Disclaimer: I own everything…including your souls. So fork 'em over!
Story Thus Far: Alaster battles against Shield, Shizuru scraps with Blade, Touya's infected Yuusuke and the entire Third Realm slowly loses ground. Meanwhile, Kurama comes face to face with none other than his old nemesis, Karasu. What terrors can spawn from these dire circumstances?
Enjoy chapter 13!
Laughing Hopeless
"Are you hungry, Kurama-kun?"
"No."
"A shame. Everything in the Spirit Realm is exquisite."
"I'll take your word for it then."
He kept his face perfectly expressionless and his voice monotone, if not slightly blunt. Seated in a chair too large for him at the end of a table too huge to accommodate its two diners, the notorious kitsune quickly discovered the disadvantages of location behind enemy lines. For one, said enemy might catch you deep in enemy territory without allies to come swooping to the rescue. You found yourself completely at their mercy or worse…
He hadn't yet decided if this was worse.
Karasu, for the past five minute or so, had sated himself with merely watching the stoic redhead from the far side of the table, eyes dark with sadistic malice and familiar insanity. The silently burning candles floating about the room all cast eerie shadows across the heavy black jacket and myriad of silver and black buckles strapping his limber, figure. The kitsune remained unmoved for the most part.
However…
The soft shape of his mouth had become thin and strained, as if he'd swallowed a very bitter medicine and currently fought to keep it down. His exotic green-gold eyes, however, smoldered silently as he gazed upon his long-time enemy, back from the supposed grave. Yes, the fox looked very dangerous and, yes, he looked very good whilst he did so, but that didn't change that fact that Karasu had an S class youkai glaring at him across the room.
The fox youkai couldn't sense anything from the former Togoro team member. Not even a hint of energy and even his nose failed to alert him to anything peculiar. Through the mouth-watering aromas of the feast laid out before him, Karasu's scent came to him faintly, smelling mildly of ash, gunpowder, and burned lavender. He could not tell if the other demon possessed more or less spirit energy than himself or not.
It occurred to Kurama that Karasu might have positioned their individual place settings on opposite table ends more for his own safety than formality. Though Karasu possessed a deadly touch, Kurama had another century of experience under his belt and the quest demon knew better than to get too close too quickly. After all, unless he was willing to go toe-to-toe with Yomi…
…he wouldn't try it with Kurama.
Instead, the ebon-haired demon lounged comfortably at the opposite side of table, slicing separate sections of his meal into bite-sized portions and eating them with infallible table manners. He'd even accommodated Kurama with choice of Japanese style serving platter and chopsticks or American fork, knife and spoon. (A subtle threat in itself. Karasu knew he'd been living in America long enough to grow accustomed to their eating style) All manner of very appetizing dishes spread out in a colorful, almost decorative, display about him.
He didn't touch anything though, carefully keeping his hands folded in his lap. He sat casually, but carefully in his – admittedly comfy – chair, reclining with his head back against the headrest and as far back from any potential fumes as possible.
"So very tense, Kurama," teased Karasu. "Relax. Have some wine. Though, I do recommend the tempura."
The youko eyed him coolly. "I'd rather think clearly," was his even reply.
The black-haired youkai chuckled. "You've not changed at all over the decades. Though that pesky human shell of yours seems to have aged a couple years, it's still the same bright boy I fought over a century back. May I remark you look stunning for a demon of your age?"
"You may not."
To this Karasu merely smiled and continued eating. Kurama's ire stirred and the redhead's eyes slitted dangerously, a more Yoko trait then human. Unlike Yoko however, his next words carried no mocking cynicism or sarcasm; merely a bland curiosity with a hint of business-like projection.
"Why did you bring me here, Karasu? It's been over a century and I assure you I'm not the same fighter you met over a century ago," he informed the ebon-haired demon warningly. "I'm prepared."
"That's precious, Kurama-kun," laughed Karasu, taking a draught from his wine glass before going on. "But you can't hurt me a bit under these circumstances."
