Chignash, Part 1

April 11, 2026

Ruka was in Hana and Riko’s dorm room, having just got done with a weekend practice session with the fencing club. Both Hana and Riko had also gotten done with their own weekend meetings with their own clubs as well. “The newspaper is all set to print on Monday,” Riko said to the other two. “Now we just gotta hope there isn’t a major story that comes out today or tomorrow.”

“Don’t jinx yourself,” Ruka remarked with a chuckle.

“Shit, you’re right.” She then pulled up her left sleeve and casually took off her prosthetic arm in front of both of them. Ruka and Hana both looked at her in surprise, prompting her to remark, “What’s up?”

“I’ve never actually seen you take your arm off before,” Hana replied. “Just you with it on or off.”

“Me neither,” Ruka replied.

“How else did you think it came off?” She then picked up the arm and grabbed a disinfectant wipe to clean it up. “I just gotta wipe it down or clean it every time I take it off.”

“Ohhh…” Ruka then checked her phone and began to text Kumiko.

RUKA: Hey whats up?

KUMIKO: not much wbu

RUKA: hanging out with Hana in her dorm room wbu

KUMIKO: about to eat dinner at home with my dad

RUKA: you wanna meet up later and train?

KUMIKO: sure ill text u when im free

Ruka then looked up and asked Hana, “Hey, can I borrow your portal generator? I wanna train Kumiko but I don’t wanna do it out in the open here.”

“Sure,” Hana replied before she reached into her bookbag and pulled out the portal generator. “Just make sure it comes back to me.”

Riko asked both of them, “What does that thing do again?”

“It opens up the same kind of portals that the magical beasts will open and use to come into our world,” Hana explained. Given that Riko had been attacked by a magical beast in the past, they both felt comfortable talking about the Agency in front of her, knowing she would not spill any secrets. “Unlike most portals, we can actually control when they open and close.” As she held it in front of her, she further explained, “These things are super rare and really expensive. I’m one of the very few magical huntresses in the area of the Yokosuka Branch who even has one.”

Confused, Riko asked her, “So why would you wanna even have one of those considering what comes out of them?”

“Occasionally, the Agency will use them to conduct research into the worlds the magical beasts come from. It’s pretty dangerous, so we really haven’t been able to research them aside from Halargia, which seems to be the most active world. As for me, I’ll use it sometimes to open a portal to Halargia so we can practice using our weapons without getting caught in our world.”

“Was Halargia where that one beast was from that did, well…” Riko then showed off her left arm stump. “All of this?”

“No,” Hana shook her head. “We don’t know the full details of the world that one was from, but it wasn’t Halargia.”

“Honestly, I don’t know how you two do it.” She then sighed and laid down on her bed. “It all seems so stressful. I could never do that, even with the money you guys get.”

“It’s not for everyone. However, you’d be surprised at the kind of girls and even some boys who become magical huntresses and magical huntsmen.” She then gave the portal generator to Ruka. “Keep this safe.”

“Of course,” Ruka replied. “I won’t let you down.”

…

Later on in the day, Kumiko and Ruka, who had entered Halargia and found themselves beside a rather large pond within a forest and had transformed into their magical huntress outfits, were practicing with their weapons by using trees as targets. As Kumiko swung her sledgehammer at a tree, Ruka told her, “Hit it a bit harder!”

“Got it,” she replied, starting to get tired from having hit the tree many times already. “Hyah!” She then hit the tree once more. She had been practicing with Ruka for quite some time, and had significantly improved. Even so, she wanted to still practice more to keep her skills up, and it showed in how some of the muscles on her body looked. As she set her sledgehammer down, she looked at her arms and remarked, “Man… If I told myself three years ago I was gonna get jacked like this, I would have laughed.”

“That’s good,” Ruka nodded. “It means the practices and exercises are working.”

“Yeah, but…” Kumiko then sighed, clearly bothered by something on her mind. “It’s just…”

“What’s up?”

