Oakley smiled softly at the memory. She’d been so scared back then. Pathetic. Yokai was nothing to be scared of.....not now, anyway. Then, she was weak. Then, she needed people around her. Then....was a long time ago.
But Yokai was by no means weaker than her. Quite the opposite. She just had nothing to fear of the demon. She used to be absolutely terrified of the second spirit inhabiting her body. Oakley closed her eyes, lying on her back and facing the ceiling, soaking herself once more in the past.
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‘Y-Yokai.....? The.....the blood....blood demon....?’ Oakley stuttered, her eyes widening with fear. Yokai nodded crisply, grinning so her teeth were visible. The teeth. They were like fangs. But then, now that you looked at her, she wasn’t as pretty as before. No. It wasn’t that. She was changing. Her silky black hair wasn’t smooth anymore, it was matted and tangled. Her skin was pale, fringe was growing, but her eyes glowed like burning coals through the hair. Fangs were growing; they were like a wolfs, or a bears. Her perfectly manicured fingernails were growing, too, they were sharp and claw-like. She wasn’t beautiful anymore, she was hideous. Oakley couldn’t contain the horror building up inside of her.
‘Like my true form?’ Yokai asked, sneering. ‘I guess not?’ Then, a few second later, she was back to being the beautiful lady from before. ‘Better?’ Oakley nodded vaguely. ‘Fear. Another useless emotion.’
‘Y-you said love...and friendship....and trust....they were all useless....’ Oakley whispered, that was confusing. Love, trust and friendship were special. Not useless. Weren’t they?
‘You pour your heart out to these people, depend on them and need them, then they abandon you! They leave you behind, alone to wallow in your own self pity, it’s better not to have such trivial emotions. Fear? You said you were afraid of being alone. How is that something to fear? Loneliness can only make you stronger....’
Oakley fought back tears. How could she say something like that? Lan would never abandon her! But would he? Things felt like they were all messed up now, this couldn’t be real, Yokai should be dead! ‘Listen.....if you’re my host.....then I’m taking you now!’ Things were moving too quickly, everything was a blur, Yokai was lunging for her but she couldn’t move.....only one word was in her mind as blackness engulfed her....
....Lan...
><
Yokai stood in the storeroom, staring around the area. She had a body...and her sword was right in front of her. Things couldn’t get any better. True, the body wasn’t the one she’d had in mind, but it would have to do. This girl’s body was better than nothing. Grinning sadistically, she reached forward wrapping my slender fingers around the handle. ‘Good to be back!’ The demon said triumphantly, lifting the blade off the tabletop. Only to find she couldn’t do it. It was too heavy.
‘What? No! I must have gotten her own strength! This girl’s no stronger than the average scrawny school girl!’ Yokai cursed, the situation was terrible. ‘Damnit!’ She frowned in anger, the frown definitely out of place on Oakley’s young and innocent features. This girl had no attributed element yet. She had no special abilities. She was weak, physically and mentally. This was the worst body she could have ended up with. Yokai threw herself against the wall angrily. ‘God-’ She slammed herself against it again. ‘Damn-’ Yokai continued to throw herself against the stone wall in anger. ‘it! Goddamnit!!’
‘Oakley?’ The sound of a voice she didn’t recognise came to her ears. ‘What’s going on down there?’ Yokai was momentarily frozen, then relaxed. He needn’t know. Hell, he’d be dead in a few seconds anyway, but he still needn’t know because the authorities could try and use his corpse to find out what had happened. Then she would be back in the sword, Shion would make sure of that. Shion. Now you came to think about it, was Shion even still around? He’d been the one to originally seal her away, but he was immortal so he should still be in position.
Hmm....
‘I’m.....the sword....as soon as I tried to pick it up, I dropped it, it was too heavy...’ Yokai lied through her teeth. It came smoothly. The sword had been too heavy. She hadn’t dropped it, though. The heaviness could be remedied, though....The man who she suspected was the one who was a) Oakley’s master and b) the one who was supposed to kill her -even if he wasn’t she would have killed him anyway- groaned. ‘I thought you said you could handle it.’
He appeared at the foot of the stairs, rubbing the back of his head. He was looking hassled and sweaty, as if he’d been standing in front of a huge fire. Which, judging by how you destroyed the sword, he probably had been. ‘Are you all right, Oak-’ He froze, staring at Yokai in disbelief. ‘What on...? I thought you were hurt...?’
‘Of course it would seem that way to you, you senile old fool!’ Yokai said evilly, and in a split second the man realised what had happened. ‘She.....Yokai....you....possessed...’ he said each word slowly, as if that was helping him grasp the situation better. ‘....die....’ Yokai stepped forward, but she couldn’t manipulate myself as she once could. She wasn’t as fast as before. She wasn’t as strong as before. But he didn’t know that. And as he backed up against the wall his terror got the best of him and he yelled. I managed to get a grip on the sword, and, heaving as hard as I could, swung it towards him. In an explosion of blood, he lay on the floor in two pieces, eyes empty of emotion but widened from the moments of fear he’d experienced a few seconds previously.
