[Action | Closed | Bounty] Bonding through bounties

[badly_behaved_priest]

Who: Genjyo Sanzo and Koumyou Sanzo
What: Bounty - What Remains - Kindroth
Where: Fayren - Ruins
Warnings: Violence


Sanzo glared into the deep shadows of the ruins as if daring something to leap out of them. It would give him something to do. Come'on shitheads. He was already grumpy just being back in these ruins, if anyone but Koumyou had asked him to do this, he would've told them to fuck off. But Koumyou held great sway over him, so he was here by the elder Sanzo's side, just waiting for something to make a move.

"Why do you care about this?" he asked Koumyou as he eyed a shadow that might have moved.

Comments

[its_dad_sanzo]

"I don't!" Koumyou meanwhile was quite relaxed, inwardly as well as outwardly. He'd been walking alongside his son with his hands tucked in his opposite sleeves, like they were just on a pleasant stroll somewhere.

"But I'd hate for either of us to get rusty, in this dull place." Plus, he'd never gotten to see an adult Kouryuu in action! He was looking forward to this, even knowing how unprepared he'd left his son. Sanzo training? What was that?

But Kouryuu had managed so much even without it! He looked forward to seeing how.

[badly_behaved_priest]

"I'm not getting rusty," Sanzo grumped in response. His gun was by his side, currently hidden by his sleeve. There wasn't much around to fight, not this early into the ruins. Previous expeditions had cleared out a lot for this path. The distant presence of many nasty things still made his skin itch. Damnit.

"That body isn't going to be what the family expects, not after this much time."

[its_dad_sanzo]

"No, I imagine not," Koumyou agreed, "especially if it's damp where it's at."

He'd brought a backpack of things for handling the body, slung over his shoulders. It looked incredibly out of place on top of his Sanzo robes and the straps even overlapped the sutra.

"Careful! Last time I was out here I fell through the roof. Twice!" It wouldn't be a surprise to Kouryuu that Koumyou had been out here, of course. Between the demon cat he'd taken home from this place, and the firing of the Seiten Sutra at one point...

[badly_behaved_priest]

"Hn." Sanzo gave him an annoyed look and sped up enough to walk a foot or so ahead of Koumyou. Koumyou could find some way of surviving that kind of fall, Sanzo couldn't. So he'd walk ahead, and carefully, to test the floor before they ran across another pit.

"You fell through a floor, not a roof." Even Koumyou wasn't spared shit like that.

[its_dad_sanzo]

"Well... it was a roof once I was at the bottom!" Koumyou just kept on keeping on, hands tucked in his sleeves. "With a big hole in it! Though the second time, the whole thing gave out. Thankfully the guy I landed on the first time could fly..."

Such luck.

He started digging around in one sleeve for his pipe. Priorities.

"The second one that went out, though, I think it's because I used too much chi on top of it. So I'll be more careful this time!"

[badly_behaved_priest]

"That's not what a roof is, master." Sanzo shook his head, it was a stupid thing to argue about but that'd never stopped him before. As he lacked the ability to fly, he'd just be walking very carefully.

"We shouldn't need anything drastic. If my gun doesn't work, we can lure it somewhere we won't collapse this place." Like, maybe, not in the middle of a room.

[its_dad_sanzo]

"Ceiling, then!" Koumyou laughed, "So picky, Kouryuu... and that should be easy enough. It'll be trying to touch us, and we'll be trying not to get touched!"

You know, like any Tuesday as a Sanzo with grabby people around.

[badly_behaved_priest]

Sanzo tucked his gun away momentary to pull out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, this one a neon yellow. The green one had bit the dust a few days ago. Lit cigarette in hand, he pulled the gun out again and gave the room they just entered a scouring look.

"How are we going to find it?" he asked, ignoring Koumyou's commentary.

[its_dad_sanzo]

"Well, apparently when we get in its range, it'll find us," how reassuring! Koumyou belatedly lit his pipe with his own little lighter, and tucked the lighter away again. He took a drag of his pipe. "They're drawn to life energy. And paralyzed by sunlight."

So, you know, at worst... well, it wouldn't be the first time he'd flooded these ruins with the Seitan's light.

"We've never fought along-side each other, Kouryuu! Are you excited? Mah-aah, but I'm all rusty..."

