Chapter Three: Protected

Disclaimer: I don't own Shaman King.

Sharona stared with eyes, wide in surprise, at the broad-shouldered man whose fingers had dug into the hilt of his sword. Ryu's features had changed beyond recognition in anger: his teeth were gritted and bared in a rabid, wolfish manner, the muscles on his neck and face were stretched tight and the soft, dark brown eyes were bloodshot and wide open. He had taken an offensive posture: torso lowered, arms stretched in front of his body, feet pressed against the soil, his whole being driven by a primal, animalistic instinct, awakened by the brutal violation of his chivalrous morals.

The man standing behind her bore more resemblance to an infuriated beast rather than a knight in shining armor. She had never beheld a man so overtaken by ire and the fact that it was someone as gentle-hearted by nature as Bokuto no Ryu was even more terrifying.

She turned her head towards the attacker, slammed against the pine tree. The dragon jaws locked around his neck were pressed so tight that they would break his neck any moment now. Though Sharona would have no remorse for seeing that trash dead, she felt that Ryu's actions were getting dangerously out of control.

"Ryu, stop it!" She yelled.

The former ringleader completely ignored her plea. He opened his mouth and muttered huskily in some sort of bloodthirsty trance:

"Is there a greater offence than attacking a woman?"

A choked sound escaped Emilio's throat. The jaws were clutching tighter.

"I've met scum like him before." Ryu started. "Thugs who start brawls in bars… people who kill for the fun of it. Shit like him won't stop at nothing to get what they want. They don't play fair. They don't care about honour."
He moved his left higher on the hilt and improved his grip.

"It hurts me kill him, but if I just let him go, he'd come back again. He'll never stop till he gets his revenge. He might even bring friends of his along to make the job easier. If I—"

"Don't do it!" Sharona yelled angrily. "If you despise him that much, then don't sink to his level!"

Ryu suddenly gaped at her, as if he had just noticed her existence.

"Killing him will only get you in trouble with the Shaman Council! Do you want to get arrested and thrown in jail for killing a little shit like him!?" She explained authoritatively.

"But!..." He exclaimed. "He was going to rape you! How can you be so merciful on him after what he did to you?"

"Because—"

"You're an idiot."

A crimson-red string shot forth and pierced Ryu's shoulder. Blood shot out of his wound and the shaman let out a cry in pain. The control on his Oversoul was weakened for a few seconds, giving Emilio the opportunity to slice through Yamata No Orochi with the second strike. His body fell limply on the ground with a soft rustle coming from the contact with the grass. The string was pulled back and it snaked tightly around Emilio's arm.

Sharona stood up. From what she could see, the teeth of Yamata No Orochi had left deep wounds on Emilio's neck, from which blood was pumping out, staining his chest and the ground beneath him. He was barely breathing. The woman could see that his carotid artery was severed, which meant that he had very little life left. She smirked; Ryu was so blinded by anger that in the end, it didn't matter at all whether he intended to kill Emilio deliberately or not. His careless actions had put an end to the other man.

Ryu put his hand on his shoulder, trying to stop the blood flowing out of his wound. His right arm was hanging flaccidly.

"Was there any point in… doing that?" He grunted with some difficulty. "You're… dying..."

Emilio barely opened his eyes. His lips parted and he gurgled out among the blood he was puking out:

"You're… going with me..."

Ryu's face was turning paler with every passing second. The couldn't have possibly lost that much blood for such a short period of time, so this meant that the cause for his pain was something different. When she saw how his face twisted in agony and he gritted his teeth, Sharona started turning paler herself as her fears grew. What had Emilio done to Ryu? Was that attack supposed to do something more than just leave a gash in Ryu's shoulder? The blonde gasped in fright when he collapsed on his knees and a groan escaped his throat.

Emilio laughed out with his last breath:

"There was… venom… in that string…"

The crimson energy whirling around Emilio's weapon vanished as the last sparkles of life in his eyes died away. His Oversoul was undone and the spirit of a scorpion floated in the air above his arm. The ghost scurried to his dead master and curled in a ball on top of his chest.

