Chapter Text
Ken could barely tell what was going on anymore.
The group that had been harassing him and his friends for the past few weeks finally attacked all at once, each of them with their own kozuka-knife imbued power. Thick stalks of corn dotted the surrounding landscape, meters tall, and periodically budded out vicious, snarling gremlins shaped like mutant corncobs – some bulbous and lumpy, some thin and withered, crawling around by the hundreds, so many they blanketed the ground. Every so often, the man controlling it all, tall and thin as a scarecrow, would swing his arm at the ground, and new cornstalk would burgeon from the earth, bringing even more monsters with it.
Half a dozen large paper lanterns, filled with pale blue ghost fire, hovered in the air, spewing streams of flame in all directions, boiling the air, scorching the dirt; each managed by the woman wreathed in fire herself, crackling out of the characteristic hard black shell of a yōkai form. Occasionally, a lick of flame would sweep across the very flammable corn monsters, setting them alight – at which point the little things would skitter forward aggressively, turning themselves into fireballs, kernels popping in their wakes.
The other man, a burly guy with a shaved head, a ratty t-shirt and, weirdly, a pair of formal hakama, fluttered through the air, visibly drunk, held aloft by a flurry of yellow-white feathers that he controlled like a drone swarm. From his mobile, plumy throne, he sent out waves of razor sharp feathers, zipping through the air like dragonflies to attack whatever weak point they could reach. The feathers were also flammable; whenever they ignited, he used them much like the corn monsters.
There was a giant spider too, for some reason. Chitin gleaming black in the afternoon sunlight. It wasn’t even anyone’s power, one of them just pissed off a completely unrelated Tsuchigumo a few days ago who decided to join the fray today, attacking everyone indiscriminately. Couldn’t it at least have been an alien spider? At least that would be interesting. Either way, no one on either side really knew what to do about it.
It was pure pandemonium. The noises of a thousand squealing creatures filled the air, interspersed with the loud pops of flame and heat and the occasional monstrous cry of the spider. Something shifted and moved in all directions, a kaleidoscope no matter where he looked, his head aching from the undulations. The ground shook with every stomp of the spider’s massive legs. The air smelled like popcorn, undercut with a sour insectoid-like stench.
But despite the chaos and mayhem, he and his friends held firm.
Miss Ayase – Momo, sometimes he still slipped up, even in his head – ripped up cornstalks and smashed corn monsters by the dozens with each huge sweep of her psychic teal-green hands, auburn hair fluttering, earrings clattering. That they haven’t been overrun entirely is due to her sheer, brute force power, the kind that has him in awe to this day. It was those same powerful hands that held off most of the spider’s advances, too, a humongous barrier that has kept it distant enough, crimson-red mandibles clacking at the translucent solidness.
Miss Shiratori twirled around the battlefield, dodging everything with an easy grace while sending out pink tendrils of hair like it was second nature, dozens of them snapping at the blade-like feathers before they could ever cut a thing. She was the only one here with that kind of precision, sharper than the razors she intercepted, and she did it all while forming shields or yanking people to and fro to protect them from other attacks.
Jiji, in a new accord with Evil Eye, allowed him to take over in brief increments to take hits, deal heavy damage, just enough time to keep him interested but not so much that he went completely wild, before switching back to send out long-range waves of chi. He dealt with most of the fire – Miss Shiratori’s hair burned, and Momo could feel the sting of heat even through her telekinesis – clearing out the popcorn fireball gremlins and the floating lanterns and occasionally pressuring the people actually causing all this havoc.
And Ken was also there. In the back. Doing what he could.
It only made sense. Each of them were more than human, and ever since Turbo Granny left, taking her powers with her, he was just human. He can’t do much these days. He’d been training with Miss Seiko and Mr. Manjiro, trying to up his attack power, but he just didn’t have the spiritual aptitude Momo and Jiji had. Weeks of practice and nothing had taken, besides a bit more stability when someone tried to push him over. Not exactly helpful in a fight like this.
