A border rift tore open beside them. Ran Yakumo practically fell through, her nine tails bristling, her composure shattered. "Beckitzer! We need your assistance! Now!" she cried, her voice tight with a panic they had never heard from the unflappable shikigami. "They're here! They've completely bypassed the outer defences!"
All eyes snapped to Ran. Reimu's widening in alarm, Marisa's narrowing in readiness, Sakuya's alarmed turned sharpening with cold calculation.
All except Nowa's. His gaze remained locked on the distant, mist-shrouded dense trees and beyond, his expression grimly satisfied.
"That's the source of the breach," he gestured as he stated, his voice a low, calm counterpoint to Ran's distress. He finally glanced at Ran. "A subtle, meta-level incursion. You wouldn't have seen it from the surface-level reality to conceptual-level. The method is weaving itself into the land's own structure signature."
Reimu was already flying in the air, her Gohei equipped. "It's toward the Misty Lake. Let's go."
Marisa shot after her, and Sakuya dropped her supply baggages, gracefully flew, following Reimu behind. Nowa, however, stood perfectly still.
"What are you doing, Beckitzer?! This is our survival!" Ran yelled, her voice frayed with panic. Marisa halted her broom mid-air, twisting to look back.
"Hey, Old-timer! Come on!" she shouted.
Nowa let out a weary sigh. "It's a pain… Just go already." Both of his hands swept out to his sides, and the Liquid Nano Armament flowed, forming two grappling hooks that shot out with a sharp crack. They anchored deep into the trunks of two trees on either side of the path, the black tendrils stretching tight like colossal bowstrings.
"I have to use a less destructive way to move, you know," he said. Then jumping back, the tendrils stretching even further, storing immense potential energy. With a final grunt of effort, he released his hold on the ground.
The world blurred. He was slingshotted forward, a dark-blue projectile rocketing through the forest canopy at impossible speed, the wind screaming past him as he overtook the others towards the lake.
Nowa landed not with a graceful touch, but with a devastating crunch that carved a small trench in the soft earth at the lake's edge. He stood up, brushing off his coat as Reimu and Marisa descended beside him, Sakuya and Ran appearing a moment later without a sound.
Before them, the air above Misty Lake shimmered with a sickening light. A tear in reality was slowly, inexorably widening, pulsing with a low, disharmonious hum.
"Well, we arrived early," Nowa remarked, his tone disturbingly casual. He turned his back on the nascent breach and walked towards a large tree at the treeline.
"What are you doing, Old-timer?!" Marisa yelled, gesturing at the unfolding cosmic disaster.
Nowa simply sat down and leaned against the tree trunk, crossing his arms and closing his eyes as if settling in for a nap. "Not in the mood," he stated flatly. "I said I'd help when I'm in the right mood, remember? So you deal with the opening act. I'll just be your life insurance." He tapped the rune revolver at his side. "Don't worry. The policy is still active."
Ran looked from the calmly seated Nowa to the growing rift, her face a mask of horror and fury. "This is not a game, Beckitzer! Our world is being invaded!"
Nowa didn't open his eyes. His hand dipped into his rune pouch and emerged with a single, red, gem-like rune. With a flick of his wrist, he threw it. The gem flew in a sharp arc and shattered against nothingness just before it reached the event horizon of the tearing reality.
Where it broke, a complex, spider-web pattern of crimson light flashed into existence, sealing over the tear like a cauterized wound. The rift still pulsed, but now it was a defined, gated orifice.
"Only one entity can enter at a time now," he said, his voice flat. He finally opened his eyes, but looked not at the rift, but at the sky. "If not for the meddling of your 'primordial god', I could have woven a permanent symbiotic rune defense yesterday. It would have handled this for you. So now, you deal with it. One at a time."
A stunned silence fell, broken only by the disharmonious hum of the stabilized rift. The crimson web pulsed once, and a single entity phased through. It was a nightmare of geometry and flesh: a triangular head dominated by bulging, multi-faceted predators eyes and a wide, lipless mouth. It landed solidly on the lake's surface without a ripple.
Reimu's eyes widened slightly, first in shock at Nowa's action, second at the nightmarish beings they were up against, then in sharp understanding. He hadn't abandoned them. He had just defined the rules of the conflict.
"One at a time..." Marisa grinned, cracking her knuckles, her Mini-Hakkero flaring to life. "Heh. Now that's a handicap I can work with. Thanks for the house rules, Old-timer!"
"Focus," Reimu commanded, raising her Gohei. "Sakuya, you have the first move. Disable it before the next one arrives."
"Understood." Sakuya raised her pocket watch. "Illusion world: The world!"
The world turned monochrome and silent as time stopped. She blurred, a dozen knives hung in the air around the monstrous entity. Sakuya dashed in a circle to line up her attack.