The fox demon lifted brow and laid an arm along the edge of the table, long dexterous fingers drumming the wooden surface idly. Karasu watched him shift with an unreadable expression of both fascination and hatred. A disturbing mixture to be sure, but the redhead would not let himself fall prey to intimidation tactics as he had so long ago.
"Really? What pray tell is preventing me from taking your head off right now? Do you doubt I'm capable?"
"Never, Kurama-sama," Karasu said, appalled. "Your exploits place you in a far higher class than I. Now, the question is do you think your capable of destroying me. Are you stronger? Better? Smarter? Superior to me?"
Kurama leaned his elbows on the table, folding his slim fingers together in front of his face, hiding the lower part of his expression from view. Only his vibrant gold-green eyes, spliced with Yoko and Suiichi, narrowed thoughtfully. Between the two passed a dark moment of twisted understanding and Karasu smiled his most vampirish grin. Kurama had obviously thought on this subject long and hard before. Now his ponderings would be called into the limelight.
The fox demon closed his eyes. "No…No I'm not."
"Then why did you beat me last time?"
"The circumstances favored me then," came Kurama's simple reply.
Karasu placed his wine glass beside his plate and bared pearly teeth in a very predatory smirk, lavender eyes glinting with anticipation. "Pray tell. I'm curious to know how they favored you then and not now. Then, when I was stronger than you, faster and better prepared. How did you beat me? Twice no less. Tell me."
"You were…are…at a disadvantage," Kurama answer cryptically.
"Yes?" Karasu pressed. "Such as what? I had you in my hands more than once and yet you still win. It's tormented my sleep for over a century. What prevents me from killing you like I have everything else? What is my disadvantage?"
"You're insane."
The final conclusion his words led up to came out somewhat blunt, matter-of-factly and down right acidic. The kitsune's brilliant irises, splinters of pale moon gold scattered through the rings of emerald, glittered with barely hidden distaste. Karasu leaned back in his seat, pursing his lips and making a low humming sound at the back of his throat. He traced a long, clawed finger around the rim of his glass, prompting the crystal glass to sing appreciatively under his touch.
Kurama didn't seem keen on wasting more time however. He lowered his hands.
"Why are you working for Enma?" he asked flatly. "It's fairly obvious that's what's going on. You're infecting and destroying Yuusuke's kingdom from the inside out."
"Very clever Kurama. Did my dear pet, Touya tell you so? Yes. Of course he did," Karasu mused aloud. "You should be proud. That young ninja had grown into quite the worthy fighter thanks to your words. He admires you very much, you know."
"I'm curious about something," Kurama continued, ignoring the quest demon's commendable words on his ninja victim. He propped his chin atop his knitted fingers, expression perfectly neutral. "All those years back, when you came back and kidnapped me with the Kistune Flute. Who was it really that brought you back? Did you come after me as a…bonus for something perhaps?" The corner of his mouth turned up delicately. "Well, Karasu?
The demon smiled thinly, a gossamer veil of black hair slipping over his narrow shoulders to trail like silk strings along the table top, sucking up the light and throwing none back into the air for the eyes of others. His pale complexion, even from this distance looked corpse-like to the youko and he carefully picked up a thin, razor blade from the rim of a sushi dish beside him.
Tapping a finger delicately against the blade he finally answered. "Since you've thought on this some decades now, I suppose I could tell you," he consented mildly. A malicious gleam entered his gaze, making his sensuous amethyst eyes glow a hellish violet-red.
"You won't live long enough to appreciate it though."
Kurama shifted and sat back, listening intently and looking for all the world like an attentive student. However, behind those many faceted eyes, his quick mind raced in a hundred different directions, all speed, zooming and thinking as he struggled to come to terms with his situation and figure the most efficient means of escape. Karasu's information would prove helpful, if the demon possessed enough sanity to keep the facts straight, but ultimately, the red-head's goal consisted of escaping and finding the quickest means to reach and aid Yuusuke.
He knew now…he was the only one who could.
