WARNING: Rated R, for just about everything! See the first warning. You all should know the drill by now, have it memorised, and probably hate it. Thank for you for your time.
Author's note: Well, someone finally complained about how long I go on and on in Reponse to Reviewers. The problem is a fault in my own character, not anyone else's, so I'll probably change the format next story I do. But I don't like changing formats this late in the story, so I'll keep responding to reviewers in this manner for the remainder of this fic then maybe switch to E-Mails or something. Oh, I also wanted to say in this that there will probably be a delay on the next chapter, because I have to go out of town and thus away from my computer to take care of some business for a few days, and I'm not sure how long it'll take me. Please be patient with me.
Response to Reviewers! (I'll try to be succint in my responses this time.):
Ms Jadey: Sorry to everyone about the short chapter, but it was the best stopping place. These coming two chapters aren't as important as those following - but we're just a few more chapters away from the climax, peoples! The suspense is getting a little thick, though. I do talk to many drunk people (I used to live on campus, peoples), and I use elements of them in Hiko's drunken state so I do believe how he acts is realistic. You are obssessed with the routine theme, I agree. Please, don't lose sleep over it. Everyone will probably kill me for getting Kenshin out of it by the skin of his teeth.... again. Anyhow, I will try not to get myself killed before I finish, and thank you for your review!
Not_signed_in: Thanks very much for your review, and I appreciate the open- mindedness about the yaoi. Also thanks for the tip about the disclaimers - from a lawyer, I guess you'd know - though I resent the comment about me being a high-schooler. I might be young, but I've done three years of University! I just didn't do law! Hope you like the chappie.
Vesca: Glad to see you still with us then. Of course Hiko will have guilt, we have to be fair here. But I'm going to have to beg you to still be patient - there are a few things I have yet to put in one way or another (we have to give our Kenshin a break and some time to heal, too). Thanks for your review.
Chiruken: Kenshin makes it out.... again. (They'll be a lynch mob after me at this rate. I'm really pushing my luck.) Thanks very much for your review. Always a pleasure to hear from you.
Emz: LOL. Thanks a mil, Emz.
Crazy Girl Person: Well, it worked, you finally updated 'I Wish'. Very good, too! Of course I'm not going to have Hiko find out now! What I have planned is much more dramatic! (I stop as I catch myself blowing my own horn again). Well, I hope so, anyway. Heh heh, funny story, leaving the house in the middle of a review. I'm amazed your connection didn't reset. Thanks again for the review, and you're welcome for the coffee. That'll be 1000 yen thanks.
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Routine
Chapter 11 - Another Near Miss
By Sinnatious
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Hiko felt the comforting aura of sleep begin to disappear as he slowly drifted back into consciousness the next morning. He was so warm.... he must be getting soft, like his baka deshi, if he kept wanting to stay in bed like this. Rolling over in an effort to stave off the comfort, Hiko sensed, more than physically felt, the sudden movement and breath of air feeling very similar to that caused by an object moving with god-like speed, almost as if he'd freed something under him.
His eyes snapped open at that, but he saw nothing. That's odd, he could have sworn it was his baka deshi.....
Speaking of the baka, he'd better wake the boy up to prepare for the day's training. Standing and stretching, he simply figured he must have just been dreaming. Odd, he didn't recall having any dreams, for that matter, he didn't even recall settling down for the night....
Shrugging it off as usual, he removed the sheets and threw them into the laundry. Maybe they should forgo sword training for the day and just focus on chores. He was running out of sake again, after all. Annoying, that. He ought to start checking the bottles for leaks.
He found himself pausing again, though, when he noticed his prized white mantle sitting in a disarranged bundle on the floor. That was also strange, he always made a point of folding it and putting it next to his katana. Perhaps he'd knocked it and not noticed.
Hiko frowned, though, as he donned the white mantle once again for the day. As usual, he didn't recall much of what happened after he sent the boy to bed and began his nightly sake drinking ritual, but for some reason, he remembered, or thought he remembered, his baka deshi saying something. Somehow he knew it was immensely important. Brow furrowed in thought, he grasped at the memory that seemed slipperier than a fish.
<<<Kenshin's face was solemn, though his eyes looked panicked. He was so beautiful, so child-like, but were those tears streaming down that perfect face?
Hiko said something unintelligible to his own ears; the only reason he knew he had spoken was from the feeling of his voice grating deep in his throat. Evidently, from the reaction, it had been a question. The boy had hesitated, red hair covering his face, before he raised his lavendar eyes to meet his master's gaze.
"It was you, Shishou.">>>
It was..... him?
What was him? And what was his baka deshi doing out of bed talking to him at night?
