Day Four: Early Morning

[Reijin]

Continued from: http://www.cdbzrpg.com/forum/showpost.ph...ostcount=5

The head struck the blood stricken earth and it seemed to be hours before the body touched the ground beside it. The lifeless head was kicked off to the side as the younger of the two Saiyans stumbled forward, falling to his knees and coughing up ruby stained life onto the soil beneath him. His hands struck down and he continued heaving, his body rejecting the sudden loss of so much blood.

Crimson liquid seemed to spread beneath him, forming a strange gradient against the darkening blood of the nearby corpse. In Reijin's delirium, he could nearly make out images in the ruby scrying glass beneath him, as if showing him the future to come. He had made it quite far. He'd already been announced as a finalist, and it was obvious that once more he would not make it as the winner of the Abyss, as he had failed many times before. It simply was not meant to be, and that tore at the young adult.

His arms pulled him forward a few feet to stop at the tree he'd nearly reached before he rolled over, throwing his weight against the tree into a sitting position, watching the man in the distance grieve the situation that had resulted from the ambush. The man seemed as if he might have been speaking, but then Reijin could not near anything through his ears other than the sound of rushing air, haunting echoes, and the throbbing thumps of a dying heart. His own wheezing breath was growing fainter, slowly escaping to the wind to join the spirits of Dante's fallen.

It had been a good run.

He had failed, once more, but this time he had made it to at least the same spot as he always did. He didn't know if he'd ever have the strength to reach that second place pinnacle he'd stood on once before, fighting toe to toe with Raditzu, tasting the exstacy of the third level of an Ascended Saiyan as his long flowing hair matched that of his adversary, locked in the heat of battle with a strength that even the impulsive bastard child of Bardock would not match. It had felt fantastic. To be at the top while thirsting for that win.

Reijin finally realized, looking back at that moment, the moment before the other Saiyan brought his world crashing in around him by shattering his fingers to remove that power from his body, that he'd deserved his loss. For all of his calculations and strategical mental trials, for all of his planning and tactical analyzing... He'd failed. He had lost himself so strongly to the power of being that strong, in much the same way as Raditzu had when he'd destroyed the city after defeating the great Dragon, and he himself had gotten so enraptured in it, that he'd stopped focusing so much on his goal... and had instead become engrossed in events taking place on the path itself. What good was a desire to achieve victory when he could think of nothing more than the heavenly feeling of every nerve in his body rupturing, spreading an orgasmic flow of adrenaline and ki through each nervous ending? By simply defeating Raditzu for his victory at that moment as he should have, he would have then lost the power that no other Saiyan had ever felt, and he himself would never feel again.

Reijin had lost the Dante's Abyss that many years ago because he had allowed himself to become distracted at the most critical point in his fight. He'd given in to his emotions in ways beyond what he needed to evoke pyrokinetic flame, and he'd given Raditzu all the time he needed to win. The fallen warrior chuckled slightly at the irony of this epiphany. He had wanted nothing less than to win Dante's Abyss that year, to do everything that it took to defeat Raditzu, and when he'd finally had the opportunity he had thrown it all away. He knew that had Raditzu done nothing, Reijin would not have tactically ended the fight as he should have; he would have toyed with him until either Raditzu was lost to the Abyss on his own lack of strength or Reijin had exhausted the strength that he had gained from it.

He hadn't earned it, and he was disgusted by his attempts to convince himself otherwise all these years. Last year he had fought his way up to the top and had fallen well short of the final pairing, unable to even survive long enough to see who the two at the top of the ladder were. Reijin had learned later that it had been Bardock himself had been the winner, fighting against a nearly unheard of but extremely talented warrior known as Yamu. Reijin could speak from personal experience about the strength and skill of the man that Bardock had fought.

Bardock's power had grown every year. Reijin remembered when the two worked together during the war taking place on Kala, and the memory crashed into him harder than the axe that had taken Orion from the competition. Bardock had fought Kao, the son of Brim, alone beneath that tower of angels as Reijin had struggled with the decision to interfere on the older Saiyan's behalf while destroying his Saiyan Pride. In the end, the decision had been removed from his hands as Bardock and Kao were both taken to the blaze that had erupted beneath the building, shaking the entire monolithic structure of Heaven and Hell in one enormous serenade.

