Kuda

I never want to leave this place, I thought as I ate the food I ordered from room service. The girl was gone with her friends for the day, leaving me free roam of the room. She still had no knowledge that I was there, so I was taking advantage of the perks. Mainly, the food.

When I ate my fill, I went back over to the insanely plush couch and laid down, my lithe body sinking into the cushions. I smiled and sighed with content. If it weren't for the fact that I still had to keep up my end of the bargain with Shun, I would have liked to stay at this place.

I could have been like one of those 'spirits' that haunted places and become famous. But I knew I had to get back soon. Heaven forbid if Shun goes looking for his own Akuma again. That was nothing but a fiasco last time. I had specifically given him a weak, low-level Akuma, and he went and found one that could have killed him with nothing more than the flick of the wrist.

He got lucky that time, and the odds of that happening again, were slim in my book. A face then popped up in front of mine. She asked, "What are you doing here?" I jumped up and looked at the slim, black-furred Kanko in front of me.

"Teru, you startled me. I could ask you the same question." The black pipe fox eyed the table of room service food that I had been eating. "My Master and I saw you slip into this hotel yesterday, and when you didn't come out, I decided to see what the hold up was," she said.

Teru's master was an Akuma hunter like Shun, but he was much more deadly than my master. And, he was human, which put Shun at risk if the two ever ran into one another. Even though Shun killed Akuma as well, that didn't matter.

Teru's master wanted to kill every last one of them. I cleared my throat and said, "I came here to investigate a girl. If you saw her, you'd understand." Teru picked up a piece of half-eaten toast and raised a brow. "Some investigation you have going on," she said and dropped the toast.

I laughed nervously. "He-he. Well, I got hungry. He-he." Teru was also different from me. She helped her master on her own will. She wasn't forced like me. If I were helping an Akuma on my own will, she would have jumped me. But with the fact that I owed a favor, she understood.

I didn't have much choice, in other words. Teru asked, "So, how is your Master holding up?" She also knew of Shun's curse. When I thought about it, most within the Akuma and hunter community knew about it. Not much of a secret, is it? I sat on the couch and told her, "He's….Getting by. What about Star? How is he doing?"

She rested her wispy body on the armrest next to me and said, "My Master is doing fine. He was recently injured in a fight, but has almost fully recovered." I was surprised to hear that Star had been injured. "How did he get hurt?" I asked.

It had to have be a powerful Akuma, or human error on Star's part. "It was an Oni. A strong one at that. Star didn't even land a hit on him, and I had to drag him out of there before he got killed." I could just see Shun running into this Oni somehow, and getting swatted away like a bug.

Teru continued with her story, "And of course, Star was furious when he woke up. He tried to go back after the Oni, but I refused to let him until his wounds healed." I left the couch and looked out the window. Below, I saw Star standing on the sidewalk across the street. I gulped.

He looked a fearsome and deadly as ever. And he got injured? I told Teru, "Talking about your Master, has got me worrying about mine now." She joined me at the window. Star looked up at her and nodded. Humans weren't supposed to be able to see Akuma, or us Kanko for that matter.

But for some reason, Star was able to. The explanation everyone used was that he was born with a gift, but I had my own theory that he had a drop of Akuma blood somewhere in his veins. Teru chuckled and said, "I thought you couldn't wait for the day you were freed from that Akuma?"

I remembered when I first started to work for Shun, and how the day he died sounded like sweet music to my ears. Now, it kind of left a hollow feeling in my stomach when I thought about it. "He grows on you after a while," I told her.

Teru smiled and looked down at Star. "A Master is something special, despite how much they may get on your nerves or fight with you, but a lot of us Kanko aren't lucky enough to have one. They don't have a purpose without a master. Now, go on and find your's."

I thought for a moment about what she said. A Kanko without a master, has no purpose. My purpose would be taken away when Shun died. Then what would I do? I turned to Teru and said, "I will. It was nice talking with you again. Keep Star in line, okay?"

She laughed and before I went through the window, she said, "Hey, Kuda! Take a bath! You smell like an Akuma!" I stopped and sniffed myself and told her, "It's the latest perfume." Teru laughed, and I left the luxurious hotel room.

Alice

I hadn't seen anything else weird since I put the cross on. Maybe I was overreacting after all. Dan, Runo, Julie, and I were waiting for Murucho in the lobby. He had another software presentation today at Wardington's museum, and we decided to go with him this time.

While he babbled on for the millionth time about the program, we could walk around the museum and look at the exhibits. I then remembered I left my purse up in my hotel room. I told the others, "Hold on. I left something in my room."

I pushed the elevator button and the doors opened. Inside, I punched my floor number and began my ascent. I got to my door and realized how lucky I had gotten that I put my room key in my jacket, rather than my purse. I opened the door and froze. In the middle of my room, were two carts with half-eaten food on it.

I don't remember this being here when I left. I rubbed my eyes and looked again. The food was still there. "Hello? Is anyone in here?" I thought maybe somebody had snuck into my room and ordered room service, but I didn't see anyone.

It could have been a housecleaning person who thought it would be funny to dump the food in a random room, but the employees didn't seem like the kind who would do that. I shook my head and searched for a piece of paper and pen.

