Morning.  The Japanese dawn shone brightly and cleanly over traditional
and Western rooftops; over cherry blossom trees, and salarymen hurrying
toward bullet trains; over the occasional Shinto shrine, and over Dark
Heart High.  Which despite the sun, for a number of necromantically
hard-to-explain reasons, remained -- what else? -- dark.  And in the
murky darkness of the shadows cast by the ominous gothic walls
surrounding its north lot, three misshapen wigged heads peered around
the stony corner and assessed the forbidding architecture of the school.

They radiated evil.  Evil and body odor.

"This idea *sucks*!" mumbled a thin demented looking squinty young man,
oily stringy hair visible beneath a neon pink plastic beehive hairdo.

"Maug like it!" said the Schwartzeneggar-shouldered Neanderthal behind
him, nodding so enthusiastically that both his yellow Sailor Moon twin
ponytails bobbed.

"Shut up, both of you!² said the blue-coiffured third, staring at them
(one would imagine) behind in impenetrably black sunglasses.   ³If we're
gonna get away with this, we've got to be on our toes!  Alert!  Ready! 
Poised and Fearless!  Fierce, savage, inconceivably sadistic!"

"How we sıposed to be 'fierce, savage,ı and -- uh -- them last big
words, when we look like a bunch of -- ."

"Shut up!"

"Maug like Cherry Lipstick!" said Maug, licking his scarlet upper lip.

"Urusei!² shouted the leader.  ³Shut up, both of you!   That punk little
girl at the Festival -- she set us up!  We just wanted to rearrange her
face a little and that mummy boyfriend of hers wiped the freakinı floor
with us!  Evil Techıs studliest don't take that from nobody!  Cripes --
even the teachers snickered at us when we got out of traction.  We're a
laughing stock!  Are we gonna take that?  Hell no!  We're going to sneak
into Dark Heart High -- sneak into the one place there where those Dark
Heart tramps don't have their boyfriends hanging around protecting them
-- and then we're going to kick that Yuri babe's little can into orbit
past the moon!   Right?  Hai?"

"Cherry Lipstick yummy," said Maug, trying to lick his lower lip with
the top of his tongue and not doing it terribly well.

"But, Kaichou -- !"

"Urusei!" shouted the leader.  "Next stop:  the Dark Heart High Girl's
Lavatory!² 

He raised both his arms.  The stringy-haired stooge beside his underarm
winced.

³Banzai!² cried the leader.

All three raised their arms.  "Banzai!  Banzai!  Banzai!"

"Maug like cherry nail polish too!" said Maug and started sucking his
thumb.

The three hoodlums emerged from the shadows, dressed in Dark Heart High
shoujo sailor suits:  blood-red socks, crimson blouses with ink-black
collars, black leather skirts, and ghoulish skull-head school pins with
bleeding eyes clipping ash-gray neckerchiefs.  They looked like the
Three Stooges performing the opening Navy sequence from 'On The Town'. 

³Let's DO IT!"

Each put a hand on his left hip, raised his right arm at the elbow,
extended a pinky, lifted their nose in the air, and, whistling the theme
from ŒMarmalade Boyı, swished towards the front doors.



Watching the trio from the tall battlement-like top of the gray stone
enclosure, a fetching bat-winged succubus clutched two octopi pompoms
(Dark Heart Jeer-Leading Squad standard issue) and smirked.  Evil Tech
buffoons -- they just never learned.  She wondered why the Evil Tech
School Administration didn't just kill them when they registered and
plop them into the cafeteria stew directly.  The brains were probably a
bit toxic but they couldnıt be much larger than Chiclets, and the rest
of the meat was at least fresh.  Sort of. 

Ah, well.  It didnıt matter, she thought, standing.  What mattered, all
that mattered, thought Wareme Yasuko, was that those three clods were
going to go up against that odious little trampette, Mikagami Yuri. 
They'd fail, of course.  But while one or another of Yuriıs fawning
stooges was wiping the floor with them, thereıd be an opening.  And
then, thought Yasuko, her wide, fanged mouth grinning like a vampiric
Cheshire Cat, *then* she'd take Yuri-kun alone, from behind, and give
her an introduction to the art of occult liposuction she'd never forget
-- *if* she lived to remember at all. 

Octopi tentacles writhing, the bat-winged girl threw her erotic head
back for the classic 'OHhohohohohoho' laugh, but a pigeon overhead took
that moment to do its thing, somewhat spoiling the moment.  A succublast
burst it into ten thousand separate flaming feather-shards almost at
once, of course.  But it died smiling.



As Yasuko, cursing, rubbed a finger in her eye, a few of the
feather-shards wove and fluttered down below and around Craig
Maimsworth, the Black Knight (or 'Blank Knight', as he had been called
after the latest math scores had been posted).  He was clanking to
school early, for he had something he intended to accomplish there. 
People had been calling Maimsworth dim for so long that last night he
had actually turned off the WWSWF (World Wide Sumo Wrestling Federation)
Channel, and decided to try to think instead.  It was tough.  He had to
scrunch up his face and scratch his head, as he had seen Deep Thinkers
like Sylvester Stallone do in films.  But after a certain amount of
reflection, three or four hours'  or so worth, an idea came to him,
almost mystically.  He had not liked being made fun of, and now that he
had though thought about it, he realized that it all stemmed from
Mikagami Yuri.  Whenever he had tried to make a Virgin Sacrifice of her,
or obliterate her with enchanted Dragon-bots, or whatever, it always
backfired, and Maimsworth ended up looking like a fool. 

One might have concluded from this that maybe he was in fact a fool, and
that perhaps the wisest course was leaving Mikagami Yuri alone.  But
Craig Maimsworth was not One:  his minimalist cogitation led him to
another conclusion:  he realized, smiling, gently tapping a massive
spiked iron truncheon in his hand, that he had blown it on all previous
occasions because his approaches were too complicated.  After all  --
Dragon-bots!  No, the answer was to just go up to Yuri from behind and
mash her head to pulp with a nice heavy bludgeon.  Simple, easy,
uncomplicated, no-fuss-no-muss.  Well, OK, maybe a little muss...  but
hey, it was a plan, and he had thought it up all by himself! 

And so Craig Maimsworth strode toward his first class of the morning,
hearty and proud, anticipating success, satisfaction, and swift brutal
victory.  Gosh, it was great to be macho.  So macho did Craig Maimsworth
feel that could not help but notice the three sexy creatures up ahead of
him, waggling their sailor-skirted posteriors.  Boy, the big one looked
just like Sailor Moon, he thought, grinning as certain
difficult-to-execute gymnastic contortions passed through his fancy.  He
wondered if she had a boyfriend...



From behind his high window, Amakusa Hamaji looked coldly out at the
flouncing trio, the blinking cursing succubus, the drooling Knight with
the bludgeon, and the various other members of the student body as they
strolled, slithered, slimed, flapped, and lurched toward class.  The
icy-eyed sleekly handsome face of the Principal of Dark Heart High
contemplated his wards.  Darkly, needless to say.

³I say kill her now!² said Vice-Principal Akurei.  (Hissed Akurei,
actually.  The accents of human-sized sentient lizards from the demon
world could not really be regarded as Etonian -- the forked tongue,
several feet long, kept slipping out, wreaking havoc with consonants as
it slavered.)

Amakusa did not deign to move his head in reply.  ³All expulsions from
Dark Heart High -- up to and including into the grave -- are the
exclusive prerogative of the Principal.²

³Are you afraid?² hissed Akurei.  ³Is that it?  Afraid because that
red-eyed old -- .²

Amakusa turned, and made what the youth of Western cultures might have
interpreted as a rude gesture.  In fact the particular angle of the
third finger marked it as an ancient Asmodean totemic curse-rune,
courtesy of which the invisible equivalent of a giant lathe-shop clamp
now closed around his subordinate Akureiıs neck, crushing it to
one-third-size and forcing his long dripping tongue to loll out and flap
about at knee-level.

³You will -- never -- speak of that incident again,² said Amakusa, with
apparent perfect glacial calm, as Akureiıs scaly facial features turned
from light green to a very blotchy dark green.  But Amakusaıs fists,
concealed beneath his raven cloak, clenched and trembled.

³ -- kkk!  -- kkk!² said Akurei, beginning to slump, cat-pupil eyes
rolling in various clock-wise and counter-clockwise directions.

Amakusa waited another few moments, then snapped his fingers.  His
lizard subordinate fell to the carpet, sucking in air in deep rattling
gulps.

³I have spared you,² stated Amakusa, in a bored tone.  ³You are
grateful.  Now -- if you have some constructive comments on the subject,
I shall be pleased to entertain them.²

The lizardıs yellowish pupils glared poisonously up at Amakusa.  ³
ŒMikagami Troiı,² snarled Akurei, nearly spitting the obscene
syllables.  ³Troi ŒThe Hellstormı Mikagami!  Heıs *old*, Amakusa!  Old
and fat!  Old and *weak*!  For Cthuhluıs sake!  Heıs lived with a human
woman for nearly twenty years -- and *still* hasnıt eaten her!²

Amakusa shrugged.  ³Perhaps his new home lacks soy sauce.²

³When his little brat sprained her ankle here, its mother came in here
to get her.  The Hellstorm stayed out in the car.  In the car!  He was
*afraid* to come in.  Afraid!²

³Afraid of losing control and reducing Dark Heart High to a smoking
plain of fused glass,² muttered Amakusa, half to himself.  ³That man --
that thing,² he said, suppressing a shudder, suppressing the memory,
suppressing the incident that still had Amakusa waking screaming, ³that
*thing* is capable of anything.²

³Is he?  Is he still? How do you know?² said Akurei, darkly.  ³Youıve
had twenty years to hone your mastery of the Black Arts, sharpening them
against the fiercest, most vicious young hellspawn this school has
mustered, while The Hellstormıs been sitting at home drinking Sapporo
and watching Nurse Angel Ririka reruns!  Weıre fit!  Ready!  You -- *we*
-- *we* can take him.  We *have* to take him before that little
monstrosity of his matures and -- .²

³Itıs too early,² said Amakusa.  He remembered the horrifying carnage
The Hellstorm had wrought in the various nether principalities when The
Hellstorm had chosen to resign from what the humans so inartistically
referred to as ŒHellı.  The Horned One personally had sent three entire
Kklathus Of Obliteration to drag him back.  Strips and bones from their
wings still littered and floated in the wormholes leading to Earth from
the seven dimensions.

