Makai-Ichi Budōkai – Chapter 8: Creepshow! Bakuga vs Mukhahīna

Bakuga Kōten
versus
Mukhahīna Śveta

A part of Temujin grumbled that the two most interesting fighters were about to go at it, but that part took a blow to the nads. Heaven above, he hoped Enekai faced off against whoever won this one. She was probably going to sweep this, and he wasn’t entirely bothered by the thought, though his own martial pride didn’t let him entertain blowing their inevitable showdown. Yeah, it’d be the two of them, surely. He felt he could take the others. 

Well, Ryūei was scary, but Yabans were stronger than yōkai, yurei, vampires, ogres, oni, all of those dirty Haunts, so, of course, as always, Enekai was the trump card. They’d have been in deep shit if a mazoku entered— no, Qinglong was mazoku, and he was nothing even to little old him. He was sure there were no other mazoku, so they were clear. This was amazing!

His heart calmed from the spike. It’s as if the tournament is already won! The Daimaō might as well hand them the Sun Emerald. Ha, ha, it’s alright. 

She’s still looking at him.

The sound in the arena changed again.

Bakuga came first, still smiling, though his smile had softened since the Rain-Crow Ronin died. His firefly circled him more slowly now. He waved to a little cluster of gaki and oni children in the lower tier, and several waved back before their guardian slapped their hands down. The boy’s orange tunic was clean. His bare arms showed the old burn scars. His goggles sat crooked on his hat.

Mukhahīna did not come through a gate. As before, he was simply present when the eye reached the eastern side of the ring: three feet above the stone, lotus-folded, blade-hands resting inward, ordinary eyes shut, third eye already open.

Mali’s introduction shortened itself around him.

“Bakuga Kōten of the Burning Sparrow School!” she called, then turned, swallowed one sugar-note, and added, “Mukhahīna Śveta, the Silent Throat-Severing Hand of the White Cremation Ground!”

Bakuga bowed deeply to his opponent.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Mukhahīna floated.

“I mean it,” Bakuga went on, voice carrying in a hush more complete than shouting. “I don’t like hurting people. I know that sounds strange here.”

No answer.

The third eye fixed on Bakuga’s throat.

Bakuga rubbed the back of his head and gave a small embarrassed laugh. “Right. Okay. I’ll do my best.”

Mali looked between them, flag held high. “Fighters ready?”

Bakuga brought his palms together.

Mukhahīna did not move.

“Begin!”

Yellow light bloomed.

This time it did not creep outward with the shy tenderness it had shown Kurohane. It opened at once, a field of gold rushing from Bakuga’s feet, from his chest, from the firefly spinning above his shoulder. The ring softened. The jade darkened under a wash of sun. For one instant, even the crowd felt it: the loosening of teeth unclenched for centuries, the ridiculous wish to forgive a brother, cancel a debt, return a stolen ring, walk away from the tournament and buy peaches under a clean sky.

Then the world split around Mukhahīna Śveta.

Bakuga’s field became visible by failing against him. It flowed across the stone, over the trigrams, around Mali’s boots, past the barricade, into the first tier where demons blinked and cursed and touched old scars without knowing why. But around the yogi there remained a narrow vertical absence, a dark calm in the gold, as if his body had no address to which mercy could be delivered.

Bakuga frowned.

The expression made him look younger.

The nirvana-field brightened. Grass flickered beneath Mukhahīna, then faded. A blue sky tried to open behind his shoulders, but the ghost-gray aura burned it to colorless smoke. The smell of warm hills entered the ring and died there. The firefly trembled, then flew closer to Bakuga’s cheek.

Inside the technique, if there was an inside, Mukhahīna Śveta was offered rest.

He did not refuse it with rage. He did not shatter it with will. He did not cling heroically to pain.

There was simply nothing in him that wanted to leave.

The wheel of birth and death turned; he remained interested. Suffering came; he had made tools of it. Bodies opened; he studied the openings. Breath entered throats; his eye followed breath. Release presented itself as a meadow, a song, a child’s gentle invitation, and found no beggar at the gate.

Bakuga’s lips parted.

