"Ah," the youkai sorceress purred, her voice filled with self-satisfaction, "but that makes things so easy...."
Gojyo glared across the intervening space, ignoring the thirty-or-so youkai that stood between him and the woman on the dais at the center of the domed room. This chick was starting to piss him off. So she had recognized that he and Hakkai were youkai, big deal. That was no reason for her to get cocky. Her words didn't even make sense. Everyone knew that youkai were stronger, not weaker, than ordinary humans. He tightened his grip on Shakujou. "Don't take us so lightly!" he snapped. "What makes you think this is going to be easy?"
She favored him with a feral smile, and caressed the stone talisman lying in the palm of her hand. It appeared to be carved, but from this distance, Gojyo couldn't make out what it was supposed to be. "You should be honored, that I've decided to use this little toy. I've been saving it up until now, just in case there was ever a shortage of...converts...to our cause."
"And what would that be?" Hakkai spoke up beside him, his tone all polite inquiry. Stalling for time, Gojyo realized. Trying to get as much information as possible before the youkai woman attacked and they were forced to kill her.
"You'll find out soon enough." She turned the amulet so that its carved edges caught the light. "As you've already discovered, I have a gift for storing power inside the matrix of stone." Her eyes flickered up to rest on Hakkai. "You will find, however, that this piece is quite different from the quartz shard that you encountered yesterday."
She took a few steps forward to the edge of the marble dais, stopping between the two closest pedestals, blue stone to the left and gray to the right. She pulled the amulet she was holding off over her head, and held it out, wrapping its silver chain around her hand. "This piece of crystal was a gift, given to me during my recent travels through India. Through Tenjiku, to be exact. It was designed with just this sort of purpose in mind." She smiled coldly at them. "I think it's time that someone reminded you where your true loyalties should lie."
She released the energy trapped in the amulet. Gojyo didn't see anything, didn't hear anything. But he felt it, a sense of sudden power that swept over him, like a shadow passing over the sun. For a moment that was all there was to it, a brief chill, a shiver down the spine.
...And then, suddenly, understanding blossomed in his mind, like a bonfire flaring to life in the dead of night, illuminating that which could not previously be seen. Instantaneous knowledge that he had not been aware of, that he had not known he had missed until this very moment, came to him with absolute clarity.
All this time he had been hiding, denying what he was, denying his youkai nature. He had buried it in a pitiful attempt to build a meager human existence. He had a human income, a human house, and human friends. And for what? Humans were weaklings, they were nothing. He was strong, much stronger than they would ever be. It came as something of a revelation, how easy it would be to set aside his fake human guise, and revel in the power of being youkai.
His youkai blood sang with anticipation. The time for denial was over. He would be the person he was meant to be. The power that was his birthright was there at his fingertips. All he had to do was take off his limiters, and....
That absurd thought stopped him cold. I don't wear fucking limiters. What the hell?!!
His mind cleared abruptly, as if he had been doused with a bucket of icy water. He raised his head, unclenched his hands from where they had been tangled in his hair. It was wrong, he realized. Whatever power had invaded his thoughts, it had gotten things completely wrong. He had never denied what he was--had never dyed his hair, or worn contact lenses to change the color of his eyes. Because that was the easy way out, and Gojyo had never been the naive kind of person who could be tricked into believing the easy way and the best way were the same thing.
If he encountered people who recognized what his hair and eyes meant, who hated him for the mix of human and youkai blood in his veins, well that was just their tough luck. He'd fight them if they came after him; hurl insults right back if they chose to call him names. But he'd never run from them--just as he'd never run from his own face when it stared back at him from the mirror. He accepted both what he was and what he symbolized. In the absence of fear, he had no need of denial.
A person's own fear was what made them a victim. He'd had enough of that shit back when he'd been a kid. He refused to be a victim anymore.
As he shook off the last traces of the amulet's stored power, he became aware of Hakkai's presence again. The other man was down on one knee, his head bowed and his shoulders set with the strain of fighting off the spell. The wrist of his left hand was locked firmly in his right, holding it away from the silver bands of the limiters clipped to the outer edge of his ear. His entire frame was tensed with the effort of refusing to give in. Gojyo didn't even want to guess what might be going on in his head right now.
