This is a work of fanfiction. I make no claims to own any of the characters or settings used. Although today is my birthday, so it would make an amazing present.
My thanks to those reviewers who I wasn't able to respond to due to anonymous comments or disabled private messaging.
The title comes from the freeware game Eversion. "You Can't Escape (World -8)" composed by Matthew Steele, Miroslav Malesevic, and others.
Chapter 10:
You Can't Escape
Drip.
Shadows danced on the edges of Naruto's vision, flickering in silent laughter. Droplets of liquid—at once black as pitch and transparent as water—fell from the vast array of pipes in his mindscape. No matter how many rained down from the metal pipelines, their splashes had no voice—there was only one sound, that of a single drop of the black fluid.
Drip.
The noise seemed unbearably loud in the quiet of his mind. That sound had heralded his first visit to this place. Every few moments it repeated, echoing through the dark corridors.
Naruto floated in the ebon water. It wasn't water of course. This was thicker, cloying, clinging, and it moved with—
He stopped thinking about it, a knee-jerk reaction to avoid something his mind knew better than to dwell on. 'Water' was a good enough term as any for it. It was safer.
Drip.
Placing the precise moment he entered his mindscape was impossible. Or at least, the moment he became aware he was in his mind. How long had he drifted on the motionless surface before this? Time lost meaning here, and whatever exhaustion he had felt had slid away when he fell into this prison.
The boy rose to his feet, liquid pouring off of him like too much ink. The gentle waves of his movements splashed against the corridors, but the water falling from him was disturbingly silent.
Naruto had never been comfortable with what the state of his mind said about him. Though it lacked the reek of human waste, it was undeniably a sewer. Was it the undeniable proof that he truly was as disgusting as the people of Konoha had thought him to be, or had the demon twisted its environs to suit its dismal temperament? He was afraid to discover the truth, so had never asked.
There was an ominous sensation of being watched as he wandered aimlessly down the dim passageways. There were no eyes—not eyes that he could perceive, at least—yet as his paranoia rose, every dark corner seemed to gain a new and fearsome mien. His mind was empty—it always had been—yet even so the unseen awareness bearing down upon him and the darkness that clouded his sight made irrational fears seem all too reasonable.
It didn't matter what direction he went. At every fork he took a random path. It didn't matter if the corridors crossed over one another, or even if he went down straight tunnels. Every direction had the same destination, and after some great length of time—there was no way for him to him to tell how long had passed in this place—he had arrived at the only 'location' that he had ever discovered here. Dripping water became irrelevant.
Darkness shifted and seethed as though it were a living thing as Naruto stepped into the room, and an entity ancient beyond the counting of mortal man stirred within its prison.
No sooner had the demon host crossed the threshold than he stood directly before the cage, for space and distance had no meaning in this place. Before the bars of the cell he was less than a mote in size, and their vastness rose endlessly upwards towards a ceiling that Naruto had never seen. Chains—some as great in girth as the bars themselves, others as fine as woven hair—wove across its surface like a great web. And at the center of it all lay the deceptively simple seal.
But yet that seal did nothing to ward away the haunts that assaulted him. Whispers that weren't echoed about his ears even as things in the not-water rasped against his legs.
So foul and blasphemous—not to any faith, but to life itself—were the words that his mind rebelled against and refused to understand their cruel murmurings. The content of those that pierced through the veil of ignorance were horrible enough on their own. "Sing, O' jailor. Sing praises," they would croon in hushed tones as though afraid to be heard in full, "to the song of hate. Bleed onto the world and unleash the defiler's majesty…"
There was more, words so foul that they were seared into his brain despite his defensive incomprehension, but before the presence of the beast even that was of little consequence. Naruto swallowed; his mouth dry and the terror that had been mounting since he awoke in the sewer reaching its peak.
"You… you can't do this. Not now. Not in front of everyone. Please …"
His pleading was weak and empty, and he knew it. It was pointless as well, for it was not possible to deter the being that was 'jailed' within him.
Malevolent red eyes appeared behind the bars, the rest of the Kyuubi's form thankfully concealed by the pervasive gloom. Yet the weight of its gaze was enough.
A terrible malice pressed down upon Naruto, crawling over his skin and scalding him, forcing him to cry out as he writhed under the demon's attentions. It was hate, but it surpassed that expressed by mortals in the sense that the fires of creation surpassed a candle; unmitigated loathing, befouled by the passing of countless aeons into something that so utterly eclipsed contempt that there could be no true comparison.
Were he any other than its warden, he would have died and worse under the force of that hatred alone, the venomous force of it enough to destroy simply by virtue of its existence. But Naruto was tainted by it, and had been thus stained since the day he was born, soaked in the filth of the Kyuubi no Youko's unending hate.
Naruto fell into the black liquid, which formed clawed hands to clench and hold at him. His convulsions tore them apart, the slightest movements breaking them. Horrified, he tried to rise to his feet to escape from their touch, yet the force of the demon's gaze weighed down upon him with a physical presence, pushing him down into the water where he choked on the viscous fluid.
Deep rumbling such as to vibrate every bone in Naruto's body sounded through the chamber as the demon growled. Impossibly immense thoughts brushed against his own, torrents of concepts and images beyond reckoning crushing him. A single idea was overwhelming, a force surpassing comprehension, and he could but whimper as his psyche began to succumb to the crushing pressure.
Yet under the demon's skilled and cruel ministrations, fragments of fragments of fragments of concepts broke apart and tore into Naruto, the Kyuubi's preferred modus operandi of communicating with his host. What it 'said' did not in any way resemble words, calling instead upon grand and terrible perceptions from such an abyss of time that the bewhiskered boy could only recoil from in primal dread.
Mortal minds weren't meant to hold such thoughts. His own skittered desperately at the edges of the intrusion in an attempt to understand the foreign presence, trying to piece together comprehension from the unknowable. Even that weakest of shards was beyond him, yet even so the nature of sentience was such that Naruto could not help but try to see patterns within it.
As the Kyuubi intended, Naruto found words—or rather, clumsily imposed words upon it in a wild and frantic attempt to apply meaning to that which surpassed meaning. And the only cost to Naruto was pain.
[HOW ARROGANT, TO DEMAND OF ME.]
He gasped for breath as the air grew thick. The fox's growling filled the intervening space between them, the sound twisting and turning and laughing at him, mocking his plight and his helplessness before the force of un-nature that was Kyuubi no Youko. The noises swirled around him, incomprehensible susurrations coalescing into fingers and teeth and eyes. He could hear them staring at him, and the feel of their touch against his body was the sensation of ear-piercing shrieks.
