You Want To Do WHAT Now?!

“Flower Power! Rise up, pretty pretty please!” I shouted into the sky. As had happened so many times before, Aichi ran in a complete circle around me, drawing the iris sigil. The transformation slowly got faster each time I did it, with the sigil inching its way up to the top of the head, transforming my clothes into my battle outfit in real time. Next came the bows and ribbons, and finally, my fighting staff. The transformation never got old.

“Ayame ~woof! I should have known!” Aichi cheered. His tone, however, shifted in a flash. “There's just one problem. This is an anti-magic barrier!”

“Yeah, yeah… I know,” I told him. “No magic can get in or out. But I got a plan.” Raising my free hand into the air, I shouted “Brave Charm!”

It was just a matter of watching to see what the spell would give me. The spell generated an orb of light that would mold itself into whatever item we needed the most to deal with the current obstacle.

A cannon?! That was supposed to be our great big deus ex machina? A cannon.

Aichi wasted no time leaping into the cannon with a “~woof!”

“Aichi, what are you doing in there?” I asked him.

“All my life, I've always wanted to get shot out of a cannon!” Aichi shouted back. That dang puppy…

“Why didn't you go join the circus then?” I asked. “I hear they shoot lots of things out of cannons.”

“I knew a Hollow who worked for the circus,” was Aichi's response. “~woof, she does not recommend it.”

I pointed the cannon straight into the air, hoping that would minimize the chances of Aichi getting hurt. If he insisted… I might as well have given him his wish. Once the fuse was lit, it was just a matter of waiting for the fuse to reach the cannon.

“~woof, what's taking so long?” Aichi asked while inside the cannon. “The suspense is killing me over here. It's not every day you get to -” Aichi's impatience was interrupted by the sudden motion of him being fired out of the cannon. He let out a very loud scream as he flew straight into the air. I imagined one of the many kinds of screams that Tom from Tom & Jerry would scream whenever he got hurt. That's about what that sounded like. Up and up he went until he was just a dot in the air.

And then he stayed there.

“Dear Frith, I think I just broke all the fluff in my body…” I thought I heard him cry out from all the way up there. Not so fond of getting shot out of a cannon now, was he?

A cracking sound shot through the air all of a sudden. Almost like a gunshot, that was. I ducked down to the ground in an attempt to avoid something that wasn't there. Another cracking sound was heard, and then another, and yet another. Something was breaking.

But what?

The sounds then changed to resemble shattering glass. It hit me then; we broke the anti-magic barrier. Unlike actual glass, however, the anti-magic barrier fizzled away as it broke into many tiny pieces, preventing any of it from reaching the ground and harming anyone. That last bit was very important as Aichi began to plummet to the ground below as well. I still was not fond of the whole flying thing, but I just had to fly up to catch him.

"Gotcha!" I said as I grabbed a hold of him.

With him in my arms, he whispered to me, “Let's get the fluff out of here before anyone sees us…”

•

One good thing about this whole flying thing, though, was that it was fast, even faster than the shinkansen. We made it back to Susaki in no time. As we flew over the city, it became clear to us that things had only gotten worse in our absence. The entire city had broken out into one massive riot. Well… riot might have been putting it nicely. Whatever it was the yokai had done, it had caused nearly everyone to break out into what I could only describe as the world's largest shouting match, complete with setting things on fire, breaking lots of glass, flipping over anything that was not bolted to the ground, and insults I had never even heard of before. The whole thing was a mess.

Our flight had been intercepted by my best friend, Shōko, already transformed, and her lamb Hollow, Sachiko. The two of them looked as if they were having a rough time dealing with those crowds. Somehow, Shōko's hair was even more of a frazzled mess than mine ever was. And that was really saying something. I thought I saw burn marks on Sachiko's fur as well. Although thay could have just been a trick of the lighting outside. I wasn't sure.

“Ayame!” Shōko shouted. “Wow, am I glad to see you!”

“And you, as well, Aichi, ~bo peep,” Sachiko added.

“We were worried that you were somewhere in those crowds,” Shōko continued.

“The same with you,” I told her.

“There's these… demon… looking things,” Shōko tried to explain.

But Aichi interrupted her by correcting her description, “Yokai…”

“Yokai?”

“They're yokai,” Aichi repeated. “Dear Frith, it's like you humans have never seen a yokai before… ~woof…”

“So how do we stop this, ~bo peep?” Sachiko asked while nearly on the verge of tears. “I've never had to deal with so many before!”

Aichi glanced at the crowds, then at us, and back at the crowds. I kinda hated it when someone would do that because that always meant they had a plan.

“~woof, I have a plan!”

…

•

The four of us flew into my house through the open bedroom window. Aichi flew straight for the closet, where Hideaki was hiding. In a hurry and perhaps forgetting his own strength, Aichi threw the closet door open, revealing Hideaki just sitting there inside his little bubble.

“Big bro, we need to talk,” Aichi told him. “What do you know about the yokai?”

“And why couldn't you ask me about that earlier, ~nanoda?” Hideaki asked in response. For there being a whole massive crisis outside, that little bunny sure was acting very nonchalant about this… Very strange…

“~woof, I don't have time to explain what happened. We need answers.”

“Alright, alright… sheesh,” Hideaki relented. “Sweet Frith above, ~nanoda. The vast majority of the yokai were sealed away inside the caverns of Mount Osore three thousand years ago.”

That would have explained why yokai sightings were so rare in folklore.

“The whole place was surrounded by a special barrier only Hollows know how to open and close.”

Could that have been the anti-magic barrier that Aichi and I broke earlier?

“As I said earlier, ~nanoda,” Hideaki continued his explanation, “the only way for them to get out is for them to be let out. This means this was most likely the work of a Hollow.”

Oh, great… The absolute last thing we needed was more evil Hollows running around.

Unless…

“I can teach you the spell,” Hideaki concluded. “However…”

A long pause followed, most likely because Hideaki did not want to reveal the rest of the answer.

“However…?” Aichi asked.

“It requires a lot of Hollows ~nanoda,” Hideaki answered. “In fact, it requires more Hollows than I've seen in all the years since the Endless War.”

“How many Hollows, exactly?” I asked him.

“About six hundred,” was Hideaki's immediate answer. “And I should know because I was one of them. This was, of course, before Aichi was born, so I don't know if the level of our training had anything to do with it or not.”

Before Hideaki could explain any further, people had begun to throw rocks and other objects into my bedroom through the window. That was our cue to escape. The four of us ran out of the bedroom first. Unfortunately, we had not yet learned what that spell was that Hideaki had mentioned, so for better or for worse…

We had to bring him with us…