Yashakiden: The Demon Princess, Volume 5 Omnibus Edition

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  “Hanging out near some gang’s crib near Yocho. Hard to tell if it’s really her, though.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She set the whole place on fire and then picked off every last one of them as they ran for their lives.”

  The figure of the black bird reflected in their eyes like an angel of death.

  Part Thirteen: Dragon and Tiger Time

  Chapter One

  Since that morning, the Shinjuku Police Department had been worked ragged by two separate incidents.

  The first had the mayor telling his undercover agents, “A leader of the vampires is holed up in a fissure in the earth near Yocho. Take a hundred of your best men and eliminate her.”

  The police chief wanted to know where he got his information. All he would say was, “A private communication from one of our citizens.”

  They were provisioned with two hundred peaches and stakes from the city warehouse. Five minutes before they were scheduled to depart, an emergency report came in from a Yocho police box.

  “We’ve got a raging fire and a rampaging killer on our hands here.”

  So far, nobody had put the two incidents together and concluded that the mayor’s information and the rampaging killer shared the same source.

  The special unit that had been assembled split into two and rushed to the scene. The results were as pitiful as they were violent.

  Entering the earth through the fissure, the police unit came across a strikingly beautiful woman in a huge sewer conduit deep underground. She was naked and sound asleep.

  These men were not from the Toyama housing project. The sight of her lascivious body stole away their souls along with their reason. They cast aside their stakes and leaned over her body. Steeped in her bloody dreams, her body reacted. Not one of them emerged after that to tell what happened next.

  The gangster’s crib was a more straightforward affair. The territory in question involved an entire city block consisting of the headquarters and three or four houses adjacent to it, and ten to twenty more bars, strip clubs and loan sharking establishments that operated under its “protection.” The gang itself didn’t come to more than three hundred members.

  It was one of hundreds of such “associations” located in Shinjuku.

  And it was consumed in flames.

  The fire department started extinguishing the fire. They and the SDF reservists, whose goals up to this point seemed unrelated, found themselves confronted by both the hair-raising murderer and the extent of the destruction.

  The streets were engulfed in smoke and flames. The conflagration was so fierce that only one passable road remained. All the houses appeared to have been torched simultaneously. The flash points ran from the bottom floors to the roofs like lightning strikes in reverse.

  The residents had jumped from the windows and ran up the one safe street. In this part of town, they were naturally all packing heat of their own.

  Reaching a safe distance, the smoke and embers whirling into the air above them, they encountered a blue lady standing there. The bands of lights whirling about her body shot through the escaping gangsters, wrapping them in flames the same color.

  “What the fuck are you doing, lady?”

  Her merciless smile froze them in their tracks. Their guns spat fire. Lasers and RPGs rushed at her.

  In the midst of an inferno more violent than the bonfires behind them, the lady grew all the more blue and transparent. Her laughter wafted on the winds, laughter from the depths of her heart, aroused by unbearable pleasures.

  Witnessing the kind of being behind this massacre, the rescuers hung back. Every time the blue light spilled out, the blazing buildings flared and expanded in different shapes and colors.

  “What are you doing, Princess?” she cried out. “I will burn down this city while you sleep. Yo, firefighters! Hurry up and fight these fires. I’ll light you some more and keep you busy as bees. Ah, the life of a killer is so much fun.”

  Here was the strange sight of a merciless murderer murdering alongside firefighters fighting fires.

  The police weren’t just going to stand idly by. They drew their weapons and ordered her to stop and fired warning shots. When all came to naught, a few of them tried to tackle her, but passed right through her body.

  The firefighters directed their hoses at the flames scorching the sky. Beside them danced a woman slaughtering one victim after the next. Beside them, security agents crashed into the ground like acrobatic clowns. Tragedy turned into a comedy and the comedy became a farce.

  There was finally nobody left to run away. The blue Takako turned to the police officers and firefighters. The feared and respected Shinjuku Demon Hunting Squad hadn’t yet arrived.

