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“Hey, you runts are Samurai, right?”
The group of four, resting from their last battle at the Hunter’s association bar, looked up at the scrappy old man who had walked up to their table and so rudely addressed them. Isabeau cocked her head, examining him with skepticism.
“Why do you ask?”
“Doesn’t matter- Well, it does- Ah, look, let me just ask you all straight up. Ya know what a car is?”
The table was silent. After a moment, Flynn shook his head.
“Is it a kind of relic, sir?”
“Relic- Sir? Well, Look. You’re perfect for this job, see? Can’t be trusting some thieving hunters with it- Ashura-kai spies, the lot of them-”
Walter sighed.
“Your point?”
“Alright, Alright. Look. I need you to get me my car. A car is- well, you’ve seen them. Those wrecked metal… carriages… all along the streets. See, they used to go fast, faster than anything, right? You could get in one and be halfway across the country before the sun set.”
The haggard man had a wistful look in his eyes.
“But look! I know where mine is. It must be just where I left it- at the parking garage in Shinjuku.
Only problem is- it’s being guarded by a powerful demon. Oboroguruma. Ashura-kai gave up on checking there years ago because it killed too many of their goons. But- you’re trustworthy- and strong! And-
He discreetly pulled open his pocket, revealing it to be stuffed with gleaming beads of life.
“I can pay ya. Handsomely.”
Flynn’s eyes lit up at this.
“What did you say your name was, sir?”
“Zeroes.”
Flynn extended his hand- both to shake on the deal, and accept a quest on the gauntlet that was equipped to that arm.
“We’ll take it.”
Zeroes slipped a key extending from a chunk of plastic with two inset buttons into Flynn’s hand.
“Deal.”
This is how the group of four came to find themselves at the base of a dilapidated parking lot, an inch from their lives, fighting a hideously warped motor vehicle with a skeleton behind the wheel.
“YoOUU!”
The demon’s eyes flashed in the dark, locked on to Flynn’s crouching form as he frantically tried to replace his destroyed demon from his stock, and accelerated directly towards him. He abandoned this endeavor to go into a roll to dodge the 2-ton mass of steel launching towards him. Before it got close, though, it was blown off course by a powerful attack from one of Walter’s demons.
“Hoy, Flynn, you alright?”
Flynn flashed a thumbs-up before returning to his stock and successfully summoning a new member of his party. The air gained a slight chill as his Sarasvati entered the field in a flash of green light and cast Mediarama, bringing the party back from the brink of death. Now restored, Jonathan and Isabeau poked their heads up from behind the wrecked cars they had tucked themselves behind.
“Now!”
Jonathan effortlessly hopped over the pile of steel and rebar, jabbing at his demonica to summon a Koppa Tengu, knocking over the demon car with a force attack. Isabeau followed up with a zio skill of her own, leaving the demon paralyzed.
“Hyah!
Walter jumped out from behind them with his sword drawn, skewering the skeleton through its head.
“OOOooOOHH! YouUUU.. KiLL…?”
With that, the driver exploded into a million particles of energy, and the car returned to normal.
Isabeau let out a cheer, inviting the rest of her fellows to allow themselves a brief celebration for having taken out the powerful foe. Walter wiped the sweat from his brow and hissed when he drew his hand over a nasty gash that he had endured in the fight.
“For that demon to make such a formidable opponent against all four of us… It’s no mystery why those Ashura-kai thugs had to leave this bounty alone, eh?”
Flynn nodded. They had routinely found themselves able to solve problems that the organization, for all its boasted power, could not rectify on their own. He then drew out his gauntlet to re-examine the quest they had been given- his mind had already returned to the prize waiting for them at the (Place). Jonathan peered over his shoulder.
“Well, Flynn, how shall we return this car to our friend at the association?”
Flynn looked at the instructions on his gauntlet. Then he looked again. And a third time.
“Is something wrong?”
“It says… we’re to drive it back.”
The party stared at Flynn, agape, then back to the car, then back at Flynn.
