Rurouni Kenshin Fan Fiction ❯ The Way of the Warrior ❯ The End ( Chapter 2 )

The Way of the Warrior
Story by Fat Cat Buyo
Chapter Written by SmaugRyu

First, we’re gonna start this chapter (THE FINAL ONE) with a widdle disclaimer. I don’t own Rurouni Kenshin, and I don’t own this chapter. For Christmas, I presented one of my good friends, Ryu (aka SmaugRyu on FFN), with this fanfic. She liked it and I told her that the reviewers expected more, and I asked her how she wanted the story to end. She was indecisive about it, so I told her “Hey, write the chapter yourself!” and she agreed. But that posed as a slight problem. How would she get it up on FFN? So, its going here, as chapter two... the second and last chapter.

So hah, you can’t report me, or anything because I have “SmaugRyu”’s full permission to have this here.

So, merry Christmas to you all, happy new years, and... Happy Finals Week to those who go to my High school, or are having finals this week as well xP

Now, onto the fanfic. (and just to let you know, any further reviews can and will be sent to SmaugRyu (smiles)

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Kenshin gasped and jumped out of the path of the girl’s blade. He looked at the unconscious man and realized that he would have to draw the fight away from him if he wanted to prevent unnecessary injuries or deaths. This girl certainly seemed capable of killing innocents if she would use someone to draw him out. He slowly drew the fight away by jumping backwards; forcing the girl to move in the same direction he jumped if she wished to kill him, which she did. I wonder why…

“Why don’t you fight back?” She asked, swinging once again where Kenshin had been, and moving foreword to where he was now. “You had absolutely no trouble knocking out a drunk man when a girl was in danger, so is it different now that it is a man in danger?” She paused angrily. “You have no reason to treat any woman differently in a fight just because you’re afraid to harm her. Or do you treat men just the same?? I doubt it, since you were obviously still alive after fighting Jin-e and Shishio.” She suddenly stopped, in both her tirade and her swinging. “Or is it simply that you have a plan?” She looked about, considering this thought, until she noticed how far she was from where they had started. “I see. You want to save not only worthy folk, but also the town drunk.” She looked thoughtfully from the unconscious man; to the one she was fighting, then back again. She turned her back on Kenshin, now quite sure
that he wouldn’t dare attack her, and walked back to the unconscious man. She stared down for a while, then angrily slashed down, her blade landing where Kenshin’s had when the man was conscious. “Let this death also weigh upon your soul, and I plan on killing you. Just to let you know.” She cleaned the blood off her blade, and dropped the cloth when she was startled by police whistles suddenly sounding very close to where they where.

“Another time, then you shall die.” She ran off, in the direct opposite direction of the whistles, leaving the blood stained cloth. Kenshin picked it up, and looked at the odd pattern, but was promptly pulled out of his thoughts by the police chief.

“Himura! What-” He stopped talking when he saw the whole scene. Kenshin was standing over a dead body, which looked to have been killed by Kenshin’s own sword style, looking very surprised to see him while holding a bloody cloth in his hand. “What did you do?” He whispered, not believing what his eyes saw.

“What did I? I did nothing! I tried to save him! A girl was here…she tried to kill him! Well…she did kill him…but I didn’t do it!” Kenshin sighed and kicked himself mentally. It sounded like someone covering up an ill-planned murder, not someone tell the truth about a girl who was out for his life. There was no evidence at all that the girl had been here, or existed at all, and there was plenty of evidence against Kenshin.

“Himura…I regret to tell you this, but you need to come down to my office for questioning…” Kenshin sighed again and followed the police chief away from the scene, and back towards the police offices as he tried desperately to think of how to convince the police that he was not guilty of taking this man’s life and breaking his vow.

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“So, a girl who is wandering around, openly possessing two katanas, tried to kill you, killed the man, wiped his blood on the cloth you were holding, and dropped it where you picked it up. And after she had dropped the cloth, she ran way when she had heard the police whistles?” Kenshin nodded dumbly, knowing that it sounded farfetched. “We got a call about a man hurting a poor girl. My theory is, that you heard her, tried to save her, accidentally killed the man, and now you’re trying to pin the murder on the poor girl you tried to help.”

Kenshin blanched. “I would never do something like that,” he whispered in a shocked tone, “I didn’t even kill the man!”

“Right, the evidence points otherwise, however, and we really can’t believe such a far-fetched story in a murder investigation. The facts speak more reasonably and logically than you do right now.”

“Logically? I have a vow never to kill! How is the evidence pointing to me logical?”

“Well…I do admit you’ll have to stretch your imagination a bit…but you were once Battousai, is it not possible that you lost control of yourself for a bit?”

Kenshin sighed in defeat. He knew that people would believe that. “What if I found the girl who actually killed the man, and if she says that she did kill the man, then I can go free.” And I can figure out why she killed him…

The police chief thought it over. He highly doubted that Kenshin had
actually killed the man, it was very out of character for him, and with a
chance to catch the real killer…

“Fine. Except, you only have a week.”

Kenshin stood up. “A week may be a bit hard to do, but I’ll manage.” And then he left, leaving a stressed police officer behind, trying to figure out how he was going to handle this case if his main suspect was free for a week, and how he was going to explain this to the rest of the police force.

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“Kenshin! Where have you been??” Sanosuke asked as he let Kenshin into the dojo.

“I was talking to the police chief, that I was.”

