Mahou Shoujo Shinto Scion

[Valles]

It occurred to me that, quite inexplicably, I hadn't actually posted this here.

Let me correct that error.

==========================================================

MAHOU SHOUJO SHINTO SCION
Episode One:
"Sunrise"

==========================================================

[Team-OOC]Moonspawn: Inq's ded, now 1 more wave b4 I go punch RL 1s again.
[Team-OOC]Sunsword: did htehy hit your neighborhood?
[Team-OOC]Moonspawn: No, would’ve told U2. Hypothetical HHOS.
[Team-OOC]Sunsword: ican stil lhardly belive these thigns are suppodsed to be real. Straight out of a mvoie...
[Team-OOC]Stormward: They are. My mother's been working all hours and worrying a lot, and she's scattered her work all over the place whenever she's been home.

Satou Yoko sat back a little in the chair facing her wheezing, elderly computer and wiped away the sweat starting to trickle down her face. Her tiny room in the equally tiny three-room-and-bath apartment she shared with her father was swelteringly hot in the summer heat, even with the fan set in the window and the brief, threadbare hot pants and tank top she'd put on as soon as she'd gotten home and been able to change out of her work uniform.

[Team-OOC]Sunsword: yes but sombies?1
[Team-OOC]Moonspawn: Less talk, more tank! Leave my pets alone you fucks!

Yoko giggled quietly and smacked the hotkey for her opener area-effect attack, and took a pull off the glass of ice water sweating all over the coaster in the middle of the crowded TV-dinner table next to her PC.

[Team-OOC]Sunsword: there ,aggroded.
[Team-OOC]Stormward: Don't worry, we'll finish them quickly.
[Team-OOC]Moonspawn: LOL Sic em, boys! Fuck up their shit!

Yoko managed to not laugh out loud herself; her father was just on the other side of the thin wall separating their bedrooms, trying to rest after an overtime shift at his company's latest construction site. Work had been disrupted by an earthquake early in the process, and the client had paid extra to have their building finished by the original completion date. The extra work was good - the additional money from contracts just like that one had saved them from disaster several times in the past - but if her father wasn't old, yet, he'd lived a hard life, and keeping up with the pace wore at him.

[Team-OOC]Sunsword: monsters or not wer’re still on for tomorros, right/

Despite how long they’d been gaming together, and despite their all living in Tokyo proper, none of the three had ever met each other face to face. With Yoko’s part-time job only needing a morning shift for that Sunday and both of the others being free, they had finally found an ideal moment to correct that.

[Team-OOC]Moonspawn: Damn straight. I refuse to believe either of you is /that/ fucking pretty.
[Team-OOC]Stormward: Whatever your judgement on that score may prove to be, I am indeed that tall.

Yoko didn’t like to think that she might be vain, but she only needed eyes to realized that she did have the kind of face and figure that the ‘popular’ girls of her school needed special diets, push-up brassieres, and extensive cosmetics to imitate. Even if she hadn’t, a never-ending parade of boys at school and male customers of all ages at her waitress job were invariably all too maddeningly eager to remind her.

On screen, one of the spider-like mechanoids Moonspawn’s character ‘built’ brought down the last of the twisted monsters with a tinny shotgun blast, and the schoolgirl took off her headphones to stretch and enjoy the momentary rush of cool air on her sweating ears and the singing tension all through her spine as she bent her entire body into an arc before yawning. Moonspawn’s description of herself had made Yoko think of the kind of delinquent she’d usually have gone out of her way to avoid, while Stormward had quoted some pretty effusive gushing by her own classmates with a kind of patient irritation that Yoko found very familiar.

The three friends discussed the details of their meeting for a few minutes more, then Yoko logged off to go to bed - whatever her plans for the evening, she had work the next morning, and once she’d shut down the computer she brushed her teeth in the closet the apartment’s landlord called a restroom and laid out her futon without covers so she could try to get some sleep.

* * * * *

“Rise and shine, Daddy!” Yoko caroled the next morning.

As usual, Satou Reiji reacted by throwing his pillow at her head. She ducked out of the way with a giggle and went back to the corner of the apartment’s main room that served as their kitchen, dishing out breakfast for both of them out of what was left from putting together their lunchboxes.

That one room made up half the space of the apartment, but it wasn’t by any means large itself. A small refrigerator, a two-burner stove, a sink, and about a meter of counter space filled the entirety of one wall. A card table in another corner had breakfast laid out on it, while the other walls held one door on the inward side and three - open, so that the fans in the outer windows could move cooling air through the living space - in the wall facing the outside of the apartment building.

For now, before the heat of the day kicked in, the apartment was only a bit warm, and Yoko dug into her breakfast with a will. when she opened her eyes, she found her father watching her, his own food untouched and a wistful smile on his face. “What?” she asked, a little creeped out.

“You look just like your mother when you’re happy like that,” he said fondly.

Yoko blinked. He’d commented on the resemblance before, which, since he hadn’t admitted to having any pictures of her, was the only clue she had as to what her mother had looked like - black hair, worn ‘much longer’ than her daughter’s, which was only a little past the shoulders, impossible, brilliant golden eyes set in a lovely face, a sleek figure with a prominent bust...

But the emphasis on her expression was new. “I make a different face when I’m serious?” she asked.

Her father blinked, then laughed quietly. “I only ever saw her be serious a few times, for maybe five minutes at a stretch.”

Yoko grinned triumphantly, delighted to’ve won another scrap of information free from her father’s reticence on the subject. “So, Mom was kind of a goofball, then?” she asked.

Reiji blinked again and picked up his chopsticks. “She was very lively,” he said, and began to eat.

She made an irritated noise and threw a grain of rice at him, which he picked out of the air and ate placidly. Her father rarely talked about her mother. Over nearly twelve years of actively trying, she still hadn’t filled the notebook she’d started to keep track of very fact she’d wormed out of him. Having him drop a fact like that and then clam up again was heartbreakingly frustrating. Yoko finished her breakfast in three oversized gulps and mumbled the morning’s goodbyes around the food with bad grace.

It was a few minutes later, when she got her bike - an ancient, half-rusted relic, but it worked - off of the rack by their apartment building’s parking, that the day started getting strange. The biggest bird she’d ever seen in person, a raven as long as her arm, was perched on the top of the rack, watching her. when she approached to unlock her bike, it flapped over to a nearby fence and cocked its head to keep staring at her with one dark eye.

“Okay, that?” Yoko muttered, “is officially creepy.”

Halfway through the several-mile trip, while she was waiting in traffic at a stop light, she saw the giant raven perch on top of a lightpost just ahead. A crowd of people on the street pulled out their cell phones and started snapping pictures. A part of her mind wanted to start pedaling as hard as she could to escape the disturbing thing stalking her, but she controlled the urge. Trying to race through morning rush traffic would be a good way to turn herself into street pizza, and a creepy bird was only possibly dangerous.

When she pulled her bike into the narrow access way behind the restaurant she worked at, the raven settled onto one branch of the shade tree planted just outside the entrance. A few moments in the staff restroom to change into her uniform and she was ready to start her shift just as the morning rush began to pick up. The minidress, stockings, and short jacket flattered her figure, and those of the other waitresses, quite nicely. Granted, working at what was essentially an off-brand Anna Miller’s had its downsides to dignity, but the pay was enough to make up for that, letting her pay for her small family’s entire food budget while still leaving time to attend school, if not to study much.

Fortunately, her grades could take it.

When Yoko glanced across the sidewalks as she walked over to tap the greeter on the shoulder and advise her of the opening of her assigned stretch of tables, she saw a familiar face sitting in a familiar place and groaned internally. If there had been any point putting it off, she would have, but there wasn’t, so instead she bustled over, put on her best lying cheerful welcome face and tried to ignore the way the college boy kept staring at her bust.

Today he’d brought a friend, just to complete the joy of the encounter, about the same age but with shoulder-length hair rather than short-cropped. Not bad looking, really - not at all - but then, the Annoying One was better than tolerable right up until he actually started drooling. She wouldn’t roll her eyes at the new one’s openly stunned expression, but it was a distinct strain to keep her irritation out of her face and voice as she took the orders.

And that was more or less how the morning went - dodge the occasional grope, smile at the juvenile twits ogling her ass, refill her stalker and his tag-along... if they hadn’t kept telling her not to make change, the kind of day she’d been having, she’d have slugged one of the perverts and told them to hang the damned job.

Eventually, half an hour short of the end of her shift, she managed to make her trip by the stalker’s table while he was away in the bathroom, draining away the endless cups of coffee she’d poured into him. She wasn’t going to turn down any chance to dodge dealing with the creep. his friend shook his head and kept nursing his own iced coffee, then, unexpectedly, asked, “Why don’t you just tell him you’re not interested?”

“Interested in what?” Yoko asked, as innocently as she could.

“In dating him,” the new guy answered, bluntly cutting through her attempt to dissemble her way around the question.

“I’m a waitress,” she told him, relaxing enough that her smile was more irony than cheer, “smiling at everyone comes with the job.”

The tag-along blinked at her - rather than her breasts - for a moment, then, befuddled, asked, “Why not just quit?”

“I like to eat,” she said, more sarcastically still.

And then the stalker came back and interrupted, and she made her escape by being flagged by another table. Behind her, she heard them still talking to each other.

“Dude! She was actually talking to you! You have to teach me your secret!”

“Oh, that’s easy. I didn’t try to get her in bed...”

Yoko giggled and got back to work.

* * * * *

On Sundays, this time of year, Yoko ate her lunch after changing out of her uniform, sitting on a bench at the bus stop. Absently, she flicked a bite of cheap hot dog over her shoulder, and a black spearpoint beak snapped it out of mid-air. “You’re going to keep following me?”

The raven, barely visible out of the corner of her eye, settled itself deeper onto the back of the bench and fluffed its feathers out a bit.

