Yo you might have to put your thinking caps on for this one btw.
Halfway through writing this chap I was legit spending 20 odd minutes to write a single paragraph, it's insane. Somehow, without realising it ahead of time, it seems that Tamamo and Ibaraki's skillsets are literally just perfect to fucking suck when interacting with one another.
Legit the worst matchup of all time, I hated writing this chapter and it took me forever.
Anywho, hope you enjoy!
:D
Edit: I've been told it isn't that bad btw, it was just really annoying to write lmao. also sorry in advance about the ending :P
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The Realms of Kitsune tend to be idyllic places, and this land is no exception. The land is bright, illuminated in a way that makes the whole Realm glow without ever hurting the eyes. The fields are full of tall grass that shine like gloss, filling the air with the scent of life.
The homes within the Realm are all comfortable lodges. There are no overly large homes or expressions of wealth or status. Only comfort and tranquillity; enough to give all what they need and nothing more. Just enough for blissful comfort.
It is a peaceful Realm, one where the only sounds that echo above the din of small animals is that of the children laughing as they play their games of pranks and teasing.
Sometimes those pranks go too far to be considered friendly.
In the end, it is not exclusively Human nature for petty jealousy to create friction and cruelty. Emotions demand response, no matter for what is 'right'. Such things have been going on since far before the dawn of man—never more so than within the young.
Children lack the experience to identify and work through their emotions, after all. The natural result of that is that children more often than any other will lash out when their emotions run too intense with feelings they do not fully understand.
However, all of this rationalisation means nothing to a little girl as she runs home while wiping furiously at her tearful eyes.
The rapid patter of her small feet eventually lead to yet another idyllic home, the same as all the others and yet different in its own unique way, just as all the others are. Similar, but unique. No different to life itself.
The front door pulled open with a bang! And rapidly closed again with equal force and beyond the home, Jiuwei-mu takes notice of the noise. As a Kitsune of eight hundred years of age, Jiuwei‑mu possesses a mature sort of beauty; that of a plump, motherly woman. One who's skin seems to glow with warmth and whose eyes crinkle under years of friendly smiles.
It is one such smile that she wears as she sets down her needles and thread to watch as a little Kitsune sprints through her home and out the back to where she sits in the garden. Jiuwei-mu is allowed barely a moment to observe the single-tailed child before she has to catch the blonde-haired missile as it crashes into her stomach and squeezes her tightly.
Well, as tightly as a child can squeeze.
"Hello Dear," Jiuwei-mu greets the child softly while rubbing circles on her back with one hand and petting her hair with the other. "What is it that ails you today?"
The child tearfully sniffs against her midriff. "It's Kiko and Makoto again," she mutters, the sulking words muffled by Jiuwei-mu's cloth and flesh.
"I see." Her reply is fond, for a child's distress is not truly an urgent matter. Not in a case such as this anyhow. "And what did Kiko and Makoto do this time?"
The child sniffles again, burrowing her face deeper into Jiuwei-mu's belly.
"They said that I'll never have an Osore no matter how talented I am."
"Oh child, they are only trying to bring you low. They do not say this to you because they know for certain. You will awaken your Osore eventually, so do not pay heed to their jealousy."
"But Haha-Ue!" The girl raises her head to look Jiuwei-mu in the eye as her voice rises from its muffle, "How can you know that for sure?"
Jiuwei-mu simply smiles back at her daughter.
"Trust in your mother, my beloved jewel. There are Yōkai who do not posses an Osore, you are not one of them. It will come. In time."
Her child's head flops back down into her stomach in silence, so she simply sets her needle aside and picks her daughter up so that she may properly sit on her lap. The hugs from this position feels much more warm.
Jiuwei-mu begins to hum an idle tune as she waits for her child's mood to calm. She continues to hum for some time. Only stopping when the child eventually speak up again, voice quiet and morose.
"Why are they mean to me?"
A sigh is the first response that question receives. It is not an easy question, after all. Not in a way to be explained to a child anyway.
Still, what kind of a mother would she be if she didn't do her best to give her child the answers she seeks.
"They are jealous of you," she begins, quickly continuing as she sees her daughter ready to object. "You are a once in a millennia talent, Dear. One thousand years before you it was Hagoromo Gitsune. One thousand years before her, the Legendary Da Ji."
"What does that have to do with anything? I'm not a thousand. I'm not even twenty."
Jiuwei-mu hugs her adorable child closer as she huffs a mirthful breath at what her child heard in her words.
