Chapter 21: Damona's secret past.
"Seriously what's the order of the cross?" Nate asked the mostly frozen yokai, "why'd Damona freak out over them?"
"T-the o-order i-is a s-society o-of e-exorcists," Swelterrier shivered, the thought of what he was doing shook him to the core… that and he was still pretty damn cold.
"A secret society of exorcists, wow and everyone was focused on the Illuminati," Nate said in surprise, "and what about Damona?"
"T-The O-Order w-was f-found on t-the B-belief D-demons held n-no p-p-place i-in the w-w-world," Swelterrier said, "I'm so dead… oh wait, I AM dead."
"Demons held no place," Nate repeated, his mind went back to the first time he'd spoken to Damona, "I wasn't hiding in there, I was trapped in there by some self-righteous monk."
"Swelterrier…" Nate began again, "the order didn't happen to have anything to do with the crank-a-kai, did they?"
Meanwhile, Damona was finally out of breath from her flee. Her mind was still in a frenzy, unpleasant memories flooded back to her. Images of burning buildings, men in robes, decades of dark and cold limbo flashed through her mind. The pain, the fear, it was too much for her to bare.
She collapsed to her knees as the same voice screamed in her head, over and over again, "DEMONS HOLD NO PLACE HERE!"
"No… It can't be happening again!" she said beginning to sob, "I was just freed…"
Above her, the elderly yokai grinned with malice.
"Well, Gin, looks like it's as good a time as ever," the gold haired yokai with white and red robes said.
"Seems so, Kin," he silver haired sister agreed.
Kin and Gin
Wicked
From her robe, Kin pulled a stone the size of her palm, decorated with a red swirl. She chucked it at the sky above her. Before gravity could take effect, it was struck by lightning, causing it to explode into red sparks.
Grey clouds began to rapidly swirl in the area the stone had been struck. The clouds swirled faster, and faster as a large metal spike descended from their center. The spike was followed by large, gold and silver cogs with began to fly into each other and begin to rotate. More and more of these cogs were added, until the spike had become a giant mechanical clock, though it lacked a face.
When the last of the gears were in place, the sisters began chanting, "Gold, Silver, shimmer, shimmer!"
They repeated this phrase as the clock's hands began rotating counter-clockwise, sparking with electricity as they increased in speed. The electricity began to spark around the spike in the center of the clock, though it didn't go unnoticed.
Hearing the thunder on an otherwise clear night, Damona looked to the sky in confusion, her eyes met with the gigantic machine. He face was one of confusion, that is until the lightning surged in the spike and struck her.
The half-demon squealed in agony, the lightning itself didn't hurt much, but the burning sensation and splitting headache it caused were brutile on the oni-princess. She felt herself involuntarily rise off the ground as the pain began to increase. She tried resisting the pull of the clock, but it was useless, her body felt like she was being dipped in lava. Her cries fell silent as she lost consciousness, the last thing she heard, were the unicent cackling of two figures.
The world began to fade back to her, as Damona struggled to open her eyes. When she finally forced them open, she was met with a familiar sight. The room she was currently in both looked and felt like she'd been there before. The walls were a deep purple, and covered in crood drawings of various oni. To her right a black dresser, on top of which was a childish looking lamp, the shade covered in many star-shaped holes.
At the opposite side of the room, a pile of various plushes could be seen. Some of them resembled kappa, nekomata, or kirin, while the biggest looked like a pink version of Gargaros, with chubby arms that ended in stubs, small black eyes, and no visible mouth. In the middle of the room was a black rug, on which was another plush that vaguely resembled a yellow snake yokai, but it had been thoroughly ripped open and was missing an eye, white stuffing surrounded it.
"My room?" Damona thought to herself, "It hasn't looked like this in years."
Trying to find reason for this odd look to her room, she began to float off of her bed, only to plummet to the floor a few seconds later, as if she could no longer master her own gravity. She attempted again, but was met with the same result.
The second time she dropped, she began to notice that everything in the room seemed much larger in comparison to her. She looked downward to see her attire had changed, instead of a black kimono, hers was a bright pink, with sleeves longer than her arms, around her neck was a black hood which seemed to be able to cover her entire torso, and if anything, she did in fact seem smaller.
"What the?" she froze in surprise at the sound of her own voice, it was a lot more high pitched, heck, she kinda sounded a bit like Falsina. Desperate to get to the bottom of this, she walked over to a mirror, which was in her room last time she saw it. What she saw looking back at her, shocked her, "I- I'm Damini!?"
