Kit Fawkes (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fauxfawkes) wrote2021-01-27 05:15 pm
fauxfawkes) wrote2021-01-27 05:15 pm
Bonus 2: DVD Commentary
[DVD Commentary Edition]
Otherwise known as my ridiculously self-indulgent extended author's notes, thoughts, commentary on the process, hidden in-jokes, and so on. If that's the sort of thing that interests you, feel free to read on; if not, it won't hurt my feelings if you skip this. I like having it as a record for myself more than anything else, and so much went into writing this one that I'm going to be a little full of myself and go over it again, tooting my own horn all the way. Sob.
From here on out, my notes will be in red text!
"How very kind of you to bring a hostage with you," a faintly accented voice said as he began to come to, the foggy veil of oblivion slowly parting as he seemed to swim toward consciousness again.
The first thing he noticed was that his head hurt.
The second thing he noticed was that the familiar pressure of his cane against his side had disappeared.
Because Eva's got it. Ducelli doesn't know what it is about the cane that's so special, but he knows it's directly connected to Kit destroying the building in Italy, thanks to Skippy's timely delivery.
"It certainly makes things a great deal more convenient," the voice went on, seemingly unconcerned by the agony he was currently fighting off as he tried to find the willpower to open his eyes. "It appears you're quite like your father in that respect. One gets much farther threatening your playthings than one does with merely threatening you."
Kit forced his eyes open, still groggy, and found himself greeted with the sight of an opulent room lined with marble pillars and elegant statues, a place that reminded him of nothing so much as the mausoleum where he'd first met—by some very sideways definition of the word—his grandmother and grandfather on his father's side. It was all white, everything in hues of white like clouds or pearls or smoke, and it hurt to try to focus on the expanse of it with his already spinning gaze. His senses weren't responding as quickly as they should've been, either, he noted with displeasure. He hadn't realized he was sitting down until he'd opened his eyes to see the chair—and the restraints binding his wrists and ankles to it.
"Aren't you going to introduce yourself?" he rasped, trying to keep the man talking to buy himself some time. First he had to clear his head, had to get a better grasp of the situation. Then he had to find a way out. Then he had to find Kurama, assuming they hadn't killed him yet...
"Oh, I didn't rank high enough to merit becoming one of your grandfather's precious cards," the man said with undisguised irritation. "Years of service to our holy cause, decades spent in pursuit of the science that would let man achieve divinity, and all for what? To be crushed underfoot by the whims of a man slavishly devoted to a dead strumpet's memory and the toys of the occult."
Kit coughed, trying to muster a dry snicker. "Wow. You must be pretty pathetic, then, if a guy as insipid as that managed to crush you."
He could practically hear the man's knuckles turning white on the arms of his chair in the tense silence that followed, and quickly braced himself for a strike in retaliation. But it never came; instead, the faint sound of chuckling filled the air, slightly too forced to be genuine, and Kit realized he was treading in dangerous waters on that subject with this man. Whatever it was that had happened between his grandfather and him, it was a thorn in the man's side, and he clearly had no qualms about relieving the agony of that thorn by taking it out on his enemy's descendant.
Just one more thing to thank his paternal grandfather for, Kit silently grumbled.
"Now, then, Lord Hargreaves—or would you prefer Mr. Fawkes?" the man continued smoothly, needling at him with such an outlandish implication, that he might prefer a drop in rank, "No, I think we'd best call you Lord Hargreaves. We might as well keep this as close to a family reunion as possible."
"Which makes you my fairy godmother?" Kit answered dizzily. Again, he waited for a blow that never fell; again, he wondered and despaired at what trump card this unknown foe could be holding, that he felt no need to rise to Kit's bait and respond with violence.
"Young Lord Hargreaves, Alexis's precious Magician. What an honor, that I now have the pleasure of entertaining such an esteemed member of the Major Arcana," the man said in a voice that reminded Kit of nothing so much as a snake. "My name is Ducelli. My contemporary, Signor Rapetti, was the man responsible for the operation you so thoroughly destroyed a few months ago."
