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Our Days, Before The Blue Sky

[hr]

"Come on, move it, you lazy ingrates, or there's gonna be hell to pay and dinner to lose!"

The harsh voice echoed throughout the sweltering chamber, punctuated by the creak of metal wheels. The scarcely maintained wheels, attached to wooden pushcarts in roughly equal condition, protested loudly as they rolled over searing coals. The same couldn't be said for the cat-like demons employed to push the carts, down in the Hell of Blazing Fires. The "kasha", as these demons were called, only occasionally grumbled under their breaths as they plodded along, carrying the fuel that kept the everlasting fire going.

... My name is Kaenbyou Rin, and I am one of those kasha. Every day since I was born from the hellfire, I cart along corpses into the hell chambers to be disposed of, and manage the wayward souls that try to escape. It's a tough job, to be honest, but our master, Satori-sama, is very kind. Do I do it just for her sake? Not really. Sometimes I get to eat some of the corpses. Satori-sama usually stops me when she catches me, though. Says it's really bad for me, but she never really explained why.

"Hey, what the hell are you daydreaming about?! Get moving! I want all of these completely incinerated by the time the last bell rings!"

Still, ever since she left to search for her sister, who disappeared a few weeks ago, these ogre stand-ins she appointed to look over us have been really harsh. I'm definitely going to complain about them to Satori-sama when she comes back. These new corpses didn't seem to get any lighter either, and it takes me all my strength to lug these human boulders to be cremated.

"-- Ah, it's stuck on something."

Grumbling to myself, I bent down under the cart, and dislodged the thing that was stuck under one of the cart's wheels. "Hm? What's this supposed to be?" I asked no one in particular, as I held up a small orange marble of some sort, attached to a small rope like a necklace. It had an oddly mesmerizing glow, and as I cupped it inside my hands, I could see the faint design of what looked like a black eye inside the marble. Compared to the hell furnaces' slow burn, the light coming from this marble was full of life, and very pretty.

"She might like it," I said to myself.

Then, I stuck it in my pocket, and proceeded to forget about it to think about dinner instead. "Maybe we'll have magmafish today!"

[hr]

"Oriiiiin!"

As much as I try to, I can never manage to dodge her flying tackles, and get knocked down every time.

"U-Utsuho, get off me. You're going to break something one day," I complained half-heartedly.

"Orin, how many times do I have to tell you, call me Okuu! O-kuu!"

"All right, all right, Okuu, now please, could you get off me?"

The inconsiderate person that knocked me over was my best friend, named Reiuji Utsuho, or "Okuu", as she insists on being called. She told me that Satori-sama gave her that nickname once, from a reading on the kanji in her name. Utsuho herself couldn't read the kanji from her own name, so it was pretty believable. Anyway, as everyone could see from her small jet-black wings, she belongs in the category of "hell raven", supposedly born from the darkness of the Hell of Blazing Fires. For someone born out of the darkness, though, her personality sure seemed to be unbearably bright, as she showed me firsthand by ambushing me every day after work.

"Oh, what's this in your pocket, Orin? Did you get me a present? Wow! It's so shiny! Can I have it? Can I have it? Pleeeeease?"

She had fished out the necklace I had found earlier from my pocket, holding it up above her head. "Sure, sure. It probably looks better on you anyway," I said, pushing her hands down to let her put it on. Fortunately, I was right, it did look good on her; the trinket's sparkle around her neck matched Utsuho's blindingly radiant grin.

"Alright! Looks good! Now come on, I've got something to show you!" Utsuho said, before dragging me by the hand somewhere.

"Wait, where are we going? The last bell's going to ring soon, and the big oni chief gets really angry if we're late for lights-out."

"It'll only take a little while! Besides, after this, we won't need to worry about any stupid lights-out!"

