The next morning

The sun shined brightly in the almost completely blue-filled sky. A gentle breeze blew through the town, a nice respite from the heat of the sun in this June weather. A feeling of peace hung in the air considering what had happened some twelve hours earlier, though the mayor's office had been quick to explain it as a simple attack by a few gangsters who were causing trouble but had, thankfully, been rounded up and put in prison. This seemed to satisfy the townspeople and, come morning, everything was back to normal, the events of last night barely being passed around in conversation. Around Sakurashin, people went on with their daily lives; taking children to school, shopping, going to work, meeting family and friends etc. Life had, quite literally, returned to normal for the town.

Well, at least as normal as it would be for the same could not be said for the mayor and her group.

Standing on one of the platforms that had been fitted to the side of the Nana-Gou towers, Hime stood looking out over the city, her face holding a solemn, almost melancholic expression. She was dressed in her usual attire; a pair of knee high black boots with stockings that went up to her thighs, a yellow top with a long-sleeved black jacket over it and a thick scarf wrapped around her neck. Her arms were wrapped around her chest as if comforting herself given what had happened recently.

If only I could she thought to herself, sighing lightly and scanning the skyline of Sakurashin again for the umpteenth time. Some mayor I've turned out to be.

This was one of the few times that Hime had allowed herself to be worried. Normally, she supressed her fear and sadness, concerned that it would only impede any progress she planned to implement into the town. "Nothing but progress," she had told the inhabitants of the town shortly after taking office. And she done everything in her power to stick by that promise, to be the best mayor that she could be, to fulfil the legacy that her grandmother had spent years teaching her from when she was young.

If only she were here now.

Hime pushed those thoughts out of her head so as to avoid getting upset. Her grandmother would not approve anyway of such feelings if she were on duty. "A mayor must always be the pinnacle of grace and dignity." Those very words echoed in her mind, being her grandmother's whilst she was on her deathbed, and Hime had sworn to do the best she could and more to keep Sakurashin safe from any harm.

And yet … Yet, everything that she stood for, that she wanted to protect was now in danger. And it was all because of these stupid, damn Nana-Gou!

If only there was a way to destroy them, or at least contain the power then we could severely limit the destructive capability of Gi-

"Hime?"

She nearly jumped out of her skin as the voice reached her ears. She looked over her shoulder and saw Akina standing behind her, a concerned look on his face. Behind him was an open door in the floor, this leading to a ladder that had also been fit to the Nana-Gou some time ago.

"Are you okay?" he asked her, hands inside his pockets and jacket zipped up tight to try and keep out some of the chilly morning breeze.

"I'm fine," she replied bluntly, turning her head away from him to resume looking out across the town. "I should be asking how you are."

"Well, I'm not dead or dying-" he replied but she cut him off.

"Well, you could have been! It's a miracle that you were put to sleep and nothing worse!" A pause hung between them and she sighed heavily. "I don't want you to suffer for my mistakes, Akina." She added, her tone a little sadder than before.

"Well, I wasn't doing much of that to begin with, Hime," he intervened, desperate to get a word in. "Juri fixed me up. And everyone else is okay." She gave him a sceptical expression, her eye brow raised as if to emphasise this. It was a clear way of saying: "Oh really? Everyone is okay?" "Well, almost okay."

She shook her head in disappointment, still annoyed at herself for not being able to be the protector she had always hoped to be. But Akina had also felt her anger last night, though not because he had allowed himself to be hurt by Gin.

Obviously this will require an explanation, dear readers. Last night when the group had taken Hime to the hospital to get him checked up, which was all over and done with in the course of an hour thanks to Juri's expertise, Hime had tried to console Ao over the revelation that her older brother Gin was the villain. Gradually, after coming to terms with what had happened and planning what to do next, Kyosuke had recalled that Gin had stated Akina may have known about this. Upon hearing this, Hime had marched back into the room Juri had put Akina in and, just as he was stirring from his sleep, pretty much interrogated him in front of the others. After initially calming her to enable him to get a word in and, with the others looking at him, expecting him to reveal what he knew, he took a deep breath and began to explain.

