Chapter 4
Living Statue

No longer wanting this killer to go around terrorizing people and taking lives, the law enforcers of the Lunar Capital gave permission for the police department and the lunar army to search the whole place for the culprit.

"C'mon! Let's go look for the killer!" Seiran said to her comrades as she took the lead in searching the more hidden parts of the capital, mainly alleyways. "Lady Sagume said the killer will be brought to justice, so we can have confidence that we will succeed in bringing him down!"

"You mean won't be brought to justice?" Ringo reminded her.

"Same thing… You know the way she talks and the real meaning behind them…" said Seiran.

Inside a warehouse for household appliances, a few workers were there doing their jobs. Suddenly, they heard someone screaming, so some of them went to look for the source located in a passage formed by crates on both sides. The workers who didn't went to look for the source watched as those workers went in there, and not too long afterwards, they heard them scream.

One of those workers ran back out, looking terrified. "There's a murderer in there!"

The others wondered what he was talking about, and they got their answer when a person armed with a sword stepped out from the passage.

Seiran and her team searched their way to the area close to the warehouse, and that was where they heard a scream. "It seems to be coming from nearby! Quick! Look for the source!" said Seiran.

They headed in the direction of the scream and tracked it down to the warehouse. When they went in there, they saw a man down on the floor, badly wounded, and his attacker standing in front of him with his sword over him to give him the finishing blow. There were a few other bodies sprawled out around the place as well.

Pointing her rifle at the attacker, Seiran said, "Stop and put your hands into the air!"

The attacker lifted his head to look at the lunar rabbits, and that was when they actually gave him a closer look to see that he was a stone version of Yorihime. "Uh? What is Captain Yorihime doing here?" asked one of the lunar rabbits. "I thought she went to Earth!"

"Look carefully! Something's not right! She looks like she's made of rock!" another one told her.

Seiran was surprised at the presence of a Yorihime made entirely out of rock and yet was capable of movement, but since there were more important things to do now, she decided to think about those later. "Drop your sword, or else I'll shoot!"

The stone Yorihime responded by instantly bringing her sword onto the man's chest, fatally stabbing him. In response, Seiran fired at the stone Yorihime's head, blowing off a chunk of it and making her take some steps back. To the lunar rabbit's surprise, the shattered pieces of rock got together and fixed the head.

The stone Yorihime then charged at the lunar rabbits with the intent of slaying them all. The lunar rabbits opened fire all at once at her, shooting her in various parts of the body to push her back. However, the broken body parts fixed themselves at a fast speed, to the point where it seemed impossible to break her into pieces completely.

When Seiran blew off a chunk of her chest, she noticed something familiar inside it. "Isn't that the tricolored rock?!" she said in surprise.

The stone Yorihime plunged her sword into the rocky floor which was actually the ground, as the warehouse had no floor of its own. In doing so, large stone swords suddenly came out diagonally in front of some of the lunar rabbits, impaling them.

Shocked at the sight of this, Seiran told those who weren't hit to move back and be careful while continuing to shoot the living statue.

The stone Yorihime pulled out her sword and then swung it at the ground, making sure to hit it. Just by doing that, slabs of sharp rocks grew out at a fast speed in the direction of Seiran. She rolled to the side fast and fired again, only to find that she was out of bullets. Growling in frustration, she pointed her hand at the stone Yorihime and somehow caused what appeared to be small wormholes appear next to her. Energy bullets shot out of those wormholes and struck the living statue all over the body.

The tricolored rock inside the chest was exposed for the second time after getting hit in that spot a few times. That rock glowed with orange color, and then it fired a blast of energy at Seiran. She jumped out of its way, and when the projectile hit the wall behind her, it created an explosion that made a hole on it, causing the lunar rabbit to be surprised at its firepower.

The lunar rabbits continued to fire until they were out of bullets. Unfortunately, none of them brought spare bullets. "Looks like I'll have to end this myself!" said Ringo while looking at the satchel of dango she brought along. Removing the satchel from her waist, she dumped all the contents into her mouth and chewed them as fast as she could before swallowing them.

After she was done, she shouted, "Here I come! Dango power!" All the lunar rabbits stopped firing as Ringo ran as fast as she could towards the stone Yorihime with one fist pulled back. She delivered a powerful punch to the tricolored rock and sent it flying out of the body.

The tricolored rock hit the ground and rolled a bit of distance before coming to a stop, while the Yorihime statue stopped moving completely. "Did… Did we do it?" asked Kagome.

The lunar rabbits began moving towards the tricolored rock. Suddenly, the rock glowed brightly. Their instincts told them that something bad was going to happen, so they turned and ran as fast as they could for the exit. The rock then exploded.

KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

Luckily for the lunar rabbits, they were all able to get out of the warehouse in time. They managed to bring along the injured ones as well. It was also a good thing that the explosion wasn't a big one, at least one that wasn't big enough to blow up the entire warehouse.

The lunar rabbits panted heavily as they sat on the ground while looking at the smoking warehouse. "That was close…" said Kagome.

"You did well, Ringo…" Seiran said to her comrade.

