~ Episode Sixteen ~

A Source for Oblivion:

Eri, and the Old Oak Tree

“Izuma-san! There she is!” Mackenzie pointed Shinji’s attention to a red Ford Explorer SUV pulling up alongside the entrance to Grover’s Mill. Eri hopped out of the rear passenger seat before the vehicle came to a complete stop.

“…‘Izuma-san’?” Shinji asked, confused.

“You keep calling me by my last name. I’ve decided to cater to your formalities.” Mackenzie winked at him. “Mr. Izuma.”

“Is that racist?” Evan asked.

Shinji shrugged at him, bewildered.

“Hey!” shouted someone from the SUV’s driver’s side. It was Eri’s brother, Noah. Beside him sat a woman with blonde curls and half-moon glasses, smiling Eri’s way as he spoke. “Be safe, okay?”

Eri turned, hesitating up the hill towards the Star Warriors. “Noah! We’re just going to the coffee shop to work on a project…”

He stared at her, silent. “I’ll pick you up at nine.”

“That’s only like an hour! I dunno if we’ll get done by—”

“Nine,” Noah stated. “It’s a school night. I love you.”

“Bye, Eri!” sang the woman in the passenger seat. “So nice to meet you!”

Eri’s prickliness softened with a big farewell wave. “Bye, Heather! Thanks again!”

The passenger-side window rolled up with a light hum. The Explorer rolled away on slow wheels.

“God, I hate that guy,” murmured Mackenzie. She flicked away her smoky cigarette butt, watching the SUV vanish around Colborne Street as Eri trudged up the hill to meet them.

Shinji grunted, unable to recall a current opinion of Noah Seruma. All he knew was that the siblings were close at one point in time. Eri looked up to her big brother a lot—or, at least, used to.

“Sorry I’m late, you guys. I had to make dinner—” Eri unzipped her windbreaker, heading towards the trio. A black-and-purple Game Boy fanny pack was hidden within the folds of her coat, hugging her narrow hips. “—and somehow got stuck washing dishes, too.”

“Forget it, Seruma.” Shinji waved it off. “You’re here now, and that’s what’s important.”

Evan cooed at the sight of her fanny pack. “Whoa, you got a Game Boy, too?”

“Yeah,” said Eri in passing. “But mostly I just use the adapter to play on my TV.”

His jaw dropped. “The—the Super Game Boy?! That thing’s so cool! Aw, man! Luck-eee!”

“Eddi-chan loves video games.” Mackenzie lit a fresh cigarette and blew a plume of smoke skyward. “She’s obsessed.”

“Wh-a-a-at?” Evan threw glances between them both. “No way. Girls don’t play video games! For real?”

“Uh-huh. Hey, what’s that one you’re playing now?”

“Final Fantasy II.” Eri gave a shy smile. “A, um, an RPG on Super Nintendo.”

Evan grinned at her. “Yo, we got so much to talk about! You play Pokémon? Smash Bros.?”

“Guys. We only have an hour.” Shinji called everyone’s attention back to the task at hand: Monster patrolling. He nodded to Eri’s fanny pack. “You have all your Mon-Orbs in there, right?”

She nodded.

“Good. We’re going into the arboretum.”

~

The group wandered the woods in a tight unit led by Shinji studying the neon innards of the Monster Dowser. Its manipulation of multicolored light trails provided the group a dim guide along the way.

Eri, who brought up the rear of the group, tried to make out any recognizable areas where the battle with Kyupo could have taken place—the last time she was here in the arboretum. But nothing familiar came into view. She clutched tight around the Fire Pendant against her throat and tried to focus on the sound of the group’s footsteps through snow, mud, and snapping twigs as a distraction.

“What are we looking for?” Evan asked, flanking Shinji’s right.

“I’ll tell you when I know,” Shinji replied, his gaze lost within the Dowser’s cloudy orb. Mackenzie stretched up on her tippy toes to steal a curious peek.

She made a sour look. “How can you tell anything in that mess?”

“Practice,” Shinji said.

“And a lot of Advil,” Evan added. “Y’know, for the headaches.”

Headaches. Eri let her eyes trail along the gnarled trees that leered at every turn. She listened to the light shake of Heather’s Midol in her jacket pocket. A headache was trying to brew that moment, actually. She did her best to ignore it—and the fact that the waning moonlight gave off a semblance of maliciousness in the trees they passed by. Any one of them could be a Monster in disguise, waiting to jump out in their path.

The Monster Dowser turned a reddish glow that ringed the top of Shinji’s head like a crimson halo. It then turned lavender, and then blue, and finally a shade of green.

“I think we’re getting somewhere here.” For the first time since the group entered the arboretum, he lifted his head to see where they were. He peered off to the right when they came to a fork in the path. “Over there.”

