Youtou Shinnoken: Demon Sword
A Yuyu Hakusho/Rurouni Kenshin fic
by Chester Castañeda
Original concept by Chad Yang
When will Hiruma (actually, Iehog) die already? And what's Kaoru doing inside Botan's head? Read on to find out more.
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 16: To Protect Loved Ones (Part 4)
Absurd amounts of evil energy emanated from Iehog's hulking body as he tore through Genbu's continuous blitzes of avalanches and earthquakes. It was an miasma of raw power that froze Botan's breath in her lungs and left Kenshin in a spellbound trance as he kept getting visions of his sinful past. The last remaining Hiruma brother seemed less demonic and more like an unstoppable force of nature that promised to cause one catastrophe after another if he were ever unleashed into the world.
Botan turned towards her companion earnestly, tugging at his hakama while he stood steadfast on Puu's head. The aura of sheer dread that pulsed from Iehog dwarfed the power of anything she'd felt from the behemoth before, save his stint as the nigh-unstoppable, jaki-addicted Hiruma, setting her every nerve burning with the primal need to flee for her very life. "K-Kenshin! Why are Genbu and Iehog killing each other? I don't understand at all!"
"I don't know why either," Kenshin admitted, then shouted to Genbu, "What's the meaning of this, Genbu-dono? You don't stand a chance against Iehog! Besides, he's good as dead anyway. You better let me handle him. It's not your place to..."
"SHADDAP! This fight isn't about you, samurai. Besides, I can handle this loser," Genbu assured the bemused Kenshin as he weathered through the Fu no Senrei typhoon that gradually eroded whatever was left of his gigantic, rocky constitution.
"Can you? Can you really? Then handle THIS!" Iehog raged as he merged the nine dragon heads circling around him with his deteriorating body, literally turning himself into his own version of Ashura, the God of Destruction he'd metaphorically represented early on in his first metamorphosis into a relentless killing machine.
One attack from his collection of pseudo-arms resulted in Genbu instantly losing his remaining limbs. "My brother and I lied, robbed, and cheated our way to get to this moment, and even in the face of certain defeat, we still continue to fight. With that in mind, do you think you have what it takes to beat me? Do you have the kind of moxie and determination that my brother and I have? Do you have the decades-old resolve and courage to do as we did, and finish me off in a way the Battousai never could? Simply put: YOU DON'T!"
Genbu's gigantic half-head smirked his trademark broken grin as he stared down at Iehog like he would a tantrum-throwing child, despite all the damage he'd sustained thus far. "Is that all you got? Then it's you who don't understand. Stop trying to act all tough and shit. Just what kind of demon are you, thinking that pretty speeches, pointless resolve, and naive idealism will get you anywhere? If you've only fought as good as you spoke, then I'd be impressed! As is, you're simply making me sick! To me, compared to the Battousai's strikes, this is NOTHING!"
"Huh. You're the one to speak. My brother and I turned our karmic punishment on its head and lived our lives as demons to the fullest with the single-minded purpose of facing down the Battousai. We've gone way beyond our status in life, becoming more powerful than in our wildest dreams because of our determination to ruin the Battousai's life! What have you done that's so special? Compared to us... to me... you're the one who's nothing at all! Nothing at all! NOTHING AT ALL! NOTHING AT ALL! NOTHINGATALL! NOTHING!" Iehog compellingly argued, punctuating every one of his not-so-sweet 'nothings' with a multi-strike charge from each of his Fu no Senrei dragonhead tentacles.
Yet another powerful explosion, comparatively larger than the previous ones, consequently rocked the remnants of Genbu's decimated profile. The clouds of dust from the blast soon formed into a spiral that shot upwards into the sky, creating a tornado-like sandstorm that swallowed everything in its path. All the while, the Shisejyu's half-face had only one thing to mouth to Iehog: "Sucker."
To Iehog's chagrin, Genbu turned the tables on him by suddenly absorbing large amounts of the Fu no Senrei's destructive jaki unto himself by sheer force of will, fueling the nightmarish power with his own overblown sense of pride... one of the seven deadly sins... while at the same time taking advantage of the complete disintegration of his body by summoning his very last combination of attacks... namely, the Chou-Bakuretsu-Ganshou-Dan: Genbu no Hoko and the Tetsuzan Kou Ougi: Genbu no Ikari... for good measure.
'Holy shit! How dare he use Byakko's energy absorption tactic against me! If there's anyone who's going to mimic techniques here, then it's going to be me!' Iehog seethed as he delayed Genbu's total reformation by tearing apart the nearest humanoid-looking rock as soon as it appeared.
Dust streaming from his stone armor, the half-formed Genbu jetted into the orange and azure skies by sliding through higher ground and, once reaching the apex of his ascent, slapping his automobile-sized palms together, making them explode into a meteorite-like shower of wreckage and debris. With a final roar, one of Iehog's dragons died from the powerful shock of falling boulders that spread destruction everywhere, knocking the lone Hiruma sibling down. The Shisejyu teetered slightly with his unbalanced weight as he grinned down at Iehog's prone form.
Iehog lifted himself up with two of his serpent arms, then used three others to block Genbu's oncoming strikes while the mouths of the last three glowed with a black halo of coruscating energy. As a result of Iehog's perfect balance of offense and defense, Genbu's uncompleted body soon buckled to the ground, riddled with holes and craters, which forced him to sacrifice the rest of his stumps-for-arms by turning them into a thousand speeding stalactite spears care of the Bakuretsu-Ganshou-Dan.