A bit more immediately useful, he’d been working with Sakata on how to better use the nanoskin, but likewise, Ken’s imagination simply wasn’t as expansive as the other boy’s, and so he couldn’t use it nearly as adeptly. It kept him safe enough, in other battles and in this one, his thoughts conjuring up a halfway decent set of armor on his upper body and Megaman-like buster cannon he could shoot with from afar; but it all felt so insufficient compared to the power he once lucked into, and lost.
He gave up trying to deal with the masses of things attacking them. There was just too much movement, and his eyes couldn’t follow it all, not anymore. Being in his turbo form had dulled his emotions, but sharpened his senses, let him understand the speeds he could move at and made everything else slower in return; but that was all gone now. Instead, he tried to go after all the users directly, blasting searing hot plasma at them to interrupt their attacks, prevent them from spawning more cornstalks and feathers and lanterns, but he hadn’t done anything decisive. At best, he helped his friends hold their stalemate. At worst, the stalemate would have held regardless of anything he did.
He wasn’t sure how much longer this could stand. It felt like he was stagnating, while his friends got more and more incredible and everything coming after them got more and more dangerous. The one useful thing he thought he could do was be the kind of person, the kind of boyfriend, that could protect Momo, but now…
He grit his teeth. Shook the thought off.
He couldn’t fixate on that right now. He had a job to do.
He just, wished…
*
Momo was getting sick of these lousy squids.
It was non-stop with these guys. These ones in particular, and the broader set of ‘guys’ that included all the things trying to kill them for one reason or another; yōkai, aliens, thought entities, that one time a big dog chased after Okarun for ten minutes. The ones today weren’t the scariest dudes they ever had to deal with, but the cuts and burns and bite marks on her legs showed all the close calls, and with how long the battle had been going on there was probably gonna be more.
Felt like they’ve been at it for hours, though it was probably only minutes. Not because the bad guys were particularly competent – they were kinda stupid, actually, and seemed to hate each other almost as much as they hated her and her friends – but the sheer amount of stuff they had and could easily replenish made it a slog.
Case in point; Momo had killed about a million of the little corn guys by now, battlefield a sheet of creamed corn, but there were exactly as many of them as when this whole thing started. New cornstalks, new monsters, every damn second. The guy in charge of ‘em all announced some big super move with a scream, did a few extra hand motions, and a gargantuan stalk rose up 20 feet, with a single, massive cob. It sprouted arms, and legs; a full on corn giant. Instead of attacking, it looked at them furiously, then belched out a stream of even more little gremlins.
What was the fucking point?! Just grow the regular stalks!
At least it distracted the spider, now interested in something its size. But the bulk of new corn gremlins washed towards them like a tidal wave, reaching all the way to Okarun, who couldn’t deal with a mass of little guys easily. He took a few shots, blowing individuals up into popcorn, but just before he got completely drowned in them she swooped in, free from her spider obligation for the moment.
In seconds, she cleared out the area around him, replacing it with a circle of corn mush.
He nodded, wiping off corn-residue from his arm cannon. “Thank you, Momo.”
She beamed; at his gratitude, at hearing her name. Took a while for it to stick.
“Man, how many of these things am I gonna have to kill though? There’s gotta be a limit to the number of corn-cuties they can make, right?
“Stop calling them that, they’re trying to kill us!”
“But look at ‘em!” She psychically grabbed a lone surviving one and held it up. It screamed with a wet, slurpy shriek, flecks of corn spattering from its mouth. “They’re cute!”
He immediately shot it into popcorn. “You clearly have bad taste in what you find cute!”
“Oh?” She took the time to knock shoulders with him, cloth against nano-skin, and poked a finger at his cheek. “And what’s that say about you, Okarun?”
