WARNINGS:

-Although the category is Shaman King, this story is affiliated with a lot of different series. If you don't know a certain anime or manga, just treat those characters as original characters. Of course, I do not claim ownership of anything copyrighted here.

-This story is highly OC-centric.

-This story is dedicated to all Pokemon lovers. What?

The Night Will Come Soon

Prologue

It all started on a hot and humid summer's day in New York City. Mona Geraldine was enjoying her break from college by playing her favorite game, Pokemon, though the stern expression on her face did not show that she was enjoying the game at all.

Ninetails is confused… it hurt itself in its confusion.

"Damn it," Mona cursed at her black Nintendo DS while grumpily pressing the A button, despite knowing that it won't do any good. "You useless little fox… go ahead, be confused! I'm not giving you any potion, and you will kill yourself…"

"Mona, honey, are you talking to your game?" Mona's mother, often referred to as Ms. Geraldine, briefly stopped cutting the vegetables on the kitchen counter and looked over her shoulder at her daughter. She shook her head when she received no answer to her question, and also from the sight of her daughter curled up on the couch, still in her pajamas in the middle of the day.

Ms. Geraldine never asked for much from her daughter; if there were one request, it would be for Mona to listen to her more. However, Mona was pretty much the head of the household. You see, Ms. Geraldine had Mona when she was at the young age of eighteen, and due to many reasons, Ms. Geraldine did not marry the father and decided to raise Mona on her own. Ms. Geraldine dropped out of high school and worked various jobs while Granny Geraldine took care of Mona at home. Mona, ever since she was very young, has been extremely strict about logic, intellect, and even more extremely about her own opinions about everything, so Ms. Geraldine, who had failed too many of Mona's standards, has been demoted to be her daughter's equal.

Although Ms. Geraldine was happy that Mona turned out smarter than her, she still hoped for some authority as a mother. But when she complains about that, Mona would always pat her on the shoulder as if she was a kid, and say, "you're not my mother; you're my best friend." And that fooled Ms. Geraldine every time.

"Mona! Open the door! I know you're home!"

Hearing the monstrous shouting and thunder-like knocking from outside, Mrs. Geraldine looked toward the front door. "Isn't that Lisa? You gonna go open the door?"

"Don't wanna."

"Isn't she your best friend? You should go hang out with her."

"She's probably just here to force her interests down my throat again…"

Despite of her complaints, Mona got up from the couch and slowly made her way to the front door. Just when Mrs. Geraldine thought the front door was going to be knocked down, Mona finally opened the door.

"What do you want?" Mona asked, holding her game up to show Lisa that she was interrupting.

"Don't tell me you've been playing Pokemon all day every day since summer started," Lisa eyed the game and made an accurate assumption. "All right, Mona, go get dressed. We're going to Sarah's place!"

"Why am I going?"

"We were gonna have a Supernatural marathon, remember?"

"Again, why am I going?"

Lisa narrowed her eyes and forcefully let herself through the doorway. "Mona Geraldine! Do you realize that I'm doing this for your sake? After this summer, you are going to be a graduating senior from college, and you're still playing Pokemon all day? You know that after graduation, we're all gonna split up to do whatever we must, so we aren't gonna have a lot of chances to see each other anymore!"

"You are overreacting…" Mona said calmly, "it's the 21st century; it's so easy to get to places. I don't know what you're worried about."

Lisa grabbed both of Mona's shoulders and shook her. "YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND, MONA! This is why people think you're cold! Creating memories is what we do!"

"We already have plenty of memories."

Lisa stopped shaking Mona and sighed exasperatedly. Finally, she looked at Mona in the eyes and used her last resort, "AND Sarah's mom is making her homemade fried chicken for us tonight! Remember how those tasted last time? Do you really wanna let that go?"

Mona's eyes lit up at the words 'fried chicken'. She tried to remember what Ms. Geraldine said about what's for dinner, but she never liked the taste of Ms. Geraldine's cooking anyway. So after a few more minutes of hesitation, she let Lisa into the living room and told her to wait while she got dressed.

