Kevin eyed the large crater made by the blast, along with the trench that had been created when the beam seared straight through the ground. Its power reminded him of a high-intensity laser. Even though it hadn’t touched the ground when it moved, the excess energy still reduced everything within a certain radius to their constituent molecules.
As they landed back on the ground, Kevin took aim with his guns and fired off several rounds. The thunderclap echoed loudly in his ears, but he tried to ignore the noise and merely focused on keeping Fan in his sights—at least, the figure that he thought was Fan. When his bullets tore through her like she didn’t exist, he recognized the being before him for the illusion that it was.
“Celestial Art: Laozi’s Chains!”
“Void Art: Flames of Oblivion!”
Several chains sprung from the ground and were subsequently burned by the black flames conjured by Iris. The sentient fire consumed the celestial youki with an abnormal glee that caused Kevin to shiver. He never got used to seeing the Flames of the Void, which sought to erase all life and bring the world one step closer to the final oblivion.
Of course, the Void was anathema to celestial youki. The two were polar opposites. Thus, when the void fire met the celestial chains, a massive explosion of howling winds and overpowering energy sent everyone skidding backwards.
Kevin and Lilian shielded their eyes until the power died down, and then looked around. Aside from the new crater in the ground, only they, Christine, and Iris were present.
“Where did that bitch go?” asked Christine.
“She might be hidden under an illusion,” Kevin said.
“No.” Iris shook her head. “Illusions don’t consume much youki, but they’re a bitch to maintain, especially if she wants to use another technique like that cannon attack. She’s probably just hiding right now.”
“I’ve found her!” Christine called out, conjuring several shards of ice that flew toward the top of the bleachers, where Kevin could just barely make out the silhouette of a figure standing against the moon’s backdrop.
“Celestial Art: Tsun Su’s Shield!”
Several lines of light coalesced in front of the figure, moving in a circle until they took the shape of a giant yin-yang symbol. The ice hit the yin-yang circle and shattered like glass against it. The circle then morphed into a bright sphere, which shifted further still to form a sharp qiāng.
“Celestial Art: Taoist Point!”
The qiāng flew toward Christine who, unable to use any power beyond her ability to control ice, was as helpless as a human. The qiāng tore right through her like a hot knife through butter—or so it seemed. Rather than fall to the ground, Christine erupted into dark flames of the purest black, void fire, which exploded when the qiāng struck it.
When did Iris have time to cast an illusion over Christine?
Kevin was impressed by their teamwork. To not only create an illusion without anyone noticing, but for Christine to work with it required a lot of trust.
“Celestial Art: Orbs of an Evanescent Realm.”
Nine orbs of bright celestial youki appeared around Fan seconds before converging on her location. The three-tailed kitsune leapt into the air. The orbs followed her.
What began was a game of cat and mouse. Fan landed on the ground and raced across the grassy field. She tried running over to them at first, but Lilian cut her off by sending four orbs in front of her, forcing the woman to swerve and then reverse course. Leaping and spinning and running, Fan kept moving as Lilian sent her orbs to attack the lady from all directions.
She conjured a pair of golden daggers of celestial youki and attempted to slice the orbs apart. It didn’t work. Lilian’s supreme control over her technique allowed her to move all nine orbs in a ceaseless pattern that couldn’t be predicted. No matter how many times Fan swung her daggers, she hit nothing but air. The orbs surrounded Fan on all sides and every conceivable angle. She was trapped.
“Tch. Celestial Art: Tsun Su’s Shield: Version Two: Dome!”
Left with no other recourse, she created another shield, a dome this time, which surrounded her entire body as the orbs struck it.
Explosion after explosion rang out, ear shattering and intense. Despite the amount of power behind Lilian’s attack, Fan remained uninjured. The explosions ceased, yet the shield remained, pureness and unharmed.
“Void Art: Darkness Oblivione.”
