Please read Disclaimer in Chapter One.
Title: Maya's Tale (C 19: Toadheart)
Author: JaganshiKenshin
Genre: Action/Adventure, General
Rating: K+/PG-13 (for anime-style fight scenes/language)
Summary: Toad in the garden, Maya at his mercy.
A/N: Idiot Beloved takes place shortly after the Dark Tournament; Firebird Sweet directly follows that timeline. For certain character development to make sense, you might read those fics in order. I appreciate your reviews!
"You must pierce his true heart."
Maya's Tale (19: Toadheart)
by
Kenshin
Maya burned with fever.
She had been death-pale and death-cold when they took her from the Von Brandt house. Now, in the back seat of the car, Kurama holding on to her, Shayla Kidd on one side-
That hypo...Kurama wondered, what was in it?
The night tore past as they hurtled away from the quiet residential neighborhood.
"Come on, Kitajima Maya. Brace up. Fight this. Come on." Shayla Kidd's Spellcaster voice in the low dark of the car, urging, cajoling. Kurama didn't stop her.
She had to do it. Draw that gun. Just as Hiei had to draw his sword. All of it inevitable. But those chemicals... couldn't identify them by smell, no idea how to counter their effects... did Maya get any of what was in that hypo?
Maya's right hand clenched and un-clenched, then relaxed. Her face burned scarlet. Sweat spangled her brow. Her eyelids flickered, as though the eyes beneath them struggled to open, and a thin whimper, little more than a sigh, escaped her lips. She was clearly in distress, but even away from Von Brandt's residence, even with his powers restored, Kurama could do nothing for her.
He dared not try some remedy that would surely backfire, given the unknown nature of what that monster Von Brandt had done to her, whether through poisoning, enthrallment, or whatever else pressed her down into the twilight depths of sleep.
Headlights stabbed away the dark as Hiei hurled the car onward in grim swift silence. He drove fast, but not fast enough for Kurama.
Residential neighborhoods melted away. Bars of light and shadow crawled across Maya's fevered face as they entered the heart of the city. Then the slow agony of twisting, turning streets leading to Toad's Palace.
Hurry, thought Kurama, hurry.
0-0-0-0-0
This time, Toad was in the garden.
Hiei had not seen the garden before.
Through the living room, past its unsavory tank filled with Slowpokes, it lay outside a pair of French doors, through which Kurama carried the girl, pale and still again after the fevered agitation she had suffered in the car.
They stepped into a semi-circular pavilion about 25 feet in diameter, with a flat roof and a floor of sand-colored paving stones. The pavilion's outer rim was marked with six granite pillars set at regular intervals.
Beyond the pavilion, white marble statues and geometrical topiaries dotted a green expanse of lawn. Half the length of a football field away bristled the edge of a forest.
The greenery seemed real, smelled real. The clouds looked white and solid as lambswool. But while the emerald lawn and balmy air spoke of spring, the leaves of the trees blazed red and gold and orange.
What a pleasant place this would be under normal circumstances. You could almost believe in a country estate, set like a jewel in a backdrop designed by the Almighty , and though the fresh air and the green scents should have calmed Hiei, they did not.
For something about the garden made him uneasy. Something about the incongruity of open territory within a building that was a wreck outside. Something about blue skies, when it was nearing midnight.
Of course, he disliked Toad in general.
Back at the Von Brandt house, Shayla Kidd had shot her bolt, and Hiei was man enough to want to spare her further exertion. He put her well behind himself and Kurama, and this time, she stayed there.
The girl in Kurama's arms still wore that off-putting bridal gown, and while Shayla Kidd had the foresight to gather Kitajima Maya's own clothes from the folding chair, no one was going to waste time getting her into them.
On the edge of the pavilion, where stone met grass, Toad sat waiting on a marble bench: a dry-skinned amphibian the size of a man, all warts and claws and olive-brown skin, wearing a robe of pale blue silk that exposed his soft, yellowish throat. The effect was even more hideous in natural light, if you could call this light natural.
He rose from the bench and came forward to greet them.
"Give her to me," said Toad, in that beautiful voice so at odds with his squat ugly body.
Kurama seemed reluctant to hand the girl over, but he did it anyway, then stepped back to stand beside Hiei.
Toad cradled the girl in his arms, studying her, a distasteful sight: Bride of the Monster.
At last Toad looked up. The pale soft throat worked. "She has-been-like this for-how long?"
"No more than an hour," Kurama replied. "Since we defeated Von Brandt."
"I think we should burn the damned house," said Hiei, and was rewarded by Toad's attention, the gold-and-black eyes gleaming like spoiled raindrops.
Hiei's spine stiffened. His muscles twisted together. As if I'm getting ready to fight him.
"Back then, Hiei," said Toad, "when you first saw this girl. What did you think of her?"
Only brutal candor would serve. "She was in the way."
"So you tried to kill her?"
"No. She wasn't the target." Hiei got the unpleasant notion that somehow Toad was feeding on his words. "Kurama was."
"But you would have gone through her without hesitation," Toad continued.
Hiei matched him stare for stare. "If you know the answer-why ask?"
Toad dismissed Hiei with a glance. His pale, sticky tongue darted out and made a circuit of the lipless amphibian mouth. Then, with an eerie, acquisitive gleam in his eye, he spoke to Shayla Kidd. "And you, my lovely Spellcaster."
Hiei found his fists clenching. He watched Shayla Kidd from the corner of his eye.
"You only met the girl just recently, but still..." Toad gave Shay-san an eager look. "What are your thoughts?"
"Cute," she replied. "Smart. Enthusiastic. But beneath all that enthusiasm, angry."
"Why?"
There was a slight hesitation that only Hiei might notice, an inward-turning of Shay-san's gaze. Perhaps she also sensed what Hiei sensed, that the toad was in some way feeding on their answers, and also found it repellent. "I never got the time to find out."
"And you?" Toad did not mention Kurama by name, but there was no one else to ask.
"That," Kurama said slowly, his eyes on Toad, "is something Maya herself should answer."
Toad made a gobbling noise, deep in his throat. The sound raised Hiei's hackles. As Toad studied the girl in his arms, Hiei noticed that the jewel in his head wasn't emitting its usual fluorescent glow.
Because they were not in that curtained living room but standing under blue sky?
Toad's arms shook, as though Maya grew heavier by the moment. But the girl didn't weigh all that much more than featherweight Shayla Kidd.
After a lip-licking pause, Toad said, "She does not appear to be capable. And I think that even if you burn the house, it may not bring this girl back."
"What will bring her back?" With a swift glance toward the forest, Kurama spoke in a calm, level voice.
Toad blinked his gold-black eyes again and again. It seemed a strain to hold the girl; she drooped in his arms, his legs quivered, and he took a staggering step away from them.
He spoke in a hoarse whisper, but still they heard his words: "I th-think th-that you must find this Von Brandt's true heart, and... destroy it."
"Destroy his true heart?" Hiei scowled. "What the hell are you talking about? We left him in pieces!"
The air around Kurama turned winter-cold. Rage? Hiei wondered, resolve? But Kurama stood as still as one of the marble statues dotting the lawn.
Then, without warning, he gave a flick of his russet hair. A long blade of grass, forged hard as diamond, leapt from the tangle of locks, slashed sidewise, and neatly sliced Toad's head from his body.
-30-
(To be continued: Has Kurama lost his mind? )