Play Test: Stuck in Another World as a Reality TV Contestant

The rooftops of Chinatown welcomed me back into their cozy embrace. I’d spent over a decade flinging myself across, over, and sometimes into this three-dimensional landscape, earning most of my worst injuries doing so. In exchange for all those cracked ribs and dislocated fingers, I could confidently say that I knew more about the roofs of the neighborhood than the streets of any other. I knew which railings you could jump off and the location of perhaps every patch of grass big enough to dive roll onto. Friends still texted me about freshly repaired walls, and the best lampposts to slide down was a frequent topic in our group chats. I couldn’t have picked a better place for my first monster fight.

And on top of that, comparing ten years of parkour memories to what I was doing now was like comparing the Olympics to a nature documentary, or Usain Bolt to a literal cheetah. Tonight, I prowled with a surreal grace that, despite all the danger and terror of the moment, still managed to thrill me. I leaped from an apartment water tower up fifteen feet and over an alley to another building – an impossible jump before tonight - and landed with impossible silence, my feet cupping a fist-sized decorative stone fleur-de-lis, and my fingers crimped into a thin crack in the mortar. I was taking every precaution, which meant maintaining my newest Stance, and slowly peaking my head over ledges.

I’d spotted Tiger Triad graffiti all over the ledges I traversed, much newer than the Dragon graffiti they were defacing; oh, how sweet it was to know I was using their own secret technique against them. I was a living shadow with the Crouching Tiger Stance activated; The rippling Qi cloak added half my Aura to my Stealth while moving for a total of seventeen Dice in the pool, making me damn near invisible.

Which was great, because as far as I knew, I very well could have been surrounded by Tigers using the same technique. The roof looked empty as I pulled myself up, but I only had an okay Perception and, so far, Funikugami’s gift feat was proving to be less than useless, in that it was actively making things more difficult.

It turned out, that in a neighborhood with over a hundred thousand people in it, the ability to detect the desire as opposed to the intention to kill was extremely distracting. People wanted to kill people all the time. I could feel them in the apartments below me, in almost every apartment, someone who wanted to kill their wife, husband, roommates, kids, themselves, the people on the television, the people in the news, etc. Most of them were quick flashes, little bursts that swirled away as fast as they formed, and the rest were low thrums that repeated in a way that told me they were old, constant desires. I was glad that no one in my range had thus far been burning with a need to murder, but the ‘noise’ was frying my nerves.

It had driven me to climb up the hotel I was currently atop. The building was tall and old enough that the top floor was a maintenance area for the elevator mechanics and electricians. Smells Blood only extended about fifteen feet or so with my current Affinity, meaning the empty floor granted me a brief respite while I waited on Maki.

The latter half of my routes were clear, the rain and wind chill helping out by keeping the roofs thankfully empty. I didn’t want to get any closer to Bell Street without getting the okay from Maki, but I had a good view from this height. Prepping for parkour like this, i.e. from a distance, at night, with only my eyes, would have been suicidal for most people, but it was what it was. At least the damp footing and handholds were only inflicting a one or two Dice penalty depending on the specific movement currently; I could work with that.

With nothing left to do but wait, my mind turned to what the others were up to. We’d have some pretty crazy stories to share when we met back up. Whenever that was. I hoped the others were being a little more cautious than I was, as hypocritical as that might have been. I had the benefit of being a local though; Black Harbor was my home turf – I might have been separated from the Party, but I was hardly on my own here. One of my starting feats was literally:

[Minor Feat] Local (Black Harbor) – You’ve spent years here and it shows. Gain one

automatic success to navigate in your chosen area and add 1 Die to any attempts

to evade pursuit or track people here.

I could afford to operate with a higher risk threshold here than Cici could as a ninja in neo-feudal Japan or Mars as a motorcycle bandit in pseudo-Transylvania. I was like Batman in Gotham, except broke, or John Constantine in London, except not an asshole.

My phone lit up. Maki was ready. I sent back a confirmation and switched it to silent.

“Time to bust some ghosts.” Damnit, now I had the Ghostbusters theme song stuck in my head.

Almost as soon as I stood up, I felt something lurch in my soul, conjuring up the unforgettable odor of Funikugami’s domain. There was a flash of lightning then a less-than-a-second pause before the deafening roar of thunder followed. The clouds began to roil above me as the rain returned with greater force than seen all day, the droplets so fat and heavy that they stung like pebbles on my scalp, obscuring my vision as the wind picked up. My phone began to buzz as an automated emergency alert blasted through the silent setting.

I had to hunch over the screen to read it. “What the fuck is a rain squall?” As if in answer, a sudden gust almost succeeded in pushing me over the edge of the building.

