meiji government. Taking Soujirou into his custody had not been entirely uncalculated. There was a chance he held valuable clues to tracing the killer.

"That place they found you...near an old rice wholesale business, was it?" Saitou began pleasantly enough, tapping seasoning over his soba noodles. He had spoken with Kinomoto before leaving the station.

Soujirou paused in the midst of slurping up noodles, eyes nearly closed. He hesitated, then nodded.

Noting the hesitance, Saitou pressed, "What were you doing there? That kind of coincidence is not in your favor, Seta-kun."

The boy set his chopsticks down, fisting his hands on his knees. "The warehouse, and the grounds, once belonged to the Seta family."

"Oh?" Saitou quirked a brow. 'Once belonged...' "And what happened to them?"

"Saitou-san," Soujirou said consideringly, clenching his fists, "aren't you more interested in what happened in that alleyway?"

"Hm." Saitou contained a smirk. He had more than one goal now, and solving the case was the other one. "Answer the question."

Soujirou's darkly blue eyes looked up at him through the fringe of his dark bangs, and there was a flicker of anger there. "They're all dead, Saitou-san."

Ten years ago...that might have been the time when Shishio went through this place, taking Soujirou with him. At that time, Saitou had been establishing himself within the ranks of secret police but he thought he remembered a series of particularly violent murders in Nagoya, including one middle-class family. "Shishio killed them," he hypothesized, gathering a mouthful's worth of noodles.

"Wrong," Soujirou replied. "I killed them. Back then...I killed them all, with the short sword that Shishio-san gave me."

Saitou looked at him dispassionately for a moment, then devoted his attention to the soba. After a moment or so he glanced at the boy, who seemed to have regained his composure. "And?"

Soujirou's breath had sped up. His eyes were wide again, unfocused. "At that time...at that time, you know? At that time it was kill, or be killed. 'The strong survive, and the weak die.' That truth and Shishio-san's short sword were all that saved me."

Ah...certain pieces fell into place. That explained why Shishio had taken on the raising of a small boy, not merely because he was precocious but because he proved impressionable as well.

"So you came for the past you can't put behind?" Saitou said, gesturing expansively to the crossed pair of katana in the corner.

Soujirou looked up quickly, eyes still dilated. "You...Saitou-san..." He shook his head and frowned. "This has nothing to do with your case."

"Snap out of it," Saitou barked, setting his chopsticks down with a clack. "Completely apart from my case, as a swordsman I won't stand for a man carrying around a katana of honorable lineage with half-baked intentions."

The boy started. "Saitou-san..."

"You know what I mean," Saitou continued, observing him keenly. "You came here of all places because there's something you can't let go. When you let emotion rule you, there's a danger of acting impulsively...when you picked up that sword once more, some of those things you thought you unlearned have been picked up along with it."

Soujirou set his clenched fists on the tray with a bump, glaring up at Saitou wordlessly.

"Ho...? Are you going to deny it?" Saitou knew that there was a time to handle a situation with tact and delicacy, and he'd decided this wasn't it. He was enjoying himself in an abstract sense. He picked up his chopsticks and resumed his meal.

Lowering his head, Soujirou remained in that tense pose for a long moment.

That was enough for now. Saitou resumed his line of questioning as if he'd never skirted into tangential territory. "What did you see in that alleyway?"

"Dead men," Soujirou replied in a tone eerie with calm. "The killer was a big man. He had the last one by the throat." He picked up his chopsticks as well.

"Only one man?" Saitou pressed.

"Only one," Soujirou echoed.

"You're sure there's no possibility that there was another killer at the scene?" Saitou persisted. "The night is cloudy. You may not have seen--"

"Saitou-san," Soujirou protested, eyes squinted in that sleepy, deceptively innocent look. "My skills may be rusty, but they're not nonexistent. I would have noticed another fighter."

"Fine," Saitou said shortly, absorbing this as he plied his chopsticks once more. The information changed his projection of the crime scene...how much, he would not find out until he'd seen the full report tomorrow.

They ate in silence for a moment. Saitou watched Soujirou finish his rice with a speculative expression. "Would you be able to identify that man?"

Soujirou considered it, his eyes nearly closed. It was a tactic Saitou used often as Fujita Goro to prevent his expression from giving him away. He couldn't help but wonder if that was how Soujirou used it now.

"I am not sure," the young man replied cautiously. "But that voice...if I heard and saw him again, I would recognize him."

"Good enough," Saitou muttered, laying his chopsticks aside to finish his tea. Once again he was considering using the boy as bait...for surely the killer would seek to silence the one person who could identify him.

Lapsing into silence, they stacked their trays outside of the room for the serving-girl to pick up. Soujirou looked at him mildly.

"This is better than sleeping in a warehouse," he commented.

Saitou frowned at him. "If you travel much longer, you'll be as shabby as Himura."

"It wouldn't be so bad, living as Himura-san," Soujirou said thoughtfully.

That concept was so misguided, born of muddied thinking, that it caused Saitou to snap, "Don't be ridiculous. If you really think that way, you should set aside the sword you picked up and find someone to forge a play-sword for you." In a less severe tone, he continued, "You should live by your own rules. You don't need to live by another's simply because they defeated you."

Soujirou's eyes sparked with what might have been anger, but all he said was, "And you, Saitou-san? What rules do you live by?"

"My own, of course."

The boy continued silkily, "Not by aku, soku, zan?" The creed of the Shinsen Gumi, he seemed to be saying.

"That's a part of my rules, "Saitou said coolly, settling himself into a kneeling position once more as he faced Soujirou on the mat. His knee creaked in pain as he did, and he kept his face impassive.

The brazier in the corner flickered and spat embers upward as its coals shifted.

"But weren't they someone else's to begin with?" Soujirou said with serenity, cross-legged and imperturbable as a young Buddha.

Saitou just looked at him for a long moment. Then, after a pause, he threw his head back and began to laugh.

Soujirou regarded him, perplexed. After a moment he smiled rather sheepishly, lifting one hand to rub at his head. "Saitou-san...?"

"You may have a point," Saitou acknowledged. He shook his head, the trace of a smirk still on his lips. He broke eye contact, dropping a shoulder to rotate his joint. He sighed, at last allowing himself to register the accumulated rigors of his long travel. He was not young anymore, especially not compared to the slender boy beside him.

"Are you all right, Saitou-san?" Soujirou inquired, leaning forward.

"Fine," Saitou replied shortly. He rotated his other shoulder, fingers moving along the ridge of old scar tissue beneath his shirt. "Old wounds. It should rain by morning."

Soujirou glanced behind him at the stack of futon bedding, then back again. His eyes were shadowed by the fringe of his bangs as he looked up. "Saitou-san, would you like a massage?" He lifted his face just enough to bring his face into illumination.

"A massage?" Saitou was too startled to slough it off and chuckle as he might normally at such an unexpected, oddly personal invitation. Back in the days when that wound had been new, aching even then with the turn of the weather, Okita Soushi would make just such an offer. Then he would ease the rock-solid tension of knotted muscles with his steady, strong hands.

"Yes..." Soujirou said slowly, face slipping back into that cautious, narrowed-eye look once more. "I have practice. Before Yumi-san joined him, I would perform that service for Shishio-san. He...he said it often eased his pain."

"I'm surprised Shishio would even admit to pain," Saitou said dryly, but he found he was unbuttoning his uniform jacket with one finger, slipping out of it to fold and set it aside. Then he answered the offer politely, "If it wouldn't be too much trouble."

"No, no, not at all!" Soujirou said effusively, waving a hand. "If that's the least I can do for the unexpected kindness you have shown me, Saitou-san, I consider myself lucky!"

"Hmph." The soft snort was his disclaimer. "Expedience, not kindness..."

"What was that?" Soujirou prompted, as Saitou laid out his bedding to lie on face-down.

"Nothing at all."

***

The streets were still damp and filled with the scent of rain-soaked things as Soujirou threaded his way through this unfamiliar hometown of his. As Saitou-san had recommended to him before he departed at first light, Soujirou had left his new sword propped in the corner of the room, though not without misgivings. That very hesitance made him ponder Saitou-san's words of the night before.

Was he weak for following Kenshin's way? Or had he indeed been weak before -- in the head, not the body -- in accepting Shishio's way as truth without finding his own path? Was it Saitou-san who had the right of it, finding his own path between Shishio's teachings and the revelation shown to him by Kenshin?

He had thought that was what he was doing, but Saitou-san had criticized him harshly.

Soujirou wasn't the type to ponder overlong on anything, though; he preferred action. Yumi-san had often criticized him for not using his brain. This, Soujirou had been and still was prone to accept philosophically...he simply acted on instinct, because that was so much easier.