Yoko sighed. “Thought so.”

She ate slowly, finishing her meal and sipping on the bottle of tapwater she’d brought. She had a couple of hours yet before the meeting, and even with the length of the ride there was no need to hurry.

Then, in an alley nearby, someone screamed. Despite the pitch, it was a young man who bolted out into sight with bleeding gashes along his side and arm. He didn’t even pause or turn on the sidewalk, sprinting right out into traffic and only barely avoiding being hit.

The zombie - a withered, mummified, skeletal thing with long rusty talons on the gauntlets of its ramshackle armor - wasn’t as lucky. The sedan was moving quickly enough that its entire front end crumpled a little and, though the thing kept trying to move, the impact was enough to shatter ever bone beneath the undead husk’s waist.

That, in itself, would have only been startling, but that first monster had friends following it, dozens of them, reaching out with clawed fingers or bearing horribly corroded ancient weapons.

Someone else screamed - Yoko didn’t think it had been her - and then everyone started running. Not being a fool, she herself was one of them, and as she fled a corner of her mind was frantically trying to call to mind all the news reports she’d previously dismissed as unlikely to directly impact her life.

The walking dead, as impossible as it sounded... they were quicker and more agile in real life than in most games or fiction, but still less so than a healthy adult. No magic or acid vomit, and now bows or other ranged weapons save rotten javelins. Running was, in fact, what the sober, worried talking heads had recommended - most people in modern-day Tokyo weren’t athletic enough to properly outrun the untiring dead, but the few minutes they could keep ahead of the monsters were long enough for the Police and Japanese Self Defense Force units the government had stationed throughout the city to begin to respond.

Ahead of her as she ran was a mother, dragging her grade-school daughter behind her by one hand. Crossing a cross street - vehicles were nowhere to be found, all of them having fled by now themselves - the child tripped, skinning her knees, pulling her hand from her mother’s... and, most importantly, stopping her where she had fallen.

“Hanako!” the mother cried in terror, planting her feet to go back.

“Don’t stop, I have her!” Yoko ordered, and reached down to scoop the girl up into her arms, yanking her off the ground without breaking stride.

“Thank you!” the older woman gasped, and started running again. After a few strides she and Yoko were running side-by-side, with the graceless stomp-stomp-stomp hammer of the zombies close on their heels. If she’d pushed herself, Yoko could probably have outpaced her even carrying the daughter, but something inside her rebelled at the idea of escaping by leaving someone behind.

“This way!” a voice urged from ahead of them, and Yoko looked up from watching the ground in front of her feet to see a man in a police uniform waving them down a side street.

Yoko and Hanako’s mother traded glances and went as directed.

Fifty feet down the new street, they skidded to a halt in horror as a second force of undead began pouring out of the broken windows of the shattered shopfronts on either side of the road.

“All too easy,” the policeman said from behind them, and Yoko whirled to see him literally rip his face away from the weathered bone beneath. “Really, Sunchild, did you think you could hide forever?”

Yoko turned her head to give her comrade-in-terror a wordless ‘do you know what the hell he’s talking about?’ look, only to realize that she was receiving the same expression in return.

The skeleton-man laughed as the zombies rushed past him. “You didn’t know? How truly foolish the forces of Heaven are!”

“Not,” boomed out a clarion bass from overhead, “So foolish as to leave her unguarded in such times!”

“Yatagarasu!” the skeleton screamed as Yoko’s very own bird of ill omen swooped close overhead to settle to the ground in front of her.

“Wait, what?!” Yoko found herself blurting in shock.

“I bear many missives from Your holy mother,” the crow said to her, “But as things are we must begin with-”

“Kill them!” hissed the undead commander to his minions.

“-survival.” Yatagarasu’s beak fished... a compact? …out from beneath one wing. Despite the obstruction, his beautiful voice remained as clear and resonant as ever. “At the recitation of your name and lineage of the first order, this charm may loosen the restrictions placed upon your holy birthright by-CEASE, KNAVE!”

The crow interrupted his explanation to launch himself at the leading assaulting zombie, plunging all three clawed feet into its eyes and mouth with a thunderous shout.

Lineage of the first order... with certain death closing in quickly on all sides and no better options at hand, she accepted the... carved golden - no, it was a compact... and held it up, unconsciously striking a pose straight out of an anime.

“I am Satou Yoko, daughter of Satou Reiji and-” for a split second, the impossibility of the words made them catch in her throat. “Amaterasu-Omikami...”

When had it gotten so bright? She felt-

Light. Weightless, effortless, and alive.

Like she could run a marathon.

Like she’d just been freed from a boring classroom on a beautiful spring day and could dance for hours.

“...and I forbid you to harm anyone else!”

And then a zombie swung a sword at her head.

She shrieked and flinched and, instinctively, tried to ward it off with a thrown up arm.

It stopped the blade dead, in a flare of light and rush of heat, and a sound like an incoming jet engine. Splatters of molten steel splashed away from the searing shield, some of them falling on the bare skin of her arm and face.

It felt like hot water splattering out of a sink or shower.

“Put the peasants from your mind, My Lady! I shall ward them!” Yatagarasu called from outside her field of view.

Oh, lovely.

How dangerous were these zombies to her now, anyway? If her power could sear away even rusted steel like that, then it should have no trouble doing so to their rotten flesh...? Did it require conscious effort? How often and how consistently did it work? If it had just jumped out at her like that, then it should be fairly simple, though if ‘complete commitment’ or focus were needed, then...

She didn’t know. She couldn’t know. She’d have to take the chance.

The skeleton-man was the only one of her foes that had talked. If any of them had more impossibilities at its command, it would be that one, the boss, so, he had to go first. The question was, how? Could she throw this... sunfire?

It was worth a try.

Experimentally, she reached for that just-passed feeling, the stretch and exaltation, like a runner’s high... and shoved

Flames burst from the air in front of her, flaring out in a rough, broad cone like some trumpet-belled flower.

“What?” the skeleton taunted as his minions closed in again. “What was that supposed to be, ikebana?”

“Ikebana this,” Yoko muttered, and grabbed at what she’d concluded was her power again as she broke into a sprint. A simple burst of fire might be more visually impressive than practically, but-

A screaming sweep turned one intercepting group to ash, then she ducked around a second group and incinerated the third and last bunch between her and-

It felt like being doused in a city aquarium’s worth of ice water, a freezing shock so intense it was an actual pain, and an incredible physical impact that literally picked her up and tossed her bodily across the street and into a solid wall with such force that fragments of brick and a cloud of dust billowed away like a volcanic eruption.

It felt like landing back-first in a box of styrofoam packing peanuts.

“Pathetic!” the skeleton laughed, with something much like relief in his voice, as she pried herself out of the brickwork and shook off the surprise.

If she’d felt any temptation to let her newfound power let her stop being afraid, that surprise, the feel of that... whatever it was... was enough to quell it.

She didn’t ever want to feel like that... whatever it was... had felt like ever again. But she couldn’t hurt the boss without getting at him, and if she didn’t...

Yoko was out of her crater and charging again before she realized it, riding a wave of fury that she knewwas mostly panic. It felt like running across a field of warm mud in her bare feet, and everything on the street was so very bright that she could see the shield that had repulsed her before, like a dome of dark smoke that left the false policeman half-visible at its center.

This time she was braced for the impact, ready to push back against it, so it only knocked her back off balance. She staggered, then shouted incoherently at the gloating skull on the other side and leaned back and put her entire body into the hardest haymaker she could throw.

This time the flower of sunlight was already at its target, and the nauseatingly-shaded shield pulsed a solid black under the impact.

The skeleton, sorcerer, commander, whatever he was inside the shield recoiled a step at the impact, so she hit the shield again. Then again, and again, over and over, ignoring the stinging ache building in her fists.

By the third blow, there was a visible mark drawn on the pavement, a razor sharp separation between the protected asphalt within and the road surface outside, exposed to the waste heat of her assault. By the seventh blow, she could feel a peculiar rippling around her feet as the tar in the asphalt she was standing on started to boil. On the eighth, the storefront behind her target burst into flame.

On the eleventh, the uniform the undead leader was wearing did the same, and the twelfth - aided by the way that distracted him, perhaps, or simply the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back, shattered the resistance at last.

“No! My Lady, do not abandon your-” the skeleton-man cried in terror as she lunged forward, only to have his words cut off as one last swing and burst of flame ate away at his bones until there was nothing left but charred chips and ashes on the wind.
Panting, Yoko hauled herself to a stop and looked around. The street looked like a vision of some Western hell - boiled, blasted, desolate and desecrated. Aside from the still immaculate sanctuary where mother and child huddled under Yatagarasu’s protection, what wasn’t on fire was already charred to black ash and cinders - cars and storefronts alike swallowed by the conflagration and reduced to twisted wreckage that went perfectly with the molten, ruined puddle of sullenly burning tar that had swallowed most of the street.

As she looked around, she became abruptly conscious of the aches and scrapes and throbbing all down her back, and the numb, frozen pain, shot with spikes of cracked-bone agony, that had replaced her hands. She also, on looking down a moment later, realized that her clothes had burned away along with half the rest of the block, leaving her literally as naked as the day she was born, save for the golden compact which had somehow found its way to a jewelry chain around her neck.

“...dammit.”

==========================================================
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[Black Aeronaut]

I only skimmed through this. I gotta reread this better later on.

Holy shit. Magical girls based on Japanese myth and legend?

[Ebony]

I liked the idea when you were discussing it originally and I like the execution. Please continue.
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com

"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."

[Star Ranger4]

the chat reminds me more than a bit of, well, US (members of the legedaries channel), in CoX. Only with more typical teenager spelling
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

[Ebony]

the chat reminds me more than a bit of, well, US (members of the legedaries channel), in CoX. Only with more typical teenager spelling

Aside from DS, you mean.
  