He turned away, annoyed grumble in his throat. But she caught it anyway; the shy little upturn to his lips. She filed the sight of it away in her memory forever.
A huge, fiery explosion resounded across the battlefield. A parade of screams followed, most of them corn-sourced, but one of ‘em possibly Jiji-sourced, too.
She groaned, then launched herself back into the thick of things.
All the stuff that kept happening to them, it was really startin’ to wear on her. In a way it hadn’t before. Maybe it was finally just catching up to her, exhausting her much deeper than physically or mentally, but there was a much more obvious reason things were starting to crack.
They were capital-O Official now. Her and Okarun. The second she’d recovered, he made good on his promise and confessed to her nice and proper – even had a little box of chocolates and a small thingy of flowers. He didn’t have to do that part! But he did it anyways, because he was Okarun and perfect, and she said she loved him back and they kissed and it was great.
And then an alien attacked. Then later, a yōkai, then a kozuka knife user, then a big mushroom thing that she still didn’t know what it was. Always somethin’.
Point was, they’d been ‘dating’ for about a month now, and they hadn’t even gone on an actual date yet! Flirting in the middle of the fight like that was about as close as they got, seeing as how most of their free time was being in one or recovering from one. And outside of that, between school and their jobs and her always busy home, they’d had nearly zero alone time together. Pulling him into a supply closet during one of their breaks or off into an alleyway as he walked her home to make out was nice, but she was a fuckin’ lady, damnit, she should be taken out on a proper fuckin’ date!
It was just… were they ever gonna have the time for it, the way things were going? Were they ever gonna have a chance to be normal, even for just a little bit? There was always something happening. Someone’s balls were missing, or they were stuck in Empty Space, or they got turned into cans, or stuck in a coma, or trapped in a box, or made teeny-tiny. And they weren’t any closer to figuring out where all these friggin’ knives are coming from. Maybe it would never end.
She just, wished…
*
As the noble leader of this group of champions fighting for justice, it was Aira’s job to keep a bird’s eye view.
Of the battlefield, most certainly. It had been her keen tactical mind that had kept them from being completely outnumbered and overrun by the forces of evil. Ayase and Enjoji had brute force on their side, true, but they lacked her finesse. They held off the flow of corn-cuties and lantern fires, the more obvious dangers, but they probably hadn’t even noticed how the feather-user was targeting the tendons in their arms and legs, intent on fully crippling them. He might look a drunken slob, but he was vicious; it would only take one well-placed slice to end this whole fight.
Good thing she was here to prevent exactly that.
A flurry of pink tendrils flailed from her head like whips, and she danced to each of her friends as the drunkard shifted his focus, snipping at every errant feather. There weren’t as many of them in the air as corn-cuties on the ground, but they replenished just the same, new ones growing out of the user’s skin and detaching to join the flock every time he took a sip from his flask. Probably related, but perhaps he was simply troubled.
The one thing they all knew was important was to attack the users directly, but their powers made it a challenge to get close. She attempted to make whatever openings she could; for Enjoji, as one direct hit from Evil Eye would likely knock out either of the two men, whose yōkai forms were obviously weaker compared to the woman’s; for Ayase, who could simply trap one of them in her brutish, telekinetic paws if she could get a hold of them; for Master Takakura, to get one good shot in with his alien space gun. But their foes weren’t totally stupid, the corn and feather users staying far back behind a wall of their thralls, and the hardier lantern user the only one to get up close, backing off before she got overwhelmed.
It was… unfortunate that Master Takakura no longer had his yōkai powers. With one All-Out he could break past the teeming masses in front of them in an instant, knock out one of their foes quickly, turn the whole tide.
She sensed a growing frustration in him over it, the forced change in his strategies. She wasn’t the only one to notice, but as the leader, it was another important thing to look at from above. The emotions of her compatriots, how they might affect the flow of battle. How changes in relationships might do the same.
