[FFML] [yyh][ry][xover] Youtou Shinnoken Chapter 17: The Book of Fate

[Abdiel]

Kaoru flicked the tip of Botan's nose with the finger she used to
silence her. "Pay attention, sister. Listen and listen well: The only
way I can possibly forgive you for your trespasses and out-and-out
flirting with _my_ Kenshin is for you to...." And so Kaoru Kamiya
dispatched her final ultimatum on the cowed shinigami.

Botan couldn't believe her ears. "Huh? Come again? I didn't catch that
last part--Oh, and the first part too." And so Kaoru Kamiya leisurely
repeated what she just said syllable-per-syllable, leaving no room for 
doubt and confusion on Botan's part.

The ferry-girl tilted her head to the side as she clumsily shifted on
her sandaled feet. "Oh, is that all? I'd ask why, but... Eh. Whatever."
The death goddess shrugged, coughed primly, inhaled, then incessantly
chanted, "Iehikiehikiehikiehikiehikiehikiehikiehik...!" over and over
again.

"Now say the name of that other guy; the big, bulky demon that can merge
with other monsters." Not bothering to ask Kaoru how she knew of Iehog,
Botan merely complied to the girl's wishes, renewing her mantra with a
fresh peal of "Iehogiehogiehogiehogiehogiehogiehogiehogiehogiehog--"

"LOUDER! I can't HEAR YOU!" Kaoru commanded, her arms crossed in defiant
audaciousness.

"IEHIKIEHIKIEHIKIEHIKIEHIKIEHIKIHEIKIHEIKIHEIKIHEIKIHEIKIHEIKIHEI!!!"
Botan squeezed her eyes shut, screeched her throat ragged, hacked like a
cat, doubled back, and resumed, "IEHOGIEHOGIEHOGIEHOGOHEIGOHEIGOHEIGO...
Goheiehog. G-Gohei... Iehog. Kihei... Iehik. Gohei. Kihei. Iehog. Iehik.
GOHEI. KIHEI. Oh my God...!"

Botan's pinkish eyes widened in sublime, uplifting comprehension as her
long-awaited epiphany finally happened. "Those bumbling idiot demons
that Kenshin fought _are_ Hiruma Gohei and Hiruma Kihei! GOHEI AND KIHEI
ARE IEHOG AND IEHIK!!!"


***


"You've meddled in our affairs for the last time, _shinigami_," Iehik
gravely informed the shell-shocked Botan as he used his psychic powers
to simulate some sort of Kanashibari mind-breaking technique upon her
person. "It's about time you made yourself useful and serve your true
purpose for being here; as _bait_." 

Botan's ki turned dark. The air grew cold around her as her immobile
body desperately tried to fill the void within her soul with warmth and
prana from her environment. There were some voids that couldn't be
filled, however; some problems that kept returning after they were
solved; second chances to make a bad decision.

"BOTAN!!!" Kenshin screamed, his eyes turning amber as he withdrew his
Youtou Shinnoken from its enchanted sheath and jumped straight towards
Iehik; in his mind's eye, a brief flashback of Udou Jine freezing
Kaoru's lungs and making her slowly suffocate played itself over and
over again inside his psyche.

Even though he wasn't able to utilize the full power of the Battousai
for the sake of a duel with Goro Fujita, he'd damn well do so in order
to protect his loved ones. 'I will not fail. Just like in the past, I'd
die first before I let anyone hurt the ones I love!'

Still, no matter how desperate Kenshin wanted to save Botan and to keep
the Demon's Sword free from its malignant past, he also knew that the
Chojin, the true puppet master behind the demon brothers' actions, had
to be stopped before he could destroy the entire human world, perhaps
even all of the three worlds... no matter what the cost. Iehog and Iehik
might delude themselves into thinking all the unnatural events that
happened today had occurred for their sole benefit, but Kenshin knew
better. He could sense it. They were being used by a greater, darker
power and the fools barely even realized it.

