InuYasha Fan Fiction / Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ The Blue Anshan ❯ Everything Changes 11 - Break ( Chapter 50 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

The Blue Anshan

By Alesyira

Disclaimer: Inuyasha and Yu Yu Hakusho are not mine. I made a few OCs to fill in my gaps.

Summary: everything has a breaking point

Chapter Rating: M. This one gets a bit graphic.

-o-

Arc 5 - Everything Changes 11 - break

Hiei hadn't been able to get far enough away, even dashing at top speed. The numbing settled deep into his bones and running became more of a struggle than he'd ever experienced. He soon found himself face-first in the brush, yanked backwards on invisible strings that no doubt led back toward the clearing.

*Fox, you have about thirty seconds to take that guy out before I become a liability.*

Kurama couldn't remember the last time that Hiei had admitted to any kind of weakness. "Yusuke, do you have a shot on this guy?"

He growled in response, "Fuck, I can't shoot what I can't see!"

Kagome whirled to her concentrating friend. "Shippo, can you tell where he is right now?"

He waved to one direction. "Up there," he muttered.

The scattershot of Yusuke's shotgun blast erupted toward the enemy's location and tore through the rapidly chilling rock. More lava spilled upwards to block the gap, but Shippo split his attention to push away the new material. His face scrunched in deep focus as he tried to keep a window open for the others to see their target.

"Where's my bow?"

Kuwabara scrambled to the side. "I saw it somewhere over here…" he rustled through the underbrush where they'd been earlier in the evening before Kagome had dropped her weapon in haste to extinguish the tree.

The heat around them rose. Hananoki couldn't catch her breath. Flames licked at the branches of the trees outside the protective shield. She gasped in pain as the forest cried out. This had to stop. How could she make him stop?

The twists and furls in the shimmering energy had hinted at another plan of attack, and Kagome's gasp nearly broke Shippo's concentration. The molten rock still spilled sluggishly from the earth around them, creeping up the walls of their barrier in gradually lessening amounts. Shippo's sweat from exertion evaporated from his skin with nearly inaudible hisses. A curl of smoke drifted up from his shoulder and he inwardly sighed, hoping he wouldn't have to replace this shirt, a favorite of his for well over-

"No!" He was yanked from his vague (probably delirious) fashion musing by the outburst of his slightly broken cousin. He spared part of his focus to peek at the commotion nearby. The tall red-haired human shuffling frantically through the underbrush as his mother swayed on shaky limbs. Yusuke cursing with a glowing fingertip pointed toward their enemy. The flash of a familiar rose-whip. Kagome with her hands over her mouth as she gaped in disbelief at something above them in the distance.

His gaze drifted upward to set eyes on the fourth member of the Reikai team as he hung limp in the air, dangling in front of their levitating enemy like a dead-weight shield as the forest around them burned wildly out of control.

The bright green end of Kurama's signature weapon flew with unerring accuracy at the immobile form of his teammate, but Shippo wasn't surprised to see the end smoke and shrivel into a blackened curl once it left the protection of the barrier.

Shippo tried to blink the blurriness out of his vision. He could think of nothing they had on hand that would survive those temperatures to retrieve their ally. He lifted a shaky hand and let his eyes fall closed as he tried to feel out where the little fire youkai's energy signature might be. If that one could drag him around like a puppet, then maybe he could, too.

He could sense Hiei, but his grasp slid right off, and the control he held on everything else faltered. He couldn't see how… he growled in frustration. Not enough time. Not enough experience. Not enough power.

bait

"Return to me," Youganryuu said, his voice deceptively calm. He stared intently at Hananoki's ashen face as she shivered amidst the others. The monster's thoughts were exposed, open like a book to be read and examined. Hiei was disgusted by what he found. This one had been thoroughly broken. Nothing this monster saw had any worth, it was all dust and ash in various stages of being 'before', everything except this female that seemed to mean more than his own life.

She shook her head, her eyes wide with fear as she took a tiny step backwards.

