Interlude Part Two


Kokomi

Kokomi didn't run to the gate when the first explosion rocked the compound; she ran for the temple's main building.

Yuuta spent his days playing with Reiko, Yuuko, and Yukito in the main house under the watchful eye of Kuwabara Yukina. Right now, they would be in the family dinning room off the kitchen—a much more intimate room than the enormous conglomerate of rooms used for compound-wide dinners. Kokomi had been heading that direction anyway because she made a point of eating lunch with Yuuta every day, hoping her presence would help alleviate his lingering depression over Kusuo's necessary absence.

"Yuuta!" Kokomi slammed the dining room doors open, then threw herself to the floor as two bullets of blue spirit energy rocketed through the doorway to shatter the paneled wall behind her.

"Oops." Reiko lowered her smoking finger with a sheepish grin. "Sorry, Ane-san."

"No, it's fine." Kokomi's heart may be pounding out of her chest, but she would much rather the twins shoot first than not at all. "Where's Yuu-chan?"

"Here!" Yuuta popped up from behind an overturned bookshelf.

"Thank goodness!" Kokomi scooped him up and hugged him tight enough that he squawked.

"Ane-chan! Can't breathe!"

"Sorry," she said, easing up her crushing embrace. "Sorry."

Kuwabara Yukito peeked over the same bookshelf, his read eyes barely visible beneath his mop of mint green hair. Kokomi breathed an unexpected sigh of relief that all four children were present and uninjured.

"We need to get to the saferoom," Kokomi said, falling back on the pre-determined plan everyone had been so sure wasn't needed and yet everyone made sure to memorize. She looked around the room, already spotting a hole in the plan. "Where is Yukina-san?"

"She went to get lunch," Yuuko said, and Reiko nodded her agreement.

"She's been gone a while."

Kokomi bit her lip, uncertain what she should do. Her abilities, while intense in their own way, were hardly battle oriented, and while she had been practicing how to infuse her spirit energy into weapons, her best medium was bamboo arrows. And once she released the arrows from her bow, it was hit or miss whether the spirit energy would stay long enough to do damage. Rinku said that she was a fast learner and would likely have a solid handle on the process by the end of the week, but that didn't help her—or the children—right now.

Yukina, on the other hand, was an ice demon, and a rather well accomplished one. That was why she always stayed with the children; so she could act as the shield and—if necessary—sword while she, the children, and Kokomi went into hiding.

"Should we find her?" Yuuta asked, but Kokomi shook her head, her decision made.

"The kitchen is on the opposite side from the saferoom. We need to get there as quickly as possible." She offered Yuuta and the other children a reassuring smile. "I'm certain Yukina-san will meet us there."

Yukito looked near tears—no doubt worried for his mother, from whom he was rarely separated—but he nodded in agreement and let Kokomi take his hand after she'd placed Yuuta back on his feet.

They navigated the enormous house without difficulty, though Yukito cringed and clamped tighter on Kokomi's hand whenever the compound shook beneath the weight of the battle waging outside.

"Don't worry, Yuki-kun," Kokomi said, taking an ill-advised break to smile at the boy and pat his messy mint hair in comfort. "Everything will be A-okay! Just you wait—"

Two steps ahead, the wall exploded inward, filling the hallway with dust and shrapnel. Kokomi barely had enough time to wrap the four children in her arms and shield them from the worst of the damage with her body.

"Damn!" a familiar voice said, and Kokomi looked over her shoulder to see a slim feminine silhouette climb out of the splintered hole blown through the hallway's inner wall. The dust cleared slowly to reveal Yumehara Chiyo wiping a thick flow of blood from her face and left eye with the back of her trembling right hand. She held a black sickle in her right fist that dangled a black chain tipped with a giant, spiked ruby. Kokomi gaped, but Chiyo didn't seem to notice her.

"Where did that crazy bitch get grenades from?" Chiyo muttered as she picked up her weapon's limp black chain with her left hand. "And how is she blowing them up without me seeing her? It's like they're appearing out of nowhere!"

"S-Strawberry Milk Girl?"

Chiyo went rigid. For a moment, she stared out the open wall and into the courtyard before her head slowly turned to face Kokomi and the four children gathered beneath her like chicks. Horror paled Chiyo's complexion as her eyes moved from one face to the next to the next.

"K-Kokomi?" She shook her head. "What are you doing here?" Anger overtook horror and she shouted, "You're supposed to be in the safe room—!"

A wildly spinning grenade appeared from thin air. Chiyo's head whipped toward it, and she screamed.

"Get down!"

Kokomi launched herself onto the children.

Chiyo launched herself onto the grenade.

It exploded.


Kaliea: Somehow, Chiyo has taken center-stage in this story, and I'm not even sorry. Of all Saiki's posse, I always thought that Chiyo got the short end of the stick. Largely because, amongst everyone in the show, Chiyo is the only one who is exactly what she's supposed to be: a normal high school girl. The growth we see in her over the course of the show from flighty and lovesick to level-headed and loyal is the sort of progression that most "normal high school girls" can only hope to aspire to in the however many years they spend in school, and I definitely wanted to showcase that here. Just because Chiyo is less powerful than her friends does not make her less willing or capable :)