Betwixt Heaven and Earth

Second Divide: Clandestine Employment

It was during times like this that he hated the fact that ghouls were so hard to detect. It was also during times like these that he wished he didn't work for an organization like the one he currently worked for. At least that way he wouldn't have to fret all the time about when ghouls emerged for no reason out of nowhere and made life difficult for him.

It was one thing to know that a ghoul infestation was happening and to have the capability to stop it, but to not know where it was happening, well... That was as good as being powerless.

This wasn't cool. Oh no, this was not cool at all.

Niou Masaharu, Manipulator⁽¹⁾ of the Ten of Swords Organization, shook his head as he looked at the computer screen. "The worst part about this is that Yanagi's off on a mission with Sanada and Yukimura." The Three Demons were off on another mission somewhere else. This wouldn't have been such a bad thing if Yagyuu Hiroshi and Kuwahara Jackal had been around, but that was not the case, because they, too, were on a mission.

At that precise moment, the Organization was left in the hands of Niou, the necromancer Marui Bunta, and the shape-shifter Kirihara Akaya, who was currently out someplace gods-knew-where.

Even Niou knew that this was a very, very bad thing.

Niou swore as he moved away from the computer, his mind going into overdrive. What in the name of all the Hells were they going to do? He didn't have the hacking skills that would allow him to pinpoint the location of the ghouls; neither did Marui.

This was not what he had signed the contract for, damn it.

    "Niou, calm down," Marui soothed, taking a large bite out of a slice of cake as soon as the words had slipped from his mouth. "Remember: we're demons. If we can't get the computer to work, then we can always find someone else who can. You, of all people, ought to be able to do that, right?"

Niou smirked as the implication of his teammate's words sunk in. Marui was right: if you can't fix it yourself, find someone who can. "True, true. I'll go get us some fresh meat then, Marui."

Marui nodded approvingly, taking another large bite out of his cake. "You go and do that. But if you screw this one up like the last time, I'm sending my dead after you, make no mistake." Niou noticed some light flickering around Marui's fingers, and he knew what that meant.

    "Yeah, yeah, I know," Niou replied as he spread his two leathery wings, flapping them a couple of times to loosen the muscles and joints. "We had to erase the memory of the last one we hired, and that was nasty." He winced as he climbed out of the window, allowing the night breeze to fill his wings until he was airborne. "My ear was still ringing three days after Sanada yelled into it."

He flapped his wings, and soon he was flying, coasting through the air with the night sky above him and the city sprawled out below him. He searched for Kirihara's presence, seeking out his unique spiritual signature from out of the many below him.

It did not take him long, and soon he managed to communicate his plan to the young shape-shifter via telepathy. A moment after he had done so, Kirihara responded.

Niou blinked at the speed. "That was fast..." he murmured, but then again, who was he to deny the grace of the Fortunes when they so desired to help him? After confirming the location with Kirihara, he tilted his body in that particular direction, homing in on Kirihara's presence to guide his way.

--~*~||Ω||~*~--

It was the soft mewing sound that had caught her attention. While it was not an unfamiliar sound, it was somewhat strange to hear it now that she was in her apartment. None of her neighbors owned cats, as far as she knew, and besides, the sound seemed to be coming from her window.

Now that, in her opinion, was the most puzzling thing of all. She lived on the tenth floor, and had no balcony to speak of. How could a cat get on her windowsill if there was no means by which it could climb up or down?

Nevertheless, the mewing was a somewhat heartbreaking sound, so , regular geek and hacker-for-hire extraordinaire, got up from her computer, and moved towards her window, sliding the pane open to let in the sweet evening breeze as her gaze fell upon a black cat with the brightest green eyes she had ever seen.

    "Come here," she murmured as she reached out, picking the cat up and bringing it into her apartment. "You shouldn't be out there; you might fall."

The cat merely mewed back at her in thanks, before leaping from her arms, trotting over to her kitchen, and then leaped onto the chair. From there it jumped onto the counter, where it sat on its haunches, gazing at her expectantly.

She could not help but smile, amused as she was by the cat. People had told her before that some animals had such animate expressions that they almost looked human, and she was certain that this particular cat was one of those animals. She could practically read its thoughts: "Feed me, please!"

    "Do you want some milk? I just got some today," she said, walking over to the refrigerator as she did so. On any normal day she might have called herself a wacko for talking to an animal that, obviously, wasn't going to respond, but tonight, she didn't really mind. She poured some milk onto a saucer, and placed the dish in front of the cat, which started lapping it up eagerly.