Perhaps it was just part of his dream. He had grown uncomfortably fond of his oddly beautiful student, and though during the day it was a simple matter of acting particularly harsh to convince himself otherwise, his subconscious always did like to haunt him at night.
Living solitarily on a mountain for so long without so much other meaningful human contact probably had something to do with it, too. After all, though he'd never admit it to anyone, Hiko Seijuuro was still mostly human.
Shaking these thoughts out of his head, Hiko grasped his sheathed katana, slipped it through the folds of his belt and and purposefully made his way to the red-head in question's room.
To his surprise, though once again the stoic swordmaster managed to conceal it, Kenshin was already up.
"You're up early."
The boy jerked in fright, whirling to face him. Hiko frowned at the his pupil's dishevelled appearance. The dark rings under his eyes suggested that he hadn't slept at all the previous night, and his clothes looked as though they had just been tugged on hurriedly and didn't sit right. His futon, on the other hand, looked hardly disturbed at all. It didn't seem likely that, even as hormone-driven as the little baka likely was, that he had snuck out the night before so that only led the Hiten Mitsuryugi Master to deduce that the boy was having nightmares again. If it was so, he doubted that Kenshin would want to talk about it, and it wasn't in the hermit's interest to be prying into people's personal lives - not that much of Kenshin's personal life should have been a secret to Hiko, or vice versa.
"H-hai Shishou," Kenshin stuttered nervously. Had his master noticed? He didn't think he could stand to answer the questions of a sober and acutely aware Hiko. It was nothing short of a miracle - though one greatly aided by his god-like speed - that got him out of that situation, and even then, he wasn't out of the proverbial woods yet. He hadn't been able to clean up at all the night before, as it was he was fortunate to have remembered to pick up his clothes on his speedy flight to neutral sanctuary.
"Any reason why?" Hiko pressed.
"I - I woke up early. I thought something had startled me awake but it must have just been my imagination," Kenshin stuttered.
Hiko muttered an unintelligible and unimportant reply. Sounded like his baka deshi's classic excuse for being woken up by nightmares. He regretted that his student had to have such a childhood that he'd be plauged by such nightmares, but more upsetting was the fact that they still haunted him. It had been well over a year since the boy's screaming had awoken him during the night - either he was becoming better at not crying out in his sleep, or they had returned, as he'd already suspected for some time, only recently.
The swordmaster shrugged, more for his own benefit than that of Kenshin's. There wasn't a great deal that even the 13th successor fo the Hiten Mitsuryugi Ryu could do about nightmares if his silly baka deshi wouldn't confide in him first. "Fine then. You can do breakfast. I'm going out to the stream to get some more water."
"Of course, Shishou," Kenshin replied, struggling to hide his relief that once again Hiko had let it slide. No doubt the man suspected something, but he couldn't very well come out and confront him about it when all he had were vague inklings. Sighing to himself, he moved about cleaning up the kitchen before starting breakfast. The dishes seemed unusually heavy. He hadn't received ANY sleep the night before, after all.
Shimatta - he hadn't thought of that. Great, now he had tiredness to contend with as well as his still-healing injuries. He was already a fast healer, but he was really wishing he was a god-like speed healer.
Hiko returned with water, and Kenshin finished cooking breakfast, though as tired as he was - he was always tired these days it seemed - he nearly ruined it in his lapses of attention. It was still better than Hiko's cooking, though, so nothing was said on the matter. Even so, Kenshin could feel his master's scrutinizing gaze on him throughout the entire meal. He did his best not to give anything away, but his nervousness had to be flaring up in his ki even with all of his efforts of masking it. His Shishou wasn't blind, after all. Could he recall anything of the previous night?
Breakfast concluded in the now-uncomfortable usual silence, Hiko finally breaking it saying, "We'll be training up on the overhang today. Be ready to leave as soon as you've finished the dishes."
"Hai, Shishou," he responded automatically, picking up the dishes - had they become even heavier again, or was it just his imagination?
The monotony of washing up was still a relief, being strangely meditative and thus taking his mind off his exhaustion and pain. He had been almost hoping that his tiredness might numb his discomfort, but if anything it simply made it harder to endure. Why couldn't they just do laundry today instead? They had enough work to do for a chores day - and no doubt his master would be wanting to go replenish his sake supplies again sometime soon. It took a lot of sake, after all, for Hiko to get that drunk, so a single large jug was lucky to be lasting two nights rather than a week like it used to.
Wordlessly, he completed his morning chores and followed his Shishou out towards the rock cropping where they occasionally practiced. It was easier to train there than in the river, but worse for impacts. He'd have to remember to push all those trivialities aside and concentrate on putting up a better show for today's training - if he repeated the poor performance of the day before Hiko'd probably either start asking him questions again or get fed up with him and send him away altogether.