"Talent like yours carries with it a stigma," she begins again. "Nobody wants to be weak, you see? This makes you a threat in the minds of all of your peers; because whether they know it or not, they will instinctively understand that you will surpass them, and so they will try to bring you down while they think they can get away with it. It is the Curse of the strong to be strong, for if you falter then the weak will not hesitate to pull you back down to their level in order to assuage their own personal self-worth. Kiko and Makoto are mean to you because they are scared that you will rise so high that their forms will become invisible to you."
Jiuwei-mu holds her daughter's cheeks in her palms and tries to impart her words well enough that her child will not forget them.
"You must be strong, Tamamo. Only by being strong will you be safe from those who would wish to persecute you for your talent. If you languish, they will do all they can to keep you down here with the rest of us, but you can go so much further, my child."
"Are you going to leave me!?" Her child exclaims, hugging her tighter with worry clear on her face.
"No, child. Like most of our kin, I shall likely never see my sixth tail." Try as she might, she can't quite pretend to be content as she admits this. But then, what Kitsune could? "It is you that shall pave your own path."
"I don't wanna leave you!" Her child exclaims again, and Jiuwei-mu feels warmth blossom through her chest at the vehemence in her daughter's words.
A part of her wants to tell her child that she can stay; that they never need part, however, she would be a poor mother if she placed her own selfish feelings over her child's future.
"Do not worry, Dear," she comforts instead, "You are far too young to be making your own path yet. We have plenty of decades to spend together."
"Okay... What's 'stigma'?"
Jiuwei-mu stifles a chuckle at her daughter's question, recognising that it is perhaps still too early for her to be ensuring her child knows to keep moving forward without ever looking back.
For now, she remains but a child. The full weight of the talent she was unfairly born with can be bore later. No need to rush.
"It means prejudice, Dear. It will be your constant companion, but it does not need to define you. Everyone will perceive you by their own biases, but the only perception of you that will ever matter is your own."
"Okay." Tamamo nods her head once before falling back against her mother's side and turning to look at her needles. "What are you doing?"
"I was preparing a new winter garment to match the flowers my sister planted, for when I next visit her," Jiuwei-mu answers, smiling at the change in subject before briefly pausing in consideration. "Hmm, I suppose you are old enough now to be trusted around a needle. Would you like to learn?"
Tamamo's eyes widen with a sparkle, her previous dour mood easily forgotten as she nods her head enthusiastically.
"Mn!"
///
Tamamo-no-Mae
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How does one define a concept?
This question is one that a lot of Tamamo's lessons were about through the years, both from her mother and the unsolicited advice from Hagoromo. Not to mention the various temporary teachers she has had over the years. The vast majority of a Yōkai's strength comes from their Osore after all; just as the vast majority of a Human Sorcerer's ability is decided at birth.
But for combat between Yōkai, defining an Osore is incredibly important. For Osore are inherently manipulations of a concept—a fear of a concept anyway, if one wants to be specific.
So the question becomes, how does one define a concept?
Take Cold for instance. On its surface, such an Osore would be simple. It would be the fear of low temperatures. Such an Osore would likely grant one the ability to freeze others, to control snow and ice. Things of that nature.
But is that all that can be defined from 'cold'? What about a cold attitude? Could such an Osore grant dominion over brusque personalities? Could such an Osore force emotion into people bereft of it, or drain emotion from those who feel too much?
What about the common cold? Could that virus be defined under an Osore of 'cold'? What about lethargy? Winter is oft associated with deep sleep, for it is when many a species go into hibernation. So could an Osore of 'cold' effect lethargy? Could that spread into the concept of sleep itself? Dreams and nightmares?
Where does one draw the line and say that the connection between one concept and another has been severed?
Even after all of that, an Osore is not the concept itself, but the fear of that named concept, so who could say how it might manifest? Would an Osore of Cold only grant dominion over ice, or would it also grant dominion over fire, for that is how one fights the fear of cold?
Could that Osore be stretched to effect the concept of 'lost'? After all, snowstorms are known to leave frozen corpses in their wake, yet perhaps the most feared aspect of a snowstorm is how one becomes lost within it, unable to find the path to safety.
So could this Osore bridge that conceptual gap?
It's tough to say. The general consensus of her lessons was that there's no real way to certain about these things ahead of time.
Fear is personal, after all. So all Osore are inherently subjective. No two users of the same fear are ever the same, though there are sparse records on that front as it is a rare thing indeed for an Osore to be revived; and there are never two of the same alive at the same time.
It's a complicated subject, that's why her various teachers spent so long droning on about it.
The end result is that there is no simple 'answer'. There is no knowledge one can possess beforehand that will provide a solution from the get-go.
