Disclaimer: For all you people who forgot in the unforgivably long absence: I still own nothing, y' little buggers.
Story Thus Far: Goodness! Karasu is the host of the terrible sickness and Yuusuke's kingdom is under attack by Kumuro's diseased forces. Hiei informed our dysfunctional trio of anti-heroes that they have three assassins on their tail and Kurama continues to be held up in the Ningenkai. Lions and tigers and demonic warfare! Oh my!
Enjoy chapter 10!
Defensive Maneuvers
Thra-ach!
The disgusting, wet, and generally nasty sound of flesh losing its original health to physical violence. In Mika terms: Kurama just laid one to baddie-bitch! The girl whooped, but quickly abandoned her post as cheerleader on account of several long slithering tentacles crashing into the walled two feet from her face. Stucco blew up in her face, choking her and coating her damp skin – still wet from the shower – in dusty white.
Terrasuka's maddening shrieks of agony and frustration tormented the human eardrum, but to Mika there was no more lovely a sound than the pain-racked screams of a sadistic she-monster getting hers. The teenager blasted the offending limb with a short burst of blue energy, disintegrating the thrashing red tendril.
In the middle of the hall, Terrasuka shrieked again, a terrible gurgling wail of a noise that rippled offensively through the air, raping the ears with its disgusting resonance. The human parts of the demoness's mutilated body writhed and twisted in mortal agony. The slender human body, clad in dark satin and wreathed in a long-armed crown of squirming tentacles, arched and bent backwards. Elegantly manicured nails, clawed at the air in primal desperation as her attacker overwhelmed her.
Her face – if that oozing, throbbing mass of raw flesh, fangs and countless, bloody feelers could be called a face – yawned and bubbled sickly, glistening fluids welling up from the back of her throat. Kurama, during all this, had retreated to a safe distance, his organic grass weapon dripping with scarlet liquid. His wide, slanted eyes, usually soft and pleasantly distant in their wisdom had hardened and even darkened to an intense shade of predatory instinct.
He wanted something dead…now!
He landed on the opposite side of Terrasuka, having completed his initial attack seconds after the youkai's transformation. The ugly, oozing wound pumping fountains of dark blood from her breast seemed fatal and probably would have been if the opponent had been born into any other family of evil demons besides Karasu's. Unlike her brother, Terrasuka would not be killed by either blow to the heart or loss of blood either individually or simultaneously.
The fox-spirit narrowed green eyes as the woman swiveled around to 'face' him, the majority of her long, lashing tendrils waving about in his direction. The deceptively young looking combatant leapt back, long legs, coiling and propelling his lissome body back in a long, weightless leap that landed him comfortably in a four-way intersection of the hall. He fell into a crouch, shoulders loose, body hunched over in a premeditating pounce.
Terrasuka hissed wetly and the hall erupted into a writhing forest of flesh-hungry feelers.
Kurama did everything in one fell move. Smoother than humanly possible and more gracefully than most high-class youkai, the master thief leapt up spinning. His arms shot up and released his grass blade, flinging it with enough speed to make a whining hiss as it ripped through the air. Terrasuka 'hoomf'ed in surprise as the blade rammed through her belly and burst out her back, but miraculously remained on her feet. Mika saw Kurama's fingers fly open and he released something else, freeing the tightly held mound of blood-red petals concealed covertly within his quick hands. His motion sent them whirling in a deadly flurry of razor-edged flora, swirling around the red-head like a protective shroud.
Terrasuka moaned like a woman deprived of love and wounded by fate, if not by physical injury. Voracious in her blood-lust, she sacrificed several of her tentacles in vain attempts to reach the fox-demon through the storm of rose-petals. Each limb was sliced off like a butcher's knife sailing through the raw meat, spraying blood and falling in a twisting coil on the hotel carpet.
"You cannot beat me," Kurama said soberly, voice low and dangerously husky, the way it got when youko power swam more strongly through his blood-stream. "I'm far stronger and more experienced. Karasu was obviously the stronger of you two. Why put yourself through the pain?"
