Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ Unbalanced Pendulum ❯ Loyalty's an Enslaving Bitch ( Chapter 4 )

Much love goes out to all those who are reviewing this piece of fanfiction. I'm trying to add more paragraph breaks to make this a little easier to read. I noticed that some of my paragraphs were becoming lengthy and, while appropriate for a book, I found them to be hard on the eyes when reading an Internet story.

And by the way, yes I promise that that (back to the Hiei and Karasu scene) was my first lemon I ever wrote. I openly welcome any suggestions a person may have as to my writing. I'm playing around with different styles and trying to really get back in the swing of things so I apologize if some things may seem a little broken.

I don't own the characters of Yu Yu Hakusho - duh.

Pretty Pendulum Chapter 4:

Loyalty's an Enslaving Bitch

I gazed at this demonic being through my third eye and unbidden came the feeling of Karasu upon me, his raking nails and pitiless demonstration of dominance and power. Sensations came again to my flesh. I couldn't understand why it would return with such a dirty vengeance. I had been used before. I had used others before. This man Karasu was no different and yet my gut clenched, that instinctual reaction to pain, fear, anguish, and dread at the sight of this white being of evil.

I shivered, the chilling vibration running up my spine in an unnamable word of foresight, loathing…guilt? I closed my eye, for just a moment, to clear my disoriented mind. I was the hunter, this thing before me was no person worthy of my compassion. This thing was my prey. I was the hunter and I could smell his blood hot in my nostrils, feel his illusory flesh beneath my nails, his hair gripped viciously within my fist. He was to be my captive, not a person…not a person at all.

I looked again, with a calmer mind. He was sprawled dreamily upon the ground, next to the trunk of a large tree…and he was not alone. A few paces away wandered a chimera with bat wings and elfin ears peaking out beyond a wide hat brim - the likely origin of the tales of the Youko's chimera minions. Both were well muscled, but lean and quite feminine at first glance. It was no wonder they had followers desperate for their amorous attention.

The chimera's gait spoke of habitual wariness and numerous sickles of various sizes dangled from his belt. The Youko slept soundly under the guard of this man. There was trust between them, trust in abilities at least.

If I were to somehow deliver this kitsune alive, he would need to be tricked and to do that I needed to know him. And so I continued to watch these two. I haunted their movements with my jagan eye for 10 months, give or take. I made sure to cloak my signature with dampening wards, a necessary tool of stealth for all assassins. I always carried a bundle of various wards - not all harmless - in a small sack secured to my ring of belts. By mixing a drop of my own blood into each and every inkwell I used to write the wards, I prevented the more dangerous of ones from harming me. If I could not apply them without suffering myself, what was their use?

I kept my distance, always observing via jagan, any closer would have risked too much. I knew not the skills of these two thieving warriors, if warriors they were, and so kept out of their range.

In ten months' time I had learned of the intimate relationship between those two. The aching, lustful jealousy that sometimes accompanied my observations was tolerable, worked away by my own hand when all else failed. I was disgruntled but acceptant of my reaction. Everyone worth their skin in the Maikai knew of the allure of kitsunes. Spirits gifting the corporeal plain with their presence was what they were. And all of us purely mortal demons could only breathe in their glory and hope for them to look our way.

I had not entirely believed that the mere presence of this species could bring forth such powerfully physical reactions, but I learned. And I noted that this power was especially deadly to myself. Things became all the more complicated with that unintentional seduction. I found I was forced to regard him as an object of sex rather than anything else to avoid my own contamination.

I now laugh at my naïveté.

But there was more than the simplicities of lust in the eyes of the two lovers in my view. They truly loved each other, and passionately so. When I first realized this, my irrational and shocking anger, panic, envy overwhelmed myself. I built a wall of hatred that boiled beneath the delicacy of my skin and fueled my pyretic aura. My recovered rational froze the wall and likened it to the touch of iced steel. Outwardly I grew colder, while I burned my insides to ash - the extremities of Hell. My bitch mothers would be so proud of their forbidden son.

