A thousand tides, a thousand waves
Takin' it all away
It'll come back in, we'll be gone by then
And it's a miracle we ever learned to live

-Indigo Girls

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Part 14: Afterimage

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Later, Hazuki would not be able to say that she blacked out, as such, but she could not tell how much time had passed before the Souma of her loved ones brought her back to the here and now. Even then, though, her mind held only one thought: She can't be dead, she can't be dead, she can't...

"How..." she heard herself say, as though from a great distance. "How did she..? Was it... in battle?" That seemed most likely, and Chou'un probably would have preferred to meet her end on the battlefield anyway.

A tiny shake of the head from Ryofu. "Disease," she said softly.

The answer was like a cold fist tightening around her innards. Even a warrior's death had been denied her. "I'm sorry, this is..." Hazuki whispered, looking away from those eyes even as her own began filling with numb tears. She felt Chikaru and Tamao squeezing her hands, but she could not look up at them, because she knew that once she did it would all be over.

Ryofu made a surprising sound, then: part growl and part sigh. "I'm sorry," she grated, and Hazuki could not help but look up at her then. Ryofu's normally blank face was once again a tangle of unfamiliar emotions, chief amongst them frustration. "I could have... said that more..." she fumbled for a word, "more... kindly. Not used to... talking to people anymore. Haven't spoken... since Chinkyuu died."

"I'm sorry, Ren," Hazuki whispered. She knew the name Chinkyuu from Ikki Tousen, not to mention from having now actually read Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and could only assume that "her" Ryofu had met her companion and strategist after she and Hazuki had parted ways. But that had been... what, a few months ago? A year at most? Could this loss have changed Ryofu so quickly?

"She had... a good, long life," Ryofu said slowly. "Chinkyuu did. But also Chou'un. Fought and lived at Kan'u's side through... many wars."

This was making less and less sense, and Hazuki groped for a realization that simply would not come. In the end, it was Chikaru who asked the relevant question. "Ryofu-san... how long has it been since you last saw Hazuki?"

Ryofu closed her eyes and looked deep in thought for a moment. "I... don't know, but... I think about... eighty years?"

For the second time in short succession, Hazuki felt the world spinning away, so she pulled her hands free and somehow clambered to her feet. "I... have to go..." she heard herself whisper. "Have to... find Kaname." And even though finding her fellow Yami was nowhere near a priority at that moment, at least this gave her the excuse she needed, and she half stumbled and half ran for the door.

Kaname stood with her hands on her hips and stared down the son of the man who'd raped her eight years before. "All right, go ahead and talk. I'm listening."

"Can we... maybe not talk out in the open?" Hoshi grimaced, looking around. "I'd... rather not be seen."

"Rather not be seen," Kaname nodded. "Which is of course why you wandered onto the campus of an all-girl school wearing a trenchcoat and sunglasses, with hair that can probably be seen from low orbit. You're not exactly scoring any ninja points here, Hoshi-kun."

"Look, it might be..." he snapped, but then rapidly composed himself. "It might be... bad... if someone were to see me here talking to you. I'm still not a hundred percent sure I'm not being followed."

"Oh, lovely," Kaname sighed. "Fine. Over here, then."

She led the way toward the shed where the track and field equipment was kept. After taking a look to make sure there weren't any of the usual bi-curious underclassmen trying to furtively sneak kisses, she motioned him to follow her around back. "This is as private a place as we're going to get," she said, turning to face him again. "No one here to see us but the woods." It occurred to her that she was baiting him a little, and she could not deny that a very dark part of her actually wanted him to try something, just so she could kick his ass.

"Okay," Hoshi nodded. He then took a long breath. "I guess you've heard about what our parents have in mind for us?"

"Wedding bells, a honeymoon, and a string of hopefully female heirs? Yeah, I've heard. And I suppose you're here to talk me into it?"

He frowned. "Kaname-san, I..."