The creature's ring of fangs expanded in what former fox-thief deciphered as a smile and returned it with a glare, the stripes of green and gold within his gaze growing dark and dangerous. Terrasuka warbled her laughter and slithered and stumbled her way toward her prey. Kurama's body posture grew agitated by the female's aggression and he raked his fingers through his shorn hair, an old gesture turned warning that he now armed himself.
Between his slim fingers, she could just make out the tiny bead of green plant-life.
"I gave you your warning," Kurama said tonelessly. He lifted his arm cross his chest, lifting it high in post-striking position. His eyes narrowed. "Now die."
His arm lashed out and the crack of hyper plant growth and the snap like a whip lanced the air. Terrasuka wailed as thorny vines erupted about her body in the likeness of a flesh-hungry serpent. It wrapped her body in a perverted embrace, ripping flesh and tearing through delicate satin fabrics. Another whip cracked and suddenly Kurama was vaulting over his victim, calm as a chess master placing the king in check. The all-surface slicing length of his weapon had lodged itself firmly within the throat of his enemy, wrapping the neck in a bloody noose.
Kurama yanked, ripping the wound plant like a string wrapped round the neck of spinning top. Terrasuka bubbled wetly, blood spraying as the gross rip of flesh signaled the Rose Whip tearing out of his opponent's throat. Like a broken top, she spun briefly, moaned, then staggered. Red oozed down her slender neck in dark rivulets, dripping in thick pools and soaking the carpet. Glistening rivers oozed down her breast, soaking her gown through.
The fox turned sharply to face his opponent and Mika saw the open perplexity in his face as he stepped away. Terrasuka, still alive somehow, gargled and dripped while stumbling toward him, body swaying and bobbing drunkenly. Slender, crimson smeared fingers reached for the fox demon, pawing the air in search of the youko's well worn dress-shirt.
"Mika, get back," Kurama ordered sharply, eyes glittering with a powerful focus. He flicked his whip back with a sharp wrist motion and the impossibly long weapon snapped to life, striking with snake-like speed and action, it bit deeply into Terrasuka's abdomen, ripping through her and painting the walls with red spray. The disgusting mass of flesh where her face had once resided jiggled and bounced as the demon laughed grossly. Kurama snapped his whip across the mass, but the residual ruin of his last attack bled sluggishly and ineffectively.
"I'm more," wheezed Karasu's kin, "than I seem, fox."
"So I gathered," Kurama articulated coolly and immediately whipped his wrist in a sharp elbow to finger sweep that neatly separated Terrasuka's arms from her well-sculpted body. Dark blood splattered and pooled like a thick sludge on the once spotless carpets and Mika wrinkled her nose at the acrid stench of it. Terrasuka's writhing featureless head suddenly retracted in upon itself, like a recoiling animal back into its shell as smooth, alabaster flesh slid back into place over the nightmarish blob.
After a stomach churning moments of facial reconstruction, Terrasuka's lovely doll-like face stared calmly back at them, unperturbed it seemed, by her loss of both arms. Kurama frowned slightly, his brow creasing slightly in thought. He obviously suspected something afoot and the evil little smile upon the woman's lips rubbed proverbial fur the wrong way.
"Kurama. Why do you welcome me so rudely?" asked the beauty softly, voice melodic and mesmerizing. "Am I not a friend? You and Karasu seemed so very close in all his words about you."
The fox-demon with shorn hair of fire-red refused to be roused. He lifted his whip arm instead, slender fingers gripping the thicker stem handle firmly. Eyes colored with gold-flecked emerald grew cold at the mention of his former nemesis. Kurama didn't bother to answer, frustrated by this creature's determination in warding off a fatal blow. Kurama had technically taken out about seven major organs and severed three arteries. Demonic tolerance aside, the monstrosity should have showed some signs of injury.
"Is she self-healing?" Mika hissed from her vantage directly behind Kurama and not back where he'd told her to go.
The fox glared. "I don't know, but you need to get back, Mika."
