"Think you're better than me?! If you didn't—rrgh!"
"Better? You're the one that—"
"—doc to babysit you, you would have starved to death a hundred—"
"—the temerity to blame Renko for—"
The rolling ball of hatred that was Kaguya and Mokou reached the bottom of the stairs. Landing on the cement below, they shoved away from each other. "Yeah? That so?!" Mokou had barely gotten to her feet again when she lunged forward, putting the entire force of her body into a fiery overhead punch. Kaguya stumbled out of the way, and Mokou didn't even flinch as her hand smashed into the parking lot. Fire roiled out across the pavement.
"Please calm down!" Maribel shouted down at them. She took a single step toward the stairs before remembering that she was still barefoot. "Renko, what do we do?"
"I, um."
Kaguya leapt away and hovered into the air, blasting a beam of pale energy down at Mokou. Mokou rolled aside to dodge it, and it vaporized a long line of asphalt. "If you don't admit to your sins, how am I to forgive you for them?"
"Listen, you...!" Mokou crouched to the ground. The air around her shimmered for a moment, and she burst into flames. Wings of fire blossomed behind her, and she shot up like a bullet, tackling Kaguya around the waist. The two took off flying at a ballistic trajectory, a single parabolic streak of fire heading off into the night. Like a problem from a freshman physics quiz. Assume that a 62 kilogram immortal is fired at a 25 degree angle at 13 meters per second. At t=0.7s, she impacts a second immortal, with a mass of 58 kilograms. Assuming that the collision is perfectly elastic...
I never did get to hear how Mokou finished that statement. I was left staring in amazement as the two flew off over the top of the building across the street, becoming a dwindling ember in the sky. Hundreds of meters away, they broke apart, and an impromptu fireworks show started. Streaks of flame and bursts of silver light clashed in the heavens.
"... we need to stop them," I said.
Maribel had been just as entranced by this display as I was, and now her attention snapped back to the moment. "R-right!"
As we hurried back inside to grab our shoes, I tried to figure out what in the world we could do about this situation. We'd already missed our chance to split it up peacefully. The longer they fought, the more likely it was that somebody was going to realize something very weird was going on. ... assuming the sounds of the exploding horse-sized insect hadn't already tipped off my neighbors.
When we ran back outside, we continued right down the stairs to stand in the tiny parking lot. We could still see their fight as a series of flashes, roaming around the sky. Hundreds of meters in the air, they were far, far out of our reach.
"How long do you think it's going to take...?" Maribel said.
"I don't know. They're doing a lot of dodging, so maybe one quick hit will end it?"
"Unless it turns out like that fight in Gensokyo..."
I shuddered at the memory and prayed that it didn't come down to that. It was one thing if somebody saw a bunch of mysterious lights in the sky. It was another thing entirely if somebody saw them smashing each other's skulls on the sidewalk.
The fight carried on, becoming more elaborate as it went. What had started as bursts of flame and blasts of light expanded, soon becoming fans of fire and lances of energy that lit up the night sky. It was a beautiful display, and if you didn't know better, you never would have guessed that you were seeing two people carrying on a centuries-old blood feud.
Maribel and I were both so focused on the fight that the sound of something tapping on the pavement behind us didn't even register at first. I only idly glanced over my shoulder, and it took a few seconds more for me to make out the shape behind us. The moon and nearby streetlights provided only dim lighting, leaving us in a tangle of shadows. Standing out from even those was a patch of absolute darkness, in which my brain slowly picked out the silhouette of a spider.
The Dark Thing.
Just as I realized what I was looking at, it stomped each foot in rapid succession, spearing the tips into the pavement. It made a gravelly, crunching sound that I could feel in the pit of my stomach. The act didn't seem to have any purpose but intimidation. It was very, very effective.
"Merry," I said, and barely managed to stay in place for long enough to do so. "Run."
"Eh?" She glanced back over her shoulder. The second that her eyes settled on it, the thing launched itself at us like a cannonball. Before Maribel could hesitate further, I grabbed her hand and yanked her along at a sprint.
Only after two or three seconds did I have the luxury of thinking about where to run to. Whether by design or by chance, the thing had been between us and the building when it ambushed us... which meant that we were now running away from shelter. Not that I felt hopeful about our odds of hiding inside the apartment again. It had barely worked the first time.
