Disclaimer: Gaaah...nearly two months!! First things first, I apologize for the late update! I lost my original hard copies of the story, so I'm having to rewrite all the succeeding chapters again. SUMIMASEN. :P And hey, I'm only getting on summer break now. :P All standard disclaimers apply. Enjoy!
Tsuzuki Asato
#03 finding you...saving you
Once the bureau had been notified, Watari had virtually attached himself to his slim laptop. The typing went on for an hour or so, furious and unceasing. His brows were furrowed deep into his forehead and his hair was disheveled. An equally harassed-looking 03 hooted weakly on his shoulder.
A clatter of punching on keys, the click of a mouse and—
"We have a hit."
Tsuzuki looked up from his worried pacing and Tatsumi from the pile of folders he was shifting through. Wakaba was chewing her lip, looking pensively from the shut doorway clutching the carton boxes of more and more records.
"Aie…it's a good thing that I had Guoshoushin wire the library database electronically or we'd have had to search through mounds of records." Watari's eyes flashed. "This demoness is very very old."
Tsuzuki retraced his steps to the windowsill, where he had sent a messenger to find his partner. It had been three hours yet it had not returned. He flipped his attention back to the light haired shinigami. "So who is she and what is she after?"
"She calls herself Kauket…the Egyptian goddess of primordial darkness. She is a parasitic phantom who attacks shinigami almost exclusively. Her power relies on draining them of their very soul, by feeding on the darkness of their memories and their deepest desires. She locks them in a dream sleep where all they can see is what she steals from them; memories, emotions, hopes, everything. Eventually, she drains them completely and the shinigami will be absorbed into her.
"Centuries ago, she destroyed many shinigami…targeting especially those who died young and had a sorrowful life. Er…about 400 years ago, it was thought she was permanently dispelled but…she must have been only biding her time, or has only now broken free from a binding spell."
"How shall we find her?" Tatsumi gave him a serious, questioning look.
"According to logs from long-gone shinigami, she would most likely have brought him to a place of great importance and/or anguish during his mortal life. Memory stimulation…so that means…"
The sound of the swinging door and Wakaba's off-guard gasp caught all of their attention. Tsuzuki had raced out.
Of course…there's only one place…In the year since Hisoka's death and the week since Tomoko's murder, the Kurosaki compound had fallen into disarray. The once beautiful ancestral mansion was in shambles now. Whispers of ghost children and family curses circulated around the family who abandoned it completely, and the place was now devoid of people save the aged gamekeeper who only came by to tend the garden.
And it was a wide and spacious garden, one of great beautiful trees and rows of flower bushes. As a child, Hisoka had loved to explore the grassy grounds when he wasn't being held on a strict rein by his parents.
A lone cherry tree had single handedly destroyed every happy memory he had of the place . A night had been with a mood as scarlet at blood and a smiling, silver-haired monster had carved a curse upon his body. He had struggled, then succumbed, sunken into a sable haze of pain and delirium, screaming like an infant caught in a nightmare he couldn't escape from. And it was a nightmare. The sakura petals rained from the sky like tears, crying for a little boy's stolen innocence.
Kauket smiled as she watched him cringe and twitch. She pulled her dark tentacle-like locks of hair about him tighter, inhibiting his soft breathing, and binding him to the trunk of the old tree.
He was beginning to plunge into a dark portal of his own misery. He was remembering the nights as a child pounding on the door of his cell crying for food or water or even just a bit of sunlight. He would be a good boy. He would be normal. If only for a little sunlight. Or his mother in tears, slapping him over and over. "You're not my son, you're not my son, not my son!"
The demon bent her inhuman lips to kiss the boy's bloody forehead. Soon he would relive everything. He would reach the pinnacle of his anguish, then all would be over. She could taste already the lusciousness of his soul. It and his powers would be hers.
A white tiger blazing with light pounced upon her, roaring with power and rage. Her red eyes flashed and she raised a slender clawed hand. A wide berth of space surrounding her glowed, a protective field forming to shield her from the clash of Byakko.
"I've been expecting you, Tsuzuki was it? The partners always come."
She raised a hand once more and an identical copy of the shikigami materialized from smoke, and went straight for the original's throat. Tsuzuki watched in horror as his summon was evenly matched.
"You cannot win over me. I've fed on so many for so long that my powers are too great a force for you to handle, child."
Tsuzuki gritted his teeth, beads of sweat trickling down his face.
A portal of darkness opened overhead and a gigantuan creature blacker than night slowly emerged and levitated to the earth. This demoness can summon such a beast? It had eyes much like Kauket's as well as her equally menacing fanged grin, which she displayed with a haughty, triumphant laugh. She motioned to it and it came to her, moving with a sleek, fatal grace.
Hisoka...
The empath was motionless, tied firmly to the sakura tree. A trickle of dark blood poured from the corners of his eyes. Any moment he would be absorbed completely. The edges of his outline began to fade from sight. It would soon be too late.
"He's my power source..."
He had to break from the spell. If he could release himself from her...she would probably be weakened. Enough to seal her once more? He didn't know. He saw the gigantic creature moving towards them.
Hisoka...please...wake up!