“Having muscles like this… It’s good for me, but…”

Ruka, confused, asked her, “Is everything okay?”

“It kind of bothers me also, actually. It… It kinda reminds me of the body I was born in.”

Ruka immediately understood what she was trying to say. “Oh… That’s why.”

“Exactly. Having muscles and shit is more of a man’s thing, and, well…” Kumiko then sat down on a rock next to the pond. “I don’t want to be a man. I’m not a man. I’m a woman.”

Ruka assured her, “Listen, Kumiko, you don’t have to be a man to be muscular or strong.” She then pulled up her left sleeve and flexed her arm. “See? I gained some muscle. That’s what happens when you swing a sword around for almost six years.”

“I mean, I get it, but…”

“I don’t think you’re any less of a girl if you got some muscle. Anyone who tells you you’re not one can fuck off.” She then drew her sword. “Is anyone giving you shit at school again?”

“No, not this time.”

“That’s good.” Ruka then began to swing her sword repeatedly, counting to herself with each swing with a quiet whisper. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten…”

Meanwhile, Kumiko looked at Ruka and thought to herself, “I know she would immediately tell me why it’s not all good, but I wish I had her figure. Well, either her or Sayaka-chan’s figure. They both are really pretty. I can deal with the issues of having big boobs or an attractive body or whatever like that. It’s just… Sometimes, I can’t stop thinking about it.” Kumiko had begun to use Sayaka’s first name by this point, having grown close to her since the two trained a lot together due to being inducted into the Fox Knights at roughly the same time.

…

Later that night around 10 PM, while Ruka was watching TV in the living room, she hooked her phone up to a long charging cord plugged into the wall next to her couch. She then flipped the channel to one that was showing an anime she had been watching over the past few weeks. She remarked as the opening for the anime played, “Let’s see who dies this week…”

Then, her phone began to ring, and as she picked it up, she saw that it was a call from Hana. As soon as she answered it and before she could even say a word, Hana frantically told her, “You need to come back to school now, Ruka-chan!”

“Woah, woah, woah,” Ruka replied. “Slow down, Hana. What the Hell is going on?”

“We have a situation here and we need your help,” Hana replied after taking a deep breath. “Meet up with Fujimori-senpai at the front entrance.”

“Where are you?”

“It’ll take too long for me to explain here,” Hana frantically told her. “Just get to the school as soon as you can.”

Before Ruka had a chance to reply, Hana hung up with her. She sighed and said, “Ah, fuck, that can’t be good.” She turned the TV off and then rushed into her bedroom to get changed out of her pajamas and throw on some casual clothes.

…

About seventeen minutes later, Ruka arrived at the front entrance of the school after getting out of a bus. There, she met Yoko and Kumiko, the latter of whom had also just shown up. As she ran up to them, Ruka asked, “What’s going on? Why did Hana call me so late?”

A transformed Yoko told Ruka, “You’re gonna wanna see this shit. It sounds like Chignash has come back.”

“Chignash? Here?” Ruka’s expression turned from one of confusion to one of fear. “Oh no…”

Kumiko asked, “What the Hell is a Chignash?”

“Chignash is the name of an unusual magical beast,” Yoko explained. “Follow me. I can take you to where he is.”

As the two of them followed Yoko to the rear of the building, Ruka added, “Chignash is said to be at least one hundred years old. Unlike any other magical beast, he can talk like us and is fully sapient. He’s also been spotted for decades despite allegedly dying many times in battle. This is the first reported sighting of him since at least 2020, and the first sighting of him in Yokosuka ever.”

Kumiko asked her, “Well, what class is he given by Agency dispatchers?”

“He isn’t given one. He’s considered so unique that they can’t grade him. If a sighting of him is confirmed, they will start pulling as many magical huntresses in the area as they can.”

“How many are already here?”

Yoko explained, “It was me, Miyashita, and this other first-year girl here who’s also a magical huntress. She said her boyfriend was coming down, too.”

