Disclaimer: I own nothing. 'Ware ze Spoilers for Gunlock.

...wait, this is an AU. What spoilers? D I don't even known what happened officially.

PART FOUR

In Which Sanzo Learns That the Greatest Weapons Are Those Everyone Later Laughs At You For Using

Pain. Pain consumed his universe, pain of body and pain of mind. Dimly Jien could hear his own voice howling in purest agony, and other voices rising up to meet his, but that was far far away and the red that covered his eyes was blinding, was suffocating, was burning in his throat and lungs and he was lost to its lurid glow. It felt good to give in, to surrender after so long fighting the Wave induced insanity that nibbled always at the edges of his mind. This place did that to people.

He let his eyes slide shut and drifted on a sea of red.

When the torrential pulse of the Minus Wave finally subsided, Sanzo, being a human (and an exceedingly strong willed one) was the only one who got back up. Thus it was solely his dubious pleasure to view the gargantuan form of Gyumaoh slowly rising from the carved throne he had occupied for five hundred years, shaking off wires and parts of scaffolding like a snake shedding its skin. Red hellfire gleamed from the pits of shadowed, sunken eye sockets. The mouth gapped open, yellowed fangs protruding, and the first inhalation of air inflated ancient lungs and carried oxygen to a slab of gray matter and cerebellum easily the size of the Jeep. There was a sword, too, leaning against the wall, one with a blade so large it could have served as a double lane bridge across a river. The demon king's hand groped in the darkness and settled on its familiar hilt, dragged the weapon slowly towards him with a horrible shriek of steel on stone.

It had taken the strength of a toushin taishi to defeat this monster before. Sanzo stood alone before him, a human armed only with a really bad temper and an adamantine refusal to back down when he'd come this far. He was pissed, too, well and truly furious, and had been since he'd first seen the star pendant set prominently in Gyokumen's control panel.

hair the color of moonlight

Sanzo leveled his baleful glare at the towering youkai and threw down his challenge. "Omae o korosu." I'm going to kill you.

Gyumaoh's ancient lips split in a wide, bloodsucking grin.

In the Heavens, Kanzeon screeched at Jiroushin to hurry up and get the damned popcorn before the show started.

"Devour them, my love. Devour them, devour the world. Send them all to Hell!" Still on the scaffold, Gyokumen seemed to have at last succumbed to the madness of her own creation, silksmooth voice near shattered, her once immaculate hair hanging crazily around her contorted face. The Minus Wave's pulse shivered her heartbeat, stopped it, then commanded it beat again in proper time with itself. Kill. Kill. Kill.

She laughed and it took her laughter into itself, echoed it, amplified it. Her insane eyes settled on those who had not joined the irritating priest in retaining consciousness. She commanded and the Wave relayed.

It whispered to Dokugakuji with her voice and

murderer

his eyes flew open. Images spilled out before them like blood from a wound, he was face down staring at dirty concrete so how could he be watching his mother slide forward limply off the edge of his sword when he knew it was only a memory?

traitor

His own mind rebelled, refusing to cooperate when he tried to tell himself it wasn't real, that he hadn't let Gojyo die and that

kill the human

he hadn't let his Prince die either, not yet, except Kou's eyes looked so young in the afternoon sun with blood pouring down his neck and

Killkillkillkill

he shook with the force of it, the burning need to protect what was precious to him, even if that meant ripping out the throat of the weak, fragile human who dared harm a packmate and her voice was wind hissing in his ears and all he could see was

red

Sanzo meanwhile remained utterly oblivious to the danger. The monk was, after all, facing a far more obvious threat in the form of Gyuu-zilla (now with sword wielding action). Not to mention the fact that a person tended to not pay attention to his or her surroundings as much when simultaneously trying to figure out just how the royal fuck one was supposed to fight a god of destruction without sutra or gun or even a sharp pointy stick to help things along.

Thus being stabbed in the back came as somewhat of a rude awakening.

Jien's charge from behind took Sanzo in the shoulder, summoned blade slicing clean and deep. The monk half twisted as he staggered back, a snarled curse on his lips, and the surprise on his face at the identity of his attacker might have been a little bit gratifying to a certain pair of youkai not present and a certain monkey not awake. For all the blond's bitching about the general untrustworthiness of the youkai race, there were souls Sanzo instinctively recognized and responded to as Lawful Good (or at least Lawful Neutral or Chaotic Good) and Jien's was one of them. Youkai were walking time bombs under the Minus Wave, yes. Some of them, though, he'd grown accustomed to believing as strong enough to hold onto their sense of self. He hadn't been expecting betrayal from someone who'd killed their own mother to save an innocent child from being murdered.

