Cold-Blooded: A DC Universe Fanfiction (#Wattys2015)

Chapter 52: Yukie, Rose: Red as Blood

A/N: If this is the first time you have checked in on this story since the first of April, and you don't yet know I made some serious changes to both chapter 50 and 51, you should reread them before you proceed. Thank you.

The angle of the sun tinged the snow the luminous blue of moonstones; the day was passing into afternoon. This time, the yuki-onna was waiting at the peak, but Yukie circled around before becoming corporeal again in a spot where she could not be seen. She remembered the razor-ice claws which had laid her face open two days before, and then somehow she had also ripped the heart from Yukie's chest without the pain waking her. They had the same powers, but the yuki-onna was experienced and much more powerful. Going into battle literally naked and unarmed would be folly.

The only advantage she might have would be if she fought hand-to-hand. The yuki-onna did not move or look like a martial artist. Could she form butterfly swords out of ice, swords strong enough to fight with? If so, could she then keep the yuki-onna from turning them on her? Uncertain. As far as clothing or armor went, all she had to work with was...all around her. Reaching out with her newfound powers, she pulled ice and snow off the mountain, shaping it around her. Yukie had helped Slade on and off with his armor several times, and she had often heard him talk about armor design, what worked and what did not. Snow alone where she needed the greatest flexibility, small slivers of ice where more protection was needed, plates of ice in other places. She added flanges of razor-sharp ice to the bracers on her forearms, where she would flip a butterfly sword to strike with an inside elbow, formed a full-face mask from the clearest ice she could create.

As armor went, it was strange and primitive, but it would be some protection, anyway. Rather than entire swords, she fashioned yawara sticks out of icicles. Thus attired, she went to meet the yuki-onna.

Her ancestress stood at the very edge of a precipice, and the wind which yawned up from the crevasse had the nose scouring odor of either a hot spring or a volcano, like the breath of hell. She was examining something she held in her hand, and as Yukie approached, she saw the glint of gold in the sunlight. It was her engagement ring.

Half-turning, the yuki-onna said, "It is like ice that does not melt. I never saw anything like it before. A pretty thing. Was it costly?" Her voice was like icebergs grating together, and she spoke in a way that was nearly archaic, so Yukie answered in kind.

"It was a betrothal gift from my husband," Yukie replied. "So its worth is great to me, whatever its cost."

The yuki-onna looked her up and down. "You look quite the warrior. Your husband must be a great and powerful samurai."

"He is," Yukie replied, for in its way it was no more than truth.

"Ah, that one of my descendants should rise so high in the world! It makes me very proud." A flick of her wrist, and the ring flipped out of sight, down into the chasm. "That life is over. He will not have you back. There is no going back. I imagine you think yourself ill-used, divided from your lord as you are, stripped of your humanity, everything you know wrenched away from you."

Yukie did not so much as flinch. There was a great deal more at stake than a small piece of crystallized carbon, whatever its real or sentimental value. "I am here for a heart, either mine or the heart of winter, the heart of our ancestresses. I do not care which. Give me either of those, and I will call it fair."

"You will have neither," the yuki-onna snapped. "I have hidden one of them and have the other here," she pointed to her own breastbone. Again, she raked Yukie with her glare.

"It comes so easily to you, being a yuki-onna. It was near a year before I could banish the storm and shape ice and snow as you already do, and that was with Tsurara to instruct me. She it was who held the kami-yuki before me, and tarried a year to teach me before she gifted me with the burden. Hah, I thought her very strange and wild. She was the yuki-onna for more than three hundred years, and I have been the yuki-onna for three, near to four times as long. What must you think of me, infant that you are?"