Searing pain cut through the whole of my back and I arched it as a soundless scream left my mouth. No support could act as a crutch to muster strength against the tears rushing down my cheeks, and a familiar weight that had stood there for a thousand years had vanished. Despair mixed with the pain of a Backdoor attempting its best to split to no result, and one word materialized amidst this inferno of unseen flames: “Anon…!” I called him the same way one would call a guiding light, and once he'd served as protector of both me and our four children, a hand of golden light in a dream so tender it felt wrong after the wind underneath the wings of life turned into acrid smoke that withered and killed everything, now he could not come.

It did not mean I was alone, for two strong hands reached me anyway, a pair too strong and not an ounce gentle, and though pain rippled through me unforgiving, I eyed her, and Momiji had pressed teeth and this massive bandage wrapped around the top of her head, bloody and messy despite my smudged vision. It could have made me laugh if not for how my toes would curl and my shattered spine fought charred ends, as if continuing to arch forward would stop the intense burning of the sensitive bone. “Hey, hey, calm down, Aya!” She sniffles. “The phantom pain seems bad…” One of her troglodyte hands leaves my shoulder, talking to someone else beyond my sight and concern, before that hand returns holding a… Oh… “I-It was quite hard getting them out. Youkai Mountain is crumbling under these big earthquakes—” Stressing her words, everything around us shakes and low, tuned-out groans grow to screams and yelps the whole five seconds of terrible movement, my stomach churning at how the modern-looking ceiling lights—I know these lights. Beneath them, Kanako essentially tried to scam me—moved and danced.

Momiji not once faltered in her hold of the incubator.

Soon the tremors stop, and her red eyes are as determined as the naked tree to survive autumn. “—But I would never fail one of ours… Four of ours, anyway.” She titters, and I take a moment to notice how that gnawing pain had faded away, back resting on the bed and ignoring the uncomfortable casts wrapped around what remains of my wings.

“Momiji…” The 'thank you' is there, somewhere, though it finds no leave at the moment. To think I have lost my pride as a Karasu Tengu, my tidal wings, maybe to never be the fastest again… It hurts. Not physical hurt, which battered me out of sleep—what is happening to Okina…?—, but a hurt that was there from the moment I had Yukari bearing down onto me and robbing me of my life's work, soiling it with her propaganda.

Another loss for Aya Shameimaru.

“Things could be worse, surely. We could have earthquakes and explosions.” She pounds her words with a sternness that makes me wince, eyes turning to— “You are completely worthless in this state, in the eyes of Lord Tenma, and you have committed many crimes against our home.” She shakes her head, and the shame grows like a maddening beast. “You're a disgrace to your race, Aya.” —she hands me the incubator, and I can't help feeling offended when she makes sure that I hold my children firmly. “Make sure they are not also ashamed of you.” Ha! As if Takezo, Waku, Midori or Tomoe would ever feel ashamed of their awesome mother.

A crucial fighter in the battle of all battles, and who had to sacrifice her wings for the love of her life!

She's the fastest Tengu reporter of all, owner of the Bunbunmaru, and gave it her all during these terrible, terrible past few months, and even when things were at their bleakest, she never gave up, no matter how many defeats she'd stack up…

“I'm getting mixed signals, Momiji…” I stare at the incubator, how the light shimmers off the hard shell nestled on smooth hags and comforters. My lower lip trembles, and, despite the passing gaze of many other people who come and go around me—busy white and green mikos and humans and Tengu. A lot of hurt, and many more dead—, these tears that flee me are not from pain. Rather, they're from unbridled joy. The few minutes within that Fake Shrine against Yukari were a nightmare, and before them came actions impossibly stupid in execution.

No more wings to be the best; a fleeting chance at love—a creeping thought overlays my mind and pumps my blood with cold like nothing else: is Anon even alive…?—; a tainted newspaper, something that'd started before Yukari, even. “… B-But mama still has you, right?” I whisper to these pristine white eggs.

They give no answer, though it's unneeded. Like that gentle ward he'd cast upon restless dreams, I hope my kids feel the same safety I felt that day.

Well, at least the last installment of the Bunbunmaru will be its most legendary~!

Momiji's expression is unknown to me, and not even the loud clang of metal and a body upon the ground, followed then by the very familiar sound of a Gap mercilessly tearing the world apart, could take my eyes off my children.