Happy 2025! Man, it feels like I haven't posted a chapter since last week!

So, yeah, this is me trying to upkeep a weekly schedule. We'll see how long I can keep it and if I end up writer's blocked first or if I end up getting too excited and posting the rest of what I have over the next couple days. I like to keep you guys on your toes.

And speaking of you guys, WOW! Once again, I thought that like... five people would read this, period, but if the stats are to be believed then a lot of people have at least taken a look at this, and I just wanted to say I appreciate all of you! Especially Asumwasdd, who left my first ever review which is like, amazing, especially since it was not only positive but also seemed to get the exact idea I was going for, just the need for a crossover like this to exist in the way I wanted it to. Thanks, and I hope you enjoy.

(also sorry if you say me post this and immediately delete it, there was a minor typo which sort of messed up the lore pretty significantly. Oops!)

CHAPTER 3 - Willed by the unwilling, while the Willing sat by

After the… unconventional result of Shinji's fight with the first angel, was it any surprise that Shinji was prescribed training? Of course not, it was needed. Movement training had gone pretty well, despite a slow start the boy really was a natural at picking this stuff up. Combat training… less-so.

Reisen stood over Maya, flicking between looking out the window at Shinji's Oni and down at the screen where the simulation was being displayed. They had started combat training after blitzing through the movement training, but the boy was no Reimu. He was reserved, quiet, and rigid, pointing and shooting with his Oni but never commiting to more drastic movement. Perhaps it was for the best; the Oni was locked in a massive, pure white cube for the time being as they ran a combat simulation through wires it was hooked up to, and too much movement would result in Shinji bashing into those walls.

Still, though, Reisen felt her brow furrow. Being a soldier was a job, so you weren't expected to love it, but you still needed to care about it at least a little.

"Pilot Ikari, you've got the motions down, but you're being a little sluggish. Could you try and put some more energy into it?"

"Target in the center… pull the switch. Target in the center… pull the switch."

"Uh… right." Reisen looked to Maya for help, but she merely shrugged in response. "Just try and be a little quicker about it. You're supposed to be in a warzone, after all." She let go of the Push-to-talk button at that. "He just obediently goes on with what people tell him to… I can't say I don't understand it, but I can only hope it's enough."

"Isn't obedience all you need a soldier to be, Head Alchemist Inaba?" Misato, who'd been standing in the observation room's back for the whole exercise, finally saw fit to pipe up. Unsurprisingly, just to snipe at Reisen, who sighed.

"Captain Katsuragi, I may be Head Alchemist now, but I'm as much a soldier as you are. You and I both know I'd rather the third child not be… this on the field of battle, but it's not my job to make sure he's happy and healthy. What do you expect me to do?"

click!-click!-click!

The brief argument had taken their focus away from Shinji, and none of them had noticed that his virtual ammo had 'run out'. Shinji had been carrying out the motions all the same.

"Er… that's enough, Shinji."

o0o

It had been a long night for Shinji, but he had ended up leaving far before Misato on the special 'Gensokyo' route home. The special 'Gensokyo' route which Shinji still didn't fully trust to be anything but a route to connect Misato's house with the city. He'd never actually seen anyone ride the full length of the route except him.

There was that word again, 'Gensokyo'. The name - "Fantasy Land" or "Land of Observing Illusions", sounded more like the name of a theme park than that of a village in the Yatsugatake mountains, but he didn't have much of a choice to question it. Unsurprisingly, the train's stop didn't stop anywhere near any village either, but was only about a ten minute walk from Misato's house, and to his room which he crashed into like he did every night. He supposed he wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, it wasn't like TOUHOU was hurting for funds, after all. What was one station next to something like the Onis or the geofront?

Nonetheless, Shinji was getting used to the whole thing. Living with Misato, usually coming to the home alone, and especially cleaning up the place. They'd tried to split chores, but Shinji ended up doing everything himself. Shinji had quickly hammered a morning routine into place, a morning routine he followed today, too: Getting dressed, cleaning the apartment, and more importantly, as he slid open the door to Misato's room…

"Miss Misato, it's morning." Waking up his guardian. Except, Miss Misato wasn't present. In her place was a formless blob of blankets that smelt like booze, a terrible beast that groaned and roared whenever Shinji tried to wake it. Today, at least, the blob was feeling merciful.

