A Flash Of Yellow Thunder
Hello everyone and welcome to the latest chapter of The Heart Of The Asura! We've got a slight shift in focus to another group this chapter, but don't worry, it'll still be plenty entertaining. And speaking of entertainment, swing by and see about becoming a patron on my Pat reon for info, scene samples, and other tidbits relating to all my writings! Now then I believe that's all the announcements, so with no guest review questions to answer this week, on to the story!
Nighttime: Mt. Natagumo
"Will you hold still you prick," Susamaru ordered as she and Tanjiro tried wrapping Inosuke's wounds, "This is already annoying enough as it is!"
"No, I'm fine!" The Boar Fighter insisted while struggling, "these wounds are nothing, I'll keep outshining you both!"
"The cuts might not be that deep but if you lose too much blood you could die," Tanjiro reminded while tightening one of the bandages.
"It's just a few cuts," Inosuke put his arms up and flexed his muscles, "I won't be stopped by-GAH!" He was finally silenced for a moment by Susamaru clubbing him in the back of the head and using her other arms to restrain him.
"Just shut up and let us finish this," she grunted before giving the boy slayer a serious look, "so you're sure that's what spider mom said? There's really a Kizuki on this mountain?"
"I don't think she had any reason to lie and even if she was, I'm certain I would've smelled it," Tanjiro nodded while finishing up another bandage, "What I did smell was fear, so much that she yearned for death. I think whoever is keeping these demons together is doing so through force."
"That explains such a large group being together," Susamaru retracted her extra arms, relieved that they were finally finished treating their fellow slayer's wounds, "at least the way that other demon talked. Usually at best demons only gather if Muzan allows it, save for the occasional duo forming. Which only makes it more likely that she was telling the truth about a Kizuki being on this mountain….shit."
"We can't waste the opportunity either way," the boy swordsman gave a determined look, "we need to figure out which one is the Kizuki and get a sample of their blood."
"Ugh, what are you guys blabbing about," Inosuke asked groggily.
"Just figuring out what to do next," The Temari Demon assured.
"Oh, before I forget, here," he held up a white kimono top, "I got it from the Spider Mother's remains. I know it's not your usual color but I thought you might like it for now until you can replace the one you had to tear up."
"Aw, you worried about me catching a cold," Susamaru gave a playful smile.
"Just being considerate," Tanjiro answered innocently, "since you're not officially a slayer you don't get paid like we do, but don't worry about that. When this mission is over I'll buy you a new kimono."
"Oh, right," she blushed in embarrassment at this reminder and his willingness to help her, "guess that is a problem." The demon girl swiped the kimono top from his hands a little more quickly than she meant and began putting it on, "just don't go overboard. I don't want you to go broke replacing torn outfits for me."
"I don't think it'll come to that," the Breath of Water User smiled, "now we'd best get moving. The other demons could be close by." The group began trekking through the forest once again while Susamaru tried processing the odd feeling she was having.
"Idiot," she muttered under her breath, "why do you always have to be so nice?"
Another Section of Mt. Natagumo
"Ow!" Zenitsu suddenly held up his hand, "something just pricked me!"
"We're in the woods at night," Honoka pointed out, "there are plenty of bugs flying around."
"You say that but all I hear are the skittering of these spiders," Zenitsu pointed down to the ground, indicating the white arachnids all moving about around their feet. The Police Officer shuddered at the reminder.
"Well as long as they're not venomous it shouldn't be a problem," she offered while trying not to tremble herself.
"You say that like it's the only problem we have right now," the blond held his nose, "we can't find Tanjiro and the others, this place stinks, literally, and it's super creepy! And that's before we even mention the de-." The blond froze as he spotted something behind Honoka. The tall woman slowly turned around and looked at what had caught his eye: a spider with a pasty white, nearly bald human head.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!" The duo took off at a run, the absolute terror of the situation allowing Honoka to keep up with the slayer thanks to the adrenaline coursing through her veins. "Was that a demon back there?!" She screamed while running.
