Chapter 4: Chapter Four

(4)

She cursed herself as her feet pounded down the sidewalk. She was still running, but out of frustration with herself rather than the sudden strike of fear that had driven her from the soda shop. It wasn’t all that long ago that she had mentally described herself as behaving like an out of place adult, and then she had such an outburst. She had said she didn’t want to be thought of as insane, and then conducted herself like a madwoman. The only thing she was seeming to be a master of was hypocrisy.

But what was that woman doing there? Well, a girl, really, and she hadn’t looked that much older when--

Her brain recoiled and fuzzed out from the reference, forcing her to squeeze her eyes shut to clear it.

It wasn’t hard to put together that she had been Reina Tamashini, the absent member of the group, though she had no name to put to the face before--

Agh, there it went again! The vision of where she was running disappeared as she clenched her face and closed her eyes again. It wasn’t painful when it happened, but it was a quick way to dizziness and disorientation if she dwelt too long in that pre-awakening fog. It was like trying to remember nothing, not like the concept of nothing or literally recalling nothing, but actually envisioning the essence of nothing. Except it wasn’t nothing, stuff was there, but it wasn’t. Just noise, except there was no noise. Fittingly, there was no suitable way to describe the nothing that both was and was not all that had come before.

Reina only seemed to recognize her as Nariko, though. On the other hand, that probably shouldn’t be remotely surprising, assuming the raven-haired upperclassman had any recollection of that past in the first place. It clearly hadn’t happened in the here and now, and she hadn’t looked like this then. Oh, gosh, even thinking of it glancingly produced a buzz across her brain.

She let herself slow to a stop just before an intersection, watched some cars pass as she caught her breath, then headed forward again when the walk light came on. A playground was nearby, empty currently, and she walked over to a swing. She gave it a couple pushes, then caught it and sat down. She expected to be more scrunched in it, but Nariko’s body was small enough that wasn’t the case. Instead, she gave a few kicks, just letting herself sway and think about nothing for a few long moments. Not about her horrific display, not about what they might do with it, not with Reina’s arrival. Just nothing. It wasn’t working very well, honestly.

“Oh my, you look a little down, sweetie.” There had been that feeling of sudden appearance she had felt when Dakunaito first confronted her, but the voice was a woman’s. When she looked up, there were both a woman and a man in seemingly elaborate costumes, both of their faces covered with oval masks that concealed their features. Their clothes were nonsense, but could be said to resemble an ivory suit with blue lines on the man and some sort of festival dress in wine red on the woman. What really set her on edge were the number of daggers the man casually twiddled amid his fingers, and whenever the woman moved her hands, there seemed to be some kind of line between them.

“Oh, I doubt she recognizes you, darling,” the man said in a smooth, elitist accent.

The woman tilted her head toward him without either turning away from her. “Oh?” she asked, as if this were a line from a skit. “Whyever would that be, dear?”

“I heard,” he replied as he spun one blade around his index finger, “that a little black bird was going around saying she’d lost her memories!”

“How terrible,” the woman feigned, raising one hand up before where her mouth would be. “Losing one’s memory! How horribly lost and confusing that must be!”

“I also heard,” he added slyly, “that it means she can’t transform.”

“Tragic!” the woman exclaimed. “Whatever would the poor child do if some unscrupulous demon came along and took advantage of such an opportunity to put her out of her misery?”

“Oh darling,” he agreed, “perhaps we should find out?”

When she jumped to her feet in preparation to defend herself, however, the woman just laughed. “Oho, memories or no, she does seem to still possess a zeal about her, dear!”

“A word of advice, little girl,” the man told the brunette in reply to his darling’s remark. “We’re demons. As in, not one of your fleshy, weak humans. You may no longer know better, but believe me, you’ll be much better off if you don’t do something incredibly stupid like trying to resist.”

“We’re renowned for our magnanimity, you see, sweetie,” the woman provided. “When we see such uninformed behavior, we just can’t help ourselves but educate such a poor thing.”

