The Irony Gods: Chapter 29


(Author's Note)

I'm feeling a bit evil tonight…it's like 3 AM right now. No, I don't sleep. Wastes time. Long chappie.

I'm eating cookies and sippin' da Dew…

NOW FOR SOME MADNESS!

Oh, and before anyone gets all offended and whatnot, I like rednecks, and I like snowplows—whatever is said in this fanfic is purely for the sake of entertainment, unless it's in an (A/N), 'cause then it's my own personal interjection.

Quote(s) of the Day: "My day is not complete until I have terrified a total stranger."—BumperSticker


Pandemonium: Zombies and Lab Rats

(Houtou Castle—Rendezvous) (A/N: I know, I know…that word is spelled all funny. "Rondayvoo")

"Lirin's gettin' tired of waiting, Yaone," the spunky little Princess whined, plopped on the arched spine of one of the rocky structures surrounding the dark Castle. "Why's Kougaiji and Doku takin' so long?"

The healer offered an uncertain smile and a quick glance to make certain that the girl wasn't showing signs of taking off after her brother. "Don't worry about them, Lady Lirin. I'm sure they're fine."

Though, in her mind, it was taking longer than expected. The Sanzo party was probably already at the generator site, and the plan couldn't move forward without that artifact. There were plenty of strange, ancient artifacts in the Castle, but they just had to need the one most difficult to obtain…ugh, irony was a bitter thing.

She sighed and sat down as well, rubbing her sore legs through the sheer stockings. Standing for so long in tense worry wasn't good for her health, but she couldn't help herself. It was dumb luck alone that left the castle without Gyokumen Koushu or Professor Ni around to make things complicated, but she knew better than to expect no resistance at all.

Lirin was nowhere near as patient as Yaone, and just wanted them to get back as soon as possible. She wanted to go see Sanzo and Lydia, and even Goku. Things were so boring without people to play with.

She snapped in no time.

"Dammit!" she cried in frustration, pounding a fist into the stone beneath her. The structure vibrated, but held firm. "I wanna go in and get 'em!"

"Now why would you do that?" inquired an amused voice from behind.

In a flash, she was grinning and leaping to her feet to run over to her brother and tackle him with a big hug. "Big brother! You're back!"

Kougaiji's smile was strained, but not enough to alert his sister. Yaone, however, noticed right away, and was about to mention it when he sent her a pleading glance which clearly asked her not to say anything.

Something was wrong—very wrong—but she kept her mouth shut anyway. If Lord Kougaiji wanted her quiet, then it was probably something that would upset Lirin. Instead, she said, "It's good to see you both back safe, though I must say that you look like you fought through an army to get out." Her smile was real enough. She was relieved that they had gotten out as unscathed as they had.

Dokugakuji laughed heartily, "Oh, yeah. You wouldn't believe how huge Lady Koushu's personal guard has gotten."

She smiled warmly. "So did you get it?"

The Prince reached into his vest and withdrew the silver box, frowning slightly. "Yes, but it took forever to find, so we're probably running out of time."

Yaone nodded dutifully, setting aside her questions and addressing the problem at hand, "Then we should go now. The dragons are at the bottom of this spire."


(Ground Zero)

Hakkai drove that jeep the way an inebriated redneck drives a snowplow—with total disregard for pedestrian safety. Of course, when the pedestrians are sadistic zombies from all walks of death, one tends to forget that they normally shouldn't be mowed down like a field of rather odoriferous saw grass. Plus, it made short work of quite a lot of the ground we were supposed to cover.

I found it intriguing that even the ancient dead of this realm knew how to flip us the bird.

"Sore losers!" Gojyo taunted right back at the raised fingers. He was already swinging his shakujou around like a bladed whip, dismembering the ones who got too close to his side of the jeep.

A blur of red flashed by my face, missing my nose by mere microns as Goku took down eight of the grotesque reanimations with one swing of his nyoi-bo. He was laughing happily, high on the rush of the fight.

