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veiledfox · 3 years ago

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Kitsune’s Blood Art Awakens

She had only intended to enter the Realm of the Slayer Corps for a brief visit to a lake she had found a short distance from a town. Some relaxation as her intent, with the waters back home being a little too chilled for her preferences to really settle in and take a breather. Yet, as she stepped through, she could hear the chirp of her Crow nearby. The beat of it’s wings getting her ears to twitch atop her head as they set afire with blue flame briefly to disappear from sight with her tails. Raising a hand in the same moment to provide a post for Bonsai, the avian with it’s jade bead harness coming to land on her fingers and relay it’s message to her.

Hashira Tengen Uzui was stationed nearby with some fellow Slayers, though they were occupied with investigations into disappearances and suspected Demon involvement. Potential of higher rank Demon presence, requiring their utmost focus. However, there had been reports of disappearances and brutal deaths from the other side of town from the Entertainment District where the others were focused. Messy work, eye witnesses of small, yet clear, glimpses of the Demon. Her target of her assignment.

Thankfully she had brought her equipment just to be safe on the off chance she might’ve crossed a Demon heading to the lake that was her original aim. Though it would just take a moment for her to get it all on and settled around herself comfortably to allow her to act. A moment she doesn’t delay on, and wastes no more time than needed to get dressed and set her Nichirin Blade on her hip opposite from the Tanto Dagger she normally carries.

With a direction given by Bonsai, and visually indicated as it flies off to her target, she sets off immediately. Dashing through the forestry and out past some outskirt buildings before seeing the lights of the night-life city in the distance. It takes her some time to actually reach it, but there were no interruptions from Demons or otherwise. Though, the closer she got, the more she could hear the fighting had already started.

Nichirin blades clanging against something to either deflect or attempt to cut through. Shouting from some familiar voices, responses from some unfamiliar. Likely the Demon Tengen had gone to the Entertainment District with Tanjiro’s group to hunt. Yet she could also hear some muffled combat as well, as if the sound was being dampened from within a building or something of the sort. It wasn’t for her to intervene in, however, so she kept on her path. Toward the city, and away from the Entertainment District.

Only, the sudden sound of a high pitched whine through the air and a subsequent loud crash would get the Kitsune to stop atop a roof top and look toward the fighting. She could see clouds of dust rising high into the night sky, and smell blood. Human blood. A lot of it... Immediately she wanted to rush over to see the situation and help, but before she could decide whether to do so or not she could hear a shriek from another Human, the opposite way from the Entertainment district. One from her destination.

It only took Bonsai cawing as it swoops down and circles her before heading to the destination for her to start moving again. Focusing her breathing to aid her movement as she leaps rooftop to rooftop. Finding herself coming to what appeared to be an inn of sorts. A rather extravagant looking one, almost as if it should be in the Entertainment District, yet the windows were all dark. Where the Entertainment District apparently thrived at night, this place was like any other, which slumbered once the sun set. Save for any Demons within, of course.

Getting onto the building, she takes a moment to try and listen, to smell for the Demon. She could tell it was present, and she could get a vague idea of where it was, which she began progressing toward. A balcony on the northern side of the building, but as she peered over she could see multiple, as with the other sides of the building. Five of them on the highest level, and it looked like four more on the level below. A crash would direct her to the upper level, and she quickly drops to the center balcony of the five. Hearing the scuffle of whatever was happening within, smelling fresh blood, and the scent of the Demon was stronger now.

It took the sound of what seemed to be a vase shattering to clear up the direction Kyuushi had to go. Jumping onto the railing of the balcony and leaping across to the farthest one on the western side. Drawing her Nichirin and sliding the door open, but before she could notice any Demon or even enter she feels a sudden rush of wind pass her, and hears something land on the roof across the street from her. Yet a split second later she feels her right arm begin to sting and throb in pain as well, looking to her shoulder first to see the cause and finding the skin red and bleeding. Whatever had just passed her having gotten too close on it’s way by, and scraping the skin away.

Thankfully such wound wouldn’t last too long, she could already feel the usual tingle of her healing Magicks kicking in to repair the skin and close the small wounds as she turned around. Spotting a humanoid figure on the roof across from her, the tiles under their feet crushed and dented down from the impact of their landing with such speed. Though now that she was looking at the Demon that was her mark, she could see it’s arms were... missing?

It’s legs were unusually thick, with some form of chitinous armor covering them below the knees. When they turned to look back at her, eyes wide and crazed, they contained numerous irises within both of them. The main, normally sized irises like those of herself and humans, but with countless smaller ones of varying size surrounding them. It’s mouth with mandibles at it’s corners, forehead with antennae sprouting out the sides. Face covered with blood, and what looked to be the last of a hand still in their mouth being chewed on a few seconds more before they consumed the last of it.

“I-...chch-I shhhouldn’t have been t-targeted...?” She could hear it speak, though it seemed more to itself than to her, a wheeze to their voice and a clicking of a kind escaping. Head twitching a little and the mandibles tapping together. “D-Daaa-Daki’s in thhh-chchch-the entertainment dissstrict. Up-p-p-per sss-ch-six, ssshould’ve haaad the Slayersss at-t-ttention...”

Almost like his words were a trigger, another loud sound from towards the Entertainment District itself. Then... screaming? Though she was sure she was the only one to hear it between herself and the Demon, given her greatly heightened senses from her body adapting to so many Realms. Yet the voice... it sounded familiar, the Kamado sister? It sounded different though, even if only slightly. Though she wouldn’t be allowed to keep trying to make sense of what was happening, seeing her Demon shift itself on the roof as it wheezed again.

“Daaaki’s in t-t-t-chchchch-trouble, Hhhashira ssstench...wwwant to please MMMuzan-sssama... must l-li-chch-live... run.” Without much of any warning, the Demon was suddenly gone from immediate sight, a burst of noise and the tiles of the roof being tossed to the right. Though she could still smell it, turning her head she catches sight of the Demon a few buildings away now, and launching themselves to another one even farther.

Kyuushi curses under her breath, knowing she won’t be able to catch up if she restricts herself to her human traits and use of this Realm’s breathing techniques. The later she would still employ, as it was something that helped her greatly with her physical capabilities even outside of this Realm. Though, with a brief flash of blue flames surrounding the top of her head and her lower back, her inhuman features are set free. Six tails behind, two furred ears atop her head, the blue Oni horns. Climbing onto the railing, she inhales, beginning the breathing patterns required, and entering total concentration.

Feeling her muscles almost vibrating with energy, she launches herself across to the building the Demon first went to, and immediately turns to chase it down after landing. Another long, far reaching jump to cross a few buildings, landing on the same as the Demon had before her, before launching herself again to follow it’s path immediately. In the distance seeing the leaping form of her target getting further from the Entertainment district, though thankfully not farther from herself. No, instead she could see she was closing the distance already.

For all the speed and power in the Demon’s legs, it seemed to her they needed a second or two to really ready for big movements like what it was utilizing to try and flee from her. Though she wasn’t about to let it get away, nor kill another Human. Even with her speed compared to the Demon in this moment, however, she knew she’d still take a bit to actually catch up to it leaping roof to roof like this. It’d be faster if she just ran it... mentally cursing herself as she decided to utilize more of her Magicks.

Leaping again, she would catch herself with the unseen Magick platforms she could conjure under her feet, breaking into a sprint immediately and drawing her blade as she did. Having set herself just inches above the buildings they were crossing, she was able to keep level with the majority of the Demon’s path as the distance began to close even faster. Keeping her Nichirin low to her right side, she held firm to it’s grip with the one hand while her other took to her Tanto and tightened around it.