“Is he a magical huntsman too?”

“I would assume so.”

As they rounded a corner, they found that a portal had opened up on an outbuilding and that Hana was standing outside, clearly exhausted from fighting. She turned to them and said, “Oh, thank God, you guys made it.”

Ruka ran up to her and asked, “What the fuck happened?! Is Chignash really in there?!”

“Yeah, he sure is.” Hana then wiped blood that was coming down from her nose. “Agh… I got hit in the nose pretty good.”

“Where’s that other girl Yoko mentioned? What about her boyfriend?”

“They both went in together behind me, but…” Hana then looked to the portal behind her and sighed. “They got separated from me when Chignash knocked out the boyfriend. I told the first-year girl I’d get help for her. I have no idea how they’re doing now.”

“Anyone else in there?”

“When we first got the report,” Hana explained. “It said that there was a report of screaming followed by it suddenly stopping. At that point, the original caller saw the portal and called the Agency.”

“Fuck… That means there could still be someone in there. Did you see them?”

“Unfortunately, it’s night time in Halargia, too, so we couldn’t get a good look at the area around us when we battled Chignash.”

“Does the Agency know about Chignash being here yet?”

“I told them as soon as I left Halargia, but I haven’t seen any other names pop up on the app aside from you guys, that girl and her boyfriend, and the rest of the Fox Knights.”

“Alright.” Ruka then turned to Kumiko and told her, “Transform.”

“Yep,” she replied with a nod before both of them held out their left hands and their transformation rings began to glow. Once the two of them had transformed, Kumiko gripped her sledgehammer as tightly as she could, fearing what was in store for her. “So, uh, what is this thing again? What does he look like?”

“He looks like a manticore,” Ruka explained. “He has the body of a giant lion with wings, the horns of a goat, and the tail of a scorpion. However, he can speak like a human, and he thinks like one, too, which makes him all the more fucked up. It’s said he’s killed hundreds of people before, including many magical huntresses who have tried to take him down. The best we normally can do is repel him and get him to leave our world and go back to Halargia where he comes from.”

Kumiko was stunned. “Holy shit…”

“Follow me,” Hana then told the four of them. “We need to head in sooner rather than later.”

“You heard her,” Yoko then told the other two. “Let’s hurry it up!”

As all four of them crossed into the portal, Ruka thought to herself, “Here goes nothing. I’ve heard plenty of stories about Chignash wreaking havoc whenever he makes an appearance, but I never thought I’d get to actually fight him.”

When they entered Halargia, they were immediately confronted by a moonless sky above them and the entrance to a cave nearby within a forest. Hana pointed to the cave and told the group, “He went in there.”

“Let’s head in,” Ruka said before she drew her sword and ran in, quickly followed by the others right behind her.

Within the cave, they found that a few torches had been previously lit and left on the ground, providing a source of light, however small. Additionally, as they walked further in, they found a cellphone on the ground with the flashlight turned on. Ruka picked it up and asked Hana, “Whose was this?”

“If I had to guess,” she replied. “It belonged to whoever was screaming before we got here. I didn’t have my phone out at all. We battled Chignash outside the cave.”

“Hmmmm…” She then sniffed the air before covering up her nose. “Agh… It smells horrible in here.”

Yoko began to gag as the putrid scent that Ruka had reacted to began to hit her as well. “Ugh… What the fuck is that?”

Kumiko, also disgusted by the smell, covered up her nose and face before asking the others, “Yeah, what is tha-?” She stopped herself when she saw that Ruka and Hana were looking at each other with expressions of horror. “Wait, what’s going on?”

“That smell,” Ruka realized. “Hana, that smell is…”

“It smells like death,” Hana also realized. “Something’s been dead in here for at least a few days.”