Shishio Makoto had wanted to dominate the country by blood and fire in
order to make it stronger. Kenshin, Saito, Sano, and many others had
risked their lives to stop the would-be tyrant because his plans would
have caused great suffering and an untold number of deaths for the
ordinary people. But this time was different. The danger was infinitely
greater. It was literally a fate worse than death.  

The two demon brothers' unseen master was hell-bent on destroying the
very fabric of the three worlds themselves and reweaving it to suit its
own twisted desires.

The cost of failure was too high. There could be no holding back. To
save Botan, to save the entire country, it was necessary for him to do
this; nothing less than unleashing the true, complete strength of the
Hitokiri Battousai, the Strongest of the Bakumatsu no Douran, the
Legendary Demon Slayer, was needed right that instant.

The red-haired swordsman who prowled the streets of Kyoto was a curious
blending of the past and the present. He had all the memories of Kenshin
Himura--memories of a rurouni's wanderings after the Bakamatsu no
Douran; memories of Sanosuke, Yahiko, and all the other friends he had
come to know; memories of Kaoru and Tomoe; even though his memories of
being a spirit inside a sword was strangely lacking, at least the
important memories were locked in his mind--However, the way he
interpreted those memories and his mode of thinking were almost entirely
that of the Hitokiri Battousai: cold, precise, and ruthless in a way
that was beyond most people's comprehension.

Just as it had been during the Bakumatsu, the part of him that was
Kenshin acted as the strategist, setting the goals to be achieved in
his mind, but it was the Battousai who was the tactician, the one who
did whatever was necessary to achieve those goals.

And somewhere in the depths of Kenshin's soul, something stirred and
began to awaken. Mighty coils slowly rasped across each other... scales 
rustled... a great golden eye opened...

...then Battousai heard a voice that echoed as if from the bottom of a
deep well.

"To yourself be true."

So it had been a century ago... and so it was now again.
    
And with the Battousai's preeminence, the overwhelming emotions that had
been clouding Kenshin's thinking had been stripped away--or at least
momentarily pushed aside.

When Kenshin delivered his 'death blow' upon Genbu, he held back--in
hindsight, he reckoned that the saint beast probably even survived the
attack. He also did the same thing in his fight with Fujita, as though
his instincts explicitly told him not to let his dark side completely
take over, lest he became responsible for corrupting Yusuke's soul care
of their shared bond through the Demon's Sword.

But this time, the situation had changed; none of those petty little
things mattered in the face of the current state of affairs. It wasn't
even a choice anymore...

"Tainting the Demon's Sword with sin and murder, even that of demons,
will condemn your spirit to the Lowest Ranks of Hell far worse than
Phlegethon or good ol' Fire and Brimstone," Koenma's century-old warning
came back to haunt Kenshin with inopportune vengeance. Unfortunately,
there was no Kenshin present to hear that warning.

'Who cares? Let me transform myself into death, the destroyer of worlds,
for a worthy purpose that truly matters,' Battousai retorted, sneering
at the bygone memory as he let his sharp youtou whistle through the
wintry air with unerring swiftness.

...And so Iehik's round head went flying into the nimbus-filled skies a
split second later, his putrid, ichor-filled blood tainting the ground
in a fountain of death.

"ANIKI!" the immobile Iehog cried in despair as his brother's squat and
portly form fell on its knees then flopped down like a dead, decapitated
fish--or a dead, decapitated _anything_, for that matter. The staggering
trauma was too great for the luckless chimera; the fact that Iehik's
head soon tumbled right in front of him, just out of his paralyzed
claws' reach, added further insult to his numbing shock and searing
emotional agony. "NOOOOOOOOO!!!"

Iehog moaned in disbelief and agony. He was making a thin, whining
noise, a high keening that sounded like a baby crying. His hideous face
was chalk-white; his eyes were enormous. He threw his head back and 
screamed. His voice was full of shattered glass. Then anger set in.

That did it. The Demon's Sword was now tainted with blood--a recently
killed quarry's blood--and Battousai could almost taste the incredible,
mind-numbingly raw power surge within him. The delectable energy coursed
through his veins like lightning, like alcohol, like nothing he had ever
experienced, making him drunk with a special kind of electric ecstasy.
He was making the Demon's Sword do what it was designed to do, and as a
result, his power increased tenfold... or so he reasoned.  

