Yashakiden: The Demon Princess, Volume 5 Omnibus Edition

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  “But leave her be and she destroys this world. Huh.” Setsura folded his arms across his chest. Somewhere in his untroubled eyes was a touch of glee.

  “This could be considered a godsend,” Mephisto said. Setsura nodded and Mephisto added, “But no. Such a perfect separation makes this into a worst-case scenario for you. Kanan-san will always exist as the coexistence of two distinct people. Having lost one, the other there will become a husk of her former self.”

  “Then what do you propose?”

  “We must somehow unite her with her physical self.”

  “And we end up right back where we started.”

  “Not necessarily. There are cases of divided selves coming back together in a different fashion than they were before.”

  “Different in a good way?”

  “There is no way to tell,” Mephisto answered tersely.

  “So you’re saying there will never be a good time for destroying her.” Princess chuckled to herself.

  “No disagreement there,” Setsura said. “In any case, treat her with kid gloves.”

  “Very well. I will don kid gloves before destroying her.”

  “I figured you’d say that. Like I said, a nasty piece of work.” Setsura glared at Mephisto. “Quack.”

  “Then it is decided, Setsura,” Princess said triumphantly. “I will destroy Takako’s alter-ego. Or you will save it and return it to her original self. Hoh! How will you keep her from me while persuading her to do so? I do love to see you in anguish.”

  “Huh,” Setsura grunted, as if in agreement. So that’s what it comes down to, he seemed to be saying. It’d be hard to imagine any other man so nonchalant in the face of such a quandary.

  In a soft and coaxing voice, Princess said, “How about it? Kneel at my feet and plead for salvation. Ask for my help in saving poor Takako Kanan. Give me a little hip-hip-hooray and I’ll listen to anything you have to say.”

  “Pass,” Setsura said, turning away.

  “If you intend to chase her down, you’d better get going.” Mephisto stepped to the side, clearing a pathway to the door.

  As he went by them, Princess said, “Fascinating, Doctor Mephisto. I can’t say I’m not grateful.”

  Setsura Aki said, “I’ll remember this, you quack.”

  “Good luck to you both,” Mephisto said to the two figures exiting the room. “Don’t worry about Kanan-san here.” The cause of the current trouble picked Takako up off the floor and gently laid her on the bed. “Your treatments are not yet over. For the time being, shall we tend to another while other things work themselves out?”

  Her treatments—whatever treatments those might be—treatments that ironically depended on the restoration of Takako Kanan’s alter-ego, replete with its madness and its steadily strengthening of powers sufficient to devastate this world.

  To that end Setsura must suffer, and Princess rejoice. And Mephisto? Did he not find some small reason to rejoice in all of this?

  But on to preparing the mysterious compounds for his next patient.

  Officer Minagawa was ordered down to the special detention lockup in the first basement level. He grumbled aloud that he’d already pulled a regular shift. That changed nobody’s mind.

  There were three others besides him. Minagawa was on edge. Along with the four already, that meant twice as many guards as usual.

  When he asked the other three, they said they’d booked an unusual suspect into jail the night before. The scuttlebutt around the station identified him as a “person of interest” related to the recent outbreak of vampire transformations in Shinjuku, perhaps even the ringleader himself.

  The kind of thing that sent a cold chill down his back. When Minagawa asked how they’d come to arrest him, nobody knew, only that he’d been surrounded and gave up of his own accord.

  Minagawa reflexively raised a hand to the nape of his neck. “Yeah, you too?” his partner laughed. “Did it to me as well.”

  Everybody knew the defensive protocols. Hit ’em with a peach before coming down here. Some bioengineered type, though they tasted just the same.

  Even more surprising, the duty sergeant said the eight of them were there to watch a single cell. They hadn’t deployed that heavy a guard even when they’d picked up a madman who’d infused his muscles and bones with TNT and literally turned himself into a human bomb.

  They were decked out in full combat gear to boot. The cell itself was hardened enough to withstand a small nuclear device. Nothing else could house the kind of criminal element found in Demon City.

