(Kurama's POV)
I snarled, bearing my massive golden fangs at the Eight Tails before me. Pushing against the ocean behind me, with a layer of chakra allowing me to find physical purchase against it, I was about to launch myself at my fellow monster. However a fit of laughter distracted me and looking down I saw its source. It came in the form of a man wrapped from head to toe in a dirty, maroon coloured cloak and holding an odd looking wooden staff, with a green crystal in the top, in his right hand.
"YES!" the man cried manically, a grin spreading out across his lips, causing his grey skin to crease. "My call has been answered once again, with the delivery of another great beast!"
"Who the hell are you calling a beast?" I glowered down at the mad hermit. He ignored my question and continued:
"And this one already has a vessel, while also bringing me one for the beast I already have. Oh, thank you divines above."
"Okay," Sunset grimaced as the man started to chant and preach about great deities. "How about I send you to thank them personally!" With that she leapt from within my head, fist raised and ready to flatten this guy into the ground. But just as she was about to reach him, he flicked the top of the walking tool in her direction, sending her flying back into my chest with a wave of pale green force. "So you wanna play rough, huh?" she asked as she pushed herself from the sand back onto her feet, glaring at the man as he walked backwards into the tree line behind him.
"Make your Nine Tailed brother ready, Eight Tails." he laughed, disappearing into the darkness
With a snarl, she went for him, charging after the hermit into the forest.
"Sunset, wait!" I called after her
"Kurama!" Vinyl yelled, but it was too late. For a massive bulk of muscle without legs, the Eight Tails could move surprisingly fast and he was already only a few feet away, hammer-like fist raised. I sent Vinyl into my left palm with a current of chakra, then bowling her onto the beach as I was thrown across the sea by the earth-shaking swing connecting with my muzzle.
I flew about two hundred meters over the water's surface, before slamming into it once, twice, thrice. A total of six times I skimmed across the sea until I eventually stopped. Slowly attempting to rise to my feet I yelled to the teenager sitting on the beach:
"Run Vinyl! Find Sunset!" I only had time to see her nod before my foe's shadow loomed over my head. The bull-headed beast came crashing down, head first, knocking me down deep below the waves. An immense wave of pain washed over my entire body as I was forced down into the dark
Damn, how the hell is he that fast? I guess not even I can stand two, chakra infused, blows to the head... Was all I could think as my vision began to dim along with the glowing golden flames that comprised my body, before long I was my normal, my orange-furred self again. Now deep in the blackness of the ocean floor and unconsciousness, with the last thing I felt was the sandy floor on my back and the last thing I heard was I triumphant roar from my enemy.
(Third Person)
Sunset threw another enraged punch straight into a third unsuspecting tree. The impact not only shattered the tree's trunk, but uprooted the entire thing - tossing it deeper into the foliage.
"Damn it!" she swore, relaxing her stance once again. She was pretty worried now, her Link Mode having faded away almost instantly after entering the dense jungle of green leaves and tall trees. That was almost an hour ago now.
"What happened Kurama? Don't tell me you lost to that thing?" she turned and ran further into the forest, her eyes scanning her every surrounding carefully, not that it did her much good. Whoever that hermit was, he was very adept at messing with her head. She would catch a brief glimpse of him for a second and strike at him, only to find it was a tree. "Is it magic? Or a jutsu? Or am I just going insane?"
"All very good questions young vessel, very good indeed." a devious chuckle echoed between the trees, from out of the darkness. But more training with Kurama had honed her senses to a fine point and allowed her to pin-point the laugh's origins - directly behind her.
She whirled on the spot, raised her leg and waited for the crack of broken cheek bone.
It never came. Only another bout of laughter filled the air, as the cloaked man stood behind her, holding the outstretched limb in a field of sickly green aura produced by the crystal lodged in his walking aid. Sunset looked straight into the snot-green eyes as they glowed just as brightly as the emerald on the end of the old man's staff. They illuminated his pale grey face, revealing a trio of scars running down the left side of his face, from his forehead to his dry, chapped lips. At that moment they were spread wide open is a devilish, creepy grin of triumph that made the respective grins of Pinkie, Vinyl and Kurama look straight up normal.
"At first I was quite angered to discover that your charge had been knocked to the bottom of the sea..." he began, his smile growing wider and distorting his scars. "But it was a blessing, as it saves me the hassle of having to restrain him while we undergo the process of removing your free will."
