[FFML] [yyh][ry][xover] Youtou Shinnoken Chapter 24: Freckles (Part 6)

[Chester Castañeda]

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Youtou Shinnoken
A Rurouni Kenshin/Yuyu Hakusho Crossover Fan Fiction
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

The individual fights are coming to an end in this chapter.


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Chapter 24: Freckles (Part 6)

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Back in the broad, tree-lined avenue of Omotesando, in front of the
Harajuku Station building...

Kaoru immediately ran towards the worn out Kenshin using Botan's body as
the red-haired spirit guardian nearly fell down in a dead faint,
catching him in just the nick of time. "Kenshin! Are you okay?"

>From behind them, like a theater audience, several people from the
rescued crowd cheered, whistled, and applauded, while others were
hastily looking for phone booths to call the police, paramedics,
firemen, friends, or family members with to tell them about what had
happened.

"I only need to rest a bit; going at top speed and creating afterimages
like that has made me dizzy! Oro, you're making afterimages too, Botan!
I didn't know you can do Shinsoku as well!" the half-delirious, half-
joking Kenshin... the tanuki girl couldn't tell which... muttered before
he started to resemble one of those transparent television ghosts that
were created through cheap green-screen effects.

"Oh my gosh, Kenshin! Are you okay?"

"K-Kaoru-dono? D-Don't be silly. I'm already a ghost, so my appearance
shouldn't come as a shock to you; consider this my standby mode." For
the second time, the shadow of the Chojin's influence had affected one
of Kenshin's fights and made them infinitely more difficult than he
would've anticipated.

"Thank you, Mister Swordsman! Thank you, Kimono Lady!" the daughter who
cried for her mother earlier said before bowing alongside her mother
and waving farewell to their saviors.

As Kenshin waved back to the people, Botan voiced out her concerns.
"Kenshin, Kaoru... I don't like the looks of that miasma of jaki that
escaped from the shikigami. It could mean trouble." Subsequently, a dark
presence caught all three personalities' collective attention and made
the onlookers run for their lives.

>From the burning guts and internal organs of the warped and corrupted
shikigami, a projection of the Onmyouji's true form... that of a bowl-
cut man wearing traditional priestly clothes of a yin-yang master...
materialized before Kenshin, Botan, and the unseen Kaoru.

"Thank you for participating in our experiment, Himura Battousai. I'm
sorry to report that, judging from how you fared against me, you just
can't hold a candle to Shishio-sama, much less my Dark Lord Chojin."

"Sadojima Houji," Kenshin whispered in recognition of the face of the
puppet master behind the hard-to-defeat puppet, which prompted him to
ponder about Shishio's connection with the Chojin.

Houji chuckled. "I haven't heard that name in ages. But I don't remember
giving it to you. How did you know who I am, Battousai?"

"It was one of the first things I asked Koenma about; your name as well
as Komagata Yumi's."

"Who's Houji, Kenshin?" Kaoru asked innocently, worried that Kenshin
was tackling another phantom from his past.

"One of Shishio's men. He witnessed my final fight with Shishio before
I..." Kenshin knew that this wasn't the time to deal with Kaoru's
amnesia, but then decided that he might as well address the issue at
that juncture. "...Before I died in Shishio's hands."

Botan's body jolted as a look of dawning realization and indescribable
horror twisted her face care of Kaoru's own shock. The Kamiya Kasshin
Ryu Adjutant Master didn't take the truth behind Kenshin's death so
well; in fact, she took it so terribly that Botan was suddenly in full
control of her shared body as the traumatized Kaoru retreated to her
supposed shell with nary a peep or a telepathic thought.

His purple eyes hidden by the shadows of his sharp, pointed bangs, the
semitransparent Kenshin turned his full attention to Houji's projection,
asking, "What experiment are you talking about? What did you do earlier,
when you made your shikigami explode and released that miasma of jaki?"

The image of Houji the Onmyouji cackled before it faded like the
reflection in a pool that had been disturbed by the ripples of a thrown
rock. "Now wouldn't you want to know? I won't ruin the fun. Find out the
truth by yourself, you deluded, idealistic fool."

"Botan, can you take us to the nearest place where the miasma landed?"
Kenshin asked after a couple of minutes of deliberation. He didn't want
to play into the Chojin's hands, but he deemed that he had no other
choice.

"Sure. Your spirit energy tracker should locate them. What I'm afraid of
is that they may have hit the two B-level blips we were looking for
earlier," Botan informed as she summoned a new oar and ushered Kenshin
to get on; in the back of her mind, she was worried about the lack of
Kaoru's presence, even though earlier on, she was annoyed by the
girl's existence, ironically enough.

"We have to hurry, then. We were so concentrated in fighting a Chojin-
powered Houji that we forgot his main purpose of existence: to assist
and strengthen the Chojin's minions."

As they flew off to the direction the spirit detector pointed them
towards... which was the Shibuya shopping district... Kenshin became
lost in thought. He remembered that he, as the Youkiri Battousai,
attempted to exact revenge against America's atomic bombing of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki by destroying the barrier that prevented their Demon World
from attacking their cities.

His planned act of mass murder went against everything he stood for, and
he was glad that Koenma had sealed him away before he did something he'd
truly regret. Was the Youkiri Battousai some facet of him that was even
darker than the Hitokiri Battousai? Was Battousai the Demon-Slayer a
side of him that he couldn't control, brimming with power and unfettered
by compassion or restraint?

He also hoped that Kaoru would find it in her heart to forgive him for
breaking his promise to her and for not telling her about how exactly he
died. Speaking of which, he further wondered who was the Chojin supposed
to be. More importantly, was the evil overlord someone he knew? The
realization that Sadojima Houji was the Onmyouji allowed Kenshin to
entertain a suspicion he'd had of the Overfiend ever since he was woken
up from his slumber.

'Could it be that the Chojin is Shishio Makoto?' He also pondered why
the Onmyouji kept referring to them as separate entities if they were
truly one person. However, he decided that all those were questions to
be answered for another day.


===


Eventually, Fuwan and Yahiko ended up within the inner sanctum of the
holy ground, specifically the entrance to the Meiji Jingu Gardens where
another Tori Gate stood...

