"So, let's have a talk, miss backup."
Shinobu was sitting before Sakusa now that they had returned to their inn room, now wearing a different shirt after realizing she had put on the wrong one, with her hair tied back up. The crimson-tipped teen had his back against the wall with his leg bent and his arm wrapped around it, looking oh so uninterested as always, something that the butterfly girl sitting so formally grew irritated with.
Sakusa himself, however, also refused to put on another shirt, which Shinobu couldn't help but grow slightly flustered at. She still hadn't forgotten about her bandages, but at this point, she was more intrigued with what the crimson-haired boy was about to tell her.
"So," Shinobu replied, "You were going to talk to me a little bit about the Kari?"
"That's right."
Shinobu nodded in understanding.
If she was to be honest with herself, she was genuinely curious to learn about Sakusa's family, as well as learn just what that immense pressure and thumping could have been.
She had several theories, like a Blood Demon Art modified for human use, a different breathing style he had learned alongside the Breath of Rage, or maybe even an ability granted to him by his weapons.
The answer Shinobu received, however, was something completely different.
"So. Let's start." Sakusa sat up and put his arm on the table, palm towards the ceiling, and said, "I want you to watch my arm, got it?"
"Right, Kari-san." Shinobu nodded. She was already admittedly staring at his arms slightly to begin with, so this wasn't a difficult task for her. The butterfly girl watched closely at the many veins popping across his skin, and as Sakusa began to take deep, long breaths, her eyes shot open in surprise and awe.
Little by little, the man's skin began to tint a slight shade of red, and red arteries began to pop out beneath, forming bright red streaks like vines across his skin.
This is what his entire body looked like back in the forest....amazing, I can feel his body heat increase from here.....
Not only did his arm change, but Shinobu began to hear it once again, the rapid thumping like that of a heavy drum in an orchestra, only much faster.
But, for the slow speed these changes gradually accumulated to, they faded away surprisingly fast, only seconds after Sakusa audibly regulated his breathing, returning back to Full Concentration, the breathing method he was born with. The arteries faded away, back into his chest, and the red tint and thumping decreased in an instant.
"Wow....."
Sakusa let out a sigh, and flopped his back against the wall again, and returned to his casual way of sitting. "What do you think that was, washboard?"
Oh, for the love of- my chest isn't even that flat, you ass....
"Erm, I'm not sure, Kari-san~" Shinobu replied beneath her false smile.
"Tch, you really are a moron then." Sakusa groaned.
"What you just heard was the Kari family's hereditary ability, the ability to control our heartrates and bloodflow at will."
"It's different from how normal people simply regulate their heartbeat by taking deep breaths, standing still, calming down, and all of that shit. While someone like you would need a minute or so to calm your heart when it races, I can do it instantly."
Shinobu was visibly taken by surprise.
"Really? The Kari can do that?"
"We've been able to do that for decades." Sakusa replied, "Almost every Kari family member inherits this ability, and it's convenient not just for killing demons, but for everyday life as well."
"Kari members who don't go into demon hunting can go into common jobs, where their abilities are incredibly useful. In the medical field, surgeons can control their heart rate to maintain their steady hands and make sure they stay composed under pressure during a surgery. In the competitive sport fields, Kari members have become experts in many martial arts competitions as well as regular sports, such as football in Europe, as well as being excellent soldiers in the battlefields. Not only this, but lucky bastards are able to completely halt the blood flow towards an open wound, stopping any blood loss from occurring in the case of a life-threatening injury."
Amazing.....
"However, everyone in the Kari family has a different level of proficiency when it comes to this ability. Some have limited strength with it, while others, like me,"
Sakusa brought his arms up and straight out to the side, and the blink of an eye, the arteries returned and the thumping began once again.
"I can do this as easy as taking a breath."
Again, as quickly as it came, the streaks of red across his arms faded, and the thumping ceased.
"That's what happens when I control which arteries conduct how much blood through my body. On its own, it's a decent ability, and it's helped me survive some messed up stuff in the past, but combined with a breathing style, this ability becomes something else entirely."
Shinobu listened intently, leaning forward in her seat.
Sakusa continued, saying, "Breathing styles rely on using specific breathing patterns to gather oxygen into your body and grow to the strength of demons, even surpassing them. Because of the Kari's ability to control the speed and direction of their blood flow and to control the rate at which the heart pumps this blood, they can push themselves to direct more oxygen to their muscles, drastically increasing their breathing style prowess. Not only that, but the Kari are also capable of taking in even more oxygen than a normal human with this increased circulation of blood through the body, meaning that we're basically much more fit for the use of breathing styles."
