Chapter 22

22.

“So what do we do?” asked Suri.

“If you expect me to do something for you then by all means, keep dreaming.” Answered Naila, landing gracefully on all fours, like all cats do.

Suri turned to Rai and proceeded to smack him on his head, “It’s all your fault, dumbass, you’re no help at all, you better apologize to lady Naila and ask for her assistance again, nicely. Didn’t Sakura teach you any manners?”

“My mother didn’t have to teach me anything! I was born knowing.”

Suri covered her face with her hands, “I’m gonna seriously re-think buying those photos for Sakura-sensei…”

“Don’t! Oh Hell, please, please, don’t piss her off on my behalf! Please!” Rai grabbed Suri’s arms and shook her with the spasms of fear and worry flooding his body.

“Ha, it’s been ages since anyone has put him in such a state, if I’d known all it took was threaten him with his mother’s wrath…” Naila hiss-laughed.

“I can arrange a meeting with her  if you’re interested.”

“Mmmmm, yes, I think I am.” Naila’s amused eyes filled with Rai’s fear, “I like you girl, what do you need of me? In exchange for this meeting?”

“Just help me find the Kage Inu Yokai, my aunt and I can take it from there, we need to trap one of them.”

“You got yourself a deal.”

“Wha- this is what I get for helping you?” Rai turned to Suri, “How can you plot against me?”

“Excuse me, but who said I owe you anything? You’re here because of your mother, and you just directed me to this here cat temple, lady Naila is the one who is going to really help. I don’t owe you nothin’.”

“I’ll take my magnificence somewhere else then!”

“Please, do.”

“Hold it,” said Naila, “We will need him if you want to trap one of those hentai dogs.”

“We will? Ugh.” Suri’s shoulders slumped.

“Of course you will, no one can do anything without me.” Rai preened.

“I swear to God-” Suri shook her fist.

“Let’s just go,” said Naila, “Do you have a mode of transportation? Because if we have to walk to Hokkaido it will take too long, and I will not pay the fair if we have fly or ride the train.”

“Hokkaido, right. Well, yes, I have a car.”

********

Jime woke up to cold. It was very cold inside the car’s trunk. But that was alright, because there were burns on her exposed skin that were still smarting, “Oh, right, I didn’t check if the sun was up in Japan. Dammit.” Some latent memories of the various times she nearly burned to death all for the vampire King’s amusement threatened to surface with his evil laugh ringing in her mind but she firmly pushed them back inside their memory cage. She touched the inside of the trunk and it opened for her, “Thanks, honey-boo.”

It was a beautiful night, with clear sky that let the eye feast on the spectacle of snow covering nature like a sweet white blanket. She stretched and whimpered because of the burns, but they would be gone in a few more minutes. She found Suri sitting on top of the car with a bucket of food next to her and a bag for the trash.

“Watcha doin’?” she asked as she climbed to sit next to Suri.

“Waiting for the show!” Suri exclaimed all excited.

“Oh, o.k… what show?”

“Lemme explain from the beginning!” Suri gasped with glee while shoving 4 pocky sticks inside her mouth.

“Brace yourself.” Said a cat who was lounging on top of the front hood, while covering its ears with its paws.

“Who’s that?” asked Jime.

“I’ll tell you! I’ll tell you! Just lemme say it my way!”

“You’re awfully exited.”

“Uhm, ah, I think it’s the snacks, I, lady Naila says I ate too much? But I don’t think so, anyway!”

“Total sugar rush.” Said Naila the cat.

“I see, nice to meet you, by the way.” Jime replied.

“Likewise.”

“Pay attention to me, jime! GOD!”

“Go on then.” Jime softly chuckled.

“So, Sakura-sensei sent a son of hers to help us, Rai, who turned out to be the biggest ass I’ve ever met, and that’s saying something, he’s so conceited, anyway, he brought me to the Asakusa cat shrine, you know it? Never mind, I got you some gifts, I got a black maneki neko for you, which protects from evil spirits, and a white neko for good luck, I also got two for myself, and a pink one for love-”

“Love?”

“Don’t interrupt me, where was I? Oh yeah, the shrine, so we get there and I meet lady Naila, who is the grim reaper cat, do you know her? She’s so cool, and of course, stupid-ass Rai says all the wrong things, and I beat him for it, turns out he’s afraid of Sakura-sensei, anyway, lady Naila was so amused she agreed to help us, turns out she reaps all the souls the perv dogs kill so she knows where they are all the time, along with their victims, right?”

