#Wrist cramp 2 electric boogaloo

[pr0ng3ls]

@naffeclipse I've struck again with this lad. Snuck into a late night Magma on Discord and decided he needed a little love <333

[writer-and-artist27]

The End of Takatou Iori

Note: As a thank you thingie for @chiefladylightyay. The one way I can see Takatou Iori surviving after Judai’s Electric Boogaloo of sorts. If her beginning lines of dialogue to Judai were any indication, she deserves better. Just like how The Princess Bride gave the main cast a happy ending. 

So here we go. I hope you like this. I’m not sure how the fight would go, but here’s my take on the end.

The theme is split between two things: (1) Comeback Move, and (2) Determination, both from the original Japanese version of the Yu-Gi-Oh GX soundtrack. 

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Judai took a breath. The tanto’s grip in his hands was unfamiliar — far too smooth of a grip to really be like his old blade from the war. But Iori was still in front of him, looking very tempted to clash. His lungs were burning, she was huffing, but the battle was still on. The door was behind him, so if he made it through—

Wait for me, Hikari, he thought. I’ll come home soon.

Iori, as expected, charged first, wavy brown hair messy from blood. 

“HAAAAAA—!” her battle cry rang loud in Judai’s ears and he ducked her newest kunai strike to instead grab her wrist with one hand. Of course. She wanted revenge for her father. But the attacks were far too dull. Far too dead. Far too predictable.

It was like she wasn’t even trying and instead was wishing for death. 

He felt her pulse in that moment and paused. 

Just like me, before Hikari.

With the grab, she yelped and he simply pulled. With only one-fourth of his strength, he flipped her over his head and onto her back as hard as he could, making sure to slash her arms for good measure with his tanto hand. Of course, he avoided the wrists because there was no point spilling blood needlessly. Still. The scream that echoed afterwards would surely be haunting his nightmares. Iori squirmed, trying to move, but her arms were incapacitated. Judai had to make sure of that with the slashes from earlier. 

Now, for the key—

“You fool. How dare you—” Iori was still moving her legs. Judai narrowed his eyes, feeling the familiar flow of chakra go up to his vision with the gesture. She was trying to stand. “I-I’m not done—”

“Done, my ass. You should’ve killed me when you captured me,” he shoots back, and immediately crouches down to kick her feet out from under her. Iori squawks and this time, Judai reverses the grip on the tanto in his hands as fast as he can to slash. “By not doing that and instead giving me a weapon, you left me a turn to win.”

As expected, blood spurts out of her calves as Iori falls yet again, the scream on her lips as she does so.  

Judai puffs a breath while bringing his blade back and Iori is left lying on the tile floor of the dark and cramped room. The air smelled of iron and sweat, and it felt far too familiar. Far too ominous. For once, he’d take going to a hospital room than this place ever again. He wanted to go home. He wanted to see Hikari.

His nerves wouldn’t let him have it. Iori was still breathing. Even after falling and having both her arms and legs rendered useless for any further combat, she was still breathing. 

Should he kill her?

He approached her anyways, shaking the thought out in exchange for thinking on the key. Thinking on going home. 

The bitter laugh that echoed in the room startled him, as minute as the feeling was in that moment.

“I see now…” What exactly? “I… never really wanted revenge.” 

Judai blinked blearily. Iori was smiling. It was a sad smile. 

Why was this reminding him of—

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“Judai, you should rest. You’re killing yourself.”

“…What if I want to kill myself?”

Lips were slamming into his and blue eyes were teary and burning into his once they pulled away. “Then I’m not going to let you! Because I want you to live!”

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Oh.

“I merely wished… to see… my parents. One last time.” Iori laughed, and this time the sound was punctuated by a wet cough. The bleeding must’ve come up to her lungs now. “I wonder, Hero, if you feel any remorse for killing my father?” There was another wet cough. Iori was still smiling, even with blood starting to pool under her limbs. “But I guess… It doesn’t really matter… anymore…”

Judai took one step towards her and then she grabbed his tanto-holding hand. He felt himself grunt as he was pulled downwards, and quickly found himself freezing as soon as his vision caught up with what happened.

Iori was pointing the tip of the blade towards her heart with that same smile on her face. 

“Okay, Hero… Set me free…” The smile transformed into something more genuine. “Please.”