Mona first went into the bathroom to wash her face and brush her hair. Although those were just two things, she did them extremely slowly. It is not that she hated hanging out with Lisa, but it is that she had told Lisa over and over that she does not enjoy watching those horror flicks. In fact, Mona could not understand why anyone would enjoy those things. Why would anyone purposefully scare themselves like that? Every time after they watch things like that, Mona would have to repeat to herself that ghosts are not scientifically proven to exist. But it scares her that they are also not scientifically proven to not exist. But for that juicy, delicious fried chicken, Mona was going to swallow up her fear and try to block out as much sound as she could without Lisa catching her.

After wiping her face dry with a towel, Mona was ready to leave the bathroom. However, when she turned the door knob, the door refused to open. Mona raised an eyebrow and checked that the lock was indeed unlocked already. Lisa must have locked it from outside, that little brat, Mona thought. With her other hand, she pounded on the door.

"Lisa! Open the door! You know you are so getting smacked for this!"

There was no answer. In fact, it was completely quiet outside of the bathroom. Mona could not hear even the lightest sound of her mother cutting vegetables. An eerie feeling immediately emerged from Mona's head to toes. Mona tried to yell again, but this time…

"Lisa! Mom! Are you guys—"

The light suddenly went off.

Mona let out a small "ah!" and jumped from fright. She was beginning to feel very scared now and the only sound she could hear was her racing heartbeat.

Slowly, Mona's eyes were getting used to the dark and she began to see things more clearly. But things seem be have more of a bluish hue to them. Suddenly, the whole bathroom was glowing in bright blue. Mona gasped but could not even scream. She started to turn the knob furiously and even tried to slam through the door with her body, but the door would not budge. She looked around the bathroom frantically for anything that she could use, but as her eyes looked past the mirror, something horrifying was standing there right in front of her reflection—a blood-drenched little girl her long black hair spread over her face.

"SHIT!"

Mona threw away all of her usual calmness and screamed. As she started screaming, the girl reached her hand out and it came out of the mirror. Shouting a series of curse words, Mona backed into the corner of the bathroom to be as far away from the little girl as possible. Surprisingly, all Mona could think about at that moment was all the tips and tricks to scare away evil ghosts that Lisa had taught her. Salt, holy water, incense, burning herbs… BUT WHO WOULD CARRY THAT KIND OF STUFF INTO THE BATHROOM?

"Goddamn it, Lisa… I don't want to die here!" Mona started to throw anything she could reach at the little girl, but the little girl already had all of her upper body out from the mirror. The little girl raised her head and looked directly at Mona's face. Mona saw nothing but hatred and vengeance in her eyes. At that, Mona remembered what Lisa told her about the legend of Bloody Mary. There are many different myths about Bloody Mary, but they are often about the spirit of a mother who was accused of killing her own child, but it was actually miscarriage. The wrongly accused mother died hearing the hateful voices of her family and friends calling her names. That is why, when you say Bloody Mary in a dark room, the evil spirit, believing that you are one of those people who cursed her to death, would appear before you in the form of a young maiden and rip your face off.

Terrified of her realization, Mona unconsciously put her hands on her face to protect it.

"P-Please, Mary, don't be unreasonable! Even though someone turned off the light, I didn't even call your name!" Mona started to spew out anything that came though her mind. "Actually, YOU were the one that turned off the light, weren't you?"

Out of frustration, Mona pointed her finger at the little girl and yelled. But the little girl's expression only became fiercer, and she continued to climb out of the mirror.

"OH, COME ON!" Mona tried to scoot further away. "I'm not one of those people who accused you of being a murderer! They were uneducated bastards, all right? Trust me, you're not at fault! Miscarriage still happens in this era, and some people still blame the mother, but those are all the older generation. People understand more about the female body now and we all know that there is no such thing as a witch, so you should stop being so angry!"

Finally, the little girl was completely out of the mirror. In an instant, she was right in front of Mona and grabbed Mona's hands.

