Ink Stained

101: kiss her, break him, love them*

キスして、壊す、愛する

the waning moon. It was a thin, pale yellow crescent hanging in the sky. It hardly looked capable of lighting up the world the way it could when it grew up into a full moon.

Much like young Pai, in fact. She didn't look the sort capable of hurting a fly, yet her memories showed her to be a ruthless killer, with a strange, massive power swirling restlessly inside her, waiting to be acknowledged, waiting to do what it thought it was meant to, like a confused child that had been taught all the wrong things and only wanted to be loved.

[kill?]

But unlike many who shared her fate – or at least what Misao had glimpsed in her memories of those others cursed to a fate like hers – Pai had shown herself to be remorseful of her crimes. Unfortunately, that didn't negate any of what she'd done in the name of protecting the boy she called Rikuto.

She wondered if Pai was looking up at the moon as well. After she fainted, Shin, without a word, had picked her up and taken her to the royal court physician. She knew Kouta wanted to go with them, she could see it in her son's eyes, but he'd stayed behind because he knew that, for the day at least, his duties called for him to remain by his father's side.

It was two hours later that the physician's apprentice reported to them that Pai was fine, and had suffered only an intense dizzy spell. Nevertheless, the physician himself had prescribed her some medicine to take to help ease the strange fatigue Pai was suffering; something Misao knew was thanks to using her power to demonstrate what it was So Fu had in their possession.

For the rest of the day, the council debated and argued fretfully over the young girl's unbelievable claims. After everything they'd seen, not to mention reports they poured over that correlated with Pai's stories, as well as Shin's testimony when Kouta drew him away from the unconscious Pai's side long enough for him to give it before he went right back to her, no one could deny the truth in her words.

No real conclusion or agreement on the next course of action had been met. Misao knew that the next few council sessions would be long and tense as they attempted to figure out what to do. It had been the same in the weeks following the Kitsune's attack, as the Tengu tried to recover whilst mourning the deaths of so many.

The two Heirs who'd been present at the meeting had quietly left the same day, most likely to report to their respective Kings what had transpired. She knew Kurama had made a smart move – albeit admittedly risky – by letting them be in the Main Hall while Pai talked. He'd played a gamble by letting them in, because now when news of So Fu leaked to the other Clans and Pai's ties to the Tengu were made known, no one could accuse Kurama of trying to twist the situation to his benefit by keeping the other Kings out of the loop.

Except for the Kitsune King. Kagetora.

She tapped her long fingernail on the wooden frame she leaned her elbows on, a small frown on her face. Seiren, Heir of the Kitsune, barely reacted to Pai's tale, except when she used her power – and while everyone else was shocked by it, he'd looked like he knew it, like he'd seen it before. In fact, he looked like he knew about everything she was going to say before she did.

Reading minds was not something Kitsune could do, not even ninetailed Kitsune...which left there to be only one possible conclusion; Kagetora, in all likelihood, already knew about So Fu.

And what with how old she suspected him to be – far more than the thousand years most thought because of his nine tails – she didn't think it too out of the realm of possibility that he did know about what was going on. When they did happen to be in the same room, she and Kurama watched the Kitsune closely and noted that he didn't even try to hide that he was older than the mountains. It was just those around him who never really paid attention.