Hello! So, this story has actually been sitting around in one of my notebooks for while. More accurately, I started it a long time ago, finished it a while ago, and have only now gotten around to actually posting it. Funny how things happen sometimes.
This story is more an experiment with description than anything else. It takes place sometime after the last manga, though all you really need to know is some of the early/anime stories.
Disclaimer: I do not own King of Bandit Jing. Don't have any otherworldly treasures to lure him with either.
Timeless
He smelled of pine needles and snowflakes, even more so than the trees enclosing him. It was the smell of a spirit unrestrained by mortal lock.
The boy was resting, leaning lazily against a rock with snow and withered moss on it. His black hair and orange coat contrasted sharply against the deep greens and pure whites. What contrasted most of all, however, was the bright purple-and-green cat mask he wore, its smile impossibly wide.
The obsidian-haired one was gazing up to the overcast winter sky, or what little could be seen through the junipers. A black albatross, the scent of blackberries on his wings, slept soundly in his master's crossed arms. By his side lay a large green crystal, a silver chain bound to its top and a beautiful face bound inside. The crystal was cracked.
Then a nine-tailed fox came, her scent like sweet grapes and her fur brilliantly white.
"Well, imagine finding you here," the colorless kitsune spoke, a smirk playing across her thin lips. "Jing."
The cloaked one turned his head toward her, his false feline face hiding his true expression.
"Jing," he echoed, a subtle flavor of amusement and interest in his young voice. "Only Kir calls me that now. How do you know that name?"
"I heard it long ago," the snow-hued vulpine answered, sitting down in front of the boy. "Does the name Sherry mean anything to you?"
"Sherry…" The odoriferous one said, pausing.
"I suppose it doesn't really matter," she went on. "A name is just a prattle of sounds. It doesn't mean much in the end."
"Oh, I don't know about that," he replied. "Names can have their own power."
"So do you have a preference of what you like to be called then?" asked the alabaster fox.
"Bandit King will do," he answered. "It's what everyone else calls me, and it is who I am."
"Fine," the white beast replied, laying herself onto the snowy ground. She almost disappeared, the snow and the fur were so similar.
"So tell me, Bandit King," she spoke, frost clinging to her breath. "What is it like, to be one of the deathless?"
The masked one looked to the sky once more, holding up his hand to catch some snowflakes. He examined the tiny crystals in his palm, perfect, flawless, frozen.
"It's been…interesting," he finally answered, glancing back over to the kitsune. "Aren't you a couple hundred years late in congratulating me though? Or has it been three hundred? Hmm…Oh well."
"Does it really matter to one without time?" she asked lazily. "Were you wearing the mask then too? I believe we were fighting then. I don't really remember."
"I don't believe so," commented the onyx-haired boy, leaning back onto the rock. "It doesn't mean much either way. If I took my mask off, my face wouldn't be any different since you last saw it."
The white vulpine smirked as she rolled onto her side. "So what is the role you have been assigned?"
"Oh, it's nothing different than what I did before really," the pine-scented boy spoke, looking down as the dark bird in his lap shifted slightly in his slumber. "I steal to praise the world. I take what they don't need so they appreciate what they do need. If they're wicked, I take what matters most to them and give it to others more deserving. I can take anything, with or without form. The stars are nothing."
Without even lifting his gaze, he raised his hand to the bleached kitsune and made a simple snatching motion. Suddenly she felt her body go rigid, her mind enthralled. She couldn't look away from the boy despite her will. Then the Bandit King unclenched his fist, and the lithe fox was free.
"See? It's nothing."
The golden-eyed beast frowned and leered at the cat-faced thief. "You can stealing away hearts nothing?"
The boy in the tangerine jacket casually batted at a stray pine branch, as if amused, or perhaps bored.
"Oh, it's not so hard. All living things want attention. Even if the attention from another is false, it's real to the one who believes it to be real. That is the key to stealing a heart, and anything within it."
"You must have a lot of time on your hands to think of such things," the kitsune stated, looking amused.
"I suppose," the Bandit King answered. "But like you said, I am deathless. Eternity drags on some days more than others."
The obsidian-haired boy sat in silence, as if in thought or dream, or perhaps just sleep. Neither boy or fox knew how long the quiet lasted. There was no reason to keep track of time.
"But, there was a girl, who was…different," the feline-faced thief finally spoke, his voice almost lost to the frost in the air. He stroked the avian in his lap.
"Oh, is that so?" asked the ivory kitsune, crossing her long paws and resting her head on top of them. "So what was she like?"
The boy with the night-colored hair remained wordless for a moment.
"Her hair was silver…or was it gold?" he began, still looking to the hidden sky. "She carried a bat, or was it sword? Either way, she stood up to the darkness of the world. She may have been a princess, or she may have been a peasant. I might have known her for long or little. But what I do know is that when I took her heart, she stood up to me and took my heart in return. It was a long time before it was returned to me."
"I take it this was when you were a mortal?" the white fox remarked with a sly grin.
"Yes."
"So what was her name, the one who took your heart?"
He ceased petting the bird.
"…You know, I don't remember," he answered, continuing the stroking of the bird. There was a tinge of sadness in his voice, an emotion that echoed more than the words.
The alabaster vulpine closed her eyes. "I thought as much."
The boy with hyacinthine locks, which were now embraced in faint frost, turned his grinning feline face to the snow-colored fox. "And what makes you say that?"
"You may have everlasting breath, but your memories do not," she explained, reopening her golden eyes lazily. "The pathetic things can't even last half a mortal's lifetime without falling apart, really. An immortal one need not cling to them."
"If you lose too many memories, you lose yourself," the boy answered.
"But you are no longer that limited being that you were in your mortal days, were you?" the ice-white kistune stated. "Memories are but a cocoon to be stripped away with time's hand from your reborn self. They are useless to you now."
"I wouldn't call them useless," replied the Bandit King. "Memories are also lessons learned, and such lessons should not be easily discarded. And some things only exist in memory, and will disappear forever if they are forgotten. Death is kinder than forgetting."
"If something is forgotten so easily, it was not important. If you need to remember something, the world will never let you forget," said the vulpine. "You will never forget to steal the precious, because that is important. It is the reason you are endless, the reason your breath doesn't cease. Trivial memories only get in the way of your duty as the perfect stealer."
The obsidian-haired thief paused, and then shrugged.
"There's no need to rush forgetting though," said the Bandit King. "They will fade when they will fade." He shivered only slightly in the cold.
"Are you sure you're not afraid?" asked the kitsune with a smirk.
"Why be afraid of who I am?"
"Perhaps, because you don't know who you are anymore," she suggested. "What does the name Jing mean to you? Anything?"
He didn't answer. The snow fell heavier, coating the ground.
The ageless kitsune chuckled, and then soon left, apparently bored. The snow soon swallowed her footsteps, as if she had never been there.
The boy remained there, watching the snow. Somewhere in his thoughts, there was a memory. A memory of a beautiful sea, and him, or someone like him, saying something about not wanting eternity. What was his reason again?
It didn't matter, really. There was little that did. He was timeless.
III
Yeah, it's all metaphysical and stuff, and not really a happy ending. It's sort of a worst case scenario, really. Hope you enjoyed it anyway.
For anyone who reads Gilded Smile, it will be finished, eventually. I'm trying to get some other fanfic stuff out of the way first.
Cya!