#booktwo

Sixty years in the past, the Wicked’s lair…

Not for the first time since his existence and especially during this latest scheme of trying to destroy the Yo-kai Watch, Unfairy wondered if he was being affected by his own powers as he walked into his room, his latest assignment tucked under his arm.

While he certainly didn’t mind the easy assignment of just spying on the group of kids and Yo-kai trying to stop Dame Dedtime’s plans and delaying any important progress they were making, he certainly didn’t like the implication that it was because the trio of Yo-kai that did originally took care of that, and failed repeatedly once Unfairy really thought about it, had been given a more important assignment rather than letting him take a break from spreading his own discord among the Bonies and Fleshies, which would have nearly made him pass out from exhaustion on multiple occasions if he didn’t have enough snacks on hand.

Speaking of which, he pulled out a box of Fruit Drops from his pockets, scowling when he opened it and saw the few candies left inside. He sighed in annoyance before popping one of the candies into his mouth, closing the box, and pocketing it again. He had planned to go to Galleria Boulevard to pick up more snacks through the not-so-legal manner of sneaking into the closed candy shop and swiping a few treats that probably wouldn’t have been missed from the storage area when he had been called back to the lair to take care of this assignment.

Of course, now the shop was probably open by now with people keeping an eye on the products being sold, not to mention that he didn’t want to risk making Dame Dedtime mad by shirking his duties, even if it would’ve only for a minute or so.

If it hadn’t been for the fact that he didn’t want it to be super obvious to the Bonies and Fleshies that he was responsible for spreading some of the discord among them, he would’ve been more than glad to use his Drain Attribute powers on them to keep himself from falling into total exhaustion.

Unfairy then proceeded to suck on the singular candy as he left the lair, hoping that luck would be on his side and he wouldn’t have to keep an eye on them for too long. After all, there was still a war, no matter how dumb the reason for it was, that the Wickeds planned to take advantage of.

*****

Same time period, Harrisville…

The kids waited at the secret base for Nathaniel and Kenny to return from setting up something that was supposed to help them with getting ready to take down the Wicked Yo-kai.

Nate and Katie nervously fiddled with their Yo-kai Watches, now officially at A rank after a quick stop at Timer’s and More in their time period, while Lucas once again made sure that they had enough supplies so that they didn’t need to possibly ditch this time period to pick up more stuff, along with the information they would need to think up and plan with Nathaniel and Kenny to keep the Wickeds from taking advantage of the war between the Bonies and Fleshies.

Their Yo-kai companions were hoping that they could pull this off and be able to get home to their time period safely, especially Whisper and Jibanyan. They had left Buchinyan with Shogunyan at present day Shoten Temple so that there wasn’t any risk of him getting lost or captured during all of this and while they were aware that this was the best decision, they missed him terribly.

At that moment, Nathaniel and Kenny came back with an elderly calico nekomata with purple flames on the ends of his twin tails wearing a green cloak and carrying a walking stick following behind them.

Kenny gestured to the elderly nekomata and said,

“This is Master Nyada. He helped us set up the three trials that will help you get ready to take down the Wicked Yo-kai.”

The elderly nekomata just gave a sad smile as he said,

“The trials were originally something the boys did for fun before all of this happened, but doing them will still help you out in the long run.”

Whisper looked at Nyada as if he was trying to remember something about him as the kids nodded and Nate said,

“Okay. What’s the first trial?”

*****

Nate asked as he drank from a bottle of water, resting from completing the first trial,

“How was he able to run so fast?”

The first trial, dubbed ‘The Trial of Courage’, involved trying to catch Master Nyada in under a minute. Before they did the trial, they did ask how catching him in under a minute was supposed to be connected to courage and the explanation they had received involved being able to quickly stop evil-doers and being able to quickly save someone.

While they weren’t quite sure how often that sort of thing would happen, Nate, Katie, and Lucas at least knew that with the kind of lifestyle they have, it was bound to come up sooner or later.

It did take them a few tries to actually catch Nyada, considering how crafty he was, but in the end, it took Nate 45 seconds, Katie 30 seconds, and Lucas 35 seconds to finally catch him.

