As I vaulted from rooftop to rooftop, Ikidre began to stir while I carried him on my back. He was mumbling incoherently in my ear by the time I approached the main academy building. There was a moment of panic when I thought perhaps he had suffered permanent brain damage from the strange attack and would act like this indefinitely. My worries quickly faded when I began to distinctly hear girls' names spouted intermittently amidst his blubbering. With a smirk, I carefully deposited Ikidre onto a bench just inside the Academy entrance.

"Minor concussion. He should come around quickly."

I turned to the voice and found myself facing a pair of bright, amber eyes hiding in the thin shadow of whitening hair. Elder lips smiled unassumingly, making the scars covering half of the face wrinkle. I was suddenly staring at my sensei, Hagane Kino.

"S-sensei! We were told you were already on a special mission tonight."

"Excellent!" A trace of relief reinforced Kino's smile. "Then it seems as though the message got to you. When Kokichi-sama gave me my new assignment, I asked that he send you on that scouting mission so you wouldn't be idle with a worrisome situation at hand. I know that you and Ikidre can become restless when told to stay put and be patient."

Kino knew me well. Already the relatively large amount of patience I usually afforded my sensei began to wane. Had Ikidre been conscious, he also would have offered a barrage of questions. I wondered if Kino intentionally omitted Tonbei from his comment.

"Kino-sensei! We went to Tonbei's family—they're gone! And I saw something, a blur, it attacked…" Words came out of my mouth as though I had raced ahead of them on the way to the Academy and they had all now caught up at once. Kino held up a hand and nodded. When his smile faded, I knew he was taking me seriously. "Quiet now, Raika," he said in a low voice. He moved and knelt by Ikidre. "As soon as he comes to, I'll explain everything I know to both of you. We won't have much time to talk, and we'll need to move as quietly as possible."

"'We'?" I asked. "Sensei, where are we going?"

A hint of Kino's smile returned. "To finish my special mission."

My sensei was stern in assuring I heard no more than Ikidre, so he asked me to report the details of what had happened while we waited. Once my teammate had finally reopened his eyes, Kino took a few minutes to make sure nothing had hurt Ikidre in a way that would significantly impair him.

"The itinerants have sighted at least one intruder that appears to be scouting around the village perimeter," explained Kino, once the three of us had gathered ourselves and left the Academy. "The ones who actually saw it reported a large, foreign creature that has lion-like legs, but walks upright like a man. I'm skeptical, but the witnesses also reported that it was wreathed in a red glow."

Ikidre shot me a look as we turned and darted uphill towards the mountain valley. "But then, could it be…"

"Yes, Ikidre," Kino said calmly. "I suspect the 'red blur' that Raika saw attack you was the intruder. We're probably lucky that it simply wanted to escape, rather than to fight you. In fact, part of me was hoping that you'd find something during your temporary mission. Now we know the intruder is still nearby. Kokichi-sama has ordered us to intercept it and subdue it if possible, kill it if necessary."

"Then this intruder must be the one who's kidnapped Tonbei and his family!" I said.

"That's a premature conclusion, even if it is a possibility," cautioned Kino. "It doesn't seem likely to me that the two are related. First of all, Raika reported that the household was very well-kept, showing no signs of struggle. Second, Tonbei has family that tends rice fields in the southern plains and he's mentioned visiting his cousins there in the past. It's possible, since he's been temporarily released on probation, that his family decided to take an unannounced trip."

"But we found the creature inside Tonbei's house!" Ikidre blurted. "Maybe it was making the house look like it was undisturbed."

Kino winced in thought. "Again, that's possible, but there are other, simpler explanations. If the intruder wants something inside the village, a vacated house would make a good hiding spot. But if you're right, Ikidre, it would mean we're dealing with a very intelligent sort of creature."

We were shushed moments later, and approached the valley at the top of island's largest hill. I could see most of the village spread out below me to the east, while the north and south rises of rock met closely with the craggy field of tall grass and blue torpetals. Large flat areas were carved at regular intervals into the stone, adorned with aging pillars and towering arches. Most village-wide ceremonies were historically held here, including the appointment of new council members and seirei acquisition.

