#Uonuma Usui

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Fellers, to honor Jamieson Price's upcoming 63rd Birthday, allow Me to share this, complete with a Song like this and well, have a very Happy Early 63rd Birthday to Jamieson Kent Price (1961-present), Ladies and Gentlemen! ;)

[gladyscontrerasart]

That Shishio is bitching and I love that look.

Watsuki Nobuhiro Redesigns 3

And moving on to the Juppongatana! I hope and pray that this is the way Shishio will appear in the live action. I think this design kicks ass!!! Soujiro reminds me of Miki Kaoru from the Utena series. And finally, Kamatari, while cutter then the original, he’s more scantly clad! Wear that kimono more properly young lady/man!

[gabriel-gabdiel]

Youtou Shinnoken: Demon Sword Chapter 57: Living Sin (Part 9)

Hiei does his best to take care of Usui Uonuma, who’s gunning for his Jagan. In turn, Yusuke deals with his old behemoth of an enemy who was once merely B-Class in power level.

Kenshin in turn deals with an enemy from his past with the assistance of one of the Spirit World ferry-girls.

Credit for the pictures goes to Ozzy Oz da Vyrus. 

The original source of this idea comes from Chad Yang. I continued his story idea found here.

The rest of the chapters of my Yuyu Hakusho and Rurouni Kenshin crossover fan fiction are available here and here. Enjoy.

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Up above the Okushiri Military Base....

The flying fortress made of solidified reiatsu (spiritual pressure or pressurized spirit energy) care of the Quest-Class powers of Detective Daiji Matsudaira (the reincarnation of Aoshi Shinomori) landed on the helipad of the base, startling the soldiers there.

Yahiko had earlier requested Botan to fly even higher up than the flying castle with purple beams of light shooting out of it in order to get the drop on the structure.

Literally.

From 50 kilometers above the earth, Yahiko descended straight towards the moving castle, its concentrated jaki beams dissipating against the ghostly human missile and his neutralizing reiki.

He first skydived from the ferry-girl's oar (much to her surprise and chagrin) up in the stratosphere and did his imitation of the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu's "RYU TSUI SEN! (DRAGON HAMMER FLASH!)" for starters.

The impact then cracked the topmost outer shell of the dense fortress.

A trickle of reiatsu leaked off of the spiritual construct, like scattering fireflies in the night.

He then did one of his own Revisal Techniques of the Kamiya Kasshin School, named, "DOU GAMI! (GOD ON EARTH!)", which rocked the castle further at its core and spread cracks all over its very foundations.

Daiji's solidified reiatsu then turned into a shower of outright sparks, the solidified energy sublimating and ionizing into pure spirit energy.

Finally, the Tokyo Samurai Spirit executed a "TEN GAMI! (GOD IN HEAVEN!)" that started the downward spiral of the moving building, the cracks turning into outright crags and debris as the teenaged ghost got jettisoned high above even the stratosphere, reaching instead all the way to the mesosphere.

He reached a height about 70 kilometers or 43 miles away from earth.

The young samurai kid drove the Onmyouji's prison that whole distance from heaven to earth with a sky-cleaving, earth-shattering strike, or at least a strike powerful enough to send cloudy shockwaves behind them as they broke through the speed barrier.  

"INGA GAMI! (KARMIC GOD!)"

Yahiko's first of two ultimate attacks had enough jaki-neutralizing power to push that huge pillar right into the middle of the military base like a meteorite. A shooting star.

The sublime mix of reiki (spirit energy) and jaki (negative energy) then ionized into their base forms, the kenki (swordsman energy) that bound them fading away into the ether.

All of these forms of energy were neutralized by Yahiko's own strange spirit energy. His own reiatsu or unique mixture of reiki and kenki.

His strike from his self-made sakabatou (Kenshin's reverse-edged sword that Yahiko manifested using his reiki) was powerful enough to warp time and space itself. Like a blunt version of the Jigen Tou.

Only a single helipad-sized spire of the formerly huge fortress was left by the time it crash-landed unto the base.

***

Youtou Shinnoken: Demon Sword

A Rurouni Kenshin/Yuyu Hakusho Crossover Fan Fiction Story by Chester Castañeda

Original Concept by Chad Yang

The Kenshingumi will now take care of their loose ends before fighting the final boss of this arc. This battle is about to explode! FIGHT!

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 materials that are far too many to mention here. Don't sue me please, I'm very poor.

***

Chapter 57: Living Sin (Part 9)

***

Back at Kitaoimisaki Park...

Usui Uonuma shook his head. The newbie member of the New Ten Swords, Kuronue, was outwitted by the legendary demon fox Youko Kurama as well.

If you wanted something done right, do it yourself.

Amidst the burned shadows and silhouettes that were once Kuronue stood Usui, his previously broken Tinbe practically whole now.

With it now capable of withstanding the heat and impact of multiple Jaou-En-Satsu Kokuryuha (Dragons of Darkness Flames) from Jaganshi (Evil Eye User) Hiei, the black serpentine flames were unable to affect the turtle shell one way or another.

But Uonuma knew that Jaganshi Hiei had one more ace up his sleeve. The Chojin's spies had briefed him about the fire demon and his ability to absorb the power of the fiery dragon beings unto himself.

As expected, Hiei boosted his speed and power tremendously by absorbing the flame dragons of the Kokuryuha right into his body, his youki (demon energy) rising to astonishing levels. To S-Level and beyond.

Under the old Reikai rules, Hiei's presence there would've been considered outright illegal. A demon that powerful shouldn't be in the Ningenkai (Human World).

A demon that powerful was on par with one of the Chojin's Ten Swords.

'So this demon's name is Hiei, huh?' thought the blind man, waxing nostalgic. That was also the name of the mountain where the old Juppon Gatana (Ten Swords) stronghold was.

What a curious demon. He had the speed of Souiro "Heaven Sword" Seta and the strength (or even firepower) of Makoto Shishio.

If Usui could conquer this strong demon, then he'd get one more step closer to standing as equals with the Youkiri (Demon-Slayer) Tenro.

To sit at the right hand of an unborn god. To be able to challenge an unborn god and become one himself.

Nah, perhaps that last one was still a bridge too far for him. But this, defeating the fire demon, wasn't.

The dragons roared and gnawed against the Tinbe but like a mountain standing above the earth with a crown of clouds, it wouldn't yield.

His Tinbe then reformed completely, but there was a gap the size of a sword slash right on its upper top left corner.

That was where Hiei focused his attack, sticking the tip of his Jaou-En-Satsu Ken (Sword of Darkness Flame) right into it, forcing its way in.

Hiei learned a lot from Kurama's little trick earlier with the Demon World Moss. This time around, the jaganshi found a weak point before the shield was able to fully heal or reconstitute itself.

Hiei's aura of youki and black flames flared to life, increasing the pressure on that one little crack, like a pressure cooker about to burst.

More cracks appeared on the shield as the pressure built up further and further. It reached the boiling point and then went beyond it. Through this one weakness, Hiei was able to focus his demonic energies and bust through.

The Tinbe cracked apart in twain and then into a million pieces, and from there Hiei released all of the Dragons of Darkness Flame unto Usui's hapless form.

However, that was actually a ruse.

The blind swordsman and spearman had actually activated a second illusion from Jine Udo's Jagan as Hiei attacked with the full power of the Kokuryuha inside of him, knowing full well that his Tinbe wasn't complete yet.

However, by making Hiei dream that he had broken the false Tinbe, this bought Usui enough time to completely manifest his real Tinbe with the small crack or gap finally filled in.

It was this shield that stopped the Dragons of Darkness Flame cold.

Usui baited Hiei into wasting his one shot at him and it worked. Hook, line, and sinker.

Every last one of the flame dragons crashed uselessly against the reinforced and complete Tinbe, like the waves of the ocean crashing against the sea wall or dam. The tides turned but the wall remained unperturbed.

Hiei's Jagan was now his...!

However, as Uonuma began his counter Rochin stab with the intension of pinning both Hiei and Kurama into the nearest wall like twin butterflies, something felt amiss.

His body then literally fell apart into tiny pieces of meat cubes, red mist spraying all around him.

Usui was able to seal the crack on his Tinbe, but the gap of time he needed to do his counterstrike was all Hiei required to strike back.

In that fraction of a fraction of a second, the super-powered fire demon slashed at him at the rate of a hundred times per second. Or more.

Before Usui could block one strike with his shield. Or counter with a thrown spear to the heart or face.  Or even activate Jine's Jagan at the last second and create another illusion to fool Hiei with.

Moving faster than his sensitive hearing could detect. Or predict.

Moving faster than his mind could fathom.

Moving faster than sound itself.

***

About a hundred years ago, around the 1870s, inside Shishio's hidden fortress within Mount Hiei...

From out of the blue, Usui Uonuma asked Makoto Shishio a simple question.

"Between the Ten Ken (Heaven Sword) and myself, who is more powerful?" he had asked out of whimsy. "Who would win in a fight?"

Shishio chuckled, swirling the wine inside his wineglass as he considered Uonuma's unusual query. He decided to humor his former hitokiri (manslayer) rival.

"You can keep up with Sou-kun's speed up until he uses the Shun Ten Satsu (Instant Heaven Kill), which is him using both battoujutsu (sword-drawing techniques) and the Shukuchi (Reduced Earth) at the same time. If you're able to disable him before that, then you will win."

"Shun Ten Satsu, huh?" repeated Usui. "Why do you think that?"

Makoto drunk his drink in one shot and then gave the glass back to his courtesan and lover, Yumi Komagata.

"It's simple. You can counter anything you can hear, smell, sense, and react to, right? Sou-kun's Shun Ten Satsu is faster than sound. Your Shingan won't even hear him coming."

***

Back in 1993, at Mount Kannon...

Kenshin Himura sighed as he trudged on foot back to Mt. Kannon within the Hidaka Mountain Range of Hokkaido.

He had Kazuma Kuwabara place him near the mountain care of the trusty Jigen Tou (Dimension Sword).

Like in the case of the battle at Mount Kamui, Mount Kannon was outside of Okushiri.

Kenshin had absorbed enough spirit energy from all the Reikai Tantei (Spirit Detectives) earlier to manifest himself and his spiritual body on his own, without being wielded by any of them.

Although he was kind of curious what sort of powers would manifest if his sword were held by the likes of Yahiko Myojin, Natsuki Shinkai, Likka Ikumi, or Daiji Matsudaira.

Perhaps another time, they'd find out.

Most of the energy he soaked up came from Yusuke Urameshi, in fact. It should last him until the rest of the battle.

The fact that Yusuke's reiki was that immense was both reassuring and worrying.

Reassuring in that they had the big guns against the Shin Juppon Gatana (New Ten Swords) this time around. Worrying in that he wasn't sure if it was Rando's Kugai (World of Suffering) curse or Urameshi's own developing powers that led him to have this surplus of energy.

Without all those multiple seals that held back his power, Yusuke might still suffer from power incontinence. He might still be unable to control his full immeasurable strength.

Regardless, Himura had other concerns to deal with. He was busy taking care of this Chinese warrior earlier, who wounded him in battle that made it difficult for him to save Hajime Saito from Feng Xinhai's schemes and Toguro Ani's attempt at possession.

A Chinese warrior that ended up related to him and his dark past after all.

The stranger with white hair and crazed eyes that Kenshin fought was no stranger to him after all. He remembered who the man was.

The man's name was Enishi Yukishiro, all grown up. The younger brother of Kenshin's ex-wife, Tomoe.

Since Tomoe was Kenshin's ex-wife, that made Enishi his brother-in-law. A brother-in-law with a century-old grudge regarding Kenshin's (accidental) murder of Tomoe Himura (nee Yukishiro).

"...Tell me, Battousai. Is my sister smiling down on you from heaven?" so said Tomoe's brother, Enishi.

Enishi had somehow ended up in the Heisei Era and got himself mixed up in Kenshin's current affairs. Himura could've almost sworn that his brother-in-law had died back in the Bakumatsu.

The younger brother of Tomoe was one of many unsettled debts Kenshin left when he died fighting against Makoto Shishio back at Mount Hiei.

In their first meeting in a hundred years, Enishi even gave Kenshin the same wound that ultimately killed Tomoe.

Meanwhile, as Himura neared where he previously defeated the martial artist, the cross-shaped scar on his cheek flared with a twinge of pain. No, actually the cuts felt as painful and fresh to him as the first time they were made.

The scar somehow ached even more than the much deeper laceration on his chest that still hadn't fully healed.

Like a paper cut that microscopically tore through skin and thousands of nerve endings like a jagged handsaw.

As though Enishi's very presence had reactivated Tomoe's curse on him. The curse of the cross-shaped scar.

***

At the helipad of the Okushiri Military Base...

"Get the HELL out of THERE! Sadojima Houji!" beckoned Yahiko as he sheathed his sakabatou while Botan herself swooped down from above then behind him.

He further chided, "That strike wasn't enough to take you down, right? No, you still have the Chojin's powers inside you, you dirty rat. Of course that wasn't enough!"

"You're being too loud, Yahiko! You're bothering the military people!" was what Botan resisted herself from saying, inwardly reminding the Kaoru inside her, 'He's supposed to be loud, you silly goose! The Chojin and his forces are invading Okushiri, remember? If not Hokkaido altogether!'

The aforementioned military base had long ago been put on high alert ever since supernatural beings started attacking different parts of the island at once.

Many of their deployed teams didn't return to the base hours after deployment.

"Stand aside, kid!" one of the soldiers said, who in Yahiko's eyes should've looked more shocked at seeing the seeming U.F.O. land in the middle of their base. "Civilians aren't allowed in here. This is now official military business!"

Another private attempted to grab hold of Myojin, only for him to slip his grasp. The teenaged version of Yahiko willed his ghostly self to become incorporeal.

The Jieitai or JSDF (Japanese Self-Defense Forces) then surrounded what was left of Daiji's solidified reiatsu structure, their guns cocked and ready to go.

What remained of Matsudaira's seal broke apart like a hatching egg.

And from there came forth the Onmyouji (Occult Priest) in all his glory, wearing a mix of a business suit with an occultist robe serving as his overcoat. The true right-hand man of the Overfiend.

With purple glowing eyes and a miasmic aura that flowed all over his body like thick black and crimson smoke from a smoldering flame, Houji spoke in askance.

"Why do you want to fight me, Myojin Yahiko? Do you bear a grudge against me? Do you hate me from the bottom of your heart?"

Yahiko was taken aback by the question. "W-What...?"

"Right now, you have no such hate in your heart," said Houji the Onmyouji. "You're fighting out of a sense of duty to your friends. To your idol, Himura Battousai. Otherwise, you'd have no such quarrel against me."

Or perhaps Sadojima was merely acting as the representative speaker to one other person.

Perhaps Myojin was actually talking to the Chojin (Overfiend) himself. The mastermind behind all these resurrected baddies from the Meiji Era to the Heisei Era.

Just who the hell was the Chojin anyway? Was he Makoto Shishio? Or someone else entirely?

The Onmyouji's ghoulish shikigami (familiars) with their tattered robes and sharp scythes flew at the gathered soldiers, who fired at them to no avail.

"STOP!" screamed both Yahiko and Botan at the familiars prior to the massacre that was about to take place.

None of the military men stood a chance against these supernatural beings.

***

Back in Hokkaido, far away from Okushiri, at the foot of Mt. Kannon...

Kenshin witnessed Enishi's strength firsthand.

The Chinese warrior had become so powerful he drove Himura Battousai himself from the forests of Okushiri all the way to a whole separate mountain range in Hokkaido, miles away from the island.

By pure willpower and hatred, Enishi grew strong enough to give pause to even the powered-up version of Battousai that had his own magical Demon Sword.

The Overfiend had indeed prepared for every last contingency. He was every bit as cunning as Youko Kurama himself.

Earlier, Kenshin's chest actually got hit by Enishi Yukishiro's ultimate attack, the Kofuku Zetsu Tou Sei or Kofuku Zettousei (Crouching Tiger Severing Sword Rush), as a counter to the Amakakeru Ryu no Hirameki (Heavens Gliding Dragon Flash).

Kenshin was also distracted by the fact that Tomoe's brother managed to find him a century later to enact his rightful revenge. His Jinchu.

That was why he was defeated by a technique Enishi must've trained over and over again to counter all sorts of battoujutsu strikes, including the ultimate one devised for the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu.