“Goddamn it, Funikugami!” I yelled. I didn’t know what to expect from the Kami, but conjuring a blinding storm felt like a bit much. “Surely there are weather gods who would be upset by this!”

Shit, I didn’t have time to speculate; Maki was in danger. The storm drain had already been at capacity, much more rain and she’d be washed away. I dropped the Crouching Tiger Stance and leapt across the street, dive-rolling onto a roof and into a sprint towards Bell Street. My crow-headed patron had just put a hard timer on this exorcism.

A stride in parkour was pretty self-explanatory, it was a jump from one foot that you did while already at speed. Delivering for Runr had honed mine to a science, but Annie’s Coiled Hamstrings had pushed them into an art form. I crossed the distance to where I’d been attacked on Bell Street in a single uninterrupted sprint like I was running on a track. Even with the insane six Dice penalty the storm was causing, my jump distance was such that all I had to do was leave one flat roof surface and land on another, my familiarity with the neighborhood letting me know where to shoot for with only the little I could make out through the sheets of rain.

Maybe forty seconds from the start of the storm later, I was on top of one of the office buildings that had loomed over me the first time I’d encountered the Hungry Ghost, panting a little from the exertion. Despite my newest patron’s promises, it was still annoyingly empty of spirits.

“Come on, Funikugami, what do I have to do?”

Almost as soon as I said the words, I could feel it at the edge of my perception, that same creeping dread that I’d felt the last time. Maki had mentioned that I’d probably earned its attention by escaping like I did, and I could sense at some animal level that she was right. Fear began to pick at my skin like fishhooks again; the first time, after fighting Kuze, it had been fear of the unknown, but now I could think only of the thin woman I’d left in the sewers and how helpless she’d be should the waters wash her away.

“HEEEY!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “I know you’re there, you coward! KILL ME ALREADY!”

If I had to describe the shift in the atmosphere, I’d call it ‘curious’. But still, nothing actually happened – maybe a different tact then.

I slapped myself on the ass. “Ooooh, baby, don’t you want a piece of this?! I’m a tasty, tasty boy! Move your saggy-ass titties over here and slurp me down your ugly gullet, you dead bitch!”

I dove to the side as a red-hot flare of killing desire sparked to life behind me. To my surprise, a meteor hammer swung by a very human opponent pierced through the space I’d been in with enough force to shear a hole into a rooftop AC unit beyond. A thin, short boy dressed in all black and in a wooden Tiger mask retracted the rope weapon to his side with a sharp yell. He must have been camouflaged into the parapet.

“How fucking dare you!?” he shouted in a high-pitched voice. Damn, still going through puberty and he was already able to use the Crouching Tiger Stance? The kid was impressive. “You think the Tigers are a joke?!”

“Wait, what? Who the hell are you?” I asked, palms up.

“A dead bitch, am I?!”

He brought the hammer down in an arc aiming for my head, but I slapped it away. The kid was already around Kuze’s skill level, but after fighting Pak this was child’s play. I’d come a long way since that first duel.

“Woah! Hey now, that wasn’t directed at you! I promise! I had no idea you—” I ducked under another attack. “—were there in the first place, I swear!”

The triad spun like a shot-putter and chucked the meteor hammer, rope and all, at me like a net, tangling it as it flew with his back-hand. Again, last week – hell, yesterday, this would have been a great gambit, but we were simply on different tiers of fighting now. The kid followed the distraction with a Tiger’s Pounce, knife drawn and pointed at my belly.

I caught his wrist, pulled it down and to my side, and pivoted on my hips, trapping him in a classic joint lock and held him there, so that he could truly understand the gap between our martial arts.

“Kid, listen to me! On my mother’s life, I sw—”

“Kid?! KID?! You don’t remember me, do you? I’m four years older than you, James Li, you fucking clown!”

“Huh?” I took a closer look at the triad. “But then…oh, you’re a girl? My bad, I thought you were a teen boy.” She growled in response. “I mean, uh, shit – that came out wrong.”

The triad was upset by my comments, which was fair. They were inappropriate and mean, unintentionally so, but still. Her reaction was a little extreme though.

She snapped her elbow in my joint lock fast enough that I couldn’t release her, and spun around to face me, causing the bones in her arm to break through the skin with a sickening sound. Then, lunging with her full body weight, she drove the sharp, broken ends of her bones like a wicked spear into my chest.

I could hear her gritting her teeth from behind her mask, choking back the pain. “I’m, hah, going, hah, to kill—”

It was my turn to interrupt her. I front-kicked her, converting the four extra Successes into a telekinetic blast that sent her crashing into a now completely ruined AC unit. She caved the metal box inwards with her body, steel crumpling around her.

