Five kids. Two unconscious, though one was going to wake up on his own in a few seconds. The other was getting help.
That left two to deal with.
Cal knew what they were going to do at just about the same time they did.
The psychic mage might’ve been able to muddle that a little had he been awake.
The younger girl attacked first with a flying kick from the other room, going through the wall like paper. She wore a mix of colorful armor and spandex in red, white and yellow. Her helmet resembled a fearsome insectoid monster complete with snapping mandibles and quivering antennae. They weren’t for show. The mandibles could bite through iron like it was soft tofu, while the antennae transmitted vibrations in the air to the girl, acting like radar. The entire ensemble was completed by a long, blue scarf that fluttered artfully as the girl’s spiked boots aimed for his face.
Unfortunately for her, he was not where her eyes and radar sense said he was.
He was about a foot to the right.
The scarf made for a handy leash with which to whirl her around once before whipping her into the next room.
Her exit was as dynamic as her entrance.
The older girl hadn’t wasted the seconds.
Two portals opened on either side of Cal.
One red, one blue.
A pair of 12 foot tall oni emerged swinging tree-sized kanabo.
The iron-stubbed clubs boomed like thunder against his telekinetic shield.
He took a moment’s eternity to check in the small groups of his allies that had gone for the Imperial Palace rather than fight the monsters out in the city.
Despite his occasional small acts of help the results were mixed.
Independents had gone in solo, in temporary parties and dedicated ones.
As usual the stronger or higher level one was the greater the probability of success although good teamwork could let a team punch up.
They had failed to get past the monsters and sapients holding positions just behind the canal.
The JSDF had sent the only thing they could.
The elite special forces squad slipped past everything. Their only goal was to reach and secure the emperor.
He would have told them that it was too late if their comms weren’t being disrupted.
Instead, he put the thought into their heads.
They followed the voice in their heads that they thought was their instincts, heading to where he sent them rather than continue their mission.
Marloes and her random team were under pressure against the parasitic worms.
Farther out from the Imperial Palace grounds, the monsters and outworld invaders continued to push.
The kid in the giant robot did a smart thing.
Rather than fight with panicked people underfoot, he used his giant shield as a tray.
Terrified people clung to each other as he carried them on his shield and away from danger one giant step at a time.
The oni drew their massive weapons back for another strike.
Cal expanded a spiked ball of telekinetic force inside their skulls.
They roared in pain, dropping their weapons with a ground-shaking thud.
Blood gushed from their face holes, yet they didn’t die.
They were not entirely physical beings.
He sliced their legs off at the knee and arms at the shoulder before throwing them through the roof.
They’d land on monsters or outworld invaders, giving his allies an opening.
The loud whine of an engine announced the armored girl’s reappearance.
This time she rode a wickedly aggressive looking motorcycle in that same insect motif.
The thing sounded like a jet engine in the enclosed space.
She whipped around him in a circle with her arms posed in an ‘X’ pointed his way because apparently the motorcycle was somewhat alive and a little smarter than a horse.
Her arms grew bright.
He readied his shield.
She slashed her arms downward.
A bright yellow energy beam shaped like an ‘X’ cut furrows into the dark-stained floor only to dissipate against his shield.
The summoner stood with several portals of different shapes and sizes around her.
The other three were seconds from joining the fight.
It was time to flip the board, so to speak.
If he was the kids’ boss monster, then why not make them the boss monsters for others.
The fights needed to be fair for his allies to gain something out of it, but he wasn’t above tipping the scales a bit.
So, match ups made fights as the saying went.
He’d keep the psychic mage with him because the boy had grown strong enough in the two years to dominate anyone under Level 40 unless they had top tier will power or less likely, a Skill or spell to counter mental manipulation and control.
The floor swallowed the motorcycle riding girl. He made her a path straight down through the palace to the tunnels beneath where the tight quarters would hinder her mobility. Meanwhile the JSDF elite team had the cybernetic and biomechanical modifications to withstand her superior physicals. They were trained killers and had worked together for years.
As for the summoner girl?
He grabbed her in an invisible hand and carried her through one of holes her oni had made.
The portals vanished.
She’d need time and concentration to start the summoning process again.
He wasn’t above giving her a hard landing, rattling her head a bit.
The concussion would hamper her efforts.