“You two talk too much,” she finally replied, then brought her foot around and into the air, sending a cloud of sand into their faces. Despite said faces being masks, they flinched away, and she took the opportunity to turn and bolt.

She hardly broke free of the playground, however, before a half dozen figures appeared ahead of her, cutting her off. Their faces were covered with metal shells except for pale mouths with sharp teeth, and their bodies were covered in silver suits that glittered with every movement as if they were composed of innumerable small scales. Half held vicious-looking swords while the others held eldritch-looking pistols in a two-hand vice grip, and they moved back and forth among one another so that their nearly identical forms were hard to keep track of individually, especially with their jerky, twitchy movements.

“Oh, how terribly unfortunate,” the man bemoaned. “She did something stupid.”

“Trying to run, sweetie?” The woman held her hand before where her mouth would be again as she laughed. “Ohoho, you silly, silly little girl ...”

“No memories, remember,” she bit back at them in sarcasm. “How was I supposed to know you were going to bring along Michael Jackson’s backup rejects?”

“Oh, she’s quippy now,” the suited figure observed, his voice suggesting a bemusement that couldn’t show upon his mask. “What a pleasant change. Too bad it’s so little and late.”

“Get over here!” The woman threw her hand forward as a line of string zipped out from her palm, defying physics as its length spanned the distance. Before it could reach her, however, there was a blur of motion as a sword came down to cleave the twine, the blow apparently connecting all the way back to the woman and causing her to stagger. “What?!”

“Dakunaito!” The man pulled his blades up as he recognized the black figure that had imposed himself between the child and the woman’s attack. “What are you doing?!”

The man with the eyes of burning coal stood up straight from the strike. “Clowns and jesters are trying to steal away my prey. What do you think I’m doing? Better yet, what possessed you to be foolish enough to try?”

“Clowns and jesters?!” The suited man feigned aghast.

“Why, we never!!” The woman was similarly overdramatically struck.

“I will have you know, sir,” the man argued back, “that we are consummate performing artists!”

Dakunaito was already striding toward them, massive sword off to one side. “If you harm a hair on her head before I find my prey, you are dead.”

The man struck first, throwing his blades with a wave of his hand, but the figure in combat armor swept them away with a swipe, then broke out into a sprint to close the last distance, coming down in a cleave that the suited man barely stopped with more blades he seemed to pull from nowhere. As the clash began in earnest, the two different fighting styles became quickly apparent. Dakunaito clearly considered this man a much more meaningful opponent than he had the blonde girl before, and with good reason. While his strikes were precise and skillful, the suited man was moving in ways that seemed theatrical and unnecessary, but were actually carefully considered. He would bow instead of ducking to go under a high blow, one hand across his chest and the other across his back, legs twisted as if it was a dramatic stage bow, only to use the position to unwind like the snapping of a top the instant the blow passed, aiming to bring both hands full of blades across the knight’s chest in quick succession and forcing the dark man to either break away or block rather than follow up.

However, the woman seemed to believe this was not a particularly good match up for her partner, and clearly wanted to move to his assistance, but this would mean leaving the girl unguarded. She turned toward the silver humanoids and pointed to her. “If she tries to escape, kill her!” And that was all she said before jumping toward the men’s brawl to find an opening to assist the suited man.

That left said girl to turn toward the silver figures. She couldn’t refuse this opportunity. If numbers were any indication, and that the woman thought them normally insufficient without her supervision, they were likely much weaker than the two performers. Six versus one weren’t great odds, but they were better than eight versus one, and if she was going to spend all her time in these experiences critiquing the fighting of others, she should probably put her money where her mouth was.

They clearly took her moving into a combat-ready stance as an indication that she intended to try to escape. The first one came forward with a sword, but his form was far sloppier than the man clad in combat armor, and she easily stepped inside of it and slammed an uppercut into his exposed chin.

