The Sky Opens Up, Things Doth Die

by Shadow Master

(BtVS/Utawarerumono/Rurouni Kenshin/Other Demi-human Sources) Evil is Cunning. It is ambitious and it absolutely will not stop until it is victorious. Good thing some people don't care much about the odds right?

6. Shattered Pieces Down a Bloody Path

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the copyrighted materials contained herein. They are the rightful property of their respective creators and/or associated companies. I make no profit from this whatsoever and I have no intention of changing this in the future. I write because it's fun and because there are those who enjoy reading my stories. Therefore please do not take legal action against me or bury me beneath a mountain of litigation. I can promise you it won't be worth it.

Note: As usual positive reviews will be greatly appreciated, constructive criticism will be considered but not necessarily acted on and negative/bashing/venomous/trolling/etc reviews will either be ignored outright or burned as fuel to keep things going. While everyone is entitled to their opinion only me and the people in charge of the website when the story comes to an end NOT a reviewer.

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A Short Distance From the Slaver's HQ Hangar

Hiko's POV

"So, you having fun yet?" he asked even as he danced between the sprays of gunfire being sent towards him.

"This? This is just a bit of fun," his partner said, dismissing the danger of the forces they fought. "Just a game with boys and their toys."

While it was a little more serious than that, he had to admit that the skill level of these slavers was only just above what he'd expect from a random civilian picking up a gun and using it. He'd been expecting Yakuza survivors or maybe dishonourably discharged members of Japan's SDF, but all signs pointed this to not being the case. If it were, there'd be tactics being used to force him and his partner to positions where the firepower could be concentrated or away from viable sources of cover. At the very least there'd be an effort to reduce their mobility to make it easier to land a shot.

Instead all he'd been having to deal with we volleys of gunfire, half of which was following them around as they ran about the airstrip while the other only came during brief moments of immobility. Not that either worked, of course, since apparently no one had clued the shooters into the fact that one should shoot where the target was going to be rather than where they'd been. Then, of course, there was the simple fact that, even if the slavers had gotten something from the addition of animal traits to their human forms, they were still way too slow to be a threat to him. It didn't matter what sort of guns or bombs they had since, without sufficient skill to compensate the difference in speed , they'd never manage to get a solid lock on either target.

Essentially they were just wasting ammunition.

That said, both he and his partner knew that if they established a feeling of being too untouchable the slavers might cut and run, taking their 'property' with them. Besides the whole point of the plan was to draw as much of the slaver forces to them as possible in order to make it easier on the infiltration team. To that end they needed to portray themselves as a serious threat but also to make 'mistakes' often enough that the fools would think victory might be theirs if they tried hard enough for long enough. It wasn't too hard since he had experience duping the inexperienced into thinking they might be able to defeat him, only to prove they never really stood a chance.

Given how the slavers were still yelling things like 'keep it up' and 'they gotta tire eventually', he would say that the deception was working, with no signs of any cracks forming.

A bit of a surprise considering the fact that Shizuku had pretty much announced the presence of her group with the ice show but for some reason he'd seen no sign of any of the slavers breaking off to go elsewhere. He could only presume that the leader was confident that whatever forces were stationed elsewhere would be up to the job of catching or killing the second team. Given that Shizuku's group had been repelled before, it was easy to understand how the leader could come to such a conclusion.

A mistake the fool would hopefully come to regret.

What truly worried him, though, was the fact that Xander had chosen the least subtle way to join the party, riding on the back of Ruby and using Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi shortly thereafter. While it did comfort him somewhat to know that his apprentice had shaken off his emotional trouble and chosen to play his part in the plan, the lack of surprise would greatly increase the risk to team two. Shizuku, Ageha and Sasa had their youkai powers to protect them, along with decades of experience in their use for combating those after their lives. Xander, though, was still too early into his teachings to use them in battle even with the edge that Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi provided. As for Ruby, while she had grown much since she'd hatched and was showing the first signs of what she would be when fully grown, dragons were by no means invulnerable. Indeed, while they might've been seen as nearly godlike in the past, that was only when blades and the most primitive of bombs were the standard weapons of a warrior.

With modern day weapons, or at least those that still worked after the Calamity, a dragon's scales were no longer the armour they once were, nor were their flames instant death. A careless move on Ruby's part or a lucky shot on a slaver's part would bring to an end the crimson dragon's life.

~Tread carefully, Xander and Ruby~, he thought even as he skillfully attacked a slaver who drifted a little too far from safety. ~Victory is guaranteed to no one. Not even me.~

As a master of Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu he might be powerful but there were those who in the past proved to be strong enough and skilled enough to put even his life in peril. In some cases it was neither power or skill that led to defeat, but rather a single careless choice or a moment of inattention that exposed a warrior to a defeating blow. That was one of the reasons he'd employed unconventional and in some cases unfair methods when training Xander. Not every foe would play fair and some would use methods that put Xander at a distinct disadvantage, or at least prove confusing at first. The sooner he beat reliance on preconceptions out of the boy, the safer he would be once he ceased to be a student and became the fifteenth master of Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu.

Seeing movement out of the corner of his eye he turned his head just enough to see what was going on and found something that just upped the difficulty level of the fight.

A heavy machine gun.

One that looked to have been accepted by the SDF just prior to his estimated cutoff point for technology that still worked post Calamity.

"Scatter!" he shouted before increasing his speed as well as the randomness of his movements.

No sooner had he given the warning and acted on it himself that fifty caliber rounds began to fly through the air at a high rate of fire. While a different level of weapon when compared to assault rifles, it still suffered from the same flaws one of which being that hitting a target relied on the skill of the user. That being said, the sheer volume of fire being sent his way made it so that the slavers could blanket a large area with bullets, leaving precious few gaps to maneuver through.

~I might actually break a sweat~, he thought, taking full advantage of the heavy machine gun operator's slower reaction speeds and predictable firing patterns.

Sparing a glance at his teammate, he was impressed to see that, while not a Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu master, she was moving with such speed and agility that one might mistake her attackers as intentionally missing her. So long as no one amongst the slavers managed to come up with a plan that overcame the general incompetence of their warriors, the young woman would be fine.

Gunshots followed by the feel of a ki he'd come to know, cracking in an ominous manner, caused him to divert his focus out of concern. That concern only grew when they ki expanded, gaining a dark taint as it went like a thread of poison weaving its way through the body of its victim. Then something happened that made it so that he was not the only one who knew that something was amiss and pretty much put an end to his ability to act as a distraction.

RRROOOOAAAARRR!

With a presence that could not be ignored and a bellow that allowed all to know of its fury, none could make the mistake of thinking that things could go on as they had. That was only further emphasized when, from a location to the rear of the hangar that the slavers had used as their primary base, an explosion of fire erupted laced with an unnatural darkness. Like a vicious beast it tore off part of the hanger's rear and continued on for over a hundred yards before it reached the edge of its current limit.

After such a flashy move there would be nothing he could do to keep the slavers from investigating and, if what he suspected was true, more enemies arriving would only make things worse.

The time for distractions was over.

"We're going NOW!" he ordered before he dropped all pretenses of being held at bay by the slavers and fought as a Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu master should. "Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu: Doryusen!"

With a strength sufficient to the task he swung his blade, hitting the ground, and in response a wave of stone, asphalt and dirt rose up to surge over the slavers that once thought they had a chance of victory. Those in the direct path of his strike's effect were slain by high velocity debris sent at them while those on the edge of the path were thrown through the air with a bone or two broken. Once he was satisfied that the way was clear he charged forward, with his partner falling into stride alongside him a few seconds later.

There were only a few slaver stragglers to deal with on the way to the source of the troubling ki, but fortunately the unexpected destruction had thrown them for a loop. A few quick slashes and they ceased to be a threat, leaving him and his teammate free to proceed with only a second or two of delay. A few more seconds to navigate the debris mixed with the fires that lit up the night and they arrived at their destination.

What he saw was a mild surprise for him but, more than that, it caused him to frown since this was a development he should've anticipated.

Standing a short distance from a cage mounted on wheels and plastered with various ofuda was the source of the ki of his current apprentice, but much like the fire that'd possessed an odd quality when it'd torn its path of destruction, so too did Xander. For one thing in place of the chocolate brown eyes he'd come to know there were twin golden orbs but they didn't belong behind the lids of a human being.

No.

Instead bore a resemblance to the eyes of the red dragon Ruby but only in the sense that they would be at home in the eye sockets of large lizards considered by civilians as mythical.

When added to the patches of black scales that seemed to be spreading outward like a virus converting human skin into more of their kind and he knew that Xander's non-human half was finally showing itself. From the day they'd stumbled upon Kirito and the others he'd known that the only way Xander could still be alive was if he'd been changed as well. Given what he'd sensed from the boy thus far and the fact that Janus had sent along two draconic packages of one sort or another, he'd had his suspicions as to what sort of animal blood dwelt within his apprentice.

Now it was confirmed that it was dragon blood.

Though given the progressive changes he was seeing it didn't seem to be one of the Asian variety and that put a bit of a wrinkle in a theory he'd been refining for some time. Shortly after he'd finished reading Janus' explanatory letter and realized what kind of egg had been dropped in his lap, he'd thought that he was perhaps witnessing the beginning of a restoration. Unlike what most of humanity thought, not all 'mythological' species and races were made up nonsense used to explain everything from the weather to the behavior of animals. Youkai existed, albeit in communities separate from humans and elsewhere in the world, and other races thought to be mere fairy tales still lived as well. However, whether due to the actions of humans, conflict with other races or infighting amongst themselves, there were those races who had gone extinct.

One such race were dragons in all their variety around the world.

Symbols of power no matter where they dwelled, they were often seen either as things to be subjugated so that they could be used against their enemies or eliminated as potential threats. There were also some dragons who liked to collect treasure either because they liked shiny things or because it was beneficial to them personally somehow. Whatever the case, there were no shortage of beings, both human and otherwise, who went on the hunt, with some finding more success than others. The end result, though, was that in well over four hundred years there had not be a single credible sighting of a dragon, be it in Japan or elsewhere. Some idealistic idiots still believed that a scarce few still lived in the parts of the world that human technology could not reach but he'd always been a realist.