She should’ve worn a helmet.
He plopped her near the mother worm.
A lone humanoid with a high level class would be too tempting a target.
Whatever alliance they had once had was in the wind.
He had been helping that along this whole time, planting seeds of doubt and greed in all of the sapient minds the five children had brought through the spire rising out of the fountain park close to the palace.
That should help Marloes’ team when it was time to send them against the mother worm.
A chaotic three way fight should help them, especially if they entered it after the other two were already locked in combat.
The kekkaishi boy managed to resist his telekinetic hand with a dark barrier that felt slick and wrong.
He shuddered and let go.
Instead, he placed a telekinetic shield around the boy.
The boy could stand inside his barrier as long as he wanted.
Two remained mobile and were headed his way.
Cal tried not to notice the invisible Kanji written in blood on the walls, floor and ceiling of the throne room. He wanted the jujutsushi to think the trap still remained unnoticed.
The class was shamanistic.
In the boy’s case, he focused on written curses utilized for a wide array of effects.
Perhaps it was just as well that he planned to let the jujutsushi pull him into the domain.
It should contain the radiation, although it could cut him off from the outside world, rendering him unable to help his allies.
Cal readied himself because the biggest threat was about to be unleashed and he needed to make sure the man wouldn’t irradiate several dozen kilometers in the heart of Tokyo.
----------------------------------------
Marloes leapt across barrier platforms over 30 meters off the ground. The others followed her lead.
They came to a stop. Each stood atop a small barrier platform.
Kekkaishi Endo had stated that he was incapable of maintaining a single larger platform for all of them like she had wanted.
The grounds of the Imperial Palace looked nothing like she remembered it from just yesterday. Less than a day in fact. Eight hours at most. She had gazed at it from atop a building a few kilometers away.
Night slowly gave way to day as the first inkling of the sun’s rays started to peak over the distant horizon.
The once grass-covered park grounds was now a barren wasteland of brown dirt and blackened char. Most of the lush trees were gone. Those that remained were dark and twisted, reminding her of skeletal hands rising out of their graves.
The pits caught her eyes. The shallow depressions were scattered everywhere she looked.
They seemed to be arranged in a purposeful pattern.
She wouldn’t have noticed from ground level.
Her ability to sense and detect things of a magical nature were limited. She had foregone those options to focus on direct combat abilities.
Stone tiles covered the bottom of the pits, while four small stone pillars loomed from the lip. The latter were arranged equidistant from each other and she’d bet her magical uniform skirt that they were aligned to the Cardinal directions.
She could make out intricate carvings in the stone and writings in dark brown ink. Some were in recognizable Kanji. The rest were in symbols she didn’t know.
The whole arrangement stank of ritual and an evil one at that.
She knew long-dried blood when she saw it.
It was caked in thick layers.
Whoever wrote them had gone over every line repeatedly.
“Miko-sama?” Marloes thanked fortune that a subject matter expert had randomly joined up. “Can you tell me anything about those things?”
“I- I’ll try…” Miko Hiromi replaced her torimono with another from her small bag of holding.
It wasn’t what Marloes expected.
The Den-den Daiko looked like a child’s toy compared to the ones she had seen others use. It was made more out of shiny red plastic than the traditional wood.
Regardless, the miko-sama closed her eyes, chanted softly and began to spin the rod in her hands, causing the small beads tied to the end of the two strings to strike the drum at the tip.
Yup, definitely sounded like plastic.
They didn’t have to wait long because the miko-sama cried out and nearly dropped her torimono. Yuta’s quick reflexes snatched it before it could fall to the ground.
“Their spirits— suffering… pain… no escape… forever…” Hiromi sobbed. Her words came out between deep, heaving gasps.
Marloes cursed herself.
She had forgotten that the miko-sama was also a girl no older than 12 or 13.
She was being just as bad as the JSDF and their policy or lack thereof in regards to endangering children, so long as they were powerful enough to be useful to the nation as a whole.
Yuta, of all people, glared at her.
“Yeah, maybe, we leave that stuff for the old people later and do what we came here for.” He pointed with his over-sized blade.
They caught sight of a fierce battle raging just on the other side of the canal. It was their target. All of them instinctively came to the same conclusion at the same time.
“Ewwww…” Dashing Bandit Celebration shivered with her whole body.
