Authoress' notes: (authoress bows so low in front of Rumiko Takahashi that she thunks her head off the floor) (THUNK) ...OW!
Besides...Shidoubara is(Guide) + (Rose)
Thank you again to everyone who reads and reviews! I appreciate it!
Wayward Ransom, chapter 27.
by artisanrox
The young man sat on the matted floor, hunched over, his hand held up to his bowed forehead in frustration.
Akiko's elaborate wooden box containing her brushes and ink lay on the floor next to them, in the strangely indistinct, foggy cottage.
She turned to her left, placed the cleaned brush in the box, and sighed resignedly. "I think that's about all for today," she said tiredly, and brought her palms from resting neatly on her thighs up to her face, rubbing her tired eyes. "I don't know how else to explain some of this."
"So...there's no easy way to remember all this stuff?" asked Bankotsu, rubbing his temples with a hand.
"I'm afraid not," said the girl. "You just have to keep using what I'm telling you until it all becomes second nature."
Bankotsu scratched his head and sighed at the mass of papers around them. Flat scrolls lay on the low table in front of them, and scrunched up papers were scattered on the floor. It was a constant struggle for him just learning good brush technique, and remembering what the characters looked like, let alone making the brush strokes in the proper order.
The only time he could do anything anywhere near an acceptable level, at least according to his teacher, was for her to literally take his hand and help him along. Though, most times he absolutely didn't mind her taking his hand. But even though her tendency to accept nothing less than perfection got to be really frustrating, she was irresistible as a teacher.
Bankotsu never quite wanted to learn from anyone else. He found it hard to believe he could, anyway. He'd never, ever consider looking like an ass in front of his men by fumbling around while practicing to write. Asking his only literate member to teach him was unthinkable. The elders of the surrounding villages knew his name, and of his frightening reputation, and would have no qualms about seeking to kill him in a moment of concentration. Besides, why learn from other literate people, who'd probably turn their noses up at the mention of his name anyway, when you could have a pretty girl do it?
So, there was only one alternative to getting some practical experience, and Bankotsu pretty much knew the answer to the question before even asking it, since he had asked it once or twice before.
"Wh- what if we go to the market, and I'll try to read some of the signs there?" Bankotsu asked, hopeful to spend a little more time with the girl. He looked downward, breaking contact with Akiko's eyes, and started nervously running the edge of his cobalt blue jacket between his fingers.
Akiko looked out the window. Her brow wrinkled. "I told you before. I-- really shouldn't be seen in town with you," she said nervously. "I'm already getting dirty looks from some of the people around here."
"Why should that matter?" Bankotsu looked back up at her, grinned and raised an eyebrow. "Who cares what people think of you?" He was sliding closer to her as he spoke. "Screw 'em all. There'll always be someone who doesn't like you, no matter what you do."
He rose up a bit, and turned. He practically leaned over her, and in response, she arched her back away from him a little. Her yellow eyes widened.
"So...why not do what you want?" he said quietly, his eyes looking deeply into hers. "C'mon along with me," he whispered, with a darkly charming smile, and a toss of his head towards the front door.
Her wordless, wide-eyed gaze was enough of an answer in itself. After admitting to himself that the answer wouldn't be "yes" this time either, he pried a little further. "You worried about the guys?"
Akiko tried to choose her words carefully. All she could come muster, however, was, "Well...I...ah-"
Don't worry at all," he interrupted quietly, flashing that irresistible smile again. "I know they won't lay a finger on you, because they know they won't have fingers afterwards if they do."
Akiko looked positively torn for a moment, her eyes flickering back and forth, back and forth between the only two possible answers she could give.
She placed a hand lightly on his chest, and gently pushed on it. "I can't," she whispered, her eyes now still helplessly locked into his. A long, agonizing silence commenced, and he sat back down after Akiko hesitatingly removed her hand from him.
Shot down, Bankotsu's shoulders fell, and he resumed fiddling nervously with the edge of his jacket.
"I'm sorry," added Akiko. "I do really thank you..."