Yuusuke looked away from his bloody fingers, auburn eyes moving up to look at Touya's cold and smiling features. The pale blue nimbus about his body siphoned about his arms, sending sporadic bursts of azure energy through the air around him. His solid blue eyes, frozen in a perpetual grin of merciless insanity, made his youthful appeal ugly and creepy like a broken clown doll. The violent snapping wind produced by his energy tore at his hap-hazard bangs, throwing his comfortable shinobi clothing back and forth.
"Touya," the young ruler said softly, beseeching. "Touya. You've got to snap out of it. Karasu's controlling you. You don't want to do this."
"Of course I don't," the ice demon laughed, aura simultaneously spitting blue whorls of frosty power across his forearm, encasing the limb in misty blue ice. He dropped into a sudden crouch, knees out, chin raised and tilted to the side in a cat-like pose of tactful thought. "But what I want doesn't matter anymore."
"This is suicide Touya."
"I've already won," the Ice Master giggled horribly. The grin on his face made him look like psychotic child. "That dart cut my hand as I released it. My blood is yours and so is my disease. You'll understand why I can't help myself soon enough, lord Yuusuke."
"So you're not going to kill me, is that it? You're just here to watch." Yuusuke said scathingly, spiky mop of dark hair obscuring his eyes, fangs bared in a painful grimace. He clenched his hand, knotting stained fingers into a fist. "Just like Karasu. Always dramatic and sadistic."
Touya stood up; brows raised in a perplexed expression as the young lord made no move to rise with him, remaining crouched in the blackened earth. The former Tantei made a low growling noise that Touya deciphered as a laugh, deep, demonic and bitter. He turned his face toward the slighter, infected youkai, smiling spitefully at the blue-eyed ninja as his wiry shoulders rose and fell, trembling with laughter.
"You're strong, so I know that's not the insanity laughing," remarked Touya acidly, eyes narrowing with uncharacteristic coldness for one possessed my Karasu. He lifted his hands, blue energy swirling. "What are you planning?"
"It's simple really…" Yuusuke said. His eyes flashed and in those dark orbs burned twin furnace flames. "Jin may not have the heart to kill you…but I won't have you killing my friends and family."
The ice demon smiled insanely.
"I already have."
Yuusuke just stared.
"I only just handed Kurama into the hands of Enma and sent your daughter to the afterlife, the disease boiling in her blood." Touya paused, examining the Toushin, who'd gone still and silent. "You know…as she collapsed in that street I'll bet she was cursing her demon blood. If she'd had just a trace left of human in her…true human…she might have lived."
"Bastard."
Touya flinched.
In that time it had taken him to blink, Yuusuke had relocated himself and seized Touya by the throat. His long, steely claws trembled with rage, slicing thin lines in the pale flesh along the ice youkai's throat. The dark tattoos lining his features glowed with inky light, undulating and pulsing erratically with his rage and infection. His long fangs bared themselves as he hoisted the slender ice demon into the air by neck and holding him there.
"I could crush you," he rumbled, vocal cords trembling as they fought to become the throat of a true youkai, bestial and animalistic. "I should crush you. I want to…but I can't. Because he wants me to and I can never let him control me. Not like he's controlling you, Touya."
"He'll control you no matter what you try. Might as well kill me," the shinobi gasped, thin fingers grappling uselessly with his captor's iron fingers. He smiled through his pain. "Kill me."
Yuusuke paused, his blood red demon glow dwindling, his spirit sensing something changing within Touya's temperament. The young ninja struggled; face contorting as if in terrible pain. His eyes cracked open, his features turned sour and taunt with agony. The once icy blue orbs glowed entirely with sick maroon and lavender light, Karasu's familiar poisonous energy seeping into the air through Touya's tortured body.
He forced his head aside, Yuusuke's claws punching through the thin flesh of his neck, red blood welling up and running like water freely down his pale neck. He gripping Yuusuke's wrists tightly, eyes wild, rabid, like those of a desperate animal.
