"Nataku. Nataku!" Litouten was vigorously shaking his son's shoulder. "Wake up!"

"Huh?" The boy dazedly asked as his father pulled him up from the bed and literally dragged him out. His long, black locks fell to his waist and he barely had time to tie them back when he was pushed onto the balcony. "Does Tentei want me again?" He rubbed his eyes.

"No."

"Then wha-"

"Ssshh." Litouten hushshed him with a vile grin on his face, a filthy hand on his shoulder. "And watch."

Nataku did. All he saw was dead blackness and the Western Army housingplex not too far into the distance. "There's nothing there."

"Not now. Just wait. Tonight will be..." he trailed off, searching for a word glorious enough to do justice to this sensation of sweet, sadistic victory he was now tasting. "Nataku, wake up!"

The boy had fallen asleep on his feet. "I'm awake, Father. Tonight will be what? You said it'll be what?"

"Mine."

He sounded like one of thoseic books the Marshal always slipped under his door whenever he knew Litouten isn't around. Nataku looked grumpily towards his father and shrunk back as the hand on his shoulder tightened into an oppressive grip. He looked to Western Army, then closed his eyes again. He didn't want to see this.

****

He had never really seen barrenness until now, the charred homes, trampled flower beds, broken fences, and severe emptiness -made more painful by the multitude of footprints in the snow indicating that there were once many more people here- it all tugged at memories that only this body knew. And what this body knew, Tenpou could only guess.

Walking the cold empty streets, that part of him numb to human suffering seemed to die with each step. Whisps of smoke from dying fires rose from various points in the village where several families had decided to stay out of love for homeland. "When ites right down to it," a woman had told him. "Total disaster is in the eye of the beholder. Yes, we miss our lost friends...but we still have ourselves. Homes are just sticks and stones, and they can be rebuilt. Besides, the town was starting to look a bit decrepit anyway, wouldn't you think?"

If Heaven had the opportunity to experience such calamities, maybe it wouldn't be so intolerable, so untouched. Something so egotistically virgin needed a bit of...non-virgin experiences. Dirt. Snow. Wind. Rain. Fire. Fire.

It was a dim, gray sunrise, giving way to a sickly pale sun that seemed to suck the heat from earth instead of give. He caught a wide frozen splotch of red against a house, blatant and infused with the last scream of the dying, then fought the urge to gag when the scent reached his nose. Tenpou picked up his pace and headed to a wood right outside the town.

Finding him didn't take too long- a permanent frown etched into perfect white marble that made the snow around him hide in shame. His eyes were closed, painfully so, as if he were forcing himself farther and farther into his meditation like it was some closet to hide in. As he stepped closer, a twig broke beneath Tenpou's feet. He froze. The other flinched, then stilled himself, a murmur barely audible on his lips. "..e back."

Tenpou dared to speak. "Sanzo." One violet eye cracked open to give a well-aimed glare tailored perfectly for the marshal, apanied by a well aimed gun.

"I thought I said that I wanted to be alone."

Tenpou didn't flinch, but held out a meat bun in his right hand. "You've been alone for five hours. You've been fasting for fifteen. Not smoking for ten. I'm surprised you're still alive."

His hand was graciously swatted away. "Don't try to be my fucking nursemaid."

But Tenpou wasn't at all ready to leave. As if he had expected the initial rejection, his left hand offered an opened packet of cigarettes. Sanzo was about to repeat the gesture, apanying it with more colorful epithets, then reconsidered. So he took a cigarette, evoking a light smile from the other man who tapped the bottom of the pack with thefort only a well practiced smoker would have until a cigarette popped up neatly from the rest.

Sanzo wasn't at all surprised as he lit up and threw the lighter at Tenpou's feet. "My thanks." the marshal said, as picked it up and brought burning life to end of his cigarette. It felt good, that first drag in a good long time...his mind liked it, but his body began to cough and choke like the beginner it was. It took a few shorter puffs for him to get ustomed, but when it felt morefortable, Tenpou leaned himself against a tree, closing his eyes. "Just this once, so he won't get addicted."

"So you decided to cut the crap."

"Yes, well, we both have eyes for bad acting, hm?" He grinned again then flicked his ashes onto the snow, blown cold by the northern winds before it even reached the ground. The winds haven't stopped since that first attack. They both knew it. "That's them, you know, and they're still hungry."

"There's no food here."

"Some villagers have decided to stay."

