Immolation and Corrosion

We stood against the giant slime apparition as it began to make its way towards us. I wondered what this thing was in life. Junpei knew a slime-guy didn’t he? Maybe he knew how to defeat this thing.

“Any ideas, officer?” I said.

“Let me try and get this thing off of you. You just need to seal that Rift, right? How long do you need?”

“Umm… gonna need a hot minute,” I said. “Perma-rifts don’t seal easy, you know?”

“Fine. Just try and make it as quick as you can!” Junpei said, his body lit aflame before he jumped towards the massive monster. The creature stood guarding the rift, but Junpei’s flaming kick immediately dispersed the creature, punching a hole directly through it.

On that cue, I immediately leaped through the hole and onto the other side. Focusing my energy, I tried to pour it out of my hands and into the rift. Sealing up holes in spaces required a lot of focus, so that’s all I tried to think about. I felt like I was making progress at least until…

“Akina! Behind you!” Miharu warned and I immediately turned around. I then saw a tendril grab my leg and immediately drag me into the air.

“Woah, woah. Hey… HEY!” I was then slammed into a wall, then the ground, then the wall again, then the ground. Every time I hit the ground, I got a good taste of the dirty sewer floor, before I was thrown against the wall one more time.

I let out a groan of pain and disgust. Terrible things had just happened to me, before I looked up and saw Junpei still fighting the thing.

“What the hell, officer? I thought you were supposed to protect me!” I complained out loud.

“Sorry. This thing regenerates fast,” the flaming man said, punching another hole through it. “And it seems like by the way it is, my main magic is having a bit of trouble. I gotta work twice as hard…”

“Tch…” I wiped myself off and spit out the trash that had gotten into my mouth from the beatdown. The slime monster had shifted itself to form a large set of tendrils, like the one that was used to beat me down with. Junpei was trying to destroy them, but they were forming too quickly.

“We can’t focus on the rift if it can just regenerate through Junpei and attack us through that. There’s gotta be a way to stop this thing!”

“I got it!”

With that I confidently raised Kyoha with a cool spin and fired it with one hand. I had gotten way better at that, and I didn’t even fall on my ass this time. I still went deaf, for a minute, but it was something I was used to by this point.

The issue was the magical shotgun blast that I shot at the creature seemed wholly ineffective. The damn slime just ate it like it was lunch, and then it just turned to me.

“What do you mean you ‘got it’?! You didn’t have anything. You just shot it!” Miharu unhelpfully complained.

“Well, I mean, that usually has it…”

Our argument couldn’t continue because another tendril slammed into my area, and I needed to dodge out of the way. I took out my knife, and began to run Miharu’s power into it as well. The long energy knife began to cut away at the tendrils that reached me. The issue is, these things just mopped up more sludge from the environment and made more mass to reach me with.

Junpei on the other hand, seemed to be pretty successfully burning away the tendrils, but he also had the same problem. The mass itself was too big. We needed a way to destroy it or else it would just reform itself too quickly. This thing also tanked Kyoha like a champ, so I needed to think.

I kept on running and dodging the flying tendrils that kept on trying to latch onto me. However, I accidentally tripped on my own feet. Woops. There were a lot of things flying around, and I was also trying to dodge all of the stinky gunk flying around. This fall was completely and perfectly justified if you were looking at my current situation.

Regardless of how justified that fall was, one of the tendrils latched onto my ankle and began to drag me into the mass. Into the smelly, steaming, pile of gunk that was its body. The worst thing ever was going to happen to me. Goodbye cruel world.

Before I could get fully absorbed, the flaming horse man kicked apart the tendril that was grabbing me and saved me from the mess. I immediately regained bearing my surroundings and leapt off the ground, spinning and pointing my gun at the monster again.

“That was a close one,” Miharu said. “Be more careful where you’re jumping!”

“I’m trying, but this thing just isn’t going down. How am I supposed to kill something like this? It’s going to run us down eventually!”

“Well. It seems to need to absorb things around it so… maybe if it just can’t absorb anything…”

Miharu’s thoughts made me think as well. It made me think a terrible, awful, and disgusting thought. But, it might be a way to destroy the apparition. It was just not going to be pretty.

But at least I’ll get to drag Officer Junpei down with me.

