"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
(Friedrich Nietzche)
Youtou Shinnoken: Demon Sword
A Yuyu Hakusho/Rurouni Kenshin fic
by Chester Castañeda
Original concept by Chad Yang
Yusuke's true battle is not with Rando, but with his own inimitable sadness.
Disclaimer: Yuyu Hakusho is the rightful property of Yoshihiro Togashi, Shueisha, Fuji TV and St. Pierrot. Rurouni Kenshin is the rightful property of Nobuhiro Watsuki and Sony. This disclaimer also covers all the other copyrighted material that are far too many to mention here. Don't sue me please, I'm very poor.
Chapter 12: Over the Horizon (Part 6)
Kenshin landed on the ground and jumped away as Iehik stood stock-still, paralyzed and trembling. Then, without warning, a spray of greenish black ichor squirted out from a vertical slash that ran from the demon's head to his crotch. His body slowly peeled apart, like Rumpelstiltskin after hearing his name told to him, and fell into two neat halves onto the mucky ground. The swordsman wanted to pull his strike back at the last minute, but he ultimately decided that he'd rather risk damnation and madness in order to keep Botan's mind from breaking apart. He had no other choice; all the other times he hesitated, somebody else had to pay the price.
Consequently, Iehik's psychic version of Kenshin's Kanashibari technique ceased to be, and suddenly Botan could breathe again. She collapsed onto her hands and knees, gasping and coughing, half-relieved and half-horrified at the curious circumstances surrounding her release, retching at the awful taste in her mouth. She willed her eyes to fly wide open, but her body still felt like lead; fear, apprehension, and an assortment of other emotions engulfed her as she woke up from her weird... for lack of an appropriate, precise term... dream.
"BOTAN! I was so worried! Are you all right?" the ferry-girl heard Kenshin call out in the periphery of her clouded mind. Her heart pounded excitedly in her chest, her pulse racing to a frenzied uproar, but everything eventually slowed down as she willed herself to relax. She let out a liberating breath to further calm her worn nerves and throbbing heart. Once she reached her familiar 'happy place', she recalled the very last thing she realized before waking up from her aforementioned trance.
"Kenshin! Those bumbling idiot youkai are Hiruma Gohei and Hiruma Kihei! GOHEI AND KIHEI ARE IEHOG AND IEHIK!" Botan elucidated quite loudly, yet her resolve seemingly faltered in mid-speech, as though she were unsure of what she was saying; hearing those strange words come out of her own mouth just now made her realize how bizarre and ridiculous her revelation was.
Iehog reeled at Botan's words, looking at her in enthralled shock while silently mouthing the words, 'How did you know...?'
Kenshin's feral eyes widened in surprise as he quirked an eyebrow of askance and incredulity at the reawakened Reikai Shinigami. "Iehik and Iehog are the Hiruma brothers? I don't believe it." Intrigued, the redhead turned towards the blue-haired girl and further queried, "More importantly, just how did you know who the Hiruma brothers are? I don't believe I've mentioned them to you."
"Uh, well, funny story that's, um, kind of involved, but I guess I've somehow, I don't know, 'read' either your mind or those two demons' minds at a key moment? You know Kamiya Kaoru, right? She's the one who hit me with a clue-by-four and pointed out Iehog and Iehik's true identities! Or at least she did so in my dreams." The ferry-girl pouted. "I'm glad she helped me out, but she had quite the attitude, honestly speaking! I wonder what her problem was."
Kenshin merely gawked at the spectacle that Botan made of herself, his confused stare and darting eyes mentally forcing... begging... the somewhat ditzy angel of death to focus on the topic at hand. "Um, Botan? About Kaoru and the Hiruma brothers...?"
The flabbergasted ferry-girl shrugged and relented to Kenshin's clipped inquiry by simply stating, "I ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge," as though it explained everything that needed to be explained concerning the current situation. "Again, it's a long story, but the fruit with the long name is probably the reason why I dreamed about Kaoru-san, the Hiruma brothers, and all your other past memories... or something. Either that or I've somehow gained access to death god powers I didn't know I possessed until now, which is even more unlikely."
Kenshin didn't quite understand a word Botan was blabbering, but he felt that he at least had a rough gist of an explanation to work with, in any case. He would've loved to ask the death goddess a few more questions in regards to her out-of-character knowledge of the alleged 'true' identities of his current opponents, but he had more pressing matters to attend to. For one thing, he felt a surge of jaki suddenly envelop Iehik's remains at that very instant.
Fortunately or unfortunately, the uneventful death of Iehik... formerly known as Kihei Hiruma... was not meant to be. Unbidden, the vaguely human-shaped specter Kenshin espied earlier... approximately ten feet in height and covered in a dark, frayed, and hooded cloak that revealed only grey, decayed hands... stepped forward and bathed himself with the sinful aura of choleric negative energy.
"What was torn apart, now be whole; let two become one!" the wraith-like form's deep, booming voice enunciated as a sheer waterfall of negative energy power swallowed Iehik's remains up in a black torrent of miasmic smog. Without delay, the split-in-twain youkai started to cleanly fuse together, his halves merging like they were made of clay. The damaged parts of his muscles, skin tissue, tendons, and bones regenerated, and Iehik was reborn. Or reborn for a second time, if what Botan revealed were to be believed.
Iehog wanted to celebrate his brother's quick return and recovery, but seeing that he was crippled from the neck down at the moment, he instead opted to greet, "Big brother! Welcome back! I'm so glad that you're still alive!" The bearded beast afterwards blinked. "Big brother? What...?"
