Rurouni Kenshin Fan Fiction ❯ Blood Dawn ❯ Chapter Two ( Chapter 2 )

Disclaimer: Refer to first Chapater.

Ravyn

Present Tokyo

Cold amber.

She started, as if she had been slapped. The stinging in her cheek might have been proof of that; it could have also been an illusion.

It shifted.

Gasping. Pulling for air she watched as frantic eyes, young and brown; calling for her to come back. To not leave.

Her gasping for him...a name, a person who she needed.

He wasn't there.

Kaoru sat up with a start. Her eyes, wide and blue, were startled.

"Misao."

Kaoru forced her shaky body and limbs to roll off the futon. Her long slender legs clad in only a pair of shorts and her upper body covered in a tank top, she managed to get to the door.

Opening it she noticed the light in the kitchen was already on.

"Misao."

The slim girl turned her own eyes wide dark pools of chocolate to her friend. She offered Kaoru a cup of the freshly made tea and both sighed.

"Dreams?" Misao questioned. Kaoru simply nodded.

"Me to."

"Eyes. Amber eyes." Kaoru whispered her voice dark with emotions not even she completely understood. She looked at her long time friend and groaned. "Amber eyes that wanted to devour me, whole."

Misao snorted. "At least you got something besides a voice." Her eyes slide shut with remembrance. "Just a overwhelming feeling of...." She stopped her face flushing.

"Misao?"

They had had these dreams, nightmares, as long as both could remember. They had been sparked at there first meeting in high school. They roomed together in Collage, both waking with the startling realization that they both shared the uncanny feeling of terror.

They where both having nightmares about something that seemed to hide in the shadows.

"He felt like--" She covered her face and flushed again. " Like whatever he was terrified of hurting me. That he felt I was something delicate and needed protection, and there was this overwhelming sense of need." She peeked out from behind her hands. "Is there a reason that I can't find a man like that who is REAL?"

Kaoru sighed. "I wonder sometimes Misao, if maybe we are just deranged."

Misao snickered at that. Nothing really could keep her down for long. It was one of the things that Kaoru most cherished about her. Kaoru narrowed her eyes at her friend and sighed.

"You know I am getting sick of this."

Misao blinked at the rock hard tone her friend was using. Kaoru was always gun ho on something, but this, this was something she had not seen in her friend since she had accepted the fact that her parents where actually gone.

Kaoru had buckled down and supported herself.

Right now Misao was looking at the same determination in her friend's sea dark gaze. "So what are we going to do about it."

Kaoru narrowed her eyes. "Find out who the hell it is and hurt them." Kaoru's eyes narrowed. "Hurt them badly."

Misao gave a half-shriek, half-laugh and looked at Kaoru in amusement. "How in the world do you plan on doing that? Find them and bash their heads in with a wooden stick?"

Kaoru shook her head. "No. There are other more painful ways to hurt someone."

Misao blinked. Kaoru had a nasty temper, but she rarely had the want to hurt someone.

Misao thought back to there collage days and her response to persistent male's who wished to take her out and winced...maybe it wasn't all that rare that she wanted to hurt someone.

~*~

Soujiro Seta tiredly placed his hand to his temples and wondered if he was cut out for this type of work. Ten years on the job and he still felt like he was run over by a truck after every single employee meeting he had.

And that was only the first branch. His hit and miss teams where legendary for their excellence is working against the fast uprising Vampire and Werewolf alliances.

But it was his Search and Rescue teams that he took his pride in. Groups of agents partnered into two's; agents that had no need to slaughter the life of those they worked against, but agents who worked to get the wives and children of the Underworld to safer homes.

But sometimes he still felt like a glorified baby-sitter.

His two best S&R team was currently working on one of the toughest cases he had ever had his hands on.

It was so full of loops holes, webs, and could cause a war if it was not delicately handled. Which was why he was beginning to wish he had someone other than the two women he was forced to give it to.

Delicate.

A word he would use to describe their appearance not there personalities.

"Hey Boss-man! Care for some coffee?" The energetic and outgoing voice always brought a smile, or a shiver, to whomever heard it. Misao on coffee was enough for him to declare the building into a code red emergency.

Where was Kaoru?

"Morning Soujiro-San, feeling up to a day full of Misao-Chan?" Soujiro felt a sense of dread slowly fill his stomach. "Is that a new case for us?"

Her smile reached mega watt proportions as the trap snapped shut. "Did you know Misao has been up since about two this morning?"

A wired Misao.

Hell seemed like more fun.

Motioning the girls to follow him he wondered exactly how they where going to react to something like this. If he knew the two of them, and since he had recruited them himself almost ten years ago, he could say he did, he knew that they where going to be blow a slight fuse.