The elderly nekomata, who was somehow not exhausted from basically doing the trial repeatedly, just gave a mischievous grin and explained,

“Oh, that’s a little secret I don’t plan to reveal anytime soon. As soon as you’re ready, we’ll move on to the next trial, The Trial of Love.”

*****

Well, that was certainly entertaining for the first couple minutes.

Unfairy thought as he watched the group with a pair of binoculars from the roof of one of the houses in Harrisville. To avoid setting off the Model Zeroes, he had to watch the group from a distance and while he hated that he wouldn’t be able to hear anything they were saying from where he currently was, it was better than getting caught because he wasn’t aware of how far the Model Zeroes could detect a Yo-kai.

He thankfully didn’t have to worry about anyone else seeing him up there due to all of the Yo-kai that lived in Harrisville having gone to Flatpot Plains or Springdale, so he didn’t have to waste his energy keeping himself invisible all the time.

Not that he was going to use up his energy to screw up something as minor as a bunch of kids just running around to see who was the fastest. It didn’t look important enough and he only had so many candies left. He would only use his energy to go full on invisible if the group was moving to somewhere that wasn’t within his current seeing range and had to follow them without tipping them off.

Though, he would be lying if he didn’t admit that some part of him kinda wanted to reveal himself to them early and force them to rush through everything just to have a shot at stopping the Wickeds, only to get sloppy and screw everything up.

He just didn’t bother to go through with it or even ask about doing it in the report he just sent because he didn’t want to hear whatever lecture Dame Dedtime would come up with to berate him for doing something that had no guarantee of success for the Wickeds and berate him even further.

For now, he would stay here and continue to watch them until something more important than seeing who can run the fastest came up that would be worth the risk of potentially getting caught and could delay the group, even if it was for a short while.

*****

The Trail of Love sounded simple enough when it was explained to them, head to a specific house and find five kittens that a friend of Nyada’s was willing to let him borrow for the trail in that area in under two minutes.

The first catch was they had to do the trail one at a time so that it wouldn’t appear that the work wasn’t being done equally among them. That was fair enough.

The second catch was that the kittens would sometimes move from their intended spots and two of them were rather mischievous if they saw that you could see them moving somewhere else. If they were caught, they would then purposely run faster than usual and hide in a spot that would make it difficult for the kids to just grab them.

Thankfully, Hovernyan had promised to keep the kittens from going towards the river, since that house happened to be located in a spot close to the river, though that was the only help the kids would be getting for this trail.

It was supposed to test their compassion for others, plus their patience in case things weren’t going as smoothly as they would like.

It had taken Nate one minute and 40 seconds to complete the trail because the two mischievous kittens decided to climb a tree after Nate had managed to find the first three in thirty seconds and it had taken him a minute and ten seconds altogether for him to climb up the tree and get the kittens down one at a time.

Katie had an easier time with her having only taken 40 seconds to get all of the kittens. When she had ran into the mischievous kittens, she had managed to win them over when they had hidden in a pile of gardening supplies by taking her hair ribbon off and placing it on the ground in front of them, slowly dragging the ribbon towards her and watching as they pounced on it until they got within reach and she scooped up both of them with no issues.

Lucas had the most trouble with him coming in at a minute and 50 seconds. As a Yo-kai, he could understand what the cats were saying and he knew that they could tell that he was part of a powerful line of Yo-kai. He took the longest because he was spending that time trying to convince the kittens that they didn’t have to be so skittish around him because of his aura. Ironically enough, the two mischievous kittens had been the easiest and quickest for him to convince with him only having to take twenty seconds each for both of them.

Nyada then sent the kittens back to their mother, who had been waiting outside of where the trail was taking place, and said to the group,

“Well, now that trail has been taken care of, let’s head to Mount Middleton for the final trail.”

*****

Unfairy so wished that he could leave his post. He had gotten bored of watching the kids gathering kittens after the first minute and it was only his fear of Dame Dedtime’s retribution that kept him rooted to this spot.

He envied his siblings for not having a huge fear of their mother’s retribution and he especially envied the group he was spying on.