No, the only thing one can learn is the ability to figure shit out. An Osore's manifestation is personal and thus inherently unpredictable. So instead of learning to predict, one needs to learn to observe and deduce. Adapt.
Everything has rules. Laws that govern action and reaction.
Against her, Ibaraki possesses the Osore of Retaliation. A fairly simple concept when it comes to defining it. It's direct and mostly unvague.
But wat does it do? How does it function?
The obvious aspect is that Ibaraki can invalidate Tamamo's retaliations or enforce her own retaliation.
Right away, that alone makes it clear that she cannot, under any circumstance, allow Ibaraki to have the initiative. If every one of Tamamo's attacks follow after one of Ibaraki's, then she will never accomplish anything. Ibaraki would just invalidate it all.
Luckily, it does seem that she can try to use her illusions to trigger Ibaraki's Osore into wasting a free defence, but evidently that is not exactly a reliable tactic.
Besides the give and take of attacks, Tamamo can think of only two other uses of Ibaraki's Osore that she has observed.
First, before the fight even began, she noticed Ibaraki's aura growing slightly stronger seemingly at random. With the benefit of hindsight, it's clear now that the cause was Tamamo's verbal hostility. Likely, it is a case of returning insult with insult counting enough as a 'retaliation' to strengthen the Oni.
Lastly, when Tamamo made a large number of illusions of herself, Ibaraki somehow managed to remove them all and reveal her. Presumably, this is because Ibaraki threw out a big and obvious wall of fire followed by a less obvious projected slash. By seeing through Ibaraki's 'trick', she allowed Ibaraki to 'retaliate' and see through her trick in turn.
Annoying. The question of definition is simply, how wide is the idea of 'retaliation' being spread?
Insults and tricks clearly count, so it's not limited to physical harm. But how wide is that net? Does Ibaraki's Osore consider every form of 'reaction' to be a retaliation? If one person says hello and another says hello back, is that a retaliation?
One thing Tamamo thinks she can exploit is that a retaliation needs some degree of proportionality. Responding to a greeting with a punch cannot be considered retaliation because it is not returning something equivalent back. Depending on how strict the Osore is, Tamamo can at worst categorise actions into one of three roles.
Positive, neutral and negative.
So a negative action can prime Ibaraki's Osore for another negative action but not for a positive or neutral action, for it is not retaliation if the response is unrelated.
Illusions are probably neutral by this standard, so long as the trick itself does not posses true offensive potential. So placing an illusion of ground over a pitfall of spikes or an illusory attack would probably count as 'negative', while an illusion meant to disguise Tamamo's presence would likely be 'neutral'.
That's all while assuming that Ibaraki is as bound by her Osore as everyone else, when it is much more likely that she can be selective about when her Osore activates and when it does not.
Tamamo's brain feels like it's going to explode.
She can't be bothered to think more deeply about Ibaraki's Osore. She's got the basics down well enough anyway. For now, it's more a matter of experience being the better teacher.
In simpler terms; she'll figure it out as she goes.
Focusing forward, Tamamo finds it rather amazing how much faster her thoughts come to her these days. She also finds it somewhat interesting to still be hearing the sounds of this Realm falling apart from Ibaraki's destructive attack.
She had never imagined this degree of destruction before, and yet somehow she finds herself surprised by how long it takes for things to fall apart.
The effect of scale, she supposes.
Regardless, Tamamo has an Oni to abuse.
The land around them remains desolate; nothing at all like anywhere she knows of within the Human Realm. Jagged peaks of stone rise and fall in every direction, leaving gaping chasms in place of ground. Trees only remain in view by being splattered over stone, broken and fallen.
She can even feel the heat of lava rising rom deep down below, not to mention what magma has already escaped the earth and cooled into basalt.
It kind of annoys her, to be honest. It's an entirely irrational thought, but the image of how Narauko would react if this destruction had been wrought on his Realm in truth pisses her off a little.
It is fortunate then, that the target of her ire seems even angrier than she is.
Wonder how that happened.
In this momentary lull, Tamamo watches Ibaraki crack her neck one way as if doing so will release the anger pent up like tension. In response, Tamamo's inviting hand drops to her side and she starts bouncing lightly on her toes.
There is no warning or signal to resume their fight. Between one calm moment and the next, they simply move; their bodies both leaving the air cracking in their wake as they move faster than sound.
The effort it takes to move at these speeds gets exponentially more difficult; as if the world itself is trying to hold her back. With her new body, however, she can manage.
Ibaraki opens with a lunging thrust, dropping her sword when Tamamo's tails parry it aside and catching Tamamo's countering arm with one hand before planting the other firmly in her gut and folding her in half.