“Eh. One monster is the same as any other. Uglier things have met their end at the edge of my soul-cutter sword,” Yuta said. “Let’s help that summoner. She looks sort of familiar.”
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
Marloes held them back with a look.
Miko Hiromi needed a few moments to catch her breath and refocus.
And…
The summoner girl did look familiar, which made Marloes think.
Kita-something Erika?
She remembered because it was close to her own family name.
When was the last time they had crossed paths?
A few months ago?
The length of time wasn’t out of the ordinary.
Tokyo was an enormous amount of territory to cover and most people like her tended to stick to much smaller areas. The younger and lower level ones tended to stick to their neighborhood and perhaps the nearest encounter challenge.
Bountiful Decade had condensed that even further.
It was too dangerous to go out too far, especially alone, unless one was on her level. The monsters had gotten more numerous and more dangerous. Ones that had been confined to their zones had started wandering the streets on their way to siege the neighborhoods.
The summoner girl did look like Erika, except noticeably older.
Years.
Not months.
Perhaps she was wrong—
No, she was right.
She was certain it was Erika.
Although, the quality of her summons had jumped astronomically from tiny, weak yōkai to large and strong ones that battled the bloated mother worm and her worm-ridden… children?
The thought of what had been done to Jester made the bile rise to her throat.
She forced it down.
“We kill the worms. Then we subdue and capture Erika.”
She was mildly surprised that no one, not even Yuta, had questioned the latter half of her orders. She had been prepared with an explanation, though part of her wouldn’t have believed her.
It had sounded ridiculous in her head.
However, she reminded herself, nothing was truly out of the realm of possibility in the world the spires had wrought.
“Kekkaishi Endo. You will create and maintain the platforms above them. Conserve your energy otherwise. We will need you to contain Erika.”
The boy clasped his hands and bowed.
“Yes, Sparkle-sama.”
Damn Dashing Bandit Celebration!
They were taking their cues from the other mahou shoujo.
Marloes assessed the other pitched battles waged across the palace grounds. Much too chaotic for her liking. Too many variables… although, she wasn’t noticing a lot of chaos. If she looked closer it was clear that the separate battles weren’t spilling over into the other ones.
“Do you have anymore of those things in your bag?” she said.
“Ah, sorry!” Dashing Bandit Celebrations rapped her knuckles upside her head. “These are all that’s left of my precious trash pandas. It’s going to be a busy month replacing my other poor babies,” she pouted.
Unfortunate that.
The plushies had performed admirably as meat shields. Or was that cotton? They lacked physical brains for the worms to take over. Much like the yōkai.
The summoned creatures were a mix of spirit and flesh.
Marloes supposed there was enough of the former to mess with the worms’ ability to puppet a host judging by the yōkai ignoring the worms burrowing into them.
The mother worm vomited in the face of a pale-skinned Oni.
The ogre-like yōkai stood about over 2 meters tall and the mother worm had to aim down.
Marloes didn’t like the look of the massive monster.
The mother worm’s face was swollen, but she looked like a Japanese person. Small strands of black hair stood out of her scalp. The pale skin stretched to breaking. She crawled on her stomach with some help from bloated arms and legs.
“She moves like a seal,” Yuta said.
“The animal you’re looking for is a worm, Yuta-chan,” Dashing Bandit Celebration said. “See all the little— and not so little wriggling thing’s in the goo leaking out of all those pustules?”
Yuta swallowed the lump in his throat. “Someone promise to kill me if I get wormed. I don’t want to end up like that.”
“Don’t worry. Only us maidens have to worry about that. You and Endo-chan would end up like one of those poor guys.”
The mahou shoujo pointed to a group of worm-ridden men wearing the tattered and stained uniforms of the palace guard.
They didn’t move as well as Marloes knew they should’ve. Spears kept a wolf-like yōkai at bay while guns barked.
They killed it, but didn’t notice the burrowing yōkai until it ripped their legs out from under them.
“Yuta?”
“Yeah?”
“Defend this position until I call for you. Be ready and remember—”
“Go for the head. I know.”
“Lend me your two most powerful plushies,” Marloes said to the other mahou shoujo. “Have your fastest and sneakiest ones ready to distract the summoner. I trust you’ll know the moment.”