In all honesty, I wasn't too keen on jumping into the fracas. I mean, my coat could get all kinds of decomposing fluids on it, and who knew how hard it was to get the stink of rotting dead things off of such porous and supple leather? Nuh-uh. No way. I refused to tango with the undead. I remained firmly glued to my seat on the floor, fantasizing about the many things I could be doing in my realm at that moment—watching Ren & Stimpy, playing Devil May Cry 3, plotting revenge against my next door neighbor's little kid for calling me a "doo-doo head".

A gunshot from right beside my ear swatted me back into reality—a very, very disconcerting reality—and I squeaked in surprise, causing everyone to look at me in confusion.

"What's the matter?" Goku asked with a grin, taking another swing at a posse of dry skeletons trying to climb into the jeep. They fell to pieces and released their hold, receding back into the crowd of corpses.

As I watched, the individual limbs and bones picked themselves up and reassembled, shouting silent injustice with shaking bony fists.

Nope. Not happening.

"Hey, quit making us do all the work!" Gojyo interrupted my observations. He was giving me a baffled look, clenching a cigarette firmly between his teeth so as to prevent further wasting of precious tobacco product.

I balked. "Er…actually…zombies kinda freak me out," I admitted lamely, scratching my head and looking anywhere but their faces.

"That's ridiculous," Konran snapped, earning an irritated glare from myself. "You kill things all the time in this realm. The only difference is that there's no moral high-horse here—they're already dead, so just destroy them."

I shuddered at the thought. "Dude, I can't even play Resident Evil 4 without all the lights on and the sound turned off and Blink-182's Enema of the State blaring from my stereo. This here, this is hell. The Ring nearly made me wet myself!"

Now Sanzo was staring at me. "You're an idiot," was his simple response. He then returned to decimating the undead populace with round after round of ammo.

Konran sighed and dematerialized just his arm when a particularly avaricious corpse tried to drag him down off the jeep. In fact, every time one of them got near, they either suddenly decided that it wasn't such a great idea after all, or his threatened body part would do its voodoo vanishing trick. He frowned at me in disapproval, which made my brain shout a few choice obscenities at him for being so patronizing. "Lydia, you are a brilliant young lady, but sometimes you are just plain stupid."

"Excuse me? I'll kill you."

"Put that rage to better use and help get these creatures out of the way. The crowd up ahead is far too thick for the jeep to take us through, and at that point we go on foot."

I stared. I stared for a very long time, before finding my voice where it had hidden itself away in a closet under a quilt and a bunch of old winter coats. "Are you insane? I'm not walking through that! No! N-NO!"

"Yes, you are," the monk growled from behind his gun. In an instant, three more zombies crumbled to dust against the power of that tiny weapon.

I pointed at the god. "Ass-hat has to carry me, then, 'cause I'm not going of my own volition."

Konran chuckled a little bit ominously, "That can be arranged, though I do wonder if you really want to be so close to me."

"You're an ass."

"Yeah! Take that, ya stinky dead guy!" Goku shouted at a zombie that had tried to shimmy up the pole to get to us. He had effectively removed any and all shimmying capabilities it may have possessed. The monkey was oblivious to the argument, that lucky chimp.

The jeep began to slow down, and my panic level rose to a record high. Even my brain could only repeat the same thing over and over: Keep driving. Don't stop. Keep driving. Don't stop. Keep driving. Don't stop. Keep driving. Don't stop…

"No, I mean it, guys!" I begged. "I can't do this! Kon, please!"

The jeep came to a halt and the crowding bodies descended upon us, kept at bay by the wide swings of Goku and Gojyo's weapons. Sanzo kept control of the close-range stuff while Hakkai prepared a chi-blast to wipe out the path ahead.

"We have to go now!" Hakkai announced, standing up and taking aim with the glowing ball of light.

"Lydia, get up NOW!" Konran shouted, grabbing my arm before I could react and yanking me out of the vehicle. The moment I tried to scramble back in, it turned back into Hakuryu, and he fluttered up into the air to avoid the groping bones and rotting hands hungry for white meat.

