BUTTERFLY : SHINOBU KOCHO (PART ONE)

Part 1: Chapter 3; The Seraphim

"Pfft, as if I'd crawl into bed with your flat ass either, shrimpy. I'll just sleep on the floor."

WHAT'S WITH YOU AND INSULTING MY CHEST, YOU PRICK?!

"But in any case, we need to talk more about the mission." Sakusa grumbled, pulling out the map of Shimabara bay. He took a pen and ink out of his small bag and put them to the side, and continued, "Last time I was here, the demons were attacking in these places; here, here and here." He circled distinct places in the city, each one around what Shinobu perceived to be the higher-end districts.

"So, the demons target the richer parts of this city?" Shinobu mumbled.

"I think so," the crimson-haired teen replied.

"But it's not the location that pisses me off so much."

"Oh? Is it the time of the night they attack or something?" Shinobu asked.

Sakusa, however, shook his head. "No, that's not it. It's who they attack, and what they do to those they target."

"They don't eat them, or at least I haven't seem them do so. And they seem to love stealing away small, easy targets, like children, but mostly young women."

Shinobu's surprise was obvious as her eyes widened and her breath caught in her throat. For all her life, she had only seen demons instantly go for the kill and eat any human immediately, for one to do anything otherwise while on the hunt was unheard of. "What do you mean, Kari-san?" Shinobu asked, her voice laced with concern.

"Every time I intercepted one of these groups of demons, I usually found the corpse of a girl, usually between 13 and 18. You fit right in between that, so any demon who might have been hiding seeing a young pretty girl like you come into Shimabara as a traveler would have immediately thought of you as easy prey. But, once they see that you're the 'wife' of someone like me, they would have left you alone. I'm a giant guy, I don't fit into what they capture, so these demons might think it'd be annoying to kill two people for the sake of eating just one, you get me?"

"But that's not important, it's more about what they do to the women and men they do take."

"See, I've never actually seen these new fuckers eat anyone. They don't even bleed them out, they just snap their necks and toss them onto their backs and run off. Not only that, but these victims are marechi we're talking about, not some normal human they're able to resist."

Shinobu was beginning to grow more and more concerned.

Demons, even the strongest in the Twelve Kizuki, find it really difficult to resist the blood of marechi humans, how are these ones able to.....

"Kari-san, are you sure that these humans had marechi blood in them?" Shinobu asked with a serious tone. Sakusa, however, had tick marks form on his forehead at the question. "You bitch," He spat, "You questioning my sense of smell? I'm a goddamn Kari, for god's sake."

"No, no, not at all, I-

"I know my nose, you washboard." Sakusa snarled, "We may not have many marechi members in our family, but we have stronger bodies, and all of our senses are as sharpened as they can get. Kari members have a higher muscle density, stronger lungs, better sense of smell, touch, hearing, taste, and sight-oh, which reminds me, you've got a piece of rice stuck in your teeth that's really irritating me."

Shinobu wanted to scream.

How many times are you going to test my patience, you narcissistic asshole....

"Look, the point is that these demons are unlike any other." Sakusa spat, "At the very least, they have an unbelievably high resistance to any blood at all, and at most, it could mean these things have a focus unlike any other demon we've ever met. Put this with the fact that these things hunt in groups, and that makes these colony demons much, much harder to deal with."