  Something descended from the sky.

  Setsura Aki landed on the ground with only slightly bent knees, and quickly straightened. Tonbeau Nuvenberg landed with a thump on her ass. “Ow, ow, ow!” she yelped, not immediately getting up.

  “Oh, it’s Setsura-san!” Takako called out. “Did you come here to get in my way? You and your fat auntie?”

  “That I did,” Setsura answer airily. “I would have taken you back myself, but you are the other Kanan-san, so my fat aunt is here to watch my back.”

  Tonbeau got to her feet, brushing off her bum and puffing alcoholic fumes. “Young people these days don’t respect their elders. Who extricated herself from that tight fix? Who figured out where she was? Thanks to a little magical Weight Watchers, I dropped fifty pounds too.”

  She belched.

  “Sorry about that,” Setsura apologized, not taking his eyes off Takako.

  He found out about Takako from Tonbeau and the big raven. Rather than hailing a taxi, he’d made his way there with his devil wires. But no matter how great a genie he might be, he didn’t have a way of capturing her without killing her. Not to mention that killing her was pretty much impossible too.

  How could he kill this demonic sprite, that he couldn’t even touch?

  “Sorry, but I won’t be going with you,” Takako said.

  “Why?” asked Setsura.

  “I haven’t done enough killing yet. Doing away with all those weaker things feels so good. I can accept it in a way I never could before. I have at last become the real me.”

  Setsura listened without response, taking in the alter-ego of this girl he was trying to save and her inhuman confessions. Passing through the shadow of death, the shadows falling upon his frazzled face were a darker shade than mere weariness.

  This was not Takako. And yet it was Takako. The girl sleeping peacefully in the back of the Crystal Pavilion was Takako. The girl who could slay hundreds and then calmly complain she was just getting started was Takako too.

  What had Mephisto created in his effort to rescue Takako before she turned fully into a vampire?

  “Perhaps you were better off as a vampire.” There was hardly a perhaps about it now. “But we’ll take you with us.”

  “And if I say no?” Takako said, raising a hand to her mouth and smirking. “Get in my way and I’ll kill you, and a dozen more like you. Once I have reduced the population of Demon City to zero, I’ll think about it.”

  The blue light grazed across Setsura’s face and struck a patrol car behind him. The hood flew open, disgorging a ball of flame and wrapping a fiery blanket of oily fire around the police officers.

  Setsura flicked his right hand. The micron-thin titanium scythe severed Takako’s willowy waist in two. He felt nothing more than the wires parting thin air.

  “Oh, you got me,” Takako said with a mischievous glare. “But it won’t come cheap. I may just have to tease you to death.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Setsura said with a shrug, a sign he was out of ideas on his end.

  The blue light leapt out and struck at Setsura’s chest. In the moment before contact, it changed into a rainbow of colors and spread out in ripples. The ripples overlapped and merged, casting out shadows of light and dark around him.

&nbs
p; “Much appreciated,” said Setsura.

  Tonbeau cheeks flushed. “Ah, well, it can’t be helped, I guess. Youngsters these days may be uncouth, but they are comely. A kiss as a reward? Oh! What was I thinking?”

  “On the lips?” Takako said disbelievingly.

  “You’re darn tootin’!”

  “On the cheek,” corrected Setsura, a tad bit peeved. “On the cheek.”

  “Fine. I’ll burn you to a crisp but leave your filthy lips behind.”

  Tonbeau stifled a belch. “Let’s get this straight, girlie. You are a doppelganger. You’re not the first, and you won’t be the last. Though I can’t remember one ever being as bitchy as you. There are ways. We have means.”

  “Then let us see what you have to offer before I dispatch you for good.”

  Blue stained the world. With Takako encased at its center, the sapphire snake slithered down the road. Every time the glowing torso struck the surface, black smoke erupted from the asphalt. The trail carved into the blacktop and the light it cast off made mincemeat of obstacles.

