FCL64: I'm back! YAY! You all should be so excited! This chapter took me even longer to write than the last one! Mizuko is a very problematic character.
animegrlsteph: Does Mizuko die?
FCL64: I can't tell you.
(animegrlsteph sticks her tongue out at FCL64)
FCL64: Anyway, moving along. I own Kiyoshi, Akiko, Takeshi, Kasumi, and Mizuko. Which is half of the characters in this chapter… but that's not the point. The point is, other than those five, I don't own anyone.
animegrlsteph: Nobody cares! Just get on with the story so we can see Mizuko die a slow and painful death!
FCL64: No one ever said she dies…
animegrlsteph (twitching): She doesn't die?! You're kidding me! No! This can't be happening!
FCL64: Uhhh… Okay then. Anyway, here's the next installment of 1 Dead, 3 Missing.
At the end of Mizuko's transformation, Kiyoshi flinched backwards, the sudden onslaught of aura almost more than he could handle. But the four of them took it in stride, almost too quickly for Mizuko to see their hesitation. Almost. "I sssee that you are beginning to realize that weaklingsss sssuch asss yourssselvesss are no match for me!"
"Weaker does not mean weak!" Akiko exploded, infuriated by the insult in Mizuko's words. The other three adjusted their positions, as if their feet had been burned. "And, in case you hadn't figured this out, brute force does not necessarily win a fight! Strategy is also involved. It is possible for the weakest warrior to obtain a victory over the strongest opponent."
"How clever." Mizuko replied sarcastically. "But pretty wordsss don't win fightsss, either."
Akiko flung her arm out, her thumb and first two fingers extended, muttering under her breath. Layers of black ice covered the floor, their slick surface made harder to walk on by the constant changing of layers. Irregularities where a thin layer of ice began or ended. But Mizuko didn't seem fazed in the slightest. "Don't you know how sssnakesss move, little girl?" She questioned, slithering toward Akiko without a problem. "Ssscalesss on our undersssidesss grip irregularitiesss. By flexing csssertain mussscles, we ussse thossse to propel ourssselvesss forward."
"And you're particularly stupid for telling me that." The ice shifted, no longer multiple layers, but instead one smooth, glass-like sheet.
"Ssso you sssay." Mizuko continued moving across the ice, albeit she was moving a bit slower, a bit more carefully. Suddenly, spikes of ice erupted out of the ground and Mizuko was only narrowly able to dodge some of them. Only one hit her, piercing through a point about three feet from the end of her long body. The tip immediately splintered into five, each arcing over or under at least two others before burying itself back into the floor. Mizuko immediately turned and threw her entire weight at the dome, but nothing happened. Not so much as a single chip of ice came out of the entire glistening structure.
"So I know." Akiko replied evenly. "That ice has been solidified to be at least three times harder than diamond. And the ice itself, if not the air around it, is extremely close to absolute zero."
Suddenly, Mizuko lunged at her, the deadly fangs sinking deep into Akiko's shoulder.
Akiko fell to the ground, but the ice miraculously remained in place, and Mizuko remained attached to it. "It's so cold, in fact, that mere contact with it is slowly freezing your body from the inside to be as solid as itself," Akiko explained, panting. Turning to the group she was with, she added, breathless from pain, "I'll maintain the ice… as long as possible… try to avoid… touching it… but you must… you must… kill her before… before I lose consciousness… or she'll slowly… she slowly thaw and… regain… full mobility."
Kiyoshi's resolve hardened, his doubts at killing another living being dissolving. Takeshi said, his aura sword appearing, "We will avenge you, Akiko."
Some of Akiko's strength returned momentarily as she shouted, "I'm not dead, you idiot!"
Kiyoshi glanced at Kasumi, who was strangely mute, and said, "Careful, Kasumi. You only have four."
"And I intend to make them count."
"Can you and Takeshi hold her off for a few minutes?" Kasumi nodded, so Kiyoshi continued, "Be careful. Attack from a distance whenever you can. Her tail may be anchored to that one point, but she still has a long reach." Glancing at Akiko he added, "And I doubt any of us three has the capacity to handle whatever venom is in those fangs—and Mizuko probably has a lot more of it. Because Akiko is in a lot more pain than she is letting on."
Both Kasumi and Takeshi, who had been listening, nodded, heeding Kiyoshi's warnings. They were all facing Mizuko, just out of range of her perilous bite. She had coiled, ready to strike, facing them and said, "How sssweet. A lassst, heartfelt goodbye. Sssickening!"
Kasumi whispered a question to Takeshi, who nodded. He then took several steps forward, to come within range of Mizuko's venomous fangs. "A sssacrificssse, eh?" Knowing she could move faster, Mizuko lunged. But somehow, she was the one who got hit.
