Falling Cherry Blossoms (Rated R, Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Black Lagoon/Bible Black: Origins)

Disclaimers:
1) This story is set in the universe of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is owned by Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. It follows on from my work Controlled Circumstances, but my muse decided that (at least parts of) this had to get written first.
2) This story also incorporates characters, situations, and other concepts from the animated works Black Lagoon (crime/action, Rei Hiroe/Madhouse/Geneon Entertainment) and Bible Black: Origin (erotica/horror, Milky Studio/Kitty Media).
2) I have used canon material from the above works wherever it suited the needs of the story, but where necessary I have taken my own interpretation of that canon, written my own material to address oversights or plot-holes, and indeed outright ignored some portions of the canon which clashed. Basically, if it screened in an episode of Buffy that came after ‘Graduation Pt.2’, I’ve probably already discarded it.
3) I welcome criticism of my works, but if you tell me that something is wrong, I also expect an explanation of what is wrong, and a suggestion of how to fix it. Note that I do not promise to follow any given suggestion.[/i]



Two years ago, the British Watcher’s Council chose to Call Tatyana ‘Taz’ Zyrianova, a Russian-born New Zealander, as The Vampire Slayer. Since then, she’s seen almost nothing out of them in terms of real help. Taz and her Watcher/boyfriend, Peter ‘Misha’ McKellar, have been frantically trying to cope with the trials and travails of teenaged life, even as they fight a desperate, pitiless guerrilla campaign against the Forces of Darkness in their home city of Napier, functionally occupied by a mercenary army loyal to the undead.
Now, their friend Yukio Washimine has invited them to Japan for the hanami festival, hoping to give them a brief holiday.
But when you’re a Vampire Slayer, nothing is ever that simple or easy...

Spoiler: Cast List

FUJIYAMA HIGH SCHOOL — FACULTY
Kagiyama Shunji, Principal (‘kōchō’)
* Kiyabu Konosuke, Boy’s P.E. Teacher/Kenjutsu instructor
Nishizaka Echiko, Girl’s P.E. teacher, kenjutsu-ka, secret Shugenja
Yamanaka Tomoyuki, World History teacher
* Shiraki Kana, Basic Mathematical Analysis teacher
Fukuzawa Ichiro, English teacher, head of Fujiyama exchange program
* Minase Sakurako, English teacher

FUJIYAMA HIGH SCHOOL — STUDENTS
Kozono Nami — Senior (Class 3-B), Student Council President
Mochida Junko — Senior (Class 3-D), Student Council Financial Representative
Hiraya ‘Hiratani’ Seiji — Senior (Class 3-E)
THE ASPIRING COVEN
Front row, left to right: Takashiro Hiroko, Morita Rie, Shidō Saki (all Seniors/Class 3-F)
Washimine Yukio, Senior (Class 3-F), member of literature circle
* Sakimoto Tatsumi, Senior, head of literature circle
Kajiwara Maki, Junior (Class 2-E), member of literature circle

ST. GEORGE’S ACADEMY EXCHANGE PARTY
Justin Whelan, Teacher, chaperone for exchange program
Hudson ‘Hud’ Young, Year 13 Student, Second XV lock, nominal head of exchange students
Erika ‘Rika’ Karlson, Year 13 Student
James ‘Jimmy’ Jackson, Year 12 Student, formerly a classmate of Taz’s
Claudia ‘Squeak’ Fisher, Year 12 Student, formerly a classmate of Taz’s
Tatyana ‘Taz’ Zyrianova, Year 13 Student, Slayer, fait-accompli addition to exchange
Peter ‘Misha’ McKellar, Year 13, Watcher, fait-accompli addition to exchange

WASHIMINE-GUMI AND AFFILIATES
* Bandō Tsugio, acting gumi-chō
* Matsuzaki Ginji, AKA ‘Hitokiri Ginji’, acting wakagashira, Yukio’s guardian
* Yoshida ??, a senior enforcer
* Taka ??, an enforcer
* ‘Chaka’, enforcer and wannabe gunslinger
* Tokugawa Kazuo, university student, Yukio’s semi-official suitor

KŌSA-KAI AND AFFILIATES
* Kōsa Masami, kai-chō, recently inherited position
* Kōsa Hayato, wakagashira, Masami’s younger brother
* Kozono Taro, shateigashira, Nami’s father
* Sumida Yoshiteru, Nami’s personal driver/bodyguard
* Minase Rikiya, kobun
* Sazama Kenji, chinpira (thug/Yakuza-wannabe), leader of Nami’s personal gofer squad

Part One: One Link in a Chain Reaction
Part Two: Send Lawyers, Guns and Money
Part Three: Pleased to Meet You
Part Four: ??

 

Fujiyama High School
Sagamihara, Tokyo, Japan
08:32, Monday, April 17, 1995

Justin Whelan glanced about at the sea of Fujiyama students around him, and the varying degrees of veiled (and even open) curiosity they were casting on Gaikokujin-sensei and his four charges. Hudson Young and James Jackson were almost dapper in their scarlet blazers over charcoal-grey trousers; Erika Karlson and Claudia Fishers’ blazers were teamed with scarlet knee-length skirts over white tights; skin-colours aside, the uniforms alone made the four impossible to miss in the sea of dark-grey seifuku and garukan. “Good to see everyone’s here on time,” he smiled. “You’ve all got your class placements sorted out, yeah?”

“Yes, Sir,” nodded Young. Tall and burly, as expected of a lock on the Second XV, the Maori boy was missing pre-season training for this exchange visit, but didn’t regret the choice. The other three all added their own confirmations.

“Good,” Whelan noted, with a nod of his own. “Then —”

He was interrupted by an aberration in the normal bustle of Fujiyama students arriving by foot or bicycle: a well-preserved white car – a rivet-counter would have told him it was a 1967 Lincoln Continental, complete with ‘suicide doors’ – coming to a halt at the kerbside. After a moment, the driver dismounted and moved around to open the rear door for his passenger, a tall, imperious girl in a Fujiyama seifuku with a long ponytail of hair so black it gleamed purple.

“Spot the Rich Girl,” muttered the lanky Jackson, a little sourly.

“Oi! Careful she doesn’t hear you, Jimmy,” Young said, nudging the smaller boy with an elbow. “Five’ll get you ten that driver’s got a full set of irezumi under the penguin-suit.”

“I don’t bet against dead certs, Hud, you know that.”

The new arrival’s amber eyes swept over the knot of five foreigners almost dispassionately... then stopped and widened a hair as they fell on Karlson. Her own attention on fixing her tie, Rika didn’t notice the stare before the newcomer broke it and continued inside, a thoughtful expression on her face.

For his part, Jimmy had been following the newcomer’s movements — or, at least, the movement of her long, toned, stocking-clad legs and well-turned backside. “She’s a bit of all right, though,” he murmured appreciatively. “Is this a high school, or a casting-call for an AV studio? ’Cause I’m pretty sure Fujiyama’s average Babe Index is a good few points above the national curve....”

Fisher turned a scorching Death Glare on him, which suddenly turned into a nasty smirk. “Becca’s gonna love hearing that you said that, Jimmy!”

“Hey-hey-hey, steady on, Squeak! I was just making an observation — no need to go narc’ing on anyone!”

“Maybe, maybe not.” The smirk turned even nastier. “Question is, ‘what is worth to you for me not to tell her’?”

– – – – – – –

In Class 3-F, Morita Rie, a bubbly girl with light-green hair in high twin-tails, was laying a thick, old-looking book with an elaborate hexagram engraved on the front cover in front of her best friends.

「What’s this?」 With a waist-length river of bright red hair and arguably the best figure of the trio – and as Jimmy had noted, at Fujiyama that was high praise indeed – Takashiro Hiroko was also the effective head of their little group. And, as the most knowledgeable about magic and the occult, leader of their budding coven.

「I found it at an antique store yesterday!」 Rie chattered eagerly. 「It must be an original, it’s hand-written and everything!」

「It looks old. Was it expensive?」 wondered their third, Shidō Saki, who wore her brown hair in a simple pixie-cut.

「Not at all! I found it in a pile of sale-books – I think it was part of someone’s estate.」

「A hand-written book of magic....」 Hiroko mused. 「It was probably written by a priest in the Middle Ages!」

「What a find, huh?」 Rie said, all but preening smugly.

「Excuse me,」 a new voice interjected. The trio looked up to see the usual stern expression on Mochida Junko’s face. The Student Council Financial Representative was quite pretty, with long, pale-blue hair and round glasses framing her face, but she was not a person given to humour, especially when acting in her official capacity. 「The Student Council has considered your application to form a club – and it has been denied.」

「Denied?」/「But why!?」 Rie and Saki blurted, almost as one.

「Did you really think the school would allocate official funds or facilities to support an activity as absurd as witchcraft?」 Junko scoffed. 「Don’t blame me: the Student Council made the decision as a whole. I’m just the messenger. Good day!」 Her job done, she turned away and went on her way, ignoring Saki’s outraged splutterings and not letting the trio see her small, triumphant smirk.

Hiroko glared after the departing functionary for a long moment... then turned considering eyes on Rie’s find, mouth hardening in resolve. ‘Absurd’, Mochida-san? 「Rie, Saki... let’s translate this book.」 We’ll show you. We’ll show you all!

– – – – – – –

「Good morning, everyone!」 Rika chirped, bowing to the seated students; she knew her accent in Japanese was pretty bad, but she’d carefully memorised and rehearsed these phrases for weeks. 「I am Karlson Erika. It’s nice to meet you all!」

The Year Thirteen girl knew she wasn’t a ravishing beauty, like some of her classmates, but she was quite pretty, and she’d also known, even before she got on the plane, that her Nordic coloration was always going to get particular attention while she was in Japan. She was half-expecting the murmurs and quiet exclamations that ran through the whole room, and tried not to blush too hard as she made her way to her assigned seat, next to her host-student, Kinjo Matsuko.

Rika might have grown up in Napier, but unfortunately for her, she had never encountered the paranormal, and thus had never had cause to develop the kind of alertness that was a functional survival-instinct in that city. She didn’t register the girl with the raven-wing ponytail tracking her movements with cunning amber eyes....

– – – – – – –

A couple of hours later, during the half-hour ‘interval’ Fujiyama had only this year instituted between its first two pairs of classes, Rika emerged from her stall and turned on the hand-basin taps to wash her hands. Drying her hands on a paper towel, she turned around – and yipped in surprise as she saw the elegantly-groomed Fujiyama student standing just a little too close behind her. The loo flushing must have covered her coming in. “Uhm...”