But then, it all had to do with personal weakness. A basic, decent personality was not enough to save one from his or her own flaws. Rikudo had taught him that.

Blood dripping from between his fingers where he clutched at the wound, Sanzo found his voice. "Nevermind. I'm killing you first."

Jien's empty eyes mocked him. The canines were bared in a growl, the muscles trembled as though in fury (or hunger), but there was no drive of rationality or even desire behind it. An animal with the frothing mouth disease did not recognize its own sickness. It operated on instinct and that which drove it to attack where it would not ordinarily, to kill where it would not ordinarily.

Rabid creatures had to be put down or at the very least contained. Sanzo set himself up grimly in fighting stance, hoping a good solid chop to the neck would drop the bastard before Jien did something to force him into taking more permanent action. Gojyo was a strange guy; Sanzo knew that (eventually) he'd be forgiven about the shooting thing (whereas Hakkai probably never would), but if he came back dragging Jien's corpse there would be hell to pay.

Cursing the gods sounded like a better idea than dealing with any of it. He just loved these little win-win situations they seemed to delight in presenting him with.

And to make matters that much more complicated, there was a sudden surge of heat from the left, and the blond's wary sideways glance revealed a newly conscious Rasetsunyo rising to her feet, cloaked in fire, amethyst eyes unfocused and a frighteningly serene expression on her face. Rasetsunyo was one of those creepy people like Hakkai who, as they got closer to absolute zero on the About To Go Completely Fucking Postal Meter, the more they managed to look perfectly calm or even pleasant.

Well, shit. So much for that garbage about high ranking youkai being more resistant to the effects of the Minus Wave. Even if it were true, it wasn't much help in this scenario. And if Gojyo was sure to pitch a hissy fit about a dead brother, Sanzo shuddered to think what hysterics Kougaiji would go through over a dead Empress.

And she'd certainly been one of the most useful of his tagalongs thus far. Fux. He didn't want to kill them.

He was also waiting for the monkey to get up and face off with him as well just to make his shitty day complete. But Goku for once disappointed his expectations (not that this was a bad thing), and remained sprawled boneless in the rubble. The monkey wasn't a true youkai, after all. Apparently all a concentrated Minus Wave could do with his tiny simian brain was overload it until it shut down of its own accord, instead of rewriting anything inside it.

Neither help nor hindrance from that end. Useless ape.

"Come on, you assholes," Sanzo snarled, backing up to get both brainwashed zombies in his line of sight. Jien he thought he could take. Rasetsunyo hell no without the sutra, but really, what was another probably hopeless battle stacked up on top of the one that ultimately awaited him? At least Gyumaoh appeared to have stopped moving, perhaps waiting to watch the scuffle between allies along with his tramp on the scaffolding.

...tramp on the scaffolding. Her standing in front of her machines. Source of the Minus Wave.

A Great and Mighty Revelation suddenly occurred to Sanzo in the form of an earlier, silly idle thought recalled for no apparent reason, and he seized on it desperately to formulate a plan. Not much of one, he would freely admit. But it was better than getting chopped up or fried or eaten, or more likely, suffering all three one after the other.

He risked a look away from his two opponents to search for a subject with potential. There were lots laying around, no surprise given the explosions of earlier on, and he managed to snag one easily enough.

Sparing a thought of fervent thankfulness that Hakkai the strategist was not here to see him do something so monumentally retarded, the monk targeted a brightly glowing congregation of metal things (the more glowy the more important, he rationalized) and let fly with his last hope.

He threw a rock.

Yes.

A rock.

And this thrown rock smashed the illuminated cluster of stuff rather neatly, wreaking mad damage upon what turned out, miraculously, to be a bunch of power conductors supplying electrical current to the machines. The lights on one entire side of the equipment tower began to blink furiously and a high whining noise began building up to a pitch, indicated overload. More caterwauling came from the bitch at the console. Then both lights and noise simultaneously went dead.

