Falling
by L. Sith
Disclaimer:
Don't own RK and not getting paid for this.
Author's
Notes: Thanks to everyone who commented. And I want to especially thank
Kamorgana for being my pre-read. Due to her excellent suggestion, I've
posted up a revised version of chapter 2. And for those of you that
like Saitoh x Tokio romance, please check out her story: 'Preys'. And
for those of you that don't like Saitoh x Tokio romance ... pretend
this is a KxK story, and be sure to read Kamorgana's 'Children of the
Revolution'.
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Chapter 3: Laws of Physics
Saitoh
stood near the exit of the gaudily decorated room and smoked his
cigarettes until he finished the entire pack, but the women continued
to drone on. If he hadn't been ordered by Hijikata to stay on 'best
behavior' during these mixers, Saitoh would have given those idiots a
piece of his mind long ago.
But instead, he stared coldly at yet another airhead until she ran out
of words and left to find herself a new victim.
Finally, a chance to getaway from this ridiculous waste of time. Saitoh
headed outdoors.
Sunshine
gushed onto the garden with its annoying brightness, destroying any
possibility of privacy. Hijikata had abruptly moved all the parties
from evenings to mid afternoons - probably in response to last night's
incident.
Saitoh peeled off the overcoat of his uniform and handed the blue and
white cloth to the first subordinate he came across.
"Captain?" His man asked in confusion.
He
didn't stay to clarify. The daisho pair already marked him a 'wanted'
man, he didn't plan to wait around for the vultures. Saitoh quickly
headed towards his corner of the garden. But Tokio wasn't there.
Instead, he walked in on a couple messing around behind the thicket.
"Captain." The boy jumped up with a panic stricken expression.
"Ahou. Keep your pants on."
Frustratingly,
Saitoh searched through rest of the garden, leaving a trail of
distressed idiots behind him, but no sign of her. Where was that girl?
She had better not died of an internal injury overnight.
Always
the alarmist, Hijikata had spent over an hour on the formal reprimand.
It almost sounded like someone had killed the little fool instead of
just startling her. And that was without Hijikata knowing about Tokio's
injury.
'That stupid girl had been nothing but trouble', Saitoh
thought as he headed out of the front gates of the estate in his
continuing search.
Hordes of servants loitered in the narrow
street in front of the residence. It didn't take long for him to spot
her, sitting slightly apart from the others, reading a book. He walked
up to her, but the little idiot reacted not at all. Even if Takeda
habitually wore a huge bell around the neck, it probably still wouldn't
have helped her that night.
Saitoh snatched the book out of Tokio's hands.
She blinked up at him in confusion, then quickly scrambled to her feet,
and bowed. "Good afternoon, samurai-sama."
Saitoh
noticed that she still favored her left leg, but otherwise appeared in
good health. "Did you see a doctor like I ordered?"
"Yes, samurai-sama. And the doctor said that I've sprained my knee but
it will heal shortly."
Saitoh
nodded. And with his goal fulfilled, he turned to leave. But just
before handing back Tokio's book, a brief sense of curiosity struck
him. What did servant girls read about? How to dust the furniture
properly? He opened to a random page in the book and perused it. Much
of the material made no sense to him. He recognized the words, the
numbers, and the mathematical signs, but the writing also contained
symbols he'd never seen before. Misprints? A foreign language? Some
type of cipher?
"This book is all about things falling, do you drop things a lot in
your line of work?" Saitoh asked.
"No I don't!" Tokio answered hotly, "It's a physics book, and physics
is all about bodies in motion."
Physics?
Saitoh had never heard of such a thing before. "So you like to learn
about people's bodies and their motions? Then where are the pictures?"
He mocked.
Tokio took a swipe at the book, attempting to snatch it back. "Go and
do your stupid caveman things and leave me alone!"
Saitoh
raised an eyebrow at her behavior. How impertinent. "You shall at all
times show me, or any other samurai, all due respect. You will not
speak until spoken to. You will not attempt to steal books out of our
grasp. And you will keep your eyes properly downcast in our presence."
"That's
it?" Tokio said, not bothering to hide her sarcasm. "I thought I was
suppose to get on my knees and scrape in a samurai's presence."
"Then do so."
Tokio's
mouth opened then closed again with an audible click. But she remained
standing, looking defiant. The girl really ought to learn better than
to challenge him. Casually, Saitoh circled to Tokio's left side. Then
without warning, he kicked her good knee out from under her. And
although he gripped her upper arm and made sure that she didn't hit the
stony ground with her entire weight on hers knees, he nonetheless
ensured there was enough force to drive his point home.
"You will follow my orders to the letter. And don't EVER contradict me
again." Saitoh said.
And
she glared up at him. "How's that possible when you contradict yourself
all the time? You and your stupid 'scream for help'!"
Saitoh
almost chuckled at her attempt at a battle of words. The little idiot
certainly had courage in abundance. Too bad she had no hope of winning
in the intellectual arena either. "So the guy wasn't forcing himself on
you after all. You were interested."