Luckily, instead of doing the follow-up strike that would've also missed, Kenshin had the foresight to do a more powerful version of the Dou Ryu Sen on the ground that was enhanced by the vortex created by the succession technique.

This last-minute creative counter was what initially buried Enishi right into the heart of Mt. Kannon.

Regardless, Kenshin arrived back at his earlier starting point.

By Himura's estimation, only he or maybe Yusuke could take Yukishiro out one-on-one. Enishi should not be allowed to join forces with the rest of the Shin Ju.

***

Yahiko manifested his neutralizing reiki and kenki all over the military base with a sparkling blue and yellow light that blended together and formed a green glow. This then warded off the raggedy evil spirits that served as the Onmyouji's shikigami.

It was his own form of spirit pressure. His spirit energy interacted with his swordsman presence in a way that sealed or canceled out the spiritual power of his opponents.

Botan, in turn, flickered back and forth between her original shinigami (death goddess) form and Kaoru Kamiya's form as she saved the soldiers from being reaped by Houji's soul reapers by using her floating boat oar like a bokken (wooden sword) or naginata (glaive).

The two Kamiya Kasshin Ryu practitioners made short work of the familiars before they could take one life of the JSDF military corps.

"Please evacuate from here. You're no match against them," explained Botan to one of the soldiers before swatting multiple weakened shikigami away with her weaponized boat paddle.

One of Myojin's shikigami-dissipating swings swiped mere inches away from Houji's face, creating a thin cut over the bridge of his nose.

"Swinging a sword mindlessly at someone out of hatred is just violence. Kenshin taught me that," said Yahiko. "My duty as the Son of Tokyo Samurai is to defeat you. That is all. I'll even stake my life on it."

Sadojima smirked. "So be it. Samurai-san."

From behind Houji teleported the ever-reliable Gatekeeper Itsuki.

Yahiko turned towards the blue-haired shinigami and told her, "Quick, call Boke (Moron) and tell him to come here right now."

"Boke...?" trailed off Botan.

"KUWABARA! Kuwabara Kazuma! We need him here now! If he needs healing, heal him up as well! He and his space sword are the only ones who can take on that green-haired yoga guy and his goddamn portals!"

"All right! I'll call him! Jeez," said Botan, who turned on her communicator.

"Language, Yahiko!" reprimanded the Kaoru inside her in turn.

Afterwards, Itsuki summoned a multitude of warp gates, this time rectangular and doorway-shaped instead of circular and hole-shaped.

Inside each dimensional door was either the corpse (as well as ashes) or unconscious body of the many different Shin Juppon Gatana members.

It was through these gates that the Occult Priest blasted his purple beams of negative energy. Before, they served as destructive pillars of neon plasma. Now, they were probably used to give the killed or otherwise heavily injured Shin Ju another lease on life.

"Oh no," said Botan. "Not again. He's not going to revive all the New Ten again, is he? Jeez, we just defeated those goons! Learn how to stay down and give up!"

The shining eyes of Houji the Onmyouji then dimmed and faded away, replaced with his actual normal eyes.

"Ah, you returned. The snotty little brat. How does it feel to go back to zero after all the effort you've spent killing the Shin Ju? Like Sisyphus and his rock, right?"

The boisterous nature of the Chojin's conduit had returned. Houji was seemingly awakened from his brief slumber earlier, when he actually sounded "cool" and "aloof" for a hot minute.

"Hey," said Yahiko. "What happened to you earlier? You weren't the one talking, were you?"

Houji raised an eyebrow at that. "What do you mean?"

"Don't play dumb. It was the Chojin who talked to us back then, right?" asked Myojin. "Tell it to me straight: The Chojin is Shishio Makoto, isn't he? Of course, he is! Who else would start a war against the Spirit World with a team called the New Ten Swords? No one but him!"

The necromancer chuckled. "That's a... secret."

With a grunt, the samurai teen jumped and attacked the Chojin's right-hand man with a downward slash from the Jodan-no-Kamae (Fire Stance), which was then blocked by Houji's scythe.

They crossed blades, their different energies clashing against each other as arcs of lightning ripped through everywhere like light-filled cracks that broke through reality itself.

Houji's lack of formal training with his weapon was rendered moot due to his seemingly oceanic flow of negative energy that gave his simple block the weight of the world. Or at least the huge water pressure of the ocean depths.

However, regardless, the beams of purple plasma emanating from the dark priest flickered and wavered as it interacted with the reiatsu of Yahiko.

"That's it! You can do it, Yahiko!" said the Kaoru within Botan. "Show them why I consider you the number one pupil of the Kamiya Kasshin School!"

"Can you really do it, boy?" asked Houji, smirking. "Can you seal away the overflowing, overwhelming power of the Chojin himself? The Living Sin?"

The dimensional doors leading to the Shin Ju were then shut down. Or rather, slashed shut.

Gatekeeper Itsuki chuckled, his slashed eye that doubled as a dimensional portal opening. "He's here."

Sure enough, in one of the doors, the jaki beam was slashed in twain, the negative energy cut down by the spiritual might of the Jigen Tou.

It was from this door that Kazuma Kuwabara emerged, the transparent ghost of a recovering Sanosuke Sagara beside hiim.

"You called, Jo-chan (Missy)?" said Sano.

"YOSHA! (HELL YEAH!) Let's get this party started, samurai boy!" shouted Kazuma, the rambunctious teenager with bleached orange hair similarly styled like his best friend Yusuke Urameshi's hair.

***

And so there he was. Buried deep underneath Mt. Kannon itself like Son Goku the Monkey King from the literary masterpiece, "Journey to the West".

The rumbling inside the grumbling mountain roared deeper and harder. Like it was about to explode and turn into a volcano.

"...BATTOUSAI!" screamed Tomoe Yukishiro's little brother Enishi from underneath Kannon Mountain, spewing hot fire along with the brimstone and magma he was surrounded in.

His spectacles had long ago been lost or burned to smoke and ash by molten rock. The rest of his outfit remained intact though, probably protected by his body's significant aura.

Yukishiro crawled out of the hot magma pits of hell, or at least the otherwise dormant mountain in an explosion of fire, smoke, molten rock, and lava flow that scarred and burned the surrounding forest.

The singes and burns on Enishi's (literally) piping hot body, however, started healing right before Kenshin's eyes.

Not quite at the level of instantaneous regeneration as the Elder Toguro, but quick enough to survive a trip down a volcano and live to tell the tale. Still too quick compared to a normal mortal though.

Besides which, he wasn't supposed to only be burned from the fires of a river of magma anyway. It must've taken thousands of degrees of heat to even leave him slightly scalded at all.

His humongous amount of spirit energy kept him from suffering life-threatening injury. The same way Hiei or Yusuke would've survived such a predicament.

The red-hot blade of the Chinese-styled warrior didn't quite reach its melting point but it cooled down from the sheer blast of miasmic spirit energy from him.

If allowed to run rampant like the rest of the Ten Swords, Yukishiro could very well murder every last one of them. The Reikai Tantei, the Kenshingumi, and the Oniwabanshu.

All of them could die. This high-level martial artist could do what at least 8 of the 10 Shin Ju couldn't. He was a one-man army. He was like their Hajime Saito. A true wild card of sorts.

Kenshin foresaw it all through the Youtou Shinnoken.

The last thing Yahiko and the rest of the Reikai Senshi (Spirit World Warriors) needed right now while battling the Onmyouji and the Chojin's wealth of negative energy was a spanner in the works like Enishi.

***

The powers of most of the reincarnations or ghosts from the Meiji Era—most of Kenshin's comrades—were a result of how their spirit energy interacted with their swordsman energy or fighting spirit, creating what was known as reiatsu.

With Daiji Matsudaira (Aoshi Shinomori's reincarnation), it was the Quest-Class manifestation of objects and materials from his spirit energy.

With Natsuki Shinkai (Yutaro Tsukayama's reincarnation), it was the ability to manipulate kinetic momentum or acceleration, usually in the form of reflection or deflection.

With Likka Ikumi (Misao Makimachi's reincarnation), it was her skill to manifest her thoughts into reality, creating visual mirages or even holographic illusions seen by all.

With Sanosuke Sagara's soul, it was his pure fighting spirit that allowed his ghost to approach Regent-Class regeneration abilities, stamina, and pure brute force that allowed him to affect the physical plain like a rampaging poltergeist.

With Kaoru Kamiya's soul, it was a mix between Botan's soul reaper powers and Kaoru's past swordsmanship skills that allowed them to heal, boost, replenish, bind, manipulate, or otherwise enhance the spirit energy within them or of those around them.

With Kenshin Himura's soul, he became one with the Demon Sword, a demon-slaying blade that could arguably injure or kill a god. His own reiki, kenki, and reiatsu interacted with anyone who wielded his blade in ways that raised their very power levels.

Finally, with Yahiko Myojin's soul, his unique brand of spirit energy interacted with other spirit energy (whether it was human or demonic) in a way that suppressed or neutralized them into nothingness.

Yahiko's unique powers worked like how an acid and a base reacted quantitatively with each other when mixed until the acidity of the acid disappeared. Or how Hiei's Jaou-En-Satsu Kokuryuha was cancelled out by Shinobu Sensui's polar opposite power of Sei Kou Ki (Saint Light Ki).

Their reiatsu was different from the reiki and youki used by Yusuke Urameshi and their comrades due to the use of other forms of reiki within the Meiji Era reincarnations and the use of classic shinigami warrior techniques among the revived spirits.

Reiatsu was more comparable to something like Sensui's Saint Light Ki or Yusuke mixing his reiki and youki together to form something approaching Sei Kou Ki instead of either pure reiki or youki. Even jaki.

It was through these souls—these seeds of hope—that Koenma Daio intended to defeat the Chojin and his unnatural powers that defied death and the natural order of the Spirit World.

***

Kurama's board full of chess pieces were in their proper places, which kept the Chojin in check. They were practically on the verge of a checkmate, even.

The pawns were positioned to divide and conquer the Shin Juppon Gatana, with each Reikai Senshi paired up to their appropriate members.

Their source of power, Houji, had his borrowed negative energy suppressed by Yahiko. Their means of transportation, Itsuki, got sealed off by the Reikai's own Kuwabara and his Dimensional Sword.

Botan was there to heal and replenish reiki as well as assist Myojin tactics-wise care of Kaoru. Sanosuke himself was gradually recovering his spirit energy and fighting spirit for good measure as "Jo-chan" or the shinigami she fused with nursed his flickering body back to health.

Kuwabara regained his second wind even, which allowed him to not only create portals but to close or destroy them with his twin Dimension Swords.

This kept the annoying Gatekeeper from transporting jaki to the injured/dead Shin Ju or even getting the recovered members to help Houji out.

Even with his use of Sensui's seven personalities and the new powers it brought him, Kazuma kept him at bay.

As for the shikigami that served as the Onmyouji's infantry, Sanosuke punched them out with the "FUTAE NO KIWAMI! (DUAL EXTREME!)" while riding shotgun on Botan's oar.  

So why did Myojin feel like something was amiss? Like he had a bad feeling about everything? Like something terrible was about to happen?

A new enemy descended from an unseen sky portal that Kuwabara noticed, slashed apart, and closed too late.

"Huh!?" was Yahiko's reaction to the new arrival. This distracted him even as he ended up on the verge of disarming the untrained Houji. "Who is that? Is it another replacement Shin Ju?"

Kuwabara said, "We've already confirmed that Toguro Ani and Kuronue replaced Suzaku and Udo Jine! It's not one of the New Ten! Must be one of the Dai Shin Kan instead!"

Sanosuke's jaw dropped. "No way...!" which made Botan and Kaoru ask in unison, "Who is that supposed to be, Sano?"

Kazuma jumped into action, intending to slash a portal and kick the newcomer into it, only for his Jigen Tou's energy to start unraveling before his eyes.

The woman in courtesan clothes smiled as she floated down using her umbrella as a parachute (like goddamn Mary Poppins, Botan realized), crimson energy emanating from her pale white skin.

"Ah, it's all coming together now." Houji cackled. "Welcome back, Komagata Yumi. Get rid of these insects for me, if you would please."  

And so Makoto Shishio's personal courtesan and lover arrived, dressed in her classic Meiji Era garb but this time there was a hole in her chest where her heart used to be.

The very place where Shishio stabbed her in order to do a surprise attack on Battousai Himura.

Also, she had long fangs inside her mouth.

"Inner Blood Turmoil," Yumi said as she sapped Kuwabara of all his spirit energy using the Kyuuketsuki Kakuto Ryu (Vampire Martial Arts) that Rando stole from her.

"SHIT! Now even Shishio's girlfriend has superpowers too?!" said Sanosuke, remembering the woman whom he did a bridal carry with as they traversed Shishio's Mt. Hiei stronghold.

"...BLOOD WIND!" she screamed, releasing a red energy-sapping tornado at the Reikai Senshi.

***

Originally, Kenshin was barely able to defeat Enishi and get back in time and save Sanosuke Sagara, Kazuma Kuwabara, and Hajime Saito from the nefarious machinations of Karasu, Feng Xinhai, Usui Uonuma, and Gatekeeper Itsuki at Mt. Kamui.

But now that his detour was over, he had to get back to his original business.

He had to. Or else Enishi would undo everything they'd done so far to suppress the New Ten Swords from conquering the island of Okushiri as well as Hokkaido.

"Sessha (This one) wonders why even though I thought I'd never met you before, you seemed to know everything about me de gozaru (that you did)."

"'Sessha'? 'De gozaru'?" Enishi repeated the words with a snarl and a dismissive snort. "Are you kidding me, Battousai? Why is the most fearsome hitokiri of the Bakumatsu acting like a gentle fool with flowery samurai language? Enough of your lies!"

"This one never thought to see you again after a hundred years. I was sure you were already dead," confessed Kenshin.

"I did die. But I live again. Reincarnated in a new era," said Enishi. "I willed this weak new body I was reborn into to become even stronger than I already was before you died in the hands of Shishio Makoto."

'So he survived the Bakumatsu after all,' thought Kenshin, who believed that Enishi had died of starvation as a little boy in the ensuing revolution.

"Now I will enact the revenge that I was robbed of a hundred years ago! If you've been dispensing Tenchu (Heavenly Retribution) in your time as a hitokiri, then this is Jinchu (Earthly Retribution) for all your sins! Prepare yourself, Battousai! ZETSUGI...!"  

From there, he didn't even give Himura the chance to breathe or any breathing room as he attacked, attacked, an attacked some more.

Tomoe's little brother had grown ridiculously strong. As though he'd been training the last hundred years for this one moment. Empowered purely by hate.

However, one way or another, Kenshin was able to contain Yukishiro's growing threat long enough to assist Saito's rescue or allow the Kenshingumi to go through their mission of taking out Houji.

Himura figured out how his Wattoujutsu (a mixture of Japanese swordsmanship and Chinese kung fu) worked after only seeing a couple of techniques from it.

The Demon Sword's blade then shone with an ethereal light before Kenshin's form changed altogether.

From a 30-year-old man, his body returned to his more youthful 15- to-16-year-old self.

The form he had before he developed the cross-shaped scars. When he was still known as the Hitokiri Battousai. This way, he could engage Enishi the same way he did against any other opponent.

Free of bias. Free of shame or guilt.

"SHUUGEKI TOU SEI! (KICKING SWORD RUSH!)"

This technique of Enishí's involved hitting his opponent from below then kicking the blunt side of his sword at the last second to maximize damage.

Thusly, Kenshin answered the technique back with his own, "SOU RYU SEN! (TWIN DRAGON FLASH!)"

"KAISHI TOU SEI! (BAYONET SWORD RUSH!)"

As for the Bayonet Sword Rush, it was a follow-up whirling counterattack or riposte involving Enishi putting the hilt of his sword against his opponent's sword to add momentum to his pivoting swing.

However, Kenshin had a similar counterstrike technique like that as well in the form of "RYU KAN SEN! (DRAGON WRAP FLASH!)"

"SHO HA TOU SEI! (PALM BREAK SWORD RUSH!)"

From the Jodan Stance, Enishi swept his sword starting from over his head down to the ground. Afterwards, he then placed the palm of his hand on the sword's blunt side to push it forward at full force.

The answer to this move that resembled the Dragon Hammer Flash was the "RYU SHO SEN! (RISING DRAGON FLASH!)", which was the natural Ryu Tsui Sen counter that doubled as a two-handed sword block wherein the sword was held by its handle and tip with either hand.