“Right.” Naila deadpans.

“She said we gotta motor to Hokkaido, and I got to ride the Panda Bus going back to mustang jack! Which got us here, this is a national park by the way, it took a lot of cleverness on my part to get inside with mustang jack.”

“I was wondering.” Jime pointed out.

“So, along the way I gotta stop for a piss, and to eat, and to stack up on supplies lady Naila said we’d need, and guess what? There’s like tons of money on my credit cards! I know I should be worried about that but somehow I’m not.”

“I can guess why you’re not.” Jime muttered under her breath while sneaking a glance at the sweet snacks, but Suri didn’t hear her.

“So I go on a little shopping spree, just a wee bit tiny widdle shopping spree, and get all the snack I’ve wanted to taste but didn’t have enough money for, I got melon pan, and curry pan, yakiniku pan, but I didn’t know which to eat first because if I ate the curry, like a meal, you know, salty before sweet, then I wouldn’t be able to taste the melon flavor because it’s so mild in comparison, so I ate the melon bread first, then the yakiniku then the curry, then I needed something sweet to balance it all, so I got some pocky, straight up chocolate because anything else is just too weird, 3 or 4 boxes, but they gave me other flavoured pocky too so I got it, also some lotte choco too, and strawberry candy, which I bought because of the engrish in the package, it’s too funny! Here lemme read it for yah,” Suri pulls out a package from her bucket and starts to read, “I put a strawberry trembling in a spring breeze into my mouth, It’s sweet sour taste is one of the first kiss, do you know the divination by strawberries?, if you chant your lover’s name three times when you eat the smallest strawberry he will appear in your dream, then you should confess your love to him in the dream resolutely, so he will become to see you in his dream too, then you and he will fall in love without fail, why don’t you try once tonight if you cannot believe that? You see? It’s too hilarious! Oh! I got Calpis to drink! Ahahahahaha! That name just cracks me up every time! I also got some mochi goodies here somewhere,” she rummages through the bucket but leaves it right away, “Some senbei cookies, mon-chan senbei cookies, that monkey is too cute, you know what I didn’t get? Freaking green tea! That’s what! Hate it, and they put it in everything! Also, we needed some girl sailor uniform, high school uniform, lady Naila said. And I didn’t understand why, but now I know and it’s genius! Also, some guy make up, and girl make up. A few hair accessories and a wig. You see, lady Naila said we needed to lure the hentai dogs to an unpopulated area so we chose this park, and guess who got to be the bait? Go on, ask me!”

 “Who?”

“Rai! Ahahahahaha! He didn’t know what hit him! But a few strokes to his ego got him to accept it all. He probably thought he’d have to challenge them to a fight or something like that but that wasn’t the plan. Anyway, I froze his body so he couldn’t move and changed him into the school uniform, put on the wig and all that, made him up real pretty, since he’s such a flower boy when he doesn’t open his mouth, and I bound him to that tree down there, you see it? He’s supposed to be striking sexy poses… Oi! Rai-chan! Put more effort into it! Show some cheek, MORE CHEEK! The perv dogs are bound to come any second now. And that’s the show I’m waiting for! Isn’t it awesome?”

“She also drew a protective circle with salt all around this area so that the dogs won’t be able to escape once they go inside, I pointed out we needed to leave no trace of us ever being here so she made a spell to return nature back to how we found it when you’re done, but I guess that’s not as important as what kind of snacks she ate.” Said Naila, rolling her cat eyes, which just looked too weird to Jime.

“Good to know.”

“Uhm… you guys… I-” Suri covered her mouth, “suddenly I don’t feel so good.” She jumped to the ground and started to vomit while holding herself up with a near tree.

Jime looked on with a curious expression on her face, “I wonder what a sugar rush feels like,” she took a whiff of the smell coming from Suri’s direction, “then again, it’s just as well I can’t eat.”

“The dogs are here.” Naila sat up.

“You’re gonna miss the show!” Jime told Suri.

“Fuck you.” Suri managed to reply in between her heaves.

“Oh, wow, that is- wow, how perverted.” Jime commented.

“They sicken me.” Said Naila.

“Who knew you could use a wig like that?”

“They are worse while in the city.”

“They are? Wow, I’m glad we’re out in nature then- wait, forget I said that.” Jime cringed.

