Chapter Ten
A Cave
Gojyo cracked his knuckles as he walked in through the mouth of the cave. "Hey, brother mine!"
"Hm? What is it?" Dokugakuji stepped up beside him, followed by Yaone.
Gojyo took a few steps forward, trying to search out a good place to stretch out. He might be lying around for a while. Idiot monkey. "Any beautiful women come this way and you just point them right to my soft reclining form, m'kay?" He smirked over his shoulder.
"Heh. Don't worry. I'll be sure to call in all the local weirdos."
Gojyo wheeled around. "Don't even joke about shit like that."
"Please don't be alarmed, Mr. Gojyo," Yaone cut in earnestly. "Lord Kougaiji has promised that your bodies will not be touched while your consciousnesses are absent."
Gojyo snorted, reluctantly tearing a wary eye away from his brother, and looked at Yaone instead. Alongside being an apothecary skilled in all manner of potions and poisons, and being a competent fighter, she was also quite beautiful. Her dark hair neatly tied back into two pigtails, with large eyes and a rather catching red youkai mark on her arm, she had always been a pleasure on the eyes. Gojyo blinked, and then smirked wolfishly. "Is that so? Not touched at all? Hakkai will be so disappoi–GAKH!"
Out of nowhere a hand had latched onto the back his neck. "Come, Gojyo. I have found the most uneven, inhospitable strip of cave floor, just for you."
A guttural whimper was as much as Gojyo could gurgle out as the hand on the back of his neck increased its pressure, successfully steering him away from Yaone and Dokugakuji.
…
"…"
"Having second thoughts?"
Sanzo shot a glare at the youkai Prince.
"Can you blame me?"
"Not at all. Makes me glad not to be in your shoes right now, actually." Kougaiji squinted up at the narrow strip of light coming down between the two walls of mountains towering around them. Little of it reached this far down. Instead, it dappled the earth in bright patches. The entrance to their cave was just shy of one such patch. Just tinted by the light.
The last two days had not been pleasant.
Kougaiji and his party could travel swiftly by flying dragon. Sanzo's pace had been crippling by comparison. It took Jeep the rest of the day and into the next morning to reach the mountain range that had been on the horizon when they all first run into one another. Kougaiji had to say, watching the vehicle's slow progress from the air, he almost had to admire Sanzo for still being sane two years and change after first embarking on this venture to the West.
It had then taken another day and a half to climb up the mountain to the cave in question. Kougaiji had weighed the benefits and drawbacks of their present location carefully. Benefit– the cave they chose was very well hidden and the only reason he heard about it was because Dokugakuji had known that a good deal of mining had been done around here, decades ago. The cave was actually a never-completed tunnel. Even if there were old miners still living in the nearest village, this cave wasn't one that would be worth the remembering. It was unknown. That was the benefit. Now, the drawback– this cave just happened to be wedged between the face of two mountains, and thus was vulnerable to any sort of attacks from above, or even from the sides.
Kougaiji felt like a child who had tactlessly run into a corner, curled up in a ball, and then hoped beyond hope that no one just happens to notice him.
And the worst part was– it really was the best they had.
Of course, they could always travels to a more secure area. But that would mean at least another three grueling days flying over Sanzo's Jeep, going as slowly as a snail. It would mean at least another three days in which one of Gyokumen Koushu's lackeys could see him fraternizing with the enemy, and that was the last thing he needed right now. And it would mean at least another three days in which Goku would be unconscious, his presence unchecked and unaccounted for.
And to think I'm actually worried about the little bastard. Kougaiji bit into his thumbnail, looking back to the earth. Still… at least I'm not nearly as pathetic looking as someone else here. Because in these few days of traveling Kougaiji had been able to witness firsthand that at which Hakkai and Gojyo didn't even bate an eyelash under the circumstances– the continuous deterioration of Genjo Sanzo.
He watched the monk now. It wasn't anything… outright. He could not call it a breakdown. No. Deterioration was the right word for it. He was like a vase that kept getting chipped. One chip, and the vase still looked fine. Another scrape – it give the vase character. And another, and another and another. But then there came a point when the viewer just realized… the vase was completely broken. It looked terrible. It needed to be thrown out because there was no way to fix it at this point.
