Chi (Blood)

Wednesday, 4:45 PM. Aside from the ongoing matter of Hiromasa Ohtomo’s death, and the case of Noe Numasaki, there was very little of supernatural concern happening in Satsuma. An elderly woman complaining of a poltergeist here, a strange case of bilocation there, and both nowhere near Kumamoto. Thus, due to the location of his station, and due to his proximity to the two ongoing matters above, Knight-Captain Shunji Godoh was a de facto social media monitor for the Knights today.

Bound to a desk for eight hours, mindlessly scrolling through feed after feed, search result after search result, interrupted only every once in a while by the pronounced arrival of an e-mail in his inbox, was not the day in the life of an onmyoji that Shunji had been impressed with while being trained in the Godoh household for eighteen years. Surely, he thought, it must be a little more exciting in Japan, where his older brothers and sisters were working; Japan was the land of eight million gods, after all, whereas Satsuma was the land of one God and a handful of superstitions.

Frankly, he should have just clocked out when his divination for the social media climate predicted stagnation. The story was largely the same as it had been yesterday: the more vocal minds accused some of the members of FCZN (mainly Fuku-chan and Cocoro-chan) of being in cahoots with the government, of being part of some cult, and of being responsible for Ohtomo’s death. Meanwhile, the mainstream media either downplayed the nature of the connections alleged in the leaks, or called them fake entirely.

More importantly, some had suggested this afternoon that Ohtomo’s death might have been from electrical burns rather than thermal burns. Though he was not near any electrical equipment when the incident happened, and there was nothing like a flood that might occasion him being electrocuted, it would explain why he jumped backward and received sudden burns from a source that was nigh-invisible during the daytime. It clashed, however, with Justo’s report that Ohtomo’s body contained traces of black powder, and the medical examiner’s report that he had suffered impact trauma.

Either way, satisfied with submitting that piece of information to the Bureau, Shunji finally got up from his desk and prepared himself for the rush-hour slog back home. But just then, his head began to ache. To throb.

It throbbed in time, like a heartbeat, coming in steady waves. But it was not the tempo of Shunji’s heart; his had been at rest nearly all day. No, this was the heart of someone who was agitated, who was active. He remembered—something was in his blood. He tried to focus on it, shut out the pain and the debilitation and just think about the pulsing.

Images flashed into his mind. Clashes of fire and lightning. The glint of a sword. An aura of red. Spirits flying to and fro. The tense breathing of a young girl.

“Numasaki…” muttered Shunji.

* * *

Rewinding time once again…

Before a hair on Karen’s bob could be harmed, Leonor’s leg hit something solid. Very solid. The impact mattered little to Leonor right now, but she was forced to drop her leg back down to the ground.

She saw now that she had struck a piece of wood—a Japanese bokken practice sword to be precise. Karen was holding it with two well-spaced hands initially, but now that there was a pause in their melée, she let her right hand take it by the handle.

“Whew! Close one!” exclaimed Karen. “I’m not good with that kung-fu stuff. But it’s over now! I have the high ground!”

Karen raised the sword to her right, perpendicular to her stance, doubled her hold on the hilt with her left hand, and swung the sword at Leonor’s open left side. Leonor quickly dropped her shoulder to block it, but was unable to stop the blade from tearing through her clothes and skin. Karen kept the momentum going, bringing the sword inward to her own left side before thrusting it at her quarry.

This dealt sure damage, striking Leonor in the ribs and, at the very least, knocking the wind out of her. She let out a sharp groan before collapsing to the ground.

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic!” said Karen. “That was only with the back side of this sword. …Now, how should I handle you?”

She turned back to Noe. The wood of her sword began to shimmer, turning like mercury for a moment before being re-formed as iron.

“…Hmm, nah.”

The sword glowed again, but this time settled on a permanent, green-tinted glow, having traded out solid matter altogether for a laser.

“Nope. Still not my style.”

Karen retracted the sword’s laser and tossed the handle aside. Then, she paused to think. Noe could not do anything in this time but scramble in her mind for something, anything she still needed to do—something which, if she wished and prayed hard enough for, might get her out of this peril. But her mind at this moment was blank, and in her thoughts she fumbled fruitlessly. If nothing else, could she just pray that she wouldn’t die?

Karen snapped her fingers. “I know! Have you ever heard of shikigami, Noe?”

“Sh—Sh—Sh—Sh—Shi…”

“Aww, guess I’ll take that as a ‘no’. Okay then! Let me call one here right now!” She turned to look over her shoulder, and unzipped her backpack.