I was about to ask her what she meant, when she quickly ground to a halt and looked up, causing me to follow suit. Towering above us was a giant hell furnace on its side, strapped tight to one of the corpse pushcarts with a bunch of metal chains. Flying about it were some of Utsuho's smaller hell raven friends, whom she bellowed loudly to. "Yo! Are you guys ready?!"

"Almost, Okuu!" one of them said, while whacking on the hell furnace with what looked like a club. I hoped I was wrong, but it looked like one of the clubs the ogres hefted around while on duty.

"Uh, what is it that you guys are doing?" I asked, even though I was almost sure I didn't want to hear the answer.

Utsuho spun around, and planted her hands on my shoulders, glaring straight at my face. "Listen, Orin. Hell belongs to us! It doesn't belong to those smelly oni! We were born here, and we're gonna show them what's what so they can't bully us anymore!"

"Er, that doesn't really answer my question..."

"I've got it all figured out! Don't ask questions!" she retorted confidently.

"... I guess that means you can't answer it."

"Okuu! We're ready!" one of the ravens said.

"All right! Let's go, Orin!"

Before I could protest, Utsuho had yanked me up towards the top of the contraption, where a small makeshift saddle separated us from the opening of the furnace. Utsuho pulled out a large white blanket from somewhere, and tied it around her neck, draping it over her wings. With her ensemble complete, she pointed forward and exclaimed, "Nobody can stop the invincible Chirei-dan! Let's gooooo!". Then, one of her raven comrades smacked the furnace with an oni club. It began to rumble beneath us, before erupting with a huge plume of fire, accelerating the cart forward rapidly.

"O-Okuu?! What's the meaning of this?!" I managed to sputter out in the middle of the high-speed explosion.

"Alright, Orin! We're going to use this rocket to bust out of the Underground right up to the surface, and we're gonna find Satori-sama ourselves!" said Okuu. "We'll show those oni who's boss! Forwaaaaard!"

"This is crazy! I'm going to dieeeee!" I yelled, holding onto the flimsy saddle for dear life.

[hr]

A little while later, we were all sitting down in front of a holding cage. Predictably, the rocket had crashed into a wall before it had gotten anywhere substantial. Luckily, the hell furnace escaped unexploded somehow, in a miraculous outcome. Meanwhile, we were getting verbally bashed by the chief oni. Every member of the group had been bound by ropes, including me, even though I didn't recall joining Utsuho's birdbrained following.

"Reiuji Utsuho! You're nothing but a bunch of trouble! When're you gonna learn some sense?!" the oni said. "The surface doesn't exist! It's all a bunch of fantasies you kids cooked up!"

"No! It's real! Koishi-sama told me about it before! On the surface, there's no ceiling! No walls! Everyone can fly as far as they want, and there's a big, blue sky everywhere you look!" Utsuho said, standing tall even as her arms, legs and wings were being restrained by ropes.

"Hahaha! Your loony master's gone, kid! She never had a lick of sanity in her! Blue sky, surface world, all a bunch of made-up nonsense! I bet she's buried under a pile of rocks right now, even!"

"She's not! You take that back! Satori-sama's gonna find her!" she cried out, tears flooding down from her eyes.

Meanwhile, the other hell ravens had already bowed their heads to the chief oni, and were having the ropes around them untied. "O-Okuu, come on, lighten up a little. If you keep it up, you won't get any dinner."
"Yeah, come on, Okuu. Say sorry already."
"We're all sorry, Chief Oni."

"Shut up! You guys don't deserve to call me by Satori-sama's nickname," she sobbed, turning away from them. From my position, I could clearly see her holding back the urge to bawl completely. I wanted to reach out to comfort her, but the chief oni had already pulled me away by the shoulder, removing my bindings in the process.

"All right, Kaenbyou, let's go. I know that she pulled you into this, so it's all fine. Just don't go off with her again, okay?"

