Warnings: Some brief violence.
Lucky Child
Chapter 53:
"Good Thing or Bad Thing"
His cheek looked the color of a ripe and bruised tomato, skin scraped and raw after an unforgiving encounter with the sidewalk (the sidewalk had won said encounter, of course; Yusuke had a hard head, but even he had trouble breaking concrete with it at the tender age of ten). He stared at the floor, sullen as an October day, as I bandaged him up on my bedroom floor. The muffled clatter of pots and pans echoed through the floor underneath us, vibrating against my tailbone and the sides of my crossed calves.
"You know," I said as Yusuke flinched away from my hands and the iodine-soaked cotton in them, "there are ways to get back at the big kids without resorting to violence."
"There are ways to get back at them without resorting to violence," he repeated, voice high and whiny in mean mockery of my own. Enormous brown eyes rolled like a cement mixer. "You're such a square, Keiko."
I pursed my lips, but I didn't retort. This was the fifth fight he'd picked with the sixth graders in a month. Sooner or later they'd stop going easy on him, really pound him into the pavement—which, yeah, they'd already done, but they'd do it worse if Yusuke kept antagonizing so many at once. This time it had been four against one. The previous week it had been three, and when Yusuke nearly won, they brought in reinforcements. And since it was my goal to keep him alive (so he could get killed at an appropriate moment in a few years, ironically) it was time I stepped in.
"Fine," I said, shrugging. "Then I won't help you embarrass them into next Wednesday, I guess."
Yusuke's sneer turned curious, those huge eyes of his blinking like a startled owl. "Embarrass them into next Wednesday?" he repeated—but he didn't mock my voice this time. "How would you do that?"
Another shrug as I tried not to smile. "I thought you said I was a square."
Yusuke scowled. "Fine. I take it back. You're as square as a triangle." He caught my wrist and leaned toward me, peering intently into my face. "So how would you do that? Embarrass them, I mean."
"You just apply a bit of chemistry, that's all."
"Chemistry?" His nose wrinkled. "What, you want me to do homework?"
"I know better than to ask that of you," I said (and Yusuke looked rather proud, that little punk). This time I couldn't suppress a small, devious smile. "Still, though. We will need to go to the library, if you want this weapon."
It was like someone had like a firework inside him, and all the sparks showed in his grinning face. "A weapon. Now we're talking." But excitement faded as his nose wrinkled again. "But what kind of weapon do you find at the library that uses chemistry and embarrasses people?"
I giggled. "The kind you get from a chemistry book, of course."
Yusuke looked unconvinced. "A book?"
"Yeah. A book." I shut the first aid kit at my side and stood. Yusuke took my hand, looking skeptical still, but I just smiled, all teeth like a leering shark. "Books are the best weapons in the world."
In another life, Yusuke could've been a chemist. He certainly mixed the formula for stink-juice and sneezing powder with all the solemn accuracy of a dedicated researcher, mischief turning his normally scattered brain quite focused. The bullies never picked on him against after the science project Yusuke inflicted upon them.
"You were right, Keiko," Yusuke said when he returned home triumphant (if not a little smelly). "Books do make good weapons, so long as you get the right kind."
He was right, of course, and seeing this, I copied down a series of chemical formulas with the same care Yusuke mixed them.
Said formulas—and the weapon of a book they came from—would prove infinitely useful protections come the inevitable, fated future.
In order to serve the whim of fate, I had to play things very, very carefully.
Although I had a bolt-hole—safe and dark and tempting—I had to use it judiciously. I couldn't just hide and wait for this all to blow over. Not right away, at least.
Upon timing, I surmised, hinged everything.
Suzaku would eventually sic his mind-controlled lackeys on Keiko in an attempt to psychologically torture Yusuke. In turn, Yusuke would be invigorated by the threat of Keiko's death—the exact opposite of Suzaku's intentions, which would lead the phoenix king to his demise. If Keiko disappeared, hidden away from the threat of her pursuers, Yusuke would not see her in peril. He would not power up, and he would lose.
Visibility, therefore, and risking myself to death, was a necessary part of fate's design.
(Provided Yusuke cared for me deeply enough to be so inspired by a threat on my life.)
(Provided I hadn't fucked it all up and treated him too much like a sister treats her brother.)
(Provided my inability to love a goddamn teenager hadn't ruined everything—an unfair and ironic consequence of my desire to be ethical.)
(But I'd have to worry about that another time. It was too late now, after all, to change my relationship with Yusuke.)
After the boys entered the portal to Demon World, I hoofed it back to the school. Much as it pained me to abandon my city and not fight the hordes of infected people terrorizing it, I valued my life far more than my pride and city's reputation. Plus, no way would I ever lead Suzaku's minions to my parents or friends. The school was to be my battleground—and a well-stocked battleground it was.
While I intended to fight a war there, I also intended to be quite comfortable whilst doing it.
I had just taken an enormous bite of onigiri, mouth full of rice and fish, when the communication mirror in my pocket chimed. Hand over my mouth, trying desperately to swallow (and wondering if I could somehow put the mirror's ringer on silent) I flipped open the compact and held it up, mumbling a "Hello?" through my full mouth.
For a moment the mirror reflected my face—bulging chipmunk cheeks and all—but soon the image rippled and Yusuke's face swam into view. He blinked at me, squinting, and said, "Keiko, are you…are you eating dinner?"
"Yeah." I managed to choke the onigiri down at last. "Just riceballs and a canteen of soup. Nothing fancy. How goes the mission?"
