SUMMARY::Xero Katsuraii was once just a normal teenage girl until she met the famous Cirth Akuma, a demon. She travels around a new world she's never been to in order to turn her new cat-girl body back human and return her to her own world. But Cirth has his own plans.

AUTHOR’S NOTE:: It's better than it sounds, I promise it will be. Cirth is someone you can't help but love and can't help but hate. BTW these are my own characters, I'll be honored if you steal one,but please ask first, okay?

Chapter 1: A Snake In The Grass

One failure after another, that's what school was. The endless destraction of life brought people like Xero down. She had failed another test, all because she was distracted by her teacher. And Ryo-sensei was very handsome teacher. Most students didn't ask why she would like him, it was obvious, and she wasn't the only one to think that he was a gorgeous sensei.

The bell rang again, as it always had. It's squeal was enough to make her want to cringe. At the time of the bell, she was either dissapointed by having to leave Ryo-sensei's room, or she was happy because she had to go home. That particular day, was different though. She was not dissapointed, or happy, but because of another 'F' on her test, she was dreading home.

He mother was the sort of parent to give her grief about school work, and her brother was the sort to make fun of her for it. When she thought of Maru bragging over him being a school graduate she would have delighted in strangling him. That was just wishful thinking, she told herself.

After the bell's ring, both girls and guys ran for the hall screaming, yelping and cheering as school was out for another day. And for Xero, just watching it was an act of complete shame. “What Pigs.” She breathed to herself, walking through the halls, thinking she was alone. She should have been over the immaturity of her classmates already, but they were like animals.

The shadow of a man was cast down behind her. She noticed it, but didn't turn until after it had spoke “I agree, but some of us grow out of that stage. Others don’t get that luxury.” She turned around, thinking it was Yusuke, the school's great prodigy. He was a soccer star and the one boy that girls could help but stare at. But it wasn't him.

“Ryo-sensei," He smiled at her and she turned her head in order to hide the pink of her cheeks. "I didn’t see you there.” Ryo was indeed a good-looking teacher, although his hair suggested he was older than his face had shown, with silver locks pulled back behind his head. His face, on the other hand, showed his youth. He must have only been at least five years older than her, and it was no secret that she had a crush on him. “Where did you come from?”

He didn't answer. His golden eyes looked outside through the windows, smiling as if wishing he could look at the world from a birds point of view. “Beautiful day, don’t you agree, Xero-chan?” She looked out the window and he was right; it was a beautiful day. The sky was a perfect shade of deep blue with only mid-sized spots glazed over it, half covering the sun. Lines of geese, like waves, flew across the heavens. It seemed that to him, there was nothing better than a beautiful day in the way he spoke about it. “Wouldn’t you delight in flying up there like those geese? Complete freedom from the world below." He said taking a deep breath as if trying to breathe the fresh air out from the cracks in the window. He exhaled and said dazily, "Like magic.”

Xero was caught back by that, and looked back up to the sky watching the geese fly away and out of sight. She closed her eyes tight and turned around, away from the window. “Magic doesn’t exist in the real world.”

She began to walk toward the way to the exit. Ryo watch he go for a few seconds before deciding to catch up to her. “Are you saying there are more worlds out there than this? Worlds that do, in fact, have magic?” It was an odd question that took her off guard, she slowed her pace.

“What I mean…” She spoke, but the answer couldn’t be reached. How can you answer to what you don’t know? She didn't believe in other worlds and in magic, but it's not a fact that it doesn't exist, and in that, it was impossible to answer. Ryo knew that. She lowered her body into a bow so that her legs were straight but her thigh-long black hair reached the floor. “I’m sorry.”

When she raised herself back up, she saw his face smiling at her, tingling sensations ran across her face to show the amount of scarlet on her cheeks. He gave a chuckle than slipped his hand around her shoulder, turning her toward the window. “Don’t be. But you are only partly correct; this is the real world. Maybe this is the only world, and maybe not. But about magic, it can happen.” His hand came across Xero’s face, to her left ear and plucked out a coin from behind her ear.

Xero rolled her eyes at the childish magic trick. “I don’t believe in magic, sensei, they’re only tricks.”

“Than I suggest, you look a bit closer.” He held the coin flat in his palm, Xero looked at it, closing her face in on it. It was there for one second, which she saw the imprint on the piece of metal. She her the SNAP and saw the flames jump up and saw the coin vanish before her. She had her beliefs, but that had confused her because she had seen it happen, no tricks not nothing. The coin had vanished from his palm, right in front of her. Her face turned to Ryo’s in confused amazement. “Not everything is as it seems, but sometimes magic can be staring you right in the face, and you’ll be searching for something else to explain it. You have a special destiny, Xero-chan, just be sure you know what to look for when you find the light that leads to it.”