In the heat of the moment, I wrestled away from the chief oni's grip, and looked at the bound form of Utsuho conflictingly. Her teary eyes seemed to be resigned to her fate, as she motioned for me to leave without her, as if saying, "It's okay, Orin, I'll be fine." My hand gripped painfully at my chest, and the air felt like it stagnated. Looking back at the chief oni, and then back at her- at that point, I wanted nothing else but to kick the chief in his shin and dash away with her.

"Okuu, I--"

Then, the world shook around us.

"TARGET CONFIRMED. FIRING KEYSTONE."

[hr]

The lifeless, robotic voice roared out from all directions, causing everyone to look around wildly. Then, without warning, the ceiling caved in, as a behemoth of a white rock crashed in through it, embedding itself within the red rock around us. The subterranean structures around us broke to pieces, and the floor underneath us gave way to an enormous crevice. Utsuho, still bound with the ropes, couldn't escape falling through the hole, and screamed as she did.

"Okuu!!" I yelled, diving in without a second thought. The darkness of the crevice quickly engulfed both of us, as I felt something in my arms. Clutching it tightly, I tried to fly back up. The world wasn't as kind as Satori-sama, however, as the floor was already too close, and I crashed into it, accidentally letting go of whatever I had gotten a hold of earlier. "Okuu! Okuu!" I called out, coughing wildly.

"U-Uhhh... O-Orin..." someone groaned. I reached out in the direction of the sound. A faint light pierced through the darkness, and my outstretched hand was gripped by someone's warm fingers.

"Okuu!"

"Cough... O-Orin, hey, you're here," said Utsuho, as the orange light from the necklace I gave her earlier illuminated her face. Her confident grin was all I could see, even through her bruised and battered face. Relief washed over me- she was safe. I crawled over to her, and held her tight. It seemed that the fall had loosened her bindings, enough that she had freed herself from them.

"O-Okuu... you're safe," I whispered, through a few sniffles.

Suddenly, a brief hum broke through the silence, causing both of us to look around in a panic. Then, a huge light went up behind Utsuho, illuminating the cramped area. Utsuho sat up quickly as she saw what was revealed. "Whoa..." she exclaimed in awe. A gigantic golden eyeball was embedded inside of the earth, with the middle of the pupil opened up to show a small space inside. The bright light had come from the golden iris.

"Cool!" Utsuho said, as she quickly got to her feet, getting up to clamber inside of the eye. Somehow, she had also dragged me along, and we were thus cramped in the tiny space together. The inside of the head looked absolutely arcane, with amazing golden symbols and lines lighting up everywhere we looked. In the center of it all, a small round indentation appeared to be the focal point of the whole light show.

"Okuu, listen!" I said. The humming started again, but this time a little louder. It was coming from her chest, from which she pulled out the orange marble. The marble pulsed with light along with the insides of the little space in unison. Utsuho and I looked at each other in wonder, and I nodded to her wordlessly. She then stuck the marble inside the indentation.

All of a sudden, the eye closed in on us with an overhead cover, covering us in darkness. A booming voice, similar to the one we heard earlier, announced, "SYSTEM CHECKS NOMINAL. ALL SYSTEMS ONLINE. INITIALIZING YATAGARASU," before the lights all turned back on at once, and everything began to shake violently.

"I think it's working!" exclaimed Utsuho excitedly.

"I think we're dying!"

[hr]

Shortly after, the lights all around us cleared up, and showed a clear picture of the world around us, as if there were no walls around us. The area we had found ourselves in showed a giant white rock in the middle of a large clearing. The same white rock that I had seen earlier, it was polished to a mirror shine, as an unfamiliar white light beamed in from the ceiling where it crashed through. Was that...?

"O-Orin! Look over there!" Utsuho called out, pointing towards the mirror-like rock. In it, I saw that we had climbed into a giant white-colored human-shaped mechanical suit, with a scary-looking golden eyeball embedded into its chest. Behind the giant human was a pair of black wings, over which a white cape was draped over. In a way, it kind of looked like Utsuho herself.

