A Game of Cat and Bird (Okabe/Kokancho, Yae, Ran, Kaoru)

Automobiles, a real marvel. Little rolling cages moving at speeds that would reduce a human body to shrapnel and mush, and everyone has deluded themselves into thinking their shell of glass and metal- their strips of cloth- will protect them. A marvel, still.

Seated in the back seat of a black automobile, Okabe looks out the tinted glass of the window. Fading away, those glumdrum stacks of concrete, giving way to sparse, dry nature amidst scars of artifice. It’s all the same to Kokancho, as he knows himself. A thing of another world, looking through double-mirrored eyes at this one, alien in its mundanity.

That’s the thing about people. Leave them alone in mundanity for too long, and they will invent a magic of their own. “We’re getting close to the site of the fire,” Blue, Agent Blue as he calls himself. Agent Blue. It’s endlessly amusing to watch the infinite complexities of the human soul try to cram themselves into a single name, a single word. As if they could become an Idea themselves. Perhaps they can. The world, denied miracles, will inevitably invent its own.

The man steers their automobile beneath an archway of stone. The cage slows its roll, coming to a stop outside a layer of yellow plastic barring the way. There’s nothing to stop the rattling cage from plowing through the little yellow line, but human consensus has granted it a power over them. Bold black letters on bright yellow, like the wards of old. Maybe the wards never meant anything at all, until some humans and yokai a few ages past collectively deluded themselves into thinking a few symbols on a piece of paper meant something. A boundary. A warning. A spell.

Human authorities wearing their titles and uniforms mill around like ants, certain in the purpose of their little personal worlds. Take the Agent’s partner, for instance. By trade, a sanitations engineer- less grandiosely, a janitor at their secret base. When the Bureau find themselves understaffed, the janitor is dressed up in some nicer clothes and comes along. Just to keep up appearances. Agent Blue has affectionately given him the name Agent Orange, with the understanding that he could- if he so choose- kill the entire facility by mixing two liquids together to make a lethal gas.

Leave them alone in mundanity for too long, and they will invent a magic of their own.

Doors open and doors close. Wielding all the power and authority of their made-up titles, Agents Blue and Orange scoop the yellow lines away and walk beneath. Kokancho follows them, wearing a new set of clothes. Tight, confining, the outline of an Agent. Agent Yellow, he chose for himself. A master of the wards. A master of the yellow lines.

When their trio approaches the entitled humans, they are stopped. “Look who it is, guys,” one of the police says to a colleague, seeking validation for his condescension. A consensus to empower his word-wards. “The Ghostbusters are here. Worried a will-o-the-wisp started the brush on fire?” Along the road leading out of the city’s concrete heart, the plantlife is charred and broken.

Agent Blue sighs and takes out a folded leather pouch, presenting it like his royal seal. “The BAE is here to determine if-”

“If a ghooost started the fire, right,” the officer wiggles his fingers, nearly casting half a dozen curses he doesn’t understand. Kokancho looks at him with an amused grin. “And who’s this?”

“As if you don’t have a junior detective of your own,” Blue responds flatly.

Past the obstructing officer, the shattered remains of a stone block salt the black ooze that has congealed into their roadways. A group of young students are crouched around the remains. Kokancho recognizes them all from the other day’s meeting. Yae Zennami, Ran Nejima, and Kaoru Nagamine. Members of the Student Council, the self-appointed protectors of this mundane world of theirs’.

Walking away from the conversation between the posturing titles, Kokancho spreads Okabe’s arms, then slaps them down against his wide stomach. There is no Kohaku here to do the talking this time, so he takes it upon himself to offer a jovial, “Hello!”

They look up. At once, their eyes go sharp, their shoulders tense. Ran Nejima marches out to meet Kokancho, body placed protectively between the newcomer and the girls. “The fuck are you doing here? …The hell are you wearing?” Wards indeed. As though he were clad in talismans, Kokancho’s fine, too-tight suit drives the scarred, shaved-headed boy back. Almost like looking in a mirror, now that he takes the time to measure the lad. Though he boasts a little more color than Okabe’s pallor.

“Nice to see you too?” trying to keep a neutral tone, Kokancho throws his hands down at his sides. “I thought you would be a little happier I was not spirited away forever.”

“Are you cooked in the head?”

“Hold on, Nejima-san,” Yae approaches her colleague from the side and rests a hand on his arm. “I don’t think he knows.” She looks into Okabe’s eyes, as Kokancho flicks them between the two faces, reading their expressions. “Your bancho did something unforgivable,“ the girl explains. The second girl, Kaoru- the one with the glasses- is keeping her distance, hands clutched tightly to a clipped board.