He stepped in front of Hakkai, as if by doing so he could shield him from whatever this magic was. If he'd been pissed before, he was furious now. "What the hell are you trying to do to us?" he snarled at the youkai woman.
"I?" the sorceress replied archly. "I am doing nothing. I'm simply allowing your true natures to assert themselves."
"It's rather arrogant, isn't it?" Hakkai's voice, menacingly soft, spoke from behind him.
Gojyo looked back over his shoulder immediately, to see the other man slowly getting to his feet, holding both hands away from his body with exaggerated care. Relief flooded through him. "Hakkai!"
Hakkai wasn't looking at him. He was focused on the sorceress, dangerously intent. "It's pretty arrogant to assume that you know anything about our true natures, when you don't even know us at all. Don't you think?"
The sorceress' eyes widened. She took a few faltering steps back, reaching out to lay a trembling hand on the armrest of her throne, as if she were suddenly in need of its support. "It isn't possible! How can you fight it? How can you stand against this power?!"
Gojyo bared his teeth in a humorless smile. "Didn't I warn you not to take us lightly?"
The sorceress didn't waste time replying. Instead, she pointed a single, shaking finger in their direction. "Kill them!"
The spell that had been in the amulet had caused a drastic change in all of her youkai followers. They seemed to have become more savage, more feral. Their eyes, instead of glinting with anticipation at the challenge of battle, now glowed with hunger and bloodlust. They flexed their claws, bared their teeth, or licked their lips in the anticipation of a slaughter. The intensity of their hunger was a little unnerving, and it made Gojyo suddenly glad that he'd managed to fight off the power from the amulet on his own.
The youkai charged forward.
Gojyo's focus narrowed until he became aware of nothing in the world but the enemies directly in front of him and Hakkai's solid presence on his right. As the foremost pair of youkai lunged, Shakujou's chain shot out, the silver crescent cutting one nearly in half and slashing open the throat of the second. Then three more were upon him, and he was forced to deflect several sword blows with Shakujou's pole before he got enough of an opening to decapitate the swordsman with Shakujou's paddle blade. By then the crescent had snapped back into place, and Gojyo spun it around to take down three more youkai in a row.
Hakkai was a blur of smooth motion, blocking and striking with a ruthless efficiency that belied the congenial smile on his lips. Each time he attacked, a youkai fell--whether it was the heel of a hand crushing a nose, the snap of a fist to the chest, the chop of a hand at the back of the neck, or the point of an elbow into the soft tissue just below the ribcage. Gojyo grinned and let the adrenalin surge through him as he focused on his own fight, knowing he didn't have to worry about Hakkai.
It was over in a matter of minutes. Gojyo casually dispatched his last two attackers. However, just as he was lowering Shakujou, he heard a sharp "Look out!" from the right. He caught a glitter of light out of the corner of his eye and dodged out of the way just in time. Fragments of sharp blue rock embedded themselves in the floor where he had been standing only a moment before.
His gaze tracked to the sorceress. She looked furious, and even as he watched, he saw her gesture sharply. More fragments of that blue stone rose from the bowl on one of the six pedestals surrounding the dais, collecting over her hand. She jabbed her finger forward and the razor-sharp fragments flew across the room at them. They were forced to take evasive action yet again.
Now the two brutes in armor, who had stood motionless on the dais throughout the combat, were finally advancing. Youkai weapons coalesced in their hands as they walked forward, taking the shape of a long pole arm for one and a heavy mace for the second. They brandished them aggressively, yelling at the tops of their lungs as they charged.
They weren't even a challenge. The weight of the armor slowed them, and while it protected vital areas like the chest and stomach, the joints were open to attack. Gojyo's opponent went down when he made the mistake of exposing his vulnerable left side. Hakkai's opponent hit the floor a moment later with the clatter of metal, his windpipe crushed.