"Ugh… I just got back from the night shift… Just let me sleep…" Shinji sighed, and went to close the door as softly as possible when the blob spoke once more. "Wait, before you go, can you go stop the-"

"CIRNOOOOO! WAKE UPPPPPP!" The sound of tiny fists pounding against the front door made Misato fall out of her bed, revealing that she was still wearing a set of shrine maiden robes. Was that all she wore? She groaned, rubbing her head for two reasons. " Shinji…"

Shinji sighed, and went to the front door as Misato reassembled her blanket shell. It was an odd image, Misato wasn't really like a shrine maiden outside the clothes at all, which Shinji still hadn't asked about. He simply left, getting the front door and opening it, bonking one of the children as he did with an 'ow.'

Children was the wrong word. They were fairies, as hard to believe as Shinji found that. The four of them all had wings and could apparently do things as unexplained as Cirno's ice powers, so it wasn't as if there was a better word for them, but still, there was still a certain barrier of common sense in Shinji's mind that he'd still yet to overcome. The fairies' 'leader', a girl with green hair and golden wings that looked like a mix of a dragonfly's and the branch of a tree, suddenly got quiet when faced with someone.

"Ah… is… Cirno-chan, ah… Can Cirno play today?"

Shinji was about to go and open the fridge, when he heard little footsteps getting louder next to him. Before he could do anything, Cirno, looking very tired and wearing a smile that looked forced, was next to him. "Of course I can! I always wanna play!"

"We can play inside, if you want…" The other three fairies nodded in agreement.

"Nuh-uh, why would we do that? It's always the most fun when we play outside. I'll come!"

Shinji looked on, sighing as Cirno ran after her friends. She always talked a big game, but the ice fairy really wasn't good in the heat, and, from what he could tell from those days when he was home all day, the ice fairy usually got tired around noon. Often, her friends would practically carry her back to Misato's fridge, even as she whined about being 'the strongest'.

Shinji sighed. At least Cirno had friends. Shinji would be leaving in a bit, and walking to school alone as he always did... He suddenly felt very silly, feeling jealous at a magical fairy- who also might as well have been a child- for how many friends she had, but he'd rather feel silly than actually consider why he was in this situation in the first place. He packed up and left only a bit later than the fairies had left, with only an "I'm leaving" marking his exit.

o0o

School was a dour affair, as Shinji had quickly gotten used to. Despite seeming to be about the same age as him, at best a couple years older, Reimu hadn't actually gone to the same school as Shinji. Apparently, she hadn't gone to any school, actually. Without that slim hope, he found that he didn't know anyone in his new school, so he did what he did best... closed off his heart. He'd gradually settled into a routine in school, a routine just as comforting and just as ironclad as the one at home: Get there, sit down, try your best to follow along with the teacher and type notes about the first five minutes of class in the provided school laptop, promptly become unable to track what the teacher was rambling on about, zone out, lunch, zone out, go home.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Nobody really paid attention to him, which was fine by him, because he didn't exactly do anything worth paying attention to. Only one student had even approached him, the class representative, and she probably only did so because she quite literally had to. Shinji couldn't name a single person in his class.

Shinji hadn't even noticed the teacher arriving or the class getting started. He especially didn't notice a boy in a tracksuit showing up, loudly complaining about his sister being put in the hospital by that angel fight. He didn't really pay attention to anything at all in the first half of the day, only being roused by a message dinging through his laptop. It was sent by another student:

"Is it true that you pilot the robot? [Y/N]"

Shinji looked around. Nobody was staring at him, and he had no idea who'd sent it.

Eh, couldn't hurt. [Yes].

And then, chaos in the classroom. The class rep shouted out a "Take your seats!" to no avail as Shinji was mobbed.

"That's so awesome! Hey, how were you chosen?"

"Were there any tests?"