A hiss. Mika screamed and Kurama tackled her out of the way as a swarm of darting tendrils buried six inches into the plush beside them. The two rolled apart on instinct and only barely evaded the second wave of needle sharp limbs. Kurama righted himself and caught his breath as he flung himself backward; arching over and yanking his legs up after him in a dexterous back flip, dodging the errant stabs directed toward his person. He danced betwixt the waving mass of thrashing limbs to regain sight of his opponent, but Mika beat him there.
"Hey, fox-boy! She's gone Resident Evil on us and sprouted a buncha really nasty lookin' arm things!" she roared over the incessant hissing of Terrasuka's newly grown limbs.
Kurama sliced down a slue of slithering tendrils and darted through the gap in time to spot Terrasuka. Smiling peacefully, a bunch of tentacles writhing and sprouting from the gory sockets where her arms had once taken up residence, she grinning at her two revolted opponents. Dust and mortar blew up around them in dense clouds as the demon's whip-like arms sliced through the stucco wall, shattering windows and shredding the rich lavender curtains. Three feelers jabbed simultaneously at the youko, forcing him back.
Stab! Stab! Stab!
He couldn't dodge them all like this. From all angles they came, hissing past like angry hornets, brushing his arms, legs and face as he slid past would-be lethal attacks. Damn! She was fast! Gritting his teeth to prevent himself from biting his tongue should he be struck, the young man darted away from another wave of wild stabs; moving so quickly it seemed his body fluttered in and out of perception. He slashed, slashed and sliced the oncoming limbs, littering the floor in bloody cords of flesh, but no matter how fast, how strategically he anticipated and destroyed them, more zipped in to replace them.
"Kurama!" shrieked Mika, seeing his assault grow more and more furious, faster and faster and more blood-thirsty. She incinerated several tentacles and managed to scramble past a stray arm lodged through a suite door to her left. Hand glowing with a translucent blue energy, the girl dashed toward her guardian deciding which group of arms to burn first…
"Gotcha little girl!" cried Terrasuka gleefully.
Mika cursed like a true Urameshi as a slender feeler slithered lightening fast about her waist and hoisted her air born. Mika immediately blasted the offending arm, only to be slapped by another tentacle, like a fly from the air, as she fell. Kurama shouted her name as he watched Yuusuke's daughter plummet to the floor in a boneless heap, aura flickering and fading about her petite form.
"Mika!"
"Don't worry, dear Yoko-kun. I'll take excellent care of Urameshi-chan's little girl," giggled Terrasuka, eyes growing wide, and rolling crazily in her too perfect face. "But first…"
His eyes widened at the sight or Terrasuka's smile and the walls groaned suddenly. Seven feelers licked out to snap up fluffs of the carpet, having missed their red-haired target who was forced to leap back into a wall. Shoulder blades slamming against the scarred stucco as he rolled away from the follow through, Kurama destroyed every single attacking arm before it made contact and the squirming limbs fell about him like vines against a weed-eater.
Sweat ran a single bead down his flushed alabaster skin dripping from the gentle slope of his chin as he narrowed dark green and moon-streaked eyes at her. Judging from the slow, tense manner with which he wiped perspiration from his upper lip, he didn't appreciate Mika's injury.
"Oh please, Kurama," laughed the woman.
Suddenly the walls about him exploded and the fox felt himself get engulfed by a mass of wet, writhing tentacles that burst from their hidden lodging inside the wall. The ropy, things wrapped his wrists, legs, waist and throat in a paralyzing chokehold. His whip burst back into its original form, a non-petaled rose flopping to the floor as its owner struggled ineffectively against his attacker. Terrasuka's deceptively soft lavender eyes grew amethyst cold as she seemed to glide across the carpeting toward her new captive.
Kurama bared delicately tapered fangs at the female and instantly redoubled his efforts, lean muscle and sinew bunching and coiling as he struggled to pull his arms free. She only smiled pityingly and stroked her victim's head, finger singers sliding through his hacked hair and smoothing it lovingly.
"Such a pity," she remarked. That you have to die, remained silent, but hung in the air a wordless afterthought.
Terrasuka's dark, wine-hued lips began to split in that homicidal, grin of needle teeth as she leaned intimately closer to the King of Thieves. Her transformation paused briefly, her eyes flickering across Kurama's dark, entrancing features, hypnotic green-gold eyes momentarily captivating her with the ageless depth and intelligence. He saw her mind change from their original murderous intent to a most pleasurable temptation.
