Sukuna: The Last Sorcerer 12

Actually finding the deserters took less time than he expected.

Unfortunately, way more than he hoped for.

It took the whole rest of the day; all eight of them weaving around through the wild, going slow and quiet so they wouldn’t tip off anybody who happened to be on the lookout. Ryo was almost beginning to regret this whole ‘let’s go hunting’ thing Azula had offered him until… finally… they found what they were looking for.

Holed up in a rocky valley almost a whole two dozen miles from the village, the Fire Nation deserters had made their camp and they weren’t exactly subtle about it. 

Crouched behind a boulder, rough stone biting into his palms, Ryo raised an eyebrow as he looked down at all the shelters and tents made with red cloth; Fire Nation equipment and torn banners scattered around a fire pit in the middle of the whole thing. Yeah, not exactly subtle.

“At least twelve,” Azula stood next to him, the princess holding a black-gold spyglass right up against her eye. “All armed. And trained by the Fire Nation, so they won’t be entirely pathetic in a fight, especially with numbers.”

Not entirely pathetic… He was still learning to speak Azula but he was pretty sure that meant something like, not cannon fodder.  “Yeah, but they’re deserters,” Ryo whispered back. “So, what, aren’t they cowards?”

The princess clicked her tongue, a frown almost twisting her face as she lowered the spyglass from her eye. “It means they’re cornered buzzrats,” she rolled up the glass and handed it to a soldier at her side, golden eyes narrowing again as she kept them on the camp. “A cornered animal is rarely the most powerful, but often the most dangerous. They have nothing left to lose.”

Nothing left to lose, huh… Ryo slowly nodded. Can’t deny that.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Dawn.

Of course it was dawn, Ryo rubbed his eyes as he got up from his bedroll. Who the hell actually likes doing anything this early?

Judging from the hungry smile she wore, clearly the princess was the head of the early bird committee.

The soldiers seemed to be part of that too, the six “Skullfaces” she brought with her moving like the sun hadn’t just peaked up over the edge of the world as they marched silently through the dull morning light like machines. In their black-and-red armor, spiky as ever, they quickly fanned out and surrounded the sleeping camp, cutting off the main exits before the first guy probably even finished his yawn. Ryo had to give credit where it was due, these guys were probably worth whatever they were paid. 

Although he wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t even get paid. 

The Fire Nation seemed like the type to just demand duty.

Either way, by the time the deserting bandits rolled out of their tents, still scratching their nuts, they walked right into a wall of steel and waiting fire.

Most of them just… folded. 

Like instantly.

Hands shot up so fast it was almost funny, as weapons (swords, axes, a couple of weird looking hook-thingies) clattered loudly on the rocky ground. In no time at all, they dropped to their knees; one guy already starting to beg, “M-m-mercy, Princess, we didn’t mean… w-we were starving o-”

Azula didn’t even bother to look at the pleading deserter, simply giving a nod to one of the skulls. The butt of a spear slammed into the dude’s face halfway through his next word, blood streaming down from a broken nose as it crunched.

Yeah, mercy. Ryo rolled his eyes. Figured.

The fourteen-year-old let his head tip back against a rock as he let out a sigh. This was it? This was the big, super-secret mission? “Waste of a field trip.”

Just as the soldiers started tying them up, roping them together to keep them in one place, a horn blew.

A single, ugly BWWWWAAAAH that bounced off the rocks like a giant, dying cow. 

…what?

A lot more dudes.

A whole new wave of them came spilling over the rocks. 

Not a dozen. 

At least twenty. Maybe more. All of them yelling, faces painted, waving their weapons like they were in some kinda movie. 

“Well, shit.”

He glanced at Azula as her head snapped toward the ridge, whole body going tight. That perfect, porcelain “I’m in charge of everything” mask had a crack in it. Just a hairline fracture and only for a second or two, but he saw it. 

Oh. You didn’t plan for this, did you, princess?