"I can't believe you're really part of Koenma Daio's little army of
revived souls. Someone as sickeningly naive as you shouldn't go around
fighting death matches like this." Inwardly, the ninja sighed in dismay;
he'd expected his mission under the Chojin's payroll to be far more
satisfying than this, especially since again, the Reikai was somehow
involved in the mix. "Oh, by the way; you better not stay there for
long. I threw _a lot_ of homing shuriken bombs in the air. They're bound
to come boomeranging back to you any second."

Fighting against his borrowed body's demand for respite, the bloodied,
burnt, and battered Yahiko avoided the rain of exploding metal while
also desperately escaping from the explosions' path like an action star
would, save of course the parts where camera tricks for depth perception
were concocted to make the flaming red clouds that were nowhere near him
appear a lot closer than they really were. The occasional Spirit Energy
Cannons on top of the shrapnel-cum-bombs were also quite a pain to deal
with.

Fortunately, Yahiko had already formulated the best way to go about
defeating Kazemaru, so he only needed to find the optimum opportunity to
apply what he'd learned so far. "You want to see the fruits of hard work
and a lifetime of training? Fine. Like you, I don't have any natural
talents like supersonic speed, the inability to feel emotion, or
superhuman endurance; just my training. You want to prove to me you're a
hardworking ninja? Screw you. I'm a harder-working samurai."

"You're a funny kid. Still, there's nothing I hate worse than a sore
loser," Fuwan disclosed as he tripled the amount of flying bombs in the
air while again keeping his distance from the swordsman just like
before. Now that he knew about the kid's flying technique, he could go
back to flinging death from a distance without worrying about having his
opponent catch up to him. "Dedication; hard work; all the forces of
heaven and earth may go against me, but I'll still rise to the top."

"That's an interesting story, champ. But tell me, since when did hard
work entail using magical throwing items that home in on your opponent's
ki and an outfit that can produce these weapons infinitely?" Yahiko had
now resorted to using his Dou Gami to soften up the ground enough in
order to deploy Kenshin's Dou Ryu Sen and combat Kazemaru's Reiki
Cannon. "Also, I'm curious; since the last time you fought the kid who
beat you, what _have_ you added in your arsenal that didn't involve
those two gimmicks?"

"You have quite the lip for someone who's about to die. By hook or by
crook, a ninja will win."

Yahiko's arms were getting weary from all the Dou Ryu Sen attacks he
lobbed against the exploding shuriken bombs that he also had to dodge,
neutralize, throw back at Fuwan with his healthy hand, and whatnot. He
couldn't even feel his injured, blood-crusted hand anymore. However, he
remained optimistic even amidst the gritty, war-zone-like backdrop that
surrounded him.

Just then, the poisonous shouki of energy that the Onmyouji released
after being defeated by Kenshin hit the ninja hard like a meteor strike
of some sort, creating a large, smoldering crater that produced smoke so
thick it created bolts of electricity around it. To Yahiko's vexation,
the impact didn't destroy his opponent; it instead replaced his reiki
with jaki and... judging by the rise of power the samurai boy sensed...
enhanced Kazemaru's power exponentially.

'Oh shit, you've got to be fucking kidding me,' was Yahiko's final
thoughts before the steaming, purple-tinted Kazemaru Fuwan emerged from
the ashes and molten rock, raised his arms up in the sky, and expelled
a slate-gray swarm of shuriken that engulfed the Meiji Shrine's
pathway like a plague and ripped apart anything they touched into
unidentifiable fragments.


===


Back in Shibuya, beside the empty building where the Nalanda Shop used
to be...

They entered through the fire escape and, as soon as they arrived, were
greeted with the contusion-filled vision of Shizuru Kuwabara, her face
featuring a half-shut black eye, her pants ripped, her belt missing, her
underwear exposed, and her half-open vest revealing a bruised cleavage.
She appeared like she could barely stand, as evidenced by the way she
favored her left foot.

"Sh-Shizuru-chan? SHIZURU-CHAN? No... No. No. Nonono... Shizuru-chan!
NO! I'm so sorry we got here too late, Shizuru-chan!" Botan shrieked
and cried as she grabbed the battered Kuwabara sister by the arms and
held her in a tender embrace. "Oh, you poor thing! Are you okay? Were
you...? Did your attacker...?" The ferry-girl paled as she let the
implication of her words hang in the air.

Because she wasn't one to mince words, Shizuru said, "Me? No. Please.
Who the hell do you think I am?" as she did her best to keep herself
upright despite her pounding headache and her broken foot. To Botan's
puzzlement, the taller girl handed her what appeared to be a crumpled,
bloodstained yen note.

"What are you talking about, Shizuru-chan?"

"Look over there to find out."

Botan entered the room Shizuru pointed at; one that led directly to the
blocked exit where the police were waiting outside. She then withheld a
gasp at what she saw: The mangled body of an unconscious, half-naked,
and eye-patched man wearing the nonstandard kendo training apparel of a
tattered gi, a bloodied hakama, and a broken wooden sword while bathing
in pools of his own blood. Moreover, bits of broken teeth littered the
floor.

Upon closer inspection, the blue-haired girl realized that the man had a
dislocated arm and broken fingers on top of all the bleeding he was
doing after being struck repeatedly by what she presumed were rocks
scattered all over the condemned apartment. "Oh my. Wow. Shizuru-chan...
W-WHAT IS THAT THING HANGING OUT OF HIS BUTT?"

"Eh? That's his bokken." Shizuru weakly chortled as she slid into a
corner, sat down, and fumbled for her pack of cigarettes and lighter
inside the pockets of her torn clothes. "I broke his swords... the both
of them. Goddamned motherfucker."

She remembered grabbing hold of the bokken just as Musashi was about to
knock her out cold with his wooden sword, the Koenma bills wrapped
around her hand and focusing her feelings of anger and resentment at
these Chojin worshippers who helped Keiko wind up in a coma into one
focal point. The bokuto broke in half from the might of her righteous
indignation, and from there, all hell broke loose as the victimizer and
the victim exchanged roles.

