Chapter 54: the Pucelle

Escape, Mizu needed to escape! He stumbled on his feet. This is what saved him. Iron flew like an overheated ray of light just where his head had been seconds before.

The Tengu ahead of him hadn’t been able to dodge. He hadn’t been as lucky as Mizu. A hole had appeared on the back of his head.

The body of the Tengu began to fall like a puppet with cut strings. The body of the Tengu touched the ground.

However, instead of completely falling, lying on the Earth, the body began to glow a crimson colour before exploding in multiple sprites of the same colour.

The sprites went past Mizu, travelling behind him, to where he knew they were. ‘Now wasn’t the time to think!’ he reminded himself mentally.

He went back to running, his supernatural strength allowing him to cut through deserted streets like a sports car. Stopping was death!

Mizu didn't want to die. Mizu didn't want to die in such a way. Weeks ago, things weren't like this. Things shouldn't have changed so quickly! Things shouldn’t have turned this way! He would have preyed if he didn't know that the gods of the glorious land of the rising sun had been mostly eradicated by the devils.

The gaze of Mizu fell on the beginning of another street on the right. He slid, his paw moving on the ground as if he was a figure skater.

He was in the open but now that he had taken a turn, he knew that he would be out of the gaze of the ones hunting him.

The gaze of Mizu fell on a little opening on the ground, one that would probably lead to the sewers.

Mizu was a youkai, an inu Youkai from the once great Hatake clan and their innate techniques had always laid in the art of tricking minds and shapeshifting.

He jumped, jujutsu enveloping his form to allow him to shapeshift. Mizu allowed a happy smile to bloom on his face. He would survive. He would be able to see again his brother and sisters!

Something divine, holy pierced through the air like a missile and burrowed itself deep in the arm of the Inu.

Agony erupted in Mizu's veins and he wasn't able to stop himself from howling in pain. He could feel himself stuck.

He turned toward his arm to see a sword had been the one to pierce it and nail him to a wall. Mizu recognized the sword.

He wasn't a smith or a connoisseur of powerful weapons but he had seen the same blade cut those who had been, that he had called friends, brothers, sisters, comrades.

This blade had cut through jujutsu-augmented scales and armour. Nothing they had done had been able to hide them or protect them from the bite of the weapon.

Even at that moment, only his training as an Inu ninja allowed him to feel the poison the weapon was diffusing in his being, a poison that almost seemed sentient, that felt alive, that saw the existence of Mizu as a stain, one that needed to be removed. It was a poison that screamed divinity, perfection and that hated everything it deemed unholy, imperfect just like Mizu.

Mizu tried to move it but the sword didn't budge or slip no matter how frantically he tried to escape from it. It was as if the sword was the mythical sword in the stone that the legendary King Arthur had once wielded.

Despair began to overwrite his mind as the Inu youkai realized how dire his situation was. If he didn't escape, he would die. The blade had been able to hurt him. It meant that the wielder was close and Mizu in that moment, Mizu feared only the blade and the monster who slaughtered his brethren with it.

He tried to use Jujutsu but the grasp of his curse energy eluded him as if something was destabilizing him from the inside, destroying both at a physical and a metaphysical level.

He needed to escape! How could he escape?! ‘Think Mizu! Think’. Realization entered his mind and made his eyes widen. The thing stopping him, not allowing him to escape was his arm.

Festerous wounds needed to be excised to not infect the rest of the body. Those had been the words of wisdom he had once heard from an elder. He wished just that those words hadn’t been so literal.  Determination bloomed In his eyes as he continued to gaze at his arm. He needed to get rid of it.

He needed to get rid of it ‘but this was his arm,’  his instinct screamed. He had always lived with his arm! Losing an arm would also mean crippling himself. Some techniques need to be executed with two hands.

He took his decision. Better a crippled future than no future. Better a shameful future than no future.

Even with his arm, nothing would have changed. Mizu had chosen to flee after his friends died instead of fighting honourably. Just for that, he would have been treated as a pariah by his clan. What was another shame?

Mizu tried to take a deep breath but he was unable to. His lungs felt constricted as if with each instant, weights after weights were placed on his chest.

The weapon, he realized. He needed to act now! He gathered all the curse energy he could in his right arm and with it chopped his left one.

Flesh, nerves, sinews and bones were cut as if they were butter freeing the Inu and making him fall to the ground due to his loss of balance.

For a moment, Mizu felt nothing wrong. The next one, maddening pain assaulted his body and his senses. Blood erupted in an arc painting the wall behind him with a crescent.

The Inu bit in his tongue to not shoot. The lesser pain allowed him to focus on something else other than the fact he missed an arm, on the fact he needed to escape.

He crawled, his body feeling like a wreck due to the poison he could still feel shimmering in his veins and the fact that he was still loading blood. Had he been a lesser Youkai or a human, he would have already died of blood loss or shock.

Soon, he said to himself mentally. Soon, it'll be over. Soon, he would escape from this nightmare. Soon, he would see his family.

