Kokuana Forest, Ema — 9:00 pm. Tomoe held her fists positioned in front of her face. She just had to remember her training, nothing else. Junko’s death still weighed heavily on her soul, but rather than impeding her emotions and decisions it fueled her determination.

For so many nights she had laid awake in her bed; staring with unblinking eyes at the ceiling. Numerous scenarios ran through her mind like a television endlessly flipping from one channel to the next. What would she do to the scum that took her away? What would she say to her best friend upon meeting again face-to-face?

Tomoe was positive the answers would snap directly into her muddled brain the moment the mystery was solved. Yet, there was no crystal clear solution. No storybook happy ending where they’d go to school the next day like nothing happened. The only reality she knew at that second was survival and vengeance.

“That purple mist he’s emitting is probably tied to his ability Tomoe,” Mura said while eyeing the obese Shitidama. “If you’re gonna help, don’t get too close—“

The orange-haired human was already running towards the sentient mountain of flesh; it having already gnawed the digits from its scorched hand. Meanwhile, Mura and Lilith raced off to fight Hakanohi, the fire demon which lumbered towards them.

Tomoe took a deep breath as she approached the violet fog. Her fighting gloves were strapped tight as the material gently gripped her skin. Adrenaline surged as she passed through the thick mist, taking the first steps towards its source.

“Is human trying to kill Baku?” the Shitidama curiously asked. “Human can’t do anything! Good for nothing but a tasty meal!”

Tomoe ignored the beast’s barely-intellectual statements as Baku happily slapped his sore-infested gut. Winding her arm back, she ran up to the monster’s stomach and plunged her fist into it. Her knuckles sank into the Shitidama’s belly; the fatty flesh rippling from the impact as if she had punched a tub of gelatin.

Her lungs were beginning to ache from the lack of air. With her forearm now sinking into Baku’s stomach, she withdrew it with a wet plop. A sheen of bodily oils coated her exposed skin, generating bile at the back of Tomoe’s throat.

—As I thought, I can’t reach its bones through all that fat.

Tomoe looked up at his bald head, resembling a caterpillar’s upon closer inspection. His sunken in eyes were more like black pits with yellow dots looming down on her. Baku laughed childishly, swinging his powerful arms at her. Tomoe swiftly dodged the slow-moving strikes, backing away from him in the process.

She had to breathe, the pain was becoming too much. By now, the mist was spreading too far to run out of for a quick intake of fresh air. A few meters away, Tomoe took off her red beanie hat and held it over her face. The thick woven material would provide a decent enough filter for the time being. Pressing it firmly over her nose and mouth, she exhaled at last. Relief flooded over the girl as she quickly took another breath and held it.

From just that one intake her mind began to flutter along with her eyelids. It felt like she had just inhaled a direct dosage of anesthesia. Slipping the hat into her pocket, she resumed her stance to take on the monster for another round. Looking up, all that she could see was the vapors of the magical smoke.

—The hell? It was right in front of me!

The hairs of the back of Tomoe’s neck stood on end as she heard a reverberating chuckle from behind her.

“Huhuhu…”

Tomoe dived and rolled ahead of where she was standing. As she leapt forward, she felt Baku’s arm barely miss her. A second later and she would have been a goner.

—This asshole can teleport too…

“Come back, let Baku crunch your skull!”

Tomoe wouldn’t be having any of that. She quickly recalculated the scenario in her head. Baku was too fat to damage through his torso and too stupid to recognize pain. From what she could see however, his head and neck weren’t armored or covered in blubber.

—I just have to break its neck. These demons clearly bleed like we do, so they can die like us too…

For a quick moment, Tomoe stumbled and regained her composure. Her mind and body blanked out, causing her to quickly lose control of her breath and exhale accidentally.

“Huhuhu! Little human sleepy yet? Go to sleep, go to sleep!”

This mist he was emitting was a sleep-inducing agent. Forced to breathe once more, Tomoe took out her hat and held her breath for a third time.

—If I fall asleep, I’m dead. Gotta… get his… neck…

She bit down harshly on her lower lip, the pain and shock jolting her awake and granting a burst of energy. Running straight towards Baku once more, the monster raised his arms in the air and slammed them arms down; striking the ground with a crater-inducing impact.

“Bwahaha! Baku wins!”

