Crap

"It is not fine! It is completely not fine!" Daiyu yelled as he ran for his life away from the Snow Ghost. It was entirely humiliating to be turning his back on his foe and running away like a coward.

His anger threatened to choke him as he thought about this, and he bellowed, "You clanless ingrate, I hope the Spirit Bear tears off your rear end! I hate you so much right now!"

The Night Rose made no reply. Her job required subtlety, and Daiyu once again regretted ever agreeing to her plan. When he first met her, he had thought the infamous Night Rose lived up to her reputation of being cold, logical, and cautious. But as they had been forced to rely on each other, he came to find that she was far more reckless and loyal to those she cared about than he had first thought.

Of course, when that loyalty was betrayed, as in the case of Min Ling, it seemed that the Night Rose would return that betrayal with death. He wondered what she had experienced in her mysterious past to make her so untrusting of all but her closest subordinates, but it was not his place to ask since he was the same way.

Looking back, he should have had some inkling of her personality when he met her for the first time, five years ago. Back then, Daiyu had just completed his own secret mission to escort an important and surprisingly righteous big shot to a certain building in the capital when that very building had been set aflame by Hua Yan. It had caused him quite the headache trying to evacuate the big shot before he burned to death, and so he had understandably been rather furious by the time he coincidentally caught sight of the Night Rose escaping from the flaming building over the rooftops.

So who could blame him if he attacked her on sight? It wasn't as if he was at fault, and yet she seemed to hate him just as much as he hated her. But perhaps it was a good thing, since if she treated him kindly he might have felt guilty about hating her.

Daiyu forced his poisoned body to move even faster, gritting his teeth against the terrible pain in his meridians. He opened his mouth and howled, "Hua Yan, you had better execute the next step of this plan NOW if you don't want it to fail!"

There was silence, with only the sound of his own panting and the fleeting crunch his footsteps made as he employed his shadow movement technique. He wondered briefly if she might not have tricked him into running to his own death, but the next moment he heard a terrifying roar, so loud his eardrums felt like they were going to break. It seemed Hua Yan had managed to provoke the Spirit Bear, hopefully without giving herself away.

Daiyu saw a snowball fly up past the lip of the crater, and instantly tapped into all the agility he could muster upon seeing the signal. Since it was nighttime, and surprisingly Snow Ghosts did not have a good sense of smell, he was able to melt into the shadows since he had stayed far enough ahead of the Snow Ghost.

Moments later, the Spirit Bear burst over the edge of the crater, its terrifying void eyes red with anger, and saw the Snow Ghost dashing away. Since neither Daiyu nor Hua Yan had revealed themselves to the Spirit Bear, they were able to trick it into thinking that the Snow Ghost had been the one to encroach on its territory. Although Hua Yan had told him that it was more that the Spirit Bear would lose interest in the real intruder once it caught sight of the Snow Ghost's delicious soul.

Several agonizing minutes later, Hua Yan slid breathlessly into his hiding place, holding the Ice Fire Blossom in her hand. He could feel the waves of heat and cold coming from it even several feet away, and eyed the reddened skin on her hand, but stayed silent.

She glanced outside the canopy of trees to see the Spirit Bear finally catch the frightened Snow Ghost and crunch into its bones, absorbing its soul while also eating its carcass. "Come on," she whispered to him, "we need to get moving before the Spirit Bear finishes its meal and decides to come looking for dessert."

He nodded grumpily, but tore a strip of cloth from the bottom of the robes Hua Yan's friend Youmei had provided for him. Tossing it to her, he motioned for her to wrap her hand with it so she wouldn't keep receiving continual frostbite and lava burns from the blossom in her possession. She looked a little surprised and even a bit touched as she followed him out of the hiding place and slipped down the mountain with them.

Once they were far enough away from the Spirit Bear to talk normally, he asked her about the cure. "How many more ingredients do we need to get rid of the poison?"

Hua Yan was examining the petals of the Ice Fire Blossom, but she looked up when he spoke. Tilting her head and narrowing her unnerving red eyes, she tugged on a strand of her dyed hair as she thought. "Let's see....we have the most important ingredient now, which is the juice from the petals of the Ice Fire Blossom, but we still need several common herbs, which we can buy in any of the larger towns, and we also need a couple of products from other magic beasts. Thankfully, we won't have to face those beasts to get what we need, merely scour the places they've been."

Daiyu instantly felt a strong sense of foreboding. "What are you talking about?"

The Night Rose smiled at him brightly, and he could tell she was taking genuine pleasure out of her words. "I mean that one of the ingredients is an Amethyst Guardian Snake's skin, and they commonly live quite near to here in the swamps to the west of Binghuo Mountain."

Daiyu glared at her. "And what's the other?"

She smiled even more sweetly. "It's crap. Giant Silver Ape's crap, to be exact."

Daiyu immediately swore, not recovering his equilibrium for several long moments. His mood was blacker than a storm on a summer night when he spoke to her again. "And will we be *drinking* this horrifying concoction?"

Laughing evilly, Hua Yan replied, "You will. I will not. Males have to drink it while females only have to apply it topically. Lucky me, I only have to smell like poop while you won't be able to kiss anyone for an entire month because of how bad your breath will smell."

She hopped past him, leaving him stunned as he tried to figure out from her body language if she was telling the truth or just trying to mess with him. Unbeknownst to her, however, Daiyu felt the corner of his mouth turn up in a slight smile. If teasing him like this could cheer her up from losing her friend Youmei, he wouldn't resist it.

She was teasing....right?