Those who Favor Fire
Disclaimer: Characters and premise are the property of Kazue Kato. I'm just borrowing them for a little non-profit fun.
Chapter Twelve: Oath Broken
"Oath Bonds, when not carefully contained, become permeated with emotion," Yuri informed Bon. "Sometimes it is accidental, sometimes it is built into the Oath directly: You will love me. You will hate my enemies. You will be loyalto me."
"You'll tell lies and breed distrust among your people?" Bon asked thinking of Karura's bond with his father and the other head priests of the Myo'o Dhari before him. He glared at Iblis, "That was the bone they threw Iblis when all our familiars really wanted was an alliance against the Impure King."
Iblis haughtily ignored him. Yuri shrugged, "For a human the emotions permeating a bond effect them unconsciously. An impulse to trust or to distrust that you can't explain, a feel of danger or safety in the air. A human can choose to set aside their instinctual reaction to the feelings generated by an Oath Bond, a demon can't. For a demon swearing to feel a thing makes the feeling real, inescapable. Satan's eldest sons were abused horribly by humans who bound them before the Nephilim grew to understand Oath Bonds and learned to guard against them. The Blue Flames, stolen from God, are the only thing that can alter an Oath Bond and even after five billion years of practice Satan still can't destroy a Bond."
"Since the beginning Gehennans bound by a will not their own, forced to follow God's commands. Satan and his followers learned to manipulate their chains, to pass them from their creator to a human of their choosing, someone they trusted above all others. But in doing so the vulnerability became seared into their genes, their children were born free of any master but encumbered with means to be chained and no one knew the danger until it was too late. Satan learned to use the Blue Flames to cleanse the bonds of emotion, to allow his sons and all of their generation to clearly see the chains they'd been saddled with. Rin cleansed the Myo'o Dhari Bonds of emotions you complain of. He gave your people a chance to evaluate the Bonds objectively without the weight of past mistrust. Now I'm returning the favor and giving Rin the chance to see the Bonds you've put on him without any love or loyalty that you may have commanded him to feel," Yuri said.
"I don't believe you," Bon said flatly. "What Rin did felt good, you're hurting him."
"You're human and Rin only polished the tarnish off the Myo'o Dhari Bonds," Yuri said. "The Bonds are more powerful for Rin and so I want him to take a much closer look at the chains binding him."
"You know why I don't buy it?" Bon continued trying not to even think about Angel slowly pulling himself back to his feet behind him. "Because I saw what you did to Angel; you're a mare, you read minds. So you know we didn't use Oaths to force Rin to feel anything. If you're just showing Rin his memories nothing is going to change. Our friendship is REAL. Rin's loyalty to Assiah is REAL. You're the one trying to make Rin into something he's not, not me."
"I didn't have the time to delve into Rin's memories too deeply. I wasted my chance to give the new Paladin a chance to show me that he wouldn't murder my son," she glared hatefully at Angel but dismissed the Paladin as a threat when she saw he was bleeding heavily and was only staying on his feet by leaning on his sword. "But I saw enough in the Paladin's memories. The Grigori is no less hateful now then they were when my father had me burned at the stake. I'm willing to gamble that my son has no honestly earned loyalty to the organization that murdered me."
"The Grigori isn't all of humanity, or even all of the True Cross!" Bon snapped.
"No one protested when they tried to murder me and my unborn children," Yuri pointed out. "All they did was villainize my lover for saving us."
Rin felt his memories of the banquet settling back into place.
The Ifrit had had let slip that a rescue was coming, Rin wondered if anyone had thought to alert Ryujin or if the Myo'o Dhari familiars had struck out on their own when he and Bon went missing in Gehenna. He wondered if Ryujin would just feel that the conditions of his Oath had been met. 'Have to remember to ask Mephisto-ni how Ryujin's Oath'll work if he doesn't know to come and how I manage it.' And that thought triggered another wave of memories.
Rin dashed across the cleared main lobby of the old dorm, his bare feet soundless on the hardwood floor. He stopped abruptly and Yips' jet of water shot harmlessly past his nose. He twisted and bunted a water balloon back to burst in Ito's face with the shinai he carried then braced to block Izumo's naginata. Mike and Uke leapt at Rin while Izumo had his sword engaged. Rin grinned and jumped back. The sudden lack of resistance made Izumo stumble into Uke's path. Rin grabbed Mike by the scruff of his neck and tossed him on top of the other two.