This morning he wandered the streets partly for his own sake, and partly because Saitou-san had asked it of him. The secret policeman had freed him from the secure jail-cell that he'd landed himself in, and Soujirou felt a measure of gratitude for that. He had been...unbalanced...the night before, and that had led to his capture. Yet again, Saitou-san was showing him mercy. Soujirou wanted to find out why. There was something...different, something less cold than the composure he showed to anyone else when he looked into Soujirou's eyes.

He remembered Saitou-san speaking of his former comrade, the first division captain of Shinsen Gumi who had passed away. *You resemble him a great deal.*

He paused on the street. "I wonder..." Soujirou said to himself, nearly inaudible. He shook his head and moved on. When Saitou-san wanted to reveal something, he did. On the other hand if he wanted to keep it to himself, it would remain forever so.

Soujirou remained on his corner, watching carts pass on the way to market, or creaking heavy with produce headed for the harbor. He pulled his pathetically thin money-pouch from the depths of one sleeve and weighed it in his hand, sighing. It had been a long time since he'd stopped anywhere to work long enough to make more money. If he got food for himself this morning he would spend what was left to him.

With a resigned shrug, he tucked the worn leather pouch away and continued up the streets, looking with interest now at the signs. If he was to spend all his money, he might as well fill his belly before depending on Saitou's charity again.

He moved from a prosperous business district into a slightly shabbier one with working-class people scurrying about on highly important business, from the looks on their faces. Even here the prices would be beyond him. Working his way toward outlying quarters of town, he found himself in a definitely questionable area. It was in this place that the sword hanging at his side could have been seen as a possible deterrent, or given his youthfulness, more likely seen as a challenge to lurking street toughs. As it was, Soujirou knew he looked harmless but he was confident he was faster than any potential opponents.

It was a pity, he thought with a touch of humor, that he hadn't been faster last night. But if he hadn't been caught, he might not be under Saitou-san's nominal guardianship right now. Though Soujirou was admittedly not quick-witted, he did believe in certain things, and a tenuous concept of 'fate' was one of them. This meeting was not mere happenstance...they had been intended to meet, and Soujirou felt sure that had been set in motion since the last time, in Yukimura-ko.

Perhaps they had been meant to meet for Soujirou to come under the scrutiny of Saitou-san's seeming harshness once more. His curt words disguised well-meant advice. Indeed, Soujirou felt he had not been on the right path. Not quite.

He cast a wary look around. There was a group of men lingering in an alleyway, dicing on the dirt-lined ground. A woman brushed past him hurriedly, a squalling baby in her arms -- she slammed the door of a tiny house behind her. A witch doctor rattled a tray of novelty remedies, snake oil and miracle bones and blessed statues. Frowning, Soujirou decided regretfully that he had left all reputable food establishments far behind.

"Oi, what the hell'ya doin' around here, a blue-butt kid like you?" the drawl of a Kansai dialect wrapped around him.

Soujirou turned quickly, face lighting up in an unexpectedly genuine smile. "Chou-san! You..."

"Yeah, me," Chou said affably, sauntering up the street. He was the same, as if Soujirou had been catapulted back to those days before and the only difference was the absence of a certain tension in their smiles. He still wore his ripped-sleeve red dougi, and had more swords belted around him and on his back than three average men would handle put together. His grin was wide and he showed white teeth and his straw-blond hair was swept up in the same outlandish style. One of his angular eyes was open, the other closed in his habitually lazy fashion. Once he got into range, he clipped Soujirou on the head with a casual black-gloved fist. "Never expected to see you again, bou-ya."

The strangely out-of-context use of Yumi-san's old name for him made Soujirou blink. "Ah, well, I..." He rubbed his head in mute protest, glancing up at the tall figure of Chou with one eye half-closed in a playful sort of look.

"Still on the run?" Chou said cheerfully, speaking indiscriminately loud in such a dangerous quarter.

Soujirou made frantic shushing motions. "Ah, no, well..." He opened his eyes fully, looking up at the blond swordsman. "Actually, I'm under the protection of Fujita Goro-san while I'm in Nagoya." After that, he was sure, it was up to him.

"No shit!" Chou opened both eyes fully, looking startled. "That old stick? He didn't say anything to me!"

"Ah, that's right, you're working with Fujita-san," Soujirou mused. "I hadn't realized that would mean you're here, too, Chou-san! Actually this just happened last evening. I was caught by the police as a murder suspect, but Fujita-san came and had them release me. Now, since I'm a witness, I suppose Fujita-san has plans to use me to lure in the real killer." He wasn't the quickest of wit, but his animal instincts were sound.

Chou shook his head. "You're havin' a busy week, bou-ya."

"And I'm having a hungry morning," Soujirou replied, looking around curiously. "Why don't we..."

"Hunh? Oh, there's nothing around here," Chou said, waving a hand. "C'mon, I'll take you to this little uptown place closer to the harbor and we can catch up or somethin', I guess..."

Soujirou protested, "But I don't have very much money..." He put his hand into the sleeve where he'd stowed his money-pouch. "Wha-?" He felt around thoroughly. "It was just...here..." Fleetingly, he remembered the mother who had bumped into him, carrying her crying baby.

"Idiot," Chou said, moving as if he'd tap Soujirou on the head again, but he refrained. "Got pickpockets hangin' around here; they probably took you for every yen you were worth."

"I guess so," Soujirou replied with a deprecating laugh. "Well, I suppose I won't be having breakfast." He wasn't overly put out. He was certain the young mother and her baby needed those few meager coins more than he did.

"Don't worry about it," Chou told him, waving a hand. "I can spot you one measly meal, y'know. For old time's sake. Besides, if you're stayin' with Fujita-san, you can pass along the information I found for him."

"Ah," Soujirou said, and recalled that he had heard or found somehow that Chou was working with Saitou-san in the place of a jail sentence. This was probably the reason Saitou-san had asked him to explore the streets - on the chance he would run into Chou-san. The Meiji government had use for all sorts of special talent, and luckily for Chou-san, Saitou-san had deemed him one such individual. "In that case, I accept." It wasn't as if he was getting something for nothing, after all...

They moved through the streets again toward better quarters. Chou led the way with his confident swagger, and a path parted before them as people melted out of the way, clearly apprehensive about the swords hanging on his person. Katanagari no Chou, he was...Chou, the Sword-Lover.

Once they were settled in a small restaurant situated between markets and a street leading to the busy harbor area, Chou began to divulge details of the case that Saitou was working on. He filled him in on small details that Saitou had not seen fit to share, such as the deaths of Meiji officials and the fact that Saitou had speculated a large, well-muscled man and a swordsman good with a kodachi or tanto were responsible for the murders.

They placed their orders and settled down to wait for their food while drinking liberal amounts of tea.

"The man I saw was quite big, probably muscled," Soujirou mused, recalling the sight of the killer shadowed in those moon-obscured moments. "But I didn't see anyone else there."

"Yeah, well, if there was anyone else he'd be a lot harder to find," Chou said, chin in hand. "But I've already found a coupla guys that meet the 'big, strong, and muscled' description. One left town this mornin', and the other...well, the other only has one arm. The other's cut off above the wrist; muscle man has it capped in bandages."

"Hmm..." Soujirou said with a frown. "I'll let Fujita-san know...I'm sure he won't be pleased." In his own mind he combed through his recollections of the night before...the big man with his raspy voice had had his victim by the throat. He had only used one hand...but that didn't necessarily mean he was the amputee.

"Nn," Chou responded, leaning back in his chair. He put both arms behind his head. "In the meantime I'll keep tailin' the guy and keep a lookout for any other people meetin' that description."

Soujirou nodded. He leaned over to tell Chou the name of the place he was staying with Saitou. "If you find anything else..."

"Oh, I'll find ya, no problems with that," Chou said easily. "Found ya today, didn't I, even though I was lookin' for Fujita-san?"

Soujirou nodded dubiously and hid a smile.

"At any rate..." Chou sat up abruptly and stared at him. "Fujita-san been treatin' you all right?"

"Huh?" Soujirou met his gaze levelly. He forced a laugh. "What do you mean?"

Chou shrugged. "Fujita-san's a difficult man t'get along with."

"Well, I'm very easy to get along with when I want to be," Soujirou said mildly. "I owe him a great deal."

"Yeah, well...if he tries anything...uh, funny..." Chou made a vague gesture.

It was Soujirou's turn to stare. "What...what kind of 'funny' are you talking about, Chou?" he inquired politely, nonplussed.

Chou shook his head sharply. "Forget I said anything," he said, a hint of humor lurking around his generous mouth. "Ah...food's here." That said, he picked up his chopsticks with every evidence of devoting himself to filling his stomach.

Soujirou found he was rather hungry, as well.

***

Saitou leaned over the desk he had taken over for the duration of his stay - it was Inspector Takai's apparently, but the commanding inspector had been...

"Called away to an outlying district," Inspector Kinomoto explained, pushing his round-rimmed glasses up his nose as he leaned over the most recent murder notes as well. "There are influential families concerned over the murder of recent Meiji officials. Apparently, the ministry outposts are isolating themselves from all contact, holing up in their enclaves and reinforcing them with hired swords. This causes great concern amongst the more powerful merchant families."