Aira wondered if Ayase even realized how much more she hovered around Master Takakura. Because of his new fragility, because of the Change. When they battled together prior, support switched as necessary, adjusting to whoever was closest or splitting up entirely. But now Ayase stuck as close to him as possible when before she might have rushed forward. It was… inefficient.
Yeah. That was Aira’s problem with it. Never mind the other changes that it brought.
There was a new distance between her and Master Takakura. Self-imposed, sure, but Aira was no harlot. Takakura was a taken man now, and it would do her no good to offer affection as aggressively as she did before. But oh, how she missed it. Sliding up behind him to wrap her arms around his, pressing her hand against his firm shoulder, a careful graze of her pinky against his. But a change in the battlefield, whatever that field may look like, required new strategies, and so she took a tactical retreat. Because while Ayase may have one that battle, Aira can still win the war.
…Right?
A flare in the sky. A deadzone in the air straight from a hovering lantern to Master Takakura. A blazing beam shot his way.
And before Aira could even move, Ayase leapt in the way, blocking it with a turquoise shield.
When the fire died, she wagged her hands from the burn, transferred through her psychic powers. Master Takakura rushed over and fretted over her palms, while Ayase herself simply smiled and teased back. Aira failed to ignore it; another tender moment scrounged together in the midst of battle.
Aira grit her teeth behind the yōkai mask.
Was she really not worth consideration? Even for a moment? Were the differences between her and Ayase really so great? She, too, was proud to call Takakura her friend, found just as much joy in his excitement as he talked of aliens and cryptids. Haven’t they been through just as much together? Saved each other’s lives over and over again? Had they not danced together in battle in a perfect ballet of teamwork against Serpoians and Musician-Tulpas? What was the difference?
She just, wished…
*
Can I murder now?
Jiji sighed. No, Evil Eye.
A beat.
Can I murder NOW?
In a second, alright buddy?
He heard only a deep whine in his head.
He ignored, it, dove himself past the other consciousness to the massive pool of Chi connected to it. He swirled it with his own, forming a twisting helix of dual energy. And with a thrust of his palms, he unleashed it.
“EVIL GUN!”
A crackling beam of raw force – a literal Kamehameha wave, because that was what it totally was, so sick – carved through a mass of flaming corn-cuties on the ground before he piloted it upward into another flaming lantern, the one that just tried to blast Okarun to smithereens. Fragile looking, but deceptively strong, it took a second or two for the Evil Gun to make the structure of it buckle and collapse, before the whole thing exploded in a ball of scorching blue.
“Boom!” he cried. “Keep makin’ as many lanterns as ya want, I’ll no-scope every single one!”
“Stop encouraging the bad guys!” he heard Momo yell.
He laughed; not like he had anything else he could do!
He wasn’t so good at strategies and tactics. That was Momo and Aira’s bag, what he counted on them for. But neither of them had landed on anything useful enough to end the fight, which probably meant this whole thing is an endurance game; whoever ran out of stamina first, loses.
And Jiji don’t run out of stamina!
Between him and Evil Eye they had chi for days. Far as he could tell, making these fools burn through all of their energy was the best thing he could do. At least, until Momo came up with one of her genius plans.
The lantern user got up close, like she always did whenever he blew up one of her lanterns – he figured making new lanterns was on a timer, and she had to distract him so he wouldn’t blow them up faster than she could make ‘em. Black and white mask like Aira’s covering part of her face, a cloak of blue-white fire wreathing her body over her pantsuit, a cascade of heat coming out of the top of her head like a bonfire. She was… kinda cute, honestly.
“Ah c’mon, you sure we gotta be fighting?” he said as she approached. “I’m already hot for you, girl!” He pressed a finger to his cheek and made a hissing noise like a sizzle.
“Stop flirting with them too!” Aira yelled.
The lantern user rolled her eyes, then exploded into a ball of ghostfire and shot at him like a bullet.
Yeah, that seemed about right.
