Scrappy-Fan92: Hello, everyone. I'm here to introduce you all to my first non-Mario story on this site! A few years ago, I got into Love Live! and its follow-up series Sunshine! through a friend, and wound up falling in love with the casts of the first two series. I decided to draft this fic out of the blue as a surprise to all the readers here and my friends. This spooky little story takes place after the events of Love Live! Sunshine! and its movie finale, so open spoilers abound.

Ruby: The pre-existing characters of Love Live! are created and/or co-owned by Hajime Yatate, Sakurako Kimino, ASCII Media Works, and Lantis. Please support the official release.

This chapter was originally uploaded on Saturday, November 13th, 2021.

Love Live! Sunshine! Idol Hands are the Devil's Workshop

"Greetings, my little demons, and welcome to the domain of Yohane!", Yoshiko Tsushima said with a flourish as fake lightning flashed in her darkened room and a synth pipe organ soundtrack played in the background.

She stepped around her film studio/bedroom, her cape billowing behind her. Her camerawoman smirked wryly.

"She's really getting into character today," Hanamaru thought.

"Yohane" turned back to the camera and chuckled to herself. "Today's soiree with the shadows of humanity will be something truly horrifying...ghostly unboxing videos, with goodies provided to us by our lovely sponsors at Moonrise Studios." She pulled out a box from a bucket emitting purple dry ice vapor with all the pomp and circumstance that entailed.

"From the depths of Hades, comes the sealed box of evil spirits."

"One could call them Ghosts of Tsushima," Hanamaru muttered under her breath. Yoshiko caught the offhand comment and raised her pointer finger to silence her friend.

"Viewers of Yohane, step back from your screens. I will begin to draw out the spirits and exorcise the goodies within...¡A través del japonés mal traducido, criatura sin sangre, vete!"

Yoshiko kept her eyes closed, waiting patiently for something to happen. Then a little less patiently, not that the box cared.

"Come on, ghost, become unboxed," Yoshiko whined. She began to panic and turned her gaze to an uncharacteristically guilty-looking Hanamaru. She knew it from the look in her eyes. Hanamaru had forgotten to set up the timed prop to move the box.

"W-well, nothing to worry about, folks!", Yoshiko spluttered nervously. "Boxes are so passe! Why expel an old ghost when my hungry audience can see me summon a new ghost!"

Hanamaru mentally facepalmed. She was really going to try it again.

"You haven't 'practiced' enough, Yoshiko."

"It's Yohane!...Ahem, please do not be dissuaded by the concerns of my acolyte, folks. I possess the powers to summon the dead!"

Yoshiko cleared the bucket from her set and began finger-tutting over the floor just as the background music switched to a more ominous tune.

"Spirits of the netherworld, as I, the great Yohane descended to fracture the mortals' peace, you shall ascend to do the same! HIYAAH!" Yoshiko raised her hands to the sky right as the music peaked and finally faded into the next track.

Silence otherwise.

"You shall ascend to do the same!"

Silence Part II: The Quieting.

"You. Shall. Ascend!...Ah, come on! Please ascend!" Yoshiko's "authoritative" voice dropped and she began snapping her fingers to make the spirits arrive, to no avail. She then scowled and dropped her head to the floor to scream at her absent guests.

"Do you realize that we are doing a show and there are. Certain. Expectations. For cast members?!", she yelled, punctuating her plea/threat with punches to the floor.

Hanamaru took it upon herself to intervene before things went further off the rails, and stepped in front of the camera.

"I'm Yohane's acolyte-zura. And I'm afraid we need to cease broadcasting to all you lucky mortals."

"We will do no such thing! The show must go on!"

Without warning, Yoshiko's door swung open and her mother poked her disapproving face in.

"Is the noise necessary, young lady?"

The light from the hallway peered like a holy beam of judgement directly into Yoshiko's face, triggering a hiss from her as she futilely tried to shield her eyes with her cape. Blinded, she tripped over the bucket of dry ice and landed with a thud. The box was knocked open by the calamity and spilled its contents to reveal a pair of Bonjour Puppy earphones.

Yoshiko buried her grief into a bacon cheeseburger with extra-fried sesame seeds at Yapi's Fantastic 92nd. It was a newly opened nautical-themed restaurant that You had gotten the other members of Aqours hooked on some weeks ago. At first, it served as a hangout spot for the now-smaller unit of six. Now, it was a place to commiserate over a spectacularly spectral failure.