Sharona supported her body on her hands and she did her best to stand up while trying not to put much pressure on her injured ankle. Despite her efforts, the sharp pain pierced her ankle and caused her to stagger, almost knocking her on the ground again. She hopped on one leg to the nearest tree and supported her body with one hand. The woman closed her eyes and tried to slow her breathing down, which had become erratic from the pain of her injury. After a few seconds she had regained some of her strength and felt confident enough to walk over to her crutches lying on the ground by hopping on one leg. She picked her crutches and used them to walk over to Ryu, who was now bent in two, his head facing the ground. The man was panting heavily, inhaling and exhaling again and again, his eyes bulging out and cold sweat breaking on his forehead. Sharona's heart froze in fear when she saw that the flesh around the wound on his shoulder was turning greenish-blue; the poison in Emilio's weapon was this deadly?!

She turned around when a familiar, but strangely ethereal voice laughed out. Emilio's soul had left his corpse and was floating an inch above the ground, staring with glee at his agonizing opponent and the blonde.

"He won't be using this arm for quite a while." The ghost ascertained gloatingly. "In fact, he won't be using it at all… he won't live long enough for it to heal."

Sharona screeched:

"Fuck off, you son of a bitch!"

"Baobara's poison is one hundred times stronger than the poison of a desert scorpion." Emilio continued with a smirk. "Your friend has less than an hour to live."

"Fuck you!" The woman spat out. "Do you think I'll let him die!?"

"There's nothing you can do." Emilio stated.

Sharona leaned forward so that she could see Ryu's face and shouted:

"Ryu, hold on! Don't die just yet!"

The man rested his torso on his arms. He stood in this posture for ten seconds and suddenly, he stamped on the ground and rose up with all his strength. Sharona was taken aback at Ryu's sudden change; only seconds ago, he was struggling to breathe and now he was standing tall as if nothing had happened.

"I'll be fine." He groaned out. His voice was low and husky, drained out of energy. "Let's go while I can still fight it."

Emilio's ghost shook in uncontrollable, maniacal laughter.

"Still fight it!?" The spirit exclaimed with a grin on his face. "That was a blatant lie and you know it! You're half-dead and your body is decomposing even as we speak and you know that, too! You don't have a—"

"I TOLD YOU TO SHUT UP!" Sharona shrieked and swung her crutch at him. It went right through his head. Emilio sighed and slowly hovered higher in the air.

"I think I'll leave you now. I had enough fun." His expression seemed even more arrogant as he watched Sharona from above. Then he addressed his scorpion: "Let's go, Baobara."

With those last words, Emilio's soul faded away and disappeared. Baobara lied on his master's lifeless body for a few more seconds then its body started dissipating. The spirit turned into a formless cloud of energy that quickly vanished, leaving no trace of its existence behind.

Sharona scowled. There were two things she prayed for: the former was that she was fast enough to take Ryu to a hospital before he died in her hands and the latter was that Emilio burned in hell for all eternity. She supported the man under his shoulder and both of them started walking as quickly as they could towards the other end of the forest.

The blonde's heart twisted with angst and fear. It seemed to her that the forest path was stretching into the immense eternity. No matter how hard she tried to go faster, she couldn't see the end of the thick wall of trees surrounding them. Sharona felt herself trapped in a nightmare, a restless delirium outside reality and space. Her senses had turned painfully acute, her perception of the whole world had become agonizingly sharp. She felt time slipping away with every passing second, every passing beat her heart made. She could sense it almost physically, as if the Grim Reaper himself was slicing piece after piece of her time with his scythe. With every single step she took, her fright was slowly turning into panic, becoming harder and harder to control. Her grip around the man's shoulder was tightening more and more, afraid that she might lose him, that he might crumble, disappear, fade away into oblivion should she let go of him, as if she was his only connection to life. Sharona gritted her teeth, fighting off her pain and trudging forward with Ryu, lying half-unconscious on her body, where the end of the forest lied.

"Damn, you're heavy…" She gasped out. "I know you're big, but I didn't think you'd weight a whole ton!"

She threw a sidelong glance at Ryu's face. It was calm, relaxed, devoid of all expression. Dangerously tranquil.

Lifeless.

She stopped dead in her tracks and raised her voice worriedly:

"Ryu, are you listening to me!?"

There was no response.

