MTTA: Resurrection

Backstory

"Shiro, what's going on?" I asked her, taking her by her other hand as well. "What did he mean by finishing what he started and killing everyone, shouldn't that have ended with you?" I asked confounded.

"It is more complicated than I led you to believe Seiya, but it is not wise to listen to the words of a liar and traitor." She stared back at me, just as determined to not say anything else as I was to get the truth, so I looked back into the shrine at Sora and asked him instead, again speaking in Japanese.

"What truth do you speak of, what do you believe she has withheld from us?" I asked and the fox smirked wickedly and began to cackle.

"I will tell you little one, after you release me, the prison has only been halfway unlocked, destroy the barrier and I will let you know all there is to know about our past; my sister and I." He answered vaguely, and I felt apprehension at just the mention of his freedom.

I had no means to control him, he was malevolent firstly, and then behind that malevolence was the unscalable power of seven tails and a hatred specific to the humans as well as Kitsune according to Shiro.

"What do I gain from your freedom?" I asked and he blinked slowly after hearing it, he seemed to think about it even more.

"Even without your help, I will eventually free myself, now that the doors are open there is only one barrier that remains, and nothing; human or otherwise will dare enter to close them again, had the initial seal been undone you would all be dead." He answered, sucking in a breath and roaring at us, even with a barrier between us I still felt the sound as it travelled through, grabbing my bones and shaking them, nobody else seemed to realise it, the roar was a silent one, but Haiiro was confused when he suddenly fell to his knees and suddenly coughed up blood.

"Stop, please!" I snapped when the boy fell to his side and started convulsing, what was going on, what was this monster, were the others like this as well?

Those questions toured through my head while I fell to my knees and started coughing as well as blood started bullying its way through my eyes and nose, and then came a splitting headache that knocked me down almost immediately.

When I was eventually awake again I was met with a calming tone which was both pleasing to my ears and healing to the many phantom pains that roamed through my body unwanted and uncontested.

"She's awake," Justin called to everyone when I started opening my eyes. "Kay, are you okay?" He cradled my head that was placed in his lap as he stared down at me with a face full of anxiety and shaking hands. "I have never seen you react that way to anything before, I thought you were going to die." He sucked in a stiff breath and let out a sigh.

"What happened?" I asked, slowly raising myself with his help and looking around.

"You were out cold for hours," Jason answered sitting by a small altar with his eyes glued to a book full of notes.

"I re-sealed the shrine," Doctor Cidelle answered after Jason did, sitting next to me and taking my cheeks in his hands as he visually inspected my condition. "I placed runes throughout the entire cave, shutting it off from this world, I am infatuated with that creature, but to release him would be the death of myself as well as this plane; a Kitsune of that calibre should have powers immeasurable power akin to that of a god, and the last time I checked, I was still just a mortal." The old man complained to me.

"What does shutting it off from this world even mean?" I asked, and he nodded at my lack of understanding and looked across the church we were in at Haiiro who was being cradled by Shiro who sat ways from anyone else and stared out the windows silently speaking to herself.

"As an alchemist, I have minor experience with tampering with the world of spirits, I have long been using a small pocket of that said space to store my belongings, I have no idea where it truly is or how to begin getting there, I sent the entire cave to a place where nobody would ever tamper with it again." He answered, looking back at me. "It was only then that you started recoverin' your senses, you were for a lack of better words; dead."

"Dead?" I asked back and he nodded.

"Braindead, you still breathed, but your mind was gone, that was dangerous." He admitted with a shake of his head, and looking around at the concerned stares being directed toward me and Haiiro I agreed with him, it could have been much worse, the very first Kitsune we came to free turned out to be one that desired everything dead, it made me want to call it quits right there and then, but before that…

"Shiro, who was that, truly?" I called her attention to myself with the question, and she stopped her inaudible song and looked around at me.

"Sora was my brother… by both alliance and blood, my caretaker, and the one who betrayed me," She answered without hesitation.

