Spotlights were turned on in unison, giving light to the darkened stadium surrounding a square-shaped battle arena. There were four poles on each corner and three sets of ropes creating barriers for its competitors. Those ropes were not created to keep people outside of the square-shaped platform, but to keep people inside to face their destiny.

"Ladies and Gentleman!"

A referee yelled toward the mic before his mouth as his other hand pointed upwards to pump the crowd in what was about to come. Eating in the cheering from the fans and supporters sitting comfortably on each of the stands, the referee continued with his pause for dramatic effect. It took the crowd a little over two minutes to calm down, but the big smile on the referee never wavered in the slightest.

It only grew bigger.

"Welcome to our annual New Japanese Pro Wrestling big match of Nineteen-Ninety-Seven!" Amidst the fans going crazy and the spectators losing their mind, the referee announced the sides that will be fighting in this glorious match tonight. "In the western corner we have our Foreign Invader and the nemesis of our beloved Jushin "Thunder" Liger, Suuuper Ligeeer!"

As his name was called, a mysterious entity appeared cloaked in his silver and menacing costume that evoked a gentle yet terrifying demon. Its eyes were gleaming in red, as if they were burning solemnly. The costume itself was ridiculously detailed, and the fans of said wrestler found that fact very charming yet detrimental. There was something disconnecting about it, and people didn't need two eyes to mull it over the fact that it was an ordinary human in the costume.

That whole gimmick didn't work as well as Juushin's was, but the man in the suit kept himself in-character. He pointed around the ring like these humans were primitive savages that should be flipped off any chance he got. That was the angle and the story. That was the set-up. Craving in the moment, Super Liger raised both arms as if he was goading these beasts, and it worked. People began jeering at his presence, and the man in the suit kept going.

"Alright, that's enough," a sudden and distinctly female voice resounded over the Tokyo Dome. "I'm not here to defeat a man in a costume. Take off your stupid looking mask, Super Liger."

The spotlight then shined on a pint-sized girl at the eastern corner of the ring. Her long brown hair that ran as far as her legs were shining from the reflections. Her attire was simple: A white vest and a purple skirt with brown boots for footwear. Her hands were on her hips, showing off the arm restrains which still had what was left of its broken chains dangling from it, and her chest puffed out, in a show of confident boast of her skill and fighting prowess, toward the challenger.

"In the eastern corner we have our favorite Pintsized Powerhouse from the Japanese Female Professional Wrestling: The Little Oni!" And to that role call the little girl raised both of her arms and pose herself as the unbending ironman that she was. "With her tiny figure you best not be deceived that each of her limbs pack so many energy it could destroy a mountain or two if she wanted to. But don't even think for a second that she had no skills on the rings, folks. She got a lot of way to make her opponent faints, and launching them out of the atmosphere is one of her favorite moves!"

"Come on ref, you're selling me a little too hard there," The Little Oni grinned from ear to ear. "I'm not that good."

With the cheering that the little lady got, Super Liger wasn't entirely too bothered by the apparent distinction between his persona and hers. He admitted to himself that it was irritating though, and it was time for him to take her down a peg. Looking from his perspective, he wasn't sure of what to make of the Little Oni: Was she a midget or a really short lady? Either way she stood there as a pro wrestler, and every wrestler had their gimmicks.

So what was hers?

Super Liger pointed his index finger toward her, before using it to make a slitting motion across her neck. He wasn't supposed to be in this match, but due to a contract deal he was obligated to be in this dinky square circle somewhere far from home. He hated this particular side of pro-wrestling, especially becoming a wrestler whose gimmick was so outrageous it couldn't possibly ever sell, but he had to soldier on. A man's got to have principles, and his was seeing things through until the end.

The referee walked into the corner and the two wrestlers were getting ready for battle. Super Liger braced himself for the incoming attack from the midget, but she just stood there putting on airs to the wrestling fans around them. She raised both arms into the air and let the screams of her fans, mostly girls, roar throughout the vicinity. But then she turned toward the foreign invader, and like Bruce Lee she goaded him to come to her in full force.

What an absolute show-off, thought the man in the silver costume.

Although her performances sure were able to keep people from never slowing their ballistic sides.

The girl got talent on her mic performance that was for sure, but how about her in-ring performance?

