damned_institute | Day 37: Men's Showers

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Day 37: Men's Showers

I wouldn't really call this a locker room. More like a bathroom with lockers. The place was uncomfortably crowded, with almost every adult male patient being hustled into the showers at once, but Phoenix wasn't as annoyed by the claustrophobic, milling throng of bodies as he might have otherwise been. Every extra person was one more person who might end up standing between himself and Edgeworth.

He knew that the prosecutor would have a fit if he found out about this. He'd known since he'd tacked that first response up on the bulletin board. And in a way, he couldn't blame him. Phoenix knew that he jumped into things all-or-nothing more often than most people. At the same time, he had some kind of reality testing. He wasn't going to learn the basics of how to defend himself and suddenly decide that he was Rambo.

He found an unoccupied locker in the southwest corner and glanced around, trying to gauge how long he could possibly stall in a locker room, looking as if he was expecting something, before people started looking at him strangely. It would have been easier if he'd known something of the description of the man he was supposed to be meeting. As it was, all he had was handwriting and a military rank, neither of which guaranteed any particular appearance.

It's not as if there was a better way to plan this, though. "Yeah, meet me by the lockers. I'll be wearing gray and a smiley face, just like about a hundred other guys."

[for Hughes]

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"Please, don't call this one that," Kenshin replied with a slightly distracted laugh. "That's not for a few years yet." Five years, to be exact. In five years, they would have a son named Kenji. Belatedly, he realized that he still was, in fact, staring at the faucet without turning it on. He then turned it on too quickly and nearly boiled himself alive. "Oro!"

Once everything was the way it should be, he looked over to Sanosuke. "But how, though? How is she alive? You said that Enishi killed her as the final stroke of his Jinchuu."

Edited 2008-11-25 19:56 (UTC)

Sanosuke tried to groan when Kenshin turned on the hot water full blast, but he was laughing too hard for it to come out right. The guy was beyond flustered, and for damn good reason, but that wasn't going to stop Sano from enjoying every minute of it. Making sure that he didn't repeat the mistakes of the rurouni, Sano began his own shower, and shrugged a bit when Kenshin questioned him.

"I thought she was. But Yahiko said it was a trick that Enishi managed to do with a doll." For the first time since he'd told Kenshin about it, Sanosuke thought over the events of Jinchuu, really considering everything that happened. "One of the guys that fought against you used dolls. Nothing like making a fake Kaoru or anything. But he had this massive one he hid in and used for his fight against you. Considering how it looked, it might not be so hard for him to pull off something like a fake corpse."

He'd have to be damn good, of course. Megumi had been the one to examine the body, and even she had been fooled. But considering all the preparations and everything else that Enishi's group had gone through, maybe it wasn't so farfetched to think they'd be able to pull it off.

"It's not something Yahiko would make up. The kid's too honest for that." Sanosuke didn't want Kenshin to have a doubt in his mind. They still have every reason to escape this hell, but knowing Kaoru hadn't died was a huge relief off of his shoulders.

And, of course, Sano was laughing at him again. Kenshin gave his friend a very reproachful look, suddenly very glad that he and Yuffie had gone off by themselves last night. Sanosuke probably wouldn't have been terribly kind when it came to Robin's (rather feeble) efforts at swordsmanship.

Dolls so realistic that they could pass for corpses. It was very macabre, certainly, but Kenshin imagined that it could be possible. After some of the things he'd seen in his lifetime, he had a fairly open mind about this sort of thing. He'd seen a man's body get so hot that it caught fire and burned until there was nothing left. A corpse doll didn't seem like quite as much of a stretch after that.

"No, this one is sure he isn't lying." Yahiko was an honest kid, and he could never lie to them. He'd tried, once, when he first started doing odd jobs around Akabeko, but they'd found him out quickly enough. The rurouni couldn't imagine that that much had changed in the last five years.

Five years. Kenshin's smile softened a little, and his voice grew thoughtful. "He's really grown up, hasn't he? Fifteen. A few months ago he was picking pockets, and now he's a man. Do you think he's had his Genpuku ceremony yet?"

The look Kenshin gave him didn't exactly do much to erase Kenshin's face. He was right about the hard time he probably would've given Robin though. But since he hadn't been there, he hadn't know about it, and for now Robin was safe from having fun poked at him.

