Itaru's grey eyes rested horrified on Sakura's attire, flowing around gracefully with the rest of her. His body had gone rigid at the sight of the hated blue and white, and he seemed to be stuck between bolting away from old instinct and attacking out of fury. He started to move forward slowly, his face twisting into the picture of intense hatred, and Ronin started to call out to Sakura in warning, but was cut short when Itaru suddenly stopped and turned to slink back into the crowd of writhing vampires, apparently thinking better of attacking.
Ronin heaved a sigh of relief and stood patiently waiting for Sakura. The match seemed to be finished, as everyone else had returned to the swirling mess of flying limbs, but she was sweetly taking her time getting out of the ring, examining the tip of her spear. Annoyed, Ronin went to her, and made the mistake of stepping into the ring himself. Sensing someone, she whirled on him, slid into a low stance, and told him to grab one of the abandoned spears that littered the floor. Naturally, he did as she informed, as she looked rather like she would fight him with or without a weapon, and picked up a spear, narrowly avoiding a jab.
"Stop that!" he barked as she poked at him again. "I need to tell you something important!"
"You can tell me," she sang, "right here."
"Sakura, I'm really serious!"
"I know! So get on with it!" she snapped, making a gash in his right arm.
"How can you still be so angry at me?!" he called back, getting even more irritated with her, and somehow managing to nick her blue and white kimono overcoat slightly. "And take that stupid thing off!"
"No! And you should apologize for—" She broke off and narrowed her eyes worriedly when Ronin's eyes grew wide and scared, focused on something behind her. Any color that he had had drained from his body.
"Look out!" he cried suddenly, and she turned quickly to see what in the world could have scared him so, and was knocked upside the face with something hard and fleetingly hot.
Itaru had not run away, he had gone to get a weapon, Ronin realized too late. Now he stood sneering down at Sakura, who had fallen from the blow, a firey torch stolen from the cavern wall in his hands. "Get up, you hound!" he snapped, seething, not even registering Ronin's presence. "Stand up and fight!"
Sakura's face showed sick, fearful recognition as she stared up at Itaru's disgusted countenance. "But you…you should be dead!" she protested, shaking her head back and forth slowly.
"How characteristic of that uniform," he snarled, "for you to want to see people dead."
She didn't protest, but stood up shakily and brushed herself off, abandoning her spear.
"Itaru!" Ronin called suddenly. "Please! You can't—"
Itaru looked up and glared at him as if he had only just noticed that he was there, quieting him immediately with the harsh intensity of those normally dead-looking grey eyes. "Don't you talk to me like I've broken my promise to give you seven days," he hissed. "Don't you dare. This isn't your punishment. Not yet. This doesn't have a thing to do with you, at least not directly, so don't you dare interrupt."
Sakura, meanwhile, adopted a look of semi-understanding, gave a half-chuckle, then smiled wryly at Itaru as he turned to stare coldly at her.
"What's so funny?" he asked dryly, apparently very upset at her sudden lack of fear of him.
"Just that you're such a hypocrite," she half-laughed, sneering. "I think I can see the situation here, and your ignorance is completely frustrating, you pyromaniac bastard. Taking on a Shinsengumi in a fair fight is bravely unlike the likes of you, so I'll accept the challenge. Now, take of your glasses, boy. You'll get hurt."
Itaru was incredulous, his expression stuck between snarling and laughing, which didn't help to disprove Sakura's pyromaniac claim at all. "You think I'd loose against the likes of you?!" he choked, grinning. "You talk so proudly, one would think that you really were a brave and loyal member of the Shinsengumi, you poor thing! But really, where were you while Jaden was busy patrolling Kyoto? Batting your eyelashes? Kimono shopping? Busy on your back, entertaining one of those special customers so that attention was diverted from your dear BFF when she needed attention to be diverted?"
She punched him hard, right on the side of his face, so that his glasses really did go flying and he fell backwards. She loomed over him dangerously, as if daring him to go on, and strangely, he did, in the same dryly and sarcastically humorous tone.
"You're worse than them," he said, reaching for his glasses behind him and carefully examining them for breaks. "You're worse than those murderers, because you wanted so badly to be one of those murderers, but in the end, couldn't do a thing. Even when you had a chance to help one of your friends, you thought about it too much, and you only made things worse."
"Shut your mouth!" she snapped, kicking him this time, again sending his glasses flying and his head smashing against the hard ground.
He grabbed his glasses, stood up shakily, and continued laughing. "I'll humor you, Miss Sakura. Now, lets pretend for a moment that you really are an ex-Shinsengumi, one who really actually took action and didn't let her friend's life fall apart, and one who happily killed a few of my comrades. Yes. Now, Miss Sakura, since you are this person, all pity for you is gone from me." He grinned. "You can die like a real Wolf of Mibu now, in the pleasant fantasy that you were, and are, a brave samurai."