Iehog gestured, and his leviathan tentacles pushed the conical rocks away by a sudden shriek of tempestuous wind, the four pairs of howling death homing in towards the hapless rock monster. With just one attack, Genbu's frame disintegrated into dust, his body crumbling in the middle of screeching Ashura limbs that weathered him down with the combined forces of the harsh elements and an almost instantaneous and unilateral application of intense pressure. At that point, the mountainous but limbless Genbu was about as threatening as a statue: a talking statue, but a statue nonetheless.
With a show of meaningless pride that went hand-in-hand with Iehog's own stubbornness, Genbu continued to smirk his grotesque, self-satisfied grin at the smaller demon. "Tough luck, motherfucker. I can take more than you can dish out. You better get your priorities straight. Go eat your crow pie and moral victory now before I shove them down your throat!"
Iehog harrumphed in disdain as he lifted Genbu's colossal bust at Kenshin and company, intending to make up for wasted time by making better use of the annoying Shisejyu's delaying tactics to his advantage. What the adamant Hiruma brother didn't count on was that the stone golem never intended to be a mere distraction in the first place. "On second thought, scratch what I said earlier. No crow-eating for you... I'll be the one to eat you instead," Genbu abruptly hissed.
"What...?" was what Iehog blurted out before he unwillingly combined with yet another Shisejyu, but this time he was on the receiving end of the cannibalistic ritual. From there, after finally digesting... pun unintended... the current turn of events, Kenshin warily observed Genbu's behavior, half-expecting him to suddenly amalgamate with Iehog's mind and attack him with gleeful abandon. Instead, Genbu merely laughed at the redhead's suspicious look. "You've read my mind, samurai. If only my body can take as much negative energy power as the Hiruma brothers can, then maybe I'd be kicking your ass right about now. As is, well..."
Genbu threw his head back and started to cackle. It was an insane, chirruping guffaw that stretched on for an extended period of time without any need for oxygen; just like Iehik's mad laughter from before. Perhaps the Shisejyu had assimilated Iehog far more successfully than he had anticipated, even to the point of becoming more Iehik-like than he would have liked.
In any case, the ground below Genbu subsequently erupted into a ditch-sized crater as geysers of onrushing negative energy escaped through the cracks of his rocky skin, his volatile frame quickly turning into his own personal Vesuvius of sorts. "The bearded fucker inside my body wants to come out. Too bad there's no way out for either of us at this point."
As Botan balked at Genbu's unintentional euphemism, Kenshin asked, almost beseeched, "Why, Genbu-dono? Why are you doing this? Why are you risking life and limb to help me? Be reasonable; don't follow Iehik and Iehog's example! You don't have to do this. You don't have to kill Iehog in order for me not to..." but Genbu halted the spirit guardian's frantic appeals short with a firm rebuke.
"Don't be an idiot. I'm not doing this for you; it's just that, if I let go of Iehog now, this battle would be pointless," Genbu calmly but firmly rationalized before cracking up yet again at the nonplussed look on Kenshin's face... the redhead's expression was indeed priceless.
"Don't look at me like that. Haven't you figured things out yet? You humiliated me earlier on by holding back on your power, making me look like a complete idiot. Well, fuck that. This time around, I got to show you how good I really am. And here we are. I was able to put down a guy you didn't have the balls to beat, much less kill. Suck on that, samurai chump," Genbu justified, which was his own way of admitting, 'You fought and treated me like a real warrior before. You didn't have to, but you did. Because of that, I wanted to know if I can live up to your expectations and fight like the warrior you thought I was.' At least, that was how Kenshin interpreted the Shisejyu's words.
Whichever the case, the Stone Shisejyu laughed off his imminent suicide bombing as he braced himself for the inevitable. "Shit, come to think of it, this is a really retarded reason for me to die. Haha. But fuck it, I feel great."
"GENBU-DONO!" Kenshin shouted out, complete with outstretched hand and a hint of manly tears on his eyelids.
The greatest surprise for Kenshin was that nothing seemed to happen when Genbu finally fell down on his face and trembled with anticipation; there was no immediate big bang afterwards, much to his, if not disappointment, then certainly surprise. The bluish flare surrounding the Shisejyu's body went out in a second as he froze and hung on the spot like a large, immovable boulder. There was an almost oppressive silence, as if everything in the universe had chosen that exact moment to hold its breath and flinch away in expectation. Kenshin peered at Genbu, who looked up, sneered, and headbutted the ground, causing his skull to crackle and pop like the lit fuse of a pack of dynamite.
"Puu, Kenshin..." Botan whispered warningly, "I think we should be a lot further away from this..."
That, as far as any of them would be able to recall afterwards, had been when Armageddon happened. First, there appeared a sudden blast; a blast so overwhelming, it felt like the unspeakable horrors of Pandora's box itself had just been unleashed, opening forth the doors to hell and redefining the concepts of suffering and death anew. The darkness pulled in, and then reared back. Like a reversed explosion, it collapsed unto itself. It overflowed and released plumes of azure flame and continued the repetitive cycle over and over until there was absolutely nothing left of Genbu's body for him to regenerate from. No rocks, no pebbles, no miniscule dust particles; nothing but molecules and atoms. Even the jacked-up-with-jaki Earth Shisejyu could not reform himself after being atomized.