Reijin's breathing was rough and shallow as he struggled for breath, watching the only other survivor as he stood up from the corpse of the woman at his feet. He watched the man walk over towards the two fallen warriors nearby and kneel down, picking something up from near them. After looking it over for a moment, he opened it, revealing the medkit for what it was.

The younger Saiyan coughed quietly, lying against a tree silently while watching him, unable to speak as the man began to pull out a bandage. The man glanced towards Reijin for a moment, and to Jun'ai's surprise, Reijin stopped breathing, his head falling to the side a bit as his eyes closed halfway.

The man looked down at the carnage at his feet, his eyes flowing from the two that had attacked them over to the ebon haired youth nearby, and finally to Violet's body. Saying nothing more, he walked into the bushes, disappearing quietly into the darkness, the darkness falling around the dead from the failing ki aura retracting.

It took a few moments for the younger Saiyan to claim enough strength to move, but finally his body responded to his struggles, a slight twitch in his necking rekindling the life that he'd fought to hold onto. He could not even hear Jun'ai at this point, although he could still feel her presence. Her words were lost to the dire screams that seemed to surround him in anguish, his head finally rolling forward so that his eyes could lock on the discarded medical kit in the distance.

As a repayment for the strength and dedication that Bardock had shown over their entire time fighting together in various competitions, Reijin paid the debt that he'd gained for his consideration of interrupting Bardock's personal fight in that room ages ago. Throwing his body weight forward, his bloody fingertips dug deeply into the soil, pulling his body weakly along the ground as his eyes were locked onto the box. He'd allowed Bardock to believe that he'd been lost to the battle as well, giving the man every final decision in which of the spoils of war he wanted on his way to the final pairing. Reaching the medkit, Reijin winced in deep pain as his fingers managed to tip over the box, its supplies spilling out to the grown.

His fingers dug through the box as his other arm sought to hold his clothing tightly against his wounds to retain some of his blood, while his mouth betrayed him by allowing it to flow almost freely to the ground. He erupted into a series of coughs as he rolled onto his back, struggling to catch his breath before glancing in the direction of his departed ally, hoping that he'd given the man no reason to come back to allow Reijin's failures to bring him down as well. His hand held up a strong bandage and a vial containing the last remnants of what the man knew to be quite similar to Senzu bean extract, its almost magical components playing a healing factor in the most devastating of wounds. He squeezed the small amount from the final and felt it searing as it flowed down his esophagus, quietly retracting down into his stomach before being absorbed into his cell walls.

This would help to clot up most of the blood loss and invigorate his blood cell generation, at the least. The numbness that followed allowed him to push himself up to a sitting position, lifting up his shirt to tear strips of cloth from his clothing to assist in holding the bandage scraps in place to help cover the gash that remained. His shattered knee had become infected, and the medicine could only prolong such misery, but any form of prolonging would help him to at least make it far enough to watch the titans of Dante fight it out.

Rolling over, his vision had cleared enough to grab the pitchfork that was lying discarded nearby and use it to push himself up to his feet, his destroyed knee giving him a slight bit more support than he'd thought as he continued to struggle for breath. He had no idea why he was continuing to push himself through the circumstances, but his resolve had been strengthened in his delirium. He would help in every way that he could. He used the long pole to lift up the Ki Machine Gun by the strap and struggled with his other arm to grab it, wrapping it around his body before then clasping the baseball bat to his belt.

Finally the girls voice entered his mind. How are you... she began, unsure of exactly how to finish her sentence.

He clutched his pitchfork tightly and managed to gain enough strength to force out one simple sentence. "I... am... Saiyan." To him it was everything. It was a past worth overcoming. It was a strong heritage. It was pride. It was a berserker's blood rage. It was lust for battle. It was the desire to win. It was the refusal to accept a loss. It was anger. It was destruction. It was a calling.

It was the very definition of his being, and he would emanate it until the final gasp of oxygen had been torn from his body and his soul had been eradicated by the demons of Hell.

It wasn't over.