And yet -- Akurei had a point.  What *had* Mikagami done since then? 
Nothing.  Amakusa had Œfriendsı in the intelligence wing of the Unholy
Depths.  He had seen the FBI (Faintly Bestial Info) Reports.  Mikagami
Troi -- The Hellstorm! -- made toast for his wife and daughter
mornings!  Read the sports page!  Watched his cholesterol!  His
*cholesterol*!  The only times Mikagami had ever watched cholesterol
before was when it spurted out of his victimsı bodies as he tore their
intestines and all the rest of them out.  Could it be?  Could the lizard
be right?  PerhapsŠ

³That brat of his -- her Œinnocentı, Œpowerlessı act -- sheıs just
toying with us, Amakusa.  Hit her now!  Obliterate her now, before her
little act is dropped and she does the same to us!²

Amakusa nodded, grimly.  Mikagami Yuri had survived for seven entire
chapters now -- sheıd even survived a Purity Bomb.  But -- could the
daughter of The Hellstorm, of a General of the high Imperator Regni
Satanicae -- an IRS man! -- conceivably be Œpureı?  Or was she just so
strong already that it had no effect?  If that was the case -- if she
was that strong even now -- if she developed further -- if *two*
creatures like The Hellstorm could possibly exist -- then all Amakusaıs
goals -- his dreams, his plans -- .

Amakusa turned.

³We attack,² said Amakusa.  ³You, Aug-sensei, Kurosawa-sensei,
Truncheon, all of you.  Together, all at once.  Hit her with
everything.  Destroy her.  Destroy every last cell.²

The lizard grinned, showing a mouth like an ad for kitchen cutlery. 

³Mikagami Yuri is cold meat,² said Akurei.

Amakusa gazed at the scaly head impassively and turned and looked out
the window again.  No, he thought.  No, you are.  He knew what the
Mikagami bloodline was capable of.  Who knew better than Amakusa?   The
lizard and his troupe of sacrificial victims were in for the struggle of
their lives -- the last struggle. 

But afterwards, thought Amakusa, after the lizard and his companions
were so much charred stubble, her power would be just a trifle
depleted.  And then -- then Amakusa would demolish her with the most
thoroughgoing incantatory hell-bolt he had ever invoked.  It would
probably destroy Dark Heart High itself.  He would have to preside over
some other Satanic Educational Enclave -- Berkeley, perhaps, or
Radcliff, or possibly Bob Jones University. 

But he would be avenged at last.  -- Avenged!


*********************************************************

Dark Heart High

Netherworld Educational Institution for The Universal Propagation of
Evil

started by Mads

********************************************************* Part Eight:

Troi-ohkiıs Day Out  by  David Pascal
*********************************************************


Dark mordant brooding was part of the job description of being a Major
Demon.  Who ever heard of Beelzebub singing along with Big Bird on
Sesame Street, or Ashtaroth crushing an empty Schlitz can against his
forehead while boogie-ing under a limbo stick at Big Sur?  No.  Dark
Lords brooded -- blackly, richly, mournfully, like Goth-Industrial
lyricists or Jim Morrison impersonators.  To Troi 'The Hellstorm'
Mikagami such grand regal gloom had come naturally, like most things
daemonaical, but -- since getting married, he was starting to falter
even there.  You couldn't really dwell on the black permeating horror of
all things if, after all, all things weren't horrible.  And having his
wife, being with her, being actually married to her -- he could barely
suppress a red crack of a smile from appearing beneath the burning
rosebud slits that were his eyes, as their redness glowed in the black
indistinct swirling smoky transdimensional smudge that was his Œnormalı
form.  But he did suppress it.  For she was gone now -- off on a
three-day trip to cashier some employees for yet another company --
McDonald's, he thought; Satan's *real* kingdom.  He could not really
bring himself to smile, for -- he missed her.  He missed her terribly. 

Murakami Troi sat at the breakfast table at his home and looked at the
refrigerator door.  The door opened, and a pitcher of vitamin-enriched
low-cholesterol Batıs Blood (tm) floated out.  He looked at the
cabinets, and one opened, and a black onyx glass with ŒWorldıs Greatest
Popı hovered up and over towards the table.  The cup landed, the pitcher
poured, then both sat on the table and were still.  He looked at the
sliced bread and the toaster, and the slices for Yuriıs toast leapt up
from the wrap and popped themselves in and the toaster hummed to life. 
He snapped his fingers.  The Asahi Shinbum newspaper dropped outside on
the front steps every 5 AM vanished and re-appeared beside his hand.  He
opened it to the sports section to see how the Yakult Swallows were
doing.  He frowned shook his head.  A tie!  Pah, the game was just never
the same since Sadaharu Oh retired.

Troi rubbed his red burning eyes -- literally burning, as they were
essentially acid plus some mystic substrate.  Heıd stayed up rather late
last night.  Heıd tossed and turned alone between the acetylene sheets
of his bed till two AM, and finally gave up and enveloped himself around
his state-of-the art Sony stereo system, absorbing the sound so that it
didn't wake Yuri.  And once sealed, he had turned it up to volume ten
and let the violins swirl, the arias soar.  Troi was an opera lover, a
stringent classicist:  Gounod's Faust, losing his soul; Mozart's Don
Juan, dragged to hell by Mephistopheles, Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique,
the hallucinatory guillotine falling to chop off the composer's head --
ah, that was art, only that!  And his favorite of all:  Wagnerıs
Gotterdamerung, the Twilight Of The Gods, the entire universe burning,
collapsing, swallowed up in flames and flames and flames.  Classical
music -- what ecstacy!  And *only* classical:   Murakami Troi feared
neither the unutterable tortures of the Seven Abysms nor the unspeakable
torments of the Malefic Abyss.  But a Britney Spears album or -- he
shuddered -- a ŒBest Of Queenı CD!  The mere thought of that ultimate
agony -- lead singer Freddy Mercury straining to hit a high 'C' -- made
his trrembling claws sweat with very horror.  Fortunately he had
Wagner:  he had merely to think of the transcendent perfection of
Wagnerian leitmotivs and harmonies, and calmed and sighed happily. 

But, instead, this time, he sighed sadly. 

Is that it, Troi, he thought?  Was that always it -- your weakness -- a
weakness for beauty?  Yes; yes, it was.  He thought for a moment of his
old and much despised former classmate, Amakusa Hamaji.  In the old Dark
Heart Debating Club he and Hamaji-kun had gone at each other tooth and
nail (and stake and scythe) on this point.  Hamaji-kun claimed that Evil
was deception, lies, untruth --  no wonder the swine had ended up as in
school administration, thought Troi.  The Hellstorm on the other hand
loved power and fury, wrath and destruction and apocalypse,
all-obliterating power!   Hamaji-kun had sneered.  That was not 'evil'
at all, Hamaji had taunted.  To Œloveı power and strength, energy and
vigor -- why, it was almost -- almost life affirming!  If Troi Œlovedı,
he should get out of the Career Evil business entirely, Hamaji had said
with a sneer.

Troi had paid him back for that remark, he thought, his red eyes
crinkling evilly as he recalled the retribution with a smile. 

And yet -- horrible as it was, impossible as it was, unthinkable as it
was, he -- he did love.  He loved his wife, he loved his daughter, he
loved the soaring peaks that classical sonorities brought him.  And
because he did -- was he, he thought, painfully -- was he truly no
longer evil?  His heart (or rather the indistinct mystic mush behind his
roiling ebony ribs) nearly broke as he contemplated the possibility.  No
longer evil.  No longer horrific, feared, terrifying, pitiless.  Instead
-- what?  He knew.  He knew the fate of those who were not evil. 
Weakness.  Weakness!  Once he had striven to extend Hell's Dominion over
the whole of creation; now, he sat in a Western-style living room
watching daytime Japanese television hoping to get a glimpse of Tomoyo's
panties on Card Captor Sakura -- .  Great Lucifer, what had happened to
him?  What had gone wrong?  Yes -- yes, he had grown weak.  Weak.  And
his daughter too -- smiling, cheerful, kawaii Yuri.  Weak.

Troi rubbed his red burning eyes -- literally burning, as they were
essentially acid plus some mystic substrate.  Tired?  No, youıre just
lazy, said a voice inside him.  How long had it been since you swallowed
the souls of a brace of rival sorcerers, or torn the heart out of a
shrieking nether-demon and eaten it before its eyes?  Years -- decades! 
By Beelzebub, how had it all come to this?

Troi knew, of course.  He could put it all in one word.   Or rather two
words:  his wife.  His wife, and, now, Yuri.  Ah, Yuri -- nowadays she
looked so much like her mother had, back then when Murakami first saw
her, chained to the wall in one of the loathsome sulfurous cells of his
former associate, the Gnat Lord Abysmal, Mlurgraalx.  She was just
another victim snatched off the street, fourteen and half-naked, he
recalled, smiling; fourteen, and so -- so kawaii!  She was the first
human he ever wanted simply to look at for a while and not digest.  That
oaf Mlurgraalx was late, of course, bungling the execution of some
demoniac possession somewhere or another.  So thatıs what The Hellstorm
did -- he sat there, necromantic ebony swaths swirling about his dark
burning form, and simply looked at the girl, as she wailed and sniffled
and trembled.  There was -- there was just something about her.  He had
reached out a distorted talon to touch her cheek.  She screamed,
terrified, the way they all did.  And, instantly, instinctively,
Hellstorm drew his claw away.  He realized, with a shock, that -- he did
not want to hurt her.  Even now, so many years later, he recalled the
utter astonishment of that feeling: a desire not to hurt, not to kill
but to, to -- what?  He had no word for it then; he thought of her now
and was not sure that there was any word that would do that feeling
justice.  He had pulled his hand away, and drew back from her.  And she
looked at him, and -- understood, and was grateful and glad.  He looked
at her visible happiness, and he *smiled*.

He smiled.  And then everything fell apart.