With my pulse pounding in my ears and the sound of those pavement-shredding footsteps growing closer, I desperately searched for any possible respite. Kaguya and Mokou were still nowhere nearby. If we kept slanting out toward the road, we'd be far from any shelter larger than telephone poles. The parking lot was nearly empty, except of course for...
"The car!" I shouted. We'd been running at an angle away from it, and I jerked on Maribel's hand, curving us around toward it. Fortunately, the Dark Thing didn't maneuver as well on pavement as we did. Behind us, I could hear its crunching footsteps drift off to the left, followed by abrupt silence as it leapt into the air. It smashed into the ground mere centimeters behind us, spurring us into a renewed burst of speed. In the time it took to skid to a stop and take off toward us again, we managed to close the last of the distance to the car. I released Maribel's hand, and we went separate directions around it, with her jumping into the driver's seat and me on the passenger side.
We hadn't even closed our doors yet when the thing slammed into the back of the car, making the entire vehicle jolt forward and bounce on its shocks.
"What now?!"
"Just drive!"
"Right, um! Where's the—" Maribel's hands fumbled over the steering column, and she flinched as the Dark Thing stabbed a leg into the trunk with a shriek of tortured metal. "I-ignition?!"
Her hands found the button as soon as she said it, and the car hummed to life. Maribel wrestled with the controls for a second or two longer, putting it into manual drive mode and into gear. Another sound of smashed metal behind us, as the thing batted at a fender hard enough to dent it. And then, Maribel floored the accelerator, and we took off in reverse to ram the monster.
The Dark Thing was too big to run over, especially from a standstill. We still had more mass than it.
The car shuddered as the rear bumper shoved into it, and it flailed in outrage against the back of the car before it was shoved aside. Now free, we accelerated past it and out of the parking lot, still driving backward, but away from the thing.
"Where did it come from?!"
"Maybe it was there the whole time," I said, gasping to catch my breath. "If they're working together."
She turned to look through the back glass as we drove backward onto the street. "It looks like it hit the car pretty hard..."
"I don't even want to look," I groaned.
"Can you see Kaguya and Mokou? We could really use some help!"
I didn't dare to roll down my window, but I leaned over to look in the direction of their aerial fight. I couldn't see anything, but that didn't mean much.
Despite being rammed by a car, the Dark Thing had recovered, and was already bounding after us again. Now that I actually had a chance to study it in motion, one thing became abundantly clear: It might have been terrible at making turns, but boy, could it move. Barely a few seconds in and it was already gaining on us, a jagged, leaping blob of darkness in the night.
"Merry," I said, with my grip on the door handle tightening. "We need to go faster!"
"This is as fast as it goes!"
It was true. The speedometer barely read 30 kph, but already, the motor had settled into a steady, frantic whirr. Driving in reverse had its disadvantages. Maribel jerked the wheel, and we flew around a corner. An oncoming car effortlessly swerved to avoid us, and I'd never been so glad for automated drivers. Unfortunately, the car couldn't turn as sharply as we could on foot, and the Dark Thing was able to keep up with us much better. It barely lost any ground as it stumbled through the turn, and with a single massive leap, it crashed down meters from the hood.
"I-it's getting closer...!" I said, trying to keep my voice steady. If that thing fed on fear, I must have been a banquet.
Maribel bit down on her lower lip, scowling as she focused on driving. It was the coolest I'd ever seen her look, although slightly dampened by the fact that we were barely going faster than an all-out sprint. The Dark Thing leapt again. This time, the tips of its front legs grazed the hood of the car, sending sparks and flecks of paint flying. We weaved around another corner, it leapt again... and this time, it landed square on the hood.
The force was enough to make the car's undercarriage drag the road for a moment. Maribel slammed on the brakes, but we weren't really going fast enough for this to pose any trouble to the thing. It reared back and stabbed its forelegs into the hood of the car. Something in the motor made a horrible grinding sound. Somehow, it kept running.
"Should we get out?!"
"We're a few blocks from my place. There's not really anywhere to go!"
