Apartment Confrontation

Outside of the crime scene tape the police had put up, all of the Fox Knights were discussing what had happened. “I told the police everything I saw,” Kumiko explained. “It wasn’t much, since all I saw was the victim’s wife running out of the house covered in his blood, but I hope it helps.”

“From what I’ve been able to overhear,” Hana theorized. “There’s a high probability that we’re dealing with yet another killing by Tsuda Mari.”

“This bitch needs to be stopped before she kills someone else,” Yoko denounced as she crossed her arms. “She’s a real pain in the ass.”

“And my biggest fear is that she might go after Yoshiro-kun or Kumiko-senpai next,” Tenko pointed out. “We don’t know how she feels about trans girls, but we know she hates boys just as much as she hates men, so going after the former is a given. I wouldn’t be shocked if she’ll go after the latter, too.”

“That’s what I’ve been fearing,” Kumiko nodded. “And I’d keep an eye out for Sayaka, too. This girl’s willing to go after other girls too if she thinks they’re too friendly to men and boys.”

Sayaka turned away slightly, fearful of what Mari could do to her before Kumiko held her hand, surprising her. “Ah, well, uh, I’m… Worried.“

“You’ll be fine,” Hana assured her with a pat on the shoulder to comfort her. “We won’t let anything bad happen to you or anyone else in the Fox Knights, Miyamura-san.”

“She’s right,” Ruka assured her. “We’re gonna take care of Tsuda now before she can kill anyone else.”

Yoshiro then got off the phone with someone, his face white as a sheet, before telling the others, “I just got a phone call from my mom. She says someone’s been loitering outside my apartment for the past half-hour, and it sounds like it’s that Tsuda girl. I told her to stay put and wait for us to get home.”

“Wait,” Yoko then gasped. “She’s at your apartment?!”

“We have to go now,” Ruka then told the others. “Hana, Kumiko-kun, let’s hurry.”

“Agreed,” she nodded. “Me, Murata-senpai, and Ruka will go with Yoshiro-kun to his house. The rest of you will stay on guard or on patrol in case she’s gone when we get there.”

…

Outside of Yoshiro’s apartment, which was numbered as Apartment Fourteen, Mari had indeed been waiting for half an hour, checking her phone to see what the time was. She knew that Yoshiro was most likely out given the crime she had just committed earlier, so she decided to wait for him to come back. This also served as a way for her to find and kill her next targets, who were coming up the stairs, none the wiser to who she was or what she wanted to do to them.

When the doorway to the stairs opened, Kana and Kazu both stepped out. Mari turned to them and greeted them with a smile, hiding her true intentions. “Hello there! I’m so glad you could make it!”

“Our parents don’t know we’re here,” Kazu explained. “How long will this be, Kosaka-san?”

“Not long at all,” Mari replied, having given them the fake name of Tsuruno Kosaka. “I’m just waiting for the rest of my friends to get here, but in the meantime, you two can help me with something.”

Kana asked her innocently, “Help you with what?”

“The woman who lives here is an enemy of magical huntresses,” she explained, lying to them about Yoshiro’s mother. “She’s that girl who keeps going around killing boys in Yokosuka.”

“Wait,” Kazu asked. “This is where Tsuda Mari lives?”

“You got that right, kiddo. We’re gonna take her out, and we’ll get that reward money the Agency promised.”

Kana looked at Kazu and pointed out to him, “We could use the money, oniichan.”

“You’re right,” he sighed. “Okay, we’re in.”

“Let’s get her, Tsuruno-oneechan!”

“That’s the spirit,” Mari replied with a smile. “Now, Kana, I need you to stay out here as a lookout while me and your big brother deal with this woman, okay?”

“Awww, but I want to go in,” Kana protested.

“Kana,” Kazu assured her. “I’ll be fine. We need a lookout anyway.”

“Fine, fine, I’ll stay out here,” she reluctantly backed down.