"Rapetti" is a subtle nod to "Rappaccini", on whom the Italy adventure's dolls were based. Also, I picked Ducelli for no other reason than that it had a nice ring to it. DooCHELLee.
"The dead girls," Kit whispered, forcing himself to tilt his head up and keep it erect, despite the urge to let it fall against his chest. "I see you compared notes."
"We did far more than that, Lord Hargreaves," Ducelli answered with a cold smile. Then, abruptly, his voice turned pleasant again. "Did you enjoy our sleeping beauties? I do hope you appreciated them. They were specially crafted for you, you know."
"I see you've discovered my weakness for cutthroat women," Kit muttered, his humor as black as his expression.
Kit, clearly, gets his puns from his mother. And his macabre sense of humor from his father.
"The process had been in development for years, of course," Ducelli went on, rising from his chair and beginning to pace the room, seemingly uncaring of the fact that Kit was still bound to his own chair and couldn't reasonably follow his movements without an exceptional amount of head-turning and neck-craning, which considering his current dizziness and disorientation was decidedly not an option. "The deadly dolls, one of your grandfather's finest advancements. Far simpler to work on female subjects than male ones, as well, though not impossible. And such interesting data we gathered from examining them! Souls summoned back from the great beyond seemed to carry with them a unique ability, a mystic property that granted them extraordinary power in an otherwise mundane world."
This is also my subtle in-canon explanation for why Riff is the only male deadly doll in the series, as well as the most long-lived.
He paused, turning on his heel so sharply that the sole of his shoe squeaked on the marble floor. "Of course, that wasn't the only area of research in which he made exceptional progress. After all, what good is a soul without a body to hold it? So we also greatly advanced the study of cellular growth, drawing just a few cells from a donor source and maturing them into an adult receptacle to hold our resummoned soul." His voice took on a note of arrogant pride. "I spearheaded that effort. I was the one who perfected a working process. I made the deadly dolls possible!"
"Which makes you a grown man who plays with dolls," Kit replied, sotto voce.
Ducelli's expression abruptly went icy. "But your grandfather," he said, stalking toward Kit's chair. "Your grandfather had no concept of vision. He was fixated on the idea of one woman, one resurrection. He failed to comprehend the sheer potential of what we had discovered, what we could do."
Ducelli is the archetypal disgruntled lieutenant in the evil organization. He does all the work and what does Alexis do with it? Chases after dreams of resurrecting his stupid dead sister. Come on, man, show some vision. (I bet his Italian sensibilities also despise Alexis's sense of fashion.)
Kit glanced up as the man approached the side of his chair, then resisted the urge to howl as Ducelli seized a handful of the hair at the back of his neck and pulled, forcing him to throw his head back to compensate, making his vision swim and a jolt of pain lash through his mind. "Let me introduce you, Lord Hargreaves, to what I can do."
As if on cue, a new figure stepped into the room—a girl in a high-necked dress with wavy red hair about her shoulders, with a nose and smile that seemed unsettlingly familiar, with a pair of blue eyes that made Kit feel as though his heart had fallen out of his chest and splashed into his stomach. It wasn't just that she was beautiful, wasn't just that she was undeniably the most exquisite of all the so-called princesses he'd seen in the crypt below the house; no, it was that looking at her made him realize, to his horror, that he knew exactly where he'd seen those eyes before.
He'd seen them every day.
He'd seen them in the mirror.
"You were kind enough to spill your blood for us in Italy," Ducelli almost purred, his hand still fisted in Kit's inky hair, keeping his head forced back and his throat bared. "A few cells was more than enough."
I always kind of wondered why Alexis didn't just do this in canon. Beat the crap out of Cain, draw some blood, forge a clone, make it bang Mikaila, insert genetic material, receive unholy baby. Mikaila's obviously viable if her eggs can be fertilized and grown in vitro; why couldn't he do the same for Cain? Or maybe I'm just reading too much into this. Regardless, Ducelli thinks of this shit. Which probably contributes to his grudge against Alexis, go figure.