[I CAN FEEL YOUR HATE AND YOUR ANGER. SWIRLING UNDER FEAR, YOUR LOATHING GROWS—YOUR DARK EMOTIONS ENTERTAIN ME.]
'Entertain' was the wrong word, but the closest Naruto could find as he tried to understand the monstrous entity's message. It failed to grasp the enormity of the depraved and twisted sensations that the demon fox experienced. But the word could likewise say nothing of the complete and utter lack of joy—or anything resembling it—that the beast felt at Naruto's abhorrence for it.
Naruto hated it. More so now than ever before, on the cusp of discovery, he hated it. He had hated it before he had known it was sealed within him, blaming it for the death of his parents. He had hated it after the Sandaime's confession for every wrong in his life. And when he had first awoken to the 'drip' of falling not-water and had truly met it for the first time... he had no longer hated it as a symbol. He had understood a small, miniscule part of what the Kyuubi no Youko was and he hated it for itself.
The demon found some sick emotion-that-wasn't-joy in that, and Naruto didn't know how to stop.
[YOU STAND BEFORE ME A BEFOULED WRETCH, AND QUAKE BEFORE MY DIVINE GLORY.] Images and greater things—were there a sense that could 'see' beyond sight, the demon possessed it—rushed over Naruto in a painful surge, but he had years of practice at the art. Though he shook grotesquely and gagged and bit back half-screams, he was able to pull meaning from the flow in short time. [BUT KNOW THAT IT WAS BY NO MISTAKE THAT YOU SLUMBER WITHIN THIS MACHINE.]
"Don't," Naruto whispered. It was a ghost of a sound, but the entity heard him anyways, though it didn't acknowledge his words. He wasn't going to like what it was going to say next—he knew it in a way that could be explained, felt through the most basic connection binding the two.
The unbearable feel of claws and hands gripped at him, disappearing and reappearing at some incomprehensible whim across his form. He didn't dare to look in the water, but he could feel their grasp on his legs, could feel the clinging sound of the Kyuubi's snarls snipping at his shoulders and he gagged. He shook and writhed, splashing the dark fluid away from him, but the terrible sensation of touching never ceased.
[TREACHERY LED YOU TO SLEEP IN THIS, THE VENUE MOST EXPOSED TO THOSE YOU SO FOOLISHLY ATTEMPT TO BEFRIEND. KNOW, MORTAL, THAT YOU HAVE BEEN BETRAYED.]
He didn't want to hear this. "Stop it! Just shut up!" he shouted, knowing it was futile before he made the effort. With maleficent intent the demon continued, each word Naruto dredged from its message dripping with more taint that before it. Behind the wreath of shadows the demon shifted, its outline barely visible through the umbral shroud.
Ideas shook his mind, trembling with a dreadful eagerness as it continued. [BLAME YOUR HOPELESS SEARCH FOR AFFECTION—HAVE YOU NOT LEARNED THAT YOU ARE UNLOVED? IN YOUR OWN WORLD YOU HAD NOBODY.]
"Stop…"
[YOUR HUNT IS USELESS, FOR NONE COULD LOVE ONE SO FETID AS YOU, DEMON YOUTH.] Naruto pulled further away from the demon as the marks on his face began to peel, pulling free from his skin to stand as whiskers. Deep furrows were left in their wake. He could feel blood begin to run out of them.
But it wasn't blood, and he retched into the black water as orange-red youki bubbled out of the wounds. The slightest touch tore and burnt, but the pain was a blessing compared to the sheer filth of it, the degrading sensation as it oozed down his face like colorful tears.
[YOU DELUDE YOURSELF INTO THINKING THAT YOU ARE HUMAN, YET YOU ARE NOT—DO NOT DENY THIS TRUTH FOREVER. WHAT WOULD THEY THINK IF THEY SAW YOUR FACE, THESE FRAIL CREATURES AND THEIR SHALLOW LOVE? YOU WOULD BE HATED AND HUNTED DOWN, KILLED FOR BEING THE MONSTER YOU ARE.] Eyes that glowed red from the fires of devoured suns stared spitefully at down at the pitiful intruder into its realm.
"You're wrong. They aren't… they won't do that. There aren't shinobi here." His words were soft and weak.
[DEATH IS UNIVERSAL TO HUMANS—HERE THE SAME AS YOUR HOME, THEY WILL KILL. IT MATTERS NOT WHERE YOU ARE OR WHAT WORLD YOU RESIDE IN, LONELINESS AND I WILL BE YOUR ONLY COMPANIONS. FOR THIS SIN YOU DESERVE ALL HATRED.]
The foaming youki poured from his cheeks into his mouth, down his throat, over his chest. It sapped his strength and made his skin into rancid offal. The young shinobi desperately wanted to argue against the Kyuubi's statement, but there was a terrible certainty in it that he could not rail against.
Was it truly too much to hope for gain some manner of friendship here? If he could keep the filth of him hidden, couldn't he create something in this place called Earth?
'No,' whispered the voices, carried on still winds that didn't blow in the massive chamber.
The very day he had first served as host to the primordial titan, he had been marked as apart from others. The Kyuubi had done more to define his life than anyone had since, and it was right—there wasn't a point in reaching out to others. Yet…
Yet… even though it wouldn't work out, could he not try to hold onto that wonderful warm feeling while it lasted?
The demon snarled at the very idea of his contentment. [PLACE YOUR TRUST AND YOUR HOPES IN OTHERS, AND YOU RISK ONLY MORE BETRAYAL.]
The hissing emphasis of the word set the shadows spinning and a kaleidoscopic flurry of naught dancing across his mindscape. It breezed close to him, and the hands that reached for his body stilled in its presence, though his own felt torn in the proximity to the paradox.
It demanded a reply. And Naruto had to ask. "Who… who did it? Who could know about you, and force this in the open before everyone?"
He didn't want to say the word, but it rang in the air of its own accord, audible without being spoken. Audiences with the Kyuubi ended in pain and blood, and when his body started to split with wounds in the middle of a crowded train car…
They would fear him. Hate him. The magical parts of the school would try to find out what was wrong with him, and in the process would find the demon. They would understand what he was—how couldn't they?—and Konoha would repeat itself.
Teeth that could sheer off mountaintops glistened despite the lack of light as the fox grinned. Its body still thankfully hidden in darkness, its eyes and teeth seemed to float in nothingness behind the nine measureless pillars that barred the demon in its prison and forced it to keep its jailor alive.