Youganryuu's eyes slid shut. His hand twitched. Hiei's limp form wobbled slightly in the air before his left arm lifted and then…

crack

Kurama froze, staring up at them with barely veiled rage. The recently restored mother flinched like she'd been slapped. The miko narrowed her eyes, her fingers clenched uselessly at her side, her lips pressed into a thin line of anger.

When Hiei had been thinking of how ridiculous it might appear to be flung around at his teammates like some wrecking ball, he hadn't considered how much more embarrassing it would be to be used like this by some lovesick, brain-dead moron. A fucking damsel in distress. If he had control over himself, he would have scoffed.

He made a mental note to have everyone's memories wiped once this bullshit had ended.

Small miracle that whatever control this youkai held, it had left him paralyzed and numb. He mentally rolled his eyes. Torturing a victim to get someone else to give in to demands lost effectiveness if the person being tortured couldn't feel or display the pain.

'Please tell me you're still alive in there.'

*Of course.*

~And you… aren't bothering to restrain him with the Jagan?~

*What kind of idiotic question is that? Of course I am! Does it look like it's doing a damned bit of good against a youkai that controls fire magic with his mind? No. Fuck off if you can't be more helpful.*

Kurama growled out a sigh, narrowly refraining from visibly pinching the bridge of his nose. Sometimes he wondered why he worried about this blasted stubborn male.

"Here!" Kuwabara found the bow sticking out from under a bush and tossed it at Kagome. She caught it midair, followed by the single arrow he chucked right after. "I don't see the quiver-"

"Doesn't matter, I only need one!" She nocked her arrow and took aim, her magic flaring along the length of wood. She had her shot lined up lightning fast, but not quickly enough.

Hiei found himself jerked sideways to block her at the last moment, and he stared down the business end of her arrow as her eyes narrowed in frustration.

What a fucking coward to hide behind someone instead of confronting his foes face to face. As soon as he regained use of his limbs, he would be removing this bastard's head from his shoulders.

"Hey asshole, stop hiding like a little girl and come out to play," Yusuke growled, his fingertip blazing as he aimed, watching for an opening. They couldn't flank him without leaving the barrier.

Hiei sensed some motion behind him and Kagome's aim slid to the side, likely centering on the exposed portion of the monster's face. A soft whisper came from right beside his ear. "Return to me," he demanded quietly, the sound carrying much farther than it should in the fiery air around them, "or else I'll hurt him more. This one won't burn, but he'll break."

Hiei was going to fucking kill him.

The girl hesitated.

The monster's voice crooned softly, "No?"

Kurama's pupils shrank in shock as he watched Hiei's arm collapse under invisible pressure. The blood drained from his face as the already broken arm twisted unnaturally with another sickening crack. The limb stretched beyond its limit. Skin tore, tendons snapped before muscles pulled violently apart, and his blood sprayed in a huge pulsing arc to shower the trees and spatter the barrier with bright red splotches.

Hiei heard the gruesome cracks and snaps. He spotted the crimson flash of blood out of the corner of his eye. He heard the gentle crunch of dry leaves as the dead weight of a detached limb thumped to the forest floor. Kagome's eyes were round as saucers, and she might have screamed his name, but there was a buzzing sensation in his brain and a roaring in his ears. His mind refused to connect together the clues of what had just happened.

"You want to watch this innocent bystander suffer for you?"

Hananoki took a step closer, shaking. "No, no more. Please."

Youganryuu drifted lower to the ground.

Hiei's gaze fell upon their newest ally, who had some connection to this monstrous elemental. Shippo was angry and frowning at him, but it was likely not out of concern for Hiei's well-being and more for the self-sacrifice he could anticipate from his mother. Perhaps, with another decade of practice and a solid connection to the boost of power granted by Kagome's jewel, the fox might have been able to counter this crazed monster's efforts, but that would not be today.

The kitsune's mother hung her head in defeat. He could read it in her body language as easily as he could skim it from her mind. The enemy wanted her back and would continue to pull Hiei apart, limb from limb, until she acquiesced. She had no reason to turn herself back over to this monster of a man for his sake, a stranger, but Hiei knew a bleeding heart when he saw one. She couldn't help herself.