The woman stared at her fallen champions in disbelief, before raising her head to look at them, impotent rage burning in her slit-pupiled eyes. "I underestimated the two of you," the sorceress hissed, "I never foresaw that things might turn out this way. I've made a mistake, one that I deeply regret."
Her taloned hand tightened on the arm of her throne. "I will have my revenge for this eventually. The power from Tenjiku may not have taken hold in you this time, but just you wait. Your day is coming. Before long, this dark aura will sweep across the continent in an unstoppable wave, and no one, not even you, will be able to stand against it."
"Oh, I don't know about that," Hakkai replied with a cheerful smile. "Now that we know what to guard against, I have a feeling it really won't be a problem for us again."
The youkai woman only snarled in response, and held up her hand once more. Crystals from the smoky quartz bowl flew towards her and began to collect over her palm.
"Oh no, not this time," Gojyo snapped. Shakujou's chain whipped out before the jagged shards had finished gathering. The youkai woman barely had time to look up at the rushing noise the crescent made, before it caught her full in the chest, the twin points sinking deep into her flesh.
But it seemed that she hadn't intended to cast the quartz pieces at them, after all. Instead the crystals had fused together over her hand, molding into a long shard of stone. She laughed, even as she fell to her knees on the dais. Blood seeped through the silken material of her gown and bubbled past her lips. "You...still...loose," she gasped with her last breath, and drove the shard of crystal downward, into the chest of the human monk they had been sent to find, who was still chained helplessly to the floor by the side of the crystal throne.
"No!" Hakkai's sharp cry of denial could do nothing at all to change the scene in front of them, as the monk slumped forward, and both he and the sorceress collapsed to sprawl on the cold marble floor.
It took only a matter of seconds to cross the now-empty room to where the monk lay. But even seconds took too long, judging by the pool of blood that was forming under the body. The quartz shard had pulled free as the man fell, leaving a large gash torn open in the tan robes, and a raw hole, welling crimson, in the flesh in the middle of the monk's chest. Gojyo stared down at it and cursed. "We screwed up big time on this one," he muttered. "Sanzo's gonna shoot us for sure."
Hakkai was already kneeling on the ground beside the monk, feeling for a pulse at the man's neck. "No," he said unexpectedly, his gaze focusing intently on the downed man, "he's still alive."
Gojyo looked at him, incredulous. "Really?"
"The stone shard hit the side of the heart, but it didn't rupture it." Hakkai's voice sounded a little strange. "The worst damage is to the right lung. It has collapsed, and is filling with blood."
"Shit. You can tell that just by looking?"
"No," Hakkai replied distantly, distractedly. "I just know." He leaned forward, reaching out towards the wound, a frown of concentration on his face. Before he could touch damaged tissue, brilliant light flared to life under his palm.
Hakkai's hand jerked involuntarily as he caught his breath in surprise. But he made no move to withdraw it. Instead he extended his hand until it hovered only centimeters away from the still bleeding wound, bathing the flesh in verdant light. As Gojyo watched, the bleeding slowed to a trickle, and then stopped. The edges of the stab wound pulled together, and gradually began to close. The unconscious monk shivered once, then his chest rose, ribcage expanding as he drew in a deep breath.
The green light faded away, as if it had never existed. There was still a wound, a nasty, scabbed spot surrounded by red, inflamed skin. But it looked like it had been healing for weeks, rather than inflicted only a few minutes ago. "Shit. What the hell was that?"
Hakkai sank back on his heels, absently raising a hand to rub at his temples. His face was pale, and he looked pretty shaky, like he'd just woken up with the mother of all hangovers. He gave a nervous little laugh. "I don't know. I'm afraid I've been feeling a bit strange all morning. Perhaps this was why."
Gojyo stepped over to the other body, to make sure that the youkai woman was dead. She was, her slit-pupiled eyes staring sightlessly up at the dome. The silver chain of the amulet she had used earlier was still wound around her right hand. Gojyo looked down at the piece of carved crystal strung from it, lying smoked and blackened on the floor. Now that he was closer, he recognized its shape as that of a chess piece. It was one of the little ones, the smallest ones on the board.