"Because it's not going to happen," Kaname interrupted him. "You have about as much chance of marrying me as you do sprouting wings and flying to Mars under your own power, kiddo. I don't care about the money, I don't care about the power, and I don't care about the intimidation. I'm not the same little girl you knew years ago, Hoshi-kun, and no one, especially anyone named Saiga, is ever going to force me into anything again, do you hear me?"

"Kaname-san, you don't understand..."

"What's there to understand?" she snarled. "If you think I'm going to..."

This time Hoshi was the one who interrupted. "I don't want to marry you!" he all but shouted, then made another visible effort to calm himself. "I... have no desire whatsoever to marry you, Kaname-san."

She stared dumbstruck at him for a few seconds. "Oh, Christ, don't tell me you're gay?"

"No," he said hurriedly, shaking his head. "Not gay at all. I just... don't want to marry you."

In spite of herself, Kaname felt insulted at the denial. "Ohhh, I get it. I'm not good enough for you? Well, I am damaged goods. You know that better than just about anyone."

"That isn't what I meant," he grated. "What I meant was..." He worked his lips silently for a few moments, as though trying to either find the words or keep them in. "I couldn't do that to you, after what my father did. I was a child too, Kaname-san. I couldn't stop him from hurting you then..."

Hoshi looked anywhere but at Kaname, his face the very picture of barely suppressed emotion. "But I can stop this," he whispered.

Hazuki kept moving until she reached the roof of the gymnasium building, and only then did she stop for breath, hoping that maybe the afternoon wind would just blow through her and clear her head of these racing thoughts.

Eighty... years...

Only now that she was alone were the horrible implications beginning to set in. In spite of the fact that she didn't look as though she'd aged a day, Ryofu was somewhere around a hundred years old now. Possibly even older: Hazuki had no idea how old Ryofu had been when they had met, and had only assumed early twenties based on her appearance.

If eighty years had indeed passed, then it probably wasn't just Chou'un: most likely everyone Hazuki had met in that world was dead by now. Toutaku and Kaku, Kayuu-shogun... hell, even Sekito... and Ryofu would have witnessed it all, while she remained as young and vital as ever.

Only then did Hazuki realize that she was still carrying her mask. She looked at it more closely, and now that she knew what she knew, she could see the signs of age on it: the faded paint, the darkening of the cracked area that showed the weathering it had endured...

"I'm sorry we never found your mask," Ryofu whispered, her tiny smile fading.

"It's okay," Hazuki assured her. "If it turns up, would you hold onto it for me?"

"I will."

Had Ryofu scoured the battlefield looking for this lost mask? And then saved it for her all these years, hoping that one day she'd be able to return it?

Hesitantly, Hazuki held the mask close to her face. Even new, it had not been equipped with strings or a strap to fasten it to the face, but when Hazuki had put it on, it had stayed securely in place, as though held there by either magic or simply the force of Chou'un's personality.

"Wear these into battle," Chou'un said, brandishing the blue mask before handing it to Hazuki, "and you will have the strength of a thousand! None shall be able to stand against your fury as you defend what is yours!"

She could not deny, even now, that something transformative had happened when she had put the mask on. There had been magic in that world, after all: maybe some of it was left? Maybe there was some trace of the Kachou Kamen persona to be found?

She placed the mask to her brow.

Chou'un saluted her with a bao quan gesture, a sign of respect between warriors. "Good travels to you, Tsuki Kachou," she winked.

"Thank you... Hoshi Kachou..." Hazuki bowed in return. "Thank you for everything."

"You can thank me by telling me how it all turned out when next we meet," Chou'un smirked.

Had Chou'un ever completed her own quest? Ryofu said that Chou'un had lived and fought at Kan'u's side, but had it been only as warriors, or had Chou'un been able to confess her love for the black-haired bandit hunter she so admired? And had that love been returned?

She took her fingers from the mask, and it immediately fell from her face.

Hazuki sank to her knees and buried her head in her hands as the first sobs finally came.

"So, what are you going to do?" Kaname asked, still staring dubiously at the young man. "Are you going to tell your father you want some fresh meat?"

