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Say Chesse!
~ :) ~ :) ~
THERE WAS SAITOU…
AND THERE WAS KENSHIN…
AND THEY WERE ABSOLUTES…
AND SO KAMI WANTED NOTHING MORE THAN TO FORCE THEM ON
IMPENDING DOOM WITH EACH OTHER…
AND SAITOU FROWNED…
AND KENSHIN WAS CONFUSED…
AND KAMI-SAMA SMILED DOWN UPON THEM BOTH…
:) ~ :) ~ :)
Chapter I: On Shishio and Shishou, and Everything in Between (Which isn't much…)
Saitou Hajime frowned.
And frowned again.
And another for good measure.
And looked down - Way down.
And thought, heck with it, and stuck his face in a permanent scowl.
He was mad. Piping mad. Steaming mad! Why he was so mad that he… He narrowed his eyes and skooshed the noisy cricket under his heel until it was nothing but a grease spot on the dirt road.
He was MAD!!
Now, I'm sure all you fans are just dying to know what's gotten our dear Saitou so worked up. The fact is, I'm not sure, and Saitou hasn't really got a clue, either…
He was just mad.
And just looking at his 'partner', all smiles and happy, made him even madder! And madder and madder and madder and MADDER… He was a veritable kettle on the verge of bubbling over… And he liked it.
Oh yes, dear Kami, he liked it.
He liked the power. He was a powerhouse of energy just waiting to be pestered, so he could bowl the person over and explode in their face like an overheated steam engine. He was teetering on the edge, the rocks were crumbling. All he needed was a bit more of that killer annoyance factor before he…
"SAITOU-SANNNN?!?"
…cracked.
"N-n-naa…ni…?" he asked through gritted teeth, ready to pounce on every opportunity that his unsuspecting target provided.
"Saitou, can we go visit my-…"
"Iie."
"Or-…"
"Iie."
"Demodemodemo-…"
"Iie!"
"But you haven-…"
"IIE!"
Kenshin held back a minute, working out a protest before crying out a resounding, "NAAANII-…"
"IIEE!"
"At least let me finish my-…"
Saitou sent him back such a glare that Kenshin shrunk back another 10 feet or so, muttering a soft "… de gozaru…".
It wasn't that he felt intimidated by the man.
Oh no.
It didn't matter that he was more than twice his height and weight.
Cough.
He'd never let such a thing get in his way.
Choke.
After all, he was the Battousai! He froze men's blood with fear! He was the strongest Imperialist! (A rather klutzy Imperialist, but the strongest one nonetheless…)
With thoughts resembling the above running through his head, he approached his deepest darkest archenemy and was about to speak before his subject interrupted him once again.
"Why do you want to go and see him, anyway?"
"Oro? Dare?"
"Your high-and-mighty 'Shishou'…"
Kenshin drew back in shock, eyes wide. "How did you… Nani…?"
"I thought you ran away from him. What makes you think he'd want to see you?"
"I didn't run away… I just… left for a little while…"
"10 years? That's a little while for you?"
Saitou registered in the deepest dankest recesses of his mind that Kenshin was stuttering out some lame excuse involving tar, feathers and train tracks, but he turned back to the road ahead without paying much attention to whatever it was he was drawing from his statement.
And he frowned.
And frowned again.
And pulled out a cigarette.
And laughed insanely. "BWA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAA-HAAA HAAA!!!"
(Okay, okay… I just had to throw that in there for kicks… ^^*)
And frowned.
At the sound of this, Kenshin drew himself away from his stupor and looked on in shock. 'This man,' he thought, 'is INSANE! I knew it, I knew it! I never should have agreed to go on this so-called Shishio-escapade!' He cursed himself inwardly.
He also mentally wondered how a man could laugh and frown at the same time. It just wasn't human. Kenshin was positive that in all the years he had known Saitou, he had never seen him smile or even so much as grimace, unless, of course, if it was because he was getting ready to beat his victim to a pulp… (Hmmm… Does this sound familiar? Sounds a bit like the Misao/Aoshi case, ne? Oops, that wasn't supposed to happen! ^^*…) Frown, frown, frown… For Heaven's sakes, the man lived off other people's misery!
And he almost frowned at the thought, but caught himself before allowing himself to. He was not about to let such a man as Saitou rub off on him!