His fingers itched toward the entrance to the sewers, jujutsu already changing his form beginning with his remaining arm.

Joy and relief bloomed inside him as his elbow passed through. He had succeeded!

It was Unfortunately for Mizu at this moment, that a flash of silver moved through the air, through what had been his remaining arm.

“What?” the Inu whispered in shock and despair as his last arm was cut away.

“Do you truly think you would have been able to escape me?” the voice of a woman said arrogantly above him.

The woman who had cut Mizu’s arm, who had been one of the monsters who slaughtered all of a hidden peaceful Youkai community was a beautiful young woman who seemed foreign with blonde hair and sky-blue eyes.

She wore European armour over what Mizu could recognize as a Japanese uniform. A cheerful smile was drawn on her lips.

She looked like an angel. She didn't look like someone able to kill without any remorse.

“I let you run, you know,” she told him, her damned smile stitched on her face. “I wanted to see what you would do. I thought maybe you could have done something interesting. Unfortunately, you didn't. You just lost my time.”

She shrugged “It is what it is Mr monster.” She grabbed the silver blade and pointed it at his head “Now, I'm going to kill you and go back to the others.”

“Why?” Mizu found himself asking. “Why? He repeated. “We did nothing to you. We attacked no one.”

The sword retreated to sit on the shoulder of the blonde woman. She turned her gaze toward the sky “I shouldn't be discussing,” he heard her whisper, thinking out loud “Nah, that's fine. It won't be long anyway.”

Her gaze went back to him “You said we attacked you without you having done anything as if it was enough of a reason to paint what we were doing here as bad. We didn't need you to do anything bad, little doggy,” she said mockingly.

“We know you will. That's your nature you see. You all can’t help it.”

“Nature? Nature?!” they had been hunted and killed just because they were seen as inherently evil?  He understood it now. Nothing he would say would change anything.

“Yes, your nature,” the blonde woman continued. “You see, you can stay ‘peaceful, inoffensive’ for centuries but sooner or later, your nature rears its ugly head. Sooner or later, you destroy. Sooner or later, you corrupt. Sooner or later, you all hurt humans. This is the nature of supernatural beings. This is the nature of Youkaï, of beasts like you. The world is changing, ravaged and destroyed by things like you. Things are changing and humankind needs heroes.”

The arm of the woman moved, the blade following, diving and separating cleanly one of Mizu's dog ears from his body.

Pain erupted, his brain screaming at him that he had lost one of his ears. The world that always seemed so clear became deemed, silent.

“Fortunately, Destiny played in our favour. The Gremory spawn worked in the favour of humankind, in our favour by creating her curse. She gave us the hero faction the possibility of doing what we weren’t able to do before. She gave us the possibility of getting rid of monsters like you and growing strong doing it.”

A broken chuckle, more a mix between a laugh and a cough escaped from Mizu “You’re pathetic, so fucking pathetic.”

The eyes of the blonde woman turned as cold and sharp as glass when she heard his words “What did you say?” she spoke calmly. Mizu could feel the threat of violence behind her words but he didn't care anymore.

He was going to die. Even though he didn't want to, he knew it was a fact. Mizu was going to die here. The last thing he could do was to die with his pride.

“I said,” he wheezed “that you were pathetic. You can try to give moral reasons for your actions but be honest with yourself. Deep down, you don’t care about humankind. You would have acted before the curse if it was the truth. You do it simply because you hate us.  You're pathetic because I may be the dog Youkai here but the true rabid dog here is you whor-”

The words of the Inu youkaï were stopped by a blade plunging through his forehead and going out from the back of his head.

With a sickening squelch, The blonde woman pulled her sword back brain matter and blood coating it.

The form of the inu dog began to lose shape exploding In thousands of sprites that rushed to the blonde girl and sank into her skin.

The girl closed her eyes and took a deep breath before opening them back up. Her iris twisted for a moment, changing colours and shape taking a more animal appearance before turning back into her normal blue-green eyes.

“You took your time Jeanne,” a young-sounding voice spoke from a distortion in space.

“Yeah, I know but better take time than rushing and botching things right?” the girl said playfully looking at the space distortion.

“What about the others Georg?” Jeanne asked.

“They finished before a long time. They had been teleported back to one of our bases. You’re the last one.”

“Okay, I get it. It won’t happen again, Georg.”

“Good,” Georg answered her a sliver of satisfaction appearing in what had been an emotionless voice.

“Was the hunt fruitful?” Georg asked her as the blonde woman stepped through the distortion in the space-time continuum.

The girl shrugged her shoulders “Kinda. Some physical and magical enhancements. Some interesting Juju whatever spells but nothing really interesting.”

“We still have time Jeanne. Just do what needs to be done and sooner and later, we'll be able to realize our mission here.”

“Patience is a virtue and all that bullshit. I understand it more than most Georg.” The portal began to close behind the blonde woman “It may take time some time but soon, it'll be Fox skinning season,” Jeanne whispered leaving back what once had been a city full of life in one even ghost wouldn't even dare to venture into.