Luckily, the blast only sent Puu and his passengers flying away in a swirling cloud of debris; the rest of their surroundings fared much worse. There was a vague impression of coldness, more coldness than probably even Yukina had ever felt before, and an expanding cloud of cold fire that didn't so much freeze the rocks as corrode them upon contact. Afterwards, the remaining trees and vegetation not within reach of the first world-shattering Kenshin-Genbu fight instantly turned into brittle spines as the storm chased at the trio's heels all the way back to the middle of the temple stairs.
Kenshin had time to throw his arms in front of his face and roll into a ball before hitting the stairway like a guided missile. In contrast, Botan had her eyes shut the whole time, but was still able to soften her landing by involuntarily summoning her flying oar at the last minute. Granted, the wooden paddle splintered apart like a matchbox upon impact, but at least she fared a lot better than the rest of her companions. Meanwhile, Puu tried to roll with the brunt of the collision, and wound up skidding halfway down the rest of the steps before he came to a stop against the foot of the flight of stairs.
Kenshin slowly pulled himself out of the small trench he'd inadvertently dug with his back and threw his disheveled hair over his shoulder with a flick of his wrist, retying it with a tattered piece of his own clothing. He had certainly felt better, but at least he was still alive. Sort of.
As per usual to his character, Kenshin checked on Botan and Puu's condition and welfare as soon as he could feel his legs again... first the ferry-girl, then the spirit beast. Thankfully, Botan didn't suffer as much injury as Kenshin did thanks to her ability to fly, but Puu, despite having the very same aerodynamic skill, was regrettably the one most affected by the ensuing shockwave of the rumbling detonation, his tremendous size and awkward shape hindering his flight control somewhat.
The pair of celestial entities had to combine their efforts... with Kenshin pushing from below and a flying Botan pulling from above... in order to help Puu up from his awkward fall. Once the spirit beast was right-side up again, the shinigami began to ameliorate the gigantic bird with her healing powers, figuring that by rejuvenating Yusuke's other self, she should be able to help Yusuke himself recover too, even though her ki-flow was but a mere trickle at that point.
Kenshin looked back the way that they had come, and widened his eyes in astonishment. The nimbus clouds produced by Iehog's portentous use of the God of Dragons had parted, literally split right down the middle all the way from either side of the endless horizon. Botan then yelped after the Youtou Shinnoken's guardian as he hurriedly limped back to the site of the blast, but once he reached ground zero, all he could see was the tragic world of rubble, smoke, and broken dreams surrounding him, his repulsion growing upon every step.
Any feelings of exultation Kenshin might have felt from Botan and Puu surviving the explosion immediately died in his chest as the ramifications of Genbu's sacrifice struck him hard on the face with full force. He offered a moment of silence to both the Earth Shisejyu and the relentless human-turned-demon he took with him, as well as to the devious but ambitious Iehik who died earlier. For good or for ill, they all managed to live the lives they wanted, doing great justice to their "second chances" in their own unique ways.
From a distance, smoking through a whole pack of regular, unfiltered cigarettes, Goro Fujita grimly observed the explosive conclusion to Kenshin's battle from the top of the highest tree he could find. The chilly mountain breeze swayed his thin, antennae-like hair bangs dramatically and, occasionally, killed the light of his cigarette as well... cigarettes that, in his opinion, had become stronger and tasted more bitter than the cigarettes he used to smoke back in day, which was the way he liked it.
'Finally, that redheaded bastard found a way to beat small fry... have someone else do it for him. It's about time, too. Honestly, the fool spends far too much time and effort in observing his precious code, when it's actually his hesitation that does him in more often than not. He should be more damn decisive. Anyhow, the show's finally over. Time to go.'
Fujita jumped straight down from his precarious perch, landing on his feet like some sort of mountain wolf, but then winced and favored his left side as he straightened up. It had just been a couple of hits... hits from a hundred, even a thousand, missed strikes... care of Kenshin's faux Battousai self who still held back despite the policeman's urgings, but they were painful hits nonetheless.
His nicks and cuts were supposed to be but mere grazes, but the sheer force behind these shallow wounds were able to incur hairline fractures on some of his ribs and make him regurgitate blood from time to time. The tactic of bludgeoning a man with a sword instead of cutting him up must have been a relic of the redhead's stint as a wandering rurouni with a reverse-edged blade.
Fujita's eyes turned into sharp slits as he tried to take his spent cigarette out of his mouth with his sword hand, but its tendons were still a bit sore after countering Kenshin's desperation technique, the Kaiten Battoujutsu, with the Gatotsu Zeroshiki; for the moment, he probably would have trouble picking up a mere toothpick. Perhaps stubbornly keeping his grip on his weapon when his opponent was wise enough to let go of his wasn't the smartest of moves.
Fujita had needled Kenshin on and on in regards to how weak and pathetic he supposedly was compared to his Hitokiri Battousai self of one hundred and twenty-five years past, or even the weaker rurouni who had flashes of brilliance now and again when provoked, but that wasn't quite the whole picture now, was it? Kenshin kept on holding back because he could afford to hold back and still survive, the overpowered and capricious moron.