Fuses and Misao...better not think about it.

Soujiro walked over to his desk and sat down behind it as he watched the two women move to sit down the chairs that sat close to his desk.

"We have a slight problem ladies."

Kaoru and Misao exchanged looks. " Soujiro-San, every conversation we ever have starts out with we have a problem, can you get a LITTLE more creative here?"

Misao nodded agreeing with Kaoru. "Are creative edge is beginning to dull Boss-man!"

Soujiro sighed. "It involves a little girl. She is around three years of age and hybrid."

Kaoru sat up straight at that. "Hybrid?"

Misao blinked. "I didn't think that it was possible! The only way Vampires or Werewolves can have children is with their mate, and that they have to be changed. I thought that the magic of the children would kill the mother otherwise."

Soujiro nodded his head. "Except this time it was a female who decided to mate and decided that such a small thing as mating was not important. Since she is a full Vampire the child lived."

Kaoru let out a low whistle. "But that means..."

Soujiro nodded. "You are aware of why most Vampires are made aren't you?"

Misao nodded the girl for once serious. "Vampires are made because they are born with only certain small amounts of potential. Those are the ones that the urban legends about Garlic and holy water killing them got started on."

"Right." Soujiro said tiredly. "But a human that has high Ki and is taught to use it and THEN turned into a Vampire is something of a super Vampire. The most well known of course is the Battousai."

Kaoru frowned. " I thought the Battousai was just a rumor."

Soujiro shook his head. " I wish he was. The man who was turned into the Battousai is not very well known. But the history books attempt to link him with the Hitokiri Battousai from the Meiji Era. He was supposedly untouchable and something of a legend from those times."

Kaoru blinked. "If they could not kill him then how are we supposed to get near him?"

Soujiro smiled then. "Your not. But you do need to know about him in case he decides to stick his nose into this affair."

Misao blinked. "He is still alive?"

Soujiro laughed. "As is his Master."

"There two of them?" Both women said out loud.

Soujiro nodded. " Yes. Battousai was responsible for the destruction of the majority of Tokyo some 16 years after the Bakumatsu. No is quite sure what sent the man off, but it was rumored to have something to do with a now dead Vampire by the name of Shishio Makoto."

Misao brightened up. "It had to be a woman!"

Soujiro shook his head in a type of denial.

Kaoru frowned. "Why are you telling us all this Soujiro?"

"Because the little girl you have to find is a hybrid of Shishio's family. A vampire of the name Enishi is trying to get his hand on her, and if he does so, because her powers will give him the ability to match maybe even the Battousai because of her mixed blood, he can take her power and use it to raise Shishio from the grave."

Kaoru blinked. "Wasn't this Shishio a very well trained killer?"

Soujiro nodded his head. "And because of the Ki this child will give off, it will make him almost unstoppable. He will do everything in his power to bring the Blood Paths back from the shadows."

Most Vampires did not have the need to drive to drink human blood, not after the purifying years. The higher powered Ki they where the less likely they would need to kick that blood gave them.

The only time it was taken was during the mating ceremonies now, and a mated vampire was sure to be as twice as strong as an unmated on. The link and shared power between the two souls was almost indestructible, Vampires swore they could track a mate that had been killed hundreds of years later.

But not many humans believed in rebirth now.

But the Blood paths could not be reopened. With as many Vampires that there where now a days that would put the human race in a lot of danger.

"So what is our job in this?" Misao questioned, her large green-blue eyes filled with a mixture of determination and anger. A look that meant she was more than willing to do whatever it took.

"Your job is to find that child before Enishi does. Find her and hide her."

"Hide her where?" Kaoru demanded flabbergasted. Of all the contacts they had it the Underworld there was no way they could hide such a child easily.

Soujiro shook his head. " I am not sure. But I will have the other teams keeping their eyes open as well. Its best if I leave it in your hands however since you two have the most contact and the best chance of stopping this mad man."

Misao muttered under her breath the entire way out of his office. "Mad man my foot, more like a dog with rabies, or some type of crazy person with toothpicks glued to his teeth, or..."

Soujiro placed his head on the desk and began to beat it to a rhythm only he could hear.

~*~

Himura Kenshin felt the emotions he had kept hidden for a little over century fighting with in him to break loose and burn his already tentative hold on his soul to shreds.

His amber eyes burned with an intensity he had not felt in so long.

"Kaoru."

He sighed as he allowed her name fall from his lips. It was whispered with the same stark devotion of a lover, a name to be whispered when he was alone to allow it to linger on his tongue.

A name meant to be caressed.

"Kenshin."

