Within the droves of snow-fitted trees, the crinkling of their leaves was muffled by the snow covering them as the many branches swayed from the mild breeze brushing against them. Other than the rustling leaves, the lone sound of muffled and slightly crunchy footsteps echoed through the forests. Solus, the causer of the footsteps, marched through the forest with his eyes firmly shut while his kitsune ears flicked and flopped rhythmically to seek out any useful noises. Solus callously cast his gaze between and through the tree line, his mood teetering on full frustration despite his desire to remain stoic before his spirit companions.

(Solus is a light tan-skinned teenaged humanoid with two white alkorian horns on his forehead and six fluffy kitsune tails with different coloured ends [three of them are blond with a dark royal blue, a rouge red and a pale green tail ends respectively, and three of them are lime-coloured with a purple/magenta, a black and a white tail ends respectively]; he has curly knee-low mostly blond hair with some lime parts and a single night sky ahoge, and blond with lime iris')

(Solus is wearing a pale blue headless full-body suit with a snake scale texture, a knee-low pale yellow trench coat with a wide hood detailed with two large eye-shaped ovals and two holes (the hood looks like the head of a king cobra and has semi-transparent fake eyes), black fur trousers, and pale yellow metal hiking boots)

"Do any of you lot sense the yokai?" Solus asked, his voice stern and firm. He forced his frost-covered eyes open with a minor amount of effort, flinging small shards of ice off his eyes. In response to his question, a torrent of varying voices sang in Solus' mind while all telling him the same sentiment of not sensing where the yokai was. Solus sighed and crossed his arms in agitation, causing what little restraint he had to melt away into a scowl.

"And the lack of footprints doesn't help... what could be causing its spirit chakra to be obscured?" Solus uttered in an aggressive grumble. As he continued to ponder in annoyance, a faint tug pulled at the forefront of Solus' soul, making all his anger dissipate in one go at the spirit's attempts to steal his attention. He mildly grinned at the boldness of the spirit; who Solus could only think to be one individual.

"Something on your mind, Sweetie?" Solus asked with no hint of anger or aggression. Almost in time with his question, a mass of golden mana(wavey energy) phased out of Solus with a playful twirl; it bundled together before taking on the shape of a human toddler with kitsune ear-shaped horns on the top sides of her head and two kitsune tails floating behind her. The young spirit fiddled with her non-existent clothes, ensuring she was presentable, before fist-pumping to psych herself up. She raised a hand to her chest and began speaking her mind.

"Couldn't I just use my play cube to locate the yoku?" the young spirit asked with a flowery pleasant high-pitched voice. Solus amusedly smirked as he peered around, checking for any potential observers.

"Sylvie sweetie, I appreciate the offer but...". Solus couldn't bring himself to even finish his sentence at watching the form of his daughter begin to wobble as she pitifully whimpered and yelped like a fox, striking directly at Solus' soul and making him stagger back in pain from Sylvie's intoxicatingly cute sulking.

"As much as it sounds like a great solution, Master Solus is simply concerned about what effect an abnormal yokai would have given what a normal one did to the GoG cube," Sosuzoku, a reserved regal tone to his voice, stated telepathically to the duo. The spirit's voice cut through Sylvie's whimpering like a sharp knife, filling her with anxious embarrassment as she turned mildly red in the face.

"Oh yeah... grandaunt Nola and Lola weren't happy when we had to reset the cube," Sylvie muttered meekly, giggling slightly as the image of her aunts learning the news their a thousand plus records had to be wiped and almost passing out flashed in her mind. Whilst Sylvie's mana form dispersed and phased back into Solus, a mild yawn reverberated through Solus with every fibre of his being rattling like an active microwave oven from the yawning's tremors.

"Mmn... it was anything but pleasant having to reset that thing," Nebula grumbled aggressively, directing her telepathic voice to Solus for only him to hear. Solus rolled his eye playfully, his mood greatly heightened at the sound of Nebula's voice.

"Nice of you to join us, Nebi," Solus remarked with a cheek to his tone, eliciting a pouty huff from Nebula. Her pouting only served to elevate Solus' mood to even greater heights as he slowly gathered light mana(white wavey energy) into his palm and aimed it towards a particular tree, one which stood out like a sore thumb given the viscous, flame-looking leaves adorning its branches.

"How'd we miss that?" a snarky girly spirit voice asked as black spirally spirit energy seeped from Solus and merged with his light mana, causing the mana's texture to take on a fuzzy appearance. Solus nodded, finding the situation mildly humours with how obvious the yokai was, yet none of them could detect it despite looking right at it.

