All of the Pieces
[ Episode Eleven ]
A Pain That I'm Used To
Wherein Kurama tastes something sweet.
They had been bobbing uselessly in the water for a few hours, held afloat by the makeshift life jackets they had crafted from their pants. The moon had given way to the first light of dawn, golden rays stretching across the water but still revealing no land nearby. Hiei was set in deep concentration, attempting to reach out with his Jagan and make contact with anyone that he could, while Kurama had handed off the communicator to Kuwabara, hoping that his strong spirit sense would be able to suss out a connection where the fox had failed.
Lyra had somehow managed to coax Hiei into lending her one of his belts so she could lash the waistband of her inflated pants to her chest, allowing her to float hands-free and play a soft tune on her harmonica. She had joked that if she tried hard enough, she might be able to attract a helpful pod of whales to guide them to shore.
"Hey, Kurama! I'm getting something!" Kuwabara crowed, waving the communicator excitedly over the water. The small screen displayed only static, but a faint voice began skipping through the fuzz. "Botan, is that you?"
"Ku... on... ay!" Everyone recognized the reapers voice, but her words were indecipherable.
Hiei's eyes cracked open and he nodded to the Western horizon, his Jagan finally picking up on something. "Botan is almost here."
Kuwabara looked to the West, narrowing his eyes to see with his second sight. His face broke into a mile-wide grin as he spotted what he was looking for. "And she brought company!"
They all turned, the light of daybreak at their backs. Within minutes, what was a small disturbance in the distance closed in on them, and Kurama had to stop himself from chuckling at the sight. Jin flew at a breakneck speed above the water, ropes hanging from his ankles and tied off to the bow of a neon green speedboat. Botan sat behind the helm, clinging onto it for dear life as the Wind Master pulled the craft much faster than its motor would ever allow.
As the rescue party got close, Jin pulled the boat up sidelong, splashing everyone with a rough wake as he came to a stop. Botan stood on shaky legs to drop the ladder at the back of the boat and then turned to her drenched friends with a joyous salute. "All aboard the S.S... um..." she paused and leaned over the edge to read the name painted on the side, "Wet Dream? Jin!"
Jin winced at Botan's admonishing shriek. "D-don't look at me, I didn't see the name before I took it!" He stammered, holding his hands up innocently.
He had most certainly seen the name.
The waterlogged fighters pulled themselves into the boat, quick to finally be out of the cold water and strip the confining floats from their necks. All but Yusuke and Lyra hurriedly slipped their pants back on in their proper place. Yusuke was rather comfortable without them, sprawling out in a seat in just his boxers, while the Lyra was frozen in place, shaking like a leaf.
Botan swiftly set herself to rifling through the various storage compartments and produced a large towel from one of them. "Bingo!" She chimed triumphantly and rushed to Lyra. She stretched out the towel as a screen to block the human from view. "Take off that top and wrap up in this, dear. We need to get you dried off!"
"Y-you are a s-saint," Lyra chattered as the ferry girl carefully attended to her. The soft, dry towel felt like heaven against her pruned skin.
"Dryin' off won't be much of a problem here in a minute!" Jin announced as he set off. The wind kicked up violently as he accelerated, forcing everyone to duck low and hold on tightly. The spritely demon pushed the structural limits of what the boat could handle, and within an hour and a half, they had made it back to land, arriving on the familiar shore just East of Genkai's compound.
As per Jin's promise, everyone was bone dry and wind chapped by the time they made it there. Kuwabara was the first one out of the boat, all of his weariness dissipating in an instant now that he was so close to Yukina and his sister. Hiei was the second to disappear, while everyone else fell into an easy stride for the hike to the dojo.
Kurama moved up to walk next to Botan, his curiosity and concern for his mother's safety making it impossible to wait. "Was there a blast in Ningenkai like the one that was aimed for us?"
Botan looked at him solemnly but set a reassuring hand on his bicep. "Yes, but not in Japan. One went off in India, and the second in Russia." Her pink eyes glistened with threatening tears as she spoke. "India believes it was an attack by Pakistan, and they are on the brink of war. Russia is blaming theirs on the Americans... everything is going sour, fast."
"Great, so now it's not just gods we have to worry about," Lyra sighed, holding her towel close as if it could offer some comfort against the thought of the entire human realm plunging into an all out nuclear war.
They made it up the last steep hillside to see the dojo proper, where Kuwabara was already kneeling in the courtyard, clinging tightly to Yukina's diminutive form. Shizuru stood at the base of the steps, worry-worn dark circles under her eyes, but she wore a smile of relief in seeing her brother in one piece. Koenma was waiting in the doorway at the top of the stairs, his face pale and hollow as his physical body suffered the heavy burdens of stress.
"A lot has happened while you all were gone," the young god professed, gesturing for everyone to enter.
