Ink Stained

25: circles*

"The only alternative left is to let the Kamigami get to Shin, and we all know exactly what will happen if they do." Kouta reminded them severely.

"But this could kill him!" Kaede protested, eyes wide and his wildly flailing arms expressing his clear aversion to this plan. "It could kill him and us if it fails."

"Failure isn't an option." Kouta said simply. "We're strong enough to take it."

"Maybe we are, but Shin, on his own, with all of us against him? He won't survive it." Ryosuke argued.

"He could die if the Kamigami get to him," Daichi said quietly. "But Kouta, I'm not sure this is the best way, either."

He, Jirou, Haru, and Shouta were the only ones who didn't look angry with Kouta for coming up with this 'insane' idea, something she still didn't understand the significance of, or how it could get Shin killed, or them.

Or why Kouta would suggest it if it was so dangerous in the first place.

Kouta looked at Daichi, his second-in-command while Shin was gone. "There is no best way. Right now, a Torimaku is the only way we can save him."

The others started arguing again, and while they did, she leaned to the right. Haru glanced at her.

"Haru-san," she said quietly. "What is a Torimaku?"

Haru shifted as he silently continued to watch the others arguing amongst themselves, bouncing idea after idea off of each other, with every other person shooting down idea after idea as inefficient or severely lacking in one way or another.

"It's a collective Ability we can perform. There are a few of them. This one is a sort of binding spell." He explained quietly. "It involves using each of our own Abilities to create a wall of magic around something at the centre. Then we focus all our magic into containing it. With what Kouta's suggesting, he wants us to focus our magic on containing Shin's True Ayakashi."

She folded her legs to sit cross-legged on the bed, moving gently so as to avoid jostling Haru's foot next to her ankle. She frowned; it couldn't be that simple. There had to be something more to it than that, otherwise the others wouldn't be fighting so hard against it.

"So it is a barrier?" she clarified. He nodded. "Then why have you not tried this before?" she glanced at the others, still arguing. "Would it not be better to do this than let the Kamigami get to him?"

"No," he said softly, dark eyes flicking over to rest on her. "It's not something any of us want to do."

"Why?"

"Because it means overpowering him with all of our power. Can you imagine that?" he asked. "Seven different Abilities working together to force you into a bound state where you can't do anything. You can't fight back with all of us pressuring your mind into submission. It's like enthralling a human, only a hundred times worse."

Her breath caught at that. She remembered how she felt with Konohana, the way the Kamigami was able to so easily render her speechless, motionless, just with a tap of her fan. Pai had never been enthralled by a Hengen, but she had heard stories of what terrible things Hengen could do to humans with it, the horrible things they could make humans do with it.

"It's enough to eradicate a human soul from existence," he continued. "Imagine that – one day a person is there, and even if they die, their spirit is still somewhere in Yomi-no-Kuni. When we attack – and that's what this is, Pai-chan, it's our last line of defence – when we attack with a Torimaku, not even their spirit is left behind. If this doesn't kill Shin, it could break him irreparably, and we still won't have him back."