Disclaimer: Don't own it. The End.
Story Thus Far: Kurama and Karasu are caught in a garish standoff whilst everyone else scrambles for sanity, safety and a place to hide from the infected hordes rampaging Yuuuske kingdom. What of Mika? Lying in the human world with a sprouting flower on her wrist? Of Alaster who's managed to run into an evil horde princess? Stay tuned to find out.
Enjoy Chapter 15!
Totally Unrelated Events That
Absolutely Fit Together Somehow
"Mika stop eating those."
The command was iron-clad and no-nonsense to the point of being laughable, but the dark eyed little girl didn't laugh. She solemnly placed the handful of spicy red sugar candies back inside the plastic sprinkles, sticky red fingers dropping them one by one into the container. She eyed it greedily, eyes darting toward her red-hair companion. The frosting smeared across her nose and mouth bore grim testimony to the sugar-coated battle ground of her guardian's kitchen and the cooking war being waged inside.
…or lack thereof.
"Mika! Stop eating that!" Kurama snapped, grabbed the hyper-active child from the counter top and placing her on the tile floor. He pried a wooden spoon from her hand before she could whack him with it again. He shook his head, a large white patch of flour prominent in his cinnamon tresses, powdering his pale face so he looked like a mannequin. Six-year-old Mika's lip quivered and she reached pathetically for the spoon in question.
The kitsune narrowed his eyes at her. "That won't work a second time, girl."
She instantly stopped blubbering and glowered, knotting her arms over her chest. "Kurama no fun," she articulated childishly.
"No. I'm not. That's because you turned a flour bag over my head," he reminded her, placing the girl on the floor. She blinked up at her from her height of three and a half feet and grabbed the back of his jeans at the knee, tugging. He looked down at her, stirring something or another that smell delicious. If not for the miniature ball of six-year-old terror throwing precious ingredients into his hair and clothing, the spirit fox actually had a wicked skill at cooking.
Being over a thousand years old the Fox Thief had become something of a culinary expert; – Who ever heard of someone getting that old and not knowing how to cook? - But obviously wasn't above chocolate chip cookies and Christmas tree shaped confections. Mika tugged again, pouting.
"Wanna see," she told him, bouncing on her toes. "Wanna see!"
"You threw flour over my head," he repeated.
"Sorrry," she apologized quickly. Tug, tug. "Wanna see!"
He looked pensively down at her. "Mika. Tell me something honestly and maybe I'll forgive you."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah!" she agreed, hopping shaken-cola-bottle excitement.
The fox knelt beside her, abandoning the batter- mix on the counter and gazing sternly at her. Then, with total seriousness he helda handclosed over something unknown. She blinked, taking his larger hand and examining his closed fist with a toddler's fascination. He waited until she was satisfied and spoke again.
"Tell me what I'm holding," he commanded her. "Honestly."
Mika stared at the kitsune with a mixture of outrage and despair. Obviously she didn't know and that meant he wouldn't forgive her and let her sit on the counter again. She'd grown used to her new guardian's strange method of getting a point across, but his bizarre child-tactics sometimes made Mika angry to the point of tears. She'd hated all the previous guardians for treating her like a child, but sometimes she wished that he would too sometimes, just so didn't feel so guilty for every choice she made.
"Well?" he inquired calmly, slim brows rising.
"I…don' know," Mika mumbled.
Then, to her astonishment, Kurama grabbed her under her arms and placed her on the counter.
"Very good," he commended her absently. He picked up the nearest spoon and began stirring again like nothing had happened.
"Wah?"
Kurama picked up on the child's confusion and smiled warmly at her. "Mika. You answered honestly. It's what I asked you to do. Therefore, you answered correctly."
"But…" Mika said, her head hurting. This was that strange Kurama-thinking that made him so different from all the human care-takers her parents had tried to persuade her to behave for. He always made some kind of obscure sense but to the six year old, that sense seemed too deep for her quite often.
Kurama didn't look at her while he explained. "Sometimes the answer is in plain sight, Mika. Many people think I'm incredibly smart for the things I can guess at correctly." He looked up at her. "But you know…the reason I'm smarter then most people is because I see what many of them don't. I've watched the work and how it works for a long time and I've come to realize that logic isn't as complicated as people would like it to be."