As soon as Uke and Mike were clear Godain had Yips spit another stream of water at Rin. This time Rin used a small burst of flame to evaporate the water before it reached him. Then he executed a forward rolled to duck under another of Ito's water balloons. "No fair!" Rin exclaimed. "You were out!"
"Even if this wasn't tapwater pretending to be Holy Water it still wouldn't do more than get me wet," Ito argued and Rin glared at him.
But Mike and Uke had untangled themselves and were back in the fray. The Exwires fell back while Rin and the two byakko tangled at speeds their eyes could barely track. Mike and Uke quickly realized that despite their own great speed, they couldn't outrace Rin and switched to harassing him on multiple fronts. Rin used his shinai and sometimes his feet to keep them at bay.
Mana stood at the back of the room searching for a verse that would weaken Rin. Mephisto had reassured the Exwires that Rin didn't have a fatal verse as he'd been born into his body and thus couldn't be exorcised. So they'd made it the object of the spar for Mana to try to find a verse that would weaken him before Rin managed to tag her out. Ito, Godain with Yips and Izumo with Mike and Uke were defending Mana while she searched.
Rin brought the hilt of his shinai down on the top of Uke's skull, stunning the Byakko. One-on-one he soon eliminated Mike as well. Izumo confronted Rin next. She tried to make use of the naginata's greater reach to keep Rin at bay but he dove under her blade and rolled. He came to his feet well inside her guard and gave Izumo a quick kiss on the nose. "You're out," he said, not liking the thought of hitting his girlfriend even in a spar.
Izumo smiled lopsidedly and dropped where she stood. Rin caught her as she fell and tossed her to Ito. The surprised dragoon dropped his sling-shot to catch her. "Okumura Rin, you are in so much trouble!" Izumo shouted. Uke and Mike snickered but remained on the sidelines, with their Tamer theoretically 'dead' they were out of the fight.
Rin barreled into Godain, ramming his shoulder into the taller boy's stomach and snatched his summoning circle out of his hand as he crumpled. Yips sighed apologetically and joined the byakko on the sidelines. Godain tried valiantly to recover enough breath to stand but Rin was already past him. Mana dropped her offensive efforts in favor of throwing up a hasty barrier. Rin spun and slammed his elbow into the translucent wall. It bowed then popped like a balloon.
"Oh man Okumura-kun, what the hell do you and the Paladin do in your spare time?" Ito exclaimed as he set Izumo back on her feet. "That was seven on one and you trashed us with barely a trickle of your flames."
Rin shrugged. "We've been doing a lot of two on two with Bon and Lightning lately. The last couple of weeks he's even let me pair with Bon again. I guess we must be improving," because Rin knew trading partners was Angel and Lightning handicapping themselves to get a better spar. At first it hadn't worked, Rin hadn't been able make himself fight to win against Bon. Which had led to the other three had sitting him down and talking at him for hours about why he should. Talking didn't make it sink in half as well as watching Angel and Lightning spar against each other. The two Adepts ruthlessly exploited each other's weaknesses until they'd been trained out of it then they moved on to the next weakness. After that Rin discovered he could compete against Bon without hesitation again. Bon might not like losing but victories he hadn't earned weren't good for him.
Izumo rapped Rin lightly on the head as she walked over and sat on the stairs. "Outside of the two girls from the Myo'o Dhari, does anyone know anything about the new Page class?" she asked. She wrinkled her nose. "My guess is that they'll be moving in here in a couple of months."
"The class is huge," Mana volunteered as the others joined Izumo lounging on the stairs. "In addition to the Myo'o Dhari there are two other first years from exorcist families, exchange students from Germany. And there are six second years with Mashos who Sir Pheles extended an invitation to."
Rin took the step below Izumo and leaned back against her legs.
"Sir Pheles liked what Okumura-kun and Suguro-senpai did last year, making contact with us," Ito commented. "So he had us do the same thing. One of the girls with a masho is a real looker. The other one I can't tell, she never looks up from her shoes. The guys seem okay enough to share a dorm with, no worse than Suzuki and Maki anyway."
Mana sighed and shook her head at Ito's description of the new girls. Izumo thumped Rin again for taking the junior class' pervert out of the spar by getting him to catch her.
Rin rubbed his head theatrically and gave her a wounded look. "There's an older guy too," he remarked. "Like in his thirties. Mephisto-ni is going to have him teach PE since he can't really give him a scholarship at the Academy. He got a Masho a couple of years back and finally got tired of talking to shrinks about the stuff he saw and went to a priest instead. They put him in contact with us."