She reverted to her full human face, leaning her lips but a breath from Kurama's. "Good-bye Kurama-kun. This is the last kiss you'll ever know."
Her mouth leaned in for the touch, but Kurama's lips twitched up at the corners and his eyes flashed, stopping her. She paused, suspicious.
"I'll make you eat those words," Kurama replied and before she could change her mind, he caught her lips with his own…
…and bit her?
The woman yelped and leapt out of the contact, as ivory fangs pierced her lower lip, drawing blood. Lacking arms to properly wipe it away, she stepped slowly back, licking her lips clean and glaring furiously at the youko. Crimson blood spilled from her bitten lip, dribbling down her face unchecked. The gorgeous, but restrained spirit fox only smirked and licked his lower lip clean of her blood; an arousing gesture, if not so terrifying due to his most Yoko-like expression.
"I'm not Suiichi Minnamino and I'm not Yoko Kurama," hissed the fox.
Terrasuka gasped and hacked suddenly, arms she didn't have attempting to fly to her throat. Gentle tremors began at her belly, moved up like a slow tide through each muscle group and slowly over took her entire body. In moments Terrasuka was trembling and jerking like a marionette in the wind. Her eyes widened. Frothing foam bubbled up from her throat as the puncture wound about her lip swelled and turned an ugly purple. Her eyes grew wide and horrified as realization sank in before rolling listlessly back into her sockets. Her grip loosened and her feelers grew limp about the fox demon's wiry body. They fell away and she toppled over, clawing the air vainly and ripping the nearby curtains from their rungs. She tumbled face-first into the thick, soft, carpeting and laid still.
He smiled humorously and spat the poisonous yellow berry from his mouth, toxic juices having served their purpose. "I'm just Kurama and I've learned some new tricks."
The body continued to foam and gargle for several more minutes after the conclusion of their 'fight'. Kurama ignored it, however, rushing to Mika's side. She moaned and stirred very slightly in the youko's arms, but would not fully come about. Kurama thought a moment, then dug into his pocket and gingerly bloomed a seed into a potent-smelling flower beneath her nose. A moment…Her nostrils flared and the young woman jerked up with a loud, long, howl of disgust.
"OH LORDY THAT'S SICK! KURAMA YOU'RE SICK! OHH! NASTY!" she wailed, clutching at her nose as tears poured down her cheeks. "It's like…like…that's so nasty I'm lost for words."
Kurama returned the flower to a seed and delicately slipped it somewhere about his person. "Imagine having a sense of smell one thousand that of a human being," he remarked lightly, helping to her feet.
Mika wiped her face and peered over her guardian's shoulder. "How'd yu' win?"
Kurama shrugged. "A cornered fox bares its teeth. I bit her."
"I'm gonna pretend that was a metaphor," sniffled Mika. Kurama only smiled. "What's our next move?"
"Get to Yuusuke. Your father must have contracted trouble again. Why else would demons be tracking you specifically?" replied the fox-thief. "I suspect someone wants to keep at least one of us out of the Makai."
"Lovely. Should I go fetch my blouse? I just love family reunions under terrible danger."
"THERE WON'T BE A REUNION, BECAUSE YOU'RE BOTH GOING TO DIE!" shrieked a familiar, if not horrible wet and choked voice. A plume of crackling energy filled the hall behind the two and a mist of oily black fumes boiled along the floor.
Mika glared at Kurama. "I thought we killed this bitch?"
Kurama slipped his hands in his pockets and looked pensive. "We?"
Terrasuka, having been dealt the death-blow one too many times had seemingly given up all sense of sanity in exchange for a second chance at killing Yoko Kurama and Mika Urameshi. Her skin suddenly erupted in what Mika thought to be the worst case of acne she'd ever seen. Angry blisters opened up on her smooth flesh, before her pores began to seep black oil-like fluid which encased her whole body in glistening slime. Her eyes remained the same insane violet-purple.