I also discovered the loyalty and surprising honor within each of these men, more prominently so in the chimera than the Youko as would be expected. Endearing chocolate that I could use to spread upon and lick clean my ire.

But I knew that there could be no honor nor trust nor love in a demon's world - well, naught more than the honor between thieves, the trust between sworn enemies, and the love between victim and predator. These two men came to signify the impossible, what I knew to be impossible. And I learned to hate them for it. I was determined to prove them wrong.

I was tired of waiting. I knew all I needed to know. And so I moved.

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It was raining. Is it only raining in my memories? Or was it truly raining in reality? It seems too coincidental: the sky shedding tears for the brave. Nevermind. It doesn't matter.

It was raining and the Youko was playing in the water, a kit dancing in celebration of the rain. The chimera's adoring eyes were watching him dance from the safety of the trees' shelter. The Youko jumped into puddles near his lover, splashing him every time. He was laughing, trying to convince his lover to join him in the rain. But his lover was adamant and told with loving admonishment that he was not for frolicking in the rain. A lewd motion of his hips followed the remark before he turned and walked back to where the two had slept the night before. The Youko laughingly yelled after the chimera that he should just go fuck himself if he was so inclined and had the not the patience to wait.

I took it all in from my vantage point in the tree tops only a few hundred yards away, maintaining the distance as I stalked the chimera. My positioning was deadly and deadly intended was my mind. The chimera was settling in against a tree, pouting as stubborn liquid drops wove their way down to him through the canopy above. Why he didn't choose to retreat out of the rain and into the cave he sat not a mere two feet away from? Ah I see, the rigid line of his shoulders and back dictated that he had felt me, well more like to a distortion of unfamiliar and dooming energy. The wards still masked any real clue of my existence.

Timing was absolutely crucial. In my observations I had seen him fight off a few formidable demons into whose territory the two thieves might have wandered. He was good - experienced, fast, intelligent. But I was still faster, sneakier and had less honor - still better. The honor of this creature would be his downfall, that I had decided a long while ago. Call it my sense of sadistic and self-lifting irony.

I had lost the true but not the total element of surprise. But I had to wait for the chimera to make a mistake and I had to move quickly enough to have his life in my deciding hands by the time the Youko made his grand entrance.

He stood. That's it, that's it, now just a little bit further. He was nearing my hiding spot. His path would take him just barely beneath my location within the trees. The rattling of chain indicated his arming. One more step…now!

I pounced with my unnatural speed to land on the ground in front of him. I halted my movements just long enough for him to see me and cry out to his partner. Yell, I thought, bring him here. Let him see you in disgrace. Let you be the one to secure him to my side.

I drew my katana, my longest weapon, and purposefully missed his body instead tangling the chains of his sickles around my blade. The ensnared katana I stabbed deep within the rain-softened earth. This rendered both his and my weapons useless along with temporarily chaining him to the ground. The problem for him was that the katana was not my only weapon and I was much too swift to allow him the necessary time to free himself from his weapon. I had caught him completely unprepared. No one in all of his days had tried to foul his weapon before his body and he was not ready. The chains hindered his movements completely.

I used the opportunity to ward him with strips of immobilizing spells. They weren't true motion inhibitors; those were of the brand of powerful magicks that could only be writ by witches and wizards. Mine only slowed the bearer down, making all of their movements jerky and difficult.

The Youko wasn't close enough yet. I had to stall for time.

I leered up at the chimera's defiant face and spoke with naught but contempt in my voice.

"What is your name?"

"My name does not matter." I kicked him with the hard toe of my boot, crushing his right kneecap with the distinctive crunching of shattered bone. The join could no longer support his leg, but the ward did not let him adjust in time to catch his falling body. He fell hard, face first in the dirt. He didn't scream, just gasped. Bright and sticky perspiration appeared as if by magick atop his skin. I grabbed his hair and wrenched his torso upright.