The hitokiri simply could not describe the feeling he felt every time he
murdered a demon like that: The sheer thrill he experienced from rapidly
absorbing his dead prey's ki--a piece of demonic nourishment which his
body, his whole constitution, yearned for--was indescribable. It felt
like... an orgasm, or maybe as high as you could ever get on drugs. No,
even higher than that. It couldn't be expressed. Such comparison pales
amidst the sheer ecstasy he felt from feeding into himself a demon's
soul; a life. Every fiber of his being exuded... aliveness. There was no
other word for it: Aliveness.  

But wait. There was still a demon left... a blubbering, seething one
which hardly qualified as a threat anymore because of his paralysis from
the neck down. He was an easy kill. But Iehog wasn't the only demon that
Battousai felt: there were still others, hundreds of them, roaming in
this world, and even beyond that, he felt an entire world composed of
billions and billions of demons. Then there was the matter of the
Chojin, who had the potential to become the most merciless and powerful
demon in all of existence. This was unacceptable.

The Hitokiri Battousai's grip tightened around the Youtou Shinnoken; he
had much to do. In fact, in light of his current objectives, perhaps he 
shouldn't refer to himself as a hitokiri anymore; he should instead be
known as Youkiri Battousai, the Strongest Demon Slayer. And so the
redheaded youkiri braced himself and moved in for his second kill...
the second of many.

Meanwhile, as a result of Battousai's brand of vigilante justice, Botan
started to stir, her body freed from Iehik's temporary psychic bind.
She could feel herself being swept along towards awakening, as if she
were caught in a strong tide. She floated in a black ocean somewhere
below the reach of her consciousness, unaware of the passage of time. 

The ferry-girl could sense that she was rising up from the darkness deep
inside her, towards the light that awaited her outside of this limbo.
She was powerless to stop it now, helpless in the grip of inertia.

Botan willed her eyes to fly wide open, but her body felt like lead;
finding herself in the middle of a bizarre scene was cause enough for
her to panic, but shock came first. She was held immobile by it. All she
could do was stand there and stare while her mind searched urgently for
excuses--logical, acceptable excuses--to account for the frightening man
who wore Kenshin's face stalking a sniveling, helpless Iehog while the
dismembered head of Iehik lay in between them. Immediately, she thought
of drug-induced hallucinations and holographic imaging, then a simple
dream--was she back to dreams?

'No. This isn't a dream. I'm actually... I... What?' A forgotten urgency
drifted inside the ferry-girl's head, beckoning to her like an unknown
word at the tip of her tongue, a lost object lying right under her nose;
she tried desperately to grasp the vague notion of a memory inside her
turbulent mind, careful not to squeeze it too tight lest it escaped her
grasp like a puddle of water. 'What was I supposed to remember?'

Her head swam. Bluish hair clung to her face, obscuring her pink eyes
and confusing her vision. She brushed her bangs away and looked up again
at the scene, hoping that something more pleasant had replaced it. She
was in for more disappointment: all she saw was a vision of the horrible
Iehog somehow regaining bodily movement out of sheer desperation as he
reached for his dead brother's head in the palm of his enormous paws.

Iehog laughed: an ugly, bitter sound that woke Botan from her dazed
reverie and made the Battousai hesitate in mid-step. "I have nothing
left. You're the only one I have, big brother. And now... now that I've
lost you... I need to do this. I need to--I don't understand it myself,
but like you always said, _we_ need to fulfill our destiny." The
youkai's teary eyes lit up as his voice trembled. "I want our lives to
_mean_ something, and this is the only way I know how!"

Then, impossibly, the head started to talk. Iehog wasn't sure if it was
from his own crazed imagination or if Battousai and the shinigami could
hear Iehik talk as well, but he didn't care: To him, his wise and all-
knowing big brother's head was drawling, "Very good, little brother. You
finally understand where I'm coming from. Now quickly, open your mouth
and merge with me so that we can finally fulfill our destiny!" And so
Iehog did exactly that, swallowing the inert head whole with a single
gulp. 