Thus, when Xander, the dragon egg, and Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi appeared before him, he thought that perhaps Janus intended to restart the Japanese dragon species. Dragons were said to have rather long lifespans so long as they didn't die as a result of injury or sickness, and with the benefits of Hiten Mitsurugui-Ryu coupled with the suspected animal additions, Xander likely would as well. While it might be impossible for two humans to repopulate a species, that had as much to do with the average human lifespan as it did the genetics side of things. However dragon biology changed things since it did not conform to the same rules as human biology and he wouldn't put it past Janus to somehow use his power to improve the odds of a successful rebirth of a species.

With what he saw now, though, he wondered if his theory had been a little or a lot off in regards to what Janus had in mind.

If the dragon part of Xander had been Japanese in origin it would've fit with his current theory perfectly, but the more he saw the changes creep forward, the more he thought the DNA had its origins in another part of the world. If so then new problems presented themselves with regards to his theory because, while the various types of dragons had several similarities, the differences made one wonder if procreation would even be possible between two different types.

"RR-rr-rr…"

~Something to be debated at a later time~, he thought as signs of volatility began to manifest in Xander's body language.

"Careful. I don't think he's entirely in control," his teammate said, sounding ready to act the second she needed to.

"Perhaps," he thought before deciding to test that theory. "Calm down, idiot apprentice! You've made a big enough mess as it is. Let's free the captives and leave. I think we've all had our fill of excitement for the night."

Watching Xander's face carefully he tried to see if there were any signs of understanding or his student reigning in his emotions, but all he could see was a rope fraying more and more. Whatever had provoked the boy it had unleashed a deluge of emotions that could only be slowed in going where they would rather than be stopped completely. Given what the teenager had already done, he didn't think that any of them would like to see what the consequences would be of Xander losing all control of his draconic blood.

Then there it was.

Bit by bit he could feel his student's ki beginning to stabilize and return to what he considered to be normal. He could tell that this was not easy for his apprentice by the slight tremor in the boy's body that was subtle enough to be missed by the less than observant. The scales that had been spreading on Xander's skin were withdrawing and returning to their normal human color but he could see there was a fight going on between the part of the young man that wanted to reign in the power that had exploded within him and the power that wanted to envelope the boy entirely.

Still, he was not worried. If there was one thing he could safely say about Xander it was that the boy was stubborn to the point of being ridiculous about it.

Against such an iron will the power had no choice but to back down and so it did. As the last visible traces of draconic attributes vanished from sight Xander dropped to the ground, having lost consciousness from the amount of energy he had burned through in such a short amount of time. Wary but still dutiful he walked up to his student to check for a pulse and was pleased to discover a steady rhythm.

"Gotta say I wasn't expecting anything like that when I saw the kid," his lady partner said casually from behind him. "Sure, he had the feel of potential but it was a long way off. Now I'm not so sure it's so far away."

"Shows what you know," he said with light scoffing. "My idiot apprentice almost made things ten times worse. Besides, power without the skill to use it safely is worse than taking a dip in a volcano."

Hearing sounds of movement from above he looked up to see Ruby descending towards them and, once she was on the ground, she walked over to Xander's unconscious form before nudging it with her snout.

"Don't worry. He's just asleep," he said gently in order to calm the dragon's nerves. "He'll wake up soon enough."

Ruby seemed to regard him for a moment as if to judge the veracity of his words, but apparently chose to trust him in the end, curling her body around Xander almost like a protective wall. So long as no one tried anything aggressive towards the dragon or his idiot apprentice, he doubted that they had much to worry about. Considering the state of the slavers and the surrounding area, he doubted even criminals would push their luck by trying something more.

"Y-you… you think you can fuck with ME!?" an angry voice said from the direction of Xander's path of fiery destruction.

Looking, he soon spotted a form struggling to stand from the edge of the damage done by the fire his student had unleashed. By his guess the man had only just managed to make it to the edge of the attack and so, while he didn't die instantly, it was doubtful that he had more than a few minutes of life left. Even if he were youkai, the damage the flames had done to his body were beyond even a dai youkai's ability to recover from without the infusion of a considerable amount of power.

"I had it all… worked out. Get some capital and connections selling off the things the big fish would pay big money for," the man said, looking to be a little over thirty years old by the look of the unburned flesh. "I'd set myself up Osaka Castle… start up my own outfit… and rule Japan from the shadows. But you… YOU… you ruined EVERYTHING! It's all gone straight to shit!"

"Live a life of delusions and sooner or later you're going to wake up to cold hard reality," he said, preparing himself to act should the dying man do something stupid. "I suggest you give up and spend your last moments grasping what inner peace you're capable of."

"I might not… have much time left but…" the man said, the life beginning to reach its low point. "…I'll make sure…no one else does either…see you…in…hell…"

With that the man fell over dead but not before something fell from the slaver's hand, clinking to the ground with the sound of metal. Waiting to see if anything would happen, it was only when a full minute had passed without anything happening did he walk towards where the metal object had fallen. True, it was a bit of a guess that the object was tied to the man's parting shot, but it was all he had to work with at the moment. Upon reaching it the first thing he noticed was that it appeared to be some sort of handle that reminded him of those used to pump gas into cars at a gas station. However the device was clearly not meant to pump gas if the antenna sticking out of the top, and its pea green coloring made him think it might've been designed by the military. Picking it up, he tried to make sense of it but his life as a hermit afforded him limited contact with the outside world and technology had never been more than a passing interest for him.

"Can you make anything of this?" he asked, turning to his teammate to show her the device.

"Definitely a transmitter of some kind. Reminds me of some of the dead man switch devices you'd see in the movies. Then again it could've been a detonator he pulled the trigger on," the dark haired pseudo-onmitsu replied, leaning over a bit to look at the item. "Seeing as how nothing went boom, I don't know what that moron was trying to do."

He thought on it a moment but nothing readily came to mind so he decided to shelve the potential problem for the time being.

"Whatever it was, we'll deal with it in due time," he said, tossing the device to the side. "For now we do what we came here to do. The slavers might be in chaos right now but all it'll take is one of them managing to rally the rest to cause us problems."

Turning towards the cage he was pleased to see that Shizuku, Ageha and Sara were already working to free the captives that looked to be a mix of youkai and transformed humans. From what he could tell it looked like there were about five in total but this caused him to frown since, during the strategy discussion the mizuchi threshold've been twice as many. Looking about he chose to use his powers of observation and deductive reasoning skills to learn the truth rather than verbally ask the question, since it'd only delay their departure.

The first thing he noticed was the smell of blood and it didn't take him long to find possible sources when he looked for the familiar color on the ground as well as the nearby walls. The older sources were arrayed around the cage but that made sense since scum like this no doubt found harming their 'merchandise' fun and there might've been a few examples made to keep the rest in line. It was when he began to focus more on the fresher sources of blood that he noticed a trail leading away from the cage. Curious he began walking to follow it while letting his mind work over the possible scenarios. At the moment the most likely seemed to be that one of the slavers had gotten injured when Shizuku attacked, with the others then ran off bleeding all the way. Not unheard of since criminals in general were not known to be willing to risk their lives once the possibility of victory dropped below a certain point and slavers were the scum you found at the bottom of a very disgusting barrel.

It wasn't long before his sense of smell told him he was seconds away from seeing the source of the blood but when his field of vision cleared a large crate he found that his theory had been wrong.

Tragically so.

Instead of the body of a slaver having passed away due to blood loss he found the body of a seventeen year old Japanese girl that had died with a look of pain and fear on her face. Hair dyed almost blood red and only going a little past the shoulders, he could see signs of abuse on her body not tied to the gunshots that'd led to her death. Since he'd never met a slaver that was into pain to the point of letting themselves get beaten physically, he presumed he was looking at the body of a captive. Judging by what he could see he would surmise it was the bloody wound in her shoulder that'd created the trail that'd led him there and the four through and through shots to the chest that'd killed her. Little by little a new scenario took form in his mind and, when joined with Xander's actions, he felt as though he almost had a whole picture.

The girl had likely been out of the cage being toyed with by one of the slavers when Shizuku arrived with her team. Judging by the trail of blood going from the vicinity of the cage to the body, the girl likely was frightened into immobility at first. However the wound to her shoulder likely snapped her out of it, giving rise to the next common impulse when the weak found themselves someplace dangerous.

The impulse to run.

The girl had tried to flee the battlefield and, whether one of the slavers deliberately shot at her or the bullets had hit by accident while the gun had been aiming at something else, the result was the same. Death had likely come swiftly since, whether you were youkai or human, that sort of damage done to an area of the body where vital organs resided could not be overcome. If Xander had been present to see this death as well as the few seconds of fleeing, it might well have been enough to provoke an emotional reaction in the boy. Even with all the dead bodies they had seen since the Calamity, those were deaths that had happened quite awhile ago and thus had no more impact than someone shooting a corpse.

This would've been the first time Xander would've seen death occur in such a manner and not at the hands of a demon living on the Hellmouth, but a human.

For soldiers that had gone through the necessary training, seeing a person die in front of you was difficult but the lessons learned allowed it to be bearable.

For a civilian without the comfort of the perpetrator being a demon rather than a fellow human being would not handle it quite as well.

~It would seem that this has been a night of quite a few lessons for my apprentice~, he thought, kneeling down before closing the dead girl's eyes compassionately. ~One can only hope that they will serve to make him stronger.~

With the final kindness done he stood up and turned away to rejoin the others who had convinced Ruby to be their method of leaving the airport swiftly.

He'd had his fill of the place.

---

Nii-jima Island

'Not everything is as it appears to be'

A truer statement there never was and it could be applied to a wide range of situations.

In the case of the last moments of the leader of the slavers based out of Tokyo's main airport, it was an error on the part of those who'd thwarted his plans to think the parting shot was a bomb. However the coolness factor was reduced somewhat by the fact that even the slaver boss didn't know what exactly using the device would do. All he did know was that he'd found it in a safe belonging to a high ranking officer of the JSDF and what paperwork there was that wasn't incomprehensible implied that using the device was meant as an option of last resort. The documents indicated that, should Japan ever come under threat from a sizable land or sea based threat that could not be repelled with available forces, the device would be used as a means to delay the enemy until Japan's allies arrived.

Naturally the limited imagination of the slaver boss presumed that the device would be some sort of WMD that would take out everything on the east coast of Japan.