Super Liger dashed forward and pummeled the girl's stomach with a cross-arm lunge. It was easy to pick the girl off of the ground because she was short, and it was easier to slam her into the eastern pole due to how light her body was. There was a loud slam that echoed throughout the now silent dome.

It was due to shock from how easy it was for a grown man to have her way with their favorite little girl, but that was the situation Super Liger and Little Oni were supposed to be selling. It was part of the act, a carefully calculated choreography that the two had practiced individually. The confrontation so far was lifted straight from the wrestling books 101, and it was written there for a good reason.

But it wasn't over. Not yet.

Super Liger picked the Oni by her arms and launched her body upwards. The girl stood there, not fazing at all as if she was unconscious. Then came the moment where he slammed the back of the girl into the ring, hard.

Some of the audience started standing up from their seat. It was a nail biter for sure.

As Super Liger was getting himself the booing and cursing, he reveled in it and basked in his infamy. As a decent human being, he wasn't a subscriber to the pain against midgets around the world. As a pro-wrestler, he was supposed to be an example of a good heel. It was less for the green slip and more for no slipping in his careers.

But as Super Liger looked at the suddenly quiet audience, he realized that it was going to be an unconventional match for him.

Looking behind him, the Oni rose. She was now sitting on the same spot where she had been slammed down prior. Then the little girl turned her head toward Super Liger with a big grin as she stood up while proclaiming to everyone who can hear her.

"Is that all?"

Super Liger couldn't believe it himself. That was one of the more exhausting move that a pro-wrestler could receive and the girl just sat herself back up like nothing had ever happened. But he'll bite. He'll unleash his power as a pro wrestler at her and she will go down in style. He wanted to see how long the girl could endure, and as long as she laid motionless on the ground, he won.

And so began Super Liger's ineffective pummeling. He tried to punch the living daylights out of the girl, and even resorted to elbowing her at a dangerous angle. It would give the referee enough reason to call the heel on his bad and unprecedented behavior but when he saw the Oni not even flinching from those blows there were no reason for that to stop.

There was no way the producers wouldn't capitalize on this.

The barbarity never stopped from Super Liger. He kept his barrages of punches, elbows, kneads, and kicks toward the seemingly defenseless little brunette, but those moves just wouldn't do her in. The more he struggled to sunk her into the thin white mattress the more Super Liger found himself helpless before the littlest of presence from his opponent, as if he was trying to dent a sturdy and concrete wall with the flimsiest and rustiest tools.

It didn't feel like a set-up at all, because all combat moves he previously launched were all real and dangerous. Some of them even banned due to safety issues.

But the damned brat just won't flinch.

Super Liger had it with this disgusting farce. So he went out of the ring, picked up a folding chair to the protest from the commentators and stood menacingly at the center of the ring. With the chair on his hand, he banged the chair a few times on the mattress. The sound that came from its echo was both grating, but powerful.

Super Liger then dashed as fast as he could. He turned around, carrying the folding chair close to his chest, and let his back bounce on the ropes that acted as a barrier.

But that was a misconception. Those ropes were never something that hindered the wrestlers: They were tools to defeat their opponents.

A one-time visit to the ropes weren't enough. He doubled down by striding across the ring and bouncing on the other side. He tripled down by dashing back to the first ropes he had bounced before. It was apparent at this point that he was going to do something ridiculously risky, getting creative with the process for massive undertaking.

After the fifth time he had built up his speed bouncing on the ropes he launched his chair toward the little girl and hit her square on the head from its blunt edges. Finally the girl flinched as blood began splashing from one side of her forehead. Finally the Oni took a step back, shocking everyone that saw what just happened in-front of their eyes.

But it wasn't over.

At the same time the chair bounced off of the head, Super Liger launched a kick in mid-air. Using both of his legs to press his entire weight into the chair and into the Little Oni. She finally fell on the ground with a pool of blood flowing below her head.

Everyone stared at the girl that was now lying motionless on the ground, and every eyes in the room became affixed on Super Liger. He was out of breath, clearly trying his best just to recover from a trick that was done quite perfectly if he had to pat himself in the back. Except maybe he had executed the trick a little too well.