'Speaking of Saitou,' he thought to himself, 'Where is he?' Kenshin scanned the horizon (as well as noted that Saitou was a very quick man to have escaped him that fast…) and noted a tiny speck far, far, far away. In fact, it looked almost as if the speck was about to walk off the face of the earth. He groaned and began running in that general direction.
By the time Kenshin reached the spot where the speck had been, he realized he had made a slight error. Actually, two, if you considered them as separate cases… One, the speck he had seen had in fact been nothing more than a speck. He glared down at it and proceeded to attempt to kick it off the face of the earth… Which leads us to error number two… He was at the end of the earth! He looked down warily and wondered if he would reach China if he jumped down. (He also then thought better of it. He had no particular urge to go to China, anyway…)
And so, with nothing better to do, Kenshin sat down on the edge of the earth and dangled his feet down. He picked up a dandelion, and fondly remembered an old rhyme. (And don't ask me from where…) "Mama had a baby and her head popped off!" He popped the head off the dandelion, laughing at his own ingenuity.
After a long, long while, and many, many dandelion heads, our dear Kenshin began getting bored. (And we can't have that, can we?!) He looked across the wide expanse of territory before him, sighing in bored-ness (AN: My new word!) and soon noticed a trail of smoke leading off to a small clump of houses which he inferred to be 19th Century Megakyoto. (AN: *snort*)
He headed off towards the clump and soon realized that it wasn't in fact Megakyoto, but rather Megakioizaka (That's a mouthful…). He grumbled at that and rushed to hurry up after the quickly disappearing cloud of smoke. He realized that he really had no need to worry because Saitou lit up another cigarette about 0.00001 seconds after he was finished the first (or second… He really didn't actually know…), and a newly replenished cloud appeared above him.
Kenshin thought this cloud looked quite like a rain cloud.
He also began to wonder whether or not that was the reason why Saitou never smiled. After all, being stuck under a stinky, smoky, hazy mist couldn't be that much fun… He resolved to ask him about it later on in the series… Perhaps after Shishio was dead and there was peace once again. (LOL… Foreshadowing! Ooo!)
By this time Kenshin had caught up, and he looked up at the dark and sinister man.
And laughed.
For Saitou had such a strange look on his face that it was hard to look upon it and not laugh. Kenshin twisted his face in knots trying to imitate it, failed, and simply continued laughing in a rather childish sort of way.
And Saitou frowned once again.
And he poked and prodded in his box for another cigarette, and realized they were all gone!
And his deeply sensitive inner self (yeah, right) cried and cried at the fact that it would have to suffer forever and ever and ever. (Or at least until they reached the city [which of course was not too far off by now.])
~ And Saitou suddenly had an epiphany! ~
~ And he realized smoking was bad! ~
~ And he threw away his lighter! ~
~ And he smiled and laughed in a way so unlike Saitou! ~
~ And he thanked Kami for small miracles! ~
AN: Okay, okay… Back to the real story… We all know that would never ever, EVER happen…
And so Saitou's inner self was crying…
And thus Kenshin sent his own inner self the Battousai to go and cheer Saitou's inner self up, but all the Battousai did was pull out his Sakabatou and beat some sense into him.
And Saitou's inner self was angered at that.
And Saitou was angered at that.
And Saitou sent his inner self after the Battousai.
And the Battousai ran away in his own self-pity. (No, not really… He just continued to beat up Saitou's inner self until he was but an empty shell of nothingness…)
And Saitou was MAD!
And so Saitou and the Battousai began to wage war. (With Kenshin standing a bit away looking slightly scared… and confused, as usual…)
They stood back to back and each took 10 paces, turned around, drew their swords…
…And began shooting insults back and forth…
But neither the Battousai nor Saitou was good at insulting. The insults they used were so lame the author has decided to save you the time and energy it would have taken you to read them. ^^
And suddenly they both ran off, leaving a completely bewildered Kenshin in the dust, wondering if he would ever see himself again.
And he cried at the mere thought and tore after them.
And he suddenly got… an idea!
And he made a solemn vow to get Saitou to smile, for that was the only way he would ever stop the horrible victimizing of his past self…
And he smiled in a determined sort of way and raced through the grass and all the way through Megakioizaka and all the way across Japan to the end of the earth again… And he stopped and sighed…
And popped a head off a dandelion
Chapter Two