My Missing Piece {Uzuren}

44

This is very confusing for me at this point- I'm having trouble keeping track of what everyone is up to :')

We're sitting with Rengoku for now

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Honō no tora, after only ten minutes of running, began to break apart. It should have been able to carry Rengoku farther, for much longer, but since it had a splinter of itself running around looking for the sound hashira, it didn't have the strength to hold itself together. In a last attempt to get the fire demon to a patch of shade before it completely lost its physical form, it dropped all its bones except for its skull, and focused the remainder of the energy it had left to keep that part from disintegrating.

Luckily, due to the nature of the littermates ability, the ordeal wasn't going to hamper the splinter's mobility at all.

Reaching a small cluster of trees, honō no tora carefully pulled its flames back away from the skull so it didn't catch anything on fire. It then crouched down, leaning forward and opening it's jaws to set Rengoku down against the trunk of a tree. Not two seconds later, its head crumbled, the skull disintegrating before it hit the ground. The fire, immediately becoming a bright red, lost its tiger-like shape and disappeared into the new katana.

The ensuing silence was peaceful. However, as Rengoku continued to regenerate, nightmares haunted his unconscious mind. They were random, but one reoccurring image in many, if not all of them, was a version of himself crouched over a pile of mutilated human corpses, blood and gore running down the mountain of death in rivers. Uzui would appear somewhere to the side, and when Rengoku's eyes turned to the sound pillar, he attacked the demonslayer without a single thought.

Seeing this scared the fire demon to his core, and each time, he forced himself awake and into a world of pain. The waking world was awfully painful, with his body still not completely regenerated from being burned in the sunlight. It was a side effect of the skeleton guardian ability; using it would drain Rengoku's energy and thus slow down his regeneration.

After the third or fourth round of this, Rengoku forced himself to sit up. Honō no tora was still recharging, hiding inside the nichirin metal as it did so. Recalling his most recent bad dream, Rengoku frowned. The nightmare version of the fire demon had been shown again, this time feasting on people that he loved. People he hoped to never ever have to hurt in real life. Thoroughly disappointed that his head would come up with such a thing to show him while he healed, the man shifted uncomfortably. He hated the thought that there were pieces of human corpses in his stomach.

TW: self induced vomiting

Blinking, he got onto his knees. I'll just.. get them out, then. (He really isn't in the best state of mind rn ☹️)

Taking his index and middle fingers on his right hand, Rengoku bent over and held his hair out of the way with his left. Sticking the two digits into his mouth, he pushed them all the way to the back of his throat until he gagged. He waited a second, and then pushed them down father. This time, he felt bile rise in the back of his throat and quickly removed his fingers as he threw up his stomach contents. Everything he'd eaten in the past couple days spilled out onto the ground, as well as a deal of stomach acid that made his head reel. Rengoku, surprised that this brought him satisfaction, repeated the process until he felt weak and empty inside. When he was done, he let his hair fall to cover his face in yellow/red locks.

Trembling slightly, he stood up, placing a hand on the nearest tree trunk for support. He clutched his torso painfully as he wandered deeper into the small swath of trees, searching for somewhere else to sit. Even though every inch of his body ached, and his stomach was agonizingly empty, he didn't regret doing that to himself. Not yet, at least.