#sutoku

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He would eat well tonight.

He'd been tracking them for days. They were a small group, only five in number, and they moved quickly for being civilians.

It didn't take long to ascertain that these were not civilians.

That…made him feel a little better. He hated that it did, but he had given up the easy luxury of knowing that his victims were destined for death, marked whether he was their end or not.

At the moment the knowledge soothed him but it didn't blunt his hunger.

He waited for the perfect moment. There always was one because humans were predictable.

Sure enough, it came when the biggest of their number, already half drunk, swaggered off into the bushes to have a piss. There was no challenge in slitting his throat.

The oni came up on the smart one second, the leader who wore a blue sash. That one went down without a fight, windpipe crushed by his claws and the fall of his body muffled by the thick carpet of leaf litter on the the edge of their chosen clearing.

Number two wore glasses and she managed to squeak before he closed his teeth around the back of her neck. A single crushing bite and she wasn't a concern anymore.

Numbers three and four got wise. They lit torches, pulled pilfered explosive tags from hidden pockets and readied kunai with crookedly sharpened edges. None of this helped them. They died screaming but as deep in the forest as they had camped, there was no one else around to hear but the animals.

The animals were smart enough to stay away.

He ate the big one and the woman, the first because he needed the meat and the second because he'd always preferred the flavor. For a moment, sitting at the fire his meal had built, he felt a pang. His older brother would be able to identify where each of the dead bodies came from- could tell their blood types, their favorite foods, what illnesses they might have had or poisons they were carrying.

Chouza always had a much more delicate palate.

The other three bodies would have to go to waste and that was a shame but leaving them alive simply hadn't been an option. The last thing he needed was word of attacks getting to the wrong ears.

It was during the cleanup- the burning of the bodies with a fire jutsu, the sorting and appraising of their goods- that he heard a sound come from the wagon.

He paused in his inspection, tilted his head.

The sound came again- a little muffled thump.

He carefully stood and inhaled deeply. He smelled wood and blood, the scent markings of a fox that had passed by a day or so before, and bird.

The smell of bird was both distinct and very strong.

Carefully,  cautiously, he approached the wagon. His meals had styled themselves as traveling entertainers. It was a disguise that would hold under the inspection of a village's security force, but not a trained ninja. He knew about the drugs in the packets in the false bottom, of the rare blue paper smuggled from the Country of Birds. He knew about the cache of pilfered jewelry- mostly silver- which had been sewn into the woman's bedroll.

The thump came again.

He strode to the wagon and threw the tarp off.

The eyes that blinked at him from the tight, chakra-woven net were as inhuman as his own.

"You can't eat me I'm too bony." The child said, trying to be brave. The way his scarlet nose twitched told the oni otherwise.

The oni pinched the bridge of his nose. He'd only stopped tracking the group for a few hours the night before, picked it up that morning.

How the HELL had they had they time to kidnap a-

"How did they trick you, tengu?" He asked.

"I wasn't tricked!" the little yokai snapped. Then he curled up. "I fell."

"You fell." He said flatly.

"I fell, okay?! I was too far away from the nest and a wind current caught me-"

"Seven hells you're a child." the oni said, eyes wide.

"I'm a hundred and three I'm not a child!" the tengu snapped.

The oni looked behind him at the fire, burning low. "Do you know what direction you came from?" A thought. "And how far were you pulled?"

"I- southeast? And." The tengu looked chagrined. "I'm not sure. Pretty far off course."  

Southeast could only mean Mount Iwaki. It was easily three days' travel as a ninja ran, perhaps two weeks at a civilian's steady pace. Quite a journey for anyone to make, much less a juvenile tengu. the oni smelled a lie, but there were more important things to be concerned with.

Like that net.  

The oni leaned down. "Hold still."

The tengu did as ordered and the Oni grabbed hold of the net. The embedded chakra began to burn but despite the quality of the jutsu (stolen? Most likely) there was no leaving a mark on diamond-hard skin. The oni adjusted his claws and he tore. The net fell to pieces.

The tengu carefully shifted back in the wagon. He eyed the camp- and the piles of ash that had once been his captors- with trepidation. "Thank you." He said. "You're not going to eat me?"

"I eat humans, boy, not birds." The oni said. "What were they going to do with you?"

"I don't know." The tengu said, hopping up on the edge of the wagon and cautiously stretching his wings. "The man said something about a high price."

The oni growled, low and dangerous. The tengu flinched.

"You didn't fall off course." The oni said. "You were running away."

"No I-"

The oni gave the tengu a look. He wilted a little. "Yeah I was." He whispered.

The oni grinned, a wide grin that stretched the flaps of skin on his cheeks. "That's okay. I'm running, too. Is there anyone worried about you?"

The tengu shifted a little from foot to foot, talons making tiny gouges in the wood. "My older sister, maybe. The others in our Parliament probably don't care much."

Left unsaid, 'or they would have come to find me.'

"You're in luck." The oni said lightly. "I'm traveling southeast."

The tengu gave him a suspicious look. "No you aren't."

"Well I am now." The oni said. "but first-" he shot the ashes a look. "I want to know what they intended to do with you."

"Can't ask a dead human questions." The tengu pointed out.

"Not without a Yamanaka, anyway." The oni murmured.

"A what?"

"Nothing. Can you do anything about those feathers, kid?"

"'m not a KID." The tengu said, and twitched his nose.

The bright scarlet of his skin faded, the feathers and claws disappeared. In their place a long-nosed boy with black hair the texture of straw sat on the wagon's edge and glared at the oni.

"It'll have to do." The oni said.

"What like you can do better?" The tengu asked.

The oni lifted an eyebrow and a moment later the tengu, eyes wide, said, "Okay, that's better."

"Eat humans, remember?" The completely ordinary man with the crow-talon marks on his cheeks offered his arms. The tengu-boy looked at them.

"I'm going to find out who was going to buy a tengu and I'm going to eat them," the man said, "with or without your help. But if you want to make it home, you're going to need more than luck and being able to fly. I saved you, and according to oni law that makes me responsible for you at least until I can get you back to your parliament."

The tengu bit his lip. "You're really not going to eat me?"

"No birds." the man said.

"I'm not a bird. I'm Sutoku. Iwaki Sutoku." The tengu-boy offered his own arms and the man lifted him up onto his shoulder. "Hey, I can feel your horns!" the boy said.

"Careful not to hang on to them too tight or you'll mess with my genjutsu." The man said.

"Your gen-what?"

The man chuckled and Sutoku could feel it through his bones. "You have a lot to learn, Iwaki Sutoku."

The tengu huffed. "Easy for you to say. So teach me something, man-eater. What's your name?"

"Me?"

The oni kicked a cloud of dirt onto the remains of the fire.

"Chouji. Akimichi Chouji."

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