"I'MTHREATENINGYOUOVERHEREYOUFOOLS!" she screamed, throwing a regular hissy-fit of ghastly horror.
Kurama narrowed his eyes at the annoyingly resilient creature. "So I noticed."
"DIE!" she shrieked and a forest of vine-like appendages hurled themselves upon the kitsune. Mika gasped, but Kurama grabbed the girl and held her tightly against his side. Green-gold eyes glowing a soft yellow, he lifted one arm and gestured with it, thumb and forefinger extended in a silent command.
"Bloom," he said quietly.
Terrasuka's body obediently exploded in three places, spraying red gore and squirming tentacles in every direction. Vines – real vines – covered in long thorns and exotically colored flora burst from the holes. The plants grew and expanded under Kurama's power and wrapped the demoness in a cocoon of greenery. Her muffles shriekes cut off violently as the plants crushed her in their complex root-system and goring vines, feeding off her body.
The Death Seeds.
Mika and Kurama looked on in silence as the petals darkened to a deep crimson, soaking in the blood, draining the monster of the liquids. They kept growing darker, as if the supply would never end.
"She won't die the normal way," Kurama said as Mika gaped at the bloody mess. His expression remained cold and detached as he spoke. "She's nothing but a manifestation of energy and flesh. She has no vital points because he body isn't really alive or even breathing. It's just a shell endlessly mutating to serve her needs."
Mika gulped, feeling ill. "So…she's dead right?"
"She won't bother us again," Kurama said cryptically and gave his protégé a warm smile, hoping to calm her. Mika (who was not comforted by this) just felt a bit more ill than before. She knew Yoko could be ruthless but holy crap, he just freaking smiled after a blood-bath like that.
"Umm…good?" Mika asked.
Kurama rolled his eyes. "Yuusuke's daughter," he sighed and moved quickly down the hall. "Come on, Mika. Botan's told me where every hole between the Makai and Ningenkai is located. There's one close by and active if those demons arrived so promptly. We can probably use it without wasting energy if we hurry."
Mika followed her guardian, still staring at the twitching mass of flesh, blood and greenery. The purple drapery, which she'd crashed into only moments earlier fluttered and danced in a cold, snowy draft, blood dripping from the fringes
"Uh-huh…" she babbled. "Just thinking…each sad…rustling…purple curtains…filled me thrilled me with fantastic terrors…"
"What are you talking about?" Kurama teased.
She shook it off and glared at him. "Nothing! Let's go!"
And they took off.
-i-n-f-e-c-t-i-o-n-
"Lord Yuusuke!"
"WHAT?" screamed the demon-boy in frustration.
"We have another attack. South side. Half of them are our own men," reported one of his messenger harpies, the eagle claws that formed her lower body dripping blood, her wings singed by battle fire. The demoness turned a face toward the south, watching the distant with her sharp raptor-eyes. She blinked and looked back to her lord. "I'm afraid our forces are being driven back even as I speak."
Yuusuke didn't have time to think on the losses or even to give her a command because as he opened his mouth to do so, Veil flew up the side of the turret wall and perched on the rubble beside him. His tunic jangled as he landed in a crouch beside the Toushin.
"We need a hit, Yuusuke! East side. I've cleared the men out!" he cried.
Yuusuke swung around, bracing his right wrist with his left hand. A bead of brilliant blue light so pure it gleamed white began to form at his finger tip. The bead swelled until it reached the size of a small base-ball and then erupted from the demon lord's hand like a missile. Yuusuke's feet skidded back a good foot and a half, the recoil shoving him backward as the signature blue spirit technique shot off into the distance. A black throng amassing in the distance vanished in a radiance of blue that exploded in a silent mushroom cloud of energy. A moment later the sonic boom reached the fortress and the residual shock wave threw dust into their faces.
His aim, after nearly a century, was dead on.
"Thanks," Veil said, saluting mockingly and taking off.
"My lord?" the harpy insisted urgently.
"Yeah, umm," Yuusuke said intelligently, clenching his hand against his forehead. Making a snap decision he gestured to an experienced youkai working the ground units at the far end of the ramparts. "That's captain Yukori. Take a C-class platoon from the Western division and try to hold the fort there. I'll come down there the moment they break through the fifth trenches. Alert me then. Got it?"