  Peering into the cell with the monitor mounted on his shoulder pad revealed a one-armed man in Chinese dress lying on the cot. Based on appearances alone, he’d seen a thousand others in his life that looked a hundred times as dangerous. Though in this city, outward appearances said nothing about what was hiding beneath the skin.

  At five in the afternoon, it was still bright outside. That’s when it began.

  The man lying in the cell began to groan in agony. This wasn’t ordinary human anguish. If this was the result of a bad dream, then he should go mad every night.

  Suddenly in front of Minagawa’s eyes, he saw the wastelands. The gray endless expanses, punctuated in the distance by flashes of what must be lightning. The ceaselessly howling wind was like music compared to the man’s moans, though the bleakness carried on those shrieking gales made him want to stop his ears and close out every sound.

  There was no way he could remain here, Minagawa vowed. A single night and he would lose his mind.

  The scene shifted.

  Minagawa wasn’t alone. Men wrapped in many colors were crossing the plains, some on horseback, others on foot. They were wounded, smeared with blood. Arrows jutted out of their armor.

  Beneath their feet, bones mingled with the sand and dust. No, upon closer inspection, the entire plain was made up of white bones. Layer upon layer of countless skulls, sand filling the gaps, forming hills and fields. Those who trudged across it were cursed to the last man.

  Minagawa understood that this was the path he had trodden to get here. So of course he would writhe and wail in the face of such nightmares.

  “He’s coming!” someone called out.

  “To the door! He’s gonna try and get out!”

  “Don’t be a fool. He couldn’t bust out of there with a nuclear bomb!”

  The heavy reverberations brought Minagawa back to his senses.

  “The door’s caving in!”

  “No fucking way!”

  Alarm bells sounded. Three foot solid steel doors bowed out from the walls. The hinges creaked and shattered one after the other.

  “The peaches!” Minagawa shouted. He got out the pale fruit. They’d all heard they could ward off evil. These peaches weren’t about to end up in their stomachs. With an earthshaking rumble, the door fell outward.

  “Run! Get out of here!” he yelled, even as his finger was pulling the trigger on the electromagnetic cannon strapped to his waist.

  Fifty-thousand volts charged the fifteen-hundred round magazine. A curtain of steel rounds swept sideways at his colleagues. Ballistic polymer helmets were so much Swiss cheese under the assault. Looking down at his writhing partners, Minagawa put his hand to his neck and felt the faint pair of dimpled bumps there.

  Thirty-five years before, at the age of three, the man that attacked him while he was playing by the river was a vampire. Regardless of nationality, the curse of the vampire was universal, without boundaries.

  The dispirited figure emerged from the shattered doorway. Minagawa took a step back and greeted him with a silent bow. Such an unexpected reunion after so many years, he thought. The graceful but somehow sad face looked at him. A sharp pain pierced his neck.

  Minagawa felt he’d at last laid down the heavy burdens upon his shoulders.

  Chapter Three

  The man stretched mightily and sat down on the sofa. The long day was finally coming to an end. He still had a ton of things to deal with, but
there really were times when some tasks were best put off till tomorrow.

  Arriving home after a week away, his wife greeted him with a face like an iceberg. At least she did give him the old “Who the hell are you?” routine. She’d probably turn a cold shoulder to him in bed, and thank God for that too.

  His eyes fell on the package on the cushions next to him. He picked it up and put it on the table. He was the kind of man who bought such things from the kind of men who sold such things. In the heat of the deal, there wasn’t time to call in an appraiser. He had to trust his gut and his luck.

  Containing his rising spirits, he began to undo the knots.

  Monsters bared their fangs from the red surface of the worm-eaten wooden box. A dragon flying through the air; a giant snake coiled around a mountain peak; a white tiger prowling the ground—these animal drawings dashed off in black ink possessed an uncanny realism and sense of presence that burned into his retinas so vividly that he unconsciously pulled away.