I scribbled a note for the housekeeping person to take the cart out of my room when they came to clean. I stuck the note on the TV and grabbed my purse, quickly returning downstairs to the others. Murucho had joined them while I had been up in my room.

Dan said, "That took a while." I pulled my purse up on my shoulder and said, "Sorry. I got sidetracked by something on the way up there." Outside of the lobby, a large charter bus pulled up to the front door. Murucho stood up from his chair and said, "There's our ride."

We all looked at him, clearly confused. Runo asked, "Where's Kato and the limo?" A man stepped out and held a sign with 'Marakura' written on it. He was for us.

Murucho told us, "My parents took that limo as well cause they're planning on selling some of the programs before they go out to stores, and they needed extra room. So, they rented us that bus. Come on, we need to get to the museum before the presentation starts."

The charter bus was clean and had the little TVs above the seats. I sat up in the very front, and the others were a few seats back. The doors closed, and the bus did that hissing noise before it started to move.

Shun

It was day two of trying to find Kuda. Hopefully, I would get better results than I did yesterday. I had just left the apartment when I was greeted with the bickering. Wrath and Dante were walking down the sidewalk, arguing as usual. They saw me and shut up.

The moment they walked by, they proceeded to fight. I rolled my eyes, but smiled. I had actually missed the two. It was just too quiet at night. I stopped at the lake and sat on the bank. I was at least going to get a rough idea of where Kuda could be hiding out.

Nothing particular came to mind. The only place that he might be in, would be the sofa section of a furniture store. But there were hundreds of those in Wardington, and I wasn't about to check each one of them. I wanted to find the Kanko, but I wasn't going to go to those kind of the lengths to find him.

I stood up and brushed the grass off of my pants. All I could do was walk around the city and hope to run across him. It wouldn't be hard to find a white, floating pipe fox. He stuck out like a sore thumb in a crowd of people. Or anywhere for that matter.

I left the lake and realized I was approaching the street with the hotel that Alice and the others were staying at. I peered down an alley to see if the Kanko may have been prowling around it. While I was preoccupied with the alley, something rammed into my side.

I was knocked over and feel onto the concrete sidewalk, scraping my hands as I broke my fall. "The hell!" I shouted, ignoring the stinging in my palms. Floating in front of me, was Kuda. He smiled and said, "Looks like I don't know my own strength." I stared at him for a moment, then stood up.

"What the hell was with running off and making me worry!" I shouted then realized all the eyes staring at me. I felt my face turn red. To their eyes, I was yelling at nothing, and nobody. Kuda was next to me shaking his head, and trying not to laugh.

But he was really close to failing. "Uhh…." I had no clue how to recover from this, so I discretely grabbed the Kanko's tail and dragged him back to the lake. He was snickering at this point. I let him go and glared. "I'm sorry, but that was funny. The one reason I love being invisible to everyone," he said while shaking his head and still snickering.

I rolled my eyes and asked, "So where were you anyway? I thought an Akuma might have snatched you up and eaten you like a noodle or something." Kuda stared at said blankly, "A noodle? Really? You had to go there, didn't you?" I grinned.

Kuda rolled his eyes and said, "Ok, I'm going to ignore your little simile there and answer your first question. I was following that Alice girl you talked to a few days ago." My grin vanished. "Why were you following Alice?" The last I remembered, he would have shot me if it meant getting me away from Alice, so I was eager to know why he was following her.

"When you were talking with her at this lake, I felt something was off about her, but I was too occupied with getting you out of there, that I didn't bother to do anything. But while I was trying to cool off after our argument, I ran into her and felt the same thing again. So, I followed her back to the hotel she was staying at. Oh, you should have seen that hotel. It puts the apartment to shame. And that couch. Oh the couch."

I snapped my fingers in front of the pipe fox's face. "Kuda! Stay focused!" At least I had been right about the couch. Kuda's ears pricked up. "Oh, yeah. Right. So, as I was saying, I followed her up to her hotel room and used my ability that I use to find Akuma, and found out that she has a curse on her."

Alice is cursed? "Who would want to curse her?" I asked more to myself than Kuda, but he didn't seem to tell the difference. "The same Oni that cursed you," he said. I stared at him and said, "That's impossible. I killed that Oni the day he killed my family. He would have had to put the curse on Alice before then."

What reason would that Oni have for cursing Alice? Demons just didn't go around and curse random people. They had reasons. Especially the Oni. "I don't know what the stipulations of the curse are, but almost everything about it is like your's. The only thing I could tell, was the it was worded differently," the Kanko told me.

Like mine? Did that mean if Alice ever killed an Akuma somehow, she would lose a part of her life? No. Kuda said it was worded differently. I ran a hand through my hair and growled. "I know. It didn't make any sense to me either," said Kuda.

I began to walk away from the lake. Kuda ran up next to me and asked, "Where are you going?" He rested on my shoulder and asked again. I told him, "I'm going to find Alice and see what else we can find out about her curse." Because it concerns me now.

a little bit of humor for your monday. ;) serious in parts, but humorous. mainly humorous. that such a funny word. (i didnt get much sleep) 0.0 please forgive my rambling down here. read, review, and other things. ~Copperpelt~