#this chapter was so good | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tonguetiedraven · 2 years

Note

Can you write Bon's point of view on the fight in chapter 135?

The amount of requests I have gotten for this are hilarious xD

So, here's the first of the series on chapter 135. This one has no ships since it wasn't asked for. Just a worried boy watching a horrible scene. Obvious warning for SPOILERS below, lol. Also,

TW: Blood, gore, violence, mentioned past death as well. Rin has had a rough couple of weeks, lol.

— — — — —

It was cold. That sensation affected everything else, and it was the hardest thing to push past. Ryuuji had spent his entire life learning to detach himself from physical discomforts and worries, but something about the cold was just hard to push past, and always had been. It saturated everything. Your breath, your limbs, your eyes. Nothing you did would erase the unflinching harshness of this sort of cold.

“Got that?” he asked quietly, trying not to notice how his breath turned to mist the moment it left him. Yukio nodded, his glasses reflecting the setting sun in a blinding flash.

Another problem with cold. It brought snow and ice, and reflections were hell on this sort of work. You had to have your eyes to shoot, and the glare would make it hard to see anything, let alone a tiny target. Joints got stiff, fingers got numb, reflexes slowed…

None of it was ideal when so much was at stake.

Stranger still, was how much ice there was when there was so much fire across the battlefield. It was as if the elements themselves were at war, and he supposed they were.

Shifting on the snow covered rock, Ryuuji could see Satan. He was keeping the scope trained on him, or…

Well, he was trying to keep the scope trained on Satan.

It was a horrible position to be in. He’d spent his entire life preparing to be a leader. To be the bocchan, the future master of his loyal monks, and that included the ability to give and follow orders. To see things in a detached way and know how best to use his resources. To stay removed from the conflicts as well as he could so that he could give unbiased instructions. You had to see the full picture, and you couldn’t let your own longings interfere with that larger picture.

(The snow he was kneeling on was melting and freezing to his clothes. The chill making even his knees numb. His chest ached from the cold air, and he’d long since removed his piercings to save his ears from frostbite. He missed the weight, but he was probably too cold to even notice if they were there.)

He knew he was in the best position he could be. That logically, it only made sense for him to aid Yukio in this task. That he’d be largely useless on the battle field. That Rin was the only one who stood a chance going toe to toe with Satan, and that he had to stay here and finish his task.

But he couldn’t stop himself from watching. Satan’s form had morphed and shifted into some eldritch terror. Something writhing and twisted and wrong. Alien in its shape, and absolutely the sort of terror that could lead to insanity.

It was the sort of horror you couldn’t look away from. The sort of dread inducer that made you stare, not because you wanted to, but because you were entirely helpless to move away. You were ensnared in the trap, and you had to gaze upon the thing that would destroy you, because you couldn’t comprehend it, even if you knew it was your ruin.

But Ryuuji’s gaze kept moving to the small speck of blue fighting the monstrosity.

Rin was impossibly hard to see. The white hair and blue flames blended in with the surroundings, and it was only the ragged remains of his clothes—the white uniform coat all but destroyed and showing the dark thermal clothes underneath —that made it so Ryuuji could pick him out at all.

(The metal was freezing. He could feel the chill of it even through the gloves. It was the kind of cold that burned. Burned like the blue fire burning over the battle field.)

Ryuuji had been there when the seal broke. He’d watched Rin die. He’d watched him burn with a fire that he couldn’t contain until there was nothing left. He’d watched Rin die, and before he could even comprehend that horror, he’d watched Rin come back to life, entirely different. More demon than human, and giddy in his violence.

He’d watched the dark haired goof turn into a white haired monster, and even then, standing in Shiemi’s magical forest, he’d only been able to feel the cold as he clung to Konekomaru and tried to pull the only people he had left away from the violence.