… It did not produce the impressive result she was hoping for. The silver figure hissed, but moved little, and merely stepped back and swung again. This time, she stepped to the outside and punched for his kidneys, but it was like impacting a heavy sandbag, and he moved even less.

In a moment of clarity, she scolded herself for being surprised. These weren’t humans, the suited man had said as much. She was trying to fight it like one, but clearly even an obvious mook like this wasn’t going to go down so easily. Even if their combat skills were rubbish, they were far too tough for an unarmed human without powers of her own.

She was the one who stepped back this time, to reassess her options. She needed a force multiplier. She needed a weapon of her own, but all of the weapons on the field were held by enemy forces. It wasn’t impossible. They had human forms and moved like humans, she just needed to stop relying on blows and use techniques that wouldn’t care how tough they were.

These creatures also seemed rather dull. The one swinging a sword at her seemed to pause after every strike as if bewildered that he had missed, and the others seemed content to stay back and keep up their nervous shifting until they had reason to engage. A lack of skill, intelligence and basic strategy left it obvious that brute force was all these things were good for. It was no wonder the woman was loathe to leave them without supervision.

The next he struck, she grabbed his wrist and stepped to the outside, twisting it as she threw him face-down to the ground by the arm. She planted her foot on where his shoulder would be and cranked hard on the hilt of the sword, forcing it to break free against his thumb. The next movement was burying it in the middle of his upper back. There was a sound like a banshee’s scream that didn’t come from his mouth and his body burned away in an instant of fire that left no ash.

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… Well, that had been easy. Too easy, and the weapon had shifted the moment it entered her control. The more ludicrous spikes withdrew to form a more proper concept of a sword, becoming thinner and more practical rather than imposing. However, soon after she struck, energy began pulsing down the length of the weapon like sparks, jumping out from odd parts of the blade. She had wanted a force multiplier, but that had operated like a hot knife and butter.

Whatever was afoot, she’d have to consider it later, as his death seemed to be the signal for the next one to attack. She rotated her center of gravity to what had been her back foot as she made it her front, and swept up to knock the incoming strike away. Her second swing took his arm off, and her third cut him in two above the pelvis. His body vanished the same way as the last.

This had brought her close to one of the gunners, and she moved in fast, stepping her leg in behind his as she threw her weight behind her shoulder into his chest. By some miracle, despite their durability, these guys were no heavier than they looked, and he toppled backwards. She followed, but only to drive her knee into his chest to hold him there as she reached in and twisted the gun in his grip. Slipping her finger in over his, she turned and shot another of the gunners that had tried to draw a bead on her, and finally brought the sword up into the downed gunner’s chin. She didn’t feel the fire that consumed the body, suggesting it didn’t behave like actual flame, but her knee came down and hit the concrete several inches down, drawing a grunt of pain out of her.

The moment the gun entered her hand, it followed much the same transformation as the sword, becoming smaller to fit her grip and become a more practical-looking weapon, though frankly, both still had a rather evil look to them. Still, their performance couldn’t be argued with, and if this was going to become a regular thing, she thought she’d rather like to keep them as she rose to standing again and rotated to fire two more shots of the energy the gun fired into the chest of the final sword mook.

The last gunner opened fire on her, but she ducked first down and to the left, then to the right, reacting to where he was aiming, an easy feat since he motioned with his entire body before firing. She took the opportunity of the lull after the two shots he fired to charge in and run the sword through his midsection. Again, the final of the half-dozen silver figures vanished in a flash of heatless flame.

Though she took a moment to catch her breath and recenter her focus out of the adrenaline rush of combat, she couldn’t help but admit that had been the easiest fight she had ever been in. Of course, the buzzing nothingness kept her from recalling any of them specifically, but she’d done weapon combat before, if only in sparring. Even rookies whose skills were equivalent to the silver figures never went down so effortlessly. Her body almost protested at the lack of solid impacts from the sword just slipping right through them. Were these demon weapons that ludicrously powerful? She had a hard time believing it, they certainly didn’t seem to be that way in the hands of those guys.