"It's going OK, I guess." I saw the barest gleam of a stone wall behind his head, the interior of Maze Castle I was certain. "We haven't killed each other yet, which is a plus. Was touch and go there for a second, though." His eyes lit up, memory clearly exciting. "Ya see, there was this big falling wall thing, and—"
He told me all about the Gate of Betrayal, not to mention Hiei's mad dash to save them and his play-acting the role of turncoat. It happened nearly identical to the anime, I was pleased to note. Perhaps this meant Hiei's character development was on schedule, after all. The thought had my shoulders sagging with relief. Seemed I hadn't screwed up too badly, although Yusuke took my relieved sigh a different way.
"Hey, Keiko, it's OK. We're doing fine and kicking ass," he assured me—and then the sarcasm returned. "I mean, yeah, for a little while there I was pretty sure Hiei would stab us all in the back when we weren't paying attention, little three-eyed jerk, but it turns out that's not his style, even after everything that happened with the Shadow Sword." A sheepish grin. "But then Kurama said that you'd sent him and Hiei, and I knew I had to at least give him a shot, right? And then Hiei saved our asses so it all worked out in the end."
"Aww—I didn't realize my recommendation would mean so much to you," I teased. As Yusuke turned red and sputtered, face dipping momentarily out of frame, I had to grin. Even if we weren't romantic, he trusted me. He valued me. That had to count for something.
"Yeah, whatever, Keiko," he said, rubbing at his nose as he popped back onto the mirror's round monitor. "Gloat all you want, but you're gonna be a fat load of help now that we've got the Hiei situation squared."
The reminder sent an icicle of apprehension through my chest. "So you face the Beasts next, I take it."
"Yeah." He rolled his eyes, brown glittering with a bit of orange and gold—nearby torchlight, perhaps? "Not that Koenma told us shit."
"I remember. Y'know. Since I was there and whatnot."
"So you understand why I'm pissed." He shrugged, resigned to Koenma's incompetence. "I dunno what we'll face next, but I'll check in if anything big happens. So where are you right now?"
"Yeah," cut in a deep, gravelly voice. "Are you somewhere safe?"
The video shook and shorted, black lines racing across the picture as it trembled and danced. I caught glimpse of several pairs of shoes, a pair of legs clad in distinctive magenta, and a flash of scarlet eyes before it stilled—this time showing me two faces squeezed together, each glaring at the other with teeth bared. Kuwabara had his hand on Yusuke's forehead, trying to shove him away, and Yusuke's fist clutched tight to Kuwabara's shirtfront.
"Ouch, Kuwabara!" Yusuke snapped. "Quit pushing!"
"You quit pushing!" Kuwabara shot back. "I wanna talk to Keiko, too!"
"I'm sure we can all speak to her if we're careful," came Kurama's longsuffering voice. The Mirror once more jostled, floating up to show me an expanse of stone ceiling before centering on a pair of green eyes and brilliant red hair. Kurama held the mirror at an angle above his head, arm a magenta streak to one side of the frame, camera trained down to encompass himself, Yusuke, and Kuwabara all at once (Kurama would have mad selfie skills once smartphones came about, lemme tell ya). As Kuwabara and Yusuke crowded over his shoulders to see better, Kurama asked, "I trust you've found a quiet place to lie low."
"Oh, shit, yeah!" I said, popping to my feet. "Lemme give y'all the grand tour."
The PE shed didn't have a light source of its own, but I'd rigged a glowing lamp out of a headlamp and a plastic milk jug. I rotated in a circle, holding the mirror at selfie angle just like Kurama, showing my friends my hidey-hole in the lamp's pearlescent light. Behind the barrier of the dusty vaulting horses I'd arranged a circle of milk crates and a place to sit, complete with blanket, decorative fringed pillow, and even a small Megallica poster that had come with their latest album. Home away from home and all that. It's the little things that keep you sane.
"It's actually pretty cozy," I said. "Had to sneak it in bit by bit, but I have a radio, a cooler full of rations, and best of all…"
Kuwabara's face screwed up. "Is that—is that a beanbag chair?"
"Yup!" I walked toward the bright pink lump to give the boys a better look. "Stole it from the drama department."
Kurama chuckled. "Resourceful."
Yusuke asked, "But why did the drama department even have a beanbag chair?"
"Apparently they did a 1970s rendition of Hamlet, or something similarly atrocious. Kaito didn't want to talk about it. Poor kid seemed traumatized."
Yusuke and Kuwabara, being exactly who they were (as well as people who didn't know Kaito), didn't understand the hilarity of that mashup, but Kurama shut his eyes and chuckled behind his hand. From off-screen a scratchy voice (belonging to a person who also didn't get my jokes because he is nothing but himself) snapped, "What the hell is a bean bag chair?"
Kurama's lips quirked at the corner. "It's a bag full of beans that you sit on like a chair, Hiei."
"Wow, shorty," Kuwabara chortled, face turned to the left. "You seriously didn't get that from just the name? Sounds pretty obvious to me!"
"Mock me again and you'll lose your tongue, oaf."
"Oaf!? Why I oughta—"
Expression resigned (but eyes glimmering with the barest hint of amusement) Kurama glanced first at Kuwabara and then off screen, look of reproach silencing Kuwabara before he could lob a retort. "Now, now, you two. We learned from the Gate of Betrayal that it's important we work together."
"I need no lecture on teamwork from you, Kurama!" Hiei snarled back. He stepped into view behind the rest of the boys and glared at the back of Kurama's head. "Do not speak to me as if I am a child!"
