[FFML] [yyh][ry][rewrite] Youtou Shinnoken Chapter 15: To Protect Loved Ones (Part 3)

[Abdiel]

"The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."

(Infamous paraphrase of a Mark Twain quote)


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Youtou Shinnoken: Demon Sword
A Yuyu Hakusho/Rurouni Kenshin fic
By Chester Castañeda
chester.castaneda at gmail.com
gabriel_gabdiel at yahoo.com
Original concept by Chad Yang
chadjill at ms3.hinet.net
http://www.fanfiction.net/~abdiel

Was this fight really about Hiruma versus Kenshin or Kenshin versus the 
Battousai? Also, just how far do the Hiruma brothers want to go with
their vague and indistinct mission anyway?

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Chapter 15: To Protect Loved Ones (Part 3)
________________________________________________________________________



Kenshin simply could not kill Hiruma while the monster held Botan
hostage. Not while he could still taste the tang and feel the warmth of
Tomoe Yukishiro's blood even after a century had passed. 

Kenshin and the Battousai were no Jekyll and Hyde. Kenshin was still
mostly himself when he was the Battousai--the same man with the same
goals of protecting the weak, innocent, and defenseless against the
forces of evil using his immeasurable strength--only a lot more
intimidating and, more importantly, a lot less hesitant in not just
killing, but on how he approached life, death, and battle in general.

Battousai was a man who eschewed limits and restrictions, but that
wasn't to say that he let his great power go to his head. Nothing of the
sort; succumbing to the lure of his own abilities was exactly what the
Battousai wasn't. He was instead all about control. 

The difference between Kenshin and Battousai, in Kenshin's mind, wasn't
their mode of thinking or even their general attitude about the value of
life. Rather, their differences lay more on the amount of control they
had on themselves at any given moment. The had the exact same
motivations and intentions, they just went about them differently
because the Battousai was far more willing to cross the line--and the
slippery slope beyond it--than Kenshin.

'You have no choice now. There's no better recourse than to kill her
along with the demon,' the Battousai inside his mind beckoned. 'You know
me better than anyone else, Himura Kenshin. Don't tell me that you're
just as naive as the rest of them, thinking that the Battousai...
Youkiri, Hitokiri, or otherwise... is merely a mindless psycho like Jine
was or a killer with a superiority complex like Shishio was.' 

Kenshin stirred in his melancholic reprieve. 'Even as Youkiri, we didn't
take a life for granted. We simply followed Hiko's teachings to the
letter and readily faced the consequences of taking a life, come what
may. Remember, a sword is meant to kill, and swordsmanship is the art of
killing. There are times when you have no other alternative but to
kill.'

Most certainly, when given the chance, the Youkiri Battousai could be as
eloquent and loquacious as his more peace-loving counterpart. 'Do you
think of me as a simple murderer?'

'Yes and no,' Kenshin detailed. 'I know your... our... reasons behind
killing. Yes, there are times that it simply cannot be avoided. I know
that. But--'

"I trust you, oh magical redheaded swordsman!" came Botan's tongue-in-
cheek vote of confidence, which left the Demon Sword Guardian somewhat
shaken and confused at the time, but in hindsight helped him regain
quite a bit of his eroding self-confidence.

Kenshin chuckled in remembrance of the ferry-girl's antics, then frowned
as a bitter, unbidden memory entered his mind--that of him slicing his
wife in half as she jumped in front of him to protect him from his
hulking opponent's furious charge, which led to both their deaths by his
sword's blade. Tomoe had given her complete and total trust to him at
the time, but look what that got her; he made her bathe in a rain of her
own blood.

Kenshin had another less horrible but equally depressing flashback, this
time of Kaoru Kamiya waiting patiently for him back in Aoiya as he did
battle against the superhumanly powerful Makoto Shishio. Due to
circumstances beyond his control, he broke his promise to the kendo-girl
and never came back from his death match. 

To think, Kaoru had also given her complete and total trust to him at
the time, and look what that got her; he made her wait for nothing
because his will to live wasn't as strong as he'd hoped it would be. The
sharp rocks of reality saw to it that he would never, ever find his
happiness, as though he never deserved such leisure.

On both counts, Kenshin Himura had betrayed the trust given to him in
the worst way possible. These separate yet significant incidents were
two of his greatest failures in life. And now, yet another innocent
woman was offering her trust to him this time around. Would he fail to
uphold her faith in him as well? Would his letdowns come back to haunt
him at this unfortunate time, making this momentous fight against the
Hiruma brothers his third opportunity for catastrophe? Would he even
manage to outdo himself in creating despair and tragedy at this point?

'Never again. I'm not so naive as to believe that killing could never be
a final resort, and I know the Battousai's... _my_ reasons behind it. Of
course I do. There really are times when it's foolish not to kill,
especially if it could mean saving a lot of people's lives. I know that.
That's the reason why I became the Battousai in the first place.'

Kenshin exhaled. 'But still, there's a big difference between defending
yourself because of your self-preservation instinct and killing someone
in cold blood. It doesn't matter what your intentions are. When you make
the conscious decision to end another person's life, then that's killing
in cold blood right there; no ifs or buts. That's the whole point of the 
Battousai's persona: the willingness to use killing as a means to an
end, regardless of moral implications and consequences.'

There were many occasions where Kenshin felt like he lived in a world of
eggshells, with him always taking constant care not to break something--
or someone. He, of all people, knew just how weak and delicate life...
human or demon... really was. A stabbed heart here, a decapitation
there; when you were pushed, killing was as easy as breathing.