A metamorphosis happened immediately. A vortex of jaki appeared before
them like a whirling spindle of black energy. It drew in, it turned back
on itself. Like an explosion in reverse, it collapsed inward. It poured
itself into the amalgamated brothers; it filled them to brimming and
then did it again, over and over. The air was sharp with the smell of
ozone and fire. Streamers of pale ash burst out from the core of the
spindle, arced back and shot into them again: The roaring of magma
inside a firestorm. A harsh blaze, like a dark inferno roiling through
the endlessly-moving surface of the sun, ended the vigorous dance.

A black pit ripped itself in the air, so dark that Battousai's golden
eyes recoiled to look upon it. Two points of brilliant red shone out
from that unspeakable void, and the aura of concentrated fear poured
forth from the rent like some poisonous vapor. The gate that called
forth the chimera crackled and spat arcs of crimson lightning as it
finally emerged; the fused, final form of Iehog and Iehik. 

It hardly made a sound as it moved, the aura of its menace intensifying
when it started to limber forward. If Battousai's shared heart with
Yusuke were still alive, it would have begun to pound out a rapid tempo
of fear in his chest. The swordsman spirit backed away deliberately,
interposing himself between Botan and the beast whilst trying to be as 
quiet and as battle-ready as possible.

The thing seemed to grow as it approached Battousai, swelling with utter
darkness, its limbs thrashing about it as if caught in the grip of some
chaotic wind. Its red orbs burned with the promise of crimson hellfire,
zeroing in on Himura Battousai with their hideous glare. The sheer power
that pulsed from the monster beggared the imagination.

"WE ARE MAHIRU," the fused form of Iehog and Iehik shrieked and boomed
in cacophonic chorus as it... he... they... whatever number or gender it
was produced two huge, pillar-like arms, even more massive than the arms
it already had. They smashed great craters in the ground as they struck,
moving with a velocity that was terrible to behold for things of such
immensity. Even when Battousai dodged them, the titanic impacts kicked
up massive waves of debris that pummeled him, threatening to bury him in
an upsurge of displaced earth if he let an impact strike too close. "AS
YOU CAN PLAINLY SEE, WE ARE UNSTOPPABLE. MERGE WITH US SO THAT WE CAN
HELP FULFILL YOUR GOALS OF DESTROYING ALL DEMONS... OR DIE IN THE HANDS
OF THE VERY DEMONS YOU'VE SWORN TO KILL."

"Fools. I'll never debase myself as to ask for the help of filthy demon
spawns," Battousai hissed as he dove and spun, weaving his way between
the attacking monster until he was in range to execute his preliminary
assault. Powerful blows from the Dragon Nest Dodge struck the monster
with lightning speed, severing its mutant arms into small chunks and
churning far too fast for whatever trap lay inside Mahiru to catch.
Instead, a crackling storm of impacts echoed through the area as the
Demon's Sword shredded into the monster over and over.  

"VERY WELL, THEN. KILL US IF YOU CAN, AND BECOME THE INFAMOUS BATTOUSAI
THE DEMON SLAYER ONCE MORE! WE'LL HELP CORRUPT YOUR PURE SOUL, JUST AS
THE CHOJIN WANTS. OR WE'LL KILL YOU SO THAT WE OURSELVES COULD WIELD THE
INCREDIBLE POWER OF YOUR DEMON'S SWORD. NO MATTER HOW YOU LOOK AT IT, WE
WILL STILL WIN AND FULFILL OUR DESTINY! THERE'S NO STOPPING US!" the
hideous creature dissonantly responded as it extended a trio of gruesome
grasping arms that grew out of its main body like limbs from some
diseased tree, sprouting ugly clusters of thorns along their length even
as they grew. 

"Your 'master' is a deluded fool then, thinking that he can control me
like the rest of you pawns," the Battousai snapped as he immediately
countered the branch-arms' furious charge with heavenly vengeance. His
strikes were delivered flawlessly, the years of sleep-induced peace
melting away as the weapon in his hand became nothing more than an
extension of his body. "My only master is my divine purpose: to destroy
all demons and to bring about a true Utopia. Paradise. Eden. Rakuen.
Whatever you may call it. Once I'm done with you and all the rest of the
many demons in all three worlds, the Chojin is next."

