Falano didn’t hesitate to start shooting, only for his plasma bolts to miss as the tengu encircling the flitted around and avoided his aim. “Lock-on isn’t working!”

“Magical interference. It’s a yokai realm after all.” Kofuku watched the one with the staff, which was standing back among the others.

“Could you have told me that before we walked into the trap?”

“I thought you knew!”

“Do I look like I associate with bird people?” She tried firing again, but one of the tengu with a sword was upon him, grabbing onto his arm and using its body weight to try and push him over. His shots went wild as they spun around in the struggle.

Kofuku ducked under his aim, feeling the talisman start heating up in her hand, but before she could throw it another tengu grabbed her from behind, placing their sword to her throat and kicking the back of her knee to force her into a kneel. The talisman, now scorching the skin of her palm, dropped to the ground, where a sudden gale appeared from nowhere and extinguished it. She reached for the feathery arm that was wrapped around her shoulders, and then changed her mind, grabbing instead the necklace under her collar and tearing off the little metal capsule on the end. She bit into it, forcing the two halves apart, and taking aim away from the cabin, blew the powder inside into the air.

Approximately thirty grams of bone powder, nanoscopically carved into miniscule sigils indistinguishable even to most common forms of magical detection with the help of an extremely precise laboratory laser, dispersed through the air and ignited into a green flame that rapidly spread outwards. At the sight of this the tengu holding her immediately let go, and the other backed away in the panic.

All except in the elder with the staff, who simply staked it into the ground and summoned a torrent of gusts that contained the witchfire, driving it into the ground and allowing it to peter out.

Kofuku picked up the revolver that was knocked out of her hands and took aim, only for the butt a rifle to slam into the back of her head, making her vision explode into stars as bright as the constellations she had counted, pitching her forwards into the dirt where a clawed hand held her head down and another locked her arm in place. With each throbbing of the blood in her head, her vision blurred and unblurred, the stinging in the back of her skull tempting her to close her eyes and go straight to sleep. She fought with herself to stay awake, and found Falano pushed down in the same way right next to her.

“Should have let me keep the missiles!” he shouted as the foot-talons of a tengu clamped over his mask.

Kofuku didn’t bother replying, focusing on the sound of clinking metal coming towards them, stopping as the tengu elder planted the sharp end of his staff in the ground between the two of them.

The yokai crouched down, his beak augmented in a sheathe-like metal prosthetic that ended in a hook-like point and his eyes flanked by long eyelashes that in any other circumstance, might have been considered beautiful. It tilted its head to get a good look at Kofuku, brushing the pink locks of her hair out of the way, and switched to tapping a sharp claw on Falano’s mask. “Not very clever, are you?”

“May I know who I’m talking to?” Kofuku asked, trying to recall the customs of their people, but came up empty in terms of memories. It seemed yokai etiquette had slipped past her in all the years they had been at war. “We don’t have to get violent. We’ll leave, I promise.”

“Violent?” He scraped his claws over Falano’s mask, scraping off some of the black paint on one of the “wings” of its manta ray shape. “This one fired first.”

“Yeah, because you started coming at us with weapons!” Falano protested, and would have gone on had one of the tengu warriors whacked the back of his helmet-like head with the blunt edge of their katana.

“That is our right. This land belongs to the spirits. You smell of oil and machines. Are you here for our share of the minerals, at last?”

“We’ve no interest in your minerals,” Kofuku said quickly. “We’re just passing by. I will honour my fath-” She stopped herself just as the elder tengu snapped back to look at her. “I will honour our prior agreement to let you keep this land.”

“To honour the agreement would be to have never come here.” He leaned in closer, drawing a sharp breath, his metal beak twitching as his expression changed. “But you…your blood carries the scent of silk and venom. What are you, child?”

“I’m human.”

“Yes…” He drew the world up. “A human with yokai blood. A great weaver. Yet you use flames that would burn us!” He grabbed the discarded metal capsule.

“You didn’t exactly give me a choice.”