Closer and closer to the Demon, closing the gap between herself and it, until suddenly it turned it’s head and looked straight at her mid jump. Upon landing on the next roof, it swiveled and launched straight at her instead. The sudden offensive action prompting Kyuushi to bring up her Nichirin blade and draw her Tanto, bringing the flats of both of them together in front of herself just in time to catch the pair of chitin coated feet that were thrust at her. Though the impact threw her off her platforms, sending her flying back and down with the force of the Demon impacting against her to the street below and through the dirt for a good few meters with him on top of her.

It got down low over her while they slid, almost squatting on her Nichirin. All so it could look straight into her eyes with it’s own, before looking up to the inhuman features on her head. Coming to a stop, she would act quickly, making two tails rise to stab at the Demon, but she catches it’s antennae twitching just a split second before it jumps off and away from her along the street. With it off, she rolls herself backward onto her feet and readies her blades, Nichirin held out ahead of herself and Tanto at an angle behind.

“Nnnot human-chchchchch-why are you ssslayer?” It poses, head cocked aside as it crouches down, legs bulging as if readying to leap at her again like before. “Whhhy hunt y-your own k-k-chch-kind?”

“I’m no Demon.” Is the only response the Kitsune gives, taking a breath and sprinting forward at her opponent. It leaps, again towards her, spinning in the air as it does before a leg is extended out while they’re still rotating mere seconds before impact between them. Kyuushi bringing her Nichirin up and angling it along her arm to catch and stop the leg with a clang of the chitin against the metal. The Demon no longer spinning, she can see it’s other leg bent a split second before it releases almost like a bullet to try and strike her.

Thankfully through a combination of a twist to the Demon’s body due to the leg still against her sword, and a swift deflection with her dagger, she’s able to direct the kick just beside her instead. Hearing a loud thump of some kind as the leg reaches it’s full extension, and hearing dirt kick up behind and to her side. Already she could have told someone that the Demon’s legs were strong with just their brief chase and how they looked, but strong enough to cause a shockwave was something she didn’t quite expect.

Another thing she didn’t was the foot readjusting, catching her side as it swung itself around behind her and kicked off her back with the other leg. The action forcing her to a knee briefly, but she soon rises again and turns to face the Demon. Only to find it sprinting at her, before a small leap and spin to kick at her again, a roundhouse, which she counters by reversing the grip of her Tanto to stop it’s momentum. It’s body lowering briefly after before managing a backflip on it’s remaining leg, though she leans far enough back to avoid it hitting her.

Not even a second given between the Demon landing, and the next attack launched her way. A forward kick this time, the same strength as earlier. Quickly shifting aside, and bringing her tails to act, she catches the limb with a tail to redirect the kick aside and grip onto the Demon. Breathing as she raises her blades into reverse grips, and bringing them down with the blades partially crossed. Embedding them into the flesh above the armored knee, before forcing them apart to sever the leg.

Beast Breathing: Second Form, Shred

Tossing the severed chitin covered leg backward, she immediately takes another breath as the Demon stumbles backward. Her gaze drawn to it’s neck, she sees her opportunity to behead it. Lunging for the Demon, she thrusts her left arm with her Tanto forward to cut into the left side of the Demon’s throat, while swinging her Nichirin towards the right side ready to make the cut. Yet she feels both her arms stopped abruptly, grabbed even, by something thin and almost boney feeling. Rough, and at a point even sharp.

It only took her a second before she was looking to the reason, finding buggy limbs wrapped around her arms. She could feel them tightening around her arms, and immediately retracted them before leaping backward. Keeping low as she lands, her blue eyes rise to her opponent, finding they had grown two arms in the form of the odd, insect limbs. Their severed leg beginning to bubble for a moment, before it’s lower half regrows in a near instant. Right before, from it’s sides below the top most arms, two more of the arm-like limbs grow.

Without more than a second or two passing, her opponent was crouching, launching itself at her with the limbs outstretched. The upper two thrust forward at her first, she stops them with an upward swing from her Nichirin, directing them up and away from herself. The lower two going for her abdomen, two of her tails come around to grip and stop them. Though it’s limbs would adjust, making to grab at her arms and tails instead of striking her. A strong leg raised and tensed, before being launched forward at her stomach.

Immediately her four remaining tails come around in front of herself before the chitin coated foot could impact her, cushioning the hit a little, though enough to not let it break into her torso. Still, she could feel pain from it, an eye closing and a cough escaping her as her air is briefly forced from her lungs. Thinking quickly, she utilizes her tails that acted as cushion against the attack to grip the leg against her gut. Using that grip, and those on the Demon’s other two arms, to twist the Demon and throw it to the ground.

They use the momentum from her throw to roll back to their feet, bursting towards her immediately again after. It’s approach this time is too fast for her to try and block or deflect it, she has to move at the same time as she strikes, and she could hardly think as she launched herself backward. A movement similar to a backflip, but she kicks off to send herself farther back, soon with the Demon coming to match her just above. It’s arms already rearing to strike at her, but she brings her blades around herself.

Reverse grip on her Nichirin blade aimed out from her body in front of herself. Tanto behind grip and angle mirroring the longer blade in front of herself. With a breath, she spins herself to slice repeatedly at the Demon. Deflecting it’s arms as they lunge to her, cutting it’s torso, shoulders, and the arms deflected. Her opponent’s speed carrying them farther as her own begins to slow and drop, she can see and feel her blades cut at it’s legs next. Though it seems to just clatter against the chitin over the lower halves, but it kept them from kicking at her.

Beast Breathing: Fifth Form, Coiling Strike

Twisting her body as she begins to drop more and more, she catches herself in a backward roll. Quickly rising to her feet after, and turning to look to the Demon as they hit the ground and tumble some. While they were still down, she turns on her heel and rushes the Demon. Forwarding her grips proper, she leaps over it’s form and slices at both the arms that were most available at the time. Seeming to cut through them for the most part, landing on the opposite side. Twisting herself to jump for them again, seeing the first two arms snapping and flinging off. She cuts at the other two this time, severing them instantly unlike before. Landing again, and twisting to leap like before, though this time aiming to catch their legs. Cutting partially through the front of one with her Tanto, while catching the back of the other with her Nichirin, likely severing tendons.

Beast Breathing: Fourth Form, Pounce

Turning to the Demon again after landing, she could see it already trying to get up again. The arms bubbling like the leg before, One regrowing, it sets the limb to the ground to push itself up onto it’s good knee. The leg she severed tendons for laid out behind it, for the moment still useless. A moment she had to try and utilize. Bursting toward them as she takes a breath, bringing Nichirin up and across horizontally in front of her, Tanto rested atop the other blade aimed forward, though her grip had been reversed. Ready to attempt to behead her opponent again like before,

Yet as she strikes with her Tanto in a thrust to their throat, in just a split second she can see chitin coat the neck and deflect her blade. Watching it spread from there to coat the rest of it’s body in seconds, including the newly grown insect arms. It’s leg she had rendered briefly useless being brought forward and foot to the ground so the Demon could lunge at her. Jumping up and over to try and avoid the strike, though she can feel one of the arms catch a leg and cut into it.

Thankfully she’s able to catch herself on the other end fine, able to feel the cut as a shallow one on the outer side of her left leg. Already tingling with the gentle warmth of Kitsune Healing Magicks, she wouldn’t need to worry about it for long. What would require her attention more was the Demon, already hearing it growl as it kicks off the ground. Sending itself her way, it was spinning much like she had a moment ago, but unlike her it was to extend out a leg and kick down at where she was. Kyuushi managing to roll herself out of the way just before the foot could hit her, she springs up to her feet again.