Still, he never allowed himself to lose control of his incredible power
over life and death even for a moment, even when he'd already crossed
the line and became the Battousai, even when he had his back against
the wall, even when killing truly was the only option, all because an
innocent--any innocent, even his opponent at the time--might suffer and
die in his hands if he did. Indeed, an imperfect justice system where
the guilty got away in order to prevent the greater injustice of
condemning an innocent was needed to keep the world from spinning out of
control, or at least stop the hero from falling from grace himself.

Sure, this kind of blind justice made his mission of protecting the weak
just a tad more complicated and difficult, but he was willing to take
the risk and the trouble of holding back just so he wouldn't have to
compromise his own principles and high morals. That was just the way he
was. Only justice could bring peace.

Then again, Kenshin's pacifist self couldn't even begin to comprehend
the hypocrisy behind protecting life by taking it away--death for life--
becoming the judge and executioner and deciding which life mattered more
than others or choosing to end a life in exchange for the lives of many
just because he could didn't sound very heroic to him in the least.

These facts made his morals and actions seem rather dissonant with each
other at times, Kenshin reckoned. Just who was he to decide who deserved
death or not? The world wasn't divided evenly by black and white or good
and evil. By taking justice into his own hands, what made him different
from a totalitarian extremist who'd decided by himself who lived and
died by forcing his own code and belief system upon others? 

Such thoughts had haunted the Spirit Guardian in life as well as in
death. Violence was never the answer, but when faced with a violent
madman who endangered all those around him, what could he do? 

On one hand, as someone who had already killed before and could kill
again in a heartbeat, he knew the toll murder had on someone who'd
never wanted to kill in the first place and only did so for noble, if
rather misguided, reasons. He simply couldn't just go around wiping out
people he didn't like. Well, he technically _could_ do just that, but it
went against everything that he believed to be right. On the other hand,
he couldn't just stand there and let injustice happen either.

When he was the Battousai, such choices became a lot simpler. With the
Battousai's preeminence in the surface of his consciousness, any
overwhelming emotions that clouded his thinking soon got stripped away--
or at least momentarily pushed aside. He became a more methodical, more
practical, and more pragmatic Kenshin--an attitude that made perfect
sense when it came to facing life-or-death situations and the horrors of
battle and war, because the thing that really held him back was his
complex set of ethics and technical pacifism. 

Battousai had no patience for such two-facedness, such as the ethics of
sparing evil men at the cost of risking the lives of good people in the
process. He who didn't punish evil commanded it to be done, he believed.
But for someone who held himself back even less than Kenshin, he still
made use of his tenuous control of his strength to its fullest, bottling
up the lightning in his veins and the fire in his eyes with the pure,
unadulterated concentration of a ray of light.

Too much hesitation and uncertainly would inevitably give birth to chaos
and disaster just as quickly as a hasty and impetuous decision.
Battousai, like Kenshin, also believed that only justice brought peace,
only that he would never let an evil flourish just because his cheap
morals and higher-than-thou outlook kept him from soiling his hands.
That point became moot way back when he became a hitokiri for the
Ishin Shishi more than a century ago anyway.

In any case, Kenshin knew the real deal in regards to killing. Slippery
slope and moral ambiguities aside, he'd always managed... or at least
struggled... to redirect his murderous instinct to a more positive
direction, and his Battousai self was most certainly all about cold,
calculating control and sobering restraint, despite what others might
think. Alas, there were numerous occasions where enemies would take
advantage of his holding back, having it backfire on his face from time
to time.

If Kenshin had shown more decisiveness and acted sooner, then he
probably wouldn't be in this position right now. The same could be said
of all his other exploits in the past. He could've stopped the Hiruma
brothers, Genbu, Rando, Saito, the Chojin, and even Shishio himself
before everything in his life went to hell. His restraint and his self-
control were hand-in-hand both his blessing and curse, shaping his
character and marring his decisions.

'So will you or won't you?' Kenshin's emotionless, methodical Battousai
self challenged him in the simplest of terms. 

Kenshin shook his head as he addressed his other persona. 'I know that 
you aren't some blood-lusting psychopath who'd kill at the drop of a
hat. All the same, don't you think that I have just as weighty a reason
not to kill Botan and Hiruma as you have of killing them? Or anybody
else, for that matter. Hope against hope, idealism against reality, I
will find a way around it. Not because I believe that there's always a
choice around not killing; I don't believe that for a second. And
certainly not because Koenma Daio made some silly stipulation that I'd
lose control once I do kill; I now understand that I embraced that
condition because I never wanted to kill in the first place. That's
what Botan made me realize just now.'

Battousai snorted impatiently. 'Isn't that attitude essentially selfish?
You're basically just keeping yourself uncorrupted by not taking a life
at the cost of many other people's lives! Sure, you won't stain your
hands with the blood of another, but you'll be enabling murderers
indirectly by letting them keep on doing what they're doing. I'm certain
that any future victims the Hiruma brothers will have won't appreciate
your decision not to kill. Botan certainly won't, especially if she
doesn't survive this battle.'

'Selfish? Don't you think I _want_ to kill Hiruma?' Kenshin argued in
seldom-manifested outrage. 'Killing him at this point is all too easy;
we both know that. But if I kill Hiruma, he's going to take Botan with
him, and there's no way I'm going to stand for that. More to the point,
by resorting to murder by convenience, what separates me from Hiruma?
What's to stop me from killing again? What if I become so desensitized
by killing and disregarding the lives of both friend and foe that I'll
begin using it to solve all of my problems? You know how great _that_
went during the Bakumatsu no Douran, don't you? Call me selfish or a
hypocrite, but killing isn't even a choice at this point!'