"That's an understatement," Shizuru mumbled around her cigarette.
Everyone filed inside and, to Kurama's great amusement, Hiei didn't even sneer as he passed Kuwabara and Yukina. Baby steps of progress after seven years still counted at progress. Perhaps the fox had a chance of convincing the fire demon to make an appearance at the wedding after all, as it had been the only gift that Yukina had requested.
They all sat at the low table in the center of the room, Lyra taking a moment to hide behind a screen and slip back into her clothes. Placed in the middle of the table was a broken crown, a hefty looking golden ornament encircled with five skulls carved out of pearl. Yukina immediately began tending to Kuwabara's burnt hands, while Botan set to work on Lyra's.
"So, the oh shit meter is at a hundred percent, right?" Yusuke prodded when Koenma didn't start speaking.
"Yes, I suppose so," Koenma began, sparing an odd look to Yusuke's gray plaid underwear, "Once Enma found out that you were in Fudo's temple he took aim with the dimensional cannons. It seems that he would rather resort to systematically destroying Makai and Ningenkai than allow us to bring him down."
"Cannons? As in more than one? What the hell are they, and how many are we dealing with?" The former detective asked, scratching irritably at his ear.
"There are three of them. Weapons that come from an era of ignorance and decadent pride in Reikai. They all went off simultaneously, one targeting Fudo's temple, while the remaining two targeted other gods trapped in Ningenkai," Koenma sighed.
"Other gods? How many has he locked up trying to cover his tracks?" Kuwabara questioned, absently clenching his, now healed, hands.
"All of them, apparently," Botan chimed in as Koenma placed a folder on the table. She opened it up and pulled out two small maps, one of the human plane, and the second of Makai. Several points were circled in red, most of them with an 'X' scratched through them in black. "Ayame sent us this information. She stayed behind after we left, and swore allegiance to Enma so we could have eyes on the inside. We... we lost all contact with her right before the first blast."
Koenma reached out over the table to give the reaper's hand a comforting squeeze as her voice began to crack. "As Enma has grown more powerful, he has gone back to destroy which gods that he could. Most of them were already wiped out before I even learned of this charade, only a handful of them remain; Fudo, whom you've already met, and four others," he said.
"Two others, now," Botan corrected, looking to the crown on the table. "We believe this was Daikoku's, one of Enma's siblings. They were lost when the river in India where they were imprisoned was struck by the blast. This is all that Jin could find of them."
"And what of the third attack? Who was that aimed at?" Kurama asked, recalling Botan's mention of a strike in Russia. His ears were trained on the conversation, but his eyes were drawn to the broken artifact sitting in front of him. The longer he sat next to it, the harder it was to ignore the strange magnetism that pulled at the corners of his consciousness.
"Touya reported back but hasn't found anything yet. He's still on sight looking for clues, but we're assuming whoever was there was wiped out as well" Koenma disclosed. "The sites are not named, so we don't know who is left."
"So, no sign of the other brother that Kannon mentioned, Jikoku?" Kuwabara huffed, stress eating at the edge of his voice.
The young god merely shook his head in the negative and frowned.
Hiei snorted impatiently as he leaned into the door frame. "Why don't we just storm Reikai now instead of sitting around and talking about all of the things we don't know?"
"Because of this," Koenma said as he pulled another page from the file, "Ayame also reported that Enma is somehow mass producing new soldiers at an alarming rate. I had suspicions when they first stormed the Gate of Judgment... the Special Defense Force has always been kept at the same number of troops throughout history; one hundred and eight. However, they had at least two thousand soldiers during their initial attack."
"How many do they have now?" Lyra asked, leaning in to look at the papers strewn across the table, but having no luck reading them.
"Ayame estimated around fifty thousand, all of them A-class," Koenma answered gravely.
An overwhelming silence fell over the room as everyone was sobered by the information. As much as Hiei wanted to brush aside the revelation as meaningless against a group of S-class fighters, numbers like that would easily overwhelm even the likes of Raizen. A direct attack, however desirable, would be certain suicide.
The group's contemplation was disrupted suddenly by Kuwabara skittering away from the table in fright. All eyes fell on him as he pointed a shaky finger at the crown, sweat beading on his forehead. "That thing just freakin' talked!" He hollered.
Yukina quickly moved to his side, pressing the back of her hand to his head to test his temperature. "Are you feeling alright?"
"NO!" He screeched. "That thing sounded like hell itself!"
"I didn't hear any–" Lyra's words ended abruptly as her eyes shot wide. She stood up and took a few backward steps from the table, locked in an uneasy trance. When her pupils finally refocused she shook her head. "Fuck that," she snapped in English, "I'm going outside." With that, she spun on her heels and marched out the door, but not before snatching a cigarette from Shizuru that was in the process of being lit. The brunette looked only half irritated as she followed, resigned to the idea of having someone to smoke with.