"CHOU TEN TOU SEI! (UP-AND-DOWN SWORD RUSH!)"

This was Wattoujutsu's version of the Ryu Sho Sen. It allowed Enishi to leap upwards using his sword as his pole vault then attack from the air by pulling his sword towards him by its hilt cord immediately after jumping.

Kenshin drew out the fearsome technique with a feinted Ryu Tsui Sen only to do the "RYU KAN SEN ARASHI! (DRAGON WRAP FLASH STORM!) at the last second, the multi-hit forward somersault sword strikes catching Yukishiro off-guard.

"Ugh!" Enishi landed bad on his ankle, his knees buckling from the force of the centrifugal strikes, the chainsaw-like windmill of strikes drawing a fine mist and squall of blood. "Damn you, Battousai...!"

Kenshin cut Enishi's cursing short with a jarring punch to his jaw.

Battousai Himura had a Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu answer to every one of the white-haired young man's Wattoujutsu techniques. He took advantage of Enishi's barrage of hateful, unfocused strikes with clinical precision.

The fact that Himura didn't realize who exactly he was fighting against until the last second helped him figure out the proper counters to Enishi's Wattoujutsu early on and even bury him right inside the Kamui Mountain itself. Albeit temporarily.

Kenshin imagined he'd have a harder time with the kung fu master swordsman were he distracted by his guilt for killing Tomoe and knowing Enishi's identity from the start.

"Is that all you've got, Battousai?" demanded the scuffed-up, bleeding-from-the-mouth Enishi, who spat away blood as his veins—no, his very nerves themselves—hypertrophied or thickened enough to become visible underneath his skin with vascular density.

This was his Kyokei Myaku (Nerves of Insanity) in action.

***

It was bedlam at the Military Base of Okushiri.

Ten things were happening at once, and barely anyone could keep up.

More soldiers were deployed to rescue the fallen and suppress the invaders.

They waged war against the Onmyouji's shikigami, even though many of them couldn't even see the grim reaper familiars.

They had to use their special thermal goggles to detect and shoot the enemy, but neither bullets nor grenades worked on them.

Botan had more luck dissipating the strange creatures into the ether, but that was because it was part of her job description as a soul reaper.

She did double duty in casting her healing and reiki-replenishing spells on Yahiko, Sanosuke, and Kuwabara while at the same time defeating her share of scythe-wielding reapers created from wayward earthbound spirits infected with the Chojin's jaki.

Also, the bodies were really hitting the floor now. Not due to the Kenshingumi (they were basically all ghosts) or their Reikai Tantei comrade falling into a dead faint.

It was because the vampire (or perhaps succubus) Yumi bit the necks and absorbed the blood of all the nearest JSDF soldiers to power her Kyuuketsuki Kakuto Ryu.

As for Gatekeeper Itsuki, he and Kuwabara were having a portal contest of sorts. He kept making portals while Kazuma kept slicing them apart.

Regardless, it took much longer for Yahiko to seal the power of the Chojin, the borrowed ocean of jaki overflowing with immense pressure from within gleeful Sadojima.

"TSUI GAMI...!? (HAMMER OF GOD...!?)"

Myojin's attempt at the sword-breaking, jaki-neutralizing Hammer of God was thwarted with a simple yet shuddering one-handed scythe swipe that belied Houji's actual physical strength.

"So you intend to beat me at this level of strength?" asked a smug Sadojima before releasing a pillar of jaki that made Yahiko kneel before him, as though bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Yahiko felt like he had plunged deep underwater, drowning in negative energy as the oceanic water pressure increased further and further the deeper he went.

Myojin grunted, grit his teeth, and rose up against the harsh and dense waves of pure jaki that bore down on him in waves, his green aura of reiatsu resisting the crushing force of the Overfiend's distant yet overbearing presence.

Like a black sun whose dark rays and heat reached the earth all the way from space despite being millions of miles away.

It was a tug of war between the Chojin's power boosts and Yahiko's neutralization skill.

Thanks to Botan and Kaoru, the ghost of Sanosuke had healed up and reenergized himself with reiki enough to summon his signature Zanbatou (Horse-Chopping Sword) again at long last.

He had more bandages than usual, half of which were spirit seals from Botan that kept his ectoplasm from escaping his ghostly form.

"ZANBATOU ATE! (ZANBATOU DISTANCE HIT!)"

Sanosuke's Zanbatou Ate, based on Anji Yukyuzan's Tou Ate (Bladed Distance Hit), created a landslide aimed at Houji, who shielded himself with his shikigami ghouls.

"ZANKUU ZANBATOU ATE! (ZANBATOU VACUUM DISTANCE HIT!) "

As for his Zankuu Zanbatou Ate, Sanosuke aimed it at the ensuing Blood Wind air funnel that the courtesan in revealing clothing fired off at him.

The last thing Sano expected was to use that 12-foot longsword against Shishio's lover, the non-fighter known as Yumi.

***

Enishi did a low split-legged crouch, only to charge with an onslaught of strikes instead of doing another Zettousei when he saw Kenshin sink his stance low in kind instead of taking his bait and attacking with the Hirameki.

"SENRAN TOU SEI! (WAR SWORD RUSH!)"

"RYU SOU SEN! (DRAGON NEST FLASH!)"

Sparks flew everywhere as though they were in a steel mill or foundry as they parried and attacked each other with impunity, their swords crossing and chipping at their edges.

Blood and ectoplasm stained the ground soon afterward from both combatants.

Enishi moved faster than Kenshin could react. Like an unswattable fly. Or perhaps a whole swarm of flies. Locusts. Bees. Wasps, even. A plague of wasps. His twitch muscles able to react to attacks or counterattacks by lightning-fast reflexes.

It was like dealing with Soujiro Seta's Shukuchi all over again. Himura couldn't even predict Enishi's strikes by reading his sakki (bloodlust) because he was exuding hatred and killer instinct at all times. At every waking moment.

Like the polar opposite of the Heaven Sword. It was no different to deal with someone who lacked bloodlust compared to someone who always exuded bloodlust. There was no sudden spike of killer instinct you could use to read an opponent's moves.

This forced Kenshin to take the initiative and jump high into the air in order to become the aggressor for a change, even if only to draw out a counterstrike that he could then counter.

"RYU TSUI SEN! (DRAGON HAMMER FLASH!)"

Yukishiro countered by also leaping vertically before Kenshin could drop him with the Dragon Hammer Flash. Afterwards, at the point where his jump force was equal to Earth's gravity, he jumped even further, thus essentially doing a double jump or what was known to basketball players as an airwalk.

"SHIKKU TOU SEI! (SLASHER SWORD RUSH!)"

Kenshin's youtou (demon sword) and Enishi's watou (Chinese-style katana) clashed hard against each other, their impactful vibrations strong enough to shatter steel. However, their mystical swords forged from spirit energy and the life force of their very souls both held true.

However, Battousai or no Battousai, the scarless Kenshin realized he had to take Yukishiro out before his own feelings of despair, depression, shame, and remorse got the better of him.

For even now, he felt like he deserved to get hit by every last strike from Enishi for the sin of accidentally killing his ex-wife in an attempt to rescue her from her kidnapper.

"KUZU RYU SEN! (NINE-HEADED DRAGON FLASH!)"

"UGH!"

Like water crushing rock over time, the constant barrage of counters from earlier finally took its toll on Enishi, leading to several lapses of attention that the Battousai took advantage of to great effect.

Kenshin's persistence paid off, with that last multi-hit attack finally landing on his nerve-filled brother-in-law.

He then prepared to do a supersonic noutoujutsu (sword-sheathing technique). The same one he used to disable the super sensitive hearing of Usui Uonuma's Shingan.

"RYU MEI...! (DRAGON CRY...!)"

Kenshin stopped short of doing his high-pitched sheathing technique when he saw a familiar young woman with jet-black hair, doe eyes, a white kimono, and purple shawl appear out of the half-burnt forest.

She brought with her a nostalgic, heartbreaking scent.

"T-Tomoe...?!" stuttered Kenshin before Enishi's Watou ended up stabbing him right in his chest, on the same wound made by the Zettousei that got him earlier.

The pair of scars on his left cheek reappeared. Bleeding with fresh blood (or, in his case, ectoplasm).

***

Back at the Okushiri Military Base...

The Blood Wind dissipated from the strength of Sanosuke's vacuum slash, but Yumi herself blocked the wind pressure with her open, glowing-red umbrella serving as her shield.

Ah, yes. The Blood Wind.

The double-edged, energy-sapping red tornado created from the heat of the spirit energy it stole and the coldness of an injured body that was losing blood.

However, this woman somehow managed to do Blood Winds without the need to be injured. Or perhaps the hole in her chest served as her injury?

Sagara originally thought it was one of Rando's ultimate moves, only to remember something about him stealing techniques. So this energy-sapping technique was actually her move, wasn't it?

Regardless, what was a desperation move for Rando was a normal move for her. It all made sense now. Or at least that part did.

"How the hell did you get superpowers too, lady?" Sano demanded to Yumi. "You even went so far as to change yourself into a vampire! You really are something else!"

"Stop acting so friendly around me, you boorish lout," said Komagata to Sagara with half-lidded eyes, parrying his probing zanbatou stab from more than 12 feet away with her closed umbrella that doubled as her sword. "You should've stayed as a ghost in the Spirit World. You'll regret crossing paths with us again after a hundred years, Sagara Sanosuke."

Sano left his cumbersome giant sword behind, charged unimpeded, and backhanded the woman. "Nothing personal, Neechan. We can't let you or your psycho boyfriend run amok again in this era either."

"...Bastard! You dare hit a lady?! Youki Duantoutai! (Spirit Guillotine!)" Yumi reeled from the slap that caught her by surprise but then kept Sanosuke at bay with the Spirit Guillotines.

"...Son of a bitch! Rando stole that move from you too?!" said Yahiko before breaking the paper-thin waves of demon energy with "Men (Head)" strikes from the Fire Stance and flying skyward with the God in Heaven technique.

"Not exactly," Yumi chatted with a nonchalant smirk. "I stole some of Rando's moves myself in exchange for the moves he stole from me. Tit-for-tat."

As for Sanosuke, his follow-up attempt at chopping Komagata in half with his 12-foot sword led to it getting blasted full of huge holes care of Itsuki. This made the zanbatou look like a macroscopic slice of grey Swiss cheese.

The scattershot blasts responsible for Sano's predicament originated from a gun attached to Itsuki's right arm. It shot out miniature black holes the size of pinholes but had event horizons the size of bowling balls or bigger. They ate up any type of matter nearest them.

It was a (literal) handgun with black holes as its bullets that the Gatekeeper developed through the help of Shinobu Sensui's Kazuya personality.

Itsuki's Black Hole Gun also ate up chunks of Sano's ghostly flesh whole.

"GUUAAAHH!"

The Gatekeeper had taken advantage of Sanosuke's moment of hesitation in killing Yumi. Sano remembered mid-swing how she had originally died by Shishio's hand and then had her corpse burn along with his in a sudden unintended funeral pyre.

Meanwhile, as the flying Myojin attacked Yumi from above, Botan attacked from below. She flew on her oar mere inches from the ground before getting off her ride and using her forward momentum to smash her paddle right into the vampire. She then let the more athletic Kaoru inside her do the rest.

Using jaki and youki together, the succubus imbued her foldable fan and her closed umbrella with enough blood-red energy to stop the oar cold with a cross-block. She then unfurled her umbrella in time to also prevent Yahiko's Ryu Tsui Sen from hitting her noggin.

From this close proximity, she then used her Inner Blood Turmoil to absorb her attackers' spirit energy unto herself, sapping the two of their reiki and making their souls flicker and fade.

Neither the living nor the dead were safe from this vampire queen.

***

"GOU TSUI TOU SEI! (FALLING BLADE SWORD RUSH!)" screamed Enishi after impaling the distracted Kenshin in the chest.

The Falling Blade Sword Rush allowed the white-haired martial artist to pin Battousai at last, lifting him high up and over his head with his sword and upper-body strength.

"At last. At long last. You're going to die, Battousai! You scum! You criminal! You took away everything from me! Now I will return the favor and take away everything from you! This is my Jinchu!"

The Guardian of the Youtou Shinnoken grunted and coughed, his eyes unable to tear themselves away at the visage and silhouette of his ex-wife Tomoe Yukishiro.

Red tears streamed down his cheeks and bloodstained scar.

"T-Tomoe? I-Is that really you?" he mumbled in disbelief, as though not even noticing Enishi's watou inside of him.

He was no longer Hitokiri Battousai (Battousai the Manslayer). Instead, he transformed back to Rurouni Kenshin (Kenshin the Vagabond).

"Tomoe" then told Enishi with an old man's deep voice, "My apologies. This is the best help I can give you for now. That damn Okashira stole all of the jaki that the Chojin gave me and sealed me and my precious Iwanbos away with it, turning the energy into solidified reiatsu."

"You did splendidly, Gein," said Enishi, who smiled for once. He couldn't face the reanimated corpse of his elder sister eye-to-eye, though. "Now please take that puppet away. I don't want you to soil my sister's memory with it."

Kenshin went pale. He'd been duped by one of Gein's puppets. However, his trickery paid off. He didn't feel like hurting Tomoe's little brother any longer.

"Did you know what I went through to get to this moment, Battousai? As an orphaned boy, I ate human flesh in the battlefield to survive. I was adopted by a rich couple, only for me to kill them because I hated how happy they were. I ended up becoming an arms dealer using their wealth for good measure. I then found out you already died, which sapped me of my will to live. Only to be reborn in this era after I found out you became the Demon Sword's guardian."

Enishi dragged Kenshin's bloody (or ectoplasmic) body all over the forest at the foot of Mt. Kannon, savoring the moment before pulling his sword out and stomping on the Battousai's bleeding wound for good measure.

"I'm not sure whether I should wield your damn sword myself or just destroy you along with that sword. Oh well. It doesn't matter. You could die a thousand deaths and it won't bring back my sister. Even after I died, I couldn't find her anymore. I've lost her forever. All that's left is to make you feel the despair I felt when you stole her away from me."

***

Back at the Okushiri Military Base...

Chaos continued. Fires broke out everywhere.  The wind howled like wolves to the moon. The base crumbled and turned into shambles. It was Hell on Earth.

Hell in Hokkaido.

Komagata's Inner Blood Turmoil created her own version of reiatsu—her youki mixed with the Kenshingumi's reiki, the blood of the soldiers she fed on, and the Chojin's jaki—before releasing that pent-up energy towards Yahiko in the form of the "BLOOD FIRE WAVE!" projectile.

However, thinking fast on her feet, Botan purified the surplus of jaki around them then used it to replenish the reiki she and Myojin lost from being in contact with Yumi.

'Wow. She's doing the thing! The same thing Urameshi did when he got hold of the Meikai's crystal ball thingy,' thought Kuwabara. 'She's purifying jaki into reiki!'

Again, Botan used spirit bandages that doubled as spiritual energy seals, acting more like a priestess than Hinageshi the Shrine Maiden or Houji the Onmyouji.

"Nice one, Tanuki-chan!" said Yahiko. "I mean, thank you, Botan."

Botan smiled at the samurai boy. "You're welcome. Now go get 'em."

'This woman is seriously getting on my nerves,' thought Yumi while eyeing the ferry-girl whose astral body housed two souls instead of just one.

A rejuvenated Myojin then did the sword-breaking "TSUI GAMI!" to neutralize the Blood Fire Wave and the pinhole-sized black holes that Itsuki's sneaky Kazuya personality shot right into his heart and head with the Black Hole Gun.

The samurai kid kept moving forward, practically swimming in the thick of "it", with "it" being the Chojin's ocean of jaki.

Meanwhile, Houji frowned, his arms crossed. 'This goddamn brat! For Chojin's sake, he sure is persistent.'

He thought that the Chojin allowing him more access to his boundless negative energy—enough jaki to, quite frankly, revive the long-dead kingdom of Meikai (Nether World)—was sufficient to neutralize the neutralizer.

However, Houji's jaki output remained relatively low and it even started dwindling.

Like opening your water main at full capacity yet still ending up with less water than you expected when filling up your bathtub. Defying the very will of the Overfiend himself.

'The boy is starting to get better control of his neutralization powers, isn't he?' the Onmyouji thought, tapping his scythe's handle to the ground impatiently.

