The lights grew dimmer the farther they walked, the neon glow fading behind cracked screen monitors and shattered prize cases. Old dust floated in the air like oxygen. They began to climb up a flight of stairs rising to the second floor.
The screaming seemed to have stopped.
Daiki's hands nervously curled into fists.
"Are there people here, or what?"
Jimmu didn't respond. He was staring upward, squinting at the ceiling as if he were reading a text.
"Are you seriously zoning out again?" Daiki whispered, slightly annoyed.
"Hm... I'm calculating," Jimmu murmured.
A second passed.
"....Actually, I lied. I was thinking about eating crispy noodles."
Daiki groaned. "Focus up, man."
Before Jimmu could defend himself, a faint noise froze them both.
A muffled sob.
A child's.
Daiki's breath slowed. He turned his head sharply and pointed.
"Over there."
They followed the sound around a toppled claw machine. Beyond it, the arcade opened into a wide VR arena, with two staircases opposite each other leading down. There were glassy floors, cracked headsets dangling from wires, and projector lights flickering like stars in the sky.
In the center of the room stood a young boy, not a day over eight years old. He stood motionless, his eyes wide but almost stuck in place at the same time.
Daiki's heart began to pound like crazy.
"A kid...? What's a kid doing in-"
Jimmu's arm shot out, stopping him from moving forward.
"Look closer."
Daiki did.
The boy's limbs were twitching.
Something thin and pale wrapped around his wrists and ankles...
Strings.
Not real strings.
Wisps of white Reiki acting like puppeteer wires, extending into the vast darkness above.
Daiki's blood ran cold.
"...Jimmu."
"Yes," Jimmu said calmly. "He's getting controlled by something, like a puppet."
A quiet but animalistic clicking echoed from the ceiling.
Daiki slowly lifted his eyes.
High above, clinging to the rafters like a grotesque insect, was a hunched Yurei with elongated fingers that split into threads of white Reiki. Its jaw hung low from the rest of its mouth, eyes empty and doll-like.
Every small tap of its fingers made the strings tighten around the child.
Daiki's fists clenched even tighter, his nails digging into his palms.
"How are we going to free him?"
Jimmu's eyes narrowed. "By killing his captor."
As if recognising it had been discovered, the Marionette twisted its head too far to the side, and its string lashed violently.
The boy jerked forward with a strangled gasp.
Daiki stepped immediately. "We need to save him!"
"Stop," Jimmu said sharply. "If you rush in, it'll snap every bone in his body."
Daiki froze.
The Marionette dropped from the rafters, landing quietly on three limbs, one arm extended upward like a puppeteer. Its fingers twitched.
The boy's neck began to slowly tilt.
Daiki could watch no longer. Everything in him was telling him to move forward.
Or more accurately, "Surge" was telling him to move forward.
He barked, "HEY! Let him go!"
The Yurei's head twisted toward Daiki, threads tightening around the boy's neck.
Jimmu moved quickly.
Reacting to both of their movements, the Yurei snapped its fingers.
The boy's body jerked as the threads yanked tight and lifted him into the sky, and then he got launched downward like a meteor.
Daiki lunged immediately.
He didn't think. He just moved.
At inhuman speed, he flew forward and over the railing and into the arena, and caught the boy mid-air before he slammed into the ground. The threads attached to him sliced his shoulder like hot wire, but he gritted his teeth and pulled the child into his arms before sliding across the ground.
"I got you," Daiki whispered. "You're okay. You're okay."
The Yurei shrieked, its puppet lines flaring.
Jimmu's voice cut through:
"Daiki. Duck."
Daiki didn't ask why. He knew how Jimmu worked. He dropped immediately and shielded the boy with his body.
FWIP!!
A sharp arc of Reiki sliced above his head, severing the strings attached to the boy's body cleanly. The Yurei recoiled violently and released an ear-piercing scream from its mouth.
"Jimmu, don't hit him!"
"I won't," Jimmu said flatly. "You're too loud for me to miss."
Daiki stammered, "That's NOT a compliment!"
The Marionette tensed its limbs. Strings replacing the old ones erupted from its fingers, threading into several corners of the arena as if it were going to puppeteer the entire room.
Daiki's eyes widened.
"What the hell?!"
"Mm." Jimmu lowered his stance. "Don't blink."
He raised two fingers.
Reiki spiralled into the air.
The Yurei launched its strings at Jimmu like knives.
Jimmu didn't flinch.
He redirected every thread with tiny but solid barriers of Reiki, guiding each one as if he were conducting an orchestra.
