Episode 39 The Undying Fire

Otis clings onto Ryuu’s shoulder, cheerleading in a rather obnoxiously loud voice. “Yeah! Come on, Redheaded Gorilla! You can kick this Blueheaded Gorilla’s butt!”

Ryuu groans, pinching Otis rather recklessly around the neck and squeezing him tightly in his fist. “Look, you stupid invertebrate with slime pus for brains, I’m in the middle of a fight here. So I need you to get outta the way!” Without another word, Ryuu ruthlessly flings Otis into the air, not bothering to even glance as he soars through the sky.

Otis lands with a squishy plop on the ground some yards away, his eyes snapping shut in pain from the impact. He waddles about for several moments, protesting loudly in a raucous screech.

“Yeah,” Ryuu growls to Arayu, “sorry about that. I’m ready to fight now. Don’t you dare hold back, because I’m going to go all-out!”

“Hmph,” Arayu grunts.

With a shrill cry of his bowstring, Arayu lets loose another platoon of his golden arrows, watching them soar through the air obediently towards Ryuu.

In a flash of blue light, Ryuu teleports out of the way, allowing the arrows to come to a faltering crash into a pillar of rubble behind him.

Arayu rapidly launches another assault of arrows, until Ryuu teleports to dodge it again, this time ending up right next to Arayu. Ryuu swings his sword through the air; however, Arayu leaps out of the way only just in time.

Midway through his jump, Arayu fires another round of arrows. Ryuu merely blocks the attack with his raised sword, allowing the arrows to meet its blade and fall to the floor, singed from the heat of the flames.

“Is that all you’ve got?!” Ryuu shouts over the crackle of flames over his head. “Come at me with something stronger than that!” With amazing speed, Ryuu rockets himself forward, straight towards Arayu.

However, halfway through the attack, Ryuu finds himself crashing into a large, scarecrow-esque object. He skids to a stop, watching as the momentum of his sword is carried into the puppet.

Ryuu spins, and finds Arayu standing behind him now instead. With a flourish, Arayu places two fingers up to his mouth, and whistles a loud, piercing cry. Several feathers fall from the sky, and Ryuu watches as a large, formidable hawk soars through the air, coming to a rest on Arayu’s shoulder.

The hawk gleams, as its silver feathers catch the light from the sun. It releases a shrill, echoing cry in reply to Arayu’s, glaring at Ryuu with beady black eyes.

Ryuu pauses, considering his opponent’s strategy. He reinforces his grip on his sword, clutching at the hilt with both hands. The crackle of flames, lightning, and ice coursing through it resound loudly in his head. ‘I see. So it seems he’s gonna try and seal up his weaknesses by preoccupying me with these two other guys. Heh. Ain’t gonna work.’

“What are you staring at?” Arayu mutters harshly under his breath.

Jerked back into sudden reality, Ryuu watches, frozen, as yet another wave of golden arrows chases after him. He leaps out of the way only just in time, panting heavily.

“Whoa!” Otis murmurs from the sidelines. “That was a close one, Redheaded Gorilla!”

Ryuu growls irritably under his breath. “Ahh! Shut up! You’re too noisy!” He throws himself forward, striking with a retaliatory attack at Arayu. However, with a powerful jerk, a magnetizing pull causes Ryuu’s sword to lurch forward and strike the puppet instead.

Ryuu hovers over the puppet with a disgruntled expression for several moments, before a call causes him to spin around. “Too slow!” Arayu howls.

Drawing a large circle in the air, Ryuu blocks the Strafe with a last second spell. “Joukai Guardian Seal!”

Arayu, whose arms still remain in the firing position for his bow, lowers them, gazing at Ryuu haughtily. “So that is one of the techniques developed personally for all Joukai members.”

Ryuu returns Arayu’s snarl with a smirk of his own, giving Arayu the thumbs up, even as he is forced to bend over and pant from the effort of maintaining the shield. “Heh. Impressed? In our day, we had even deadlier skills at our disposal. If you want, I’d be more than glad to show them to you.”