To Yumi and Itsuki, he only had one command. "Kill him."

Yumi then made it rain blood like the Battousai would back in the Bakumatsu.

A literal rain of blood poured down on them, but each droplet contained razor-sharp scalpels. A bloody rain that cut you apart in order to induce a thicker bloodbath afterwards. It pelted the ground like suppressive fire from a machine gun.

She aptly named the technique, "Bloody Rain."

It was the bloodsucker's way of creating the energy-absorbing Blood Wind without having to sacrifice all the plasma that she had already drained from her other victims.

"I don't know who you are, lady, but you leave that boy alone!" said Kuwabara, who finally had time to intervene.

***

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the island...

Yusuke Urameshi had actually been in a punching match with Toguro Ototo all this time.

Right in the middle of Okushiri Island, in fact. Along the Tsurikake River.

Instead of playing with the percentages of his power, the Younger Toguro instead went all out from the start, displaying 100% of his full strength.

'His B-Level strength,' was Yusuke's unsaid sentiment. He recalled how easily he manhandled the A-Level Rando earlier now that he wasn't faced with any distractions or dirty tactics.

So dealing with Toguro should be a cakewalk now, right?

In kind, Urameshi himself released his first pair of Spirit Cuffs. Just like the good ol' days, they ended up in a slugfest that turned the peaceful river into roiling rapids from the shockwaves of their punches.

"You've struggled in every encounter you've faced with the Chojin's forces so far yet won every time," said the Younger Toguro. "Why is that?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, man," said Yusuke before blasting the gigantic hulking grey behemoth before him with the "SHOT GUN!" technique, bombarding him with the purest of reiki bullets.

The vascular and muscular Toguro pressed on, healing the missing pieces of his flesh instantly like his older brother would.

An impressive feat a power level or two ago. To Yusuke, it had somehow become old hat. Any S-Level worth their salt should be able to regenerate fast enough as long as they had an abundance of spirit or demon energy inside them.

"I took on Rando, Souther (Xinhai), Suzaku, the blind guy (Usui), and the rest of the Chojin's New Ten Swords fair and square. All I'm doing now is killing time and keeping you from ruining Kurama's plans to take your new gang out. Right until your big bad boss, the Chojin, shows up."

Toguro's eyes narrowed behind his shades. 'His reiki is... overflowing. It almost reminds me of the Chojin's own jaki. Immeasurable.'

Yusuke dodged the Shi Dan (Finger Flip Bullets) by reflex even though he had a feeling he could survive direct hits from Toguro's unnaturally strong finger flicks at this point in time.

It was a B-Level against an S-Level (albeit one who was holding his strength back), after all.

The Shi Dan were even more powerful than the strongest human punches, capable of blasting through concrete, but against Urameshi's wealth of spirit energy, he doubted that they'd even penetrate his skin.

Even with his powers sealed, he teetered from being a high A-Level to a low S-Level.  

'Are you hiding your present power level, Toguro? Is your 100% form not your full power?' Urameshi thought.

There was just no way that the likes of Rando, Xinhai, Usui, Saito, or Suzaku would end up stronger than the Toguro Ototo himself.

Then again, while it took Toguro 50 years to reach B-Level, it took only 10 years for Sensui to reach S-Level. Meanwhile, it took less than 3 years for Yusuke to surpass them both and take on a centuries-old S-Level archdemon, Yomi, to the brink of defeat.

To Toguro, Urameshi asked, "What happened to you deciding to stay in Hell for 100 million years to atone for all the crimes you've committed? Were you plucked from Hell by the Chojin and forced to work for him? Answer me, Toguro!"

"...We're not so different, you and I."

"OH, COME ON! Not this tired cliché again!" the teenaged living warhead told off the demonized human strongman in between bone-crushing punches.

He didn't want to hear such things from someone much weaker than him.

***

The veiny (actually nervy) Enishi got talkative all of a sudden, Kenshin realized.

His life story was as unfortunate as the vagabond expected. Maybe even more so. So he even killed a family after he was given a new lease in life? How much of a monster had he become?

This was a lot for Himura to take in. He could barely breathe right now; much less digest Yukishiro's words.

Meanwhile, Enishi snarled in remembrance of the things he'd been through. The people he killed. The opportunities of happiness he turned his back on in favor of a century-old grudge.

The innocents he murdered in order to harden his heart enough to take on a monster like the Battousai. When he died, he resisted the reincarnation cycle for so long, hoping against hope he'd find Himura's soul in the afterlife and drag him to Hell along with him, torturing him for a million years.

However, his chance had finally arrived only a few decades ago. He reentered the reincarnation cycle and avoided becoming an insect or a slug, getting instead the body of a Chinese boy with his memories of the past as a Japanese man intact somehow.

He then trained his body in martial arts, went to prison more than a few times, became a career criminal, and climbed the ranks of organized Chinese crime known as The Triad (what the Shanghai Arms Dealers eventually developed into a hundred years down the line).

In fact, until a few couple of years ago, Enishi occupied the position of Dragon Head that his protégé, Feng Xinhai, currently had. He had a Chinese name himself, but he long ago abandoned that identity in order to completely become Enishi Yukishiro.

He dedicated himself into becoming what he was in his past life and more.

It was because the Chojin himself reawakened his soul's past memories for the purpose of taking down Kenshin Himura.

Under the guidance of the Chojin and his reformed Shin Juppon Gatana, he even learned how to use his spiritual powers on top of reviving the lost martial arts of Wattoujutsu. He studied the Japanese language.

He began slaying demons himself by helping fund technology that linked the Demon World to the Human World with the money he made by being the Triad Dragon Head.

And now, while serving under Tenro the Demon-Slayer's Yakuza Family as one of his enforcers, he finally crossed paths with the man who stole his happiness a hundred years ago.

His revenge, his Jinchu, was literally a hundred years in the making.

"I will kill you now and then the rest of your friends afterwards. I'll break apart the Demon Sword or steal it for myself. Become its new master. From there, in the Spirit World, I will also hunt your ghost and kill you again until all memory of you is erased. Suffer like I did. Suffer for eternity, Battousai!"

Something stirred inside Kenshin when he heard those words. It was one thing for Enishi to swear to kill him. However, what did the rest of his comrades have to do with his revenge? Was he really going to kill the Kenshingumi or even the Reikai Tantei and the Oniwabanshu all in the name of his Jinchu?

Just as Enishi prepared to finish Himura off, a shinigami flew between them like a bolt from the blue.

The woman who sported a black kimono and raven hair zeroed in not on Enishi and Kenshin but instead on the Tomoe puppet of the Puppet Master.

'Ah, I remember her,' thought the Guardian of the Demon Sword. He met that death goddess before while assisting the training of Sanosuke and Yahiko when they first arrived in the Human World.

From his limited interactions with the shinigami, Kenshin surmised that she mainly did research work for Koenma Daio, not unlike the child inspector Sayaka.

'Ayame, was it? She's the shinigami that Kurama assigned to the Southeast Quadrant of Okushiri. Did she follow us all the way here?'

***

Yusuke wanted to end the fight with Toguro using one gigaton punch or one Chou Rei-Gan (Mega Spirit Gun), but he held back. Kept his cool.

He wanted to bet on a "maybe".  As in, "Maybe Toguro is holding back and is about to show me something more amazing than 100% of his power".

Otherwise, Urameshi would've already blasted Toguro back to Hell where he belonged and had a 100 million year sentence to serve. From there, the teenager would've waited for the Chojin or someone to arrive and force him use 100% of his power instead.

Finishing this fight early presented too much of a risk. Like eating an unripe fruit or something. Besides which, if Yusuke went all out, he'd wipe out several mountain ranges and riverbanks off of the map.

But maybe he was risking hundreds of thousands of lives over his own selfish whims.

'Fine. I'll push a little harder, then.'

The ensuing "REI-KOU-DAN! (SPIRIT WAVE BULLET!)" that fissured the surrounding ground and threatened to break the world in half was mostly absorbed by Younger Toguro's beefy body.

Toguro's 100% form before might instead be his 000.1% now. Maybe he'd been training all this time in Hell. Training from Hell.

Or maybe this was all wishful thinking on Urameshi's part now that he had outgrown his boogeyman from his past.

Yusuke put his hip into his last punch, manhandling the "ultimate" form of Toguro that earlier on threw him around like a rag doll the first time they fought.

"You want to rise to your greatest potential, but unfortunately you've already been there and done that and more. You've become too powerful," Toguro said after fixing his twisted neck that had his head staring straight behind him.

"You're not somehow begging for mercy, are you?" asked Yusuke as he hit another bone-crushing uppercut to Toguro's jaw.

"...Nothing challenges you anymore, but you don't want to sever your attachment to this world of weaklings."

Toguro flexed and did a full-powered tackling punch with enough force to move or even obliterate mountains. Alas, this version of Yusuke ate mountains for breakfast ever since achieving S-Level during his fight against Sensui.

This was nothing to him. Drop a building on him, and he'd wonder if it was raining.

He hated to think in such a way, but to him fighting Toguro now was akin to fighting Kuwabara. It didn't help that the behemoth fought straightforwardly and without trickery, unlike Xinhai and Rando.

"You honestly sound pathetic now, Toguro. What happened to you? Keiko can hit harder than that. Put your hips into it!"

But nothing major really happened to Toguro after dying back in the Ankoku Bujutsukai (Dark Martial Arts Tournament). It was Urameshi who had changed.

Any of the current roster of Roku Youkai (Six Demons) could take him on and turn him into roadkill, to be honest.

Toguro's form doubled or even tripled in size. He was now doing his "100% of 100%" technique that had him stake his very soul's life force in order to unleash his fullest potential.

However, his fullest potential ended up just B-Plus in the end. Not even at A-Level.

'Quit messing around and go 1,000% power or something already, Toguro!' Yusuke inwardly begged. But that never happened. He kept dealing with a Toguro who could barely make him flinch.

"In order to continue to live the lie you call your life, you're someone strong pretending to be weak so you could fit in with the rest of the weaklings."

"Stop yammering! I'm more impressed with your big mouth than any of your punches!"

Yusuke did his signature finger gun pose and focused his ocean of reiki at a single point of his index finger, gathering all that limitless energy into one concentrated shot.

"Great fighters refuse to lose, but you refuse to win just to get back that feeling and exhilaration of conquering something greater than you. So what do you do now that you're in a world where nothing is greater than you?"

"Jeez. Shut up already."

Yusuke sighed. If Toguro really was going to unleash a new superpower on him, he would've done so by now. Meanwhile, he himself hadn't even worked up a sweat.

Was this some sort of long-con, "Sun Tzu's Art of War" deal? Was Toguro hiding his power level like he always had, using only a small percentage of his potential? Or was this indeed his limits after his defeat in the Dark Tournament?

"Maybe you're right. Maybe I have been a little careless in my fights lately. However, in the end, I kept winning anyway. So who cares? It's my curse, I know. REI-GAN!"

***

Back at the foot of Mt. Kannon...

Ayame the Shinigami grabbed hold of the corpse puppet of Gein and cut off its spiritual connection with the mad scientist using her reaper powers.

She then said to Enishi, "There's no way your sister is smiling down on you in heaven! Not while you're doing something as terrible as this, stalking Himura-san for decades! A whole century!"

Enishi scowled at the impudent ferry-girl. How dare she say such things to him.

"What do you know? How can you possibly know the pain I've been through? The pain that my sister and her fiancé suffered from? You're nothing but a stranger! You have nothing to do with me!"

Kenshin tried standing up, but Enishi kicked his chest wound and pinned him down with a foot stomp. "And as for you, stay down! I'm not done with you yet!"

Yukishiro was about to punch Koenma's ferry-girl away when she chanted an incantation that led to the body double of his sister Tomoe to frown at him and cry tears of blood.

"Don't you hear it? Don't you hear the cries of despair of your dearly departed sister Tomoe from a hundred years ago? The last thing she wants to see is you suffering or making everyone suffer along with you!"

Enishi shook and shuddered before he himself screamed in anguish, screaming until his throat became ragged. Clutching his chest at that baleful look that rocked him to his very core.

"Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut up, SHUT UP! Enough of your lies, Reikai! I don't believe any of them for a second!

However, he couldn't for the life of him kill even a puppet of his sister. Any young woman who reminded him of his sister, he couldn't bring himself to kill.

He damn well tried to though, his hatred rising. His cognitive dissonance assuring him these were all lies. That his sister had wanted to kill Battousai all along to avenge her fiancé's death.

That the rumor of how Battousai pledged to not kill ever since he killed Enishi's sister was just a rumor.

That Enishi hadn't wasted his multiple chances at a new lease on life for nothing.

He slashed the Tomoe corpse puppet apart with the Sho Ha Tou Sei, his own tears flowing down as he did so. Nauseated by the act, he moved away and puked soon after.

Even though she wasn't the real Tomoe.

'I have to do this. I have to destroy all their lies!'

He had waited for so long and come so far. In the end, it should still matter, right? If it didn't matter then what was the point of all this?

It was all Battousai's fault. He was the one who ruined his life. He was the one who forced him to suffer like this. Everything was perfect until he came along.

Even in the afterlife, Himura haunted him.

"Himura Battousai must die! Suffer! Die a thousand deaths! A million deaths! I won't rest until he has suffered as much as I have and MORE!"

Yukishiro prepared to do his ultimate attack on Kenshin, only for Ayame to get in his way.

This looked mighty familiar.

He hesitated for a whole second in cleaving the shinigami in half. Here was another woman the same age as his sister. Everywhere he looked, such maidens like her kept reminding him of what he had lost.

A second was an eternity in a fight, though.

Kenshin rose up and blocked Enishi's ensuing sword strike even though, unbeknownst to him, his brother-in-law intended to miss Ayame by a mile anyway.

Himura's heart swelled at doing so. Here and now, the vagabond was able to do the sword block that he failed to do against Shishio.

Had he done the same block against his hitokiri successor, would he have survived their mutually assured destruction? Had he not given up back then and decided to fight on, would he have been able to come back to Tokyo with the rest of the Kenshingumi? With Miss Kaoru?

Kenshin really wished he had fought on instead of giving up and dying along with Shishio. That he did.

"...I will fight to the end to protect those I hold dear! That is my truth!"

Himura's resolve in defeating Enishi finally hardened after wavering for so long, his cross-shaped scar seemingly glowing with a red bioluminescent light.

The crouching tiger faced off against the unhidden dragon one more time.

"KOFUKU ZETTOUSEI! (CROUCHING TIGER SEVERING SWORD RUSH!)"

"AMAKAKERU RYU NO HIRAMEKI! (HEAVENS GLIDING DRAGON FLASH!)"

Last time, the tiger was able to cut deep wounds into the flying serpent even though it was driven deep underground by sharp dragon claws.

Would the tiger finish what it had started? Or would the dragon have something hidden behind its upward flight into the heavens?

***

Kazuma attempted to create a portal to serve as a shield over Yahiko, only for Itsuki to seal that portal with Kazuya's Black Hole Gun, the twin rips in space-time canceling each other out.

However, Kuwabara expected the maneuver and teleported right in front of Itsuki in order to slash apart the firearm at pointblank range with the Jigen Tou.

"Motherfucker...!" shouted the foul-mouthed Kazuya possessing Itsuki's body, grasping his damaged handgun.

Itsuki then awoke Sensui's George personality in order to gain access to a hyperdimensional gun vault filled with Tommy guns, pistols, Desert Eagles, mini guns, shotguns, AK-47 rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers, and bazookas.

He had actually restocked his gun collection by stealing many of the armaments and ammunition available in the very military base they were invading right then and there. Knowing full well that ordinary guns were more useful against living, flesh-and-blood beings like Kuwabara versus the solidified souls of shinigami and ghosts from the past.

In retrospect, this made Houji's efforts to shoot Yahiko, a ghost, with a gun moot. However, Itsuki at least had a backup plan.

"I'll kill you all!" said Hitoshi. "I will purify the Human World by getting rid of all the humans!" His shtick was that he wished for human extinction.

However, before he could use one magazine or clip from his guns, he got pummeled to submission by a revived Sanosuke Sagara.

Botan had healed up the wounds of Sano's ghost yet again with purified jaki turned into reiki. He then got the jump on the green-haired youkai through brute strength instead of fancy teleportation techniques.

'Her again?' thought Houji, noticing how Battousai's woman served the same function as he did with the rest of the Shin Ju. 'That Reikai shinigami is making this mission of ours needlessly difficult.'