We'd come to a complete stop in the middle of a narrow street, and with the Dark Thing standing on the hood, Maribel and I were both too terrified to move. It stomped a few more times, denting the hood, then stabbed its forelegs through the windshield. We both shrieked and shielded our faces. The glass was, thankfully, shatter-proof, but it was left with an opaque network of cracks across it. The Dark Thing struggled against this unwelcome obstacle, filling the car with the horrible cacophony of crinkling glass as it tore two holes in the windshield.
Once it freed its legs, the Dark Thing lunged forward again, and this time its legs pushed through into the passenger compartment. They clawed up the dashboard, ripping two jagged lines up the center of it, and it thrashed to reach us with them. Only the car's frame was stopping it from stabbing us straightaway, and even as it was, we were both pressed against our doors and scrambling to get out.
Fire lit the night from overhead. A fireball slammed into the Dark Thing, and waves of flame rolled over the remains of the windshield. When the world settled down enough for me to see again, a second or two later, the result was impressive: The Dark Thing's entire bulk was smoking, and the hood of the car was covered in scorched and peeling paint.
The reinforcements had arrived, albeit several minutes too late.
The Dark Thing shuddered in pain and jerked its limbs back out of the car, ripping out the last of the windshield in the process. Before it could free itself, Mokou fell from the heavens like a blazing meteor. She landed on the hood in a crouch, transferring her momentum into an overhead two-hand smash. The entire car bounced again (I would have been worried about damage to the shocks by this point, if it hadn't just been ravaged by a giant spider), but even over that sound, I could hear the sickening crack of chitin. Or whatever the Dark Thing was made out of. Darkness-based artificial chitin substitute.
"Where the hell'd this thing come from?!" Mokou shouted through the windshield, or lack thereof.
"It attacked us outside!"
"Can't fight this kind of thing in public without trouble, right?"
In my panic, I'd barely even thought of that. "Yeah, we shouldn't be out here!"
"Then drive!"
The Dark Thing lunged at Mokou, and she took it head-on, tackling into it and letting one of those scythe-like legs go over her shoulder. She wrapped an arm around the base, trapping the limb, and with her other hand, punched the thing in the underside. This was enough of a spectacle that it took a moment for me to shout, "The river! There shouldn't be anybody there at night!"
The river, at least if you're me and Merry, is Kamo River. It extends along one side of the campus, and has nice, broad walking paths on its banks. We were about half a kilometer away.
Of course, with Mokou fighting a giant spider on the hood, visibility wasn't great. Maribel rolled down her window and pushed her head outside, then stepped on the gas.
"Where's Kaguya?!" I shouted, squinting against the wind coming through the hole where the windshield should be.
"Killed her! Don't worry, I've got this!"
It wasn't a very reassuring answer, but there wasn't time to discuss it further. Mokou's trick with the Dark Thing's leg had let her get a good half-dozen punches in against its underside, but it had exacted its vengeance. The sharp tip had sliced a wide gash in her back as it pulled away, and deep red, arterial blood was drooling out. As soon as it had room, it pivoted and swatted at her with a leg the size of a grown man. Mokou tried sidestepping it, but there was only so much room on the hood of the car. It smashed into her with the force of a truck. I heard only the briefest gasp of pain as she flew from the hood and fell tumbling to the road.
"Renko...!" Maribel wailed.
"I saw! Um." I tried to stay calm and think of a plan, but mostly I could only think, crapcrapcrapcrapcrap. The Dark Thing turned toward us and reared back. Maribel yelped and ducked her head back into the car, right as it crashed down. Its legs pierced through the roof, and it used them as leverage to haul itself up, now splayed across the hole where the windshield should be. Bracing itself, it pulled backward, and with a groan of abused metal, began tearing a hole in the roof. If it couldn't get to us through the windshield, it seemed ready to make its own entrance. We were being hunted by the world's largest can opener.
"Okay, Merry," I shouted over the wind whistling past us, and shrank back against my door. "On three, slam on the breaks and we'll..." I looked around. We weren't quite to the river yet, but in the middle of a bunch of small businesses. Nowhere that was open this time of night, but there was plenty of cover. "I'll jump out and try to lead it away! Like a decoy. Once it's gone, you get to safety."
"You can't outrun that thing!"
"No, see, I've got it—" I flinched down as the Dark Thing's legs stabbed through the ceiling again. The holes were now large enough to fit my head through. "I-I'll, um, I'll go over a bunch of obstacles, and it will have to slow down to climb over them, and...!"