The Star Warriors travelled for a little longer until a clearing with a ravine came into view. Eri lifted her heel as a patch of soft dirt underfoot started to sink into the rush of water.

“Okay, looks like this is the spot,” Shinji announced. “Thompson, give us some light. Call out your element, like I told you about before.”

Mackenzie removed the golden-winged pendant from around her neck. “Element Air--R E L E A S E ! ! ”

A gust of air formed around her as the Air Pendant glowed to life. The gold chain vanished, leaving only the wing-shaped pendant spinning in Mackenzie’s grasp. It emitted an invisible force that pushed away her hands. The pendant remained on the air, weightless.

The healing gusts that consumed Mackenzie erupted into a feather-scored squall that did not tangle in her hair or clothes. The pendant extended into a vertical rod double her height with angelic wings that flexed into place on either end. With the wings came a shining ruby orb that churned into existence upon the head of the staff.

“Agghh! What the hell?!—” The sight of the new elemental weapon startled Mackenzie so much that it dropped out of her hands and the bottom-end of the rod plummeted directly onto the exposed sock of a thrift store Mary Jane shoe. Macks hopped around, screeching at the top of her lungs. “—OWWIE, OWWIE, OWWWW!”

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“The Air Staff,” Shinji said, approvingly.

“Oh, wow! So pretty…” Eri lingered a gaze upon the staff’s long, semi-sentient, angel wings. The ruby crystal nestled between them gleamed in the darkness.

Mackenzie frowned at the thing, leaning against it for support as she eased off her injured foot until the sting went away. “It’s so big. Can I get this thing in a size small, maybe?”

Eri giggled. “No way, Macks! It’s the perfect size for you! Think you can use that thing to fly with?”

“Huh?” Mackenzie blinked and exchanged a glance between Eri and her Air Staff. “What, like in Cardcaptor Sakura?”

“Ha, ha! Yeah! Exactly.”

She blanched at the thought. “How bold of you to assume my Air Staff can fly.”

“It has wings, right? Why wouldn’t it fly?”

“And you say I watch too much anime.”

Evan adjusted his glasses. “Kinda looks like the Staff of Hermes or something, you know?”

“The whatnow?”

“You know, the symbol in medical offices,” he elaborated. “That wand with the wings and snakes, and stuff?”

“Thompson. Cast some light for us, please,” Shinji asked her again.

“Oh, right. Sorry. Um … how do I do that?”

“Easy. Hold your Air Staff upright and produce the image in your mind. When you’ve got a clear picture going, summon a Sub Elemental Crash. Remember when I made those stairs for you out of that tree you were stuck up?”

Mackenzie frowned. “How could I forget?”

“Just like that. Just focus,” Shinji told her. “Remember, you are one with your element. You are Air. You can do this, Thompson. Know that the light exists, and it will.”

“Right!” Mackenzie straightened, held her Air Staff with its ruby crystal pointing skyward. She dropped her eyelids and let out a deep exhale. "Air! Come forth and crack the sky wide open to help show us the way!"

The Staff’s wings stretched out wide—and then bent inward like elbows, before letting off a couple heavy-thumping flaps that scored the air with loose feathers. Its ruby crystal glimmered to life.

Mackenzie called out at the top of her lungs, "I beg of you--Heavenward Sight!!”

A sudden pillar of light shot skyward, blinding the three other Star Warriors in a brilliant flash that manifested in the form of a Sub Elemental Crash.

Eri lowered her arm, blinking away the speckles that danced before her. The hard radiance softened enough to invoke an illusion that she and her friends all stood in the gleam of a winter afternoon in the woods.

Mackenzie’s eyes fluttered open. The sudden change in incandescence startled her with a shrill yelp. She caught her breath, realizing what had happened: she’d done this, herself. With her very own magic. “Oh, wow…”

“You’re telling me!” Evan winced, mashing fists into his eyes, bobbling his glasses frames against both sets of knuckles. “ ‘Kenzie, next time you want it that bright, warn us, okay, man?”

“How was I supposed to know it was gonna be so bright?!” she demanded. “Gimme a break, Evan, it was my first try!”

“And you did great,” said Shinji, squinting around like he had just woken up from a nap. All he needed now was to be wrapped in a fuzzy blanket, his feet clad in slippers. “Perfect. Thank you, Thompson.”

“Hey, you guys! Look!” Eri pointed their attention to the far end of the clearing. A few yards ahead stood another grassy patch between a pair of maple trees whose branches formed an archway before it.

There, in the middle of the little enclosure, stood the grandmother of all oak trees. It was the largest one Eri had ever seen, and stood under the soft glow of Mackenzie’s magical light with branches extended skyward to greet the kids. It was an old tree, the wrinkled bark rife with clefts and knob-like bubbles. Just how old—Eri doubted anyone could guess.

