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

Chapter 54: Rose: A Retinue?

Rose recognized a lot of yokai among the throng—the ones with necks like snakes were rokurokubi, and the woman who was a spider below the waist was a jorogumo. The turtle-frog hybrids had to be kappa, and—well, there were several yokai who were one-eyed and about the same size as a human child, so it was hard to tell which those were, exactly. At the center of the assembly was a little old man with an enormous, oddly shaped head, wearing marvelous dark orange silk robes embroidered in gold.

"That's Nurarihyon," Kitaro whispered to the Titans. "Think of him and treat him as the emperor of all yokai."

"Got it," Rose whispered back, but Nurarihyon was addressing her father.

"Peace, Warrior," he said, smiling, "We are here to welcome the new kami-yuki and celebrate her accession. All here assembled, greet the new Queen of Winter!"

Rather than cheering, every single yokai bowed, and Yukie, startled-looking, returned the bow. "You do me great honor," she replied. Then there was a thunderclap, and most of the yokai disappeared.

"That was startling. But who are they?" Yukie asked, looking at the half dozen or so yokai remaining.

Two were small to the point of being child-sized, with soft, slightly blobby features, but their heads were a little too large and their hands had claws. The one on the right held a wrapped bundle in his hands. The next yokai was a red, newt-like creature with webbed hands and feet and a mane of dark hair, another was a small calico cat—a kitten, really, with two tails. That one Rose recognized straight off—a bakeneko.

Then there was a pair of dogs. Or something like dogs. They had bodies something like bulldogs, at least, short, powerfully built and stocky. Their heads were somewhere between a dog's and a cat's in appearance, and they had lion-like manes and tufts of fur on the ends of their tails and on their paws, curly against the smoothness of their tawny fur.

Finally there was a girl about nine or ten years old whose hands were green, webbed and clawed. She had pointed ears and pointy teeth, but she looked rather sweet all the same, yet stubborn too. Wait, the necklace at her throat was moving—it was a snake. Maybe.

"Ah, they hope to join your retinue," Kitaro said.

"My what?" Yukie asked.

"Your household staff. Someone of your status among yokai has to have people to look after her and her residence. They're applying for the job. Jobs, actually."

From his body language, Slade Wilson had decided to be amused by the situation.

"The last yuki-onna did not seem to have anyone looking after her, from what I saw of her dwelling," Yukie pointed out.

"That was because she, um, devoured a few of them. The rest ran away," Kitaro said.

"Also, I plan to return to the United States very soon. Do they realize that?" Yukie asked.

"Yes! They're counting on it. Uh, look. It's like this. When the Europeans returned, we yokai retreated from the world, most of us, because of how the Catholics took against us the last time they were here. Since then, we've been stuck in our own Time of Isolation, and it isn't any better for us than it was for Japan as a whole. We need to come forward and live in the modern world. All of these folks here are young. They want to learn, and it's hard when you're stuck at home in the community you've lived in all your life. If they join your retinue, that's traditional enough to make their families happy, and if you're going to America—well, then they can go too."

"We don't want to be human," said the girl, boldly, "We just want to learn how yokai can fit into the world as it is now."

"Kiyomi!" one of the blobby kids scolded.