“You are Karlson Erika, yes?” the Japanese girl said, with an odd little smile and not much accent to her English. “I am Kozono Nami, Student Council President. I don’t believe you noticed me when you introduced yourself, but we’re in the same class while you’re at Fujiyama. I hope you are enjoying your time here.”

“Everything’s... still new. It’s an adjustment, but everyone’s been really friendly so far!” Rika nodded.

If Rika had been just a little more worldly, she would’ve been alarmed at the glint in Nami’s eyes. “Well, if you have any questions, please, feel free to ask me anything.”

“Domo arigato, Kozono-san! I will!” Rika chirped brightly.

“I mean it: you can ask me anything,” Nami repeated, with a strange emphasis.

I... think I’m missing something, here. Probably something very Japanese. Rika frowned a little in puzzlement, but nodded politely. “... I’ll keep it in mind, Kozono-kaichō.”

– – – – – – –

As Nami emerged from the girls’ toilets, not-quite-smirking in satisfaction, she found herself faced with a rather unwelcome interruption. Hiraya Seiji was in the same year as her, but socially, he was even further beneath her than something she’d scrape off her outside shoes before leaving them in the entryway lock-boxes. His grooming was a disaster; his teeth were uneven; he was scrawny and sallow-skinned; and worst of all for him, while Nami’s father Taro was a ‘construction executive’ and trusted subordinate of Kōsa Masami himself, head of the Kōsa-kai, she knew that the Hirayas were nobodies.

「Uhm... Kozono-san...」 he began hesitantly, offered her an envelope in both hands.

A love-letter? From someone like him? Nami didn’t quite sneer in his face, but she made absolutely no effort to hide her true feelings. 「I’m sorry,」 her tone gave the lie to the ‘apology’, 「but men do not interest me.」

Hiratani flinched and cringed from her clear contempt. He’d spent weeks gathering the courage to approach her, and to be rejected so utterly —!

「And even if they did,」 she added, not in the least interested in softening the blow, 「you would be completely out of the question.」 Her gaze flicked to the sign they were both standing under. 「Seriously: trying to deliver a confession to a girl by waiting for her outside the toilets? What were you thinking?」

With that biting (though not unjustified) observation, she turned and flounced away, heedless of the heart she’d just trampled all over.

– – – – – – –

Takashiro residence
Sagamihara, Tokyo, Japan
20:43, Monday, April 17, 1995

With no reason or right to linger on school grounds, the trio of budding witches had joined the ‘Going Home Club’ and made for Hiroko’s place to change into comfortable civilian clothes, then get to work.

If the Student Council’s decision had been intended to discourage them from pursuing their interest, it was not only a failure, it was downright counterproductive. Like all teenagers, being denied by ‘the Man’ had only made them all the more determined. Spurred on by the sting to their pride, the three girls had been hammering away at translating the ancient text for most of the evening, even foregoing breaks to watch their favourite anime because they knew that Real Power was right at their fingertips.

Unfortunately for them, the outcomes of their translations were... not proving particularly enlightening.

「‘In those words of great magic...’」 Rie read aloud, hesitantly, as she knelt on the floor over the pages she’d been labouring over. Is this really right?

「‘... you shall find the spell to summon the evil of darkness....’」 Sprawled on Hiroko’s bed with pad and pencil before her, Saki was no more certain of her results than her twin-tailed friend. 「This is so hard! If it was just English, it would be bad enough, but with all this other stuff...!」

「It looks like these words are based on Latin and French,」 Rie agreed. 「We should be able to figure it out!」

And Hebrew, Saki didn’t add. None of us have studied Latin or French or Hebrew, and there’s only so much you can do with dictionaries and phrasebooks! 「We’ve been at this for three hours, Hiroko!」 the brunette whined, flopping onto her side in frustration. 「All we have is a couple of pages, and I’m not even sure we have those right!」

「But we are making progress,」 the redhead assured her, glancing up from her place at her work-desk. 「In fact, I think we have enough to try out one of these spells!」

「What?」 Saki boggled. Did you see something I didn’t? Because all I have is jumbles of words that don’t hold a lot of meaning!

「Here,」 Hiroko said, pointing to a short passage she’d just finished. 「I’ve found a simple spell.」

Interest piqued, her two friends joined her and leaned over her shoulder to peer what she’d come up with. 「‘To make a woman dance naked?’」Saki read, giving her friend a skeptical look.

「Well, we can’t exactly start with raising the dead, right?」 Rie reasoned. 「This has to be a lot easier.」

「It still sounds pretty tame,」 Saki shrugged. 「Or is ‘lame’ a better word? What kind of spell is it?」

Hiroko shrugged in turn. 「It just says that the woman placed under this spell will ‘dance naked’.」 And casting it requires only a few drops of the caster’s blood. Considering for a moment, she reached for the scalpel she used as a pencil-sharpener, bit her lip, and flicked it up the pad of her left forefinger, wincing at the blade’s bite.

「I’ve got the perfect candidate in mind, too,」 Saki grinned. 「Let’s see how smug she is after this!」

「Uhmm... this last line?」 Rie wondered, looking closer at Hiroko’s translation. 「‘People shall not envy but pity her’? What does that mean?」

「Oh, don’t worry about it!」 Saki chattered eagerly, eyes gleaming at the idea of pulling off this kind of a practical joke. That prissy, uptight little bitch ‘dancing naked’? In public? Oh, hell yes! 「Just do it, Hiroko!」

And with her friends’ urgings ringing in her ears, Takashiro Hiroko began drawing kanji on the paper before her, using her fingertip for a pen and her own blood for ink.


– – – – – – –
– – – – – – –

Spoiler: Author’s notes

For those who don’t know much about New Zealand culture, down here the national religion is rugby (though personally, I’m agnostic on the matter). A school’s First XV are its top-flight rugby team, the best players (usually all Year Thirteen students, too, though there are exceptions for prodigies from lower years) and usually candidates for rep(resentative) teams at the district, regional, and sometimes even national level. The Second XV are almost as good, the guys who didn’t quite make the grade for the Firsts, and they often act as a walking replacement squad for when First XV players can’t play for various reasons (injury, misbehaviour in school, etc.)
Wikipedia has a handy guide to the play-positions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugby_union_positions

Toying with Ye Forces of Darknesse, with blood magic... for the sake of petty teenage drama? Buffy was a horror-show, as well as a coming-of-age drama, and Bible Black Origins was horror erotica. “If you think this has a happy ending... you haven’t been paying attention!”

 

Warning: this installment includes a semi-explicit depiction of a female-on-female sexual assault. While it is a tragic reality of our world that such things happen on a daily basis, that does not make it right or just. For those into such things, rape-fantasy is an amusement and a game, but rape-reality is a criminal violation of body and of will.


Fujiyama High School
Sagamihara, Tokyo, Japan
08:27, Tuesday, April 18, 1995

Claudia Fisher glanced sideways at her host-student, Kajiwara Maki, as the pair of them came through the gates. 「See? We made it! With time to spare, even. You worry too much!」

「If you say so, Claudia-san,」 the second-year returned indulgently. 「We –」

“G’day, Squeak!” An arm like an iron bar clamped down on Claudia’s shoulders, sidelong-hugging her against a body goddesses might envy, and the Year Twelve looked around and up into a grinning face.

“Oh, shit!” she breathed. There goes Tokyo! “Taz!? What are you doing here?” And in uniform, at that!?

“You remember Yukio, from the exchange last year?” the taller girl said, tipping her head to where the aforenamed Japanese girl was standing, with Misha a couple of steps behind her, also in St George’s scarlet. (Unnoticed by the foreign girls, Yukio and Maki exchanged bright smiles and waves of greeting between sempai and kōhai.) “She brought us up here for hanami – paid for the tickets, and everything. And since we knew you and Hud and Rika and Jimmy would be here, we reckoned we might as well swing by and see if we could join the fun!”

“But... you jokers aren’t part of the exchange program!”

“Yeah, well, we’re on our way to hit up Mister Whelan and Fukuzawa-sensei about that,” the Russian-born Kiwi shrugged blithely. “If they can find room for us, they might add us into the exchange; if not, we’ve got a couple of weeks in Japan and no real commitments about how we spend them. Either way, sweet as!”

With that, Taz released her freckle-faced former classmate from the sidelong bear-hug, nodded towards the school, and led Yukio and Misha towards the admin wing through the crowd like a knight on horseback parting a block of infantry.

Squeak stared after her for a long moment, remembering what life was like around Tatyana Zyrianova with rising dread and a sinking stomach. 「... Maki-san? Does Fujiyama’s insurance policy cover Acts of God?」

Maki snickered at the obvious joke and took the gift-wrapped opportunity. 「Oh, calm down, Claudia-san. You worry too much!」

「When it comes to Taz and Misha? No. No, I do not.」

– – – – – – –

Mr. Whelan was visibly controlling the urge to sigh as the small party filed into his temporary office. “Mister McKellar, Miss Zyrianova, as a matter of curiosity, tell me: does the term ‘low-key’ mean anything to either of you?”

Taz cocked her head in thought. “... isn’t that just code for ‘boring’, Sir?”

He left that alone. “Is there any point in mentioning that after Grantham’s chicanery, the two of you were deliberately excused from the exchange program this year?”

Yukio stepped forward a touch. “Sumimasen, Whelan-sensei, but their presence is my doing. Tatyana-sempai and Misha-sempai were so welcoming to me during my visit to Napier last year that I wanted to repay their hospitality, but they could not afford to participate on their own. Fortunately, my family has had a... change of fortunes in recent times, such that I could pay their way, and I was delighted to do so.”

“Look at it this way, Sir,” Misha added from behind Taz, where he was using pencils to secure her hair into a low, ‘artsy’ bun. (Fujiyama’s female grooming standards were less stringent than St. George’s, judging by the riot of hair-colours and -styles they’d seen on their way inside, but it couldn’t hurt to be seen Making An Effort.) “If you fold us into the official exchange itinerary, you can keep an eye on the two of us for most of our time here. (Dammit, Taz, hold still for a second!) Otherwise, we’re going to spend the next two weeks in Tokyo at loose ends.”