The truth? The truth was something decidedly stranger.

The truth was that the device that the device that the slave boss used had but one purpose: to unlock as well as open every door in a top secret base on Nii-jima island built deep enough to escape standard methods of detection. The facility itself had been built a little under two decades after the end of the second world war once the Japanese government was confident surveillance by the Allies had cooled off enough. Nevertheless, they knew that if their defeaters found out about their efforts it could lead to even stricter and even more disagreeable terms forced down their throat. Thus they'd had every everything smuggled in or disguised in such a way so as to make it look like they planned on developing the island for industry and tourism. It drew out construction, given that they couldn't bring in more effective and expediting tools without arousing suspicion, but to maintain the utmost secrecy it'd been accepted.

All told it'd taken ten full years to build the facility with all the criteria cited by the government and various ranking military officers but when it was finished the real work began.

What was that work? Why, brainstorming various means of breaking free of the control of foreign powers and restoring Japan's honor to its former glory, if not beyond that, of course.

Whether it was developing weapon technology, biological weapons, super soldier creation methods or something else entirely, the leaders of Japan found a way to support it. It sometimes required that they do business with 'unsavory' people and groups, but fortunately once both sides 'understood' each other things usually went smoothly.

When it didn't… suffice it to say that even the Yakuza had a patriotic side to themselves.

As time passed, though, the progress the various divisions inside the top secret facility was less than ideal and changes in the times made it harder to provide the resources required. While none in either the government or military were willing to shut down operations entirely, they were forced to shut down the less promising divisions and forced those that remained to work on a reduced budget. By the time the mid-eighties arrived morale in the base was reaching an all time low…

…then they received a VERY special shipment with an escort that was as well armed and well prepared as they could be without giving away their JSDF origins.

The director of the facility had naturally been curious but only once the shipment had been successfully placed in the most secure room ever built was he briefed. Needless to say he'd been astonished but after being shown the preliminary evidence that'd been collected, as well as what little field analysis had been possible with portable equipment he'd been convinced. From there new work had begun down a road of experimentation that none had seen coming or even thought was possible, but the speculation for how it could help Japan was enough to cause the scientists to push on.

Months of study and experimentation had led to revelations never before seen, even if it did mean they burned through some of the shipment in the process. However after such a long period of hard work dealing with such an unknown quantity, it'd only been a matter of time before something had gone wrong.

And it had gone wrong…

…SPECTACULARLY wrong!

Debriefings by the survivors as well as what records had been transported to safety revealed that, due to a bad supply of chemicals, the test subjects hadn't been as unconscious as they should've been. The result? A seventy percent casualty rate and the destruction of quite a bit of the facility itself, save for what'd been necessary to keep the place from caving in on itself. That'd been what it'd taken to render the test subjects unconscious once more and secure them in containment pods designed to hold any super soldiers who physically met expectations but mentally had become unhinged.

In the end it'd been decided to cease all activities within the facility and to salvage what was left into something useful. Thus the 'option of last resort' was set up using a mix of subliminal programming, chemical cocktails and various other methods of amplifying the aggression of the test subjects. Naturally included was programming that would prevent the test subjects from harming specific members of the Japanese government and military, primarily, and Japan's citizens in general, but the only way to confirm if it worked was to test it in the field.

Given the projected damage, if all the work that'd gone into the 'last resort' did not behave like they wanted, grounds for using it had yet to arise that were good enough to satisfy those in charge.

It was a twisted sort of blessing in a way that, thanks to the 'Calamity', as the event was referred to by Seijuro Hiko, the population of Japan had been torn to shreds, leaving only a scattered number of people living all over, as well as the youkai races.

Thus, as the systems inside of the base responded to the fact that the activation button on the device had been pressed and a pre-programmed set of actions began to unfold. All the doors opened in order to provide a clear path to the surface, the containment pods were opened and the feed of chemicals meant to keep the subjects unconscious was shut down. It would still take some time for the occupants of the pod to shake off the effects but, given the results of the experiments, it was unlikely to take more than a week.

When that happened, when they woke up, the test subjects would almost certainly head to open air and when they saw Tokyo in the distance they would head there by whatever means was available.

After that… they'd do what dangerous people tended to do after being put through torturous experiments by people who ignored their suffering and pleas for it to stop.

They'd vent on whatever suitable targets presented themselves until they were satisfied.

---

Hiko's Home Outside of Kyoto

Five Days Later

Xander's POV

To one looking at him from afar it might look like he was just enjoying the view of the sunrise while being sure to show both Ruby and Himari affection with steady petting of their heads.

But the truth of the matter was that his actions were on autopilot with his mind focused on something else entirely.

It'd been days since his world had been shattered and the degree to which he'd been changed had been violently been revealed. While he would not say he had not recovered a bit, he knew that no sane person could move past such things quickly and that it'd likely be months for him to recover. However the journey of a million miles began with a single step and for him that meant working through his feelings and thoughts on the matter since Hiko had already made it clear that he wouldn't put up with anymore teenager bullshit from him. It'd taken two days of him being as emotionally volatile as any other teenager whose life had been upended before the master of Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu had laid down the law with him.

If he couldn't treat the others with respect and politeness then he'd be living out of the cave Ruby had been born in until he could.

The only time he had anyone other than Ruby and Himari for company had been when Hiko trained him and, while out of whack, he knew better than to provoke the man. He'd seen enough of what the man could do to know that only an ass kicking awaited him if he pushed his luck too far but more than that he needed to finish the training. That wouldn't happen if he gave the man a good reason, or several half-assed ones, to stop the training immediately and kick him to the curb.

He couldn't let that happen.

Not just because he finally accepted that this world had changed into something out of 'Mad Max', where your only safety was in numbers, whether it was the number of people or the number of weapons. He also needed to master this style of swordsmanship because only then would he be ready to hunt down the demon responsible for all this death and destruction. In the grand scale of things he'd be seeking vengeance for all those people who'd been killed when the world went to shit but on a far more personal level he wanted his pound of flesh because his chosen family had been taken from him. It'd be impossible for him to do anything else given all that had happened. He wouldn't be able to follow those who simply picked up the pieces and moved on with their lives.

Ever since Jesse was turned… no, ever since the last piece of him that still believed his parents loved him died, he had never been the sort of person to let go of his need for retribution.

"Rrr?" Ruby growled inquisitively, turning her head to look at him.

~Damn.~ He reeled in his emotions as best he could before whispering, "Sorry, girl. Sorry. It's not you I'm mad at."

This seemed to satisfy her for the most part but she still nuzzled him a bit and conveyed comfort over the link they shared. Between that and his own efforts he managed to lock down most of the killing thoughts and emotions inside of him but he would have to be careful in the future. Regardless of how intelligent or sapient Ruby was on her way to becoming, it was never right to allow one's own foul mood to lead to harming those you cared about. No matter how bad things got he could never allow himself to become like Tony and take out his bad day on someone he was responsible for and cared about. In Ruby's case he not only saw her as a child but also sort of like a little sister, so he'd be the worst kind of scum to let something so innocent be harmed by his negative emotions. As for Himari, the cat youkai might have been older but after all she'd been through as a result of the catastrophe, losing the humans precious to her, he could not allow himself to be so foul to add more suffering.

Keeping one mental hand on the lock box he'd put his negative emotions into he began to think about the future.

Shizuku and the others were escorting the remaining captives they'd rescued back to their youkai tribes, or whatever they were called. The water manipulator had stated that afterwards they'd resume traveling Japan, looking for other trouble areas and, if they could, they'd solve the problems themselves. If not, the youkai woman had asked Hiko if he'd be willing to provide aid in the future. Hiko, of course, had conveyed in his usual way that the only reason he'd agreed the last time was to smash through his 'idiot student's' denial and nip a nearby threat in the bud. The man claimed that if he kept dropping everything to help with every problem that cropped up he'd never be able to finish training his successor due to the interruptions. He hadn't said anything during the entire conversation because, while he did feel some sympathy for those in trouble, he had to give priority to his training.

He might be patient enough to stick with his training until he officially became the master of Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu but he was not willing to put up with distraction after distraction.

Just like back in Sunnydale he couldn't worry himself silly over what was happening elsewhere. He needed to stay focused on the problems that were right in front of him. Besides he'd never bought the spiel that the Watcher's Council and the Slayer were the only people keeping the world spinning in the face of demonic aggression. There had to be others doing their part and, if so, he was sure that there would be others who'd step up to keep the situation in Japan from devolving further.

A Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu master and an apprentice were not absolutely crucial to the safety and security of Japan.

And if they came for help after he'd finished his training he might be willing to accept a few jobs, so long as there was a good chance them helping him get real life experience with his blade. However his focus would have to be on hunting his prey and, if that took him away from Japanese soil, then he was sure the youkai and changed humans would adapt in his absence.

All that mattered was that he gained the skill, strength and knowledge needed to hunt his prey to ground.

The rest could wait until his vengeance was satisfied.

"Ya done brooding yet?" a voice asked from above, causing him to look straight up.

And immediately looked elsewhere, doing his best not to get hot in the face like some pure hearted little virgin!

"Dammit! What the hell do you think you're doing!?" he exclaimed, doing his best to erase the section of his memory that had recorded the last few seconds.

"What do ya mean? I'm just lazing on this branch, enjoying the view."

"I don't have a problem with you taking in the view," he growled in mild frustration, since this wasn't the first time this had happened. "I have a problem with you setting me up for 'up the skirt' shots!"

"My, my, what an innocent young man you are," the owner of the voice said with amusement before jumping down from the branch to land in front of him. "I'd have thought a hero like you would've already had his cherry popped."

"No changing the subject, Yourichi!" he yelled, not comfortable talking to ANYONE, really, about his love life, or lack thereof. "There's no way you can make me believe that all these 'accidents' happened by chance! What the hell are you playing at!?"

Yes.

After the rescue in Tokyo, instead of heading off with Shizuku or going off on her own, the dark skinned woman that'd been paired with Hiko had chosen to tag along all the way back to Kyoto. When she'd been asked why, all he'd heard was how impressive Hiko had been and how interesting he was thus she'd decided to hang out with them for a while. He'd expected his sensei to oppose the idea since they were already crowded enough with everyone who already lived in the hermit hut or close by, but instead the swordsman had just tossed a 'do whatever you like' at her without even turning his head. He hadn't liked it but had decided that since it was Hiko's home and territory, his teacher had final say on any new 'tenants'.