Mika took a cookie and sank her teeth into it; the wide gap where she'd fallen off her bike and knocked her two front teeth out oozed frosting.
"I got s'arth," she wheezed around the cookie.
"Swallow first. You'll choke and it's not pleasant," Kurama told her placidly.
Mika swallowed, blushing. He'd once allowed her to choke on a peppermint before performing the Heimlich. He then immediately asked her 'Do we run while we suck on candy?' The answer, as you can imagine, was no. The girl repeated what she'd attempted to say.
"I'm not smart."
"Of course you are. If you weren't I would have never agreed to raise you in this manner," he told her in the oddly blunt way that other adults did not. He handed her a cookie cutter. "Hold this. Mika, the reason your parents asked me to raise you is because you are so smart that most human nannies cannot cope. I dare say, I have trouble sometimes and that's significant."
Mika made a face. "Dun like nannies. They're shtuuuupid."
"No. You are a mean little demon girl who uses her superior intelligence and genetic gifts to torment human baby-sitters," Kurama said somewhat tactlessly. But for Mika, tact meant more words and less meaning. The meaning in Kurama's words were plain enough.
"I'm not mean," she said, hurt. "Whaddyu mean, 'mean'? I'm not mean!"
"Yes you are. You bullied all the boys at school today because you're stronger than them. Then you made fun of the girls because you understand more than them. Then you disobeyed the teacher because you're faster and know she cannot punish you unless you allow it." he pointed a spoon at her, gaze stern. "That is mean. Now the only question is whether you want to continue to be mean or if you'd like to be sweet instead."
Silence.
"Kurama?"
"Hmm?"
She smeared frosting on his nose with a smirk. "I'm not mean. I'm gonna be sweet!
Sweet?
Sugar?
Flour?
White?
Snow? She felt…hazy…like she should be remembering something…something important. She frowned and held her head. Her skull pounded like drum, a pulsing throb through her head like a heavy bass system in his brain. Mika woozily looked up at her guardian, he didn't seem to notice her, merely wiping frosting off his nose with a finger and licking it off with annoyance.
His hand came away red…red with blood. Dark crimson…almost black dripped on the counter, into a vat of white frosting like measured drips of red food coloring. She smelled…the metallic scent of blood, of sweat of pain of fear. She looked up from the scarlet drops and her heart nearly stopped as she met Kurama's gaze.
Her guardian stared back at her from the safety of the familiar kitchen…his arms bleeding crimson flowers through his holiday sweater, gaping holes burned into his jeans, his torso, a heavy run of the horrible fluid running down his right eye from a deep gash on his brow. The stench of burned flesh and blood and sugar cookies seared her nose.
He grabbed her arms roughly. "Please! WAKE UP!" he screamed.
BAM!
Mika's eyes flew open in reality and the sweet, sugary scent remained, though the flour vanished I favor of slushy snow and freezing wind. She sucked a gasp and sat up, shivering violently. Her head spun like a quarter during a game of Bloody Knuckles, everything felt fuzzy and blurred around the edges. She remembered in fragments… sleeping… evil Christmas carolers… Terrasuka! She remembered that! Running in the snow with Kurama… suddenly… violent urges like a voice…in her head telling her to hurt him. Hurt Kurama? Oh no?
She stared down the front of herself and noted the aching gash crisscrossing her belly and chest, suddenly feeling a bit less concerned for the red-haired fox-human hybrid. Groaning she looked around, trying to assemble her head. The scent of sweetness remained…what was it? The smell had brought her that sweet dream and broken the that terrible voice…the sugary smell.
She clutched something in her hand and gazed down at it.
In her hand a small, withered white flower lay rumpled and abused, the sweet odor of Christmas frosting filling the air. She inhaled and knew without a doubt that Kurama had left her the flower... somehow he'd known what illness assaulted her. He'd known and he'd cured her with this, but no he'd vanished. Vanished into the Makai with Touya dragging him down.
Touya. Why had Touya attacked Kurama? Where had they gone? Mika felt the first niggling of panic. Had Touya hurt Kurama during the struggle? Or taken him to the enemy (whoever the hell that was) and left him there? Perhaps they'd gone to her father's kingdom? Maybe to the Third Realm? She peered at the distorted and humming air behind the garbage cans and gnawed her lip as the biggest question arose.