“A special destiny?” Xero asked looking to the floor. “I’m not so sure; my brother is more likely the one with that. Maru’s better at more things than I am.”

“Have faith, you’ll see.”

Xero nodded and again they walked a bit farther. Ryo even walked her to the door where her friends were supposed to be waiting, but something made him stop before him. She searched the doorway to find out what.

Everything was as it always was; a crowd sat in front of the doors and filled the outside. Cars lined up to pick up their kids and take them away to their nice, cozy and comfy homes. But there was something different in the scene. A man leaned against the wall of the entrance, staring straight at Ryo with eyes hidden behind black-as-night sunglasses and his body covered with an open black trench coat with a red lining that showed the white T-shirt and loose karate pants under it.

There was something about him that made the hairs at the back of her neck stand on end. Through the glasses, she could have sword that she saw crimson eyes, the color of blood looking through them, straight at her sensei. She wandered what he wanted and where he came from, and part of her even wandered if he was human, which was a silly question, wasn't it?

Ryo turned back to her, put his hands and her shoulder and smiled, “Excuse me, Xero-chan, I need to have a little chat with someone.” His eyes leered toward the man in the trench coat, who was grinning wide with vampire-like white teeth.

She stood there for a few minutes more after Ryo left her side and watched him go to the man at the door. She took a closer look at the stranger, hoping he wouldn't notice her looking and found something she didn’t see before: a thin imprint, a tattoo on his left cheek. She read it. In Japanese kanji it meant darkness. A strange tattoo in a strange place, but the tattoo wasn’t only the strange thing about him. Like most other people, his hair was black, but with red strands in random places. It looked almost natural.

Strange? Yes he was, but in a good-looking, ‘God, I’m going to melt’ sort of way, she thought. As she watched him, she saw his head turned her way and grin in a malicious and devious way. She jumped and turned before getting interrupted by her name being shouted through the halls.

“Xero-chan!”

She turned around, seeing the figures of her two best friends, Natsuko and Hisa coming toward her. But Xero’s thoughts were a bit pre-occupied, she turned back to Mr. Ryo and the man with the tattoo and mixed hair, but they were gone. “What are you staring at?” Asked Natsuko, tapping on her shoulder.

She looked back at her friends and shrugged with a fake smile that covered any previous curiosity about the man in the trench coat and the tattoo on his left cheek. “Nothing.”

-----

“Nice to see you again, Ryo-kun,” the stranger greeted cheerfully. Ryo could nearly feel his gaze on him through the guy’s shades. “So, you’re a teacher now, are you?”

Ryo saw no humor in the situation, his lips were as still as stone, “What are you doing here, Cirth?” He whispered as if saying something so disrespectful, he couldn’t let anyone hear. In Ryo’s golden eyes, there was anger, and there was fear.

“You’re not being very nice to your old friend.”

Ryo's eyes glared through the shades at him but almost jumped back at the quick vision of crimson, "You're nothing but a traitor to me, Cirth. You stabbed me in the back and sold me out to your lord."

Cirth grinned and looked up to the ceiling, scratching his chin with an egotistical pride, "I don't deny it." He said and looked back to Ryo, "She didn't trust you and I had to prove my loyalty. At least your not dead, right?" He chuckled in an evil way, then motioned for Ryo to follow with a simple jerk of his neck and walked out of the building.

The street that that school was built on wasn’t the best in the city. In fact with the garbage sitting at the curbs and stray dogs and cats on the roadsides, it was as far away from the ‘good’ part of the city as Earth was from Jupiter. Nevertheless, Cirth led them out on the sidewalk, but Ryo was hardly fooled. “What are you doing here, Cirth?”

No answer.

“There’s a threat on Okami isn’t there?”

Cirth’s grin would never falter. “The seer points out that unless I annihilate a human who lives in this,” He looked up into the air at a crossing airplane, then to a passing motorcycle with a male and female screaming as they sped passed traffic, and lastly he examined his sunglasses, bringing them down to sit on his hands and revealed blood red eyes. “Rather odd world, than my lord will parish by her demon hand.”

Ryo’s eyebrow furrowed in a confused way, “Wait a minute. You just said she was human, and she will kill Okami with her ‘demon hand’?”

“I know.” Cirth snickered, stopping in his tracks, rocking back and forth with pride. “The seer’s tongue is very trivial at times.”

