酒呑童子

“ ………“

Grabs her ankle, twisting it just a little to hope it should hurt.

     “--Oi...”

“ …… “

He doesn’t look but feels the weight and recognizes the voice. Another sigh rolls out. 

“ I have cats to feed. Get off. “

     “Meow...?”

“Ugeh.” She’s got him there. It was permissible to kill other players… Oni are so good at finding loopholes!

“Well…! You should still be a little sorry.”

     Maybe things would have turned out differently if someone paid for Shuten’s law school tuition... Oh, what could have been.

     “Hmm.. what was it that boy always liked to say -- something stupid and modern... ‘Hate the game don’t hate me’?”

“The people you killed in Golden Ward! The whole game ended up being a joke, so you killed them for no reason!” He sounds more exasperated than disappointed.

“Master’s gonna be real mad if he finds out you ate someone and didn’t say ‘sorry’ after…”

     “How rude. With all the fuss I wasn’t even able to stop for a light snack...”

‘Trouble’ is an understatement: He’s awash in a sea of balloon remnants, comedic levels of grief written across his expression. At the sound of Shuten’s voice, he snaps to attention, innocent tears shining in those big purple eyes.

“I messed up really bad this time!” He laments, raising his arms skyward in a melodramatic why-me gesture. “There were lots of balloons, and I thought it’d be fun to pop them, but some of them take away your points instead of adding them, so now my score is less than zero and they’re gonna turn me into a weird cat thing!” A beat passes as he takes stock of Shuten’s appearance, theatrics taking a back-seat in favor of honest surprise. “– Woah, you’re all bloody! Did you kill someone again?”

     “Oh, this...?” Shuten wipes blood from her face with the back of her hand. However, seeing as the back of her hand also had blood on it, the end result was more or less the same, just more smudged. Beautiful.

     “Hmm...” She tilts her head as if to size up the situation and Astolfo himself.  A pitiful, pleading face staring at the oni for help. Ah, how gracious she must be to accept. “Yes... I think this face of yours would be better to look at while drinking than any animal’s...”

     “Haah... what a day...” And it didn’t seem to be ending anytime soon.

     Especially not with what sounded like a zoo of animals screaming all at once, followed by a sea of pops and the clear screech of a Paladin in distress. Of course, Shuten could not let whatever face that came out of go unseen, sauntering towards the source and smiling wickedly.

     “Oh, my... Oh, dear... What have we here, now...? Making trouble again? As usual, you’re such a naughty boy, huh...”

▊狐 “All the same, Shuten-chan, don’t you think if there’s a will… THERE’S A WAY!?”

She dove in with all of the power of the sun behind her speed, hand spread way, fingers elusive enough to bypass the oni’s horns–!

Pat pat, pat pat.

She was snuggling up to the oni too, a rare (these days) Tamamo fuwa fest. “SUCCESS! TAMAMO’S GREAT VICTORY!”

     Before Shuten’s eyebrows could even raise all the way with surprise, Tamamo’s got the upper hand on her. Quite literally, the fox’s walm warmly and dexterously provides ample amounts of quality pats despite her horns.

    “...”

     “Ahh... Oh, dear...” Surprise begets an almost dreamy look on the oni’s face as she settles into the other woman’s body. “So it seems. Fufu, even a prideful oni knows when she’s been defeated...Well then, I guess there is no choice in the matter...” 

▊狐 “I’ve been wondering about this imbalance for a while, but shouldn’t I be patting your head!? Since I’m the taller one after all!”

“Not that I mind! I don’t mind at all!” Headpats were good.

     “Hmmm, but...? My horns would just get in the way, you know...?”

Deep within the lake, the closer he got to the light, the more he realized what exactly was going on. He finally realized what he was looking at and where he was just before he spotted a presence in the dark reaches of the water before him. Multiple presences, actually. All of them larger than he.

Back on the surface of the lake, the still waters soon started to break out into sudden turmoil from an apparent struggle under the water, waves reaching the shores and inconsequentially splashing on the sand. After a couple of minutes, it soon died down until only a couple of bubbles of air broke the surface and popped in a gurgle.

For a few minutes more, the surface of the lake returned back to its eerie stillness, with no sign of what had gone down in the bottom.

Then a couple of nondescript creatures’ bodies floated up to the surface, along with one very familiar, very wet, and very tired figure slowly walking out of the water and onto land. Immediately, he collapsed onto the dry land.

“It’s a fucking…castle,” he panted out, his arms stretched out across the ground. “A castle and like…a bubble around it.”

Even immortals could feel tired, too; he just closed his eyes for a few seconds. 

“You can’t…kill me off so easy, Baba… I’ve faced worse…” A pretty proud boast for someone currently dropped to the ground and at this point realizing his shorts had gone missing during the altercation.

     As Mercutio navigated the unknown depths of the lake on the oni’s fancy, she sat quietly on the shore’s edge. Though she was keen enough to throw him into a cesspit of potential danger, as soon as she could not keep track of his form she would scoot up as close as possible to the waves’ edge and keep her eyes glued to the surface. Just in case.

     Luckily any semblance of concern that she would forever deny was unfounded, as the calm top layer of water breaks and spits out a damp and shorts-less Mercutio.

     “...Good work.” His efforts are rewarded with a toothy demon’s grin as she sizes up his condition.

you can cook with me all day long

     Yes, yes... That was a 8.9 on the cuteness scale.

“Uwah–” He hadn’t been expecting a show of force, so for the briefest of moments, he hesitates. That strange degree of trust remains, however; he makes no attempt to flee or break away from Shuten’s accusatory finger-poke, despite how a single upturn of her finger could dig those claws into his eyes. His expression shifts from dour to contemplative, curious eyes watching the path of the swallowed sake as it slides down her throat.

“Does that mean you love me, then?” Astolfo’s selective hearing is a Noble Phantasm in its own right. Still, he seems heartened by her words, his legs folding comfortably beneath him as he sits upright. “It’s fine if you wanna eat me, as long as you’d feel bad about it!”

     Shuten lets out a long ‘hummm’ and stands up, kimono nearly falling from her body as if it couldn’t keep up with its owner’s unpredictability. Before Astolfo can think of standing up she carefully places the now-empty cup of sake she’d been drinking from atop his head. Carefully, slowly, her fingers retract from its edges until she’s sure it can stay in place.

     “Those pained faces of yours are lovely, but a stupid smile fits best, after all.” Glad you’re feeling better, in other words, perhaps.

      “Yours or mine? Fufufu...”

     "What are you saying... ‘it’s probably gross,’ something like that..."