"I'll pay you for any brushes I ruined," said the young man in an attempt tp change the subject. "I haven't made amends for that in a while. "
"That's alright," said his teacher with a laugh. "You know, you're much better with your money than I am, I think. If I had as much money as you I'd probably wouldn't have enough of it to show to anyone else. I'd buy my own kingdom or something!"
Ban continued to pick dejectedly at his jacket's hem. "All that...isn't what I want," he said quietly.
Puzzlement flushed over Akiko's face for a moment, after which her expression became very grave. "I do work for government officials all the time. I hear them talk. They hate you very much. I don't want them to ruin everything you've given me by angering them. They'd just take it all away, and that would make it all pointless. But I'm sorry."
Ban laughed. "They're just afraid of us," he said with a casual grin. "They already know we can run through their own forces in hours. That's why they have no problem paying us to do their dirty work for them. They can talk all they want. Doesn't change the fact that I'm not worried that my men and I call the shots."
"That's what worries me," said the girl.
Bankotsu humphed. This is usually how the non-educational conversation went with Akiko. Her repeated refusals often made many things well up within him that usually were hard to come by: true anger, true disappointment. They temporarily flashed within him when she refused to accompany him in public, and he momentarily would find Akiko's fear of society irrational and unfounded, particularily when someone she knew was the leader of an extremely powerful group of mercenaries. What was stopping her from just going with him and telling the government to go to hell? Akiko seemed to live her entire life in unecessary fear, which was thoroughly annoying to him. However, he knew of his own reputation among the villagers of the area, and that was certainly part of her reluctance.
Bankotsu smiled wryly to himself. That was the price he paid for feeling indebted and honor-bound to a group of ruthless killers. "If we go out, you could show me where you got that pretty little box you have all your stuff in," he insisted.
Akiko brightened, and Bankotsu hoped beyond hope that it meant an acceptance of his offer.
"Oh! That brush box wasn't bought at a shop!" Akiko laughed. "That's an heirloom from my father's side of the family." She picked up the box and brushed her fingertips across its intricate surface.
Bankotsu saw her flinch backwards as she noticed an ant coming out from under the lid, and flicked it off in disgust. The two of them watched it land on the floor, and Bankotsu thought its presence exceedingly odd. He wondered how an ant could have possibly gotten in there in the first place, since the case was closed the entire time she was teaching him, and there were no insects in there to begin with.
Akiko's eyes met the young man's once she flicked the ant away. "One of my mother's ancestors was a master woodcarver," she continued, after recovering from getting spooked from the insect, "so there's nothing else like it. It wasn't just given to me, it was entrusted to me."
The young man gasped, and could feel his face pale in worry as he looked up into Akiko's face. Since anything to do with language caused Ban to panic horribly, he often lost awareness of his strength in frustration, the result of which was that he had reduced many brushes to splinters in the past few weeks. Bankotsu was hoping the many brushes he ruined weren't as precious as the wooden case.
"The brushes you demolished?" Akiko laughed and waved her hand dismissively. "Oh, don't worry, they're junk. That's why I wasn't particularily worried about them."
Bankotsu sighed, and almost passed out from relief.
"I buy a few of them at a time so I can be--" Her eyes went wide, and her face paled.
Bankotsu turned around to see at what she was staring, and Akiko screamed in horror, as Ban saw that in the place of the single ant that she previously flicked away, there were millions and millions of them, covering the front doors, the walls, and part of the ceiling in a blanket of crawling blackness.
Ban felt Akiko grasp his upper arm tightly, and he had to grin at her rather uncharacteristic girlishness. She usually didn't shrink from bugs, even demonic bugs, but rather sat in a near-trance, fascinated by them. Maybe there was something specific about ants that she didn't like? "They're just bugs, you know." In spite of his comment, he was more than happy to wrap an arm around her waist and draw her tightly next to him.
"But...there's so many of them!" she exclaimed, now gripping his shirt at his chest and back, and leaning heavily into his shoulder.