"I-It's... we're inside that thing?!" I blurted out.

"Awesome!! A-And, Orin! Look up there! The surface!" she said excitedly, pointing upwards above the white light. My eyes moved upwards, and indeed, the bright light coming from above the white rock was different from the usual dim red light of the Blazing Fires.

Unfortunately, before we could celebrate, the white rock before us hummed to life, and announced, in its previous booming voice, "WARNING: MANA PURGE IN T MINUS 600 SECONDS. ALL REMAINING LIFEFORMS IN IMMEDIATE VICINITY WILL BE ELIMINATED."

"W-What's that mean?" I stammered.

"I dunno, but it doesn't sound like a good thing, which means we gotta stop it!" said Utsuho excitedly.

"What?! How?!"

"Let's try... this!" she said, before grabbing onto a couple of handles in front of her. As if reading her mind, I saw the giant human suit leap towards the rock, and smash into it with its fist. The impact was great, but... "Wait, why isn't it doing anything?" ... even with a few repeated blows, it appeared that the rock was impervious to any sort of damage, even with the gigantic weapon on our side.

"Okuu! Stop! Before something bad happens!" I said, causing her to stop... whatever it is that caused the suit to move. With the shaking around us stopped, I sighed in relief. However, it didn't look like Utsuho was finished. Her head was darting around, as if she was looking for something.

"Hmm... Oh, there it is!" she said, before she leapt over to the crashed rocket we had rode on earlier. Unfortunately, she didn't quite stick the landing, and smashed the fist of the giant suit right through the hell furnace's walls. Remembering how it had erupted earlier on our joyride, I could feel the blood drain from my face.

"Okuu, what did you--" I started, before the lights around us started to blink rapidly. Some horns began to go off, and the hell furnace suddenly began to transform and morph uncontrollably on the suit's hand. Utsuho meanwhile nonchalantly commanded the suit to raise its fist from the wreckage, which fused itself with the suit's hand.

"All right! We got a weapon now! And I've got just the name for it! Let's go, Orin!" said Utsuho, pointing the transforming arm towards the white rock. She wasted no time in commanding the giant suit to fly towards the rock, which rocketed forward with the same breakneck speed as I had just experienced not too long ago.

"Giga..." Utsuho said.

The suit began to swing back the fist in a wind up. I looked back quickly at the arm behind us, watching it melt and suffuse into a long orange pillar, with several yellow lights revolving rapidly around it.

"Flare..."

The pillar then dissolved into the suit's arm, creating a shining orange fist. All of the lights around us went wild, and the pilot space we were in shook violently once again. I turned back to the front, watching us hurtle towards the white rock and holding onto Utsuho's blouse for dear life. "Okuuuuuu!!" I yelled out.

"Breakerrrrr!!"

In one swift movement, the suit swung the gleaming fist into the white rock with an enormous right hook, crashing through it with reckless abandon. The fist disintegrated everything in its path, melting the white rock that was barely dented earlier, as we careened through it and up towards the ceiling. And then, the blinding light.

[hr]

My eyes eventually adjusted to the light, and I cautiously cracked my eyelids open. Around us was an enormous expanse of space, that stretched as far as either of us could see. Without walls. Without a ceiling. In fact, above us was a vast emptiness, painted with a light blue color. The "sky". I stood there agape at the wonderous view, which only seemed to expand before me as time went on. Looking over at Utsuho, she was in a similar state, and we both admired the beautiful openness of the "surface world."

Then, just as quickly, the sky above us began to move further away from us. It took me a second to realize that we were falling, and I turned quickly to Utsuho. "Okuu, why are we falling?"

Her only response was to blankly stare back at me, replying with, "Um, huh?", followed by a distinct rumble, coming from her stomach. As if on cue, the various lights in the pilot space around us dimmed down as we continued to fall out of the sky.

"Okuu, you idioooooot!!"