[FFML] [fic][rk][cont] Rurouni Yahiko Chapter 22: The Second Coming of the Son of God

[Chester Castañeda]

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Rurouni Yahiko
A Rurouni Kenshin Continuation Fan Fiction
By Chester Castañeda
chester.castaneda at gmail.com
http://www.fanfiction.net/~abdiel

Writing the Gan versus Amakusa fight was fun. Also, we're nearing the
climax of the present arc.


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Chapter 22: The Second Coming of the Son of God

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'I AM THE SOBA KING! GUWAHAHAHAHAHA!' the Gan inside Yahiko's head
boasted, which spurred the stunned boy into action.

"...sealed with the blood of Christ, he may come before you free from
sin. Amen," murmured the shining Amakusa before he weaved, bobbed, and
bent backwards to avoid the Tokyo Samurai Descendant's wild strikes,
sensing the boy's bloodlust.

"AMAKUSA! I'LL KILL YOU!" screamed Yahiko.

The shining, beatific Shogo harrumphed. "You should've decided that from
the start."

In an instant, Yahiko sunk low in a spray of tears and sweat before
delivering a stiff Ryu Sho Sen to Amakusa's chin as the shimmering
Christian revolutionary straightened up his body to regain his balance,
which sent him right into the middle of the nearest staircase in a mess
of splayed limbs, dust, and wooden splinters.

'...W-What?'

Curiously, the golden halo of light around the insurgent's head and his
flaming bodily aura flickered from the assault. However, he recovered
and went back to a vertical base in a second, brushing away the debris
on his shoulder then blocking the teen's subsequent strikes as they
climbed the steps in a dance where blunt force and unbelievable
sharpness collided.

Amakusa said, "Your name is Myojin Yahiko, isn't it? Give up. Your
parents will surely be saddened to never see their son again because he
has become part of a communal grave of unidentified corpses. If you
don't want to end up like your friend or the Gunma and Kamiminochi Units
of Akahori's Police Army, then you should stand down."

Yahiko answered, "My parents are both dead, and I have no intention of
standing down!"

The Myojin kid continued his charge regardless, so Amakusa parried and
rebuked him, stating, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block
to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of
men."

"I have no idea what a Satan is supposed to be. I am curious, though;
did you give the same, 'You can leave now if you want,' ultimatum to
Keisuke and his Fake Battousai Group when you massacred them too, Mister
Battousai of Style? For someone who's allegedly been 'forced' to kill
people, you sure have a real knack for it!"

"What? _Fake_ Battousai Group...?" Amakusa mouthed with a raised
eyebrow.

Yahiko's assault sputtered and lost momentum after hearing Amakusa's
confused tone. 'He _is_ the red-haired, cross-scarred man that wiped out
all of Keisuke's men, right? Only a member of the Juppon Gatana or a
one-man army who killed a thousand policemen like him could've done so.'

The Tokyoite then glanced around for any sign of Minoe; he found none.
'He's gone... Fine. It's better this way.'

'I'll call you Kitsune-chi, and I'll have you and hug you and love you
because you're my little Kitsune-chi, Kitsune-chi!' The eye-patched man
giggled inside Yahiko's psyche.

Every swipe Yahiko did, the kenki-infused Amakusa parried to the side
with slashes of fluctuating strength and speed while he backed away,
each of them aimed at the flat side of the sakabatou instead of its
blunted part in order to prevent getting his katana broken by the God
Hammer technique.

'I'm too slow. If only I could handle the weight of the sakabatou the
same way Kenshin did when he was at his prime, then nobody would've had
to die today. A year later, and it's still too heavy for me to handle.
If only I were stronger... Dammit!' Yahiko thought, the outlandish
memory of Gan hooting and hollering till his body fell apart piece-by-
piece renewing his rage and resolve.

Meanwhile, Amakusa himself surmised, 'I get it now. This boy is the one
who fought Akahori's head bodyguard on the night those criminals from
Shinshu who pretended to be part of our Battousai Group were wiped out
by Morinaga. This was the child who risked life and limb in order to
break the Ten Ken's katana under the mistaken assumption that Seta
Soujiro murdered all those people. Is this the reason why you're so
intrigued by him, Morinaga?'

Yahiko's thousands of repetitions when it came to Kamiya Kasshin Ryu's
unique brand of dodging, slipping, and blocking enabled him to weather
the storm of whirling steel once Shogo decided to counterattack.
However, Amakusa observed that most of the blocked hits were from his
Ryu Sou Sen, while it took the boy sometime to figure out the one-eight-
ten combinations from the sword school of his father, the late Tokisada
Muto.

'Could it be possible that this boy is somehow connected to the _real_
Battousai himself? Reverse-edged swords are hardly commonplace weapons,
and he seems a bit too familiar with how Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu works, like
that one annoying policeman from the Tokyo District who kept me from
wiping out his unit because he knew what techniques I was using. Come to
think of it, I think he and that copper knew each other.'

Even though he held his ground for the most part, the recent Kuzu Ryu
Sen Yahiko received left him struggling to focus on his task, his
muscles feeling wobbly, his legs throbbing, and his body stiffening like
hardened plaster. Countless cuts, contusions, and half-blocked attacks
still came through for Shogo.

'Does that mean that the rumor about Himura Kenshin taking up a non-
killing vow and brandishing a reverse-edged sword was _true_? I thought
that balderdash was a false lead! I hope Captain Ujiki's claims that
Battousai is now a cripple are also false,' Amakusa debated inside his
mind.

Before Shogo the Divine knew it, they'd reached the atrium of the
ballroom's upper deck, his lackadaisical blocks and parries powerless
against Yahiko's determination to land a hit, his fighting spirit
pushing him back.

'Sure thing, Yoshi-boy. I'll stop just as soon as I lose all of my
common sense and do whatever it is strangers tell me to do!' Gan had
hollered at a livid Yahiko the other day during their momentous chase
around Shinshu thanks to the hooligan's unpaid food tab.

'HEY, wait a minute! Yahiko! My name is Yahiko! YA-HI-KO! Who the heck
are you calling 'Yoshi'? And what the heck's a 'Yoshi' anyway? I don't
look like a 'Yoshi'!' Yahiko shot back at the time.

"I won't let you win," the sixteen-year-old teenager told Amakusa.

