Salvaging the Situation

Kyoha in hand, I dashed over to the back of the stage. The riftmaker ran pretty fast, so much so that even I had trouble keeping up. The massive stage had a pretty large behind the scenes area to go along with it. I was hoping all of the backstage staff had evacuated by this point, and it seemed like I was right. It was as empty as it could be.

That was a bit eerie, especially since the lights weren’t on for some reason. I could only assume the lights were off to hinder visibility, but luckily I have a soul-bound ghost on my side that could help with these problems. My vision got turned up to eleven, as I walked cautiously through the backstage.

“Where could she be?” I asked her.

“Dunno why you’re asking me,” Miharu responded. “If I had to guess, it would obviously be by the emergency exits.”

“Well. I know where those are. Let’s try and cut her off!”

Luckily, I had boredly walked around this entire backstage while the show was going on. So, I knew where to check. With a dash, I ran towards the emergency exit, and began to look around in every direction. There wasn’t a lot to see, just a bit of darkness, but due to Miharu’s enhanced energy I managed to just catch something out of the corner of my eye.

“There she is!” Miharu called out, and I turned towards the side. From there, I saw the masked figure, in her hood, standing on the opposite side of me. I raised my gun instinctively, but there was one thing that caught me off-guard.

“Akina…!”

Shiori was held at knifepoint, as we stood off. Sweat dripped down my face, as this scenario was exactly what I wished wouldn’t happen.

“You didn’t evacuate?” I muttered.

“Akina!” Miharu immediately spoke into my mind. “Don’t blame her. We were supposed to protect her. It’s just as much our fault.”

I took a deep breath. Miharu was right, it was our fault. I should have known better than to leave Shiori alone like that. She was our client, the entire reason we were here in the first place, and I let her get captured just like that. Stupid. Stupid.

“I’m sorry, Shiori. I’ll try to get you out of this. I’ll fix it,” I responded. Approaching with Kyoha drawn on the target. I needed to remedy my mistake of leaving my client unguarded. Failure.

“A-Akina…! You can’t—!”

The knife was pointed even closer to her neck, quieting her. It also stopped my movements too. Even though I knew I could run faster than the average person, the riftmaker could as well. That knife would be a problem for Shiori before I could even reach for an attack. I also couldn’t shoot, with how imprecise Kyoha was either.

“You’re going to let me leave,” the riftmaker’s voice spoke. A distinctly female, albeit muffled voice.

“Do you think that leaving through that back door will get you out of here? I bet the cops have surrounded this place already!” I responded.

“Why do you think I have this girl in tow?”

I grit my teeth. Failure. That’s all I could think about again. I had too much success recently, and of course once I get my biggest job it loops all the way back down to failure. But there’s one thing I could do that I was familiar with, and that was salvage. How would I salvage this? I don’t know, but I had to figure it out.

“Who even are you?” I asked, standing there, unmoving.

“I don’t think that’s important to you. It’s not important to me either, to be honest.”

“Okay, then what the hell is all this then? Why are you cutting open these rifts and hurting all of these people? There can’t possibly be a good reason for any of this!”

“Did I not say that it wasn’t important to you? I’m just frustrated, that’s all.”

“Frustrated?” Shiori immediately blurts out. “I-Is that seriously why you tried to ruin my conc— MMMFFF—”

Shiori’s mouth immediately got covered as the riftmaker took a step forward. I didn’t take a step back though. I was still standing in her way. “She’s right. Is frustration really a reason to cause this much chaos? Is it really a reason to almost kill Yoshio?”

The masked lady looked back at me, with a tang of guilt. But, regardless, she still stepped forward with Shiori’s neck at knifepoint. She wasn’t moving back, but I wasn’t either.

“You keep on talking and talking. Are you going to let me through or not? My life is a dead end. It’s nothing to you, or me! What I am absolutely means nothing. Now let me through, and everything can end easily.”

“It’s not nothing to me. I don’t know how you see it, but you look familiar, and not because I saw you back then. But I’ve seen those eyes of yours before. I think we’ve talked a bit, and I really can’t understand why you would do the things you do,” I continued to speak.

“You really recognize her?” Miharu asked.

“It’s a hunch. But, trust me. I’m surprised you haven’t caught on. There’s a factor that she isn’t accounting for,” I responded mentally, before waiting for the riftmaker’s response.

“You know. I’ve had enough of this,” the riftmaker said. “How about I just stab Miss Pop Star in the neck and get on with it? I can beat you, and then I’ll figure it out from there.”

“I don’t think you can out-wing me sweetheart,” I responded. With my eyes turned to the side, into the darkness of the backstage. Looks like the cavalry had finally arrived.

“RAAAAH—”

In a blur, I saw a sharp set of fangs attach themselves onto the riftmaker’s shoulder. Two long claws grabbed at her hood, tearing at it and allowing Shiori to be released and be let free. The pop star ran to my side as the riftmaker swung wildly at the newfound attacker.

Azana kept on viciously attacking the riftmaker, as the top of her hood got torn apart. Though, with a few wild swings, the feral shrine maiden took more than a few stabs causing her to fall off, leaping back to my side.

“Took you long enough,” I said to Azana. She was bleeding, which was pretty bad, but she seemed to be walking through it.

“Screw off. We’re only in this situation thanks to you,” Azana huffs. “God. I’m… it hurts but it’s not like I’m not used to fighting like this.”

“If you can still fight then that would be helpful,” I said. “This girl’s got a lot more fight in her, I bet.”

I turned towards the riftmaker, her hood torn off. The familiar eyes matched my memory now, as I remembered who exactly this was. Two large cat ears flopped from the top of her head, as she stared daggers at me.

“Long way from a store clerk, aren’t you? Honoha,” I said, my weapon pointed at her. A bored-looking face that I saw when I went to buy my ramen, now facing off.

“Her? Seriously?” Miharu asked me mentally.

“We don’t have time to press her on her motives, we need to get her under control now,” I responded.

As a response to my questioning, Honoha growled. Aglow came over her body and she immediately dashed away, presumably to try and find another exit out of here, kicking up dust in her path.

“HEY! GET THE HELL BACK HERE!” Azana immediately shouted, before running after Honoha as well.

I turned back to Shiori, and nudged her to go. “We’re really sorry that we weren’t able to protect you the whole time. That’s our fault, but… just let us handle this for now. If you leave through this emergency exit, I think the police should be able to protect you.”

“...Thanks,” Shiori muttered. “I… I still appreciate all of your work. I… I was scared, but I still believe in you.”

“Thanks. That’s more than I can say for myself,” I sighed. “Now go.”

She nodded. Heading out of the emergency exit, she closed the door behind me and left. Now, it was just me and Miharu.

“While it was our fault, you shouldn’t be too hard on yourself,” Miharu said. “Our job isn’t done until we catch her.”

“Yeah. We got this. We… we got this…” I said internally. “We’ve got to solve everything right? Our failure rate can’t start now.”

“Good. I like that attitude.”

With our pep talk done, I flowed the ghostly energy through my legs, spun around Kyoha, and ran.