Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ Unbalanced Pendulum ❯ D Minor's Charm ( Chapter 3 )

Unbalanced Pendulum

Chapter 3: D Minor's Charm

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Day-old rainwater dripped languidly from the ancient and rotting tiles. Clip, clip, clip - my dark boot heels sounded crisp and authoritarian above the milling the crowd. The murmur continuous and never ceasing in that busy market square. Stooped people walked with a depressed and callous air. Narrow faces, worn-through clothing either a size too large or a size too small added to an already decrepit atmosphere.

Every once in a while, I could hear shouting and frustrated voices in the white wash of noise, the splashing of many chamber pots' contents in the street gutters. It would travel down, whichever way that happened to be, at its own desired speed. Exuding a hair-curling scent along its thickening trail. Skinny and bruised boy children would splash the mucky streams upon the saddest looking figure, or roll in it themselves for the glory - a bastard system of disgust.

No animals roamed those streets - well maybe I do remember a demonic chicken or two. Hardly pets, however, nuisances recruited for food that these people only thought they remembered how to cultivate. And then there were the scavengers. Those critters only appearing long enough to feast upon the sick and forgotten things of the town - if it could be called that - were an ugly sight. Sometimes, if the hairless rodents were lucky enough, they would enjoy the flesh of a weakened person so sickly as to be hard to distinguish from the consumers.

Money never lasted long. One night a person would earn his pitiful wage, by the next it would be spent upon any one of a number of things. Women, men, food, watered down Maikai alcohol, and, rarely, even clothing were usually top on the lists of those with any coin at all - not necessarily in that order. I couldn't believe that I found myself here time and time again, strutting haughtily down the center of the cracked and bleeding streets. It was a community clinging to that last shred of remembered dignity gone foul. Yet it was dignity still.

I forever marveled at what these desperate humans were reduced to. Those were the worst of the worst, the most luckless and dirty of the rare Maikai bred humans. Their ancestors stumbled haplessly into a hole in the netting between the worlds uncountable generations ago. They pathetically clung to each other in fear and hatred of everything of this new world and formed this stinking pit of filth they dreamt to be a great city.

I suppose that new humans did occasionally join the fray in depressed fatigue, but most in that place didn't even remember that there was a world different from their own. The newcomers soon were driven to forget as well and, with it, their hope for any form of salvation.

Needless to say, intelligence never lasted long in a place such as this. A mind would drive its possessor insane. How would one be able to live, satisfied, in this dank and murky pit of existence if they believed in possibility, invention, and improvement? Those with thought too often wandered free of the human territory and condemned themselves to even stranger walks of life. It would go against Darwin's Theory of natural evolution for the brains of these humans to evolve in any direction but backwards, to shrivel up and cease.

Demons didn't even bother to antagonize them. Those that did venture forth in the hopes of filling their bellies with the rarity of human flesh and blood soon learned that it wasn't worth the effort as they had lost their Ningenkai taste long ago. Soul eaters were a different story.

Demon and human souls vary only on the very technical level, but it is just enough for Reikai folk and soul eaters to tell them apart. Human souls are a purer form of energy (lest that person be tampered with by darker forces) than those of demons. Supposedly they taste sweeter too, I wouldn't know. I guessed it is comparable to a tough steak versus tenderloin.

Those humans may have been disgustingly primitive, but they were still human. And that's why I was there. I wasn't counting on any bit of intelligence on the part of the human occupants, only memory. Youko Kurama is hardly someone that can be easily forgotten.

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The first place I went after leaving that filthy tavern and Karasu's slithering presence was the Hidden Chronicle. Hardly hidden, it was the database, so to speak, of demonic history and culture. She made no effort to hide herself from the world, but simply hid the world from herself.

Years and years ago, the ancient druids of Maikai - now practically an extinct race - charted the energy pathways of the earth and found their draining point, the point in the chain that all links gravitate towards and must pass through. Their secret knowledge that each person only passed on to one other person in their lifetime, allowed them to open up their beings to the currents and learn of absolutely everything through the visions in the flowing links.