"You didn't," Kit choked out, his body already involuntarily fighting against the restraints that bound him, completely ignorant of the pain that lanced up his limbs as sheer revulsion drove him to get away, away, as far as he could so he could kill that monstrosity, that abomination—
"And the Lord made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man, and the man said, 'this is now the bone of my bones and the flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man'," Ducelli intoned, his smile tinged with twisted pleasure. "Shall I introduce you to your twin, Lord Hargreaves? I'm sure you'll appreciate that we've chosen to call her Eva."
It ain't Godchild until you've got biblical references. "Christopher", coincidentally, means "bearer of Christ", which ties in both to the Adam references (since Christ is the second Adam, who actually gets it right) and the fact that he's ultimately the force positioned against Eva's original sin. It also ties in neatly to the "temptation of Kit" theme I've got going here, and no, I didn't actually plan for all this in advance. It's just a nifty coincidence and my penchant for making everything tie in to everything else.
The magic, Kit realized a moment too late. The magic in the crypt that had sent him flying, and the eyes he'd glimpsed before he'd blacked out—it had come from her, this girl they'd forged from his own blood, because there was magic in his blood and they'd harnessed that to make her...
And suddenly, more than anything, he longed to lash out and bring the whole building crumbling down around them, even if it meant his own death along with it. Anything if it meant destroying this blasphemous creation in front of him and the sneering man that had brought her into being.
"You're welcome to bed her if you like," Ducelli went on, releasing his grip on Kit's hair to step over and trace the curve of the girl's cheek, as though she were a doll in form as well as in name. And she didn't even flinch at the intimate touch or the insinuation; her blank eyes remained locked on Kit's, her expression as cold and flat as a mirror's surface itself. "I know that's one sin that runs in your blood."
Alexis did his sister, Cain wanted to do his half-sister, and little does Ducelli know, Rosella wanted to do her twin brother for all of about five seconds before she realized they were related. Tee hee.
"I'd sooner smother her with a pillow," Kit snarled back, unable to help himself.
Ducelli laughed. "Oh, we've already saved you the trouble of that."
And abruptly, the pieces fell into place. "You created her from my blood, grew her into a person, and then killed her like the others—"
"So that we could summon her back with the deadly doll process," Ducelli finished with a satisfied nod. "A very interesting process, experimentally speaking. You see, we'd known all along that the summoning ritual would awaken certain spiritual powers along with it, but Eva's proved unusually strong. As though the deadly doll process had only augmented a potential that was already there." He paused, obviously more for emphasis than anything else. "A potential that you so graciously demonstrated when you destroyed our laboratory in Italy."
I think this is another really cool premise that went untouched in Godchild. They know the deadly dolls always come back with funky spiritual powers. Why not just make a herd of undead shock troops and end the world that way? Again, Ducelli is shaking his fist at Alexis's memory (and hormones) here.
"I'll gladly prepare you an encore," Kit muttered.
Ducelli sighed. "I must say, enduring your unending supply of retorts is just one more reason to commend myself for cutting your sister's throat when I had the chance. I much prefer her silence to your chatter."
"You mean you're so infatuated with the sound of your own voice that it annoys you to hear anyone else's."
"You're quite arrogant for a man bound and held at another's mercy," Ducelli remarked coolly. "Arrogant enough to entertain notions of destroying this entire building the way you did the other, I'm sure. But while I have no doubt you'd be willing to sacrifice yourself for the sake of seeing this undone once and for all, I also have no doubt you'll hesitate when it means the death of that dear young lady you brought with you, as well."
Then they hadn't killed Kurama after all. They were keeping him as leverage to ensure Kit's good behavior—and apparently, given Ducelli's persistent pronoun trouble, they still hadn't realized that his demon wasn't female. Perhaps that long hair of Kurama's had turned out to be useful after all, he thought wryly. With the way these monsters slaughtered girls without remorse, the likelihood of them underestimating Kurama's abilities based on his assumed gender was fairly high.
So much the better for their chances, he mused grimly. But would it be enough?
"Then let's get to the point," he said quietly, never taking his eyes off the girl called Eva. If she had his powers, even half of his powers, there was no doubt in his mind that she was the much greater threat at the moment. "What do you want with me?"
