Chapter 6
Chapter 6
Matsumoto, Nagano
May 3, 2013
8:41 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
“Finally,” the rat man muttered. After that it quickly paused its strumming, plucked a different string, and then resumed the tone from earlier.
A ring slowly appeared in front of me and started floating down.
“It’s so pretty,” Ao said as I caught it with my left hand and inspected it.
It was a plain gold ring with inscriptions on both the inside and the outside, just like the ring from Lord of the Rings. The only difference was that the inscriptions on this ring looked vaguely similar to some letters from the English alphabet. And they were moving around on the ring’s surface like an eel in water.
“What should I do...once I wear this?” I gasped out as the sobs were starting to die down.
I’m simply not in the mood to shout some silly childish and happy phrase to make this trinket work, now when I haven’t even stopped sobbing at this point in time.
‘And I’m a mother of one and about to be married to my boyfriend in two months. I have a dignity to uphold.’
“It’s your choice – wear it now! They’re starting to attack my barriers!”
“Ao, I have to get...up,” I quickly told my daughter, so that I could make sure that if the trinket malfunctioned I’m the only one who gets harmed.
As Ao leaned against the wall and asked me to make a pretty costume, I stood up from the floor, walked a few paces away from everyone and then slowly slid the ring onto my right index finger.
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Matsumoto, Nagano
May 3, 2013
8:42 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
Something about Kurumi changed when she wore the ring. It wasn't her light brown, long sleeved dress. It also wasn't anything about her physical features, nor her demeanor. It was...it was what I felt on the day that Kurumi woke up after the surgery that saved her from bleeding to death.
When Kurumi cradled Ao for the first time, crooned to her for the first time, fed her for the first time…I knelt by the bedside and worshipped them with my eyes and my heart.
It was greater this time. Back then, I knelt of my own free will. Now, I sat for my limbs were senseless, my eyes unable toblink, andmymouth wasgapinganddrying -
I flinched when my left arm was suddenly pinched hard.
"That hurt the eyes, Mr. Rat," Ao complained while furiously rubbing her eyes with her right hand. A moment later, Ao suddenly stopped rubbing and had a horrified expression on her face.
At the same time I heard the Indian man's music stop, replaced by the sound of something falling hard on the floor.
"Madar Chod Yavanas!" the Indian man yelled in a terrified voice as he quickly stood up, staring at the two broken halves of his musical instrument while his golden bracelets and necklace jangled from the sudden movement.
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Matsumoto, Nagano
May 3, 2013
8:42 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
"Why were we also affected?!" Ran screamed as the rat man quickly put the two halves of musical instrument together and made it glow.
"Don't ask me! Ask the Yavanas!"the rat man yelled as it made the glow around the musical instrument brighter. At the same time, I can hear several people outside shouting 'Don't move or we'll shoot! Don't move or we'll kill you all!'
“What’s happening?!” I asked, looking from Ran to the rat man in confusion.
“Friendly fire, Ms. Ikeda!” Ran yelled in a mix of anger and disbelief. “The damned ring affected us too!”
I stared slack jawed at Ran. A moment later the rat man yelled out ‘done,’ sat down on the floor with his musical instrument and promptly started playing again. However there was a difference this time; wind started blowing out from him, his eyes rolled back into his head and started beaming gold colored light, and then he started singing.
“Sukhkarta Dukhharta Varta Vignachi!”
All of a sudden Ao slapped her right hand over Ichigo’s eyeglasses, yelling that he can’t look at the rat man or he will faint. At the same time, her eyes were closed tight and she leaned against my fiance in blue jogging pants and white shirt.
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Matsumoto, Nagano
May 3, 2013
8:42 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
“Are you joking Ao?!” I replied, trying to be heard above the reverberating din of the Indian man’s voice.
“Nurvi Purvi Prem Krupa Jayachi!”
“No Papa! That almost happened to you when Mama wore the ring!”
“Sarvangi Sundar Uti Shendurachi!”