Yoshiko was loath to admit it, but she felt awful. Her videos had been stalling for weeks and her motivation was waning in light of Aqours' downsizing. She made it clear to Chika that she had no intention of leaving, but something was lost. She didn't know if it was the third-years' departure or just fatigue finally taking its toll on her, but her personal work and her focus on school idoling were utterly shot.

Hanamaru sat on the opposite end of the booth at Yapi's, snatching a few onion rings from her despondent friend's pile.

"So, my uncle finally learned how to work the wi-fi in his house, he wants to watch all our videos."

"Mm-hmm."

"And my other uncle finally got rid of the lactose intolerant cow at his ranch. But he can't get the ranch away from the cow's salad."

"Mm-hmm."

"And I want to marry your left shoe."

"Mm-hmm."

"You're not even listening to me, are you?"

"Mm-hmm."

"Ugh, call me when you're done feeling sorry for yourself," and Hanamaru turned her attention to her thawing milkshake as Yoshiko sank further into despair.

"I have not lost my edge, my knowledge is just too avant-garde for everyone else...Oh, who am I kidding? I'm a phony weirdo who can't even do a proper seance! If I could just get a ghost, I'd have something to offer other than being the cutest member of Aqours!"

Hanamaru looked up from the milkshake she was guzzling to raise an eyebrow at her compatriot. "'Cutest member'?"

"Well, who else would it be?"

"Ruby?"

"...Yeah, you're right." Yoshiko fell silent again, but her own words rang in her head. Get a ghost…

Yoshiko paid for their meal then parted ways with Hanamaru to head home. She strolled glumly down the sidewalk, the oncoming traffic sending her cape fluttering against her back. She must have looked silly, she thought.

A delivery truck drove past her and hit a speedbump, opening its storage door ever so slightly and causing a single piece of cargo to slip out onto the pavement. The truck turned the corner without any passenger even stopping to look for fallen goods.

"Hey, you left something behind!"

Yoshiko crossed the street to retrieve the item. The fall and subsequent tumble had torn off a piece of the paper packaging, revealing a corner of a book. Yoshiko picked up the book and felt her sixth sense flare up. She quickly hurried back to the sidewalk and looked to see if anyone was around. Seeing that there were no pedestrians and no other oncoming cars, she ripped the parcel paper to reveal the book's cover. Occult Classics: How to Commune with the Dead Before You're Dead. There was no author listed.

"This can't possibly be for real." Yoshiko's pondering was short-lived as her phone buzzed with an incoming text message.

3:12 PM

Little Demon Lili (Riko)

Hey Yohane where r u?

Family and I r heading out soon.

We need u to watch Prelude for us

for 2 hrs instead of 1.

She'd forgotten that she promised Riko that she'd watch her dog while she and her family went out to treat Riko for all her progress in overcoming her stage fright. Their house would be free of interruptions for two whole hours, more than enough time for Yoshiko to verify if this book was actually capable of letting people talk to ghosts.

"Just one little spell can't hurt."

4:39 PM

At the Sakarauchis' apartment, Yoshiko was absolutely giddy with glee, geared up to gallantly greet gaggles of ghouls, ghosts, and gobbledygook.

"'Alliteration amuses any and all able-minded apparition appreciators,' apparently," Yoshiko said, reading the book's foreword.

Prelude sat in the middle of the living room, panting heavily. Yoshiko flashed a smile at her, and Prelude walked to the kitchen to eat a couple of dog treats Yoshiko had left on the floor.

Yoshiko returned to Occult Classics and paged through a couple of the chapters until she reached the section on ghost-summoning.

"'To properly summon a ghost, thou must announce thy presence with full mage title, blow a Peruvian shepherd whistle, and invoke the name of a specific ghost,' seems easy enough. 'If thou does not know any ghosts by name, utter the first moniker that comes to mind…'"

Yoshiko straightened her posture and cleared her throat to begin the summoning.

"I, the great Yohane...ahem, of the East, call forth-wait, hold on," Yoshiko blew the whistle that she had paid a non-modest fee for at a local shop, "...I call forth the dark ghost, err, Ranchmilk to take corporeal form and commune with the feeble mortals of this plane!"