'Huh. I guess we haven't scraped the bottom of the barrel yet. Just how
much more dire must this situation become before you abandon your silly
ideals and save Botan from a fate worse than death? Oh, sorry. Does that
make too much sense to you? Then I apologize. My mistake. I admit, in
the way you constantly deny yourself the pleasure of killing Hiruma,
then sure; you're selfless. So selfless that you'll even let a mass-
murdering chimera live and cause pain and suffering to even more
innocent people that you so claim to protect,' Battousai retorted so
crisply that Kenshin had to wince.

'Of course! How dare I not sacrifice my moral code because its currently
inconveniencing me at the moment! How dare I not make the situation
worse by doing something I don't want to do in the first place!' Kenshin
hotly answered back. Then, after a lengthy pause, he explicated, 'Look.
Thing is, killing Hiruma is exactly what the Chojin wants; he wants
Hiruma to drive me to the point of killing him because it probably ties
in with their bid for world domination or something. I'm not sure, I
wasn't really paying attention to Hiruma's rants. Still, this fight will
become meaningless if the Demon Sword gets corrupted. There's got to be
another way. I know I've said that killing will occasionally be an
option, but it should only be reserved as the very last option!'

Battousai metaphorically rolled his eyes. 'Spare me the 'You shall not
kill' bullshit; killing Hiruma won't make you a bloodthirsty murderer.
It's a little too late for that already, don't you think? Besides, the
only ones who've ever entertained such a silly notion have never killed 
themselves. Who cares if the Chojin has manipulated everything so that
you'll be forced to kill? Who cares about Koenma's silly stipulation? Do
you really have so little trust in yourself that you'd automatically
presume you'll again become a psychopath by killing a psychopath? You'll
become a vigilante, maybe, but you won't suddenly start killing people
at random. Get real. Killing doesn't work that way. What's to stop you
from killing again? Simple. It depends on whether or not the person
you're facing deserves to be killed. This is not the time to dillydally
about killing, Himura Kenshin.'

'I'm not dillydallying. I know exactly what I'm doing,' Kenshin
adamantly insisted to himself. 'If I fail, I'll give you free reign to
do whatever you feel is right; save Botan and the others for me. But
before that happens, I'll stick with my decision and rescue Botan in my
own way.'

'Then what are you going to do? Time is running out. Decide now,' came 
Battousai's ultimatum.

'It's not really even a choice. Even if scumbags like the Hiruma
brothers or the Chojin himself deserved to die, I will not be the one to
make that decision if I can help it. Never again will I let what
happened to Tomoe and Kaoru happen to anyone else ever again: not to
Botan, and not even to the Hiruma brothers. A life is a life; they're
all equally precious. Besides,' Kenshin smiled as the hands of time
started to move again. 'I give my trust to Botan as well. It's only
fair.'

The Demon Sword Guardian couldn't see the Battousai nod in agreement,
but he took his other self's admission of, 'I don't really care what
your decision is, so long as you're completely sure and unhesitant about
it,' as a sign of approval, or at least assent. 

Kenshin finally realized that it didn't matter that he couldn't save
Botan from Hiruma as the Battousai. He ultimately decided not to kill
the both of them in order to save the former from being fully absorbed
into the latter's body. What he did instead was employ a feint using
his kenki and continue the mind game tactics he'd been executing since
he transformed back from Battousai to Kenshin, unbeknownst to the
gigantic crossbreed. From there, Kenshin did his 'leap of faith' high
above the slow-as-molasses, mix-and-match beast, his body becoming a
blur as he defied the very concept of gravity itself.


***


The hero was helplessly assaulted and bruised; he couldn't keep up with
his enemy. Then the villain picked up a child, girlfriend, or someone
similar and drew back his weapon for a killing blow--and suddenly, the
hero was able to ignore his wounds and charge at his enemy, attacking
with a flurry of furious blows that utterly overwhelmed his opponent.

Or at least, that was the idea. Unstoppable rage and heroic resolve are
usually seen as a response to a threat against something or someone
that the protagonist cared deeply about, gaining his newfound power
purely from guts and the desire to protect. But for Kenshin, the
situation was a bit more complicated than that. He wanted to protect not
only the hostage's life, but his opponent's life too; and because he
couldn't wait for Hiruma's karmic death, he had to attack immediately
while keeping those rather troubling thoughts at the back of his mind.

In any case, the battle had finally reached its fever pitch, with Hiruma
leaping a hundred feet up in the air in response to Kenshin's diving
attack, both combatants engaging in one last-ditch effort to one-up each
other--and, apparently, the amalgamated beast was able to cheat his way
into winning the exchange, all thanks to his special little contingency
plan: absorbing one of Koenma's Angels/his personal kidnapping fodder, 
Botan. To hell with Kenshin's heroic resolve! Hiruma would beat the odds
and subvert the norm, even (or especially) if he had to systematically
break down the supposed hero's spirit in the process. Sure, it made him
the villain of this story without a doubt, but he wouldn't have it any
other way anyway.

"KUZU RYU SEN!"

As Hiruma expected... specifically _counted on_, in fact... Kenshin held
back on using the full power of his instantaneous nine-strike attack at
the last second, with the special technique's final strike... the
'tsuki' or a forward sword thrust... stopping just short of stabbing
Botan's throat. What Hiruma wasn't able to count on, despite having
enough savvy to use the shinigami as an effective shield of sorts
against Kenshin's unblockable attacks, was the amount of power the
watered-down strikes still possessed.
 
