それが終わるてみましょう、それは始めましょう

Standing near the top of a large, sturdy tree and easily hidden behind the thick cover of interwoven leaves, on a densely knotted branch that easily held his weight, he smiled.

A breeze wafted through the forest, stirring up the leaves that still clung desperately to the stronger trees deep within the forest. His nine tails shifted over each other as they tasted the scents in the wind. The early morning winter sun shone on him as though he stood under a limelight, at the centre of attention. The light brought out diamond specks of brightness in the silver fur of his tails. Lines of black circled the ends of each tail.

Deceptive, he idly thought. Just like he tended to be.

Though his tails looked no more dangerous than on any other living creature's, if he so willed it they could turn hard as steel, as hard and sharp as uncut diamond, easily able to pierce through a body all the way through like so much paper. They acted as a shield, preventing anything shot at him from actually reaching him. Over the course of his long, long life, many things had been aimed at him with the intent to kill.

He let very few of the ones who'd done the aiming live.

There was a light jingle of a small bell that twinkled sweetly as a cat with two sleek tails twining around each other landed nimbly on the same branch he stood on. Its fur was black as midnight, with white sock-like patches at each of its four pink paws. Around the cat's neck was a dark blue strap that held a single silver bell on it that alerted him whenever the cat was near. Long ago, an Onmyoji had spelled the bell so that only those the cat wished to hear it would be able to.

"Kage-chan," it said in greeting, a male and human voice coming from the throat of the Bakeneko.

He scowled down at the cat as it sat neatly by his feet, two tails wrapping neatly around its legs as it lifted a single paw and began cleaning its face. The cat didn't seem concerned that one of the most dangerous Hengen alive was glowering at it as it continued to wash itself. But then again, it knew that there was really nothing the man could do to it. They had been through far too much together for him to even try. His eyes were closed, even, speaking to how at ease and totally unbothered he was.

"I told you not to call me that, Sato." He reminded blandly. "Multiple times, if I recall."

Sato paused with his paw mid-air. One glowing red eye opened to look into the almost matching red eyes of Kagetora. The pupil was a black slit outlined in a thin line of golden yellow. "Do you think I care?"

"You should, if you don't want your fur burned off like last time."

Both of Sato's eyes opened at that, and his lips pulled back over his fangs in a mock-hiss. It had taken Sato almost a year to grow back the singed-off fur along his spine after Kagetora had used his kitsunebi to chase a yowling Sato around after he refused to stop calling him 'Kage-chan'. Even thirty years later, the fur there was still shorter than that along the rest of his body.

It pissed him off. "I still haven't paid you back for that."

Kagetora's lips kicked up in an amused smirk. "You can't get the jump on me, is why."

"Too much energy to waste on an idiotic jackass who's too full of his own supposed intellect, is why." Sato shot back.

Kagetora chuckled at the Bakeneko's affront. He looked back over at the wash of dulled green forestry. He could hear the minute sounds that filled the forest – from the flapping of waking baby chicks squawking for food, to the moles that dug deeper beneath the surface of the land in search of warmer havens, and the crunch of ice on the thick bed of snow as the land animals not yet in hibernation prowled, sniffing and snuffling.

It stopped snowing only minutes ago, and the canopy of trees all around him were covered in a thick blanket of pure white that reminded him of her hair. Hair that turned white as a result of the things that had been done to her.

Mood souring at the memory of looking into those tortured honey brown eyes that belonged to the girl who had once tried to kill him with a gun – a mere gun, how laughable – his lips turned down as he listened to the sounds of the birds only just now waking up and emerging from their burrows in the trees, and tasting the forest all around him.

He could understand why Tengu had turned their lives around, centuries ago, and decided to become protectors of the forests and mountains when humans began exploiting nature for their own benefit. Something beautiful as this needed to be protected, lest it be cut down and forgotten as so many things were wont to. Tengu were Ayakashi of war, but only when there was an actual war going on. Otherwise, they sought to protect the things that mattered to them. To live in peace.

It was admirable.