"Your name is Kuronue. I've heard him call you by that many times." My statement was toned exactly as was my question before it. He had to know that my act of violence was trivial.

His eyes, the only part of his body free enough to move as quickly as his surprise warranted, snapped wide open with panicked lightning in my direction. I leaned in close and my words smoothed to pitying mockery, "Yes, I've been watching you. But you knew that didn't you? You felt me hiding there, always there and you never said anything, attributed it always to another thing. I saw you look right at me more than once and then, each time, you would look away. But that's all right, you're still young and he is careless. You were both naïve and…distracted. So you see, it's not your fault that…he's going to die."

I inwardly smirked at his guilty tension and hopeful fear. He was barely older than myself. I could tell by the texture of his skin, the clear fluid of his eyes, the habits of his mouth - he had lived a romanced life and the Youko had been his prince. I felt sorry for his death. And I wished that I didn't have to kill him.

In that one moment when I looked into his desperate face and smelled his damp skin, I could understand why the Youko loved this man. Maybe I should say this boy. In that moment when I was torturing him, tricking him into the actions I would soon need, I came to not hate him. My jealousy was stupid and unwarranted because of me and because of him.

My expression softened a little then I saw the reflection of something very white dash across Kuronue's pupil. It was just enough to alert me to the Youko. There was no need for me to hide the energy of my jagan any longer and so I unmasked it to find the troublesome fox.

I knew they both felt the energy, the sudden air-blurring power of my jagan contaminating the natural setting of the forest. Kuronue's eyes grew to even larger sizes.

"I see you Youko Kurama." Silence. I smiled inwardly, yes watch me, spy on me, try and use your wit to outsmart me for it will all fail you in the end just as this one's loyalty will destroy you.

"And you see me. But do you see your precious lover?" I changed my position so as to stand behind Kuronue, my double-edged dagger to his neck. I burned away the wards. For this to work, his arms needed to be free.

"Come before me or you will never do so again." There he was all defiant and angry, but outwardly cold and calculating. His step had yet to gain the hitch of tension.

"Don't touch him," he snarled.

I laughed, "I will do as I please. Let me explain this as plainly as I can. If I free this man you must agree to come with me freely, without causing any problems for myself, to my determined destination. He must not attempt to interfere. From there you will no longer be my charge and I couldn't care less. If I kill him the agreement is void."

I had to speak slowly. If the Youko decided to reject the offer or show any sign that he would, Kuronue would lose his desire to save the fox with his own life. There had to be time for Kuronue to become desperate before this could happen. If the Youko proved to be truly loyal, as I believed he would, then all the better. I paused for a few moments before delivering my next sentence.

"On your word as a kitsune, what do you say?" I pressed the knife deeper into Kuronue's skin, causing a few dribbles of blood to spill down his smooth neck. There was no question as to the sharpness of the blade.

The kitsune opened his mouth to speak. His head was hung low in defeat, his eyes staring at the ground. "Alright, I promise. Now let him go."

"Kurama no!" Kuronue reached out and grabbed my armed hand as I pulled it away. I wonder if he even considered that I didn't fight him at all when he slammed my hand and knife into his chest. The edge slipped through the bones as it would through water, piercing straight through to his heart.

"You fool," I muttered.

Kurama stood there immobile. He knew what had happened just as well as I did…and there was nothing he could do about it.

I hadn't killed Kuronue. He had killed himself in an attempt to free Kurama from his promise. Instead, Kurama was mine and his lover was dead. Kurama would want to hate me, - would hate me. But hate for the death of his lover was unjustified and he couldn't hate Kuronue so the guilt would eat away at him, having no other place to go.

I retied my headband.

"Come pet. There is no longer anything here for you." I kicked the corpse, whether for emphasis or for personal confirmation I've never really been sure.

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Well that's that for now. Please R*R!