"What percentage of Hourai elixir do they infuse into the LCL? …I'm asking for a friend."

Shinji was flustered, and honestly a little confused by that last thing, so he only managed to mumble out a "that's secret", which failed to slow the crowd around him.

"That's so boring… oh, will they kill you if you say something else?"

"Ooh! Ooh! Is it true that they have a lady who lives alongside forest youkai? Is it true that they employ them?"

"What was that ultimate attack that was on T.V. ? Can you do it too?"

"Are you guys on the same side as NERV or-"

The bell rang, and the teacher halted his endless ramble long enough to dismiss the class. As Shinji started to pack up, he did so still inundated by an endless supply of questions about both very confidential as well as very personal things, neither of which he thought he should share.

"Ikari-kun, where do you live?"

"Away, up in the mountains… I think I gotta go!"

He walked out, pursued by a small crowd. Only three kids remained behind: The class rep, sighing and nervously pulling at her long, green hair, was on cleanup duty, as was the girl with short brown hair, glasses, and a cape she insisted on wearing in class. The third was still sat in his seat, wearing his tracksuit, giving the evil eye to Shinji. He would let Shinji know why you don't mess with the family of Toji Suzahara.

o0o

"Oof!" Shinji went down like a sack of potatoes in response to Toji's pulled punch.

"Sorry, new kid. After everything that happened, I wouldn't feel right unless I punched ya." Toji wanted to end the interaction there. Honestly, he was already walking away, already having burnt away his anger all at once. He wasn't a tough kid deep down, and as much as the new kid had deserved a punch, he didn't really-

"What was that for? Not like I wanna pilot the thing."

And Toji stopped. He was angry again. In a second, he'd closed the gap between him and Shinji, picked him up by the collar and was now holding him twenty centimetres in the air with one arm. "What was that for? WHAT WAS THAT FOR? My best friend is homeless because of what you did in that damn robot! My sister could've died, she's still in the hospital!"

Shinji looked away, bracing for the punch. Even angry, Toji still didn't really want to do this. And yet, he hit Shinji again. And again, and again when he was on the ground. He raised his hand, not really knowing why at this point, and then felt a sting on his fist as a thin spear of light shot past him.

"Night with Overly Bright Guest Stars!"

"Gah! Class rep-" Toji tried to dodge the thin spears of light shooting out of the girl's ofuda, and managed to get a bit further than he had last time, but eventually ran off. Shinji looked on at his saviour, but she didn't offer a hand or anything of the sort, so he pulled himself up.

"Thanks…" He remembered she had already introduced herself to him. "…Sanae."

"That's class rep, and you're welcome. Now, I'm already mad at Toji for picking fights as it is, so you're gonna tell me what you did to instigate this fight. Toji isn't the kind to hit… that much." Sanae was smiling why she said it, but she certainly wasn't happy about this. It was hard to actually read what she was feeling.

"I… he told me his friend-"

"Wait! You're the kid who piloted the Oni! I saw your fight- what spell card did you use? Does it have a name?"

"Spell… card?"

"Wait, you're the kid who piloted the Oni!" Despite saying the same phrase twice, her tone was completely different. "No wonder Toji was mad at you, do you have any idea what you did to Kensuke's family? I know it's probably hard to control yourself, but jeez! He has to live with the Usamis, and you know how Sumireko can get- oh, you don't know how Sumireko can get, do you? You just got here! I know you're a new transfer, but you gotta be careful or else you'll get people hurt! And another thing-"

Shinji was at a loss. When the class rep had introduced herself, she'd maybe said five words, but now she was going off on tangent after tangent that Shinji could barely follow, much less respond to. Sanae carried a sort of cheerful anger that Shinji literally had no idea how to respond to, doubly so when he was still reeling from the beatdown that she had saved him from. And yet, completely cheerfully, she almost acted like she didn't want to. Fortunately, his thoughts and her babble were both cut off by a curt, electronic buzz, followed by a siren. "Oh, my! There must be an angel attack coming!"

