Bakushin Toritate part 3
|| ... ... ... ||
"Why is my Nintojo responding like this?" Jaken questioned, trying to pull the staff away to silence the flames.
"Burn the pretty pretty, my master! Now's your chance!" Umebayashi said, cackling evilly and sticking her long tongue out.
"Silence, fool!" Seisuiki reprimanded, floating next to Jaken. "This is the master's time to protect Lord Sesshomaru. Do not interfere with his task."
"I have to protect him? From what? Why?" Jaken asked.
Tadamasa looked up and narrowed his eyes at the Green Pheasant from his grand distance before laughing and clapping his hands slowly. He was quite entertained by the escalation of the situation. That doctor always seemed to intrigue him! Walking through Nintojo's flames, he got a closer look at the Green Pheasant's mighty arrows. They weren't meant to purify those hit by them, it seems. His lordship of the worlds between was doing two things: protecting Meioshi from Sojuro and revealing the truth about the soul she has to save. Pity, the young lord didn't have the eyes to see it. Only King Biancheng, the overseer of Meioshi's powers, and Tadamasa by association knew the truth. While Tadamasa was curious about Sesshomaru's involvement in this, it truly did not matter.
WHIP! CRACKLE! SLAM!
"Kishi!" Kinzo called.
The little girl clashed against Maboroshi no kohime's Akai Tsuno with Meioshi's boat oar and bravely faced her greatest fear. With little to no fighting experience, Kishi called on Meioshi's combat affinity as a main support but at the cost of her energy. The onmyoji were unfamiliar with Kishi's combat skills, but Kinzo reasoned that Meioshi's fighting prowess had to be lethal. His sister was the fastest he had ever seen her, and the way she handled the boat oar was like she had done it since she was little. An impossible set of training she never learned. From one twirl to the perfect balance of her tiptoe, Kishi was holding her own against the goddess. When the patron merely cut the boat oar to disarm Kishi and stop her, Kishi used both severed parts to quickly hit the goddess in the face and neck repeatedly and crouch low to ready another attack. The grand monks of the onmyoji lent their strength to protect the little oracle and provide a shield against Maboroshi no kohime. Enraged, the goddess accepted Kishi's challenge and stopped holding back against her clansmen. She had hoped to spare her oracle, but the little girl was set on protecting Kinzo. Maboroshi no kohime struck Kishi back before looking over at Sojuro. Fine. She was an outcast now.
Going for Sesshomaru and Meioshi, Sojuro summoned his kami-reiki strength into his katana and delivered a piercing blow that snapped Meioshi out of her hold and struck the earth viciously. She grabbed at Sojuro's shoulder armor and dragged him semicircle before kicking him in his upper chest. He managed to recover and slapped Meioshi's spin kick away from him to grab her leg and swing her over his shoulder. Maboroshi no kohime unlocked her berserk mode and grew another pair of arms to quickly handle her Akai Tsuno and go for Sesshomaru. She made her trance far stronger than before, but Sesshomaru was resisting the mental attack this time. With him distracted, the goddess was able to catch his ankle with the hooked part of her weapon and pull him forward into a half split. She hit him with the end of Akai Tsuno and jabbed the blade into his armor to crack it. When he clawed it away from him, goddess and youkai clashed in power in a flurry of punches and blades striking. Fire and lightning burst from impact often to make the air around them ripple into sound waves.
"Why are you here, Hidorobo?" Meioshi demanded.
Sojuro merely smirked toothily and replied, "To offer the goddess over there a proposal, but... I'll admit I am quite interested in your might. You have grown since our last encounter. It's a pity you've sided with more demons as of late. You would have been a beautiful kami knight."
"What does that foolish ram over there want with Kinzo? Why is she protecting someone like you?" Meioshi demanded, clenching the back of her teeth.
"She has accepted my love's proposal, demon queen," Sojuro purred seductively. He effortlessly pushed against Meioshi's arctic sword in order to whisper in her ear, "To make Kinzo into her knight... the way I was made into one."
Meioshi was quiet for a moment, shock sinking into her bones, but, when she heard Sesshomaru grunting from a harsh blow above her, she looked at him and let herself be shot back by Sojuro's attack. Her symbol of strength was fighting with everything he had plus more, and he was barely breaking into a sweat. He seemed angrier that his armor was scuffed more than anything else. She needed his confidence in this fight. She wasn't a weak, little girl anymore. She had been training to defeat her enemy... and, by extension, Hidorobo. She had to remember who she was... and remind Sojuro of what he lost.
When Sojuro charged at her again, she blocked the attack, got alarmingly close to Sojuro's lips, and whispered seductively with lowered eyelids and glowing eyes, "What a perfectly boring proposal then, kami knight. Neither you nor she will ever know how good it feels to be enticed by the forbidden. You don't even know what a true, sensual sin is. You, dear kami knight, only know of one sin: the lie that a man has to always take matters into his own hands. Oh, but dear Hidorobo, look at you! You're more of a dog than the inu prince there. You move when your so-called wife tells you to move. You bark when she tells you to speak. You were freer when you were a mortal. The embodiment of a woman's desire as a young samurai. That's quite the pity. If you think I would have made a beautiful knight now, how enticing and electric would our touches have been? A holy warrior forbidden from touching another man outside of what was arranged and a decorated samurai forbidden from experiencing the fullness of life. Oh, but you prefer things the new way. A demon queen, was it? One forbidden from touching a mortal man now... and a kami knight acting as the messenger and husband to a war goddess. That's quite scandalous! A painful and painless sin... But if you don't sin, are you truly having fun?"
"You are speaking the obvious, demon wench," Sojuro replied with his darkened purr. "Of course, a demon would know of sin."
"Then it's obvious you know who's truly the demon here," Meioshi said with a smirk.
Understanding the implications she was making, Sojuro grew angry at the doctor's simple trick and punched at her harshly to gain some distance. How dare she call him and his wife demons!
"Lord Sesshomaru! This isn't my doing me lord!" Jaken tried, pulling Nintojo back.
It was no use. Nintojo kept engulfing Sesshomaru in flames.