Bull shit. There wasn't a bit of rust about it, but he liked to claim otherwise.

[badly_behaved_priest]

Sanzo thought about the one chance they might have had to fight beside each other. He quickly stopped thinking about it.

"Comforting." He took a drag on his cigarette and exhaled a cloud of blue-grey smoke. The air was so still in here.

"I don't want a serious fight, I want to get out of this shithole as soon as possible." This was the second time he'd been dragged here for a bounty he didn't even get paid for! If he could be assed to sign up properly, maybe, but no!

[its_dad_sanzo]

"Comforting? It's terrifying!" Koumyou was most assuredly not terrified. Nor oblivious to sarcasm. But sometimes, he liked to pretend.

He wasn't getting paid either! This was apparently just something to do, for the elder Sanzo. It beat sweeping leaves in the shrine garden all day. Yes, decomposed and probably damp and semi-liquefied corpse retrieval and all.

[badly_behaved_priest]

"There should still be things creeping around," Sanzo commented as they entered another empty room. There were still creatures, somewhere, in the distance, but they wouldn't come near. From what they knew of the undead thing they were hunting, this was a good sign they were going the right direction.

[its_dad_sanzo]

"Mmn, probably, yes," Koumyou blew smoke-rings at his son's back. "Do you suppose that means we're getting close?"

Something came lunging out of the dark, as though on cue. Koumyou ducked under a swipe from the tall creature's big clawed hand. "Ah!" The elder priest backpedaled, somehow almost daintily, "Found it!"

Shhh there was a flashlight all along, I totally didn't forget it.

[badly_behaved_priest]

Sanzo lept back and fired, once, twice, the sharp cracks of gunfire amplified by the stone walls. One bullet caught the hand that lunged from him and the creature lurched back with a hiss, lurking somewhere outside the range of the dropped flashlight.

The wraith had that horrible, deep darkness that bordered on non-existence that Sanzo had grown tired of before he even arrived on this world. If light touched it, it didn't reflect, it denied the light that tried to reach it. Disgusting thing.

He glanced to the side for Koumyou. Safe, for now.

Another blast from his gun into the blackness hiding farther back in the room. The resulting snap of the bullet hitting stone announced that he'd missed.

[its_dad_sanzo]

"Ooh, spooky-spooky!" Koumyou was having no difficulty staying out of harm's way, even keeping his pipe upright and taking another drag from it. The adorable little keychains on his bright pink backpack clacked together when he ducked another swipe from out of nowhere.

"That thing sure is loud!" Like Koumyou had never heard a gun before. Like Sanzo hadn't gotten that very same gun from Koumyou's very own exceedingly well-armed temple. What kind of tiny and isolated mountain temple had an entire armory of blessed weapons, anyway?

In fact, he'd probably been the one to turn that Smith and Wesson into a banishing gun in the first place!

"Should we lure it somewhere in particular, you think?" A leap backwards, but Koumyou carried on chatter like he was just casually practicing his disco dancing.

[badly_behaved_priest]

"Not in the middle of the goddamned room," Sanzo snapped as he ducked under a dark claw. He hadn't thought that far ahead. Too much power in the middle of the room made the floor collapse, that's all he needed to consider, right?

He swore loudly and fired, catching the wraith somewhere in the dark blob that made up its body. When the claws came down again, he ran towards the beast and then past it, heading to a doorway. If he could get the thing there the worst they might do is damage the doorway itself. Or bright the entire ceiling down on their heads.

Sanzo drove that concern out of his mind and whirled around, realizing too late that he could now barely see the creature or Koumyou, the circle left by the flashlight was hardly enough for the large stone chamber.

[its_dad_sanzo]

Koumyou hopped over a lower attack from the creature, and ended up in a one-handed flip to evade another -- keeping hold of his pipe as he went. He managed to follow after his son's path, at least, still just as serene as anything. Forty-nine? Who was forty-nine? Surely not this groovy guy.

He slid to a halt near Sanzo and took a drag of his pipe. "It's really determined!" he noted the obvious, while exhaling smoke. Koumyou shook out the hot ash from the end of his pipe, and before it could even hit the floor he'd snapped his fingers and a spark of an ember from the ashes roared to life. A sudden inferno burst out toward the wraith. Would it do anything but temporarily light the place up? Who knew.

