The front doors slid open as if they weren't there at all. The Doppelganger clone stepped across the threshold like a homeowner returning from errands—head cocked, red-white kimono swaying, bare feet silent on the wood.
Sota was on his feet before anyone else, recognizing the cut and color of that kimono like a flare in a night field. "Why the hell are you here?" His voice cracked, and his eyes were already beginning to pale, power pricking at the edges.
Chairs scraped. Tea cups rattled. Everyone faced the intruder.
"My, my. Everybody is so jumpy." The clone smiled with the careless delight of a child who's stolen a candy jar. "I came for only one person. And that is her…" A lacquered nail pointed, and Ellie flinched like the air had stung her. She slid behind Jay's leg, bunching his hoodie in both hands.
The shrine's overhead fixtures—simple paper lanterns—burned a little brighter, or maybe it was the way fear wired everyone's senses. Either way, the light cut sharp across the clone's throat, making the symbol visible for all to see: an eye with a vertical line spearing it.
"It's a Chosen One," Sensei said, cane already lifting a hair from the floor. "But how did you get past the protection seal?"
The clone laughed—an unlovely sound, bright and hollow. "That pathetic basic protection seal? One scratch and that seal was already broken."
Chiaki's jaw flexed. "That's not possible unless—"
"What do you want with her?" Jay interjected, easing Ellie further behind him, his forearms tingling with that prickly, wrong heat he had learned to fear and to use.
"Our Goddess is annoyed," the clone sang, like a gossip relishing the tale, "because one of our members can't do his job until he gets his precious trophy. So, I'm here to claim her back."
"She's not an object," Chiaki snapped, heat finally breaking through her discipline. "And what makes you think we'll just hand her over?"
"It wasn't a suggestion," the clone said, smile thinning. "It was a command."
"Like hell we will," Aiko's voice cut in, and she was suddenly there behind the clone, air winking where she'd been a heartbeat before. Her heel scythed toward the back of the demon's skull—but her kick met a forearm, not flesh. Another clone rose out of the original's shadow like spilled ink given bones.
Two more shapes unpeeled from the dim corners of the room, identical faces, identical dresses, identical marks under identical chins.
"Since you all won't be giving her easily," said the first clone, cheer flattened into annoyance, "I guess I'll have to take her by force."
They moved at once.
Jay surged forward, demon heat spitting claws down his arms. Chiaki's spear leapt from her palm in a silver blink. Together they took the clone head-on, Jay's demonic forearm colliding with hers in a screech of force, Chiaki's spear stabbing for ribs. The clone bent around the thrust like paper in the wind, slid past Jay's swipe, and raked nails across the floor, carving splinters. Jay blocked a heel to his temple with a horned forearm and drove a counterpunch; the clone folded, spun, and flicked a palm for Ellie—Jay intercepted, claws sparking against her wrist. "Eyes on me," he growled, and she laughed, feral and delighted.
Across the hall, Detective Reid had already pivoted, sights lined up. "Police!" he barked out of habit no one here needed, and squeezed off two shots at the second clone. The demon blurred; one bullet shattered a hanging frame, the other pinged off the far post. Reid stepped to hold a safer angle, re-acquired, and fired again.
Sensei met the third clone with a deceptively soft lift of his cane. Wood kissed wrist: a shock. The cane's hidden blade flashed out with a whisper. The clone's smile faltered for the first time. "Old man," she cooed, "don't break a hip."
"Worry about your neck," Sensei said, and moved with an economy that made everything Aiko did look flamboyant by comparison: angles, lines, no wasted motion, each step skimming—but somehow everywhere the blade needed to be to meet her.
Sota and Aiko paired on the fourth clone. Aiko vanished, reappeared, feinted left, vanished again. Sota's eyes glazed white, the world slow-rolled into a five-second preview. "Right elbow in three—duck!" he barked, and Aiko dropped just before a strike whistled above her hair. "Sweep left in two—now!" She hooked the clone's ankle a beat ahead of time, catching where the weight would be, not where it was.
Furniture exploded into splinters. A table flipped, slid, smashed against the far wall. Paper doors shredded. The plaster groaned, then gave, a hole opening in the side like a gnawed-through rind. That wasn't the worst of it: the ceiling above them sighed in dust and fractured beams, then roared down in a thunder of timber and grit.
A new wind blew through the ragged opening above their heads. Three figures stood on the roofline, looking down into the splintered hall as if peering into a stage.
"Sorry to crash the party," Mamushi drawled, snake-smile curving. "But it looks like the party's already ruined."
Jack's eyes didn't sweep the chaos. They fastened at once on Ellie, and something like bliss, like relief, like hunger slid across his face. "I finally found you, my love," he called down, voice tremulous and eerie. "Come. We can finally be together."
"NO!" Ellie screamed. "Go away!" Her fingers clamped Jay's hoodie as if she might fall into the floor without it.
Jack's face spasmed, the sweetness imploding into rage. "How dare you touch her," he snarled, voice pitching into something needle-thin and murderous. "Get your filthy hands off her."
"She's not coming with you," Jay said. He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to.
Jack's smile returned, razor-thin. "She will be mine." His sleeves twitched and two surgical knives slithered into his hands, gleaming like icicles. "And you're going to die."
He leapt.
Mamushi and Doppelganger dropped with him—three streaks of red and black and white tearing the air.
The hall became war.