Fanning her tails behind herself, she lunges forward to strike again. She had to be able to get through it’s chitin armor somehow, and she would find it. Aiming a thrust of her Nichirin to one of the joints of the insect arms expecting a weak point. Instead of simply being deflected, she would find purchase, but it was shallow. Only serving to render her blade stuck in the Demon’s flesh, and when she jumps to kick both her feet to it’s chest in hopes of pushing herself free, it grabs onto both her legs.

Shifting it’s weight, she feels the Demon push her toward the ground, impacting against the dirt with a dull thud. The force of her arm hitting the ground as she was more or less thrown down did push the blade further into their arm, but the Demon seemed indifferent to the deeper wound. Instead bringing it’s arms up and readied to strike at her, two of which she’s able to collect with her Tanto and her free arm to redirect them into the dirt to her side, though the lower two were still headed for her torso.

A bit of squirming would free her tails from beneath her, allowing two to circle around and up to try and grab the arms to stop them. Though they would be just a split second too late, the Kitsune hissing in pain feeling the first couple inches of both the pointed, sharp insectoid limbs pierce her skin. From what she could feel, one seemed to strike a rib, stopped by the bone while the other just narrowly missed it, but it didn’t feel as if it struck anything vital. Though in the brief instant after, while she was still recovering from the pain, she heard a cracking noise of some sort. Right before the Demon rose above her, stepping over and raising a bulging leg to bring it down on the now limp limbs.

She could tell, even without feeling it yet, that this was a strike with all their might behind it. A stomp down that, if she let it land, would mean being impaled by the arms that had pierced her at least. Chest being crushed under the power behind the Demon’s motions at worst. She has to act fast, as the foot starts to come down on her, pulling the limbs free and tossing them aside with her tails, even if the act left her with one less blade. Her other four coming up to attempt to provide cushion against the strike again, though she’s well aware it won’t be as effective with the higher target.

As the foot comes down, then, she instead drops her Tanto to grab onto the ankle of the Demon just before it could contact with her, dulling the impact between the grasp and her tails cushioning it. Though she would still feel the shockwave that followed punch against her torso, making her lurch and begin coughing violently, feeling what must have been the struck rib cracking, if not outright breaking. An injury she knew her Magicks could handle, though it would take much longer than the cut and scrape she had suffered so far.

The Demon uses it’s leg strength to tear it’s foot from her grip, raising it to strike down at her again. She was still coughing, even in this moment, doing her best to recover as quickly as she could. Even employing a style of breathing she had learned a few visits prior in this Realm. Recovery Breathing, a pattern meant to motivate the body’s natural regenerative properties to recover from discomfort, injuries, or hinderances. Though she finds herself needing to shift from this method to one to enhance her physical strength without a second’s notice between. Taking in another breath as best as she could as the Demon brought it’s leg down once more.

Again, she manages to grab the ankle and dampen the impact, but not as much this time as she had before. Feeling it strike her abdomen proper, even with less of it’s strength making it through her tails and her grasp. She could feel the tips of her tails sting from the impact, which they quickly squirm away to get out from under the foot. As for her abdomen, there was pain throughout everything between her chest and her stomach. Having heard another crack of some kind with either the hit itself, or the shockwave that followed straight into her body.

Yet another coughing fit as she did her best to hold onto the Demon’s leg this time, even going as far as to let her black claws take form on her fingertips. Curling her fingers in hopes of digging them into the Chitin to find purchase to some degree or another. A vain attempt, she would soon find, as it wrests it’s leg from her once more and readies it’s full strength behind another stomp. Letting it loose before even a second could pass this time, the speed behind it making the leg blur even just slightly, even to her eyes.

In the brief instance, she was confused why she was having difficulty tracking the movements this Demon made now. Maybe it was the odd bit of light headedness she was feeling all of a sudden? She only took two more serious wounds, but even they were rather shallow compared to what she’d suffered in the past to feel this way. She could tell just from how her torso felt that she thankfully wasn’t bleeding much, if at all either. Whether it was due to Recovery Breathing or her natural Magicks closing up the open veins so she would lose as little blood as possible, she wasn’t sure.

Either way, however, her wounds were about to get much worse, and she was bracing herself for the impact of the Demon’s foot the best she could. Yet... it never came? Not only that, but she could feel something shifting, both on top of and within her abdomen. A part of her expected the worst, adjusting her head to try and see what was happening, yet... the chitin coated foot didn’t contact with her. No, it was still in the air above her, close to her abdomen, yes, but it was... held by something.

A clawed hand, made of blood from the wet, crimson look it had. Connected to an arm which sprouted from her abdomen, right around where the still healing wounds were. The hand curling it’s fingers, and tightening it’s grip which allows it’s claws to pierce through the chitin armor. Breaking and cracking the exoskeleton around the puncture points, and making the Demon’s own blood spill from the open cracks. Another grasp that her opponent quickly pulls their foot away from, even if it tore more of the chitin plating off from their ankle, and they back away from Kyuushi.

Freed now, the hand adjusts. Twisting and extending the arm out from Kyuushi more, setting on her hip for support as another hand takes shape from the same origin point. The arm for this one reaching out and to the side for the second hand to set onto the dirt beside her. What looked to be a pair of ears being next, two tall tapered shapes which are followed by a head, the head of a Fox to be more exact.

Long snout with the sides of the mouth pulling back as it snarls while looking toward the Demon. A neck following, though it has some sort of bulbous formation around it’s lower portion before, and around, what must have been the shoulders that emerged next. Followed by a long torso after. Though what takes form next surprises Kyuushi for a second, as she watches a tail curl up and out from the origin point that this... thing was forming from. One, followed by another, and another, and another as they keep rising out from her. Six in total, by the time it’s first leg pulls free.

The leg was akin to that of a Feral’s hind leg. Thicker, rounded thigh, the backward knee, ending with a long and angled foot into a paw at it’s end with claws similar to those of it’s hands. Setting it to the dirt on the same side as it’s first hand, before the second leg joins the first, and the newly formed beast keeps low in an almost protective pose over her. Though she was able to manage shifting herself back and to the side a bit to try and get a better look at this large, crimson creature, just in time to see the liquid-like form become more defined. Changing to look more natural, like an actual living thing, though it’s colors stayed various shades of red from bright crimson to dark congealed blacks.

This... thing, something that came from her body, even with the limited angle she was getting right now it was BIG. Though such a thought would be an understatement a moment later, as she watches it creep a little closer to the Demon that was her opponent, and rise onto it’s legs to stand upright. Shoulders shifting back, clawed hands tensing at the end of it’s arms, feet shifting atop the dirt, and ears folding back. The odd growth around the base of the neck now a definite collar of sorts of thicker fur, which as the Kitsune stumbles a bit to try and get to her feet, she notices it drapes down over a rounded chest.

Finally lifting her gaze to the head, she sees piercing yellow eyes trained on the Demon. Pupils thinning to slits as it’s six long, large tails fan out behind it. The beast, which with a proper look now looked akin to an anthromorphic stage Kitsune mid transformation between Feral and Human, snarling again. A loud, rumbling growl as it takes an angry step forward again, which makes the Demon take a step back as it regrows it’s arms.

“I̧͢N҉̡S̀͜E҉̧C̶͝T̡͟”

A rougher, deeper, yet noticeably feminine voice. Yet... it didn’t sound like it was spoken aloud, but only within her mind. A direct communication with her, which is followed by more growling. The same as the beast’s, both internally and externally now, It made her ears twitch with curiosity at what the cause was, both for the creature and for the voice. Though as she got to look at this thing, her mind called back to a moment years prior. In Fuyuki City of the Realm of Chaldea. The glimpse of a monstrous anthromorphic Kitsune defending her, before possessing her.