Blood was beginning to run down in hot streams from the ugly gash she’d carved in my chest. Her attack had caught me off-guard and blown right through my Force Armor and the temporary Health I’d gained from the meal bonus. And she’d done it all with her own shattered bones – what a goddamn maniac. I absolutely needed to recruit this woman into my school. She even fought with a rope weapon; it was meant to be!

That required her to be alive though. The two Murderous Damage she’d dealt me looked bad, but her arm was barely hanging on, and unlike me, who could bleed for days so long as I didn’t force a check against stabilizing, she was losing a dangerous amount of blood to the pouring rain.

“That,” I said, pointing at her, “was hardcore. I think we may have gotten off on the wrong foot here. Maybe we take a quick timeout and talk this out?”

She hissed in pain as she extricated herself from the wreckage. “You’re…dead…James Li. The Tigers are gonna piss on your corpse.”

“Rude. I’m here doing you guys a huge favor! There’s a Hungry Ghost here with us right now; that’s who I was talking to!”

“Shut up, idiot. I know better than to believe your lies.”

“You’re kidding, right? Please tell me you can feel it. That oppressive feeling, the sense of impending doom? It’s here with us, I’m telling you!” She paused and tilted her head. Good, I wasn’t imagining the sensation then.

Indeed, the ominous pressure had ramped up the moment we’d started spilling our blood. The air at the back of my neck had started to warm, as though someone was standing directly behind me, breathing heavily on my skin.

I openly turned my back to her. “That’s right, I know you’re here. You little piss baby, you think this girl can possibly do enough damage to me to make your job easier for you? A coward in life and a coward in death – is that all you can do, wait around for weak targets?”

Gravity seemed to push heavier upon me with each word. Murderous desire poured forth from a spot hovering above the ledge of the building. It was bitter and curdled like rotting milk, an unbelievably pungent and stomach-turning scent of death and bile somehow leagues worse than Funikugami’s realm. His domain had smelled like a charnel house or a killing field, yes, but this was distinctly wrong, like something that should not have existed and could never have been found in the natural world. This was the smell of infection.

“What, what are you doing?” asked the triad, her panic rising. “What’s happening?”

I stared at the haze emanating hatred at us. “What’s the matter? Can’t fight a man face-to-face? Were you a man in life, or a wretched, stray, starving do—chk!”

My body seized as fear reached through my chest and back, squeezing my heart and tugging at my spine. I stumbled forward a few steps, narrowly avoiding face-planting. Weaponized dread, as Maki had called it, assaulted each of my senses; the smell of rot, needles under my skin, a black, grainy film over my vision, the ululations of women, all telling, no, demanding that I fall, break, hide. It imposed upon me the childish desire to pull the covers over my head, to cling to my mother’s skirt. As the sensation grew into a crescendo, the system asked me to roll a Willpower check. Thankfully, I had prepped for this.

[Minor Feat] Shining Resolve

You may call upon your mystic might to resist fear and despair; letting you use your Aura in place of an Attribute or Skill for relevant rolls. Doing so causes your body to shed dim golden light in the material world, and your soul to glow like a second sun for anything with the appropriate senses.

In the face of such overwhelming malice, I happily threw 20 EXP towards becoming grossly incandescent. I, and thus Style Maker, had already been forewarned about this kind of spiritual warfare, and I’d come up with Shining Resolve early on when brainstorming solutions, but had needed to really experience the attack to create it. The relief was immediate, the light chasing away both foreign sensations and evil thoughts.

“Pathetic,” I spat, standing up straight. “Bitch-made in life, bitch-made in death.”

The shadow hovering in front of me seemed to shiver away from my golden glow. I wiped the rain from my eyes; time was ticking, and the downpour showed no signs of abating. What did I have to do to get this thing to commit to attacking me?

If it wasn’t going to take the first step, then it was up to me. I placed my palms on my abdomen and started to gather fire-natured Qi in my belly, stoking it as hot as I could. Sucking in a deep breath, I let the Qi into my lungs. It mixed with the oxygen there in an explosive fury.

A twenty-foot-long cone of golden fire burst forth from my mouth, momentarily blinding me with how bright it was against the storm-shadowed darkness of the night. For the first time tonight, I thanked the Carrion God for the heavy rain; on a dry night, I’d have risked burning down the building below and getting a few thousand eyes on me, curious about the noise and light.

While I couldn’t see how the flames affected the ghost, I could feel the murderous desires split down the middle in two. I had no idea what that meant or if I had harmed it, but I doubted the latter. Smells Blood was letting me keep an ‘eye’ on it, and the hatred had done the opposite of diminishing, only growing and swirling all around me.

