Bug Hunt (Kohaku, Okabe, Momofuku, Dawn, Fumiko)
Every night, it gets bigger. The city-wide Bleeding Zone, spreading from the core of the city into the outer fringes. The suburbs, the outskirts, one by one will fall into the creeping darkness where monsters live. Kohaku wonders to himself what will happen when they reach the absolute of the city limits, where the Idea World again falls silent. Will the spread stop? Or will it start to reach beyond this city, into the rest of Japan? The prospect of just leaving this all behind with Tai at his side…
No. Then he would be powerless to stop them from taking away his precious person.
Walking the abandoned suburbs at night is an invigorating experience. Among the shadows of empty, dead houses, it feels like something could leap out at you from any direction. Human instinct plays at the shadows in the periphery, creating monsters. In some cases, literally. At any time, a spawn straight out of nightmares could crawl from between the ragged buildings. On the prowl, on the hunt.
Everything is different from the inside of a vehicle. In the passenger’s seat of Agent Red’s little car, Kohaku watches the busted cookie-cutter houses pass by. Without the threat of dark, open space all around him, it’s dull and repetitive. There’s no thrill of the hunt- the counter-hunt. Hoping something will make its move and foolishly become your dinner instead.
“How did you two get out here without a pass?” the agent’s attempts at casual conversation always come across as an interrogation, but she’s incessant with her attempts. It’s different from Blue’s hollow chatter. Red actually wants to know, rather than going through the human motions. Kohaku wonders if she has a single real friend.
“Maybe we shouldn’t reveal that to the government,” Okabe is sitting in the front passenger’s seat, while Kohaku sits behind Red. The other boy’s large frame made fitting into the cramped back seat impossible, and they needed to adjust the seat back to make room for him. Leaning to the side, Okabe looks at Kohaku with a wry smile. “Might be it ends up sealed by morning.”
He can feel the agent rolling her eyes. “Not if we can use it.”
Realizing he’d been forgetting to breathe, Kohaku suddenly sucks in a breath before he speaks. “The old subway tunnels,” it’s like speaking in a dream. Everything still feels distant and numb.
“They shuttered those,” matter-of-factly, the agent contests his claim. “If you cut your way through, somebody would have noticed.” What a stupid disagreement to have. As if they would bother giving her a fake story at this point.
“There are ways to get past. Your inspectors suck ass,” Kohaku fires back.
“Hm.” Just a curt noise of acceptance.
With a hum of the engine, they pull up into the driveway of the gang’s old haunt. The doors all open at once, and they step outside. The yard is as overgrown as it ever was, clots of weeds growing among the tall, unhindered grass, chopped down only where it hindered the gang. All save for a broad circle around the burn pit. Looking into the ash at the bottom, he savors the feeling of regret. It hurts, but it’s a pain that’s his. His. Not this… thing sliding between his thoughts.
Red puts on a bulky headset, then tosses them both flashlights. Kohaku catches his deftly, while Okabe lets it thud against his stomach and catches it when it falls. Three beams of golden light flick on. In the illuminating rays, her strange new accessory looks like something straight off a sci-fi movie set. Broad metal dome across her head, large hexagonal lumps over her ears, and an orange-sheen to the glass surface of the goggles.
“What is that thing?” Okabe asks curiously. He reaches out to poke the headset, and Red swats his hand away.
Kohaku notices she’s murmuring something under her breath, but she stops to answer, “It’s one of Ngiem-san’s projects. It allows the user to observe extrareal phenomena their naked eye could not parse.” With her other hand, she pats the side of the helmet. “There are also noise cancelling headphones, the kind soldiers use, put through a filter to help receive anomalous sounds.”
Twirling a large length of pipe in his hands like a baton, Okabe stops at the bottom of the stairs while Kohaku pulls the key from his pocket. They’d changed the lock out for their own ages ago. “Does that have to do with what you’re… whispering?” the big guy asks.
“Personal focusing techniques help to retain memories of anomalous events,” Red answers. “Me, I do math. I’ve been making estimations of angles and distances and performing rote calculations in my head. Speaking them aloud helps.” The agent scans the yard, one hand on the holster of her sidearm. “…Unfortunately, for all our techniques for understanding and observing, we haven’t developed proper Idea Weapons yet. There are only Ngiem-san’s prototypes. You two are our only real option to fight back.”