Bankotsu gazed into her worried face, now so painfully close to his own. He would have loved to have the girl clinging all over him like that for a long while, as it was so rare she did so. However, he had to admit that the ants would get eventually get pretty annoying, and would distract him from her. The thought made him laugh. "We'll just find somewhere else for you to stay until we can get the place cleaned up." He knew to get rid of the insects, or to get the two of them out of the cottage, he'd have to release her, but before doing so, he held her closer to him for one moment longer and whispered in her ear. "...or...you can just come with me, and we can-"
"Uh...n-- no," she said, releasing him a bit too quickly, and this caused the young man to roll his eyes in frustration. The girl grabbed a sturdy roll of parchment as a deep blush spread across her cheeks. Ban chuckled again, and as he walked casually over to the front door, she stood up and began following him, swatting the closely circling ants away from her with a roll of paper, grunting and groaning at the unpleasantness of the invasion.
Ban grasped the door, and pushed on it. Strangely, it refused to move even when Bankotsu used his full strength to try to budge it. Even pushing into it full-force didn't move it.
The...hell? I can't budge a stupid screen?
"Relax, girl," he said to her as she began to cry, the ants finally reaching her and starting to bite her feet. "If we can't go through the front door, I'll just make another way out." He walked over to where the door met the wall, and ran into it, full-strength, shoulder-first. When the wood paneling was knocked away, there was nothing but millions more ants where there should have been daylight. A few ants bit into his shoulder before he could get them off, and he realized that these ants, did indeed, hurt when they bit.
Ban heard the girl cry out again, and when he looked back, she was thrashing around helplessly, waist deep in a black, crawling mass of insects, her arms pinned down to her sides.
The entire house around them disappeared, whisked away into a misty, whitish surrounding. Bankotsu was thrown completely out-of-sorts by the whole thing, and was finding his walking was severely impeded by heavy masses of ants beginning to cling to his feet and legs.
In the distance, a platform stood against the awful, cold whiteness of the area. Ban could see the same blackness that threatened to take the two of them over, dripping in loads from the top of the platform.
And his eyes widened in horror as he saw the swarm leaving behind the bones and characteristic weapons of his comrades. The insects had devoured each of his men, leaving their twisted skeletons left on the platform, gazing toward him with hollow eyes.
My men? FUCK! Thought Bankotsu as he struggled to move his feet, both horrified and angered in the realization that his comrades had also been overpowered, then consumed by the swarm.
Bankotsu could feel the swarm clinging onto his feet, preventing him from moving, and he began to thrash around as helplessly as the girl.
He, and the girl, were next.
He looked up, and there was that half-demon, seemingly on another raised platform where the ants did not swarm, his expression twisted into worry. Behind him, he saw that girl, that reincarnation of Kikiyou, shooting sacred arrows, trying to keep the number of insects down, but getting more and more frustrated at her ineffectiveness. They were obviously shouting things to one another, but Bankotsu could not hear anything; the ghastly sounds of the sea of ants drowned out their words into seeming silence.
The half-demon reached out a clawed hand to the both of them.
Bankotsu glared at the half-demon. He then cursed him under his breath, and turned his back toward him, continuing in trying to fight off the swarm by himself.
"Take his hand! Bankotsu! BANKOTSU!" Akiko despairingly called over to him. His refusal to listen caused her to go from calling Bankotsu in a frenzied scream, to a desperate plea as she struggled to break free of her living prison. "My God! Please! Bankotsu! Take his hand!"
Ban only turned around, and continued to glare coldly at the half-demon while the sea of ants continued to swallow the two of them. Another part of himself, however, had only the awareness of thousands and millions of biting insects covering him from his feet to his neck.
"GODDAMMNIT! Bankotsu, you're killing us!" pleaded the girl with tears running down her face. The ants getting into her hair, her eyes, her ears, caused her to wail horrifically and shake her head in a hopeless effort to get them off. "You're KILLING US!"
She gave one final scream, and Ban's vision went completely black.
His eyes flew open.
