God, I hate to do this, Yahiko thought to himself. But I don't see how I'm gonna save my ass if I don't. Petty crime was one thing; holding a weapon to a cashier and demanding money was quite another thing. Several things to be precise, and a felony was probably one of them. But what was he to do about the two grand he owed the big boss? At a scrawny 12 years old, Yahiko didn't stand a chance of raising that amount of dough, not in the next few days. Since he relished the thought of all of his four limbs and twenty digits staying intact, desperation had drawn him to this: marching into a tiny corner store late at night brandishing a katana and hoping against hope that this crazy stick-up plan was going to work.

It better, Yahiko thought to himself. Or I'm gonna look like a complete idiot and then get killed by Usashi's gang. Other people in Yahiko's condition might have committed a stupid crime with the express intention of getting arrested and placed in the relative safety of a police cell, but Yahiko wasn't a fool: last time he did a stint in juvie hall, Usashi's goons had found him and twisted arms to get him set free so they could twist his arm. A lot. Which was why he was about to march into a store with a Japanese katana in hopes that the lady behind the counter could get into the register and hand him lots of money. Yahiko really didn't want to hurt anyone, but desperation makes people do desperate things. A sword wasn't his first choice of weapon, but it had been available, and there was no danger of it going off accidentally. If all went well, he would get the money and no one would get hurt. If all didn't go well...well, he decided not to think too much about it. Focus on the goal, he told himself.

At the entrance of the door, Yahiko took a big breath, thought to himself Here it goes, and charged forward.

Karou tiredly dropped a can of soup into her shopping basket after wincing at the price. She hated shopping at this overpriced convenience store, but it was too late to make a trip to the grocery store, and there was absolutely nothing edible in the kitchen at home. She and Kenshin had been too busy lately to keep up with the apartment much – Karou with her dojo and college classes and Kenshin with whatever he and Sano got up to at the police quarters. "Whatever" usually involved Kenshin dragging home in the wee hours of the morning, exhausted and often bloody. Karou tried not to ask many questions, and her husband was not very good at answering the ones she did ask. It was best if she just tried not to think too much about what her husband of six months did in his endless fight to right wrong and be all dashing and derring-do. It was what had attracted her to him in the first place, but that same admirable trait left her in constant fear of being a widow.

Shaking her head, Karou moved on to the next shelf, looking for enough basic goods to get them through the next week. As she swung around, she brushed against a jar of marmalade with the end of her weapons bag, which was slung across her shoulder. As always, Karou had taken her sole means of transportation, an elderly scooter that reached about 45 mph tops, to teach her evening martial arts classes. Not wishing to leave her weapons bag outside on her scooter on the off chance that someone would steal it, Karou had kept it slung across her shoulder as she shopped. The bag had been intended for someone of taller proportions than Karou, and she had never quite gotten the hang of keeping both ends of the bag out of other people's way, or, in this case, lone jars of marmalade's way. The jar wobbled, then fell off the shelf. Karou caught it just before it hit the ground. Looking at it, she thought, Hmm, I wonder if Kenshin likes marmalade. I've been married to him six months and I don't know. On a whim, she tossed it into her basket.

Bread, milk, and eggs were sitting in the basket along with the soup and the experimental marmalade. Karou was debating between two brands of toothpaste when her instincts told her that something was not quite right. Pausing, she felt herself collect inwardly, chi reaching out to sense what was in the air surrounding her.

"Alright, this is a holdup!" a voice yelled. It was followed by a slight scream. "Don't move!" the voice ordered. Another voice screamed, and there was a general flutter of movement from the few shoppers in the store.

In one fluid motion, Karou set the basket down on the ground and reached for the weapons bag. Pulling a bokken loose, she crawled low along the floor until she reached the end of the aisle and could look up at the safety mirror angled in a corner of the room. It offered her a picture of what was happening in front of the register. Glancing at the reflection in the mirror, Karou froze. What the heck? she thought, then stifled a slight laugh.

