Chapter 8: Like Pac-man

Yama rubs his temples in frustration. He was aboard The Colloquium of Souls at the moment, standing in the reception area trying to fill out the paperwork necessary to see Onigumo's soul recalled from the void. The Colloquium of Souls was a relatively new ship in the grand scheme of things, it served as a docking station for every afterlife the mortals had dreamt of. There were thousands of gods and goddesses of the dead and every one of them had their own version of an afterlife, naturally all of them were actually space ships of various shapes and sizes.

Under his kingship, The Spirit World was one of them. But not all afterlives had gods to oversee them and not all afterlives prohibited their souls from traveling, some even encouraged it. To make matters simpler The Colloquium of Souls was built to handle the traffic of souls between each afterlife and The Wheel of Reincarnation.

Unfortunately, under the management of Kui-Xing it had a bureaucracy to match. From the fringes of his hair Yama glares at the man sitting at the reception desk, Kui-Xing was a Chinese god who had been given the office of literary affairs upon his deification; in short he was the god of memos, post-it notes and paperwork. He was practically Yama's arch-nemesis.

Finishing the last line in the sheaf of papers Yama places the clipboard on the reception desk. Neither god says anything while Kui-Xing goes through it. Finally nodding the sitting god gestures to one of the clay soldier-golems placed under his command. "The brown soldier will lead you to the recall chamber. I trust your people can handle the claw machine?" Yama nods before turning and walking away. Kui-Xing grins at the leaving Kami's back, his appearance shifting into that of a red eyed goddess. She whistles as she turns and leaves.

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-O-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

"Sir? We have a bit of a problem..." Yama looks up from the data pad in his hand at the ogre in the doorway to his office. That was funny; it looked like the same one that had delivered bad news before. The officer looks down, "Ah, well the ogres in charge of operating the claw machine ran out of coins…" Yama face palms, the indignities he was subjected to. "Get another 100 from the treasury and leave me in peace." The officer salutes, nearly stabbing himself in the hand with his horns before scurrying away. Ah well. At least it couldn't get any worse right?

Yama gently lets his head hit his desk with a light thunk. …he was going to pay for that thought somehow he just knew it…

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-O-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

"Sir? We have a bit of a problem..." Yama looks up from his data pad in his hand at the ogre in the doorway to his office. Oh dear, it was the same ogre again, he would have to check later and make sure that ogre wasn't being hazed. "What is it now; they can't be having that much difficulty with the claw machine." The officer gulps, "You know how no one is supposed to be able to escape the void?" Yama stands up quickly, slamming his hands down on his desk. "He didn't! Please tell me he did not escape the void!" Oh dear myself why?!

The officer nods shakily, "That's correct sir, he didn't, but he got very close to doing so. The techno-ogres are here with an explanation." Yama sighs putting his head in his hands. This was going to be blamed on him. He knew it. "Send them in." There is a quiet scuffling as the techno-ogres enter the room to stand before his desk. With a deep sigh Yama looks up. "Well, go on." An ogre in a lab coat takes a step forward, "Now, the first thing you have to remember about the void is that it isn't actually a void. The moment we put something in it, it automatically becomes something else. So really it's more like a whole lot of space with funny physics and a microbe in it. And since everyone's been using the void as a garbage dump for things they don't want to deal with, it has gotten really full for something we call a void."

The ogre hands Yama a data pad, "About 4 dimensional ages ago we resorted wrapping everything up in its own little void bubble to keep everything separate from everything else. So then the void was more like pile of bubbles with something in the middle of each one; amorphous but with millions of tiny partitions. The second thing you have to understand is that normally a soul thrown into the void collapses in on itself; mostly due to sensory deprivation… we think. And well, the soul you asked us to recall appears to have done the opposite instead." Yama looks up sharply, "What!"

The ogre nods its head repeatedly, "Yes, yes we thought that was weird too, it got worse though, since because he expanded instead, the void bubble he was in wound up too small, allowing him to shatter the partition between himself and his neighbors, whom he promptly err… ate… like Pac-man."

Yama drops his head to his desk, his horns adding more chips to the worn surface, "Do we have any idea why this happened?" The ogre looks over at one of the others, "Now I'm not too sure about this but, Steven thinks that there are two contributing factors. The first factor is that the soul Onigumo spent two lifetimes as an absorption yōkai, which may have changed the identity modifier in his soul from human to yōkai. The second factor is the size of his soul. Originally it was within the normal range for souls his age and purity class, but whatever he was doing that last lifetime caused his soul to immensely grow in size. So he had both the knowledge and the means to go about absorbing bodies and destroying souls to make energy and matter; and lots of practice doing so, which let him continue expanding outward."

"Everything he encountered is part of him now, luckily for us, eventually the size of the bubble he was in was too great for him to get any leverage, or we really would have had a void again. After a while of thrashing about Onigumo eventually stilled… then he collapsed in on himself... Only instead of collapsing into a fist sized soul he collapsed into a slimy pile of goo, viscera, and bones with a skin blanket and randomly placed appendages of various shapes and sizes… Some of the ogres who operated the claw machine are still in the bathroom puking…I'm not sure when they are going to come back out."

Yama cried internally; he was going to be in so much trouble for this! "What did he absorb? I don't see that in this data file." The ogres look at each other in question again and Yama feels a migraine coming on. The lead ogre speaks again, "Unfortunately there is no way of measuring distance or position in the void so we have no idea where the bubbles are exactly or consequently what he absorbed… I know The Assembly wants him as a witness but are you sure you want us to pull him out? Some of the stuff we threw in there was really, really, scary."

Yama shakes his head, "There is no way in any space or time anyone with half a brain would allow that, send a message to The Soul Society and ask their soul king to lend us The Kōtotsu. Make sure Onigumo soul doesn't come out of the void with anything else."