The Forbidden Love of Yukari Yakumo

Chapter 11: The Fight of Truth and Destiny

The Scarlet Devil Mansion's Grounds, right after the last chapter

Lunging towards the seraphic Angel of light and love, the flame-haired Shinigami of ebony-black raven darkness slashed her scythe rapidly, cutting at the resplendent angel with futility, like the black darkness as it tries to enter a well-lit house of glowing candles.

Waiting a moment, Hachuurui paused before her eyes glimmered from green to purple, and she started to glow a chalky aura of whiteness from around her body. The shinigami stepped back in fear as she released a large blast of radiant white energy that pierced the surroundings, which where totally black. The blast hurt Yutaka, but didn't hurt Yukari.

Shouting out to the ethereal seraphim, Yukari asked, "Why did your attack not hurt me?"

"Because it only hurts those which are not pure of heart. You are safe, Yukari..." the giant angel of splendour and glory called out, her voice echoing with divinity.

Yutaka was hurt, but not beaten, though, and decided that if she could not hurt the beautiful, consecrated deity of love and peace, then she would hurt the defenceless maiden standing on the ground. Dashing at a speed so fast it would make the strong petals of a rose detach from the stalk, Yutaka approached the Border Youkai, but, unexpectedly, she entered a gap before the malevolent shinigami could slash at her delicate, ivory body.

"NO! DON'T DO THAT!" Yutaka shouted angrily, "Fight me, you coward!"

As she leapt towards the Border Youkai, it almost seemed like she was going to hurt the frail, pulchritudinous woman, but a large, long cylinder of ivory-white light pierced the Shinigami, causing her to gasp in pain. Hachuurui, holding her hand out where the light-stick had come from, said, "I don't think so, Yutaka. If you want a fight, come here and get one!"

Amazed by the bravery and beatitude of the holy angel of love, Yutaka turned her attention to the angel once more, and looked for a weak point on the giant angel of holiness, but didn't seem to find one. Flying around the cherubim in circles, she seemed to be able to dodge the several strands of pure justice emanating from the pure angel's perfect body. Finally, the Shinigami settled on landing on Hachuurui's head, and dug her large, horrific, blood-lining scythe into the pure and good doctor lizard angel seraphim of love's eye, and blood poured from the unfairly attacked angel of adulation's otherwise perfect orbs of sight.

"Ha! This is where it ends, Hachuurui! I've finally beaten you!" Yutaka screamed, "After all the millennia we have battled, all the incarnations we have been through, I will finally be the victor of this battle!"

Hachuurui did not recoil in pain, and merely cried tears of blood, "You may have won the battle... but the war will never end... and if it does, I will be the winner..."

Yukari watched in horror as the giant, curvaceously attractive winged lizard angel collapsed to the floor. Her heart filling with anger, the Border Youkai stepped into a purple void of teleportation before appearing behind the evil, monstrous Shinigami, and she kicked her in the face, causing the evil woman to bleed from her mouth black blood with tiny snakes of death in it, stepping back in monstrosity.

"No-one makes me bleed my own blood!" Yutaka shouted, her face wrested with purest rage, "I'd kill you for this... if I was allowed to... you win this round, Yakumo... but your friend... she will not!"

Yutaka giggled with sadistic glee of maliciousness, and watched as the large, ephemeral angel withered back to her still-beautiful, but not as breathtaking Lizard Youkai form. Cutting a small hole in her back, Yutaka watched as a small, pink wisp left the delicate body of the fallen angel of justice, and grabbed hold of it with as much force as the cruel wind that snatches dandelion seeds from their caring mother plant.

Yukari stared in horror as Yutaka flicked the soul a few times as if to mock the pure and just angel before her final judgement in the Netherworld. Turning to the horrified Border Youkai, Yutaka gloated voraciously, "Ha! Your friend is now dead! I have her soul! I'll see you... thirteen souls later... ah ha ha!"

Disappearing as quickly as she appeared, Yutaka vanished into thick, ink-black air, leaving a large black cloud of malevolence in the air as she went. The scenery returned to normal, but Yukari was not concerned about that... her friend, the only good friend she had ever made, was now dead, and it was all her fault...

Standing by the tragically beautiful corpse, Yukari kneeled in sadness, and cried soft, limpid tears into the green hair of the once intelligent, once ethereal doctor of love. She was crying so loudly that she almost didn't hear the soft, echoing voice of the very person she was forming her glistening blue droplets of liquid sadness over...

"Yukari... I... don't have long before I disappear into the Netherworld..." a beautiful, glistening, translucent apparition of Hachuurui said, "I need you to... remember what to do when you get... all the flowers..."

Yukari stood up, and gazed at her friend's image. She was silent with awe at the sheer glory of the ghost's divinity. Too amazed to speak, she nodded as silently as a white snowdrop in the moonlit night.

"...okay. This is what you have to do. You have to... crush them into a paste, and rub them into Dawitsu's wounds. You then have to say, 'Return, my love' six times, and then, only then, do you bring true love's kiss to his perfect lips, and he will wake up, his wounds restored..." Hachuurui explained informatively, but suddenly, her voice began to fade, "Oh no... it seems I'm... it seems I'm finally going... no... I'll miss you... I'll miss Dawitsu... and... I hope you two can... have pure... and healthy... children..."

But before the wise and well-informed doctor's ghost could explain any more, her apparition's coloured began to leak into the air, and whatever colour remained bloomed spectacularly into ephemeral cherry blossoms. Yukari shook her head desperately, and said, "No... no! Hachuurui, don't go! Don't! Your death shouldn't have happened! It's a horrible tragedy! And it's all my fault!"

