((Well, that took forever. I've been watching some vintage anime lately (and lots of other anime), so my writing might reflect a little of that. It happens. :) And now we get into the meat of some action.))

43rd Scent: Blinded

Naoto tumbled out of a trio of vintage televisions stacked in the middle of a playground. She and her team came to understand that different sets in the human world lead to different areas in this world, so wondering why she was away from their usual Junes landing pad didn't cross her mind. She'd returned to human form immediately after hitting the soft ground, discarded her shoes and broke into a run barefoot down the twisted street of Magatsu Inaba. She needed all the traction she could get, and shoes—honestly—got in the way.

"Mitsuo!" Anger fueled her call into the red and black sky. "Where are you?!" The fog from this world was starting to leach into their world again. That was usually a sign that someone would go missing, or at least a kidnapping attempt would occur. If she could stop the dog demon here, they could avoid another incident. "Quit hiding like a child and face me!"

Rustling in the nearby brush brought her to a halt. Her claws extended from her fingertips on instinct. A lower level shadow -a fully formed but weak Magic Hand-burst forward at top speed. She leaped to the side to dodge it and swiped across its fingers with her claws. The shadow's digits plopped to the ground, wiggled like worms, and evaporated. What remained of it writhed and squirmed. Another strike across its palm destroyed it in a puff of dark smoke.

She snarled, running up a street flanked by dark houses up to the top of the hill. She stopped, catching her breath, and stared out over a field littered with boulders and jagged rocks jutting up out of the red earth. She knew this field. For a split second, it lived in her memory as a verdant, lush, open space speckled with colorful wild flowers. The row of abandoned two-story homes edging the upper end to her left seemed familiar as well.

It hit her memory like a hammer to drywall. This was the field she, the dog, and the fox were playing in when the red stain hit and the silver haired man spirited them away to the human world in a cardboard box. This…was home.

As soon as she inhaled to call out his name once more, the scene morphed, twisted, and reshaped into walls that stacked into clean rows of various colored cubes, like she'd walked into the inner workings of an 8-bit video game. The entire field soon filled the with corridors, 90 degree angles, dead-ends, and passage ways of a massive labyrinth.

"What is this place?" Naoto scooted her foot back when a tone went off around her. The sky darkened as a ceiling formed, blocking her view and caging her into this maze. A large, red, semi-transparent reticule bearing the word "START' blinked to life above her head. "A game?"

Mitsuo stepped into view at the far end of the first corner.

She blinked, then narrowed her eyes at the distant figure. "This is all just a game to you?"

He chuckled softly. "That's right. It's all just been one massive game, but it's not my creation. We can't affect this world that way. This belongs to Her. Don't you think I'm playing her game well?"

"Games have an objective—a prize. What are you after?"

"I'm serving the will of my Bonded. I tried to explain our role in life, but you just don't get it. You're caught up on this 'we're equals' bullshit. You never learn."

"You can't simply be serving your Bonded out of blind loyalty."

"If you think I have another motive, then find one. You like puzzles, Cat. Figure it out."

Before she could demand an answer, he took off out of sight. She rushed in without hesitation. The red 'START' sign flicked to green with an audible 'bong' sound when she passed beneath it.

Naoto kept her ears and eyes open as she ran through the halls at break-neck speed, barely keeping his heels in sight.

"Keep up, Cat!" His laughter and taunts left a breadcrumb trail of their own. "You were never as fast as the fox! Haha!"

She rounded corner after corner, turn after turn, narrowing her focus: take him down and get answers. She bolted down corridors bearing offshoots to multiple dead ends that would have trapped her had she not kept up with him.

The chase dumped them out into a massive, dark, square room with a high ceiling bearing only one spotlight shining in the center-the center of the labyrinth. And in its circle stood her target.

She strode forward. "Mitsuo, you're under arrest—again—for the murder of Kinshiro Mooroka, for being an accessory to the murders of Miyumi Yamano and Saki Konishi, for multiple counts of kidnapping, and for endangering the lives of Rise Kujikawa, Yukiko Amagi, Yu Narukami, and Chie Satonaka. You have a laundry list a mile long, Mitsuo. And you're going to pay for every single one."

"I never kidnapped that short-haired bitch, or the fox's human, so you can't pin that on me. They came here on their own. I only ever kidnapped one. Her scent of strawberries was too delicious to ignore. She was a target, but I wanted that job myself."

The thought of this animal demon lusting after Yukiko sent shivers of disgust up her spine. "You sick bastard. We've got you for murder. That's more than enough for the court to convict you without bringing this world into it. We'll get your accomplice on the others. Namatame's days are numbered."

"Your friends survived the weapon. I don't see the problem."

Her claws retracted and she clenched her fists. "It almost killed Yosuke!"

"It's not meant for us. He was stupid and got in the way!"

"It altered the nature of Chie's existence. She's not human anymore because of you."

"No. She's one of us now, fully and completely. Which proves that my master's creation works. Now that it's repaired, she knows exactly who she should go after next."

"You won't get a chance to complete her command. As soon as you set foot in the human world again, you're going to rot in jail for the rest of your life. You failed."

He shook his head. "You call yourself a yokai of logic, and yet you don't understand the fundamentals of an experiment? My master gained experience from my failures. That's what you get when you don't get what you want. And now," he chuckled in a whisper, "she has all the info she needs. She'll get exactly what she desires."

"And what's that," Naoto drew out the words with their own venom.

He stared back at her, into her, through her. "Everything."

Naoto's claws were out in a thought and leveled at his neck. Her voice lowered. "You can't hide in this world anymore. It's over."

"You're right. It is over." His face cracked into a mischievous grin beneath solid dark eyes, "for one of us."