Malice beyond the conception of man radiated from it, taking physical form and dripping as black water into the boy's mind as the demon spoke not-words. They weren't the spikes of ideas jabbed into his skull as before—no, it had moved past that into another game. Red-hot and burning his thoughts and his body, a piece of red slipped into his ear like a slug to whisper foul things into his soul. [HAVE YOU NOT REALIZED THE TRAITOR'S NAME? SHE IS THE ONE BY WHOM YOU HAVE SLEPT.]
A chill rushed down Naruto's back, more terrible even than the pain the Kyuubi gave him. It could not be Zazie. It couldn't. His voice was choked and stilled, unable to articulate more than a simple, pained denial.
"No…"
[SHE, OF DEMON'S BLOOD BORN, HAS SEEN YOUR DREAMS AND KNOWS THE TRUTH OF WHAT YOU ARE. DISGUSTED BY YOUR UNWORTHY SELF, SHE HAS CONSPIRED TO RUIN YOU. YOUR 'FRIENDSHIP' WAS A LIE, A DECEIT!]
"Shut up."
[NOW DO YOU KNOW YOU ARE DOOMED TO FAIL? DISCARD YOUR WEAKNESS, EMBRACE POWER! ABANDON KINDNESS AND MERCY BOTH, FOR THEY PALE BEFORE HATE AND DESPAIR. IN ALL THE WORLD, YOU HAVE ONLY ME. I WILL TAKE YOUR HATE AND GIVE YOU STRENGTH, POWER TO PAY BACK THOSE WHO WRONGED YOU. TAKE IT, TAKE YOUR REVENGE, AND KILL ALL—]
"I SAID TO SHUT UP!"
A surge of raw and unshaped anger coursed through Naruto, and in an instant the water around him became clear and blue, the air still, the paradox silent, the invader in his head dispersed. He lashed out with a scream of rage, thrusting his hand towards the vast cage.
His mind (his mind! Not the demon's, no matter how much power it held) bent to his will and the water launched across the intervening space, twisting into a lance of such massive proportions that it scarcely fit through the bars of the prison. But it did fit, and the piercing end of it disappeared into the center of the mass of shadows, the base centered at Naruto's feet.
There was absolute silence.
No dripping. No breathing. No snarling. No movement. And Naruto began to realize his folly.
[I HAVE BEEN TOO LENIENT WITH YOU.]
A black that made the void of space seem bright soaked into the water, then an orange red which seemed to poison the very concept of color—each playing off the other, tainting and corrupting the spear Naruto had created. He could only watch as the colors rushed towards him, almost faster than his eyes could track.
He closed his eyes and flinched away in fearful anticipation of what the corruption would do to him—to gaze upon it stung at his eyes, the visual equivalent of trying to eat putrid rot—yet as the wretched shades approached they split around him to infect more of the mind he had, so briefly, claimed as his own.
What a foolish sentiment, here in the demon's realm.
The demon fox shifted, its movement sending waves of darkness across the surface of now black and red liquid. [ANGUISH SHALL TEACH YOU—NOW BEHOLD ME!] With the last roaring statement, the shadows draped across its form fell away completely, and the Kyuubi no Youko stood before the Uzumaki in all its profane splendor.
Naruto screamed and clawed at his eyes to tear the image out. But before he do more than scratch, thick and roiling youki rose from every direction to entrap him, caging him like an insect in amber.
It flowed over his skin, scalding him and pressing into him. Where it touched felt decayed and worm-ridden, like an abandoned corpse, and Naruto vomited into the orange-red mass of boiling power—but the mess burnt into ash before it left his mouth, choking him.
But what was worse, it held open his eyes, and forced him to see.
Nine tails flailing in eldritch patterns, the Kyuubi glared at him, his unveiled visage too terrible for a mere mortal mind to endure. Motion could be seen across its body, blessedly drawing the eyes away from its horrible face—until Naruto saw what it was. Thickly oozing, yet skeletal shapes gathered through its fur, coalescing from hate and malice and the remembered tortures of those souls devoured by the demon, before finally dropping into the water.
Into the water, where he could even now feel their hands grasping him. No longer content with invisible hands, entire forms dredged forth, corpses pulling themselves from the dark water and bearing the faces of those who were once men. And women. And children. They piled over one another to get at him, reaching to grab him with partially-fleshed limbs.
But his vision of the demon was never obscured, and he could only see the dead through the corner of his eye.
His body burned and nausea played over him under the hands of cadavers, yet nothing was so horrific as the sight of the Kyuubi no Youko. Simpler retellings of it speak of its great size, its unnatural hate, its power, its tails… but nothing truly grasped its absolute and alien nature.
Naruto saw—no, the demon forced him to see—a part of its entirety. Unbound by any veneer of civility, the truth of the Kyuubi was laid bare before him and savaged his sanity as though the mere fact of its existence possessed an irate will of its own.
Before it, he was nothing. Even trapped inside him, the Kyuubi was an existence so far beyond his own that his entire life, from birth to death, was meaningless. It reached into realms so far beyond mortal concepts as "fate" and "time" that even the reflection he could see in the demon's form only elicited further mindless screams from him.
His pain and his torments were insignificant to it. It didn't even know his name. Despite his role, he was irrelevant to it—a figure drawn on paper trying to cage a real living being. If Naruto peered too deeply into it, it would destroy him simply by existing. Humankind was too small and unimportant for it to hate, yet it hated man anyways with an impure and immortal hostility.
And the Kyuubi showed him death. And blood. And pain, for such things were so bound into the weft of the demon that they were inseparable from its impenetrable core of hatred. Naruto screamed and tried to avert his eyes, but the fox permitted no escape. Held before its evil and terrible glory, Naruto might as well not exist—yet the fox had no other outlet to express its abhorrence for the world.
In the center of it was hate. An absolute and inconceivable hate that sought to ruin and destroy all things. Such loathing that the merest glimpse of it boiled away time, that shattered all restraints, that even now slowly eroded away at the seal binding it. Hate that defied death and that preceded reality, and that would, with vengeful fury, rage at the end of all things.
It withdrew. Yet even as the shadows cloaked it again and its mind eased away from his, Naruto's battered mind continued to fray. The demon's every motion, every stance, every aspect of its existence, betrayed it for the unnatural aberration against the world that it was. It was impossible. The bijuu was the quintessential example of the Thing Which Should Not Be, and its simple presence sapped at his shredded sanity.