“B-Blood Demon Art... y-y-chch-you say you’re n-not a Demon, but you c-c-ch-can evoke Blood Demon Art.” The Demon speaks, answering one of her questions unintentionally. A Blood Demon Art. Though now that she knew what was happening, she still wasn’t aware of the how or why. The only thing she could deduce was it having to do with a Demon’s blood to one degree or another. A fair guess being that the chitin armor the Demon encased themself in is one such art.

Either way, in the moment she was just glad that it seemed to leave them at a stalemate for a moment. Allowed her time to recover her breath, get her balance back and stable. Taking a good, deep breath once she was back to how she was prior to the odd light-headedness. Her tail picking up her Tanto from the ground, so that she could bring it back to her left hand as she walked across to the discarded arm where her Nichirin was still embedded within.

Before she could even move to collect it, she hears the same snarling from the crimson beast, turning to see it lowering, the Demon across from it doing similar. Both of them leaping for each other at the same instant. She couldn’t quite make out the initial movements either one made at first, but the first clash was clear. A leg, swung wide aimed for the anthromorphic Kitsune’s head. It’s arm opposite the leg, however, brought around to stop and grab the leg. Using the grip to swing the Demon ‘round, and bring it down with a heavy impact against the ground.

She could see some of the chitin armor shattering on impact, it’s arms moving to stab at the one of the beast holding it’s leg. They pierce the limb, but the crimson creature doesn’t seem to be bothered by it whatsoever. Even as the Demon twisted to kick at the arm with it’s other leg, severing it with a splatter of crimson against the beast’s body. Only for the liquified piece of it’s body to absorb into it and the creature shifts to reconnect their arm without issue. Letting go of the leg to slam it’s clawed hand down on the chest as it climbed over top.

The other arm rises, readying to strike down with it’s horrid claws at the Demon beneath, but before it could the four insect limbs shoot up to the head. Fox visage being pierced, broken, and after a moment popping like a bubble as the body itself falls limp over the Demon. She can see her target begin to shift, trying it’s best to shove the crimson figure off from it. Though it seemed the thing was a fair bit heavy, as it took some effort, even with how powerful their legs were.

Kyuushi quickly grabs at her blade from the ground, lifting it but keeping the limb it’s end was embedded within on the ground. Raising a foot to bring it down with all her strength on one half of the discarded arm to free her blade. Hearing the limb snap, being broken in half and letting her Nichirin free. Turning her attention back to the Demon, finding it managing to shuffle back to it’s feet, turning it’s gaze to her.

Something that she notes in the brief moment of a stare-down between them, the Kitsune notices that the chitinous armor across it’s body is still broken and fragmented. The ankle of the leg that the beast had gripped it by to toss it to the ground still a bit crushed. Though it had healed it had regenerated it’s lost leg earlier with a fair bit of ease after their first exchange. Took a brief moment between the severing and the regrowth, but the same amount of time had to have passed between it being thrown to the ground and the Demon now facing her again.

It made her wonder, but it also gave her a thought. Maybe it would be an opportunity. A chance to cut at the Demon again, with it’s chitin compromised.

Their staring lasted a few seconds longer, before there was movement from both of them. Kyuushi bringing her other hand to the grip of her Nichirin as she bursts toward the Demon and takes a breath. Seeing it ready it’s arms as they grow closer and closer, but she comes to an abrupt stop to leap up and over as the Demon passes under. Flipping herself as she swings at the limbs on one side, then the other, Slicing through the thankfully broken enough segments of chitin to sever two of them, though only partially cutting into the third and missing the fourth.

Turning to face her opponent again, she sees them match her movements, a leg rising to swing for her, which she matches by bringing her nichirin across to deflect it. Just for the limb to be brought in reverse to try and hit her again, being caught once more by her blade and kept from impacting. Her foe using the momentum this time and adding more on their own to spin around and bring the leg at her again, with more force now than before.

In their doing so, it seemed the Demon got closer to Kyuushi, clear to her that she wouldn’t be able to deflect it with how much it now passed her. Though she couldn’t give the Demon ground to act either, not now with the possible opening the crimson beast had provided. Instead bringing her blade’s flat along her arm and bracing herself to take the hit. Though the instant of impact which sends her flying into the wall of the building to her side is joined by a mass explosion from the other end of town.

Even as she’s trying to recover from hitting the wood as hard as she did, a blue eye opened and looked across the roof tops to the distance. Smoke starting to rise high into the sky, and she could smell blood even from here. Human and Demon both. Something was happening with the other Slayers and their two targets, but she wasn’t able to tell what from here with the limited information from her senses. Especially not with a tingle that gets sent down her spine from her horns, drawing her focus back to her own fight in time to see the Demon launching off the wall of the building opposite her.

A chitin armored foot headed straight for her, all Kyuushi could do in the moment was push herself from the indent in the wood so she could barely manage to turn and bring her tails around herself. Using them, and the flats of her blades, to receive the attack and dampen how bad it’s impact would be on her body overall as much as possible. Even though it sent both her, and the Demon themself, through the wall and into the building through two more. Crashing into the fourth wall, where her opponent leapt off and regrew it’s limbs.

The same split second, they both hear a scream of a Woman and an angered shout of a Man. A pause so short and fleeting in their fight as both look aside, finding what looked to be a Husband and Wife creeping into the corner away from the two while the earlier shouted obscenities and annoyance at them. Immediately, the Kitsune knew the Demon would likely attempt to use one of them to hinder her movements.

After quickly acting to hide her horns, tails, and discolored skin with a brief flash of blue flames across her body, she leapt to action. Kicking off the wall behind her and cracking it with the force she used to launch into the Demon and force them back out into the street. Wincing feeling it’s four blade-like insectoid limbs pierce into her sides as they flew. Only to hear more shouts of surprise and fear as they hit the dirt outside, and she adjusts to try and pin the Demon’s legs down for the moment.

Just a quick glance about making it clear to her that the town was being roused by the explosions a moment prior, which meant this fight got a lot more difficult as long as the civilians were near. Taking a breath the best she could, even as her opponent retracted two of it’s arms to stab them into her sides again at different points than before, Kyuushi shouts out at the top of her lungs “CLEAR THE AREA, AVOID THE ENTERTAINMENT DISTRICT!”

Keeping her words short and precise, and thankfully it seemed to be enough. Seeing the people around them begin to clear the space and more in the buildings rushing out and away. A distraction that left her to be stabbed, again, as the other two limbs were pulled free and thrust into her flesh again. Bringing her to cough violently, blood splattering out onto the Demon below her and the lightheaded sensation from before returning again.

Her opponent suddenly shifting, pulling their legs free from under her own which throws off her balance and leaves her at their mercy. Being swiftly tossed aside from over them, crashing to the dirt and rolling some before she was stopped by the still present crimson beast corpse. The contact with which seeming to make the unease in her head even worse, if only briefly, leaving her disoriented as she sets a hand to it’s chest to try and get up again.

Before she could make any significant progress though, she feels that same tingle as before, and suddenly finds herself being pushed over onto her back. Looking above herself, to see the beast was full once more, and this time had the leg of the Demon lodged in it’s mouth from the knee and down. A loud, angered growl coming from the anthromorphic Kitsune, and it’s jaws trembling as it puts all it’s strength into biting through the chitinous leg and severing it entirely.

