[It was a gray, dark day. The clouds were a veil shrouding the sky, a veil which was billowing and wrinkling and rippling as the wind blew in from the north. It was cold. Moist. Forerunners of rain.
If Hijikata had a collar he probably wouldn't be able to resist the urge to tug on it. But - either because we're dealing with before the true advent of the furies or because he wasn't feeling black today (or both and time is our bitch) - he lacked one. So instead, he just was grim. He grimmed his way through the increasingly obvious prelude to a storm. He grimmed as he ignored the cold and wet as best as he could, and any attempt to point out otherwise would get a sharp, "Shut it." And grumbling. He grimmed his way to house. Their destination.
Their. Plural. Saitou was back at camp with Souji, far below. Which left Hijikata with Sannan in the ass fucking middle of nowhere checking out this house which some bureaucrat with more money than sense had built. An-...
You know what? Let's skip the rest of the prelude. You get the idea. This was the point in which, after testing the front door and discovering it unlocked and doing appropriate let's be prepared in case a small horde of ronin come streaming out formalities (he sensed fuck all, but still, formalities, they'd get killed pretty quickly otherwise if they didn't observe them), Hijikata opened the door. And immediately saw a dead body.]
...
[It wasn't anybody that they knew.
Probably.
But it still seemed pretty fresh as corpses went in the middle of fuck nowhere. Remarkably fresh, actually. It was the sort of fresh which implied that someone had beaten them there, and that same violent someone was possibly still in the general vicinity.]
Shit.
[Said with feeling. And the faint roll of thunder could be heard in the distance.]
Ping me if you want me to edit anything. Otherwise...
If Hijikata had a collar he probably wouldn't be able to resist the urge to tug on it. But - either because we're dealing with before the true advent of the furies or because he wasn't feeling black today (or both and time is our bitch) - he lacked one. So instead, he just was grim. He grimmed his way through the increasingly obvious prelude to a storm. He grimmed as he ignored the cold and wet as best as he could, and any attempt to point out otherwise would get a sharp, "Shut it." And grumbling. He grimmed his way to house. Their destination.
Their. Plural. Saitou was back at camp with Souji, far below. Which left Hijikata with Sannan in the ass fucking middle of nowhere checking out this house which some bureaucrat with more money than sense had built. An-...
You know what? Let's skip the rest of the prelude. You get the idea. This was the point in which, after testing the front door and discovering it unlocked and doing appropriate let's be prepared in case a small horde of ronin come streaming out formalities (he sensed fuck all, but still, formalities, they'd get killed pretty quickly otherwise if they didn't observe them), Hijikata opened the door. And immediately saw a dead body.]
...
[It wasn't anybody that they knew.
Probably.
But it still seemed pretty fresh as corpses went in the middle of fuck nowhere. Remarkably fresh, actually. It was the sort of fresh which implied that someone had beaten them there, and that same violent someone was possibly still in the general vicinity.]
Shit.
[Said with feeling. And the faint roll of thunder could be heard in the distance.]