Because there were so many things happening at once, Kenshin barely kept up with the many twists and turns of the recent events. Yet upon further inspection of the cloaked figure, one word escaped his lips: "Onmyouji."
The ghastly apparition spared Kenshin a token glance before hissing, "Close enough, spirit; I guess you can call me an 'onmyouji', though the powers I possess are hardly the result of onmyoudou spiritual training." Even though the redheaded swordsman couldn't see the supposed onmyouji's face beneath his ratty cowl, he could tell that there was a hint of a smirk in his raspy voice.
The Onmyouji moved closer towards Kenshin, reeking of the aura of death, decay, and the terrible power of jaki possessed by all the Shisejyu present, only multiplied a hundredfold. "As Rando had so eloquently surmised when I visited him yesterday, I am merely the conduit of the Chojin's power; I am the one who distributes his overflowing energy to all his warriors. So, in essence, I am here to merely assist his minions with their various tasks, and nothing more."
Kenshin's head felt dizzy with the sheer wealth of facts and details he'd just received, nearly to the point of experiencing information overload. "You were with Rando before? So you're the one who gave him and the other demons the jaki they needed to launch this attack in the first place? The Chojin's agent of chaos?"
"The very same," the Onmyouji proudly affirmed, his featureless face seemingly staring into the depths of Kenshin's exposed soul with its outwardly nonexistent eyes. "Oh my, but your perceptiveness have stayed sharp even after all these years, Battousai."
Kenshin warily backed away from the Onmyouji and narrowed his eyes into slits, peering at the stranger in the same piercing manner. "Who are you? I keep getting the feeling that we've met before."
The Onmyouji barked with shrill laughter. "A little too perceptive, I see." Subsequently, while converting the evil energy of his master into demonic power for Iehik to use, the stranger hovered towards the revived demon's direction, only to pause in slight puzzlement. "What's happened to you, Iehik? Speak up, minion!"
Curious, Botan moved towards Iehik's still body, examining it for a bit before exclaiming, "Iehik's not responding, and he's not breathing either!" She closed her eyes for a moment, put her hand on the demon's chest, concentrated, then stated, "I-I'm not sure what's going on, but I can't feel a spirit inside this body. This demon is dead, or at least brain-dead."
"That can't be. I resurrected him perfectly!" the Onmyouji protested, irritated and perplexed, before he hesitated yet again. After a second or two of contemplation, he snorted and said in a half-surprised, half-impressed tone, "Huh. It seems that we've all been duped by these Class-D demons. The slain youkai that I've revived was nothing more than a mere shell of himself. I've grossly underestimated their power."
"A mere shell?" Kenshin repeated before murmuring, "Iehog." The name was said with nothing more than a whisper, but all three of them turned towards the last remaining demon brother as a result of it.
"Big brother," Iehog drooled in dazed wonderment, stuck in an epileptic trance with only the whites of his convulsing eyes showing as what appeared to be a sentient brain settled on the very top of the beast's head. The foreign body's nerve endings entered all the nearby pores of the demon's scalp until it was firmly wedged unto its host's skull. "Is that you, big brother?"
"Yes, it's me," Iehog answered his own question in a higher-pitched yet courser voice, as though his words were spoken by a different person altogether; Iehik, to be exact. The bulky youkai afterwards turned towards the mantle-wearing interloper. "As you can see, 'Onmyouji', we have no more need of your services. We can handle things on our own; tell the Chojin that our mission is as good as done."
"Humph. You arrogant bastards," the Onmyouji retorted, but his halfhearted insult came with an inappropriate hint of amusement, strangely enough. "Do as you wish, then." And with just that, the cloaked figure vanished into a human-shaped silhouette of wispy black smoke. But before either Kenshin or Botan could react, Iehik spoke through Iehog again.
"So Battousai, you already know the truth about me and my brother. It's just as well, since this'll make things much simpler. Yes, your hunch is correct; our paths have crossed before the Demon Sword even existed. We are the very same Hiruma brothers that you've defeated and humiliated in the distant past." Veins, or what looked like veins, began to spread and pulsate all over Iehog's body, clearly visible on the chimera's non-scaled skin.
"We didn't recognize you when we first met in the Cave of the Demon Sword because we really didn't know about our past lives at the time." Soon, the collection of body parts gradually regained their mobility and locomotion... the web of 'veins' was probably abnormally large nerves from the living brain that currently housed Iehik's soul. Even as the disembodied demon spoke, he concurrently worked overtime to undo the damage wrought upon his brother's hefty frame care of Kenshin and his Youtou Shinnoken.
"Slowly but surely, even as our threads of fate intertwined around each other yet again, we've pieced together our forgotten history and became aware of how big an impact you've had in our life, Battousai. Isn't that right, Miss Death Goddess?" Iehik and Iehog growled the last line of dialogue together in velvety chorus and just a hint of belligerence.
Botan blinked, stared about her, and then pointed at herself in askance. "Who, me? What do I have to do with this? I only dreamed about your stupid memories! Otherwise, I have nothing to do with you and your past lives."
Iehik-Iehog huffed disdainfully, looking at Botan with half-lidded eyes. "It was your Spirit World that sealed our fate about a century ago. What are you, a shinigami trainee? Look it up in your Book and Fate and see what that damn toddler did to us, novice!"
Botan frowned petulantly before rummaging through the insides of her pink kimono and retrieving the Book of Fate. She leafed through the pages and found the Hiruma brothers' names. "Hmmm. I'll just give a brief summary of the proceedings. For all his reckless schemes and scams that victimized and even killed a lot of people, Hiruma Kihei should've been sentenced to go to Level 18 Block 4 of the Corporeal Punishments Sector, where he'd be frozen in a block of ice and bent in all sorts of positions while a large, three-headed devil chewed him apart."
