[FFML] [yyh][rk][xover] Youtou Shinnoken Chapter 38: The Other Side of Bloodlust (Part 6)

[Abdiel]

Several hours later, at Roppongi, mere minutes before daybreak, a
spaghetti-legged, bleeding, burned, and wheezing Kazuma Kuwabara leaned
with his back against a crumbling wall of what was left of a nightclub,
his eyes defiant.

He whispered, "Get up," while the billboard from behind him collapsed
from all the stress it went through after the epic war that happened
during that early morn.

All over him were the groggy, disoriented figures of Karasu and the two
Suzaku doppelgangers, who themselves were heavily damaged and
flabbergasted by the old-looking (and odd-looking) young man before
them.

Kazuma's Rei-Ken sputtered like a faulty, dying flashlight in his hands,
its beam of jagged light fading along with his life force. Nevertheless,
Kuwabara was still up on his feet, and his enemies, albeit recovering,
were down for the count.

Kuwabara slid down the wall and left behind a trail of his own blood.
"Stand up, you sons of bitches. I'm not through with you yet."

Karasu stood up, his organic mouthpiece long ago taken off, his stringy
hair turning gold like wicks of dynamite set aflame, and said with nary
a stutter, "No. Stay down."


========================================================================


Youtou Shinnoken
A Rurouni Kenshin/Yuyu Hakusho Crossover Fan Fiction Story
By Chester Castañeda
chester.castaneda at gmail.com
gabriel_gabdiel at yahoo.com
http://www.fanfiction.net/u/223441/
Original concept by Chad Yang
chadjill at ms3.hinet.net
http://www.fanfiction.net/u/56473/

Tag team handicap match between the Kurama and Kuwabara pair and the
trio of two Suzakus and Karasu.


========================================================================

Chapter 38: The Other Side of Bloodlust (Part 6)

========================================================================


Several hours earlier, at Roppongi, right after Kuwabara's rescue of his
comrade, Shuichi "Kurama" Minamino...

Standing before the collapsed and exhausted Kurama (who himself had a
cerebral death match against Jine "Kanji Killer" Udo before Suzaku took
advantage of the situation and stole the Demon Sword when the redhead
was at his weakest), Kuwabara snarled the following words:

"Hey, assholes. If you want to kill Kurama, you'd have to go through
_me_ first."

"I'd say, 'That can be arranged,' but you'd be expecting that, wouldn't
you?" said Karasu from behind both Kurama and Kuwabara. "Still, that was
an impressive display of skills, human. You've again done something
unexpected of you."

The smoke cleared from Kuwbara's effort to save Kurama's life (which
involved creating a portal in order to redirect Karasu's beam of
volatile energy back at him, which triggered an explosion that took him
and the twin Suzakus out), only for Kazuma to discover his efforts were
for naught.

In the middle of the smoking crater was Karasu, relatively unharmed
since exploding was something the "suicide" bomber was more accustomed
to than actual human terrorists or kamikaze pilots (who could only do it
once).

As for the Suzaku clones, one of them escaped the blast by magnetically
attaching himself to the exposed metal bars of a nearby demolished
building, while the other simply covered himself in metal and let his
shield absorb the brunt of the explosion.

Judging by how bored and disinterested the corvus looked after exploding
while the Suzakus were nearby him, they were probably none the worse for
wear despite the explosion.

Kazuma harrumphed at Karasu's condescension before he turned around and
pointed his shining blade at the crow youkai. "I was able to thwart your
plans before, _demon_... and I can do it again. Try me."

Kuwabara went in front of Kurama and circled around him, like a Mama
Bear would to her cub. Seeing Minamino's current predicament, it was now
three-against-one instead of three-against-two.

"Kuwabara-kun, I..."

Kazuma hushed Kurama by putting a finger on his lips and winking. "I'll
take care of everything for now, Kurama. You rest up. I won't be able to
take those two clowns and bird boy down by myself though, so you better
heal yourself quickly."

Kurama closed his eyes and chuckled, summoning what little of his youki
was left to cocoon himself in a bed of kudzu. "You're fearless, as
usual. Thank you. I shall return soon to assist you."

Just as one of the Suzaku was about to shoot a version of the Lightning
Storm of Torment at Shuichi that served as a powerful electromagnetic
pulse and was filled with microwave radiation, Kuwabara had already sent
the cocooned Kurama to "parts unknown" with a portal underneath him that
led somewhere within or outside Roponggi (or even Minato).

"You should've saved yourself as well when you had the chance," declared
one Suzaku while he raised two fingers upwards the sky and summoned
lightning for himself and his twin to recharge their metaphorical
batteries with.

"We already have put one of you down. You're in no position to threaten
_us_." Karasu adjusted his mask. The demon considered whether to remove
it or not in order to pull out all the stops when it came to his power.

Better safe than sorry, after all.

Even though Kuwabara himself was nothing special, his damnable Dimension
Sword _was_.

It could create portals, hack through barriers, cut through _anything_
(whether it was solid, liquid, gas, or plasma), slice through three-
dimensional space and keep on slicing long after the cut was made, and
it could even neutralize spirit or demon energy. The Dimension Sword was
almost as troublesome a blade as the Demon Sword.

"What are you hesitating for, Karasu? Fire at will," said one of the
Suzakus that proceeded to do just as he said with his Ankoku-Raiko-Ha.

Seemingly reading the corvus youkai's mind, another Suzaku reassured,
"That goat-faced idiot doesn't know how to fully use that dangerous
sword of his to its fullest potential. He barely even survived a fight
against Byakku, the second weakest of the Four Saint Beasts. He couldn't
even kill him. There's nothing to worry about."

"I'm not the same guy I was back then, Suzaku. Hell, I'm not the same
guy I was a few minutes ago. Go ahead. Let me prove you wrong." Kuwabara
ran in a zigzagging pattern to avoid the lightning bolts and find cover
in non-conductive material like concrete, back alleys, and nonmetallic
debris.

Whenever Kuwabara could, he'd slash apart the lightspeed arrows (not
really lightspeed because it was also composed of massive youki plus it
traveled through a medium... air... instead of in a vacuum, so it was
slightly slower) using timing, distance, and angles instead of speed.

_Or_ he could simply make a portal beforehand, predicting when and where
Suzaku would fire the damn thing. This allowed him to shield himself
from the barrage or use the dimensional bridge as a teleporting escape
pod that could send him elsewhere.

"Tough words from someone who's dodging and running away! You sniveling
coward," mocked one Suzaku while he raised hell and bits of metal all
around that section of Roponggi. Meanwhile, the other Suzaku levitated
himself high up to get a better view of where Kuwabara went in order to
shoot him more accurately from above.

As for Karasu, he elected to slink into the shadows and catch Kuwabara
by surprise with some sort of ambush, since it was clear to him that the
teenager was willing to undergo guerilla warfare to survive this war.

Already, he was fighting from a distance, away from the energy-absorbing
powers of the Suzakus.