Click. Kohaku pushes the door open. His flashlight sweeps through the first-floor sitting room. Just seeing this place is like hanging weights across his shoulders. The weight of the past, nostalgia. Just days ago they sat around on these sofas, those chairs. Playing card games and shooting the shit over a soda or a drink.
You can have that again.
The words come from his own inner voice, but Kohaku feels unwell when he hears them. His voice, bereft of his tone, as if spoken by an alien thing imitating him. Wielding the weight of his losses as a lever to overturn his mind. Gritting his teeth, Kohaku approaches their minifridge. Opening it, he finds the pile of Yukimarimos still huddled up inside, producing a wafting aura of winter chill.
Taking the guidebook from his back pocket, Kohaku kneels down and opens it to their page, ushering the little snowballs in. “Sorry you were stuck alone for so long,” he softly apologizes.
“Incredible,” Red mutters over his shoulder.
There’s a clatter from the bathroom, and Kohaku jerks to attention, like an animal ready to spring. He reaches for his knife on instinct, but it’s still being held by the Bureau. Something about him being seen with the assault weapon being ‘bad for business.’
Just Okabe, waddling out and tossing a messenger bag back over his shoulder. “What? Just grabbing our toothbrushes and such.”
Shaking out the tension in his arms, Kohaku moves towards the stairs. He stops, foot locked in place at the bottom step. It’s their room up there. If this place has him sweating so much his hair is stuck to his face, then facing that… that absence. It could kill him. Maybe not literally, but in this fight against it. Against her. A heavy hand rests on his shoulder.
“I’ll take care of it,” slipping the guidebook from his hands, Okabe moves past Kohaku. His former classmate looks down at him and smiles reassuringly. “Go sit.”
Kohaku obeys. He flops down onto the sofa, alone in the darkness of the living room. No oil lamps to fill it with homey wilderness cabin vibes. Just the bioluminescence under his own skin. Something Kohaku once thought was a symbol of his power. His place as an apex in this ecosystem. Now, it feels like a collar. A collar on a dog.
Tired eyes fall on one of the chairs around the card table. Even in a world where Kohaku hadn’t turned it all upside down, that chair would still be empty. They came here to pick up some things left behind, but also to find Takoyaki’s remains. Kohaku has had a text message sitting on his phone for days.
body’s at your place
It was from Momofuku Chikata, the Wind Demon of Fujiwara. Or one of her associates. Kohaku knows she hates him, he knows this is probably a trap. But this is for one of his own. It needed to be done.
Maybe it’s deserved.
None of it. None of this unfair world is deserved. This world is too cruel to those who love. Comforting rationalizations, thick and sweet, like a dense syrup poured down Kohaku’s throat. It’s Other. It’s himself. It’s so hardwired that his entire body convulses, wracked with the emotion radiating from that place Kohaku can’t find. It makes him want to throw up.
It’s no real comfort.
Love.
The word just makes the absence feel deeper. Kohaku can reach out and feel the connection to his Idolon, but it does not answer. This rejection, hanging tantalizingly just in arm’s reach, is somehow worse than the agonizing years of separation.
Reaching up, Kohaku runs a hand through his hair. It’s soaked, greasy-wet. “You alright? You really don’t look well,” Red’s voice interrupts his wallowing.
“I’m fine. I told you, it’s just a flu or something,” Kohaku growls back. Stay useful. Stay valuable. Lifting his head, Kohaku sees Okabe carrying a cheap plastic urn, plain white.
“It’s full of ashes, there was a note with his name on it,” the rotund boy reports. “I suppose they doled out the rite on their own.”
“Hm,” eyes turning down at the floor, Kohaku stares into the slats between the wooden boards. In the periphery of his vision, he sees a headlight draw itself across the front windows of the house.
Red draws her weapon, holding it angled downward, in two hands. “Looks like we have company.”
Overturning the bottle of oil, Momofuku lets the grease soak into the cloth over her hand. Flipping the container back onto the shaky, scavenged metal shelving beside her, she runs the treatment up and down her bokken. Her other hand grasps the hilt of [Kagutsuchi Masamune], the blessed wood stinging her skin and leaving a red, cracked rash. Every twinge of pain is a reminder of her fight.
Do you think this is some kind of torture? That you’re going to drive me out with some dry skin?
The work has nothing to do with Momo’s burden. This blade is hers’, and so she is responsible for its care.
Seated on a metal folding chair on the catwalk above the Fujiwara Senki’s warehouse, Momo takes a deep breath. The nutty scent of the tung oil fumes around her. As she drags it into her lungs, she feels its natural power reinforcing [Wood] and protecting it from the crackling heat of the [Fire] ever at her heels.
