Interlude Part One
Shun
Shun groaned. He pushed to his elbows. He coughed up blood. The metallic tang was familiar on his tongue, and he brushed away the smear of red from his lips with the back of his hand. The last few months had been a dream come true only for Shun to realize very, very quickly that his chuunibyo dream was actually a horrific nightmare of epic proportions.
The seal binding his spirit energy was almost completely gone, now. Only a few tattered bits of it remained, and more and more of those tattered bits burned away every time his aura flared to its maximum output. Which only happened when his life was in danger. Which had become a minute-by-minute occurrence under the tutelage of his mentor.
If Shun had held any doubts about the validity of the Ghost Files and its demon cast, Black Dragon Hiei had entirely disabused him of them.
"What's this? Done already?" Hiei scoffed, appearing from seemingly nowhere to stand imperiously over Shun's huddled form. Shun looked up at his mentor—his tormentor, more like—and passed his shaky hand over his bloody lips once more.
"I'll admit that you've surprised me, human, but what point is there in continuing this charade? You're no warrior, no fighter, you're barely worth considering as a threat."
"B-barely a threat is s-still a threat," Shun forced out as he pushed up to his knees. He raised his right arm, its usual red bandages long used to bandage his actual wounds. A crackle of ice blue lightning rippled across his bruised and bloodied skin, raising his hair at the roots with its electric kiss. The lightning danced across his arm and up his shoulder, crackling wildly and lighting the whole cave in vivid, acidic blue-white light.
"Haaaa!" Shun lunged forward, an after-image flickering in his wake. He threw a punch, but Hiei caught his lightning charged fist with his open palm. Shun gritted his teeth and poured more energy into his arm. A shape began to form—a snake? A lizard?
A dragon. Shun grinned.
"Hn." Black fire licked across Hiei's skin, his own small dragon forming from the flames. His black, dragon shaped aura flitted up Shun's arm, raising blisters as it smothered his ice-colored lightning.
"Agh!" Shun collapsed to his knees, his whole body trembling from pain. His lightning snuffed out, and Hiei's black flames vanished.
"Hn," Hiei said again, and Shun dared a teary look up at him. Two sets of red eyes clashed as Hiei stared Shun down, his expression entirely unreadable. After a pregnant pause, Hiei dropped Shun's fist and turned on his heel.
"Tend your burns. You will try again when you're finished."
Despite the pain, humiliation, and uncertainty crushing him, Shun felt unaccountably buoyed. In the five dilated days he had been training under the demon, Shun had learned that the (much) older man's respect was not easily won. To have gained his approval, however benignly given, went a long way toward raising Shun's esteem. Maybe, just maybe, he wasn't entirely useless after all…
"Hurry up, human," Hiei snapped. "I do not appreciate you wasting my time."
"Y-yes!" Shun climbed to his feet, his blistered arm clutched firmly to his chest, and stumbled to the small campsite that held their medical supplies. He cleaned and dressed his wound with practiced ease, tying off the end of his white bandage with his teeth. The cloth was imbued with spirit energy to stimulate and hasten healing, for which Shun was grateful. He'd learned how to handle pain under Hiei's tender, loving care, but he still didn't liked it.
"Take up your sword."
Shun lunged for the sheathed weapon propped up beside his bed roll, snagged it, dropped into a shoulder-roll, and came up on one knee with the naked blade braced over his head. Hiei's bare katana slammed against it with enough force to generate sparks.
"Do you enjoy pain?" Hiei said, his voice barely rising as he menaced Shun around the cave with every surgery-precise thrust and slash of his glimmering blade. Shun could barely keep up, only able to react to Hiei's movements with his body because his eyes were still too slow to keep up. Thin scratches blossomed on his face, arms, bare chest, and any other patch of skin Hiei could reach. But there were fewer of them today than in past days.
Shun's left foot came down on a loose stone, and his leg went out. He yelped, diving to the side and barely avoiding Hiei's skewering thrust, though he did gain a four-inch gash across his ribs for his troubles. Groaning, Shun slapped a hand to the wound and used his spirit energy to propel him backward and out of his mentor's reach at the same moment he swept a wide arch with his sword to dissuade a repost.
"One more mistake like that, and I'll kill you, human."
Shun nodded, panting, and said, "Yes, Hiei-sensei."
Getting used to Hiei's teaching methods had been the biggest adjustment so far. The man never said anything encouraging, and his criticisms were anything but constructive, but it was obvious to Shun now that, in those first few weeks especially, the fire demon had been holding back. His speed, his strength, the heat of his black flames, even his biting quips had been tailored to match Shun's just enough to propel him forward day-by-day. His progress had been so gradual that it wasn't possible for Shun to say exactly how much he had improved, only that he had. Probably.
"Hn." Hiei swiped his blade through the air, shaking off any loose blood, then sheathed the weapon without cleaning it. He never cleaned it, and yet, it always came out of its sheath perfectly pristine. Shun's did too, but for obviously different reasons. In all these months of sword training, Shun hadn't laid a single scratch…
"Oh." Shun stared at his blade where a single bead of red clung to the very tip. His head snapped up, scanning his teacher for any sign of a wound. There. It wasn't much, but on the back of Hiei's hand—his sword hand—was a thin line of blood. A grin broke over Shun's face, and it was all he could do to hold in a triumphant cheer. He'd done it! He actually drew blood!
"Quit gawking like a child."
"Yes, sensei!" Shun flicked his sword the way Hiei always did, and the little bead of blood flew away like a glimmering ruby to disappear somewhere into the dimness of the cave. Shun sheathed his sword with a grin, then barely tossed himself aside in time to avoid a punch to the face.
No rest for the weary…
Kaliea: So, this whole multiple updates on multiple days thing is not going to be the norm (sorry in advance), but I spent the last week re-reading and editing the whole book so I could re-post the older chapters so everything was formatted the same, and, well, it got me inspired enough to dive back into writing (fortunately, I've had a day or two off of work to get back in the 'zone.' That said, I'm back to my usual heavy workload tomorrow, so I don't know when my next updates will be. In the meantime, I'm trying to build up a buffer so I can at least do once or twice a month until the book is finished. Depending on how much time I manage to get for myself (my boss is going on a two-week anniversary vacation in June, so maybe I'll have time then?), I'm hoping to have this book finally and completely finished by the end of the year. Here's hoping...
