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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/SteelTrim on 2025-10-22 05:31:21+00:00.

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The moment they crossed the barrier was obvious, as Yuki’s eyes shone a bit more intensely, regaining a brightness he hadn’t noticed was missing prior.  Of the sleepers, Rin awakened first, jolting up and her hand going for her blade, only to still as she beheld her surroundings, cautiously peering around with her hand on the hilt, yet not seeming to quite register anything at first.

Yosuke’s awakening was more like a drunk waking up in the gutter, numb limbs feeling around as he rolled over with a gurgling that may have been either “Five more minutes,” or “What the hell happened?” in spirit. He then proceeded to look around only once before crawling over to the edge of the iceberg turned raft, hanging his head over the side like he was about to vomit despite his complete lack of a mouth.

“Lady Yuki, Sensei!” Rin greeted with, surprisingly, no grogginess in her voice. “What happened? Why are we in the forest?”

“An Ofuda happened, and a potent one at that,” Yuki explained, her voice calm. “We retreated outside its effects to steady ourselves.”

Rin seemingly blanked for a second before hesitantly asking, “Then why are we outside town?”

John groaned as she confirmed his fears. Despite her flaws, Rin seemed like a knowledgeable combatant, especially given that she had survived this far. If there was some sort of widely known “turn off all weaker yokai and yokai-blooded Unbound” technique, she likely would have had it come up in the past at some point or otherwise have known of it.

With that, any hopes of anyone nearby knowing an easy counter vanished.

This was almost certainly something that Kiku knew how to do specifically, as he couldn’t picture the priests of some random do-nothing post having such secret, or even lost, knowledge. Did they have to worry about whether word of this would get out and come back to haunt them via obsessive secret seekers or folk trying to preserve their monopoly?

Of course, that’s without considering what it would take to deal with them.

The simplest answer would be to locate the Ofuda, like Yuki was trying to do back when this first began, and destroy or alter it, but where to start? Would it be multiple? One incredibly powerful charm hidden somewhere? The former felt more likely, at least from his untrained perspective. After all, redundancy would mean they couldn’t deal with it all at once.

“Well, that’s a problem,” John groaned, before looking at Rin’s blank, uncomprehending expression. “Somehow, someone managed to shroud the entire city in the area,” John hurriedly explained.

Rin’s expression soured like someone had fed her a sour grape.

Yuki huffed, glancing toward the shoreline, briefly scanning for any threats before, satisfied, turning back to the rest of them. “I think I know what she’s doing,” the kitsune stated. “The nogitsune is trying to force us to either split up or deny us the town, since John is the only one of us who can walk into it undeterred. As we learned back at the warehouse, she has access to Unbound forces that are not yokai-blooded like Rin and thus aren’t deterred by such Ofuda. She likely aims to use them to capture you if you enter alone and let your guard down, and if you refuse to enter, that still denies you a support base, as it’d be easy to kill any messengers heading between your fort and the town with some carefully placed Nameless.”

“But why didn’t she finish it there?” John asked. “She could have had herself written as allowed under the Ofuda, then just attacked us when we were trying to figure out what was going on. We would have had no answer.”

Yuki quieted, and the silence hung uncharacteristically long as the kitsune tried to come up with an answer, likely asking herself a myriad of uncomfortable questions about what she would do in her “sister’s” shoes.

“She’s worried about what you may do, I think,” the kitsune finally muttered, deep in concentration.

“What?” John half-laughed, although it was bitter. “Are you saying she’s scared of me?”

“Not scared, cautious,” Yuki quickly corrected, glancing towards Rin. “You’re hard to gauge. Ever since I got here, every other day feels like it brings a new revelation, be it something mundane to you that merely didn’t come up before, or in the form of you coming up with a new idea to deal with a problem. The last time you fought, you displayed power a magnitude greater than she expected, which introduces risk. If she were on the Ofuda, and you managed to get a hold of one before fleeing, you could cause incredible trouble by going to the proper authorities with it.”

