Title: Desert in the Sky
Authors: Petrafina Dantanko
Summary: A new foe has a grudge against the War, intending to end it even at the destruction of both the Makai and Ningenkai! How did the battle for the Crown begin? Could the VERY first King come back to try and reclaim the throne?
Warning: strong violence, mild language
Disclaimer: I do not own Kojiki no Gash, but I do have authority over Bituah, her Mamono and their attacks. Please ask before using any; thank you.
Author notes: None at the moment.
Women should not wander streets at night, especially alone.
But Bituah held more audacity than most women of her nation, and she knew the price that such pride paid - not just at the hands of the government. The priests were the most feared of their kind: fierce, heavy-bearded fiends with condemnation glimmering in their eyes.
But Bituah walked with little fear, for she had her book - not tucked in the safety of her robe, but hanging by her side, open for all to eye.
The Mosque was not a far walk, but her hosts had begged her to not go (especially since she had not told them where she was headed). The man, burdened with a chronic cough, was an old and gentle figure, who had begged the most, but the seemingly foolish smile on her face had silenced him and his family.
So she arrived at the brightly lit holy site, the only intention in her heart: to worship. She strode inside and eyed its intricacy while seeking the room in where to wash herself.
"What is a woman doing in here?"
Bituah merely turned her head towards her left. The two men seemed young, in their twenties, but their faces showed signs of steadily growing whiskers. She merely blinked, remaining silent for the moment.
"Well?" began this first speaker. "What say you?"
Pursing her lips, she replied in her naturally quiet voice, "Women are better meant for silence, for they are mere objects."
"And they should also not wander without their Father, Brother or Husband!" A smile crept on the man's face. Bituah tightened her grip on her book, her face remaining stoic. The man's eyes then wandered to her side. He asked, "What is that you hold?"
Bituah cocked her head as the men approached her. The book began rising in her arm slowly.
"That is not the Qu'ran," growled the second man. "What is a woman doing with a text other than the Holy One?"
"No good," replied the first, "which is why we cannot merely expel her."
"Away with you!" she hissed, but the men lunged for her anyway. And before they started wrestling for it, she cried, "Aranya!" - the Persian green book glowing an ominous pastel green.
The men halted - releasing her and gazing at her with narrowed eyes of confoundment. Silence echoed throughout the mosque, until the trio heard a gust blow through the entrance. Suddenly -
"Ah!" The men cried as a sharp wind smacked them far and hard against the wall, an unceremonious thud reverberating. Bituah glanced around for the assailant, who immediately made its presence known.
The demon stood slightly taller than a ten-year-old human, and indeed, it was one decade old. And it looked rather human, despite the goat ears and small horns, the goat tail and inhuman feet. One inverted triangle streaked below each eye, which shown catlike and a malicious golden green.
"They seem to have sustained greater injury than the last," said Bituah as the demon went to inspect the victims.
Placing a hand behind one man's head, it drew its fingers close to its mouth and licked off the large portion of blood. It replied, "A little more serious than last time, yes," and it returned to its book keeper.
"Which country now?" asked Bituah. "We cannot remain in these countries for long."
"Indeed," replied the Mamono. "The lack of competition worries me least. As for your well-being..."
Bituah cast one last, distant glance as the unconscious and bleeding men. She nodded and opened her book.
"Shetanaii!"
Arms opened as if to be crucified, gusts of enegry appeared in the Mamono's stretched palms and soon engulfed the pair. They immediately vanished in a powerful storm, which ravaged the bowels of the mosque and nearly destroyed its entrance as it blew into the eerie, star-struck Arabian night.
"Gash Bell, are you crazy!"
Kiyomaro's angry shout brought the golden-haired Mamono to the kitchen, a sheepish grin on his little lamb face.
"Yes, Kiyomaro?" queried Gash, but his supplication could not sooth the Oni they called Kiyomaro.
"What kind of weird experiment were you trying to pull this time?" raged the human, holding high a pot, its insides charred with whatever-it-was.
"Oh, hey!" Gash's mind trailed, as if Kiyomaro had not yelled at him at all, and he snatched the pot holder. "I wondered what would happen to this. Hn... Looks like Vulcan put it on five minutes too many."
"Five minutes too - what do you mean!" shrieked Kiyomaro. "You know my mother doesn't let you in here alone after last time!"
"Oh yeah..." The memory seeped slowly into Gash's tiny, but happily naïve, brain. He giggled and replied, "Okay, Kiyomaro, no more experiments!"
Rage slightly (oh-so slightly) subsiding, the human released a sigh of extreme exasperation. His mother would annihilate them - if not their hearing - if she discovered any evidence of the mess and -
"Oh, my gods, what is that?"
