Blackout

At the previous chapter, I have forgot to mention that Ayumi has changed into her casual clothes, since her shrine maiden uniform would definitely raise some eyebrows. I have already fix it. Please forgive me for my negligence.

Hajime’s POV
   “To think that grandfather would actually agree to ally with the onis, he must have gone senile!” Hajime fumes as he’s walking around his room in circles.

   It has been several hours since that outsider Minase Jin, also known as Silver Wolf, has went to Shuten Douji and asked for an alliance. Hajime doesn’t know what kind of trick did the fake Hero pulled, but Shuten Douji actually agreed. And now, onmyojis and onis are working together to repel the rest of the youkai threats.

   Naturally, Hajime was furious when he first heard of the alliance. He immediately went to his grandfather and questioned the decision.

   “Onmyojis allying themselves with onis? Are you insane, grandfather?” he yelled.

   “I don’t like this as much as you do, Hajime. However, it has to be done. After all, we need all the help we can get. Mark my words, the alliance will only last until Tengu and Tamamo No Mae are defeated.” his grandfather explained calmly.

   “But it’s the onis we’re talking about! Have you forgotten that Shuten Douji killed Asuka nee-san?”

   As Hajime has expected, grandfather’s expression has gone dark the moment he mentioned the late Asuka.

   “Of course I haven’t. Sometimes I even get nightmares over her death.” grandfather whispered.

   “Then we should avenge her all the more!”

   “No. The civilians’ safety is our top priority.” the old man said stubbornly.

   Hajime let out a small snort of disgust. To think that the Head Onmyoji is such a coward.

   “All of you agree with me, right?” Hajime asked the other onmyojis who’re also there with them.

   To his disgust, a vast majority of them are on grandfather’s side. Two or three are unhappy with it, but chose to remain silence.

   “Looks like the Ichihara onmyojis are all cowards.” he spat.

   “Careful, young man. You’re venturing into dangerous territory there.” his grandfather warned.

   “But it’s true! Wait till I become the new Head! All of you will be out of a job, you hear me? All-”

   “Hajime, you’re to stay inside your room until all this is over. I won’t tolerate any disobedience.”

   Hajime was absolutely shocked to hear that. He’s actually getting grounded. Him, the future head of the Ichihara Onmyojis. Not to mention that he’s twenty years old. He’s a college student, for crying out loud, and his punishment is one usually given to a kid who did something naughty. And yet, obey he must, for that is the rule of the Ichihara family. If he goes against the current Head, he’ll be banished from the family forever.

   “I shall obey. However, please release me from the house arrest should there be an attack. I’m sure that my help will be needed in times like those.”

   “I appreciate your offer, but you’re not getting out of your room anytime soon. Now go.”

   “...Yes.”

   Right before Hajime leaves the room, he hears some soft snickers behind him. He gritted his teeth and acted like he didn’t hear it. He’s not stupid. He knows very well the reason they laughed.

   Hajime is the second child of the prestigious Ichihara family. His family is well known in producing strong onmyojis, so much so that their rank are second only to the Yamauchi family, who governs all onmyojis in Japan.

   Asuka, the eldest of them all, was known as a prodigy in the art of onmyo. She mastered the art in the young age of nine even though some took at least ten years to master at least a fraction of it. Originally, women are not supposed to be taught onmyo-jutsu, but everyone looked the other way since she was an Ichihara. The only restriction that was given to her is that she’s not allowed to become an actual onmyoji. She’s also extremely good at her staff technique. Even grandfather couldn’t beat her after she practiced it for three years.

   Ayumi, the youngest child, admired her elder sister so much so also wanted to practice onmyo-jutsu. Her too is very proficient in it, and her skill at wielding a katana was praised highly by pretty much everyone who crossed swords with her.

   Everyone claimed that it’s such a shame the two of them were born as girls. Otherwise, they would end up becoming two of the best onmyojis ever known to mankind. And then there’s Hajime.

   Unlike his two sisters, Hajime isn’t good at onmyo-jutsu nor wielding weapons. He could barely cast a basic force field spell without stuttering, the talismans he drew can hardly be used, and he often freaked out when he has to go out and exorcist an evil spirit. His staff-wielding technique is mediocre at best, and he has never won a sparring match against anyone from his family.

