When I Took You In (1)
(Snake Summoner Mayu AU, because I have no control over my brain.)
It is bitterly cold in the mountains.
Ikuchi should not be here. She should be nesting down in a warm cave, belly fat and full, sleeping til the spring.
But the summoner has commanded she undertake this mission. It is a task beneath the summoner’s dignity, but the client is willing to pay good coin for its completion.
Enter the samurai nest. Find the hatchling of the client’s kin. Kill it.
She had been selected for her pale scales, her small size, her venom.
The summoner had remarked these made her perfect for infiltrating the snowy mountains the nest was hidden in with a cruel smile.
Manda is all too willing to swallow even small snakes like her who refuse or question the summoner’s commands.
She does not wish to be eaten yet.
So she slithers through another snowdrift, desperately praying to the Sage that she won’t freeze before she even arrives.
She stopped being able to see a while ago.
Her tongue feels like it will snap clean off if she tastes the icy air too frequently.
Only the faintest sensation of vibrations keeps her from curling in on herself to preserve whatever smidgeon of warmth she has left.
Only that makes her push her frozen muscles to keep going, heading towards rather than away as her instincts feebly hiss.
Where there are vibrations, there are humans.
Where there are humans, there is heat.
She will not freeze if there is heat.
She will not die on this Sage-forsaken mountain. She will not.
She forces herself to crawl forwards.
Ikuchi is so so cold.
She stiffly twines herself up and around something not-alive, slithering cautiously over new terrain with tiny bumps in it.
There is no snow anymore, thank the Sage, but it is still so so cold.
She cannot even taste anything anymore.
Her head bumps into something else. She noses it carefully.
Not-alive. Safe to climb.
She sluggishly heaves herself up the not-alive thing.
There are faint vibrations coming from above her. She needs to get to the vibrations. She’ll die if she can’t get to them.
If she could just heave herself over the edge of this not-alive thing—
Heat.
Lovely, warm, delicious heat.
She twines eagerly around the source, burrowing her head under where it is hottest, letting out a hiss of contentment as the cold burns out of her blood.
Aaaah.
The heat source rises and falls rhythmically, a gentle thud-thud-thud vibration filling her senses.
She shuts her eyes and lets herself drift in the warmth.
She is jostled awake when the heat source lets out a snuffly noise and wriggles slightly before settling.
As the heat source has saved her from dying an ignoble death via cold, she graciously decides not to bite it to stop it from moving.
Instead she retracts her head from the warmest spot to get a good feel for what exactly her new warmth generator is.
Her tongue flickers out over soft, faintly downy skin, over small features that scrunch up at the inspection before smoothing back out in sleep.
It’s a human hatchling. A very young one at that, barely a few days out of the egg at her best guess. Or was it weeks for humans? Or maybe months?
Humans are strange, Ikuchi reflects.
They’re so vulnerable for so long early in life, it’s a miracle that any of them even survive to adulthood.
That’s probably why the adult humans that are running around are so hardy. The summoner is proof enough of that.
Though other adult humans calling for the deaths of hatchlings, like the client, probably don’t help survival rates much.
Wait.
The client.
The mission.
Ikuchi pokes her head over the edge of the hatchling’s resting place and tastes the air.
A bigger human, also asleep.
Stuffy cloth.
Tatami mats.
Sharp metal. Lots and lots of sharp metal.
She retreats back down and noses over the hatchling, searching its cloth coverings until she finds what she was hoping she wouldn’t.
A stylized bird with wings raised, its beak piercing its own breast to draw blood.
The symbol of the client and his kin. The kin whose hatchling she’s supposed to kill.
Well.
Hm.
She settles her head back down in the warmest spot, burrowing under where the hatchling’s head meets its body and tries to think.
It’s...regrettable that the hatchling is what saved her from an icy death. But she has a job to do. A mission to complete.
It’s not like she particularly wants to do it. No, no, if she had it her way, she’d gladly bite the summoner and the client for good measure. Teach them for sending her to die in the cold for worthless bits of round metal.
