PART TWO
A day or two after the ‘twitchy’ incident, Sanzo finally resolved a purely internal war he’d been waging with himself for a long while. It was time, he decided, to put an end to this ridiculous farce of a mission.
“Get packed,” he told the others at dawn, ignoring their sleep muzzed looks of blank incomprehension. Sanzo’s sense of urgency had faded considerably after the first three years on the road. Since that time, he’d never once insisted on unholy departure times, finding that giving the monkey time to eat breakfast (and himself a chance to properly recover from whatever he’d been doing the night before with lots and lots of strong coffee) translated into a day spent in the Jeep with no headache/hangover/suspicious feelings of soreness in fascinating places as well as less whining from Goku.
“But Sanzo....” Hakkai began, ready to point all of this out, until the monk silenced him with a glare.
“We’re finishing this stupid Journey so we can all go home,” Sanzo announced flatly. “Anyone not out front and ready to go in ten minutes is getting left behind.” Ultimatum delivered, he turned on his heel and stalked out of the room. Silence reigned in his wake.
Goku abruptly squalled and dashed for the kitchen, realizing ‘ten minutes’ meant ‘no breakfast’ unless he packed something to take along. Hakkai and Gojyo exchanged a Look.
“Think he’s missing someone?” the halfbreed sniggered.
Hakkai very politely refrained from doing the same. “Maa, Gojyo.” He began gathering up strewn clothing left from the night before. “If you were stuck going West knowing I was waiting in a village behind you, what would you do?”
“I’d say fuck the mission, babe.” Gojyo left off searching for his other boot to toss a wink at the green eyed youkai. “Togenkyou could go to hell in a handbasket for all I care, as long as I have you.”
Hakkai tried and failed to not look pleased. Gojyo was a master of empty, meaningless flattery, but nothing the redhead did when it came to one Cho Hakkai, mass murderer, polar opposite and best beloved, could ever be construed as meaningless.
“Then Togenkyou is very lucky that Sanzo does not think the way you do,” was all the healer said in response, however.
Gojyo snorted. Seconds later he made an entirely different noise when long, slender fingers that a girl named Kanan had once called beautiful reached from behind to undo his belt.
“Sanzo did say ten minutes,” Hakkai murmured into the nape of Gojyo’s neck, his blandly innocent tone in complete contrast with what his hands were doing to the halfbreed in front. Thus occupied he missed the other’s sudden huge, stupid grin. Apparently pretty words were appreciated by the quiet scholar types as well as praise mongering women.
They made it outside in eleven minutes, but since Jiipu wouldn’t go anywhere without his master, Sanzo couldn’t make good on his threat to leave them behind. The monk settled for glaring at both of them, receiving a wide, wide smirk from Gojyo and a sunny smile from Hakkai.
Deciding afterglow hurt his eyes, Sanzo kept his sour gaze on the passing landscape as they drove and chainsmoked until the Kougaiji-tachi showed up, right on schedule, to challenge them an hour past midday.
*****
“Genjyo Sanzo!” Kougaiji shouted in his best Noble Challenger voice, trying valiantly to ignore the fact that Lirin was sitting on the monk’s shoulders. “We’ve come for the sutra. Surrender it and you’ll keep your life.”
Ah, the familiarity of everyday ritual.
“He says ‘I refuse!’” Goku yelled back, eager to get on with the fighting and interrupting the blond who had indeed been about to say just that, with a few expletives tacked on for good measure.
Sanzo glared and dislodged Lirin, booting her back to her proper side of the battle with a good hard kick. “Don’t put words in my mouth, monkey.”
Goku spared him a sidelong look, Nyoi-bo held at ready. “But that’s what you always say.”
“Not today.” Sanzo shifted his acid glance back to Kougaiji. “You. I’m tired of you. Only an idiot would get brainwashed or possessed as many times as you do and require rescuing by your enemies. It’s pathetic.” He raised the Smith&Wesson and shot the youkai prince in the throat.
Everyone gaped, except for Kougaiji, who managed to look both shocked and affronted before falling down in a pool of his own blood.
“Che.” Sanzo then swung around and shot Gojyo.
“Now listen up,” the monk snapped at a horrified Dokugakuji and Yaone. “In return for my healer saving these two idiots before they bleed to death, both of you are going to tell me what I want to know about the motherfucker issuing your orders. Then, you are going to give me that long distance dragon I know you assholes flew in here on, and I’m going to Houtou Castle to settle things.”
In some part of Hakkai’s mind that wasn’t in a whitehot rage over Gojyo being shot and himself being traded around in a negotiation like a side of beef, he had to admit there was a certain merit in the simplistic direct approach.
“Um,” said Goku intelligently, trying and failing to get over what looked like an authentic case of shock trauma, “um, Sanzo, are you going by yourself? You shot Gojyo.”
“And Hakkai will certainly need to stay behind and heal the wounded,” Hakkai added in his best Really Polite Voice Concealing Ugly, Murderous Fury.
Sanzo shrugged. “That all depends on whether they agree to give me what I want.”