“What’s going on?” Suri mumbled from her tree.

“You don’t want to know, trust me, dear niece.”

“She’s still too young to witness this level of depravity.” Naila shook her head.

“Rai is surprisingly holding his own.”

“His self-love will admit no less.”

“Oh come on, tell me…” Suri mumbled yet again in between puking sounds.

“You’ll have to use your imagination… hey, that can’t be physically possible… yet I’m seeing it with my own eyes.” Jime was impressed.

“That’s just foul.”

“They’re not getting tired either, this won’t do, which is why I bought the origami monsters.” Jime jumped down, opened the front door and pulled out from mustang jack’s glove compartment the little clear plastic cubes she had previously gotten from the Bakamono Novelty Shoppe in JapanTown. “Which one first?” She asked Naila.

“The octopus, let’s see how they like it when it’s them getting groped.”

Jime laughed and opened the cube, at contact with air the little origami figure started to change into a real one and Jime tossed it into the fray before it grew to its giant proportions.

An hour later.

“Well, it’s winding down now. What a show!” Jime laughed.

“It was typical demon folly. I’ve seen worse.” Naila shrugged.

 “This sucks too much.” Suri sulked from her position lying down on the back seat of mustang jack, “I didn’t get to see anything.”

“Consider yourself lucky then. And here comes my cue.” Jime grabbed the snack bucket and tossed the remaining food away, she went to the trunk and rummaged until she found some glow sticks for emergencies, which she activated and put inside the bucket, then she asked Suri to conjure a hermetic seal/lid for the bucket.

“What’s that for?” asked Suri not even bothering to open her eyes.

“Necessity is the mother of invention, sobrina. This is a dog cage.”

“Clever.” Naila deadpanned.

“Isn’t it?” Jime chuckled and hopped to where the Kage Inu Yokai were.

“What’s happening now?” asked Suri.

“Pft,” Naila snorted, “Your aunt sure is vicious, she’s taking full advantage of the hentai dogs’ lack of strength… beat down, beat down, family jewels, nothing is sacred for her.”

Screams of agony followed that statement which made Suri swear to herself once more to never binge on junk food again.

“Got it!” Jime yelled.

“Thank God this task is over, then.” Suri pouted.

******

“How disappointing, these are all stupid humans, I was expecting more of a fight,” Jack walked into the cave where all the dragon fighters had gathered after completely off-ing the templars, “Man… I miss a good battle.” He sighed with longing while scrubbing his hair from the human blood and gore that had splattered all over him.

Toren, River, Ren and the rest were talking with Joslyn over their intercoms, nobody paid attention to Jack.

“You’re all looking like death warmed over, what happened now?”

A dragon warrior answered him, “The templars got one of our kids.”

“Oh. Damn. I guess that’s not good?”

River turned to Jack and pinned him with his fierce dragon stare, “You’re not needed anymore, just go away.”

“Fine, see if I care.”

“But how did this even happen?” Joslyn’s voice could be overheard loudly.

“I don’t know,” replied Ren, “I can assure you, no one was left alive, I had all the exits covered, nothing escaped.”

“Clearly, someone escaped, with a kid dragon with them!” River snapped.

“Clearly, whatever or whoever lore traitor that has been helping the templars had a hand in this. It’s as if they just traced in and out with the specific purpose of getting our offspring, and they even managed to kill the parents. I’m guessing the attack was a distraction to get the kid.”

“This is horrible!” Joslyn wailed.

“We need to check every nest with infants, right now. Everyone, MOVE OUT!” Toren commanded and all dragons followed.

Jack was left with nothing to do but go back to his vampire.

******

“My daughter is so smart.” Sage couldn’t help himself, he was proud.

“What do you mean?” asked Angelica.

“All the various magic traps and dead ends she put on her bank accounts.”

“But… you did manage to send her the funds, right?” Angelica side-glared.

“Yes, dear, yes, don’t look at me like that, I transferred the money, it’s just that I couldn’t find any registry of her expenses, which means I still don’t know where she is.”

“That’s my girl. I just hope she’s clever enough to stay under the radar so that Siti won’t find her.”

“She will manage.”

“But it’s Jime I’m worried about, she’s not exactly subtle, and she doesn’t know about Siti, she still thinks of her as an ally.”

“I will have to force the blindfolds from her eyes then, by force.”