The Search

“The window was broken open and the cage was chewed through,” Tatsuko solemnly explained to her friends the next day.

They were all sitting inside the living room of Altair’s house while her dad was away.

“And just before that, she attacked me,” Yoruhi added before turning to Altair. “Have you heard of something like that happening before?”

“No…” Altair said while thinking. “Wait. You said that was after you gave her water right?”

“Yeah, why?” he asked.

“Well, I don’t mean to scare you, but… that sounds like rabies.”

“RABIES?!” Yoruhi shouted.

Ah… I’m going to die again when I’m only four years into this world. He thought.

“What’s rabies?” Ryuji asked.

“It’s some type of virus that makes you afraid of water and very violent. But now that I remember it correctly, it can only affect mammals, so I don’t think that’s what Fukuro had. Also, the virus was eradicated a couple hundred years ago, so it’s very rare for it to appear again… Sorry for the scare Yoruhi.”

“You can maybe try mentioning it was eradicated first,” Yoruhi pouted.

Ryuji and Altair snickered.

“Hey…” Tatsuko quietly said, her voice faint and just above a whisper. “Do you think that Fukuro ran away to go die somewhere else? I heard that some pets do that so that they don’t make their owners sad…”

A gloom fell over the kids again.

“Well, if she did, that means she still cares a lot about you,” Ryuji pointed out.

“You think so?” Tatsuko asked.

“Well, we shouldn’t assume that she’s dead yet anyway.” Yoruhi said. “She could still be alive out there.”

“Yeah!” Altair agreed. “Maybe she just went somewhere to recover her energy. She’s probably tired of being sick all the time, and went somewhere to heal. When she’s all healthy again, I’m sure she’ll come back!”

“...I hope so,” Tatsuko murmured, but she knew that it was just wishful thinking.

“Anyway, I have to get going now,” Yoruhi said. “I need to continue my training with Arien.”

The friends waved goodbye to him as he exited the house.

It was here that Fukuro remembered that she needed to get to training with Vivian again, and so she also ran out of the house.

Watching the two siblings leave, Ryuji turned to Altair.

“I hope she’ll be okay,” he said.

Altair nodded her head.

“Tatsuko has always been strong, I believe she’ll get through it,” she said.

Ryuji nodded in agreement and turned over to Altair’s bonsai collection near the window.

“So… what soil mixture do you use for your deciduous trees?”

⋆✦-∞-⟡-∞-✦⋆

“Sorry about what happened to your bird, kid,” Vivian said as she trekked through the forest with her student.

The sounds of the large trees rustling in the wind and the occasional chirp of a faraway bird filled the silence that permeated between them.

“It’s okay,” Tatsuko said, “it’s not your fault… I guess it was just time for her to go.

“You’re being surprisingly mature about this.” Vivian said.

“Yeah? That’s because assassins don’t cry.”

Vivian stopped in her tracks.

“Now I don’t remember teaching you that. Where did you learn that from?” she asked.

Tatsuko slowly came to a stop as well before turning back to her mentor.

“Well it’s just that I’ve never seen you cry before,” she admitted, “you’re always so strong and so cool…”

“Haha!” Vivian laughed, “well this strongness and coolness don’t just come from anywhere kid! …You should’ve seen me when I lost my first scouting buddy. I remember crying for days. He was a good little falcon. But crying it out made me feel better about losing him.”

She pointed to the scar across her eye.

“And this scar too,” she said, “I remember screaming out so loudly when that mutated bear cut me through the face, I was almost ashamed of myself as an assassin. But my guildmates who were nearby didn’t judge me for it, and they instead took down the bear for me… They were a good bunch, and I’m sure I can say the same about yours too.”

She walked up to Tatsuko and gently patted her on the head.

“So if you ever need to cry you have both me and your friends to do it with.”

Vivian felt a small hand grab onto her feathers that draped over her shoulder.

“Woah–! Hey, that’s not a cape, that’s my feathers, I can feel tha—”

“So it’s okay to cry right now…?” Tatsuko quietly.

Vivian let out a small huff before she quietly smiled.

“Yeah. But… Please don’t do it on my feathers, okay?”

Tatsuko hugged her tightly and began to cry into her mentor’s arms.

And for the first time in the past year, she felt like everything was going to be alright.

⋆✦-∞-⟡-∞-✦⋆

Tatsuko sat alone in her room staring at the window which had been repaired by Nene.

Vivian was right, crying it out did feel a lot better, and she was even able to spend most of the rest of the hunting trip without thinking too much about Fukuro. She was occasionally reminded of her missing bird when she killed an invasive rodent and was planning to feed it to her like she always did, but as the day went on her grief started to dwindle down.

By the time she came home, she was already at a good level of acceptance, but still found herself staring at the locations of where friend usually perched.

