Spin-off: Four Demonly Kings
Mission canon(s): Onmyōji (2016 video game)
Part 6 of: Colour Swap arc
Calamity strikes the Demonly Kings just as they need one last ingredient, and Momoka faces the challenge of a lifetime.
Warning for in-fic objectionable content: gore.
The fic, titled "Assassins Night" does not fully belong to 2004JIMENEZ as it contains significant amounts of text plagiarized from Wikipedia, but they're welcome to whatever they've actually created.
A fragment of the nightPerfume of daylight- A seed of time
Cloth of fleetingness
The Four Demonly Kings' urgent quest to restore their colouring was almost at its end, but then disaster befell their plans:
The three boys had fallen sick, all thanks to the harsh environments encountered in their previous three missions.
Inasuke had caught the cold from the heavy rainstorm in the Touken Ranbu mission, the Tinker Bell fic's cherry blossom overload came back to haunt Urato's respiratory system, and Kaguya once again was rendered weak as mush from the potency of Akira-Sue's sweaty odour. The three were thus bedridden, their plans for the last ingredient wrecked. They were to stay in Medical until they recovered; all together in the same infirmary room, donning the same hospital gown, they bid the time in a combination of boredom and utmost physical discomfort.
"Why did this have to happen?" Inasuke whined, voice hoarse. He nearly doubled over in a coughing fit before going limp and flat on his bed again like a soppy towel, laboriously breathing from a steaming fever and aching muscles. His hair was not only still black, it was also a damp, sweaty, greasy mess. "I can't even go back to feed Booky and Vill; what if something happens to them? Besides, my phone is still in my room, and I need to raise my new Vil event card."
"Willya shut up? My head is poundin' over here!" Urato grumbled back. Normally strong and tough, he too found his body weak and useless, struggling to raise a hand. "'Sides, ar'ya fer real? Dat new Vil event card is a frickin' R, whatcha raisin' it for?"
"You're the one who needs to quiet down," Kaguya pathetically whimpered. He looked even more miserable: sallow and gaunt, pale cracked lips, long red hair sprawled in oily, matted tendrils upon his pillow, he resembled Ariel halfway through succumbing to Ursula's life-draining magic. "This is even worse than when I fell sick one week straight right before taking my university entrance exam."
Part One
One night, in the town of fiore people are getting slaughtered in one night. So many deaths every single night. Shikigamis try to stop the killings. People are terrified of dying next so the shikigami speed up the process and ty to find the thing that is doing the killings.
The fic scenery around Momoka resembled 21st-century urban United States with touches of medieval Europe rather than Heian-period Japan, but this was not her greatest concern.
She was facing two problems she'd never before encountered in her PPC career. First, all of her friends were out of commission, and no temporary partner was assigned to her. When RC 381's console shrieked louder and louder and one more colour-swap antidote was needed, she had no choice but to take on the challenge of a lifetime: a solo mission.
Second, Urato's revelation the previous day was still ringing in her mind. Everything that was transpiring – the part-time work, the colour swap, the ingredients quest – was ultimately her fault. If she had been more mindful of RC 🤘's doorway, Urato and Inasuke wouldn't have needed a privacy retreat, and the four wouldn't have needed a part-time job for vacation money.
One cool night, a strong breeze flows and the leaves fall from the tree to the ground. The night sky was naked, with no stars at all and no moon.
The pre-fic environment was unforgiving: strong wind, no light, a chilling lack of sound. The fic's choppy narration only added to the haunting atmosphere. Momoka could neither write on her charge notebook nor read the ingredient list in the impenetrable darkness. After a while, the sky turns lighter and the sun starts to come out to the sky slowly. The trees dancing along with the cool breeze. The moon begins to go down. Momoka took a deep breath – if it had come down to this, there was no way to go but forward.
Then a scream comes from a house, followed by a horrific sight where a women comes out with blood in her hands, carrying her small child, knocking Momoka flat on her behind.