"An- Angel?" Shinji's eyes grew wide. He'd have to be the one fighting that angel, especially if Reimu was still out of commission. Wiping the specks of spit from his mouth, he ran off in the rough direction of TOUHOU. To his surprise, instead of bolting to a shelter, he found Sanae running after him, and to his disgruntlement he found the girl was faster than him, quickly catching up.

"I'm coming with you!"

"I don't think you're allowed!"

o0o

Sanae sighed, slumping in the shelter surrounded by her class. As it turns out, she actually wasn't allowed into TOUHOU headquarters, even during an emergency and no matter how many spell cards she knew. She just wanted to help, after all. And just being class rep didn't help anyone... not like-

"So, did he know anything about the Angel's mythological origins?"

Honestly, being in the same class with Sumireko probably just hurt things. The girl, the only other one who knew a thing about the supernatural, had become obsessed with her as soon as she'd started visiting Gensokyo, and even though Sanae had only been to the fantasy land once or twice, she's quickly become the lightning rod to Sumireko's questioning and wild speculation about the occult. Honestly, as selfish as it was, she'd kind of found herself hoping that Sumireko'd be fascinated enough by Shinji to stop talking to her for a while, but the boy was an expert stonewaller. Not that Sanae'd helped with that barrage of questions... God that was stupid! Then, she realized that Sumireko was looking for an answer.

"No."

"Aw, really? Did he know anything about Junko, the mysterious co-commander of TOUHOU? Head alchemist Reisen? Did he say anything about how Reimu started piloting?"

"He didn't say much of anything. I don't think he knows that kind of stuff."

"Aw, did he even say what kind of youkai he was?"

Eh? "He's a human, Sumireko."

"Working with TOUHOU? They've gotta all be youkai, it doesn't make sense otherwise! I'm already pretty sure I've narrowed Reimu down to five or six possible species, and Gendo's gotta be a Wanyudo, but Shinji could be any type of human-type youkai!"

Sanae zoned out again as Sumireko went back to listing types of youkai. It wasn't exactly easy to listen to Sumireko whenever she got like this. Sanae was, and she could admit this to herself, a bit of a blabbermouth, she tended to get carried away in her way of thinking, especially when she had been told what to do. But when Sumireko got carried away, it was never anywhere useful! It was always pseudo-conspiracy theories and otaku ramblings... she was really too similar to her cousin wasn't she? just trade out the chuunibyou aspects for a standard military-otaku. And it wasn't exactly fun to hear her constantly ramble on about Gensokyo when Sanae, despite her best attempts, rarely even got to go, living in Tokyo-3 and all.

"Listen, Sumireko… eh?" Sumireko was gone. A quick scan of the shelter revealed she wasn't hiding anywhere and she hadn't managed to find someone else to listen to her.

"Toji!" The boy jumped when he heard his name. He had been sitting along the same wall that the two girls had been, just staring at the ceiling "Where did Sumireko go?"

"You didn't hear? You were right next to her."

"I looked away for like a second! What did she say, Toji?" Sanae dropped her cheery expression rather consciously.

"She said she was gonna go see if she could learn about how the Oni worked! You were right next to her, I don't get-"

Damn it! Sanae shot up, made sure she had her gohei on her- of course she did, a real shrine maiden always had their gohei, and ran to the entrance. Toji, quickly grasping the situation, shot up and started following Sanae. She didn't exactly want him to come, but good luck trying to get the blockhead to sit back while someone else did the saving.

o0o

"Heheh, Kensuke's gonna be so~ jealous."

Sumireko was stood on top of a hill a decent way away from the shelter. It was a perfect vibe: her cape was flitting in the wind behind her, being picked up and draping out behind her like a flag of norse runes. Her dress… so what if she wore her favourite dress under her school uniform at all times? It looked great! She looked great now, like she was ready to find the truth!

Whatever that may be. She paced around the top of the Shinto shrine on the top of the hill, which seemed all too humble when she compared it to the Hakurei shrine of her dreams. She knew that the angels were monsters, and she knew TOUHOU's job was to fight them. She also had irrefutable proof that TOUHOU was an organization lead by youkai, wielding magic and the occult in the fight, so the angels had to be too. Whatever she was sure that she'd know the angel when she saw it.