Sakura was absolutely fuming now, and Ronin was caught in such awe that he couldn't move; couldn't do a thing to stop them from killing each other. Itaru was pleased, it seemed, at having made her so furious. Apparently he didn't realize that he was digging his own grave, and continued to smile genially. "My, my, you're so quick to deny your worthlessness, Miss Sakura," he chuckled. Did I hit too close to home, you hound—no, lapdog of the Shogunate?"
She'd had enough. In one graceful swirling motion, she had swept up her spear and thrust the tip of it into Itaru's soft flesh, only just below his ribs. He let out a short gasp, but only the very end of the spearhead had bit into him, and he remained generally unharmed. Retaliating, he clubbed the side of her face with the still-burning torch quickly and brutally.
Ronin finally broke free of his dreamlike trance and sprinted forward to catch Sakura as she sprawled backwards, one slim hand cradling her left cheek as she trembled from the pain of the blow. Itaru casually stood by and allotted them time for recovery, assuming that Ronin was only there to play medic, and deciding to let it slide.
Carefully prying her hand from her face to examine Sakura's fresh wound, Ronin soon understood why she was trembling. The mark was actually something of a scrape, but a huge once that ran from her jaw line to the top of her cheekbone, and was not only bleeding, but was red and blistered from the heat and slightly blackened with ash. Wincing, he turned with thoughts of a desperate attempt to call Itaru off, but she suddenly shoved him roughly backwards, face contorted in rage.
"My face!" she snarled, swinging at him with deadly force. He narrowly avoided it the staff part of the spear knocking him to the side, but its tip caught his arm and left quite a gash behind. "Look what you've done! You've ruined my face!" She swung again, hitting Itaru in the side this time and sending him sprawling, but snapping her spear in half in the process. Honestly, she didn't seem to care, and began stalking over to his fallen form, ignoring the other half of her weapon as she walked by, content, apparently, to do as she pleased with him with the splinters on the end of her half.
He had stood back up by time she stalked over to him, but didn't have the time to draw up his defenses, and she punched him hard across the jaw, mocking her earlier warning as she sent his glasses across the floor one last time, quite far away this time.
Not allowing him to fetch his spectacles this time, Sakura soon afterwards jabbed at his thin neck with the broken end of her spear, catching the right side of it and breaking flesh. She pulled away and he began coughing, blood flowing thickly around any splinters left in his neck with dangerous rapidity bruises from her earlier blows starting to show on his face. He leaned over, wincing as he continued to cough violently and attempt to stop the flow of blood by wrapping his hands around his neck, and Sakura stabbed him again, in his shins. He fell to the ground, but, annoyingly, continued to grin.
"Poor, pretty Sakura," he chuckled darkly and huskily between desperate chokes for air. "Always thinking you have the upper hand. Because you're a samurai, right? Because in the end, things always work out for you, right?" His smile finally fell, to be replaced with a look of contemptuous rage as he slowly and painfully stood up. "Now, murdering Wolf-of-Mibu-wannabe, suffer."
Sakura suddenly yelped—Jaden's uniform was quickly disappearing within a plume of eagerly licking flames, the anciently dry fabric going up like newspaper. Before her kimono could catch too, she flung what was left of the old rag onto the floor, and, seething now, left it to smolder quietly away in the dirt. But before she could react further, Itaru hit her again.
A few other vampires seemed to realize that this battle was beyond the rest of the playful scuffling going on, and stopped to watch the two warily, not quiet listening in to the pair's distraught conversation. Of course, they would never have anticipated Itaru's vengeful and disloyal intentions, but they seemed to realize that a trip to the medics might be inevitable; it wasn't strange for a few to get too serious during the Festival, after all.
Katie suddenly came up behind Ronin, eyes widening at the scene before them, the two glaring at one another, sending off hateful vibes. She drew a hand to her mouth from shock at their gory wounds.
"You took off so fast, I just knew something was…" she began quietly, but soon trailed off and looked back at the two, looking as if she were caught between crying and being sick.
"Yes, something is wrong," Ronin finished for her, also refusing to draw his eyes away. "Very wrong. This shouldn't be…if she just wasn't so stupid…" They seemed to be at a temporary stalemate, nervously judging each other, and so he drew his intense gaze away and turned Katie's head to him. "Please. I know I've asked a lot, but please, could you go find Toklata? I'm sure she's still in one of the Sporting Halls. Please, could you?"
Slowly, Katie nodded, her head turning back to the fight as soon as he released her. But without further prodding, she slowly turned her body and began to run back to the Hall entrance, sneaking looks over her shoulder the whole way.
Ronin felt horrible for treating her like a (very pretty) piece of meat in his earlier rush and then asking something of her, but know he needed that favor. He felt as helpless as the rest of the onlookers, but knew that he had to stay. Sakura had made it quite clear to him that she'd wanted to take care of Itaru herself as revenge for his cruel words, but he wasn't sure now if she still had the upper hand.