Whelan swallowed hard at that, then turned to Fukuzawa and drew him to one side, where a soft yet urgent conversation ensued. Slayer hearing meant Taz could make out most of what they were saying anyway, but she did her best to remain impassive regardless... even when phrases like ‘trouble-magnets the size of skyscrapers’ and ‘more collateral damage than a kaijū convention’ reached her ears.

When he turned back to them, Whelan still looked distinctly unimpressed, but he’d clearly decided that if he’d already bitten into the lemon, he might as well swallow. “Very well,” he sighed. “You’ll have to introduce yourselves to your class, and you will have to apologise to them for all this kerfuffle.”

“Understood, Sir,” Taz nodded calmly.

Whelan gave her a long, suspicious look at her being so openly reasonable – which, Taz had to admit, she’d probably earned over the last couple of years – then jerked his head. “All right, you three, get moving!”

“Sir!” “Sir!” “Hai, sensei!”

– – – – – – –

Hiroko glanced up from chatting with Rie and Saki as Washimine-san came in, followed by two strangers. Gaikokujin, in the uniforms of St. George’s Academy? I thought all four of them were already assigned to other classes?

Yamanaka-sensei was clearly under the same impression, but a quick, hushed conversation with Fukuzawa-sensei seemed to clear up the confusion – even if Yamanaka-sensei visibly didn’t like the surprise or disruption. As Washimine-san made for her normal seat, Yamanaka-sensei carefully schooled his features back into impassivity and turned to his students, the pair of foreigners standing against the blackboard behind him. 「Class, it seems we have two late additions to the exchange program. Both of you, kindly, introduce yourselves.」

「Good morning, everyone!」 the dark-haired girl grinned, bowing to the seated students; her pronunciation was fair, but her accent was thick and complicated, even when speaking in what were clearly memorised phrases. 「I am Zyrianova Tatyana, but I prefer to be called ‘Taz’. It’s nice to meet you all! I humbly apologise for my lateness and the inconvenience it has caused everyone.」

「Good morning, everyone!」 her companion said with an easy smile that belied the scar running down his face. His bow was slightly more precise, his pronunciation far better, his accent fainter and cleaner. 「I am McKellar Peter, but I prefer to be called ‘Misha’. It’s nice to meet you all! I humbly apologise for my lateness and the inconvenience it has caused everyone.」

「Oh, and to prevent any misunderstandings?」 ‘Tatyana’ added with a mischievous grin, nodding to her companion. 「This man is mine. He got the scars when a punk with a blade wanted to take me on a ‘compensated date’, no matter how many times I said ‘No’. Misha fought him off, and walked away with several wounds. The punk left on a stretcher. Confessing to either of us would be pointless.」 She’d clearly scripted and rehearsed that warning even more than the standard introduction phrases.

Chuckles and murmurs of shock and bemusement ran around the room, even as Yamanaka-sensei suppressed a growl at the unorthodox postscript. 「Both of you, sit down so we can take the roll.」

「Yes, Teacher!」 「Yes, Teacher!」

And as the newcomers took seats against the inside wall, Hiroko glanced at her two best friends and noted the same intrigued expressions on their faces. Well, this is going to be... interesting!

– – – – – – –

The high-school gossip-mill was clearly working with its normal efficiency, because the other four St. George’s students appeared at 3-F’s doorway at the start of interval. “I’d hoped you were kidding, Squeak,” Hud muttered as he led the party inside. “I thought we left Mayhem and Chaos in Napier?”

“No, I’m Chaos,” Taz grinned, giving the Maori lad a good-to-see-you hug. “That’s Mayhem, sitting over there. We’re a double act, remember?”

“It’s hard to forget,” drawled Jimmy – before he wheezed as Taz gave him a squeeze of his own.

“G’day, Hud,” Misha smiled over his handshake with the Second XV player. “Look at it this way: we’re going to attract all the trouble, so you lot should have a smooth run.”

Hud nodded, but his eyes were fatalistic. “Something tells me we’re not that lucky. Good news for me, though? Your Japanese is better than mine, so you get to give our arrival speech at Assembly.”

“Wait, Assembly?” Misha’s eyes flew to the classroom clock. “That’s –”

“At Fujiyama, it’s third period on Tuesdays.” Hud’s face split with what could only be called a shit-eating grin as he handed over a couple of note-cards. “Which is in about half an hour.”

The scar-faced boy growled and gave Young a ‘ha-bloody-ha’ look. “Hud, what’s the opposite of a ‘near-cue’?”

Hud’s grin did not shrink by even a single millimetre.

“Hey, Rika,” Taz was saying a couple of metres away, letting go of the blonde girl. “Get any love-letters, yet? I hear Japanese boys go crazy for the Aryan look.”

“With you here? I’m not gonna get any now, am I?” was the rather ambivalent response. Erika Karlson was three inches shorter than Taz, and not quite as well-developed.

“Don’t sell yourself short. Then again, they’re randy high school boys; I’m not sure you’d want to catch any of them, in case you catch something from them.”

“Aw, gross!” the blonde grimaced. “I didn’t need that idea in my head!”

– – – – – – –

Knowing that the eyes of the entire Fujiyama student body (if not their actual attention) was on the stage of the school hall, including the folding chair where he sat next to Mochida-san on one side and two teachers on the other, Misha stifled a sigh and tried not to fidget as Kozono-kaichō finished reading the minutes of the last Student Council meeting. It was probably riveting stuff if you were super interested in the school rules governing the Fujiyama student body, and particularly all their clubs and circles, but right now, it just sounded like a whole lot of bureaucratic verbiage. Then again, the longer she rabbits on about, the longer I don’t have to get up in front of this lot! He added wryly, reshuffling and considering Hud’s note-cards once more. They weren’t worth much, mainly a bunch of platitudes and other boilerplate niceties. But then again, when you’ve only been here a couple of days, what can you say?

「— requests for amendments will be discussed at the next meeting,」 Nami concluded. 「That concludes the matter of school regulations. And now, I ask Financial Representative Mochida to present the report on club finances.」

Misha’s eyes flicked to the blue-haired girl sitting next to him. He hadn’t actually had a conversation with her yet, other than saying ‘hello’ when they got to the stage steps, but she seemed... distracted. She was a little flushed, and not-quite-squirming in her seat, her eyes on the pad clutched in her lap; she seemed to have missed Nami’s cue completely.

He was on the point of opening his mouth to ask about her welfare when Nami spoke again. 「Representative Mochida, the financial report, please?」

Junko’s head jerked up, almost guiltily. 「Y-yes, of course!」

And as she stood up, and he got a good look at the eyes she’d been holding downcast – and her dilated pupils – Misha knew that something was terribly, horribly wrong.

Junko moved to the microphone, her body-language curiously hesitant to those in the audience that knew her. 「H-hello? I’m, I’m Mochida. F-first, I’d like to read the finance report.」

Misha shifted in his seat, tucking the note-cards into his blazer’s inside pocket. Something told him he wouldn’t be needing them.

「Sport clubs and literature clubs are... are...」 As Junko kept going, attempting to speak, her words became ever more distracted and hesitant, and she started to fidget in place. The audience could see a sudden flush blooming across her face; the closer ones could make out a sudden wash of sweat running down her face. Then words failed her completely; she clutched at herself, whimpering in distress.

And in a sudden flash, Misha realised what he was witnessing. Oh, God fucking dammit, Yukio was right! He bolted upright, hastily palming something else from his blazer pocket. Taking the four steps to stand behind Junko, he gently set his left hand on her shoulder. 「Mochida-san, are you all right?」

「I... I... I can’t bear it anymore!」 she blurted, whirling around to face him and tearing open her seifuku top. Beneath it, rather than the traditional undershirt, she was wearing only a pink lace brassiere that mostly contained her impressive bosom.

Let’s put the brakes on that train of thought, shall we? And with that, Misha’s right hand came forward, splashing the girl’s face with a half-pint of ice-cold holy water.

Junko yelped and reeled – the puff of silvery steam from her forehead was all the proof he needed of his suspicions – then crumpled onto the stage like she’d been king-hit, barely conscious.

「What did you do to her!?」 Principal Kagiyama demanded, rising from his chair.

Misha ignored the teacher, testing Junko’s temperature with one hand as he aimed the other forefinger squarely at the frozen-to-the-spot Nami. He deliberately pitched his voice for the microphone to catch. 「Kozono-san, call an ambulance! I’ve seen this at home – Mochida-san has been poisoned! It looks like someone dosed her with methamphetamine.」

Nami held her open-mouthed stare for a long moment, then finally shook herself and dug a cell-phone out of her pocket.

「Kagiyama-kōchō, call the infirmary, tell them to get an ice-bath ready. We need to keep her temperature down until the ambulance arrives.」 Not entirely a lie, and the ice-bath would help for his purposes. 「Do they have a stretcher?」

「They have gurneys.」

「Good. Get one. Now. Sir,」 he added.

And as the official party scattered, dismissing the assembled students back to their classrooms, Misha carefully killed the microphone, then dribbled more holy-water on his forefinger and began tracing arcane runes on the insensate Junko’s forehead, murmuring incantations in Drow to counteract the spell someone had cast on the poor girl.

A moment later, Taz and Yukio appeared at his side. “Is there anything we can do?” the Slayer asked.

“I think it’s under control, at least until the real medics get here,” Misha assured her. “And whenever I find whoever’s working from a Black Bible, there’ll be hell to pay.”

“Ah, fuck! I thought this looked familiar.”

“You said it. I – wait a second.” Something had caught his eye beneath the pink lace, and Misha tugged back one side of Junko’s now-open fuku, then down on the centre-section of her brassiere, to get a clear look.

There was an intricate double-hexagram freshly henna-tattoo’d over the girl’s heart.

“And isn’t that curious?” he murmured, letting everything fall back into place to restore Junko’s modesty.

“Might explain why she was hit so hard and fast, though.”

“Maybe.”

– – – – – – –

When the school nurse had bustled Junko away on a gurney to meet the arriving ambulance – thankfully, the nearest emergency hospital was less than half a kilometre from the school – Kagiyama-kōchō beckoned Taz, Misha, and Yukio to follow him to the staff room. Mister Whelan and Fukuzawa-sensei were already there, along with a woman that Misha remembered Yukio identifying as the head female PE teacher, Nishizaka Echiko. “Now, McKellar-san, please tell us what just happened,” the Principal asked, politely but firmly. “The ‘methamphetamine’ story will do for other students, but I need the truth.”

