Information


Yoshiko has a minion!

Ghost the Restless Malevolent Spirit




Yoshiko
Legacy Name: Yoshiko


The Storm Montre
Owner: SEOUL

Age: 8 years, 11 months, 1 week

Born: April 21st, 2015

Adopted: 8 years, 11 months, 1 week ago

Adopted: April 21st, 2015


Pet Spotlight Winner
September 22nd, 2018

Statistics


  • Level: 1
     
  • Strength: 10
     
  • Defense: 10
     
  • Speed: 10
     
  • Health: 10
     
  • HP: 10/10
     
  • Intelligence: 0
     
  • Books Read: 0
  • Food Eaten: 0
  • Job: Unemployed


There was no aid I could offer to my family as I lay dying. I could only watch in helpless horror as the magic was drained from my parents, sisters, and little brother. Grandmama was the first to lay down her life for the vast reserves of magic her spirit kitsune had stored over the years. The ones I still think of as the Aura Bandits had no mercy, though Little Brother was only two. We were a means to long life and great fortune for those with diminished magical strength.

My prayer to be granted new life somehow reached the ear of a kitsune not far distant. Her own life was so full of regret and misery that she granted a blessing greater than even the extension of life. She sacrificed her kitsune spirit as my own spirit died from the drain, filling me with new life, new power, and new hope. The bandits had no reason to suspect what had happened. I made a very convincing corpse.

I do not know how they entered the family fortress. I still do not know, after all these years...

*****

Teacher drones on the topic of Japan's geographical layout, turning the beauty of the islands into a dull monotone that has every student more interested in digital pets and hand code than in the lush vegetation and volcano-free surface of Yakushima.

After three centuries of mingling among humans, I know how to get just enough answers wrong on pop quizzes to avoid suspicion of my true identity. My teachers think I am the bright girl who doesn't quite exert herself enough. My classmates can't decide if I'm cool and edgy or some sort of assassin in training. This is just what I wish them to believe. I can try to fit into human society, but I can never belong.

I move to a new island every few years, enrolling in schools with a cover name and a few tweaks to my appearance. It is funny how many times my teachers have been ignorant to the fact that we graduated together just a few years before. As long as you do not give them reason to notice you, humans are conveniently unobservant creatures.

The sounding of the final bell is welcome. It is only Tuesday but the other students chatter about a concert many will attend next weekend. I can see two girls darting glances my way, wondering if I will be in the crowd. Not even Tectonic's tour stop in Tokyo can distract me from my purpose. I can enjoy their music on CD whenever I like. It's been years since the spirit world offered such a promising lead on one of the Bandits I seek.

The little apartment isn't technically mine. Its owner is a woman well on her way to beating the world age record. At 112 years old, Mai still has the energy to walk out and water every inch of her little garden, though she often forgets her key and sits on the stoop until I get home. She calls me "Little Ghost" and always buys the chocolate cherry cookies I love above all other human foods. She has this saucy way of telling me ghosts do not pay rent each time I offer. I repay her kindness by calling gentle rains to her flowers and prize cherry trees when drought threatens.

Someone so close to the spirit world has a way of observing what most ignore. Sometimes I think Mai suspects too much about me, but I cannot fear such a model of kindness.

My attic room has a sort of sloped roof that gives me easy access to the alley behind the building. Beneath a drooping cardboard canopy is the hole that lets into the old warehouse. I have built my spirit platform there, in a place even the rats are not agile enough to reach.

I begin the shift as I walk the floor, my body taking to the familiar form of a kitsune without a single twitch of protest. There is a silver hue to my once-white fur that is a mark of the sacrifice made to save me. My birth spirit lies dormant, powerless and void of magic while the one that gave me new life lies in a grave long buried by nature. I blessed the place with a field of lotus blossoms that always put forth blooms despite earthquakes and tsunamis.

My aura grows to a massive cloud crackling with the energy of a storm. A shuddering ball of lightning forms between my paws as I take position at the center of the circle and tense for the crossing.

The spirit world is hard to describe to one limited by human senses. One does not see the passing of time or hear the shuddering vibrations of air that mark the passage of another traveler. The aura remnant is neither a taste nor a smell, yet it can be followed. The one that has me so eager to hunt is not one of the Bandit leaders. There is the slightest sensation of Little Brother in the tug of the life thread that beckons me to move through timeless space.

My return to the human world leaves me a few blocks away, stalking down an alley even more dismal than the warehouse. Posters along the chain link fence are in tatters, advertising films not seen in theaters for at least thirty years. The only establishment not yet boarded up is a small bar that smells worse than any public latrine.

My target is inside, of course. Even Bandits of little import feel a need to stay in the crowd, though they need more powerful allies to extract magic.

I have to give a seeming of my human form without giving up my true form. As if I didn't have problems enough, I'll need to walk into the worst bar in town at one in the morning looking like a sixteen-year-old girl.

My target is fat and bald with a badly-trimmed goatee and a double chin it cannot conceal. He leers along with the less dangerous petty criminals of the crowd but I can see that he's sweating from across the room. He's a leech, a pathetic minion for greater forces who can only take magic with the aid of a yako, a tainted spirit that has turned against the ways of the kitsune.

He pretends to be flattered by my smile, following the beckon of my hand until we are protected by the darkness of a moonless night. It is a ruse for the sake of the humans. Not even a yako's pawn will risk the wrath of great spirits by threatening the natural order in a crowd of humans.

He tries to take me by surprise, the only move he can make. The stunning blow is swift and far too easy.

I ask the usual questions in a dialect not spoken in Japan for well over a hundred years. He can understand me perfectly, though he feigns ignorance. This is no hardened warrior trained in the mental disciplines of a spirit world walker. It takes little effort to obtain what I need. The lead is small and will take days, maybe a full week to sort out. This will give me time to work on strengthening my impression of the faint aura-scent his shallow mind provides. The delay has its risks, but entering the spirit world too soon may very well warn a worthier enemy of my approach. I have lost true yako twice to such impatience. There will not be a third time.

I allow my fury to build into a storm that takes physical shape. In the darkness of night, my enemy does not even realize his danger until my storm clouds strike with a sizzling bolt of lightning.

The kill offers no real satisfaction. That tiny part of Little Brother's captured spirit that is freed only serves to make me more bitter at the sense that so much of his playful spirit still remains imprisoned in unworthy vessels.

I can always sense the approach of sunrise. My tail is always the last part to vanish upon my return to a human form. I am sorry to see that luxurious silk shrinking until it is no more than a patch of silver hair on my lower back, hidden beneath tight-fitting jeans.

On this new day, I must tolerate the dull topics of onion root cells and classic haikus, but tonight...

Tonight the hunt begins anew.

Story by Pureflower

Layout/Coding: pizza

Overlay: matt_bellamy

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