Lucifer was bored.
Not just any kind of bored though, it was the worst kind of bored. The bored where, no matter how hard you think or look, there's nothing around to cure your boredom.
That kind of bored.
She was currently sitting on one of those spinny chairs repeatedly going around in one direction before stopping suddenly, and spinning the other way. Her mother's co-workers and clients bustled around everywhere, kind of like a bee hive. It was one of those offices that you found in billion story sky scrapers. A bunch of desks crammed together and separated by a thin piece of white plaster. Melody, Lucifer's mom, had told her specifically to stay in her pathetic excuse for an office while she went and did some adult stuff.
"Stay here while I do some adult work, okay honey?"
"What if I get bored Mommy?"
"Don't worry my little Lucy," Melody cooed while lifting Lucifer off the chair and kissing her forehead "you'll think of something, Mommy's gotta go now, be good"
"Yes Mommy"
That was 2 hours ago.
Lucy was a very patient person from birth, probably inherited from her Grandfather, but she was still only a child, and children happen to get bored very easily. She stopped the chair spinning with her foot and slid to the ground. Compared to before the noise seemed almost non-existent now, so the continuous tapping that she started hearing seemed very loud to Lucy.
She waited a bit, but the tapping was still there, it sounded as if it had gotten even louder. All other sound seemed to have been blocked out by Lucy as she focussed intently on the tapping. It sounded like it was coming from the hallway directly across from Melody's office.
As one of the office workers walked by she stuck out her arm and grabbed the hem of his jacket. He glanced at her and sighed.
"Look little girl, I don't have time to play with you"
"Sir can't you hear that tapping?"
The worker took a second to pause and listen intently, but to the little girls shock he didn't hear it.
"If this is some kind of joke than it's not funny, I have work to do"
"Please sir, can you just look down that hall for me?" She looked up at him with bright maroon eyes filled with tears. At first glance they were normal, plain even, but if you tried to look deeper you could see her eyes were more of a dark brown with reddish flecks in them, giving you the illusion they were maroon.
He sighed a final time before gently grabbing her wrist and leading her down the hall. Lucy made him walk up and down the hall five times before she was content that nothing was there (though the tapping still was) and let him go.
She toddled back to her Momma's office and climbed back on the chair. The tapping was more annoying than scary now, but the little girl found she could block it out if she tried hard enough. Her Grandpa was always saying how if you tried hard enough, you could hear anything within a close radius, the same went for blocking things out.
"Grandpa what are you gonna teach me today? I'm so excited. All the things you teach me are really cool!" Lucifer bounced around her grandfather happily as they walked out onto the porch where they could easily see the forest and the rain cascading from the sky.
He chuckled softly, it reminded her of fabric passing over fabric "Settle down little devil, did you know that if you practice lots and focus hard you can hear anything around you? The same goes for blocking things out of course"
"Wow that's so cool Grandpa, teach me! Teach me!"
Lucy was proud and grateful she had mastered that quickly, and her Grandpa had been even happier for her.
She smiled to herself and started spinning on the chair again, only then being reminded of her previous boredom. She spun the chair around in circles for a while, but soon found that the more bored she got the louder the tapping became.
Eventually it was too much for her and she leapt off her seat and stormed down the hall with her arms crossed over her chest and face set into an adorable frown.
"Come out wherever you are, you big meanie!" The child shouted and stomped her feet, silence greeting her loud accusation.
"I know you're down here, someone has to be making this tapping, machines don't tap they whirr" She said smartly, poking her way down the hall again. Carefully examining every nook and cranny, every corner, anywhere the thing that was making the noise could be hiding. This time she noticed something that she didn't see the first five times she walked through this hall.
At the very end of it, in the left corner the shadows seemed a bit darker, a bit more sinister and foreboding than any other corner in the building. Orange seemed to be swirling fitfully through shadows, going in one direction before suddenly changing its path. It seemed to be alive, or have a mind of its own at the very least.