A sphere of crackling black fire appeared over Fan’s head, massive in size, easily six times larger than Fan herself. With a grunt, Iris directed the giant sphere of darkness to descend. It fell on Fan without mercy. The shield that surrounded her fizzled out, and then the massive ball struck her. Fan’s final scream of pain as she was consumed caused Kevin to grit his teeth. Even though he knew this woman was an enemy, he never enjoyed it when other people were in pain.
“Do you think we got her?” Lilian asked as the void fire disappeared, leaving behind a crater that was nearly twenty feet wide.
“I don’t see how she could have escaped from something like that. Those screams of pain were certainly real enough.” Kevin frowned as he studied the damage done to the surrounding area. This was going to take a lot of effort to cover up. Out of his peripheral vision, he spotted Christine and Iris walking toward them. He smiled, but then widened his eyes when he saw something bright traveling behind them. “Get down, you two!”
While Christine just looked shocked by his yell, Iris grabbed the girl and yanked her to the ground. It was a good thing she did. Several seconds after they both hit the dirt, a qiāng shot through the space they’d been standing on. It continued traveling toward him and Lilian, but they both moved out of the way quickly enough to avoid it.
Kevin threw himself into a shoulder roll, coming back up on his feet and aiming his guns at the spot where the attack had come from. He fired off a single round and watched as it splashed against a shield that suddenly flared into existence. He fired off six more rounds. Two of his shots missed, but the rest splashed against the shield. This had to be the real one.
I’m almost out of bullets.
He only had two bullets left in each gun, and he couldn’t afford to reload while in the middle of combat.
“Lilian!”
“Right! Celestial Art: Divine Spears That Strike the Earth.”
Kevin watched as the woman, Fan, rushed out of her hiding place, dodging several thousand imaginary spears of light. He couldn’t see them himself, the spears, as he was not the illusion’s target, but he saw the effects it had on their opponent. Fan swerved and weaved through what she perceived to be a hailstorm of light spears that struck the ground and exploded, or so he thought. When one of the spears went through Fan and she disappeared, he knew that, once again, they had been fooled by an illusion.
“Dang it!”
Kevin rushed over to Lilian and tackled her mere seconds before another qiāng impaled the ground where she’d been standing. The spear exploded in a shower of light particles, which then took the shape of a rope that tried latching onto him and Lilian. He gritted his teeth as he held onto his mate and rolled them both across the ground, until they were out of the rope’s reach. He then scrambled to his feet and pulled the redhead up with him.
“What the heck is going on here?” Lilian seemed frustrated by their lack of success in finding the real Fan. He couldn’t blame her. Watching as all of their attacks were rendered useless by illusions bothered him quite a bit as well.
“I’m not sure.” He surveyed the soccer field, wary for any potential attacks. “But something is definitely wrong. I know that my bullets hit a shield, which means she had to have been there.”
Something was wrong. He didn’t know what, but the more he thought about the battle thus far, the more certain he became. He was missing something. They were all missing something.
He studied the soccer field. Nothing seemed out of place. The damage done by their battle was still there. He could see the many pockmarks created by th
e various techniques all the yōkai had thrown around like so much candy. Holes and scorch marks and various scarring littered the ground. The large trench caused by that Fan woman’s beam attack, along with the massive crater where the beam had struck the goal and exploded, remained. Likewise, the people on the bleachers were still passed out cold. Nothing seemed out of place…
… Until he looked down at his guns.
“An illusion,” Kevin muttered in shocked realization.
Illusions were a result of the caster’s imagination. If a yōkai could imagine it, they could cast it. However, illusions were rarely perfect. Since they were the product of imagination, if someone lacked knowledge about something, the illusion they cast would be imperfect.
Kevin’s guns were a pair of SIG P938s. They were both black, had fairly standard features, and carried 7+1 round magazines. While the design on his guns looked identical to the ones he had been using, there was something missing from the guns in his hands.
These guns didn’t have a place for his magazine clips.
“Pardon?” Lilian asked.