Damini: B rank
Charming
"B-but, that doesn't make any sense!" she said examining her now child-like body. She couldn't have been Damini again, the only way yuki-onna regress to previous forms was if their glacial clip was taken, but she'd taken it off a week back and didn't regress, so what gives?
She reexamined the room, now that she thought of it, she was Damini the last time she saw her room look like this.
"What is going on?" the now young princess asked herself, she had a creeping suspicion, but she needed more evidence.
She went to the door and jiggled it open, on the other side were the familiar black and red halls of Oni Castle, decorated with many paintings depicting her father's nautical adventures. She carefully slipped out of her room, quietly walking down the left part of the hall. Taking in the scenery, everything looked as it did in her early days. Before Nate, before the Crank-a-kai, even before Damona as a yokai existed.
"It's like I never left," Damini thought to herself.
She was pulled out of her thoughts by a familiar voice echoing through the halls.
"I don't care what Rinne says, this is insane!" the voice of a woman said.
At the sound of her voice, Damini's eyes widened. She began running towards it, leading her to a much larger hallway. She looked to her right and saw her… her mother.
She was a dazzling Yuki-onna, with pitch-black hair, held in a ponytail by large, jagged Glacial clip designed to look like a snowflake. Her kimono was an elegant white, covered in blue dots which extended to her feat, a cut to give her leg room. Snow-like fluff surrounded both her neck and the bottom rim of her attire. As she usually was, she was reclined in the arms of a pure-white snow-golem with a bucket on his head, the only noticeable facial features were little red, dot-like eyes.
Upon closer inspection, Damini saw who her mother was speaking to. Another yokai from her clan, she recalled, but that was all she knew of him. His aquamarine hair was back in a messy top-knot, yet still covered a single one of his eyes, he wore ancient japanese attire that was mostly a deep blue, with a strip of red in the middle, wrapped around his neck, were two dragons make of purple smoke, both had three, beeding red eyes.
"Rinne is our leader, we must honor his orders," the yokai said.
"Look, I enjoy putting humanity in its place as much as the next yokai, but really, taking on Enma's army?" her mother replied, "that's a suicide mission. If it were back in the day, I might have rolled with it, but I am a mother now, I can't just abandon my babies to fight a losing battle."
The other yokai growled, "ever since you became Oni Queen you've been acting like this, you've begun to put your own desires over that of the clan's."
"Octy, honey, I have more in my afterlife now, not just a clan, but a family, I can't just leave on a whim," the Yuki-onna retorted. The other yokai began to say something else, but her focus was elsewhere as she had just spotted Damini, "speaking of which…"
He mother levitated out of her golem's arms and over to her, scooping the smaller yokai in a hug, "Hi, baby."
Damini felt an odd sensation, like being warm and cold at the same time. It was then she realise exactly what day this was… the last day she saw her mother. She would later be convinced by the leader of her clan to act in an assault on the army of Enma. they'd be severely outnumbered, and eventually brought down by two cadets by the names Arachnius and Toadel Dude. King Enma would charge them all with treason, and banish them to the deepest part of the infinite inferno.
Her thoughts were interrupted by her mother saying, "Mommy's gotta go, evidently your uncle Rinne has some crazy scheme cooked up."
The older Yuki-onna tried to let go, but Damini wouldn't let her, "No! Don't go!"
Her mother just sigh, before smiling at the small half-demon, "I know, you want me to stay here."
She kissed her daughter's forehead, "I'll be back before you know it, my little sugar demon."
Damini tried to hold on, but she slipped out of her grip. Her mother returned to the golem's arms, blowing her daughter a kiss as she and her associate began to leave the room.
Before she had the chance to run after them, Damini heard two voices chant, "GOLD, SILVER, SHIMMER, SHIMMER!"
Damini felt her form be lifted off the ground as she was pulled backward into a similar clock-like vortex to before. She felt herself be flung through a river of purple liquid, filled with cogs of gold and silver. In a flash of light and another headache, she awoke in a dark hallway, this time standing upright.
Hoping to get some kind of intel on her surroundings, she looked around, seeing many oni, including the Kabuki brothers and her massive cousins, the Terror Time Trio, all bowing.
"Princess Damini of the Oni," she heard her father's gruff voice and turn in his direction, he was on one knee and had a box in his left hand(no, he ain't proposing.), "you have reached the age where your power will begin to exceed all previous limit's you've been held to…"
"This one is obvious," Damini thought to herself, "this was my Glacial clip ceremony."
Plundros opened the box with two fingers, "To help you contain and control that power, is one of the greatest gift ye shall ever receive."
From the box, the oni king pulled a tiara made of purple crystals, "step forward, and claim your birthright."
