Be Careful
What You Wish For
A Rurouni Kenshin fanfiction
By Chibi Tenshi and Kirstian
Chapter
Fourteen
Kaoru swore all she did was
blink. The assortment of bodies she sent
flying somewhere between here and
She began rummaging through the
bodies while scanning for the familiar glint of red hair.
“Aha!” she exclaimed as she pulled
him up.
Kaoru was busy shaking Kenshin as
he oro’ed his way into the land of the awake.
“Kenshin!”
“Oro?”
A happy smile lit her face as she
hugged the little redhead, and practically suffocating him in the process.
“You’re back! I never thought that
an oro would do so much for me,” she babbled.
She paused as if waiting for him to say something suggestive, or throw
bad poetry at her. She blushed heavily
as she thought of something else he would throw at her.
To her surprise, Kenshin was unable
to meet her eyes as he mumbled something.
“Nani? What did you say?”
He continued mumbling. Kaoru wasn’t sure which she preferred – the
over-compensating, Mr. Smooth Lines, who propositioned her at every turn while
boasting about weapon size, or the mumbler that was right in front of her. She also wondered if the weapon size bit was
true, before thwacking her head.
Inappropriate lecherous thoughts – she had been hanging around her
overzealous fan club a bit too long.
Kaoru tilted her head so she could
hear what he was saying. She caught
something like “Gomen de gozaru yo… didn’t mean to… sakabatou is just a
sakabatou…”
She laughed, causing Kenshin to
raise amethyst eyes to meet her face.
“No worries. It wasn’t your
fault. It was that FOX’s fault!!” She shook
her fists at the air and ducked. Being
hit by flying paper at that velocity wasn’t exactly fun.
“Are you sure?” he asked
shyly. His face was blushing so
furiously as if he couldn’t comprehend just how suggestive he had been, though
suggestive was an understatement.
She nodded and hugged him
again. She firmly reassured herself that
it was the sakabatou she felt against her again, nevermind the fact that the
actual weapon was lying a couple of feet away.
And in the back of her mind, her lecherous side thought with great
relish that Kenshin was as good as his boast.
Both turned bright red. Kaoru pushed him away slightly, and muttered,
“You weren’t the only one anyway.”
He growled. “What?” It was as if she were watching him
transform right in front of her. With
each memory of the past couple of days’ events returning to him, his eyes grew
increasingly golden. “I’ll kill them
all.”
She threw herself back against him
and slid her hands down his chest.
Hitokiri-mode dropped, he looked as if he were about to combust
spontaneously.
“Kao-Kaoru-dono!”
She grinned at him wickedly. “I think you’re sufficiently acquainted with
my body to call me Kaoru, don’t you think, anata?” she cooed.
As Kenshin fainted in her arms, she
allowed herself a cheap feel of him.
Yup, not bad… not bad at all.
************
Not too far away, Sanosuke woke up
with a pounding headache. “I say, what
the fuck gave me such a concussion-”
The sentence was never finished as
his face turned an amazing shade of red when he saw Kaoru standing not too far
away from him. “Shit,” he muttered. He wanted to bash his head against the
wall. While he was always fond of Kaoru,
it hadn’t been that kind of fondness.
And if he remembered all the thoughts running through his mind of all
the things he wanted to do with her, he sure was glad that the ex-hitokiri
wasn’t clairvoyant.
He scrambled to his feet and was
about to take off when a forceful yank sent him face first into dirt. “What the f-”
“Shut up, tori-atama,” Saitoh
grumbled between mouthfuls of smoke.
Sanosuke’s eyes widened. Hell, it
looked as if Saitoh was smoking at least ten cigarettes at once.
He scratched the back of his head
in confusion. “I know it’s kinda strange
to find yourself here…”
Fierce golden eyes glared at
him. “Did I not tell you to shut up?”
Apparently, Sanosuke wasn’t the only one with the ability to speak despite
having an object firmly lodged in his mouth, although in this case, Saitoh had
at least fifteen cigarettes wedged in there.
“Er, was he planning on breathing
any air any time soon?” Megumi asked as she approached with a rather
disoriented look on her pretty face.
Sanosuke gave her a lecherous
grin. “Two on two female action huh?”
She thwacked him soundly across the
head. “Shut up!” she shouted, face
bright red. “I still don’t know what
came over me. It was as if suddenly,
Kaoru-chan was the most desirable of all creatures…”
She left the rest of the thought
unsaid. Sanosuke, with a healthy lump on
his head, came up and prodded her. “And
what? Were you thinking of some of the fun things you wanted to do with her?”
This time, Saitoh smacked him
down. “Shut up!” he growled.
Misao walked over, a far cry from
the usual overenthusiastic weasel. “I
feel so hung over…” she moaned.
They all blinked at her. “What!?” they chorused incredulously.
“I’d had all this sake earlier…”
Megumi smirked. “Nice try, weasel girl. You were chasing Kaoru for longer than a
couple of hours.”