Although the altercation pulled a giggle from me, I had to wonder: Hiei had glared at Kurama when I sent them through the portal, just as he was glaring now. Were the two of them on good terms? The last time they'd interacted (to my knowledge, at least) Kurama had been in the middle of aiding Yusuke in his fight against Hiei—a betrayal if there ever was one. Did Hiei still resent Kurama for that insult? Had they met up over the summer to work things out? I didn't know. In fact, I'd avoided asking either of them for fear of getting in the middle and ruining whatever loyalty they might forge…and also I didn't want to encroach on their feelings. That, too. They were both such private people, after all. At least they'd gotten through the Gate of Betrayal in one piece…
"Hiei, do at least try to be nice," I said, but with a smile so he wouldn't think I was mad. "You're a team now!"
He merely glared, scarlet sparking like banked coals. "And now you lecture me, Meigo?"
Kuwabara tossed a look over his shoulder, lips pursing. "Wait. Meigo?" His eyes popped wide open, darting back and forth between Hiei and the mirror in shock. "What the—?! Do you two know each other?"
Kurama smiled. "Yes, they do. Kei and Hiei are friends, Kuwabara."
Hiei sputtered something that sounded suspiciously like a denial, but Kuwabara ignored him. He was too busy staring at Kurama with that same look of confusion and shock, eyes travelling between Kurama and the mirror—between Kurama and me—in turn.
"Wait. Kei?" And once more his eyes widened; he leapt back with a dramatic point Kurama's way. "Are you tellin' me that you two know each other, too!?"
I performed a vigorous rendition of jazz hands at the mirror. "Surprise! I know literally everyone ever!"
Kurama glanced my way and chuckled before nodding at Kuwabara. "Yes, we know one another. We're classmates, actually."
"Classmates?" He at Kurama blinked a little, processing. "And you have a nickname for her?" At that he turned on Hiei. "And you have a nickname for her?" He counted on his fingers, eyes screwed up in concentration. "Hiei calls her Meigo, Kurama calls her Kei, Yusuke calls her Grandma…" His hands dropped, along with his blocky jaw. "Everybody has a nickname for Keiko but me!"
"Seems like it," Yusuke said.
"B-but!" Kuwabara said, face growing redder by the second. "But—!"
Before I could tell a stammering Kuwabara that it was OK, and to not be upset, he could make up a name for me whenever he wanted, we were still besties and we always would be, Yusuke stood on his tiptoes and snatched the mirror out of Kurama's hand. The picture swung wildly across the screen before settling on a tight shot of his face, eyes narrowed, mouth set into a thin line. It wasn't often I saw Yusuke look so serious, and the comforts building on my tongue died like sprouts in frost.
Even so, though. Knowing he was so concerned for me wasn't all bad. Perhaps our relationship was deep enough, after all…
"So tell me, Grandma," Yusuke said, low and urgent and not joking even a little bit (so unlike him, so unlike my Yusuke). "You think you'll be OK tonight?"
His voice brought a ball of nerves to my throat, but I choked it down to speak. "I hope so. I've been monitoring the radio." I angled the mirror down so he could see the headphones around my neck and the small portable radio clipped to the waistband of my track pants (I'd changed from my uniform to the workout gear I'd stashed in my hidey-hole, of course; no sense fighting in a skirt). "There's been reports of violence and they issued a riot alert for downtown, but it's nice and quiet this side of town. I'll let you know if that changes."
"You'd better." His voice dropped even lower. "Just sit tight, Keiko. We'll smash that whistle and fix all of this soon, you'll see."
"I believe in you," I said—and because the lump was coming back and I didn't want them to hear it in my voice, I smiled and waved goodbye. "Stay safe, guys."
"Roger that. Over and out!"
Yusuke's hand flashed across the screen before it darkened; he'd closed the compact, and our connection along with it. With ponderous fingers I closed my compact, too, and stashed it inside the cup of my secure sports bra.
The boys were about to face Genbu, a creature of earth who would fall under the weight of Kurama's flowers. After that came Byakko, the one feline Kuwabara would ever care to harm, and then Seiryu, whose ice would challenge the heat of Hiei's flame—and foreshadow the dragon that would rise from it someday.
Not much time left until Suzaku, the phoenix, would face the boy who had risen from the ashes and returned to life.
They had their battles to fight.
Meanwhile, I had mine.
It was time to make an appearance, I decided, and I crawled out of the PE shed's small grate.
"Wow, really?" she said. "That's terrible!"
"Yeah," I said. "They're saying everyone should go home before the rioting spreads from downtown—and definitely before nightfall."
A round of emphatic nods from her and her friends. "We really need to get going!"
Although the looks of fear on their faces sent a spike of guilt through my chest, I merely smiled—tight-lipped and silent—as my classmates gathered their things and told me goodbye. I watched them from the school's second story, tracing their path through the courtyard and out of the school's front gate.
Good. Another batch of students sent safely home. They hadn't believed me at first, but lending them one of my radio's earbuds so they could hear the Mayor's distress broadcast had certainly done wonders for my legitimacy…
Once I lost sight of them I resumed my prowl, hunting down another lingering pack of teenagers over by the library. Told them what was happening in the city, played the radio broadcast, urged them to get moving—lather, rinse, repeat the same steps I'd performed ten times that afternoon as I got rid of the final stragglers. I'd gotten my tactic down to a science…and good thing, too, because the broadcast had started playing on a loop, crowding out the local news with warnings of encroaching violence.
Things were going dark, fast.