"Win? This isn't a contest. You don't even have anything to do with why
I'm here. If you people had let me kill Akahori from the very start,
then none of this senseless bloodshed would've happened. I was willing
to compromise. You weren't. You only have yourselves to blame."

"BASTARD! How dare you?  Don't pin your crimes on your victims! It's
insufferable, shameless assholes like you whom I hate the most! SHIPPU
JINRAI DOTOU NO KEN!"

A technique Yahiko learned from the Joetsukan Dojo's Shibata Ryu in
Yokohama that was incorporated into his personal Kamiya Kasshin Ryu
arsenal, the Gale Thunderclap Billow Sword was a quick and sharp
disarming move aimed specifically at the Left or Right Wrist or "Kote"
as well as the "Yoko-Men" (Upper Right Head) and "Sayu-Men" (Upper Left
Head) of the opponent.

Amakusa parried the Shippu Jinrai Dotou no Ken with ease, but Yahiko
kept shifting from that move to the sword-breaking Tsui Gami, which
forced Shogo back in order to keep his wrists safe and his blade from
getting chipped or outright shattered from the varying attacks.
'Annoying little brat.'

Just beyond this sakabatou-wielding amateur was Akahori: Amakusa's last
chance at redemption. He'd cross the bridge leading to the Battousai
once he got there. Right now, he had other issues to take care of and
prioritize. He'd become God once more for the sake of defeating his
personal Satan.

Yahiko's back ended up against the same railing Akahori held while
delivering his speech to encourage his troops a short while back, the
reopened injuries he'd suffered thanks to experiencing the Nine-Headed
Dragon Flash twice within a three week period limiting his movement.

Was this what Shogo meant by claiming himself a force of nature? He used
the same techniques as Kenshin and Hiko had, but possessed none of their
grace or deliberateness. He _could_ be faster than the ex-vagabond...
the boy found that debatable... but he sported none of the Battousai's
battle-tested savvy and cunning, in the Tokyoite's opinion.

Also, the Christian leader was about as violent and dominant as Seijuro
Hiko the Thirteenth, but he didn't possess the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu
master's complete control over his unfettered might. Endless aggression,
wasted power; a formidable opponent, but a different animal altogether.

'I will not fall to someone inferior to either Kenshin or his master. No
way.'

"Come now. No speech about me having delusions of grandeur or being some
sort of hypocrite? I've heard them all. What's your take?" The
transfigured Shogo increased the pressure by pouring every last
offensive technique in his arsenal, from the Ryu Tsui Sen to the Ryu Kan
Sen to the Dou Ryu Sen that sheared the flooring Yahiko walked on to a
metaphoric needlepoint.

"I'm done talking. Let me show you what I mean." A metal sheath to the
rejuvenated Amakusa's eye woke him up from his reverie, followed by
multiple counterstrikes to the body that compounded the damage that
warriors like the late Sergeant Isao Askikaga, Lieutenant Okami
Yamazaki, Captain Mitsuru Ujiki, and Gan had already contributed.

'What in the world...?' Although Amakusa's brain didn't register any of
the pain from the counterassault... his robust lungs breathing without
any trouble while his oxygen-rich blood clotted his wounds and
reinvigorated his tired body... the facade of health made him even more
cautious.

"Ryu Sou Sen Garami!" said Shogo.

"Tsuka no Gedan: Hiza Hijiki!" retorted Yahiko, ducking under the one
point that the technique concentrated on attacking.

Amakusa's knees buckled from the counterattack before the move he used
to finish off Gan could even hit the nimble Yahiko.

The last Rai Ryu Sen Shogo executed served as his version of master-
level Hyoki no Jutsu, otherwise known as self-hypnosis. A Nikaido Heiho
expert could deploy Hyoki no Jutsu unto himself in order to trick his
body into functioning at peak performance and unleashing dormant
potential without regard of dire consequences such as wear and tear.

Even though his body didn't register pain, it didn't necessarily mean he
was invulnerable. The only thing that his Rai Ryu Sen did was turn off
the alarms in his mind and removed his biological safeguards that kept
him from worsening his critical condition.

His midsection remained a mess. His body was still battered to a pulp.
If the boy could tee off on him at will, his mission could be put into
jeopardy regardless of his lack of pain. His endorphin rush could only
do so much. The interloper before him must go down.

Yahiko's mouth remained a thin, flat line while his eyes appeared glassy
thanks to their dilated pupils. His mind went blank. His heart slowed
its beats. His body was at its limit. His muscles remembered that
perfect strike against Soujiro... the indefinable technique that was
neither Kamiya Kasshin Ryu or Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu in nature... a move he
could call his own.

'How harsh! I was only trying to help,' the Minoe within Yahiko's tired
heart bemoaned as he fluttered his eyelids and stretched his hands
towards the boy like a scorned lover.

Amakusa willed his faltering yet pain-deprived body to move forward and
bombard Yahiko with a composite version of Nikaido Heiho kanji strikes
and Ryu Sou Sen slashes, the smooth calligraphic movements meshing well
with the hard, sharp, and accurate slices of the Dragon Nest Flash.

The spiky-haired teenager blocked and parried the nonstop volley, which
left the rebel's sword seemingly trembling with fear. 'Fear? Nonsense.
He's hitting my katana so hard and accurately, he's turning it into a
tuning fork. It could break at any moment!'

Amakusa reacted in kind by mixing up his offense and increasing his
amount of angles to minimize sakabatou-to-katana contact. Yahiko
neutralized this with the dual Kamiya Kasshin Ryu Ougi of Hadome and
Hawatari, his heavy, Hawatari-assisted body shots against Shogo piling
up slowly but surely. Even the Nikaido Heiho techniques that Yahiko had
trouble with earlier were countered.

They were at the exact same impasse they experienced back when they
first clashed swords at the Shinshushin Manor's open yard; the
irresistible force versus the immovable object. In real life, there
were no irresistible forces or immovable objects; something always had
to give, and earlier in their battle, that something was Yahiko Myojin.

Shogo bided his time, adjusting the direction of his strikes against the
teenager's impenetrable defense so that Yahiko would be forced to move
his body in compromising positions that aggravated the wounds he already
had. The rebel's red and white light shone through with each strike,
overwhelming the darkness within the boy's raging heart.

"AMAKUSA! EAT THIS!" Although Yahiko missed his chance at shattering the
surprisingly tough blade, his horizontal slash formed a welt at the flat
part of Amakusa's cross scar, the thudding blow producing a spray of red
and white not unlike the rebel's mystifying aura.