His body flickered with new colors as he let Evil Eye take over, who took the hit with an excited cry. Given how he died, he was… unfortunately resistant to fire; the flames licked uselessly at his purple-pale skin. They got into a tussle, exchanging a few brutal kicks and punches, before Evil Eye slammed his knee into her gut and shot her off.
Jiji took back over, reigning his yōkai bro back in before he got too excited; if he really got going, no one would be able to stop him, not even his friends, especially since they were past the days of carrying around hot water to switch him back. He fired another Evil Gun at Lantern Girl as she flew back, pushing her straight into the massive spider, which by now had chewed through most of the big corn cutie.
Another lantern built itself into existence overhead, unleashing more flame, at the spider, at just about everything.
Well. One more step towards exhausting their resources, right? They would have this fight finished in no time!
…And then, they’d have to deal with what came after.
After the fight was almost worse than the fight itself these days. They could all lock-in while something was attacking them, but in the aftermath, when the adrenaline faded, when they had to take stock of all their injuries and properly tend to them, when they had to spend a bunch of time debriefing, going over what they learned, trying to connect things to the source of all this trouble and failing miserably, it all bled into a crushing fatigue. One where frustrations really started to show.
Momo in particular had been fuming longer and longer each time they fell into their routine, her usual bluster turning a bit hotter, more scathing, more mad at all these jerks attacking them than he’d ever seen. Okarun, with a scrunch to his face that only seemed to get deeper and deeper, so down on himself these days because his training wasn’t sticking – and no amount of Jiji telling him how awesome he was for trying at it anyway seemed to help.
And Aira, well…
There was a small period of time where she and Momo actually got along pretty well! When Aira as much as anyone had been looking forward to Momo getting back to normal. But recently she’d been going extra hard with her criticisms, their resulting arguments getting a little more visceral. The two were usually back to normal by the next day, but it was obvious how upset Aira was over the Change, and taking it out on Momo in the guise of battle critique.
And, well, he couldn’t say he didn’t get it.
It was tough, seeing ‘em together. The girl he loved, and his closest friend. Unlike Aira, he never really thought he had a chance, but ya couldn’t blame a guy for hoping, right? Selfish as that was.
But hey, that feeling didn’t have to own him. He could look past it, see how cute they were together, all the little touches they did when they thought no one was looking, how incredibly obvious it was when they came back from making out in a closet, that look that they gave to each other, like all their dreams came true. So adorbs. His hands were curling into a heart just thinkin’ about it.
But it bubbled up, sometimes. That selfishness. Floated up, lingered in him for just a bit too long, before it popped and scattered away. Something he couldn’t help but want every time he saw Okarun’s hand wrapped up in Momo’s.
He just, wished…
*
I wish I was strong again. That I had the power to protect Momo, to protect the person I love.
*
I wish I could spend some time with Okarun without some assholes trying to kill us all the time!
*
I wish I understood whatever it is that Takakura sees in Momo Ayase.
*
I wish…
*
“THAT’S IT!” The drunk feather guy, high up in the air, screamed over everything. “I’M SICK OF ALL THIS! I’M ENDING THINGS NOW.” Ken saw him take out another kozuka knife from his pants.
He and his friends stanced up, getting ready for another threat-
“No!”
“Don’t do it, you idiot!”
That had them thrown off. Because it was the guy’s own teammates giving him pushback, straight up stopping the fight to address him.
“Fuck you!” the drunkard said. “It could literally win this whole thing for us right now!”
“Or you could get us all killed!” Lantern Woman warned.
“Whatever!” He stabbed himself, and a dark, inky miasma curled around him.
The Corn Guy stuttered out, “O-Oh god, if you’re gonna use it at least be careful with how you word-”
“I wish for something to ruin these brats for good!”
An ethereal stillness lingered over the battlefield. The corn-gremlins froze. Even the spider stopped attacking, as if waiting for something to happen.