That was Sanzo. He looked terrible just by virtue of being there.
"Hm?"
"I said, how long are you going to need to prepare for this… ritual… thing?"
Kougaiji studied his face for a moment, searching for just one trace of nervousness. Nothing. The monk may have lost his charge, but not his nerve.
"A few hours. Pushing a presence out of this world is a more delicate process than pulling one in, and that's saying something. There are three of you. And I'll be working with a plain – Goku's mind – that I know absolutely nothing about. It'll take some time." Sanzo twitched. "Nervous, priest?"
"Tish. Hardly. I just want a cigarette."
"If that's all it is, then let's get to work."
…
Gojyo leaned against a wall of the cavern and slid down into a sitting position onto his sleeping mat. Night had fallen, and the five levitating balls of flame that Kougaiji had hung in midair around the cavern just made everything that much eerier.
It didn't help that the half-light was falling hauntingly on Kougaiji, crouched in front of Goku, who had been leaned against the cave like a rag doll. The Prince was examining his power limiter. The diadem on his head. After the initial hissing reaction that he had gotten out of Hakkai and Gojyo when he'd gripped the thing, Kougaiji he restricted himself to touching the golden band with a single nail at a time. For the last however many hours he had tapped the thing, run either his thumb or forefinger over it, then maybe touched Goku's pulse or lifted an eyelid. For hours now he had literally been doing nothing but prod the stupid monkey. And the really sad part was? Kougaiji was completely absorbed in what he was doing.
He ran a nail down the central groove in its design.
Gojyo tilted his head back against the wall and rolled it to look at the other figures that hovered like shades in the cave. Jien– Dokugakuji was sitting just a few feet away from him. I still hiccup on that new name sometimes. His brother was now applying some kind of shine to his sword. Gojyo didn't see the point. It was a demon weapon, after all. It'd just vanish into the other plain until the next time he called for it, and all the dirt on it would just be left behind. Instant cleaning. But then, Gojyo wasn't a Sword Master by profession.
He sighed loudly into the silence, punctuated only the scraping of metal and the crack of the fire balls. Gojyo rather sensed than saw the silhouette of Hakkai give him a warning glare across the cave. Tightass. A short distance from Hakkai were Yaone and Lirin. The squirt had sprawled out on the floor over Sanzo's sleeping bag, fast asleep and using the seated Yaone as a pillow. Hey, Gojyo could think of worse pillows.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Again? How many times was Hair-do going to knock nails with that thing? Gojyo slumped further into the wall. Quiet and tense. That was the air. Quiet and tense. Hakuryuu and the Houtou dragons were out on patrol. The would be able to see if some unwanted assassins tried to come along and crash this little private shindig. That could be awkward. Like having your future mother-in-law crash your bachelor's party.
…It made sense in his mind.
Ignoring Hakkai, Gojyo clicked his lighter open, rustled up a pack of cigarettes, and then flared one into life. Whatever. If the little Prince was as good as he said he was, he could do with the one quiet sneeze. Gojyo exhaled smoke through his nostrils, his eyes coming to rest on Goku through the calm of the cigarette. And what do you say, monkey? Hm? You spent five hundred years of obscurity in a cave, just like this one, and you got out. Got out. Could have counted your blessings. But no. You just had to go digging for your memories. And now here you are, slumped off in another cave. On another mountain. Just like last time.
…Maybe it's those very memories of yours that keep landing you in dark places, locked in your own head.
Gojyo inhaled and, suddenly acutely aware of having to keep quiet, almost coughed. This time, however, it was practically impossible to ignore Hakkai, and the fear of death compelled Gojyo to just hold it in.
"Alright. Finished."
Gojyo wheezed out. Kougaiji stood.
Dokugakuji just looked at his kid brother with an eyebrow to the skies. "What was that?"
"Shuuu-huuup," was all that Gojyo managed.
"Gojyo," Gojyo looked up at Hakkai. He did not like that smile. "Why don't you go get Sanzo for us?"
Oh, he was not taking this shit. Damnit, Hakkai needed to get over himself and that one little jab about Yaone. I mean, come on– All of the 'do take care's and the 'how are you's and please. …Gojyo was scrambling out of the cave at top speed. Because there was nothing as terrifying as the feeling that Hakkai was reading his mind and preparing to act accordingly.