"I see. So, because of this ability, the Kari have a higher oxygen intake, and better delivery of this oxygen to your body, making your breathing techniques stronger in combat." Shinobu replied.
The butterfly girl was beyond amazed. A body such as Sakusa's, which was already built for combat, comes with a powerful bonus such as that? The Kari were renowned around the corps well before she had joined as a Hashira, so she felt a little dim-witted for not knowing much about them yet.
"Wow, I'm impressed that you managed to piece that together yourself, stupid." Sakusa remarked with a scoff.
And there goes all my praise for you, dick.
"But, there are a ton of drawbacks that come with this."
"Oh?" Shinobu tilted her head. She probably should have expected some sort of downside to such a convenient skill, but in all honesty, she thought that was where it would have left off.
Sakusa continued on, "Just because our bodies are able to do things you can't doesn't mean we're not human. We may be able to go things no other human being can do, but that doesn't mean we're suddenly gods or anything. Our bodies can only withstand being pushed past their limits for so long, and even though the Kari evolved to have this ability, it doesn't mean we don't have unbreakable bodies or more durable veins and arteries. They can rupture, clot, or even explode if we push ourselves for too long, and believe me, some people have learned that the hard way by being too cocky and trying to punch above their weight, only for their limbs to burst and for their heart to explode out of their chests."
A shiver ran up Shinobu's spine at the thought of such a gruesome fate. She had seen horrific deaths in the past, but for something like that to occur simply from overexertion, the thought of it didn't sit well with her, especially when it could come from something like arrogance and overconfidence in the field.
Sakusa, though, simply shrugged and bluntly said, "It was their faults for being idiots and not realizing their own limits. Even with the drawbacks, this ability of ours is still well worth the risks."
"For example, for normal humans like you, you need years of training just to get to to where you are now. Me, though, I started my Rage Breathing training at the age of three, and I became a Hashira eight years later."
"Three years old?" Shinobu gasped.
This guy....he was only a toddler when he started training to fight demons....amazing...
"Yup," Sakusa nodded, "Father wanted a strong heir to become the next of the Hashira of Rage. Because only one can ever be crowned the Rage Hashira, there's always competition for the title in the Kari family."
"I guess....Father hated the idea of a weak son, so he did everything he could to make me as strong as possible....."
Shinobu felt her heart crack a little when he heard Sakusa's voice soften and grow quiet, and his cold gaze suddenly withered away.
She recognized that painful shine in the boy's crimson eye, after all. It was the one she hid behind her thin veil of a false personality every single day.
Whether it was for better or worse, Shinobu somewhat sympathized with the other teenager.
"Kari-san......?"
"Hm? What is it, brat?"
"I.....w-want to know more about your family....can I ask some things?"
Sakusa remained silent for a minute, his eye gone wide in shock. But, after a moment, he had managed to collect himself and nodded stiffly, turning his head away with furrowed eyebrows.
Shinobu asked her first question.
"Kari-san, how old is your family? When did the family name grow to such a size?"
"The Kari surname is over 2000 years old." He bluntly replied. "The first Kari on record was in the Han Dynasty of China, in about 50 B.C.E. Her name was Huo Kari, and her status as a Chinese Empress meant she was permitted to keep her surname after her marriage. She gave birth to the first recorded Kari male, who's name was Tsuzin Kari. Because Huo was one of the most respected empresses of the Han Dynasty, the name Kari already held a large reputation behind it."
"W-What happened next?"
Sakusa rolled his eyes on impulse at the follow-up question, and sat up from his spot against the wall, sitting with his leg still bent and his arm wrapped around it. Despite his irritated visage, he was actually more than willing to answer Shinobu's questions.
"Tsuzin became the most influential person in the history of the Kari. As he aged, Tsuzin became incredibly furious, according to the archives I've read through. He was angry, and nobody could understand why. He had all the money he could desire, all the women to choose from, and all the pleasures life could grant him within his reach. One thing he never had, though, was absolute power. Not authority, reputation and status, he had no real strength. He was described as frail, ugly, and pathetic. If he didn't have the Kari name, he would've been beaten in the streets and called a fucking monster."
"Oh, that's horrible." Shinobu's eyes softened when she heard the story.
Sakusa shifted himself around, though, sitting cross-legged now, and leaning over the table. "No, no, Kocho." He replied, "It was great."
