The policeman stepped out of his box and waved. "Hey, Yamamura! How's the promotion sitting?"
Kenjiro Yamamura ran a hand through his hair. "I'm still getting used to it. They sent me to Department 6."
"What's Department 6?"
"Durned if I know."
"Well, what do they have you doing?" the policeman asked his old friend.
"You've heard about the trouble at Juuban?"
"The haunted school? Yeah. Just outside my district, though."
"One of their students was involved in that jewelry store thing last week, too."
"The girl that went to the hospital?"
"She's okay," Kenjiro said. "They patched her up and sent her home. But her mother is still there. She's in some sort of coma, has the doctors baffled. And then there's that sickness that struck several of the shoppers who were there. They have three of them on iron tablets and observation for anemia."
"Like those anemia cases at Juuban?" the policeman asked.
"Don't spread that about, Zenji," Kenjiro cautioned. "It's far too early to start a general panic."
"This is an odd neighborhood," the policeman mused. "You know Feng Shui, that stuff? The whole neighborhood is supposed to be some kind of mystic nexus, and it centers on that school."
"So." Kenjiro sighed. "And anything odd happen this week?"
"Nothing but a stray cat," his friend laughed. "Seen this black stray for a good two weeks now. I should call Animal Control but I'm too soft-hearted."
"Back to work for me," Kenjiro said with a laugh. "I left the Department car around the corner."
"Good luck with your investigation," the patrolman said. Then he saluted. "Detective."
SEARCH FOR THE MOON PRINCESS
Episode Four: Fire on the Mountain
Darien was worried. He remembered too well waking in a sudden sweat with vivid dreams just starting to fade. He had staggered out of bed that morning feeling like he hadn't slept at all. Then he discovered the cut on his cheek.
For a moment he wondered if he'd cut himself shaving. But he didn't shave his legs. Or the other places he spent a few minutes of iodine and bandages on. When he came back out of the bathroom he discovered the roses he had bought were missing from their vase -- but his dress shoes were neatly shined.
Darien sighed now, giving the pleasant day a distrustful look. That had been a week ago and nothing similar had happened since. Maybe it had just been stress. "Amnesia I've lived with all my life," he said to himself. "Sleepwalking I can do without." He thought about the missing roses again. "What could I have been up to?"
They met at a soda shop within the Crown Arcade. "Serena," Amy said, "There's a cat on your shoulder."
"I found her. I call her Luna. See that spot on her forehead?"
"Wait a minute," Amy said. "I know this cat. You're that cat that rescued me, aren't you?"
"Meow," Luna said. She looked guilelessly back at Amy.
"Huh," Amy said, letting the matter be for the moment.
"You want to window shop, or are we going to the arcade?"
"Actually," Amy said, "I have something to do this afternoon."
"Not studying!" Serena moaned.
Drat, Amy thought. I don't want to lie to Serena. In the Crystal Academy disk she'd hacked had been reference to the "Sixth Road of Sendai Hill." Only five roads met there now, but Amy had turned up some old legends. She meant to ask around at the Shinto Shrine there.
"I was going to go to the Hikawa Shrine," she told Serena. "Some girls in our class have been getting good-luck charms there to help them with their grades." It was the truth, though it was not her own errand.
"Ooh." Serena's ears pricked up. "Do you think that would work for me?" She jumped to her feet. "Geography test, here I come!"
Amy dropped her head in chagrin. Well, maybe this time Serena wouldn't be a trouble magnet...
The cherry trees were in full bloom, almost hiding the long stairs up from the bus stop and the tall torii gate into the shrine. Within was a collection of traditional wooden buildings surrounded by the quiet greens and browns of oak and maple. Some of the older trees were girded with straw rope hung with zig-zag paper streamers; a mark of powerful kami.
"Whew," Serena said. "I'm winded from all those stairs. Hey, this place is neat! Look, Amy, some girls from our school! Oh, is that one of the priests?"
The small balding man in old-fashioned dress bustled up to them, beaming broadly from under thick white eyebrows. "Welcome, young ladies!" he chirruped. "Welcome!"
"Thank you," Amy bowed deeply. "It's our first visit," she told him.
"Excellent, excellent. Come back again, and often, won't you?"
Amy didn't know what to say, so she bowed again. The old man bustled off towards another group of visitors.
Over by the fence a shrine priestess was sweeping. "Amy, do you see that girl?" Serena pointed. "Oh, she's so beautiful!"
The girl was striking; long black hair, dark eyes, a long body that suited the flowing lines of her robes. She was also familiar. Amy realized she had been near them at the jewelry store. Serena had even bumped into her.
The girl seemed to notice their gaze. She looked their way in a calm challenge. Dead leaves swirled in a sudden gust about her feet and two black ravens dropped from the sky to alight on her shoulders.
"Oh!" Serena bit her knuckles.
Amy felt a bit like doing the same. "Stay out of trouble, will you?" she told Serena. "I'm going to have a look around."
Raye Hino knelt before the flame burning near the heart of the shrine. The Miko -- the priestesses of a Shinto shrine -- were even today respected for their spiritual affinity. Back in the ancient traditions (and the Hino line went very, very far back) their powers were reputed to be greater still.
Her long black hair flew wild about her face as she chanted in a low voice, and the firelight threw jagged shadows across the dark wooden walls.
Her visions, the visions that came to her in meditation, had in recent weeks undergone a disturbing change. She sensed evil forces forming, growing in power. She devoted more and more time to her meditations, now, trying to understand this change in her visions. Was this something changing within her? Some dark turn to her own psyche? Or was this truly something new and dangerous come to the world about her?