She nodded curtly. "Yes, lord," she replied and took off for the officer in question.
Yuusuke squinted into the distance, frustration evident on his face. He wanted to get down there and fight, but Veil argued that his joining the fray would only get them what they wanted. If one of them managed to infect the Toushin, then that would mark the end of everything they'd worked to hold for the last two hours. The your Emperor had resigned himself to the occasional nuking of larger enemy forces and the irregular hand to hand slaughter when his own forces found themselves driven dangerously far back by infected demons.
Speaking of whom…
The sky darkened as yet another wave of air-borne youkai plummeted through the skyways, breaking cloud-cover and plunging toward the yet-to-be penetrated fortress. Wyvrens, wyrms, goblins and winged monstrosities Yuusuke had never before seen dove individually toward his keep, all on a single, blood-thirsty mission of infection, murder and blood.
Yuusuke raised his hands, planting his feet wide and closing his glowing auburn eyes. The heat of battle and demonic adrenaline colored his irises a dangerous blood red as he used his powers. Blue light rippled around his figure and his long, dark hair shifted and fluttered like a halo of dark spikes around his shoulders. Dark tattoos grew dark in contrast to his leanly, muscled body.
Eyes, still shut, he pounded his fist into the other and thrust his arm into the sky, hissing his mantra.
"Sapphire Storm," he muttered, brow furrowing with the unfamiliar technique.
Blue particles began to glow in the skies over head, bright light blinked into existence all through the air, multiplying, doubling, filling up the air around the blood crazed youkai, who paused in wonder of the blue specks. One fiendishly ugly bat demon poked experimentally at a speck which caused a small explosion, setting off the one next to it, then the three beside that one, the ten next to those, the fifty after that and suddenly the entire sky exploded into a blue haze of chain reaction detonation.
He grinned evilly, having cleared the entire sky clear of all demonic entities.
"NEVERMORE!" came a shriek and in a flurry of flapping, moth-like wings, a female youkai leap from her hiding place beside the broken turrets, raising bloody claws to rake them across the young man's arms. He swung around to eradicate the assassin, but someone else got there first.
"Needle Storm!" a voice exclaimed.
He heard a whine and a hissing noise just as the offending demon collapsed, dead, to the ground at his feet. Yuusuke stepped away as blood began to spurt from the innumerable number of invisible wounds covering her body. The needle had pierced her body through a million times, lacerating every organ, every artery, bone and the brain. It was safe to assume the demon quite dead.
"Must be more careful husband of mine," teased a familiar voice.
Yuusuke turned, smiling as his wife leapt an incredible forty feet from a high balcony, landing beside him and smirking in a self-satisfied kind of way. He scowled and looked off in mock resentment.
"I had it covered," he huffed.
"Sure," Keiko cooed, patting him on the cheek. "I'll see you later. Ryu is having trouble on the right flank. I'm gonna go strengthen the line. Have fun. Kill demons." She blew him a kiss and sped away before he could protest her fighting. He groaned and shook his head, knowing that his had no right trying to keep her out of danger after all his years of blood and battle.
Keiko hated all this fighting, though she did her fair share and learned not to hesitate in the face of death, she would never reach the level of ruthlessness the Reikei Tantai had reached in their years together. Even divided as they were she suspected secretly that every one of them, with the exception of departed Kuwabara and perhaps Kurama, had only grown more lethal in their years of solitude.
Thunder rolled overhead as the battle intensified, multi-colored energy flashes dominating the field as the enemy troops disabled the energy wards and began their spirit assault. Yuusuke finally gave the hand signal to the large gathering of gray-winged youkai below him. All tall, white-haired, gray skinned and clad in dark energy concealing camouflage, they gaze impatiently up at him with pupiless white eyes. He gestured them 'go' and instantly every one of them took off, scattering to their assigned regiments like a firework of dove-like wings and snowy hair.
Dove Division: healers, medics, doctors and trained warriors immune to low level spirit energy, they were Yuusuke's best defensive unit and his last resort when a battle turned ill.