Yaone appeared sick and shaken, but since Doku seemed way too busy following the monkey into shock and Lirin was still staring speechlessly at her brother, the alchemist supplied the answer for all three of them. “..of…of course, Genjyo Sanzo.”
Sanzo had the audacity to look slightly pleased with himself. Hakkai made a mental note to take it out of his hide later. Lovestruck (and therefore, no longer completely rational) or not, there some things that couldn’t be excused and the priest’s current behavior was one of them.
He fervently hoped Sanzo would come back alive from Gyumaoh’s castle, if only so Hakkai could wring his selfish neck.
*****
Here Within Follows The Account of the Third Fall of Houtou Castle
or,
What Really Happens at the End of the Journey West
As all main characters are required to do when facing the last Fortress of Doom, Sanzo formed a party of the most useful of his currently available allies, excepting Hakkai, Kougaiji, and Gojyo for obvious reasons. So he stood on a ridge before the gloomy, really cliché looking castle with Goku flanking him on one side and Dokugakuji on the other. Goku was staring at the castle with unconcealed anticipation. The former Sha Jien was staring at Sanzo with unconcealed dislike.
“Get over it,” Sanzo told him bluntly. “I’m doing your prince a favor. I haven’t seen him doing anything to get rid of the crackbitch you said was in charge, that Gyokumen Kyushu.”
And Jien could hardly argue with that.
They entered the castle. There was screaming. There was blood. There was death.
Sanzo leaned against a red spattered stone wall and smoked a cigarette unconcernedly. Long withheld frustration had turned one of his party members into an unstoppable force of violence and destruction, and the other had always been one even with his limiter intact. “This is getting repetitive,” he remarked aloud to no one.
Then he noticed the door. He pushed himself off the wall and went to investigate.
Soft white light greeted him inside. Streamers of ofuda hung from every wall. A massive white stone pillar stretching from ceiling to floor, in which a female youkai of glaringly familiar features was imprisoned.
“Rasetsunyo,” Sanzo said quietly, offering the name to the silence. It seemed to echo back to him in a prince’s misery strained voice.
Why not? he thought to himself, and flicked away his cigarette.
Goku and Jien came looking for him sometime later, having tired of chasing down cowardly guards and only just now noticing that Sanzo was not trailing along in their bloody wake. Jien might have felt worse about killing former comrades if they did not attack him first, screaming “Die, traitor!” and otherwise spewing garbage that Gyokumen had to have put in their heads. Only a moron would take anything that bitch said at face value. Anyone who believed her deserved the punishment for general stupidity.
Shouts and sounds of combat indicated the location of their target. They charged around a corner, expecting to find Sanzo cornered and out of bullets, or worse, out of cigarettes. What met their astonished eyes instead was the sight of a tall, sharply beautiful woman with an absolutely glorious cascade of crimson hair …..roasting alive what had to be three or four entire squads of soldiers. Sanzo stood off to one side, slightly behind her and looking displeased as the smell of burnt flesh wafted in his direction.
“She keeps dogs to guard her palace, rather than warriors,” the Empress Rasetsunyo observed calmly after the bodies had been reduced to ash, shaking back the voluminous sleeves of her shockingly white kimono.
Goku and Jien gaped for the second time that day.
Sanzo lit another cigarette. “Usurpers are often gifted with a lack of judgement,” he agreed, sounding bored. He took a long drag and exhaled slowly. After a moment he added, “Unforgiveable.”
“Truly.” Rastetsunyo’s smile, while as flawless and beautiful as she, was vengeful and just a bit scary.
“Lady,” Jien breathed, hope dawning like a sunrise across his blood streaked face. Her terrible, lovely gaze fell on him as he moved to kneel before her. “Your servant. I am a bonded swordsman to your son, Empress.”
“Dokugakuji.” And her rich jewel voice turned the name he had taken into something honorable, something worth aspiring to, instead of the mask it was for the sinner Sha Jien. “I’ve been told of your loyalty to my Kougaiji. For staying by his side in this snake infested pit, I thank you, as a mother and as Empress.”
Two and two finally collided together in Goku’s head. “You’re Kougaiji’s mom?!” he yelped. Sanzo and Jien both winced.
Golden eyes as wide as saucers stared at her earnestly. “But you’re so pretty. Moms aren’t supposed to be so pretty, are they?” Utterly oblivious to his own lack of tact. In his own mind it made sense, though, because really, none of the moms he’d encountered (and the subject was fairly abstract for Goku anyway, never having had a mother) had been pretty, except maybe for that Yanming chick. Moms were older, respectable ladies who cooked good food and wore aprons and worked at inns or shops next to their respectable husbands.
Sanzo and Jien both reached grimly for their weapons. Insulting powerful royalty (especially a member of that they hoped to enlist as an ally) was one of those Things Deserving Punishment That Dumb Monkey Ignorance Could Not Excuse.
Except Rasetsunyo beat them to the punch, and smiled in pure amusement, the expression as dazzling as her smile of bloodlust was frightening. Jien took another turn at gaping while Sanzo just looked briefly annoyed at the loss of opportunity to pound some sense of etiquette into his ward’s thick skull.