Hoshi leaned back against the back wall of the shed, then slowly sank to a seated position, as though he were quickly running out of gas. He rubbed his hands wearily over his face, then let out a long, slow breath.

Based on his sudden change of posture, Kaname could guess the answer. "But you can't do that, can you?"

"Not to his face, no," Hoshi said quietly.

Kaname stared at him for a while longer, then came up alongside him and sat down as well, leaving about a meter between them. "Can't stand up to the old man, then?"

"My father is a monster," Hoshi said, and now his voice was thick with emotion. "I know all too well what he put you through, Kaname-san, but... believe me: being his son, and his potential heir, is a very special form of Hell. So... no, I cannot refuse his wishes." He looked over at her and gave another humorless smile. "Not in the conventional manner, anyway."

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked quietly.

"It means that I won't be what he wants me to be." He looked away, casting his gaze toward the trees. "I'm leaving the country, Kaname-san. I'm going to try to go somewhere that he'll never find me, so I can try to live my own life, instead of the one he would shape for me."

"Christ," she whispered. "I'm guessing he doesn't know?"

"Not yet," Hoshi snorted. "Then again, maybe he already does. I've been living under his watchful eye my entire life. He's bound to notice I'm gone sooner or later... probably sooner... and then he'll notice the missing money that I stole, and then he'll track down the car I rented and the flight I'll be booking..." He took another deep breath and let it out slowly. "But by then, if I'm lucky, I'll be long gone. Money can go some distance toward making me disappear once I'm in Shanghai. From there, I'm thinking maybe America, maybe England... somewhere I can just... be."

Kaname nodded slowly. At least now the bleached hair made sense, but there was something else that did not. "Hoshi-kun," she asked, "are you in danger?"

Another forced smile. "As they say in all the bad movies, Kaname-san... I know too much. My father won't let me go easily, so I have to make a quick exit."

"Then why, if time is of the essence, did you take a detour in your daring escape to come and see me?" she asked. "Were you maybe hoping I'd want to marry you after all? Because if you haven't heard the rumors yet, I'm queer."

He gave her a surprised look, which then faded to something more thoughtful. "Huh. I guess I can understand why you would be, after..."

"Oh, do not go there," Kaname growled.

Hoshi blinked at her a couple times, then shook his head. "No, Kaname-san, that wasn't why I came."

"Then why?"

After a moment of internal deliberation, Hoshi reached into his pocket and pulled out a small USB stick drive, which he held out to her. "I wanted to give you this."

Kaname took the nondescript object from him and turned it over with her fingers. "What is it?"

Hoshi spoke the next words with obvious difficulty. "It's... the evidence... of what he did to you that night."

Kaname's blood ran cold even as her Souma flared inside her, and she nearly dropped the device out of sheer revulsion. "Are you telling me," she said in a low, dangerous voice, "that your sick f*ck of a father took pictures?"

"No, not pictures," Hoshi said, shaking his head. "He... took video."

Tamao was not yet an expert on using her Souma to sense the presence of her loved ones, but she could feel it enough to follow Hazuki to the roof. The black-haired girl was sitting over by the edge, staring out toward the distant ocean, her mask held loosely in one hand and her hair trailing behind her in the light wind. Tamao approached slowly, then sat beside her. "I... brought your shoes," she said quietly, holding out the items in question.

"Thank you," Hazuki said with a tiny smile, accepting the shoes and slipping them on. "I... wasn't thinking this far ahead, to be honest."

"I don't blame you," Tamao sighed. After a pause, she went on. "Chikaru's still there with Ryofu-san. I think she's going to... well, she's going to be Chikaru, and try to put her at ease. Ryofu-san seemed... surprised when we told her that it hadn't been eighty years for you, as well. At least, I think she was. It was kind of hard to tell."

"Yeah, she doesn't tend to emote much," Hazuki nodded. "I suppose if Lilith were here she could give us the whole lecture on subjective time and book time and so forth, but... I guess time just moves differently in her world."

