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“You’ve ruined me.”
A phrase that Turbo Granny has repeated to the stars, to the world, to herself, over and over. Surely a hundred times by now.
Always a different spot, down the road, yet always the same words.
Ruin, ruin, ruined. There’s no better term for what happened to her.
After she cursed that boy. After said boy and girl defeated her. Stole her power.
Stole her power and left her squirming around in a ceramic doll, a lucky cat in everything but actuality.
A doll that had to keep following around the boy who stole her powers to prevent him from dying!
Who knew brats could get into so much trouble?
It comes to an end, of course. All things do.
Her time with them is over.
She keeps her oath.
The boy got his balls, she got her power.
She left.
Just like she was always planning to.
Like she was always meant to.
Ghosts can’t stay with the living. Not without changing them entirely. Making them angrier
She didn’t want to change...her. Or the rest. Not that much.
Turbo Granny, fool that she is, didn’t want to change them.
But impossibly, they changed her. Her, a yokai beyond generations and generations!
Now there’s a presence in her essence. In her power.
One that won’t go away no matter how fast or how far she runs.
She clatters her teeth.
Granny has outlived a hundred villages, a hundred towns, and every resident within those places. The only thing that lasts is the road and that too has disappeared at times underneath her rough soles.
She walks a thousand kilometers, runs them faster than any other.
Yet it is not enough. Not this time.
Because there’s something in her chest that won’t go away.
No, that’s not it.
A gnarled hand curves into an unnatural claw over her chest. Seeking to plunge into said chest for the useless organ that lies within.
It’s not that it won’t go away.
Pump, pump, goes the heart she doesn’t need. An impossible pulse.
It’s that it keeps coming back.
That itch, that thought, that impossible dream. Impossible because the dead don’t dream. They can’t.
Yet every night it comes again on these long lonely roads. A simple shrine, one full of laughter and arguing behind its doors. Full of life. Full of silly children, who refuse to give up.
(And a silver haired woman waiting there too.)
Turbo Granny stomps a foot. Breaks road underfoot, leaving an actual footprint in it.
“Fine. Fine. I’ll do it, damn you!”
Just this once, just this one time, got it? Damn rebellious organ of hers.
Getting to Kamigoe City isn’t an issue. Nothing is too far for her.
What she finds there...is. Is a problem.
Thing is, it shouldn’t be.
A familiar spirit medium, face to face with another yokai. Another spirit, full of intention to harm harm harm.
Stupid thing, how dare it touch what is hers-?!
Turbo Granny acts.
“Fuck you!” Turbo Granny spits. She’s there, faster than a blink. Faster than a thought.
The shitty spirit can’t even speak back, that’s how pathetic and new it is. Instead it gasps and rattles. Like that even means anything.
Simple enough to just bite down.
Bite down into a mouthful of rotten flesh and clanking metal, nothing meaningful, nothing that could even add a speck of aura to hers.
Gone in a second. A worthless second.
“Huh. Didn’t expect that,” an all too familiar voice muses from behind her.
When she turns...
The medium watches her through the frames of her glasses.
The same way she always has, but her face is so much closer to Turbo’s now. Less distance between them, Granny’s height greater than the spirit medium’s once more.
Like the first time they met. Possessed body and all.
The woman’s wearing just as much clothing as then, or lack thereof. Showing off her flesh with no worry of the threat it invites. Or what men will claim invites.
(Not that Granny would let anything happen.)
Her name should be rot and dust like all the rest, forgotten to time and how little it matters. Names never stay in her head.
Turbo Granny still knows it anyway: Seiko.
“Why’d you help out? You know I eat these kinds of spirits for breakfast.”
Seiko can. She always could.
It’s her abilities that nearly exorcized Turbo Granny in the first place.
Turbo Granny knows this.
Why did she step in, then?
“An old hag like you can’t keep up with me,” Granny scoffs. “Takin’ out small fry is better done quicker.”
“ Again, with the name calling, you hypocrite.”
“I’ll stop calling you names when you can run faster than me.”
“That’s never, then? Hag.”
“Never.”
The word has more weight than it should, dropping from behind her sharp teeth.
A different kind of promise.
Seiko bends over, enough to grab a fallen purse.
There’s something slow about the action, the edge of that short skirt riding up just so in Granny’s direction.
She slow blinks. Instead of speeding up, for once. Taking in the sight that seems to be tailored for her alone.
Is it?
Turbo draws closer, not entirely sure herself of what action she will take. In arm’s length of Seiko. Too close, to allow what happens next.
Seiko whirls around, reaching out.
A trick!
Just like-
“It’s our first meeting all over again, en’t it?”
She feels long fingers dig into her robes. Pulling their owner closer.
Not enclosing, grabbing, like hundreds of filthy men with women that aren’t theirs to touch. But instead welcoming, loose enough for Turbo Granny to pull away should she feel like it.
“Humph.” The huff of her breath is enough to cause those silvery strands to wave.
She should feel like pulling loose.
She doesn’t.
Lets the touch linger, let Seiko’s arms rest about her own. Hugging closer.
Hesitantly, gently, Granny reaches back. Reaches back with hands that are only meant for clawing and grabbing and stealing. Not for this softness. Never this softness.
The touch of a willing soul is so very different from those she’s used to punishing in the depths of their sins. So much warmer.
Almost enough to chase away the ache in her bones.
Seiko, fool that she is, lets her touch. Even moves deeper into that touch.
Until they’re wrapped about each other. Two natural enemies, yokai and spirit medium.
Turbo Granny could sink her teeth into her, strip flesh from bone quicker than a barrier can be sketched out in defense. Shred straight through fat and muscle using her claw-like nails.
So many actions she could take, that would lead to Seiko’s untimely demise.
She doesn’t.
Instead, she allows the closeness to linger. For Seiko to rest her head under her chin, hands spreading out into her robes. Rests her hands around ribs and shoulders to support a much weaker human body.
Together.
The words that Seiko speaks are too quiet for any ordinary human to hear, but in perfect range for a yokai like herself.
A whisper spoken into her shoulder.
“You’ve ruined me.”