“Which means Chignash, if he is here, has been here for a while.” Ruka then uncovered her nose and stuffed the phone behind her armor before continuing forward. She shouted down further into the cave, “Okay, whoever’s in here needs to come on out! We got more magical huntresses with us!” She had to ignore the growing scent of decaying flesh and old blood as she went further into the cave with the group.

They all then heard a low growling sound come from further in the cave. Hana told Ruka, “That’s definitely him.”

“I’ll go ahead first,” Ruka then told the group. “Stay back here for now.”

Kumiko asked Ruka, afraid of what could happen to her, “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Start heading my way after about two minutes have passed. Until then, I’ll hold him off by myself.”

Hana then tried to stop Ruka, telling her as she grabbed onto her shoulder, “Hang on! You shouldn’t go alone!”

“Let go of me,” Ruka demanded as she brushed off Hana’s hand. “I got this, Hana!”

Realizing she was not going to change her mind, she replied, “Fine… But I’m only giving you two minutes.” In her head, she still had reservations about what Ruka had planned, but she knew that Ruka could not be easily stopped.

“That’s fine,” she replied before she marched further into the cave alone, pulling out the discarded cellphone to use as a flashlight. As she walked further in, she started to come across the dead bodies of several magical beasts that had been killed prior to their arrival, with the smell of death being at its strongest at this point in the cave. The beasts were all small and resembled the usual animals one would find in a typical forest, although in true Halargian fashion, they bore a wide variety of unusual features such as odd fur colors, extra eyes or limbs, and more. She looked around at their bodies as well as the splatters of blood on the walls of the cave and remarked, “What the Hell happened here? These can’t be from any magical huntresses.”

Indeed, many of the dead magical beasts looked like they had been bitten into or ripped apart, and it looked like they had been dead for at least three or four days. Whatever had happened to them was not the work of a human, and it had not happened that night. Ruka heard the same growling from before as she looked at the corpse of a dog-like magical beast in particular that had had the lower half of its body ripped off. She looked up and saw a pair of red eyes in the distance further into the cave. As she shined the phone flashlight at the eyes, she began to see what was staring back at her: Chignash himself. As he continued to look at Ruka, he spoke to her in a deep and booming voice that echoed through the cave. “So, you’ve followed me into this cave?”

Then, right after, Ruka heard a pair of voices from behind Chignash, both of whom yelled out, “Help us! Someone, please help us!” She could not see who was making these noises due to Chignash’s wings blocking her field of vision, but she could guess that they were the missing first-year magical huntresses from her school. One of the girls then shouted, “Who’s out there?! Miyashita-senpai, is that you?!”

Chignash was unable to fully extend his wings due to being within the cave, a fact that annoyed him. “I can’t just fly out of here… I’ll have to take care of you instead. You’re different from that other girl that was able to escape through my portal earlier.”

Ruka then charged at Chignash, hoping to make some kind of strike against him. However, he responded by retracting his wings before by picking up a rock with one of his forelegs and standing up on his hind legs to throw the rock at Ruka. She was just barely able to dodge the attack, and fell over onto the ground when the rock struck the wall of the cave and several pieces hit her. As she got up, she thought to herself, “Fighting Chignash will be different from any other magical beast I’ve ever fought. Unlike all the others, he has human-like intelligence, which makes him so much more dangerous.”

“You managed to dodge my attack, even if just barely.” He then picked up a sword that he had kept behind him with his forelegs, which he was now using as a set of arms and hands. Even hunched over due to the height of the cave, he still managed to tower over Ruka. “Looks like I can use this against someone who knows what they’re doing.”

“How the fuck did you get a sword?!”

“I have my sources,” Chignash explained. “And this sword that I wield was made just for me. If a mere human tried to wield this, they would fail miserably.” Indeed, the sword looked far larger and heavier than Ruka’s, and it was stained with blood all over its blade.

