Jessica screamed at the uninhibited violence being displayed. Lindsay wanted to scream, but even her mind had turned into a block of ice. She could do nothing as the one she knew as David stalked up to her.
“Don’t hurt her!”
Lindsay’s eyes, already widened with fear, widened further, this time in shock.
“J-Jessica…”
Her friend Jessica stood in front of her, arms spread wide in a protective gesture. The usagi’s legs were shaking. They jittered like two twigs caught within a fierce storm. Her pale skin looked nearly translucent. The fear permeating from her was an almost physical thing…
… and yet still she stood in front of Lindsay, protecting her, defending her. Even though she was frightened, Jessica was still trying to keep her safe.
David hesitated. He looked at Jessica, meeting her frightened eyes, then at Lindsay. He hesitated some more. Indecision became rooted on his face.
“What the hell are you doing?!” the oni shouted at David. “You gonna just stand there, looking at the stupid bitch! Get that friggin’ rabbit out of the way.”
David gritted his teeth as he continued to look between them, his internal struggle clear as day on his face. The oni behind him growled. Having grown impatient, he lumbered over to them with large, thundering steps, shoving David out of the way.
“Useless, friggin’ pussy.” The oni scowled, and then he swiftly backhanded Jessica.
“J-Jessica!” Lindsay cried out in horror as her friend sailed through the air, smacked into the ground, rolled across the hard, wooden floor, and then came to a stop several feet away. She didn’t get back up.
Jessica…
Tears leaked from Lindsay’s eyes, hot and stinging, running down her face. Her timid friend had been injured trying to protect her. It should have been the other way around. She was supposed to be the one protecting Jessica.
But I… I can’t do anything… too weak…
Lindsay wasn’t like Kevin. She didn’t have his resolve in the face of danger. She was just a normal girl, trying to live a mostly normal high school life. Sure, she’d been caught up in that battle at the California Comic Con, but there’d been so much going on back then that she didn’t have time to be frightened. She’d also been under the protection of Heather, who’d been so calm and collected that Lindsay had been able to take strength from her.
There was no such person here. The teachers were petrified, the students even more so. In fact, the only one who didn’t look frightened out of his mind was Dr. Allan Spencer, who stood far from everyone else, hands clasped discreetly behind his back.
A sudden pain caused Lindsay to cry out. The feeling of rough, steel-like fingers gripping her hair brought more tears to her eyes. The oni yanked. Lindsay cried again as she was dragged by her hair, across the floor, up the stairs, and onto the stage.
Tear tracks stained her cheeks as she was forced onto her knees. Large hands kept her pinned in place, and fingers like iron dug painfully into her flesh.
“Someone get the camera and start filming!” the oni shouted. A yōkai with a weasel-like face rushed to do as told. The oni then leaned down and whispered in her ear, his grating voice and breath on her neck making Lindsay shiver. “You’re gonna die today, bitch. I’m gonna fucking kill you.”
Oh, God!
Lindsay felt her bladder threaten to go. Her body was a shivering wreck. She couldn’t control it. Her mind had become overridden with fear. She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t do anything. She was helpless!
The weasel-faced yōkai turned to face them, the camera on. The oni grinned as he gripped Lindsay’s head between his hands. Lindsay sobbed. This was it. She was going to die. She was going to die and there was nothing she could do about it.
I don’t wanna die…
Visions flashed before her eyes, images of her friends, of her family, of the people she would leave behind.
Please…
She thought about Kevin, the boy she still sorta liked, even though he was a male.
Someone…
She thought about Christine, the girl she did like, and regret welled up inside of her as she realized she would never see the yuki-onna again.
Help…
“I want everyone to watch this,” the oni said, but his voice sounded far away. Lindsay’s mind was locked, clammed up with fear and overflowing with remorse. “This is what happens to humans who think they can befriend us! You should all learn to fear yōkai!”
This… this is the end.
Lindsay closed her eyes, hoping against hope that it would make the end less painful, that maybe, just maybe, if she closed her eyes, she wouldn’t suffer as much.
“Prepare for trouble!”
“And make it double!”
What?
Lindsay’s eyes snapped wide open upon hearing two very familiar voices.
She quickly looked toward where she heard the voices and couldn’t believe her eyes. There, standing in the center of the amphitheater, back to back, was Kevin and Lilian. Hope welled up inside of her breast. It was a hope that suddenly stopped, giving way to confusion instead, when she saw their outfits.
Are they wearing leather spandex?
“To protect the world from douchebags everywhere.”
“To defend the innocent with style and flair.”
“To decimate idiots who think they’re all that.”
“To kick their asses when they’re heads get too fat.”
“Kevin.”
“Lilian.”
“Curb stomping jerks at the speed of sound.”
“Surrender now or prepare to get your ass pounded into grass.”
The silence that came after Kevin and Lilian ended their, um, speech, was profound. Everyone was gawking: the teachers, the students, the yōkai—everyone. However, Lindsay noticed something the duo’s strange entrance had caused. She didn’t think anyone else had realized it, but she had.
The fear, which had permeated this room like a suffocating cloud of smoke, had vanished. Gone. It was as if that had been the duo’s intent all along.
