Broken Wings

Chapter 3: 4th District Shinigami

"You who invade my sacred territory... prepare to be cut down for your insolence."

"Taro you idiot, stop trying to take his photo and just run!"

"Nobody's gonna believe this... that guy really IS a shinigami!  This whole damn city's haunted!"

The footsteps of the drunken invaders faded into the night.  The "shinigami" stood motionless, sword in hand, refusing to cross another step lest he pass outside his sanctuary. He felt no need to cross the threshold and pursue them, lest he interrupt his own enlightenment.

He marched back into the garden of the run down shrine, approaching its small, wooden hokora.  A small, smooth, solid black mechanical box sat at the base.  The wretched humans could not hear the melody that flowed from the box, its chaotic dissonance flowing through the area.  As he knelt down before it in meditation, he planted his sword into the ground, clutching the hilt tightly in his clawed hands.  Now that melody no longer left the area, but flowed into his sword... and into him.

The purple-haired warrior stayed completely motionless, awaiting the answer he sought to enter his mind. He had only two orders. Find Kaito. Kill anyone who interfered. The notes bounced around his mind, swearing to give him both the answer to his first order... and the means to carry out the second.

He folded his black, razor-sharp wings behind him and waited for the moment when he would have his answer and take to the skies to seek his prey.

"So ice cream can be acquired anywhere?!" Kaito asked in astonishment as Miku handed him a small cup of vanilla ice cream.

In spite of the horrible afternoon she'd just survived, she found her mood lifted by seeing Kaito at her kitchen table gleefully prying off the lid to the cup and digging in.  'Having to keep a secret like that must have been so terrible for him...' Miku thought to herself, 'No wonder he was such a wreck.'

"So you're a Cheruba..."

"Seruva."

"So where do Seruva live anyway?"

Kaito quickly swallowed his current bite of ice cream.  "We live in a huge expanse of islands in the sky..." he explained, "Humans can't get there since they can't fly or wield song magic... well, normally, they can't."

Miku leaned against the counter. "Uh, we can't fly the way you guys do... but we have ways of flying."

He hesitated before his next bite of ice cream.  "Right... I remember, you have those mechanical things instead."

"Airplanes, Kaito.  They're everywhere too.  I'll point one out next time one flies overhead."

"So are there like... ancient ruins and fantastical creatures there and stuff?!" Miku asked excitedly, her thoughts racing to movies she saw as a child of floating castles in the sky.

Kaito laughed at her enthusiasm.  "Something like that!" he said.

Witnessing Kaito's light and cheerful demeanor, Miku wondered if this was closer to his true personality. "Man... it'd be cool to see something like that..." Miku sighed dreamily.

At that, Kaito shook his head quickly.  "No!  Humans aren't allowed there!" he said, "That's why even I can't go back!"

Miku sighed as her flying castle fantasies drifted away.  "What have the Seruva got against humans anyway?" she asked, a little sour.

"OW!"

Kaito suddenly clamped his mouth shut, cringing as he held a hand to his temple.  "Heh... Kaito, you gotta eat that slow, remember?"