Put simply, some years ago he and several other tuners, among them Akina and Akina's own grandfather, had hoped to stop any Yokai from trying to integrate the dimensions using the Nana-Gou. To do so, they had tuned Gin to the Otherworld to try and do … whatever he could. Obviously, the plan had not worked as they had hoped, last night being more than enough proof of that.

It had taken a few moments for everyone to process what Akina had told them. When it was done, Ao, who had been silent the entire time, burst into tears and rushed out of the room; Kotoha following close behind to try and calm her down. Hime had told Akina to get some rest and everyone left. Since then, a sort of unease had hung over them. Ao had been trying to come to terms with her brother potentially being the biggest threat to the town in a long time and had been staying in the office, lying on the sofa with a blank expression. Kotoha had been sitting with her and Kyosuke and his younger sister, Touka, had checked up on them earlier this morning.

As for Hime, she had been on her own trying to piece everything together, and had eaten a few meals of ramen in the meantime. The same questions had been burning through her mind for the last few hours, constantly repeating themselves. What had he meant by needing to fry a bigger fish? Where was this supposed 'bigger fish' anyway? And with the Nana-Gou around, what else did he plan to bring to help him? Obviously something not good in any way, but what?

Despite constant asking and pondering, she had practically no answers for any of these questions.

Akina walked up to her, hoping that she would turn to look at him so they could start some kind of strategy to try and resolve this matter they now faced. But she did not even so much as glance in his direction. It was as if she did not even know he was there, or was deliberately ignoring him. The latter could have been possible, given that the former was an obvious impossibility, but Hime may have just been in a thinking mood. Whenever she was in one of these, she tended to just blot everything and everyone out. So he joined her in staring out across the town, the noise of the streets below barely being audible to them.

A sigh. "What are we gonna do, Akina?" Hime asked him, still keeping her head focused on the town around them.

"Well, our obvious course of action is to try and tune Gin back to the Otherworld, before he does any more damage." He replied, pausing to cough a little. "Question is; how? He's not gonna just walk out and let us take him down like that." He snapped his finger to emphasise his point.

"Ao won't be very happy for us to do something like that to him." Hime commented irritably. "But she'll have to accept it. As long as he remains here, he's a threat to the entire town."

"Are you sure that's a good idea, though, Hime?" Akina asked her.

She shot him a look, her lips tightly clasped together and eyes narrowed; a clear way of saying: What you expect us to just let the cries and pleas of someone in the office endanger the entire town? It made him flinch a little but he kept his cool. Years of experience with this had made him able to remain headstrong.

"Akina, I'm aware that Ao wants to keep her brother alive and away from harm but right now we have to put Sakurashin first. If we don't, then everyone is going to suffer!"

"I know that, Hime!" he replied. "But what if we try a different approach first? What if we try and reason with him first?"

She tutted and rolled her eyes, looking back at the city before them. "It's not going to work, Akina."

"How do you know?"

"Because I saw how determined he was by the look in his eyes. My grandmother always told me that you can tell what someone's intentions are by the look in their eyes. He was and will use the Nana-Gou to merge the dimensions. And anyone who gets in his way will pay the ultimate price." She paused, calming herself a little before continuing. "Look, if we let Ao or anyone try and talk to him, we don't know what will happen and he could very easily hurt someone very easily. We'd probably even be sending them to their deaths. And with someone that dangerous walking around, we have only one course of action." She turned her entire body to face him, her body language a clear emphasis of her seriousness regarding the situation. "No matter what: Gin has to go!"

Akina could not help but find himself intimidated by her words. Then again, with someone as stern, powerful and rather blunt as Hime, whoever was on the receiving end of one of her serious statements had to have nerves of steel not to be intimidated. After all, being so young and having been the mayor for a number of years had not waned her attitude or headstrong personality. Rather, it seemed to have strengthened it, and when it came to protecting the town there were absolutely no exceptions in dealing with the threat. The words she had told him a few days ago came back to him almost by instinct.

"If it has fallen so far to become helpless and a threat to Sakurashin, I'll kill it myself."

And that includes us and herself. Ancestors help us! Hime thought nervously to himself.

A few moments passed before Akina spoke up again, trying to find a way of wording this and avoid angering her more.