And now that he was nearing the apex of his higher state of being, the
Battousai soon realized the reasoning behind the Chojin's orders to
corrupt the Demon's Sword: If he were able to kill all the demons in
Makai, then there'd be no one to stop the Chojin from taking over. A
simple, direct, effective, and effortless plan. Battousai snorted; just
for that, he'd make sure to make time in his busy schedule to find and
kill this arrogant Chojin before the _real_ massacre began. 

Botan felt like she hadn't blinked in years. She couldn't tear her red
eyes away from the fight that unfolded before her, didn't want to look
away for a split second. On one side, there was Battousai--moving like a
streak of greased lightning, his kenki as brilliant as the corona of the
sun, unleashing insanely powerful techniques that she'd never even heard
of. If there ever were a god that touched down his feet upon the surface
of the Earth, she thought, it must've looked something like Kenshin did
now. 'Except he isn't really Kenshin. Kenshin's gone for now,' a voice
at the back of her mind that was not her own concernedly reminded.

But on the other side, there was a demon more terrible than her worst 
nightmares. The aura of sheer terror that pulsed from this 'Mahiru'
behemoth dwarfed the power of anything she'd felt from Iehog before,
setting her every nerve burning with the primal need to flee for her
very life. Unthinkable energy emanated from its dark-shrouded body, an
aura of raw power that froze her breath in her lungs every time she
looked at it. Iehog and Iehik seemed less like two separate beings now,
and more like some moving portal rent in the fabric of space, through
which one horror after another streamed in an endless onslaught. This
Mahiru was... 

"M-Mahiru...? What, as in, like, the 'Hiruma' brothers in reverse? Oh
please, that's reeeeeaaal creative, just like the way the idiot brothers 
reversed their old names to--Wait a minute!" Botan exclaimed in sudden,
opportune comprehension. Her elusive epiphany had finally come to her
for a second time, and everything made sense again. Instead of denying
it like she did the first time she came upon an important realization,
she embraced it; hugged it like a newborn babe, like the child she never
had. It had a tangible form, even--a small tome, no thicker than a
notebook, inside her kimono's breast pocket.

She was a shinigami; she was death incarnate. She had power over all
human souls, even though she didn't usually exercise it the way those
other, more grotesque and amoral death gods did in the Shinigami Realm.
The personable work and reasonable hours (plus extra fringe benefits and
dental care) under Prince Koenma's wing was more her style, really.

True, ferry-girls like herself weren't as free as those ad hoc death
gods littering the afterlife; Botan and others like her were bound to
obey rules just like those zanpakuto-waving warrior shinigami from Soul
Society, and she had absolutely no power over the lives of demons and
celestials to boot. Nevertheless, the power she did have, the very same
power over life and death common to all shinigami, was still quite
potent and deadly in and of itself. Restricted, bound by very strict
edicts and even stiffer punishments, yet she was in the middle of an
emergency. Rules were supposed to be thrown out the window at times like
this. 

Still, she hesitated. She had heard of the consequences surrounding her
plan of action, and she wasn't quite sure how prepared she was to face
them. On the other hand, if she were the paragon of forethought, then
she wouldn't be a shinigami in the first place. 

So Botan took one look at Kenshin--his golden eyes becoming more and
more feral as the fight progressed, the remnants of his fleeting
humanity drowning inside an all-encompassing need to fulfill the true
purpose of the almighty Demon's Sword--sighed, and nodded resolutely. It
wasn't even a choice at all, as far as she was concerned. 'If I'm right
and there's a loophole, I might have a chance. If I'm wrong... then I'll
cross that bridge when I get there.'

With no further ceremony, she took out the Book of Fate, a pocket watch,
and a special pen of sorts, then started writing vigorously on the its
empty pages.

