One foot in front of the other. One. Two. One. Two. In time with the celestial army's drum beat. One. Two. As if he were going to war. Boom. Boom. It never ceased, an echo of the soldier's heart as he is thrown into the heat of battle. One. Two. And as long as it rung clear in the distance, he could be sure that others were fighting right next to him, that he wasn't alone. One. Two. The lake was getting nearer, he could sense it.

Then the sound of drums wasn't only in his mind. He could actually hear it faintly over the howling winds. Boom. Boom. Slow this time, like a death march. And so he journeyed, as if to his death because it was this beat of heaven which he followed so doggedly through the squall. Tenpou rounded the hill and there it was- a lake within a crater. Frozen yet solitary. Nobody was there, but something about the lake beckoned to him. Holy water.

With one last burst of energy, Tenpou sprinted towards it and fell at its icy shore. The winds seemed to blow less harshly here as if the powers of the earth had no place. On his knees and with shaking hands, he reached out and touched the glassy surface. It stung, but he refused to break contact. Leaning forward and cleaning the scattered snowflakes off the ice, the marshal felt as if his heart stopped beating. Staring back was his reflection. Tenpou Gensui's reflection. His real reflection.

A strong gust suddenly washed over him, made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. The beating got stronger. Closer. It came again, with enough speed that he was knocked off is knees and into a snowbank. And a mist was rising around him. Then came whispers- at times indistinguishable from the winds that carried them.

"Marshal Tenpou..." they said. "Marshal Tenpou, you've come!"

Tenpou must have blacked out for a minute or two, but when he opened his eyes, he was on the surface of the lake, surrounded by Kenren's thirty soldiers...or at least what was left of them.

****

It all went right back to Chin Lishou, the feeling anyway. When you see someone and yet you don't. It was pissing him off. Should have just shot him through the head this morning, Sanzo thought dolefully. Or through the heart. Give him a few seconds to say where Hakkai really is. But the strange thing about it was that this was Hakkai, not some strange spell made to look like him. And dammit, he needed a driver. No use killing the real thing.

The simplest conclusion would be to say that he was possessed, Sanzo mused as he looked up from the paper and towards the wall. A crack ran through it as if something from the other side had stricken it hard.

There were just some mental frequencies that were simply Hakkai's- see it in the smile, hear it in the tone of voice, and especially his silence. Hakkai's silence was completely, utterly self-controlled. He would just vanish within himself and vanish from the room altogether until he willed himself to speak. Like magic. And he would be there again like a fairy godmother/mother hen at your service. Now the silence was different. It was unbearably loud- worse than Goku calling out to him from the mountain.

This was somebody screaming at the top of his lungs.

"Sanzoooooooooo!" Goku shouted from the hallway, his footsteps bounding closer, shaking the floorboards.

Shiiiiiiit. Right when I had a bit of peace. Please, " .Hell."

And soon glass was flying. The beside him shattered into a thousand pieces as ice arrows penetrated the glass followed by streams of fire, quickly making the rickety wooden lodge into a burning inferno. Goku burst into the room, panting heavily.

"The village is being attacked!"

"No shit Sherlock!" he snatched his gun and loaded. "Let's go before this piece of crap collapses on top of us!"

Outside, they were met by bloody carnage. People were running every which way. Nobody fighting the onslaught of snow youkai that swept the streets like a plague. Sanzo spat. "People who live without danger turn into chickenshit pretty fast."

Beside him, Goku summoned his staff. "We have to do something, Sanzo."

"Don't be so eager!" the monk snapped as he pushed the both of them into the shadows of a nearby building. "And shut up."

The youkai possessed little features, looking no more than ice statues with furious blue eyes. Some possessed wings. Looked like white moths. Flew low. Spat out fire. Spat out ice. One of them made another round in their direction, screeching furiously. With practiced calm, Sanzo raised his gun, aimed right between the eyes. A loud crack of thunder and it disintegrated into snowflakes.

"At least they don't leave a mess when they die."

"I wonder how many there are..." said Goku, poking the pile of snow with the end of his staff.

"A lot. It must be an entire clan out there."

"Why?"

"Simple. They need food and they're desperate."