Besides, Fujita had heard that the human Battousai's might was nothing compared to the peerless power of the otherworldly Youkiri Battousai. Up to what level of ability had Fujita managed to draw out of Kenshin? Higher A-Class? Lower S-Class? Perhaps it was Hajime Saito's so-called 'reincarnation' who was lacking of enough skill to make the Battousai serious enough to let loose his true and current power.
Nonsense. Of course he could beat him; and, once the Battousai revealed his full capabilities, Fujita would be able to surpass them himself in a far more interesting match. Regrettably, as is, Kenshin Himura was less than a shadow of his former self. What a waste of potential. To obsess with every detail, nuance, and consequence of killing was an exercise in futility, the officer believed.
"Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you, Battousai," Fujita assessed out loud before spitting out the cigarette in his mouth, crushing it with his heel, and walking away in apparent disgust and concealed pain.
'Chojin-sama is not going to be pleased with these latest developments,' the ragged-cloaked Onmyouji that gave Rando and the demonic Hiruma brothers their powers and second... in the case of the siblings, probably third... chances before they blew it anyway intoned to himself.
The Overfiend had given him a relatively simple task: help Rando and his minions corrupt or destroy the Demon Sword and kill anyone that got in the way. Everyone working for the Chojin knew that the Youtou Shinnoken was the greatest threat to the establishment of their dark kingdom, and it only made sense to, if not destroy it, then use it to their advantage, helping the Chojin make his great push to consolidate the lands of the Human World, Spirit World, and Demon World together beneath his fierce, velvet-gloved rule.
The Great Gunther-Konig of the Nether World, Yakumo, had been stupid enough to place his faith in the Meikai Crystal and allow his enemies to run about freely and spoil all his plans. The Chojin had faith only in himself and the untapped negative power found in mankind's collective misery and suffering, and he had no intention of wasting that precious energy trying anything until he could be sure that no annoying little Spirit Detectives with stupid hair and effeminate features would show up, get beaten repeatedly, and then gain the unstoppable resolve to ruin his plans. He knew about Koenma's little errand boys, of course; lots of soldiers from his undead army knew about them. About half of them were destroyed by these free agents of chaos, in fact.
'There go our chances at nipping the problem in the bud before things get really sticky. Those stupid idiots! To think, they were so close in beating those Reikai Tantei and tainting the Demon Sword with demon blood! Honestly, was provoking the Battousai into killing them so hard? He wasn't called both a manslayer and a demon-slayer for nothing!'
Unseen, the Onmyouji moved away from his shadowy hiding place in the forest, moving especially fast as the powerful presence of Hajime Saito incidentally passed him nearby. 'They're failures; each and every one of them! Rando should have known better, being one of the Shinju, but he has failed as well! What a complete waste of jaki! I ought to resurrect those failures just to kill them in an even more humiliating manner!'
'Is that so?' a voice gently rasped inside the Onmyouji's mind, sending shivers up his nonexistent ethereal spine. 'O-Oh, did you see all that, Chojin-sama?' he stuttered sheepishly, then cleared his voice and stated with a bit more conviction, "I am ashamed and apologetic for Rando and the three Shisejyu's failures. I have no excuses. I'll take the blame for their losses! Punish me in any way you see fit!'
The Onmyouji's functional bond with the Chojin... just like Kenshin's bond with Yusuke via the Demon Sword or Yusuke's bond with Puu via that spirit beast egg Koenma gave him... allowed the Chojin free access to the Onmyouji's senses as if they were his own, which made the faceless minion the perfect spy as well as conduit for his overflowing jaki... the ki representation of the concepts of sin and malice themselves.
'You've looked better,' the Chojin noted. 'Does your work overwhelm you so?'
'My fervor to you, master, overwhelms me,' the Onmyouji wheezed, still recovering from the earlier shock of the Chojin listening in on him at such short notice. 'This body is but a transitory one, oh great leader to those who are willing to serve. I shall miss its quirks but a little when my final change comes upon me.'
The Chojin addressed his Onmyouji servant by his real name... his original name, before he became more grim-reaper-like than the creepiest of the Spirit World shinigami... in a svelte tone, crowing in a reassuring manner, 'Don't be so hasty. Experiments tend to yield unexpected results from time to time, especially thought experiments such as this. Theories are bound to turn out wrong and obsolete or proven correct and timeless as the pursuit of truth and knowledge progresses. The only thing that would make this defeat pointless is to not heed the lessons we've learned from it. As is, we've found out quite a lot about our enemies through this, shall we say, strategic defeat.'
The Onmyouji's featureless cloak would have registered nonplussed bemusement had it had a face attached to it. 'Strategic defeat, my liege? Incidentally, what have we gotten from this defeat? We barely scratched the limits of both Urameshi Yusuke and Himura Kenshin's true powers, the Reikai is proving to be a formidable opponent with the way it has monitored and anticipated our actions thus far, and a new rival in the form of the ghost or whatever of Saito Hajime had come back from the grave to haunt us! If things get any worse for our group, we might as well be at the mercy of the likes of Oda Nobunaga, Tokugawa Ieyasu, Commodore Perry, and Abraham Lincoln while we're at it! Or, worst-case scenario, the entire Shinsengumi faction might revive itself from the ashes of history! Oh, may the gods have mercy on our already damned souls if that ever happens!'
