[JE] [FAIRY] Sleeping Jin and the Unholy Trinity 1/2
Since returning from holiday I've been writing kizuna_exchange fic, which is why I haven't been working on any prompts until now. Just because I've skipped to this one doesn't mean I'm not going back.
Title: Sleeping Jin and the Unholy Trinity 1/2
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Pairing: Akame
Rating: PG for kissing and zombies (these two things are not related)
Genre: AU, twisted fairy tale, crack
Word count: 12,276 (in 2 parts only because of LJ's character limit)
Disclaimer: Not mine, damnit
Summary: Once upon a time, solo____ and jo_lasalle had a conversation about the dangers of Jin's accessories and how Kame always looks incredibly hot beating people up. They gave me this title (where the Unholy Trinity = hat, sunglasses and hair) and this prompt (Jin pricked his finger on his sunglasses after tripping over his hat and fell into a deep slumber. Kame had to come with a machete, hacking his way through the hair to reach Jin and kiss him to wake him up.) and asked me to write it. Hope you ladies enjoy! I promise, Jo, there are no Yamazombies.
Sleeping Jin and the Unholy Trinity 1/2
There were no decent adventures to be had these days, Kame decided as he skimmed through the newspaper. The pages were full of the usual adverts from desperate kings after someone to slay a dragon and save their precious daughters in return for a good marriage and half a kingdom as a dowry. Kame had tried one of those once, but as the dragon's personality had been much nicer than the princess's, he'd sent the girl off to a finishing school instead. The dragon had been so grateful someone had taken her off his hands - her father had refused to pay the ransom he'd been asking - that he'd given Kame free run of his hoard. Kame had walked away with a magic sword, a pair of vintage gauntlets and a Bottle of Plenty.
Then there were the adverts from villages being harassed by trolls, looking for some brave young creature to defend them in the dead of night. Kame had tried one of those once, too. The troll in question had been hiding out in an old, rickety shack during the day, taking cover from the sunlight that was so deadly to his kind. Easy enough to deal with. Kame had simply hired the Big, Bad Wolf to huff and puff for a bit until the shack blew down, exposing the troll to daylight. One petrified troll later, Kame was on his way, a little heavier in the purse but still bored out of his mind.
Right at the back of the paper, just before the sports section (which Kame always read first), there were the adverts only the very brave or the very stupid would answer. Ones involving certain death, mostly. Kame was neither stupid nor suicidal, and while he counted himself as a fairly brave man he didn't think a reluctance to infiltrate the belly of a whale in search of lost travellers could be called cowardice. More like common sense. With a sigh, he folded the paper and tossed it on the recycling pile.
"Still nothing?" Koki asked.
The two of them had been sharing a small cottage on the outskirts of Chiba ever since they'd gone into the questing business together. Mostly, quests were solo deals, but every so often an advert would ask for a pair, or even an entire party, so Kame found it handy to keep in touch with others in the same line of work. Koki was an excellent housemate - fierce as a lion, gentle as a lamb - and he always had good things to say about Kame's cooking.
"Still nothing," Kame said. "There's never anything new and exciting, not anymore. When was the last time you had to sneak into a castle to find a magical item that you had to use at a certain time of night to break a curse or risk destroying the world?"
Koki scratched his head. "Uh...never? I think you're the only person who's done that one. And nobody ever thanked you properly for saving the world, either."
Kame sighed again. "Maybe I should just take one of these. No princesses, but I could go save a village or something."
"Our finances are in good shape this month; don't take on something you don't want to do just for the money." Koki gave him one of those serious, intense looks he reserved for moments of supreme gravity. "Kame, if you want to have an adventure, then you have one."
"I'd love to, but I've been through all the papers and there's nothing even remotely interesting. Exciting new quests don't simply turn up on my doorstep because I want them to."
There was a crash from the front door. Koki rose to his feet. "Sounds like the postman hasn't got the brakes fixed on his bike yet. I'd better go see if he's okay."
He returned a couple of minutes later with a dozen chocolate boxes (the princesses Kame had saved insisted on sending him chocolates for Valentine's Day every year, but these were late as there hadn't been any post yesterday), a letter of thanks from Jack and Jill (written on brown paper and smelling faintly of vinegar) for helping them get back up the hill, and a mysterious envelope addressed to Kame.
"Probably a bill," Kame decided. "It looks like something that's about to make my life a misery."
Nevertheless he opened it, discovering, to his great delight, that sometimes exciting new quests did turn up on one's doorstep.
"Listen to this!" Kame perched on the arm of the couch, settling down to read. "It's from Queen Hiromi of Tokyo, asking if I can save her eldest son."
"From what?"
"She's not sure. She hasn't seen him in over a year. The letter says that when Prince Jin was born, one of his Italian relatives got on the wrong side of a mob boss - something to do with ripped-off designer goods. In retaliation, the boss hired an evil fairy to lay a curse on the newborn child, that he would be undone by his own accessories."
"His own accessories?" Koki looked bewildered. "Jewellery and stuff?"
Kame shrugged. "Doesn't go into detail, but up until seven years ago Jin wasn't even allowed to wear scarves in case he accidentally strangled himself. Poor kid must've caught a lot of colds."
"So what changed seven years ago?"
"They found the evil fairy dead in a nightclub. Apparently one of the DJs played an Arashi song by mistake and the resulting rainbows and upbeat perkiness killed her. Rumour says the DJ might've been paid to do it."
"What a way to go," Koki murmured, half-sympathetic.
Kame declined to comment, having hidden his 'Classic Shoujo Anime Theme Songs' CD from his housemate. "With the evil fairy dead, everyone assumed the curse was broken and Jin was allowed to wear accessories for the first time in his life. His mother notes that she thinks he went a bit overboard. He was even allowed to get a piercing, which is what they thought for sure would be the thing to do him in."
"So what did get him?"
"No one knows. About a year ago he went by himself to the remains of Edo Castle - you know there was all that talk about pulling it down and building a palace there? The queen says he wanted to take a tour before it went, and since he'd always been prone to suddenly rushing off on a whim, he left before anyone could volunteer to go with him. When he didn't return they sent a party after him, and..."
"Well?" Koki leaned forward eagerly. "What did they find?"
It was Kame's turn to look puzzled. "The entire castle had been overrun with...hair?"
-----
Kame set out the next morning on his new quest. He'd have left sooner, but it had taken him half a day to get his machete sharpened up. Koki had opted not to accompany him because hacking his way through a forest of hair didn't sound like his idea of a good time, and besides, an offer had just come in from the Three Bears to take their cottage back from a cute blonde girl and Koki felt he was the right man for the job.