As I patrolled the halls, flushing out the various wings of the school like a bird dog on the hunt for quail, my hand returned again and again to the mirror hidden safely in my bra (bras are far superior to pockets, says I). The boys had only contacted me the once, almost two hours prior. Surely defeating Genbu wouldn't take Kurama this long, right?
I could only pray they'd just gotten too busy for a check-in, and hadn't been felled by the Beasts.
Once the school felt deserted enough for my tastes, I headed for the only bit of ground I hadn't covered. The faculty wing still had its lights on, unlike the rest of the school, which told me at least one or two teachers remained.
Was that a good thing or a bad one? Good because Keiko needed to see and be seen in order to draw Suzaku's fire (in order to keep the goons away from her family, and for the sake of Yusuke's power-up), but bad because a teacher was fated for infection. Unlike in the anime, however, no teachers at Meiou were as terrible as Iwamoto—and that meant even the worst of them probably didn't deserve infection, let alone the beating I'd give them.
I tried not to think about that, though, as a door rattled open down the hall ahead of me. Out stepped a lone figure, lean and tall, face momentarily obscured by his gleaming glasses.
"Yukimura?" he said, glare fading to reveal the pinched and dour face of Hamaguchi-sensei. He narrowed his eyes, stringy bangs pattering against his forehead. "You're still here?"
"Sorry, sensei," I said, trying to look contrite (even as my heart decided to dance the samba in my chest). "I left my bag somewhere and I'm trying to find it."
"Hmmph." He shoved his glasses up his nose and turned. "Well, don't take too long. You'll disrupt the faculty."
"Yes, sir."
I watched him stalk off down the hall and disappear into another room, tongue clenched between my teeth. Hamaguchi was, of course, that teacher who had at first disliked me after hearing rumors from Iwamoto—but after he'd seen my grades (not to mention the fact I never cut up in class or skipped school) he'd stopped picking on me. In fact, he'd even praised my work a few times (if not grudgingly because I so often challenged his literary theory). I didn't hate the guy at all. I didn't think he hated me, either.
Still. Out of all my teachers, he was the one I pegged as most likely to attack me, his presence probably preserving Keiko's teacher-battling fate. Even though I had made a few half-hearted attempts during the school year to antagonize him just for the sake of the Saint Beast Arc, he had never truly become my enemy. Too bad I'd have to kick his ass when wasn't even a tenth the asshole Iwamoto had been.
Good thing or bad thing, Keiko? Good thing or bad thing?
I flinched and swatted my chest when something fluttered against my heart, but it was only the compact mirror vibrating—turns out it did have a silent setting, which I'd located after a few minutes of frustrated fiddling after the first mirror call. I power-walked down the hall and to a small nook where architects had tucked away a water fountain. The boys (Kurama once more holding the mirror in prime selfie position) stared back at me when I opened the compact, all of them holding up three fingers on their hands. Hiei sulked in the background, however, hands jammed petulantly into his pockets.
The breath stilled in my chest, held tight and quiet.
It hadn't occurred to me before—too caught up in our conversation, I guess—but today marked the first time I'd seen them all together. All four boys, the fated team of Spirit Detectives, united at long last, all four of their precious faces in one place for me to see. Granted, I saw them on a screen instead of in person, but still. The sight of them swelled my chest near to bursting, filled my head with delighted fizz like I'd chugged too much champagne.
My eyes pricked. I squeezed them shut and breathed again, pasting on a happy smile—a genuine one, even if I wouldn't indulge the happy tears threatening my vision.
"Ta-da!" said Yusuke.
"Three down, Keiko!" Kuwabara added.
No wonder they'd been silent for three hours. Three down accounted for Genbu, Byakko, Seiryu, and all the various wandering they'd have to do through Maze Castle. "That was fast!"
"Yeah, and the last one doesn't stand a chance," Yusuke gloated. "You still doing OK?"
"Yeah, the school's deserted. I sent all the kids home so they'd be safe." But not for long, if I had to guess. With three Beasts down, Suzaku would sic the insect-possessed goons on me any minute now. "I'm going to find a place to sit tight, in the meantime. So far the rioting is still contained to downtown."
"Good to hear," Kurama said. His eyes searched…well, the screen, but probably my face depicted upon it. "You will continue to be careful, won't you?"
"Of course!" I chirped (and I meant it, because now that Keiko had been established at her high school, there was no more reason to risk exposure and stay out in the open). "Soon as we hang up, I'll head for the shed and—"
"Keiko?"
I froze. Kurama, Kuwabara, and Yusuke all froze too—because none of them had said my name, and I certainly had no reason to say my own name, and that had definitely been a girl's voice, right? I heard the creak of my own joints in my adrenaline-soaked ears as I peeked around the corner of my alcove. My jaw dropped like an anchor through warm water when I saw her.
"Amagi?" I said. "What the heck are you doing here?"
She stood a ways down the hall, wearing jeans and a blouse—street clothes. She'd gone home after school, I was certain, and the clothes attested to that, but why the heck had she come back to school?
"I came here to check on you." Her dark eyes, perplexed and narrowed, searched the hallway at my back. "Who were you talking to?"
And right on cue, Yusuke's voice echoed her through the compact's tiny speakers. "Hey, Keiko—who are you talking to?"
Amagi's eyes slipped from my face to my hand. Uh oh. I lifted the compact up and patted my hair, lips stretched into a manic grin so huge it would make Pennywise jealous.
"Nobody, just—good luck and goodbye; I have to go!" I said through my clenched teeth, and before Yusuke could reply, I slammed the compact shut on their stunned faces. Shoving it back into my bra, I trotted forward with hands outstretched. "Amagi, you shouldn't be here!"
