Shinku no En: The Crimson Bond
by UltraM2000
Disclaimer: Don't own Saiyuki…yet. Severe fluff, M2000 style, and slight PWPness. Watch out for flying youkai limbs, organs and bodily secretions. GREAT liberties taken with portrayal of Chinese/Tougenkyou hell.
"Oo, look, Hakkai…it's that guy who's the reason you're wearing that monocle."
"Aa, sou desu ne. And there's his big brother, too."
"Dug his eyeballs out, did you? Gnarly."
"Look look look, Sanzo, don't you recognise that guy?"
"Should I, bakazaru?"
"Yeah, of course! Those were the VERY FIRST ONES WE FOUGHT! There's their leader!" [1]
"Hmm. Now that you mention it, it IS that egoistical bastard. I'm surprised you remembered, stomach-brain monkey."
"San-zouuuuuuu!!!"
"In any case…" Sanzo whipped out his pistol and pulled the trigger. The modified bullet struck the first demon right between the eyes, and he screamed and disintegrated into a pile of silvery ash. "I suppose we should give them some form of acknowledgement."
"VERY definitely," Gojyo grinned, noticing in the crowd the very sexy female spider demons that had attacked them in Kouchin. [2]
"It's only polite, isn't it, everyone?" smiled Hakkai.
"Well then…let's give 'em a greeting they'll never forget!" Goku shouted confidently, and raising his Nyoibou brought it down on five demons' backs.
Immediately, chaos erupted. Hakkai threw himself into the fray with his sword drawn. The first one attacked with amazing speed and broke through his guard, raking its claws across Hakkai's cheek. The burning wound made Hakkai wince. Parrying another series of blows, he drove a fist into the demon's midriff and followed it up with another thrust of his sword. The demon bucked wildly in pain, shrieked and dematerialised much as Sanzo's had. Praise the blue elixir. Hakkai stepped back a few paces, wiping the blood on his cheek off on his sleeve as Hakuryuu flapped, snapped and blew small plumes of flame at the more persistent foes.
"They really do have physical form…but yare yare, honestly, people just get ruder and ruder every day," he sighed, slicing a persistent demon down the chest.
"And Hakkai's character gets worse and worse," Sanzo replied unexpectedly, kicking another one aside to shoot at the one behind it.
"Does it really, Sanzo?" grinned Hakkai serenely.
"Sanzo! Watch out!" yelled Goku, leaping up behind Sanzo and swinging up the Nyoibou. A battleaxe-wielding ugly snarled gruffly, cheated of its prize, but the snarl was cut abruptly short as the priest lazily shifted his gun to the other hand and sent a slug through its skull.
"Don't expect any rewards for that, saru."
"I am NOT a monkey!" protested Goku, swinging his Nyoibou again and neatly decapitating a few more attackers. "Just pay me back sometime soon—" he paused to crack open the skulls of two demons trying to interrupt— "'cause I charge high interest!"
Sanzo's reply was to shoot six demons, reload and shoot six more. "That, for your information, was originally MY line."
Gojyo was having quite the time himself. It had been a long time since he'd had a good, old-fashioned dust-up like this—he'd never thought he'd missed all the conflict. His shakujou's blade sang merrily through the vile spirits' ranks as bits of ectoplasm flew everywhere before becoming white, dusty ash. The half-demon had to do some fancy footwork to avoid a particularly irritating group of demons that insisted on clutching at his trousers and trying to trip him.
"Go to Hell, all of ya…or at least get back in there and take your torture like MEN!" he yelled, kicking out and jabbing the shakujou at them mercilessly. His blade cut a perfect arc through the air as more ash went flying.
Suffice it to say that it didn't take more than half an hour for the four to wade through the mess of enraged ghosts and demons, Sanzo shooting one last bullet into one of the still-twitching attackers. Gyuutou and Mamen were, for lack of a better expression, staring at them pop-eyed. Sanzo noticed, and turned to them.
"Never seen a Sanzo killing demons on the job before?" he drawled laconically, enjoying a post-battle cigarette.
"That wasn't even a warm-up!" Gojyo chortled.
"I didn't quite get all the kinks out of these muscles," sighed Hakkai, opening and closing his fists several times.
Goku wasted no time and leapt towards the portal. "Well, we got that problem finished so we'll be on our way, Y'Majesty! Sanzo! Gojyo, Hakkai, come on! Let's go—AAARRRRGH!" The saru had leapt straight into the portal to Avici and plummeted into nothingness.
Hakuryuu flapped his way into the portal, looked down, squeaked and dashed straight back to Hakkai's shoulder, chirping frantically. Hakkai poked his head in and then waved his hand round, feeling for a floor. There was none. "It's a straight drop down, everyone," he informed them a little lamely.
