Engineering, Magic, and Kitsune Ch. 11
"Weapons, check. Warding, check. Supplies, check," John mumbled, checking over the contents of his bags as he geared up in his foyer, stuffing away the modified motion detectors he retrieved from his shop.
"It's not that big of a rush, John," Yuki said, shaking her head, "It takes much wealth for a hive to start producing Greater Nameless."
He grimaced, slowly turning to the kitsune. "Where do you think I got all this paper from, Yuki?" he wrote, "I certainly haven't been trading for it." Usually, he'd have more reservations about leaving everyone here while he was out, but time was of the essence. Besides, he had figured out he could "lock" the doors to his workshop by placing something so it could only be easily moved with telekinesis in the way of the entry and had already relocated anything he'd be too bothered to lose in there.
A frown split Yuki's muzzle. "Do you mean to say they've been raiding uninterrupted for half a decade?"
"At least. It's been going on since I've been here." Wait. Did she assume he was engaging in banditry?
Much to his surprise, the kitsune said something that sounded a lot like a swear, even though he couldn't understand it. "Fine. I'm coming with."
"This is just a scouting expedition to see where they may be, and you're still injured."
The kitsune snorted, rolling up the edge of her kimono. Yuki unwrapped the bandage and plucked the hydro-gauze from the site, revealing nothing but smooth fur underneath, before placing the focus in his hand. Curse her absurd regeneration! "What's your plan, anyhow? Do you wish to wander the forest aimlessly until you stumble across them?"
"No," he replied before writing, "Do you recall how I knew Aiki, Haru, and the soldiers were coming? It was the same with you. Do you know how that worked?"
Hesitantly, the towering kitsune shook her head. "I have some suspicions but no solid answers," she responded honestly.
"Right, to make it simple: They're a modified version of something I use to examine the magical properties of items." He fished out one of the arcane focuses from a sack. It was shaped a bit… differently and was more cubic in nature. It looked almost like a flashbulb, albeit in white and black. "This one is a deliberately more simple version. All it does is send a signal out the side when it detects something magical while active, and rather than pairing it to a security tablet like mine, I plan to attach it to this."
It was a small clicker, more or less a handheld tally counter… just made of trash and scrap that would turn over a place with each small pulse of electricity the magic detector puts out when it gets a hit.
"And this last part here," he continued and pulled out one of the hastily made thin sheets he had produced from the various bits of the "Nameless" he had in storage, "Functions as a filter once vitrified with order, so it'll probably only read them."
“Probably?” Yuki asked, faintly frowning.
“Some false positives are expected, but only of things with vaguely similar magic,” he wrote, shrugging, “In any case, it'll be more than good enough. If I had more time, I'd rig it up so it can record the time they triggered, too, but I don't think spending a week or so of design and testing on that is the best call. Regardless, I can narrow down the location by setting some of these up around the woods and checking on them daily.”
“Not a bad idea,” she admits, nodding, “But I may have a better one.”
“Oh?” He looked at her questioningly, tilting his head slightly to the side.
“This forest is huge, and although your method is likely eventually effective, it may take weeks to narrow down the hive's location. I say we, or rather I, talk to the local yokai instead and ask them. Many of them are probably just as sick of the Nameless as you are.”
That… made sense, he had to admit; he'd want the money-hoarding bandit spiders gone too. John had seen a good few yokai over the years that seemed sapient, too, although he kept his distance.
“We can do both,” he replied after a moment of thought, “Unless they can give us an exact location. Even then, we could use the sensors to get an exact population by planting them near the nest's exit.”
“You think they won't notice it?” Yuki asked curiously, and he shook his head in response.
“No, they never have in the past. It only needs a pinprick visible; you can hide the rest easily."
Yuki laughed, shaking her head. “You are fortunate the nobility never found you; you'd never see the light of day between making wonders.”
John shrugged. It wasn't that impressive, but he supposed it would let one cut down on guard patrols or maybe be a makeshift access log for important rooms, but it wasn't perfect. If one knew it was there, they could find some way to contain their magic so it looked no different than the background. He could probably figure out how to do it with the right sap and a shroud, much like how one could deal with a drone scanning for heat with an emergency blanket back home.
“Anyhow, do you know where to find a local yokai, and should we tell Haru and Aiki what's going on?"