I tried to take Ao’s hand off my eyeglasses, but she suddenly screamed at me before my hand even touched her.
“Kanti Jhalke Mal Mukataphalaanchi!”
“Papa! Please! Don’t look at Mr. Rat!”
“Jai dev Jai dev Jai Mangal Murti!”
“Then how about you!?” I said as I sat against the wall, giving up on account of not agitating my daughter's injuries.
“Darshan Maatre Man Kaamna Phurti!”
“My eyes are closed but Mr. Rat is still shining into my eyes like the sun,” Ao whimpered.
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Matsumoto, Nagano
May 3, 2013
8:43 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
“Ran! The rat man!” I yelled at her.
I wanted her to make the bastard stop this magical show that was hurting my daughter’s eyes and could knock my fiancé unconscious. I also wanted him to stop singing and start doing something about our present situation.
“Jai dev Jai dev Jai Mangal Murti!”
“On it! And please don’t call Mr. Krauncha rat man, vocally or in your thoughts! I can hear them and it's rude!” Ran reprimanded me.
I quickly nodded, for fear that being stubborn about this subject would spark an argument at the wrong time.
Once she saw me nod, Ran quickly acted.
“I, Ran of the Yamada of Gifu, will the hiding of the image and softening of the voice of Krauncha, servant driver of the foreign god Ganesha, from the eyes of human beings!”
Krauncha’s voice suddenly lowered in volume, and his image blurred from sight by a…
I coughed as a mosaic straight from the Adult Videos that I saw a long time ago covered Krauncha’s face and lower half.
“Never mind the AV graphics!” Ran wailed with a blush on her face.
I quickly shook the silly thoughts out of my head and concentrated on the task at hand.
“Hey Krauncha. What happened to the barrier and the tengu?”
For a few moments Krauncha ignored me, so I was about to repeat my question. All of a sudden his voice came out of my surroundings while I can still hear him singing from where he sat.
“Hello. Hello. Can you guys hear me?”
“Did you hear Kurumi’s question?!” Ichigo said. He then focused his attention back to Ao, who had just let go of her father’s face and was leaning against the wall with a grimace.
As I moved towards my daughter, worried about what her brief burst of activity had done to her ribs and chest drain, Krauncha replied to both our questions.
“Yes I heard. The barrier dissolved, and the tengus are alive and unconscious – Madar Chod they are unconscious.”
It took a few moments for the words ‘tengu’ and ‘unconscious’ to join together in my mind. That was why Ichigo and Ran were able to yell their shock before I was able to do so.
“How come! What happened to the Nagano tengus?!” Ran screamed.
“I’m not even going to guess. Hey kid. What kind of distraction are we going to do? I’m about to start dropping weapons here.”
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Matsumoto, Nagano
May 3, 2013
8:43 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
“First, give me one of those guns Krauncha.” After that I turned towards Ran. “Ran, please barricade the door. Don’t let anyone through.”
“You’re not going to start shooting at the aliens downstairs, right?” My wife worried as she stepped over Moe’s sleeping body, sat down beside our daughter and started inspecting her injuries with frequent glances at me. Behind her, Ran started barricading the doorway with sacks of rice.
“No such thing. The gun is just for insurance, dear.”
I didn’t mention I needed to see what Krauncha was talking about when he said gun. There was a big possibility that he might just give everyone antique muzzleloading rifles, which would just get Dad and other Self Defense Forces personnel killed.
"Hold your hands out kid!"
I stood up from the floor and quickly did as Krauncha said. A moment later I staggered under the weight of the gun that instantly appeared in my arms.
A brief inspection was all it took to make me sigh in frustration.
"What is this?" I asked Krauncha, while trying to ignore the disturbing AV style mosaic covering his face.
The rifle I was holding in my hands was heavier and longer than the Type 89 rifle of the Self Defense Forces. It also had a bayonet, already attached to the bayonet lug, which was more a wakizashi than a tanto. And it was a damned bolt action rifle.