I screamed—a flat-out, terror-stricken, utterly pansy scream—when a long-dead youkai corpse with one halt-eaten eye and greasy dripping strips for skin grabbed my right arm. Before I even knew what I was doing, my left hand tore from Konran's grip and flashed behind me to whip Ryushi out of the sheath, slashing forward and shredding the revolting thing into several dozen pieces.

Once it was effectively down for the count—though it certainly was making an effort to prove my judgment wrong—I calmed down enough to take a brief assessment of the situation.

I discovered three important factors:

One, these zombies were mostly just skeletons. The few with enough meat on their bones to do heavy lifting seemed to have concentrated around the blue glowing object at the hub of the round, craterlike formation which Chitsujo had selected for this final showdown. Ergo, at present, I didn't have to worry much about zombies wielding giant swords or chainsaws. Video games were soooo warping my sense of reality.

Two, they weren't that bright. They didn't seem to even notice when a limb or two got severed off, and when faced with an enemy who possessed a clear advantage, they lacked the common sense to turn tail and head for safety.

And three, Ryushi was happy. The sword loved the idea of having so much cannon fodder to sharpen itself upon. Not only that, but the quiet corner of my mind was stirring again, letting my violent half peer through the holes in my armor to see the bounty before them. They wanted to wade out into the middle and attack for the fun of it all.

Konran touched my shoulder lightly. "Are you okay?"

I shrugged his hand off and stepped away. "No, but now I'm mad, and that's good enough."

Goku and the cockroach fell back toward the group as Hakkai's chi blast wiped out all the zombies for a hundred yards ahead with a deafening shockwave, and stood on either side of me in camaraderie.

The monkey laughed excitedly and grabbed my hand, yoinking me along behind the two parents of the posse. "C'mon! Sanzo'll leave us if we don't hurry!"

"You're—having—way too—much—fun!" I complained, straining to simultaneously run and breathe in the presence of a thousand noxious rotting corpses. Goku was enjoying this too much to notice, Gojyo didn't seem bothered, and I had the irritating suspicion that Konran didn't have to breathe at all if he didn't feel like it.

"Aw, you'll be fine!" Goku assured me, letting go to spring into the air and club three more zombies that had taken it upon themselves to halt our progress. "It's easier than fightin' youkai!"

"Or are you just scared?" Gojyo taunted with a wry grin, effortlessly slashing through a dozen enemies with one swing of the blade.

"Grrr…outta my way!" I snapped at a corpse wearing ancient armor and carrying a light sword. I swung down hard, only to be blocked by an upstroke. The shock rattled my teeth and pushed me another inch toward losing it, and in a flash I used the momentum to push off to one side and sideswipe him, gashing him through the middle and spilling what used to be intestines on the ground.

"Nice," Gojyo chuckled, elbowing a skeleton in the bony bridge of its nose and knocking its head off.

"Gross!" I cried, squeamish again and scrambling behind Konran for safety as we ran through the press of bodies.

The god sighed, reached back, and drew me up to run beside him, holding my arm to keep me from hiding at the back again. "Lydia, I understand your reluctance, but you told me that I could count on you," he whispered, too quietly for the others to hear through the guttural cries of dying dead. "Stop playing. I'm useless in the state I'm in. Do you want this world to die?"

I scowled. "No…"

"Then go do what your darkest instincts whisper in your ear." He murmured something in ancient Latin and let go, then fell behind a bit, and without warning planted his heel the small of my back and shoved me forward into a gaggle of congregating soldier corpses.

"Augh! Konran you ass!" I shouted before slamming against the nearest body. It staggered, shot me a resentful glare, and raised its spear to stab through my head.

Foolish child, the coldest voice groaned in my head, as though the sound of creaking glaciers had gotten trapped in its vocal cords. I froze in fear, realizing which one had spoken, and what Konran had done.

BLOODLUST.

"No!" I shouted on instinct, rolling out of the spear's way and rushing to my feet. "I can't!"

