Disclaimer: I do not own Yami no Matsuei
Shout-outs:
AnimeAngelRin: Well, we all need our humor. "SoE" was entirely too dark. The way I see it, it's been six years of growing up, handling problems, and being distracted by a bunch of kids, so they're going to be slightly less EMOANGSTYOMG.
laustic: Remember Kurikara and Hisoka's conversation, it'll be important later. Thank you for being the only one who's posted on my LJ.
Eternity's Heir: Thank you so much! (Snuggles)
animephreak80: I generally find YnM fandom to be superior to, say, Harry Potter fandom in the Gawd Awful Fanfiction department (though YnM has it's fair share of crap). And actually, I know thee people named Adam and they wouldn't bother reading, let alone reviewing, so your review means plenty to me. Especially when you compliment my plot, writing, and research all in one fell swoop. You guys are making me a blush factory, seriously.
You know, I hadn't given much thought as to Kaneko becoming Yutaka again. I suppose it would be terribly funny if the dosage was like birth control and missing a day reverted Kaneko back to Yutaka. Imagine trying to explain to Kyoko that Mommy is now her second Daddy. Perhaps I'll write that drabble one day…LIGHTBULB MOMENT! I know when I can use this. I won't tell you, because it's a spoiler.
Amethyst-eyed Koneko: I was getting seriously worried! That's what sucks about internet friends…you never know if something's happened to them. I'm sorry it took so long…play season is an effective inspiration-killer.
I've only seen a little bit of FMA and haven't confirmed any pairings in my eyes, though I do like Ed/Winry.
I thought of you when Suzaku applied the verbal bitchsmack to Nagare. I'm glad you liked it, since I wasn't too happy with that chapter (set-up chapters start to get to me after awhile). Unfortunately, action stories aren't my forte either (why am I writing them?) so this might be a long time coming.
FaerieRikki: Suzaku against Nagare is awesome, yes it is. As for Nagare's attachment to his sons…you'll just have to read to find out!
Masami-chan: I avoided HSM like the plague because it just looked like yet another high school movie…one that I definitely couldn't get into (I mean, come on. My school's Thespian Society consists of AP students, band geeks, and lacrosse players.)
Well, hope your worry makes you read and consequently review as quickly as possible!
Kiko812: Kiko should go to bed earlier (Luna is a flippin' hypocrite).
ShinigamixGirl: Why'd you change your name?
jennamarie: I'm gonna respond as soon as you're done catching up, okay?
Note #1: Just thought you should know that FP is due for seventeen chapters, give or take. My muses are all on strike, so I don't know how good those chapters are going to be…
Note #2: I AM SO SORRY THAT THIS TOOK FOREVER. VERY VERY SORRY.
Off-Topic Rambling: Sorry to bug y'all about this again, but it gets a little lonely over at my LJ…just click on the "Homepage" link on my bio…you know you want to…it's shiny…
First Loss
"Okay, Hiko, I want you to stay right here," Suzaku said, after carrying her son into the lowest level of her palace. "Do not come out for any reason, okay? Hiko? Pay attention to me."
The young boys peripatetic eyes attempted to travel back to his mother.
"What did I say?"
"Stay here and don't come out," Hiko responded uninterestedly.
"For any reason," Suzaku added sternly, noticing her son's attention wandering again.
"Mm-hmm," Hiko intoned.
"It's disgusting to me that you and I are the same flesh."
Kushinada froze up as the nasty hiss reached her ears. Her entire body trembled, rendering it impossible for her to turn around, even though she did not need sight to confirm who it was.
"We have the same body, the same blood, but different souls. I thank the powers that be for that, you treacherous whore," Kushinada-youkai kissed.
"I am not," Kushinada defended herself in a hoarse whisper.
"You betray the man we lived with for millennia to aid the ones who killed him!" She grabbed her benign counterpart and whipped her around. Kushinada flinched underneath the demon's red gaze. "Loyalty isn't in your vocabulary, is it, you stupid bitch?"
"Leave me alone!" Kushinada yelled, finally plucking up enough courage to push away.
"My pleasure. It sickens me to know that we're breathing the same air. Which might be why only Shizonai is battling your allies."
She suddenly disappeared from sight, though her voice remained.
"That, or he can handle your pathetic little militia."
At first Kasane figured defeating an enemy she had already once defeated was going to be an easy task.
When three claw wounds began festering in her arm, she had to reconsider.
"Shit, what the hell?" she hissed, her hand clapped to her upper arm as blood ran out from between her fingertips. Her skin was beginning to bubble and hiss around the wound, a thick bloody steam floating out from the tears in her flesh.
"Thought this would be easy, did you?" Shizonai snarled, his teeth suddenly sinking into her ear.
Kasane shrieked as the tip of her lobe was ripped off. Her cry was matched by a pained, surprised yelp as another set of teeth sunk into Shizonai's arm courtesy of Byakko, whose jaws tore Shizonai away from Kasane and flung him backwards.
