Alice
I ran through the lobby doors and clicked the elevator button. My hands were still shaking from earlier. What were they? I tapped my foot as I waited for the elevator to arrive. My nerves kept jumping around, causing me to flinch every time somebody walked past me.
Could they be one too? I asked myself each time I looked at somebody. Were their eyes endlessly black as well? Around the corner, Dan and Runo appeared. They were dripping water and wrapped up in towels. I then reminded myself they had been swimming when I left. Dan was holding onto his side and groaning.
Runo shook her head and said, "I told you not to get in that pool so soon after eating. If you would have listened to me, you wouldn't have almost drowned." The two saw me standing in front of the elevator. "Alice? What's wrong?" asked Runo.
Dan chimed in and added, "Yeah, you look seriously freaked out." I was. After being ganged up by those two and seeing the black eyes once again, I wasn't sure what to think. The elevator beeped to let me know it was on the main floor. I jumped, unprepared for the sound.
The metal doors slid open, and an elderly man stepped out. I took his place and quickly told Dan and Runo, "Nothing's wrong. I have to go up to my room and get something." The doors closed, giving me the worried looks of my friends as my last thing to see.
I leaned in the corner of the elevator and stared up at the florescent lights. Was I going crazy? Was I really seeing people with those inhuman eyes? The elevator stopped on my floor, and I hurried out. At my room, I fumbled with the key card until I finally got the door open.
From there, I locked the door behind me and rushed over to my suitcase. I unzipped a small pocket, and pulled out a white box. It originally held a necklace-earring set my grandfather got me for Christmas a few years back, but I was now using it for other needs.
I opened the box and looked at the silver cross that was resting on a bed of cotton. A tiny, ornate flower garnished the center of the piece. My grandfather's parting words he gave me before I arrived at Wardington with Murucho and the others, rang through my mind.
"Wardington is a dangerous place. There may be times you don't feel safe, or are scared. If that happens, this will keep you safe." I remembered when he dropped the cross in the palm of my hand, and I thought I'd never take it out of my suitcase.
But even if the cross didn't do anything, I needed something to turn to in order to calm myself and feel safe. I lifted the cotton in its box, and took the metal chain out that I had stashed underneath.
Carefully, I slid the cross onto the chain, and latched it together around my neck. It may have been the placebo-effect, but I did feel somewhat safer. I closed the box and set it back in my suitcase.
Kuda
The girl was a fast runner. She might even be able to outrun Shun, I mused to myself. I was following her in order to discover what this strange essence was that I had gotten from her.
When I first saw the girl, Shun was talking to her, and I had been too busy trying to get him away, leaving me unable to examine this person. She ran into up the steps of a huge hotel, and into its lobby. Still determined to find out more, I slipped through the sliding door and into the lobby.
I found myself awestruck at the magnificent interior of the place. "This is so much nicer than the apartment," I said to myself. When I snapped myself out of gawking, I looked down and found the girl at the elevator, talking to two people.
I easily recognized them as people in the picture Shun kept hung on the wall. They were some of his friends. The elevator doors opened, and the girl ran inside. Before they shut, I went in as well. She had no clue that I was in there with her, and it might have been a good thing.
Her eyes were still as wide as they were when Wrath and Dante tried to 'flirt' with her. Poor girl has got to be confused. When the elevator stopped, I continued to follow her to her hotel room. Staying close to the ceiling, I observed her.
Since she was alone, I didn't have to worry about other peoples' presences getting in the way. The Alice girl was kneeling by her suitcase and pulled out a box from one of the compartments. I felt my ears prick up when she took the top off of it. Inside, was a cross.
And it wasn't just some old piece of jewelry. The hairs along my body tingled. There was a blessing placed on it, and a powerful one. Alice sat there and looked at it before finally putting it on a chain and around her neck. But the presence I felt on her before could not be masked by the blessed piece of jewelry.
Whatever I sensed, was stronger than the holy article around her neck. I shut my eyes and used the same ability I used to find Akuma, and directed it towards her. When I opened them back up, I could see it floating around her.
"A curse," I said breathlessly. But I had gone past people with curses on them before, and none of them had struck me like this one. The ancient sigils of the curse created a cylinder around her body. Everything about this curse was familiar to me; the dark aura it emitted, the similar structure.
"Where have I-" My words caught and I stared at the girl. This curse was like Shun's, but at the same time it wasn't. I mentally compared the energy it gave off. In every way, shape, and form, this curse was like his. That can only mean it was placed by the same Oni.
I then compared the structure. Although I could not read the sigils, I had seen Shun's before. The ones floating around Alice, were similar to his, but worded differently. I shook my head, unable to understand what was going on before me.