Mari then held out her transformation ring, prompting the other two to do so, as she told them, “Alright, guys, let’s go!” In three flashes of light that occurred in quick succession, they all transformed into their magical huntress and huntsman outfits before pulling out their weapons. Mari thought to herself as they all got ready, “These kids have no idea the trap I’ve laid out. While Kana is out here guarding, I’ll kill Arikawa’s mother and then Kazu, and I’ll make it look like the alleged Tsuda Mari killed Kazu before me and Kana flee the scene. I’m sure I’ll run into Arikawa soon enough, and when we do, the two of us will fight him together. Kana will be on my side in no time, and without her pesky little brother in the way, I can make her my apprentice of sorts. She’ll be convinced of the truth behind our kind and why we must remain for girls only in no time.”

Unbeknownst to them, Yoshiro’s mother had been waiting for them, having seen Mari pacing outside of her door and overheard part of the conversation. She waited on the other side of the door, holding a knife as she took deep breaths to prepare herself for the idea of potentially killing a child in self-defense. “Calm down,” she thought to herself. “It’s either them or me. You have to do this.”

Mari then banged on the door with her spear, breaking the locks further and further with each hit. After four tries, she forced the door in and found Yoshiro’s mother in position with a knife. The two immediately sparred, with Mari dropping her spear and pulling out a knife of her own as they slashed at each other a few times, spilling their blood on the floor and the wall. When Mari tried to stab Yoshiro’s mother in the face, she responded to her by pushing back against her as hard as she could. She then pushed Mari away from her and into the wall, breaking a portrait hung up on it.

Kazu yelled out, “Kosaka-san! Don’t let that Tsuda girl defeat you!”

“Wait a minute,” Yoshiro’s mother exclaimed. “What do-?!” She was interrupted by Kazu throwing a knife at her, which barely missed her head. “Hey, what the Hell?!”

Mari then got up and thanked Kazu with, “Thanks for that. I’ll take it from here.” She then picked her spear back up and tried to ram it through Yoshiro’s mother, but she missed when her target rolled out of the way and stood back up. “You won’t get away, Tsuda!”

“Who the fuck do you think I am?! I’m not this Tsuda girl! I’m Arikawa Shoko!”

“Don’t believe her, Kazu! She’s lying!”

They all then heard Kana yell from the hallway, “Hey, get out of here! We found Tsuda Mari first!”

“That’s not Tsuda Mari,” then came Yoshiro’s voice as he screamed back at Kana. “That’s my mom! The girl you’re with is Tsuda Mari!”

Mari, realizing her plan was crumbling, grabbed Kazu by his shirt and pulled him in, stabbing him with the knife twice as he screamed in fear before Yoshiro’s mother jumped in, wrestling with Mari before she could stab the young boy a third time. “Let him go,” she yelled at Mari as she was stabbed herself by her.

With blood everywhere, Kana and Yoshiro ran in, slipping on it as they tried to stop Mari once Yoshiro’s mother was forced to let go. Mari then picked up her spear and attacked Yoshiro with it, but he deflected it with his sword before then swinging at her. “You won’t get away!”

As Yoshiro then chased Mari through the apartment, Ruka ran in, seeing Kana crying loudly as she tried to help her badly-injured brother. “Oniichan, hang on! I won’t let you die!”

Ruka pulled out a vial of healing dust and poured some of it on Kazu’s two stab wounds as she told Kana, “I need you to find anything you can to bandage him up. I can’t use up all of my healing dust on him since I need to help Yoshiro’s mom, too, okay? I got more help coming.”

Kazu told Ruka with fear in his eyes and tears rolling down his face, “Please, oneesan, don’t let me die. I don’t want to die. I’m scared.”

Kana then asked, “Is my brother gonna be okay?!”

“We won’t let him die, Kana, I promise,” she told her before she then moved on to Yoshiro’s mother. She told her, “I got some healing dust left. I’ll dump it on your own stab wound and do my best with your other injuries.”