“To the Princess!” one of her six soldiers barked, forming a little metal circle around her, fists and spears out as half of the surrendered deserters screamed and scattered even while tied up, crawling away on their hands and knees.

Azula’s face was a stone again, but her eyes were burning. “Fools. Deal with them.” Azula moved, a blur of blue flame and black armor, Ryo’s eyebrows going high the more he saw her in action. Damn… princess is…

Well, she definitely had killer moves. She wasn’t throwing big, sloppy fireballs like the rest. No, she was stabbing with it. 

Blue fire, hotter and brighter than the morning sun, exploded from her fist. It wasn’t a sloppy blast like that big dude’s; it was a line. A precise, high-velocity ribbon of blue flame that hit the lead deserter mid-yell. 

Right through his chest.

Azula didn’t even look down as he fell over dead.

Daaaaamn.

The Skullfaces were holding their own, too, and not just barely. The other guys may have had numbers but there was a reason Azula picked these six. Shouting, grunting, the shing of metal on metal, the rush of fire leaving a hand. It may have gone from a precision strike to a brawl, but it wasn’t a brawl these guys were losing.

Ryo blinked slowly as he stayed put. Sure, he leaned a little bit forward off his rock, but he didn’t bother to move yet as he watched the fighting. One of the deserters went down, a spear in his throat, gargling, as the guys on his side threw out fire blasts, wild and panicked. Yeah, they got this.

Three bandits not too far from them saw their chance, whatever small chance they thought they had. The ones who were still kneeling, the ones who hadn’t been tied up yet or ran away, scrambled to their feet, eyes wild as they went for weapons or anything else. 

One of them roared, a big slab of meat with a face like a busted-up sidewalk and scars all over his arms, a finger aimed right at him. “Kill the bitch and her pet!” 

…Pet? Red eyes narrowed.

The big guy sucked in a breath and threw a wild blast of fire.

Sloppy.

Nothing compared to the speed and power of those four Royal Guards, but still… fire.

The boy rolled as the air cooked, momentum carrying him over the dirt. Orange fire scorched the air where his face used to be as Ryo came up in a crouch, heart doing that fast, hard thump-thump-thump that meant the engine was turning over.

He could feel it; that heavy, vibrating, wrong feeling coiling in his gut. 

The memory of Sukuna’s fist going through his chest wasn’t one he’d forget in a thousand more years, not drowning in that blood ocean either. 

Definitely not getting his jaw ripped off. All of it, every second, every minute of consciousness before the darkness took him again, had been his life; the hate, the anger, all that pain in the two-hundred and something days of fuck this, fuck you, fuck everything. 

It felt good.

That black-red gunk flooded his palm, swirling black and red. Hungry. 

It wanted out.

The burly guy was already breathing in for another blast, face all twisted.

Ryo let the memory of a thousand deaths, a thousand beatings, snap into focus.

His eyes flickered red.

“怒 (Do)!”

It meant wrath, or rage… or even get angry. Ryo really wasn’t sure how he knew it, but it had come to him while he was getting tortured over and over. Once his Cursed Energy had started flowing right, at least.

Sukuna would have called it a “self-command.”

Ryo just called it Special Move #1.

It was nothing but raw force leaving his fist, a black-red cannonball of pure get fucked. Call it whatever you want, it punched clean through the bandit’s own fireball. The deserter’s fire shield, an orange wall he threw up last-second, didn’t do him any good either as the blast hit him square in the chest.

The CRACK was loud enough to draw attention.

The bandit flew backward, body a full ragdoll, and slammed into a pine tree ten feet away, folding around the trunk in a way bodies just ain’t supposed to. 

The clearing went dead quiet for a split second as Ryo stood there, hand smoking with that dark energy. Then everything went back to screaming and fire and dying.

Red eyes glanced up across the clearing to see a pair of golden ones on him.