Hopefully, Kensuke would be okay with phone video-

Was that an earthquake? Whipping around to the source of the massive noise, Sumireko audibly gasped, and nearly dropped her phone. It was-

It was-

Jeez, what even was that? It looked like a massive squid, or lobster or something else that Sumireko hoped was just her having a dirty mind. It started by just floating through the town, almost weightless. And then, it stood straight upward, two tentacles spilling out of its arms. It was an almost eerie white, the only spot of colour on the thing being an Ultramarine Orb on the thing's… chest? Stem? Shaft? In its center. The angel just stood in place, almost like it waiting.

Then, another rumbling noise erupted from the city. It didn't sound the same, though. Now, it sounded more like someone grinding a skateboard on a massive rail. Sumireko didn't know what to focus on, until she saw a building open up-

Oh. My. Science. Out of that open building stepped out a massive, titanic… monster! There was no other way to put it! It had to be the Oni, and she saw where it got the name, it definitely looked like one. Out of another massive building, the giant grabbed a gun… strange, why wasn't it using its spell cards if it had them? With a bratata the Oni shot the pure angel, strange enough, it shook off the blasts like they were nothing. Seriously, it was doing-

"SUMIREKO!" An arm grabbed Sumireko's cape and started pulling her back.

"Eep! I- I mean, who dares- Toji? Sanae?"

"Jeez, you're worse than Kensuke. C'mon, we gotta go." Toji was the one who spoke, but Sanae stayed uncharacteristically quiet.

"Noooo! Look at the Oni! Don't you guys want to see it? It's literally fighting an angel right now! Sanae, what if it uses a spell card! What if it opens a gap to Gensokyo or something?"

"Gawd, why do you always talk crazy? It's just a big robot. C'mon, you're gonna get hurt."

So, Toji was a lost cause, but Sumireko couldn't just give up! "Sanae…" But Sanae's expression didn't change. She didn't look mad or anything, but that almost made her even more unnerving. She just nodded as Toji started yanking her back to the shelter. "W-w-wait! Sanae, don't you want to see it? They've got something to do with Gensokyo, you know it as well as I do! Come on, please! It's like a gundam..." She heard a rumble behind her as she was still facing her friends. She was missing it! "Guys…"

Sanae looked up, and for the first time since she'd left the shelter, showed an emotion. Fear. Sumireko and Toji both followed her gaze as she whipped out her gohei, only to see the Oni, somehow airborne, flying straight towards them. The three of them could do nothing but scream.

o0o

"Oni launch!"

Oni-01 shot upwards, surrounding Shinji with the piercing sound of the launch pad scraping against its guide rails. And yet, to the boy, the sound barely registered. He still remembered how the last angel fight had went, after alll; He still remembered his skull being blasted open, and the horrific gnawing feeling of the purification eating his brain.

But, he also remembered how proud Misato had been. How much everyone needed him to do this. How Reimu could barely even stand, and how they'd expected her to fight anyways. He had to do this, no matter how he felt about it. So, he'd just suppress his feelings, and keep suppressing them until they never caused a problem again.

"Target in the center… pull the switch."

The massive door of the faux building above him slid open, blaring a mixture of warm sunlight from the outside world and the harsh, pure white electric lights of the building's roof into the tunnel. When he reached the top, Shinji almost automatically stepped out, gun in hand, and lined up the shot.

"Target in the center… pull the switch. Target in the center… pull the switch."

Shinji pulled the switch, lighting up the cockpit with a titanic muzzle flash and blocking his view with the giant gun's cloud of smoke. Had the monster gone down? Was it that easy?

"IDIOT! He just gave the angel cover!" Misato's voice shot through comms a fraction of a second before a glowing, white whip shot out of the smoke. The angel had grown arms, and it was only through some miracle that Shinji managed to jump out of the way before those arms could wrap around his Oni. It was so close, in fact, that the tip of his rifle was outwardly severed, getting air before falling usefully down to where he'd been just a second before. Misato's voice came through the comms seconds later, snapping him out of his shock. "I'm sending you another rifle!" And then, strangely, he heard Reisen's voice right after. "This one's experimental, be careful with it!"