Her lips pursed, and normally I'd be distracted by how pink they looked, but just then all I could notice was the shake in my knees and the hitch in my worried breath. She said, "I called your house. You weren't there, and your mother said you were staying late at school to help with something. But you'd told me to leave school, and I wondered why you had come back." She pointed at the windows lining the hallway, at the dark trees standing just beyond them. Sunset's light caught her black hair like lightning on oil. "There are more bugs than before, and they started flying toward the school. I just thought—"
The shake in my knees stilled. "Flying here?"
A slow nod and a worried eye. "Yes."
"Oh. Oh no." And with that the shake returned in full swing, power lines in a gale. "You can't be here, Amagi. You have to go home, now."
"What? Why?"
"Remember how I said things were going to go bad, and soon?" I took her arm and nudged her around, turning her back the way she'd come. "Well, now it's really really soon, probably within the hour, and—"
I never got to finish that thought, of course. Nobody ever lets me finish thoughts. Throat like sticky flypaper, the words caught there and died as a door down the hallway slid open with a hiss. Footsteps echoed in the quiet air as Hamaguchi-sensei—eyes unfocused, jaw slack, hand loose around the base of a freakin' gymnastics trophy, of all things—stepped into view.
Amagi tensed under my hand.
Hamaguchi-sensei's face swung toward us—and then that slack expression vanished. His jaw clenched like an angry fist before he spoke.
"Yukimura," he slurred.
I didn't think about it. I put myself between Amagi and him with a quick side-step, hand forcing her back and behind me almost of its own accord.
Hamaguchi's mouth split in a wide grin—too wide, too gleaming, all teeth and no smile whatsoever. "I told you not to disturb the teachers, Yukimura."
"Oh my god." Amagi's breath ghosted across my ear like graveyard mist. "He's blue!"
He looked perfectly olive-toned to me, but I supposed (in a distant way, thought barely registering amidst the cold suffusing my chest) that my lack of psychic sight had something to do with this. But to Amagi I only murmured, "The bugs got him."
"I told you, Yukimura," my teacher said. He took one step forward, foot dragging the ground like a gunshot in the echoing hall, little leaping girl atop the trophy glittering. "I told you."
It's easy to be afraid. It's easy to see someone advancing on you wielding a gymnastics trophy and run for it, turn around and bolt because your life is in danger—but when my foot slid back, flight trying to win over fight, it bumped the toe of Amagi's sneaker. I looked down with a gasp, staring at that white toe with my mouth open.
Something inside me stilled.
"Amagi." My voice held steadier than it had any right to as the cold in my chest solidified, spread, sharpening my eyesight and quickening my breath, the feel of the air on my face and the clothes on my skin more tangible than they'd ever been before. My commanding tone impressed even me. "When I give the signal, you run. Run as fast as you can to the school gate, do you understand me?"
Her voice, however, still shook. "Uh. Uh huh."
"OK." My shallow breath ran deep for just one moment. "OK. Get ready."
"You always were a bad one, Yukimura," Hamaguchi said in a sing-song voice. He took another dragging step, and then another, but the fighting chill Hideki had beaten into me wouldn't let the voice of fear sing its siren song. "A blight on this school, and on the school that was so right to kick you out." A single bead of spittle trickled from his grinning mouth. "And if I have any say, I'll do the same to you!"
He lunged. Amagi shrieked, but I whirled away and under his arm, hand flying up to smack against the underside of his wrist. The trophy went flying, clattering against the ground as I spun into a crouch under my teacher's chest.
"Amagi, now!" I bellowed—and she did. Amagi ran as I grasped sensei's wrist and sent him flying over my shoulder, his back slamming onto the ground so hard I feared I'd broken him.
I didn't stop to make sure I hadn't.
Instead I aimed a kick to the side of his head, and when his skull bounced like a hollow coconut against the tile floor, I turned and sprinted after Amagi.
She was taller, but I was faster, grabbing her hand and tugging her like the Doctor tugs a companion away from certain death. The girl gasped as she ran, obviously not an athlete despite her slim waist, but she made it all the way down three halls and a flight of stairs to the shoe locker room before wrenching her hand from mine and leaning against a wall to catch her ragged breath. A quick scan of the empty atrium revealed no enemies; I skirted toward the glass-paneled front doors, keeping low and close to the wall, and peered around the door frame and into the yard beyond.
"Coast clear," I said, eyes roving across the empty courtyard. Only a few tall lamps at the edge of the school wall and the main building lit the huge space, but even the shadows looks clear to me. Amagi, breathing still labored, crept to my side when I gestured for her to follow. "We can't wait. Can you keep running?"
Amagi nodded despite her shaking chest and the fear in her eyes, face brave despite the fact a teacher had just tried to beat us to death with a trophy. This time Amagi took my hand of her own accord, gripping tight as I stood and pulled her after me out the door.
"Which way's your house?" I asked before we started running. "Left or right out the gate?"
"Left," she said.
Left. We needed to run, turn left, and then we'd be—well, not home free, but able to plan our next step, because goddamn it and fuck I hadn't counted on her being here and this threw my whole damn plan into disarray. But there was no way I could involve Amagi in this mess, nor leave her to get murdered by the bug-infested masses. I needed to take her home and double back once she was safe. We just had to run across this courtyard (wide open, exposed, sitting ducks, totally not the kind of terrain Hideki-sensei would approve of), turn left, and run some more. Easy-peasy, right?
Dammit, I sure hoped so.