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com

"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."

[Valles]

Fair warning: the following contains gore, bathing, and bathing in gore. Also, cluster F-bombs.

==========================================================

MAHOU SHOUJO SHINTO SCION
Episode Two:
"Lunacy"

==========================================================

Suzuki Tsukusa grinned triumphantly as the Twisted Inquisitor, the main boss of the raid she and her friends were on, went down at last. Its death meant that the run was almost over, and that she actually would have time to do the dishes and feed Mokumoku before turning in.

[Team-OOC]Moonspawn: Inq's ded, now 1 more wave b4 I go punch RL 1s again.
[Team-OOC]Sunsword: did htehy hit your neighborhood?
[Team-OOC]Moonspawn: No, would’ve told U2. Hypothetical HHOS.

If anybody from Her Prime Ministerness Tanaka to the Queen of Hell herself touched the squirts she’d fuck their shit up beyond all recognition. Zombies included.

[Team-OOC]Sunsword: ican stil lhardly belive these thigns are suppodsed to be real. Straight out of a mvoie...
[Team-OOC]Stormward: They are. My mother's been working all hours and worrying a lot, and she's scattered her work all over the place whenever she's been home.
[Team-OOC]Sunsword: yes but sombies?1

People bought stories about honest cops all the time, and that was even less likely. But everybody weighed things differently, Tsukusa figured.

Not that it mattered nearly as much as the way the fresh spawn of reinforcements was wading into their team.

[Team-OOC]Moonspawn: Less talk, more tank! Leave my pets alone you fucks!
[Team-OOC]Sunsword: there ,aggroded.
[Team-OOC]Stormward: Don't worry, we'll finish them quickly.
[Team-OOC]Moonspawn: LOL Sic em, boys! Fuck up their shit!

She triggered one of her slow-charging powers and giggled at the resulting carnage as her AI-controlled summoned ‘allies’ waded in, and from there it really was essentially over.

[Team-OOC]Sunsword: monsters or not wer’re still on for tomorros, right/
[Team-OOC]Moonspawn: Damn straight. I refuse to believe either of you is /that/ fucking pretty.
[Team-OOC]Stormward: Whatever your judgement on that score may prove to be, I am indeed that tall.

She didn’t actually doubt that her friends were both fairly good-looking; neither would ever have agreed to a face-to-face meeting if they’d been talking completely out their ass. But at the same time, a published model and the star attraction of a maid cafe?

On the internet?

If Stormward was the queen of her school, it was because she had more money than God. She’d never said so - the girl had more taste than that - but what she considered ‘basic’ and ‘treats’ was practically a signpost. Sunsword probably did get hit on every hour she was at work, but a maid cafe brought in a pre-primed audience; getting those pervs’ attention would be literally like shooting fish in a barrel.

[Team-OOC]Moonspawn: 5pm then?
[Team-OOC]Stormward: Presuming that the district isn’t evacuated, that should be manageable.
[Team-OOC]Sunsword: Styill works for me

A couple exchanges of joking around finished the night’s festivities, and Tsukusa shut her computer down and padded through the dimness of the apartment’s living room to its small kitchen. Finding this place had been a hell of a risk after Mom died, but the stability it had given the squirts was totally worth everything she’d done to keep it.

Smiling, she started the water and got to work.

* * * * *

“Heyo!” Tsukusa called as she strolled casually in the door of Keiichi’s Bar And Grill, old-fashioned physical doorbell jangling as she shouldered the heavy wooden portal aside like it was nothing but a screen door.

At this hour of this day of the week, the only other living soul in the place was Keiichi himself, kicked back with an ebook behind the bar. He came upright and smiled when he saw her - a little warily, though, as he should be.

“Hey, Kid,” he rumbled. Despite his advancing age and wirey build, and despite being of a height with her who was none too tall for a girl, Keiichi had the deepest and most resonant voice of any man Tsukusa had ever met. “You want your usual?”

“Depends what kinda business I got,” the girl answered, hopping onto one of the stools anyway.

“That brat Moto goin’ on about how I ain’t willin’ to pay my piece, I bet,” Keiichi guessed.

“Pretty much word for word,” Tsukusa agreed. In theory, someone who hadn’t joined the family shouldn’t’ve been collecting for the Yamaguchi-gumi - but then, theory said a lot of things, and practice could vary as long as it lined up with the reasons for the theory.

“How ‘bout the tab he’s been runnin’ with me, then? Happen he mentioned that when he was doin’ his reportin’?”

Tsukusa leaned both elbows on the bar and let herself give that extra-special shark-smile that’d once gotten a middle-school girl into the front lines of an illegal kickboxing ring. “Funny enough, nothing like that came up.”

Keiichi snorted. “Yeah, he and some buddies been comin’ by and runnin’ up a bill.” He shrugged. “I ain’t called ‘em on it ‘til now ‘cause I know who they work for, but my margins ain’t that wide.”

“So you counted it towards your share for the month,” the teenager finished.

“Yup. I’ve got the receipts.”

“I figure I’d better take a look at those, then,” Tsukusa allowed, and they went into the back to do that.

* * * * *

“Neechan, Neechan, Neechan!” Tsukusa’s little sisters cheered, swarming out of the crowd of elementary-school students to latch onto her legs and grin up at her cheerfully. Tsunoko had lost one of her incisors the previous week, so for the moment it was easy to tell the two of them apart.

“Hey, squirts,” she grinned back, reaching down to ruffle their hair in either hand. “Where’s your brother?”

“Niichan’s with his giiiiirlfriend!” Tsukiko sang against her big sister’s waistband, delighted to be the first to deliver the news she expected to embarrass him beyond words.

“Oh?” Tsukusa asked playfully, putting on her thickest movie-gangster impersonation. “In dat case I ‘tink’s mebe I should be meetin’ ‘dis bird.”

The twins giggled and let go of her legs to tug her along by both hands, eager to see their older brother in trouble. The younger girls’ excited chatter preceded the sisters and made Tsukishi look up from the book he and the female classmate next to him had been going over. “Oneechan!” he said, sounding somewhat alarmed, “you’re early!”

She dropped into a seat on the low concrete wall next to him and messed up his hair, too, just to get the usual indignant squawk. “Work was pretty simple today,” she said, “so I thought I should pick you lot up. Don’t think I’ve met your friend before, though.”

Tsukishi went red. “Oh,” he said. “Um... Oneechan, this is Takahashi Noriko, one of the other members of the Literature Club. Noriko-chan, this is my big sister Tsukusa.”

Noriko gave a seated bow whose jerky quickness just emphasized her sudden pallor and wide, frightened-mouse eyes. It made Tsukusa want to scoop her up and coo about how adorable she was, but besides completely ruining her own image, doing that would probably have just given the girl a heart attack out of sheer panic.

Instead, she gave her a conspiratorial smile and said, “You’re the one that makes sure he’s paying attention, then, right? I knew somebody had to be when I stopped getting calls about him sneaking novels into class. Thanks!”

Come to think of it, hadn’t she seen this kid before? Yeah, she had - Mister Takahashi that liked to make a show for his wife, that ran that garage next street over from the bus station, this was his daughter. No wonder she was terrified.

Still, her attempt to reassure the girl worked, at least partway. Noriko stared at her for a long moment, then smiled tentatively. “My seat is right behind his,” she said softly, “so I can poke him whenever he gets off task.”

“I owe you one, then,” Tsukusa told her. “I’d been trying to convince him, but there’s only so much a dropout can say, y’know? And a big sister just isn’t the same as a Mom.”

Realizing what she’d just said a split-second later made her want to blink just as much as the younger girl was. She hadn’t meant to be that open.

“You’re better than our mother was,” Tsukishi told her fiercely, before she could think on it further, and the twins piped up their agreements eagerly, one latching onto her outside arm and the other climbing onto her back to take a deathgrip around her neck.

“Gack!” she said, reaching up to pull the tiny arms away from her airways, and then the school’s Public Address system cut in and interrupted.

“Attention all students and staff,” the secretary said, sounding terrified. “For your safety, please proceed in a quick and orderly fashion to the assembly hall. Please remember to comply with all instructions from Self-Defense Force personnel, and take care to move in groups.”

“Zombie drill!” the twins cheered excitedly.

Tsukishi, old enough to recognize the difference between a ‘drill’ tone of voice and the real thing, and to know that a drill would have been scheduled during class hours, looked terrified. “Fucking shit,” he said, lapsing from his usual polite speech.

“Kishi-kun!” Noriko scolded him, “Language!”

Tsukusa, for her part, was in complete agreement. “On a fucking shit cracker,” she said.”C’mon, squirts. Move.”

For once, the uniformed policeman stationed to ‘command’ the military detachment at the school was far too busy to give her so much as a hairy eyeball, too glad of another apparent adult to help corral and calm the dozens of panicking youngsters.

The scene was surreal enough on its own - children huddled like a solid knot of disaster victims, surrounded by a protective ring of white-faced adults, all nervously watching the barred doors and blocked windows as the unfamiliar pop and chatter of gunfire, flavored with screams and shouted orders and warnings, went on outside - but the sudden appearance of a tiny pet rabbit with a samurai’s gauntlet strapped to the miniature harness it was wearing too the feeling of unreality to an entirely different level.

Especially given that, not only was the thing talking, like some magical girl’s merchandisable mascot, shouting “My Lady! My Lady!” in a piping little girl’s voice as it hopped its way down the bleachers, but she recognized it.

“Mokumoku-chan?” one of the twins asked from behind her.

“My Lady!” the rabbit yelped one last time as she skidded to a halt right in front of her. “Oh, praise your Father and all the other gods, I am in time!’

“What. The. Fuck.”