And the battle had begun to look very ill.
"Ur'meshi!" a voice broke in overhead, sounding winded.
Yuusuke looked up into Jin's wide blue eyes, taking in the shinobi's blood stained clothing. The Wind Master looked worse for the wear to say the least and his expression gave Yuusuke no doubts about that. The ninja had joined the battle not five minutes after the imp's report that the territory was officially at war. Yuusuke gave him two divisions to command on the Western flank, Veil five for the Eastern and Northern and his other military officer, Xander, three to man the South.
The red-haired ninja wiped a splatter of blood, another demon's judging by his lack of cuts, from his brow and grimaced. The straps off his shoulders had ripped and frayed like someone grabbed them and torn them from his back and bruises decorated his flesh wherever cloth did not hide it, but at least he didn't seem to have any serious wounds.
"Ur'meshi. I dun know wha's happ'nin, but 'bout a thousand o' our men just got hit from th' side boi somethin' huge!" he said, voice tinged with frustration. "I be thinkin' s'a real, whopper o' a dragon. I killed th' summoner, bu' th' bugger won' be dyin' any toime soon and we're losin' men."
"I'll take care of if!" Yuusuke said, almost relieved for something urgent to do. "Jin, take south side and help them out. I hear they're having troubles."
"Kin do!" Jin said, and spiraled off toward the trouble spot.
Yuusuke leapt up on the ramparts and dove off the high walls, plummeting for the ground. He flexed his aura, energy cushioning his fall as he landed softly on the ground, signaling to three of his trusted officers. The trio abandoned their posts to their second in command and took off with their Emperor to the fire-strewn battle field marking the Western flank.
"See that dragon?" he called over his shoulder.
Eyes widened, looked, then bobbed 'yes'.
"Good. We're gonna go kill it," he said, baring fangs in a demented grin that spurred his three companions on to smile as well. The four demons took off for the threat brewing and inwardly, Yuusuke wondered if his forces would live out the night.
-i-n-f-e-c-t-i-o-n-
Shadows… fleeting darkness in an abyss of nothingness that spiraled into eternal ebony. Death? Darkness? Hell? He stood still, breath frozen in its aborted place on his lips, stuck over his tongue, forgotten as he stood breathless before the nothingness of it. As though he stood on the very knife edge of reality and the entire world threatened to tip and send him plunging into the inviting embrace of the sensation deprived darkness.
In the back of his mind, he felt a flutter, a weak and tattered kind of struggle against a pull too great for matching and yet the pathetic, stubborn little bugger kept at it, fluttering behind his eyes, wings tips brushing his thoughts, tickling the inside of his skull. A butterfly to delicate to change anything…insignificant thought. Meaningless words that darted meaninglessly behind the silence of his vacant expression.
"That is what awaits you, Hunter, if you continue to seek the light. The light and those stars your brethren spoke of. Precious, pitiless clouds that span out of your pathetic reach, little angel child," leered a voice, female, haughty and full of anger, of jealousy in something so pure she could never understand the sheer simple complexity of it.
"Why not?" he'd shouted out over the wailing shadows of the Pit, of the first darkness and the centre of all the Makai. Of all worlds. "Why can't I seek light? Why can't I go? Why only the darkness?"
The shadows, rippled, shuddered and slithered just beneath the lip of the jagged circumference, inky blackness undulating in irritation, confusion and envy, envy, always envy. He felt the cold breath of the Abyss, dark air stirring the paleness of his hair as the entity of the ebony stirred as well. His eyes, so attuned to the world of shadows and silence could barely discern the shape that now glided together like ink dribbling into a single, black, gossamer figure of wispy strands of impossibly long hair and lithe feminine curves that he could only just make out as such.
Did she lift her arms? Turn her face to him?
"Child…child of darkness, my darkness, my shadows, why are you not content? Why do you turn your face from your mother when all the others have conformed to the shadows?" she uttered, voice soft, sultry and heavy as satin lining a coffin. "Why do you not shed your childish youth of light-lust? Mature! Grow into the great and terrible perfection I designed and delicately wove you to be! Why of all my children do you, the only one I want to be mine, turn to the cursed lighted world? Why? Answer me, impertinent child!"
