Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Upon leaving the village, the three figures came to a halt. Two of them were Setsura and one of them was Prime Minister Kongodai. The man in the black slicker pointed with his right hand, the direction Princess promised would take them out of this world.

The third figure, also wrapped in black, slowly set off, walking less like he didn’t feel good than as if he’d been severely wounded.

Watching him disappear down the desolate road, the man in the slicker turned to the naked man next to him, who was presumably Prime Minister Kongodai. With Setsura in the lead, the two of them set off toward a forest on the left.

In the shade of the overhead branches and leaves, the man in the slicker waved his right hand. Something leapt out from his fist and wound around a branch. The two of them rose magically into the air.

Flying through the air like a pendulum, he flicked his wrist and waved it again, interrupting their arc, shifting their motion, carrying them deeper and deeper in.

Many minutes later, at the end of a long arc, he spotted his objective—the manor house standing elegantly near the shores of the lake—and allowed himself a casual smile.

Princess’s abode.

The pendulum reached the extent of its arc. He cast out another wire—and suddenly felt no resistance on the wire. Falling from a height of over fifteen feet, they landed softly and silently thanks to him casting out a second safety line. The naked man safely under his arm, he focused his attention on the severed end.

“But of course you chose my home,” said a voice behind him. He turned around to find Princess hovering ten feet in the air, gazing down at him. “Or rather, Doctor Mephisto’s. As you surmised, he’s the kind of chap who could fashion a new tongue. Or even without a tongue, could make the silent speak. But I won’t allow it.”

“That’s not what we agreed,” Setsura objected, placing the prime minister behind him. “Who’s the big bag of wind who positively swore not to interfere once we left?”

“Once you left, indeed. But here you are hurrying to find Mephisto. I can interfere all I want without contradicting myself in the slightest.”

“You’ve got your directions mixed up.”

“How’s that?” said Princess incredulously. “Then who was just headed that way? I thought it a simple feint, but supposing you sent your double there doesn’t change anything. Are you Setsura or the Dancing Fiend?”

“As far as that goes, you’re not following him, are you?” Setsura grinned.

A small spark of doubt flared in Princess’s breast. Soon after they’d left the warehouse, she exited via a window and followed them. As things stood now, Setsura must have concluded that returning with Kongodai would do no good, and so attending to his health would be the best move. The best man for the job was Mephisto.

Outside the village, they’d split into two groups. Though the black-clad man must have been the Dancing Fiend, Princess couldn’t see the point of sending the ogre to the outside world. She sensed a diversion, but if he was going one direction alone, it was clear the other two would be going somewhere else.

However a mystery this nonchalant young man was to her, she didn’t see him stooping to pointless ruses.

A moment later, two possibilities occurred to her: the man heading to the outside world wasn’t the Dancing Fiend but was Setsura or the prime minister. From her vantage point, if Setsura could don the mask of the Dancing Fiend, then even the frail prime minister could be reborn as that beautiful genie.

And yet the fact that they were headed towards her manor house told her that the prime minister must be the prime minister. And while the prime minister’s head hung heavy on his chest, mostly hiding his face, this Setsura was, at a glance, clearly Setsura.

So Princess had followed them.

Ultimately, she chose the two over the one because of the speed with which they had flown through the forest. Fretting over whether one was the ogre and the other was Setsura would only cost her time.

But now that she was here, Setsura’s smile and words again raised doubts in her mind.

“No matter who the other is, he will be of no use in the outside world, as long as you remain here. Give it up, Setsura. The only one welcome in my house is you.”

“Sorry about this.”

The air hummed. Red crosses covered Princess’s body from her head to her waist, from her right side to her left, and then disappeared.

“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times,” Princess jeered. “It has no effect on me.” Her gleeful expression faltered. She tried to raise her arm but her hand didn’t move. “You—”

“Now you are honestly fit to be tied,” Setsura teased in turn. “I can’t cut you, but I can bind you. I finally figured that much out. There’s still time. Mephisto should be able to fix him in five minutes.”

“You son of a bitch. Let me go.”

