River of Stars Ch 9 bit – Terrible Twos

“So.” Sanzo leaned against the right side of the stone window-frame, looking out onto the moonlit garden outside their rooms; a spread of green quiet, dotted only by the :giggles: and :nestling: of sleepy dragons. “Were you able to get a good read on Shunrei’s chi?”

“Good enough, I think.” Hakkai leaned against the other side of the frame, green eyes only glancing at him; voice low enough that the two arguing over the palace floorplans back by the snack table should think they were only discussing Hakuryuu’s visit with the local dragon flock, or the burning shade of the moon. “The flow of her energies is different from yours. Much smoother, I doubt she needs more than a light dose of mononoke-ha once in a while to stave off headaches. But not nearly as powerful.” The monocle glinted. “So. It is… or I should say, you are… as you suspected.”

Sanzo leaned hard on emotionless stone. Easier to feel that against his skin than the :concern: and :wonder: from the man beside him. “You’re not… upset.”

“I am a child of Shangri-La,” Hakkai noted. “We know that souls can be born into new bodies. And sometimes a soul is born into a body that doesn’t fit it as well as it should, and- people change. By the grace of the Goddess, or bloodshed, or the simple need to protect another.” He shrugged. “Gojyo wasn’t born here; I’m not sure how he survived, when there’s not a trace of youkai genes on Earth. But if he is right, if all born of Shangri-La have a trace of other… then something I overheard in Ni’s lab finally makes sense. Ni’s problem wasn’t getting me to change. It was overcoming Gonou’s efforts to stop it.” Hakkai glanced down. “I suppose… to Gonou it was much like a cancer sweeping through my body. Instead of just latent youkai genes finally expressing themselves when I was – stressed enough.”

Sanzo blinked. Reran in his head exactly what he’d unearthed in Ni’s lab computers before he’d found Gojyo’s prison cell, and let it mingle with the folklore of Shangri-La that whispered in his dreams. “People… in the middle of a battle. Or a disaster. Or – who go to the temples and pray….”

“Sometimes change,” Hakkai finished. “To youkai, or kami. Even if they’re of Kanzeon’s Favored, sometimes.” He hesitated. “I think that’s what happened to you, after Koumyou died.”

Kami. He’d suspected it for… heh. Almost as long as he’d been alive, this time. Because the only way kami genes could have activated under that stress was if they were already there. And the only way an Earth-born human could have gotten kami genes spliced into his DNA was…. “No one gets through the Five Gorges alive.”

“…Are you angry?”

Sanzo snorted. Angry didn’t come close to cutting it. “Just trying to think how those idiots back at the temple would sputter if they knew they were being ordered around by a two-year-old.”

That startled a chuckle out of the healer. “You’re not, you know. Not really. Oh, chronologically, that body, yes. But physically – I’d say twenty, about? Old enough to have some sense.”

“Young enough somebody back at the SGC should have noticed, damn it,” Sanzo growled.

“Ah! But the chakra’s very distracting,” Hakkai smiled. “And the scowling. And – well, the gunfire.”

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