She took another step closer and the tapping stopped, the swirling shadows were still and for a second the little girl thought she had stopped breathing as well. But then the tapping started again, faster and louder, it resounded around her head like the banging of drums. The shadows swirled, outwards and got bigger, they reached towards her with clawed like hands, and formed the body of a terrifying nine-tailed fox that towered over her. She couldn't help herself, her Grandad and Grandma always said to never show signs of weakness around predators not to make a sound but she just couldn't help herself.
She screamed.
Melody had never been so stressed in her life. She had a loving husband who was always full of surprises and curiosity, a beautiful daughter that had been taught the ways of etiquette and survival way before she was supposed to know. Both of Melody's parents were alive and well, having a big part in Lucifer's upbringing.
The only thing that wasn't perfect was her job.
Numerous times before Lucifer had complained about how Melody could never spend any time with her unless she brought her to work, and even then it was brief. Her job was the epitome of hell.
Crowded desks that we were supposed to call offices, hours that were long and not negotiable, 15 minute lunch breaks and no time for holidays.
She had considered quitting quite often, but she needed this job to help support her family, and with Lucifer starting kindergarten soon (at the tender age of five) quitting was simply out of the question.
With that thought Melody continued on her way back to her officeso she and Lucy could go home and have a nice bubble bath together while sipping vanilla chocolates. She was just about to turn the last corner to her office when a high pitched and terrified scream broke out from the office.
Time seemed to slow down for a second before Melody's brain kicked into overdrive recognizing the voice almost immediately. Ignoring the pain in her legs from standing all day, ignoring everything around her.
Only one word kept repeating over and over in her head.
Lucifer
She went down the last hall where she was sure she had heard the scream, her mouth fell open and her eyes widened as she watched her own child being dragged kicking and screaming through the wall by a gigantic fox.
And that was the straw that broke the camel's back. The stress crashed down on her, 50 times worse, it was so heavy that she was brought to her knees still staring at the spot her daughter had been dragged through. Tears leaked out the corners of her eyes leaving pitch black streaks down her face that resembled her pitch black feelings. She didn't move, not even when the police came or her co-workers gathered around her trying to ask her what happened. She didn't react, just kept on staring at that spot where she had last seen her daughter.
Never again would she be able to hold her and tell her she's her precious treasure, share secrets with each other, never again would they run through the fields hand in hand, never again would she scold her for staying up and reading when she should be in bed.
Never again
She felt her husband's arms wrap around her and pull her to his chest, safe and secure is what she should feel, but she wasn't feeling much at the moment, just broken and empty. He whispered promises in her ear that she knew he could never complete no matter how much he tried.
Slowly she got to her feet before ripping her eyes away from where she had last seen her little Lucy, and bolting out of the sky scraper with her husband hot on her heel's.
She ran past the car park pushing past the people on the street with her husband following close behind. Her feelings were easy to understand and read for almost anybody, but they could only see the surface, they didn't know how much it hurt, but they also didn't know how angry and desperate it made her. Her daughter was not dead. Just somewhere else, lost and probably waiting for her mother to come and save her.
She would not let her daughter down, screw it if the devil would come after her.
"Mel, stop running pointlessly! It won't help anything!" Worry was bleeding through his voice. Jack didn't even bother to hide it.
"Who says I'm running pointlessly!" She shouted back, stopping in front of the state library, looking just as large and full of life as she remembered.
She pushed open the doors and went straight to the section where historical events were recorded. Jack came up behind her puffing from the exertion it had taken to keep up with Melody.
"What are you doing Melody? Is this some sort of coping mechanism?"
"She's not dead Jack"
"The authorities said she was dead, but I guess they weren't there, so care to tell me what happened" Jacks body posture was more relaxed now that he realised that his wife wasn't going to try and kill herself or something equally ludicrous.
"All it took was for me to hear that scream and I banked into that hall, just in time to see my baby get dragged through the wall by some kind of fox demon looking thing, she was alive"
"Ah I see, but what if you were hallucinating?" He really didn't like doubting his wife, but in situations like these it's better to double check every piece of information.
"I know what I saw, it was no hallucination, I would be able to tell between my daughter and a fake" She replied while busily shuffling through the various folders on the shelves.
