Power filtered into the drowsing girl, trickling into young channels like raindrops in sand. A gentle, steady flow, that went on… and on….
And stopped.
Ayame yawned, and snuggled deeper into her grandfather’s arms. Himura straightened, smiling at Gensai as the Healer held the young hanyou curled against his shoulder. “That should mend it.”
“‘Jiisan? Is Ayame going to be all right?” Suzume blinked from Kaoru’s arms.
“She will, so long as we keep an eye on her. But your sister’s going to be sleeping a lot for the next week,” Gensai said softly. “Himura, she’s three!”
“Magic doesn’t flow as thickly here as the Uncleansed Lands,” Yamagata said gruffly from the far corner of the study, bending his head in a far less formal nod to Selenay. “She would have needed more time for her youki to grow.”
“Even had she been in Yamato, it is not always certain when the claws will arise,” Kenshin noted. “But one would advise you plan for her to receive her weapon no later than thirteen. If the claws are late, the fangs may be as well,” his face sobered, “and that often means the rage comes early.”
“Yoshiko said something like that. I have a fang of hers for each of them; she made certain I’d be prepared, in case-” Gensai looked away.
“‘Jiisan’s sad about ‘Kaasan again?” Suzume whispered.
“Oh, she wouldn’t want me to be sad.” Ayame tucked in one arm, Gensai hugged her little sister with the other, eyes suspiciously bright. “Not when I have such beautiful granddaughters to look after.”
“What happened?” Selenay asked softly.
“Gensai Yoshiko was samurai, and hanyou, and her children were in danger.” Kaoru surrendered her chair to the Healer, surreptitiously handing him some of the fluffy paper Yamato used for blowing noses as well. “She picked up a naginata and went to the wall with her husband.”
Selenay inclined her head, accepting what wasn’t said. “I see.” She cleared her throat. “A fang?”
“It is needed to create the sealing weapon,” Kenshin stated. “It must be one’s own, or blood kin, or adopted kin. None else will work.”
“Forgive an outsider for asking stupid questions,” Sejanes put in, “But what on earth happens if you have more children than teeth?”
Crossover Queen's Creative Chaos 
Here comes the Youkai regenitive abilities discussion, though from what remember from Inuyasha the more sentient ones don’t have a lot of kids usually.
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I suspect this may be one of the things that casually blows Valdemaran minds. Because things don’t work that way for humans!
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Even if they didn’t grow back, running out of teeth before you ran out of children would be a lot of kids. Humans have a lot of teeth in their mouths and many other animals aren’t exactly slacking in that regard either. And I can hardly imagine their youkai counterparts having less toothly smiles . . .
Good job, Selenay. Someone has start asking the questions that will sound dumb to knowledgeable and that someone might as well be you. Besides in this case, it really is better to admit ignorance than pretend to have knowledge that you don’t. And some of the Yamato people need to realize just how little information you have.
Of course, one should also be prepared for someone wanting to ask equally dumb-sounding questions about Valdemar, Heralds, etc.
Come on, everyone, ask questions! You know you want to.
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Key word here is fang. As in two, maybe four, at a time. The tooth for Kenshin’s first sealing sword likely came from Hiko. But he seems to have left that one at Toba Fushimi. It is likely that the one for his current sword came from him, and we can see he is not missing any teeth.
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Actually I think the implication in this story is that he didn’t leave /his/ sword(s) behind, he just stopped /using/ them since there’s a scene or two where he has a sword (or swords, can’t quite remember) that isn’t the reversed edge blade that he uses throughout the canon series.
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IIRC, those are later replacements. The one he keeps on his person at all times, the sealing sword, is that reversed edge number, which he would have had no interest in prior to joining the revolution as an assassin. Hiko would have made sure he had a sealing sword prior to thirteen, when he did join.
In Inuyasha, the fangs grow back quickly, IIRC inside of a scene.
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*G* And now you know why Kenshin looked so perfectly harmless. He got to ask lots of dumb questions!
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What about orphanages, street tribes, and the like? Families can get really big really quickly if you’re including adoption rites and so on.
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Hmm. You might ask the ninja more about that… if they’ll tell you. 😉
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>You might ask the ninja more about that… if they’ll tell you.😉>
But you can’t. Because no Shinobi came along for the Jump. Really, not a single one anywhere. You’d have to go ALL the way to Yamato to find any. That is if Shinobi were anything more than children’s stories in the first place of course.
Please ignore the sharp-eyed geisha (that seems to be blurring her ki very well) tending to various Valdemar nobles (who, thanks to the alcohol have rather loose tongues) and the Complete Ordinary laborers, who if one were extremely paranoid, appear to be examining the patrol routes and defenses of your castle.
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Not to mention the cats. No, not Firecats, just regular black cats… at least that’s what those black blurs seem to look like….
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Wish I had a bit of that right now
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The Japanese used a tooth blackening material that protected their teeth, but that tradition died out amongst everyone but the geisha a long time ago.
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Huh; the research I’ve done said that was a Heian-era custom, and that’s why the oiran preserved it, given their stock in trade was giving the impression of Heian noblewomen. Other than that it was more a custom of married women than the whole population.
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