Isabeau looked taken aback.
“Does he give any instruction on the operation of the vehicle?”
Flynn studied the notes left on the quest for a concerningly short amount of time.
“It says… ‘Put the keys in the ignition. Put it in drive. Then drive it. It’s… a… car.”
His voice trailed off as the group realized what a profoundly unhelpful set of instructions they had been left with to escort this unfathomably valuable artifact to its owner. Jonathan coughed.
“You’re… certain that is all?”
Flynn turned the gauntlet out towards the party for all of them to see. That was, in fact, all. Walter broke the stunned atmosphere with a clap of his hands.
“It’s no worse figuring this out than nearly dying in battle, is it? Come, Flynn, take out the key. I’ll bet one of those buttons on it will work.”
The strange key was produced from Flynn’s coat pocket. Sure enough, after pressing the large button on the plastic section, the car produced a click. Flynn walked over to the side with the wheel and tugged on the door. It opened.
“Well, we saw how that demon was piloting it. Hop in!”
The party clambered in to the open seats of the vehicle with obvious unease, and slammed their doors shut. The car had landed in such a position that it was facing directly towards the mouth of the parking garage, out to the open street. Flynn, having taken the driver’s seat, had the initiative.
“Ignition… Should we look for a small fire? A piece of coal?”
Flynn furrowed his brow, trying to make sense of the words on his Gauntlet. Ignition? What did a key have to do with starting a fire? Walter got his attention by tapping his shoulder with the back of his hand.
“Hoy, look. I can see a keyhole behind the wheel from here.”
Leaning awkwardly, Flynn spotted it too, and inserted the keys. Nothing happened. He reached up and fiddled with them in an attempt to remove the keys and try again. Inadvertently, his hand knocked them forward, and they turned in the keyhole. With this, the car’s lights came on, and the samurai could feel it begin to vibrate softly. Isabeau put her hand up to the glass of the window.
“I suppose we’re getting somewhere now. What was next? Put it in ‘drive’?
After another few minutes of fumbling, Jonathan leaned forward and pointed at the knob in between the passenger and driver’s seats that had caught his eye.
“Does this move? Look- it has a “D” here- perhaps it stands for ‘Drive’?”
Flynn grabbed the handle and wrenched it into the position that Jonathan had indicated. Miraculously, they began to move. Jonathan gasped.
“Remarkable! But- how does the carriage move without a horse? Is it the unclean ones’ magic?”
The car began to slowly roll forward down the wrecked street. After a minute of advancing at this glacial pace, all present in the car were stricken by the feeling that the man they spoke with had greatly oversold the exhilarating speeds that a car could reach. Isabeau was the first to speak up and voice this concern.
“From what the man told us… Does this not seem a tad… Slow?”
Jonathan piped up from behind the driver’s seat.
“Perhaps it’s controlled by one of those two pedals you saw under the seat? Try pressing one.”
That sounded like a reasonable hypothesis. Flynn obediently depressed the smaller of the two pedals down to test it. All the way to the floor.
A cacophony of shrieks very unfitting of dignified warriors of Mikado erupted from the car as it lurched forward with an entirely unexpected level of force.
“My God, Flynn! Stop it! Stop the car!”
He had tried to stop it. But taking his foot off the pedal did not seem to slow it down enough to avoid crashing into the building that they were rapidly approaching. Thinking quickly, Flynn slammed his foot down on the larger pedal. This successfully prevented a head-on collision with the dilapidated storefront they were on course to hit. It also had the secondary effect of violently launching everyone in the car forward. Isabeau and Jonathan squawked as their heads hit the back of the seats in front of them.
Flynn, pressing his foot down on the brake pedal as if he was afraid it would spring back up, fumbled for the PRNDL and moved it back to the position they had found it in before ripping the keys out of the ignition. He folded his hands in his lap and simply stared straight ahead. Walter had adopted a similar position, his closed fist pressed against his mouth and his eyes fixed on some distant point outside the car window. Presumably, those in the back were also in a similar state. The entire car was quiet. Nobody spoke for a long time.