"That, kid, is the – “
“I’m sorry,” I interrupted. “What I meant to say was why are you going to give out bolt-action rifles with ridiculously long bayonets?”
“Because I sincerely doubt the JSDF teaches its soldiers how to shoot non-Japanese guns. And I don’t know the internals of any assault rifle.”
I blinked, thought about it, and then realized he was almost right. Except for the Special Forces, the JGSDF had exclusively been using Japanese rifles ever since the Type 64 in the 60’s. And the 13th Infantry, 12th Brigade of Matsumoto were mere Alpine troops with Air Assault training, not Special Forces.
“Would Dad automatically know how to work a bolt action?”
A moment later I realized how stupid that question was. Anyone who watched war or action movies and dramas or played First Person Shooter games would know the basics of how to cycle the action and how to reload a bolt action rifle. Even the problem with a lack of marksmanship training was already solved by the mere fact that the sleeping Self Defense Forces personnel were only on the other side of the street.
“Now do you realize how easy it is to use a bolt action rifle?” Krauncha asked. When I reluctantly nodded, he grinned so wide I could discern it through the mosaic and continued.
“And that’s not the only thing I considered. The Smellie Mark Three has a very smooth bolt operation, so it fires faster than almost every other bolt action rifle ever made up to this day. And I put a 1907 sword bayonet on it for when an Outsider manages to get into sword range.”
In light of the things that he said, I mentally conceded that Krauncha did make a good decision with these ‘Smellie’ rifles.
“Alright, I think I’m fine with this rifle. Is it loaded? How many rounds for the magazine? And where’s the ammunition you said earlier?”
Immediately after I said that a satchel appeared at my waist, already slung around my neck and heavy with the weight of many clinking metal objects.
“Loaded and cocked with five rounds. Don’t try to load the full ten rounds, you’re not used to it.”
I nodded and replied.
“Good. As soon as Ran finishes barricading the door, I want you to pour smoking hot salad oil all over the walls of this house.”
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Matsumoto, Nagano
May 3, 2013
8:43 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
“No Papa. Grandma's flowers will die,” Ao moaned.
"Ao," I intervened to decrease the possibility of a tantrum happening now, "our lives are more important than the flowers.
“Ao, I promise you that we’ll plant more flowers later – “
“Salad oil is not a good idea for other reasons Mr. Ohta,” Ran suddenly interrupted Ichigo as she sat down next to her sleeping sister and started stroking her face. Behind her, I could see that the door was completely blocked by a double layer stack of rice sacks tied together with enough hemp rope to form a wrapping of rope as thick as my arm.
“Why not?” Ichigo challenged, in a tone that sent alarm bells ringing in my head.
“The temperature when wood starts to burn and the temperature when several kinds of salad oil start to smoke are uncomfortably close to each other," Ran replied defensively. "This damaged, wooden house might start burning down if Mr. Krauncha does as you wanted.”
"Then boiling water. Let's use that," I intervened when I saw Ichigo looked like he was about to explode in anger.
I recognized what was happening. Ichigo had finally lost all his patience, again.
Whenever my boyfriend loses all his patience he starts snarling angry and hurtful words, at both the people responsible for his anger and those who were just around him. And in the aftermath it always fell upon us, his family, to perform damage control.
Thankfully Ichigo had been doing his best to improve that part of him ever since we became fourteen, which resulted in far rarer outbursts than before that year.
‘I’ll give Ichigo a pass on this moment if he listens to me and shut up now.’
"Ichigo, sit down. Please, sit down," I pleaded while pulling at his shirt over Ao's head. "Bullets are going to fly again when the boiling water starts falling. Come on dear."
"Papa, please sit down?" Ao backed me up with her own plea.
After a few moments of coaxing, he finally sat down beside Ao with his back resting against the wall, his eyes closed to the world, and the rifle rested against his shoulder. I then looked towards Krauncha.
"Go! Now!"
