Crash

  “You're probably wondering why I gathered you here tonight,” said Debuu.

  The sentai exchanged a speechless glance.

  “We asked you here,” retorted Inês.

  There was a beat.

  “Right.”

  The four teens were sat in a line on the shrine floor, the rice paper door shut behind them. Outside, the wind hissed, and the snow whirled like sand in a rainless storm. It was early in the evening, and the sun was setting; shadows stretched in every direction. Two days had passed since Inês and Jin had gone investigating together, and now that Marcel and Lu were back in fighting spirit, the Shining Hearts Sentai PurePure wanted to have a talk with their guardian. A lone, lit lantern cast the only source of light in the room; low to the floor, set in between the group and the bug, it painted gloom on the watchful faces of the sentai; Debuu's own little mug, however, was left fully visible, his every tic and response on full display.

  “We have questions, Debuu,” said Inês, remaining imperturbable.

  “About what?”

  She didn't answer right away. She wanted to observe where the insect's mind would wander. Its wings fluttered with a buzz and its globulous eyes darted across the four, lined faces.

  “Have you been having trouble getting along?" it asked in a high-pitched tone, its mandibles squirming with apprehension. "It's Marcel, isn't it?”

  Marcel let out an indignant call. Jin put his hand on his leg, tapping him reassuredly.

  “That's not what this is about,” responded Jin.

  “Then it's Inês!” replied Debuu. “The tanuki whisperer herself. Gimme a break!”

  She looked at Debuu with distaste.

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked. “Why are you trying to sow discord among us?”

  Debuu shifted nervously, its wings buzzing. Its eyes glanced at the door.

  “You're dealing in matters you can't even conceive of,” it said in a hushed, hurried voice. “If you knew what the box you're trying to open really contains, you would just leave it be.”

  The guardian's typical toy commercial tone, high-pitched, saccharine, and overly excited, was nowhere to be found. It was as if they had accessed a new frequency.

  “Then help us understand!” retorted Lu.

  “Why have things been erased?” asked Inês. “Why are the people here like blank slates?”

  “Why do we not get hungry?” continued Jin. “And why does the food have no taste?”

  If it had been possible for Debuu to lose its black color and turn pale, this would have surely been the moment. The insect was fully fidgety, now, its gaze fixed only above the sentai's heads, staring at the door like it knew it was about to burst open at any instant. The only thing anyone could hear anytime the voices stopped was the hum of its nervous wings, and the shrill whistle of the wind, punching the shrine with snow in a seemingly obstinate effort to tear it down.

  Abruptly, Debuu's wings stopped moving. The bug closed its eyes. It seemed to be praying; or maybe it had resigned itself.

  “I never meant for any of this to happened. I was forced to enact someone else's will.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Inês. “Who?”

  But before Debuu could answer, there came a white flash from outside, as blinding as it was sudden. The bug was like a deer in the headlights, caught with a cast of terror on its face, its pupils reduced to two imperceptible dots. A thunderous roar joined the howling storm. Something was just outside the shrine and it wanted in.

  “Debuu, what is that?!” Jin asked in a rising panic.

  But Debuu didn't seem in the mood to talk. Hurriedly, it leaped from the floor to the offerings table and started scarfing down the kagami mochi unreservedly. Outside, the tumult and the lights got louder, brighter, nearer. The bug kept its eyes locked on the door, chewing with its mouth agape; little choked sounds coming from its occluded throat.

  “For... gi… me… tru… sa… ma,” it said painfully.

  Inês had to try something. Lu and she got up and did their best to help Debuu, but performing the Heimlich maneuver on a rhinoceros beetle wouldn't be a cake walk (not that the guardian needed that), so Lu simply started hitting the insect on the back, hoping to send the mochi flying out of it. Maybe there was a bit of vengeance in her for it having taken the treat she had so longed for. The bug did stop choking, but, in a crude, upward snowfall of pixelated blue light, it started vanishing bit by bit. It froze, looking at its stunned sentai.

  “I'm sorry I couldn't be more truthful with ya,” lamented Debuu with a sad smile. “It's not in my programming.”

  And soon, there was an empty, blue space where Debuu had stood just a second before; corrupted.

  No one talked for a moment; the four teens' shoulders and jaws hanging low. Inês was the first to break the silence: “This world is a lie.” she said simply, dejected.

  “How can you say that?” asked Marcel in earnest. “There are things we don't understand about it, that's for sure, but that doesn't mean everything we've done has been for nothing! What about the villagers? They love us.”

  “Didn't you just listen to Debuu?” retorted Inês. “He talked about programming. Maybe they were just made to love us.”

  Marcel didn't seem ready to believe it.

  “What about us? Everything we've been through?”

  He looked at Jin, wet-eyed. Lu seemed about ready to cry herself.

  “I think we still have a more pressing matter at hand,” said Inês.

  She grabbed Lu by the shoulders and helped her back up.

  “Come on,” she said. “We have to face whatever's outside.”

  Marcel and Jin shared a conversation in one look. Then, they nodded and rose. Lu looked back at the blue void left by Debuu, stumbling slightly. The four stood together in front of the entrance. The rice paper door glided open by itself. The night had veiled the landscape in a dark velvet cover, and the snow was sharp.

  “What is that?” asked Jin.

  Among the tempest, two bulbous white lights detached themselves up ahead. The roar picked up and advanced. Then, they heard it: the familiar, distorted music they all knew so well. A few meters ahead, in front of the shrine, standing with its gleaming white and chrome frame, it was Truck-kun.

  “I gave you purpose,” it said in a thunderous roar. “I gave you power. I saved you, and this is how you repay me?”

  Shell-shocked, the group offered no reaction.

  “You perturb the order of this world I created with senseless questions; incapable of accepting a destiny of meaning and glory.”

  Inês couldn't believe her eyes: the ice cream truck that had struck her into this world; the reason she had been sent back in time, was now standing in front of her in Sengoku-era Japan, its lights blaring, its engine running, and… talking. Too many questions were jockeying about in her mind for her to make sense of this.

  “Wait… what?” she mumbled.

  Truck-kun revved its engine. It seemed about ready to run the group over and be done with all this bother, when, along the black horizon, a plump limpid silhouette detached itself from the dark, hurrying toward the shrine.

  “Tanuki?” Inês said faintly.

  Standing in between the group and Truck-kun, Inês' friend seemed ready to protect the four teens with his life. At the same time, from everywhere and nowhere in particular, they heard the loud bark of what seemed like a hundred hounds. The tanuki shook in fear and hesitated, looking back at Inês, unsure of what to do. There wasn't more than a second of indecision in his mind: with a soft plop, the creature transformed into a formidable, fluffy tanuki-truck of his own (of course it had a tail). Truck-kun revved its engine once more, and the tanuki responded in kind. There was smoke and then they both let go. Tires screeched, metal crumpled, and there was a fleeting moment where they didn't know… Then, they saw the little tanuki's round body, inert on the disturbed snow.

  “No!” Inês cried out.

  She ran toward her friend, but when she got to him and kneeled down, the body was gone. What remained was only the crane that she had gifted him on their first encounter, battered and soaked.

  “What…?”

  Grief turned to rage. Marcel crouched next to her and looked her in the eye. He took out his netsuke and nodded to her, then he stood up. Inês and the others followed his lead. They wouldn't let this act go unpunished; they couldn't.

  “Power of purification: PurePure, let the light come forth!” they said in unison.

  But nothing happened.

  Without glow, the charms were but beautiful pendants.

  “You would use the gifts I bestowed upon you against me?!” shouted Truck-kun in outrage. “Then you are no longer sentai.”