Kuwabara remembered how Yusuke, Hiei, and Kurama left him behind, both
literally in the Human World and in terms of power level. Even now, they
outclass him by one, two, or even  three levels of power, especially
when they get into their super-powered forms.

Sure, he got an education and a future out of it (and Urameshi ended up
as an out-of-school cook with a ramen stand while raking in dough with
Reikai-related investigation jobs on the side).

However, this was Kuwabara's chance to prove that he truly wasn't the
weak link of the Urameshi Team.

His teammates could be way stronger than him (Kurama with his intellect
and his plant manipulation, Yusuke and his mazoku blood and boundless
spirit energy, and Hiei with his super speed and Black Dragon Spirit
Technique), he could be humiliated by the enemy repeatedly, and Hiei
could forever not give him the respect that he believed he deserved.

All the same, he'd prove his value to the team one way or another,
starting with this: If there was one thing he had going for him, it was
his creativity in using his special powers. It wasn't the same tactical
ingeniousness that Kurama had, but he could give even the redhead a run
for his money in imagination.

'I'll show them. I'll show them all.'

And show them he did, beginning with the closest Suzaku, who didn't
only shove metal shrapnel at Kuwabara with the speed of bullets, but
also revved up parked cars and utilized his complete control of
electromagnetism to drive them at the youth.

All the while, this Suzaku waited for the right moment to fling the
magnetized coin he had on hand at mach three, intending to hit the very
heart of the spirit detective with the destructive might of the Railgun.

From there, Kazuma did a curious thing.

Instead of slicing up the incoming vehicles controlled by Suzaku's
boundless electrical powers, the ex-delinquent created portals for the
lead cars, let the portals close, then opened up new portals that
teleported the vehicles in the opposite direction of the rear cars.

This resulted in a scrap yard pileup even bigger than the one he hid
underneath earlier.

Unfazed, the "grounded" Suzaku magnetized the flying heaps of metal and
redirected them all towards Kuwabara. While the tall, orange-haired
former delinquent attempted to escape through a portal, Karasu emerged
from the shadows and threw a grenade into the dimensional rift, thus
blocking Kazuma's exit.

Or so Karasu thought before Kuwabara sliced a small portal over his
head and sending his bomb back. In the same motion, the teenager sliced
another portal that sucked up the subsequent rain of steel like a black
hole.

After the crow demon's head exploded (again), the teenager made another
portal that led directly behind the non-levitating Suzaku.

Before that Suzaku could react and steal the spirit energy powering the
Dimension Sword, Kuwabara created yet another portal that spewed out
the shards that almost "julienned" him earlier, which froze in the
electric demon's presence due to his electromagnetic field.

Or they would've stopped had Kazuma not sliced apart the magnetic field
too, allowing the mass of accelerating wreckage to continue traveling
unimpeded towards Suzaku, forcing him to blast them apart with the
Railgun he had reserved for Kuwabara.

Kazuma couldn't do much of anything else, so he escaped via portal to
another area of Roppongi for fear of having his Jigen Tou absorbed if he
ended up too close to either Crimson Sparrow.

"You're running away again, human? Is this the best that you can do? Is
that all your special power is good for?" mocked one of the twin Suzaku
clones.

As for the levitating Suzaku, he spotted where the human went and fired
an Ankoku-Raiko-Ha. It zapped Kuwabara's legs, making them numb and
rendering him unable to run away from the Suzakus.

Additionally, Kazuma was running out of spirit energy as well. He
couldn't move his legs and, soon enough, he wouldn't be able to use the
one thing that kept him alive.

'Where'd the human go?' asked the Suzaku on the ground to the Suzaku in
the air via radio waves, the latter serving as his eye on the sky.

'Here. I'll shoot at him so you'd know his location,' telepathically
said the Suzaku that temporarily "crippled" Kazuma.

The unharmed Karasu, with smoke rising from his face and his singed
collar, said, "Don't underestimate that child. He's more powerful than
you think. It's his special ability, not his power level, that's
dangerous."

"Out of my way, Class-A." Suzaku shoved the corvus aside while his feet
crackled with electrical power, his telekinetic magnetism ripping the
steel foundations and rebar of the streets and turning them into his
own personal railway. "The Class-S Express is coming through."

Right above Suzaku's right hand, another bolt for his Railgun floated
and twirled above his waiting fist while he himself hurled his body
through his personal rollercoaster at speeds worthy of a bullet train.

While Suzaku skated towards Kazuma and the other Suzaku had a Lightning
Storm of Torment with the human's name on it cocked back and ready to be
released, Kuwabara's mind went on overdrive.

How was he, with numb legs and limited reiki, supposed to escape all
this?

Aware that there was a Suzaku from above intending to snipe him to
oblivion and a Suzaku from below setting him up for that destructive
electromagnetic cannon more devastating than even a Mega Spirit Gun, he
had the bright idea to increase the speed of his last remaining Jigen
Tou strikes with the assistance of gravity. And portals.

Kuwabara first cut a portal from above him as the aerial Suzaku blasted
another one of his lightspeed Ankoku-Raiko-Ha, and the only way the
ginger-haired kid could react fast enough was to anticipate the shot and
cut the portal ahead of time.

He then stepped aside (or rather, crawled by his arms) and cut another
portal from where he was sprawled earlier, letting the bolt of
lightning travel endlessly from the bottom to the top of the parallel
portals until its energy dissipated on its own.

Kuwabara espied Karasu running from behind the speeding, bullet-train-
like Crimson Sparrow that had brought with him all the wrecked cars that
the human totaled through his quick thinking, coming at him at hundreds
of miles per hour.

Neither seemed to understand what was about to happen next. Even their
"eye in the sky", the floating Suzaku, was clueless.

Just as soon as the Ankoku-Raiko-Ha sucked in by the first portal
disappeared, Kuwabara dropped himself over the parallel portals, such
that every time he fell at the bottom portal, he'd end dropping through
the top portal, in a gravity-aided endless loop through physics-defying
entryways.

To Kazuma, it appeared like he fell in a bottomless pit with a repeating
background "filmstrip" of two Crimson Sparrows and one crow demon. To
the Suzakus and Karasu, multiple Kuwabara clones appeared to fall one
after another from the top portal into the bottom portal.

What was actually happening was that the wielder of the Dimension Sword
was falling infinitely through a "feedback loop" of dimensional rifts.

"I get it now! He only has enough power to make two portals! This is his
last-ditch effort and those are his last two portals! Shoot or bomb him
with everything that you've got, and we've won this battle!" said
Karasu.

The Reikai Tantei commenced waving his sword around. Like before, it
gave him the ability to slice apart the incoming metal debris into
pieces even from a distance.

Unlike before, aided by physics-defying gravity and a wormhole through
space and time, Kazuma's slices came at the speed of a whirling rotor,
obliterating everything before him with multiple slices instead of one
slice because his infinite fall and velocity increased the strength,
speed, and rate of his slashes.