Furthermore, every attempt Itsuki made to get away from Sagara was blocked by Kuwabara, who himself punched the demon back into portals of his own that redirected him towards Sano's waiting fists and "FUTAE NO KIWAMI!"

"All right, enough of this!" declared Yumi, who shifted from targeting Yahiko to focusing her Spirit Guillotines and Blood Fire Waves at the Kamiya Kasshin Ryu kendoist turned shinigami Botan/Kaoru Kamiya.

Kaoru assisted Botan in deploying evasive maneuvers against the succubus, with her using the reiki-imbued boat paddle to bat and parry away the projectiles headed towards her before flying away from the bloodsucker.

She then ended up blocking the scythe of the unskilled but jaki-empowered Houji, which kept her from taking flight and escaping. "Keep still like a good girl."

Finally, a black hole appeared where her chest used to be. It was actually a dimensional rift that sucked the ferry-girl's ghostly flesh and ectoplasm away.

Gatekeeper Itsuki then closed the portal that mortally wounded Botan/Kaoru with a wave of his hand.

The ferry-girl's jaw opened, clenched, and froze at a silent scream, her red eyes rolling upwards until only her eye whites were visible.

"KAORUUU! BOTAAAAAN! NOOOO!" said Yahiko with an anguished, bloodcurdling shriek of his own.

Itsuki's mouth curved upwards in curiosity. 'What will you do now, Samurai-san? Is this enough to break you into pieces like what happened to my dearest Shinobu (Sensui) when he saw the Black Chapter Tapes?'

***

Back at the foot of Mt. Kannon...

As Enishi Yukishiro's heart wavered, Kenshin Himura's resolve hardened. Tempered by his will to protect those around him.

The Kofuku Zetsu Tou Sei should've countered the Heavens Gliding Dragon Flash by avoiding the first slash completely and countering the second slash with a well-time riposte, unfazed or even aided by the void created by the first slash.

The Zettousei was seemingly designed to break apart or deconstruct the Hirameki, as demonstrated earlier by Kenshin barely surviving it the first time it was used.

It should've halved the effectiveness of the second slash, but by Kenshin drawing the sword low and removing the ground-based leverage of his crouch, Enishi stood no chance.

Kenshin's much faster and stronger Heavens Gliding Dragon Flash hit low to weaken Enishi's strong crouch then hit high with the multiplied centrifugal force of the follow-up second strike of his ougi, the Crouching Tiger Severing Sword Rush buckling under pressure.

Enishi's counter was ultimately overpowered by the much stronger and better applied succession technique.

However, like before, even after his counter was countered by a more experienced, worldlier version of Battousai guarding a powerful demonic sword, he still kept standing.

Sure, Yukishiro shook like a leaf and heaved belabored breaths because his double-edged, hypertrophied Nerves of Insanity multiplied his pain to the point where an ordinary man would've blacked out in a dead faint.

But he wouldn't go down. He refused to go down. He'd rather die than go down.

Whether he was thrown into magma inside a mountain or cut down to oblivion with the Legendary Youtou Shinnoken (Demon Sword: The True Blade), his willpower continued to defy fate and destiny itself.

He braced himself for Battousai to deliver the finishing blow, relying on his twitch reflexes and his thick pulsating nerves that were practically on fire at this point to launch another counter.

Instead, Kenshin told him, "You didn't really mean to raise your sword at Miss Ayame, did you? Cutting down the fake Tomoe puppet to you was like ripping your heart out."

He spat, "What of it, Battousai?! That's just a puppet I tore apart, not my real sister! My sister that you killed!"

"It doesn't matter if the puppet was fake or not. Ripping her apart hurt you at your core. The pain you felt is real."

"DAMN YOU TO HELL! Push me any further, and I'll do the same to the shinigami!"

Himura replied, "Even though you've murdered others because you couldn't stand how happy they were, you hesitated in killing Ayame-dono. She reminded you too much of Tomoe to go through with it, didn't she?"

"DON'T YOU DARE SAY HER NAME, BASTARD! Her murderer has no right to do so!"

"...In the end, what stopped you was your sister. So I ask you the same question you asked me. Is your sister smiling down on you from heaven?"

Delirious, he started having visions.

Visions of his sister taking care of him when he was sick with the flu, sleeping at his bedside. Cooking for him. Taking care of him. Serving as the only family and mother figure that he ever knew.

His revenge against Kenshin was all he had left. All that mattered. His only reason for being, since Battousai robbed him of the original reason for his being. Without this one goal, he'd be nothing.

He could do anything as long as his sister was smiling back at him.

He closed his eyes. All he could see—the face he claimed was a lie made by the Spirit World—was his sister frowning at him with sad eyes full of pity.

The things he'd ignored earlier that bothered him also started making sense.

Why his sister threw herself in between Battousai and the leader of the Yaminobu.

Why his sister stayed with Battousai for so long and even became his wife (being a deep cover agent wasn't enough to explain that away).

Why Battousai vowed never to kill after "easily" killing so many people for such a long time.

'He did that because he felt guilty after killing my sister! And everyone around him! He's a criminal who's celebrated as a hero because he killed during a war when it's 'legal' to do so!'

He opened his eyes. The image of his unhappy, melancholic sister coalesced into Shinigami Ayame's face while bearing the same grim expression with her mouth.

He fell to his knees and broke down bawling. A broken man.

It wasn't the strike from a mystical demonic blade or the most powerful technique of a ghostly guardian from the Bakumatsu that brought him down to his knees.

No. It was him realizing his sister's disapproval of his Jinchu that unraveled his single-minded determination to kill Kenshin and/or make him suffer for an eternity and a day.

Only sheer willpower kept Enishi standing. So when Kenshin broke even that, he had nothing left.

His will to fight went away. All that was left was anguish, despair, and hopelessness.

"Neesan... Neesan...! (Big sis... Big sis...!)"

What was he supposed to do now?

***

To Be Continued...

The main event is about to start, and it's a doozy. Tenro will finally make his appearance to complete the Okushiri Arc!

Ciao, Abdiel

[inuh]

[desmi-v00]

[mr-fujita]

hello! For the detailed RK character thing, it has to be your anti-hero Saito :D

I knew it! I knew you eventually would ask me this about Him ^^ Nothing more than the things I’ve said before, anyway let’s see:

Detailed Character Opinion Meme: Saitou Hajime

What I like about them:  He has principles and refuses to compromise them, unlike a certain trenchcoated ninja we all know and love ( but Aoshi went against his beliefs of right and wrong to win a title that was, ultimately, meaningless as well as denied him). For example, even though he regards the Battousai/Kenshin as an enemy, he fights alongside Kenshin/Battousai for the common good, because he believes that “Aku. Soku. Zan” should be upheld, personal rivalries notwithstanding. It takes an honorable person to lay aside their petty hatred in defense of the greater good.

To sum up, Saitou may seem quite evil at first glance, and he is definitely an Anti-hero, but he doesn’t actually fit the criteria for an evil man. He is honorable and has a rigid, and valid moral code that many people agree with and follow. He cares about other people, even though he tries not to show it. That effort not to show it has its purpose, as well, to protect him, and to allow him to act upon his beliefs with the freedom he would not otherwise be allowed. Finally, the fact that he enjoys killing and sometimes seeks out ways to do so is not reason enough alone to believe that he is evil; not only because of that, but also because he tries to prevent himself from acting on those urges, in accordance with rules of behavior and his own moral code. True, he sent Kenshin and Sanosuke on ahead so he could kill Usui, but who would really call it evil to kill Usui?

What I dislike about them: Excuse me?

Favourite moment: After saying that there isn’t a particular scene or moment that is better than other as long as we look at the different contexts. Although a lot of fans believe that the biggest moment was the fight against Kenshin, I prefer to look in another perspective; the moments that we can clearly see his Logical and pragmatic way of thinking. We can pick then several scene/moments. Indeed the Kenshin’s fight was very intense in the ideological part and their speeches were amazing in the beginning. Of course I cannot forget the battle against Usui Uonuma. Where a great opportunity was given to watch His way of thinking, very straight and logical. But in terms of fight skills I need to mention also His appearance in the Jinchuu Arch. For me the best we can see about Mr. Hajime is placed in the battle against Yatsume Mumyōi

(This manga verison is in Portuguese PT-PT)The fight against Usui is probably the best we can extract of his character but the best of both world lies in the Jinchuu arch… If you are a Saitou fan like me and you don’t know about the Jinchuu Arch… then your vision about Mr. Hajime is not completed.

Least favourite moment: The fight against Shishio.

Definitely Watsuki didn’t want to see Mr. Hajime as the main character in this battle against Shishio.:P

We reached the main point of all points. Why Saitou didn’t defeat Shishio when He had the advantage of the “surprise effect”?

The strike by aiming to the forehead of Shishio after destroying a pair of doors with his gatotsu was without doubt, the one that Saitou would perform in a “no failure” moment. Pointing to the forehead while taking your enemy by surprise? yes definitely! is the 99.99% chance of killing your opponent with just one movement! That’s actually the purpose of the gatotsu strike as a variant of the Hirazuki style.

What possible can go wrong? The guy is using a Steal crown… is the 0.01% probability.  Hard to believe that wasn’t researched by Mr. Hajime, but it’s not the main point.

I mean Shishio must at least have lost consciousness during some time and be affected by it. In addition to that, what we should say when Shishio deflected the first gatotsu attack and Mr. Hajime did a lateral movement with the sword and Shihio was able to not only block the strike but hold it with his hands??

yeah… That was the day for Kenshin to win, not to Saitou ruin, again, his show ^^

Anyway, I completely agree that for some reason it’s called Rurouni Kenshin. and there is a reason why I would like so much to see the animation of the Junchuu Arc :)

But for a Saitou-fan perspective that’s my opinion. Seriously or not I have it. The manga and the anime are amazing, but they are even better if Saitou is there.

OTP: Saitou and his wife.

Other ships?

BROTP: Saitou x Cho. I don’t appreciate that much that vibe Sano x Saitou actually (maybe because I just see Saitou’s prespective) But Saitou x Cho is one that I would like to see more often.

NOTP: Saitou x Yumi, Well I guess would be something to be watched, and I guess She would have no problem watching Saitou killing someone in front of her eyes lol.

[sokak]

「志々雄一派」/「英」のイラスト [pixiv]

[i-megumi-takani]

Rurouni Kenshin: The Legend Ends (Saitou vs Usui)

[lazy-wavez]

[winterdragoon]

[apenas-um-rurouni]

[clickchirp]

"And then...my heart really did stop for a moment" 

- Usui

[beautyindissonance]

The Blind Sword of the Juppongatana

[suki-redd]

What the Eye can't see by ~Aiphos-Sender

One of my friends drew this :D It's one of my favorite drawings she's done of RK Saito. So much love <3

On a side note, she drew Usui from memory. She didn't have internet or any sources. Meaning when I lived with her....we watched this fight quite a bit...>_>

[gabriel-gabdiel]

【Draft】Youtou Shinnoken Chapter 54: Living Sin (Part 6)

Sano deals with Karasu, Kurama deals with Rando, and Saito is ganged up on by Xinhai, Itsuki, and Usui.

The original source of this idea comes from Chad Yang. I continued his story idea found here 

The rest of the chapters of my Yuyu Hakusho and Rurouni Kenshin crossover fan fiction are available here and here. Enjoy.

Back at Sanosuke's death match with Karasu...

"SANO!" Kenshin screamed after his friend, his head woozy from all the ectoplasm he'd lost from his... earlier fight. After the smoke cleared, he realized that his Demon Sword had ended up wedged into a stone like a Japanese Excalibur.

The blond Karasu was on his way to retrieve the sword and magnify the jaki he received from the Onmyouji when he noticed that Sagara was charging at him at full speed.

Sanosuke summoned one final zanbatou from what was left of his spirit energy, his ghost body transparent and fading fast.

His reiki then turned blood red, and so did his ectoplasm, making it look like real blood. Ghost's blood.

Bomb after bomb exploded all around him from above and below. Blockbusters. Landmines. Homing bombs made of demon energy floating around him like glowing balloons.

However, he wouldn't go down, his zanbatou holding up like a wrecked car that somehow could still drive forward, slicing through cluster after cluster of military-grade demonic artillery.

He'd gone through worse before when he faced off against the tricky teleporting Itsuki and two Suzaku clones with the help of Aoshi's reincarnation.

"ZANBATOU ATE! ZANKUU ZANBATOU ATE!"

He did his Zanbatou Ate to destroy all the landmines and his Zankuu Zanbatou Ate to blow away the falling blockbusters, the bombs he missed exploding with fire and shrapnel that shredded both him and his horse-chopping sword.

But he kept moving forward. For a change though, Karasu himself charged towards him, his wish to break him apart growing stronger and stronger. His sadistic side rearing its ugly head.

"SARU-SAN!" Karasu's hair glowed and undulated from his youki and the Chojin's jaki like the tendrils of a bioluminescent jellyfish underwater. Or the lit fuses of a box of dynamite.

"KARASU! C'mere, you crow bastard! FIGHT ME LIKE A REAL MAN!"

His zanbatou exploding in sparks and molten steel, the "bloody" yet vengeful spirit of Sano kept tanking hit after hit from the floating energy bomb mines that surrounded the youkai like a cluster of suns that formed into his own Milky Way.

Yet he kept moving. Irresistible. Unfettered. Smiling like a madman. His face a crimson mask.

Due to the decreasing size of his gigantic sword that also served as his shield, Sanosuke began using his fists instead to stave off the galaxy of youki bombs, punching them back at either Karasu or unto each other with the Futae no Kiwami (Dual Extreme).

"FUTAE NO KIWAMI! FUTAE NO KIWAMI! FUTAE NO KIWAMI! AAAH!"

Sano resisted the impact of the resulting explosions on his body by nullifying them with the Kiwami Hazushi (Extremity Release), punching his body on the opposite end of the impact to release enough energy to resist the blasts.

The fires of Karasu's Inferno raged even harder. Yet Sano entered the flames, undaunted. As though he were a fire demon like Hiei who could survive such high temperatures.

Ignoring the explosions from the dense conflagration of S-Level demonic energy that tore his ghostly flesh apart piece by piece, Sagara attempted to punch Karasu's head off with the Dual Extreme, only for Karasu's energy mines to explode on his fist at the same time.

Karasu was beside himself with glee. Savoring the moment. He could practically taste Sano's desperation. The temperature of his explosions reaching an atomic bomb's climax.

Sanosuke screamed in agony, shielding himself with what remained of his melting zanbatou, burning in what seemed like the core of the sun. The Heart of Hell.

"My youki has reached nuclear levels of potential energy. I'll bring your ghost beyond the limits of human suffering. Once I'm through with you, there'll be nothing left to save! All that's going to be left of Okushiri is dust and darkness. You're going straight to hell, Saru-san."

"No. If you're going to take me to hell, I'm dragging you with me! TOU ATE!"

Sagara took the remnants of his zanbatou (about the size of a sword) and stabbed it into the ground, parting the energy mines away like Moses would the Red Sea. This time it around, it was a Red Sea of Fire that parted in two like theater curtains.

The bone-crushing force from the Tou Ate's impact lifted Karasu up into the air. Sano then charged with his crumbling sword, its red-hot metal reduced to the size of a kodachi.

"YOU CAN'T WIN, SARU-SAN!" screamed the haggard Karasu, hurling his energy bombs at Sanosuke, who punched them out into flame and smoke with his ectoplasmic bloody fists and repeated Futae no Kiwami strikes.

In the end, all the fading Sano had left to stab Karasu's chest with was barely two inches of hot metal, which was all that was left of the twelve-foot zanbatou. Enough to injure an ordinary human, but barely a pinprick to a Class-S demon.

"Checkmate, Saru-san!" said Karasu with a smile and sultry eyes.

However, it was still a pinprick to his heart.

"SANJU NO KIWAMI (TRIPLE EXTREME)!"

The Dual Extreme punch using two fists drove the shrapnel right into Karasu's heart before the organ exploded altogether with the third final strike of the Triple Extreme.

"I told you I'm dragging you with me to hell," said Sanosuke with a grin.

A choking and raspy Karasu clutched the bloody hole where his heart used to be, grinning in kind. "So be it. I'll see you in hell."

The Guardian of the Demon Sword finally found his voice after witnessing the slobber knocker of a fight before him. "SANO! NO! GET AWAY FROM HIM! HE'S GONNA EXPLODE...!"