Botan shuddered, and then turned the page. "For all the people that he'd fought, injured, and murdered, Hiruma Gohei should've been sentenced to go to Level 14 Block 1 of the Corporeal Punishments Sector located in the banks of the swamp-like middle fork of the River Styx, where he had to fight other wrathful people for an eternity while the sullen and slothful lay at their feet, gurgling in the water." She stated the run-on sentence in one breath.
The ferry-girl paused as she peered into the barely legible footnotes of the Hiruma brothers' verdict. "But since Hiruma Kihei wanted to con and swindle his way out of his 'legal' troubles, Koenma-sama got really pissed and reincarnated the both of them into low-class demons instead by using the special rule where all demon-related verdicts can be done under Reikai jurisdiction. Huh." She closed the Book of Fate. "Too bad Reikai conquered Meikai, or else you two wouldn't have been reincarnated as demons, huh?"
"Yeah. Too bad," Iehik sardonically hissed through clenched teeth as he shakily rose from the ground, finally finding the strength to stand on his brother's own two feet. "But that isn't where the story ends. Oh no. As low-class demons, we've suffered through countless abuses from youkai of higher class in Makai. We had to seek refuge in Ningenkai, where we were instead persecuted by Reikai's Elite Spirit Detectives. In reality, no place in all the three worlds was safe for us to exist."
With a forlorn, faraway look, the creature growled in a gravelly voice that was unmistakably Iehog's, "But what was even sadder was the fact that we had no idea what to do with our lives. It was as if we were wandering around with no particular purpose to follow. Our lives felt quite empty, actually."
Kenshin was well-aware of the fact that his amalgamated enemies were merely stalling for time as they said their peace, relating in a lengthy monologue what could literally be their entire life... or afterlife, as the case may be... story. Nevertheless, morbid fascination led him to carry on listening to the extensive diatribe. 'Hiruma Gohei and Hiruma Kihei; I would've never imagined them to go to these extreme lengths just to exact their revenge upon me. Never in a million years.'
'It's almost time,' Iehik thought before continuing, "Yes, our existence was hollow and meaningless up until the point where a powerful being named 'Chojin' recruited us and several other minor demons to search for the so-called Demon Sword. He took particular interest in me and my brother, especially since, as I've told you earlier, we'd already become experts on the subject of Youtou Shinnoken lore. In return for our loyal services, the Chojin generously promised to unlock our memories of our past lives and reveal the role that the Reikai played to damn our present existence. Well, here are now, many years later, face-to-face with our mortal nemesis, feeling as though we're meeting each other for the first time all over again."
Botan shivered. There was a dread chill down her spine that didn't quite coincide with the temperature around them... she felt the touch of frost-fingered death that would make even a shinigami pause. 'Something big is about to happen.'
"You've got to hand it to the Chojin to specifically pick us for that particular task. The sly devil! I wouldn't even be surprised if he did it purposely from the very start!" The chimera stretched and flexed his limbs as a sort of warm-up routine, which prompted Kenshin to fall into his favored battoujutsu ready stance. "We may not look like much, Battousai, but now that we've fully realized our real identities from past to present, we've finally found our true purpose in life. Do not underestimate the power of those who have nothing more to lose but everything to gain. There's no tomorrow for us, and that makes us very dangerous people!"
Kenshin cautiously circumnavigated around the recovering monster and his ever-growing corona of indigo energy before affirming, "I get it. You've been manipulated by the Chojin to find the Demon Sword because he knows your past history with me. He expects you to do everything in your power... and perhaps even beyond that... to exact vengeance upon me and the Spirit World without the least bit of effort on his part." The former rurouni harrumphed. "So the Chojin is the kind of person that lets other people do his dirty work for him? I'm disgusted."
"Are you really that much of an idiot? For you to assume that our little confrontation is because of something as simple as petty revenge leaves us disgusted!" Iehik-Iehog spat as they willed their body to shamble forward, creating small pits of buckling rock underneath the soles of their clawed feet. "We know the truth of our existence now! Revenge is not enough! Defeating you is not enough! Hell, even corrupting the Demon Sword until you've lost all remnants of your human soul won't satisfy us! Your punishment will know no limits, BATTOUSAI!"
From there, the fused Hiruma Brothers barreled forward earnestly.
'At last, they've decided to attack. Finally,' Kenshin reflected as he patiently braced himself for the expected assault from the fully recovered and passionate hodgepodge demon.
'Let me show you how to access the true powers of the Shisejyu,' Iehik whispered to Iehog's mind before they lunged at Kenshin with alternating blows from both Seiryu's scaly dragon arm and Byakko's muscular tiger paws. Their initial salvo was impressive, turning the surrounding landscape around Kenshin into heaps and heaps of crumbling dust clods.
'Kenshin's going to be all right. The chill down my spine is just my back feeling the jitters of 'pins and needles' from being carried by that oaf Iehog for so long. These losers are no match against Kenshin! He's going to be all right. That is, please be all right; please kick their collective butts the same way you did in my dream. Or in your memory, as the case may be,' Botan beseeched to no one in particular as she intently watched the ensuing fireworks.
Kenshin knew beforehand that his opponents would be coming towards him recklessly, completely disregarding the fact that he could read moves through malicious intent alone. As such, he obliged their gamble as he waited unwearyingly to counter the all-too-familiar wide swings, sharp thrusts, and brain-rattling haymakers that Iehog attacked him with earlier.