The Battousai sighed at the interruption but the man pushed it aside and turned. His face was angled against the dying light and Yahiko saw the dark gold hidden behind his bangs; eyes ringed with dark violet and he recognized the emotion he saw there.

A longing that refused to be held in check any longer.

"She has to be close to twenty-four now if you right about her rebirth." Yahiko tossed out almost carelessly.

Kenshin smirked then. He knew Yahiko's words were more for Yahiko then himself, his need to be reassured that his beloved 'Busu' would be back into his life again and soon.

"She is." His voice was low and controlled. The emotions where hidden once again but where so close to the surface that Yahiko feared he may start going door to door until he found her.

There where a lot of doors in Tokyo.

"How much longer to you plan on waiting till you go and get her Sir Ken?" Megumi asked from the couch where she was perched. Sano sat next to her, his dark eyes amused.

Kenshin turned then and looked over the family he had taken care of over the years. Megumi and Sano mated for almost the entire time he had been without Kaoru.

Yahiko and Tsubame, mated after both where more than adults and Yahiko finally worked up the nerve to tell her about his past and future.

Not long after the blood had stained both Tokyo and the young man's hands if he had remembered correctly. Shishio had met his end at the end of two Katana's and one fist.

Which was why he had brought his little group together after so many years. Not there they where ever apart long, just that this was more important than usual.

Especially with Kaoru out there somewhere, and if he knew her, in the middle of the rising web of deceit.

"Enishi is up to something." Kenshin said softly, his words dark with the hate that he felt.

Unfortunately he could not do anything about Enishi until he had more proof, as one of the main figure heads for the now stable system for the Vampires if he went after Enishi for nothing it open the world back for blood shed.

And even as a part of him craved to tear the world back open by its hinges, he knew that Kaoru would never forgive or allow it. Sometimes you had to bend the rules to get your mate however, and he would not allow Enishi to place her danger again.

He was certain that Shishio had been connected to his first wife's brother. And while he had loved Tomoe, he had not been what he was now, had not been changed by his master, and so he felt none of the strong pull or desires that he felt for Kaoru.

Kaoru would be his this time.

Sano leaned back and thoughtfully tapped his chin with the finger that was not holding Megumi's hand firmly in his. "Enishi. That means that he would be trying to bring the blood paths back, but I am not sure how he would."

Kenshin sighed heavily but Tsubame beat him to it. "There are several way in which he can. There are several key players that he can attempt to bring back, but in order to do that he would need a sacrifice and lots of magic. Something he does not have right now or we would not be having this conversation."

Kenshin smiled at the girl, Tsubame had taken to there world of intrigue faster than any would have thought and become a strong player in Kenshin's world.

"But where would he find someone strong enough to cause problems?" Yahiko questioned. "And WHO would he bring back. I can think of several people that we have killed of the years."

Megumi chewed on her lip thoughtfully. "Sir Ken, do you have any idea's about what he could be up to?"

Kenshin shook his head. " I have a few half formed idea's but I am not sure. I will have to talk to Hiko first. But Tsubame-Chan and Megumi-San, I need something else from you two."

Both women looked at him and nodded.

"There is a group of people who have been going under the name of the Underworld Detectives for around ten years now." Kenshin said softly, "They have been putting a major whole in Enishi's side. I want you two to go and check it out and tell me what you think." He smiled a dark smile laced with amusement.

"A old friend of ours runs it."

The women looked blankly at him.

" Hajime Saitou."

~*~

Saitou sighed as he looked at his subordinate. "You sent the Weasel and Raccoon on the most important mission we have yet to find ourselves with, why?"

Soujiro shook his head. "They are the best we have right now sir."

Saitou looked at him dryly. "Hence the reason we are doing so poorly. It would be better if we just went and told Enishi what are plans where and then ask him what he thinks."

Soujiro bristled. "Listen, Captain, who else are we going to send?"

Saitou smiled tightly. "If they mess this up it's going to be your head. Sending one woman who has this insane idea of not killing and another who is a loud as a chipmunk caught under a metal gate is not my idea of subtle or delicate. I am sure I told you this situation needed to be handled delicately."

Soujiro just smiled slightly at his boss and excused himself.

Saitou shook his head and looked at his watch wincing. Tokio was going to have his head if did not get going to lunch soon.

There was nothing more terrifying than his wife angry.

~*~

Large green eyes shot with small specks of gold hid behind her dark hair and watched as the people around her cursed her and demanded to know why she wasn't where she was supposed to be.

She allowed a small smile of glee to cover her lips.

The pretty lady had told her that the one with blue eyes would help her. And the pretty lady who smelled like those pretty white plums never lied.

The small boned child settled down into her hiding place and watched with eyes that where very wide and muffled her giggles.