He gasped. He quickly sat up, adrenaline still racing through him, causing him to pant heavily. With the feeling of all those insects still crawling all over him, the girl's blood-curdling screams ringing in his head, the sight of the uncontested deadly invasion of ants devouring all his men so easily, he didn't even care to notice the covers falling from his chest down to his lap. He drew his legs up a bit and balanced a wrist on either knee, his head lowered as beads of sweat ran off and fell onto the futon under him.
After quite a while, his breathing evened out, and he managed to lift his head. Gazing out of the window at the faint morning light, he wiped his brow with a limp hand and rose heavily to his feet, a sea of thoughts about the daimyo's betrayal, his loss to that damned half-demon, and the girl's continued refusals of his offers swirling about his head and causing him to stumble once or twice.
Nightmare. Crap...that hasn't happened for a while.
Needing some fresh air, he left his room. Still in a bit of a shaky daze from the sudden awakening, he padded unsteadily, but quietly over to the front screen, using the walls and furniture for support.
Reaching the front screen, he was thankful for a moment as it opened just as he wanted it to. Walking out onto the front steps, he found himself bathed in the quiet, cool, bluish light of the early morning. Reaching a wooden supporting pole, he crossed his legs and his arms, and lowered his brow defiantly. He closed his eyes and leaned his head and shoulder tiredly on the pole.
Why the hell would that half-demon care?
The crickets, who refused to be lulled into resting for the day, and still chirped noisily, held no answer.
She could've lived like a queen, right up until the end.
A flash of anger arose from within him.
We ended up having the same damned ending, anyway.
A deep, cleansing breath was inhaled, then exhaled slowly. A deer, catching the scent of a human in the area, leaped away from the house, into the thick forest.
No. Can't let it bother me...
Can't.
He opened his eyes, and gazed at the color-changing horizon as the sun rose. He listened to the increasing number of melodic bird calls, which steadily began to replace the chirping of the crickets in the crisp air.
He dared not fall asleep again, but he was calmed in the notion that the day would bring the same things it always had for him.
He glanced over to his left, where his halberd rested, planted securely in the ground, almost glowing from the angle of the light relecting off the curved surface of the end blade.
Another day, another target.
He forced himself to grin. Going for my target...it'll help me forget about it all real fast.
The curved edge of the banryuu bit deeply into the sliding door to the daimyo, Yukio's, castle. The door was easily pushed aside, and the young warrior stepped casually through it, looking for his target.
Bankotsu humphed boredly. The defenses to this castle were exactly what he suspected: awfully inadequate. Just like they all were.
Having been seen at the bottom of the steep hill by a group of what he was sure were Yukio's strongest soldiers, Bankotsu grinned as they raced down the winding path to meet him. They had wisely sent the strongest out first instead of last. Maybe they had hoped to wear him out that way. After a few exchanges of useless banter, the general waved his fan forward, and they had attacked.
And so easily, the banryuu cut the legs from under all ten horses, and in the second few swipes, dispatched them, then in seconds, removed the heads from the men who were riding them.
The closer he got to the castle, the weaker the castle's defenses were, due to the sheer numbers of soldiers fleeing in fear when seeing their much stronger commanders literally fall in pieces. Many ran at the sight of the single dark young man, dressed completely in ghostly white, with the huge, blood-smeared halberd in his hand. Others, who were either younger or inexperienced, were so frozen they could not attack; they stood still as statues, shakily holding their rifles. Their katanas also clattered nervously in their scabbards, as the young man walked a footstep or two away past them. And then they almost fainted when they realized they, themselves, were still alive.
The archers were a bit more of a problem, but a quick dodge here and there, sometimes using his weapon as a shield, and making a rush to the front gate solved that problem.
When he reached the interior of the gate, there were no more troops to confront him; all was silent, and Bankotsu stood still for a moment, a sarcastic grin on his face, just daring someone to shoot at him, from either ground or air.
But...there was no shot fired. And there was no one to be seen.
Even as he entered the front door, and the interior of the castle was as ghostly as the front gate. he chuckled to himself. Couldn't have killed everyone already, he thought, amused. They all must have fled. Fine with me. I should have sent a letter, like last time...would have given some of them more time to choose to either leave ,or prepare to die. A slight twinge of embarassment went through him, because, not having Renkotsu with him, and not being able to read and write himself pretty much meant the idea was null and void.
