##

They all looked like hell.

Arain was covered in blood, a little of it her own, her battle gear shredded and her hair wild.

Yahiko’s Gi hung in rags, the boy just as bruised and beat up as Arain. And just as proud.

Megumi was a little better off with minor cuts and bruises. Her Kimono was a total write off though.

Tomoe looked like she was competing with Arain for most savage/wartorn looking, although she wasn’t as proud about it, supporting the still unconscious Kenshin with ease.

Sano looked remarkably better than he did before thanks to the Megumi’s medicine. Still looked like he’d been run over by herd of wild horses anyway. Especially with Megumi supporting him somewhat. Everyone suspected it to be an excuse to hold each other anyway.

Shuriken and Soujirou had crawled ashore like half drowned, black and blue rats. At least they were cleaner.

All of them watched the shipbeast in its death throes, its thrashing and screaming growing fainter and fainter. Watched and waited for some sign of Karou and Jubei.

None appeared…and with a final horrible death rattle, the Shipbeast’s still burning ‘corpse’ was lost within the violent embrace of the sea…and then there was nothing.

…And just as they were beginning to give up hope…

“Buddha’s tits you’re heavy…What the hell Battousai feeds you?!”

“What did you say? I’m the one carrying your worthless ass!”

“I knew you weren’t dead, Busu.” Yahiko said calmly, even as he wiped his eyes. “You’re too stubborn and ugly to die.”

They helped them onto the dock, Karou glaring at Yahiko. “I heard that, you ungrateful snot!”

“Come over here and say that to my face.”

Karou ignored him as she stumbled toward Tomoe and Kenshin. “How is he?”

“He’s sleeping now.” Tomoe replied. “Until we restore his personas. And Ashura?”

“Gone, along with the swords.” Arain and Shuriken startled, but Karou raised her hand. “I’ll explain later. Right now I just want to sleep.”

“I hear you there.” Jubei remarked. “Saving the world twice is enough for me.”

“You mean you don’t want to push your luck.” Arain muttered.

Everyone laughed at that one.

As they turned to leave, Tomoe paused to stare out at the sea.

*A world without the swords. Is it truly possible?*

Finding no answer in the sea, she turned to join the others.

Tomoe stopped dead in her tracks.

Was that…a heartbeat?

“Is something wrong?”

Tomoe shook her head. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

Funny, how time seems to slow down during a catastrophe? As if your mind has to defy the laws of time to convince itself of what it was seeing?

Seeing Ashura explode from her watery grave definitely counted as one of those moments.

She screamed through the air…shattering the pavement as she landed on her feet before them, stumbling everyone with the tremendous impact.

A wide-eyed Tomoe summed up everyone’s reaction.

“Shit on me and call me sukiyaki.”

Ashura was an unholy sight: Dark waves of energy boiled off her, staining the air and decaying everything around her. Hunched over, her body convulsed violently, gulping for air only to insanely cackle with each breath louder and louder. Clawed hands tightly gripping the hilt of the Hellsword, eyes rolled back in their sockets. Looked more dead than alive really.

Before their horrified eyes, she slowly pulled the Hellsword from her heart, screaming with the

effort until it finally left her body with a wet pop, the horrible wound sealing without a trace. Almost collapsing, she reared back and howled drunkenly… triumph and insanity swirling in her eyes as they rolled into place to regard them.

The changes ripped through her body even faster than before…Ashura no longer recognizable or even human…The energies within her rising to dangerous proportions…

“Run!” Karou screamed.

They were almost a block away when the explosive release came…the concussion wave knocking them all head over heels. Several buildings were knocked aside like toys…Tomoe only having time to shield Kenshin as they were buried under a rain of rubble. Everyone else dodged or managed to destroy the damaging rain…only to see something much worse.

Himeno Ashura was gone. In her place stood a creature of nightmares and ancient legend. A freakish half-breed of Dragon and Woman, somehow serpentine and humanoid at once. Standing over fifteen feet tall if she was an inch and thick with whipcord muscle. More buildings suffered as she flicked the immense skeletal weapon she called a tail, it’s bladed tip shearing them like wheat. The Hellsword had grown with her, even taller than its wielder now and twice as frightening.

But it was her face that would forever scar their memories, if one could call it that: a giant set of fangs comprising a featureless, female oni’s ‘mask’ when closed, four pairs of red/black eyes along it’s thick draconian neck flaring as it roared with ugly laughter.

Every one scattered as Ashura slowly stalked toward them, hiding amidst the ruins and buildings.

She barely reacted to the ice blast that incased her, Karou appearing out of nowhere with a Ryu Tsui Sen that shattered the ice…An unfazed Ashura blasting Karou out of the air and through her through a building. Arain barely teleporting in time to avoid a sword swipe that leveled a block but kicked out of the air as she reappeared behind her. Megumi fired right between Ashura’s eyes, actually knocking her back a step. Sweatdropped as she glared at her, unhurt.

Tailwhipped Yahiko and Jubei behind her without even looking.

“Real smart, Takani.” She muttered.

Sano punching Ashura’s leg from behind distracted her enough for Megumi to run like hell. Sano thrown into her back a second later…Shuriken attempting to contain the following energy blast but knocked back as well…only another time freeze from Soujirou allowing them to escape before Ashura’s tail speared them. Ashura roared, the sheer force of it throwing them like toys through the air and scattering them…knocking out what little fight they had left as they crashed back to earth.