The Demon falling back and into the dirt with it’s limb removed again, Kyuushi could see a hint of fear in it’s features. Desperation alongside it. Their actions would be more bold now, she was sure of it, and in the condition she was she’d need to make the most of it that she possibly could. Especially as she saw the beast, her beast, leap over and to their foe to keep up it’s assault. Her wounds were numerous now, and each rather deep compared to the first two, but she could feel her Magicks working to close what they could already.

A breath, deep, filling, entering into Recovery Breathing for a few seconds before she rolls over and works to her feet again. Grabbing her Tanto and Nichirin while focusing to stop whatever bleeding she could with the Slayer Corps methods, and promptly switching to her Beast Breathing after. Muscles throbbing with both pain and energy as it takes hold, and she turns to rush into the fray with her beast. Their target focused more on attempting retreat right now, repeatedly leaping backward and away from them along the dirt road they were on.

Yet for all their efforts, the Kitsune and her counterpart were closing, and they were closing fast. Even more-so on the beast’s end, as it lowered to all fours, using it’s full body in it’s pursuit now and catching up to the Demon in mere seconds afterward. Lunging at them with it’s arms stretching out, claws branded and ready to either grab at them or shred through the weakened chitin armor. Finding it’s hands and parts of it’s body suddenly bursting in splatters of crimson as the Demon somehow causes the chitin across their body to explode off of it’s form in a countless number of razor sharp fragments.

Kyuushi herself only finds a split second to react as she sees the form of the anthromorphic Kitsune become disfigured to raise her arms to protect her face. Another set of explosions in the distance at the same moment she feels many shards of her opponents armor hitting her flesh. A handful embedded into both arms, a dozen or so across her legs, even more in her torso. Again coughing blood from the wound and slowed in her approach briefly, but she powers through a mere second later.

Leaping, she uses her counterpart as a springboard of sorts, onto it’s back first before up and over the Demon who comes to a stop after one more retreating jump. A fleshy body, the severed leg bubbling to regrow in that instant as she starts to come down over them. Right as they scratch across their own chest with their insectoid arms to draw their own blood, she breathes and readies her blades to strike.

The crimson across the Demon’s chest shifts in the same instance, covering their form and darkening. Immediately allowing Kyuushi to register it was trying to form a new layer of protective chitin. Something she couldn’t allow to happen, and she quickly improvises a change to her planned attack. Tossing her Tanto with a spin, the strength behind sending it to and embedding the blade in the side of the Demon’s throat. Bringing her now free hand to support her main grip on her Nichirin as she readies it to swing at the opposite side, seeing the darkening blood rising higher and higher toward her target every millisecond that passed.

What surprised both her and the Demon, however, was the beast suddenly rising to bite at the throat of the Demon where Kyuushi was aiming before the chitin could reach. Eyes glancing up to the Kitsune as if giving a signal of sorts, one which she understands instantly. Swinging her Nichirin with all her strength as she gets close enough, through the head of the crimson beast with ease, and into the neck of her target. Her shout of effort being drained out with yet more booming sounds from the Entertainment district, though her blade cut true.

Another surprise still when she catches a clawed red hand rising to grab the handle of her Tanto, and drive the smaller blade towards that of her Nichirin. The Kitsunes working together to sever the head from the Demon’s shoulders, before all three collapsed into a pile on the ground. Target’s body beginning to burn away and flake into nothing, the anthromorphic Kitsune’s starting to evaporate into red mists and return to Kyuushi through her wounds, and the Slayer herself gasping and wheezing in pain feeling the shards of chitin dig further into her body due to gravity bringing her down on them all.

Beast Breathing: First Form, Sever. -Improvised-

Kyuushi gasps again as the two bodies beneath her give way, causing her to fall a few inches further onto the ground proper. Her weapons beneath her, she can feel the handle of one digging into an open wound in her abdomen, and works on getting up to her knees as bare minimum as soon as she could. Body growing fatigued as she switches back to the patterns of Recovery Breathing, and focuses her energy to try and increase her healing Magicks what little she could. Using the Nichirin to prop herself up, and sheathing her Tanto, as she glances out toward the Entertainment District again.

Smoke, the heavy smell of blood and fire, ribbons of some kind flying about within the air. Whatever was happening, she knew it wasn’t good, but also that she couldn’t help even if she wanted to. Not in this condition, and not when things were already seeming to be so deep in on their end. Having to remind herself of such when she sees the ribbons suddenly stop... only for there to be a flurry of more explosions which lead to an equally abrupt silence, and a large burst of some kind. Seeing pieces of the buildings in the surrounding area sent flying into the sky, many of which on fire, and the stench of human blood hitting heavy against her nose.

It angers her, knowing she can’t be there to assist, but as silence falls again beyond the sound of the flames in the distance Kyuushi rises a little weakly to her feet. Continuing to use her Nichirin for balance as she steps aside, vanishing from the Realm in an instant with a soft gust of air. Set along the path to return to her home, where she would call out to the Hellhound which resided with her to fetch the inhuman medic whom had aided her countless times before. Slowly finding her way to her home on her own, removing what she could, and easing herself onto the floor in the entryway to wait.

#The Kitsune {Kyuushi}#Veiled Legends {Story}#Truths Among Myths {Headcanons}#realm-specific aspects

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thedeadshotnetwork · 8 years ago

