Chapter 8

Feeling the slightest touch of metal, Shirushi turned around, just as the wielder sliced. It was quick; first there was a flash, then the sound of metal against bone with a bright red spurt of blood. 
"HIKARU!" There he was, standing behind her with a knife. 
"What the hell do you think you're doing!?" she screamed, after being met with a cruel smile. She backed away, seeing the predatory gleam in his eyes, otherwise two empty holes of midnight blue. 
"I'm going to end your life, Shirushi." The voice came like an icy breath. He took a step towards her. 
"Don't you come near me," she said. "Don't you even come within six feet of me!"
"But I have to kill you," Hikaru said, still in that cold voice. "I did want to do it so you wouldn't know what had happened, to make it as painless as possible for you. Now that you've found out, I will have to ask for your cooperation. Keep quiet, and I'll promise that you'll go quickly without feeling a thing."
"Oh, don't lie," Shirushi snapped. "I should have known that you wanted to kill me in the first place, what with how you acted and all that. Why do you want to kill me!?"
"It's all very simple," Hikaru murmured, running his finger along the blade. "Your family's power is something that my superiors wanted to have so badly. So badly that they'd stop at nothing to get it. Since they can't get it, they don't want others to have it either. So," he continued, tasting the blood he had gotten, making her shudder, "you have to die."
"Really. So then what about my position with the Dragons of Heaven?"
"That's nothing. I was sent here," he smiled again, "to _ replace_ you.I have less power than you, I'll admit. But enough to carry out the job, and with my arrival, what good timing." He walked toward Shirushi with that same smile on his face. "With all that pain you've experienced, with your family gone, old forgotten memories renewed and re-enacted, and failing to protect the one you cared so much for, I would think that you'd be more than happy to die." His face was inches from her own. "Think about it, all that pain, all that guilt, all that responsibility, gone! You wouldn't be there at all to feel anything." His fingers ran along the cut on Shirushi's collarbone. "Wouldn't you like to just end it?" 
Shirushi grabbed his hand, throwing it back. "That's none of your business."
"And maybe that's true. But still. You're worth changing my life when you're dead." The knife came closer and closer to her throat, just touching the surface. Thinking quickly, Shirushi lifted up one knee, and kicked Hikaru down to the floor with a loud thud. 
"You don't have any morals, do you!?" she screamed. 
Hikaru, still apparently quite in pain, smirked. "What do morals have to do with anything? I've killed many people before you, Shirushi. I've never felt any remorse. They deserved to die, as do you. You see, another reason is, now with your current instability, you're a threat to everyone. You could kill all of humanity and the world with your powers. Like a human atom bomb." He got up, moving quickly towards the girl. She moved a hand to slap him away, but he grabbed it, along with her other wrist, slamming them against the wall. 
"Resistance will do you no good, unless you're a masochist." Shirushi watched in horror as Hikaru took one of his hands and lifted the knife, ready to strike. 
"What's going on here?" The door flew open, and Sorata came in. 
"Sorata! Tasukete!!" Shirushi screamed, just as the blade came within an inch of where her head was. "He's gonna kill me, man!! Hikaru's gonna kill me!!"


Yuzuriha kept running. The screams she had heard were desperate; something very wrong was happening. She knew it had to be-she had never heard anyone make such a horrifying sound. Up the stairs she went, Inuki at her heels. She turned to see that the door to Shirushi's room was open, and then looked in to see something that was all too real to dismiss. 
"HIKARU!!"
He stood there emotionlessly, facing a terrified Shirushi, his hand on a knife, the blade embedded on the wall next to Shirushi's head. As for Shirushi, she looked pale, was breathing ragged, shallow, breaths, and there was a severe gash on her collarbone, bright ruby red with blood.
 Yuzuriha thought. 


