Sugar Rush

   “It's in moments like these that I really wanna eat,” grumbled Lu.

  The group, sullen and withdrawn, was making its way back through the snowy forestland. This was the first time their silent bubble had been ruptured since they had witnessed the magical girl voyage of Henrietta. Until now, it had been a couple of hours of treading through the woods, tongue-tied and ruminating.

  “We don't get hungry, Lu,” Inês reminded her mechanically.

  “I know, I didn't say I was,” she clarified in a moan. “Just that I wish I could eat… you know, my feelings.”

  “That's healthy,” ironized Marcel in a hoarse voice.

  They kept on marching in taciturnity.

  The snow was falling sideways along the algid wind. Debuu-ni was leading the march, Marcel and Jin a little ways away; Inês was behind them, Lu by her side. Lu would glimpse at Inês with a worried look now and then, something she had been doing more and more since Inês had cried to her over the tanuki's death. Inês often felt those glances, although she rarely caught them outright, always walking with her head pointed straight ahead; her eyes not really looking, more so seeing. That's why she didn't notice Lu wondering off to a gnarled tree obscured by snow-blanketed branches. The smell that lingered through the windswept woods in that moment was sickly-sweet and tinted with rust. There was stillness as the group continued to advance, leaving Lu behind. And then, there was a sudden, blood-curling scream that chopped the woods' silence in half. Inês turned around, her head searching where to look, but Lu was nowhere to be found. They heard her again.

  “Help me!” Lu yelled in a panic.

  Up in a tree branch, she was balancing against the void, pulling at her from under. On the tree alongside her, a giant man's head, burly and rugged, dangled by its hair from a branch near the trunk. He snickered, his teeth stained yellow and black, and advanced slowly toward Lu, slamming his jaw open in a manic, monstrous grin as if to signal he wanted to eat her. Lu's eyes widened and she screamed louder. She gave the head a kick to the eye which made him roll back and blinded him, but also made the girl lose her balance. She fell, now hanging only by her hands.

  “Do something!” she pleaded in a high-pitched shriek.

  Inês and Marcel grabbed whatever they could find: sticks and stones, and pine cones and branches, which they started throwing helter-skelter at the repugnant head. Meanwhile, Jin began climbing the tree bit by bit, trying to get to Lu. As the scene unfolded, a haze of glimmering ivory and scarlet flashes dashed through the chaos with tempestuous force. Debuu-ni, whirling its way upward in a rising dance, rocketed up to the branch, its eyes glowing red. With a blow and a flurry of burning blasts, it scorched the snickering creature mid-air. There was a low, brutal screech, and the head fell in a ball of pyre to the ground. Marcel jumped to Inês, getting her out of the way in-extremis as the hellfire comet came crashing down on them. In a discordant tumult, the ground trembled with the force of a natural disaster. The relic of the head, charred black, stood at their feet, fuming. Inês looked at the dark, alien mass; its features unrecognizable. Then, her eyes veered to Marcel.

  “Thanks,” she said in a hurried gasp.

  “Anytime.”

  Jin got to Lu in time. Their hands clasped in a muted echo, and, with some effort, he lifted her onto the branch. Climbing down the knotty tree in a snowstorm was no small feat, but, in the fullness of time, they managed to make it down, more shaken than hurt. Inês could finally catch her breath. She gave Lu a long, warm hug.

  “You're here,” said Lu.

  “We are.”

  She broke the embrace and looked at Lu, her eyes wet with tears.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “I was just walking when I saw these,” she said, showing a handful of brightly colored, star-shaped candies in the palm of her hand. “They were at the base of that tree. I was picking them up when that thing dropped down and grabbed me.”

  “That thing was a tsurube-otoshi,” said Debuu-ni. “They trick people into approaching their trees before descending on them. Usually they leave coins or something else that's valuable, but it probably heard you wanted food earlier so it lured you in with that.”

  “It's konpeito,” said Marcel. “It's originally from Portugal, I think.”

  "It looked sweet," said Lu sheepishly.

  She held out her hand with a hangdog smile. The others exchanged an incredulous look and, after a pause, took a star each. There was quietude as they crunched on the hard, vibrant sweets.

  “So...” asked Inês in a didactic tone. “What does it taste like to you?”

  “Hum... nothing?” answered Lu.

  “Exactly! Nothing tastes like anything in this world, you know that!” she shouted as she rolled her eyes. And, shaking Lu around a bit, she brought her in for another hug. "But, truth be told, I miss it too. The hunger, I mean."

  When she let go, Inês turned to Debuu-ni.

  “We'll have some more things to discuss tomorrow,” she said.

  The bug nodded vigorously, its pompon twitching as it did.

  “This world is working against us," she added. "Let's see if there's anything we can do about it.”

  Ashes of the tsurube-otoshi danced on the breeze like darkened snow as they followed Debuu-ni out of the blackening forest like a north star.

  "Say, Luci-chan," the bug said with doe eyes. "Since none of you care much for these konpeito, would you let me have them?"

  "Oh, I'm sorry, Debuu-ni, I threw them out already."

  "What?!" Debuu-ni cried out.

  They didn't camp out in the shrine that night. Instead, they went back to the House of Still Waters. It wasn't that any of them trusted Debuu-ni fully, or that they planned on going back to pretending like everything was fine, but they had a new mission now: they were going to put an end to this facsimile world and to Truck-kun's reign of terror, and for that they would need to join forces.

  That evening, they didn't pretend to enjoy dinner together and they didn't have a late-night debrief of that day's events; everyone went directly to their rooms, and Debuu-ni stayed in the dining room. But, later in the night, they all shared a dream of her, the first sentai, walking barefoot among a sea of stars: Henrietta.