If he hadn’t known that they were doing this because they were getting ready to deal with the Wicked Yo-kai, he would’ve just assumed that they were just having their own weird brand of fun.

The members of the group he was spying on appeared to be pretty close too. Another thing he envied.

He and his siblings had been close once upon a time, but after years upon years of being on separate missions to spread their personal discords among humans and Yo-kai around Japan and the world outside of it, sometimes being forced to go quiet for undetermined periods of time because of something out of their control, and barely being able to just meet up somewhere for old times sake rather than because all of them were needed by Dame Dedtime for something very important, it was hard to tell whether or not he was the only one of the Elite siblings that wished to know if they could ever be close as they had been before if they were given enough time to do so.

Unfairy sighed as he watched the group leave and turned invisible to follow after them. Wherever they were going, it would at least be a change of scenery.

*****

The fact that there was an A Rank Watch Lock door was the first hint that the final trail wasn’t going to be easy.

The second hint was that Nathaniel and Kenny said that this trail was called the Trail of Moxie, but only said that they had to defeat a powerful Yo-kai named Demuncher and said not to worry about how long it took them to finish this trail before they claimed to have to pick up something and would be back as soon as they could before leaving them.

The third and final hint was that when Nyada walked them to the trail, he had led them to a giant yellow Yo-kai just sleeping there, who had to be Demuncher, and picked up a rock.

Whisper eyed the rock in Nyada’s paw warily and asked,

“Umm…what are you planning to do with that rock?”

As his way of answering, Nyada causally threw the rock at the giant Yo-kai, told the group to have their Yo-kai out and ready to battle Demuncher, and fled as the giant Yo-kai was starting to wake up.

“OW! Who disturbed my sleep?!”

He looked to the group that happened to be within fighting range and yelled,

“I’ll show you what happens to people that enrage me!”

*****

The group just had enough time to pull out the six Yo-kai they had on hand before they found themselves battling Demuncher.

As usual, Jibanyan and the Komainu Brothers were in the front row and the back row contained Tattletell, Brushido, and Tongus. Jibanyan started off by barely dodging a punch from Demuncher, taking a small bit of damage that he paid back to Demuncher by burning his hand with one of his tail flames, dealing the same amount plus a little extra since he hadn’t missed his target.

Komajiro then sent a lightning attack at him, but when he noticed that it hadn’t done a lot of damage to Demuncher compared to Jibanyan burning his hand and when Demuncher had thrown a rock at him as payback for the lightning strike, he was able to alert the other fighters that Demuncher was an Earth Attribute Yo-kai. Komasan then threw some fireballs towards Demuncher as retribution for the rock thrown at his younger twin, which he was slow to dodge considering his large stature, resulting in a good amount of damage being dealt.

Jibanyan unleashed his Paws of Fury Soultimate to keep Demuncher distracted as the Komainu Brothers prepared to do a combo attack of their Spirit Dance and Wild Dance Soultimates. Demuncher flicked Jibanyan off once he was finished, but it was enough time for the two brothers to let off their combo attack before all three Yo-kai were damaged by Demuncher throwing some additional rocks at them.

The three Yo-kai in the front retreated to the back row, grateful for the healing from Tattletell and Tongus before the three Yo-kai that were now in front took their turns with dealing their own damage to Demuncher. Brushido used his broom to help Tattletell leap up towards Demuncher to land one of her slaps on him while he froze the large Yo-kai’s feet and waited until Tattletell had landed safely on Tongus before he swept his broom under Demuncher’s feet, breaking his ice and causing the giant Yo-kai to fall to the ground.

Both attacks did a good amount of damage and after the current attacking row had their fun with battling the giant Yo-kai, with Tongus even getting a few hits in in an attempt to stop him from using his Soultimate on her, the main three battlers were brought back to the front row and with a well-timed team attack, Jibanyan and the Komainu Brothers dealt the final blow and watched as Demuncher fell to his knees and admitted defeat.

*****

“Congratulations on completing all of the trails, you guys!”

The group saw Nathaniel, Kenny, and their grandfather’s group of Yo-kai friends coming up the mountain path to congratulate the group.