Just then Hikaru turned to face her. 
"Go," he merely said, nodding to Yuzuriha and Sorata, who was standing off to her left. "It's none of your business what I do to the girl."
"Why, Hikaru?" Sorata asked. "She hasn't tried to hurt you!"
"Hikaru, _please_," Yuzuriha pleaded. "You can't kill her!"
"Yes I can. It was my mission, to destroy her, the last of the Kamimura clan. We wanted their power, but if we can't have it, no one will."
"Power of the Kamimuras. . .?" Yuzuriha stared at the boy. 
"Don't you understand that her family and her ancestors were descendants from two gods, Benten and Fujin? How else is she a Seraph-albeit now a defective, _useless_ one? Their power grew over generations, each generation more powerful than the last. It's the closest thing to having them on The Project's side themselves!"
"The Project!?" Sorata exclaimed. "You don't mean. . ."
"Yes, the Ikawa Project. I am an assassin."
"Well, that doesn't matter!" Sorata shouted back. "You can't destroy people just because of the powers they have!" 
Hikaru shrugged lazily, then pulled the knife out of the wall with inhuman strength. "Morals and ethics won't save Shirushi's life, Arisugawa-san. I am only here to complete my mission."
Yuzuriha couldn't stand it anymore, couldn't, couldn't _couldn't_ believe that this was the one she set her heart on. With a cry of anguish, she flung herself at Hikaru with lightning speed, and started beating him with her fists.
"NO! You can't do it! You can't complete your mission!! You can't, you can't, you can't!! You. Can't. _KILL_!!!!" she screamed, punctuating each word of the last sentence with a fist. Suddenly she gasped as Hikaru grabbed her firmly by the shoulders.
"You don't understand how serious this is. Shirushi's only been a bother to all of you and everyone else. Forget her. Erase her from your life. By tomorrow she'll only be a memory," he said in a cold voice, lacking emotion.
Yuzuriha felt her eyes well up with tears, with sadness for Hikaru. However, it turned into sheer anger at what he said next.
"After all, she's only a human with that silly need for love." 
A loud crack resounded through the room as Yuzuriha slapped him. 
"YOU MONSTER!!" she shrieked. "You're not even human! Everyone needs love in one respect or another! How can you say that about your own kind!?"
"Love is nothing to me. I pity you, Yuzuriha, for not understanding. I'll never love anyone, and I'll never feel remorse for what I do." Hikaru then turned to Shirushi, raising the knife. 
"Stop!" Sorata yelled, grabbing Hikaru's arm. "There has to be an alternative to this," he continued in a milder tone, still restraining him. 
"I've told you. She's useless to you now. I'm actually doing you a favor here."
"What are you talking about?" Sorata asked. "All this talk about her being useless has to come from somewhere. _If_ you kill her, at least explain to us why she had to die."


Hikaru wrestled out of the Kansai monk's grip, turning to face him. 
"As you know," he said, "Seraphim have a massive amount of power. They are like weapons to magic-users everywhere. But they have to be emotionally stable in order to work properly, or they're dangerous to whoever or whatever is in the vincinity. Like her," he said, gesturing to Shirushi, "she has been going through a lot of horrible things, as you can see. Now, with a persona like that, she won't be of any use to you. At best, she's useless right now. But if I let her live," his eyes narrowed. "There's no telling what she could do if she became angry. Her powers could go out of control and vaporize everything into nothingness. Better to end her life now than let her run beserk over Tokyo. Seraphim don't care who or what they destroy when they're like that. You want that to happen, Arisugawa-san?"
"She's gone," came the answer. Sorata pointed, and Hikaru turned around to see. Shirushi had obviously taken the opportunity to run out, and Hikaru heard footsteps fading in a hysterical pitter-patter, turning into a rough slam as she fell down the stairs. 
"Hmph," he sniffed.  He turned to leave the room, and Sorata caught his arm. 
"What are you going to do?" Sorata demanded.  
"Nothing," Hikaru said in an empty tone. 
The only sound that remained was that of his footsteps in the hallway to his room, but for him, the air was sweet with anticipation. 
He hadn't had a good assassination in a long time. But he could spare a few more minutes, even an hour if need be. 
The utmost care for a spectacular kill. She'd never know she was being followed. He had to put a hand over his mouth to prevent his laughter from echoing in the mansion. 