The current keeper was called, simply, Madeline and presented herself as an open book. She had no real reason to hide. Few knew of her existence and even fewer really believed. That mystery kept her safe and her ties to the knowledge of the Maikai kept her free of fear.

She was a surprisingly robust, young looking woman with bushy eyebrows and small eyes. Though one would never call her beautiful, she had an easy attitude about her. She was confident without the need for any such displays, secure and happy in her life.

She smiled often showing off her chipped and dinted yellow teeth. Rumour was that Madeline gained her sustenance from the energy she absorbed and chewed rocks to fill her illusory stomach. I had never seen her eat and so cannot prove truth one way or another.

She greeted me with an engulfing hug to my great, though hidden, displeasure. I inhaled her frizzy, translucent hair and had trouble not choking in a very unapproppriate manner. I needed her good graces if I was to get the information I desired.

Her living room was a small clearing to the east of a palm tree like forest with picked flowers spread in thick layers upon the ground. She sat me down and then moved to sit across from me.

"I saw you coming Hiei-chan. What do you wish to know oh assassin of no clan?" a solid woman's voice without the airiness expected of someone in her spiritual trade.

"What can you tell me of Youko Kurama? I already know the popular rumors."

"You mean that gorgeous silver creature? Well he's a kitsune, but telling you more simply wouldn't be faaaii-iiirrr." A twinkle was in her eye and a singsong melody in her voice. I was annoyed but not exactly surprised by her response. She would only divulge what she willed.

"Fine, have it your way. What can you tell me of kitsunes?"

"Oh I shall, I shall. Well…they are rare spirits to see in this plane that's for sure - spirit foxes. They need to feed to stay corporeal, or feed to restore their strength if they have a stolen body of their own. They can consume practically anything real…but souls are the most potent sources of energy. Um…the number of tails they possess indicates their power. They have powers of illusion, but that little thing there," she reached forward and tapped a finger upon the headband covering my jagan eye, "might negate those…. Ooo-ooo, and since they are spirits, they can become a tad enamored of physical experiences."

When finished speaking, she quietly placed her hands in her lap and shut her eyes. Her entire body ceased all movement, her back straight, legs crossed, and arms loosely bent at the elbows. I took that as my cue to leave. Usually, I might have simply sped away and been a mile gone before the wind of my movement would have disturbed her. But I rose slowly, making sure there was nothing left she had to say.

Her frozen posture never changed after a full five minutes time and then I left at my blinding speed. I tore free my jagan's cover, holding it in my right hand for the moment, and searched for my destination. I knew where I wanted to go. The rumors were too scattered and unreliable to chase down, but a soul eater was easy to find. They preferred the sustenance of human rather than demon and there was only one well-known permanent settlement of humans in the Maikai, the charming trash heap known as D Minor.

I felt Madeline's mind echo as I traveled. It was amused, hopeful, and impatient. What the Hell was going on?

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I felt my nose wrinkle in disgust at the shit that I could smell. The biting scent of piss wasn't far behind along those horribly soiled streets.

The town's most crowded building was not surprisingly the large, moldy bar with a brothel upstairs. If a person wanted information the best place to turn to was one of those two. Sex and alcohol were always in demand by the lowlier "underground."

A thin and frail looking woman greeted me from behind a great veil of tobacco smoke. Her movements were stiff, wary, and scared. She easily saw through my humanoid body to the fine demonic features and deadly aura. I snarled at her, displaying my sharp fangs with dangerous pride and watched with inner glee as her eyes widened in fear. Her hand compulsively grabbed for her throat in a gasp, the cheap bangles rattling. I not-so-gently brushed passed her prone form and used my impressive speed to materialize, standing, upon the bar; it was the highest surface on that floor. A few of the gaudy whores screamed in painfully shrill and hoarse voices, one of the more sober men fainted right on the spot.

"Who tha fuck `er you?" drawled an obviously drunk man a few tables away.