I lowered into a semi-crouch, ready to spring in any direction, but no attacks came. What was it waiting for? Clearly, it didn’t need me to be totally alone, or it wouldn’t have hit both me and the triad with its dread presence. I thought back to what little we’d been able to piece together about the man who had become the Hungry Ghost.

Jealousy – he’d been so trapped by envy and unrealized ambitions that they’d literally kept him on Earth after his death. Oh damn, I knew exactly what to do.

“Can we hurry this up, man? I’ve got hot guy shit to do! You think I want to be here?” I pulled the front of my sweatpants and boxers down, letting my cock and balls hang out. “Look at my huge penis and tell me I want to be here! This is the penis of a man with better things to do, okay? I should be hitting someone’s back walls right now, but I’m here soaked to my bones because your dumb ass didn’t know how to stay dead!”

There! The killing desires were coalescing in front of me. I tucked my dick away and fell back into a defensive stance.

“Argh!” The triad shrieked in pain behind me.

I spun around to see a ghastly image of death with its fingers buried into the shoulders of the gangster. He hovered over her, his belly, distended and flabby, draped over her head. Pressed against the thin, grey-and-green ‘skin’ of his stomach were the outlines of hands and legs desperately trying to escape. His head, cartoonishly malformed and stretched out, was stuck in an expression of pained ecstasy, his mouth hanging wide open, bloated tongue lolling out and bloodshot eyes rolled up in a cruel approximation of an ahegao. You could see at the back of his throat fingers trying to claw their way out. Despite his corpulent stomach, his arms and legs were rail thin, giving an appearance of malnourishment – apart from his hands and feet, which were large, distinctly inhuman clawed things.

“Gigigigigi…” Its laugh echoed in my skull and sent shivers up my spine.

The triad bucked and tried to writhe out of the thing’s grasp, only causing her wounds to split and grow. Her blood began to flow up the ghost’s arms to be lapped up by its furiously wagging tongue. The tiger mask had fallen from her face, and she shot me a pleading look, stooped underneath the weight of the creature’s belly.

She didn’t need to ask twice. I could still feel the murderous desires where they’d been gathering behind me, but I had to assume it had already figured out how to spoof the senses from Smells Blood. Cursing Funikugami in my head for the useless feat, I dashed forward and torqued my hips into a roundhouse directed at her hips. The triad was in no position to resist, and I put every one of the nine Successes from the uncontested roll towards telekinetically blasting her away from the roof. The force was enough to tear her from the ghost’s hold and send her flying across the street, over the next line of roofs, and crashing, from the sounds of it, onto a parked car in the opposite direction of the alleyway I’d be leading the Egui to.

“Gigigigigigigi,” it laughed, sticking both of its claws into its mouth. I could see it grow a little bigger as it sucked the blood off them.

“Yeah, fuck you too, asshole.”

I lifted a hand to my throat, circulating a small orb of fire-Qi within my neck, and coughed out a much smaller jet of fire at the ghost, squinting to not blind myself this time. The spirit’s chest turned into a black cloud before the fire could make contact, as it opened a hole for the flames to pass through. Christ, if this thing could discorporate fast enough to dodge direct attacks, then Maki was right; fighting it was suicide.

Although, it did have to dodge the fire…

I shook the thought free from my head, that way led to death.

The Hungry Ghost charged me, claws stretched forth, spinning almost whimsically as it did, laughing all the while. Again, it was so much faster than I could believe, crossing the distance between us in an instant. I was ready to dodge and got a healthy six Successes to do so, but it still tagged me across the shoulder as I tried to roll under the attack. Its claws felt solid and real, but they ignored my Force Armor completely. My skin and flesh burst out and around where the digits had pierced me, flaring with red-hot pain.

Think positive, James, I said to myself, shunting the agony out of my mind. At least you’ve got its attention now.

Right, right – this could be good. If it thought I had an advantage, it might decide to flee and pick an easier target. I turned on my heels to jump across the street but had to stop before I flung myself directly into it. How?! That was outrageous speed – it had somehow circled me faster than I could track with my eyes.

Well, I had tricks of my own; literally, in this case. I side-flipped from standing an incredible twenty feet to the next roof over, a move honed through years of tricking with my friends and recently elevated into the superhuman by my copied jumping feat. There was no way to tell if the spirit was surprised – its face held in permanent rictus – but at the very least, it didn’t have an answer.