"Okay." He glanced back at the town for a brief millisecond, the breaking of eye contact with her making him feel more at ease. "Well, first, we need to find out what exactly he's after, and if there any way we can maybe get to it and help it or destroy it or whatever before he does."

Hime nodded, thinking hard for a moment, her mind once again burning with the same questions as before. Okay, so he says that he has bigger fish to fry, but what exactly? Could anyone know? Maybe not now, but what about in the historical archives? Maybe there's something there!

"I have an idea." She said after a few moments, whipping out her phone. "Well, a couple to be exact. C'mon, Akina." She added, moving back towards the ladder; Akina followed.

"Kyosuke! Are you free? Good! I need you, Kotoha and Ao to do me a favour." A pause followed as they descended slowly towards the ground. "Well, bring her along or tell her to meet me and Akina! No, I don't wanna argue or mess around, just do it please!"

"YOU! What are you doing here?!"

With a sigh, Hime clenched her fists and closed her eyes, waiting for the raving of her 'uncle' to subside so she could tell him what her business being there was. Given how hard he was going, though, he looked set to continue for a while.

The beady little old man, with stick like arms and slightly bigger but still very thin legs and dressed in a tank top that looked older than he was and a pair of shorts, continued to snap at her vehemently. His face was partially red like that of a slowly ripening tomato. The short black hair down the side and across the back of his face seemed to rise and fall almost as if it were all a wig and every so often bits of saliva would spray from his mouth. Two people nearby gave looked at the scene nervously and decided to quickly step inside the small wooden building in front of them with the sign Amasaki Ceramics on the front.

This was an antique workshop owned by the man and his wife, both of whom Hime knew, nestled between two office buildings on one of Sakurashin's main streets and, for the most part, was relatively quiet. That was until Hime and the gang, with her cousin, Kohime, had paid a visit and, shortly after, was the victim of an attack by some former associates of Gin who also opposed Hime as mayor. It had survived largely intact, though many of the priceless valuables and personal possessions inside were lost. This probably explained why he was in more of a bad mood with Hime than normal.

"Well, are you going to answer me?! Or are you too worthy to answer someone like me?"

Another sigh and a pinch of the bridge of her nose followed as Hime looked at him in the eyes, not letting him annoy or intimidate her.

"Uncle Jiroku, can you please move. I need to speak to Auntie Kiku," she said calmly but with a voice that demanded her request be obeyed.

He either did not hear her, or refused to obey (most likely the latter) as he continued to rant on about Hime, berating her for 'poor performance' and 'a disgrace', drawing a few concerned looks from people on the street as they walked by. Akina watched all of this happen from a few feet away, looking warily at Hime just in case she decided to belt the old man in the face. But she kept her cool, merely rolling her eyes at everything he said and waiting for him to finish. He noticed her foot tapping the ground though; this one small body movement indicating that her patience looked to be running thin.

Let's just hope she doesn't go crazy on him Akina thought to himself.

Thankfully, as if to ease his fear, a shrill voice erupted from the doorway of the small wooden building behind Jiroku.

"Jiroku! Stop that at once!" Everyone looked in the direction of the building to see a woman in her early sixties standing there, a stern look on her face as she brushed part of her grey hair from in front of her eyes. "Is that any way to treat our mayor?"

"What mayor?" he snapped back at her, pointing an accusing finger at Hime. "Nothing but a waste, she is!"

The old woman tutted. "Seriously, you are no better than when Kohime was here." She walked down from the doorway over to them. "Mayor, it's lovely to see you. What brings you here?"

"I need to ask you about my grandmother, Auntie Kiku," she replied, ignoring a huff from Jiroku. "And also if you still have her work on the Yokai."

"Of course we do, come in!" she said happily, waving her arm in the direction of the shop as she led Hime towards it. "You'll have to excuse the mess, though, we've just been sorting a few things out. Oh, and the air conditioning isn't working so I apologise if it's too warm."

Hime brushed it off and they walked inside, leaving Akina and Jiroku standing outside, the noise of cars and people chatting filling the air around them.

