My email: shinelilac3 at Gmail dot com
:-)

It's a wonderful story, full of surprises and a unique idea, I just don't know why I found it this late? or why this little reviews for this amazing story?
You can show the little changes that in the end can make a huge change in the person's personality and made him another one. I can see and sense kenshin every second in your story.
I was hoping you write more about battisai and also about Tomoe,
Well I hope you read my review even after these years. I'm sure I'll remember this story.
Oh, do you have any contact with the writers of shadows of shadow. The darkest shadow,lightest light? Will they continue? If not would you try to continue them? Hope you answer me, my email:

I'm current on chapter 6 and my heart just broke a little bit when Kenshin thinks about how there could only be so many people who need to be assassinated, and his work will probably be over in a few weeks. Poor kid.

Oh my goodness! Wow! This fic is so wonderful! I was looking for a story that answered the question of how Kenshin went from that adorable little Kiheitai recruit to a very monosyllabic assassin, so I was absolutely thrilled when I found this. What an extra joy to find out that it's wonderfully written *and* complete as well! Your writing really grabbed me and kept me enthralled. I loved Shozo and Kumiko, and all your original characters. And I loved the personalities you gave to all the smaller characters from the story, like Okami. Lovely job! Thank you for sharing this excellent story!

you made me cry here...
I love the story, all of it.. congratulations!

I never liked Tomoe or how much pain she caused Kenshin. Despite that, I really enjoyed your story.

This is absolutely amazing, great job!

My third time reading and still my fav read. Its been about 1.5 years yet I still remember this story. The best rurouni kenshin fanfic in the world!

This last chapter was the final straw. Congratulations, you've made me cry. Great work, I loved the character building you did. Thank you for writing.

Wonderful epic tale of heroism and damnation. You write Kenshin so well!
P.S. You might want to add the "complete" designation to your stories. Many fans don't read older, uncompleted FICs for fear they will never find out how they end.

A very impressive beginning!

this is beautiful and heartbreaking... because all that lovely fragile hope is so soon to die

Something I noticed rereading this: Shozo was sent away before Shinzu came back from the munitions trip...so that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. ; Unless he had another guy looking out for anyone who might be his friend or something.

To answer Lucifer's Advocate7, I never did use the word "geisha" for the very reasons given, plus the fact that no foot soldier would have been able to afford one. In doing my research, however, I did find that there were three levels of this kind of woman-geisha, concubine, and prostitute, the concubine (for lack of a better word) being a pale imitation of a geisha while actually being a higher class of prostitute. They were bought and sold like geisha, though.

The idea of a family selling the eldest came from my reading of the biography of a geisha, who was an eldest daughter when she was sold. Indeed, she was five when she was sold, but then a concubine would not be going through all that formal training.

Sorry to say this, but you got the Geisha and Gion part completely wrong.

First error: the oldest child wouldn't be sold. The eldest children were treasured (and could do harder work) - younger would be sold.

Second of all is that in this time period, geisha were expensive and to be a geisha, you had to go through lots of training. Girls would be bonded to a geisha house as very young children (as young as 2 or 3) and would begin their training. They are not prostitutes - what separates geisha from prostitutes is that they were more often entertainers. Also, there would not be as much outward flirting as you demonstrated. It would be more in revealing their wrists or necks, etc.

The misconception that geisha had sex with customers can be attributed to women who styled themselves after true geisha and the Western World then believed geisha and whore were synonymous.

Now, during the Edo period, there were prostitutes. However, true geisha and prostitutes were not the same, even then. While you could argue that Kenshin and Co. went to one of these fake geisha, you said they went to Gion. I shall assume that of all places in Japan, Gion is the one place where you are sure to find true geisha - and thus no sex would have taken place.

Sorry if this seems harsh, I just wanted to make sure you got your facts straight!