Kenshin, on the other hand, was a different story.

"Yeah, he has." It had been dark, but even that couldn't hide Yahiko's pride when he told Sanosuke about it. "I asked him if he still used a shinai, but it turns out someone passed on a different sort of sword to him. A sakabatou." Of course, the someone was pretty obvious. And it was a good choice. Yahiko would do well as the next one to bear that sword.

"Sounds like everyone will have a hell of a lot to tell me when I get back from Mongolia, doesn't it?"

"A sakabatou, huh?" Kenshin felt a wide smile slowly starting to spread across his face. Yahiko inherited the sakabatou. IT felt so fitting, somehow, and it meant that the rurouni could finally give up his wandering. He was going to settle down and have a family and pass his sword onto the highly capable next generation. "This one was planning on giving it to him, eventually," he said, delighted. "This one is glad that he's going to end up with it." But now came the question of how to arm Yahiko. He would need a weapon, and probably something with a little more force than the bokken and shinai that Kenshin was used to seeing him fight with. The pole from the closets would probably work in the short term, yes, but the boy needed a katana.

"Perhaps we shall have to contact Adel-dono again, ask him to make us another sword with the same specifications as this one's. We'll have to gather the materials, of course, and it may take a few days for Adel-dono's backlog to clear, but Yahiko needs to be armed."

"Well, I can save you some of the trouble." Sanosuke was in full agreement with the idea, especially since Yahiko had already earned the reverse blade back in their own time. Better that the kid have a strong weapon like that instead of a stick or something. "That night I got sent to get metal, the guys I was with and I pretty much took apart one of the bathrooms. I still have a bunch of pipes in my room." It definitely would be a time saver, though Sano hadn't missed the list of people who were up the day before. It might not matter in the end, depending on where Yahiko fell in line.

"So what'd you end up doing last night, anyway?" Sanosuke was curious about it, especially since Kenshin's state of undress gave Sano a good chance to look over his shoulder. It didn't look any worse, but it wasn't exactly healing either. "Couldn't have been more fun than the pillow fight I was in."

Kenshin's smile only widened when Sanosuke mentioned that he already had the materials. It was selfish, of course, but he was very eager to see how Yahiko wielded an actual sword. Obviously, the rurouni's...future self had seen fit to make him the inheritor of the sakabatou, which meant that a one point match had probably been involved somehow. Yahiko would've had to be able to land a hit in order to pass the "test."

"Do you remember Robin Prower, the young man from a few nights ago? He asked for this one's help in learning how to defend himself. This one spent last night drilling him on some extremely basic sword technique." He looked up at Sano. "...Does this one want to know why you were in a pillow fight?"

Kenshin's anticipation was pretty obvious, and Sano had to admit, he felt much the same way. It'd be good to see how the kid had improved, especially since what the rurouni said next gave him an idea. There was a conversation he'd had the other day that he hadn't really had an answer for, but now that Yahiko had shown up, maybe he did.

He'd have to talk to a couple of people first, though. Not just Yahiko, but Miku and probably Sousuke as well.

"You mean Thick Glasses, right?" Names weren't things Sano always remembered well, but usually he could do descriptions. He was kind of surprised that Kenshin had agreed to the kid's wishes, however. Even if it wasn't his specific sword style, Kenshin had always left the teaching to Kaoru. Except that hadn't been an option until last night. "He any good at it?"

Part of Sano regretted missing it, since he'd like to see just what kind of teacher Kenshin was. But he knew the guy better than anyone, and since he got the feeling he might have ended up pretty bored watching, Sanosuke wasn't too upset. The pillow fight had ended up pretty fun, after all.

"Ninja Girl was pouting. So I had to knock some sense into her." It wasn't exactly detailed, but Sano figured that Yuffie probably was the type who wanted to keep her problems to herself. And so long as she didn't do something phenomenally stupid, Sano was okay with that. "We talked about some things too. And she said she'd go on a date with me."

He'd tried to slip it in casually, like it was no big deal, but the truth was that Sanosuke was watching for Kenshin's reaction to that last one. There was a lot of things he was still pretty confused about, and while his friend wasn't exactly the greatest when it came to acknowledging his own feelings, Kenshin was also pretty damn perceptive about others. And women were always throwing themselves at him, so it probably couldn't hurt to ask, right?

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Day 37: Men's Showers

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