“You shut up too.”
Tonbeau Nuvenberg’s mitt-sized hand covered his mouth as she raised the beaker with the other. She pressed the mouth of the beaker against her sausage-like lips, spun around, took away her hand and slapped the beaker against his mouth.
Perpendicular with the floor, the contents of the beaker should have spilled out. But not a drop did. It was attached to his face like a suction cup, fitting the contours of his face from his cheekbones down to his jaw.
The liquid covered his mouth and nose. Yakou had no choice but to choke and gag and swallow.
“That’s a good boy.”
Removing the beaker with a pop, Tonbeau retreated several steps and examined the young man hanging there upside-down.
“You bitch!” raged Yakou.
But his features quickly stilled. The fury melted out of his face. His eyelids closed. And opened a moment later, wavering and filled with an altogether different kind of light. After blinking his eyes several times, they revealed an expression closer to horror.
He hadn’t lost his memories in the process. What he retained resembled the sensation of wandering in a deep and pervading mist, but all of them were still there—he who was manipulated by Princess, he who fought with Setsura—and now they became the personification of the shame and humiliation coursing through his bloodstream.
“What the hell have I done? Release me! Undo these bonds holding me fast!”
“Seems he’s back,” said Tonbeau, taking hold of the chains.
“But is he really all right?” Takako objected.
“What, you don’t trust my concoctions?”
“No, but you are better safe than sorry. That Princess has him wrapped around her little finger.”
“I am the Yakou I was before all this! Believe me!”
“Of course you are!”
With a shove of her palm, Yakou dropped out of his restraints head first. A split second before colliding with the floor, the wings fluttered and hummed and he swooped into the air.
As he landed, he glanced at Ryuuki. “I do not believe you.” His words were filled with enmity. Ryuuki was his sworn enemy. “You should be perfectly aware—that woman killed my grandfather. And I will have my revenge.”
“Whoa, hold your horses. I perfectly understand where you’re coming from, but I owe him one.”
“Nobody owes him anything. Left to his own devices, he would destroy not only this city but the world and everything in it.”
“C’mon, give it a break. He’s raised his hands and hoisted the white flag and thrown in the towel. Are you one to kill prisoners who’ve already surrendered?”
Tonbeau slowly turned around. Ryuuki was standing there. The man who rose languidly from the bed was a completely different person from before. A fierceness suffused his whole body—not a murderous vibe, not loathing, not hostility, not anger.
But the fighting spirit of a warrior. He was General Ryuuki. “The past can never be simply relegated to the past,” he said quietly. “It is true that when your grandfather was killed, I served Princess. If fighting me serves your purposes, then let us fight.”
“Oh, this is interesting!” Takako’s eyes sparkled.
“Knock it off.” Tonbeau jabbed her in the side, making her wheeze. “What good would that do? Yo, Yakou-chan, I’ve got something to say to him.”
“What about?” Takako asked.
This time Tonbeau shut her up with a slap, though it was more a sumo wrestler’s open-handed punch that knocked her head back.
“I appreciate the sentiment, but step aside,” Ryuuki said softly, though his voice clearly communicated his lack of regard for her concerns.
The Czech Republic’s second greatest witch darted away and put her back against the stone wall on her right. It wasn’t so much that she’d given up on persuading them differently, just that she sensed in Ryuuki’s voice the power to do whatever had to be done.
“Is this venue acceptable?” the great general asked.
“Fine with me.”
Whatever these old enemies felt, Yakou’s answer was equally subdued.
Ryuuki made the first move. A simple gesture. He stretched out his left hand parallel with the floor. An invisible wave raced toward the wall. Yakou floated into the air. The air was his natural domain.
Ryuuki threw out a two-fold blast of qi. One aimed directly at Yakou. The other would be absorbed by the wall and rebound at him from an unexpected angle.
Yakou ducked the direct attack and waved his hands. Exercising the intuition of a warrior, Ryuuki jumped back from the silent qi licking the stone floor.
He went down on one knee. “So you use it too?” he said, clearly delighted. He hadn’t numbered this one among Yakou’s talents—a fellow wielder of the same qi—it couldn’t help but make his heart race a little faster. Admiration colored his features.
Yakou’s body spun around. His open wings were caught by the time-delayed qi slanting off the walls. It then struck the ropes and chains dangling from the ceiling.
The rope ruptured. The chains and shackles shattered. Tonbeau screeched and dove for the cover of the bed. The loud report filled the room. The flaying rope slashed open the mattress on the bed. The chains struck, sending fissures through the wall.
The rope bounced off the mattress, the chains ricocheted off the walls in a deadly dance of death, flinging off shrapnel that could take apart an armored vehicle, not to mention a human being.
Ryuuki stood there, eyes half-open, arms hanging at his sides. The deadly projectiles stung at his shoulders and chest and head.
“Ah!”
That shout came from Takako as Tonbeau jumped beneath the bed, a space that would admit one normal person only with difficulty, let alone this mountain of a woman. And yet as Tonbeau crammed herself in, this alter-ego, this other Takako, didn’t take her eyes off the soldiers and their death match.
What prompted her surprised reaction—death rained down upon him, but Ryuuki didn’t die. The flying shards came to a sudden halt a few inches before reaching him, intercepted by an invisible wall.
“That’s the first time I’ve seen such a defensive perimeter formed from qi,” Tonbeau said in blank amazement. The end of a piece of rope grazed the tip of her nose. “Ack!” she exclaimed.
All movement in the room came to a halt. The scene resembled a strange still life.
The astonished Yakou floated down. Ryuuki calmly turned around. The doll girl was lying on the ground in front of the open door.