***
Driving down an unmarked dirt road surrounded by dense trees, Niko starts to relax. Without any form of the monster that was chasing him in sight, he feels like he can take a breather. His car crawls to a stop, just short of a small, wooden shack. "Whew! That was close." He steps out of the car and looks backwards. "What was that thing, and where did Chisai go?"
Feeling safe enough to gather his thoughts, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his cell phone. Thinking that he could call his dad for some sort of advice on this crazy situation, he starts to press some buttons on his screen, keeping an eye on his surrounding area. The phone responds with an odd-toned beep. Niko looks down at the phone, and reads a message that he never thought he would receive in this day and age: "No Service."
"Well," he puts his phone back in his pocket, "so much for calling for backup."
Above him, a low-pitched hum begins to get louder, then jumps higher in pitch. He looks up, only to see a red car flying off of the bridge that passes over the trees. Trying to estimate the car's falling trajectory, he looks through the trees for any sort of path he can take. One small footpath leads behind the wooden shack and directly parallel to the car's path. He reaches into the back of his car to grab his sword, and heads past the wood shed towards the path.
As the car veers off the bridge, Chisai feels weightless for a moment.
The friendly female voice from the car speaks up. "Systems detect increased distance between ground and car. Determination: you are falling."
At the sound of the last word, Chisai's fear doubled, if not tripled. She never thought she would be plunging to her death in a souped-up futuristic sports car that a stranger let her use. Defensively, and involuntarily, she begins to scream.
The voice from the car speaks up again. "Best course of action: ejection while sacrifice."
The thought of being scarified to anything made Chisai even more scared. Her heart starts to beat more times than she can count. Her life starts to flash before her eyes as she looks out the front window, only to see the rapidly approaching canopy of the forest below.
"Farewell, Mr. Konkura. We had a lot of fun." the voice says.
Small hisses and clicks come from all around Chisai. Thinking the worst, she screams with all of her might, hoping that someone or something will hear her and come to her rescue, although rescuing a falling car at this rate would be pointless.
Straps appear from the sides of the seat and wrap around her, automatically clicking into each other. Thinking that this is one of her worst nightmares, she doesn't even want to think about what will happen next.
The whole roof detaches from the car frame and flies upwards. A metallic "CLANK" is heard from above, as if the roof came into contact with something, but Chisai is a little too preoccupied to even notice the noise.
Moments later, her seat is launched from the car itself. She grabs hold of the sides of the seat to hold on, finding handles on both sides. She grabs hold of the handles like her life depended on it.
Experiencing the effect of negative gravitational force on her made her a little sick. The seat's upward momentum slows down, then starts to fall downward.
Before Chisai can think of what horrors she had left to face of this catastrophe, a small white parachute shoots upwards from the back of her seat. Moments later, a larger red parachute comes out and appears above her and covers her in a glow of red from the sun above.
Feeling her heart trying to jump out of her chest and get as far away as possible, she starts to slowly glide down towards the canopy below.
Sounds of crunching metal, glass shattering, wood snapping, and various other popping noises come from below her. Too scared to see what kind of carnage the impact of the car had with the forest below, she picks up her legs onto the seat and wraps her arms around, trying to expose as little as possible from whatever awaited below.
Shuffling through the dense woods proved to be a bit of a challenge for Niko. Thinking back to this morning's events, he says aloud, "What I wouldn't give for Chisai's attack right about now to clear a better path for me."
The sound of metal crunching and wood snapping echos ahead of him. Knowing that he only has a few minutes to hopefully save anyone in that crash, he increases his speed forward and activates his demonic ability, hoping to gain some speed, and to be able to jump from tree to tree, in case the woods became too dense.
As he goes further, the woods start to thin out, and he can see a large sandy area with lots of sun. "An opening!" He rushes towards the sandy area, hoping to find another path to where the car may have crashed.
As Chisai slowly glides down to the ground, she slowly opens her eyes to at least see where she was going to land. Having no prior knowledge of how to properly guide a parachute, she was at the mercy of wherever gravity and the wind took her.
Below her, she sees a tower of smoke coming from the wreckage of the car she was just in. Looking elsewhere, she sees a large opening in the trees. Hoping to land in an area that she didn't have to climb down from, she tries to shift her weight to aim for the opening.
Moments later, she lands in the open area with a soft "thud." Realizing that she had landed, and on firm ground, she feels all around her body and the straps for a release mechanism. As she searches, the parachute floats downward and covers her up.
Pushing through the last of the thicket, Niko sees a large red blob moving up and down at the other end of the sandy area. Drawing his sword from its sheath, he approaches the red blob with caution.