"If you think I'm just gonna' give up and become your puppet, like the Eight Tails, you got another thing coming!" The telekinetic grip on her shin and foot was only restricting her ability to move away from him, it didn't stop her moving it. With a gargantuan yell of effort she pulled her entire body into the air, using her restricted leg as an anchor to pull herself up on. Next she balled a fist and allowed herself to fall towards him, ready to bring the entirety of her weight down upon him through a punch. He barely reacted at all, flicking his staff slightly to the side, he tossed her into a nearby tree with sufficient force to knock her out.
"Simple punches and kicks will never be enough to defeat me, my young vessel." he laughed at Sunset as the world around her went black.
(Kurama's POV)
I awoke with a jolt, my head springing up from the blue exam desk it had been resting against. I was wearing a faded, hand-me-down, black blazer with (what was meant to be) golden piping running down the inside of the collar, but it was actually a horrible mustard yellow in colour. Underneath this was a stark white shirt and a tie striped with the same gold as the piping and a rather repulsive maroon colour. I was also wearing a pair of thin black trousers, black work shoes and clipped to my belt, my beaten up, old Lupercal Clan cap. It was the only part of my current attire that I actually enjoyed wearing - the blazer looked horrible, the shirt itched and scratched and the tie looked as bad as the blazer. The trousers and shoes were tollerable, however the former was thin and black, providing no defence against the biting wind in the winter and absorbing too much of the searing heat in the summer. The latter just got uncomfortable to wear after a long day of school work.
That was where I was, the educational jewel of Xeno-Terra's Northern Hemisphere - Strider's Academy. Located on Lighting Isle, the largest island in the Storm Archipelago, it was considered one of the finest and known to be one of the largest secondary schools on Xeno-Terra. A place driven by pride, and funded by the taxes of the poor - it certainly wasn't a place I enjoyed attending. But as Grumps always reasoned:
"You'll get a good education out of it, now get on the boat!"
I commuted daily from my home on Tornado Isle via one of the massive Sky Barges sent to every island in the chain, and was ferried on the floating air ship to the academy complex that dominated a large portion of land in the South side of the Lightning Isle. Admittedly it was an amazing looking site, if only some of the richer nobles that lived in the Archipelago had put at least some money into building it, I would probably enjoy coming here.
Of course I didn't have to do that anymore. This was a memory and I knew it, a bad one at that.
"Now isn't the time to see how I died-" I whispered to myself, but I was quickly cut off by a familiar face telling me to 'shush'. This middle aged woman was the mother of one of my childhood friends, saying that I was only sixteen at the time. I watched her walk back to her place at the front of a long row of eleven, lined up exam desks - each one with a student sitting at it, scribbling about who knows what.
All of this was running according to my memories and could not remember for the life of me what this test had been on.
Although I'm pretty sure she 'shushed' me for talking to myself about waffles or something like that. I thought in a whimsical manor, before turning my attention to the test paper on the table before me. There wasn't much to look at, the gaps in my memory causing the page to appear blurry and distorted.
"Great. What am I gonna' do while I wait for death to role around?" I questioned myself out loud, this time what I said ringing true to what I had said at the time, however in a less sarcastic way than then. My eyes scanned the large exam hall I was sat in, a total of twenty six rows filling it from left to right, labelled A to Z. I searched for people I knew, my friends, my teachers, my negative friends but none came into view.
Maybe I should just write about waffles until-
*BOOM!*
My thoughts were interrupted by and almighty explosion that consumed everything to my left. I was in seat T1, fairly close to the exam hall's right wall (judged from a North facing perspective, while I was facing South) and at the back - so the while the detonation, that destroyed a large part of this wall, did burn my entire left side and tossed my from my seat, it didn't kill me. I crashed to a stop against another desk, two rows away, as more explosions tore through the hall. The world spun around me, screams and shouts filtered through my right ear as my left was filled with a continuous, high-pitched ringing. I caught a few words of concern shot my way and even a few tugs on my body to try and get me to move, but I could barely feel my limbs past all the pain, let alone move them.
Next came the gunshots. Loud and echoing in the large room, they provoked further screams and shouts of shear terror as it dawned on me and just about everyone else what was happening.
The Serial Fang were attacking. A radicalistic group who believed strongly in the all-powerful Gods Of Old, who openly fought against Xeno-Terra's leading government - The Terran Union. The Serial Fang were a people to be reckoned with, strong in number and even stronger in will and fuelled by a belief in the divine, they had existed for thousands of years as the, equally long lasting, Union had never successfully put them down. This was all in alignment with their typical strategies, attack an important civilian centre in an attempt to spread fear throughout the world and scare people into joining their cause.
Makes sense that they'd come here...but why am I here now? I thought as my vision began to darken once again. Crap...