"You Philistine...!" Just as the angelic Shogo prepared to unleash the
onslaught of another Kuzu Ryu Sen, his body went inert, his muscles
paralyzed from the neck down. From there, like a vacuum would to light,
he felt his kenki get sapped by his opponent's complete lack of living
energy; an blank void of immeasurable depth and denseness.

"T-The Lord is good. When trouble comes, he is a strong refuge. A-And he
knows everyone who t-t-trusts in him. But h-he sweeps away his enemies
in an overwhelming flood. He pursues his foes into the darkness o-of...
night!"

Yahiko aimed at the vibrating blade, and Amakusa compelled his numb and
paralyzed body to block the thrice-hitting Tsui Gami with his arm,
dislocating it.

The lustrous Amakusa felt the wind knocked out of him as he set the
jutting, out-of-place bone back into place with a stomach-turning
crunch. It didn't hurt, but it exhausted his numb body. With the
strength of his indomitable willpower, he forced his injured arm to
move.

The follow-up body strikes that should've ended the match right then and
there never came; the blinding agony and blood loss from the Nine-
Headed Dragon Flash had rendered Yahiko's legs into a rubbery mess. The
first one to rise to the occasion and deliver the final blow was the
winner.

A minute passed, followed by another. After the fifth one, the gasping
combatants stood as one and charged at each other.

"KUZU RYU SEN!"

'Ugh. That was gross. But anyway, time to go! Ninpou: Kakuremi no
Jutsu!' announced the frowning and retching Minoe in Yahiko's mind's
eye as he did a poor impersonation of a ninja attempting to become
invisible in order to sneak away and escape.

"...." Yahiko's eyes adjusted itself, the flowery rainbow afterimage
morphing into Amakusa's first strike as though time slowed itself down
for his sake. At that point, his body moved on his own, his muscle
memory remembering the same state of emptiness he experienced when faced
against Soujiro Seta's Shukuchi.

In an eye blink and a sigh, the _real_ Minoe appeared in front of Yahiko
and did something that the Tokyo Samurai Descendant had only seen one
other time in his lifetime: He blocked each and every last strike of the
Nine-Headed Dragon Flash with a blunt wakizashi, the sparks from the
high friction exchange igniting all at once like an ornate fireworks
display. Enishi Yukishiro himself took a while before learning to block
the powerful technique.

"M-Minoe! You came back! Thanks, I..." Yahiko sputtered, but he trailed
off after his rescuer invaded his personal space and addressed him with
a bright, dilated eye that reflected his flummoxed face back at him.

"Goodbye. Please forget that any of this ever happened," the eye-patched
effeminate man requested before pushing the teenager off the ledge of
the vestibule and turning his back to once again confront Shimabara's
One-Man Army.

"Minoe, please be safe!" Yahiko cried out to the petite secret agent,
but he never heard a "Mochiron!" back from him as he blacked out on the
floor down below with a resounding crash.


===


An hour and fifteen minutes past midnight, inside Akahori's designated
study...

"Father?" the wind whispered.

Tetsuo Akahori limped into the hall even as the sounds of battle down
below his study's veranda continued to erupt like fireworks at New
Years' Eve. He grabbed hold of his face with a gloved hand, his
spectacles glinting in the lamplight.

'Is this yet another one of those hallucinations caused by Amakusa's
Rai Ryu Sen? No, that technique wasn't the Rai Ryu Sen at all; I've
stolen the _true_ Rai Ryu Sen from Amakusa many years ago.' Akahori did
his best to stand up using the nearby table as leverage. He'd stabbed
himself a little too deep with his letter opener earlier in order to
wake up from the hypnotic, suffocating stupor Shogo left him in earlier.

'That... thing Amakusa did doesn't deserve to be called Rai Ryu Sen.
Using drugs to simulate a technique he could no longer do by himself is
beyond pathetic.' Every other breath of Akahori's had a whistling
wheeze, so he knew that the effects of Shogo's Rai Ryu Sen (watered-down
as it might have been) remained in his system.

"Father," came another soft, unmistakable sigh.

'There it is again. It's faint, but I can hear it. Why won't it leave
me alone?' the sweaty, middle-aged man demanded as he stumbled over the
bookcase and let loose several tomes on the floor, his legs unbalanced
and burning with a fire he couldn't put out no matter how hard he tried.

His hands. His hand smoldered in memory of the past. The incorrigible
Meiji Government (or rather, the Ishin Shishi who eventually became part
of the hanbatsu) attempted to erase him from their midst the same way
they did with Makoto Shishio, the Sekihoutai, the Shinsengumi, Hajime
Saito, Kaisho Katsu, Shinsaku Tagasuki, Kogoro Katsura, Toshimichi
Okubo, and Takamori Saigo.

He remembered that, even in the middle of the infernal conflagration of
hell, his little girl mewed the same word over and over again without
panicking... like a true Akahori. He grabbed hold of the door where she
lay there calling for him over and over the roar of the raging blaze,
without any regard to the flesh-eating flames on the crackling door. He
burned from the inside out.

"Father, it's me."

However, that was merely a memory. He had more important issues to
attend to at the moment. He rifled through his desk drawer, discarded
his Colt Single-Action Revolver, and picked up a firearm that earned
more widespread use among the old Satsuma forces and the signature
weapon of the famous Bakumatsu hero, Ryoma Sakamoto: A Smith and Wesson
Army Number Two. He also took two bandoliers full of speedloaders for
his revolver and tucked them inside his coat.

His sweaty head snapped up in attention after hearing several knocks on
the wall. "Are you in there, Father?"

They'd set their trap, hadn't they? The bastards. Like Tagasuki and
Saigo, he had no intention of going down without a fight. Not after
everything he'd done and sacrificed for the Ishin Shishi and the
hanbatsu.

The best years of his life were wasted all for the sake of maintaining
stability in an inherently corrupt nation. If he were to perish, then
he'd make damn well sure that they were going to go down with him.

No. Wait. That wasn't it. It wasn't the leaders of the Meiji Government
that he should be afraid of. What was he supposed to do again?

He heard a creak from above the ceiling. He turned. Hanging feet greeted
him back. Familiar, socked feet. The stench invaded his nostrils and
seared his lungs. He howled and nearly pulled the trigger of his handgun
while its barrel was in his mouth.