Raye bowed before the fire, hands held in the mystical gestures that would concentrate her vision. "Help me, spirits," she chanted to the kami of the shrine. "Help me see what evil threatens this place."
The smoke twisted and spiraled until she could see shapes within it. "This shrine? There is evil here?" She gestured again, trying to see more clearly.
Something was here. Something new, something very powerful, had come to the shrine today. And that something was now...behind her!
"Who's there?" Raye demanded. "Show yourself!"
The figure moved. "Stop right there!" Raye cried. She spun to her feet and reached into her sleeve.
A projectile hurtled past her. It was a mop bucket. It hit the brazier in a terrible hissing and the room filled with white smoke. Raye rubbed at her eyes, trying to see. "I think I'm in trouble," she said.
Amy wasn't sure what the priestess had been up to. Putting the lights out had seemed the prudent thing to do. But she knows this shrine very well, Amy thought wryly. I'm a lot more likely to get disoriented than she is.
She walked gingerly forward, hoping she was moving along the wall towards the door. There was an excitement in her of having a chance to come to grips with one of the mysterious attackers. It was well-tempered with the realization that the last two had been rather too tough for her to handle alone.
She bumped into something that breathed.
Amy grabbed with desperation, managed to find a head, shifted her hands to the other's throat. A pair of hands scratched at hers in the dark, then went unerringly to a target of their own. Amy felt the pressure behind her eyes as her neck was squashed for the second time that week.
It had turned in a moment into a contest of pure strength and will. Amy knew she was naturally strong, perhaps stronger than most of the girls in her class. But whoever this was had a steely strength of her own.
Their feet scuffled against the wooden floor. Amy's back hit the wall, and they rolled across it, slamming first one of them then the other. Bright flashes and fireworks were starting to play in Amy's vision. Against the roaring in her ears she heard a voice shouting;
"Stop it! Stop fighting, both of you! Amy, she's not from the Negaverse!"
In one last burst of strength Amy thrust the other person away. She fell, hard, back against the wall.
Raye staggered back, holding her throat. What was this thing? And what had spoken? Okay, this was enough playing around.
She yanked an ofuda from the wide sleeves of her Miko garb, unrolled it with a snap of her wrist, and made a quick gesture over it. She squinted, saw the movement in the smoke, and dove in.
"Evil Spirits, I banish you!" she cried, and pasted the ofuda cleanly on the thing's forehead.
The thing moaned and fell over with a distinctly un-demonic thump. Raye crawled over, feeling her way along the floor. She came to an ankle. Felt pleated skirt, then bows, then pigtails.
There was no doubt about it. She'd just tried to dispel a junior high girl.
Serena lay under a quilt in the old-style wooden house just off the shrine that Raye and her grandfather shared. "If you hadn't been sneaking around..!" Raye blazed. Then she hung her head again. "She'll be fine. In fact, she should have woken up already!"
"And how is the young lady?" Grandfather bustled in, beaming. "I made rice dumplings for everyone!"
"Rice dumplings!" Serena sat bolt upright. "Mm, hmmm!"
"So, Serena," Amy said. She tried to get her friend's attention; the dumplings were fierce competition. "What did you mean by saying "She's not from the Negaverse?"
"Gblm curswmnb," Serena said.
"Serena..!"
"Where did you find this airhead?" Raye asked.
"Inmambl gblms!" Serena said. Her eyes filled with tears.
"Now, don't you start on her, Raye!" Amy said crossly. "I'm still not so sure about you!"
Serena swallowed convulsively. "It wasn't me. What's a Negaverse, anyway?" She beamed. "Are there any more?"
Amy hung her head. Then she looked thoughtful. "So Serena didn't say anything, and Raye and I couldn't -- that's odd."
"What?"
"I didn't know cats could sweat." They all looked at Serena's cat.
"Oh, all right," the cat said. "Yes, I told you to stop fighting. For all the good it seems to have done. Honestly, how you expect to fight the Negaverse when you can't spend five minutes without fighting among yourselves..."
"Raye hit me too hard! Raye hit me too hard! I'm hearing voices!"
"I didn't hit you, you dweeb! I blessed you. If you ever reach satori you'll have me to thank!"
"Calm down, both of you!"
"This is just what I was talking about," the cat lectured. "You girls are going to have to buckle down and concentrate if you intend to continue with this mad adventure of yours..."
"How do you turn her off?" Serena muttered. She grabbed Luna and swung her up over her head. "Is there an off switch?"
"Put me down!" the cat said crossly. "I am not a toy. I am a Guardian from the Moon Kingdom -- and far more experienced than any of you, I might add."
"Did someone ask for more rice dumplings? And what would you like?"
"Milk, thank you," Luna told Grandfather. He beamed and disappeared again.
"Is everyone but me just totally insane? You're talking to my cat! Raye is writing poems and sticking them on people's foreheads! And some ugly with a weirdo accent tore up Molly's mom's shop and now Molly is hurt!"
"Serena, please." Luna had a perfect voice for lecturing; she sounded just like a school teacher. "It is really very simple."
She took a deep breath. "Girls, your world is being invaded."
Next --The Negaverse is on a roll and their deadliest attack yet is aimed right at Raye. Detective Yamamura scratches his head at the mystery of the missing buses and Luna has a few choice words. Can Kitty Magic be far behind? A special two-parter!