Bankotsu entered the front room, and closed the door behind him. He leaned heavily on the door frame with one shoulder, the other shoulder bearing his huge weapon...and he sighed tiredly.
And that's when he raised an eyebrow in confusion. This is getting tiring?
Supported by the doorframe, he furrowed his brow. He still felt the loss of his men now and again. And he still was angry at himself for not being able to remember the simplest things that Akiko, his reluctant former teacher, tried to drill into his head over and over, and over again.
Most of him had no issue in picking up right where he left off the first time, but the adrenaline was quickly wearing off in the boredom caused by the silence of the empty castle. Flashbacks, prompted by the thought of the previous night's bad dream, started to fill his mind: his humiliating loss at the hands of that half-demon, the sight of seeing so many around him die, over and over. For just a brief moment, the whole business of leaving a trail of body parts behind him was...
...yeah. Tiring.
"Damn half-demon..." he whispered to himself, "...getting to me like that..." This was not the time to get distracted, though some wine would be nice to help him forget the scathing discipline handed to him by the very one who had taken his comrades from him.
All of his previous opponents, from the time he was a small boy, wanted him dead; they were out for blood, and would have gotten it, by strength or deception; they were out for his head and, later, the heads of his comrades on pikes. The next time around, they'd be no different. Enemies were never considerate enough to quit playing when you got tired of it.
What infuriated him the most was that Bankotsu could tell that the soft half-demon, the same one that ended up defeating him, didn't even really want any of that. From the way he fought, to the way he bantered, Bankotsu could tell that the half-demon's heart wasn't fully into any of it.
Naraku had told him about Inuyasha's formidable strength, especially if he had, out of necessity, turned full-demon on Bankotsu. He sincerely wished for that to happen as to further test his strength, after cutting through the disappointingly weak Wind Scar, and most especially after mirroring it back.
But instead, his opponent ended up desperately trying to get him to see through Naraku's misuse of him. And Bankotsu did...all too late. Naraku had granted him and his comrades another life, for which they were grateful, even though they all knew it was all merely a means to an end. And Bankotsu was pretty grateful himself...
...and then, there was his banter with the half-demon. The half-demon seemed to want to give him something else. Freedom? Understanding?
The whole situation caused him to wonder: Was his opponent's softness, his lack of a killer instinct, also part of his strength?
He considered that idea ridiculous. Kill or be killed - that's how the world worked, half-demon or not. He shook his head in an attempt to clear it.
Bankotsu pushed himself away from the threshold, and began casually going about from room to room, searching for his prey at a frighteningly relaxed pace. To make sure there were no cowards hiding in the corners of the castle, he made sure to run his weapon right through the doors of the closets. However, the only thing that came out of each closet was a storm of white feathers from the destroyed futons within. However, when he sniffed the air, he could have swore he could smell wood burning.
Bankotsu entered another, much larger room. It was richly decorated, like all the other rooms he had been in, with beautiful silk screens of peacocks and peonys. The desk within the room had a brush laid across it, obviously dropped in a hurry to leave the room. Documents he could not begin to comprehend were spread across the desk, some tainted black by the wet brush, and Bankotsu could barely see a picture of a golden winged creature beneath the splattered ink. He gazed at it temporarily, but since he could never hope to learn anything by taking a look at the scrolls which lined the shelves, he decided instead to continue to check for his target in the large wooden crate in one corner of the room. A quick thrust downwards with the curved edge of the banryuu created a flurry of wooden shrapnel and gold coins, and also assured there was nobody attempting to hide inside.
Bringing the curved blade back up, Bankotsu couldn't help but gaze for a moment again at the ever-so-slightly glittering edge of it. Touching a finger to it, back at the monk's place earlier in the day, had caused a stinging burn on his finger. The priests actually managed to put some purifying power in the curved edge. Huh. Maybe that's for the best, thought Bankotsu, looking at the faint purple glow with a wry grin. Maybe my "holy" weapon will be more kind than I will.