That had occurred to Tamao as well, though she did not like the potential implications at all. "I... hope it wasn't my fault, Hazuki-chan," she said quietly.

"How could this possibly be your fault?" Hazuki asked, turning a puzzled look on her. "Why would you even think that?"

"Because I helped Lilith-sama put that book back together," Tamao sighed. "I was there when the flow of time started again. What if I made some kind of mistake, and..?" She broke off, unable to finish the thought.

"I don't think you did anything wrong," Hazuki assured her. "If the flow of time got screwed up, that's on Lilith, not you. Besides, if time moves faster for them, that might explain why it took Lilith a few months to come back for me when I was in that world: maybe for her it was only a day or two." She looked pained for a moment, then shook her head. "Anyway, I shouldn't have bolted like I did."

"You just had a terrible shock," Tamao assured her. "No one could blame you for that."

No reply was given, and Tamao turned her eyes toward the distant horizon as well. "I'm sorry, Hazuki-chan," she whispered. "I know Chou'un was... important to you."

After a pause, Hazuki began speaking in a soft, distant voice. "Just a few days ago Chikaru was telling me about how far I've come in accepting who and what I am: a woman who loves other women. There are three people in all the worlds I've traveled whom I can truly thank for that." She looked over and gave Tamao another wan smile. "Two of them are my girlfriends." The smile faded, and she looked away again. "Chou'un was the third. Even though we were never... intimate... she taught me a lot about what it is to be a lesbian. Not as much as she originally wanted to, perhaps, but..."

A soft chuckle escaped Hazuki then, and Tamao smiled along with her, even though she could not deny a twinge of uncomfortable emotions at this reminder of Hazuki's time in that world.

"Chikaru started me on the road by helping me accept that there was nothing wrong with what I am, and what I feel," Hazuki went on. "Chou'un took me further down that road, by arguing that not only was there nothing wrong with it, but that maybe it was the most right thing in all the world." She then smiled wistfully, again looking over at Tamao. "And then you showed me that both of them knew exactly what they were talking about."

Tamao nodded, still feeling that twist of discomfort at hearing another name beside hers and Chikaru's, but she pushed that aside, reminding herself chidingly that she had no room to be jealous, given her own past with Nagisa. Hazuki had just lost a dear friend, and there was no place for feelings like these.

"When I first started on the journey," Hazuki continued, "I didn't exactly go out of my way to make friends. I was too focused on Hatsumi for that. Even in later worlds, I always knew I'd be leaving soon, so it felt like there was no point in letting myself get close to anyone. Even in the few worlds that I made true friends, it wasn't as though I'd ever be able to visit, or send letters." She hung her head for a moment, then sighed. "Somehow, though? Deep down? I always thought that I'd see Chou'un again. It just seemed... impossible that I wouldn't."

As much as her heart was breaking at Hazuki's pain, the earlier thought of Nagisa was giving Tamao an even more uncomfortable feeling. "Hazuki-chan?" she whispered.

"Hmm?"

"What happened to Ryofu-san... it's going to happen to us too, isn't it?"

Hazuki nodded slowly. "I wish I could tell you otherwise, Tamao-chan, but... yeah, it probably is."

They sat in silence for a long while, then Hazuki slowly got to her feet. "I should go find Kaname," she said, half to herself. "Then I need to go back to the dorm for my sword and my seifuku. After that, I need to come back and apologize to Ryofu."

"Apologize?" Tamao repeated. "Why?"

"Because... I may have lost a friend today," Hazuki said quietly, "but someone who was a sister to me has lost everything she ever had, and all I could do was run away. Ryofu deserves better than that."

Tamao studied the hardening expression on Hazuki's face, then nodded in reply. "I should... find Nagisa-chan, and tell her that I'm leaving," she whispered. She was feeling an overpowering urge to hug her roommate... possibly for the next eighty years.

"I think that's a good idea," Hazuki replied, another momentary soft smile peeking through.