“We’re in an illusion,” Kevin said, loudly this time. “All this time, this entire battle, it’s been nothing but an illusion.”
Lilian’s eyes widened. Kevin turned to shout at Christine and Iris, who were walking over to them.
“You guys! We’re trapped within an illusion! You need to break out of it now!”
Following words with actions, Kevin bit down on his tongue hard enough to draw blood. His mouth was already filled with the coppery substance from the last time he’d dispelled the sleeping illusion, so the taste in his mouth didn’t change. However, the sharp pain disrupted his neurological pathways, which had the consequence of shorting out his five senses and breaking him free from the illusion—just in time to hear a terrified scream.
Kevin spun toward the source and stared in uncomprehending shock at what he saw. Christine sat on the ground, on her butt, her hands behind her back and being used as support. She was staring up at Iris in wide-eyed horror.
Iris had a qiāng composed of celestial energy sticking out of her back. It looked like it had been thrown at her from behind. The tip protruded from her chest, blood dripping along the blade’s edge, almost as if it were made of steel instead of youki, and an increasingly large red stain spread along her shirt and trailed down her stomach.
The twin-tailed succubus stared down at the qiāng’s tip, blinking several times, as if she couldn’t figure out what it was doing there. She then looked at him and Lilian. Their eyes locked for a moment before she looked down. As she stared at Christine, her lips twitched into a surprisingly warm smile. She opened her mouth, though whether to speak or something else, Kevin didn’t know. Iris released only a strangled gasp as blood dribbled down her chin.
And then she pitched forward, collapsing to the ground like an android that had run out of power.
“IRIS!”
Lilian rushed forward, her panicked and horrified yell proceeding her. Kevin swore as he followed her. He aimed his guns in the direction the spear had to have come from and fired off a round. Fan rushed out from behind the bleachers. He unloaded the rest of his rounds at her, but while his aim standing still was pretty much ten for ten, he couldn't aim while moving yet. His shots went wide. Even so, the three-tailed kitsune still put up a shield. Perhaps the sound made her react on instinct.
“Iris! Iris! Iris!”
His guns clicked empty. He knelt next to Iris at the same time that a shocked Lilian fell to her knees and tried shaking her sister awake.
“Christine!” His shout made the yuki-onna’s head snap over to him. He reloaded his guns with two spare magazines. “Keep that woman away from us with suppressive fire! Do it now!”
Christine’s eyes were still wide, but she obeyed his command. Hundreds of ice shards appeared all around them and peppered Fan, forcing her to retreat. They speared the ground like stakes, constantly following the path she took, leaving her unable to cast any of her techniques.
“Lilian! Lilian, listen to me!” Lilian looked at him, her eyes wide. “You need to take Iris and head over to Sonoran Junior High. It’s the closest school to the soccer field. Christine and I will cover you. Go now! Hurry!”
Lilian still looked downright terrified. Her eyes were wide. Her face was pale. She was shaking. Even so, she listened to him. Her tails extended and wrapped around Iris, lifting her into the air. He couldn’t see the blood soaking into her red fur, but he could see it splashing against the grass. Iris’s arms and legs dangled like wet noodles as Lilian rushed off, her reinforced legs going far faster than he would ever be able to run.
“You’re not getting away!” Fan shouted, but she was forced to retreat when Christine fired more ice shards at her. It became even more impossible for her to do anything when Kevin began firing at her as well.
“Christine, fire at the surrounding lights while I keep her busy!”
Christine didn’t say anything, but the ice shards she created suddenly changed targets. Instead of racing off to try and impale Fan, they struck the many lights surrounding the soccer field, shattering them and casting the field into near total darkness. Even kitsune could not see in the dark. Their vision was only as good as a human’s. Like Kevin, she probably only saw silhouettes.
A silhouette was all he needed.
A single gunshot rang out. A howl of pain followed. Kevin saw the silhouette stagger, proving that he’d hit his target somewhere. Knowing better than to push his luck, he put the safety on one of his guns, pocketed it, and then grabbed Christine by the hand and ran off.