“Junpei! I think I have a way to beat this thing! But you’re gonna need to turn off your fire for a minute!” I shouted, jumping right next to him as he beat down another tendril.

“Huh? What is it?”

“We’re gonna dive straight into that thing’s center, and then destroy it from within. Your flame, and my own energy. If you don’t mind getting a bit dirty that is.”

“Hm,” Junpei looked at the flailing monster. “Fine. It’s not like getting dirty wasn’t part of the job.”

I didn’t want to get dirty either, but it seemed like we had no other option. Junpei turned off his flame, and I would kiss these clothes goodbye. They were cheap anyways, and I could buy another set.

“On my mark,” I said.

“And you too. If anything bad happens to me, fix me up as best you can. Also shut off my nose, I don’t want to vomit.” I also told Miharu.

“I already do that. I’m at your service,” Miharu answered.

“GO!”

The two of us took off running into the mucky sewage ghost. We jumped forward, and landed into the mess. The smell was muted, but the feeling still felt gross and terrible. An ugly, slimy texture that felt like it would melt in my hands. The ghost was somewhat transparent, and we could still see the outside, but I could tell this was difficult for Junpei as well.

We kept sinking into the apparition, and the tendrils pushed us in further. It was like diving into a really slow sinking swimming pool, but soon… the two of us managed to get absorbed completely.

It felt like the absorption was trying to pull me apart, but Junpei seemed to be holding on well. Miharu was working overtime trying to keep me in a stable condition too. Shortly after, Junpei activated his flame. His entire body lit on fire, and that spread out.

It became burning hot, and it’s not like this didn’t affect me as well. I felt like my skin was going to fall off from both the monster and Junpei’s heat.

“Akina… I don’t know how long I can keep repairing your body like this… you’re going to need to do something!” Miharu warned. She was doing great, because otherwise I would’ve been both corroded and immolated alive right now. The apparition itself began to be lit on fire, and it felt like it started melting away… but it kept on trying to reconstitute itself from the surroundings.

And now, it was my time. With a strong pulse of my energy, all of that power shot in every direction. I put as much power as I could into this blast, and suddenly the apparition burst into a thousand flaming pieces.

“RAAAAH—!” I shouted, as Junpei and I fell to the ground. I still had Miharu muting my nose, so I couldn’t feel how bad we smelled. I was going to tell her to keep on doing that until I took a very very long and thorough shower.

Flaming bits and pieces of the apparition began to burn away under Junpei’s flame, and the man himself didn’t stop either. He got up and tried stomping out any fire debris that still remained, but it would have a pretty difficult time healing from those tiny pieces while on fire.

“Akina. Remember the rift!” Miharu told me.

“Yeah. I got it,” I responded, picking myself off the ground and running towards the rift. I immediately got to sealing it, as I didn’t want anything else to come out before I could. With more focus, and a bit of time… soon, the rift closed.

“You done?” Junpei asked as the flaming pieces of muck dissipated around us. I nodded. It’s been a long day. Hopefully there was still time for rest.

***

“Sorry for keeping you up so long,” Junpei said. We both climbed out of the sewer, still a total mess. We both needed a shower, badly.

“Yeah. It sucks that we couldn’t get the riftmaker though,” I groaned. “All that for nothing.”

“Hey. I’m still paying you, cheer up,” Junpei said. “I’ll register it by tomorrow.”

“I guess.”

The money did sound nice, but for some reason I still felt pretty bummed about not being able to catch the riftmaker. Just, a weird empty feeling.

“Look who’s getting all wrapped up in justice. Seems like you’re seeing the value in me now!” Miharu said.

“Yeah. I guess. I don’t like it. I feel like we need to stop whoever that is. They’ve slipped us twice now. It doesn’t feel great.”

“We’ll get them eventually, Akina. That’s what problem-solvers do,” Miharu reassured me. “If we run into them again, then they won’t stand a chance.”

“We’re looking into the case, if you’re concerned about it,” Junpei said. “We know who to call to deal with the problem, so don’t worry.”

With the two reassurances behind me, I decided to smile a little bit. Might as well not get hung up on that past, and focus on how I can fix these problems in the future. “Yeah. You’re right. Let’s get this gunk off of us. We have clients to impress tomorrow.”

“See you, then. I have a long shower to take myself,” Junpei waved. We parted ways, and I headed back home. It was super late.

I suppose days-off are never that simple in this city.