Unfortunately for them, peace was a short-lived thing, rarely ever an actual fact of life. It was more of an illusion, something perfect to strive for, but almost impossible to attain.

"The Daitengu have begun their Torimaku." Sato commented lazily. "In a clearing south from here. Pretty good place to do it, actually."

Kagetora frowned. Shin wasn't here yet. "Who are they doing it on?"

"Yoshida Jirou."

"The shapeshifter?" Kagetora asked. "Not the dragon?"

"Not the dragon who hasn't awoken yet, no," Sato nodded. "He's the only one of them who comes close to Shin's strength."

"The dragon would be a better bet." Considering what he really was beneath that skin of Tengu he'd worn all his life.

"He's still recovering." Sato reminded him. "They're pretty desperate, at this point. Shin killed the Nue who were going to tell Kouta what's been happening, and then he attacked Haru. Now the Kamigami are going to be involved if they don't do something about him soon."

"Jirou's not close enough." Kagetora's upper lip curled at the mention of the useless gods. "They are desperate, and foolish."

Sato made no comment on whether or not he agreed with Kagetora's sentiment on what the Daitengu were doing. He just continued to wash his face, his fur-clad shoulder, and then moved to his leg, stretching it up high above his head before bringing it back down.

Kagetora looked down at him, watching him for moments longer. "Don't you ever get tired of doing that?" he asked.

Sato paused in cleaning, his leg held out in front of him. "Doing what?"

"Cleaning your fur all the time."

"That's like asking a human, 'don't you get tired of shitting all the time'?" Sato answered. "I'm pretty sure they do."

Kagetora snorted. "Why don't you just stay in human form?"

A look of sorrow briefly stole over the Bakeneko's eyes as he turned away from Kagetora and looked out to the forest ahead. He shook his head as if clearing it of cobwebs, and the bell around his neck jangled.

"Touka only ever knew me in this form." He remarked quietly.

That was all he needed to say. Kagetora could easily hear the sadness in his voice. He was the only one Sato let hear it. Kagetora looked away from the cat. Memories of ticking pocket watches, fire, screaming, gunshots, and rage filled his mind, and he closed his eyes on the images flashing past them.

He opened them again, looking down at his hand. There, on his pinkie , was tied a red string. It was old, and the only reason the colour hadn't completely faded away was because he used an enchantment to preserve it. Kagetora wasn't entirely sure what he would do if something ever happened to it. Often, deep into the night when the rest of the world slumbered and everything was quiet, he thought that the only thing that kept him from completely losing control was this little bit of red string.

"Besides, I'm not Bakeneko." Sato continued, and his voice was noticeably, forcibly, brighter. "I'd have to lug around human clothes with me every time I wanted to shift. Can you imagine, a human walking through the streets and happening upon a black cat with a backpack filled with clothes in its mouth. I'd be lynch-mobbed. It's easier this way."

Kagetora said nothing, already focusing on another voice he heard as the rustling leaves of the tree brought it to him on the wings of the wind. He laughed as he continued to listen to the conversation.

Using Midori to make her feel like she can trust you. Oh, that is smart, he thought. She hadn't remembered everything yet, clearly. She was still so very gullible.

Sato looked up at him in confusion. The Bakeneko was only two hundred odd years old. His senses weren't quite as finely honed as Kagetora's was. It was an endless source of gamely amusement for him to tease Sato about it.

"What?" Sato asked. "What is it this time?"

"She's calling herself Kuniumi, now." Kagetora said. Then he frowned. "Something's wrong with her voice. Kuniumi...she choked her."

"Choked her? Wait, hold on – Kuniumi?" Sato's eyes widened. "She's already appeared?"

Kagetora's eyes flicked down to the cat. After a long, contemplative moment, he finally spoke. "Do you know why I decided to let the Onihitokuchi get to her so early?"

"You mean besides checking to see if that's why Rikuto collapsed?" Sato scowled at him. "I'd like to. She could have been killed if she wasn't lucky to have Shin get to her in time. Then we'd have to wait spirits know how long again."

Kagetora shook his head. "It wasn't luck, Sato. This is the second time Pai is fulfilling the requirements. Kuniumi," the name was a snarl on his lips. "Already started approaching her long before the Onihitokuchi came into the picture."