He didn't even need to move his arms. He simply stuck his Jigen Tou out,
let his infinite fall do the "slashing" for him, and end up grinding
everything before him into metallic dust. _Now_ he was thinking with
portals. And Dimensional Swords.

Even from afar, the "falling" Kuwabara could see Karasu synthesize "Mad
Bombs" lined up perpendicularly in front of him and set off the talking
land mines simultaneously.

The crow demon then dropped himself inside his newly made trench before
the buzz saw that was Kazuma tore apart that section of Roppongi like
an Allied Forces Bomber during World War II.

"You snotty little puke! I'LL TEACH YOU NOT TO MESS WITH AN S-LEVEL!"
screamed the Suzaku traveling on his demon-made rollercoaster rails and
fired off the Railgun as soon as he arrived within firing range of the
endlessly dropping Kuwabara and his ingenious bottomless pit technique.

The electromagnetic blast of light was split apart by the continuous
gravitational slices of the Jigen Tou, and all Kuwabara needed was to
change the angle or his bodily position to cut through as far as his
eyes could see.

The feared Railgun beam that even Yusuke had to avoid was cut in half by
Kazuma's Jigen tou!

The Dimension Sword followed simple rules of use. The blade itself could
cut through any kind of matter just short of splitting atoms. The harder
Kuwabara slashed, the farther the slash itself went, like a vacuum slice
reminiscent of the Shinko Ryu of Xinhai/Raijuta.

If he imbued the slice with extra spirit energy, he could slice spaces
themselves, like Mukuru could. If he used all his physical and spiritual
energy altogether, he could create wormholes or portals that defied the
laws of physics.

The slashes came closer towards Suzaku, with a range that was nothing
short of mind-boggling. It was like the human had a sword hundreds of
feet long yet he could swing it around like it weighed the same as a
beam of light.

The Suzaku in the air couldn't come any closer thanks to how far the
range of Kuwabara's slashes were, so he chose to shoot lightning bolts
from afar. However, thanks to the distance between the demon and his
moving target, the bolts never reached Kuwabara.

Furthermore, Kazuma had enough presence of mind to raise his Jigen Tou
upwards and let it absorb some of the lightning headed his way instead
of slashing it apart, thus giving his energy blade some extra juice.

'Dammit, how can I get close to that kid?' thought the aerial Suzaku.

'Not bad for an A-Level,' came the grounded Suzaku's conclusion before
he activated his "Choudenji Ho" or "Ultra Electromagnetic Cannon" mode.

The Phoenix King clone then compressed together the remaining car wrecks
he had on hand that wasn't ground into millions of pieces by the portal-
assisted Jigen Tou into a huge wad of metal many times his size and
fired them off all at once at three times the speed of sound by forming
parallel currents on both sides of his arm with his electricity.

The sonic boom alone almost blew Kuwabara away from the top and bottom
portals had he not summoned every last ounce of will and spirit energy
left inside of him to keep him inside his infinite loop instead of
outside it. The slower-than-light but many times more destructive
electromagnetic bullet shot at Kazuma like a comet.

However, thanks to the fact that at that point, Kuwabara's acceleration
was about to hit terminal velocity (his top speed while falling while
also taking drag force or air resistance into account), even the extra
large helping of the Railgun fizzled out under the might of the
accelerated Dimension Sword, with the superheated electromagnetic blast
getting split in twain as well.

'Shit,' was all the non-floating Suzaku could think; he had no
ammunition or powers left to go against the impenetrable field of
destruction caused by Kuwabara's sword.

He attempted to magnetize himself to the nearest (or farthest) metal
structure to reverse his forward momentum towards Kazuma's waiting
slashes, but this decision came a second too late. He ended up scourged
and lacerated by the outer fringes of the Dimension Sword's lengthy
cutting range.

The only one who could save Suzaku was, appropriately enough, Suzaku. Or
rather, his airborne clone who used that distraction of the second
larger Railgun to hover above the top half of the parallel portals.

"The jig is up, kid," declared the healthier of the two Suzakus before
he absorbed the energy of the Jigen Tou unto himself.

However, Kuwabara's quick thinking earlier to absorb part of the Ankoku-
Raiko-Ha paid dividends at that moment. At the last second, he slashed a
new portal with a pocket-knife-sized Dimension Sword that led to
somewhere else other than the top half of the twin portals he made, thus
allowing him to escape from the Shin Ju once more.


===


From darkness, came forth light.

"Hey. Are you awake, Mister?" a girly voice asked.

"...Eh? Wh-Who are you?" asked Kazuma, his eyes fluttering open.

The girl before Kuwabara giggled and smiled. "Who do you want me to be?"

The teen winced at the sudden glare of neon lights.

What happened? The last thing he remembered was... escaping from the
clutches of Suzaku and Karasu (less so the crow demon, more so the
Shisejyu clones).

He saw the words printed on the nearby napkins. He palmed his face. He
was inside the "Sex Bomb Bar and Grill" he espied earlier.

What the fuck was he doing there?

Thankfully, he regained control of his numbed legs that were shot to
paralysis by one of the Suzakus' Lightning Storms of Torment. He was
still on spaghetti legs, though.

"Will you buy me a drink? I'm sooo thirsty, Cutie Pie," said the girl
who roused him from his sleep, her finger twirling around his chest.

Kuwabara blinked then turned beet red. His head rested on the bosom of
this woman who called him "Cutie Pie". Her bare bosom covered only by
a red bikini. He stood straight up in attention this time, his knees
knocking like he were in the middle of the Antarctic.

As far as Kazuma's eyes could see, he discerned through the black and
neon lights hostesses and dancers in various states of undress (like
the Korean girl in ox horns and a bib that barely covered her chest),
old-ass "salarymen" or businessmen, young adults who were probably mere
days after hitting legal age, and whole slew of foreigners.

"Did you hear? There are fires all over Minato after the thunder strike
and blackout happened! We better find shelter!" said a gaijin in
accented Japanese.

"Do you think it's a terrorist attack? A bunch of Chinese communists
want to destabilize the Japanese government or something?" said the
foreigner's hostess companion.

"Are we even safe in here?" asked a girl who looked barely legal yet
chugged down alcohol like water.

"It's too late in the morning to get to the late train! We better rent a
hotel from an area not affected by the blackout!" suggested another
yuppie.

"Who cares, ladies? If it's the end of the world as we know it, then
let's enjoy ourselves one final time, shall we?" guffawed what appeared
to be a politician.

The beat of the bass of the club's music assaulted Kazuma's ears and
made his battered body vibrate like a tuning fork. For whatever reason,
he somehow teleported right into some sort of huge exclusive VIP lounge
for rich kids, entrepreneurs, and tourists to spend their disposable
income or trust funds on.

While he stumbled into the waiting arms of the barely clad hostess in a
red bikini, neck-length pink hair, a star-shaped hairclip, glasses, and
a voice that a pop idol could be proud of, his hand ended up on her
boobs, which had him back away like he'd touched a hot stove.

"S-Sorry!"