I don’t believe it…
Tears, not of fear or pain, but of hope and joy, welled up in her eyes.
They’re really here. Lilian and Kevin really came.
She couldn’t believe it, but her eyes certainly weren’t deceiving her. They were there. They had come.
The silence that permeated the room was shattered, not by the people who witnessed this scene, but by the ones who caused it.
Lilian and Kevin turned to each other, clapping their hands together like a couple of kids playing patty cake.
“That was so unbelievably cool!”
“We were awesome!”
“I’ve always wanted to do that!”
“Although, you need to work on that ending. You totally threw us off.”
“I’m sorry, but I couldn’t think of anything that rhymed with sound.”
“It’s okay. We’ll work on coming up with something even cooler when we get home.”
“Yay! And now, at least, we can cross another thing off of our ‘list of things to do’!”
“Right! Quick, Lilian! Get out ‘the list.’”
Everyone remained silent as Lilian shoved her right hand into her cleavage, then pulled out a notebook and a pencil. She flipped through the notebook, then crossed off something in it. Lindsay, despite her head still held in the grip of the oni, facepalmed.
Are… are you serious? Are they really doing that now?
Apparently, Lindsay wasn’t the only one who thought what was happening was stupid. The oni let go of her head, allowing her to slump to the floor, and then stomped toward the end of the stage.
“Who the hell are you two?!”
Lilian, her two tails waving behind her like hissing snakes, pointed at the oni, her fiercely grinning face and shining emerald eyes presenting a stark contrast to the danger she was in.
“We’re the people who are going to kick your
butt, loser.”
The oni gawked. His face froze for all of one second, then turned a bright shade of crimson.
“W-w-w-w-w-what—you guys are—kill them! Kill them both!”
The other yōkai weren’t certain what to do, but they obeyed their leader all the same. Half a dozen yōkai rushed at the two. However, just before they reached the pair, Kevin held out his hands.
“Wait, wait, wait, wait! STOP!”
The yōkai, already confused, halted as if their feet had been glued to the floor.
“Before we begin this rumble, I wanted to ask a question,” Kevin said. “Do any of you know what a kitsune’s power is?”
The yōkai surrounding them actually thought about the question. One of them, a girl with green skin and flippers for hands, answered. “Um, illusions?”
“Correct!” Kevin clapped his hands together, his excited expression so far from the normal Kevin that Lindsay wondered if he’d suddenly gained a split personality. What was going on here? “Now, here’s my second question: What power do Celestial Kitsune have?”
Again, the girl answered. “It’s, uh, celestial… powers?”
“Right again! And now for my final question: Did any of you notice that Lilian is no longer standing beside me?”
Lindsay blinked, startled when she realized that, with all of her attention on Kevin, she hadn’t even noticed Lilian disappear. The others also appeared flabbergasted. They looked at the spot where Lilian had been standing. Not anymore. She was gone. Vanished. It was like she had disappeared into thin air.
“Gomu Gomu no Extension!”
Two tails suddenly slammed into the girl’s shoulder. The yōkai female crashed into the ground like someone had dropped an anvil on her. The wooden floorboards dented, and her body bent at an awkward angle, face up, glazed-over eyes staring at the ceiling.
And then Kevin acted. His guns left their holsters and he fired them before Lindsay even realized what was happening. The others were completely caught off guard, too. Kevin fired four shots, which exploded in a spark of green energy. Four yōkai suddenly hit the ground as the projectiles impacted against their faces.
“Celestial Art: Orbs of an Evanescent Realm.”
Half a dozen light spheres appeared around Lilian, glowing with the brilliance of a small sun. The orbs shot at the remaining yōkai, who tried to defend against them. However, when the orbs passed right through him, he, along with the other people watching—including Lindsay—became confused.
And that’s when the Lilian in front of the yōkai disappeared and another Lilian appeared behind him, her tails already extended and touching his temple.
“Kitsune Art: Illusory Sleep.”
Lilian’s tails flared briefly. The yōkai’s eyes rolled up into the back of his head and he crumpled to the ground. There he remained, inert, lifeless, and snoring really loudly.
And that was it. The half a dozen yōkai who had attacked them were defeated before anyone had time to really understand what was happening.
As Lilian and Kevin shared a high five, the oni’s face became progressively redder. Lindsay actually thought she saw steam pouring out of his ears.
“You two… YER BOTH DEAD! YOU HEAR ME?! DEAD!!”
“If you wanna kill us, then you’ll have to catch us first!” Kevin declared as he holstered the silver gun and unclipped a cylindrical object off his bandolier. “By the way, catch.”
He tossed the object at the yōkai who, out of reflex, caught it. The oni looked at the strange cylinder in his hand, a curious frown plastered on his ugly visage.
“Everyone, close your eyes!” Kevin shouted.
While several people appeared confused, Lindsay did just that, shutting her eyes tightly. It was probably a good thing she did, because seconds later, something flared to life, so bright that her eyelids actually turned white. She could hear screaming, a threnody of voices crying out in panic and pain.
“My eyes! Oh, Gods! My eyes!”
“Can’t see! I can’t see!”
“The light!! It’s so bright!”