Kino gave Ikidre and me the signal to spread out. We both summoned our seireis and moved to the mountain ridges on either side of the valley for better vantage points. Kino crept further on into the shadows to investigate the west end of the valley and then subsequently scan that side of the island.

I came to a small alcove where one wall had crumbled away to allow a view of a sliver of forest, which stood just above the village heights. The itinerants had favored the trees as a training ground for academy students. My mind wandered momentarily as I recalled a long history of training sessions with my academy class. Tonbei had been the class clown, finding horribly silly uses for the henge technique, all of them in bad taste. I smiled slowly as my gaze lifted from the forest to the rest of the serene village. Now was an odd time to appreciate the peace with which commoners moved about the streets, or to appreciate the soft lights and curved architecture that characterized most of the village itself, now that I was in the middle of an important mission. But the mission felt secondary; I yawned and dreamt of my village as it used to be, so undisturbed, like a city living within a quiet slumber…

…I became vaguely aware that there was yelling nearby, but this was not as disturbing as the realization that I had fallen asleep, sprawled awkwardly on the rock. I still felt very lethargic, and it was not even midnight! My nap had clearly been unnatural. My waking mind refocused on a second round of yelling: it was coming from the field.

I forced my muscles into action, but they responded slowly. Staggering as though I had just arose from bed after days of rest, I ran my hands along the stone pillars for support, from one to the next. Eventually, I came back to the edge of the mountaintop field, and I saw two figures locked in a grapple. When I saw that Kino was one, my hand dove for my kunai holster and my breath began to quicken. When I saw the second, all this was undone. I gasped, breath held, and the metal kunai clanged onto the stone surface at my feet.

Kino was fighting a monster wreathed in a deadly red aura. From all I could see at my distance, the beast attacked in blurs, and its form was indistinct. I could, however, clearly see moonlight bouncing off of Kino's shoulders and chest as though it were wet. I realized, belatedly, that it was blood. My teacher struggled to free himself from the red creature's frenzy of attacks; they came so quickly, I was sure that the thing must have had several limbs at its disposal. More glinting fluid sprang into the air from Kino's veins at each attack.

And through all this, I stood motionless, horrified.

Suddenly, I lost track of Kino's right arm. I thought at first it must have disappeared, but his move was simply so quick that the monster was unable to avoid it: Kino's arm had landed deep within his enemy's throat. I wanted to look away, for now there seemed to be nothing Kino could do to keep the beast from closing his large maw upon the limb, sundering it utterly. But my attention was frozen along with my body. I couldn't even move my eyes.

The red monster inexplicably kept his mouth open, and Kino appeared to force his arm in further so that all I could see was his shoulder. The large aura around the creature began to flicker erratically, and when it unsuccessfully attempted to writhe out of Kino's hold, then came my realization. Kino was strangling it! For the next torturous minute, I watched the writhing continue and dwindle, until finally the monster lay motionless in a black heap at Kino's feet. The red aura was gone.

Kino stumbled towards me after a moment, his breath coming in ragged gasps. I was finally able to rush forward, and catch my sensei before he collapsed into a torpetal patch. His mesh armor was slick with hot blood. He would be dead if I didn't find help immediately. I shouted frantically, but there was no response. Ikidre was nowhere in sight. For all I knew, the monster had already got to him first.

I struggled to shift Kino onto my back, but my legs gave way, and I felt a great shudder as my entire body began to tremble. Angry tears rose behind my eyes, for I wasn't certain whether I was truly too weak to carry him or whether I had simply been inwardly shaken to the point of incompetence by that dreadful sight from moments ago. I clenched my teeth, closed my eyes, and drove my consciousness into a blank calm.

Release!

A powerfully brisk chill ran through every cell in my body as my Initial Gate opened. Strength flooded back into my muscles, and I stood. My mind cleared, the world came into clear focus, and—for the second time that night—I raced back towards the Academy taxed with the weight of a limp body.