"See, Tsuzin wasn't born like me, he didn't have strength and abilities from birth. No, all he had was his flimsy arms and shitty body. So, he had to improvise to obtain his power. Once Huo died and he earned the title of emperor, he put all of his wealth into research, sending scouts all across Asia to find a way to obtain power of unrivaled quality. There's a big gap in the documents after this, but it was said he found power, in the form of martial arts."
"Martial arts?"
"Mhm. Martial arts became his obsession, he grew crazy with the idea of using these skills to grow undeniably strong. He learned the chinese martial art of Jiao Li, traveled to Korea to learn Taekkyon, and tried to study as much as possible about these skills in order to combat his weaknesses. He became what he wanted to be, he became one of the few emperors who were just as skilled as his body guards, and remained unopposed until his fifties, when the stress on his body from decades of martial arts withered him away. When he was on his deathbed, however, he gave one simple command to his son, one that the Kari would forever live by, even today."
"Do whatever it takes to become strong. Fight, break, kill, all in the name of absolute power."
Woah.......2000 years and the Kari still live by that goal.......
Shinobu was more than bewildered at the Kari's history.
"This was the beginning of my family's search for power. As time progressed, the Kari name migrated as far as they could. Korea, Mongolia, the Philippines, India, Indonesia, everywhere across Asia, before they settled in Japan, around 600 years later, in the Asuka period. Everywhere they went, however, they always found whatever they could about martial arts and methods to build their strength, and stole it from their rightful clans." Sakusa spat. The butterfly girl furrowed her eyebrows when she saw the bitterness behind Sakusa's eye, it was almost as if he was disgusted even speaking about something like this.
She held her tongue, however, she didn't want to push her boundaries. Instead, she made an "oh" sound, signaling for Sakusa to continue.
"By the Asuka period, the Kari were well on their way to perfecting every single martial art. Anywhere they traveled, all across Asia, they perfected their own modified ways of these arts, integrating what they already knew to improve and add to a certain form's drawbacks, or to perfect the benefits just that much more. But, even that had a limit to its potential. The Kari were still just your average human, being agile and strong, but not superhuman, like they wanted to be. Around this time, it was time for the Kari to try something else; selective and strategic breeding."
"The Kari, using their reputation as expert combatants with a strong lineage and connections across the known world, used any way they could to pair up their family members with others with a strong bloodline, or access to new ways to improve their already considerable strength. This went on for centuries, as they bribed, threatened, and arranged marriages and conceptions to improve their genetics, so they can grow stronger. As the centuries passed on, and events like immigration, war and famine occurred, the Kari stayed strong. They perfected their arts, learned new ones, and grew stronger with every generation, getting larger, faster, better."
"However, our lives were to change when we met Yoriichi Tsugikuni, the strongest ever demon slayer."
Shinobu's eyes shot open when she heard that name. She had heard it mentioned a few times before, but to think Sakusa's incredibly long line of family members knew of this man, it boggled her mind. She truly had no idea just how broad and immense this family's history could be, it put her own to shame.
Sakusa's eye sharpened as he spoke, his tone growing much more serious. "The first ever Kari clan member who was a demon slayer was named Kasugai Kari, around the same time Yoriichi Tsugikuni became a slayer himself. Kasugai, alongside Yoriichi and his older brother Michikatsu, became the three strongest demon slayers of their time. Yoriichi mastered the Sun Breathing technique, while Michikatsu had developed his own unknown derivative, and Kasugai developed-
"The Breath of Rage, I see." Shinobu nodded in understanding.
"Yup. He designed his breathing style around the anger he had developed from a young age, and coincidentally, ever since then, every one of our next generations developed this anger."
"Kasugai designed the Breath of Rage to combine his latent rage, his superhuman composition, and the hundreds of techniques at his disposal. Rage Breathing is designed for complete and utter domination in a fight, using the dozen-or-so techniques in combination with one another to slaughter the demons without giving them any chance to even process what was happening to them, that's why some techniques aren't exactly lethal on their own."
"Eh? So some Rage Breathing styles don't kill demons?"
"I didn't say that, brat. Some techniques are almost 100% percent lethal if they land, but others are more to damage or restrain demons instead, or simply used as a transition move between attacks in combinations."
"Either way, there are two constants within the Breath of Rage; Unrelenting assault on your opponent and straight-up insanity."
Right. Because the first thing a temperamental baby like Sakusa Kari should have is a Breathing Style that revolves around being a temperamental baby.