But there was nothing he could do but slowly raising his hands to the sky, proclaiming that he was the best between them.

Then it happened.

In the shadowy corners of Super Liger's vision, the Little Oni sat back up as if nothing had ever happened.

The audience didn't know if they should exude a sense of joy or a sense of fear. The feat that the little girl had exposed before them didn't befit a human. Her actions were bereft of humanity and tapping to the undiluted sense of abnormality. She stood up, slowly, gracefully, and without saying a word. Her expression said it all, though covered in a slowly dripping stream of red.

The big grin on her face signaled her counterattack.

And Super Liger knew it wouldn't end well for him.

The little girl walked toward Super Liger, and each steps she took felt like the earth below them beginning to crack and crumble. The man in the costume instinctively took a step back, and then another. He tried to reach for the folding chair by crouching, but once he asserted himself unable to reach the chair he forced himself to the ropes.

He had nowhere else to go, but the girl still made her way toward him.

The girl was just a few centimeters above his waist, but that was what made the girl extremely disturbing. Maybe the referee didn't sell her too much. Maybe she was the extremely powerful pintsized powerhouse.

However, he still had his pride as a pro-wrestler.

So he charged through the impossible odds.

And was met with a flying lariat that flashed his senses black and white.

"So, what do you think?"

The video was paused with a touch of a button. With the remote on her fingertips the Little Oni bask on the figure that was now standing proudly in the middle of the ring. She had been forcing the reporter of today to watch what appeared to be the recording of her matches from the start of the year before. It was no doubt a good wrestling match, her reporter thought so too, but she thought of it as an overplayed spectacle for sure.

"Well, Ms. Ibuki," started the reporter. "It was a pretty good match for sure, but what made that match the most memorable of all matches you've ever had before?"

"That's a good question," the brunette pointed at the black-haired reporter that dressed herself in as prim but stylish a manner as possible. "And it's something I can't answer that well. First of all, it's one of the turning points in my wrestling career. I used to be quite the jobber in the women's pro wrestling you see? Can't help myself but be the newbie that took the hit from the other senior wrestlers you feel me?

"Now that's directly related to my second point: The wrestling world changed that day. It was the start of a good year for wrestling. What I introduced to the crowd that day was not something you can find so easily in the east, but it was something you can easily find in the west. If I may ask this of you, miss reporter: Are you on the side of the East or the side of the West?"

The reporter fell silent.

And the brunette laughed. "Alright, that's pretty smart. I myself am a woman who believed on the western side of things. I desire power and great spectacle. Thrills that one can rarely encounter in their life. I made myself the Eastern Undertaker in my pursuit of becoming the unstoppable force of wrestling that will make everything simple. I desire not respect from my peers nor will I ever respect them, except if they are strong enough to defeat me. Though that's just the gimmick for now I intend to follow through with it."

A big word from a wrestler with barely a year of experience under her belt. This interview itself was just her boasting, even though she knew it could ruin her predetermined image in her promos. Either she was handed a lot of silver spoons or she was laying twenty-four karat gold the size of a goose eggs. But the reporter's input didn't matter in the least.

What she needed to write was Suika Ibuki's interview in verbatim.

"And finally, this is kind of embarrassing to say believe me," the wrestler rubbed the bridge of her nose bashfully. "It was nice to be viewed as the face of the ring for once. Those rigorous days of training and calmly taking it in finally bore fruit. I was there in the ring as the hero of the story, not the villain. I hope from now on I can always be the absolute force of justice"

Afterward the girl chuckled, before breaking out into a big laugh.

The reporter didn't know what to say to that, but her laughter was evidently contagious.

1998

Thinking back, the first time she was called into the supervisor's office was when she had received her first promotion. The smell of lavender filled the room, and a tense atmosphere appeared with each striking ticking from the clock placed above the exit. As usual, she would knock the door first before entering the room.

"Come in," replied the stern but soft voice from behind the door. "The door's unlocked."

"Boss, I'm here with Suika Ibuki's interview draft," the reporter said as she let herself in with thirty pages of documents in her hands. Twelve being the interview and eighteen being the background stories. Some she found intriguing if true, but out of professionalism she refused to make it anything personal. "Where do you want me to put it?"