Ryo sat down in the grass and stared out at the blue sky, until Cirth walked in front of the view. He replaced his shades onto the bone of his nose, but even through the thick black glass, red eyes glowed from behind it. His black and crimson hair blew in the wind, and something was just not right. “What do you want from me? You want me to turn evil, to kill one of my own students?”

But Cirth’s gleam through his glasses and his fanged-toothed grin only became slimmer and more malevolent. Something was wrong. It was hidden like behind those shades, a mystery, and a plot. “Of coarse not, Ryo-kun.” He turned around, placing his hands into his pockets and walked a few steps, “I just want you to know you can’t stop me. I’m going to bring her to the lake and be on my way to bring her to Okami-sama.”

"The lake? But that..."

"I know." He snickered.

“And why are you telling me this?”

Cirth turned back around, those eyes glowing through the black shield of the shades. A forked snake-tongue slithered in and out of his grinning teeth, “So you can try to stop me. Otherwise it would be no fun.” He slid his hand through his black and red hair and started to walk away, “It was good to see you again, Ryo-kun.”

-----

Xero was still puzzled even as they walked each other home; she was watching her feet as the journey went on. Hisa and Natsuko couldn’t help but notice her strange behavior. She was normally very energetic on the way home. “Hey, Xero-chan?" Natsuko prodded her to get her attention, "Are you sure you're okay? You seem distracted.” There was no answer. Xero just continued to stare at her feet until Natsuko got in front of her and stopped her by placing her hands on her shoulders. She stopped abruptly and looked up to see worried faces on both Nastuko and Hisa's face. “What is it? Something’s wrong, I can tell.” Natsuko asked again.

“I’m fine,” She first replied. "Really, I am." They looked at eachother for support and shrugged in unison to decide to keep walking. Xero still seemed detached, but finally she began to talk about it. “Have you ever seen a man who was so mysterious that even when you’ve never spoken a word to him, you could feel it within his presence?”

“Oh yeah! Definitely.” Natsuko said bringing her head up and down. “I mean have you seen Yusuke on the field?” She continued with a smile, showing brightly the crush she had on the boy. Natsuko was a well-known soccer star on the field of Fujimitora High alongside Yusuke. Hisa had longed to be on the team for what seemed like forever, she was actually the most talented of the group, she just wasn’t well liked. “He’s mysterious in his own way.” She grinned, “He likes you, you know that Xero-chan?”

“Yeah, but I’m not talking about that. You know Yusuke, I—“ She paused to think what she was going to say but thought better of it, “Never mind.” She dismissed, waving her hands.

Xero wasn’t satisfied in the least, she was still puzzling over the man that she asked herself questions in her head that drove her insane. Why was she so interested in this guy? He was just a guy after all and most guys in this town were jerks, she said it herself. What made this one different? It bothered her.

Hisa hadn’t spoken a word since she and Natsuko picked up Xero. Talking really wasn’t her thing, she would much rather read or play soccer or card games that she always dueled Yusuke to. You would think that Natsuko would get jealous, but she understood that they were only friends—since second grade.

Now was her chance to shine; “Sempai,” She started respectfully, she was a grade lower than Natsuko and Xero, so naturally it’s what she calls them in or out of school. “What are you afraid of?”

Both Natsuko and Xero were puzzled, “Huh?”

“You two—you seem so fearless. I was just wondering what you’re afraid of.” She muttered under her breath. Rose color came to her cheeks after she spoke.

Natsuko took a moment, tapping her chin with her index finger in thought, “Well, my mom and my report card would be a pretty nasty nightmare—“

“No, I mean, what have you always been afraid of?”

“Well…” Natsuko let out a deep sigh. This kind of question was a tough one for her. She always thought herself to be fearless, but Hisa wouldn’t take ‘nothing’ for an answer, it was the hard truth. Everyone feared something. “I guess it would be—losing one of my best friends.” She said, pulling Xero and Hisa into an unwanted hug.

“Snakes!”

Xero was immediately stared at, “I’ve always been afraid of snakes since I was a kid. I was bitten by one once, it was horrible.” She shivered, “Next to that would be spiders.”

“Anything that’s poisonous, huh?” Observed Natsuko.

Xero thought about that a moment longer, “Not really, just anything with too many, or no legs.” Said she and everyone laughed as they came upon a breaking point, a fork in the road where Xero split with both her best friends. She waved her hands frantically, shouting out them loud enough to disturb the neighbors and ran toward their houses; but before she could reach her own she stopped.

Her brown eyes were shown in full as her eyelids rose as high as they could. “That’s him,” She muttered to herself.