“…That’s what you went with?!” Lantern Woman yelled, aghast. “That could literally mean any-”
The ground shook.
The earth beneath them trembled, so viciously it was hard to stand upright. The masses of corn-gremlins were thrown into each other, pulsing back and forth in useless waves. The massive Tsuchigumo stumbled to and fro, its hairy legs squishing corn-things by the dozen as it struggled to stay up. The Corn Guy himself held onto a few thicker stalks, surrounding himself with bigger corn soldiers for protection. The other two hovered in the air, waiting for whatever was about to happen, one with glee in their eyes, one with terror.
Ken and his friends clustered up, in case they needed to protect each other. Whatever showed up, they’d deal with it.
In the center of everything, four hills crunched out of the ground, tossing a number of corn-gremlins aside.
Then, they exploded in a cloud of grit and dust.
From each one a colossal, bony finger erupted, crawling high into the sky, nearly twenty stories tall. They shifted and jerked, their too many joints cracking like a rockslide, the nauseating sound reverberating in Ken’s skull even through hands pressed against his ears. Locks of wet hair dangled from rotting tendons and connective tissue that strung between the joints, dripping with a viscous liquid so dark-red it looked like oil; the scent of blood and rot splashed up from where it landed. The fingers cascaded in a macabre wave like trees in a hurricane, small movements in thick trunks that should otherwise be immovable, revealing an overpowering force.
“Hah!” The drunkard cheered. “That should do… somethin’, right?!”
Ken and his friends traded disbelieving stares, before focusing back on the fingers.
The fingers suddenly locked into place, fingertips curving down at the last knuckles to point at each of the four of them.
“Oh, fuck.”
Ken found himself agreeing with Momo.
The fingers started to clamp down.
Before he could even start to run, Momo swaddled him up in her telekinetic grip and ran away for the both of them; Miss Shiratori did the same with Jiji and her hair.
The girls sprinted away at a breakneck pace while he and Jiji turned back to watch the fingers. Instead of following the previous trajectory, the fingers twitched like spider-legs to adjust, fingertips tracing the movements of his friends with more deafening creaks. Ken fired his cannon at the two after him and Momo, Jiji his chi beams at the ones after them, but the projectiles went straight through as if the fingers were intangible. He doubted the fingers were gonna feel intangible once they connected.
The girls tried to zig-zag, hoping to confuse the fingers, but they tracked every motion perfectly, continuing down ominously, inevitably. More plasma fire, more waves of chi, but nothing was working, their efforts entirely useless. In one last ditch attempt at protection, Momo skidded to a stop and pulled him close, wrapping an arm around him and using the other to hold up a thick shield of telekinetic force. Again, Miss Shiratori mirrored her, standing by Jiji as her hair spun itself into a wall. They all braced themselves.
The fingers went straight through, colliding into each of their torsos.
They were pinched roughly to the ground, an infinite weight pinning them in place but not outright crushing them. Ken gripped the sticky mass of wet hair and meat and bone and tried to do anything to shift it; it was like trying to move a mountain. His chest struggled to shift against it to take in breath. At any moment, it could complete the motion, squishing them flat with trivial effort. He grasped wildly for Momo’s hand and found it, and they gripped each other tighter than the fingers looming above.
The fingers thrummed with a sickly energy.
And then, they vanished.
“…Huh?”
He sat up, hands clumsily patting at his chest looking for some kind of change. He looked to Momo, and his friends, found them examining themselves similarly. No one could find any differences.
Momo shot up fully first, looking back at all their foes, who had simply been watching on, too scared to mess with whatever just happened. The rest of them stood up with her, continuing to check on themselves and coming up empty. The only effect seemed to be the lingering sting on his chest from the sheer pressure that was just against it.
“HAH!” Momo yelled at their confused combatants. “Whatever your stupid plan was, it didn’t work!”
Ken’s chest flared with a blistering pain.