Botan and the newly arrived Kenshin both shuddered once they realized
where the rest of the swordsman's bokuto went. "Hey... I recognize this
guy. He was that swordsman that your brother fought and beat during
Genkai-shihan's tournament to see who inherits her Spirit Light Wave
Gem. He even helped Kuwabara learn how to use the Rei-Ken, although it
was by accident. He's now sexually assaulting women with a sword-stick
from hell? I never realized he'd turn out to be such a creepy sex
offender!"

"Fuckers like him deserve to die. I shouldn't have held back and sent
him straight to hell." The auburn-haired girl kept flicking her lighter
in order to light up the cigarette she had in her mouth, but it just
won't work. Wordlessly, Kenshin took the lighter and ignited it for her.
It was at that point that she looked down on her hands and became aware
of how hard they were trembling.

"Hey, who's your semitransparent friend?" Shizuru asked after taking a
long and hard drag out of the cigarette that the red-haired spirit
guardian helped light.

"Huh? Oh, he's... a long story. I mean Kenshin. Himura Kenshin. He's my
assistant for the day," Botan introduced as she checked Burashi for any
vital signs. "This man is lucky to be alive, to be honest. Had you
shoved that bokken any further, it would have perforated his colon and
killed him."

"BOTAN, LOOK OUT!" Kenshin warned as Shizuru's sheet-white face
contorted into a trembling mess of unshed tears and unreleased
resentment from behind him, her half-finished cigarette falling down
from her slackened mouth and sending small, airborne embers of red-hot
tobacco all over the floor.

Botan barely had an idea of what was happening as Kenshin threw her to
the floor and knocked the wind out of her physical form. By the time
she looked up, her mouth went dry and her eyes dilated to the size of
plates... the redhead had pushed her out of harm's way just as a
revived, possum-playing Musashi stabbed him right in the abdomen with a
crimson katana.

"KENSHIN!"

Just like with his battle against Saito, Kenshin avoided getting his
vital organs stabbed by instinct... even though, to be honest, ghosts
didn't have any vital organs to speak of. Then again, because the
Chojin-assisted Onmyouji had weakened him severely, he felt his body
begin to fade and break down from the cowardly yet effective stabbing
attack.

"The Onmyouji told me to lay low and wait for you two while he slowly
healed my wounds. Looks like you suckers fell for his plans hook,
line..." Musashi bit his lip as he grabbed hold of the protruding piece
of wood wedged inside his posterior and pulled it out with a sickening,
squelching sound. "...And sinker," he ended with a slight falsetto tone.

"Come here so that I can shove that blade up your ass too, you
motherfucker!" Shizuru threatened as she recalled the boiling rage she
felt as Musashi molested her even though, at that point, her tired legs
and broken foot simply wouldn't listen to what her mouth was saying.

As Burashi let out a figuratively face-splitting grin, his missing teeth
were suddenly replaced by sharper ones and his eye patch smoldered away
into ashes as his covered eye produced a torch-like jaki flame of its
own. "No. Daddy's a little busy right now. I'll finish what we started
later, honey. That was just foreplay."

"Foreplay _this_." To both Shizuru and Burashi's shock, a Demon-Sword-
wielding Botan burst forth from out of nowhere and smashed the sheathed
blade right into the bridge of the kendo practitioner's nose with a
literally face-splitting strike.


===


Back at the about-to-be leveled entrance to the Meiji Jingu Gardens...

His sword's handle wrapped around his damaged left hand's wristband
because of its tenuous grip, Yahiko tried to use the fact that the
whirling, sharp-as-broken-glass bombs were traveling dangerously close
together to his advantage by delivering the strongest Dragon Earth Flash
he could muster in order to preemptively detonate the steel cloud and
let it blow up into oblivion before it reached him. However, his plan
somewhat backfired because now, fiery molten-metal death rained upon
him.

"You can't touch me now, samurai boy! Go back to your ancestors and rest
in peace! I hope this time around, you've realized which one of us is
the genuine article and which one is the warrior wannabe!" The corrupted
shinobi grinned, the dark energy flowing right into his soul, enabling
him to fling and aim his thousands of buzzing shuriken en masse into the
clouds of fire that would lead to Yahiko Myojin's immolation and
cremation.

Fuwan admired the spectacular conflagration from afar, checking the sky
for any signs of the samurai boy just in case he decided to use his
leaping technique to escape the blast. Such utter predictability had no
place in the battlefield.

"You had potential, kid. However, by wasting it on unrealistic
principles and easy-to-read parlor tricks, you can never reach the
pinnacle of success that I have attained. Suffer and drown within a sea
of mediocrity. You're not only held back by a glass ceiling, you're not
even good enough to reach it."

"Is that so?" asked the Yahiko that practically flew forward three feet
off the ground like a human missile at seventy miles per second by
redirecting the angle of his pole-vaulting Ten Gami in such a way that
it'd hurdle him forward instead of upward. "I'd like to rebut by
smashing this sword into your face."

"Yeah? Well I'd like to see you try, kid. JAKI HO!" Unlike the single-
burst Spirit Energy Cannon, the volatile Negative Energy Cannon flowed
through Kazemaru's palm like a continuous waterfall of energy
specifically intended by nature to destroy, corrupt, disintegrate,
decompose, and break down all matter to their simplest form.

Yahiko spun around in a tailspin to avoid getting broiled, burned, and
crushed by the singular wave of corruptive force, the pitch-black beam
with a glowing purple aura creating trenches even deeper than the one
the boy ended up in earlier. He landed on his feet, sprinted a bit to
maintain his momentum, and then smashed the sakabatou with a reverse Dou
Ryu Sen in order to increase his speed from seventy miles to a hundred
miles per hour.

"Fine. Feel free to charge at me as fast as you can; it'll certainly
help my shuriken bomb swarm rip you apart and blow you to smithereens
faster!" Fuwan seethed as he spread his arms out wide and synthesized
even more of his deadly, telekinetic throwing blades before he compelled
them by thought to surround Yahiko and kill him in a variety of
traumatizing ways.