Her feet slapped the sidewalk at my back, each running step far louder than my own quiet footfall. I flinched at every smack of sole on pavement, neck prickling as we left the shadow of the school and entered open terrain, but a smile slipped across my mouth when we reached the midway point and passed it without incident. The gate seemed to inch toward us, perception skewed both fast and slow by adrenaline's discombobulating pulse. Almost there, almost there, keep on running, Keiko, because you're almost there—
But things are never that easy, are they?
Amagi sensed them before I saw them, hand in mine weighing like an anchor between one step and the next. I shot a glance over my shoulder, and at the sight of her wide black eyes and color-drained face, my feet tangled with each other and sent me stumbling. We stopped, both staring at the open gate ahead, eyes locked on the darkness beyond—the darkness that grew darker as the sun beat its final retreat over the distant horizon.
"More of them!" Amagi gasped.
For a moment I held fast to the hope she was merely paranoid in her panic—but then, there in the shadows, I saw them move.
"Yukimura."
I'd been so intent on the shadows—those stumbling, shuffling shapes in the dark, silhouettes of slumped shoulders grey against the black—I hadn't thought to look behind us. I whirled to put myself between Amagi and Hamaguchi, but that left her exposed to the people in the shadows, so again I whirled, spinning on my heel with a curse. Hamaguchi stood only a dozen feet away, hands hanging limp on the end of long, swaying arms. A gash on his temple bled freely, fluid trickling down his arm to coat the scissors in his hand with gleaming red blood.
The color of it wasn't lost even in the fitful light of the streetlamps. The sight sent an electric shudder across my scalp.
"Yukimura." His head ticked to the side like a marionette on the end of drunken strings. "Hitting a teacher, Yukimura? It seems Iwamoto was right about you."
Amagi's hand found its way into mine again. Her pants sounded more like sobs as something shuffled at our backs—the people in the shadows slinking forward, eyes vacant and mouths agape. Men, mostly, but a few women, too, all adults, all holding bats and broken bottles and even a razor blade in their rigid hands.
Amagi let out a true sob, then. "The bugs—th-they're crawling everywhere. In their m-mouths, in their ears—"
My hand around hers tightened—and perhaps my lack of power wasn't such a bad things, after all, if it spared me the sight that made strong Amagi weep.
Good or bad, Keiko? Good or bad?
"He was right," Hamaguchi went on. "You're a violent, arrogant, juvenile delinquent who—"
As soon as my eyes turned his way, the horde slid forward. Fencing us in, keeping us corralled, blocking escape routes. I tugged Amagi's arm to get her moving, uncaring—or at least not letting myself care—when she gasped in fright.
"Follow me, and keep quiet," I murmured.
She obeyed.
It took at least two laps of the school and quite a bit of creative maneuvering on my part (including at least one ingenious escape through a window) to lose our pursuers, but I managed to guide Amagi back to the PE shed in one piece. I shoved her through the bushes concealing the ventilation grate first and followed after, replacing the grate as quickly and as quietly as I could behind us. Amagi sagged in a heap on my beanbag chair, huffing and puffing like a wolf trying to knock down a house, face a shiny mess of sweat and tears. Despite feeling winded, however, she managed to hold her breath as the horde pounded toward us, still hot on our heels even after my evasive maneuvers, ring of feet vibrating the tin walls of our hiding spot. Her face got even redder, which I wouldn't have thought possible, but I shut off the light of my headlamp-and-milk-jug lantern before I could decide if she was mulberry or maroon.
I found out (mulberry) when a shaft of light cut the gloom, a vertical ribbon of silver slashing the wall above our heads. The chain holding the shed's doors rattled, but held fast, as one of the infected tried to wrench it open. Amagi clapped a hand over her mouth, eyes bloodshot and nearly bulging from her skull.
I held my breath, too, every nerve singing with electricity and fear.
"Even girls their size couldn't squeeze through that," one of them said.
"Keep looking," Hamaguchi replied. A fiendish giggle. "They can't have gotten far!"
The door swung shut, and the silver ribbon disappeared.
Amagi gasped, muffling her face with the pillow she'd found beside the beanbag chair, but her devotion to secrecy—while appreciated—wasn't necessary. The voices of Hamaguchi and the others faded, the sing-song sound of my surname growing more and more distant as they wandered off over the grounds, searching. "Yukimura! Yukimura! Come out this instant!" Hamaguchi said before his voice grew unintelligible, waning into obscurity as distance grew between us and them.
My heartbeat—steady but ferocious, athletic and strong in a way my previous heart had never been—began to slow its frantic pace. I released my held breath at last, ears straining to hear the enemy over the sound of Amagi's labored breaths. Luckily I didn't hear much: just the murmur of searching voices, footsteps too far away to make out.
Still, Amagi wasn't stupid. She spoke in a voice barely above a whisper when she asked, "What is happening here, Keiko?"
A deep breath to steady my nerves. I sat back against the wall, lowering gingerly against the panel in case it creaked. "They're after me."
"Yes," Amagi said. "I gathered."
Even through a whisper I heard her desiccated voice, unamused and skeptical. We had only the light from the window, indirect and dim, to go by, but still her eyes managed to glitter in the darkness—chips of onyx bathed in ink. I met them and didn't bother smiling, both because I didn't feel like it and because she couldn't see it, anyway.
"No matter what happens, you have to stay in here," I murmured. "You have to stay in here, and stay quiet, you understand?" I groped for her hand. Found it. Gripped it tight. "I won't let them hurt you. I promise you, Amagi, I won't let them hurt you."
