Chapter Text
The gunfire had stopped. The sutra wasn’t humming anymore.
And maybe most important of all, his robes had finally shed the last telltale drops of blood and mended themselves. Not a trace of clawmarks remained.
Take things slow, Genjyo Sanzo warned himself, settling his living bundle more firmly in his right arm. His left might need to be busy. Shooting. Damn poison’s not all out, even if the sutra did swat… whatever contagion came with the claws.
Behind him in the monastery strongroom, one of the surviving monks shivered.
“Finger off the trigger, if you’re going to get the shakes.” Sanzo tried not to growl. Anyone who’d managed to stay alive this night would probably shoot at him. Not that the twisted things that had attacked them had growled; at least, not in a way human ears could hear. “I’m opening the door.”
Head priest Nishimoya scowled down at his persacomm. “Captain Taikei still says we should remain where we are until he’s confirmed all the shikigami are dealt with-”
“Stay if you want,” Sanzo cut him off. He had a living victim to take care of, and a sutra muttering in the back of his head with icy curiosity about :DNA not previously encountered – not Shangri-La/Terran/known Confederacy construct. Further analysis required.: “I’m leaving.”
The sutra will let me know if there are more of those things out there. I think.
:Analysis of unknown biologic pulse-communications still in progress.:
And it was sheer will and guts that kept Sanzo’s stride even, because the concept the sutra tried to fry into his brain wasn’t nearly as simple as ‘pulse’. It was a spiky combination of EM projection, telempathic elements, distortion of space-time like rippling water, ripple-bounces as I am here, I-am, you-are-other, you-are-prey....
Damn it, ease up! Sanzo snarled silently at alien tech that both was and wasn’t a sacred scroll of paper. Just warn me if you sense it. The damn things want to eat us. I don’t need to know what they’re saying.
Ancient amusement. A sense of a tickling prickle; like a kitten’s whiskers brushing his face, next to the monsters’ spine-freezing screams.
The kid. Has to be. “Whatever you’re doing, better pull it in and be quiet,” Sanzo murmured to the bundle leaning on his shoulder. “I don’t know who this Captain Taikei is, but I know Confederacy shikigami, and what hit us wasn’t them. If they’re lying about that, I’m not going to believe them about anything.”
A quiet breath near his ear, and the kid played possum, limp and still; wrapped up in an acolyte’s oversized robe so anyone looking couldn’t see more than the rough outline of legs, arms, head.
They’d better not see more than that.
Sanzo wiped that thought from his face and mind. He had a hurt kid in his arms, they were walking past twisted bodies in pools of blood soaking the temple’s wooden floor, and here came a rattling pack of soldiers in combat armor and nightvision helmets, armed to the teeth, scattering through the open space as if they meant to catch any suddenly resurrected bodies in a withering crossfire.
Which showed that somebody in charge had more survival instincts than your average lemming. The near-invisible akuma had played dead a time or two. Only the sutra had caught the whispers of whatever the creatures used to pulse-sense around them, and Sanzo had put them down with a psychokinetically charged bullet to the head. Not a trick he usually dared to pull out. Everyone knew Quincies were a Federation gene-line. And his records - accurately - showed he didn’t have relatives back in the Federation. Which would have made explanations very tricky.
“Halt and identify yourself!”
Never explain anything. Sanzo halted, feeling one of the trembling monks run into him from behind, and stood his ground. “Do I look like I need identification, soldier?”
Another of the armed men stiffened. “Sir....”
The rifle came up to aim. “I said-”
“Captain Taikei!” the evident second in command hissed. “That’s a Sanzo!”
Damn it.
On the one hand, that ought to stop most of the questions. On the other - so much for getting out of here unnoticed.
Don’t lose the momentum. “Genjyo Sanzo,” he announced, sweeping his gaze over all the soldiers before settling back on Captain Taikei. The man’s helmet visor hid most of his face; the bit Sanzo could see of his mouth was a hard line of lips, like a man determined not to flinch from fire. “These are the survivors of - Momijizan.” He’d almost said Kinzan, damn it. And this wasn’t anything like the shikigami attack that had killed Master Koumyou.
Except for the bodies. And the blood.
Deliberately, Sanzo pushed those memories away. Three months. It’d been three months since he’d given his master’s body to cremating flames, and he would not cry. There were lives counting on him. One life in particular, squirming a little against his shoulder. Someone the size of a twelve-year-old in that position probably wasn’t having a good time.