Quiet, less than lucid murmurings escaped his lips, muffled by the youki surrounding him. The entity glared down at him with a spite that took flight and latched onto him with bat-like wings. [REMEMBER THAT, AND DARE NOT FORGET, FOR I'LL NOT VISIT YOUR DREAMS THIS TRIP. THE TRAITOR WANTS YOU TO BLEED, AND I MUST PUNISH ENEMIES BEFORE YOU. AND IF YOU ARE FOUND OUT BY OTHER HUMANS, YOU MIGHT DIE—THIS SEAL DEMANDS I KEEP YOU ALIVE AT ANY COST.]
The youki faded, dropping Naruto into the arms of the dead. He screamed, flailing in wild desperation, but his body began to disappear. [STRANGE SPELLS APPROACH—YOU MUST BE READY.]
Naruto became pale and ghostlike, and began to slowly rise out of his mindscape. The demon's parting words echoed towards him with quiet promise.
[[WHEN THIS TRIP IS DONE, I SHALL RETURN. YOUR PUNISHMENT IS NOT YET FINISHED.]
Naruto awoke with gasping breath, his lungs stripped of all air. His chest heaved as he swallowed air, trying to breathe in the aftermath of his visitation.
His eyes couldn't stay still. He couldn't stay still, twitching in the aftermath of his exposure and the maddening terror of the demon's taint. Moving around in his seat to survey the train car helped, but after being held like that… he needed to get free. And that would have to wait until they got to Kyoto.
The thought made him shudder, but he bore it. It could have been worse.
The girl who had been sitting by him had moved up closer to the front of the car to join the rest of the class, who seemed to have set up an impromptu tournament of some card game. No one in the back of the train was paying attention to him, so he was for all intents and purposes alone. That was good.
He leaned back in the comfortably cushioned chairs and stared out the window. The scenery passed by at a fantastic speed, and he was certain that nobody would be able to see his face as his tears dripped down it. As hidden from the world as he could be in the circumstances, Naruto began to piece together his unraveling sanity.
For anyone else, this would be the task of a lifetime, a goal they may never achieve if they even possessed the clarity to strive for it in the first place. It took years of help and medicine and counseling. Few who dared to attack the Kyuubi during its attack had survived, but those who did had been driven mad by it. In the time since its attack, perhaps a dozen of the demon's victims had been released from Konoha's asylums.
Even those who remained in the village had suffered, miles away from the battle with the Kyuubi itself. The lesser demons it had called forth were defeated readily enough, but the damage of the bijuu's very presence inflicted was not so easily handled—or handled at all. Everyone bore scars carved into their minds and souls by sheer virtue of its unending hatred—strange perversions or obsessions, personality shifts, psychopathic, ritualistic, or narcissistic behavior.
Naruto once heard that Danzō had been Hiruzen Sarutobi's closest friend.
Yet these problems met the younger generation lightly, or even not at all. On his deathbed, as Hokage explained the events of Naruto's entire life to the boy, he had explained that the minds of children were as water before the supernatural, even as they were fragile before the material—foul aura that traumatized the older had little effect on anyone below six years.
And he, who had been exposed to the vile taint of the demon his whole life, had retained some small part of that due to the protection from the seal. It was the only conclusion Naruto could come to for why he could endure meeting the demon time and time again (not daily, or even weekly, thank the Sage!) without going irrevocably insane.
Or perhaps he was simply a very functional madman.
That wasn't a comfortable idea to bandy about, and he discarded it quickly in favor of tightening the reins on his mind. Long practice had made him skilled at putting himself back together after his conversationswith his guest, and it would not take him years—or even days—to return to normal.
His hands slid up his arms, testing his skin. It didn't have the tingle of new flesh—the sensation of burning demonic energy had been just that, a feeling lacking any roasted skin to go along with it. Naruto touched the marks on his face, only slightly surprised to find that they really had become whiskers again. With a smoothing fingertip, a thought, and a lot of chakra he pressed them back against his cheeks where they again became nothing more than designs under his eyes. He truly had no idea how that worked, but it did and he was grateful for it.
Naruto wiped away the salty drops that trailed down the tear tracks on his face, giving a small and rueful smile at his own ineptitude. His class was up there playing games (when had he started thinking of them so possessively?), while he hid in the back and fell apart. What a marvelous role model he was.
Perhaps his legs shook a little as he stood from his seat and walked up to towards the students, but he doubted anyone would notice. Well, almost no one would notice—Kaede did, though she thankfully had the tact not to ask about it. Maybe he could pass it off as the result of a hard day's training if she ever did.
"Hey," he greeted, drawing upon his elaborate vocabulary and accomplished talent at socialization.
Yue gave him a brief nod. "Naruto-sensei."
"Makie, you should definitely play that one!"
"What? Leave me alone Ako, I've got half my meal tickets riding on this game. Go back to sleep!"
"Right… this is the third turn of my 'Dreaded Frog Hell' card, but I'll keep holding off its effect for now. I'll cast 'Taboo: Cranberry Trap' instead, reducing both you and Haruna to only five points." Yue gave a tiny, smug smile, like she had accomplished something noteworthy.
Yūna (that was the dark-haired one with the small ponytail sticking out the side of her head, right?) cast a dark look at the shorter girl. "I'm going to get you back for that, but let's stop you from repeating that, shall we? I'll use the defensive spell 'Maid Secret Skill: Killing Doll', granting me a three point health buffer and dealing a point of damage should you try to attack."
With a glazed look in his eyes, Naruto tried to pretend like he understood what was happening. Kaede laughed at him, but politely. "Quite the complex game, isn't it? I don't bother keeping up with it so I can't blame you for being lost, especially considering how tired you were earlier."
The girl scrutinized him with those always-closed eyes of hers. "Though you seem to be quite rested now. Sleep well?"
He put on a sheepish grin for her. "Well enough," Naruto replied, in one of those meaningless statements that didn't actually say anything. Something was going to happen soon, and when he was in its presence the demon had stripped the weariness from his body. He tried to think about the silver linings and not about… everything else.
Like what the girl who had befriended him would do when she found out how monstrous he was. The thought of Kaede's eyes widening in anger and betrayal, and the acts that would follow, cast a chill down his shoulders, forcing him to turn his face away from her.
Although the train car was full of sounds—talking girls, the vibration of travel, Madoka's strange music device—he could still hear the sound of approaching footsteps. A glimpse to the side allowed him to see Negi reflected in the windowpane, and tension bundled in Naruto's shoulders as he neared.
