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 Tokyo and back again, reverberating through the ground around them down to the very bowels of Hell itself.

 

"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 midnight hour is close at hand..."  She twisted her neck to look back at him, eyes wide and fearful as he stared past her at the growing brightness, "creatures crawl in search of blood to terrorize your neighbourhood..."

 

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."

 

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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.