The three students traded long, uncertain glances. It was Misha who broke their collective silence. “I’m... not sure what you mean.”

The Principal cocked his head a touch, then nodded to Nishizaka-sensei. In response, the woman raised one hand – holding a small metal ofuda between her fore- and middle fingers – and spoke a few words in archaic Japanese. Electric-pink light flared around the charm, and a matching glow limned the door behind the trio of students. That done, she gave him a reassuring smile. “Now, no-one outside that door may overhear this conversation, McKellar-san. Please, speak freely.”

His shoulders dropped a hair, and again glances were exchanged – this time of relief. Fellow tradesfolk. Good. It’s always better to deal with people who won’t think we’re completely barmy. “Then those are your wards around the school perimeter, Nishizaka-san?” Misha asked. “They’re good work, very solid. Unfortunately, they’re keeping in things I think the school would rather be rid of.”

“So I am gathering,” she said, with a ghost of a smile. “Please.”

“Bluntly? There’s at least one coven of witches at work in this school, most likely working from a European book of magic called a Black Bible. We’ve run into copies several times before. It purports to be based on the work of Alistair Crowley and his religion of Thelema, and through that, to draw on earlier mystical traditions like Enochian magic and the practices of the Rosicrucian Society. Unfortunately, that’s a damned lie – and I do mean ‘damned’. The actual fact of the matter is –”

The ensuing explanation went on for a minute or two, but left the adults in the room in varying degrees of confusion, unease, and outright alarm.

With the context clear, Misha moved on to specifics. “– like a lot of the book, this particular spell is a trap. It’s designed to be simple to translate, so even a novice has a starting point, and the description is meant to appeal to peoples’ spiteful instincts by seeming like a simple prank, the sort of thing you do to take revenge on someone who’s irritated you. Making a woman ‘dance naked’ in public is pretty embarrassing for her, depending on her peer-group and how body-modest she might be, but ultimately that description makes it seem benign enough. But in actuality, if the spell carries through to its conclusion, it induces a state of arousal that prompts the woman to, well, strip and publicly masturbate in front of a large group of her peers, which is a degree of humiliation most people can’t bear.”

“How did you stop it?” Kagiyama asked.

He reached inside his blazer, producing the now near-empty pint-bottle. “That spell is a demonic mental influence, a mild form of possession; a simple splash of holy-water on the victim’s skin disrupts it for a few minutes, like shorting out an electric circuit. The kind of ofuda used against kitsune possession would probably have the same effect. The disruption bought me the time I needed to cast a proper counter-spell. Now, sometimes these things come around and try again, which is why I was planning to add some more holy-water to her ice-bath to fend off any recurrence, but Nishizaka-sensei might be in a better position to establish a proper ward. Mochida-san’s body has gone through some serious stress, so she’s going to need a few days’ rest, and she’ll be very embarrassed for a while... but thankfully, I got to her before anything unrecoverable happened, and the story of ‘methamphetamine poisoning’ should get her sympathy, rather than the mortification that usually results from being subjected to that spell.”

“So, now what?”

“We find the witches responsible,” Taz shrugged. “We make sure they understand exactly what they’re doing, the nature of the forces they’re flirting with, and the true consequences their actions could have. That determines the next step.”

“Which would be?”

“When dealing with witchcraft, Sir, there are two primary options.” Misha forced himself to meet Kagiyama’s gaze without flinching. They are not going to like hearing this part. “The first is to get your hands on the witch’s spell-book. It always contains a central charm, a kind of mystical master-key that lets you undo all of the spells the witch has cast from that book. Taz and I already know the central charm from the Black Bible, so that gives us options if these dabblers prove... unreasonable.”

“And the other option?”

“Well, Sir, I don’t know if Japanese magic has any better alternatives, but in European experience, the only other way to break all the spells cast by a witch... is to cut off the witch’s head.”

That was met with a long, stony silence from the locals. Whelan was openly shocked. “... You’re talking about murder.”

Misha met his teacher’s eyes steadily. “I’m talking about saving lives, Sir; I just told you where this kind of thing can end. I really don’t like killing people, especially kids whose main crimes are ignorance and stupidity, but we’re talking about dozens, maybe hundreds of potential victims that we’d be saving with a single stroke of a blade. Believe me, it’s a last resort, I really do hope they listen to reason instead... but in our profession, you hope for the best, but you have to plan for the worst.”

Yukio cleared her throat diffidently. “Kagiyama-kōchō, we need a place to start looking. Please, do you have any candidates?”

“... Actually, I do. As I remember, three girls applied to the Student Council for permission to form a witchcraft club, hoping their studies would uncover truths lost by mainstream history. Kozono-san and Mochida-san convinced the council to reject the application – they thought it was a pointless waste of resources.”

“That... might’ve been a mistake, Sir,” Misha winced. “Nothing makes something more attractive than forbidding it. I understand that any official club has to have oversight from a faculty member?”

“Yes.”

“Please, get the names of those applicants from Kozono-san; we’ll pay them a visit as soon as we can, and hopefully help them understand that magical powers and teenaged ‘judgement’ are a really dangerous mixture. Depending on how that visit goes, you might want to ask Kozono-san to reconsider the council’s ruling. After all, learning magic in a structured way, from a knowledgeable tutor – perhaps Nishizaka-sensei? – might help them avoid, ah, unwise choices.”

Again, Yukio cleared her throat. “Sempai, Kozono-san may not be... thinking clearly, for the moment. She and Mochida-san are... very close.”

“Really?” Taz asked, arching an eyebrow. “How ‘close’?”

Their host-student deliberately met Taz’s eyes, then looked between her guests significantly. As close as the two of you.

“I see.” Bloody lovely, that’s all we need – a Student Council President and yakuza princess on the warpath to avenge her wounded lover! “OK, so we don’t involve Kozono-san except as a last resort. Still, Kagiyama-san, we need those names from a member of the Student Council, and we need them quickly, please. Before someone gets themselves used as part of a foundation-slab.”

– – – – – – –

Dismissed back to their classroom even as the Principal sent for the Student Council’s Secretary, the trio found everyone predictably abuzz with discussion of Junko’s ‘episode’ – and Misha was promptly besieged by a knot of students barraging him with questions about how he’d known what was wrong with Mochida-san and how to help her. He sighed, called for quiet, and patiently explained that he’d seen it too often – ‘P’ being such a growing scourge in Napier, including its schools, and he knew the signs of an overdose.

The trio of demon-hunters did notice that three classmates did not join the throng of questioners, and with silent glances, they agreed to pay closer attention to those three. In the brief break between third and fourth period, when there was no teacher in the room, Yukio bent down in her chair to change sets of books, not letting the girls in front of her realise how much of their sotto voce conversation she was actually overhearing.

「Saki, do you think it was —?」 Morita-san sounded distinctly worried.

「I think Kozono-san might want to be careful, or we might make her dance naked next!」 Shidō-san, on the other hand, was almost gleeful.

「Be quiet, both of you!」 Takashiro-san snapped. 「For now, people think it’s a poisoning. That means the police will come to investigate! The less we say, the less chance they’ll come looking for us.」

「But, Hiroko, we don’t really know if it was magic!」 Morita-san wasn’t certain of much of anything, judging by her voice.

「What else could it have been?」

「Quiet, I said!」

– – – – – – –

This has not been the kind of day I hoped for, Rika sighed, organising her books as the late-afternoon sun slanted through the windows. With o-soji and final home-room over, she was free to go ‘home’. Technically.

But Miss Minase ‘requested’ that I lend a hand with the English Club, and if I don’t show up, it’ll make me look lazy and irresponsible, and she’ll tar the whole lot of us Dragonslayers with the same brush. She massaged one temple. Well, I do want to be helpful, and all that....

“Are you all right, Karlson-san?” Nami asked from a couple of rows back, closing her satchel.

“Just a little headache, Kozono-san,” Rika assured her. “It’s been, uh, an eventful day, hasn’t it?” Thank you so much, Taz and Misha! Then her brain caught up with her mouth. “Oh! Oh, God, Kozono-san, I’m so sorry! I forgot Mochida-san is a friend of yours. Do you know how she’s doing?”

“I’ll visit her in hospital before I go home, and I’ll pass on your good wishes,” Nami assured her, stopping next to Rika’s desk and regarding her with that same odd smile she’d had the day before. “You’re very kind to be concerned for her, when you only met her yesterday.”

I’d’ve called it just ‘being decent’, myself, but –

That train of thought came to a screeching halt when Nami laid a perfectly-manicured hand atop hers and squeezed gently. “So kind, and so beautiful, too,” Nami cooed. “Karlson-san....”

“Uh –” Rika began, as the Japanese girl started to get uncomfortably close. She tried to step away, only for her back to run firmly into the wall. Trapped! “Kozono-san, I think you’ve misunderstood –”

“Call me Nami-chan,” the Student President breathed. Then, somehow, Rika was sandwiched between the wall and the other girl’s body, her wrist pinned above her head, and Nami’s lips were on her own.

What the hell!? Rika wondered wildly. Instinct clamped her teeth together to block out the Student President’s probing tongue, and she managed to worm her free hand between the two of them to try to push the other girl back, but Nami was so much bigger that she just couldn’t get any leverage!

Nami pulled back a little, examining Rika’s wide-eyed face with predatory amber eyes, and almost casually caught the fending hand with her own, trapping Rika’s now-crossed wrists against the wall with one hand before tracing her victim’s jawline with the nail of her free forefinger. “Is this truly your first time with a woman? Let me show you the things men cannot understand!”

“No!” Rika yelped, suddenly terrified. Jesus Christ, I’ve had dates where the boys weren’t like this!

The caressing forefinger lowered to Rika’s chest, and suddenly Nami’s whole hand was inside the blonde’s blazer. “Your body has a different opinion,” the Student President smirked. “Come on –”

“Hey, Rika, are you gonna stay what the fuck!?”

– – – – – – –

Taz didn’t think. She didn’t need to. Both hands seized Nami’s shoulders like scrap-iron grapples and all-but-flung the Student President across the room, where she slammed against the far wall with a window-rattling THUMP. Before she could double over, Taz’s forearm was across her throat like a steel bar, pinning her in place and not-quite cutting off her air.