"Yeah… It was a good thing I brought along dango…" said Ringo.

"You always carry some around with you…" Seiran reminded her.

Not too long after this incident had seemingly ended, a large amount of law enforcers and the cleanup crew came to deal with the place. The lunar rabbits reported to their commander regarding everything that had happened.

As they were talking about this, one of the cleanup crewmen came out from the warehouse and said, "We have not found the tricolored rock you described."

"Then I guess that rock blew up…" said one of the lunar rabbits.

"No… If you think about it, we only brought two rocks into the Lunar Capital. One of them went missing after the explosion in the Lunar Science Central, and it is assumed that it is destroyed in the explosion," said Seiran, "but now we saw it inside that statue and apparently controlling it…"

"Are you trying to say that the rock didn't explode, but merely created an explosion?" Ringo asked her.

"That may be the case, unless there are more than two of them…" said Seiran. "If that rock really didn't explode, then it likely went off somewhere…"

"A rock that moves on its own… Now I've seen everything…" said the commander, a middle-aged male Lunarian with neatly-trimmed purple hair wearing a military uniform. "I assume that this same rock killed a bunch of people yesterday and today?"

"It may sound strange, but all these started happening after we brought back those rocks," said Seiran. "We can only conclude that those rocks are actually sound kind of living organisms disguised as rocks or something like that…"

Suddenly, Kagome was reminded of something. "Wait a minute… Didn't Captain Yorihime take one of them with her to Earth?"

Seiran and a few other lunar rabbits who knew about this became shocked upon being reminded of that. "Uh oh… Does that mean… she's in trouble…?" asked a lunar rabbit.

"Nah, I'm sure she can deal with it no problem," said another one. "There's no way she would be killed by a rock."

"But I think it's probably better that we still contact her and tell her about this," suggested Seiran. "The people with her at the moment may be in danger."

The store owner of Moon Statue Store was busy dusting his statues while humming quietly. All of a sudden, the window shattered, and in came the tricolored rock, floating in the air. "What the?!" gasped the store owner as he turned to the rock, which flew right at him and bashed him in the forehead so hard that he bled and passed out. A bit of blood got onto the rock, but then it got "soaked" into it.

The rock then "looked" around the place, observing each of the statues. It then glowed in grayish light, and in doing so, four particular statues started shaking. They were majestic-looking statues of a turtle, a tiger, a Chinese dragon, and a phoenix. After shaking for a few seconds, the statues crumbled into pieces, and the pieces flew towards the rock and swirled around it, gradually moving closer and closer to it and building up upon each other.

Seiran and the others were still at the same place, and the blue-haired lunar rabbit was trying to get in contact with Yorihime. "She's not answering her mobile phone…"

Just then, the commander's communication device sounded, so he answered it. He was surprised by what he heard from his caller, and after he was done, he told the lunar rabbits, "We've got trouble…"

As soon as they finished listening to what their commander said, the lunar rabbits ran as fast as they could towards the part of the capital that was currently in crisis. "What sort of monster would suddenly show up in a place like this?" asked Kagome.

"Whatever that monster is, we'll have to deal with it and make sure that the civilians are safe!" said Seiran.

"I hear sound coming from around the corner! It must be there!" said a lunar rabbit.

The lunar rabbits made it around the corner of a building and saw the monster their commander said but didn't describe. The monster was an amalgam of various creatures. It had a turtle shell for a body, legs and the tail like that of a tiger's, a long neck and a head like that of a dragon's, and a pair of bird wings on the back of the shell. It was also made entirely out of rock. It was about the size of a van.

"What in the world is that?!" asked Ringo in shock.

"It's made of rock… Can it be that same rock?" asked a lunar rabbit.

"I remember seeing the statues of animals such as a turtle and a dragon at the Moon Statue Shop," said Seiran. "Can it be that the same rock from before went to the store and merged with them?"

"How is that possible?!" asked Kagome.

"We don't even know what that strangely-colored rock is to begin with, so everything about it is surprising to us!" said Seiran. "Let's not talk about that for now and try to do something about it! That rock must be hidden somewhere inside its body! We just have to expose it and remove it from the body to stop the whole thing!"

The lunar rabbits ran towards the monster and then open fired at it from their rifles. The rock monster turned to them while getting shot in various parts of the body, and when it opened its mouth, orange light came out from within it before it fired a blast of energy that they avoided by throwing themselves to the sides.

"Ringo!" Seiran shouted to the blonde lunar rabbit. "Eat some dango and then use your power boost to shatter it with a punch!"

"No more dango!" Ringo told her while showing her that her satchel was empty. "I can get more, but you'll have to wait!"

"Then get more fast!" Seiran told her. Ringo nodded before fleeing the scene in search for a restaurant.

Seiran then told the other lunar rabbits, "We have to hold up until Ringo returns!"

"We can't just rely on her!" Kagome told her. "Who knows if she can't take down this thing by herself even after powering up?"

"Then let's weaken it enough for her to take it out!" said Seiran. "We're soldiers personally trained by Captain Yorihime, one of the strongest people on the moon, so let's pull ourselves together and bring down this monster!"

TO BE CONTINUED