Should I follow?
Tactics had never been Mika's strong suit, no matter what Kurama told her of being intelligent. She held her nose like a swimmer going for the cannonball. With a leapt she screwed her eyes shut and bounced into the shimmering air, vanishing into the portal and zipping through the non-existent Barriers to speed into the depths of the Makai, hoping where ever she landed it didn't have any grumpy demons to flatten.
The this point Cloud was in a pretty foul mood, to be quite generous, and frankly not in any kind of attitude for non-sense. Veil shared his dark enthusiasm and as the two sped alike, looking like a gothic Ying and Yang, they silently agreed on one thing and one thing alone in their mad race for Yuusuke's fortress. Their senses buzzed with the rising energies of the forest and its inhabitance. They could smell the stench of disease on the air like a stale wind. They agreed on one thing.
They had to get there…NOW!
Somewhere out there, Cloud felt in the pit of his stomach that something had began. Something terrible.
The hordes of infected demons he knew about already and the fact that they'd gathered at the front gates of the castle didn't shock him. The new and powerful energy leading them also did not surprise the dark angel and certainly not the knowledge that Yuusuke would soon join the ranks of the contaminated, or that Touya had finally fallen prey to the disease's final stage or even the growing feeling that keeping his promise to protect Alaster might somehow have grown more difficult…
Beyond shock, thought Cloud with an ambiguous sense of certainty. Nothing could scare him.
Then a girl fell out the sky and landed on him.
That, he admitted, did scare him a bit.
Veil stopped his run long enough to see Cloud get run into the ground by the falling ass of a brunette girl in sweats and sneakers, though he didn't make any move to either help or harass the fallen shadowkai. No, he seemed more interested in the groaning teenager sitting woozily between Cloud's aching wings, his downy limbs having cushioned her plunge into the Third Realm.
"Mika?" Cloud heard him ask in a low whisper. "Mika Urameshi?"
"Veil!"
The teeni-bopper butt situated on his back shifted uncomfortably between his awkwardly angled wings, crushing his ribs farther into the dirt and reinforcing that aforementioned foul mood. Black energy danced around his skin, but neither the newcomer nor the dragon-demon noticed, far too busy socializing to take note of the abused and somewhat flatter blonde beneath Mika's tail end.
Veil grabbed her by the shoulders, kneeling beside her, but didn't seem to realize whom she'd landed on, the same way she didn't. "Mika, what are you doing here? How did you get the Third Realm without Kurama? Where is he? Why isn't he with you?"
"I don't know," she said with a pained kind of voice. "I was with him, but we were attacked by these deranged demons and Karasu's evil sister or something. Then I…I got sick in the head and Kurama was kidnapped by…Touya. It was really weird. But I'm alright now and I came to Makai to find him, but it doesn't look like he's here, huh?"
Veil shook his head. "No. I'm afraid not. But it's not safe here. There's a terrible disease that Karasu's spreading on Enma's orders -,"
"Enma's?"
"Yes. Your father has fallen to the disease and Karasu's infected horde is closing in on your mother and the last of the Third Realm's loyal. Mukuro's – err – Kumuro's land has fallen already and no reports forthwith from Yomi so we can only assume…."
"STOP FILLING HER IN A BIT SO I CAN GET UP!" Cloud burst out finally, face paper white with rage.
Mika looked startled, twisting around to see what/who she'd landed on. Spotting a tussled blond head protruding from the area somewhere beneath her buttocks she leapt up immediately. "Oh crap! Sorry, dude! I didn't see you there."
"Naturally," he replied pleasantly, "your butt was on my back!"
"Erm…" said Mika keenly, big brown eyes batting quizzically at him. "Hey…you're that…the dark angel dad and Kurama used to tell me about. Cloudhunter?"
Hearing his name mutilated again for the millionth time in the last week or so, by the owner of the ass that had just plowed him into the ground, the immortal virtually exploded; eyes flaring blood red light. "Cloud!"
"Geez. Take a chill pill, blondie." The girl didn't seem impressed.
"GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!" Cloud mimed throttling an invisible teenager.
Veil figured this as good a time as any to wade into the generation gap and try to smooth things over…a caring sentiment save that the one sentimenting was Veil, therefore there was nothing either sensitive or sentimental about it. He marched between the two of them and smacked them both hard across the head. This irritated both parties who (in Cloud's case) met him just half and hour ago and didn't think Veil had earned the right to strike him under any circumstances and (in Mika's case) had fallen through a rip in the space time continuum and didn't think she deserved to get slapped period.
"Get a grip, you two. We have to get to the castle," Veil snapped.
Cloud glowered but nodded, glancing at Mika. "How fast can you run?"
"I dunno…I guess I'm pretty fast if I try to…Hey! HEY! Put me down!"
But Veil and Cloud had seized her arm and begun to frog-march (run) her toward the castle and all the horrors that awaited there.
Wake up.
So...dark…so…nothing…noir…it's all so…noir…
Wake up!
The spirit lifted his face from his knees; cheeks stained and tear streaked, blood at the corner of his mouth crusted in his pock-marked palms. The scars left by decades of grinding his nails into the heel of his hands, the thin, feathery line across his mouth where he'd bitten his lip until his teeth punctured the skin. His face, so pale and youthful, held centuries of pain and torment not fit for the features of one his seeming age. His slanted, cat-like eyes worn like someone had taken his spirit to the grind stone and sanded him down into a thin, smooth nothing.
He looked up, listless as some blurry figure materialized from the nothingness. The shadows converged and melted into a tangible figure that rose from the void like a beacon of black smoke. The lost soul lowered his chin into his folded arms again, his lank brown hair flittering in the sudden hot wind of the new presence. He didn't know what this strange new entity wanted. He'd seen many entities in this place…most of them terrible.
What…do you want?
I want you to wake up.
Who are you?
You know me, brat.
I don't even know who I am. Much less you. Leave me.
You know who I am! You have to remember! Concentrate!
The lost soul clutched his head, screwing his golden eyes tightly shut. Can't, can't, can't! Not strong enough! Not strong enough! I'm too weak! He felt his throat knot up and his stomach churn with nausea as the familiar mantra came back to him, that giant dominating voice that masqueraded at his own…telling him he could not, reminding him how pathetic, how useless, how weak he had always been, though he couldn't remember why or how.
But it was all he knew. It must be right. I'm destined to fail! Despair set in and he buried his face once more in his arms, shaking his head. He couldn't do it, couldn't and didn't want to because even if he did it changed nothing because he was still weak and destined to fall, to fail and destroy others because of his mistakes. Too weak! Too weak!
You spineless whelp!
I am spineless! You don't have to rub it in!
No! I mean, grow up and get your own opinion. All I hear is you repeating what your dear, damn daddy told you. The voice sneered elegantly in the darkness and the lost soul blinked up into the smoky face of the mysterious entity. He destroyed you and sent you here not because you're weak, but because you're strong and because you're a pain in the ass to him. That's why I'm gonna drag you back to reality, because you're giving him a hard time and that's what we need. It's time someone knocked the bastard down a peg and it's gonna be you.
The lost soul stared, shocked at the smoky figure and thought for a moment he saw something glow an ugly purple color in the centre of it's forehead. Something familiar coiled through the gloom like a sinuous serpent of black fire and darkness. The murky blur of this place started to grow oddly dull…then brighter, like that strange purple glow had started sucking away the shadows.
I…I know you! I…I know who I am!
Good. Now wake up! The Fox is on his last ropes as it is.
Alaster, being the intelligent kind of demon he was, knew when to cut his losses and run: A talent that few possessed in a world of dramatics, heroism and romantic ideas like getting killed in battle had a glorious and honorable glow about it. As an experienced fighter, or at least a long time observer of serious fighters, he'd come to realize over the years that dying in battle had no appeal what so ever.
He'd seen death by the hand of an enemy and found nothing dignified about it. Gagging and mewling helplessly on the blade of your opponent, drooling your own blood like a thick beverage down your chin and chest, knowing that you'd lost as the enemy gloats over your demise, or worse yet, dismisses you from the world without even the vaguest appreciation for the life they'd taken.
