Chapter 25 - Arthur CunninghamHollow NightStrange. At my st checkup, the Doctor said I’d made great progress. He assured me that if I kept up the moderate exercise, avoided undue stress, and continued eating well (which was code for “take whatever your mother gives you and don’t ask questions), the fainting and shortness of breath would both become distant memories.

  I suppose I’d simply gotten too overconfident. There was an abrupt sound of something falling, then a gasp, and before long I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder.

  “Cunningham! What’s wrong?”

  The voice – the hand – was Mizuko’s. Once oxygen had decided to grace my lungs again, I blinked a few times, registering the cold sensation of the tarmac underneath me. My fingers found the left side of my chest.

  “Apologies. I suppose that st stunt took more out of me than I thought,” I lied. “B-But, Shirogetsu. Could you repeat what you said?”

  Junko eyed me with concern, perhaps weighing if I could still take what she had to say.

  After sharing a gnce with her sister, she sighed.

  “I’m starting to think we’re not the only ones who’ve been here. To the Hollow Night.” She restarted. “To tell you the truth, part of me still suspected there could be others running around somewhere that we didn’t know about.”

  Rusuban, who had been uncharacteristically quiet, chimed, “I was of the same mind. At least, until the ‘Leaderboard’ was revealed.”

  “Right.” Junko replied curtly. Something about her tone resembled annoyance. “But this –“ She brandished the strange item for emphasis, “This backpack, or gear, whatever it is, wouldn’t just be here for no reason, don’t you think?”

  There were some moments of stillness as we pondered her hypothesis. If she was correct, the scope of this nightmare was much, much rger than I’d hoped.

  “What if they are just that?” Mizuko questioned. “What Juno simply intended for these to be rewards for us? A tool to be leveraged, just like that lighter?”

  The mention of the lighter reminded me of our friends over on the other side of the city. I hoped they were doing well – better than us, anyhow.

  “Okay, but then why frame the mission the way they did? They called these things artefacts. Meaning that they’re not meant for us. They were meant for something – or someone – else, and a long time ago at that.”

  Mizuko nodded, tapping her foot, and spoke no more.

  Ever the hype-man, Rusuban must have noticed our dropping morale, and sought to fix it.

  “In any case, we ought to secure more of these relics; that way we can see if the rest of them follow this trend of having been designed for someone in particur.”

  I couldn’t tell if it was because I found what he said reasonable, or simply that my current train of thought was leading to a conclusion that made my skin crawl, but I agreed.

  As I lifted my forearm up to wipe my blurry eyes, I could’ve swore I noticed a something standing behind Rusuban, but when I looked back up to inspect it, it was gone. Was I hallucinating?

  “Very well.” Mizuko decred. “Let us be-“

  “…”

  “…Sis? Sis, where did you-”

  Mizuko’s naginata fell to the floor with a cng.

  “Huh? Shirogetsu-san? Shirogetsu-san?! WHERE ARE YOU?!”

  This time, I was unable to convince myself of any visual misconception on my part. If you blinked, you definitely would have missed it. But I saw all of it.

  Before Mizuko had even finished her sentence, the same figure from previous spawned behind her, and in a fsh, left, this time with our ally in tow.

  "Cunningham! Cunningham you need to find her right this instant!”

  I was panicking. My breathing was off, there was too much fear and sweat in the air messing with my senses, I was-

  “I’m trying!” I yelled. “H-How could she just-“

  Junko began to bellow for her sister at the top of her lungs. How did it keep doing that? Its movements weren’t normal in the slightest. It felt less like teleportation and more like…more like a glitch!

  I had to focus. If I was even a second too te, she was as good as dead.

  The hellish image of her limp corpse, the screams of her sister at now being an only child, my own ambitions to spend the rest of my life by her side reduced to ashes – I let that anguish fuel me, drive me into ensuring that it would not become reality.

  Perhaps you’ve heard this before – that the world of EXS is like a canvas, with colours of different shapes, hues, intensities, all finding their distinct pce on the piece. I needed to look past the bright, obvious tinctures that crowded my vision.

  There was a colour that didn’t fit in with the rest, wasn’t there? Almost like a jigsaw piece with no pce to call home, constantly looking for new pces to try and-

  My body sprung into action before my mind could catch up. Feeling my bestial side take over, I submitted to my instincts, cws poised, and swiped ferociously toward my left. My tip of my nails became dipped in a familiar red substance, and a spsh of the same liquid stained my clothing.

  Yes! I’d managed to nd a hit! I naively thought to myself. It wasn’t until the scent of the watery fluid wafted up to my nostrils, that my heart began to sink into the deepest, darkest depths of despair.

  I hadn’t struck the Noise at all – rather, I’d struck its hostage.

  “No. No. No. No. No. No-“ I began to stammer, looking at my shaking, treacherous, murderous paws.

  I felt the rapid pitter-patter of feet approaching me but dared not look her in the eye.

  “Cunningham…” She began. I didn’t have to look at her expression to verify the anger that was making her voice tremble. “….what did you do?”

  I felt as though I was going to throw up at any moment.

  “The Noise, it – it’s using her as a shield! Even if I try and predict where it’s going to appear, I can’t – we can’t strike! Otherwise we’ll –“

  I was promptly shut up by Junko unsheathing her odachi, and looked up to find her pointing its whetted tip right at me.

  “You are going to tell us when and where it will strike.” She informed coldly. All sembnces of patience were long gone from her eyes now. “I will deal the finishing blow. If there is so much as an extra hair on her head out of pce, your Pact will be coming to an end very soon - that much I assure you.”