"DAMMIT, MARY! How is killing a fellow woman going to satisfy you, huh? You're just like those aimless villains who just want to take over the world for the stupidest reasons! Humans will be human no matter what you do!"

"Shut up…"

"…eh?" Mona barely heard the small voice coming of out the little girl's mouth. The little girl's face was just a few inches away from Mona's, and all of a sudden, Mona noticed that underneath the blood, the little girl had a very pretty face.

"No wonder you were accused of killing your child," Mona said without thinking, "what kind of prostitute would risk having a baby? No offense, Mary…"

The little girl's face darkened immediately. In an almost inaudible voice, she said…

"My name is not Mary."

Mona felt a strong pull on her hands, and she saw past the little girl's shoulder that the mirror was reflecting a scenery completely different from her bathroom. And the next second, Mona was pulled into the mirror, and she saw darkness. And then, she felt a suffocating pressure all over her body, which got heavier and heavier until it was too painful for her to bear, and that's when she fell into unconsciousness.

"…and in 1338, Ashikaga Takauji established the Muromachi period…"

The last class of the day is history for the classroom of Year 2 Class D of Tokofushi Middle School. Students were either sleeping or resisting the urge of falling asleep. All but one eccentric female classmate, who was sitting up straight with a very concentrated expression on her face. The history teacher looked at the outstanding student with approbation; however, he could not see from the distance between them that the girl was shaking uncontrollably.

"Kanzaki-kun, can you tell us what important event happened from 1467 to 1477?" asked the unknowing teacher.

Kanzaki Ushio, the seemingly attentive female student by the window, shook even harder at the teacher's question. If you looked closely, she was exactly one centimeter away from actually sitting down on her chair. She has been in that position for the whole day, and she could barely feel her legs. But the threatening eyes staring into the side of her head kept her going at it.

"T-the… Ounin… War…" she pushed the words through her gritted teeth.

"Excellent!" the teacher clapped his hands together. "All right! We'll continue with this period tomorrow. Don't forget there's a quiz next week!"

A collective moan sounded from the all the students, but Ushio didn't even have the strength to moan. She collapsed into her chair the moment that the teacher left the classroom. She slowly turned left to look outside the window, which was entirely covered by a giant blue creature that stood outside. Most students in the school don't seem to notice it, but there are humans in this world who possess stronger spiritual power than others. One of them is Tokofushi's student council president, Okawa Toshiaki.

"KANZAKI-SAN!"

As the students of class 2D gradually left the room, the formerly mentioned student council president stumped into the classroom and advanced toward Ushio, who was massaging her legs. The girl looked up at the fuming third-year, unfazed by his loud voice.

"Good afternoon, Okawa-kun."

"What is that giant blue thing doing there?" Okawa lowered his voice once he got closer to Ushio.

"That's Anna's shikigami, Zenki."

"I know that's Kyoyama-san's shikigami! There was a red one last time…"

"Oh, the red one's name is Kouki."

"I don't care what their names are!" Okawa slapped Ushio's desk. "I'm asking you why they're here! It's true that most of the students here can't see spirits, but normal people can still feel pressure from unworldly creatures! It's going to affect their schoolwork!"

"Hey, I'd be happy too if they left me alone," Ushio shrugged. "But Anna sent them here to make sure I do these trainings. If you wanted to lecture somebody, go lecture Anna. Trust me; I'm sick of these spying spirits too."

Ushio stretched in her seat, but the pain from today and yesterday and the days before yesterday would not go away. She sighed inwardly and cursed the day that she came to this world. Yes, Kanzaki Ushio was the girl that Mona Geraldine had been living as after she was pulled into the mirror by the nameless little girl. Ever since that day, her life had been a living hell.

When Mona first woke up from her unconsciousness, she was in a place completely foreign to her. She was enclosed by some cheap plastic bars, and above her head dangled a baby mobile with giraffes. Realization dawned upon her and she looked at her hands. They were small and fat and had stubby fingers. She was turned into a baby. Out of frustration, she did the only thing that a baby like her could do—cry. And almost as soon as she started crying, a woman hovered over her. The woman was young and beautiful, but the one thing that stood out the most to Mona was that she was not American. The woman lifted Mona out of the cradle and rocked her in her arms.