He did, however, promise to be only a phone call away. And if Koki was of no help, Kame had a half-dozen other adventurers to whom he could turn for advice if required programmed into his cell phone. He slung the Bottle of Plenty into his backpack, along with some sandwiches and a couple of chocolate bars, a purple bobble hat (in case it got cold later), an expanding plaid blanket (in case it took longer than anticipated), a first aid kit (in case the forest of hair was sharp) and his magic sword (because he'd be a fool to leave home without it). The machete, he kept to hand. He and Koki had both been lazy with the gardening lately and getting out the front gate was a great warm-up exercise.
The machete also scared the taxi driver out of charging him extra for even approaching the place. It had been a while since Kame had last been to Tokyo; he hadn't realised just how hazardous things had become around Edo Castle. Not that he could even see the castle, because a thick, tangled forest of dark brown hair hid it completely from sight. The hair extended for over a mile in all directions, covering buildings and creating cracks in the roads. Rubble lay strewn across the ground where the hair had grown through walls.
"It's still growing," the taxi driver said when he caught Kame's horrified stare in the mirror. "Real slow, mind you, but it's still growing. They say there's people lost in there and everything."
Kame wondered if he should've brought more food. "People? I'm only looking for one guy." He wasn't holding out much hope that Jin was still alive given that the prince had been missing for a year, but Kame suspected the evil fairy's curse hadn't died with her. It was the only explanation for the strange goings-on at the castle, and curses were a tricky business.
The taxi screeched to a halt a good hundred paces from the nearest tendril of hair; the driver turned around to give Kame a sly, nasty grin. "But you're not the first to go looking for him, you see? The queen's had people going in there for near enough a year now and none of them have returned, not even from when the forest was much smaller than it is now. You're just the latest in a long line of fools - I hope you've made your will."
Nothing in the letter had indicated to Kame that he wasn't going to be the first to make a rescue attempt, but it made sense that the queen hadn't waited a year before trying to find out what had happened to her son. He intended to be the first to succeed, however. The queen had helpfully included a photograph of Jin, on the off-chance Kame actually managed to find him through all that hair, and the prince was quite comely. Kame liked bright smiles. One of his fellow adventurers, Ueda, possessed a particularly bright smile, though as his current quest, according to his most recent email, involved infiltrating a church to assassinate a murderous false priest, Kame didn't think he'd have much of an opportunity to show it off.
"Thanks for the warning," Kame said darkly. "Anything else I should know about?"
The taxi driver winked. "Watch out for accessories."
Kame grudgingly paid up, shouldered his bag and let the driver go off to fleece someone else. He walked around for a bit, examining the hair from a safe distance in search of a good place to start.
There didn't seem to be one.
Cautiously he poked an oversized curl protruding from a nearby window, finding it surprisingly soft and pliable, if a little damp from the morning air. It didn't look like he'd need the first aid kit after all. He jumped when the curl apparently poked him back, but it was just very springy.
There was only one thing to do. Kame pulled out his cell phone, brought up a map of the area, and looked for something that used to be a street. There was no point trying to cut his way through buildings as well as hair - why make work for himself? It took him all of two minutes to find a suitable route, and half of that was making the connection in the first place. (The forest of hair didn't do much for reception.)
It seemed almost a shame to have to cut such beautiful, luxurious hair, but there was no alternative short of setting fire to the entire area and that was far too risky. Kame gritted his teeth and began hacking his way down the street, heading for the castle at the centre of it all. It seemed a long way off.
Where there were no buildings the hair created shiny, voluminous walls, criss-crossing back and forth across the street like an enormous braid. Kame slashed down the middle with the machete; the severed strands fell away to let him pass between them. It seemed too easy - surely other would-be rescuers had done the same thing?
It wasn't until he paused to catch his breath and felt a creeping tendril of hair snake past the back of his leg that he realised the hair was regenerating behind him. He risked a glance over his shoulder, saw it weave a fresh wall where he'd stood only a minute ago, and figured he'd better keep moving if he didn't want to be smothered. The lack of successful rescue attempts was starting to make sense now.
Constantly cutting hair wore Kame down before he'd made it halfway to the castle - he hadn't expected to have to deal with regrowth. The weave wasn't as tight as it could've been so he didn't have a problem getting air to breathe, and there were enough gaps to let the daylight through that he didn't have to resort to using his phone for illumination. He couldn't afford to slow down, though. If he did, and the hair managed to capture his right arm - and thus his machete - he'd be done for. He might have all the air in the world but he'd still die if the hair choked him.
Respite came from unlikely quarters. It gave Kame a fright when his blade suddenly struck metal, but closer examination revealed a car buried under the hair, covered by it but not infiltrated by it. Inside the car the only hair belonged to the young man in the driver's seat, half-starved and completely terrified. Kame sliced the hair clear from the front passenger door, wrenched it open and threw himself in before he could think about it.
"Now we're both trapped," the stranger said mournfully. "Don't suppose you've got any food on you, have you? I'd like to have a last meal before I starve to death."
Kame studied him for a moment, trying to figure out why he seemed familiar. Shaggy brown perm, hollow eyes, slightly more developed around the chest area than most men... "Yamapi!"
Yamapi blinked, rubbed his eyes and stared. "Kame?"
"It's been what, five years?" Kame said. "Since that quest where we had to put a pretender on the throne by making her popular." It had been one of Kame's earliest quests and Yamapi had been the senior adventurer, giving him plenty of guidance and useful tips, one of them being to always carry a sandwich.
"Good times," Yamapi said, somewhat muzzily. He looked like he hadn't eaten in a week.
Kame hastily pulled out his Bottle of Plenty and said, "Chicken soup."
The car was immediately filled with the scent of fresh chicken soup. Kame scrabbled around in the backseat till he found Yamapi's now-empty canteen and filled it to the brim with hot, nourishing soup. Yamapi downed it so fast he almost choked.
"Easy," Kame warned. "How long have you been trapped in here?"
"Only three days." Yamapi set down the canteen with obvious reluctance; Kame filled it up again. "But it feels like a week. I was trying to drive as close as I could to the castle but the hair's unexpectedly resilient."
"Does the car still run?"
"I think there's hair in the engine."
So much for that idea. "Are you trying to rescue Prince Jin?" Kame had to check.
Yamapi's face fell. "I was. No wonder the queen would only pay on delivery."
"My letter didn't even mention payment - just said I could name my price!"
"She must be getting desperate. If Jin's even still here he's probably one of the zombies."
"Zombies?" The letter hadn't mentioned zombies.