The Oni who cursed Shun, had been killed by him the night his family was killed. That would mean that this curse was placed on her before then, I said to myself. My brain hurt as I tried to figure this out. What reason would that Oni have for cursing this girl? I stopped using my ability to look at her, and the curse vanished.
But I knew it was still there, only visible to those who were able to will it to show itself. I wanted to get a closer look at Alice, but when I got within five feet of her, I was thrown to the other side of the room. I sat up on the floor and shook my head. "That hurt," I said with a groan.
The cross on her neck flashed in the light, and I remembered the blessing that it had been imbued with. But I was no Akuma. I was a spirit. Looks like I've been around Shun so long that his demonic presence has rubbed off on me.
Alice stood up and left the hotel room. I stayed behind. This girl had sparked my curiosity with the curse she had. Did she even know about it? I floated over to a small couch that was in the room, and laid down.
My eyes widened, and a smile creased my face. "This couch feels amazing!" I shouted and rolled on the cushions, completely forgetting everything for that moment.
Shun
I stuffed my hands into my pockets and sighed. Where could he have gone to? When it was past noon and closing in on evening, and Kuda had yet to return to the apartment, I started to worry. If what I said to him angered him enough that he wouldn't come back, then I wanted to find him and apologize.
He was still bound to me by that favor, so he would have no choice but to continue to serve me. But he was the only friend I had right now, and I didn't want to lose that. If Kuda no longer considered me as a friend, then things would go back to how they used to be when he first started to work for me.
He would only do what he had to, all while waiting for me to die so he wouldn't have to deal with me anymore. I had already lost too much, and I didn't want to lose the only friend that knew who, and what I was. When I left out to find my old friend, it had been daylight.
Now, it was night. Tired, I leaned against a metal fence to rest my feet. Behind me, something fell over. Thinking it could be an Akuma prowling around, I turned and got ready to fight. But when I saw a cat run away from a knocked over trashcan, I realized I was in no danger.
I then saw where I was at. I had made my way back to the old elementary school Dan and I attended, and where not a week ago, I killed an Akuma that possessed a little girl. The playground was empty since school was done for the day. The swings moved back and forth in the wind, and I closed my eyes.
Flashback
I was sitting in one of the swings, staring at the worn down dirt in front of me. It had been two weeks ago that the Akuma came and killed my family, but I had to carry on. The images were still raw in my mind. Over at the lunch table near the swings, I could hear the teachers talking.
One from another class said, "I don't know why on Earth he insists coming back to school after what happened to his family." I tightened my jaw. Everyone thought they had just been killed by some maniac, but it had been a band of Akuma led by an Oni.
I tried to tell people, but they just thought I was being a distraught kid who wasn't able to understand that my family was dead and was making up a way to cope with it. But I'm not….. Over at the slide, the other kids in my class were playing.
I had always been a loner from them, and the recent events only made it worse. I had already been called 'weird' and 'freak' and everything else by them. They didn't think I was normal, and they were right. I was far from it. A tear rolled down my cheek and landed on my leg.
"Hey? Why are you crying?" I looked up and saw the new kid looking at me. He showed up in our class at the start of the week, and seemed like a loud-mouth from the beginning. "What do you care?" I asked coldly. He would end up being no different from the others who talked about me.
They always did. He walked over to the swing next to me and sat down. "Just wondering. I don't like seeing people sad," he said and kicked his feet, making the swing move. It was strange having somebody outside of my family actually show they cared about me, and didn't see me as some kind of freak.
I said, "Your name was Dan, right?" The brunette nodded his head and smiled, stopping his swing from moving. "Yup. I don't know everyone's name yet, so what was yours?" he asked. I smiled and said, "Shun." Dan tilted his head to the side and said, "That's a cool name." The brunette then laughed, and I did the same.
End Flashback
I was still holding onto the side of the fence, a sad smile and tear stain on my face. The wind stopped blowing, causing the swings to go still. Remembering the first friend I had, proved to be almost be too much to handle.
Knowing that I had to stay away from them, and that I would die and never see any of them again, made me wish that my life would slip away from me quicker so I wouldn't have to deal with the reality.
But it only made me want to find Kuda more, so I would at least have one friend by my side. I pulled myself away from the old playground and all of its memories, and went back to the apartment, ready to keep looking for my loyal friend tomorrow.
chapter title based off the song The Cross by Within Temptation. lol. if you havent noticed yet, Kuda has a thing for couches. 0.0 check out my profile for an announcement regarding the future of our stories, and also vote on a poll if you have not. read, review, and other things. ~Copperpelt~