On cue, another faux building opened up, but… Shinji just froze. The angel almost loomed over him, and in that moment he was both back in front of the third angel and frozen on the ground in front of the fourth. Only another swipe by the angel's whips could get him to jump away, but he simply wasn't fighting back. He simply couldn't force himself to, even as his audio channels were drowned with Misato yelling at him. Another swipe, cracking against the space that Oni-01 had been just seconds before, splitting the massive umbilical cable, the giant wire that supplied the Oni's power, behind it with a splurt of white fluid and electrical sparks. It uselessly sat there like the stem of a plucked dandelion, while another wave of panic gripped TOUHOU headquarters.

"Umbilical cable severed! He only has five minutes of battery power remaining!"

Would the battery power even matter? The Oni was grabbed by one of the angel's whips by the leg, which didn't even bother to start purifying him as it simply flung him away like trash. The Oni crashed against the side of a nearby mountain with enough force to cause yet another earthquake, but the angel was alr-

Shinji locked eyes with Sanae, Sumireko and Toji. The three of them had just barely avoided being crushed by the Oni's hand, and looked absolutely terrified. He'd almost killed them. His classmates had almost died, because of him. Why were they even here? How were they even here, as small as ants huddled on the mountain when he was controlling a giant?

Oh god, how many people had already died because of him? In that instant, the fight against the third angel once again flashed through his recollection, especially the memory of all those leveled city blocks. When the angel once again whipped out its arms, Shinji at least caught them, he knew damn well he couldn't let the angel hurt his classmates, but beyond that he just… froze, writhing under the angel as its tentacles finally started purifying the Oni's hands. Once again, that same horrific gnawing feeling began to burn through Shinji, its only mercy being that it wasn't gnawing away at his head this time.

"Three minutes and thirty seconds of battery power remaining!" Maya Ibuki was the first one to break the split second of shocked realization that there were children in the middle of the battlefield, which snapped everyone else out of their shock, too. Misato took the lead once again. "Damn it! Shinji, let the three of them into the cockpit! You can retreat and we'll regroup later!"

"Captain Katsuragi, what makes you think that civilians are allowed into the cockpit without authorization?"

Not now, Reisen. "I'm authorizing it."

"You're exceeding your authority, Captain!"

Misato stared daggers at her 'earth rabbit' coworker. Technically, the head alchemist of the Oni project was one of three people in TOUHOU who did, in fact, outrank her. She was, however, the only one who was actually here. Gendo and Junko had been away on business when this whole attack had started, and nobody had yet even gotten hold of them yet. TOUHOU was more than prepared to enter combat without the two of them... honestly, in direct combat, Reisen wasn't needed either. Misato's authorization was, in effect, a barb towards the other woman. Not outwardly hostile, and not with the goal of starting anything. It was more a question: 'would you really rather these children die than your precious chain of command be violated?'

Reisen's sunglasses rendered her true expression unreadable, but her clenched teeth said more than enough. She said nothing more, so Misato continued.

"Hurry up and do it!"

And, at the push of a button, the entry plug shot out. Through its speakers, Misato yelled at the three kids to get in, which they promptly did. This was not the time to ask questions, after all.

"Is this… water?" Toji didn't know how to feel about the fact he could breathe in the stuff.

"It's actually most likely a complicated mixture of LCL and diluted Hourai elixir, or possibly some other elixir that TOUHOU has- oh, no! My phone!"

Sanae remained quiet, putting a hand behind Shinji's chair and watching intently. This wasn't exactly her choice of how it was gonna happen, but she did still want to be a pilot. Firsthand experience was firsthand experience.

The first thing she noticed was how loud the comms were, even as the entry plug was still rebooting. Several voices blared through, first: "An anomaly has occurred in the sympathetic nervous system."

And then, "It's almost like we have three foreign bodies in there. Noise is clouding the Oni's ability to read commands, it might as well be drunk."