"The usual cabinet," said the boss from behind the large desk at the end of the room. A single left hand pointed its index finger toward one of the white shelves stacked with various documents of varying shapes and sizes. "And after that I want you to take a seat over there," the index finger moved toward the empty chair opposite of her. "We need to talk."

"About what?" asked the girl as her hand stored the document in the bottommost shelf. "If it's about another promotion, I don't think I'm good enough to be one of the executives in this company." It wasn't just a show of modesty, because she meant it. Her workload already swamped her in her current position, and climbing the corporate ladder was just not the life she was dreaming of. "Do you accept if I decline your offer early?"

"Don't worry, it's not about that," it was faint but she could hear her supervisor laughing quite loftily. "Unless you want to decline covering your next hit piece."

With that alone she had her ear unconsciously perking up. Her smile as she looked at her boss was like that of a curious cat. "Tell me more."

There were a number of things that Aya noticed today: The sun was shining brightly, the flowers were dancing wildly as the petals were being blown away by a gentle and relaxed zephyr just outside the window. Her co-workers were looking at her weirdly, like finding a beached whale lonely with its live flashing before their eyes. Maybe because she was skipping along the 15th floor of her publication company heading out from her editorial management staffs with the biggest smile and the happiest expressions on her face.

"You're completely creeping me out, you know that?"

"I know."

Her happiness carried over into the lunch hour, painting a weird atmosphere around the cafeteria she usually hung around in with her colleagues. Hatate Himekaidou and Momiji Inubashiri, both being her juniors in their line of work couldn't have been feeling more awkward than they were right now.

That was until Aya stopped eating her lunch midway and started dancing around their table.

"Okay, what the hell is your disease?" Hatate angrily said as she pointed the pointy ends of her forks at the now seated girl. "Did you eat something funny this morning? You're not on or off of your meds, are you?"

"Oh, no no no, no. I'm just really, really happy right now!"

"But why?" Momiji said after she drank her refreshment, grape-flavored soda, and cleaned up her eating utensils. "I can get it if you just got a promotion or something, but this was something truly unprecedented."

"I got the ok."

"The ok for what?"

"My hit piece of the year."

Hatate thought about it for a second before she gasped and slammed both of her hands on the edges of the table. "No. Way." She made it extremely sure that she didn't misunderstood, so she asked again. "You mean about that strange cases? You were now given an okay by those stiff jerks from the editorial staffs?"

"You know it!"

"How in the world did you manage that?" Hatate was utterly dejected, but she shook it off as she tried her best to find a good place left in her and congratulate her superior. Aya wasn't just a superior to her though, but someone much more important than that. "Congratulation Aya. Now you're one step ahead of me again."

"And what are you going to do about it?"

"I'm going to catch you in no time," Hatate assured Aya. It was only natural for a rival to congratulate the progress and success that one rival had attained. "Our eternal game of cat and mouse will never end and you know it's true."

"I just hope I'm not too slippery for you to catch," the older reporter taunted her junior as she reveled in the basking afterglow

"Don't worry. If you turned into a frog I'll find you your prince charming," replied the junior reporter.

As the two reporters started to tease each other by trying to wrestle each other into a tickle-hold, Momiji slowly took her tray of food to the finished cabinet and walked away from the soon-to-be scene of carnage. As she thought about what articles were left unedited or in need of various touch-ups, she heard a loud crash and bang from behind her.

24th of March, 1998
14:12

After being chewed out by her superiors, Aya was given her letter of introduction from the supervisor herself. Looking closely at what appeared to be the silhouette letter sealed inside a signed white envelope, the back of the envelope had a signature wax seal that the supervisor loved so much. Not knowing much about her, what came up in the senior reporter's imagination was a shadowed and blurry figure for an older, more mature, and mysterious figure binding her peers with a penetrating glare.

Her first order from her superior was to introduce herself to the detective in-charge of the various cases pertaining to the same incidents. Finding her was supposed to be an easy job, because she was told the detective was living in one of Chiryu City's biggest shrines. Her supervisor said that she doubled as the caretaker when she was living here, working like a shrine maiden by the day and ace detective at night.

