"Loren, Harmony, Malory, can I talk to you three for a second? Just a quick word, don't worry," Steve said as Loren was packing his lunch containers into his backpack and was about to go buy some softdrinks. As the one who didn't mind walking out into the hot sun, it had worked out that he would go off to buy everyone some cold drinks, which he didn't mind as long as he was already getting something for himself. Harmony got a cold water, because she was getting her sugar intake cut whether she liked it or not.

It was only the fact that he wasn't the only one called which kept him from panicking and worrying that he'd done something wrong, or start worrying about he was going to lose his job, or—

All right, maybe he panicked a little.

"Norm and I have decided that we'll be taking the Halili house," Steve explained once the three of them had gathered round him. "Mrs. Halili was willing to lower her price a little more, so we're taking her offer. That means we need a plan to exorcise the house. Loren I want you to confirm whether or not your theory about the tsukubo—… tsukuno—… the figurines is correct. We'll be going tomorrow to conduct one last inspection of the house, you can check then."

Loren swallowed, feeling the horrid weigh of expectation and responsibility falling onto his shoulders.

"Steve, we might need the family to be present to negotiate with if Loren's idea is correct," Harmony said, and Loren was just glad the older man's gaze was off him. "I've been looking things about this too since, since it's usually me doing research for this, and from what I've found, any sort of peaceful resolution will need their participation. For all intents and purposes, these are their dolls. The implied relationship is there. Without them, there might not be any room for a resolution that's not violent."

Steve nodded. "I know, but we'll need to confirm it one way or the other first. I'll speak to Mrs. Halili about needing them to be around to help with any exorcism. Loren, just do what you can tomorrow. Poke the dolls, check them for magic… if you need me to check for spirit presence, tell me. That will probably confirm it one way or the other, but I want to see what you can do."

That gave Loren pause. "Is this a test?"

"Consider it a diagnostic one instead of a pass-or-fail one," Steve said bluntly. "I want to see what more you can come up with on your own."

Pursing his lips, Loren nodded.

"Good. Malory, Harmony I want you two to check for other indicators, you know the ones. Just because this might be what Loren suggests doesn't mean we should rely on it being right. I'd rather know sooner than later if this is a demon."

"Understood."

"Got it boss!"

Steve nodded. "You and Malory can take the rest of your break, I want to have a word with Harmony in private."

The dismissal was clear, leaving Loren no choice but to go back to where everyone else was, even as he looked back to watch the two worriedly. Fortunately, they didn't seem to take long, Steve's piece seeming to be brief. However, whatever it was left Harmony looking both chastened and frowning in frustration, though she quickly wiped the look on her face when she saw him looking at her.

Loren was thoughtful as he jogged towards the nearest local neighborhood store, the kind run by some little old lady operating out of a little shed built into the fence of their property and mostly stocked softdrinks and chips, which he'd made an arrangement with to put a few bottles of soda in the freezer at this time so they'd be at their coldest. A part of him wondered if he needed to ask Harmony about it…

…

Well, if she wanted him to know, she'd tell him herself. Besides, from context, it was probably Steve telling her to stop covering for Loren so much. While he was glad that she was watching out for him, Steve clearly felt that either she was overdoing it or that he needed to see what Loren was capable of without Harmony holding his hand. Or why not both? Certainly it probably looked like Loren wasn't pulling his weight if Harmony stepped in every time Steve asked him to do something…

Huh… was he dangerously close to losing his job?

…

Well… fuck.

----------------------------------------

Loren had expected the Halili house to be emptier, since they were apparently planning to move out, but to his surprise the interior seemed to be pretty much the same. There didn't seem to be anything packed away, at least not that he noticed. Then he remembered they were selling the house because they planned to move to Lasablica. That probably limited the number of things they were packing, since they couldn't very well take all the furniture with them aboard. Shipping and airfreight were expensive, and while the rare few Flame and—ugh—Water mages capable of teleporting might have been able to cross the oceans—it was probably easier for the (ugh) latter than the former—they were probably still far too expensive for a middle-class family to hire to just move their stuff.

Actually, he wasn't even sure if a Flame mage could teleport across the ocean. Would they travel along the shipping lanes or the underwater cables? Traditionally teleporting worked by going along the roadways, which were often much hotter than the surrounding land, but there weren't any roadways in the oceans…

And he was getting distracted. Shaking his head, he peered at the acrylic display shelves, subtly letting his Flame spread out from him. There was no tell-tale feeling of Keres about, for which he was glad. It took something truly messed up for the walls of a house to stop keeping the things out, or so he'd heard. Sexual assault, familial murder, practically living in utter filth… basically things that destroyed the perception of the house as a home and a safe place. There was none of that here, for all that someone had died on the premises and the family intended to soon move out.

