The God Out of Time

A Force Of Nature

Kimizuki's face, still expressing the fear he had for the arrow that had just flown towards his head, turned to Xankai, who was smirking through the blood that was still coming from his wounds. The god of death's fear faded away into amusement the longer he stared towards the bloodied Xankai before him.

"What was that?! You waste of a god! You couldn't even hit a target that was standing perfectly still no more than 20 meters in front of you!" Kimizuki mocked Xankai in between his fits of laughter. Despite this Xankai's smile never faded from his face, in fact it grew into a chuckle that forced Kimizuki's laughter to slowly wane into silence.

"It's just as I stated before Jizo, you've lost" Xankai stated still chuckling despite his very serious wounds. Upon hearing this, Jizo immediately stepped closer to Xankai angrily questioning him.

"Have you completely lost your mind in your absence? You are completely bloodied beyond function! All I have to do is walk over to Har-" Jizo turned towards Haricho to see an aqua light fading from bed. The blight that covered Haricho was slowly fading from his body and he slowly opened his eyes and stood upright. He then began to slowly go to tears, and dropped down to his knees and prayed.

"Thank you Xankai, God of Nature, I will forever be grateful!" Haricho said through tears.

"WHAT DID YOU DO!" Kimizuki picked up Xankai with one arm by his Kosode and held the katana up to his neck.

"I simply allowed you to dodge" Xankai promptly, and condescendingly stated.

"You'd think you'd have learned your lesson after all of these years" Kimizuki slowly said, the anger slowly rising in his voice. "I'M NOT A GOOD LOSER!!" He screamed as he threw Xankai off of the roof of the building tumbling towards the busy street below. Xankai's body limply flew threw the air blood trailing the ground that he passed over. Kimizuki slowly walked towards the edge of the building, sure that he had but to drop down and cut the god of nature into smaller pieces, but when he approached the edge, he had just enough time to see the god and his bow vanish just before the ground into a green light.

"XANKAI!" Kimizuki screamed out into the air with pure bloodlust.

Xankai lightly hit the ground underneath a cherry blossom tree near the center of the forest below his shrine. As he landed, the pink petals that layered the bottom slowly turned red. "Akiko" He coughed through the blood, and the bow once again glowed in a brilliant light to reveal Akiko standing next to him.

"We need to get you patched up right now!!!" She begain to panic, trying to think of a way to stop the god from bleeding. "Do...do gods bleed the same way as humans? Do i need to clean the wounds? Can you get infected?! What am I supposed to do?!" She barraged him with questions becoming more and more upset until she began to cry. "You idiot! How could you let yourself get hurt this badly! I don't know what I'd do if you died" The god slowly raised one finger up to Akiko's lips to make her stop speaking.

"Everything will be fine, just watch" He calmly stated. Xankai then proceeded to slowly place both of his hands upon the tree and he spoke to it. "I'm so sorry, but I need to do this" he whispered to the tree. A green light then began to radiate from the place where his hands were placed upon the tree. The light appeared in the form of small orbs that floated all around Xankai, and passed into his wounds. The wounds slowly began to heal, but even so, tears slowly passed down Xankai's face. Akiko went to place her hand on him, but then her eye caught a glimpse of the flowers upon the tree, which were slowly withering and dying. She then slowly placed her hand upon Xankai's hair, and gently pet him, but it was at this moment that a sound could be heard from the edge of the forest.

"COME OUT XANKAI!" Kimizuki screamed out into the forest, but his voice could be scarcely heard over the sound of trees falling before him. Kimizuki was blindly swinging into the forest slicing down everything in his path. "You're always spouting this nonsense about how nature is peaceful and calm, but you're such a hypocrite!" He shouted as he felled another group of trees. 

Akiko had stopped touching Xankai and was facing the direction Jizo's voice was coming from, but she then turned towards Xankai to see that his face was one of pure anger. His teeth were gritting together, his face was darkened, and instead of his eyes being the bright blue of usual, one had fallen into a dark red. 

"Do you know why?!" Kimizuki yelled out into the forest. "Because NATURE is the most destructive thing on the planet!" He yelled as he chopped down one more tree, but standing behind this tree was Xankai, with Aiki fully drawn back.

"Maybe you're right!" Xankai said through gritted teeth as he fired an arrow that flew straight into Kimizuki's right arm.

"DAMN YOU!" Kimizuki yelled out through the pain and leaped forward at Xankai with a slash from the katana, but right as the sword was going to make contact with him, he vanished into a green light, and immediately Kimizuki felt a sharp pain in his left leg. Xankai had appeared to the left, behind another tree, and just as Kimizuki turned to look at him, he vanished again, and he felt an arrow fly into his right leg. This forced the god of death down to his knees. With another flash of light, an arrow flew into Kimizuki's right arm, then another immediately into his stomach. Xankai then appeared in front of Kimizuki and drew the bow pointed straight at his head. Kimizuki simply whispered "Akemi", and with a flash of white light the girl from before stood in front of Xankai with her arms fully extended and tears streaming down her face.

"Please don't kill Kimizuki!" she begged to Xankai, whose face slowly fell from the rage he had, and his eye slowly returned to the blue it usually was. Akemi bent over with tears down her face to Kimizuki, and slowly lifted him to his feet, not even looking back towards Xankai, for all she cared about was his safety. Xankai had returned to normal, and had also released Akiko to her human form.

"Don't ever come back Jizo" he stated plainly, as the god and his regalia vanished into a black light. Xankai then turned around, took one step towards the forest and collapsed to the ground, and passed out.

When he awoke, he was laying in his shrines bed, and it was barely morning. He looked around but did not see Akiko in the shrine, so he went outside to investigate. Once he had taken one step out of the shrine, he could clearly see her sitting on the ledge looking out over the forest at the sun that was beginning to rise, and Xankai couldn't help but speak.

"Beautiful, Isn't it?"

But he wasn't looking at the sunrise.