For her productive outings today, she wore her jet-colored soft cotton hat that gave warmth to her ears, a dark sunset-hued scarf over a fall-patterned leather winter coat. For her pants, she fancied a skin-tight denim jeans that reached as far as her brown leather boots were covering her legs. A bag of important journalist tools were slung over her shoulder, resting nicely on the right side of the reporter's hip.

"Living in Chiryu's shrine," she let her voice trailed off as one hand stroked her chin while the other laid out a small but packed with information notebook which belonged in her chest-pocket. "Could be the Chiryu's main branch of shrines. That supervisor does love talking in riddles, doesn't she?"

Passing by a park and hearing the wild cheer and jeer from it the reporter backpedaled almost instantly to look at the source of those loud voices. Now normally, depending on whose voices belonged to what she wouldn't force herself out of her way to approach them, but kids and teenagers are good sources of rumors. Aya Shameimaru was a firm believer that rumors are just half-truths, but those half-truths will spice up the eventual truths.

Playing all over the big jungle gyms were four small children. They wore different clothes that separated them from each other individually, but had enough common ideas on what they wore to exude various senses of being in a close-knit group of friends. As the raven-haired girl approached the quad-squad one of them was carefully teetering at one edges of the slippery playground attraction. The more she looked at the blue-coated girl, the more she feared for the worst to happen.

And so she picked up her pace. Slowly, she walked toward the little girl that was now dancing on the corner of the slippery pipes. The three other kids were watching her with absolute glee and clapping to her awkward choreography, but it was during their utmost fun that a large wind howled from the north and blew the dancing girl off-stance and off-balance.

She tried her best to keep herself balanced, and her friends reached for her to make sure she didn't fall from a three meters height. It was all in vain, because she quickly dipped down the outwards of the jungle gym head-first. On the side of the jungle gym was hard concrete. The blue-coated girl was sure that if her head were to hit that concrete floor she would become scrambled eggs and no one would ever know that it was her anymore.

"I got you kid!" Aya screamed as she ran at full speed and dived head first to catch the little girl. For a sprinter like Aya the distance was easy to cover. She had joined the athletic teams during her school days and had found herself being the ace of her school's track team. With just the right start and a good dash, the halcyon days of her sprinting career was slowly coming back to her.

The distance was just right.

Her legs were in her tip-top shape.

And now she pressed her weight down to a single muscle structure of her leg, propelling the mass of a 27 year old senior reporter.

She launched herself forward with her body just slightly above the ground. She turned around by using the power of her abdominal muscles and caught the blue-coated girl in her arms just before her small head had slammed itself into a messy destruction.

The kids were looking at the spectacle before them, before looking at each other, and gasped in awe at the sight of a human rocket.

"What was that!?"

"I don't know but the girl went bang and woosh!"

"That was amazing!"

The trio hurriedly leaped down from the jungle gym safely into the ground and surrounded the senior reporter with an apparent glee in their eyes. Aya found herself surrounded by little girls whose eyes had signs of complete interest in her. Then she looked at the little girl resting on her chest, and found her with eyes that were glittering a million stars at her. Slowly, Aya sat on the concrete ground while caressing her back as softly as she could.

As she sat, she mumbled silently: "Please no back pains!"

Thankfully, there weren't any complications with her back.

"Hey lady, who are you?" asked the little girl in blue. "Are you from outer space? Are you a robot?"

"Are you an alien?" greeted the one in a thick-looking black coat.

"She's not an alien dummy, she's an astronaut! They are the people who fights aliens!" the one in dark green winter jacket snidely replied. "Isn't that right lady?"

"No way, no way, she's neither of those!" Came the surprisingly small voice from the green-haired girl. "She's a superhero!"

"A superhero?" All of the other three kids instantly looked at Aya with an even more sets of starry eyes. But then they turned their eyes back toward the green girl. "What's a superhero?"

"They are the agents of justice! They fight for what is right and make it their absolute job to protect the peace and safety of the planet!" The green one pulled out a comic book from one of her coat pockets. "Look, like this character here: The Unstoppable Master Tengu!"

What the little girl in green showed the other girls were a figure of a costumed individual wearing a happy red tengu mask flying through the sky as if they were popping out of the comic book cover. The Master Tengu wore a plain black latex suit attached with an all-purpose utility belt on her waist and their hair was a painting of black and white. However, what caught Aya's attention was how the scarf that the tengu wore was eerily similar to the scarf that was around her neck right now.

