Makai-Ichi Budōkai – Chapter 3: Opening Ceremony, Blah Blah

Temujin and Enekai’s respective matches were so quick that the young man had forgotten what happened in them by the time the trumpets sounded.

Those were long crooked horns blown by red-faced tengu clinging upside down to the rafters. The doors at the end of the hall opened with a groan. Beyond them, a staircase climbed into a vast chamber lit by fire the color of burning emeralds.

Emeralds! What a tease.

The gathered fighters moved.

The main arena waited beyond the temple: a circular lei tai the size of a village square, raised over a pit of smoking black water. Around it, tier upon tier of seats had been carved into the mountain’s interior. Thousands of demons filled the tiers: sword schools in funeral white, oni accountants in business suits, armor-plated clan brutes eating skewered hearts from paper boats, naked gaki painted head to toe in bracket numbers.

High above the arena, the Makai Daimaō sat like a mountain carved into a throne. Stately, fat, and feral, he was a titanic ogre of red skin and sharp lines, all that mass rising toward the square hat on his head, where 魔 was written in bold black strokes. That forked beard looked like he stole it from Satan, and a tiny part of Temujin wanted a beard like it. Not so much his blue suede suit, which looked strained at the shoulders, or the oversized polka dot tie, which didn’t belong on demons. A cloud blacker than volcanic smoke curled beneath him, lifting him from a balcony of carved skulls. Temujin saw one puff of that smoke flow past the tie, hoping it would swipe the cloud away, do anything at all to fit being worn by demon king. 

The crowd roared.

The Daimaō raised one meaty hand.

Silence dropped with the speed of a guillotine.

“Warriors!” he bellowed.

The mountain shook. Dust sifted from the ceiling. Somewhere, a small demon fainted and was eaten by his neighbor before he hit the floor.

“For six hundred and thirteen tournaments, the Makai has gathered the brave, the stupid, the doomed, the hungry, the dishonorable, the honorable, the dishonorable pretending otherwise, and those blessed maniacs who know that blood is a language better spoken by hand!”

The crowd roared again.

Yulaan mouthed the Daimaō’s next words a heartbeat before he spoke them, then sighed.

“I was here last year,” she said.

Temujin replied, “So I heard.”

“I lost.”

That surprised him. “You?” Oh, so that’s what Bakuga started to say that bothered her. Then came a new feeling. 

He’d done this to himself before— of course he could carry the Toad Sage’s jug of water fifty miles, of course he’d agree at risk of food deprivation to carry it alone, of course he stood before the bulbous kiloton water-tower tank, and of course he realized only then how fucked he was.

Classic Temujin. Just his luck. 

But this was making him rub his lips sore, worried of the demon pain to which he just doomed himself. 

Every girl he’d teased and carried back in Naga Kedua repeated the claim he was a prodigal martial artist. Now the hour of proving his boasts arrived and, dear God, Yulaan couldn’t even win? 

Her tail lashed under the cloak. “Lord Saké still has me in chi-limiting restraints. I was operating at a fraction of what I achieved on Gorta.”

“You’re limited?? So you mean you—…”

The door would be the next thing to speak, he thought. It would shout, Come pass through me, boy, you don’t belong here.

Enekai bounced on the balls of her feet. “If anyone in this crowd could take down Yuli-chan, then they’ve got to be amazing.”

With a grimace, Yulaan held out the sage bean.

Enekai took it between two fingers, sniffed it, then ate it. Her face went through three stages: suspicion, offense, and reluctant acceptance.

“It tastes like old dirt.”

“Right, it does,” Yulaan said. “That’ll keep your energy high so you won’t get exhausted as quickly as I did. And you won’t get hungry.”

“I still might.”

“You might also get thrown into black water or ringed out.”

“I won’t.”

Yulaan extended her tail.

Enekai stared, then grinned and wrapped her own around it. Then they slapped palms and shook hands. They shook tails, once, hard enough that the stone under Enekai’s feet cracked.

“I’ve guessed which fighters will go where. If I’m right, then you’re gonna kick your first guy’s ass pretty bad. But after that… Don’t underestimate the bright kid,” Yulaan said.

“Bakuga?”

“Mm.”

“He seems nice.”

“So does bait.”

Enekai laughed. “He seems like the kinda kid who’s hiding some real intense power.”

“That’s why I’m warning you. Either you or that spooky yogi’s going to fight him, bet.” 

A condor set itself next to Yulaan and both Saiyans watched it. It seemed to watch them in turn.

“Oh, hey, is that an eagle?”