The twitch drew a half-dozen weapons aimed his way. Morons. “What the hell is that?” one of the twitchier shouted.
Priest Nishimoya cleared his throat. “Um, we’re not-”
“An orphan recently remanded to the temple’s care,” Sanzo cut across his words. “I claim Privacy on his behalf.”
That got half the weapons re-aimed elsewhere. Good.
Captain Taikei was made of sterner stuff, though. “You’ll have to wait for the medics like everyone else. Get in line-”
“Captain!” the second in command hissed again.
Taikei’s mouth thinned. “What is it now, Ozeki?”
“None of the men is going to touch a Sanzo, sir!”
Sanzo kept his face impassive, as if he’d heard nothing. However else his unknown parents might have meddled with his genome, at least he’d come out with good ears.
Taikei’s annoyance was almost palpable, like sticking a hand into clammy ground meat. “Backwater superstitions....”
“He’s in white robes,” Ozeki pointed out, voice still low. “And the kid’s are clean, too. If they’d been hit, we’d see it.”
You just keep thinking that.
Taikei’s jaw worked, not so different from the sawing motion Sanzo had seen one of the akuma use to dismember a still-shrieking meal. “Sorry, Priest Sanzo,” the captain stated, loud enough for the room to hear. “You may have heard that Confederacy creations are sometimes gengineered to carry contagions. We believe this batch can inflict a particularly virulent form of Strickland’s.”
Not a twitch of face or voice to hint otherwise. Meaning the man was a good liar, or his superiors were pulling the wool over his eyes, too. Either way, it was past time to get the hell out of here.
Inclining his head in the gracious nod most expected from a high-ranking priest, Sanzo stalked past the armed men and out into the night.
Strickland’s my ass. That’s a damn fungus. This was a virus. I think.
Way, way too fast-moving to be any ordinary virus. The sutra had grumbled about neurotoxins, started countermeasures, tried to take its usual minute to do a casual analysis of the latest contagion to attempt to inconvenience its bearer-
Only to release the closest thing Sanzo had ever felt to an unholy squawk in his brain, as it detected the virus actually warping the spacetime continuum to start appearing in cells across its bearer’s body; a wave of infection that wasn’t bothering to resort to anything as plebian as an incubation period.
The next few seconds after that had been a frightening white-out of sense and thought. Sanzo had come to in a swarm of writhing bodies, pulling the trigger again and again, headache jangling as the sutra snarled through his reflexes like a furious dragon. :Kill! Kill! Kill!:
He still didn’t know what the sutra had done. He thought it’d wrapped him in itself, and released a short - hopefully controlled - burst of the same energy it used to fry Confederacy shikigami from the inside out. He hadn’t exactly had the chance to ask the other monks. They’d been too busy surviving. And the Maten itself had been growling about :Analysis continuing: and :Preliminary countermeasures in place. Destroy carriers. Avoid further exposure.:
Avoiding further exposure sounded like an excellent idea. The neurotoxin hurt. A lot.
Someone gets hit with this akuma of a virus - if you couldn’t counter it inside an hour, there wouldn’t be any human cells left to save.
Which made Sanzo almost break into a cold sweat as the kid shifted in his grasp, obviously trying to listen to what was going on as they walked out into a snap of annoying floodlights. Sanzo squinted against the brilliance, never slowing his pace toward the half-circle of gunpowder and steel cutting off the one road leading up to this isolated monastery. Armed soldiers, suited medics, biohazard trucks-
Oh. Grenade launchers. Fun.
And there were a few things in amongst the trucks he didn’t even recognize. This was not the normal response to a landing of Confederacy monsters.
You have a kid. You claimed Privacy. Don’t think about anything else.
Face set, Sanzo stalked toward the barricade.
Heh. Watch them sweat.
He could almost see the thoughts playing over helmeted faces. On the one hand, no soldiers with him, which implied he was walking out of what was apparently a quarantine zone without official permission. On the other hand, no soldiers with him - which meant did they really want to try and stop him?
Hell, what do I do if they do? One revolver against a bunch of guys in armor and APCs-
The Maten rustled on his shoulders, cranky as he’d ever felt the alien tech. :Offensive and defensive options prepared.:
Through the cool flow of calculations, Sanzo felt the hope that he opted for attack.
I guess even an AI can get snarly.