'I need to wake up. This is a nightmare. I need to wake up in order to
deal with Amakusa once and for all. Get a hold of yourself, Tetsuo.'

He swung the door open and hobbled right in the middle of the hall, his
revolver cocked and ready. Before him stood the apparition of a milky-
haired, alabaster-skinned, and slate-gray-eyed ghost from beyond.

"Father, it's me. Rin."

"You don't fool me! My daughter is in the safe hands of my bodyguard,
Seta-kun." He aimed his Smith and Wesson at the ghoulish specter. "I
want to wake up. I have no time to waste on you, spirit. Leave me be!"

A gunshot resounded in the hallway; from an outsider's perspective, the
muffled bang didn't stand out from all the other, louder, and
unremitting rifle blasts from within the yard.


===


Yahiko woke up staring at the ceiling after hearing a thunderous boom
that shook the entire manor and rendered the staircase a couple of yards
away from him into a rickety mess. He then concentrated on clearing his
double vision, his head pounding like a drum. What happened exactly?
What time was it? What was he doing lying in the middle of a stranger's
house?

Was he protecting his mother from one of her rougher customers again?
No, wait, she was already dead. Was the yakuza beating him up again? No,
wait, he was already freed from the yakuza by Kenshin. Was he blown away
by that man who flew like a bat and threw dynamite around with reckless
abandon? No, wait, he already defeated him. How about the man with a
mouth of a whale? Or that bald guy with the multi-section stick? He
defeated them too, although Kujiranami was more of a... draw, if
anything else, since Kenshin was the one who put Whale Mouth down for
the count.

Was he involved in a carriage accident? Trampled and knocked out by
horses? Nearly killed by Psycho-Kid? How long had he been asleep?
Minutes? Hours? Days? Years? Well, maybe not years.

He then realized he'd fallen. More importantly, he was pushed by a
certain wigged, bandaged, and eye-patched "land pirate" spy known as
Munenori Minoe. He looked around. The remains of the murdered Togakudan
was beside him. In fact, one of them helped break his fall. He resisted
the urge to hurl.

The bodies hadn't stiffened yet, so he deduced that he hadn't been down
and out for long. On that note, who knew that being friends with Chief
Uramura and Officer Kosaburo would have its benefits, such as knowing
how rigor mortis worked?

Breathlessly, Yahiko thought, '...Minoe!' after remembering that
Amakusa's former fan had essentially substituted himself for the
Tokyoite in order to confront the humanoid typhoon that wanted some
random politician (albeit someone with connections to Shinshu
cockfighting and Sanosuke's father) dead.

He gaped at the whittled railing where he had stood while battling it
out against Shogo Amakusa: the same place where Minoe teleported from
out of nowhere, shoved him away, and saved him from receiving the full
brunt of the third Kuzu Ryu Sen he'd seen that week. He was lucky to
survive with his limbs intact the first and second time it was used
against him.

What did he just witness the last forty-five minutes or so? What did his
eyes see and his mind comprehend after seeing so many deaths in his
midst? Blinded by his own rage, he could barely remember how he forced
Amakusa up to the upper deck above, much less figure out what had
happened beforehand. All he could recall was his feelings over Gan's...
then his mind blanked out with visions of his time together as part of
the short-lived Three Stooges.

The sword clangs from above him compelled him to try to stand up and
return to the forefront of Amakusa's one-man war against the Japanese
Government, but his legs wouldn't listen to him at all, as though a
demon mounted his chest, digging his claws deep and crushing his heart
and lungs like citrus fruit.

Subsequently, all the color from Yahiko's face faded to nothing, his
skin's pallor resembling that of the Togakudan corpses beside him:
blood-soaked from the outside, blood-drained from the inside.

Minoe popped out of nowhere like a daisy and spoke nonsense like a
madman: a womanish hobo with a small sword to protect himself, but was
otherwise harmless. Or not so harmless, because he was going to kick
Amakusa's butt, and after the feeling in Yahiko's legs came back,
they'd battle the zealot two-on-one and at the very least save the lives
of everyone who'd survived so far.

On that note, Yahiko couldn't believe how skilled Minoe was up until the
time when he first saved his bacon. In many ways, the pirate man and
Kenshin were alike in the sense that they were more than what they
appeared. They even shared the same inflections and quirks, come to
think of it.

Then, a mound of humanity exploded into a menagerie of appendages, bone
fragments, giblets, vital organs, and limbs: a sea of flesh and blood
heading right towards him.

"M-Minoe?"

It rained crimson during those early hours of the morning.

The boy's stomach churned after he heard the person-sized silhouette
from above him splatter and break with a voluminous series of muted
viscous chops, like a whole cabbage patch being cut apart and shredded
by the thousand-armed Goddess of Mercy herself, Kannon.

"...."

Judging from Kenshin's descriptions when he recounted how he first got
his cross-shaped scar, it rained the same way as the Battousai's bloody
meeting with Tomoe Yukishiro did. Yahiko bathed in warm blood other than
his own, its pungent metallic smell assaulting his nostrils, stinging
his watery eyes, and souring his tongue.

Afterwards, it rained appendages, severed limbs, and entrails, which
prompted Yahiko to at last gain the strength to move away from the
remains and expelling what was left of the Sakaguchi Soba he ate
previously.

Hope against hope, Yahiko looked back. He knew it sounded horrible of
him to think that way, but he wished the raining appendages were the
remains of the exhausted Amakusa, killed by self-defense of the unlikely
hero known as Munenori Minoe, the Master of Blocking.

The mangled cadaver was unrecognizable, but the shredded purple-and-blue
ensemble it wore wasn't. Yahiko's heart skipped a beat, his whole body
shaking as he retched on his spit and mucus.

A glimmer of optimism entered Yahiko's mind. 'No. No, no, no. Wait. This
could be another person's corpse!' Yahiko was a terrible, terrible
person to desire the death of a stranger in exchange of the life of
someone he knew, but he also realized that he didn't care.

'Relax. Patches... I mean, _Minoe_... has made his choice. He's on our
side. Even though Amakusa was his idol, he chose to fight him for the
sake of his deceased comrades and Gan's sacrifice. He didn't turn tail
and betray the Sanbaka after all.'

Yahiko's train of thought derailed into a multi-passenger tragedy
mourned for years to come after realizing he'd referred to himself, the
late Gan, and Minoe as the Three Stooges without any provocation,
derision, or sarcasm whatsoever. 'What the hell am I thinking? I should
stay focused! I am not part of that village idiot troop! Not at all!'