"How did he betray you?" I asked and she looked down at Haiiro who snoozed peacefully and sighed.

"He sold my trust to the humans, and when I broke out into a rage he sided with them and killed me." She answered looking back out the window again.

"So you ARE Shiroi-no-mono then?" I asked again and she nodded without hesitance. "Then what did he start that he wanted to finish?"

"I do not know exactly, he lived beside mankind for thousands of years using me as revenue, but I forgave him because we are blood, I am his older sister, how could I hate my child brother?" She sighed. "I was foolish, and he took advantage of me because of it, but when I was freed, he lost the trust of the humans and sided with me for a while, but eventually betrayed me again to regain their trust, outside of that I do not know." She caressed Haiiro's wild grey hair and smiled sadly.

"Why does he hate Kitsune that much?" Jason, more invested than he appeared as w he slowly went through a pile of books from the church asked.

"That might be the aftermath of my betrayal, we were the strongest, I; the White One, stronger than any kitsune of my time, a power uncontested, and he was not far behind me, in terms of growth he was just barely slower, he had the power to kill kitsune as strong as six tails though only halved their tails, and I with four tails was stronger than the only nine-tailed Kitsune of the time, I was either feared or worshipped." Shiro looked across the church at everyone else.

"How far the mighty have fallen, from a god to a whisp, and now a living spirit." Jason sampled her tolerance and then paused. "Wait, did you say you killed other Kitsune?" He asked, I had heard it as well, but it had gone through one ear and out the other. "You killed your own kind, why?" He asked.

"Some," She paused and looked at me, almost as if she was seeking permission to say anything further, but then went ahead and spoke anyway. "Those were trying times, and not everyone agreed with what I was doing." She explained briefly.

"What exactly were you doing then?" I asked and she took a moment seemingly to gather her thoughts and then looked up again.

"Two thousand years is a long time for humans, they breed so fast; compared to my introduction and first ever encounter with one, they had multiplied into the millions, and overtaken all of my land as well as neighbouring lands, they spread like a plague and killed and plundered, and called it progress, they stole and r***d and called it evolution, but they were nothing more than animals, they still are." She seemed to be going into some dark memories as she explained it. "I had forgiven them, and my brother as well, but the humans in their fear turned their swords to my love and his children, my only true child and his children, my grandchildren…" She let out a low growl and balled her fists. "They killed everything that tied me to the world of mortals, and so for a hundred years I searched for every last one of them, I murdered as they did, I plundered and destroyed everything as they did, but most importantly, I killed them, every last creature born of my womb, two thousand years of inbreeding had created massive families under my name, sharing variant beings of my own flesh, abominations that had no place in any world, so I hunted them down and killed them all, all of my children born outside of my love."

"Wait, so you killed children as well?" Tori who sat at the back of the church watching over a stack of conscious captives looked around at her, and the people though in pain turned their ears to her as well, this was information coming from the source, no doubt keeping them there was a bad idea, but having them where we knew they could cause no harm was a better idea.

"They needed to die, they had power that did not belong in the hands of human beings, I had seen what humans capable of power used it for; their limitless greed had been the start of many wars and led to the extinction of several yokai species… a man with power is a monster, so I stripped them of it; I did what needed to be done." She responded, unapologetic about what she had done or said.

"So the millions that you killed," I looked at her shocked.

"They were all my children, I could sense them, and their ancestors, their descendants, everyone, but the others wanted me to forgive them, they tried to stop me from accomplishing my goals, they wanted me to resubmit to the humans who had promised to leave them alone if I gave myself back into their hands and made peace." Shiro placed Haiiro to lie and stood stretching her legs and arms causing snaps in her joints as she familiarised herself with this new body, making me wonder if what I had accidentally done was going to create another monster like her brother… her brother.

"Then your brother, what exactly was he doing all this time?" I asked distracting her from herself and she looked around at me.