Meanwhile, Yoshiro and Mari battled each other in close quarters in the back of the apartment, trashing the walls around them with their weapons as Mari tried to repeatedly stab Yoshiro with her spear. Eventually, as they spilled over into Yoshiro’s bedroom and then out onto the rear porch of the apartment, they dropped their weapons and began to use their fists instead. Yoshiro broke Mari’s nose with a well-aimed hit to her face before Mari kicked him in the stomach, sending him to his knees before she then kneed him in the jaw, causing him to almost fall off of the porch before he caught himself with his left arm. Mari, seizing the opportunity, pulled out a knife and tried to stab him in the arm to make him let go, but Yoshiro was able to swing himself up and over Mari, landing back on the porch and grabbing his sword.

“You won’t win,” Mari yelled at him with rage in her eyes. “My war against you will continue!”

“Shut up! I don’t give a fuck what your excuse is! You don’t EVER lay a fucking hand on my mom or little kids!”

Mari then grabbed her spear from the ground and thrusted it forward, narrowly missing Yoshiro’s head as he jumped over to the porch of the apartment next to his, with Mari soon following him. The two knocked over a table and some chairs as they swung their weapons at each other, blocking their attacks and not making any progress whatsoever. “You can’t keep up with this forever, Arikawa!”

“Neither can you!”

“We’ll see about that,” Mari replied before the two clashed, pushing up against each other with their weapons. “You don’t belong with us! You never did! Hunting magical beasts was something for us, and boys like you stole that from us like you steal everything! Can’t we have something to ourselves where we don’t have to fear your shitty behavior?!”

“Is that what all of this shit is about?! You’re angry because magical huntsmen exist?! You want to hurt others because you got hurt?!” He then pushed her away, causing her to drop her spear again and briefly stop to catch her breath. Yoshiro also stopped, continuing to berate her. “Like I said before, I don’t give a shit what happened to you! I can’t let you go, not after what you’ve done!”

“Men wronged me first! It’s only fair if I get to wrong them in return!”

“I don’t care what some men did to you! It’s not a fucking excuse! You’ve gone insane, Tsuda!”

Mari, incensed by this comment, charged at Yoshiro with her knife as she let out a primal scream of rage, intending on killing him even if it meant her own death. Yoshiro responded by thrusting her sword all the way through her chest and out the other side before she got the chance to stab him. Coughing up a heap of blood, she told him, “You… You piece of shit…”

“Look at the path your actions have led you down,” Yoshiro told her as she began to die, her blood pouring down his sword and onto the floor of the porch. “You may have been treated like shit before by men, and I’m not saying you don’t have the right to be angry or wary of us, but you don’t have the right to kill every man or boy you see. Your hatred and your lust for revenge have only led you down a path into your own grave.”

“Spare me the bullshit,” she spat at him. “I don’t care if I live or die. I… I know there are girls just like me… Girls who want to do what I did, but didn’t think they could until I showed them it could be done. I may die, but the idea that we should have at least one thing to ourselves lives on.” She then gripped the sword with the last of her strength and pulled herself off, letting the blood from her wound pour out quickly to end her own life as she fell to the ground. She gave one last gesture to Yoshiro in the form of the middle finger as she told him, “Goodbye, Arikawa. I’ll see you in Hell.”

With that, Mari was officially dead. Yoshiro caught his breath as he looked down at her corpse, her eyes still wide open yet staring at nothing while blood slowly ebbed from her chest wound now that her heart had stopped. He wiped away sweat from his forehead, unintentionally smearing some blood on it in the process, before sheathing his sword and remembering that his mother had been seriously injured. “Mom! Mom!”

As he ran into the neighbor’s apartment, the owner, a businessman who had seen part of the battle, asked him, “Woah, Arikawa, what the Hell happened?! Are you okay?!”