"You mean the thing that's twitching in the sink?"
"Do I even really want to know?"
"Why wouldn't you, silly?"
"Gash!"
The chase for the Mamono lasted quite a while, leaving another half of the house in ruins larger than a Mesopotamian temple. Finally Kiyomaro realised the futility in his chase, and he hurriedly began cleaning and fixing and disposing what needed to be disposed (especially the moldy whatever-it-was, which seemed to be fastly evolving into sentient life).
Gash helped somewhat. He (and the Vulcan 300) had volunteered, but when their work only augmented Kiyomaro's woes, he made Gash scrub the floors after he was completely finished with one section of the house.
"Kiyomaro, I'm back from market."
"Mother!" he gasped under his breath, and he glanced around the house frantically. Small messes were present here and there, but at least the kitchen looked decent, if not normal. So with a deep breath, he helped Hana enter.
"Oh, dear, I should have been wiser and let you come," she said, handing the bags to him. "I have a few more bags in the car, if you don't mind."
"Never, Mother," replied Kiyomaro with a smile, and he set the bags on the kitchen table.
While Hana began unloading the items, she asked, "How did you and Gash entertain yourselves?"
"Oh, Mum, we - "
Kiyomaro clamped a hand over Gash's big mouth. The older boy replied, "We relaxed and read and... did some cleaning."
"Aw!"
Suddenly Hana began sniffing, detecting a strange odor. She asked, "Have you been cooking?"
"Oh, not that much," and he rushed himself and Gash out to the car to unload the four last bags.
"It's hot and dry all of a sudden," said Gash as they returned inside the house.
"Hn?" Kiyomaro glanced high and at the trees. At that moment a wisp of wind rustled the leaves. He remained still until a stronger gust blew, nearly knocking the bags from his grip.
"Woah! Weird weather," he said but shrugged and joined Gash in the house.
But if Gash had paid closer attention, he might have detected the Mamono, who from only two kilometres away affected the weather for quite a distance.
At the same time, a rather mismatched duo had taken to the air to eye potential victims. Unfortunately Eita Kubozuka became distracted by a young, scantily-clad woman, and he nearly crashed into one of the taller buildings in the city.
"I'm okay!" he chirped. "Missed me by a mile!"
Hyde rolled his eyes and began murmuring. He eyed the landscape when a discrepency in the wind caught his sight.
"Hn? Eita we're going this way."
"Why? I just found a good restaurant where they sell Buri Burg - "
"Just get over here, or I'll let gravity do your flying!"
The pointed - though unreal - threat got Eita to follow Hyde closely. The human finally noticed what he noticed: a strange, harsh flickering in the wind. And as they got closer, its course changed - as did its speed - heading directly for them.
"Ah!"
"What's the matter Hyde - ah!" he cried, when the gust suddenly bombarded them through the air, sending them tumbling at an incredible speed towards the ground.
"Do something!" cried Eita.
"Like what?" Hyde could do very little, as the wind was too strong to counter until they began whirling between the buildings. Finally only a few metres from being crushed, Hyde summoned a spell to break their fall. It returned at an angle.
Hyde tumbled on the pavement and landed on the sidewalk, skidding painfully to a stop. Eita received worse luck: crashing into the glass doors of the building behind Hyde.
"Ow," moaned the Mamono, but he soon remembered Eita. "Oh no. Eita!" And he ran through the broken entrance to see to his cringing friend. "Eita, Eita, are you all right?"
The human sat carefully. Glass shards were embedded here and there. He bled on face and hands but not profusely.
"I think I need to go to a hospital," he groaned, and Hyde looked frantically at the stunned faces of the people who gathered. Then Eita said, "But make sure that I get the cute nurses."
Hyde grinned, still shaken but glad to see that his friend still seemed all right. Then Eita's eyes shot wide, and he pointed outside. "Look!"
A small dust devil formed on the sidewalk. Hyde and Eita stood wide-eyed at the strange occurence: sand gathering in the funnel and taking shape. And in place of the sand stood a human in midnight blue garbs: a veil and robe, ebon pants beneath and dark lightweight shoes. In one arm laid an open book scribed with demonic symbols.
"A book keeper!" Hyde lept onto Eita's shoulders, reaching frantically for his book in the back pack.
"She must be one of those Arab chicks," said Eita, noting the concealed nose and mouth. "Hey, I bet she's pretty cute underneath that veil, huh?"
"Eita! Focus," growled Hyde as he handed him the book.
The woman blinked nonchalantly and recited, "Aranya," and though said without much fervor, a powerful wind began blowing relentlessly against the pair, who struggled to keep on their feet.
"Jikeru!" cried Eita, and Hyde tried to counter the wind with his own gust spell. His attack almost worked, but the woman seemed undaunted.