The rabbit flinched at the completely blank stare she was receiving. “Oh dear,” she fretted. “I’m making a mess of this, aren’t I. I must-”

A particularly final thumping noise interrupted her as something heavy hit the main entrance doors very hard.

Mokumoku shrugged the gauntlet off her back and shoved it towards Tsukusa’s feet with her nose, then drew herself up into a dignified standing posture and began to recite. “In the name of Your Holy Father, Tsukiyomi-no-Mikoto, I, who before being graced by My Lady with the name-”

A second loud bang caused something metallic in the entrance doors to give way with a thoroughly alarming ‘KRAK!’ The policeman, who’d been staring at the bizarre tableau just as intensely as anyone else, jolted awake and hurried to place himself between the civilians and the door, the last squad of soldiers taking their positions to either side of him.

“Short version,” Tsukusa told Mokumoku.

“Your Father ordered me to give you this and have you-EEP!” the rabbit started to say, cutting off with a squeak as Tsukusa swooped down to scoop her off the ground by her ears and dangle her painfully in front of the girl’s face.

“You work for my father. He told you to give me this,” Tsukusa said, and felt the twins tensing at her back at the rarely-heard and always-feared note of real fury in her voice.

“...Yes, My Lady,” Mokumoku whispered, in spite of her own discomfort, curling into a tiny knot of tension, the classic lapine ‘don’t notice me’ defense. Despite several months as the ‘family pet’ of the small Suzuki household, she’d never heard Tsukusa sound like that before.

“Right, then,” Tsukusa said, almost mildly, in spite of the six-inch range on a death glare considerably worse than any she’d ever produced on purpose. “I don’t have any fucking clue what the fuck this fucking crap is all about. But if you’re serious about this shit, then you can tell my fucking sperm donor, whoever the fuck he may be, that if he wants something from me other than a set of crushed balls and a broken fucking neck, the down payment starts at seventeen fucking years of child support and my mother back.”

Mokumoku’s voice quivered in terror, but she forced herself to reply anyway. “This will help you protect your brother and sisters.”

Tsukusa set her down immediately, and picked the gauntlet up as a third great impact blew both doors wide open. “What does it do?” she asked, strapping the thing on as a muscle-bound, mutated gorilla-thing lumbered through at the head of a shambling column of ghouls.

Family was more important than justice.

“It temporarily unseals your own power when you tell it your name and parentage,” Mokumoku told her quickly, hopping into Tsunoko’s arms.

Well, why not? She’d fight the same fight either way, and it wasn’t like flapping her jaw cost her anything. She held that hand up to look at the thing. “I’m Tsukusa,” she said to it, “And my parents were Atsuko and Tsukiyomi.”

The astonishing thing about the change, she thought once she realized what was happening, was the weight. It seemed to drain out of the world and into her. Or perhaps density was a better word - she felt no heavier, just somehow bigger. Like, even though she was no taller, and they no shorter, everyone around her had shrunk, leaving her the only adult on a kindergarten playground, standing there with the same reckless energy that she’d always gotten from a proper pre-fight warm up fizzing through her entire body.

The deformed monster at the zombies’ head bellowed through the tiny head almost buried in its mountainous shoulders and charged, bowling through the soldiers in a chorus of screams to the percussion of breaking bones.

‘Moon-child’. She guessed that that made it official. She charged to meet the thing. The further from the kids she could stop it...

It - he - saw her coming and roared again, raising two arms each larger than her entire body in a widely-telegraphed prelude to smashing her against the auditorium floor like a melon with all the power in his massively-humpbacked shoulders.

She skipped scornfully to one side, out of the way of the blow, and shattered the knee of the smaller of his twisted, withered legs with an almost casual kick. With its tendons and ligaments torn and the bones they were anchored to in about three times as many pieces as they should have been, the joint and the leg it was part of twisted out of place with a horrible wet ripping noise and dumped the mountain of half-rotten meat to the ground.

So she shattered its elbow, too, with another kick that dropped her entire weight onto the point of its elbow.

A human, so wounded, would have screamed, no matter how much adrenaline his system was carrying, but the monster didn’t make a sound.

A smaller, more human zombie lunged at her from one side, and automatically she caught its arm, broke it, and then slammed a quick punch into its face. Its entire skull folded around her armored fist like a loaf of bread - the faint crackling resistance of the crust and a gooey softness beneath.

How much stronger had she gotten?

Apparently these creatures had just as much need of their heads as a living human or most of their movie counterparts, because the one she’d just hit crumpled like the proverbial cut-string marionette. If its companions minded, they didn’t show it, charging forward in a clawing wave of talons, rotten fingernails, and clumsily-handled rusty melee weapons. The first one she disarmed and knocked down, splattering its head with a stamping foot as she took a single step forward and picked up the next to pitch into the middle of the rush.

It bowled half of them down and fouled the limbs of the rest, tumbling them down in a thrashing mass. With much of their threat nicely neutralized, she stepped close and started crushing heads and waving arms with judiciously applied steel-toed kicks, starting with the ones that seemed closest to working their way free of the mess.

“Watch out!”

At the soldier’s shout, and following storm of gunfire, she whipped around to see that the hulking brute that she’d hit first - and failed to finish, dammit - had dragged itself into reach while she was distracted.

Turning around to look was the wrong response. Even with the damage she’d already done to it, and even with the concentrated fire of the military squad pouring into it and ripping entire swathes of its body away, it still brought one scabbed club of bone and flesh masquerading as a fist down squarely onto her head.

If she’d just thrown herself out of the way, she’d probably have been able to dodge the blow, but as things were, she could barely see straight, her head was ringing like a cathedral bell, she felt like she wanted to throw up, and she suddenly had a fucking nasty headache.

Oh, and she had zombies crawling all over her face, stinking like a sewer and trying to tear her open with their bare hands. One of them wrapped itself around her neck, trying to claw her throat open, and she reached up and dug her fingers into its neck in the approved eye-gouging fashion.

Apparently she was now strong enough to rip open a dead man’s ribcage.

Since the zombie had been crawling on top of her, this dumped everything that had been inside said structure right out all over her, and did nothing to ease her efforts to not lose her lunch.

Between the growing struggle to hold down her nausea and the sheer confusion of the horde’s assault, she rather lost track of the details of the fight, distracted by the need to punch, kick, elbow and headbutt her way through the press until a delivery truck landed on her stomach and completely stunned the muscles that had been trying to reverse themselves.

She reached up and sank one hand’s fingers into a bullet hole near the giant arm’s elbow and let it pull her out of the pile of mostly-wrecked meat. With a quick pivot and a wet, sickening crack, she pressed her other hand into the beast’s forearm, forcing the joint into a position no natural limb should take. Even if its dead flesh felt no pain, it had enough sensation to realize that it very definitely wanted her gone.

The colossus flailed and hurled her away, shanks of stinking meat tearing away under her fingers. She should have slammed painfully into the ground, but the pain never came, despite her bouncing three times before she finally slid to a halt. With a grunt, she staggered back upright and threw herself onto its back.

In hindsight, launching herself at a monster that was easily two or three times her size was probably not the cleverest thing she’d ever done.

Moments after she landed, it rolled over on top of her and began to lift itself up slightly, then slammed itself right back down, using its massive weight to crush her repeatedly into the pavement. Despite feeling increasingly like she had been run over by the Shinkansen on a particularly busy day, Tsukusa realized, with some surprise, that she was still conscious.

And she could still move her legs.

Waiting for the beast to rise again, she dug her fingers in and scooted herself out from under it on her back like a mechanic sliding a creeper out from underneath a car, then doubled her legs up against her chest and mashed its almost-hidden head back into its chest cavity with a ferocious double kick.

And that, except for a couple of bursts of assault rifle fire and the irregular pop-beat-pop-beat-beat-pop of the white-faced cop going through the pile and putting single finishing rounds into the skull of any undead still twitching, was that.

Tsukusa pulled herself to her feet again and stood for a moment, ignoring the foul effluvium dripping from her shirt and shorts and hair and every inch of skin, ignoring the smoldering burn of her cuts and scrapes, the pinching of her gauntlet’s metal against the skin of her knee, even ignoring the ferocious ache pounding its way out from inside her skull, all in favor of just trying to catch her breath through the stunning stench and the horror of doing all of that to human bodies...

The thought tipped a desperate balance, and, quite shamelessly, she began to throw up.

* * * * *

Repeated scrubbing in the gym teachers’ shower and some donated clothes from the adults present had her decent and no longer stinking like roadkill within an hour, and she came out of the shower room rubbing her hair dry to find the cop from the assembly hall and a white-haired guy in a JSDF uniform with a lot of bling waiting for her.

The former offered her a cup. “Coffee?”

“Please,” she said, taking it and taking an immediate sip to wash the still lingering taste out of her mouth.

The three of them stood and stared at each other awkwardly for a long moment, and then she turned and dropped herself into one of the teachers’ lounge’s chairs with just enough grace to avoid spilling her new drink. “How are Tsukishi, Tsunoko, and Tsukiko?”

“Quite insistent on seeing you,” the soldier said, “and a little scared, but none of them are hurt.”

“I got no clue what the fuck is going on, just so ya know,” she said.

“Nobody does,” the cop put in, with an ironic twist to his tone that suggested this one had more of a sense of humor than she’d ever heard a pig admit to.

“Your... retainer, Mokumoku? Seems to have more of an idea than anyone did to date, if her story about Izanami can be believed.” Soldier shrugged. “But that wasn’t why I’ve come to speak to you.”

Tsukusa stared down into her coffeecup. “How many troops you got could’a kept breathin’ after gettin’ swarmed like that?” she asked.

“None,” Soldier said, smiling a little, like she’d surprised him pleasantly. “Which is why we need you.”

“I ain’t a patriot,” she told him, looking up with cold, basalt-grey eyes. “I’ve got bills to pay and mouths to feed.”

