Makai-Ichi Budōkai – Chapter 15: A Savage Battle! Temujin vs Ryūei Part 2

The arena snapped sideways.

He hit the stone on his shoulder and rolled through pain bright enough to have color. Before he could find his knees, a second blow struck the ribs. A third landed under the sternum. A fourth slapped his guard aside and cracked across the cheek. 

He came up on one elbow.

She kicked him down.

He gasped and looked up at her. She stood.

He had, at the last panicked moment, seen her move and braced himself.

“For you,” she said, “I start with twenty percent.”

Twenty percent? He had pushed every bit of chi in his face just to keep it from popping, and she wasn’t using—

Temujin planted a palm. Stone scraped skin from the heel of it. He forced air down and launched low, swinging a kick.

His entry was good, but she jumped, and kicked him back. He vaulted backwards and skidded, balancing himself with a roll.

She appeared in front of him, and beat him with open-palm strikes too fast to register. 

Desperate, he threw his rear palm towards her sternum with enough chi packed behind it to crack armor.

His hand touched cloth.

Her knee drove into his chest.

The rush sucked air out of his lungs. He felt his body streak back in searing speed— hit thunderously spine-first against her leg— second hit to his gut, all momentum stopped.

White filled his eyes. 

He clutched at his gut and only saw the eddies of dust, moving all confused by his body’s velocity and direction, as he fell to his knees and gasped blood. 

He heard Sesame say something about ‘juggling’ and ‘tossed around the stage’ but his ears began to fail.

Blood rushed up his throat and came out in a second burst of vomit. 

‘What… what the hell just happened!’ 

Blood rushed past his throat, into his head, and his cheeks burned. The blood-spangled tiles were close to his eyes. Then the shadow slithered over the blood, and he looked up. 

She drove her fist very low, too low, breaking through the tiles— crashing up his chin and putting him back into— almost, he almost flew, but he choked instead as fingers ripped around his throat with the tender grip of rusty knives. 

A strangled gurgling gasp left him. 

One cold fist pushed blood back into his mouth, and a second spat it out for him.

“Temujin!” cried Sesame, as other demons made noises he couldn’t describe. 

His arms thrashed for position. 

Ransui returned to his mind.

The scholar’s fine hands, polite salute, the wet crack— Temujin had watched him die from the safety of not being interesting enough yet.

Only a few hours ago, Ryūei was a spooky ghost girl.

He coughed and cried out as she kept pulverizing him, pummeling him with fists crushing his stomach, his spleen, his liver, his kidney, the pain was sickening him too much to think back anymore.

Where has that ethereal ghost gone? Where had this wrathful beast come from?

Her hair curtained both of them. The arena became noise behind black strands. 

The pain ceased, and his breaths ran sloppy through his mouth. 

“What drives you?” she asked.

Her voice should have been harsher for the bruises she left. Instead she spoke more like an older-sister catching their sibling stealing a cookie, or a temple— god, he couldn’t even think in similes anymore. The blunt, slapping pain shockwaving through his body in cold pulses brought up hot wretched snorting and tingling numbness through what he guessed was the burst remnants of his stomach.

He tried to answer. Air scraped at his throat and failed.

“You know you cannot win.”

Her thumb shifted, and one finger broke through the skin near his jugular. Pressure entered a new place. His vision darkened at the corners.

“You could have walked away at any time. Why seek this pain? Why fight a battle you had no chance of winning?”

With force he knew would fail, he beat and clawed at her wrist. One tiny flex brought a fingernail close to cutting the jugular vein, and he went numb. 

He tried to find the heroic answer. Sun Emerald. Trapped friends. The promise. The tournament. The pride of Earth. Toad Sage. Sesame. Enekai and Yulaan’s horrible confidence. All true, all horribly true, all besides the point.

Why hadn’t he left?

The coldest truth was simple: he knew she wasn’t going to let him. He could have ran, and given her permission to cut him down as both an enemy and a coward. Why give her the pleasure?

But no, there was another answer, deeper under the ice.