  “He said he dug it up—”

  The man stroked his jowls. He couldn’t believe his luck. There was no end to the precious artifacts that only an expert could put a price on. But he could count on the fingers of one hand those ancient works of art whose value anybody knew at a glance. This was one of them—in the same class of a nation’s crown jewels. No, a wonder of the world.

  The shining brightness in the tiger’s eyes, the realism in the dragon’s scales—he noticed his palms were sweating and wiped them on his bathrobe. The air conditioner was on full. He hadn’t been this excited about a find in a decade.

  He touched the lid covering the box. Considering its design, those creatures must protect untold treasures within. His finger froze. He had the feeling the tiger was glaring at him. He put more effort into his hands and lifted up the lid without any additional effort.

  He let out an explosive breath. Just as the phone on the table rang. Clucking to himself, the man replaced the lid and got up. He stepped over to the desk and picked up the receiver.

  “It’s from Kanzaki-san,” said his wife, sounding like fingernails on a chalkboard. Calls to the residence weren’t set to go directly to the study.

  “Tell them I’m tired. I just got home.”

  “He says it’s urgent business, from the Chief Cabinet Secretary. Kanzaki-san says it’s not something he can handle on his own.”

  “What the hell’s with Demon City’s General Administration Division?” he grumbled. “Who does he think the bad guy is here? My God, if he doesn’t have the brass to intimidate the likes of the Cabinet Secretary—well, all right. Fine.”

  Yoshitake Kajiwara, mayor of Shinjuku ward, took a deep breath and prepared himself to tear his subordinate a new one.

  Setsura ran after the Demon Princess, following her to the middle of the forest. The reasons were simple.

  “I know where Takako is,” she’d said. “Come with me and we’ll throw a little reunion.”

  Normally, whether or not to take a handout from the enemy would be a no-brainer. But the situation was hardly normal this time.

  “Sure,” he’d said, and went willingly with the woman in white.

  They weren’t on any kind of trail. The undergrowth changed with every step, up to the knees, to the chest, over his head. Princess alone strode without a detour, without slackening in her pace, running along with a straight bearing. Setsura couldn’t help noticing that the thick shrubs and briers parted before them of their own accord.

  A white object wavered in the distance. Using his devil wires out as sensors, he determined that it was a towering column of high-temperature steam. Despite the smell of sulfur, there was nothing toxic about it.

  After another fifteen yards, a rugged and rocky field appeared in a corner of the forest. The steam rose in thick columns. Between the columns a pool of water, a hot springs, was visible.

  Standing next to a rock, Princess put her hands on the clasp of her robe. Setsura said, “You came here to take a bath? You’ve been taking me for a ride.”

  Princess paused and smiled. “Nothing of the sort. You will learn of Takako’s location soon enough. But you’re looking a bit down in the mouth. You must be tired. Not a condition at all appropriate in one of my servants. You could use a good soak.”

  “You think this is the time for that? I’ll go on without you.”

  “Go where?”

  “Wherever.”

  “Regardless of whether you know where that is. How very much like you. Go wandering around in the dark and you are bound to get lost. You’ll do yourself more harm than good.”

  So it was back to the hot springs with this woman.

  “Besides, didn’t you wound your hand in the village of the Dancing Fiend? These waters would do you a world of good. Join me.”

  The steam or her garments blocked his view. When his vision cleared, she wasn’t there anymore. A splash and spray of water that made him duck.

  “What are you doing? Come on,” she urged him firmly, standing in the hot springs, boldly exposing herself above her waist.

  Light reflected off the water beading on her porcelain skin like pearls. Princess herself was an angel, her body itself the beautiful treasure. A small spark of admiration lit up in the eyes of the young man looking idly on.

  “Hurry up,” Princess enticed. The tone of her voice was the same, but layered now with husky overtones.

  Setsura started to walk towards her, and then stopped. She wasn’t weaving a spell over him. The only magic she was using was her own nudity.

  And yet the sight alone stirred up mists of sexual desire that clouded his thoughts, rang like crystalline bells in his ears. His self-control slipped away. He cast himself into a sleepwalking state as he yielded to her commands.