Knowing how this ceremony went down the first time, she walked forward, bowing to her father once close enough, removing her hood as she did. The oni king settled the clip in her hair, causing it to glow a brilliant purple. Soon after, the glow engulfed the half-demon as her body and hair grew in length, her cloak wrapped around her body as the light died. When it fully faded, Damona was once again her normal self.
Before she had the chance to do anything else, she was sucked back into yet another vortex, though, no one seemed to notice.
"Wah, WHAT IS HAPPENING?!" she yelled rolling down the purple stream. In another flash of light, she was greeted with a lobby-sized play room, this time around she was sitting on a couch as a younger Falsina was playing with another yokai.
This yokai from the waist up, resembled a human child, save for the cat like eyes and a ears, she had short lilac hair was wearing a golden snake tiara and mummy wrappings on her torso and arms. From the waist down, there was the bottom half of a slim, black nekomata with golden tale flames. Damona remembered this brat all too well, "Cleocatra."
Cleocatra: C rank
Charming
"This is the day that Dad had a meeting with Basetnyan, and left me to babysit her little nuisance!" Damona thought with a scowl, she had seen Cleocatra on a number of occasions and the egyptian yokai made it her mission to screw with her afterlife, if Damona recalled correctly, This was the first of the many incidents.
The two younger yokai were currently playing with a couple of mermaid dolls, giggling as they made the two dolls kiss. If this had been the first time the oni-princess had witnessed this event, she would've found it cute and innocent… She knew better now.
Damona kept her eyes on Cleocatra, barely blinking, any minute that kid was gonna come over and take Damona's clip, than she'd end up chasing her around the room to get it back.
The egyptian hybrid set her toy down, and stood up, walking over to the elder Oni Princess. Damona kept her glare as the younger yokai approached. She wasn't surprised when Cleo said, "Your Tiara is pwetty."
"aw, thankyou!" a memory of her first reply played back, she was so dumb the first time, "yeah… so?"
"It's so sparklewy!" the half-cat said in amusement, "can I twy it on?"
"Oh, I'm sorry, but this tiara is only for me to wear," Damona forced herself not to scowl at her former naivety, she wouldn't make the same mistake twice, "yeah… no."
"Pwetty pwease?" Cleocatra gave her the puppy eyes.
"NO," Damona said sternly.
Cleocatra looked her strait in the eyes, then jumped up, grabbed the Glacial clip and took off running, giggling in her "sneakiness."
In a puff of smoke, the oni princess was once again Damini, and even angrier than the last time this happened. She took off after the egyptian yokai, determined to steal back her clip, all the while, Falsina giggled at her misfortune.
"Give it BACK!" Damini yelled trying to keep up, in this form, she had much smaller legs than Cleo did. The younger yokai stuck her tongue out in a mocking gesture and continued to run in a circle. Eventually, an idea came to Damini's mind.
She stopped dead in her tracks and tripped Cleo when she came around, causing her to fall on her face and drop the clip. Damini quickly ran over and grabbed it, but no sooner than she did, she felt the pull of the vortex yet again.
"ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?" she screamed as she was sucked in, rushing down the purple stream once more, "I'M GETTING SICK OF THIS!"
Finally the vortex spat her out in the middle of a dark forest. She got to her feet and brushed off her kimono.
"That's it, I am tired of this!" she exclaimed.
Above her, Kin and Gin kept close watch.
"You know, I can't say I disagree with her," Gin said in an annoyed tone.
"I was merely trying to find the best possible divergence point, sister," Kin said in her own defense, "and believe me, this one is a doozy."
"Whatever," Kin sighed.
Damona took a minute to think things over, "ok, so there is no doubt I'm travelling through time, but this is bizarre. First my mother leaving, second my clip ceremony, then Cleo's first annoyance, now here."
She thought over what significance these events had to each other, they were all almost completely unrelated. There were only two connections between them, each event had shaped part of Damona's personality, and she had relived them in linear order, "Let's see here, I started most of my deceptive behavior after Mom never came back, the clip made me look like this, Cleo practically destroyed my trust for others…"
Her thoughts were interrupted by a burning smell. Her eyes widened as she remembered where and when she was. Sure enough, she could see the glow of the embers, not 40 feat away, the smell of sulfur, the screams of terror and pain.
She was here, where it happened.
Despite the immense fear and dread she felt, she began flying toward the flames, almost with no self control, she saw the village burning to the ground, many humans still trapped in their homes. The half-demon flew to the first house and noticed the door had been bolted shut. She swirled her aura and blasted the door down, beginning to cool the air with her powers, huddled in the corner, she saw a asian woman gripping two young children tightly.
