Give Me Ten Minutes
The girl was a girl.
She had been born in Tokyo, an ordinary girl of Japan. Her father was a section chief who would never rise any higher, her mother the owner of a ramen shop, and her heedless little sister a girl who dreamed of becoming a gyaru. She herself meant to follow her mother and become a ramen chef.
Money had never run short. She had never been unhappy, and she had never been ground down by hardship. There was nothing wrong with her mind, and nothing wrong with her body. If anything, she was sturdier in both than the children her own age.
Once, she had run into a flasher. While her friends screamed and recoiled, the girl spun and drove a roundhouse kick into his jaw. Another day she saw a stray cat struck dead by a car, and she only frowned—pity, and nothing beyond it. Among her peers she often seemed dull to the point of insensitivity, and unnervingly tough.
But the girl was not strange. She was afraid of ghosts. She disliked the dark, and she did not welcome being left alone in the house. When a cockroach sprang out she wailed and made a scene, and filth was the one thing she absolutely could not stand.
She liked handsome idols. She liked handsome heroes. Her favorite was Setsuna, that aloof hero in white. She loved her family. She loved her school. She loved her friends.
She carried the mortifying memory of begging her little sister for money when she wanted to buy something and came up short. She lost her mind over the sushi her father brought home as an evening snack, and the memory of her mother trimming her hair was a treasure she kept close.
The girl was ordinary.
The girl was a student.
The girl had a promising future.
The girl was an oni.
The girl was a tree.
The girl was a dev—
"No!"
"Kyaaaaaaa!"
"Do not become its jewel! My descendant! Overcome it! If you do not, you die!"
Shuten-doji bore down on the girl as he pleaded. Pshk! Pshk! Branches burst up through the palm that pinned her. They shone with all the colors of a rainbow, like sunlight swimming through the sea; their bark was cool as wind, and at their tips human teeth clicked and chattered.
The teeth on the branches bit into Shuten-doji's forearm. Pshk! The girl's blood spilled over. Crunch. Crunch. The sound of flesh and blood being torn apart rang through the space, and the girl's mindscape was shrinking.
"Shaaaa—!"
The Snake God cinched tight around the girl's waist. The pressure was enough to crumple a baobab without effort, and cracks ran through the bark.
"Kyaaaaa!"
Nine heads snapped at the branches thrusting out of the girl. They did not swallow what they caught. They spat it back out, and the fallen pieces clicked their teeth.
"Krrrrk!"
"Kh—!"
Shuten-doji and the Snake God let out strangled groans.
"Fall back! Stay like that and you'll be eaten!"
Susanoo roared, and the storm sword tore the roots to shreds.
"Brother!"
Beginning is end. End is beginning.
A circle with no body, heavy with yin, imitating the mirror that reflects the world.
Tsukuyomi's fan swept a perfect circle. The ring drawn on empty air had no substance, and yet it held a vast yin, and that yin copied a mirror fit to reflect the world. The Yata Mirror, one of the Three Sacred Treasures, settled over the mindscape.
"Get clear. Die, and I won't be held responsible."
Tsukuyomi wiped the sweat from his brow and formed a hand seal.
The Yata Mirror binds what it reflects.
Chrarararang!
The mirror caught the girl's tree, and the tree was dragged into it as if gravity itself had taken hold.
"Kyaaaaaaa!"
The girl screamed. Roots that had seized the mindscape drove deeper inward, while branches lashed the air, grabbing at anything they could reach. Leaving her thrashing to escape the pull, Shuten-doji and the Snake God fell in with the Three Noble Gods.
"Tch!"
"Krk!"
They wiped away the blood streaming over their bodies.
"Don't charge in like a fool. Do you not understand that if you are hurt, the girl is hurt?"
"Shut your mouth. If you've got a complaint, then do it properly yourself."
At Susanoo's rebuke, Shuten-doji spat on the ground.
"...This is going to drive me mad."
"Shaaaaaaa..."
The Snake God lolled out its tongue and licked Susanoo. Disgust surged up in him, and with it a sharp irritation.
"Tsk."
But the situation was what it was, so he pressed the feeling down into a quiet corner of his heart. They had fought each other to the death to begin with. To expect goodwill merely because they had joined hands for a little while was a luxury.
"Munch, munch. I'm not seeing a way out of this."
The Phantom Thief passed Shuten-doji the popcorn and asked, lightly, "Care for some? It's caramel."
Shuten-doji wore the look of a man who had lived a long time and never once met a lunatic quite like this. In life he himself had been a madman of some renown even among oni, but this one outdid the man he used to be.
"And why, exactly, are you eating that..."
"Kurk?"
The Snake God lifted its head out of the popcorn and cocked it. Shuten-doji shoved that irritating face aside.