Even worse, he could see her heart still somehow ached for this villain, despite the centuries of pain he'd put her through. She couldn't let go of her original love for the innocent youth he'd once been. She wouldn't leave a stranger to suffer in his grasp.

The monster landed lightly on the ground as she walked forward, meek, defeated, tears in her eyes. He used his magic to hold Hiei's limp form to the side, ensuring he still remained shielded as Hananoki approached the edge of the barrier.

She drew almost close enough to touch before she stopped. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she whispered, "You took them away from me, and now you take again."

Shippo got to his feet and stepped toward her, pleading, "Mother, no, get out of the way!" The destructive firestorm that had plagued the clearing had dropped off to a lingering heat, the creeping lava quickly cooling into a gigantic stony shield arcing over them.

The blood continued to flow quickly from the stump of Hiei's arm. He wasn't sure exactly how long he had before the blood loss would render him unconscious. Mild regret; at least it wasn't his sword arm, but his balance would be shit. That is, if someone killed this fucking bastard already so he could stop the bleeding.

rage

She shuddered and repeated herself, her voice gaining strength. "You took them away from me."

His face twisted in rage and grief. "They killed my family!"

She came up short, confused. "What?"

"Your family killed mine as soon as they discovered our weakness, and it was all your fault. You betrayed us and then you left me," his voice was raw.

Hananoki made a face of disbelief and shook her head in denial. "I'm not talking about them, I'm talking about my son! You took me from my son and his father. The only two things I had left once I thought you were gone." She cried and raked her claws through her hair in frustration. He reached out for her and she took a single step back from him. "I waited for you to find me. I waited!" she shouted. She took a breath and continued as her voice shook, "for years and years and years. I thought you were dead and I had no more hope you'd ever come back."

His face screwed up in anger as he replied, "You threw away my magic as soon as you could get rid of it!"

Her jaw clenched in righteous fury. Her arm flung wide to indicate Shippo standing some distance behind her. "What?! Could you never sense where your magic had gone? I didn't throw it away. It didn't just vanish! It changed —it moved— it became something new."

Youganryuu's anger faded and his arms fell lax at his side as his gaze shifted beyond her to stare at the male he'd dismissed as just another fire elemental. His eyes widened as he took in the younger male's appearance and the taste of his magic.

She shook her head, her claws dragging down her face as she fought against the anger boiling within her. "You could see nothing but betrayal, not even when proof of my love had always been so close!"

He'd ignored the truth. Once he knew what to look for, he could sense it as easily as anything else. His magic, running free and easy through the younger male as he tried to control something he barely understood. The stripe along his face so like his own. Was this what a child between them would have been like? Pieces of each of them, assembled to make a new creature?

She shuddered. "And then…"

A growl ripped up her throat. "And then you broke and you broke and YOU BROKE!" She screamed, rage suffusing her. Her hair whipped around her face as her eyes shot through with a violent glowing red.

He turned his attention back toward her as his understanding finally fell into place. "I loved you…" he murmured, his voice the smallest of whispers.

Her voice was barely coherent as she tried to speak around lengthening teeth, "I loved you and you didn't even care about me and what I had to say!" She leapt forward suddenly with a vicious snarl, her jagged claws spread wide and her eyes wild with madness.

Those deadly sharp tips thrust easily through the exposed skin of his chest like a hot knife through butter. He stared down at her in numb disbelief as she sliced through his torso. With their magical connection broken, she no longer had any resistance against his burning blood as it spurted from his gaping chest, splashing her front and pouring down the length of her arm, sizzling through fabric and skin. Manic fingertips found his steadily thumping heart amidst all that heat and crushed, crushed with the agony of her broken heart and centuries of torture, her eyes clouded with uncontrollable rage.

She refused to be trapped again, and he didn't deserve freedom after denying hers for so long. They both fell to their knees, her arm dissolving within his chest as the life bled from his eyes. Her screams of rage shifted into shrieking agony as his blood burned through her. He wrapped his shaking arms around her and tucked his face against her neck, realizing this would be the last embrace of their lives.