"I wonder how Shigisawa-sempai's doing," Inasuke said. "I miss her already. I can't imagine spending the next few days locked up in a room without her around."
"What, dya want her to catch our bug?" Urato replied. "'S just a few days. Ya can run up tah her when yer healthy."
"Spending just one day confined with annoying people and having nothing fun to do is too much. She's the only thing making it bearable at this point."
"Who're ya callin' annoying?" Urato said unamusedly. "Ya gotta crush on her or sumthin'? Even now?"
Inasuke immediately rolled over to face the wall. "No way. She's just a special friend to me. Everything is just better when she's around.
"Do you remember the badfic we came from? We may have gotten new, legitimate pasts, but I can't forget that nightmare. That depraved Sue who called herself the god of justice, she thought she was always right. She thought her high status meant that she could force her warped views on everyone else. That she could throw rocks at someone and call them useless if they were too weak to fight murderers. That having her home bombed meant she could join a gang in committing brutal serial murders. I had to live with her and endure her nonsense because there was nowhere to go, until she just upped and decided she was too good for me.
"Shigisawa-sempai on the other hand, she's everything Bakara is not. She's kind and gentle. She's lost her entire family, but never uses that to drag others down. She and I sometimes mission in canons I don't know, but she never calls me useless for it. She doesn't complain about the number of plushes I make, unlike a certain someone. She's the sister figure I've always wanted."
Inasuke didn't notice that Urato had fallen asleep.
As Momoka often said in chaotic missions with the boys, it was imperative to stay calm and devise strategies in any tight situation. Thus, stay calm and devise a strategy she would – even if the sight of the woman's child coughing blood, then going on to slam himself in the ground screaming like a psycho was fresh in her mind.
Since she was all alone, no task-splitting was to be had; she'd have to collect charges and find the last ingredient. She thus decided to start on the former first – and into the notebook went a charge for wrong setting.
A shadow passes rapidly and suddenly the dead kid in the ground disappears. The kid goes outside and looks for the kid and tells his mom "Mom, where did the kid go, he's not here no more." The mother goes out and doesn't see the kid, so she grabs her child and runs inside the house, her heart starts to race, and she calls someone to come help. The ambulance comes and takes the mother, police get involved and look for the kid but there's no traces of the kid.
The fic doesn't even bother differentiating which kid is which, Momoka thought as her right wrist moved furiously. Thanks to ambiguous syntax, the kid who was supposedly dead disappeared, then reappeared alive, ran outside, spoke to his mother, then fell dead and disappeared again. Also, why are there ambulance and police in a game set in the Heian period?
Suddenly, creatures appear and people see them, some of them don't look him man like, and a person says "There Shikigami, Shikigami is the term for a being from Japanese folklore. It is thought to be some sort of kami, represented by a small ghost." The man says "In simpler terms Shikigami are conjured beings, made alive through a complex conjuring ceremony. Their power is connected to the spiritual force of their master. Usually shikigami are conjured to exercise risky orders for their masters, such as spying, stealing and enemy tracking. Shikigami are said to be invisible most of the time, but they can be made visible by binding them."
This dialogue sent Momoka's CAD into overdrive, spitting out a reading for exactly one second before shattering itself. "This fic plagiarizes text from English Wikipedia?" she said. This was going to be a long mission.
"Yanno, it's gettin' kinda dull in here. Three guys inna room together n' can't come up with 'nythin' cool?" Urato said hoarsely as he woke up from his brief nap.
"Goodness, keep your voice down, will you? It's already bedtime," Inasuke deadpanned. A coughing fit later, he continued, "What do you wanna do at this hour? Just go back to sleep!"
"I wonder what's Momotchi's doin'," Urato said. "She was actin' real weird after our last mission yesterday. She was like… a walkin' statue or sumthin', man. She refused tah talk. She kept starin' into da distance. She barely ate dinner. She didn't even play games – n' she rolled SSR Leona yesterday mornin' too. Is she okay? Ey Guyatchi, dya know… Guyatchi! Whatcha doin'?"