"Fill up the bag!" Yahiko ordered, trying to make his voice as deep and masculine as possible. The cashier behind the counter was a rather wobbly-looking older woman, clearly terrified of the sharp sword aimed at her. She was fumbling at the register, scooping up bills that fluttered and flapped in her veined, trembling hands.

A pimply kid not much older than Yahiko tried to discreetly flip open his cellphone as if to call for the police. "Don't touch your phone!" Yahiko ordered, "Or the old lady gets it!" The kid froze, then dropped his phone back into his pocket while the cashier continued to stuff the bag full of money. When it was reasonably full, Yahiko snarled, "That's enough!" acutely aware that every second counted. Grabbing the bag, he pushed it into his backpack with one hand, the other wrapped around the katana handle. Got it! Now I just gotta get out of here before the police arrive, he thought triumpantly.

"Just what do you think you are doing, kid?" a bossy female voice cut through the tense air, startling Yahiko. He swung around violently, both hands gripping the sword. In front of him was a young Asian woman with long black hair pulled into a ponytail and a wooden sword pointed right at him.

"Get out of my way!" Yahiko snarled, praying that bravado would substitute for strategy. Whoever the woman was, she looked at lot more confident with her wooden sword than he felt with his sharp metal one. The way that she was pointing the wooden sword at him loudly said that she could do all sorts of things with it. She was also standing between Yahiko and the quickest way out of the building.

The woman snorted in wry amusement, looking over him with a practiced eye. "You really don't have a clue how to handle that thing, do you?" she stated more than questioned.

Yahiko felt his gut tighten. Brazenly, he raged on. "Don't mess with me lady unless you want to be sliced to ribbons!"

She snorted again, "Kid, I teach kendo. That's Japanese sword. Don't screw with me. Your grip is backwards, your stance is crap, and you're completely wide open. You've never held a sword in your life."

Yahiko blushed hotly. Fear raged along with anger and desperation. He had the money, all he had to do was get it to Usashi and pay him off, and now this bossy, ugly woman was in his way, waving around some stupid wooden toothpick like it was any good against a real, sharp katana. Fury and panic crowded out his judgement. He didn't want to hurt this woman, but he really, really didn't want to face Usashi empty-handed. Hoping desperately that some beginner's luck would magically appear, Yahiko charged forward and attacked, slashing the sword at the woman's face.

The woman moved, a swift blur of speed, and all the sudden Yahiko felt the ribs on his right side explode with pain. Screaming, he collapsed on the floor, rolling about in agony. Dammit, broken again! he thought to himself frantically. He was no stranger to broken ribs; Usashi's goons had seen to that once.

Shaking her head, the woman stood over him and said, "I hate to do that to you, kid, but I can't have you running off with the money you stole and you needed to learn a lesson about not taking what isn't yours." She bent forward, and Yahiko found the katana handle swiftly removed from his clenched fist. Casually, she pointed the tip of the wooden sword at his injured side. "If I were you, I would stay down there. You've still got more ribs for me to break if I absolutely have to."

Around them, the store buzzed with frenetic activity. Two other patrons in the store were comforting the cashier, who had dissolved into a hysterical fit of crying. Off in the distance, Yahiko could hear the faint sounds of a police siren. The pimply youth was on his cellphone, jabbering excitedly to a friend: Yahiko caught part of the conversation. "...Man, it was awesome! This chick totally kicked the kid's ass. I got it on video..."

Great, Yahiko thought to himself. I'm gonna get arrested, Usashi's goons will fry my ass, and I'll end up as part of a viral video on Youtube. But he was far too angry, scared, and hurt to do much more thinking: the dense knot of fear and agony clogging up his brain blocked out most thought processes.

Blue uniforms filled the store. A rush of people in and out the door, blips and clicks of police communication back and forth. After a few minutes, the paramedics arrived to cart Yakiho and his broken rib off to the hospital. While he was being wheeled out, Yahiko shot one final glance of defiance at the crazy woman who had beaten him. To his surprise, she was gazing at him with a measuring look on her face. It was the last sight to pass his eyes before the doors of the ambulance slammed shut.