"What is the meaning of this?" Ruri demanded angrily as they were escorted at spear point to a "waiting area."
"Keep quiet," Korin muttered as he sat down and waited calmly, doubting that she would.
"I am a lawful representative of the Dragon!" Ruri insisted angrily, indicating the daisho in her belt. Korin hoped she wouldn't manage to convince them to disarm the two visitors. "This is an insult!"
"You are being guarded for your own protection," one of the guards said irritably. A look entered the Dragon's eyes and Korin sighed as he realized that she had just lost her temper.
"Protection?" Ruri asked. "Protection!!! I don't need a lumbering Crab to protect me! You talk about protecting me again! and I'll take that spear and ram it up your..."
On that point, at least, Korin agreed with her.
"This way! She came this way!" voices were shouting. Korin opened his eyes at the sound of armored boots. A small group of Crab guards, swords drawn rushed into the room.
"Did you see her?" one of them demanded.
"Did we see who?" Ruri asked angrily.
"Bayushi-hime's maidservant," the guard answered without thinking. Korin put together the clues. A Scorpion's servant being chased by guards through a castle...guests treated with suspicion. It pointed to one thing.
"There's been an assassination?" he asked.
"Jungo!" the guard lieutenant commanded the Crab who has spoken. "Guard your tongue better."
"Who was the victim?" Ruri demanded, having put together the same clues.
"That is no..."
"Nevermind!" Ruri shouted, rolling under her guards and taking a leap at a corner of the room. The guards blinked and followed her motion quickly, not certain of the fiery Dragon's intentions. "I'll just ask her!"
The maidservant appeared from a shadow under the tapestry and leaped over the Dragon's charge and dodged around the Crabs, eager to be away from the girl that had spotted her.
"ARRRH!!" Ruri snapped irritably as she turned about to find her path cluttered by "lumbering Crabs." "Are you going to do anything? Kakita-san!?"
Korin was still sitting as the maidservant rushed for his position, apparently not worried about him in the slightest. He didn't move until Ruri was half-way to closing the gap with her.
Ruri almost didn't see the strike as Korin stood and snapped the empty sheath of his blade outward and caught the running assassin in the stomach. The next blow came down over her head, sending her into unconsciousness.
"Heh," Ruri said. "Down she goes. Knew you were a good one, Kakita-san." She flashed him a very approving look that he was learning to recognize.
"And on that point I have to agree with the little lizard," a new voice added as someone walked into the room.
Korin looked around and saw the oncoming form of Hida O-Ushi, for such a samurai-ko as this could be no other, and noted a look in her eyes that almost mirrored the one in Ruri's.
He sighed and sat down, and tried not to contemplate the misfortunes of his life.
See other episodes by Thrythlind
(Posted Fri, 08 Nov 2002 17:36)
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