Yamapi nodded, looking very serious. "Zombies. I ran one over on my way in here, but I don't know if that was enough to kill him. I mean, kill him again. He was carrying a sword and wearing a silly hat so I figured he had to be one of the previous rescuers."
"I can see that," Kame said carefully, hoping three days trapped in a car hadn't driven the poor guy insane, "but what makes you think he was a zombie?"
"Grey skin, really sharp teeth, drooling, eating a severed leg-"
"So the guy had poor hygiene and weird eating habits..."
"-And he was wearing clothes from last season."
"Zombie," Kame agreed immediately. He wondered if all the previous rescuers had suffered the same fate. Clearly, there was more going on here than just the forest of hair, because Japan hadn't had a zombie problem for centuries, so the history books said - not since the last of the necromancers had been wiped out. There could be hordes of them wandering around the area if they'd managed to elude the hair. Kame fervently hoped he could avoid joining their ranks. "Are you still planning on saving the prince?"
"Uh..." Yamapi turned red. "I could really do with finding a bathroom, and I just don't think I'd be able to concentrate properly on saving him until then. Not that either of us is going anywhere."
Kame thought otherwise. "Try starting the car."
Yamapi shrugged but agreed to try it, turning the key with an expression that said he thought he had a greater chance of joining Mensa than hearing the engine turn over. Kame's faith was justified, however, and the car started smoothly.
"Now what? We won't get far through this hair. The tyres got caught in it; that's what stopped me in the first place."
"I'll cut the hair around your tyres," Kame volunteered. "We're not that far in; if I cut you a starting point and you floor it, you should be able to make it out. The hair's less dense back that way."
"But that means you'll be..."
Kame puffed out his chest proudly. "I'm on a quest."
A fellow adventurer, Yamapi understood completely. He didn't wail, or gush in gratitude, merely clapped Kame on the shoulder and wished him good luck. They'd tried doing the hugging thing before and it hadn't really worked out, so this seemed a better idea. Kame was quite a tactile person, especially when drunk, but if Yamapi had been trapped in the car for three days Kame didn't want to get any closer than he had to.
Leaving the car again gave Kame some trouble. He had to wind down the windows a crack first, slice the hair outside, then take advantage of the temporary gap to slide out the door and slam it shut again before the hair could creep inside. He quickly circled the car, stripping away the tangles, then signalled Yamapi to gun the engine. His former questing partner gave him a triumphant "kon kon" hand signal and hit the gas.
There was no time to stop and listen, to wonder if Yamapi had made it outside. Kame's break had refreshed him, a swig from the Bottle of Plenty - this time, filled with red wine - had revitalised him, and he was prepared to deal with all comers, hair and zombies alike.
He didn't find a zombie until he got nearer to the outer walls, which he couldn't tell until cracked grey stone appeared through the hair. He missed the zombie at first - its skin was the same colour as the wall. Cape, sword, knee-high boots...all traditional adventuring clothes, which Kame had never gone in for. (For one thing, at his height, they looked a little silly.) It was tearing strips of flesh from a human hand, giving Kame a good idea of what had happened to some of the other would-be rescuers. Dead or undead, didn't look like he had much of a future ahead of him.
Not unless he made it to the castle and found out what was really going on.
Kame didn't want to blunt his machete on the zombie. As it staggered towards him, eyes vacant, a few strands of hair twined around its waist, Kame reached into his backpack for the magic sword. The dragon from whom he'd received it hadn't been able to explain how it was magical, only that it was, as he'd acquired it in turn from a knight a couple of centuries ago. It was sharp, that was the important thing as far as Kame was concerned.
It was also glowing green, which it hadn't been when he'd packed it, but he didn't have the time to worry about whether or not the damned thing was radioactive.
The zombie reached for him. Kame lashed out with one booted foot, catching it squarely in the stomach with a horrible squelching sound, forcing it back to give him room to swing. The undead didn't seem too bothered by trivial things like pain and it took several attempts for Kame to cut himself enough slack, mindful all the while of the hair slowly regrowing behind him. A roundhouse to the jaw sent the zombie reeling into a particularly vibrant patch of hair - nourished by rotting flesh, possibly - and gave Kame the opening he needed. Grasping the magic sword in both hands, he swept it across the zombie's neck.
He was expecting some resistance, but also that the zombie's head would, at some point, say goodbye to its shoulders. He got both of these.
What he wasn't expecting was for both the head and the stump of the neck to catch fire.
In an enclosed space, fire would kill Kame a lot quicker than the zombie could've. He scrambled to unroll his blanket and smother the fires before the hair could catch alight. The blanket ended up scorched; Kame, unharmed. He cast a speculative eye over the sword before stashing it away again. It was no longer glowing green and it didn't look flammable. Perhaps that was its magic, to ignite whatever it cut? Kame took a swing at the hair, just to make sure, but the blade cut normally. Maybe it only affected undead flesh? He hoped not to have any further occasions to test out the hypothesis.
Unhooking the machete from his belt, he resumed his task, now following the wall on the grounds that sooner or later, he had to reach an entrance. It was evidently made of sterner stuff than the more modern buildings outside - the hair barely broke through at all, tangling instead along the top, trailing down the sides to create a rough tunnel of which Kame took full advantage. No sense tiring himself out more than necessary; there was no telling when he might find another zombie.
Less than half an hour after his first undead experience, Kame had his second. This time, at least, the zombie was already dead twice. It had been crushed by the heavy doors leading into the castle grounds. Kame tried not to look at the repulsive, oozing corpse as he forced open the doors. He'd be hitting the Bottle of Plenty for a pick-me-up if he did, he knew.
Though short for a man and lightly built, Kame was considerably stronger than he looked and he was able to move the doors enough to slip through, stepping carefully over the mess. That brought him within the grounds.
The castle must've been a nice area for tourists once, he thought. He'd never know now. The forest of hair resumed inside and it was only by peering through the gaps in the strands that Kame was able to locate the castle itself, towering over the landscape. Hair and rubble mixed freely below, uneven ground waiting to trip Kame as he fought his way through to the door. Whenever he stopped to mop sweat from his brow hair crept around his ankles, teasing, always threatening to trap him but never following through.
The front door had more breathing room, or so Kame thought until he realised the door was no longer there, replaced by solid, sculpted hair that was stiff with hairspray. Even the machete couldn't make a dent in it.
In desperation he pulled out his cell phone to call Nakamaru, another of his questing buddies. Nakamaru had a strange fascination with both cleaning and hair products - he'd once gone on a quest to retrieve a legendary bottle of conditioner, only to have it accidentally run over by his own client - so Kame was sure he'd have an idea.