Multiple saucer ceiling lights flared to life, illuminating the entire room in a wash of yellow at the sound of someone throwing a massive switch. The sudden brightness stabbed through her eyes. She squinted against it automatically for protection, shielding her face with her arm, and waited the few brief seconds for her vision to adjust. When she brought the world into focus again, she found Mitsuo still grinning in victory. The room held only one way in or out—the way she'd entered. Her heart dropped, because the light revealed more than just her only escape.

They weren't alone.

Dozens of Shadows morphed and shifted around them in a ring of pure darkness. Featureless hands greedily groped the cubed floor pulling their bulbous bodies toward the two animal demons in the center. Masks of blue, red, and gold zeroed in on them with hungry intent.

"Maya," Naoto breathed. She began to tremble. Maya were unformed Shadows. These were the monsters that hunted animal demons for food, the ones responsible for the annihilation of their class. They were the voids of humanities dark sides. Their primary desire was to consume as many animal demons as they could and use the energy from the human soul aspect within them to fill that void and transform into their complete, powerful state.

She turned 360 degrees. The room filled with their growls and snarls as they crept in like slime on the two young yokai in the center. Dozens of Maya existed between them and their escape. They were completely surrounded.

She was trapped. He'd used her pain clouding her judgement to lead her here and stalled for time.

Her tail fluffed out.

As she feared, he didn't turn himself in out of guilt. This was planned.

Mitsuo had lured her into the heart of a Shadow Den.

Panic pulsed through her body. "You tricked me."

He frowned. "I didn't want to do this. Part of me still thinks of you as a sister, but my master says you and your friends are a problem. You know it's impossible to disobey a direct command."

"Are you insane, you imbecile? You'll die here, too! Your Bonded just signed your death warrant. She doesn't love you!" Naoto kept the claws of both hands out in defense as the horde inched closer. "You're just a tool to her!"

"Wrong again," He swiped her hat from her had before she could blink and stepped back -his proof that he did the job. "She loves me. She loves me so much, that she gave me an out. You're the only one who's going to die here."

She swiped at a reaching red masked Maya that got too close.

"Did you ever wonder why that shadow that ate our teacher went after the fox first?" he growled, cautiously stepping back. "Because he's more powerful than we are. When I remembered that detail and told my Bonded, she cleared it all up for me. Maya are attracted to the strongest human soul aspect they can find. Put a bunch of us in a room with them, and they'll go for the most powerful one every single time. In this situation," He smiled, "That would be you, Naoto."

"You can't know that. You're betting our lives on a hunch," she argued. Mostly it was to keep him here and force him to help both of them escape, and partially out of curiosity.

"You like facts, Detective Prince? Here's one for you: All She had to do was touch you to gauge the level of your soul aspect's strength. You are someone's discarded sense of Justice. They gave it up, threw it away like garbage, and here you are. The human you came from is probably a criminal out there right now. I hate to admit it, but the soul aspect inside of you is stronger than the one inside of me. Every Shadow in here will go after you first. For once, it pays to be weak." He continued to step backwards. Sure enough, the closest Maya oozed around his feet, ignoring him like he was a stone in their way.

"Mitsuo!" She shredded another Maya and spun to take out a third red masked.

"Since this is the last I'll see you, I'll tell you one other fact: The fox is not a human soul aspect. He's something else. Maya would tear through each other just to get to him."

Naoto's thoughts raced to Yosuke's revelation that he still wanted to help bring Mitsuo back. "If you remember our life here before, then you remember that Yosuke stood up for you. Don't do this. You were our friend once."

"You don't remember me at all!"

"You know why!" She slashed in a combination of strikes that shredded a blue masked Maya into smoke. "The Silver Haired Man blocked our memories!"

"And your Bonded hasn't bothered to remove it! You have a name, Naoto! The command can't be removed, but it's just a stupid memory block."

That fact shot through her head. Kanji had the power to bring her memory back.

Mitsuo neared the exit, placing her hat on top of his head. "Namatame should be at that little girl's house by now. When they cross into this world, I'll give them your regards." With a smirk and a tilt of her hat, he turned tail and bolted out of the room

Namatame can cross between worlds?! "Mitsuo!" She called after him. "Dammit." She raised her hands, claws out as the shadows neared. Steeling her strength she lashed out at two of the red masked Maya, then a blue masked one. Another red one's bulbous body lurched for her. She leaped into the air, spun, and sliced up its back, destroying it. One of the blue masked Shadows snatched her foot out from under her. She cried out as she hit the floor. She rammed her foot into its face, and slashed across its arm, severing it. Another volley of scratches, and it met its end.

She scrambled to her feet and ran for the door, only to be blocked by a wall of enemies. Another larger, blue masked Maya met its end at her claws. For every Shadow she destroyed another took its place.

The gold masked Maya -the strongest ones-were waiting for her to tire herself out handling the weaker ones. She could imagine them salivating in the back impatiently waiting.

She backed up, panting. There were too many of them. Once she became too exhausted and lost control over her change skill, they would come in for the kill. Her heart raced in terror as she realized she would experience the greatest nightmare of all animal demons.

All she could think of was getting out of there and getting back to Kanji. And if she couldn't, her death would break him. It was her job to protect her Bonded. She wasn't a servant, but that was defiantly her role. He was the only family she had left. She bit her lip as tears streamed down her face.

Her teeth clenched in resolve. Terrified or not, alone and screaming inside or not, she would not let herself be eaten without a fight. Naoto curled her fingers into hooks, crouched low, and with a battle cry pulled from the depths of her soul shooting the barbs of every emotion into her prey, she charged.

TBC