She squealed. "IYA! You're such a perv, Ojisama! (Mister!)"

'Ojisama...?' It did not help at all that the pink-haired girl's voice
reminded him of the tiny, twittering intonations of Yukina. "Uh, look,
um..."

"I'm Ginger. Nice to meet you."

"Yeah. Ginger. I'm... kind of spoken for already, so..." Well, that
wasn't _exactly_ the whole truth of the matter, but since he went from
having a crush on Botan to dedicating his love to Yukina, it wasn't too
far off from the truth (or his intentions).

Ginger pouted then smiled. "It'll be our little secret, then?" She
winked while she drew the tall teen in an embrace, her chest mashed
against his. Meanwhile, Kazuma turned to the side lest she felt
something else of his touch her. "Now about that drink..."

"I-It's a very serious relationship! I'm sorry!" said Kuwabara, his
voice several octaves higher.

"What she doesn't know won't hurt her."

"It'd hurt _me_! Besides, I'm not even of legal age to drink yet!"

"...What." Ginger blinked cutely. "Oh, Mister! You're such a big kidder!
No high school boy could enter this place! But if you feel like a high
school boy at heart, that's okay too. I'll be your high school
girlfriend!"

"It's true, it's true! Here's my ID!" He took out his wallet and flashed
his high school ID for Gai Tech. "I'm in high school!"

All signs of cuteness dropped from Ginger's face after she exclaimed at
Kuwabara, "NO WAY! You look like forty or something! Stop lying and buy
me a drink, you cheap old fart!"

"I'M NOT AN OLD FART! And I don't have a credit card, bitch!" snapped
Kuwabara, remembering that during his delinquent days, it was
commonplace for Roppongi red light districts and nightclubs to get
patrons drunk with their hostesses and force them to give up their
credit card numbers for the sake of charging them exorbitant prices for
their drinks and female company.

"...Is there a problem here, Miss?"

"Oh, thank Buddha! Are you the bouncer? Listen here, there's been a
mistake...!" Kuwabara sighed in relief.

If he'd gotten the attention of a bouncer, then this mess should get
sorted out quickly. Sure, he'd probably get thrown out the club, but at
least he wouldn't end up getting scammed by floozies or anything (not
that he had a credit card with him anyway).

Too bad as soon as he turned, he was faced with the masked Karasu.

God. Dammit.

He almost stumbled and fell on his posterior, his heart jumping into his
throat.

Ginger pushed Kuwabara away and turned her attentions toward the tall,
dark-haired pretty boy instead. "Oh, thank goodness you're here, Mister!
This ugly old man is harassing me! Ginger doesn't know what to...!"

This time around, the crow demon pushed Ginger away, giving her the
cold shoulder. "Did you really think you can get away from me, you
grotesque creature?"

"K-Karasu!" Kazuma backed off, his footing still unsteady.

"Oh, I get it. You two swing _that_ way, huh? Then you should've entered
the gay bar downtown. Jeez." Ginger harrumphed and tossed her hair while
she left in a huff.

"Where're the Suzakus?" demanded Kuwabara while Karasu smirked at him.
The corvus answered, "Right behind you."

One Suzaku looked like he'd been given forty lashes by pirates, his
blood dripping all over the place while the patrons murmured that
somebody needed to get him to the hospital.

The healthier Suzaku... the one who levitated out of harm's way and
absorbed the energy from Kazuma's Jigen Tou... strode more confidently
towards the teenager.

Kuwabara summoned a Rei-Ken instead of a Jigen Tou because even after
his short nap, he was still out of energy. While he pointed the tip of
his Spirit Sword at his gathering enemies, the Suzakus and Karasu
laughed at the sight of him holding an inferior weapon.

Because the demons were making a scene, the crowd of merrymakers inside
the exclusive club kept their distance, although a few of the patrons
laughed along with the Shin Ju, but for different reasons.

Because they had no spiritual power, they couldn't perceive the Rei-Ken,
so to them, Kuwabara was for all intents and purposes wielding an
imaginary sword.

"You couldn't even call this a Mexican standoff. You're shooting blanks
now, kid. Surrender or perish," said the undamaged of the two Suzakus.
Even the damaged one had to stifle his laughter because his lacerated
sides pained him every time he guffawed.

"Knowing what a scum bucket you are, you'd probably kill me even if I
surrendered. You're the same guy who used Keiko as leverage against
Urameshi, aren't you?"

"Well, yes. That's true. Suzaku is a scum bucket. But at least by
surrendering,  you won't harm the people here." Sure enough, Karasu
fiddled with the straps of his organic mask while a hush befell
the crowd.

Meanwhile, the Suzakus shot the crow demon a dirty look.

"What will it be, human?" asked Karasu.

"That guy with the mask... Could he be...?" trailed off one of the
patrons.

"He's a Mad Bomber, isn't he?"

"Oh no! Not the Mad Bombers!"

"No way. You don't mean that cult of suicide bombers who all wear long-
haired wigs and creepy masks?"

"Does he have bombs strapped on him? Is he going to make like a kamikaze
pilot and blow up this club up along with him?"

Karasu could only chuckle after he ripped off his mouthpiece and inhaled
as much oxygen from the stale nightclub air as he could, his hair
changing color in the process while eliciting gasps from the Sex Bomb
nightclub's customers.

"How did he do that? How did he change his hair color?"

"EEEK! I'm too young to die!"

"GET ME OUT OF HERE!"

"CALM DOWN, EVERYONE!" screamed Kuwabara, which stopped short the mirth
of the Shin Ju and the growing, volatile atmosphere of tension from the
gathered club members who were about to stampede out of the narrow
exits of what Kazuma realized was a fire hazard of an establishment.

The unharmed Suzaku got into Kuwabara's face. "There's nothing you could
do that I fear, A-Level. The gulf between us is too far for even you to
fathom, let alone _cross_."

"You talk too much," concluded Kazuma before attacking the Crimson
Sparrow.

Pandemonium then erupted.

Karasu himself jumped back into the milling humanity to keep himself
from getting teleported in case the teenager summoned enough energy for
one more Jigen Tou.

Suzaku's electromagnetic field absorbed the Spirit Sword's energy like
Byakko did during his first fight with Kazuma, converting ki to
electricity and reducing the blade to the size of a pocket knife.

"You were never a match against me. You were never in my league. I will
not be defeated by the weak link of Team Urameshi!"

Little did Suzaku know, he had said too much. Before he realized what
had happened, Kuwabara took a page out of the demon's handbook and
absorbed his electrical energy unto himself, converting it into
spiritual power.

Kazuma then drew out the Jigen Tou from Suzaku's stomach, the latter's
blood spraying everywhere. As for the other Crimson Sparrow clone, he
shot one energy blast after another at the glowing Kuwabara, who merely
used the extra energy to further charge up his Dimension Sword.

"Karasu! Blow this nightclub to kingdom come NOW!"