Yoshiko scanned the room's layout to see if anything had changed, perhaps an item out of place that was now inhabited by the spirit of some ghastly demon.

Nothing outside of Prelude having waltzed back in after chowing down.

Yoshiko sighed and slumped into a chair. She really was a failure. She checked her watch. 4:42 PM. If nothing else, she could mope about for roughly another hour before Riko's family came back home.

"Yoshiko, we're back early!"

Yoshiko stiffened and nearly hurt her neck from the whiplash. Riko had come through the door, holding bags of food.

"Oh, you're back already," Yoshiko stuttered out as she tried to hide the book underneath the sofa.

"Yeah, the seafood made my mom a little woozy, so we just left. The servers were so nice, they offered us a ton of coupons if we ever decided to come back. What have you been up to?"

"Oh, you know, stuff."

"Well, I hope Prelude wasn't too much trouble for you," Riko said as she called Prelude over to her. "Were you a good girl today? Speak, Prelude."

"Feed me, human."

"So anyway, I learned how to converse with ghosts from this book I found in the street, and after a false false alarm, I may have projected a vengeful spirit into Riko's dog. You're welcome."

"WHY?!", Chika demanded. Riko - after she had stopped screaming - called for an emergency meeting of all Aqours members at Chika's family inn for the following day. Everyone gathered at the lobby of the Takami inn at 3 PM, Ruby excepted. Mutsu was present for the day visiting and was dragged into the group discussion whether she wanted to be there or not.

"I did it because I wanted to feel important!", Yoshiko pouted. "I didn't think the evil spirits would actually drag Prelude into this."

"Why wouldn't they? They're evil spirits-zura!", Hanamaru exclaimed.

"I prefer to consider myself a spirit of peculiar ethical leanings," the ghost Ranchmilk said, speaking through Prelude. Everyone nearby took a step back.

"That is unholy," Mito leaned over her desk to say.

"Wholly unholy," You added.

"It'll make a great gimmick for our group, though," Yoshiko added.

Chika rubbed her temples and sighed. "Yoshiko, we love you, but you gotta think these things through more. We just got Riko over her dog phobia, now you've got an actual poltergeist inhabiting poor Prelude."

"'Poor Prelude' should be the least of your concerns, mortal."

"Aw, geez! I really messed up, didn't I? Well, um, we can still turn a zero into a one with this!"

"Yoshiko, sweetie," Mutsu began, "this isn't a zero. This is a negative 47. I don't think we can paper over this."

Yoshiko sighed and felt her cheeks go red from shame. She couldn't try to make a marketing opportunity over one of her friend's family members going rogue and she was ashamed of herself for even thinking it, personal pride be darned. "Alright, alright, I'll look up a chapter on you-know-what."

"You mean exorci-oomph!", Hanamaru's mouth was clamped shut by Mito before she could finish.

"Yeah, dog treats."

"Humor these peons with your pathetic parlor tricks, Yohane of the East. But you will never rid this mortal plane of me."

"We'll see. Chika, get the salt. We're doing this now."

"Oh no!", Mito began. "You're not doing an exorcism in our lobby!"

"You're darn right!", Chika concurred.

"You can do it in Chika's room."

With Chika's "approval," Yoshiko and her party of unwilling acolytes moved to Chika's bedroom to get the exorcism process started. Chika and You shook salt around the floor to make a circle, while Hanamaru and Mutsu covered the windows to provide a cloak of darkness. Riko sat on Chika's bed, stroking the possessed Prelude gently.

"I still love you, Prelude, even if you howl at traffic at four in the morning now."

"According to the book, that wasn't howling, that was the ghost speaking in Gaelic curses," Hanamaru corrected.

"Wait, really?"

Yoshiko nodded her head to confirm the claim. Ranchmilk had a way with words even and especially if no one alive knew what dark denunciations they were referring to.

"Let's just get this over with," Chika grumbled.

Yoshiko finished scanning the book and beckoned her friends to stand on the outer rim of the salt circle, Prelude sitting between them all.

"My little demons, it is time to rid the world of my mortal folly."

"You really put up with this every day?"

"Yes, now be quiet," You interjected.

"I hath seen the errors of my ways, and I, Yohane of the East, call upon the forces of the spirit world one more time to retrieve their errant comrade."

A wind blew the curtains as the room took on a velvet red tint. Prelude's body itself began to glow.