Undeterred by the nimbus plague of explosive ninja stars he had to face,
the airborne Yahiko treated the approaching promise of a scourging _and_
a burning the same way he approached battling multiple men; he dealt
with each and every projectile one at the time because even though they
were magically enhanced by the Chojin's power and could home in on his
ki signature, they still had to move at different speeds and altitudes.

Yahiko did his tailspin move again to avoid the nearest of the exploding
shrapnel before landing on his feet and deliberately slowly down his
speed to normal albeit athletic human levels. Afterwards, as even more
shuriken approached, he plucked some of them right out of the air with
his healthy hand and threw them at back at the others in order to
preemptively detonate them without necessarily risking the creation of
another river of melted metal.

Slowly but surely, Yahiko was able to reduce about one-fourth of the
shuriken throng down while closing the distance between him and his
ninja nemesis. It didn't even matter that Fuwan kept replacing the lost
throwing blades, because they couldn't even touch Yahiko at that point.
The boy knew that he didn't need to take on _all_ of the ninja stars
and, as expected, Kazemaru didn't want his volatile creations anywhere
near him.

Once Yahiko was just one Ten Gami away from finally catching the manji-
tattooed shadow warrior, Fuwan decided to try a different tactic and
intentionally doing what his opponent had been avoiding to do; blast the
shuriken cloud and let it turn into a combustive bombardment of
supersonic death, superheated steel, and expanding gases. To make sure
that the teenage-looking ghost-turned-human didn't survive, the bald
ninja telekinetically threw even more shuriken and fired more energy
blasts into the rising firestorm.

"Hey, dumbass! Stop wasting your ammo! I'M UP HERE!" Yahiko called out,
with him being about forty feet directly above the thunderstruck, mouth-
agape Kazemaru. However, to the boy's consternation, the ninja's initial
astonished expression was soon replaced with one of glee and
expectation.

"You have made a grave mistake by resorting to a method that I've
already countered, Myojin Yahiko! You have nowhere else to go but down!
I'll be finishing you off right now!" Sure enough, Kazemaru let loose
his metal swarm at the skyward Tokyo Samurai while also lobbing his Jaki
Ho every time the boy neared a ninja star or several. Eventually, the
heavens were scarred, defaced, and wounded by the midair onslaught, the
constant explosions painting the midday sky red and orange even though
the sun wasn't anywhere near setting yet.

"While you were in heaven, using your unlimited amount of free time to
train, I was working. While you were there to enjoy eternal bliss, guess
what? I was also working. No normal human can harness, much less master,
the power of jaki! YOU'LL HAVE TO UNLEASH DOOMSDAY ON ME BEFORE YOU CAN
EVEN HAVE A CHANCE AT DEFEATING ME!" Fuwan boldly asserted as he kept
Yahiko floating by hitting the circling aerial mines and pushing him
back with his Jaki Cannon.

"You call this hard work? No, I'm afraid you're wrong. This isn't hard
work at all. This is you, admitting defeat and realizing that this is
the limit of your abilities," Yahiko rebuked as he set free his kenki
and employed it to neutralize the ninja stars' telekinetic and homing
capabilities, which made them lose their momentum and fall victim to
gravity.

In panic, Kazemaru repeated the same mistake Yahiko made earlier and
detonated the shuriken while it was near the boy with his ki beam. "Let
me show you what hard work can truly achieve."

Yahiko exploited Fuwan's mistake by doing a midair Ten Gami from the
resulting blast, which then gave the quick-thinking ninja the idea of
blasting the boy and hurling himself out of harm's way. He anticipated
the expected Ryu Tsui Sen technique and made his move then and there.

Alas, Yahiko wasn't using the Dragon Hammer Flash at the time. It was
instead a skill unlike anything Fuwan had ever seen. Within a fraction
of a fraction of a fraction of a second, the Tokyo Samurai exploded with
potentiality, his mind perceiving time in a much faster pace than normal
and his body reacting in kind, letting the strength of nearly every
muscle group in his system combine in his full-bodied strike.

Because this skill exploited the delay between the relaying of
information from the brain to the rest of the body, it allowed an
opponent no leeway in bracing himself from the impact of the strike,
which made the technique doubly jarring and powerful. It was a sucker
punch that Kazemaru saw with his own eyes, yet his brain wasn't quick
enough to perceive it.

"Revisal Technique Defensive Ougi: INGA GAMI!"

Just as Fuwan's eyes unfocused and his brain blanked out from the
jolting strength of a strike that couldn't be perceived by the naked eye
even if it were swung right in front of it, Yahiko's heightened sense of
time perception let him realize in a relative snap that leaving the
unconscious ninja there would result in his fiery death, jaki
enhancements or no. As such, depending on one's point of view, the
practically fainted ninja was either lucky or unlucky enough to
experience the actual Succession Move of Yahiko Myojin's Revisal
Techniques.

"Revisal Technique Counterstrike Ougi: BANZEN GAMI!"

While the God Retribution relied on conscious and precise perception,
the God Perfection instead depended on the purest of instinct, such that
even if the opponent were also gifted with the same time-compressing
awareness as Yahiko sported, he'd still fall victim to the faster-than-
thought strike of the Banzen Gami. Based on Zen Philosophy's "Mu" or
"Emptiness", God Perfection was named as such because it could only be
performed when the user emptied his mind and let his instincts deliver
the perfect strike that was unmarred by doubts, hesitation, or even
human limitation.

In physical, literal terms, Yahiko performed a split-second upward
sword strike on the knocked-out Fuwan that resembled a traditional golf
swing and traveled even faster than a normal strike because it sliced
through a thin line of split air that the Inga Gami itself made... a
virtual vacuum that enabled a quicker, more powerful swing because of
the lack of friction and air resistance.

Thusly, the comprehensively assaulted Kazemaru sailed away from the
impending explosion as Yahiko himself did a Dou-Gami-to-Ten-Gami combo
that enabled him to fly away from the resulting bombardment of falling
ninja stars. Even though the fight was already over by then, the
continuing downpour of detonating shuriken made it seem that the battle
had only begun, oddly enough. Although this time around, the Meiji
Shrine Garden Tori Gate was spared, everything else wasn't.

