PART THREE
(Congratulations! RASETSUNYO has joined your party. GOKU Level Up! JIEN Level Up! SANZO HP decreased due to smoking. Additions to Party Skills: Pyrokinesis, Summon Hell Fiend. Gained: EXP, AP. No items.)
And so on and so forth.
It soon became much easier to clear the castle (dungeon) levels. Youkai guards willing to tackle what looked like two humans and a traitor were far more leery of, and in some cases willing to surrender peaceably or at the very least get confused and distracted for a few seconds at the appearance of a vengeful she-demon silhouetted in flames, demanding as their true Empress to let. them. pass.
Those who didn’t move died fairly horrible deaths and became sparkling examples to their comrades. As the Sanzo party (har) moved onwards, they encountered less and less truly serious resistance.
It got even easier to move on when they ran into a group of Kougaiji’s men who recognized both Jien and Rasetsunyo. After the initial bouts of fainting and heart attacks, Sanzo and Goku were treated to the unfamiliar honor of having an armed guard, albeit a small one, both clearing the way before them and preventing any chance of an attack from the rear.
“This is boring,” Goku muttered as he paced at Sanzo’s side.
“You could always take point,” Sanzo told him, in no mood for whining. “Or do you not trust Gojyo’s brother and Kougaiji’s mother to handle things back here?” He made no mention of himself because the way things were going, he wasn’t going to have to fight at all. At least just yet. And really, that was peachy keen and dandy. Sanzo liked making other people do his dirty work unless he really, really wanted the kill for himself.
Whir went the wheels in the monkey’s brain. Gleam went the bright, bright eyes. Can I Sanzo? those eyes asked soundlessly. Will you be safe if I go ahead, can I can I?
“Stupid monkey. You don’t need my permission.” I’ll be fine.
“Sankyuu!!” Goku crowed as though Sanzo had just given him a gift, and went charging off, happiest as always when able to prove his own power physically. Goku was not terribly smart, like Hakkai or Sanzo, nor was he clever with words, cards, or women, like Gojyo. He was not even graceful in that strange, intangible way of Kougaiji’s, which had he known the words, he would have called nobility, or aristocratic. What he was, what he was good at, was strength. Sheer indestructibility, and his own confidence of it.
Because Sanzo wanted things he would not have to protect.
Rasetsunyo was eyeing the monk as Goku’s pounding footfalls drew away. “Yours?” she asked, fondness tracing her tone and another, older child behind her eyes.
Sanzo thought about denying it. But he’d been denying a lot of things recently. Maybe this was the right time, here and now in the middle of enemy territory, so close to the completion of his his life’s purpose? His personal Journey, is that what this was? assigned mission, to finally admit some truth to himself. Maybe.
“Yes,” he found himself answering her. “That’s right.” He was mildly surprised that speaking his own mind honestly didn’t hurt somehow, given how out of practice he was.
Who knows what more might have been said, had Goku not come careening back at that particular instant and, throwing himself at a monk shocked defenseless, sealed their lips together.
Rasetsunyo’s face went comically blank, staring. Jien turned several fascinating colors and averted his eyes, all the while mentally tallying up the number of bets he’d just won. He knew there was something swishy about the monk.
Sanzo was twitching dangerously when Goku let him up for air. He fairly radiated volcanic fury. The safety clicked off on the gun that he appeared to have drawn from nowhere.
“You will call me if you need me,” Goku surprised him by demanding fiercely and with utter seriousness. This was evidently one of those weird, fluke episodes of maturity that transformed him from child to adult in the span of a second. Sanzo said nothing, but neither did the gun his clenched fist go off, as focused, sober golden eyes searched his own. No longer the eyes of a child, the blond thought dimly.
“Alright then.” Whatever Goku had seen appeared to satisfy him, and he let go as abruptly as he’d attached. Before Sanzo could even find the breath to swear or make a death threat the monkey was gone, off and running and soon lost in the violence of the melees going on at the far end of the hall.
Meanwhile Sanzo was not blushing. He wasn’t.
“Yours?” Rasetsunyo repeated into the terrible silence, her tone deceptively neutral. Who knew what was going on behind her marble etched expression of polite yet aloof imperial calm.
Sanzo was reminded exceedingly of Hakkai and glared accordingly. He snapped, “I never said he was my son.”