"Sanzo. Oy, Sanzo!" Gojyo looked along the mountain pass. There, high above, just between the two walls of black rock, in the little sliver of sky… was a full moon. He didn't know why, but it made him smile a little. Down here in the bleak and bulging terrain of mountains and rock, it was the only source of light that splashed across this canopy of grey.
And there he was. Gojyo blinked. And then took another step. Nothing happened.
The priest had wedged himself between two rocks that made something of a recliner. A very stiff and uncomfortable recliner. His head had lolled to the side and his right arm had reached up against his left shoulder to clutch at his Scripture. Sanzo had retreated from the cave shortly after Kougaiji had begun his examination, well before sunset. Gojyo doubted that he would have picked this stop when it had already, as it was now, become seeped in moonlight.
Perhaps it should have been Sanzo that Gojyo was worried about when they settled into a cave on the mountain face. After all, Goku could neither see nor hear nor feel the place into which his actions had landed them all. Whereas Sanzo… what must it had been like? …For the man who had taken Goku out of a cave as a child, to now carry him back into the darkness.
Sanzo looked exhausted. Gojyo studied him from a distance. His face, turned away from the moonlight and touched by shadow, rather than relaxing in sleep as Gojyo knew it usually did, just seemed to have gotten even harder. He was tense and sharp and the bastard looked miserable.
Sanzo's grip on his Scripture suddenly tightened, and Gojyo began to worry that he might tear the thing. Sanzo gasped in his sleep and flinched on the bare rock. Gojyo's jaw tightened. He had seen this before, when he had guarded over Sanzo after the Kami-sama incident. Back then, Sanzo had lost his Maten Scripture to the wannabe prick. It's either one of your belongings or the other. You've gotta stop being so careless with your shit. Gojyo was about to walk over to the man and shake him awake when Sanzo flinched again, his head jerked to the side, and the moonlight spilled over his features.
The light should have made everything that much more stark. It should have done what Kougaiji's floating torches had done back in the cave, and made Sanzo's face more drawn, more wax-toned, and more sallow. Instead, his face eased, and then softened.
And then broke.
Gojyo heard the dormant hiccups. Had he waited too long to wake him up? Gojyo took another drag from his cigarette, and breathed out. It tasted better in the fresh air. What are you gonna do?
He'd been meaning to make a ruckus and alert the monk before he got too close and saw too much. Now, however, he treaded very quietly, wedging his cigarette between his teeth, and slipping off his bandana as he went. Gojyo draped it over Sanzo's eyes, and applied pressure with his hand, letting the bandana seep in whatever it should. Sanzo stiffened under his touch, and Gojyo felt his eyeballs dart under their lids, under the bandana, through the moisture, beneath his fingertips. Then Sanzo did exactly what Gojyo had been hoping he'd do. Very shakily, and very hesitantly, he let go of his Scripture. He raised his hand, fastened it around Gojyo's wrist, and pulled it away. Gojyo's fingers hooked the bandana as they lifted.
Sanzo's eyes were dry. Gojyo stepped a few paces back, and Sanzo sat up unsteadily. He was probably aching from having slept on the rock like that. Idiot monk. I swear the kid's stupidity is rubbed off on you. Though Gojyo wondered if he was really one to talk.
"Sometimes…" Sanzo rasped. Gojyo's attention snapped back. Sanzo smirked blearily. "Always… I've wished that the youkai had never stolen my master's Saiten Scripture." He swallowed loudly. "…I never wished that they would have just stolen the Maten one instead."
If this hadn't been the Maten Scripture, Goku wouldn't have been able to leave. He didn't have to say it out loud. He wouldn't have said it out loud.
Gojyo pulled out his pack of cigarettes and offered him one. "Hi Lite. Take it or leave it."
…
Kougaiji had known from the first that Goku was like no other warrior he had ever met. Still, the Prince had always marveled at the simplicity of his beliefs. He fought for himself. Himself.