"I can only imagine how much business they're disrupting," Saitou said, putting on the polite facade of Fujita Goro. His only interest and focus was in solving the murders and bringing the killer to justice. "With such specific targets, it seems less something personal against the Meiji government and more someone against the changing port regulations." He had been reading Takai's copious notes.

One of the changes suggested had been an increase in taxation of merchants who imported and exported goods. It was a broad tax that would be imposed not only on middle-class merchants, but the wealthy merchants who were descended from daimyo and other nobility, former samurai and the like who had formerly been exempt from that kind of taxation due to their duties to raise armies at the command of the shogunate. Since they were no longer called to such a duty under the Meiji government, the Meiji had determined they could raise revenues by imposing the tax.

"That was Inspector Takai's conclusion," Kinomoto agreed. "That was one reason he decided to visit the families of the outlying district. Some of them were vocal in their complaints of the economic disruptions, but it might be masking their true feelings on the issue. Inspector Takai thought to question them personally."

Saitou sifted through the notes on the crime scene. "In the meantime, I can focus on the investigation from the killer's angle." He tapped the notes on the desk to even them out and gave Kinomoto his most disarming smile. "I have quite a lot of experience in these sorts of investigations."

"Y-yes," Kinomoto said, seeming flustered. "I suppose that is why you were sent here."

"Oh, I hope you won't think I'm trying to take over, or anything like that," Saitou demurred, leaning back in Inspector Takai's chair. "I was simply an inspector with the most field work in murder scenes."

Kinomoto pushed his glasses up with a quick, nervous movement. "Yet you chose not to visit the murder scene last night," he pointed out. "Y-your questioning of the suspect-ah, no, I mean witness. Did that..."

"I would not voluntarily co-opt the chief inspector's handling of the murder scene," Saitou said in a deliberate display of modesty. "Indeed, he did an admirable job...his notes on the scene are quite detailed, his conclusions factual rather than speculative. As for Seta-kun...the boy had few useful observations. The night was quite cloudy, you will remember."

"Ah-well, yes," Kinomoto acknowledged.

Saitou continued in scrupulously polite tones, "Now, if you don't mind, I would like to read Inspector Takai's notes in full."

"O-of course!" Kinomoto said, flustered, then seemed to realize he was braced over Takai's desk and leaning forward. He stepped away and seated himself, then lifted a finger. "A-ahh...can I get you tea, Fujita-san? I'm terribly sorry; my manners..."

"Tea would be quite refreshing," Saitou acknowledged with only the barest hint of a smile.

As soon as Kinomoto quit the room Saitou settled back in his borrowed chair with a creak and turned his full attention to Takai's meticulous handwritten notes.

Five bodies had been discovered in the alleyway. Four of them had been strangled in the grasp of a powerful hand - one hand, because each of the dead bodyguards' throats had been circled with four bruises on the left side of the neck, and one thumbprint bruise on the right. This matched, so far, with the notes of the previous killings. To strangle them so powerfully, this killer had a tremendous physique and great forearm strength.

The fifth dead man had been one of the ministers from Port Regulation. Though he was not a recently-arrived official, certainly not from the Tokyo branch, he set out from the ministry toward his home with four bodyguards. That was curious, and he hoped Takai had set someone to look into it - if not, he would ask Kinomoto. Why had the man felt himself threatened, or had it been paranoia?

The Meiji official had been skewered through the throat with a blade, likely a kodachi.

A witness, possible suspect, had been found at the scene of the crime, Takai's notes continued, and sent back to the station to be held for questioning. As Saitou suspected, Takai had not drawn the conclusion that Soujirou had been the killer. That was Kinomoto's deduction.

Saitou sorted through the notes again and frowned. He had set Soujirou to wandering the streets today for a reason...two reasons, really. If the killer, or killers, saw him, Soujirou might be followed on his way back to the inn. Then Saitou would be on hand to apprehend him if someone made an attempt on Soujirou's life, and he could take the killer in that fashion. His other reason was pragmatic; Chou and Soujirou would recognize one another and pass along the information he needed. Idly he wondered if Chou had discovered anything yet.

The broom-head might seem like a slacker, but he had proved to be an effective agent for Saitou these past few years.

There were two angles to pursue, and Takai had quite effectively co-opted one. The first was that the killings surely stemmed from above, in the form of a noble or merchant opposing the new taxes. Takai was welcome to it; he knew his area and local politics. The other was from the killer's side, and Saitou was certainly more practiced in hunting predators. Yet if he discovered the killer, he could find whomever was behind them as well...and his orders did not involve mercy or due process, only swift and unrelenting justice.

"Sir..." The door pushed open and Kinomoto returned with a tray. This time, Saitou was relieved to note, Kinomoto had only brought one cup.

"Kinomoto," Saitou spoke up, "has anyone been to the Ministry of Trade Regulations this morning, to question the official's co-workers?"

The inspector set down the tray to the side of the scattered notes. "No, sir." His eyes glowed behind his thick glasses. "Would you like me to take care of that?"

"Yes," Saitou said thoughtfully. "If you would, Inspector. I'd like to know why Minister Takawa thought his life might be in danger."

Kinomoto nodded with fervor now, clearly thrilled with the prospect of participating in the investigation. "Yes, sir!" He looked a heartbeat away from saluting. "I would be honored to accept the assignment!"

Saitou mused that it seemed to him that Kinomoto was like a raw recruit, though as second in command he must have been working at the station for some length of time. Perhaps the man was never allowed out in the field. "Kinomoto...your strength is paperwork, is it not?"

"S-sir?" Kinomoto pushed his glasses up. "Well, now that you mention it, Inspector Fujita, Takai-san has always commended me on that being my high point as an officer."

"As I thought," Saitou said, almost under his breath.

"What was that, sir?"

"Nothing at all," Saitou replied, putting on his disarming smile again. "Actually, I had a question for you, Inspector Kinomoto."

"I'm at your disposal," Kinomoto said.

"There's a case I want to look into," Saitou told him. "It would have happened about ten years ago. Would you still have files on such a case, if it were unsolved?"

Kinomoto looked dubious. "That was before my time..."

Obviously, Saitou thought, but did not say it. While not quite bearing the shine of a raw recruit, it was clear that Kinomoto was still very young.

"However, we may still have some files from that time...a moment, inspector! I'll ask one of our clerks." He left the room once more, not quite shutting Takai's office door behind him.

The murders of the Seta family had very little to do with this case; no connection at all, in fact, but for the tenuous link to the sole witness of today's case. He didn't doubt Soujirou's assertion that he had killed his family at that time. Yet, being in the same district as the murders of that time, he could not resist the prospect of learning more. In a peculiar way he felt it might give him insight into Soujirou's muddled psyche.

The boy was a risk to himself, picking up a sword at this point. Saitou didn't feel he had been too harsh on that score last night. Kenshin's succession technique had broken Soujirou's convictions, but his killing instincts were still the same. With his back to the wall and a sword in his hands, Soujirou might still act as he had been taught no matter what intentions he held up.

He drank his tea while he waited for Kinomoto to return, which the man did so within a few heartbeats, glasses askew.

"Fujita-san," Kinomoto told him, riding the glasses up with one finger, "Amaru-kun says it's very unlikely that the office would have kept files from that time. We're not required to keep them beyond six years, due to a lack of space. However, Takai-san was in charge of the files at that time and he might have kept any that he felt to be particularly outstanding or troublesome."

Saitou nodded, pleased. "He does seem to have that sort of personality," he replied in complimentary tones. "Thank you, Kinomoto-san. If you could see to the questioning at the Ministry of Trade Regulations, I would be very grateful."

Kinomoto puffed up as his chest inflated. "Sir!" This time he did salute, then turned crisply and left the room.

After a moment, Saitou sighed. It was such a simple task, he could only hope that Kinomoto wouldn't bungle it. The man seemed overeager. For his part, Saitou had already decided, he would take a look through Takai's files and then see about meeting up with Soujirou.

He finished his tea first, then sorted through the files on the desk and put them back in order before he got up to investigate Takai's file system. When he stood, he rotated first one shoulder, then the other. The motion made him think of Seta Soujirou again, and his offer of the night before. His hands had been firm and competent, soothing the knots and old aches from Saitou's flesh, reminding him of Okita's steady, strong touch. For those moments in the surreal lengthening of the evening, lying on his belly with cheek rested on his folded arms, Saitou's past and present had mingled. Not many situations made him feel that way, but those that did resulted in the patented loss of his objectivity.

Soujirou was not only a risk to himself.

And so it was with the boy in mind that Saitou found himself rifling through the neatly-categorized files of the absent commanding officer. In his file system, Takai was as meticulous as every other trace of his presence. He had everything sorted away by year, and each year was broken into files clearly labelled with the case description. 'Harbor drowning.' 'Alleyway murder.' And there, ten years before... 'Unsolved hitokiri killings, civilian and police.' Saitou's amber eyes narrowed and he pulled the file free.

