Chapter 4
Chapter 4
Matsumoto, Nagano
May 3, 2013
7:59 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
As the ghost’s body sank through the floor, I grabbed my wife and threw ourselves at the floor, and not a moment too soon. Bullets suddenly smashed holes in the walls, the windows, the pictures, the cabinets, and all the ghosts who were huddled by the walls.
“Ichigo! Ao!” Kurumi screamed in my ear.
I blinked. And then I snapped my view to my right, to see the beach chair’s back get ripped apart by a bullet just a finger’s length away from the crown of my daughter’s head. I instantly tried to get up when a partially transparent arm suddenly grabbed my right shoulder and yanked me back onto the floor. A moment later, the head of my self-proclaimed four times great grandfather rose up through the floor.
“What are you doing?! Can’t you see that – “
“My daughter!” I yelled at him.
“I’m on it! Girls, barrier!” the inari yelled from the other side of the chair, where she and her fellow inari laid prone on the floor.
A cold wind suddenly began to continuously blow from the direction of our door. A few moments later bullets started drastically slowing down the moment they cross over the walls, and then ended up falling to the floor by the time it reached the middle of the room. Of course that meant that bullets ended up dropping all over me, Kurumi and Ao.
Thankfully the bullets were cool when they dropped, otherwise all three of us would be suffering burns, especially my unconscious daughter.
“What is happening here, Ohta?! Who’s shooting at us?!” the inari screamed.
I thought she was talking to me, so I opened my mouth to reply. However, the ghost who was holding my shoulder preempted me.
“We think they are soldiers Lady inari! From one of the peoples who are from another world!”
I felt time slow down in the seconds that followed. Disregarding the crazy words about their origin, this ghost…this honored ancestor had just said foreign soldiers were shooting at this house, right in front of an SDF base.
The fact that I can’t hear any Type 89 rifle or P9 pistol, whose sounds I am familiar with from watching every exhibition battle Dad was involved in and from my punishment by Dad, replying in anger against the foreign sound of these particular rifles...
...it made me feel something that I only felt once before; when Kurumi almost died from giving birth to Ao.
“What happened to my parents?!” I yelled at my ancestor, fearing that I was now an orphan.
“The people not of this world,” he replied while giving an approving smile, “made them and everyone in the district fall asleep with magic, irregardless of what they were doing at the time.”
“That is a bad thing to do,” Kurumi commented from beside me.
“Definitely! That single spell caused several lethal traffic accidents and would’ve turned this place into a sea of flames by now if I hadn’t remembered that gas stoves had become popular by the time I died. We had a frantic time turning off gas stoves – isn’t it quiet all of a sudden?”
It was only at that point that I noticed the shooting had stopped.
“Where are the others?” the inari’s voice cut through the unnerving silence.
“Lying in ambush at the first floor,” my ancestor grimly replied.
“Oh no,” Kurumi whispered in a mournful tone that I completely agreed with, seeing as buying this house had exhausted our family’s finances. And it had been damaged just now and may suffer more damage if this fight goes on.
All of a sudden a human shaped figure covered with glowing circles made of some written language leapt onto the windowsill of the lone sliding window in the room, with a firearm of some sort in its arms pointed straight at Ao.
Silent, flying, red balls of electricity suddenly streaked through the air towards the figure, fast enough that it wasn’t able to react in time.
And then I experienced my first close encounter with an explosion.
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Matsumoto, Nagano
May 3, 2013
8:00 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
My ears rang from the sound of the explosion that just happened, and my sight was blurred for a short time because of the flash from the explosion.
The disorientation was the reason why I didn't instantly run to my daughter after that explosion.
When my senses cleared up, I saw aftermath of the explosion.
The frames of the sliding window was gone, the windowsill turned into twisted metal. And the table beneath the window was destroyed, the legs and the top of the table snapped in half by the explosion from above it.
Seeing those broken objects woke me up from the disorientation, because my daughter was frankly the person in the room closest to the explosion. I frantically pushed my boyfriend’s arms away and in two steps had placed myself in front of Ao...to see if my daughter was still alive from that explosion.
I saw that Ao was sleeping untouched.
I gasped in relief and sank down onto the floor, with my forehead resting on the beach chair itself. After a few seconds of teetering on the verge of weeping someone laid a hand on my shoulder. Upon looking up, I saw that it was the inari, toting a kama in her right hand while facing the windows with a cold look in her eyes.
“What do we do?” I gasped out.
I had no idea as to what I should do in this ridiculous, ridiculous situation, where I and my loved ones were trapped in a shootout between ghosts and foxes on one hand, and mysterious magic using soldiers on the other hand.