Also, for some reason, Yahiko remembered him and Minoe getting their
heads stuck inside the crevice of a bat cave while Gan talked to both
their hindquarters... and he didn't know why.

A flapping and bloodied eye patch flew right into Yahiko's face. He lost
his balance and fell on the seat of his hakama, even though the light
slap of leather didn't really hurt him.

Once realization set in, Yahiko wailed and bit his own wrist to keep
his whimpering sobs at bay, multiple streams of salty water flowing from
beneath his eye bags as his eyes turned red and his airways were clogged
with screams too loud and too hoarse to pass through his throat all at
once.

He tried screaming Minoe's name, but his sniveling rendered his words
incomprehensible, the tightness in his chest forcing his head to the
ground as he pounded the floorboards as though he were knocking on
heaven's gilded gates themselves. 'Bring him back,' he would've demanded
to the heartless gods.


===


An hour and twenty minutes past midnight, across the hallway where
Akahori's designated study was located...

Rin didn't even flinch as she felt a fleck of some invisible destructive
force the size of a pea whiz past her hair, her scalp and her skin pores
throbbing after she heard a loud pop from behind her while her father
aimed a smoking gun at her.

"Are you all right, Father?" she deadpanned as she brushed her hair
back, the smell of gunpowder lingering in the air. "You don't look so
good."

The wrinkled, grit-teeth Noh mask her father wore as his face melted
into a different expression altogether, the eyes behind his spectacles
glinting in recognition of his lone daughter with a flame she was
intimately familiar with. His lips twisted into a smile, his laughter
exuberant and tearful. Heartbreaking.

"Father, you're limping. Are you hurt? Did Amakusa hurt you?"

"Rin? Rin! RIIIIIIN! I'm so glad you're safe!" As his tears and nasal
expulsions streamed across his face-splitting grin, Akahori ran towards
his daughter, hugged her, and swung her around until dizziness set in,
his bellowing laughter making her bite her lip and cling unto him for a
little longer. However, the prickly part of his chin made her flinch and
move away, as though stung by a cactus.

"Did Amakusa hurt you, Rin? Did he do anything else to you? I swear, if
he dared...!" the hypocrisy of Tetsuo's thought processes didn't bother
him in the least, especially in light of the fact that she was kidnapped
by her temporary coachman for the sake of minimizing fatalities.

Tetsuo using a police army, the Togakudan, and hired bodyguards as
cannon fodder for Amakusa made him more dangerous than the rebel in many
ways.

"You and I both know who and what Amakusa is, Father. His convictions
won't allow him to do any such thing. He only brought me here, nothing
more," Rin reassured. She presumed her irises shook as usual with the
way her tearful father stared at her with quivering lips, which amused
her in the sense that it looked to him like she was about to cry even
though she wasn't really.

"I don't trust him. That man is a hypocrite. He doesn't only create
widows and orphans, he also finishes off the loved ones of the people he
killed as well, all the while claiming himself to be a god and a god-
fearing Christian. What a joke."

"It was your fault why he was forced to do that."

"He had the choice not to kill. He had the choice to fail. If divine
retribution is important enough for him to willingly turn into a
charlatan and a fraud, then I reserve the right to condemn him for it."

"Father... I can't breathe."

"Oh, sorry. Did I hurt you? I forgot that you bruise easily. I thought
that I'd lost you when Amakusa first showed your body. Just like...
Anyway, where's Seta-kun?"

Her father cleared his throat and relinquished his solid grip on her,
but first he gave her a parting porcupine kiss on the lips as an apology
of sorts. She licked her mouth, tasting the bitterness of tobacco and
the sweetness of wine.

"I was forced to leave Seta-kun behind. He'll be here shortly." Rin
focused her eyes on Akahori and saw a shaking, trembling, gaunt, and
haggard mess of a man. If Amakusa were to come there shortly, he'd
finish him off in an instant. This was not the man she referred to when
she told Shogo that he didn't stand a chance against her father.

"Wait, what are you doing back here? Who brought you here in the first
place?" Akahori asked, his doting facade morphing into a countenance
that Rin was more familiar with. The Noh mask returned, the bespectacled
man transforming into Enma Daio, his thick brow ridges touching the tips
of his glasses and his gloved hands forming a steeple of sorts below an
unimpressed sneer.

"I don't know. I was left here by another Battousai." Rin fidgeted and
bit the tips of her thumbs in remembrance. "He was a doppelganger
Battousai that looked nothing like Amakusa Shogo yet also sported red
hair, a cross-shaped scar, and imperceptible speed. He had the build of
a little girl and he was able to catch up with Seta-kun."

"Honey, Daddy doesn't have time for your little riddles."

Tetsuo waved his daughter off, which prompted her to reply while rolling
her partly lidded eyes, "I meant what I said. There are two Battousais
in this mansion right now. The one who brought me here had a twin scar
under his eye and Tokugawa Era clothing. He smelled of blood."

"Two Battousais...?"

Her father grabbed hold of her shoulder, pinched the fabric off of her
skin, and gripped it tight (probably to avoid further bruises) as he
exhaled deeply while his eyes darted to and fro the floor the same way
her eyes would've done so involuntarily.

She then realized something. Her genius father, the architect behind the
Modern Shimabara War that virtually wiped out Shimabara's Hidden
Christians right off the face of Japan, had not anticipated her capture
at all.

"I haven't figured out why Amakusa's Battousai Group left you here when
they could've killed you and used that fact to their advantage." Her
father's words didn't mesh with the expression on his face, which had
downtrodden eyes, a faraway look, and a thin, constricted line where his
lips should be. "It doesn't matter anyway, since Seta-kun will be here
to finish the job."

"Father," Rin ventured.

"What is it, darling?" Her daddy queried while running his gloved hands
over her creamy white hair.

"You aren't angry at me for falling into Amakusa's trap?"

"Of course not, sweetheart. I was so busy with all this Battousai Group
business that I've neglected you and your needs. It's not your fault,
but mine."

"Then I've realized something."

"What is it, honey?"

"I am your weak point."

Without missing a beat, Tetsuo affirmed, "Yes."

Rin tilted her head to the side. "It doesn't bother you?"

"I don't care. People weren't meant to be perfect anyway. My weakness is
my strength." He held her close, to the point that she could smell the
stench of alcohol and cigarettes and see the streaks of red lightning in
the corneas of her father's bloodshot eyes.