She hurled it into the already turbulent skies…watched them swell into the storm to end all storms…so monstrous it was almost a life of its own. Violent and Hungry. Lightning screamed around them constantly. The wind howled and hammered whatever the lightning did not incinerate. Stinging rain beat at them mercilessly.

Amidst it all, Ashura basked in her creation. Tasted the rain like a child would.

*There has to be a way.*

Sleep. Shuriken’s body screamed for it. Sleep until death claimed her. But that one thought kept dragging her back into reality.

Lying on her back, too exhausted to move, she looked to the sky as if it would give her an answer.

Surprisingly, it did.

She rolled over and climbed to her hands and knees. Summoning the energy to reach out to every one.

Like her, they were all picking themselves up of the ground. Tapping their last reserves of strength just to stand…

*Bane was known as the Stormdragon, because her power was so immense it would affect the weather, even allow her to control it.* She looked at Ashura so they could see what she did. The changes still tearing through her massive body. *Ashura’s transformation isn’t complete…She needs that sword in order to contain her power until she does.*

*So if we shatter that sword…* Arain finished for her. *She’ll lose control and the storm wilturn on her!*

“That’s your plan?” Jubei said dryly, using his sword as a crutch.

Everyone looked at Ashura again.

“We’re gonna die…” Yahiko remarked.

“…Might as well do it in style.” He finished. “As a Tokyo Samurai I demand no less.”

Everyone stood in reply, newfound hope lending him or her strength.

“Not every day you get to save the world.” Sano answered for everyone.

Ashura was surprised to feel them gathering their strength. Surprise that quickly became amusement.

It wasn’t the head on attack she expected. Suddenly the rain began to harden…becoming shards of hail that stabbed her endlessly…more annoying than deadly really. She found Arain just in time see her raise her sword toward the heavens…summoning a pillar of water that towered over her even…Ashura blocking it as it crashed into her…fighting against it…

And immediately regretted it as Yahiko plunged his bokken into the water…Ashura screaming at the blast of electricity that tore through her…Arain and Yahiko actually pushing her back until Ashura pushed back with an energy blast…stabbing toward them with tail and sword as they scattered…

…Jubei and Soujirou leaping onto and running along Sword and Tail to slash her across the eyes…Ashura blasting randomly as she flailed about in pain. Barely noticed the barrels of lamp oil Shuriken and Karou smashed all over her…but that changed as Megumi fired…Ashura’s scream of rage heard for miles as she became a walking inferno…

“Now Sano!”

Ashura dropped to her knees and leaned on her sword…Attempting to forced the fire out with sheer will and heal herself…Interrupted by the searing pain that lanced through her as Sano struck the Hellsword full force…thrown back as the sword’s aura lashed out in reaction…

And had no apparent effect…other than pissing Ashura off even more.

Something she made quite clear as she stood…stabbing the sword into the ground and unleashing her aura throughout the city…Seeking out and driving everyone to their knees in agony as it slowly sucked the life out of them…

All except one.

Even Ashura was stunned as Tomoe began to walk toward her…wading through the dark flames with every bit of strength she had even as it robbed her of it…A look of rage and determination etched across her face…

“You’re right…” She managed to raise her head enough to look Ashura in the eyes…and smiled.

“Cause this is the LAST!”

And ran through the flames until she reached the sword…holding on even as her hands began to burn…The dark energies surrounding them becoming a maelstrom around them all that matched the fury above and challenged it…merging into a chaos indescribable…

And then Tomoe was thrown backwards, landing in a heap in front of them, hunched over her smoking hands. The aura draining them faded…drawing back to the sword as Ashura gasped for breath…actually hurt from Tomoe’s ‘attack’…

It didn’t stop her from raising the Hellsword…everyone too drained to move as it whistled through the air…

“Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu: Amakakeru Ryu no Hirameki!!”

Their auras flared and battled around them. Flattening everything around them. It took the combined efforts of Arain, Shuriken and Tomoe to shield themselves from the unimaginable forces tearing around them…still barely enough as the auras doubled. Tripled…

Back and forth the struggle went…no one able to tell who was the stronger…Both women strained to their limits and beyond…knowing that the slightest moment of weakness would decide their fate…

…and the moment came…Ashura finally overpowering the blow…displacing the air in a massive thundercrack…debris and even buildings sucked within the tremendous vacuum storm created in its wake…

Karou rode that storm…adding its strength to hers as she completed her turn…

Ashura sneered inwardly in triumph. She knew the secrets of the Mitsuguri Ougi, using the vacuum to aid her strike as well…confident that the Sakaba would not withstand the impact…

Even that accursed weapon has limits!

She will die. They will all die!

Circling in midair, They completed their turns and lashed out once more for the final blow. Both swords screaming through the air on their collision course…

Limit. Break.

The two words snapped something in Ashura’s mind. Triumph soured into sickening horror, as she understood their plan all too late. Saw the small crack in the Hellsword’s blade Karou aimed for.

Right where Sano hit it. Right where Tomoe touched it!

Then Sakaba and Hellsword met for the last time.

##

Two nights in a row the world was rocked by something unexplainable.

There wasn’t a place on the planet that didn’t see the explosion of light that seared the heavens, or felt its thunderous roar. But something was different about this time. Something…right, that they couldn’t explain, even those special few affected by the previous night.

No one would ever know what truly happened.

##