  She took my silence as assent, and walked over to Rusuban. He was crouched over what seemed to be a drain strainer, his hands id ft upon its surface.

  She looked down at him, and he nodded without looking her in the eye. He was grimacing in pain, as though he was trying to lift a heavy object.

  I grabbed my elbows with my arms, keeping my hands out of sight, closed my eyes, and re-converged the rays of my attention. We only had a split second to get this right – and even then, we had to finish it in one blow. Junko must have known, deep in her heart, what that meant. What she would be risking.

  But it seems she’d long since abandoned her fear.

  Mizuko was more than just an ally – to me, but especially to her. I had no doubt in my mind that, should it come down to it, Junko would throw away her very own life if it would secure her sibling’s safety.

  I prayed I would not live to see that happen.

  I couldn’t tell you how much time had passed, but I was at my limit. My eyes were shut tight, in order to decrease the amount of stimuli I had to deal with simultaneously, though I could sense that Junko and Rusuban were still nearby.

  The former, as expected, was summoning all of the EXS she had left. Her ‘colour’, so to speak, was an increasingly intensifying shade of blue that was becoming harder and harder to ignore. Rusuban’s EXS, on the other hand, might just be the strangest case I’d come across in my short tenure thus far.

  Whereas Junko was a single colour of an extreme saturation, it was like Rusuban was sporting two different colours entirely.

  The most noticeable tone was the bright, deep shade of green that was also gradually becoming more intense, perhaps reted to whatever he was preparing underground.

  In contrast – and I could only wonder exactly what this implied – there was a much darker, swampy shade of green lurking in the recesses of his EXS. This duality, of sorts, was something I had never come across before.

  And why did this secondary tinge emanate such a sinister aura?

  If not for the hairs on my thick coat of fur suddenly standing on end, I may have reached an answer.

  “It’s approaching.” I announced without opening my eyes. “It’ll be here in front of us, any second.”

  “Is my sister there?” Junko inquired. Her breath was staggered.

  “I don’t know.”

  She grunted, but spared me of any further conversation, likely to allow me to concentrate.

  In tense moments like these, I often forgot to breathe myself. It felt like a distraction from whatever the task at hand was. Until I’d gotten it done, you could say I didn’t deserve to breathe.

  Sometimes, I’d ask myself questions in order to give my brain something to focus on, other than trying to convince me to save my suffering lungs. So, I opted to propose a question that had secretly been at the back of my mind, ever since witnessing Mizuko’s abduction;

  Why is the Noise still here?

  Surely if their goal, as Juno described, was to gorge on our EXS, then I’d say our rival has a very decent meal on their hands already. Does it gain something out of watching us struggle – ‘pying with its food’, maybe? Does it want to secure the rest of us as its dessert? There were simply too many-

  “THERE!” A gruff, canine voice that resembled my own called out. I felt my arm shoot up, index finger pointed toward my two o’clock.

  For what felt like the first time in years, I opened my eyes. I wish I hadn’t.

  My vision did not deceive me, and neither did the familiar scent of blood – it was Mizuko, the clothing on her right arm torn through, the skin underneath sporting three bloody lines.

  Her arms were outstretched, palms open and shaking, as if telling us to calm down. Behind her, was the Noise in question – and it occurred to me that the word ‘glitch’ was the best way to describe its horribly malformed, incongruous shape.

  Unlike many of the others we’d encountered, there was no archetype or simile that could be used to depict the kind of eldritch abomination that stood before us. I felt my sanity slipping just by looking at it.

  Perhaps what was more bizarre were its movements. At first, I thought it was shaking, when in fact, it was as though its muscles were in the midst of a spasm. Or would ‘vibration’ be more appropriate? Like it was trying to move, but was trapped in its own body, gging like a character in the video games I’d py as child.

  “STOP, DON’T – “

  Mizuko’s pleas were interrupted by a loud rumble before the very ground beneath us gave way, crumbling as a colossal green pnt, its bright green hues and sharp spikes resembling that of a Dionaea – or Venus Flytrap to the uninitiated – erupted from the realm’s very bowels.

  Like a crocodile, it sprung and cmped down on the ‘gging’ creature, squashing it between its massive, mighty jaws. Terrified, I leaped forward and snatched the distressed Mizuko, before jumping away once more. If Junko was attempting what I thought she was, we needed to get as much distance as possible.

  After having nded some distance away, I looked down at Mizuko.

  “Thank God you’re okay. I’m sorry for –“

  My speaking came to halt once I’d noticed the icy bde she’d likely just fashioned. Before I could plea for her to stop, a cold yet unbearable, razor-sharp pain penetrated my right forearm, forcing her out of my grip.

  Between my tortured howls, I heard her whisper an apology before sprinting back toward the others. I didn’t know what her reasons were, but she couldn’t go back there. That much I knew for sure. Going on all fours would’ve caused me too much pain, but I wasn’t going to catch her otherwise.

  “Mizuko…stop…wait!” I tried, reverting back into my human form, finding my feet and chasing after her. “You have to stay ba-“

  It was too te. Perhaps now recognizing what Junko was about to do, Mizuko sped up and screamed.

  “NO! STOP! INJA!”

  …Inja? Who on earth is –

  My thoughts were silenced as a piercing blue light fshed before us, and then a massive explosion in Rusuban and Junko’s direction followed. Mizuko was sent meteoring backwards into myself, and I opened my arms out to catch her, before my vision was swallowed by an impenetrable darkness.