The swordsman arched his body slightly back to the left, countered with a right-lead left strike to the body, sidestepped to perform his left-right sword swing, and then finished with another lateral move to execute a backhanded rising slash to his opponent's blindside. He afterwards disappeared from view before the monster knew what had happened to him.
Unlike before, when the beastly Iehog let himself get overtaken by the mindless rage and belligerent feelings of his Frankenstein mishmash of conflicting demonic body parts, Iehik's brain power and methodical thinking muffled down those very instincts. Unfortunately, this caused the compound monster to slow down a bit compared to his unyielding brutality and physics-defying acrobatics earlier, his movements somewhat hampered by hesitation and self-consciousness. Too much intellect and the body parts' powers faded; too little control and the body parts' malice took over.
But having a presence of mind during battle certainly had its perks. For one thing, Iehik's scheme of replicating Iehog's tactics had lulled Kenshin into a false sense of security, which meant that the swordsman himself had let his instincts take over, falling into his oh-so-very-predictable pattern of ending all his counterattacks with one of several variations of the Ryu Kan Sen or...
'He's there! Up in the sky! Doing his favorite Ryu Tsui Sen maneuver! FIRE AT HIM WITH THE FULL FORCE OF THE MEI-KOU-SHO-KAI-HA, IEHOG!' Iehik commanded and Iehog obeyed, raising his head to the skies and charging up a youki-filled ball of plasma fire inside his fanged maw.
"Down here."
Iehik-Iehog's head moved oh-so-ponderously towards the source of their summons as they both felt something... the Demon Sword, probably... slash though the tendons of their fiery jaw, making it unhinge and collapse down to their neck. As a result, gouts of molten Mei-Ko-Shou-Kai-Ha flame started to painfully spill down their chest, like flaming drool that went hand-in-hand with the flabbergasted look that they currently sported.
Kenshin had just executed a Dragon Rising Flash with such blinding speed and force that his monstrous opponent couldn't even react to it long after it had connected. He had completely read and comprehended Iehik's ruse right in the middle of battle, giving him an edge in the fight that went beyond mere brute strength, height and reach advantage, and spirit energy reserves.
It didn't matter how powerful the demonic brothers had become after they merged, for the redhead had finally started to access powers far beyond that of Yusuke's own abundant supply of reiki. His past self's innate ability to read his enemies' next move, to gauge their limitations, and to exploit their weaknesses by understanding their psychological makeup was beyond peer.
But even before Iehik-Iehog felt the burning torture of having their own special technique backfire upon them, they were already flexing the remnant's of Byakko's arm, hardening it into a Kaiwan of their own and aiming it at Kenshin right after he confirmed to them his exact location care of his Ryu Sho Sen. "RETSU HOKO!"
A spiritual missile that was more akin to a crushing wave of compressed air than the explosive impact from a blast furnace burst forth from the behemoth's outstretched and hypertrophied left arm, devastating everything in its path into fine powder.
Kenshin's violet eyes widened in astonishment for a split second, then they narrowed into slits for a fraction of split second, and finally the swordsman himself became a blur in a millisecond, reacting in kind to the assault by timing his golf-swing-like Dou Ryu Sen strike just before the Retsu Hoko hit him. His accurate technique deflected the shot right into the stupefied youkai's reptilian chest, leaving a hole the size of a bowling bowl and a spectacular spray of blood and guts. Amazingly, the lethal blow merely staggered the still-standing monster, as though it was too confused to fall down.
"Is that the great secret that you've been hiding from me? The fact that you can now copy the special moves of the deceased Shisejyu that you've absorbed unto yourselves?" Kenshin asked his sharp, ego-shattering questions in that typical tone of his that was neither mocking nor inquiring, but altogether lecturing. What he really meant to say was this: "You've gone through too much. I'm sorry that it has to end this way. Even your best isn't good enough to beat me."
'I knew it! I knew I was worried for nothing! Or maybe I didn't. Wow. I never realized that Kenshin was this strong and fast, especially not after seeing him helplessly sprawled on the ground as soon as I woke up! His opponent before must have been really good, then; far better than these two moronic demons,' Botan reflected giddily, but she could not help but feel that... No. She dared not indulge her nagging feelings of dread, opting to continue watching the soon-to-be-short-lived match.
Iehik-Iehog panted and gurgled heavily, as though they were drowning in a sea of their own blood, but afterwards guffawed as their internal and external bleeding stopped. Every one of their muscles, veins, and organs voluntarily pulsed and moved on the command of their mind. "Did you feel that last attack, Iehog? No, not really, big brother; it kind of tickled, though. He has quite the fast reflexes, huh? Yes, he does. Well then, let's show him what we can do," the monsters talked to themselves comically as their loosened jaw moved in an exaggerated, puppet-like manner.
It happened in a rainbow flash that was more characteristic of a Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu Technique. In that particular moment, Iehog regained the same amount of frightening quickness he had displayed as a mindless monster earlier, but unfortunately wasted it on another predictable Retsu Hoko maneuver, stabbing his Kaiwan outward as pressurized energy came forth in droves of ruptured air. Kenshin's mind, as always, instantly registered the move and devised several countermeasures against it in record time.
The redhead's eyes stared bewilderedly at what happened next, his gaze almost as vacant as Genkai's was during the heat of her battle with Byakko.
Iehik-Iehog did a feint and actually executed a similar-looking but all-in-all different technique, as evidenced by their snatching and lifting of Kenshin in midair using a vacuum-tight grip, their large and muscular fingers choking whatever remnants of life the apparition had. Then, with a mighty roar, the chimera slammed the diminutive warrior to the ground with concussive force. "ZETSU HOKO!"