Kamui was standing at the stairwell as Shirushi came hurtling down and landed with a thud. 
"Shirushi, what happened!?" he cried. But all she did was shake her head, scramble to her feet and run for her shoes, pulling them on and haphazardly tying the laces. 
He grabbed her shoulder. "Where are you going? What happened up there!?" 
She ignored him, snatching for her jacket and struggling to put it on.
Kamui grew impatient, and shook her. "Shirushi, answer me!!"
She whirled around to face him. "Someone in this house is trying to kill me. I'm running away, far away from here!" She turned around once again, threw the door open and disappeared into the night as if she was an apparition. 
"Shirushi! Come back here!" Within seconds Kamui was also out the door, after his friend.  he thought, running out of CLAMP Campus. Luckily, Shirushi hadn't gotten too far yet. He could just make out the reflector stripes on her jacket, watching them heave up and down as she tried to catch her breath, and then blurring with the dark green material with speed. Kamui was almost out of breath himself, just trying to keep up with her, and so far, she hadn't known that he was right behind. 
The two ran down the streets of Tokyo into a subway station, and somehow they were able to run down to the train without even buying a ticket. There were so many people, even at this time, that Kamui couldn't even find Shirushi. He managed to find a seat and sighed, looking out the window with nothing to see.

******

"Where to go, where to go, where to go..." Shirushi held onto one of the train bars, pausing to think, what to do next. Of course later she'd have to call Nokoru and explain the situation, but now, now finding a place to hide was top priority.  
Tokyo Tower, Diet Building, one of the shrines and temples, even the Aoyama graveyard...all too predictable. She tapped a salaryman next to her. "Excuse me, but where is the next stop going to here?" she asked. 
He named someplace she didn't understand. 
"Where?" she asked again. 
"You know, it has Rainbow Bridge," he said in disgust. "Kids," he muttered.  she thought. No one knew of any business that she had there. The last place they'd look. When the train stopped, she was the first to go to the door, up the stairs and out, running to Rainbow Bridge. 
Then she noticed something wrong.  There was too much noise for just one person running. Her footsteps weren't the only ones running with her. Someone else was also going to where she was going, right behind. She hadn't realized till now. 
Hikaru. After all that running and finally being able to hop the train, she still hadn't been able to run from him. 
Summoning her strength, Shirushi ran faster, faster, as if she was only wind, light and untiring. She ran till she finally touched ground belonging to Rainbow Bridge, and came to a complete halt. Swallowing, she clenched a fist and flung it backwards, not caring if she missed. 
A hand caught her wrist and spun her around so quickly that she didn't have time to feel dizzy. "Kisa--!" the last syllable remained in her throat as she realized her pursuer wasn't the young man she was fleeing. 
Kamui was staring at her evenly, restraining her with a firm grip. 
"It's...you," she said, being careful to conceal surprise, anger, and whatever else she was feeling.