"Why," Kaname said in a voice that could cut steel, "did you bring this to me? Do you think I needed a f*cking memento?"

"No," Hoshi denied, shaking his head quickly. "No, it's not that at all. That's why I called it evidence. I'm giving it to you so you can take it to the authorities... if that's what you want to do. I only ask that you give me a few days to get out of the country first." He rubbed his hands over his face, obviously trying to cover his nervousness. "There's plenty more that he's done... but I couldn't get any actual evidence for that. He keeps it all too well hidden, even from me." He gestured toward the stick drive. "He never bothered to hide that, though, so I grabbed a copy. I thought about bringing it to the police myself, but..." He shook his head, unable to complete the thought.

"So even though you know what he is, you still won't stand against him, eh?" Kaname nodded stiffly. "Goddamned patriarchy. Even with the hell he's put you through, he's got you pretty well trained, doesn't he?"

"No, Kaname-san," Hoshi said quietly, fixing his pale eyes on her. "I didn't want to drag you into a scandal against your will. I wanted it to be your choice. Something you might want to keep in mind, though..." He made a face, then looked away again. "Even if you take this to the police, my father is a rich, powerful businessman. You're a woman. This is the modern world we live in. I think you can connect the dots yourself. I may be a coward, but I know how this country works, and... if you're going to use this, you'll need to be ready for a fight that you may not be able to win."

Kaname wondered briefly if Hoshi had any idea the sort of fights she was now capable of winning. As much as she hated to admit it, though, he was right: a sword would be of no help to her here.

With a groan that made him sound much older than he actually was, Hoshi pushed himself to his feet, then offered his hand to Kaname to help her stand. Even though she did not need it, she accepted the gesture, which he then turned into a firm handshake. "I need to go. Good luck, Kaname-san. I... probably won't see you again."

"You're right," she snorted. "This does sound like a bad movie. Take care of yourself, Hoshi-kun."

He nodded and gave her the most genuine smile he had managed yet, though even then it was thin and a little haunted. "I'll leave through the woods," he said absently, then strode off into the trees.

"Hey, Hoshi-kun," Kaname called after him before he could disappear from sight. She waited for him to look back, then gave him a half-smile. "You turned out okay."

Hoshi bowed to her, then slipped on his sunglasses and hurried off into the woods, while Kaname clutched the "evidence" in her hand, trying to process everything that had just happened.

Now what?

In the end, she didn't get very long to think about it, because shortly after she emerged from behind the shed and started walking back toward the gymnasium complex, she heard Hazuki's voice. "Kaname!"

Her fellow Souma-bearer jogged up to her, still dressed in her sparring gi. "I... have just had a very surreal afternoon," Kaname told her.

"I know the feeling," Hazuki said grimly.

There was something strange about her voice, and when Kaname looked more closely at her, she noticed something else: something even more unexpected. "What the hell... have you been crying? What happened?"

Hazuki looked away. "I don't want to talk about it right now."

"Uh, one damned second here," Kaname said, holding up one finger. "You do remember what happened the last time that I said I didn't want to talk about it, right?"

"Yeah," Hazuki nodded, reaching to scratch the back of her neck in what Kaname hoped was just a reflex action. She then let out a short sigh and looked at Kaname again. "I just found out that a friend of mine died."

"I'm sorry," Kaname said automatically. "Was it... anyone I know?" Hazuki had once claimed to have no friends at all in her previous life, after all. She couldn't mean someone at the school, could she?

"No one you know," Hazuki said quietly. "I think I may have mentioned her name a few times, but..." She paused to take a slow breath. "I'll tell you all about it later, I promise. I came looking for you because Eve and Lilith found the intruder in the Library. Are you busy?"

"Not too busy for that," Kaname nodded, feeling her Souma once again rumbling to the surface. Maybe she was going to get to win a fight today after all.

"I'm going back to my room for my fighting gear," Hazuki told her. "Bring what you think you might need and meet us in sparring room number three in half an hour."