A mushroom cloud formed in Okushiri, giving Kenshin horrid flashbacks of the Second World War. Of the time he almost single-handedly destroyed the Spirit World Barrier with the intention of unleashing youkai into the United States of America in his anger.

However, just as quickly, the cloud disappeared.

Himura looked up, then shielded his eyes from the brightness and hotness above him. Hundreds and thousands of miles away in the atmosphere was an explosion. A second sun of sorts as the other sun set in the horizon. Or what looked like a miniature supernova from up close.

From there, a bandaged Kazuma Kuwabara stood where Karasu used to be, a shining portal closing from behind him.

It took another second for Kenshin to realize that Kazuma tore through the fabric of space-time with his Jigen Tou (Dimensional Sword) in order to teleport the exploding Karasu and his mushroom cloud away from ground zero, letting him explode in the sky like before, in one of their missions.

"Whew. That was a close one. Oh, hi Kenshin!"

"Kuwabara-dono!" called out Kenshin.

"You bastard. You stole my thunder," said a tired but smirking Sano.

Kuwabara harrumphed. "Yeah. Don't mention it, dude. Saving your life from a crazed suicide bomber was no big deal... Whoa! Whoopsie-Daisy!"

As Sanosuke collapsed from exhaustion, Kuwabara caught the fainted street fighter's flickering spirit in his strong arms.

"...By the way, nice fight," the carrot-topped teenager said. "Shine on, you crazy diamond. You won't be a disposable hero today."

He then turned towards Kenshin, who pulled his sword out of the stone.

"We need to act fast, Kenshin. If Kurama's predictions prove true, then Officer Fujita and our whole team may be in trouble!"

***

Youtou Shinnoken: Demon Sword

A Rurouni Kenshin/Yuyu Hakusho Crossover Fan Fiction Story by Chester Castañeda

Original concept by Chad Yang

The Shin Ju's attempt to finish Saito off continues. Also, Kurama has his hands full with... Rando?!

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 materials that are far too many to mention here. Don't sue me please, I'm very poor.

***

Chapter 54: Living Sin (Part 6)

***

Back at Mount Kamui...

"Why are you serving under the Chojin? Or at least one of his minions? What do you get out of it?" asked Hajime Saito, also known as Lieutenant Fujita Goro, to Gatekeeper Itsuki from the Sensui Seven.

"...Because I want to," came Itsuki's non-answer.

"According to my research, by the end of the Sensui Shinobu incident, you took away Sensui's body and soul into your portal. You were never heard from again until now. What changed since then?" Saito asked before falling into his Gatotsu stance and charging.

Itsuki's one open eye glared at the officer. He then hid behind a series of portals to deflect Saito Hajime's Gatotsu back to himself.

From there, Goro Fujita did something only two other people in the youkai's lifetime did to defeat him (one of whom was Daiji Matsudaira).

What did Hajime do? Use Itsuki's portals against him.

Who was the first person to do it? Shinobu Sensui.

In Sensui's case, he kicked a Reshou Kou Kyu Ha (Fissure Kick Crimson Ball Wave) right into Itsuki's back when the demon attempted to deflect the spirit energy ball back to its owner.

In Hajime's case, the ex-Shinsengumi captain feinted a Zeroshiki to the back of Itsuki, tricking the demon into making a portal behind him that led directly to another portal above the policeman's head.

Afterwards, the copper entered the portal atop him in order to end up from behind the one-eyed youkai. He then hit him with a Zeroshiki from his blindside before he could make another portal to shield himself.

The green-haired demon crumpled to the ground, his wound gushing with his demonic blood as his portals disappeared.

The policeman then hit the nail right on the head.

"Sensui was stolen from you, wasn't he?" asked Saito.

"Go to hell, Shinsengumi scum," a voice different from Itsuki's usual dulcet tones spat at Hajime. However, it came from the Gatekeeper's mouth still. Before Saito could continue his line of questioning, a shikigami (familiar) of the Onmyouji appeared before them bearing a sickle.

Not only did Saito have to finish off the familiar in order to keep it from undoing his fatal wound on Itsuki. He also had to avoid both a multi-hit strike from a reemerging Usui Uonuma and a Matoi Izuna (Ground Vacuum Slash) from a recovered Feng Xinhai (Raijuta Isurugi's Chinese reincarnation).

"HYAKKA RYORAN!" shouted Usui after he whirled his Rochin spear with a counterweight into a whirling dervish of strikes and blows, attempting to hit and stab his killer at the same time. His stomach where the Gatotsu Zeroshiki originally hit him a hundred years or so ago rumbled with fire.

Usui made his Tinbe shield even thicker and denser than before to withstand the force of any counterstrike thrust from the Gatotsu. Or rather, his Tinbe memorized the amount of force it received and grew stronger and denser as a result every time.

The dark priest and conduit of the Chojin's boundless jaki also worked overtime to keep the Shin Juppon Gatana (New Ten Swords) alive in their war of attrition with the Reikai Senshi (Spirit World Warriors).

Even Yusuke Urameshi would've had problems with the multi-pronged tactic. However, like with Urameshi, none of it mattered against the strength of a high-class foe.

"!?"

Again, Saito broke through Usui's thicker shield because his initial Ishiki strike to him wasn't even at his full power, his stab leaving a nasty gash on the chest of the blind man who turned his body away at the last minute.

"How the hell did you get so strong, you bastard!?" spat Uonuma.

"Unfinished business from a century ago," answered Saito, who pulled his sword out and did another Zeroshiki, but the Tinbe thickened just in time to block it. "Now tell me what happened to Shishio Makoto after he died and presumably went to hell, Uonuma Usui."

Usui sneered. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

***

Kurama, also known as Shuichi Minamino, was intentionally left behind to serve as the ace up in the Reikai Senshi's sleeve.

The plan was that he'd be briefed of the situation on the ground as their "infantry" attacked the initial wave of Shin Ju. Then he'd relay via the shinigami what the others were supposed to do afterwards.

Like their personal chess master. Or a general in an army.

However, this particular general was also used to fighting in the trenches with the rest of his men.

He was, after all, the one who figured out that Yahiko Myojin's recently discovered ability to nullify ki was the key to defeating the Shin Juppon Gatana's own personal power distributor, the Chojin's Onmyouji.

As Natsuki Shinkai had described, the Shin Ju were akin to a party in a role-playing game, with the Chojin's dark priest serving as their "healer" of sorts during battle. He even directly borrows his dark energy from the Overfiend himself.

Otherwise, the Reikai Senshi and the Shin Juppon Gatana were left at a bit of a stalemate.

Kurama was also the one who used the talents of the Mushiyori Residents (Asato Kido, Yu Kaito, and Mitsunari Yanagisawa) to thwart the plans of the Shin Ju to turn one of their own into a permanent S-Level demon (which was Karasu, by the way).

If he had to hazard a guess, his equivalent in the New Ten Swords was Feng Xinhai, Natsuki's Chinese father and apparently the reincarnation of one of Kenshin's previous enemies, Raijuta Isurugi.

A coward and pretender in his past life, Xinhai managed to become one of the Spirit World's most dangerous foes with his own chess-master mentality.

This was why Shuichi was kind of surprised to see Rando of all the Shin Ju seek him out after the teleporting Kuwabara dropped him off of the shores of Okushiri.

"So Xinhai is sending out his lackey instead of himself to face me?" Kurama asked his fellow redheaded demon, his rose seed at the ready to become a Rose Whip.

Rando replied with his squeaky voice that sounded almost grandmotherly, "I'm no lackey of Xinhai. There's merely a change of plans. The Chojin figured out that Xinhai is no match against you tactics-wise."

"...And somehow you are?" asked Kurama, his voice slipping octaves lower as the prideful youko from inside him sneered at the spider youkai whom Yusuke pummeled into submission earlier on.

Rando chuckled. "And like the Chojin predicted, you can't help but underestimate me. That will be your downfall."

As usual (much to the chagrin of his past partners-in-crime like Hiei and Yomi), Kurama summoned his Rose Whip and did evasive maneuvers while waving around his weapon at Rando to see how he'd react.

He was always the "wait and see" kind of fighter.

Rando reacted in kind, using only his weakest attacks when he was still below Class-B to respond to Kurama's interrogative whiplashes.

Kurama avoided the array of Youki Duantoutai (Spirit Guillotine), Kasho-Happa-Ken (Fireballs), and Zankuu Reppu Jin (Spirit Halo Cutter) that Rando lobbed at him.

Minamino also had the presence of mind to lead the Spirit Guillotines into the webs sticky web of Youki no Ito (Silk Strands) that had bound Yusuke earlier when Rando and him first fought.

It was a simple tactic. Rando planned to catch Kurama by his spider web then blast him with his variety of projectiles.

None of the little imps that Rando summoned could get near Minamino either thanks to his Fuuka Enbu Jin (Wind Petal Waltz Configuration).

However, Rando himself was throwing enough fireballs and vacuum cutters from far away and weaving enough silk webs to keep him from getting bothered by the razor-sharp technique.

For the most part, anyway. He still got scratched up.

Any other Rose Whip strike he couldn't avoid, he blocked with his own Youki Whip or a whip made of demon energy.

"...."

After a minute passed, Kurama switched tactics. He realized that, like with Tsukihito "Game Master" Amanuma, Rando was probably there to keep him occupied rather than serve as a legitimate threat.

'Or maybe Rando is smarter than you give him credit for. This way, he won't have to reveal all his tricks at once,' Kurama told himself off. Or Minamino did to the prideful youko. 'Like how Kenshin once defeated an enemy by evading him until he self-destructed.'

'Nonsense. That's what we're doing to him,' came his youko self's retort.

As Kurama quickened his pace all of a sudden, he did three things at once.

He threw a seed into a wound he had made on Rando's arm earlier that the demon hadn't noticed. He threw another seed into the sands of the beach they were on. He finally grew a Juryo Yozan Ken (Binding Fist of the Demonic Vine) on his right hand while still holding his Rose Whip with his left hand.

Rando avoided the Kagon Retsuzanshi (Rose Whiplash) and used his muscle control to resist getting stabbed by the Juryo Yozan Ken as though he were Toguro Ototo.

The seed that Kurama planted into him earlier popped out of his wound like pus from a zit thanks to all his muscle clenching and flexing.

However, before the spider demon could attempt to do one of his wrestling holds on Kurama, the demon-turned-human jumped over him then and tangled him with his whip.

Rando still managed to tear through Kurama's chest with a missed strike, though, even as the demon fox landed from behind the pasty demon.

Kurama lacked the strength to pull the Rose Whip tight enough to cut Rando apart or pull him around, but he had enough cunning to pull at the demon's feet in order to make him trip right into where he wanted him to fall.

Right into a newly grown cactus patch filled with spines the size of knives and swords.

His three-pronged plan worked. Rando had enough wherewithal to avoid sharing Roto's fate, but he had no defense against his cactus surprise.

Rando died instantly, his blood pooling into demon cacti that were spinier than normal. The sentient cactus patch grew and grew with its spines, impaling the hapless youkai in every way possible.

Kurama sighed and walked away from the bloodbath, only to then pause and avoid having a cactus head impale his head as well.

"As expected of the Legendary Youko Kurama! I had to bust out Jine's Jagan at the last minute there! You're quite the tricky one!"

Minamino backpedaled into the nearest coconut tree, his back against its trunk that served as his shield against any attacks from the rear.

The corpse of Rando had disappeared, replaced by a Rando with a Jigen Tou that he probably used to teleport Kurama's own demon cactus back at him from out of nowhere.

Rando chuckled. "But you're not a perfect fighter. Even though you took down the likes of Karasu and Toguro Ani, you were once injured by Genbu. Cursed by Gama. And almost killed by Ura Urashima. You tend to drop your guard too much."

Kurama was about to turn his whip into a super whip when vines burst forth from his body, spraying his blood all over the sandy ground.

"!?"

These were vines planted into his body by Rando, he realized. Using his own weaponized seed, the Shimaneki Sou (Seed of the Death Plant), at that.

'Pretty clever,' was the begrudging thought of Youko Kurama.

Rando could only smile as the Death Plant grew and bound Kurama to the coconut tree behind me while he himself transformed the youki of his Jigen Tou into a Hadou Ken. "Heh. I told you so. Don't underestimate me."

***

A creature made of flaming negative energy formed from behind Xinhai, holding its own fiery version of the nodachi that its "master" held. The flames danced and roared, thus making the humanoid form of Feng's shikigami (familiar) look more like a raging wildfire.

Uonuma, on other hand, kept Hajime busy with his stabbing Rochin and a Tinbe that had gotten used to the exact PSI (pounds per inch) of strength that the policeman was willing to unleash so far from his Gatotsu.

As for Itsuki, his demeanor and character changed. Like in his fight with Daiji Matsudaira, he showcased new powers. His eye that Kuwabara had slashed close was now open, but instead of an eyeball it served as a portal to his personal realm.

'Minoru,' recited Saito from memory as he chucked a piece of rubble at Itsuki, only for the debris to disappear right into his missing eye like a miniature black hole.

'This is the power of Minoru. One of the split personalities of Sensui Shinobu. They all somehow transferred themselves to Gatekeeper Itsuki.'

From there, the tactics of the Shin Ju shifted. Saito had to dodge from the wave upon wave of kamaitachi (vacuum slices most commonly associated with weasel youkai and their sickle-like limbs) from both the Raijuta reincarnation and his fire shikigami.

The slashes moved both on the ground (care of Xinhai) and in the sky (care of the shikigami), thus keeping Hajime herded in one area in case he decided to jump and strike from above.

Meanwhile, in the middle of all this moved in Usui. He shielded himself from friendly fire with his Tinbe and pecked at Fujita with his Rochin, the unblocked Matoi (Earth) and Tobi (Sky) Izuna bolstering his attack.

Finally, Itsuki exacerbated the situation by teleporting from behind the backpedaling officer, his eye portal at the ready. He also protected himself from the barrage of Izuna by making portals that caught them, only to create exit portals aimed at Goro as well.

Any Izuna that had missed the policeman could then be "recycled" and aimed back at him care of the tricky portals of the Gatekeeper. It was a three-pronged assault that scratched and clawed at the Wolf of Mibu slowly but surely.

"DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE!" screamed the blind spearman. "Ever since you've gotten here, my stomach and guts have rumbled like I've been starving for weeks! My heart is beating like it's about to explode! The only way to quench this heat is to consume you with it!"

"...."

The wave upon wave of attacks from all angles indeed drew blood. Saito's blood.

The policeman grunted as yet another Izuna sliced his body up with a clean cut, followed by a stream of blood. Dodging these slashes almost felt like dodging rain at that point.

Uonuma himself evaded and blocked every last Izuna that came his way thanks to his Shingan (Mind's Eye) that allowed his heightened senses to detect both Hajime and the vacuum cutters a proverbial mile away.

Meanwhile, Itsuki continued to catch and release the Izuna that missed their mark back at Lieutenant Fujita from impossible angles and blind spots, even from underneath him. This kept Saito on the defensive.

And all this time, the policeman was herded by Xinhai and Usui like cattle to his eventual doom from within the black hole where Itsuki's right eye used to be.

All according to plan. Right?

Saito smirked, his wounds regenerating and his aura in the form of his wolf spirit forming around him like a shikigami of his own.

It was about time he bared his own fangs at Shishio's New Ten Swords.

***

'I can't believe you got tricked by that technique thief of all people,' the youko side of Kurama told his human counterpart. 'Beaten by small fry. Shameful. Pathetic.'

Without intending to do so, Kurama transformed back into his Youko Kurama form, partly to protect his human body from harm from the weed growing inside it.

Shuichi told his youko self to calm down. 'Stop underestimating him. Rando didn't become part of Shishio's New Juppon Gatana for nothing. Don't let your guard down.'

The infamous Rando possessed more than a hundred techniques he'd stolen from many a martial artist in the Demon and Human World. He even outsmarted Yusuke enough to give him the World of Suffering curse even though the half-demon was many leagues more powerful than him.

"Fighting you feels so much better than fighting Urameshi Yusuke," Rando told Kurama. "It's more a battle of wits than brawn. You don't need a stupidly strong power level to survive. We're cut from the same cloth, you and I. We can take on kings and gods even though we aren't necessarily the most powerful beings in the three worlds!"