"I don't know, I just want this all to be a bad dream!" Zenitsu yelled back, "if this is all just a bad dream and I wake up with my head in Nezuko's lap I'll do anything! I'll farm an acre, two acres, I'll do any kind of heavy labor if I have to, just let this all be a nightmare!"
"I just want to go back to catching regular criminals," Honoka cried, "I never thought stumbling onto a monster mystery could be so terrifying!" But the real terror was only just beginning. The duo stopped suddenly as they were greeted by an eerie sight. It was a clearing with a small, one room house suspended sideways in the air.
But what made it especially eerie was the presence of multiple people hanging around the house. Their bodies were all suspended in midair, held up by nearly invisible threads and all in various states of disfigurement, as if they were turning into something else. 'What's going on now,' Honoka thought while staring in openmouthed horror at the scene before her, 'how is such thin thread holding up that house, and what's happened to those people? Wait, are they turning into those spider things with human heads?!' One thing was for certain, this place was the source of the awful smell.
As for why the house was suspended, that became clear when something began moving inside of it. Both Honoka and Zenitsu hugged each other in terror as a purple spider with yellow rings on its legs began descending via a spider thread. But what made it even more horrifying was this particular spider was huge, easily as long as a person. In fact, the head of a male person with short white hair was on the spider's body! When he smiled, fangs were clear in his mouth.
"You better not start talking!" Zenitsu suddenly yelled as he tried running away, "this night has been freaky enough already! No way am I dealing with any giant talking spider monsters!"
"It's useless," the spider demon laughed with a slightly high-pitched male voice, "you've already lost!"
"Wait, what are you talking about," Honoka grabbed ahold of the frightened blond, managing to slide to a stop.
"The blond one should've already realized it," the spider demon laughed, "look at your hands!"
"What, what's wrong with," the slayer gasped as he looked at his left hand. Several parts of it had turned a sickly purple with a spot that definitely indicated a bite.
"That is the venom of me and my fellow spiders," the demon grinned, "you got bit earlier and now it's coursing through your veins!" He produced a pocket watch from seemingly out of nowhere, "in one half hour you'll become a spider as well, one of my many servants crawling along the ground." Naturally this did nothing to help Zenitsu's current frightened state. "First you'll feel tingling and pain, then nausea and dizziness, and finally the pain will become so great you'll black out. When you wake up, you'll be one of us!"
"GAAAAAAHHH!" Zenitsu yelled in absolute terror as several of said spiders approached.
"Get away!" Honoka suddenly unslung her MP18 and sprayed the first line of human-headed spiders. Many of them backed away in surprise, likely never having faced such a weapon before.
"What in the world was that noisemaker," the spider demon took two of his legs out of his ears, surprised at how loud the gun was.
"It's an MP18 submachine gun," the police woman pointed it at him, "I don't know how long you've been on this mountain but the whole world was at war at one point. Numerous weapons like these were used and they've proven capable of tearing apart all kinds of living creatures!"
"So, the slayers have finally come up with new we-AH, ow, ow, ow, ow!" He didn't get to finish as Honoka sprayed him with several more rounds from the gun until the magazine was empty. The hail of bullets even shot off the webbing he was suspended from and caused him to drop to the ground.
"Did I get him," Honoka wondered aloud while changing magazines.
"Hahahaha!" The spider monster leapt back up, "what an unusual weapon! It's like getting jammed by a bunch of small, hot spearheads, one after the other, in impossibly quick succession!"
"What, how are you still alive," she took a step back in fear, the muzzle of her gun wavering due to the shaking of her hands.
"Fool," he laughed, "you're clearly not a slayer or you would've known it's useless to use something like that. As a demon I'm already hard to kill and as the eldest son of the spider family you have no hope of ending my life!"