One deceptively delicate, pale hand lifted to sift affectionately through scruffy chocolate brown hair.
“Child,” she told the itan monkey god cum destroyer of the world, “never regret the honesty of your words. Truth is a powerful, powerful gift, and you wield it well.”
Goku flushed bright red.
Jien finally stopped gaping (damn his jaw hurt). This was a possibility he’d never even thought of, one that might sway the outcome of the conflict firmly, irreversibly in their favor. He directed a look approaching awe at Sanzo. “Did you ….did you do this?” Meaning, of course, breaking the Lady’s seal.
“Do you see anyone else here?” the monk retorted. He did look a tad bit smug, however.
Rasetsunyo favored the ill tempered blond with another of her dazzle smiles. “Sanzo Houshi-sama has been kind enough to explain some of the details of what’s happened since I’ve been asleep. When the traitor bitch is dead, we will owe him a great deal.”
The monk flicked ash from the end of his cigarette. “All you owe me is the Seiten Sutra and a halt in the experiments to revive your husband.”
“As good as yours.” Deep amethyst eyes, the same shade as Kougaiji’s, sparked briefly with anger. Her voice turned brittle, the way Hakkai’s did sometimes when he was about to go postal. “My .....dear husband will remain asleep until Heaven sees fit to release him. After all, it was the gods who sealed him, and who am I to dispute divine decree?”
Sanzo raised a brow.
The Empress of Houtou Castle let a wisp of flame dance between her fingertips. “He tried to kill my son, you know,” she said conversationally, ignoring Jien’s intake of breath. “Swore a youkai who refused to eat human flesh was no son of his blood, and he would do better with another womb to bring forth his heir. And the traitor whore who sits up there on my throne ran to oblige as soon as I was out of the way.” She extended an arm languidly, and to all of their discomfort, the thick stone wall actually burst into flame.
“Shall we go say hello?”
*****
OUTTAKES
[Scene: SANZO shoots GOJYO]
GOJYO: It’s just a flesh wound! (falls over)
[Scene: SANZO shoots KOUGAIJI]
KOUGAIJI: (tries to duck out of the way and ends up getting the bullet between his eyes)
SANZO: Dammit. Hakkai, can you fix that?
HAKKAI: Um, no?
SANZO: (sigh) Another brilliant plan wasted on idiots.
[Take Two: SANZO shoots KOUGAIJI]
KOUGAIJI: (dodges) What the hell was that for?!
SANZO: (still shooting) Quit flinching away and take it like a man!
[Scene: SANZO, JIEN and GOKU use one of KOUGAIJI’S flying dragons to reach Houtou Castle]
GOKU: ..whaddya mean there's no in-flight movie?!
[Take Two: SANZO, JIEN and GOKU use one of KOUGAIJI’S flying dragons to reach Houtou Castle]
DRAGON:(gets a few wingbeats up into the air)
[A cell phone rings]
SANZO:(fishes one out of his robes and answers) ..hello?
JIEN: o___o No, don’t~!
DRAGON:(CRASH)
SANZO, JIEN & GOKU: x____x
JIEN: (weakly) No cell phones during takeoff.
SANZO: (bleeding) ....
[Scene: SANZO, JIEN, and GOKU stand before the gates of Houtou Castle]
GUARD: Who goes there?
JIEN: =.= Me. Open the fucking door.
GUARD: Ah, Dokugakuji! (pauses, suddenly suspicious) Those guys with you aren’t English knights, are they?
JIEN: ...uh, no.
GUARD: Oh, good. We had some wackos up here earlier ranting about coconuts and sparrows and a Holy Grail. We sicced the guard dogs on them.
SANZO: (twitch) (aside, to JIEN) Guard dogs? I refuse to get chased around by stinking animals once we’re inside...
JIEN: He means the Ethnically Improbable Trio of French Youkai: Pierre, Jacques, and Jean-Paul. We let them handle intruders.
PIERRE: (appears at edge of battlements) Your mother was a greyhound, and your father smelled of alderberries!
SANZO: ...all of you youkai are goddamn freaks, you know that?
[Scene: the chamber where RASETSUNYO is sealed. SANZO walks in]
SANZO: (frees her)
RASETSUNYO: A little short for a Stormtrooper, aren't you?
SANZO: u_u
[Scene: the chamber where RASETSUNYO is sealed. SANZO walks in]
SANZO: (stares up at the pillar and reaches out slowly to touch it, perhaps to see if she’s real)
[There’s a flash of light and RASETSUNYO crumbles suddenly into pieces like the youkai who turned to stone statues in that one episode]
SANZO: o_o ....shit. (looks around to make sure there were no witnesses. And then runs like hell.)
[Take Two: the chamber where RASETSUNYO is sealed. SANZO walks in]
SANZO: (stares up at the pillar and slowly reaches out...to ignite a match by scraping it across her face. He then lights his cigarette and strolls back out)