Misha was past them both in a near-blur, slipping a supporting arm around Rika’s waist as she wilted and folded in on herself. “It’s OK, Rika, it’s OK, we’re here now, you’re safe –”

“S-s-she wouldn’t stop, Misha, I-I said no and she wouldn’t stop, why wouldn’t she stop –”

Even as her lover comforted their friend and her growing sobs with a gentle, cradling hug and soothing noises, with Yukio taking the girl’s other side a moment later, Taz flung out her free hand. Her pointer-finger all but speared the messy-haired male student who’d been sitting at the back of the class, organising his satchel and doing nothing to stop Kozono’s activities, and who was only now rising to his feet in outrage. “Damare!”

Hiratani froze, still four rows back from the unfolding drama. He could recognise the voice of death. Especially when it told him to ‘sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up’.

How do I put this in terms that this rapist bitch will understand, but that won’t get me arrested? “Kozono-san, I was on train Sunday night when I had my first-ever encounter with chikan,” Taz began lightly, her incandescent fury betrayed mainly by her thickening accent and worsening English syntax. “I don’t know how man reaches thirties without learning actions have consequences, but I was quite happy to educate.” She leaned in, emerald eyes boring into amber. “I was feeling generous, so lesson only cost him two broken fingers.”

By now, her forehead was almost resting against the Student President’s, and her voice was barely a whisper. “Kozono-san? When people abuse my friends, I am not generous. You understand me, yes?”

“Who the hell are you?” the Japanese girl hissed back, eyes burning with her own fury. “Nobody tells me ‘no’!”

“In words of Kerr Avon? ‘We all have to learn to live with disappointment!’” Taz’s ‘smile’ bared a lot of teeth. “You will not touch Rika Karlson again. You understand me, yes?”

Nami said nothing.

Taz leaned into her forearm-pin a little, increasing the pressure moment by moment. A very distant part of her mind wondered which would give way first, and when: the girl’s windpipe, or the wall.

Finally, a hint of actual alarm flickered across Nami’s eyes, as the lack of air got past her arrogance and anger. Her gaze dropped, and she waggled her chin up-down-up-down.

“Good! Understanding is at heart of all sound relationships.” And she let go of the Student President.

Nami staggered a half-step, dragging in a deep breath of sweet, fresh air, then turned a fresh glare on Taz, amber eyes blazing like afterburners. “I won’t forget this!” she snarled.

“I hope not!” the Slayer said, with a bright, murderous smile. “Because next time we must have this conversation? I will not be so restrained.”

“Kozono-san, you might want to head over to the hospital to visit Mochida-san, right now,” Misha added over Rika’s bowed head, his voice even more wintry than his glare. “After all, your girlfriend might be under the impression you actually give a shit about her.”

And as Nami and Hiratani both fled the room, Misha looked at Taz and arched a rueful eyebrow. So much for being politic with Miss Yakuza Princess. Yukio was right about this getting complicated.

She gave him an old-fashioned look of her own. Kozono doesn’t like being denied? She can take a teaspoon of cement and harden up!

He shrugged – It was an observation. I didn’t say we made the wrong call. – then gently rubbed Rika’s shoulders. “Erika, let’s go, OK? We need to talk to Mister Whelan and the Principal about this.”

“D-do we have to? W-won’t it hurt the exchange program?”

“Sweetheart, we need to get you justice. Fuck the exchange program.”

– – – – – – –

At the school gates, Nami paused and turned to give the boy still following her(!) a considering look. 「Hiraya-san. What did you see?」

Hiraya Seiji wasn’t the smartest boy on campus... but now his hopeless crush was actually speaking to him, and he could win back at least a little favour with her. 「I... the blonde gaijin offered you sympathy for Mochida-san’s sudden illness, then took it as a chance to start making unwelcome advances on you.」

「That’s what I thought.」 She cocked her head and gave him a pleasant smile. 「Thank you... Hiraya-kun.」

– – – – – – –

Kagiyama-kōchō had listened to Rika’s halting explanation of what had happened like a man who desperately wanted to be anywhere else, and now that she was finished, he had an expression like he’d sat on a bed of nails but wasn’t allowed to stand up. “I think this is all a grave misunderstanding. Zyrianova-san, you are overreacting –”

“Oh, don’t give me that ‘kinjite’ bullshit, Sir!” she snarled. “You don’t want this getting public, costing Fujiyama ‘face’? How will your precious ‘face’ be affected if I stand in front of a full Assembly at St. George’s and tell all our staff and students that your Head Girl sexually assaulted one of our people and you wanted to pretend it never happened? Perhaps I should invite the newspapers, too?”

“Miss Zyrianova, threats aren’t –” Whelan began.

“Not ‘threats’, Sir,” she corrected coldly. “Clarifying the possible consequences of an action.”

“Zyrianova-san, Kozono-san’s father is quite prominent –”

“You mean he’s a shateigashira for the Kōsa-kai.” Taz’s voice, her icy tone, didn’t waver in the least as she once again took a sledgehammer to a ‘delicate’ topic. “Yukio mentioned it. She was very careful about telling us who the local players are before letting us take the field. I know who Nami’s father is; I just don’t give a shit.”

For his part, Misha was standing behind Rika’s shoulder, offering her silent back-up when she’d spilled the whole story to the Principal and their own teacher. Now, he nodded to where Yukio was standing by Rika’s other side. “Yukio-san’s actions last year brought her to the notice of Tennō Heika himself. The Kōsa-kai might, might try to take reprisals against two random gaikokujin who laid hands on an underboss’s daughter. But when those two foreigners are not only the guests of a young woman who has rendered recent and priceless service to the Chrysanthemum Throne, but the ones who made it possible in the first place? No – they aren’t that stupid.”

“Well, Nami might be, but we can handle her,” Taz shrugged blithely. “She’s nowhere near as big a fish as she thinks she is.” Cold emerald eyes fell back on Kagiyama-kōchō. “Now, Sir: are you going to call the police? Or do I?”

Whelan coughed uncomfortably. “Uh, Miss Zyrianova? In preparing for this exchange, I did some research into how the Japanese police approach cases like this. At best, their handling of the ‘investigation’ would blame Miss Karlson for the incident and re-victimise her all over again; hell, I’m not even sure Japanese law recognises female-on-female sexual assault as an actual crime! When you also consider who Miss Kozono’s family are? Official channels are... not likely to be helpful.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Misha wondered caustically. “Where does that leave us, ‘Sir’?”

Whelan flinched a little at the biting ‘honorific’. “Principal Kagiyama, might I suggest that you bring in Miss Kozono to ask for her version of this incident? If Miss Karlson’s and Miss Zyrianova’s accusations bear up –”

Taz bristled anew. “‘If’? ‘Sir’.”

Whelan shot her a look pleading for calm and understanding – to no avail – and pressed on. “– then we push Miss Kozono to apologise to Miss Karlson for her conduct, and to step down as Student Council President.”

“Is that a joke, ‘Sir’?” By rights, the contempt in Misha’s glare should have flayed Whelan where he stood.

“Sometimes you have to take what you can get, Mister McKellar. Or have you never heard of ‘realpolitik’?”

“I’ve heard of it. ‘Sir’. It is not a substitute for justice.”

“Whelan-sensei, could you and your students wait outside, please? Kagiyama-kōchō and I need to speak privately for a moment.” Despite Yukio’s respectful tone, it was manifestly not a request.

Misha turned concerned eyes on his friend, realising what she intended — and what it would mean for her. 「Yukio-san, are you sure about this?」

The bespectacled girl gave him a small smile, a touch melancholy but yet serene. “I know the consequences of my choice, sempai. I am content with them.”

Whelan gave her a baffled look — which redoubled when Misha and Taz gave the girl deep, respectful bows — then led his students out into the secretary’s office. Where he rounded on Misha. “What the hell was that about?”

“You want a discreet resolution to this, ‘Sir’? Congratulations: Yukio’s gonna get it for you.” Misha’s jaw was clenched. “Her father, Ryuzo, was head of the Washimine-gumi when he died in ’92. His right-hand man has been acting in his place since then, but the other syndicates wouldn’t let him formally take over because he’s not of Washimine blood; by tradition, the only person eligible to inherit the title is Yukio, and by those same traditions she’s too young, too female, and too civilian to be accepted. Except that what she did last year gave her clout, the kind that would see Tokugawa retainers storming hell at her request.”

“She’s about to act like the head of the Washimine-gumi, Sir,” Taz added. “Which means she will be the head of the Washimine-gumi, and she has the support to make it stick, no matter how having a female boss will chafe the traditionalists. If Nami is smart, her father is smart, and the Kōsa-kai are smart? Nami will resign as Student President, all right, probably to ‘support’ Junko during her recovery... and in a week or so, she’ll have an ‘accident’ with a kitchen cleaver, and her ‘apology’ to Rika will come as an anonymous gift wrapped in rice-paper.” She waggled one pinkie-finger meaningfully, but her eyes didn’t stop laser-boring holes in her teacher. “And our friend Yukio, who until now has gone her entire life untouched by the blood and filth of the family business in favour of reading philosophy books? Is going to have to spend the rest of her life as the boss of a Yakuza syndicate.”

“And if Miss Kozono isn’t wise? Or her father? Or the Kōsa-kai?”

“The Kōsa-kai had a change in leadership a few months ago, and the new jokers have been looking to make their mark,” Misha said grimly. “If any of them are stupid enough to keep pushing, Nami Kozono’s self-important refusal to understand the word ‘No!’... just started a war. Sir.”

Whelan and Rika both stared at him. After a long moment, Whelan started shaking his head. “You two just can’t —”

“Oh, fuck you, ‘Sir’!” Taz growled. “If we hadn’t been here, how much further would Nami’s attack have gone, eh? And would you have done anything about it? Would anyone? You adults want us to do things your way, to go through official channels, to trust your system? We just did — and your system fucked us. Again.” She shook her own head, weary and contemptuous. “We can’t get justice your way. So Heaven help her, Yukio is going to do things by our rules.”

Misha raked Whelan with another glare. “Christ, ‘Sir’ — and you teachers actually wonder why the Student Judiciary at St. George’s is so active!”



– – – – – – –
– – – – – – –

Spoiler: Author’s after-notes

For those who don’t speak Australasian English, the opposite of a ‘near-cue’ is a ‘far-cue’ (Fark-yu = Fuck you).

And the main plot of Bible Black: Origins begins! Unfortunately, innocent fumblings with books of magic get a rather more robust response when people around them actually know the signs and already know not only your playbook, but their own as well. (The remedy that Misha describes was established as far back as ‘The Witch’, Buffy tVS Season 1 Episode 3. Didn’t see a lot of it in later seasons, since JW was trying to cuddle up to interest groups like Wiccans and the LGBT community, but Buffy had an easy run of things in Sunnydale that way. Taz and her ‘team’ have not been that lucky.)