“I do not care for cheap circus tricks,” Arayu retorts indifferently. “Whatever it is you plan cannot possibly compensate for the skill level at which I attack you.”

“Tch!” Ryuu snarls, “I’ll wipe that smart ass, confident smirk off your face!”

“Try then,” Arayu replies.

For a moment, Ryuu glances behind him at the puppet standing innocently still, and then at the silver hawk still floating above Arayu. ‘Damn. As long as the puppet and the hawk stick around, they’re gonna give me trouble. If I can’t target him directly, then I’ll just blow everything up!’

“Are you ready for my first ‘circus trick?’” Ryuu taunts with a shout, planting his sword into the ground. All of a sudden, he begins glowing a blindingly bright blue, as he concentrates his mana into solid form.

Arayu watches smugly, without a trace of panic in his stony stature. ‘Concentrating his mana so as to solidify it. A common trick of the Joukai, yet not one achieved without much training. I care not for such bland tricks of the eye.’

“I see through your plan!” Arayu shouts aloud to Ryuu. He strings his bow, ready to fire at will once more. At a rasping whistle from Arayu, he orders the hawk circling his shoulder to spur forward.

The bird jolts through the air at lightning speed straight towards Ryuu. However, even as it reaches the near vicinity of Ryuu’s sword, it bursts into flames, and melts into a thin, gaseous vapor of mana.

Arayu lowers his arms, having misjudged Ryuu’s capacity. “He dissolved my hawk…?”

Ryuu grins, now demonically, as he pulls his sword out of the ground. The mana that had been slowly solidifying around him pours directly into the large crack created by the placement of Ryuu’s sword in the ground.

At once the hole in the ground opens wide, like a gaping mouth as the earth quakes and trembles under the might of some heavenly body. Arayu stumbles, losing his balance under the intense pressure of the earth. “What…on earth is going on?!” he cries.

Ryuu sheathes his sword with a screeching scream of metal upon metal. He allows the figure emerging from the cracks in the ground to speak for itself. “Joukai Summoning Technique Number One…Dances with Balrog’s Other Self!”

Arayu’s eyes widen as he meets face to face with the scarred, brawny face of Dances with Balrog’s other self. He wields a Gaea, just like his real counterpart. However, in the white of this clone’s eyes, there exists no pupil.

“A summoning technique that calls forth a soulless version of the four that once governed Victoria Island. I’ve used up almost all of my own personal mana to call just this one guy forth, but it should be more than enough,” Ryuu explains casually.

“You…!” Arayu mutters, staring slightly cautiously into the blank eyes of Dances with Balrog’s other self. “To think that a lowly excuse for a human being such as yourself can summon such a creature from the bowels of the earth!”

“Heh,” Ryuu returns Arayu’s remark with a sly smile. “If you think that’s all I’ve got in store for you, you’re dead wrong. Don’t worry buddy. The show’s not over yet.”

With a ferocious vertical swing of his sword, Ryuu brings his blade sweeping down into the ground. “Ex…plosion!” A gigantic volcanic eruption explodes around Ryuu, forming of heated field of lava surrounding everything within a thirty feet radius of Ryuu.

Arayu holds up his arms to shield himself from the sparks of scorching embers blazing past him in all of Ryuu’s fiery wrath. However, as he peeps through his arms, he notices that both Ryuu and Dances with Balrog’s other self stand completely still, showing no signs of weakness to the scorching heat.

Finally, the gaseous explosion clears, leaving everything that had been within it burned to crisps. Arayu coughs loudly, blowing smoke and ash out of his clogged nostrils. He wipes his face, which is completely blackened with soot.

Raising his bow to fire, Arayu spits on the ground at Ryuu’s feet. “Pathetic.”

“Tell that to your puppet,” Ryuu smirks, gesturing with his thumb at the shredded rags that had been Arayu’s defense at his feet. “He don’t look too good if you ask me.”