“THE WORLD IS COMING TO AN END!!!”
“Dude, calm down. It was just a flash grenade.”
“Oh… right, my bad.”
While all the screams were loud, none of them were more ferocious, more furious, than the one released by the oni. Having received the flash grenade’s attack point blank to the face, it was only obvious that he would be the worst off. She could hear him, his pained, enraged howls. The sound caused the hairs on the back of her neck to tingle.
The light died down. Lindsay opened her eyes, blinking several times to clear it of spots. Everyone else was suffering from similar problems. Even so, it didn’t take long for everyone to realize that Kevin and Lilian were no longer there. Lindsay looked around, her head turning this way and that, before she saw the open door at the far end of the room, and the yōkai who should have been guarding it lying unconscious on the ground.
“Damn those two,” the oni growled angrily. “Damn them! DAMN THEM! I’M GOING TO KILL THEM! I’LL MURDER THEM DEAD!”
The oni leapt forward, off the stage. The floor cratered under his weight, but he didn’t let that bother him as he blasted off the ground again, barreling for the door, which he smashed through like it was made of paper. A series of crashes, bangs, and roars soon followed, the sounds growing softer with each passing second, until Lindsay could no longer hear them.
In the silence that followed, the yōkai who remained stood around, looking at each other.
“What should we do?” asked one of them.
“Hell if I know. I was just following that guy because I didn’t want to get killed.”
“Me too.”
“Should we leave?”
“Maybe…”
“Or maybe you guys should join us,” a voice said, one that Lindsay didn’t recognize.
There, standing by one of the doors, which stood opposite the one Lilian, Kevin, and the oni had vacated through, were two people—yōkai. One of them was a usagi like Jessica. However, the other was…
“Dude, is that an octupus-man?”
“It’s like Dr. Octopus come to life—except he has real tentacles!”
The octupus bristled.
“I am not an octopus,” he said in a strange accent. “I am an akkorokamui. Get eet right.”
“Woah. Listen to that accent. Are you French?”
“Gyaaa!”
As the akkorokamui banged his head against the floor in comical anger, the usagi looked at everyone there.
“We’re here to get all of the humans out of here before the oni returns. Any yōkai who wishes to help, feel free. If not, then I suggest leaving before I kick your sorry asses for ever thinking of doing something so stupid as holding innocent people hostage!”
Left with such a proclamation, most of the yōkai no longer seemed sure of what to do. However, little by little they acted, some leaving, while others stayed behind to help.
“Okay! Everyone, unless you wanna stay here, I recommend following me. Several vehicles are on their way to pick us up, and I want all of you to be safe at home before any potential fireworks start. Also, let us know if anyone here is injured. Davide is a healer, so he can fix those wounds right up.”
While many of the humans were distrusting of the two yōkai, they didn’t have much choice but to follow their directions. Anything was better than staying in this place.
Matters were helped when Davide used his powers to heal all of the humans who’d been injured. Perhaps it was the act of a yōkai healing them, but some of the humans became more at ease with the two. She supposed being rescued from a group of yōkai by other yōkai helped them realize that not all yōkai were evil.
Lindsay and a now-healed Jessica, Alex, Andrew, and Eric walked with the others as the usagi calling himself Mack directed the students out of the amphitheater. As they walked across the courtyard, the sun shining on their backs, Lindsay listened to the conversations around her.
“Huh, those two… I guess they’re not so bad… for yōkai.”
“Hm, it was pretty cool how that octopus healed those people.”
“Forget those two! Man, did you guys see Kevin and Lilian?! They were unbelievable!”
“It’s hard to forget what those two did. And Kevin, was he always that, um, weird?”
“Weird? I think he was pretty badass. He reminded me of Deadpool.”
“I guess he was kinda cool.”
“But speaking of Kevin, I should remember to stop saying bad things about him. If he can take down yōkai like that, who knows what he could do to me.”
The comments from the boys made her smile. She wondered if Kevin knew that his actions had given him several fans.
Probably not.
The girls were also talking about what happened.
“Lilian… she was kinda cool, wasn’t she?”
“Yeah, the way she handled those yōkai was amazing! I was so surprised!”
“Do you think we may have been wrong about these yōkai?”
“Maybe…”
“What about Kevin, though? You saw what he did, right?”
“Yeah, I never realized Kevin could actually be that cool.”
“I know, right? And did you see those abs? He was totes hot!”
Oh dear, Lindsay thought as several girls cupped their cheeks and sighed. It looked like it wasn’t just the males who Kevin had gained some fans from. She hoped Lilian was all right with random females pining after her mate. Considering there are already several girls who like Kevin, I can’t imagine her becoming too worried.
She, Jessica, and Kevin’s friends stopped walking when a group of girls walked in front of them. It was her and Jessica’s old group of friends. They looked at her and Jessica, their faces filled with remorse.
“Can we help you with something?” Lindsay asked, not quite coldly, but certainly not friendly either.
“I…” Alice started, then stopped. “We wanted to apologize… to you and Jessica, I mean. We felt really betrayed when we realized Jessica wasn’t human, and we pushed you two away. So, um, we’re sorry.”
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