Kenshin crashed helplessly on the earth, bits of debris and stone pelting the both of them. The spirit coughed and choked amidst the settling dust, completely disoriented by the shocking turn of events.
Iehik-Iehog grappled the incapacitated ghost with both hands this time, their eyes feral and lacking pupils as they executed one of the most powerful maneuvers of Byakko's Claw... the diamond-smashing "KONGO SAI!" Kenshin was again unceremoniously flung to the ground.
Kenshin was pelted with three feet worth of dust and debris, then left a deep, human-shaped crater on the ground in the wake of his violent impact. The sharp, fractured rocks dug deep into his corporeal skin, spilling blood and breaking bones that were not his own. Because of their bond with the Youtou Shinnoken, it was likely that Yusuke would suffer the same injuries as he had. Again. 'Oh no. Yusuke-dono isn't going to like this. Not one bit.'
Afterwards, before Kenshin could react, he was yet again lifted and slammed on the ground; this was Byakko's follow-up move to the Kongo Sai, the first Kai. The luckless fighter felt several more of Yusuke's bones crack and pop against the intense pressure. Iehik-Iehog afterwards lifted up the half-unconscious redhead once more as they stomped their foot on the ground, making it buckle and crack into a mass of stony spikes. A nasty, maniacal grin briefly appeared on the chimera's face as he began to execute the final Kai.
The destruction filled the air with many pounds of dirt merging upward then falling down on Kenshin's injured body, the ground collapsing into an eroding pit as the aforesaid spikes shattered upon impact. The ensuing shower of rock shrapnel skewered the former rurouni in every which may, turning him into a crimson fountain of blood and dirt. In the back of his mind, Kenshin felt that the Final Kai was just slightly worse than Genbu's Exploding Palm Trick or even Shishio's Guren Kaina.
"KENSHIN!" Botan cried out only after seeing the Hiruma brothers reduce their victim into a fleshy bag of hemorrhage, for it had taken just one second for them to execute their devastating combo. She summoned her oar and flew towards the hapless Guardian of the Demon Sword, only to be bowled over by a shockwave of purest sin; a disgusting sensation of abnormality and unnaturalness. "What the hell was that?"
Henceforth they came; a thousand tendrils of unbidden darkness. Botan felt the dreadful, nauseating mass of malevolent energy envelop the entirety of their surroundings. Or perhaps 'envelop' wasn't the right word, as the sensation left her feeling altogether hollow and empty. As she unwillingly focused on the peculiar and repulsive feeling, she soon discerned the origin of the miasma of jaki.
Amidst the inviting, velvety blackness of oblivion, the frightful alarms inside Kenshin's mind beckoned him to wake up and face the situation at hand. 'What's going on?'
The conflagration of raw power erupted up from the surface of the menacing youkai's pores; it screeched out a scorching, overwhelming hurricane of chaos and destruction. There was a cacophony of dissonance, like a speeding car crashing, like the haunting dirge of a beloved's funeral, like the screams of a million innocents. "Ah, at last. We've finally synchronized. We are now one. I am now one. I am," the beast paused, and then smiled a demented hyena's toothy grin, "Hiruma."
'Oh. This jaki I'm feeling! It's incredible, it truly is!' the disoriented Kenshin reflected in wonder and disbelief after partially recovering from the creature's overwhelming onslaught. The purported 'Hiruma' was producing ridiculous amounts of negative energy, steaming with the rot and ripeness of sordid malice.
The swordsman struggled to get up from his prone position, feeling a bit woozy and imbalanced by the aftereffects of blood loss and the nausea from secondhand negative energy poisoning. 'Where is it coming from, though? Iehog wasn't displaying this much power even after he was fused with Iehik! What he had then was an increase of his run-of-the-mill youki. Was it because of Byakko's jaki magnet body parts or another reason altogether? Perhaps...!'
Kenshin's extensive trance was cut short by hearing Hiruma deride, "Hey, what's with this weak power of yours, Battousai? Is this truly your limits? MA-TOU-TOU-RYU-KEN!" The ex-hitokiri spirit managed to escape the full torrent of freezing rain, but his arm and leg were nonetheless encapsulated in several layers of thick, hard ice.
"Not only can I make use of the Shisejyu's newer techniques, but I can also do some of their older ones as well. So please don't go just yet; the fun has just begun!" the monster boasted as he walked over Iehik's 'recently healed yet still an empty husk' of a former body and absorbed it unto his current, 'coalesced' one, using the extra mass of flesh and bone to reconstitute the missing parts of his chest and jaw. "But you shouldn't be embarrassed about the fact that I'm stronger than you. Even the greatest and strongest of humans is no match against the most mediocre of demons."
Kenshin retorted with a quick battoujutsu slash to Hiruma's Kaiwan, severing the hardened arm by cutting right through its weakest point, which was the very bones and tendons of the ball joint connecting the limb to the demon's torso. The beast growled in annoyance, but otherwise appeared impassive about the injury, showing no signs of pain and panic.
"Oh, like that's mature." Hiruma rolled his eyes as he picked up Byakko's dismembered arm, intending to reattach it to himself. The grotesque eyesore subsequently felt a light breeze on the top of his head as Kenshin sheathed his sword. His skull cap unceremoniously fell off, revealing a fresh spray of ichor and a disgusting view of Iehog's own grey matter. Iehik's brain, on the other hand, hastily scurried downwards his brother's hairy back for refuge.