"Our swords are made of nichirin steel," Zenitsu called from behind her, "it's a metal that absorbs sunlight. The only two ways I was taught to kill demons was by exposing them to sunlight or cutting off their heads with a nichirin blade!"
"But doesn't that mean you, huh," Honoka stared dumbfounded for a moment at the spot the blond slayer just was, seeing nothing but an outline before looking up, "what are you doing up there?!" She'd learned he was a little cowardly during the last demon encounter, but the moron had seriously scurried up a tree to escape spider demons?!
"I'm trying to escape, why aren't you?!" The frightened boy called down from the branch he was perched on with his back facing everyone.
"I'm a police officer, I serve and protect the people," she pointed up accusingly at Zenitsu, "and you're a demon slayer, you've got a better chance of surviving because you can actually kill this thing!"
"Were you not listening?! I'm already dead, worse than dead I'm turning into a spider!" He yelled back down, "the only thing that will happen if I fight now is getting turned into a spider faster!"
"But if you kill it that might not happen," Honoka argued as more spiders began approaching, "I've seen the other slayers, they all do these crazy things, so that has to mean you've got some crazy trick up your sleeve!"
"Hehehe," the Eldest Son laughed, "don't underestimate me. Other slayers have tried and failed to kill me and my family. But if you surrender now, police woman, I promise to keep you human long enough to show me how that little contraption works. You won't get a better offer from the other members of my family, believe me."
"Screw you!" She yelled while firing her weapon again, this time in short, controlled bursts, taking out one line of spiders after the other. But she was quickly pushed back towards the tree Zenitsu was cowering on, trying her best not to get bitten. 'What do I do, what do I do,' he looked at Honoka and the spider demon frantically, 'I'm not brave like the others, I don't have some crazy trick, so what good am I?'
He knew better than anyone else how cowardly he was. He'd wanted to run away during training, he'd been lucky to survive Final Selection and his other missions. And the one technique he was able to perform was best used against single opponents instead of a whole swarm. But as he looked at the terrifying Eldest Son, he couldn't bring himself to do anything other than tremble.
In fact, all the demon had to do was flash one more evil smile before he fainted completely and fell. "ZENITSU!" Honoka yelled when she saw what was happening. 'He'll break his neck if he lands wrong,' she surmised while trying to move and catch him. But that's when something strange happened.
The blond slayer repositioned himself in the air and jumped off the tree, right at the Eldest Son?! "What," the spider demon reflexively spat out purple corrosive venom from his mouth. Amazingly, Zenitsu rolled in midair to dodge the attack while Honoka dove out of the way. She was glad she did as the purple substance began to eat through the wood on the tree.
'I don't want to know what that would do to a person,' the police officer thought while getting back up. Thankfully, the spiders were just as surprised as she was and turned to watch the spectacle. Zenitsu took a running stance then with his hand hovering above the handle of his sword. "Hey you guys, quit standing around and take him down," the Eldest Son ordered.
The mutated spiders charged and leapt at him then but he was able to dodge by deftly hopping out of the way. 'Wait, are his eyes closed,' Honoka realized as he landed close to her. She didn't have long to look as the blond boy dodged another spurt of venom from the main demon. 'Whether they are or not, he's moving like a completely different person from before.'
The gun-wielding woman looked from Zenitsu to the spiders and the spider demon, trying to decide what the best course of action was. It was during this short span of time that she noted he was assuming the same stance over and over again. With that realization, the policewoman moved in front of the blond and let out a war cry while firing her MP18. "Now what in the world are you doing," the spider son held up his forelimbs as some of the bullets hit him.
"I don't know!" Honoka yelled up at him, "I've got no idea what he's doing but it's clearly something you're worried about. So until he's ready to act I won't be letting you or anyone of those spiders through!" She continued to fire her weapon in short bursts after this, warding off the spiders whose number seemed to be steadily increasing.
