Retribution (Kozi) [Chachamaru] *Adult*

Kozi hung out in this park all of the time, so he wasn’t an unusual sight. Groups of students walked by, professors chatted, but there was the darker side as well. The pedophiles, the rapists, etc. that would sometimes stalk about here. They’d watch the girls, the young good looking men. But, one thing was certain about this park...these passersby were entirely safe.

As the day progressed, Kozi’s eyes focused for the most part on the page in front of him. But, like all demons he had a sixth sense for things, he could hear thoughts, and more than anything he could feel the thoughts of the impure. So, for the most part he read his book, until someone started thinking something awful. They wanted to harm someone, or something, an animal or a human, it didn’t matter to Kozi.

Today he had sat there until nightfall, which wasn’t unusual. He was waiting. Because, unlike the other hunters here he was entirely aware of everything and everyone around him. Unlike them he knew that he was hunted. That the shinto priests would destroy him if they could. Kozi didn’t always do good things, sometimes he used the souls of those he punished against the living. Unlike his prey, who didn’t realize that they too were numbered with the hunted, Kozi knew all too well that he may be being targeted himself.

But, tonight it was quiet, at least so far. The priests weren’t out as much without the holidays, and there wouldn’t be another one for a few weeks. Kozi sensed no presences other than one of an impure he’d been tracking the entire day.

This man was scum, he’d been watching the girls as they’d passed, had been casing a girl for days and knew she would go jogging just before nightfall.

As the man turned, seeming to sense a presence on the bench, Kozi was gone. The girl ran past and the man looked as though he were dazed a first, a look of confusion passing his features. Then, all turned to darkness around him and an overwhelming sense of fear invaded. Kozi had snared his prey, but was unaware that he may have been snared himself.

Some thirty or forty yards off there was a presence he had been unable to detect, that approached. Kozi couldn’t be seen by any ordinary mortal, but by this one it was entirely possible.

Kozi sensed something, but now it really was too late, wasn’t it? Now that he had his prey he sure as hell wasn’t going to let him out. More than anything in these attacks Kozi felt this overwhelming sense of vindication, of doing something right, of riding the world of a black soul.
That was a bit ironic though, wasn’t it? His own soul was as black as night, though he served the gods he wasn’t numbered among one of their favorite servants. Plus, his kind were a bit prone to pulling tricks on humans and making matters worse for the gods themselves.

Now, Kozi reached out to the trembling creature before him, driving one black talon through his heart, and subsequently through his soul, and one into his mouth. He wanted him to suffer or he wouldn’t have done this last part.

The man squirmed and writhed, screaming in abject agony upon the ground as a cloud escaped through his chest, and blood seeped from his gaping wounds.

“Your soul is -impure-...,” this last word seemed to cut somehow, to make things worse, and the man clutched at his ears more than at his bloodied form now, wishing, it seemed, that Kozi would just stop talking, but his wish wasn’t to be fulfilled.

“You are -filth- do you understand...and like filth you will be used for no other purpose than to cleanse this world....”

With another swift motion, Kozi put a hand over the form’s mouth, pressing his head into the ground painfully, and putting a hand over the hole where the soul leaked out. He started chanting in some fel tongue, cursed long before this man ever had life, or perhaps even the world.

A crystal formed there. And then, as though nothing existed, the man disintegrated and fell into a thousand petals, thousands of white cherry blossoms. Then, the void sank and all was normal once more.