Rurouni Kenshin © Nobuhiro Watsuki
He knew that this mission was a great honour. He understood that it was vital for the Ishin Shishi. He agreed that it was the best plan. He just didn't understand why they had to pluck out his eyebrows.
Himura Kenshin was kneeling in a tatami room, squirming as the okami of the inn clicked the tweezers together thoughtfully. It had all sounded so simple, so essential when Katsura-san had laid out the preparations. Only three hours, a short dinner banquet that the Shinsengumi were holding. They only needed one undercover geisha. Could he possibly…?
The okami swooped in with her tweezers and yanked out an offending ginger hair. He bit back a whimper and stared at a particularly ugly wall-scroll. Why on earth did the innkeeper have such a hideous scroll anyway? Wasn't that the one her sister-in-law had given her last New Year? He could still see the singe marks around the edges.
Kenshin didn't think that he'd ever see such a scene again- the okami touching a glowing cinder to the paper with unholy glee, the unwelcome relative "just nipping back in to pick up a shawl I forgot…" and blood all over the walls…His hand still ached on cold, damp nights after that debacle.
He focused back on the room and his surroundings just as the okami gathered a particularly thick cluster of eyebrow under her tweezers and yanked. Maybe he should remind her about the scroll…was that a bucket of hot wax Sango had just carried in? On second thoughts, maybe not.
There was a muffled snigger, and Kenshin looked up to glower at one of the other patriots dressing in the corner of the tatami room. It was fine for them, they simply had to disguise themselves as servants, or lie in wait as reinforcements. Why shouldn't they have to dress as geisha too? He looked at the other Ishin Shishi.
Yoshida rather reminded him of a doll he'd seen once on a stall. The potter had shaped the clay into a man, and then placed one hand on the head, the other on the feet, and stretched it out.
Tanaka would need a license to pass as human, let alone as a woman.
Inoue could have possibly passed as a woman...if he were, say, twelve inches shorter …a different nose…not quite built so much like a sumo wrestler…Kenshin gave up.
He cursed Katsura's chivalry- the traitor had refused to let any of the maids venture into such danger. And furthermore, he cursed his employer's idiocy in putting him in charge of this band of misfits. He could handle 'slicey' and 'no slicey' but leadership skills were beyond him. As was eyebrow plucking.
One of the maids, Sango picked up a comb and dipped in the wax. 'She can't…she cannot be…' "Nnnngh!"
Hot wax and hair are not naturally inclined to met, not even during the most humorous of accidents. At least geisha's hairdressers had a certain degree of skill- Sango's complete and utter lack of hand-eye co-ordination ensured an experience so agonising that Saitou's wildest dreams didn't even begin to touch it. Kenshin's sharp eyes picked out the splotches of black dye on her hands from when she had coloured his hair. More of the dye had spilled on her than his head.
He understood that the wax would be needed to style the elaborate geisha hair arrangement; he just didn't understand why Sango had to do it, and why on earth she was waving that pin so close to his face…
Oh. It was just a hairpin. Kenshin released the girl's arm and tried to look suitably abashed when Okami glared at him. It was simply reflexes, not a desire for bloody, screaming, vicious revenge at all…
Kenshin felt that the amount of force the innkeeper used on the rest of his hair was quite unnecessary.
His eyes followed her hands as she rubbed wax into the skin of his face and moistened a brush to paint on the white make up. It was cold, and he blinked as she swept it in long, arching strokes. He found it rather relaxing…
"Itai! That was my eye!"
"Oh, don't be such a baby!"
Katsura's death would be long, lingering and satisfyingly bloody.
He glowered at Okami as she quickly and efficiently spread paint across his lips and used a stick of burnt paulownia wood to pencil in his eyebrows. The damned woman was humming.
"There! Just the kimono now!"
Relaxing slightly, he slouched back a little…then bit back a scream.
Pink.
Fluffy little rabbits gambolled in green and yellow fields, delicately nibbling on powder blue flowers against a pink sunset. The obi was decorated with soft cherry blossoms.
That was definitely unholy glee in Okami's face. He was barely aware of his body moving.
Katsura wandered into the room, almost casually, a faint trace of concern in his almond-dark eyes, "is everything alright?"
Okami and Sango simply pointed.
"Oh, dear. Himura-san, could you please come down from there?"
After ten minutes of bribes, threats and warnings, Kenshin finally allowed himself to be coaxed down from his high perch. He was still sulking as the long, heavy pink silk was wrapped around his body.
"Done! Uh, you don't need to run that fast…"
In the hallway, Iidzuka whistled, "nice kimono, Battousai-san!"
Kenshin wondered if it was too late to fetch his sword. A bloodbath sounded good right now, or possibly seppuku…
AN: Okami is another name for a Japanese innkeeper. A customer would simply call him/her Okami-san.
Sango is just a random OC I created on the fly.
Seppuku, otherwise known as hara-kiri, is ritual Japanese suicide.