"Shh…shh…what's wrong, Ushio-chan? Are you hungry? Did you poo-poo?"

The woman had a sweet voice, but Mona could not understand the words that were coming out of her mouth. But somehow she had a hunch that Ushio was her name and the woman was, indeed, her mother. Although everything was unbelievably bizarre, Mona stopped crying and yawned as the woman rocked her gently. Maybe her baby's intuition told her that she was safe because she was in her mother's arms.

The first few days of Mona's new life had been lazy and peaceful. A baby's ability of acquiring its first language is amazingly fast; in a very short time, Mona was able to understand most things that her new mother said. Moreover, Mona began to gradually accept the fact that she was no longer in America, and she may not even be in the same world. This assumption was proven correct on the 7th night that she got turned into a baby, when she woke up in the middle of her sleep from the feeling of some liquid dropping on her face. As she opened her eyes, the most gruesome scene was in front of her—her mother, pinned to the ceiling by something invisible, looked at her with terror, and her stomach bleeding like someone had shot it with a shotgun.

"Ma…ma…"

Mona watched as her mother's body was set on fire from nothing at all. She was scared, but she couldn't remove her eyes from her mother's burning body. And then, from the corner of her eyes, she noticed a movement. She couldn't really tell what it was, but there was definitely something in the nursery with them. She felt the creature coming toward her, and just as she cursed her immobility as an infant, another visible shadow appeared by the window. Before she could see clearly who it was, the shadow took her from the crib and jumped out of the window in a flash. Mona felt the cold wind slapping her face; the person who took her was running hastily through the woods. She looked up and saw that it was a man whose face was covered by a crow-like mask. After an hour of running, the man stopped in front of an enormous Japanese-style mansion. At the front door stood a short old man with a long cigarette holder in his mouth.

"Is that the child, Mikihisa?" asked the old man.

"Most likely," said the man carrying Mona. "However, something felt strange. When I arrived, her mother was killed by a demon. That demon didn't look like just any demon either. It looked like it was after this child…"

"I wouldn't be surprised," the old man turned around and walked inside the mansion.

"Bring her in."

Later on, Mona found out that the man who saved her was Asakura Mikihisa, while the old man was his father, Asakura Yohmei. The Asakuras were a family of onmyouji that was established as early as the Heian Period. Since Mikihisa was busy and away all the time, it was Yohmei who took care of her from the day that they took her in. Yohmei told her about her family, but he knew just as much as she already knew. He explained to her about the onmyouji's theory of yin (darkness) and yang (light). All humans possess the complementary elements; however, females are born to be more oriented toward the yin, so they are often the target of demons, spirits, and other unworldly creatures. Since Mikihisa happened to save her, Yohmei insisted that she studied the art of shamanism under him.

Mona knew that Yohmei was hiding a lot of things from her, because Mikihisa obviously did not happen to save her. But she decided that it would be good to learn from Yohmei. Encountering demons and spirits was becoming a frequent thing with her, and she could also see them more clearly as she grew older. Accepting that all of this was real, Mona became Yohmei's disciple and continued this life as Kanzaki Ushio.

For most of her childhood years she trained with Yohmei in Izumo. She also grew up with Asakura Yoh, Mikihisa's son, who was one year younger than she and was also under the training of shamanism. Yoh had a great gift in this field, but Mona also excelled especially in the area of exorcism. Maybe because of her past life's experience of being a student of biology major, she found it easy to memorize the different sutras and rituals of exorcising different spirits. Although she was reluctant about dealing with all these demons and stuff that she hated, she was determined that through her new abilities, she was going to find the little girl in the mirror, and force her to take her back to her original world. She wasn't going to give up Sarah's mom's homemade dinner. No, not yet.