Suddenly, she heard a pair of frantic footsteps running up to her door, before the voice of her brother called out.

“Tatsuko! I have a plan!” he shouted, “I know how we can find Fukuro!”

At the sound of that, she rushed over to her door and pulled it open to see Yoruhi standing there, exhausted from his training.

“There’s a new thing I learned today,” he said through panted breaths, “It’s called ‘trace detection’. It’s the highest level of magicule detection that allows you to discern the magicule makeup of specific things and track where they went. It’ll be a little faint, and since I’m kind of new at using this, it might take a while but…”

“Try it,” Tatsuko said, still clinging onto the belief that her friend was still out there. Screw acceptance, denial was better.

“I’ll need to see the cage she was in,” Yoruhi explained.

Tatsuko moved out of the way to let her brother inside and inspect the cage.

After a while he said, “just as I thought. It’s a bit faint but I can kind of see it because Fukuro was acting violent yesterday. If I can just track it…”

He followed a trace that was invisible to her, and slowly made his way over to the window where he stopped.

“What’s wrong?” Tatsuko asked.

“It… disappeared…” he said.

“What? Why?!”

“I think… I think it’s because Nene repaired the window so the magicule makeup got mixed up. It’s become a lot harder to detect now…”

Tatsuko crumpled to the floor in disbelief.

“But wait!” he said, “I can try asking Arien to detect it since she’s better at this than me. She’s not here right now, but I can ask her tomorrow.”

Tatsuko ran up to him. She wanted to punch him because of how he played with her emotions, but instead she gave him a hug. She knew he didn’t mean to, and was just the awkward kid he always was, and she was glad that he was still thinking about Fukuro even though she was starting to give up.

She recalled back to the day in the forest when she first found him stumbling around in brown woolen rags as if he didn’t know how to walk, and how she silently laughed at the ridiculous sight before her.

Now that person was her ever-so-reliable brother that she was glad she asked for.

⋆✦-∞-⟡-∞-✦⋆

“This is where it leads to,” Arien said with a yawn.

The four kids stared at the giant tree in front of them. It was a deprecated, run down house that was far away on the other side of the city, and they each wondered why Fukuro would ever run there.

“Are you sure?” Fukuro asked, not believing it.

“Hey, are you calling me an idiot?” Arien said. “First you drag me all the way here in the middle of the day, and now you’re doubting my trace detection skills. And to top it all off, I’m letting you guys skip school today because I felt bad. At least show me some appreciation.”

“...Sorry,” Tatsuko apologized.

Arien sighed, and looked up at the old tree in front her.

“I get it though, this is a strange place for a bird to run off to. Let’s see if the person inside has her.”

She walked up to the front steps and gave the door a gentle knock. When no one responded, she knocked harder, and when there was still no response, she just gave a shrug.

“Looks like nobody’s home,” she said, “Guess we’ll come back tomorrow.”

“What?” Tatsuko asked, her face becoming distraught.

“What?” Arien asked. “We can’t just break in there; that’s trespassing. Did your parents not teach you these things?”

“Yeah but they can’t just steal my bird… That’s stealing!”

“Technically, it’s not stealing if your bird went in there herself,” Arien sighed.

“Well what if they’re keeping her captive? What then?” Tatsuko asked.

“We should at least check inside,” Yoruhi agreed. “It’s not like we’re going to steal anything.”

“Tsk, tsk Yoruhi, and here I thought you would stand to be the voice of reason,” Arien said. “No, we are not breaking inside someone’s house. The best we can do is wait for them to come back if they’re not home.”

Altair walked over to Arien and stared up at her with her big, beady, scarlet eyes.

“If your sick grandma was in there, would you wait for the person to come back before breaking in?” she asked innocently.

“Oh, not you too Altair,” Arien said.

She placed her palm on her head and began massaging it as if conflicted inside.

“Fine,” she said, “I suppose you do have a point Altair.”

She looked back to the door and shuddered upon walking close enough.

“Geez, now these kids are going to convince me into breaking and entering,” she muttered quietly. “May Lumie forgive me.”

She took a big deep breath, steeling her resolve, and pulling back her arm to knock as loud as she could.

“ATTENTION GOOD PEOPLE OF THIS HOUSEHOLD.” she shouted, swinging her arm to knock on the door. “I APOLOGIZE FOR BREAKING IN BUT WE BELIEVE YOU HAVE OUR—bird…”

The door shattered open on impact, causing her to freeze—half because she didn’t expect the door to break, and the other half because of what she saw inside.

Her eyes widened in horror as her magical senses started popping off the radar, alerting her that she should not be here.

Inside the house was a powerful vortex of dark, complex, magicules swirling in the air; and its center was a portal to a realm that she had only heard of in her studies.

The Nightmare Realm.