"You have to!" Konran growled, standing over me as a dark mist, intangible to the corpses attempting to rend him apart. "I need that power! Kougaiji is near and without me the plan is useless!"

The zombie hissed an unintelligible curse and tore the embedded spear from the fluid-soaked earth, lunging at me again. I ducked under the shaft and hooked his ribcage as he streaked past, shredding his organs and bones apart. He fell to the dirt in a gory heap, twitching and still trying to attack me.

Up ahead, the bodies were denser, closing in on the guys the moment they destroyed the ones nearby. This was bad. The reanimations were weak, but in such massive numbers the party could tire before ever reaching the middle of the field.

"Kon…you realize that once I let that one out, she won't stop until nothing is left alive, don't you?"

"It's been nine years, but that's not so long for me," he replied curtly. "I remember."

A zombie grabbed Hakkai by the throat and tried to drag him down into the masses, but Sanzo shot it three times in the head and Gojyo sliced it to ribbons. The healer looked exhausted from using so much chi to blast through the crowd.

I stared hard at the god, shaking slightly at the thought of what I was about to do. "If anything happens to them, I'm blaming you. I already blame you for Yumoa. I know he's not dead, but I'm sure he's in pain. I'll never forgive you if they get hurt."

He frowned. "Lydia, don't you trust me at all?"

To my surprise, I laughed—a cold, harsh sound…I was cracking. "Just swear that you'll stop me. Kill me if you have to, but stop me when it's over."

A pained look flickered in his eyes, but he nodded anyway. "Very well," he whispered, flashing apart in a cloud of darkness and breezing ahead on the wind.

I cursed loudly and bashed a groping zombie to the ground, tearing it apart before it could touch me.

"Mom, Dad, forgive me," I muttered, unlocking the cage.


(Ground Zero—Aerial View)

"Oh, no," Yaone murmured as the two dragons descended from the clouds, revealing a bird's-eye view of an army worthy of hell. "So this is why they brought the generator so far from the castle?"

"I guess with all the dead soldiers buried on castle grounds, it was only the prudent thing to do," Kougaiji replied with a troubled expression. "If Konran's plan works, then this isn't much trouble, but if not…"

"We're in for a rough time," Dokugakuji finished for him.

"Yes, it seems that way."

Lirin let out a whoop of barely-contained excitement. "Yeah! We're gonna go see Baldy and Lydia! I wonder if Yumoa's comin' too."

Her brother and Dokugaku exchanged worried looks. This was going to be rough in more ways than one. They would have to wait until after the battle to tell her.

Yaone saw the exchange, and suddenly she understood why Kougaiji had been so troubled. Something must have happened to Yumoa. She wanted to ask, but Couldn't with Lirin nearby—she was the one most likely to throw a fit.

"There they are," she announced instead, pointing to a bare patch in the carpet of bodies. In the middle, several figures could be seen fighting hard and keeping the zombies far back enough to let them make slow but steady progress. They were doing well under the circumstances, but with such overwhelming forces the army could converge as one any time and crush them.

"We need to hurry," the Prince urged, digging his heels into the dragon's hide and bringing it into a steep dive. "Come on!"

Yaone and Dokugaku followed right behind on the second dragon, the four of them plummeting from the sky at ridiculous speeds. The ground hurtled upwards, threatening a messy death, but at the last possible second the animals leveled of, braked and hovered over the group of fighters.

Sanzo shot a zombie twice in the head and once in the heart, and scowled up at them as it fell. "Took you damn long enough! Were you waiting for a formal invitation?"

Kougaiji's eye twitched in irritation at the ungrateful priest. "You should be glad we decided to help you. Otherwise you'd be dead."

He snorted derisively. "Save it for when you actually do something useful."

The Prince saw that he was being baited, so he ignored it. Instead, he motioned for Yaone and Dokugakuji to follow him down.

"Wait, what about me?" Lirin demanded.

"Lirin, you stay at a safe distance. Take care of the dragons for us."