"Want?" Ducelli repeated, as though the answer were laughably simple. "I want to achieve the true purpose of DELILAH, the one we all sought before your grandfather surrendered to the temptations of the woman from Philistia: to bring about the end of this world and raise a new one from its ashes."
"Then you should've named her Babylon," Kit spat, his eyes growing narrow. "The mother of all abominations."
Kit, don't call your clone twin a whore. Also, whee, more biblical references.
"Oh, no," Ducelli answered, once more grasping at Kit's hair and pulling his head back; this time, however, he traced his fingernail in a thin, stinging line across the expanse of Kit's bared throat and smiled like a snake. "I have my Eve. But so much the better if her Adam should join her."
Kit's blood ran cold as the man continued, "It is much more tedious to create a male doll. But sometimes the finished product is well worth the effort."
DUN DUN DUNNNNNN.
I don't remember when precisely I came up with this particular twist, but it's a villainous plan I'm pretty pleased with. Ducelli's figured out that Kit's going to keep turning up and interfering no matter what DELILAH tries to do, and he's hit on a neat and elegant way of achieving three goals at once. First, Kit's out of the way. Second, he gets a crapton of Kit's blood from which he can make as many more Evas (this is not an Evangelion reference) as he wants. Third, he gets Kit himself as a weapon, who is arguably even more powerful as the original than the copies are. A very tidy way of sewing things up all around.
"You're mad!"
"An obstruction not just neutralized, but transformed into an ally," Ducelli murmured. "Who could stand in my way with two of you at my disposal? And so long as I gather an ample amount of that blood of yours before the process is completed, as many more as I care to create on top of it. A little blood goes a long way; all of yours should be more than sufficient to last me until my work is complete."
He paused, shifting his free hand to scratch at an itch on the side of his neck before returning his attention to Kit's throat. "Of course, there is still the matter of your young lady's life. And I'm not an unreasonable man, my dear earl, so allow me to extend you a bargain." His eyes narrowed slightly. "There's no mistaking your paternal lineage. You're the Cardmaster's grandson, beyond a shadow of a doubt. But that's only half the equation, isn't it? Half the blood. Half the potential."
That itch being the moment when Kurama's shimaneki seed implants itself. Did anyone catch that on the first go?
His mother, Kit realized at once. The magic he'd inherited from his mother, that was so instinctive to him from years and years of life in Daventry, honed to a deadly edge under Crispin's tutelage and enhanced through his experiences with Crehador and the life he'd lived until now. The man knew who his father was, his grandfather, and quite probably knew everything there was to know about that side of his family...but he, just like everyone else save Crehador, had absolutely no way of knowing who his mother had been. They didn't know he was a prince on her side, and the heir to a kingdom if he wanted it. They didn't know why he was as powerful as he was.
And they couldn't replicate it if they didn't know how he'd gotten it in the first place.
"Who was it?" Ducelli demanded, yanking again on his hair. "Tell me and your young lady goes free. What did the Cardmaster do to create you? Which of his dolls conceived you?"
Ducelli, like everyone else, has no way of knowing about Rosella; Cain did an excellent job of keeping her presence under wraps during the events of And Miles To Go. So he assumes that Alexis's original plan to have Cain bang one of the deadly dolls and produce a corrupted spawnchild must've gone through in secret (one more thing to hate Alexis for, in his book—how dare the Cardmaster keep such secrets from his Disgruntled Lieutenant™?), which would also explain Kit's magic super freaky deaky powers. Or so he thinks.
Obviously, he's also thinking of how to make more Kits by experimenting until he produces a deadly doll with the same powers as Kit's "mother", and then breeding some more that way. Whee, inhumane medical practices and anachronistic Victorian science!
"You'll never make more of me," Kit forced himself to sneer, his vision already spinning from the abuse. "I'm one of a kind."
Ducelli snarled, releasing his hair long enough to backhand him across the face, making his head snap around from the force of the blow. Then, furious, the man stepped back, motioning angrily to the girl still standing silently in their midst. "Deal with him," he snapped at her. "We'll see if he's more inclined to talk when I start taking off his lady's fingers one by one in front of him."
