The girl who strode into the middle of the fight threw an elbow that knocked a thug flat, her blue eyes narrowed to slits. She spun, long hair flashing in the sunset, to crash her bag across another boy’s face. Having made a sufficiently-sized clearing for herself, she turned to face the rest of the gang. “[i]WHAT[/i] are you ignorant twats doing?!” 

Mizuki Ikino was taller than most students in her year, casting an imposingly long shadow as Mochi bounded over to her. With a leap, the cat sailed onto her shoulders, glowing yellow eyes eerie in his grey-striped face as he studied the boys under attack and their assailants. His tail twitched and he tilted his head, letting out an unnatural meow that seemed to echo. Mizuki reached up and stroked his head, her attention fixed on the dwindling group of thugs. After a beat of silence, she glanced over her shoulder at the two boys— one was badly injured already, but the other one had taken only a few blows. Mizuki’s hand tightened around the handle of her school briefcase, her knuckles blanching. 

Mochi had been drawn to this street fight for a reason, she could see that now. The thuggish delinquents radiated a malice that was far from human. She wasn’t frightened, however, having spent her entire life in the company of the uncanny; she had been born with a highly-developed sixth sense. Her childhood was a roadmap of the supernatural. Now her brain was furiously pinging that the boys were [i]wrong[/i], that there was something incredibly cruel and evil about them. 

The reprieve had been short and they regrouped for another assault. 

Mizuki stepped into a swing that broke a forerunner’s nose; blood sprayed. A hand grabbed her arm and squeezed until she felt her bones creak. Mochi flew at the hand’s owner, clawing and yowling. A wild punch caught her high, glancing off her forehead. She slammed a palm into the elbow, using her other hand to apply counter-pressure on the inside of the forearm. The crunch was loud, even in the cacophony of the melee. Backing up to sweep her hair out of her eyes, somebody wrapped an arm around her throat from behind—they were shorter than she was, so she was forced to bend backwards—and she slammed her heel into their foot, swung her head forward, and then jerked it back into their face. 

Mochi screeched in pain. 

Mizuki screamed and charged blind for the sound. She caught the boy holding her cat by the throat around the chest and smashed him to the ground; she straddled him and drilled her fist into him wherever she could reach. Another boy tried to haul her off and she sank her teeth into his arm until he let go, blood dripping down his hand. Someone started trying to kick her in the sides, so she pushed off the bastard under her, stomped him in the crotch, and launched into the new one. She was all but snarling, her hair wild, her skirt torn, as she flung him against a nearby wall and kneed him repeatedly in the groin. 

Somewhere in the back of her mind she wondered why she had gotten into this fight. Mochi had led her here, but she could have picked him up and carried him away. What made her so keen to fight? Why was she spoiling for it? She didn’t know the other two she was fighting beside from a hole in the wall. 

The boy she was still kneeing shoved her away and she stumbled, skinning her leg on the concrete. He came in for a soccer kick to her abdomen and she let it land, swallowing down the pain and grabbing his ankle to unbalance him.