Chapter One: Teenagers with Attitude Recruitment Program

Disturbance roiled the leylines. Reality buckled, then began to decay. Already too late to prevent disaster, what happened next could only be managed and maintained.

The world changed in an instant. A sprawling metropolis waited upon the sea, a center of commerce and culture. In a blink, unbeknownst to the inhabitants, the city was transformed. Reality rolled itself up as decades of progress were rewound. Towering buildings known the world over were erased from history and existence. Famous neighborhoods disappeared, replaced with dilapidated rowhouses and flooded fields.

“Ay ay ay!” said the castellan of an ancient keep.

If this kept up, the world could come undone!

Another tremor shook the leylines to their core. The ancient castellan made for the magic dampeners, lest the ancient keep between worlds be torn apart from the vibrations.

The city was now a mid-sized port with occasional high-rises. Entire generations throughout centuries had simply never been born. The time-space continuum was unraveling, all while the denizens of this mortal ‘earth’ plain were entirely unaware of the damage that had already been done.

“We must restore the leylines!” said the castellan, observing all this through myriad monitors.

Another violent shudder caused the monitors to flicker as magi-tech crystals nearly shorted out.

That once-mighty city on the coast had been transmogrified by the history-altering damage to the leylines. Now it was but a small agricultural town in an obscure prefecture. Its populace was forever changed, with many living elsewhere and the majority having never even existed!

Drastic measures were required just to keep all of world history from unraveling like string cheese! The castellan balled his left fist, with spectral azure flame escaping from closed metallic joints, and smashed a glowing blue button upon the dashboard.

The Fortress of Regulation shuddered again, this time casting an emergency spell to arrest leyline decay for seventy-two local hours. A temporary band-aid—but time enough to conscript local help.

Five glowing power pendants activated on a magical map. Five subjects immediately at or below the age of maturity for the local culture would be selected to stand between this tiny town that remained in the historical records, and the utter umbral erasure of oblivion.

“Ay.” The castellan let out something approaching a fatigued sigh. It had done this many a time.

The Umbral Court had to be kept at bay. To preserve the timestream, no sacrifice was too great.

+++

Surnames have been redacted to protect identities and the innocent.

A dismissal bell rang out over the sole high school in Tenshigurobu. The hundred or so students of this dilapidated, rural farming hub filed off to their clubs. All, that was, save for a small trickle of kitakubu—the go-home club.

Ren prepped his bicycle for a long ride back along canals and through the agricultural fields to his family plot. Such as it was every day.

A familiar cast awaited. Yuto and Miyu were cousins, Ren was pretty sure. They looked the same. Took their bikes down the same turnoff past the town’s small fishing pier every day. Certainly weren’t dating and kind of looked the same. Yuto had his hair kept tightly cut per school regulations, while Miyu’s hair had a troublesome cowlick that prevented her from truly meeting the school’s dress and hair regulations. At either rate, their uniforms were immaculate.

There was Haruto, who would have been the star player of the school football club had he not needed to head home and help with the family farm. As one of two upperclassmen of the go-home club, he’d be crossing the mountains to attend university in Tokyo next year.

Sakura, the other senior. She’d been part of some kind of strange club in first and second years. That club was now defunct, leaving her with nowhere to go but home.

These five kept their bikes side by side, united only in this one thing they had in common. Such had it been all year, and the year before that.

As they angled their bikes along the small town’s narrow, sloped road to prepare to head back home, they passed a sixth figure with platinum blonde hair and a sweater in place of the school uniform.

“Hi!” said the blonde exchange student in perfectly rehearsed Tokyo-standard Japanese. It stood out from the pitch accent of far-off Tenshigurobu spoken in these parts.

“Hello, Becca-san!” Miyu said to the exchange student.

Becca was an exchange student. Her school uniform hadn’t come in yet, having just transferred in a week prior. Very American. Blonde hair, tall, voluptuous. It was said she came from somewhere called ‘Oregon’ but few in the class really knew much about what this far-off city was like. She said it was most like Hokkaido in climate. Ren thought she was part of the go-home club as well, but Becca walked back into school with an overlarge American-style backpack. Perhaps one of the existing clubs had invited her along?

The guys watched Becca pass, disappearing through the front gate and back into the school. Miyu unsubtly nudged cousin Yuto, causing him to glance away from the foreigner. This, in turn, broke Ren out of his revelry.

It was time to go. They’d ride down the hill together, framed between the hilltop school and the sea some kilometers in the distance, then break off in different directions as the road split up. Same ritual that they did week in and week out in this small coastal village where nothing ever happened…

… until this day, when Ren happened to spy a warm purple glow coming from the second floor of the old, abandoned schoolhouse.