Judai frowned. He could feel his chakra pulsate through his eyes, and he blinked them before taking a breath. It did not take much force to wrench her grip away, and her dead purple eyes blinked at him blearily. “No,” he said flatly. “After all the shit you pulled on me, no.”

“No…? Why…?” Iori laughs again, blood staining her clothes. “Is it because you’re finally feeling something like remorse? You’re finally feeling something in that iron-heart of yours?”

Judai takes a breath to calm any irritation, instead biting out, “Yes. My wife is good at that.”

Iori stops.

Judai immediately drops the tanto in his hands and tears off a bit of his pants, pressing the cloth into the nearest sword wound.

“What — what are you doing?” 

“You’re a missing nin,” Judai says casually, “and normally the village wouldn’t let you leave this place alive. But I’m not a ninja anymore.” He ties the knot without hesitation before taking a bit of his dirty shirt in his teeth to tear at it too. “So there’s nothing against a civilian taking in a former ninja to start anew. And besides.” He does his best to dust off any dirt on the cloth before starting the next informal bandage. “My wife would kill me if I came back with more blood on me.”

For the first time, Iori is giving him eyes that look alive. “You… You can’t be serious. I tried to kill you.”

Judai throws his head back and laughs. “It’s another Tuesday for me, Takatou, retired or not. And besides. Once I become a dad, I can’t handle the bar in the cafe forever.” His gaze hardens as soon as she lifts her head to look at him. “And I can’t let you leave this place with all the information you piled up on me anyways.”

“So…” Iori coughs again, “You’re suggesting I-I give up everything I have and just come back with you?”

“Hey.” Judai shrugs, giving her a dirty look. “A precious person of mine told me that they wanted me to live. And right now, I want you to live. It’s the least your parents would’ve wanted.”

“How dare you say that when you—”

“I never had anyone like parents to begin with, so at least cherish their memories when I can’t.”  

Iori falls silent. 

“I know I killed your father. I don’t know when, I can’t remember how, but things are different now. That same person of mine showed me how life is worth the pain and suffering. And I’d be damned to let someone else be fucking suicidal after my bout.” Iori is staring at him with a hint of light in those purple eyes now and Judai rolls his while offering a hand to her. “So let me bandage you up or so help me, because I can’t stand seeing other people be self-pitying.”

Iori stares. “I’ll… I’ll have to change my name. And my appearance, and everything.”

Judai shrugs his shoulders but pulls her up to sit anyways, still offering his other hand to her. “Konoha’s one of the nicest villages there is. We could just put you under a new name, play you off as searching for refuge. And quit looking so dead. Take the time to be yourself and stop chasing ghosts.”

The image of blue hair flashed through his mind’s eye and Judai paused. Iori continued to stare.

Judai puffed a breath and shook his head, absently kicking the tanto away from his feet. “Look, I’ve had enough of old demons. And I took on Hoshino as a name. Why can’t you do the same in finding one for your own? To let go.”

Iori fell silent again. Then she ducked her head. “…I always liked Mikazuki.” 

There was no mistaking the bloody hand slowly placing itself into Judai’s right palm. 

“New Moon?” Judai smirked and shook on it. “That’s fitting. Now give me the key. We need to go. Don’t be surprised if my wife yells at you.”

It was as if someone had pressed the pause button. “Your… wife?”

“She’s a beast in her own right.”

There were no more words exchanged after that.

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A few years later… 

“Mika-san! Mika-san!”

“Tomoko-chan, slow down! You’re going to hit something!”

The little black-haired girl grinned and shook her head. “I’ll be fine, Mika-san! You’re here with me!”

The former Takatou Iori sighed and shook her head, brushing short gray hair out of her face. It took a while to get gray hair dye, but no one was the wiser to her old Suna origins when she bought the hair color. Konoha’s sun let her lose some of her tan and for once, gray hair and purple eyes made her feel like a new person.

And for this little girl… 

“Mika-san, Mika-san! Hurry up! The library’s going to close in an hour!”

Iori wondered what her parents would think. What her father would think, with her being an auntie to the child of the person who killed him. But it was in the past. It was a what-if. 

It was time to face the future. A future she was blessed to have, in some way after defecting. After all, she could no longer call herself Iori when Sachi Mikazuki rolled off the tongue better. 

“Mika-saaaaaan!”

“I’m coming, Tomoko-chan, I’m coming.”

For this little girl, with a smile that shined like the stars that brought her to her new home, Mikazuki followed with newfound light in her eyes.