It was a thick one.

The first thing he ascertained at a glance were that all murders were ascribed to an unknown hitokiri, who had briefly rampaged through Nagoya killing policemen who sought to capture him, culminating in the murder of an entire family, the Seta rice-merchants, in whose rice warehouse the hitokiri was presumed to have sought shelter. The family was all accounted for from the old woman to the youngest daughter except for the long-dead Seta father's bastard child, missing and presumed dead.

This tied in with what Saitou already knew of Soujirou. With those violet eyes, he was surely of mixed blood. His father, Seta, had lived here and for some reason had chosen to take the boy in, possibly out of sentimentality towards the last-blooming romance of his life.

Saitou's sharp eyes flicked through the file. Used bandages with bits of raw skin had been discovered in the warehouse, and in the trash heap of the family complex. The wounds of the dead policemen had been severe - one man had been sliced entirely in half from split skull to crotch. The wounds had been partially seared as if a torch had been put to the bleeding flesh. Those deaths, as well as the notes on the warehouse, had Shishio's presence stamped all over the file.

The Seta family, though...that had all the earmarks of a crime of passion, not the ruthless efficiency of a strong manslayer. The murders had been performed with a shortsword, a wakizashi not found at the scene. The only weapon at the scene of those murders had been the plain katana of the younger legitimate Seta, which had not even been drawn from its scabbard. His head had been cut from his shoulders. Most of the bodies had been stabbed, hacked at even. Takai's immaculate script drew the same conclusions, that the murders seemed to have been performed by a completely different person.

Seta Soujirou - the characters for his name stood out on the bottom of the file. His description was brief and vague, probably second-hand from some neighbor of the family. Missing, presumed dead. Wanted for questioning if found.

He could only imagine why Shishio had left Soujirou alive...more than that, had apparently encouraged him, instilled even then the grain of his philosophy that would shape Soujirou's life. It was surely his wakizashi that had performed the murders, and his words that had guided the killings, even if he had not done so with his own two hands.

Without hearing the truth from Soujirou's own lips, Saitou could know nothing further. *At that time it was kill, or be killed.* From those words he could project a childhood of abuse; he could intuit the bare bones of a situation...evidence of the hitokiri's presence, anger of the family, the eagerness of the Seta son to test his katana on young, helpless Soujirou... Being acquainted with the darker side of human nature, Saitou could draw conclusions on what had happened only too well.

But only Soujirou himself could tell, or feel, the full effects of the dreadful story.

Saitou put the files away neatly.

He had done all he could with reading. From here on out, action would be required to solve this case before any more people were killed. Of course, Saitou's attention was focused on his purpose - aku, soku, zan. He would kill not only the killer, or killers, but the one behind them, whose morals were degenerate enough to spur him to order many deaths in an attempt to hinder any legislation that might affect his wealth. Saitou despised a person with such sloppy methods...if they thought a little killing would stop bureaucrats from passing whatever laws they liked, then they overestimated their own worth once the police traced the deaths to the source.

There was a certain hubris, too, in not expecting to be found out as the impetus behind the murders that made Saitou suspect that someone highborn was behind it.

Saitou retrieved his katana from where it leaned against the wall, affixing it to his belt once more. The time for research was done, and the time for action had arrived. Now all he needed to do was find the boy, find his agent, or both.

***

The afternoon buzzed with drowsy heat and flies. Rain had disappeared from the streets as if it had never been, evaporating in midday heat and the steely sun of a cloudless sky.

In the humid shade of an outdoor shop, a big man sat plying a broad-brimmed straw hat as a fan, chasing away any errant flies that might attempt to settle on his broad sweat-dewed face. One arm rested on the table, terminating in a bandage-swathed stump. He leaned forward with an intensity at odds with the oppressive heat, watching the passersby.

His eyes tracked a slender dark-haired boy, the one whom he'd been following unobtrusively for the past few hours. This was the one, he felt sure, though the night had been dark and the boy had carried a sword at his side. He was accompanied now by a tall blond swordsman and it was too risky to strike until they had separated, but the big man wouldn't wait for much longer. He took pains to kill those he targeted under cover of night, but this boy had to be finished sooner. He had been taken by the police the night before and there was no telling what he had related to them.

The big man got up, scattering coins at his table. His quarry had turned the corner and he could not risk losing him entirely.

His hand twitched and clenched into a fist as he moved from under the shade into the thick of street traffic. He was imagining the slender throat of the boy, and how it would feel under his hand as he wrung the life out of him.

***

The afternoon was wearing on in the drone of insects and the low-grade activity coursing through the streets. Chou had turned him loose after lunch with a friendly pat on the shoulder and an injunction to "keep in touch -- the willow-head bastard knows where I am."

Now Soujirou was drifting through the streets of Nagoya...not precisely lost, but he had definitely misplaced his exact location. This had resulted from a combination of trying unsuccessfully to seek out his inn, and taking a criss-crossing path to throw off pursuit.

He was being followed.

At some point the hairs on his nape had prickled and risen, and Soujirou had accepted the familiar sensation of being tailed. It had been quite some time since he'd recognized the sense of pursuit. He found himself choosing side-streets, routes with less traffic, because he knew if the killer grew tired of the chase and decided to strike, he probably wouldn't trouble himself worrying over the safety of bystanders. Soujirou didn't care to involve anyone else in the fight, and for that reason he would confront the man alone -- if he didn't find his way to the inn before then.

The thought of finding his way back to the police station had glanced off him, but surely his follower would recognize the route no matter how oblique and, in doing so, would seek to attack him even sooner. It was not sentiment that led his steps into ever more deserted streets so much as practicality.

He wanted to be alone. He was tired of his presence acting as a forerunner for disaster.

At last he realized that the street he was on had become dangerously empty. In fact, there was no one in the little street, more an alleyway, and he was a long way from finding the inn. He turned, and found himself traveling up a long thin alley that ended in a dead end.

Soujirou felt an especially strong prickle arcing up his nape, and he turned.

A tall, broad man stood a short distance from him, standing in a loosely waiting kind of pose at the mouth of the alley. He had a wide-brimmed straw hat pulled low over his eyes and the face lurking beneath it was brutish, mean..the sullen kind of face that a hardened killer or thug possessed.

Soujirou's eyes drifted to the man's left arm, which terminated where the wrist would have been. It was wrapped in bandages, the remnants of his left forearm much slimmer than the meaty thickness of his right one. "Ah, I see," he said softly. He looked at the man's face again, remembering a strong hand clamped over the throat of a dead body, then opening to let the corpse tumble to the ground. "You're him."

The man's brow lowered like a thundercloud. "You made a mistake, boy." The term he used to address Soujirou, the low menacing rasp, all of it pulled together as the last piece to identify him. "Now you'll have to oblige me and die."

"Oh?" Soujirou exhaled, drawing out the noise of surprise, lifting one finger to tap thoughtfully at his cheek. He put his head to the side, examining his opponent. His body was bulky and solid. He was surely used to employing his strength as his chief advantage.

Soujirou was faster than anyone, with or without a sword. "And what is the name of the killer-san who has come to finish me?"

"I don't need to give my name to someone who's about to die."

"Unfortunately for you, killer-san, I'm not that obliging."

The man's eyes narrowed. "We'll have to see about that!"

A broad-brimmed straw hat tumbled in the air. The street was deserted.

"Damn," the word hissed through Soujirou's clenched teeth as he launched himself forward. He had underestimated his opponent; simply from the breadth of his body he had assumed he wouldn't be able to move quickly. Soujirou spun as he raced forward, turning to track his opponent's movements...the man wasn't quicker than the eye, like himself or even Himura-san; he was fast like Senkaku, unexpectedly so for a man of his size. He stopped, feet planted, in roughly the same space his opponent had vacated.

The big man turned to face him, cracking the knuckles of his right hand by clenching fingers into a fist several times. His smile was unpleasant. "Not bad, boy...but if you expect your feet to save you..."

"I am no threat," Soujirou pointed out calmly, knowing that parlay was useless even as he spoke the words. His eyes darted from side to side in the close quarters of the alley. He could leap to the rooftop...

The killer loosed a bray of laughter. "The police released you because you looked harmless, but I won't," he promised, eyes glinting. "You couldn't even use that sword you carried last night. You're nothing."

Soujirou's hands tightened into fists. "I wouldn't be so sure," he returned with a pleasant smile. Even if all Soujirou did was avoid him, this man would not be able to catch him, or crush his life out between his fingers as he did all the rest.

The man's brutal features tightened, and he fell into a slight crouch. "Here I come," he uttered his challenge.

Soujirou lifted his chin. "I'm waiting."

