"Therefore, you should be grateful to Akira and me." She finished.
"Hell no!" The new pigeon snapped instantly before grief could cling to his chest as he cried pitifully, "Oh, Lord Feng, out of all the multilingual birds, why must it be me? Can't it be one of those colorful cockatiels or those parrots? Why me?"
Having heard enough of his pitiful moans, Willow sighed, "Because only you can do the job. With your physical appearance and intellect, you can bring messages back and forth while avoid conflict with the enemy. Those colorful birds you talked about would be too eye-catching to the naked eye making them a perfect target. Unless you want to entertain me and find a sparrow that can speak multiple languages?"
Hearing her words, the raven looked up at her with a sudden change in his presence as he hoped up and down in pride, "Hah! Is there any sparrows smarter than me?! Lady Willow, it won't be because that I can't find one, but that none of those silly bags of air can even hold enough talent to take on a second, much less third, language!"
So says the pigeon. Willow nodded her head biting back a sigh, "I see, I see. Then, you won't have any problems pretending to be a pigeon for a while till we return home."
"That's-!" The pigeon sucked in a breath and sighed in defeat, "All right. I'll do as this mistress says."
Mistress? Shouldn't that have been the title for that father's legal wife? Geez, what a headache. She sighed, "Shouldn't the term be lady? Mistress should be Lady Huang's title, right?"
"Mi-Mistress?" The raven blurted out, "What mistress? It's not like I have a new mistress or anything."
Willow sighed, "So my father wants me to have this raven under me as well. I thought for sure that it would only be temporary."
Willow shook her head before glaring at the bird, "You better keep that beak void of any human and raven words while you're a pigeon, or..."
She thought for a bit before turning to Akira, "Aki, how does roasted pigeon sound to you? I heard from my aunt once that they're actually pretty good, enough to make my cousin cry in awe and grief."
"Roasted pigeon?" Akira turned to her before the look of confusion turned into bewilderment, "Hold on! Did you just give me a pet name?"
"I'll do it! I'll do it!" The raven quickly interrupted without a second thought, "Just don't roast me!"
Feigning ignorance, Willow turned to Akira. The fox shook his head as Willow could feel parts of her body beat, like a heart, and contract. She could feel her clothes getting tighter in some area whereas they were getting thinner in others. When he was done, she quickly hid in between some trees and got changed.
When she reappeared, she was now in a tattered pair of jeans and wore a thin wool scarf over the collar of her red turtle neck sweater. The sweater felt a little tight hugging her undershirt a little to tightly that she was afraid it would tear. She probably should've bought a little more variety of clothing before coming to this trip, but that was impossible unless she had the ability to see the future.
Seeing her new change, Akira shook his head with a sigh, "You owe me."
Saying this, his fur looked like it was shrinking into him and his legs grew thinner while his snout turned shorter. His body shrank slower than his fur as his tail shrank in faster and thin. By the time it was over, he had become a pretty black cat. The new cat now turned to her and continued, "Five servings of fried tofu. Enough for a week."
Willow grinned and nodded, "Of course."
The pigeon turned from Akira to Willow in glances before he cawed, "Wait, why is he a cat and I'm a pigeon?"
"You want Aki to waste all his energy just to turn you into something more desirable for only a few days?" Willow sighed shaking her head, "If you want, we'll just turn you into a peacock and leave you like that to return to Father."
"N-No!" The pigeon struggled to shake his head only to nod in contrary to his words, "I don't want that!"
"Good." Willow nodded in satisfaction, "Then, you fly high and out of sight, got it? Let me know if you see something unusual. You're smart, so you wouldn't get caught, now would you?"
"No, ma'am." The pigeon responded obediently.
"So, I'm a ma'am?" Willow raised a brow.
"M-Miss!" The pigeon quickly corrected.
She nodded her head in satisfaction when the pigeon suddenly continued, "But, why a cat of all things? He could just be a stupid mutt instead."