First that clod Mlurgraalx finally turned up and morphed his mouth wide
to bite her head off.  Hellstorm lopped it off with a slash of his
talon, and informed the protesting head that he, The Hellstorm, wished
to savor the little human beast personally in his gnarled aerie.  But
did Mluurgraalx hand her over, like a gentleman?   Not a bit of it.  The
oaf protested and Troi had to tear out the bunglerıs entrails and toss
them around till the dungeon seemed awash in vats of spaghetti.  And
then Mluurgraalxı peeved birth-coven got into the act, and The Hellstorm
had had to shred them too.  And then the one survivor went whining to
the Nether Council, and when they condemned Troi and demanded the girl,
then The Hellstorm had had to kill them all as well.  The whole tedious
affair just kept snowballing till finally the Evil One himself demanded
the little human.  Troi spit in his eye.  And -- well -- all Hell broke
loose. 

He grinned.  That had been fun.

But the grin faded.  It was all over now.  He had won.  Or, at least,
had demonstrated that destroying him was far more troublesome than
leaving him alone.  And now -- now he watched his cholesterol, invested
in Sony, ran a little consulting business, lived with his little human
wife and put his little human girl through school, and -- sat, and aged,
and rotted.

The toast heıd put into the toaster suddenly popped up high in the air
and Yuri burst through the door simultaneously.  She bounced up high,
catching the slices with her teeth as she held down her black leather
Dark Heart High skirt, landing as always in perfect formation. 
³OhmyKamisamaIımLATELATELATE!² she said, or rather whrrffled through the
already-partly-munched crust, spinning to dash out the door.

³Lunch, young lady!  Your mother isnıt here, and we agreed youıd prepare
your own lunch.  -- Yuri?²

³RRRKKKGGGHHH!² said/gagged Yuri, turning in mid-dash to open the
refrigerator, go, ³AAKKKK!², grab veggies and mayo and whatever and
sushi-slice them into a whirlwind mixture between two slices of bread,
wail ³MMNNNGGKK!² and wrap them and pop them in the book bag strapped
around her shoulders and swerve to rush out the kitchen door again,
mumbling ³IrillyGOTTAgoDadandImeanrillyRILLYbye² through the remaining
toast between her teeth.  And as she bounced out the door she briefly
turned her head towards Troi before the door closed behind her, and -

And as Troi sat there, below his red eyes there appeared a sudden dark
opening that was somewhat darker than the rest of the dark mass that was
Troi Murakamiıs head.  In a humanoid, one might have said that the
beingıs jaw had dropped open in astonishment.  And it had.  For Troi
Murakami had seen a -- a tear.  A *tear* in Yuriıs eye. 

A wave of the famed and dreaded rage that had slaughtered phalanx upon
phalanx of trembling nether-demons broke over Troiıs roiling features.
The newspaper hovering in what were roughly his hands burst into flames
like autumn leaves in an incinerator.  He rose, trembling; he rose and
roared!  The pictures cracked and fell from the walls, the wallpaper
browned and blackened and curled, the microwave exploded, the kitchen
utensils began to melt like Uri Geller spoons.

Troi seethed, volcanic stench emanating from him like Brut.  Yuri --
Yuri was crying.  Satanıs *teeth!*  Troi had been sitting at his kitchen
table all morning whining and pouting, full of self-pity, and all the
time his own daughter, his *child*, was *suffering*.  And he had been
too self-absorbed, too *dense* to even *see* it.  Cold fury rippled
through the several interfolded dimensions of his form.  Was it school? 
Was that why?  Was she being bullied?  He recalled the note that swine
Amakusa had sent about someone trying to impale Yuri in a virgin
sacrifice.  Heıd shrugged it off -- anyone stupid enough to try locating
a virgin nowadays would obviously be too dim to pull it off correctly. 
He remembered Yuri spraining her ankle.  At first heıd assumed sheıd
merely been twisting her heel into underclassmensı groins, as all Dark
Heart sempai traditionally did.  He recalled that Tamaida brat from the
Steel Thorn Clan coming to visit Yuri -- heıd grinned, imagining sheıd
entranced the wretch merely to practice trampling on his heart and
spitting the bones out afterwards laughing, like other schoolgirls. 

But in all that time -- heıd never imagined someone actually hurting
her.  And -- that tear!  Someone *was* hurting her.  Someone -- some
doomed pitiable shortly-to-be-obliterated wretch, he thought, his razor
teeth grinding across variant dimensions, some suicidally inclined Dark
Heart insect --  was *hurting* his *eentsy-weentsy baby!*  And he --
*The Hellstorm!* -- was just sitting there *whining about his
cholesterol count!*

Troi roared again.  The utensils melted, the table collapsed, the chairs
split into toothpicks, the refrigerator slowly sagged into slag. 
Everybody in Dark Heart High is going to *die!*, thought Troi.  And then
Dark Heart High and everything for twenty blocks around will be
*pulverized into dust, excrement, and ash!* And then *the entire
Prefecture!*  And after that,  *all of Japan!*  Starting with *the
Emperor!*  Starting -- starting ³*Now!*² howled Troi, like a hundred
Heavy Metal Fender Stratocasters in full moan, his swirling ebony claw
slashing Forbidden Eldritch Rune #332-C in the air, and vanishing as he
slipped out of space to ride the ethers of otherwhen to the
soon-to-be-smoking-crater that was Dark Heart High.

* * *

Three red-stocking crimson-bloused black-leather-skirted Evil Tech
transvestites slunk down the corridor of Dark Heart High, the two
grapefruits filling their respective brassieres flopping around in
conflicting directions.  Massive beads of sweat poured down the low
sloping foreheads covering their far-from-massive brains.  Talking about
penetrating Dark Heart High was one thing.  Actually doing it -- the
awful reality had begun to sink in, and as they slunk they trembled.  If
spotted, any one of Dark Heartıs upperclassmen could reduce them to
ash.  A whole *corridor* full of Dark Hearts could reduce even the ash
to ash.  Sweat ran off the trio like a faucet.

Of course, every last Dark Heart High student who saw them spotted the
louts as Evil Tech cretins at once.  But one no more paid attention to
such than one would to the average cockroach or any other sort of
vermin.  They were grotesque, but no more so than the average freshman,
one of who would eventually eviscerate them just for practice.  And
there was always the happy possibility that they could have brought
explosives and might blow up a wing of Dark Heart, and thus get everyone
the afternoon off.  So they were tolerated.   What is life without a
little comedy?

Slithering up the stairs and through the second-floor corridors like bad
trench-coated spies in an Austin Powers preview, the leather-skirted
trio nearly gibbered with excitement when they finally spotted their
goal ahead:  the second floor Dark Heart High Girl's Lavatory.  Cackling
and chortling and slobbering and generally acting absurdly, they slunk
inside and slipped into the stalls, where they made more cackling and
chortling annd slobbering noises, and waited. 

Waited for Mikagami Yuri's kidneys to seal her doom.


* * *

The dark twisting mass of congealed shadows that was The Hellstorm
appeared outside a Yakisoba Shop two blocks from Dark Heart High.  The
glass in the window melted.  The yakisoba burst into flame.  The green
leaves on the trees in the street turned brown, then ashen, then snapped
off, like the branches.  Grass blackened.  A hydrant burst, the water
turning instantly to ribbons of superheated steam. Birds fell from the
sky.  Flies dropped dead.  Cars parked in the street began to fizz and
pop as their metal bodies began either warping or melting.  The shops
were closed and the street empty at this time of morning before school,
and so there was no living thing around -- except a single tiny white
kitten, staring at the scorching black necromantic mass before it.  The
kitten hissed with horror, its hair sticking up like a porcupineıs, its
terrified eyes bulging.

Troi stared directly at it.  His bony black half-claw half-hand
stretched out and pointed at the tiny creature.  A bass growl
reverberated from The Hellstormıs quasi-mouth.  ³You,² he said.

The aghast puss' eyes rolled up and it flopped over like an old
handbag.  It had either a triple coronary or fainted, probably both.

Troiıs shifting abysmal form slid fog-like over to the prostrate feline
and hovered over it in a compact crackling thundercloud.  He had taken a
moment to think, as his form passed through the mystic short cut to Dark
Heart High.  Obliterating the entire school, the city, deep-frying the
Emperor -- no.  No, that was too hasty.  Destroying everyone everywhere
at once was an over-reaction.  If he did that, he wouldnıt be able to
make them *suffer*.  And he wanted to make the person or persons who had
hurt Yuri suffer.  Slowly, bloodily, gruelingly, in exquisitely
prolonged individual agony -- yes, that was the fun way to do it!  
Tormenting entire hordes of humans was wasteful -- only 'Baywatch'
scriptwriters were self-indulgent enough for that.  Troi needed to learn
what wretch specifically had dared injure his little poopsie-woopsie. 
Only then would he be properly able to use the swineıs ribs for
chopsticks, toes for munchies, entrails for shoelaces, and so on. 

But that took stealth.  Craft.  A disguise was needed.  A form.  A
velvet glove for The Hellstormıs merciless and unstoppable iron fist. 
Troi could change shape, of course.  His wife and he wouldnıt have been
able to have Yuri unless he could take human form.  But Œhumanı was not
the only form he could assume.  Troi uttered Obscene Shape-Shifting
Possession Incantation #111-D (the Beta version).  His crackling inky
mass above the kitten warped and bent and howled like arctic winds, and
then the mass compressed itself around the kitten like a huge black
fist, and closed.  A large *pop!* broke the air and a stench of sulfur
swirled and there, on a large charred smear across the sidewalk, a
kitten -- a kitten now blacker than a ravenıs wing -- opened its eyes. 
Its red, burning eyes.  And smiled.

³AAACK!² cried Yuri, careening around the corner, stepping down, hopping
up, twisting, slipping, skipping off-balance, twirling, hopping, and
ultimately falling on her butt anyway, providing a fleeting glimpse of
panty for anime traditionalists to savor.

The black cat on whose tail she had stepped and tripped sat there and
looked at her. 