“Hey, Momo,” Dawn’s voice punches through the sukeban’s meditative weapon maintenance. The computer specialist is leaning back in her chair, one ear of her headphones pulled aside as she looks up at Momo, face upsidedown. “I just got a hit. Somebody’s there. At the ID house.”
The [Fire] crackles, rising higher.
Yes. Yes. Avenge!
Swallowing, Momo heaves in a shakier breath and lays her blessed wooden blade on the table. She grabs [Tsuzumi Masamune] in its place, and rests the ordinary bokken on her shoulder. “Fumi-chan! Get the bike ready, we’re going right now!”
Their trap is sprung, and Momo knows she was right to trust the others with this mission. Without Dawn’s expertise, she’d be searching all over the city for that freak and whatever group he conned into covering his ass.
You know his name. His family. If you wanted it badly enough, you wouldn’t need anyone else.
Not deigning to respond, Momofuku seizes the railing and leaps down to the concrete floor of the warehouse. Her oni-reinforced bones creak, but hold, as she flexes her knees easily with the landing. Red hair flutters in the air flow of Fumiko’s motorcycle exhaust as she pulls up alongside Momo and clicks the remote for the garage door. “You sure just the two of us will be enough? We’ve got the second bike.”
“I don’t want those suit goons knowing Dawn’s face,” Momo reasons, swinging one leg over to mount the bike behind Fumiko.
“And what, our faces are chopped liver?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah.”
Belladonna has taken great pains to remain off the radar of the corrupt bastards her hacks bring down a peg. Momo wraps her arms around Fumiko’s waist, lying [Tsuzumi Masamune] across it. “Let’s go! We’re wasting time.”
The bug hunt begins.
“Fukuzawa!” a voice outside shouts, amplified and projected towards the building. “Get your ass out here!”
Resting his hands on his knees, Kohaku pushes himself out of the sofa. The spot he leaves behind looks embarrassingly soaked. “We need to get you on an IV with fluids when we get back,” he hears Red say from behind him, as he trudges towards the door. There’s… a hint of real caring in her voice. It’s bittersweet. Hard to trust.
Throwing the door open, too worn down physically and mentally to bother stopping it from slamming the wall, Kohaku walks down the stairs into the beam of a motorcycle headlight. Obscured by the play of light and darkness, two silhouettes stand on either side of the vehicle. The fluttering skirt, whipped by night winds, leaves to question to the identity of the first. Momofuku Chikata, a bokken resting on one shoulder and a small megaphone in her other hand.
“Momofuu-ki,” the name slides out of Kohaku’s mouth like a garden slug. “I wondered when we would end up like this.”
‘I’m sure you knew it was coming, asshole,” tossing the megaphone into a pouch, hanging from the side of their ride like a saddlebag, Momofuu-ki steps forward into the light. Her silhouette becomes clearer, even as the details of her features are obscured further in shadow. Kohaku has to squint against the harsh contrast. Her footsteps stop, when the sound of a gun cocking can be heard over Kohaku’s shoulder.
The second figure in the dark raises some kind of weapon and points it back at Red. “Gun down. Unless you want things to escalate, cause I guarantee you can’t keep up, lady,” the motorcyclist warns, her voice deep but feminine.
“You are threatening a federal agent,” Red warns. “Drop the weapon.”
Raising one hand, Kohaku motions for her to stop. “They’ll bring out Idolons. If they’re just talking right now, let them talk.” He can’t see her, but when the motorcycle girl lowers her weapon, he assumes Red has done the same.
“There’s a blood debt owed,” shadowed face no doubt warped into a snarl, the Fujiwara leader stares Kohaku down. “That girl you stabbed, she’s my sister. I should rip your damn arms off.” Her hand tightens around the grip of her weapon, and Kohaku can hear the wood creaking. Momofuu-ki’s voice trembles, panting, her breath steaming in the night air.
There’s a heavy silence. Kohaku stares at her with drooping eyes, hand flexing and clenching in search of a weapon he doesn’t have. So why don’t you? He wonders it, but doesn’t speak the words aloud.
She fights for love. That can be used against her. Just dig a finger into the right spot and pull. A plan unfurls in Kohaku’s mind, the blueprints to convince the girl that they have a Sword of Damacles hanging over those she cares about. It doesn’t need to be true, only believable.
He pushes the thought aside, spits into the overrun flowerbed beside the walkway, and licks his teeth. “Where do we go from here?”