“Stay here. This is the safest place to be in this battle.”
“We’re not moving away from here?” Ichigo asked as he knelt beside me.
“With your daughter in that state?” the inari scoffed. “Good luck making sure the ribs don’t puncture her lungs.”
My boyfriend hissed angrily and then continued asking questions.
“How about teleporting? You folks could do that, right?”
Before the inari could respond, the ghost who had yelled ‘fools’ spoke up.
“The ghosts from the castle in the north relayed a message from the tengus. They said you inari shouldn’t use any magic that might cross the barrier.”
“Why?” the inari asked.
“The tengus said the Outsiders. had set up a very well made spiteful curse barrier. One that they are hesitant to start tampering with.”
The usage of the words 'spiteful curse barrier,' 'hesitant' and 'tengus' in one reply already made me feel concerned. That concern quickly turned into worry when all the inari in the room suddenly had worried looks on their faces.
“How big is the barrier? What does it do?” she asked in an authoritative manner.
“It’s as big as the exact boundaries of this district. And it is supposed to turn all the air inside the barrier into gunpowder and then set off an explosion that would kill as many people as possible inside and outside the barrier.”
“You mean we’re inside a bomb?!” I shrieked at the ghost. “A bomb the size of a city district?”
The inari whispered the worst words that I could ever hear in this moment.
“Yes we are, Ms. Kurumi. Yes we are.”
Her reply was followed by the sounds of a violent struggle and a multicolored lightshow from the ground floor.
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Matsumoto, Nagano
May 3, 2013
8:14 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
“What just exploded?” Kurumi muttered as we watched a fireball rise from the ground some distance away from our home, through the damaged window and the holes in the walls.
I looked at the nearest visible and intact landmark that I knew of close to that explosion, compared it with my mental map of Matsumoto, and came up with a depressing answer.
“It’s the factory behind the base,” I said as the tattered remains of the curtains fluttered because of the shockwave, temporarily drowning out the sounds of the battle outside.
“Don’t some of our classmates’ parents work there?”
“Yes they do.”
“…I hope that factory closes at five o clock.”
“Me too.”
Some time ago, when the fight restarted downstairs, the inari immediately yelled out orders that were quickly followed by everyone.
Except for two inari, the identical twins named Moe and Ran who both looked not one day past fourteen in their human forms and midcalf length junior high school uniforms, all the other foxes and my four times great grandfather went downstairs and drove them outside the house, incurring lots of smashed furniture and plates in the process of doing so.
As for my family, with Moe and Ran’s help we moved Ao’s beach chair to the least damaged corner of our room. After that Kurumi and me sat down in front of the beach chair, while Moe and Ran crouched at both sides of our thankfully still undamaged door, ready to attack anyone unfriendly who comes through it.
“Ms. Moe? Ms. Ran? Who’s winning the fight now?” I asked the two inari.
Moe, the more reserved one of the twins, answered me.
“I couldn’t tell you Mr. Ohta. There is so much magic in the air now that I couldn’t tell how many are still fighting or who is…still alive…”
Moe’s words trailed off as worry and nervousness washed over her, a sentiment that I also felt at that moment in regards to Dad and Mom.
“Oh cheer up Sis!” Ran, the outgoing one of the two, chimed in. “Lady Shizuka is one of the most powerful messengers of Mistress Inari! And Mommy’s been alive for a hundred years now! They’ll be alright out there. And let’s not forget Mr. Ohta’s ancestors!”
I winced at the revelation that their mother was fighting out there, in a battlefield that was equal parts a war movie and Naruto; what with the balls and beams of light blowing up or burning everything solid that was hit, and the constant sound of metal hitting metal competing with gunshots and whatever it was that the foxes and the mysterious soldiers were shouting.
And then I had a horrible realization.
“Ichigo?” Kurumi asked me with a worried tone of voice.
“Mom and Dad are still out there.”
I’m not sure, but most likely they were on the street when these magical soldiers cast their magic. Therefore my parents must be asleep somewhere on the streets, along with who knows how many others, in the middle of this battlefield.
“Oh no. Ichigo, are you going to look for them?“
My wife had a really conflicted look on her face. I guessed that she was torn between wanting me safe and sound right here with her, and not wanting me to suffer the pain of losing my parents…like this.
“No,” I said while shaking my head. “As much as I want to, I don’t have any idea where they are now. And it’s irresponsible of me to just crawl into the middle of a fight that involved not only firearms but superhuman strength and speed, along with magical analogues of high explosives and anti-tank weaponry.”
My wife sighed in relief after my explanation.
“Madar Chod. All this because of a motorcycle accident."
