Kyuuketsuki Duo: The, Uh, Not So Wonder Years Part 1
Demons -- Part 4
That was that. The deal had been struck. Duo felt as if there should have been a bolt of lightning, some judicious bleeding, or a horde of hungry Shinma descending to devour his soul in payment, but nothing of the sort occurred. Then again, he considered, they already had a considerable hold over his soul, and a churchful of others, for that matter.
The Shinma had pointed him on his way, and then he was off, eager to see the end of his self-appointed quest to free his mentor as soon as possible. He felt bad for having just stalked off, leaving a bewildered and concerned Heero behind him, but he knew Heero was just doing his job, and he knew that it was for the best. Even if the hunter didn't genuinely care, Duo only wanted his companion to be happy, or at least content, and he knew that the strong, silent warrior never would be while he was tied to such a pathetic, contemptible creature such as himself. Even now, he was off to kill another human in another typically human, typically base and savage act, an act that might inspire even more disgust from his mentor, even as he tried to free him from such disgust. The irony might have amused him, had it not saddened him more. But in the end, perhaps knowing that Heero would despise him would make letting him go more easy.
In any case, he would follow Heero's advice to the end. His mentor had always said, concentrate on the solution, not the problem. He knew that, in this case, if he spent too much time contemplating both the cause and the effect of his self-imposed mission, he would only get depressed, and maybe get distracted and killed, and that would not help Heero at all, so he resolved not to think about it. There was no changing the facts, his past behavior and his human ways, so instead, he would concentrate only on the task that the Shinma had set him. He had not made his decision rashly, nor lightly, without consideration of the consequences, but now, he avoided thinking about all the unpleasant things that he had already resigned himself to.
The target was located in another isolated countryside. It would take some hunting for the guardian to find, for the Shinma had not been very precise in their directions involving the human realm, but having visited the ruins of such a location before, he knew what to look for. Standing in the large clearing, eyes closed against the sun's warm rays, he opened his mind to the othercurrents, and looked first for the sign of any Shinma presence. He found none. Odd. If there were a human collecting and studying and abusing Shinma, then there ought to be some Shinma being collected and studied and abused. Duo mentally shrugged. Perhaps the scientist was between samples.
He changed tactics, instead trying to find signs of prolonged bitterness, hatred, suffering, such as the Shinma Urami he had once confronted had displayed. Again, the search came up empty. On the other hand, he did detect signs of sudden pain, a sharp, stabbing pain that hit him right behind the eyes, and he reached out a mental hand for a solid presence that was not there. He shook off the disorientation, and the need for someone to lean on, and finally the self-directed disgust at his own weakness. If all went well, before long, he would have to learn to deal with being on his own on a permanent basis.
With near-obsessive resolve, Duo moved towards the source of the pain. It was not as he had expected. With the ruins of the spacious villa fresh in his memory, he had anticipated a building at least large enough to look as if it might hold a small research facility, and perhaps an exterior that discouraged nosy visitors that might disturb a scientist's work.
The building he approached was a small structure, and looked actually quite friendly and inviting. It was situated along a mild brook, its clear waters gurgling merrily on its way downstream. The fresh willows along its banks swayed gently, providing a pleasant shade to the set of smooth boulders in the middle of the cool liquid. There was a small vegetable garden outside the cottage, the leafy green heads only just starting to peek through the weedless soil. The fishing pole leaning against the wall by the door of the well-kept house, and the small pottery kiln off to the side, completed the image of the home of a self-sufficient human, living off the land by himself amongst nature.
Duo stood outside the home, scratching his head. The structure was real, no illusion constructed by a crafty creature to lure innocents in, or to hide the true nature of the place, and its trappings looked tended and used. He searched the area once more for the presence of a Shinma, or the source of the pain, and this time, both searches came up empty. It did nothing to lessen his feeling of ill-ease, however. Perhaps he was being jaded when the sight of such an idyllic, cozy little homestead made him suspicious, but suspicious he was. This was the place his earlier search had led him to. It was too random for it not to be.
The door swung open, and from the house stepped a man, appearing to be in his late forties. He wore a loose, homespun shirt, and discolored, threadbare cut-off pants, and carried, in one hand, a small fishing spear, not held at the ready as a weapon, but as if the man had just stepped out to catch his dinner. He seemed startled to see a young, black-clad man standing before his home.
"Why, 'ello there, young man. Was there somethin' I could do fer you?"
Duo himself was just as unprepared to see this old man emerge from the cottage, but he covered it smoothly.