In the meantime, after a few minutes of intense fighting, Mahiru heaved
a wrecking-ball-like limb into the air, whipped it around its body, and
cast it wholesale towards its prey with such ferocious force that even
Battousai barely had time to get his sword up to block. It was strong!
It had unbelievable power that was further reinforced by its constant
mutations care of Iehik's unique savvy and Iehog's awesome constitution.
Instead of bringing its chitinous claws around to strike somewhere else,
the huge demon pushed down onto the interlocked blade and soon the
Guardian of the Youtou Shinnoken found himself in a contest of brute
strength.
 
Battousai pushed the demon back, feeling his own power grow in the heat
of battle. As he put more and more energy into blocking, he felt his
blood lust rise, giving him an enormous amount of leverage that defied
the laws of physics themselves. He reached out with his spare hand,
reeled back, squatted down, pumped up his legs, and exploded with a
perfect Ryu Sho Sen blow that came faster than a heartbeat and stronger
than when Kenshin used it against the Shisejyu Genbu or the mysterious
Fujita; a blur that swept towards the horrifying beast in the time it
took a hummingbird to flap its wings.

Mahiru didn't even miss a beat after the destruction of its battering
limb, instantly sprouting another host of attacking arms. Four multi-
jointed appendages erupted from its central mass, each ending in four-
fingered grasping claws. The digits on each finger stretched eerily, as
though it were made of rubber. That flexibility clearly threw off the
Battousai's ability to predict where the arms would strike, as well as
ensnare the sharp sword if the opportunity arose.

"Pathetic," Battousai intoned as he unleashed an endless storm of steel
and sparks that fell to the ground in a shower of tiny yellow stars, 
avoiding the fingers altogether and concentrating on rending the arms'
joints apart piece by gruesome piece.

Time lost meaning as a hundred strikes became five hundred, and then
more. Battousai switched from speed to strength to solely relying on
skill as he slowly but surely wore the confused beast down, chopping him
up like timber. The former hitokiri now understood how Fujita felt when
he first fought him earlier; aside from the obvious disappointment,
Battousai missed the feeling of fighting at such a high level of skill
and expertise. He long yearned for his terrible yet irresistible power
to affect change into the world--to shape it into a better, safer place.
'Just a little longer.' 

Every strike of Battousai's sword brought him closer and closer to his
true power; a power far beyond that of even the infamous Hitokiri
Battousai, who slew hundreds to usher in a new era for Japan. No, this
Battousai--the Youkiri Battousai--was cold, precise, and ruthless in a
way that went beyond most people's comprehension. He was relentless;
inhumanly cunning with human intelligence--a force of nature without
nature's equanimity. The swordsman's own metamorphosis, in contrast to
the demonic siblings' transformation, was almost complete.

Botan would have none of that, of course. 'It's been six minutes
already, I think. Just under a minute left. It's time.' "Not so fast,
Mahiru... or should I say, the Hiruma brothers!" That got the lumbering,
slavering beast-monster's attention; just in time too, as the amber-eyed 
Battousai seemed to be on the verge of going past a metaphorical 'point
of no return, where he could never, _ever_ regain the humanity he had
just so recently recovered. "I know you two. You're Hiruma Gohei and
Hiruma Kihei! The Hiruma brothers! You can't fool me!"

"H-HOW DID YOU...?" Mahiru interjected suddenly, turning away from its
tenacious quarry as its face screwed up in incredulity and disbelief.
The monster afterwards did a chirruping combination of a laugh and a
snort as it challenged Botan's accusations, daring, "WELL? SO WHAT IF
YOU KNOW US? WHAT CAN YOU POSSIBLY GAIN FROM LEARNING OUR NAMES? WE ARE
THE MAHIRU MONSTER, AND WE WILL DO AS WE PLEASE! AND WHAT PLEASES US
MOST IS BATTOUSAI'S CORRUPTION AND DEATH! EITHER OF THE TWO OR BOTH! SO
WHAT CAN _YOU_ POSSIBLY DO TO STOP US?"