She drew imaginary circles around her father's stomach while resting her
head on his chest. She stopped once she realized what she was doing.
"You yourself said that burning houses should be looted. I'm the fire
that leaves you vulnerable to thieves and your own enemies. Are you okay
with this?"

"It doesn't matter. Making a bright future for you... for us... is what
compels me to act. Some people in our country aren't willing to face the
changes of the new age. They continue to live in the past, as though
stuck in some sort of time warp. I'm here to bring about change for the
next generation because the old must always make way for the new."

Her father's hands trembled as it massaged her back and petted her head
like a stray cat, his warmth and his smell either nauseating or
intoxicating her as his musk overpowered her. Tentatively, she embraced
him back. She felt him tense up and keep her at bay afterwards.

"I will erase the sins of our fathers to make way for a brighter
tomorrow. A New Japan awaits us, and I will not let the ghosts of the
past come in the way of its fruition."

Akahori held his daughter by the shoulders, pushed her towards his side,
and held one of her dainty hands. "We need to find an appropriate hiding
place until the storm has passed. Even though my plans have suffered
several setbacks, it's still moving along nicely. Before the break of
dawn, this Battousai Group issue will be put to rest."


===


After what seemed like countless hours or what could've been mere
minutes... Yahiko didn't care anymore...

Instead of watching the backs of his two companions who lent their
strength to him in order to subdue the beyond-reasonable Amakusa, Yahiko
ended up endangering his comrades and ultimately leading them to their
deaths. They had sacrificed their lives for his instead of the other way
around.

Honestly, who was he kidding? Minoe, the Master of Blocking? Blocking
strikes wasn't enough to win against that monster, Amakusa. Even _he_
barely lasted a couple of minutes at a time against Shogo's Hiten
Mitsurugi Ryu, while Gan... He'd rather not talk about Gan at the
moment.

Dammit, he couldn't see.

"K-Kenshin... Kenshin, what am I supposed to do now? What would you have
done if you were in my sandals?" Yahiko already knew the answer to that.
Had Kenshin been the one who handled this mission, then none of those
people would've died. The problem would've been settled as soon as he
and Amakusa crossed swords. That was how great Kenshin was.

Come to think of it, had Kenshin met Amakusa earlier on... six years
earlier, to be exact... would those one thousand policemen and soldiers
be spared their gruesome fate? Yahiko believed without a shadow of a
doubt that _that_ would've been the case.

As the Hitokiri Battousai, Kenshin was a butcher without peer who paved
the way to the new era and painted it with the blood of the Ishin
Shishi's enemies. As the vagabond, Kenshin was a pacifist who had the
power and ability to stop conflicts with both his mind and his body: a
hero through and through. He was perfect: Yahiko's idol to Minoe's
Amakusa.

How was he supposed to compete against that? Forget about him being ten
years too early to reach Kenshin's level; at this rate, he might as well
have been a thousand years too early.

"I've inherited your sword, but I haven't inherited your strength to
come along with it. I'm so... weak."

'Unlike your other so-called allies, are you prepared to kill me?' was
what Amakusa told Gan, not Yahiko.

The Tokyoite bit his lip and wiped away his tears. Kenshin was strong
enough to afford to not kill his enemies and face the repercussions of
doing so. That wasn't the case for Yahiko, a former yakuza lackey.

Didn't he as a ten year old swear to the insane Enishi Yukishiro that if
he killed Kaoru before he and Kenshin fought, 'Then, in place of Kenshin
the non-killing rurouni, I WILL KILL YOU!' with nary a stutter? Did he
not face down a giant back in Aoiya, convinced that Kenshin would come
back and save them all? Where was that courage of his now?

'I guess I know better now than before. Ignorance is bliss.'

To the Myojin boy himself, Shogo concluded, 'You've never killed a man,
have you? Foolish child. This is no place for you.'

Amakusa was right. Yahiko never did kill a man. He'd like to think that
it was a choice he made rooting from his strong moral fiber or, like in
Kenshin's case, regret and atonement.

However, it just happened that he hadn't had the opportunity or ability
to kill anyone. It wasn't a conscious effort on his part, although the
non-killing nature of Kamiya Kasshin Ryu also came to play in regards to
that circumstance.

Wasn't he just abiding by the pacifistic vow that Kenshin made for
himself merely because he wanted to follow the ex-rurouni's example
without regard to whether or not it applied to his current situation?

Would the outcome of this incident be a lot more different if he had
executed Amakusa like some sort of wandering vigilante? Was it really a
matter of choice on his part, or was it more because he didn't have the
strength or skill to kill the rebel?

He remembered chasing the backs of both the sprinting Sanosuke and
Kenshin in his dreams: a recurring fantasy that defined his goals up
until this juncture. Right now, in his mind's eye, their backs were so
far away he could barely see them anymore.

The hemorrhaging light of the sunset shone as they all dashed to an
unknown destination, so the long shadows of Sanosuke and Kenshin that
covered Yahiko's path remained his only other indication that they were
still there. No matter how fast or how hard he ran, he could never catch
up to them.

If it were Kenshin guarding Akahori, he would've found a way to overcome
the opponent without leading to any casualties or collateral damage
whatsoever. He would've defeated Amakusa and made him realize the errors
of his ways, or at the very least prevent him from hurting anyone else.
Had Yahiko killed Amakusa when they first fought, then...!

"If only Kenshin were here. If only Kenshin's weakened body still had
the strength to wield this sword I'm not worthy of inheriting..."

"JEEZ, SHUT UP AND STOP WHINING! Kenshee this, Kenshee that. Can't you
let a guy rest in peace here? If you want your Kenshee so bad, then why
don't you marry him? Honestly."

Yahiko whirled his head so hard at the source of the familiar voice that
he'd almost snapped his own neck. He screamed, fell on his knees, and
crawled to the safety of the Togakudan's dismembered corpses after
seeing the chopped head of Gan speak to him with a sneer and an
unimpressed stare.

"Shit. I'm going crazy! What the hell is going on?"

"Well, if by crazy, you mean that you're getting whinier by the minute,
then yes. Yes, you are."

"Holy Enlightened Buddha, are you for real?" Yahiko rubbed away the
tears in his eyes. Even though he'd already bade logic and reality
farewell, there was still no way he'd allow... Gan's ghost the
satisfaction of seeing him so vulnerable and pathetic.

