shortly after midnight

“What have you done?!” Kaguya screamed.

“But I didn’t do anything! I don’t even know how!” Robert protested, stunned.

They were standing almost at the very top of Tokyo Tower, carried there by Kaguya’s magic. Impressive as that feat was, it paled in comparison to what had just happened to the Moon.

“Look!” Kaguya yanked Robert by the sleeve.

They both saw the phantom battleship Yamato, glowing with an eerie green radiance, hovering above Tokyo Bay. It descended for a moment, then stopped, hanging motionless in the air. Countless luminous points streamed out of it, spreading across all of Tokyo.

“It wasn’t me!” Robert blurted out immediately.

“I know… It has to be him… I don’t know what he calls himself now… It doesn’t matter. We need to hide—they’ll find us any moment!”

“That might be difficult,” Robert said, pointing at a swarm of winged, spectral beings flying straight toward Tokyo Tower.

They passed effortlessly through glass and concrete, becoming visible to humans only at the very last moment. Anyone touched by one of the demonic entities froze in place, paralyzed, trembling as though living through their worst nightmares while awake. Cars ground to a halt in the streets, pedestrians stopped moving. Soon, the wave would reach Tokyo Tower.

“Quick! We need to fly down from here—we’re perfectly visible to them! You can fix the Moon later!”

“And him?” Robert pointed at a gray, winged humanoid that had just landed beside them and was slowly shuffling their way.

“Don’t do anything yet!” With a sweeping gesture, Kaguya flung glowing powder from her pouch. The spectral humanoid dissolved into gray smoke. “Let’s get down to the street!”

They descended slowly, phantoms swirling all around them. The moment their feet touched the ground, they were greeted by Mr. Harada’s voice.

Harada’s men quickly piled into three cars and sped toward Tokyo Tower. Each of them had been given a talisman, carefully tucked into a pocket—Mr. Harada clearly knew what he was doing, and disobeying his orders in a situation like this would have been profoundly unwise.

It soon became clear that the talismans worked. They saw spectral beings flying around them, attacking pedestrians and drivers, forcing cars to stop abruptly or skid to a halt—but not a single one turned toward them.

Eventually, they were forced to slow down more and more, until the road was completely blocked by cars whose drivers had fallen under the spirits’ influence.

“Out!” Mr. Harada ordered. “Tokyo Tower isn’t far—we’ll go on foot.”

After several minutes of fast jogging, the group arrived just in time to see a tall foreign man and a young Japanese woman slowly drifting down and landing on the sidewalk. Strangely enough, that wasn’t even the weirdest thing they’d seen today.

“You see now, miss, what our situation looks like,” Mr. Harada began, choosing to restart the negotiations from the beginning.

“I see it—but I have nothing to do with this.”

“My view is quite the opposite. Our first unfortunate… interaction… set off a chain of events that we are now witnessing.”

Another spirit tried to sneak up behind Robert and Kaguya, but she tossed magic powder straight into its eyes, and the creature disintegrated into dust.

“As a gesture of goodwill,” Mr. Harada said, pulling two talismans from his pocket and tossing them at the fugitives’ feet, “pick these up. They’ll protect you—at least from lesser demons.”

“Robert, you can take them. They’re ordinary talismans. Quite useful, actually—I should prepare some myself…”

“I have many questions for you, young lady,” Mr. Harada interrupted, “but unfortunately we don’t have much time under the circumstances. I suggest a temporary truce. We have a more pressing… matter.” He gestured toward the spectral battleship Yamato, now gliding over the city like an airship, radiating green light.

“What are you proposing?”

“One of you is capable of wielding the power of a kami—an extraordinarily rare talent. I certainly cannot do that, but a man like Mr. Murata can.”

“Murata? He’s behind all of this?!”

“Precisely.”

Robert could only listen to the Japanese conversation, understanding very little.

“Returning to the point,” Mr. Harada continued, “I assume one of you used the power of the stolen kami—”

“I am not a thief!”

“My choice of words may indeed have been unfortunate. Regardless, one of you used a kami’s power, sending a signal visible to supernatural beings—and provoking Mr. Murata into action. I suspect it was you who wields this rare gift, young lady?”

Kaguya avoided looking either Robert or Mr. Harada in the eye. The man in the suit slowly turned his gaze to the tall tourist.

“You? A gaijin?!”
He caught himself quickly. “My apologies. Truly, this is an unexpected turn of events. Still, it would explain why such a… random individual found himself in this place and time. The ways of fate are inscrutable…”

“Sorry to interrupt,” Robert whispered to Kaguya, “but I think he’s talking about me…?”

“I’ll translate later. Let me negotiate.”

“Our foreign guest seems eager to be part of the discussion. Please apologize on my behalf—I understand a little English, but not enough for a smooth conversation.”

