Cold-Blooded: A DC Universe Fanfiction (#Wattys2015)

Chapter 45: Kitaro, Rose: Hijacked

Having taken up a position where he could watch both the front and back doors of the resort café, Kitaro waited and watched the crows fool around on the roof. They liked playing in the snow just as much as people did—he'd seen them do it before. There were three of them, rich ebony against the velvety white. Two were flying up to the roof peak, flopping down and doing log rolls before flying back up and doing it again, but the third had found a bit of plastic which it was using like a snowboard. It would pick the plastic up in its beak, fly up to the peak, stand on it, and ride it down to the edge, then pick it up again and fly back up. Just like a child with a sled…

Then he saw Lady Snowblood's brother stick his head out the back door of the café to look right and left. Every line of his body said, clearer than words: furtive. Disappearing again, he reappeared a moment later, supporting—no, wrangling the Lady out the door. She was stumbling along with her eyes more than half-closed, struggling feebly, and a few steps outside, simply sagged to the ground. Her brother picked her up as best he could, slipping a little, on the icy pavement, and carried her to an SUV, where he unlocked the back before slinging her inside.

This was obviously an abduction. Lady Snowblood had been drugged, and her brother was taking her gods knew where. Kitaro's first impulse was to stop it, but immediately after, he realized he didn't need to stop it. He needed to hijack it.

The brother got into the driver's seat and started the vehicle, while Kitaro called the ittan momen, the yokai who resembled a length of white cotton which could somehow fly. Sparing a glance toward the ski lifts, his keen eyes sought out Rose's pink jacket, and spotted her in one of the chairs headed up the mountain. Well, he had to trust Inari. Rising up several meters, he urged the ittan after the SUV. Where was the brother going? Towards Aomori, but there was quite a lot of mountainous countryside to drive through first.

Okay. He had to look for a good place to force the SUV off the road. It wouldn't be that difficult to do, as the road was slushy and had icy patches here and there. Although, on either side of the road, there were four meter high walls of snow, twice the height of a tall man. Maybe not so easy. The road itself looked like an irrigation ditch, seen up above where he was.

Kitaro knew he couldn't take any chances that Lady Snowblood might be injured or killed, but he couldn't care less about the brother. Riding the ittan like a flying carpet, he sped up and circled around, surveying the landscape. No other vehicles on the road, in anticipation of the storm, probably. Good. Most of Hakkoda-san was a lonely place. Ah, a downhill slope of the road, adding the help of gravity.

Now to do the deed—Shifting into his half-mode, where he had an upright, human-sized body with a fox's head, he zoomed the ittan down, swooping in at the SUV on the driver's side. If having a kitsune suddenly flying at him didn't spook the man, he didn't know what would.

It did. Instinctively, the man jerked the wheel, and the vehicle accelerated right into the wall of snow, carving its own tunnel and collapsing that tunnel behind itself. It was a rough, steep downhill road, so the SUV went further than it otherwise might have, fetching up in a shallow ravine, its descent slowed by the snow. Instead of a violent impact, it crunched into the ground with a gentle bump. The way it came to rest at an angle meant it was only partly buried in snow, which was good.

Riding the ittan down to the SUV, Kitaro's first concern was the Lady, who was a limp bundle in the back seat. Jumping down off his helpful friend, the ittan momen, he approached the vehicle and unlocked its door with a touch of magic. Her pulse was slow but strong, her breathing that of someone in a deep sleep, and there were no bruises on her face or lumps on her head. That meant the brother could live, at least for now.

Turning his attention to that man Kitaro saw that he was clawing at some giant poofy thing that had popped out of the steering wheel to hit him in the face. The thing had hit him hard enough to give him a nose bleed and drive his glasses against his face so hard their wire frames had broken the skin. Nice! That way a few more bruises would hardly show or matter.