The corvus obliged, his body glowing with combustible energy. Instead of
attacking Karasu and leaving everyone at the mercy of the Suzakus,
Kuwabara slashed open the largest portal he could make: A ring-shaped
(or donut-shaped) one that surrounded the whole establishment from wall
to wall, thus getting rid of the bottleneck that kept people from
escaping because there were only two exits available.

"EVERYONE GET OUT NOW!" he screamed, turning his attention towards the
blond and explosive Karasu who was now about to trigger his full-body
explosion. Ginger, the girl that first woke Kuwabara up, turned back in
time to see the teenager she mistook for an old man leap up with his
sword she couldn't see at the Shin Ju.

"...OLD MAN!" the pink-haired girl shouted in tears before she got blown
back by the conflagration that Kazuma split apart like Moses would the
Red Sea, her recoil sending her straight into the closing wormhole while
the kid she only knew for about a few minutes got swallowed by the
explosion.

She'd later find out that Kuwabara was able to save 162 Sex Bomb Bar and
Grill patrons from being burned alive by the Mad Bomber's explosion,
although even at the police station, she and many other witnesses had a
hard time explaining why.

For now, while she cried over what she believed was the death of the
mysterious, heroic boy, a blue-haired apparition of a kimono-clad young
woman with a boat paddle approached her, wiped her tears, and said,
"There, there. Everything is going to be all right. You're alive.
Nothing is ever too late for you as long as you're alive. Remember
that."

As she sobbed her head off on Botan's shoulder, Ginger didn't undergo a
rapid transformation, become a devout Buddhist or even Christian, and
turn her back on her "sinful" life as a nightclub hostess on the red
light district of Roppongi, doing what amounted as borderline
prostitution (because outright prostitution was illegal).

She did however become a waitress then shift manager of the Cat's Tail
Cafe six months later, abandoning her questionable practice of doing
credit card scams. Humans weren't capable of sudden change, but they
could practically transform themselves if they went about things one
step at a time.


===


Kuwabara didn't end up as lucky as Ginger and the rest of the hundred
something tourists, businessmen, yuppies, trust-fund babies, and
students posing as adults he saved from immolation.

Initially, Kazuma had the upper hand as soon as the Sex Bomb nightclub
(appropriately enough) exploded. For another thing, the Suzakus were
injured despite being S-Class (but like the cancer-ridden S-Level
Shinobu Sensui, they were still dangerous).

As for Karasu, he was A-Class like Kuwabara, so the odds were somewhat
in the young man's favor compared to before, when he faced two healthy
S-Levels _and_ a spanner in the works of an A-Level.

However, something went wrong. While attempting to repeat his portal
trick from before, Karasu summoned a swarm of Trace Eyes to occupy the
endless gravitational loop, thus making the parallel portal technique
too dangerous to use.

The bleeding Suzakus were more cautious around Kuwabara than before,
firing volleys of Lightning Storms of Torment from a distance and not
directly at the hobbling Kazuma.

Instead, they aimed at the ground around him, hoping that the blasts
would injure him since he showed he could absorb energy like they
could.

Kuwabara, with the help of the space-and-time-tearing Dimension Sword,
batted away the occasional bolts of energy from a safe distance.

Karasu summoned the energy mines he used against Kurama in the later
stages of their death match, surrounding Kuwabara in a field of aerial
bombs.

Kazuma countered by apart cutting the mines or teleporting them closer
together so they could detonate from a distance. He also absorbed some
of their demonic energy after cutting them, thus allowing him to use his
Jigen Tou a little bit longer.

However, the teen didn't expect to step on a landmine while approaching
Karasu. A chain reaction of exploding mines from the air and from the
ground ensued after the opportunistic Suzakus fired off Railgun shots at
the hapless Kuwabara.

Bleeding from the explosions while his Jigen Tou flickered in and out of
existence, Kuwabara cut another portal that returned the mach-three
electromagnetic blasts to the Suzakus, only for them to magnetize their
feet and avoid the beams before firing off another Railgun volley.

This time, the superheated metal shells reached the Reikai Tantei, who
reacted by slashing them apart with the Jigen Tou.

However, as a consequence, his Dimension Sword disappeared, replaced by
the weaker Spirit Sword. He'd run out of energy at last. The donut
portal that saved the lives of the Sex Bomb Bar and Grill patrons
drained a whole lot of his stolen energy.

Although his Jigen Tou and the energy boost from the electrical youki of
one of the Suzakus kept him from dying from Karasu's Full Body Explosion
(while also injuring the corvus youkai in the process with a chest-to-
midsection slash), he ended up with the Rei-Ken again.

A third Railgun volley then happened, one from above, one from below.
Meanwhile, because the distance-halving Dimension Sword was now gone,
Karasu himself went for the kill, intending to grab hold of Kuwabara's
head to _literally_ blow his brains out.

"KIYODAI REIKIBO!" Kazuma hollered, realizing he was still surrounded
(arguably, _trapped_) by landmines and "air" mines while being fired at
by mach-three metal bullets of twin electromagnetic cannons. This
caused an explosion even greater than the one that rocked the Sex Bomb
earlier.

The blast pushed back all four combatants (the geyser of energy even
reaching the levitating Suzaku), but Kuwabara in particular received
quite a lot of damage because the destructive force of the Railguns
remained undeterred thanks to the lack of a Dimension Sword to nullify
them.

Even Karasu, who was immune to explosions and energy bursts, suffered
not because of the flames or the concussive forces tearing apart his
limbs, but instead because bullet-speed shrapnel lodged themselves
inside him, drawing blood.

"Stand up, you sons of bitches. I'm not through with you yet," the
trembling Kazuma said, his bloody back literally against the wall, his
flickering Rei-Ken in tow.

"No. Stay down," Karasu answered back, his individual hair strands
glowing like the thin, superheated filaments of light bulbs.

"REI-SHURIKEN!" Kuwabara was defiant to the end, but he had no powers
or skills left to justify his bravado, evidenced by the ultra
electromagnetic fields of the Suzakus absorbing the reiki shards before
they could reach them.

Now that the mines were gone, the three resumed their earlier attack
pattern, with one Suzaku firing off his Railgun while floating high in
the sky, the second Suzaku using his electromagnetism to create a whip
sword made of black metal sand with the cutting power of a chainsaw, and
Karasu about to do a second Full Body Explosion at the defenseless
Kuwabara.

They ended up destroying the space Kazuma occupied, turning it into a
long, jagged, and seemingly bottomless hole. However, Karasu himself had
enough presence of mind to halt triggering his "suicide bomb" in mid-
sprint after he realized something was amiss.

After being wrapped in a vine (not the Rose Whip, or else he would've
ended up in pieces) and hurled towards the foot of his rescuer, Kuwabara
chuckled and said, "What took you so long, man? Don't worry, I softened
them up for you."

"Kurama," the golden-haired Karasu growled before putting his mask back
on in a bid to conserve energy.

Indeed, Shuichi had returned just in the nick of time, hurling Kazuma
towards him before he was mutilated, disintegrated, and/or blasted into
smithereens.

