Title: The Order of Things
Series: Samurai Champloo
Characters: Mugen, Jin, Fuu
Summary: Because in chaos there's always an order, and this is the way in which they walk.
Disclaimer: Don't own it.

Mugen has been told he walks like he has no joints in him at all, and he dismisses the observations because really, if he didn't have joints, everything about him would be solid straight bone and that wouldn't be a decent way to describe the jumbled way in which he moves. When he mentioned this, he'd also been told that he lacks the ability to comprehend poetry, and he can't actually argue with that, so he just kills the fool and moves on.

And so this is how it works: he walks like a substance with really no substance at all, and when you finally pin down a word to describe exactly how he moves, he does something so different and new that your long sought after word becomes as inadequate as any before.

But to describe him as indescribable would be cliché, so he settles with walking to the forefront and calling himself Infinite, and that is that.

Jin is easy to watch; he moves fast and light, and doesn't burden your eyes with impossible feats that can be simplified without losing effectiveness. He is water to Mugen's spitfire, though if you ever told him that you'd compared him in such a complimentary manner to his barbarian cohort, he'd likely not trust your judgment from then on.

He's trapped in his own frost like a dragonfly in amber, and though he moves like fluid, bubbling springs, he takes every step with careful precision and tells himself that even if he's not quite alive, he's safe.

He is calm and quiet and quick, and – really – everything that both of his traveling companions are not, and when they walk, he follows up from the rear because he's the stable one, and – though it's not like he'll admit it – he will never let either of them fall behind, and that is that.

Fuu is nondescript, in the shadow of both warriors, her individuality lost in the mad pendulum between anger and innocence and love. She speaks her mind when she ought to, unearths the hearts of her two men, and walks in-between them because without her, they are two magnets with the wrong pull, and she's the only medium to draw them together.

They journey with her, and they shield her, as she slowly kills herself, looking for her Sunflower Samurai. She grounds them, and protects them, in her own special way.

Someday she'll bloom, and teach Mugen about flowers, and show Jin that he can, too, learn to love, but for now she'll walk the infinite path in-between. And that is that.

Fin.