"May I see that, uhm, may I ask for your name little lady in green?"

"Everyone calls me Dai!" The girl smirked as she handed Aya the comic book. "Here you go."

"I'm Rumia," said the one grinning widely. "So you're really not an alien?"

"I don't like my given name so call me Uri," the little girl in dark green clicked her tongue as she tried to continued, but she hesitated. "Forget it."

"Now you better remember my name okay, because I'm going to introduce myself once." The last one was happily jumping up and down on top of Aya's lap with the biggest and happiest smile on her face. "I am the genius Cirno! Its' nice to meet you, Master Tengu!"

Aya couldn't help but smile wryly. "I'm not this Master Tengu, girls. Sorry to burst your bubbles." She was expecting dejection from the little girls' eyes, but she found everyone just shaking their heads with eyes still glowing star lights toward her. "You couldn't possibly be thinking I'm this tengu shown in this comic book, could you?"

"But you are the Master Tengu!"

The four kids were saying that in unison.

"Alright, alright. Maybe I am that Master Tengu."

And every kids in the vicinity cheered.

24th of March, 1998

14:33

Aya was sitting on a vacant bench, surrounded by four little girls beside her. Two on her right and two on her left, they barraged her with questions upon questions related to her. What her name was, who she was working for, and which newspaper publication she belonged to. All of them pretty standard stuff, and it was a set-up for her to obtain information she couldn't get by conventional means later on.

After the short interrogations, Cirno excitedly told the Tengu where the shrine was. As she explained the direction, she touted: "Cirno's a genius, that's why CIrno know which shrine you're talking about!" Afterward she wanted to tag along with Aya and taking her gang along with her, but she'd rather go through the investigations solo.

"The Chiryu Shrine," the girl repeated the name engraved to the signpost beside the torii. "This was supposed to be where the ace detective live, but even Aya found it ridiculous that a Shrine Maiden would part-time as the strongest asset the Aichi Investigation Force had in their arsenal.

As she stared along the rising stairways, she found the strange case of incidents she was documenting becoming stranger and stranger. Not even the slowly darkening early-evening sky knew the exact degree of bizarre she will be getting into. Each steps she took toward the top made it explicitly obvious that what she was climbing toward had little semblance of a normal world.

The world is the stage, its surrounding the blank canvas.

Now on top of the stairs she had the bold view of a big shrine surrounded by fences overlooking a small forestation. She looked through the empty shrine-ground: roads made of pavements and grounds covered in lush green grass. It felt so serene, as if she was completely secured and protected in this small rectangular area.

She held onto her reporting tools inside her bag. Her hands were shaking, unsure of what was to come.

The shrine's serenity was eating her alive.

Noticing an offering box, however, lifted her suspicion of the otherworldly from her consciousness. It was a good indication that she was still in the world of the living. After placing a five-hundred yen coin inside the offertory, she rung the bell, and clapped her hands two times. Her eyes closed tight, she began to pray.

After a few minutes, something began to tug at her pants.

She looked down after she was done with her prayer. The sight of a cute little white dog made her heart jump from how cute it was. Its white seemingly-glowing fur combined with the handsome face that stared back at her gaze with its sharp but big eyes. The girl let her sensitive and girly side go as she crouched down and began petting the wolfdog all over as she hummed a few nice tunes out of her small lips.

"It seems my cute little wolfdog likes you, Ms. Tengu," a confident-sounding voice startled the reporter out of her daze of cuteness. Looking up was a figure of a woman in thick white coat, a red scarf around her neck, and blue jeans that reached up to where her loafers covered her feet. Her hair was tied in a ponytail and its luster color of hazelnut shone with the evening light. The woman on top of the shrine's wooden stairs was beautiful, that fact alone the reporter couldn't refute. "How about you come with me and have some tea? Green's fine with you, right?"

24th of March, 1998

15:22

The Chiryu Shrine consisted of a shrine ground, the main shrine, and a small house at the back of the main shrine. The shrine ground covered the area as far as the end of the small forestations around the shrine ground. There were many trees inside the shrine ground itself, but they were of different species. The forest would be consisting of pine trees, while the trees in the shrine ground were of oak and cherry trees.