Eventually, Isabeau broke the silence.
“Shall- Shall we try that again?”
Jonathan, looking very pale, shook his head.
“I, for one, do not wish to spend any more time in this vehicle. We should simply send a message to the man and have him collect it himself.”
Walter, seemingly having made a miraculous recovery from his former shaken state, leaned around the passenger seat and scowled at Jonathan from over his shoulder.
“He needs us to bring it to him because he can’t come out here on his own! And besides, where’s your sense of adventure? I say riding in this ‘car’ is the most thrill I’ve had in an age!”
“Were you not just crying out for Flynn to stop the car but a few moments ago?”
“Hush, Jonathan.”
Flynn cleared his throat and spoke, breaking up their tiff.
“Someone else can try. I… Do not think I am fit to command the car.”
Isabeau leaned forward to pat Flynn on the shoulder.
“Oh, Flynn, don’t be so hard on-”
“Excellent! Let’s switch!”
Flynn dug the keys out from his lap and dropped them in Walter’s open palm as the two climbed out of their respective seats. Flynn was all too glad to get out of his position as group chauffeur. Jonathan quailed slightly at the prospect of Walter getting behind the wheel.
“Are you certain this is a good idea?”
Walter jammed the keys in the ignition, clearly trying to go through the motions of starting the car with an affectation of deftness.
“You worry too much. I’ve got an idea of how it works now.”
This was, apparently, not a completely untrue statement. Swiftly, Walter moved to put the car in reverse and backed up to the road once again. However, the credit he earned for this maneuver took a large hit when he began attempting to drive forward in a straight line. Nauseatingly, the car swerved from curb to curb as Walter made a doomed effort to one-handedly straighten out the vehicle while also taking it down the street at 40 miles an hour. As the other passengers held on for dear life to whatever was within arm’s reach, Isabeau posed the question that everyone was wondering, but too preoccupied with confronting their mortality to ask.
“Walter, how did you know to make it go backwards?
The spiky-haired samurai, one hand still on the wheel, twisted his body around to reach over Flynn’s lap to retrieve a small pamphlet that lay on the floor mat.
“You really must keep your eyes on the-”
“I found this in the secret compartment here. It only makes sense that there would be instructions for something like this, no?”
A small owner’s manual landed next to Isabeau as Walter lightly tossed it behind him. Isabeau grabbed it and leafed through the first few pages, which displayed diagrams and explanations for the various knobs, buttons and levers that had so perplexed them. Her brow furrowed.
“There’s- There are INSTRUCTIONS? Walter, stop the car. It is of the utmost importance that I review these.”
“You haven’t any faith in me. See, I’ve already got a knack for this!”
The car lurched as Walter vastly oversteered a left turn into a slight skid. As they rounded the street corner, a medium-sized humanoid demon came into view. A plan quickly formed in Walter's mind.
“Hoy, everyone, see that Oni on the road? How much experience do you think our demons will get from that?”
Everyone caught on to what he was getting at. Everyone thought it was a terrible idea.
“Walter, please, do not-”
Asking anyone else’s opinion on what he was about to do was purely for the sake of theatrics. His mind was already made up. Walter, finally moving his other hand to the wheel in a concerted effort to drive in a straight line, aligned himself with the lumbering demon, and floored it.
Everyone was a little more used to the speed of the car from their past several minutes of exposure therapy. Even the demon itself did not put up much resistance to an automobile slamming into its body. The thing that made everyone shriek in fear this time was the loud crunch of the car driving into the street light that the Oni had been standing directly in front of.
The party climbed out of the car to examine the damage. Jonathan, having fared much worse with this mode of travel than everyone else, immediately excused himself to puke the artisan bread he had purchased that morning out into a rusted trash can. There was now a sizable dent in the bumper, along with the steaming remains of the demon that had exploded over the hood. Walter lightly tapped the indentation with his foot, trying to appear unaffected by what had just happened.
“Well, it still w-”
“Keys. Now.”