Tokio bared her teeth. "Only the truly desperate would be interested in
those Shinsengumi monsters."
Then
belatedly she clamped her hand over mouth and looked frantically
around. Although Saitoh knew that a great deal of the population shared
her sentiment, to voice such an opinion was treason nonetheless. It was
so easy to get Tokio to hang herself with her own words that he almost
considered it unsporting.
"Lousy good screaming did for me
anyways." Tokio lowered her voice to a hiss. "You managed to send them
all away with one little word! And you aren't even Shinsengumi." She
paused momentarily for breath, regaining some of her composure.
"Besides, with that jerk, screaming would only have summoned his
friends, making things worse for me. And I knew you were right around
the corner, so ..."
"What makes you think I'd rescue you? I may not, for the fear of the
Shinsengumi." He teased.
And
at his words, a look of guilt passed over her features. She pouted for
a moment then got properly on knees and bowed until her forehead
touched the ground. "Thank you, samurai-sama, for saving my life.
Please excuse the lapse in my manners. I promise to follow all your
orders from now on and not to contradict you."
And to reward her
for her improvement in manners, Saitoh gestured for her to rise and
handed back her book. The party had begun to draw to a close, and just
before he could make a clean getaway, a richly dressed girl approached
them.
"My lady," Tokio bowed.
The girl's gaze glanced past Tokio and fell squarely on him.
"Captain Saitoh." The girl curtsied awkwardly. "It's a -"
He cut her off with a curt gesture, pointing towards the end of the
street. "Good night ladies."
And the girl nearly ran in her enthusiasm to carry out his implicit
command.
But before Tokio followed her lady in a similar retreat, she asked him
in puzzlement, "What are you a captain of?"
"The third division of Shisengumi." Saitoh answered offhandedly.
And he was treated to the opportunity to watch Tokio gap like a fish.
He smirked.
Checkmate. Complete victory.
*******************************************************
Saitoh
spent rest of the day searching through bookstores and tracking down
more academics than he could count, but none of them had ever heard of
'physics'. Where in the world did that silly girl find such an esoteric
subject?
And by late evening, 'physics' had become a minor
obsession. Refusing to give up, Saitoh headed to the basement of the
Shinsengumi compound and burst into Yamazaki's office entirely
unannounced.
Yamazaki glanced up from a pile of papers and sighed. "Come to ask
about your lady in the garden?"
Saitoh gritted his teeth. Was there anyone who hadn't heard about that
incident?
Yamazaki continued on absently, "What do you want to know? Her
birthday? Her favorite color?"
Apparently,
Yamazaki spent his life collecting worthless data on everybody. Perhaps
someone ought to change Yamazaki's title from 'Chief of Intelligence'
to 'Guardian of Useless Information'. Not that it concerned Saitoh any
- he had his own mission to pursue. "What do you know about physics?"
"Never heard of this 'physics'. Why?"
"I saw a servant girl read this book -"
"Your
servant girl can read?" Yamazaki cut in, all trace of frivolity gone.
"What is she doing being a maid? She could get paid three times as much
working in a teahouse."
Yeah, and the silly fool would get herself killed within minutes.
"She's a klutz."
"A klutz? That's a convenient cover."
Saitoh
tensed. For hours now, a nameless unease had skirted around the edge of
his awareness, and suddenly, it felt like the shadowy thought had been
dragged into the light. How had such a simple concept eluded him for so
long?
"When did she fall into your orbit?" Yamazaki asked,
"That girl is a cunning one. She uses her beauty to attract Takeda then
plays the victim to get into your blind spot."
"Maybe ... but she doesn't seem sharp enough to be that ... cunning."
Saitoh ventured.
And
yet, Tokio made him very uneasy. Saitoh had spent too much of his time
analyzing her lately, and that by itself had been peculiar. Now, with
Yamazaki's added warning, Saitoh reexamined all his previous
assumptions. Not surprisingly, it took him quite a few minutes before
he realized how closely Yamazaki was scrutinizing him.
"You wouldn't be here unless something about her tripped your alarms."
Yamazaki finally said.
Saitoh conceded the point. "There are these strange symbols in the book
she was reading ..."
Yamazaki
immediately pushed a piece of paper and a writing brush in front of
Saitoh. Saitoh wrote down what little he could remember.
And more tense silence fell while Yamazaki chewed on the new
information.
"This
is nothing that I've seen before." Yamazaki said. "May be some form of
cipher. I'll put my men on it. In the meantime, consider her an Ishin
spy. Don't speak to her, don't even go near her until I tell you
otherwise. And that, is an order."
Saitoh nodded and got up to leave.
For
rest of the night, he replayed every conversation he had ever had with
the girl. But the deeper he probed, the murkier the waters became,
until he could no longer distinguish between a mirage and a shark.
Tokio ... was she simply a stupid servant girl or something far more
menacing?
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Next Chapter: Betrayal of Trust
Japanese term:
ahou: Idiot
daisho: The long and
short pair of swords that the samurais wear.
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