005: The Second Degree
It happened like this –
First: Impact.
His body slammed into concrete, the wind knocked out of him so sharply he hardly had time to breath before the front of his shirt was grabbed again. Blood filling his mouth, dribbling from the corner while his tongue swelled uselessly– fuck, he'd bitten it.
Second: Ringing.
Loud ringing, shrill. Too many knocks to the head and he could barely hear the insults the demons were throwing at him. He had nothing quippy to throw back, only syrup and copper pennies filling up his swollen cheeks so he settled for spitting that in their faces.
They didn't like that.
Heh, good.
He'd taken three of them down, easy, but the remaining four were being a pain in the ass – last time he'd checked, there was a group of people, too close, too dangerous, for him to fire anything off and attract attention. These demons weren't thugs either – at least, they were strong and smart enough to have evaded him this far.
Three: Flash.
Something, catching light, and he'd only just moved centimeters in time to miss losing a kidney in an impromptu game of operation.
He'd walked Keiko home an hour ago, had detoured to find something to eat that wasn't ramen or soba. His nose had caught the smell of something acrid, senses telling him to turn down towards the characteristic dark alley where he'd found them splicing up an unfortunate salary man who wasn't going to make it home.
Their mouths were filled, hands slicked and dark, and Yusuke's vision had gone red in fury.
"Just die already!" The lankier one made a grab for him and Yusuke ducked, rolling, all the while ignoring the sharp pain in his ribs.
Ignore feeling like shit now, do it later, after danger's passed.
Good plan, good plan.
(God, he was getting old and tired of this shit.)
A decade ago he would have been tossing jokes alongside his fists; smarmy remarks worthy of a shonen jump character, right from the pages of his comics - a one-man, under-appreciated stand-up routine. Now, now he just wants to get home. Kick his shoes and socks off, take a goddamn shower, and sleep in until his next shift. He can't even remember the last time he flipped open a manga.
Blue energy crackled like portable lightning as he delivered a spine-tingling gut-punch to the nearest demon. The others had caught on to put distance the minute his energy started to flare.
A fourth one down, its still smoldering body falling between Yusuke and the demons at the mouth of the alley. At some point, they'd managed to dance around each other – he was all too aware that his back was to the wall and they were blocking the only exit.
Three left, pissed beyond anything; the only things standing between Yusuke and his futon.
"All right, assholes," he spat, wiping the remains on the back of his arm. "Let's get this over with."
"Cocky humans like you piss me off," the middle one snarled. A sound of disbelief pulls from Yusuke's throat before he could stop himself.
Him pissing this guy off for stopping him from fucking eating someone? And on the wrong side of the barrier!
"Listen, you're the asshole in this situation."
One hand stayed fisted in front of him, ready to throw down, while the other waved in the general direction of the dead salary man's body, his guts still flayed out in the open.
See? You did this.
"We'll have to show you what it means to mess with the likes of us," the demon continued, ignoring him. It pulled something out and held it between two clawed fingertips.
Yusuke might not have had an encyclopedic knowledge of every inconveniently bad thing a demon could pull out in battle, but he at least knew nothing good could come whenever demons started pulling this shit.
Especially when their mouths started to split in wide, toothy grins of premature victory.
It crackled – black, dark, bad – whatever the hell it was. No bigger than a golf ball, Yusuke could feel from meters away the revolting energy trapped in the foggy, amber glass
Shit.
The two demons flanking the middle squinted, their arms pulling up as if they couldn't handle the sudden flare of energy either. Not good.
Yusuke's skin prickled, and he could feel his own spirit energy rising in response to the suddenly escalating sphere of demonic energy cultivating at the mouth of the alleyway – two blocks away from a standing soba bar, he noted, incredulously.
(And not even a good soba bar, but it didn't deserve to be blown up on a forgettable Tuesday.)
Like a bubble being blown by a kid too small to handle it, the demon's own aura was being rapidly eclipsed by the ever expanding orb – Yusuke's eyes burned, and the bruises and open-wounds he'd amassed during the skirmish felt on fire. The demonic energy licked at him like alcohol, hissing on contact with his skin.
"You'll regret it now! You-!"
It was obvious the demon had bitten more than it could chew.
Yusuke's chest burned, ached, from the pressure pushing up against him. It was violent, senseless youki. The more the chaotic energy spread outwards, engulfing the entire, narrow alley, the more Yusuke had to push to resist. He was pressed up against the surface of a barrier – just on the wrong side. It grew bigger and bigger, pushing him further and further into a smaller sliver of existence until he was dangerously waft-thin.
This isn't how I'm going to die. This can't be how I die. Shit! Dammit!