“And ain’t nothing in this world for free,” the old man said, finishing the quote and nearly making her drop her drink. “I’ve been authorized to offer up to one billion yen for your agreement to work with us for a minimum of three years, with an additional million each month. Yamada-kun-” he nodded to the cop, “-tells me that you’re still technically a minor, so there will need to be a trust fund arrangement, but under the circumstances, that shouldn’t present a difficulty.”

She looked at him for a long, quiet moment, then, conversationally, asked, “You’re offering a billion fucking yen to some random no-name fucking punk.”

Soldier gave her a thin smile. “And to both of the others like you that we’ve found.”

Tsukusa thought about it a few moments longer, but her answer was never in doubt. “For that kind of money, you’ve bought yourself a thug.”
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[ECSNorway]

This fiction is relevant to my interests. Please continue to post more.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[Niteflier]

So, Stormward. I'm not really up on Shinto deities, so I'm just going to guess the obvious: Raiden?

And really, of course the girls are hot. Only in the Greco/Roman mythology are the children of gods ever ugly. And then only sometimes.

[drakensis]

So you're into Hel are you?

But yes, this is interesting
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[Valles]

Chapter Four, sadly, is still 'in progress', so there'll probably be a wait for it.

==========================================================

MAHOU SHOUJO SHINTO SCION

Episode Three:
"Supercell"

==========================================================

Tanaka Izuna’s usual pose for computer use was tilted back in the comfortable office chair she’d brought from home, with one leg crossed over the other and kicking idly. Gaming, on the other hand, required what she thought of as ‘the typing pose’, leaning forward to put both hands in reach of the keyboard. Tonight’s event hadn’t given her much time to lean back.

[Team-OOC]Sunsword: ican stil lhardly belive these thigns are suppodsed to be real. Straight out of a mvoie...

Hm, a movie with the strong and striking champion cutting down the foul legions of the hungry dead, blazing a path to safety for the stunning love interest rescued from a destroyed cafe, locking the fallout shelter door behind them and smiling over into her companion’s adoring eyes...

[Team-OOC]Stormward: They are. My mother's been working all hours and worrying a lot, and she's scattered her work all over the place whenever she's been home.
[Team-OOC]Sunsword: yes but sombies?1
[Team-OOC]Moonspawn: Less talk, more tank! Leave my pets alone you fucks!
[Team-OOC]Sunsword: there ,aggroded.

Moonspawn was the excitable type, she’d found. At least when it came to her gaming, anyway. Fortunately, her own character had spells to increase another’s ability to deal damage to enemies, so turning Sunsword into an unstoppable killing machine and Moonspawn’s summons into useful support for the group was simplicity itself.

[Team-OOC]Stormward: Don't worry, we'll finish them quickly.
[Team-OOC]Moonspawn: LOL Sic em, boys! Fuck up their shit!
[Team-OOC]Sunsword: monsters or not wer’re still on for tomorros, right/
[Team-OOC]Moonspawn: Damn straight. I refuse to believe either of you is /that/ fucking pretty.

Involuntarily, Izuna’s eyes cut across to the magazine lying face-up on the corner of her desk, with her own blue-white eyes looking back at her from the cover, and an evil little chuckle - easily suppressed - lurked for a moment at the back of her throat.

It might be a bit bad of her, but she was totally looking forward to seeing the group’s resident tomboy get a major shock.

Especially since she’d be able to rub it in with an autograph.

[Team-OOC]Stormward: Whatever your judgement on that score may prove to be, I am indeed that tall.
[Team-OOC]Moonspawn: 5pm then?
[Team-OOC]Stormward: Presuming that the district isn’t evacuated, that should be manageable.
[Team-OOC]Sunsword: Styill works for me
[Team-OOC]Stormward: I’ll see you all there, then.
[Team-OOC]Moonspawn: TTYL
[Team-OOC]Sunsword: sleepp well.

* * * * *

For almost as long as Izuna could remember it had been one of her mother’s absolute rules that the two of them would eat at least one meal together every day. As her mother’s name ceased to be one spoken of as a minor novelty, as her career advanced into actual influence, some of the rules had changed - now it could be any meal rather than merely dinner, and they sometimes had guests - but even today her mother’s secretary had been given that ‘tradition’ as one of his guiding principles.

“I don’t even think that Yanagimoto disagrees about the necessity,” the older woman said, waving her chopsticks in an exasperated gesture she’d never have let any of her colleagues see. “He’s just taking his sweet time explaining what his price is because he figures it gives him more leverage. As though he needed it, with people dying in every incident!” A bite full of rice vanished into that famous icy glare.

If they’d been discussing anything other than the rash of supernatural terror attacks, Izuna probably would have teased her about ranting, but instead, since the particular problem was something she could see a way to do something about, she said, “His daughter is one of my kohai in the Student Government. I can try asking her, seeing if she knows or she’d be willing to pass a message?”

Granted that the two of them were three years apart in age and that Councilor Yanagimoto didn’t strike her as the sort to think to talk about his Important Work with his family, but it was worth a try.

Her mother thawed slightly as she thought about it, then nodded sharply. “If she doesn’t know, then yes, you can tell her to pass it on to her father that I’m asking.”

Izuna gave her a slight, seated bow, then rose to find herself being regarded sadly. “Yes... what?”

The fact that her mother hesitated a moment over replying took her mood from puzzlement to worry. Her mother - decisive and almost crushingly self-confident - never hesitated. “There are days,” the most important person in her life admitted, “when I regret what my career has meant to you, growing up. Like I’ve stolen your childhood somehow.”

Part of Izuna wanted to joke about how she really should have grown up by her last year of highschool anyway, or about how deathly dull most of her peers’ interests were, but this was a serious conversation. Something her mother was worried about had to be.

She set her chopsticks down. “There were a lot of times when I wished you were around more, or that I didn’t have to watch what I said and did everywhere anyone could see. But... I wouldn’t change any of it, wouldn’t have even then. Your work is, always was, actually important, and as I’ve grown up I’ve only become more sure that you’re genuinely better at it than anyone else I could think of. The fact that you were always willing to trust me not to screw that up meant, still means, so much...

“Please don’t worry about that, Mother.”

Her mother reached over and brushed her hair away from her face, cupping her cheek in her palm. “You’ve grown up so well,” she said softly.

That was really alarming. She laid her own hand over her mother’s. “I’m not going to die,” she told her firmly, “and neither are you.”

Her mother blinked at her, then laughed. “No, no,” she said,” Nothing like that. But once they think their man won’t get splashed by the blame for all of this, I’m going to need to start washing my neck.”

For the executioner’s blade to find a clean and respectable target.

Izuna scowled and started to open her mouth, but her mother kept going and interrupted. “And that’s the way it should be. People are dying when it’s my job to protect them.” She smiled and picked up her own chopsticks again. “You are also still forbidden to kill my political enemies in sword duels. Mother’s orders.”

* * * * *

“Holy shit,” Yanagimoto muttered, and Izuna relaxed out of her stretch with an amused smile as Yamanaka Eiko started laughing outright, for once stopping her constant flitting around the edges of the conversation to hold her stomach.

“I know!” Iwasaki Hanabi agreed with a fervent sympathy that was at least half meant to tease Izuna herself. “It’s disgusting! She’ll eat more than all three of us put together and put it all on those things!”

“An inhuman monster,” Eiko intoned with wavery solemnity, spoiled by her badly hidden laughter and habit of talking too fast. “Why, she ignores her diet nearly as much as you do, Miss Athlete.”

“Your envious calumnies are noted,” Izuna said wryly. “But-”

“You know why she agreed to this trip, Ei-chan?” Hanabi interrupted, patting the ruffle of whatever anime outfit she was wearing this time back into place.

“Miki’s, Bicchan,” Eiko said.

“Lingerie shop,” Hanabi explained. It had been her turn to pick the destination, so it was Akihibara rather than someplace good for that, but that didn’t make them wrong about her own reasons.

“They’re still growing, you see.”

“It really does make you sick.”

“With envy,” Yanagimoto cut into the back-and-forth patter with a tone dry enough to use in a martini.

“Well, duh.”

“Speak for yourself. I saw the bill the last time she did this.” Ei-chan held both of her hands up as thought to ward off the expense. Given her own slender - the unkind would and have said ‘rail thin’ - figure, she had cause for her horror.

“Also, backaches,” Yanagimoto said.

“No,” Bicchan said solemnly, and Izuna covered her own eyes with one hand.

“No?”

“Not that she’s ever admitted,” Ei-chan said. “And we’ve gotten her to relax enough to bitch about everything else that annoys her.” Like being too tall, something that Eiko, barely 150cm, had no time for.

“Mostly boys,” Bicchan said. She’d spent most of that discussion being comically smug about 160cm being just the right height.

Yanagimoto considered that. “That is disgusting.”

“Incredibly,” Ei-chan said, with an agreeing nod that set her ponytail bobbing.

“Horrifically,” Bicchan said.

“Remind me why we’re friends, again?” Izuna asked, to general laughter.

“Comedy value?” Bicchan offered, brushing her stylishly feathered bangs out of her eyes..

“Mutual dark secrets?” Ei-chan suggested.

“Oh, so that rumor is true, then?” Yanagimoto asked interestedly, if after a beat or two of pause.

“About the threesomes?” Bicchan said. “No, worse luck. She’s still in denial.”

“Or at least the closet,” Ei-chan chipped in.

“Um,” Yanagimoto said, finally nonplussed.

“They’re lying to you,” Izuna said. “Both of them have perfectly nice boyfriends.” She rolled her eyes. “And, of course, there are all too many people willing to make my business their own.”

“...I could note that that statement does not actually say that you’re also not interested in girls-” Yanagimoto observed.

Izuna said nothing.

“-but instead I think I’ll point out that I’ve heard nice things about that Karaoke spot on the corner.”