Sato frowned in confusion. "How long?"

"Two years ago. After she tried to kill Kirishima a second time, with Rikuto."

"When she was still with them?" he didn't try to disguise the surprise in his voice.

Kagetora nodded. "How do you think Pai was able to accomplish as much as she did in there? Without Kuniumi, she would have been driven mad with guilt, or they would have cancelled her because she couldn't do any of it in the first place. Pai is not a born killer."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Sato's voice was accusatory, but not all that surprised. He had long since accepted that though he and Kagetora shared a goal to which they both had worked towards for almost two hundred years, there would always be a crypt in which Kagetora kept his secrets locked from the world.

Sato wasn't entirely sure he even wanted to know what those secrets were. From what he knew, and heard rumours of how Kagetora was like before he met Touka, he knew that those secrets could only be dressed in darkness and blood.

Sometimes, he wondered what Touka ever saw in Kagetora. Then the damned man would do something good that even he didn't expect of himself, and Sato would see why Touka risked it all for him.

Kagetora's elongated canines flashed as a wink of sunlight caught on them when he grinned at Sato. "I like seeing you ruffled."

Sato's ears flattened and his eyes narrowed as he looked at Kagetora in pensive irritation. "I hate you."

"Not as much as we both hate dear, lovely Kuniumi."

"No," Sato admitted. "Never as much. Don't get me wrong, though – you're annoying as hell."

Kagetora sighed dramatically as he reached into the pocket of his ankle-length black trench-coat and pulled out a cigarette. Sato spied the white of his Mask, a literal fox mask that Kagetora always had somewhere on his person, even when he slept.

If he slept at all. Sato wasn't entirely sure the Kitsune did – or even needed it.

He knew that the only reason Kagetora didn't particularly mind letting his Mask be seen so easily, and be so exposed, was because Kagetora knew that there was no one alive and sane who would try to take it from him. Even if any such person existed, they would be dead long before they could follow through on the act.

Funny, considering Kagetora didn't even really need his Mask the way other regular Hengen did. Sato was hedging his bet on Kagetora being so open with his Mask just to see who was foolish enough to think having a go at it was something they would live through.

Sato watched him as he only spared the end of the cigarette a passing glance before it sparked to life. Kagetora brought it to his lips and inhaled deeply before letting the white smoke stream out.

"Woe, if only I were not Kitsune, perhaps I'd have been a tad bit more bearable, no?" he spoke in a quiet, brooding voice as he looked out to the forest with his burning red Ayakashi eyes. "Everyone likes cats, don't they? Would that have been better, you think?"

"Maybe." Sato narrowed his eyes to slits again, not entirely sure of whether Kagetora was joking or not. He could never be certain with a Kitsune as fickle as this one. After a moment, he asked, "Still, do you think we should have left it alone? With the Oni?"

Kagetora looked down at him, and for a brief moment Sato felt a flash of fear at the cold look in Kagetora's eyes. "Doubts will get you killed, Sato."

Sato scoffed. "I'm not having doubts. I committed to this, and I'll see it through to the end. Just like you."

"Then what are you thinking?"

"We could have given her more time." He replied. "Let her be as normal as possible for a little longer. Humans always want to be normal. They're scared of being different."

"I thought you didn't care what she wants? That it doesn't matter?"

Sato glanced down at the bell tied on the blue leather thong around his neck. "Touka was happy with you. She got that for a while, at least."

Kagetora shook his head, the slight breeze ruffling the tufts of dark brown hair falling over his forehead. "Be that as it may, it's too late for her."

Sato frowned. "What do you mean?"

"So Fu took that possibility away from her. She was forced to make her choice when she turned sixteen while with them. Now she will have to live with it."

"You mean...?"

Kagetora nodded. "Her hands are shaking every day now. She bleeds every time she remembers something of the last three years. She's having nightmares that stray into her reality. It's only a matter of time, Sato. If we didn't set the Oni on her, it would be too late otherwise."