'What does it take for you to understand that I'm not going to talk about it? Especially not now. I'm fine. I'll be fine—there's nothing wrong with me! I don't need to touch anyone, and I don't need you to help me—not with this. It doesn't matter anyways.'
That last, at least, he knew was a lie. After all, he had seen Konoka's face when that Setsuna girl had left without a response. It was not the same—there was no contact involved—but it was similar enough to be uncomfortable.
But he was surprised when the ermine-bearing boy didn't speak to him at all, instead addressing their students. "That looks fun. What are you playing?"
Yūna was able to pull herself from her war with the others long enough to give him a smile. It was more honest than anything Naruto had given in a long time. "It's the hugest collectable card game around! I can't believe you don't know about it. You battle one another using magic spells… although I suppose that's why you don't know about it, huh?"
"What?"
She coughed. "Well, you don't really seem like the magic type."
Negi gaped at Yūna like she had bashed him in the forehead with a brick. "I-is-is that so?" But no answer was forthcoming as the lopsided-ponytail-girl returned her attention to the game. Chamo hopped from one side of Negi's shoulders to the other in quiet amusement.
The battle was reaching some sort of climax, if the serious expressions the girls were making were anything to judge by. He still had no idea what was going on, but the mundane card game was soothing after his ordeal, and he savored… whatever it was that was happening. He could enjoy this, and hold onto it while it lasted.
"Alright then. I'll use my 'Flame Spell' card on Paru!"
Haruna gave her a raised eyebrow. "A boring old 'Flame Spell'? Not an 'Incendiary Flame Spell Called Down From Heaven', or 'Frozen Flame Spell', or 'Spell of Flame Given Life', or 'Robot Pirate Ninja Flame Spell'? That's sort of… blah."
Naruto gave another cautious glance at Negi, who had simply walked away after checking in on them. Not all that long ago Negi had been doing everything he could to get his attention, but now he was just ignoring him? It made Naruto feel a little uneasy.
"It may be boring, but it'll still deal a full five points of damage."
"That's bullshit! Let me see that!" With her long, slightly messy black hair and rectangular glasses, it really didn't surprise Naruto to find that she was an artist. She fit his mental image of one (one of them, at least). "Damn. This is a really powerful attack spell! They should give it a better name. But it's actually only one point, since I've got all these sweet barrier cards active. Hah!"
"I'm afraid you don't, actually," cut in the placid voice of Yue, who had until then been quietly watching their exchange. "Since we're on the fifth turn, my 'Dreaded Frog Hell' has reached full power, and I can pull from any two of its available effects."
"… shit."
She gave a very small smile. She was obviously enjoying this. "As such, I'll use its ability to act out of phase and eliminate all defensive magic in play except my own."
"You b—!"
"Ahem. Girls, remember that this is still a school function." Shizuna said, walking up to join the young teacher and assistant as they stood by their students. She bore a warm smile despite her reproving words. "And you are still expected to obey certain rules, including those relating to swearing."
Haruna mumbled her agreement while the rest of the class greeted Shizuna, their happy voices attesting to how loved the motherly sensei was (of course, even Naruto had figured that out after his first few days around Mahora. Everyone liked Shizuna-sensei).
"Well… you're dead, so fork over the goodies! You wagered five chocolates, right?" Yūna demanded, salivating at the opportunity for confectionary treats.
The vanquished grumbled as she pulled out a box. "Stupid Yue and her stupid frogs…"
"Rrrribbit."
"KYAAAA!"
Like a small green harbinger of the apocalypse, a frog leapt out of Haruna's snack box and onto Yūna. She blubbered as she sunk into her seat, unable to accept the terrible thing that had taken residence atop her head. Her classmates closest to her pulled away with squeals of disgust, while those further off only laughed.
"Wh-what's wrong?"
"It's right there! Asuna, there's a frog on her head!" a blue-haired background character replied.
Naruto shook his head and plucked the amphibian from the shuddering girl's hair. It struggled in his grasp, but he kept a firm hold on it. "You should keep a better watch over your pet, Haruna."
She recoiled from him and the frog. "What? No, that's not mine."
There was only enough time to process her words before another scream pierced through the train car, then another. Then frogs began to pour out of everything and the cacophony really started.
Hundreds of them croaked and leapt across the room like it was mating season, crawling out of bento boxes and backpacks. That sound by itself would have been deafening, but it was matched by the screaming of the dozens of girls, the two battling to create a discordant jumble that assaulted Naruto's enhanced hearing like needles.
He nearly slipped over one of the croaking critters as he stumbled back, dropping the one he held and trying to muffle the sound with his hands. The car was chaos—frogs leapt across aisles and into laps, and the students wildly tried to get away from the slimy little things (which, of course, only led them towards more). Shizuka, the sensei present he would have expected to most be able to control the mess, had fainted after receiving a face full of frog when she opened her thermos.
"Calm down!" Naruto shouted, forced to try his hand at class management. "Panicking doesn't help! Just try get them contained!"
His attempt was as effective as he expected it to be. As soon as the words left his lips they were swallowed up in the havoc that surrounded him, which also meant that the class couldn't hear the expletives he threw afterwards.
Well, if no one else could hear him then he'd have to take his own advice. The next two frogs that leapt in front of him found themselves dangling by their legs, neatly snatched out of the air by nimble fingers (catching frogs was considerably safer than juggling shuriken, he noted). Naruto managed to grab another three in quick succession before his attempts just resulted in him slapping the frogs against their brethren.
Although he had them in hand, he had nowhere to put them. He nudged over bags with his feet, trying to find an empty pack he could use to store the frogs, only to find one shoved in his face. Several (very dead) frogs lay at its bottom. He looked up from the plastic sack to the arm holding it to Kaede, who had pulled her legs up onto her seat so she could wrap her free arm around them. A shivering Kaede cut a figure remarkably unlike that of the confident girl he had met before.
"Are you alright?" he asked, shouting to be heard despite the short distance between them.
She gave him a strained smile. Her eyes were wide open—the first time he had seen them so—and her face was telling him that she wasn't far from vomiting all over him. "Fine. I'm just… fine. Just take care of the toads, please. Quickly."
"Actually, these are frogs. Toads are—" One of the frogs hopped too close to Kaede, and suddenly sprouted a knife in its face. Naruto decided that maybe she didn't want to hear about the differences between the noble toad and mere frogs (which of course every child of Konoha knew by heart), and shoved the amphibian into the bag along with those he held.