The girl called Eva stepped forward, brandishing Kit's cane—so that was where it had gotten to, he thought absently, riding the narrow edge of vomiting from the disorientation—and raised it in her hands, her blue eyes cold as ice as he felt the magic flare and steeled himself for a whole new world of pain—
And then the moment shattered as Ducelli's howl pierced through the air.
"Kill them!" Ducelli shrieked as he thrashed and crumpled, flesh still bursting with flora even as he pitched toward the floor, bloody spittle foaming from his mouth.
At his command, Eva whirled back to face Kit, eyes sparking with fury as her magic flared again, and he fought to get his limbs free from the damaged shackles—just a little more, a little more!—as her first bolt of power hit him with enough force to tip his chair over backwards, slamming him back against the ground. He cried out as the impact jarred his already aching head, making his vision swim and blur over, but the landing was also enough to jar his hands and feet free of their bindings, just enough for him to roll out of the way before her second blast shattered the chair into splinters.
"Kurama!" he screamed, knowing his demon was somewhere near—who else could've unleashed such a plant upon Ducelli?—and about to enter the fight. "Break the cane!"
I cannot tell you how many times I misspelled "cane" as "Cain" in writing this narrative. But it's a pun in itself so I guess that's only to be expected.
He continued to roll along the floor, fighting off waves of nausea as he scrambled for cover from the barrage of magic Eva was hurling in his direction, her already vast reserves only augmented by the help of the wand in his stolen cane. He dove behind a pillar, gasping for breath as the stone exploded behind him; he'd have to keep moving, he couldn't stay in one place for long, had to clear his head so he could cast and retaliate...
Another shot rocketed off the other side of the pillar, and he dove for a new safe haven, half running and half crawling as he ducked for cover. He had to get himself under control—!
Then, abruptly, the explosions went silent, replaced by the sound of something growing, growling, devouring—and a heartbeat later there were warm, familiar hands on his shoulders, tipping his chin up, gently prying his eyelids open until he could see a pair of vibrant green ones staring back.
"They drugged you," Kurama pronounced with calm fury, and Kit tried to keep his eyes open (when had he let them close?) as he watched Kurama reach into his hair and remove a seed, pushing magic into it until it began to sprout in his hand. So that was why he kept it long, Kit thought dizzily, to keep his weapons inside it. But was this a weapon, or something else? What was he doing?
The little plant sprouted rapidly, maturing to full bloom in a matter of moments, and Kurama snapped the stem in half to reveal a milky white sap inside. "Drink it," he ordered, and pushed the broken stem between Kit's lips almost before he'd gotten his mouth open to receive it. It tasted terrible, like congealed, brackish water tainted with minerals, but he drank it as obligingly as he could. It took him three or four swallows just to get the first mouthful to go down, and the nausea from his headache wasn't helping anything, either, but slowly, gradually, he thought he felt his vision beginning to clear, and the throbbing pain in his head subsiding.
Kurama does not like it when people fuck with the humans (or anyone, really) he cares about. An angry Kurama is actually scary enough that even Hiei doesn't want to tangle with him, which is saying something. Also, Kurama's plant-based healing remedies are hax even in canon. He's capable of taking one look at a sick guy, noting the symptoms, and curing him all in the span of like ten minutes.
"That won't hold her for long," Kurama said grimly, glancing up in the direction of the devouring noises. "Her power is shielding her, and it's slowly killing my binding plant."
"Can't fight her in here," Kit answered, forcing himself to breathe steadily, fighting to get full control of his senses back. "She's too reckless. Doesn't know how to rein herself in. No strategy, she's not—alive, doesn't think, she'll carry out that order until she dies..."
"This room is in the center of the building," Kurama replied, shaking his head. "There's no easy way outside, certainly not before she could bring down the ceiling on us."
Kit sat up a little straighter, eyes slightly widening. "The ceiling," he said with sudden urgency, his gaze flickering over the ornate, arched roof above them. "Up and out. Do you still have that vine we used, the one we climbed up for the stakeout...?"