Demuncher then stood up, brushed the dirt off his cloth, and said to Nyada as he happened to show up,

“I have to hand it to you, sir. You really know how to pick them.”

Nyada made a cat smile as he said,

“Of course I do. I wouldn’t send just anyone up against my star pupil.”

There was a bit of silence from the group that had just battled Demuncher before Whisper finally broke the ice,

“We were never in any real danger?”

“Of course not. If I just told you outright that he was just acting, you wouldn’t have really put your heart and soul into the battle. The Trail of Moxie is to show that you’re willing to fight when you have no other options left.”

He then clasped his paws together and said seriously,

“And thus ends the Trails of Moximous Mask.”

It took Nate and Katie a moment to realize why he said that and facepalmed as they muttered,

“Of course they were called that.”

Nyada glanced at them and gestured to his friend group and said,

“My best friends are literally superhero enthusiasts. You honestly think I wasn’t going to do something that this to make their training more interesting?”

Before they could comment, Hovernyan said,

“Now, since you’ve completed the trails and our Yo-kai friend group is safely together again, we need to discuss stuff.”

Lucas perked up and asked,

“Like what we’re going to do about the Generals and preventing them from going to war?”

Hovernyan nodded,

“Exactly. You three have information from your future about the battle and when the Wickeds officially took advantage of it and when it was able to officially end. Now, your present is part of the ‘slightly perfect timeline’, so if we can just use the information you have, we can hopefully change things around and make your present part of the ‘truly perfect timeline!”

Kenny then presented Nate, Katie, Lucas, and the Yo-kai with them a bag with purple scarves, bandanas, and ribbons before explaining,

“Our best bet is to avoid picking between the Bonies and Fleshies if we want this to work, so we decided to form a third party. Wearing a red scarf, bandana, or ribbon identifies you as a Bony and wearing a blue scarf, bandanas, or ribbon identifies you as a Fleshy, so we decided to combine the two colors and have our third party wear purple scarves, bandanas, or ribbons as our way to identify ourselves as members of the currently unnamed third party.”

Nate and Lucas took a purple bandana each and Katie took a purple ribbon from the bag, then watched as the others made their decisions from the bag as well. Nate, Lucas, the Komainu Brothers, Faux Kappa, and Predictabul now wore a purple bandana, Jibanyan, Hovernyan, Master Nyada, Nathaniel, Kenny, and Gnomey were wearing purple scarves, and Katie, Whisper, Mermaiden, and Pallysol were wearing purple ribbons. When the others had putting on their new accessories, Katie took down her signature pink hair ribbon and replaced it with the purple ribbon so that it could be easily seen.

Katie then admitted as she was putting the pink ribbon into the bag for safe keeping,

“It’s weird not wearing this, but it’s for a good cause. We just need to pick someone to act as the general for our group. Maybe the Generals will be more willing to talk to whoever was in charge of us.”

Pallysol looked at Whisper and said,

“Technically, out of all of us here, you have experience in dealing with war before. You’re probably our best bet here.”

Whisper clarified with a stammer and faint pink blush,

“A-as a private tactician to a warlord, not a battler!”

Pallysol said with a bit of a blush,

“Well, you had to give your former boss ideas to work from, didn’t you? I’m just saying you might be able to work the same magic on our two warring generals and they might be willing to take you more seriously if you presented yourself as a general.”

Whisper looked around at the group and after some consideration, he said,

“I’ll only be the general for this group until we can deal with the Wickeds. After that, I’ll hand the position of the Psychics over to someone else that’s actually from this time period.”

Jibanyan looked at Whisper curiously and asked,

“Is the Psychics our official group name or…?”

Whisper shrugged,

“Unless someone has something better.”

The group started chanting the group name repeatedly, so it was safe to say it was a great name for them.

Whisper straightened up, feeling some pride in his chest as he said,

“Now, first order of business. Let’s get off this mountain and look over the information so that we can get enough of a head start to keep the Wickeds from gaining the advantage this time around!”

With that said, everyone started heading down the mountain, eager to put a stop to the Wickeds plans in one way or another.

