I remember it all as if it were yesterday. I am sixty-three years now, and the last forty-six of those years have been spent in killing demons. It is odd how some memories of the past are burned into your mind, the colors, smells, sounds, shapes, and other features etched with such a brilliance that it is likely to be the last things in life to be forgotten. I have a few memories like that. My wedding, the birth of my son, these are two such things. But the first of these-the very cause of everything else-looms above me like clouds before the sun.
Allow me to explain these demons that Ryouga, my son, and I fight. Where they originated from and how they came to be here, these things are unknown to us. We were never able to keep one alive long enough to tell us. We always killed them in the end. We had to.
These demons lack form and feature, so they must steal people's identities by taking over their body. When this happens, the real inhabitant of the body sinks into their worst nightmare and live it the entire time he or she is possessed. It's horrible; there is no other way to describe it. These demons can be cruel, they can be kind; to this very day, even after almost half a century of fighting these demons, they continue to amaze me.
I know only a few things. Their touch without a human body is poisonous. They can control the body even after the real inhabitant dies. They love pork meat for reasons unknown, and the sound of squealing pig or the scent of cooking bacon will cause them to chase after it. Only weapons tempered by a dragon's fire can do them damage outside of a human's body. If you kill the human body they inhabit, then they die with it. This weapon I have, this one here, I did not make it. I do not know who did. The Amazons possessed these weapons from the time when dragons and Orcas and other great beasts roamed the world. It was passed on to me to kill Orcas, because that was what they were made for, and that was why they had been preserved for so long.
On this day, forty-six years ago, I had gone into neko-form because of Shampoo and Akane was chasing after us, beating up things with her mallet. I don't know if there is a connection between that and the release of the demons. After forty-six years, we never really did find out how they were released.
I was waking from neko-form, in Akane's lap as usual, when I felt something coming. It-I can't describe it. It wanted blood, it wanted freedom, it wanted to hurt others as much as it was hurt, and it was frustrated. All these emotions hit my mind like a wave, and I fell from Akane's lap and rolled into the river-we had been sitting on the riverbank, and Akane reached a hand out to help me from the waters. I saw the shimmering before it hap-I saw the shimmering. I thought it had been beautiful, like dew in the grass with the sunlight bouncing from it.
But it held an ugliness in it.
As Akane's hand reached out to me, the shimmering struck her back and forth, back and forth, sawing like a blade. With Akane's hand in my own, I saw her eyes open wide in astonishment and she slumped forward. I saw her back. It was sliced to ribbons, like raw meat-snnnnook.
*sniff sniff* Anyone have a handkerchief? Thanks Cologne.
It hurt, to see that Akane had died like that. She was dead, yes; I admit it freely to all you at this table! To my time, forty-six years ago, on this Friday, by the riverbank and with her own hand in my own, Akane died. This went down in history to be known as the Black Friday, and for good reason too. It was a bloody, gruesome day.
I don't know why I didn't die that day. The shimmering floated around almost aimlessly. I leapt from the water and tried attacking, but every time I did, I slipped through. Remember, these demons have no substance. I don't know why I wasn't poisoned. I finally ran from them with Akane's body in my arms. I ran all the way home, even as people watched and stared at me. They were killed on the spot though, even as the shimmering followed after me. It still didn't attack me though. It was as if it was waiting for something. When I reached home, it attacked and killed Kasumi, Nabiki, and Tendo. But Ryou-er, P-chan was alive! The shimmering followed after him. I grabbed him and ran but P-chan had been caught by the shimmering and was somehow sliced down the line of his back. The wound was tinged silver and he sort of became listless. The shimmering grew and grew until it was attacking everyone in Nerima. Kunou fell, Kodatch, Ucchan, everyone. Everywhere I ran, people were dead.
I found Cologne and Shampoo fighting them with swords. They were killing the shimmerings. I asked them how to do it, but they didn't have time to explain. Night fell, and when it did, the shimmerings disappeared. Because they had been trapped in the darkness for so long, they couldn't stand it. In all those horror tales of monsters, you hear about how you are safest in the light; that isn't the case with these demons. Cologne healed P-chan, telling me her Amazonian legends about these monsters and how the only way to kill them were by using dragonfire-tempered steel. Nothing else could cut them.
After that, we fled to China where other villages would have weapons needed. You might have wondered what happened to Mousse through this all. He followed after us, but he had been possessed by the leader of the demons almost immediately. We don't know why he was chosen. In China, we gathered together all the other fighters we could find. Tarou joined us, he fought with Ryouga and myself, and he was very good. I trusted him with my life, I continue to do so. For six years we fought the best we could, but the demons continued to spread across the world, either killing those they could or possessing them.
By the seventh year, we had a name for them. It was the name of the legend, known by few. It was believed that to recite the name was to invoke the demons and court death with them, so Cologne was very reluctant to tell us their name. In that seventh year, Tarou was attacked by Mousse and many other Orcas. We weren't there when it happened, but we felt the Orcas gathering together to fight. I and Shampoo ran after the fight, but it was too late to do anything by the time we got there.