Something that sounded suspiciously like a snigger erupted from the corner where Jien was, ostensibly, facing away from the scene to hide his own embarrassment.
Sanzo glared at him too. Really, both siblings were equally annoying. In fact, this was almost as bad as having the original idiots here with him. (Somewhere far away, an unconscious but very alive Gojyo and an extremely exhausted Hakkai simultaneously sneezed.)
Rasetsunyo’s polite mask cracked, and the corner of her mouth twitched up. She was obviously trying her damndest not to laugh out loud.
Sanzo decided to go kill something and stalked off in the direction Goku had taken, muttering viciously under his breath all the while. Too bad they weren’t his real companions. Them at least he could shoot at when they mocked him.
Following an encounter with a strangely familiar lab coated human in glasses (whose intelligent, malicious black eyes had hungrily devoured the sight of Sanzo in a way that made the priest, used to stares of all sorts from murderous to awed to lustful, very nervous, a peculiar feeling of unsettling wrongness that he hadn’t felt since Kami-sama) that ended with Jien roaring something incomprehensible and running the man through, they were ready to proceed at last to the castle’s (dungeon’s) lowest (final) level (stage).
Sanzo lingered over the body, not quite sure what he was looking for in a dead man’s middle aged, stubble patterned face. Goku appeared at his side as though he’d been summoned from thin air.
“Sanzo?” he questioned, picking up on his guardian’s unease and tensing unconsciously in response, ready for a fight. Their little band of rebel soldiers had already been dismissed to go and guard the exits, courtesy of Rasetsunyo’s orders. Others had been dispatched to various parts of the castle to seal off, if they could, any of the secret tunnels that the quarry might use as an escape route. The four remaining waited now only for Sanzo’s readiness.
“....nothing. It’s nothing. Let’s go.”
They went. Nii Jenyi’s blankly staring eyes, thus far trained up at the ceiling, slid sideways to watch them go.
Gyokumen Kyushu met them at the bottom of the lift stop with the detonating of planted explosives.
****
Sanzo woke in his least favorite way: aching, chained, and weaponless, deprived of gun, sutra and most of his outer robe. A glance aside revealed his companions nearby in similar states of bondage, coming around as well, although Goku had blood pouring from his temple and seemed content to stay out like a light.
A figure stepped in front of him. Sanzo glared up at the bitch responsible for this entire mess.
“Ah, this one’s awake.” She was lovely like poison, as he’d half expected; Rasetsunyo’s opposite. Blue/green to flaming scarlet, silk draped curves to a harder, sleeker physique, vanity to honor. A courtesan, a scheming flower with jewel hard eyes and no softness to be found except on the outside.
It was a wonder that Rasetsunyo had been sealed rather than poisoned or knifed in the dark. Gyokumen Kyushu was obviously not one to challenge her enemies directly, as evidenced by the two hundred or so armed guards arrayed in ranks behind her, trying their best to look impressive and intimidating. Sanzo had wondered where all the rest of the castle’s reinforcements had gotten off to.
The monk spared an uncharacteristic pitying thought for the Kougaiji-tachi who dealt with this on a daily basis. Then he abruptly retracted that sympathy in light of the knowledge that they, excepting Dokugakuji, were many miles away and not here now enjoying captivity.
Gyokumen had been speaking while he was observing and pitying/envying others not present. Sanzo tuned back in to catch the tail end of her speech, which she’d probably spent three years preparing since hearing of his coming (and she had).
“Blah blah blah great honor to be guests tonight, blah blah opportunity to view your failure, blah blah won’t kill you now a better fate awaits momentarily, blah blah blah.”
Great, Sanzo surmised wearily. She’s going to make us watch and listen to her running narrative as she brings Gyumaoh back to life. Which would explain all the buzzing, humming and blinking going on across the surface of the vast, ominous machines surrounding a hulking shadow that had to be the sealed demon king.
His next thought was Fuck that.
“I must say I wasn’t expecting the change in entourage…to think you would leave your healer behind and bring a traitor along with the boy and the kappa...”
Sanzo choked at that and wondered how anyone so stupid as to mistake one red head for another of completely opposite gender could have possibly made so much trouble for him over three years. Granted, they were all covered in dust and burns from the explosion, but....