Half an hour (and a gut-twisting journey through the space-time continuum) later, Kaname found herself once again in the Great Library, where the first thing she saw was the enormous blue eye of the Hat of the Keepers. She then looked slightly lower to see the face of a very gleeful Lilith. "Hazuki-chan! You came! And you brought Kaname-chan too! And..."

Lilith paused, looking for all the world like she was counting heads. "Tamao-chan and Chikaru-chan, as well?" She looked puzzled for a moment, then her face lit up. "Ooh, perfect! This makes the plan even better, with all five of you here! Come on, Eve's upstairs. Follow me!"

Kaname took a look around at the others, who were largely unchanged from their own world (save for the presence of Hazuki's sword), then at herself: her new sparring gear had once again transitioned into samurai armor, and her bokken was once more a katana with a dragon-head pommel. She smiled to herself: it felt pretty damned good to be back.

"So what's the situation?" Hazuki asked, sounding very businesslike as the small crowd followed Lilith through the endless stacks. "What are we dealing with?"

"Well, we caught it quickly enough that it's only managed to infect a single book," Lilith explained. "We've got that book isolated, and if we're lucky, our little sneak won't have figured out yet that we're onto it."

"What sort of creature is it?" Chikaru asked. "Would it be too easy to assume it's another dragon?"

"Unfortunately, we don't know its exact form," Lilith frowned, leading the way up one of the spiral ramps that connected the different levels. "It's probably going to be watching for us, so if it senses something as powerful as me or Eve reading along, it might do something drastic."

"Okay, define drastic here," Kaname spoke up. "From what Hazuki told me, it's already rotting the book from the inside, isn't it?"

"Yes, and growing more powerful as it does," Lilith nodded grimly. "Its plan was probably to infect other books once it finished the job. I'm worried that if it knows we're onto it, though... it might give up on its plans and just... destroy the entire book."

No one said anything to this. Based on previous encounters with the Maker goddess, Kaname was more than aware of how protective she was of her books. To have one actually destroyed...

"Pardon me, Lilith-sama?" Tamao-chan asked at last. "We'll be going into the book, though, won't we?"

Lilith shook her head. "Not all of you should go: just Ryofu-chan, Hazuki-chan and Kaname-chan. Chikaru-chan's presence might tip our hand because of her Souma type, and Tamao-chan, you'll be doing a very important job on the outside."

"But... what happens if the world is destroyed while they're inside?" Tamao asked, obviously fearing the worst. Kaname couldn't really blame her for that, as she'd been wondering the same thing.

"That's exactly what you're here for, Tamao-chan," Lilith smiled at the Miatoran girl, putting an arm around her waist and giving her a brief side-hug. "If everything goes to hell, you'll be their ticket out. I'll explain it all to you before we start. You'll be doing the job that I was going to do, but having you do it instead of me should make it much safer for everyone."

By this time they had reached what Kaname assumed was the "main" level of the Library, or at least the one with the kitchen on it. Here, not far from where they had encountered Ken-chan and the hat during their previous trip, they instead found Eve kneeling on the floor, with a single book open in front of her. Kaname could immediately tell that this one was their destination: the visible pages were markedly decayed, and the writing, along with being illegible as always, appeared to be quite a bit more faded than it was in the few open world-books Kaname had seen thus far.

"You came," Eve smiled up at Hazuki before letting her bottomless eyes sweep over the rest of the group. "Thank you."

"I promised I would, didn't I?" Hazuki smiled at her former sister, though unless Kaname missed her guess, she looked a little uncomfortable as she did. "I'll be right back; I'm going to get changed." She then headed off toward the kitchen, a bundle of blue and white fabric still clutched under one arm. Kaname nodded to herself as she recognized it. Fighting gear, indeed.

"Okay, I need to go over the plan with you, Tamao-chan," Lilith said then, taking the younger girl's hand. "Let's go over here and talk Maker to Maker." As she began to lead Tamao away, she looked over her shoulder at Kaname and winked. "Oh, and Kaname-chan? As sexy as you look in that armor, you're probably going to want to go lightweight for this trip."