The man sprang forward again, and Soujirou tracked him easily this time, expecting that kind of swiftness. He gathered himself and jumped, clearing the man's head easily and slipping through his outstretched fingers by a thread's length. He might not have swung a sword for some time, but walking the breadth of the land had kept his legs in perfect shape.

They faced off again, both breathing a little harder. The man glowered at him. "I'll get you sooner or later, little rabbit," he promised. "You can't escape the noose forever."

Soujirou rocked back on his heels, hands clasped behind his back. "Hmm?" He smiled disarmingly. "I think I'm just warming up."

With a curse, the big man started forward again.

This time Soujirou vaulted over his head with hands clasped behind his back. The man surprised him, twisting mid-leap to grab for one of his ankles. Soujirou opened both eyes, brow knitting in a serious look; his breath caught. He glanced off of the big man's shoulder and, muscles bunching in calves and thighs, kicked off once more.

His landing was unsteady but he'd eluded the hand that nearly trapped him. They faced each other without words, then as they narrowed their eyes, struck.

Soujirou angled for the wall this time, kicking off powerfully and staying out of range.

"You're faster than you look," the big man allowed with a growl. He straightened, eyes hard on Soujirou, putting his hand to his stump.

"Yes," Soujirou said with a nod. "I'm not going to be the one who dies today." He smiled.

"I wouldn't be so sure." The big man began unwrapping his stump, unspooling bandages to the alley floor.

Soujirou frowned. If he turned to run now, he would expose his back to the enemy. Even if he took to the rooftops, he wasn't sure in which direction the police station was. Stalemate.

The man's stump was capped in dark leather, tapering down to a narrow sticklick appendage where his wrist would have been. Soujirou watched, sickened, as the man twisted at his stump, jaw set, then pulled the leather cap free with a roar.

"If you won't die so easy...then..."

The big man held up his left arm, turning it this way and that. Riveted to the stump of his forearm was a glittering kodachi-length blade.

Soujirou widened his eyes.

Without warning, the big man started forward, slashing the blade of his left arm in wide arcs. Soujirou dodged, avoiding him nimbly, aware of the dead end of the alley several paces behind him. If he set his back to the wall, he had nothing, no sword in his hands to protect himself.

His eyes looked beyond the big man to the far end of the alley and he started, a sensation that twitched briefly along his skin, then he looked up into the face of his attacker.

"Why?" he said clearly, dodging this way and that, avoiding both blade and the crushing hand that swept out to snare him. "I was no threat to you. I had nothing to give to the police."

The big man's face twisted as he stabbed out, and then he laughed as he crowded Soujirou toward the end of the alley. "You're no threat to me. The Tanaka family doesn't even know that I was seen."

Soujirou looked up at him with artless puzzlement. "Then why...?" He looked like prey, he knew; easy pickings once caught, no matter how quick he was on his feet. His fists were clenched so tightly he knew his fingernails might have drawn blood.

"I want to kill you, and that's all," the man said, lifting his kodachi high for a final blow. "That's enough for me!"

"No," came a cold voice from the end of the alleyway, "that's enough for *me.*"

Soujirou leaped.

He heard the rushing sound, the unity of a body in motion and the thrust of the sword that made up the powerfully deadly Fanged Thrust, the trademark Gatotsu of the former Shinsen Gumi. He saw Saitou moving amazingly fast, making it seem to Soujirou as if he himself were suspended in the air as Saitou crossed the distance and plunged his sword through the body of the big man.

Then Soujirou tumbled, somersaulting mid-air to land lightly beyond the secret policeman and the man he had killed. He knelt, breathing hard. He could hear the crunch and wet, meaty sound sound as Saitou turned his blade in the man's wound, then kicked him off its length.

He turned when he heard Saitou sheathing his blade. "Impressive," he said politely, keeping his eyes on the tall man in front of him, trying not to look at the bulk of the dead man beyond. It reminded him...the big body, the broad angular face...it looked like Senkaku.

"Despicable, really," Saitou returned. "Small fry, when it came down to it."

Soujirou kept his eyes on Saitou, breath coming in rapid spurts. "You...I..." Was it that his mind held half-baked intentions, or was it what Saitou had accused him of last time they met? Within him, emotions had been rekindled. Swordplay had never bothered or roused him before, but now with the blood hammering in his body he felt perturbed.

"Let's go," Saitou said, looking down at him with unreadable dark eyes. His gloved hand touched Soujirou's shoulder.

"Don't touch me!" Soujirou cried, jerking back from his grip, breathing even faster. He stared up at Saitou with wide eyes, not quite believing his own reaction.

"Don't be stupid," Saitou said coldly. He brushed past Soujirou, indicating he should follow.

After a moment of hesitation, Soujirou did. He followed him out of the alleyway and past the discarded hat that lay like an empty cup, spinning around on its point in the sluggish summer breeze.

He lifted his face to the sky. "It's going to rain again."

***

The body would wait, that much was for certain.

Saitou led the boy back to the inn, face impassive. He had things to do, but first he had to see to Soujirou. He was in a critical place, yet it wasn't the sort of thing to be handled easily in an alleyway. The dead body had affected him, perhaps worse than that time at Yukimura-ko, and Saitou had an inkling of why. The big man who'd tried to kill him resembled Senkaku in size and general similarity of feature.

Senkaku, the last man Soujirou had killed.

From a serving girl he had sake delivered to the room. He used this to daub Soujirou's wounds while the boy protested the use of it. Saitou ignored him, taking first one hand, then the other, swiping a pad of alcohol over the bloody crescents in the boy's hands. Though he hadn't realized it he had picked up a thin wound on one cheek from a glancing arc of the kodachi, and this Saitou tended as well, expressionless during the entire exercise.

"You should have run," Saitou said reasonably. "You had no means of fighting him or facing him in the alley."

A flush crept up Soujirou's chest and face, and his eyes took on a dangerous glint. "I was doing fine when you found us."

"He would have cut you down," Saitou replied. "His convictions against your confused mind...even at his level, it would have ended like that."

Soujirou's eyes flared. "And what about finding my own path?" His fingers clenched around the bandages, straining the wrapped fabric. He looked up into Saitou's eyes and his look was still wild, his own eyes dilated and unbalanced as they had been back in the alleyway.

"It's all very well in theory," Saitou said, "but this is the second time I've rescued you. Third, if you count the overzealous Kinomoto. What if I'm not around the next time?" He should drop his mixed intentions, or come up with a true purpose. That was all.

Again, Okita's image overlapped with that of the boy before him. Yet Okita had always been calm, in control, even in his moments of frenzied swordplay. He had always understood his emotions and kept them in check when the occasion required. Soujirou had kept his locked away for so long that he had no idea how to handle any of it.

"You infuriate me," Soujirou said unexpectedly, eyes glimmering. "You...if it weren't for you I wouldn't have been forced into those situations to begin with. I was wandering."

Saitou countered, "And I suppose I was the one who forced the sword into your hand? No, it was you who picked up the sword."

"You--" Soujirou broke his words off, glaring up at him fiercely, hands fisted on his knees.

"More than Himura-san, you infuriate me! You bother me. And I don't know what--" He paused, head tilting to the side as if hearing something from afar.

Saitou's impassivity wasn't nearly so perfect as he knew it seemed. "You *are* beautiful," he murmured, feeling objectivity slip away into the moment. Between every moment of violence, the readiness to kill or be killed, there was the stillness of beauty. It was worth appreciating, if only for that short period of time. It was worth living for. And that was all.

A look of hazy curiosity passed over Soujirou's face. He seemed frozen in the instant before action. "But I'm...nothing," he protested. "Certainly not beautiful at all."

Saitou wasn't going to argue the point with him. The boy was unschooled and didn't know any better. Instead of speaking, there was something he could do. It had nothing to do with the problem at hand. It had nothing to do with his purpose here.

He didn't care.

Objectivity cast aside, Saitou gripped the boy's shoulders and dipped his head, pausing just that fraction long enough to ascertain he wouldn't be pushed away as unwelcome, and then he slanted his mouth down over Soujirou's.

There was no waiting for this. It was worth making the time.

***

Soujirou's heart was pulsing within him, fluttering wild in his chest like the wings of a trapped bird. He was free, though, freer than he'd been in his life though he couldn't say why.

Soujirou's eyes were wide, but unseeing. Now Chou's odd comments had fallen into context. Somehow, he had known. Perhaps Saitou-san had a reputation for loving men.

Saitou's mouth was on his, the scent of a man enveloping him, the feel of lips fitting against his own. This was what made Soujirou's heart pound; it was a feeling entirely unanticipated despite Chou's cryptic words, but not unwelcome. His hands were still fisted against his knees. He could bring them up, he knew; he could push Saitou away.

Before he could fully contemplate it, Saitou pulled his mouth away first. They were only a breath apart, close enough to feel the vibration of his lips as Saitou murmured, "And do you resent this?"