“We fight,” Momofuu-ki lowers the bokken and takes it in both hands. “You and me. I win, you stop running around like a coward. Throw yourself on the Council’s mercy. It’s more than you deserve.” She lowers her head, like a bull preparing to charge.
“And if I win?”
“You won’t…” she snarls. “But if you did, then…”
Even in a hypothetical, she can’t bring herself to offer what she means to. What she should, for the ‘wager’ to mean anything. Leave him alone and forget what happened. It’s not something that can be done. Kohaku knows full well.
“If I win, we stay out of each others’ way,” Kohaku finishes for her. “Is that fine?”
“… Fine.”
“Let’s take this onto the street.”
Outside the blinding glare of the motorcycle headlights, Kohaku and Momofuu-ki move into the open. Behind them, their witnesses stand in tense silence. Red and the rider. …Where did Okabe go?
The sukeban is wearing a face mask. She’s been wearing it for a while now, even when they last met during the Fujiwara operation, but it’s new. Not that this is the time to be asking about fashion choices.
“I don’t have a weapon,” Kohaku points out, but the moment he speaks the words there’s a clatter at his feet. He looks down, and sees the prayer staff of Okabe’s Idolon, the tengu Kokancho. Rings and charms hang from the circle at its peak. Kohaku looks around, but he can’t see where it came from.
“Problem solved. Pick it up.”
Kneeling down, he examines the staff. He’s never used one in a fight before, and it’s not weighted very well. Not from what he can tell.
“Come on,” the girl practically growls, like a feral beast. “I’m not going to wait forever!” Her feet widen into a ready stance. Kohaku takes the staff and stands. No sooner is he on his feet, than there is an audible pop in the air and she’s right in his face. “ORA!” hard wood cracks against the side of Kohaku’s skull, sending him spinning. A second blow follows, striking him across the ribs. The weapon rebounds off of his flesh like rubber, and it doesn’t hurt as much as it should.
Sweeping the base of the staff to strike her feet, Kohaku fails to connect, but earns himself enough space to take a proper stance. He flips the staff around, so he can use the lighter, more aerodynamic end to block. There’s no chance he keeps up with her using the ringed end as a bludgeon.
There’s barely a chance to keep up with her now. Air pops in Kohaku’s ear as Momofuku appears to his side, already mid-swing. A power inherited from the Idea World. This time her weapon cracks across his skull. The blow stalls the moment it hits. Kohaku should be seeing stars, but he’s not. Using the strength in his back and shoulders, Kohaku shoves the bokken away with a headbutt and reaches up to grab it.
“What the hell are you made of?!” the sukeban leader tenses her arms and swings the blade aside to ear it away from him. Kohaku’s grip is not wrenched free, but the force yanks him off of his feet and sends him sprawling on the ground.
She’s one to talk. What kind of strength is that?
Before Kohaku can get up again, she’s on top of him, knee drilling down against his guts with her full weight behind it. He raises the staff against her chest to hold her back, but she does the same with her bokken- presses it length-wise across his neck. Struggling to wheeze a breath in through the blocked airway, Kohaku’s mind retreats into the hindquarters of his brain, replaced with the instincts of a beast.
He is a hunter denied his fang. But the monkey has been given a tool. Letting one side of the staff fall deliberately, Kohaku digs its end into the ground for leverage. Momofuku’s weight had been pressing down, and now it shifts, sliding to the side. Using the other end, Kohaku rolls her off of him, in the same movement as he swings his feet and tumbles into a kneeling position.
Now she’s on the ground too. Driven by predatory instinct, Kohaku jumps on top pf her, grabbing her by the shoulders to press down. The point of a bokken jabs into his belly where his liver should be. Her nails dig into his arm, drawing blood as their sharp points sink deep. And the girl’s eyes look up at him with wild hatred.
With the same inhuman strength as before, the hand digging into his elbow jerks his limb to the side, causing Kohaku to fall. Momofuku drops her bokken, and soon they’re a tumbling mass of limbs on the pavement. Gone are stances and strategy and higher thought. Two apes, scratching each other in the dirt. The cold, wriggling voice fades away, pushed back by the boiling ape blood, and Kohaku feels like himself for the first time in days. His mouth splits into a wild grin.
A shoulder check from Momofuku knocks Kohaku away. She changes her mind at the last second and reaches out to grab him, before he can crawl away. Those nails curl into his mouth like fishhooks, snaring him by the jaw. Kohaku bites down, crunching into her skin, pressing against fingerbones that are tougher than they have any right to be. Her blood tastes hot in his mouth, thick like a boar’s. As it dribbles down his throat, Kohaku feels a surge of strength.