“DENKICHI!” she shouted. Her backpack began to shake, and tremble, and then glow, and finally a trail of white came streaming out. The trail’s head stopped in one place, and beneath that a body began to build, a humanoid body, down to the torso. Two long, muscular arms were defined, with bright blue five-fingered claws at the end of each. The head had no face, but a mouth split open, revealing a set of shifting, jagged teeth. Finally, along its back ran many electric currents, which seemed to endlessly flow. It hovered above Karen, filling nearly the whole back half of the room.

“Shikigami are spirits we capture to serve us. Denkichi here used to just be a plain old onibi, but he’s had a loooot of training from me and the boss man. Hee-hee! Now, go on, Denkichi! Sic ‘em!”

Faint currents of blue bolts appeared beneath Denkichi’s skin, pulsing in and out of sight. With each pulse, they became brighter, and brighter, and brighter; until they almost seemed to break through the surface, making Denkichi’s arms lose all definition, down to his blue clawed fingertips—making them indistinguishable from genuine lightning.

Denkichi did not even need to move from where he was. Drawing one arm back, he let it hit the wall—nay, pass through the wall—and then swung it at Noe like a flail, all while Karen watched with her face painted in sadistic glee.

In this brief span of time, Noe had a couple more thoughts. First, she was reminded of the fact that she, too, had a spirit following her around, like Denkichi with Karen. But, Chigadaira? Was that the name of this onryo? How did this girl, whom she had never seen before, know what the specter that had been haunting her for the past two weeks was called? Was she trying to turn him into another shikigami? For what?

And if she was trying to make “Chigadaira” a shikigami, could Noe do the same? If it meant being able to fight against threats like this, it would certainly be a lot more convenient than her giving up her free will every time.

And Noe needed to fight. Leonie had just gone down trying to protect her, and if she didn’t do something much worse was likely to happen to her. What friend would she be to Leonie then? And she herself was certain to die too; Karen had laid that out from the start.

Noe needed to fight.

God, she silently prayed, I know it’s bad to be possessed by evil spirits, even if they’re not exactly demons. But I wouldn’t mind it if this Chigadaira thing took control of me one more time; at least it’d be doing more good than with Justo and Sachiko. I know it’s been weakened (?) or something like that, but if it’s at all possible—

Now Denkichi’s arm came bearing down on Noe. She traded praying for simply sticking her arms out, squinting her eyes, and hoping until the very last moment that something, or someone, would swoop in and save her from her fate.

Noe felt no pain, but over the next few moments her vision—even as her eyes were shut—became clouded with red. She was compelled to open up to the light again. There was the same room, the same sister, the same onmyoji, the same shikigami, but nothing could remove this crimson-colored tint covering her vision. Then she noticed something new. Where the open air had once been between her hands were now leathern wrappings. A whole three feet of steel extended upwards, and against it was an electric amalgam, slowly homogenizing.

She had seen Byakko-maru several times now since it mysteriously came into her possession, but she had little, if no memory of how it felt to touch it, or to hold it. At this moment it felt unnaturally light, even with the force of Denkichi’s arm turning it inward on her.

Then, finally, came the voice—the voice, it must have been, of Chigadaira. Like a chorus of whispers it resounded, each echo touching a different point behind her, along the surface area between her two ears. The voice sent sparks crackling down her spine, jolting her to action. She knew not how she understood the voice, for it spoke nothing soluble, but once she accepted it, she moved according to its command.

First, she brought the sword downward, moving Denkichi’s arm with it. Then, breaking this entanglement, she drew the sword backward and above her head. A powerful swing downward severed the shikigami’s forearm, and created a deep crater in the floor. Electricity diffused throughout the whole space, touching every inch of Noe’s skin.

Karen, who had stumbled and nearly toppled over with the fissuring of the floor, was struck with awe at the sight she now beheld: a human and an onryo, moving as one, Chigadaira’s aura perfectly overlaid over Noe’s body. This aura was no longer that ethereal, royal white, but red—not a deep shade of red, but red nonetheless. Chigadaira was weakened, but was pushing his power to its limits. And, what was more, Noe did not seem to be fully possessed; her movements were far more fluid than the typical staggering seen in most cases like hers. Her teeth were gritted, her eyes on the hunt, but she was not frenzied. She had surrendered her senses to Chigadaira, but not her will.

Instinctively, Karen went up against the back wall, leaving Denkichi to protect her. The shikigami, now without one of its arms, shifted the unharmed one to its core and let the intact mass of the other be absorbed into it. Once again the blue bolts began to pulse throughout his body, but this time with only one endpoint the arm pulsed even stronger. More claws began to emerge and break through his white skin, forming what might be said to be the mace on the flail. Truly whiplike now, Denkichi let his pulsating, protean arm of lightning fall to the floor.

“I’VE SEEN ENOUGH!” Karen screamed. “DENKICHI, DESTROY THEM! DESTROY THEM BOTH!”