Now Kougaiji found that he was marveling at the boy tenfold. How could he have kept any sort of idea of "himself" with this sort of lock on his mind? Hakkai had told him that Goku's limiter was forged by the gods… but it was one thing to hear it, and another thing to touch the thing and feel the power and complexity of it. It was like a maze of restraints and dead ends. A proper Minotaur's Labyrinth, to name a legend from a land near west of India, Kougaiji's home. The limiter was a labyrinth keeping whatever needed to remain inside, trapped. Kougaiji, after spending hours trying to figure it out, had to just give up, and instead concentrate on the one thing he was certain of – the only thing one could be certain of when facing a labyrinth: its entrance.
Gojyo, Hakkai, and Sanzo were now standing around him while he crouched in front of Goku. It had been agreed that Hakuryuu would remain here with Yaone – just in case they needed to be packed up and driven away quickly. Kougaiji couldn't go as far as aiding their getaway. Behind him the usual goodbyes were being exchanged.
"You gonna tuck me in a read me a bedtime story, big brother?"
"Sure. Do you want a list of your STDs alphabetically, or chronologically?"
"…!"
"Hey, baldy Sanzo! If you see anything cool, can you bring it back for me, 'kay?"
"Where you do you think I'm going? Some sort of vacation! …And quit calling me bald…"
"Thank you for agreeing to take care of Hakuryuu. It's very kind of you, Ms. Yaone."
"It's the least I can do. I still haven't forgotten when you came to my aid over a little over a years ago, when that militia captured me. Please, just take care of yourself–"
"–Make sure the path right behind me is clear," Kougaiji barked out, once more inserting the nails of one hand into the grooves of the design on Goku's limiter. "We're starting." He began to chant:
"I call on the Key to all doors,
My right arm to make seen this Gate."
He rose slowly, stepping back a few paces. There, at the tips of his fingers, as if pulled from its mold, remained the golden outline of the pattern on Goku's diadem, glowing in the shape of a closed archway. Carefully, surreptitiously, he brought his left hand to the delicate form, hooked his nails about it, and pull on it gently.
"The sinister widen the sinister.
Three souls fly to dubious Fate."
For a moment nothing but that ominous last line hung in the air. He held his breath. Did it work? It was not a normal chant. But those were the only words he could think to match the desired effect…
A blast shook the mountain, and for a moment Kougaiji thought there was no way in hell or heaven that he would be able to keep a grip on that design. The light was searing. It kept building in intensity, until Kougaiji wondered if any of them would ever be able to see again. Then, in a flash like lightening, it compressed. Kougaiji blinked to see that, like a shadow of pure brightness, a larger clone of the diadem's patterns now shone out from the design at his fingertips. It was like watching an image on a screen, and he was holding the projector. Two golden half circles were now shimmering in the cave, and it would have been beautiful, if it was not so terribly hard to maintain. He hooked his fingers on the miniature design in his hands once more, as one might hook strings to form a new design, and pulled the life-size design, the Gate, opened. Kougaiji recognized the design – it was almost identical to the Gate that bastard Homura had created to his 'new world,' a year ago, when he had tried to destroy the universe as they knew it.
"Hurry," Kougaiji gasped. "I can't hold it for long." Hakkai gave Hakuryuu a last pat, Yaone a last smile, and was through the door. Through the door and… gone. Though the gateway itself was transparent, when Hakkai stepped across the threshold, a golden ripple passed around him, and he vanished. Ripple. Goodbye and good riddance. Sanzo was next, followed by a last goodbye from Lirin, and followed still by Gojyo. Kougaiji actually almost let go of the formation when Sanzo stopped short and the red-head almost ran into him from behind.
What does he want now!? Kougaiji gritted his teeth. His arms were beginning to quake despite himself, and sweat was streaming down the sides of his head.
"Why." Sanzo addressed him. It wasn't a question. It was a demand.
Kougaiji smirked. "I'll tell you if you get back alive." Demand rejected.
Sanzo snored. "Oh good. Something to look forward to." He was swallowed by the pool of light that was the threshold to Goku's mind. Ripple. Gojyo gave the whole band a last smirk, a salute to his brother, and took off after his companions.
Ripple.