And then the impossible happened.
Within the frozen time, the entity's triangular head rotated with a series of audible, grinding clicks. Its bulging eyes locked onto her, and its wide mouth stretched into an impossibly wide, uncanny smile.
"Impossible...!" Sakuya muttered, her composure cracking for a split second.
On the sidelines, Nowa glanced at Sakuya slightly, observing the scene within the frozen world. 'I see, she controls time. The kind of menace of a power, but their opponent is… Time resistance? No... it's coded resistance, it's disturbingly prepared. It has abilities that don't acknowledge local temporal laws. Hmm, noted.' He closed his eyes once more
"The world resumed!" Sakuya released her hold on time. The world rushed back with a sound like a crashing wave. The volley of knives shot forward, only for the entity to deflect them all with a single, amorphous limb that swiped through the air in a blur, sending the silverware clattering harmlessly into the lake.
Sakuya landed beside Reimu, her expression graver than they had ever seen. "Reimu," she reported, her voice tight. "It is not bound by time!"
The declaration hung in the air, more terrifying than any roar. An enemy that could move in stopped time was an enemy that could not be pinned down, could not be ambushed, could not be predictable.
The triangular entity's mouth opened, and instead of a sound, a visible shockwave of distorted data, like corrupted computer code, shot around it.
"Get back!" Reimu yelled, a wide spiritual barrier was cast in front of the group, then it glitched pixels upon contact with the wave and that shattered her barrier like glass, then the area's greenery became gray and was so quiet, eliminating nearby spirits in one data shockwave. Reimu's face darkened with a grimace. "It killed the nearby spirit." she stated. Ran looked professional, and had flinched at the change of their landscape error.
The entity stopped its advance. Its bulging, multi-faceted eyes turned to look at the crimson web containing the rift. "FLAY-M NOH-ah…(Flame Noah…)" it hissed in their alien broken English words.
"いったい何を言っているんだ?(What the heck is it saying?)" Marisa asked in their native language, her focus locked on it.
It turned its gaze back to the group, its head moving with jerky, precise motions. It looked at Sakuya, dismissing her. Its eyes passed over Nowa, acknowledging the biggest threat to their operation but not engaging. It scanned Ran, then Marisa, its assessment cold. Finally, its gaze locked onto Reimu Hakurei.
A wide, uncanny smile stretched across its featureless face, a mockery of human expression that was profoundly disturbing.
"PRAI-meh-ree ob-JEK-tiv, FOWND,(Primary Objective, Found,)" it intoned, its voice flat. "kuh-MEN-sing ak-wih-ZI-shun. KLAY-ming PRAIS TAG.(Commencing acquisition. Claiming price tag.)"
The words it left its mouth was confusing to them, but the intent was clear and visible, the air shattered into action.
Sakuya didn't need time to be stopped. A dozen knives materialized in the air between the entity and Reimu, forming a silver wall. "何を言っているのかは分からないが,その意図は霊夢に向けられている.(We don't know what it's saying, but its intent is on you, Reimu.)" she stated, her voice colder than the mist off the lake.
Marisa, understanding the assignment, let out a wordless yell of fury, her Master Spark charging not to attack, but to create a blinding, protective barrier of light in front of her friend. "Back off, you glitchy freak!"
Ran's tails bristled, her body tensing to lunge, her youkai energy flaring in a brilliant protective ward.
But the entity was already moving. It didn't run; it phased, its body glitching through Sakuya's wall of knives as if they were mere illusions, its form solidifying right in front of Marisa's defensive spark.
Ran lunged, "Shiki Briliance—" But then she crumpled to the ground. She stared at her hands, her nine tails drooping limply, her aura flickering and dying. "W-What...? My power... it's gone!" Her eyes widened in dawning, absolute horror than the last. "My connection to Milady... it's severed! Something must have happened to Lady Yukari!"
Nowa overhearing her panic. 'Huh, Two-Pronged Attack. This Zero is brilliant then… Welp, she can handle it. She is strong with her power anyway.' Even with the clear distress of the shikigami couldn't make him move.
Ignoring the crisis, the entity manifested a spear-like limb from its arm and drove it forward. It pierced through Marisa's defensive spark, which shattered like glass. Reimu narrowly dodged the thrust by throwing herself to the side, hitting the wet ground.
"Reimu!" Marisa screamed, desperately trying to charge another spell. The triangular entity loomed over Reimu, its uncanny smile fixed, its spear-limb rising for a final, decisive strike.
Sakuya threw out three knives. "Light Speed: C. Ricochet!" They moved faster-than-light, ricocheting through a point of non-existing boundary, but her knives passed through its glitching form harmlessly. Marisa's spells fizzled. Ran was powerless on her knees.