"Ranchmilk, you have taken someone precious from us, and as such we have no choice but to expel you back to your former plane of existence," Yohane recited as Mutsu and the Aqours girls provided backing chants to neutralize the ghost's escape. "Do you have any words to say before you go?"

"Though I am a ghost, there is no true immortal in this room."

"On the one hand, what are you talking about? On the other hand, I don't care!"

"I seek eternal life among the mortals, while you merely seek eternal fame."

"Keep flapping those intangible gums, Ranchy. I need more time to find the last part of the incantation," Yoshiko said as she paged through the book.

"To think that you would come so close to achieving what no others have before, just to throw it away for a schoolmate's dog. You truly are confused about who you are."

Chika reduced her chant to a subtle hum and listened more intently.

"Yohane would not allow such idle concerns to curtail her dark potential, but perhaps Yoshiko would."

"Hey, you don't have to go for the throat…"

"Ignore him, Yoshiko! He's just trying to get in your head!", Chika called.

"Don't stop chanting! And it's Yohane!"

"Is it, though?"

"Shut up!"

"A scared little child with delusions of grandeur is still a scared little child," and the possessed dog snarled. Yoshiko stepped back a bit, for her ego's protection if nothing else.

"This little child is going to send you home. Hope you're ready to say goodbye to Prelude."

"I am, in fact."

A great flash blinded the whole room. Yoshiko called for the others to continue chanting, not that such a feat was easy as her party lay witness to Prelude howling on the ground. A ball of light emerged from her body, and the dog lay weakened.

"I thank you for your cooperation. Residing in the body of your dog has given me memories to last a lifetime...multiple lifetimes, to be exact."

"You can't hurt anyone. The salt circle forbids it."

"Ah, yes. We will have to do something about that."

Ranchmilk dropped the ball of light form and contorted his face into a screaming oni mask. Yoshiko flinched and stepped back, dispersing her part of the salt circle.

"No!"

"Muahahaha. Relax, Yohane, I have no intention of possessing you. I would never have stalled for time if there wasn't someone more amenable to my ambitions of longevity. Farewell, fools," and Ranchmilk returned to his ball of light form and exited the room, the velvet tinge leaving with him.

"What did he mean, '...my ambitions of longevity'?", Riko asked, checking for Prelude's pulse and stroking the now-unpossessed dog.

"He wants to possess someone who'll live as long as a human but hasn't lived too long," Yoshiko began. "But why take a chance looking around for a host when I'm the youngest human in the building!"

"What if he sensed someone else coming, someone he knew would eventually show up?", Mutsu questioned.

"Our business has been slow for weeks! No one else would show up here unless we asked them to…", Chika's face paled as the realization dawned on her and everyone else in the room.

Ruby creaked the door of the inn open and walked in sheepishly. "Hey, guys. Sorry I'm late, I had to stop by the bakery-AAUGH!"

Ruby was wrested back by some force she could not explain and collapsed on her back. Yoshiko and the others raced back to the lobby as fast as they could, but it was too late. Ruby began to convulse as the ghost took over, her turquoise eyes glazing over.

"Oh dear," Hanamaru said. "Ruby, are you there?"

Ruby sat straight up and a twisted smile crept up her face.

"I'm sorry, the school idol you are trying to reach has been disconnected. Please try again never."

The artist formerly known as Ruby stood up and leapt through a window of the inn, leaving her ex-friends aghast.

Riko slouched against a wall and dropped her face in her hands. "What have we done?"

"What have I done?", Yoshiko muttered hoarsely.

You was gasping rapidly and looked to be at a loss for words on how to fix their situation. "Wait guys, we don't have to give up yet...uh, maybe the ghost left us a clue?"

It was at this moment that Prelude stumbled out of Chika's room and walked past Riko to paw a box that had been left on the floor.

Chika opened the box and her face fell in an instant.

"She's too good for us."

"What, what? What's in the box?", Yoshiko pleaded.

Chika sighed and showed the contents of the box. It was a small chocolate cake with strawberries decorating the border. Written in blue frosting atop the cake was the sentence "We think you're pretty sweet, Yoshiko."

Riko let out a sympathetic elaboration. "Hanamaru said things weren't going well with your show...so we wanted to surprise you with this, but then everything with Prelude happened. We forgot Ruby volunteered to pick up the cake."

