Amongst the long list of issues with an inferior bipedal form, Kurama took issue with some more than others. For example, she hated how slow running was. It was ridiculous how cold you could get without fur to keep you warm. But perhaps the worst of all was the need for CLOTHES.
Everything would be so much simpler if they all just ran around the way nature made them… But no. Whether it was humans or devils or youkai or angels they all cloaked their body in scratchy and uncomfortable nonsense.
Even the dress she was in now, which Naruto’s brother assured her was extremely “high quality” was a thousand times more irritating than her fur. She walked with a scowl, followed by the other members of Naruto’s peerage. The building they had to visit for this Rating Game nonsense felt like an endless chain of hallways with very little identification. Finally, they found a woman who was clearly waiting for them.
This female devil had green hair and eyes. She took in the group.
“Where is your King?” she asked.
“On an errand,” Kurama said. “I’ll take his place.”
“He— He isn’t coming?” the devil asked.
“That’s what I said.” Kurama was already tired of this devil and her nervous shifting. “Just show me who I have to kill.”
When this was over, she was going to eat three people’s worth of fresh fish. Yubelluna had promised to supply that for her while Riser was losing his mind and calling his absent little brother all kinds of names that morning in the apartment.
Kurama liked this Yubelluna woman. She knew that good things happened when Kurama stayed fed.
“We’re supposed to meet our opponent, no?” Kurama tapped her foot. “Show us the way!”
The nervous wreck of a devil looked scared of Kurama and scared of something else at the same time. Ultimately, Kurama won out as the threat that was right in front of her, and she threw the door open.
Kurama went through followed by the others. On the other side of the door was a dark room with a bright light in the middle. The light created a circle and had a table placed within it. Behind the table on the other side of the room were fifteen devils in all kinds of shapes and sizes. One of them had skin that looked like it was made of ice. One was a monkey youkai of some kind. One looked like a pirate.
Honestly, Kurama didn’t care.
She walked over to the table and flopped into the chair, sitting like a ruler. Well, she was the King of Beasts, so that was fitting. She chuckled to herself.
“Is something funny?”
The other seat at the table was occupied by a devil who looked like he was in his mid thirties. Kurama had realized a while ago that it was impossible to judge how old devils were from their faces. Their auras gave a better indication.
This man was weak.
He sneered at her. He had blond hair that bordered on orange, not too unlike a Phenex. His teeth were all sharp, though. They were the teeth of a carnivore.
“Bring out your King,” the devil said.
“He’s not here,” Kurama said, boredom audible in her tone.
“Are you serious!?” The devil across the table turned to the side. “What are you going to do about this?”
In addition to the devil with sharp teeth (Kurama assumed that was Fufu or whatever his name had been; Naruto told it to her once) there was another devil by the table. He was standing slightly to the side in silence. This one was stronger than the one sitting in the chair… But he was still weak.
“What do you think, Geza?” Lord Amon said. “We hold a Rating Game.”
Geza slammed his hands on the table. “I took this match as a favor to you! Now this snotnosed King ran off and hid behind a bunch of women! I get nothing out of beating these bitches for the whole Underworld to watch!”
Kurama had been tapping her fingers on the chair and yawning. Her hand stopped moving. She leaned forward. “Who is beating who?”
Geza looked at her and sighed. He waved his hand in the air. “No one. I’m backing out. This isn’t what I agreed to.”
“You signed the contract,” Lord Amon said. “The match is set.”
“The opponent didn’t even show up!”
“He sent a proxy in his place,” Lord Amon said. “The match will go on.”
Kurama was still staring intently at Geza.
“Tonight, I am going to learn how you taste,” she said.
Geza stared at her. A smirk slowly formed.
“One sight of a real devil and you don’t want to play with your brat of a master, huh?” he said. “Well, you aren’t bad looking—”
“No,” Kurama said. “I’m going to feast on your flesh. I’ve been curious for a while now. How do devils taste? I’m going to chew you thoroughly to answer that question.”
“You don’t have a chance in hell of beating me, reincarnated bitch!” Geza said.
Kurama just looked at him. In the face of a predator’s eyes, Geza quickly got up from the table. Although he tried to play it off, he was uncomfortable.
“Let’s beat these bitches quickly!” he said, storming out of the room. “I have important business to get to tonight!”
When he was gone, Kurama got up. Lord Amon was watching her.
“You’d best not lose. For your sake, and the sake of your master,” he said.
Kurama turned her eyes on him. He, too, was a devil that carried the taste she was so interested in. Lord Amon didn’t run. However, he got tense.
Kurama turned and left the room. “Whatever.”
The others followed her again. None of them seemed at all nervous. Outside the room, the attendant who showed them in was waiting for them.
“This way,” she said.
The attendant brought them to a room of white walls with a couch and what looked like a crystal ball. The glass sphere was on a one legged table that it had all to itself.
“Please take a seat,” the attendant said. “Today’s Rating Game has been designated as a dice match—”
“Get to the point,” Kurama said.
The female devil nodded hastily.
“You’ll roll a dice and get a score of up to ten each round! That determines what pieces you can send, corresponding to the evil piece each devil represents! A King can send themselves at any time! But—” The attendant looked around, another reminder that Naruto wasn’t present. “If a piece survives the round, they can stay in play until the next one, rewarding winning rounds! The match goes on until one side has exhausted all of their pieces!”
“I see,” Kurama said. She went to the crystal ball and put her hand on it.
Immediately, a holographic die appeared and started to spin.
When the spinning slowed down, it flashed a big glowing 9.
Kurama grinned.
LINE BREAK
Naruto and Brynhildr stood just outside the thin strip of forest that housed Hrimfaxi, Skinfaxi, and the hut of Dagr and Nott. The frozen wastes were called Jotunheim, Brynhildr said. The fire on the other side was Muspelheim. Apparently they were both home to giants, although she said it wasn’t surprising that Naruto hadn’t seen any. Most of them lived underground.