I waited until I could feel its murderous desire pressing against my mind, Funikugami’s worthless feat capable of that much, and then jumped down to the street. The office building across the street was too tall, and the rain was too fierce to try an arm jump to its ledge. Closer, and from the ground, it was easier to arc my jump over the soaking-wet surface and directly onto the gravel of the flat roof.

“Aw, shit!” I yelled out. I didn’t even realize I’d been struck again until I felt the pain blossom in my back when I rolled to standing on the gravel. When had it hit me? How had it hit me?

Whatever, I didn’t have the time to worry. The Hungry Ghost was already upon me. It floated over my head, flying in figure-eights while laughing to itself, licking its fingers, and growing before my eyes. The triad’s blood had granted it a few inches of height, but mine had given it a foot or more.

My Aura thrummed as I had to force away a surge of fear, this time coming from within me. If I was being honest, the idea of covering another four blocks like this wasn’t inspiring confidence. It had already pushed me past an Injury Threshold and didn’t appear at all worried about its hunt. At least it was momentarily content to gloat; I used the opportunity to use my Circular Breathing and rolled a super-charged Recovery Check. I’d planned to save that first meal-bonus-enhanced Recovery roll for when I was worse off, but that seemed hopelessly optimistic now.

It stopped mid-air as my wounds closed – the act seemed to inspire some kind of frantic anger in the creature. The ghost slammed its claws into its distended stomach and began to howl. I had no idea what was about to happen but knew enough to know that I needed to immediately run. Unfortunately, Funikugami’s feat was playing games with my head, making me pause as I tried to figure out which way to move. I could feel five distinct points around me, other than the Ghost I could see, all of which were practically vibrating with killing desire in my new sense, behind, around, and even below me.

The Hungry Ghost started vomiting out a black miasma over the roof, throwing its head back and forth like a sprinkler. Eyes wide, I rolled an Agility + Dodge in a panic, but the rain screwed me. That five-dice penalty the storm was inflicting led me to slip and fall flat onto my chest, the bile-scented shadowy ooze crashing down onto my back before I could react.

Suddenly I was elsewhere, trapped in a memory like in the Shrine, except this time I was viewing it from another’s perspective. Unlike Funikugami’s memories, this one was broken and disjointed, mostly just flashes of misery. I was a teen boy in Chinatown at a warehouse party, the clothing and music indicating the early-80’s. There was a fight, I’d danced with the wrong man’s woman, and the next thing I knew I was being stomped on. I curled into a ball, but the kicks didn’t stop until they’d shattered my knee. Someone carried me out and dumped me on the street. My so-called friends were nowhere to be seen, so I ended up trying to limp home. I had barely made it into the alley across from the warehouse before I heard that awful laughter and felt that oppressive hatred bear down upon my shoulders.

Then I was James Li again, gritting my teeth and pushing myself back to my feet. A sharp shooting pain informed me that my knee was just as shattered as the boy's had been. I glanced down to see that same miasma clinging to my leg, intuiting at a look that no recovery check was going to solve that problem. Instinctively, I coughed a jet of flame at my knee, scorching both the cursed substance and my flesh beneath for three Murderous damage.

It was worth it though, the pain was a small price to pay for full mobility. That miasma, what I guessed was the solidified anguished last memories of the Ghost’s victims, was all over the roof, making every step dangerous. The next closest building was a warehouse – the warehouse, in fact, from the boy’s memories. It was an older design with a slanted metal roof that would have been dangerous on a dry, sunny day, and a full fifteen feet taller than the office building I was on, but I had no other options. I angled myself so I could still see the Egui in my peripheral vision and leapt for the edge of the warehouse.

As it happened, Funikugami’s Smells Blood was not useless, and I probably should have been lending it more credence. My trajectory took me more-or-less through one of those burning points of killing desire, from which shot out a clawed hand reaching for my wrist. I twisted out of the way, but the jump was ruined, and I slammed into the side of the warehouse elbow and ribs first.

The alley between the office building and the warehouse was extremely narrow, meaning that when I bounced off the warehouse, I bounced onto the office building’s ledge, and then rolled back into the alley. The special feat I got for having 6 Dice in Agility allowed me to right myself on the very tumultuous fall down the thirty-five feet or so to the ground, but it did nothing for me when my chin clipped a rusted metal bracket that had been left behind from a past renovation.

I landed on my feet, ears ringing from the blow, ribs cracked, elbow bleeding, and worst of all, trapped between two tall walls.

“Gigigigigigi,” came from one side.

“Gigigigigigi,” came from the other.

I turned to look at the two identical Hungry Ghosts boxing me in. Goddamn it, I had even felt the murderous desires split earlier – I should have seen something like this coming. I’d been too quick to disregard the information from Funikugami’s gift, my mistrust of the Carrion God coloring my judgment.