He let his flabby arms return to his sides, anticipating the bloody stain he had made. When he looked in front of him however, there was nothing there. Instead, he felt something quickly scaling his arm. Turning in confusion, Baku saw Tomoe clinging to his shoulder.

“Die, you son of a bitch!” Tomoe shouted at the top of her lungs.

Baku laughed obliviously and tried to shake her off. The human girl responded by slamming her fist into the side of his thick neck, stunting his intake of air as the windpipe began to swell.

He reached over at the irritating human on his shoulder, attempting to remove her. However he found himself unable to grasp Tomoe, as his fingers were long chewed off from his act of wanton gluttony.

Tomoe punched Baku again in the same place as Baku laughed still. With a flurry of one-handed strikes, she pummeled the same point on his neck. The Shitidama’s laugher grew confused when he felt a disc within his spine lodge out of place from her rush of punches.

His breathing stopped, as did his ignorant bellows of fun. Tomoe concentrated all of her pain and rage into one final strike. A loud crunch rang through her ears as the beast’s head shifted unnaturally to the side.

Black liquid oozed from Baku’s nose and mouth, his face frozen in a post-mortem smile as Tomoe jumped off. The shitidama slumped over then fell on his back with a resounding thud.

With its source dead, the purple mist slowly evaporated over the course of minutes. Tomoe’s sighed, breathing a sigh of numb relief as she collapsed asleep onto the soft grass.

❇ ❇ ❇

Several minutes earlier and meters away on the same hilltop, Mura locked his eyes onto Hakanohi. He twirled his blade, shifting it into its spear form. Gripping onto the pole tightly, he looked over at Lilith.

“You know at this point, the bigger they are the less intimidating they get,” Mura quipped.

Hakanohi dragged his flaming arms across the ground as his fires burned brighter. The fiery Shitidama roared furiously.

“Ignorant demon ssssssscum! You dare mock me?!” the beast bellowed.

“You’re the only walking matchstick here, right? Such a shame I didn’t bring my flame-retardant coat,” Mura laughed as Lilith grinned along.

“Foolssss! I’ll ssssshow you what becomesss of those who take me lightly!” Hakanohi yelled in fury, his voice reverberating through the leaves of the trees.

Mura watched the corrupted demon’s arms and legs closely, waiting for him to telegraph his attack. The tricky part would be avoiding the perilous fires that engulfed Hakanohi’s entire towering body.

The flaming Shitidama swung his arms along the ground as he began to spin in a circle, cracking into trees and sending them flying across the hilltop like burning missiles.

Mura leapt over the demon’s infernal appendages like a jump rope, slicing upwards as he jumped. The blade made contact with the flaming bone, carving it open with a satisfying crack. Marrow oozed from within, bubbling and hardening as it became exposed to the flames.

The demon wailed and recoiled in pain as trees fell around them. To stop the wound from burning, the Shitidama deactivated the flames on his wounded arm.

“You bassssstard! No blade sssshould be able to cut through my impenetrable bone armor!” Hakanohi cursed.

Mura grinned as he landed back on the solid earth, confident in his growing skill.

Just then, everyone heard a loud thump from a few meters away. The purple smog in the distance began to dissipate and within no time, the three fighters could see the aftermath of Tomoe’s fight.

“Lilith, go get her out of there!” Mura yelled after seeing the human girl unconscious.

The yokai nodded and ran towards Tomoe.

“What a disssgrace that Baku was, dying to a human! I sssshould thank her however, no longer sssshall I need to ssssuffer his primitive idiocy!”

Hakanohi wailed in a fury that could only come from a mindless soul like him. His fires grew hotter, triggering Mura to visibly sweat as the heat got to him even from a distance.

He turned to his right and noticed a tall tree still firmly rooted in the ground. This sparked a plan in Mura, retracting his spear back into the slipstream ring as he sprinted towards the tree.

“You coward! Fleeing from the great Hakanohi, are you?!” the demon screamed.

The Jikininki paid him no mind though. As Hakanohi dragged and spun himself to attack, Mura had his hands free. With the agility of a monkey, Mura quickly jumped and climbed up the branches of the tree as fast as he could muster.

“Run, run! Hahahaha, I’ll ssstill immolate you!” Hakanohi cackled, his eyes glowing brightly within his enflamed skull.

Mura reached the top of the tree as Hakanohi’s arms collided with its trunk, nearly shaking him off. He grabbed firmly onto the treetop, leaning his weight towards the Shitidama’s direction. From this height, Mura was on eye level with his opponent.