"Just what we need around here, another chaperone," Ito complained.
Yips whispered something to Godain and the dark haired boy covered his mouth to keep from laughing.
"What?" Ito demanded.
"Yips just wonders why someone who can't get a girl to do anything but slap him cares about chaperones," Mike volunteered.
"See if I ever let you mooch my sardines again," Ito groused at the little bunyip.
Rin leaned his head back into Izumo's lap glance over at Mana. "Have you heard anything from Aiko-chan since she switched schools?" he asked, far from the first time.
Mana flinched. "Why do you keep asking that?" she demanded.
"She said she'd stay in touch, but I never hear anything from her," Rin said with a frown.
"No, Aiko hasn't contacted me," Mana snapped. "She was my best friend, my life-line when I started seeing demons. Then she left and never looked back. Why do you keep asking? Why can't you just let me forget her like she forgot all of us?"
Mephisto tilted his head to one side then the other, studying Rin a few days after the spar. "She broke a promise to you," he diagnosed.
"Aiko-chan said she'd stay in touch, nobody ever means that," Rin said bitterly. "I should just forget about her. She wasn't really my friend."
"You should do something about it," Mephisto disagreed. "She made a promise, to you. And she broke it."
Rin heaved a deep sigh. "It's a demon thing. Why couldn't I just be normal?"
"Why would you want to be?" Mephisto replied carelessly. "You'll never wonder if someone is betraying you. I'd suggest extracting retribution sooner rather than later, before it festers."
"I'm not going to do anything to her for just not answering my emails," Rin protested.
"Oh you will," Mephisto said darkly. "It's up to you what you take as your forfeit though."
A few weeks later Rin and Amaimon sprawled on the lowest tier of the amphitheatre in Delphi, soaking in the sun and letting their bodies heal after several hours of enthusiastic sparing.
"What would you do if someone broke a promise to you?" Rin asked.
Amaimon shrugged. "If they hadn't set a forfeit ahead of time? Kill 'em I guess. I don't buy into that stuff about there being too many humans so we should destroy their souls whenever we can."
"I mean a little promise," Rin clarified.
Amaimon wrinkled his nose. "Little brother, don't talk like a human. They call their promises little, unimportant things when they don't feel like keeping them. Demons don't have a choice, there are no little promises."
"Can't I just ignore it, I mean I didn't make the promise."
"Take the oathbreaker's eye or their lying tongue then it won't bug you anymore," Amaimon advised.
"Yes it would!" Rin exclaimed.
Amaimon rolled his eyes.
"What if she had a good reason? Maybe her computer broke… and her phone," Rin suggested. "Maybe she's hurt or, or kidnapped or something. I should go check on her."
"Yeah, why don't you do that," Amaimon smirked.
Once the idea that Aiko hadn't kept her promise because something had happened to her entered Rin's mind it took root. He found himself picturing her hurt or in trouble more and more often. His distraction didn't go unnoticed by his friends but Rin couldn't bring himself to tell them what he was worrying about. He knew they'd just tell him that he was being ridiculous. People promise to stay in touch then forget to write all the time, there was nothing mysterious or sinister about it but the more Rin dwelt on it the more certain he was that something bad must have happened.
With that thought fixed in his mind, it wasn't hard for him to gate to Tarako-san's Ryokan early one morning and, from there, to slip off to Kyoto unnoticed. From Kyoto he caught a train to Shirakawa. The school Aiko had transferred to was a few miles from the train station. Rin arrived at the gates just after dawn but that was as far as his planning had gone. He hopped up on top of the school's gate and waited for inspiration to strike.
As his thoughts began to wander Rin felt a subtle pull. Without really thinking about it he followed the sensation and a short while later found himself watching Aiko as she ate breakfast and chatted with her friends through the window of the school cafeteria. Rin followed her superstitiously as she went about her day. He watched her as she sat in class and when she trained to be a shrine maiden. He watched her undertake her duties as her class representative with confidence only to go shy and bashful when in the presence of the school's student body treasurer. When Aiko started back toward her dorm after dinner Rin step out of the shadows just before she reached the door. "Okumura-kun," Aiko blinked at him in surprise. "What are you doing here?"
At the sound of her voice after nearly a year of silence Rin felt something snap in his head. "I wrote to you, you never wrote back," he said his voice tight.