But she has to complete the mission. Manda will eat her for failing the summoner otherwise.
All it will take is one tiny little bite. The hatchling will only suffer for a few moments.
...Okay, more like several minutes. It’s not like it’s her fault the venom will take longer because the hatchling is so big. She’s not a constrictor!
She flicks her tongue out irritably.
One bite.
Just one bite is all it would take.
Then she could be back in the caves with her brothers and sisters and never have to think about warm hatchlings and their weak, pathetic, pitiful death throes ever again.
The hatchling above her makes a little cooing noise and shifts above her, covering more of her coils in warmth as it squirms.
It even considerately takes some of its weight off of where she was beginning to feel a bit squashed.
She finds it distinctly annoying that this tiny human she’s supposed to kill has done more for her than her own summoner.
At this rate, she’d rather throw her lot in with it instead of continuing to—
Wait.
She pokes her head up again, considering the hatchling.
...Below average chakra reserves. But those should increase as it grows, right?
And she could help guide its growth.
Make it a much better summoner than her current one, or even his student.
Perhaps most importantly, she knows the Great Snake Sage will not let Manda eat her if she is contracted to another summoner.
He had thrown a tantrum when the summoner’s student had turned on him, but the Sage had not let him eat those snakes contracted to the student. She will be safe from his wrath.
In the caves at least. If they meet on the field of battle, she’ll be fair game.
But even one safe haven from Manda is better than none.
The scroll is heavy and difficult to unravel for a snake her size.
Still, she gets it open and props it up against the wall of the hatchling’s resting place.
After ensuring that the right segment is where she needs it to be, she twists around to look at the tiny human,
The hatchling looks back at her.
Its dark grey eyes do not focus on her, moving with the restless blindness of the very young.
“I am Ikuchi of Ryuichi Cave.” She hisses softly. “By your blood on this contract, we will become bonded. Do you accept?”
The hatchling gurgles.
Close enough.
She carefully pricks the hatchling’s finger with her lower fangs.
It wouldn’t do to poison her summoner.
Not yet anyway.
The hatchling whines, wiggling weakly as if that would make the pain stop. Blood beads on the appendage, bright red and hot.
She coils her tail around the tiny, soft wrist, and guides it to drag against the blank space on the parchment.
A rush of chakra.
A sensation not unlike a successful shed, useless dead scales sloughing away for gleaming new ones to take their place.
Ikuchi hisses in pleasure.
Ah. Her summoner is crying.
Squalling really, red-faced and snotty-nosed, thoroughly miserable.
The bleeding on its hand hasn’t stopped. It looks like it might have gotten worse, actually.
Ikuchi racks her brain for what little she knows about human physiology and healing.
Did the bastard summoner say it was saliva or excrement that slowed bleeding?
A shadow falls over the resting place.
She coils back on the chest of her summoner, ready to strike at the intruder. Did the client already send another assassin, despite paying the bastard summoner? Was betrayal planned from the beginning?
The adult human above them has its teeth bared in threat, eyes furious yet frightened.
“Get the hell away from my daughter.” It snarls, drawing a short blade from its midsection.
What?
Oh.
It’s trying to defend its hatchling.
Ikuchi reluctantly slithers off of her summoner’s chest and does her best to look small and unassuming.
The human scoops up her summoner in a flash, one hand cradling its head while the other bares the blade, ready to strike at any moment. It’s an instinct she approves of, even if it is completely pointless in this particular instance.
She curls up in the warm spot her summoner left behind, and announces, “I intend no permanent harm to the hatchling. It is contracted to me, and in my best interests to protect it.”
The human’s face creases in confusion, before its eyes land on the contract scroll.
Color drains from its face.
Huh. Ikuchi hadn’t known humans other than the bastard summoner could look like that. Maybe it was indicative of an emotion the bastard summoner felt all the time.
“Jirou!” The adult human’s shout is nearing a scream, eyes never leaving Ikuchi for a moment. “Jirou, get in here right now!”