******


"What are you doing here?" Shirushi asked in a calm, if not agitated voice. "You weren't supposed to follow."
"I-" Kamui gaped, and then found his voice. "Well, you were running down the stairs, fell down on the floor, and ran out of the house like there was a fire or an earthquake! Why wouldn't someone run after you!?"
"I told you, someone there was trying to kill me." Shirushi looked away. "Go back. If you stay here you'll only make it worse for yourself." She nodded. "Go back, when I find a place to stay I'll call Nokoru-san and tell him about it." 
Kamui tightened his hold and turned her face towards his. "Look at me, Shirushi. Who is trying to kill you?" As he shook her, her jacket slightly fell crooked, revealing a bleeding gash on one side of her collarbone, the blood still flowing freely. Without thinking, he reached out and ran a finger along it, not noticing Shirushi's slight yelp of pain.
The cut was along the side of her bone, and it had been deep enough so that he could see the white of the enamel gleaming fiercely in the harsh lights on the bridge. The surrounding skin was soiled with both dried and fresh blood, red turning to rusty brown. 
Obviously, the would-be murderer had intended to slit her throat, if not decapitate her. 
Kamui's train of thought was interrupted by the victim. "You wouldn't mind letting go, would you?"
He looked up at Shirushi. "You could have died."
She shook her wrist a little, and he let go of her. "Yeah, I know that."
 Kamui watched as Shirushi walked over to look down at the water, facing away from the cars whizzing down, the couples, and lights. He just stood there, looking at her, stifling the sobs in him, the tears about to pour like rain. The need to cry was overwhelming; to cry for the violation that had happened not long ago, the pain of losing two of his friends, friends that he had cared for so much gone, and now yet another one that was in danger of also becoming like them, who _almost_ became physically dead tonight, like Kotori. 
Gentle Kotori. She had never done anything to deserve such a violent death. She had still been kind, even when he had treated her so badly when he had seen her again. He had loved her, in fact, loved her still. He still visited her grave at CLAMP, he missed her so much. 
But nevertheless, he couldn't protect her. . .
As Fuuma couldn't protect him. He was still Fuuma in body, but in soul and spirit, the other "Kamui" had taken over. Fuuma, now just a container for his twin star.
"Hey! You're not going to jump, are you!?" a man's voice called out suddenly.
Kamui looked up again to see Shirushi standing on the bridge railing, fighting to keep her balance. 
"NO!" Without a thought he dashed over to where Shirushi was, reached out, and grabbed her, yanking her down from the rail onto firm ground.

******


Shirushi stumbled as she was awkwardly pulled away from the railing. "Let go. Let go," she snapped as she struggled to free herself from whoever or _whatever_ was holding her, as the case could be. 
"What the hell were you doing?" Kamui asked. "Do you really want to die that badly!?"
"No." Shirushi looked directly into his eyes, now dark violet with anger, confusion, and anxiety. "I wanted to get a better view of Tokyo from there, so I thought if I stood up higher-"
"You all right now, kid?" The man who had shouted in the first place spoke up from his car, now parked by the side. 
"Yeah," she mumbled. "I wasn't going to jump."
"Oh, you never know," he said cheerfully. "People of all ages try to jump off bridges to kill themselves. You're lucky that young man over there saved you before you got the idea to anyhow."
"Thanks for being so concerned," she muttered, with a slight twinge of sarcasm. The man didn't seem to notice. "You watch that girl now," he said, nodding to Kamui. "She doesn't look like she's well, for all we know she could be autistic. Looks like she's been in enough scrapes already." With that, he started the car again, driving off. 
 Shirushi thought. Summoning energy from inside, she touched her hands to her nose, feeling power flow through to heal the laceration that the stitches held together. The threads, no longer needed, came apart underneath the cloth which also came loose in her hands. Removing the bandage, she next put a hand on the other gash on her collarbone, fusing the muscle and skin to once again cover the exposed bone, leaving only dried blood as a reminder of the wound. She then turned her head to see Kamui with a shocked look. 
"What?" she asked. At his response of pointing at her wounds, she explained, "As long as it's within a day, I can heal wounds like these." 
Suddenly rose petals the black-red of blood fluttered down, making a fine cut when she tried to catch one.
"Oh, really? Then you should be hard to kill." Hikaru's voice echoed through the night, and Shirushi looked up at him standing on a light, crumpling the petal in her hand. 
"You...!!" she shouted, enraged.
Hikaru smiled in the beautiful, sinister style of a hunter. "Time's up, Shirushi." 
The crumpled petal now was oozing blood down her hand.