After comprehension sunk in, Yahiko ranted, 'What the hell am I doing?
I'm talking to a dead guy's decapitated head! I'm losing it! I'm cuckoo!
I'm loopy! Pull yourself together and stop doing something that Psycho-
Kid does on a regular basis, Yahiko!'

To Gan, Yahiko begged, "I'm so sorry I wasn't able to protect you! Now
please rest in peace! Spirit, leave me be!"

Gan's head snorted at the incoherent Yahiko as the boy flailed around
and smashed his head on the floor to... cure himself of his supposed
psychotic episode? Who knew?

"Wait, come again? Protect _me_? Isn't it the other way around?" Had Gan
still possessed hands, he would've cupped his face with one of them to
mime his disbelief.

Yahiko stopped bashing his troubled brains out in time to relent, "All
right, fine! For some reason, you were the one who saved my life because
I was too weak to take Amakusa on my own! Happy?"

"Oh, so this time, _you_ owe _me_ a life debt, huh? Funny, it seems that
I've wasted my time trying to save you after all," Gan needled, which
made Yahiko growl. That insipid, open-mouthed grin and wide, mischievous
eyes tempted the Tokyoite to play ball with the insufferable talking
head.

Yahiko confronted the Chatty Gan with his own furrowed eyebrows and a
toothy, half-agape mouth. "What do you mean?"

"If you're going to whine about how helpless you are during a time of
crisis, then I might as well have pushed you into Amakusa's rotating
blade strikes and watch you turn into ground meat."

Drool began falling out of the severed head's mouth. "I wish I had my
stomach. All this talking about food is making me think I'm still
capable of hunger!"

Ignoring the gruesome fact that he was talking to the remains of a dead
muscleman he met a day or two ago, Yahiko inquired, "What am I supposed
to do now?"

"Are you afraid to die? Are you afraid of Amakusa?" Even now, the
beheaded head of Gan continued to mock, arguably haunt, Yahiko with his
accusing words.

"No. No on both counts. But what's the point of fighting him now? I've
already failed so many people. I failed both you and Minoe. I'm
helpless."

"Failed to do what? Protect everyone?"

"Yes. If Kenshin were here... or even Sanosuke..."

"Fuck Kenshee. Fuck Harada Sanosuke. You're the one who's here, Yoshi-
boy." Gan guffawed the same death rattle of a hearty laugh he shared
before his body fell apart from Amakusa's attack. Yahiko shivered in
remembrance. "You sound just like him, you know."

"...What?" Yahiko muttered.

The Disembodied Gan clarified, "You sound just like Kumamoto." He then
sneezed and spewed out bloody mucus. Or snot-covered blood. He wrinkled
his nose. "My nose itches. Can you be a dear and scratch it?"

"No. That's disgusting." Yahiko slapped himself several times over in an
attempt to wake up from his guilt-wracked fever dream. "You're a figment
of my imagination. Also, you might fall off. Amakusa sliced you up real
good."

"Fine." Gan's head rolled his eyes. "Anyway, didn't you hear the awesome
dressing down I gave Kumamoto earlier? It was all true. The great
expectations he shouldered has turned him into a deluded rebel murderer
with a god complex, which is sad. You're acting quite like him right
now, judging from what you're bitching and moaning about."

Yahiko turned away after his vision blurred and his eyes were flooded
with salty bitterness. "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't
have a god complex. Besides which, I've only so far hit Amakusa a
couple of times and broke his sword's sheath in three places! Big whoop!
I can't stop him the way I am now. He might as well be a god,
considering how little damage I've given him."

Gan heaved a low howl of a sigh even though he lacked half a windpipe
and both lungs. "Amakusa didn't listen to a goddamn thing I said. My
sage knowledge went from one ear to the other without ever registering
in his dumbass brain. Will you do the same thing, Yoshi-boy?" the
bandanna-wearing "zombie" snarled, which jolted Yahiko awake.

"Kenshee is Kenshee. Yoshi-boy is Yoshi-boy. Don't be like Kumamoto,
who's burdened by the shadow of some imaginary Amakusa he could never
hope to compete with. You should also step away from the shadow of the
Battousai you idolize and create your own path. Show everyone here,
Amakusa most of all, the limits of your true strength."

Yahiko punched the floorboard in front of Gan so hard, the resulting
sharp wooden shards skinned his knuckles raw. He felt his face and ears
grow warm as his gums bled from how sudden he slammed his jaw shut and
bared his teeth, his tense neck thick and rigid from all the increased
blood flow to his head.

"Bullshit! My _true_ strength? Don't make me laugh! You're dead, Minoe's
dead, the Togakudan are finished, most of the police troops have been
neutralized, and none of these... 'events' would've happened if we just
let that damn lunatic zealot kill that damn Oyakata from the get go!"

"Fuck, listen to yourself, man. If you focus on what you've left behind,
you'll never be able to see what lies before you!" Gan boomed, and
Yahiko froze in place. In the boy's skewed perspective, the animated
head looked more alive than he did at the moment.

"Aren't those policemen stuck inside that smashed, debris-filled
entrance still alive? Are you going to let Amakusa run amuck and kill
them too because you failed to save the lives of the other officers in
the yard? Or the Togakudan inside this ballroom? What about them? What
about the Oyakata, who I heard has a daughter? Or his daughter, come to
think of it? Aren't you going to save them too? Or are you going to
helplessly drown in your own guilt?"

"Shut up. I've heard enough." Yahiko's shoulders slumped down while his
neck, grit teeth, trembling hands, heartbeats, and breathing slowed down
to a crawl. He stood, sheathed his inheritance from Kenshin, and used it
as his crutch of sorts to keep him from toppling over.

Gan queried, "Where do you think you're going?"

Yahiko replied, "Like you said, I shouldn't get too wound up about the
past. On that note, dead people shouldn't interfere with issues that
don't concern thems anymore."

"Oh, fuck you! If I had a body, I would've headbutted you to the ground
like a railroad spike," the bodiless Gan threatened.

"If you had a body, I'd kick you in the crotch," the unimpressed Yahiko
countered.

"Shit, now you got me depressed. I don't have a crotch anymore either.
Oh, ladies! You're all going to miss out!" Gan sniffled. "Between you
and me, Yoshi-boy, I hope I don't turn into some sort of earthbound
ghost like Okiku and the Nine Plates; cursed to an eternity of me trying
to pick up the pieces of my sliced body. That'd suck!"

