Shinobi Isekai: Round Two

Introductions

It was a long time before Kyou accepted she was not, in fact, dreaming. Nightmaring? How much time, she wasn't sure, since all she seemed to do was eat, sleep, shit, repeat. Her vision was blurry and her body, well, a baby's, so for the longest time her world consisted of a scratchy, reddish brown blanket on a stiff mattress. She lay on her back beside her mother, the frail woman never looking her way or speaking, only every moving at the prompting of another, older woman who came over at regular intervals to change Kyou and press her to her mother's chest to feed—which, weird, but ok. Something was obviously wrong with her mother. Something more than being married to a baby murdering assfuck.

Speaking of.

Satan was the only person whose face she ever saw clearly. The moment she realized who she was looking at, her vision cleared to the highest definition. Every wrinkle and scar, every nose hair, was in sharp focus as she leveled her meanest glares on him, chanting die die die with all the menace she could muster. Not that it fazed him. If anything, he seemed to get a kick out of it, cradling her with a half smile that tugged at his scar and made him as ugly on the outside as he was within. It clearly wasn't an expression he was used to making, if the deep frown lines around his mouth and between his brows were any indication.

Today, Satan seemed especially cheery. He actually cooed at her, cooed, drawing out her new name in a way that had goosebumps rising on her skin. She tried to hit him, tiny fist doing zero damage and eliciting a laugh from the vicious man. He said something in that language she swore she recognized, likely to her caretaker, and carried her away.

Anxiety flooded her system. Where was he taking her? Was he finally getting rid of her?

Her fear translated into baby style fussing, her pale fists striking out at him as she scrunched her eyes closed in the face of bright sunlight. Wow, her eyes were sensitive. Voices she didn't recognize engaged the demon in conversation, foreign hands poking at her face and running fingers through her hair.

Rude!

She opened her eyes to glare at the interlopers and the ladies—black hair, black eyes, sunken cheeks in too pale faces—jerked their hands back with audible gasps before exchanging rapid fire words with Satan. Huh. Sure, she'd wanted them to stop touching her, but her glares never worked on Satan. Was...was there something wrong with her eyes?

The ladies turned and walked away, and Kyou's still sharp gaze was drawn to a pop of color on the backs of their dark dresses.

What the fuck?

Like, the actual fuck?

Was she reincarnated into a family of hella intense larpers? That was the only feasible explanation for that symbol.

Satan carried her away, leaning her against him so she was looking over his shoulder. She wriggled until she could see down his back and caught a glimpse of red and white on the back of what she now recognized was a dark kimono. Yukata?

The language must be Japanese, then. That's why she recognized it without understanding it—familiarity born of a youth well spent. If only real life had subtitles.

The blinding light of the sun gave way to pleasant darkness and Kyou found herself indoors, again. There were more voices, but she was thankfully left unprodded as Satan moved through a building much larger than their home. God, being a baby sucked. She wanted to turn her head, to actually see where she was going, but no. She was stuck looking over Satan's shoulder like a Renaissance demon. Her vision was blurry again, so the people they passed were all pale, indistinct blobs. Satan's voice rumbled beneath her, and Kyou took the opportunity to whack the side of his head.