So, with all the exquisite agony that Hiruma experienced regardless, his
body's complex network of pain receptors firing up all at the same time,
he felt that the Spirit Guardian might as well not have held himself
back. Then again, he was still alive and well, Botan was still his
hostage, and he most definitely still had the upper hand in this fight
this time around. A bout of mind-blowing suffering was hardly going to
change any of that.

'So much for your accusations of me losing my mind and being manipulated
by the Chojin, you samurai chump! I'm the real winner here! I... I've
won. Yes, I did. Who cares about what I _want_? You never really know
what you want till you get it, anyway! Besides, I've won against the
Legendary Battousai! That's what every demon wants to accomplish, right?
Yeah. To win against the Guardian of the Demon Sword and make use of
the Reikai Artifact's power; I guess that's what I wanted to do. No,
that's definitely it!' the monster ranted to himself, unaware of the
extent of his unraveling mind's damage.

"I leave the rest to you," Kenshin enigmatically remarked as he sheathed
his sword and let gravity take control of his exhausted body, diving
backwards to the Genbu-devastated ground a hundred feet below. He was
now in an awkward and vulnerable position that left him wide open to any
number of Hiruma's overwhelming counterattacks. 

Hiruma could hardly contain his glee; it was like Kenshin had just
quietly wrapped himself in a neat bow and handed himself over to him.
The youkai was ecstatic, if a bit relieved. Because of the promising
turn of events, he didn't need to die in order to corrupt the Youtou
Shinnoken anymore. All he had to do now was reach down, eliminate the
impotent Battousai, and make use of the sword's power for himself.
Everything was going his way for once, save for one problem--Hiruma
couldn't move a muscle right then and there for some reason, his aching
body turning as frigid as a rock. "What in the...?"

Even though the slashes of Kenshin's weakened yet painful Nine-Headed
Dragon Flash were hardly enough to render Hiruma incapacitated--much
less dead, despite its ability to torture--he sorely underestimated the
deepness of its cuts and the fact that Botan, his only ace in the hole
in this fight, was also proving to be his greatest weakness too. 

Hiruma had been so preoccupied with stopping the ferry-girl from
completely escaping his belly that he neglected to take into account the
fact that it was taking him a whole lot of energy to literally keep
himself together in the first place. With the combined forces of
Kenshin's attack, Botan's insistence to escape, and Hiruma's own high-
maintenance, hodgepodge body that sapped him of his recently siphoned
jaki power at an alarming rate, the cross-hybrid demon felt himself
start to fall apart from the seams.

The truthful mind could endure all deceit and deception without getting
lost. The truthful heart could touch the venom of hate without being
harmed. From time without end, darkness flourished in the abyss, but
always yielded to hallowed light. Those were the things that entered
Botan's mind as she struggled against Hiruma's clutches; she didn't
really understand these words at first, but she was comforted by their
wisdom.

Botan concentrated her reiki-based powers some more: far more than
Kenshin had anticipated. "Botan, what are you doing? Get out of there
now! Hiruma might still get you if you don't use this opportunity to
escape _right this instant_!" the Spirit Guardian protested.

Botan turned to face Kenshin, her pinkish eyes seemingly boring holes
into his very person. She then winked impishly at him and reassured,
"Didn't I tell you to trust me too? I won't let myself be your load; I
couldn't stand it! I never was such a person during Yusuke's rise as a
Spirit Detective, and I won't be like that during your fights against
this Chojin person as well. Just watch and learn, samurai boy!" 

Kenshin balked as a fleeting vision of Kaoru's face superimposed itself
on Botan's visage, a feeling of wistfulness and nostalgia filling his
heart. 'What was that all about?' 

From there, Kenshin heard Hiruma screech: a strangled, choking gasp of
torment and agony. The crossbreed, completely helpless, watched in
mounting horror as Botan struggled against his abominable (abdominal?)
trap, the bright blue-green ki in her delicate hands building rather
than diminishing. The skin of his cracked face tingled in agony, almost
as if in response to the power buildup of Botan's reiatsu. The beast
could feel it--feel the might of her willpower and determination
increasing before him, converging in the palms of her hands, and knew
that, after what he had made her endure, she would give her escape her
all.

Hiruma clenched his beastly teeth in agonized frustration, his feral
eyes haunted and desperate as he struggled hard to keep on fighting.
'Dammit, kidnap victims aren't supposed to do shit like this. This is a
serious breach in tradition! Why can't you just be still while I
finished your emasculated knight-in-shining-armor off like a good
hostage?' the Iehik part of Hiruma's brain scolded Botan telepathically
using the remnants of their increasingly tenuous bond.

'Oh, shut up and screw yourself,' Botan scoffed as she finally paid
Iehik back for the Kanashibari mind-breaking technique he'd unleashed
upon her earlier by releasing the blinding force of her mass of
shinigami power right into Hiruma's very ki-flow, spreading itself like
an intravenous feed into his demonic bloodstream. 

The ferry-girl briefly appraised the current progress of her attempt at
escaping Hiruma's body. She'd so far managed to extricate even more of
herself out of his abdomen--right up to her knees, in fact. That was
good. Just one more push, then.

The push came in the form of her entire body turning into a conduit of
purifying energy as her reiatsu battle aura converted Hiruma's toxic
black jaki into pure aqua reiki. At first, Hiruma's borrowed negative
energy enveloped Botan's body almost completely, covering it with an
unspeakable void of poison, decay, and death, but eventually, Botan's
immaculate aura took over. 

Hiruma's body was afterwards swathed by the blue-haired girl's own
luminescent spirit, and the straw that broke the camel's back also broke
his weakening frame, except replace 'straw' with 'high-level spirit
power few shinigami ever mastered'.