Perhaps they intended to sell the furniture or gift it to relatives. Or maybe it was part of the sale price? One house, fully furnished. While the house was a little worn, it wasn't the complete rebuild their worksite was.

To his Flame, there wasn't anything unusual about the little plastic figures of imaginary war machines. They didn't have the elevated temperature of a Flame-imbued object or have the mild chill of something passively drawing in heat and magic. Indeed, his Flame passed right through them, though that didn't mean anything. A purely spiritual existence made of ambient magic that had spontaneously formed due to the convergent pressures of several passive psychoreactions—ugh, after all these years, why did that phrase from science class manage to come to mind so easily?—would be Flame-inert. Easily detectable to a Spiritualist, and even a Thaumaturgist to a degree, since despite its coloring venestuff was also Flame-inert. So… did that mean Steve already knew the answer to this question, and was just waiting to see Loren could get there?

In that case… what did he really need to do here? What was the end goal? Confirm that the figures were in fact tsukumogami? Ostensibly, but pointless. Either they were and Steve already knew better than he did, or they weren't and Steve already knew better than he did. Steve had already said he would check them out later if Loren asked, which means he could, and could have done so at any time.

However… if Steve thought that Loren wasn't doing enough, or wanted to see what he could do without Harmony covering for him…

Ugh. This was about 'initiative', wasn't it? Loren hated it when his dad talked about this sort of stuff, always saying how employers loved employees with initiative, that someone like that was what companies were looking for, etcetera…

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

He'd always argued that teachers didn't care about stuff like that. They wanted the exact answers to exact questions, and any 'initiative' was a waste of time and effort because they afforded no additional benefit. He'd seen classmates—and Harmony—taking the initiative over the years with fancy and impressive presentations, and it never got them anything. He hadn't done any of that and still passed, and with about the same grades.

But… this wasn't passing or failing. This was about, here and now, impressing his employer with the tangible benefit of continued employment (probably) on the line…

Or it really was a diagnostic and a pass or fail, in which case… well, as they say, the prize for work well done is more work.

For a second, he glanced towards where Malory was looking around the room, her eyeless face pausing to stare at seemingly featureless objects, meaning she was probably looking inside them. He'd never really seen her doing anything that could be construed as her taking the initiative. Though to be fair, he didn't really have the time to watch her that closely, since he had his own work to do…

Huh. Actually, the only thing he'd done that could be counted as 'initiative' was in making the heating vessel on his first day. That had probably been a mistake. It had given Steve the incorrect notion he had initiative and had predisposed the man to expect more of it.

Curse you, past-Loren, making Loren's work harder!

…

Well, one way or another, he had to work. If nothing else, he had to earn this month's paycheck. To that end, he'd gone on a research binge the night before, looking for stories or articles of what things needed to be done when spiritually imbued items transferred ownership.

The first page of the search had been unfortunately been full of all sorts of Lasablican news reports and things from people saying that owning spiritually imbued items was a form of slavery and that all spiritually imbued items should be free and granted citizenship and be allowed to vote—all their usual self-righteous obnoxiousness. He had to figure out the search keywords to filter those out before he finally found something useful.

So, with last night's research in mind, he turned away from the shelves and walked towards Danny, Mrs. Halili's son. Or to be more specific, her younger son.

He was younger than Loren, which mean he could be anywhere from high school to college. He'd never been good at being able tell someone's relative age, and always defaulted to 'younger, older or same' when it came to humans. Oni he just assumed were all older than him by default unless explicitly told otherwise, and payatin… well, there he'd at least learned to look at the hair and clothing style. Which decade their hairstyle was from was a relative indicator of their age, as were their clothes. Mom hair on mom clothes meant they were probably his mom's age or older.

"Excuse me," Loren said, trying to sound polite and just barely not customer service. The customer service voice always annoyed him. It always sounded so insincere and vapid. He settled for 'genuinely interested'. "Danny, right? Do you know what's going to happen to all the figures once the house is sold? Steve didn't say, and I was wondering… well, if any of them would be available?"

Danny had looked politely attentive when Loren had started speaking, but slumped at his question. For a moment, Loren was afraid that he'd hit some kind of nerve. "Do you want one? You can take as many as you want. We were going to bring them with us, but with dad…." He looked around in what he thought was a surreptitious manner. Was he looking out for his mother or the ghost of his father? "With dad gone, mom says there's no reason to go through all the trouble. Mom really isn't a fan of plamo, she just humored dad because he loved it so much. We… I've tried to find collectors who might be interested in keeping some, but none of the models are particularly rare or sought after, and the ones that are…" He shrugged.

Loren tilted his head thoughtfully. "Would you keep them all, if you could?" he asked.