"Ryu!" She exclaimed, her facial color changing to white. Ryu's life were barely opened, his head was hanging limply facing the ground. Sharona concentrated on hearing Ryu's breathing; it was barely audible and slow, like the sounds emitted from an old man on the brink of death. She groaned when Ryu's legs gave out and the weight of his whole body threatened to crush her. The woman rested the other shaman on the ground and tried to recollect her thoughts.

He was dying, it was pointless to deny that fact. The poison from Emilio's weapon had spread through Ryu's entire body, polluting his blood and effectively deadening his whole organism. Sharona had some medical skill, a requirement for her former job as a babysitter, but her experience only ranged from treating wounds and bandaging chafed skin to picking out the most suitable drug or antibiotic to relieve a cold, a flue or a fever in extreme cases. She had never treated a poisoned man before and her knowledge in venoms and antidotes was embarrassingly poor. The only thing she knew was that if you sink the poisoned area in hot water, the poison spreads slower, but… where the hell was she supposed to find hot water right now!? Sucking the blood out of the wounds seemed useless to her right now; it's been at least half an hour since Ryu got stung and that had given the poison more than enough time to circulate through his body several thousand times. And with a poison as deadly as this one, the chances that she might get infected were very high, and the last thing she wanted now was to die along with Ryu when being so close to the village.

She unbuttoned his shirt and removed it from his body, revealing his broad hairy chest and his wounded shoulder. The area around the wound had grown in size and was tinted in a color even more sickly than before. She pressed her fingers against the carotid artery and she felt his pulse; it was weak, far slower than it should normally be for a human being, but it gave Sharona the momentary relief that the man had not died yet. This meant that she still had time to do whatever was in her powers to do.

The shaman locked her fingers together and concentrated. Sharona had heard of this kind of treatment only once from Faust. It was the conscious manipulation of one's Furyoku to transfuse it from his own body to the body of another shaman.

"It works the same way blood transfer does, but it's not as simple as sticking a needle in the patient's body. The donor has to mentally direct his Furyoku to flow out of his body and enter the recipient, and that is something a lot of shamans aren't capable of. Also, a single donor's blood will be enough to invigorate the recipient's organism, but in the case of Furyoku, it takes the amount of two, three or more shamans to take the desired healing effect on the recipient's body. This is not only because the recipient needs to convert Furyoku into healing energy, but also because his soul is receiving the Furyoku of a foreign being. As it transforms the foreigner's Furyoku into its own, a lot of unrefined Furyoku is destroyed. The process takes time, but if performed correctly, the effects will be staggering… However, I don't advice you to stick to this method, as it doesn't always pay off.", that's what Faust had said. The last person he had used this technique on was Ren, one year ago when they fought Hao's minions. The boy was bleeding profusely and was on the brink of death, if it wasn't for Faust's quick thinking and preservation, Ren surely wouldn't have made it. The German discouraged inexperienced people from using that technique, because it could have unexpected, if not harmful effects on the recipient. Sharona, however, had far too much at stake and had no other options left. She couldn't bear the guilt that someone had died so that she could live. Sharona chose the role of the patron for herself, she took the burden of responsibility for others willingly. It wasn't only because of her selfish desire to manipulate others, but because she thought this was the only way for her to become stronger.

As she placed her hands on Ryu's wound, the woman suddenly realized how weak she actually was.

Sharona closed her eyes. She quelled down the rampaging thoughts of fear and despair inside her head and tried to delve into her sub consciousness. She saw only darkness. Vast, pitch-black emptiness, an immense starless cosmos of her own psyche, a territory she had never explored before. There were no laws or order here, except the ones that she had constructed herself. This world lacked light or sounds, there was no warmth or cold here, nothing that could be perceived by physical human senses. Sharona passed by huge immaterial blocks of raw thoughts and instincts and towering skyscrapers of memories, towering into the unseen skies of darkness. Formless emotions, scrambled information and blurred memories ran pass her, till she found it; a stream of pink-tinted energy, springing from a bottomless well and flowing through the mental dimensions of her being.

She reached out.

In the meantime, Ryu was plunging into a deep sleep, his conscience sinking into oblivion…

From the Author: I decided to end it here, so that I won't have to drag along the chapter. I'll post the rest as a new chapter. Accept my apologies!