Yoshiko just dropped her head in shame and let out a little whine. That snowballed into a sobbing session as tears dropped to the floor. The ghost was right. She had delusions of grandeur, and not letting them go meant her friends paid the price.

Chika placed a supportive hand on her shoulder and brought her into a hug.

"Oh Yoshiko, don't cry."

"But I want to. It's all I'm good for."

"No, no, you're our friend the great Yohane. You don't shrink before problems, you shine!"

"Shining under a blood moon, but shining!", You added.

"You guys are just saying that to be nice," Yoshiko choked out between sobs.

"You got my dog back. Thank you."

"But the ghost got Ruby."

"And Ruby's got us. All of us," Hanamaru replied, rubbing Yoshiko's head.

Hanamaru's assurance worked. Yoshiko stopped mewling and began to steady her breathing, Chika drying off Yoshiko's eyes with her own cape.

"You can't read a spellbook with tears in your eyes."

Yoshiko broke off from Chika's embrace and took a stone-cold disposition as the realization set in.

"We have to fix this."

The Aqours girls (and Mutsu) smiled. You handed Yoshiko Occult Classics.

"Where could she have gone?", Mutsu wondered.

"Knowing Ranchmilk, he'll probably want to lay low, so I imagine Ruby's house is a no-go. He'd want somewhere deserted, quiet, and large enough to hide in."

"Like a construction site-zura?"

"Or somewhere that's about to be deconstructed!" The answer came like a bolt of lightning.

"Uranohoshi!", everyone exclaimed.

"He wouldn't be that predictable," Chika mused.

"No, but Ruby might be unconsciously steering him there," Yoshiko replied. "We've got nothing left to lose."

"I'll get the salt," You said as she headed back to Chika's room.

"What does it say about dealing with mobile ghosts with possession powers?", Riko asked.

"'Most ghosts will not have full access to their powers upon initially overtaking a new host, so any and all exorcisms must be done with expediency. Animals and the previously possessed will serve well in sussing out lingering spirits.' We need to flush out Ranchmilk before he latches onto Ruby's soul like an undead parasite!"

"We will," Chika began. "That freak wanted to use Prelude for evil, so I guess we'll have to use Prelude for good...if that's okay with Prelude. You wanna help us perform an exorcism to purge an innocent of unholy influence, Prelude?"

Prelude turned over on her back.

"I'mma take that as a yes, Prelude! Who's a good dog, Prelude? You are!", and Chika began vigorously rubbing her belly.

Yoshiko rubbed her eyes and billowed her cape. "The ghost can insult my summoning skills all he wants! But no one messes with Yohane…'s friends!"

The gates of Uranohoshi Girls' High School were like a barrier to a haunted castle now. A slow, cold wind jostled the locked gates of the closed school, serving as a warning to all who would trespass. All except six girls and their evil-detecting dog.

"If we go in, there's no guarantee we all come out," Yoshiko warned the others. Not a single person budged from their spot.

Yoshiko sighed and gave a small smile. "Thanks, guys."

And so, one by one, Yoshiko hoisted the girls and Prelude over the gate cheerleader-style. Chika pulled out a rope from her backpack and slung it over her side of the gate for Yoshiko to climb over herself.

"Never thought we'd be back here," Chika said.

"Yeah, and I'd prefer to not die here," Riko said, clutching Prelude. "Why couldn't we bring Shiitake?"

"Because Shiitake's at the doggie spa and I can't afford to pull her out mid-loofah," Chika admitted under her breath.

"You really should invest in a doggie spa at your inn," Hanamaru mentioned.

"I know, I know!"

"My little demons, we fight the unknown with the hand we're dealt. If we have one dog, we travel in one unit. We'll scour every room in this school, even if it takes us years."

"Or we could just follow not-Ruby into that bathroom over there," Mutsu pointed out. "I just saw her go in."

"...Right. Children of Yohane-"

"We're not calling ourselves that," You interrupted.

"-move out!"

The group crept towards the bathroom door, forced open by the lock's mysterious melting. Yoshiko took point and propped the door open with her foot, entering first with Prelude and beckoning the others to follow into the darkened room. The lights were not out, but were flickering heavily.

Riko scanned the room for anything out of the ordinary. Anything out of the ordinary aside from the local celebrity trespassers led by their eccentric friend. She passed by a closed bathroom stall and her ears perked up at the sound of...crying?