Noise was right. How did Shinji stand those voices yelling at him?

Nonetheless, to Sanae's amazement, Shinji still managed to will the Oni to move. In an incredible feat, while its hands were still being purified, Shinji managed to push the angel, who had been floating right above them like the world's second deadliest zeppelin, far away. As the oni roughly stood up, Sanae couldn't help but notice its massive hand below them, both all-too human for what she had thought was just some kind of robot, and also ashen and grey, like it had been burnt away… or like it was as pure as the moon.

"Recovery route 34! Retreat to the mountain's east side!"

Toji, who had been arguing about something ultimately meaningless with Sumireko, picked up on that. "New kid… she said retreat!"

"I mustn't run away…"

Toji looked up at Sanae, who looked back at him across Shinji's chair. Neither of them knew how to react to that. "Uh… new kid?"

"I mustn't run away…"

The sound of a hatch opening outside the cockpit could be heard. To Sanae's horror, the Oni reached its burnt, purified hand up out of their field of view, only to come back with a knife that absolutely didn't look like enough to fight with. "Shinji, what're you doing? Use your spell card, use something!"

"I mustn't run away!"

And then, Shinji screamed, and rushed the angel. The angel, seemingly caught off-guard, shot its two arms straight at the Oni, but it was a movement it was obviously unused to compared to its whipping, and both shots failed to stop its momentum. Shinji pushed forward, ignoring the gnawing now emerging from his core, and jabbed the knife straight into the giant, ultramarine sphere- the angel's core- in front of him. Even as Maya's voice started a fearful countdown, Shinji only pushed forward, pushing his knife further. It was almost a race, but thankfully it was one that the Oni won as the core shattered like a marble. As the two titanic beings lost their respective energies, one through death and the other through losing power, Sanae could only look on in horror.

Not on in the angel. On to Shinji, which Toji and even Sumireko joined her in. Her classmate, really a boy in a way that Sanae only now fully noticed, wasn't giving some cocky speech or raising his fist in victory. He wasn't standing there over his defeated foe, satisfied. He hadn't used a spell card at the last minute to get him out of an otherwise-impossible situation, if he even could use spell cards on command. He wasn't like Reimu at all.

He was curled into a ball, trying to make himself small as possible. Dead to the world, he did nothing but sob to himself.

o0o

A heavy rain had consumed the outside world, turning the otherwise pristine schoolyard outside Tokyo 3's finest in education into a muddy mess. It was the kind of day that made you just want to curl up at home and ignore the outside world until it ended, and it was the kind of day students hated their schools for forcing them to attend.

"It's been three days."

"Since what? Since we got in trouble?" Sumireko looked up from whatever she was doing on the school computer. It was Toji who'd spoken initially, but Sumireko's unfortunately all-too-characteristic disregard prompted Sanae to answer.

"Toji means since Shinji stopped coming to school."

"Oh…" The girl actually closed her laptop at that, looking almost guilty. Toji just sighed.

"I wonder… what do you think the guy's been up to?"

Sumireko shrugged. "Dunno, you worried?"

"I- not exactly worried…"

Sanae saw right through him. Of course he was worried, he was just too machismo to show it. The three of them, the only ones in the class at the time, sat there in silence for a bit, which Sumireko apparently saw as a good excuse to open her laptop again. Sanae wished she was surprised. Toji tried to be tactless despite having a heart, but Sumireko was a natural at it.

"Here." Except, she handed Toji a slip of paper. "His phone number. If you're worried, why not call him?"

Toji hesitantly took the slip of paper and read it over. It was, indeed, a phone number, god knew how Sumireko got her hands on it. It was a Yamanashi number, looks like the new kid really did live in the mountains.

Toji ran out of the room faster than he'd admit, running to the green phones near the school's entrance. He picked up the phone with the same gusto he tried to do everything with, but when confronted with the phone number itself, the actual physical process of dialing the number and confronting, if just through a phone, the boy he'd beaten up upon their literal first meeting, he… couldn't.

He hung the phone back up.