His father often said something about there being no words to describe a certain event or something.  He, on the other hand, was having no such trouble; dozens were popping into his mind.  Fucked.  Screwed.  Up shit's creek without a paddle.  In deep kimchee.  In the red, definitely a particularly appropriate one for the moment.  To name just a few.

He'd always known it was a bad idea to make his Tousan mad, but DAMN!

"What the hell possessed you to pick up a gun?"  Tousan was... seething.  Yes, that was the word:  seething.  Only a seething Tousan would have glowing red eyes.  "Do you have any idea what could have happened?"

"I - Well, I thought - " he began, fighting the urge to start backing out of sight.

"You thought?" Tousan repeated darkly.  "When, exactly, did you think here?"

This time he was unable to resist the impulse and fell a step back.  "I - I," he floundered, retreating another pace.

Tousan's hand clenched on his shoulder, holding him in place, and he held back a wince.  "You weren't thinking.  You just found something dangerous and wanted to play with it, didn't you?"

He nodded and reluctantly admitted, "Yes."

"What if your brother or sister had gotten a hold of it?"

For a split second, his blood ran cold.  His sister was strong as hell, yeah, but they shared a common fault of acting first and asking questions later.  And with his brother and his potential for disaster...  He winced, looking up to meet his Tousan's eyes once more, relaxing a bit to see they were fading back to their usual color.  He could feel the color returning to his own eyes; it happened sometimes, that his power went out and his eyes changed color, though he had no idea to what shade.  "I'm sorry, Tousan," he whispered.  "I won't touch another gun ever again."

Tousan slowly released his shoulder, and he rotated it subtly, wincing slightly.  He'd known Tousan was strong, but well, damn...  Maybe this was where his sister got all her supernatural strength.

"You'd better be," Tousan promised direly, "because I'm turning you over to your Mom and Dad for punishment."

It was all he could do not to let out a sigh of relief.  As bad as the other two of his parents could be, they weren't nearly as scary as Tousan could be, mainly because it took so much to rile him, though anything that could hurt one of them or one of his parents usually did the trick.  This brief argument felt like it'd taken a good ten or so years off his life.  "Of course, Tousan," he replied, turning his eyes down to stare at the floor.

Tousan's hand once again gripped his shoulder, though in a much looser hold.  "I just don't want you to get hurt," the man admitted, sounding like the words were being forcibly pulled from him.  Tousan was rarely one for public affection, even with him, or his siblings, or Dad and Mom.  Mom said he was just reserved, again making these rare displays of overprotective anger all the more alarming.  "You're my son, and I don't want anything bad to happen to you."

He smiled faintly and hugged Tousan, silently amazed to feel arms around him as well.  "Thanks, Tousan."

Tousan permitted the hug another moment then stepped back.  "Go to your room."  He sounded somewhat relieved that this whole thing was over, though he certainly couldn't be more relieved than he himself felt.  "I'm sure your Mom and Dad are going to ground you."

He winced.  "At the very least." But he made good his offered out and fled the room.

"You got in trouble. You got in trouble," he heard his sister tease in a sing-song voice from the other side of her room.

He paused outside it long enough to return, "One day, when you get in trouble with Tousan, I'm going to laugh at you," before pressing on to his own bedroom and flopping down on his bed, letting his eyes slip closed.

A heavy weight landed on his chest, and he felt the air rush out of his lungs.  "Niichan!  Niichan, niichan!  Wake up, niichan!"

His first thought, after 'Oww', was 'Dai's getting heavy.'

"Niichan!" Dai yelled again, shaking his shoulders.  "Are you awake?"

He pushed at his brother once, not trying too hard; he didn't want to hurt him after all.  Not that he was complaining too much about being woken up from that dream (even just remembering Tousan mad took months and years off his life), but he had to object to the means.  "That's it," he mumbled, peeking his eyes open.  "I'm feeding you birdseed." 

"Un-uhh!  Daddy doesn't cook birdseed."

Daddy?  "Who let you have caffeine?"

A big grin covered the younger boy's face.  "Touchan left the coffee pot out half-full."

He groaned and shoved Dai off him at last, the hyper boy giggling as he bounced on his bed, burrowing his dark violet hair into Kyo's pillow.  "Why'd you wake me up?"  Like that especially.

Dai finally finished snuggling and opened wide purple eyes.  "You were asleep."

He felt a faint tug at the base of his skull. He wasn't very surprised to see the end of his braid in Dai's fist; the younger boy always seemed to be attached to it.  "You're going to have to let go of that, Dai."

"Nooo!  Why?!"

He bit back a grin.  "Because you woke me up, and now I have to get up."

"Un-uhh!"  His eyes seemed so caffeine-glazed they audibly blinked.  "Nobody else but Touchan's up."

Big surprise there.  Tousan was always wake and up before everyone else.  "So why did I have to be up?"

"You don't have to be up, just awake.  The dark mousy woke everyone else up."  He blinked, and he was pretty sure he heard his brother's eyes clicking again this time.  "Miho said that-word-we're-not-supposed-to-say to me.  She told me to," he actually made a beeping sound instead of cursing, "off.  Miho's mean."

Yet another big surprise.  Still, the Dai-logic was a bit baffling.  "So you woke up everyone?"