"No," Soujirou answered honestly. For some reason, something he with his tangled emotions couldn't fathom, he did not resent it. All he knew was that he hoped it wasn't for the spectre of the boy he knew he resembled. He lifted his face, slightly, bringing his lips within a hair of alignment with Saitou's. "I don't resent this at all." His lips touched Saitou's as he spoke.

Saitou's hand raked through his hair, tipping his head back, holding him in place. He didn't feel resentful, but there was a tremendous restlessness filling up inside of him, aching in his chest, pooling between his legs as Saitou's mouth moved over him with certainty. He had little experience with sex, only that which he knew of Shishio-san and Yumi-san secondhand, and the pleasure of wrapping his own hand around his aching hardness.

For Saitou to teach him like this it didn't feel odd. Only...a bit strange.

Saitou's mouth parted his, dipping inside in a manner that slaked and spurred on his restlessness in equal parts. At last, Soujirou's hands moved in response to this restlessness. He fisted his hands in the fabric of Saitou's uniform, unwilling, unable perhaps to do anything more. He was fearless when it came to a battle, but this was no fight.

Though his own stance was passive, Saitou was far more active. He separated once more, this time to take the glove of his right hand between his teeth and pull it off. Once the glove was discarded, his bare hand slipped into the margin of Soujirou's kimono top, exploring and pushing it aside all at once. His other hand kept Soujirou close, cradling the base of his skull the better to explore his mouth.

There was a question in the back of his mind, a why, but it melted away like the snowflakes he had once seen as a child, those he'd hoped to find in Snow Country. Saitou had been unexpectedly gentle back then as well, and so this was not the complete surprise it might have been. What did surprise him was his own response; he had never been intimate with a woman, and here and now his first intimacy was with a man. The thrill of desire that crested through him was startling.

Saitou's mouth was firm, demanding. When his tongue ran over Soujirou's lip it commanded entry, and Soujirou's mouth parted with a slight gasp which Saitou followed to its source, swallowing his small noise.

Without quite realizing it he brought up his hands at last and began to push at Saitou's shoulders. He pulled his mouth away from the invasive excitement of his kiss.

"Stop..."

"Ho?" Saitou left his hands where they were, but did lean back slightly. He raised one coal-black brow.

"Why?" Soujirou asked with a frown. He was perfectly amenable to Saitou's advances -- for reasons he didn't quite understand himself -- but he had to know this one thing. Like that time in Yukimura-ko, was this interest because he...resembled someone a great deal? "Why this, Saitou-san?"

Saitou's brow was still raised as he looked down at Soujirou, expressionless. Then his mouth quirked. "Hm. Perhaps you bother me, as well."

Now Soujirou thought he understood. He was adept at reading between the lines. A man like Saitou couldn't outright admit that he wanted someone like that, but now he thought that was what Chou had implied...and now this was the choice Soujirou faced. Soujirou also recognized the measure of the man enough to realize that he was being *offered* a choice instead of simply being overwhelmed, as Saitou did in all other aspects of his life.

"All right," Soujirou acquiesced.

Then Saitou did something quite unusual. He smiled. It was a slightly wry, but genuine expression.

He bent his head again, and Soujirou lifted his own to accept Saitou's kiss. If the first had been demanding this next was aggressive, forcing his lips open again and again until he tasted the remnants of smoke and tea in his own mouth. Saitou's tongue pressed into him, probing and hot; his lips moved roughly against Soujirou's. His teeth tugged at Soujirou's bottom lip, opening him up again until Soujirou sent his own tongue out to resist the predator that took his mouth with such skilled force.

Soujirou didn't know what he had expected out of sex but this hadn't been it. This was ground he understood; this was adrenaline rising and the beat of blood quickening through his temples and throat and wrists. It was most of all comparable to the familiar cadences of a fight and Soujirou was accustomed to being second to none but one.

Their teeth grated and Soujirou made a startled noise, struggling to get closer as Saitou's fingers toyed with one of his nipples, the other descending to the small of his back.

"Hm...you're not bad," Saitou said appraisingly.

"Not bad..." Soujirou's eyes glinted. "For a virgin, that is."

"Ah, I see." Saitou seemed neither surprised nor unsurprised by this revelation. Still, what he said next was startling: "I won't ask again if you resent this."

Soujirou shifted his position, pushing his chest up into the hand that cupped his nipple, letting Saitou's knee slide between his thighs to get closer. "I know," he replied directly.

The flare in Saitou's amber eyes might have contained approval, but definitely held lust. When he bent his head this time, there was no restraint in his kiss. He nipped Soujirou's mouth open, delved deep inside, and eased Soujirou to the mat, stripping open his kimono top as he did so. His mouth was biting and forceful and evoked similar savagery from Soujirou, who fought back with lips and tongue and the fingers that raked down Saitou's arms, hard enough to draw blood had they been bare.

Saitou's hands, in contrast, skimmed over his flesh with a light touch. They teased sensation from him with the fingers that tweaked past his nipples, dug into his skin and muscles and pressed down lower, one hand splaying toward his stomach and the knot of his obi. Saitou's teeth sank into Soujirou's neck and he gasped, hands stiffening into claws at Saitou's nape. Close...getting closer...he felt the pulse leaping in his throat and he knew what he wanted. He arched. "Mmm..."

Lips moved over the sensitive line of his neck; teeth grazed at the hollow of his pulse as if Saitou would eat into it, burying his mouth in Soujirou's warmth.

"Ahh..." Soujirou arched again, his legs bent on either side of Saitou's body, which rested heavily on him. With the slightest movement, he gained friction. He writhed, then, glorying in the sensation he could bring about, groaning as his nascent hardness was ground against Saitou's unyielding torso.

"Only that much..." Saitou murmured, propping himself above Soujirou with one arm. His eyes were a gleam in the darkness. "Very responsive." With this cryptic statement he levered himself backward onto his heels, kneeling between Soujirou's splayed legs.

Rendered inchoate, Soujirou cried out with frustration. "That's unfair, Saitou-san," he protested, his words perfectly polite but his voice bleeding through with pure desire. He wanted to be touched.

Saitou said nothing, merely looked down at him as if he were some new lascivious form of art or perhaps the kind of meal he wanted most to devour. A finger ran down the length of his uniform jacket, prising the buttons free, then he discarded the garment with crisp movements that were no less hasty for their precision. With the same hungry look he descended, flattening one of Soujirou's legs to half crush him with his weight, one hand reaching now for the knot at Soujirou's belt.

Soujirou's head made a small thump on the tatami. Saitou's fingers were quick and skilled, pulling free the knot and delving down, pushing aside the negligible obstruction of his fundori to fondle him with an ungloved hand. His methods were direct, closing down on the length of Soujirou's shaft and stroking with his palm up and down, again and again.

In the hot, dark room Soujirou's cry was sudden and stuttering.

He tried to bite it back but his self-control failed him and continued to do so, crumbling under the sure and steady movement of a warm-callused hand shaping a rhythm from him. He arched, convulsive like a body in the throes of an ecstatic fit. Saitou's mouth pressed down on him again and Soujirou responded frantically, teeth and lips and tongue all tearing at Saitou with a desperation he'd never quite realized before. Ever.

Then the hand stopped.

"Wh-what...why?" Soujirou demanded, half-sitting and clawing at Saitou, whose bare hand traced a moist path over Soujirou's fluttering abdomen.

"Very passionate," Saitou said, seeming amused. "You wouldn't deny me my pleasure, would you?"

Soujirou's breath came in gulps and he knew he was flushed, discomposed. Where was his self-control now? "No," he said, and could be proud of the even tone.

Saitou pulled him closer, lips brushing over the sensitive skin just beneath Soujirou's ear. "Do you know what I want, then?"

Soujirou's eyes closed. Saitou's hand was making a lazy path below his waist, dipping down to one clothed thigh then the other, tracking over his stomach again. Dreamily, he responded, "Yes." He had grown up in a harsh reality and it had always schooled him in the basics. Between the factual language used by Chou and Kamatari and Shishio himself he couldn't help but become aware of the particulars of that reality.

"Will you give it to me?" Saitou's teeth grazed his skin but did not bite.

Soujirou inhaled. "Yes," he replied, a little less assertively. Inside, Saitou meant, he wanted to be inside in the only way two men's bodies could be coupled. He wasn't ignorant. He knew it would hurt.

"If you weren't so responsive"-- Saitou's hand rubbed between his legs briefly, making his breath quicken --"I would spend more time on this. But I don't think you'd last long enough."

Surprising them both, Soujirou laughed.

Saitou drew back to look at him, dark brows drawing close together. His hand was a warm and aggravating source of pleasure on Soujirou's hardness, enough movement to keep his breath sped up but provide no further relief.

"You don't need to say anything, Saitou-san," Soujirou said, feeling a bit of the masking smile slip over his face to patch the vulnerable moment. "I'm used to pain."