Misao coloured and hung her
head. “I’ll never be able to look at
Kaoru-chan the same way again…”
They spotted Hiko getting up, and
brushing off his mantle, with the slightest hint of red on his cheeks.
“Hiko-sama!” Misao crowed,
delighted at the opportunity to taunt him.
“Shit,” he muttered as he put his
mantle back on. “What do you want, weasel
girl?”
“Stop calling me that!”
Hiko glared down at her from his
imposing height. “Whatever you’re about
to say, just shut up. I don’t want to
hear it.”
“Say what? That you wanted your
baka deshi’s woman? And you wanted to show her your ryu?!”
He roared at her. “Be quiet, weasel girl!” His cheeks looked as
if they had been rouged. “And as I
recall, you were suggesting some pretty creative uses of your kunai.”
Misao turned an even brighter shade
of red. “That was only because Sanosuke
was saying all that stuff about the mobility of his zanbatou!!!”
All eyes flashed towards Sanosuke
as he turned an unhealthy shade of red.
“Well, err…”
Megumi chuckled. “I thought the zanbatou didn’t have a wide
range of motion. Rather stiff in fact…”
“Megumi!” they all yelled at her,
and Megumi ducked in time to avoid the kunai flying at her head.
“Is it just me or does it smell
like the forest is on fire?” Tae muttered as she grabbed her head and walked
over unsteadily.
They all gestured to the smoking figure
behind them, who by all appearances looked as if he had shoved a cigarette
factory in his mouth.
“Please tell me it was all a bad
dream,” Tae continued.
They all shook their heads. Sanosuke was giving her a particularly lewd
wink. “Shut up!” she screamed as she
flung a pan over.
“There are more uses to a pan” was
all Sano got out before getting decked by it.
“Cast iron,” she mumbled, trying to
force out the unwanted images her overactive imagination had conjured up.
The group grinned collectively.
“We should try to put this behind
us, and forget.” Which of course was
like telling someone not to think of pink elephants on a mad stampede.
“This is impossible!” Misao
groaned. “Why couldn’t that FOX thing
take away our memories too? Why must we remember!?”
Sanosuke said with a thoughtful
look upon his face, “I think it would be cleansing for us if we all shared our
visions of what we wished to do to Kaoru.”
All hands came down to smack on
him, only to be beaten out by Saitou.
“Why don’t you just shut up?!” Saitou roared, eyes flaring a molten
golden, and him looking rather like Smoke-Man.
“Ano, Saitou-san, do you think
you’re smoking a wee bit too much?” Misao asked while remaining out of beating
distance from him.
“I’m doing just fine,” he growled
out. “It helps me clear my mind.”
Sanosuke, with more than a few
lumps growing from his head, a swollen eye, and bruised cheek, said, “Unless of
course you took into account the 101 uses he had for cigarettes.”
It was a while before anyone heard
any words from Sanosuke.
“I’m leaving,” Saitou announced
after he beat Sanosuke up. If anyone
noted that he had stopped smoking after what Sanosuke said, nobody said a
thing. And really, did anyone want to
stop him?
Murmuring in agreement, the rest of
the prostrate bodies began to rise from the forest floor, generally suffering
from major blood-loss, cranial damage and something a hell of a lot like a
hang-over. Especially when a few of the
less wise bodies began to mumble, "I must
have been drunk… that's gotta be why she looked so sexy…"
Those ones ended up with a few more
swift punches to the head and went down dreaming of sake.
Fuming as she pulled back her
sleeve, Kaoru snarled, "just because the FOX took back the wish doesn't
mean that there wasn't a bit of truth to the whole thing, you know!"
After a moment of overwhelming
silence, a chorus of voices responded bitterly, "like we'd ever want a
tanuki tomboy like you" - before
the mass remembered the last two days, cursed under their collective breaths,
and then began the trudging journey back home, whether it was to Kyoto, Tokyo,
Hiko's little shack on the mountain, or just a random village that had bad
enough luck to have been dragged into his little fiasco.
Grumbling to herself, Kaoru huffed
her breath out her cheeks and turned around, storming back over to
Kenshin. Taking the collar of the
swirly-eyed and colour-blind samurai's pink gi in her fist and hefting him over
her shoulder, grimace turning into a slight smile when she heard him oro again,
Kaoru blew her bangs out of her face and took one moment to gaze into the
sunlight that was beginning to spread through the forest, a accurately-placed
beam of dusty white light managing to slip through the branches to reveal the
way out of the brush, the trees taking on a less frightening appearance in the
daylight as birds flew above her head.