Jiroku folded his arms and exhaled heavily, shaking his head, annoyed that the mayor, that disgrace, was entering their shop. Why she had become mayor, he did not know! He could at least take comfort that some of the people here in Sakurashin felt the same way as he did about her, though they were not doing much about it. Besides, he had to tolerate her presence as long as his wife was around.

"I still don't understand why you work for her," he said, looking over at Akina. "She's not worth the position she holds."

"Well, she may be difficult, but she is doing her best and has kept us safe so far." Akina argued back matter-of-factly.

This seemed to make Jiroku's blood boil. "Safe?!" he spat. "What do you mean by that? If she's kept us safe, then why was our shop destroyed a few days ago and there were shootings across the city recently? That doesn't sound like safe to me!"

"None of us knew this was coming, and anyone else in her position would have been just as powerless." Akina told him, his voice also growing a little more irritated at the ignorance of the old man in front of him. "Besides, we know who it is we're looking for now." He added.

"Then where is he?"

Akina went to reply but looked up to see two young men dressed in jeans, hoodies and trainers casually walk into the alley between the shop and the office building, the first of them holding a cigarette in his hand. One of them quickly glanced at the street around them and then followed his accomplice into the alley, taking a small packet out of his pocket. Jiroku noticed Akina's stare and followed it just to see the second of the two disappear behind the side of the building.

"Hey!" he barked angrily, forgetting about Akina and rushing over to where the two had gone. "You're not smoking near my shop! Scram!"

Akina could only shake his head and suppress a laugh. If there was one thing that he found hilarious about Jiroku, it was that he was a bit of a hypocrite, and this was the perfect example as to when this happened. Hime had recently enacted a new law to try and stem the smoking problem among the population, which had resulted in a limited number of places where one could smoke. Not everyone was happy and so they had resorted to sneaking around during the day or at night to have a cigarette out of the view of the public.

Obviously, Jiroku was not happy with two 'hoodlums' smoking near his premises, especially when the mayor was around.

"Ah, here it is!"

"Thank you, Auntie!"

Kiku handed Hime a large thick, red book with a slightly broken spine and a bit of wear to the cover. They were in a back room with wooden walls, a window facing an alley between the shop and one of the office buildings and a table in the centre with Hime on one side and Kiku on the other as she sat down from browsing the bookshelf on the wall behind her. On the wall hung several works by the painter, Hiroshige, a favourite artist of Jiroku, and a little to the right of Hime on the wall behind her, was the way out into the shop. The noise of several customers marvelling or mocking several things in the shop reached their ears. Hime was a little annoyed that they would be so vocal and so demeaning with their views on some of the things here but Kiku did not mind. She allowed people to have their opinions, even if she herself did not agree with them. Her husband, on the other hand, would have them immediately thrown out of the shop were he to hear them. Maybe that was why some of them were being so talkative now in his absence.

"What exactly are you looking for, Hime?" Kiku asked her.

"Gin said he was looking a 'bigger fish to fry' as he put it." Hime explained, opening the book and rifling through the pages, trying to find something in her grandmother's writings that would give her some kind of clue.

Kiku nodded, brushing some sweat off her forehead. It was a warm day today and with the air conditioning broken and so many people coming in and out, it was going to get even hotter inside the shop very quickly.

"Excuse me just for a moment while I open the window." She said as she got up, though Hime was too busy pondering to reply.

Kiku walked over to the window and pulled it up, feeling relief sweep over her as the breeze from the outside flooded into the room. It felt great to have the cold touch her skin once again. Whenever it was hot, nothing could ever beat something like th-

"We're not doing anything!"

"Then why the stamped out cigarettes on the ground?!" A pause followed as Kiku looked to her left and saw Jiroku arguing with a two young men a few feet from the window. "Now get lost!"

"Oh dear, will you stop being so loud!" Kiku said as the two men decided it was best to leave and cautiously moved past the smaller, yet very angry old man, feeling intimidated by his piercing gaze.

"I'm just trying to stop us from being fined!" he snapped back at her before looking back at the two men and shouting something else at them.

Inside the room, Hime sighed and face-palmed, annoyed at the noise that was disturbing her concentration. She was never going to get anything done at this rate if they decided to have a shouting match or something. With the town in potential danger, the last thing that needed to impede her and the gang from stopping Gin was an argument between these two.