Both Urato and Inasuke were taken by surprise: Kaguya had slinked out of his bed, and was desperately trying to open the door with feeble hands.
Part Two
The little kid that saw the figure in the woods was sitting in a bench with his mother. The little kid in the sunset and his mother smiled meanwhile looking at the sun staring to set. The kid said to his mother "Isn't the sunset beautiful mother, look at the sky. It's a nice purple and pink color, it's as beautiful as you".
The mother said to his son "Oh Lucas, thanks for saying that you really made my day."
Outside of the massive blunder that was characters named Vincent and Lucas in Heian-period Japan, the chapter started out idyllic. This was ideal time to start the equally important task of finding the last ingredient.
However, Momoka ran into a problem. The ingredient's name, a seed of time, was more obtuse than the rest of the list. There wasn't a single narrative clue – in fact, due to insufficient description, the environment was literally nothing but a reflective surface for a ground with a bench upon it, where the kid named Lucas and his mother conversed. This was not helped by the fact that the sunset, both in the sky and reflected on the ground, was illustrated by two pieces of unattributed artwork, thus resulting in a visually confusing mess. The clouds constantly shifted between purple and orange, and the art style between semi-realistic and cartoonish. Momoka's eyes eventually teared up, her head ached and she collapsed to the ground – she could not stand up, let alone search for anything.
A house materialized for Lucas and his mother to enter, the sky shifted to a night sky […] lit with stars, and a figure (of a woman holding a red peony flower lantern) was in top of the street lamp. When the environment had stabilized enough for Momoka to open her eyes and stand up, a realization occured to her: the chapter focused quite prominently on the change from day to night, with a loving shot of the sunset. This, she figured, must be a clue to "time"; the only thing unsolved was the "seed". She decided to nonetheless produce the ingredients list scroll and open it; holding it up, she asked, "Is this chapter where the last ingredient is?"
All this got her was a bolt of shock.
A man walks in the street and trips on something. The man stands up and turns around, he looks down and sees a person covered in blood and sees his hands as bones. He screams "Ahhhhh, someone, someone, call the police now."
[…]
A person walks in the streets slowly, with a hat on her head, and an umbrella. She sits down on the bench and stares out to the lake. The women puts an evil like smirk on her face. The kid Lucas, looks at the person sitting in the bench, and suddenly the person in the bench turns around slowly. She turns around completely and stares at Lucas, she tilts her head and Lucas begins to get nervous.
… capped off with more unforwarned traumatizing imagery.
"Hazama-sempai! What are you doing?" Inasuke said, crawling off his bed. "The door is locked! Where are you trying to go? Medical staff is going to catch you anyway!"
Kaguya ignored him. Weak, shivering hands futilely twisted the unmoving doorknob until the fingers were red. It didn't take long for him to eventually collapse to the floor, weak like an overcooked noodle. He soon launched into a violent coughing fit, then he felt a gush of salty liquid in his mouth. He gasped – thick, warm streams ran down his chin, his white hospital gown was stained with drops of blood.
At this, Urato mustered whatever strength he could to haul Kaguya back into his bed like a sack of potatoes. "Aight, yer stayin' put, n' that's final!" he said. "Tryna get out again n' I'm tyin' ya down!"
Kaguya wanted to argue, but was interrupted by yet another bout of bloody coughs. He flattened himself weakly against his pillow, blood blending in with the red of his hair.
Part Three
Among all the Onmyōji badfics Momoka had seen, this was easily the worst.
She didn't dare look up or open her eyes fully – not due to a visually overwhelming environment, but because of the dead birds decapitated that had somehow appeared in the bathtub Lucas had just bathed in. Eyes squinted as narrowly as she could, notebook held close to her face so she wouldn't have to see any more of the horrific imagery, she wrote down a charge for constant, unwarned gore.
