Keep in mind here that almost all of my (minimal) Japanese history knowledge comes from the Drifters series, wherein historical warlords/fighters from various periods and countries have been isekai-ed into a bootleg Tolkein-verse and duke it out for...uh...supremacy, I guess. One side is at least nominally for the annihilation of the human race, whereas the other side wants to save it, which you would THINK make them the good guys, except they want to save civilization less for altruistic reasons and more for straight-up "conquer and rule" purposes. Anyways its got Oda Nobunaga, Shimazu Toyohisa, and that Yoichi archer guy as the protagonist trio, and also some military police dude named Hijikata (I think I spelled that right?) on the "kill everything in the world with fire" side.

June 28th, 2022

Keiichi-kun could be a weird guy, Rena reflected. While she herself still had some faint whiffs of the city clinging to her even a year after her return, he was an urbanite born and bred, who was increasingly and comedically perplexed by all the many rural facets of life within Hinamizawa. It could be endearing, or it could just be advantageous (usually in club games), but one way or the other, Keiichi-kun generally found himself confused by the others.

Today, he seemed determined to flip that script and confuse them.

For one thing, Keiichi-kun was generally not the type of guy to cut class, even when Rena could candidly admit that he was the smartest dang person in here, perhaps aside from Chie-sensei. Normally, even though he yawned his way through the lectures and spent most of his work time tutoring her and Mion, he was still here. Of course he was. Keiichi-kun loved their club games, and he was always an enthusiastic competitor. The only times he didn't show up was when he was sick, and he was usually healthy as a horse.

She eyed the empty seat worriedly, then glanced to her other side. Rika-chan was absent too, and her cousin Hanyuu. Satoko-chan had shrugged when she'd come in this morning, saying something about how Rika-chan had said it was an emergency that she and her cousin had needed to deal with. Why Satoko-chan hadn't been involved, no one knew, but she seemed philosophical about the whole situation, plonking down in her seat and pulling out a rarely-seen notebook as Satoko-chan started to jot down ideas about traps, free from the risk of Keiichi-kun overseeing them.

Rena gnawed her lip and tried not to worry. Rika-chan would tell them if something was really wrong. She was a smart little girl like that.

With three out of their number missing, however, club games were postponed, with Mion halfheartedly laughing and offering a prize to whoever found their missing trio. Rena's feet dragged in the dirt as she slowly made her way home, feeling a familiar sinking in her heart. The absence of club games always did that to her. It was a gentle sadness –a sort of melancholy– and she tried to bolster her spirits with the idea of a visit to the trash heap after she stashed her bookbag and school uniform. She-

Rena paused, her foot crunching in the dirt. She heard something.

Stopping and listening for a moment, Rena's brows furrowed as the low, rustling murmur of the trees and the buzzing of the cicadas were supplemented by voices –human voices. Closing her eyes and casting about a little, Rena stepped to one side and then another, trying to pinpoint the familiar sounds. It was off in the woods a little bit, but it was definitely them: Keiichi-kun, Rika-chan, and Hanyuu-chan.

Without hesitating a moment, Rena dropped her bookbag where it was and plunged into the woods, pushing through the dense foliage at waist-height as she struggled to get closer to the voices in a way that wouldn't make it immediately obvious she was here. She didn't know what was going on, after all…

And when she pushed through the last of the bushes and peeked around a tree, Rena blinked. Well, she was certainly seeing what was going on, but…she didn't understand it one little bit.

All three of her friends were there. Rena was pretty confident on that. But what they were doing –why Keiichi-kun was mounting what looked like a desperate defense on a mountain of chopped-up logs as he wielded a branch like a bo staff in one hand– Rena didn't have the slightest idea. Hanyuu-chan was trying to mount his makeshift barricade, but Keiichi-kun was swinging his branch at her to fend off the young girl, a scowl of effort on his face as Hanyuu ducked and dodged but still persistently tried to reach him. That, at least, made a modicum of sense –in that Rena could understand what they were doing, even if she didn't have the faintest clue why– but Rika-chan swarming up a nearby tree, keeping a baleful eye on the shouting Keiichi-kun, Rena didn't get at all.

"Back, you monsters!" Keiichi-kun howled, his chest heaving with sweat. Wait, how long had they been at this!? "You'll never take me alive!"

"Keiichi-san!" Hanyuu wailed, desperately clinging to a log. "Your mother will be worried soon! Please come home!"

"Ha!" Keiichi-kun brandished his stick at her with a strange, almost exhilarated grin. "Foul demon that you are, trying to fool me so! I see those horns sticking out from your head! You'll not have me in your pot!"