I deeply apologise to anyone disturbed by my depiction of Nami’s conduct towards Rika. Even though what I showed is massively toned-down from the original scene in the hentai, it’s still sexual assault. Nami’s seeming belief that consent is optional, that no-one would ever refuse her, is a reflection of her own self-absorption and I do not condone it in the least.
(She’ll never know that the tight time-frame here just let her dodge one particular bullet from canon....)
Sadly, even research as cursory as mine indicates that Japan’s official-channels handling of sex-crimes is... far short of ideal, even with improvements and tightening of the laws in recent years. Back in the mid-’90s? It was even worse. And that’s for the cases that actually make it onto the official books; some interest-groups’ estimates place the proportion of assaults that go unreported as high as 95%. Even in a shame-based culture like Japan, that’s... yeah.
Unfortunately, when you deny an angry man justice for his injuries, he’ll settle for revenge. And when Misha mentions the (strictly unofficial) Student Judiciary at St. George’s, both he and Mr. Whelan know (but carefully don’t acknowledge) that Taz and Misha are two of its most active and rigourous members. Even the faculty has called on their services, from time to time.

Canonically, Nami was visually coded as being one Very Rich Bitch (and Very Entitled, too). She was chauffeured to school in a land-yacht of a Lincoln(?) limo, she had a really high-end hairdo, her civilian clothes were all designer or better... it all spoke to her family flaunting their money and power. And who in Japan usually has such things for their families?
Yukio’s status as a sheltered Yakuza princess is the foundation of the last six episodes of Black Lagoon’s second season. Here, her trip to Napier gave her a unique tool for making allies in Japan, and that’s seen an up-tick in the Washimine-gumi’s fortunes since she returned. Is it enough to avoid the tragic clusterfuck and bloodbath that resulted from Balalaika jamming her colossal war-boner into Tokyo and its Yakuza politics? We’ll have to see.

 

Warning: this installment contains graphic violence, the brutal on-screen death of a character, and implied similar fates for several others.



Takashiro residence
Sagamihara, Tokyo, Japan
19:14, Tuesday, April 18, 1995

Outside, the last hints of twilight were fading, but the trio of would-be witches were back working on their translations... in between bouts of furious debate.

「If it had been drugs, she would have been far more hyper!」 Saki insisted. 「It doesn’t matter what that gaikokujin boy said. It could have been the only explanation he could think of! I’m just annoyed that he interrupted. Who knows how far things might have gone?」 she added, with a wicked smirk. 「She might have given everyone a real show!」

「Well, he did, so she didn’t, 」 Hiroko pointed out, finally cutting across the latest argument. 「And because he did, we still can’t be sure if the spells in this book actually work. We need to find another one that we can try out for proof.」

Saki sat up on Hiroko’s bed, ready to respond to that – only to be interrupted by the doorbell. 「... are you expecting anyone?」

「No.」 The redhead frowned in puzzlement. 「Go down and see who it is, please?」

「OK. I’m not getting anywhere with this page, anyway,」 the brunette sighed, laying aside her pencil. 「I thought this was magic! Why does it have to be so hard?」

When she opened the door, Saki jolted in surprise at seeing the trio standing outside. The gaikokujin boy, ‘Misha’? And his girlfriend and Washimine-san? What are they all doing here? She noted that all three were in civilian clothes, black jeans and T-shirts under military-style fatigue-jackets, and both foreigners had their backpacks on. 「Is there something I can do for you?」

「Shidō-san!」 He did have a very nice smile, Saki noted: pleasant, polite, charming without being at all leering. 「Morita-san and Takashiro-san are here as well, then? That’s good! We were hoping to speak to all three of you.」

「About what, may I ask?」

Misha responded by holding one hand out before him, palm uppermost. He made no word or gesture, but a ball of electric-purple plasma formed over his open palm, lighting up the entryway and filling it with the acrid stink of ozone. 「Shared interests.」

Wide-eyed and gaping in pure awe, Saki almost fell over herself standing aside and waving them inside. 「Hiroko’s bedroom is upstairs – just follow the lights!」

「I think the living-room might be a better choice. If nothing else, there will be more space for all of us,」 he suggested, still with that disarming smile.

「Of course. Just through there. I’ll bring the others out!」 she babbled, all but running for the stairs. 「Rie, Hiroko, get down here! It’s that foreign boy, Misha! He’s got magic powers!」

Both of her compatriots were down to join her in moments – Rie all but falling over herself, eager and bursting with curiosity, Hiroko slower and... guarded, the book of magic tucked under one arm. It was their host who spoke first. 「You’re a wizard, McKellar-san?」

「I use magic on occasion. I have... family obligations, and magic is one tool for dealing with them,」 he shrugged, his smile turning crooked as he repeated the demonstration he’d given Saki. Rie squealed in wide-eyed wonder, but Hiroko’s eyes only narrowed. “Do you mind if we speak in English? Taz’s Japanese is... not the best.”

“Very well. What can we do for you?” Hiroko wondered, still cautious.

“Well, firstly, I was hoping the three of you might answer a few questions for us.”

Even as he spoke, Taz’s right hand – which had been hanging loose by her side – made an odd flexing/twisting motion, and suddenly she was holding —

— Is that the sword from Conan the Barbarian!? —

— loosely before her, slanted point-down across her body. She cleared her throat to make sure everyone was watching, then plucked a piece of paper from the fax-machine sitting on the side-board next to her and dropped it over the sword’s upper-most edge.

That edge seemed to glow silver-blue for an instant, and the paper fluttered to the floor in two pieces.

“We’d appreciate answers that are prompt, and complete,” Misha said, dropping the smile in favour of an abrupt, business-like demeanour.

Taz stood the sword upright on its point before her and folded her hands over its pommel. “Lying would be unwise,” she added, a little unnecessarily.

All three would-be witches had realised that Death stood in the room with them. Hiroko, the quickest thinker, turned her eyes to their classmate. “Washimine-san, what is this all about?”

The bespectacled girl sighed softly and mimicked Taz’s odd hand-gesture. A sword matching the foreign girl’s, narrower and slightly shorter but clearly in the same pattern, seemed to drop into her hand from her cuff, and like the foreign girl, she stood it before her and folded her hands over the pommel. “It is about what happened to Mochida-san, and whether you three had anything to do with it,” she said, with a calm, resolute intensity none of the witches had known she possessed. “And what we may have to do about that, if you did.”

“Such as, what? Burn us at the stake, like your kind did to our sisters in times past, witch-hunter?” Hiroko asked acidly, amethyst eyes boring into Misha.

She expected him to react with boasts, or anger. What she got was... a world-weary sigh? “Takashiro-san, may I see your spell-book, please?” His voice was so mild, so polite, so resigned, that it almost sounded like an actual request.

Scowling in resentment, she stood and slapped the tome into his extended hand.

“Thank you.” He took a few moments to page through the book, flicking back and forth between sections, then nodded as he found one particular passage. “The usual pseudo-Kabbalistic screed...”

“‘Pseudo-Kabbalistic, hex me, Alex Crowley’,” Taz half-sang under her voice, with a hint of a crooked smile. (The Japanese in the room traded glances and shrugged in confusion. Must be a gaikokujin thing.)

Misha snorted a laugh, but shot his lover a dour look at the tasteless ‘joke’. “... yeah, it’s a Black Bible, all right. Walpurgisnächt edition.”

“That’s the end of the month. Less than two weeks away?” Taz asked, with an arched brow. “Not a lot of time for them to get up to speed.”

“If they’re in a scramble to perform the sacrifice, they aren’t stopping to register what they’re actually doing,” he noted clinically. “And they might just bungle the containment wards.”

The foreign girl winced and shuddered at that idea.

Misha turned sombre eyes on the three would-be witches. “But I think we might have caught this in time,” he added, shedding his backpack to dig out, of all things, a video-tape. “Takashiro-san, I think the three of you need to see this recording.”

“What is it?”

“Your future. Specifically, what this” he tapped the book “would have led you to, in a few weeks’ time.”

Trading baffled glances with her friends, Hiroko shrugged and found the remotes for the TV and VHS machine, watching as Misha slipped the tape home – it was labelled {‘CENTRAL NAPIER COVEN’}, she noted – and punched the PLAY button.

The scene that flickered to life was lit mostly by candlebras. The camera was panning across a handful of fellow teenaged girls, wearing long hooded robes of black silk (and nothing beneath, judging by the way those robes clung to their bodies). The date in the corner of the recording was... 30-04-94. Almost a year ago... last Walpurgisnächt! Hiroko realised.

{“Hey, Brenda, say ‘gorgonzola’!”} the camera-girl smirked to a lithe brunette with gold-rimmed glasses.

‘Brenda’ responded by rolling her eyes and hoisting a middle finger at the lens.

Growling in mock-anger, the camera-girl panned around a little more, finding a short, very pretty girl with a blonde pixie-cut and wearing a heavy bronze hexagram amulet over her ceremonial robe. Misha hit ‘PAUSE’ to freeze on her face. “The leader of this little coven. Her name’s Jennifer Mallard – I’d known her since my first year in primary school. Jenny ended up at Central Napier College, rather than St. George’s, so we kind of drifted apart for a while, but we still saw each other at inter-school events, chatted when we bumped into each other on the streets, that sort of thing. Maybe if I’d realised what she was into, I could’ve stopped this,” he added, voice softening with regret.

“She made her own choice, Misha,” Taz told him. It sounded like a conversation they’d had more than a few times before.

The camera flicked around the room a little more, showing off the other four girls in the coven and the space they were working in. “Is that a Christian-style church?” Rie realised.

“The campus chapel at Central Napier College,” he nodded. “It opened in 1892, but it was damaged in the Quake of 1931. Unlike St. George, the school board decided repairs were too expensive to be worthwhile, but the Catholic Church wouldn’t let them demolish it. Nobody wanted to pay the lawyers’ fees to force a final decision either way, so they just boarded the place up and abandoned it. Kids like to use it as a party spot, until this happened.” He hit the fast-forward button again, letting go just after a jump-cut.