With one hand, Kohaku pushes Momofuku’s free arm away. With the other, he slowly pries her claws out of his mouth. Pressing his foot against her chest, he kicks, rolling to his feet with the momentum.
The two sides, covered in scrapes and fresh bruises, scramble upright. Then, the sound of heavy metal and hydraulics landing on the road pulls their attention. Up the street, by the next house over, the mechanical dragon Brute Cannon has manifested and taken aim. Beneath it, the red-haired motorcyclist holds a weapon in one hand, the other outstretched and pointing.
“Last chance! Drop that spell!”
While Momo scraps with the bastard who stabbed Madoka, Fumiko keeps an eye on his buddies. Really, Fumiko is sure that if the bitch with the gun tried anything, [Simply Red] would be on it in a nanosecond. But keeping her paintball gun trained on the federal agent, who seems to think it could be a real gun, is very satisfying.
But the other guy?
Fumiko doesn’t know the fat fuck’s name, but he’s watching the fight with a very cocky looking smirk. Like he knows something she doesn’t. And- did he just fucking wink at her?
Keeping her paintball gun trained on the two of them, Fumiko turns here eyes to scan the houses’ night silhouettes for something she missed. She’s careful not to turn her head too much, in case they see by her outline she’s not still looking at them.
Now, Fumiko hasn’t been paying much attention to the fight. So where did the Fukuzawa brat get that staff? Sure as shit wasn’t carrying one before.
There. Movement.
Fumiko glares through the darkness. The corner of a house, two lots down. Something peering out at them, at the fighting.
Raising her weapon, Fumiko calls out to the agent and the fatass, “Stay where you are. You might not be able to see it, but my [Brute Cannon] is locked in and can manifest at any time. Got it?”
“I’m well aware,” the agent’s arms are folded. That ridiculous headset she’s got on… can she see out of phase Avatar Idolons? Eyes narrowed, Fumiko keeps the weapon trained on the two of them as she steps onto the sidewalk, until she needs to turn and watch where she’s going. Breaking into a light jog, she rushes for that mystery person’s hidey-hole.
Skidding around the corner, Fumiko stands face to face with a bird-person, the eyes on their ugly, wrinkly bald head closed- until they flutter upon, and it takes a step back in shock. “Arah!” the creature caws in surprise.
“Yeah, I got you,” though her voice is confident, Fumiko takes a wary step back. She recognizes this thing. It’s the fat guy’s Idolon, from that operation to purify the water. Even if it looks like pathetic trash, it’s still an Idolon, and she’s a human. Idea Space warps behind her as Brute Cannon’s phased-out form moves to guard her if necessary.
“What are you doing back here?”
The creature is kneeling in the unkempt grass, posed as if focusing or praying. It raises its chubby wing-arms, as if the paintball gun in her hands can actually hurt it. “D-don’t shoot!”
What a fucking dweeb. “Answer the question then, you oversized chicken nugget.”
Should’ve known trying to be helpful would just screw everything up.
Staring down the woman, Okabe holds Kokancho’s wings up plaintively. He can see through the Idolon’s keen eyes that the weapon she’s got is anything but a real gun. Just a little paintball thing. He’s not even sure a real gun would do anything to him.
It’s the outline of the giant fuckoff mecha behind her that he’d really rather not deal with.
Knelt in the crevice between a yard fence and the side of a house, Okabe has been quietly praying, channeling his aegis wards to help protect Kohaku. With how Kohaku’s insides glow in the Idea World, it wasn’t too hard to hide their light against his skin. Not wanting to admit it, he gawps at the woman.
“I’m losing my patience. Count of three before I start blasting. Three…”
The feathers on Kokancho’s wings and chest puff up as Okabe goes into a panic. “Wait! I… it was a- I’m casting a protective spell,” he blurts out.
There’s a clicking of a tongue. “Still so nervous. Simply couldn’t hack it,” the grass crunches, as Kokancho in Okabe’s body walks into the scene. The red-haired woman twists to point her paintball gun at him instead, but he calmly walks to Okabe’s side. Under one arm, he carries the plain white plastic urn containing Tako’s ashes. In the other, he dangles a long, metal pipe. “Suppose you could look the other way, and just trust me that it’s for the best?”