   Even so, Hajime could become the next Head. That’s because he’s the only male who’s next in the succession line. It was supposed to be his father, but both his parents have passed away in an car accident when they were young. And so, the burden would be left to Hajime should Grandfather Iemitsu ever passes away.

   Naturally, a lot of people are not happy with this. A Head is supposed to lead his followers by example. If the Head is a weakling, the family would not prosper. Even so, Hajime is going to take on the title shamelessly. He’s fine with hiding at a safe place while his subordinate go out and risk their lives. Leaders aren’t meant to be at the front, but at the back.

   When reports came in that announced that Shuten Douji killed Asuka, everyone at the house grieved. Everyone except him, that is. If only Ayumi would die as well, people would stop bringing up his incompetence.

   “Everyone who refuses to acknowledge me should just die.” Hajime mumbles.

   He’s so caught up in his thoughts that he didn’t even notice an apparition who’s standing behind him. The ghost is wearing the robe commonly worn by monks at ancient times. A monk who failed to pass on, perhaps. However, there’s something odd about him. He still kept his hair, and it’s so long is reached until his waist. Speaking of being kept, his fingernails aren’t cut at all. Each of them are the length of his arm. He opens his mouth and says something, but no sound came out since the tip of his tongue is gone. The more the ghost opens and closes his mouth, the more Hajime becomes agitated.

   “That’s it. I’ll show them!” Hajime decides.

   He goes to the paper door of his room real quietly and opens it. Wow. They didn’t even bother to post a guard outside. Well, he’ll make sure that they regret it for underestimating him.

   While being mindful of other onmyojis, he slowly makes his way to the barrier room where the pillar that opens up portals is placed. Even if Hajime is a third-rate onmyoji, he’s still capable of opening up portals. Before he activate the portal, however, he made sure that the coordinates are randomized. He has heard that Shuten Douji and his army of oni is nearby the current coordinates, so he has to change them in order for hostile youkais to cross over and invade the shrine.

   After that’s done, he quickly leaves the shrine altogether without being seen before he got caught up in the fight.

   “I wonder how many will survive. I hope there will be enough for the brilliant old me to guide!” he says gleefully.

Jin’s POV
   Ayumi wastes no time in calling her grandfather.

   “Is everything all right there, grandfather? What, the shrine is under attack by evil spirits and youkais? We’ll head back right away to help!”

   Ayumi pauses as her grandfather says something on the other side of the phone.

   “What? But-”

   More muffled voice from the phone.

   “...I understand. I shall do as you say.”

   Her expression looks quite reluctant when she puts away her phone.

   “What did Iemitsu-san said?” Jin asks.

   “He said that he can take care of things at Kameda and wants us to focus on reinforcing Fushimi, the main branch at Kyoto instead.”

   “You know what, I’ll go to Fushimi. You can head to Kameda first.” he volunteers.

   “Thank you. I’ll do just that.”

   “How are we going to spread up our forces?” Audrey asks.

   Jin looks at the map again. Minus the Kyoto main branch and the Kameda Shrine, there are ten other shrines spread all across Japan.

   “I’ll take care of all the shrines located at the Kansai Region. You girls take care of those at the Kanto Regions.” he decides. “We have a lot of places to go. In order to save time, our strategy is to defeat all the stronger enemies and leave the small fries to the onmyojis and onis.”

   “I think that’s the best way to do this too.” Ayumi agrees. “However, how are we going to travel to those places without wasting hours?”

   “We have the ability to travel to somewhere far away from us by opening up portals.” Audrey tells her.

   “Not me, though. Space magic is the one and only magic I’m bad at.” Jin confesses.

   “Wait, you actually have a spell that you’re bad at?” Aldenia asks with a surprised look on her face.

   Jin merely shrugs at that.

   “No one is perfect.”

   “More like you can’t master it since you’re too much of a simpleton.” Estyshana giggles.

   “You can interpret it however you want. Anyway, let’s stop wasting time and let’s do this already.”

   Audrey finds out the location of Fushimi Shrine and opens up a portal which leads there in order to convenience Jin. She then opens up another portal so that the girls can go straight to Kameda Shrine.