"What? No way! Lydia, I can come, right?" She turned hopefully to the other girl, only to find her staring at sheer emptiness. "Lydia? You okay?"

She stood still and silent, listlessly holding Ryushi as the mob of bodies pressed in on her. Her eyes were focused on nothing in particular, perhaps a point of air some fifty yards away.

One of the zombies hacked a laugh and reached out to take her arm—only to have it drop to the ground, severed cleanly at the elbow. The monster watched its arm fall, then screamed and attacked full-on, taking only one step before falling apart at the seams.

Lydia still hadn't moved.

Lirin stared in fear. "Oh, no…what happened?"

Goku back-flipped over the zombies' heads and skidded to a halt amongst the stragglers. "C'mon, guys! Konran's way up there already! He's waitin'!" Then he saw Lydia too, and blinked. "Uh, oh…so that's why Konran's all strong now. Thought that was kinda weird."

The Princess didn't understand. "What happened? Why's she acting like this?" She started to follow the other three off the dragons, but then Lydia finally moved and she froze in place.

"Lirin…" she murmured, slowly looking up at the girl. Her eyes had no light in them—just utter nothingness, as though her soul had been sucked out. If anything, there was coldness. "Please leave. I don't want you to see me like this…"

"Like what?" Lirin demanded.

Another zombie exploded when it got to close—she didn't even flinch. She blinked slowly and turned to walk away towards where Konran had gone. "Hungry," she whispered.

Lirin shuddered. "Ummm…I guess I'll stay with the dragons then…but you guys better come back!" She shook a fist at her brother and the others, then spurred the dragon upwards, leading the second one close behind by the reins.

Kougaiji watched her go and sighed, relieved that she was going to obey for once. He turned to Yaone and Dokugakuji. "I need to get up to where Konran. It may take some time to prepare the spell."

"It won't take that long," muttered Gojyo, tossing down a spent cigarette and frowning after Lydia, who was headed straight for Konran's location far ahead. "They're both at their best—and their worst. Konran seems okay with handling his dark half, but Lydia's completely gone."

Kougaiji narrowed his lavender eyes and turned to Sanzo. "You mean she's not blocking Konran's power anymore? But she's like a wildcat when she does that. Before you came to Konran's hideout, she tried to kill him for real."

Sanzo just shrugged slightly. "Not my problem. Konran's the one in charge of her, not me, and he's just here to clean up the mess he made." One of the zombies had the unmitigated audacity to leap out of the hesitating crowd and grab Sanzo's gun arm, and one sutra later it was nothing more than dust. As soon as the light died down, he turned to follow the god's path. Understandably, the sea of reanimations parted down the middle, not unlike Moses escaping Egypt.

(A/N: Unfortunately, no one from Lydia's realm saw this bizarre occurrence, and doubts as to the monk's true holiness persisted throughout the remainder of this fanfic.)

"Better go catch Konran," Gojyo prodded Kougaiji's group, trailing after Sanzo.

Goku was right behind him. "Yeah, he's been waitin' a while."

Only Hakkai remained behind, watching the other three go and apparently catching his breath. He looked worse-off than the other three after using so much energy to get this far, and once they were out of earshot he looked over to the others. "You have to realize that what Konran has forced Lydia to do is to basically lock her soul away. Her morals are gone. I would advise against getting too close to her—it seems her chi has organized itself into a deadly barrier.

"Also, before I forget, Konran is on edge as well. He's mostly worried about Lydia, but I think he may also be struggling with the circumstances. We should go through with this as quickly as possible." He smiled tightly. "The zombies are weak, but they do have massive numbers. I'm glad you all made it safely."

Dokugakuji chuckled and cast a wary glance around at the advancing army. "I get the feeling that what we just went through was the easy part."

He managed a soft laugh, concentrating his chi for another blast into the reformed crowd. "Probably."

The three of them chased at some distance to avoid the debris from the chi blasts, and after a thought, Yaone moved between the other two and cleared her throat hesitantly. "Lord Kougaiji, did something happen?"

