The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune

Dammit, she had always been short. It wasn’t as if the Kami hadn’t taken enough away from her, but now they had to keep reminding her that she was short too! Balancing on the thin, creaking branch, the miko Kaede stretched and reached her arm towards the pristine goose-feather fletching. The arrow had gone completely off target and now the young, coltish priestess was up, in a tree, trying to retrieve the damn thing from where it was stuck in a branch… a long way off the ground.

Her archery skills were getting better, but thanks to the demon that had slaughtered her sister and took out her right eye Kaede’s struggle with depth-perception was a constant thorn. It made her grouchy whenever she caught her right shoulder on a door frame. It made her sad whenever she put her fingers through a shoji screen instead of opening it. Now it made her feel like a complete and utter fool as she stood on a thin branch in a very tall tree, reaching for her damn…STUPID… ARROW! She’d be damned if it was going to get the better of her this time!

Blowing a few stray hairs out of her face and twisting just a little more on the ball of her tabi-clad foot, the young woman lunged at the back of the arrow, grabbed it, lost her balance and fell. Kaede was too surprised to even scream.

But she did groan and the thing which softened her unexpected landing groaned too.

She’d landed on someone…or something and not only had she landed on them or it, but she had also impaled their left shoulder with the business end of her razor-sharp arrow head.

Could this day possibly get any worse? Oh wait… yes, it could. She’d fallen on a demon, whose face was planted unexpectedly in her chest. All Kaede could see was the pointed tips of its ears and a large mass of dark hair, pulled into a high tail. Collecting herself was the first priority of a miko when faced with the unexpected.

Kaede took a large, deep and hopefully calming breath and exhaled suddenly when she remembered the male face most likely getting a red eye-full of her untouched bosom! The deep humming laugh she felt tickle her breasts through her kosode rather than heard only served to confirm her rather hentai first suspicions of this wayward character beneath her!

Pulling herself off the bowled-over demon she’d used as a moderately soft landing and impromptu arrow-stop, Kaede narrowed her remaining eye and attempted to look fearsome. She was a miko, dammit – a new one, but one just the same! This demon better just give her back her arrow and stay out of her way, preferably forever!

Totosai, in a thoroughly opposite way, had been having a very good day. It was warm enough to travel away from his forge without freezing his ass off and he had yet to hear of any of his apprentice’s abominations. Kaijinbo had been gone quite sometime, but sometimes the whelp did that and so long as he eventually came back, the sword smith was a happy camper, indeed. There was no need to worry about anything. Such a fine spring morning for a walk!

And then it started raining mikos.

Or rather miko.

Or rather Kaede.

The fact that the young woman was quite pretty, albeit in a severe and strangely off kilter way, more than made up for the slight discomfort her broadheaded arrow was causing his left shoulder. Totosai absently scratched the side of his rakish, thin face and wondered if he played the pity card, would she shove her boobs back into his face in feminine concern? It was definitely worth a try!

The demon made quite a show of sitting up and favoring its right arm. Surprisingly un-red eyes in a thin, rawboned face blinked up at her in feigned suffering. Reaching up to gingerly finger the thick wooden shaft in his shoulder, Totosai felt he was putting on a pretty good show, if he did say so himself… that was until he bent his left arm up, pulled the arrow shaft out a couple of inches without the slightest flinch so the point no longer kept hitting the tree he was resting against.

“That’s better.” He mumbled to himself with a lopsided and completely shit-eating grin.

Remembering his charade…finally, the demon blacksmith let his face fall into the mask of total earthly suffering. He even added a wounded sigh for good measure.

The miko, she wasn’t buying it. Arms cross over those lovely, creamy breasts, the girl persisted in glowering at him in a strangely lop-sided way that he just couldn’t put a claw on. There was something different about this pretty little thing; what was it?

“Owww…miko, see what your fall from the heavens has done to me! Have you no pity on a poor demon simply out for a walk?” he hammed it up, one eye cracked in Kaede’s direction, gauging her response and possible gullibility.

“Simple is right.” Kaede snorted and mumbled to herself as she uncrossed her arms and leaned on her bow. The demon looked harmless enough – he was actually kinda cute in an idiotic, sweet way. Willowy, though – she figured he was going to look like a piece of jerky in another 50 years or so. Yeah, right – and she was gonna be short and fat. That wasn’t happening! Why was she even considering it? The fall must have rattled her brains!

“Owww…ouch…ouch…oh, it stings… oww… oww!”

“Stop it. I know you’re unhurt, demon. I have a bargain to drive with you. Will you hear it?” Kaede looked down her small nose at the dramatic scene before her and waited for the fool to wrap it up.

Totosai knew she wasn’t buying it. He sat up, opened his big green eyes very wide and tried to appear like he was listening, which he very nearly was. The young miko’s long brown hair had begun to sneak out from under the silk tie that bound it and strands of it waved at him in the wind, inviting like the subtle curves of steel… like pretty little knives…

“Eh?”

“I said I will pull out the arrow in your shoulder and put a poultice on it that will keep down pain and infection. In exchange, you will leave this forest and never come back. Understood?”

“Pull out the arrow? Oh, all right.” quoth Totosai and withdrew the arrow like it was less than nothing and smiled up at the very cute miko now bugging her eyes out at him in irritation… no wait…

“Oh! I see now! You only have one eye, pretty though it might be, little miko. Would you like me to sharpen this broadhead for you?” he kindly asked without a hint of guile.

Kami help me! Kaede mused and hated the small niggling thought that found this demon’s wide-eyed almost innocent eyes really, really cute.

“Uh, sure.”