Was it vaguely dragon-shaped? Yes, yes it was. As much as fire could be, really.

[badly_behaved_priest]

Sanzo hadn't seen his master do that before, though he recovered from the surprise quickly. The wraith shrank away from the sudden burst of fiery light, a pitch black hole in what should be a lit room. It struggled to move even as it dodge the thing, leaving Sanzo plenty of time to reload and fire, five rounds sinking into the "chest" of the creature. Gunfire wasn't quite so loud after that goddamn dragon.

The thing was still alive, struggling, terrible, and dark. Sanzo reloaded again while it was recovering and looked to Koumyou to say, "If I bind it, can you finish it off?"

[its_dad_sanzo]

"Of course!" Koumyou is so super helpful!

[badly_behaved_priest]

Sanzo didn't have time to be exasperated, the wraith was recovering now the fire was gone. He darted to the side, both gaining distance between him and Koumyou and hopefully drawing the attention of the wraith. The sutra on his shoulders began to twitch and flutter as he chanted. The creature was moving, staggering, lunging and-

Strands of the sutra shot out, smacking the wraith back, wrapping around its limbs. It might be ghostly in nature, but the sutra was far more powerful than it was! The paper tendrils shifted and tightened as it fought for freedom. It was stuck!

[its_dad_sanzo]

"Ooooh," Koumyou hadn't asked anyone if Sanzo could use the Maten sutra at all; that just seemed rude somehow after he'd left the poor guy with zero instruction with it. He perked up. It sure had been a while since he'd seen another sutra fire off!

Even if it was very, mm, limited. Shit, good job, Koumyou.

...Still! At least Sanzo could use it at all! That was something. He wasn't sure what, but something!

"Alright, here I go!" More fire sprung out of nowhere, another dragon, and it roared audibly as it charged the wraith and closed its rather large jaws around the bound monstrosity.

[badly_behaved_priest]

That did the trick. The wraith couldn't flee from the fire and light, trapped by the Maten sutra. It thrashed against the bindings, once, twice, and was still, the pit of darkness that made up its "body" starting to fade. The sutra retracted and vanished, leaving just the human body in its place, smoking from that final attack.

"Disgusting." Sanzo approached with a bland, annoyed look. The chamber now smelled like burnt flesh and rot, many weeks of rot. Foul.

[its_dad_sanzo]

Of course, the flashlight was pretty melted by then, too, left in the middle of the room as it was. It spluttered, then finally failed. Koumyou tucked his pipe away in his sleeve, and shrugged his adorable pink backpack off even as the Seitan sutra started to glow. Golden sunlight flooded the room without the sutra leaving his shoulders.

Naturally, that just made the corpse's state even more obvious. Koumyou peered at it, and then laughed.

"Well, at least that dried things out a little!" Silver lining. Important to find when it came to weeks-old decayed corpse retrieval. Koumyou pulled a tarp out of his bag first, and laid it out over the corpse's smoking, skin-slipped form. Then he crouched down and started tucking the tarp in around it, straightening it out a bit as he went. Part of a limb popped clean off when he tugged at it through the tarp. Whoops!

He hummed to himself as he worked, like this was just a normal thing to deal with. Once he had it how he wanted it, he slid one side of the tarp under the body and rolled it. There was a distinctive squelch sound at that as the corpse slid-rolled onto the tarp properly.

[badly_behaved_priest]

Sanzo watched Koumyou work with concerned interest, his hands tucked into his sleeves. Unlike Koumyou, he hadn't kept his cigarette. It was burned to a crisp alongside the melted flashlight.

The body wasn't particularly disturbing by itself, he'd seen far too many corpses to be that bothered by one that was extra rotted. Koumyou's ease of handling the corpse was more perplexing. There was a great deal he didn't know about Koumyou and that was for the best.

"...How far do we have to carry this thing?" he asked, voice dripping with disdain and disgust.

[its_dad_sanzo]

"No idea!" Koumyou was so helpful! He produced a big, waterproof bodybag from his cute little backpack next, and laid it out next to the tarped body, opening its zipper as wide as it would go before moving to roll the dead guy into it, tarp and all. "...Ewww, squishy."