"That's crazy! I'm not letting you do that!"
"Merry, you have to trust me! We... we might not both make it out of this, and I—"
Before I could finish my heroic/suicidal speech, an orange light in the rear view mirror caught my eye. It was Mokou, a flaming cruise missile streaking after the car. She was catching up to us, actually.
She looked very, very pissed.
"Merry, hit the brakes!"
"I'm not letting you—!"
"Please, just do it!"
Maribel gave a frustrated groan, but cooperated. She slammed on the brakes, and the car screeched to a stop. With her suddenly much higher relative velocity, Mokou caught up in seconds. She didn't slow down a bit, but instead slammed into the Dark Thing at full force. As large as it was, she still managed to tackle it into the air, and the two tumbled down onto the hood and off of the car.
I almost felt sorry for it. Almost. It was left on its side, scrambling to right itself, and Mokou was having none of that. Its limbs slammed into her, but she gritted her teeth and shrugged it off. A sharp-tipped leg speared into her back, bringing a fresh gout of blood; in retaliation, she grabbed the base of the leg. White-hot flame burst out of her hand, and the leg fell to the ground, twitching and still smoldering in the spot where it had been connected.
"Y'know, all I wanted tonight...!" Mokou slammed a flaming fist into the Dark Thing's underside. When her hand pulled back, gooey strands of some kind of bodily fluid were hanging from it. "... was to get some sleep...!" It smashed a leg into her chest, and even though a snapping sound came from within, she somehow managed to keep herself in place. "... and not deal with...!" Another punch. A shudder ran through the thing's entire body. "... this kind of...!" She gritted her teeth, with blood running between them now, and burnt another leg off at the root. The Dark Thing was moving only weakly now. "Bullshit!"
Mokou pulled her fist back, and it burst into white-hot flame. She took a step back, and put the entire force of her body into a blow, arcing her fist overhead. It punched through the creature's carapace with a sickening squelch. She didn't let up, punching again and again, pounding and scorching whatever passed for its internal organs, until it went limp beneath her. Even then, she continued for a few more seconds, until finally black mist started rising from the corpse. "There," she gurgled, past a mouthful of blood. "'s dead."
Our drive had ended at a ramp down to the river path, so we were thankfully off the main roads. The occasional late night traveler went past, but they paid no attention to a single car parked off the side of the road. Mokou laid on the ground, barely moving. Maribel and I stared out the now-empty hole where the windshield should have been, overwhelmed by everything that had just happened.
It seemed that the fight had been the only thing keeping Mokou upright. She sat there for a few seconds, hunched over the Dark Thing's sublimating corpse and taking deep, ragged breaths. Then, with one final wheeze, she collapsed to the ground. The noise of the battle faded, replaced by silence.
I reluctantly opened my door and stepped out of the car. After that fight, I felt naked and exposed without metal around me. I was concerned for Mokou, though. There was a spreading pool of blood beneath her, and she still wasn't even trying to stand up. Maribel got out of the car too, and had taken a few steps toward her before a new obstacle showed itself.
The black mist was still rising out of the Dark Thing, and unlike with the chimeras, it was hard to miss. It was a thick, black cloud, like night itself was boiling up out of the corpse. It clung to the ground, a tangible presence that blocked all light that passed through it. Soon, it was like a wall of darkness between us and Mokou.
"... is it supposed to be doing that?" Maribel said.
"I... don't think so?"
The cloud was moving now, its higher areas oozing forward and then drifting down to spread across the ground. Somehow, I didn't think it was a coincidence that this act was bringing it closer to us.
Maribel eased back, taking a step away from it. "Maybe we should... go around."
"Yeah, that's probably for the best. ... er..."
Where the cloud had already been moving toward us, now it was reaching out. A long tendril on the leading front pushed out and curled in our direction, like a limb that was feeling for something. Maribel stumbled backward and waved her hands at it, trying to fan it away, but the motion only coaxed it onward.
"S-stay back!"
"Merry," I said, my voice low and level. I felt like I might provoke the cloud if I made any sudden movements. "Let's back away, and once we've got some distance, we'll run, and we can—"
The tendril seemed to have found what it was looking for. The entire cloud flowed forward now, like an advancing storm front. The world beyond it disappeared behind darkness.