:Analysis of unknown biologic still in progress.:
Oh yes. A cranky, cranky sutra, indeed. He wondered how long it’d taken Kanzeon’s world-shaping tech to analyze Terran DNA, when the first settlers had landed generations ago.
:Terran DNA/ecosystem analysis will need recalibration given new complicating factors,: the Maten growled.
Wait. Wait wait wait. You think this thing is going to get loose?
:Analysis of young unknown biologic still in progress.:
Great. And what would the Maten decide about the kid after the analysis was over?
:Offensive and defensive options available.:
Right. Because whatever the sutra might decide was the best option, it didn’t act on its own. Unless its bearer was in deadly danger, and for some reason not capable of choosing to command it.
Why didn’t Koumyou-
Sanzo wiped that thought from face and mind as he neared the barricade. And didn’t slow down. Dark hair and a white labcoat had caught his eye, and he did not want to deal with what they implied.
Why is one of the government’s black ops gengineers hanging around an alien invasion?
He could think of a host of reasons. Especially given the little chip he’d taken out of the back of the kid’s neck, and dropped into a torn-open monster’s stomach.
Which made him angry, and for once he wasn’t going to throttle it back. Sanzo narrowed his eyes, headed straight for the center of the barricade and one shaking soldier, and didn’t stop.
Guns melted out of the way.
Keep moving. Don’t stop. Walk like you’re going to walk all the way back to town.
Which, given what he knew about neurotoxins in general, stood a fifty-fifty chance of actually being a good idea. As long as there wasn’t any more venom circulating in his system, the longer he kept moving the more chance his body had to sweat it out.
On the other hand, the longer he kept moving, the more chance his wounds had of opening up again. And if the people behind him saw him bleed through the robes... it wouldn’t be good.
“Hey....” Came the casual drawl behind them. “I didn’t get your name.”
Sanzo kept walking. “Don’t move,” he whispered to the suddenly tense bundle on his shoulder. “Do not move. There are too damn many of them. I didn’t haul you out of there just to get us both shot.”
The kid was trembling. That :kitten-prickling: was back, and fiercer.
“And tone that down,” Sanzo hissed. “They’re looking for you. Think they can’t detect that?”
The prickling cut off, like eyelids slammed closed. Good.
“Still didn’t get your name!” rang out behind them.
Sanzo shifted his kid-bundle from shoulder to shoulder, and held up his right hand in the abhayamudrā.
“Cute. Well, there’s only five Sanzos around. I’m sure I’ll get the name of the one who tamed the demon elephant.”
He probably will, too. Not good.
One problem at a time. First to get out of sight of this apparently super-secret mess. Then....
I need to call a cab.
Sanzo unlocked the second of the five hotel rooms he’d rented via persacomm and the planetary ‘Net, and hoped he’d been paranoid enough.
No one lying in wait. Guess that’s as much as I can ask.
There were bags and bundles, though; some with the soft slump of civilian clothes, others with green and pizza-sauce scents that meant they ought to be the food he’d ordered.
Need to hole up and heal up for a day or so. Both of us. “I’m going to put you down, now.” Sanzo kept his voice quiet; he didn’t do gentle. “If you want to eat first, we can. But I think I’m going to fall over after I eat, so I was planning on a shower. Blood itches when it dries.”
The kid wobbled as he stood. Maybe from hunger. Maybe....
How long has it been since he stood on two legs?
“Sh-shower...?”
Oh good, he can talk. “Come on. I want hot water. And soap.”
The acolyte’s robe was definitely a loss, covered on the inside with bits of dead skin and who knew what else. Sanzo planned to burn it. Just in case. The kid wrapped inside....
Well. I think he’s a kid.
Sanzo deliberately did not stare, helping the kid scrub off knobby knees, clawed hands, and plush-furred gold-brown tentacles. He made a point of washing behind pointed ears.
For his part the kid was staring right back, slit-pupiled eyes wide at the range of scrapes, scars, and gashes Sanzo’d collected in fights from years back to just hours ago. “Are you- did I do that?”
“Are you kidding?” Sanzo said dryly. “Shrimp your size? You barely nicked me. Here. Hold still.” He parted brown strands that weren’t quite hair, checked the back of the kid’s neck. “Good, looks like that’s scabbed over. Try to keep it dry for a few days.”
Those gold eyes went even wider. “...You took it out.”
“Of course I took it out,” Sanzo bit out, wrapping the kid in a dun towel. “You don’t chip-tag people.”