The Yurei screeched with visible annoyance.
Daiki gently sat the boy down, whispering for him to stay low, then charged.
"HEY! Asshole!"
The Yurei whipped toward him.
Daiki leapt forward, enormous amounts of Reiki already bursting through his body like a wild forest fire due to Surge. He cocked his fist back and slammed a flying punch into the Yurei's jaw.
BAM!!
It landed with enough force to disconnect it from the rest of its mouth and split Daiki's knuckles open.
The creature spun from contact, and Jimmu appeared behind the Yurei's head as if he had teleported somehow.
He was standing on a barrier in the air like a stair step and began to raise his hand in one lazy motion.
"Move."
Daiki landed on the ground and rolled out of the way.
Jimmu's hand pressed lightly against the back of the Yurei's head.
His Reiki began to erupt from his body, a pulse flashing outward from his hand, releasing a blast of raw Reiki that erased a large portion of the Yurei's body and the ground that Daiki was previously standing on.
The Marionette unravelled into collapsing threads, dissolving into smoke that vanished into the air.
The only thing that was left was silence and. a large crater.
Daiki panted. "Holy shit... we did it."
Jimmu stared blankly at the dissolving dust.
"...Annoying creature."
Daiki shot him a look. "You said the same thing last time."
"It keeps being true."
Daiki let out a small, breathless laugh.
Then:
The kid suddenly tugged at Daiki's sleeve.
Daiki turned and crouched. "You okay?"
The boy's eyes were wide, but he wasn't crying. He looked more stunned and terrified than anything.
"You're... you're not with them, right? The... the monsters?"
Daiki shook his head. "Nope. Uhh... we're the good guys! What's your name?"
"Ranta," the kid whispered.
Jimmu knelt beside them, scanning the area. "We shouldn't stay here. Did you come here with anyone else?"
Ranta hesitated at Jimmu's question. His small fingers twisted into Daiki's sleeve.
"No," he whispered. "I... I came here alone."
Daiki frowned. "Alone? Why would you do that?"
But Ranta just shook his head, eyes wide with the lingering terror of almost dying. He didn't seem ready to explain, or maybe didn't fully understand how he ended up in the Marionette's grip.
And better yet, he had seen both Daiki and Jimmu use their Ketsugojin.
That would be hard to explain to a kid.
Jimmu rose to his full height, brushing dust from his knees. "We're moving. This place is old and structurally unstable."
Daiki blinked at him. "Structurally? Do you even know what that means?"
Jimmu tilted his head. "...I do. That's why it felt like the right word."
Daiki frowned. "I guess."
Still holding Ranta's hand, Daiki stood and looked around the ruined arcade. Multiple cracks zigzagged across the ruined arcade and ceiling from the force of Jimmu's blast. The scattered lights on the floor still flickered from shattered projectors.
"Yeah," Daiki muttered, "let's get out of here. This place gives me the creeps."
Ranta nodded, gripping Daiki tighter.
Jimmu walked ahead, hands in his pockets, gaze wandering toward the broken neon signs instead of watching where he was going.
Daiki hissed like a mother, "Hey! Eyes forward! How can you zone out after what we just went through?"
Jimmu hummed. "Mm. I'm just thinking."
"...About what?"
"Whether I should get crispy noodles after this."
Daiki nearly tripped from a mix of shock and annoyance. "You REALLY need to get your priorities straight."
Jimmu nodded thoughtfully. "Are you not hungry?"
That made Daiki think.
"I... Okay. You know what? I am pretty hungry."
Jimmu didn't respond.
Because he was already staring up at a dangling prize sign, completely lost in thought.
Daiki groaned louder than he ever had before. "Oh my god."
Luckily, the banter made Ranta a bit calmer, as he quietly snickered at the bickering.
Jimmu eventually snapped back to reality, glancing over his shoulder. "Let's go. The ambient Reiki's shifting."
Daiki tensed. "More Yurei?"
"Maybe," Jimmu said. "Or I'm just really hungry."
Daiki dragged a hand down his face. "I'm... I'm just going to believe the second one."
Ranta let out another small, shaky breath that sounded like a laugh.
Daiki looked down and smiled at him. "Don't worry, little man. We'll get you somewhere safe."
Jimmu stopped at the doorway, looking back at them with his usual blank, half-bored expression.
"Come on," he said simply. "Let's get him to his parents."
Daiki made sure Ranta was still holding onto him and followed.
As they stepped out of the dark and ruined arcade and back into the faint light of the city, Daiki could finally relax.
Their troubles had ended, for now.
And the kid was safe.
That was enough.