His eyes bulging and his body trembling, Hiruma roared incoherently, now fully understanding the threat that even an indisposed Demon Sword Guardian still posed. Had the unseen strike gone any lower, it would have cut through both Iehog's and Iehik's respective brains in one fell swoop. 'That was a bit too dangerous. Even though I'm now a demon, he is still Battousai the Manslayer. Or, as the Chojin mentioned, Battousai the Demon-slayer. I better finish him off now. No ifs or buts.'
And so Hiruma started to unleash the ultimate technique of his Shisejyu arsenal. The whole, devastated area fell silent. It was an unnerving calm usually felt within the depths of undisturbed crypts or before the unremitting wrath of an incoming storm. Then it happened. The demon exploded with the fury of an army of harpies whose sheer numbers could blot out the sun and the sky into darkness.
The remaining trees around the veranda blinked out of existence in an instant; in another moment, the ground itself evaporated into dust as a shadowy globe of utter black surrounded the chimera. Still the darkness spread. It filled the temple; it spread beyond. The lengthy staircase nearby turned into a cascading waterfall for the faux river of roiling umbra. With a howl of aggravated fervor, the mountain shook, crumbled, and groaned, unable to tolerate the deathly blackness. Soon, Hiruma lifted himself and his missing limbs up inside the motionless wormhole of utter emptiness, slowly mending whatever it was that needed mending.
Botan's face went pale as she saw Kenshin get swallowed by the ominous ebony sphere. She, along with the two demons that the swordsman was fighting right at that moment, had seen that technique before. 'That's the reason why there was a significant increase in his jaki! He was planning to use this skill from the very start!'
Then it happened.
"Kyomei Jisatsu Jin: FU NO SENREI!" Hiruma announced.
'Legend of Hades Onslaught...?' Kenshin started as he repeated in his head the elaborate name of Hiruma's borrowed technique.
'The Trial of Negation!' Botan thought in panic. Aloud, she shrieked, "Kenshin, run! For Enma Daio-sama's sake, RUN!"
The darkness collapsed into the palm of Hiruma's claws, merging together and then shattering into rivulets of ice particles. It pulsated in and out like an artificial heartbeat; more to the point, it became the heartbeat of a dying sun. It quickly absorbed all the heat it could soak up until the hollowness produced coldness beyond mere cold. The air smelled of decay.
It then arrived: a column of ice falling from the sky; a monumental ray of power, untamed and monstrous, surging with all the pressure of the seven seas. Hiruma caught it in his palms, and it gathered there; it swelled and took form, becoming a sentient weapon of annihilation.
In the instant before Hiruma let the projectile fly, it looked like a hideous sea serpent. It was the true form of the blue dragon: Seiryu, the God of Dragons. It had a body of at least a hundred feet in length, seemingly made of blue-green water. Its iridescent crimson eyes shone in rage.
With an earsplitting squeal, the leviathan-like beast ascended into the heavens until it was hovering high above its mesmerized, soon-to-be victims. Thusly, Kenshin heeded Botan's advice and started to run in order to lead the monster away from the ferry-girl.
The arctic dragon unerringly homed in on Kenshin's... more like Yusuke's... ki-signature as it headed straight towards his direction. The mountain's hard cliffs crumbled like hollow clay pots against the subzero reptilian's impassioned charge. It crashed unto its intended target moments later.
Kenshin was still surprisingly nimble on his feet, bearing in mind that it was currently wrapped in a cast of ice, but he was still not quite fast enough to completely avoid the corporeal embodiment of the Fu no Senrei. The dragon eventually had its way with the hobbling swordsman spirit as it tossed and turned him within its coiling body like a boat trapped inside a mile-a-minute maelstrom of tempestuous tidal waves.
The serpentine creature started to fly in tighter circles, its speed growing ever faster as a shimmering whiteness began to form within its path. The God of Dragons then quickly descended in the middle of its spiral, thundering down onto the luckless Kenshin like an unstoppable flood of ice and snow taken from the very depths of Makai, in the Floating Island of the Ice Maidens.
"Ryu Kan Sen TSUMUJI!" Kenshin repeated what he did with Yusuke during their 'tandem' fight with Genbu and Rando, using his Dragon Sword Swathe to recover his leverage and escape the Fu no Senrei's grip by quickly increasing the speed and velocity of his own bodily rotation.
"Where'd he go? FIND HIM AND DROWN HIM! I mean, kill him! KILL HIM!" Hiruma ordered the Fu no Senrei beast, but was then surprised to see Kenshin suddenly land in front of him. Before the fused monster had any time to react, the swordsman promptly disappeared just as the God of Dragons locked in on his ki-signature. As a result, master and pet were soon about to be reunited together.
"YOU MORON! Don't let the Fu no Senrei hit Hiruma! If he absorbs that attack, he'll become possessed by the God of Dragons himself and grow to be ten times stronger!" Botan warned Kenshin after seeing for herself what the redhead had planned, flying on her oar to get a closer but safer look at the fight's proceedings.
Kenshin did another one of his patented half-second spit-takes and ferociously attacked the approaching serpent with an unforeseen Ryu Sho Sen from underneath it, staving it away from Hiruma's vicinity. He then followed the strike up with a series of five-hit combos he used on Makoto Shishio, starting with the Ryu Kan Sen Tsumuji and ending with the Ryu Kan Sen Arashi.
"As you can see, if you can hurt the dragon, you can hurt Hiruma as well, or at least the Seiryu part of him! You can aim all your attacks at the both of them," Botan advised further, daring to come closer to the place of combat for Kenshin to hear her words.