At the sound of Enekai’s voice, the condor pitched its head up slightly and properly looked at her, then lowered its head back down. Enekai looked over her shoulder, shrugged, and turned back towards the Daimaō. Behind her curtain of bangs, Yulaan’s golden eyes drifted left. Her face didn’t move— she knew Temujin stood behind her. Then she looked back to the condor. It was gone.

Above, the Daimaō sniggered grimly, “The Halls are no place for the bitch-hearted. If you lack the balls, spare yourself the agony!”

No one moved.

Temujin dropped his head and slapped the sweat off his face and prepared his obituary in his mind. He ignored the door.

One old turtle demon in the third row shouted, “What if we lack balls from the previous tournament?”

The Daimaō pointed at him. “Then borrow one!”

The crowd laughed.

Then the crowd had more savage howls: in trotted an orange-skinned succubus in square glasses and a corporate gray miniskirt too short for any known office code, swaying through the air with a manila folder hugged to her chest like a lucky bastard.

The Daimaō looked at her and brought the cloud down. His brow furrowed.

“What is this?”

Temujin watched her adjust her glasses and immediately regretted being seventeen. That tiny, most controlled touch of the rim could have killed more than ten thousand swords. “Liability revisions, my Lord. Since the tournament tends to be interrupted by fight-crashers and vagabonds, the Dai-Makōtei has sent you another—”

The Daimaō stared at the forms, then at the secretary, then at the forms again, as if trying to decide which had insulted him first. 

He ate the secretary from the waist up, chewed with administrative patience, and wiped his mouth with the liability revisions.

Temujin leaned back, still staring, eyes wide until they started to dry.

And then the secretary reappeared in a ‘poof!’ with the letters even appearing in the air around the sherberty cloud, and said, “They must be signed by noon, my Lord. Your father’s orders. Just in case someone crashes the fights to steal the treasures again. He promised to cause extreme, intense damage if another, erm, incident occurs.”

The Daimaō’s face twisted into a grimace and he leaned against his knuckles and rolled his hand. “On that note! Remember, then, the spoils of victory. I have, with me, a near endless sea of treasures for today’s champion! Every possible cut of diamonds, sapphires, rubies, turquoises, opals, emeralds; ziggurats of jade, jet and lapis lazuli. Sand dunes of wine, oceans of women, and your choice of one of twenty-three miraculous pieces of shit—” 

Temujin’s eyes narrowed on the shimmering perfect-cut of the Sun Emerald that burned his eyes in the sunlight. That was the one.

Any magical entrapment was his to undo, so long as he had it.

And he could have it, so long as he and Enekai were the final combatants. That had been the plan, Sesame and he giggled to themselves before entering. These two sillies had crushed the strongest of the Twelve Kings (“crushed,” he admitted), and defeated a tyranny that had seemed invincible to generations of the mighty. All they had to do was face each other. Not even win, indeed! They need only a monopoly on the brackets, and it was done.

Ironic, then, that the Sun Emerald floated next to an uncolored-gray Moon Marble, glass-ball Soul Gems that trapped murdered and ensnared souls. To Temujin, the two together were a set up and punchline. What he wanted, versus what he fought. 

Yulaan looked at the treasure chest floating next to the Daimaō, not towards the Sun Emerald but instead the beige-and-tied scroll suspended next to it. She kept staring until she could almost, almost plagiarize the calligraphy from the indents. Her hands settled along the rail and she looked down, forlorn. “Always next year…”

The Daimaō waved the whole ceremony away. “Alright, whatever! Commence already!”

Drums thundered. Gongs answered. The bracket board ignited in midair, names burning across slabs of black jade.

Wishing only to erase the prior image immediately, Temujin searched for his own.

He found it.

Temujin of Earth

versus

Qinglong Xuanwu, Ice Dragon Gentleman of the Northeastern Gate

“Qinglong?” Sesame said. “Well that sounds like a tacky air conditioner brand.” Then she patted Temujin’s shoulder. “You’ve got this, Muji-chan!”

Enekai pumped her fist and rubbed her face against the boy’s with a big silly grin. “Good luck!”

Yulaan looked up at him from beneath her bangs. “If I’m guessing right, he’ll use the dragon early if he thinks you’re ordinary.” She pressed the same shoulder Sesame had patted and said, “Let him.”

That lightest friendliest grip made his shoulder sore and he ached for Sesame to pat him again. “And if he doesn’t think I’m ordinary?”

“That’s on you to figure out then.”