“I am in the dark,” Kokancho admits, for once speaking a whole truth. “Fukuzawa-san and I were taken by some,” he looks over his shoulder at the continued posturing, Agent Orange standing back and scratching his mustache. “Nice men in black suits. They asked us to help them investigate the paranormal,” smiling around the word, Kokancho swings his focus back to the councilors.

Ran’s glare tries to cut into Kokancho’s passive amusement. “Is he telling the truth? That rat bastard didn’t even tell his own guys what he did?” The ignorance only seems to fuel his enmity, as is often the case with ignorant and the ignored alike.

“I think so.”

“That doesn’t mean we can trust him,” Kaoru comes, now. She wears doubt as her armor, something Kokancho can respect.

“I didn’t say we should trust him,” Yae corrects, with no particular rush in her voice. “Your bancho stabbed our friend during an argument, Okabe-san. So you’ll understand we’re not eager to work together with your gang again.”

Splitting into a humorless grin, Kokancho chuckles to himself. The sound is like a spark struck to the Nejima boy’s rage, it ignites, and he steps forward. “You think that’s funny?”

“People,” Kokancho utters the word delicately, as though handling a volatile curse, “Try to kill each other for the strangest reasons, don’t they? Would it make you feel better to hit me?”

“What?”

Wearing a playful expression, Kokancho spreads his borrowed arms, presenting his sizeable body. He’s slightly taller than Ran Nejima, and wider besides, but the shorter boy outstrips him easily in raw muscle mass. Maybe the extra blubber would soften the blows a little. “We wear the same jacket, yes? We carry the same allegiance, bound by our titles. So punching me will make you feel better? As if you had the chance to punch him, just a little?”

Silence reigns in the standoff. Winding up, Ran Nejima drives his fist into Okabe’s fat gut. Half-groaning and half laughing, Kokancho doubles over. “You’re all fucked in the head. They should stop calling you Okay-Abe.” The viciousness in the boy’s words has died down. Regretful, now, as though the act of violence had betrayed some internal compass to which he’d clung.

Agent Blue tries to push past the policeman, but Kokancho stands and waves him away. “All in good fun, ah haha! We’re just playing!” It seems enough for the branches of the authoritative tree to return to their own internal bickering. “So, are we even now?”

“Not even close,” Kaoru and Ran answer in unison, each glancing at the other, shocked by their synchronicity.

Presenting Okabe’s palms while catching his breath, Kokancho shrugs, “May we at least get to work? I have a job to do here, and I imagine so do you.”

“He’s right about that,” breaking away from the scene of the fallen brick, Yae Zennami walks into the brush. Her foot brushes past scraps of burnt cloth and leather on the pavement, and she waves a finger at it lazily. Her male guard does the manual work of bending down to place the samples in a clear little bag. The whole while, Kaoru does not take her eyes off of Okabe.

Stone, dirt and grass are streaked with traces of fire. “They started in bursts, like a fireball,” Yae narrates aloud as she paces through the scene. “… One of them caught on someone. They laid down here and rolled on the pavement to put it out.”

“An Awakened that can create fire?” Ran suggests, but Yae shakes her head. Kokancho agrees with her- there’s nary a whiff of Idea Materials here. What he does catch is a curious scent, something like…

Taking one of the bags from Ran, Yae sniffs the opening. “No. This was a gasoline fire.” Gasoline. That’s it. One of humanity’s modern necromancies.

“Do you see any traces of Ai here?” Kaoru clutches to her wooden charms, a shield and sword of information in her hands.

“Looking for someone?” Kokancho asks. The other three look at him. Ran steps in the way, while the two girls huddle closer and whisper with one another. “Ahaha, haha, so rude,” dismissively, Kokancho walks past their cluster and deeper into the woods.

What a sorry state of affairs. Green and brown, earthy colors, deduced to a dense collection of throat-choking, tongue-souring, charcoal black. All this life, snuffed out by the blossoming wrath of some human disagreement. Kokancho wishes he’d been there to watch the spectacle, at least.

He comes to a clearing. Or, at least, what has become a clearing. It is as though a storm blew through this place, shattering branches and scattering debris. Walking to an old log, too sodden with water and rotten to burn, Kokancho squats down on Okabe’s cumbersome haunches to examine a distinctly foot-shaped impression in the wood.

“I don’t remember you being so glib,” behind him, Yae’s voice approaches.

“I wasn’t aware we were acquainted.”

“Touche.”

“So does this mean you’ve finished with the silent treatment?” looking over Okabe’s shoulder, Kokancho watches her squat down next to him.