  Amidst the shouts and screams of the police officers drifted incantations in the Czech tongue. “In the name of the four great elements, I summon you. Water that scatters light, wind that binds what cannot be touched. Come! Urp.”

  The sun dimmed.

  Water gushed up like a fountain from the tracks gouged by the snake, forming a barrier in front of the raging light. The light was sucked into the water. At the same time, a strangled cry rose from Takako’s throat. A gust of wind tangled about the body that her alter-ego, that nothing else could touch.

  A similar “Hand of the Wind” was said to infuse the magical arts perfected by Christian Rosenkreuz.

  “Come here!”

  Tonbeau beckoned with her hand. However Takako tried to flee, a stronger power restrained her. Twirling around like a ballerina, she was drawn into the witch’s arms.

  “She’s a strong one all right. Wrap the both of us with those threads of yours.” Tonbeau felt the punishing binding twining around them. “You can let the mayor know what’s going on later. First, get me back home as quickly as possible!”

  “Roger that,” a voice drawled from within the black smoke. The beer-barrel sized lady and the willowy girl, embracing like mother and child, flew high into the air.

  The officers and firefighters who’d escaped a fiery death thought they might have recognized a man in black on the roof of a nearby building, but then a moment later, the oily blast from an exploding patrol car erased the three otherworldly beings from view.

  That day at least, probably the ones most shaken by events were those three. When they arrived safely back at the house a dozen minutes later, the box wasn’t there. In the full light of day, someone had strolled into the great magician’s house and borne it away.

  “What is this!” Tonbeau raged. Setsura looked on blankly.

  Tonbeau was still locked in an embrace with Takako. Thanks to the “wind” element, the hair of the two had stood on end, blown back, then tangled together.

  “One would think that common thieves would at least give a house bearing the name of Nuvenberg a pass!”

  As it turned out, an eyewitness was present, the doll girl lying on a bed in the back. “The mayor came by,” she explained in a soft but firm voice.

  “He what? Didn’t you think that a bit strange? What did he say? That the prime minister wanted a gander at it too? Or else—”

  “Did he say he wanted Doctor Mephisto to take a look at it?” suggested Setsura.

  “No. His wife. She wanted to show it off to her friends at an upcoming Welfare Society fundraiser.”

  “You don’t say.” Tonbeau’s shoulders slumped. “And I could believe it.”

  “So could I,” Setsura agreed. He went to the living room and made a phone call.

  “I haven’t left the office since coming to work this morning!” the mayor barked. “At any rate, I want to hear what’s going on. Get over here as soon as you can!”

  The prime minister had managed to call off the American nuclear missile strike. But this business of him sporting Setsura’s face and everything else—mysteries piled on top of mysteries.

  “I’ll explain everything later,” Setsura said.

  The mayor insisted he could come over right then, but Setsura politely declined and ended the call.

  “I’m afraid you were taken for a ride,” he said gently. The doll girl hung her head. Setsura scratched his head in a damn-it-all manner and said to the trussed up Tonbeau and Takako, “The mayor says that a girl came to him with information about Princess’s current hiding place. The door didn’t budge coming in or going out, and his secretary noticed nothing amiss. Was that you?”

  “Hmm?” Takako smiled seductively.

  “Why would you do something like that?”

  “I detest women who carry on so high and mighty. If you want me to explain more, hurry up and tell this lump of pork to let go of me.”

  “What’s this? I’ll teach you to respect your elders, young lady.”

  She squeezed her hamhock pair of arms. Takako screamed. The whirlwind whipped at their hair and clothes.

  “Tonbeau-san,” Setsura said, looking out the window, “I’m going to search for Princess. It might be possible to put an end to this during the day. Ten thousand police officers and more wouldn’t make a bit of difference.”

  “I’ll leave you to it. Vampires give me the willies.”

  “I figured as much. You’ve been a great help. I’ll leave Takako Kanan-san in your care.”