Youko Kurama then regressed back to his Minamino form, standing in the middle of the beach. The Shimaneki taking root in his body.

Rando continued. "We fight smart and we can take down even Class-S demons and humans with our cunning even if we're many levels below them. And right now, I'm proud to be one of the few to outwit the likes of Youko Kurama!"

"Hoo. Is that so? Then show me what you got, Rando," the youko inside Kurama couldn't help but dare as Minamino wiped the blood from his mouth. "Impress me. Try and outwit me if you can."

Rando frowned then took on a pose as though he were holding a ball. An energy ball filled with his youki, to be specific. "Fine. Eat this. SHINKUU...!"

'He has more than a hundred techniques in his arsenal and he chooses a fireball to finish me off?' quipped the youko to himself. 'This after his rant about high-level beings relying too much on punches and ki blasts? My goodness.'

"...HADOU KEN!"

Kurama got blown away by the Vacuum Surge Fist, but ended up none the worse for wear because he manipulated the Death Plant inside him and made a full-body cast to absorb the shock of the technique.

More importantly, the blast created a trench for him to hide under before another seed he had planted in the cactus patch grew to... fruition.

An explosion from the cactus patch followed, ripping through the beach like a shrapnel bomb from World War II. The spines flew with the speed of bullets from a million snipers. Or like suppressive rounds from a machine gun.

Kurama had planted seeds from the Dynamite Tree into the demonic cactus patch, resulting in multiple explosions of cactus spines from fruit that exploded when they ripened. The seeds and spines ripped apart anything in their path.

Even the Shield and Armor of Sand weren't fast or strong enough to protect Rando, his body riddled with spines and seeds.

"AUGH! BAKUSAI TENKETSU (BREAKING POINT TECHNIQUE)!"

Sweating and bleeding heavily, Rando attempted to blast the ground to smithereens by stabbing his finger unto its weakest point to serve as his shield against the flying plant bullets, but the sand proved too fine and loose to destroy with the technique.

"As predicted, you stole so many techniques from so many people that you didn't have time to learn how to use them to their fullest potential," said Kurama from the trench he was hiding in.

"N-No! BLOOD WIND!" screamed Rando by reflex. It was supposed to be his emergency technique whenever he was injured. But it didn't work this time.

"You've used up your youki. There's too little youki inside you to activate even the Blood Wind. If you hadn't called my bluff and shot me with that Shinkuu Hadou Ken, it might've worked."

That was the natural consequence of having 100 (or more) techniques. Sometimes you ran out of power before you could get to Technique No. 50, much less No. 100.

"NOOOOO...!"

Minamino then changed back to Youko Kurama and absorbed the energy from the Shimaneki in order to regress it back to seed form so that it'd stop leeching off of him like a tumor.

This energy boost also healed him somewhat. Not completely, but enough to allow him to join the battle against the remaining Shin Ju without serving as a liability.

With a harrumph, Youko Kurama then told the bleeding pincushion that was Rando. "Mind games? Tactics? You're not in my league in that regard either."

A dark sphere that blotted out the sun then appeared above them.

It was the Perfect Shishi Hoko Dan (Lion Roaring Bullet) made from Rando's desperation, sadness, and insecurities.

More and more, Rando reminded Kurama of Yusuke. Particularly their shared tenaciousness and boundless spiritual power affected by the intensity of their emotion.

***

"W-Wha...!?" stuttered the blind bearded swordsman turned Juppon Gatana member as he blocked and deflected another powerful Gatotsu stab with his turtle shield at the last second.

The reflexes of Hajime were... unreal. He should've been chopped into a hundred pieces by now. At most, it looked like he got scratched by a herd of alley cats.

Saito struck Uonuma's Tinbe with a crushing blow filled with megatons of force, breaking it apart like chalk or ceramic china. The former Shinsengumi member again upped the ante of his Gatotsu.

The Shingan saved Usui from having his arm ripped apart along with his Tinbe, releasing the shield in time to do a Rochin spear counter, but the copper merely punched the spear away with his right fist then drilled forward with another Gatotsu Ishiki with his left arm.

All while dodging Izuna slashes flying and teleporting from all directions.

A new Tinbe formed immediately after as Usui slipped the Gatotsu Ishiki to his head and ducked the follow-through slash to his neck. The new shield blocked and deflected the Gatotsu Nishiki to his midsection.

"Keep pressing him," yelled Xinhai before his shikigami beside him disappeared then reappeared from behind Hajime. "Don't give that jiba (cock) sucker an inch! Don't leave him any breathing room!"

Sure enough, both Feng's shikigami and Usui took turns drilling the policeman down... right into the waiting Itsuki's hands (or black hole eye).

However, as though he himself had a Shingan of his own, Fujita took advantage of all his opponents crowding him and bowed just in time to avoid a flaming shikigami sword slash that instead landed on Usui's Tinbe defense.

"HEY! Watch it, you piece of shit! I'll kill you if you do that again, Xinhai!" cursed Usui at both the Chinese mafia boss and his familiar.

"Jibai (Cunt)," murmured Xinhai.

"...The hell did you just say!?"

Whoops. Maybe cussing out a teammate with superhuman hearing from under your breath wasn't the smartest thing to do.

Regardless, this gave the scuffed-up Saito enough wriggle room to take on the four Shin Ju.

"You moron! Behind you!" shouted Feng this time around.

By instinct and by his heightened senses, Uonuma dodged the "bullet" aimed at his spine, his reconstructed body remembering how he originally died. With the upper half of his body ripped apart from his lower half.

The nape of his neck moist with ectoplasmic sweat.

The missed Gatotsu Ishiki instead hit the jaki flame monster square at its heart, its flaming body imploding from the crushing blow. Like a miniature supernova from a dying black sun.

However, Itsuki was already upon Hajime, his own black hole sucking the policeman into parts unknown.

Or he would've had the copper not immediately recovered and again did a Gatotsu Zeroshiki at Usui that ripped into his shield and arm.

Usui grit his teeth and attempted to push Officer Fujita into Itsuki's eye portal, only for the gangly policeman to lift the blind man and throw him at the green-haired youkai.

Itsuki willed his eye closed to keep Uonuma from ending up into his eye portal, only for Saito to force him into the small slit of space left of the portal... at a speed that was literally faster than an eye blink.

This led to a spaghettification effect wherein the blind Shin Ju's body stretched vertically and compressed horizontally in order to fit into the event horizon of the black hole.

Even as this happened, the spirit energy of Lieutenant Saito flared, which seemingly gave him enough inner gravity to keep himself from being swallowed by Itsuki's eye black hole himself.

His sword then plunged into Itsuki's empty eye socket with a Gatotsu Nishiki, which ripped its eyelids apart and made the demon lose control of his own powers, his face collapsing unto the black hole of his own making.

Xinhai saw enough. He summoned the dissipating negative energy that was left of his shinigami unto him, setting his body on fire. Black fire. "Saito Hajime. How did you get so strong? How did you end up alive in the Heisei Era?"

Thanks to the dark fire of his shikigami coalescing into a full-body aura, Feng got enough heat from his jaki and coldness from his Izuna technique to produce his "TORNADO RIPPER!"

Like with his fight with Seiryu, Saito went into Gatotsu Nishiki stance and sunk his stance low while plunging his sword to the ground to gain enough leverage. This along with his dense ghostly aura prevented him from getting lifted up by the twister.

Just like Xinhai wanted.

In Chinese, he said, "I've gone through hell and back to reach the peak of my power. To become at least as powerful as Sensui Shinobu in a short period of time on my own, without borrowing the strength of the Chojin. How did you cheat your way to success? How did you get this strong?"

Right in the eye of the storm, the Taiwanese man shot a huge supersonic Tobi Izuna at the heart of the Tornado Ripper, which made the twister explode from within, turning into a Sonic Shockwave.

Or this would've happened had Lieutenant Hajime not charged from below the twister and stabbed upwards with a Gatotsu Sanshiki straight into the head of Feng, splitting his head open like a cut watermelon.

And in an instant, like in the case of Yusuke Urameshi, Hajime Saito killed three Shin Juppon Gatana members.

***

The Perfect Shishi Hoko Dan blasted a new hole from where the beach used to be, with parts of the sand crystallizing from the heat of the big bang and the sea filling the hot crater with water, releasing loads and loads of searing steam.

Youko Kurama survived the resulting explosion by summoning a long Rose Whip and swinging to the nearest high ground.

But he didn't come out completely unscathed. He tumbled around in the cluster of coconut trees and sprained his ankle from a bad landing before he took cover, the blast burning some of the trees to ash and uprooting others.

It rained. Or it seemed to rain before Kurama realized it was actually saltwater from the sea blasted sky high that soon turned into a full-blown tsunami created by the impact of the blast.

The tides literally turned.

He fought to survive against the floods, seeking high ground. It took all his energy to keep himself from being swept away by the waters and drowning.

Regardless, he wasn't worst for wear like Rando probably was. His last burst of energy destroying practically everything but its target. His youki completely spent.

What a waste of raw potential. He could mimic any technique he saw but didn't know how to use most of them.

Speak of the devil, Rando's head poked out from the churning waters. His battered body then emerged along with it as he trudged towards the new shoreline. His youki almost nonexistent. Like he was on the verge of death.

He then stopped right in front of Kurama before taking on the martial arts horse-riding stance.

"FINE! If I can't make you submit by outsmarting you, then I'll do it the old-fashioned way by overwhelming you with BRUTE FORCE! IBUKI!"

A dark energy enveloped the red youki aura of the multi-skilled demon as he accessed the reserve of jaki that the Onmyouji gave to him earlier after resurrecting him.

His power level jumping from Class-A to Class-S.

His body ejecting the seeds of the Dynamite Tree that Kurama was banking on to blast the pasty demon down the line.

He finally discarded his pride and finally let the Onmyouji power him up artificially into S-Level.

Kurama thusly took a blade of grass and turned it into a sword. It got carbonized soon after by a Burn Knuckle followed by a concussive Power Dunk. And a Genocide Cutter that lacerated the redhead all over through slashing leg kicks.

The demon fox attempted to catch him with the Rose Whip, but somehow Rando moved as fast as Kenshin. Thus, Minamino ended up hitting nothing but afterimages.

"What are you going to do now? Plant more seeds into me? Make me hallucinate? Erase my memories? Suck my blood with a Vampire Plant? Use an entire living tree against me? None of that will work against this S-Level demon!"

And Rando was indeed correct. Like with his encounter with the Reikai Boueitai (Spirit World Special Defense Squad), all of Kurama's attempts at trickery and growing dangerous plants were thwarted by the spider demon blasting all of his creations into smithereens before they had the chance to mature.

Although Kurama avoided triggering the Hiryu Shoten Ha by not being aggressive (it was activated by the hot ki of the opponent) and cancelled out the Blood Wind by making Rando use up his demon energy, the demon still hit him with another tornado variant named, "YONOKAZE (NIGHT WIND)!"

Followed by a "RAGING STORM!" that resulted in claws of energy and air rising towards the heavens.

The demon fox attempted to attack close with double Joryu Yozan Ken on both fists, only to get scorched by a similarly close-quarter, "KIKOU SHOU!" energy dome of annihilation that destroyed everything within its vicinity except the one doing the technique.

Even Youko Kurama had no answers for Rando's shifts from one technique to the next. It almost felt as if the silver-haired kitsune were fighting a dozen different fighters all at once.

Such was the power of a powered-up Shin Juppon Gatana member.

This reminded Kurama of his fight against Shigure in the Makai Unification Tournament. He got so injured in the match he had to retire from competition.

The youko's youki reserves then bottomed out thusly, his body shifting back and forth both his two forms before settling into his human form.

***

Hajime Saito had just killed Feng Xinhai, Usui Uonuma (again), and Gatekeeper Itsuki with all the variations of his Gatotsu technique, making short work of them all.

The officer particularly took advantage of Xinhai's (and, in essence, Raijuta's) blind spot when he was about to swing an Izuna, hitting him right between the eyes the same way Kenshin did with his Hiryu Sen (Flying Dragon Flash) technique when he first defeated Isurugi for the first time.

However, Saito's mouth then quivered into a slight frown when he saw Feng grab both halves of his head and put them back together. As though he were a zombie from a horror movie.

Was this the Onmyouji's doing? Fujita looked around for any sign of the Chojin's dark priest. Or maybe Xinhai was a type of Class-S being that could survive even a head blow.

The Raijuta incarnate harrumphed at Hajime. "Looks like my gamble paid off."

Officer Goro palmed his face, his vision blurring. Why was he having a migraine? And what did Xinhai mean by "gamble"? What "gamble" was he talking about?

Afterwards, he saw the "corpses" of Itsuki and Usui emerge from a portal. They themselves were worn-down and exhausted like he was, but not dead. Or even half-dead.

Even though he witnessed their death by his sword firsthand.

What was going on here? He could've sworn he hit them with his best shots. Did Usui use the Jagan of Jine Udo to create a hypnotic illusion?

Fujita growled, "Fine. I'll just have to kill them again and again. No matter how many times it takes. Until he shows up."

Xinhai shifted into his fencing stance and probed into Saito's defenses with the long reach of his longsword nodachi, pivoting counterclockwise in order to avoid the southpaw copper's deadly Gatotsu strikes from his left arm.

A grumbling Usui hid behind his shield and also poked at Hajime with his Rochin from a significant distance. Whenever Saito attempted to cut the distance between them, the blind swordsman deflected with his Tinbe or did his Hyakka Ryoran multi-hit technique to make him back off.

Itsuki himself was there in the background to teleport either Shin Ju to safety or mix things up by exchanging their places.

This dual jabbing from fighters who didn't want to engage, baiting Saito to charge and get countered left the policeman at an impasse of sorts.

If he charged at either of them, the other would surely counter him. And if he didn't attack soon, they themselves would attack while he had his guard down.

Chipping at him bit by bit. Like ice picks. While his headache grew worse and worse.

Saito charged at the Chinese Raijuta at a half-beat, expecting a parry and a counter. But he had a counter of his own.

As soon as Xinhai parried the Gatotsu and circled to his left, intending to thrust with his platinum longsword with his prosthetic right hand, Fujita himself batted away the sword with his follow-up side slash.

Saito then repositioned himself to do another Gatotsu Zeroshiki, only for his face to get punched by a metallic lead right straight.

"You thought that I'm just a simple reincarnation of Isurugi Raijuta, didn't you? You believed that I'm just the same coward as my past self. You've underestimated me!"

"...."

Saito's world then turned upside down as he fell into a portal and teleported from the ground to the sky.

His sense of gravity ended up warped. He almost got skewered by Usui's Rochin had he not done a reverse Gatotsu Sanshiki that drilled downwards like the Gatotsu Nishiki thanks to his positioning.

This attack pushed the blind man away and allowed him to flip back down to earth.

And yet even though he didn't land headfirst into the ground, his lightheadedness worsened. As though he had suffered a concussion.

He looked at his wounds. As expected, they healed almost immediately.

Wait a minute. Even with his superpowers, he shouldn't be healing this quickly.

He then almost had his entire throbbing head disappear had he not avoided the black hole bullet shot at him by Itsuki of all people.

Instead, a huge chunk of his shoulder went missing where the trajectory of the vortex missed.

"...Itsuki, don't kill him. We need him. He'll make a fine member of the Shin Ju, after all," came Xinhai's light admonishment.

"...Fuck that. I hate all this pussyfooting around," spat Itsuki, who had again shifted personalities, this time adopting Sensui's Kazuya personality.

Therefore, his hand had turned into a gun as well, except this time it fired high-velocity black holes that ate everything in its path instead of mere ki bullets.

"Besides, I couldn't kill this fucker even if I tried," Itsuki-Kazuya concluded, spitting at the ground.

The Chinese mobster chuckled. "You have a point."

And indeed, Saito immediately healed his shoulder soon after. Even though it was missing whole bits of muscle tissue and bone.

A smirking Xinhai then boasted, "For your information, Toguro Ani wasn't given a new body when the Overfiend fetched him to become part of his Dai Kaijin army. Because we didn't need to. We used his original immortal body instead."

...Those sons of bitches.

Office Fujita thought he had killed Toguro Ani in one shot because his healing powers were compromised by Yahiko's neutralization ability, leaving him at B-Level regeneration.

The Gatotsu should've disintegrated him thoroughly enough to keep him from regenerating fully for months.

But Goro didn't take into account how much better Toguro Ani probably was at regenerating himself once he was away from Yahiko's vicinity.