Huh. That got quiet again. Was that good or not?
There was a gurgling growl.
Sanzo eyed the kid’s stomach, and let his lips turn up a little. “Come on. Trying not to die always makes me hungry.”
Two pizzas and an amazing amount of fruit later, and the kid was a sleepy lump in his new dark red shirt and jeans. The Chinese-style laced shirt left room for his tentacles to slip in and out under the back, and clawed toes curled up happily against sandal thongs. Sanzo had debated socks, and decided they could wait for later.
Gnawing on a bit of crust, Sanzo scowled, poking at memories of blood and death for facts, not emotions. Okay, what have we got? It’s nothing the sutra’s met before. It’s infectious. Looks like it kills some people, but others....
Okay, maybe he wasn’t quite the hardcase he wanted people to think, because the thought that those monsters he’d cut down - the ones trying to eat the whole monastery - had once been human-
A furry lump slumped against his right side, one tentacle reaching out to curl loosely around his waist.
Sanzo glanced that way, and carefully put his own hand on the kid’s shoulder. Like a baby monkey tail. Only more teeth. “So.” Damn it, he was no good at this. “You want to sleep, or you want to talk? And what’s your name? I can’t keep calling you kid. Eventually you’d grow out of it.”
“...Specimen Nine.”
Okay, had he said he hated this whole situation? Because he did. So much. “That’s not a name.”
“S’ the only one I remember.” The kid nestled against his side, seeking warmth. “That guy. Who talked to you. S’what he called me. I think. Voices... sound different now.”
“That’s not a name,” Sanzo said flatly. A government gengineer making a kid not human anymore? Whatever was going on, he was going to get to the bottom of it. And burn it to the ground. “You need a name.”
Gold blinked up at him, a spark of defiance. “So give me one.”
Sanzo stilled. Because on one level this was a kid; he could see it in the half-defensive stance, hear it in the hopeful voice. On another, this was something not at all in the world he knew - claws and fangs and venom, and way too strong to be human-
“...I’ll get the name of the one who tamed the demon elephant.”
No. Not a demon elephant. A demon monkey.
“Goku,” Sanzo said, determined, eyeing the peach pits left in the dinner wreckage. “Son Goku, the Monkey King.” He tapped his own chest, where he’d put his black armor shirt back on over his bandages. “I’m Genjyo Sanzo. Glad to see you pulled out of the whole hissing, eating people headspace before I had to shoot you.”
Gold eyes widened. A determined chin lifted. “So why didn’t you shoot me?”
Good question.
The golden shimmer and slit pupils were the same. Everything else was different. The - thing - Goku had been before the sutra grabbed him had been four-legged, with a mouth full of fangs and slick skin shifting colors to blend with night and shadows and blood. Tentacles, razor claws - the only obvious difference between Goku and the other akuma had been size.
That wasn’t what stopped me. “You were between the man-eaters and the kid acolytes,” Sanzo stated. “You weren’t trying to hurt people. You were trying to protect them.”
“I was?” Goku curled his fingers, staring at the bone-white claws that slid out of his fingertips. “It’s all kind of fuzzy. I just remember... they were scared. I didn’t want people scared of me. I wanted....”
He didn’t even see the kid move. Goku was just suddenly there, head pressed against his chest, short brown hair-tendrils tickling the side of Sanzo’s throat. Tentacles were wrapped around him like rose-vines, as the kid took a deep breath and sighed. “I like your heartbeat.”
“It’s preferable to not having one,” Sanzo said dryly. If the kid were a constricting snake he’d be in trouble. But so far all Goku seemed to want to do was hang on.
So far. “Ground rules, monkey.” Sanzo gripped smaller fingers, eyeing the fine points of razor-white as the sutra whispered in his mind. “First rule. You’re better, but you’re still dangerous. Don’t claw anything unless you intend to kill it. And don’t claw anyone. If they need to die, I’ll shoot them. It’s kinder.”
Goku started, head lifting off his chest. “You mean, even after you fixed me, I could still....”
“Infect people, like those akuma did?” Sanzo said bluntly. “Better assume you can, until we find out otherwise. The consequences if we don’t and we’re wrong are horrible.”
Goku gulped. “But you’re not scared of me.”
Annoyed, yes. Scared? Never. “I’ve got an edge most people never will.”