Her fingers, cold and clammy, clamped around mine right back. "I know you won't. I trust you. But why? Why are they after you?"
I didn't bother to hide my grimace; the darkness did it for me. Still, I hated the truth as it spilled off my tongue: "Because my friends are trying to stop this, and much as I hate to admit it, I'm their weak spot."
Much the way she'd taken my warning of psychic bugs in stride, so too did she take the tale of the Saint Beasts and Suzaku's whistle without flinching. I didn't bother lying to her, though I left out mention of demons, Suzaku implied to be nothing more out of the ordinary than a human psychic. Amagi listened without commentary, merely nodding when I finished. She hadn't let go of my hand while I spoke; I didn't bother correcting that. If this brought her comfort, so be it.
"So what do we do now?" she asked when I was through.
"We do nothing. You have to sit tight." I shifted against the wall, blood flowing back into my aching tailbone. "I'll draw them off, keep them away from you."
"No." Her hand tightened around mine. "You're not going out there when we have such a good hiding spot."
It almost made me laugh, the fact she wanted to take care of me when she was the one put needlessly in danger. "I don't plan on taking unnecessary risks, Amagi. I'll go out, make an appearance, hide again. Gotta keep them on campus while the boys take care of the source of the problem."
"But why? Why not stay hidden?"
"So they don't go after my family. I wouldn't put it past them to threaten Keiko's mom and dad to draw me out."
She didn't reply right away, and for a moment I deluded myself into thinking she would accept this, too, without question. But I was wrong.
"Keiko's mom and dad?" she said.
Oh, fuck, there I went talking in third person again. The dark helped me to tell a convincing lie, since I could put all effort of deception into the tone of my voice. "I disassociate when I'm stressed," I said, shrugging. "Regardless, I gotta keep those assholes here, away from people I care about."
"And I just made matters worse," she said, despair turning her voice brittle—but she drew in a breath and her hand steadied against my knee, resolution rallying her nerve. "Do what you have to, Keiko. I'll stay here if that's what's needed." Her confidence only lasted for so long, though. "It's just, the thought of you facing them all alone…"
"Oh. I'm not alone." I patted her wrist with my free hand, touch conveying comfort in the dark. "Not entirely, anyway."
"What do you mean?"
"I've got allies hidden in the school. Sort of, anyway." I let go of her hand so I could sit up and reach under the nearest vaulting horse, and for the cardboard box I'd hidden beneath it. "And a few squirreled away in here, which is good for you."
The line of Amagi's shoulders wore the barest of silvery outlines, a silhouette of indirect illumination and perhaps a trick of the desperate eye. Her back straightened as she tried to see what I was doing, craning her neck over toward me. I grabbed a blanket off the crate beside her and draped it atop the two of us like children building a fort, dragging my water jug lantern underneath, too. I'd tested this before: with the help of the blanket, the light didn't show from outside the shed unless someone put their face against the tiny window on the east wall, and since said window was six feet up…
Still, though. Better make this quick.
"You don't happen to have any martial arts training, by any chance?" I asked as I rummaged through the box.
"Sorry." Her face had regained its usual white pearlescence, even if her eyes still carried a terrified glint. "I don't."
"Probably shouldn't give you a close quarters weapon, then, which leaves…here."
I handed her the red bottle with the pump handle set into the lid and the hose snaking off the top. It looked a bit like a fire extinguisher, though the hose ended in a thin, foot-long wand with a small opening at the tip. Amagi took it with unpracticed hands, fingers tracing over the pump, the hose, and the reservoir.
"Pepper spray," I explained. I pointed at the pump handle, then at the hose. "Pump it up if you hear them coming, then point and pull the trigger, but don't get any on your hands. If they get near, spray 'em. This has a two-meter range, so that'll keep you out of most fights, and the spray will put them out of commission for a while but won't cause any lasting damage. I hope." I winked, an ineffectual attempt at levity given Amagi's blanched face. "I couldn't get ahold of any Bhut jolokia, but Dad's imported habaneros will still do the trick." He'd inspired me to make pepper spray in more ways than one. Good ol' Dad.
Her mouth fell open, then closed again. She looked…not impressed, exactly. More like stunned? Which wasn't bad, but I'd hoped to impress her a little with this—not that I wanted to impress a teenager! Nope. Not me. Stop being a perv, Keiko, jeez—
"Keiko," Amagi asked, every word a battle slow. "Where, precisely, did you get this?"
My chest puffed. "I made it."
"You made—" Another mouth-open-and-then-shut-with-a-snap moment. "You made pepper spray?"
"Yeah. A continuous-spray-pepper-flamethrower, basically!" And I was proud of myself, too, for creating something that would hurt my enemies but not do lasting damage. "I mean, I didn't make the bottle. It's what Mom used to use to spray pesticide before she decided her garden was too much work. But the actual chemical spray—"
Her face dropped momentarily into her hand. "Dare I ask how you figured out how to make that?"
"Books." I cracked a grin—the same one I'd given Yusuke all those years before, when I taught him to make the same sneezing gas I'd hidden (among other things) in the school to aid in my impending war. "Books are the best weapons in the world."
She opened her mouth to reply, but the distant murmur of voices grew louder, recognizable words swimming through the haze. I snuffed the lantern as soon as I heard my name, bathing our hideaway once more in darkness.
Amagi waited for the voices to fade before saying, "The fact that you spend so much time with Kaito near the library is rather worrisome, in retrospect." A pause. "What about you?"
"Hmm?"
"If you're not taking the pepper spray, what weapon do you have?"