A little fanfare broke from the demon brass, cheap and cheerful and hideously catchy, and the pink-skinned majin referee bounced onto the lei tai as if the stone itself had winked her upward. Her name burst across the floating scoreboards in hot candy lettering—魔人茉莉 / MAJIN MALI—and she struck a pose with one knee bent, one hip out, microphone lifted to her glossy mouth, and the red flag held loose in her other hand like a lounge singer’s scarf. What first looked like pink hair proved, on closer notice, to be the soft tentacular flesh of a majin’s head coaxed into a hime cut: blunt bangs over her brow, cheek-length sidelocks, and two outward little curls that gave her the wickedly girlish look of someone who could giggle while mispronouncing your cause of death. She wore a deep blue unitard with a black pleated miniskirt panel at the hips, gold-trimmed boots, black wristbands, and a golden belt plate stamped with the curling majin mark; tournament staff attire, perhaps, if the staff had been selected by a committee of lonely old demons pretending they were only discussing brand identity.

She twirled once, and as she did, her left forearm softened into a cluster of pink bubbles that lifted above her palm, each one reflecting the arena, the fighters, the ring and the stretches of dirt, the black water below, and her own delighted red eyes in miniature; then she snapped her fingers and popped them one by one in a tiny bright chain of pip-pip-pip-pip-pip, leaving a sugary mist that smelled faintly of strawberries and hot copper.

“Hell-lloooooo, ladies, ghouls, and every evil thing in between and beyond!” she sang, and the crowd answered with whistles, roars, and the clacking mandibles of things that could not whistle. “I am your illustrious, adorable, certified, court-approved, totally impartial, and absolutely bribe-resistant announcer-referee, Ma~aaajin Mali! Mali-mali-hong, are you all ready for some serious ultraviolence?!”

Someone in the upper stands shouted an indecent offer.

Mali put a hand to her cheek and beamed, as in literally beamed with her hair forming into a tentacle that shot a magic beam at the offender and turned him into a magic bean, which then pattered helplessly on her tongue.

“Remember,” she sang, wagging one finger, “no harassing the ref!” 

The stands howled and cheered with constrained hunger. She felt it, tasted it, let it sparkle behind her red eyes— the whole hot, hairy, horned amphitheater reduced for one sweet second to boys at a bakery window, aching to be chosen, chewed, condemned with a wink. Sesame, floating with her arms folded and one eyebrow raised, watched her with the narrowed professional displeasure of a majin seeing another majin getting away with too much and wanting to know her secrets.

“The rules are simple,” Mali continued, pointing her microphone toward the Daimaō’s balcony. “But because some of you gorgeous slabs of head trauma can’t count past your own knuckles, Mali will say it loud ‘n proud! Down for ten seconds, you lose! Out of bounds, you lose! Forfeit, knockout, death— these are all acceptable endings, though between you and me—” she leaned toward the nearest camera imp, lowered her lashes, wagged her finger, and grinned with all her little teeth, “— we are all hoping for blood.”

The arena loved that. The roar came up in waves, and a lizard noble spilled black wine down another’s robe and he did not notice.

Mali turned on one heel and pointed her red flag toward the east gate. “From the mortal sphere of Earth, trained under human skies, presently foolish enough to test himself before the Makai’s finest: Temujin!”

The gate groaned. Temujin stepped forward, the dark day’s light catching the worn seams of his fighting clothes and the knuckles he had wrapped too carefully for a man pretending not to be nervous. He heard a few laughs, a few interested murmurs, the distinct wet click of someone deciding whether he would taste better raw or roasted. He ignored them and kept walking. 

“Kick ass, Muji-chan!”

He kept walking harder. 

Mali spun toward the west gate, her smile sharpening.

“And from the Northeastern Gate, heir to the Cold River Method, bearer of the frost-dragon mantle, gentleman of ice, ink, and exquisitely survivable arrogance: Qinglong Xuanwu!”

The opposing gate opened without groaning, as if it knew better. Qinglong entered in dark Ming-style martial robes, black-blue silk with red lining, his tall formal hat casting his eyes into lacquered shadow. A square embroidered rank badge showed a dragon writhing among waves, though the truer dragon slept across his shoulders: a slender ice-blue creature with whiskers like frozen thread, claws folded, eyes pale and imperial. Frost gathered wherever his slipper touched stone. He looked less like a fighter than a magistrate arriving to sentence weather.

Mali placed herself between them and lifted the flag.

“Fighters, step forward!”

Temujin did.

Qinglong did.

The little dragon opened its eyes. 

Temujin noticed a thousand black shapes all perched along the top rim of the tournament arena, each one with a pair of red eyes. Condors or, no, condor-ish things. Qinglong also looked. 

Temujin saw Mukhahīna’s eye swivel towards the fighter’s chambers, towards an empty smoky spot. When Temujin looked back, the eye was looking back at him. 

He deserved to gulp. He needed to focus. Qinglong was his opponent. The world ended at the edge of the ring. 

“Now,” Mali purred, and the red flag came down, “make Mali proud!”