Training under Yohmei was already very arduous, but when Yoh came home from his trip to Ozorenzan with a fiancée, her life became even worse than before. Kyoyama Anna was a skinny little girl when they first met, and she was a whole head shorter than Ushio. But when Ushio refused to learn how to summon spirits from Anna, she was sent to the hospital with fractured bones.

Anna's hellish training was really no joke. Unable to take Anna's abuse, Ushio moved to Tokyo on her own at the age of 13 and started self-learning and attending Tokofushi Middle School at the same time. But after one short year, Yoh also moved to her neighboring town Funbari Hills to train for some sort of tournament. Ushio was not interested at all, and she had no problem with Yoh's moving. Unfortunately, after a few days, Anna also moved in with Yoh. For some reason, Anna forced Ushio to receive the same training as Yoh to prepare for the Shaman Fight, but Ushio had no interest in entering at all.

"You will enter it. I'm not giving you another choice," was what Anna said.

"You don't give me choices, Anna!" Ushio retorted. "I'm busy with school and I can already make a living by exorcising spirits. I'm not interested in that stupid title."

"Oh?" Anna raised an eyebrow. She tugged at her 1080 beads; at that Ushio started to sweat—that usually meant that Anna was going to summon Zenki and Kouki. "Then you can go to hell now."

Of course, Anna never hurts Ushio that badly, because Ushio was quite good at cleaning. Many years later, Ushio would realize that training under Anna was pretty much the same as being Anna's housemaid. Although she hated Anna and all the things that Anna made her do, Ushio would think back on it and see that those years were probably the easiest years of her life. But nothing was ever going to make her say that she was lucky to have met Anna; she was not a pushover like Yoh.

"Sorry, but I've got other things to do."

Ushio cracked her fists and aimed at Anna's face, but as usual, Anna took down Ushio with one slap.

"Too slow, Ushio," Anna said coldly, "Don't even dream about laying a finger on me without a guardian spirit. It's about time you found one; even Yoh did already."

"You see? I think it's still swollen," Ushio pointed at her face.

"Well, I don't care if she wants to spy on you, but tell her not to use such a big shikigami next time!" Okawa Toshiaki had only met Anna once she came to Tokofushi to find Ushio, but that was enough for him to vowel to stay away from that girl. "Anyhow, did Shimai-san come to class today?"

"Who?"

"Shimai Reiko, your classmate!" Okawa said raised his voice as all the students left the classroom already. "Your classmate hasn't been to school for the past four days, and you don't even know?"

"Well, how am I supposed to know if she doesn't come to class?"

"You guys were classmates in first year, too!"

"What do you want me to do about it, then?"

"I went to her house yesterday to try and visit, but her mother looked really nervous and didn't let me in," Okawa started to explain. "I thought it might have something to do with…what you do."

"She's probably just sick with chicken pox or something like that," Ushio yawned and started to pack up her things; her legs were feeling better now. "Normally they have to be isolated. I know you think Tokofushi is filled with youkai's and evil spirits and stuff, but there's really not a lot. You just think so because I happened to be here and you don't see onmyouji's everywhere."

"Kanzaki-san, can you not be so cold towards your fellow classmate?" Okawa said with a sigh. "Even if it's just chicken pox, you can come with me with one of those charms you make. They'll drive away bad spirits, right?"

"No way, those charms were made through proper ritual. I usually sell them for at least 3000 yen each," Ushio stood up from her chair and slung her bag over her shoulder. "It was nice talking to you, Okawa-kun, but I've gotta get on the next bus heading for Funbari Hills. When Anna sends Zenki to spy on me, that means she's 'summoning' me to her house."

"Wa-wait, Kanzaki-san!"

Normally, it takes about five minutes to get from Tokofushi to Funbari Hills by bus. Ushio used the extra time she had to run to the ramen shop and bought three bowls of miso ramen to go. When she got to the bus stop, the blue shikigami Zenki appeared in front of her again. Dammit, Ushio cursed in her head, Anna just won't let me have it easy. Instead of boarding the bus that arrived, Ushio started running towards Funbari Hills while making sure that she doesn't spill the ramen. As a result, Ushio got to the Asakura residence ten minutes later than she planned.