"Then that's their problem, not ours." Sanzo said tersely, not looking at the stranger in front of him. "And definitely not yours. All you do is cause us trouble with your selfish little wants...not caring who gets trampled along the way. You and the rest of you, all the same- whether its for this heaven or that heaven, all the crap got thrown down here."

"Like Goku, perhaps?" Tenpou said, wryly prodding the monk to defend his ward.

Sanzo only snarled, putting out his cigarette with more violence then necessary, the quiet hissing adding a greater dimension of irritation to his mood. "And I should hope that you weren't responsible for chaining him up in that fucking cave, alone, for five hundred fucking years so that five hundred fucking years after he got put there, *I* had to fucking take care of him."

Tenpou opened his mouth to disagree, then silenced himself, his face growing still and his eyes narrowing in subtle contempt- more for himself than anything else. Why was Goku...he didn't know this. Nobody had told him, but it was a glance into an inevitable fate he didn't want to ept...still couldn't ept...but he had to now: he was going to lose everything regardless of what he did. And everything he had so wished for Heaven would never...and it would be nothing glorious. No Renaissance. That's what he wanted, a true renaissance, like the ones he'd read about- a golden age of true change instead of a rotting, tepid one...he had so wished...

But it was a human desire ipatible with a nonhuman world- like trying to light a match in the vacuum of space...

Looking past the end of his cigarette, he saw the image of Konzen at his desk, superimposed on this unruly, smoking monk. Had Tenpou been in Konzen's office this very minute instead of some freezing wood with Sanzo, he absently and futilly mused, Konzen would have said something like, "Go back to your books and quit distracting me." if he really didn't want to be disturbed. But if he really didn't mind Tenpou's presence, it would be something in the range of, "You're still here."

"You're still here." Sanzo said, dully.

"Yes I am." he agreed, a better mood returning to him. "The youkai..."

"It's not your problem."

But motivated by a growing sense of vanity, Tenpou decided not to scuttle away with his tail between his legs like a kicked dog on some dirty sidestreet. Nobody had the right...no, not even a Sanzo because he was...and *he* was...is...

"It's not for you to decide which problems are mine, Genjo Sanzo, emissary of the *gods*. " Tenpou retorted, rubbing it in, delighting in that look of abject shock that flashed across Sanzo's apathetic face just then, and feeling more like himself and deciding that he was himself, only in different skin- human, youkai, or not- and that he was still marshal.

Matters which concerned rampaging youkai were, arbitrarily, his problem. "Now listen, I've instructed the people to put out their fires and hide out in the valley west of here taking minimal belongings. They should be all cleared out in about two hours or so. The town will then be deserted and the youkai will most likely go for the slower caravan moving southwards which left around the time you started meditating. They cannot get there without passing first through the town. I think we can handle them, don't you think?"

But Sanzo was busy grinding his teeth. "Fuck you."

"Now, now. You should start to be nicer to me. I may not be Hakkai, but that doesn't mean I'm worth any less." Tenpou chided as he went over and put a patronizing hand over Sanzo's head, petting him as if he were some student of his. "You know that Three Aspects debit Card you have?" He stopped. Sanzo glared. "When I go back, I can cut the Sanzo's ount with just a simple order and you and your predecessors will have a good five hundred years to learn how to earn your wages right. Wouldn't you like that?"

Tenpou's hand tightened at the hair that brushed against Sanzo's neck as if pulling an imaginary ponytail.

"Or..." the marshal continued, pretending to ponder.

"Or." said Sanzo through a clenched jaw, his trigger finger twitching like mad.

"Or, maybe I won't. I could also have a word with the Three Aspects about guaranteeing vacations to the men in your line of work. After all, you need your rest...humans are so...so frail..."

It was enough provocation to send a bullet buzzing past his ear and into the air. Before he had time to think any second thoughts, Tenpou was grabbed by his collar in a brutal hold.

"Listen you..."

A bloodcurdling screech filled the air, cutting off the monk's impending threat.

"So now they know we're here. It's all quite convenient really. I'm doing my job, and you're getting your friend back. There won't be any more need for you to meditate yourself over to his side. Isn't that fair? " Tenpoumented, oblivious to how close to death he was at that moment. He paused. "Isn't it what you want, Genjo Sanzo?"

Sanzo released him, his eyes strewn with scornful disbelief as if he'd just been viola

本站無廣告，永久域名（fanyan.cc）