Ibaraki opens with a lunging thrust, dropping her sword when Tamamo's tails parry it aside and then nearly losing her legs as Tamamo's tail wrap around the haft of her sword and swing it straight back at the Oni.
It's only a rapid application of Youki that keeps the sword from going deeper than an inch in the Oni's thigh and then there is a blur of movement before Tamamo feels a impact slam into her chest and throw her away. She discards the blade as she flies, not willing to trust it close to her.
Righting herself mid-air, Tamamo lands on a spikey crag of stone as softly as a feather and drops into a crouch, staring down at Ibaraki with a mocking smirk.
The Oni seems confused.
Tamamo feels like she can read her mind. She's almost certain that Ibaraki is trying to understand how she reacted to that engagement so well and how that ties into what she's revealed of her Osore.
She can see in real time as Ibaraki comes to the wrong conclusion. Likely assuming that her Osore is based around her own fear, thus extending to her the ability to foresee events that would cause her harm.
Tamamo can see how she'd come to that conclusion, but it's not quite right.
See, the thing about Prejudice is that at its very core, 'prejudice' is not seeing a Kitsune and expecting trickery, or seeing an Oni and expecting brutishness.
No. Those are just symptoms. Consequences.
What 'prejudice' really is, at its most pure, is simply assumption. It is judgement before fact. Belief before certainty.
With her Youki now flowing through her Osore, Tamamo feels like she can see everything.
If you believe something will happen, yet do not know for certain that it will, then is that not prejudice? So if you attack with a lunge and expect that your opponent will dodge and throw a counterattack that you can catch, then is that not itself a prejudice you hold?
Ibaraki is certainly stronger than her, Tamamo will not try to pretend otherwise. If the Oni were a Kitsune, she would likely have eight tails to Tamamo's seven—a significant difference, though perhaps more so in her mind as a Kitsune herself. The number of tails one has is very important culturally after all.
However, Tamamo is starting to think that it might not matter. Not when she can see every belief and assumption this Oni has of her. She knows what Ibaraki believes she is capable of, knows how the Oni expects that she will act.
Tamamo feels a smile forming, and she directs it straight at Ibaraki.
"What's wrong?" She asks, her smile growing as he remembers something and changes her words. "Where'd your confidence go?"
"Fucking Kitsune," Ibaraki growls under her breath, making Tamamo chuckle lightly before the Oni blurs again, appearing before her and half-heartedly swinging her sword down, attention elsewhere.
Ibaraki is then surprised when the blade digs into her collarbone and sends fresh blood spurting into the air.
"Surprised~?" Tamamo taunts, as if there is not currently a blade inside of her heart slowly killing her.
"You are not an illusion," Ibaraki states, clearly not believing her own words even when she knows she's right. The contradictory feeling leaves her frowning with pursed lips.
"Ever hard the saying, 'seeing is believing'?" Tamamo asks, and then before Ibaraki can respond, the Oni's head snaps to the side and her body careens off to the side, digging into one of the newborn mountains of crag before coming to a stop.
Tamamo doesn't chase. Instead, she allows her fake self to fade away and reveals herself to Ibaraki just so that she can laugh at the Oni.
A belief is only a belief until evidence is presented. Then it simply becomes a fact.
Really, her Osore is perfect for a Kitsune. It synergises with her illusions perfectly.
If you believe something is true, and then you see evidence that it is, then that stops being a prejudice and becomes a fact of your life. That is what it means to fear prejudice, and that is what her Osore is. The fear that your fears are real.
So if Ibaraki believes that she is facing Tamamo, and then she sees Tamamo, then has that prejudice not become a proven fact?
"You're really startin' to piss me off," Ibaraki mutters, her voice clearly audible despite the distance between them and the constant sounds echoing all around. "Is that all you're gonna do? Sit around and hide from me? Or is it that that's all you can do?"
Tamamo tilts her head slightly, and then she smirks and snaps her fingers.
As she does, an illusory copy of Ibaraki's sword appears high up in the sky, burning with dragonfire.
Ibaraki makes the mistake of looking up at the illusion and, well...
Seeing is believing.
Just as it did minutes beforehand, Ibaraki's sword plummets to the earth, straight at the Oni in question and for the second time today, Tamamo watches as a Realm is folded in half, feeling a slight tug in her gut as her Youki reserves dip by a good chunk.
And then Ibaraki is next to her, moving way faster than before and entirely silent, no crack of air following her. She barely even has the time to note the Oni's presence before her skull is shattered like a melon hit by a hammer.