At first Yourichi had been easy going enough as she was introduced to Kirito and the others, and even Himari didn't seem to have a problem with her, so he'd just let it go. That quickly proved to be a mistake since not only did she not act like like any lady he'd ever met but she proved determined to find ways to amuse herself, even if she had to engineer them herself. Of course he hadn't been able to prove anything either by witnessing the woman's machinations or finding evidence, but Yoruichi had always had that same smirk on her face that implied everything was going according to plan. In the end he'd made the choice to simply ignore it all and focus on his training.

Yoruichi had apparently taken that as a challenge and had been making move after move to mess with him while acting like it was just one big coincidence or perfectly harmless. He'd tried to call her on it and even get Hiko to lay down the law, but his sensei had just told him that if Yoruichi's antics were enough to get him flustered then he'd never make it in a real fight. He hadn't agreed since he felt there'd be plenty of time to work on keeping his mental composure AFTER he'd mastered the physical components of the Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu.

Of course Hiko stated that if that was what he really thought then it only made it clear just how much of a kid he still was and how far was left to travel on his journey to mastering Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Yoruichi replied with a smirk before a more serious look crossed her face. "What I do know is you'd better put a stake in that black seed growing in your heart. If you don't, rot'll set in and you won't like what'll happen after that."

"Really? Giving me the 'don't seek revenge' speech?" he asked, figuring out what she was implying. "The whole 'someone seeking revenge had best dig two graves: one for his foe and one for himself' thing? Sounds about right but I don't have a problem with it. So long as I kill the bastard who killed my chosen family, what happens to me after that doesn't matter."

"I think it'd matter to Kirito, Himari and the others," Yoruichi said, her golden eyes narrowing a bit more. "When a person makes friends their life is no longer just their own. Have you even considered how they'd react if you died? How Ruby would react?"

"Friends? Don't assume that just because we've been living together for so long that that means we're friends," he replied, his eyes narrowing right back at her. "People can live in the same apartment building, see each other day after day, and still not be friends. As for Ruby and Himari… Ruby'll probably follow me wherever I go and by the time I'm done she'll be old enough stand on her own. I doubt this bond thing I've got with her is strong enough to do much damage if its cut. Himari might like me but her mind's not much better than a house cat's right now. If something happens to me I doubt she'll remember me for very long."

"Is that so?" she asked, sounding like she disapproved. "And if you're wrong? Just because you don't consider them friends doesn't mean they think the same way about you. The bond with Ruby might not seem like much to worry about to you but how much do you really know about Japanese dragons? And Himari? Hiko told me her story. Her sapient mind might've withdrawn but that doesn't mean it doesn't still have some sense of what's going on. She's also clearly grown attached to you, specifically more so than any of the others. If losing Yuuto did this to her, what do you think'll happen if you die?"

"Please! Yuuto was obviously her boyfriend or close enough that makes no difference. Me? I doubt she sees me as anything other than a source of food and attention," he replied, believing that the woman was overstating things. "What're the odds she'll come out of it before I go off on my own? Sometimes it takes years, decades, for people to come back from what's happened to Himari. I'll be long gone by then."

"STOP BEING SO SELFISH!" Yoruichi yelled at him before vanishing, only to reappear right in front of him and lifting him off his feet by the front of his shirt. "This world's descended into total anarchy! There's no guarantee of anything anymore! Not food! Not safety! Not even a roof over your head! You think Kirito and the others don't realize that?! That they aren't terrified by that? You and Hiko make it bearable! Your strength makes it possible for them to sleep at night and live each day without fear squeezing their hearts! You would rip that away from them for something like revenge?!"

"WELL WHAT ELSE AM I SUPPOSED TO DO!?" he yelled back, having had enough of this bullshit. "Even if I didn't admit it, even if I did everything I could to reject it, I had a feeling Willow and the others could be dead from the second I woke up in Japan! All this destruction and death! It's hard enough staying alive on a Hellmouth when all you have to worry about are demons and magic! But they're the most important people in my life! My chosen family! With blood family a steaming pile of shit I was afraid for the longest time that I'd wind up just like the rest of the Harris family! Willow, Jesse, Buffy, Giles, Miss C, Oz and fuck it even Cordelia of all people gave me reason to believe I could be more than that! NOW THEY'RE DEAD! ALL OF THEM! DEAD! Do you have any idea what it's like to lose everyone you care about!? How empty it makes me feel!? Revenge is the only thing left burning inside of me… if I lose that… I'll just be a dead man walking."

He hadn't meant to be so honest, to lay it all out like that, but with Yoruichi getting in his face like that had gotten him so worked up it'd just all come out like diarrhea of the mouth. Nevertheless it was the truth, every word of it, and indeed with all that he'd lost the only thing that was getting him out of bed in the morning was his desire for revenge. To do otherwise felt like it'd be a betrayal of the bonds he shared with each and every member of the Scooby gang, even if a part of him conceded that some of them wouldn't mind so long as he was happy.

His heart, his soul, wouldn't let him settle for anything less than avenging their deaths!

"I guess there's only one thing to do then," Yoruichi sighed, sounding like she'd realized that there'd be no talking him out of it. "If you're gonna be heading into trouble one way or another then I'll just have to make sure you're good enough to survive and find your way home."

"Huh?" he asked, not quite getting what she was saying, though he did have a suspicion.

"Swordsmanship is an effective method of fighting but if something happens to your sword you need something to fall back on," she explained, regaining her previous amused look. "Lucky for you I've got some experience training reckless hotheads like yourself. I'll have a talk with Hiko and see if we can work out a joint training schedule for you."

A feeling dread began to settle in his stomach.

"It won't be easy but at least it'll be more productive than sitting here brooding and looking at the sunrise," Yoruichi said, sounding like she was doing him a favor. "By the time I'm done nothing less than a god of death'll be able to kill you."

"Hooray?" He was now not sure if he should be happy or very, VERY afraid.

---

A Little Over Two Weeks Later

Yoruichi's POV

"Looks like our joint schedule is working out," Hiko said as the two of them watched Xander lumber off to his 'room'. "Barely."

"Look at it this way: either it'll work out fine and he'll be ready for just about anything that comes his way or he'll get injured and won't be able to go on his quest for revenge," she said, trying to keep everything in perspective. "Sure, it means he won't be able to become the next master of Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu but at least he'll be alive."

"I would prefer it if we didn't let things go that far, Yoruichi," Hiko said dryly, looking at her with a look of opposition. "Janus' letter made it pretty clear that Xander would be needed to oppose the evil that caused the Calamity. Besides, I'd rather not train another apprentice that winds up destroying his own body. One of those is more than enough."

True. No teacher wants to train their student to the point of ruination, or have their student leave only to die taking on something beyond their ability.

"It's for the best," she said, thinking about the adjustments that could be made to the training schedule. "With what I felt on that day… Xander's going to need every edge we can give him."

"You're not wrong. I felt it, too," Hiko said with a grimness. "Even without it focusing its power on me, it took a concentrated effort of ki manipulation to shield myself from it. Whether it was just a spell cast or the power of a living being if it was focused to destroy a single person, only the strongest of the strong could survive. Tch, to think Janus actually thinks my idiot apprentice has that kind of potential makes me think the two faced Roman kami has started going insane."

"Maybe, but I've seen people defy the odds before and cost a lot of people who bet on a 'sure thing' every yen they had," she said, recalling all the times people had called her a fool for placing the bet she had. "Besides, with the show he put on at the airport, I have a feeling we haven't come close to seeing his limits. When he graduates from both our training we might just get to see something special."

"Well, until then I'm going to take a nap before dinner," Hiko said, walking away from her. "Trying to make something out of an idiot is hard work."

She rolled her eyes at this statement because, for all the work Hiko put into the act of appearing the exasperated teacher, she knew that he was satisfied with Xander's progress. If that wasn't the case then the caped man would've just stopped training the young man months ago and ignored any pleas for a second chance. Instead of being genuine punishment whenever Hiko upped the difficulty of the training, it was in fact a fulfilling of the obligation of a mentor to a student. While when teaching large groups of people a mentor developed a training regime that all of the students could handle, it was different when teaching a single apprentice. With only one a mentor could tailor their methods to that person's strengths and weaknesses in order to maximize the results gained from the training. With every lesson successfully passed, Hiko was forced to reevaluate his future plans in direct response to what he'd learned of Xander's current level of development.

Now, with the addition of her own training, the amount of data both of them had as teachers to help Xander reach his full potential as a warrior gave them quite a few ways to proceed onward. She'd have to do some thinking to come up with some ideas before discussing them with Hiko to see when it would be best to put them into practice. She wouldn't be teaching him how to use his katana, though, since that would likely only complicate Hiko's own, but rather two other disciplines she was an expert in.

Though whether it'd work with things the way they were was questionable. After all, Zankensoki was designed to be used by spirits, not flesh and blood beings.

Since the day of the Calamity and awakening in her current body she'd only cautiously explored what it was capable of, operating on the assumption that it'd die if she went too far. Through experimentation she'd managed to become warrior enough that she'd been able to adequately back up Hiko during the rescue attempt on the airport. Could she go further? Was her body somehow strong enough that she could use what she'd been taught to the fullest even with a form of flesh and blood? Or was it still as fragile as any other human or youkai's body? She would need to renew her experimentation a distance away from the others in order to keep them safe from any potential backlash. Once she was sure that it was safe she'd teach it to Xander, since she'd seen enough evidence to confirm that his body and spirit were strong enough to handle what she could presently do.

The energy within him might not have been the spiritual power she was familiar with and his body might not be comprised of reishi like her old body was, but she didn't think it'd matter.

With the power Xander had shown at the airport and the partial transformation he'd undergone, only to appear to return to normal, she had a feeling that the changes done to him were special.

Like a certain monster of a teenager she knew.

She wondered how the kid and the others were doing and hoped that Kisuke had been able to get them through the emergency Senkaimon in time. She'd been too far away from the shop to make it back and so had been overcome by the foul energy, being rendered unconscious in seconds. It might've been different if she hadn't been in a specialized Gigai but the suddenness of the Calamity had caused her to decide against leaving it. There had simply been too little time to waste and she couldn't say no to Ishida's request to find his father and bring him to Kisuke's shop. All could feel the evil of the energy rolling towards them and, if they were to stand against it, they would need all the strength they could get.

