Saturday, March 27, 2004

Past Collides with Present: Chapter 4 Part 2
And here's the next part of Chapter 4!

Back in Makai, the forest was as silent as always. The inside of the castle was another story. Puso stormed around, breaking everything he could find and cussing at the top of his lungs. "Stupid ningen!" he yelled, rubbing his still smarting face. "How dare she hurt me! I hope her death in the forest is the most painful there can be!" He didn't know about Shiori's rescuer.

A chuckle sounded from the shadows behind him. Puso jumped and screeched a particularly nasty curse in demon language. Then he turned and glowered at the intruder. "Who gave you permission to come here?" he said in a threatening voice.

The intruder chuckled as he stepped out of the corner into the partial light thrown by the torches on the walls. He was tall, about six and a half feet, with black feathers that hung sleekly to his shoulders in place of hair and evil red eyes. His black feathered wings stretched almost eight feet from tip to tip, even though they weren't fully spread. "You called for me; here I am. I understand you have a rather interesting job for me."

"Of course." Puso was instantly polite and formal. "You'll be Kage, ne?"

The devil bird* bowed. "At your service.as long as the price is high."

"Of course," Puso repeated. He got straight to the point. "I need you to capture a ningen woman for me, if she's still alive. Then I'll tell you the rest of my plan."

"You mean the same woman you tried to kidnap?" Kage grinned evilly. "My, but isn't that a nice sunburn! Funny that it showed up in the middle of the night."

Puso growled, then remembered who he was dealing with and abruptly became polite again.

Kage laughed. "No need to worry about her death--"

"I'm not," Puso interjected.

"-she was rescued by another youkai. I tracked them all the way back to a portal to Ningenkai before I returned here. I must say, I'm quite interested in any ningen who has ties to demons. Who is she, and why is she important to you?"

"Her name is Shiori Minamino, and as far as she knows, she has no connections to any demons."

Kage frowned. "Elaborate."

Puso sat down near the fireplace and invited Kage to do the same. Kage remained standing. Puso shrugged and started the story.

"A long time ago, a certain thief stole something from me. Something very valuable."

"Knowing what this item was would be very helpful to me."

Puso sighed, running a hand through his spiky, dark orange hair. "A bow and a quiver of arrows. Both very powerfully enchanted. Any arrow shot from the bow would blast through anything until it found the flesh of the wielder's enemy. Pretty nice, don't you think? The quiver held special arrows. They always came back to the quiver after they had been used. That way the ammunition never runs out. I didn't use them much, and I kept them hidden in the maze dungeon of this fortress. I thought no one would ever get them, but a certain very crafty thief managed to." He stopped, and his pale orange eyes began to burn with hatred. "The bastard killed my brother that day."

"I see." Kage was amused. "And now you want revenge. But one thing arouses my curiosity."

"And that would be?"

"Why now? How come you waited so long?"

"Well, at first it was because he was far more powerful than I, and I knew it. If I had tried for revenge then, he would have sliced me into ribbons. Then he was killed, or so everyone believed. Lately, however, I began hearing rumors that spoke of him as alive. I did a little investigating of my own, and I found that these rumors were true. I also found that he now has one fatal weakness."

"That woman."

Puso nodded. "He loves that filthy ningen. He'd do anything to protect her."

Kage grinned again. Somehow the expression made him look scarier. "I like the way you think. But I want to know one more thing. Exactly who is this thief you want to kill?"

Puso grinned, too. "Why, I thought you would have guessed by now. Especially since you tracked him earlier, for it had to have been him who rescued that woman. You didn't recognize his yoki?"

"It felt familiar, but I couldn't place it."

Puso grinned wider. "That, my friend, was Youko Kurama."

"Impossible." Kage's face went flat. "I killed him. I never miss a kill."

"You missed this one. I called you in because honestly, he's still more powerful than me, and I figured that you had a reputation to uphold. If it got out that you missed a kill, you'd be ruined."

Kage stayed silent, and Puso began to wonder if he had said too much. Finally, Kage asked, "Exactly how did he survive? I felt him die."

"What you felt was his spirit fleeing to Ningenkai. Once there, he merged with an unborn child and grew up as that woman's human son. He should have returned to Makai by now, but he hasn't. He doesn't want to leave his mother." Puso laughed. "Doesn't that just give you the warm fuzzies?"

Kage didn't respond. Instead he walked to the door leading to the castle's entrance hall. Then he turned and looked at Puso. "I don't care about the money," he said. "The only payment you need give me is the privilege of killing Youko Kurama with my own hands. Find your revenge some other way."

"I intend to," Puso said. "I intend to break his heart. I want him to ask for death first."

Kage studied him. "Is that why you want his human mother? You need her in order to get to him?"

Puso smiled. "That woman is his weakness."

Kage opened the door to the entrance hall. "I like the way you think," he said again. "Don't worry about the woman. I'll get her, and I won't botch it the way you did." Then he walked out.

Puso stare after him. "Kage the devil bird," he murmured. "The most skilled bounty hunter in the three worlds. No one knows his real name. He's never missed a target, and he prefers to kill." He shook his head. "What am I getting myself into?"

*The devil bird is an actual species of bird. I saw it when I was in Australia, and since I don't know the name of the species, I call it the devil bird. It's actually an interesting story how I came to call it that, but it's a little long, so I'm not telling unless a bunch of people want me to. Anyway, I thought it would be a cool idea to base Kage on the devil bird. By the way, his name is pronounced "Kah-geh." It's Japanese for "shadow."

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