"'Soften' them up? Surely, you jest, Kuwabara-kun. You practically
defeated them already."

"You flatter me, man. They're tough bastards to kill, though."

"Don't worry, what awaits them is something far worse than death."

"Er, Kurama...?" A cold bead of sweat traveled from Kuwabara's forehead
to his lantern jaw before he licked his dry lips. He didn't know whether
he should be happy or scared that his comrade was in "pissed-off and
murderous" mode.

The redhead had only this to say to his fellow ginger. "Brace yourself.
Hold your breath." While the confused Kuwabara tried to decipher those
cryptic words while walking on jelly-like feet, Kurama said to their
enemies, "Fuuka Enbujin."

"...Fuuka Enbujin?" Karasu couldn't help but laugh before he formed new
aerial mines using the pent-up youki and combustible material in his
system, the open air giving him more power than ever before. "That's one
of your weaker attacks, fox. Have you run out of tricks?"

The Wind Petal Waltz Configuration involved a tornado of rose petals
that might appear harmless as a spray of water at first, but because
everything Kurama mutated turned deadly, the shower of flower petals
was no exception.

Like Suzaku's black iron sand, every petal was sharp enough to cut
through a human's flesh and bone.

Most demons could not be amputated by the attack, but they were more
than vulnerable against lacerations. However, it was completely
ineffective against Karasu in the Dark Martial Arts Tournament, and he
was merely Class-B back then.

Surrounding himself with a sphere of black metal sand that orbited
around him and tore everything in its path, the grounded Suzaku tore
apart all the razor-sharp petals before they could reach him. His iron
sand proved even sharper than the mutant flora, it'd seem.

Kurama targeted their most dangerous opponent in his mind, which was the
flying Suzaku who could safely snipe at the Reikai Tantei with Railguns
and Lightning Storms of Torment whenever he wanted.

Summoning his Rose Whip, he redirected his Fuuka Enbujin at the
levitating Crimson Sparrow with vacuum rings that increased their
damage.

The airborne Suzaku answered the barrage with his own continuous blasts
of the Lightning Storm of Torment. Actually, most of the whirlwind of
petals were being aimed at him, although they also proved ineffective
against his microwave radiation that made the plants wilt in his
presence.

Karasu stopped himself cold from laughing any further after the petals
exploded all around him care of his energy mines, remembering how the
devious Kurama managed to get a vampire plant to suck the blood out of
him and kill him. 'There must be some sort of trick to this...'

"Let's attack them both! Kuwabara has nothing but his worthless Rei-Ken
left and all Kurama has in his bag of tricks are harmless petals and
that stupid Rose Whip of his! They're helpless!" called out the ground-
based Suzaku.

Kuwabara gulped. None of Kurama's petals were actually harming the three
(actually, two) Shin Juppon Gatana members in the least, but his Rei-Kan
(premonition) _compelled_ him to stay the hell away from the shower of
flowers.

Even if he were a powerful demon who could take that scourging barrier
of lacerating plant life, he wouldn't dare enter that petal storm.

Finally, the nearest Suzaku... the one with his two feet on the
ground... attacked the evasive Kurama first with his sphere of swarming
destruction, the black iron sand shearing through not only the Fuuka
Enbujin, but everything else, including the demon fox residing inside a
human avatar.

As for the other Suzaku, he went into the eye of the flower storm and,
once he got in range (about 50 meters, but he got traveled closer to
ensure a more accurate shot), fired off a Railgun that had Kurama flying
and burning.

Kuwabara had enough. Before the nearest Suzaku ended up beheading the
legendary youko and ending his more than a millennia of existence right
then and there, he blocked the whip blade with his Rei-Ken.

At the corner of his eye, Kazuma noticed Kurama scattering away the
Fuuka Enbujin as the former entered the fray. 'That's mighty thoughtful
of him,' the teenager mused.

The raven-haired Karasu surrounded himself with aerial mines that made
escape difficult for either Kurama and Kuwabara. He then began hurling
incendiary bombs... napalm, to be exact... to keep the half-youko from
growing anymore plants. All the while, he felt like there was something
wrong going on that he couldn't put his finger on.

The weaker, exhausted Kuwabara collapsed because his Spirit Sword
couldn't penetrate the dense cloud of orbiting metal particles of
Suzaku's black iron whip sword.

Kazuma furrowed his eyebrows. 'He didn't bother absorbing my Rei-Ken
this time, huh? Is he mocking me because I'm weaker or...?"

Kurama evaded the Railguns and black iron sand whiplashes the best he
could, doing somersaults and cartwheels to showcase his elusiveness, but
thanks to the abuse he suffered from the twin S-Level Suzakus, he ended
up a step slower than before.

However, his pokerfaced look never left his face, his green eyes darting
back and forth his enemies, seemingly probing at them. His mind was
probably going a mile a minute in trying to figure out a way to defeat
them.

"Let's attack them both! Kuwabara has nothing but his worthless Rei-Ken
left and all Kurama has in his bag of tricks are harmless petals and
that stupid Rose Whip of his! They're helpless!" the Suzaku with the
black iron sand sword practically repeated.

"I heard you the first time!" said Karasu, who managed to touch
Kuwabara's head and almost made it explode, only for him to be attacked
with impunity care of the Rose Whip and another Fuuka Enbujin, the
assault from the blind spot allowing Kurama to damage the corvus's
mask.

'Maybe the Fuuka Enbujin is nothing more than a bluff. Kurama really is
out of tricks, and his last trick was to make us think that he has
more tricks,' Karasu decided before he pulled out all the stops and
summoned dozen upon dozens of Trace Eyes.

The place where the Sex Bomb Bar and Grill had stood turned into a
literal hellhole, the napalm burning bright and red enough to make that
whole portion of Roppongi look like Dante's Inferno, or something close
to it.

Because he dealt with organic "smart" bombs instead of energy bombs,
Kuwabara had a tougher time slashing and batting away the "batty" Trace
Eyes, which were bombs with eyes and bat wings.

Kurama helped out in taking out the sentient explosives, only for him
to either be cut by one Suzaku and his magnetic whip sword or shot at
with (at this point) unstoppable Railguns from the other Suzaku.

"You're right, Suzaku! They got nothing left!" the aerial Suzaku agreed
with his land-based counterpart while he shrugged off another blast of
the Fuuka Enbujin with his microwave radiation and shot Kurama with his
Railgun at eight shots per minute, which further scarred the landscape.

In what looked to Kuwbara as an act of desperation, the redheaded half-
fox lassoed Suzaku and pulled him down with all his strength. Kuwabara
warned, "Let go, Kurama! Or else he'll...!"

To the ex-delinquent's surprise, Minamino was able to bring the demon
down to the ground without being electrocuted.

After Kazuma aw that happen, something clicked in his mind that made him
do exactly as Kurama told him to do earlier: Brace himself and hold his
breath.

The fight continued, and despite Shuichi successfully bringing one of
the Suzakus back on earth, that only left him vulnerable to even closer
mach-three blasts from the Ultra Electromagnetic Cannon.