The Soba King and the Kid Samurai stared at each other before they burst
into energetic, if morbid, laughter, with Yahiko tumbling posterior-
first onto the ground anyway despite his sakabatou "support" and
slapping his knees with whooping titters at a joke that probably wasn't
as funny as he thought it was. Meanwhile, Gan's head stretched his mouth
so wide with his sniggers, he could've swallowed his fist whole.

Yahiko wiped away his tears, his bloodshot eyes now clear and cloudless
thanks to his own grim mirth. "Thank you, Gan. No offense, but I hope I
won't be seeing you around anytime soon. I still have some work to do
and the rest of my life ahead of me."

The head didn't answer back, which Yahiko took as his cue to leave.

'Who I am right now isn't enough to surpass Amakusa or Psycho-Kid, much
less Kenshin during his peak. That doesn't necessarily mean I can't keep
that deranged cult leader and his posse from doing whatever they want.'

Every step felt like stabbing knives and every breath stung like glass
dust in his lungs. Regardless, he gingerly made his way through the
less damaged of the two staircases, wincing at every footfall, his head
feeling like it was about to burst at any minute.

He felt a soft tuft of something underneath the sole of his sandaled
feet by the time he reached the railing where he faced down Amakusa's
second Kuzu Ryu Sen head on. The place where Minoe had pushed him, to be
exact. He raised his foot and looked down. It was a raven-haired wig.

He chuckled again, laughing at something that wasn't funny at all. He
wondered if this was also Psycho-Kid's coping mechanism as he entered
the two-floor dining hall beyond the corpse-filled ballroom.


===


Two hours and thirty minutes after midnight, within the humongous
confines of the Akahori Mansion's guestroom...

After a quarter of an hour of searching through the different rooms of
the labyrinthine mansion, Amakusa found his quarry hiding inside the
guestroom along with his milky-white daughter way before the Ten Ken
could return.

"Rin, move to the corner. Daddy has some business to attend to," the
Oyakata ordered the Porcelain Doll of the House of Akahori as he went
into position, and true to her reputation, she obliged his request. She
stood stock-still by the shadows of the moonlit window while staring,
unblinking, at the events that unfolded before her, her shaking irises
hinting emotions that she might or might not have felt.

"Akahori. We meet again. Let me say hello to you properly." The gleaming
Amakusa's aura of sword-ki whirled around him anew, summoning a gust of
wind from out of nowhere that made his clothes and hair flutter as
though he were in the middle of the storm of the century.

The Oyakata slowly backed away into the windows and flapping curtains
while keeping his distance from Amakusa's striking range, making sure
that Rin was always within his field of vision lest the zealot became
desperate and struck her down like the coward that he was.

"I was wondering whether or not that cannon shot to your shin even
fazed you because you managed to finish off a squadron or two. But
judging by that bleeding hole on your abdomen and the fact that you look
as haggard as you were after you took out a thousand men, I'd say it
affected you immensely after all."

Tetsuo squinted his eyes, his glasses flaring from the bright beams that
emanated from the wounded but indefatigable Amakusa's body as the
insurgent slipped into his battoujutsu stance and roared. The forty-
something-year-old politician then placed his right hand a hairline away
from his holstered pistol, ready to draw and fire at the slightest hint
of movement.

Amakusa made the first move, leaping forward with a charging battoujutsu
strike that nearly cleaved in half the curved part of the wooden
scabbard that housed his shining blade. Because it wasn't a reverse-
edged sword, the katana slid even faster than the original Battousai's
sword-drawing technique; perhaps fast enough to cleave bullets in half.

Akahori tested that theory by drawing his gun, aiming it right between
Amakusa's eyes, and firing. An instant later, Shogo split both the
projectile and the fraction of a second it took to release his sword
from its borrowed sheath in half, the two metal halves of the bullet
traveling in different directions while singing the cilia of both his
ears.

'His skills haven't deteriorated at all, but the sheath he's using isn't
the same sheath he had before. It's a scabbard from another sword
instead of the black steel one with the sharpened edge,' Tetsuo noticed
after witnessing that one sword-drawing slash from Shogo. 'Even though
most swords are shaped the same, I doubt that his sword is a perfect fit
with that sheath. It has made his unsheathing strikes a mite slow.'

As the Oyakata evaluated Amakusa's skills, he kicked a couch right at
the Kakure Kirishitan in order to block off the follow-up scabbard
strike of the Hiten Mitsurugi School's Double Dragon Flash.

Meanwhile, Akahori remarked, "I take it that even now, you're suffering
from a god complex, am I right? Tell me, did the invisible man up in the
sky command you to murder all those policemen, or are you now pretending
to be your magical imaginary friend made flesh?"

"Blasphemer! How can you who are evil say anything good? You're a
philosophically inept charlatan with an imperfect understanding of how
the world truly works. The minds of men are incapable of fathoming God's
ultimate plan."

The entirety of the couch collapsed into a mess of broken wood and
stuffing, the centrifugal force afforded by Amakusa's sword-drawing
stance giving him enough momentum to imbue the hollow sheath with bone-
crushing power without it breaking like a matchbox.

"I'm imperfect? Good. God doesn't exist because god is defined as
perfect, and there's no such thing as perfection. The concept of
perfection is a lie; a fantasy of idle minds wishing for something
better than this imperfect world."

With that said, Akahori released the remaining four rounds of his
firearm.


===


Next: Murdering god.

Almost forgot to note that the Gadamer Gem Amakusa used in the
last chapter was based on the same weapon that Shiro Amakusa of
Samurai Shodown (or Samurai Spirits) fame used. The "Invisible man
in the sky" paraphrase is a quote from the late George Carlin's
skit about how religion is bullshit.

Also, the "Focus on what you left behind" quote was taken from
Pixar's Ratatouille, while the "Burning houses should be looted"
quote was lifted directly from "The Thirty-Six Stratagems" of
Zhuge Liang. All rights reserved, as per usual.

Disclaimer: All characters used in this fanfic (save some others)
are the rightful property of Nobuhiro Watsuki, Shueisha, Shonen
Jump, Viz, Sony Studios, Fuji TV, Studio Gallop, Studio Deen, and
ADV. This disclaimer also covers all the other copyrighted
material that are far too many to mention here. Don't sue me
please, I'm very poor.

Taas noo kahit kanino,
Abdiel