“Oh,” he said.

For the first time since Temujin had seen him, the happiness did not know where to stand.

Mukhahīna’s third eye narrowed.

Bakuga dropped the field.

Gold light folded back into him in tatters. The crowd came awake angry, as if cheated of a dream they would deny wanting. Bakuga stepped forward, hands rising into a quick little guard. He was not large, not much taller than a child beside some of the demons in the hall, but his feet touched the stone with sudden competence. Burning Sparrow School had not been only a smile and a meadow. His first kick snapped toward Mukhahīna’s ribs with a sparrow’s fluttering feint and a hawk’s cruel line behind it.

Mukhahīna tilted in the air.

The kick missed by a fingernail’s width.

Bakuga landed, turned, came in again with both palms, yellow sparks jumping along his forearms. He apologized as he struck, a breathless little sorry, sorry, sorry, each one attached to a blow aimed for a joint, a nerve cluster, the floating man’s centerline. Mukhahīna drifted backward without unfolding his legs. His blade-hands did not rise. His body seemed to correct itself around each attack before the attack arrived.

Bakuga’s firefly flashed.

The boy vanished downward.

For one sharp moment Temujin remembered Yulaan’s warning: sometimes punching, sometimes kicking, sometimes falling very fast. Bakuga dropped beneath the angle of Mukhahīna’s third eye and rebounded up from one palm, both heels scissoring toward the third eye.

Mukhahīna’s eyes opened wide and his right hand moved towards his own foot, and he jerked his foot upwards, far too little movement to strike the boy.

Bakuga landed behind him.

He stood there smiling for half a second, as if still expecting the next part of the exchange to arrive.

Then red opened under his jaw.

A thin line only. Almost polite. Then the line widened and the blood came down the front of his orange tunic in a bright, boyish gush. The firefly spun once in frantic gold and then hovered very still beside his cheek.

Bakuga touched his throat.

His fingers came away red.

“Oh,” he said again, softer now, and sank to his knees. He chuckled softly. “Wow.”

Temujin had not seen the strike. He had seen Bakuga move; he had seen Mukhahīna’s hand remain almost where it had been; he had seen blood appear, which was not the same thing as seeing how.

Yulaan had.

Her posture changed so slightly that only someone near her would have caught it: the head angling, the shoulders settling, the wounded ribs forgotten. She was not looking at Bakuga or the yogi or Temujin or anyone who made sense. She was looking past Mukhahīna, past the eastern ring edge, across the pit of black water.

Mukhahīna unfolded from lotus style and let his feet touch the stone. 

Bakuga collapsed onto his side.

The firefly descended and rested on his goggled hat. The boy’s expression was calm. 

Mukhahīna looked at his own right foot.

One toenail was gone. He admired the clean cleave and the puddle of a child’s blood wrought by it. Yet he did not move. 

Rather, he bent further forward in faint clerical wonder, as if a page number had disappeared from a book whose ending he already knew. Then the third eye shifted, found what the ordinary eyes had not bothered to seek, and he moved on.

Temujin followed too late.

Ryūei stood beneath the far arch perpendicular to the scene. 

Her infant ghost floated near her shoulder, blank and open-mouthed. Her hair hid her face except for one half-visible eye. Between two bone-white fingers, a sliver so thin it should not have been seen. Mukhahīna Śveta’s severed nail.

She regarded it for a moment, as one might regard a fallen petal, then snapped it with a finger’s flex. Each piece sleeted past the blue marble unto the floor mat.

Yulaan’s mouth parted.

The Thirty-Six-Armed Sword Kannon looked down with all its unmoving mercy. The crowd, denied spectacle by speed, began to understand what it had missed. The understanding moved through them more slowly than fear, but it got there.

Mali raised the flag at last.

“Winner by way of murderous pedicure,” she said, and even the sugar in her voice knew to step lightly, “Mukhahīna Śveta!”

Mukhahīna walked from the ring with his arms behind his back.

Ryūei’s eye found Temujin.

He was through to the next gate. He had tricks left, hands left, legs left, breath left.

It suddenly seemed a very small inventory.