"Up and out," Kurama repeated, catching on instantly. "Kit, are you sure you'll be able to—"
"I can do it," he interrupted, rubbing his eyes one last time before pushing himself to his feet, steeling himself. "I can handle it. When I reach the center of the floor, let her out."
And the moment Kurama nodded in reply, Kit darted out into the center of the room, hands at the ready for a fight.
"Now!" he called, and watched as the binding plant exploded in a mass of shredded vine and singed leaf, revealing Eva and his cane in its midst. She looked rumpled but physically unharmed, the edges of her dress in tatters, the cane held firmly in white-knuckled hands and her face, the twin to his, set in a look of furious determination.
It had been a long time since he'd fought a magical battle. And he'd never dreamed he'd ever have to fight one against a creature that was effectively himself.
This was going to be interesting, he thought grimly.
He drew a slow breath as he watched Eva gather her magic, preparing her next strike against the new, available target he presented, and he cast his mind back to the endless lessons with Crispin he'd endured in the days before he ever came to London. It wasn't a game of attack and counterattack; no, it was a game of attack and receive, using an opponent's strength against them, using a trick to seize the upper hand...
The blast of magic came flying at him and his hands instinctively moved to receive it, fingers twitching as he let it orbit around him like a moon before firing it back in her direction.
She saw it coming, of course, and her eyes narrowed in fury as she hauled more magic out of his wand, added her own to it, slammed the attack back in his direction harder and faster than before—and again he received it, flipped it, let it spin harmlessly around him before pitching it back to her.
For people who have read And Bids You All Adieu, Kit's fighting style here is basically identical to the one he's shown using against Crispin in Lessons. It's also a vague nod to the choices Kit had at his disposal, and his discussion with Kurama about brute force versus strategy earlier. Eva is powerful from the force of her rage, and her strategy basically amounts to "hit it back and harder"; Kit's the one almost playing with it, accounting for its momentum, and tossing it back to her as part of a strategy to make her use up all her power.
Also, it's a slight homage to the Link vs. Ganondorf fight at the end of Ocarina of Time. Energy blast ping-pong!
No one had ever taught her, he realized as the magic crackled and spun, flaring with potential in the ornate room. No one showed her how, no one made her understand why; she was nothing but a useful tool in a monster's hands, a monstrosity born of his own blood and made to walk the earth without ever knowing why...
He lost count of how many times he'd hurled the magic back at her, faster and faster with every shot, but his breath was catching in his throat and he silently urged himself on, commanding his reflexes to respond with the same rapidity as his will demanded, faster and faster until it was racing back and forth between them, larger and larger and burning like a supernova that would kill him in an instant if he were ever to slip or miss.
Kit's endurance here mirrors Rosella's. He keeps up because he has to; there's simply no other acceptable option.
Eva threw her hands forward, forcing every last bit of the magic in the cane into her blast, and it rushed at Kit so fast the eye could hardly follow it—
But that was the moment he'd been waiting for all along, the moment when she'd exhausted her last reserve, and this time, rather than blasting it back at her, he angled his hands and let it skim up into the ceiling instead.
A blast of magic that powerful would've surely brought down the whole building around them if it had struck a load-bearing wall, but as it was, the force of it tore a hole clear through the stone of the elegant roof overhead—and the roof over that, and further still up into the yonder of the dim blue-gray sky.
A look of hesitation flickered over Eva's face, her gaze twisting down to the cane in her hands as if unable to comprehend where the source of her added power had gone, and then her lips pulled back into a scowl as she cast it away and began to draw on her own innate magic, yanking it out as quickly as she could, gathering it in preparation for another strike to follow the rest.
"Go! Now, go, do it now!" Kit yelled, but Kurama was already moving, and his familiar green vines were climbing up and up through the wreckage of the hole, up toward the sky like the shoots of a beanstalk, and Kit abandoned his ground to bolt for it, leaping onto the vines and holding on for dear life as they carried him up and out and away, up toward the jagged circle of sky waiting overhead.
Jack and the Beanstalk reference, check. Also, a little bit inspired by Mulan, too, except that in place of "get off the roof, get off the roof, get off the roof!", Kit's mantra is "get on the roof".