He bent over, hands clutching at his gut and sternum. He groaned through his teeth, jaw clenched so tight they creaked, as something in his body set itself alight. The nanoskin peeled off of him, his mind unable to keep its shape, clattering to the ground as a few glowing cubes.
“Okarun!”
“Okarun!”
“Master Takakura!”
His friends gathered around him, reaching for him but unsure of what to do. He had no answers for them, could barely focus on anything other than the thing inside him trying to break free. Something volatile. Something… familiar?
He screamed, and his bones started cracking.
Another sound like rock scraping rock as his joints shifted, as his body lengthened. First his fingers, growing long, nails sharp, then his arms, bones stretching out. New vertebrae grew in between the old, arching his back, huddling him forward with new height. His legs and toes snapped and popped as they did the same, thick new muscle burning with desire. His hair turned white, waving up like a flame. An obsidian, grinning mask grew itself around his mouth.
And then, it all stopped. Transformation complete.
He looked down at his feet. They had burst through his shoes.
He sighed. “What a bummer.”
“OKARUN!” Momo gasped and slapped at his bicep excitedly. “You got your powers back, how’d you get your powers back??”
“Dunno,” he answered honestly. “But I bet however it happened, it’s gonna cause problems.”
“Did those huge creepy fingers do that?” Jiji guessed. “Why the heck would that happen?”
Ken shrugged.
“As unusual as this is,” Aira said, “perhaps this isn’t the time to figure it out?” She nodded towards the mass of foes.
Who, upon seeing the apparent uselessness of the fingers, started charging forward. Even the spider, finally having chosen a side.
“Pfft, well, whatever they did, they fucked up hard!” Momo immediately climbed onto his back, and, like an instinct that never left, his arms immediately went to support her. “Okarun, let’s go kick some ass!”
“Got it, babe.”
No sense holding back; he went All Out.
He fired forward with a ghostly speed, Turbo Granny’s power slotting back in him without issue. He blasted right through the blanket of corn-things like a boat through the water, splashing them off to the sides. Lantern flames fired at them like spotlights, razor-feathers darted forward like bullets, but he was more than fast enough to dodge the bulk of them, and the rest plinked uselessly off of them like rubber darts. He didn’t even notice Momo making a barrier; it was hard to pay attention to anything other than the feel of her against his back, and the wild scream she let out as he ran.
He found his target easily: the corn guy.
With the full force of his All Out he jumped and kicked forward, slicing through all his corn guards like butter and hitting the man himself straight in the chest, spinning to shoot him towards the ground. He collided with a breathless grunt, and fell immediately unconscious.
All the corn-things vanished.
Without an army holding them off, he and his friends could get much closer, focus their efforts. The lantern user, who could fly but not so high up, could now be pressured by Momo and him zooming back and forth, grasping at her with telekinetic hands, while Jiji mowed through all her lanterns. Aira kept the drunk guy busy as she did before, but with Ken more easily dodging the feathers, she could offer additional support to the rest of them. The spider, sensing the turning tides, shifted its gaze back and forth, no longer sure what to do.
One wrong move from the lantern user was enough for Momo to finally take hold, squeeze her yōkai powers back down, turning her into a normal woman. Momo lowered her to the ground.
He wasn’t proud to do this next part.
He kicked the woman unconscious.
“Damn, Okarun,” Momo said. “Here I thought I was datin’ a gentleman!”
He shrugged. “She burnt your hands.”
She wrapped her arms tight around his neck and squeezed.
The drunkard was trivial to deal with after that. One good palm blast from Jiji while Momo and Aira dealt with his feathers and he fell from the sky.
Aira kicked him unconscious, before stomping her shoe onto his chest.
“Drunken lout,” she said, her yōkai powers fading away. “As if you were any match for a beautiful savior such as I!”
The rest of them turn to the spider. Eight eyes blinked back at them.
It raised one of its legs to its mandibles and cleared its throat.