“Of course, Sparkle-sama!” Dashing Bandit Celebration threw an earnest, if inaccurate salute.
“Miko-sama… if you are capable, please do what you can to disrupt the yōkai. Send them away if possible.”
“I will try, but she is a lot stronger than me,” Miko Hiromi said.
Marloes figured she had one more battle in her if she went all out.
She opened up with a handful of shots at the armored carapace of the burrowing yōkai before it could dive back into the ground.
The bullets barely scratched it, but that wasn’t her goal.
Ice coated the carapace where the bullets struck.
The sudden freezing cold made it brittle.
The next set of shots shattered the carapace.
The ones that followed pierced the softer flesh and exploded a split-second later.
That got their attention.
The worm-ridden and Erika split their focus for a moment.
“Let’s work together to defeat this monster!”
Marloes leapt across barrier platforms much closer to the ground than the ones the rest of her team remained standing on.
Erika scowled… then sneered.
“Don’t think I didn’t notice you up there. I have eyes and ears everywhere.”
Marloes eyes widened.
“Be caref—”
Too late.
A large funnel cloud descended from above.
How had they not noticed the dust whirlwind?
She recognized the shapes swimming in the thick dust by the glint of their sickle limbs.
Kamaitachi.
“I don’t like this!” Dashing Bandit Celebration curled up into a ball, cupping her hands over her neck to protect her vital areas from the slashing sickles.
Mahou shoujo’s were always stronger and tougher than they looked, however, Dashing Bandit Celebration was on the lower end of the physical scale.
In short order, bloodless cuts criss-crossed her exposed skin.
Where were her summons?
Most had been sucked into the whirlwind.
The two exceptions were her strongest.
Oddly enough, both had red capes.
The one in blue spandex flew to the aid of the others, cape fluttering while it, he, shot beams of red light from his eyes. The other one called tiny bolts of blue-white lighting with the tiny hammer he whirled over his furry head.
Miko Hiromi cried out and fell to her knees, clutching her arm.
To Marloes’ horror, the miko’s hand plummeted to the ground still clutching the torimono.
Yuta cursed as he stood over the young girl, sweeping his over-sized blade wildly.
He killed kamaitachi, yet more remained judging by the sparks from the clashes between blades.
“Endo! Protect yourselves!” Marloes roared.
“I can’t! Not without releasing the barriers you’re standing on!”
For the first time this day the boy’s voice cracked, climbing several octaves higher.
The fear hammered how young he was, how young they all were, into Marloes.
“Just do it! Yuta, go for the summoner! Break her concentration!”
Erika needed to maintain it to keep the yōkai from vanishing.
It seemed a difficult task.
She couldn’t remember ever seeing a summoner call forth such a varied and powerful array of them.
The oni. The kamaitachi. The burrowing centipede-like creature.
Any one would’ve been the crowning summon of a Level 30.
That pushed Erika to at least over 40.
And the girl had been nowhere near that just months ago.
What had happened on these grounds behind the barrier in just a few hours?
Marloes stomach briefly tried to move into her chest as she dropped to the ground.
Despite the many bloodless cuts, Endo enclosed himself, Miko Hiromi and Dashing Bandit Celebration inside rainbow hued boxes.
Erika and the mother worm split their forces to go after her.
Marloes ran, jumped, dipped, dived, ducked and dodged.
Unlike the other mahou shoujo she was somewhere in the mid to high end of their class’ superhuman physical prowess.
The worm-ridden were slower and clumsier than they had been before infection.
Their Skills and spells were too slow and weak.
Likewise, the yōkai were of the lesser sort. They threatened with numbers rather than individual strength.
She filled them with bullets from every conceivable angle and direction.
Her unblinking eyes darted wildly as she marked targets and fired within fractions of a second.
The bullets turned bodies into mist.
Dead yōkai slowly vanished into the ether.
While the worm-ridden lived if she missed the head, they were for all intents and purposes out of the fight.
Rather than finish them she saved her ammunition and energy.
She shot the mother worm in the face only for the bullet to be blocked by a magic shield.
The same thing happened with Erika.
A hunched yōkai covered in dark, tattered robes stood next to the summoner with its hands raised to the sky.
Yuta flash-stepped behind Erika, slashing the magic shield.
He leapt back to stand in the air 10 meters away.
His lips moved.