The damage from the sweeping attack caused the tree’s trunk to buckle and groan loudly. Steadily it began to fall to the ground.

“Foolish imperial dog! Be reduced to cinders!” Hakanohi screamed in delight. He positioned his flame-enshrouded arm where the tree would land, ready to incinerate it and Mura too once it fell into his grasp.

Mura narrowed his eyes, concentrating. Gripping the tree as it fell toward the Shitidama, he propelled himself off the tree. Leaping through the air towards Hakanohi’s flaming face, he summoned his spear back into his hand.

“Impossible!!” the Shitidama cried out in shock.

Mura answered the monster by plunging the blade of his weapon into Hakanohi’s face. The monster howled in pain, attempting to lift its elongated limbs high enough to reach Mura. Unfortunately, they were too heavy to reach his face.

With a blindingly quick rush of stabs, Mura punctured Hakanohi’s flaming skull nearly a hundred times within the span of seconds. Blood and embers spurted from the wounds, turning into tar from the heat.

“N-No! Sssspare me!” the Shitidama pleaded with dying gasps.

“Spare you? When I have a perfect strike lined up? Not a chance.”

Mura heaved his blade upwards, splitting Hakanohi’s head clean in half from the nose upwards. Blood and embers spurted apart into a smoldering ball of brain matter.

He fell back to the ground, retracting his spear back on the descent. The dead Shitidama wobbled briefly and fell backwards, tumbling off the cliff-side as its flames extinguished for the final time. It landed with a loud tremor, colliding with the trees below as disturbed birds flew away off into the night horizon.

Standing back up, Mura dusted himself off as he ran over to check in on Lilith and Tomoe. Lilith had dragged the girl over to a clearing away from the fight but with enough visibility to see everything that occurred.

“Is she alive?” Mura asked.

“Yes, just asleep. I honestly can’t believe we did that! I mean, I didn’t really get to do anything though. You guys stole my kills,” Lilith said cheekily.

Mura smiled and suddenly it donned on him. He really had just killed a Shitidama, all alongside a human being.

“I can’t believe she actually killed it. We need to watch out for that one.”

Mura and Lilith laughed a little as Tomoe slept soundly. Their laughter soon died off as the adrenaline waned away and the gravity of their situation came rushing back.

“I can’t believe we wasted all this time fighting the shitidama while Shuten escaped. Who knows where he could be right now,” Mura lamented.

A familiar voice chimed in behind them. A voice belonging to a figure Mura and Lilith had nearly forgotten about.

“Well done, Tenth. I’m proud of your work here,” Kirin said, having appeared from whatever location she was surveilling from.

“Proud? The main culprit got away!” Lilith said, clearly irritated at their one shortcoming.

“I’m aware of that, yes. I alerted the Onryō Squadron, they’re currently tracking his whereabouts. You accomplished one of your goals in discovering the missing adolescents, so you’re at least deserving of that praise.”

Mura sighed and brushed the soot out of his hair.

“The killer… his name was Shuten. Said he was a ‘Poacher’ from some organization called Goetia?” Mura said.

Kirin’s pupils shrunk within the pale moonlight. She approached Mura, nearly centimeters from his face.

“Are… Are you sure, he said those exact words?” Kirin spoke, the trembles in her voice betraying her usual demeanor.

“Yeah…? I heard it too. Why are you so worked up, who are they?” Lilith asked.

“We’ll inform you at a later time. Consider your involvement on the case finished. We’ll be assigning this matter to another Jikininki of higher rank.”

Mura’s eyebrow raised slightly. Whatever this Goetia group was, they were clearly big enough of a threat to inspire the first sign of fear he had ever seen from Kirin.

“Go rest up at a hotel? In the morning you’ll report to Zozo for your reward and next instructions. My team and I will make sure the human girl is taken home and the bodies are reported to the authorities.”

Mura and Lilith nodded, not aware of the concealed presence below the cliff-side. Inspecting the corpse of Hakanohi, Kishin stood with a frown as he glared at the lifeless husk.

His slender fingers ran across the metallic edge of a locket; inside was the discolored photograph of a young smiling woman.

“Seems like my luck just graduated from shit to splendid.”

A nostalgic smile spread across Kishin’s face as he snapped the locket shut.

“Ain’t that right... darlin’?”