"Honey, transform!" Byakko half-hissed, half-whispered, his tongue gently lapping at her bleeding ear before he turned his attention back to Shizonai, who had just narrowly dodged decapitation from Kurikara's Futsu. Locking his hand around his wrist, an expanding funnel of dark red energy ripped out of his outfacing palm. Kurikara leapt backwards; the energy missed him and instead incinerated a small group of trees that had previously acted as a windbreaker for Suzaku's palace.
Shizonai stepped backwards from the energy spent and was immediately hit by twin o-fuda spells from Tsuzuki and Hisoka, pushing him forwards and his shoulder into Nagare's sword, whose owner had snuck up during the distraction. With a snarl Shizonai struck out with his other arm, ripping three gashes into Nagare's face as he pulled his impaled shoulder free and pushed himself up off the ground, slapping a hand to his wound. His skin flashed a dim white and then sewed itself back together.
"Did he just heal himself?" Hisoka spat.
"Well, Kushinada can go back to being a person, so he probably took that from her, too," Kira said from beside him, a few feet away. "Reverse splitting, I guess. Where is she, anyway?"
"We lost her when the battle began," Byakko said, falling back beside Kira as Suzaku took his place, swinging her zanbatou furiously at Shizonai's head. He dodged, also missing being hit from both sides with water from Kasane and fire from Touda. The two powers slammed together but before negating each other, Shizonai formed a white ball in his palm and slapped it against the intermingling elements. Fire and water split from each other and were sent back towards their owners. A sudden wind tunnel grabbed Kasane by the wrist and pulled her out of the way of her own attack.
"Touda!"
The blunt side of Suzaku's zanbatou was suddenly taking the brunt of the fire. Streams of flames slid and shot off from the edges as Suzaku's elbows were forced backwards under the strain.
"Shit…I can't hold this!" Suzaku muttered trough gritted teeth.
"Kasane!" Touda shouted, and then he roughly grabbed Suzaku's shoulders and jerked her and himself away. The fire shot forward like water from a broken dam just barely above their heads. A torrent of water from Kasane followed the trajectory of fire, cutting it in half and dousing the trailing end.
"Oh God…" Suzaku whispered, watching the leading end cut through the air where there had once been trees, towards her castle where her son was.
Contrary to popular belief, Hiko did, on occasion, heed at least some of his mother's words. He had stayed in the lowest level of the palace, as per her orders. When the roof of the lowest level was ripped off he ducked and covered his head with his hands, just like she had instructed him after the last time she and Touda had an argument.
But being an easily-distracted toddler born of two Fire Shiki, the scent of flames was like to him the scent of cookies to an ordinary young child: something to be investigated.
The stairs had not survived and his second element was Earth, not Air, and thus he was without wings. Screwing up his face in concentration, he willed his body into the shape of the dragon-like snake form he had inherited from his father. The floor of the lowest level was earth, and his small wriggling body soon pushed a tunnel into the dirt.
The deadly pale of Suzaku's face mixed with the bloodshot of her eyes sparked a vaguely familiar fire that sucked the air out of Tsuzuki's lungs. For a moment Tsuzuki thought that all his years were catching up with him and his heart was undergoing cardiac arrest. It was only when white began creeping over his eyes that it dawned on him.
"No…" he croaked hoarsely, stepping back. Akuko's derisive voice, Hisoka's screams, Muraki's laughter, dimly sounded in his head as a terrible heat and pain began to grow in his chest. "Hisoka…"
Shizonai's ears twitched and he cast his eyes down on his queen's descendant. A quick sniff produced an ear-splitting malicious grin.
"I love the smell of demon power in the afternoon," he said, just loudly enough for all his enemies to hear him and turn their attentions towards Tsuzuki. "What?" Shizonai continued, seeing even from his great distance sweat beginning to pour down Tsuzuki's sheet-white face. "Not used to your true self? Shame."
"Shit," Hisoka spat, hastily putting up psychological barriers. "You guys, keep fighting!" he shouted at the Shikigami, before turning back to his pallid, sweat-soaked husband and shoving him by the shoulders against a tree. "Okay, Tsuzuki? Listen to me. Concentrate only on me. Nothing else is happening. Okay? Pay attention to me. Only me."
A ripping sound was heard; Kurikara had sliced Futsu cleanly through Shizonai's shoulder, severing the arm from the socket. Instead of the expected pain-filled shriek, a manic laugh was sounded. Shizonai's remaining arm snatched the falling appendage out of the air and shoved it against his torn skin. When he took his hand away, his arm was reattached as perfectly as if it had never been removed.
"Tsuzuki, this is nothing," Hisoka continued. "Absolutely nothing."