"What do you exactly plan on doing then?" Going and doing things pointlessly would get you nowhere.
"Finding out how to get my daughter back, or at least know that she's safe and in good hands"
"Sounds like a good plan, I couldn't have done any better myself if I had seen what you had seen" He said helping her shuffle through the folders, for what he still didn't know.
"It was the best I could think of while in that state of mind"
"I don't blame you it was probably harsh" Just thinking about his wife going into some kind of depression made him want to punch something. Repeatedly.
"Still is, I'm fighting the urge to just go home curl up in a ball and cry myself to sleep repeatedly" Melody confessed with a sad tone, praying to whatever god's out there that her baby was safe.
Light flittered through the green leaves of the trees, illuminating a pale girl only five years old. The steady rising and falling of her small chest was the only sign she was alive, but even then it was only just barely. The clothes that she wore were obviously once beautiful and stylish, but now they were torn and in tatters covered in red. There were scratches all over her body, some were still bleeding and ran quite deep, others shallow and already scabbed over. Purple and olive bruises covered her back, arms and legs, covering almost all of her pale skin. Animals hid in between the trees and shrubs, daring to peek their heads out at this person that had fallen from the heavens.
Her eyes flickered under their lids, showing signs of dreaming. She shifted slightly in her sleep, making her dark caramel hair fall over her face. She shifted again, harder this time, scaring some of the creatures away before she started repeatedly having spasms and shaking.
'Wake up brat' a deep voice growled in the girls head 'It'll be easier for you if your awake'.
"Uhn" The girls eye's slowly slid open but soon squeezed shut again when an overwhelming pain hit her.
'Relax your body so it can get used to my chakra and build its own tenketsu system'
Another wave of pain made the girl curl into a tight ball. She was in so much pain she didn't even realise that something was talking to her in her head.
'Listen to me girl!' The voice growled, louder this time.
"W-who are y-y-you? W-where are you?" The girl stuttered out after the wave of pain had passed. It felt as if someone was squishing her organs and veins to the side to accommodate this weird flow-y liquid-y stuff. It felt nice, like cool water after a hot day, the liquid stuff that is not the squishing.
'I am in your head, and for what you can call me, ahh, you can call me Ashi, girly'
It was an interesting feeling, it hurt but at the same time it felt so nice, until it was everywhere. Since the girl wasn't in as much pain as before she could concentrate more on her surroundings, but the more she concentrated the more she felt suffocated by the stuff now flowing through new veins.
It was everywhere, the trees, the animals even the air. The girl gasped and clawed at her throat in attempt to expel the stuff from her lungs, but it was no use.
'Don't panic, keep your breathing even and you'll eventually get used to it'
She listened to Ashi's words and tried to calm her breathing as much as possible. She still felt it everywhere, but at least it was more bearable now.
"Where am I? Where's Mummy's office building, I don't think there are any forests near there" She said, confused at her surroundings. Mummy had always said that if she ended up somewhere she didn't know, find the nearest phone and call her.
'You're in the middle of a forest, what are you? Dumb? Great I picked an illiterate' He went on to grumble for a couple more minutes, saying things that the girl didn't understand but didn't sound very nice at all.
Deciding to ignore the mean voice she slowly sat up to examine her wounds. None looked that bad anymore, and the girl realised that they were healing over faster than they would have normally, she watched in wonder as her skin knit itself back together and bruises gradually faded back into her pale unscathed skin.
The skin of a child that doesn't know of the word war, and the most pain she had probably experienced was grazing her knee on the concrete.
An innocent.
Somewhere far off in the future after years of the child's skin hardening to stone, and pain was an everyday thing, Ashi had wondered more than once if he had done the right thing by picking this innocent girl.
But for the moment he had no objections against stealing the girl from her world for his own purposes.
No one in the ninja world had prepared for her, and what she was.
Simply because no one had ever, nor expected to come across such a thing.
She was something no one could ignore, everyone loved, everyone hated, the thing everyone never expected.
She was an innocent evil