Arayu merely growls, holding aloft his loaded Dark Arund. “Go to hell. You and your entire damned family! You can all go to hell for the hurt you’ve done to mine!” Letting loose the loaded arrows, Arayu allows them to glide once more through the air, singing through it in the piercing silence.

Ryuu merely teleports out of the way, without showing so much as an ounce of effort. He nods his head towards Dances with Balrog’s other self. “Do your job.”

With a flying leap, Dances with Balrog’s other self pounces on Arayu, who engages in a rapid-fire attack in an attempt to repel him. However, the summoned beast continues to unrelentingly assault Arayu.

Arayu leaps agilely away as Dances with Balrog continues to repeatedly slice at him, holding his Gaea like a butcher’s knife. He watches as the brown-skinned monster slams into nothing but rubble, shattering it into dozens of pieces. With each successive attack, the lag time between recovery and attack rapidly decreases.

‘What brute force!’ Arayu wonders to himself, hopping out of the way at another of the monster’s attacks. Suddenly, Dances with Balrog’s other self stops, and stands panting silently. ‘Has it stopped?’ Arayu stares curiously as the tanned man puffs and heaves, standing awkwardly in the middle of the battlefield.

Arayu raises his bow, before Ryuu interjects. “I’d put that bow away and get into dodging position again if I were you,” he sneers.

“What are you talking about—?” Suddenly, Arayu’s eyes bulge as smoke rises from the ground, and three Tauromacis appear, grasping their spears of lightning with a mournful howl.

At once, three separate staffs of lightning clash and fall upon Arayu, as he seeks to evade the enemy fire from the three newly summoned monsters. ‘This is bad…!’ Arayu thinks to himself, as he glances left and right in anticipation of new attacks.

Suddenly, out of the crossfire of falling spears of lightning, Dances with Balrog’s other self darts out of nowhere, landing a crushing blow on Arayu’s left shoulder.

Arayu falls upon his knees, and suddenly feels cold steel underneath his jaw as two of the three Tauromacis place take the opportunity to cross their staffs at his neck, disabling him from any further movements.

Ryuu saunters casually up to Arayu, watching haughtily as blood pours from the wound on his shoulder. “Heh,” Ryuu growls, “it’s kinda pitiful to watch you grovel and beg for your life.”

“I am not going to stoop so low as to beg for my own life,” Arayu answers him proudly. “I will refuse. If you will me to die here, then I’ve no complaints. I will not ask a murderer for my life.”

In the baffling silence, Ryuu then proceeds to clap twice, though no sign of emotion appears on his face. “Hmph. You’re so arrogant, huh?”

Ryuu stoops slightly to stare Arayu directly in the eye, while Dances with Balrog’s other self stands obediently nearby him. “You really want to die here if I order it? Tch. Don’t be ridiculous, and more importantly, don’t make a fool of yourself by saying things you don’t mean. You don’t want to die; it’s just your pride that stops you from saying so.

“Believe me, I know. If you die here and now, you won’t ever get the chance to kill me, your mortal enemy, ever again. You’ll go to hell unfulfilled. And you can’t bear the thought of that, not when your father’s killer is still walking the streets of the living world.

“However…” Ryuu pauses to take a breath in a dreadfully slow fashion, as a sneer curls about his lips. “All evils must be put to a stop.” He then snaps his fingers, and all of a sudden Dances with Balrog’s other self and his summoned Tauromacis disintegrate, decomposing into nothing more than gray dust.

Without the force of the Tauromacis’ spears holding him up, Arayu collapses into a heap on the floor, breathing heavily as the wound on his shoulder forces him down. Ryuu grasps him roughly by the collar, holding him up his face.

“Stand,” Ryuu orders, letting go. Arayu sways, but remains standing absently. “Either you will fight to your death, or you will kill me. We decided early in this fight, remember? At least one of us must fall dead here, and I’m making sure that promise is fulfilled. Fight!”