“Out of my way,” he told him as he pushed him to the side. “My mom’s hurt!” As he made it out into the hallway, Ruka and Kumiko saw him and stopped him from going into his own apartment. “Hey! Hey! Let me go! My fucking mom’s in there!”

“Yoshiro-kun, listen,” Kumiko told him. “Your mom’s hurt really bad, okay, but she’s alive! The police and an ambulance are here, and they’re taking care of her! You need to step back and let them do their job!”

“Come on! Let me go!”

“Yoshiro,” Ruka then told him. “Listen to us! We’ve done all we can do! She and Kazu are going to the hospital, and we’ll take you there to see your mom! Just step back and let the cops and the firefighters do their job!”

“But, but, my mo-!”

Hana then placed a hand on his shoulder from behind. “Yoshiro, step back. Our work here is done.”

Yoshiro turned around and sighed, finally listening to reason. “Okay, okay, I’ll step back.”

With Yoshiro calmed down, Hana told two police officers nearby, “If you’re looking for Tsuda Mari, her body’s out on the porch in Apartment Sixteen. The Agency will be here soon with a cleanup crew and an investigation team to take over.”

…

At the hospital, Ruka was sitting with Yoshiro outside of the room his mother had been put in upon her arrival, the two of them having de-transformed back into their civilian clothes. Yoshiro was also bandaged up a bit from some cuts and bruises he sustained in his battle with Mari. “She didn’t lose a lot of blood,” Yoshiro said to Ruka. “But she’ll still need to be operated on. I’m gonna have to work extra hard hunting magical beasts to make up for the loss in income since she’ll be out of work. Even so, I’m just glad she’s alive and she’ll be okay.”

Ruka asked him, “Does your dad send you any money? Does he pay any child support?”

“Yeah, but it’s not enough to make ends meet. Like I’ve said before, I don’t usually see him, nor do I really want to.”

Feeling bad for him, Ruka remarked, “I don’t talk to most of my own family, either. Hana knows more about this, but… A lot of them don’t like to acknowledge me since my mom came from a lower social class. My uncle Daisuke is one of the only people I get along with.” She then arched her back and stretched. “Truthfully, I don’t have any real connection with them, especially not with my parents being dead.”

“So that’s why you live alone?”

“Well, yeah. I’ve lived with my uncle, too, but I wanted to be on my own since this line of work is pretty dangerous and he has his own family to take care of. Legally, Uncle Daisuke owns a house and rents an apartment, but in reality, I usually live there alone.”

Yoshiro was intrigued by this connection the two shared. “Perhaps we share more in common than we thought.”

“Maybe we do. I assume you don’t particularly care for your father’s family?”

“They can go fuck themselves for all I care. I assume you feel the same?”

“For the most part, yes.” She then looked down at the floor, thinking out loud about her own future. “You know, I haven’t really thought about what I want to do after all of this. I’ll hit my ten years when I’m twenty, but I can’t really picture myself at that age. I could always go on longer, but of course, if I do that, my odds of this job killing me go up with every year I continue. When it comes to families…”

“What about families?”

“On the off-chance I ever have one of my own,” she explained to him, her voice getting more emotional as she went on. “I want to be there for every moment I possibly can. I won’t care who my children fall in love with as long as they’re happy. I’ll love them unconditionally. There’s not a single fucking thing my father’s family could ever teach me about how to love any children I may one day have.”

Yoshiro was stunned. Ruka had never been this vulnerable to him before, and he was unsure of how to process this. “Ruka, you…”

“But who knows if I’ll ever get to do that? For all of my life ever since the accident, I’ve wanted to only swing my sword and fight. It gets my mind off of my past, and it helps my restlessness. Some nights when I think about what happened to me, I even summon my sword and keep it by my bedside to be more comfortable. It helps keep those inner thoughts at bay. I don’t think I’ll really get to have a family, to be honest.” She then turned to him and realized who exactly she was talking to, blushing and turning away again. “Ah, uh… I shouldn’t have run my mouth about my life… Sorry.”

