New Improved Unsustainability

YUP, she's sitting down next to her, eating rice crackers as well... a single piece. Manners, and all that.

"Well... no, but it's already mentioned in the scriptures, are they not? The kami has given you the body in it's natural form, untainted, so altering it to suit your own needs is taboo, especially when to changing of genders, or even more drastic, species, like from human to kitsune..."

Kitsunes are fine since they're shapeshifters, but humans with their 'science' and what not...

"The kami are not perfect, and are in fact quite fallible. They make mistakes, they can cause great harm to the land and to the people." Kasumi was a strict believer in the teachings most of her youth, but that changed when she saw the hurt her rigid beliefs had caused.

"Ah..."

Well, that's a good point. But well... it's... time to consult the scripture...-

"What of it? I have had over a hundred sons and daughters, some of which I learned wished to be one or the other as they grew older. I love them all as dearly as I have the others." She sighs, not out of annoyance but understanding.

"Haruka-san, have a seat here." She offers a pillow, there's also some tea and rice crackers.

"W-Well... That's different, isn't it, Kasumi-san? Shapeshifting is something in our abilities to do so, because us disguising as humans is to not attract attention to ourselves, making sure they will not cower before our kitsune forms... While a human turning into a kitsune is like a commoner wearing the queen's robes, or... something like that...?"

"And how is that any different? Magic inherent to our species, and humans using what they have naturally to them, the gift of tools and imagination. It should be considered an honor that they wish to emulate us. To disguise yourself is to experience the world from a new perspective and I think you need to consider a new one yourself once in a while."

"SEE KING-"

"SEE KING-"

...were his ancestors right about these extinct creatures??

The needle dropped.

---------------

A crash in the hallways as Jeff burst through the wall next to his door. He ran for the lobby, but only found a door at a dead end. Feeling Mistress's presence behind him, he entered that room as fast as he could with a door slam behind him. Moments later, he was bolting right back out of that room, with Mistress waving him off from that room with a terrifying smile.

He ran all the way down the hall to the other side, where he found another door. One that somehow led him to his own room, where Mistress was once again waiting for him.

After rolling out of the way of a spear and through the hole he had made in the wall earlier, he tried several doors in the hallway until he found the fourth one unlocked. He saw the Mistress in that one, too, and slammed the door shut. Another room two doors down, and another sighting of Mistress, and another door slam.

And another.

And another.

...

And another.

At one point, Jeff would find himself on the ceiling. The entire hallway upside down as he ran from the demon lord. Tiny hands reaching from the carpet above him, like the hands of babies. Bluish and translucent reaching down for him.

Until Remilia finally cornered him with nowhere to run. Baby hands grabbing Jeff and holding him in place. The vampire closer and closer. The corridor changing, becoming more like flesh than wood and plaster.

"Who are you to think you have the right to intrude my master's home and demand a meal? You had better return to where you came, or I will send you there myself." Sakuya's voice is laced with hostility towards Millia. Her voice does not carry a hint of unease like a human's should.

No, instead Sakuya lifts the sides of her dress and draws knives from her holster.

"Demon? Is that how you greet all visitors?" It's been a long time since she's been called that. Definitely got a chuckle from her, and in a moment faster than a heartbeat she was behind Sakuya hand caressing her cheek. Nails against that flawless skin leaving thin red marks.

"What a pretty little thing you are, human."

Sakuya had been working when a chill up her spine caused her stall. Her breathing slows, and she shifts her eyes towards the shadows, imagining Miccucia just around the corner.

Her hand slowly hovers over where she keeps her knives underneath her dress. The feeling of unease, like the eyes of a predator on her, she has only one doubt in her mind that Micuccia isn't watching her right now, and it's that the stabbing feeling in her gut is absent.

She looks around slowly, then her eyes spot movement within the shadows. Red glowing eyes appear from within the darkness, but they neither belong to her mistress nor her teacher. No, this is something different.

"Guten Abend, meine Liebe." Definitely a vampire, Sakuya.