Cryptotrappers!

Cryptotrappers- The Famished Dead Part 2

"I'm sorry, we're blowing up the rollercoaster?" I asked, disbelievingly.
"You think the fireworks were here to liven up the place?" Sid mocked.
"Okay, for one, that doesn't even sound realistic." I responded. "Second, it neither sounds plausible nor feasible. Are you sure it will work?"
"Not in the slightest, but what else can we do?" Randy retorted.
"Besides, it's all gunpowder, right? We can make some kind of explosive from that." Lucy reassured. Outnumbered, I could see I had no choice but to agree.
"Alright, I'll join." I resigned, "But if it's even slightly wet out this won't work."
"Relax, it'll be fine." Sid coolly responded. I wasn't any more convinced, but I got to work.

The next eighteen hours were pretty uneventful. As the sun rose, safety returned to us and we caught up on our sleep. But we couldn't just leave. It was our hope that we could finish the entire fiasco before night fell again but as I scraped out my last firework, the last maroon slivers of daylight were falling behind the horizon.
"So we have our actual explosive now. We should make a fuse from the fireworks too, set it off from a safe distance." Lucy softly commanded.
"Any idea of how we'll light the fuse?" I asked. My colleagues shot me a quizzical look upon asking this so I clarified my thoughts, saying "We didn't bring matches, right?"
Everyone fell silent. Clearly they hadn't thought this far ahead yet.
"We'll figure it out. Let's just get the setup sorted first." Sid assured me. With a sharp nod, I began to attach short fuses from the fireworks.

As we sat in wait for the sun to dip beneath the horizon, I finally broke the silence of thought to voice my concerns about Eva.
"Do you think Eva's slept while we've been here? Or has she had more sleepless nights seeing what scraps she can find on The Gallows online again?"
"I'm worried about her mental health too." Sid finally admitted after a short silent pause. "She can't keep pulling all nighters. I get it, I'm worried too, but this isn't the right way to go about things."
"Yeah, she needs to keep healthy. As much as she wishes she could be, she isn't a robot who can keep working through everything." Randy followed up.
"When we get back," I stated, with leadership burning like a fire on my tongue, "When we get back, we're going to make sure Eva takes a break. Whether she wants to or not."

As the sun finally set and malaise filled the air around us, we were no closer to figuring out how to light the completed fuse.
"We would have been better off if we were facing a flaming skeleton." I half-joked, defeatedly.
"We could always take one more look, just in case we somehow missed matches." Sid replied, just as down in the dumps as I was. Randy began to look through, but his disappointment rung through his words.
"Nothing in here that we can use. Unless of course we can light a fire with a few grains of rice."
This, strangely, perked up Lucy, and she sprang suddenly to her feet.
"Do we have rice? How! Where's it from?"
"Look, I don't know? They threw a bit on me before you crashed my wedding!" Randy stumbled on his words, before following with "Wh- What does it matter, a bit of rice can't help us!"
A smirk crossed Lucy's face.
"Actually, it can."

"Lucy," I pushed, "Lucy, why are you throwing rice grains on the floor?"
"I'm trying to attract a Yokai, a specific one, one that carries fire." Lucy explained. My quizzical expression, alongside the rest of the team's, told her that she had to elaborate further. "I read a book on some useful Yokai and the mention of rice jogged my memory. It's a one eyed humanoid Yokai called the Mikari Baba, the borrowing hag. They're greedy and they love rice, and they'll scour gardens for every single grain. But, most importantly for our purposes, they carry a flaming torch in their mouths."
"Which you think we can use it's torch to set off our explosives then?" I responded quizzically, holding back Sephiroph who was trying to snatch the rice from the air.
"Precisely."
"Okay," I counter-argued, "But what makes you so sure a Mikari Baba will actually come here?"
"Well..." Lucy responded, far more unsure sounding now. "You know.... the rice..... you.... Have a little faith, ok?"
Just as Lucy scattered the last grain on the theme park ground, a shout came from the roof behind us.
"You two, Gashadokuro at ten o'clock!" Sid called down to us, as he and Randy jumped from the roof of the rollercoaster queue. I turned to my right to see the giant figure lumbering in our direction.
"Now or never on the Mikari Baba." I muttered.
"We need to give it more time." Lucy commanded, before calling out to the rest of the team, "Alright, we need to buy some time for Exo. He needs to stay here to attract a Yokai but we need to get the prize away from here. You'll be fine on your own, right?"
I nodded.
"Then the rest of you, move out. Exo, signal us when we should return." Lucy spoke, before running towards the Gashadokuro.
Suddenly a bit unsure, I called out in question, shouting "Lucy, wait, why is it called the borrowing hag? What does it borrow?"
But she was too far away to answer.