Now Saitou outright frowned, and his other hand tightened behind Soujirou, fingers digging into the bare skin of his back below his loosened top. "There may be some pain," he acknowledged, "but I am no incompetent lover."

"I-I didn't mean to say you were!" Soujirou stammered, caught off-guard. Laughter bubbled up inside of him again but he didn't want to let it go, thinking Saitou might mistake that as well. He lowered his head.

Saitou's hand left the warm lump of his cock, making him feel cold and abandoned if only for that one thing. That hand tipped his head up, and he met Saitou's glimmering eyes. They were dilated, he noticed, narrow but still dilated.

"Don't look away," Saitou said, voice deep and low.

Soujirou's lips parted.

Perhaps taking it for invitation, perhaps simply because he wanted to, Saitou slanted his mouth down hard over Soujirou's, catching his mouth open, lowering him to the tatami again. His other hand left the small of Soujirou's back and now both hands were pulling at Soujirou's hakama, lifting him up and leaving him exposed as he not only gained access but stripped him entirely.

Soujirou cooperated, lifting his hips wantonly. He was undone and feeling flushed as if he'd downed more than half a bottle of sake.

Watching Saitou, the secret policeman, Saitou, the former captain of the Shinsen Gumi third division, it was impossible to even think of a man whose mouth could move with deceptive gentleness over the curve of Soujirou's shoulder. This was a man whose private self could press Soujirou's legs apart with stroking hands and carefully, ever so carefully, press into him with long sword-callused fingers. It was inconceivable to think of the sardonically ruthless chain-smoking officer in the context of the lover, nicotine-stained fingers dipping into a salve that smoothed away the hurt even as they penetrated Soujirou, one by one.

This was the reality, this hard and cold man shedding one layer to reveal another, taking the role of a lover as he knelt between Soujirou's thighs. Soujirou lay on the mat, forehead dewed with sweat, his harsh breath filling up the room. Saitou's hand was beneath him, fingers stroking within his body to the same cadence as the mouth that enclosed him, wet and demanding as his kiss.

Like water Soujirou yielded, but he was drawing Saitou along in his current.

"Wolf," Soujirou whispered as Saitou lifted his head, licking his lips. His face was slack in a look Soujirou had never seen but nonetheless recognized; lust was easy to know. "You're like a wolf who wants to devour me."

"I'm the wolf that wants to mount you," Saitou corrected, pulling his fingers free of Soujirou with a twisting sort of slither.

Soujirou cried out.

"Do it, then," he invited, breathless. Just as Saitou was someone different in this time and place, he was different here and now. He wanted something for himself.

Saitou took hold of his thighs, hauling Soujirou's body closer, his sulfur-yellow eyes enflamed. He looked almost frightening but what betrayed his passion was the pace of his breathing as he reached down and undid his pants.

Fascinated as Soujirou was, he almost didn't want to see as Saitou free his thick, hard length of its constriction but he couldn't look away. It made the moment real and imminent and then he was being lifted, legs hoisted over Saitou's shoulders in preparation for the ultimate penetration.

What could have been awkward became instead unbearably sexy as Saitou's mouth covered his, liquid fire flowing between them. Something nudged him down below and Soujirou had barely a moment to frown or steel himself as Saitou's tongue plunged into him, filling him, prompting him to duel with darting swipes. He was being devoured by the old wolf, the thought touched him, and he groaned into the attack of Saitou's mouth as the tip, then more, of Saitou's cock slid into him.

Saitou's hands were active as well, teasing away the pain with skilled caresses, fingers toying with his nipples and things lower. When Saitou's hand touched him down there Soujirou was almost surprised to realize he was still hard, had been hard since Saitou's mouth had sucked him down the current of desire.

There was pain, the slow burn of being split open and spitted on the large length of the man braced above him. Saitou's mouth grimaced against his and Soujirou held still, transfixed. But there was pleasure as well, as Saitou had promised.

When his length was fully inside Soujirou he paused, mouth going slack, and pulled away. His eyes glinted with a primitive look, the intimacy of two people coupled, a combination of lust and propriety and something raw that had no name. Soujirou made the smallest of flexing motions. A bead of sweat fell from Saitou's temple, dewing Soujirou's cheek.

"Unh!" He cried out as Saitou withdrew partially and thrust into him again, those amber eyes turning dark. There was a well of untapped force behind those cautious thrusts, Soujirou could feel it...and he wanted it.

He clutched at Saitou's arms. He wanted to batter himself to pieces in this storm. He felt something, more than the sense of vague detachment that had veiled his life for so long, and he wanted it to consume him completely. He wanted the old Soujirou to disappear and a new one, capable of feeling these emotions, to take his place.

Saitou sped up, giving him long, shallow thrusts. The pain that he had felt was shifting into a new sensation, still burning but in an entirely vital way that reached deep inside of him and touched off a node of pleasure. Soujirou groaned, scrabbling at Saitou's shoulders, trying to fit himself up into that rhythm, wanting *deeper* and *more* and all of it *now.*

A mouth crushed down on his again, hard and thorough and filling him with tongue and the aftertaste of smoke and tea and it tipped him into the balance of pleasure, rocking up to meet each thrust that Saitou gave him.

Saitou moved faster, rough undulations that slammed into him and let Soujirou realize how gentle the man had been fucking him until that moment. He rode it, caught in the familiar ground like a battle, thundering through him like blood but so much more passed through him, expanding his senses, making him growl and claw up into Saitou's tight embrace.

There was no more tenderness, only rough breath and the rasp of Saitou's cheek over his, strong fingers that bit into his shoulders and held him in place, the width of Saitou's hard cock that stretched him and pushed inside then withdrew, stabbed inside and took his breath away, withdrew and made him moan.

Any control that either of them possessed was in shreds as they grabbed and thrust at each other with abandon.

Saitou's amber-wolf eyes locked onto him. He didn't look away.

His hand on Soujirou was steady and demanding as everything he did; his thrusts were shorter, faster. They had slid a short distance on the tatami from the moment Saitou had mounted him and kept going as the pressure between their bodies built to a fever-pitch, tension rising.

Soujirou cried out again. He was tumbling from a high place. He arched up even more furiously, inflamed by Saitou's maddeningly steady pace, losing the last of his control as he spent himself in evanescent, flaring gouts of pleasure that spread through him like light distributed to every corner of the dark room. It lit his vision until he could hardly see but still there was Saitou's eyes on him, an anchor, both port and cause for the storm.

He came to himself and the back and forth, the rocking motion that had not yet ceased, though the pace was languorous and less demanding. Above him, Saitou's eyes were heavy-lidded. His breath was quick, almost labored.

"Ahh..." Soujirou closed his eyes at the last, most invasive sensation. He did not resent it. He couldn't possibly bring himself to any feeling but enjoyment.

The thickness of Saitou's cock was spasming within him as the man grew still. They breathed for a long moment in counter-unison. Then Saitou withdrew and he felt empty once more.

Saitou reached for his jacket, retrieving it with a long arm. He lay comfortably beside Soujirou as he pulled a cigarette free, struck it to light, and took a long drag. "That," he said in measured tones, "was impressive."

Soujirou chuckled, face creasing in an uninhibited smile.

"For a virgin."

***

The night was cool and the streets swept clean with rain, a refreshing contrast to the hot bustle of the afternoon. The street was still damp, which Saitou could gauge by the way his shoes sank slightly as he strode out the door of the inn, adjusting the katana by his side in a quick habitual gesture. Now that he had discovered what he came for, the rest was only a matter of time.

As he prowled swiftly through the streets he considered himself to be on duty. He did not think of the sprawl of alluring pale limbs tucked in a quilted blanket that he had left behind. He did not anticipate, but he remembered.

The lodgings of the Tanaka family were just outside the business district in a very prosperous area of town, one near the old castle.

Saitou did not enter by the front door. He did not allow himself to be seen at all as he entered the house quickly and quietly. He was here for one thing, and one alone.

The name the assassin had given him was a familiar one. He had been to this house before...at that time, it had also been for the head of the household.

Candles guttered behind thin shoji screens throughout the house. Saitou moved on feet shod in soundless tabi, having left his shoes prudently at the side entrance he had used. There was little movement in the house -- at this hour, even servants were sleeping. He moved through the well-appointed, spare halls searching for the study, and found it.

"Tanaka Ryuuji," Saitou stated, sliding the study door open all the way. He knew this man, from long ago. He wasn't surprised to find him ordering the deaths of Meiji officials now. After the death of his father, Tanaka Reiji, he had been an important part of the Meiji revolution himself. He had supplied huge sums of money from his family enterprise to fund the growing body of imperialists.

He must have changed his mind when he found his money couldn't buy him the influence with the government that he wanted; the power that he desired most was out of his reach. Saitou would make sure it stayed that way.

The back of the man started violently, and he turned.

"Y-you!" Tanaka gasped, turning ghastly pale even in the flickering light of his study candles.

Saitou unwrapped the burden he'd been carrying in his right hand, and let it thump to the floor. "I bring a message, Tanaka."