They continued to fight.
--
Toklata yelped as Ishin narrowly missed her face with a punch that would have surely left a bruise. All she could manage to do was dodge him at the best of times, she found out too late, and was soon regretting her choice to challenge him. They had actually kept this up for a few rounds already, and she could feel herself starting to lose speed.
In all honesty, she had found comfort in the familiar face set against the sea of everyone else, but hadn't really thought that she'd be able to get away with just innocently standing next to him.
These thoughts distracted her enough that she couldn't quite pull away quickly enough when the General lashed out again, and so she fell unceremoniously to the floor, landing on her bottom. He had to have been holding back, she knew, but felt proud anyway for holding up this long.
The General offered a hand and suggested coolly that she accept her defeat and go find her master, but could tell by her immediate sour expression as he mentioned Ronin that she didn't want to consider that option "What's that look for? Usually you're attached at the hip," he joked dryly, stepping out of the ring and picking up his scythe with considerable ease. She was pleased to see him sweating, though wasn't sure if she had even caused it.
She was about to explain about Ronin's awful words from the day before and how he had tossed away Jaden's sword, but the two suddenly noticed Katie standing behind them, her eyes worried and her hands, shaking, drawn up to her chest as if to protect herself.
--
Itaru shoved Sakura onto the ground with sudden and frightening force that seemed to come from nowhere, the act awkward against his thin and battered body. "You called me a hypocrite earlier, didn't you?" he snapped. "What an irony now that I'm repeating it to you, though I do think you deserve it." He kicked her. "Talking about truth and justice." Again. "Protectors of Kyoto? You were even more hated than we were!" She started to get up, but he whirled around and firmly pressed his foot against her ribcage. "I just don't understand how you can be proud of dear Jaden."
She struggled against him, spitting out various cutting words, but somehow couldn't break free as he slowly applied pressure. Ronin suddenly felt sick and swayed slightly forward—he remembered this very same scene from before, from that awful, awful day so long ago, but with two others, and he wondered how he could have been so cruel.
"Stop it!" he called, remembering how Souji Okita had cried the same useless request to him, his young voice resonating in his mind as clearly as the rest of the details, including directly after, when the poor thing had broken in to a desperate fit of wracked and horrible coughing.
Itaru, for some reason of another, heeded to his wish and took his foot from Sakura's chest. He then stared down at her with a suddenly doleful expression, seeming to be weighing his choices. The vampires who had been watching him with careful eyes seemed to relax a bit at his lapse and continued on with their own fights.
As they turned away, Itaru looked down at the smoldering remains of old cotton, tilting his head slightly. His expression became glazed and reminiscent for a few brief moments, but the sounds around him quickly brought him back. Then he made his decision, picking up her spear and pointing the tip of her throat in horrible irony—his was still bleeding dangerously as well. Sakura stared up at him with a hateful and sickened expression contorting her features, and yet she didn't seem afraid.
Ronin came to and dashed for them, but knew somewhere that he would never make it. Even if had been able to originally, Itaru would surely see him coming and make quick work of the process; it was hopeless and it was his fault for not intervening sooner, for letting everything play out, for—
Itaru was suddenly thrown off balance and crumpled to the floor. Ronin wasn't sure what he expected, really, but was surprised to realize with faint astonishment and pride that it had been Katie who had slammed into him—she had fallen backwards as well from the resistance, and now sat opposite of Itaru on the ground. Ishin and Toklata ran up beside Ronin, panting and just as surprised.
"That's my mentor!" she yelped, suddenly regaining some composure and scurrying over to him, looking into his face with sorrowful disbelief. "How could you do that to—"
He grasped her ankle and slammed her into the floor. Her head bounced off of the hard ground and she lie still, but Ishin was quick to dash over and knock Itaru out as well, kicking his head from behind with a bit more force than necessary. Sakura remained conscious but couldn't seem to pull herself up from the ground, and lay there with a hand over her face, breathing slowly.
"I think we've won," she commented dryly, laughing humorlessly.
"Quiet," Ishin said gently. "We'll get you to the medics, just relax."
She stared at him quietly for a few moments before nodding and falling into a dreamless half-doze.
--
A/N- Oh, I know, I know. In short, I have amazing amounts of homework this year, plus field hockey, plus marching band. Plus, our team this year is…well, they stress me. And then, reviews have been dwindling down lately, so I'm not even sure that a lot of you are still interested. I know it's veering dangerously off the "Darren Shan Saga" road, so I thought maybe some people might loose interest. If you're still out there, please drop me a line so I know. Trust me, I need the encouragement.
Oh…and I'm kind of happy but kind of disappointed about this chapter, all at the same time. I don't want to go into it now, though, I'm sleepy. Goodnight.