Kougaiji's gait shifted slightly, but not by much. "What kind of something?"

She frowned and concentrated on skipping over the scattered and rotting limbs. "What happened to Yumoa? Every time he came up, you avoided the subject entirely and got that worried look."

This time Dokugakuji's stride changed, and she turned to him for answers.

"Well? If it's something you want kept from Lady Lirin, then it must be something serious."

"It is," Dokugakuji admitted quietly, glancing over at the Prince.

He nodded. "He was helping us find the artifact, and when we were ambushed Yumoa was stabbed…he's dead."

Yaone gasped and nearly tripped over a severed leg. "Oh, no! But Lady Lirin will so upset! She was looking forward to playing more of those games he brought from his realm. Are you sure he's really gone?"

The Prince nodded gravely. "His heart wasn't beating and he wasn't breathing—both things he did while alive. He's dead all right."

"Sure, he could be annoying, but he was such a nice guy," Doku muttered.

Kougaiji sighed. "I don't envy the person who has to tell the others, but for now we have a job to do. We should save this Yumoa issue for after, especially since our mistakes could completely get rid of the need ot tell everyone."

The other two nodded assent, and the three sped up to catch Konran. There was only so much time and it was counting down fast.


(Houtou Castle—Hwan's Lab)

She should have been irritated at the fact that the other two had escaped so easily—those guards were so incompetent it was embarrassing—but couldn't find the heart to stay annoyed. After all, she had captured the god without a hitch.

Yumoa lay prone on the steel table, frowning slightly as though having a bad dream. The dagger's hilt still protruded from his chest like a movie prop—so little blood that it was hard to believe he had been stabbed at all. The harsh halogen lamp overhead cast him in an ethereal light, enhancing the physical qualities that marked his god-status—the snowy hair and tan skin, the unearthly glow he gave off in the presence of such bright illumination. For the first time in a long time, Hwan found herself smiling.

At last, she had what she needed, and all that research had paid in full. Lady Koushu would be mightily impressed when she discovered the doctor's pet project.

But first things first.

After taking a syringe and a vial of clear fluid from the cabinet, Hwan approached the table and prepared the drug as per instructions. Then she pushed his long black silk sleeve up his arm. The inner layer of his shirt was crimson—how could he stand the heat in two layers of silk?

She shook the thought out of her mind and pressed the tip into the vein, injecting the drug until it was completely gone.

"There," she murmured with a smile, setting the vial and syringe on the tray and proceeding to remove the dagger. With a bit of force the razor-sharp knife slid out of his chest, making an unsettling slurping noise as it went. She set that aside as well, and waited.

At first there was nothing, and she wondered if perhaps the dagger's legend was a tad more powerful than the books had told her, but then his bare foot twitched, then his arm, and suddenly he jerked upright with a pained cry.

"Qwie! Owie, owie, owieeee!" he whined, clutching at the wound and grimacing. His fiery eyes spotted Hwan and he frowned even more. "Hwan, you meanie! You stabbed me! What was that for? And how come I died? That's whack! I can't die! No fair! Cheater!"

She flipped the switch on the console beside her and folded her arms, unmoved by his indignant cries. "You're a nuisance. And not just that—you also drugged me and stole information from me. And not just that—you also left me unconscious in the presence of that monster Ni Jianyi."

"But…but…" Tears filled his glowing eyes so instantaneously that Hwan had to fight her flinch reflex.

The next moment he was crying uncontrollably, "I'm sorry! I had to do it! You put my uncle in that machine and he's gonna kill all my friends. And I hate being alone 'cause Kon's always going all evil and stuff, Higeki never plays house or Twister, and Chitsu hates everything!" He raised his tear-streaked face to look at her with shining eyes. "Please forgive me? I just didn't wanna lose my friends…and now there's a stab wound in my chest!" He picked at his shirt and stared down the neck, pouting at the neat slit just above his heart. "Man…I never heal as fast as Kon…this sucks."

