Red River Fan Fiction ❯ A SHINTO PRIESTESS IN THE ANCIEN HITTITE EMPIRE ❯ Prelude ( Prologue )

A SHINTO PRIESTESS IN THE ANCIEN HITTITE EMPIRE

OR

WHERE THE RED FIRE AND RED RIVER MEET

 

Disclaimer: I own nothing except Miyuki Kanzaki.

 

This is not something that I am proud of. This is basically a retelling of the manga Red River with another character in place of Yuuri Susuki. I like the manga the best and wanted to give the heroine a little boost. Well let's hope I didn't go overboard. Actually, Miyuki is the character that I created for a BESM campaign called “Exorcism High School”. I found the background of the campaign good for the story. Of course, I have to modify the capacity of Miyuki a lot since we can't have a Mary-Sue free (she could have destroyed an army single-handily).

 

Miyuki is highly capable in the physical and willpower domain but average in the intellectual domain (that means that she must work hard at school). She is also extremely fast and agile.

She can befriend easily any kind of animals, even wild ones.

 

She is moderately attractive but has enough presence to stun a small crowd when she wants. Her “priestess aura” is also enough to command such a small group although, she is still unaware of her innate charisma.

 

Due to her duty to the family shrine, she knows a wide range of offensive and defensive combat techniques both formally with various martial arts and practical due to her beginning experience in the rather volatile background of “Exorcism High School”.

 

Various divine forces have an interest in her and sometimes come to her rescue.

 

She has enough experience to have built her energy reserves for her various powers and do no longer drop exhausted after a few techniques.

 

Her Kyudo practice enables her to pinpoint weaknesses in targets, but her main forte is her Kensei abilities. She can fight blinded because of her sensitivity to life-force energy, make incredible leaping attacks and the same sensitivity allows her to judge rather accurately the skill level of an opponent. She can conceal any melee weapons on her person just like the Highlander character and she has been trained in Iajutsu and can strike as she unsheathes her sword. Finally, she has pinpoint accuracy and can fight with two weapons.

 

Her Shinto background allows her to cast spells of medium duration of no real power at ease (make noises, tie knot, invoke a gentle breeze, create light, protection from elements, climb walls, …). With time, preparations or access to an energy source, she can boost her power-level and casts spells of great power (lightning, flight, wards of protection, invisibility, summon spirits, matter creation, …). In any case, her level of power is at the whim of the deities. She must always strike a bargain with a specific local spirit in order to cast a spell.

 

However, she can still use her personal power at will. She can detect the supernatural element on a large zone, can identify the cause of a nearby problem, detect life-forces, magic and evil energies and can see normally invisible spirits. She has the knowledge how to create wards of protection for buildings or individuals against the supernatural. Her own spiritual power is enough to banish supernatural entities, exorcism them from possessed human souls, or confuse and disorient them. With time and preparation, she can't be directly harmed by a specific entity or supernatural event.

 

Knowledge is power and education a good tool. Miyuki is primarily skilled in gymnastic, bio-feedback control, occultism, swimming practice, theology and first aid. She knows how to drive her scooter and is a crack with her rollers. Her experience with the various menaces for the Nexus has taught her how to intimidate someone with just a look, resist to interrogation, the art of detective work and how to be a burglar.

 

PRELUDE

 

Our story begins in Tokyo. Strange that almost any story like that begins in Tokyo. But in that case, it is not a coincidence.

 

The planet Earth is a living entity with her consciousness and her body. In fact we can easily compare the planetary body with a living body. In each case, there are blood vessels. For us, the blood vessels enable the body to function and live. For the Earth, the blood vessels are called Ley-lines and Dragon-lines. The first enable the mystical energy of the Earth to permeate her body and the last flow with the very life-force of the planet.

 

Those lines intersect themselves at some points on the surface, creating what is called a nexus. In those nexuses, the energy available is high and the very fabric of our universe is thin and can be breached. Very few individuals can tap in those wells of power or open the doors and unfortunately some do it only for their personal welfare and to the expense of others.

 

There are numerous nexuses on the surface of the Earth and they vary greatly in power, but only one is a super-nexus of mystical and life-force energies combined.

Since the Great Kanto Earthquake, this super-nexus or simply the Nexus is located at Tokyo, just under a small high school in the Juuban district. Since then various supernatural menaces have been drawn to this location, along with the scum of humanity in order to gain power or access to our world.

 

But if there is Darkness, there is also Light. Since the very beginning, various persons in the high school have fought to protect the Nexus. Miyuki Kanzaki is such a person.

 

Born at the end of the twentieth century, Miyuki is a child of crossroads. The eldest daughter of the local priest, she was destined to be the heir of her family. And yet, she is a modern child in the ultra-socialite Tokyo. At fifteen, the long black-haired, green-eyed teen is attempting to handle her rather complex life.

 

Oh yes. Life is not easy for her. She must study at school in order to have a future. She is also pressured by her family in order to inherit the family shrine, encouraged by her peers to live in the modern Japanese society and finally she is battling at night with supernatural forces. No we can't say it is an easy life.

 

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“BE GONE, EVIL SPIRIT!”

 

The ferocious demon was struggling to break the pentagram restraining him. A snarl was resonating in the deserted gymnasium.

 

Irradiating her inner light, dressed in her red and white Shinto robes, Miyuki was focused against the evil supernatural entity.

 

Lightning was swirling between the two fighters. Willpower was everything in such a battle and suddenly the demon was breaking.

 

“BY THE NAME OF MASAKADO, PROTECTOR OF TOKYO! RETURN TO THE ABYSS. I COMMAND YOU!”

 

Miyuki threw the last of her energy reserve as she completed the ritual of banishing. With a final dismayed roar, the demon was thrown out of the earth dimension into the black-pit world of his origin. And with an angry sound, the tear in the reality was sealed.

 

“Phew. That was close.” The young girl straightened herself and gazed into the building. Tears slowly began to drop from her emerald eyes as she contemplated the pitiful body abandoned in a coin.

 

“I was too late. Poor Himuro-sempai.” Slowly, the Shinto priestess approached what was just a few hour ago a handsome young man ready to bite in the life and now no more than a desiccated corpse.

 

“One does not play with such forces. I cannot even pray for your soul.” With reverence, Miyuki gathered the remains of a fool who tried to obtain more power for him and loose his soul as a result. This was not the first time that a mortal attempted a bargain with the forces of Darkness, this wasn't even not the first time that Miyuki loose someone in the eternal struggle but like before it was one too many time.

 

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Much later, after giving a proper burial to what was Himuro Nakajima, the young girl was trying to wash her guilt in the hot shower of her home. She was part of a closed circle of special persons capable to use supernatural powers against what was trying to take over the Nexus. She looked into her hands. Perfect hands, capable to excel to the art of the brush on a silk canvas, powerful enough to use the katana to deadly efficiency and nimble enough to weave complex spells in an instant. “And incapable to save just one life.”

 

She sighed. Of course, she knew that the entity would have wreck havoc on the district if it had been allowed to venture free and she knew that Himuro was ultimately responsible for his own death, but her heart was saying another thing. Her power developed along the bloodline of her family was phenomenal and she knew better than succumb to the siren song of the Nexus, but sometimes she wished for another life without the responsibility of the world on her shoulder and the very few friends that she still have.

 

She should have known better. Sometime, some forces listen to such a heartfelt wish, and granted it.