Fire Meet Gasoline

Ch. 9 - Charring the Flesh

CHARRING: partially burn (an object) so as to blacken its surface

It felt good to finally have Iguro out of my mind. Mentally I wished him luck with Kanroji, putting my jealousy behind me to turn toward the flame Hashira who sat next to me as we took the train from headquarters to the first stop where we would have to part, Sagamihara.

"Be safe," Rengoku commanded me as he stood and leaned down to boop my nose with his index finger, "I'll be there as soon as I can." I gave a single nod, smiling sweetly as he came down to peck my lips.

"You, too," I smiled as he began to walk off the train, "be safe."

The train lurched forward as it continued on its journey. It was about a forty-five minute ride to Machida. It was a large part of Tokyo with hundreds of thousands of lives at risk. Finding the demon would be like finding a needle in a haystack. I at least had the hint of looking by the Sakai River.

When I left the train, I quickly walked across the tracks toward the river. It was beautiful to see the shady trees surrounding the water. It was clear I was in demon territory thanks to the lack of humans out walking around. They were either dead or keeping away from the area.

"It's about time one of you showed up," I heard the slithery voice begin to ascend from the water. That was clearly this demon's element as its body hardened once it touched air. I quickly unsheathed my sword and pointed it in its direction.

This demon had long black hair, blacker than the night just like its eyes. It had no eyebrows present and its skin looked water-logged, pale and gray with blue veins all over. Its ears were pointed and sharp, pulling back as I became a threat.

"You're done here," I hissed through clenched teeth, changing my stance to better my position. The demon then rolled its eyes as if I were no threat.

It slowly began to manipulate the water, the stream following its hand movements before hardening into an ice shard. The shard then came quickly after me, I reacted quickly and stopped the pointed stream.

"You're quick," the demon complimented, "that'll make this fun." A sly smile crept upon its face.

"That just means your death will happen faster," I grimaced, using the pressure of my katana to push the ice shard away, some water droplets from the remaining stream getting on my face.

Without further chatter, the demon then allowed several sharpened streams to rise beside it and aim in my direction. A core tube of water swirling around the legs of the demon held it in place making this one an easy target.

I channeled the fourth flame technique to block as each sharpened stream came at me, breaking off against the flames emitted from my sword.

I then took my own shot, using the first form to dash across the river in an attempt to decapitate the demon. Unfortunately, this one easily dodged and was able to get a hit in as I made my way across the river. A diagonal slash came across my chest from the sharpened water, easily tearing my uniform. The cut was deep and I was losing blood quickly. I channeled the total breathing constant technique to slow it down.

"Be careful, demon slayer," the demon hissed with a smile, "even the weakest looking demons may have tricks up their sleeve." The demon was in the middle of the river, rendering the rest of my flame techniques useless, especially since I wasn't fully trained and couldn't move as fast as Rengoku.

"So do the weak looking demon slayers," I muttered, hair sticking to my face from the water that had splashed over me from the hit.

I then tried my best to channel my serpent breathing, using the first technique to not only cross the river once again, using nearby rocks that stuck out from the water, but to try and avoid any slashes. The slashes I tried to emit in a winding pattern toward the demon easily hit it, however not in the critical place. The wounds slowly began to heal on its body as it chuckled. I looked down to notice that yet another slash had formed across my chest in the opposite diagonal pattern, blood pouring quickly and my breathing beginning to waver.