³OowwwŠ² she said, rubbing her posterior.  ³Oh golly -- poor little
thing -- are you all right, neko-chan?  I didnıt mean to -- .²

The black kitten walked almost majestically up to Yuri.  It had so
leopard-like a gait, despite its small body, that Yuri had to giggle. 
What sort of a cat was this?  That color didnıt seem natural at all. 
And the claws looked almost metallic, like they were platinum or
something, not bone.  The ears were long and sort of elvish, and -- the
eyes -- !  Yuriıs lips widened into a grin and then she covered her
mouth, laughing. 

³You look just like my Daddy, Mr. Nek-nek-neko-chan,² said Yuri.  ³Where
did you ever get red eyes like that, ne?  Are you an albino?  Well, I
guess you canıt be because youıd be white if you were an albino and you
arenıt.²

The black cat leapt into her lap and rubbed its head against her tummy
and looked at her.  What an odd look.  She smiled.  ³Are you -- worried
about me, Neko-neko?²

³Mrrowwrr.²

³Golly Iım all right,² she said, smiling, scratching behind the kittenıs
ear.  ³Ne, I fall down all the time.²  The black kitten purred deeply. 
³Oh, you like that, huh?  Youıre friendly, arenıt you, Ne-ne-chan?²  The
kitten growled again, rather darkly this time.

³Oh you donıt like that name?  All right, well, how aboutŠ²  Yuri looked
at its eyes more closely, thought, and grinned.  Then she pulled its
long elvish ears out.  ³Troi-ohki!² she said.

The bell announcing the beginning of Dark Heart Highıs first class rang
a block away.

³AAACK!² cried Yuri, twisting over, hopping up, skipping off-balance,
twirling, hopping, grabbing her lunch and book bag and hurtling down the
street, skirt flapping in the slipstream, providing a fleeting glimpse
of panty for anime traditionalists to savor.

ŒTroi-ohkiı watched her go.  And then, flexing the mystically enhanced
adamantium claws in one paw and chuckling sadistically, followed.

* * *

Amakusa-sensei stood looking out the window again, watching Mikagami
Yuri go ŒEeeeeeeek!!!ı as she either tripped, slid, or somersaulted
through the closing iron gates for the dayıs classes, looking like a
complete buffoon.  He had to smile.  What disciplined deception, what
brilliant deceit!  No, this creature did not lack subtlety, guile, like
her brute of a demon father.  A lesser villain than Amakusa might
actually have mistaken her for a normal bumbling human.  Amakusa knew
better.  After she was done with Akurei and the other three -- the
appetizers -- Amakusa would have to strike silently, instantly,
unanswerably.  There would only be one chance.

He closed his eyes, his cloak already flickering as he entered the
meditative state to begin the preliminary invocations for The
Penultimate Malediction -- the hell-blow that would probably reduce Dark
Heart High and all in it to a wad of smoking excrement the government
would like as not end up sequestering with other radioactive waste. 

But -- his cold features sank into a deepening frown -- if Dark Heart
went, The Hellstormıs brat would go with it.  And he would be avenged,
avenged at last, avenged upon the Hellstorm for -- a choke caught in
Amakusaıs throat -- for what he had done to him that time before the
entire Debating Club -- the horrible, awful, unspeakable thing -- .  Am
turned away, trembling.  

³Avenged!² he roared.  He shut his eyes, threw off his cloak, and began
the long process of invoking the Pit Spawn, Oxomoloxoma of the Seven
Eyes, the Dark Nornsı Nether Shades, the Unaussprachlichen Dingen, and
the rest, combining their nacreous essences into the Penultimate
Malediction. 

³Avenged,² he whispered, cackling quite insanely.

* * *

The black kitten with the burning red eyes looked at the Gothic
wrought-iron gates that had come between it and Mikagami Yuri.  It
walked calmly up to the gate.  Its head passed between the wrought iron
bars, and when the kittenıs shoulders came into contact with the bars,
coppery sparks spit out as the bars melted instantly into liquid slag
and then grayish smoking vapor, while all the adjoining metal shuddered
upwards and warped.  The kitten, not even noticing, was already past. 
The bars in the gate crumpled like black toothpicks and fell to the
ground.

* * *

Akurei looked at the assembled sensei with stern implacable eyes.  Or
tried to.  When you're lizard-headed, it's tough -- one eye stares off
in the left direction and the other stares off in the right.  

"You understand your orders?" he barked.

"The little brat's powerless?  You're sure?" said Coach Truncheon.

"She may have some residual defensive spells protecting her" said
Akurei, lying through his magnificent rows of overlapping teeth, "but
we've taken care of the rest.  You won't get a scratch -- provided you
throw everything you've got at her fast, everything you can muster, and
break through before she can invoke any new mystic shields."

"And what if we can't?" said the icy Fujiko Kurosawa, suspiciously. 

Akurei grinned as suavely as a face resembling a snakeskin handbag with
fangs can grin.  "Then you just explain to Yuri that it was all part of
a special test for our most promising little student, and give her a big
gold star.  Or is that beyond you?²

Aug-sensei was enthusiastic. 

"Akurei's right.  After all, we are testing her, aren't we?  Testing
students is what school's all about," he said, hefting a two hundred
pound modified Uzi-plus-grenade-launcher in the pincers of his moving
tube-like robo-arms.  The pinkish-gray brain visible through the bubble
top of his mobile unit seems to almost percolate with anticipatory
spunk.  "Come on, Fujiko-san!  Killing students is fun!  We need to thin
out the herd every now and again.  Besides, Yuri fell asleep in my
history class once.  If that doesnıt merit extermination, what does? 
Cımon, we'll get her together."

"You'll get her separately," said Akurei.  "We're testing the teaching
staff too.  As Aug-sensei says -- we need to thin out the heard every
now and then."

Fujiko looked at him.  Akurei leered back.  Icy human women excited
him.  Something about them got to his cold blood.  He almost hoped that
she would survive.  Paralyzed, ideally, and -- heh heh -- bedridden,
thought the lizard, a foot and a half of tongue slithering spontaneously
out and snapping in the air.  She would go after Yuri third in order. 
Akurei had no intention of following Amakusaıs instructions and going
out against Mikagami Yuri as part of a group.  He had no idea what her
real powers were capable of doing, but he knew he didnıt intend to go
against her when she was still fresh.  If she had to knock three
instructors out of the way first, she would be depleted.  And when she
was -- then Akurei would have a chance to step in and give the coup de
grace.

"Truncheon first.  Then Aug-sensei.  Lastly," he smiled, "
'Fujiko-chan'.  Understood?"  A grunt, an amniotic burble, and a cold
stare replied.   Akurei nodded and grinned.  "Then get out there and
wipe Mikagami Yuri off the face of he earth," cried the lizard. 
³Banzai!²

³Banzai!²  cried Aug-sensei, raising his Uzi-plus-grenade launcher.
³Banzai!²  cried Coach Truncheon, raising his truncheon. ³Wipe this,²
sneered Fujiko-sensei, turning on her heel and making a gesture which
resembled an aforementioned ancient Asmodean totemic curse-rune, but was
not.

* * *

Yuri bounded through the door and over several heads and into her seat
in a subsonic arc, landing in her chair and panting up all the oxygen
her lungs could contain.

³Hi Yuri,² said Leilei.  Yuriıs pink-haired friend and classmate smiled
so brightly she looked even more like a seven-year-old than ever. 
Balabalalde, the chained mummy boy that Leilei accompanied, looked at
Yuri with his one visible eye.  Indulging in an exceptional display of
emotion, Bala blinked hello.

³Hi.  Lei.  Lei,² said Yuri, between puffs.  ³Ba. La.²

³Youıre late,² said Leilei.

³Iım always late,² groaned Yuri, looking for the Kurosawa-senseiıs
frowning expression.

³I know, but I mean late even for you.²

³I tripped over a kitten.²  She sighed.  ³I guess that means Iıll be
outside holding buckets again...²  Yuriıs head glumly swiveled around to
see whether Kurosawa-senseiŒs leather bullwhip might be snaking out from
some unexpected angle by way of additional chastisement.  "Ano... "

"I know.  She's not here.  She's even later than you are.  Something
weird is going on."

"Weird?"

"Un.  The speaker announced that Kurosawa-sensei, Aug-sensei, and Coach
Truncheon were supposed to go to the Teacherıs Conference Room, and they
haven't been seen since.  I think theyıre having some kind of surprise
meeting or something."

"So I guess that's why -- uh -- ."

"Yah," said Leilei, observing the students taunting and rousting one
another even further than usual.  ³If it gets rowdier, I think someone's
going to have to -- "

A severed leg flew through the air and hit a werewolf at the front desk
in the head.  He turned around, wrenched something from the student next
to him, and then an arm flew, helicopter-prop-like, back through the air
in the direction the leg came from, landing with a moist splat. 

There was silence for a moment. 

Then a grinning rat-headed exchange student from Hokkaido shouted "Food
Fight!  Waaaaai!" and the room exploded as limbs, scythes, axes,
shuriken, daggers, spells, curses, anathemas, etc., hurtled through the
air.

"AAAk!" shouted Yuri, as a vampire bat lurched toward her face.  Leilei
smacked it with her book bag and knocked it into the mouth of a
second-year Gila Boy majoring in Necronomics.  He spat it out into the
face of a Venusian Blob Girl who tore it away and then personally
plopped onto his head with several slimy tentacles.  The two fell over
on several others.  Bursts of flame shot up, modified Uzi fire was
heard, and the nose of a missile launcher poked out from somewhere.

A giant spider launched itself toward the girls.  Balaıs chain lashed
out.  Two halves of a giant spider launched themselves away from the
girls. 

Leilei grabbed Yuri by the hand and heading for the door.  "Cımon, Yuri,
Bala.  Something's wrong.  Let's go get a teacher."