Goku blinked. Reached up a hand, and touched the sutra. “Oh. It’s all prickly.”
Which was the sutra going poke, and Sanzo could only hope it was a nonhostile scan of energies and not something nastier.
:Offensive options only deployed voluntarily so long as bearer Genjyo Sanzo conscious and aware.:
So you say. If he’d had any idea he was going to end up with an alien supercomputer poking around inside his head, he’d have dropped his damn frontier-scout curiosity about the sutras like a hot rock, and never have gotten close enough to Koumyou to get tagged as his heir.
:Terrans alien to Shangri-La.: Cool calculations had a mint-taste of amusement. :Native supercomputer.:
A wiseass alien supercomputer. Because obviously, poking bits of an alien planet’s ecosystem so other people could find out how not to die horribly gave you terrible karma.
“So what is it?” Goku was eyeing green-edged white paper with obvious suspicion. Which showed the kid was smarter than the average priest. “How’d you save me?”
Good question. Sanzo remembered dumping spent brass, reloading as fast as human fingers could manage, seeing the smaller monster tense to spring and adrenaline-shaking monks leveling shotguns at movement-
Most of the priests probably would have called it holy compassion. Idiots. Being a Sanzo had nothing to do with it. Half his life and more he’d been a Scout and territory-opener on Shangri-La’s vast western frontier. And the first rule of a Scout was never shoot a nonhostile unknown.
Because it might have friends. And brains. And the ability to hold a grudge. He’d nearly gotten himself trampled to death by a bunch of angry monocorn stallions once. Shoot a creature that wasn’t edible and wasn’t trying to kill him? No, thank you.
So he’d stepped in the way. The same as he would have for a spider-bear, or a water-cougar; shoulders prickling with the knowledge of idiots’ fingers on triggers and his own revolver ready to snap up and fire.
:Quick analysis complete,: the sutra had announced. :Human DNA identified. Additional nonhostile option possible.:
The image and shape of that option had been too incredible to believe. So Sanzo hadn’t tried. He’d just stepped into the little monster’s leap, and prayed, gathering will and power to unleash-
“Makai Tenjyo!”
He might never understand everything the sutra was. But Koumyou had carried it years longer, and taught him all he could believe.
The Maten is meant to break the darkness.
“I’m not sure what I did,” Sanzo admitted now, meeting that gold gaze. “You acted more like a person than a monster. So I - broke the monster.”
“And my, what a shattering that was,” a familiar voice chuckled. Contralto, counter-tenor; most people would have struggled to place it as one or the other, before looking at the generous bosom under translucent silks and deciding on she.
Sanzo had met this most sketchy of goddesses before, and he knew se was no such thing. “Kanzeon Bosatsu.” If one of Shangri-La’s mysterious native sentient species wanted to call hirself that, it was no skin off Sanzo’s nose. Se was far more merciful than any other gods he’d dealt with. “What kind of alien hell cut loose tonight?”
“I have no idea. Except that whatever it was, both of us agree it’s alien. That doesn’t happen much.” Ringlets of dark hair brushed hir pale shoulders as se peered at Goku. “So you’re Son Goku now? You can call me Aunt Kanzeon, since you’re going to be looking after my Sanzo for me.”
“Who is going to be looking after who?” Sanzo said dryly.
Goku was smiling, slit pupils relaxing into something more round and friendly as he sniffed the air around hir. “You want me to take care of Sanzo? Sure!”
“Who was the actual Scout in this room, hag?” Sanzo growled. “I can take care of myself.”
“And yet, you almost didn’t,” Kanzeon observed. “That was a very interesting distress call.”
He’d just bet it had been. Most of the time Sanzo tried to ignore the fact that the sutras served Kanzeon’s people as mobile information sensors. Right now, he’d take all the information he could get. “I’m trying to decide if that was a weapon, a contagion, or something else I haven’t thought of yet.”
“You always were the suspicious sort,” Kanzeon mused. “Most of the time it’s just cute. Right now... I have to admit I’m worried.”
Goku was looking between them, frowning. “How can monsters be a weapon?”
Sanzo blinked. Tried to cudgel a brain coming down from adrenaline crash and food into rational thought. “Did you get any schooling?”
Thin shoulders trembled under red cloth. “I don’t know.”
“Probably wouldn’t help if you had,” Sanzo shrugged. “Most people who’ve crossed paths with a shikigami close enough to observe them end up dead.” He opened photos on his persacomm, holding it so Goku could see the screen. “These are shikigami.”