What the undead Onmyouji seemed to have no way of understanding was that things needed to be done in a certain order... that heroes could be confused and manipulated into leaving things alone until you were ready to crush them. True, it was stupid to try and not succeed, and that there was no excuse for pointless failure. The Chojin himself had failed once and swore never again to suffer that humiliation. That weakness would never again grip him, and he had no patience when he saw it in others who should know better. Then again, he'd sacrificed pawns for the sake of the big picture before, since that was basically the function of the weak, after all. The loss they suffered today was more of a stepping stone than a detriment, all things considered.
The Chojin, the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Great Beast that was called the Ashen Phoenix, Prince of this World, Father of Lies, the Living Sin, the Equalizer, and Lord of Darkness could kill Koenma's band of Spirit Detectives with his own hands if necessary. But to do so would be to reveal his presence to them, and expose himself to retribution.
Far better to hide behind his lieutenants and intermediaries until victory was all but assured, where nobody could get to him as he went about reshaping the three worlds into his own image. He couldn't be stopped if they didn't know anything more about him than his name. That had been Yakumo's great failing; the proud yet shallow Warrior King of Meikai... the world that used to function as the Reikai of the Makai... had been so obsessed with causing a scene and casting his shadow across the Human World's realm twice over that Enma Daio would have needed to be blind not to know who his enemy was.
The Spirit Detectives had always been on the Chojin's hit list, especially since the Class-S Sei Kou Ki Master, Shinobu Sensui, joined their ranks. At the very least, the Overlord had always intended to reduce the ragtag group of humans, demonic human-sympathizers, and hybrids of both into Reikai Tantei paste well before he made his little gambits and funded the Black Black Club, reestablished the Dark Tournament, and helped in the creation of the Black Chapter tape... the latter of which had the unexpected benefit of inducing the aforesaid Sensui's serendipitous descent into madness.
Sensui's fall from grace fascinated the Chojin to no end. The amount of delicious damage and chaos that the potentially strongest pure human who'd ever lived created in his ten-year campaign to ethnically cleanse the world of all humans was far beyond anything the Overfiend imagined, much less expected, and for that reason, he wasn't especially upset with the Reikai's so-called victory today. He'd learned long ago that even opponents could function as his pawns, and up until the time he unveiled his trump card or was on the verge of inevitable success, the game was on. He simply needed to setup as many hidden traps and gambits as possible to the point that even flukes and probability was on his side.
In chess, a situation in which one player lost a minor piece... i.e., a bishop or pawn... but captured the opponent's rook was crucial in victory. The side that won the rook was said to have won the exchange, while the other player would lose the exchange, since the rook was usually more valuable. The opposing captures often happened on consecutive moves, though this wasn't strictly necessary. It was generally detrimental to lose the exchange, although occasionally, one might find reason to purposely do so, resulting in an exchange sacrifice.
As far as the Chojin was concerned, he was the one who fared better in this little "exchange" of sorts, with the price of pawns far less considerable than the knights, rooks, and bishops he'd routed in the process, especially considering the scope and frightening growth rate of his limitless zombie army. If Koenma's best of the best could barely handle the Chojin's worst, then it was still the latter who was on top. Without Enma Daio's mercenary and totalitarian tactics, the Koenma-Daio-ruled Reikai was ripe for the picking; it was like playing chess with a novice player, even.
'There's no need to panic. Everything is going according to plan,' the Overfiend reassured the Onmyouji. He would've rather left it at that, with a trite phrase that did less to comfort than frustrate, but on a whim, he decided to humor his loyal yet panicky general's fears and trepidations by offering a glimpse into the methods to his madness.
'Raizen's descendant has proven his desperation when it comes to protecting that human girl, becoming so reckless and unthinking that he could be manipulated in any number of ways. That's the reason why I suggested for Rando to use his Kugai technique on the boy, and Seiryu to use the human girl to increase his jaki output. I reckoned something very interesting might come out of that experiment, and I was right... it proved that the hanyou has no control over his full power, which means that there's a possibility for his own strength to overcome him in the end. Besides which, we've also taken away something important from him this day; he himself would hardly call this battle a win, not by any stretch of his imagination.
'The Spirit Wave Master is worthless without her Spirit Wave Light Gem; she could barely handle the power of B-Class demons, so she's as much of a non-factor as that C-Class human with the A-Class Technique. As for the 'Legendary' Battousai, the Hiruma brothers and Genbu had proven him unwilling, even incapable, of killing, thus making him less of a threat than I'd anticipated; he could never defeat our growing army with that sort of attitude. As such, the full assessment of Himura's abilities is pending for the time being.
'Finally, the dark horse of the ensemble... Saito Hajime, Fujita Goro, or however else he wants to be called... has his own selfish agenda to take care of. Regardless of whichever side he chooses in the end, he'll still be of great use to us. The seeds of doubt and mistrust can be spread in the middle of these independent factions before they could get a chance to merge. Remember what happened to Serizawa Kamo's separatist Shinsengumi unit, the Roshigumi? They caused more harm than good, forcing the Kondo Isami sect to put them all down, cutting the Shinsengumi's manpower by half. So think of the Miburo's appearance as more of an opportunity than a threat. Have I missed anything?'