"Toguro also absorbed the Janen Ju (Sinning Tree) unto himself, giving him both the power of Gourmet and the power of hallucinations," said Feng, confirming Hajime's suspicions as he doubled over and took a knee.

He looked at his hand and from it formed the face of Toguro Ani.

An Elder Toguro who had the body absorption powers of the late Sadao "Gourmet" Makihara and the hallucinogenic capabilities of Kurama's Sinning Tree.

One of the cells of Toguro ended up inside Saito after he disintegrated him earlier, and it was slowly but surely taking over his entire body using the assimilation powers of Gourmet.

***

Fighting the powered-up Rando right then and there was like dealing with a "broken" character in a fighting game lobbing "super combos" or "finishing moves" over and over again without spending one bit of energy on their super bar. Like it was permanently full.

It bordered on cheating, almost. Or fighting against an SNK Boss.

Or fighting against Yusuke Urameshi himself.

"...It's unfair, isn't it? I'm too powerful! In this world, this reality we live in, life isn't unfair. It favors the strong. And the weak will always be food for the strong! These are the rules of nature!"

Rando verbalized what Kurama was thinking before blasting the millennia-old "teenager" sky high with a Power Geyser.

However, a decently skilled player could theoretically counter this cheat if the cheating player was only mindlessly spamming his special attacks over and over without rhyme or reason.

Overcompensating for his lack of skill by having an unfair advantage and using power given to him rather than using something he had earned.

Kurama still had his Binding Fist of the Demonic Vine on the ready, but every time he attempted to use it, Rando countered with his huge arsenal of big moves.

At any rate, in Kurama's eyes, this was the closest thing he could get to fighting someone like Yusuke. The demonic spawn of Raizen, who in turn was the oldest King of Makai for the longest time. The monster that neither he nor Yomi could overthrow.

Minamino had wanted to try out a special technique on Urameshi all this time on the off-chance that they did have to battle.

Rando moved so fast with his flash-step techniques that Kurama couldn't even see him anymore. No wonder he could take on two fighters at the same time.

Gingerly getting up on his feet, Kurama took out another seed hidden behind his bushy hair.

Rando hesitated in unleashing a Buster Wolf or a Kugai-powered Psycho Crusher on Shuichi after he saw the look of determination in the demon fox's eyes.

He checked himself to see if he had any open wounds that would lead to a comeback victory from out of nowhere care of a Kyuuketsu Shokubutsu (Bloodsucking Plant) or something.

'What is he planning this time?' Rando scowled. 'No. I have to finish him off now before any of his schemes end up working! I don't want to turn out like Toguro Ani stuck inside the Sinning Tree or something!'

And as soon as Kurama threw the plant at Rando, it was blasted with energy beams and vaporized like all the rest.

However, it wasn't vaporized. The seed, now a seedling, kept growing.

Rando stomped on it with his heel. "This is it? This is your great plan to defeat me? Oh, how the mighty has fallen!"

He then stopped and almost tripped face-first, realizing that the plant had ended up tangled on his foot. "What nonsense is this? You-Gan."

Carbonization usually was enough to deter regeneration, but the plant had taken root elsewhere, seeking out Rando in particular with its leafy vines.

Annoyed, the spider demon shot out different projectiles at the peculiar weed, only for the creeper to grow even more and more, taking root in the ground and spouting more of its green leaves and purple flowers.

Regenerating endlessly like demonic weeds. Or like cancer. Or like his fellow Shin Ju Toguro Ani would.

"W-What's going on? Why aren't my techniques working!? WHY WON'T THESE WEEDS DIE!?" Rando demanded, becoming even more determined to disintegrate or burn the plant to ash.

"That's the Invasive Kudzu," Kurama said. "Japanese arrowroot. Genus Pueraria, in the pea family Fabaceae, and subfamily Faboideae. It's a perennial vine here in Japan."

"K-Kuzu (Trash)?" asked Rando. "No, you're kuzu!"

Kurama continued. "When naturalized in the West, kudzu became an invasive species considered as noxious weeds. It can climb over shrubs or trees, suffocating and killing them as they take over due to heavy shading."

Rando didn't listen, blasting the creepers that kept on haranguing him as he attempted to create a second Perfect Shishi Hoku Dan to incinerate them all in one fell swoop.

However, little did the pasty kabuki youkai know that his outright overzealousness to kill the demonically mutated weed made it grow even stronger. It absorbed youki, jaki, and reiki like how normal plants absorbed sunlight, making it grow exponentially due to photosynthesis.

Like Yusuke would, Rando fell into the trap of focusing all his power in destroying the plant with his boundless energy even as the plant grew bigger the more he attempted to kill it with spirit energy. Like throwing gasoline to a fire.

Rando's tenaciousness proved to be his downfall. If only he had left the seed alone, then it wouldn't grow this bad. Like the single-headed hydra getting its head sliced off.

Actually, Kurama had been experimenting with seed hybrids for quite a while. He had extracted the DNA of the incapacitated Toguro Ani when he had him trapped in his Janen Ju.

He then mixed that DNA with cordyceps fungus to create a Pseudo Creature with Toguro's immortal cells. It resulted in a parasite that could merge with its host on a cellular level, allowing it to instantly repair any damage done to its half-alive victim.

Just like with the Regent-Class Toguro Ani when he was still trapped in the Sinning Tree.

It was through this same Toguro DNA that Kurama made the Invasive Kudzu.

Drowning in a sea of vines, Rando poked his head out from the noxious weeds and laughed. "Bravo. As expected of Kurama. You proved me wrong about power levels. The cunning can take down the strong after all."

Kurama spared a glance at Rando before turning his back and activating his Spirit Detector that doubled as a communicator in order to report to Kuwabara that he'd taken down a Shin Ju member.

"But what if your opponent is both cunning and strong? You could've been such a person yourself, but the Chojin is both smarter and stronger than even you," said Rando. "Your Reikai Senshi took down two of the Shin Ju: Jine and Suzaku. We replaced them with Toguro Ani and... one more member."

Shuichi turned to face Rando again, but he was already overrun with the Invasive Kudzu. To himself, the kitsune asked, 'Who's the tenth member of the New Ten Swords?'

A scythe then stabbed Kurama right in the sternum.

Minamino saw the scythe coming and was about to dodge in kind but a voice stopped him cold in his tracks.

"You're still up to your old tricks, old friend."

A demon with long ears like Yomi who also sported a hat, leathery bat wings, a vest, and black straps wrapped around his arms had just arrived.

No. Not this again.

"K-Kuronue...!" said Shuichi before taking a knee, his blood pooling from underneath him. This was Kuronue, right? Or was this another imposter?

Kuronue pulled the scythe out of his old accomplice's body and hissed out while cringing.

"Whoops. My bad. I forgot how fragile humans are. So tell me, Youko... What have you been up to? Why haven't you come back to the Demon World yet after all this time?"

***

Because their team won the Ankoku Bujutsukai Grand Finals during the Second World War, the Toguro Brothers were rewarded with the chance to become demons themselves as funded by the sponsors of the tournament.

It was what the Younger Toguro wanted. After defeating the demon Kairen, he also wanted to become as strong as that demon himself.

What they weren't told was that they served as guinea pigs for the experiments of Dr. Ichigaki and Dr. Shoji Sugino (the reincarnation of Gein), as sponsored by Mukuro and her right-hand man, Kirin.

It was a project to turn humans into demons, based on the (in)human experimentation done by the Empire of Japan's Unit 731 on Chinese civilians (which were called "logs" because the unit's cover story was that their concentration camp was a lumber mill).

Many of their initial test subjects were abject failures. Some went mad with power. Others became catatonic. Still others suffered from genetic deformities, mutations, poor health, and diseases like cancer.

However, the cancer that Toguro Ani got after being injected by demon DNA was like the immortal HeLa cancer cells of Henrietta Lacks' cervical tumor (now used for humane experimentation of various drugs throughout the years).

It was through these cells that Dr. Sugino grew a clone of Elder Toguro while the original was left to die with his cancer.

***

"Gatotsu ISHIKI!"

"TOBI IZU...GUAAHH!"

Hajime Saito and Feng Xinhai exchanged blows, with Saito getting the better of the exchange by wrecking his prosthetic arm apart with a lightning-quick Gatotsu thrust.

However, Hajime then collapsed to the ground, exhausted. He tried to stand up, but he felt his body rebel against him.

Toguro Ani was taking over his body. Infecting him like cancer. Spreading and replacing his healthy cells with his own cells like a sentient tumor.

How humiliating. The Shin Ju got him good. Or Feng Xinhai did.

"Did you target me from the start?" he asked Xinhai, marveling at how the former Raijuta became such a diabolical mastermind.

What happened in his past to turn him from a pretend killer to a real one?

"It could've been anyone, really. Myojin Yahiko is gifted but inexperienced with his powers. So of course any one of you Reikai Senshi would've rescued him. However, this is the best-case scenario for us."

"And the worst-case scenario for you," said Itsuki, his forearm gun returning back to normal as a hand while his eye portal opened once more, signifying the return of his Minoru personality.

Usui snapped, "The fuck is this? What's the point of beating Saito Hajime if we're gonna keep him alive anyway? This is bullshit! This is something that damn Houji would honestly come up with! I hate these harebrained schemes of yours!"

"Don't be such a caveman, you dumb xiao riben (puny Japanese). We already won," said Feng. "Rather than kill him, we should have him join the Shin Ju. The Chojin's plans are worth more than your feelings about the matter."

Uonuma snarled back, "Like you care about the Chojin's plans yourself. You're just a child playing cops and robbers. A big pretender."

Xinhai healed enough of his body to summon his familiar again, which now rested on his arm stump where his prosthetic arm used to be, turning into a hand made of jaki fire. "You're ours now, Saito Hajime...!"

The Wolf of Mibu then bared his regardless fangs, striking down the metal arm of Xinhai, knowing how much harder it was to fix the prosthetic versus healing the man via the Onmyouji.

However, his hallucinations got worse and worse. It felt like he was fighting a thousand Usuis, Itsukis, and Xinhais. They kept getting up. None the worse for wear.

Like nothing he did mattered.

And indeed, the three were just biding their time until Toguro Ani took over Saito's body.

But Hajime didn't care. He kept on fighting, whether he saw a hallucination made by Toguro as he invaded his brain or the real deal in front of him.

He charged at anyone within striking range while at the same time fighting the literal demon within him. Mixing things up with his boxing knowledge.

From time to time, he feinted Gatotsu stabs, only to do boxing punches instead in order to keep his assault from being predictable.

Right straights and jabs to replace his Ishiki, right downward hooks to replace his Nishiki, and right uppercuts to replace his Sanshiki.

He could even do a Zeroshiki punch while fighting toe-to-toe.

He nevertheless stumbled and received stabs several times himself whenever he swiped, thrust, or punched at nothing at all.

Ironically, Toguro's invasion of his body kept him from injury or death, but every time he healed, more and more of his cells were replaced with Toguro's cells.

"AH! I don't care anymore!" shouted Usui, his stomach churning and his spine tingling at the pathetic sight that was Officer Fujita currently. "If Saito is just going to be another puppet of Toguro Ani... of the Chojin... then I'll put him out of his misery myself!"

Uonuma decided to finish off Saito by striking his Rochin right into the officer's brain to allow Toguro Ani to replace it with his own disgusting, perverted brain. He couldn't stand another minute of seeing Saito reduced to a husk of his former self.

However, as Usui did another shield parry to the Gatotsu to deflect the attack (instead of a head-on block that would've crushed the Tinbe to bits), something curious happened.

The man with enhanced hearing somehow ended up with Saito's sword plunging into him. "WHA...!?"

Xinhai moved forward to do an Izuna counter, only to have his own stomach pierced by Saito's blade. However, he was far away from either Fujita or Usui. "W-What's going on!?" he exclaimed in Mandarin.

Only Itsuki was able to figure out what was happening, but he did so too late.

Yet another tear in the fabric of reality caught the Gatekeeper by surprise, and out of it came Lieutenant Hajime's katana.

And it was a portal that Itsuki didn't create. With blood dripping from his mouth, the green-haired demon called out, "H-He's back...!"

Officer Saito harrumphed and gave his sword a twist, much to the chagrin of the three Shin Ju. "Kuwabara Kazuma. You've returned."

From a huge portal emerged the Keeper of the Dimension Sword. "Damn right I did, Officer Fujita."

Kuwabara had actually cut multiple portals that allowed Saito to skewer Usui, Xinhai, and Itsuki all at the same time even though they were far away from each other.

The powerful A-Class human with an S-Class technique then pointed his diamond-shaped energy sword at Xinhai. "And _that's_ for jumping me from behind, you Chinese muscle-head. Serves ya right."

Fujita's eyes widened then narrowed at the other person who emerged from behind Kuwabara.

It was Kenshin Himura himself. The Guardian of the Demon Sword. The cavalry had arrived.

"Officer Fujita! We just got word from Botan! Did Toguro Ani...?" began Kuwabara.

"Yes, he did," grumbled Goro while Xinhai cackled and heckled them both.

"Yes, we told him all about it, Kuwabara Kazuma," said Feng. "Toguro Ani is slowly but surely taking over his body the same way he took over Makihara Sadao of the Sensui Seven."

Itsuki then extracted himself from the blade and began making a portal that would've teleported Saito's katana to his head, which made the policeman finally pull his weapon out of the other two Shin Ju.

"Who is this Toguro Ani?" Kenshin asked Kazuma. "Is what they're saying true, Kuwabara-dono?"

"Yeah, I'm afraid so," said Kuwabara, who grit his teeth and growled. "Toguro's an old enemy of ours who can regenerate his body from even just one cell. Later on, he also received the power to take over bodies too."

"Alas, even though you've arrived to back him up, it's already too late. He'll soon become one of us. A potential Shin Ju candidate," said the Gatekeeper.

The color of Itsuki's aura changed again, revealing another Sensui personality that even Yusuke Urameshi wasn't able to face. "Hello. My name is George. And I hate all of you. Die."

From "George's" portals emerged all sorts of guns and ammo hidden in Itsuki's hyperdimensional pockets. His own personal junkyard dimension. He then opened fire with an Uzi and a Tommy gun.

Kuwabara made a portal to catch the bullets from the submachine guns intending to teleport them from behind Itsuki, but the Gatekeeper opened his own portal from behind him, with the exit hole above Kazuma and Kenshin's heads.

The Jigen Tou user then made portals that teleported him and Kenshin out of there.

Soon, Kuwabara was upon the backstabbing mobster Xinhai while Himura ended up spinning from above Itsuki with a Ryu Kan Sen Tsumuji to the neck.

The Demon Sword clanged hard against Usui's Tinbe.

"Battousai," drawled the unseeing Uonuma before licking his chops. "A century ago, we never had the chance to cross swords or spears. I'm happy we could finally fight each other. Let's pick up where we left off earlier!"

"...." Himura glared back at Usui.

As for Kazuma, he was about to cleave Feng in half with his Dimension Sword when the Chinese Triad Boss grabbed hold of the ki blade with his flaming pseudo-hand and crushed it apart into bits.

Xinhai harrumphed. "I will not be bested by the weak link of Team Urameshi."

"You're making the same mistake that Toguro Ani did. Don't ever underestimate me! REI-SHURIKEN!" shouted Kuwabara, and sure enough, the shattered shards of what was once the Jigen Tou turned into spiritual shrapnel that tore the Chinese man apart.

Xinhai would've lost more than just an arm and a leg had his familiar not shielded him and absorbed the hail of shuriken unto its jaki body.

An upside-down Itsuki teleported from behind Saito, stating, "Nothing personal, Saito Hajime. I'm just doing what I'm ordered to do. Then again, I never really liked you anyway," before whipping out his submachine guns and firing.

However, the bullets bounced off of the dense aura of reiki covering Hajime's body, making them ricochet back at the Gatekeeper, forcing him to retreat.

And then right before their eyes, Saito began to change. His torn police uniform disappeared, replaced by a different uniform he'd also worn once upon a time.

His Shinsengumi uniform.

His reiki howled in the wind with a haunting sound, his spiritual power transforming into the form of a wolf.

The Miburo or Mibu's Wolf had returned.

***

To Be Continued...

How can the Shin Ju survive the Shinsengumi's Miburo?

Ciao, Abdiel

[d-aniplex]

O_O   i just came.....

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