"Good evening, fellow citizens of the world!" Krauncha yelled in the manner of a radio host personality. "I, Krauncha! Servant of Lord Ganesh, shall now serve a dish of boiled alive Lighteaters!"
A moment later the sound of a waterfall splashing against solid objects came upstairs almost simultaneously with multiple howls of terrible pain. Seconds later the smell of vegetables being cooked wafted up here, quickly followed by the sound of gunfire and shouts in Japanese.
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Matsumoto, Nagano
May 3, 2013
8:44 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
As I listened to the massacre downstairs, I was busy mentally flagellating myself for losing my patience.
Never mind that I had already promised Kurumi I would do my utter best not to do that for the sake of our family, it wasn't even the right time for me to do so. We are currently in grave danger.
It wasn't even right of me to snap at Ran. She had saved me the blunder of burning my own house down, due to my lack of knowledge. And it just wasn't right that my wife had to act, again, to save me from embarrassing myself.
'You are such a pathetic husband, Ichigo. Pathetic.'
"Mama, I'm scared."
"Shh. Just ignore the screaming dear. Don't listen to it."
My eyes snapped open. I looked to my left to see Kurumi only holding Ao's hand instead of a hug, probably because of my daughter’s broken ribs.
"No Mama. It's not the screaming."
A huge creaking sound went through the air, making me look all over our room for the source.
"The house will collapse."
We suddenly found ourselves and the house falling downwards through air.
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Everything was hurting.
My head was aching, so I won’t open my eyes. My back was hurt, so I wasn’t willing to move my body. But my ears weren’t hurt, so I could hear. And what I heard was my daughter wailing, and rifles shooting.
In a flash, all the pain was gone. I snapped my eyes open and sat up, while groping for the rifle. I quickly saw Kurumi leaning over our daughter to my left, wringing her hands in a panic. Ao herself was laid supine on –
I choked as I saw that it was one of the corrugated iron sheets that served as our house’s roof, laid flat on the ground. And more rubble laid just an arm’s length away from Ao’s head. That prompted me to take a look around us.
To my front were Ran and Moe. Ran was on her right side, unconscious while blood was slowly trickling from a wound at her right temple. At the same time Moe was asleep, her head safe from injuries because Ran was hugging her to her own chest.
Beyond them by two meters was Krauncha. He had stopped playing his musical instrument, no longer covered in mosaics. He was also slumping forward in exhaustion, breathing heavily as his arms rested on his crossed legs.
We were surrounded by a circular wall of debris as tall as me while standing up, composed of corrugated iron sheets, wooden beams and planks, and the remains of our worldly possessions. Above us, the remains of a small dome of golden light slowly dissipated away, revealing a picturesque nighttime sky from a rural city that was marred by the light and smoke of burning fires. And below us, the wooden flooring, at least those inside the circle of debris, was cracked in places but otherwise still level ground.
“Ichigo!”
I snapped my eyes back to my wife.
“What do we do? Ao’s saying her sides hurt badly.”
After a moment’s thought I answered her question as I stood up.
“Kurumi, keep Ao still. I’m going to call for help – ”
All of a sudden the wall of debris beyond Kurumi was violently smashed apart, revealing a Lighteater without the head part of the zentai suit.
He had green colored skin covered in peach fuzz, from the crown of his head down to his neck and possibly further. He was glaring at us with eyes that glowed green, while holding a sword that glowed with the same color in his right hand.
As Kurumi threw her body over Ao, an act that made our daughter wail more in pain, I quickly aimed the rifle over her head but didn’t shoot because...because my instincts were strongly warning against it. Only after a few more moments of aiming did I notice what he had just accidentally done.
He gave me the chance to finally see the street in front of Camp Matsumoto at street level.
Behind him a glowing green, two story high wall of magic separated him and us from a continuous waterfall of steaming water, the blurry images of a lot of human figures twisting and screaming in pain and a steady fusillade of rifle fire from the other side of the street.