Who wanted to die because some stupid run-of-the-mill demon had decided to bring a grenade to a fist-fight?
Concentrate, Urameshi.
Closing his eyes, Yusuke willed himself to find enough control to push back. The air around him grew thinner, as the sound of millions of cicadas and crows grew louder – a manifestation of the energy. Deafening.
Pain rippled through him as he felt something pulsating at his side – not from within where he'd been looking, but a literal burning heat pressed tight against his skin.
"What the hell-?"
It hurt to open his eyes, even to squint, as colors seemed to invert and warp in the alley. He couldn't even see the shapes of the demons anymore, or even the semblance of their impression, as the orb seemed to pulsate and consume everything in its super nova.
Pink.
He felt it before he saw it – at least, he thought he felt it. A spark arcing across his mind's eye before he saw it in real time. Not an off-white bolt that he could have mistaken for pink as his eyes cooked in their sockets, but honest-to-god pink; sparks of it shooting like a firecracker had erupted in his hand.
No! His pocket?! How-?
From the corner of his eyes, Yusuke could see pink – pink! – landing in every direction, like an array of fireworks, sparklers, falling stars, all from the pocket of his spare denim. It sizzled and burst into smaller eruptions against the demonic energy, seeming to grow even more pronounced and wild as if making contact spurred a bigger reaction. It wiggled and danced, alive, clawing its way along the ground, in the air, along the walls, towards the direction of the demons.
The weight against his chest seemed to recede, increment by increment, while the light show coming from his person grew in intensity.
Once, on a rare day where Yusuke had attended his classes, his middle school science teacher had demonstrated smoke being captured in a bubble. The purpose of the lesson was lost now, but Yusuke could remember the exact moment the bubble had burst – collapsing in on itself while plumes of white-grey fog had rolled and spilled out.
It was immediate – the immense, chest-crushing pressure, the stomach-lurching dark energy, all of it was pulled back as if an industrial, reality-bending vacuum had been turned on. In a sudden crackle and flare of pink and white light, the meteor shower that had erupted from Yusuke's pocket had flooded the entirety of the alleyway. He'd barely been able to make out ginormous arcs of pink lightning encasing the darkness before everything had become a burning flash, too brilliant for his eyes to bare.
No light show is worth going blind over, he decided.
Yusuke closed his eyes and braced himself.
His breaths came out in shallow pants, the air still too thin and now filled with debris and smoke as he fell forward onto his hands and knees– the wind whipped at his cheeks, the final wave in one massive fall out. Yusuke's eardrums popped, as if he'd just come up to the surface for air rather than nearly died because some idiot tried to blast him with a metric fuck-ton of concentrated youki.
Without his sight, Yusuke's ears could only pick up the sound of dust settling, stray debris drifting across cement, and one lone semi-human breathing in the incredulity of his existence. No rasping voices, no claws scraping against bricks, or sharp objects being picked up to end him. He wasn't sure he wanted to open his eyes, not yet.
Behind his closed lids, Yusuke saw flashes of color – white, pink, blue. His head ached; ongoing reverberations that only made everything else ache that much more.
For a moment, the animal part of his brain that was never fully eradicated, even after a decade of fighting and youkai-exterminating, jolted nervously at what he'd seen in the last few seconds of sight: colors tipped like they were dripping off the flesh of reality, burning so bright he could have been looking into the sun dead straight.
It felt wrong, like Yusuke just took a floor seat to a game played by forces beyond his paycheck.
He breathed in, out. In, out.
His eye lids fluttered, his body's last resistance in attempts to engage, before finally opening to take in the scene in front of him.
The entire alleyway was clear. Except for what suspiciously looked like dust where there once were multiple demon bodies, the space felt…clean. Not physically clean (or, Yusuke's brain added, emotionally, considering what he saw happened here) but clean like… someone had taken a big cosmic microfiber and wiped the board clear of any spiritual residue; they'd turned on the UV lights to disinfect, leaving behind only the light lingering smell of ozone.
Yusuke's skin felt tight. It stung – all over.
As he inspected his hands he realized every inch of him, including the skin beneath his sleeves, was tinged the same color. Prodding it resulted in more stinging, more pain.
He couldn't remember the last time he'd gotten a real burn, the occasional oil splatter from the ramen stand not included. His red, inflamed skin was undeniable: he was sunburnt. Furiously, painfully sunburnt.
In the alleyway, the spirit consultant regarded the dead salary man, the only audience to his thoughts.
"What the fuck."
Posted 12/27/18. Happy new year!
More to come. It's nice to hear from readers, so thanks for those of you who have shared your thoughts.