He'd seen a shinobi drown in his own blood once upon a time when he and Shizuru first started traveling together. He remembered when she'd introduced him to her adopted sect of wandering ninjas, all having abandoned their home dojo in search of something more adverse. The killing had been a grudge match between two skilled fighters and in the end their companion had lost his life.
He remembered Touya had knelt beside the defeated ninja until he'd passed, then looked up from the fresh corpse with those deadly pale blue eyes and said a simple sentence that rocked him to his core.
"I'm very… appreciative… that your father didn't kill me."
Hearing Touya say the word 'appreciative' in that context nailed a lesson between Alaster's eyes like a nine-inch railroad spike. Alaster figured life was the best thing that sentient beings had going for them…and he refused to squander it or likewise have others steal it from him. So the next thing the clever kitsune did could be taken as either very boldly brilliant…or very desperately dim-witted.
He leapt up, grabbed the girl he'd accidentally tackled to the ground and held his claws to her throat, snarling, "Call them off if you want to live!"
The horde shuffled to a halt and Alaster figured that life must have had a special place in her little heart too because she shot him a very mean look over her shoulder. He could practically taste the loathing oozing from her every pore in his direction. If she'd had her way he figured she'd have loved to have him slowly torn to pieces at her whim, but he had the claws, the size and the advantage so she didn't have the luxury.
"Foolish!" she hissed at him as he backed up the path from the mindlessly glaring eyes. "You think you've won do you? That you'll get away alive?"
Alaster deliberated. "At this rate…I suppose I do."
"Bastard creature! Damn you! I'll have your hide!"
"I have claws. You don't. I win. Now kindly shut up and keep walking. No, no! Biting me won't get you anywhere."
The child fumed, looking less and less like an innocent child by the second. Alaster knew the girl had some kind of special influence over the hordes of infected victims, but he couldn't fathom what precisely. The overpowering stench of insanity and disease rolling off the sea of polluted demons made what his nose told him hard to confirm. If his senses were, indeed, not addled by the odor of the other diseased, then it smelled like this girl was pure sickness. A fleshly sack of pure sickness.
"You'll die soon enough! Fool! My touch is toxic! My scent a poison! I'm death itself!" she crowed, startling Alaster who, up until now, had her fingered as some kind of weird mascot. The seriousness of her announcement brought him unpleasantly to earth and the reality of his impending doom…or whatever.
Al smiled to himself. "So…you must be the disease incarnate that Enma summoned up. You made Karasu the carrier and first living host body for the illness and let it spread," Alaster said, voice sardonically amused. "You really are death itself in that sense, I suppose."
She leered. "You suppose a lot of things, fox."
"I suppose."
"You'll fall dead in moments. Twenty seconds if you're luck is strong."
"I feel pretty lucky."
They continued to back their steady way up the path and Alaster thought he heard someone screeching his name but figured he could ignore it for now because his full attention was needed to do this hostage taking thing right. The girl squirmed in his grip, but didn't try anything fancy to escape him, though the scent of disease grew thicker, like a blanket over his mouth and nose. Could air get thicker really? Actually thick enough to choke a man?
"Why aren't you dying?" screamed the girl in frustration.
Alaster figured honesty couldn't hurt at this point. "Maybe because I'm already infected?"
"No you aren't! If you were then I could control you no matter how minimal the infection! I am the disease! The disease is me! I am the weapon of Lord Enma himself and you're not playing fair!" Her face screwed up in a babyish twist for that last whining wail.
The fox demon felt a flicker of confusion and that forbidden emotion…hope? "I'm playing perfectly fair. If your powers are failing you, that's not my problem."
Alaster had begun to wonder exactly where he was planning to go with his diseased little girl. He couldn't take her into the castle surely, that would only expose everyone else to the sickness and that wouldn't be very cricket. No. So maybe he could just keep walking until the horde was out of sight and smell? Nah. That didn't do anyone any good. So perhaps…just kill her? Could he do that?
"Go ahead and kill me!" the child squealed, sensing Alaster's sinister line of thought. "They will assault the castle mercilessly until everyone is dead and infected, even those we had orders to keep alive. More death will come from your actions, fox! Do not dare to try and end my life, for it will -,"
"They do what they will do even under your command, you liar. See you in hell."