He turned down a corner of his mouth in disgust. Maybe that means I shoulda left it at Masakisho's place.
With another indifferent humph, he passed up the gold coins which lay on the floor, left the scroll room behind, and continued his room-to-room manhunt. He noticed the burning smell getting stronger, and the air getting slightly warmer.
Bankotsu continued to destroy closets, chop furniture in half, and tear up suspiciously loose floorboards. He had found more than one cringing daimyo in his life hiding out in such places, all-too-confident they'd get away from their death sentence. They for certain weren't the most entertaining kills, as the stronger, more defiant of his targets were the ones he truly enjoyed taking down. Nonetheless, death was the one thing he knew how to do well, and even when the cowardliness of his targets caused him extreme boredom, he and his men managed to leave the burning castles, and everything in them, behind. The satisfaction of a job well done was all that mattered. Being paid extremely well for doing what you did best was simply added good fortune.
Searching through a small food storage room, he began to consider that his target was, apparently, not in the castle. The storage room was obviously next-to-last in the long hallway he searched. After much investigation and still turning up nothing, Bankotsu spat an impatient "damn". He turned a corner, heading down the long hallway to the large room at the end of the hall, the burning smell getting stronger with every step.
Opening the large screen, he was assaulted by a wall of hot, dark smoke, and it curled around him as he entered the room.
"Girls! Get out of here! The fire is getting worse!"
The confident, middle-aged woman took hold of the senior's gentle hand. "We're not leaving you, Shidoubara! You're coming with us if we have to carry you! There are too many things you must teach us!"
The old teacher objected, flailing her arms, trying to fight the two of them off. "No, girls! You two must get out! I don't know if I can walk!"
The younger woman scowled angrily at the growing fire, and wrapped an arm around her teacher. "How awful it was for the rest of the staff to just leave you here and run off like that when you fell! They better hope they won't run into me, because I'll show them about as much mercy as that demon would!"
The youngest of the three solidly held on to her teacher's opposite arm, not letting her grasp budge no matter how much struggle there was. "I agree with her! We're taking you with us! We'll get out of here...I'm sure of it!" She glanced over to the other woman. "But, we must get dear Shidoubara back up quickly! It's getting too hot in here! And soon we won't be able to see and-"
"Don't worry!" said the woman on the teacher's left impatiently. The smoke was starting to affect her, and she coughed deeply. "Just...stop! Let's carefully get her to her feet. The more calmly we do this, the faster we can be out of here. The door isn't far away." She closed her eyes for a moment to collect herself, so the young apprentice with her wouldn't feed off her fear. "Ready?" she said, after clearing away some kitchen equipment that littered the floor around them.
The girl nodded, but fear was etched into her face. She nervously bit her lip as the smoke was getting thicker, and the fire, growing steady as it was easily fed by the wooden structure around them, threatened to engulf them.
The woman was forced to cough once again before counting down. "One, two-"
Her final count was never even heard above the apprentice's scream of terror.
Through the black smoke, a ghostly shadow could be seen. The shadow became a figure of someone walking toward them, and the young girl released her teacher's arm so she could clap a hand to her mouth and begin shuffling backward. She had not far at all to go before her back hit the shelves behind her, and tears began to stream from her eyes in horror.
All three of them were soon gazing up at who they were sure was the demon that single-handedly took down all the castle's best defenses, and caused the entire staff to drop everything and run for their lives, neglecting the fires they had begun in preparing their lord's food.
Shidoubara narrowed her eyes. She noticed that this "demon" looked disturbingly human, and so very young--decades younger than herself, and hardly any older than her sixteen-year-old apprenctice now sitting to her right. His face looked practically innocent, as opposed to the weapon he carried over his shoulder, which had little rivulets of dried blood running down its huge, oddly double-edged blade, causing a pool of red to form at his feet as he stood still. The relaxed charm in his grin, the youthfulness, the innocence...it made him all the more frightening.
