High over Tokyo, as clouds scudded across the moon, causing fitful light and erratic shadows, a figure lurked within the ambient darkness of the skyscraper's comm tower's shadow. Far below, a sleepless city moved and shifted like a writhing mass of worms or larvae. Eyes that shouldn't look as old as they seemed stared down at that milling congregation of chattel and waited. It would come, it had come every full moon, drawn like a moth to a flame.
There. There it was, and this time, he'd catch it. Catch it and bend it to his will. He'd spent too long and too much time to let this opportunity slip away. Like a misshapen patch of fog it moved across the night sky. Wings of scaly leather beat the air as pinpoints of red, piggy eyes searched the cimmerian gloom of the city's night air for it's target.
A grunt alerted Aikan to the monster's intentions and as the demon swooped to attack, so did he. A startled gasp ruptured from the demon's lungs as Aiken landed squarely upon its back. A lariat, woven of sea hag hair, snapped about its neck and closed with a deathly grip. Taloned claws scrabbled at the stricture and panic filled its being. A voice like fire and ice grated through its ears, violating the halls of its mind and forcing its way into the demon's essence.
"Take me to Amatsu Mikaboshi!" The words reverberated within the monster's psyche. There were no options. Death would be a deliverance, suicide was impossible. The creature was a prisoner, a victim to his captor's will. The hellion whimpered as it folded the fabric of nature and entered the supernatural realms. Dim shapes coalesced out of the stygian supernal strata of the chthonian atmosphere. Before them stretched the demon palace of the God of Evil. The baleful light of the necropolitan dimension reflected queasily from the gilded architecture of the theocratic palace. Arches and pillars, towers and walls swooped and stood in defiance of Euclidian geometry. Windows and doors, corridors and stairways seemed to conform to an Escherian logic.
Aikan slowly garroted the winged oni and as the creature expired, leapt from its back ere it crashed into the pavement. He sauntered up the broad avenue between the grotesque statuary that lined the boulevard. He breezed up to the guards and with a seeming wave of his hand, dispatched them from their plutonian chores, their heads severed from their shoulders, rolling about upon the palace's porch. He strode through the entrance hall, mercilessly slaughtering all that he encountered as he made his way to the deity's audience chamber. Ichor and blood flowed in his wake like some mystic river rising at his passing, borne by each unwavering footstep.
Finally he stood in the grand audience chamber, he surveyed the chaos and confusion that attended his arrival. All about him courtiers of the demon hall drew back in confusion and terror. Here was one who had done what no one in living memory had ever done. Assaulted the sepulchrean corridors of infernal power single handedly. Only one individual was unmoved. Indifference was the atmosphere of the dread god, as he sat upon his alabaster throne.
"So, it would seem thou art Momotaro reborn after all," he said in a voice brimming with self love and admiration for its own dry wit. "Hast thou come to kill us all?"
"No, thou dreadful master of all that is evil, I have come to show thee the errors of thy ways," Aikan said.
"Foolish mortal, thou hast stepped into a trap, thou shalt be consumed." The God Emperor raised his hand in a gesture that would lead to Aikan's eventual destruction, it stopped as the youth produced a stoppered vase.
"Behold thy worship, here I have the Spirit of Momotaro, proving that I can not be him reborn." The god looked down for the first time at the young man standing before him.
"I can not see, the vase shields too much, how can I be sure that it is not some trick?"
"Open it thyself then great dread one!" Aikan called out as he tossed the vase high in the air. The satanic emperor snatched the vase from the air and screamed. Before he could examine it, it exploded in his hands and the spirit of Momotaro enveloped him in his stately purple robes. Demon lord and hero wrestled in the great chair, plasm and ichor raining down upon all.
All that is except Aikan, who had turned as the jar exploded and with swords drawn slew all that stood before him as he left the demon palace. The walls thereof were stained black with the vile blood and ichor of the underworld's most nefarious that day. The slaughter would have continued unabated had not a powerful duke of hell not banished his shade from the ethereal realm and sent him blood soaked and gory back to the prime material plane.
High over Tokyo, as clouds scudded across the moon, causing fitful light and erratic shadows, a figure stepped from within the ambient darkness of the skyscraper's comm tower's shadow. Far below, a sleepless city moved and shifted like a writhing mass of worms or larvae. Eyes that shouldn't look as old as they stared down at that milling congregation of chattel and sighed. His revenge had been exacted. His debt to his family was done. Or was it? Amatsu Mikaboshi could not attack him directly for his act of vengeance, but he could plague him and his family with demon kind for all eternity. He had a career now. He would hunt his hunters. Kill those who would harm any future family he may have.
Aikan looked down upon the masses of milling people, and smiled benignly at their ignorance. The were such fragile creatures, these humans. But he was in part, kindred with them and so, he would protect them, and in doing so, meet his wife and sire a family.
