Soldiers of Light ch.4 "Dysfunctional Cooperation"
 

The sounds of violent actions continued for the next several minutes. Eventually, the sounds died down, and the door opened quietly. Kurama walked in, rubbing his forehead and mumbling under his breath about crazy old men and their ways.

"What are you all looking at?"

Kurama found his seat. It was positioned under an ancient picture that depicted some strange figures.

"Damn, I thought I had a temper. What the hell is his problem? IT WAS ONLY A FEW SCRATCHES! By the way, I'm not tending to your needs guys. You help yourselves." Tayuumi said. Plopping the contents of the tray on to a serving pan.

It contained a large amount of fried rice.

She scooped some onto her own plate and abruptly yelled, "Where the hell is the rest?! I don't want just only rice."

A still fuming Takin walked into the dining hall, carrying the rest of the food in with him, along with the bowls of shrimp, beef, pork, and other rice toppings.

"Here. Not like y'all deserve it, but here's the dinner."

He tossed them roughly onto the table.

"If you need me, I'll be starting up the airship. I hope you all spill on yourselves."

Takin walked out in a huff.

Ningyou stood at the bow of the ship waiting for Kurama to come to her. She jumped up onto the railing and let her feet dangle above the deck. Swinging them slowly back and forth. She began to slowly mend her clothing through concentration. "Moving the torn bits inside is the best I can do for now. I'll need to get some blood from a powerful daemon in order to repair the dammage. Maybe that one I was toying with at the bride. He seemed like a nice guy." Ningyou thought to herself as she rearanged her matter. Compressing the broken bits and mending it back together.

When she was finished she created a Yo-yo in her hand and began to play with it. Doing mind boggling tricks as she sat awaiting her meeting.

"It wasn't my god damned fault! Get over it! GAWD!" Tayuumi yelled.

"Thanks by the way!" she said while loading toppings onto her rice plate.

She walked over near Kurama and sat down.

"People need to control their tempers. It's just a stupid ship. Anyways, what the hell is that thing over there. I don't like it."

Youji had taken a seat across Tayuumi, and had been enjoying pouring soy sauce onto his fried rice until the other had opened her mouth again. Just like he disliked her actions, he found that her words weren't something he particularly enjoyed. "To simply say that it's an 'ship' is an insult to Takin, and an insult to the airship itself. If you cannot understand the value of an object you do not deserve to be here, nor wield that sword of yours-or any other, in fact."

Reaper, as per Grim's instructions, ate in his most decent manner, which basically consisted of grabbing whatever he could reach and shoveling it into his open, gaping mouth. Grim stood at the sidelines, a very far-reaching place to be concerning Reaper's immense girth, and shook his head.

"Good lord Reaper, at least show some respect to the animals as you consume them...how good can this stuff be anyways?" Grim casually ladled some rice and meat onto his own plate, delicately tasting the morsels. That lasted for all of a few seconds until Grim devolved into the sort of food-eating vaccuum Reaper was. "Oh. My. God. So...so GOOD!" Grim squealed like the little girl his voice sounded like. "I never, I never had anything like this. It tastes...it tastes like TASTE. Reaper, pass me that, pass me everything."

Dim recollections of the past began to resurfce, of those few occasions when Grim had posessed a body, usually for short period of infiltration or mind-fucking, but never for a prolonged period to experience senses. Every morsel of food was brimming with exquisite taste to him, as if the cooking was meant for that of the god's instead. Rapidly Grim shoved down another handful of grain and meat, then began gnawing on whatever he grabbed next. "I don't know what this is, but I'm willing to keep on chewing if the inside tastes as good as the exterior."

Reaper looked down, his hunger momentarily sated, and glanced at Grim's newest eating. "PSST, Grim, you aint supposed to eat the bowl."

"I'll eat what I goddamn please, it'll just go down better with a bottle of soy sauce. Genkai, you come from a family of drunks, don't tell me you don't have any booze onboard. I'll take it all, just dump it in a huge mug and swirl it all around. Oh my stomach..."

As Grim's borrowed body began to explain the reprecussions of eating your weight in rice, pork, chicken and utensils, Reaper looked over the room, finally spotting a picture. "Hey Grim, are those the guys we-"

"We've never seen anyone in that picture before Reaper, it's ancient, before us, long before *urp* us. Don't talk about that picture again Reaper." Reaper nodded at the command and sat still, a default state of relaxedness washing over him. Grim got over his brief moment of anxiety and posed the query to Kuruma, trying to shriek over the rumblings he could feel in his gut. "So, Genkai, who are those figures in the painting? Looks like a pretty old tapestry compared to all this new stuff." Grim thought he had a pretty good assumption of who was who in the picture, right down to how they all bled, but he was suprised Reaper had remembered.

"Oh shut up Mr. Serious. The reason I said that was because I didn't do much to it. I left a few scratches. He did more to it than I did. I wouldn't get so pissed if someone I was sparring with affected my sword a bit. It's not like I destroyed it. Please shut up if you can't understand what I am saying."

She continued eating after taking off her gauntlets. All the while glaring at the odd pair across the table.