“Very little of this destruction was from a fight,” she says, and not exactly to him. Suppose that answers that question. “Branches were broken, but they were left whole, not used as weapons. The footprint in this log is moving forward, they didn’t stumble into it while backing away, and there’s nothing behind it to advance to,” she reaches out and touches the bark of the tree the log is resting against. There’s a patch that was shorn away, as if by a wild cat sharpening its claws. “Someone was beating on the trees. Trying to cover their tracks, a diversion of some kind? A temper tantrum?” she’s speaking only to herself now. To no one at all.

“This part of the tree,” Kokancho touches the wood beneath the torn-away bark. It’s fresher than the rest, everything around it drier. Cracked, where something struck the trunk with blunt force. “It was the only part that was wet when it burned.”

“They poured water on the hole?” the observation only seems to confuse Yae more. “What are you getting at?”

“Took a piss?” Ran suggests from the side.

“No,” the tengu has encountered wounds like this before, where internal fluids were pulled to a specific area. “Something drained the life from this tree. Draining life force from something affects the insides like this. There was more sap concentrated below the surface, so it was wetter.”

She’s looking at him, now. With more focus and more intensity than before. Yae’s mouth curls into a faint smile. “And how do you know that?”

“Eheh. Ehehehe. Did you think they recruited me for my good looks?” pushing on Okabe’s knees, Kokancho hauls himself upright. “I’ve been doing a lot of studying ever since my Awakening.“ Studying the mortal world. All its fascinating histories and sciences, the advances from when monsters last walked the earth and the magic was strong and true.

“Hey,” Ran calls them over. “There’s a dead bird over here.”

The interest in Yae’s eyes already drifting away, attaching to new information. They close in, circling the crumpled thing. It did not die to the fire. That much is obvious to all of them, from the twisted direction of its wings to the twist of its neck, like throttled poultry. Blackened blood is caked to the surface of its body, pulled up beneath the skin and then baked by the flames like a blood sausage. “The fluids,” Kokancho hers Yae say to herself. “It was drained too.” Her eyes cast around the clearing, at the destruction. “They all were.” Her eyes narrow, and it seems as though she’s far away, in another place, another time. “A trail of blood… that disappears abruptly.”

Kneeling beside the slain animal, Kokancho cradles it in Okabe’s hands. He closes his eyes and whispers a request like a prayer, “Sing for me. Sing your parting song, little bird, and then fly free.” His ears perk and he listens carefully. “What do you hear?”

“I don’t hear anything,” Ran answers. Kokancho ignores him.

”I’m not sure,” Okabe’s faltering voice brushes past his own ears. ”I don’t understand bird.”

“Repeat what you hear,” Kokancho insists. Through one ear and out the other, a feeble attempt at whistling birdsong. Then a panicked, struggling tweeting. Okabe chokes on the tones, but it’s not like it’s difficult to understand. A predator. Human. Many birds have a specific warning call for humans. “A human did this. With their hands, I think.”

“Care to explain your reasoning?” Yae asks.

“A bird told me. Just a little white necromancy, hm, have you never seen someone speak with their Idolon before?”

“No, I understood that much,” the girl brings a finger to her chin. She seems about to say something else, when Kaoru calls from the other side of the clearing.

“It’s her!”

Yae hurries over, but Ran blocks Kokancho’s path, raising a hand to his chest. Even with his body-blocking and the whispers of the girls, Kokancho cranes over Ran’s head and catches glimpses of a clump of black hair in Kaoru’s hand. “This is School Council business, go tell your goon squad to leave,” the other scar-faced boy commands.

“Sure you won’t be needing a healer in your pocket?” Kokancho asks, smugly.

“Yeah.”

“Fine, fine,” raising Okabe’s hands, Kokancho backs away. He reaches into his coat pocket and Ran tenses up, lunging forward to grab him. “Hey!” Ran yanks the hand out of the pocket, revealing a wad of sticky notes. “Personal space?”

“… Fine,” with a growl, the boy releases him. Kokancho retrieves a pen and jots down a phone number. One of the bureau’s burners.

“Take this. We’ll be in the area, just in case anyone needs medical help,” he tries to fold the paper into Ran’s hand, but the delinquent’s fingers prove too strong for him to force. Instead, Yae reaches around her valiant protector’s arm and takes the slip of paper.

“Thanks,” she’s already walking away. The others leave, Kaoru slinging one more dirty look before she goes. Kokancho laughs and sighs, shaking his head.

“That boy sure knows how to make enemies. At least he makes for an entertaining drama.”