Be Careful
What You Wish For
A Rurouni Kenshin fanfiction
By Chibi Tenshi and Kirstian
Chapter
Eleven
Warm arms came around her shoulders, turning her
against his chest.
Kaoru groaned inwardly as she slipped into
consciousness, the few hours of sleep she had managed to grasp gone in a
fleeting moment. The feel of strong,
muscled arms as she lifted her hands to push herself away was at the same time
assuring, but frustrating. Kenshin.
"You again," she mumbled, "how'd
you get in? I hit you pretty hard... and
I barred the door, too, come to think of it..."
A quiet chuckle rumbled beneath her ear, but he
did not respond; and, as gentle hands came up to rub her back, Kaoru sighed
sleepily.
It sure was a lot more comfortable with him,
instead of crammed in that corner - but how long would this last until he tried
to cop another feel?
"Nn, just let me sleep," she grumbled,
pushing weakly against him, before collapsing onto his shoulder again. "Well, fine, but watch your hands. No touchy."
Still muttering to herself, Kaoru made slight
argument as he pulled her into his lap and took one of her hands in his, warmth
and comfort enfolding her. Nestling
against him, she pulled her knees up and rubbed her foot along the inside of
his leg.
"Mmhn." Turning her face into his neck, she said
drowsily, "... didn't know your legs were that muscled..."
She was almost asleep again when his hands
became a bit more curious - the one rubbing over her shoulders moving downwards
past the small of her back, and continuing.
"... that is it," she growled, snapping awake - and she was dumped
unceremoniously back onto the floor in the darkness as her punch sent him
spinning through the roof and into the clouded sky above. "WHAT DID I TELL YOU?! NO TOUCHY!!"
Stomping her feet as she stood, Kaoru stormed
towards the door - and then stopped as it exploded inward with the force of a
dragon - or more appropriately, with the force of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu.
"What?!
What happened?!"
"K-Kenshin," she stammered, blinking
wide-eyed at the man standing in the slivers of the doorway - and not at all
flying through the sky, as he should have been, as she looked behind her at the
hole in the ceiling. "I-it
wasn't...?"
Decisively relieved to see her unharmed - and
with her yukata drooping off of her shoulder as a plus - Kenshin sighed and
sheathed the sakabatou. "Kaoru, my
love, you frightened sessha with all that noise."
"B-b-but, it wasn’t...?"
Moving over to her and draping his arm around
her shoulder, Kenshin chuckled, the baritone of his voice rumbling in her ear
as she shot her head around from him to the mess of shingles and dust on the
ground where she had been lying.
"You really shouldn't scream like that, you could wake the dead,"
he drawled, and Kaoru forgot her confusion as he caught her chin in his fingers
and stayed her face, staring into his warm and very inviting violet eyes. Really, he could make her heart pound
sometimes - especially as the hand on her shoulder slipped further down to
clasp her hip, drawing her closer.
"Such a loud one," he admonished tenderly, and she almost fell
against his chest. The masculine smirk
he was wearing wasn't helping - such looks that could make her weak at the
knees, and she was still half-asleep, to boot.
"Although," he continued, a brow rising as he moved the hand
on her chin to gently brush the hair away from her forehead, "I always
figured you would be a screamer."
The comfortable hold of his arm shattered when
it moved down to a bit less-comfortable pinch on her behind - and his words
sunk in, she stuttered a moment, trying to figure out what he meant, before her
face went absolutely red.
It was probably just the dark of night hiding her murderous face from him as he
rumbled, "you do have quiet a set of lungs on you, love... never mind that
mouth of yours... which, sessha is sure is good at more then just being
loud..."
Frustration, weariness, confusion, and pure,
unbridled rage coalesced inside her - and Kenshin was rewarded with a scream,
all right, one that rang clear and loud and ear-piercingly shrill all the way
to
"That's my girl," Kenshin chirped
after making sure his ears weren't bleeding - even though with the beating she
had given him, he was sure to be bleeding elsewhere.
Chest heaving, she stormed out through the
doorway, her breath still loud in her ears - but as the sound fade and she
caught her bearings, a new but not at all unfamiliar noise greeted her, the
rampaging population still distant but ever present.
"You said they wouldn't be here until the
afternoon," she cried to Kenshin, who hobbled out beside her and reached
for her shoulder for support - she told herself it was just an accident that
his hand had slipped and landed on her chest.
"Kenshin no baka!"
Even as she pummelled him back into the ground,
he sang eagerly, "not to worry, sessha will take care of them in a
hurry!"
"And WHAT IS WITH ALL THE STUPID
RHYMES," she cried, about to pull her hair out - or maybe his again, since
it seemed less painful for her, and more painful for him.
"Sessha can try a different one de gozaru
yo!" Kaoru paused, holding onto the
collar of his gi, as he cleared his throat.
"... sessha's hair is red..." He looked thoughtful for a
moment, "... Kaoru's eyes are blue..."
She thought for a fleeting moment that he would
say something terribly romantic; "please say you love me too", or,
"sessha just wants to tell you that I love you".
Instead, he gave her one of his adorable rurouni
grins and chimed, "may sessha have the honour of doing you? Please?"