With grim determination, the ferry-girl pushed one final time and
successfully broke free from Hiruma's cowardly trap, which resulted in
him receiving an unbelievable amount of damage from the simple act of
bodily separation. This dire consequence happened because, unbeknownst
to him, Botan was actually the only thing holding his monstrous yet
volatile frame together at that point.

Hiruma had taken so much accumulated damage from Battousai's devastating
attacks that his hybrid body had become unstable; so much so that, had
he not thought of the brilliant idea of merging the ferry-girl into
himself in the first place, he would've lost the war of attrition sooner
than he would've anticipated.

The Hiruma brothers were never within Kenshin's league from the very
start to the very end of this battle, despite the artificial enhancement
of their powers care of the mysterious Onmyouji and the Shisejyu body
parts, as well as Kenshin's unwillingness to go all out on them. As
such, Botan was merely the unexpected catalyst to Hiruma's mounting
burdens in this instance. The demon's attempts at becoming a diabolical
mastermind who could make his opponent do exactly as he wanted while the
latter cursed his name all the while was for naught. Battousai was
right; he truly was the pawn and the fool of this story, and nothing
more.

Still, though Kenshin had given Botan the necessary inch of leeway she
needed to escape, the surprisingly innovative shinigami used that very
inch to carve out a veritable mile of payback. Botan had used the large
amounts of charged-up reiatsu she'd accumulated inside Hiruma's belly to
tear apart the chimera's body in order to escape. "A-Amazing!" Kenshin
appraised in wonder.

Falling straight into Kenshin's waiting arms, Botan collapsed in a
rather trite and unintentionally intimate embrace with the redhead, much
to her growing embarrassment and consternation. She also had an out-of-
the-blue desire to blurt out, "You are not my _boyfriend_!" despite the
fact that no one was asking, and it would really make the already
awkward situation worse. She even had the suspicious feeling that the
Kenshin-loving Kaoru Kamiya inside her mind liked the situation even
less.

Then Botan remembered she could fly, and promptly did so, summoning her
oar and boarding it with Kenshin as she removed the both of them from
Hiruma's reach and the mortifying situation/position they were both in.
She was _so_ on the roll in these last few moments of the fight.

Hiruma roared like an indignant yet toothless lion as he saw the two
rabbits he was chasing escape. He gasped and coughed, horrified and
ashamed at the circumstances surrounding Botan's release, retching at
the awful taste in his mouth, and gingerly favoring the gaping hole
where his stomach used to be as the remaining amount of jaki currently
hemorrhaging out of his body went at odds with his deteriorating
condition. Despite all his urging and goading, Kenshin proved just how
weak he really was by managing to win their battle anyway by virtue of
overall health.

So now what? What sick lesson had Hiruma learned now? What sort of
twisted moral had the browbeaten behemoth gotten from this mortifying 
experience? That, no matter how hard he tried, how many times his two
selves--Iehik and Iehog--trained to improve their demonic powers, how
many demonic parts they stole, how diabolical Iehik's plans were, how
determined Iehog got, and how many horrifying things they went through,
somebody more talented and powerful would always bring them down? That
they would forever be, instead of cosmic horrors, cosmic jokes? That it
was wrong for a demon to dream of a better life?

Was that it? Was hard work only reserved for those gifted enough to make
it matter in the end, and if those less-than-talented actually tried to
improve their lot in life, the fates would conspire against them,
putting them back in their place? Did some people simply deserve more
out of life because it was their birthright? That Hiruma's only purpose
was to merely highlight the gallant hero's heroism, the dear damsel's
purity, and that Hiruma himself was fated to fall into the fiery pits of
hell, where there would be wailing and gnashing of teeth forever and
ever, until the end of time?

'Screw that,' Iehik thought, and Iehog agreed, which made their feelings
become one again and compelled their minds to become 'Hiruma' once more.
Even at the cusp of nigh-defeat, even when their body was about to be
torn asunder by the dark powers given to them, their mantra remained the
same. To hell with life lessons and destiny, because life sucked and
destiny was overrated. 

Botan was only a good twenty feet away from the falling Hiruma when the
overly dramatic hybrid used the darkness in his missing belly to
redirect his surplus of jaki into a concentrated blast that was neither
the Mei-Kou-Shou-Kai-Ha nor the Kyomei-Jissatsu-Jin: Fu no Senrei;
instead, the negative force coalesced to form an endless maelstrom
powered by the Hiruma brothers' mindless obsession and dark ambition.

"Holy Spirit World, doesn't he ever stop?" Botan cursed under her breath
as she performed some aerial maneuvers to avoid the closest of the
deadly attacks, the projectiles effectively razing whatever was left of
the patio below into what looked like the United State's world-famous
Grand Canyon. On their own, Iehik and Iehog were able to increase the
power of their jaki with their combined feelings of motivation and
hope--hope that they could prove Battousai wrong and show him that they
were not mere puppets to their destiny. Ironically, their self-
destructive actions illustrated the exact opposite of their intentions.

"Hiruma, stand down _now_. Your body has taken too much abuse already.
Escape and live to fight another day! To continue this battle is
pointless," Kenshin begged from afar as Botan struggled to escape from
the damned hybrid demon's machinations _yet again_, but Hiruma would
have none of that. 

"Live? This is the very moment that I've been living for! That Iehik
and Iehog had been living for! Fuck living an empty existence
afterwards; this is the fight of our lives! It's either you kill us or
we'll kill you all, motherfuckers!"