As he approaches it, the blob starts flailing and small noises come from it. Being close enough to touch it, he aims his sword directly into the center of the blob. Stepping closer, he steps on an edge of the blob, but it doesn't react to his approach. Reaching up to feel the blob, the feeling of cloth-like silk and nylon passes through his fingers. He grabs a hand full of the material and yanks it away, pointing his sword directly at whatever was under this 'cover.'
The brief moment of being uncovered sent a feeling of joy through Chisai. However, the sight of seeing something sharp and metal pointed at her throat rapidly dispersed the joy and turned it back into fright.
Hoping to start this confrontation as friendly as possible, she quickly moves her hands from searching for a release mechanism of her straps to up beside her head, closing her eyes to shield her from whoever was about to attack her. "Please don't kill me. I didn't know it would drive off the bridge like that!"
"Chisai?" Niko says with a soft undertone. He withdraws his sword and sheaths it.
Chisai opens her eyes and slowly looks up. The first thing that she notices is his silver hair, meaning that he had turned into his demon form, unlike the red-haired menace that was chasing her. "Niko? Is that really you?"
Niko bends down to get a good look at her. Resting on one knee, he asks, "Quick: what happened this morning?"
A little suspicious of the sudden question, Chisai thinks back. "Um, my parents yelled at me, you talked to them, we went to the training ground, fought a gold bird, and met Kitsune, then...."
Niko puts a finger up to Chisai's mouth, notifying her to be quiet. "That's all I needed to hear." He reaches down and follows the straps around her chair. He presses a button on the side of her seat, next to the right handle, which makes the strap buckles release in sequence.
The straps release their hold on Chisai, who suddenly launches herself from the seat and towards Niko. Wrapping her arms around him, and making him fall backwards, she says, "THANK YOU! THANK YOU! Thankyouthankyouthankyou...." she starts to say.
Falling onto his back, Niko is a little uncomfortable. "Uh, Chisai?"
Not willing to let go, Chisai rests on Niko for a while. "You have absolutely no idea what I just went through. I'm just glad to find the real you, and to be on solid, non-moving ground."
The sound of rustling in the nearby trees catches their attention. Before they can get up, Kitsune walks out of the woods and into the sandy area. "Man, I really miss my Ki
nhouou right now. He'd fly me over these woods in an instant."
"Kitsune!" Chisai and Niko call out simultaneously.
Trying to kick off a branch that had wrapped around his leg, Kitsune hops into the sandy area. Looking up at the source of his name being called, he responds, "Hey, you...." He pauses as he notices that Chisai is laying on top of Niko, "...guys."
The pause in his response and odd tone of his voice made the situation seem awkward. As Niko and Chisai looked at each other in the eyes, the realization of the awkward moment grew more awkward.
Chisai pushed herself off of Niko and backed away. Niko sat up, then pushed himself off the ground.
"Kitsune, when did you get here?" Niko asks, trying to move the conversation along.
Pointing over his shoulder, Kitsune responds. "About ten minutes or so. Tora's light thing dumped me out over there, and I've been crawling through the jungle trying to figure out where I am."
Chisai points upwards as she walks up to the guys. "See that bridge, up there? We're just outside the city."
"City? Which one?" Kitsune asks.
"Tankana. We're just east of it." Niko answers.
"What? Really? It must have changed a lot while I was gone." Kitsune says. "I don't recognize any of it."
"It's a little hard to recognize a city from a forest." Niko points to the small path that he just traversed. "My car is this way. Let's get in it and..." His sentence is cut short by the falling of a tree coming from his route. The blur of brown and green catches his eye. Turning in that direction, he draws his sword out and backs up to Kitsune and Chisai. "Guys, we got company."
Chisai moves back with Niko. "What do you mean?"
A snarl comes from the forest on far side of the sandy area. Sounding similar to the one that she had just escaped, she already knew the answer to her question.
"Chisai, get into your demon form. I think that's the only way we can defeat this." Niko says.
"This? I have my own to deal with!" She snaps back as she sees the pile of red hair crawling through the forest, getting closer to her. Focusing all of her attention to turning into her demon form, she shuts out all distractions. I hope I can do this quickly. Her hair starts to fade to orange, which meant her process was starting.
Seeing this for the first time made Kitsune a little uneasy. "Whoa, that's something you don't see everyday."
Chisai's copy emerges from the forest on the far side of the sandy area, galloping at full speed at Niko.
Niko's copy lunges from the forest straight towards Chisai.
"What the hell are those things?" Kitsune calls out.
Niko raises his sword above his head."We're about to find out!" He swings it with all of the force he can muster in front of him. "HELLFIRE!"
Chapter 7