"You might not know, but I know something now," the demon smiled wickedly at the sight of the woman dropping her current magazine and loading in another one, "that weapon can only fire projectiles for a limited amount of time. Even if you manage to wipe out all of my spiders, I'll still be alive, and you'll be helpless. All I have to do is wa-GUH!" A presence disturbed the air then.
Honoka could feel it, like the air was vibrating. When she turned to look at Zenitsu, it was as if his body was generating electricity. "Breath Of Thunder First Form," he spoke calmly but with surprising force, "Thunderclap And Flash." The ground began to tear up around him from the pressure in the air then, "Sixfold!" The Eldest Son spat another gob of purple venom at the slayer but this time it didn't even come close.
Zenitsu seemed to vanish, his form little more than a yellow blur in the few instances that Honoka managed to catch a glimpse of his movements. He bounced from tree to tree in a zigzag pattern before finally using the webs strung across the trees to catapult himself towards his prey. The now frightened spider demon tried to retreat back into his house, but it proved futile. Zenitsu shot straight up and busted through the other side of the small abode, slashing the demon's head off as he passed by.
It all happened so fast neither the Eldest Son nor Honoka realized what occurred until it was already over. She gazed in awe as the slayer seemed to hover in front of the moon for a moment, until she noticed an issue. He stopped moving while still in midair and began to fall. "Oh no, no, no, no," Honoka ran and dove forward, managing to catch the falling slayer before he hit the ground.
At about the same time, the body and severed head of the Eldest Spider Son hit the ground nearby. "This is ridiculous!" He declared while looking skyward, causing Honoka to jump at the fact that a head was talking. "How could I lose to someone who shouldn't even be able to move their limbs?!" It would be his final words as the spider demon turned to ash and dissolved into nothingness.
"We're alive," the police officer sighed in relief before checking on Zenitsu, "hey, why didn't you tell me you could do that? Were you just faking being scared?" All she received was a groan before noticing that blood was beginning to run from his nose and mouth. "Wait, don't tell me that venom's still in your system?! The demon's gone so how?!" The purple coloring on his hands had spread too.
"Calm down Officer," Honoka took a few steadying breaths and pulled out the small pouch of medical supplies she kept with her during long trips, "remember your training for treating poison. Let's try and drain it and staunch the bleeding." She pulled out a small utility knife then and cut open the bite on his hand. It started squirting blood.
"AAAHH! I just remembered I did poorly on that part of training!" She gripped the sides of her head, "if someone's out there please help!" Fortunately, help would soon come to find both of them, on the wings of a butterfly.
About The Same Time: Tanjiro's Group
"Did you hear that," Tanjiro asked as they broke the forest edge and found a large stream, "It sounded like thunder, but there are no rain clouds."
"You got me," Susamaru shrugged while approaching the stream, "if you smell any demons that way it might be worth checking out, but if not-." She froze, hearing the sound of movement from the trees to the right of where they'd just exited. A form shot out of the foliage then and leapt into the air, their target obvious.
"Breath of Water First Form," the stranger identified themselves as a man due to his deep voice, "Water Surface Slash!" The Temari Demon reacted, intentionally falling backwards to avoid the horizontal attack aimed at her head. She stopped her fall with one hand on the ground and brought her right leg up in the same motion, aiming a kick towards the slayer's head. Her opponent only had time to raise his elbow, stopping the attack from hitting his face but was still sent tumbling over due to not bracing himself in time.
But his training as a slayer was obvious now when he tucked and rolled, springing back up to his feet in an instant. "Another surviving slayer," Susamaru observed in surprise. And he must've been the oldest slayer she'd seen in a while. The man must've been around twenty years old with black butch cut hair and a stubble beard.
He was also possibly the biggest Breath of Water user she'd ever seen, standing at what must've been 6ft 5in with a physique that was easily over two hundred pounds. He also wore a grey haori over his slayer uniform. "And you're another demon," he growled while leveling his blade towards her, "I'll take your head for my comrades!" The slayer rushed forward then while Susamaru got ready to evade. But just before he got within striking range, Tanjiro moved in between them.
