Sanzo makes Cho sit beside him, close on his left. He keeps Goku directly behind Cho, reflected in the rearview.
The small, strange dragon-car whines under his hands, requiring his weight behind the steering wheel.
Some days, it tries to throw Cho from its passenger seat. Only Sanzo is allowed to drive.
Goku complains about his hunger, and Sanzo can't keep Cho from talking to Goku.
The heavy weight of his gun against his arm is little reassurance. It is even less when he first sees Cho fight, bright green bursts of chi obliterating the first mindless youkai that attack.
Sanzo makes them all sleep in the same room. He dares not leave Goku alone with Cho, nor Cho to himself, and he refuses to buy Goku his own room.
He and Goku learn together that Cho sleeps with his eyes open. The second time he laughs, low and curling and dangerous, Goku climbs into bed with Sanzo, regardless of the threat of the gun.
Sanzo calls him an idiot and kicks him, but Goku shudders and shakes his head, keeping his body between Sanzo and Cho.
Sanzo lets him stay.
Cho laughs, his eyes trained, unseeing, on the ceiling.
Between Goku and Cho, Sanzo hardly fires his gun at all.
Goku sticks near him, overprotective, beating holes in the youkai that approach and breaking their bones.
Both of them keep an eye on Cho, though it distracts Goku's focus.
Cho smiles, without teeth or opened eyes, serene and angelic and beautiful. He remains clean and perfect, firing chi through his enemies, three or four at a time, never once stopping.
When he throws a shield up around Sanzo and Goku, Goku nearly falters, shocked.
Cho gives them a smile, the same as all the others, and resumes the slaughter.
Gojyo knocks on the door, holding a flower stolen from someone else's garden.
A man answers, and blinks. "Gojyo! The fuck, you're alive?"
Gojyo frowns hard. "Where's Ito-sensei."
The other man winces, ducking his head. "Don't know."
"What do you mean, you don't know?" Gojyo hisses, grabbing his collar.
"Hey! No! Look, she left, okay? When – fuck, we all thought you'd died! Alright? But she… she went out looking for you, man."
Gojyo swallows. "Which way?"
"Don't. Don't. Some folks found her body a coupla days ago. Youkai tore her apart."
Gojyo staggers backward.
"She's buried behind the schoolhouse."
Gojyo leaves. He sells his house, packs a change of clothes in his bag, leaves.
Terue is gone. The schoolhouse is closed. There is nothing for him here.
Genichi went West.
Jien went West.
He turns his face toward the setting sun and squints into the light. The stitches in his stomach don't hurt any more. He'll cut them open later, to pull the strings out.
Gojyo bows his head to shield his eyes from the light, his handyman's handkerchief tied around his forehead and his limiter cold around his neck.
Gojyo goes West. There is nothing for him here.
She says her name is Shunrei.
She cries, and Cho watches her, feeling a knot tighten in his gut. She is beautiful in all the wrong colors, and talks too much of bearing a half-youkai child. A half-blood bastard.
He had forgotten what it felt like, to be around women. He misses intensely the openness of the road and nothing but Sanzo-sama and his monkey. No reminders.
Still, when another youkai lays a hand on her, he kills it without a second thought.
"Come on," he murmurs to her terrified face. She faints in his arms.
"I'll take you home."
Gojyo runs out of places to spend his money in before he runs out of money. The further West he goes, the more he has to fight. The further West he goes, the more stores are out of business, ransacked and left open, fruit rotting in the streets.
Gojyo scavenges. He sleeps in abandoned hotels and homes, and more and more, fights off youkai driven mad.
He stopped reasoning with them long before.
He remembers the hot rush of taking down an animal twice his size with nothing but his teeth.
The limiter grows tight to choking around his throat.
He says his name is Chin Yisou.
Cho smiles at him, remembering, until the gleam of his teeth shows between his lips.
"Are you afraid, Cho Gonou?" Chin Yisou slurs, the acupuncture needles in his mouth curving with his grin.
Cho slams his fist into Chin Yisou's chest and closes his hand through the hole that should have held his heart. Blood spurts from the wound, but it is only Cho's. Chin Yisou shrieks, his body convulsing and dissolving into dust.
Cho pulls back his ravaged hand. His palm cradles a mahjongg tile.
"Yes," he murmurs. "But not of you."