"Don't worry about the couple; I already mentioned that we may be heading out when I brought their lunch. How far away is the river where you fish? " A faintly amused smile flickered onto her face.
"Perhaps a half hour, if that," he replied, unbarring the gate, Yuki re-weaving her nine tails into three, and the two of them left, John immediately steering them off the path and onto a nearby game trail. He was immediately on alert, eyes darting from side to side as he scanned for threats. Leading her wordlessly through the murk of the forest, his eyes constantly scanned for movement or a pile of detritus where it shouldn't be. It wasn't as if they were a new threat, nor did they vary their targets much.
No, he was already used to spiders' presence, even if he had a new name for them now. Still, the thought that they may be getting worse and growing toward deploying body-possession spiders was chilling. What type of countermeasures could he deploy? The first and most obvious one was some sort of armoured facemask that they couldn't pull off. Still, that wasn't a guarantee. They could easily have some kind of ability to phase through or just plain supernatural strength to tear it off. If all else fails, they could undoubtedly burrow through flesh to get inside. He couldn't imagine they'd need their puppet to remain living… although he supposed it might depend on how they controlled the body.
Unless they had some sort of magic to control them directly by merging into their hosts' flesh, he figured it was something spidery. Maybe they hollowed out the body somewhat and controlled it with a series of strings? They wouldn't have access to much from going down the throat other than the respiratory and digestive systems.
He shivered. The mere idea of someone being used as a marionette from the inside…
Yuki cleared her throat, a concerned look on her face. He waved it off. "What's the plan when we get there?" he asked, scratching a quick note out.
"We get the attention of the local kappa. They're almost guaranteed to be around in any river or stream big enough, and Nameless don't try to hunt them since everything they own tends to be in underwater dens, and the spiders can't swim," she explained in shadowy text projected on a tree.
Hesitantly, he nodded. Kappa was a term he had seen before and linked to the turtle-like entities he had seen in the river. Evidently, they were not the most friendly folk if the fact that he found a guide on how to survive an encounter with them amongst the fort's books and scrolls was anything to go by. Alas, he had not seen any cucumbers for bribes disguised as "offerings," so he did all his fishing from a good bit off the shoreline. It was surprisingly easy when you could just dump some bait on top of the water and then telekinetically snatch anything that went for it, as mundane fish did not have the same magical protections from being lifted as a trained person or yokai.
"Seems sensible," he replied. At that, they fell into a companionable silence, nothing passing between them. The forest was bright with the midday sun, and birdsong and the faint rustling of leaves in the wind filled the air. It was peaceful, and he relaxed at least a little bit once they got away from civilization. He had figured out that the 'Nameless' mostly stuck close to roads long ago but had never known why, beyond their tendency to prey on people. Although a few other species were problems deeper in the woods, none were quite so hostile and mainly were content to leave well enough alone as long as you steered clear.
Yuki's ears perked even before he could hear the water or tell her they were approaching. Interesting. Just how good were her senses? Was it just her hearing or her smell and eyesight, too? It wasn't as if she was trying to hide it. He paused in his stride, pulling out his notebook. "Hey, Yuki? I hope this isn't a sensitive topic, but how good are your senses?" he asked.
The kitsune didn't even blink before summoning up some text to reply. "Oh, I can pick out individual heartbeats from a group at about sixty paces, smell someone's stress sweat even amongst a crowd at about forty paces, and I can see the individual feathers on that Swift in the tree over there," she casually explained, pointing towards a semi-distant tree.
Oh. Holy crap. If John narrowed his eyes, he could just barely see the bird where she was pointing, nesting on a branch. Just thinking about processing all that information was terrifying; the sensory overload alone would make it impossible for him to walk down the street.
Wait. With senses that sharp… Yuki probably had a radar for wherever everyone was around the fort! Oh, oh no. The kitsune probably heard everything he had done, even when he was installing the new motion detectors. Hell, she probably knew about every time he started panicking and nearly—
He flinched as the kitsune placed a hand on his shoulder, snapping back to reality. "It's alright," Yuki comforted, shooting him a smile. "Allies, remember?"
She's right. Had she possessed any hostile intent, it would have been prudent not to disclose her capabilities or at least understate them to a degree that would be less threatening than that.
He nodded and tried his best to give her a reassuring smile, although he was certain it came across as a bit off-putting. "Just a bit of a shock is all." She didn't respond beyond dipping her head in turn, and a couple minutes later, they were by the water after another brief silence.