With a mad gasp, Kougaiji flung his fingers apart, ripping to shreds the design they had held. The fractured golden strands shot from his fingers, shot through the great Gate, catching it as spikes would paper, and the whole mass of gold rocketed back against Goku's head, which was thrown back at the jolt and knocked against the wall of the cave. Kougaiji sank to his knees, gasping, and sat there, staring at his hands. Vaguely he was aware of Yaone running across the cave to Goku.
"He's bleeding from that," Yaone tilted Goku's head forward to examine it. "You ought to have cushioned him before you began the process."
"…I wasn't sure of its particulars," Kougaiji answered dully.
There was a gasp. He thought it was Lirin. He looked up to see what the problem was and in the returning half-light of the fire orbs, he saw three bodies, now vacant, and no longer obscured by the radiance of the rippling Gate, lying on the cave floor. He swallowed. It was one thing to know they would be gone. It was another to see the 'corpses.'
"Kou… your fingers." They were smoking.
Everything hurt so much more now. And his hands… he felt as if they'd been seared, bitten and broken, all in one sensation. He brought his fingers to his face, and skimmed them under his nose. He smelled burnt skin, and felt splintered nails. He wasn't imagining it.
Oh, do they owe me big time for this one. Kougaiji tried to get back to his feet. He teetered on bent legs, and fell back on his knees painfully.
'Kou!" Dokugakuji was by his side in a heartbeat.
"I'm fine," he rasped, looking from one to another of the discarded forms of the Sanzo Party. His arms already on fire, the rest of his body was beginning to ache. Was this it then? The price for defying the gods? He smirked, thinking of that bastard Homura.
There was a thrill to it– to knowing that he had, for a moment, unlocked a Gate that Heaven itself had sealed. As one whose magic revolved around fiends and planes and presences, it was a point of personal pride. And as a Prince… well, it was nice to know that, even if he couldn't stand up against Gyokumen Koushu, he could always compromise on fighting gods.
But how on earth are you going to get back, eh? He fixed his gaze on the head of flaxen gold hair that shone, even in this darkness. It would be a strange and unusual end indeed if the Sanzo Party was put to a halt, not by a foe, but by the strongest of their own Party.
"I fight for myself. Me! That's reason enough."
"We'd best make them comfortable for now. Yaone, after you've finished with Goku, could you take a look at my hands?" Everything, everything, had benefits and drawbacks.
…
"…Spill."
Tenpou raised an eyebrow as he looked up at Kenren. They had gone back to the sakura grove to see if there was any lasting damage after Goku's mirage journey to and from his body. Apart from the cracks in the earth from his sparring with Kenren, nothing seemed otherworldly in the garden.
"Whatever it is your thinking. Spill." They were on their way back to Tenpou's office now. They were almost there already.
"It just… rattled me, that's all."
"You got scared, didn't you?" Kenren ashed his cigarette onto an otherwise pristine marble floor. "Scared that he was going to vanish… back into his world? The real world?"
Tenpou chuckled. "As if you weren't the least bit nervous yourself."
Kenren snorted. "Yeah, well, I'll tell you one thing – I wasn't nearly as nervous as someone else."
"…He was too scared to even let go of him after that. Wouldn't even let him sit up."
They walked in silence for a while.
"Shit. I feel like we're in some kind of balancing act, and we can't see whom or what we're balancing against, and we can't control it either! And one wrong step in the wrong direction and we all come crashing down into the abyss, and Goku never does remember–"
"Shh!" Tenpou pressed a finger to his lips.
Kenren stopped short in the same heartbeat, not because of whatever sound Tenpou had detected. No. He always stopped short because one held one's breath around the Marshal, just as one held one's breath around a crouching tiger – unless, of course, one wanted to be skinned alive. That was the effect Tenpou could have on men. The blood ran cold. As Kenren had once said to Goku, centuries ago– "Impulsive." Ha. What an understatement.
Then he heard it too.
It was impossible to say who vanished from whose side first. The two just evaporated from the hallway. And they weren't splitting up either. No. That had been a misconception for which their opponents too often paid the price. One thing to know about Field Marshal Tenpou and General Kenren was that they worked like a perfect clock. Completely and utterly in synchronization.
–Which was why Tenpou was completely and utterly thrown off when he heard Kenren's voice coming from the wrong direction altogether.