*****

Unfairy had been too awestruck by the battle to do anything to make the battle unfair, even when there had been a few points during the battle where no one would’ve been to tell right away that he had gotten involved.

Not that he had mentioned it in the report he had sent during the middle of the battle. He may have fudged the report a bit and claimed that the kids were having more difficulty with battling him than what was actually happening and it would take a while for them to be finished.

Now as he watched the one group of humans and Yo-kai congratulate the other group that had been battling Demuncher, he couldn’t help but feel sad.

Could this have been the type of comradery that he could’ve had with the other Elites, if things had been different?

Unfairy got up from the tree branch that he had been sitting on. He was tired of this. He was tired of fretting about his place among the Wicked Elites and trying to gain respect from Dame Dedtime, who barely gave it to him as it is. He was tired of dwelling on whether things could really change for him or any of the Wickeds if they were successful.

He sighed as he leaned against the tree trunk. It wasn’t like he just bail out of the entire plan at this stage, not if he didn’t want to deal with fighting the other Elites and possibly Dame Dedtime for being a traitorous coward. He also couldn’t just walk up to the humans and Yo-kai fighting against the Wicked Yo-kai and offer his assistance. They would immediately suspect that he was trying to pull something on them.

He glanced at the almost empty Fruit Drops box in his hand just as another paper appeared in his hands. He glanced at the paper telling him to spread his discord around Galleria Boulevard, then to head to Flatpot Plains to keep the two generals and their teams busy long enough for the other Wicked Elites to get everything else set up.

He had originally planned to take advantage of the discord to slip into the candy shop and pick up some more candy and snacks, but if he held off on that and just used up the last of the Fruit Drops he had…

That would be just enough power for him to invisibly spread enough of his discord around Galleria Boulevard to keep the group from reaching Flatpot Plains right away, just to appease Dame Dedtime, then he would use up the rest of his energy to spread discord among the Bonies and Fleshies in Flatpot Plains, including the two generals.

He took one more glance to see that the groups were busy taking things out of a bag and with a mischievous smile on his face coming from him having no plans to tell Dame Dedtime that the group was finished battling Demuncher, Unfairy teleported away to do what he would consider his best work yet.

*****

As the group happily walked down the path to the train station after reviewing the information and being ready to set their plan of hopefully having a peaceful discussion with the Generals Arachnus and Toadal Dude in motion, they saw Smogmella on the path near the train station, she rushed over to the group.

“Everything has gone to absolute chaos! First, almost every Yo-kai on Galleria Boulevard is fighting with each other over every little thing that’s not even related to the main Bony and Fleshy debate, with the ones not involved in the excessive arguing already trying to flee the area to who knows where until everything has calmed down. Then when I went to the battlefield to get the generals to see what was happening, the battlefield was just as bad, if not worse! I couldn’t even keep track of the generals because of how busy they were on the battlefield, which would’ve made trying to talk to them a total waste of time!”

She then clasped Hovernyan’s paws as she continued,

“That’s when I remembered that you’re one of the few Yo-kai I know of that haven’t joined either side and I figured that the group I had seen you with must be on the same page as you, otherwise they would’ve spoken up about whether the Bonies or Fleshies side was better. Will all of you help me with dealing with this chaos?”

The group needed no further prompting as they nodded and Hovernyan said,

“You have my word as a member of the Psychics that we will get to the bottom of this and put an end to this chaos.”

“The Psychics? You’re your own group, then?”

“We’re built up of the Yo-kai and humans that have no desire to take part in any of the Bonies and Fleshies debates. We may like both things that they are debating about or we may prefer a third choice. Regardless, we just wish for things to not get super out of hand. You get that, right?”

Smogmella nodded and asked,

“May I join you, then? I’m tired of being pressured to join one group or the other.”

Hovernyan handed Smogmella a purple scarf she then wrapped around her neck as he said warmly,

“Welcome to the Psychics, Smogmella. We’re glad to have you aboard.”

With a new member in tow, everyone rushed down to the train station by foot, hoping that they could still find a way to put an end to the Wicked’s plan for good.

Previous Chapter: https://libraryofrewrita.tumblr.com/post/183172176579/chapter-22-into-the-eye-of-the-storm