"Come on, come on, come on, come on," he whispered under his breath, sensing Eva's magic growing stronger by the second and resisting the urge to scramble up the plant's stem itself. Just a little more, just a little further—
Magic slammed into the base of the plant, and the vines trembled and shuddered in reply.
"Here!" Kurama called, reaching down to grasp his hand, and amid a combination of pulling and scrambling and what Kit guessed was a certain amount of creative use of Kurama's own abilities, they hauled themselves up and out of the hole and onto the roof of the estate house, two stories up and dwarfed all around by the open expanse of the sky.
The moment his feet were on solid ground, Kit dropped to one knee, yanking his pant leg out of the way and dipping his hand into his boot to retrieve a second magic wand, this one fully charged and rippling with power. He drew a breath, casting a brief, wild, impossibly arrogant look toward his demon, and held the wand aloft.
"Want to see what I can do?" he said, holding back a sudden burst of hysterical laughter, and proceeded to bring the house down.
Way to destroy the building while you're standing on top of it, Kit. He was showing off for Kurama, though, which helps to explain some of the reckless stupidity here. Sort of.
He had to admit, though, there was something oddly fitting about his tendency of destroying every building connected to DELILAH that he ever set foot in; he mused over that thought as he worked his way over the precarious piles of rubble, coughing a bit from the fog of plaster dust still clouding the surrounding air. Crehador had once mentioned that his father had died bringing down a building that was supposed to house the ritual that would end the world. How nice to know he was carrying on the family legacy in that respect.
"Are you all right?" Kurama asked gently, apparently having much better luck at keeping his balance on the rocky surface than Kit was. He picked his way over and extended a long-nailed hand to help him along, his silvery hair twisting in the slight breeze.
...Wait.
Kit blinked in disbelief, rubbing his eyes with his free hand to ensure he wasn't seeing things (or still delirious, but no, his head seemed much clearer now than it had been under the drugs). But no, that was Kurama standing in front of him, now considerably taller than before and clad all in white, and sporting a pair of fuzzy white ears that poked up from his long silver-white mane of hair...and was that a tail?
"You're a fox," Kit blurted, then realized a moment too late just how incredibly stupid that sounded when he said it aloud. "You're—I mean, you're actually a fox."
"The term is 'youko', to be precise," Kurama elaborated, tugging him within reach and then lifting him effortlessly into a carry hold, darting across the rubble with unnatural ease. It was a much more pleasant way of traveling, Kit had to admit, even if it was downright embarrassing to be cradled and carried along like a baby in his demon's arms. "But yes, you've caught me. I'm a fox. A demon fox, technically, but you knew the demon part of it already."
"I summoned a demon fox," Kit repeated, as if he still couldn't quite believe the chances of such an occurrence. "Crehador's never going to let me hear the end of that one."
Something that everyone who's seen Yu Yu Hakusho has known since the beginning.
Kurama pushed off into one final leap, coming to land in the grass in front of what used to be the manor house, and carefully set Kit down on the ground. "Yes, and speaking of your friend, I suggest you wait here," he said with one of his knowing half-smiles, one made even more cunning when coupled with his now-golden eyes. "Those drugs still aren't completely out of your system, despite your miraculous display of willpower in overcoming their effects a few minutes ago, and I'm afraid you took quite a beating before I was able to get back to you. To say nothing of destroying an entire building beneath your feet and riding the crumbling wreckage the whole way down."
Kit frowned, processing that (and yes, he noted, fatigue was beginning to set in, and had he really been this tired and groggy a few minutes ago? He honestly hadn't noticed, being so caught up in the more important matters at hand) before offering a slight nod, catching Kurama's sleeve in his fingers before his demon could get away. "Crehador's coming?"
"You did just participate in a high-risk magical battle, send a burst of power hurtling through two ceilings and up into the sky like a signal flare, and then summarily destroy an entire building with your abilities," Kurama pointed out. "Even in my limited experience with your friend, it's not unreasonable to deduce that he might be heading this way."