  “What a strange man. Don’t you want me? Don’t you want to embrace this body at least once? Or do you belong to Doctor Mephisto’s tribe?”

  Now shadows of disgust and volition flitted across the unruffled features. “Enough with the kidding around,” he said sternly.

  “Then come on in. I—” Princess looked up at the sky. “Hoh.”

  Setsura followed her gaze. “Huh,” he said.

  “What did you see?” Princess asked.

  “Oh, nothing.”

  “Then what did you say huh for?”

  “Dramatic effect.”

  Princess gave up trying to twist his moral arm. “There will be plenty of opportunities for us after this. If you find the prospect so disagreeable, then I will enjoy the waters alone. You take the point. Go looking for Takako alone.”

  She sank down, down to her head and deeper still, until only her black hair floated on the surface, until it too was sucked into the depths, leaving him very much alone.

  He gazed at the sky, the surrounding forest, the bathing hole at his feet. He nodded. “Might as well.”

  Though he didn’t sound convinced that these hot springs were as grand a place as she claimed it to be.

  Ryuuki walked alone down Okubo Avenue. The old warrior’s refined features were strained with inarticulable distress. Now and then, a passerby turned for a second look.

  The root of Ryuuki’s pain was his craving for blood. He was starving and suffering. Blood was life. He was exercising his martial spirit to suppress that desire.

  Reverberations shook the air above his head. Bright beams of light pierced the darkness and swept towards General Ryuuki. Helicopters.

  “You, there! Stop where you are! Don’t move! Our laser cannon and missiles are trained on you.”

  Ryuuki counted how many were hovering around him. Five, positioned randomly across the sky.

  He moved fast. Beams of light fell to the ground in front and in back of him, to the right and left. The asphalt vaporized. Flames shot up, thousands of degrees in intensity.

  One beam caught him dead in the chest. He fell forward violently. Another beam pierced his skull.

  “Cease fire,” came the voice over the radio. “But don’t touch him. H
old your positions until the ground troops arrive. Don’t let down your guard.”

  “Roger that.”

  The helicopter drifted closer, forming an air cordon around him. Ryuuki suddenly looked up at the sky. Laser cannons and RPGs weren’t enough. An invisible something ruptured the air in the center of the squadron. As if summoned by unseen forces, Shinjuku’s elite helicopter corps plummeted a hundred and fifty feet to the earth.

  Part Nine: Ryuuki Agonistes

  Chapter One

  The sirens and lights of the patrol cars converged on Okubo Avenue. The Toyama bus stop.

  These lights and the sounds were said to make evil cower everywhere, but the occupants of the vehicles were hardly in a confident mood. They knew that Shinjuku’s air combat wing, the much vaunted helicopters corps, had just been destroyed.

  They knew who the criminal was too. A single, unarmed man. These air devils, equipped with lasers and air-to-ground missiles and rotary cannons, had been knocked out of the sky with a wave of his hand.

  What good would their puny side arms do?

  Their blood boiled with anger and revenge. At the same time, a cold thread of fear ran through their guts. Fortunately, all that remained at the scene of the crime were the blue trails of burning aviation fuel, the twisted wreckage of the helicopters and the bodies of the crew members.

  There was no sign of the perpetrator.

  The reconnaissance helicopter radioed in: “Toyama Park and the Toyama housing project are being searched. You will be updated of any findings. Over.”

  “Start looking further afield,” the incident officer announced.

  The man turned forty-nine this year, and for all the time he spent grandstanding at crime scenes was generally regarded as a run-of-the-mill desk jockey. But none of them had a problem with that directive.

  Several days before, the Toyama housing project had been hit by a mysterious nuclear attack. Not only was the central courtyard cordoned off, but the rest of the block still seethed with radiation.

  Thanks to the superhuman efforts of the departments of public health and safety and nuclear control, that same day the surrounding neighborhoods were blocked off with lead-impregnated, high-polymer barriers and sprayed with radiation absorbing foam. Levels immediately outside the project had been reduced to acceptable levels, though the threat of radiation poisoning inside the zone would remain dangerously high for at least another month.