Fan’s enraged, pain-filled screams chased after them.
***
The Sonoran Junior High campus wasn’t like the one for Desert Cactus High School. Where the high school was composed of multiple buildings of varying sizes, Sonoran Junior High was a single building. Constructed from a combination of red brick and cement, the building was shaped like a giant rectangle. It was a three-story structure that looked kind of imposing in the darkness of night.
Lilian ignored the imposingness of it as she rushed into the building, breaking through the door and hurrying inside. Her tails were coated in warm liquid. She raced down the halls, panicking as she tried to find the nurse’s office. Having never been to this school before, she didn’t know where anything was. But she had to find it! Iris’s life blood was being drained even now. If she didn’t find some place where she could at least try to patch her sister up, then Iris would die.
Nurse's office. Have to find the nurse's office!
The beating of her own heart was abnormally loud as she searched in vain for the nurse's office. She found a library, several classrooms, and even came upon the gym, but the nurse's office was nowhere in sight.
Where is it? Where is it?!
“Lilian!”
The shout came just as she was passing a hall she’d already been down. She saw Kevin and Christine. Kevin gestured for her to follow him, and she did not hesitate to do so. They ran down the hall, taking several twists and turns, their footsteps bouncing around them as they ran across the tiled floor. The many windows they passed allowed moonbeams to shine in, which reflected off the white tiles. Numbered doors were on their left.
“In here!” Kevin shouted.
They reached what could only be the nurse’s office; it was a decently sized room composed of white tiles and white walls. Blue padded seats rested against one of the walls and a long counter with a single sink and several cupboards sat against another. There were two doors. One led to what looked like an office with a desk and swivel chair. The other led to a room with a bed. It was the room with the bed that Kevin directed Lilian to.
“Set Iris on the bed.”
As Christine went over to the chairs set against the wall, Lilian did as she was told, though she nearly cried when she saw how terrible Iris looked. Iris’s entire front and back were soaked in blood. Her skin had become much paler. Iris had always been pale
due to her void blood, but now her skin tone was a ghostly white.
“Lilian, grab several rags—they should be over in the cupboard above the sink. Soak them in warm water and come back. Also, be sure to grab the disinfectant.”
Lilian nodded and hurried off toward the table with the sink. She searched the cupboards and quickly found what Kevin wanted. After setting aside the disinfectant, she put the rags under the sink, and then, not even bothering to wring them out, she rushed back into the room.
Kevin had taken his shirt off. She normally would have admired his broad shoulders and defined muscles, but she couldn’t take any enjoyment out of the sight. He’d wadded up his shirt and was using it as a means of applying pressure to Iris’s wound. When he saw her standing there, he gestured her over and began instructing her.
“Help me clean off the blood around her wound.”
They worked together, wiping away the blood, which seemed almost futile since Iris was bleeding so much. They still did the best they could. Most of the blood was coming out of her back, so they were eventually able to clean the wound on her front. As he set aside the rag and began disinfecting the wound, Kevin called for Christine.
The little yuki-onna looked shell-shocked. Lilian couldn’t blame her. She might have been a yōkai, but just like Lilian, she wasn’t inured to violence. She was probably even worse off than Lilian, who had been in several violent confrontations already and had even been forced to kill another in self-defense.
“Christine, do you think you can cauterize these cuts with your bakeneko power?” he asked.
“I-I can’t,” Christine mumbled, looking away. “I haven’t been able to use my bakeneko powers since that incident with Heather and Lindsay.”
“I see. In that case, I’m going to pinch Iris’s wound shut,” Kevin told her. “When I do, I want you to freeze it closed. It’s not the best solution, but it will keep her from losing any more blood until I can find a needle and thread to sew the wound shut.”
Christine swallowed heavily. “C-couldn’t Lilian just use her celestial powers to heal her?”
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