"What…"

She listened more closely. It was crying. Ruby's crying.

"Why are you crying?"

"Riko, is that you? Everything's so dark and scary. I want to go home, but he won't let me."

"You're talking to us, which means you're fighting him. Don't stop, I'm coming in!"

Yoshiko and Chika exchanged nervous glances and looked down at the stall that Riko was trying to enter. There were no feet to be seen underneath the door. Prelude began snarling.

Riko jostled the door and finally got it open, but there was no one there.

Riko entered the stall dumbfounded and a little crestfallen. "Ruby, are you there?" She heard a faint voice, muffled to the point of sounding submerged. She approached the toilet bowl and saw a reflection of Ruby's face crying.

"Ruby, don't worry we're going to get you out of here!" Riko leaned over to address her friend directly.

She would regret that action very soon.

Ruby's face disappeared from the water, violently dispersed as a tangible hand emerged from the murky depths and clutched Riko's throat.

"Ack, Chika, hel-", Riko could not even finish before her head was dragged down into the toilet.

"Augh, toilet ghost!", Hanamaru whimpered before hiding You.

Prelude leapt into action and bit on Riko's leg to pull her away from Ranchmilk, but the ghost's grip proved stronger. Prelude dug her claws into the floor to hold her ground, but she was being pulled forward as well.

Chika, Hanamaru, You, and Mutsu joined in to try and pry Riko from a watery grave, while Yoshiko frantically paged through the book to find a solution.

"Yoshiko! Hurry!", Chika pleaded as the group's grip on Riko's leg was slipping.

Yoshiko was shaking her head at the "solutions" offered in the book. They were all useless.

"Yoshiko, please!" The others were barely holding ground, and Chika could already feel Riko's limbs going limp.

Yoshiko pounded her head for a solution. Her eyes then lit up.

"Sorry in advance for this! Red paper or blue paper?"

"What?", You asked.

"Red paper or blue paper?"

"I don't understand what you're saying!", Hanamaru exclaimed.

"Red paper or blue paper?!"

Suddenly, the water in the toilet bubbled to the surface, and Riko's head finally surfaced, pushed back up by the very hand that had dragged her down.

Ranchmilk's hand kept a grip on Riko, but was tapping its fingers across her throat annoyedly.

"Am I really hearing this amateur spiel right now?"

Chika looked exasperated. "What in the world are you talking abou-"

"Uhp, uhp, uhp, not now Chika, the grown-ups are talking," Ranchmilk said as he partially emerged from the toilet to address Yoshiko directly, Riko fully released from his grasp. "Little girl, do you realize what kind of ghost I am? Not an Aka Manto or an Aoi Manto! I would never drag myself to the level of red paper, blue paper chicanery, I do have my dignity after all. I am Ranchmilk, sole entity, accept no substitutes, accep-"

Yoshiko clapped the book shut, dashed towards the toilet-residing ghost, and swung the spine of the large book down on his/Ruby's head with a ferocity that would make Maka Albarn blush. Ranchmilk let out a slurred moan as he slumped over the toilet seat.

Riko and the others dragged Ruby's body out of the toilet and out of the stall so Yoshiko could begin the exorcism.

Mutsu shook her hands dry of the toilet water and grimaced.

"Well, I can cross that off my bucket list."

Ranchmilk was laid out on the floor, You creating another salt circle to keep him contained just as he was beginning to stir back to consciousness. The girls sans Riko began humming again.

"What are you going to do with me?"

"What I should've done earlier," Yoshiko declared. "I'm going to untether you from this plane of existence and send you crawling back to the burning bowels of Heck!"

"You can't do that."

"Hummm, yes she can," Hanamaru said.

"Okay, you shouldn't do that."

"And you shouldn't have possessed my friend's dog, possessed the kindest member of Aqours, and tried to drown Riko," Yoshiko said flatly.

"Is mercy in short supply among you fleshies? Think of what you're doing. I still have so much to live for. Seeing the dawn of world peace so I can ruin it. Or seeing your blue-eyed friend and the piano girl finally confess their love for another."

Riko cocked her quizzically. "What are you talking about, Chika and I aren't in love."

"You keep telling yourself that."