The others in the clearing watched in horror as the doomed pair experienced their final moments. The two fell over in a sprawl of limbs, blood hissing as it dripped to the grass. Her eyes cleared as she stared at their strands of intertwined hair, his fire-bright jewel tones nearly indistinguishable from her wavy red locks.

Her final hiccupping sob came as his last breath brushed across the skin of her neck, and then they were still.

Shippo stared, his jaw slack.

Hiei dropped to the ground once the last of the magic faded away, a small gasp escaping from him as he collapsed in an undignified heap. Kagome could see nothing but the gush of blood from Hiei's stump of an arm as they rushed forward to give aid to the only person that could be saved.

fix

"Kami… damn— fuck. Just, band-aid. Kuwabara, uh… we have a first-aid kit, right?"

Surely they'd had more experience with serious wounds than this. Amateurs. "Gimmie his arm!" Kagome hissed, waving Yusuke toward the bloody mess. "Quickly!" she urged him, nudging the now-livid fox to the side. "Miko-heal-y things, just give me a moment to see if we can do something about this," she muttered, reaching out to take the offered limb as Yusuke dropped it into her hands. The weight of it surprised her and she toppled forward over it with a sudden ooph, smearing his blood across her face.

"Ugh, jeez, what the heck?" She quickly righted herself and Kurama helped her angle the arm along the crushed and ripped split of his shoulder. "How do you lug this thing around? It weighs a ton."

The corner of his blood-spattered lips twitched into the slightest hint of a smirk.

She eyed the others and they quickly backed away as she released her hold on the fires of her purity in warning, but she knew it wouldn't be her magic that saved his limb. The jewel had already shown it had an affinity for making quick fixes, and she meant to keep the others out of reach while it happened.

Her hair briefly fluttered in the swell of power as she touched her hands to the burning skin of his mangled shoulder and the chilled, lifeless meat of his torn limb. She shuddered, thinking about how much this injury may have hurt, and then she looked down into his face to meet his eyes.

Power slid through her fingers into his arm, and she sensed a shift in her perception of time.

'You're going to be okay,' she thought at him, unsure if he could hear her.

He lethargically blinked up at her. She wanted to brushed the stray hair out of his face. *You're right. You can't get rid of me that easily.*

He gasped and growled and dug the fingers of his working hand into the dirt at his side as the nerves reconnected and fired a deluge of delayed agony directly to his brain. His legs twitched and jerked as he fought to hold himself still against the inverted pain of having his arm torn off.

It was darkly fascinating to see the ends of ripped arteries seeking each other out to knit back together. It was like time moved backward. The blood stopped flowing, the tendons and muscles reconnected, and the skin pulled itself back into place with only a hint of pink scarring to show where the injury had occurred. She leaned forward in relief, resting her forehead against his arm as she relaxed. "Kami, I hope this doesn't become a regular occurrence."

His entire body shuddered once before he stilled and took a deep breath to center himself. They remained there for a moment, silent and motionless, and he reveled in their contact while it lasted. She seemed exhausted. He appeared to be mentally recovering from a potentially fatal injury. His teammates looked on in relief that he would be okay and didn't dare disturb the person that had made him whole once more.

"Not to be awkward or anything," she mumbled from her spot, "but the rest of you should try to understand that I can't just heal someone that's ridiculously injured like that. Don't get any ideas that I'm some magic cure-all."

Yusuke snorted and grinned down at her. "So does that mean your magic is only good on people you like?"

She halfway shrugged. "Something like that."

Yusuke's eyebrows disappeared into his mussed hair. "Damn. I'm not sure what you did to get on her good side in one day flat, shorty, but call me impressed."

Hiei's eyes slid shut in irritation. "If you would be so kind as to move, I would like to dismember at least one person today. You may then show him how well your healing skills work on someone less likable."