Botan's usually cheerful smile curled with atypical spite as she took
out a small pocketbook from the folds of her kimono and showed its most
recent contents to both Battousai and the Mahiru chimera. "What indeed."
The page shown contained the following entries:

Hiruma Kihei: Dies because of his own brother's immune system; Gohei's
body will reject Kihei's brain and mark it as a dangerous foreign body.
As a result, Kihei will become brain dead within a couple of minutes
before Hiruma Gohei's own death. 

Hiruma Gohei: Dies because of the excessive, out-of-control mutation of
his body. He'll soon receive complications from various congenital
disorders ranging from Neurofibromatosis, Elephantiasis, to Proteus
Syndrome, his body becoming so twisted and warped that he'll immediately
suffocate from his own tragic deformities.

"The many copies of the Book of Fate that we Reikai Shinigami have are
actually our own version of the infamous Death Notes of our fellow 
Shinigami from the Shinigami Realm. I admit, shinigami generally don't
have jurisdiction over the lives of _demons_, but there's always a
loophole somewhere in the rules, and the one I found apparently states
that humans who were reincarnated as demons as punishment for their past
sins are still fair game for Reikai Shinigami like myself to 'grimly
reap', so to speak," Botan explained primly to the trembling Mahiru as
she smoothened her ruffled kimono. "All I really needed was your
original human names and... poof. Gotcha. Oh, look at the time. You only
have ten more seconds to live, Gohei. Old man Kihei's already a goner."

Mahiru's contorted face paled as the last ten seconds of their... its 
reincarnated life passed with agonizing eternity. Then, just as it hoped
against hope that it had escaped Botan's cruel judgment, it happened.
And so it was written in the Book of Fate, and so it was done. 

Once the genetic goliath flopped down and died, Battousai himself
slumped to his tired knees as his Youtou Shinnoken clattered noisily
onto the ground. As he kneeled there, catching his breath, Botan rushed
up towards him.

The ferry-girl coughed, then probed uncertainly, "Kenshin...?"

There was no response for quite a while. Then, unpredictably, Battousai
punched his face hard, which made Botan yelp out in bemused surprise.
"What the hell are you doing?! " she demanded as she shook the swirling-
eyed swordsman ghost by the arms. 

"Oro? I'm waking myself up! The Battousai inside of me was having
delusions of grandeur again, so he needed a, as Sanosuke would say,
'swift kick in the butt' to put him in his place. Well, actually, Sano
would probably use stronger language..." Kenshin, _the_ Kenshin Himura,
blabbered on and on.

Botan giggled, then stopped as Kenshin turned her over with unexpected 
gentleness. She blinked in surprise to see Kenshin's long red hair
flowing freely down around his shoulders, then realized that he must
have lost his hair tie during his feverish battle against the Hiruma
monster. Mahiru monster. Whoever.

And without another word, he pulled her into his arms and simply held
her close.

For a disbelieving moment, Botan could do nothing. After everything that
had happened to the both of them, she certainly didn't expect this.
Especially considering the fact that an awfully irate lady claiming to
be Kenshin's girlfriend was currently taking residence in her own head.

'And I was so worried about him being cold and unfeeling after I saw him
turn into Battousai. Why, he's not cold at all... not the true Kenshin,
anyway.' she thought amusedly. And in his warm embrace, the ferry-girl
couldn't resist the urge to nuzzle at Kenshin's neck and rub her cheek
against his long soft hair.

'You're really pushing it, lady,' the voice in her head that wasn't hers
warned. 

Botan blinked, and then exhaled. 'And I thought he would stink of
blood...  hatred... fear....' But she had been very wrong.  She caught
the scent of a healthy male body, mixed with the honest smell of sweat.
But those familiar smells were mixed with something elemental; fresh
wind and rain, tinged with the subtle sharpness that lingered in the air
after a lightning strike. 

'Get your nose off of him and heel, girl!' the voice in her head that
wasn't hers commanded. 

"Botan," the softness of Kenshin's words did nothing to hide the wealth
of feeling in his voice. "You've saved me... from myself. Thank you."