“Clever girl,” Ei-chan said to Bicchan as several of Izuna’s guard detail stepped into the business to speak to the receptionist.

“I vote we keep her,” Bicchan said to Ei-chan as the girl behind the counter flinched away from the looming dark-suited security types.

A few moments later, the guards came back with the all-clear, and they went inside with Izuna saying, “I’m fine with that, but I think it might cause problems with other people.”

Yanagimoto smiled at the receptionist as she came back from leading a guard to check on the room they’d be using, but when she turned back her tone was as serious and harsh as her choice of words. “If the first thing my father actually notices about my entire life is whose daughters I’m making friends with, he can go get stuffed.”

Eiko elbowed her taller friend in the ribs. “Hey, defiant! She’s just your type.”

Izuna took hold of her friend’s shoulder and physically propelled her into the room. “That’s not funny.”

Eiko stopped smiling and slid into one of the benches. “Sorry.”

“You and your mother are actually close, then?” Yanagimoto asked, sitting and leaning forward to examine the song list on the room’s console. Her voice was soft, and her eyes were hooded and sad.

“So!” Ei-chan cut in, “what kind of music do you like, Yanagimoto-kun?”

The four girls traded glances around among themselves, then burst out in giggles. Eventually, Hanabi was the first to recover. “Boy, Ei-chan!” she teased, “you sure know how to read the mood!”

“This is just a day out,” Eiko defended herself, “There’s no excuse for being that serious.”

“I need to keep my direct-access-to-Mother hat on for a moment longer, sorry,” Izuna said, “but after that we should be clear for the rest of the morning.”

Ei-chan and Bicchan traded a private glance of their own, then adopted identically comically serious poses, sitting bolt upright with their hands daintily on their pressed-together knees. Izuna threw a cushion at them, then turned to Yanagimoto.

The younger girl looked back at her. “you invited me because your mother has a message for my father.”

“That’s why I invited you,” Izuna agreed, but went on, “That’s not why I’ve enjoyed having you as part of our morning so far.”

The suspicious look kept up for a moment, then relaxed into a smile. “Then I’d say that Shi-chan is fine. What was the message?”

Izuna brushed her hair back and leaned forward. “Well... First a question of my own. Does your father really think that the police can cope with these zombie attacks on their own?”

Shi-chan blinked, an expression of dawning enlightenment racing across her features, followed by regret. “Sort of. He’s serious about it being a police-only function, but that’s because he’s angling to give the National Police a permanent upgrade.”

Izuna blinked in turn and leaned back thoughtfully. “...Okay... That makes a kind of sense... I’ll tell Mother, that that’s his goal. She was... unhappy... at what seemed like a ‘leverage’ tactic with lives at stake. But if it’s that... Well, I’ll tell her, and let her decide.”

She smiled a little. “All right, serious time is done.”

Shi-chan nodded also, and the other two relaxed with dual relieved sighs. “Okay, so,” Ei-chan said, turning to the group’s newest member. “Seriously, ‘Shi-chan’?”

‘Shi’ was the most common reading for the kanji for death.

“‘La petit morte’?” Bicchan quoted in what was barely recognizable as French. The others ignored her.

“It’s really Nadeshiko,” said girl explained, “And anyway I didn’t want to ruin the naming scheme.”

“Huh?” Ei-chan said.

“‘A’,” Nadeshiko said, pointing at Eiko’s own boyish chest.

“‘B’,” her indicating finger aimed at what modest beginnings Hanabi’s own ‘Akiba Style’ ensemble made good practice of.

“‘C’,” she tapped her own chest, calling attention to its unspectacular but unmistakable encumbrance.

“And...” she grinned, wickedly, and pointed at Izuna, who regarded the entire speech with a tolerantly raised eyebrow that fooled no one present. “‘E’.”

“I can neither confirm nor deny,” Izuna said, then let herself smirk.

Shi-chan’s face fell. “You’re disgusting,” she said, and Ei-chan and Bicchan burst out laughing.

* * * * *

Just before noon, Outa-san, the head of Izuna’s security detail, stepped into the door and interrupted the debate over whose turn it was next. “Miss, we need to go, now.”

She blinked, and stood. “All right,” she said, concerned. “What’s happened?”

“We have reports of the walking dead from all across Akihibara,” the guard said.

“Do we have room for three more?” she asked, turning to physically lift Nadeshiko and Hanabi to their feet, since they were too busy being startled to get up themselves.

“Of course,” Outa-san said. He’d been with her detail for more than long enough to predict the question - and the insistence that would have followed about getting her friends out as well if he’d answered otherwise. There was no percentage in courting the argument.

Usually, there would have been a relatively discreet car waiting in the street outside to scoop them up and rush them out of the area, possibly with a police car to clear its way through traffic. Certainly Outa-san had expected it to be there; he’d never have sworn that way if not.

Hanabi and Eiko were tense and serious, the latter pale and shaking slightly and the former sweating and shifting from foot to foot. Izuna recognized her own mood as the same singing calm that had overtaken her during the time that cult tried to kidnap her. She’d ended up sobbing all over her mother’s suit once it was over, but that hadn’t hit until well after she was safe. Nadeshiko, in contrast, seemed placid, almost doll-like in the face of danger, except for the faint hint of irritation at the inconvenience.

“Right,” Outa-san said after a few moments’ furious consultation with his earpiece, “This way.”

They hustled off through the streets of Akihibara, a knot of schoolgirls at the center of a ring of large, grim women and larger, grimmer men in sober black suits. For a while, most of their progress was owed to the way their direction matched the crowds’, and the way already alarmed people swirled out of the way of the guards’ air of purpose.

And then they turned a corner, and the press of the crowd and the roar of near-panic were gone, replaced by an eerie, echoing silence and a completely deserted street, strewn with bloodily slashed and dismembered corpses. The only sign that they hadn’t suddenly teleported across the city was the buzz and flicker and flash of the signs and shop displays glaring down from every floor of the eight-story towers looming over the narrow street. The only other sound was the grief-stricken sobbing of a woman not immediately visible.

Outa-san took one look at the situation and swore again. “All right,” he said, “back-”

“Watch out!” one of the other guards shouted, starting to draw his gun and pointing to direct his compatriots’ attention to the skeletal, ragged figure crouched behind a trash can.

It was the wrong thing to do. Not drawing the gun, but shouting the warning. The zombie looked up, weeping black blood from both dark, empty eye sockets, then - guided by the sound or by some other sense - leaped, covering the half-block to the sharp-eyed guard with a single bound and a banshee shriek of rage.

His name had been Ishida, Izuna recalled with a corner of her mind as she grabbed Eiko and Hanabi and all but physically threw them through the door of the nearest shop. Nadeshiko was already moving on her own, she didn’t need help - and then, as she’d been half-bracing herself for, Outa-san’s shoulder hit her in the ribs and knocked her staggering through the doorway herself.

“Oof,” the guard grunted under his breath, “how much do you weigh, bitch?”

“More than you!” she snapped back over her shoulder. Eiko had stumbled over a severed leg, distracted by the screaming as the monster-woman tore at the guards with superhuman strength and fingers that ended in kitchen knives; Izuna yanked her back on balance and dragged her behind her. Nadeshiko had the door to the small shop’s stock room open, and they poured through it, Nadeshiko, hanabi glancing over her shoulder, then Izuna, dragging Eiko, and finally Outa-san slammed the door behind them.

“Don’t lock it!” Eiko said from where she’d tumbled to the stockroom’s floor. “If the others need to get in...”

Hanabi had her eyes closed and was breathing deeply, visibly fighting down nausea. “They won’t,” she said.

Eiko went pale. “...Oh.”

“Outa-san,” izuna said, and held up her cell phone to show its ‘no signal’ warning, “Does your radio have reception?”

He blinked at her, then locked the door and raised a hand to his earpiece. After listening a moment, he pulled the discreet speaker plug out and tucked it over his collar. “Jamming and horror-movie threats,” he said.

“Charming,” Nadeshiko said.

There was a long, rasping scratch at the door. Everyone else in the room, even Outa-san, flinched. Izuna looked at the door thoughtfully. “Don’t bullets go through doors?” she asked.

“Yeah,” said a male voice from behind her. “But sorry to say that ain’t likely to slow a Servitor that strong down much.”

Hanabi squeaked loudly enough from the shock to provoke a fit of screeching and banging from the monster at the door, and Izuna whipped around with her hands raised in an automatic empty-hand stance even as Outa-san’s gone came up, tracking towards...

A snake - or something very like a snake, since it had just blinked at her when real snakes didn’t have eyelids - curled on top of one of the boxes of dolls piled along the wall next to her. “Yo,” he said. “You Izuna?”

She blinked, then, just like fear and grief, sat shock aside to deal with later, once things were safe and settled. “I am.”

“Sweet. Hang on a sec. Your daddy had something he wanted me to give you.”

And then he made a noise that she remembered hearing from a number of different cats over the years, usually right before a rug or coverlet gained a wet and hirsute new decoration.

“This is way, way too freaky,” Hanabi muttered as the gleaming damp endcap of a traditional scabbard emerged from the deity’s wide-gaping mouth.

And emerged, and emerged.

“I’m unpleasantly reminded of childbirth,” Nadeshiko noted.

The familiar back-and-forth sarcasm, joking, and wordplay helped calm Eiko’s nerves. “For a telephone pole, maybe.”

“It gives...” Hanabi swallowed a pulse of nausea and repeated, “It gives a new meaning to the idea of sword-swallowing.”

Eventually the ‘Serpent’ coughed out the last of the pommel and the blade began to tilt over and topple to the ground. Conditions by years of iaido and kenjutsu classes - and suddenly, Mother’s hints about studying those rather than sporting-only kendo techniques took on entirely different overtones - Izuna caught it before it could finish falling.