"Ah, you're here, Ushio!"

Yoh stood in the doorway with a broom in his hand. Even though Yoh usually talked with a lazy tone in his voice, Ushio could tell that Anna has been slave-driving her fiancée every day. Ushio couldn't deny that she feels sorry for the guy, but she also thought that Yoh was too chicken. Yoh obviously hates training—ever since he was little—but he still smiles and does whatever Anna orders him to do. By the time they really get married, Yoh would still be Anna's leg rest. Unless Yoh doesn't mind, that is.

"Did you prepare dinner yet?"

Yoh's smile turned sour immediately. "No, I just got back from running 100 kilos. And I still have to mop the floor."

Ushio looked over Yoh's shoulder to look for Anna. "Anna's not home?"

"She's not home from her daily stroll yet."

"I thought so," Ushio took off her shoes and lifted the ramen takeout box for Yoh to see. "I bought these to save time. We'll put it in your bowls so she'll think I made it. Of course, you're gonna reimburse me later."

"Ahaha, thanks, Ushio," said Yoh, "you saved my life."

Truthfully, Ushio's first priority was to save her own. But since Yoh had been her friend for so long, Ushio thought she'd save his too. After dumping the ramen into different bowls, Ushio took the ramen shop's bowls and takeout box outside to hide in the yard. Just as she found a nice big tree to hide them with, a voice colder than her own was heard behind her.

"Did you actually have the nerve to serve me takeout food?"

Ushio jerked around to see her worst nightmare. Anna, dressed in her usual black mini dress, stood over her like a lioness, even though she was still younger and shorter than Ushio. However, the bright blue shine of the 1080 beads were enough to send chills down Ushio's back.

"Anna, this is the most popular ramen shop in Tokofushi. You should know that it's very hard to get your hands on their ramen because they always have very long lines."

Anna stared at Ushio coldly and ignored her excuses. "Zenki said that you didn't wear the weights I gave you when you were running here."

"He lied; he never liked me. Don't listen to that blue liar."

"I will be adding 10 more kilos to your weights tonight," said Anna as she turned away and walked into the house.

Ushio pointed her middle finger at the scrawny blonde girl, but put it down quickly remembering that there are ghosts of Asakura ancestors all around here.

Dinner time with Anna and Yoh was always awkward. Anna never talks, not even when Yoh tries to strike a conversation. It always ended up with Yoh asking about how Ushio's school was and if she ran into any interesting spirits in her town. But Ushio doesn't particularly enjoy sharing every bits and pieces of her life with people, even if it's Yoh or Anna. As usual, Ushio ended the conversation quickly, telling Yoh that the spirits that she encountered in Tokofushi were mostly evil spirits that she had to exorcise for people.

"Evil or not, have you found a strong spirit to be your guardian spirit yet?" Anna asked.

"Again, I don't need a guardian spirit to do exorcism," said Ushio with annoyance, "AND I don't need those physical trainings either! I already said that I wasn't going to enter that tournament thing!"

"You are entering. You are going to be on Yoh's team and make him Shaman King," Anna sipped the ramen soup. "For my happiness."

"Now I'm even more sure that I'm not entering."

"All right, all right, Anna. Don't force Ushio to enter if she doesn't want to. It's dangerous, anyway!"

"You're too soft, Yoh. I'm trying to help you find useful allies."

"Tch… why don't you enter yourself then…" Ushio muttered and continued to eat her ramen. Suddenly, her phone started to ring. The caller was Okawa Toshiaki. Ushio was not in the mood to talk with the over-responsible student council president about some random classmate. But right after the ringing stopped came the message tone. Ushio was going to ignore that too, but the message tone rang twice. It must be an emergency. Ushio flipped open her phone to read the message.

"I just went to Shimai's house. Shimai Reiko is dead."

"She had no face."

To Be Continued