Yokai smiled, wiping her hands through the pools of blood, licking it off her fingers and relishing the taste, the delicious, coppery-iron taste that she had missed so much, longed for every second that she’d been trapped within my weapon. The blood ran down the blood demon’s fingers, trailing down her arms and reddening her white sleeves, soaking her shirt with the wonderful crimson liquid. Blood....
The rich, spine-tingling joyous laughter filled the weaponry, the customer that had been upstairs was filled with a feeling of dread that caused them to run outside and as far away as possible. Yokai had a feeling of exhilaration rushing through her veins; the joy of the kill. The man was dead; nothing could fix that. But she’s always had weaponry, lots of weaponry. And she just happened to have something to store weaponry in. The metal arm. And she knew just how to make it so she could do just that. Yokai hefted the guillotined sword over her shoulder with much difficulty and climbed the stairs, and gazed around the weaponry. ‘Wow,’ she whispered. ‘That’s a lot of weapons....’ She had half a mind to take everything in sight now, but she needed to sort out her arm. She leant the sword up against the wall. It was simply too heavy to keep hauling around like she had before she was sealed. It was a shame, really, but she would just have to work on increasing the physical strength of this host.
Yokai rifled through one of the cupboards, pulling through various weapon-enhancers until she finally found what she was looking for. Miniature summon gems. ‘Heh, there’s so many....’ Yokai grinned at the gems glittering in her hands. ‘So many gems.....so many weapons....this is perfect!’ Affixing summon gems to her arm was a simple enough task. All she needed to know was fix one into a joint on her arm, and affix them on with a burst of magic. Fortunately, even though Oakley’s magic hadn’t taken an Elemental form with the right technique Yokai could access small reserves that had already built up.
Simple, but that didn’t mean to say it didn’t take a long time. ‘Damnit,’ Yokai cursed as she fixed the maybe fiftieth or so tiny gems. She still had another fifty to go. But she was getting there. And, eventually, half an hour later, she was done. Yokai looked down at the fruit of her labours admiringly. ‘Good. Now, the fun part.’ She flexed her fingers, and turned to face the weapon storage vault.
Inside the vault was an assassin, warrior and murderer’s heaven. Almost every weapon she could think of. And she wouldn’t have to pay a cent. ‘All right. Long swords, long swords....’ Now it was down to business. Long swords. Yokai already had the Guillotine Sword, but she’d always had vast resources of weaponry. And besides, in this new body the beheading blade was too heavy for her to lift. Start simple.
Down the back of the vault was where she found the long swords. Each gem could contain several of the same weapon, so she took three of the same long swords and fixed it into one gem. Yokai then helped herself to sword shorts, mid swords, short and long bows, silver and iron tipped arrows to match. Katana, hundreds upon thousands of shuriken and kunai (those among the arrows would have to be regularly re-stocked on), Windmill shuriken (not as many), steel rods, staffs, and even a black thing that she didn’t know what was.
It was small and fit into her hand perfectly, it had a form of pipe and a trigger. But what was its purpose? Yokai didn’t know, and had half a mind to leave it behind before she spotted a manual on the same shelf that she found the thing. It was called “Guns 201”, and it was filled with pictures, information and details of different forms of the black thing. It was called a “gun”, apparently, and according to the manual it was a “Sig Sauer P238”. Yokai shrugged, and read this off the page:
The SIG Sauer P238 is a compact .380 ACP caliber, single-action pistol. It is a version of the Colt Mustang pistol with a classic SIG Sauer scalloped slide and finger relief under the trigger guard. Grips are fluted aluminum making this an all-metal frame firearm in competition with plastic-framed pistols in the same class like the Ruger LCP and the Kel-Tec P-3AT.
Yokai had no idea what any of this meant, but it sounded pretty good. According to the “beginners guide to firearms” at the front of the manual, you could load it with things called “bullets”, which she found huge amounts of in a container on the shelf. ‘All right...’ She muttered, loading it up and flicking the safety switch. ‘...let’s see what you can do.’
The blood demon squeezed the trigger, and with a loud “BANG!!!” the bullet was launched out of the pistol and smashed into the wall, blasting a hole into it, leaving a stunned Yokai was left holding the smouldering gun with an expression of shock covering her face. ‘Whoa.’ She muttered, evidently impressed. She could use this as a substitute for her guillotine sword for a while. She put every bullet she could get her hands on into a summon gem, which, by the way, was literally millions, along with the gun.
Maybe ten minutes later, she’d robbed the shop blind, cleaned up the blood, put the sword into the arm, and exited the building, excitement rising in her body. ‘I can hardly wait...!!’ Yokai just about sang, this was going to be a blast. She hadn’t killed in decades, and had missed it most of all. Life was sweet.....these were the words that filled her mind as she entered the Side District and readied her gun.