“Then choose to surrender your life. This is your incursion. We have not violated our agreement, though perhaps we should.” He looked up at the other tengu, causing a murmur to spread among them. “What say you, child? Shall we retake the land that was rightfully ours?”

She didn’t say anything, trying to match his gaze through the fog her vision was cycling through repeatedly.

“But of course.” He moved away. “Unlike you, I will uphold the honour and grace your father bestowed upon us.”

“So you do know me,” she breathed.

“I know of only one Jorōgumo that has betrayed her own kind and birthed a child with a human. I thought I sensed her pathetic magic again tonight. Your mother wove her web and trapped herself in human lies. You carry that same poison in your blood. And now fate has brought you back to me.”

“Wow, racist much?” Falano said.

“An outlander has no business with us and no right to judge us,” he said simply, and stood up, turning his attention to the cabin. “Come out, human. We will make it quick.”

Richard, for whatever reason beyond Kofuku, straight up just did not reply.

“So be it then.” The elder nodded to the tengu riflemen, who spread out around the cabin and began firing round after round through the windows, shattering them. It went on until they all had to reload, and then the elder signalled for them to stop. “A shame your friend is devoid of common sense.”

“What’s that thing in there? You didn’t touch this cabin for years, since my father died, you didn’t order your men in,” Kofuku said. “What is so bad that it scares a great yokai like yourself?”

“Do not presume, child. You have never experienced the infecting madness, have you not? Pieces still remain of him. All remnants of the Hollow Tide are still a danger to us. Remnants that your people so carelessly scattered in our lands.”

“Figured it was a piece of Orochi. Didn’t my father save you from that?”

He hissed through his nose, but had no reply.

“The way I see it, he gave you a choice,” she said. “My mother’s choice was to leave, too. Your choice seems to be to hide in this forest and blame us for everything. Are you safe or are you just hiding from the world?”

“Silence! I will not be lec-”

The hairs on the back of Kofuku's neck stood up and she even saw some of the loose pink strands in front of her face begin to rise. A pit formed in her stomach, far more uncomfortable than any trip to space could cause, and deep inside she knew something was very, very wrong. A bright light illuminated from behind both her and Falano, and a gunshot rang out. She frowned. It wasn’t a gun, it just sounded like one. One of the tengu swordsmen collapsed, the front of his chest burnt to a crisp.

“Yeah, get ‘em Ritchie!” Falano shouted, pushing against his captor.

The elder backed away, and Kofuku felt the tengu holding her down scramble away, allowing her to turn over. The light forced her to shield her eyes, and through her fingers, she could see that even in the dark of the yokai realm, it currently looked like day, and that the sun was directly in front of them.

Except it wasn’t the sun. Bright as it were, she could still make out Richard, his eyes filled with the same light that was bursting out of the dodecahedral device in his hands, hovering in the air over the cabin above the hole in the roof he had melted though. Stray force of lightning licked like tongues across the structure, raking the ground and burning the grass to bits of fulgurite as they passed. He was staring at the assembled tengu, a viscous scowl overcoming his expression. “Bird,” he said, his voice buzzing as if several people were saying the same thing at the same time. “Migrating here…I fucking hate birds!” With the raising of his hand, he summoned more bots from his own body, frying another tengu and setting the grass ablaze close to the elder.

The old tengu and his warriors finally broke, turning and dashing as wisps back through the trees as Richard hovered after them, spewing more arcs that burnt a path through the brush, striking some trees so hard they toppled.

“We have to stop him!” Kofuku called, looking at Falano.

The mercenary was busy shaking dirt out of his joints. “Why? Those bird-brained idiots tried to kill us. Didn’t you guys believe in karma or something?”

“If he gets to where they’re from, he’s going to raze their entire village! Innocent people, Duran.”

“Oh. Right. Oi, Dick!” He called, projecting his voice louder via a speaker in his mask. “Calm the fuck down! Genocide’s not on the menu today!”

Richard either didn’t hear him or didn’t care, letting off a lighting blast so powerful it carbonised the tengu that was caught in it as well as felling several more trees at the same position.

Kofuku’s hand reached the bangle, touching the button that she knew would trigger his countermeasure. “Try again!”

