TherosAestas
Member
Suzume had intended to accompany Hideo to meet with the head of the Kuchiki clan, but an unsettling feeling had descended upon her and the need to discern its source was much more vital to her at that moment. She oversaw as Inei and Amaya triple checked the vaults. Nothing had been compromised. Everything was accounted for so what was bringing her such discomfort?
As Suzume stepped out of the vaults, determined to push her growing unease aside, the soft tap of wood against stone slowly drew nearer. She’d heard that sound many times before but why was she hearing it now? The tapping grew louder and louder but she stood frozen despite her attempts to move. This couldn’t be happening. She’d been nothing but good to him! Why now!? The soul society was peaceful, but perhaps that was precisely why now.
The taps turned to thuds. Wooden stilts striking stone as they carried someone far heavier than her closer. The clanking of a metal censer on chain punctuated his approach, ringing out like a death knell in the impossibly silent courtyard.
“Tiny puppeteer.”
Inei and Amaya also stood frozen, their limbs refusing their will to move as a shadow stretched long and thin over the miniscule Feng.
“How easily the puppeteer becomes the puppet.”
A clawed hand clamped down on Suzume’s shoulder. She didn’t register the pain, only the faint metallic scent on the breeze as blood blossomed around the points where Jigitarisu’s claws pierced her flesh. Her muscles screamed as they tried to work against his influence but to no avail. A sound like branches scraping escaped his lips as he delighted in her struggle. He loved his mistress, yes, but she’d grown weak, dependent on a man who brought her nothing but his own family troubles. He couldn’t understand how she saw him as worthy.
“Su-zu-me!”
He chimed her name in that sing-songy way he always had, but now with something darker underlying. The playful, carefree Fox was gone and all that remained was Jigitarisu. Cold. Unyielding. Bloodthirsty. With a twitch of his finger, Suzume began to move. He didn’t need to tell her where he was taking her. She knew where.
”Hideo.”
The singular name left the small Shinigami’s lips, broken and twisted. Her voice was entirely wrong as if her mouth was moving by someone else’s accord. Suzume appeared first before Hideo and the head of the Kuchiki clan, she believed his name to be Kinko though she didn’t know much about him. Blood rolled in vibrant rivulets down her left arm, her gaze distant and vacant as clawed hands emerged from the shadows behind her. They creaked like ancient twigs snapping as they moved to pull the strings, her strings. The last semblance of control slipped from her tiny body.
Jigitarisu’s face peered out from the shadows, his eye glowing red, his mask cracked and shattered and a cruel smirk on his lips.
“More than just the scoundrel to play with. What fun!”
His left hand slowly rose into the air as Suzume’s head mimicked its movement. Jigitarisu’s predatory gaze never left the eternally smiling Shihoin. His fingers quietly plucked strings as he made her jaw work again.
”Hideo.”
A dark gleam filled with already pitch black eye as he observed them. With the smallest flick of his wrist, Suzume’s body went skidding across the ground, leaving a smear of blood where her left arm dragged. In that same moment, Jigitarisu had melted back into the shadows. Suzume didn’t move. Whether it was because she could or because she just refused to was unknown.
Not even the tap of his stilts or clanking of chain heralded his approach this time as he emerged from the shadows, his staff swinging toward Kinko as the censer chained to it overflowed with scarlet incense and small shimmering particles that flew through their air toward Hideo and peppered the ground.
Jigitarisu melted into the shadows again as his voice rolled off the smoke, a singular word, condemning them both.
“Unworthy.”