“What,” Eiko said, “the fuck.”

For a long, long moment, Izuna looked down at the creature coiled on top of the stock box. Eventually, she said, “I always thought Mother was joking, or at least being metaphorical.”

The serpent laughed like a dog, with his eyes and a gaping mouth and hanging tongue, showing thorny triangular shark-teeth white against the midnight blue and stormcloud gray of his scales. “Nope,” he said, and his tone confirmed the impression of amusement. “Straight from the armory of the storm-god himself.”

Outside the door there was a shuffle and a thump, then another long moment of silence, broken at last by the first of a series of wretched sobs.

“Ii-chan,” Nadeshiko said.

“Yes, Shi-chan?”

“Your father is Susano-o.”

“Apparently.”

“And you knew it.”

“For values of ‘knew’ not involving actual belief, yes,” Izuna said, amazed at how placid her voice remained. She’d known that she could be calm ‘under fire,’ but this ridiculous.

The... wyrm, maybe? …snickered. “These three are snarky, Boss,” the serpent-god said, working his jaw and throat uncomfortably. “You should keep ‘em.”

“Outa-san,” Izuna said, feeling the weight of the blade in her hands without taking her eyes off the tiny dragon coiled just under eye level, “how long do we have?”

“She seems to react to noise,” the bodyguard answered softly. “So I’d say as long as we’re quiet, long enough for rescue to come.”

“Very well,” she said, and carefully, began to draw the blade. It was tricky - the quarters were cramped, and for some reason her father had thought it was a good idea to give her a massive nodachi as long as she was tall, rather a more conventional blade.

And then she thought a little more about thirty centimeters from the hilt, and blinked. “An homage to the Worochi-no-Aramasa?” she asked, fighting to think through the frisson of awe. That famous blade had been in the ancient tsurugi style, straight and double-edged, rather than the single-edged and slightly curved modern form that the nodachi was extended from.

“Your dad had it reforged,” the serpent said, and she had to fight down the start of shock. She was holding the sword that had killed the dread dragon Orochi, executed the destructive god Kagutsuchi. It was real and it was in her hands.

She resheathed the blade even more gingerly than she had drawn it, finally feeling just as croggled as her friends looked. “I think,” she said shakily, “that you had better tell me everything.”

So he did.

The wyrm, it turned out, answered to the name of Kirara, and he was one of Susano-o’s trouble’biters’. “No arms,” he said wryly, “means I can’t shoot a gun. So I find trouble and bite it.”

Twenty years before, the lord of the gods, Izanagi, had ordered his three children and foremost lieutenants to proceed to earth and there sire or bear divine children who could serve as their heirs.

“Wait, don’t they already have kids?” Eiko interrupted.

“Like the Imperial Family?” Nadeshiko asked.

Not, as it turned out, within the last couple of centuries, and even then, most children of the divine would inherit only a small fraction of their parents’ power without the parent’s deliberate will. For the most part, Izanagi decreed that his subjects should not so exert themselves.

And then, abruptly, he had changed his position - then vanished just as the children began to come into their full adulthood, and as Izanami began her greatest campaign against the living in thousands of years.

“I don’t,” Izuna pointed out, “exactly have power over the clouds and rain.”

That was because, to hide her safely from Izanami and her family’s other enemies, her powers had been sealed away to only those levels that might be expected of any ‘ordinary’ one of her half-siblings. The tsuba of her new sword had been enchanted to loosen those locks, to unleash the power she had been born to wield from its suppressed state at the provision of the correct incantation.

Outside the door, the broken sobbing of the taloned zombie collapsed into a frightened whimper, making Kirara break off from his explanation of Heaven’s politics in the wake of Izanagi’s disappearance. There was an irregular thumping, hammering noise, like heels drumming on the ground, and a harsh rattling hiss of gradually released breath.

Then there was a tremendous impact against the door as the monster outside drove gore-flecked talons through the chipboard and began working them back and forth to try and tear it asunder.

Outa-san stepped in front of the portal, raised his pistol, and unloaded the weapon’s entire magazine through the door. The talons twitched as each bullet smashed through, then, when the barrage of fire paused, began working and shredding just as though completely unbothered. “Kirara-sama,” the bodyguard asked over his shoulder as he reloaded, “with that power, can she get away from this?”

“Maybe,” the wyrm said. “But one way or the other, she could certainly beat it.”

Outa-san didn’t like that idea in the slightest. No bodyguard would. But he was also a professional, and thus obligated to take what the available expert indicated as the best chance available. “Do it,” he told her, and asked Kirara, “What can you do to help?”

“Not much. The dead don’t mind poison.”

Izuna looked down at the cloud-and-lightning-bolt design of the legendary blade’s tsuba for a moment, then took a deep breath and drew herself up very straight. “I,” she said formally, “am Izuna, daughter of the Tanaka clan, sired by Susano-o no Mikoto out of Himari of the same line. Let this be known as a truth acknowledged by all parties.”

It felt, she decided once the intensity had receded enough to think again, like getting hit by lightning in the middle of an orgasm.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything like enough time to savor the sensation. There was a rending crash as the zombie witch smashed her face into the door’s splintering center. Firing one-handed, Outa-san emptied his second magazine into her head from close enough that all of them could smell her rotten flesh starting to cook under the muzzle flash.

Having her face and head reduced to a reeking black pulp didn’t stop the monster, nor dim the menacing green light that now filled her empty eye sockets. Izuna stepped around Outa-san while he was reloading and kicked the struggling zombie in what was left of her face.

The light fixture exploded. So did the door. The zombie went flying in a cloud of shattered wooden fragments, covered in crackling wisps of St. Elmo’s Fire. More of the auroral display lined its way across every surface of the shop and street, crackling and sparking off of antennae and counter displays.

She chased after it, not at a run but in a single leap over the bodies of people, friends, she’d known and trusted for years, drawing the long awkward blade and bringing it around to -

- miss badly after the monster threw itself down the street.

She followed.

It was the most bizarre game of tag she’d ever played, skipping through and over entire blocks full of suddenly dark storefronts full of blanked-out screens, ignoring sticky pools of drying blood splattering away from her shoes in favor of the dictates of survival. She would swing and it would dodge, it would pounce and she would duck... It was frustrating, and despite the ongoing evacuation they were having more and more near-misses with still-living civilians who hadn’t been able to flee quickly enough.

What would Sasaki-sensei say?

Tactics.

She needed a way to either damage the creature from a distance, catch up to it, or force it to come to her.

A storm goddess should have lightning, but she had no idea how to call it and no time to figure the trick out. She already knew that she couldn’t cover ground as quickly...

But if she took the pressure off, it tried to attack her.

She stopped dead in the middle of the street, next to the fallen body of a young teen, still staring sightlessly at the sky. Took a deep breath. Cleared her mind. And raised her father’s sword into the high guard, nearly vertical with the tsuba almost level with her eyes.

And, while she waited, the zombie glared at her with luminous eyes - then charged.

Instinct, and years of practice, told her the moment, and to focus everything in her being into the strike.

The report from the lightning strike that coursed through the blade in the moment of the cut shattered every window she could see - and reduced the monster to a smoking bisected husk.

Very carefully, she let out her breath and slid Worochi-no-Aramasa back into its sheath.

==========================================================
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[Black Aeronaut]

..... Your signature is oddly fitting here.

[ECSNorway]

Oooh yeah. Definitely having fun with this one, altho the bit about "will the others make it to the van" seems a little unclear. Who made it and who got left behind?
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[Ebony]

Nice Left 4 Dead reference there, V.
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com

"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."

[K sai]

Ok, before I say anything else - this is awesome.  So awesome, that I saved the page and converted it for my kindle - so I could read it on the way into work when I ran out of time yesterday morning.

Next - questions. I'm not seriously into Japanese or magichick culture so some of this stuff that may be obvious to others may have passed me by. So apologies in advance if the requests for clarifications are stupid. Going backwards through the episodes for stuff that confused me:

Ep3

Outside the door there was a shuffle and a thump, then another long moment of silence, broken at last by the first of a series of wretched sobs.

Um, so if I'm reading that right, the ZOMBIE overheard what the characters were discussing  and got scared? So, the zombies here have capacity for rational thought and emotion? 

 rather a more conventional blade.

And then she thought a little more about thirty centimeters from the hilt, and blinked

This part seems to be missing bits? 'Rather than a more conventional' And I don't quite get the 'thought a bit more about 30cm from the hilt'. Was it meant to be something about drawing the blade out a little way to check it? Or is it a Japanese culture reference I've missed?

Ep2

If I'm reading it right, WHO her father IS, is not seeming to really register for Tsukusa?

Ep1

“At the recitation of your name and lineage of the first order

How does that translate into 'Oh - my mother who I know nothing about is the Goddess of the sun'? 
Earlier in the ep it was made clear that Yoko knew nothing about who her mother is aside from the stuff she got from occasional fatherly comments. Reiji's comments about the mother render down into 'Your mother had a Sunny personality' - which btw was a completely awesome foreshadowing. Maybe she extrapolated it from the boss zombie's comments - but it seems a stretch at least to me. Or am I missing a Japanese culture reference again?

Basically, the difference between the Crow's statement versus the Rabbit in Ep2 stating it for the record and the Snake's long explanation is kinda jarring for me. 

Whole story:

• Their choice of MMPORG handles seem to indicate that although only Izuna 'knows' about their parentage, all of them are aware of it on sub-concious level?
•  I really like that the superpowers have realistic effects on the world around them - major damage, nausea, outfit destruction etc.  It makes the whole scenario seems much more grounded somehow.
• Using lineage recitations, makes a million times more sense to me than cutesy magic phrases. That's a Win!
• Where are the other countries in all of this? Are they having their own issues? Does this mean we will see Scions of other Pantheons eventually?