"He was by my side as I killed my ill-begotten bloodlines, he grew stronger with me, but he had no heart, I often had to subdue his rage, and at one point I had to chase him across the lands when he lost his sanity and killed everything the light touched, the kitsune that I had to kill died because they came to stop him through any means necessary, and so overtime his hatred of them, of our own kind that tried to subdue and seal him away became so great that he betrayed me who stood in his way to get to them, after that I have no idea what happened, but his seventh tail could only explain that he went on several more rampages." Shiro started stretching again as the church fell into speechlessness.

"What you just said," Justin spoke up after the silence stretched on. "You have lied twice before, if we asked another who has lived through that time, would they say the same?" He asked, and she shited on her feet and stared at him, and then at me with a melancholy expression, likely remembering that she had promised not to lie to me again after the incident with my uncle.

"I have spoken things only as I remember them, whether it is true or not is not for me to decide, but I trust my memory, remember all that I have done and said from birth to this very moment." She stared at him with a raised brow, and Justin sighed.

"It's unreal that she is right before us, I feel like she's been there all the time, but seeing her now and hearing what she has to say first-hand has a different feeling than I was expecting." He admitted, sure as everyone else was that she most likely did not like nor trust him as he had always blamed her for my actions.

"I want to break your neck," Shiro kept staring at Justin, and then looked at Jason. "If you had made no change I would have haunted your dreams until your death, and you… I do not trust you; descendant of dragons." She said to Tori as well outing her secret in an instant.

"Dragons?" Cidelle looked at the girl.

"Well, I honestly thought you were a bit gullible for believing my salamander story," She shrugged. "But that's the only lie though, I promise I really was a prisoner, this isn't some elaborate plan or anything, I followed Mikayla because I trust her and want to lead in her footsteps until I can walk freely and search for my mate again."

"This Joel person is real then?" I asked, and she bobbed her head.

"He is sealed somewhere out there, but I have no idea where to begin searching, he is the one who made me like this, he saved my life." She acknowledged.

"So, you were human?" I asked, I never saw that coming.

"That's right, about two hundred years ago, Joel is a branch relative of Kira, a distant relative, and most Dragons don't age as others do, and they have the unique ability to de-age at will, at the price of losing most of their memories until they reawaken that is, so I met an injured and confused boy who was adamant that a secret cult was trying to kill him, as an orphan just a few years older I ran way with him when my home was torched in search of the devil that the church was hunting, we survived together for years before his memories returned, but when they did we were discovered again, so to save me he marked me who was on the verge of death and ran in the opposite direction, leaving me with all his memories."

"Hell, that sounds like a fairy tale," Justin huffed.

"When I de-aged the third time after living an entire three generations searching for him I was suddenly linked again, I saw his last moments of freedom before he was sealed, but before I could see where he was, he passed out, that's when I started searching openly for him, risking my identity and eventually getting captured by the bureau three years ago."

"How conveniently problematic," Justin raised his brow at her again, and Tori closed her eyes and took a pacifying breath and then stared back at him with crimson eyes and a grimace.

"If you have nothing positive to say regarding my life please keep your thoughts to yourself, not all of us have some tragic unbelievable story you asshole."

"Ramblings of an old lady," Justin chuckled, which caused Jason to chuckle, which only made her angrier as her teeth sharpened and her jaws clenched.

"The two of you stop it, can you not readher heart and tell she is being honest?" Shiro stared at them, and they stopped laughing, maybe there was some hope for them yet. "Seiya," She turned to me next. "What do you intend to do next, I am merely an embodiment made true by your own will, this form is not permanent." She explained, and I nodded.

The real question she was appealing to was; given how the first rescue almost released a genocidal maniac like her former self, what was my plan going forward as it pertained to the rest of the sealed Kitsune, all of whom we neither knew their stories nor backgrounds, we were blindly rescuing potential catastrophes, it was an enormous risk.

"I think we should persist."