Isabeau thrust her open hand before Walter before he could finish the thought. He really didn’t have it in him to argue with her, both because he didn’t want to get into a row when everyone was ready to be done with the whole escapade, and because, on some level, he had to acknowledge that it was probably the best way to make it back alive. Walter passed off the keys once again, and sheepishly crawled into the back seat next to Jonathan, who was slumped against the glass with his eyes squeezed shut- and still looking quite green. Isabeau plopped down into the drivers seat and spent several minutes reviewing the owners manual while Flynn rooted through the glove compartment in the passenger seat. Eventually, seated at the very edge of the driver’s seat, Isabeau began to lead them on what would be the longest and most successful car ride of any of their lives.
Eight minutes later, they arrived at their destination. The four samurai quickly exited, eager to escape the stifling environment of that deceptively short car ride. Zeroes was waiting there for them with barely contained glee. He skipped past his extremely frazzled-looking hirees to run his hand over the hood of the car, clicking his tongue at the large dent in the middle.
“Damn demons did a number on her in the past 20 years, huh?”
“Um- Well-”
Isabeau elbowed Jonathan in the kidney.
“Yes, it is a shame, isn’t it?”
Satisfied after giving his old set of wheels a once-over, Zeroes turned to the samurai again and began rooting through his pockets for their payment. Flynn bounced back and forth on his heels in excitement.
The moment of victory was interrupted by a loud whoosh as the car was engulfed in a bright flash of light. All present turned to watch, slack jawed, as the reason for all their hardship began to warp and shift back into an Oborogoruma in front of their eyes
“FIIiiNNALLY….GOOD PLACE! GooOOD THING FOR MY FORM! OLD ONE… GONE! YeSS!”
The demon, eyes flashing inside its newly fashioned vessel, then proceeded to turn around and drive the car back in the direction that the samurai had come from, leaving a cloud of dust in its wake. Everyone continued to stare at the spot that the car had been just a moment ago, its existence now only marked by a pair of skid marks. Jonathan eventually sheepishly turned to the rest of the group.
“Are we… going back for it?”
”No.”
Upon hearing the unanimous verdict, Jonathan let out a sigh of relief. Zeroes returned to his pocket and pulled out a measly two beads of life, tossing them towards Flynn. He looked disappointed, but was too tired to haggle for a better prize- and what he got was still valuable on its own. The older man sucked air through his teeth as he took one last look at the burnt rubber that represented the last evidence of a time of convenience and wealth in Tokyo.
“Suppose I owe you something, in the end. Well, I hope you all had fun driving her, at least. Hell, I imagine I’ll never get to do that again as long as I live.”
Isabeau found it within herself to force a smile.
“Yes. Thank you for the reward.”
He then slipped back away into a dark alley, releasing the four samurai from the tension of an outside observer. They all slumped to the ground, needing a moment to regain control of their heart rates and their nerves. Flynn’s gauntlet flashed, as Zeroes had apparently just confirmed the completion of the registered quest.
“Well, at least we never have to set foot in another one of those machines as long as we live.”
Everyone nodded in agreement. At that moment, Flynn’s gauntlet began to blink again, indicating a message from Mikado. As usual, equipped with a sixth sense for exactly when the Samurai wanted to hear his voice the least, it was Abbot Hugo. Flynn opened up the message, and turned up the volume on his gauntlet for all present to hear his message.
My Samurai, I see you have completed a quest regarding the operation of an automobile! I’ve created a special assignment just for the four of you to teach the other monks how to use ours. I’ll be counting on y-
Flynn immediately slammed the gauntlet’s small metal shutter over the screen, cutting off the audio.
“Did anyone hear that?”
“No.”
“Not I.”
“I believe the message may have been too garbled by the interference from the ceiling.”
“Good. Let’s go back to the bar.”
Flynn got up and stretched, and the rest followed suit. It was something Hugo could never comprehend from his spot in the Monastery, but as far as the Samurai were concerned, some relics were best left to the past residents of Tokyo.