I used another Circular Breathing charge, healing most of the fall damage and leaving me with only two of the Murderous damage left over from when I’d burned the curse off my knee. The Hungry Ghosts licked their lips, content to draw this out. I took the opportunity to use another charge and heal myself to full.

“Now who’s underestimating who?”

I shoulder-checked the brick wall of the warehouse, utilizing Lance Pressure to easily blast a James-sized hole through to the other side like I was the Kool-Aid Man. The bricks and rubble I sent flying collided with a metal tank in the building, punching finger-sized holes in it, causing the contents to begin spraying out. Before I could get the dust even settled, I could tell by the smell of the liquid what the warehouse had been converted into.

Thankfully, my golden glow cast enough light that I could see inside the dark building, a welcome change from all the rain in my eyes. I leaped up to a metal walkway hanging above the dozen or so massive vats the new owners had installed. Strange, I didn’t know there was a distillery here, but the smell pouring out of the damaged vat was unmistakable.

‘Three’ Hungry Ghosts phased through the wall, though I was fairly certain it was just one splitting itself into multiple bodies. Maki had told me they could turn to smoke, and I had seen it do as much to avoid my fire, but I hadn’t anticipated its full capabilities would allow this.

Avoid my fire…I thought, soaking in the smell of the alcohol pouring onto the floor. No, no, surely that’s a terrible idea.

Another three ghostly bodies descended from the ceiling, passing through the dirt-encrusted skylights. With those, that should have accounted for all the coagulated murderous desires I’d sensed with Smells Blood. I took a deep breath and steeled myself for what came next; accounting for how fast I’d seen a single body move, there were a few narrow gaps that I could aim for to escape the Ghost’s coverage.

As though reading my mind, all six bodies began to laugh in perfect unison. They were soon joined by another six which phased through from above, and six more that came in through the walls. My heart sank as their appearance dropped a guillotine through all my potential exit routes.

“Oh God…” I sighed. I might have bitten off more than I could chew. I’d been warned, by Maki, by my Alan half, by common sense, but I just had to insert myself into the middle of this against all reason. I’d mistaken ignorance for confidence, hubris for courage; now my friends were about to be stranded in a world I’d trapped them in, and my mother wouldn’t even have a body to bury.

The heady aroma of pure alcohol washed over me, temporarily pushing aside the horrifying aroma of the Hungry Ghost. It watered my eyes and sent a flash of drunk inspiration through me. The smell tempted me to try my flames again, but if even half these vats were full of alcohol, then I was basically standing in the middle of an enormous bomb.

“Gigigigigi!”

“Ah, fuck it.”

I jumped down to the floor, standing in the rapidly expanding puddle of pure distillate. If I was dying, I was dying fighting – and I sure as shit wasn’t dying with unspent Experience. I quickly bought two feats, the first a standard option for Elemental Control (Fire), and the other a spontaneous invention from Style Maker.

[Major Feat] Fireproof

Your connection to the Primordial Flame has almost completely inured you against its destructive effects. Your Aura naturally negates up to 5 damage from heat or fire, from any single source of damage, protecting both you and anyone in very close proximity to you.

[Major Feat] Fire-Proof

Your vast amount of fire-natured Qi allows you a powerful command over flammable vapors and liquids in your immediate surroundings. You may flood an environment rich in these sorts of flammable substances with your Qi and use them as additional fuel, letting you supplement any Elemental Control (Fire) rolls you make with extra Dice. The upper limits of this feat are only controlled by the amount of fuel in your environment, however, for every extra Die you add to a roll over your total number of Dice in Elemental Control (Fire), you take 1 point of Murderous Damage.

I closed my eyes, swept my leg to the side, sloshing booze as I did, and settled into a deep horse stance. Normally, this would have been where I took a deep breath and entered a meditative state, but I didn’t know if breathing in the vaporous cloud of alcohol I was standing in could get me drunk. I was already feeling tipsy, though that may have just been the adrenaline.

I stretched my arms out, left palm facing down, right palm up, and began to circulate my Qi into the vapor in the air, the alcohol pooling on the floor, and even through the enormous metal stills into the booze contained within. Hope springs eternal, came an unbidden thought. I clamped down on the rising optimism, however; Ishida Ken had brought a spirit-slaying sword and still lost this fight.

That said, holy god, there was a lot of fuel in the warehouse. In theory, I could potentially add so many Dice to an Elemental Control roll that I would instantly turn to ash trying to channel the power, even with the buffer my fire resistance provided. If the ghost had been dodging my fire because it needed to, and not merely as a flex, then I may have just found my equivalent of Ken’s sword.