Hachuurui's head, the only part which remained, smiled as softly as a pollen-covered pussy willow, and shook her head gently as the last of her bloomed and got carried away into the spring breeze...

"NO!" Yukari yelled at the top of her effeminate, perfect voice.

However, Hong Meiling, who was also lying unconscious, but not as permanently as the undeserving victim of the Shinigami, was the only person around to listen to the aggrieved Youkai, and she cried loudly, her wailing as tragic as the moment a poppy explodes, before walking into the ornamental garden to take the Chaparrel she had come for. Although the radiant beauty of the Chaparrel seemed to offer a spotlight of hope for the afflicted and distraught woman, her eyes continued to let the balls of melted grief flow, and the thought of simply giving up and killing herself crossed Yukari's mind...

Opening up a gap, Yukari almost made it lead to the lowest pit of hell so that she could experience pure and unadulterated permanent destruction of the ephemeral soul, but something stopped her... it was the thought of her true love, the one who needed her alive, who needed her to help him in his hour of need. What would Hachuurui have died for if she didn't finish what she started? Not about to let the wicked succubus of virility win, Yukari's heart filled with the purple fluid of pure determination, and she changed the way the gap went, this time opening into a higher level of hell... the former hell of the Underground, to find the precious Foxglove that contained the Digitalis needed for her final healing of the beautiful and precious motivating factor of her life... Mateyuu Dawitsu.

Former Hell, instantly after

Yukari twitched in fear, before feeling the raw heat that permeated the surroundings within the large expanse of molten lava that contained the souls of the evil and the damned. Such a place did not seem like a place in which there would be anywhere that plants would grow.

Her eyes darted from rock island to rock island, however, no matter where she flew, not one place seemed to have a plant growing there. Not wanting to ask for directions because of the rule made oh-so-long ago by the great Youkai of Old that said that Youkai from the surface could not enter the Underground, and so she merely floated aimlessly, her mind sometimes drawing her towards the deep, deathly lava that, if it wasn't for her pure, holy dreamboat of purity that she was fighting for, she would be swimming in to bring a quick, painless end to her tragically ruined life...

Author's Notes: Oh! It's so sad! Hachuurui was such a hero! Sacrificing her life for the greater good! You won't see Hebiko's narrator do that, would you? And another thing you won't see in Hebiko's stories are the heart-stopping action and the tragic description of grief that make art what true art is! Painful! Art isn't there to make you feel good, it's there to make you feel bad! Isn't that right, Michel? Hey, Michel, I couldn't find your house in the human village... you must have been out, huh? Why were you out? You'd better not be with some other girl... what are you looking at me like that for? I'm just kidding, silly!

Typist's Notes: I am beginning to suspect that Momiji is simply trying to avoid the Crazy Lizard Woman... I know that I would, but I simply cannot say no to those pleading eyes of hers... that wolf woman certainly knows how to get her own way... stupide bonne conscience, me forcant á travallier avec se prédateur sexuel... oh, my apologies, that section was in the French, never worry about what it says...

Reviews for Chapter Eleven:

Yukari Yakumo: Oh, come on. Don't act like you're not going to bring that self-insert back from the dead. Also... really? My only good friend was the Lizard Youkai Angel Doctor thing I had only just met? Wow, so you depict everyone but me, you, and Dawitsu as evil, and I'm also plain unlikeable. And what's with how little I helped in that... blur that you call a fight scene? I seem utterly useless, like one of the many flowers that you use in similes and metaphors...

Yuuka Kazami: Are you implying flowers are useless, Yakumo? I've never decided to fight with you, let's see who wins... [Typist's Note: I did manage to persuade Miss Yakumo and Miss Kazami to leave the building, but only because Yukari seemed amiable to me... Miss Kazami seems like the kind of Youkai Woman that eats people...]

Mateyuu Dawitsu: Aw, hell yeah! Yukari versus Yuuka! This I gotta see! You know where they went, Jean? Um... well... no, I don't want to talk about that book's fight scene! Okay, fine, it was awful, can you tell me where the fight is, now?

Yutaka Hadekawa: Men are so foolish sometimes... what is their obsession with watching and encouraging fights... oh, what's that? Women emotionally back-stab each other instead of physical violence? Well... that's certainly true... as I was once the shortest girl in the neighbourhood when I was a child, I know that well...

Hebiko Bimyouna: Is anyone actually reviewing this story, or just offering social commentary? Anyway, I have a few things to mention that Yukari failed to... True Love's First Kiss is hackneyed and stupid, and should only ever be used as a parody of old-style fairy tales... in fact, why don't you do that, Tokage? Market it as a parody! Sure, you were serious when you wrote it, but if you market it as a parody, you'll look less stupid... unless you make it so obvious that you were serious when writing it that you just come across as being in massive denial...

KDJFDSKNSKCNS Koishi Komeiji: Wow, why did you get so scared? Because I suddenly appeared? That's what I do, sorry about that? What's your name? Yay! I can ask that because my third eye is closed! Jean? Oh, that's a nice name? Why are you typing everything I say? Oh... I see... AH! Can I read it too? I'll start at Chapter One...

[Typist's Note: A while passed before she finished the Chapters, but she did continue on to say what follows...]

My... this is... disturbing. My psychoanalysis tells me that this woman is a very tortured, if not, demented individual who is coping with her trauma or social inadequacy by picking up on the latest hype and exploiting it until it's entertainment value is run dry. I only hope that the fact she's a Lizard Youkai prevents her from visiting my big sis... I don't want poor Satori to be driven insane by this particularly... strange mind...