"Kill me! Kill me, Yuusuke!" he hissed. "You have to!"
The Toushin drew back. "Kurama wouldn't kill you and Jin wouldn't either! I won't give in! Karasu wins if I do."
Touya collapsed in the dirt, icy mist coiling about his trembling body like silken gauze too fine to hold a form. His fingers coiled into a tight ball. He lifted his glowing eyes from the battle torn ground, his haunting blue gaze flickering with lavender light.
"Damn you…all of you. Things would be so much easier if you would just listen to me for once," he murmured, skin crackling as ice splintered about his flesh, jutting up from the ground only to fall apart with his lack of concentration.
He hugged himself and shivered violently and for a moment Yuusuke saw what everyone who knew Touya had always imagined seeing. Touya…vulnerable, his face pale and open as a rainbow of different emotions flitted across his deceptively youthful countenance. He trembled, body going suddenly into violent convulsions, racking his slighter frame. He cried out and doubled over, clutching his head and groaning through tightly clenched teeth.
Yuusuke paused, his crimson brown eyes flickering uncertainly. This seemed…weird. Weirder than all the other shit Touya had been hurling at him for the last couple minutes. The Toushin took an experimental step toward the ice demon who moaned, hanging his head like he might puke at any moment and looking genuinely miserable.
He paused. "Umm…Touya?"
"It's time then," the smaller demon gasped. He twitched spasmodically and went back to his original position. "I knew it couldn't last forever. I'm not strong enough to last forever. I guess I should be happy…"
"Kool Aid?"
Touya lifted his haggard face and smirked at the Toushin, a rare expression even for the real Touya yet…right somehow.
"Hello, Yuusuke-san."
With that simple greeting everything else melted away. Abandoning his doubts Yuusuke dashed to the fallen ice demon because after all, if he'd already been infected then Touya really couldn't do him much more harm than that. He fell on his knees beside the familiar shinobi and seized his thin shoulders pulling the slighter youkai upright.
Touya reached up and gripped his wrists, his solid blue eyes completely, wonderfully, expressionless and business-like. He frowned as if perplexed by Yuusuke show of emotion.
"Yuusuke. The cure is a flower. Dreaming Bell," he said, voice cool and calm.
Totally in control. Nothing sadistic, twisted or insane about him, nothing but genuine icy Touya the frigid bastard goodness.
"The pollen merely needs to enter the lungs and the effects of Karasu's 'nightmare syndrome' will vanish and…and why are you looking at me like that? This is important. You have to tell the others before you become ill as well. Are you listening, idiot?"
Yuusuke for the life of him could not wipe the stupid, happy grin off his face. "You have no idea how happy it makes me to hear you call me an idiot. How did you break free of the sickness? Do you have the flower?"
"No," Touya sighed. "I – ahh!" He broke off, clutching his head.
The Toushin caught the smaller demon, eyes wide. "Touya! Touya, what's wrong?"
"I'm not cured…I'm going into the final stage. I'll slip into a coma shortly, so you'd best listen to me before I do," Touya informed him, outrageously calm as he made the horrific statement.
"WHAT?"
"Shut up and listen to me. You need to get to Spirit World Headquarters and find Kurama. He can grow the flower and spread it all over the Makai, but you've got to move quickly." He reached into his tunic and pulled out a slip of paper. "It looks like this. So if you have any healers left ask them if they have this flower. You might save your men if you have a good plant manipulator in your ranks."
Yuusuke took it numbly. "But…Touya…"
"I didn't kill her."
The young ruler blinked. "What?"
"Your daughter…she's…alive," Touya's eyes fluttered and he sagged, falling forward into the other demon's startled arms. He shook himself and sat back up, swaying. "I lied to…you. She's alive…get her…the cure."
"Thank you, Touya," the Toushin bit his lip.
"Just…tell Jin…I'm sorry."
Touya sat back, leaning over his knees and closing his pale blue eyes. A silent 'get lost you idiot'. Yuusuke took to the sky, knowing Touya didn't want him to waste anymore time standing around. Touya felt the world tip dangerously and hugged his knees tightly to keep from falling over.