Very, good, please continue!

K

[Valles]

Um, so if I'm reading that right, the ZOMBIE overheard what the characters were discussing  and got scared? So, the zombies here have capacity for rational thought and emotion? 

Sort of. Some forms of undead do - recall the skeleton that Yoko fought - but this particular one is animalistic. It just doesn't like loud noises, and started trying to get through the door to rip them apart until they quieted down again and it forgot.

This part seems to be missing bits? 'Rather than a more conventional' And I don't quite get the 'thought a bit more about 30cm from the hilt'. Was it meant to be something about drawing the blade out a little way to check it? Or is it a Japanese culture reference I've missed?

Sort of both. Properly, the passage should read:

And then she thought a little more about the deliberate notch thirty centimeters from the hilt, and blinked. “An homage to the Worochi-no-Aramasa?” she asked, fighting to think through the frisson of awe. That famous blade had been in the ancient tsurugi style, straight and double-edged, rather than the single-edged and slightly curved modern form that the nodachi was extended from.

In the myth about how Susano-o first acquired the Kusanagi, he's using Totsuka-no-Tsurugi to chop up the corpse of the monster Orochi, and finds Kusanagi buried in one of its tails the hard way, chipping Totsuka-no-Tsurugi. So that 'notch' was kept when the sword was reforged.

How does that translate into 'Oh - my mother who I know nothing about is the Goddess of the sun'? 
Earlier in the ep it was made clear that Yoko knew nothing about who her mother is aside from the stuff she got from occasional fatherly comments. Reiji's comments about the mother render down into 'Your mother had a Sunny personality' - which btw was a completely awesome foreshadowing. Maybe she extrapolated it from the boss zombie's comments - but it seems a stretch at least to me. Or am I missing a Japanese culture reference again?

Yatagarasu are crow-gods with three eyes and three legs, and are specifically known to be the chosen messengers and servants of the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu. Since this one has explicitly said he works for her mother, I don't think that there's a very big logical leap involved.

Their choice of MMPORG handles seem to indicate that although only Izuna 'knows' about their parentage, all of them are aware of it on sub-concious level?

And/or Fate is fucking with them.

Where are the other countries in all of this? Are they having their own issues? Does this mean we will see Scions of other Pantheons eventually?

They do have their own problems, which are fought by magical girls from their own national mythologies - for instance, King Arthur has reincarnated as a petite blonde teenager in Britain - but at this stage, their struggles aren't intended to be plot relevant and so will appear only in cameos and passing mentions.
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[Valles]

Oooh yeah. Definitely having fun with this one, altho the bit about "will the others make it to the van" seems a little unclear. Who made it and who got left behind?

To start with, there was Outa, the chief bodyguard, an indeterminate number of other 'Secret Service' types, and then Izuna and the girls.

Other than Outa, the guards died buying the girls enough time to get away from the Witch.
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[ECSNorway]

They do have their own problems, which are fought by magical girls from their own national mythologies - for instance, King Arthur has reincarnated as a petite blonde teenager in Britain - but at this stage, their struggles aren't intended to be plot relevant and so will appear only in cameos and passing mentions.

Would Arthuria's current Boon Companions include a redheaded mechanic and a brunette tsundere?
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[Black Aeronaut]

Man, you can do all kinds of things with a setup like that.  And best of all you can use it to represent all kinds of cultures.
Like in Mexico, they have La Santa Muerte, the Lady Messenger of Death.  As Messengers of Death goes, she certainly one of the more positive ones (think Belldandy in such a role)... but I don't think she'd be very pleased at all with someone using her dead on her turf to further their own goals.  No, not happy at all. 

[Valles]

Would Arthuria's current Boon Companions include a redheaded mechanic and a brunette tsundere?

Could be! And, if I were to speculate, I would suspect that the latter's name is Gwen and the former's either Lance or Lacy. The blonde's name is actually Ursula, which she regrets keenly.

Although for copyright reasons, the canon would still need to pass even more lightly over events in Britain than elsewhere in the world.

I do note that, for reasons which will remain mysterious in-character but are probably obvious to the 'viewers' of the 'show', the proportion of magical 'boys' is somewhere around 5-10%, and that, although magic isn't exactly something that touches most people's lives, the setting has never had a masquerade.

And yes, it'd be an excellent setting to do either multiple 'shows' in or a long series of RPG 'expansion books', and I encourage anyone interested to give it a shot.
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[ECSNorway]

Publicity Shot from said 'show'.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[Sirrocco]

1: This is kind of awesome.2: I too like the realism factor.  I *also* like the realism factor of having the government instantly coopt the magical girls so that they can focus on saving the world instead of making rent.
2a: The fact that the police are taking the talking rabbit in stride and have accepted him as a credible source is also kind of cool.
3: I actually initially read the bit about the sun transformation as a semi-telepathy thing associated with the transformation brooch.  Girl takes item in hand, girl willingly attempts to state her own heritage, girl states her own heritage as it is rather than merely as she knows it, girl has WTF moment, but puts it to one side so as to focus on the situation at hand.

...and now I have this image of, say, Tsukusa taking a moment to step outside one night and give her father a bit of a talking-to.  Speaking of which, I really like Tsukasa as a character.

Incidentally, given that you have so much other realism in the story... why did the Gods wait to empower their children until right before life-and-death battle?  Why not give them a bit of time to practice first, and possibly get used to the idea?  I'm not saying that this is a bad thing - I like how it makes the story flow and the scenes produced and all that - I'm just sayign that the Gods ought to have some reason that they found sufficiently compelling.  Izuna in particular has had a number of people she knew and liked die in front of her because she was not adequately prepared when the threat first raised its head.  If her father can't give her a *real* good justification....

Assuming that the messengers are going to be handing around and doing the Magical Girl Companion Animal schtick, I'm interested to know what they can do.  The crow obviously ahs some sort of shielding power... what else dot hey have?

[Valles]

1: This is kind of awesome.2: I too like the realism factor.  I *also* like the realism factor of having the government instantly coopt the magical girls so that they can focus on saving the world instead of making rent.
2a: The fact that the police are taking the talking rabbit in stride and have accepted him as a credible source is also kind of cool.
3: I actually initially read the bit about the sun transformation as a semi-telepathy thing associated with the transformation brooch.  Girl takes item in hand, girl willingly attempts to state her own heritage, girl states her own heritage as it is rather than merely as she knows it, girl has WTF moment, but puts it to one side so as to focus on the situation at hand.

...and now I have this image of, say, Tsukusa taking a moment to step outside one night and give her father a bit of a talking-to.  Speaking of which, I really like Tsukasa as a character.

Incidentally, given that you have so much other realism in the story... why did the Gods wait to empower their children until right before life-and-death battle?  Why not give them a bit of time to practice first, and possibly get used to the idea?  I'm not saying that this is a bad thing - I like how it makes the story flow and the scenes produced and all that - I'm just sayign that the Gods ought to have some reason that they found sufficiently compelling.  Izuna in particular has had a number of people she knew and liked die in front of her because she was not adequately prepared when the threat first raised its head.  If her father can't give her a *real* good justification....

Assuming that the messengers are going to be handing around and doing the Magical Girl Companion Animal schtick, I'm interested to know what they can do.  The crow obviously ahs some sort of shielding power... what else dot hey have?

I hadn't thought of that explanation for the thing with the compact, but consider it worthy of No Prize.

When Tsukusa meets her father, we may safely expect there to be violence.


As a first-order reason for the Parents waiting until this stage, I'll say that they, themselves, were under orders in the matter. Izanagi's reasons are, in character, unclear, and will be discussed, although even he didn't expect Izanami to move so fast or so agressively.

I actually wouldn't've thought of that aspect of Izuna's feelings and reactions through on my own; thank you for pointing it out. In Susano-o's defense, he didn't know that Himari's life had reached the point where her daughter would have constant companions ready to lay down their lives.

As to the associated kami... Yatagarasu was able to create the shield because he's a fairly potent sorcerer in his own right; he's the yatagarasu, Amaterasu's primary retainer from the days of Jimmu Tenno - at this stage, he's easily the most powerful member of the cast. Kirara is much younger, and qualified for his 'job' on the basis of his ability to think on his belly-scales (no feet), his skill at getting where other people don't necessarily want him, and the fact that he can swallow a sword whole and cough it up again with no ill effects. Mokumoku was unlucky enough to be too slow to dodge when Tsukiyomi decided to grab whichever retainer was handy and stick them with the job of delivering Tsukusa's 'key'. On the upside, she makes really good mochi.
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[Niteflier]

It doesn't seem like Tsukiyomi has been thinking things through very well. He abandons his daughter without any support so she (from what I can tell) has to grow up a yakuza runner, doesn't have a pre-prepared messenger to *get* his daughter's key to her, and in a panic, just grabs the nearest available messenger without thought to any abilities or *why* all his other ones bolted.

[Black Aeronaut]

EDIT: Ach, nevermind.  Valles already answered the question.  :p
EDIT2:
Some more fun thoughts...  Shintoism is basically animism (the belief that all things have spirits and they should be respected).  This extends to all things.  Including modern technology.  In some places, outdated hardware has been given proper funerals!  So now, I am wondering... What is the likelihood we could see the scion of some techno-kami? 
I doubt it would happen, but it's a fun thought anyhow.  The powersets alone are intriguing.  Sound-based attacks...  Ability to emit EM Radiation in any frequency...  Magnetism (oh, hai Magneto!)... Any other ideas?

[robkelk]

EDIT2:
Some more fun thoughts...  Shintoism is basically animism (the belief that all things have spirits and they should be respected).  This extends to all things.  Including modern technology.  In some places, outdated hardware has been given proper funerals!  So now, I am wondering... What is the likelihood we could see the scion of some techno-kami? 

I think that Skuld's still too young to have children...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012