Thankfully, Kiku pulled her head back into the room and walked over, sitting across from her once again, an apologetic look on her face.

"I'm sorry about that. He can be very aggressive sometimes towards the public." She explained.

Hime just tittered a little. "I've noticed." She replied, noticing the sound of a few footsteps reaching their eyes and the talk in the shop suddenly diminishing greatly, indicating that Jiroku had entered the shop. Best get ready for another world war to kick off out there.

Silence fell across the room again, broken only by the noise of the pages turning and fluttering in the wind coming in through the window. Hime's concentrated gaze absorbed all the information on the pages she looked at but none of it gave her the answers she wanted. Her grandmother had certainly been the type to be mysterious when she wanted to be, and that did not stop when it came to her writings about the Yokai or the Otherworld and other such things.

"Kiku, did my grandmother ever tell you anything about the Otherworld, something maybe she didn't want me to know about?" Hime asked her.

Kiku thought for a moment, trying to recollect all of the conversations she and the mayor's deceased relative had had. These had been many years ago though so it was hard to remember which ones would probably be relevant or not, and then of course there was remembering what was said rather than just when they had the talks.

After a few moments with Hime looking on patiently, she suddenly exclaimed: "Oh yes, there is one I remember!" she leaned forward and opened up somewhere almost to the back of the book with about ten pages left. "And it helps that she put something here as well, a sort of record if you will."

Hime looked down at the pages Kiku had opened for her, and was surprised. Unlike the previous pages, which had been largely text with a few detailed and innate drawings scattered across the pages, these were entirely pages in an ink-style artwork of gigantic creatures. Some were bipedal in form, their thick bulky legs holding up their bodies that were covered in scales, horns and other such things that made them look grotesque and quite scary; others were on all fours, a snarl on their faces as if they were angry that someone was painting a replica of them.

Now this I didn't expect! Hime thought to herself.

"What is all this, Auntie Kiku?" she asked the old woman, looking up at her with a look that demanded an explanation.

"Well, first, let me ask you: have you ever learnt about what happened here in this area many centuries ago?" she said to Hime, whose blank look quickly answered her own question. "No worries. Well, what you see before you in that book are some of the many creatures that used to come and go from the Otherworld to our dimension. The locals here feared and respected them, calling them gods and hoping to appease them and, in return, receive blessings or even simple mercy. There were many stories of these creatures having the ability to change the weather, create or destroy life, assist in providing food aplenty to villages and entire towns and such. Some, however, held much darker purposes and were literally called the incarnations of death, fear and destruction themselves."

"What were their names?"

"Baragon, Manda, Mothra and Battra to name the majority of them. Though two of the most renowned were-"

"Ah! Thank you for the drink, my friend. I'll see you soon!" came Jiroku's voice from in the shop, which was quickly followed by a: "Hey! You, boy! Just because you work for the mayor doesn't mean you can touch everything on the shelves!"

With a roll of her eyes, Hime turned back to Kiku and urged her to continue. "As I was saying, the two most renowned, and feared, were Gojira and Ghidorah, the three headed golden dragon of fire and death."

"So what does this have to do with my grandmother?" Hime asked her, the curiosity within her rising steadily.

"Well, your grandmother, as you might remember, was always fascinated by the Yokai. Not just the dragon that she beloved but other so-called gods and goddesses, namely these creatures." She indicated to the pages of the open book before them. "And it was while she was learning about them when she was around your age that, as she told me some year ago, she learned of two men called Oushuu and Enyou Hiizumi, brothers from one of the most powerful clan families in the early days."

Hime nodded a little. She had heard about these two brothers, mainly their early lives as well as the achievements of their family before they were born. What had struck her as odd, though, was that when they were just slightly older than her, they practically faded into history. What was more, Enyou disappeared from the records completely and the family name was only mentioned in mere footnotes for some time afterwards in the books she had read. Her grandmother had never really told her about them. Then again, when Hime was younger she did not think her older relative herself would have known about them.

Obviously, I was proven wrong. She mentally told herself.

