Nightime. The Thugs of the Week ™ are busily engaged in villainous wrongdoing. Suddenly a voice like velvet over steel rings out through the darkness.

"Stop de gozaru yo! Sessha cannot permit you to continue with this heinous activity."

The Chief Thug is unimpressed. How dangerous can one scrawny-looking little rurouni be? In typical thick-headed fashion, he motions his boys to attack.

Shwing! The sakabatou erupts from it's saya with a metallic rasp. Ting-clang-rasp-clang! Blows are exchanged at near-lightening speed. As the steely music fades, Kenshin rises from his trademark crouch to stand spotlighted in the glow from an upstairs window. Sakabatou and saya become one once more, and slowly the rurouni turns, expecting to find his foes stunned, properly chastised, and moaning over their wounds.

They were definitely stunned. And some were moaning. But not a one appeared chastised. Mostly... well, mostly they appeared to be having trouble keeping a straight face.

"Oro?" Kenshin hoped his voice didn't sound as plaintive to their ears as it did to his. Rurouni and thugs stood facing each other in the empty street for long moments, until finally a minor underling cleared his throat.

"Ano... aren't you Kenshin? The famous rurouni? Formerly Hitokiri Battousai?"

Reluctantly, Kenshin nodded.

"Oh." The underling shuffled his feet awkwardly, then ventured, "You're not what we expected."

The rurouni relaxed. "Sessha gets that a lot. You thought sessha'd be taller, ii de gozaru ka?"

"No," another man grunted, "we didn't expect your gi to be held closed by a diaper pin, complete with..." he leaned forward to peer at Kenshin's shirt, "complete with a cute widdle tanuki head."

Kenshin flushed as red as his hair, his shoulders slumped, and the sheathed sakabatou hung limp in his hand: the very picture of dejection. "It's not my fault de gozaru yo!" he protested, "It was all Kaoru-dono's idea!"

A few sage heads nodded: Women and their infernal notions were always bringing great men low. "Made you wear it, did she?" the Chief Thug asked sympathetically.

"Yes!!" Kenshin's hand tightened on the saya, idly swinging it back and forth as he looked at his feet. "'Kenshin!' she said to me in that way she has -- nobody else says my name the way she does -- 'I'm tired of you showing off your muscles to every eligible woman in town! It's not decent!' But it's not like I was doing it on purpose!"

"That's right!" agreed another thug, currently displaying his chest in its entirety, "No one can help what happens to their clothes in a fight!"

The flame-bright head shook back and forth in a decidedly put-upon fashion. "Not according to Kaoru-dono. 'My practice gi doesn't fall open the way yours does!' she said. 'If you're not doing it to attract women, then why are you being such a big baby about a little pin!'" He sighed. "'Because it makes me look stupid' didn't sit well with her as an answer, so here I am." The thugs made some soft sounds of commiseration, but it didn't seem to make the rurouni feel any better. He began walking back toward the dojo, the end of his saya dragging along beside him, striking a pathetic little note against the ground.

"Oi! Weren't you going to send us to jail or somethin'?" It was a mark of how Kenshin's plight had struck them: the underling who had first addressed him was willing to face Saitoh if it would cheer him up.

"Let him go," the Chief Thug murmured, clapping the underling on the shoulder, "he's got bigger problems than stopping a few thieves." Around him, his men nodded sagely. "He's got a woman who dresses him funny."

Sekihara Tae
tae@sekihara.dreamhost.com
July 19, 1999