The camera had been set on a tripod on the former dais, focused down into what had once been the seating area for the congregation, now cleared of everything but the coven’s ritual circle – some nine metres across, though only marked out in gold paint – and the improvised altar at its centre. Four of the girls were standing around the altar, their robes open to bare their bodies; of the four, ‘Jenny’ was standing at the head of the altar, one hand on the pommel of a sword standing by her side. (Hiroko absently noted that the weapon’s hilt, crossguard, and the base of the blade were stylised into the shape of an ornate Christian cross.) All four girls were looking towards the main entrance, and after a moment, the other two witches came in, dragging a seventh girl by the arms between them. The prisoner was naked, slim and small-breasted, with curly brown hair, staring at the witches, the altar, the sword, her eyes almost bulging in abject terror... yet she wasn’t struggling.

Again, Misha paused the tape, letting everyone focus on the victim’s face. “Megan Youngman. She went to Central with Jenny and the others – they were all in the Seventh Form when this happened. Near as we can tell, she never harmed a soul in her life; she was one of those quiet, nerdy types that just wanted to finish high school so she could go to university and study marine biology. She’s under a mild enchantment, here, one that keeps her from fighting back against what’s happening, but she’s completely aware of everything that’s going on.”

Playback resumed once more, and the ritual circle flashed with otherworldly electric-blue light as Megan and her captors crossed within its boundaries. Megan was laid on the altar, her eyes still wide and begging, but Jenny only smiled cruelly and fondled her sword in anticipation. Misha hit the FORWARD CUE button again, going through the ensuing ritual at double-speed and blocking the audio track, so although the watchers could see the six witches all standing spaced equidistant around the altar, a half-pace back from its edges, chanting and gesturing, they couldn’t hear the words spoken. “You don’t need the actual details of the ceremony,” he said coldly. “Best not to give you any bright ideas, just yet. Of course, once you see the big finish....”

He let the tape go back to normal speed, just in time for the chanting to reach a crescendo. {“Zazsas, Zazsas, Andaztsan Zazsas!”} Jenny declaimed, lifting the sword to waist height in both hands.

{“ZAZSAS, ZAZSAS, ANDAZTSAN ZAZSAS!”} her followers chorused.

{“Zazsas, Zazsas, Andaztsan Zazsas!”} she repeated, now raising the sword overhead (with visible effort; she wasn’t very muscular). Something unseen tilted Megan’s head back, baring her neck to the coming blade.

{“ZAZSAS, ZAZSAS, ANDAZTSAN ZAZSAS!”}

And Jenny brought her sword down onto Megan’s offered throat with all her strength. It was a well-aimed blow, catching her target halfway between chin and collarbone; even with her utmost might behind it, the stroke didn’t quite sever her victim’s head, but the blade bit to the spine and lodged there. Blood gouted from the horrific wound, splashing Jenny and all her followers.

Watching a year later and thousands of kilometres away, Saki shrieked and looked away from the ritual murder she’d just witnessed. Rie cringed and covered her eyes with both hands. Hiroko flinched, but didn’t avert her gaze.

For several long, terrible seconds, nothing happened on-screen, save more blood pumping from Megan’s torn corpse, as her heart kept trying to sustain a life already taken, and Jenny panting raggedly as her efforts took their toll. Then the perimeter of the ritual circle flared with that same electric-blue light again, and every glyph and symbol within it started glowing a dazzling bright white, and Jenny’s head came up, her face alight in triumph.

Within the side of the ritual circle closest to the camera, inside both the inner and outer circles, another encircled hexagram was forming, this one of electric-red light, perhaps two metres across. Inside it, rising up like through a hole in reality itself, was a figure more than twice the height of a man, surrounded by blackness as if robed like his(?) summoners.

Despite themselves, most of the on-screen witches flinched back from what they had called up, several showing actual fear. Jenny, on the other hand, stepped forward with a smirk. {“My Lord Zazsas —”}

The demon waved a dismissive hand, and Jenny’s voice shut off, though her mouth kept moving. As she realised she couldn’t hear herself, that no sound was coming from her lips, her eyes and mouth went wide in alarm. The demon ignored her panic, his attention solely on the ritual circles that contained him. He reached one hand towards the outside, but when his claw-tips reached the plane above the inner circle of the wards, a curved golden wall of light appeared over the glyphs and dashed his hand backwards in a scintillating rainbow flash.

{“Hey, we had a deal!”} Brenda blustered, giving Jenny a worried look even as she stepped towards the demon, blazing-gold hexagram mandalas forming around the wrists of her clenched fists as she mustered her powers. {“We made the sacrifice you demanded, we summoned you –!”}

She’d gotten his attention. It was the last, most horrible mistake of her life.

Though almost five metres still separated them, another casual flick of the demon’s fingers lifted Brenda from her feet and blasted the robe from her body, leaving her hanging by her wrists from nothing metres off the ground, completely naked. The demon seemed to examine her for a long moment, then finally deigned to speak. {»̳̯̻̘̹̭͜ͅ»̤ͅI͔̣ ̛A͖̟̘̞͕M̮ ̳̘̕Z͈A҉̣Z̳̜̙̰̫͔͚͠S̴͕͙͍̟̗̱̜AS̞̰!̷̺̻̝ ̛͎ ̵̝̞͔I̴̱ ̠̱ͅk͘ḛ͉̳͓̙̥ę̹̩͕̺̩p̖̯ ̰o͍̤̹̣͉̗͟n͕ļ̺̰y̪ ̵th̷̠͚̳̥o҉̙͍̝͍͎̹s͓̗̪e͉ ͍͈̲͓̖̰̤b̥̳͇͍͜ḁ͍͖r̗͚ǵa҉̪̜̭͖̗͎i͇̗ṇ̤̖͖̪s̡̘͖ ҉̞̱̖̳ͅI͖̻̗̲͎̕ p͖͙̯̰̺̪̥l̶͍̞̰̼͓̠e̴͔̦͈̘̳a̬͎s͖͈̦̕e̩͙̠͈͕̘ͅ,̧̬͙̞͙̮̪«͢«̬̭̭̮̤͕̖} it snarled. A year and thousands of kilometres away, the trio of Japanese would-be witches cringed and tried to cover their ears as that eldritch voice echoed through their souls like clawed fingernails screeching down a blackboard. Whatever language it truly spoke, they heard perfect Japanese. {̟»͙̬͍»͈̜̝̰T̯̬̘̦o̤̲̝̗̮̤͘ ͉̱̼͈̟̼̤s̱͇̜̼̝u̸̮m̶̥̝̮͍͖̟̱mo̦n̝̲ ͓͈̲͇͞ͅm̹̹e̤͓ͅ ̧̭͇̘̤̺̹o̡̤b̡̟̩̹̫͉͚̣l̪͓̖̭͎i͔̘̻g͓͈̫̞̪̱ͅes̛͉̖̥̬̣ ̪̗̳̩̥̮m̸e͎͈͡ ̠͚̝̪̲n͏̩̰o̲t̹̣͙̝͇͖͙h̟̥i̮̭͎̜͎̼͇͟n̬̭̘̻g̳ ͚̜̘̟̮̟̫t͚͕̫̙͘ó̮̬̦w͍͈̘a̩͍r̹̱͖͇d̢̻͇̣̤̭̼s͚̝ ͏̯y͓̙oư̟͚̬.͇͚̼̘͚͚̺«̯̖̰̮̝«̣̬̥̀}

In two steps, he was looming over the altar, and in a simple motion, he reached over it to seize the airborne girl between two half-metre-long hands. Brenda’s shriek of terror/agony ended almost before it started; her companions’ screams, and the sounds of flesh tearing and the grisly crunches and pops of bones and joints, lasted a few moments longer.

In Tokyo, a year later, even Misha was pale. Saki bolted for the kitchen, barely reaching the sink before vomiting, loudly and at length. An ashen-faced Rie slid from the couch to sit on the floor, a hair’s-breadth from a dead faint. Hiroko folded in on herself, hugging her knees to her chest, transfixed and unable to look away from the horror before her, softly chanting over and over again, 「No, no, no, no, no —」

With a snort of contempt, Zazsas cast the ruins of his victim to either side. They slapped wetly against the golden wall of light created by the inner wards and slid to the ground, barely recognisable as once-human.