The back of Yahiko's spiky-haired head formed a large bead of sweat as
he realized something in hindsight. 'Huh. Pure instinct, huh? Well,
maybe I should have thought about the consequences of slamming an
unconscious man many feet away with no means to brace himself first
before doing just that. So much for the Sword That Protects... Man,
that landing of his sounded _nasty_. If Kaoru were to see me now, she'd
be hanging me out to dry on a laundry line and beating me raw with a
shinai!'


===


Back in the middle of the demolished Yoyogi Park...

"I call this Impact Magnification. Can you figure out what it does? The
Chojin's Onmyouji gave me a taste of this power when he told me about
the possible perks of accepting this job, but this is the first time
I'll be trying this skill out on a worthy opponent."

"DAMN YOU! You're a cheap, cheating bastard! Whatever happened to the
pureness of hand-to-hand combat?" Sanosuke reproached as he stood up on
wobbly feet, his body shaking like a leaf in the middle of a hurricane.

"This _is_ hand-to-hand combat. Do you see a gun in my hand? Or a sword?
Stop whining and take your ass-kicking in full." Kibano cracked his
knuckles as he practically leaped towards Sano... or rather, towards the
full fifteen-feet range where his Impact Magnification did the most
damage... and wailed on the white-jacketed brawler by punching the air
and letting his magnified force do its thing while idly wondering when
the man switched outfits.

Sanosuke kept his arms crossed as he weathered the storm, feeling as
though he were fighting against an invisible giant with fists as large
as he was tall and arms that had the length of an entire neighborhood
street. In minutes, deep craters that looked like humongous fist
imprints leveled the ground as Sano was flung around by the multiple
impacts like a rag doll that was about to get ripped apart by the
seams at it tumbled inside a washing machine.

In the middle of all that wanton devastation, Sanosuke got the bright
idea of flinging an enormous boulder right over Kibano's head in order
to... crush him? Distract him as he galloped towards him with flying
fists? He didn't really think things through, which was normal for him.

Nevertheless, he immediately regretted his decision when, like a
volleyball player, Getsuno used his Impact Projection to swat the large
piece of park real estate right into Sanosuke and then slammed both the
rock and the street fighter into the ground in a crushing, crippling,
open-handed blow that made the entirety of Yoyogi crumple in a park-wide
shudder.

After the dust settled, Kibano guffawed in satisfaction at seeing
Sanosuke cringing in pain and quaking in what he supposed was fear right
in the middle of a hole shaped like the gargantuan indentation of his
right hand; a sad, pathetic heap of a man.

"I should've thought that one through. Ow, my fucking spine..." a groggy
Sanosuke gurgled as he came to just in time to roll away from Kibano's
second Impact Projection strike that would've been strong enough to pop
his bones out of his body.

"You're all talk. Sekihoutai? Captain Sagara? Protecting the new era?
What a joke!" Getsuno mocked as he unleashed the full potential of his
B-Level self and run amok on the literally defenseless revived spirit.
After a couple of minutes of playing the game of cat and mouse, the
bearded martial artist ended his blistering assaults with a spinning
heel kick that flung Sanosuke all the way to the lone island where the
fountain pond lay.

'He can use his _feet_ too? What the fuck kind of a technique is he
using anyway?' the hyperventilating Sanosuke pondered before looking up
and seeing the Jesus-looking combat expert throw a flying kick in his
direction. Sano covered himself the best he could as he was driven to
the piece of land like a hammered train spike before the floating Kibano
turned his flying kick into a bicycle kick that transformed the placid
pond into a geyser of displaced water, flying rocks, and snapped trees.

"Who the hell cares about these powerless little shits that we can
squish like bugs if given the chance? Who wants to be normal anyway?
Humanity is an evolutionary dead end that needs constant rescuing from
superior beings like us!"

Getsuno somersaulted back to dry land in order to admire his
handiwork... or footwork, as the case might be... when Sanosuke emerged
from the banks of the smashed fountain and delivered a Futae no Kiwami
right at the center of the long-haired warrior's chest.

Kibano blanched as he felt his torso's pores eject a sudden spray of
blood that soaked his gi red and made his heart stop beating
altogether.

"FUTAE NO KIWAMI! AH!"

For all intents and purposes, Kibano's cardiac arrest rendered him dead
for a full second before the Chojin's jaki that the Onmyouji donated to
him shocked his system enough to restart the circulatory process like an
energy-based defribrillator of sorts. Nonetheless, this impromptu
revivification took a lot out of him, so he was now a sitting duck
against the charging Sanosuke's continuous death blows.

"FUTAE NO KIWAMI! FUTAE NO KIWAMI! FUTAE NO KIWAMI!"

To Sanosuke's disgust and Getsuno's glee, they both discovered that the
Impact Projection could be used defensively as well. More to the point,
by simply keeping his arms together and his feet apart in a classic
boxing guard position reminiscent of the Peek-a-Boo stance of Mike
Tyson, his borrowed jaki formed an invisible protective shell that kept
the overly offensive Sano from penetrating through and finishing him
off.

Kibano wanted desperately to follow through the flurry of Sanosuke's
punches with a punishing counterblow, but his body was still reeling
from the heart-stopping punch it felt earlier. Then, to the immobilized
messiah look-alike's horror, his teeth chattered and knees buckled as
his body endured a rain of fist-sized air pockets that pierced through
his imperceptible barrier; Sano was now using a different, deadlier
technique.

"SANJO NO KIWAMI! SANJO NO KIWAMI! SANJO NO KIWAMI!"

The determined Sanosuke shouted his throat ragged as he kept delivering
blistering combinations at his hapless opponent without any regard to
how each Three-Fold Extremity slowly but surely loosened the joints of
his right hand. However, his own tunnel vision prevented him to see that
Getsuno had already recovered bodily movement amidst the endless
punching barrage, which in turn allowed the bohemian martial artist to
do an Impact Projection backhand that flung Sano ten feet away from him.

Figuring that just over three yards was too close for the Impact
Projection to hit him, Sanosuke recklessly charged towards Kibano to
start his assault anew, only to have his skinny body smashed like a
pancake care of the green-haired muscleman's jaki-enhanced clapping
move. The severely damaged street fighter fell to his hands and knees,
flabbergasted and humbled by the sheer might of his nemesis's bone-
crushing power.