The world hadn't even finished falling apart and Ibaraki still doesn't slow. Nearly the same instant that she killed Tamamo's illusion, the Oni's eyes snap to her, somehow, and Tamamo has to throw herself to the side to avoid dying for real, leaving another illusion in place that is rapidly decapitated and then drawing out a ring of Foxfire as it dies and Ibaraki's attention turns straight back to her real self.
If seeing is believing, then is absence a lie?
Ibaraki's sword spears through the heart of Tamamo's headless corpse as Tamamo's chakram of Foxfire crashes into Ibaraki's back.
It does nothing.
Damn.
Ibaraki spins around in an instant and then Tamamo is five kilometres away, watching a portion of the world evaporate in golden fire.
Glancing behind her, Tamamo scowls as she sees another of her tails without its lustre.
This is such a pain, she complains in her mind. Most techniques have tricks to them and conditions that one can figure out to gain the advantage. Retaliation by comparison is an exception, being incredibly simple. That doesn't mean it's fucking easy.
Tamamo's illusions spread around her in every direction, creating a titanic forest in mer moments. Trees dozens of metres wide and thousands of metres tall. Thick vines and angry insects filling the space between bark and branches.
And then her Osore sees her illusion and believes that it is real.
Just in time for Ibaraki to come crashing into her forest like thunder, shattering every grasping branch and snapping vine that tries to impede her with an almost insulting degree of ease.
How is she so much faster? Tamamo absently thinks to herself as she wreathes herself in Foxfire once more and leaps backwards, leaving an illusion in her place. It is a significant difference.
Almost immediately afterwards, Ibaraki appears on the same branch as her clone like a vengeful wraith and splits it in half before her eyes snap unerringly straight at Tamamo's.
How does destroying an illusion tie into finding me? Tamamo rapidly thinks as she pirouettes around a thick tree trunk and kicks off of it, diving through a curtain of vines right as the branches behind her shatter. What is the connection to Retaliation?
If she could figure that out, maybe she could make this easier. But nothing comes to mind and Ibaraki isn't exactly giving her a lot of time to sit and ponder.
Tamamo hurls herself at another tree and its titanic trunk splits perfectly down the middle like opening a hidden seam, allowing her to fly straight through, spinning in the air to face backwards as Ibaraki chases after her.
As the Oni tries to pass through the tree after her, it suddenly comes alive, dozens of wooden spears catching Ibaraki and violently halting her advance. Only half of the spikes draw blood.
The entire tree cracks and groans from the strain of holding Ibaraki back, but Tamamo's Osore holds it from shattering entirely.
"Your Osore is really annoying, you know?" Tamamo complains, hiding how challenging it actually is to keep Ibaraki in place like this. She doubts she can hold it for long.
Ibaraki spits a breath out ad glares at her. "You have no right to say that."
"Haha, I suppose you're right. An idiot like you must struggle with abilities more complex than 'punch this', huh?" As she speaks, Tamamo releases the wheel of Foxfire she had been charging up, only for golden dragonfire to erupt from Ibaraki and annihilate everything around her, burning through half of her own flesh.
As she speaks, Tamamo throws an illusion of Foxfire at Ibaraki and leaps away, bringing the wheel of Foxfire she has been charging with her.
A moment later, another explosion of golden fire fills the air, burning a hole into her forest and then the chase is on once more. Tamamo blurs through this titanic forest, swinging around trunks and branches and vines and through it all, Ibaraki remains a half step behind, never quite able to see her yet always knowing exactly where she is the moment she destroys an illusion.
It's an untenable situation, and to be perfectly honest, it hurts Tamamo's pride a little bit to be so on the backfoot. However, she simply cannot sustain a fight with Ibaraki suddenly moving so much faster than before. Not until she figures out why.
Right as Tamamo leaps to another branch, she sees herself being pinned to the connected tree trunk and instead straightens her feet, allowing the tops of her feet to catch on the branch she would have landed on. With her momentum pulling her, Tamamo swings a full circle around the branch, bending her knees and pushing off the air as she starts to rise again.
As the illusion she left behind takes a sword through the chest that pins it to the tree, Tamamo rises from behind with an uppercut carrying an immense weight of Foxfire behind it that lands square on Ibaraki's surprised chin.
Once again, nothing happens and Ibaraki responds by digging an elbow into her sternum hard enough to crack bone and pulverise the organs below. However, Tamamo remains unmoved as an injured duplicate of her flies out of her back and into the forest.
With Ibaraki caught off-guard and Tamamo already moving before the elbow even hit her, she manages to firmly plant her palm on the centre of Ibaraki's chest in a gesture that could almost be mistaken as intimate.
At least until Tamamo violently smashes her Youki against itself around her palm and her Foxfire turns radiant white.
Let's see how your Osore reacts to this.