"Hau, hauhau!" Hanyuu whimpered, clamping her hands down on her small charm points self-consciously. "I-I'm not that kind of demon, I promise! Your parents will be freaking out!"

"A likely story!" Keiichi-kun cried ferociously, swiping at her with the branch as Hanyuu yelped and fell back. "My parents and I have never made contact in twenty years, and they're not likely to start now!"

"Reason is wasted on the reasonless." Rika grumbled from several meters above him, inching her way slowly along a high branch with her turquoise smock hiked up around her thighs. "Hanyuu, stop trying to negotiate with the idiot and grab his weapon!"

"Hauhauhau! I'm trying!" Hanyuu called back.

"What." Rena said, unable to think of anything else to say as she found herself stepping out from behind the tree, making Hanyuu-chan, at least, crane her neck back to look at her.

"Oh, ehm, h-hello." Hanyuu-chan said sheepishly. Keiichi-kun glanced back to see what had drawn his opponent's attention, and to Rena's surprise, paled a little, before brandishing his heavy branch with even more vigor.

"Call all the reinforcements you wish!" he shouted bravely, holding Rena's eyes with defiance glinting in every line of him. "Call every last yokai in the netherworld, but you'll never have this warrior's head! Do you hear me, you monsters!"

"What." Rena said again, baffled, as Hanyuu-chan climbed to her feet and scampered back a few meters.

"Hau, u-um, Keiichi-san has, well, what I mean is, he sorta…" she flustered nervously, tapping her index fingers together, and Rika-chan made an annoyed noise as she continued to try and scoot above Keiichi-kun.

"He broke one of the artifacts I brought out from the Saiguden to clean." she explained, keeping her perilous balance as she nudged further and further out on the branch. "We think he's possessed by some kind of samurai or ronin."

"What." Rena said for the third time, because what else could you say in a situation like this.

"I know the exorcism ritual." Rika-chan said reasonably, as Keiichi-kun spun in circles, trying to keep an eye on all of them at once, and continued spouting strange, anachronistic defiances at them as he flourished his heavy branch. "Problem is, he grabbed that stick there, and neither of us are big enough to tackle and restrain him. We've been trying to pin him down all day."

"And you failed every time, just as you shall always fail when you attempt to take me on!" Keiichi-kun shouted to her, puffing out his chest as his eyes glinted with a warrior's madness. "Not even the netherworld can hold me! Once I figure out this strange land, I shall return to my own, and you shall rue the day you thought to keep me in chains or put me -urk!"

"Anytime now." Rika-chan grunted impatiently at Rena, her tiny arms trembling as she tried to keep her grip on the lasso she had flung down over Keiichi-kun's neck. Rena blinked and shook her head.

"Uh, right."

Deciding to embrace the absurdity of it all, Rena ran towards the pile of wood and climbed atop the makeshift barrier as Keiichi-kun thrashed and struggled against the noose on his neck, his face going purple. Her first order of business was to grab his branch and wrench it away from him –even in this state, Keiichi-kun or whatever spirit that had possessed him still fought her for it– and only then did she grab his wrists and twist them behind his back, sending the both of them crashing onto the splintery logs as Rika-chan let go of her noose.

"Ah! Foul demons! Using witchcraft and sorcery to ensnare an honest warrior!" Keiichi-kun shouted, bucking and wiggling desperately beneath her. Rena rolled her eyes a little.

"Who used witchcraft? It's a noose, just like peasants use to trap rabbits." Rika-chan said with a smug grin, leaping down out of the tree. Keiichi-kun's struggling intensified at those words as Rena saw him sweat.

"You will not feast upon my bones!" he hollered desperately.

"Eh, Rika-chan, maybe hold off on the hunting metaphors." Rena said with a somewhat sheepish grin, which twitched a little as Keiichi-kun continued to buck under her. "Now, listen, um…whoever you are. We don't mean to hurt you. We're not yokai. You're possessing the body of our friend, and we'd like you to come out of him, please. Rika-chan here is a priestess, so she'll be able to separate the two of you lickety-split."

"Lies! Deceiver!" Keiichi-kun cried out, wriggling frantically and all but frothing at the mouth underneath her. "Face me with a sword in hand, demon, and we'll see who's the better man!"

Rena looked at Rika and Hanyuu-chan as they came up to her, both panting.

"Tie him up and drag him to the shrine?" she offered. "I'll take the legs, you two can take his head."

7.48 AM, USA Central Time


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