"Good afternoon, sir. I was just passing through the area and saw the fresh waters and was considering taking a drink. If that'd be alright with you?"
The man laughed. It was a good, friendly laugh, not a bone-chilling, sinister one. "Of course you can, laddie. The waters here belong to no man. But I could do you one better. Why don't you come in for some freshly brewed tea? I've had it steeping all morning, and was just letting it chill a bit so's I could enjoy some after catching me dinner."
"No, I couldn't," Duo demurred. "You'll need that after your fishing. It's a warm day."
"Not at all, laddie. It's not often I get travelers through these parts. I'd be happy to give you some tea, if perhaps you'll entertain an aging man with a story or two of the outside world?"
Duo considered it. It was as good as any a chance to get inside the small home and investigate it, although what he might hope to find, he knew not.
He put on an amiable grin. "Agreed." And the man led him inside.
The interior of the house sported as comfortable an appearance as the outside. The furnishings indicated that there was only one occupant of the house, although it seemed as if at some point it had had the benefit of a woman's touch, and another's company. The man propped the spear against the kitchen counter and brought Duo to the table. He poured him a glass of the cool tea in a homebaked, earthenware mug, then poured himself one. Duo swirled it in his cup in appreciation, inconspicuously checking it for any sign of malignance or poison, as he waited for the old man to take the first sip. Finding all to appear innocent, he saluted the old man with his mug and took a swallow of his own, surprised to find that he had missed the taste of a liquid other than blood or water sliding down his throat.
The two exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes, speaking of the weather and the area, and then Duo shared a story or two from his last visit to a town where there had been anything of unsupernatural note. The conversation was, all told, very mundane, but he was a little startled at the natural people skills that allowed him to converse so easily with the old man. Before his awakening, he had not much interacted with the others at the orphanage, and since his awakening, had only interacted with Heero, in an non-social environment. Although such skill had itself been awakened when the Shinma had reshaped him, this was the first chance he had had to employ it, and he found himself rather enjoying it.
The old man himself was a pleasant enough conversationalist, and Duo had some problem thinking that he might be the one whom the Shinma had been referring to, the one who had dared to use the Shinma towards his own ends, but for the growing feeling that he was being watched, not by the man sitting across from him at the table, but by some other, greater force. His luminous, violet eyes swept the room, seeking the source of his unease. He spotted something out of place on the mantle.
"That's a beautiful pot, over there on the mantle," he indicated the object at the end with a slender finger. "Did you make it yourself?"
"Why yes, yes I did." The man's voice swelled with pride. "My own special formula went into that glaze."
"May I see it?"
"Why, certainly."
Duo stood from his seat and approached the near-iridescent container, the old man following. He picked it up and carefully examined the subtle swirls of green on green that seemed to shift as he turned it this way and that in the light.
"It's lovely. And what about this piece here?" Duo carefully put the urn down and moved to lift his true target, the cloudy gray stone in the center of the mantle, worn smooth and shiny from a river's waters. "Did you find it outside?"
As his fingers made contact with the stone, he felt a sharp jolt of electric energy bite his fingertips and a momentary drain of energy before he jerked his fingers away, as the man hissed, "Don't touch that, you little fool!"
Startled by the sudden change in the man's voice, Duo spun around to see all signs of the man's easy-going nature erased from the man's countenance, replaced by a face contorted with an angry snarl. The baleful glare was held by eyes whose pupils had completely dilated until there was nothing left of the bright hazel irises, nothing but black holes that were windows to his soul.
The man lunged suddenly at Duo, and together they tumbled to the rug before the fireplace. There was a strength to the old man that obviously must have come from some outside source as Duo was only just barely able to keep the man's outstretched fingers from closing around his neck and choking the life from him. As the guardian of the boundary, Duo had never been much trained in hand to hand combat, but he had had some experience in brawling from his time at the orphanage, when the other children had bullied him for being different, before they had learned to leave him alone, and he employed some of these tricks now, for once in his life cursing the fact that Shinma powers had no direct effect on humans.
The man had his knees on either side of the guardian, and was supporting his own weight on them as he pressed his hands down with greater leverage, leaving Duo the precious room he needed to get his own knees firmly entrenched in the man's belly. With an effort, he kicked his feet up and heaved the unbalanced man over his head, wincing as he heard the man crash through a table even as he scrambled to his own feet.