“Well, while you were talking to an old police chief, a young, pretty girl has been here waiting for you!” Kenshin froze, his eyes widened, and he ran into the dojo. He found Kaoru, Yahiko, and Megumi talking with a girl. Not just any girl, but the one that had tried to kill him.

“Why, hello Battousai.” Kenshin took a step back, his eyes wide in fear for the safety of his friends, and the girl took his fear as an invitation to begin a fight. She lunged forward and drew her sword from its sheath in a mimic of the battoujutsu. Kenshin managed to jump out of the way, and drew his own sword. He moved to attack her, sure that she had just attempted a battoujutsu, his best attack, and that she would be
vulnerable, when she did something completely unexpected. She turned with the sword, swinging out of his attack range. Kenshin winced as her sword bit through the arm he had used to protect his side. Once the blade had cleared his arm, she thrust it forward. He moved aside and it cut the edge of his shoulder. The girl’s eyes widened slightly as she felt herself moving forward, out of attacking range. She swung the blade down and slightly to the left, which made her turn to the left with it, swinging her around to face Himura.

“Why are you trying to kill Kenshin??”

The girl narrowed her eyes as if the mere mention of the horrible wrong-doing angered her greatly. She turned her gaze towards Kaoru. Her eyes were full of anger, hatred, and wounded pride. She suddenly disappeared, and Kenshin barely had enough time to block her attack.

She’s faster now…She must have become even angrier when Kaoru asked about her motives…

Kenshin mentally sighed, and finally began taking this fight seriously, as a life-or-death match. He noticed that her swings lacked the absolute power of a man’s swing, but she was much more agile than a man, and often used her agility to strike where people could not easily block, like the back. Pain suddenly filled his body as he saw a red blade swing away from his back. He saw it flying back towards him and blocked it. It quickly changed its path and struck his arm, drawing more blood and strength from the former Hitokiri.

The girl jumped away from her opponent and carefully analyzed her opponent’s status. He’s weakening…I expected him to be much stronger…have much more stamina…

“Stop!” Megumi yelled, “His body is deteriorating from his fight with Shishio!! He can’t fight anymore!”

The girl paused, her sword in mid-strike, and seemed to have been suddenly turned into stone. Kenshin took a few deep breaths and tried to figure out what had happened, and what she would do now. He moved his head slowly, and noticed that her eyes followed. It was obvious to him that she had no intention of letting him go alive. He took a small step to the left, and her sword instantly flew to his neck. The tip was not even a millimeter from his jugular vein. Kenshin decided it was in his best
interest to stay still. He looked into her eyes, which were still watching him like a hawk, and found that he could not figure out what she was going to do. Her eyes were filled with inner turmoil, doubt, anger, and a desperate race to figure out what to do now. He felt the sword suddenly leave his throat and he saw her put her arm out to her left, and rest the dull edge of the blade upon it. He noticed that her fingers were not really holding the hilt anymore, but were gently resting upon the leather-bound hilt. It looked much like she was letting him leave, but he could tell from her eyes that she had no such intention.

Sanosuke could take no more. He ran towards the girl, his fist and arm ready to punch, but never got the chance to attack.

The girl had noticed he was coming as soon as he had taken a step, and had moved her arm a bit. When Sanosuke got near her, her fingers suddenly gripped the hilt and swung it down, and the sword swung up off her arm, and then down towards Sanosuke’s back. The force of her swing, the combined force of gravity and her strength, cut through him, and his severed halves fell to the ground as the girl’s sword had reached just under her arm. She changed her grip on the blade and looked down at Sanosuke with a smirk on her face.

Kenshin watched in stunned horror as Sanosuke’s blood poured from him, and he realized that Sanosuke was not quite dead yet. Sanosuke’s hand reached toward the girl, as if to hold her back so Kenshin could be saved, and the girl cruelly stomped on it and ground it into the floor until all the bones were broken. Sanosuke coughed up blood when he opened his mouth to scream. The girl brought the tip of her sword over until it rested on his chest, right where his heart was, changed her mind, and stepped toward Kenshin. Sanosuke tried to do something to help his friend, but found he couldn’t as his world began fading to black, slowly and painfully, as his close friend was about to be killed.

The girl had a smile on her lips as she approached the horror-stricken wanderer. She’d waited for this for so long, trained until she was sure her skills could destroy Battousai the manslayer, was so patient for this fight, even when her whole body wished only to go out and kill the an who dared to insult her, openly say that she was below him because she was a woman. And just to make sure she would destroy him, she had perfected a style of fighting that could flow from any attack to any other one, keeping her opponent from attacking her. It mattered not that her arms lacked the natural strength that men had, her legs were far stronger and faster than any man’s,and she put that advantage to use. It mattered not that the Battousai’s attacks could kill anyone with one swing, because he would never get a chance to attack. And now, as she came closer to the man that she had declared her one true enemy, she would prove that it was not the girl that needed saving, but the man.

Kenshin watched the girl come closer with growing anger. She had killed two men right in front of him, not even a day apart, and one of them had been his good friend. And she was smiling. She suddenly grabbed Kenshin’s neck and lifted him up. He gasped as all of his body weight began pulling on his neck.

“Battousai, you were wrong.” She positioned her sword so it was on his neck, where her hand was not, and gently poking his skin. “It is the man that needs the savior, not the woman.” A gun suddenly went off, and the girl coughed up blood. Kenshin could see a bullet wound in her chest, and the blood staining her clothes darker. “See you in Hell.” She pushed her sword through his neck as police ran to subdue her.

And so ended the life of Kenshin Himura, formerly known as Battousai.

--Owari (the end)--