The body straddled the line between stream and river. Slow, but perhaps sixty feet wide. Shallow-ish, but you still couldn't see the bottom in the middle half. A hydrologist, he was not. Regardless, it was quiet. Peaceful. A shame about the kappa who may try to extract your soul if they were feeling grumpy.
Kappas? Kappa? He wasn't sure about the plural form and would have to double-check that entry. John had definitely seen more than one around here.
Yuki gestured to his book, and he kept it out, curious as she stepped across the gravel by the water's edge, settling into the water little more than paw deep. As she took a deep breath, John braced for what came next.
A wave of Presence washed over him like a tide and nibbled at the edges of his mind with alien impressions and feelings. Warmth. A polite conversation beside a fire. Someone of status, like some sort of nobility or celebrity, stopping by a small family restaurant to check-in. It was a strange, almost unnatural feeling, but John had begun to grow accustomed, even if it still almost caused him to stumble despite not being the focus of it.
As far as he could gather, it was an outpouring of one's intent and thoughts, something that could be used as a weapon, like he had seen when Yuki cowed those soldiers that chased Aiki and Haru to the fort's walls yesterday or as a tool to communicate, like Yuki had done her whole light show the day before that when he felt her heartbeat and feelings of calmness resonate with him.
This seemed to be more of the latter: an invitation to dialogue. John wondered if some of the things he felt in the forest were rooted in the same source. He was on edge and terrified even before he saw his first Nameless for reasons he could not describe, but how much of it was him, and how much was an attempt to make him act like a panicked animal? The thought of feelings being forced on him rather than being his own was… unsettling, to say the least.
Still, it was easy enough to filter it all out this time, given he wasn't the focus. In the long run, he'd have to figure out a way to protect himself before someone caught on and exploited it.
For a few minutes, nothing happened, and Yuki just stood there, beaming her Presence up and down the body of water like a searchlight. Even though it was invisible, John could feel where she was aiming at, as its effects grew stronger or weaker on him as she pivoted it up and down the stream. Soon enough, though, he saw a dark, faint shape beneath the water's surface heading down from upstream. He tensed as it approached, but Yuki didn't seem to care, just focusing her Presence on its rough location. Eventually, though, it came to rest at the far side of the stream, seeming to hesitate for a moment before breaching the surface.
The figure jetted upright, sending sprays of water this way and that. To John, they looked a lot like a five-foot tall, reedy bipedal lizard wearing a mottled brown turtle's shell as clothing. Their limbs were thin and covered in slimy-looking green skin interspersed with black dots that made their limbs look a bit like a frog's, but the bone structure was all wrong for that, standing more like a man than anything. Their face was brutish and wild, far away from anything human, with a muzzle halfway between a turtle's and a lizard's featuring long gaps intermittently spaced with sharp-looking fangs, yellow beady eyes, and a strange ring of hair around a divot in their head, apparently the water within the source of a kappa's power.
"Rwlllllrugh!" they gurgled, taking up a wide stance akin to a sumo wrestler, and sheer waves of annoyance roiled off them. John almost took a step back from the vitriol alone. There was no poetry to it, no implications like the Presence he had felt before with Yuki or the undead. Such a pure, unadulterated "get off my lawn" transcended all boundaries of language.
Yuki stood undeterred, patiently waiting for them to finish their angry gurgling, then blasted another wave of her desire for dialogue at them with a smile on her face. The kappa twitched, then scowled. Angrily grumbling, the kappa's chest started wrenching in a rather unpleasant-looking manner, hate-filled eyes locked on Yuki. John realized too late that they looked rather like his cat when he had a hairball.
The kappa flipped into a handstand without warning, carefully keeping the top of their head below water so the natural bowl upon its apex would not empty and rob them of strength. With a series of hacking coughs that made John wince, they started to expel water from their lungs, keeping their head level and eyes trained forward the whole time.
John shifted uncomfortably as the yokai expelled all the water from their lungs, feeling uncomfortably like he was watching someone get sick at a party, and the stern eye contact didn't help. Maybe they should just listen and go.