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"Eusia! It was my turn to help Solus make spirit mana!" a frantic and childish young male-sounding voice exclaimed. The spirit's outburst unleashed a torrent of shock through the sea of spirits residing within Solus, sending the spirits into a shock-filled frenzy as they couldn't believe Oshi was capable of raising their voice. Solus smirked at hearing the tsunami of voices before closing his eyes and firing off the spirit mana sphere in the direction of the yokai-infused tree.

The spirit mana blast careened directly for the tree at blinding speed. The yokai did not even bother to dodge not until it was too late as the spirit mana pierced right through its wooden trunk and shredded it to splinters. A distorted howl erupted from the tree, its leaves exploding into violent flame-spewing fountains as they merged into a vaguely animal-ish form. However, the yokai's howling abruptly ceased and its gathering body bursted into embers which fizzled out before even reaching the ground.  The now leafless tree turned a dark grey, its texture becoming flakey before it crumbled to a pile of ashy sawdust.

"Didn't even know what hit em," Tsarina said condescendingly from within Solus' mind. Solus scoffed in amusement before lowering his hand and strolling over to the pile of ash.

"It only means the Yokai was sure in its concealment abilities," Vaillan stated calmly, her voice astute and firm.

"Seems like it-.". Solus held his tongue, abruptly halting himself mid-step and slowly brought his foot to the ground as something about the ash caught his eye. From the subsiding and smouldering ash, a rainbow-coloured crystalline ring, containing a crossed-out eye, rested on top of the ash pile and glistened under the moon's light.

"What's that, Pa?" Sylvie asked perplexedly while her spirit form scratched the back of her head. As she floated towards the ash pile, Solus pinched his thumb and index fingers together, and Sylvie instantly stopped in the air from the teal glow encasing her and dragging her away from the ash.

"Hold your tails, we better not mess with something we can't sense," Solus stated before adding, "And we should inform Kara or Kusana.".

"Thou doesn't need to bother for One is already here," Kara stated emotionlessly, catching Sylvie's attention and forcing her head to turn in the direction of the passionless voice. Kara gracefully descended from above, her sprawling fuzzy wings obscuring the moon and casting a shadow over Solus as he crossed his arms with a slightly ticked-off expression.

(Kara Raiden is an extremely short kid-looking humanoid half-angel/half-mothion; she has deep Lavender eyes with a red open book-shaped right iris and two small deep lavender compound eyes under her human eyes, super pale skin, four large twenty feet long fuzzy lavender moth wings, has pale lavender fur[on her entire arms, her shoulder blades, hip section, and entirety of legs] and fuzzy black insect antennas)

(Kara is wearing black shark-themed metal bracelets and lavender-coloured sunglasses)

"So, you were tailing us... again?" Solus asked unamusedly, watching Kara as she landed beside him and casting a side eye to pass on his annoyance to her.

"It was merely a coincidence," Kara stated as she wrapped her fur wings around her body into a cloak.

"Hardly. I believe you and the word coincidence are antonyms, Little Miss Truth et Knowledge," Solus remarked while commenting on Kara's mastery of Vivo's wing cloak technique, leading Kara to boastfully ooze smugness like a fountain as her neutral expression melted away into a crooked grin at someone acknowledging her accomplishment.

"Indeed, for one....". Kara covered her mouth before sharply coughing to expel her surface-level pride, "It's not important, what we should be focusing on is this outerworldly object.". Solus raised an ear

"Are you saying you can't get a read on its information?" Nebula asked telepathically with a hint of concern to speedy speech. Kara nodded as she turned to Solus, her face displaying a serious scowl as her antennae wiggled furiously.

"As much as it annoys me to say, this object appears to come from The Realm Beyond making it immune or invisible to my heavenly qi," Kara mentioned while lightly grabbing one of her antennae and flicking it into the other one.

"Must be for you to refer to yourself by anything but one," Solus remarked cheekily, causing Kara's cheeks to turn mildly red. Kara swung her arms straight down in a pout, puffing up her cheeks as she clenched her fists in utter fury; her pouting only exploded as she watched Solus completely ignore her for something else.

"Sometimes I- ONE has to question if your family have any care for etiquette when talking to royal-". Solus abruptly wrapped his arms around Kara, making her slur the last word of her sentence, and Sylvie before springing backwards as the rainbow light of the crystalline object became too bright to ignore. Despite his effort, the light easily caught up to Solus, washing over everyone and enveloping them in seconds before instantly disappearing along with the individuals caught by it, leaving nothing but the ashy remains of the yokai behind.