Nino walked out onto the street. It was still early in the morning, and he found his body extremely tired and his mind irritated and confused about what had happened the night before. He simply couldn’t get his mind around it… The last thing he could remember was going to bed, and the fist thing after that was waking up with his face sore and Sho standing over him. Needing some air, the dark haired man had left the apartment. Before he had left, Matsu had called out and said he was going shopping for things before the day got to hot, and Nino had simply waved as an acknowledgement before walking out the door.
“Nino!” a voice called. Nino turned his head, and he found the face of Aisling not far off. Stopping a moment as the red head seemed to run over towards him waving a hand. “Hey…..” Aisling breathed out catching her breath before proceeding. Nino said nothing and wondered what the girl wanted. “Thanks for giving my cards to my da. I really appreciate it,” she said happily.
Nino’s eyes moved over the girl for a moment finding that she appeared unharmed from the previous night, and after a moment he simply nodded. There were no words in his mind at the moment that wouldn’t come out in an irritation at that point, so he simply remained quiet instead. “Ok see you later!” Aisling said as she suddenly turned and started into the park. The dark haired man watched for a split second before sighing to himself and starting to walk again.
Seeing one of the people from the night before had brought up a strange twitch in Nino’s stomach again, and as he took another step, Nino found himself suddenly in an all red world… Blood was everywhere… like water… threatening to drown everything. Nino turned around sharply looking in each direction for what he didn’t know. However, was he turned around completely, the dark haired man’s eyes finally caught what there was to see.
A brown haired girl had her back to him… Nino’s eyes narrowed. “Aoi,” he more or less swore the name.
“Are you angry with me?” Aoi’s voice was sweet but cool at the same time. She didn’t turn around to face him but simply continued to stand in the pool of red liquid. “I wouldn’t blame you if you were….”
“What is going on, Aoi?” Nino’s voice was dark as well. “What is this place?”
“Do you still love me?”
Nino froze. “Why are you asking?” he challenged back.
“It was just a question,” Aoi answered back. “Answer.”
“Depends,” Nino answered back.
“Guessed as much,” Aoi answered back. “You were always like that….. Oh well…. Bye then… Nino…” With that, the figure seemed to wade through the blood water away.
“Stop,” Nino’s voice was sharp. “Why are you here?” he demanded.
“You already know,” Aoi answered back. “I want you to take care of her….”
Nino found his eyes narrowing even more. “Emiko is not you,” he answered back darkly. A quiet laugh escaped Aoi even as she continued to stare off not looking back at Nino.
“I never said she was….” she answered back. “I never said anything like that… I… just don’t want her to die in the way I did…..”
Nino found his eyes growing again as he took a sharp step back. “Are you blaming me?” he challenged caustically. “For what I had no control over?”
“No….I didn’t mean it like that…. I’m sorry….” Aoi’s voice answered back. “I’m not blaming you… I… just don’t want Emiko to suffer… A war is coming… and… just… Please….teacher her the things that she needs to know…. For me.” With that, Aoi turned around and stared quietly back at Nino. Her face was paler than before, and she had a colder look in her eye. Yet it was the same Aoi… as if she had been preserved by time or maybe his memory….. “Give her something stable… because… because… because I asked…”
Nino didn’t answer back for a moment but just averted his eyes and found himself reflecting back in the blood water. A chill had moved through him, and the dark haired man couldn’t move. His reflection was all but glossy in the blood pool that reflected back at him. “Are you torturing me, Aoi?” Nino asked after a moment.
“No….”
“Fine,” Nino sighed back out turning his head back to Aoi who now stood in front of him. “Fine…..”
“Thank you,” Aoi answered back leaning forwards suddenly embracing Nino. In that half minute, Nino found himself back on the street. He hadn’t moved at all, and time had passed strangely.
Shaking his head, Nino swore to himself before turning and walking back towards his house.. He had a migraine to say the least of things, but he didn’t bother with anything else. Walking back to find the apartment empty, Nino sighed looking on his bed to find a note from Aiba who had apparently gone out to look around the city. Great… he was going to get himself lost again. Nino crumpled the paper and rolled his eyes thinking on Aiba’s sense of direction before slumping back in the couch and closing his eyes resting for a bit.
The sound of a knock on his door didn’t surprise the dark haired man by then. It was as if he had been expecting it. The sound of a voice yelling through the door even told him who it was. “Nino! Open this door!” Emiko’s voice shouted. “I know you’re in there!”
