Liability (6)

Raw, visceral power flowed through his aura, tainting the white colour to a deep, bloody crimson red. Aramitama, the aggressive godly power, was coursing in a frenzy of its own around and in Arahabaki.

All repressed wrath from the humiliation channeled into his destructive will, waiting to be unleashed.

The growing blood lust rushed within his being , fueling the expanding aramitama. An insatiable thirst for a carnage welled within, ready to burst forth in a great deluge.

The kodama of the surrounding trees, as well as other forest yōkai, sensed his overwhelming aramitama - a forewarning of a godly rampage. The yōkai fled in droves into Kakuriyo. 

Several flights of birds flew towards the skies, away from their roosting spots. The monkeys screamed their warnings and the wild boar grunted at the fellow Japanese serrow and deers while all were running from a possible impending carnage. 

They are far from the human population in a primeval forest. The nearby villages were long abandoned because of rapid depopulation. Only the scattered, dilapidated and damaged shells of houses remained as an eerie testament to past human occupancy.

Asanki and Tokkoni studied the reddish glowing aura of Arahabaki. These two Mishakuji are the only two lesser gods he trusted enough to reveal his condition. 

The old war buddy bond was hard to break amongst them, the surviving Emishi gods. The Mishakuji and Yamata-no-Orochi had been one of his greatest allies.

Asanki contemplated for a while. "Try to get an appeasement ritual soon. There is only so much of aramitama you can hold before it rages outwards from your being. Don't bother with those foreign yōkai, werewolves or whatever they are called. I only don't understand why this is happening to you now." 

"Exerted too much on the spirit cover and the large teleportation channel," Arahabaki answered.

Both Mishakuji stared wide eye at Arahabaki. 

Spirit cover was a god's protection capability that could exhaust vast amounts of godly 'goodwill' or benevolence, the nigi-mitama as the Yamato gods termed it. The spirit cover helps to obfuscate and then create an illusion. The gods seldom used it, unless necessary.

Unlike the Yamato gods which had four mitama, the Emishi gods have two sides. Arahabaki had few, if any, appeasement rituals to replace the used nigi-mitama.

Even the Mishakuji could not conjure the spirit cover while creating a portal to teleport. No wonder the aramitama was circulating in an erratic and chaotic manner.

Arahabaki's powers are imbalanced to the extreme. While such an imbalance would be beneficial in times of war, it is a detriment to the current era where peace reigned. 

"You can't enter the urban areas now until it dissipates." Tokkoni paused and said, "those yōkai has left for the highway. Don't know why you want to risk it."

"That female is Yamata-no-Orochi's offspring, and she is now the guardian of the eight snakes but brainwashed," Arahabaki grumbled. "However, her memories are gone, just like her partner, that Daija."

"So Daija is still around. I would not say that his memories disappeared in entirety, but they are returning, judging by how he rejected godhood to be a yōkai," Tokkoni added.

Arahabaki replied, "I thought it was over a mortal pet?" 

"Daija, we know him better than you. Do you think a god will give up everything to mope over some dead human for centuries? Before the gods sealed Yamata-no-Orochi, he said that Daija himself seems to remember something. So not that brainwashed," Tokkoni said.

Asanki laughed and wiped a tear from his eyes. "Yeah, don't even think they know what they are doing. Just compare the accounts of history between Kojiki and Nihon Shoki. Even Tsukuyomi got cut off in one somehow."

"Why do you even read those two books?"

"Knowledge is power." Asanki flashed him a smile. "Anyway, Tokkoni here will look after you. I have some personal business to attend to."

***

With Daija watching over Isuki in my office and Kyoko taking care of official business, I paced around, waiting in the fire escape stairway to our carpark. Then I heard an echo of the door opening - she is here. 

"My my my, what have we here?" An eight-legged shadow towered over me, swinging from the ceiling like a hypnotic pendulum.

I rolled my eyes. She likes to use her sickening, sultry tone. 

Then the impending disappointment in the tone as the shadow shape-shifted into a curvy figure of a woman. 

"Hello boss."