Embarrassingly enough, the previously sinister Onmyouji that sneered and stared down at the Battousai was now sycophantically applauding... as in clapping and hooting in his lonesome... at the Chojin's complete and perfect analysis of the situation. The sight of a raggedy-clothed, hunchbacked, and miserable soul reaper acting as cheerleader sans pompoms to the Overfiend's schemes was hard to put to words. "As expected of the Dark Lord, you really had planned everything from the start! Your steel-trap mind is only rivaled by your own raw power! As you've promised me more than a century ago, I'll certainly be the first to..."
'Silence; you're blathering already. Also, stop your clapping, or else you'll lose some of those fingers,' The Chojin indifferently admonished his excitable right-hand man once more, but the Onmyouji could imagine, almost feel through their bond, the ghost of a self-satisfied smirk in the corners of the Dark Lord's mouth. Whether that was true or he was misinterpreting the Chojin's contempt for appreciation was up in the the air.
'You know as well as I that I would sacrifice all my fingers for you if I have to... but you're right, sir. We need to get our priorities straight.' Curbing his enthusiasm, the Onmyouji genuflected on his tattered robes and asked, 'What is your current bidding, my liege? The remaining Shinju are on standby, ready to follow your every command to the letter.'
'The plan has not changed. Mobilize Udou Jine and Suzaku, give them free reign to do as they wish, watch out for any signs of betrayal on their part, and remain in the shadows for the time being. I've heard their plans... the ones they were willing to show me and the ones they'd kept to themselves... and I believe they're the logical choice in exploiting the assortment of weaknesses that our enemies have presented today.' Curiously enough, the Chojin's orders sounded more like advice than "commands to be obeyed to the letter".
'But master, those two are...!' the Onmyouji began, intending to meekly point out what the mad Jine did to Suzaku's familiar, the annoying demon bird named Murgle... Murugu... Morgue... whatever her name was.
'Yes, I know. But their conflicts of interests are to our benefit as well. If they could manage to pull either of their plans off, we should soon witness what the Hiruma brothers weren't able to achieve; the awakening of the true powers of the Demon Sword.'
The Onmyouji felt the Chojin's frightening presence in his mind's eye and nearly fainted at the sheer awesomeness of his vision: that of a lithe, six-foot-high Warlord suited in the full regalia of the cursed samurai armor... worn once upon a time by Oda Nobunaga himself... and the bloodthirsty swords, the fiery Mugen Jin and the surgically sharp Kien... re-forged from their temporal, material selves in the pits of, as Botan would say, Level 17 Block 8 of the Corporeal Punishments Sector, turning them into transient weapons of genocide.
'Oh, and a few more other things,' the Chojin casually remarked after recovering from his momentary loss of self-control. 'In regards to your report that the Spirit World is rallying their own forces, even up to the point of following our lead and resurrecting warriors from the past and defying their own laws of life and death, I'll let you handle that case. Make them suffer from their own folly. With the performance Saito just shown today, they might even double their efforts. Take advantage of that fact with impunity.'
'It's already taken care of, my lord,' the Onmyouji assured. 'In light of the Reikai's apparent unwillingness to murder humans compared to their gleeful execution of demons, I've asked Gouki to gather our human recruits Getsuno Kibano, Burashi Musashi, and Fuwan Kazemaru to search high and low in Mushiyori City for these resurrected souls. I'll just tell them that they can test their strength and prove their worth to us by finding people effused with the same spirit signature as shinigami.'
'Good. Also, keep tabs on Xinhai's activities in Tokyo as well. Based on his impressive performance in gathering jaki so far, he'll sooner or later have to deal with one of Koenma's would-be lackeys.' The Evil Overlord smirked. 'Judging from what era these warriors are coming from, I'm guessing the Reikai had figured out a few things about our operation. Good for them. Nonetheless, although they may think they're on to us, they couldn't be further from the truth.'
'Your every wish is my command, my master.' The Onmyouji rose, bowed to seemingly no one in particular, and faded into smoke and ash a second later.
Kenshin, Botan, and Puu sat still on the non-wrecked portion of the temple stairs for a long, long time as they quietly contemplated that early morn's shocking events, waiting patiently for the dust of Genbu's kamikaze attack on Iehog to finally settle down. Quite a lot had happened that day... the hours they spent fighting Rando and three of the Shisejyu seemed like months, even years, of grueling combat and trauma that they would remember for a lifetime.
First off, there was the initial part of the Shisejyu invasion, where Rando and company were able to separate Botan, Yusuke, Keiko, and Genkai from each other, pairing them off with their designated demon zombie and manipulating the odds to the youkai's favor by the use of subterfuge, manipulation, and deceit. Alas, with the appearance of a mysterious policeman who apparently came straight out of the pages of Japanese history, Goro Fujita ruined that very plan and helped halve the demons' forces in one fight, forcing the surviving demons to concentrate on fighting their selected quarries.
Nevertheless, certain minute, out-of-sight happenings in between those two major events held far more sway and significance to Botan's eyes, particularly the ones involving Keiko's coma and near-death experience in the hands of Seiryu, the cowardly act hidden away from Yusuke's eyes and revealed to him exactly when it was too late for him to stop it.
Because the Chojin and his minions had changed the Rules of Engagement in Spiritual Warfare to suit their own needs... reviving demons that were long dead to beat the Spirit World at its own game of perpetuating the cycle of life and death... Botan decided that it was high time she herself bended the rules as well. Thusly, as Iehik and Iehog took her hostage, she multitasked and astral projected herself into the Spirit World, scouring for Keiko's lost soul before Yusuke's sort-of-girlfriend became a husk of her former self.