"STOP!" He yelled with his arms held out protectively, only flinching slightly when the incoming blade halted mere inches from his face, "there's been a misunderstanding."
"What do you mean," the man growled, "that is a demon, and I am a demon slayer. Moreover, she's likely in league with the other demons who killed my comrades!"
"Inosuke and I are both slayers," Tanjiro revealed, not budging an inch, "and her name is Susamaru. She came here to help us with this mission, she's got nothing to do with the Spider Family."
"See, no web artwork," The Temari Demon pulled off the white kimono and let it hang around her waist in order to show him, "I'm with him and Boar Boy."
"That's Inosuke Hashibira to you!" He raised his arms up in exclamation.
"But that can't be right," the Breath of Water user looked between them, "it's against Corp regulations to defend a demon, let alone work with one."
"I know, but I promise Susamaru doesn't mean any harm to you, the Corps, or to innocent people," the boy swordsman declared resolutely, "she hasn't eaten a single human since joining up with us."
"But she has eaten humans in the past," the slayer raised an eyebrow.
"I mean, she, well she-," he was interrupted by the demon girl lightly pushing him out of the way.
"Look pal," Susamaru began.
"My name is Kojugai Ubukaze," he angrily introduced/corrected.
"Booboo-kaze," the Temari Demon continued, making him seethe a little, "there are way bigger problems on this mountain right now than me. If you want to avenge your comrades, I'll hold the rest of these demons down so you can cut their heads off. I've got a pretty big ax to grind with Muzan Kibutsuji and if one of his Kizuki is on this mountain I'll make sure tonight's their last night. So what's it gonna be? Are you gonna keep going after the wrong person and wasting time, or do you want to avenge your comrades?"
"You think it's that…...what is it?" Kojugai noticed everyone had suddenly turned to look at something on the other side of the stream. The slayer himself glanced back and saw that a demon in a white kimono with white hair tied into four very simple braids with green jewels was there, trying to sneak by.
"Now that's a demon we can tear to shreds!" Inosuke practically cheered before jumping and running on a path of rocks across the stream. The girl demon looked shocked at this and turned to run back into the woods, her blue sash fluttering as she fled. "Get back here!"
"Inosuke wait, it could be-," Tanjiro reached out, trying to warn his friend.
"Now Father!" The spider girl signaled. A giant shape appeared in the air then, right above Inosuke. The Boar Fighter managed to backflip out of the way in time as the new demon crashed into the stream, kicking up a good bit of water. Unlike the spider demons they'd encountered so far, this one was clearly male with baggy blue pants and a large muscular physique that towered over them all.
His grey skin was characterized by the same red dots and lines on his arms as the rest of his apparent family. His long white hair whipped around to reveal a spider-like visage with eight, beady teal eyes and rows of teeth, including four large mandible-like teeth, that became all too visible when he opened his mouth to roar. "Don't come near my FAMILY!" The Father Spider wound up a punch and threw it, barely missing Inosuke as he cratered the part of the stream where the dual wielder had just been.
But that was only the beginning of his onslaught as the giant of a demon threw another blow, aiming to hit Inosuke before he even landed on the ground. "Breath of Water!" Tanjiro and Kojugai both leapt into the fray with their swords poised to unleash their respective attacks while Susamaru charged in with her extra arms sprouting. None of them knew it yet, but this would lead into yet another faithful encounter.
The Eldest Brother has fallen, but how will our heroes fair against the Father and the Sister? We'll find out soon enough, so in the meantime feel free to leave a comment or review about what you liked/disliked or if you've got any neat ideas for future chapters! And swing by my Pat reon for updates and other little tidbits. Last thing, stop in next time as our heroes test their strength against the powerhouse that is the Father Spider! 'Til then.