Without even bothering to raise his head, Arayu loads his Arund silently. He pauses, waiting for Ryuu to raise his sword. Doing so, Ryuu sneers. “Okay. Now that you’re ready, let’s go.”

However, before Ryuu can even take a step forward, Arayu raises his head, cocking it to one side. “Do not take me for defeated, fool!” Suddenly, a devastating Strafe leaves Arayu’s Dark Arund, and soars through the air.

One by one, the arrows pierce through Ryuu’s stomach before he can even react to them. He stumbles around for several moments, clutching his stomach. Then, not bothering to remove the arrows from his bleeding wounds, he smirks. “Heh. I see. To be honest, I didn’t realize you still had that much fight left in you.”

Still not speaking, Arayu loads his Arund again, and holds it tight, taking aim at Ryuu. “I’m sorry,” Ryuu interrupts, causing Arayu to pause momentarily, “but this fight is over!”

Drawing a black seal in the air with the tip of his sword, Ryuu’s sword suddenly glows bright red, lit up not with the light of fire, but of some unknown power. “Joukai Amplifier! One thousand sacrifices!” With an explosive blast, Ryuu becomes engulfed in a sphere of red and black energy, as the pressure of it presses heavily down on him.

“Wh…what is that?” Arayu stutters, the grip on his bow slackening slightly.

“The greatest skill invented by the Joukai,” Ryuu answers, “the Joukai Amplifier multiply my strength by one thousand times for one hour. However, past that hour…all of my mana will be sealed for twenty-four hours, and my physical strength will be severely weakened—halved, basically.”

“In other words, a ‘last resort’ skill,” Arayu concludes.

“Exactly,” Ryuu replies.

Suddenly he disappears from view with a blue flash. Spinning around in a frenzy, Arayu suddenly feels the cold sting of a sword tear into the flesh in his chest. He collapses, as the whole butt of Ryuu’s sword slices cleanly into his chest, creating a large, opened wound all across.

Spitting out blood in torrents now, Arayu is thrust back into the air as Ryuu clutches him by the collar tightly, nearly choking him.

“Listen here, Arayu,” Ryuu mutters menacingly. “You’ve told me all along that you want to kill me because I killed your father? That is complete bull. Before you die, listen to the real truth.”

Arayu chokes as Ryuu’s grip tightens around his neck. His eyes cloud over, as he begins to lose his vision from a combination of various pains. “The real truth is this: your father killed my comrade, Kunai’s father. He killed Sheath, my mentor, first! I killed him in retribution, to put a stop to the senseless slaughter!

“If he hadn’t been killed, more and more families would have been shattered, just like yours! I killed your father because it was necessary, and now I’m going to kill you because it’s necessary as well! Do you hear me?! Your father was in the Naraku; the very same group you are in now. Because of where his loyalties lay, families were shattered, just like Kunai’s, just like yours!

“If you understand that, then you must understand this: it was your father’s fault. It was all because of your father that you experienced the loss of a parent. It was because of your father that Sheath is dead, that he is dead! It was your father’s fault that I lost my mentor, that blood was shed! It was your father’s fault now that you’re going to die!”

With a finalizing yell, Ryuu cries again, “Joukai Amplifier! One thousand sacrifices!” Letting go of Arayu, he allows him to fly in the air for a moment, before thrusting his sword clean through his stomach, and withdrawing it unrelentingly.

Blood flies everywhere in the air, as Ryuu turns and fails to watch as Arayu drops to the floor with a thud, no worthier than a piece of butchered meat.

With a metallic clang Ryuu sheathes his sword, and walks away.

‘Let’s put an end to this nonsensical pain.’

Next Time: Episode 40 Rematch! Poison Arrow Versus Holy Arrow

Otis: Whoa, wow! Score one for the Gorillas! Has Arayu-gorilla really died?! Find out in upcoming episodes-to-be! However, next time we get to watch Silver-gorilla face Zack-gorilla! Yay!

Episode 40 Rematch! Poison Arrow Versus Holy Arrow coming soon!