A word of advice, if in reading this book and you feel you can relate, close the book, run, and hope they have not noticed you. But hey, if you are reading this book from camp, then go right ahead, you already know how to defend yourself. But I am getting ahead of myself here, let us start from the beginning. My name is, not important, kidding, it’s Goldenrod. My mother thought it was a suitable name, if you were to see me, you would know. I’m about 4’5”, tan, with curvy golden brown hair, kinda out of place in Japan, I know, but what can you do? I have never known my father, but I can only assume that he’s the reason behind my appearance. Anyways, today my class was taking a field trip to the local temple for cultural purposes. Personally, I have always thought these trips were just extracurricular. More religious than educational, but I would never say that, each one offered a break from schoolwork. Today however was different, for the first time ever, we were visiting a kitsune or fox spirit shrine, usually we would visit either buddhist or ancestral shrines. What was even worse, Mrs. Rinko, a teacher that hated me, kept eyeing me like I just dropped another stink bomb in her room. “Can anyone tell me what this Kana inscription says?” Mr. Daeti asked, pointing to a small kana inscription under the central golden fox. “We offer this place to a guardian kitsune spirit, with an offering we hope you’ll save us from the yokai that plague this prefecture, Aren’t yokai those evil spirits?” I asked. “Very good Goldenrod, Yokai are evil spirits, each embodying different evil attributes of us humans.” Mr. Daeti continued, this was about the time I put my earbuds back in, these trips were nice, and Mr. Daeti was a good teacher, but it got kind of boring. “Goldenrod, can I have a word?” Mrs. Rinko whispered in my ear and I nodded, I could have sworn I saw Mr. Daeti glare at her, but she was walking too fast for me to catch up and look back at the same time. “Do you have any idea what you have done?” Mrs. Rinko snarled. “Is this about the firecrackers?” I asked. “Stupid child, not everything revolves around your stupid pranks, where is the dragon’s vial?” She asked, her voice becoming much more greedy and high pitched. “Look Mrs. Rinko, I have no clue what you’re talking about. I have no clue where any vial is, and dragon’s don’t exist, they’re a myth.” “Foolish demigod, you will hand over that vial.” Mrs. Rinko said, her voice losing all semblance of a human. “Demigod?” I asked, and that’s when Mrs. Rinko transformed. Losing all semblance of humanity, she grew shorter, golden bat wings, a hideous greed contorted face replacing her human face, and a horrid smelling fur congealed on her body. “Hand over the dragon’s vail, or I’ll kill you and take it off your corpse.” The creature that had once been Mrs. Rinko snarled, drawing a switchblade knife, you know, the kind the yakuza use, but with an exception, this was more of a jagged switchblade katana. Like any sane person, I ran, but in a blur she was directly in front of me. “Goldenrod, the quill, use the quill.” Mr. Daeti shouted from across the room tossing me one of his favored writing quills, a capped quill nonetheless. What did he expect me to do, stab this thing in the eye, would probably be a one time use. But as the creature flew towards me, it was my only line of defense. As I uncapped the quill, it switched to a brilliant prismatic katana. I’d never even used a katana in this kind of situation, hell, I’ve never even been in this type of situation. The creature shattered my quiet thought process with a slash of it’s katana. Blocking it, I couldn’t help but notice that the kana inscription said *Change is the only thing in this world that remains unchanged* I can’t explain how much anger that made me feel, my whole life had been change, whether it was the random daily gender changing, or when my mother moved to another prefecture. I hated change, and this katana said it was the only thing that was constant, that hatred fueled my slashing and stabbing, forcing back the creature. “Who are you, demigod child?!” The creature screeched. “Listen, I have no clue what anything you're saying means, and to be honest, I think you got the wrong person.” “Wrong, I do not make mistakes, making mistakes leads to losing what I have, no mistakes have been made.” The creature screeched back, launching herself at me, of all people, wait, why was the katana humming? Raising it, I braced for death, but it didn’t come. The creature somehow found a way to embed itself on both it’s own katana and mine, what are the chances? The creature emitted a horrid screech, slowly dissolving into a fine dust. Looking around, I had hoped to see Mr. Daeti, but he too, seemed to have dissolved into dust, for he was no longer there. I put the cap on the tip of the katana blade stupidly, but surprisingly enough, it shrunk back down to it’s quill form. The ride home was surprisingly uneventful, little more than the occasional glance from Mr. Daeti, or the almost blank looks of the other students as each had headphones or earbuds in, ignoring the other passengers on the train system. “Goldenrod, perhaps we can have a talk?” Mr. Daeti said, ushering me to his office. “Hai, Mr. Daeti?” Goldenrod asked. “Perhaps I mistook your precedence, the yokai you fought today, it was too strong to have been a normal occurrence for a demigod to face when they reach that age, I’d like you too come to a special camp where you can learn to better protect yourself from the yokai and other creatures. Would you do this for me?” Mr. Daeti said. “Sure, why not, it gets me out of this place so..” Goldenrod replied.