“To hell I will,” raising the sights of the weapon into her line of sight, the woman fires a paintball straight at Okabe’s head. Kokancho moves Okabe’s arm with deft coordination, striking the sphere of paint with his staff. Most of it splatters against the metal, while a few specks stain the boy’s large gut and the side of his face.
Two more paintballs loose, and Kokancho slides one of Okabe’s feet back, taking a more careful stance as he strikes them out of the air. When the woman pulls the trigger a fourth time, the machine in her hands makes a click- and then a squelch. The paintball jams in the barrel, and paint from the clot leaks out the end. “Keep the spell active,” Kokancho orders Okabe.
Baring her teeth, the woman raises her hand. “Brute Cannon!” In a moment, the silhouette behind her sprouts mechanical parts, stomping onto the pavement and cracking the sidewalk with its weight. “Last chance! Drop that spell!” she commands, lowering her free hand to point straight at Okabe- still kneeling there in Kokancho’s body.
“Uh,” he jerks his head, looking to his ‘human’.
Of course, the ‘human’ goes and puts Okabe’s body in the way of the Idolon’s weapons. “Ah ah ah. Only if you’re willing to blow a human being to bits. And I don’t think you are. Besides,” he holds up the urn. “Even if you don’t care for me. The ashes of the man who died fighting by your side… are you really going to scatter them with gunfire?”
“God, you people really are rats,” the woman spits on the ground.
“They usually add to that appellation ‘with wings,’ but I catch your meaning,” Kokancho sounds as playfully amused as ever, even staring down the gun barrels of this mecha-dragon. “And you’re right. I am a filthy rotten cheater… but where’s the fun in watching a one-sided fight?”
“Hey!” the gang leader walks into view behind her subordinate now, next to the Brute Cannon. Momofuku, her eyes glaring from between a cap and a mask that conceal most of her face. “What’s going on over here?”
“This guy’s using his Idolon to cheat, protecting Fukuzawa somehow,” the red-head reports.
“Tch,” one side of the sukeban’s face twitches, evidence of a sneer. “Should have known you pieces of shit wouldn’t play fair! That’s why my attacks aren’t hitting like they should!” Raising her bokken, she calls out, “[Simply Red]!”
A towering red oni in a school uniform flashes into existence beside her, winding up a massive club in Okabe’s direction. He panics, waving Kokancho’s wings in front of him. “No no no, no!“
Sweltering rage bloats, barely contained behind her grit teeth.
What did I tell you? You’ll never get a fair fight out of this duplicitous worm. You need to tear them all apart before they try something else!
[Aramasa] gnashes her teeth in turn, from behind the latticed cage of Momofuku’s meridians.
“Okabe,” the sound of Fukuzawa’s voice grates on her ears. He’s speaking calmly, but she can hear the heavy breathing behind it. Looking aside, Momo sees him walking over, this wide, stupid grin on his face as he exhales puffs of steam into the air. His hair is still plastered to his forehead, like he just crawled out of a pool. But it’s all sweat.
Disgusting.
“I didn’t ask you to cheat,” like he’s the good guy in all of this, Fukuzawa chastises his minion. “Drop it and stay out of this.” Taking the staff, Fukuzawa tosses it at his gang member’s feet. “And thanks for the staff, but it’s not my style. Too slow.”
Of course, when you get caught, throw someone else under the bus!
But the fat thug shrugs his shoulders, wearing a big dumb grin that reminds Momo aggravatingly of Shujinko, if he was a hideous blob. “If you say so, boss…” he chuckles to himself when he picks up the staff, giving it a deft twirl as if to flaunt the easy movement in his boss’ face.
Fukuzawa doesn’t notice.
He’s staring at her. “Yeah, whatever, the fight’s still on. I could have whooped your ass handicap or no handicap,” Momo spits venomously, walking back into the street. She’s got little more than a bit of road rash and a bleeding finger where the fucker bit her. She snarls at the thought, resenting that she can’t pay him back in kind without her getting the upper hand.
Do it. If he wants to fight like animals in the mud, show him who’s the real beast here.
They square up again. Fukuzawa takes a boxing stance, while Momofuku readies her bokken. He must really be huffing his own hot air if he thinks he can take her unarmed.
Momo controls her breathing, cycling her internal alchemy. She watches the ID leader gasping and heaving out fuming clouds. She felt it when they were entangled in their grapple, his own internal energy is a fucking mess. It’s like he’s drowning in [Water], and now [Fire] is struggling underneath and boiling it up through his throat. Momo is reminded of [Aramasa]’s influence, trying to consume her in the flames of rage. Is a Yokai eating him up from the inside, too?