The laughter had stopped. I opened my eyes, surprised to see that the dim light I’d been shedding had risen to the equivalent of an emergency flare, single-handedly illuminating the whole of the warehouse. The Hungry Ghost had circled me overhead with its bodies; it was impossible to read its Halloween mask of a face, but it seemed wary of whatever I was doing.

I needed it distracted; even if it had been faking some of its speed with its extra bodies, the demon had proven fast enough to dodge my fire. I’d give this one shot to throw as much raw power at it as I could, and then I’d use the distraction to punch through its net and keep moving towards Maki, regardless of how successful the fire was at hurting it. Ken’s memory demanded that I honor his sacrifice and play it safe. I was making no assumptions.

“Confused?” I called up at it. “I guess dying with dignity is foreign to you, huh? Hmm, yeah, I bet you died crying and pissing all over yourself.” It growled, the sound echoing from all around me. “Sounds like I guessed right. Yep, you died with snot running down your ugly mug, and your little, baby penis all turtled up.”

The growling grew louder.

“Well, take notes, baby-dick, this is how a real man dies – with a smile on his face and a fat cock swinging free in his boxers. Do you know I’m too big for briefs? Yeah, they’re too uncomfortable when you got a ludicrous hog like I do.” I chuckled. “I’d make a joke about finding one of your descendants to fuck, but we both know you died a virgin. And I’ve got to assume that all your relatives killed themselves out of embarrassme—"

Over half of its bodies began to howl like before, thrusting their claws into their bellies, while the rest hung back, cutting off my exits.

Now!

I held the image of my dantian in my mind and visualized a spark within it setting off a grand explosion, unleashing the full force of my mystic might and then some. Fireproof and my 3 Dice in Elemental Control (Fire) meant that I could safely add 8 Dice to my roll, but I was at full health and flirting with death anyway, so I rounded up to lucky number 13.

I screamed, feeling the intense pain of burning from the inside out, the skin on my hands bubbling and blackening as I channeled my borderline Divine wrath. Fourteen Successes were almost more than I knew what to do with, but I quickly set the power to whirling around me like a tornado, focusing on sending the torrents of flame upwards where they could dissipate harmlessly, as opposed to out and into the rest of the neighborhood.

The noise let loose by the inferno was the loudest sound I had ever heard, absolutely deafening. Behind the bone-shakingly deep roar of the flames was the shriek of steel shearing and warping. The amount of air the tornado was sucking in was so great that a metal I-bar almost breached the wall of fire around me before getting picked up and flung out of sight.

There was for a moment, an urge to keep my attack going, to let it grow to devour all the fuel it wanted, but I stomped it down and dropped the attack. The warehouse was brick and steel for the most part, and my tornado had vacuumed up the alcohol from around me, but the most distant vats were still fully on fire, belching smoke. Above me was a circular hole melted through the roof of the building; it took a few seconds for the rain to start falling in heavy waves through it. I had punched a small hole in the cloud cover, though it was already rapidly filling back in.

[Hidden Quest Completed!]

Collateral Damage I – did over $1,000,000 of property damage.

Reward: 10XP, Gain item: Base Upgrade Token x 3

[Hidden Quest Completed!]

Destroy the Tiger Triad’s Black Harbor counterfeit liquor operation.

Reward: 15XP, +2 Investigation

Bonus, Extremely high profile: 10XP, +2 Elemental Control (Fire)

I swiped the Quest notifications away. Underneath me, about ten feet below the concrete floor, was a huge, pulsing ball of killing desire. I sucked in a quick Circular Breathing charge while I could, clearing two points of Murderous damage.

The Hungry Ghost rose slowly through the floor, forcing another Willpower roll on me as it glared unholy hatred at me through a single eye. The other looked like it had boiled and popped in its ghostly skull. There was no question that I had done it serious harm; its skin had charred and still seemed to be smoldering, and half its face had melted down like wax. I had also forced it into a single body – as evidenced by both the lack of pings from Smells Blood and the fact that it was about twelve feet tall now.

I turned and sprinted full tilt through the warehouse’s ash-covered brick wall, headbutting my way through with a telekinetic blast from Lance Pressure. Considering the biblical rage I could feel being sent my way, I doubted the Hungry Ghost could do anything but chase after me.

I didn’t have to look back to know it was following me. Even without the constant awareness from Funikugami’s gifted feat, its wailing was ceaseless. Luckily for me, it had abandoned strategy altogether for pure, animalistic fury. Where I hurdled over a car, I could hear it shred through the steel out of anger. And as I leaped back up to the roofs, I narrowly avoided being clipped by an awning it tore off the building and threw at me. The few people I could see, bold enough to brave the storm to investigate the explosion and sounds, scattered around us in terror. What this looked like to them, a golden glowing man fleeing from a truck-sized demon, I could scarcely imagine.

