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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/SteelTrim on 2025-12-10 07:19:37+00:00.
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It wasn't hard to hear the frantic whisper-shouts emerging from the buildings as lights started flickering on through the windows. The first actual human they saw, though, was a single man who poked his head out the door, all bleary-eyed and half-asleep, only to see the two of them before shrieking and hustling back inside, followed by the sound of him tripping over something and hitting the ground. John wasn't sure what he said after that, but he was sure it was rather colourful and unsuitable for polite company.
He was also unsure whether that man was wearing pants.
"We'll give them three more minutes, then I will start going in and throwing them out into the rain myself," muttered Yuki.
John snorted, shaking his head as he checked his magic supplies. Seems like he was getting a bit low on air aspected mana. Oh, on some level, he was still terrified, and he was damn sure that they were going to pour out of the doors in hordes and then he would have to flee, but he couldn't because they'd be behind him, and then he and Yuki would have to—
Still, seeing one of the men who had driven him to the fringes so long ago terrified and half-awake had demystified them. They're probably not monsters, just assholes, even if he'd prefer never to see any of them again. Strangely, what most people would call 'monsters' seemed to make better company.
Hmm.
Wasn't that a thought? Yuki and Yosuke were both oddities by the standards of the world at large, and they were both good to hang around with, in their own ways. Rin… well, she was less of an outsider, given she was almost certainly part of a noble house, and he had a fair bit more he had to hide from her, as Yuki so kindly reminded him.
"Isn't that a bit harsh? They might not have time to get dressed and will get sick from the cold," John said, listening carefully as frantic shouting started echoing through the strange man's building, several other voices slowly rousing.
Yuki chuckled lowly, her golden gaze landing on him, although she didn't turn her head. "Perhaps some will. They hurt you, John. Do you truly care about them so much that you can't bear for them to experience any discomfort? Look around you. They're well off and will not perish due to it."
John broke first, looking forward once more. "I don't know, it just seems wrong," he admitted. "Perhaps I'm getting soft."
Yuki didn't respond, letting the silence sit between them, although it was not an uncomfortable silence by any means. "I know this gauntlet is weaker, but can you do any more lightning bolts?" she finally asked, after a minute or two more of waiting.
John checked the gauges to confirm before nodding. It wasn't as if these were anywhere near as big as what he levelled against the Nameless, or that Unbound, so they were passably power efficient.
"Would you mind?" she asked, pointing to the sky again.
John shrugged, pointing to the sky. It was nice that his warding mostly dampened the noise and light; otherwise, he'd have long since gone deaf. Thankfully, it was quite a bit dimmer than a full-power one, too, so he didn't need to close his eyes to not stun himself, even with the warding dimming it.
BOOM!
"Time's up!" Yuki shouted, the palpable menace in the air intensifying until it was like a thick blanket lying over everything. "Get out here now before I come in and get all of you!"
"How do we know we'll have all the priests?" John asked. "We don't know how many there are. Surely some could just stay bunkered down and do something?"
Yuki only smiled, and John instantly caught on to her plan. Clever. They certainly protected the buildings with more classical Ofuda, but if they weren't much of a threat to Yuki, there was no reason she couldn't use the excuse to stomp around looking for hints.
Besides, an angry yokai stomping around without hurting anyone was certainly scary, but probably wouldn't be sufficient to justify the deployment of those Unbound lurking on the fringes. Still, something bugged him, almost like a splinter digging into his finger.
Why did she need justification to deploy? She must have been worried about him or others escaping and trying to take her down with them, but the Nameless cordon seemed damn effective with how efficiently they choked supplies from the region. This plan seemed to have an overabundance of caution woven into it, even to his paranoid mind.
By the time he got anywhere of note, she could have easily snagged important figures and used her magic to make them spew any story she wanted, creating retroactive justification. Did the technique have limitations he was unaware of?
A steady stream of men began to emerge from six of the buildings like a leaky pipe after a few drunkenly stumbled forth, most still half-asleep with their clothing improperly put on, if they were even dressed. Thankfully, they seemed to actually use sleeping garments around these parts, doing his eyes a great mercy as he didn't want to see… ten, no, twenty men of various builds nude today.
It was hard to tell if he had seen any of them before. Most of the times that he had run into them, John was not paying the most attention to what they looked like so much as just frantically fleeing from impending pain.
Iron arrows stuck in his leg. The shafts were broken, but the heads lodged deep inside. He just had to reach down and pull—
The fingers on his gauntlet twitched as his arm fought to rise, but he stopped it, and he fiddled with his warding necklace with his other spare hand, making sure that it was well in place and working with a few hard taps against his chest.
The brief flicker of shielding as it protected both his hand and his ribs was enough to ease some of the knot in his chest. Still, he shuffled over to a building and leaned against it, immediately feeling far more comfortable without his back exposed.
It was good they weren't in their priestly vestments. John wasn't sure what he'd do with himself if they were.
"Is this everyone? Who is the head priest?" Yuki asked, eyes scanning over the huddled mass of humanity. They stood tall, but they were close to each other. Too close, like sheep in the face of a predator. John scanned his light over the crowd, the bright flashlight illuminating the men more clearly through the gloom.
Each shook like leaves in the wind as the light passed over them. Was it from the cold or fear of the kitsune? No. John certainly looked like a vengeful ghost, searching them for whoever wronged him, but he had no plans to take revenge. It wasn't useful and provided no utility, even if there weren't Unbound nearby waiting for a reason to roll in.
The mass of humanity stayed cluttered, even as Yuki's piercing gaze looked over them closely, carefully, like a farmer deciding which of their stock was next to the slaughter. "I will have my answers. Is the head priest among you?"
A chorus of half-whispered answers and shaking heads answered her, and the kitsune snarled viciously.
"Fine. I'll find him myself," Yuki growled out, and the already chill air felt like it dropped a degree before she angrily stomped off toward one of the buildings that the men had come out of. Of the buildings that housed men, John had seen that two of them held five, then two had three, and the last two had only two people apiece, although he was unsure if this was due to some hiding or if higher rank afforded more personal space.
Yuki stomped up to the first one and threw the door open before continuing inside, her tails lashing behind her like whips. Of course, she could almost certainly hear the heartbeats and breathing if there was someone inside. The priests, however, didn't know that, and it gave her ample cause to root around for anything that felt out of place. Perhaps she'd be lucky and find one of the Ofuda, like what they used around the city. Maybe she'd find something else useful.
This, of course, left John alone with the priests. His whole body tensed as he got ready to fight, thoughts of oozing wounds and terrifying chases through the brush flooding his mind.
His hand twitched, fighting to come up once more, but he forced it back home, hand gripping his leg hard enough to draw blood. He could deal with this. He knew he could.
The men flinched as he panned his light over them again, but it was only for a moment before John checked his angles to make sure nobody was sneaking up on him. He needed something. Just marinating in this silence was going to murder him… or get somebody else hurt, even if it wasn't somebody he cared much for. Why was his body screaming for him to fight?
John felt sick. There had to be some way out of this fugue. Fidgeting, he scanned the crowd once more before locking onto a face.
"Wait. I know you. You, in the middle with the top knot, come forward, please." The words tumbled out of John before he thought them through, making him wince.
The man flinched, and the surrounding crowd backed away from him like he was bearing a terrible plague. "Me… Sir Unbound?" the man hesitantly asked, stepping forward. He was fairly middling in height, perhaps five feet seven inches, but had a portly build that you more often saw on short and wide people, like s...
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