I've got two other stories active right now, but I'm feeling the urge to write Samurai Champloo. I partly blame 3jane, the author of Nenju and a spin-off of that, for inspiring me/driving me insane/inspiring this story.

This is for her.

A/N All song titles come from songs sung by Laura Viers, a great singer. Ironically, the song this chapter takes its title from, isn't really blues. At all. Just a little fact for you.

Chapter One: Black Gold Blues

Bird of prey
Gonna float away
To a feather cloud formation
I'm gonna dig
For pretty and strange
Gonna open me up
A black gold vein

Perhaps if she called to them, and told them her secret they'd stay with her. Did she really want to use pain to hold the two men to her? As Fuu watched Jin and Mugen walk in opposite directions, both from each other and from her, she couldn't find the cowardice in her to use the information she contained against them.

The guilt they both carried was clear. Guilt for her sake. Fuu could've used their pity. She could have used their disdain. She even could have, and had, use their hunger against them. For life, for food, for the land, she'd used all those hungers against them on their journey. She'd used them, period. She felt no guilt for what she'd done on her journey to get here, to this place. She'd done what she felt she had to.

That didn't mean it came without consequences. She had taken all the consequences that passed her way and continued to bear their brunt. Fuu studied the hard backs of the two men before her, quickly receding into the distance. From behind, they appeared much the same. The same air of confidence. Mugen was lanky bordering on skinny compared to Jin's lithe stick-figure. Whereas Jin moved as if a strong wind would bend him, but never break, Mugen moved like a mountain, bending to no wind or force on Earth. Fuu had often pitted her own self against that mountain. Fond memories.

The wind stirred the hair on the back of her neck, sending a shiver down her spine that reminded her of aches and bumps she'd ignored so that she could have this last goodbye. She wanted to have this memory to hold with the others, knowing that if she could help it, she'd never see those two again. They'd never understand. Not her secret. Not why she was doing what she'd have to do. There was no recourse for her.

Three Years. Three long hard years, with two of them spent in incarceration. Mugen was glad to see the open sky. His face, somehow even leaner than it had been in youth, was set determinedly. He had a plan. For food.

Inside the small sushi restaurant, a large fat man was slowly making seaweed rolls for the couple in front of him. With a flick of his wrist, Mugen released the small dormouse onto the table. Within seconds the couple was screaming and heading for the door, as the obese cook crabbed a knife and started trying to hack at the mouse. The mouse, cleverly, scrambled off the table and away...not so cleverly towards the kitchen. The cook followed.

Quickly, Mugen started to shove the rolls and anything else he could get his hands on into a bowl. Egg rolls mixed with seaweed mixed with wasabe all in the bowl, but Mugen didn't care. He was hungry.

Finally, Mugen had gotten everything he wanted, and just in time too. The cook stepped back through the door, with a grin on his face and a dead mouse in hand. He spotted Mugen, and apparently oblivious to the empty stand behind him, boomed out, "You hunger? I make mouse roll!"

Mugen didn't lose his appetite, but knew better than to push it. "No, I'm not into mashed Mickey."

Mugen left quickly, and heard the cook yell as he finally saw the newly scavenged counter. Within seconds, Mugen took off, the cook yelling behind him. Quickly, his long legs taking him large steps from the danger and to safety, Mugen cut through the crowds, the bowl rattling in his hand.

Mugen turned the corner and slowed down now that he was out of sight...not slow enough, as it was. He ran right into a tall thin frame, one that didn't budge at all, attesting to the strength and groundedness of the person. A man, as it was. A man who was very familiar with the degenerate thief lying before him.

"Mugen, I take it you haven't changed?"

Mugen didn't want to look up, but knew if he didn't, the damn ronin would take it as weakness, or gods forbid, sentimentality. "Listen, fish-face, I don't need to change. I'm perfect."

Jin smiled, that peculiar "kinda smiling but not really" smile that was original to only him. "Perfectly awful."

Mugen stood, wiping the remains of what was to be his lunch from his chest. "You wanna go, bitch? Cause we can go."

"Did you just call me a bitch?" Jin asked, amusement clear on his face, and his hand on his blade. Fuu's father's blade, as it was.

Mugen nodded, "I call it like I see it." His hand, too, was on his blade, another of Fuu's father; although this time it was the European style of the people who'd seduced her father into Christianity and ultimately his death.

"You'd think that after this long, the old grudge would be gone," Jin commented, still not having drawn his sword.

"You can't help it that I'm prettier."

"Positively girl-like."

"You take that back."

"No."

Standstill. Even the bystanders aren't moving, just watching the two, both attractive in their own way, samurai stare at each other. Finally, Jin blinked, slow and long.

Mugen laughed. "Ha! You lose."

Jin sighed and removed his hand from his sheath. "Isn't that how it always is?"

Mugen nodded and wrapping one long arm around Jin's shoulder, the two started away from all the public eyeing (or ogling as it was if you happened to be a woman from the age of BIRTH to DEATH). Despite three years apart, the two men, never friends, still had the same chemistry together...the chemistry of antipathy. In other words, dislike. Strong dislike. Usually covering up a begrudgingly earned respect. Okay, let's be honest...somewhere...deep inside...past the heart...through the stomach...and deeply ingrained...they liked each other. At most, as acquaintances.

"So, fishboy, what are you doing here in bumfuck Japan?"

"I was hired to escort the current Shogun on a tour of the countryside."

"Where's the shogun?"

"He was assassinated."

Silence. "So...remind me to never have you guard my body."

"You wish I would guard your body."

At this statement the group of fan-girls going by had a mass fainting episode, though one of them managed a picture before falling. The samurais walked on.

"Not particularly if that's the way you do it."

"I can do it better."

The fan-girls woke at that, but because of the mass fainting were too entangled to loose themselves and follow. Thus, the slash event of a lifetime was lost. Later, they would be hogtied and kicked out of the MuJin fanclub.

Back to the story...

"What have you been up to, Mugen?"

"Nothing much. You?"

Jin thought of his dalliances with Shiro. "Nothing much."

Another silence, this one companionable. They were quick to fall back into the pattern of walking together. Even though they'd only done it for six months, and with Fuu, it was an easy pattern to mimic. Thinking of the comfortableness of being together again, brought the thought of the last missing friend.

Jin posed the question. "Have you see Fuu?"

"Since that last time? No. You?"

"No."

"You know, Japan is a small country. I bet if we looked, we could find her."

Jin raised an eyebrow. "Why would we wish to do that?"

"I don't know, 'cause we can?"

"Why would you wish to invade her life like that?"

"Cause I can."

Jin considered that. "Agreeable. Where would we start looking?"

"Nagasaki, duh!"

"Why Nagasaki?"

"Because it's where we last saw her."

"And?"

"It's most like where she is."

"Why would you say that?"

"How far do you seriously think she'd have gotten without us?"

"A good point."

"I got twenty ryo that says she's in a brothel again."