“I’m gonna head out,” it said, in a screeching, high-pitched voice.
“Yeah you do that,” Momo said.
It skittered away with pounding stomps.
With all the threats dealt with, his new (old?) powers receded almost by themselves, body cracking back to normal. He gave a few pained grunts; he wasn’t sure if it hurt more now for some reason, or if he just forgot how uncomfortable the transformation was.
But when it all finished, he gave a relieved sigh.
Momo collided with him, nearly pitching him to the floor.
“Okarun, that was incredible!” she gushed, rubbing her cheek against his. “You turned the whole tide!”
He shied a bit away, giving an embarrassed laugh; but his hands remained firmly around her waist. “I… guess I did. Though it wasn’t like I could've planned any of that.”
“No kidding!” Jiji said as he dragged the three users into a pile. Miss Shiratori carefully collected all their kozuka knives into a handkerchief while he did so. “Why did that even happen? The power backfire on them somehow?”
“I… guess?” Ken offered. “The other two really didn’t seem to want the guy to use it.”
Jiji wiped his hands off in a clap. “Well hey, glad everything worked out!”
A dot appeared on the horizon.
Miss Shiratori slapped him on the back of the head. “Why did you say that?!” He rubbed at the spot apologetically.
In an instant, the dot stretched out to circle them entirely, essentially forming an entirely new horizon, miles away. Blue sky, then a thin slice of red, then the regular ground below. They huddled, back to back. His yōkai powers returned; Aira followed suit.
The ring started to grow, bulging from the bottom.
“The hell is happening?” Momo asked.
“Dunno,” he answered.
“Maybe whatever effect he started isn’t over,” Aira offered ominously.
The ring continued to expand, eating away at the landscape and replacing it with something new. After a bit, he could finally get an idea of what: a mass of liquid, an ocean of some sort, but the wrong color entirely. A red tinged with purple, maroon, like wine. It continued its creep towards them, swallowing up the world, picking up speed as it got closer and closer.
“How… how are we supposed to stop that?!” Jiji shouted.
No one could answer him.
More and more of the world was replaced by the cherry-colored ocean, the area around them – rice fields, a building here or there, a few scattered fences – an island in the middle of it all. An island that shrank and shrank and shrank. Would it keep going, all the way to them? Dropping them into a strange ocean surrounded by nothing?
The ocean got closer and closer, the stillness of it hurting his eyes; it felt like it should be flowing towards them, but it wasn’t, the land was simply being replaced by more placid liquid. They could do nothing but watch as it approached, backs pressing hard against backs.
Until finally, a change.
Instead of more ocean, a mountain started to appear. It filled in as slices, one cross section at a time, like a 3D printer was making it from the far side and going in. It hit the peak, half the mountain formed, then sloped back down. It spawned in with foliage, again the wrong color, blues and purples instead of greens and browns, an entirely new landscape forming around them.
The mountain finished, a bit more peculiar jungle, then charcoal-grey sand, sweeping away the last of what was left of the world until the travelling worldshift finally met them with a sound like a finger flicking out of a mouth. Pop.
And they found themselves on an actual island. One unlike any that could have ever existed, surrounded by an endless purple-red ocean. Transported somewhere new, with nothing and no one else around, not even the kozuka users that had been in a pile right next to them.
The four of them gawked as they spun their heads around, taking in their new setting. Momo swatted at the air, as if it might reveal it all to be an illusion. Maybe it was. Or maybe this was all just the last synapses of his brain going off after the fingers killed them all.
“…Miss Shiratori,” he finally said, having shifted back to normal. “What power did that guy use?”
With confusion still heavy on her face, she carded through the knives, reading their labels, trying to figure out which one it might have been.
“I guess… this one?” she said. “The others seem like yōkai, but I don’t know what this one is.”
She tilted it forward, revealing the flowing script on the hilt.
Monkey’s Paw.