He reflected, before darkness took his thankfully into silence on just how much he hated it when they called him 'Kool-Aid'.
Veil of the Chinese Dragon Demon Clan and General of the Third Realm never ran from the enemy. Never. The pursuit of keeping this record perfect made him downright rabid in a melee and by the end of his battle the draconic youkai came to realize a scenario in which he had not considered before. As thousands of needle sharp barbs swarmed through the air about him like a living swarm of pet bees, guided by his dragon youki, he found himself surrounded on all side by enemy youkai.
And every single one of them bore Yuusuke's banner hues on their armor.
Grimly, the dragon battled on as his own men turned coat and attacked the only uninfected being on the battle field. They came at him in waves, breaking over his swirling shield of metal barbs like water against a particularly spiky rock. Blood sprayed everything, soaking the ground crimson as demons threw themselves into the flesh shredding blizzard of metallic death.
The lone General burned the blood away from his flesh with his natural dragon heat, boiling it away before it could find a spot on his sable skin to soak. He gazed with frustrated eyes at the carnage and mindless kamikaze attacks of his own disciplined and loyal troops. He wanted to get away from them, spare them death until a cure could free them but he knew he could not risk them coming to the fortress and adding to the enemy number.
He had to kill them all.
His hands clenched tightly about his twin saber blades, glistening with a black iridescent sheen shared only by the scales of his ancestor dragon kin. The treasured weapons could not be destroyed by anything method of demon or spirit alike.
He prayed not to use them against his own men. His Talon Swarm technique did damage enough.
"NEVERMORE!" screeched a voice wildly. He jerked his head up, golden lizard eyes narrowing as a familiar harpy messenger hurled herself at him, mouth yawning in a wild scream. She pulled up sharply, suddenly and angled herself over the youkai, her mouth growing wider and wider and wider…
He started.
"Oh shit…"
He had no time to get away before she sucked a breath and loosed the most hideous, nerve rending, ear-drum popping sound ever heard by ningen, demon or spirit. Veil fell to his knees, blades clattering to the dirt as he clutched his ears, fingers buried in his flaming hair as he tried to block out he mind scrambling noise. He felt his control slipping as the sound sought to drive him insane. He struggled, struggled, to maintain…to hold himself…to keep his brain…from shattering…
She ran out of breath…
…and died, plunging from the sky to fall earthward, having expending the last of her power in her last attack. Veil moaned, trying to orient himself as the sky, the ground and air spun together in an indistinguishable blur, morphing everything into a giant pinwheel of reality, whirling in the wind.
She'd just Screeched him and damned if he could even stand up straight after an attack like that.
He cursed his luck as his muscles quaked and gave out beneath him, dropping the young demon on his flank, limp and helpless. He shivered, suddenly cold in the silence around him, his ears temporarily ringing. He felt the strongest demons recovering from the harpy Screech. They lurched toward him, diseased breathe ragged from bloody and fanged jaws. They crawled over the piles of dead surrounding the fallen General and descended upon him like rabid jackals to a kill.
Veil swallowed his moment of fear as the familiar face of his platoon captain loomed over him; his golden orbs darted from her lustful green eyes to the hungry expressions of her toon members. The disease made the B-class female youkai's deepest darkest desires and emotions come to the surface, the other C-class merely turned into killing machines. They wanted to kill him…she wanted to torture him.
She spun on her allies and blasted them to bloody scrapes, their smoking flesh raining across the battlefield. She smiled brokenly and turned her attentions back to Veil, helpless before her. She'd always hated him for being so emotionless, so strong and unattainable to her. She'd give sway to her desires now. Veil struggled to move but his body felt like lead, vulnerable, unguarded lead.
"Veil-chan," she gargled.
He closed his eyes, waiting to die.