******


"You didn't think I'd give up that easily now, did you?" Hikaru laughed. "My mission was to kill you, and I certainly don't want to fail this one."
"Wadatsumi yo, ware ni mizu ni chikara wo..." water rose around Shirushi in towering, sinister waves as she chanted. "SUI-KOU!!"
Suddenly he was surrounded in a tornado of water, foam rising in an angry froth, then thrown as it changed shape onto the road. He got up, gasping for lost air, clothes now wet and dripping, and looked to see his target with fingers now dripping with water.
"So sad, you're not going to go quietly still. Well, I can fight if you want," Hikaru grinned, feeling sheer, raw power building up in his hand, spreading around him in crackles, and then releasing it all in one shot in a blink of an eye, laughing as Shirushi was suddenly knocked to the ground like a flour sack with all that force. 
"Shirushi! Daijoubu ka!?" Kamui was immediately at her side, but she had already gotten to her feet, but now there was the sound of rushing wind as she chanted. 
"Fuujin yo..." she started as the wind got louder, howling madly around her figure, "ware ni kaze no chikara wo, kama-itachi!!" she finished the chant, waving her arms up and back. Hikaru had to jump to miss a blast of wind that would have knocked him over the bridge, and even so, the strong, cutting gust knocked him into a pole, bending it with his impact. He could only gape at the remains of her target area, now leaving a considerable crater in the pavement. The attack had destroyed everything it touched.
There was no mistake; the Seraph was now in a supressed rage. If he didn't kill her now, he'd fail the mission _and_ the chance to replace her.
 he thought, and he summoned a sword to his side, the cold hilt materializing in his hand just as he thought of it. Raising it over his head, he gathered speed and charged toward the girl, blade aimed right at her heart, until another attack knocked him down, sending him into hard, unyielding concrete. 
"Who!?" he managed to speak despite the shock and pain of being sent into the ground. Evidently, it wasn't Shirushi, as she was standing there, gaping with a dying flame around her as her intended counterattack crept back to where it had come. Suddenly a figure came up to his prone body, and he looked up in shock. 
Kamui glared back down at him, eyes glittering a cold blue-violet in the street lights as the unearthly aura around him was dimming. 
"So _you're_ the one who tried to kill her."
Hikaru smiled again, a smile that seemingly infuriated his future ward.
"Yes, I was the one trying to kill her. So? She deserves to die. She's no good anymore to you, useless. Won't be able to control her power for long. So, it's for your protection that I'm disposing of her." He got to his feet, still smiling. "After all, I wouldn't depend on someone who let me get _raped_ to protect me with his or her life. You probably wouldn't either." Carefully, with his hands behind his back, he silently summoned the earth's magnetism into a single mass of energy, looking nonchalant all the while. Then, his smile grew wider, and he knew he was ready as soon as the weight felt heavy and pulling. 
"Die."
With that, he threw the blast, it's magnetic power pulling Shirushi to the ground with a hard, loud, crack. 

******

Shirushi bit back a scream as her body slammed into the asphalt with such a loud slap that she wondered if she had already died with all that impact. 
Fortunately, she discovered that she wasn't due to the pain coming seconds later, sharp pain of some glass underneath her, the full force of being thrown into the cement. But for some reason, everything was blurry...shapes moving and flickering across her view. 
She heard someone laughing. Hikaru. Laughing because he thought that he had killed her, that right now, she was just an empty piece of flesh and now he could replace her. 
Then she heard footsteps, footsteps getting louder and louder, and then the scraping of gravel as they stopped. She kept quiet, and still, suffocating herself by not breathing, not daring to make even the slightest movement with her fingers or her face. 
"Shirushi..." A tearful voice sounded. Kamui's voice. Why did it seem so far away right now? A warm, soft hand on her forehead, smoothing away wayward wisps of hair, and sniffles. Tears falling with soft plops onto her jacket. 