* * *

'Troi-ohki' stalked, tiny and majestic, down the corridors of Dark Heart
High, his proud kitten head radiating kawaii disdain.  Good grief!  Had
nothing changed in all these years?  He gazed with unutterable contempt
at the student body.  'Body', he thought? You call these scrawny
specimens a 'body'?  The vampires wore braces, for Golem's sake!  The
Blobs?  They looked like Raspberry Jello!  Were those werewolves, or
hamsters?  In *his* day, a demon was a *demon*.  These punks looked like
Kiss impersonators at a Bar Mitzvah!  Was Dark Heart a School for the
Demonic Elite or a K-Tel 'Munsters' video compilation?  A couple of the
students had even smiled at him.  Pathetic!  He much preferred the ones
that had tried to step on his tail or collect him as an ingredient for
their cauldrons.  Blowing the legs off the former and the hands off the
latter whet his appetite for some *real* conflict.  He hopped up on the
charred and smoking torso of his latest victim, number sixteen or so,
some two-headed lizard-like former sophomore, and looked about.  Where
had Yuri gone off to?  Where could she haveŠ

Ah, there -- there she was!  Troi saw Leilei and Yuri trotting away down
the second floor corridor, looking around for a teacher.  He clawed his
way up a passing witch's black cloak, hopped on a werewolf's head, leapt
down to the floor and then up onto Yuri's open book bag, slung like a
backpack across her shoulders, and crawled inside just as Balabalalde
turned the corner, following.  Yuri stopped and turned.

"Yuri?  is something wrong?" said Leilei.

"No. I just thought I felt something."

"Maybe you're developing psychic abilities!"

Yuri grinned, a little sadly.  "Thanks for saying that, Lei-chan.  But,"
she shrugged.  "I'm just me.  No powers, nothing special."

A dark angry growl issued from the depths of her backpack.

"Did you say something, Leilei?"

"No.  But -- I did hear something."  She looked around, puzzled, and
then saw the Ladiesı Room.

"Say, Leilei, would you mind if I stopped at the Ladies' Room for a
minute?  I kind of fell down on my way to school and I'm still a little
dusty -- ."

"Sure, go ahead.  I'll wander around and try to find one of the teachers
someplace.  Bala-kun?  You stay here with Yuri, OK?  I'm kind of worried
about that noise."

Bala, lumbered stiffly up, his chains clanking and his one non-bandaged
eye narrowing suspiciously at what seemed to be a largish lump in Yuri's
backpack.  He considered uttering some sort of grunt to bring Yuri's
notice to it, but all had time for was catching a brief vision of her
shiny black leather skirt bounding through the door of the Girl's
Bathroom.  And though in theory there was no cavern, abyss, or crevice
that Balabalalde of the Agherukk feared to enter, in practice only a
complete and total jerk would dare walk into the Dark Heart High Girl's
Lavatory. 

He stared at the door, guarding it.  Suddenly it popped open and smacked
him in his bandaged nose.  He blinked.  No one came out.  He blinked
again, and then looked around, and then looked down.  Below a small
black kitten sat there beside his foot.  A small black kitten with
burning red eyes.  And -- even more curiously -- burning red cheeks
too!  Bala wondered for a moment what Yuri might be doing in the
bathroom.  But then his bandages began to feel rather hot and a bit
tight here and there and so he discontinued that line of speculation.

He looked instead at the cat.  The House of Balabalalde did not like
cats.  Of the many demonic covens, clans, etc. that the House of
Balabalalde had quarreled with over the centuries, the Kit Kat Klub in
Frisco was especially prominent, and they specialized in using cats as
familiars and as henchmen or rather hench-demons.  Thus, pitched battles
with various mutated and enchanted felines over the years had fostered a
real distaste for the sneaky, mouse-eating fur-balls in the Bala
household, and as Bala saw the kitten sitting there -- just *sitting*
there, right next to his foot -- the notion of setting a new field goal
record for Dark Heart High by kicking it straight through several brick
walls, out into the air, and over the goal posts a half mile away seemed
-- well, like a really jolly thing to do. 

Only -- .  His single eye looked mournfully at the door of the Girl's
Bathroom; but what it envisioned was not Japanese urinal industrial
design, but the face of Mikagami Yuri.  Yuri loved cats.  She'd said
so.  ³I *love* cats,² said Yuri.  She'd said that after he'd booted one
particular feline over a set of trees at the festival, and then she said
some other things.  Bala had not liked the other things.  Yuri had been
furious.  And -- he did not like that either.  He did not like having
Yuri angry with him.  He had not liked it so much that he went out and
found the wretched feline.  It had lived; Bala had only booted eight of
its nine lives to pulp.  Bala tore off a few strips from his bandages
and wrapped up its somewhat fractured limbs and ribs till it looked a
bit like Bala himself and handed it to Yuri.  And -- Yuri had liked
that.  So much so that they were friends again.  And Bala was glad. 
Very glad.

But. This cat was not that cat.  This cat was out here.  And Yuri was in
there.  And -- thought Bala as his leg slowly began to bend backward --
since Yuri was in there she couldn't really see what was happening out
here, could she?  And -- he thought, his leg bending further and further
back, his eye beginning to stare just a trifle manically -- if she
couldn't really see what was happening out here, then she wouldn't
really get upset if someone... somewhere... just casually...
spontaneously... just for the pure heck of it... heh heh...did a little
something like... mwahaha... MWAAhahahhahha... like *THIS!*, he thought,
flinging his foot at the kitten, like a bandaged Sequoia careening down
a Yukon Logging ramp.

Balabalalde's foot slammed into the little black feline with the force
of boulder falling from a very high cliff.  And stopped.  Instantly. 
With a very loud CRACK.  Followed by a sort of tinkly eggshell-cracking
sort of noise, as the bones in Balabalalde's feet broke into 179
distinct pieces, and the reverberations expanded, fracturing his ankle,
lower leg, knee, upper leg, hip bone, etc.  His single visible eye grew
very large, even by pre-teen shoujo anime standards, and, though
normally of a stoic turn, deep behind his calm demeanor a verbal comment
on the recent turn of events seemed to want to rise to his bandaged
lips, a comment along the lines of
"YAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!", or thereabouts.

That comment was not made, however, for the kitten in question, deigning
to take notice of the bandaged boy for the first time, looked up with
considerable hauteur.  Itıs head turned, looking about.  Ah:  an
electric socket in the nearby wall.  The kitten's tail lifted, and,
somehow, seemed to stretch till it reached the socket and inserted
itself in it, like a wire plug.  Then the kitten lifted a paw, brought
it to just outside on of the metal links on Balabalalde's chains, and --
ting! -- a shiny platinum-looking claw popped out of the cat-equivalent
of its index finger.  As Bala's eye bulged even larger than before, the
kitten looked at him and smiled a 'have-a-nice-day' smile at him and
touched its claw to his chains.  All the collected electrical power
(mystically channeled) of Dark Heart High poured through Troi-ohki into
Bala's chains with a screaming crackling Niagara roar, and the bandaged
boy exploded up into the air and through the roof like an Apollo
missile.  Chunks of plaster and a bit of spackling fell from the ceiling
to the burnt-black floor.

A sudden explosion lit up the sky like a display of fireworks.

Troi-ohki smiled.

The door of the Dark Heart High Girl's Lavatory opened and a really ugly
face peered out, looked left, looked right, looked down at Troi-ohki,
sneered, and then gestured to someone behind.  "Oi!  Coast's clear! 
Minna-san!  Move it out."

Two equally grotesque figures in Dark Heart shoujo sailor suits walked
out, the first holding one end of a six by ten foot maxi-size
Darkstalkers Wall Scroll and the second holding the other end. 
Something lumpy was enclosed inside, and twitching.   Troi-ohki watched
as they snuck the carpet-like scroll out the door and stood in the
center of the corridor and smirked.  The chief made a V-sign.  His
stooges chuckled rudely. 

Troi-ohki gauged the position of their feet and the angle of the
throbbing scroll, and raised his paw.  The one adamantium claw popped
out again with a metallic 'ping'. 

Maug, ever alert to subtle nuance, heard it and looked down and saw
Troi-ohki.  Maugıs lopsided mouth opened in a  laugh.  "Yo.  Dudes," he
said jerking his jaw in the little black kitten's direction, " 'I
t'ought I t'aw a puddy tat'." 

The puddy tat tapped its nail against the floor.  The floor, weakened by
the burst of energy that sent Bala into the upper stratosphere, broke
into a hundred wrinkles, and then into a thousand cracks.  The trio
looked down at the spreading web of cracks and blinked. 

Then they went "AAAAAIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEE!!!!" as the floor collapsed and
they fell through it.

The scroll containing the struggling lump fell too.  But not through the
floor.  Rather, as Troi-ohki had calculated, it fell to the edge of the
now yawning crater in the second story floor, rolled out on the stable
part of the floor, unwound, and revealed yet another figure in a Dark
Heart High shoujo school uniform.  A pretty figure, this time, named
Mikagami Yuri.

"MMgmfh!" she said, her mouth gagged with her gray Dark Heart High
neckerchief.

No one heard her, for the hall was pretty much filled with the resonant
shrieks of Evil Tech's Finest as several hundred pounds of struts,
plaster and wiring crashed down on them on the first floor where there
broken bones lay.  Troi-ohki looked over into the hole in the second
story floor.  Dust rose up.

Yuri got to her feet.  Her feet and hands had been tied by the
respective neckerchiefs of two of the now-flattened Techies, but her
hands had gotten loose as she'd rolled.  Yuri stood up and bent over to
undo the last neckerchief, binding her ankles together.

And as she did, the succubus Yasuko Wareme, who'd trailed her from the
classroom waiting for just this moment spread her bat-wings and raised
her arms and prepared to unleash a flaming shamanic death-blow of a
thousand necrons directly at the exposed panties of the schoolgirl
bending over before her.  Her eyes glittered with blood-lust and her
fangs gleamed with vampiric saliva and her throat opened to cry the
famed death-cry of the Waremes, and -- a flaming shamanic death-blow of
*ten* thousand necrons slammed into her succubus gut from two laser-like
red beams soaring over the top of Yuri's back from the red eyes of a
small black kitten near the crater by the Girlıs Lavatory.  There was a
massive 'POOF' sound.  And in the spot in the air where Yasuko had been
flapping, there now stood a sort of black skeletal scarecrow with
extremely large surprised white eyes, kind of like white tennis balls
with a little black dot in them for pupils.  They blinked.  The succubi
bat wings behind them looked more like Buffalo-Style Bar-B-Q Chicken
Wings now.  One flapped.  The other fell off.  The eyes in the charcoal
smudge that had been a face blinked again, and then the whole blackish
stick figure keeled over backwards, crashing quietly as Yuri, totally
oblivious, stood up.