My eyes snapped back to the Lighteater, and tightened my finger's pull on the trigger, when the sound of a glass window getting smashed into pieces rang out from where he stood.
The Lighteater looked stunned, in the manner of someone who just got punched in the face. He then grimaced and went into a strange sword stance. His sword was tucked under his left armpit while his left hand was clenched in mid-air mere centimeters in front of his right hand, as if there was a shield present there.
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Matsumoto, Nagano
May 3, 2013
8:47 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
As I whispered apologies to Ao for hurting her with my body weight, I heard my boyfriend talk.
“It’s over, sir. Go home now or you’ll end up like your comrades on the other side of the barrier behind you.”
The Lighteater suddenly laughed at Ichigo in a condescending manner before replying.
“And ignore a seer? Multiple seers that forecasted that at this date and place an event would happen involving uncertain magical beings and humans that would bring defeat to the World Kingdom of the Lighteaters if we don’t intervene to kill everyone involved now? No.”
“Kill or hurt, you say?” my fiancé asked in a dangerous tone. “Is that why the currently dead Meria was trying to execute us earlier?”
A few moments of silence passed. As I nervously listened to what might happen next, Ao suddenly whispered 'Mama.'
When I looked down, she continued whispering with tearful eyes.
"You have to help Papa during the fight, or else we will all die."
"Ao, don't worry. Papa has a gun - "
"Mama, I can read the future," she suddenly interrupted.
I was about to scold her for joking at a time like this when something suddenly became clear to me, thanks to Ao’s words.
Every time that Ao misused the word ‘read’ was when she says oddly prescient statements. And then there’s that word that Krauncha called my daughter. An akashvani...whatever that word meant.
‘So Ao can see the future? A fortune teller?’
"The bad alien will step on you and me and make Papa shoot, into the bad alien's invisible shield. Mr. Rat would smash a bat on the bad alien's head, but he would ignore it and run forward. Papa would try to poke the bad alien, but the bad alien would move Papa's gun to the side and then chop off his legs."
My blood barely had time to run cold when Ao dropped the mother of all shocks on me.
"And when Papa is on the ground, the bad alien would split Papa's head in half with his sword."
All of a sudden I got stepped on the back.
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Matsumoto, Nagano
May 3, 2013
8:47:25 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
I pulled the trigger the moment the bastard stepped on my wife and daughter, and absorbed the rifle’s recoil perfectly. An instant later I heard the sound of a small metal object hitting something harder than it and falling to the ground.
I wanted to immediately work the action of the Smellie Rifle to reload it but the Lighteater was coming at me with his sword, even after Krauncha’s gold bedecked figure suddenly came from the side and broke something wooden over the alien's head. So I had no choice but to immediately use the bayonet.
I stepped my left foot forward and extended my arms for a thrust at the middle of the Lighteater’s oncoming figure.
The bayonet unexpectedly slid of something solid, and the Lighteater immediately pushed the tip of the rifle to the side.
I immediately backpedalled to gain distance –
The Lighteater started to swing his sword –
-and safely got out of harm’s way.
-and almost stumbled onto the ground.
I only took a breath to re-center myself when the Lighteater whirled around while in a kneeling posture, and swung his sword at Kurumi's head.
I saw red.
I ran forward, bayonet pointing downward so I could stab him dead. In a moment I was one step away from vengeance when he suddenly swung his sword into a circle over his head and parried the stock of the rifle away.
That parry put me in the perfect position to deliver a butt stroke to the head, but I wasn’t thinking straight. Instead, I kicked at his head with my left foot.
The Lighteater countered the kick by punching my foot with his left hand. And it was there, that I saw the secret to how my thrust was parried earlier. A small circular shield made of translucent yellow material flashed into view when my foot was in contact with it, and just as quickly disappeared when my foot got out of contact with it.
As I was getting my left foot down on the ground as quickly as possible, the alien bastard stabbed his sword straight at my stomach. And it would've made contact if Krauncha didn't tackle him from the side.