He slashed her throat open and threw her down in the road where she fell with a gurgling wail. Black blood – more ooze than lymphocytes – bubbled on the ground like dark acid, eating into the dirt with a sickening stench. Alaster wrinkled his nose and spun around, bolting for the front gates.
"Half-breed, vermin!" a familiar voice gargled. "You can't kill a disease!"
Alaster froze mid-sprint (an impressive feat actually) and pivoted around, silver-blue tresses whipping about his shoulders like a banner of frayed silk. His soft wine colored eyes grew round and shocked. In the middle of the blood splattered road, rising like some kind of demented puppet, the child had begun to rise out of the dust, black fluid dripping down the front of her, her eyes dripping the same black filth, her pores seeping, every orifice in her tiny body pouring the disease.
"You aren't Yoko Kurama!"
He blinked. "Well, obviously," he retorted.
Then ran.
"GET HIM! GET HIM!" the girl screamed. "Don't bother to infect him! He's immune! Just kill him!"
Immune? Alaster thought as he panted, sprinting for the front gates. Why am I immune? How does she know I'm a half-breed? All this darted through his brain as he ran, looking toward the upper ramparts. The heavy metal doors had probably been blockaded because the figures at the top of the walls milled frantically. Some had already starting tossing ropes over the edge of the fortifications in hopes of giving him a hand up.
He didn't really need one.
Quick as any thief or trained shinobi, he leapt on the roughly hewn castle walls and began to climb. And not just climb but really motor. The fox demon had a slight frame and a lot of physical power in that slight frame so his body to weight ratio was something incredible to behold. He had no trouble using a single hand to yank himself up so hard that he flew up ten feet to the next available handhold. In seconds he'd reached the top of the wall and scrambled over the top with a grin.
To his delight, his old ally Jin the Wind Master stood there waiting for him, blue eyes huge and luminous in his battle weary face. Obviously, seeing Alaster after the fiasco in the Dame Yume Forest came as a shock. He figured (rightly so) that neither Alaster nor Shizuru had any inkling of their dire situation with Karasu. Seeing Al rose a mess of unanswered questions that they had no time for currently.
"Al-," he started.
"ALASTER!" someone shrieked and suddenly something warm and blue-haired tackled him around the middle, sobbing uncontrollably. The poor fox yelp and toppled to the ground a mid a haze of confusion and blurred activity around them. The hordes…they were attacking…But the young half-demon dismissed those thoughts as he suddenly recognized the scent of flowers, sugar and gravedirt.
"Mother?" he cried in shock.
She didn't answer, only cried for both happiness and despair as the battle seethed around the wall of Yuusuke fortress. The blue-haired kitsune seized his tiny mother and pulled her into a tight embrace, burying his face in her neck and biting back tears. He hadn't seen her since he was a kit, because – like Mika Urameshi – his parents' lives were so fraught with peril to raise a child. The young hanyou held her like the rest of the world could fall away and she sobbed, hugging her only child and wishing that they could have met anywhere else but here.
"I'm…immune to it," he whispered raggedly, "because…of you?"
Botan wiped her eyed, but didn't draw back as she answered. "Yes. This disease will kill all demons and leave those of Reikai and Ningenkai heritage be. You won't die because of the illness. I'm so glad you're here. That I got to see you!"
Alaster hugged her tighter, inhaling the scent of his long lost mother, lingering in the seconds, the moment of having finally found someone from that time so long ago…when all the politics and the chaos had been a blurry 'problem' he could not comprehend. Secretly, he heard the hidden meaning in her gentle words, meant to be a comfort to a distressed child.
She'd said 'You won't die because of the sickness.' but she had not said 'You won't die.'
Death is only the beginning…
Author's Note: I'm thinking I see the end in the next chapter or the one after that. Just maybe.
Cloud8.9: I'm certain. But I do think this should end quickly. It's just so painful to watch… like a car-crash. You can't help but stare.
Cheezit: You want to get started on the Teen Titans' sequel or not? Hurry and wrap this up!
Me: I guess I don't have a lot of talking time so I'll be brief. Bye-bye! Be back soon!