Goku looked over the variety of monstrous forms; some alive, most dead, a myriad shapes from crabs the size of a car to thirty-foot saw-toothed Komodo dragons to a swarm of ferret-sized creatures that were almost all teeth. “All of them?”
“Those, and more,” Sanzo affirmed. “Sometimes other crazy idiots make genetic chimeras, but the Confederacy’s got it down to a science. They make gengineered creatures - people here call them shikigami - for all kinds of reasons. Terraforming. Pets. Blood sports.” He paused. “And terror weapons.”
“It’s an interesting twist on human ethics and cost-benefit analysis,” Kanzeon reflected. “Let loose an effective virus, and it can be indiscriminately spread back to your own people. Set loose a monster to hunt in the dark, or even attack in broad daylight - the overall number of deaths will be small, but the disruption to everyday life and society can be huge. And it’s unlikely to get flung back in your face.”
“Disruption is relative,” Sanzo said wryly. “Loosing shikigami on a sparsely-settled planet like Shangri-La... on the one hand, it’s easy. A gutsy space hauler can set down a needle-nose just about anywhere in the deep wilderness, and nobody might know. On the other hand, Shangri-La’s got a lot of wilderness. Which means a lot of people have guns, and the skills to use them. A shikigami can do a lot of damage for a while. But man-eating monsters don’t scare us the way they’d scare idiots in a New Terran shopping mall. We count the bodies, pull together a posse, track it, and take it down.” He leaned back. “Got that?”
Goku frowned. Looked between them, face questioning. “So… some people you really don’t like make monsters, and sometimes they dump monsters on other people to eat them, only here that doesn’t work because you get grumpy and shoot back?”
That was a giggle, coming from behind Kanzeon’s delicate hand. A definite giggle.
“And this is why I don’t raise kids,” Sanzo ground out. “Did you get any of that?”
“Sure!” Goku nodded eagerly. “Man-eating monsters.”
Sanzo blinked. Tried not to wince.
“Oh, I can’t wait to see you explain shopping malls,” Kanzeon chuckled.
I’m in hell.
The kami had giggled hir way out of Sanzo’s room eventually, the flux of there-and-gone that marked a teleport tickling his brain through the sutra. Finally.
Though se had taken Goku’s discarded robe with hir for further analysis. And offered to ward the room with a “Don’t look here” for the next twenty-four hours. Sanzo hadn’t been too proud to accept. Goku needed the rest. Hell, he needed the rest.
So of course, he was staring at a dim gray ceiling in the dark. Made perfect sense.
I saved everybody I could. The authorities can handle the rest. Or cover it up, who knows? But Goku....
No one else is going to give the kid a chance. He’s alien. Creepy. Dangerous.
...He’s a kid who tried to save people, even when he was half out of his head. I’m not leaving him to idiots who see claws and start screaming.
Which still didn’t tell him what he should do. Because Goku was a kid. And nobody with any sense would let a feral Scout turned no less feral Sanzo raise children-
:Call.:
Sanzo lifted his will and a hand in the dark, still not quite used to the whisper of :satisfaction: and :patience with young bearer: that fluttered to him with the alien scroll. Paper coiled around his kote-sleeved arm, warm and cold as standing in the sun on a winter’s day; then snaked its way up to his shoulder.
What’s wrong? Sanzo thought at the Maten. Usually you let me alone to sleep.
:Patience.:
The side of his bed dipped.
Sanzo held very still as a tentacled kid wormed under his covers, settling against his back with a sleepy sigh. Damn it.
:Maten presence reasonable precaution,: the sutra smirked.
In case the kid clawed him in his sleep. Oh, wonderful.
I should kick him out onto the floor. Would serve him right-
There was a vibration against his back. Like... purring.
On the exhale. Like a direcat, or a Terran tiger, Sanzo thought. Sleeping with him isn’t safe.
Not because Sanzo thought the kid would lose it. If Goku hadn’t freaked out about Kanzeon or not-a-monster-anymore, he doubted the demon monkey would flip out waking up in bed with a guy still wearing his light armor, for gods’ sakes.
No. The reason it wasn’t safe was the same reason he was wearing synthspider cloth to sleep in. He had nightmares. Lousy, annoying, shake him out of bed with a gun in hand nightmares. And if he pointed a gun at the kid, nightmare or not, Goku would have every right to claw him in self-defense.