Jack hit the floor running, blades already singing, carving precise lines for Jay's throat and heart. Jay shoved the demon within to his limbs: claws elongated, skin armored in scales of shadow, bones dense as anvils. He brought a forearm up and Jack's blade shrieked against it; Jack slid inside the block anyway, second knife darting for the ribs. Jay twisted, barely. The blade grazed his hoodie—fabric parted, skin did not.
"You decided to betray me, Mimic," Jack hissed, pivoting, knives flashing in a staccato rhythm that wanted to write a message in flesh. "Protecting the one I ordered you to bring."
Mimic's voice crawled up Jay's throat, distorted, apologetic, the old servile habit hard to kill. "Sorry, boss. This host—he has his hold of me in his heart. But I'll find a way to be free."
Jack's laugh was brittle as glass. "Don't give me excuses. You're a pathetic lower demon with a party trick. You need to take over a human heart to get stronger—but you can't even do that properly."
"I'm sorry, boss," Mimic said again, and Jay felt the shame like a sour aftertaste he wanted to spit out.
"So now I have to carve your ugly face," Jack said almost tenderly. "Just to take back what's mine."
Chiaki's spear harpooned into his line then—Jack had to break off a killing lunge toward Jay to parry the blade that had become a chain that became twin knives in a blink. Chiaki moved like a thought: her spear wasn't a weapon, it was a decision—one that kept changing. A hook snagged Jack's wrist; an instant later, the staff extended and cracked like lightning at his temple. He ducked. Aiko flashed in behind him, heel driving for the back of his skull. Jack crossed both knives, caught her ankle, twisted. She teleported mid-fall, reappeared above him, stomped; he rolled, and Jay's claws scythed the space his neck had been. He laughed.
Across the room, Mamushi's body elongated, scales rippling into existence with a dry shiver. Her lower half uncoiled into a massive tail; her hair fell into a black waterfall; her eyes slit with red light. Snakes popped out of the floorboards, writhing ropes with fanged mouths that hissed at the gun smoke.
Detective Reid fired through the first pair before they fully formed; heads burst, bodies twitching. "Sota!" he shouted.
"Left—now!" Sota called, white eyes seeing five seconds forward. Reid pivoted half a heartbeat before a snake launched; his shot caught it mid-leap. "High strike incoming—duck!" Reid dropped, a tail slicing the air where his head had been. He rolled, came up on a knee, emptied two rounds into Mamushi's exposed flank. The bullets thudded, flattening under scales—she snarled and opened her mouth wider than a human head, four fangs glistening.
She spat. Not venom—snakes. A cloud of tiny vipers exploded toward him like hail. Sota grabbed Reid's shoulder and yanked him back before the cloud hit. "Window!" Sota snapped, already turning; Reid dove sideways, firing blindly to break up the swarm, then smashed an elbow into the frame to drop a paper screen as a flimsy barrier.
Mamushi laughed, sinuous and savage. "Little men with little toys."
Sota's eyes flicked. "Tail sweep—jump!" Reid leapt as the tail erased a low table. He landed awkwardly, ankle screaming, and shot again. One bullet found the soft meat just below her jaw; she recoiled with a hiss.
On the far side, Sensei fought like a calligrapher writing with steel. Doppelganger didn't need to be clever. She was many. One clone pressed the front, another went for his right flank, a third slipped behind, and the original sat back, smiling, chewing a bit of hair as though bored.
Sensei let his blade carry his weight, let the clones tell him where they wanted him to go by trying to deny it. He took one by the wrist and guided her into the path of another's kick; bones cracked. He stabbed the floor where no one stood, then turned his blade on its spine just in time to meet the foot of a clone that had just decided to be there. "You're old," one clone taunted. "Bones stop remembering."
"Muscles remember what minds forget," he said, and swept low. Two clones jumped; the third didn't. It screamed, and then didn't—the body peeled into smoke and snapped out of being.
"Ugh, I hate that," the original sighed. "Do you know how annoying it is to remake a good face?"
Chiaki and Jack crashed through a pillar, a shiver running through the roof. Aiko blinked across the beam, grabbed Ellie's wrist, and pulled her toward Jay. "Stay with her," she told Jay without looking, then disappeared again, reappearing behind Jack to smack the back of his head with both palms. He stumbled, more angry than hurt.
"Why are you so fixated on Ellie?" Chiaki asked through clenched teeth, buying seconds as she forced him to turn and turn again, her spear shedding and reclaiming shapes. "Why her?"
"I'm glad you asked," Jack replied with a big smile. "Back when cars were running on steam and modern day fashion wear were suits and hats. Where I had fun with young prostitutes before I ended their lives by slitting their throats. Boy did I enjoy that life. Until I bump into you, Ellie. The way she smiled at my whole body tingled. And her sweet soft voice when she said, 'hi'. Made my blood race in true excitement of wanting to know how her body tastes inside and outside."
Jay, Chiaki, and Aiko couldn't help but feel disgusted. This person was really a sicko.
"I had been finding ways to get you alone," Jack continued. "But your parents were always with you. Making it so frustrating. So, one day I followed you to your house. Knocked on your door. Poor dad opened the door, so I killed him first. Mom told you to run, so I killed her too. You were running away from. You tripped. Banged your head against a rock before you fell into a river. Could you believe I cried for you dying on me before I could. Thank god, I became a demon. I could live longer to find you. You left me once but this time I'll do anything to have you with me."
"You're sick," Chiaki said, and sliced at his throat. He slipped an inch back; the blade kissed air.