Removing her gag, Yuri looked at the big hole in the ceiling and the big
hole in the floor.  "Wai!²  she said.

Ki Tamaida, handsome, bold, and dashing, nostrils flaring, somersaulted
in front of Yuri out of nowhere, pulled two gleaming samurai swords out
of his obi, uttered a blood-curdling shriek, and performed a series of
elliptical slashes, swishes, and stabs so dazzling as to ensure
immediate employment as chief sushi chef at any restaurant in Osaka. 
"Fear not, Mikagami-kun," he said boldly.  "Ki Tamaida will save you!"

"Golly, thanks, Ki-kun," she said.  "Uh -- but -- like, I donıt think
Iım in any danger right now?"

Tamaida looked around.  The moans from below had stilled.  The charred
mosh that was Yasuko was fizzing and popping, but otherwise
motionless.   Tamaida frowned.

"Oh," he said.  Kid Tamaida, handsome, bold, and dashing,
backflip-somersaulted away in the same direction from which he had come,
and was gone.

Liza (aka Ramidra the Unscrupulous) strolled around the corner.

"Phew!  What happened here?" she said, pushing her long conic witchesı
hat back and looking at the mess through her shiny round glasses.

"I don't know," said Yuri.  "I was in the Ladies' Room and somebody just
grabbed me and rolled me up and -- here I am!"

"You don't say.  Hmm," said Liza , looking at the ceiling and the
floor.  ³Doesnıt look demonicŠ I wonder if they might just be doing
construction work on the place.  That'd explain the holes.  Maybe the
construction guys were just trying to get you out of the way so you
wouldn't get hurt."

"Golly, you think so?"  Yuri went over to the edge of the hole in the
floor.  "Arigato, Mr. Construction Persons!"  A triad of groans limply
wafted upwards.

"On the other hand -- ."  Liza took a strange-looking device, like a
cross between a Tricorder and a candelabrum, out of her handbag.  She
pushed a switch and it started to twinkle.

"What's that?" said Yuri, dusting herself off.

"Neat, isnıt it?  Iım franchising it for Spells Rı Us.  Only 200,000 yen
-- but for you, ten thousand!  It's an Occultometer.  It registers
recent occult activity.  Hmm -- .  Well well!  Yes indeed!  There's
something Occult going on here all right.  you know what that means,
Yuri?"

"Principal Amakusa hired the Occult Construction Company?" 

Liza was about to say 'No' and explain further, but, deciding that
explanation was probably superfluous, she moved the candelabra-like nose
around instead, looking for the source of the energy, and switched on
the Intensity Evaluator sub-device.  That could be a bit dangerous if it
overloaded, of course.  But heck, it was safe for well over 500,000
necrons and there was no one and nothing in Dark Heart High that could
even begin to approach that level of -- .

Turning casually, she pointed the nose of the device at the little
kitten licking its paw beside the Ladies' Room door.  The device
immediately exploded in a fireworks-like array of billowing black smoke.

"EEEeeek," said Yuri, jumping away. 

Liza's tattered blackened blinking form slowly emerged from a cloud of
dissipating smoke.  Her skirt was burned off to mid-thigh and the
contents of her bag of inventions, spells, and devices, torn open, were
scattered everywhere around her.  The Occultometer in her hand looked
like a black chopstick.  It beeped once, mournfully, and died.

Ki Tamaida, handsome, bold, and dashing, nostrils flaring, somersaulted
in front of Yuri out of nowhere, pulled two gleaming samurai swords out
of his obi, uttered a blood-curdling shriek, and performed a series of
elliptical slashes, swishes, and stabs so dazzling as to ensure
immediate employment as chief sushi chef at any restaurant in Osaka. 
"Fear not, Mikagami-kun," he said boldly.  "Ki Tamaida will save you!"

"Oh.  Well, thanks again, Ki-kun," she said.  "Uh -- but -- like, I'm
not in any danger right now either?"

Tamaida looked around.  The charred mosh that was Wareme Yasuko was
still fizzing and popping, but otherwise motionless.  The charred mosh
that was Liza (aka Ramidra the Unscrupulous) was standing and blinking
but otherwise motionless too.  The cat by the ladiesı room was yawning a
lazy cat yawn.  Tamaida frowned.

"Oh," he said.  Ki Tamaida, handsome, bold, and dashing,
backflip-somersaulted away in the same direction from which he had come,
and was gone.

"That's strange," mumbled Liza through somewhat coal-like lips, looking
at the burnt nub that had been the Occultometer.  "That never happened
before -- and I mean like never ever -- ."

Leilei came around the corner.

"Oh my Kami-sama, Yuri!  What happened?  Are you all right?  What -- ."

³Oh, Iım fine Leilei.  It's just construction work!

"Construction work?"  Leilei looked at the dark smoking figure of Liza
and then at all the mystic and other paraphenalia scattered over the
floor.   Leilei reached down and turned one or two of them over and
picked one up.

"Where's Bala?" said Leilei suddenly.

"Gee, I don't know.  He was supposed to be waiting out here, wasn't he?"

"Yuri," said Leilei, "I don't know what's going on, but I think we ought
to get out of here right now."   Looking around, she took Yuri's hand
and turned back down the corridor from where they had come, Troi-ohki
scampering merrily behind.

The two girls hurried down the corridor, hand in hand, and when they got
within ten feet of the stairwell leading to the first floor, Aug-sensei,
the brain in the glass dome, swiveled around the corner, a two hundred
pound grenade launcher in his robotic arms.  "Taste the black lips of
instantaneous blood-drenched total-obliteration-from-the-bowels-of-hell
death death death nyeee-haaa!" he intended to cry as he pulled the
trigger and blew the girls to ash.  However, he only managed to cry,
"Tast -- ," before the paw of Troi-ohki drew a primordial Egyptaic rune
in the air that microwaved the fluid in Aug-sensei's brain-container
into boiling low-fat chicken bullion.  The pink and gray brain,
immediately cooked, took on the look and consistency of Colonel Sanders
Spicy Recipe White Breast, as Aug-sensei's entire canister jerked up and
down and twitched.  He dropped the missile launcher, which fired
nonetheless, missing Yuri and Leilei and Troi-ohki, but regrettably
obliterating the entire Biology Department on the other side. 
Aug-sensei took no further notice.  He merely stood there, turning in
circles, his tubular arms waving, going, "Danger!  Danger, Will
Robinson!  Danger!"   The girls watched him twitch and shudder and fall
down the stairs.  CLANK!

"Golly.  I think Aug-sensei's not feeling terribly well," said Yuri.

"Mm," said Leilei.

"Maybe we should call Nurse Sybil," said Yuri.

"Maybe we should get out of here while we still ca-- ."

Turning away from the smoking wreckage of Aug-sensei to look at Leilei,
Yuri looked up to see instead Coach Truncheonıs spike-headed mace
descending on her really impressed face.

And bounce off the back of Kurosawa-sensei's head, as Kurosawa-sensei
launched herself at Yuri in the same split-second.

"Ooops," said Coach Truncheon.

"Ooops?" said Kurosawa-sensei, bleeding and enraged, staggering to her
feet.  " 'Ooops'?  'OOOPS'??

The normally Vulcan-featured instructress' face stared with cold fury at
the Coach, who began tiptoeing away backwards, making little 'hi-there!'
wriggles with his fingers at Kurosawa-sensei.  The term 'cold fury' was
appropriate too, for Kurosawa-sensei had made ice-invocations a
particular part of her mystic studies.  Muttering something H.P.
Lovecraft would have given an autographed copy of the Necronomicon to
transliterate, the livid Kurosawa produced a blast of sub arctic cold
that slammed a rush of sharp frozen crystal into Coach Truncheon like a
Norwegian reef slamming into a doomed freighter.  The crusty old sports
veteran flew through the side of the school's stone walls like a golf
ball through a thin bay window. 

By an interesting quirk of fate, the sheer force of the blast also
pushed Kurosawa-sensei back somewhat too, to the point where she stood
next to Liza and amid a number of Liza's scattered devices, and stepped
on one.  The wrong one.  The resulting explosion blew Liza out of this
particular story entirely, and blew Kurosawa-sensei to the left, through
the door of the Dark Heart Chem Lab.   There were a lot of crashing and
tinkling sounds.  Yuri winced at each one.  Leileiıs eyes widened at
each one.  "There's *nitroglycerine* in there!" cried Leilei and ran
into the Chem Lab to try to stop you-know-what from occurring. 

Ki Tamaida, handsome, bold, and dashing, nostrils flaring, somersaulted
in front of Yuri out of nowhere, pulled two gleaming samurai swords out
of his obi, uttered a blood-curdling shriek, and performed a series of
elliptical slashes, swishes, and stabs so dazzling as to ensure
immediate employment as chief sushi chef at any restaurant in Osaka. 
"Fear not, Mikagami-kun," he said boldly.  "Ki Tamaida will -- !"

Only he didn't.  Because Troi, mildly wearied by the repeated entrance,
made a particularly intricate swirl of runic gestures with not one but
two cat paws.  The casual observer might have imagined that widdle
Troi-ohki merely wanted to go potty.  But in actual fact the mystic
gestures tore a gaping nacreous hole in space-time beneath Ki Tamaida's
feet.  He was swallowed up by blackness instantaneously, swirled through
various otherworldly dimensions, parallel worlds, the domains of the
Dread Dormammu, etc., and finally plopped out into a United States anime
convention in California where several squads of Linux programmers
dressed as Sailor Senshi for the cosplay cross-dresser competition were
displaying their recently shaved legs to judges.  Plopped into the
center of the Senshi, Ki Amanda of the Steel Thorn clan instantly leapt
up, poised, deadly, swords high and swirling and whistling. 

Four judges raised signs with an Œ8ı, two with a Œ9ı , and one with a
Œ6ı.

"Gnarly!" said a 211-pound Sailor Saturn wannabe from Arkansas. 

Ki Tamaida did not know English, but he did know disrespectful
intonation when he heard it, and disemboweled them all, judges
included.  Flicking the blood off the edges of his blades, he then
returned them to their noble scabbards, checked his pockets for change,
found none, and, sighing,  began a very long walk East.