Even if Ryuken insisted he was not a Quincy any more there was no denying the fact that the man had undergone the training and still possessed much of the strength he'd once possessed as an active fighter of Hollows. She'd had no doubt that, given enough time to train, Ryuken would become a powerful ally and perhaps help his son grow as well.

In the end she'd only gotten as far as appearing in front of him and opening her mouth to tell him to come with her before the Calamity had knocked her out cold.

When she'd regained consciousness she'd found much had changed, herself included. She could tell right away that her Gigai was no longer a Gigai, but more than that, unless Kisuke had been in one of his playful moods when designing the gigai she'd worn, some other force had changed it. This had been ominous and had caused her to begin descending into careful contemplation…

…right until she'd seen the fuzzy ears sticking up out of Ryuken's hair.

….and the tail flicking about behind him.

After that… well, it'd taken a while before she could focus on anything other than her own amusement.

Eventually, though, the two of them had taken in the changed world around them and had immediately moved to assess the damage as a whole but also the status of those they cared for. Both of them had arrived at Kisuke's shop to find entirely one side of it crushed beneath a nearby building that'd toppled over. Fortunately both of them knew that the store on the surface mattered little and that the underground training room was the priority. From the moment they'd been aware of the the Calamity everyone in the store had been relocated there, so there'd be no reason for anyone to have been above ground. It'd taken them a few minutes to clear enough of the rubble to access the subterranean training area, but once they had they'd both descended to find those they'd sought.

Only to find nothing but cracked walls and a cracked ceiling.

Nothing more.

Nothing save the remains of Kisuke's Senkaimon.

This reassured both of them since this plus the absence of anything resembling a living being meant that Kisuke must've successfully managed to get everyone present through to Soul Society. Naturally both she and Ryuken had immediately moved to restore the Senkaimon so that they could follow, using both their own knowledge as well as what documents of Kisuke's they could find. She wasn't a scientist like her friend but, as a byproduct of what she'd been and what she'd chosen to become, she did have some understanding of the basics behind it all. When combined with Ryuken's Quincy knowledge they managed to construct a new Senkaimon in no time but it all turned out to be for nothing.

No matter how many times they'd tried and no matter how many modifications they made, they could not make a connection with Soul Society.

It wasn't that they thought that they'd made a mistake with the Senkaimon's construction or its use, but rather when the device reached out to form a connection it was as though there was nothing there. They'd theorized and considered possibly modifying Kisuke's work as much as they dared in the hope that they'd succeed in making the connection but nothing ever came of it. In the end the only thing that made sense was either Soul Society had moved well away from them or the world on which they stood had been taken well away from Soul Society. In either case, if a path was to open between the world on which she stood and Soul Society, it wouldn't be made from this end.

Neither of them liked the fact that they'd been separated from those they cared for but both of them knew better than to fall to pieces.

WHEN Kisuke managed to figure out a way to reconnect with this mortal world he would need as much information as possible to come up with a way of restoring everything to normal. For Ryuken it would be by salvaging what he could from the devastation and opening a clinic for any who needed medical aid. If the two of them had survived, albeit changed, then there were bound to be others and, amidst such devastation, a place of healing was right up there with a means of protection in terms of importance. As a byproduct of helping others with whatever ailed them the Quincy would be able to learn what he could of the nature of the changes done to people as well as the environment around them. It was unlikely that the only things changed had been humans and spirits inhabiting fake human bodies and, by seeing how the environment affected the patients, Ryuken would learn more about it as well.

As for her, she'd do some traveling and find out just how widespread the changes were and if they had something more to worry about than just a new look and some post apocalyptic redecorating. If there was something more to it and it turned out to be the first move of a group, or worse a single powerful individual, then gathering intel was a top priority. Goals? Resources? Allies? Subordinates? Abilities? All these things needed to be discovered to determine a threat level and decide what an appropriate response would be. Using the traveling she'd managed to experiment with Hoho quite a bit, slowly raising the limit on what she believed safe to be used in her current body.

It'd been during this time that she'd noticed what looked like a group of survivors looting a police station of its weapons and generally carrying on like a group of thugs. She hadn't known if it was a case of a single gang planning on securing territory or something bigger, so she'd tailed them in order to learn more. By the time she'd felt she'd learned enough she'd been about to return to Ryuken to let him know that a group of slavers and a client base that desired such a business existed, but then she'd spotted something that gave her pause.

Three youkai.

She could tell with her senses that they weren't altered humans and the strength of their spirits meant they were nothing to sneeze at either. When she saw the three youkai follow the gang of transformed humans her curiosity returned and she chose to follow the followers, believing Ryuken could wait a while longer to be told about what she'd learned. Fortunately, though, it didn't take long before the gang arrived at their base of operations and she gained a greater understanding of the situation. First was the fact that this was no gang she'd followed but rather a team belonging to a much larger group that'd set up shop in the main Tokyo airport. More than that, her eyes had been able to spot something troubling since, at that precise moment, a truck with a trailer carrying a rectangular cage filled with people that didn't look like they were there willingly.

The chains and the visible signs of physical 'punishment' made that pretty clear.

Put everything together and it was clear that the large group of transformed humans were 'businessmen' intending to make a profit from anything they could find, even including sentient beings. She'd reached out with her senses and was able to tell that, while some of the captives were transformed humans, the rest were without a doubt youkai. This explained the three person team of youkai trailing the gang of weapon thieves but she had to wonder what the three girls planned to do now. From what she'd been able to tell none of them were strong enough to take on the criminals themselves, especially with the weapons the scum had. If it had been the old days of swords, arrows and single shot muskets they might've stood a chance but human weapons had gotten much stronger as well as faster over the centuries.

So much so that the smart move would be to withdraw and come back with a stronger force.

Interested in who the trio of Youkai were working for she'd followed them when they'd left without letting them know that she was there. What she learned was disappointing in more ways than one. Apparently, while the trio knew of two existing powers within the youkai community, they were not affiliated with either of them. More than that, the girls were considering the possibility of covertly infiltrating the enemy camp to rescue the captives by themselves. She couldn't fault their guts but clearly the three didn't have much experience fighting humans wielding modern day weapons. Thus she'd revealed herself and, with some wordplay, had managed to convince them to let her lend a helping hand. With what she'd managed to gain through experimentation she'd been reasonably sure that she could improve the odds enough at least to ensure the trio's survival and at most get the captives out by the skin of their teeth.

After all, weapons don't make the warrior.

It was the warrior that made the weapons.

Even if this group of criminals were heavily armed, if they had no experience using most of their armory then the efficacy level would sharply drop.

Once night had fallen they'd made their move, following a plan of avoiding contact with the enemy for as long as possible while still making progress to the location of the captives. She didn't have any trouble with stealth, given her history, and, while not to the same degree, the youkai girls were good enough that she didn't have any complaints. Sadly they'd made a mistake in believing that the Calamity had taken out the airport's security system and had been discovered.

~Still all's well that ends well~, she thought, deciding to take a quick dip in the lake before dinner. ~We all survived and there was only one death. Considering we should've only gotten half out, I'm not complaining.~

She knew that Xander had wanted to get all the captives out and that the death of one of them had profoundly affected him, but she wasn't some emotional kid. With the variables in play and the resources they'd had at hand at the time, a zero casualty ending with all captives rescued had not been possible. Naturally, as one with little if any real experience in such things, Xander likely hadn't believed so and might still believe that such an outcome could've happened.

If what she suspected about the boy's power was true, perhaps one day such an outcome might be possible.

She'd seen stranger things.

---

Iya Valley, Tokushima Prefecture

Two Days Later

Shizuku's POV

"Are you sure this is a good idea, Shi-chan?" Sasa asked even as they waited outside what to the uninformed looked like a meeting hall for the surrounding village.

However that was what people passing by were supposed to conclude, since it'd keep the truth from becoming known.

The truth was that the large doors of the meeting hall were, in fact, a means by which one could enter the palace of one of the three major powers amongst the youkai of Japan. In the past few centuries humans had gotten stronger and the past methods of concealing youkai lands from human eyes had needed to be revised or replaced altogether. It'd been decided to move their most precious possessions in special pocket dimensions created through the joint efforts of all daiyoukai. Measures had also been taken to ensure that those who had been chosen to rule could not be easily gotten to by either youkai or human. This was a precaution taken in light of the increasing strength of humans and attempts made by lesser youkai to replace one or more of the three reigning powers. It chafed at the three rulers because each of them were formidable daiyoukai and hardly helpless if something or someone were to threaten their lives.

However after what'd happened to the one who would have become the fourth major power, even the three could not deny that the risk was very real.

"We have been called to report directly to Lady Subaru-nano," she replied, her composure still in place despite who they would soon be kneeling before. "It would not be wise to incur her wrath by leaving-nano."

Indeed the lion youkai woman was known to be quite cold and calculating when holding court or granting an audience with a visitor. While there were some rumors that she was different in private or when amongst those closest to her, but it was unwise to act based on such talk. Lady Suburu did not interact with others often, so the fact that the three of them had been told to wait outside the meeting all before being called to give a report directly to her was ominous. Even before the foul energy had upended the natural order of things she had not been very highly ranked amongst youkai but that wasn't surprising. Rank amongst youkai came either from the individual power one wielded or from the blood that flowed through your veins. She was not a member of any notable house and, given that she was only just over one century old meant her power, while respectable for her age, wasn't enough to put her above others. Sasa and Ageha likewise were not youkai of reputation, power or position, so the fact that all three of them had been named for the meeting implied much.

If they chose to leave without meeting with Lady Suburu it would be taken as a grave insult not just to the lion daiyoukai herself but also those who served her.

Insults to daiyoukai had a habit of leaving the insulter either dead or wishing that they were, unless they were VERY lucky.

Sasa seemed to realize this and didn't press the matter further, but there was no mistaking the unease present in both the ippon-datara as well as Ageha.

She would be lying if she said that she was entirely settled herself but she had long since mastered the ability to maintain her composure even if it was only on the outside. As for the inside… the sooner they had this meeting, the sooner they could leave and she could find something to eat in order to settle her nerves.