"I'm having a bad hair day," Kame said by way of a greeting, and explained the situation.
There was an ear-splitting screech from the other end of the phone and a new voice came on the line. It turned out to be Junno, another of their number.
"He's got his hands full dealing with a giant octopus," Junno explained when Kame enquired after Nakamaru. "It can only be soothed by beat-boxing; the client asked for him specially."
"When he's got a second, can you ask him if he knows anything to get rid of excess hairspray? I've got solid hair blocking my path."
Obligingly, Junno shouted the request across. Seconds later, inserted neatly between a period of scratching and the melody line, the advice "bicarbonate of soda plus shampoo" came back.
"Bicarbonate of soda plus shampoo?" Kame repeated doubtfully, holding out the Bottle of Plenty in his free hand. He'd never asked it for something he couldn't drink before but there was a first time for everything, and it was supposed to be able to produce any liquid in existence.
"He says that should work, definitely." Junno sounded optimistic, but then, Junno almost always sounded optimistic. They'd been on a quest together once where they'd almost been massacred by an army of marauding orcs and he'd still come out smiling. Covered in orc blood, but smiling.
"I'll give it a try." Kame shook the bottle hard, aiming the contents at the door of hair. It fell apart at once, lifeless strands hanging limply in the doorway now they'd lost their starch. "It worked! The door disintegrated!"
"Of course it did," Junno said. "Hair today, gone tomorrow."
There was a thump from the other end and Nakamaru picked up the phone again. "Junno's just been hit by a flying fish," he said. "I think it's karma."
With the door of hair no longer an obstacle Kame was free to enter the castle. Clearly, no one had been inside for a while - no one living, anyway. Here the hair tangled around the furniture, hung from light fixtures like broken chandeliers, wove uneven curtains before shattered windows. Where other abandoned buildings might have spiderwebs in the dusty corners, this one had hairnets.
Where could Jin be? Kame knew if he'd been exploring by himself, he'd have wanted to go right up to the very top. Was the prince the same?
The hair was thinner inside, more of a nuisance than an obstruction, easier for Kame to push away than to hack and slash through it all. That he no longer found it creepy when the hair pushed back was, he felt, a sign of how long he'd been on this quest, never mind that he'd only set out after breakfast and it wasn't yet evening.
He began a room by room search. Minute, almost unnoticeable signs caught his eye as he searched the ground floor. Here, a glove fallen in the dust, with hair shot through the fingertips. There, a broken belt lying abandoned on a table where the legs were bound with ropes of hair. They weren't old enough to have rotted, not by a long shot. Kame wondered where the owners were. More zombies?
More zombies, indeed. Kame found a pair of them in a portrait gallery, though both of them were incapacitated by hair and he couldn't imagine either had a taste for art. As they didn't appear to be able to free themselves and he didn't want to risk starting a fire indoors he left them there and quickly moved on.
Mounting the stairs took longer than anticipated. It wasn't so much a question of clearing a path upwards as making sure he didn't get pulled back down again by trailing strands. Kame was almost tempted to catch hold of a bundle and simply climb up to the next floor but he wasn't sure how sturdy it would be and anyway, he was nearly there now.
The next sign of life came in the form of a shiny silver earring, an unclothed, kneeling lady. Kame recognised it from Jin's photo. He hoped the earring meant he was getting closer to the prince, but a thorough search of the floor forced him to conclude it must've been dropped somewhere along the way. There were no zombies on this floor, but there was certainly enough torn, bloodstained clothing around to suggest they'd been here too - while hungry. Kame hoped they'd gone downstairs rather than up.
Floor after floor proved fruitless, unless one counted signs of dead and undead adventurers alike as success. Kame didn't. His one consolation was that none of the zombies he'd seen so far had looked even remotely like Jin, giving him hope he'd still find the prince somewhere. Preferably alive.
This pattern continued until Kame reached the tower, where the hair was thicker and the passages thinner. He put the machete to good use once more, glad he'd spent so many hours in the gym with Ueda to build his stamina. Ueda was in the best shape of all of them, no doubt about it - but then, he did take on the oddest quests. He'd once spent a month in tights in order to mend a rift between two feuding families and had almost had to get married as a consequence.
A terrible groaning from the next room warned him of approaching zombies. Kame fished out his sword in preparation and watched in amazement as it began to glow, emitting green light faintly at first, then brighter as he neared the door. Zombie early warning system? Nice, but unnecessary given that they were hard to miss. There had to be some other reason, Kame thought. The glow disappeared once he'd decapitated the unfortunate ex-adventurer, rendering it twice-dead and dispersing whatever magic had once held it together.
Magic...
If anyone was going to know about zombies, it would be Ueda. His parents had sent him to all sorts of classes as a child - Elvish for Beginners, History of Dragons, Back to Basics: Sorcery for Children etc. - and he had an amazing stock of random trivia to hand. Kame gave him a call.
"Not that I don't enjoy talking to you," Ueda said, sounding slightly peeved, "but can we make it quick? I'm supposed to be taking confession in a minute and I know these people have juicy gossip."
Kame wondered if perhaps Ueda was getting a little too involved with his undercover work. "What do you know about zombies?"
"Zombies? There haven't been any around since the last necromancer was killed. That's how they're created, through necromancy. Death magic."
"But if there are no living necromancers, why have I met at least a dozen zombies today?"
"They must've missed one, obviously." There was a rustle in the background and Kame could hear Ueda asking someone to wait a couple of minutes, because patience was a virtue.
"What do you know about virtue?" Kame asked, trying not to laugh.
"The dictionary definition," Ueda said, and proceeded to prove it. "The rumours say not all the necromancers were human, and all the non-human ones went into hiding when the killing began. I don't know if it's true but if it is, I guess someone in the area's using necromancy. The bigger the spell, the closer the caster has to be to the subject to keep it active. It takes a sacrifice to activate a spell - blood, death or sleep, usually."
"Sleep?"
"Sleep is living death, Kame. Necromancers could use sleepers as a focus for their spells - unnatural sleep, of course. Where are you?"
Kame explained the situation - quickly, because Ueda was busy and it was difficult to talk on the phone and cut hair at the same time.
"My teacher said zombies can be incidental, a side-effect of necromantic magic, if people die in an area affected by a spell. The zombies haven't been seen outside the hair-covered area, right? So they're probably tied to something in the castle grounds. Look for circles drawn in blood, sleeping people, anything like that."
"And do what?"
"Improvise. Sorry, I only attended the first two classes."