* * *

Meanwhile, back at the Dark Heart high Chem Lab, Leilei ran to the
reeling and somewhat askew Kurosawa-sensei and grabbed her arm, saying,
"Sensei, we have to get out of here, it's dangerous and -- ."

And Kurosawa-sensei coolly hurled Leilei against the rear blackboard
with the force of a cannon, embedding her small body in the long
blackboard rectangle along the wall, dust from the chalk kanji on the
board bursting off in an instant shocked puff.

"Insect," hissed Kurosawa-sensei, turning like a hard wounded beast, her
eyes searching for her next victim, for her target, for Yuri.  She
staggered forward to the door when, behind her, she heard a voice.  A
voice that was not quite human.

"Mortal fool," murmured the deep resonant otherworldly voice.  "Is this
how you treat your elders?"

Kurosawa-sensei was nothing if not conversant with chills.  But this
voice sent a chill down her spine that she had never before
experienced.  Slowly, carefully, she turned.

Before her, no longer embedded in the blackboard, Leilei stood, or
rather hung, in the air.  A strange violet lunar light shone around her
and her pink hair was now fiery, floating like pale blood.  Her pupils
had turned black now, black as onyx, black as congealed blood, and as
the thing that was still somehow Leilei looked at Kurosawa, it smiled --
smiled, with fangs that were lengthening perceptibly.  A long low
chuckle came from somewhere, somewhere other than hovering creature's
throat.

Kurosawa-sensei raised her arms to hurl another ice-rooted curse.

But not in time.  


* * *

Outside Craig Maimsworth was strolling along, whistling.  "We will / We
will / Rock You," he droned, lips puckered, when he spotted Yuri,
standing alone in what looked like a really messed up corridor.  He
wondered why it was messed up.  But on the other hand, who cared!  Here
was his opportunity to turn Yuri's head into raspberry guacamole. 
Cool!  Sword or mace, sword or mace, hmmm.. he thought about it, not
noticing the rustling sound of the ceiling above him as Akurei-sensei
slithered along it, lizard-muscles tensed to leap onto Yuri and rend her
tender young flesh to ribbons in his reptilian talons.  Yuri was looking
in the direction of the door of the Chem Lab, out of which a really
weird violet light was shimmering, and going "Ano... Lei-chan?"

By contrast, Troi-ohki,  with an expression of supremely bored
irritation on his feline features, was looking out at the rapidly
slithering-up lizard.  Really -- he was getting positively disgusted
with the lack of demonic competence in the teaching staff.  Was this why
he was paying good yen to send his daughter to school?  It was out of
simple civic parental responsibility that, as Akurei sprang from the
ceiling at Yuri, Troi-ohki invoked the Seven Septagrammatonic Sephiroths
and flicked them at the doltish lizard like a booger.  There was a loud
shrieking *pop* above, and as Yuri turned, a cascade of lizard-skin
boots, belts, handbags, and Day Planners showered both her and the
floor.

She looked at it all, puzzled, and then looked to her left and saw Craig
Maimsworth, the Blank -- er, the Black Knight. 

"Hi Craig!  Hey, be careful, there's some really really strange things
happening around here today.  And I mean, really!  I mean, like -- I --
Craig?"

She looked more closely at the Black Knight and then realized
something.  It wasn't Craig.  It was just the Black Armor he always
strolled around in, holding up a big ugly mace.  She couldn't see his
head poking out from atop the armor, like usual.  "Craig?" she said. 
Yuri walked up to the armor and knocked on it.  It sounded empty.  No --
not *quite* empty.  She brought her nose to the knee joint and sniffed
and made a face.

"EEiiiuuuu!² she said, covering her nostrils.  ³Dragon turds!"

Troi-ohki yawned, smiled, and examined his left spell-casting paw with a
smile.

And then his ears perked up.  And the hair on his cat-frame began to
stand on end.  He hissed, instinctively.  It was *him*.  *He* was
coming.  And the Infernal Invocation he was using was -- it was -- .

Leilei toddled out of the Chem Lab, smiling and pink-haired and happy,
quietly brushing dust off her little-girl shoulders.

"Leilei!"

"Hi Yuri!" said Leilei with a big hyper-kawaii grin.

"Where's Kurosawa-sensei?"

" Kurosawa-sensei?  Oh.  She's out."

"She's out?"

"She's out."

"But -- ."

Troi-ohki mrowwrred like a piece of chalk screeching against a
blackboard and tore away from the girls, running past them and dashing
away down the stairs.

"Troi-ohki!" said Yuri.  "What are you doing here?  Wait, where are you
going!  Don't run away -- ."

But Yuri's words were half drowned out, and then entirely drowned out,
like all the sound in the corridor, in the halls, in the school, as an
incredible low primordial moan growled behind her, an eldritch demonaic
howl, oozing throughout the air like a malefic obscene portent.  It was
like nothing Yuri had ever heard before, and a dim fear clutched at her
heart.  Her fingers closed over the bleeding-eyed school skull pin, and
she wanted to turn to see what it was, and she was afraid to.

Leilei was not.  The pink-haired totıs head swerved to the other end of
the corridor, looking past Yuri, over the gaping hole in the ground, and
with a sharp intake of breath her eyes widened terror as she saw -- .

³Leilei?  Leilei-chan?  Is -- is something bad back there?²

Leilei grabbed Yuriıs sleeve.   ³Th -- the kitten was right, Yuri. 
Weıve got to get out of here.  Weıve got to get out of here.  Now.²

Leilei began to back away slowly.

³But -- ,² said Yuri, pointing up ahead.  The explosions and chaos and
general demolition had been nothing if not attention getting, and a good
solid slimy slithering horde of Dark Heart freshmen, sophomores.
juniors, and seniors had run, slunk, loped and oozed up the steps and
around the corner and now stood, crammed together like fish, blocking
all escape.  They too simply stood there, open-mouthed (or open-mawed,
as the case may be), staring at the *thing* at the other end of the
corridor, behind Yuriıs back.

³What is it?² said Yuri, frightened.  ³Whatıs everyone staring at?²

³Donıt look,² said Leilei, almost wilting.  ³The eyesŠ the eyes make
youŠ weakŠ ³  A violet light briefly twinkled around the little girl --
but flickered, faltered, and perished.  And her pink-haired head drooped
and lolled down. 

As behind them, a cavernous, unsane chuckle built and reverberated. 

Gritting her teeth, Leilei lifted her head through sheer force of will
and stared at the source of the sound.  It was -- or at least it once
*had* been -- the Principal, Amakusa.  The sleek cold handsome face was
now bursting with boils, and pus.  Long, ram-like horns burst and wound
from his forehead, and the ears, rippling, were now long and elvish. 
Tentacles seemed to be writhing inside his cloak and his clothes and his
smile was like a drawerful of knives.  The eyes -- the eyes were no
longer eyes, but windows into some twisted scarlet Hell, and the whole
body had swollen, swelling and swelling still further into a
behemoth-like gargoyle musculature that seemed to have frightened away
even the light at the far end of the corridor, so that the
necromantically twisted body seemed to stand at the center of a black
whirlpool that seemed as though it was drawing everything toward it: 
Yuri, Leilei, the gaping students, the rubble, the light -- all light. 
What had he invoked? thought Leilei, appalled.  And then she heard it: 
The Invocation.  The hidden horrible words that no mortal voice had
dared to utter in centuries:  ³Cthulhu fhtagn!  Phınglui mglwınafh
Cthulhu Rılyeh!  Shub-Niggurath!  Id lkıa Bgg Mık nıFraiiz! 
Nyarlathotep!  Yog-Sothoth!  Ygnaiih!  YGNAIIH -- !²

³Leilei?² said Yuri.

But Leileiıs consciousness had fled with the horror.  She knew some few
of the words -- the hushed fragments that had been passed along to
ensure that the formula be recognized  -- and shunned.  The words of The
Penultimate Malediction.  She looked at Amakusa, his mad eyes, his
mutated arms rising now to toss the last obliterating bolt, his black
cloak flapping as though in a mad storm, his drooling mouth gibbering
the closing obscenities of The Malediction.  They were doomed.  Doomed. 
*Yuri*, she thought, her dim eyes closing, *Iım sorry we never had a
chance to -- .*²

At which point a small black kitten, that had come up the other
stairway, walked up behind Amukusa and said, in an extremely deep and
extremely dark voice, ³Oi!ı

Amurasaı s burning mutated eyes blinked and his elvish ears twitched. 
Huh?  His pus-marred head looked back over his shoulder.  And as his
horrified eyes widened at Troi-ohki, his throat froze in terror and he
paused in the Infernal Invocation.

The tiny creature with the burning red eyes smiled.  "Cat got your
tongue?" it said.

And before Amakusa could move, the kitten leapt up from behind and
slammed two adamantium-clawed paws squarely in the center of each of
Amurasa-senseiıs buttocks, and pulled down his pants.  The underwear --
silken, and of a mildly frilly variety with little running Pokemons over
it -- came down with it.

The student body watching from the other end of the corridor looked for
a moment and then -- they all laughed. Uncontrollably. Amakusa-sensei,
startled, already blood-red, turned even blood-redder, and gurgled.  The
Penultimate Malediction caught in his throat.  One of the well-known
drawbacks of spell casting is that ancient necromancy and young laughter
simply do not mix.  Amakusa tried to mouth the last Forbidden Syllables,
but the laughter and the pointing just kept growing, and growing till
with a shriek he placed his warty hands over his underbelly and threw
himself out the window into the grounds below and ran, fluttering away
through the grasses like a bat, thinking, nearly in tears, ŒItısŠ itıs
just like the time he pulled my pants down during the Debating Club
Ceremonies in front of everyoneŠ Everyone!Šı  Amakusa sobbed.  ŒNot
againŠ  Not *again*Šı ³

Troi-ohki leapt casually up on the windowsill and watched the fleeing
figure.  He shook his kitten head.  Twenty years practice, and still
pathetic.  Troi-ohki shrugged and looked over at Yuri and Leilei.

Leileiıs eyes began opening again.  She looked at the kitten and
smiled.  The kitten returned her glance with a superior regal look, and
turned its head.