Damona used her ice to clear them a path. She flew to the woman and shook her shoulder getting her attention. The woman looked at her with fear in her eyes.
"What are you waiting for, get out of here! This place is going down in flames!" she gestured the clear path that would not last for long. The woman stould and began pushing her children out of the house. Damona understood what she said as she left as the japanese word for thank you.
Damona left the building just as the flames began to burn through the load baring support beams and the house collapsed. She moved onto the next house, but she was sure something else happened around this point last time she lived through this.
She prepared to blast down another bolted door, but was interrupted by a blast of red Holy fire that she just narrowly dodged.
The half demon turned to its origin, which was a black and red version of Komane, near him, a man in a black cloak marked with a golden cross.
"No," Damona whispered in terror. The lion-dog prepare another attack which she blocked with her ice, than began to fly away, only to stare another cloaked man in the face. In one hand he held a wooden staff marked in japanese symbols, in the other, a lit torch.
As she looked around many more men and women in cloaks, some with staffs, others backed by yokai, almost all of them carrying torches. The one closest to her yelled in a deap voice, "DEMONS HOLD NO PLACE HERE!"
The others repeated the chant as he raised his staff, it glowed in a red aura.
In a moment of panic, Damona leaped at him screaming, "NOT AGAIN!"
She gripped his throat as her free hand was engulfed in a purple aura, the hood fell off the man's head revealing his face. His head was shaved bald, he had three gold rings pierced in his left ear, he had a short, white beard that covered his chin. In his hazel eyes, a look of terror as he dropped his staff to the ground.
Damona stared him down as time seemed to stop, than she realized it had actually stopped. The village had faded, all that was left were her, the man she threatened, and a purple sky in all directions.
Despite seeing no one else, the half-demon heard two voices.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" one said.
"Go ahead, this man sealed you and countless others in the Crank-a-kai," the other added.
"He banished you to a cold limbo," the first continued.
"Caused anguish on your family," the second pressed.
"Make him PAY FOR ALL OF THE PAIN HE'S CAUSED!" the first yelled.
"HE WAS WILLING TO LET A VILLAGE BURN, LET HIM BURN WITH IT!" the second demanded.
Damona looked at the terror in the man's eyes. The voices continued, "kill him, kill him, KILL HIM!"
Damona thought it over, the man she had in her grip was a monster, she had no doubt about it. But something about this seemed off, why would she be sent to four moments in her afterlife that would ultimately make her who she was, then be given the chance to change of the most significant things to happen to her at all? There was also something about these voices she didn't trust.
"This man is a monster," Damona whispered, only barely enough for Kin and Gin hear. She released the man's neck as she turned around and shot the blast in the direction of the voices, all the while screaming, "BUT I'M NOT!"
The blast hit directly between the two wicked yokai, propelling them in opposite directions. As they were forced apart, the purple force around them was split into red and blue ones, with a white light occupying the cracks within.
The light expanded taking up all of Damona's vision, and when it faded, she was back where she started. Alone, on her knees, in the street. She looked around, everything looked as though it was just the normal Springdale.
"Was… it all a dream?" Damona said to herself. Regardless of whether or not the event was real or not, she knew what she was doing next. She took off in the direction she came from.
Not far, Kin and Gin were recovering from their little, shall we say, Blast in the Past?
"Ugh, my head," Gin said stumbling to her feet.
"That oni-girl is too stubborn, it looks as though she will not be manipulated," Kin said holding her side, "packs a real punch too."
"We'd best inform her majesty we have a real threat on our hands," Gin said limping to her sister.
"Good thinking," Kin replied as they both disappeared in a puff of smoke.
Soon after, Damona phased through the door to the hotel room, only to find Nate on the couch talking to a no-longer frozen, but still worried looking Swelterrier.
"Damona!" Nate said as he noticed her, "are you ok, you've been gone all night!"
He noticed her staring at Swelterrier and clarified, "it's ok, he thinks since he let us in on the Order's existence it'd be safer for him with us than them, even got his medal!"
Damona looked at her fiance, and quietly said, "Nate… I need to tell you something."
Nate looked at her in worry. An emotion that didn't fade as Damona recounted the night's events, nearly on the brink of tears. When she finished, she was met with something she didn't expect.
The human boy pulled her into a hug, it fealt both warm and cold to her… she enjoyed it. The last thing she remembered hearing that night, was nate say, "even if they come for you, you wont be facing them alone again."
Those words echoed in Damona's mind. She mentally repeated, "I won't be alone."