So much for Ueda. Kame pocketed his phone and kept the sword in his free hand instead to serve as an early zombie warning. He was running out of rooms to search.
Part 2
Title: Sleeping Jin and the Unholy Trinity 1/2
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Pairing: Akame
Rating: PG for kissing and zombies (these two things are not related)
Genre: AU, twisted fairy tale, crack
Word count: 12,276 (in 2 parts only because of LJ's character limit)
Disclaimer: Not mine, damnit
Summary: Once upon a time, solo____ and jo_lasalle had a conversation about the dangers of Jin's accessories and how Kame always looks incredibly hot beating people up. They gave me this title (where the Unholy Trinity = hat, sunglasses and hair) and this prompt (Jin pricked his finger on his sunglasses after tripping over his hat and fell into a deep slumber. Kame had to come with a machete, hacking his way through the hair to reach Jin and kiss him to wake him up.) and asked me to write it. Hope you ladies enjoy! I promise, Jo, there are no Yamazombies.
Sleeping Jin and the Unholy Trinity 1/2
There were no decent adventures to be had these days, Kame decided as he skimmed through the newspaper. The pages were full of the usual adverts from desperate kings after someone to slay a dragon and save their precious daughters in return for a good marriage and half a kingdom as a dowry. Kame had tried one of those once, but as the dragon's personality had been much nicer than the princess's, he'd sent the girl off to a finishing school instead. The dragon had been so grateful someone had taken her off his hands - her father had refused to pay the ransom he'd been asking - that he'd given Kame free run of his hoard. Kame had walked away with a magic sword, a pair of vintage gauntlets and a Bottle of Plenty.
Then there were the adverts from villages being harassed by trolls, looking for some brave young creature to defend them in the dead of night. Kame had tried one of those once, too. The troll in question had been hiding out in an old, rickety shack during the day, taking cover from the sunlight that was so deadly to his kind. Easy enough to deal with. Kame had simply hired the Big, Bad Wolf to huff and puff for a bit until the shack blew down, exposing the troll to daylight. One petrified troll later, Kame was on his way, a little heavier in the purse but still bored out of his mind.
Right at the back of the paper, just before the sports section (which Kame always read first), there were the adverts only the very brave or the very stupid would answer. Ones involving certain death, mostly. Kame was neither stupid nor suicidal, and while he counted himself as a fairly brave man he didn't think a reluctance to infiltrate the belly of a whale in search of lost travellers could be called cowardice. More like common sense. With a sigh, he folded the paper and tossed it on the recycling pile.
"Still nothing?" Koki asked.
The two of them had been sharing a small cottage on the outskirts of Chiba ever since they'd gone into the questing business together. Mostly, quests were solo deals, but every so often an advert would ask for a pair, or even an entire party, so Kame found it handy to keep in touch with others in the same line of work. Koki was an excellent housemate - fierce as a lion, gentle as a lamb - and he always had good things to say about Kame's cooking.
"Still nothing," Kame said. "There's never anything new and exciting, not anymore. When was the last time you had to sneak into a castle to find a magical item that you had to use at a certain time of night to break a curse or risk destroying the world?"
Koki scratched his head. "Uh...never? I think you're the only person who's done that one. And nobody ever thanked you properly for saving the world, either."
Kame sighed again. "Maybe I should just take one of these. No princesses, but I could go save a village or something."
"Our finances are in good shape this month; don't take on something you don't want to do just for the money." Koki gave him one of those serious, intense looks he reserved for moments of supreme gravity. "Kame, if you want to have an adventure, then you have one."
"I'd love to, but I've been through all the papers and there's nothing even remotely interesting. Exciting new quests don't simply turn up on my doorstep because I want them to."
There was a crash from the front door. Koki rose to his feet. "Sounds like the postman hasn't got the brakes fixed on his bike yet. I'd better go see if he's okay."
He returned a couple of minutes later with a dozen chocolate boxes (the princesses Kame had saved insisted on sending him chocolates for Valentine's Day every year, but these were late as there hadn't been any post yesterday), a letter of thanks from Jack and Jill (written on brown paper and smelling faintly of vinegar) for helping them get back up the hill, and a mysterious envelope addressed to Kame.
"Probably a bill," Kame decided. "It looks like something that's about to make my life a misery."
Nevertheless he opened it, discovering, to his great delight, that sometimes exciting new quests did turn up on one's doorstep.
"Listen to this!" Kame perched on the arm of the couch, settling down to read. "It's from Queen Hiromi of Tokyo, asking if I can save her eldest son."
"From what?"
"She's not sure. She hasn't seen him in over a year. The letter says that when Prince Jin was born, one of his Italian relatives got on the wrong side of a mob boss - something to do with ripped-off designer goods. In retaliation, the boss hired an evil fairy to lay a curse on the newborn child, that he would be undone by his own accessories."
"His own accessories?" Koki looked bewildered. "Jewellery and stuff?"
Kame shrugged. "Doesn't go into detail, but up until seven years ago Jin wasn't even allowed to wear scarves in case he accidentally strangled himself. Poor kid must've caught a lot of colds."
"So what changed seven years ago?"
"They found the evil fairy dead in a nightclub. Apparently one of the DJs played an Arashi song by mistake and the resulting rainbows and upbeat perkiness killed her. Rumour says the DJ might've been paid to do it."
"What a way to go," Koki murmured, half-sympathetic.
Kame declined to comment, having hidden his 'Classic Shoujo Anime Theme Songs' CD from his housemate. "With the evil fairy dead, everyone assumed the curse was broken and Jin was allowed to wear accessories for the first time in his life. His mother notes that she thinks he went a bit overboard. He was even allowed to get a piercing, which is what they thought for sure would be the thing to do him in."
"So what did get him?"
"No one knows. About a year ago he went by himself to the remains of Edo Castle - you know there was all that talk about pulling it down and building a palace there? The queen says he wanted to take a tour before it went, and since he'd always been prone to suddenly rushing off on a whim, he left before anyone could volunteer to go with him. When he didn't return they sent a party after him, and..."
"Well?" Koki leaned forward eagerly. "What did they find?"
It was Kame's turn to look puzzled. "The entire castle had been overrun with...hair?"
-----
Kame set out the next morning on his new quest. He'd have left sooner, but it had taken him half a day to get his machete sharpened up. Koki had opted not to accompany him because hacking his way through a forest of hair didn't sound like his idea of a good time, and besides, an offer had just come in from the Three Bears to take their cottage back from a cute blonde girl and Koki felt he was the right man for the job.