Azula. She was in the middle of ducking under an axe swing, but that didn’t stop her from staring right at him. The princess kicked her attacker in the knee, a scream leaving the man silenced forever with a blue fire-dagger to the throat. 

Yeah, that’s right. A grin pulled at his mouth. Not your goddamn pet.

The other two deserters who’d been with the big guy—the ones who hadn’t surrendered—saw their boy get turned into abstract art. They came at him. 

Together. Smart. Kinda.

They had whips. Seriously?

Strips of thick leather, and as they roared, fire ran down the length, turning them into lines of pure flame. Oh, fire whips. 

A fire whip lashed out, snapping where he’d been with a FWOOSH-CRACK!

Another one, aimed at his legs. He jumped, fire licking at his heels. They were trying to box him in, entangle him. But their bending was just… sloppy.

He let that dark chi flow, not just to his hand, but everywhere as skin went hard, muscles tightened, like dipping his arms in wet concrete and letting it flash-dry. 

Another whip lashed his way and instead of dodging, he shot his hand out. 

The chi protecting his palm sizzled, a sharp TSSSSSS as he grabbed the fire whip. He didn’t really feel the heat even, just a slight warmth even as it cooked the air.

Ryo yanked. Hard.

The deserter stumbled forward, off-balance, his eyes wide and mouth open in a dumb “o.”

He met him halfway with a reinforced fist.

The feel of the ribcage was a poppoppoppop under his knuckles, a bag of dry twigs being stomped on, as a wet choked gurgled left the deserter, blood spraying from his mouth. Just like that, dead before he hit the ground.

The last deserter stopped; eyes on his friend’s body, then Ryo’s still-smoking hand. He dropped the whip, fire dying out almost immediately as he fell to his knees. “I surrender! I surrender!” Full fat tears ran down his face, snot and everything else. “Don’t kill me!”

Ryo stood there, the high singing in his veins; the whole world in HD as he stared down at the crying bandit, maybe four years older than him, sobbing on his knees. 

His fists clenched, a too-sharp grin spreading across his face as he turned back to look at Azula. The princess was just now finishing off one last opponent with a precise blazing blue heel kick that deserved its own name if it didn’t have one already. “Pretty easy, ri-“

He didn’t see the blast of fire till it hit him.

The heat was a speeding truck of force, stealing his breath as it slammed into him all white-hot and angry. For one, stupid, long second, he felt his skin bubble, unprotected flesh cooking like bitter pork.

“RYO!”

Azula’s voice, sharp as ever, cut through the air, all of a sudden sounding scared?

For him?

A second was enough as that energy, that shit Sukuna had beaten into him, didn’t even wait for him to ask. A reflexive, desperate gasp of reinforcement flooded his chest; hardening his skin, his muscles, his bones, before the fire could do anything more.

It wasn’t enough to stop the pain. Fuck, no. It hurt.

But it kept him from being cooked alive as Ryo stumbled back but stayed on his feet. Fuck.

Black tattoos across his chest and arms stood out with his shirt gone to ash, every single thick one of those lines crawling all over his chest, arms and face, from what those crazy bastards had done to him. 

Ryo glared down one more time to see the deserter still on his knees, hands smoking from the desperate, last-ditch blast.

“You… you fucking monsters!” he screamed, his voice breaking, tears still streaming. “You killed them all! They were… they were my friends!”

Ryo looked at him. The pain in his chest was a deep, angry throb. The pity from a second ago… it was still there. A little flicker of it. Poor bastard.

Kill him.

…but.

He betrayed your mercy. Thought you weak. Make him pay for both.

Sukuna was right. Mercy was a good way to get killed.

Ryo raised his hand.

Dark chi, red and black, started to swirl again in his palm. A tiny, violent storm crackling between each and every one of his fingers.

“A’ight,” Ryo said, the words flat. He could feel Azula watching and he wasn’t going to disappoint. “Don’t ever say I never gave you a chance.”

“怒 (Do).”