Step on a scorpion, get stung. Law of nature.
:Meditative trance technique recommended.:
Sure, I can meditate myself to sleep. Sanzo did his best not to snark at the sutra. It was trying to help. Won’t help when I half-wake up and don’t know where I am-
:Sleep/wake cycle stage detectable. Aural scan can be set accordingly.:
Sanzo blinked in the darkness. Took a slow, measured breath, and released it, probing the images offered with what he knew. You can set off an aural scan whenever I’m waking up. So I know what’s around me?
:Inherent capability present in bearer,: the sutra observed. :Trainable.:
Were you this snarky with Koumyou- No, I don’t want to know, Sanzo sighed, as tentacles wriggled closer like a purring octopus. Just show me the technique- ow!
It was like being attacked by a furry strip of velcro. It didn’t make any headway against his armor, but various bits of tentacles had wrapped around the bare skin of his shoulders and upper neck, and those prickled, sharp as any nettle-ivy stinging hairs.
Only it didn’t burn. It seemed to be soothing.
Hell. Not good-
:Compounds harmless to human biology.:
Sanzo scowled. You’ve got a pretty wide definition of “harmless”.
:Preliminary observation indicates young biologic Goku appears relaxed and unthreatened.:
And a venomous creature that didn’t feel in danger wasn’t going to waste precious venom lightly. So it probably wasn’t meant to be toxic. Still. I don’t like strange chemicals in my system.
:If bearer will be continuing association with Goku, more encounters likely. Building up system tolerance advised.:
Grrr. You’re sure it’s not toxic?
:Harmless to human biology. Observing bearer in case gengineered “quirks” provoke unexpected response. Detoxification protocol at emergency readiness.:
Right. Because he could pass a cursory gene-screening if nobody looked too hard, but once he’d figured out the files his biological parents had left hidden in the rosary beads, he’d never dared let anyone probe deeper.
Why the hell did Confederacy scientists dump their kid on a Satrapy world?
He didn’t know. He probably never would. He’d decided a long time ago he wasn’t going to worry about it. It’d happened; he’d survived. The only thing he had to worry about was not getting lumped in with the damn Confederacy shikigami by some trigger-happy idiots.
The shikigami that killed-
Koumyou was dead. He couldn’t change that. All he could do was try to save people who were still alive... and track down whoever’d used those shikigami to steal the Seiten Sutra.
:We will find my sibling.:
Why aren’t you angry at me?
:Bearer bond to Maten barely completed in time. Bearer bond to Seiten incomplete. Bearer could summon me. Not unbonded sutra. Unreasonable to be angry.: A papery slide over his shoulder, almost like the brush of Koumyou’s airplanes. :Trance. Sleep.:
Right. Sane thing to do. Breathe in, and hold, and out....
Warm. The barely-there pulse of :soft cloth: and harder :wooden walls.: Scents of sweet-sticky fruit, slippery soap, tangy gunpowder. Warmth he was wrapped around, breathing low and quiet, heartbeat a thrum of comfort, welcome, not-alone.
Not the lab.
Goku opened one eye just a crack, barely daring to believe it. He didn’t remember the lab really well; everything before Sanzo’s hand had touched him was blurry, like rain on windows. But he remembered enough to know what the lab wasn’t like. The lab was cold. Stark. Lonely.
Here… he was warm.
Sanzo’s real.
Pale skin was warm against his tentacles, even under the silky black cloth that kept his stings out. Gold hair spilled past round, human ears, bright as the sun. And on his forehead-
“What are you staring at?”
Violet eyes blinked at him, heavy-lidded but not at all sleepy.
Goku gulped. “I just….” He waved at the little red gem of a dot on Sanzo’s forehead. “It’s pretty. I dunno why I thought it hurt.”
“It did.” Sanzo’s breathing didn’t speed up. Which was kind of neat, if other people didn’t know he was awake when he was-
But also kind of scary, too. Because it fit somehow with clothes like armor and the gun and the way Sanzo walked through armed soldiers without slowing down. And Goku didn’t know what could happen to someone to make them like that, but he didn’t think it was good. “If it hurt, why’d you do it?”
“I didn’t.” Sanzo sat up in the bed, holding one arm out, like he expected something to climb it.
Green-edged white paper snaked down his shoulder, one end resting in Sanzo’s palm to lift now and again, like the questing head of a viper.