{͓͍̳̖̩̹͉»͇̯̩»ͅY͓̻͉̬͜o̧̜͓̟̯̜̝ù̞̟͇ͅ ͏̼͚h̪͓̖̫͖͡ͅa̪̼̬͟v̴̱ͅe͕̼̹͓̥̤̫ ̡͕̮͙o̟̫͖̟n͖̳̰̼ͅl̴̺y̳͍̥̗̳͕ͅ ̷̤͙͖͇͚̳͈t͜h͜é̠̯̻̮͓̞̖ ̰̖͙p̤͚̱o̫̠̫̠wer̲̫̹͟s̷̙̲̭̭͖ ̘̞̼͙̜̫I̼͉̝ ͉̬̪̤̯̫ͅg̘̘̬r̴̗̭̪̳̝̘͖a͓̲͈͟n̥͝t̟̙̭̞e̲͕̪̭͕̹d̺̠̪͚̜̫ ̥̤͓̱y̺͎̦̯̻͎o̻̫͞ͅu̠̠,̱͢ ̺̝͖̺̖͎̕a̠̝̳̬̕n̪̬̗̳d̺̹̮͍̩̯͝ ̸̜̳w̡̗̬̜̰̼̥h̺̝̦̪͕a̺̗͘t̲̠̤ ͖̠͘I̹̬̩͠ ̱̞̲̤̞h̯͖̕av͇̘̦̱̜e҉͍̦̼̣ ̪͎̟̕g͏̤͓̟͈͈iv̳͉e̥͘ṋ͈̳̫̦ͅ ͟c̲̗a̩̬̹̝̟̫n҉͕̠n̢̮̤͔̦̣͉ot̠̙͇̖ ̖̼h͏̝͇̣͕̮à̳r̝̙̫̺ͅm͇̰̜̗̭̣ ̳̜̼̩͚͎͍m̪̖͎̪̯e̼̬̤̻͡,̘««̨̼̼̬̼} Zazsas proclaimed. {̫̯̳̣̟»̟̯̻͍̻͚͜»͎͔̬̻͓̞͝Y͔̮̭̝̦̟o̸u̝̘͓͉̣̮͞r͙ ̧̘͍̤̦̳̯̟o̩w͇̙͇̤̻̙̥n͓̮ ͖͕̼̩̬̲̬w̲͉͈ͅo̭̞͈͓͕̜r̖̀k͎̱͙i͏̺ṇ̴̩͈̥̪ͅg̟̠̦͕̯͘s͍͖̮̠ ̰̯̼̹̹̕t̨͕̰̩̪r̞͍̬̤̘̞a̯p̩̘͘ ̡̪͔̼͇͔y̡̞̙̠o̯̬̳̖u̠͉̱̖̜̻ͅ,͕̝͔̰͎«̣̤͍͖«̵̬͔̘} he added, as in her terror, one of the other girls tried to back away over the inner circle of wards — and stopped in her tracks, as if the curved plane of golden light that formed behind her was a wall of bricks. {̀»͔̥̻̜̘̤͈»̶̖̫̖̱Y̶͕̲̖̮͙̣o͜u̮̜͙̖͖̣ c̖̩a͖̯̺̦̬̝͞n͏̘̟̰͔̞̥n̻̩͍̞̫̰̮o̸̫͕t͎̭̦͍̭ͅ ͇c͍̱o̭mp̴̤͔͚el̺ ̩͚̗̟ṃe͉̼̥͙͍̞̱,̡̮͔͎͇̥ ̫̙ơ͕̗͍r̡ ̠̮͇͓ͅm̫̤͡a̺͖̹k̞̘̻e̷ ̨͚̻̟d̕e̴͍m̥͇͘a̲͇͚͔ͅn̞̦̭d͏̗̫s̶̜ ̗̹͉͠ͅo̫̹̖̫f ̞̰̠͓͖̰͍m̘e̴͔̲̰̝̯̥.̨̰͓ ̹̪̮̳͙̬Y͉̲̕o̵͍͕̻̲u̫͜ ̜̺̰͎̳̪͢h̖͎̞̀a͎̲̹v̹e͈͚̙̥̖͎̥ ̵̭s̪͔̟͙͖͉a͏͚͍͙̗͎͍̘c̮̹͈͕͢r͕̲i̬̦̜f̷͙͍͙̺͙͓̟i͖c̭̫͓͎ͅe̹̩̪͓̤d̬̞ ͉̮̺͕͚͖͢i̲̝̣̜̥̘͉n̵̳̘͎̘͇n̟̺̜̣̺o̝̘̣c͙̺͎͠e͙͚͚͓̰̰n̨̬̱̭̳̥̫t ̥̦͓̭̫̝̠͞ļ͕̫̰̖͖̤̠i͓ͅf͈̻͈͔͚͕̦è̳̠ ̳͕̟͕͙̳̭t̤̖͠o̧ ͏b͏̘͍̜̙̘̪̙r̤͙͖i̼͇̩̬̞n̮̗͜g͓̮̮̰̤̜ m̰͜ḛ̦̫͎̜͜ ̴̤͙̖̹̻̗h̵e̘̦̥̕ŗ̙̱e̤͓̲͓͚,̴͇͍͕ͅ ̡͈͉̟a̜̤n̹̖͍͡d͉̘͝ ̞̬̜̲̟̪̥s͈̺͇̹̰͎o͖ ̸̮̪̳ͅy͖̲͠o҉ụ̯̮̦̣̹̙ ̳̙̖̠̗̘ha̬̬̞̰̞̗v̖͚é̗̹ ͏͈da҉̱̖͙m̢͓̳̜̗n̪̮̼̤e̦d͖̰ ̭̮̞͕̜̜́ͅy̤̖͖͙̫̫o̠̟͚͖̲̝̘͠u͡r̶̺̭̭͖̙͔͎ ͚̠͟o͓͜w͏̘̬̪̪̙̱n̰̰̤͙̦̠ͅ ̸soṳ̡̥̙̞̹l̝̞͚s̘̪͇͔ͅ.҉͙̹ ̟̳ ̧Y̛̖̮̭̯̘̯͔o͍̝u͚͚͖̙̦͙ ͕͕a͚͖̘͚͔r̹͝e͈̪̰ ̜̱̲̳͇̪͉m̧̦̼in̘͕̦è͔͍̹̫͓͕ ̠̯͍̰͓̘n̴̩̯̘̟͇̣ow̫̬̩͓̮̤,̠͙̣ ̕t̪͎͓̪̝̦o̙͜ ̸͈d̤o̯͙̣̝̟̻͓ ͉͜w͕̥̬i̭ț͙̦͢h̪̟̫̪̠͉ ͈a̝s̵ ͙͈I͏ ̮͎͜p̯̟̱̙l͕̩̩̼͇͔͡e̱̞̞̟̯a̸̗̮̘̯̝ṣ̴͔̦̻̬̗è̹̮͇͚̲.̢̺͕̼̠̥͚̰«͓«͉̭͎}

Misha stopped the tape there, but it was small mercy. “The tape runs for another, oh, ninety minutes after this, but only the next twenty minutes really matter,” he told his audience, with professional detachment. “He butchers the other four girls, and makes Jenny watch, so she knows exactly what her ambitions have done to her and her friends. A couple of them try to fight back with what magic they have, but it’s like trying to kill a Sherman tank with squirt-guns; one of them actually tries to get the sword free, either to fight with or to commit suicide, but it’s just too firmly wedged in Megan’s vertebrae. Then, when the others are all dead and Jenny’s virtually catatonic, he goes to work on her – suspends her in mid-air with his magic, and rapes her to death. Considering he’s got a cock the size of my arm and no concept of consideration for a human partner, that doesn’t actually take very long; he basically tears her in half, blows his load, then discards what’s left of her to bleed out and... simply returns from whence he was summoned.”

Taz reached for him, slipping a comforting arm about his shoulders. “Going by the time-stamps, it had all been over for more than an hour by the time we got there; Jenny was still warm and twitching, but she was the only one, and even she was long past any help. We grabbed the camcorder, took some photos of the ritual trappings, then, well...” She shrugged helplessly. “There was a tragic fire that razed the whole church to the ground. Officially, it was an accident, probably started by some kids partying. Under the circumstances, it was the closest we could do to giving all of them a proper burial.”

“We made a copy of the tape and made sure the original, and the camcorder, got to the right kind of police.” Misha cleared his throat, recovering from his lapse. “And that was the end of that particular caper. But it just keeps fucking happening!”

Saki emerged from the kitchen again, wiping her mouth with a paper towel, still pale. “What... what did they get wrong?” she finally managed.

“Define ‘wrong’, Shidō-san,” Misha snarled. “Morally? What they did ‘wrong’ was murder an innocent girl for the sake of gaining power. If you mean in a technical sense?” Here, he gave a bitter laugh. “That’s just it: in conducting the ritual itself, they didn’t get anything ‘wrong’. They followed the book in every single detail and particular – except perhaps establishing a double-ring ritual-circle with annular containment warding; Jenny always was thorough. What you just saw, Shidō-san, is what happens when the sacrifice laid out in a Black Bible goes completely right!”

Saki lost what little colour she’d regained. Hiroko simply stared. “Wh-what?”

“The whole fucking book is a trap! There is not a single word of truth in that book about the history of witchcraft, and every magical power within is based in blood-magic, the easiest and most corrupting kind of spell-casting there is, all of which serves his agenda. Zazsas wrote the first one back during the Thirty Years’ War, and he’s been magically duplicating the things and scattering them around the world for centuries since, like chucking loaded shotguns into rooms full of five-year-olds, just waiting for things to end in blood and screaming, for people stupid enough to damn their souls by trafficking with him. There are minor variances – some versions demand a sacrifice on Easter Friday, or Walpurgisnächt, or Halloween, or Christmas Eve – but that’s just a matter of details, they all culminate the same way. Every soul sacrificed to him, including every would-be summoner he kills in the aftermath, makes him all the more powerful. One day, someone’s going to follow his recipes and give him the final amount of juice he needs to breach the containment circle when summoned – or they’re just going to fuck up while drawing the thing – and he’s going to break free to rampage across the world, corrupting and butchering people for his own pleasure.”

“And we are here to make sure he does not get the chance to go on that rampage,” Yukio added; one hand moved slightly, drawing eyes to the sword it still held. “Whatever that takes.”

“So, now, we get to the real bones of the matter,” Taz said significantly, catching Hiroko’s gaze. “Yes or no, Takashiro-san: did you cast a spell on Mochida-san to make her ‘dance naked’?”

The Japanese redhead dropped her eyes and nodded shamefully. That all we hoped to accomplish, to be, might be for nothing but that! She thought, remembering the slaughter that tape had shown. Oh, Gods and Kami, what idiots we were!

“How did you manage painting the hexagram on her chest to anchor the spell?” Misha asked.

“What?” Hiroko blinked. “What are you talking about? I used a paper-doll as a focal charm – I never had to touch Mochida-san to deliver the spell.”

He blinked himself, eyes narrowing. “That’s... Takashiro-san, kindly show me that charm.” Again, he almost made it sound like a request. A silent glance to his female companions asked them to keep watch over Rie and Saki. (Not that they were particularly animated at that moment.)

Subdued, silent, Hiroko showed him upstairs and retrieved the blood-stained paper-doll she’d enchanted. Misha took it from her with one hand – he kept the other free by his side the whole time; she didn’t doubt that he was perfectly ready to conjure a blade the same way Taz and Yukio had – then silently nodded her back downstairs, to rejoin the group.

Once there, he laid the charm out on the dining-room table and took a long, hard look at it... then his head snapped up. “Yob tvoyu mat’!”

“What’s wrong?” Taz wondered, splitting her attention between her lover and her prisoners.

“The good news is, these three are off the hook for everything but being gullible, which can be fatal but isn’t actually a crime,” he muttered dryly. “Bad news? This isn’t what hexed Mochida.”

“What?”

“It’s in the same style, yes, same methodology, but the casting-signatures are completely different. And even if they did match, this charm” He waggled it, almost boggling at the thing “is a fizzle! It’s a failure – a clean miss!” He turned serious eyes on his Slayer. “These three botched the job. What happened to Junko wasn’t their fault!”

“Which leaves us the question: who is responsible?” she nodded. “And why?”




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Spoiler: Author’s after-notes

Anyone who’s actually seen Bible Black: Origin is probably asking “... but, but: what about the ‘stations of canon’?” right about now. Uh, in case you hadn’t noticed? Taz et. al. generally have the same relationship with railways as the Normandy Maquis did in May 1944.

The Mary Poppins reference... well, black humour at otherwise grossly-inappropriate junctures is very much a Buffy tradition, innit?