“No, no, it’s fine, Ruka. I won’t tell anyone.”

“You promise?”

“I swear on my mother’s life,” Yoshiro said in a serious tone. “Anything you tell me that’s something deeply personal will not be repeated to anyone else without your permission.”

Ruka smiled. “Thank you, Yoshiro.” She then turned and noticed that Kana, who was standing near Kazu’s room down the hall, was still alone, their parents still not having shown up. “Hang on…”

As Ruka got up and walked over, Kana saw her and asked, “Oneesan, what’s going on?”

“Kana,” she asked her in a soft and refined tone of voice. “Where are your parents? Surely they would be here by now since your brother and their son got stabbed.”

“Oh…” Kana’s expression grew despondent. “They’re always late. They’ll be here, but it won’t be for a while.”

“You can sit with me and Yoshiro-kun if you want,” Ruka offered to the young girl. “I do not want you to be alone while the doctors and nurses work on your brother.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course.” She then offered Kana her hand. “We are friendly.”

Kana then reached out and held Ruka’s hand as the two walked over to Yoshiro. “Okay…”

“Yoshiro,” Ruka told him. “We’re gonna watch Kana until her and Kazu’s parents get here. She says they’ll be a while before they show up.”

“That’s fine,” he nodded. As Kana sat down next to him, he asked her, “So, um… What did Tsuda Mari tell you and your brother?”

“She told us that your mother was Tsuda Mari,” she explained. “She said her name was Kosaka Tsuruno, and that she needed me to go in and stand guard while she and Kazu-oniichan killed Tsuda.”

“I see… My guess is she wanted to kill my mom and then kill your brother, making it look like quote-unquote ‘Tsuda Mari’ killed him.”

“She lied to us,” Kana then said as tears welled up in her eyes. “She told us everything was gonna be okay, but… All she wanted was my brother dead… I don’t want my brother to die…”

Ruka then walked over and knelt down, holding Kana’s hand as she told her, “Kana, listen to me. Your brother is not going to die. The doctors are working on him now, and he will live. I know how important your brother is to you, and I want to keep you and him safe. You are in a very dangerous line of work, and I know how hard it can be for someone who is so young. I became a magical huntress when I was ten years old, and I can tell you from experience that it is difficult when you are first starting out, especially when you start out so young.”

Yoshiro then asked her, “Wait a minute, are you-?”

“I want you and your brother to join the Fox Knights. I will have to talk to Hana-san about it, but I am sure she will understand. We could always use more people in our group, and I can see the potential that you and your brother have. Under our guidance, you not only will survive, but you both could be amazing at hunting magical beasts.”

“I’m right here,” Hana then said as she walked over, having just arrived and heard the conversation. “What’s this about the Fox Knights?”

“Hana,” Ruka explained. “I want Ozawa Kana and Ozawa Kazu to join the Fox Knights. I’ve seen them fight, and they’re both pretty good for their age. I think with our guidance, they could be wonderful additions to our team.”

Hana then looked at Kana. “Ozawa Kana, huh… Would you be interested in joining our group? I’ll invite your brother as well when he recovers.”

“Well, um… I…”

“Kana!”

All of them turned to find the father of the twins storming into the hallway. Ruka asked the young girl, “Who’s that?”

Kana asked him with a worried look on his face, “Dad?”

He asked his daughter, “Have you been with these girls the whole time? What did you and Kazu get yourselves into now?”

“Sir,” Hana attempted to explain to him. “Your son was hurt in a fight. We hel-”

“Come with me,” he said to Kana, ignoring Hana entirely. “You need to stay with me. Mom will be here shortly.” As he took Kana with him back towards Kazu’s room, he turned around and gave the trio a dirty look.

Ruka, peeved by this, asked, “Hey, what’s the big dea-?!”

Hana put a hand on her shoulder, shaking her head to tell her to stop. “It’s not worth it. Let’s not argue with him in the hospital, Ruka.”