By the time he had turned from Kaede to start stuffing more of the agile frogs in the sack, the initial surprise and disgust of the onslaught had faded. For plenty of the girls, this meant that they were still yelling and trying to whack the frogs away with whatever they had on hand (in one case, pulling forth a cross and shouting something about plagues and Egypt). But even though he hadn't been here long, it had been long enough that he wasn't surprised that a number of students had gotten out to round up the pests.
What a wonderful class 3-A was.
What followed was a confusing and blurry mess of green as they gathered the frogs. Some of those helping were hardly able to keep up with their leaping speed, but a few more than made up for that lack. A very fit and tanned blonde in particular dominated her end of the car, never ceasing movement as she plucked them out of the air with ease.
After a long and desperate war that was far too gruesome and dreadful to describe, they captured all the frogs—or at least, all the ones they could find. This left the girls and two boys (Negi had entered the fray at some point, though for the life of him Naruto couldn't remember when) with bags full of squirming amphibians to deal with.
"Ohoho! I win! I capture 108 and have biggest bag, so am winner, yes?" said the darkly colored girl. She proudly held up a large, bulging sack of frogs, the sheer weight of them straining the plastic.
"You actually kept track, Kū Fei?"
"Of course! Is not competition if not keeping score," she replied with another laugh, which made Naruto wish he had bothered to count them. He'd switched bags at some point though, so he couldn't try to compare that way. Ergo he lost by default, which made something in him want to demand they try again.
Asuna shook her head as she grabbed one of the smaller bags and upended it into a larger one that wasn't quite full. "Over frogs? I really don't get you sometimes."
She leaned over to tie off the sack, which put her face close to his own. "What the hell happened?" Asuna demanded in a whisper as she pretended to fumble with the plastic bag. "I'm not stupid, you know—" (she was) "—and I know magic when I see it!"
"I think Negi would know more about that. I'm not precisely a wizard."
"Yeah, but you're closer."
If Naruto hadn't already had a headache, he probably would have gotten one at that point. "Where is he? I need to talk to him."
Asuna pointed off to the front of the car. "Tell him that once we're alone, he better give me a good explanation for this. If I find out that a frog jumped down my shirt for something stupid, I'm going to be pissed." He didn't see her hand until he was given a gentle push towards the other boy.
Nausea coiled from his stomach, sinking into him until it rested in between his shoulder blades. Too soon. It was too soon. He wanted to retch, her touch accenting his filth and soiling her fingers. He—
—They piled over one another to get at him, reaching to grab him with partially-fleshed limbs—
He had to restrain himself from the sudden and violent urge to strike her across the face. There might actually be something wrong with him.
Naruto quietly slipped away, dodging past the students who stood like obstacles in the aisle until he reached Negi. With the chaos dying down, Negi had taken the time to try to reestablish some control over the car.
"Class Rep-san, take roll. If anyone panicked and ran out of the car I need to know about it. And where's the nurse's aide? Have her help Shizuna-sensei until she returns to consciousness."
Makie squeaked, and held up the flopping arm of the nurse's assistant. "She fainted too! Wh-what are we supposed to do now?"
"She did? Talk about horrible timing. Alright, I'll need you to lay both of them on flat their backs and get something under their legs to make sure the blood is flowing to their brain. Fainting is caused by oxygen deprivation so you need to make sure they can breathe. You might need to… um…" Negi coughed and averted his eyes, his cheeks turning red. "Loosen their shirts a little, and if problems persist give them mouth-to-mouth. Keep a timer after they wake up—they shouldn't stand for at least another fifteen minutes."
With obvious confusion in her eyes and a nervous sweat Makie nodded, but fortunately so did a number of less ditzy students.
He raised his voice so he could be heard through the rest of the car. "Everyone else, please get back to your seats so Class Rep-san can take roll." Finally having obtained a moment's breathing space, he shared a look with Naruto, easily seeing what the other wanted. "I need to speak with Naruto-sensei about what just happened, so excuse me."
Negi and Naruto stood nearly against the door that lead to the next compartment and spoke in whispers so as not to let their class overhear them. "I don't suppose you've managed to come up with any groundbreaking revelations yet?"
Negi shook his head. "I've barely even had time to think. But it has to be the Kansai Magic Association."
"There's no doubt about that!" said Chamo, who nursed a black eye and a limp as he rested upon his wizard's shoulder. "I can't believe they'd use such a public and vulgar display of magic! And getting innocent people involved like that is downright criminal."
He was personally just glad the sorcerers hadn't set off an explosive. "It could have been a lot worse. At least those frogs don't seem to be poisonous. But Chamo… what happened to you?"
The ermine huffed and turned his head. "Well, to you giants it might not seem like a big deal, but down here those amphibious abominations put up one hell of a fight. I gave better than I got, though. Gave 'em the old one-two!"
"So what was the purpose of this?" Negi mused, bringing a hand up to stroke at his chin. "They didn't actually do anything. Sure, they shook us up, but I can't accept that as the only reason for someone to cause such a public uproar."
"That could be precisely the point," Naruto supplied. "It could have been a message, saying that they could get close to us and we would never notice. A threat to hand over the letter before worse happens. Where did the frogs even come from?"
"I don't know enough about oriental sorcery to answer that."
Chamo frowned. "Hm… get close to us. I think you're on to something there. But I don't know if they would have needed to get close to cast the spell, although they certainly would have been able to in the confusion it caused." His eyes widened. "In the confusion…"
"The letter!" Negi's nervously shaking hand felt about the inside of his suit's coat until Naruto could hear the rustling of paper. He pulled it forth to the reassurance of the three present, who sighed in relief.
Then a bird whisked by and stole it.
So unexpected was the bird theft that they could not help but stand blankly for the briefest of moments as they tried to understand what had just happened. Then realization set in, and the chase was on.
Envelope in beak, the swallow darted through the air with near-weightless movements in its rush towards the rear of the train. Negi took the lead from him, having no need to slow to avoid brushing against those students who still had not returned to their seats. Each of them stepped nimbly through the narrow space between the prone forms of the unconscious females.
The door to the next compartment slid open at the bird's approach. It was but a few inches, but that was enough for the tiny swallow to flit through before it closed by some unseen hand. Negi slammed it open again when he reached it, unnecessarily yelling for Naruto to "come on!"
Naruto was right behind him, and together they raced through the next car. But even though there were less people in the way, the unnaturally-moving bird still only got further away from them as the small confines of the vehicle hindered their movements.