The man's face twisted with horror and disgust. He stared at the head of the amputee assassin he'd hired, gagged briefly, then seemed to recover from it. "You can't...you can't do anything to me," he blustered. "My family is old and powerful, and you...you can't prove a thing!"

Calmly Saitou drew his katana. "Tanaka, you forgot that my code needs only the proof I have witnessed."

Tanaka stared up at him, horror wiped away by disbelief. "You...Shinsen Gumi..."

"Aku, soku, zan," Saitou intoned, and his katana raised and fell.

Blood sprayed the shoji beyond in a quick, splattering arc. Saitou observed the body emotionlessly for a moment, then bent to take the assassin's head. He wiped his katana on the man's fine robes.

Justice had been carried out.

***

The drone of the insects and the drowsy heat rising promised for another sweaty day. The weather had been erratic, though, and clouds were gathering on the horizon. Saitou tapped one hand on the worn wooden armrest of his chair and looked out the window. His thoughts strayed, briefly, to the events of the night before.

Last night had been a renewal of sorts. It was a source of amazement to him how two such similar people, Okita Soushi and Seta Soujirou, could hold his attention in such different ways. The feelings he had had for Okita at that time were undeniably distinct from those that had led him to make advances on Soujirou last night. The boy...held his attention, aroused his irritation, caused him to move instinctively to protect him even though he didn't believe in holding up anyone who could stand on their own..

It was also very different from the peremptorily possessive way he viewed Sagara Sanosuke. Now, *there* was a project very much in progress, with a long way to go.

Soujirou was grasping for the truth and he was almost there. Saitou didn't believe that he had an absolute lock on the truth, but both Shishio and Kenshin had put their hand in and he believed he had something to contribute, as well. Let the boy make his own peace with his emotions, but let him do it soon.

"Inspector Fujita," a smooth, somewhat nasal voice interrupted his train of thought, and Saitou stood.

"You must be Chief Inspector Takai," Saitou said, taking in the neatly-uniformed inspector, a man in trim condition and impeccable appearance. "Fujita Goro, of Tokyo division." He smiled disarmingly.

The Chief Inspector gave him a nod, and moved into his office, taking his place behind the blocky wooden desk. "I am Takai."

Saitou sat with an inquiring expression. "You wanted to see me, sir."

Takai gave him a penetrating look. "The head of the wealthy merchant family, Tanaka Ryuuji, was found dead this morning by one of his household servants," he said without preamble. His eyes were shrewd.

"What a tragedy for his family," Saitou said politely.

"Yes," Takai said, drawing out the word. His eyes remained on Saitou's.

Saitou had played this game for years. He made his gaze pleasantly unrevealing. They held the stare as several heartbeats ticked past.

At last Takai looked away, glancing down at the file in his hands. "It's an instinct of mine, but I believe that the case you've come to solve can be considered closed."

"Oh?" Saitou prompted, leaning forward. He was most interested to hear Takai's line of reasoning.

"Another body was found in a poor district of town," Takai said with a grimace. Now he looked worn for a moment, as if he'd been running around since the early hours of the morning -- which he surely had been. "He matched the particulars of the killer we had been searching for; great strength in one arm...and the other arm, which had been amputated, was capped with a kodachi."

"How interesting," Saitou exclaimed. "So that's how it was done."

Takai's dark gaze flicked back to him, and bored into him now with concentration. "Tanaka has been linked to the dead man by the admission of one of his house servants."

"Remarkably quick work," Saitou praised him, fitting his gloved fingertips together.

"Still..." Takai hesitated. "We don't know why Tanaka Ryuuji was killed."

When Saitou spoke, his voice was deeper, more commanding than the conciliatory tones of Fujita Goro. "I think you were right, Chief," he said, giving Takai an unfathomable look. "I believe you could consider the case closed."

"I see." Takai snapped the file shut. "Fujita-san, with all possible respect, get out of my city as soon as possible."

A faint smile touched the edges of Saitou's thin mouth. That was usually the response he got in larger cities when he was on a mission like this. "As it so happens, Takai-san, my orders are to return to Tokyo as soon as possible." He regretted that his haste had created a situation such as this, but it had been important to execute the killers before any more people died.

Takai gave him a neutral look. "Have a safe journey, Fujita-san."

Saitou bowed his head and got up, retrieving his katana from where it leaned against the inspector's desk.

"Oh, and one more thing," the chief inspector spoke up as Saitou was halfway out the door. "The boy, the witness you took, I want him."

Saitou half-turned, and the look in his eye was not so nearly civilized as the veneer of Fujita that he had used up until now. "You can't have him," he responded, perfectly polite, but there was an undercurrent in his voice that was more than dangerous. "That boy is mine."

He left Chief Inspector Takai blinking with confusion, grandstanded in his own office. The man had told him to get out of the city as soon as possible, and Saitou had every intention of obeying that order, after all.

***

Soujirou waited in the lee of the carriage that had been drawn up outside of the police station, heel of his hand resting on the sword that had been gifted to him. He had taken it up again and he thought he knew his own mind what he wanted to do, but he was out of practice. It would take discipline, and more than just the kind that had locked away all emotions but violent enjoyment for that long span of years.

Saitou approached with the tread of the wolf, something of the former captain of the Shinsen Gumi in the way he stalked toward Soujirou.

He had fallen in with dangerous company, Soujirou mused, but that was the kind that made him feel most alive. At any rate, the 'danger' that had manifested, the one that Chou had hinted at, had manifested in a way that Soujirou had been unexpectedly ready to welcome. It was as if they had moved toward that moment since encountering one another by chance, in Yukimura-ko.

Now it was time to leave this place as well.

"Did you get what you came for?" Saitou asked him, amber eyes intent and, strangely enough, intimate. "In Nagoya?"

Soujirou hesitated. "Yes," he replied. "It's not the same as back then. I'm not the same person." He looked up at Saitou.

"Simple enough," Saitou replied, crooking one black brow at him.

"Besides," Soujirou continued, "back then...there was no one to save me. This time, there was." That was all the difference. If it hadn't been Shishio, back then, with his wakizashi...Soujirou would likely not be here today. But if it *had* been this man, or Kenshin, his life would be entirely different today.

That was the reason he had sworn to tear down the flawed foundations of his mind and build entirely new ideals.

He wanted to become the person he could have been. And, in coming here, Kenshin's point had been proved -- whether Saitou would like hearing that or not. He had lived through the shadow of death and come through the other side with the help of the man before him.

"Well," Saitou spoke wryly, "don't grow to rely on it."

Soujirou tipped his head to the side. "No," he replied with cheer. "I'll become strong on my own. But I won't be afraid to ask for help, or take it, if that's what's needed."

Saitou observed him for a long, slightly uncomfortable moment. He often felt as if those amber eyes saw more deeply inside of him than Soujirou would want anyone to look. "Good enough," the man said at last. "The 'you' of now...it's a little bit different. I think you've grown up."

"Oh, I hope not," Soujirou said, closing his eyes and lifting his face to the sun. "If I can't get by on my cute face, I may have to get a job."

Saitou looked amused at that. "Just so you know, my offer still stands."

Soujirou froze. Then he laughed, flipping a hand, pretending as if the matter were as light as a discussion of the weather. "Ahh, Saitou-san, I don't think I'm ready to be conscripted into the secret police." Still, a thought persisted in the back of his head, would it be so bad? Not only to work under this man, but to put his skills to such use.

"Perhaps some day." Saitou inclined his head.

"Yes, perhaps some day," Soujirou echoed, inclining his head.

They looked at one another briefly. There was no way for them to transmit certain thoughts or feelings by the plain light of day, but the look carried all of it unspoken in a flicker of cameraderie. It had been one shared night, gone now but as for the future, who knew? Soujirou knew he would not shy away from such pleasure in the future.

"My carriage can give you a ride to the edge of the city, if you like," Saitou offered. "Or beyond, if you're traveling in the same direction."

"Thank you," Soujirou said, "but no. I'm going to make use of my own strength, in this case."

"Suit yourself."

"Besides," he added ingenuously, "I have a great deal to think about."

He bowed as Saitou climbed into the carriage. The man's eyes lingered on him before he shut the door. A moment later, the driver clucked to his horses and the carriage rumbled off. He waited, hand still on the hilt of his katana, watching it dwindle into the distance.

And why not? he thought. It would be a purpose as good as any other.

First, though, he would earn his way to Tokyo. Again, Saitou had helped him here in Nagoya. It had proved Kenshin's point to him, that life didn't have to be survival of the fittest. Still he wanted to be the strongest he could without relying on others, only doing so when his strength failed. Soujirou smiled.

He had a great deal of practice ahead of him. He could put his killing past behind, while still using a sword. Part of him did look forward to his next meeting with the wolfish Saitou Hajime. And at that time, he would be worthy of the title of 'equal.'

+end+

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