Princess writhed with all of her strength. But the tree the wires were wrapped around bent no further than her arms could stretch. No matter her supernatural strength, she couldn’t free herself. Knowing what happened during the fight at Mephisto Hospital, this was a trick only Setsura could pull off.

“I really do wonder what would happen if I plunged a branch through your heart. But lucky for you,” he said, as if she really should be grateful, “I haven’t got the time right now to conduct any experiments!”

Setsura threw an arm around the naked man—his head still hanging down—and jumped into the air.

“Wait, dammit!”

Princess’s cry quickly faded into the distance. The manor house was located at the edge of the forest.

“I still gotta wonder if this is gonna work,” Setsura said to himself. He sensed something above him and looked up.

“Yo,” Yakou said, thirty feet in the air.

Black light burst from his right hand. With a snap of the little finger on his right hand Setsura released the wire, and the two of them sprang vertically upwards. The black shuriken buried itself in the ground, just as half of Yakou’s right wing sheared away, the work of the second wire cast off by his pinky.

Yakou tumbled off balance. Setsura called out, “Into the woods! Princess needs you!” He fell back into the canopy of the forest, shifting out of the way before colliding with the branches.

Glancing up at the sky, he set off at a run. Yakou was still after him. Seemed he could do well enough with clipped wings. Princess must have communicated through her telepathy the absolute urgency of stopping Setsura first.

“He should be arriving soon enough,” Setsura reminded himself. All he had to do now was run out the clock.

He dodged left. Yakou was hot on his heels. No matter where Setsura went, he would be waiting, his eyes burning with a monstrous blood lust. Yakou reached into the right pocket of his jacket and released a black round tube from his hand.

As Setsura flew through the air, the seals broke apart and the tube became a swarm of black balls.

“Shit!”

Setsura’s slicker fluttered like feathers. Missing by a literal hair’s breadth, the balls struck the ground below. Flames billowed upwards, and not all at once.

Striking the ground at an angle, the explosions spread out like a crashing freight train. In an instant the fire spread out, enveloping the trees and bushes. Every living thing seemed to erupt with incandescent light. The sounds and shapes of monsters and gremlins writhed and disappeared.

Setsura spun his slicker as the wall of fire crested over him. He hoisted Prime Minister Kongodai onto his back. This was the only protection he had on hand. It repelled the flames. But some stuck.

“Ouch! Dammit!”

Running entirely on instinct, he twirled the slicker again and landed on the limb in front of him. Then looked back. “Good grief,” he said without even thinking.

The pursuing inferno was no longer in pursuit. Ten feet behind him, a tree burned furiously. The hot wind struck Setsura in the face. “You okay back there?” he asked.

His face still cast down, Kongodai didn’t answer. Confirming that he wasn’t burned anywhere, Setsura peered up at the sky. He couldn’t see Yakou. It wasn’t likely that Yakou had lost them in the flames. He was likely lying in wait with his next bag of tricks.

“Where did you scamper off to, One Winged Yakou?” said Setsura, succumbing to a rare bit of name-calling.

He cast out a wire behind him and got an improbable response. The wire had severed. Not only that, faster than he could renew the attack, some kind of fabric wrapped around Setsura and Kongodai and bound them to the branch.

“So something still comes from the pricking of my thumbs.” Princess appeared from behind the tree in front of him and stopped in midair. “You are bound by a strip of my own clothing. The more you struggle the tighter it gets. And if you attempt to free yourself—”

The report of a gun erupted from the base of the tree. A bullet grazed the branch over Setsura’s head.

“You look familiar,” Setsura said to the man in the suit holding the firearm, Kongodai’s bodyguard, Sejika.

“He was wandering about the forest, saw me and came closer. At that point, I only needed to look him in the eyes.”

Not waiting for her to explain her predicament, the bewitched bodyguard—once her inveterate enemy—had shot off the big branch the devil wire was entwined around and set her free.

“That one’s an unearned run!” Setsura shouted.

The one who answered was Yakou. “Give it up,” he called back, swooping down from the sky.