A strange figure appears in front of a random old couple in the streets. […] It had a bird like face and the couple said "Children's these days, trying to scare people with their costumes."
They walk past the figure and they laugh. The figure turns around and kicks the old man to the ground. It's feet were bird like, the creature laughed demonically and pushed the old woman to the ground. The creature said "Look at your selves, you look like trash, this is why I despise humans." The old man struggled to say "What, what are you." The creature responded "I'm your worst nightmare." She takes her weapon out and says "Run, run, run, run, hahahahaha."
"Seriously, Ubume? Of all the canon characters that really would randomly murder kids, birds and old people, this fic chose Ubume?" Momoka said. "She's so motivated by her love for children that she'll kidnap children from people she thinks are bad parents; what part of that makes her come off as a deranged serial killer? Even if she's not in the main story, pretty much everyone uses her, and a complete number of her shards are given out for free in quests, so there's hardly an excuse to not know her character. Has the badfic ghost responsible for this fic even played the game at all?"
The creature said with a evil voice "Oh well, that was a waste of energy."
But then, amidst all the OOC, canon-wrecking madness, one question reigned:
Just what on earth was a "seed of time"?
The rest of the night's sleep was hardly peaceful. Urato and Inasuke had agreed to alternately keep an eye on Kaguya lest he tried to escape again. Weak, aching and feverish, the three bid their time in tense silence.
Kaguya was the first to break that silence. He said, "If you don't mind, can I tell you a story?"
Urato unenthusiastically grumbled, "What izzit?"
"I suppose you know I was one of the popular students at my high school," Kaguya continued. "It's a tradition set by the school newspaper: having the student body elect students with exceptional achievements to set an example for the rest of the school. They usually have one student elected as a King or a Queen. At one point, there were Three Crows. At most, there were Seven Wonders of Ichoco. My generation was Four Ogre Kings.
"To bear such a title was an honour, but also a hassle. These students would be admired and desired by the student body. They're essentially academic idols; can you imagine the fallout that would happen if these perfect model students let romance interfere with their diligent image and their desirability?
"When Momo started going to my school, she let it slip that she lived in my house and made my lunch. After this, we had to do everything in our power to not appear suspicious; otherwise, not only would my reputation tank, my club and Momo herself would also be affected. We couldn't meet up and talk at school. We couldn't be seen together publicly outside of school hours. She couldn't talk to me even when she visited our family's hotel.
"Momo has sworn loyalty to me, and she lives by it. She went to so much trouble back then just to preserve my honour; even now, she plunges into perilous journeys for my sake. And yet, what does she get in return? All of this mess is my fault; I should've been more mindful of RC 🤘's doorway. She's out there all alone, do you think I can just sit by and let it happen? If she's willing to throw her life away for mine, then by gods, I can also throw my life away for hers."
His speech ended with more coughing. When the coughs stopped and more blood had been shed, Urato approached him and grabbed his shoulders.
"Fer real, yer da biggest idiot I've ever seen," Urato said. "Yer sick, fer god's sake. Whaddya think crawlin' out there is gunna help?"
"What else should I do, lounge around doing nothing? At least I need to make sure she's alright. She's not only important to me, but to all of us. Inasuke-kun, isn't she like a sister to you?"
Then came yet more coughing.
Inasuke knew it was his turn to step up. "Hazama-sempai," he said. "I've never seen you like this. You always care for your skin and condition your hair before bed; now you're all sweaty, greasy and bloody. You like to talk about classic poetry and video games; now you're a miserable wet sack. Do you think Shigisawa-sempai would be happy to see you like this? What do you think she'd feel if you died?
"You've told me yourself that we need to actually pay attention to her feelings. Maybe it's time you take your own advice."
Kaguya was speechless.