The three gave Enma a confused look, and the ruler of the Underworld's response was to shrug. "It's the easiest way down. We usually just kick them into the portal."
After fifteen minutes of free falling, the ikkou finally reached the bottom of the pit that lead towards the true Avici. The moment Sanzo regained his breath, he whipped out his harisen and swatted Goku and Gojyo across the head.
"THAT is for trying to look up my robes as I was coming down…idiots," he muttered.
"Nice to know you still wear jeans, bouzu."
"All right, everyone," Hakkai began in his don't-make-me-come-over-there-and-play-mommy voice, igniting a spark of ki in his hand. It wasn't very bright, but it made some headway through the thick darkness. They could now see the emptiness of Avici stretching before them, dark and silent. Goku suddenly realised how utterly cold it was, and shivered slightly.
"So this is Avici," Hakkai broke the silence, his words fairly light and conversational in tone.
"Nice place, for the worst torture y'can receive after kicking the bucket," mused his red-haired compatriot. [3]
"This can't be ALL," came Goku's famous last words as he dematerialised his Nyoibou. It was then a something-or-other swooped out of the darkness, whizzed past his cheek and fluttered to the floor. A line of scarlet blood welled up from the lightly tanned skin, and Son Goku let out a yowl of pain.
"It~TAAAAAAAAAIIIIII!!!" he wailed, one hand going to his cheek. "What WAS that? It felt like a piece of metal or something!"
Hakkai drew his ki-bearing hand closer to the wound, shedding light on Goku's face. It was a shallow cut, but it was quite long and bleeding quite a bit. It looked as if it had been inflicted with the edge of a very thin, sharp knife…
"Your 'piece of metal' is a paper plane, you idiot," Gojyo snorted, fishing the fragile missile off the floor. "Honestly, is your threshold of pain that lo—OW! Shit!" Another plane whizzed by, catching Gojyo across the eye with its wing. He bit back the surprisingly severe sting of pain and touched his fingers to his eye. They came back damp and a little sticky with blood.
Sanzo snatched the plane from Gojyo's fingers and studied it in the dim light of Hakkai's ki ball. "It's a talisman," he muttered in disbelief. Strange and archaic Sanskrit tantras were painted all over it, and Sanzo recognised with increasing dread that it was folded in the style of his master Koumyou Sanzo's handiwork—slim, streamlined and tapered with angled wings and a small V-shaped area between the bases. "It's one of those charms designed for sealing in errant souls. Someone's sending these to either kill us, or buy time. I'd opt for the latter."
As if answering Sanzo's suspicions, two more planes came flying out of the darkness. One cut Sanzo across the bridge of his nose and the other stalled deeply at the last minute, dropping in a sharp arc and slicing deeply into Hakkai's fingers. The demon-convert flinched, and his ki ball fragmented and went out.
"These…hurt a lot more than they should," Hakkai murmured softly, sucking at his wounded fingers. There was a faint bitter edge to the blood that reminded him of the smell of paper money burnt at Tougenkyou funerals. [4] "I suppose they need to have a greater effect to be used on spirits."
Upon formation of a second ki ball, it was revealed that the monk had a hand clapped to his nose, his fingers already tinted with dry red flakes. "No shit, Sherlock," he muttered sarcastically, shaking his gun out of his sleeve into the palm of his free hand.
There was a faint rustling sound like that of shuffling papers before talisman planes exploded by the dozens from the darkness. They flew straight through the ikkou's ranks, battering and slashing them. Hakkai flung up an arm to shield his face, but the plane's knife-edged wings sliced through the leather arm shields like they were made out of paper and an angry red slash appeared on his wrist. Goku ducked one, but it skimmed the top of his head, shearing off countless small bits of fluffy brown hair from his head, and then dipped sharply and cut his inner elbow. His howl of outrage was matched minutes later by Gojyo's as two more swooped simultaneously at him, shearing through the thin material of his cotton vest.
"THAT WAS M'BEST VEST, YOU F---IN' EXCUSE FOR ORIGAMI!" he yelled, and swiped furiously at the planes buzzing around him. It did no good—they merely dodged his blows, as if they were sentient and purposely mocking him, and swooped towards him again, cutting his arms several times. Running out of ideas, he sent his shakujou's crescent blade a-soaring through the darkness, but somehow the planes all banked away at just the right angle for the blade to miss completely. "This cannot be happening," he cursed, wincing as another one cut another slash into his cheek just seconds after he'd swatted it away.
