A Forest on Fire (KuramaxOc)

Ch 21: Consequences

(The same day, back at the temple)

It wasn't fair!!! Not even in the slightest!!! They had gotten word of Yumiko's injury days ago, and everyone had taken off without telling him a damned thing!! No one would even tell him why he couldn't visit her! Nooooo, they just said, "sit boy!!" and then took off, leaving him at home alone with the freaking dimwit human!!!

What was worse, is the boy couldn't even cook!! He didn't know how to do laundry, had left marks all over the floor when he tried to help mop, pulled more flowers than actual weeds from the garden, and was about as hopeless as it got when it came to catching fish!! About the only thing the human COULD do, was take out the trash, and take a punch!!! Which was good, because when Ben had seen what the idiot had done to the garden, he had knocked him halfway across the temple grounds!

He couldn't take it anymore! Just this morning the dumbass had managed to burn half of the eggs in the entire temple before finally managing to make enough barely edible ones for breakfast! This guy could even burn water!!! He had to get out, otherwise he was going to kill the brown-eyed fool!

Growling like a dog in a cage, he had run off into the forest, thinking to take his aggression out on Baldoc for a bit, when a familiar scent caught his attention.

"That's... dog scent..." Ben murmured to himself, turning towards the direction the smell was coming from. He took a few steps forward, and sniffed again. There was no doubt that was the scent of another dog-demon, and not just any dog demon...

"TARAN?" Ben barked the name out before he even had a chance to contemplate the danger. That was his brother's scent! A rustling sounded in the brush to his left, and sure enough a huge black dog with the most solid grey eyes Ben had ever seen emerged onto the path.

"Hello, Barrow." His brother's bark was like music to his ears, and Ben found himself shifting without any effort! In his spotted brown and white dog form, Ben, or Barrow as his father had named him, barely came up past Taran's stomach as he leapt forward and slammed himself against the demon's side, a steady stream of wordless whimpers and yelps of excitement and longing flowed from his lungs.

"It's you!!!" Ben finally remembered how to bark words and not just noise, his eyes glistening as he stepped back, tail wagging non-stop. "It's really you!!!"

Taran barked a laugh, his tail wagging as well, then shifted, changing into a tall young man with short, slicked back black hair, those grey eyes as cheery as ever.

"You can drop the act now kiddo, the human didn't follow you, and I doubt old Batsie gives a boar's shit about us." He said in a somewhat playful tone, rubbing the top of the young dog's head as he waited for his little brother to shift back as well. "So what's up? How's everything going?"

Ben nodded, shifting back into his half-human form. "They still have no idea that you guys contact me. I gotta be real careful around Maru, but I learned I can keep him out of my head if I just start singing reeeeally annoying songs over and over whenever he's around. He usually leaves pretty quick. It helps he's been training in spirit world so much lately... get this!!"

He finally stopped for a breath, before continuing in a conspiratorial tone. "He wants to become a pulse hunter like Mako was! Can you believe it? The freak actually wants to hunt down kids!"

Taran couldn't help but laugh as his little brother went on about life in the temple, but after a bit, he held up a hand. "Sorry kiddo, but we don't have a lot of time. Shit hit the fan."

Ben's ears fell, his tail going still as he looked up at his brother. "I was right, wasn't I?" He asked, lowering his eyes to the ground before Taran could answer.