He didn't have a single strand of hair on his head, only a greasy, badly cut mustache. A flabby whore with the thinnest skin I had ever seen was bouncing nervously upon his knee. I spit hot saliva in his face and then hurled a ball of fire in their general direction.

Over kill? Yes, but the shrieking and the sizzling of all people in that section turned whatever attention had been focused elsewhere on me. For a full thirty seconds there was absolute silence only broken by the moaning of the charred humans. I made sure to control my flame. I wouldn't want to kill any possible wells of information.

Some part of me always enjoyed these moments. I was unquestionably in charge of this situation and the knowledge that I could do whatever I wished to this entire village was intoxicating. I suppose I shouldn't have reveled so in such meaningless displays of ostentatious power but back then, my judgment and my experiences were limited to the kill and the feeling of dominance. In retrospect, it was utterly foolish and immature for a demon of my caliber to so loosely throw their influence about. It was nothing but a display of my pettiness. And there is nothing I can really say to justify my actions except that I was young. I was so very young and ignorant of so very many things. But I would have killed anyone who dared to say such to me in those days. I only trusted the basics of what I had learned from my meager life and put my opinion above all others.

"Now listen you pieces of shit. I'm looking for information concerning a silver fox spirit called Youko Kurama," there was a unanimous second panic, though the demonstration consisted more of an inward fright. I nearly choked on the smell of fresh urine, pinning the man who had just pissed himself to the floor with my gaze. For the mere crime of disgusting me with his private fluids I shriveled his member with the intense heat of my glare.

I allowed an amused smirk to cross my features, "I see you've heard of whom I speak. Tell me, has any human in this place simply disappeared - been abducted - or rendered soulless? If you give me what I wish I may choose not to incinerate you all."

I observed their paling and sniveling terror with malicious pleasure. I rotated my head slowly facing all around the room and made brief but traumatizing eye contact with every inhabitant in there, including the pasty bartender trembling just below my feet.

"Well…?"

"I-I kn-know of someone wh-who disappeared after a-"

"I know what yer lookin' for," a gruff, growling voice spoke from the opposite side of the bar. I snapped my head around to face the man. He had greasy hair in long curls that fell unevenly about his neck and a 5 o'clock shadow shading his face. A stained canvas jacket hung loosely on his frame and an old and useless pipe stuck out from his chipped and teeth. His wide eyes and dilated pupils gave the impression that he was not entirely sane.

"Yer lookin' for the Youko, he was here alright, didn't stay long to be sure, never does. He and him's crazy bat fella' were `ere indeed."

I must have growled then. My patience was drastically thinning at the incompetence of this crowd. If this man droned on any longer I may have simply decided to beat the information out of him. The thought was definitely appealing and picturing it helped prevent the action.

"I gave `em my bitch of a Mrs. in the hopes they'd teach `er some sense. I dunno what really `appened next. They were laughin' `bout some some'en, waterfall maybe. Some'en to do with cold water an' grass. The bastards never brought `er back. You go kill `em an' bring me my doll back, eh?"

"When were they here?" Water and grass - how the hell did that help me in the middle of the Maikai, an untamed region of wild, untended growth?

"Uh, a couple o' days maybe. I dunno."

I was gone, cleared of the entire village, before any of them realized I had left my position on the bar counter. I might as well have been flying from tree to tree with my innate speed.

I stopped, perched upon the tallest tree, after a mile and untied the headband that hid my jagan eye. My perceptions immediately doubled and twisted upon each other, expanding. I had to close my normal eyes to properly focus on locating the fox.

I could see everything with in a hundred miles at the same time. I was everywhere and nowhere within that dark and muted vision. The demonic auras were amplified above the natural energies of the earth and the sky - humans were dull blotches.

I smiled a triumphantly malicious smile. There was my target, ridiculously easy to track for all the mystery and legend. Soon that white creature of mischievous glory would be my captive - I all the richer for it. In a way, I almost felt guilty for being the downfall of such beauty…almost.

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I didn't really like that chapter myself, but it was necessary to get this story moving along. So what did all of you think of it?