   “You’ll never know who you might be there, so it’s better to put on a disguise.” Jin says to them.

   He himself has already equipped his adamantium armor.

   “Good idea. I’ll wear a mask or something.” Aldenia says as she’s reaching out to her Vault. “What kind of mask do you want, nee-san?”

   “One that only covers my eyes, please.” Audrey replies.

   “One that only covers eyes, one that only cover eyes…”

   “What to do? I would stand out too much with my hair.” Estyshana mumbles while she’s twirling her hair with her finger.

   “You could shave it bald.” Jin suggests.

   He quickly dodges away as Estyshana aims a kick at him.

   “You can wear this, for starters.” Aldenia says while passing the demon a black mask that has two holes so that the person who wears it can see where she’s going.

   “As for you hair, you can use Illusion to fool others that it’s not really red.” Audrey suggests next.

   “Thanks for the suggestion. Thee two of you are so much more helpful than a certain useless Hero.” Estyshana says while glaring at Jin.

   Jin averts his eyes and whistles innocently.

   Aldenia also got masks for Ayumi and Meiko, just in case.

   “Why do you have this many masks?” Jin asks Aldenia.

   “I’ve been collecting them since nee-san and I went to lots of masquerade balls back when we were at Ifezan.”

   “Collecting them? What for?”

   “It was a weird hobby of mine. Now I’m only addicted to collecting BL books-”

   “Alright, you don’t have to say any further.”

   “Will you be helping us out, Nyri-san?” Ayumi asks Nyri.

   “I’m sorry to say, but that’s not possible.” the Elder Dragon informs. “I can’t help out in the quarrels that humans are involved. This is already decided by a set of laws made by beings even more ancient than I am. If I disobey, I’ll be disintegrated.”

   “I see. It can’t be helped then.”

   Jin stands in front of the portal which will bring him to Fushimi.

   “Well, time to go. Good luck, everyone.” he says to the girls.

   After exchanging words of encouragements, all of them step through their respective portals almost at the same time.

   The first thing Jin sees after stepping through the portal is a battlefield. Everywhere he looks, he sees onmyojis, onis, a wide variety of youkais and ghosts. The first two groups are teaming up to fight the other two groups who’re also teaming up. So far, the human-oni alliance is losing the battle. They're also being outnumbered by their enemies at least four-to-one.

   As per discussed, Jin looks around to look for the youkai or ghost that’s causing the most trouble. He found one in less than ten seconds.

   The particular foe is the ghost of an Ushi Oni. Ushi Oni is a youkai that has the head of a bull and the body of a spider. It has six legs, each of them ending with a sharp claw. Also, it’s the size of two eighteen-wheelers.

   Most attacks just phase through it, but it can attack like normal. It’s also spitting out poisons that can even melt metal. The most troublesome thing is its speed. For something that’s as huge as two trucks combined together, it has the agility of a grasshopper. As Jin watches, it managed to take down a large group of onis which consists of at least thirty demons all by itself. Yup. That youkai-ghost needs to die a second time.

   Jin makes a really long jump and lands on the youkai. Before the bull-spider can even register that someone landed on its back, Jin makes Felfarthen appears on his left hand. He then pierces the youkai’s abdomen with the sword.

   The bull-spider lets out a roar that’s between a bellow of a bull and something insectoid that Jin used to hear in a movie about giant spiders. He jumps down from it right before it disintegrates into dusts.

   Next is a trio of Nurikabes. Simply put, they’re a rectangular blocks of cement with arms, legs and eyes. All three of them are as tall as three-storey terrace houses, and they’re busy flattening humans and onis alike. Blows against their cement bodies don’t work, and neither do talismans. The three of them noticed Jin taking down the Ushi-oni and walk towards him in order to flatten him. It would have been nice for them to walk towards their death without Jin moving. Unfortunately, all of them move slower than tortoises. And so, Jin has to walk towards them anyway.

   A punch, a thrust, and a diagonal slash. There. All the nurikabes are gone. Killing the Nurikabes make the youkai and ghost alliance army start to notice Jin .more and more of them are trying to take him down. Jin shrugs and mows them down like he’s mowing the lawn. These small-timers are honestly no match for him-

   “Forget the human in the weird-looking armor! We’re here for her, remember?”

