These Things Happen: Chapter 2

The long silence reigns, so still, so tangible that it acts as another entity in the kitchen, watching over these actors in a dramatic play.

The monster, the woman, and the child for that was what the Bearer really embodied. Youth in the prime of her life, wild and feral, contained in the body of a weak human girl, encased in a shell of flesh that could be modified by the spear. All were frozen in thought for a moment before the girl, this Usako gently gripped the elbow of the woman who was her mother, and led her away from the tiger striped orange bakemono.

Tora let her go, for what else could he do? Now that he was prepared, at least marginally, the Bearer would not get the jump on him again. And if she were anything like her father was at that age, she was not likely to get him in a position in which to kill him easily.

After letting the woman sit down at a kitchen seat, the girl came back to stand unflinchingly in front of him again, the spear unconsciously gripped in her hands, but quiescent for now.

Tora lowered his muzzle closer to her face for two reasons. One was to test her seeming resolve not to be frightened, and the other reason was to get a good sniff, and see just what remnants of Ushio remained in this day and age.

As expected, the girl neither quaked nor blinked, but stared challengingly into his silver orbs. At his delicate sniffs, the girl only snorted as the strands of her shoulder length hair lifted in response.

"I've had my bath recently," she snipped. "There's no reason to smell about as if I'm reeking."

Tora pulled his head back and allowed his lips to peel away from his gleaming teeth in a grin. He teased her by licking his chops and smirking.

"My, my. There is only the scent of fresh meat here, and I am oh, so hungry."

Upon further ruminations, Tora chanced upon a plan that would allow him to fulfill Ushio's wishes in the event that what had happened, happened.

Tora went on to say, despite Usako gleaming daggers in his direction, "And since I never did get the opportunity to make good my promise of eating Ushio, I believe that that honor is now bestowed upon his next of kin."

The bakemono grins disconcertingly at the slightly startled girl in front of him.

~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~

Oh no. That youkai did not just say what I thought he said, Usako thought.

With a twist of her lips showing a hint of her sharpened teeth, a quirk of the brows, and a deft movement of her hand which moved completely independent of thought, the spear rose up, and landed with precision, right between the orange youkai's eyes, making them circle with pain and surprise.

The beast hopped around from one leg to the other, his massive sharp claws entirely useless as they tried to quell the hurt blooming on top of his head.

Usako found it explosively funny, but dared not to take her eyes from the capering figure.

When it finally rounded on her, she felt like she was ready for any attack, but what came was a surprise.

The bakemono, which had named itself as Tora, placed his face intimidatingly close and bellowed, "WHAT DID YOU DO THAT FOR?! You are definitely the brat's brat! Why did I leave my family to come all the way over here for?! I'm so abused!"

Usako could only smirk back in his alarmingly close face.

"So go back to your family, demon. You are not wanted nor needed here."

"On the contrary, brat, I will be needed here."

Puzzled defiant look from the human child.

"Every bakemono can sense when the spear chooses a new Bearer. It sends all of them a chill of impending doom down their spines if they let the human come to full maturity."

"So much the better, then if-" she started to say before being interrupted.

"FOOL! What kind of an idiot did Ushio raise?! They will all come flocking here to destroy you while you are still inexperienced."

"What do you care? Your partner died, so you have no further stake in this territory."

Tora smiled toothily at that. "Oh, I do. Have a stake in this territory, I mean." He pokes a claw into her shoulder, drawing just a hint of blood on his nail, which he licked up with obvious savor. "None shall eat what I have claimed."

And with this pronouncement, the girl spluttered in protest while the beast went invisible.

While Usako could still feel his presence about the house, she could not pinpoint him in order to take up her cause again.

Tora looked upon the youngling, amused, while perched just to the side of the woman Asako. The brat's antics while trying to find him were comical in the extreme.

He leaned closer to Asako and whispered, "I'll keep an eye on her, wife of Ushio. It's the least I can do, since he had a hand in my meeting my mate."

Acting the part of a ventriloquist, Asako whispered back, "Are you sure you can stick around here for that amount of time? Without someone to train her, it will take quite a while before she can handle youkai that mean harm."

The shaggy head shakes silently with his deep sigh. "I'll take care of that too, Asako. Just be glad that Nariota is occupied with an extended visit to her family. She knows, and THEY know that I will not abide by them for more than a few hours before ripping them apart."

Tora paused in his speaking to watch with Asako through the window as Usako is running outside back and forth almost baying in fury for the 'flea- bitten mangy cur that dared claim friendship with her parents', all the while waving her spear about the shrine courtyard.

Asako shared a sheepish smile with Tora before continuing the conversation.

"Tora-chan? Why don't you and Nariota come settle in Tokyo? It used to be your old territory, and as you can see, we have plenty of wooded land bordering the shrine."

"I don't know, Asako. We live on one of the islands for a reason. Its closer to my mate's family while still being several hundred leagues away so I don't go crazy."

Another pause, as Usako starts spinning in the middle of the court with her spear expended trying to thwap a monster that is evidently not there.

Tora bursts out laughing as the chit becomes dizzy and falls on her rump in the dust.

~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-

Once again, the scene begins with Usako's room as the morning light starts its slanting path across the bed. The huddled bundle in the middle of the sheets twitches as a sense of awareness speeds across her mind's eye.

Something is watching her, and the instinct that lies only shallowly buried within her warns that the watcher is predatory in nature.

Hands hidden under the covers tighten on a long bar of wood as the tension rises. If one had witnessed the events from the day before, it is no wonder why the girl brought the spear to her bed. Since her father had died, it was her security blanket, teddy bear, and protection all in one.