“Ritchie!” Falano fired a shot past his head.

The empowered Richard suddenly stopped, and spun in the air towards them. The object in his hands appeared to warble, and he lifted his arm towards her and Falano.

Kofuku hit the button as hard as she could, praying the device inside him still worked.

Richard’s head jerked back as he seized in the air, before the light faded in an instant, and both him and the dodecahedron fell limply to the ground, the Venator folding over like a sack of potatoes. His seizure, however brief, had rendered him unconscious, and seeing this, Falano lifted him up and threw him over his shoulder.

Kofuku stood over the dodecahedron, her gaze switching between it and the trees around them. This time, when she reached for it, there was no static, no buzzing, no bolt. Despite the volume of power it had channeled just seconds ago, the thing now laid completely dead, and icy cold to the touch at that. She scooped it up and ran after Falano, down towards where they had gotten off the boat.

If the oni boatsman was still lingering in the same place, he didn’t turn on his lantern. Falano came to a halt at the edge of the water, trying to scan for their ride in the darkness. “Where the hell is he!?”

Kofuku gazed at the still water, and turned left. “Downriver!”

“Sensors are all messed up. Fuck it.” Falano started running, Richard’s limp form bouncing vigorously on his shoulder.

Kofuku had little choice but to follow after him, sweeping the trees to their flank and across the river with her revolver. A slug round wouldn't do much, but it brought her a comfort she desperately needed in the moment. The elder would realise the threat was over at any moment, and they would simply turn around and put a bullet in her back or a blade through her belly.

Miraculously, just as she’d thought that, the lantern came on for a couple of seconds, marking their boat as being about three hundred metres further along the bank. Her pace sped up, hope within sight, and as they neared, she saw the silhouette of the boatman rise up, beginning to paddle towards them.

Falano threw Richard into the boat, and pointed at it. “Get on! I’ll speed things up a bit.”

Kofuku had no protests to that, climbing on as quickly as she could and almost flopping off the other side as she slid on her back into its curvature.

Another whistle came from behind them, and Kofuku and Falano locked eyes before he waded into the water, grabbing onto the back of the boat and extending his body horizontally along the water. Vents in his waist and his legs flipped open, their hidden thrusters coming to life, propelling Falano and the boat forwards in the river with a hard jolt. As they picked up speed, the boatsman crouched down to lower his centre of gravity, dipping his paddle in the water for just long enough to help them steer the now-speedboat, preventing Falano from pushing them aground.

Kofuku crossed her legs in the boat and squeezed her eyes shut, knowing full well her life was now in hands she preferred not to trust.

Kawa wa nagare, ishi wa nokoru.

Kawa wa nagare, ishi wa nokoru.

Kawa wa nagare, ishi wa nokoru.

Kawa wa nagare-

The boat stopped again with another jolt, its previous momentum throwing her forwards, and she opened her eyes to stop herself being thrown overboard, clinging onto the side. The stars above them were unveiled once again, returning the constellations she had so sorely missed.

Falano climbed onto the boat, helped by the oni, and flopped onto the floor. The water on his body was evaporating with steam, hissing into the sky as his thrusters ran out of fuel. “Hey,” he said, looking up at her, inverted in his pose. “That was almost bad.”

“It’s not all bad.”

“Which part did you like? Almost being stabbed to death or almost being fried to death?”

“I didn’t know you had rocket boosters.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know you don’t have a dick.” She forced a laugh, trying to take the edge off what they had just survived. Not that it worked. Her eyes went right back to darting from tree to tree, not that they were in the yokai realm anymore. It was burned into her mind.

Falano flipped himself back up, still steaming. “Ritchie’s not gonna like it when he wakes up. If he remembers what you did again, that is.”

“That’s a problem for later. Did you get a reading of his lightning? Local electric and magnetic fields? Maybe some audio and video too?”

“I’m sure something inside me picked it up.” He tapped the side of his helmet, browsing through the recorded data. “Why?”

“Because-” She held up the dodecahedron, still dead. “-I think I figured out why my father hired Richard.