Tch. Don’t concern yourself with worms like this.
Worms… So there is more than one presence in his body.
There’s something else. Something about the look on Fukuzawa’s face makes her skin crawl in a different way. The way the skin folds wrong around his skull when he grins, how his brow doesn’t wrinkle right. It’s just… just wrong.
No time to analyze this shit right now.
Subtly shifting her foot as she finishes a cycle to maintain control, Momo poises herself. “ORA!” with a shout, she launches forward with breakneck speed. [Tsuzumi Masamune] whistles through the air the moment she appears at his flank. Fukuzawa’s body goes limp, his damp flesh sagging like a wet noodle as he bends under the whistling impact. Both of his hands shoot up and snatch the blade of the bokken, then he twists in an attempt to wrench it out of her hands.
Momo’s grip remains firm, and his back is left exposed. She steps forward and drives a knee into his tailbone. The boy jerks back and slams his head into hers’, and Momo feels the horns under her cap scrape against the back of his skull.
Pff. The idiot thinks he can wrestle an oni? Even a whelp like you can handle his ilk.
Gritting her teeth, Momo shuts out [Aramasa]’s trash talk and prepares to headbutt him back. “ORA-” suddenly, he goes slack again. Fukuzawa releases the [Tsuzumi Masamune], and Momo stumbles back from the force of wrestling against his attempts to take control of the weapon. After dropping into a crouch, Fukuzawa launches himself backwards, driving his skull into the bottom of her jaw. Mouth open in the midst of her battle cry, her sharp fangs clatter shut around her tongue, slicing off the tip in a stinging, bloody mess.
Fukuzawa spins around and resumes a boxing stance, shifting seamlessly between the wriggling fuckward worm-style into normal human combat. Two jabs strike Momo. First she shifts to block a stomach shot with her elbow, and then the second fist-
Oh you motherfucker!
“WATCH IT, PERV!” she shouts, shielding the sensitive mound his fist just pummeled with her tricep.
The boy doesn’t answer. He looks positively feral, the flesh beneath his eyesockets glowing through the bone. With one hand, Momo catches his following swing and twists his wrist. It bends too far for any normal human, like he’s double jointed, but she can still catch him wincing satisfyingly as his skin stretches and threatens to tear. “ORA!” she roars, slamming the pommel of her bokken into his eye. Fukuzawa’s head jerks back from the impact, his expression blank with shock.
When she winds up for a second blow, Momo’s wrist is caught in his free hand. They stand, locked together at one another’s wrists, reeling from a sliced tongue and a freshly bruising eye. Blood pools in Momo’s mouth, a taste that feels tantalizing. The muscles of their arms tense and struggle as each pushes the other back, twists, tries to get the upper hand. Their shoes scrape against the pavement underneath them, leaving marks where the rubber is torn off the soles.
How is he giving you a problem? Are you that much of a weakling?
It’s true. Fukuzawa is stronger than any human should be. Momo’s taken down grown men, before this oni blood awakened.
Their bodies locked together, she feels the pulse of his internal energies through his wrist. The way his body is fighting itself is eerily similar to her own, but it’s all wrong. Like a writhing storm of chaos, a war with no sides. [Water] chokes [Fire], [Fire] ignites… [Oil], which boils [Water]. [Oil]? The whole mess glistens in the sickly glow she can see under his skin, and it feels like he’s giving her an allergic reaction where their alchemies meet. Skin breaking out in itchy hives where his nails dig into her flesh.
[Water]. [Fire]. [Oil]. [Glow]. [Keratin].
It’s all wrong. A tangled, alien mess. Like he was born with the wrong elements in his body, in the wrong places. His body shouldn’t even be able to hold together with barely a solid for foundation! Was he always like this, or is the possession changing him? Will this happen to me?
No. This wretch shouldn’t be alive.
Fukuzawa flags first. His arms begin to shake, straining under the continuous pressure. For all the explosive power in this unnatural body of his, his chaotic mess cannot match proper alchemy. Face set in a grim staredown, Momo maintains her internal engine, the cultivation of her body’s alchemy pumping fresh energy into her veins with each passing cycle.
She feels like she could go forever.
Yanking her arms, Momo pulls Fukuzawa forward in a sudden shift of momentum. His weight threatens to topple over her, but Momo has no intention of being there. She twists his arms across one another and drops, wrenching free of his grip a the same time she releases hers’.