Marloes didn’t hear the words.
The fingers in his free hand danced in an intricate pattern.
A bright red beam of light lanced down into the magic shield, temporarily stealing all the sound in the world.
The robed yōkai’s scream erupted from nothingness.
No earthly throat could’ve made the sound.
The shield cracked.
Marloes shot it.
The shield shattered.
Yuta slashed his blade, sending cutting wind.
She shot the robed yōkai in the face from point-blank ranged.
It slowly vanished.
Erika turned to deal with the wind blades.
Up above the dust whirlwind wavered.
The kamaitachi abandoned cutting at the barriers.
A flash step brought the shinigami to Erika’s back.
He cut, aiming for an outstretched hand.
Over-sized blade descended in a flash.
Steel rang out on steel.
Sparks flew as two blades ground against each other.
A katana-wielding tengu had appeared.
The yōkai had been there the whole time, ready to defend its master as a last line of defense. It had sat hidden in a black cloak, as if it had been a simple shadow.
Another high level summon.
Just what level was Erika?
The thought that the girl could be in the 50’s chilled Marloes to the core.
Blades clashed in a blur, sending sparks flying like a little fireworks show.
Erika created distance by running away. All the while creating portals through which more came through.
Weaker ones.
Marloes put a bullet through each one before they even had time to blink.
A short distance away, the mother worm finally managed to smother the large oni.
It screeched.
The sound pulsed over the immediate area.
Monsterpedia said that it had the ability to combine the sound waves with its psychic abilities to create a brown note.
Marloes felt her stomach rumble. She clenched her cheeks in preparation, but the feeling passed.
By the grace of God her level and strength were high enough to resist.
The same couldn’t be said of the yōkai.
The sound and stench of many voided bowels made her gag.
That was new to her.
Perhaps, she had been wrong about them. It appeared that they were more physical in nature than she had thought.
Yuta cursed, he fell away from the tengu with a wet gash across the black sleeve of his left arm and a growing wet stain on the back of his robes.
The teenager flash-stepped to gain distance from the tengu’s feather attack.
He failed to maintain awareness of the battlefield.
His path took him right next to a small knot of worm-ridden battling yōkai.
As though of one mind, the former abandoned the latter and lunged for him.
Marloes put bullets into them, but she had to split her attention to shooting the razor-sharp feathers down before they could slice Yuta to ribbons.
Hands grasped Yuta’s robes, pulling and holding on with the help of Skills.
He ate a fireball to the face.
Another ruined face lunged in through the smoke.
Man or woman?
Marloes couldn’t tell.
Vomit spewed pale white wriggling worms while hair-like tendrils stretched hungrily out of every orifice and torn hole toward Yuta.
His over-sized sword was too long to manipulate in close quarters.
So, he dropped it in favor of a desperate flame blast.
It blew the worm-ridden away, but not before—
Marloes’ eyes widened. “Yuta—” Worm-ridden and yōkai leapt at her only to be blasted away in a hail of bullets. “Your arm!”
Vomit had drenched his sleeve… the one with a bloody gash.
He looked at her helplessly.
Then his face twisted.
“I can feel them!”
He flash-stepped to her.
“Stay back!” She recoiled.
“Help me!”
Desperate eyes searched hers for salvation.
His nostrils flared as he began to hyperventilate.
“They’re moving up my arm!” He grabbed his elbow.
Knuckles whitened, veins popped like—
Well, that was the problem wasn’t it?
What had Monsterpedia said?
Yuta had seconds.
She made a decision.
“Move your hand and hold your arm away from your body,” she said flatly.
He gulped, but complied.
She blew his arm off at the elbow with an incendiary bullet.
He stared at her and then at his cauterized stump in disbelief.
“I’m sorry, but hopefully I got them before they climbed up your arm. If they did, then the fire should’ve cooked them.”
He breathed in deep gasps, staring at nothing as he nodded mechanically.
She glanced at the sky.
The dust whirlwind had dwindled to almost nothing.
Dashing Bandit Celebration's plushies killed the last of the kamaitachi with heat vision, lighting and repulsor blasts.
“Alright, go. Retreat. Have Kekkaishi Endo place you in a barrier box. You did well.”
Yuta nodded, then convulsed.
“What is it? Yuta?”
Shit!
She knew.