Botan felt her throat tighten with emotion as she suddenly burst into
tears. "I'm so glad you're safe, Kenshin! I... I'm not sure why, but the
thought of you transforming into the Battousai made my chest tighten and
my heart ache, as if I had to do everything in my power to--"

Kenshin held Botan by the shoulders to quiet her down. "About that...
Botan, just how in the world did you learn that Iehog and Iehik are
Hiruma Gohei and Kihei, seeing that you've never even met them until
recently?" the guardian ghost pointed out in worry. "Just who are
really...?"

"We've shared the most intimate of intimate relationships, deep in the
darkness of the night and within the flames of passion that only the
hearts of lovers know amongst themselves," Botan stated wistfully, her
smile as enigmatic as the human condition itself.

"Botan...?" Kenshin trailed off, taken aback by the shinigami's words.

"I'm just kidding, of course," Botan smilingly reassured. "It's all
written in the Book of Fate, and I simply decided to look it up," she
lied, then twittered impishly. 

"I see," Kenshin answered, feeling a bit wary and suspicious of the
ferry-girl's actions for some reason.

"So does that," Botan started, her hands fiddling inside her kimono and
fishing out the remnants of a pre-bitten, apple-like fruit from the tree
of knowledge as her innocent albino eyes shone a mischievous glint,
"answer your question, Himura-san?"


________________________________________________________________________


Youtou Shinnoken
A Yuyu Hakusho/Rurouni Kenshin fic
By Chester Castañeda
chester.castaneda at gmail.com
gabriel_gabdiel at yahoo.com
Original concept by SeventhOne
chadjill at ms3.hinet.net
http://www.fanfiction.net/~abdiel
http://chester-fanfics.livejournal.com/

Yes, it's an April Fools chapter. Don't act as if you didn't expect it!

________________________________________________________________________

The April Fools Chapter: The Book of Fate 
________________________________________________________________________



The End.


Next: The real chapter 17, hopefully. ^_~

...What? It makes perfect sense! The apples, the names, the
Botan--Oh, and Happy April Fools Day, by the way. :)  

It's not a terribly funny April Fools Joke, I admit, but I have a
weird sense of humor, don't you know? (See the Wandering Stranger
for details... or not.) 

The Rule that Botan was concerned about was, "If a Shinigami uses
the Death Note to extend the life of someone they care about, they
will die since they have failed in their eternal mission of
shortening human lives, and their remaining life span will be
given to the human whom they saved." Since Kenshin is already
dead and Botan only did what she did to keep him from spiraling
down into his Battousai self, she did not die.

A few more Post-April Fools Joke notes: Yes, I'm still working on
the _real_ chapter 17. Though, really, this fake chapter 17, in
comparison to the real chapter 17 (or the current story arc as a
whole), has a more coherent plot, is less convoluted, and makes
more sense than the upcoming real one. Perhaps I should continue
writing this chapter instead?

Tyson Tomko: No.

Ah. Such is life. ^_^

Disclaimer: Yuyu Hakusho is the rightful property of Yoshihiro
Togashi, Shueisha, Fuji TV and St. Pierrot. Rurouni Kenshin is the
rightful property of Nobuhiro Watsuki and Sony. Death Note is the
property of Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata. Don't sue us please,
we are very poor.

Paalam!
Abdiel


***


"Really? You're kidding! You can do that?! I don't believe it!" a
heavily bandaged Yusuke exclaimed, nearly jumping out of his hospital
bed as Botan related the details of Kenshin's fight against Iehog and
Iehik.

"It's true! It's true!" Botan cheered, clapping enthusiastically. "Ha! I
got to save the day that time around! You boys can't monopolize day-
saving now that Botan-chan is making use of her handy Book of Fate!"

"I'm a bit bothered by that, though," Yusuke admitted, his eyebrows
furrowed. "If you had such an awesome ability before, why didn't you use
it against, say, the Toguro Brothers? Or, hell, Shinobu Sensui? I admit,
killing humans by means of a notebook is sadly anticlimactic, but that
kind of power could have been really useful against those ningen
fuckers--and it would have saved us a lot of time, effort, and lives to
boot!"

"Ahehehehehe... Botan wakaranai! I have no idea!" Botan chirped as she
lightly conked herself on the head and stuck her tongue out to her
cheek.


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