"I was busy, settling into a new school," Aiko replied defensively.
"You didn't write Mana-chan either," Rin continued his fists clenched, claws digging into his palm. "You hurt her feelings."
"I just didn't know what to say," Unconsciously Aiko took a step backward.
Rin narrowed the gap between them. "You promised to stay in touch," he accused. "Then you forgot about us!"
"Look, I'm sorry, but why are you making such a big deal out of it?" Aiko demanded. "You didn't come all this way to yell at me because I didn't answer a few emails?"
"You promised me!" Rin snapped and his flames burst past the seal.
Aiko gasped as comprehension dawned. "I didn't realize- I never thought of it as a Demon Oath," she said quickly, nervously. "It's just something you say when you leave someplace. I wasn't thinking about you being half-Gehennan, I didn't even know that Oaths applied to you."
"I worried about you! I made myself believe something had happened to you," Rin nearly growled. His tail lashed angrily as flames coalesced into horns on his temples. "That you wouldn't just break your promise."
"I'm sorry," Aiko cried. She tripped as she tried to backed away. Rin stalked after her and she scuttled backwards.
"Rin, stop!"
Rin turned and Bon standing in the open doorway, behind the Aria he could see Mephisto's office for a moment before the door closed.
Aiko started crying.
"That's enough," Bon said. "You scared the living daylights out of her, that's enough compensation."
Rin nodded mechanically, his flames quenched. At Bon's command the itch of Aiko's broke oath vanished allowing Rin to return to himself. "I- Sorry, I don't know what-" He reached down to offer Aiko a hand up and she flinched away from him. For a moment their eyes met then Rin fled from the terror he saw in Aiko's gaze.
He raced across the campus. Throwing himself over the wall that marked the edge of the school's grounds Rin reflexively transformed himself into flames and sped across the country side putting miles between them in seconds. Without thinking about it Rin followed one of his more empyreal bonds and soon found himself standing in Izumo's bedroom in Shimane. She woke with a start, reaching for one of her summoning papers before she recognized Rin and relaxed. "What are you doing here?" she asked sleepily.
Rin knelt beside her bed clutching her hand. "Don't ever betray me," he murmured then he was stretching up, kissing her feverishly. Izumo tangled her fingers in his hair, pulling him closer as she moaned into his mouth. Rin fumbled with the buttons on Izumo's pajama top. His mouth slid down the column of her throat, urged on by Izumo's soft gasps. His lips found her breast and she shrieked, her back aching.
Rin got off the floor, pushing Izumo back onto her bed, climbing on top of her. All the while whispering against her skin, "Please, please don't betray me. Don't ever betray me." He found himself hating their clothing as it was a barrier between them. Still things slowed as he found himself stymied, unable to choose between sliding off Izumo's pajama bottoms or attacking his own clothes first.
"Stop," Izumo managed. Rin froze. She pushed him back until she could sit up then leaned forward, her forehead resting against his collarbone as her shoulders heaved. Rin remained paralyzed while Izumo tried to calm her body and regain her senses. "You said you wanted us to be sworn to each other first," she reminded him after a few minutes.
Gently Rin disentangled them. He got up and went across the hall to the bathroom then ducked his head under the tap. When that proved insufficient to clear his head he grabbed a quick and very cold shower. He returned to find Izumo had straightened her clothes and was sitting in the center of her bed, hugging her knees.
"Thanks," Rin said awkwardly. He stared at her elbow, the closest he could bring himself to making eye-contact.
Izumo nodded shortly. "Why?" she asked.
Rin's gaze shifted to the foot of the bed. "Sato-san promised to stay in touch when she left. She didn't mean it." A look of understanding crossed Izumo's face. "I tried to forget about it, act like a human-being. But I couldn't. I got so mad. If Mephisto-ni hadn't sent Bon..."
"Then you came here," Izumo said, her voice tight.
"Don't ever betray me, please." It slipped out before Rin could bite it back.
"Why me? Why not Suguro, he's the one who made you swear an Oath," Izumo demanded.
"Bon wouldn't make a promise he didn't mean to keep, besides he was there."
Izumo flinched. "And because I won't make a formal Oath with you, you think I will."
"No!" Rin exclaimed, but it was a reflexive denial without any conviction behind it.
"You can't back out of promises!" Izumo exclaimed. "You still don't get it? Even after what happened with Sato? Oaths twist you into something that you're not. Situations change, people change, but the Oath will bind you to what was."