"Not so strong now are you?" she spat, her frayed brown tresses tickling his forehead as she hissed in his ear. Her hand seized his throat and applied pressure, squeezing the windpipe mercilessly. He choked, trying instinctively to breath. She smiled in ecstasy as he fluttered under her violent touch. "That's right. Try to breathe, dragon-boy. It hurts doesn't it, little raven? Doesn't it?"
She shook him.
"Answer me! You always ignore me! My soul from out of that shadow!" she sputtered, spittle dribbling from her lips, the mad poetry taking hold in her mind. "That lies floating on the floor…shall be lifted nevermore! Nevermore! You'll scorn me! No more, Veil! Nevermore!"
He felt his mind slipping away, darkness closing in on him. To die like this…He'd never imagined, but no matter a warriors prowess a single moment of coincidence can kill them. He'd learned that but never believed it applied to him until now. Maybe his sensei would forgive him for his arrogance…
Shizz-it!
Blood…the scent of blood!
Veil's eyes snapped open as those brutal fingers left his throat, yanked away by some unseen force. Everything looked so foggy and blurry, but those hands had gone and he sucked a hungry breath, his starving lungs greedily accepting the air denied them. He still couldn't move, lying on his back coughing and gasping as feeling slowly wormed back into his limbs, the sensation of a hand against his forehead, a coolness spreading from the touch.
Suddenly the paralysis from the Screech attack dissipated and his eyes began to clear. Blinking the dragon youkai sat up and grabbed his saber immediately, hopping into a wary crouch and backing away from the darkly garbed youkai in front of him, eyes refusing to believe what he saw. To his blurred eyes a dark winged figure with bright hair had just saved him. For a moment he deliriously wondered why another dragon youkai had come to find him.
An illusion! It had to be! Trickery! His vision cleared somewhat and he saw the demon, in fact, had black bird wings, not the leathery membrane of draconic kin. His hair had no red in it, only a wild blond and his eyes blood red instead of gold. He knew what this creature really was…but once again had trouble believing.
"Who are you?" he rasped, throat still aching.
"The one who just saved you, dragon demon," was the peeved reply. "I thought dragon youkai were extinct."
"And I thought shadowkai kept to the Unlit," the ebon-skinned demon shot back.
The dark angel shifted uncomfortably, edging away from the bleeding stump where the captain's head had once resided on her shoulders. "We do. I'm just not popular back home. Point is, you're not infected and I'm not infected and that puts us on the same side doesn't it?"
Veil thought he sounded too sure of himself. "I don't know," he said suspiciously. "What's a dark angel doing in this war? Causing trouble?"
"Fighting one of Kumuro's assassins," he replied with a shrug. "But there's still one more out here so I'm heading to Yuusuke's keep to try and hold ground. Unless you stop me of course."
"At this point, I don't care," Veil huffed. His golden eyes feinted to the left, over the demon's shoulder. "Umm…your last assassin have silver hair, white eyes, gray skin and made a really weird humming sound?"
"Dammit," sighed the dark angel. He turned around to see Veil's point of view.
About fifty feet in front of them, ten feet up hovered a strange humanoid being. Dressed in a simple white haori and totally unarmed the new comer looked like a harmless demon around twenty-ish in human measurements. His expressionless and life-devoid alabaster eyes fell upon the pair with mechanical suddenness. His long silver hair haloed his pale too-symmetrical face like a cloud of liquid, a buzzing hum like an engine purr originating from him.
"Are you Cloud of the Unlit?" he asked; voice young and emotionless, like a computer recording.
Cloud, his name apparently, threw up his hands in exasperation looking theatrically pissed off. "The godsdamned robot gets my name right! What is wrong with my name dammit?"
"I am Marionette. I have orders from master Kumuro to eradicate you and your companions," the literal killing machine went on.
Here the mechanical assassin turned his attention to Veil who groaned. Naturally it had orders to kill companions, none specifically, but any vague 'companions' in the area at the time. Namely him. The dragon demon wondered why the Fates hated him so. Veil's head hurt. He glared at the blond waif demon who brought this trouble upon him and the shadowkai sighed apologetically.