Of all the female yōkai I favoured, it is the ghosts, like Oiwa, or the jorogumo, a spider yōkai. Akane, my jorogumo is willing to moonlight for extra work. That meant money for her to feed on handsome human prey in the host clubs of Kabukicho.

"Is it about the webs again?"

She did her best. The fire escape is clean. No loose webs in sight. 

I turned around with a smile to face her and the photo in hand. "No. Not about the webs. I have a job for you."

"How nice!" She squealed in delight as her nimble, manicured fingers fished the photo off me. 

Akane had a peculiar preference for the retro 1960s high fashion style. Not those superminis.

This jorogumo would wear anything the late Jacqueline Kennedy wore. Shift dresses, Pearl necklaces, stilettos, those odd boxy jackets with the awful big buttons - you name it, she has it in her wardrobe. Her uniform appearance included an apple red nail polish with a matching lipstick colour and permed hair. 

"Wait.…" A frown grew on her face. "There's a girl with a foreign werewolf."

"You have dealt with a werewolf before?"

"Nagasaki is my hometown before I went to Edo ," Akane seemed wistful.

Nagasaki was the only port which could accept European trade since 1571. During the Edo period, the shogun restricted trade to Dejima island. The Portuguese gave the Japanese people a taste of tempura and castella sponge cake.

While China had the longer impressive Silk Road, Dejima was the starting point of the Sugar Road, Nagasaki Kaido, along with impending diabetes and tooth decay for the rest of Japan. Kitakyushu in Fukuoka was the last point before entry into the more heavily regulated areas of the shogunate.

"Yeah, it was around 1600s, just before they stuck them on Dejima. A werewolf came from the land of Portugal...." She is reminiscing now.

Like her famous counterpart of the Joren falls in Izu, Shizuoka, Akane is sexy and attractive in human form. In spider form, she resembled a giant, hideous golden orb-weaver. 

Never heard of the jorogumo keeping human pets. 

They are sadistic. Nothing brings them more joy than to drain their handsome victims out of their life force in slow agony. Or liquify them with the venom while they are still alive.  

"So you ... um...," I tried to think of a correct word here. 

"Ate him. He is delicious. Sweet meat." she licked her lips. "Can't escape the webs. Spider silk is strong once I weave them in."

"He never appeared again?" I needed to be sure.

"Only if I had vomited, there might be liquid left from his remains in my digestive system."

Of course, a werewolf is flesh and blood. Jorogumo digested them as easily as humans and our material yōkai forms. All the while we were looking for solutions to deal with the foreign werewolves. Akane is the most convenient solution. 

Then again, her kind doesn't leave their nests often or communicate with others unless it was time to ensnare some poor horny fucker. She left because of human encroachment on her land, which increases her risk of discovery, if they count the missing in nearby villages. 

"Six of them too." 

"Any forests? I can deal with six in forests. Not in parks. The ambush will be too obvious," she said. 

"At the moment, the one in the picture. I will send you the details of how to track him."

Akane glanced at the picture. "So this is the girl he likes."

"She's dead."

"Oh. But if she has a twin..." Akane transformed into the likeness of the girl in the photo.

"If you want to," I said. 

"By the way, I also eat those foreign vampires. Especially when they turn bat form."

I almost choked. If she is human, I might make a joke about the current pandemic and eating bats. Good to note future services. Her personnel file has to be updated now.

"Just don't leave a mess and don't perform the assignment on a full moon." I waved to her as she continued drooling on the picture. 

***

Every yōkai was in a flurry in the executive office as Daija watched on. Some were at their desks checking the internet, some were running about with books. 

Isuki's deep gashes did not regenerate and heal failing expectations. Instead the amanojaku was displaying symptoms which resembled a human infection. He had already started vomiting copious amounts of yōkai energy.

There is a first for everything in the world. In their long history, not even an exorcism or a pathogen can do such extensive damage to a yōkai. 

Nurarihyon scrutinised the wounds on the small amanojaku. A portal opened up at the side of Kuro's office. Everyone's hopeful eyes were trained on an entering Kuro with a smirk on her face.