She had dived into the path of a Reigun blast. And instead of tearing Takeshi's head and shoulders off, she was knocked toward the other wall. Unfortunately, her head jerked at the last second. And instead of being thrown up against the wall, the massive snakes head caught Takeshi in the stomach and the momentum carried them both into the stones forming the walls of the room.
And Takeshi was the one who came away worse off.
Botan was fretting about the degree to which Koenma was fretting. She had seen him like this only once before. That was the night Yusuke, Kurama, and Hiei had disappeared. That was the night Kuwabara had died.
"Koenma, sir. You must remain calm. I have instructed all of the ferry-girls to come to me immediately if one or more of them shows up in the underworld."
"Go find them, Botan."
"How, sir? What you're proposing I do is single-handedly located not only seven intelligent people who don't want to be found, but also that I find them when they're most likely in one of Kurama's treasure stashes. Only one of those has ever been found, sir, ever, and that was on accident. It was almost impossible to get into and, according to Kurama's letter, was the easiest to access. And, on top of all that, they have disappeared in Makai, nearly all of which is uncharted." Botan looked panicked at the thought of what she had just been asked to do, but Koenma's next words relieved her a bit, by showing her he had seen enough sense to not send her to look for them.
They were, "Damn it."
Takeshi was able to stand up, but there was a cut above his left eye from the force of the impact. As he tried to summon his sword again, the effort doing so took made him collapse. Using the wall to pull himself up, he prepared himself for another attempt. But Kasumi stopped him, shouting, "Takeshi, no! Don't expend yourself, or you'll get yourself killed! Just stay out of range and let us handle it!" He nodded, collapsing a short distance away from Akiko, who was growing ever paler, moment by moment.
By now, Mizuko had realized that they had been right; it was in fact she who was at the disadvantage. The best she could hope for was that the headstrong ice demon would succumb to her poison before these two creatures from legend could kill her. All of them working together, they were easily the strangest group she'd ever seen. A human. A demon. A throwback. And a copycat, of all things. And, unfortunately for her, they were all undeniably talented.
"Thanks Kasumi. I can take her from here."
"You can take me? Alone?" Mizuko hissed, giving serious thought to being insulted as she moved to look at the boy behind her. And when they saw him, all four of them were stunned. Kiyoshi's face and arms were covered with cuts, all inflamed and bleeding. Several bruises were blooming along his fingers and above his eyes. Yet he hadn't involved himself in the fight with Mizuko yet.
Before he could respond, Kasumi gasped, "Kiyoshi, what happened?"
Looking her in the eye, he said, "The violet poison happened."
Mizuko's eyes widened. "What are you? How isss it that the poissson cut you but couldn't kill you?!"
Kiyoshi bent down to pick up what appeared to be a small, blue pebble. "Not the poison, exactly. A hybrid. I cross-pollinated it with the ivy you had growing along the walls." From the seed, purple-blue vines began weaving themselves around Kiyoshi's arm.
The Mizuko laughed. "And you expect to kill me with it, even though it couldn't kill you?"
"Yes. Plants are intelligent, this variety more so than most. You just need to learn to listen to them, so that they can communicate with you. It knows it wouldn't exist at all if not for my assistance. When it tried to kill me, it didn't use it's full poison. Because it can adjust how much it injects, unlike the grass. It was testing me. I attained dominance over it. Then I made it grow faster and collected its seeds before killing it. Its seeds will not harm me, nor any of their seeds. This variety of plant will never be dangerous to me. But to anyone other than myself, they are actually more dangerous than the violet poison, because they can alter the amount of venom they inject. That's why these cuts didn't kill me; they intentionally didn't inject enough."
The fear in Mizuko's eyes was evident, especially when Kiyoshi said, "Kasumi, Akiko, Takeshi. I suggest you three move as far away as possible." Quickly, Kasumi helped Akiko and Takeshi do as he said, knowing that it was safest to follow Kiyoshi's advice whenever possible.
Then six plants erupted around Mizuko, attacking her and pinning her to the floor. She screamed as the ivy form of the deadly grass outside her castle cut into her skin and she felt their deadly venom seeping through her veins. Kiyoshi merely watched, the plant he had demonstrated with twining itself around his arms and neck like a pet snake, his eyes frighteningly devoid of any sympathy.
Suddenly and without warning, Koenma returned to his desk and quietly began filing reports again. "1892… 1893… 1894…"
"Sir, are you all right?" Botan asked.
He sighed. "Yes. I just decided to have confidence that they can handle whatever they run into. And to accept the fact that even if they can't, there is nothing I can do to help them. It's better for everyone if I just pretend like nothing is wrong."