The new cat now cleaned his paw before responding, "It's because dogs are too dumb that I prefer being a cat. Or are you trying to say that cats are smarter than dogs?"
Willow rolled her eyes in exasperation, "Dogs can be used in the military and cats have better hygiene manners than dogs. Come on. Let's get to work."
Then, she smiled, "If you do well, I'll give you some fruits."
Hearing her words, the pigeon's eyes glitter briefly before quickly turning his head, "A-As if I'll fall for that!"
Surprised by his weak surprise, Willow glanced over to Akira to see if he was seeing the same thing as the fox, now cat, huffed and shifted in his spot as he sat gracefully, "If you don't want it, then I'll have all of it in your stead with my tofu."
"Go back to the river, you vicious fox!" The pigeon cursed at him.
Understanding that the river the pigeon mentioned was the river to the Underworld, Willow giggled, "So, you say, but Akira has no need to face a trial in the underworld. After all, he's the servant of a foreign god, not a fox demon."
It was the truth. Akira was a kitsune. Being from the coast of America with much diversity, Willow has seen many entertainment dramas and animations displaying fox spirits as either gods or demons.
In China, it's often referred to that foxes are devious and often takes the form of beautiful women to seduce men, which they then would later either kill or turned their life into hell. While in Japan, foxes are known to be a god of harvest and such with foxes as their servants, and they would either utilize their mischievous nature to help the good or mess with the bad.
Still, this was only something she vaguely knew about. Never in her two lives had she imagined one of their servants would willingly form a contract with her so quickly. Finally, the pigeon is left speechless when he heard this as Willow sighed, "Enough. As long as he agrees, I'll hand over some fruits."
Her words quickly snapped his senses back as he shouted, "I'll have it! It's mine!"
And like that, the threats and fear the raven felt were quickly replaced with a greedy glint in his eyes. After talking over some plans with them, Willow pried some necessary information out of the bird with some bait to which the pigeon didn't think twice, "Just call me whatever you want."
Akira looked to the bird speechless at how he answered without batting an eye in suspicion.
"A name..." Willow frowned in thought before she smiled, "Then, I'll call you Harper."
"Does it look like I sing?" Harper stared at her with a disapproving glint, "I'm a raven, not a freaking canary!"
"Does it look like it matters?" Willow spoke back with a smirk on her face, "You gave me the option to name you whatever I want."
Harper grumbled under his breath before spreading his small wings and took off into the air once more.
"How long have you known that bird?" Akira asked curiously.
"About a couple of days." Willow responded as she noticed her voice becoming a little coarse, "Not bad."
"Thank you." The cat responded with a smirk.
Willow picked him up as he continued, "So, what do we do?"
"You'll see." Willow smiled as she put him back into her duffel bag.
This time, she got onto the bicycle and pedaled through the cool streets wet with melted snow around the corners and sidewalks. Very few people walked the roads while more drove vehicles rather than walk.
Despite all that, the place was more like an abandoned city that has become frightening quiet. She wasn't certain how trustworthy that information broker's information was, but it was already better than nothing to her for the moment.
She had already bought plenty of disinfect and medical-use alcohol. Small bags of gloves and masks filled the bottom of her duffel bag and a plastic goggle. Then, there were the glass tubes several small pieces of equipments she got from a school's old chemistry kit and small ceramic plates normally used for sauce and such to make up for the lack of Petri dishes. With a sigh, she carried her duffel bag of stuff and Aki on her back.
The breeze in the air had turned cold as the sun began to set. However, that didn't bother her as her next course of action would find these conditions to her advantage.
As she moved, she was careful not to come across trouble and avoided streets that had more people than other areas.
.....
With a sigh, she finally found it. After biking for so long to the edge of the urban cities, she could finally set her eyes upon the beaten white fencing lined with about the borders and the yellow plastic boards blocking the shops. She took out a wrench she nabbed from an automobile repair shop and took apart the wheels of her bike and, with Akira's help, opened up a manhole and carefully hid the tires in between some piled up trash gunk.