"Mercy..."
Kurama bristled, icy fingers crawling up his spine. He locked his attention quickly to the sparkling ornament that now seemed to be speaking, yet no one else showed any indication that they could hear it.
"Mercy..."
Two hissing voices reverberated within his mind, one masculine, one feminine, both speaking as one. His vision darkened, his view of the room fading away. He found himself floating above a turbulent lake of blood. Bobbing on the crimson surface were severed limbs and heads of both human and demonkind alike, faces frozen in terror and madness. Levitating over the center of the lake was an immense shadow, the form of an androgynous being with four arms, all gripping fierce blades. Upon its head, the only feature not blanketed in darkness, was the golden crown of skulls that had been sitting in front of the fox moments before.
"Show me... the extent... of your mercy," the voices called out, slow and sinister.
Electricity tore through Kurama, ripping at the fibers behind his eyes. A sphere of light appeared before his body, his memories playing out within it like a movie on fast forward. Centuries of kills, centuries of blood. The face that stood out to the demon, above all, was Amanuma's. The boy, innocent and fearful, that he had ruthlessly struck down in a bid to save the world.
"Hundreds of years of selfishness, but you have been taught the meaning of nobility," they proclaimed, "still, your mercy is sparse."
Kurama narrowed his eyes, growing agitated with this examination. "What do you want?"
"Daikoku wants you!" They bellowed, their dual voices shaking the world around the fox.
"For what, exactly?" he demanded.
"To show no mercy, like Daikoku. To strike down the slave masters... Is this not your wish?" They proposed, voices dropping to a low seethe.
"Masters?" Kurama asked, a small smirk playing across his lips. "Plural?"
To his surprise, the voices laughed, a strange guttural rumble. "To assume only one evil in the universe is ignorance of the highest order."
"I suppose so," the fox hummed, his formerly tense body relaxing to a cool indifference.
"Will you take Daikoku? Will you shed blood with us? Will you... show no mercy like Time itself?" The voices teemed with excitement, like two wolves salivating in the shadows.
Kurama set a contemplative finger on his chin, making a show of thinking it through. After watching Hiei's exchange with Fudo, and not yet understanding the true scope of the gain he received, it could prove risky. He wasn't too keen on sacrificing himself to potential pain if it wasn't warranted. "What's in it for me? How will it better the efforts of my team?"
The electricity returned, ripping at him more hungrily than before. Dismembered corpses in the lake below began reassembling, but without order; human torsos attaching as heads to demonic bodies, claws merging to eyelids. The disgusting amalgamations of flesh sprang up from the bloody pool, aiming misplaced talons and fangs squarely at Kurama.
Without hesitation, he ran a hand through his hair, grabbing the seed for his rose whip. The thorns lashed out to meet his aggressors, tearing limbs to pieces once again, but it did not stop them. He felt a pulse behind his eyes, an energy that wasn't his own, and time rendered to a crawl. Kurama lifted his left hand, moving his fingers tentatively, noting that his own body was not affected by the deceleration. Looking once again to the attacking creatures as they approached in slow motion, the fox saw pulsing orbs of red light within the masses of skin and bone.
"Straight to the heart of the matter," Daikoku's voices purred in pleasured harmony.
The hearts. The orbs were the hearts of the beasts, disarranged behind eyeballs and kneecaps. Literal blades of grass sprung up between Kurama's knuckles, sharp and solid as kunai, and he set them loose, piercing the red orbs with precision. The chimeras tore apart as they were struck, pieces of them crashing lifelessly back into the scarlet deep. The crackling energy released its hold on the fox, and time returned to its normal flow.
"See their weakness, make them crawl," they sang, the four arms of the shadow brandishing their blades in a joyful dance.
Kurama could not deny the rush that he felt, the familiar drug of satisfaction flooding his brain. This blood magic tasted sweet in his mouth, and he smiled, a bit too feral for his human form. A bit too much like the Youko. With a deep breath, he calmed himself and set his emerald gaze to the dark god.
"Count me in."
A/N: Here it is, finally! For those of you that follow me on Tumblr, you know about the trouble I had with my computer. So sorry for the late update! PLEASE FORGIVE ME! I've had all kinds of bad luck these last two weeks... here's hoping for a better horizon. Today's chapter title comes from A Pain That I'm Used To by Depeche Mode, one of my absolute favorite bands. I'll be posting a link to it on my blog, deusvenenare . tumblr . com!
And a HUGE HUGE thank you to my reviewers Baoh joestar (who has been so supportive from the start, it really means the world!) and StarCharter (who recommended my fic on her Tumblr and has taken the time to review several chapters, thank you SO MUCH)!