Ruka then charged at Chignash again, attempting to attack him from the front. However, he blocked four blows from her in a row, and with each block, Ruka could feel pain in her hands from how much the weight of his sword pressed down on her’s. Then, on the fifth blow, Chignash pushed back so hard she was flung into the wall of the cave, causing her to collapse to the ground. When she got up, she felt her face with her left hand and realized she was bleeding a small amount from the mouth. “Fuck…”

As she charged forward again, this time attempting to attack him from her right side and his left side, Chignash asked her, “Again? Aren’t you gonna get tired of this?”

“Shut up!” Ruka then clashed swords with Chignash again, and after three repeated blows and blocks, she noticed that small cracks had formed on both of their swords as she was forced back. “Those cracks,” she thought to herself. “They’re a bit worse on his sword than they are on mine. If I strike his sword one more time, I may split his sword in half, but I also may destroy my own.”

“I must admit,” Chignash then said to her. “You’re doing a very good job against me. Much better than the other two of your kind that tried to pursue me into my cave. I let them live for now because of how pathetic they were, but trust me, they won’t be around much longer.”

“Hey,” then yelled the magical huntress that had been previously injured by Chignash and was lying behind him in the cave next to her magical huntsman boyfriend. “Shut up! Who are you calling pathetic?!”

Chignash turned around, yelling at her to silence her, “Enough talk out of you! One more word and you’re dead!”

Ruka, seizing her chance, attacked Chignash once again. When he turned around and blocked her sword, both of their weapons did exactly what Ruka had predicted. A shattering sound was heard as both swords split completely in two. “Aha!”

“My sword!” Before he had a chance to react, Ruka used what remained of her sword to stab him in the upper chest. However, as she looked, she realize she had stabbed him on the wrong side of his chest, meaning she had missed his heart. Chignash groaned in pain as Ruka looked on in worry, realizing she had made a mistake. “Agh… Hah… Heh…” He then laughed at her, amused by her attack. “You know… You’re the first person in a very long time to have managed to injure me so seriously.” He then used both of his hands to grip her sword as tightly as he could, preventing her from pulling it out.

“Oh no,” she thought to herself. “I can’t get my sword out! His grip is too strong!”

“Hmmm… How about this?” He then let go of her sword, allowing her to pull it out of his body. “This wound you gave me will heal in no time.” He then patted his wound with his right hand, pressing down on it for half a minute as he continued to talk to her. “You amuse me. Who are you?”

“Kishio Ruka,” she replied to him in a state of both confusion and fear. “My name is Kishio Ruka. I’m sixteen years old.”

“Sixteen years old… For a human, you’re a woman, but rather young. How long have you done this?”

“Six… Six years.”

“It shows in the way you fight.” He then moved his hand off of the wound, revealing that indeed, the wound had stopped bleeding. “I can just press my hands against a wound for some amount of time, and what you humans call healing dust will emerge from them.”

“You… You can’t be serious… You can heal your own wounds?! You’re nothing like the magical beasts we fight! You’re something else entirely!”

Ruka then heard Hana call out from behind her, “Ruka! Ruka!”

Chignash looked up and saw Hana, Kumiko, and Yoko running towards him. “Ah, I see you brought company.”

Yoko fired a bolt from her crossbow at Chignash, but he simply brushed the bolt off when it hit his shoulder, ripping it out with ease and prompting her to yell, “Wait, what the fuck?!”

Hana told Yoko and Kumiko, “Get the boy and the girl! They’re behind Chignash! Me and Ruka-chan will deal with him!”

Chignash bellowed as he used what remained of his sword to try to attack the three of them, “You’ll never get past me!”

Ruka immediately stepped in between and counterattacked, using what remained of her own sword to block him. With each attack and counterattack they did, their swords were whittled down further and further. Hana also joined in, using her unbroken sword to finally fully destroy Chignash’s sword as Kumiko and Yoko slipped past him. In response, Chignash roared and swiped at Hana with one of his hands, pushing her into the wall of the cave. Ruka yelled over to her in a state of panic, “Hana, no!”