(He could hear Konekomaru chanting somewhere behind him. Guarding his back like always. He could trust his rear to Konekomaru. Izumo too. Shima might be the wildest kind of card, but Ryuuji had confidence in the rest of his deck.)

He exhaled again, focusing on the white hair and the blue flames that covered Rin, and thought a few frantic prayers as Yukio told Lightning to clear them a path.

The shot had to work. The measurements were correct, but he checked them again just to be safe. He’d check them again and again if he had to.

He tightened his grip on the scope, shifting it slightly to pull Satan back in his view, checked the numbers, and blew out a misty and anxious breath.

His face ached from the cold. Lewin crackled back over the feed that they were going to need a minute. He could hear screams. He couldn’t look. He had to stay on task. They were trusting him, and he had to trust them.

(Another chant and a ‘good job!’ from Izumo. Izumo who had called arias weak.)

He could trust them.

The scope shifted back to Rin.

“There’s Rin,” Yukio gasped, and at least Ryuuji wasn’t the only one looking. (Worrying.)

“Ye—”

The breath froze in his throat. He was looking at Rin, but even with his scope trained there, he could see the brightness growing around Satan. Worse, he could feel the malice. They were miles away, nearly level with them because apparently they could use the flames to fly, but still impossibly far away to feel the depth of malice that Satan was putting off. It was enough to make Ryuuji’s frozen limbs lock in place as his eye stayed steady on Rin.

He did not blink, and that assured he saw the entire horrible thing.

Whereas the last time he’d watched Rin die, it had been flames that burned over all of him until there was nothing but a charred mass left, this time, Rin was torn apart. This time, Rin looked entirely like Rin as he died.

It happened all at once and over a lifetime. It happened with a twist of Satan’s clawed and blackened hand. Rin’s body froze in an almost horizontal position, Ryuuji watched his mouth open (a scream? It had to be a scream) and Rin just… just ripped apart. His limbs weren’t neatly severed. They were ripped and ragged and bloody with bits of vicera, muscle, bone, blood, skin, and ligaments floating around him for a horribly infant second. His arms were torn in to three pieces, his legs at least five, his head fell back at an impossible angle, throat and neck completely severed. His hair bled black as it happened, and even his tail had been twisted off.

The spray of blood made him visible amidst the endless blue and white, and for an infinite handful of seconds, Ryuuji knew nothing but the numb terror of the cold surrounding them.

For a handful of infinite seconds, the parts of Rin fell through the air as Satan threw his head back on a laugh.

Something you couldn’t look away from, not because you knew it was your doom, but because you couldn’t possibly understand it.

His breath was frozen in his lungs, an icy knot that burned through him, surely scarring and ruining him. His fingers had locked in place, frozen and useless lumps as his eye stayed wide open, shocked, unmoving, not understanding how Rin was laying in so many pieces. How the boy he’d fought with and bled with and laughed with and trusted after everything, could be dead while he watched far away on a rock, helpless to do anything but scream his name, and even that he wasn’t doing consciously. The name was reverberating in his head, but it was a prayer, a plea more than anything else.

“Come on Rin,” Yukio called, a benediction instead of a prayer.

Yukio’s scope couldn’t possibly see what Ryuuji was locked on. Couldn’t possibly see the blood staining the snow dark. As dark as the ashes had been. Couldn’t possibly see the limbs being covered in green—

His heart thumped in his chest (had it been thumping the entire time or had it frozen like the rest of him? Had it surrendered to the ice or had it always burned?) Once. Twice.

It started to race as the green spread. As the blood no longer stood out, and the snow was entirely covered. As Satan, too large to fit in Ryuuji’s viewpoint, stilled.

“Rin,” Yukio breathed, or maybe it was Konekomaru, or maybe it was Ryuuji. Maybe they all breathed it, because the white haired boy stood up, clothes all but ruined, but still impossibly bright against the green and red and white. Still larger than life even in front of the monstrous.

Still alive, and still fighting.

24 notes · View notes