This story was originally written to comfort a friend whose neighborhood was suffering a rash of home-invasion robberies.
Sid and Rico Meet a Tengu
Once upon a time on a cold winter's night in the big city, two seedy little crooks named Sid and Rico got their come-uppance.
Kamo was an artist struggling with a disability that left her intermittently unable to complete her work. On a good day, she looked pretty good. On a bad day, she felt pretty useless. This was a bad day.
She worked in her work-room, but her tools wouldn't go where her mind directed them, and she couldn't keep her grip on the brushes, and finally, feeling weak and frustrated, she gave up and called it a night.
Unknown to her, Sid and Rico were watching her, sizing her up as their next mark. She looked weak-like easy prey, though it didn't look like she had much to steal.
Still, it was the holiday season, so there might be something in there, squirreled away out of view.
Certainly there was a lot of weird art, though art wasn't something that converted well to quick, untraceable cash.
This particular artist had a lot of the usual kind of stuff around-portraits and such. But mixed in among them, as they looked into the window, was stuff that was just, well, weird. Angels-common enough-but with fangs? And claws? What the hell was that?
Rico thought it was creepy. But he didn't dare say anything to Sid. Sid would just think he was being freaky.
Now, unknown to Sid and Rico, and only vaguely appreciated by Kamo, was the fact that Kamo had been sharing those 'weird angels' with her friends around the internet, scattered all around the wide world, who knew those images represented tengu of various legends, traditional and popular. So her work had admirers, and one of those had chosen just that night to stop by for a portrait.
While Sid and Rico were pondering their indelicate strategy for kicking in the front door, this admirer was considering by more subtle resources how he and his own companion, could get in.
Unlike Sid and Rico, however, he was reasonably certain that his intrusion would be welcome, and so he set about to be a polite, if unexpected guest.
So, this other visitor arrived, quietly and unseen in the now-darkened studio, while Kamo was making ready for bed. He had barely settled himself into his surroundings, and was about to send his companion to alert Kamo to his presence, when to his surprise, Sid and Rico kicked in the door.
From the bedroom, the visitor heard Kamo squeek in alarm.
The two burglars heard the squeek as well, and rushed toward the sound, careless as to any noise or damage they might cause along the way.
Sid liked this part the best-beating up a shocked and unwary victim before stealing anything he liked that they had.
But, as he raced past the studio, from the corner of his eye, he was startled to see a man-no, it was an angel, like one of those in the artworks-only this one was life-sized-a green-eyed mannequin concealing its face behind a fan of white feathers. What he could see of the too-perfect face was so androgynous, he couldn't be sure if it was male or female.
They'd been looking into the studio before. How could they not have seen the sculpture? Maybe it had been hidden behind the angle of the curtains?
Sid paused in his headlong rush. And then he heard Rico yelp.
"AH! IT BIT MY ASS!" he shouted.
Rico was ahead of him, spinning around in a circle like a dog chasing its tail, grabbing unsuccessfully at something the size of a collie, but green as Kermit the frog, that had attached itself to the cheek of his butt.
Sid burst out laughing.
"It's a doll!" he said.
"F* 'it's a doll', it's got my ass!" Rico whined, "It's alive!"
"Don't be ridiculous," said Sid. He walked up and grabbed the thing by its leg.
Or so he thought. As he grasped it, it disappeared with a 'pop'.
"What the f*!" he said.
But the thing suddenly appeared, with another 'pop', right on Sid's head. He felt it's mouth close around the back of his skull, and it felt like it was trying to suck his scalp off.
"AH! It's got me by the head!"
"'It's a doll!'" taunted Rico.
"Oh, f* you Rico! F* you!" Sid screamed.
"Holy crap!" said Rico, suddenly backing away from Sid, his eyes wide.
Sid turned around, and found himself face to face with the green-eyed angel. It grinned at him-a wicked, sadistic leer with fangs.
"Oh shit! Oh shit! Oh shit!" Sid screamed. Then he got a hold of himself and tried to punch the sadistic angel in the face.
The angel leaned back just enough for Sid's punch to miss him by a hair's breadth. It's expression was so bored that it seemed as if it must have required almost no effort to avoid being hit by him.
Still, Sid had another punch aimed at the angel's gut that he just knew would strike home; it always did.
But the angel turned his body just slightly, and Sid suddenly found himself flat on the floor, knocked down by the momentum of his own wild punch that had not been balanced by an impact.
"Ohmygodohmygodohmygod..." He heard Rico saying. He looked up (which was actually looking along the floor of the hall) to see Rico fleeing from the house as quickly as he could scramble out the door.
The little green thing had crawled onto Sid's chest, and was now looking at him with a wide grin and malicious little pig-eyes. It looked too much like a muppet to be a real animal. Yet here it was on his chest, probably preparing to suck his face off.
Beyond it, he saw the door of the bedroom crack open just a fraction, and the wide eye of Kamo peering through it momentarily, before the door shut quietly again.
"Kieusere," muttered the angel. It grabbed him by the collar with one needle-clawed hand and, one-handed, dragged him to the destroyed front door, lifted him up and tossed him outside as if he were no heavier than a grocery bag of kitchen trash.
He landed hard on the entryway and skidded, feeling as though he'd been hit by a truck.
Then the angel picked up the door, held it closed in place, and all the little shards and splinters on the entryway picked themselves up and reassembled into wood, erasing any sign that he and Rico had entered.
"At least there won't be evidence," he thought. "What the f*ing hell was that?"
He looked around for Rico, but couldn't see him anywhere. He picked himself up-he felt like one giant bruise, and limped his way back down the street.
Just his f*ing luck, there was an un-forecast cloudburst. He was drenched.
Meanwhile, back in the house, in the sudden silence, Kamo cracked the door open again, and peered out. Clearly she was losing her mind, because there was a tengu in the entryway fixing her door by magic.
She heard a faint pop, and looked down to see a little green monster had appeared at her feet, and was peering out the cracked-open door just as she was.
It made a faint little noise like giggling.
Kamo made a wild guess, and took a chance.
"Mu?" she said, softly.
The little monster hugged her knee. Then it reached into its mouth and pulled out a picture Kamo had drawn of Haruka.
It pointed to the picture, and then to the tengu in the hall, and to Kamo.
"You want me to do one of Sugino?" Kamo whispered.
The little monster hugged her knee again.
"Okay. I can do that," she smiled. "I don't speak...um...'arigatou'?"
Mu smiled, and edged the door open wider.
The tengu turned toward her and smiled sheepishly, with a self conscious shrug.
"Konbanwa?" Sugino said.
"Hi," said Kamo, motioning toward the studio. "Please, be welcome."
Kamo felt better already.
Kieusere is an extremely rude way to say "F* off and die" in Japanese. Coming from Sugino it's a hair's breadth short of a death curse (which is why I didn't quite go all the way to the "-ro" command form). Do not ever actually say this to a Japanese person, you might get hurt.
(In the 20th episode of the anime, Haruka uses a similar, milder word (useru, "to vanish") in a harsher command form (usero) to intimidate Yuri's paparazzi. Official subtitles say "Piss off", Shinsen & Spooner fan-subs say "Get lost".)
Arigato means "thank you" (which you probably already knew) and Konbanwa means "good evening".
Kamo is a Japanese word that as slang means "an easy mark", though it literally means "duck" (similar to the expression "sitting duck", in English). If you go to a Japanese grocery you may find Muscovy duck breast labeled as "kamo".