Kenshin backpedaled from Hiruma and his sea serpent, observing the both of them from a secure location. He promptly noticed that the fused beast's draconic arm had the exact same wounds he gave the leviathan's arm. 'They share the same bond that Yusuke-dono and I have!' he assessed before telling Botan, "Thank you for your tip, Botan. Now please get away from here while I defeat Hiruma."
"Irritating bitch; giving away my secrets at such a key moment," Hiruma growled, then grinned, his long, sharp canines glinting menacingly in the azure glimmer of Seiryu's serpentine self. "But like I said earlier, you're here because of one purpose and one purpose only. As bait! RETSU HOKO! FU NO SENREI!"
"AAAHH!" The force of the Kaiwan's vacuum blow knocked the shinigami off her oar, sending her right into the Seiryu dragon's waiting claws.
Replicating his behavior when Rando almost killed both Keiko and Botan using a You-Gan cheap shot, Kenshin dashed straight for the falling ferry-girl and the charging Blue Dragon, knocking the former to a safer platform as he allowed the latter to blast him instead. Of course, even though the fiery-haired warrior had a knack for the spontaneous whenever a loved one or an innocent was involved in mortal peril, he at least had enough semblance of forethought to finally disconnect his bond with Yusuke Urameshi; after all, the spirit detective was also, more or less, an important person to him as well.
The fading Kenshin took one last look at Botan, sprawled on the ground with a torn kimono whilst staring at him with watery eyes, and said, "Oh good. I was able to save you. Please run away now. I..." Those were his last words before he disappeared altogether, leaving behind the Demon Sword and its scabbard.
As a result of Kenshin's willful separation between temporary host and magical sword, his own existence started to ebb away, the very fabric of his corporeal being torn apart by its seams. Obeying nature's laws of compensation, the only trace of the Youtou Shinnoken's Guardian was the Demon Sword itself, which promptly gained the ability of sentience and flight as it made a beeline straight for Seiryu's flaring snout.
Realization and the Fu no Senrei struck the disembodied Kenshin hard as his sword-only form was made extremely brittle by the bitter coldness of the leviathan's dry-ice blood. The iron scabbard, another part of the sword's sentience, did one last ditch effort of stopping the monster's advance by poking its sensitive eye, but it too fell victim to the God of Dragon's incredible might.
Whatever pain Kenshin had experienced before paled in comparison to what was now coursing through his soul. The last remnant of his existence... the very Demon Sword he was assigned to protect... was slowly torn apart piece by excruciating piece by the Trial of Negation's tremendous strength. If he still had lungs, every breath would've had the taste of sulfur. If he still had a body, very movement would've brought agony to it, as if he were being stabbed with a jagged tool dipped in acid. His whole being felt like it had been sliced, cut, and sawed; if he could bleed, he would have drowned in his own pool of blood.
"KENSHIN!" Botan screamed, her entire body wracked with uncontrollable sobs. She felt her whole world disintegrate inside her, shattering from within like a glass globe via a sound of pure, excruciating noise; an internal shriek of torture. A flame burned inside her chest, and she cried out in agony as though she were being torn asunder.
Conversely, Hiruma looked on with bated breath after seeing the last traces of his longtime mortal enemy disintegrate into nothingness, his devilish eyes brimming with barely contained glee as he involuntarily healed all his minor injuries in the meantime. Botan's cries of despair only increased the beast's growing ecstasy; hearing and seeing such feelings of nihilism in any of his victims thrilled the demon to no end.
At first, there was dead silence on Hiruma's part as he let the scene of Kenshin's defeat sink in, the event burned into his twin minds' eyes. He never imagined himself to be this successful in his 'just realized' campaign to rid the world of the Battousai once and for all. Then, all of a sudden, he laughed; it was an unbidden ripple of piercing mirth that sounded like the discordant howl of turbulent spirits. "FINALLY! HE'S DEAD! AT LAST! GODDAMMIT, I FINALLY DID IT! HOLY MOTHERFUCKING SHIT!"
Botan ignored Hiruma's antics, confused and distracted with the fact that she was feeling so inordinately gloomy about the situation. Why was that? Granted, she should be sad about the fact that Kenshin was now gone, but she wasn't just sad, she was completely heartbroken. The grief she was feeling right now for Kenshin Himura's death/passing on/ whatnot was beyond measure, and she quite didn't know why she was that distraught about it in the first place.
She had just met him a day ago. Granted, all those hours felt like an eternity to her, but she shouldn't be feeling this dreadful about the friendly ghost's sudden disappearance. As a shinigami, she was supposed to be desensitized to the grim reality of death and the perpetual 'passing on' of souls, even though she herself couldn't help but feel grief when a close friend died, as was the case of Genkai's first death.
But Kenshin wasn't a close... anything to Botan. Was this misery of hers in any way connected with the feeling of inexplicable guilt she felt earlier, after the fruit of knowledge gave her sneak peeks of her buried past life's hidden memories? She didn't quite see the connection in rational terms, though her instincts told her otherwise.
Still, Hiruma aired similarly confused sentiments about Botan's sadness over Kenshin's bereavement, saying/reiterating/jeering/demanding in not so many insulting words, "Why the hell are you feeling so sad about some pussy swordsman with a gay-ass sword? You just met him, bitch! Don't tell me you've tapped that scrawny ass before all this started! Did you molest the poor little girl just a few hours ago or something?"