The main shrine was the pagoda-like building that had the offertory box in-front of it. The roofing were wider than the usual shrines were designed, around 3 kens (about 1 9/11 meters) and more adorned with engravings and little statues of mystical beasts and deities. At the tip of the top of the pagoda rest a golden dragon that roared into the heaven, waiting for its time to ascend.

The small house at the back was just a regular resting home to rest in.

Sitting on one end of the table with the white snuggling wolfdog on her lap, Aya was waiting for her tea. The sounds of puttering kettle in the other room was loud enough for her to hear the metal container rattling. As her eyes wandered through the typical living room of a Japanese household, she found a picture inserted into a wooden frame.

The picture contained the girl living in the shrine surrounded by people in the same thick and white coat that she casually dressed herself in. She set the cute puppy aside and walked toward the magazine rack the frame was sitting on. She grabbed the wooden frame with her right hand and brushed the few dusts that it gathered with her left hand.

"You like that picture?" The door was slid back, closing the entrance from Aya. The brunette placed her cup of green tea on the table, but her presence was severely locked onto the reporter that was clearly not minding her manners. Sitting down, the girl sighed as she hugged her wolfdog and began ruffling the dog's fur. "What's the matter? Come and sit down. Don't you have something to talk about?"

Aya felt something forming in her throat, and then she swallowed it.

Sitting down, before her was a mysterious woman. She acknowledged how beautiful she was, but she couldn't help but feel threatened with her hospitality. The next thing Aya knew she would be invited to dinner, but that would be one offer she would never agree on.

"Did you know?"

"Know what?"

"The last time a reporter was in my doorstep he never came back," she quietly giggled. Afterward sighing her entire lung out. "He moved to another country, said he's trying to hide his face from the face of the earth. "I missed that guy, you know? So what does an esteemed reporter like you need in such a dinky and forgettable place like this, Ms. Aya Shameimaru?"

"You know of me?"

"Of course I do," the shrine maiden reached for a locker behind her and pulled out a newspaper with the year 1994. 'The name of the writer for these headlines of this newspaper from this date up to three years later was yours, no? Every single day your findings were still being talked about and even to this days it's still remembered quite fondly by the masses. You made a really good name for yourself, didn't you? Ms. Aya Shameimaru?"

"Just call me Aya."

"Then, Aya," asked the brunette as she looked straight into her eyes. "What do you need from me?"

"First of all, a letter of introduction from my superior," a letter was produced out of the bag of reporting tools. It was signed and addressed toward the shrine maiden. "If what I presume was correct then your name is Reimu Hakurei," said Aya as she slid the envelope toward her side of the table. "And this letter is for you."

Reimu picked up the envelope, opened it and read it with haste.

"Second of all, I want to interview the ace detective that recently moved in from Tokyo. Well, it had been half a year since you came to the Aichi prefecture so to speak. But in the world of news-coverage it might as well just be yesterday."

"And what's next?" her tone spoke a level of boredom. "You're not really here just to interview me, right? As I recalled your subordinate had covered that part of the story, as you put it, yesterday. What are you trying to fish out of me, Ms. Tengu?"

That name was uttered again, did she really look like a tengu to everyone?

"Third and lastly: Tell me about the S-24 incident of 1989. In full and unadulterated detail, Detective Hakurei," Aya stopped, continuing with a reiteration. "The blood donor incident."

The information took a second to register into her brain, but the smile that came out of the brunette's mouth was a pleasant and motivated one. Her eyes were shining brightly, reveling in what was about to come out of her mouth and the journalist's mouth.

"Have you ever heard about Vampires before?"

"See the nefarious Super Liger as he fights the incredible Little Oni in an all-out no holds-barred slugfest from the 1997 All-Star Wrestling Match. Live from Tokyo Dome, this match will surely be recorded as one of the best fight in wrestling history. Don't miss out on its thrilling climax and amazing conclusion!"

From the backcover of All-Star Wrestling Match (1997): Super Liger vs The Little Oni. Live footages were edited in post-production by Cucumber Computer Editing House with the help of Suika Ibuki, the Little Oni herself. Contained in the bonus track: Suika Ibuki's turning-point interview.