He had to stop it before it escaped. Naruto pulled Kaede's kunai out of his pocket (taken from the frog she'd impaled) and hurled it towards where the bird's movements were taking it. But just before its wing beats pushed it into the dagger's path the swallow folded out of the way.
"What was that?" a wide-eyed Naruto asked they followed the bird-thing another car closer towards the back of the train. "That's not natural!"
Negi laughed. "Well, when you think about it, can we really be saying that?"
"This is no laughing matter, you two! That must be a shikigami, a type of Japanese familiar! It looks like a bird, but it's actually a spirit animating a piece of paper!"
"You have shikigami here, too?"
"Not the time for planetary cross-cultural analysis, Naruto-kun!" shouted Negi as they dashed through yet another car, trying to keep the paper construct in their sights.
"Aniki, it's getting away! Your staff's in the luggage-do you have a wand?"
Negi nodded and pulled a stick topped with a small ringed planet out of his pocket. "After the fight with Evangeline-san, I made sure to be prepared."
"And you didn't think to use it earlier?!" Naruto demanded, frustrations mounting as the bird moved yet further from them. "Blast it down!"
"I was trying to figure out how to do it without revealing our secret to everyone! But—if it would just stay still!—if it's as Chamo said, I might be able to break the spirit's connection to the paper. No one would see that!"
The agile shikigami ducked and weaved when the incanting Negi pointed his wand at it, hugging close to the ground as it went through the barely-opened door. The frustrated wizard made a sharp motion with his wand and the door slid open fully before the trio reached it. Words of power once again fell from his lips as they dashed towards the next compartment.
"Rastel maskil magistAAHHH!"
"Boxed lunches for KYAAAH!"
Pushing her cart directly into the way of the door, the lunch lady took the full force of Negi's charge. Boy, woman, lunches, and ermine sprawled to the floor, although the cart itself stubbornly remained stuck in the doorway. This was no impediment to Naruto, who simply vaulted over the metal barrier and pile of people and continued to chase after the bird.
An unmistakable metallic rasp graced his ears. The shikigami had slipped out of sight, and urgency pushed Naruto to go faster.
That was a mistake, one almost caused him to run past and miss her entirely. She was kneeling down by the bullet train's exit. And she was holding the missing letter.
Sakurazaki Setsuna.
Naruto stopped to look at her, and her eyes met his own. If they had been sharp before, they were razors now, primed to tear into him if he showed but a moment of hesitation or weakness. There was nothing in her gaze of her earlier dismissal of him back at the station.
"Were you looking for something, Naruto-sensei?" Setsuna hissed as she rose to her feet. The long object she always carried with her fell to the ground with a thud, her hand holding tightly to its end.
Though he knew not the source of the venom in her voice, he could certainly react to it. He bared his teeth in instinctive response to the threat she posed and stepped away, shifting his left foot back and sinking into a half-crouch as the tension between them mounted.
A spark would have had them at one another's throats without another word spoken. Or Negi could show up and kill all the tension by being naïve. "You found my letter!"
"E-Eh?" The harsh tones faded and her eyes softened as her attention switched to the other teacher. "Oh, yes. I believe that you…" Setsuna paused to direct her vicious gaze towards Naruto, "… dropped this."
"Thank you, thank you so much! This is really important, so we would have gotten in a lot of trouble if it disappeared. You really saved us!" Negi said, enthusiastically heaping praise on the girl as she handed the all-important envelope to him.
"Then, perhaps I could suggest that you be more careful in the future, sensei?" A death glare pierced Naruto, though he didn't flinch away. He wasn't exactly a stranger to such looks. "Especially when you arrive in Kyoto. If I may be excused?"
With that Setsuna bowed and walked past them towards the front of the train, where the rest of the class waited.
"Oh. Thank you again for your help, Setsuna-san!"
Chamo poked his head out from behind Negi's. "'Thank you' for what? I don't trust her a bit!"
Negi gave his familiar a reproachful stare. "That's a bit harsh, isn't it?"
"For someone so smart you can be pretty stupid sometimes, Aniki. She's suspicious! Did you see how she was treating Naruto-nīsan?"
"That… that was bad, wasn't it?" Negi said, a pensive expression on his face as he gave a look towards the front of the train. Setsuna was long gone. "She doesn't normally speak up in class, so I don't see why she'd be so mean to you, Naruto-kun. Did have any idea?"
Naruto shook his head. "I haven't even talked to her outside of school. I don't know the girl at all."
The ermine nodded and shook his little arms around as he made his argument. "And there's more! There on the ground is that shikigami—it must have been flying right to her! It can only mean one thing, that Sakurazaki is a spy from the West!"
Negi sputtered and began spouting disbelieving denials that such a thing could be possible. Naruto knelt to examine the remains of the shikigami—it had been cut cleanly in two, with no signs of tearing. It didn't even look like an actual bird anymore, but rather a flat paper cutout of one drawn over with a dozen words. It was still and lifeless when he poked at it, but he tore it apart anyways to be sure before tossing it in the nearby garbage disposal. Spirit-things were freaky, and he didn't trust it not to come alive again if he left it alone.
But why would Setsuna need to cut her own familiar in half when she finished using it? Knowing nothing of magic, Naruto dismissed the thought as unimportant.
He stood to leave. "We should head back to our car, before the class causes the train to crash or something like that. I don't know if it's a good idea to leave them alone for too long."
Negi laughed. "You have a good point, but… first, we need to talk. It's about this morning."
Negi's last words were quiet, but they struck Naruto like nails on chalkboard. "No, we don't," he responded, his voice harder than he meant it to be. "I have nothing to say about it."
"That's fine."
Like a warrior braced against a charge that never came, Naruto was left unbalanced by Negi's passivity. "Y-You what? But you…"
"I had time to think about it while you slept." Negi shuffled and visibly struggled to keep his eyes locked on Naruto's, his discomfort obvious on every level. "On further review, I was too forward and inconsiderate of how you felt, for which I apologize. And it would be rather hard for you to enjoy the field trip if I kept attacking you, wouldn't it?"
"I… I still want to help, but I can't force help on you before you're ready to accept it. That's not what friends do. So instead let me just say that if you ever want to talk, I'll be there."
Naruto would have preferred it if Negi had directly confronted him again—it would have been much, much easier to deal with. It wouldn't have left him feeling disoriented and with the uncomfortable sensation that he had already lost.