"It is!" Goku cursed, batting at his inanimate assailants with his Nyoibou. He was having as much success as Gojyo was. Hakkai was alternating sword slashes with small ki blasts, and Sanzo was shooting paper planes left and right, but no blow could take them out and the planes kept on coming.
"Argh! Sanzo, what are we going to do?" Hakkai fell back under a fresh wave of talisman planes. Small spots of blood were dotting his green shirt and white sash. "There doesn't seem to be any end to these, and the more we dodge, the more that come!"
"Use the Makai Tenjou or something against them!" Goku suggested, adding his two zeni. [5]
"It won't work, fool monkey! You expect a sutra to work against talismans?! Do I—" A thought suddenly struck Sanzo. Seeing the charms were meant to subdue, and nothing much else, there might be a way to stop them coming.
By the eighteen arhats, this was going to HURT…
Much to the other three's surprise, Sanzo ducked another plane, shoved his gun into his considerable sleeve pocket and stood up, stretching out his arms. The planes flew straight towards the defenceless monk by the droves, lopping off stray bits of blonde hair, ripping his robes and cutting through his skin and even his armour, but he didn't flinch, keeping his head bowed and letting them attack.
"Sanzo! What are y'doing? Those planes will turn you into sushi!" Goku cried out, still under assault himself.
There was no answer from the monk, just a slight turning upwards of the face that beckoned attention.
Watch.
The number of planes fluttering towards Sanzo began to taper off, dwindling to a few errant ones that just fluttered gently past him, not even breaking the skin as they brushed against his forehead. The last one swished gracefully down to the floor and lay there, silent. No more came to bother him.
"Wha—?!" Gojyo and Goku couldn't believe what they saw. Hakkai, however, had some inkling.
"Subjugation," was all he said.
"Precisely," came the reply as Sanzo wiped blood from some of the fresher cuts on his face and neck. He hid a pained wince. "The charms are meant to subdue, and subdue alone. If it thinks its target is already down for the count, it will cease its efforts. Let them come, all of you. Show no fear. Show no pain, because they feed on emotions like those. Just let them come."
Gojyo didn't quite seem to like the idea, but he followed along with Hakkai. He closed his eyes, feeling the sharp and tearing wings of the paper planes nick his ears, arms and chest over and over. The stinging was like that from a million thin blades. Gradually, however, they began to steadily decrease, and the last one stopped just a little bit short of his eye and dropped to the ground. Gojyo kicked at it derisively and snarled deep in his throat. The green-eyed demon was very used to hiding his emotions, and it didn't take long for the planes to cease their efforts on Hakkai. Goku, however, was still getting battered on all sides.
"Sanzo, I don't like this idea of yours!"
"Do you want to be the first person in history to bleed to death by paper plane?" Sanzo shouted in reply.
"Grrr, arghh, ch'…ALL RIGHT! ALL RIGHT I'LL DO IT!" Goku crouched down, curled up in a ball and lay still. It was after a full five minutes before the planes finally ceased their attack, and another minute or two later that Goku was able to stand. His shirt was terribly torn, and—wonder of wonders—even his limiter had a few scuffmarks on them that definitely weren't there before.
"Goku, are you all right?" asked Hakkai.
"Yeah, I'm fine," he winced, sucking at some of the deeper wounds on his arms. "Don't bother," continued the youth, seeing Hakkai beginning to channel healing ki into his free palm, "save that for after I kick seven shades of shit outta that bastard Dougan."
Sanzo, Gojyo, Goku and Hakkai looked into the depths of Avici. There was still some way to go before they reached the true core of the deepest hell, where Dougan must surely be waiting ever so patiently for them.
"This is NOT my idea of a good joke," Sanzo murmured under his breath, and cocking the hammer on his gun, he set forth to confront his errant ex-enthusiast.
[1] Issue 8, pgs. 30-34/Chapter 43: 'Be Lacking.'
[2] First story arc (First Game).
[3] Avici is indeed dark…but it is also cramped, hot (I think), stinky and very, very noisy—full of screaming souls, you understand. Like I said—took quite a few liberties with the portrayal of Avici for this one. Ah well, if a pig can become a gentleman and a monk can become a corrupted blonde bishounen, anything's possible. ^_~
[4] Chinese custom of burning 'hell money' for the dead one to spend, or bribe the guards down under.
[5] Ancient Japanese currency.
And to my reviewers...
Kurtain and Ashura -- To answer both of your questions, Avici is reserved those who commit the five unforgivable crimes in Buddhism: killing your mother, father or an arhat (one of the Buddha's 18 helpers), the shedding of the Buddha's blood and creating disharmony amongst practitioners of the faith. If Kanan's down here at all, she would be in the first level, that of "Retributive Justice". That's the one for punishing the taking of life. (Got the info from )