The guy with the sunglasses and the black and red hair was standing at the street where her house was located. That was the same guy she had seen at school. And it was a mystery how he even got there so fast.

The forest was just behind him; it was where it began in the town. He glanced toward it once or twice and looked her way with eyes so penetrating it looked as if the color was trying to escape out of his shades. His smile widened to show perfect teeth, a little too perfect of teeth except for four little fangs that made him look like either a vampire or werewolf.

“He’s looking my way,” She gulped. Her grandmother had always warned her about people like him, way too good looking to not be a jerk. What she described people like that was ‘a snake in the grass’ someone deceitful and untrustworthy.

She watched as his hand was raised, all fingers curled until the index finger stretched out and in, again and again, urging her to follow him. He gave that sly smile once more and turned around, entering the forest.

“Oh no…” She muttered slowly to herself. What to do, what to do? Follow the man she’s been thinking about since she left the school and answer her curious questions. Or go home and contemplate about what would have happened if she followed.

No more thinking was needed, she had the more convincing answer. She wanted to know who this guy was and now he wanted her to follow him into a dark forest. If anything happened, she told herself, then I can always defend myself. How she would, though, remained an enigma.

Xero lifted her feet and began jogging after the mysterious mixed haired man. Once she came to the line that started the forest, she wondered if it was the right choice. It was too late to turn back now, she convinced herself, squeezing in between the trees.

Once she was in, it was like all light was trapped outside. The farther she went the darker it got, “Mom’s going to kill me after this.” She muttered, tearing off thorns that were stuck in her shirt. She heard a sound; it was soft and seemed distant but clear, “The waterfall!” She exclaimed, the waterfall was the start of the lake that fell around the city. From the waterfall, if the man with the hair still wasn’t there, she could always walk the border of the lake down to the highway and make her way home.

Even through the pricks that the thorns gave her skin, she hurried to get to the waterfall and with the length of time it took to get there, she wondered if she was going the right way.

Suddenly the trees opened up to show the sunlight shining down upon the sparklets of water that ran down the waterfall. The path that ran along the lake was clear, no one was around. With everything she endeared in the nightmare of that forest, it was a shame she had to take another thirty minutes to walk around the forest to get home.

“Hello?” She called.

No one answered. All that replied was the waterfall that continued to rain down into the lake. Xero lowered her head, why didn’t she just ignore him and go home? Why did she just have to follow him and allow herself to be a target in some guy’s plan to make a fool of someone? It was all her fault; it wasn’t true, but she was thinking it.

She stopped.

“Something moved,” She told herself out loud in order to calm herself. It didn’t work. She looked toward a bush; it rustled in not just the wind. Something was behind it, hiding and watching her. She walked toward it, trying to convince herself it was just a cat or something. With one last rustle, something jumped out of it, something big but unseen by her eyes. It passed her with speed that matched that of a bullet and she turned toward the border of the lake where the man, wearing the shades and long red and black trench coat and having matching hair, was standing. He was looking at her behind those glasses.

“You,” She muttered getting closer. He gave her a grin, but showed no teeth this time, something that seemed strange in a guy like him. He turned toward the lake, to the waterfall where the cliff fell sixty feet down to the water from his height. Is he going to jump? She thought. She took a step that looked to have startled him, but in his grin it was a planned move.

He turned around to face her; a bit of his chest was seen through the tightness of the white shirt that was under his trench coat. He rose up his hand and gave her a wave as if saying ‘good bye.’ Was that planned as well?

“No!”

It wasn’t her that shouted it, or him. Someone in the distance was calling to them, telling them ‘no’ for some reason. Xero heard the hard breathing as someone made their way through the forest. She turned toward the sound and nearly missed the man plunge himself toward the water. “No, don’t!” She shouted and stepped forward, grabbing the coat and pulled herself down. She was falling too.

In her last moments of consciousness, before she felt the water cover over her and a sharp pain in her head and ears, before her teeth started burning in her mouth and the ceaseless sound of ringing began. She saw the one person she didn’t expect. Ryo stood at the boarder where she was once standing. She watched as he tried to grab her as she fell, but completely missed.

She was afraid of what would happen, of the pain the water in the cold of autumn would inflict on her. Xero closed her eyes slowly and released the trench coat, covering her head as she came down. Then the pain kicked in, all agony felt to have happened in a time span of eternity. She felt the hot tinge of burns come to her skin and pull her up; they weren’t the burns she thought. Her skin was numbed by the fall and she didn’t recognize the touch as a hand around her waist, pulling her above water.