Kugugugu...
The girl's mindscape shuddered again. Around Shuten-doji's heart, something throbbed with violent pain.
"We have no time."
Amaterasu, who had been holding the mindscape together so it would not collapse, spoke through a sheen of cold sweat. "The girl's flame is going out. We must hurry."
"But, Sister."
Susanoo sheared away roots that were creeping closer. "Unless the girl overcomes it herself, there is nothing we can do."
This was the girl's mindscape. She was its master, and they were uninvited guests. The tree was a robber that had occupied the house by force. Only Shuten-doji was free of that constraint, because he was the girl's own blood.
"Destroying that tree is physically impossible. What has taken root in the child will never come free of her. Not unless we kill the child."
"Not even worth considering."
Shluck. Shluck.
They had come to save the girl, and now they were speaking of killing her. If that was not putting the guest in the host's place, nothing was.
"It's getting bigger."
Even as the mirror swallowed it, the tree swelled like a balloon. More of it was multiplying than disappearing, and all the while—as if it knew its own weakness—it kept the girl shut inside its bark.
"We can't have been fighting that long, and look how huge it's gotten. Where is the energy coming from?"
"From us, I'd say."
Outside, the true bodies of the Three Noble Gods were feeding divine power in so the girl would not die. The trouble was that the power had gone to the wrong thing.
"Cut off the supply and the child dies at once. Keep supplying it, and demand will outrun what we can give..."
Fail to settle it here, and a subspecies of the Demon Tree would be born.
"There is... a way."
Amaterasu forced the words out.
"What is it?"
"In the end, we only have to separate the girl from that thing. Do that, and it can be solved, can it not?"
"Why state the obvi—"
Susanoo stopped. Her eyes were familiar. No—more than familiar. They were a look branded into him down to the marrow.
"It is simple. If there is prey that tastes better than the girl, will that thing not move?"
"Oh..."
The Phantom Thief smiled a meaningful smile. "From where I'm standing, it looks like we'd be eaten right along with her."
"Then we nearly kill it first."
"Isn't that exactly why we're stuck like this?"
"Is it truly impossible?"
Amaterasu's glare cut straight at him. "Is the chance of success truly zero?"
"Not zero. Only, with the people in here, it'll be rough going."
Driving the thing to the edge of death was the hard part from the start. Three chief gods, an oni king, and a snake god had gathered, and still they had failed to push the tree that far—only because the girl looked likely to die first, and so they had drawn back. Now it was larger, and stronger. They had neither the time nor the strength to force it back to that brink.
"Then if it is not the people here, is it possible?"
"You mean to ask the ones outside for help?"
"I do."
"The burden on the girl will be no small thing."
She had been able to endure the Three Noble Gods and the oni only because she already carried their power within her. The Phantom Thief was another matter. A phantom thief had to know how to slip into a person's heart, whenever and wherever.
"I will bear it."
"So. You'll hold the mindscape up so it doesn't collapse, take every burden laid on the girl and turn it back onto yourself, call my companions in, kill the tree, and serve as the bait while you're at it?"
"...Yes."
"Sister...!"
"Be quiet."
"Hm."
So the resolve she had shown back then had not been empty words.
"All right. We'll do it that way."
"You bastard!"
"Susanoo!"
"Sister! Are you trying to die? We're here too! Then why—why would you—"
"I bear the responsibility! The responsibility for driving this affair to such a pass!"
"Are you the only one who does?! Brother and I are also—"
"Susanoo!"
Tsukuyomi, straining to keep the mirror whole, stopped him cold. "It is Lady Amaterasu's decision. Do not argue."
Susanoo could not answer him.
Not Sister. Lady Amaterasu. The difference in that title seemed to speak Tsukuyomi's heart entire—the line between public duty and private blood. Before his brother's cold judgment, Susanoo swallowed something bitter.
Tsutsut.
Tsukuyomi's shoulder crumbled away like dust. Only his two arms remained, floating in the empty air, still holding the mirror. There was no time left. Susanoo said nothing more. He only offered his reverence to his sister, the great goddess of the sun.
"That will do."
The Phantom Thief snapped his fingers. "I've brought them."
His companions appeared out of the empty air.
"I'll keep the explanation short."
Crash!
The Yata Mirror shattered. The tree it had bound took back its freedom. Crack. Crack. The mindscape was being eaten. Tooth marks opened everywhere.
"Until Lady Amaterasu finishes her preparations—" The girl's tree came down on them, swollen with rage. "—kill that."
"Well? Easy, isn't it?"
"Ah. The child must not be hurt."
"Easy."
Pele drew the Divine Spear.
"Give me ten minutes."
The Divine Spear ran the tree through.
Today, the girl's suffering would end.