“Mr. Harada, I appreciate your courtesy, but I’m afraid we simply don’t have time,” Kaguya said, as the phantom Yamato turned and began moving toward them faster.

“Indeed. That sight deeply offends me—a national symbol of our country possessed by demonic beings. I suspect something far greater has taken root aboard it, and I can feel its presence growing stronger. I propose a temporary truce.” He pointed at the package clutched tightly in Kaguya’s slender arms. “We’ll deal with the rest later. For now, the demon aboard Yamato must be our priority.”

“Agreed,” Kaguya cut him off before he could launch into another polite monologue. “Do we have a plan?”

“Unfortunately, not yet…” He fell silent, thinking.

“Then I do.” She grabbed her magic powder and scattered it over Robert and Mr. Harada. “We’re flying there. We’ll figure out the rest later.”

“And what exactly did we decide?” Robert finally asked.

“That we’re flying to Yamato to free it from demonic forces.”

“Uh-huh. Wait—what?!”

The three of them flew slowly forward, the massive hull of the green-glowing warship looming closer. They rose above deck level, and Robert could clearly see the enormous gun batteries of the heaviest and most powerful battleship in history. A single shot in their direction would have reduced them to dust.

He glanced at his companions. Kaguya looked fiercely determined; Mr. Harada was calm, focused, ready for battle. Robert shared neither mindset and was still wondering how he’d ended up here at all. But at this point, there was no real choice.

The flying demons either ignored them or kept their distance—the talismans were doing their job. No more creatures were flying out of the ship; only the ship’s ominous aura remained.

Robert vaguely remembered from history class that this pride and symbol of the Japanese fleet had ultimately been outmatched by aircraft carriers. Yamato had been sunk in 1945 by bombs and torpedoes dropped from carrier-based aircraft. Yet the spectral ship before him looked brand new, untouched by even the slightest damage.

It felt less like a vessel and more like an idea—a symbol, now twisted and corrupted by demonic forces. Even Robert, who knew little about it, felt an urge to cleanse it. Maybe they could succeed—so long as he didn’t cause even more catastrophic destruction along the way.

They landed lightly on a wooden section of the deck near the bow. No one was in sight. They moved closer toward the main gun when, suddenly, Kaguya and Mr. Harada spun around. Even Robert felt the malevolent presence.

A woman’s figure rose up through the deck itself, passing through solid wood until she stood fully revealed. Her long black hair reached her waist. She held a long pipe, bringing it to her lips and taking a slow drag.

“Back in my days, things were different,” she sighed theatrically. “I fought mighty warriors, fearless exorcists… And now they send a child, a bureaucrat, and a gaijin.”

“Who is that?” Robert asked.

“Tamamo-no-Mae,” Kaguya and Harada answered in unison—neither sounding particularly fond of her.

“Wait, I’ve heard that name… like a video game character or something?”

“Now might be a good time to stay quiet.”

Mr. Harada stepped forward.

“Oh? So there is someone brave among you.”

“I will defeat you using our sacred rites.”

“Let’s see what you’re hiding, boy,” Tamamo taunted.

Mr. Harada pulled out a string of prayer beads—ojuzu in Japanese Buddhism—and wrapped them around his fists like knuckles, assuming a fighting stance.

“These are my exorcism rites.”

Tamamo raised an eyebrow, then decided it was safer to take him seriously. She spread her arms, and nine enormous, spectral fox tails unfurled behind her.

“Oh right—it’s that fox demon! I saw this in some anime—” Robert began.

“You were supposed to stay quiet!” Kaguya shouted over the wind whipped up by the tails’ appearance.

Mr. Harada remained unfazed.

“That’s all? Cheap theatrics—smoke and mirrors? Have the centuries dulled your fangs, demon?”

That clearly angered Tamamo. She growled at him but said nothing, instead leaping like a wild animal. For a brief moment, Robert thought he saw a gigantic fox.

Asagi, standing in a combat stance with her wooden sword drawn, was just about to charge Murata—who paid her no attention, staring instead at the spectral Yamato drifting across the sky. She decided to seize the opportunity, but at that moment a flash appeared somewhere on the ghostly ship’s deck.

Something like a bolt of lightning shot out, arced through the air, and slammed into the ground a few meters behind the exorcist, right near the hangars.

Asagi turned. As the dust settled, she saw a woman with long black hair in a kimono slowly rising from cracked concrete, clutching a cheek that was already beginning to swell.

“That hurt!” the woman complained.

She looked Asagi up and down.

“And who are you? Another stray?”

Tamamo straightened. Asagi immediately resumed her fighting stance, ready to face the new threat.

Tamamo regarded her with open disdain. At that moment, a taxi speeding at full throttle slammed straight into her.