A Debt Discharged
-- Author's Notes
June 14, 2004
This story was written for a One-Hour-Challenge prompt on the
Destiny's Gateway One Hour Challenge list.
There are three important things to realize about this story:
1. I didn't do a lot of prewriting. Sat down, set the timer, took the
prompt and ran with it.
2. The prompts on the OHC list are varied, and pretty vague. (So
that they can be applied to any couple) The odd beginning
to the story was because of the weird OHC requirements.
3. I wanted a story that ended up with Kaoru and Kenshin
together. (An idea enforced by the rules of the OHC, oddly
enough)
I got halfway through A Debt Discharged and realized that what I had
thought was going to be my ending wasn't going to work and that I
had to figure out some other way to end the story without ruining what
I had already written. This was a challenge!
In the end, I didn't want Kenshin to be rescuing Kaoru again. I mean, this
was *Kaoru's* story. She's the one doing Saitoh the favor (payback) and
she needed to fight her own battle. After all, she just took Kenshin and Sano
along for the ride, right?
Last, I have two regrets about this story:
1. The nature of the OHC (and lack of prewriting) landed me with a pretty
fast beginning. I feel that I did not do the story justice with regards to
the overall plot. (The murderer, the setting details, etc.)
2. The fact that this story relies upon the events in a story that doesn't exist!
Somewhere in the back of my mind I have A Debt Incurred all ready
to be written -- it's the story of how Kaoru asked Saitoh for a favor (for
Kenshin, of course) and incurred the debt that landed her in the bar
for this fic. Maybe one day I'll write it.
One day this story may get re-written, deepened and smoothed out some.
Right now, I have other fics that I want to finish and other stories to get
out to the readers. (Including a Rurouni Kenshin Blanket Challenge Scenario
fic that ends up being more than a little steamy!)
~End~