Mousse and all other Orcas had been killed by Tarou. He fought valiantly against them and lived, drained of everything he had in which to win the battle. Energy, curse, color. Everything. He became white and weak. He is still alive today as far as I know, and he has regained his strength-heh, and then some!-, but his curse was gone and he never regained his color, so he is colorless all over, from his hair and eyes to his skin. So, in case anyone sees him, don't be alarmed. And if you wish to live, don't call him a freak. He takes that worse than pantyhose itself.
Anyway, years passed. Sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly. Cologne died seventeen years into the fighting, and after nineteen years, the amount of Orcas had finally been shortened enough for us not to really worry about them. In the earlier years, the amount of Orcas just kept growing and growing until the world seemed to be overrun with them and humans were an endangered species that was quickly dying out.
Twenty years had finally come and gone. I was thirty-seven at the time. I wasn't in the prime of my life; that had passed long ago, but constant fighting kept me in good shape. I decided to take a look back on my life; I wondered how it all could have disappeared so easily. My youth; what might have it become if I had only the chance? I don't know. Sometimes regrets should not be allowed to come into existence. I loved Akane back in those days.
Haha! Look! She's blushing!
Ouch! Chiba! You didn't have to hit me . . .
Anyways, I loved Akane. But love can only last so long without being fed.
So I instead turned my thoughts to Shampoo. Yes, my dear Shampoo-ah! Down Pop! Down Tendo!
Eeehh . . .
Really Ryouga, was that necessary? Ah well; they had it coming. I wonder if I should wait for them to come around before finishing . . . Nah.
Anyways, we fought together for twenty years, side by side, trusting and caring for one another. Until that moment though, I hadn't actually thought about it. And the more I did think of it, the more aware I became of how much she truly loved me, to be together with me for so long. She never asked for anything in return. She seemed to be satisfied with just being with me. But I knew she wanted more. I knew she wanted a family. We were both getting on in age and time would quickly pass until it was too late to do anything. Heh.
That really is funny. We were both getting on in age. Ha ha! Look at me, I'm sixty-three, and I thought thirty-seven was old! Ha ha ha! Okay, I'll quit now. I just think that is funny though! Look, it just a few short years, I would have been fighting these Orcas for fifty years. That is half a century!
Anyway, I cornered her one day and we began to talk of the days of our dysfunctional youth. We had a lot of fun, remembering those memories. I then reminded her of the Amazon law of marriage, of my beating her. She merely shrugged it off and said the war had to come first.
I said the war is fine as it was. I told her I loved her.
We married two years later. Now, understand that there weren't too many humans around and we had to get the best we could. Very few family and friends still lived, so I asked that we wait for such a time when both Tarou and Ryouga could make it to the wedding, just because it would make it seem more precious, more wonderful to have friends there. They did, eventually. It was one of those days that will remain bright and crystal clear in my memory. I loved Shampoo back then. In my own way, I still love her now.
Please, don't look at me like that Cologne. I'm much too old to get a wife as young as the current Shampoo. And you shut up, Ryouga. You don't need to-Chiba! . . . Are you two finished laughing at my expense?
. . .
Are you done yet?
Good. I'll finish my story now.
Our son-Chiba, as you can see here-was born a year after that. It was a difficult birth for Shampoo. As in good shape as she was from all the fighting, the pregnancy took a toll upon her. She was forty years old, past her child-bearing prime and stressed at still having to fight. I remember I had to literally chase her away from fights so she wouldn't endanger our unborn child. But she had Chiba. Three years after that, she died.
Not in the actual sense of dying, mind you. She was captured and absorbed by an Orca. We had found, through years of experience, that anyone who has been possessed by an Orca for more than a year, dies. Somehow, the Orca managed to keep her out of our reach for well over a year. Two years, and then three passed. We fought against the Orca that had stolen my wife. We fought so very hard. Somehow, the Orca managed to rally other Orcas together. In the year that Tarou had killed Mousse, the Orcas dispersed because they didn't have leadership.
In the year that I was fifty-two-a good nine years after she had been possessed-I finally caught up with Shampoo. We battled it out. I was the better of the two. I always had been. I killed the Orca; I destroyed the body it had possessed. It left its own toll on me though.
More years passed. It got so that Orcas became a rare sighting, until only the more powerful ones lived. I am now sixty-three. We fought against the Orcas for more than forty-six years. Over those years, magic and other forbidden arts came into play. Anything to get rid of the Orcas. But that is all done with. Finally, on the one day I decide to take a break and let my son actually do the fighting for me; when I bother to actually have some blueberry ice-cream, the dimensional barrier-perhaps made weak from all our fighting-broke. I, Chiba and the Orca he was fighting, and Ryouga fell through it. Who knows what else fell through? Who knows why that happened or what will happen?
The future is unknown to us all, and it changes even now with every word I speak. I don't know about the Orcas. Somehow, by appearing and fighting them, we managed to scare them away before they could grow bold and attack more. I don't know what is going to happen.
. . .
And in which case, I'm not going to bother with such worries on an empty stomach. So Cologne, what's for dinner tonight?