A new day had started; the sun had
risen, the air was fresh, the sky was a cloudless, eternal blue that stretched
on forever in every direction, heralding the hoard of Kaoru's ex-followers
towards their homes holding their heads and wondering what the hell had hit
them, a warm brush of wind drifting past their aching bodies and further on,
through the grasses and over the waters, scaling the sheer face of a cliff, the
clothing of the person perched on the edge rustling in the breeze. The cosmos was even back in order - or, well,
as much order as a cosmos can be in - although Shinomori Aoshi, perched atop a
the sharp precipice, the wind whistling around him, did not seem to be able to
appreciate that fact.
"Calm blue oceans," he
muttered to himself, rubbing his temples.
"Cleanse the mind, cleanse the spirit, cleanse the body… out with
the bad vibes," as he exhaled, "in with the good… mind is an empty
vessel…"
Only to remember his failed pick-up
line.
"CALM BLUE OCEANS," he gritted through his teeth, the wind
slipping past him. "One with the
cosmos… one with the cosmos."
Ah, yes. The day was new - and it was normal.
Kaoru could sense it on the warm breath of fresh air that returned to
her as she stood in the forest, admiring the view.
She almost wished Kenshin was awake
to see it with her, but caught herself just in time.
Cursing under her breath, she
turned and readjusted the human cargo on her back, not surprised to her another
muffled 'oro', Kaoru stormed back towards Kyoto again, eager to get on the
first train home. "Stupid
FOX," she snarled, her voice hanging in the forest, foot coming down to crush
the last paper that had sent her sprawling, purposely grinding the 'FOX' header
into the dirt. "And good
riddance."
"Ororororoo," the man on
her back added as they disappeared over the boundaries of the forest.
The forest, finally devoid of the
human and hellish intruders, was silent, the happy chattering of the birds and
squirrels oddly absent, the sun rising a bit higher in the sky to filter
through the branches and cast oblong and strange flickering shadows over the
earth. The wind, suddenly turned cold, slipped
through the icy branches silently, skimming the earth but not moving a leaf -
until the FOX letter that she had stomped on quite profusely was picked up by
the phantom breeze. Lifted into the air,
it spun round and then hovered for a moment, the dirt and dust falling to the
ground again - and then, on a malevolent air, took off into the sky.
Somewhere, there was the deep,
echoing, trademark laugh of the evildoers, the sound an eerie break in the
forest's silence, as the paper returned to its origin.
"NUMBER ONE RULE AT FOX -
NEVER PLAY FAIR," the voice spoke, before rumbling back off into the
sinister laughter…
… which was cut off quite suddenly
when Sanosuke awoke, stuck in the middle of the forest. "What the hell was that?" he
groaned, rubbing his head - before realizing that he was alone. In a forest.
Without anyone to point him in the right direction. Quite a familiar situation. "Which way is Tokyo?" He cried,
putting his hands to his head.
"THATAWAY," the voice
replied.
Blinking, Sanosuke looked around,
before shrugging and getting to his feet, following the sudden clearing that
had formed in the brush in front of him.
"Thanks, man."
"NO PROBLEM."
Sanosuke made sure, on his way,
though, just to knock over some trees.
Since he was in a forest, and that's obviously what they were there for,
anyway.
Once he was gone, the executives at
FOX mumbled amongst themselves, "WE SHOULD GIVE THAT ONE A SHOW. BOB VILLA CARPENTRY MEETS MEIJI
GLADIATOR."
"WHAT ABOUT THAT OTHER
ONE? THE SPEEDY SCARY ONE. A SPEED RACER REMAKE IS ABOUT DUE. COULD CALL IT 'THE REALLY FAST BUT NOT VERY
FURIOUS, OR ANYTHING ELSE FOR THAT MATTER'.
IT'D BE A HIT WITH THE ANGSTING ANTI-TEENS."
After a period of silence, though,
the voice gave an audible shudder.
"THAT KID GAVE EVEN US, THE
GREAT FOX PRODUCERS, THE HEEBIE-JEEBIES, AND WE MADE 30 SECONDS TO FAME. LET'S
JUST FINISH WITH THE LAUGHING AND GET ONTO PLANNING THE NEXT MEET THE MARKS EPISODE, 'YOUR DAUGHTER KICK MY DOG'."
And so, FOX did just that.
************
"Ara - ara - ara - ara -
ara!"
Shaking his head, Soujirou stopped
on the road, blinked and wiped his nose.
"I must have caught a cold from everyone. That would explain why they all were acting
so oddly around Kamiya-san today. Oh
well. What would Himura-san do," he
sighed happily, slinging his pack back over his shoulder and tapping his foot
on the road, kicking up dust, before smiling and continuing on into the rising
sun. "… I really do wish Himura-san would have done a bit
more, though. At the rate he's going at, I'm never going to
finish puberty, or even get laid."
And for one moment, the feral
cat-like flash in his eyes wasn't from the sun, and the smirk that tilted his
lips wasn't as innocent as usual.
After all, he was an eighteen-year old boy, and you know what they say.
THE END - or is it?
… hah, you only wish.
_______________________________________________
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.