The Shin Ju were getting nearer to defeating Kurama and Kuwabara, who
had no more particularly strong attacks left in their arsenal.

In the midst of the swarm of Trace Eyes and aerial bombs, the Mad Bomber
attempted to grab Kazuma's head with his explosive touch, feeling deja
vu as he did so.

The teenager clipped him with the Rei-Ken in time, but the slash that
couldn't have done much damage ended up making the crow demon back away
like a scalded dog, his torso burning in agony.

There was a chest-to-midsection slash on it. 'Where did this injury come
from? Was it from the Rei-Ken? It barely touched me!'

The long-range, trigger-happy Suzaku hurled lightspeed Ankoku-Raiko-Ha
at the retreating Reikai Tantei while the melee one telekinetically
threw debris at them while attacking with his sword whip made of black
iron sand.

Karasu guessed that the faster projectile could wear down the still-spry
spirit detectives, but they didn't have time to play around. "Suzakus!
They're on the retreat! If you use the Railgun on them at the same time,
they won't be able to retaliate."

Neither of the two doppelgangers listened to their fellow Shin Ju.

"Listen here, you moronic clones...!"

"I'm surprised you know what the Railgun is, Karasu," said Suzaku. "Yes,
I probably am capable of mimicking that electromagnetic projectile
launcher. But let me get a handle on my newfound S-Level powers first
before trying out such a dangerous technique."

"W-What...?" stuttered the flabbergasted crow demon. Weren't they using
the Railgun at eight shots per minute only a couple of minutes ago?

"SPIRIT JAVELIN!" Kuwabara shouted after absorbing part of the Lightning
Storms of Torment and utilizing the stolen youki to form a longer Rei-
Ken. The same Ankoku-Raiko-Ha that the Suzaku twins decided not to use
anymore because of the teenager's energy absorption powers.

"...How?" Suzaku demanded after the Rei-Ken Nobiro penetrated through
his guts. Wait, how come his injury was worse than the stab? Did he
receive this wound earlier? When and how did he get this wound?

"SHOOT THEM! Shoot them with the Railgun _now_, like the way you did
against Urameshi!" reminded Karasu. He was watching from a distance
along with the rest of the New Ten Swords what transpired after Yusuke
and Suzaku dueled against each other.

The Suzaku clone looked at the crow demon as though the latter told him
he had turned into a little girl. "When did I fight Urameshi again? I
only fought him _once_, and he ended up killing me."

Before Karasu could answer, the other Suzaku screamed because his black
iron sand tore apart the flesh, muscle, tendons, and bones of his arm
like a meat grinder. He doubled over and gnashed his teeth.

The Suzaku who still had both his arms intact pointed out, "_That's_ why
I'm hesitant to use the Railgun. One wrong move, one wrong calculation,
and _that_ could happen. You have to be able to do the whole technique
right."

"BUT YOU DO KNOW HOW TO DO IT! You've been doing it all this time, when
we..." Karasu took one sweat-filled look at Kurama and Kuwabara before
asking, "What did you do to us? Why do I have wounds I don't remember
getting?"

Kurama was kind enough to explain, "The Fuuka Enbujin was only a
distraction. I know they're ineffective against higher class demons.
What I really used against you three was the pollen of the Mugen Plant."

"Mugen Plant? What's that supposed to...?" Karasu trailed off while the
manic Suzaku with a missing arm screamed, "Who did this to me? Is it you,
Karasu? Did you blow up my hand? Was this revenge for my making fun of
you earlier, you bastard?"

More of the Fuuka Enbujin (and Mugen Flower pollens) were blown over at
the trio of Shin Ju, and Kurama only stopped making the squall after
Karasu threw a Deleterious Bomb on the ground and blasted the squall
back at him and Kuwabara.

The corvus then realized it was only because of his mask that the
_memory-erasing_ effects of the pollen weren't as bad on him as the
other, unmasked Shin Juppon Gatana. That was why they all acted like
they suffered from Alzheimer's disease. The Machiavellian Kurama had
done it again!

The crow youkai caught the attention of one of the Suzaku clones,
synthesized an extra facemask, and said, "Wear this if you don't want
any more of your memories erased! That pollen is everywhere!"

"Who are you?" Apparently, Karasu was talking to the Suzaku who lost an
arm because he forgot how to control his own technique. "W-Who am I?
Can you tell me...?"

A Leaf Blade exited from the Crimson Sparrow duplicate's mouth and
almost stabbed Karasu in the face. An S-Class. Killed by an A-Class. It
both frightened and excited Karasu how dangerous Kurama remained even
when he had barely any energy left in his body.

"Give me that, A-Level!" the last remaining Suzaku said after he grabbed
hold of the new Karasu mouthpiece. "I remember getting the Demon Sword
but little else. Fill me in later _after_ I turn that redheaded
effeminate bastard inside out!"

"Holy shit, Kurama. That was fucked up," said Kuwabara, his legs at long
last recovering enough to follow whatever his mind ordered them to do.

Kurama shushed Kuwabara. "Listen. Do you hear that?"

A rumbling came forth from the distance, which grew in volume every
passing minute.

"...Yeah." It was a familiar sound. It had been months since they last
heard that sound. It roared louder than the flames of the napalm that
Karasu spread everywhere in that devastated part of Roppongi.

They both stared up the sky before looking at each other and grinning in
recognition.

"What now? What is that? Is it another trick from the demon fox that
I've forgotten?" asked the Crimson Sparrow.

"No. It can't be. _He's_ here...?" said the corvus.

"Oh, I see what this technique is. Seiryu was developing something
similar. Regardless, I'm S-Class! I won't let this measly power
overwhelm me! RAILGUN!"

Suzaku didn't quite remember how he used to do the Railgun, but his
muscle memory certainly did. He utilized a lot of metal this time around
in order to compete against the humongous maelstrom of dense plasma
headed his way.

His shot was perfect, as though he never forgot how to turn himself into
an ultra electromagnetic cannon that launched projectiles at three times
the speed of sound, but there were two of the fiery beasts of
destruction above them instead of simply one.

A single Railgun shot wasn't enough to take them both out. Suzaku
learned this the hard way.


===


Back in the devastated Sakurada Dori in Shibakoen...

"Your knowledge and hatred for humanity is bordering on obsession," was
the conclusion that Aoshi Shinomori's reincarnation, Daiji Matsudaira,
came up with in regards to the many scientific principles that Suzaku
applied when utilizing the full potential of his electrical powers.

"Again, I fail to see your point. I am able to do things that confirm
the theories and studies you humans do with Mother Nature. Be thankful
that a godly creature such as myself exists to prove you right in
regards to what little about your limited reality you understand!"

"Are you two ladies going to talk yourselves to death or are we going to
fight?" said Sanosuke while bumping his fists together and charging at
the nearest Suzaku he could find.

He couldn't find any because it was dark and they were hidden, but he
did get enough practice to punch cars and turn them into wrecks like
the street fighter that he was.