With her portion of the battle concluded, she turned her attention to what was no doubt the part with far more of both danger and relevance. If the far stronger commanders of this little attack didn’t get put down or driven off, it wouldn’t matter how poorly their grunts had done. Fortunately, though the suited man was easily the strongest and most skilled adversary she’d seen the armored man face, it wasn’t looking like he was really his equal. The man in the black armor was steadily wearing him down, and it seemed the time for any hope of an honest win for the self-proclaimed artist had long passed.

It didn’t seem like a straight win was ever what the man and woman had planned, however. The woman was slinking around behind the armored man, staying out of direct sight, and the sense of presence that the brunette associated with the demons had vanished from her. Somehow, she was suppressing herself, and was waiting for an ideal moment when Dakunaito was distracted and she could strike with her string, which she held tight like a garrote.

And then the woman saw it. The man in black jumped backward to avoid a wide sweep from the masked one. Back toward the woman. She raised her arms in preparation.

A flash of light as the girl raised the pistol and blasted her in the back disrupted her sneak attack, causing her to cry out in pain as she tumbled away from the impact.

Both men turned to look at the noise, the swordsman only for a moment as he confirmed what was happening behind him. The masked man took longer, his mistake.

“Darling!” he called for her, more out of shock than concern, but it was the opening the knight needed to thrust forward again, scoring a deep hit into his side. The masked man growled against the agony, but then vanished right off of the blade, only to reappear next to the woman. He crouched down next to her, as she still was half-laying on the ground, even as he clutched his own side as best he could.

“Fine,” he shouted in disgust and rage toward the black knight. “Keep your little sweetheart, Dakunaito! But don’t think you’ve heard the end of this!” And then the next moment, both were gone, just no longer there as if they never had been.

The swordsman said nothing, merely giving his blade a practiced flick and returning it to its sheath at his side. He then turned and stepped toward her.

For her part, she directed her attention down to the weapons, which she gave a little shake. “Soooo …” she drew the word out, unsure how to make idle conversation with someone who wanted her dead. “How do I turn off the sparks?”

“They are overloaded,” he replied in his inhuman bass. “Demon equipment functions very much like what you would use as a witch, channeling the magical energy within the user and giving it form. While the weapons have limited shapeshifting ability for resizing, the ones you are holding were meant to be disposable arms for foot soldiers with, by demon standards, very little power. They were never intended to handle the levels of energy a witch possesses. Ah, and there they go.”

As he said that, the weapons disappeared from her hands into countless motes of light as if disintegrating. “Aw man,” she bemoaned, “if this sort of thing was going to become a regular thing, I wanted to keep them. I guess I should just be glad they didn’t blow up or something.”

“You should not have attempted to aid me in the battle just now,” he scolded her. “Weapons or no, it was strategically foolish. Never forget that I am your enemy, you live only because you hold answers I need. If they had succeeded, at the very least, I would have been greatly weakened, and you would have odds that much better for your long-term survival.”

“You saved me when you jumped in and stopped that woman’s string,” she pointed out. “One good turn deserves another, and all that.”

“I didn’t save you,” he again corrected. “I need you in order to reach my prey, nothing more. They were willing to kill a lesser foe for sharing the same face. I did nothing more than protect my lure from vultures.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she replied, crossing her arms in refusal to hear his objections. “My life was saved in the process, and I owed you one. Think of it as keeping our balance even.”

“I dislike your balance,” was the growled response, and he disliked it enough to drop it for a more relevant topic. “You never fought in the manner you did today,” he questioned. “Where did you learn that combat style?”

She frowned, already knowing he didn’t like this answer, but unable to give any other. “I can’t say.”