She tasted blood in the back of her mouth, metallic, salty-sweet thick fluid gathering and threatening to increase. But she was afraid that Hikaru might come back, and if she showed any signs of life now, he might kill her for sure.
Arms surrounded her into a half-cradle, then pulled her in. 
"Shirushi...you can't die!" Kamui choked back a sob as he buried his face into her shoulder. 
 Shirushi thought. 



She thought this while Kamui kept on crying, rocking her gently, his tears hot on her jacket. 
"Well, that's the end of her already." Hikaru came, footsteps coming with an icy aura. "Don't be too bearaved now. She was probably the false one anyway."
"The false one?" 
"There's two true Seraphim and one false one involved in this whole battle. Of course, we don't know who the false one is, and the only way to tell is if they're more liable to go beserk with the powers they've been granted. Abdiel. Metatron. Astaroth. Our names. Shirushi was probably Astaroth, the fallen one who resided in the underworld. In other words, the false one. As Metatron, Angel of Death, I had to take her life to prevent the entire destruction of this world, and I will take her place, ensuring the victory of the Dragons of Heaven."
"Hikaru!!"
"She would have died sooner or later." Hikaru paused. "At least she won't suffer now."

******

Motomi felt a smile come on, slightly short of laughing wildly. "Well, now there's one obstacle down. With her gone, now the Dragons of Earth will win the battle." 
He felt the wind blow into his face. Tokyo _was_ a nice place, especially during the night.
Too bad it was all going to hell. 
An evil chuckle rose in his throat. He had found no use for humans. All they did was make it harder and harder to survive in the world, with technology and education and their own sets of rules.
All complex and showing signs of "civilization".
All useless. 
 he thought morosely. Before then, the rules and goals were so simple for humans. Survive. But humans had wanted to understand the world around them, why things were the way they were, and look what happened. They had developed inventions, buildings, and such other things to make this planet unrecognizable from what it was. He remembered what Kakyou had said about the earth dying.
He was right. This place was slowly but surely turning into a wasteland, a future Ishtar grasping the world.
That was why the Dragons of Earth want to get rid of humans, he reminded himself. 

He smiled again. The Dragons of Earth still hadn't found out about Satsuki "disappearing". 
It was a nice, breezy night on Rainbow Bridge. Motomi glanced over to the small group. 
"Why don't I try to get rid of more humans today?" 
He could feel the craving for a fight coming on, pulsing in his blood.
"Susano-oh yo..." he felt the god's power of lightning enter him, infusing him with electricity. He felt a grin spread across his face as he prepared a string of lightning, bright white-hot with lethal potential.
Then he released it, listening for the screams as the unaware victim went to his painful death.

******

Hikaru had no time to react as he was pinned by a searing hot, painful crackle of lightning that sounded with a horrific clap. 
He felt the blood trickling down him a few seconds later.
"Who!?" he shouted, a strangled cry as he fought to keep his pain in check.
His question was answered with an cold, icy laugh, followed by a young man with light brown hair walking down towards him.
"Motomi." Hikaru turned to see Kamui gazing at the other man with an angry flame in his eyes. 
"So, she's dead now, is she? Poor Dragons of Heaven, without their Seraph. And soon to be without their 'Kamui' either," Motomi said gleefully, readying a vine curling around his arm. "First I'll have my way with you again, and I'll kill you so that you die a painful death. It's really too bad that your friend died, but soon you'll see her in hell, if that's some consolation."
"NO!" Hikaru shouted, his purpose right now clear in his head. "You're not going to do anything to him."
Motomi's cold gray eyes flashed back at him. "Why would that be?"
"Shirushi may be dead, but now I'm the Seraph!"
"Oh, really?" Motomi said. "We'll see about that..." he grinned as the lightning bolt grew stronger, blinding Hikaru as the light grew. "RAI-SHIN!!" he shouted as the bolt came away, shaking the ground with a deafening boom. Hikaru was pushed to the ground as easily as a twig breaking from a tree, sure that some bones had broken. He could hear cars beeping frantically, screams of the frightened civilians and the ground underneath him cracking like a fragile eggshell while he lay there in agony. 
 Hikaru lay there helplessly as he watched Motomi walk towards Kamui, also flung to the ground from the thunder attack, and as the other Seraph picked him up by the front, all with a sinister look on his face. 
"You've got no one to protect you now. Not even that boy over there, and not even your so-called friend. Come to think of it, she would have failed anyway!" The last sentence was shouted out with a laugh that ran high and wild over the now badly wrecked Rainbow Bridge. 
After that, Hikaru heard no more.