Daiji inwardly groaned before he followed Sano's lead, feeling like a
copper chaperoning for an ex-con who was on parole. "You're going to
waste your energy by attacking things randomly."

"As opposed to you, who wants to 'talk' them to submission?" retorted
Sanosuke while he waited for the invisible Ankoku-Raiko-Ha to hit him so
that he'd have an idea where those cowards were hiding.

"I'm serious. I barely know anything about ghosts, but it's not in your
best interests to run out of spirit energy if you don't have a flesh-
and-blood body to speak of."

"You're right about one thing. You barely know anything about ghosts.
So kindly shut the hell up, Aoshi Lite," waved off Sanosuke. "Your
scientific mumbo jumbo has no place in a world of ghosts and goblins.
What's those superviolet blasts going to do to me anyway? _Kill_ me?"

"You could experience something that's worse than death," warned
Matsudaira.

"And what's that, Officer?"

"Ceasing to exist altogether."

The Aoshi incarnate froze after he got blindsided by more Ultraviolet
and Microwave Lightning Storms of Torment. Realizing what had happened,
Sanosuke shielded the officer with his own body, the solidified mass of
spirit energy absorbing the multiple shots with his astral projection.

"Just as a human is a mere lump of flesh until it gains sentience, so
too is a ghost a mere lump of living plasma until it gets a personality
and memories."

"...What?" asked Sano, wondering whether or not this was Daiji's way of
saying "Thank you for saving me from being electrocuted to death," or
not. "Uh, you're welcome?"

"If the body is gone, there's still the soul, but what happens when even
the soul disappears? Think about that for a minute before charging in so
recklessly against an enemy you can't see," rebuked Matsudaira.

Deploying a technique he learned from a spiritually gifted esper
(Kuwabara) in one of their past missions, Daiji transferred all his
spiritual energy to his eyes, enabling him to see not only ultraviolet
light, but also the electromagnetic field that allowed one or both of
the Suzakus to have metal objects orbiting around them.

However, he couldn't see the donut-shaped electromagnetic aura produced
by one or both of the Crimson Sparrows responsible for the orbiting
cars because he'd need to be high up the air to see its center.

Thanks to Kuwabara's all-seeing extrasensory perception technique or
Rei-Kan, even from this angle, he could observe the originator of the
field. He calculated his position by concluding that some other Suzaku
was sniping at them from another vantage point.

Matsudaira prepared his short swords, jumped at the innermost circle of
the orbiting vehicle and electronics, and did an Onmyou Hasshi.

"I found you," Daiji said.

The Dusk to Dawn Strike involved throwing both kodachi together in
almost the same manner a billiards player would hit a cue ball. This
allowed Daiji to hide one blade behind the other. Even though both were
made of nonmagnetic ceramic, he didn't expect either to hit.

As expected, both blades were batted away, but that didn't matter.
Kenshin Himura, when he first faced the Onmyou Hasshi, also batted both
blades away. A third strike in the form of kenpo brought the rurouni
down. The same thing happened to the hidden but now exposed Suzaku
because Daiji utilized his Water Flow Movement and martial arts to
blindside the Shin Ju.

"HEY! Aoshi Lite! Where'd you go?" called out Sano from a distance while
Matsudaira and the Shisejyu leader engaged in mortal combat.

A wave of electromagnetic radiation superheated Daiji's blood and made
his blades white-hot, but not before the detective used those white-hot
blades to carve through Suzaku's flesh with the Kaiten Kenbu Rokuren.

Spray of blood aside, Suzaku disintegrated the blades and absorbed their
reiki unto himself, turning it into youki and blasting Matsudaira with a
Ankoku-Raijin-Ken that would've evaporated all the water in his body in
one instant, killing him in a heartbeat.

However, the detective avoided the gruesome fate by synthesizing a new
kind of kodachi that could take even the supercharged radiation of the
Storm of Torment Fist: Swords made of platinum based on Xinhai's
nodachi.

The dual-wielded cross-sword block not only absorbed all the heat
without disintegrating. It also cut deep into the saint beast's closed
fist.

Matsudaira followed through with an outward Gokou Juji and was about to
finish Suzaku off with a second Kaiten Kenbu when Itsuki appeared out of
nowhere, grabbed the Aoshi look-alike, then teleported him into oncoming
traffic from magnetically manipulated buses. Before Daiji could
retaliate, the underhanded Gatekeeper had already teleported away.

Like a coiled spring, Matsudaira leaped into action and turned the car
that would've run him over into little bits and pieces of metal and
plastic. However, because he was surprised by the turn of events, one
of the car doors clipped his leg, causing a closed fracture on his right
fibula.

That, coupled with his boiling "microwaved" blood (which partially
damaged his blood vessels and internal organs while also increasing his
blood pressure to dangerous levels), had him end up on one knee, as
though he were proposing to someone.

Thankfully, his blood didn't heat up quickly enough to cause bubbles to
form in his blood vessels.

"There you are! FUTAE NO KIWAMI!"

That one double-impact punch from Sanosuke not only halted the nearest
truck that was about to ram itself upside Daiji's head, it also stopped
the orbiting parade and caused a chain reaction of vehicular wrecks that
wouldn't look out of place in a demolition derby.

Speaking of which, the demolition of the cars was thorough enough to
cause several fuel tanks to explode and illuminate the rest of the
street, including the other Suzaku that had been shooting (sniping)
invisible Ankoku-Raiko-Ha from atop a four-story building.

Summoning a ceramic zanbatou, "Zanza" threw the twelve-foot blade at
the demon like a spear, which the Shisejyu leader avoided by levitating.

Sano then summoned another horse-chopping blade and did his newest
technique, the "ZANKUU ZANBATOU ATE!" at the escaping Suzaku with enough
force and torque to contort the youkai's body and make him crash into
the pavement below.

Sagara turned towards the kneeling Daiji and guffawed. "That's how you
do it," he said before disembodied hands (a technique of Itsuki's)
appeared from out of nowhere ad grabbed hold of his neck in an attempt
to twist it far enough to break it.

Moving fast, Matsudaira attacked with a one-kodachi Kaiten Kenbu so
accurately, he ended up chopping the floating hands into cold
cuts without harming a hair on Sano's bushy head.

"If by 'it', you mean 'almost die again', then yes, that's exactly what
you did," Daiji deadpanned in true Shinomori fashion.


===


To Be Continued...

Next: Brains versus Brawn.

Yes, the portal scene with Kuwabara falling infinitely through parallel
portals was naturally inspired by the game "Portal". All rights
reserved.

Disclaimer: Yuyu Hakusho is the rightful property of Yoshihiro Togashi,
Shueisha, Fuji TV, and Studio Pierrot. Rurouni Kenshin is the rightful
property of Nobuhiro Watsuki, Shueisha, Shonen Jump, Viz, Sony Studios,
Fuji TV, Studio Gallop, Studio Deen, and ADV. 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.

So long! Farewell!
Abdiel
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