She chuckled wearily. His skin was so warm. She could stay here indefinitely just soaking it in, but it would likely start to get a little weird in a few moments. This male was probably not the sort that would encourage cuddling for the sheer pleasure of warmth. Her face started to itch as the smear of his blood began to dry along her cheek. She reluctantly sat up and rubbed at the rusty patch on her face with her shoulder.

rare

Shippo dropped to his knees next to his mother, staring down in shock at how they'd fused together. His lip trembled as he set his hand on his mother's cool cheek. He carefully brushed a thumb over her eyebrow and then gently closed her eye. He returned his hand to his lap and stared at the ground, wondering.

If they had done this stupid argument before they'd had centuries to go insane with rage, how differently would things have been? They'd loved each other. It was impossible to ignore that fact. He closed his eyes and sighed. He heard Kagome approaching and smiled at the gentle touch of her fingers against his shoulder. "Did you fix the little fireball?" he whispered.

"Yeah." She frowned in concern. "You're still pretty hot."

"Smokin' hot, you mean," he boasted.

"Oh geez, gimme a break," she chuckled. "Are you ok?"

"I'll be alright. It's hard to believe that I had her back and then lost her again in one damned day. But it was too little time to think of her as being anything different than what she'd been for almost my whole life: just an old memory."

She squeezed his shoulder.

"And that one," he muttered. "Never thought it would end this way. I had dreams of grand battles to vanquish this foe that had been pissing me off for so long, you know? Instead…" he sighed.

"My mom… I guess she found her peace by letting my dad into her heart. And look at this bastard. He found his peace, too, by letting my mom into his heart." He tilted his head and peered a little closer. "I think literally. With claws and everything."

Kagome gasped. "Shippo! That's awful."

"Better to laugh than to cry, yeah?"

She shrugged.

He reached out in curiosity to touch his fingertips to the markings on Youganryuu's cheek. "This person… I might not be here today if it weren't for his stupid magic."

The youkai's skin was still very warm. Magic tingled under his fingertips and he snatched his hand back in surprise.

"Oh," Kagome breathed. "What's that?" she asked as a curl of reddish orange sparkled up from the dead male.

Shippo frowned in confusion as they watched the coalescing magic warily. "Dunno. I've never seen a death result in something like this. Seems pretty harmless. It's just benign fire elemental magic." He held out his hand and neither of them were surprised when a tail of it drifted quietly over to him and settled into his palm, sinking into his flesh like it belonged.

Shippo shuddered. "Weird." More magic swiftly followed, he shivered violently and rubbed his hands over his arms. "Felt like I just got some kind of… inheritance."

Kagome stared at him. "From the bad guy?"

"Look, just because someone is crazy doesn't mean he's evil. That guy clearly had some loose marbles." He shuddered again. Then he started to sweat. And his face drained of color. "Ah, Kagome? Uh…" He stumbled to his feet. "Ah, shit, not again…" he had time to groan before the next wave of magic flowed over him, flooding his spirit with excess magic that felt like a molasses-slow electrocution.

He moved clumsily away from the bloody mess. He knew what was coming and he did not want to be writhing uncontrollably right next to the dead. He tripped and dropped like a brick, thunking his head painfully against an exposed root of Goshinboku. He met her panicked gaze and gasped, "Stay back, I'll survive."

Kagome kept her distance, her hands clasped nervously in front of her chin, unsure of how the jewel might enhance whatever crazy flares of power she could sense erupting from her writhing friend.

"Holy shit, is he dying, too?" Yusuke looked shocked.

Kurama gazed down at his cousin, another mystery to add to the growing pile of oddities. "No. Calm down. You're just lucky enough to witness the exceptionally rare event in which a kitsune earns a new tail."

Hiei appeared at his side, a little slower than usual but none the worse for wear. *I'd like to reiterate, this is the most unbelievable day I think we have ever had as a team.*

~I think I'm inclined to agree, this time.~ Kurama placed an arm over the hybrid's shoulder and was a little surprised that he let him do it.

*I need a fucking vacation.*

Kurama hummed. ~Hawaii. Let's bring her along. We'll have a threesome.~

Hiei pushed the arm off his shoulder.

~Paris?~ The fox looked hopeful, his lip caught between his teeth in an expression that might make any warm-blooded girl swoon.

Hiei sighed.