His own weight and momentum turned against him, the freak tumbles forward, slamming his face and shoulder into the pavement, while Momo drops to the ground and rolls, springing back to her feet. Before he can regain his stance, she slams a foot into the flat of his back, between his shoulders, shoving him harder into he road. Momo’s body tenses, nostrils flaring like a hooved beast preparing to stomp its foe into paste on the ground.
Teeth in a snarl of her own, she places a foot on his neck, pressing just enough to let him know she could crush his bones. “I’ve got you. You bastard.”
Kill him! Put him down!
Madoka’s face flashes across Momo’s eyes as she stares into Fukuzawa’s twisted face.
What he did to her.
What she would tell Momo to do…
His hands clutch at the boot threatening his windpipe, quivering.
“You’re pathetic,” Momo spits on the ground, splattering his cheek where the road rash has scraped it raw during their grapple. “I see why you needed to get the drop on her. She’d wipe the floor with you in a fair fight.”
The indignant rage in his eyes feels gratifying. His arms tense and he pushes harder, but it only serves to slam her foot back down when his surge of anger gasses out.
“Listen,” she growls down at him. “There’s some weird fucking shit going on with you. You’re infected, or possessed, or…” though she hates to admit it, she has to stop to catch her breath too. “You lost. You’re gonna throw yourself on the floor and grovel for the council’s mercy.” They’d probably forgive him and try to figure out what’s wrong with him. That’s just who they are. She can feel [Aramasa] sneer at the idea.
Fukuzawa gasps for air and tries to wheeze something out. Only when he drops his hands to his side does Momo raise her boot- just enough to let him speak.
“Can’t go to Higa. Court order. Where?”
What a mess. “Ugh. I don’t know, figure it out with them!” resting a hand in her bangs, Momo thinks about it, never taking her eyes off of her quarry. “…Gimme your number. I’ll make Zennami call you.”
Reluctantly, Momo steps back to let Fukuzawa get up. That woman agent of whatever the hell she’s an agent of, she walks over to help him up. Okabe and his bird-thing are already leaning on the car.
Taking a notepad from the woman, Fukuzawa jots down a number and folds the paper, walking just close enough to reach out and give Momo the slip. “Get lost,” she snarls. He stares her down a few seconds more, beaten, cowed, but still simmering with resentment. She can tell. She’s dealt with enough scumbag gang leaders to know that look.
But he and his goons climb into their car in the end, and they fuck off. Momo breathes a sigh of relief.
A hand rests on her shoulder. “Feel any better?” Fumiko asks.
“Yes. No… maybe. A little.”
“Let’s go home.”
“Yeah.”
Aching and stinging, Kohaku’s body slumps into the back seat of Red’s car. His insides knot and simmer, like a ball of boiling snakes. Okabe hefts himself into the passenger’s seat, adjusting it back to make room. Kohaku shuts his eyes and leans back.
“Not exactly a high grade showing, kid,” Red’s voice rankles Kohaku’s nerves. “Why didn’t you use your Idolon on her? This some kind of grandstanding thing?”
“Would you shut up?” he growls.
“Put your seatbelt on.”
Grinding his teeth, he begrudgingly buckles himself in. “You saw Brute Cannon, right? If I escalated, you’d probably get pasted in the crossfire.” It’s all an excuse. Kohaku reached out for Tai, but his Idolon is still giving him the cold shoulder. Would it have come out if she went for the killing blow?
The doubt breeds a small pocket of resentment, crawling down deep to fester.
“So,” Kohaku didn’t notice Kokancho slide into the back seat next to him. Okabe’s Idolon speaks as uncertainly as ever, fiddling with the staff laid across its lap. “Are we really going to… meet the Council?”
“I dunno. We could lay a trap for them,” Kohaku muses, half-seriously.
“We still have a common enemy. There would be no point to taking them out right now,” Red chides.
“Besides,” Okabe smirks back at him. Kohaku can’t see the smirk, but he can feel it. When did he get so smug? “It will be Zennami-san calling you, will it not? You could never fool her.”
It’s true. Kohaku sighs. “Maybe I just won’t go. The agents can go. You’re in charge anyways,” he tells Red. Not showing up will piss off Momofuuki again, but as long as he seems like a beast chained and leashed, maybe that’ll satisfy her.
“I’ll consult Blue about it,” she reasons. “For now, establishing co-operation would be to our advantage.”
For now. The car turns in the empty street and rumbles back towards the city.