Ibaraki screams and lashes out on instinct, her arm passing through Tamamo's head and making her fade away like smoke in the wind.
On an adjacent tree, Tamamo crouches down on a branch just a little bit higher up than the one Ibaraki stands on and pauses as she hears the Oni exclaim, "Senjutsu?!" In shock before turning wide eyes up to Tamamo, though faltering when she actually looks at her.
Tamamo follows Ibaraki's eyes down to her arm, and she winces in pain as she sees her flesh charred black and broken, leaking corrupted blood like it is diseased.
Turning back to Ibaraki in order to ignore the pain, Tamamo forces a smirk down at the Oni. Idly, she notes how Ibaraki's chest is similarly charred and rotten. It's quite the wound.
"Not quite, I'm not a Sage. It's just Reverse Cursed Technique." She does laugh a little as she says that. It's pretty absurd for a Yōkai to use it after all. That's like a Yuki-onna wielding fire. "Though, I suppose that Reverse Youki Technique would be more apt, hm?"
"What is wrong with you?" Ibaraki asks, looking halfway to horrified. "What kind of Yōkai uses Positive Energy!? You're not a Kami!"
Tamamo very deliberately rolls her eyes, absently shaking her hand lightly as it slowly regains colour.
"What did I say about making excuses, Dōji? It's embarrassing to inflate your own incompetence like this."
She's kind of talking out of her ass here, but there's enough truth to her words for them to strike home. Even if it really doesn't make any sense for a Yōkai to learn how to utilise Positive Energy in the first place. Though, it's not like she went out of her way to master it or anything.
She just copied what she saw Narauko do.
Still, her mocking words do still cause Ibaraki to visibly seethe, and Tamamo watches the Oni like a cat watches a mouse. She is curious how Retaliation will treat an attack that self-harms.
The fact that Ibaraki got hurt means that her Osore counted Tamamo's attack as the beginning of an interaction, so what will Ibaraki's retaliation look like? Will her Osore also use Positive Energy? What kind of effects could that have? Can an Osore even produce Positive Energy?
She has no idea.
Positive Energy is poison to Yōkai, so logic would dictate that trying to use Positive Energy through an Osore would only damage it, but who can say for certain?
Unfortunately, instead of lashing out as she was hoping the Oni would, Tamamo instead watches Ibaraki close her eyes and breathe in a deep breath through her nose and out of her mouth.
The Oni's eyes reopen and Tamamo finds them crystal clear. Focused and devoid of th various intense emotions displayed so far.
She's a little bit disappointed by that.
"You are ruining this for me," Ibaraki accuses, a frown on her lips. "This is supposed to be fun, but all you've done is annoy me. Do you think I'm that easy to bait? That I am so quickly driven to blind rage? Please. I may be young, but I am still nearly four centuries old. I'm not that lacking in self control."
"Didn't seem that way to me," Tamamo replies with her bottom lip out, forcing her words into a silly voice.
She learned that one from Narauko too.
Ibaraki's eyes narrow. "I was trying to have fun."
"Excuses again?" Tamamo shakes her head in feigned disbelief. "Really embarrassing."
Ibaraki takes another moment to breathe, her jaw clenching as she does.
"Whatever," Ibaraki whispers to herself before turning her attention back to Tamamo, glaring at her and just generally seeming really put out. "Fuck you, and fuck this. You ruined it, congrats. I'm going home."
Tamamo raises a brow. "Going home? You come here and bother me, waste my time and think you can just leave? What happened to testing my worth as an Ultimate-class Yōkai?"
Ibaraki glares at her. "You're clearly good enough, and honestly I don't care anymore. You suck. You're worse than Hagoromo."
Ibaraki turns away from her but pauses when she sees another Tamamo sitting cross-legged in the air blocking her path.
A tense moment passes as Ibaraki simply stares at the clone before Tamamo speaks up again.
"I just figured something out," she says, smiling genially while absently waving a hand through the air like she's mimicking ocean waves. "Your speed got an upgrade out of nowhere, and I have been watching you."
In example, Tamamo abruptly punches forward, the speed of her fist leaving a crack! in the air. Then, she pulls her hand bac and punches forward again, even faster this time, and it doesn't make a sound.
Moving too fast becomes exponentially more difficult because the world itself starts holding you back. There is invisible stuff in the air after all, dust and the like. So in a sense, you're still moving through something when you move through air and just as hitting water hard enough makes it solid, so too does the same happen with air.
At least, that's the way Tamamo can figure it..
The point is; "You actually pull the world as you move. Instead of just ramming forward, it's more like pulling a curtain around yourself, and without that resistance..." Tamamo disappears and Ibaraki tilts her head slightly when she resumes talking from a different branch. "It's not difficult at all to move as fast as you want."