We didn't hesitate. We turned and ran. The cloud rushed forward now, flowing over the car and around obstacles, roiling blackness that followed us unerringly. The front of it lashed out. It speared into Maribel's back, and the entire mass lunged forward, flowing around and engulfing her.
"Merry...!"
I stopped in my tracks and rushed over to her, but I wasn't sure what I was about to accomplish here. The cloud had contracted around Maribel in an orb, a cocoon of darkness. Past the haze, I could just barely see her kneeling on the ground, screaming and swatting at it. This had no effect.
The cloud was shrinking, though. Or rather: It was flowing into her. Lines ran through it, like the flow lines in water, all leading to the same spot—Maribel. In a matter of seconds, it collapsed in on itself and disappeared.
Maribel was left coughing and sputtering, hunched over on the ground. I checked the surroundings warily, but the cloud really did seem to be gone. I crouched down and helped Maribel up.
"What was that thing?!"
"I-I don't know. Is it gone?"
"I think so. It..." I hesitated, trying to think of a gentle way to tell Maribel that the menacing black apparently-living cloud of evil energy had fled into her. "It went away," I said simply.
"Did it?" Mokou's voice said from behind me. "Looked to me like it went into Maribel."
"What?!" Maribel said.
I whipped my head around. There Mokou was, standing a few meters away, like she'd always been there. Her clothes were still just as ripped up as they'd been the last time I'd seen her, but in barely a minute or two, she'd healed enough to go from near-dead on the grass to standing... even if she was still hunched over in pain.
"I... she's right," I admitted. "Do you feel okay, Merry?"
"Um." Maribel inspected her hands, like she was expecting to find herself growing claws or something. "I don't feel any different. Do you think I should be worried? It didn't do anything, did it?"
Mokou eyed Maribel suspiciously, but for once, she didn't argue. "Never seen a youkai do that before," she said, and stepped closer, rolling her shoulders sorely. Something inside made a crackling noise. "Dead's dead, though."
It made no sense, but then, nothing that had happened for the past week made much sense. I studied Maribel, but she seemed to be telling the truth. No injuries, no odd behavior... for all I knew, this was a standard part of youkai hunting. "I don't know," I sighed. "It's not weird that the cloud went toward Merry?"
"It's weird, yeah. Trust me, though, that thing's dead. Won't be causing us any more trouble. Besides, we shouldn't stay out here long. There could be more of those things around."
"Oh. Yeah." I glanced back toward the direction we'd come from. "So Kaguya is...?"
Mokou scowled at the name. Stuffing her hands in her pockets, she glanced aside. "Around. Don't worry, nobody's going to find the body. We can pick her up on the way back. We should grab something to drink too."
"I don't know... Merry and I have class tomorrow." Although I was already trying to figure out what excuse I was going to use to skip it. I'd been woken up at 2 AM by shouting, I felt like I was going to need a few hours just to calm down, and above all, I was going to have to figure out what to do about the car. Tomorrow was not going to be a productive day for my studies.
"Yeah, well, I'm pretty sure I've got a rib through my liver right now, so I could kinda use something to, you know. Keep my mind off all the bleeding."
I took a second to imagine: if Mokou's normal behavior was her baseline, what would 'grumpy' look like? "... we should buy some drinks on the way back," I said.
"All I'm saying is that with a little more preparation, we could have made this a party," Kaguya said. "We did kill one of the two unique youkai tonight, right? That seems like cause for celebration."
"I killed it, you mean. Not sure what you have to celebrate," Mokou said.
"It seems to me that Maribel and Renko were involved, too..."
"You know damn well that I did all the work there!"
"You definitely got stabbed the most. Maybe you should consider dodging in the future."
"Whatever. That's another kill for me, and the count was already four to two."
"Was it, now?"
"Yeah. I killed one of them in the apartment before that, and three in the dead guy's apartment."
"We don't know he's dead..." Maribel interjected, in between sipping the head off of a beer.
"The point is," Mokou continued, "I've got more than twice your score. Guess I should start thinking about what requests to make of you. I need to think of some really juicy ones."
