Karl was uncoiled and did not know how to put himself back together again. He’d lain his torso on the side of one of the metal cars, letting his tail-body trail around and behind it. The vehicle’s front half had been completely melted away by the silver-eyed Norm’s spore breath. The garage’s mosaic floor was slippery beneath Karl’s underbelly, but Karl hardly noticed that; his attention was on the console between his claws, resting on the car’s roof as if the half-melted vehicle was a desk.

Using the console was frustrating and delicate. His arms, hands, and fingers were much, much bigger than what the console had been designed for, and that was before Karl even counted his claws. Dr. Rathpalla and some of the others had tried to calm him down or offer to help, but Karl had angrily lashed out at them, only to be frightened by the plumes of spores that spewed out alongside his words.

Progress with the console was agonizingly slow. He had to take great care not to push too hard with the tip of the single claw he was using to tap tap tap on the console’s screen. Karl had already made that mistake twice before, as seen in the two ruined consoles on the ground beside him.

“How much longer till you break your fifth, I wonder?” Ichigo said, with a bitter smirk.

Karl huffed, spewing a little puff of spores over the edge of the car’s roof. He was starting to regret his decision to let Ichigo out into the real world.

The ghost sat cross-legged on the car’s roof, and was still in his oni form: red-skinned, white-haired, and clothed in black. At the moment, Karl was waiting for the console to load the next article.

“You don’t need to be so mean,” Karl said.

Ichigo squeezed one pair of hands around his ankles and another around his thighs. “And you should stop and think more about what you are doing.”

“You’re one to talk,” Karl replied.

Somewhat to his surprise, Ichigo nodded. “You’re right. But if Lord Uramaru’s lessons were good enough for me, they should be good enough for you.”

Karl sighed. The spores he produced sizzled against the car’s roof, eating away more of the blue paint. “What do you want from me?”

“You have mighty powers,” Ichigo said, crossing one pair of arms. “Use them.”

“I did! That’s how I broke the first two!”

Karl wasn’t at all used to controlling the magical powers that came with the loss of his humanity, and his attempts to use them to manipulate the console had ended in explosive failure. The whole process was complicated and dispiriting enough that Karl had decided to use his claws, figuring that it was at least closer to what he already knew what to do with the human fingers that he no longer had.

Console number three broke because Karl had sliced his claw through the screen in an attempt to scroll down the page. Because of this, Karl couldn’t simply flick his fingertip across the screen to move the text up and down. Instead, he could only get it to move in small spurts, which he accomplished by gently rubbing the back of one of his fingers against the screen in a downward motion. It was agonizingly slow compared to what he could have done if he’d still had human fingers, but it was better than nothing. Unfortunately, it was really hard to be patient when the words he wanted to see were from the article about the use of darkpox in the Third Crusade.

As for console number four, it had met its end when Karl had been scrolling through the list of individuals known or suspected to have been involved in biological warfare. He’d spotted Geoffrey’s name on the list. As he’d already figured out in his brief stay as a human in this strange new future world, the fact that the letters of Geoffrey’s name appeared on the screen with a special light blue coloring meant that the console would take him to an article about Geoffrey with just a tap of those colored letters. In urgency, Karl had pressed the tip of his claw against the screen with so much force that he’d split the console in two.

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“Have you considered trying again?” Ichigo asked.

“And mess up all over again?” Karl lowered his head in shame. “No, thank you.”

“Then send me back into your mind,” Ichigo said. “I don’t want to sit here and watch you mope, and it’s not like I’m helping you by being here.”

Karl didn’t want to admit that he valued Ichigo’s company. Unlike everyone else, the Mewnee didn’t go out of his way to be “kind”, “helpful”, or “understanding”. He was angry, too, and worried about his master, Lord Uramaru. Ichigo didn’t honey his words; he didn’t try to convince Karl that things would get better, and in that respect, he definitely was helping.

Of course, it would be nice if Ichigo and the other spirits could have done more than just—

“—Wait a moment,” Karl muttered.

“What is it?”

“I…” Karl blinked. “I think I have an idea.”

Ichigo raised a single eyebrow.

“I’m having trouble staying focused,” Karl said. “There’s just… so much going on inside my mind, now. I can focus on you; I’m not having any trouble keeping you here, Ichigo, but when it comes to my powers…”

“You said you had an idea,” Ichigo replied. “What’s this big idea of yours?”

“Maybe you can use the console.” He pointed at Ichigo’s hands. Other than their color and number, Ichigo’s oni-hands were no different from a man’s, and that made them perfectly suited for using the console.

Ichigo gave Karl a specious look, and then leaned forward and waved one of his hands back and forth through the console and the roof of the car.

Then he crossed all four of his arms.

“You were saying?”

“I meant, what if you could use the console?” Karl said.

“How?” Ichigo asked.

“Like… this…”

Clenching his fists, Karl focused on Ichigo’s hands. It was much easier for Karl to do that then to make his powers operate out of nothing. Even if Ichigo wasn’t actually there, he was more real than anything else that crept out of Karl’s imagination. Still, Karl had to imagine threads of power coming into being around Ichigo’s hands in order to actually put the damn things there.

Ichigo stared at the strange, luminous mittens Karl had given him, lifting his hands and turning them side to side. “Are these supposed to be gloves?”

“No. They’re what I’m using to try to make your hands solid again,” Karl answered. “Dr. Howle had done something similar with one of his spirit companions when we went into the General Labs building. This let the spirit attack the soldiers as if it was there, even though it was invisible.”

Ichigo narrowed his eyes in alarm. “This isn’t going to blow anything up, will it?”

“Uh… I hope so?” Karl replied.

“Huh,” Ichigo said, “so… this is what it feels like.”

“What what feels like?” Karl asked.

Ichigo looked off in the distance. “In my country, of the greatest martial arts a nobleman can hope to attain is skill at horseback archery.”

“Archery on horseback?” Karl said. “Oh! Like Old King Krog’s hussars, you mean?”

“I don’t know who that is, but… sure,” Ichigo said. He looked up at the ceiling. “I asked Lord Uramaru to instruct me in that noble art, but… well, he wasn’t exactly thrilled by the idea.”

“Why not?”

“He told me the risk of failure is high and that he wasn’t really comfortable with me injuring myself, or the horse… or the trees. I didn’t see the problem at the time. But he said that, one day, I’d understand how he felt. Now…” Ichigo turned his hands over. “I think that day has come.”

“So… did he end up teaching you?” Karl asked.

“Yes,” Ichigo said.

“Did you… injure yourself?”

Ichigo just scowled.

Alright, so that means yes, Karl thought.

Ichigo glowered at him. “I can hear that, you know.”

“S-Sorry,” Karl said, meekly.

There was a pause.

“Can you… can you try to see if what I did… if it—”

Ichigo rolled his eyes. “Fine, fine.” Hopping off the roof, Ichigo landed on the ground beside the car. Then, turning to face it, he reached out and slapped his hand on the side.

To both boys’ surprise, the metal made a definite thud.

“It… it worked!” Ichigo said, wide-eyed.

Then, with a groan, the side of the car he’d hit fell forward and onto the garage’s floor with a nasty din. Ichigo leapt back to dodge—even though there was nothing to worry about—which sent him hurtling into the car behind him and shattering its windows as his body phased through its exterior and pulled his hands through the glass.

In shock, Karl had surged forward, only to knock the console off the roof, cracking its screen as it hit the tiled floor.

Ichigo scratched his head as he got up off the ground.

Quite a few transformees were staring at both of them.

“Aw… shit,” Ichigo muttered.