Her eye twitched - she'd have to get that
checked out.
"Pretty please?"
As she punted him towards the approaching crowd,
he pleaded, "with sashimi on top?"
"I can't stand this anymore! You'd
think," Kaoru screamed as she abandoned the temple, "you'd think I'd
like all this attention! I could have
people fanning me and pampering me like some sort of goddess, with a pretty
rurouni there to keep me company, but-" She stopped for a moment. "Wait, why didn't I think of that
earlier? ARG! This is SO
FRUSTRATING!!! What have I EVER done to deserve this!? All I wanted was one! ONE!
One little red-headed ex-hitokiri - that's all! That's all I ever wanted!! Is that really
so much to ask!?"
Storming through the brush, Kaoru stopped in her
ranting and winced, hopping around as she looked down at her ankle where a
sharp branch had scraped her skin.
"... the hell, what's this branch doing here?" Reaching down to throw the stick away and
tend to her ankle, she grumbled to herself - and then her eyes caught the
trunks of the trees around her.
"... I never went into a forest," she mumbled quietly,
straightening, the wind whistling eerily through the leafless branches of the
spiny trees, a small whirl-wind of red and orange leaves tossing her hair
around her. "... and it's too early
for autumn..."
Something was terribly wrong - and unless she
had been walking for hours now, which she was sure she hadn't been, Kaoru was
absolutely positive that the sun shouldn't have been rising over the horizon
like it was through the trees, a hot yellow and orange glowing through the
trees - and her brow furrowed. No, the
sun shouldn't have been rising like that - especially coming from the west.
"What in the world is going on," Kaoru
whispered under her breath, fear and uncertainty mounting in her chest as she
took a step backwards as the light ahead seemed to pulse, the forest growing
unusually warm for the middle of the night.
When the light flared, though, she turned and
started to run - only to skid to a stop through the brush.
Somehow, Kenshin had missed one - and squatting
on his haunches in the cover of the night was Saitoh, a cigarette dangling from
his lips.
"S-Saitoh," she stammered, retreating
away from him - but, for the most, he seemed oblivious to her as he tilted his
head back and howled like a true wolf of Miburo.
If that wasn't enough - the forest, which had
been ominously silent before hand, seemed to shudder in the slight breeze, and
when she caught the wisps of air, the smell of ash tickled her nose and faint
music began to drum in her ears. Saitoh
howled again, and she spun around to flee again and screamed as arms took her
shoulders and pulled her into the shadows of the hole in a large tree, a hand
covering her mouth.
Behind her, Soujirou mumbled in an unaffected
tone, almost like he was recanting an eerie fairy-tale legend, "darkness
falls across the land, the
Managing to pull his hand away from her mouth,
Kaoru whispered back hoarsely, ignoring the continued rhyming, "you -
you're the one who got into the room with me, aren't you?! What are you talking about?!"
"And whosoever shall be found without the
soul for getting down," he carried on, glancing down at her, "must
stand and face the hounds of hell and rot inside a corpse's shell..."
"Wh-what do you mean?!"
A faint smiling playing on his lips, Soujirou
motioned for her to be quiet and pulled her a bit tighter against him into the
hollow of the tree. She was about to
argue with him and deck him one for trying to man-handle her at such a time,
when he pointed out - and she looked out into the forest to see the hundreds of
people that had been chasing after her stumbling through the brush towards the
beckoning light, lurching forward - Kaoru spotted Sanosuke, Megumi and Tae in a
moment flat, and almost screamed for him when Kenshin appeared, following Hiko,
but Soujirou covered her mouth again and shook his head. "The foulest stench is in the air,"
he whispered into her ear happily, "the funk of forty thousand years...
and grizzly ghouls from every tomb are closing in to seal your doom... and
though you fight to stay alive, your body starts to shiver."
Her heart was hammering inside her chest as she
stared at the milling people - and then the light exploded, a loud crack like
thunder shaking the forest. Her scream
was lost in the noise, and she huddled against the boy, squeezing her eyes
shut.
The boom dissipated into the air, which was
suddenly a dry burn against her skin, and as she took a shuddering breath,
amazed that her lungs still worked, Kaoru smelled brimstone and the
unmistakable pungent scent of sulphur.
Into her ear, Soujirou whispered quietly, the
music stopped dead and only the sound of her heavy breathing, her pounding
heart and his voice to greet her, "... for no mere mortal can resist...
the evil of the thriller."
Her eyes snapped open and she looked back at
him; but his eyes were not on her, and, slowly, Kaoru turned around to follow
his gaze, her head shooting forward and jaw dropping as she caught the movement
in the woods.
Without a note of emotion in his voice, the boy
behind her nodded his chin and said, "Shishio-san."
_______________________________________________
Disclaimer: We own no part of Rurouni Kenshin or any other presences, other then
Tenshi and Kirstian themselves, who will appear in this fic. If we did, Kenshin wouldn't be as clueless as
he normally is, and he'd be called Tub-by.
In any case, we have no money. We
spent it all on Sesshoumaru's spandex Halloween getup. XD So
don't sue. We'll sick Vash on you.