Yoshiko read through the incantation once more for posterity and faced her adversary one more time. "Sorry, Ranchmilk, but I'm through listening to you. Send him back, send him back, crack crick clikkety-klak!"

Ranchmilk began convulsing as the incantation took hold.

"Now try escaping! I, Yohane of the East, call upon the forces of the spirit world one more time to retrieve their errant comrade and save my friend's immortal soul!"

"You will never amount to anything but mediocrity!"

Yoshiko held up a hand to keep Ranchmilk's spirit at bay, "Back, you nasty phantom! The great Yohane of the East commands you to leave and never darken this earth again!"

A green flash lit up the room and a screaming ball of light emerged from Ruby's body. It flashed vigorously, desperately trying to keep some grasp on the mortal world, but began to flicker out. The battle had already been lost.

"Gabh a-mach, agus fuirich anns an raon agad, Ranchmilk!", Yoshiko cried out in broken Gaelic to conclude the ceremony and facilitate Ranchmilk's crossing over.

She crossed her arms satisfied. "I may be mediocre, but I've got a whole lifetime ahead of me. I can wake up tomorrow and be awesome, and you'll still be in the underworld telling your friends who sent you packing."

"I suppose that is true. Farewell, Yohane, until we meet again in the next life."

And with that, the ghost Ranchmilk faded away.

Yoshiko fell to her knees and sighed. "The deed is done."

She was dogpiled figuratively as Chika and the others tackled her into a hug to offer congratulations. And then Prelude joined in to de-metaphorize the metaphor.

"Yoshiko! You were amazing!", Chika squeed.

"Spectacular-zura!"

"You faced the jaws of defeat, and you went full speed ahead to snatch victory from them!", You affirmed.

"I owe you my life," Riko said with a grateful nod.

"And we owe you a cake," Mutsu added.

"Ah, guys. You don't have to do that for me."

"Yoshiko?", a small voice cried out.

The others turned around and saw that Ruby had come to, Prelude nosing her.

"For what it's worth, I already think you're awesome," Ruby said, flashing a joyful smile. She was soaked and there were shards of glass littering her hair, but she was alright.

"She is awesome!", Mutsu began. "No one else could do the paper routine with that much conviction, even if the book was super-clear about it!"

"Actually, that wasn't in the book, I just adlibbed...what?"

Her companions were slack-jawed at the revelation. Hanamaru was the first to break the silence.

"Goodness gracious, then what are you so down on yourself for? You fought a ghost with your own wits and lived!"

"A ghost I summoned to begin with because I couldn't be happy with who I am. I'm sorry, to all of you."

"We're Aqours and we don't quit on each other," Riko started, nursing her throat. "You proved that today."

Yoshiko breathed a sigh of relief. Whatever she was, everyone in this creepy bathroom loved her unconditionally.

And she got to exorcise a ghost twice.

"Well my friends, our livestream should come to a peaceful close for once, unless the spirits of the netherworld seek to wreak their vengeance on me for thwarting the plans of one of their own."

The next day, Yoshiko was back with a new broadcast and a small studio audience of her peers. Mutsu had taken over as cameraperson for the day while the girls of Aqours sat on the sides to offer their support. The copy of Occult Classics also played a part in Yoshiko's retooled status quo.

As her new doorstop, that is.

Yoshiko beamed to the camera. "Well, I guess we'll just have a quiet finale after all. Oh, what's this?!", she cooed as Ruby used a metal rod to lower a familiar licensed Glumo plush toy above Yoshiko's head.

"Gasp! It's the µ's member Nico back from the grave, possessing an article of her likeness to haunt the school idols of present day!"

You pulled out a tape recorder and played a tinny audio clip of "Nico Nico Ni!" from off-camera.

"Thankfully, Nico's ghost is as benevolent as her public persona. But nonetheless, such a meeting of personalities is unprecedented on this show. Anything can happen when you believe, my little demons...including in yourself."

From the sidelines, her friends looked proud. Hanamaru looked the proudest and called out from the "bleachers" before Yoshiko ended the stream.

"Alright! Yoshiko is back-zura!"

"It's Yohan-" And the stream ended for all watching.

Scrappy-Fan92: Now wasn't that fun? It was a nice change of pace for me, and frankly, I'm just happy that I was able to get something else published in 2021. Please leave constructive feedback in the reviews section, and more importantly, take care of your health.