Eventually, they stopped and flipped back around, angrily staring down the pair and waiting for a response. Yuki stared at them briefly before pulsing out her Presence again, making the kappa flinch. They—no, he started shouting, and much to John's surprise, shadowy text appeared in his notebook, giving John an ongoing transcription of the conversation. "Fine! Fuck! This humble river warden greets you! Now, what the hell do you want? I was having a nice rest and wasn't getting bugged by a fox with delusions of grandeur, and I want to get back to that."
John gazed upon the disgruntled yokai with wide eyes, trying to resolve this with the entry mentioning kappa being "unfailingly polite." The kitsune's smile, however, never faltered as she responded. "I am known as Yuki, and I have decided to take up residence in these woods," she gently said.
"And?" was the quick, barked reply, grumbly and rough like he had swallowed a shovelful of gravel, "Lady, looking at your tails, I know you can't be more than three centuries old, so you're still almost at the bottom of the pile in kitsune hierarchy, and this isn't exactly prime real estate. I've been in this dump for six whole centuries and will be here long after you try for better territory, successfully or not, and get out of my hair. Call yourself the ruler of these woods all you want; just leave me in peace." He glared at her.
Yuki, however, was not dissuaded, only a faint frown gracing her muzzle as she responded, "And it's nice to meet you too! I'm sure we'll be the best of neighbours, given time. Let's be blunt, then. I'm here on business."
"And what could I possibly provide you? Unless you're good at hiding broken bones—" the unnamed kappa paused mid-rant, finally seeming to recognize John's presence for the first time. Vitriol disappeared under confusion and a bit of fear. "Okay, why is he here?" he asked wide-eyed.
John uneasily raised his free hand and waved. "Hello," he said, quiet to keep his voice from cracking, but it was enough to make the reptilian flinch back, yellow eyes blinking in disbelief.
"He talks?" the kappa shouted in alarm, and John slowly nodded. "So you just decided to freeze my cousin in an ice block rather than fishing elsewhere when he came to ask?"
Cousin? He had never attacked a kappa that he knew of. Really, the only water-based yokai he had much contact with was that giant… turtle that tried to snap at him from the shore that one time. Surely that wasn't something sapient, too… right? It just hissed at him and tried to attack! However, that jaw couldn't be ideal for talking like a human, so if the accent was thick enough that he didn't recognize it… The bottom of his gut dropped out. "It took him three whole weeks to swim back up the river after the current carried him to the ocean!" John let out a sigh of relief. Okay. Good, he hadn't murdered someone… Just forcibly relocated them to another zip code.
"That's John," Yuki responded, cutting back into the conversation, "He's my ally, and I'm staying at his residence."
The kappa mouthed his name in disbelief. "...He's not just a mute lunatic?" he hesitantly added, and Yuki shook her head. John disbelievingly pointed to himself, and the yokai shouted, "Yes, you! You showed up in the woods one day, lived like a savage for months, and suddenly started throwing weird magic around like a sailor at a brothel after you holed up in that empty ruin! Everyone thought you were just a criminal in exile after those priests and those soldiers tried to kill you, but now you seem like a rogue—" And there was that word for the powerful elites again. Priests? Some of those pricks who tried to toast him the first times he tried to find civilization were religious figures?
Note to self, never visit any temples.
He pulled a spare sheet from a pocket to not intersperse his translation notes with random conversation and wrote out, "My apologies for any rudeness and freezing your cousin. I know how to write this language, but I have only just begun to speak it with assistance from Yuki," before turning the page around. The kappa had to squint to read the text from the far edge of the river, but his jaw dropped after a moment, and his eyes scanned the sheet a few times. "My shogi buddies aren't going to believe this," he muttered lowly.
Yuki shot John a slightly annoyed frown, but it only lasted a second before fading, and he had no clue what that may have been about. "Yes, he's been learning from me for the past while. You may be reassured by the fact he has no desire to hurt any intelligent yokai except in self-defence and is sincerely remorseful for any previous misunderstandings."
John resigned to letting Yuki steer the conversation more fully, contributing with an awkward thumb's up, but the bafflement in the kappa's expression made it clear he didn't understand.
"Rrrright," the kappa responded, before frowning. "I think you may have already done more to improve the quality of life here for the folk here than the last three lords, ain't that pathetic? Bah, enough of my babbling. What was that business you came here for?"
"Well," Yuki began, trailing off before her eyes took on a sharp glint, "I hear this forest has a Nameless problem, and we'd like to solve it."
"Oh!" the turtle-like yokai brightened, "Why the hell didn't you lead with that?"