+++

Ren skidded to a stop so abruptly that the other riders had no choice but to stop as well.

The angle of the hill and a wall around both the old and new schoolhouse grounds meant that Ren would have missed it had he not been looking in the exact direction at just the exact right moment.

“Ren-kohai, what’s wrong?” Miyu asked.

The whole procession had skidded to a stop behind Ren. Yuto had nearly crashed into Sakura who had nearly crashed into Haruto, who had nearly wiped out over the top of Ren’s back wheel.

“We almost crashed into you,” Haruto added with a huff.

“Look!” Ren pointed.

A pulsing glow came through the cracked window of the town’s abandoned schoolhouse. Rising and falling, almost like rhythmic breathing.

“I saw it too!” Haruko said, pointing over the wall towards the old schoolhouse.

“Maybe the paranormal club is setting up for a lock-in?” Miyu suggested.

“It could be a fire,” Ren said offhand. “I’m going to go check it out.”

Ren turned his bike around and walked it up the hill. One by one, the others followed.

“Well, we can’t let our juniors get in trouble!” Sakura said, dragging Haruto along.

Yuto and Miyu weren’t going anywhere without the other, so they tagged along too.

The group of five let themselves back in through the school gate and made their way across the grounds to the old schoolhouse. With only one school for the entire tiny town of Tenshigurobu, this dilapidated building was where their parents went to school back in the eighties, and their grandparents before them. The old schoolhouse was a derelict and largely abandoned for over a decade. The structure was a walking tetanus and splinter risk. School staff would stop them if they noticed students wandering into the building, but this late into the day, nobody was on watch.

A front door beckoned, partially ajar. Ren tentatively reached out for the door.

“Are we really going in?” Miyu asked.

“What if a fire’s broken out? What if there’s someone in there that needs help?” Sakura asked.

Haruto shrugged. “Let us not rock the boat.” He pointed at Ren. “Let him do it.”

Ren maintained a stiff upper lip. He had a faint, faded streak of dyed-blonde hair in his bangs that made everyone think he was some kind of delinquent.

“Just… follow me,” Ren said. “If someone needs assistance, we’ll need at least two people, yes? One to stay with them, one to get help.”

They’d have to find an excuse for why they were snooping around the old schoolhouse if they needed to bring in a teacher or the school nurse. Still, if they wound up saving someone’s life, surely they wouldn’t get reprimanded too hard.

Ren went first, using his phone as a flashlight. The power had been disconnected from this old derelict years ago.

Sakura and Haruto, the dutiful seniors, followed close behind.

Miyu dragged her cousin Yuto through the threshold as well.

With the party gathered, they ventured forth. The strange glow was on the second floor. Ren made for the stairs. Only, he made it two steps before running face-first into some invisible barrier. He fell backwards, nose hurting but without blood.

“Are you okay?” Sakura asked, kneeling where he lay sprawled out on the jagged wooden floor.

Haruto tried the stairs as well, with similar results. Sakura didn’t comfort him to the same degree as their kohai.

None dared try the stairs. They weren’t about to be fooled a third time.

“Someone put flypaper up on the stairs!” Ren said, still discombobulated.

“I don’t think it’s a prank,” Miyu said.

A low hum rose over the old schoolhouse annex. It began to grow in noise and intensity.

“G-ghost!” Yuto said, shivering and cowering near his cousin.

The hum reached a crescendo, as if resonating with something, or engaging in an obsolete internet modem login operation. Then…

“This dwelling has been timesynced and Instanced.” The voice came out of nowhere. It sounded foreign, but as the words echoed, it became more discernibly Japanese.

The schoolhouse door slid shut of its own accord.

“Ghost!!!” Yuto said, blubbering and utterly without composure.

The hum reached a crescendo as if powering up. Then, the wooden façade of the schoolhouse fell away. The building hadn’t collapsed; it was just gone. A field of stars awaited in every direction.

Everyone was screaming at this point. That startled shout that arose involuntarily when something fantastic and utterly unpredictable happened.

This couldn’t possibly be happening.

Metal walls rose to replace the schoolhouse they were in moments before. Cold gunmetal, like a technological version of a medieval dungeon. The room was darker than the old schoolhouse, owing to a total lack of windows.

A great clanking sound came from some distant, unseen hall. A wall opened upward, and a mobile suit of armor walked into the nondescript chamber. A blue glow came from the joints, evidence of a spectral presence in this otherwise empty suit.

“Greeting, local pubescents. You have been conscripted!” the living armor said cheerily.