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Cory Booker Loves Donald Trump One warm Saturday afternoon last month in a ballroom in the convention center in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, a local business leader introduced Cory Booker as a man “who may be our next president.” Booker, the tall, solidly built former mayor of Newark, the current junior senator from New Jersey and somebody people have been pointing to as a potential occupant of the Oval Office for going on half his life by now, rose from the dais, enveloped the space behind the lectern and proceeded to unleash an hourlong stem-winder. The attendees at the state NAACP convention were a friendly, expectant audience, and Booker is good at this part of being a politician—voluble and excitable but compelling to the point of kinetic, gesturing with his hands, widening his eyes, planting and replanting his well-worn loafers and intermittently using a white handkerchief to wick the sweat from the top of his shiny bald head. The people in Raleigh were rapt. They laughed when he wanted them to laugh. They hushed when he wanted them to hush. They were near tears when he wanted them to be near tears. And they responded throughout with knowing nods and church-like murmurs of assent. Given the buoyant vibe, it was easy to lose sight of the fact that what Booker was saying was highly unusual. At this moment of extreme political discord, it was even quite radical. The crux of his message was the importance of love. “Patriotism—let’s get to the root of the word—means love of country. And you cannot love your country if you don’t love your country men and women ,” Booker told them. “Love says everybody has worth and has dignity. It’s about looking at someone and … understanding that my destiny is interwoven with your destiny,” he continued. “You can’t lead the people if you don’t love the people.” And toward the end of his speech, Booker arrived at the nub. “Let me tell you something,” he said. “I’ve given an entire speech, and I haven’t mentioned the name of the president of the United States.” He still didn’t. “And you know why? Because it’s not about him.” His voice rose. “It’s about us!” The people clapped and cheered. “We’ve got all the power we need!” “We do!” somebody shouted from the crowd. “Don’t be one of those people I catch calling our president nasty names,” Booker said. “I’m serious. How can you think that you’re going to beat darkness by stealing darkness? If Nelson Mandela can love his jailers, if Martin Luther King can love Bull Connor—we’ve got to be people of love!” They cheered again. Booker over the years has talked a lot about love. “Consistent, unyielding love .” “An unbelievable amount of love .” “Crazy love … unreasonable, irrational, impractical love .” And for the better part of this decade, Booker has landed frequently on a particular phrase—the “conspiracy of love.” It’s a phrase he employs with an almost religious fervor—a combination of a guiding-light mantra and a permanent political slogan. He uses it to tell his story, from the suburbs of New York City to Stanford to Oxford to Yale. He uses it to tell the story of his family, from the poor, segregated South to the upwardly mobile comfort of the business and intellectual elite. And Booker uses it to tell the story of a country that has overcome its anguished, divided past by nurturing the bonds between white and black instead of stoking the dissension. Since at least 2011, he has used the phrase on panels and podcasts, in talks to credit union executives and furniture bosses, in campus lectures and at college commencements. He used it last year as an energetic surrogate and short-listed vice presidential possibility for Hillary Clinton. In his recently published book, called United , it’s the title of the first chapter. For some, though—including some members of his own staff—the repetition can elicit snickers and sighs. “In some circles,” Patrick Murray, a pollster at New Jersey’s Monmouth University, told me, “he’s known as Senator Conspiracy of Love.” And to those less loyal, it can trigger the kind of criticism that has tracked Booker throughout his 20-year political career—that he’s too cute, too corny or too clever, that he seems polished to the point of performative, that he’s more interested in soaring oratory than the relative drudgery of governance and legislation. “Long on vision, short on granularity,” as the former head of the Newark Alliance once said . But as saccharine or contrived as it might sound to some, those who know Booker the best insist it is nevertheless him. “It’s something that is really genuine and authentic to who he is as a person and how he views the world,” said Mo Butler, a former chief of staff. “It’s in his DNA,” Booker’s pastor, the Rev. Dr. David Jefferson of Newark’s Metropolitan Baptist Church, added. And so, if Booker runs for president in 2020—and he told me, for the record, it would be “irresponsible” to say at this time whether he will or he won’t—it’s hard to imagine that it would happen without millions of people beyond New Jersey and Washington, D.C., hearing him talk about love, and about the “conspiracy of love.” What chance, some worry, would Booker’s “conspiracy of love” have against an opponent who wields as one of his most powerful weapons a schoolyard talent to demean? David Axelrod, the former strategist for Barack Obama, has theorized that voters seek in their next president not a replica of the predecessor but a remedy—and a Booker candidacy certainly would present a stark contrast, assuming President Donald Trump is the Republican incumbent. If Booker does vie for the highest office, he will encounter a number of obstacles. Conservatives think he’s too liberal, and liberals tend to think he’s too conservative. His coziness with Wall Street rankles his party’s left flank. He has championed school choice, atypical for a progressive. He has had one notable brush with scandal—an accusation, which he denies, that he took a salary from a law firm that did business with Newark. And he’s 48 and single, a teetotaler and a vegan , with a monkish, ascetic streak, all of which might strike many in Middle America as odd or unrelatable. But then there is this—the open question of whether the love-talking Booker is the right fit at a time when angry, rattled Democrats are hankering for combative, fight-fire-with-fire, anti-Trump rhetoric. And the Democratic gains in Tuesday’s elections in Virginia , New Jersey and elsewhere have only fueled that rage. What chance, some worry, would Booker’s “conspiracy of love” have against an opponent who wields as one of his most powerful weapons a schoolyard talent to demean? “ What conspiracy of love?” former Trump campaign adviser Sam Nunberg told me. “That won’t work,” he said. “You use the word ‘conspiracy’ when you’re trying to sell books or movie tickets, not a political candidacy.” As even an informal slogan, Nunberg said, it’s fatally flawed because it’s not sufficiently simple. “It’s no ‘Make America Great Again.’” Still, said Democratic consultant Joe Trippi, a veteran of presidential campaigns: “We tend to go to the opposite as a country, and so when you look at the antidote to Trump’s divisive rhetoric, then Cory Booker—who he is, the way he talks, including this phrase—does set up kind of an opposite instinct of Trumpism.” But what if voters want retribution, not forgiveness? Perhaps Booker’s focus on love is just too soft, or simply too religious for a party that prides itself on inclusiveness but gets uneasy when the message sounds like it’s plucked from the Gospels. But if Democrats are to find Booker appealing as a top-of-ticket candidate, they’re going to have to get used to his pacifist-in-a-bar-fight style. “FUCK YOU,” somebody on Twitter told Booker earlier this year. “LOVE YOU,” he responded . *** The Capitol Hill offices of most members of Congress are richly appointed, the desks, shelves and walls covered with personal mementos, certificates of achievement and grip-and-grins with presidents and celebrities. Not Booker’s. Along with drab chairs and a picture of his parents, there’s a small statuette of the abolitionist and humanitarian Harriet Tubman, a small drawing of Martin Luther King Jr. and a photograph of Mahatma Gandhi. Booker’s space on the third floor of the Dirksen Senate Office Building is (to use his word) “austere.” When I visited him there earlier this fall, I was reminded of working a number of years ago on a story for Men’s Health about Booker, who at that time was well into his second term as mayor. We met at his apartment . The mostly bare walls and sparse, thrift-store decor gave it an almost dorm-room feel. “I’m not a big stuff person,” he told me now in his office on the Hill. Booker is an ideas person, and the “conspiracy of love” is his biggest, most animating idea. It is, he said, “a family ethos.” And his family history in some sense has prepared him to make the argument that we’re all in this together whether we like it or not. According to genealogical research done in 2012 by Henry Louis Gates’ PBS show, “Finding Your Roots,” Booker is 45-percent European —white. On his mother’s side, his grandfather was a freckled, red-haired bastard born in 1916 to a woman Booker knew as “Big Mama,” who had been impregnated by one of the white doctors in her small town in Jim Crow Louisiana. Deeper into the family tree, Booker has a great-great-great grandmother who was owned by her own father. These, he told Gates, are “the complicated, painful, amazing, wondrous stories of America, how they all mix to produce us.” It went beyond blood, too: Booker’s father grew up poor in the black part of Hendersonville, North Carolina, the son of a single mother who became ill and overwhelmed—and so was taken in by the family that ran the town’s black funeral home. A church collection plate helped pay for his first semester of college at North Carolina Central University. Booker’s father in the ‘60s and ‘70s climbed the corporate ladder at IBM, as did his mother, among the first African-Americans to do so, aided by civil rights foot soldiers of the Urban League. They were able to purchase their house in almost entirely white Harrington Park, New Jersey, thanks to fair housing activists who outsmarted a realtor who didn’t want to sell to them on account of their skin color. For Booker’s parents, his mother, Carolyn, and especially his father, Cary, who died in 2013, all of this added up to a “conspiracy of love.” It’s a term Booker’s older brother, also named Cary, recalls hearing around the house in their teens, he told me. And so when Booker graduated from high school as an honor student and standout football prospect, and when he graduated from Stanford with a bachelor’s degree in political science and a master’s in sociology, and when he earned a Rhodes scholarship, and when he got his law degree from Yale, and when he started running for and then winning political offices—at every milepost of accomplishment—the message from his parents always was the same. “I grew up,” Booker told me, “with the understanding that, ‘Boy, you didn’t get here on your own—you got here through the collective love of millions and millions of people.’” Robin Kennedy, wife of former Stanford President Donald Kennedy, told me she heard these stories the year Booker lived with them as barely a 20-year-old undergrad. So did Jody Maxmin, a Stanford professor of art, art history and classics, and one of Booker’s mentors. Ditto Andra Gillespie, who met Booker at a lecture he gave at Yale in 2001, wrote a book about him and is now a political scientist at Emory University. “He saw in his father’s origin story,” Gillespie said, “a model for what could happen if communities came together.” “We are,” Booker wrote in United , “the result of a grand conspiracy of love.” The word conspiracy today evokes immediately nefarious connotations, but Booker likes the juxtaposition of conspiracy and love . In the context of 2017’s poisonous climate, it’s “subversive,” he told me. “Defiant.” It packs, reminiscent of Tubman, Gandhi and King, “a humble radicalism,” he said. This is a phrase powerful enough to topple even the most oppressive institutions—slavery, imperial England, federally enforced racism in this country—and therefore perfect for the test Booker confronts now in Trump. But to win, he must tap into what he calls this nation’s “reservoirs of love.” “Does any of your reservoir of love flow toward the White House?” I asked him in his office. “To President Trump?” “I am so determined to fight and stop Donald Trump,” he said, “whether it’s taking health care away from millions of people, whether it’s putting in place a Muslim ban that I just find discriminatory and bigoted, whether it’s doing what he’s doing with our EPA or our DOJ . I want to fight him. But he will not … I’m not going to let him turn me into that which I want to fight against.” “Meaning,” I responded, “you are going to fight him, but you are not going to hate him—therefore you love him?” “Yeah,” Booker said. “I readily admit that.” I want to fight him,” says Booker. “But … I’m not going to let him turn me into that which I want to fight against.” Is loving Donald Trump, for a Democrat, right now, or ever, for that matter, really a winning political strategy? Booker basically told me I was asking the wrong question. “What,” he said, “are you defining as a triumph?” Winning elections. Not moral victories. In other words, for Democrats, a one-term Trump presidency—maybe even shorter than that. “But I’m talking about the real end that we seek,” Booker said, “which is the raising of the quality of life, bringing about greater justice, a greater sense of liberty for all—what our ideals are.” *** Booker always has been an uncommon combination of undisguised ambition and unflagging idealism. And he often has expressed those two aspects of his life in roundly religious terms. “I’m the most ambitious person you’d ever meet,” he told a reporter for Newark’s Star-Ledger in 1998, during his first City Council bid. He felt, he said, like he was “part of a really righteous campaign.” He absorbed his religious precepts early and well. As a boy in Harrington Park, Booker went every week to the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Closter, New Jersey. “My mom taught Sunday school,” Booker’s brother told me. At Oxford, though, Booker served as a co-president of a Jewish organization, the L’Chaim Society. When he moved to Newark as he was finishing his course work at Yale Law, to be a public-interest attorney, representing and organizing tenants, while eyeing a spot on the City Council, he began attending Metropolitan Baptist. It’s where he still goes, every Sunday he’s not in Washington or traveling somewhere else, usually seated for the 9:30 service in a pew near the front behind the wife of the pastor. “Cory,” the Rev. Dr. David Jefferson told me, “is very, very, very, very faith-driven.” When he ran for mayor in 2002, challenging the shrewd Sharpe James, who had held the office since 1986, his professed righteousness seemed almost comically overmatched. James called Booker a carpetbagger. He called him an Uncle Tom. He called him “a faggot white boy.” He suggested Booker was both Jewish and funded by the Ku Klux Klan. “Cory Booker isn’t for real,” said James’ ads. The race was the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary named Street Fight . For Booker, it was a jolting introduction to political attack tactics, which he told me he considered “despicable.” But he had a choice to make. He called his pastor. “A lot,” Jefferson told me. “A lot. A lot. I mean … a lot.” Jefferson, Booker said, “reminded me who I am, and reminded me of who I aspire to be.” “He and I would have conversations about the Bible,” Jefferson said, “the whole notion as to what Jesus did.” “Jesus,” Booker told me, “was somebody that took unrelenting abuse and criticism [from] powerful people using their position to try to destroy him reputationally and ultimately physically.” The reality, though, in 2002 was that Booker lost. James, twice Booker’s age, won 53 percent of the vote. Booker was subdued but undeterred, convinced his strategy of more or less turning the other cheek would win out in the end. “Let us show our dignity,” he told his supporters the night of the loss, “by being gracious in this minor defeat.” Booker was elected mayor in 2006, when James sensed an approaching loss and bowed out. Jefferson told me it’s still not about winning or losing elections for his most famous congregant, which is exactly the kind of a thing a campaign manager would never say. “Cory’s contribution to public service and wanting to serve is deeper than just being an elected official,” his pastor said. “He really has a calling, and he believes that.” And that is? “And that is to do basically what Dr. King spoke about,” Jefferson said. “To love humanity by serving individuals. To be great by being able to serve. And you can’t serve unless you love.” To love those he serves? “ And those enemies that he has … He believes, as I do, too,” Jefferson said, “you will never overcome that with the same mentality, the same attitude—that what overcomes that will be the conspiracy of love.” When I asked Booker about what his pastor said, he told me, “Frankly, you can say Jesus was crucified—and I can say Jesus transformed the planet Earth, that his gospel transformed planet Earth, and has inspired generations of justice advocates to make change, from Gandhi being inspired by the teachings of Christianity to activists like Martin Luther King. So I do think that is the right path to walk, regardless of what you encounter, regardless of what happens to you—is to not let someone’s hate turn you into a person of hate, but to let yourself endure, no matter what, to be a person of love.” Back in 2008, in a piece in which a writer for Esquire labeled him a “wannabe savior,” Booker said he always wanted to be “a part of a spiritual revolution” and that “we need a prophetic leader—who can raise us above our baser angels.” Last summer, in his speech at the Democratic National Convention, he said “we are called to be a nation of love.” It prompted Trump to take a swipe. “If Cory Booker is the future of the Democratic Party, they have no future!” tweeted the then-Republican nominee, days after he had said in his own convention speech that the legacy of Hillary Clinton was “death, destruction and weakness.” “I know more about Cory than he knows about himself,” Trump added. If Trump’s cryptic broadside left some scratching their heads, Booker’s comeback did the same, only more. “I love Donald Trump,” Booker said on CNN. One of the hosts spoke on behalf of probably most of the viewers with her soft, almost reflexive response. “ What ?” *** Dirty cars and trucks on Interstate 280 raced past the fenced-in children’s playground, creating a noisy, distracting, exhaust-choked backdrop for a news conference—which was the aim. Booker had come here to Newark’s McKinley Elementary School one morning last month to unveil a bill he was calling the Environmental Justice Act . One way to parse his policy priorities these days is of course through the lens of a potential presidential candidacy—his stand with Senator Bernie Sanders for Medicare for All, for instance, was viewed widely as a nod to those on the left who consider him too far to the right—but another way to see his activities is to consider what is in essence Booker’s unified field theory. Environmental justice reform , criminal justice reform , raising the minimum wage , even the legalization of marijuana —it’s all part of the “conspiracy of love.” And while Booker did not utter the actual phrase at the playground at McKinley, he did use the idea to frame his proposed legislation. “Really, I want to start with this understanding that we’re all in this together,” Booker said into a microphone to the small gathering of community