Hearing the sound of the large doors opening she got to her feet and, when the gap was wide enough, she could see a woman wearing robes of fine quality that left only her jaw exposed. Not a noble but rather it was likely one of Lady Subaru's personal attendants that'd come to fetch them.

"The Lady Subaru will see you now," the attendant said with a polite bow before turning to guide them to her mistress.

Silently they followed the attendant through the doors and through the illusion of a normal interior to the portal that led to the true home of Lady Subaru. A moment of disorientation was all that heralded the change in location from one of a simple village to that of an opulent palace decorated in the manner one would expect the home of a true daiyoukai and a major power. Both rare materials, signs of magic and power, were about, with youkai servants ill suited to being out where human eyes could see them going about their duties. She did not let her gaze linger or her curiosity have its way for long for it would be unseemly for one about to meet the lady of the house.

It didn't take long to reach the main throne room and once there it was easy to find Lady Subaru. Not because one need only look for the throne but rather because of the power exuded by the young woman sitting on it, since it could only belong to a daiyoukai. Hair white as snow, bright yellow eyes and a single fang slightly peeking out from between her lips hinting at her feline other form, and two shoulder pieces of armor that were both beautiful as well as combat worthy. Wearing a kimono that was a mix of blue, white and purple, Lady Subaru was a sight to behold.

Nevertheless as soon as she was an appropriate distance away she dropped to her knees, executing a formal bow that was all but called for when meeting such a powerful youkai.

"You are welcome in my home, Shizuku of the Mizuchi, Ageha of the hinoenma, and Sasa of the ippon-datara," Lady Subaru said in a the manner of one who stood above all others. "You have our thanks for the rescue and safe return of our subjects. It was most vexing to hear that they had been taken to be sold as slaves. I was tempted for a time to order my warriors to seek them out. However my advisors strongly argued against such action out of concern for how my peers would react, and out of respect for their years of service I conceded to their wishes. Now, as a substitute for taking official action myself, I would ask that you tell me all that transpired from your point of view. Tell me of your adventure."

~An odd request~, she thought but such was normal when a commoner attempted to understand the mind of a daiyoukai.

Nevertheless she did as Lady Subaru asked and told of how the journey had begun, how it had developed, how it'd ended, and how the rescued captives were returned home. She did not go into exhaustive detail as she was sure this would both annoy as well as bore the daiyoukai woman, but made sure to mention details she felt were relevant. By the time she was done she could detect a faint change in Lady Subaru's expression, though whether this boded well or not she could not say.

"A most interesting story, both in the good as well as the bad," Lady Subaru said, her tone even and strong. "I will have to order my warriors to more aggressively seek out groups like these slavers. All must know that dare to harm what is ours will find a wave of claws and fangs and steel descending upon them. As for the thirteenth master of Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu and his apprentice, I am most intrigued. It has been many centuries since Seijuro Hiko the First created the sword style, and until now it had looked as though it would end with its thirteenth master. Most interesting to find out that it will not."

While other meanings to Lady Subaru's words existed, she took them to mean that the daiyoukai had an interest in meeting both master and apprentice at the very least. At the most the daiyoukai might be considering recruiting Xander into her forces, for the masters of Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu had each earned themselves places in the history of Japan. Having a warrior who'd mastered the style and was still young enough to have a long career made for a rather tempting prospect.

"Is it not presumptuous, Lady Subaru, to assume that this Xander will succeed in mastering Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu?" the attendant asked with the utmost respect. "It is a difficult style and may well be beyond the young man's abilities."

"Perhaps, but as I recall it was the thirteenth master that succeeded in training Himura the Battousai into a formidable warrior despite the hitokiri's less than ideal physique," Lady Subaru replied, countering the attendant's point with one of her own. "Given the power the young man displayed at that one girl's death, I would say that he possesses a body more than strong enough to master the style."

She couldn't help but feel a shudder in her soul at the memory of Xander's display of power at that point for it had been completely unexpected and intimidating.

---

The Night of the Rescue at the Airport

"Is he going to be okay, Shi-chan?" Sasa asked as they made their way to where the captives were believed to be located.

"He is the apprentice of the master of Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu-nano. He will be… fine-nano," she replied, keeping her mind focused on what was ahead rather than who was behind them.

The truth of the matter was that she did not know if Xander was skilled enough and strong enough to hold back the youkai that had been powerful enough to stop the trio in their tracks. However, in light of the situation and with the presence of the red dragon Ruby, she had felt the odds were good enough to go on ahead. With any luck the youkai mercenary would not require the life of Xander in order to declare himself the victor and Hiko's apprentice would retain strength enough to follow them.

With the chaos that Hiko and Yoruichi were causing the slavers they came across were easy to catch unawares and, with the noises echoing throughout the air, few would hear anything worth investigating. As such their progress was swift but, when they came around the corner, her satisfaction turned to ash when she saw a group of men waiting for them beside the cage holding the captives. Indeed from the looks on the faces of each slaver there was no surprise, only smug pleasure at all proceeding as had been foreseen.

"See, Hiroshi? I told you," a particularly smug man said from the center of the group. "The two harassing the men out front are just distractions. These girls are the real problem. Probably planned on stealing my merchandise right out from under us before vanishing into the night."

"They're people, asshole!" Ageha yelled angrily at how the transformed human had referred to the captured youkai as property.

"According to who? The law?" the smug man asked, as though it were a joke. "The law died with the old world and, even if it hadn't, I don't remember any laws protecting youkai. Just humans. Today the only 'law' that exists is the strong rule and the weak serve. Nothing else. Who are the strong? Those with the strongest weapons and the willingness to do whatever they must to achieve their goals. Who are the weak? Those with weaker weapons, if any at all, and line after line they refuse to cross, even if doing so would help them achieve their goals. That is the truth."

"Yeah?! And what's your goal, asshole!?" Ageha asked, her voice full of fury.

"Nothing much. I am a man of modest desires," the smug man replied, half-heartedly trying to be humble. "World domination? Pointless. The number of soldiers needed to take and keep it would be impossible to manage. No, for a man like me... controlling all of Japan is enough. Oh, I won't make myself emperor or prime minister. That'd just put a target on my back. I'll put a figurehead up in my place, a pretty face for all to fawn over, but that person will dance to my tune and do as I tell them to.

"To do all that though I need a great many things. Many hands, many eyes, many ears, and enough weapons that no force in Japan could stand against me," the smug man said, becoming quite serious all of a sudden. "I will also need money or whatever I can use for money. The sort of people I want working for me aren't going to do it for free, after all. That's where this bunch of youkai come in."

With a flash of savagery the transformed human pulled something from his jacket and threw it at the cage holding the youkai. Upon striking it the ofuda covering it instantly lit up and those within emitted exclamations of agony that only ended when the light faded away entirely. The smug man and his employees laughed at this as though it greatly amused them.

"Creatures of myth and legend. Beings of GREAT power. There isn't a bastard or asshole with deep pockets that wouldn't like to own one," the smug man said with a smile. "Whether they're used for pleasure or pain, they're worth quite a bit to the right buyer. That said, I knew metal bars wouldn't be enough to hold them so I had my men root through shrines and temples looking for anything useful. Turns out that even in the civilized world the priests still kept the tools they'd used to push youkai into the shadows in hidden rooms. Figuring out the instructions and getting them to work took a while but, as you can see, we got the hang of it."

She, Ageha and Sasa knew all to well what tools the transformed human spoke of but the man was mistaken about one thing. Youkai were not pushed into the shadows, but rather chose to withdraw. Many had wanted to fight the humans and their holy people to their last breath in order to show the world that the power of youkai was still strong and to be feared. However it was the decision of the current three major powers that to do so would be a waste of life and was ultimately pointless. Even if the youkai of Japan succeeded in beating back the humans of Japan, it would still leave them weakened and regaining their strength would take time. Would those in China give them that time? Would other demon hunters who learned of what'd happened give them that time?

Unlikely.

Any person or group who dealt in death knew better than to pass up a chance to strike at an opponent who was weak now but could become too strong to defeat later.

Instead it had been decided to withdraw to the shadows of human civilization and allow them to believe that they had successfully driven the 'monsters' from their land. In truth, youkai had simply become better at hiding and setting up communities away the eyes of those who'd recognize what it was that they were seeing.

But this transformed human didn't need to know that.

"Now the way I see it you three have two choices," the smug human said without any weakness. "You can either get into the cage with the rest of them to be sold off to whoever is willing to pay OR you can die here and now. I am not so foolish so as to let you leave only to come back to try again. I shall give you thirty seconds to decide."

"I think you're getting ahead of yourself," a familiar voice said from the right of the current gathering.

Stepping out of the shadows in an overly dramatic manner was none other than Xander, looking a banged up and winded but otherwise still fit to fight.

"I'm betting that you didn't catch these youkai fair and square," Xander said, one hand on the hilt of his sheathed katana. "Maybe they aren't even warriors. I wonder if you'll do so good against youkai that can fight back."

"Tch! That loser Takeshi," the smug man said with disgust. "'Greatest youkai swordsman in all of Japan' my ass! Couldn't even stop three youkai girls and a gaijin wannabe samurai! Hiroshi, once this is all over with, spread the word: if Takeshi shows his face around us again, he's to be shot on sight!"

"Yes, sir. I'll see to it that everyone gets the message," 'Hiroshi' said with an obedient nod.

"I think you're going to be a little busy," Xander said, pulling his katana free from its sheath. "What with being dead and all."

"You'd think so, wouldn't you, Gaijin-dono?" the smug man asked with a malicious smile. "Pop quiz, you wannabe samurai: when does a villain stand before the hero without a shred of fear?"

"When the villain believes he's already won-nano," she replied for the apprentice, an uneasy feeling squirming within her.

"Got it in one, girlie. Tomokazu!" the smug man yelled and moments later the sounds of the fearful and the fear inspiring approached from the left.

Turning towards the sounds, her eyes narrowed as a bandanna-wearing man entered along with two others, and each of them had youkai in their grip blades pressed to their throats. None of the youkai looked to be fighters so she presumed that they were civilians who'd been found out by the slavers or had foolishly strayed too far from safety.