Botan more or less asked herself the same questions, notwithstanding their vulgarity. Then she remembered how Kenshin met Kaoru, compared it with their far less eventful meeting, and understood that she already knew what type of person he really was in the short time she spent with him. He wasn't just a faceless soul she was used to ferrying to one of the three forks of the River Styx; he was a real and superb example of humanity whom she unwittingly shared an 'intimate' moment with by somehow living through his past memories. That and the fact that he had just risked his life twice to save hers helped her make up her mind about him.
"Never mind logic; Kenshin was the kind of man who deserved to be cried over, even if you've only met him once... unlike you, anus-face," was Botan's crude rejoinder to the Hiruma monster's offensive allegations.
"Oh really?" Hiruma drawled, his voice dripping with sweet venom as he chuckled softly. "Well, I'm in a good mood today, so I'll do you a favor. How about I send you straight to wherever the hell Battousai is right now? I don't know where ghosts and the ferry-girls who love them go when they 'kick the bucket' or whatever, but I guess you're about to find out anyway."
The creature raised his Kaiwan and aimed it high above the ferry-girl's sky-blue head, intending to split it in half like a watermelon; one serving of revenge always deserved another, after all.
'Stop this. This is silly. You and I both know that this isn't the end for you, or else Enma Daio would have never bothered sealing you in a sword after all these years. He would have 'killed' you instead. But you can't be 'killed' this easily. You're not fooling anybody.'
Kenshin stirred in his mindless slumber, and then opened his eyes. Alas, there was nothing for him to see... not because he was engulfed in darkness, but because he had no eyes to see with. Being self-aware yet incorporeal was a disorienting experience for him, making him feel as though he were standing on a rocking ship traveling over the rolling sea. As if his whole world were upside-down. He had gone through times like these before, when he was still sealed inside the Demon Sword, alone with his turmoil of thoughts. It was never a pleasant occurrence.
'You're acting weak, but you're not. You've been needlessly holding yourself back. Come now. It's about time you woke me up. You've unleashed a part of me when you fought Genbu and borrowed quite a bit of my strength when you fought Saito. What are you afraid of? Look at me.'
Kenshin recognized the voice in the background of his hazy reality. It was the demanding whispers of his innermost being, his past self, the relentless one that'd been itching to get out and fight since the very beginning of this debacle. In fact, it was very thing that he'd been suppressing all this time. It was the prodding voice of the Battousai.
'You can't possibly leave things like this. Besides, you're already dead. You can't die anymore, even if you try. You can disappear into nothingness, but I won't let you. Not like this. Just who do think you are?'
Nonexistence gave Kenshin a limited choice for retorts, so he instead gave his inner voice an unsaid "What are you going to do about it?" dare.
Battousai answered the unspoken challenge the only way he typically would; through action, not words.
"Demons... I hate demons," a svelte, disembodied, and effeminate voice declared just as Hiruma was about to cut Botan in half. Daring to defy the convention of villains pausing and listening to distractions during crucial moments such as this, the chimera opted to slice the girl anyway, his shock at hearing the familiar tone be damned.
The ferry-girl flinched and attempted to run away from certain death... or, if not death, then excruciating pain... but the hateful youkai was too fast for her. Unfortunately for him though, tradition would not be denied at that very moment, as evidenced by the sudden appearance of a hovering Demon Sword in between the deathly beauty and the deadly beast.
"This Youtou's true purpose is to kill demons. It's that simple. To hell with Koenma's law and the supposed consequences they bring. Let me be death, the destroyer of worlds," the Demon Sword spoke gravely.
"..." As Hiruma blankly stared at the floating weapon in front of him while it sheathed itself and spewed out roundabout gibberish about death and destruction, he eventually realized just who exactly was speaking 'behind' the reanimated object. "B-Battousai?" he ventured hesitantly, reaching out to the Demon Sword with outstretched claws.
"Exactly." And so Kenshin Himura reappeared at that very moment, winking into existence the same way he had exited... piece by piece, particle by particle, ectoplasm by ectoplasm. But the people present noticed something quite different about him once he fully rematerialized and took hold of his most precious possession.
Kenshin already looked quite young from the get go, but now he looked positively child-like; about ten to twelve years of age instead of his usual fifteen or sixteen-year-old appearance. His lavender gi had been replaced by a dark blue one, and he also wore his flaming hair differently than before, placing it in a topknot instead of his usual ponytail. But the most pronounced change from the swordsman was his irises' color; the flashes of furious gold he'd achieved from before became a permanent fixture on his features, his assassin's glare as sharp as his sword's edge.
Botan herself gawked at the breathtaking yet peculiar sight, awestruck beyond words. She had felt Kenshin sever his connection with Yusuke, so she was more than a bit suspicious with where he was getting all this energy he was currently exuding. He burned with kenki and a hint of reiatsu... the type of battle aura utilized by warrior shinigami. And something else that gave the ferry-girl goose bumps. 'Is he making use of his own battle aura?'
Oddly enough, instead of acting shocked at how short-lived his victory was, Hiruma was elated upon seeing a younger, more solemn, and more stoic Kenshin reemerge in his midst. "Ha! But of course you're still alive! You're one tough son of a bitch! Now give me the pleasure of killing you twice! Hell, give me the pleasure of giving you a hundred deaths! FU NO SENREI! BOUKO HYOUGA!"
To be Continued...
Next: Battousai time.
Onmyoudou: A Chinese-influenced traditional Japanese esoteric cosmology; a mixture of natural science and occultism.
The perfectly synchronized Iehik and Iehog ("Hiruma") is based on the Ruroken anime's version of Gohei Hiruma; you know, the character that had both the sinister brains and the frightful brawn to go with it? You know who I'm talking about.
Paalam!
Abdiel