Of course, he had no answer.
"Hunter. My Hunter," she mourned. Her mood slid like a tide from one emotion to the next. "Even now you are lost to me? Your mind in the Above? In the Lit?"
He felt hot moisture at the back of his eyes. She manipulated him him, controlled him, owned him, and often hurt him with her words, her gestures or lack-there of, but she'd never hated him, never detested his pale hair, his bright skin that burned the eyes of his fellows or sneered when he looked toward the endless cavern ceilings in search of something too far away to possibly be tangible.
She'd always, at some level, loved him though he knew that creatures of darkness like they could not feel such things in the manner of other creatures. Love? Love? How did he know this archaic word, long since banished from the Unlit like a profanity against the Mother herself? Did she understand it, if it was she who had birthed all Shadowkai? No. Never and yet, she radiated the emotions the rest of his kin did not.
They knew only hatred, only blood, only battle. He felt something they couldn't and fought with an ambition all his own and that too they despised him for. He conquered them with this compassion that awakened a power within him that the carnage of his brethren had failed to wake. And this gift that he himself did not understand… they hated him for it. Hated him!
And he killed them. Killed them all for hating his compassion and wept when the deed was done. He wept for them that in their hatred they would never know and in the manner of the shadowkai he could not abide them. One did not suffer his enemies to live and one left no one to question his domination. Their word meant nothing, because 'trust' meant as little as the 'joke' and 'betrayal' on par with innocent words like 'water' 'word' or 'breath'. To betray was natural and just and death the only alleviation to the chaotic destruction.
The Mother's Children had feuded amongst themselves down to the last youkai and an abomination child at that. The Elders, the Children of the ages past, would never accept such a brilliant creature into their dark number. The Mother – though unquestioned in her supremacy – could not protect her brightest child from their darkness.
They'd kill him for his abilities…or enslave him for them.
"Run, Hunter. Run Cloudhunter. My light in the shadows. How such a seed as your flourished I this darkness…it is not of my own doing." Did she sound sorrowful? Regretful? "Go to the surface and make for yourself a name. I am through with you. Go."
Go…
Go…
Go?
"CLOUD! WAKE UP FOUR DAMN IT ALL! WE'RE UNDER ATTACK!"
His eyes, the color of burnt ruby and fresh blood leapt open and he leapt like a cat to his feet, darkness eating at the natural light particles that meandered through the air on unseen wings, devouring them. Senses washed over him through the sudden alert to danger, adrenaline, shock and confusion. The air smelled of dew, dirt and leaves and the chill air ran freezing fingers along his exposed skin in cool waves, playing through his gossamer feathers.
Forest? Yes, they'd traveled here. Toward Yuusuke's territory?
A brilliant light to his left. Silver fur and alabaster skin that glowed like a beacon even in the night and shadows of the forest: Alaster. He smelt roses and petals swirled in the air about them like a gentle blizzard. Rose Whip? Did they need weapons yet?
To his right stood Shizuru, decked out in her dark shinobi derived style clothing. Her soft boots made no sound as she shifted her weight on the seemingly chunky footwear. Her breathe, almost undetectable, rose and fell with perfect body control, whereas the youko's breathing quivered with apprehension and anticipation. Her mask, sleek and dark had drawn up over her lower face, hiding her mouth, nose and the slope beneath her cheekbones. Only her slanted amber eyes, the color of pale cider, exposed her anxiety as they darted in search of a target, her long blades poised in her grasp.
"Who's attacking?" he asked, running his fingers through his feathers, plucking one free and slipping it from its place formerly camouflaged inside his dark wings. He gazed at the shimmering quill, black energy slithering into it before touching it gently to his face, savoring the shift between feather and metal as a blade materialized where the softest plume had once caressed his skin.
Shizuru didn't grace him with and answer, having watched his antics and apparently found him too disgusting to reply to like a civil being. Alaster, however, provided his answer.
"Shield," he whispered.
Until the time we meet again…