If he surrendered, some version of him might continue breathing. That version would eat meals, laugh badly, limp home, and live inside the permanent shape of this moment. He would become a man organized around the place where a boy had quit. He could not forgive that man. He could not bear sharing a body with him.

His lips moved.

“Me,” he wheezed.

Ryūei listened.

The fingers tightened, one tip needling near the vein’s edge.

The pleasure for her was in the hand itself, in the delicate knowledge of how much meat a neck contains, how tenderly terror makes it move, how a human throat can plead through pulse before the mouth produces a word. 

“Is that all you have to say?”

Temujin needed space.

Words could make space when fists could not.

“Could answer better,” he rasped, “if you let go.”

She leaned closer. His feet flailed like limp meat from her small glide. Only when he saw the break in her hair and the top of her forehead did Temujin know— it was just so cold. 

“Before it ends… show me your eyes.”

Ryūei went still.

“Scare me… with your eyes… Let me see them… before I die…”

She placed her hand against his mouth. The blood on his lips felt frosted over. 

The infant ghost drifted nearer until its little face hovered beside hers.

He had guessed correctly. Some hunger in her had waited for him to stop looking away. The hair parted fully. Her face lowered toward his. Both eyes opened into him. 

His plan almost left him.

Then he tore the last air from his chest.

“TAIYŌKEN!”

Light exploded from his eyes.

Ryūei screamed and dropped him. The scream had too many throats in it. She fell backward on hands and feet, crawling with terrible speed, hair thrashing across the stone, violet flames scattering from her sleeves. The infant ghost spun away. 

The arena roared in blind outrage. Demons cursed. Glasses shattered. The Daimaō bellowed. Enekai shouted his name. Yulaan snarled laughter through what sounded like a curse. Sesame screamed something filthy and affectionate.

Mali stood at the edge with heart-shaped sunglasses already on, one finger raised. “And Temujin keeps hitting shiners— literally! You just can’t outshine this young man!”

Temujin collapsed onto his hands and knees.

He breathed knife-sharp air, coughed hard enough to spot the stone with one extra puddle of blood, and pulled himself back onto his ass. Victory! Nothing.

Five gashes under his jaw burned ice-cold, but at least he felt them. He felt the pain in his midsection and the needly searing in his neck, and thanked heaven he could. He had no idea why the move had worked. He had no idea whether she would ever allow it to work again.

Her eyes.

His eyes.

The worse injury remained open.

Ryūei rose through the white glare. She looked over her shoulder, one eye gone red-sick with rage.

Temujin did not wait.

He staggered upright and drew back his right fist. Life gathered badly along the meridians. The Toad Sage had taught him to pack chi into the hand until palm, wrist, elbow, shoulder, breath, and will became one instrument. Against Qinglong it had been enough. Against Masha it had nearly been enough. Against Mukhahīna it had been a crowbar jammed into the lowest gate of a killing tower. Now the energy came thin and uneven, too much terror in it, too little root. 

“Even if the odds are against me,” he spat, “I’ll find a way!”

Heat moved from sternum to shoulder. His fist shone pale blue, then brighter. The glow stuttered. He dragged more life into it, from thighs, ribs, belly, from the bruise she had just left in the mouth, from every stubborn piece of him still refusing to kneel.

It still was not enough.

Ryūei’s aura rose.

The darkness climbed from her sleeves and hair in black-violet sheets. Hatred took form as pressure and cold, as a field of anger so dense the air began to grow hazy and thick.

Then it expanded and spun and whirled and blew out in a bulbous blast until the arena had been hidden in a half-sphere of shadows.

The surviving demon audience shouted because the aura hid the carnage. Some demanded refunds. Some demanded she kill him in the open. Some, already frightened past their taste for spectacle, began fighting toward the exits. Others saw weakness in those fleeing and attacked them for the pleasure of correcting it. Clan guards drew blades. Seat rows became alleys. The tournament started to eat its own audience.

The shadow closed around the ring.