The boy nodded overenthusiastically.  "Mama and Daddy said they were up."  He'd believe that when he saw it.  "Miho said the bad, bad word to me.  Touchan's been up forever and ever!"  He beamed, snuggling up to him.  "And now niichan's awake!"

Damn, he was too adorable to be mad at for long.  Infinite cuteness, to be sure.  Still, there was no point in being too upset for being woken up like that.  At least he'd learned his lesson about leaving his door locked; two glomp-induced concussions had been enough to make him willing to let Dai pounce him into a softer surface, namely his bed.

He glanced up from his mini-reverie to see Dai snuggling closer and trying to wrap his braid around him.  He raised an eyebrow.  "And what're you doing now?"

"My niichan!"

The eyebrow shot sky high.  "Oh really?"

"Yep!"

A sharp racket cut off anything he'd bee about to say, the noise coming from outside.  He started to sit up, wincing sharply as that yanked his braid hard.  "What's that?"

Dai was silent a second in thought.  "Oh yeah!  Touchan said there were demons outside, so I should wake everyone up to help kill them.  Guess I forgot, huh?"

He stared at his brother in undisguised shock.  "You... forgot?"  He unwound his hair from his brother's hand and bolted from the room, still only in his pajama bottoms and tee-shirt and pounded on his parents' door.  "Dad!  Mama!"  He pushed it open without waiting for a response.  "Tousan needs -"

He froze.  Mama and Dad weren't to be seen - at least till he looked out the window and saw Shinigami and Selene dropping out of view.  Okay, that was that.  Now the hard one.

He raced back down the hallway, skidding to a stop outside his sister's door, banging on it loudly.  "Miho!  Get up!"

"Fuck off!" he received in response.

He growled deep in his throat and hit the door again.  "Get the hell out here, Miho!  Tousan needs help!"

The door opened a crack, and he was just able to see part of Miho standing there, dressed in a pair of boxers with super-deformed dancing Gundams on them and a white tank top emblazoned with 'Princess' in baby blue across the chest.  "What?"

"Tousan needs our help!  Now come on!"

"One sec."  She pushed the door most of the way closed again, but he could still hear her whispering with at least one other person in her room.

When she again opened the door a bit more, he called through, "You come too, Pan, John."

John snatched the door the rest of the way open.  "How'd you know we were here?"

He smirked as he answered, "My sister may be a dumb bitch, but she doesn't talk to herself.  OW!"  He turned a hard glare on his twin sister, who was trying to look too busy retrieving her broadsword to have been the one to have hit the back of his head.  Like he believed that one.

He felt a slight tug on the end of his braid.  He didn't need to look down to know it was Dai.  It was a rather typical way for the younger boy to keep up with him.  Why did the boy have to be so damned adorable, he thought to himself as the five of them dashed down the stairs, grabbing what weapons they could quickly from the closet they were kept in, and hurried out the back door.

For a moment, he froze.  In all his seventeen strange years, he'd never before seen anything quite like this.  First there were the demons, who bore a passing resemblance to humans, as if a human had had a more than passing encounter with either a Shar-pei or a fruit bat; he wasn't sure which yet.  Then there were his parents.  Mama was throwing those probability bolts of hers around like party favors.  Dad -  Well, Shinigami had some kind of energy scythe in his hands, occasionally using it to extend his reach a good two or three more feet; the rest of the time he was getting down and dirty - and blood-splattered.  And Tousan, he had Kuzanagi out and was using it to give these creatures hell.  He didn't even look winded yet.  How unsurprising.

One look at the red glow shining around Tousan's eyes was enough to break the tableau.  He saw Miho's broadsword catch the early morning light then a demon's head go flying far enough to bounce off the high wood fence separating their house from Pan and John's family's house.

And they were still greatly outnumbered.

Dai's hand in his hair tightened and yanked his head back.  "They're scary!" the fourteen-year-old wailed.  Out of nowhere, his black wings appeared and wrapped around himself, so only the top of his head and his legs from the knees down were visible.  But at least he'd released Kyo's hair.

"Damn," he muttered, stepping between his brother and the overgrown Pugs.  He halfway wished Dai's destructive powers could be activated at will, then he could just toss the boy at the demons, stand back, and watch the fireworks.  Wouldn't work though; Miho would have tried it by now if it could.  Well, at least Pan and John's younger sister wasn't here... yet, though he wouldn't give the annoying girl much longer before she decided to put in an appearance.  That would just be his luck after all.

"Down, Miho." 

He halfway wondered if she'd have obeyed as quickly if the order came from anyone but Tousan. As it was, she hit the ground pretty damn fast, but also just in time for Tousan to take the head off a demon that had slipped past her guard. Not that she had been doing poorly either. How could they? They'd been training for this their entire lives for today, the day the demons returned.

19 July 2005

Hmm... What can I say about this?  It's, obviously, the sequel to Gods and Other Creatures and I don't think words can express how glad I am to be working on it, even if there wasn't all that much call for it.  But this is for me writing for myself and the few people who were interested in it. And... I love my narrator in this part...

More to come soon, in and amidst me working on Endless Loop 2: Blood and Sacrifice and two or three entries for a novella challenge (10,000 words minimum - I must be losing it). See you in Chapter One!