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Matsumoto, Nagano
May 3, 2013
8:14 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
I snapped my head towards the window, where I saw the rat man in all its golden ornaments and colorful skirt and white turban. It was looking out of the windows, one hand at its waist and the other hand massaging the two temples of its head.
“What do you want now?” I hissed at the bastard.
The rat man sighed, looked back at me and was about to speak when its head suddenly jerked. The rat man then made several hops backwards as it tried to get back its balance. Moments later its head knocked against the wall, and its body rested against the wall.
“Mr. Krauncha?” Moe, the inari that wore a pink headband, asked it.
It raised a trembling left hand in a gesture of patience, and with its right hand it did something so horrifying I never managed to summon the will to look away.
Its fingers sank into the its head, and audibly squelched around for several moments. Finally, the fingers went out of its head, stained in blood and clumps of something, holding a metallic object.
“Did you just pull a bullet out of your brain, with your fingers?” Ichigo whispered in a horrified tone of voice that I agree with.
The rat man ignored my fiancé in favor of shaking its head, an action that splattered a lot of blood and something else onto the wall where we had our pictures hung on. Moments later, the splattering stopped even while the head was still shaking like a wet dog.
“Alright. That’s better,” it said as it stopped shaking its head, and dropped the bullet on our floor. Then it noticed me and Ichigo.
“Oh come on. Pulling a bullet from one’s brains, and then healing your head and brains by yourself wasn’t awe inspiring?”
Me and Ichigo slowly shook our heads.
“You foxes? You don’t think that’s uh…cool?”
“We prefer using illusions, thank you very much,” Ran, the inari with the violet headband replied.
“Critics,” it muttered to itself. An instant later it coughed into its right hand, which was now devoid of any blood and…brain material, and then straightened up.
“Back to what I was about to say, of course if Kurumi could – “
“No!” Ichigo interrupted the thing. “My wife is not going to be some magical girl of yours. And my wife is most certainly not going to go out there and get herself killed for your whims!”
“My whims?! Don’t you know that your parents are out there asleep, in the middle of a battlefield?”
“I know!” he screamed. “I know they’re out there, unprotected from all the things flying around out there. But whether I want to or not I have to prioritize!”
“Prioritize what? Your child and wife over your parents? Wow. Let me give you some very old news kid. You can always have more wives and make more children, but you can’t make more parents. Are you really abandoning Daddy and Mommy out there in that dark, cold and deadly night?”
I was stunned speechless by the...the words that the bastard had just said. And I got worried when Ichigo bit back at the rat, visibly affected by what the rat had said
“Damn you to the depths of hell! I know I might be leaving them to die out there just by waiting here, and I don’t need your lecturing to know that! But I have to choose! And I choose the people who would suffer more if I were to die! My wife and my daughter!”
My boyfriend’s voice choked up during those last few words, and then he slammed his fist onto the wall while looking down onto the floor.
For my part, I was touched and horrified at what he was prepared to do just for me and our daughter. I appreciated everything he went through for my sake, but I had no desire for him to have to sacrifice his own parent’s lives for us.
“Then let me give this trinket to her – “
“And risk losing my entire immediate family?!”
“If her fighting is what had you so concerned, then good news chutia! She won’t have to fight!”
“Oh really?” I managed to say during a minuscule pause in their conversation, which made Ichigo snap his head towards me with a look of surprise and shock.
‘I hate this rat man for threatening my daughter’s life, but I love my boyfriend more. Therefore, I must know more about his proposal.’
“Yes, really!” the rat man said. “It would be appreciated if you could be a walking weapon of magical mass destruction for Earth Kurumi, but that’s not the main function of these trinkets. Their main function is to drag the physical and magical abilities of most of the wannabe conquerors in a certain area down. In short, you wear this, your husband can punch out a guy who should normally be able to literally tear him apart like paper!”
“They have guns and numbers you idiot,” Ichigo countered. “I’m brave, but I know my limits.”
"That's just an expression chutia! I don't expect you to actually fight! I expect your father and his fellow soldiers to do that!"
"With what weapons, Mr. Krauncha?" Ran suddenly asked in a deadpan.
"The weapons in the armory of that base out there!" the rat man screamed in a frustrated tone that made me happy, no matter how childish and spiteful that was for me.
"The armory that's exploding like fireworks right now?"
I stared at the young inari for a moment, wondering what she was talking about. And then I heard Ichigo and the rat man groan at the same time. It was only at that point that I noticed a blazing fire as big as this house inside Camp Matsumoto, from which a constant crackling of gunshots and occasional bigger explosions was coming from.
"Great. What's next?" the rat man moaned as he gave a beseeching look up at the heavens.
His answer came in the form of two boots smashing into his face from above.