Mali pointed wildly with the flag. “Audience interference, audience fleeing, audience cannibalism— please pick one violation at a time!”

The Daimaō laughed from above. He loved the riot. Of course he loved the riot. It was the crowd finally admitting the event’s true nature.

Temujin rushed before the shadow swallowed him completely.

His charged fist struck Ryūei’s robe.

She was gone.

A blow caught his back and drove him forward. He turned into a knee. Blood blew out his mouth. He fired a short Heaven’s Vengeance burst at a flash of white sleeve and hit only shadow. She appeared above, floating with her hair hanging down, baby ghost beside her. He leapt. Something struck the side of his head. The world skipped.

He landed badly, rolled, pushed up, and took a punch beneath the ribs that lifted him to his toes.

Illusion could explain some of it. Speed could explain more. Onryō hatred did the rest. The sphere around them pulsed as demons outside struck it with clubs, spears, cheap curses, and desperate self-defense. Every impact sent little dents of sound through the darkness. The sphere answered now and then, crushing whoever stood closest. Screams came in layers.

Temujin saw her shape ahead and drove in with everything left in the charged fist.

This time he struck her chest.

The Heaven’s Vengeance Fist erupted.

Blue-white light filled the sphere. The black walls bulged outward. For one breath he felt the technique connect, felt the blast pour into her center, felt his own life burn through the fist and empty toward the dead woman with his eyes.

The shadow sphere split.

The explosion threw back the rioting demons clustered around it. Weak bodies flew into seats and walls. Weapons spun through steam. The arena floor shattered again, trigram strips ripping loose, lotus panels cracking, prayer chains snapping from the cardinal pillars and whipping across the stands. Black water surged up from the pit and froze mid-splash into crooked glass before the next heat wave broke it apart.

Temujin skidded across the ruined stone and passed the old ring boundary by half his body.

Mali, thrown into a tumbling arc, corrected herself midair with a little majin twist and landed on one boot.

“Ring-out! Temujin is—”

“No.”

The Daimaō’s voice struck the arena flat as he sat on his empty cloud.

Mali looked up.

“This fight does not need a ring.” The Daimaō growled, “Battle to the death. Count it down if you want. But the ring out is done.”

Mali saluted with flag and microphone at once. “Ring rules suspended! Battle to the death! Please update all betting slips and funeral preferences!”

Temujin coughed into the dust.

“Dammit.”

He had been hoping the ring-out would count. At least lose with dignity, shake hands with the godlike vengeance ghost, and move on with his life. What a fun ending. He liked fun more than whatever this shit was.

Ryūei stood where the blast had struck her.

No damage whatsoever. No suggestion of damage. Nothing. 

Not a goddamn thing at all.

Temujin stared at his fist.

Empty.

His life force, his best strike, his foolish little all-in answer had not even dirtied her clothes.

Ryūei crossed the broken arena and spat in his face.

The spit burned like liquid helium on flesh.

“You really thought the rules would save you.”

He wiped his burnt cheek. “I was hoping. Honestly though, I already figured we were doing the death battle thing and I’d just die like a victim if I ran.”

He tried to stand.

His legs shook badly. The gathering of life force had left hollows in the muscles. His right fist would not close all the way.

Ryūei waited until he stood.

That patience stripped him worse than the beating had.

“You are almost honest now,” she said.

“Glad one of us is enjoying the lesson.”

Her hand moved.

He saw it start. That was all.

The strike entered under the ribs and turned off the world.

His feet left the stone. The arena became a rotating stain of green light, red banners, broken black pit, Daimaō above, Mali below, Sesame lunging against the rail, Enekai’s mouth open, Yulaan moving as if to leap and stopping because even she knew the distance was already gone.

He hit the floor.

Sound withdrew.

The count came from far away.

“One!”

Ryūei stood over him.

“Two!”

His chest refused to lift.

“Three!”

The infant ghost descended.

“Four!”

A small, weightless body settled on his sternum.

“Five!”

The arena dissolved.

He was in Mina Town, far-eastern Xiguo.