"Oh, don't worry. There's more where that came from, and there are heavy hitters in the main building." I scooted close to her on my butt, leaning an elbow against the creaking softness of the beanbag. She dipped toward me, scent of sweat and old perfume a cloud around my senses. "It's actually pretty cool. I've got—"
I wanted to tell her about my more ambitious projects, the ones that had taken real ingenuity to push past prototype phase, but before I could dive in (mostly to distract her, because a distraction was definitely in order amidst such dire straits, and maybe also just the tiniest bit to impress her again oh my god shut up you stupid teenage hormones) another shout rang up outside. This one sounded closer than before; the beanbag made a low kssshing sound as Amagi stiffened. The shout rang up again, and then a third time, followed by a meaty thump we heard even over what seemed like quite a distance. Hard to tell in the shed.
It wasn't hard to recognize a terrified screech from inside the shed, however. Not when it was so loud, so close, and so shrill.
Amagi stayed blessedly quiet as I sat up, murmured a request for stillness, and crawled beneath the vaulting horses. Luckily I'd practiced this in the daylight, winding my way through a somewhat complicated tunnel between and below the horses until I reached the eastern wall. A crate a few feet to the left of the window gave me a boost upward, but I didn't go directly to the window for a look outside. Instead I angled an ordinary compact mirror—full of makeup instead of magic—at the glass, peering into it for a glimpse outside so no one would see my head poking up over the sill. Took a second to scan the area outside and hone in on movement, but soon I managed to get a bead on a knot of infected humans congregating nearby.
They stood about a hundred feet away, over by the corner of the school where the front courtyard turned into the grassy side yard homing my PE shed. The goons formed a tight pack, facing inward like a battalion of zombies gorging on a corpse—that scene from The Walking Dead where they consumed that poor horse who didn't deserve such and undignified death, but that was a rant for another day. I couldn't see what they attacked, squinting in vain at the pack in the darkness, but a few of them fell backward and hit the ground. A figure vaulted over them, sprinting pell-mell away from the ravenous creepers and toward the back of the school, head bent below the concealing cover of a baseball cap.
As they ran, however, the cap flew off—and from under it streamed the flag of a long ponytail.
The runner paused, doubling back to grab the hat off the ground. The light caught their hair when they ran back under the flood lamp illuminating my secluded backyard, and when I saw the gleaming color of their hair, so brilliant and so bright, my heart near 'bout stopped beating. I hands gripped the mirror hard enough to make the hinge creak.
No.
It couldn't be.
Was I seeing things, or—?
Rustling sounded at my back as Amagi found her way beneath the vaulting horses, but I gave her no help, eyes locked on the figure as they shoved their hat back on and stumbled over a rut in the grass. The zombies were on her in seconds; she let out another terrified shriek, but then metal flashed, and she knocked them back with another stroke of her trusty, destined baseball bat.
Amagi put her hand on my shoulder, pulling herself up atop the crate at my side. She peered over my shoulder at the mirror with a frown. "Who is that?"
Oh. So Amagi saw her, too. I wasn't hallucinating. While this comforted me, I said nothing. My heart lodged between my teeth as the woman outside swung her weapon, terror fleeing in the heat of battle as she screamed a feral war-cry.
A war-cry, and a bellow of my name, syllables ringing like thunder in the dark.
"Keiko!" she roared. "Keiko, where are you?"
And then the infected descended, and she had no time for talk.
"Keiko," Amagi said with rising urgency. Dark eyes searched my face, but I can't tell you what they saw there. "You know her, right?"
I swallowed. It was difficult, but I managed.
"Yeah," I said. "Yeah, I know her."
A deep breath. A deep breath to keep from screaming, from throwing up, from running out the front door and throwing my arms around her just to prove she wasn't some illusion dreamed up by my desperate, hoping brain.
I took that breath and held it, then let it out and said: "That's Botan."
Amagi said nothing, because the name meant nothing to her. I said nothing, because the name meant everything to me. Botan waved her bat and brained one of her attackers over the head, blue hair like the heart of a flame in the floodlight's soft glare, unaware I watched her from the safety of the PE shed while she fought and battled and tried desperately to find me, but was it a good thing or a bad thing that she was here, destiny and fate all muddled and mangled just the way the horde wanted to mangle her, too, and—
The mirror fell from my hands with a clatter.
"Oh my god," I said, horrified.
"Oh my god—that's Botan!"
NOTES:
THANK YOU SO MUCH, everyone who reviewed last week! I'm so excited that y'all're excited for this new arc and all the shenanigans therein, and I'm so happy we're starting this new year of LC together. Many thanks to: Skylar1023, Jamies, Saj te Gyuhyall, Melissa0723Moon, EmmieSauce, Miss Ideophobia, Yume, Counting Sinful Stars, brave-story, RedPanda923, Ashley Renee, Kaiya Azure, SlytherclawQueen, tatewaki2000, milleniumrain16, buzzk97, Blaze1662001, Sky65, MemeLord5000, EVA-Saiyajin, Lady Rini, Dreaming Traveler, xenocanaan, Linguistic Chaos, DiCuoreAlissa, WaYaADisi1, Viviene001, Yakiitori, Purrksofbeing, sousie, Marian, zubhanwc3, Lady Skynet, Sunshark, Lady Ellesmere, WistfulSin, Just 2 Dream of You, rya-fire1, Dawn17, glossary, ahyeon, Andania Shinrai, Miqila, wennifer-lynn, reebajee, Tsuki-Lolita, BlindKitten97, Octopuses 4eva, racnor, general zargon, Lola, and an unnamed guest!