business and political leaders scattered among the swings and slides. “If there’s anything that I’ve learned about this nation’s ideals, from the hallmark of our country, e pluribus unum , to the spiritual reality of our nation, of diversity, of many different communities, it’s that we’re all integrated into one common destiny, and that injustice anywhere is indeed a threat to justice everywhere.” When Booker was done talking, two local reporters had questions. They asked basically the same thing: Why did he think he could turn this bill into law? Booker, after all, is a junior senator in the minority party. But this skepticism felt rooted, too, in the recent history of this city. Booker was the mayor here from 2006 to 2013, when he won a special Senate election to replace the late Frank Lautenberg—after which he was re-elected in 2014 to his current six-year term. During his time as mayor, Booker worked to become one of the best-known mayors in America, hopscotching the country giving often lucrative talks, stockpiling Twitter followers, starring in the Brick City television show on the Sundance Channel and demonstrating an ongoing penchant for publicity stunts like bringing diapers to homebound citizens in snowstorms. His record on the ground was more complicated. Through his charisma and connections, he attracted to the city, and especially to the downtown core, a mixture of corporate headquarters, hotels, restaurants and grocery stores. But unemployment remained higher than the state and national rates. Under Booker’s leadership, crime in the city went down—then it went back up. There were budget cuts. There were tax hikes. Citizens groused. In 2006, he won his election with 72 percent of the vote. In 2010, that went down to 59. And one of the signatures of Booker and his administration, the education reform efforts with a $100-million infusion from Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg plus another $100 million in matching funds from other wealthy private donors and venture capitalists, in the end spurred only marginal improvements in student performance. “Two hundred million dollars and almost five years later,” Dale Russakoff wrote in her book about it, The Prize , “there was at least as much rancor as reform.” Newark, if nothing else, is a bright-lights lesson in how hard it is to make change. The question for Booker is now what it’s always been: How, exactly, does he turn this kind of lofty rhetoric into actual reality? Responding to the local reporters at McKinley, his first instinct is more rhetoric. He invoked American history and the bold improbability of civil rights legislation. Environmental justice, he said, was no different. “I believe that when this stuff starts to prick the moral imagination of the country, we’re going to get this legislation done.” The question for Booker is now what it’s always been: How, exactly, does he turn this kind of lofty rhetoric into actual reality? Now, in the back of his black SUV, pulling away from the school, he added to the thought. “I’m just telling you. I’ve heard people tell me things are impossible before,” he told me. “And I’m not saying that Newark doesn’t still have a lot of work to do. But my experience is that the impossible is possible.” He was talking, again, at base about faith. King, one of his go-to exemplars, “pricked” America by weaving scripture and secular ideals to craft a single moral imperative that couldn’t be dismissed. And so here I asked Booker: Would he be willing to run for office—whether in a Senate campaign or for president—in an even more explicitly religious way? “I’ve studied Judaism, Hinduism, Islam and obviously my own Christianity,” he said. “It’s the core of everything I do. And I don’t shy away from it. I think Democrats should get much more comfortable being conversant in issues of faith and calling to whatever your moral text is, be that just a secular text, like our Constitution, or be it the Quran.” But at this juncture when the mantle of religion in politics has been so scrambled by Trump, would Booker, I wondered, run as, say, a Baptist progressive? Here, though, he was “reticent,” he said. Why? “I don’t want to turn people off.” Booker’s idealism often arrives in great torrents of words. Reminders of the ambition that accompanies it can be more succinct. *** People have been talking about Booker being the president since he was in law school. “I am not prone to overstatement,” Doug Lasdon, the founder of the Urban Justice Center in New York, told me. Booker was a summer intern for Lasdon in the late ‘90s and stayed with him at his apartment. “And I visited my dad,” Lasdon said, “and he said, ‘You know what’s he like?’ And I said, ‘Dad, this guy could be president of the United States.’ And I’ve certainly never said that about anybody else, but it was obvious—his character, his intelligence, his sense of empathy.” In Newark, people talked about Booker being the president already when he merely was running for City Council out of the Central Ward. Former Councilman Anthony Carrino used to say, “‘Hey, watch this guy, watch this guy, watch this guy—he might be president one day,’” former councilman and mayor Luis Quintana told me. “I said, ‘What, are you kidding? He just got off his Hot Wheels!’ I said, ‘You want him to be president?’ He was running for City Council!” And in 2002, when Booker was running for mayor for the first time, Marshall Curry heard it all the time when he was making Street Fight . “I can’t tell you how many people told me, ‘Cory Booker’s going to be the first black president, Cory Booker’s going to be the first black president,’” he told me. Then, of course, Booker wasn’t. Barack Obama was. And then the first black president led to President Donald Trump. Trump has used the word love as well—“so much love in the room,” he said at charged rallies—but it isn’t quite the same thing. So Booker has an opening in 2020 he wouldn’t have had if Clinton had won. If Axelrod is right that Americans vote for polar opposites, then Booker—who is about as different from Trump as Trump was from Obama—might be the man for the moment. Maybe too polar, say many other veteran hands. No one wants to come out against decency, but the gears of experienced political minds—Booker’s colleagues and veteran campaign strategists—click audibly when you ask if they think you can craft a platform on love. There’s a "but" wedged into almost every answer. New Jersey Republican Rep. Tom MacArthur doesn’t doubt Booker’s talk of the “conspiracy of love” is “sincere,” he told me, but he added: “The object of government is not to sit around a campfire and sing Kumbaya . The object of government is to advance things that are really going to benefit people’s lives.” Is there appetite within this battle of ideas for tenets of love? “My heart tells me, ‘Yeah, we’re ready,’” said Rep. Donald Norcross, a New Jersey Democrat. “My head says, ‘Let’s see what happens.’” “I’ve got to think people are looking for some empathy and compassion,” said Sen. Joe Manchin, the moderate Democrat from West Virginia, who counts Booker as a friend. Strategists and consultants from both parties are wait-and-see about Booker’s approach. “Substantive change for the better cannot come from anger and resentment—they are fundamentally destructive impulses,” Reed Galen, a Trump critic who worked on the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and also John McCain’s, told me. “But you can’t just be out there saying it’s all sunshine and rainbows.” “I don’t know that ‘conspiracy of love’ wouldn’t work … but it won’t work on its own,” added Bob Shrum, the longtime Democratic strategist. “It depends on what he says and whether he’s believable. And we won’t know that unless or until he gets out there.” Iowa and New Hampshire await should Booker choose to run. The politically wired in those two key states say he isn’t nearly as known there as he is in Washington and the Northeast. People know just enough to know they want to know more. “The conspiracy of love? It makes me smile,” Jerry Crawford, an attorney and a Democratic kingmaker in Des Moines, told me. “That’s going to play better in Iowa than in D.C. It’s positive when we need positive.” It makes Sean Bagniewski, the chair of the Polk County Democrats, think of Obama’s “audacity of hope,” he said. The conspiracy of love? “I think it would be more likely the activists here would say, ‘Huh?’” New Hampshire might be harder. “I think New Hampshire Democrats are like Democratic activists elsewhere,” UNH political scientist Dante Scala told me. “They’re in a fighting mood right now.” The conspiracy of love? “I think it would be more likely the activists here would say, ‘Huh?’” In Newark, back in Booker’s SUV, I asked him about all this. “I hear Democrats often say this, that Republicans are so mean … we’ve got to stop being so nice,” he said. “I’m, like, ‘That’s 100-percent opposite to what we need to be.’ We don’t need to take on the tactics that we find unacceptable in the Republican Party. That doesn’t mean we don’t need to fight hard and make sacrifices and struggle and battle—but we do not need to take on the dark arts.” What, though, if that’s what people want ? After all, he was praised by his party when he broke with Senate tradition to rebuke his colleague Jeff Sessions during his confirmation hearing. No one is going out of their way to praise him for being openhearted about Trump. “It’s a natural human inclination,” he said. But he added: “It’s not what we preach in churches on Sunday mornings, in synagogues on Friday nights, in mosques during the call of prayer.” He bemoaned the fact that he was “lambasted” for giving the cancer-stricken McCain a hug this past summer. “Do you think President Trump needs a hug,” I asked, “and are you the person to give it to him?” Booker laughed. “I think President Trump,” he said, “needs a lot more than a hug.” November 10, 2017 at 10:33AM

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