"One day, to the surprise of many, Ghidorah went on a purge of the land, destroying all and covering large portions of the land in fire. Many creatures died and hundreds of people fled into the surrounding countryside in the hopes of getting away from him. Then, Gojira emerged and the two battled for an entire day and night, levelling much of what had not already been destroyed by Ghidorah. By the next morning, when it was all over, most of the villages were destroyed and Ghidorah was dead, vanquished and the land was safe."

"And this 'Gojira'?" Hime inquired but Kiku merely shrugged her shoulders, a clear way of saying: I have no idea.

"After the great battle, he disappeared and no one has seen him since, though your grandmother told me she believed he had left this world and returned to the Otherworld to rest. But he was not the only one who travelled to there after that great calamity."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, in the days immediately following the battle, Enyou, who had harboured a deep hatred for the creatures, and in particular Gojira, had wanted to find him and destroy the beast himself. Oushuu had protested but they fell on deaf ears. And so, overruling his brother and the clan's decisions when they desperately needed everyone to try and rebuild the land, Enyou, with the power of the two Dragon Spears, went to the Otherworld with the purpose of killing Gojira. After that, no one saw him again either, though your grandmother did tell me that the Nana-Gou were somehow linked to this. I, personally, cannot comment on that as I have ever researched them myself." Kiku concluded.

Hime found her eyes falling down to the pages of the book once again, pondering over this outpouring of new information given to her like this. It was quite shocking, even frightening that creatures such as these once roamed the land and could create or destroy whatever, whenever they pleased. And to think that there was a possibility that some were still alive now in the modern world?! That was just too incomprehensible! What was more, her grandmother had not said anything about this to her. Maybe she it was unimportant, thinking that it would only be an obstacle to Hime in her becoming the mayor of Sakurashin. Or maybe she had tried to keep it hidden, lest such knowledge fall into the wrong hands. After all, if someone found a way to control or match one of these beings in power then there was no-

Wait! A sudden realisation hit her like a brick wall. Maybe this is what Gin was talking about!

The table was almost knocked over as Hime shot up from the floor, banging her knee in the process and making her gasp in pain.

"My dear, are you alright?" Kiku asked, taken by surprise at this sudden movement from the mayor.

"Ah, I'm fine!" she replied, rubbing her knee to try and get rid of the pain. "Listen, I have to go! I think I have a lead on this case. Oh, and I'm gonna need to borrow this. Thank you very much, Auntie Kiku!"

And with that she rushed out of the room, grabbing a startled Akina as he was looking over some makeshift pottery, nearly causing him to drop it, and dragging him out with her. She bade her farewell to Jiroku and they ran, or Hime did and was pulling Akina along, down the street, leaving the old couple and several customers confused.

"Did she waste your time?" Jiroku asked his wife irritably, wiping the counter clean of a few marks with a cloth, when she emerged from the back room.

"Of course not!" she replied, shaking her head at him. "I do wish you would be a little more supportive to her."

He smirked. "When my bottom freezes over and she starts proving herself, then I will be more supportive!" he replied, turning his back on her and walking away to snap at a customer who let their child handle an expensive blue bowl in the window display.

Watching the mayor and her assistant go down the street, disappearing into the crowd and the traffic, was Akiro. He emerged from the alleyway, his mind racing. He had heard everything, having only learnt of this thanks to paying a visit to the shop to see Jiroku a few moments ago. It was there he had seen Akina, who he knew was the, or at least one of the mayor's assistants, and had gambled that if he was there, then she had to be too. And he was right.

I have to tell Gin! He told himself as he set off in the opposite direction away from the shop towards his apartment. They'll be on our tail very soon and we have to be ready.

Author notes: Hey fellow readers and writers. Apologies for the late update with this chapter. I was meant to have it up at the weekend, but a truckload of work and a slight wrist injury prevented me from doing so.

Rest assured, this FF will not be a repeat of the C.O.M X-over, it will just take a few days more to write out each chapter given the limited spare time I have.

Also, I would like to point out that I have made some changes with regards to the backstory of the manga and anime, such as with the wooden shop and the history of Hime's grandmother. Several more things will be changed in the FF too. This is just to clear up any misunderstanding and confusion.

Hope you are all doing well.