Alysa casually steps in, “HI Aku!” she greeted with a smile.”How are you?”
“I have just been transferred and now I am on hold,” Aku answered her question absently as he held a phone to his “ear”. Apparently he was conducting some sort of business over the phone.
Hovering in the air beside him was a “miniature” zen garden the size of a swimming pool where the demon was idly stacking some boulders on the sand.
Aku rolled his eyes with a growl as he considered whether he should bother to answer…
“They are HORNS. And I am not a tree.”
“It’s just… when mine show up… They look different- Do yours constantly change too?”
“I can will them to take any shape I please. I am the Shape-shifting Master of Darkness, after all. These horns make up the glorious crown of Aku and therefore it is seldom that I change their appearance.”
Plus he could use them to “hear” things from space sometimes but that was beside the point. Aku’s horns were part of his infamy and his image.
Aku was startled out of his thoughts when his affectionate alternate cozied up to him. Was it afternoon already? Amused, he slowly relaxed into the embrace.
“Oh, so NOW you like it? What a surprise!” He grinned and lay back.
“Something like that, yeah.” Azura rubbed the back of her neck nervously. She never really had someone to talk about this particular thing, always feared of being judged as a horrible monster. It was one thing to think herself as that. Another else entirely when others confirm it.
“When I hurt someone out of sheer anger, I tend to lose myself in my rage. Its like… I enjoy hurting others, even if its briefly. I want them to feel what I felt. I wanted them to suffer. And when you kill someone in that state, its hard to snap out of it. It’s… terrible. The last time that happened, I was under Bill’s influence. I-I don’t want something similar like that to happen again.”
Aku, of course, being a mass murderer himself with no remorse, hardly blamed Azura for her feelings and actions. This was all completely normal to him and he saw no real reason to be upset about it. But she was upset, and is was because she, unlike him, was human.
“What, is it not normal to want to hurt someone after they’ve hurt you? They deserve punishment,” Aku paused, tightening his claws in a fist. Yes they did. Punishment was the least they deserved for hurting her.
“But I see where you and I differ. I take pride in the results of my rage while you take shame in yours. You are a human with morals, after all.” The demon rolled his eyes. It was sort of unfortunate that she was plagued with morality but there was little to be done about it now. He paced back to her, pausing just before her.
“What do you want to do about the stone?” he asked.
“True, but… I’m mostly afraid of going overboard, you know? After what happened with Bill, I fear of losing control and hurt others…”
“…”
Aku’s rage slowly boiled away and subsided as he considered her words.
“I see… It is yourself that you fear.” The demon clutched his forearms behind his back and paced in contemplation. “Why is that, Azura? Do you fear you have not learned from your mistakes in the past?”
The sky above was gray and a light rain fell across the barren landscape. Aku was still there, locked away inside his prison just as he’d been the day before, his hatred quietly radiating toward the palace in the distance. Much of his time was spent this way, hating the Emperor, hating humans and the Gods.
He wondered if he would ever taste freedom again. He wondered if the power he felt building inside would be enough to break free. And if it wasn’t, how long could he continue to exist like this before madness set in? …He wondered if Casper really would return to visit him again.
The Shogun of Sorrow 