Rasetsunyo finished her Summoning chant, begun as soon as she’d crawled back to awareness, and the monk leaned back blissfully against cold stone to watch the fireworks.
Maybe fifty or so guards survived the Summon fiend’s onslaught, to Goku’s pleasure as once awake and free, he tore through their remaining number like a tornado through a grass field. Gyokumen also survived, to Sanzo’s distaste and Rasetsunyo’s pleasure. The Empress was arguing with Jien over who got to kill the bitch while Sanzo stood by and rubbed at his welt covered wrists. He made a mental note to never again have shackles melted off.
“Damn you! Damn all of you to the lowest pits of hell!!” Gyokumen shrieked from her perch high above in the machinery scaffolding. She’d climbed up there to escape and was now stuck like a treed cat. Sanzo moodily wished he felt energetic enough to search for his gun so he could shoot her. At this rate, he was going to have to resort to throwing rocks to shut the woman up.
“You haven’t beaten me yet!”
Rasetsunyo and Jien stopped arguing long enough to eye Gyumaoh’s concubine. “It sort of looks like it from down here?” Jien finally called up, cupping his hands around his mouth to make himself heard.
Gyokumen screeched at him.
Sanzo scowled as the shrill sound pierced his eardrums unmercifully and elicited the beginnings of a headache. “Can we get on with this?” he demanded finally of his squabbling cohorts. At least Gojyo and Hakkai weren’t prone to arguing with each other. Only with him.
“I laid claim to her corpse years before you were even born, bondsman,” Rasetsunyo hissed. “Give. her. to. me.”
Jien growled right back. “It’s my duty to kill her in place of Kougaiji-sama. Surely he deserves the most right to revenge.”
They appeared not to have heard him. Sanzo really, really wanted his gun.
A particularly loud thrumming noise above them interrupted both squabble and wishful thinking, however. Gyokumen had by some miracle made her way to what might have been a console, and was pressing buttons fast and furious like some demented organ player interested in getting as much discordant sound as possible. Lights flashed and metal groaned. Jets of steam hissed into the air.
“Oh. Fuck,” was Jien’s response. The monk nobly resisted the urge to throttle him.
Gyokumen’s maniacal laughter rang out over the heavy thrum of machinery. “You will see now!” she called, madness contorting her once beautiful face into a twisted mask. “Suffer! Everyone will suffer!”
Goku came running up, panting and gore spattered but otherwise looking disgustingly genki. “Sanzo! Sanzo! What is it? What’s she doing?”
“Hell if I know,” Sanzo snapped. He didn’t add the obvious Something Not Good.
“Witness the rebirth of a GOD!!” Gyokumen punched in a final sequence, and light exploded from the center of the contraption.
The Minus Wave that hit in the next second was so strong it was visible.
“AghFUCK!!” Jien howled, clutching at his temples and going down on both knees. Rasetsunyo and Goku joined him in agony shortly, and so did Sanzo as a wash of alien rage/pain/fire/fury/hunger/BLOODLUST invaded his mind.
The thing that shook him most, however, was the sight of something very, very familiar up there smack dab in the center of a bunch of wires directly above Gyokumen. A silver pendant in intricate pattern, glowing like a new sun.
“Behold! He RISES!” Gyokumen’s voice carried up into a decibel shattering scream, and behind her the hulking mountain of shadow began to move.
It was another’s name on his lips however, as Sanzo looked up, and up, at the resurrected Gyumaoh, lord of western Tenjiku and hailed god of destruction.
“...Ha..zel...”
****
OUTTAKES
[Scene: SANZO, JIEN, GOKU, and a newly freed RASETSUNYO clear the castle levels]
GOKU: (appears to be defeating the guards by jumping on their heads)
SANZO: What the hell are you doing?
GOKU: This is how you get mushrooms!
[Scene: GOKU comes running back to interrupt SANZO'S conversation with RASETSUNYO]
GOKU: (jumps SANZO and molests) You will call me if you need me, right?
SANZO: *___* Hellyeah.
GOKU: Kay. (runs off)
RASETSUNYO & JIEN: o_______o EWomfgSHOTA
SANZO: (sparkle)
[Scene: GOKU runs off after frenching SANZO]
RASETSUNYO & JIEN: o______o .....
SANZO: What? He's not my son.
JIEN: Yeah whatever, Laguna.