He did, however, promise to be only a phone call away. And if Koki was of no help, Kame had a half-dozen other adventurers to whom he could turn for advice if required programmed into his cell phone. He slung the Bottle of Plenty into his backpack, along with some sandwiches and a couple of chocolate bars, a purple bobble hat (in case it got cold later), an expanding plaid blanket (in case it took longer than anticipated), a first aid kit (in case the forest of hair was sharp) and his magic sword (because he'd be a fool to leave home without it). The machete, he kept to hand. He and Koki had both been lazy with the gardening lately and getting out the front gate was a great warm-up exercise.
The machete also scared the taxi driver out of charging him extra for even approaching the place. It had been a while since Kame had last been to Tokyo; he hadn't realised just how hazardous things had become around Edo Castle. Not that he could even see the castle, because a thick, tangled forest of dark brown hair hid it completely from sight. The hair extended for over a mile in all directions, covering buildings and creating cracks in the roads. Rubble lay strewn across the ground where the hair had grown through walls.
"It's still growing," the taxi driver said when he caught Kame's horrified stare in the mirror. "Real slow, mind you, but it's still growing. They say there's people lost in there and everything."
Kame wondered if he should've brought more food. "People? I'm only looking for one guy." He wasn't holding out much hope that Jin was still alive given that the prince had been missing for a year, but Kame suspected the evil fairy's curse hadn't died with her. It was the only explanation for the strange goings-on at the castle, and curses were a tricky business.
The taxi screeched to a halt a good hundred paces from the nearest tendril of hair; the driver turned around to give Kame a sly, nasty grin. "But you're not the first to go looking for him, you see? The queen's had people going in there for near enough a year now and none of them have returned, not even from when the forest was much smaller than it is now. You're just the latest in a long line of fools - I hope you've made your will."
Nothing in the letter had indicated to Kame that he wasn't going to be the first to make a rescue attempt, but it made sense that the queen hadn't waited a year before trying to find out what had happened to her son. He intended to be the first to succeed, however. The queen had helpfully included a photograph of Jin, on the off-chance Kame actually managed to find him through all that hair, and the prince was quite comely. Kame liked bright smiles. One of his fellow adventurers, Ueda, possessed a particularly bright smile, though as his current quest, according to his most recent email, involved infiltrating a church to assassinate a murderous false priest, Kame didn't think he'd have much of an opportunity to show it off.
"Thanks for the warning," Kame said darkly. "Anything else I should know about?"
The taxi driver winked. "Watch out for accessories."
Kame grudgingly paid up, shouldered his bag and let the driver go off to fleece someone else. He walked around for a bit, examining the hair from a safe distance in search of a good place to start.
There didn't seem to be one.
Cautiously he poked an oversized curl protruding from a nearby window, finding it surprisingly soft and pliable, if a little damp from the morning air. It didn't look like he'd need the first aid kit after all. He jumped when the curl apparently poked him back, but it was just very springy.
There was only one thing to do. Kame pulled out his cell phone, brought up a map of the area, and looked for something that used to be a street. There was no point trying to cut his way through buildings as well as hair - why make work for himself? It took him all of two minutes to find a suitable route, and half of that was making the connection in the first place. (The forest of hair didn't do much for reception.)
It seemed almost a shame to have to cut such beautiful, luxurious hair, but there was no alternative short of setting fire to the entire area and that was far too risky. Kame gritted his teeth and began hacking his way down the street, heading for the castle at the centre of it all. It seemed a long way off.
Where there were no buildings the hair created shiny, voluminous walls, criss-crossing back and forth across the street like an enormous braid. Kame slashed down the middle with the machete; the severed strands fell away to let him pass between them. It seemed too easy - surely other would-be rescuers had done the same thing?
It wasn't until he paused to catch his breath and felt a creeping tendril of hair snake past the back of his leg that he realised the hair was regenerating behind him. He risked a glance over his shoulder, saw it weave a fresh wall where he'd stood only a minute ago, and figured he'd better keep moving if he didn't want to be smothered. The lack of successful rescue attempts was starting to make sense now.
Constantly cutting hair wore Kame down before he'd made it halfway to the castle - he hadn't expected to have to deal with regrowth. The weave wasn't as tight as it could've been so he didn't have a problem getting air to breathe, and there were enough gaps to let the daylight through that he didn't have to resort to using his phone for illumination. He couldn't afford to slow down, though. If he did, and the hair managed to capture his right arm - and thus his machete - he'd be done for. He might have all the air in the world but he'd still die if the hair choked him.
Respite came from unlikely quarters. It gave Kame a fright when his blade suddenly struck metal, but closer examination revealed a car buried under the hair, covered by it but not infiltrated by it. Inside the car the only hair belonged to the young man in the driver's seat, half-starved and completely terrified. Kame sliced the hair clear from the front passenger door, wrenched it open and threw himself in before he could think about it.
"Now we're both trapped," the stranger said mournfully. "Don't suppose you've got any food on you, have you? I'd like to have a last meal before I starve to death."
Kame studied him for a moment, trying to figure out why he seemed familiar. Shaggy brown perm, hollow eyes, slightly more developed around the chest area than most men... "Yamapi!"
Yamapi blinked, rubbed his eyes and stared. "Kame?"
"It's been what, five years?" Kame said. "Since that quest where we had to put a pretender on the throne by making her popular." It had been one of Kame's earliest quests and Yamapi had been the senior adventurer, giving him plenty of guidance and useful tips, one of them being to always carry a sandwich.
"Good times," Yamapi said, somewhat muzzily. He looked like he hadn't eaten in a week.
Kame hastily pulled out his Bottle of Plenty and said, "Chicken soup."
The car was immediately filled with the scent of fresh chicken soup. Kame scrabbled around in the backseat till he found Yamapi's now-empty canteen and filled it to the brim with hot, nourishing soup. Yamapi downed it so fast he almost choked.
"Easy," Kame warned. "How long have you been trapped in here?"
"Only three days." Yamapi set down the canteen with obvious reluctance; Kame filled it up again. "But it feels like a week. I was trying to drive as close as I could to the castle but the hair's unexpectedly resilient."
"Does the car still run?"
"I think there's hair in the engine."
So much for that idea. "Are you trying to rescue Prince Jin?" Kame had to check.
Yamapi's face fell. "I was. No wonder the queen would only pay on delivery."
"My letter didn't even mention payment - just said I could name my price!"
"She must be getting desperate. If Jin's even still here he's probably one of the zombies."
"Zombies?" The letter hadn't mentioned zombies.