"Kasugai wanted nothing more than to best Yoriichi one day, according to his journal. He wanted the Breath of Rage to become the dominant breathing style over the Breath of the Sun, so he worked as hard as he could with what he had in his life. He didn't want this to be like Tsugikuni's Sun Breathing technique, though, so instead of a katana, he made his own weapons,
Kasugai Kari made those."
Sakusa pointed to the corner of the room, and when Shinobu looked towards what he was pointing to, she gasped in surprise.
"Y-Your blades?"
The boy nodded. "Those are his blades. Kasugai created them from a long-time design of blades found in ancient Greece, blades created out of the old weapons of a great warrior who was said to rival the gods themselves. The legend goes that as our family's members expanded towards Greece long before Kasugai had developed the Rage Breathing, there was a man coated in the ashes of his loved ones who bore a rage and hatred so vehement and untamed that he killed every single one of the gods he had cursed for granting him such a horrible life. He used blades of fire and destruction so powerful they were inscribed on the walls of ancient homes, and some Kari members managed to write them down and bring them back to Japan, where they sat in our archives for years. It was then that Kasugai found these documents, and made these blades out of the original design."
"Amazing....." Shinobu mumbled.
"It really is." Sakusa hummed in reply, "The blades have never even so much as chipped, it's been said that the blades I wield were created out of a fallen star, which revolved around the sun for years before falling down to earth, having absorbed more sunlight than any other known metal, even more than nichirin blade steel."
"But it's not the blades that are so amazing," Sakusa continued, "It's the breathing style itself."
"Oh? How so, Kari-san?" Shinobu tilted her head.
"The Breath of Rage may be difficult to master, but it is the single most versatile breathing style in the corps. Any weapon formed from nichirin steel, the Breath of Rage can be used alongside it. Hooks, pitchforks, daggers, axes, even a bow and arrow can tap into this breathing style. Anything with a cord, chain or string attached to it, the Breath of Rage can be used. You could even attach a wire to your needle blade, and it would still work. All you need is the weapon and enough adrenaline in your body, and you'll be able to use the first stages of the breath of rage."
Shinobu was at a complete loss for words. So much history was thrown at her in such a short period of time, she wasn't even able to process it all.
I-.......I don't even know what to say.....this guy in front of me, is the byproduct of 2000 years of selective breeding and martial arts harvesting........he's-.....he's-......
amazing......
"The ability to control our heartrates and bloodflow only popped up around 150 years ago, so our bodies still haven't fully evolved to handle this stress. Father told me it was a sudden mutation in our entire bloodline, though, so nobody knows why we developed this power. " Sakusa added.
"But, that's pretty much everything you would ever need to know about the Kari." The man shrugged. "The rest is empty history, Kasugai's predecessors continued to kill demons, and soon enough, we became a family designed for the sole purpose of killing these fucks."
".....sakusa....."
The crimson-tipped teen flinched when he heard his first name be called by the raven haired girl in front of him. But for some reason, he didn't feel himself get angry like he usually did. He didn't even feel any of his hereditary irritation spring up at all either, it was almost like....he was okay with Shinobu calling him by his first name.
"E-Erm, yeah, Kocho?" He cleared his throat and replied.
Shinobu couldn't help but break out into a wide smile, her violet eyes brighter than the sun still out, peeking through their window from the balcony.
This wasn't a smile shone for Sakusa, though. It was one that was hiding her pain, the ache in her stomach from the envy she began to feel.
She was jealous, plain and simple. She was born with a frail body, and a short stature. She was just over 150 centimeters tall, and weighed as much as a child. She had small muscles, and couldn't cut off a demon's head, no matter how hard she tried.
Sakusa, on the other hand, was born an utter superhuman. He was as tall as Uzui, as strong as Himejima, as fast as Iguro and as durable as Rengoku, all before he had even reached his peak of his body's strength. This boy was born into absolute power, being able to use Full Concentration Breathing the instant he was brought into this world, and a body built for combat. His arms were lean and defined, from more than six years of being a Hashira, and his broad body was lined by muscles he most likely didn't have to work hard at all for, given his genetics. He was limitless potential, a destructive and heart-stopping breathing style of midnight flames, and an overpowered latent capability perfect for killing demons, all wrapped into one tall, muscular, and quite frankly, handsome package.
While she....was none of this.
She couldn't help but feel like Sakusa, someone who hadn't lost anyone, someone who has no reason even being in the corps besides having a father who wanted him to be a Hashira, should have all these amazing qualities while she has absolutely nothing.
Envy took over her, and as she shone her bright smile and fluttered her eyes,
she once again began to have a strong distaste for Sakusa Kari.
"Kari-san.....you're.......amazing."