A dim memory came to him, and he swiftly bound the man to the floor with black bands of shadow given substance before he could get up, hoping it would work. It did. The enraged old man thrashed against his bonds and howled his frustration as the guardian took a few steps back towards the relative safety of the kitchen and regained his breath.
'Guess I found the right place after all,' he thought wryly.
The man's movement suddenly ceased and a malevolent chill seemed to pass through the house as the man's unintelligible shrieks slowly transformed into dark laughter. The chains of darkness dissolved, and the man got back to his feet stiffly, moving as if another controlled his limbs. He lurched forward in a clumsy step, and Duo grabbed the first thing that came to hand, the frying pan off the kitchen counter, and held it up over his shoulder threateningly.
With a horrible grin plastered on his face, the man charged, and Duo hurled the heavy metal frying pan at the man's head, grabbing swiftly for the second thing that came to hand as the man batted the pan aside in his headlong rush with a negligent backhand. The cookware blinded the man just long enough that when he came lunging once more at the braided one, he did not notice the light glinting off the sharp point of the fishing spear leveled at his chest.
The force of the impact drove Duo back against the wall, his elbows punching through the curtained glass window behind him. Impaled upon his own spear, the man's eyes returned to normal as the life drained from him, and he fell limply to the ground after Duo released the shaft from his numb fingers. Stepping carefully around the pooling blood, the young guardian returned his attention to the strange stone still resting atop the mantle. He swooped down and retrieved the frying pan from its place on the floor, absently noting that the man had not been very good about washing his dishes. Knocking the stone to the floor with the pan and careful not to touch it, he knelt by the rock and hefted the heavy pan over his head, bringing it crashing down upon the mysterious stone and smashing it to pieces. A black mist rose slowly into the air and dissipated, leaving behind shards that had become dull and fragile.
That taken care of, he straightened, tossing his braid back over his shoulder, and returned to the body of the old man. As he closed the corpse's eyes in some semblance of peace, he wondered what the man's price had been, what had he been offered to make him sell his soul, and if he had even been aware of it. A final glance at the broken table, the cooling body, and the pot with the glaze that the old man had been so proud of, and he left the building, sadly prepared to return to the Dark to demand his companion's freedom for services rendered. He sighed. He missed him already.
"You'll pay for that," a voice spoke at the front door, a low, conversational tone with an undercurrent of hate, made for the seduction of innocents.
Duo turned back and examined the demon before him. It filled the doorway, very much your stereotypical demon, with two legs, four arms, two curling horns, skin the colored of dried blood stretched tautly over exaggerated muscles, and far too many teeth.
"You've killed my human servant, and destroyed my collecting stone. You're going to have to die now."
Duo was suddenly aware that he had jumped to a terribly incorrect conclusion. This must be the 'being in the human realm' that the Shinma had been referring to. There were no vile human scientists performing research on captured Shinma -- that was a blank that his own mind had filled in based on his knowledge of similar situations. For whatever reason, it appeared as if this demon had been using the human and the 'collecting' stone he had just destroyed to suck the power from Shinma, just as it had minorly drained him when he himself had momentarily touched it.
He hid the apprehension that began to fill him admirably well. A lot of practice from facing down then-intimidating Shinma from his early days helped, and this demon was certainly intimidating. It stood at least a foot taller than the guardian, and carried itself with an easy arrogance, not to mention the sharp, pointy horns, the sharp, pointy claws, and the sharp, pointy teeth. Add to that the fact that he had only met his first demon a few hours ago, and she was starting to look friendly, and Duo responded reasonably to the threat. He threw a large fireball at the creature, just barely stopping the cringe from reaching his face as the demon stepped back into the doorway and to the side, neatly avoiding the burst of power as it went crashing through the back wall of the cottage.
'This is very not good,' he thought to himself. He turned tail and ran, missing Heero now more than ever.
The demon followed.
The pursuit wound its way through the surrounding woods, across the stream, around tree trunks, under branches, and over roots, faster than anything of this earth might move. His flight was controlled, relatively speaking. He did not crash loudly through the underbrush like a novice, nor did he trip over a stray vine like a damsel in distress, but his mind raced alongside him, trying in vain to come up with an escape from the grinning demon following at his own leisure, waiting for the guardian to make a mistake. In the end, he was undone by his own stealthy speed, for the animals knew not to flee from his silent path, and as he jumped wildly to avoid the surprised flock of game birds, a hole into darkness opened beneath him, and he fell through the portal, unable to change his path mid-flight, landing roughly on the other side.
He looked around.
'This is very, very not good.'
TBC...
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