Hakkai stepped forward, and used the edge of his sleeve to unwind the object from the woman's lax grip without touching the crystal directly. He looked at it thoughtfully. "A pawn." His gaze fell on the dead sorceress. "I wonder whose?"
"Someone who plays chess." Gojyo looked at it, feeling faintly uneasily. "Do you think she was telling the truth?"
Hakkai glanced at him curiously. "About what?"
"About that brainwashing stuff sweeping the continent?"
"I don't know." Hakkai was frowning as he tucked the chess piece away inside the pocket of his coat. "I hope not."
The sound of wings made them both look up. The little white dragon they had freed earlier flew across the room and landed without hesitation on the shoulder of Hakkai's coat. Hakkai greeted it by stroking its feathery mane. "Hello there, Dragon-san. I'm glad to see that you're safe." The dragon gave an enthusiastic cheep, and let Hakkai scratch its chin.
Gojyo looked down at the supine form of the unconscious monk, nudging him with the toe of one boot. "So I guess we're gonna have to carry this guy all the way back to town, huh."
Before Hakkai had a chance to reply, the little white dragon startled them both by launching itself from Hakkai's shoulder again. It circled twice, like a dog getting ready to take a nap, and then it changed. One moment the little flying lizard was there, the next there was a large jeep parked in the middle of the floor under the dome.
Gojyo just looked at it. Somehow, one more bizarre occurrence on a day like today simply had no impact on him at all. He turned to Hakkai, who was studying the thing with a combination of surprise and amusement. "Hey, it's green," Gojyo remarked. "Your color."
The jeep was parked with the driver's side door facing Hakkai. Gojyo went over and walked around the vehicle, giving it a cursory exterior inspection as he added cautiously, "Can you drive?"
"I learned the basics some time ago." Hakkai gave a rueful smile. "I've never owned a car, however, so I'm afraid it's been a while."
"That's okay," Gojyo said easily. "It'll all come back to you in no time."
Hakkai shot him a measuring look. "You'd trust me to drive?"
"Sure. It's your dragon, isn't it?"
Hakkai considered that a moment, then walked over to the jeep and laid a hand down on one of the green door panels. The vehicle chirped happily in response. Gojyo barely caught his words as Hakkai murmured, "Yes. I guess it is."
He had a tiny little smile on his face as he said it. It was one of those rare smiles, a true smile--one of pleased contentment. Gojyo ducked his head so he wouldn't have to look at it too long. Because the damn thing was contagious. He had to work very hard to keep his own face straight, so he wouldn't start grinning like an idiot from the spillover of the other man's quiet happiness.
"Hey," he said gruffly, "Quit spacing out and come over here and give me a hand with sleeping beauty. I'm getting sick and tired of this fucking glass palace." He didn't wait for Hakkai's cheerful affirmative, but turned and strolled back to where the monk lay on the marble dais.
"It's time for us to go home."
+++++
A/N: Apologies to anyone who wanted to see Hakkai discovering his powers by blasting away youkai left and right. There's actually a pre-existing explanation for both the ki blasts and the shield technique in the manga and/or anime. Although I simply love to speculate about the currently unwritten parts of the Saiyuki story, I *do* try to stick to cannon to the best of my knowledge. Many thanks to the folks who offered feedback. Attiquah Gensui, UltraM2000: Sorry for the evil cliffhanger(s). At least this chapter doesn't have one. ^_^ Bakazaru Boi, black-ocean, TK: Thanks for the comments. A little encouragement always goes a long way to inspire an author to sit down and write more. Chiefraz, amanda: Glad you liked Jeep's intro. It was different, even if it wasn't cannon. -_^ Blades of Ice, lizalou42: Hopefully Hakkai's dizziness is adequately explained--it wasn't intentional torture, just an attempt to form a logical progression from someone who can't sense ki patterns to someone who can. (And lizalou42--the point about the rock was well-taken. Hmm. Maybe Gojyo was channeling Kenren...?) XD: Wow, thanks for the detailed review! It's always great to get specific feedback because it helps a lot with future writing projects. Thanks! -V