"The Chojin will make an even newer era dawn upon us soon; an era full
of god-like entities that'll make humanity and normalcy obsolete. Don't
be like everyone else, Zanza; celebrate your superiority over others or
die alongside the rest of these weak and worthless maggots!"

Sanosuke vomited up a small puddle of blood and an unidentifiable liquid
substance as his soul finally remembered how painful it was to be alive.
The continuous ringing in his ears was particularly worrisome for him,
as well as how unfocused his vision remained. Even still, just like when
he was alive, he refused to stand down and give up.

"You ain't superior to anybody! You're just some deluded asshole who
sucks on this Chojin's energy balls and enjoys his sloppy seconds like
some sort of drug addict to unnaturally enhance your strength! By
default, that makes you lower than scum."

The magical clothes that Sanosuke bought from Yumekai's Nalanda Shop
glowed in reaction to his indomitable will. Without thinking... not that
he ever did... he raised his hands up in the air and let his touki and
reiki mix together with a sharp hint of kenki in a manner not unlike
Rando's own energy-transforming Ibuki technique.

Just then, from out of his cocktail of different swirling energies that
made his clothes flutter and flap like a flag in the middle of a
tornado, came forth a wooden polearm that supported a double-edged metal
blade over twelve-feet long and looked big enough to chop a horse in
half... hence its name "zanbatou" or horse-chopping sword. 'Ah, it's
been a while. Welcome back, partner.'

"A p-polearm?" Before he knew it, Kibano found his legs backpedaling
from the mere suggestion that he now had to deal with both Zanza the
Street Fighter and Wielder of the Zanbatou as well as Sanosuke Sagara
the Master of the Dual and Triple Extreme. "T-This changes nothing! I'll
still win in the end because _I_ chose the right side!"

"You're more simpleminded than I thought. Damn, you're dumb. In a war,
both sides of the conflict believe themselves to be the right side."
Sanosuke prepared to swing his polearmed weapon with all his might, his
added reach negating Getsuno's earlier advantages when it came to long-
range combat.

To Sanosuke, Kibano concluded, "I've grown sick and tired of trying to
hammer into your thick skull the reality of the situation and the
futility of your idealisms. Go ahead and die for your outdated beliefs,
Zanza. The Chojin's new world order has no place for weaklings such as
you!" as his Impact Projection grabbed hold of a huge piece of rubble
the size of a small island and hurled it towards his opponent with the
intention of repeating the tactic Sano utilized earlier.

Instead of slicing the hill-sized boulder and taking the full brunt of a
giant-sized hand slap, Sanosuke instead jumped back a couple of feet and
applied the Dual Extreme with the zanbatou by embedding the twelve-feet
sword into the ground and releasing a shockwave so powerful, it blasted
the flying slab into dust and hit the dumbfounded Kibano with the force
of a plane crash even though he used the Impact Projection's shell-like
guard to protect himself.

"You wanted a fight, you fucknut? Well, you got one! Here's a Zanbatou
Ate for you, bitch! Suck on it good!" the thoroughly fatigued Sanosuke
yelled while he leaned on his horse cutter for support before he felt
another jolt of negative energy from above the sky yet again.

To his surprise, confusion, annoyance, and exhaustion, Getsuno used the
impact of the Zanbatou Distant Hit to fly high up into the heavens, do a
forward flip, and then execute an Impact Projection bicycle kick that
had turned the Yoyogi Park's fountain pond into a muddy swamp. "ZANZA!
I'LL KICK YOU SO HARD, ALL THE BLOOD IN YOUR BODY WITH TRAVEL TO YOUR
HEAD AND MAKE IT POP LIKE A ZIT, BRAINS AND ALL!"

Funnily enough, all the blood from Sanosuke's body _did_ travel up to
his head at the moment, which made him look like a bandanna-wearing
turnip wherein his hair served as the leaves. "Now you fucking did it.
You've pissed me off so badly, even beating you up boils my blood. Never
push a person that far!"

The zanbatou's first slash had Kibano go into a topsy-turvy spin that
prevented him from focusing his borrowed jaki into a cohesive assault.
However, the second slash in the opposite direction ended all hope of
him finishing Sano off or even lifting a finger against his opponent.
The two opposing forces had left about half his body twisted in one
direction while the other half twisted in the other direction, which
resulted in him cracking his spine.

"ZANKUU ZANBATOU ATE!" Sanosuke announced as the mangled remains of his
long-haired archenemy fell to the ground with a groaning, wailing, and
teeth-gnashing thud.


===


Back in Shibuya, inside the empty building where the Nalanda Shop used
to be...

"You'll pay for doing what you did to Botan's friend, you brute. People
like you are among the ones I hate the most," the supposed "Botan"
declared, which puzzled Shizuru somewhat; she found it strange to hear
the ferry-girl referring to herself in the third person and all.

Kazuma Kuwabara's sister afterwards gasped as the shinigami transformed
from a lithe, blue-haired, pink-eyed girl to an athletic, well-built,
and battle-worn kendo master with blue eyes and raven locks after she
unsheathed her borrowed weapon and revealed to everyone a reverse-edged
blade.

"You and what army, lady? How dare you wave around the Demon Sword when
it wasn't even designed to be used by the likes of you." After fixing
his broken nose with his thumb, Musashi chuckled before screeching in
such a way that made it seem like he was gasping for air and laughing at
the same time.

"Come to think of it, this is my golden opportunity! Forget raping that
hard-to-get sadist cocksucker in order to get my jaki fix; the Youtou
Shinnoken will _automatically_ give me power comparable to that of
Xinhai Feng's or all the other Shin Ju members'! In fact, I may even get
honorary Shin Ju membership with that sword! SO HAND IT OVER TO ME, YOU
LITTLE WHORE!"

Even though Burashi's blood supply was supposed to be low thanks to the
bludgeoning blows Shizuru gave him, his skin somehow turned bright red
thanks to an out-of-the-blue stock of fresh plasma.