Somewhere off to the side, the kitchen door opened a crack, and a squawking Ken-chan sailed through, moving entirely too quickly to be self-propelled.

"Is there anything I should know before we start?" Chikaru asked, kneeling beside Eve.

"As a matter of fact, there is," Eve nodded, and then she stood and led Chikaru away to the other side, no doubt discussing Healer business far beyond the understanding of mere immortals of the hack and slash variety.

This left Kaname alone with the new girl, with whom she had not yet exchanged a word: they had departed almost immediately upon her arrival at the sparring room, and there had barely been time to notice that there was a pink-haired, tattooed woman in little more than a leather swimsuit top and a short skirt there with them.

"I don't think we were properly introduced," Kaname nodded to her after taking off her helmet. "I'm Kenjō Kaname."

"Ryofu Hōsen," the other woman said in a soft voice that was very much at odds with her appearance.

Kaname blinked for a moment as she placed the name. "Ikki Tousen?" she asked.

"Thank you," Ryofu nodded to her. "I've been told as much."

Before Kaname could ask what she meant, Hazuki emerged from the kitchen, dressed in the seifuku she had worn for their last otherworldly trip. "You know, that shirt's way too short for you now," Kaname noted as the younger girl approached.

Hazuki gave a non-committal shrug. "Whatever. I've got nice abs."

Kaname chuckled, as she honestly could not argue that point, and at least it looked like Hazuki was holding onto a little bit of her sense of humor.

They were soon rejoined by the others, and Lilith briskly slapped her hands together. "Okay, just a few more precautionary preparations, and then we can do this."

"Is there anything else we should know before we go in?" Hazuki asked. "Or it is just a matter of finding the monster and killing it?"

"There is more, yes," Eve sighed. "You see... this world has a Souma-bearer."

"Who is it?" Hazuki asked, frowning. "Lilith, did we go to this world?"

Lilith shook her head, then looked over at Eve, who went on speaking. "As much as it pains me to say this... I don't know who it is," the younger goddess sighed. "Obviously someone was in my presence when I left that world, but... it must have been without my knowledge."

"So along with killing the monster, you need to find the Souma-bearer and protect her," Lilith continued. She then put her head to one side, pondering this. "Or him, I suppose, though it almost always seems to be a her, doesn't it? Anyway, whoever she is, she's going to be in significant danger. Or he."

"So protect the Souma-bearer, and find and kill the monster whose form you don't know," Kaname summed up. "Should be a breeze. Anything else? What should we expect once we're inside?"

"It's what you'd consider a modern world, very much like your own," Lilith replied, but then quickly amended herself. "Well, not like yours, Ryofu-chan, sorry. We'll even be dropping you right into Japan, so most of you should feel right at home." She then took on another pondering look, this time with her head to the other side. "Everything always seems to happen in Japan anyway, doesn't it?"

"Things are... going to be in quite a bit of chaos there, though," Eve grimaced. "I can sense enough to tell you this much: the invader is using its power in the form of a blood-borne disease which is rapidly sweeping through the population."

"A plague?" Chikaru asked, looking repulsed at the idea.

"Not... exactly," Eve sighed. "It's a disease that.. kills the host and rots the mind, but... the body itself remains active, and then seeks to spread the disease by... feeding on the living."

There was a long, heavy silence, and Kaname felt a mix of dread and sheer annoyance rising within her. She turned to her partner in dragon-slaying and sighed. "Zombies? For f*cksake, Hazuki, you know I hate zombies..."

Next: Boon

AUTHOR'S NOTE: The adventures of the Yami trio in zombieland will be told as a separate story, with chapter 15 of Strange Fire dealing with the aftermath. Please keep an eye out for "Koiyamiberry of the DEAD" - coming soon(?) to... well, somewhere near here.

Meanwhile, for blogging, meta, and general anxiety, please come visit us at Studio Nine Sparrows on Facebook!