Shit. It wasn’t as if John going all out was an everyday occurrence, and he wasn’t sure if he had ever used that one at maximum outside of testing. No matter how long Kiku was observing them, there wouldn’t have been a hint of it where she could see it, not to mention his sudden discovery of flight was certainly a surprise.

Given the detection net around his base, which she would know of from his reaction to Nameless attacks, Kiku would be foolish to assume he wouldn’t start working on a counter to her rapidly. To be honest, he was kind of embarrassed that he didn’t think of the idea immediately. There was probably a bunch of shed Kiku fur that they lost, which would have been damn helpful. Combined with not knowing that his current gauntlet was much weaker…

It made much more sense now, as did trying to capture him with proxies. At best, it worked for her. At worst, it meant that she’d have a better estimate of his capabilities, especially if she had spies amongst the townsfolk to observe the ensuing fight.

"This would only delay us, right? I’d find the Ofuda eventually, and we could probably recruit the militia to sweep for it. There has to be a timeline she’s working around. Maybe she thinks this will stop us from gathering support or reinforcing the town for long enough for the Greater Nameless to heal up? " he cautiously ventured, scratching his chin.

Yuki hummed before nodding in turn. “That would make sense. If it needs to be close to its minions and puppets to direct them finely, she is likely cautious about leveraging their numbers. It’d be like marching particularly dull soldiers to war with one inflexible set of orders and no officers amongst them. It would take one surprise to topple or, worse, scatter them. Given how badly you hurt it, we probably have half a moon, if not longer. She could have a new one in a week if she were to execute the old one, but then she’d have to break it to her will, and she seemed unwilling to sacrifice the one she has now.”

“Surely it can’t keep us out for that long? Even with Lady Yuki alone attempting to grind it down, she certainly could destroy it within a couple of days, even without finding the Ofuda,” Rin curiously inquired. “We camp outside, and just focus on destroying it.”

Immediately, Yuki shook her head, and John felt a bit queasy at how easy that would make them to ambush. “No,” the kitsune said. “Rooting us in place for that long would be unacceptable. We might as well be ripe fruit on the ground, and she’d take advantage of that. At best, it would exhaust us, and they might somehow have materials for more Ofuda in reserve. No, a siege is not the right action here.”

John’s eyes went to the river as he fell into thought, looking around as he oriented himself. That tree seemed familiar, and the way the river bent—Aha!

Swapping out the focus for his telekinetic one while Rin and Yosuke weren’t looking, he directed the ice boat to shore, beaching it. Yosuke took the opportunity to crawl out like a wild beast the second the ship stopped moving, embracing the rocky shore like a spouse after a war. Wait, was he just scared of water? Questions for later.

“This is as close as we get to the fort heading this way. Afterward, the river keeps going southeast,” John stated, quickly scanning the treeline for both Kiku and Nameless using a pair of detectors. Nothing. “We can probably sneak past whatever they have planned this way, before they realize what happened.”

Stepping out of the boat, he offered Yuki his hand which she graciously took, although she put no weight onto it, before he did the same for Rin. She was more willing to let him help lift her out, and he had to put a bit of muscle into it, although she reddened as he did.

More hesitantly, he offered a hand to Yosuke as he began to push himself off the ground. The man waved it off as he staggered back to his feet, although his previously “fresh” clothes looked a bit less so after crawling around in the mud, even if his back was still shockingly dirt-free, if still soaked.

“So, here’s my idea,” John said, fumbling around in his bag before pulling out one of his self-drawn maps. It wasn’t the best, especially for someone who knew the joys of modern satellite maps and GPS units… but it would do.

“We’re here,” he stated, pointing to a bend in the river. It was perhaps an hour’s walk if they were brisk about it. If he could fly everyone, they could be there within minutes, but that might as well be a signal flare for where they were. Besides, he wouldn’t be able to carry everyone on it anyhow. "We have to assume that our opponents already k…

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