  “Don’t dawdle. If you’re not back quick, I’m throwing in the towel once and for all. What happens next to this city, I couldn’t care less. How long do I keep holding onto this tart?”

  He asked Takako, “And what will you do if left to your own devices?”

  “Only the dead know.”

  “Damned quack,” Setsura grumbled to himself. The sculpturesque face of a doctor and the wan countenance of a girl grazed his thoughts, the body of Takako Kanan left behind in the back of the Crystal Pavilion.

  He’d have to get everybody back where they belonged eventually. But a more pressing matter awaited him right now.

  How would this genie slay the Demon Princess slumbering deep within the earth?

  Chapter Two

  Setsura stopped before the fissure in Yocho.

  It was a little over a dozen feet wide and a yard across at its widest point. Of the hundreds of such chasms and crevasses scattered across Shinjuku, this one was on the small side. Even children knew to avoid them. The stakes and cyclone fences were there to keep the silly sightseers from doing silly things and injuring themselves.

  Although they were all generally referred to as “fissures,” they came in a myriad of types and sizes. The one in Ushigome-Yanagi was covered and surrounded by three layers of fifty-thousand-volt electric fencing. On nights when a bright moon rose high, creatures of unknown origins emerged while others recklessly threw themselves in.

  The hole in Bentencho was a tad more “real.” Three times a day, at eight o’clock in the morning, noon, and seven in the evening, a single SDF soldier arrived, tossed in a hand grenade, waited for the explosion, and left. As far as anybody knew, nothing had changed about that hole, and the SDF wasn’t testing hand grenade designs.

  Whatever was lurking down there demanded caution. The drivers of the vehicles parked around the vacant lot reported that nobody had returned. That they hadn’t hardly surprised him. That responsibility fell on the shoulders of the mayor. However shrewd a man he might be, he couldn’t comprehend Princess’s bottomless powers.

  But the real reason Setsura came to a halt was that—something was there. He looked around. It was ten o’clock in the morning. The summer sun poured down, as if trying to reduce everything to a melting pool of white.

  The vacant lot was approximately a hundred feet on a side. The buildings that once stood there had been leveled, and now only broken-down ten foot walls on
the east and south sides remained.

  Setsura’s gaze focused on the top of the south wall. Nothing was there. His devil wires jumped out and scanned the surface of the wall, and detected a warm spot, not the heat of the sun but left by something with a body, that had been there a short time before.

  A golden scale about four inches long and two inches wide. The edges of the scale were dark green. Off the top of his head, he couldn’t think of any creature it might belong to.

  He spun around, sensing the raw breath of a wild thing in the vicinity of his waist. Nothing was there.

  Gripping the devil wires cast out to the wall, Setsura approached the fissure. Anything after him should still be on his tail. And when it came at him, he’d be better off knowing what he was fighting.

  He jumped over the chain-link fence, didn’t land, but fell down into the chasm. His slicker puffed open in the up-rushing wind as he descended like a black dahlia into this literal underworld.

  All around him glowed green eyes. His ears rang with the sickening cries and growls. These were the creatures incrusted into the walls of earth on all sides.

  Three hundred feet down he reduced the velocity of his descent and dropped silently to solid ground. He’d scanned the ground with a separate devil wire for a safe place to land. The area was lit up by sunlight spilling from the fissure far above and a faint glow from the water conduits.

  Bioluminescent bugs flourished in the stone walls and layers of mud. The faint pink light cast Setsura into the silhouette of a man born into a demon world and left with no place else to turn.

  But this silhouette had places to go and things to do before calling it a day.

  The ground stretching out from the crushed sewers was covered with footprints. The men had shot down the escape tubes currently stacked up on the trucks, which then automatically recoiled when no longer in use—one of the “secret weapons” used by special tactical units.

  A strange sound reached Setsura’s ears a short time later—call it the moans and groans of those imprisoned forever in the darkness of this subterranean labyrinth.