Score, Sanzo thought. Jien and Rasetsunyo, who'd been slowly advancing on him, stopped in their tracks. Jien shook his head violently and staggered sideways a little, as though he were tipsy. Kougaiji's mother merely blinked, confusion flickering across her face. Her flames dimmed and wavered like a candle on the verge of being blown out.

Higher ranking youkai. She was more likely to come out of it than Jien. So Sanzo yelled at her, "I shot your son in the throat today!"

Her eyes abruptly focused on him. Sanity flooded back into her expression, followed swiftly by outrage. "You did WHAT?!"

Sanzo pointed up at Gyokumen. "I mean, she shot your son in the throat today!"

Rasetsunyo shrieked in rage and, still a bit addled by the lust for violence pounding in her head, struck without a second thought at the target presented her. A veritable firestorm abruptly roared out of nothingness to engulf the equipment tower. Gyokumen Kyushu managed a yowl of disbelief and a single step back before being incinerated, thus solving the dispute over who got to kill her. When he finally de-zombified, Jien was going to sulk like a high school prom queen stood up by her date, Sanzo thought distantly, watching the tower's destruction. Its framework began to glow a bright, cherry red after only a few seconds, losing all kinds of basic structural integrity as was metal's inevitable habit when superheated. It sagged and collapsed in on itself, dripping molten steel to puddle and steam on the dank, debris strewn floor.

Melting the machines seemed to have much the same reduction effect on the Minus Wave that throwing rocks did. Probably a much greater one. Jien was on his knees again looking traumatized, which seemed to be a popular expression for him today. At least he'd not passed out at the sudden reclamation of his sanity.

Sanzo strode over to where his monkey still lay senseless and kicked him. "Oi, saru. Wake the hell up."

Goku did, groggily mumbling that he would never, ever play in front of speeding trains again. And that he was hungry.

Kanzeon cackled to hirself. "Rocks."

And then there was only Gyumaoh to deal with.

...........


Ze Obligatory Interlude of Rampant D00m and AU-ness

It must be mentioned at this point, dear readers, a few matters of history that without which none of this presently will make any sense.

One of these matters concerns the very bad habits of the Sanzo-ikkou (and they have many, many bad habits.) Arguably the worst of these is their tendency to meet interesting people on the Journey West, spark a few intriguing conversations and probably some fights, then ram headlong into some irresolvable difference that motivates Sanzo to shoot the other party in question dead. Then the ikkou moves on and repeats the cycle a few days/weeks/whatever later.

To put it bluntly, very few are the people who survive the attentions of the monk and his companions. If they do, it's usually because of an accident or a retreat (and too few idiots seize upon this as a viable way out) or else some other ridiculous form of self-resurrection. The ikkou are at war with the world. They blame their lethal retaliation on the pre-emptive first offensives of everyone else, and perhaps it is justified. If someone tries to kill you, after all, it is only natural to object, and object violently. And if said someone happens to die in the end of the fight, it was their own damn fault for picking it in the first place.

Sanzo and Co. take advantage of this moral loophole on a daily basis. It wasn't their fault that most of their fights seemed to end in such decisive fatalities. One could even construe that as a nod to tactical logic. Leaving a live opponent on the path behind is to invite a stab in the back. So it was only logical, really, that the ikkou rarely (read: never) spared the lives of their enemies.

This is not to say that they are heartless and dispassionate slaughter machines. One or more of them had, in not a few instances, sincerely wished to avoid killing the opposing side. But never Sanzo. Sanzo was often the most prominent advocate for securing the certainty that nothing behind him would ever rise again to make trouble in the future.

Until one day another priest on a divine mission and a mind numbingly unfashionable hat flounced, swishy-like, into their lives.

His name was Hazel Glosse, (O.o;) a bishop from the West (not Tenjiku, the other West), and he had come to Save the Imperiled Land of Togenkyou From the Youkai Scourge.

The mission statement alone won the man a few gold stars in Sanzo's Extremely Messed Up Character Judgement Book, if only because it seemed to irritate his companions. So he refrained from shooting Hazel on sight for being a copycat. That, and the other priest was fabulously swishy. Sanzo hadn't seen so much conflicted vulnerability and fronted arrogance parading around in such a shiny, silver tongued, high handed package since ...well, ever. Kami-sama might have been prettier, but the decay in his soul made him about as attractive to Sanzo's very discriminating tastes as a month dead corpse. And oh so self righteous Homura, in truth a suffering man pushed far too close to the edge, had willingly chosen his own deluded arrogance and allowed it to blind him.