"Uigako!" A beam formed before her, spinning like a maelstrom before it shot at the stunned partners. And since they could not act quickly enough, the force of a vehicle speeding eighty kilometres per hour knocked them all about and against the wall.
Finally the people in the building panicked and scattered and scurried aimlessly, trying to escape whatever-it-was before it could injure or even kill them.
"Nnn..." Hyde was sluggish to rise, and when he spat he saw his blood. He ran his fingers against his teeth, finding that none were missing.
This is a bad time to be bleeding internally, he thought, body quivering as he rose to elbows and knees. He moaned, "Eita..."
He received no immediate response. "Eita?" Still the human gave no answer. Hyde's head shot in the direction of his partner. "Eita?"
And he lay before him, face toward the ground, breathing shallowly, hands on one side.
"Eita!" Hyde crawled beside him and rolled him on his back. He chanted his name as he pried his fingers from off the wound: a glass shard peering from the blood stain on his shirt.
"Eita?" Hyde convulsed, tears forming in his green eyes, but the human merely smiled.
"Hy... Hyde..." he groaned. "What's sticking out of my side? Hyde?"
The Mamono sat stunned for a moment. His fingers finally grabbed the sides of the jagged shard, and he pulled hard on it. Eita groaned louder, teeth grit, but he tried to cooperate. Finally Hyde yanked out the fatal shard: at least forty centremetres long, less than half of that in its width. Eita coughed and rolled onto his knees again, gagging up blood.
"Hyde, Hyde, I'm bleeding!" he whined.
"No kidding!" whimpered Hyde, tears beginning to streak down his cheeks.
Eita whimpered. Hyde knew he wanted to head home, but as he reached for their book, a long, slender, feminine foot stepped on it. Poisonous, terra-cotta eyes bore Death unto the Mamono, freezing him in their malice.
But when he expected her to speak - he had hoped for her to speak - she unnerved him even further with her silence and that stare.
"Ever see what happens when you use someone's ribs for a trampoline?"
Hyde's head whipped over one shoulder. He stared at the goatlike demon, who stood over Eita's prostrate body, an inhuman foot on his chest. It had dragged the body from him when he had not been paying attention.
"Well?" it asked, but Hyde's eyes remained wide and fearful. The other Mamono grinned and scoffed, removing the foot, only to jump on Eita's chest.
"Gah!" Blood spurted from the human's gaping maw as the demon bounced steadily on his chest, bone cracking louder and louder.
"STOP! You'll kill him!" cried Hyde, and the demon did stop, only to grin maliciously at him.
"That's... kind of the idea I had."
Before he even realised it, Hyde rushed towards the demon, and before his feet smashed through Eita's ribcage, Hyde pounced and tackled him. But their struggle lasted briefly: the demon punching off Hyde.
"How sentimental..." he articulated, standing tall. "Of course, emotional attachment such as yours is costly in this - or any - competition like this."
A palm extended before Hyde's weeping face. The demon grinned as its book keeper uttered the next spell.
"Jikerunu."
A gust formed in his palm and almost hit Hyde, but it moved quickly enough. The blast began incinerating the vulnerable book. The Mamono boy cried and rushed to try to save his book, only to trip on Eita's bleeding body.
"Eita," he sobbed, leaning closely and holding one of the older boy's hands. "Eita, they burned the book."
The young man smiled and replied, "I figured... I'm sorry, so sorry..." and he shut his eyes, tears streaming down his pallor cheeks. Hyde screamed: "EITA!"
A shadow loomed over him. A voice hissed, "You poor baby, you would think that a couple of redheads like yourselves were brothers. Ha!" And a fist slammed into the side of Hyde's face. The boy hit the ground, a cracking resounding and a small pool of blood forming before he vanished into the Makai.
"You should learn to quell your thirst, Child of the Simoon," began Bituah as sirens outside began blaring. "Allah forbid you become cannibalistic."
The demon rounded and scoffed. He joined her and then replied, "You mustn't be so sympathetic toward sinners. Remember that these demon children and their families are cheats and thieves. And you know that those kinds of people are not worthy of God's mercy."
"Next time, though, we should have more respect for the innocents," and they scanned the damage done to the building and how empty it seemed without its people.
"For all you know, they're damned, too," he said, but Bituah gave no reply. Then the demon held her left arm and said, "Now, come. We've more work to do."
The woman looked into those demonic eyes. A not-all-that innocent smile appeared on the Mamono's face. She uttered below the sound of a whisper, "Yes, my Agrat Bahn," and in that instance, a dust devil formed around the partners. They vanished through the gaping entrance in a strong wind, blowing high into the sky to seek others deemed unworthy.