"That's unfortunate for her, then." He murmured. He glanced sharply to the right when he heard something clatter to a wooden floor, quickly followed by the pattering of running feet. His senses might not have been as sharp as Kagetora's, but that didn't mean they weren't functional at all. "She's found it."

"Hm. The name of Hayashi Shin's Makashi," Kagetora murmured, using the old and forgotten term for the Hengen's True Ayakashi. He dragged in another lung of nicotine before tilting his head back and releasing it slowly, leisurely.

Sato lifted a white paw and swatted at the air in front of him, trying to get rid of the smoke blowing in his face. Hengen could intoxicate themselves with such things as cigarettes, drugs, and alcohol without the risk of developing life-threatening diseases as humans did, but Sato did not appreciate how much Kagetora smoked. The smell was disgusting.

He had tried coming up with all sorts of excuses, reasons, and threats in attempts to try getting Kagetora to quit, which he knew the Kitsune could very well and easily do. He'd even tried hunting down every packet of cigarettes Kagetora bought, to no avail. Every time he thought he'd gotten them all, Kagetora would pull out yet another one with a sly smirk on his face and light it up with his kitsunebi. He didn't even say anything when he did it; he never asked where the packet he'd bought just hours ago was, or why they kept mysteriously disappearing.

It infuriated Sato. Kagetora clung to the habit of chain-smoking more fiercely than a heroin addict to his drugs.

Sometimes, he wondered if Kagetora wished he were human, so that by smoking as much as he did, he would eventually die rather than live with the guilt and sorrow that plagued him every step of his life. Sato knew Kagetora would have ended his own life long ago, if not for a duty he was unwillingly committed to that kept him inexplicably tied to life.

Perhaps smoking was his way of not being able to off himself.

Sato's eyes swept up to gaze at the heavy grey storm brewing away from them, off to the west. He heard the sound of blades clashing. An instant later he could taste the scent of blood in the air. There was a strange copper tang to it, as if the blood were laced with some kind of fragrance, a sweet scent that lingered in the air.

Kagetora hummed under his breath as he expelled another lungful of smoke. He shaped his lips so that the smoke hung in front of him for a second in the shape of a large ring before being quickly blown away by the force of the gale starting to sweep through the forest.

"The song of swords is said to be the sweetest."

Sato knew what Kagetora wanted him to say. He knew why Kagetora said it. He understood why Kagetora did it, but it tired him nevertheless to always repeat it.

He sighed as his eyes flicked down to the red string tied around Kagetora's pinkie finger when the Kitsune lifted the cigarette back to his lips. "And the sight of blood the most beautiful."

"A Scythian girl once said that to me." Kagetora murmured, calling to mind an image of a fierce girl with jet-black hair and a blackwood bow in her hands – a bow she'd aimed at him when she thought he was one of the guards sent to capture her after she'd just assassinated her king.

"Artimpaz was her name, was it?" Sato asked.

"Hm. Many would disagree with that sentiment." He noted, eyes on the west and catching the gleam of twin katana blades flashing in the distance. He felt a thrill, an excitement, when he recognized the lean body clad in black racing through the forest.

He's here.

Things were finally getting started. His patience had won out, after all this time waiting for the perfect moment, as it always did. So Fu nearly destroyed his chance when they took Pai and did what they had to her, but still he chose to wait rather than act. Even if it meant unfairly prolonging her suffering.

It had paid off.

Sato made no comment as he turned his own eyes to the east, listening to the pattering of feet running through the blanket of snow. He saw a young girl, still wearing dark blue white flower spotted pyjamas, with a loose braid of white hair flowing behind her as she ran.

He looked further behind and saw a confused Karasatengu standing by the gates of Ayashi House, staring after her with a look on his face that clearly showed he was wondering why he didn't make a move to stop her. Tied around the girl's wrist was a white sash. Even from this distance, he could tell it was a Mask.

"What if Shin kills her?" he asked Kagetora. "His Makashi isn't exactly..."