Indeed, his eyes flashed a more violent red as he growled his annoyance at her. “That again. Hmph.” He turned away from her and took several steps away. “Those fools created enough of a ruckus that the witches will be arriving soon. As much as I want more answers than these, their cowardice will force me to wait another day. Know this: I refuse to rescue you at every opportunity from your own careless ignorance. Get them to accompany you if you don’t desire today to repeat itself.” And with that, he, too, was simply gone, and she was alone in the playground once more.

And yet she only had a minute or two to reflect on his warning. “Riko!” It was Haru’s voice, and as she looked up, she saw her in that stupid miniskirt again. The other girls were also no longer in their school uniforms, though their new attire varied from one another. Natsumi and Ran both wore leotards at the core of their outfits, but despite her rather impractically high heels, the redhead’s outfit looked more like that of a gymnast in a long jacket with a flared tail. On the other hand, Ran’s tights, fluff-trimmed half-jacket and airy skirt called more to mind the image of a figure skater.

And then there was Reina. If ornamentation were indicative of rank, there was no question who was in charge. A brooch held shut the neck of her cut-out top and a black choker closed around her throat with a gemstone latch. Dangling star earrings hung from her lobes. Her dark but ornate knee-high boots were perfectly polished and sported gemmed buckles. A decorative belt hung in the opposite direction of her high-waisted, asymmetrical short skirt. Decorative bracers on either forearm matched the design of her boots, and an actual, honest-to-goodness tiara crowned her forehead. No mere list of everything on her could have made it sound less gaudy, but somehow it went together well enough to hit more of a punk war princess vibe than overdecorated trailer trash. Perhaps it was the use of darker colors so that only the accents of the assorted decorations really stuck out.It was far too ostentatious and Hot Topic for the brunette’s tastes, but certainly something she could see an uptight, straight-laced over-performer imagining as her inner self, which she guessed was the idea.

Miss Sada was nowhere to be seen.

Any further observation was cut short by Haru impacting her midsection and taking her clean off her feet. The other girls looked worried a moment before the impact as they realized what was about to happen, but then her world went spinning. By the time she landed, she was ten feet from where she started and gasping to regain the wind that had been knocked out of her.

“Haru!” Homura called too late. “You’re transformed!”

The blonde head with the overly wide pigtails raised up, wide-eyed at the error. “Oh no, I wasn’t thinking! Are you okay, Riko?!”

She coughed enough to get some air moving, but reached down and eased the girl away from her. “I’ll … I’ll be fine,” she managed to get out. “Just so long as you don’t do that again.”

“I’m so sorry!” The girl seemed nearly in tears. “I was just so worried about you!”

“Sarasa detected demon signatures around your location,” Reina provided, her tone cool and professional.

“There were,” she confirmed, “but I only dealt with half a dozen grunts. Silver guys with weapons, but pretty stupid.”

“Dretches,” the upperclassman confirmed, “but Sarasa said she detected multiple major demons.”

“Three of them.” She nodded in agreement with that. “But they were fighting each other and then took off on their own.”

“Did you recognize any of them?” A moment later, the raven-haired girl seemed to realize her question. “Er, well, I mean …”

She didn’t dwell on it, merely shaking her head. “Only Dakunaito. The other two were a couple that called themselves performing artists. A man in a suit and a woman in a dress, both wearing masks.”

That put a definite frown on the older girl’s face. “Then especially without the ability to use your spells, you are fortunate that they only fought among themselves. Those two may act the part of fools, but they are extremely cunning.” She crossed her arms, however, and fell silent for a moment to regather her thoughts for changing the subject. “Speaking of the matter of your memories, the others filled me in on what you told them before you left, and we discussed what to do about it. Regardless of the cause, there is really only one path forward.”

Tamashini’s boots clicked against the concrete as she moved over to the girl still held down by Haru. She tried her best to put on a gentle face, but clearly wasn’t very practiced at it, as she offered her hand. “Come back to the fountain shop. However long it takes, we’ll explain everything that we can.”

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