It was with no small amount of disappointment that Taken saw Kirakiri slay the second of the monks attacking him, and, for a second, he lost his smile. However, there was still another monk left alive, wrapped in prayer beads and backing away from Sakiko while chanting sutras and holding out prayer strips. They were obviously ineffective as the demoness continued her advance forcing the monk to back away.

Taken grinned as he began his advance anew. He ignored the one legged monk as he passed by, the man was defeated, and Taken had no interest in finishing him off--only in entering into combat with the last of his companions.

The monk, however, was too busy mumbling his sutras whilst backing away from the beast, to notice Taken walking up behind him. He was obviously too terrified of the woman before him to think of anything except his own, immediate, survival. His eyes burned into the back of his prayer papers as he attempted to avoid her deadly gaze, and his ears heard only her gentle footsteps, like the footsteps of death.

He couldn't react, therefore, as Taken's katana lashed out in a blur of motion and metallic glint, sliding between the man's prayer beads with surgical precision, and severing the piece of leather that had kept them upon him. The beads fell and scattered, sending the monk jumping to the side as he felt the cool rush of air and slight tug at his protections before they fell.

Sakiko moved to intercept the now far less defended monk, but Taken simply met her gaze for a moment, the look in his eyes communicating everything that she needed to realize the monk's life was now in the ronin's hands even as her gaze attempted to tear away Taken's life. Taken's soul was a bit too stubborn to leave, however, and instead of killing him, the feeling brought him a sense of amazing joy. It was like walking the line of the world's most dangerous battle. The razor's edge was beneath his feet, and he had only to slip for a second to fall into the abyss.

It was exhilirating, but it also only lasted a moment before Sakiko allowed her powers to rest and turned away, leaving Taken feeling a slight twinge of withdrawl as he turned to the monk, who was now pulling himself back up and watching the demon leave.

The man's eyes glanced around and he saw his teacher, one of the elite monks of the school--one of the few granted the dragon's tatoo, and one of his friends, a man he had never beaten in a spar, both lying prone on the ground. One was dead, and one was slowly bleeding to death. Any relief he had felt at Sakiko's retreat was quickly replaced by a sense of immediate dread.

The monk struggled to his feet and closed his eyes for a second. "Focus, Atachi. Focus. You must defeat these beasts, or they will attack the temple, and more innocents may die... perhaps even Sila... Even if I die, I must stop them." When the monks eyes opened again they were full of a fire and determination that made Taken shudder, though not in fear. He shuddered in anticipation. He only hoped the boy was strong enough to make that determination matter. The ronin did so hate being disappointed.

The two stood for a moment looking through the small distance at each other. The monk could clearly make out Taken's smile. The expression that just seemed so smug that his rage threatened to engulf him for a moment before being pressed back down, giving him the deadly calm of a man in his death trance.

The monk finally charged forward, toward Taken, who was standing impassively with his sword held down at his side. He brought his fist back, his bare feet pounding against the ground as he advanced on the immobile ronin, preparing to strike out a single immobilizing blow, but, at the last second, Taken drew back his right foot and turned to the side, allowing the man's fist to travel through nothing more than the edge of the ronin's kimono and empty air.

Continuing to spin, Taken brought his blade to bear, sending it toward the back of the young monk's neck, but the man anticipated the attack and slid down into a crouch as he launched his left hand down into the ground, redirecting his forward momentum into a spin which brought his legs in a sweeping kick toward the back of Taken's ankles, which was avoided with a simple hop.

The monk spun the rest of the way as he rose, sending another kick almost immediately toward the side of Taken's head, but the blow was easily blocked by Taken's forearm, without the ronin so much as budging, the smile still playing across his face, yet now somewhat weaker.

The fight ended in the next instant as Taken pushed back against the leg of the man hard enough to send him spinning the opposite direction for a second. Obviously, it did no damage, but it distracted the monk, and threw him off balance, long enough for the ronin's blade to travel completely through the monk's torso, dropping him to the ground in two pieces.

Organs and blood pooled out of the swiftly dying corpse as Taken turned and walked away, flicking the blood off his blade before sheathing it.

The monk's faded vision watched Taken's feet leaving his bisected body, and as his sight went to to black a sense of regret washed over his being. He hadn't been enough, and any other future death would be on his head.

Question man didn't seem very interested in Sanjuro so he decided it was an apt time to sigh. Breathing in deeply Sanjuro found exactly what he was looking for in the very air he breathed. "FOOD!" Sanjuro screamed as he leapt to his feet, sprinting out of the room and into the seemingly endless maze of corridors that constituted an airship. Sniffing the air like a dog as his bare feet rapped against the floor Sanjuro knew he was close now.

An old man passed him, the man seemed quite angry but what really set him apart was the smell of food and gunpowder, but the second smell to sanjuro was merely food he'd never tried before that didn't smell appealing. Throwing the door open with an overly loud clang Sanjuro marched to the table with a smile on his face, grabbing a serving plate of pork and setting it before himself beginning to lazily eat the former pig with his bare hands. Upon spotting a second item he desired, he reached towards the communal rice, his hand was laden with dirt, blood and whatever else had looked amusing enough to touch over the past week.