The Kaoru that compelled Botan to make a grab for the Demon Sword before
the sex-crazed idiot of a swordsman realized the implications of what he
had just done (as evidenced by Kenshin's fading bodily projection)
deftly moved and read each and every wild swing that her opponent made,
now fully in control of the ferry-girl's transformed body.

In spite of how impressed Botan was with Kaoru's proactive attitude and
quick thinking, the shinigami still had her reservations. 'Kenshin, are
you sure it's okay for Kaoru to fight Burashi? I mean, with all due
respect, she was knocked down in one hit by Hiruma Gohei, of all people!
Besides which, Kamiya Kasshin Ryu sounds like a kendo school that you
yourself can master in a day!'

'Shut up, you blue-haired floozy. I can hear you inside there,' Kaoru
admonished as she did her best to parry, block, and keep her distance
from the deranged, scarlet-skinned, and flaming-eyed swordsman-cum-sex-
offender-and-murderer with a tainted and degraded blade that was as red
as blood.

'Relax, Botan. Kaoru-dono is responsible for training two of the last
great swordsmen before the turn of the century,' Kenshin reassured from
inside the doubtful shinigami's head because he was now forced to share
one body with the ferry-girl thanks to the Demon Sword. 'Furthermore,
she's a high-level kendo master in her own right too; a master-class
warrior who knows all the fundamentals of the Way of the Sword. Don't
look down on the Kamiya Kasshin Ryu; it's not a shallow school that can
be mastered in a day.'

'Thanks, but I'm still not talking to you, Kenshin.' Had Kenshin a body
he could use to do a pratfall with, he wouldn't fallen face-first onto
the rubble-strewn ground then and there. He couldn't even understand it;
she earlier said that she already knew he'd broken her promise to her,
so he presumed that she had added two and two together and understood
that Shishio was the one who killed him. Apparently, this was not the
case.

So far, the tentative strikes from both combatants were nothing more
than them trying to feel each other's respective kendo skills out. Of
course, now that Musashi had the handle part of his broken bokken
transmuted into a crimson katana tinged by the blood of the innocents he
murdered all throughout his descent into darkness, his capabilities
weren't as easy to measure. To be more specific, the Chojin could spring
up at any point of the match to take over and make Burashi more powerful
than he had any right to be.

Half a minute in, Musashi burst forth and did a hundred stabs a second
in a snakebite fashion that let him return to his guarded position with
barely an opening, which the kendo girl avoided altogether by backing
away instead of engaging the larger man. The swordsman with one eye
aflame was aggressive, but the Kamiya Kasshin Ryu master wouldn't let
him near.

Ignoring the cuts and scratches she got whenever her opponent drew
close, she managed to sidestep out of a corner, land shuddering
sakabatou strikes on both wrists and the side of the man's head that
would've made his ear form a cauliflower hematoma were his previously
broken body not overflowing with jaki at that point.

Burashi rolled his eyes as he wiped the blood that fell from his ear and
willed the ringing inside it to subside. "What's with that blunt blade?
Also, your sports-based kendo that's more concerned with form and
precision than actual deadliness won't get you anywhere. Your technique
has no place in actual, life-and-death combat. Compared to true
kenjutsu, your kendo is nothing but a joke!"

Kaoru narrowed her sapphire eyes as she executed to clinical perfection
the feints, parries, counters, and defensive footwork needed to keep her
away from the offense-based and volatile Musashi... the same basic
training she had instilled into Yahiko Myojin and Yutaro Tsukayama so
that they'd avoid fighting like Sanosuke "I'll let opponents use me as a
punching bag before I punch back!" Sagara.

'This guy talks a lot like that muscle-bound freak that Kenshin fought
who wore feathers for shoulder pads; particularly the one that sliced
Yuta-kun's right arm and almost ended the poor boy's promising kendo
career,' she reflected as she kept luring the murderous sex maniac to a
corner, only to blindside him with a sharp wrist, body, or head strike
every time.

"Spare me your love taps and nudges! We're not playing tag here, bitch!
The Demon Sword is supposed to be the deadliest katana... an instrument
of death... not a foam-rubber bat or a police baton!" the impatient and
welted Burashi roared as he grabbed and tackled the by-the-book,
traditional kendo master and pushed her back to a corner. "You've made a
grave mistake by turning the Youtou Shinnoken into something _useless_.
Play time's over, little girl!"

Musashi unleashed his multi-strike stabbing technique pointblank at the
sword-wielding Kaoru, which was very reminiscent of what the Onmyouji
did against Kenshin earlier on. As the thus-far stunned Shizuru broke
her silence and told what she thought was a transformed Botan to look
out, Kaoru timed the wild strikes and ducked a strong right stab to her
head and counterattacked with a bludgeoning slash that Burashi also
ducked.

Just as Kaoru feinted to the left and charged to the right, her opponent
read her movements and caught her with a thrust to the abdomen that drew
blood and sent her reeling back into the corner. Shizuru screamed and
threw rocks at Musashi, which he ignored in the heat of the moment.
Using his landed strike to gauge the distance, the slavering Burashi
delivered more stabs that hit Kaoru's thigh, shoulder, and hip while
also ripping apart her kendo gear into tatters.

"I want to stab you. Badly. In every way possible. This isn't the only
sword that the Chojin's jaki has healed and made all better." Meanwhile,
the sword glowed even redder than before after getting a taste of
Kaoru's (or Botan's) supposed blood.

'By Tatehaya Susanoo-no-Mikoto's Totsuka-no-Tsurugi! Can't he say _one_
sentence without sounding creepy?' was all Botan could mentally remark
as the battle between Musashi and Kaoru became more worrisome by the
minute.

Instead of keeping herself patient, Kaoru looked angry; Botan's and
Musashi's respective mocking words had clearly gotten her out of her
game, prompting her to move forward instead of lying back and waiting to
counter.

Burashi cackled as he kept on stabbing at the compromised kendo master
before Kaoru realized that he was only wide open during stabs instead of
in-between stabs, which prompted her to attack as soon as he got in a
hit and plunge the Youtou Shinnoken's hilt directly into the madman's
"healthy" eye. At last, Kaoru was able to escape the wrath of Musashi as
the man screamed in agony, but judging from the faintness she felt and
the clamminess of her skin, it wasn't without cost.