Yamapi nodded, looking very serious. "Zombies. I ran one over on my way in here, but I don't know if that was enough to kill him. I mean, kill him again. He was carrying a sword and wearing a silly hat so I figured he had to be one of the previous rescuers."
"I can see that," Kame said carefully, hoping three days trapped in a car hadn't driven the poor guy insane, "but what makes you think he was a zombie?"
"Grey skin, really sharp teeth, drooling, eating a severed leg-"
"So the guy had poor hygiene and weird eating habits..."
"-And he was wearing clothes from last season."
"Zombie," Kame agreed immediately. He wondered if all the previous rescuers had suffered the same fate. Clearly, there was more going on here than just the forest of hair, because Japan hadn't had a zombie problem for centuries, so the history books said - not since the last of the necromancers had been wiped out. There could be hordes of them wandering around the area if they'd managed to elude the hair. Kame fervently hoped he could avoid joining their ranks. "Are you still planning on saving the prince?"
"Uh..." Yamapi turned red. "I could really do with finding a bathroom, and I just don't think I'd be able to concentrate properly on saving him until then. Not that either of us is going anywhere."
Kame thought otherwise. "Try starting the car."
Yamapi shrugged but agreed to try it, turning the key with an expression that said he thought he had a greater chance of joining Mensa than hearing the engine turn over. Kame's faith was justified, however, and the car started smoothly.
"Now what? We won't get far through this hair. The tyres got caught in it; that's what stopped me in the first place."
"I'll cut the hair around your tyres," Kame volunteered. "We're not that far in; if I cut you a starting point and you floor it, you should be able to make it out. The hair's less dense back that way."
"But that means you'll be..."
Kame puffed out his chest proudly. "I'm on a quest."
A fellow adventurer, Yamapi understood completely. He didn't wail, or gush in gratitude, merely clapped Kame on the shoulder and wished him good luck. They'd tried doing the hugging thing before and it hadn't really worked out, so this seemed a better idea. Kame was quite a tactile person, especially when drunk, but if Yamapi had been trapped in the car for three days Kame didn't want to get any closer than he had to.
Leaving the car again gave Kame some trouble. He had to wind down the windows a crack first, slice the hair outside, then take advantage of the temporary gap to slide out the door and slam it shut again before the hair could creep inside. He quickly circled the car, stripping away the tangles, then signalled Yamapi to gun the engine. His former questing partner gave him a triumphant "kon kon" hand signal and hit the gas.
There was no time to stop and listen, to wonder if Yamapi had made it outside. Kame's break had refreshed him, a swig from the Bottle of Plenty - this time, filled with red wine - had revitalised him, and he was prepared to deal with all comers, hair and zombies alike.
He didn't find a zombie until he got nearer to the outer walls, which he couldn't tell until cracked grey stone appeared through the hair. He missed the zombie at first - its skin was the same colour as the wall. Cape, sword, knee-high boots...all traditional adventuring clothes, which Kame had never gone in for. (For one thing, at his height, they looked a little silly.) It was tearing strips of flesh from a human hand, giving Kame a good idea of what had happened to some of the other would-be rescuers. Dead or undead, didn't look like he had much of a future ahead of him.
Not unless he made it to the castle and found out what was really going on.
Kame didn't want to blunt his machete on the zombie. As it staggered towards him, eyes vacant, a few strands of hair twined around its waist, Kame reached into his backpack for the magic sword. The dragon from whom he'd received it hadn't been able to explain how it was magical, only that it was, as he'd acquired it in turn from a knight a couple of centuries ago. It was sharp, that was the important thing as far as Kame was concerned.
It was also glowing green, which it hadn't been when he'd packed it, but he didn't have the time to worry about whether or not the damned thing was radioactive.
The zombie reached for him. Kame lashed out with one booted foot, catching it squarely in the stomach with a horrible squelching sound, forcing it back to give him room to swing. The undead didn't seem too bothered by trivial things like pain and it took several attempts for Kame to cut himself enough slack, mindful all the while of the hair slowly regrowing behind him. A roundhouse to the jaw sent the zombie reeling into a particularly vibrant patch of hair - nourished by rotting flesh, possibly - and gave Kame the opening he needed. Grasping the magic sword in both hands, he swept it across the zombie's neck.
He was expecting some resistance, but also that the zombie's head would, at some point, say goodbye to its shoulders. He got both of these.
What he wasn't expecting was for both the head and the stump of the neck to catch fire.
In an enclosed space, fire would kill Kame a lot quicker than the zombie could've. He scrambled to unroll his blanket and smother the fires before the hair could catch alight. The blanket ended up scorched; Kame, unharmed. He cast a speculative eye over the sword before stashing it away again. It was no longer glowing green and it didn't look flammable. Perhaps that was its magic, to ignite whatever it cut? Kame took a swing at the hair, just to make sure, but the blade cut normally. Maybe it only affected undead flesh? He hoped not to have any further occasions to test out the hypothesis.
Unhooking the machete from his belt, he resumed his task, now following the wall on the grounds that sooner or later, he had to reach an entrance. It was evidently made of sterner stuff than the more modern buildings outside - the hair barely broke through at all, tangling instead along the top, trailing down the sides to create a rough tunnel of which Kame took full advantage. No sense tiring himself out more than necessary; there was no telling when he might find another zombie.
Less than half an hour after his first undead experience, Kame had his second. This time, at least, the zombie was already dead twice. It had been crushed by the heavy doors leading into the castle grounds. Kame tried not to look at the repulsive, oozing corpse as he forced open the doors. He'd be hitting the Bottle of Plenty for a pick-me-up if he did, he knew.
Though short for a man and lightly built, Kame was considerably stronger than he looked and he was able to move the doors enough to slip through, stepping carefully over the mess. That brought him within the grounds.
The castle must've been a nice area for tourists once, he thought. He'd never know now. The forest of hair resumed inside and it was only by peering through the gaps in the strands that Kame was able to locate the castle itself, towering over the landscape. Hair and rubble mixed freely below, uneven ground waiting to trip Kame as he fought his way through to the door. Whenever he stopped to mop sweat from his brow hair crept around his ankles, teasing, always threatening to trap him but never following through.
The front door had more breathing room, or so Kame thought until he realised the door was no longer there, replaced by solid, sculpted hair that was stiff with hairspray. Even the machete couldn't make a dent in it.
In desperation he pulled out his cell phone to call Nakamaru, another of his questing buddies. Nakamaru had a strange fascination with both cleaning and hair products - he'd once gone on a quest to retrieve a legendary bottle of conditioner, only to have it accidentally run over by his own client - so Kame was sure he'd have an idea.
"I'm having a bad hair day," Kame said by way of a greeting, and explained the situation.