After the fight, we had indeed stopped by an all-night carryout to pick up some alcohol. (After an anxiety-inducing run to retrieve Kaguya's corpse and haul it home in the battered car, then rinsing up. Any other time, that kind of thing would have been the most noteworthy event of the entire year. The fact that it barely merits a footnote here probably says something.) Mokou had been… very enthusiastic about the shopping process, and only my limited funds prevented her from talking me into buying half the store. We still ended up with two bottles of sake and a large bottle of nice beer, which was more than I expected the four of us would drink in one session.
I was wrong. We'd barely been sitting down for five minutes before Mokou claimed one of the bottles of sake for her own, and only after chugging a third of it did she deign to acknowledge that anybody else was present. Kaguya had resurrected and come stumbling out of my bedroom about fifteen minutes later, and showed a surprising ability to hold her liquor for somebody so delicate-looking. Now, the four of us were spread throughout the main room of my apartment. We'd tipped the couch back up into the right position, and Maribel and I were sitting on it. The rips would have to be fixed sooner or later, but it was comfortable enough for now.
"Really?" Kaguya said. "I've already decided what I'm going to ask for if I win."
"And what's that?" Mokou said, with what might have been the highest possible level of feigned disinterest that a human could achieve.
"Well, first of all, I'd like you to kiss my feet and admit that you've been acting unreasonably toward me for the past millennium."
"Not a chance."
"Oh? But that's the agreement, isn't it? Honestly, Mokou, if you aren't going to honor the spirit of the bet, then what's the point?"
Mokou grumbled under her breath and took another swig of the sake. The bottle she'd claimed was rapidly disappearing, and she was barely even showing the effects. "Fine, whatever. What are the others?"
"Hmm." Kaguya held a hand pensively to her mouth. The act didn't look quite so elegant when she was wearing a t-shirt instead of a robe. "Second, I will procure the fanciest dress that I can find, and you'll have to take me on a date to the village while wearing it."
Mokou grunted.
"Third..." Even with her hand still hiding half of her face, I could tell that Kaguya had a growing grin. "I'll see if Eirin can make a medicine that will give you rabbit ears, and you will accompany me as my loyal maid for a week."
"If you're not gonna take this serious, we'll just call it off now!"
"Oh, I'm very serious! Eirin was able to make us transcend eternity. I'm sure that she could manage rabbit ears. You'd look very cute with them."
"Yeah, whatever. Look, if you're done, you just reminded me of something that actually matters."
"Oh? You don't want to hear my other two requests?"
"I already killed you once tonight. Don't push your luck." Mokou turned toward toward me and Maribel and leaned forward, resting her weight on the bottle in her hand. "Anyway. You guys said we can only go to Mount Fuji during certain times, right?"
I'll admit, with everything else going on, I'd almost forgotten about the conditions we'd agreed to for Mokou's cooperation. "Oh… yes. It's only accessible to the public for two or three more weeks this year."
Mokou nodded, staring down at the floor in thought. "I want to go, then. Payment for getting us this far."
"Oh. Well." I really wanted to say no, at first. The night's events had shown that we really needed to keep our guard up, and combined with everything else—school, and the ruined car, and Yuuta's disappearance—we had plenty of other things demanding our attention. But, I also got the feeling that things were going to be hectic until all of this was over. The perfect opportunity wasn't going to present itself. "That… might be doable. It would probably be twenty or thirty thousand yen for sleeping arrangements for all of us, though..."
"Sleeping arrangements? Just find a sheltered spot and build a fire."
"That isn't allowed anymore."
"There's a two thousand yen ecological fee per person, too," Maribel said. "Um, they waive it if you pick up trash, though. There's an armband, I think."
"Huh, do they? It doesn't sound very relaxing, if you're playing garbage man the whole way."
"Probably not..." Maribel agreed.
Mokou looked between us, her expression a mix between confusion and annoyance. "So can we go, or not?"
I did the math in my head. There was no way I could afford to pay for the sleeping accommodations, but if I begged some money from my parents under the guise of paying for unforeseen school fees, Maribel chipped in what little she could, we did the armband thing, and we carried our own food up with us… "It won't be comfortable, and we'll be eating instant noodles for the next month, but we can afford it, yes." I tried to remember what day it was, but my brain was so scrambled that I found it easier to look at the sky. 5:18 AM on Friday, August 30, 2069. I sighed. The fact that I was both awake and drinking at 5 AM meant that I probably wasn't going to my Friday lab, anyway. "I'll start looking into reservations."