Kenshin had already seen what Hiruma was attempting to do before; he'd
witnessed it a good one hundred and fifteen years ago, in fact. Even
with his occasionally unreliable memory, the redhead could never forget
the fiery self-destruction of Shishio's crippled body once the mummy-
like samurai surpassed his supposed limits. How could he forget? His
greatest opponent's self-combustion was the very cause of his own
defeat, demise, and Reikai-imposed incarceration. In any case, the same
thing was happening to Hiruma now: unlimited negative energy power at
the cost of his own limited constitution.

Therefore, in the middle of him lobbing numerous Retsu Hoko shots using
the chaos swirling inside his hollow viscera at the still-bleary Botan
and the equally hapless Kenshin, missing his targets by mere inches,
Hiruma felt his body start to corrode from the inside out, the toxicity
of the Chojin's evil energy finally taking its toll on his hefty frame.
Thusly, for the first time since his epic fight with Kenshin began,
Hiruma felt _genuine_ terror and dread, amplified tenfold by the
irrepressible waves of jaki feeding unto his negative emotions.

"H-Help me! HELP ME, CHOJIN-SAMA! RANDO-SAMA! ONMYOUJI-SAMA!" Hiruma
beseeched desperately, remembering in kind the panic and despair he'd 
experienced when Kenshin's Battousai self talked him down like a child. 
Tragically enough, it wasn't really Kenshin or the Battousai who
defeated him this day; he was duped by some rank-and-file shinigami he'd
kept around as bait to cut down the spirit guardian's effectiveness in
battle.

Hiruma's eyes lit up. Yes, it was all Botan's fault. Everything was
going according to plan until she decided to ruin everything by becoming
some sort of wildcard to his schemes! How dare she! She must pay for her
crimes. And, like the only flotsam on his sea of misery, Hiruma held on
to that illogical idea for dear life, conveniently blaming all of his
troubles on the shinigami. He decided that if he was going to die then
and there, then he would take both the ferry-girl and the spirit
guardian with him.

A Retsu Hoko hit the pair a bit too close to home, tearing the flat part
of Botan's oar into splinters and making both her and Kenshin spiral out
of control. At that very moment, the resolute Hiruma was neither
thinking straight nor pondering about the highfaluting values of
improving his lot in life and becoming more than he could ever be.

What Hiruma wanted now was vengeance, pure and simple. To his confused,
panic-stricken, corrupted, and ultimately deteriorating mind, his
choices weren't between vengeance or finding a solution to his own
pitfalls; vengeance was the solution. "The harlot will die, and yes, I'm
doing it out of spite. I want to see her die. I want to watch the light
dim in her eyes as she realizes that there will be no tomorrow for her.
I also want to see your eyes, Battousai, as it dawns to you that, yes,
because of your unwillingness to kill me, somebody else will die! Suffer
and die with that knowledge!" 

Just then, as Hiruma caught up with the falling Kenshin and Botan, the
darkness on his abdomen promising a world of pointless agony in the form
of a screaming vortex that, as far as vortexes go, was plenty powerful--
it had the basic features of razing everything in its path and the added
bonus of having a toxic aura that could render the nearest living being
into a trembling, fetal ball of wretchedness--the most random event
possible happened. A large blue demonic bird the size of a small
aircraft swooped over the duo, shielding them from the brunt of the
subsequent onslaught.

"...." Kenshin remarked before saying his trademark phrase that started
and ended with the letter 'o' or spelled only in katakana, because its
closest homophone kanji had the rather distasteful meaning of 'feminine
discharge'. And, speaking of bodily excretions, the demon bird's name
was incidentally--

"PUU!" Botan greeted the sizable animal as she lovingly nuzzled his beak
before helping herself and Kenshin climb atop the non-singed portion of
his back for added shelter and protection against jaki-related perils.
"Good bird! Now how did you know where to find and rescue us from that
stubborn and mindless demon hybrid bent on annihilating us completely?
Not that I'm doubting your abilities or anything; I'm just curious."

Puu cheerily let out a cacophony of squawks in reply. "I see." Botan
sighed, rubbing her fingers over her forehead. Rather than trying to
translate bird to Japanese, the ferry-girl instead put two and two
together. "Did your coming here have something to do with Yusuke, Puu?"

Kenshin tilted his head to the side in askance. "What does this demon
bird have to do with Yusuke-dono, Botan? I remember this creature from
when Genkai-dono gave us a tour of her temple, with Yusuke-dono calling
him his pet of sorts, but aside from that and the fact that he's a demon
bird the size of a _car_, I don't really recall anything significant
about him."

"Oh? Didn't you know? Well, I guess you probably wouldn't, would you?
You've literally been under a rock when Yusuke was but a guy who died
when he wasn't supposed to die," Botan considered, tentatively
scratching her cheek at Kenshin's understandable cluelessness. Ergo, she
decided to get him up to speed concerning Puu's true identity. 

"Well, it's sort of a long story, but Puu is basically Yusuke's spirit
beast. He feeds off his owner, Yusuke's energy, and takes his form based
on the nature of that energy. He also has the same sort of bond with
Yusuke that you yourself had care of the Demon Sword's magic. As such,
when Yusuke gets hurt, angry, or becomes more powerful, so does Puu.
This big guy here is like... Yusuke's very own mood ring, only that he's
a gigantic demon bird. So yeah."

Puu screeched some more, as though to corroborate Botan's testimony.

"Okay. I think I understand now," Kenshin confirmed wistfully, his eyes
half-lidded and his expression pensive. "Even though Yusuke-dono had
already fainted and spent all his spirit energy after his grueling fight
against Rando, he still found a way to help me in my time of need--in
the form of his very own spirit beast saving me from certain doom, no
less. What a guy."