Now that I could focus entirely on speed, the time it took to arrive back at the closed-off alley was measured in seconds. I thanked past me for remembering to prop open the steel door in the stairwell because I didn’t have the luxury of blasting through it. The ghost was close enough that I’d felt its claws scrape my skin twice, just short of devastating me each time.

“MAKIIIIIII!!!” I shouted as I ran as fast as I could across the wet surface. “INCOMIIING!”

The storm drain was past capacity, spilling over onto the walkway. I hardly had time to measure, but it must have been at least two inches deep over the bricks, which considering how fast it was moving, was nightmarish already. I prayed that Maki’s chalk circle was intact enough to work, or I had just doomed us both.

“Argh!” I screamed, feeling the pain of the claws tearing across my back. Only I was impeded by the flooding; the ghost was now fully fast enough to reach me.

Thankfully, I was still quick enough that it could only tag me once more; though between the first and second attack, I took another ten points of Murderous damage, leaving me at death’s door.

Moonlight was emanating from the nook I’d left Maki in, and faintly from a circle under the running water. I dove over it to the other side, barely avoiding slipping and falling into the rushing storm drain. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of the kneeling Miko, praying over an urn.

The Egui, blinded by hatred, ran straight into the column of moonlight like a fly into a spider’s web. The silver light wrapped around its body in a weave, tugging it back towards the circle and away from me, just stopping it from planting both claws into my legs. It dug into the stones below instead, trying to drag itself towards me with a single-minded drive.

I flipped it off, pushing myself to my feet with my other hand. “Gotcha, bitch.”

It kept trying to claw at me, uncaring of Maki’s spell until it was too late. Its body stretched out, spaghettifying as it kept up its relentless attacks while it fought the pull towards the urn. But as soon as its feet were within the blessed vessel, it changed tact completely, switching from anger to panic in a heartbeat. The Hungry Ghost began reaching for the sky, trying to fly up and away with all its might.

While it appeared that Maki had it cooked, I wasn’t so sure and spent all of my Circular Breathing charges to fully heal myself . I was beset by that tip-of-the-tongue feeling that I was forgetting something.

Sure enough, when half of the Ghost was in Maki’s urn, I felt that same soul-deep lurch I’d felt when Funikugami had summoned the storm.

“I bequeath thee mine sword,” boomed a voice in archaic Japanese. “Fetch, mortal.”

“Aw, shit.” I’d forgotten about the second curse.

The Egui stopped mid-motion, as though it had a sudden thought. It spun around on Maki and the urn it was currently being dragged into and laughed. Placing both of its claws around its stomach, it started to squeeze down tight, the ‘flesh’ oozing around its digits, and then, with a great heave, tore itself clean in half. The net of moonlight whipped around the lower half and snapped it into the urn, leaving the upper half free, stomach gaping open, hanging tattered beneath it.

“No!” shouted Maki, exhaustion evident in her voice.

“Gigigigigigi!” The ghost spun in the air in triumph, taunting us with its laughter. “Gi—"

A pale ghostly limb fell from its torn open stomach, vanishing into motes of light like those I’d seen at the shrine. A few more followed, drawing a grief-stricken scream from the Hungry Ghost. It whirled on Maki, then me, and then back to Maki, as if unsure as to whom it was more upset with. In doing so though, I got a better look at the void that was its stomach; entirely black save for a single, pale, white handle.

The Hungry Ghost decided on Maki at last, or rather, the urn in her lap. I acted without thinking, diving at it before it could reach her. My hands passed through its ghostly body as though through smoke, but that wasn’t my target; I’d been aiming for that pale hilt that I’d seen.

For the first, and hopefully last time in my life, I heard a ghost yelp. My hands wrapped around the hilt of Ken’s sword, the Hakkotsu no Ha, Bleached Bone Blade, and the next thing I knew I was hanging in mid-air, hands buried into the Egui’s stomach. The ghost, for its part, appeared to be genuinely flummoxed by what had happened and paused its attack on Maki to bogle its eye down at me.

“Maki!” I yelled as I swung in the air from the sword. “If I live, let’s go on a real date!”

“What!?”

“You heard me! Bye!”

I remembered Maki saying that some inherent property of moving water was linked to the passage of souls from our world into the next. So, without any better ideas, I jerked my entire body violently and pulled both me and the Hungry Ghost into the raging waters of the storm drain.