"There a point to this?" Ibaraki asks, voice droll.
Tamamo shrugs. "Not really. Just thinking out-loud, I suppose."
Ibaraki stares for a moment longer, and Tamamo still wants to see what Retaliation will do with Positive Energy, so she simply waits.
Eventually, Ibaraki sighs.
"You won't let me leave without a fight, will you?"
"Isn't this what you wanted?" Tamamo counters, receiving another glare in turn.
"Not even slightly. You're no fun at all."
"I am plenty fun." Tamamo smiles brightly, "I just don't think you deserve happiness."
Ibaraki's eye twitches and she takes another moment to breathe deeply.
"Haaaaaaaaaah, and here I was hoping we'd get along," Ibaraki mutters bitterly to herself, and Tamamo can hear the touch of loneliness in her words. She simply does not care. "Whatever, I'm not dealing with your annoying shit."
Tamamo raises a brow, ready to intercept if Ibaraki would attempt to flee after all. As if reading her mind, Ibaraki scowls deeper at her and speaks again.
"If you're new to having an Osore, I guess you wouldn't know this," Ibaraki begins, bringing forth her sword and planting it into the earth before herself. "But do you really think that in the aeons of our existence, no Yōkai has ever figured out how to work around annoying Osore like yours?"
Tamamo blinks as out of nowhere, she perceives a point in time seconds in the future where her Osore's ability to predict seems to hit a wall and just stop. Alarm bells naturally go off in her head, but if she were to be entirely honest, she's far more curious than she is concerned, so she allows those few seconds to pass without trying to stop whatever it is Ibaraki is doing.
Despite obviously expecting the nature of what was coming, Tamamo's eyes still widen as an invisible, unidentifiable pressure abruptly ripples out of Ibaraki. She watches as this invisible wave rapidly spreads out in every direction, and where it passes, the forest that Tamamo created around them simply fades away like a desert mirage, leaving them standing back in the ruined world they left behind.
Tamamo catches herself as the tree she was standing on fades away like smoke.
Huh.
It doesn't quite feel like a Domain, whatever it is Ibaraki is doing. It doesn't feel absolute. She's sure that she can still use her Osore as she has been. Instead, there's just this... resistance, like trying to paint on a damp canvas. She doubts she can easily use her Osore widely enough to create another forest, but for smaller, more focused uses she doesn't think she'll have any trouble.
A technique to nullify Osore then? Though, perhaps 'suffocate' would be more accurate? It feels weird, like Youki at a different frequency.
"How did you do that?" Tamamo asks as she absently feels out her Osore. Not quite activating its effects, but just pushing along the edge. Testing the new constraints.
"I'm not telling you," Ibaraki responds, sounding almost offended.
Tamamo can't help but smile. She gets the feeling that Ibaraki would have told her if she was more hospitable. "Spiteful huh?"
"Isn't that obvious?" Ibaraki returns, her tone scathing, and Tamamo supposes that's right. For a Yōkai of Retaliation, there's probably not any room to forgive grudges, is there?
"It's a neat trick," Tamamo concedes, a distant part of her mind trying to decode it since it seems like the exact sort of thing she'd want to know right about now.
"Indeed it is," Ibaraki blandly replies, pausing in pretend pondering before continuing, "Y'know, I was vaguely planning to play around for a while and then go home after showing you this 'trick', but hell, I think I wanna beat you up a little bit more first. You know as well as I do that you're outclassed here, even if you somehow figure the 'trick' out for yourself."
Tamamo knows that much is true. In a battle without Osore, she'd likely get her ass kicked. However, it's not like her Osore is sealed away or anything. She just needs to concentrate it a little.
Suddenly, an idea hits her. A thought. One that brings a devious smile to her lips.
Osore is fear, so naturally, to break through the Ibaraki has imposed on her Tamamo simply needs to focus on a greater fear.
A year ago, she would have said that there is nothing that she particularly fears. Now, however?
Tamamo knows what her greatest fear is.
A flex of thought has an illusion come to life between herself and Ibaraki, and despite creating the illusion herself, Tamamo's heart still clenches at the sight of Narauko's back.
That is what she fears the most. That he will stride ahead of her, beyond her ability to keep up. That she would damn him to the loneliness she has felt her entire life.
...That he would turn back to her, and she would see disappointment and pity in cold eyes.
That is why she refuses to stay in place, to allow her strength to stagnate. Even if she is stronger now than Narauko should ever reasonably be able to become, she just knows that he will surpass her anyway.