"HA! Yusuke was planning something clever on purpose? You must not know
him very well, then," Botan scoffed jokingly, then cautiously looked
behind them to see if Hiruma was still on their tail. What she saw
instead horrified her. The behemoth's body had gained an ashen pallor--
even his scaled and leathery parts were infected--as it convulsed and
contorted itself into a variety of shapes and positions that barely
resembled anything that a living, non-protozoan creature could manage to
pull off.

"By Enma's beard! What's happening to Hiruma?" Botan worriedly asked
Kenshin as she reflexively grabbed his kimono's sleeve in apprehension.

"He's destroying himself. Or rather, he's already destroyed himself. His
body can't handle that much jaki anymore. It's finally reached its
limits, separating into its component parts," Kenshin concluded grimly
as he closed his eyes and bowed his head in seeming prayer for the
Hiruma brothers' damned souls.

"BIG BROTHER!" Iehog blubbered pathetically as the now-nonexistent
Hiruma's body fell apart, just as Kenshin predicted; before the enormous
youkai could even wrap his mind around the unfortunate fact, he was
already flying a good ten feet away from his brother and the severed
Shisejyu body parts they'd so carefully scavenged on the other side of
Genkai's property, his power reduced to that of a mere C-level demon. 

Unfortunately, as established earlier, all that was left of Iehog's
precious brother was a mere brain--grey matter that would quickly
crumble apart in midair if Iehog didn't do something about it. 'Iehog!
Save me! SAVE ME!' the poor demon-turned-internal-organ begged his
sibling.

His horror rising, Iehog bared his fangs, the mist of his frostbitten
breath billowing from the gaps of his frothing mouth as he dived after
Iehik and the Shisejyu parts. Luckily, the Seiryu aspect of Hiruma's
hybrid body hadn't completely separated from Iehog, so he was still able
to make a frozen water slide to help accelerate his descent. Alas, he
was too late; although he was able to retrieve Seiryu's arm, the Byakko
body parts had already disintegrated into worthless chunks of rotting
flesh, while Iehik's brain was now...

Gone. Iehik was now gone. The one constant in Iehog's life--his mentor,
guardian, partner, and only friend--was now gone forever, turned into
worthless giblets by intense air pressure. And it was all Iehog's fault;
his mindless determination to finish Botan off led Hiruma to self-
destruct.

Iehog laughed crazily: a bitter sound that woke Kenshin and Botan from
their false impression of security and made Puu hesitate in mid-flight.
"I have nothing left. You're the only one I had, big brother. And now...
now that I've lost you... I need to do this. I need to--I don't
understand it myself, but like you always said, _we_ need to fulfill our 
destiny." The youkai's eyes lit up with an impossibly deep steadfastness
as his voice trembled. "I want our lives to _mean_ something, and this
is the only way I know how!"

Then, impossibly, Iehog heard his brother speak to him; he wasn't sure
if it was from his own crazed imagination or if Kenshin and the ferry-
girl could hear Iehik talk as well, but he didn't care. To him, his wise
and all-knowing big brother was drawling, "Very good, little brother.
You finally understand where I'm coming from. Now quickly, take Seiryu's
arm, merge it with yours, and use every last bit of your hopes, sadness, 
desperation, and rage to take control of this growing ball of darkness
inside of you so that we can finally fulfill our destiny!" And so Iehog
did exactly as he was told.

Seiryu's dragon arm soon reintegrated into Iehog's depressed, browbeaten
form; from there, the youkai's metamorphosis happened right away.
Subsequently, an abominable pit so dark and foreboding that Kenshin,
Botan, and Puu's eyes collectively recoiled upon seeing it ripped itself
in the air. It was yet another inimitable vortex of jaki, but one so
powerful it equaled, perhaps even surpassed, the whirling spindle of
black energy Hiruma produced before. Twinkling sparks of brilliant
vermillion shone out from that appalling maelstrom, and the aura of
concentrated dread poured forth from the fissure like some venomous
miasma.

"This is getting ridiculous," Kenshin dully whispered, in awe of what he
was witnessing. "Iehog's power had already gone down to C-Class when he,
his brother, and the Shisejyu parts separated from one other, yet by
merely getting Seiryu's arm back, he was able to accelerate back to the
B-Level power he just lost! Where is he getting all this strength? Why
does he keep on fighting? Doesn't he realize that his so-called destiny
has been a joke the Chojin made at his and his brother's expense all
along? Is he really going to force himself to continue this pointless
battle?"

"He's acting just like Yusuke, the poor fool," Botan assessed, gulping
and shivering in incredulity. "He'll never give up. The more you beat
him down, the more determined he becomes. If you take away anything of
importance to him, he'll become even more powerful than you can ever
imagine. Really, the only thing separating him from Yusuke, in my eyes,
is the fact that he's uglier and crazier than him; scarier too. Who does
he think he is, the hero of this story?"

"Why the hell not? Why should I let you dictate to me how I'm going to
live my life? How my brother and I are going to live our lives?" Iehog
spat as he flew forward, ignoring the fact that his jaki-immolated body
was crumbling into ash and dust even as he spoke. "The future we're
trying to reach isn't a future you've already decided upon! I'll be the
one to choose my tomorrow!"

Iehog seemed to grow as he approached the flying trio, swelling with his
endless umbra, his remaining limbs thrashing about as if caught in the
grip of some wild storm. His blood-red eyes burned with the promise of
crimson hellfire, zeroing in on his would-be victims with their hideous
glare. The sheer power that pulsed from the monster beggared the
imagination. From there, he unleashed wholesale nine Fu no Senrei
leviathans in answer to Kenshin's own Kuzu Ryu Sen attack earlier.