   Jin looks at the youkai who spoke. It’s a hairy chimpanzee. Jin didn’t know that a chimpanzee is a type of youkai too.

   “My brothers and I figured out where she is! The humans are hiding her inside that building!” the chimp says while pointing at a particularly large building.

   “You monkeys better be telling the truth!” a flaming-wheel youkai called Wanyudo threatens the chimp.

   “Course we are! Have you forgotten who we are? Mind-reading is what we’re good at! The humans were so desperate on defending her that her location were leaking out from their head!”

   Oh, drat. That’s no chimpanzee. That’s Satori, a mind-reading youkai. With that thing and its brothers walking around and reading the movements of humans and onis, no wonder his side is losing.

   Before the satori could speak any further, Jin flies towards it and beheads it with a single swing of his sword. Both the body and the head fall to the ground with a soft thud. Jin looks around and see five more Satori. All of them fell to his sword.

   Originally, the plan was to take down some of the most troublesome enemies and go to the next location while leaving the weaker ones to the onmyojis and onis. However, Jin decided to take out all the youkais anyway. From the way the Satori spoke, they’re looking for someone or something important, hence their huge numbers. There’s no way Jin could risk this shrine being overrun. The cleanup operation didn’t take very long anyway.

   After all the youkais and ghosts were defeated, Jin takes a look around. The loss on the humans and onis’ side are kind of severe, with lots of corpses lying around all over the place.

   “Please take care of things here as I go to the next branch.” Jin tells a random onmyoji.

   “Understood. Thank ya fer ya help.”

   This is the first time Jin has ever talked to a Japanese with a Kansai accent, and he could barely understand him.

   “Before I go, what’s inside that building?” Jin asks while looking towards the building that the Satori pointed.

   “Oh, dat? Dat’s da main building. Our Head Shuzo-sama is inside with da strongest onmyoji in our family as his guards.”

   “Any idea what the Satori was talking about? You know, about that her that it mentioned?”

   The onmyoji gives a genuinely baffled look.

   “I have no idea. I mean, our shrine maidens are certainly important too, but none of them is worth da trouble for this many youkais ta appear.”

   “...I see.”

   Well, whoever or whatever the youkais was looking for, hopefully it can wait until Jin is done helping out at the five other shrines he’s in charge of.

   Once he’s done with killing all the hostile youkais at the five shrines, he heads back to Fushimi. He was so efficient that the bodies that are lying around the place are barely been cleaned up. Jin heads straight to the main building so that he could talk to that Shuzo person. The onmyoji that he was talking to just now saw where he’s heading and makes an attempt to stop him.

   “I’m sorry, but that’s da one place dat’s off limites, even fer ya.” the onmyoji tells the boy.

   “Do I look like I care?” Jin asks him coolly.

   “Look, ya can’t just barge in and ask ta see Shuzo-sama.” the man says nervously.

   “Again. I don’t care. I need some answer and I need it now. From your look, I could tell that you want them too. So do a lot of the onmyojis here.”

   “...Ya got me. At least promise me dat ya won’t wreck da door.”

   “I can promise you that much.” Jin assures.

   As the onmyoji has said, the entrance of the room where Yamauchi Shuzo is in is being heavily guarded by tough-looking onmyojis.

   “Move.” he orders them.

   After exchanging nervous looks, move they did. Wise choice.

   Jin pushes the wooden doors open, and he’s immediately rewarded with a view of the room inside.

   There’s a wooden curtain being placed at the middle of the room. There’s a female servant who’s standing right in front of the curtain at the same side where Jin is. She’s glaring at Jin with murderous intent.

   “Leave before you receive Divine Judgment!” she warns him.

   “Don’t wanna.”

   She lets out an angry gasp.

   “How dare you speak in such a manner-”

   “It’s fine, Marika.” the person behind the curtain says.

   “But sire-” the female servant protests.

   “I said that it’s fine.”

   “...As you wish.”

   The female servant has relented, but she’s still glaring at Jin.

   “Yamauchi Shuzo, I take it?” Jin asks the person behind the curtain.

   “Indeed. The 89th Head of the Yamauchi family, Yamauchi Shuzo, at your service.” the person answers.