******
"Kamui!! DAMEEEE!!" Casting aside her death charade, Shirushi got up without even thinking, at that moment, to see Kamui dangling by Motomi's grip, the latter with a mask of pure Satanic glee. 
 she thought forcefully to herself as the winds came around her again, ever vengeful and shrieking. She felt her carefully contained rage begin to build, gradually and gradually, as her power stocked up within seconds between her hands, until she was in the middle of a small whirlwind. 
"FUU-RYU-UN-SAN!!" The cyclone dispelled towards Motomi and Kamui, separating the two almost in a blink of an eye. Forcefully, the two were again thrown back against the railings. 
"Kamui! Daijoubu ka!?" Shirushi asked fearfully. "Come on, say something!"
Kamui moaned audibly, and then looked up at her. "In-chan..." he smiled despite his pain, and Shirushi felt her heart skip a beat. "You're alive."
She felt a corner of her mouth tug upwards. "Yeah, I'm okay." She turned her head to glare at Motomi, who was still dazed from her wind attack. 
"KISAMAAAA!" she yelled angrily as she readied her attack, hot flames crackling and hissing in her hands, growing hotter and hotter. "Kajin, ware ni hounou no chikara wo...KAEN!!" 
Her fire attack caught Motomi completely off-guard, engulfing him in flames as he yelled and screamed in pain. 
"That'll teach you, you good-for-nothing sonofabitch!!" she shrieked angrily. "First you kill my brother, then you decide to go and screw one of my friends! As if that isn't enough, you have to come back and kill him!"
Motomi glared back at her. "You had to stay alive, didn't you? You just can't die when you have to! Why do you even bother living!? You've got nothing! Nothing! Not even the 'Kamui' you've sworn to protect even thinks you're worthy of the job..." he hissed menacingly.
"THAT'S NOT TRUE! SHUT UP!!!" Shirushi screamed furiously as she clenched her fists, summoning natural powers in her bones, rushing and flowing mercurially. "SUI-CHUU!!" her raging shout calling forth a formidable water pillar just underneath her target, not caring that the water was pushing up uncontrollably or that it was flooding the cars, suffocating the passengers until their dead bodies were floating beneath the windows. 
Shirushi stalked towards Motomi. "Uso," she rasped. "Uso. Uso! USO!!"
"No one likes you here," Motomi snapped. "So why don't you just go back to-"
His sentence was cut off as a transparent, iridescent sword appeared in Shirushi's hand. Sneering, she held the blade to Motomi's throat.
"I've grown up now, Motomi. You spew any more crap and your head's coming off." To her infuriation, Motomi merely turned away. "You've got a lot to learn."
Shirushi gritted her teeth, and ever so slightly pressed her weapon in, watching the skin separate, revealing blackish-red blood.
"So, the Seraphim are going at it again, hmm?" The speaker had a sinister voice, cold, empty, but slightly amused at the scene.
"Who is it!?" Shirushi turned her head, but didn't change the force she was applying to the sword. She drew her breath inward as she saw a figure come out of the shadows.