"Help me fight him?" the shadowkai inquired hopefully. "Consider it pay back?"
"Damn you," sighed the dragon demon. "Should have left me dead and spared me this crap."
The two strangers turned to face the former guardian of Mukuro turned assassin. Veil's fallen barbs leapt airborne and swirled about his body like mini planets orbiting his aura. Cloud ran fingers through his wings, selecting two pinions feathers to serve his needs. They morphed into a set of hooked katana-like blades and he set himself up to fight, wings poised to take flight.
"To the air?" Veil inquired.
"Yup."
They took off, leaping into the wind as Marionette's power cell sent energy racing through his artificial eyes. He raised his hands and white light blazed from his palms igniting the skies with deadly power. The two dark winged demons glanced at each other and couldn't help but smile as the S-class power raced up from the ground in the form of two living whips of lightening and steel, attached at the wrist to Marionette's arms.
The assassin flicked his wrists. The two whips struck the ground and trees fell from their trunk, slicing through like thin pocky sticks at snack time. Pupiless, soulless white eyes rose to gaze upon his twin targets.
"No escape," Marionette told them.
"Nope," they chorused…and plunged at the machine in a wild double kamikaze dive.
Keiko screamed as the main gate cracked and splintered, threatening to cave in for the billionth time in the last twenty minutes. Jin raced over from the other side of the fortress to barricade the failing door with his wind, bracing it with hurricane currents and holding it stable. A couple earth demons tried to cover the door with rock, but failed to do more than pile dirt halfway up the giant entryway.
"Aye. S'not lookin' terribl'y broight is it?" Jin, bleeding from a minor head wound, said with a weak grin.
Keiko, energy quickly depleting shook her head wearily and flashed him a giant, totally ungenuine smile. "What are you talking about? We've practically won! Look! They've only busted through our outer walls and left a quarter of our men. It's almost an unfair match up."
Jin nodded thoughtfully. "I guess yer right," he agreed heartily, smiling right back. He blue eyes sparkled dimly. A ghost of his former happiness.
All the troops within hearing distance, a motley, bruised, ragged lot of Yuusuke best, brightest, quickest, luckiest or most cowardly fighters all laughed hopelessly along with their commanding officers, knowing that surrender meant death. Knowing that accepting defeat would only get them killed and no form of typical treason to gain favor with the enemy would work this time.
Together they would stand and together they would fall. Of this they were certain.
Botan raced tirelessly from one end of the medic tent to the other, frantically using up what of her healing powers she had left, bandaging, patching, sewing and mopping as she went. Her pale blue hair had fallen out of its neat pony-tail to bounce about her shoulders and stick to her sweat soaked forehead. The dead she shoved out of the tent to make way for the injured that poured in from the walls.
Soon they'd have to retreat to the inner chambers.
"Minna, hon would you hold this basin for me?" Botan asked gingerly.
The tiny winged girl nodded energetically, entranced by the pain, death and excitement of battle seething around her. Her oil black eyes watched the frantic ferry-girl move amongst the dying with hypnotic interest. In her hands, between the said basin and her small clawed fingers, she clutched a sweet smelling white flower, like the one she'd given Jin after Karasu hit him in the neck.
"Nevermore, nevermore. My soul shall rise nevermore. Never to clasp Lenore. Nevermore!" she sang, dancing and spinning, spilling water on the blood soaked stone and washing the thick red grime away.
Author's Note: Yeah I know, I suck and I need to update faster to make up for my suckiness. But don't worry I have a head start on the next chappie and I expect it up very soon…no I'm serious this time!
Cloud8.9: Whatever, you little liar.
Cheezit: You're hopeless. You start fics and then lose interest and forget all about it.
Me: (raspy because she has whooping cough) But I wuv meh Inuyasha fwiccy…Sesshomaru is so kewl!
Cloud8.9: Get to work you slacker! Move! (hits her with pocky sticks) Hey, these are bad! (eats)
All: (eat pocky sticks)