"You see, by trying to sneak in here and rescue my merchandise, you've shown me what you value more than anything else," the smug man said, walking up to the hostages before caressing an old man youkai's cheek. "By doing that you've let me know exactly what can be used to beat you. Now drop the sword and surrender or watch these three die one by one."

Seeing the scumbag turn to face them with such a pleased look on his face, she couldn't help but show anger on her face at how foul humans could be. Youkai might not be devoid of darkness but they who lived for centuries had much time to develop a system of limiting the number of transgressors. Some were permanent methods while others were preventative and instituted at a young age for maximum effect.

Humans… they were often kinder and more compassionate than was prudent.

Seeing the hostages with fear on their faces and sharp blades at their throats, she tried to figure out a way to solve the problem before her. The blades were close enough that blood could be drawn in less than second, so any action had to be taken after the blades had been neutralized. Either they needed to be moved far enough away from the hostages to create a window of opportunity or those holding the blades needed to be knocked off balance long enough to strike.

A difficult problem no matter how you looked at it.

"Do you honestly expect me to trust you?" Xander asked, his katana not wavering. "Life doesn't mean a thing to you aside from how much money you can make from it. Besides, if you kill your hostages, there'll be nothing to keep me from introducing twenty-five inches of steel to your organs. So here's my counter offer: release your prisoners and let us leave without you or your men trying anything. You get to do your thing and we get to do ours. No one dies. Sounds like a pretty good deal."

"No ones dies?" the smug man asked with mild surprise. "Where's the fun in that?"

Before anyone could think to ask the foul man what he meant he pulled a pistol out from his jacket and promptly shot the oldest of the hostages in the head. The filth didn't even seem to care that the bullet had gone through his target and embedded itself in the body of the slaver holding the hostage. The man simply shrugged at the side effect of his act before turning to stare down Xander.

"As you can see I do not fear you and I am perfectly willing to sacrifice my own men," the leader of the slavers said without a hint of remorse. "If you possessed strength enough for me to be afraid there would be no need for decoys and stealthy infiltrations. The mere fact that you wish to avoid a direct confrontation is an admission that you do not have what it takes to defeat me in direct combat. As for my merchandise… there's always more where they came from. So the question becomes are you willing to stand by and watch them die or are you going to surrender granting them a chance at a future."

"What if I choose option number three?" Xander asked with a smirk.

A roar split the air and all eyes shot skyward, having just enough time to see Ruby shooting down from the sky, mouth open to show off all of her sharp teeth and her clawed forward feet at the ready. Realizing what an opportunity this could be she lowered her gaze only to find that Xander had already taken action to capitalize on the chance and had just completed a slash that disarmed one hostage taker.

Literally.

Seeing that the last hostage taker was recovering, she let loose with a barrage of ice spikes intent on eliminating him as a threat before any action could be taken. It was not her best attack, for while it did succeed in killing the slaver, one of her ice spikes accidentally inflicted a flesh wound on the youkai girl, drawing her blood. A twinge of regret manifested in her heart but she dismissed it, knowing that even amongst the weaker youkai species above human healing was a certainty. With such a small flesh wound bandages and time would be all that the girl would need to make a full recovery.

With two slavers defeated Sasa and Ageha were quick to jump in, the former with her logs from above and the latter with her favorite daggers. No one needed to be told to maneuver themselves so that they stood between the captives and the slavers, eliminating the possibility of further hostage taking (hopefully-nano), leaving only the killing of slavers to be done.

At least that was what was supposed to happen.

Too bad she didn't count on the girl she'd accidentally hit losing all self-control and surrendering to her fear, resulting in a sprint that likely had no destination besides 'anywhere but here'. Definitely not a youkai taught anything of combat and probably had never been in a serious situation in her life. Deciding that one captive fleeing the area was as good as keeping the girl safe, she did nothing instead choosing to focus on eliminating the slavers present alongside her allies. Once they were all dead and the area safe from further enemy attacks, they could get to work on opening a hole in the cage to free the remaining captives.

That was the plan and it was a good one.

But again random chance foiled it.

"Where do you think you're going, you useless waste of space!?" the slaver leader yelled in fury over how things were going. "You belong to ME!"

The leader of the slavers took aim with his pistol and, when his target became clear, all who sought to save began to move to stop him.

But they were too slow.

Four shots fired from a single gun pierced through the fleeing youkai girl's chest one after another and, while shock kept the redhead standing for a moment or two, that was as long as it lasted. Then, like a puppet whose strings had been cut, the shot youkai collapsed face first to the ground, blood pouring from her wounds. A few seconds of feeble struggling occurred on the part of the girl as the youkai tried to pull herself further away from danger but then all was stillness, with open eyes devoid of the spark of life.

A tragedy but not one any of them could do anything about.

All they could do was double their efforts in order to make sure another one was not enacted before their eyes.

For the third time, though, what she thought was their collective future was upended as power and fury blanketed the area in the blink of an eye. None could ignore it and, when all looked towards where instinct told them they could find the source…

…they saw the source was something none could escape feeling a measure of fear concerning.

Standing, veritably shaking with fury, was Xander, but immediately she could tell that something profound had changed in the last few seconds. Power as such that she'd only ever seen in the upper echelon of youkai nobility swarmed around the apprentice of Seijuro Hiko the Thirteenth, taking on the form of a tornado. Some of the tornado took on the form of golden flames, bright and terrible in their destructive ability, with anything they touched being torn asunder before being turned into ash. Another part of the tornado was a black, sulfurous smoke thick enough that it could not be seen through and carrying with it the essence of dread that all could feel infused into its very being. On instinct alone none present even entertained the concept of devising a way to determine the nature of the black smoke, for their souls already knew that to do so would not end well for them.

Only through the gaps between the golden flames and the black smoke could one see Xander but that was more than enough.

To her eyes she could see that his human brown eyes were undergoing a metamorphosis as they first began to glow with a golden light comparable to the flames. Then, as the seconds passed, she watched as circles faded away and instead a single black slit came into being that was closed at first before widening to indicate full vision. Lips were pulled back on Xander's face to show teeth that for a moment were human but before her very eyes began to take on a decidedly more carnivorous shape that made her believe that the young swordsman's jaw bone might be shifting as well. It was only when something caught her eye that she looked up from Xander's form to gaze upon a shadow that lay upon the nearby wall's surface.

It was not the shadow of a young man.

It was the shadow of a winged beast with clawed hands, a snout and horns that gave off the impression of a crown if one included some of the more unconventional designs.

So it was with a bit of shock that single gunshot shattered the moment and, judging by the small puff she saw from the golden flame, someone had tried to shoot Xander. Sadly this proved to be a fatal mistake as until now Xander's fury and power had simply been building up rising to new heights with every second that passed.

Now? Now it had a target, an outlet, and so, like the legendary creature now displayed in shadow, Xander let out a roar that in no way should've come from a human's mouth. Then, instead of closing his mouth, the apprentice seemed to aim it at the one who shot at him before the energies circling him began to converge on a single point a foot in front of it. Given the sheer volume of the flames and the smoke, one would think the convergence would grow in size until it reached the size of a dump truck.

That was not the case.

Despite the sheer volume of fire and smoke coming together, the sphere that formed never grew larger than a beach ball.

Then, once the last speck of fire and darkness finished being funneled into the sphere, she bore witness to an onslaught of power that she would never forget. Like a pressurized container that'd suddenly been given a fist-sized hole in it, the combined power erupted outward towards the one that'd shot at him. Whether intentional or accidental the blast also handily consumed the rest of the slaver leader's forces even as it obliterated those things that only touched the periphery of the energy blast. By the time that the blast exhausted itself and sputtered out there could be no question of just how decisively the opposition had been defeated.

Another thing that could not be denied though was the fact that, whatever new power Xander had brought forth, he had apparently tapped into it before having successfully mastered it. Why did she think this? Well that was because, before the threat had been completely obliterated, it seemed as though Xander was experiencing trouble reigning in his newfound power as well as his emotions. The rage at the death of the youkai girl still quaked throughout his body, his eyes were still the glowing, golden, slitted eyes of a dragon and, unless her eyes deceived her, patches of his skin were changing. One moment she saw normal human skin and then the next she watched as it became black scales of an appropriate size should a dragon being human shaped.

Suddenly she worried about what might happen if Xander lost control of his new power and just how safe it was to be close to him at the moment.

Fortunately Hiko and Yoruichi showed up when they did and managed to get past the rage Xander was feeling to the person inside. Yet, even as she watched Hiko's apprentice let go of his power and lose consciousness, she had to wonder just what she would see when Xander fully mastered the power he clearly possessed.

The answer her mind imagined almost proved enough to break her usual composed state.

---

The Audience Chamber of Lady Subaru

Shizuku's POV

"We thank you for the story you have related to us. It was truly a welcome diversion from our day to day duties," Lady Subaru said with barely revealed gratitude on her face. "However now we must attend to another guest that cannot be put off any longer. Therefore we bid you-"

That was as far as Lady Subaru got before the doors of the audience chamber opened, with an impressive pair of Oni clearly dressed for combat preceding a kappa dressed in robes that'd leave a dent in the treasury of even the wealthiest of youkai nobles. Looking to be physically a few years older than Xander, she could see that, as far as this man was concerned, only Lady Subaru mattered to him and the rest didn't even merit recognizing their presence. While this was the first time she'd encountered such a youkai, she instantly felt that she would consider it a blessing if she never encountered a second one anytime soon.

"Why must you play these games with me, my lovely Lady Subaru?" the kappa asked with a pompous voice to match is pompous appearance. "For while I acknowledge that people such as we are often forced to deal with the rabble directly, surely nothing they have to say surpasses the business between us in importance."

What business could be so important? While she couldn't pretend to guess at the business of daiyoukai, the way the kappa had barged into the room rather than wait to be announced and admitted implied much.

"We are well aware of the importance of the business between us, Lord Shinji," Lady Subaru said with perfectly controlled politeness. "However that does not excuse the rudeness of your actions. This is MY palace and MY territory. Surely you understand the necessity of protocol and decorum. We are daiyoukai, after all, not some low born hanyou."

"Of course, of course, I am in complete agreement," Lord Shinji said, managing to recover from his faux pas admirably. "It was just that the grand destiny fate has in store for us was so enrapturing my control slipped. I sincerely apologize."