Suzaku's screech suddenly caught both Tsuzuki's and Hisoka's attention away from the creeping darkness inside Tsuzuki. Several feet away from them was a ring of upended dirt surrounding a hole in the ground, and a small, befuddled, black-haired boy stood beside it.
Shizonai pulled back, away from the group of Shiki, his gaze directed at Hiko with the expression of one about to squish an insect. Lazily he flicked his index fingernail against the tip of his thumb, creating a small spark. A quick puff of breath, and the small spark was rocketing towards the boy, gaining in circumference as it hurtled towards him at breakneck speed.
The light was blinding and near-deafening; Hisoka only dimly heard the sound of rapid footfall before it was drowned out by an explosion that nearly—though not quite—overpowered Touda and Suzaku's twin screams.
The light dissipated and Suzaku's gasp went mid-way from horrified to wonderstruck.
"Kid, I don't think it's a good idea to be here right now," Nagare said. Hiko hung precariously by the back of his shirt at the hilt of Nagare's sword; Nagare had stabbed upwards through the fabric and drove the point all the way through, lifting the boy off his feet and pulling him back away from the blast. Nagare pushed the boy forward as if wiping butter off a knife, letting the sword rip though his shirt until Hiko was completely free and he landed on the ground. The boy did not need telling twice; he instantly turned back into his snake form and plowed back into the ground.
"Kira-sama."
The sound of a small, disturbed voice made Kira whip around from where she had been scrutinizing the mid-air battle.
"You look like hell," Kira commented.
"I saw her. My other half."
"Yeah? And when is she going to show up?"
"She isn't. She says that Shizonai can handle us."
"Well, she was right," Kira said, pointing up towards their losing battle. "Probably because he took her blood. And if that's the case, then she's even stronger than he is."
"She's using power I didn't even know we had."
"I bet Susano kept it from you, to keep you his drone." She clicked her tongue against her teeth to silence any argument. "Okay…so what are we supposed to do? I was hoping I could observe, but it looks like that plan got shot all to Hell. We don't have the wherewithal to face one all-powerful demon, let alone two…"
"Kira-sama, look!"
Kira turned, following the trajectory of Kushinada's pointing hand. An unearthly translucent red glow had surrounded Shizonai as he drifted downward like a bubble. The surrounding trees as far as ten feet away felt the effects of the descent, by being obliterated.
"Great," Kira deadpanned. "Now we can't go near him."
"Kira-sama, can't you…can't you use your Holy Water?" Kushinada asked, gesturing to Kira's belt.
"Looks like I'm gonna have to. I'm just worried about…"
"About what?"
"How much power it's gonna take. And…"
"And what?" Kushinada asked, grabbing Kira's sleeve. Kira's hard gaze was fixed on Shizonai. She was chewing on the inside of her cheek.
"Huh. That may be it."
"Kira-sama?"
Kira pushed Kushinada off her sleeve and patted her hand. "You're good to have as a younger sister, you know that? You're definitely not another Ukyo, but I kinda regret not having you as a sister all these years, too. Here." Kira pulled a vial out of her belt and plopped it in Kushinada's hand. "It's all I can spare. Don't get it on you, okay?"
"Kira-sama!"
Kira took off, sprinting past the group of fighters who had fallen back once Shizonai's destructive defensive had begun.
"Hey, Kurosaki!" Kira shouted, barely slowing down. "You've still got that nifty soul-snatching trick, right?"
"Wha—?" Hisoka began.
"I'm gonna need it in a few seconds!" she called over the roaring of the wind.
"Fall back!" Kushinada screamed from where Kira had left her standing, tears streaming down her face. "Tsuzuki, get away from there!"
Kira's pale blonde hair glinted in the sunlight and then disappeared. There was the sound of breaking glass, then a startled shout from Shizonai, and finally the red glow was replaced by pure, sparkling, soundless white.
Without thinking Hisoka pushed Tsuzuki behind him and concentrated on the image of Kira. A rush of cool air swept over him, wiping off the injuries he had sustained in the fight, almost breaking his meditation on the exorcist's spirit. He bit down on his lip. He hadn't had to use Illusory Magic in a long time, not since the last time Tsuzuki had…
"Hey, thanks, kid," Kira said, turning inward into Hisoka's psyche. "Wasn't sure if that would obliterate me or not, so I didn't wanna take a chance. I already said my good-byes to Kushinada, so could you do me a favor and tell Oriya I said "'bye"?"
"Sure," Hisoka mind said back to her.
"See ya."
Kira's presence absconded before Hisoka properly registered it. Her filter escaped him quietly as well as quickly, leaving him with his own eye to see the half-destroyed landscape and those comrades that just a moment ago showed obvious signs of battle wear.
I AM VERY VERY SORRY. Not only did this chapter take over a month to crank out, I don't even like it that much. Please forgive me if it's total crap, but I have to move on to the next chapter before inspiration dies. Once again, VERY VERY SORRY.