The ferry-girl afterwards remembered eating the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge in order to coax the amnesiac Keiko... long story... to do the same. Soon after, she felt her mind react weirdly to the forbidden fruit. It was strange; it had felt as though the fruit had somehow broken through a blocked memory in the surface of her psyche, but her mind wasn't willing to acknowledge its presence, much less access its dark secrets.
Botan, who was once upon a time a lost ghost just like Keiko, also went into the misty middle fork of the Sanzu no Kawa and cleansed her sordid memories clean of all her past mistakes, of all her sins, of all her pain, and of all the stupid things she had done out of misery, fear, confusion, and loneliness, drowning it all into oblivion by means of the delectable, hallucinogenic lotus blossoms of the Elysian Fields. It wasn't her proudest moment, she knew, but she felt it had to be done at the time.
Attempting to reach the memory was a little like trying to stare into the sun itself; her body's automatic reaction was to wince and balk, so the more she forced yourself to stare, the more her body would react adversely to the stimuli as a source of pain. Her mind had ultimately deemed that she simply wasn't supposed to view the hidden memory at the risk of, she guessed, her mental and emotional health.
The brief time when she finally did recall her past, it affected her so badly that her mind automatically blocked it again sans the help of the Elysian Field's spiritual hallucinogens. She couldn't remember it now, but she could still recall the feeling of remembering her repressed trauma; even a shinigami's fearless attitude towards death buckled under the aura of horror that it generated.
So many years; so many forgotten memories; the faces of people she had known, now lost in the past. Places she had been, things she had done, enemies and friends, familiar faces and unfamiliar ones, colleagues and loved ones... all gone now. Then again, she was somehow able to view certain memories that weren't hers; memories of another soul that was living inside her mind all thanks to the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge's mysterious side effects.
'Kamiya Kaoru; who is she, exactly? What's she doing in my head? Was she a soul whom I helped ferry across the River Styx before?' Botan wondered as her head became dizzy with the sheer wealth of facts and details it just evaluated, to the point of literally undergoing information overload.
The ferry-girl didn't even bother recalling the last half of Kenshin's long chain of fights against the ambivalent Goro Fujita and the not-so-ambivalent Hiruma brothers, lest she risked breaking her mind. 'Wait a second. If the Forbidden Fruit is supposed to be a cure for forgetfulness, then the Kaoru in my mind is...!'
Kenshin was the first one to break the ice, interrupting Botan's thoughts. "I should've finished them off. I shouldn't have denied my enemies the courtesy of dying by my sword. As is, it seems like my unwillingness to kill them has forced them to kill each other for the sake of my own convenience."
To his spiral-eyed surprise... even though he should have known better by now... Botan delivered her opinion on the matter in the form of a well-placed paddle whack upside his head. "Oh, stop moping, you redheaded baby," the ferry-girl chided before waxing pensive and adding, "Take it from someone who deals with the deaths of millions on a regular basis; You can't make yourself responsible for the decisions of others. You can only be responsible for your own actions and how it affects other people's lives.
"That is, unless you're one of those schemers that try to manipulate everyone's lives for his own amusement... there's a special place for those people. I'd tell you where, but the only place I've really memorized from the Book of Fate is Level 17 Block 8 of the Corporeal Punishments Sector. The rest of the levels, I need a map to get to."
Chuckling a bit at Botan's antics, Kenshin inquired, "And Level 17 Block 8 of the Corporeal Punishments Sector is...?"
"Duh. Fire and brimstone. Um, it's easy to remember because of their wonderful hot springs there. The fire and death, I don't like so much."
"...I see." Kenshin nodded, then jokingly wrapped his arms around himself as he 'shivered' at the 'coldness' and 'cheesiness' of Botan's lame quip.
With a swing of the oar that Kenshin deftly avoided this time around, Botan protested, "I wasn't joking! Stop acting like I just made a lame joke, darn it!"
Once their short bout of horseplay was over, Botan and Kenshin were once again left to their thoughts, the pensive silence beforehand reasserting itself.
"Do you think it's a joke?" came Kenshin's second icebreaker.
"Huh? Didn't I say I wasn't joking?" Botan answered warningly.
"No, not that. I meant my vow to not kill any of my enemies, even if they're demons. Do you think that's a joke? Granted, I can and will break my vow if worse comes to worst, but it does occur to me how hypocritical I might look. Yusuke-dono seems to think so," Kenshin clarified wistfully.
Botan sighed as nostalgic feelings that wasn't her own filled her heart and mind. She wanted desperately to cut to the chase and ask Kenshin about the kenjutsu-practicing, pony-tailed girl inside her head, but she instead hemmed and hawed at the topic at hand, blurting out, "I-It depends. Why aren't you willing to kill? If you kill them, you'll become like them? You want to save the villain in order to become a bigger hero? You're waiting for your opponent's karmic death? Why? Humans I can understand, but demons, not so much. I get the feeling that you even made Koenma give you that special stipulation to not kill demons."
Kenshin exhaled, closing his eyes shut. "Take it from someone who has lived for more than a century and still has a clear memory of both the distant and recent past. Sometimes, humans can even be worse than the demons they persecute. Demons have as much a right to live as humans. What measure is a non-human, even? No one species is irredeemably evil. I'm no saint, but I'd rather err on the side of caution than to indiscriminately kill anyone... human, demon, or otherwise... just because of some misguided sense of justice."