"We will forgive this minor transgression. We too have experienced things that have tested our self-restraint," Lady Subaru said magnanimously. "As for the grand plans laid down by our parents regarding the joining of our two houses, you would do well to recall that your candidacy as my future consort was written as the most suitable. It is far from set in stone. You would do well not to undermine your own enrapturing vision of our future. It would reflect poorly upon you if your own actions removed you from consideration."

Seeing the tightness increase on the kappa's face, she could tell that he didn't like being talked down to as though he was inferior to Lady Subaru. Nevertheless, if her instincts were correct, then as a result of plans laid down by their respective parents the kappa was the front runner to become Lady Subaru's husband. This alone was a worthy enough prize to cause even the most obnoxious of youkai to be on their best behavior.

In Lord Shinji's case, though, it was not a pleasing experience to have the sought-after prize dangled just out of reach with the possibility of being lost forever floating in the wind.

"In any case, Lady Subaru, I believe that such matters are best discussed in private," Lord Shinji said before sending a glare at the three of them. "Away from the eyes and ears of those beneath us."

"While our opinions may vary from yours, Lord Shinji, in this you are correct," Lady Subaru said before turning a kinder eye towards her. "Young Shizuku, the time has come for you and your allies to depart. However do so knowing that you have performed a great service to my people. We shall not forget this."

Knowing a cue to leave when she heard one, she performed her best respectful bow to Lady Subaru before leading Sasa and Ageha from the room, the doors closing behind them. However it wasn't until they were once more out in the free air that the silence was broken.

"That kappa asshole! Treating us like we're less than dust!" Ageha snarled, clearly wishing she had an opportunity to vent her anger on the kappa.

"I don't like him, Shi-chan!" Sasa said, clearly not having enjoyed her encounter with the kappa. "I don't want to see him ever again."

"Something we can both agree upon-nano," she said, walking to the nearest edge of the village. "Let's go home-nano. We have earned some rest-nano."

Indeed, from their searching, the rescue of the captives and escorting them back to their respective lands, they had worked quite hard. She did not believe that their future would be free of equal if not greater trials, and so getting rest to restore their strength was essential.

From a time of struggle to a time of hiding to once more being required to fight for both survival as well as a return to stability.

She hoped the hardships all faced inspired unity rather a free for all motivated by a desire to establish a new hierarchy of power.

---

The Audience Chamber of the Iya Valley Palace

Lady Subaru's POV

She waited.

Waited until she could no longer hear his footsteps.

Waited until she could no longer sense what strength he possessed as a kappa daiyoukai.

Waited even until word was sent from the front gate of her palace that Lord Shinji of the kappa had left the village.

Only then in the presence of just her trusted attendant did she release the mask she wore as one of the three great powers of Japan.

"That condescending, pompous, greedy little TOAD!" she exclaimed, honestly expressing her feelings now that it was safe for her to do so. "How dare he walk in here as though this place was already his! He forgets his PLACE!"

With a final expression of rage she lifted her the stone table in front of her with one arm before throwing it across the room. She did not care about the mess she was making for she had resources enough to repair everything a thousand times over and destruction did much to improve her disposition. Her attendant knew this and so simply stood off to the side, being careful to avoid being harmed by the act itself. It took three more destroyed objects of sufficient weight before she felt enough satisfaction to return to her throne and plopping herself down on it.

"While I will admit that it is most vexing why your honorable parents thought Lord Shinji was most suitable to be your husband, they must have had their reasons," the attendant said diplomatically with the necessary calm. "There are, after all, few daiyoukai of adequate pedigree to fit the role your parents desired filled. Many of them are already bonded, leaving few free to stand by your side. In lieu of a superior alternative, you may have no choice but to allow Lord Shinji his greatest desire."

"I am well aware of that, Yukikaze!" she snapped, calling her attendant by name. "That does not make it any easier to swallow. Oh how I wish there was a suitable alternative for so long as he did not turn out to be even more insufferable than Shinji I would select him to be my consort!"

Sadly there was not.

In order to be an acceptable substitute the man would need to be of noble birth, have a territory of his own and prove personally strong enough to be a suitable match for her. Sadly, due to the retreating into shadows that youkai kind did, many such nobles had already been paired off for the sake of alliances. The only reason that she had not been married off sooner was because she was the youngest of her line and had only reached marriageable age for a youkai noble in the last few decades. It had been then that Lord Shinji had begun making visits and sending 'gifts' as a way of pushing forward the arrangements made between their parents. At first she'd been willing to see where things went, since she'd had trust in her parents' judgment, but it'd only taken her first decade of that to reach her own judgment.

Lord Shinji was a despicable man child who saw all around him as either property or someone to be used to his advantage.

As such she'd done everything she could to block his efforts but, while she'd much rather cleanly reject him outright, there were far too many old fashioned youkai who'd object to that. To them marriages were nothing more than a method of strengthening the various noble families and strengthening the associated territories. Love? Love might come eventually or it might be there to begin with, but it was not a requirement. Both man and woman involved were duty bound to put their duties before their own personal feelings, or at least that was what those old fools believed. How little they realized that, even with the noble blood flowing through their veins, they were quite similar to the commoners in their needs and wants.

Trapped in a loveless marriage with Lord Shinji where she'd have to dig for or even fabricate reasons to tolerate his presence? She would fight this to her last breath!

However, unless that idiot did something that even the old fossils would agree removed him from the list of possible suitors for her, she'd have no choice. From a purely gains and losses point of view he was the best one out of all the ones on the list and would only improve her standing amongst the three major powers. It was his personality and his tastes outside of official proceedings for nobles that she found utterly repulsive. Granted, his subordinates did an excellent job of covering things up and running damage control, but she suspected that was more due to the sheer number of times they'd done it rather than their skill level.

~What can I do… what can I DO!?~ she thought as she paced back and forth in front of her throne.

Wait. Wait just a minute!

If there was no existing male noble that EXISTED as a suitable candidate, then what if she chose to MAKE one?

True, there would be the problem of noble birth, but if she could just make sure that the other two requirements were met with flying colors, as the humans said it, then even the old fossils would be hard pressed to deny her. Indeed, if their position was that a noble existed above the rank and file of youkai and were capable of things no commoner could match, then an established bloodline was unneeded. All that was needed were enough accomplishments worthy enough to place the one who'd achieved them above the rank and file.

In that she might just have been given a suitable candidate by those three young youkai girls!

"Is there something wrong, milady?" Yukikaze asked, no doubt reacting to her sudden pause in pacing.

"No there is not, Yukikaze. In fact I have an idea of how to finally get rid of Kenji once and for all!" she replied with a grin on her face and a twinkle in her eyes.

"What do you-?" Yukikaze asked before her expression shifted to one of shock and a bit of fear. "You can't be serious! The grand elders would never permit it!"

"As expected of my personal attendant! Our long years together have enabled you to deduce my thoughts from so few words!" she said, quite happy that she'd been saved the bother of explaining. "It is indeed what you think and, as for the grand elders, I intend to make it so that they have no other choice but to accept. I can be VERY persuasive when I put my mind to it!"

"But how are you-?" Yukikaze asked, moving onto the meat of the situation.

"I haven't worked out all the details yet but I have the main points all figured out," she replied with a nod of confidence. "However I will need you to run an errand for me to collect some information. What I have is insufficient and I will need certain facts if I am to create suitable counters. Naturally I'll expect you to operate with your usual discretion since it would be a poor surprise for Lord Shinji if he were to suspect something too soon. Understand?"

For a moment she could see the conflict on her attendant's face as the struggle between her duties and the friendship they had went on, but she wasn't worried. Indeed, a minute or two later the kitsune with the gold and white hair appeared to deflate, with her opposition giving way to acceptance since her attendant knew who she'd approach for the job if turned down.

Namely her adopted younger brother and his trio of Praetorian Guards.

Gaul, Noir, Jaune and Vert weren't incompetent at their jobs, otherwise no amount of power they might have through their connection to her would've been enough to keep them from getting discharged from their duties. However the level of subtlety and discretion she required for the collection of information wasn't something they could do on purpose but might achieve by accident. Indeed, not only were the four of them incapable of covertness but they had come dangerously close in the past to sparking conflicts where she'd be a fool to want them. Only some careful wordplay by her and the quartet's behavior at the time had averted the conflicts, with stern warnings to reign them in since they might not get off so easily the next time.

Since then she'd put them to work dealing with known troublemakers in the youkai community but ones not beyond their ability to handle.

Neither of them needed to know what'd probably happen if Gaul and the others were sent on the mission.

"Very well, milady. I shall do as you ask and report back once I have gathered what you seek," Yukikaze said, setting in stone her commitment to see her task completed.

She had no doubt that her personal attendant would succeed beyond her greatest expectations.

Turning back to her own thoughts, she considered what she would need to do once the young kitsune lady returned with the information she sought. Even if one of the qualifications was met that still left the other two in the form of territory and something to make overruling the lack of noble birth would still be needed. It would be best to get both close at hand by the time that Yukikaze returned with the information she required.

Not too close, though.

She could not let the elders or Shinji notice anything suspicious, otherwise they might both get involved and thwart her plan. The former out of outrage for her intent to defy youkai tradition and the latter to prevent her from denying him her hand in marriage. It would be best if all they ever acquired were whispers and idle gossip amongst the lower nobles and commoners, since neither the elders or Shinji ever paid attention to those they deemed beneath them. Then, by the time someone they'd actually became aware of her activities, it'd already be too late.

Fortunately for her the phenomena that'd so changed Japan had likely killed quite a few unlucky youkai as well as obliterated the means by which some held onto their territory. With such a development it wouldn't take much to place an ideal location under the control of whoever she chose for the role. Either she would have her forces seize control of the location before choosing someone to administrate it or she could arrange circumstances by which one she chose could become the favored of the inhabitants.

Sometimes rulers chose that role for themselves but there were also times that the ruled made the decision when one suitably capable appeared.

If that one managed to earn their support by perhaps saving them from a serious threat like a gang of bandits or the tyrannical rule of whichever youkai had possession of the area, then all the better.

Such gratitude and a desire for new leadership could not easily be cast aside, especially if the likely future if the latter was ignored was laid out properly.

Wheels did turn inside her mind as she worked like the finest watchmaker to create an intricacy of gears and springs so as to have everything transpire as she desired.

It would be her masterpiece!