Kougaiji does not shudder, but the chill in the desert settles in the small of his back. Beneath him, the keeper of the Sutra he needs stands beside the Monkey King and… an utter madman.
"We're going back," he hisses, turning. Lirin opens her mouth to protest, but Yaone catches her shoulder, shaken by the look on Kougaiji's features. Both ladies, slim and lovely, both trained to fight, both irreplaceable. His own, to protect.
"This," Kougaiji says quietly, "is no place for either of you."
Lirin vibrates with protest.
Kougaiji fixes her with a sharp look. "We. Are going. Back."
Cho sits, quietly bandaging his hand.
"Who was that?" Goku bursts out, gripping the table with both hands. The food is on its way, but not fast enough.
Cho ties the bandage around his wrist and looks up. He meets Sanzo's eyes first.
"Someone I killed a long time ago. One of Hyakugan Maoh's sons."
Sanzo sips his beer. "Like the crow youkai?"
"I hadn't killed the crow before. It seems this one made himself into a shikigami."
Goku's eyes widen.
Cho looks over and smiles. He holds out the mahjongg tile, then crushes it in his fist.
"Don't worry."
Cho knows a personal demon when he sees one. When the youkai killer Rikudou's eyes pass straight from him over Sanzo's features, he steps back. This belongs to Sanzo-sama.
Goku fights him when he tries to hold him back, to keep him from stepping in. This is not his fight, not something Sanzo-sama will want to share, will want anyone to see.
Cho knows.
Goku fights him until Cho's grip is broken, and he dives into the fray, before the bullets, before the staff, and is beaten to the side.
Sanzo doesn't watch him land.
Cho watches, hands stilled.
The sound of the staff crunching through Sanzo's body echoes in the stunned silence before the monk gurgles, his body crumpling.
Cho catches him and swallows hard at the smell of his blood, but he can barely move to heal him before Goku shakes with the insurmountable power of a god.
The crown shatters into tiny useless crumbs of gold over the ground. Cho lays eyes on Seiten Taisei Son Goku, his breath catching in his throat.
The sounds of ripping flesh and Rikudou screaming echo over Cho's fight to force Sanzo's wound to heal. He bites his lip, concentrating.
The Merciful Goddess has lips as soft as petals, sharp as thorns. Se drops Cho's body once se has taken his blood, and passes it to Sanzo, holding his chin hard to keep him from moving. His hand still flails unconsciously at hir, smacking hir cheek.
Se stands, wiping hir mouth.
"I'm disappointed in you, Gensui," se says, fixing hir gaze on Cho.
"I'm sure I don't know who you're talking about, Merciful Goddess," Cho murmurs, still bowing deeply.
Se watches him for a long moment. "I'm sure you don't."
Se puts hir hand on Goku's head as se leaves.
Sanzo smokes, leaning out the window. He presses his hand to his stomach, just to feel that it is whole.
Cho brings him a beer.
"We do have a lot in common, Sanzo-sama," he murmurs softly.
Sanzo blows smoke into the night. "Don't say it."
Cho looks at him for a long moment, and watches his throat move as he swallows a sip of beer.
"Don't stand there either," mutters Sanzo.
Cho sits beside him, and looks out the window.
"Love is a terrible thing," he says.
"I don't love."
Cho smiles faintly. "Others would do well by your example."
Goku curls up in a corner of the room the three share.
The little dragon curls about his neck, cooing and rubbing his face against Goku's chin. It makes Goku smile, at least faintly, despite the heavy, dark sickness in his gut.
Cho finds him first, and kneels down.
Goku ducks. "I was gonna kill you guys. I. I couldn't stop it."
Cho tilts his head a little, and smiles. "Don't worry. You didn't, and that is all that matters."
Goku stammers, "B-but—"
Sanzo stands behind Cho. "Don't be stupid. We're fine. Get in bed before I put you there."
Gojyo tears into the body of a deer with his teeth, pulling skin away from the meat. He breaks the bones apart with his hands, tearing out huge mouthfuls of muscle and fat, blood running in thick, dark streams down his face and bare body.
He knows other youkai will be drawn by the scent soon, so he gorges himself, grabbing the best meat for himself, stripping a kill too big to guard all alone.
He can smell someone approaching, and growls deep in his throat, turning slitted blue eyes toward the intruder.
"Damn. You've really done it this time."