Iehog's furious Trial of Negation onslaughts bruised the sky with
nebulous clouds of black and blue plasma as the air became sharp with
the conflicting scents of ice and fire. Rivulets of black smoke burst
out from the core of the nauseating spiral of Fu no Senrei, arcing back
and hurtling towards Botan, Kenshin, and Puu's direction like an
elemental antipode roiling through the surface of the planet Mercury.

"P-Puu, can you out-fly those things? Even _you_ can't survive that many
Fu no Senrei," Botan queried in concern, to which Puu merely chirped in
reply. In mere seconds, the ice-and-fire dragons surrounded them in a
spiraling sphere of certain doom. There was no escape.

"There's no need to run anymore," Kenshin suddenly declared as he jumped
onto the top of Puu's head, his sword arm already grasping the hilt of
the sheathed Youtou Shinnoken.

"...W-Wait, what? I thought you didn't want to kill anyone, human or
demon! What was the point of holding back earlier if you're going to
kill Iehog now?" Botan complained to Kenshin as her mind desperately
searched for some other, less morally ambiguous way out of this
predicament.

"My selfish desire to leave my hands unsoiled by demon blood is at an
end. If anything, Iehog has proven to me that he deserves to die by my
blade, come what may," Kenshin concluded, readying himself with his
proverbial battou-jutsu stance. 'Dammit, Chojin. You're just like
Shishio. Using a confused yet well-meaning creature like this to do your
bidding is simply unforgivable!'

Yet despite Kenshin's willingness to finally abandon his morals once he
was forced against another wall of difficult decisions, the gigantic
stone hand of karma reared its craggy fingers and stopped Iehog's last
stand cold on its feet.

"W-What... now?" Botan tiredly managed to squeak out as she collapsed
into a weary bundle of exhaustion on Puu's back; the back-and-forth
roller coaster of unexpected events and subversions was starting to get
to her. "Is that... Genbu's giant hand? By Koenma's Sacred Pacifier,
we're not going to fight _even more_ resurrected dead bad guys, are we?
There should be a goddamn quota per resurrection!"

"No... Look," Kenshin curtly compelled as he mutely pointed at what was
happening below them. The remnants of Genbu's body--notably, half of his
head, an arm, and part of his torso--struggled against the ticking jaki
time bomb that was Iehog by lobbing and burying him under as much
Bakuretsu-Ganshou-Dan rubble and landslides as possible. "Genbu-dono's
helping us out. Can you believe it?"

"Now I've seen almost everything. Kenshin, kill me now before I see Hiei
pregnant with Kurama's kid," an exhausted, seemingly jetlagged Botan
kidded--or so she told herself.

Kenshin raised a curious eyebrow at that last comment. "Why would
mountains impregnate each other?" He then shook his head as if to clear
it. "Never mind that; Genbu-dono and Iehog are going to kill each other!
We've got to stop them somehow!"

Botan opened her mouth to protest, but thought the better of it and
instead raised her hands up in complete surrender. "Whatever. Fine.
Okay. Do whatever the hell you want, Kenshin. The world's gone bat-shit
insane anyway, so I'm fine with whatever floats your boat."

Meanwhile, Iehog struggled frantically against Genbu's unforeseen
betrayal of their cause, dealing more damage to the second-to-the-last-
surviving Shisejyu than Kurama and Kenshin combined. "THIS ISN'T FAIR!
This isn't fair at all! How dare you get in the way of my vengeance, you
damn Johnny-come-lately! Aren't we on the same side? Aren't we supposed
to corrupt the Demon Sword, destroy the Reikai Tantei, and start a jihad
for the glory of the great Chojin? What's gotten in to you, you fucking
traitor? Let go of me! Let go of me, or so help me I'm going to...!" 

"SHUT THE FUCK UP," Genbu boomed with an undertone of malice, making the
entire mountainside tremble with the might of his voice. "You're a
fucking moron, you know that? The Chojin can kiss my ass. Seeing what he
did to you and your imp of a big brother, I'd rather go about things my
way from now own, thank you very much. You want to get to the Battousai?
Then you have to go through me first."

Iehog, being the obedient demon that he was, did exactly as he was told,
blasting Genbu's body with the inescapable might of the Fu no Senrei
dragons. The stone golem's constitution was still equivalent to that of
brittle chalk--the reason for his earlier defeat against Battousai--so
even though his healing factor were still up to par, he himself was at
the edge of his rope in regards to staying alive. A few more good shots
and he was sure to be a goner.

"You don't understand a thing, you petty excuse for a Shisejyu. You
can't stop me. Compared to you, weakest of the Saint Beasts, I'm a god.
You know why? It's because of what I've been through. To enumerate, my
brother and I have held our grudge for Himura Kenshin for more than a
century, culminating to this fight where we've sacrificed our dignity, 
individuality, and in my brother's case, his very own life in order to
win!"


***


To be Continued...

Next: The stony hand of karma.

I'd just like to note that, as far as I'm concerned, when writing
this story, I have no interest in applying to it what I believe is
right and wrong; what _does_ interest me is showing why these
characters do what they do, complete with whatever justifications
they have for their actions regardless if I or anybody else find
their reasons laughable, stupid, pitiful, or downright noble. That
makes for a far more interesting story, I believe.

Disclaimer: Yuyu Hakusho is the rightful property of Yoshihiro
Togashi, Shueisha, Fuji TV and St. Pierrot. Rurouni Kenshin is the
rightful property of Nobuhiro Watsuki and Sony. This disclaimer
also covers all the other copyrighted material that are far too
many to mention here. Don't sue me please, I'm very poor.

Paalam!
Abdiel