³Lei-chan?² said Yuri.  ³Lei-chan?  Can I look now?²

Leilei began to laugh.  ³Yes.  Yes, you can look, Yuri.²

Yuri looked around.  Gee, it all looked pretty peaceful to her!  And
then she and all the students, some still laughing, heard Nurse Sybilıs
voice call out over the speaker system.  ³Students of Dark Heart High!²
peeped a tiny child-like voice.  ³There seems to be some really hot
infection passing around the teachers.  And I mean hot. Hot enough to
put them all to Œbedı.  If you know what I mean,² continued the voice,
now a deep erotic purr.  ³So!  Punk wimps like you canıt take it!  And
so I says -- get the hell out of here and go home before I have to kick
your butts out!² barked the voice, now in top-sergeant mode. ³School for
today is dismissed.  Have a nice day!² it concluded, sweetly and
elderly.

³Dark Heart Video Parlor!² shouted a werewolf, holding up a skull-face
Tekken token.  The crowds of students exploded down the corridors and
out the doors, cheering.

Leilei slumped.

³Leilei!²

³Oh.  Oh, Iım OK, Yuri.  I think -- I just need to sit down a moment.²

³Sure, here, here, let me help,² said Yuri, cradling her till Leilei sat
down on the floor amid Lizaıs various knick-knacks.

³Are you sure youıre OK?² said Yuri.

Leilei smiled.  ³Iım fine.  Why,Yuri -- are you going to cry?  How sweet
-- .²

Yuri rubbed her eye.  ³Oh this?  Golly, thatıs nothing.  I had to make a
sandwich for lunch this morning Œcause my Momıs away and I was chopping
the onions so fast I squirted myself in the eye!  Is it red?  Oo, Itıs
still burning!²

Seated at the windowsill, inside the cat-sheath, Troi ŒThe Hellstormı
Mikagami did not hear, as he slowly percolated with fury.  'Dark Heart
High!' -- Pah!  What a pathetic joke!  What scum!  What second-rate
bunglers!  What weaklings!  And he was sending his daughter here to
this?  Ukh.  Where was evil?  Where was horror?  Where was there
something dank, malevolent, abysmal, a true horror that a Demon could
really test himself against?  He had come here thinking the trash of
this school were hurting his little Yuri.  Hurting her?  These buffons? 
They were disgracing her!  Disgracing Evil itself!  A good Demonic
Academy needs to have obstacles vile, malefic, atrocious!   True
malevolence!   True malignance!  True horror!  Where was it?  Where?

Yuri sat down next to Leilei and leaned back and her hand touched
something.

³Hey, Leilei!  Look at this!²

³What is it?²

³Itıs Lizaıs.  Hey I think itıs a CD player!  Look, thereıs even a
speaker attached.²

³Are you sure?  You know Liza.²

³Well, it looks like one.²  Yuri looked inside.  ³Hey, thereıs a disk
inside.²  

Troi-ohki, Imperator Regni Satanicae triumphant, majestic with pride and
scorn, looked over as Yuri smiled at Leilei and pushed the Œplayı
button.

The ŒBest Of Queenı CD opened up with ŒBohemian Rhapsodyı.

        *ŒBismillah, I will not let you go!*             *ŒLet him go!*
        *ŒBismillah, I will not let you go!*            *ŒLet him go!*

        *ŒOh mamma mia mamma mia!ı*

³Cool!² said Yuri.

With a scream of agog horror Troi-ohki cupped his paws over his
cat-ears, his spiky tail sticking straight out as his staring eyes gaped
in stupefied anguish at the Sounds Of The Seventies glam-rock disc
whirring in the CD player.

Yuri stopped snapping her fingers.  ³Troi-ohki!  Whatıs wrong?² said
Yuri.

As heavy metal riffs gibbered from the speaker, Freddy Mercuryıs voice
attempted a high ŒCı.  Shrieking with agony Troi-ohki hurled himself out
the window to the pavement below.  Yuri stood up and ran to the window. 
Leiliei followed.

Yuri and Leilei looked out to see a small black kitten running away on
its hind legs at sixty miles an hour with its front paws clamped over
its ears, yowling like a police siren.   They watched, blinking, till
the kitten leapt up over a privet hedge and was gone.  They looked at
each other.

³Gee.  I guess he must be a Jewel fan or something,² said Yuri.

³I guess,² said Leilei.

Behind the two girls, ³Another One Bites The Dust² began to play.  They
shrugged.  They started to dance.

* * *


The Hellstorm lay on the sofa in the living room of the Mikagami
household, symphonic waves of Wagner's Gotterdammerung breaking over his
black and indistinct but again relatively humanoid form as they had for
the past few soothing hours.  His hands, such as they were, covered his
face.  They were still trembling. 

"Hi, O-ta-saaan!" cried Yuri, coming in the front door. 

"Yuri?  Come here, Yuri.  Daddy wants to talk to you."

Yuri normally would have come in and stood there and listened.  It
sounded like a serious-talk talk.  But today -- for no reason that she
could think of -- she dropped her book bag to the floor and ran and
jumped and plopped herself down on her father's dark and somewhat
fog-laden form.  One of the few advantages of having a father who was
not quite a part of this particular dimension and not quite out of it,
was that when you jumped on him he was really very fluffy.  And so when
Troi Mikagami went 'Oof!', Yuri snuggled into his lap and felt -- well,
felt like that funny little kitten must have felt in her lap earlier,
she thought.  Nice and warm and snug.

³Wuv me?² she said.

Troi grunted.

³How much?²

Troi growled.

Yuri giggled.   Those two questions softened him up more than anything.

"What did you want to talk about, Daddy?²

Troi looked down at her, his hearts melting.  Ah, just like her mother
at that age...

"Yuri, dear -- I want to apologize."

"Apologize?"

"I've always been worried about you.  It's such a harsh world out
there.  Demons -- monsters -- Oprah -- and you're so... so... "

"Kawaii?" she said.

"I thought -- I thought you were too kawaii to face it.  To face the
full reality of the horror.  But," he thought, realizing with a shudder
that there were probably a dozen more tracks on that CD -- probably a
Christmas album! -- and Yuri snapping her fingers to it!  "But, by
Satan, you've got nerves of steel!  You're stronger than *I* am! 
Darling -- you can handle anything!" 

"I can?"

Troi nodded.

Yuri thought, shrugged, and nestled closer into her father's equivalent
of a lap.  She knew he meant something nice by that, and that was all
that counted.  You couldnıt really understand your parents, and it was
usually a waste of time trying.  They were strange.  Suddenly she looked
up at him and giggled.

"You know, I saw a kitten on the way to school today that looked like
you."

"Like me?"

"Uh huh.  It was all black, and had these cute little red eyes."

"Really.²

³Mm.²

³Well,² said Troi.  ³I trust you found his company... 'a-Œmewı-zingı."

With a shudder, Yuri looked up at her fatherıs glowing red eyes.

"Boy.  You really *are* evil, aren't you?"

Troi looked down at her, and his chuckle broke into a long evil laugh so
infectious that Yuri joined in too. 

³Yes,² said Trio, with deep satisfaction.  ³I really am, aren't I?²

* * *

Afterword:

I sometimes think that the most interesting stories are not the stories
you read but the story of how the writer of a story manages to get the
whole thing down on paper in the first place.   I wonıt go into all the
details about all the interruptions, accidents, etc., that went into the
writing of this particular chapter, but -- phew!  Suffice it to say that
I ground the last words out at the very last minute, digital ink still
wet.  So if there are still any typos, etc. -- gomen nasai.

Readers and future writers should note that a few of the Dark Heart
Staff and regulars may seem to be mush at the conclusion of this story. 
Nonsense.  Whatıs a healing spell for, if not to patch up a good
character?  Every one of the regulars can be back next week; some more
amnesiac than others, maybe, but all game for more improfanficery.

Two points of note.  In this story I gave Troi shape-shifting ability. 
This seemed to me necessary.  I can't see how he and his human Mrs.
could have Yuri without him morphing into something genetically human at
some point.  I wouldn't overdo this power in the future, though.  My
feeling is that Troi likes his usual murky dark self.  Another thing I
did in this chapter was to give Leilei ŒStrange Powersı.  Now I left
future writers an out on this, by allowing Leilei to pick something of
Lizaıs up from the floor beforehand.  Liza's contraptions have given
momentary abilities to others, and Œmightı have done so in this case. 
For the record, though, my personal feeling is that Leilei is not a
seven year old human, but a lot older than that -- by a few centuries, I
think.  In fact I think she would make a fine vampire; Dark Heart
doesnıt have a formal vampire, as such, and thereıs just something about
a seven-year-old kawaii girl vampire that strikes me as dramatically
interesting.  Veins Rı Us?   I leave the decision to future Dark
Hearters.

Readers wishing further doses of Pascalian prose should check out my
Fics site at http://www.davidpascal.com/fics.  Readers wishing to
comment on 'Troi-ohki's Day Out' should email me at
david@davidpascal.com. 

My thanks to all the previous Dark Heart writers for creating such neat
characters to play with.  And my special thanks to Illyria for
being gracious enough to give me an extension of a few days.


* * *

Cosmonaut Yevgeny Platonov looked out of window of the new Russian space
station, the Mir 2.  He had always wanted to see space, to live among
the stars.  White pinpricks of light glimmered in the infinite
blackness, and Cosmonaut Platonov looked at them, stuck by the logic of
the universe, the harmony of the spheres, the peace and quiet and order
that underlay all things.  Logic.  Order.  It was all so visible once
you were away from the earth and out among the stars.  Out here
everything made sense.  Out here -- .

Cosmonaut Platonov pressed his nose hard against the glass.  Cosmonaut
Platonov observed a teenage Japanese mummy wrapped in chains floating
alongside Space Station Mir 2.  The young mummy looked at Cosmonaut
Platonov through its one unbandaged eye.  Cosmonaut Platonov looked
back.  The young mummy stuck out its thumb and made a manic rapid
hitchhiker motion with it, and continued to do so as its bandaged form
floated past.

Cosmonaut Platonov watched it till it did.  Then he turned and got all
the ration-tubes of vodka he had been accumulating from Space Central on
Earth and started gulping them down as fast as he could, one after
another after another.