“Sanzo isn’t a name. It’s a title,” the blond stated. “In the temples of Shangri-La, a Sanzo is one of the guardians of the five sutras; the five Heavenly Scriptures Kanzeon’s people used to shape this planet into something they could live on. This is the Maten Sutra. Maten, Son Goku.”
Paper dipped, as if considering him all over again.
“The chakra – that red mark – is the sign you’ve been accepted by a sutra as its guardian,” Sanzo went on. “Though they think of people as bearers, not guardians. Usually they can look after themselves.”
It was paper. Like some of the little booklets Sanzo had had delivered with the food; books with plants and animals and who knew what else. But it moved like it was alive. “The Maten thinks?” Goku frowned. “So… did it save me, or did you?”
“Joint project,” Sanzo said dryly. Frowned, eyes going a little distant. “Maten says it probably couldn’t have acted without me right there as a… template, I think. You needed human DNA to replace some of that viral mess, and between me and its records of other humans it could do a find-and-replace.” Blond brows drew down. “You can listen to that if you want, but when it comes down to it, you saved yourself.”
Goku looked at his hands; it was still so weird to have hands, and know what they were meant for. Flexed claws in and out, a white flash of sharpness. “Because… I was trying to save people, so you knew you could save me.”
“So I knew I could try,” Sanzo said roughly. “Sometimes that’s all you can do. Try.” He rubbed a hand across his face, the silvery ring holding the armor sleeve on his hand glinting in the faint sun through the curtains. “It’s too early for this. I need coffee.”
“What’s coffee?” Goku said, almost innocently. Because he thought he remembered that word from the lab, and if he did he wanted some.
Sanzo eyed him, utterly deadpan. Lifted off a tentacle, and got out of bed. “I know I’m going to regret this.”
“Interesting.” Ni Jianyi stepped into the subdued wreckage of what had been a hotel room; curtains half clawed down, bedding tangled into knots covered with a dusting of pillow feathers, the beds themselves upended as if someone had decided to play fort. “Like someone set loose a litter of water-cougar kittens.”
Behind him the hotel manager started squawking something about never saw the renter and damages, and sue-!
Ni ignored it. His government-issued mercenaries would manage the man. Or kill him. Ni didn’t really care which. He brought out his gene-reader, and started looking for samples.
Curtains look like the place to start.
They’d been clawed, after all; and if there was one thing the scientists on Nova Roma had been sure of before they fell victim to their own captured creatures, it was that the Akuma virus was carried in the claws.
Tentacles would make more sense if it was trying for a fast-spreading infection, Ni thought, scanning torn cloth. But no, this virus likes to get up-close and personal-
The gene-reader’s display lit. Not with the pattern he was expecting.
“We need to bag these,” Ni said conversationally, adjusting his glasses. “Looks like I may have a whole new virus to play with.”
“Virus!” the manager sputtered.
“Oh... you should forget you heard that.” Ni smirked at the greasy man, wondering how much his keepers would let him play before they tried to rein him in. “After all, I just might find out you’re infected, too.”
Oh yes, Ni thought, as the manager turned white. Quite a bit of fun to be had here. But he did have work to do. Namely, finding literal hide or hair of that funny young blond Sanzo.
Not on the pillows, nothing on the sheets. Check the sink, the tub, the drain....
Nothing. Not one trace of human DNA where there should be. It was like the rooms had been rented by a digital ghost.
Or a Sanzo who’s figured out how to use the Maten to disintegrate any cells left behind. Ni smirked wider, bagging his curtains. This could be a challenge.
Though the real challenge would be in convincing his so-called superiors to search for a Sanzo in the first place. The government tended to be wary of trifling with any religion on Shangri-La, particularly Buddhism. The monks and nuns might preach pacifism and nonviolence, but they liked to put their temples in the most godforsaken places, which meant that a surprising number of them were damn good shots. Witness how many people had survived at Momijizan.
They’ll never believe someone could have just walked off with Subject Nine over his shoulder. Poking the wastebasket for anything besides peach pits, Ni frowned. We all know how violent it was; not just to us, but to other infected akuma. So... how did this Sanzo get it to change its mind?
He couldn’t wait to find out.
Don’t let me catch you for at least a few days, Genjyo Sanzo. Ni grinned, peeling off his gloves with a jaunty snap. I want to see what this new virus can do.
I wonder who they’ll let me infect this time...?