Alas, Kaoru's next few strikes weren't finding their mark as the half-
blinded swordsman she fought kept her at bay with his thunderous "Tsuki"
thrusts that she sidestepped from using the newly created blind spot.

Botan had seen enough. She intentionally called Kenshin out, not caring
if she hurt Kaoru's feelings by stating the truth of the situation. 'You
have to save her now. Her style is too defensive, and her power is
nonexistent! She's going to get killed! You have to do something or else
I'll be ferrying her _and_ me back to the Elysian Fields to forget about
this embarrassing event! What if that guy's a necrophiliac as well? And
what about Shizuru-chan? Can't you go into Battousai mode or something?'

To Botan's agitation, Kenshin jibed, 'Oro? It's a "mode" now?'
Nevertheless, before the displaced ferry-girl could retort, the
disembodied redhead said in all seriousness, 'Watch and learn, Botan.
Don't blink. Don't miss a second.'

Although she was stung by Burashi's stabbing technique four times over,
the normally defensive Kaoru decided to go on the offensive in this
third go-around, her stab wounds be damned. Her foolish pride might have
been riled up by Botan's claims of her swordsmanship incompetence when
compared to the superhuman capabilities of Kenshin. However, to Kaoru's
relief, she was able to slow down the fight's pace considerably when
compared to earlier.

Before the conceited Burashi knew it, he had been caught in Kaoru's
slow-but-sure fighting tempo. Although the flaming-eyed man's stabbing
speed did have the Kamiya Kasshin Ryu master on the defensive, she
probed and only smashed Kenshin's transformed, reverse-edged blade with
full commitment at the holes in Musashi's stance that weren't blatant
traps or feints. The swordsman was able to land a shallow stab in order
to counter her as well, but that only resulted in her countering his
counter with a rib-breaking strike to the side.

It was at this point that Botan started to figure out why Kenshin was so
complacent about the idea of Kaoru fighting in his stead. She might not
have Kenshin's all-around skills, Kurama's methodical cleverness, Hiei's
overwhelming power and speed, Yusuke's volatile impulsiveness, or
Kuwabara's simpleminded determination; however, she did have skill and
finesse born out of years of learning sword forms and hours of practice.

'Do you understand now? Kaoru-dono doesn't beat down opponents; she
outclasses them by picking them apart piece by piece. She is the stream
of water that breaks down rocks and destroys mountains over time without
anyone even noticing.'

Thirty minutes later, Kaoru Kamiya had Musashi Burashi all figured out.
Both his eyes, even the one set aflame, were swollen to the point of
nigh-blindness, while the rest of his body appeared even in worse shape
than Shizuru's despite the healing powers of jaki. Every time he stabbed
anywhere, she found a way to counter. His hands were low because they
were tired from all the stabs he kept firing without any payoff.

"Let me get this straight: Kenjutsu is supposed to be better than kendo
because with kenjutsu, you can kill people? That sounds like the
reasoning of an infant. Kendo is all about strengthening your character
and applying the principles of the sword to your everyday life. Then
again, someone as shallow as you will probably never figure that out."

Both Kaoru and Musashi charged at each other a second later.

Shizuru was so used to seeing "Botan" counter every strike of the
slowing, tiring Musashi that she at first wasn't aware of the stab that
reached all the way to the kendo master's back. However, as she was
about to scream and charge forward, she realized that, for some reason,
the blade sticking through Kaoru was sheathed.

"Kamiya Kasshin Ryu Defensive Ougi: Hadome," Kaoru announced as she
sheathed half of the red katana into the sakabatou-transformed Demon
Sword's metal scabbard while she kept her wrists crossed and her grip
tight on the Reikai artifact.

Musashi pulled at this sword in order to release it from the sudden
trap, but Kaoru exploited that expected maneuver by twisting the half-
sheathed red katana and hammering the exposed part with the reverse-
edged Youtou Shinnoken in just two moves. "Kamiya Kasshin Ryu Offensive
Ougi: Hawatari," she hissed as she let the pointed part of the broken
blade slip out of the metal saya.

Before Musashi got the bright idea of stabbing Kaoru with the remaining
piece of his sinful blade, she shattered his knees, broke both arms,
dislocated his fingers for the second time (the first time was with
Shizuru), and then lifted him over her at arm's length while grabbing
him with what was left of his gi.

Kaoru's face quirked with a self-satisfied smirk after the real Botan
inwardly murmured, 'Wow. I've never seen anything like this. I can't
believe that she was the same person who was knocked down in one hit by
Hiruma Gohei.'

"What more do you want from me, you crazy bitch? Look, I'm sorry I
insulted your stupid kendo sport, okay?" Burashi sniffled and bawled.
"Look, my dick is broken, my balls are smashed, you may have crippled
me for life, and the Chojin will kill me if he ever gets his hands on
me! If you think I've done bad things, well, I've already gotten what I
deserved! I'm sorry, okay? Gimme a break! Please, don't hurt me
anymore!"

"...Men."

Kaoru conked Musashi with the youtou-turned-sakabatou, which made him
see stars. Then she did it again. And again. And again... all while
shouting after every hit, "MEN! MEN! MEN...!"

'Does... Does she have something against men?' Botan asked before
Kenshin corrected her, saying that Kaoru was instead making a battle cry
or "kiai" that kendo practitioners usually shouted in order to announce
the hit zone they intended to attack, which was the "helmet" or, in this
case, the "noggin".

On the other hand, knowing Kaoru, she might as well be expressing her
frustration towards the male human species as a whole too.

'Oh. Well, isn't her school supposed to be the Sword That Protects?
T-This is not very protective _at all_,' Botan commented. Meanwhile,
Kenshin tugged at his imaginary collar, knowing full well who Kaoru
_really_ wanted to hit on the head repeatedly with the reverse-edged
blade.


===


To be Continued...

Next: Reunions.

Sub-boss and boss fight in the next chapter. Stay tuned.

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.

Akin ang huling halakhak!
Abdiel