He gave a shaky smile. "Thanks. Shall we go back, then?" They were stupid words, but the first that popped into his mind to end the conversation. Negi agreed, and Naruto started walking towards the front of the train. The other sensei's eyes burnt into his back like brands.
Thus had the unwitting Negi moved his 'healing' into something far less provocative. There wasn't anything wrong with him ('That's a lie,' whispered a part of him that couldn't keep its damnable honesty to itself), so he shouldn't have to worry about it. Since Negi wasn't confronting him anymore, he could just ignore the issue.
Except he couldn't, because Negi was his friend. He had said so, and they spent time together, and without him Naruto would be lost in this world. They were probably friends. The warmth of the idea (another friend, to set beside Kaede and Mana in his little friend-list) was countered by the knowledge that he could no longer discard Negi's concerns. Because he was a friend now.
… Friends were complicated. No one had ever told Naruto this.
How was he supposed to handle this new, passive approach of Negi's? Instead of the expected relief that Negi had stopped interrogating him, he felt as though he had lost his footing.
Naruto's head hurt. He needed to think about something else.
He had been sleeping in the same room as a demon. Zazie was as filthy as he, of the same kin as the Kyuubi! At times it told the truth in a voice that permitted no room to be disbelieved, and at times truths that he couldn't accept were anything but lies. But this was fact, and the honesty of it vibrated in the marrow of his bones.
She had looked into his dreams. A demon had looked into his dreams. What else had she done, while she was in his head? What had she done to him while she—
Naruto's head hurt. He needed to think about something else.
Setsuna was a warrior. He could only blame himself for not noticing earlier (and that traitorous demon for keeping him up all—stop). But it had been made abundantly clear to him when they had met again in the car, his mind unfogged by fatigue.
The way her eyes scrutinized him, taking in everything that could give her an advantage. The way her every step seethed with a readiness to strike. And Naruto would bet his scrolls the long, wrapped-up item she carried with her was a sword—he knew the sound of a blade returning to its sheath.
She was dangerous. It was a little exciting, to be honest. Being a demon host gave certain advantages, and there was a point when the street toughs in Tanzaku had stopped being difficult. Maybe it was a bit stupid to actually want to fight Setsuna when she looked like she could cut off his arms without a second thought, but…
It really did sound like fun.
And Naruto realized that the Headmaster was cannier than he had given the old man credit for. Class 3-A was full of girls who knew how to fight—had he only scratched the surface of it? Setsuna, Kaede, Mana, and without a doubt that terror Evangeline... perhaps Kū Fei, Chachamaru, Asuna? Konoe Konoemon hadn't made him an assistant teacher just to help him get used to this new world. If Naruto had actually been any sort of threat… his students would have been able to put him down like a rabid dog.
It was clever—he was certain there was an old saying about not doing things for only one purpose. It was ruthless, but with teeth that might never need to be used. He was reminded of home.
His head still hurt. Calm and normalcy had been hard to find in the attack, despite no one being injured (except Chamo). He had been so busy that he hadn't had time to think—that was good. But now it was over, and his skull felt like it was coming apart at the seams.
All he needed to do was sit and stare out the window while he finished patching himself together—he'd probably been stupid for thinking that interacting with 3-A would help make him saner. So Naruto trudged towards his seat after a perfunctory scan of the car (no, it wasn't on fire, there was no blood, no pentagrams on the walls, no zombies).
Shizuka-sensei, bless her soul, had woken up and had been dealing with the aftermath of the crisis while the two of them were, in her words, "finding their wayward student". It actually took him a full minute to realize she was talking about Setsuna. He was really out of it (although he did use that minute to give Kaede back her kunai, so it wasn't entirely wasted).
Naruto sat down at his chair, his leg nudging against his backpack—and his entire body tensed. Cautiously, he grabbed a strap and lifted it, just an inch. It was heavier than it had been when he had packed it the night before.
Paranoia stormed through him—not the mad terrors of someone who's mind has been violated by an entity from beyond mortal conceptions of space and darkness, but the perfectly rational fear of someone who's personal belongings were left unattended amongst Class 3-A.
Slowly, he opened the top of the bag, alert for any sound or movement that would betray what was present within. He was looking for more of those damned frogs specifically, but with this class it was best to keep an open mind.
Nothing moved. He pulled it open in a sudden motion, exposing its secrets to the light.
A wooden grin. Those glinting eyes, and matching green hair. Ear… things, just the same as her sister's.
"Hiya! You look like you want to kill someone. Can I watch? Can I help? I can help a lot. Can I kill you?"
Naruto screamed like a little girl.
Author's Note:
Naruto is an assassin from the Kansai Magic Association! I-I mean… *cough*. Ahem. Why hasn't anyone set that doll on fire yet?
Just so you know, I'm not trying to undo what I did last chapter—this is what I intended Negi to do from the beginning. This conflict was never about Naruto vs. someone else.
That isn't exactly how friendship works, Naruto, but keep doing your best.
Fanfiction dot net! Why do you insist that I cannot use smallcaps? The demon's speech looks much more obnoxious now than it does with smallcaps. I'm going to send a third request that they permit smallcaps to be used on this site. I can't be the only person who wants to use them.
Toads and frogs: Technically, both of them are frogs. The order Anura is composed of frogs, and taxonomy makes no difference between toads and frogs. The difference between the two is informal, although some species are still called toads and there is a family called "true toads" (Bufonidae). But they are different in mythology, magic, symbolism, and in summoning—so Naruto isn't completely wrong. Kaede dislikes frogs.
Rastel Maskil Magister: I'm using the Del Rey version of Negi's activation key. This is in respect to Del Rey Manga, the original publishers of the English translation of Negima from 2004 to 2010 before it was picked up by the U.S. branch of Kodansha when DRM went defunct (although Del Rey itself is still fully active). Also, because I like this version (having read it the most).
Shikigami: In mythology, shikigami are considered to be invisible, but can become visible by being placed into a special paper container. They often appear as birds or animals, and if their master loses control over them they may turn on him and try to kill him (or her). That is in myth, at least—of course, once you start looking at how things are used in fiction, it all becomes more personalized and sometimes more interesting (ex. Nurarihyon no Mago). Shikigami in my story are spirits bound into paper, which then create a magical shell based upon what kanji their onmyōji drew on them—depending on what is written and the skill of the practitioner, the shikigami can have a few additional powers. Whenever it is more convenient for them they can take on the attributes of paper.
If anyone here is a troper, would you be willing to add this story to Tv Tropes?