When training on land they didn't usually bother with too much in the way of warming up exercises - Hiko always said that your opponents never would give you time in battle to warm up anyway, that was just ridiculous - so the young swordsman almost immediately found himself pitted against his master. Hiko started with the customary review of some of the more simple kata, moving his way up into ones he hadn't quite yet mastered. That was simple enough, even half-dead Kenshin could pull off the simplest elements of the Hiten Mitsuryugi Ryu perfectly. His real challenge would come later when Hiko wanted to spar properly.
That time came quickly, of course. Hiko wasn't giving him any room for mistakes, either. Was it his imagination, or was his Shishou trying to test him for something?
"Remember to keep your weight forward - you're far too easy to put off balance now, and it'll slow down your reaction time," Hiko corrected him in his stance, even before they had begun. Kenshin nodded wordlessly, making the necessary adjustments. Really, by all rights, his baka deshi should have been beyond having to be reminded about things like that. The inattention he'd been showing would be affecting even the simplest kata at this rate.
Remembering this, Hiko Seijuuro observed his apprentice with more interest than the usual casual observation, searching for any hint of the same sluggishness he'd seen yesterday when they'd reached the more challenging training. The kid was tired, that much was already painfully clear, but when attacking or falling back the teen always seemed to lose part of his iron-grip hold on his ki, and right now that seemed like the most obvious insight into his baka deshi's unusual behaviour.
There it was. It slightly less intense than the day before, but he couldn't quite nail it just yet. It was infuriating, really, for someone as skilled as himself not to be able to read his own pupil's ki properly. Were his skills diminishing? It seemed impossible, but it was the only logical explanation.
When coupled with everything else strange that had been happening lately, though, it pointed to something else entirely. Alone, none of these things were cause for concern, but lumped together, these symptoms made him worry more than he would have liked to admit.
No Hiten Mitsuryugi master ever liked not being able to figure things out. This distraction, then, was probably the cause for what happened next.
Hiko snapped back to attention of his sword just in time to notice his baka deshi's terrified face as he struggled evade the oncoming Ryu-Tsui-Sen. Baka! He'd reacted without thinking! Kenshin, seeing in the space of a second that evasion would be impossible, changed tactic and instead launched himself into the air similarly to meet the attack head-on, maybe hoping to strike before his master could.
Any other day, he might have pulled it off, Hiko thought to himself, quickly changing the angle of the blade so he wouldn't cleave through his pupil's sword. The two katana collided with a resonating clang, the impact of Hiko's attack, even after being changed to defense mid-flight, physically throwing Kenshin back to the ground. He hit with a dramatic thump, sending a small cloud of dust billowing from his impact. Hiko definitely felt the flare in his ki then. The power of it unnerved him so much he almost didn't manage to land himself. As it was, it was miracle neither of their swords had shattered.
Trying to steady his breathing, more from panic than exertion, Hiko looked over at where the red-head lay motionless on the ground. Baka, baka, baka. He'd allowed himself to become so wrapped up in his thoughts that he forgot he was meant to be training a currently unstable student, not fighting some adversary. Launching into a full scale Ryu-Tsui-Sen like that! If it weren't for his supreme control of his sword, he might not have been able to stop that attack from seriously harming his baka deshi. Maybe the problem these days wasn't with Kenshin, but with himself. Hiko Seijuuro the 13th quite simply didn't make those kind of mistakes, after all.
There wasn't much of anything emanating from the boy's ki now. Sheathing his blade, Hiko cautiously made his way over to where the youth was sprawled on the ground. "Oi, Baka Deshi! Get up!"
No response.
Hiko nudged him with his foot. No response whatsoever.
Maybe using his name would work; it got such results every other time. "Kenshin!"
Still nothing. That WAS weird.
He sat by the young swordsman, deciding what to do. It didn't take all the greatest deductive powers of Hiko Seijuuro to figure out that he'd given his baka deshi a concussion. It wasn't like it was the first time, but it was annoying all the same. Kenshin would probably be unconscious for who knew how long now.
He absently ran a hand through the teen's red hair, before catching himself and folding his arms instead. Best to just leave the boy be and wait for him to wake up. In the meantime, he'd better find a good rock to make himself comfortable on. He could use the time to meditate or something. Maybe figure out what was going on with himself first before he started interrogating his baka deshi.
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Just a reminder - there might be a brief delay on the next chappie! But I'm not dead! Please, if you read, review, but restrain yourselves from flaming. Natch. Cheers. Peace out.