Part Four
A wolf like creature comes towards an old man and carries him. The old man says "Please, don't kill me, I'll give you anything you want." The fox like creature replied "J don't need anything from you, there's nothing to be afraid of, I'm here to take you back to your house. Now don't make noise or the other shiki's will hear and kill us."
In a much welcome change, parts of this chapter was set in a shrine on a mountain where people used to go there and praise a mountain god. This was the closest the fic got to the canon setting. Dressed in miko garb, Momoka hid behind the badly UV-mapped donation box and watched as the "fox like creature" (then rendered as a vaguely vulpine mass of walking, talking tofu) lead the old man inside.
This was perfect time to resume the hunt for the last ingredient. Momoka slipped out of her hiding spot and made for the holy tree, where she picked up two rocks. She hadn't yet taken out the scroll when she heard the fox like creature talk from inside the shrine.
"Your not causing me any trouble, I'm glad I found you, and by the way those things you saw, there shiki's and I'm one to. I'm not like them though, I don't know what has gotten into them though, there causing trouble and I have to stop them. Plus, I'm not the only on who's found out, there are other shikigami, that know and we're going to hunt them down."
Momoka stashed the rocks away, took out the notebook instead and wrote in big letters: not how onmyōdō works.
The old man said "Wow, your a shikigami, if you don't mind what's your name, shikigamis have names right?" The old man walked towards the bed and laid down.
The creature replied slowly "My name is Hakuro."
The vulpine tofu suddenly turned into a very much not fox-like canon character. "Hakurō is a wolf, not a fox; it's right there in her name," Momoka seethed as the lead of her pencil punctured the paper.
Part Five
The old man looks at the person and says "That's not a person, that's the bird like creature, she killed my wife." Hakuro puts him down quickly and grabs her bow. The bird like creature runs towards Hakuro and appears in back of her. It spins and kicks Hakuro with immensity. It takes its sword out and tries to stab Hakuro. Hakuro makes a backflip and draws three arrows in the air, she shoots them and the bird like creature deflects all of them with her sword. Hakuro tells the creature "What's your name, and why are you doing all of this?"
The creature answers demonically "My name is Ubume, now get the hell out of my way, I should have killed that old hag when I had the chance."
"Stop right there! Fake Ubume and fake Hakurō, the PPC convict you of crimes against fanfiction and Onmyōji canon," cried a brown-haired girl in miko garb. "Charges against you include incorrect setting, namely transplanting characters from the Heian period into a vaguely modern Western setting; plagiarizing text from Wikipedia; nonsensical plot; violent content without a warning; replacing the real Ubume and Hakurō; and failure to understand the basics of Onmyōji canon. For this, I exorcise malevolent badfic ghost, kyū-kyū-nyo-ritsu-ryō!"
That said, Momoka threw the two rocks she found under the shrine's holy tree at the character replacements. The replacements turned into smoke and dissipated – and the ground started shaking. Momoka fell to the ground, got up to run, and fell to the ground again. She was sure the shrine would collapse, trees would topple, rocks on the mountain would fall and she would not make it out alive… but none of those things happened.
She looked down at the town at the mountain's foot. With each and every quake, modern blocks turned into wooden houses with paper doors, asphalt turned into flagstone, street lights turned into stone lanterns. As the quakes stopped and the environment had returned to its proper classical Japanese state, another surprise presented itself: the scroll floated out of Momoka's robes, hovered over the rocks she threw at the character replacements, and the only remaining item on the list disappeared.
"Right, the rocks imbued with the shrine's powers ultimately stripped the anachronism from the setting and returned it to the correct era. They're no doubt the seeds of time," she remarked.
That morning, the boys woke up to a knock on the door. It was not a Medical staff member bringing them breakfast as they had expected, but none other than an elated Momoka, holding two rocks.
Nothing more needed to be said; she was quickly pulled into a group hug by the other three… and was released at once, as they noticed something off. "Momo, why is your body so hot?" Kaguya asked alarmedly.
She too had fallen sick, then was hospitalized in a separate room from the boys.