"Pin him down!" I yelled to Krauncha as I raised the rifle, looking for an opening to stab the murderer to death.
All of a sudden a bright light blinded me, and along with it came intense heat that made me take a few steps backwards. A moment later, I blinked the spots out of my eyes, to see the Lighteater standing up while brushing off ash from his outfit.
"Alright. I now know how to get around this spell," he said while glaring to my right, where all the ash in the air was for some reason streaming towards to all by itself.
The alien bastard then assumed another strange sword pose. He put stretched both arms in front of him. The arm that was holding the sword was stretched straight out, with the sword pointing straight at my head. The other hand, the one that held that magical shield, was right beside the hand that held the sword.
A second later the Lighteater screamed, as a spear suddenly burst out of his right leg.
Then I screamed as suddenly the bastard twisted around, pulled out a revolver, aimed it at Kurumi's head and pulled the trigger nonstop while roaring in anger. The next moment I charged with the bayonet aimed at the alien's midsection.
Halfway there, he twisted around and aimed the gun at me.
It was a near thing. At the same time as I stabbed the bayonet to the hilt in his chest, his gun fired and my ear suddenly felt hot.
After his body slammed backwards on the floor, I withdrew the bayonet and stabbed him three more times in the chest for good measure.
I quickly threw the rifle to the side and rushed over to my wife, who was face down in a puddle of her own vomit.
"Kurumi!"
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Matsumoto, Nagano
May 3, 2013
8:47:25 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
When the Lighteater stepped on me, I mentally panicked. I had no knowledge of how to use this ring other than wearing it.
All of a sudden the world was tinged in black and white colors, and a Start button straight from the computers of the 1990’s appeared in the middle of my field of vision. At first I was encouraged by this act…but the moment I thought of pressing it, I was dismayed by what appeared in the pop-up menu.
Words composed of a combination of letters that I didn’t know anything about and letters from the English alphabet filled the menu.
I wanted to wail, I wanted to scream, I wanted to meet whoever it was that was making my family suffer and scratch their eyes out. But that wasn’t going to save us, so I had to do things myself.
I willed the entire thing away, and immediately got onto the balls of my toes. I quickly saw Krauncha smashing a strange wooden paddle over the Lighteater’s head, to no avail. It was at that point that I suddenly knew what I had to do.
I jumped onto one of the Lighteater’s legs, grabbed it, and fell face down on the wooden planks.
The leg almost pulled itself out of my hands, but thank the ancestors my grip held firm. A moment later the leg moved sideways, and before I could take a peek something hit my head so hard that I blacked out.
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I don’t know how long I was unconscious. But my head hurts a lot, and I wanted to vomit.
I tried to open my eyes since I wanted to see what was happening.
The first try only let light shine through for an instant. The second try let me see some colors. The third time worked, although everything was blurry.
I saw the Lighteater from behind, facing Ichigo with a sword stance. Ichigo himself was in his own fighting stance.
“Hello, can you hear me?” the voice of a woman whispered into my ear.
I tried to speak, but surprisingly what came out was soft moan.
“Oh dear. That is a bad sign. What to do, what to do…"
I moaned my complaint, seeing as I had a very bad feeling that my beloved would die if nobody else did something.
"Right. Dear, we're going to save your husband. However, it would end with you being given mortal wounds, and you being separated from him for some time. But I swear, on my memories of my dearly departed husband, that I would keep you alive until you heal and learn everything you need to defend yourself. Do you agree to that?"
I didn't have to think about my answer.
"Very well. Let's see what your trinket can do."
The world turned black and white again, and that Start button floated in my view. Then it clicked all by itself, and the choices in the menu were highlighted one after the other.
"Spear, spear, spear - there. Be a dear and lift one hand a little, yes like that - perfect."
One of the words was clicked. Something instantly appeared in my hand, and it moved at the same time as I heard the Lighteater scream in pain.
"Oh dear. Uh, please close your eyes, he's going to hurt you now."
A glance was all it took to for me to follow the voice.