Hazel had the poison butterfly sickness of Kami-sama in his spirit, but it was not rooted so deep as to become inseparable. Hazel had the tragedy of a fallen War God behind his arrogant sapphire eyes, but had not doomed himself to following a suicidal path. Hazel could still be saved, or better yet, could still save himself, if only someone gave him a reason to do so.

But Sanzo was not in the business of playing savior. Humans and youkai alike were fundamentally weak. Let them live and die on terms of their own strength, or lack thereof. He had no time to waste on the reformation of idiots.

When Hazel said it was destiny that they had met, Sanzo summoned all his disdain and threw it in the silver haired man's face. He was not, repeat was not, going to be anyone else's savior. And Kanzeon could go jump in a swamp if se thought Sanzo's refusal to do so was going to be swayed by a pretty face and a shockingly coincidental sob story of a history. Let the devoted shikigami rescue his master. Or let the bishop's own sacrificed god lead his follower's soul to redemption (but the gods save no one, Sanzo's mind whispered.) And, finally, there was also the matter of..

Blood. Rain. Tears.

"I leave the rest to you, Genjyo Sanzo."

Sanzo wasn't worthy of being anyone's savior.

Hazel took rejection badly (yet another thing they had in common) and promptly flipped out. Sanzo waited patiently for the chance to shoot him. No more Hazel meant no more internal conflict, and Sanzo really, really disliked being kept up at night by his own disquieting thoughts (no chance of getting someone else to exhaust his body until it drowned out his mind, either, because the monkey was still Too Young and Hakkai and Gojyo had been very put out with him at the time).

So Sanzo had been just as surprised as the rest of them when the Appropriate Dramatic Moment For Spouting Truisms and Shooting People Dead came, and the monk did not pull the trigger.

"You're an idiot," Sanzo told the stricken man before him instead. "Pride and your own ideals of revenge are the only things keeping you on this so-called divine mission, so stop killing the goddamned youkai and let me deal with them. That's my job. You're no good at it."

Hazel (along with everyone else) was doing a credible imitation of a landed fish. He didn't seem to be able to find any words to protest, or even look away, but maybe that was just because the Smith&Wesson was still pressed to the bishop's forehead.

The blond continued grimly. "If you really want to protect the people here, do it with your own strength. Creating an army of shikigami to exterminate all youkai isn't going to save anyone in the end. Especially not," and Sanzo leaned down to speak to shell of one ear, whispering, "an already murdered master, or the child you once were. Grow the fuck up."

Then he turned away in a dramatic swirl of white robes, leaving Hazel speechless, lying in the dust, to stare after him.

Hatless, too, although the bishop was far too shaken to notice until well into the next day. Halfway to the next town in the Jeep, Sanzo was refusing to talk to anyone after initially plunking a familiar oogly tri-corner hat down on Goku's head and remarking cryptically that people with really pale skin should do themselves favors and get tanned faces, because otherwise it was pathetically easy to tell when they were blushing.

Sanzo didn't know himself if he'd stolen the hat to keep Hazel from following or to encourage it. Either way, the Journey continued on.

END Part Four


OUTTAKES

(Scene: KANZEON screeches at JIROUSHIN to bring the popcorn)

KANZEON: ...and some Milk Duds! And make sure there's butter and salt on that popcorn!

JIROUSHIN: I thought you were on a diet.

KANZEON: Oh I'm sure I'll work off the calories rolling around and laughing myself sick in the next ten minutes.

JIROUSHIN: ..point.(Scene: SANZO stands before a defeated HAZEL, ready to make his speech)

SANZO: You're an idiot. Pride and your own ideals (finger slips on trigger and the gun goes off)

HAZEL: (dies)

IKKOU: ...

SANZO: 6.6 ...I meant to do that.

(Take Two: SANZO stands before a defeated HAZEL)

SANZO: (makes his speech) ...blahblahblah...grow the fuck up.

HAZEL: ...mmkay, Dr. Phil.

(Take Three: SANZO stands before a defeated HAZEL)

SANZO: (begins speech) ...yadda yadda...

GATO: (tackles him from nowhere and carts him off)

HAZEL: (to the IKKOU) Booya, bizatches! Victoly is MINE!

GOJYO: ...y'know, you can have him. His speeches suck.