******

"Am I late?" Seishirou smiled as he surveyed the scene of Rainbow Bridge through the burning smoke of cars helplessly turned over like turtles, streetlights felled like trees, all accompanied to the cacophony of screams, moans, and wails of the victims. 
"You _aren't_ going to decapitate our Seraph now, are you?" he asked of the waifish girl. "It would really be an inconvienience," he continued, still in his trademark uncaring tone.
"What the hell do you want!?" Shirushi spat back at him. 
Motomi struggled to get free of the blade's cut. "Help..."
Seishirou took in the view of the gray eyes filled with terror, eyes that he had often seen with previous assassinations. Same horrified look, instinctive knowledge of the fact their lives were ending. 
 he thought. Assassination were just a normal job for him, albeit a job he sincerely enjoyed.
He readied powers, and soon saw ghosts of sakura petals fluttering as he prepared to strike, movements beautiful yet dangerous. 
Seconds later, shikigami flew out towards Shirushi, sacred paper turning into huge birds of prey, threatening with sharp claws. 
Unluckily, Seishirou had been slightly late, as now they had been ruthlessly slashed apart. 
"Don't try to fight with paper dolls now," the girl's voice echoed, just as her sword came back up from slicing the last one. 
"Suna-no-kuramashi!" Motomi had gotten up while she had been taking on the shikigami, retaliating with a blinding sandstorm. 
"You bitch," he hissed, "trying to think you could get away with that! I'll show you what it's like to really fuck around with me! Dosha-kuzure-!" 
Seishirou interceded the attack, drawing an upside down pentacle, just as stones were about to fall. Turning towards Shirushi, he cornered her against the railing, then put his hands firmly on her neck.
"Now don't take this too personally. It's just that I'd like to play with someone, namely you." Feeling another smile on his face appear, he squeezed her throat, constricting it, noting her struggling desperately for her oxygen supply. He raised her up so he could see her face, with the telltale signs of horror on it, arms flailing as she contorted herself to hold on to life longer. "My, you certainly don't give up when you're faced with being killed, do you? Stubborn, that's what you are. But I'll change that soon enough," he said now in a sinister tone. 
He had to admit that watching a young girl die, especially a headstrong one, was one of the joys of his work. 

******
Hikaru tried to get up, however hard it was getting. His head still pounded, throbbing to his heartbeats, and his body just plain _hurt_, with scrapes, bruises, and slices, along with the grit in his cuts, and the stiffness of dried blood on his chest and arms. 
He had just regained consciousness from the painful thunder attack, the one that Motomi had, and actually was grateful for the physical hurt. 
It meant he was alive. 
Getting to his knees, he noticed Motomi standing behind the Sakurazukamori strangling Shirushi. 

But the girl was very much alive, now haplessly struggling to free herself from Seishirou's hard grip, unrelenting. 
He had failed. Failed to kill that girl. And now, the Sakurazukamori, the most talented of all assassins, was taking a crack at her. 
How was he going to report this to the Project? How the hell would he tell them? Because the only ways to ever take a position already filled, was to empty it somehow...
"Ah, what do we have here?" 
Hikaru looked up to see Motomi smiling back down at him, icy gray eyes with a steely glimmer of malice.
"You're the guy that tried to stop me from killing Kamui, now aren't you? Come to think of it, you look almost exactly like him," he said coldly, placing a hand on Hikaru's neck, and then suddenly grabbing him upwards, putting both hands on his shoulders. 
"For not letting me do that, you'll be punished. Worse than what Shirushi is getting from him..." Motomi moved in closer, and then placed a slow, sensuous, and soft kiss onto Hikaru's lips. 
"No..." Hikaru whispered, feeling in fear's hideous grip. "Don't...DON'T DO IT! I won't let you!"
"You're such a handsome boy, just like a doll," the answer came, as Motomi moved his face down to kiss the throat, as Hikaru choked back a sob, trying to stop the trembling. 
"You know, it's almost a sacrilege to do this to a lovely flower like you."

    Source: geocities.com/tokyo/fuji/2352/clampfics