"Shut up," Hwan sighed impatiently, lifting her chin and letting the light glint off her lenses. "There's no way I can allow you to leave. You'll just hinder our plans to revive Gyumaoh. Do you hear that humming noise? The generator has been activated, and the machines are channeling the energy into the sealed Lord as we speak. Soon he will rise and I'll be free."

The spunky god pointed a shaking finger at the Doctor. "Ha! You can't keep me all locked up! I'm a god! I can go anytime I want. And what's up with that dagger anyway? How'd you get it to knock me out?"

She smirked slightly and calmly seated herself in the computer chair, facing the table and just beyond the lamplight's circle of brightness. "It is an artifact from ancient times, said to possess the power to stop even the gods. Its magic put you into an instant hibernation, where even your pulse and breathing were halted."

Puzzlement filled his eyes. "Huh? Wow, that's new. I gotta tell Kon about that one. He probably already sensed that my vital signs were gone. I don't want him worrying about me. I'll come by later to check on ya, okay?" With a sudden grin he hopped down from the table, took three steps toward the edge of the light's pool, and stopped. "Wait…hey! How come I can't keep going?" He put his fists on his hips and frowned at the edge of darkness as though it had defiled his lawn.

The Doctor held up the empty vial. "I prepared this in case you decided to resist. It's a combination of radioactive elements mixed with a special potion made from sacred lotus extract and moonflower. As long as you are surrounded by darkness, you are trapped under that lamp."

He frowned. "Heyyy…that's mean. It's not nice to be mean, ya know."

"I have no intention of being nice to you, Yumoa."

"Then what are your intentions?" He smirked and raised an eyebrow.

"To keep you out of the way. If you cause trouble, or irritate me, I'll stab you again." She was not in the mood for more male-ego shenanigans.

He gasped and covered his chest protectively, which appeared to Hwan as though he were a little girl fearing exposure—instantly negating her prior thought. "No! No stabby! I'll be good, I swear! Just quit stabbin' me!"

Her brows rose. "I only did it once."

His lips pursed. "So? Still hurt."

"You're an idiot."

"Ah, but I'm a cute idiot." He smirked again and posed, stroking his chin in sophistication.

She blinked, began a rebuttal, thought better of it, and simply walked away.

Yumoa frowned, eyes wide. "Hey! You can't leave me all alone! I don't like being alone! Hwan! I think I feel sick! Maybe I have radiation poisoning!" His pleas fell on deaf ears, and after half an hour he gave up, sitting morosely on the steel table with his chin in his hand, wondering how he was going to escape this predicament.


(The Heavens)

Things were finally nearing a close. The lower world hung in the balance between existence and obliteration. Of all the mishaps that could occur down there, the Merciful Goddess knew that Chitsujo's plan was likely the most thorough manner by which to destroy the world.

Ultimate Order—ultimate nothingness. She found it fascinating that Lydia's realm would allow for any deity with that much power. In these Heavens, power was purely relative—immortality the supreme overstatement.

She was witnessing the clash of two worlds here. She couldn't allow herself to be detained for any reason whatsoever. It was essential that she sit and watch history play out and discover whether or not existence would continue.

"Jiroshin?" she inquired of her companion.

He frowned, blinked, and slowly looked to her, knowing for certain that she was either going to say something offensive to the Heavenly code of customs or suggest something utterly insane.

"Yes, Kanzeon Bosatsu?" he replied guardedly.

She smirked. "Go make me some popcorn."


(Author's Note)

At 4 AM, everything's beautiful…

ugh…I want some cookies.

Guess what? YUMOA NEVER DIED! (insert evil maniacal sadistic laughter here)

I apologize for updating two days late. I was attacked by Writers' Block about three-quarters of the way through, and resorted to drawing—which actually paid off, 'cause once my scanner gets the damn ink it wants so bad (won't work otherwise, for some reason) I'll be posting one or two more pictures on my profile page. But I'm okay now. (sigh) It's almost over!

Cyh Scævola, the Chaos Theoryst OUT