When the thickness in the air reached a critical point, Usako throws off her comforter in the direction of the menacing presence and lithely flips to her feet, spear in the ready position.

The feral changes she keeps repressed. Despite the power boost she received when she fully merged with the spear, Usako believed that nothing was free. There had to be a catch to the formidable abilities and senses gifted to the bearer.

Well, whatever the power ups, whatever the strings attached, this particular situation had no need for the skills of Usako at her most formidable.

What she faced across the expanse of the bed was a bakemono, true, but this one was only armed with the usual teeth, claws, and enormous strength. What had awoken her survival instinct turned out to be the rather large bucket of water the monster wielded.

Looking from the mischievous quirk in the fire-colored Tora's eyes to the bed where she recently had lain comfortably, Usako's mind connected the synapses that allowed her to put two and two together.

"TOOORRRAAA!!" she growled out between gritted sharp teeth.

Still maintaining his grinning countenance, Ushio's partner let out a completely fake 'oops' before tossing the full bucket of water, which turned out to be previously chilled, and fleeing out the door with a soaked, vengeful virago right on his tail.

Asako sat at the breakfast table at six o' clock, sipping her morning tea as a bright orange blip darted down the hall past the kitchen entrance. As a Doppler effect, the piercing cry of her baby girl wailed her fury at her wake up call, as the half-clad blur followed the idiot bakemono. Asako smiled contentedly. All was well within her house.

~-~-~-~-~-~

Outside the main house, the fast-paced game of 'tag with deadly weapons' came to a close at a clearing just to the side of the courtyard. This ending mainly consisted of Tora about-facing, sweeping the spear aside with a hand, and positioning his other claws in a piercing form that would impale the onrushing Usako if she did not stop.

There was no doubt about it; the brakes were applied, leaving skid marks in the turf behind her.

Usako blinked as she came out of her fury-induced stupor to realize that razor sharp claws were only inches from relieving her of a stomach. And perhaps her liver...and a whole lot of other very necessary organs needed for further life functions.

The girl looked up at the inscrutable gaze of her tormentor as he remarked, "You know? One should never let anger blind you to your surroundings, and the particulars of your situation." The youkai paused as if in thought. "You never know when they might change."

Usako had the thought that Tora was referring to something that had to do with her father, and his death.

Letting his hand drop to his side, Tora shook himself out of his reverie and out of the corner of his eye, saw that the brat was absorbed in her own thoughts. His silver orbs glinted with humor as he clocked her upside her head, claws turned aside as to not harm, before disappearing.

The girl had taken only a jarring sidestep from the cuffing before her eyes were shooting all around, trying to find the illusive bastard.

His voice echoed around the clearing eerily, so she could not pinpoint him.

"The second thing to remember is never to let your guard down when a bakemono is around...Especially when that bakemono is me!"

The girl again gritted her teeth as her eyes flashed their stormy cloud color. She would get that furball if it was the last thing she did.

Almost as if said furball was reading her thoughts, he again spoke from all corners of the clearing.

"The only way you'll be able to touch me, whelp, if is you learn how to fight. Learn how to use stealth, that spear, the gifts given to you by your father, and most importantly of all, learn how to think like a youk- AIII!"

Because during Tora's self-important speech, Usako had employed the instinctive animal cunning that Tora talked about, bequeathed to her from both her father and as a result of being the new spear Bearer.

Circling the clearing and tuning out the annoying voice only served to strengthen the information given to the girl via her sensitive nose.

She couldn't see him, couldn't hear him thanks to his multi-directional voice, and her primal senses weren't refined enough to 'feel' his location, so what was left to her was the sense of smell.

Ugh. And what a sense of smell it was, when she fully focused on it. The slight odor of big cat was bad enough when she caught a whiff of it last night, but standing right by it when its owner pontificated on and on took every last shred of Usako's determination.

At least she knew where to stick the pointy end of her spear. And she did in an almost casual motion in the general direction of the bad smell. The shout of moderate pain was pleasing to her ears as the teenager wondered if there was enough scented shampoo in the entire temple house to turn that cat smell into something bearable.

Popping out of his invisible technique at the point of his interruption allowed Usako enough time to stand on her tippy toes, reach up past surprised circular eyes and latch onto a very long, VERY sensitive ear amidst a mane of red hair.

Bringing him down to her level was only a matter of applied mathematics, physics and biology. Her weight * gravity + the number of nerves in his hear = Tora lowering his head.

"Look you. I have to get ready for school, and you have a date with the furo as soon as I speak to mother about our cleaning supplies."

After an abortive attempt at protest, many cursings that should have shriveled the accursed brat to a husk, and several hearty ear twistings later, Usako was on her way to school.

And while the earlier triumph of getting her nemesis to do what she wanted was delicious, getting stuck with the sodden (but clean smelling) beast on her shoulders did not improve her mood for the first half of school.

Neither did it help whenever she was teased for the back of her school uniform being forever wet. The beast was always harping on her progress in class, and it kept making a nuisance of itself when it tricked her into snapping at him. Being invisible, it only made her look insane to the teachers, decidedly odd to the students, and quite rude, in the opinion of one baka Tora.

Usako alternately dreaded and looked forward to lunch, when she would meet up with her friends. She had no idea what she was going to say to them, or even if she would tell them anything about the newest annoyance in her life.

*-*-*-*-*-*-*

So, minna. Whatcha think? I too, have visions of little Toras running around somewhere out there. But the questions I want you to keep in mind are: What's wrong with Nariota's family, and why does Tora not get along with them? What really happened to Ushio? And why and how did Tora move away with Nariota as mates?

Suggestions are welcome, pre-reader volunteers even more so. Critiques are the most prized of all.