Please read Disclaimer in Chapter One.
Title: Maya's Tale (C5: Toad)
Author: JaganshiKenshin
Genre: Action/Adventure, General
Rating: K+/PG-13 (for anime-style fight scenes/language)
Summary: No one knows his real name or origin, but Toad knows them.
A/N: Our friends travel once again to the Myu-Myu district, which plays a prominent role in a few stories. The 'thief,' mentioned here in passing, co-stars in A Cowboy's Work Is Never Done.
I'm happy that there are still YYH fans, and that some of you read my stories!
"A pleasure to see you again!"
Maya's Tale (5: Toad)
by
Kenshin
Toad.
No one knew his true name. That's what they called him.
Hiei disliked toads.
He disliked them on general principle-nasty, warty, ugly things-and he disliked them on specifics because he always seemed to be running afoul of them.
White Sands Serpent, who had nearly killed both Hiei and his Firebird, Shayla Kidd, employed toad henchmen. One of the thieves who'd raised Hiei possessed toad-ish qualities.
Yet here they were, in the chilly dawn, approaching Toad's palace: Hiei, Shay-san, and Kurama. Hiei in black leather jacket and black jeans. Shayla Kidd, in a taupe woolen dress with a gray wool coat; overdressed, Hiei thought, for their meeting with producers and directors later this morning concerning a new job.
Kurama in a camel's hair blazer, looking like he wished it was an overcoat, clutching a white gift bag from which gilt paper and silk poked out. Always bearing gifts, Hiei thought.
"That laptop," Hiei began.
"Don't tell me-" murmured Kurama.
Every now and then, the Shadow Warriors sought a consultation with Toad. Every now and then, Toad summoned them of his own accord, like today.
On the outside, Toad's palace was just another derelict building in Tokyo's ever-changing Myu-Myu district, but no one ever seemed to get around to wrecking it. Hiei suspected that, in some bizarre way, the building wasn't really 'there' at all.
This could be a tough neighborhood. None of them feared the neighborhood so much as what was inside this building.
Toad is a creature of mystery. He is youkai, though he gives off an aura which Hiei can never quite pin down. Toad has proven invaluable in certain Agency cases, though he does not work for the Agency as such.
Shayla Kidd trades wisecracks with Toad, but always seems weak and enervated following their visits, and for this reason alone Hiei does not trust him.
The three of them tarried in front of the building made of cracked glass, shedding brick, and twisted metal.
"So." Kurama gave a little cough. "Still broken?"
"It's not Michael's fault," snapped Shayla Kidd.
They were delaying the inevitable, and Hiei knew it.
Finally Kurama opened the door and they stepped inside to a cloak of darkness, where grit and debris crunched underfoot.
Whenever they came to Toad Palace, Hiei always felt trapped in the pages of a fairy tale. One of those fairy tales in which everyone ended up with a severed head.
They inched forward. The scent of dust sifted over their shoulders. Inside, too, the building appeared to be an abandoned wreck, but here, no matter the time of day, it was always night.
Hiei stood in the midst of rubble and ruin, and possibly the bodies of those who had died trying to claw their way out.
Shayla Kidd slipped an icy hand into Hiei's, and squeezed. He felt the beating of her heart through her palm. It always took her like this at first. She would settle down.
The illusion of darkness lasted only a few moments. Then light bloomed, trickling first from the floor and rising as though the walls were alive and awakening. The light swept away darkness to reveal a lobby. Walls of tawny marble, punctuated with gold-veined mirrors. A crystal chandelier blazed from the vaulted ceiling.
A black leopard strode in from an alcove to the left, its eyes gleaming chartreuse, its whiskers like threads of spun glass, the faint shadow spots on its coat shifting and rippling as it prowled closer.
They stood their ground. This was the footman. He didn't want them for dinner.
A carpeted hallway branched off to the right. The footman turned, padded down the carpeting, and reluctantly they followed.
The walls and ceiling were brighter than the lobby, and made of a strange matte metal that could have been pewter, brushed stainless steel, even silver. The seamless walls showed no doorways, not even a crack, nor any means of illumination. It was just a metal tube.
The footman stopped halfway down the hall. A seam began to open in the wall, from the floor up, as though it was a zipper unzipping. It formed into an arched doorway, which slid aside to reveal what Hiei thought of as The Silver Bullet.
This was an oval-shaped chamber of the same metal as the hall. No buttons. No call panel. No means of illumination, just a milky diffusion of light.
"Here I must leave you." The black leopard spoke in formal Japanese. "Midori will meet you when the elevator stops."
They stepped inside. The door slid shut. The seam disappeared. "I don't like this," grumbled Hiei.
"You never do," said Kurama.
Shay-san clutched Hiei's hand.
The Silver Bullet took off like a silent rocket to Mars. There was a shimmer of motion, a twist of hypersonic speed. Hiei's lungs felt like they were being pressed up into his throat, as though the Bullet was rising.
They could just as well have been falling.
The level of light dimmed. Shay-san's grip on Hiei's hand tightened. Full darkness now. As though they plummeted into ocean depths where no light could penetrate.
That sense of pitching over the edge of Hyouga again, as a furious, fiery infant, falling, falling, bound like a mummy.
Devouring dark spread throughout Hiei's thoughts, pressing away reason and sanity. The elevator was littered with the bodies of those who had suffocated for want of light.
Someone was crushing his hand. Someone he should know.
Just when he could not stand it another second-
-the elevator opened.
Even Hiei needed a moment to recover.