"Stable?" the Kitsune shook his head with a rueful smirk on his curled lips. Shin's Makashi wasn't 'sane', but none of the Kaosu no Ayakashi really were, not with what they were at their core, and certainly not with living separated from their Hengen as they were oft forced to. "He will control Shin and his Makashi long enough for the Daitengu to stop him from hurting her. She'll be fine."

"He's awake too, isn't he." Sato remarked bluntly. There was no mistaking the annoyed tone in his voice that Kagetora had a habit of keeping things from him until the last minute. "Where she goes, he's bound to follow."

The smirk widened. "He always has. Kuniumi is awake – why wouldn't he be?"

Sato frowned. That wasn't an answer about this time. "You mean you're uncertain?"

"Call it a wager I'm certain to win. How much do you want to bet?"

Sato narrowed his eyes at him. If Kagetora's unhealthy habit was smoking, Sato's was his inability to walk away from a bet. "Five hundred."

"Thousand?"

"Million."

"Done."

"That's a risky gamble, Kagetora." Sato wasn't talking about money anymore.

"Isn't everything worth living for a risky gamble?" he replied smoothly. The cigarette was half-finished.

He's got a point there, Sato grudgingly admitted to himself.

"What do you think he'll call himself this time, hm?" Kagetora asked idly. "Maybe Kamiumi, to match Kuniumi. Those two are thick as thieves, even if she hates him."

"It doesn't bother you that you've never found out why he's doing all this, trying to find her, when he betrayed her? When she's made it clear that she'll never forgive him for it?"

The unspoken memory that played out between them was one of oceans of blood swirling in a fiery tornado around a single lonely figure, lifting her arms to the red skies and screaming for him to see what carnage she'd wrought in the madness he condemned his beloved to.

Kagetora smirked. "I'm fairly certain I know."

Sato glanced up at him with his whiskers twitching in annoyance. There it was, something else Kagetora hadn't told him. "And, just maybe, do you care to enlighten me of it?"

"He loves her." Kagetora said, voice flat as if he didn't believe that was the reason despite saying he was quite sure it was. "Father made him betray her, and she hates him for it, but he still loves her all the same. He never stopped, not from the moment he set eyes on her, all that time ago."

Sato stared. "Seriously? It's that simple?"

Kagetora gave him a look. "Love is never as simple as it looks."

The sound of mad laughter drifted through the wind to reach him. A chill ran through Sato as he remembered when he had last heard that laugh, a laugh that belonged to two people sharing one body. It was unlike anything he had ever heard. It was so gleeful in nature that one couldn't possibly expect that the cause of such joy could be so mired in blood.

Sato had indeed only heard such a laugh once in his life before.

That had been one of the few times Sato felt truly afraid by what it meant to wilfully release one's Makashi, what it meant to let loose a Makashi at all. He shivered as he recalled the blood-soaked night when two Hengen Clans were nearly wiped out of existence, an age-old feud between the Kitsune and Tengu reaching an apex. That battle was just as bad as the many that claimed millions seventy-odd years ago.

He remembered how dark the grass was afterwards, beneath the light of the full moon, every blade of grass for miles out covered in the blood of the innocent. Sato had seen many battles and much blood spilt, but it still sent something in his core curling up in awed disgust at how brutal others could be.

It was the same night Kagetora claimed the status of King of the Kitsune, he recalled, a title Kagetora had been avoiding like it was a disease and he a healthy patient for as long as he could remember.

It's been almost ten years, he thought, shaking his head to be rid of the terrible memories, if just for a moment.

A grief that Sato still hadn't let go of – and one he knew Kagetora would forever hold on to unless someone tore him from it – rolled through him when Kagetora spoke words he had tried to forget for two hundred years. He gazed out at the silently loud forest around them.

"Let it begin, let it end."

He said nothing. Grief choked him but his face remained blank.

A breeze picked up, steadily increasing in strength, until it began to howl as the wind swirled angrily around him. A flash of what looked like yellow lightning split the sky in half for a brief moment before fading out.

Then, there in the distance, Sato saw a wall of a multi-coloured force-field begin to build itself up from the ground, swirling and mixing together to create something that only Daitengu were able to create, and something they only used when they had no other choice.

The game had finally begun.