Botan nodded and walked quietly out of the room. Even if he hadn't, she had noticed a pattern in how worried he got. It directly correlated to how much danger the team happened to be in, whether he knew of the danger or not. She had deduced that he had a strange connection to his team, on that couldn't be broken. And the fact that he was calm meant one of three things; either they had either escaped the danger, they had gained the upper hand if they were fighting, or they had been killed. She knew it couldn't be the last. She smiled. Koenma had decided upon the right people for the job. "1895… 1896… 1897… 1898… 1899… 1900… 1901…"
Mizuko screamed again. To her it felt as if a fire were burning through her veins, a cold more intense than the girl Akiko's ice following it closely. She was capable of only a small amount of thought. The first thing that registered was that she was going to die. She screamed, words coming out without her consciously deciding to utter them, "How isss thisss possssible?!"
And she heard the boy Kiyoshi's voice, as did the other three in the room. It was as cold and hard as his eyes. But mostly it was cruel and mocking. "I already explained thisss. A hybrid. And jussst ssso you know, I have a very low tolerancssse for ssstupid quessstionsss."
And Mizuko's screams were suddenly replaced with a deathly silence, a silence even more oppressive than her bloodcurdling screams had been. The only thing moving was the purple-blue plant on Kiyoshi's arm.
Suddenly Kurama leaped up from the place he had been lying on the ground and began to pace. "That can't be possible!"
Kurama's sudden movements had startled Yusuke, but were barely enough to make Hiei open his eyes. "What is it, Kurama?" Yusuke asked, almost afraid to know the answer.
"My copycat's aura temporarily overshadowed the powerful aura that had to have been Mizuko's. And then hers disappeared completely!"
"You mean they killed her?" Yusuke asked, propping himself up on his elbows to look at Kurama.
Kurama stopped pacing and looked at Yusuke. The golden-eyed stare that seemed to pierce into Yusuke, seemed to see to his very soul, made him uncomfortable. But his obvious discomfort didn't seem to register on Kurama's radar as he said, "No. I think he killed her."
"Alone?"
"Yes."
"That can't be possible!" Yusuke said, echoing Kurama's first words.
"I didn't foresee this. This experiment… it may not have been such a good idea. If this kind of power is what he wields… if he isn't like you, Yusuke, kind deep down… I might have unleashed a monster on all three of the realms. Because I believe he almost single-handedly defeated a demon with the classification of A. And he's human, meaning there is no reason Koenma could make him stay in Makai."
"But like I said," Hiei grinned, closing his eyes again, "It'll be the most fun we've had since Kuwabara died." Kurama and Yusuke winced at Hiei's blunt reminder of why they had been avoiding Koenma for a century and a half.
But, privately, they both agreed with him.
FCL64: That's that chapter. It took forever to write, but I'm very happy with it.
animegrlsteph (pouting): Why couldn't I have killed Mizuko?
FCL64 (sighs): Fine.
(FCL64 snaps her fingers and Mizuko appears)
animegrlsteph (laughing maniacally): I'm going to kill you! Again!
(Akiko, Kiyoshi, Kasumi, and Takeshi walk in)
Takeshi (staring after animegrlsteph and Mizuko, who has been chased out of the room): I thought Kiyoshi killed her.
(at the same time) Kiyoshi: I did. FCL64: He did.
Kasumi: Then who was that?
FCL64: Mizuko.
Kasumi, Kiyoshi, and Takeshi: What?
FCL64: I'm the author. I can do whatever I want.
Akiko: Obviously. And, if that was Mizuko, what, may I ask, is that?
(Akiko points to a body on the other side of the room that looks suspiciously like Mizuko)
FCL64: Mizuko.
Kasumi: Come on! Just explain what's going on!
FCL64: Animegrlsteph is chasing an illusion. She's human, but unlike Kiyoshi, she doesn't have weird plant-powers.
Kasumi: Plant-powers?
FCL64: Yes. Now shut up. So I sent her after something that would let her think she had killed Mizuko, without her endangering herself any more than she does by hanging out with me.
Kasumi, Takeshi, and Kiyoshi: Okaaaaaaaay then.
(They run away.)
FCL64: Hey, where'd you guys go?
Akiko: You know, if you were any more unobservant you probably wouldn't realize that you were the one writing the story.
FCL64: You sound like my dad. Yesterday he told me that if my head wasn't attached I'd forget it…
Akiko: I'm not going to argue that one…
FCL64: Hey, that's not nice!
Akiko: I'm not nice. You're the one who made me that way.
(FCL64 sticks her tongue out at Akiko. Akiko freezes her tongue.)
FCL64: HEY! Nod nithe! Bye everyone!