Above them, between clouds that were dropping snow and generating fierce winds, they could see a shape zooming around. Following a wide arc, Bafeel rode Jafnask down from the clouds, coming to a thunderous halt in front of Naruto and Brynhildr. It wasn’t the first ride she had taken through the sky.
“This feeling is unmatchable!” Bafeel said. She bent forward, hugging Jafnask around the neck, her eyes glowing. “To take to the skies, riding unrestrained… I never could have dreamed up such an experience. You must try, oh you must, both of you!”
A second later, Bafeel started doing math in her head. She considered how long it took them to get here, how long they had been traveling, how much time she’d spent riding around, and how long the trip back to the Underworld would take. She jerked away from Jafnask’s neck and gasped.
“I’m sorry! I was so excited, I haven’t been thinking! We need to leave right away, or else we’ll miss the Rating Game!”
“It’s too late,” Naruto said, smiling.
Bafeel stared blankly at him. “Too… late…?”
“Yeah, we won’t make it back in time, even if we left right now,” Naruto said. “Don’t worry about it. I never expected to get back on time.”
Bafeel was still looking at him, unresponsive.
“It was always going to be close, coming all this way,” Naruto said. “So I gave up on getting back as soon as we left. I saw your notes, y’know. Jafnask isn’t even close to the only horse you have your eye on.”
“Well—You’re right, but—I didn’t know that you—You really meant to miss your match for me?” Bafeel asked.
“You needed my help,” Naruto said, like it was that simple. “You couldn’t have come this far without me. So don’t hold back! Let’s go get you every single horse you can dream of, until you run out of Evil Pieces to use!”
Bafeel was undergoing warring emotions, between being excited and grateful to Naruto and fear that he would go through hardship for her.
“But what if you lose the match because of this!?” she asked.
“I won’t,” Naruto said.
To do that, Geza Furfur would have to go through Kurama. Even without Griselda, Kuroka, and Shirone backing her up… That wasn’t going to happen.
Brynhildr cleared her throat.
The Valkyrie was moving her foot back and forth, kicking a little bit of show like she was trying to make a tiny snow angel. Despite having the appearance of a woman in her mid twenties, and no doubt being far older than that in truth, she wasn’t looking at them, but there was something hopeful about her posture.
“Does this mean that I might be able to receive that ride you mentioned?” Brynhildr asked shyly.
LINE BREAK
The arena for this Rating Game was very different from the last one. Here, all the fights were taking place in a single humungous space with a dome roof. The roof had the appearance of a night sky, painted an extremely dark purple with little gleaming stars. The floor was black.
That meant the blood stains blended in.
An enormous fox dominated the middle of the room. The room had repaired itself between each round, and she put fresh craters in its smooth surface each time. One by one, Geza’s peerage had been offered to her as prey, their bodies getting crushed until they were forced to retire.
At the end, Geza used a trick Kurama hadn’t been aware of, saving up rolls in order to send all his remaining pieces at once. He himself joined them. With a Bishop, Rook, two Pawns, and his Queen, Geza challenged her.
Only he was left now.
Breathing hard and sweating, Geza stood amongst the damage of the battle, holding his broken left arm against the side of his body. There was blood running down his forehead. He was close to being forcibly tired. A wiser devil would’ve surrendered in such circumstances.
Looking at the giant fox with glowing red eyes, completely unharmed and untouched by the fighting, Geza’s common sense won out. “I—” he started to retire.
Kurama lunged. She’d promised to taste him. She kept her promises.
“AHhhhHHHHhhhHHHHhhhhhh!”
For a moment, Geza was suspended in the air, hanging from her mouth. His broken arm had disappeared behind her teeth. Kurama grinded her jaws and the wound went all the way through. Geza fell toward the ground, trailing blood where his limb used to be. On his way to the ground, he disappeared the way his peerage had before him.
Kurama looked to the right, toward where she knew the recording device was. She shrank down into her human form, garbed in her red dress. Touching her fingers to her lips, she licked them one by one.
“Tastes like chicken,” Kurama announced.
LINE BREAK
Back in the white room where they were waiting to be called upon if needed (although they’d given up on that a while ago) the rest of Naruto’s peerage watched the events that were unfolding on a holographic screen.
Griselda sighed.
“She does know that we were hoping to get more matches, doesn’t she?” said the exorcist.
“This is fine with me, nyah,” Kuroka said. They’d had snacks and drinks delivered by workers, so she and her sister were busy eating. “I never cared about rising in the ranks in the first place. It’s her loss if she scares everyone so badly they don’t want to face us. Now I can nap and eat all day!”
Griselda gave her a severe look. “This is how we were going to make our money. With no money, where are you going to nap, and what are you going to eat?”
Kuroka looked scared, but she came up with a solution.
“How about we keep freeloading off of Riser? He’s got plenty of money and food!”
“No!” Shirone said. “They pet me too much. It’s not right.”
“Dear little sister…” Kuroka put her hand on Shirone’s shoulder. “That means you're cute. You have to learn how to use that on men so that you don’t have to do any work in life. Let Big Sis show you the way.”
“No!” Shirone insisted, slapping her hand away. “I don’t wanna get pet!”
There was a glow that when it faded, revealed Kurama back in the room. She smelled faintly of blood—or strongly of it to the two nekoshou’s noses.
“What are you idiots doing?” Kurama asked. “And after making me do all the work. Honestly, you’re all quite useless, aren’t you.”
Griselda shared a look with the nekoshou sisters. She reached for Arondight, mist started to swirl around Kuroka’s hands, Shirone’s hands started glowing, and the female attendant ran out of the room at top speed.