That's just the kind of man he is.
"Hey, Tama-chan," Narauko greets, and knowing he is a creation of her Osore does nothing to stop the sorrow in his tone from cutting into her. "You're doing great."
She feels bitter. It's exactly what he would say, even when he wouldn't mean it.
"What the fuck?" Ibaraki cuts in, leaning around Narauko to glare at her some more. "There is something seriously wrong with you. What the fuck?"
That brings Tamamo's mood back up, and she lets out a small chuckle.
"What?" Tamamo innocently parrots the question back. "You scared of a Human?"
Ibaraki's eye twitches and she takes a step forward but by then Narauko's hands are already together and—
"Domain Expansion—"
"What the fuck?!?!" Ibaraki exclaims at the same time that a pitch black dome surrounds them both.
Tamamo stares at it for a moment before turning to the sky and feeling things out.
That anti-Osore thingy has gone into the Domain with Ibaraki. That's helpful.
Ten thousand bows of pure lightning crackle into existence far in the sky, each nocking a lightning bolt for an arrow and her Osore makes them true.
She would have just made more Narauko's like he does with her own clones, but...
Tamamo just can't imagine more than one Narauko. Not in the present, in the halls of history or forward in the river of time can Tamamo picture another Narauko existing.
"Sorry, by the way," Tamamo speaks to empty air. "It's kind of rude of me to show other people your Domain like this."
Well, she's pretty sure there's more to his actual Domain than she knows, so it wouldn't be a perfect replica anyway.
Tamamo shrugs; it doesn't really matter.
A few seconds of standing around in curiosity later and the black orb suddenly cracks and shatters into motes of oddly radiant light.
In that same spot, Ibaraki stands alone, panting harshly with her eyes wildly darting in every direction before snapping at her and sending Tamamo a look of pure loathing.
"What the fuck!?!" Ibaraki yells, barely glancing at the sky. "What is wrong with you!?! Why do you fight like this?!? What the fuck even was that!?!"
Tamamo's lips curl in amusement. That aspect of his Domain was probably enhanced by my own fear of it, wasn't it? Heh.
"C'mon now, Iba-tan," Ibaraki twitches at the nickname while Tamamo pulls her arms behind her back and stretches them out a little. "I get that you want to go home now, but..." Tamamo's voice lowers, a threatening note adding to it even as she continues to smile as if they are friends.
"Let's just keep going until one of us is dead, hm?"
Ibaraki takes a step back without thinking and then immediately gains a thunderous scowl as she realises it. However, she is quick to master her feelings into only a somewhat hateful glare.
"That's hardly fair," Ibaraki complains, "I'm the only one that will face consequences for killing you today."
Part of the tradition? Tamamo assumes. Because if this really is a 'rookie crushing' type of tradition, then it would probably be considered something of a faux pass to kill the 'rookie' in question.
Tamamo considers this question of what is fair for exactly one second before sending Ibaraki a bright smile and a thumbs-up—knowing damn well that Ibaraki won't recognise the gesture Narauko made up.
"Sucks for you then~."
Ibaraki's eyes narrow.
Tamamo claps her hands.
Ten thousand bolts of lightning fall from the Heavens above and the fight resumes.
Six hours later, Tamamo and Ibaraki both come limping back into the Human realm, both carrying slowly healing injuries, though Tamamo more so than Ibaraki.
"I told you you wouldn't win," Ibaraki grouses, too tired to really bother putting any heat behind her words. And despite hating the way Tamamo fights, she won't pretend that she's not impressed by her strength.
"I don't think you really won either," Tamamo counters, feeling one part smug and one part still annoyed.
"Whatever," Ibaraki waves her words off and turns away. "I'll kill you if I see your face again."
"Sure sure."
And with that, both Yōkai go their separate ways, neither of them happy to have spent time together.
///
A/N: He~llo! Dear readers!
Yo it's actually insane how from a reader perspective, you can't really understand how a scene that's just 'okay' might have been a struggle just to get to 'okay' instead of being total dogshit. I've gained like quadruple the amount of respect for other authors writing this chap. It's like I've been through nirvana and gained enlightenment through suffering.
Seriously, fuck this chapter with a sandpaper dildo. First time in my life I've ended a scene with 'x hours later'. I hate that shit, but holy fuck I cba.
Seriously, why did I make this universe scale so high?!! The stronger a mfer gets, the longer the fucking fights go. If there's no type bonus or smth to make the fight end quickly, then ts'll just last forever!
I am pouting irl. We're going back to my boy Narauko next chapter. Tamamo can go in the time out corner for annoying me with her bs osore. cuz what kind of fucking bullshit is that. >:(