By now, Kit's magic hurtling through the sky is basically the Bat-Signal for poor overworked Crehador. It's like DAMMIT, HE'S AT IT AGAIN /pays his call girls /pulls on his shoes /hits the door
He paused. "Also, there's a falcon circling overhead, which I believe might well be your friend Skippy."
"Skippy?" Kit repeated, slowly tipping his head back to search and silently cursing the fact that any rapid movements were certain to make his pounding headache return with full force. "Skippy found me in Italy. He's...good at finding me."
"And if it is, I imagine he'll be down to see you as soon as the rather large demonic predator in your midst gives enough clearance," Kurama soothed, easing Kit down until he was lying supine in the grass, his head pillowed on something soft. Cloth? Or a plant? He wasn't sure. For all he knew, Kurama might've grown him a massive cotton ball to lie on. "You'll be fine here for the moment. I'll take care of the remaining loose ends for you."
Kit abruptly tried to sit up, eyes widening, but Kurama's long-nailed hands landed on his shoulders in a flash, guiding him gently but firmly back down to the ground. "They're not dead?" he blurted, already searching for the remains of his magic and trying to ignore the faintly buzzing pain beginning to grow in the back of his mind. "They have to be dead, all of them, and my blood—you can't let my blood—"
Originally, I'd planned to have Kit kill Eva outright. It was only later that it occurred to me to have him instinctively pull his punch instead, which I think is ultimately the more satisfying conclusion anyway. Not only does it save Kit the trauma of murdering a relative, but it gives Kurama the opportunity to protect Kit from the anguish of having to, which I think was a nice touch on both sides.
"I'll treat that as an order from the one who summoned me," Kurama assured him, rising to his feet. "Don't worry. A bandit doesn't live long if he can't tie up a job without leaving a trace."
"All right," Kit murmured, tipping his head very slightly to watch his demon go to work. As predicted, as soon as he was a goodly distance away and bounding over the rubble with practiced ease, the falcon circling in the sky overhead came fluttering down to greet him, eye him, and peck once at his head in the process. It was Skippy, he mused with pleasure and more than a hint of relief. And if Skippy was here, then that probably meant that Crehador really was coming, and if Crehador was coming, then he was probably in for a good scolding or four.
But at least he'd probably bring a carriage, Kit thought drowsily, letting fatigue and his headache finally begin to creep over him. Kurama would take care of the rest, and Crehador would bring the carriage to drive them home, and twelve—no, thirteen, unlucky thirteen—snow white princesses were buried beneath the rubble.
Thirteen girls dead because of him.
And his own flesh and blood killed by his own hand.
"Bastard," he murmured under his breath, dizzily trying to decide how much effort it would take to hold on to consciousness, and if it were even worth it to try in the first place. Had Ducelli's death been as agonizing and terrible as it had looked? He hoped so.
He lost track of time soon after that, which was easy to do with his eyes closed and exhaustion setting in, but the next thing he remembered was Crehador's voice, and the odd smell of smoke, and arms lifting him up and up like he was floating through the air.
"They called his father the Earl of Poisons," someone muttered, somewhere above and to the side of him. "If he's not careful, he's going to earn himself the distinction of Earl of Massive Property Damage."
I want to be the Earl of Massive Property Damage. Best distinction ever.
"I suspect he'd be flattered by that," someone else answered, sounding wryly amused. "You'll have to let him know when he wakes up."
I'm not asleep, Kit said stubbornly, or at least he thought he said it, but he couldn't precisely remember if he'd made his mouth form the words or not.
"When he wakes up, the two of you are going to have a lot of explaining to do," the first someone said irritably, and Kit decided that was probably Crehador. Irritable seemed to be Crehador's default mood whenever things like this happened. Which was pretty much constantly, he silently admitted.
It was much easier to lose track of time again when the people stopped talking, and the only sounds left to listen to were the creak of wheels and some rather aggravated noises from Skippy's beak, and Kit drifted in and out of remembering things as visions of white thread and vines and unsettling blue eyes flickered through his mind.
He wasn't sleeping, he thought again, just as stubbornly as he had the first time. He wasn't.
Which was fortunate, because if he were, those would have undoubtedly been nightmares.
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