“So pretty…” She marveled at the sight. The other Star Warriors soldiered on past her, towards it. “Hey, this place looks familiar. I think I’ve been here before…”

“When?” Shinji asked. “During the fight with Kyupo, you mean?”

Evan made a sour sound under his breath.

Eri nodded. “Mm. I think so, yeah.”

Mackenzie froze in mid-stride. “You guys hear that?”

“Hear what?” Shinji asked. He and Evan slowed.

“I don’t hear anything,” said Eri.

“Shh!” Mackenzie waggled a hand at her with a firm scholarly gaze upturned. The corners of her eyes crinkled, twitched with concentration. “What the heck…?”

“Oh, wow. Yo! What is that?” Evan asked.

“You hear it too, right?”

“Yeah, now I do.”

“Guys, quiet.” Shinji gazed upon the woods around them, ears flexing. His fingertips grazed the Earth Pendant around his throat. “…Where’s that coming from?”

Eri watched her friends, confused and curious by what they were hearing. A low creak from somewhere among the treetops startled her alert.

Mackenzie noted her gasp of surprise. “Now you hear it, Eddi-chan?”

A stiff groan eased within the trees that lined where they all stood. The sound was barely anything, almost impossible to pick out. Eri doubted they would have notice the sound at all if it wasn’t for Mackenzie’s sensitive hearing.

“What is that?” Shinji asked.

“Whatever it is, I don’t like that sound, man.” Evan yanked the Water Pendant from around his neck, snapping the chain. “I’m getting bad vibes right to the bone.”

“Look!” Eri took a few large steps forward. Above her, the branches of every single tree she could spot had started to bend towards the clearing that housed the old oak tree.

“Wha-a-a-at...?” Evan murmured. “They’re not going to break off, doing that?”

Shinji shivered from the sight. “It’s almost like they’re…”

“Spaghetti!”

“No. It’s like they’re—they’re pointing! Like, the trees want us to go over there…”

“Did I do that with the magic?” Mackenzie asked.

“I don’t think so,” Shinji said, still frowning at Evan. He raised the Monster Dowser eye-level with both hands and gazed within strands of neon light. “Whatever caused this … it wasn’t because of us.”

“What then?” Eri reached up to brush her fingertips along a stray branch of the nearest tree. It quivered to the touch.

“Magnetism?” Shinji offered.

Mackenzie scoffed. “Wood can’t be magnetized.”

“Well it’s a gravitational pull of some kind.”

Evan laughed. “Guys, you’re forgetting we’re carrying magical weapons, on our way to fight magical creatures from another world, right? Can we just pin this down to the obvious?”

“Drugs?” Mackenzie asked.

Eri let her eyes wander back towards the old oak tree waiting for she and her friends with eternal patience. Maybe it was because of the glow from Mackenzie’s invocation. Maybe it was a trick of the eyes caused by her internal aches and pains. But she could have sworn the tree was sparkling.

“It seems to be coming from that other clearing,” Shinji confirmed. He dropped to one knee to stuff the Monster Dowser away in his backpack. “Seruma, Evan—get your weapons ready.”

“Right!”

“You’re the boss-man, brother.”

They both called upon their Elements—forming the Fire Hammer and Water Trident, respectively. Shinji followed suit, calling forth the Earth Sword. Together, the Star Warriors hedged careful steps towards the old oak tree. The creaks and groans of stiffened branches sounded louder the closer they got.

And the closer the Star Warriors got, the worse Eri’s body throbbed. She braced a palm against her forehead, as if doing so would help keep her brain from vibrating straight out of her skull. Her fingers then dove for the Midol in her coat pocket.

A thunderous clap tore through the air.

A tiny green orb suddenly appeared between her friends and the oak tree. The dot flattened against the craggy bark—and then stretched a thin, horizontal line along the trunk. A hissing icy wind spewed from it, a breached airlock.

“What the hell is that?!” Mackenzie cried.

The gash then widened vertically, forming an oval-shaped mouth over the face of the oak tree. This caused the wind to become a screaming hurricane that blew out at the Star Warriors, engulfing them whole where they stood.

“Oh, damn!” Evan dug his heels into the dirt. “Incoming! Time to rock and roll, you guys!!”

“Get ready!” Shinji shouted.

“Get ready for what?” shrieked Mackenzie. “What’s happening?!”

Eri uttered a grunt of pain, her menstrual cramps radiating against her pelvis like a brand. She winced back tears against the scream of the wind. She raised the Fire Hammer like a horizontal wind visor.

“…Can’t … I can’t…”

It took almost all of the strength in the world to keep a fresh migraine from bringing Eri to her knees. The bottle of Midol dropped from her outstretched fingers and rolled in an arc between her converse sneakers.

She gazed upon the open Void. There appeared a white outline within the depths of the unholy vortex. It was the shape of a four-legged beast.

And it was coming straight for her.