The younger apprentice clapped her hands together twice, and assumed a gesture of supplication. "PLEASE! Spare us! We didn't do anything!" she began pleading, the tears that ran down her cheeks finally hitting the floor.
"If you want a prisoner," the other student said defiantly, "take me. Let this girl and our teacher go."
The old woman gave her a sound smack on the arm in her fury that her student would suggest such a thing. "How dare you!" "Let these two girls go, and take me!"
The young man smiled nonchalantly at the middle-aged woman. "Hey." His dark smile mostly directed at the woman who had first challenged him.
The three women couldn't help but stare, horrified at his unnervingly casual greeting. The young apprentice licked her dry lips and wiped her overflowing eyes.
"So," began the demon again, tossing his head, and grinning viciously. "Where's your lord?" The question was asked quietly, almost inaudibly, compared to the crackling fire in the background.
To the old teacher's continued utter dismay, the woman answered. She coughed deeply, then forced herself to glare at the demon standing above her. "Out in the rear of this castle, beyond the bonsai garden. He--"
Even the iron-willed woman had to cringe as she saw the young man raise his massive weapon.
"Thanks!" he said, his bloodied halberd held high above the three of them.
The young apprentice screamed again and hid her face against the back of her teacher's body.
The old woman closed her eyes resignedly, laid a hand on her older student's head, and offered up a prayer for the young man's soul...if he had one.
The three of them heard a deafeningly loud, low metallic whoosh, and felt a mighty rush of air that drew their clothes, their hair, and the kitchen tools around them up in a vacuum. They heard the sounds of an explosion and of wood being smashed to bits.
Then all was still.
Realizing they were still alive, they all dared to look up.
The smoke was, for now, gone, the fire was contained to a far corner of the room, smothered by debris. The wall, where a door previously stood, had a huge, gaping hole.
The middle-aged woman was completely taken aback by the apparition. Surely he had wanted to kill them...didn't he?
She shook her head. Nevermind! It doesn't matter!
The old teacher struggled again, kicking and pumping her arms weakly. "You shouldn't have offered yourself as a prisoner! What on earth were you thinking? And you shouldn't have told him where our lord was! That was unacceptable! It was--"
"I had to do it! I had to have that horrible demon away from us! Don't worry, Shidoubara, our lord will have more than enough resources to protect himself!" argued the woman. She turned to the young girl aside of her. "We can get out that way, now that we can see it. Let's do this before the fire spreads again. OK?"
After a bit of inattention, the young girl finally turned her pale face toward her helper. "Y-yeah."
The teacher lowered her head. "Thank you, girls. You are both so brave."
The middle aged woman grasped firmly her teacher's arm, smiling, but saying nothing in response to her teacher's compliment. She figured it was her duty to protect someone so lovely and so wise. "One, two..."
Stepping outside the wall where the door once stood, Bankotsu had to pause in wonder for a moment, as he at first thought his eyes were deceiving him. He could see little shimmers of white falling from the sky, gracefully floating down and resting on the ground around him. Figuring there was no way it could be snow, he couldn't resist holding out his palm to catch some of it as it fell.
The white stuff fell lightly into his hand, and reflected an ever-so-faint pastel rainbow of color in the sunlight. He caught some of the stuff, and ran it gently between his fingers, raising an eyebrow in curiosity. It was soft, fluffy, weightless, and delicate.
Huh. Feathers.
He scowled. Yeah...from this "phoenix" bird I've heard about...
He threw the feather aside, and scanned the rear garden. He noticed the area closest to him was planted with all sorts of exotic flowers, and perfectly manicured stone paths wound around the differing patches of brilliant color. A pond with two koi was strategically placed in a far corner of the garden, with delicate benches not too far away.
Beyond the small, quaint garden, bonsai of all kinds were planted before a red Shinto gate, which marked where one of the stone paths continued. Beyond the gate was a lightly wooded area, the stone path turning into a well-worn, dewey-looking break between the shrubbery.
He grinned. He headed for the dewey path, with little feathers twirling in his wake. He now knew exactly where Yukio was, and exactly what he was doing.