    "Who's your owner, hmmm?" she asked again, absently scratching the cat between its ears before she turned around and put the milk back in the refrigerator. "And I wonder how you got so high up here..."

It was only then that she remembered: her window was still open. Sighing and chiding herself for her forgetfulness, she turned around, leaving the cat to its own devices as she went to close the window. A cold gust of wind blew past her, and she shivered as she reached out to pull the pane down and shut the draft out before her apartment got any colder.

However, a chill ran through her instead, when a powerful hand grasped her wrist, preventing her from pulling the pane closed. When she looked up, her eyes widened, unable to believe what they were seeing.

A young man was crouched in her windowsill, already pushing her back so that he could come into her apartment. Intense blue eyes gazed at her from behind a fringe of silver hair, while the young man flicked a slim braid of that same hair off his shoulder and onto his back.

However, it was not those things that had caused 's blood to run cold in her veins. It was the sight of the two large, black, leathery wings that the young man was currently furling against his back: the wings that were tipped with vicious-looking claws in the middle joint, at the ends, and along the edge.

They were wings that belonged to a dragon – or a demon.

The realization hit like a bullet train running into her at full-speed: this man was not only breaking into her apartment, but he was not human.

    "Get out!" shrieked as she staggered backwards, her hand reaching out for the nearest long and suitably hard object it could find – in this case, an umbrella. She brandished it in front of her like a sword, stabbing the metal end at the intruder in an attempt to protect herself.

    "Hey, hey, easy there," the young man said, holding his hands up to show that he was unarmed – though believed that it wasn't necessary for him to be armed, all things considered. "We just heard that you're really good with computers. We need you to hack into a computer for us."

stabbed the umbrella at him a couple more times, willing him to just go away or disappear or melt into the floor or something. "Out!" she yelled again. She did not need this...she really did not need this...

The young man seemed to sigh then, his arms going down until they were relaxed at his sides, and it was only then that it hit : he was not threatened at all by her little display of bravado.

That was when she really started to feel scared.

At the moment, though, his attention was drawn elsewhere – in particular, to her kitchen. With a dry look on his face, he said: "Akaya, what are you doing just relaxing there while I'm trying to convince this girl to come with us? You ought to come over here and help me out somehow."

turned around, and the shock of what she saw made the umbrella slide from her grasp and clatter onto the floor. There, instead of a cat, she saw a boy about as old as she, with curly black hair and a mischievous smile on his face. All of this she would have deemed quite normal, if it were not for the fact that he was in her kitchen, and that he had black ears that twitched most happily amidst his curls, while a long black tail danced behind him.

The cat-boy – there really was no other way to describe him – who was apparently named Akaya merely gave the silver-haired man an insolent look. "Shut up, nya. You know that I can't help much while I'm like this, nya."

The silver-haired man rolled his eyes in exasperation. "Yeah, and that's because you haven't even mastered the basics of your own gift yet." He turned back to , who stared back at him. He closed his eyes briefly, but a few moments later they shot wide open, staring at her with a penetrating gaze that seemed to pierce the very depths of her soul. "You're , eighteen years old. You live alone, you're a computer geek, and you don't give a damn about the supernatural." He grinned after the last statement, as if that was the main fact that pleased him the most. "Excellent. You're just what we need."

    "What the hell is going on?" demanded, though her voice contained none of the force that she had hoped that it would contain. Everything was just so damn weird now: first this silver-haired stranger with wings flew into her apartment, and now the cat that she had taken in had just transformed into a boy... "Why did a cat turn into a boy?"

The silver-haired man sighed, and smirked. "Sorry, I can't answer that right now. You're going to have to take a nap before we tell you everything. By the way, I'm Niou Masaharu. Pleasure to meet you."

opened her mouth to demand to know why he said that she would have to take a nap before he explained everything to her, but then, he snapped his fingers, and the last thing saw was the flap of the silver-haired man's wings before darkness finally overtook her, dropping her into the waiting arms of slumber.

Proceed to [ The Third Divide ]

Return to [ The First Divide ]
 

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Kage
29.May.2006

NOTES:

(1)= This is a term referring to a class of demons who are capable of reading and controlling the minds of those who are weaker than they. Akatsuki.Saga [karinui] was the one who created the term.

This chapter was adapted from part of the original that Akatsuki.Saga wrote. I have added a few details and dialogue, but the entire concept and quite a bit of the dialogue is Akatsuki.Saga's.