Disclaimer: i hereby disclaim in the usual maner of an author on ff net, if there's anything you think i own ... think a little harder

Sorry i was later than expected, i wanted to get this up on friday but i slept in and missed my ride into town so i couldnt get online until this morning

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The Fox of Mibu - Not an epilogue

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My name is Hajime Saito, this year will be my thirtieth of life. When one speaks in so dramatic a tone as I do now it is normal to say 'upon this earth', but under the circumstances I'm not sure that would be appropriate.

When fighting alongside the Batousai I learned that, unlike him, I could not hope to live as an ordinary man. I found that I needed to return to being the last of the wolves of Mibu. But with the manslayer gone and the wanderer firmly in his place there remained none in Tokyo who could fight well enough to bring me back to myself. So I left the capitol, to walk the land and feed my fire.

At first I planned to return to Kyoto to ask information from the Oniwaban regarding where I might find the remnants of Shishio's Juppon gatana. Surely if there is one who retains their swordsman's soul in all of Japan then it is one of them.

That is where trouble set in, for even the most relaxed traveler the trip between the eastern and former capitols should not take a full month. But for a month I have traveled and still I see no sign of the city, but worse, I have also not encountered other travelers for over a week. I did not mind at first, I simply assumed myself lost. After all Kyoto isn't going anywhere, wilderness survival poses no great problem to me and the possibility of encountering a skilled swordsman in the untamed forest is still greater than in Tokyo. But now I find myself not so certain, or more accurately I am quite certain that I am no longer in Japan. It's the huge desert that gives it away. Japan has no deserts and the one stretching before me is so large it could swallow my homeland whole.

Since setting out I haven't crossed more than a small stream, so it shouldn't be possible for me to have even left the island of Honshu. Still, even this strange, and perhaps even mystical, change in scenery doesn't bother me, after all – who can say that here isn't the very best place for me to find my lost self?

A number of tents huddle about a small lake at the beginning of some scrubby undergrowth at the base of a mountain range, just at the limits of my vision. If they don't pack up and leave it is not inconceivable that I might reach them before nightfall.

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Now within my hundred and twenty second season, my third in this strange land, I am certain that some god has smiled upon me in sending me here. In every country of this strange and war torn land there are warriors of greater might than Shishio, they call themselves 'shinobi'. But by comparison to these soldiers of darkness the slayers of shadow that called themselves ninja in the Japan where I was born are but pale simulacra of real warriors. Even those of the least caste, called 'gennin', are capable of magics thought impossible in the modern age.

The weaker ones are so ridiculously slow and weak in physical combat that these petty tricks could be defeated even by that pathetic rooster Himura keeps as a pet (don't hurt me Sano fans, remember this is Saito's POV so it would be odd if I said nice things about him). But the best … they move like some of the lesser manslayers of the Bakumatsu and their magics are as far above those of the 'gennin' as my swordplay is. Between these skills I was thoroughly humiliated by one of thee 'Jounin' the first time I fought one.

But these seven months have been long and full. I can fend off their petty illusions with my swordsman's spirit, in the same way that one defeats shi no ippo and destroying attack magic is possible if I channel energy into my blade.

In my fourth month I was wounded severely and awoke in the care of two women. On seeing my wounds I despaired, being so close to reviving myself only to have such injuries cripple me for life …

For a week I saw only one of them, the brown haired on who referred to the other, at the time only a voice from the next room, as master. She sat with me day and night, closing wounds and stopping me from ending my own life honorably. The whole time she assured me that once she stopped my bleeding her master would treat my lasting injuries and I would be able to fight again. When I laughed at her naivety she simply explained how such a thing was possible through chakra healing, after that she told me a lot about other uses of chakra, probably only to distract me, but I learned much that week.

Then one night, I fell asleep and when I woke they were gone. But I felt as though I had never been injured at all.

An interesting thing about Japanese is the concept of fame. Fame is called 'yuumei', literally 'having a name'. Nowhere is that more evident than here, all of the strongest are known to everyone by some name. The white fang, the yellow flash, red sand, the three, the seven swordsmen of mist, the five kages and, most recently, the name on everyone's lips – Uchiha Itachi. The boy who had apparently killed his own, apparently quite powerful, clan at around the same time I arrived.

But it is the name 'seven swordsmen' that moves me now, I have fought mist nins before and those that don't focus on that ninja magic are by far the best swordsmen I have faced since realizing I'd left Japan. While they weren't really any stronger in combat than any other village, they did have more complicated and varied sword styles in the same way other villages had hand to hand styles. To fight those recognized as their strongest! Surely the wolf within that has been coming back when I fight for a short time will return to stay. After testing myself on missing nins and others who would not cause a whole village to hunt me for their deaths I felt ready, I set out from hidden stone with Kiri as the only destination in my mind.

Right now I'm in Konoha, a village that has never wronged me and one I don't intend to wrong while I am here. This marks the halfway point of my journey to mist and a good place to stop, take odd jobs and replenish my supplies of things that can be hard to hunt or scrounge up on the road. As a token of faith I have bound my sword into it's sheathe with thin rope tied into a symbolic 'peace bind', not that I am foolish enough to fight a shinobi in a village full of them. Besides, there's some sort of festival on tonight and fighting isn't everything, even to the wolf of Mibu.

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I decided to call the prologue 'not an epilogue' because the whole Saito leaving to wander thing was sort of his epilogue moment in ruroni kenshin, but here it is actually the start of the story

the first update might be a while because i've got to type and post the last chapter and epilogue for another fic before i let myself got too absorbed by this, but i have got chapter one writen (in a notebook because trains are boring) and a good start on chapter 2