Standing upright again the dark haired man walked to the front door and took hold of the door twisting it sharply causing the door to swing open. Emiko retracted her hand from the door handle as the door swung in. It appeared as though she had been trying to break the lock or something of that concept. Nino stared down darkly at her, but she appeared to stare fiercely back at him.
“I want answers,” Emiko said.
“Fine,” Nino answered back turning around and walking into the apartment. The sounds of Emiko’s surprise and then questioning of whether or not to actually enter hit Nino’s ears, and the dark haired man turned his head and stared for a moment. “If you want what I know, hurry up and close the damn door already.”
Turning his head around again, Nino heard the door close and feet follow him. Nino walked back and sat back on the couch he had been sitting on. Emiko was once again looking around the apartment as if he she hadn’t seen it before she realized that he was looking at her and then turned her head back to view him. The dark haired man made a motion to a chair for her to sit down in which the red head followed with easily enough.
“Alright…..” Nino said rubbing the side of his face and then up to his temple. The side of his face as still sore from the slapping. “Ask anything, and I’ll answer right now.”
Again, the surprise was written on Emiko for a half second before her eyes narrowed again. The dark haired man guessed that she was surprised he was suddenly answering her questions. After a moment, she narrowed her eyes again. “Who is Aoi… fully… I know something’s but….”
“You’re not allowed to talk while I talk. Do not ask any questions until I have finished this answer,” Nino cut her off. Emiko looked suddenly offended and then sighed outwards as if understanding. Once he found that she was willing to comply with this, Nino brought his head back a fraction and looked for a place to start. “Her full name is Shiori Aoi,” Nino began. “And she was a vessel, like Matsu and me. To be fully accurate, she was Asa’s vessel. Asa is the demon lord of Twilight and also Ryuu’s father as you probably already know. I knew her along with the other vessels since I can remember.” Nino let a sigh out for a minute, and Emiko appeared to try and make some kind of comment or something. However, the dark haired man waved the word out of the air as he continued. “There are seven vessels total one for each of the demon lords, Matsujun, Aiba, Sho Sakurai, Ohno, Ame, Aoi, and myself. Vessels are created as was stated before by draining one’s real self to try and make a trap for a demon…. They are created by all but imprisoning the heart and soul and leaving it as something a specific demon lord would want. And when the demon approached to take the soul…. The trap would conceive to kill both the human and the demon lord. It’s a bloody way to do things, to say the least.” Emiko made yet another motion to speak but feel silent again as she caught Nino’s eye. “We all accepted this without question. It was what we were born for… for most of us…..” he continued. “
We weren’t allowed to have full lives… but we were allowed small things… friendship between each other was one thing…..for this reason… we became close to one another….despite the fact that we all expected to die at any time…. Anyways…. Least to say… I grew close to both Matsu and Aoi…. That is up until the point on my thirteenth birthday when….” he broke off for a split second feeling the pain of saying it out loud… the fact that he had… “When I was possessed by Noiren…. The trap had worked… yet at the same time… I didn’t want to die… I was scared…. Weak…. And I didn’t want to die… The trap failed to kill us both right then and there due to my will… but it sealed Noiren in my body… and he started killing people….” Nino broke off again and pulled out a cigarette lighting it after a moment and breathing out.
“He killed several of my neighbors as if… they were cows or something… while I could only watch… and then he turned on Matsu… and nearly killed him as well…. He turned on everyone that was around… brutally hurting each and everyone of them. And then he went after Aoi….” Nino sighed out a puff of cigarette smoke. “He went after her with a cake knife… already bloody from people he slaughtered….I watched everything… unable to do anything but watch… trapped and screwed by my own want to live….” He broke off again for a moment biting the inside of his mouth. “You wouldn’t believe all the blood…. It was a mess…. And he went after her….” Nino bit into the side of his mouth even more to the point blood spattered and soaked the inside of his mouth. “I didn’t want her to die….I… didn’t want her to…. But she took it… as though it was ok…. Just like her personality… as if everything as fine…. Despite what he was … what I was doing to her… And ya know what sucked the most…. At the very end of it… she just said… ‘it’s fine Nino… it’s fine….’ as if it was fine… as if she could forgive me for it….” He broke off again and fell into silence for a good five minutes trying to force his voice back in line.
“But… as she said it…. I found I could move again… and Noiren had suddenly disappeared completely… as though he had never been in me at all…. And I was alone in a yard full of dead people…. and Crows…. Crows aren’t fun to be around when they’re picking a bodies…” Nino laughed a fraction put there was pain in it.
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And so I have decided there will also be a part three to this o__O lol. Because again, I don't want to scare anyone off with one huge posts xD;;;;
KC