"I see." Botan mulled over Kenshin's words, feeling a bit uncomfortable over the melancholy mood that the redheaded spirit's pensiveness created. "You sound kind of like Sensui, in a sense. You still haven't answered my question, though. Why don't you kill? If memory serves me correctly, 'hitokiri' means 'manslayer', and 'youkiri' means 'demon-slayer'. If you've killed before, then what is stopping you from killing now, especially if killing might actually help?"
"I want to atone for all the deaths I've caused, then and now. At first, I was just supposed to make up for the lives I've taken in my past life as a Ishin Shishi hitokiri, but in the end, instead of expiating my sins, I've somehow ended up drowning in them. The weight of a sword that steals lives, whether it kills humans or demons, will drag you down to hell. Don't ask me if killing is right or wrong; I have no right to answer that question. All I know is that, because I've killed, no matter how many hearts I've healed, my heart can never be healed."
Rolling her kimono sleeves into a bundle on her shoulder, Botan cocked a clenched fist back, screamed, "Okay, fine! You really want to know what I think about your pacifism? PACIFIST FIST!" then punched Kenshin right on his cross-scarred cheek.
The wide-eyed swordsman's head shook like a bobble-head figure from the impact of Botan's powerful straight right, his metaphysical brain rattled by a very tangible force. From there, Kenshin gingerly grabbed his cheek and looked at Botan in confusion. With a barely intelligible mumble, he protested, "What was that for? And why would you connect a punch with pacifism? That makes no sense whatsoever!"
"Exactly. What's pacifism got to do with punching? And what does swords have to do with protecting lives? Absolutely nothing," Botan evenly reasoned, already anticipating Kenshin's predictable answer before she even threw her surprise punch. Too bad her forethought didn't extend to understanding the unfortunate implications of her riposte.
"So your point is that I'm not really a pacifist and that my non-killing vow really is a joke?" Kenshin queried while nursing his cheek with a bit of his own kenki, his forehead perspiring large, ethereal bullets of salty chagrin. "Thanks... I think."
"My point is to not think about it! Really, it's okay. The ends justify the... Wait. You're using swordsmanship for good, avoiding violence by being... Oh. You stop bullies by bullying them too... Hmmm. Responsible people are always so concerned about being good all the time that when they finally get a taste of being bad, they just can't get enough... I think," Botan attempted to elucidate, with questionable degrees of success. What was amazing was that she managed to make Kenshin's double-standard duality sound even worse than even he had initially thought.
"I reckon it is best not to think about it," Kenshin chuckled uncertainly, not sure how to respond to Botan's unthinking but thought-provoking points. "Couldn't you at least end your little moral lesson with something a bit more profound and less morally questionable, though? I feel like we're breaching tradition or something."
Botan blinked contemplatively at Kenshin as she shifted from her seat, her hands on her chin and her elbows on her legs. "Moral lesson, huh? Like what? 'Life is a lesson, you learn it when you're through.' Those sorts of sayings?"
Kenshin shrugged. "Oro? Yeah. I guess."
"If you want that, then get an inspirational message calendar," Botan retorted, which prompted Kenshin to rub his head in sheepish discomfort once more. But she then appended, "If you want to fight demons your way, fine! If Yusuke and the others want to fight demons their way, fine! There are consequences to both options, so we'll just have to wing it and stick to what we believe is right! At least, that's how I see it. To each his or her own." It was a message that really hit home for the redhead.
To Botan's confusion, Kenshin gave her a "thumbs up" sign and a congratulatory, "Thank you. That was a way better answer than before." Of course, he got another paddle whack to the head for his efforts. It was at that point that the ferry-girl realized her anger issues with Kenshin that rooted from his penchant for condescension. What was up with that? Did she need to go to a Reikai Therapist or something?
Come to think of it, she never remembered herself to be so violent before with Yusuke, Kuwabara, Hiei, or Kurama, so what was up with her repeated urge to beat Kenshin up? Repetitive violence played for laughs was more Keiko's shtick than Botan's, really. Did Kaoru have something to do with it? 'HEY! Violent kendo-girl! Just get out of my head already!'
But even as the ferry-girl's mind went off into another tangent, her lips moved by themselves and mouthed, "Then there's your answer right there, Kenshin. You don't kill because you don't want to kill, and you know the full consequences of killing. Getting the opinion of another person, whether he agrees with you or not, will probably do little to change your own stance on killing. Have a bit more faith in yourself and your principles. That's the true answer to your question."
To be Continued...
Next: S.K.Y.! Save Keiko Yukimura!
R.I.P., Shisejyu Genbu. You're the one-shot character that never could, yet you somehow managed to become more important than you really are because of Kenshin's direct influence on you after your long and protracted fight.
I'd say this is quite true in canon as well, in the sense that Kenshin was able to redeem Sanosuke, Soujiro, Aoshi, and even Senkaku (just in case you think that Kenshin only redeems important, bishonen characters :P) after merely beating the crap out of them.
Eat your heart out, Nanoha... Kenshin's the real deal when it comes to proving his love and friendship through superior firepower. Oh wait, my bad; that's Son Goku's original shtick. ^_^;
Paalam!
Abdiel