It always went this way. He could only imagine what the others felt, but no one ever wanted to talk about it.
Midori stood in another carpeted hall, smiling at them. Three feet tall, with a child's face and voice, her black hair was twisted up into twin rolls, and her emerald robes were figured with golden butterflies, fluttering in a breeze that touched only her.
Midori bowed. "How are you today, esteemed guests? Such a pleasure to receive you. I see also that you have brought a gift. How thoughtful."
Kurama found his voice. "Please take no account of this unworthy trifle."
The 'nothing' was a perfect honeydew melon, wrapped in white silk, costing the equivalent of a hundred dollars.
"If you will follow me, please." Relieving Kurama of the bag, Midori led them down the hall, a hall that brought to mind the great palaces of old, and then through another room.
This room had deep ruby carpeting, figured with gold and green, swallowing the sound of their footsteps. Floor-to-ceiling drapes of the same colors covered every wall.
There was also a vast fish tank in one corner, occupied by a number of dun-colored osoi inochi: Slowpokes, a form of dragon-koi. Each Slowpoke was a mere four feet long, and therefore quite young; the species continues growing up until the moment of death, and can reach 100 feet in length.
Though alive, they resembled corpses afloat.
At the far end of the room, Toad occupied a gilt mahogany throne on a raised platform. Manlike in size, toadish in shape, he wore a silken robe stitched over with gold-and-silver suns, moons and stars. The robe's loose collar displayed his soft, distended throat. His olive-drab skin made an unpleasant background for the wet pink nostrils and the occasional flash of a sticky yellow tongue.
The jewel in the crown of his head resembled a milky opal as large as a hen's egg, gleaming with an eerie fluorescent light that cast a beam onto the low ceiling.
Beyond Toad, half-open French doors led to a patio bestowing an impossible flash of sunlight, an impossible fresh breeze.
On either side of the throne stood an otter in a red jerkin. Hiei could not tell what the otters were, whether they were merely animals or youkai. He could not tell what Toad was. He felt stripped of his own power, and he hated feeling helpless.
Toad remained seated. Carunculated hands tipped in black claws spread in greeting. "Welcome, esteemed friends."
He had a beautiful voice, mellifluous and well-modulated, almost the equal of Shayla Kidd's, who, at this moment, was mute.
Midori handed Toad the gift. Toad unearthed the melon and exclaimed over its beauty, perfection, and aroma.
Cradling it in his lap like a baby, or a crystal ball, Toad exclaimed, "This is more than generous. I feel quite unworthy."
Hiei bit his tongue.
Kurama spoke. "What brings us here today?" There was tension in his voice, if you were looking for it.
"And why the three of us?" Hiei's face felt marble-stiff.
The otter on the left handed Toad a black lacquer tray, laden with a celadon teapot and mugs that might have been cut from enormous pieces of jade. Toad poured tea.
Shay-san still clutched Hiei's hand. This was not usual. By now, she should have shaken it off, cracked wise with Toad, anything but this white-knuckled tension.
"Sit down, my dear," purred Toad. One of the otters produced a chair. Shay-san sank into it. Hiei remained at her side watching Toad from narrowed, suspicious eyes.
If he managed to cut off the toad's head, would the lavish interior crumble into the same disrepair as the outside?
"I would not want my esteemed guests to leave without helping me dispose of this magnificent gift." The otter at Toad's right offered a silver platter; the one to his left, a silver knife. The objects flashed, brilliant, blinding.
Midori carved, revealing the creamy-jade interior, releasing the honeydew's sweet, musky scent. She handed the melon around.
"Relax." Toad chuckled, a sound like the ocean lapping sand. "It's not as though I'm charging you for this consultation."
"Consultation?" A piece of melon froze halfway to Kurama's mouth.
"Isn't it remarkable how much a melon, uncut, can resemble a crystal ball?"
Kurama frowned. "I don't follow."
"Quite so. I speak merely of the shape. Unlike that of a crystal ball, the melon's surface is of course opaque, and requires some knife-work to get to the insides."
Maybe Toad was trying to tell them something. Or maybe he was just being Toad.
When they finished the melon, Midori led them back to the Silver Bullet, and by the time they were out on the street again, Hiei's head was spinning, and his hand nearly pulped by Shayla Kidd's deathgrip.
For someone built like a pixie cowgirl, Hiei's Firebird could show surprising force.
"Th-that's it? That's all?" Shay-san's teeth were chattering. "Then why did T-toad-"
Kurama interrupted her. "Don't look now," he said, "But here comes trouble."
0-0-0-0-0
In the sanctuary of his study, Von Brandt scowled at the snapshot.
Every so often, he used a Polaroid-type camera with which to take pictures, rather than the exquisite Leica reserved for more leisurely pursuits. He used the instant camera when he needed to see an image quickly, and this was one such time.
For he had felt something, suspected something, and so last night, camera in hand, he had gone to the place of the beautifully stunted Bartholomew tree.
According to the evidence on this picture, his suspicions proved to be true.
Not only had he been shocked to find the tree had fallen, but angered to see the culprits revealed by the picture he took.
By the time Von Brandt had arrived on the scene, they had long since departed. But his camera was not limited merely to capturing images of the present.
Two young men near the tree, one with a sword and black hair, the other carrying nothing Von Brandt could see being used as a weapon... but yet...
He had no doubt. They had destroyed the stunted tree.
And for that, they must pay.
-30-
(To be continued: Tea for three, side order of trouble.)