"I won't change my mind about loving you," Rin declared stubbornly. "I shouldn't have come here tonight but I don't know how to make you believe me. I won't stop loving you, ever."
"If I hadn't realized you were freaking out, didn't know you'd have regretted it in the morning, I wouldn't have stopped you," Izumo said. "I know how we feel now but people change."
Rin sighed. "I should go home. Can I borrow your key?"
"Stay?" Izumo asked shifting over to make space for him next to her on the bed. "Just to sleep?"
The next morning Hojo Nishiki glared at Rin and Izumo over the breakfast table, not ever Rin's peace offering breakfast improved her mood. "I don't care if you have a boyfriend, have the common courtesy to keep it quiet when he visits in the middle of the night," the Myo'o Dhari girl complained to Izumo.
Even though they hadn't done more than sleep holding on to one another after their quarrel Rin and Izumo blushed beet-red. "Sorry we woke you," Rin mumbled. "I just had to talk to Izumo right away."
"Talk, yeah sure," Nishiki groused.
Despite Nishiki Rin spent the day lurking about Inari. The bustling tourist mecca had become a sleepy farming center but the looming Inari Dreamtown was gone, taking with it the desperation that had lain under the glittering facade of the old Inari. The new Inari was quiet, the last of the medical centers had only just packed up as they finished treating the lingering effects from the Illuminati's drugs, and cautious, those who'd stayed had weathered a storm and weren't truly sure it was safe yet, but there was hope now where there'd only been mania before.
Rin spent that night with Izumo as well, but the next morning was Monday and they both had classes to attend, hiding wasn't an option any longer. When Rin slipped downstairs from the girl's floor after using Izumo's key to gate back to Tokyo Bon was waiting for him at the door.
"You're okay," Bon said his shoulder's slumping with relief.
"Sorry," Rin replied staring at his feet.
"Saturday, Mephisto grabs me. He takes a minute, if that, to explain what was going on and shoves me through the door," Bon exclaimed. "Then you take off looking like you're about to be sick and when I get back he says everything's fine and not to worry myself about it." Rin's shoulders hunched. Bon sighed and wrapped an arm around him. "The one good thing about the Oath you gave me is I can use it to get you out of other Oaths. But you gotta tell me when you need help, okay?"
Rin glanced up and smiled tentatively. "Okay. If I think of anything, I'll let you know. I didn't think of you because she gave me an oath, I didn't give her one. I didn't think you could help with something like that."
"I can try," Bon said. "Our Oath isn't supposed to be one-way you know."
That night Mephisto sat down beside Rin on the roof of the Old Dorm. "In retrospect you can say that her promise was a little thing in the greater scheme of things," he said. "But it had meaning for you… and it was the first Oath given to you that was broken."
"Amaimon thought I should kill her," Rin said. "When I got there and she'd just, just not cared enough to bother... I might have done it if Bon hadn't stopped me."
"Amaimon hasn't lived among humans long," Mephisto replied. Then he took on a scolding air, "I told you not to let it fester. Shiro and I had a standing date, ever since the second year he knew me. Sometimes circumstances, a certain son of his getting into fights for example, forced him to miss it. I usually demanded he drink a shot of Jagermeister as his forfeit."
"I asked Dad why he kept that stuff when he hated it," Rin said.
Mephisto chuckled. "Exactly, a petty forfeit for a petty transgression. I must take something to preserve my own sanity, such as it is, but I can choose to tailor the punishment to fit the crime even if the one who gave the Oath wasn't wary enough to demand it of me."
Rin smiled in relief, he leaned back a bit and kicked his feet as they dangled over the edge of the roof, happy to learn that he wasn't fully at the mercy of his demon heritage.
Mephisto stared out at the horizon wistfully. "I don't actually mind the monthly trips to his grave to berate him about failing to show up once again," he said. "To be honest, when it's him, I prefer the aggravation of a broken bond to the emptiness that comes when the one I made it with is completely beyond my reach."
"His soul has lingered in Assiah for an unusually long time past his death. It's a paradox, I want him to stay but I want him to go as well: I'm more than old enough to know it's healthier and he can hardly hurry back if he refuses to leave properly."
Next week's update is going to be a stand alone side story rather than a chapter in this story:
"Second Saturday" Preview:
"Wait," Rin said. "Dad would have known better than to make an open-ended deal with a demon, even you."
"Well, let's just say…" (Mephisto/Shiro - M)