"Yeah, that was originally the plan," Danny said, looking wistful. "The house big brother built had a special room for them all ready, and we and dad were going to build a table where we'd mock up battlefields, re-enact a few scenes from the series… Dad was planning to expand his ScryVids channel, try to be a full-time content creator as his retirement hobby. He was supposed to pack up the first box of them and send them abroad last year, but… "

Danny trailed off, and Loren nodded in understanding, looking around at the shelves to give him a moment. "I'm sorry to hear that," Loren said. "Can't you still go through with that plan? I mean, from the sound of it, you and your brother both seem to like plamo yourselves, since your brother had a room built for it and everything."

That got a sigh. "We do, but… my brother has a job, and my mother wants me to apply to a Lasablican company. We wouldn't have time, and… well, over the years dad spent a lot of money on plamo." He looked around wryly. "With all the models he bought, we could each have gone to college twice, and still have money for a new car. Dad never put his hobby over us, but…" he shrugged, gesturing around the room.

Loren could understand his point. Assuming that adjusted for inflation that all the old kits had originally been worth the same as all the newer ones, each model was at minimum worth a thousand and five hundred rings. From the prices he'd look up, the larger ones could cost up seven to twenty times that… and given the number of years the late Mr. Halili had been doing this, the number of models simply in the display shelf that they were standing next to, the additional expenses like the aforementioned shelves and painting supplies… yes, that was a lot of money…

"Did you ever put together one of these yourself?" he asked.

Danny blinked at the non-sequitur. "Oh, yeah. I made a lot of these. Dad put all the ones that my brother and I put together on display here. Even mom was a couple, although that was a long time ago."

"Do you have a favorite?"

He hesitated, glancing towards his mother. She and Steve were still talking, and from the sound of it were still in the small talk phase. "Follow me," he said.

Loren was led to a seemingly unremarkable stretch of shelves, where Danny pointed at a little model. There was nothing to really make it stand out from the ones next to it beyond a few near-invisible scratches on the plastic. It was a robot he recognized, even if he didn't know the details of it. It was from the Tsubasa series, and was the one that had a lot of guns, kept running out of ammo and was piloted by a circus clown.

He didn't remember the robot in the show having a number 14 on its shoulder, but it seemed a hand-painted addition. Some of the other models on the display shelf had the same, with the numbers going higher.

"Your work too?" Loren ventured, pointing at another model—this one of a generic canon fodder robot, the kind the protagonists plow through a dozen of every fight scene—that also had a number on its shoulder.

Danny nodded. "Yeah. I started numbering mine so that I'd remember which ones I made. My brother just wrote in marker on their foot."

"Why is this one your favorite?"

"It's the first one I picked out myself," Danny said wistfully. "I thought the unit was really cool in the show, and wanted one. Before that, I'd been putting together whatever models my dad had lying around." He chuckled. "After I put it together, I actually played with it, you know? Treated like an action figure because I didn't know any better, had it shooting up all the other models I'd put together before… the joints actually loosened from me playing with it so much." He chuckled. "Dad had to open up the arms and replace the caps in the sockets, because I couldn't open them myself. Eventually I realized that these weren't as rugged as normal action figures, and learned to be more careful with them."

"You really loved this one, huh?" Loren said.

"Yeah…"

"Planning to bring it with you? I mean, it's just one, you'd be able to pack it up easily."

That prompted a blink, and a look of realization came over Danny's face. "You know… why not? And actually…" He looked around, and Loren saw him glancing at the other figures with serial numbers painted on them.

Loren nodded, then turned to look directly at number 14. Coincidentally, the little figure's head was oriented towards him—

He paused, checking that thought over again. He peered at the model again, which neither of them had actually touched, taking in the way it was posed. Its legs were spread wide, it's arms supporting double rotating machine guns the way its animated counterpart often did. So logically, it should have had its head facing straight ahead at some unseen target… and not up and slightly to the side to face Loren.

For a moment, he stared at it, a wild idea coming to him.

…

Ah, screw.

Stepping back, he looked over the shelves, trying to spot any other models whose heads were facing him and had no logical reason to given the pose they were in. It occurred to him to wonder if tsukumogami actually needed to turn its head to 'see' him. After all, it's not like the little figures had functional eyes…

But then, people assumed human-shaped things moved in human ways.

"So, besides Number 14 and his fellow numbered," Loren said clearly, making Danny turn to look at him questioningly, "who else among you don't want to just get left behind and abandoned? Raise your hands if you don't. Come on, this is your only chance. If you don't move, you'll have no one but yourself to blame when you get thrown away and your plastic is melted down and Changed to be recycled."

Danny was looking at him like he was crazy, and his words had drawn the attention of everyone else in the house.

He ignored them, just looking at the figures…

Slowly, one of the models' arms moved, its molded hands moving above its head.

Loren made a show of nodding as Danny took a surprised step back. "And we have a brave volunteer who doesn't want to die. Anyone else going to join them?"