There was an ear-splitting screech from the other end of the phone and a new voice came on the line. It turned out to be Junno, another of their number.
"He's got his hands full dealing with a giant octopus," Junno explained when Kame enquired after Nakamaru. "It can only be soothed by beat-boxing; the client asked for him specially."
"When he's got a second, can you ask him if he knows anything to get rid of excess hairspray? I've got solid hair blocking my path."
Obligingly, Junno shouted the request across. Seconds later, inserted neatly between a period of scratching and the melody line, the advice "bicarbonate of soda plus shampoo" came back.
"Bicarbonate of soda plus shampoo?" Kame repeated doubtfully, holding out the Bottle of Plenty in his free hand. He'd never asked it for something he couldn't drink before but there was a first time for everything, and it was supposed to be able to produce any liquid in existence.
"He says that should work, definitely." Junno sounded optimistic, but then, Junno almost always sounded optimistic. They'd been on a quest together once where they'd almost been massacred by an army of marauding orcs and he'd still come out smiling. Covered in orc blood, but smiling.
"I'll give it a try." Kame shook the bottle hard, aiming the contents at the door of hair. It fell apart at once, lifeless strands hanging limply in the doorway now they'd lost their starch. "It worked! The door disintegrated!"
"Of course it did," Junno said. "Hair today, gone tomorrow."
There was a thump from the other end and Nakamaru picked up the phone again. "Junno's just been hit by a flying fish," he said. "I think it's karma."
With the door of hair no longer an obstacle Kame was free to enter the castle. Clearly, no one had been inside for a while - no one living, anyway. Here the hair tangled around the furniture, hung from light fixtures like broken chandeliers, wove uneven curtains before shattered windows. Where other abandoned buildings might have spiderwebs in the dusty corners, this one had hairnets.
Where could Jin be? Kame knew if he'd been exploring by himself, he'd have wanted to go right up to the very top. Was the prince the same?
The hair was thinner inside, more of a nuisance than an obstruction, easier for Kame to push away than to hack and slash through it all. That he no longer found it creepy when the hair pushed back was, he felt, a sign of how long he'd been on this quest, never mind that he'd only set out after breakfast and it wasn't yet evening.
He began a room by room search. Minute, almost unnoticeable signs caught his eye as he searched the ground floor. Here, a glove fallen in the dust, with hair shot through the fingertips. There, a broken belt lying abandoned on a table where the legs were bound with ropes of hair. They weren't old enough to have rotted, not by a long shot. Kame wondered where the owners were. More zombies?
More zombies, indeed. Kame found a pair of them in a portrait gallery, though both of them were incapacitated by hair and he couldn't imagine either had a taste for art. As they didn't appear to be able to free themselves and he didn't want to risk starting a fire indoors he left them there and quickly moved on.
Mounting the stairs took longer than anticipated. It wasn't so much a question of clearing a path upwards as making sure he didn't get pulled back down again by trailing strands. Kame was almost tempted to catch hold of a bundle and simply climb up to the next floor but he wasn't sure how sturdy it would be and anyway, he was nearly there now.
The next sign of life came in the form of a shiny silver earring, an unclothed, kneeling lady. Kame recognised it from Jin's photo. He hoped the earring meant he was getting closer to the prince, but a thorough search of the floor forced him to conclude it must've been dropped somewhere along the way. There were no zombies on this floor, but there was certainly enough torn, bloodstained clothing around to suggest they'd been here too - while hungry. Kame hoped they'd gone downstairs rather than up.
Floor after floor proved fruitless, unless one counted signs of dead and undead adventurers alike as success. Kame didn't. His one consolation was that none of the zombies he'd seen so far had looked even remotely like Jin, giving him hope he'd still find the prince somewhere. Preferably alive.
This pattern continued until Kame reached the tower, where the hair was thicker and the passages thinner. He put the machete to good use once more, glad he'd spent so many hours in the gym with Ueda to build his stamina. Ueda was in the best shape of all of them, no doubt about it - but then, he did take on the oddest quests. He'd once spent a month in tights in order to mend a rift between two feuding families and had almost had to get married as a consequence.
A terrible groaning from the next room warned him of approaching zombies. Kame fished out his sword in preparation and watched in amazement as it began to glow, emitting green light faintly at first, then brighter as he neared the door. Zombie early warning system? Nice, but unnecessary given that they were hard to miss. There had to be some other reason, Kame thought. The glow disappeared once he'd decapitated the unfortunate ex-adventurer, rendering it twice-dead and dispersing whatever magic had once held it together.
Magic...
If anyone was going to know about zombies, it would be Ueda. His parents had sent him to all sorts of classes as a child - Elvish for Beginners, History of Dragons, Back to Basics: Sorcery for Children etc. - and he had an amazing stock of random trivia to hand. Kame gave him a call.
"Not that I don't enjoy talking to you," Ueda said, sounding slightly peeved, "but can we make it quick? I'm supposed to be taking confession in a minute and I know these people have juicy gossip."
Kame wondered if perhaps Ueda was getting a little too involved with his undercover work. "What do you know about zombies?"
"Zombies? There haven't been any around since the last necromancer was killed. That's how they're created, through necromancy. Death magic."
"But if there are no living necromancers, why have I met at least a dozen zombies today?"
"They must've missed one, obviously." There was a rustle in the background and Kame could hear Ueda asking someone to wait a couple of minutes, because patience was a virtue.
"What do you know about virtue?" Kame asked, trying not to laugh.
"The dictionary definition," Ueda said, and proceeded to prove it. "The rumours say not all the necromancers were human, and all the non-human ones went into hiding when the killing began. I don't know if it's true but if it is, I guess someone in the area's using necromancy. The bigger the spell, the closer the caster has to be to the subject to keep it active. It takes a sacrifice to activate a spell - blood, death or sleep, usually."
"Sleep?"
"Sleep is living death, Kame. Necromancers could use sleepers as a focus for their spells - unnatural sleep, of course. Where are you?"
Kame explained the situation - quickly, because Ueda was busy and it was difficult to talk on the phone and cut hair at the same time.
"My teacher said zombies can be incidental, a side-effect of necromantic magic, if people die in an area affected by a spell. The zombies haven't been seen outside the hair-covered area, right? So they're probably tied to something in the castle grounds. Look for circles drawn in blood, sleeping people, anything like that."
"And do what?"
"Improvise. Sorry, I only attended the first two classes."
So much for Ueda. Kame pocketed his phone and kept the sword in his free hand instead to serve as an early zombie warning. He was running out of rooms to search.
Part 2