The first Doorwalker she saw was skulking about on the side of the road. They were humanoid, like Kohaku's walkers; their limbs were just a bit too stiff, and there was an uncanniness to their humanity, but, from a distance, they looked like a normal hotel guest if you didn't know better.
Their head twisted unnaturally when they noticed them, and she heard the distinct clack of wood as the face stared. Their expression was plain and wooden—literally. Their simple, glassy eyes were lidless, and their mouth parted to reveal a flat, painted interior.
A lifelike puppet in a theatrically ornate yukata and armed with a katana. It looked like a samurai, really—a character straight from the old puppet show documentaries on the public broadcast channel Hisako found too boring to waste time on.
She chuckled weakly at the irony of it all.
"Ugh." Eiji shivered at the puppet's mechanical movements as it stood and drew its weapon.
"Not a fan of classical stage arts?" Nanae chuckled, spinning the sai in preparation.
Hisako laughed aloud at Eiji's second full-body shudder.
"They're freaky," Eiji grumbled.
"Neither of you have much taste, do you?" Nanae teased. "Though, to be fair, I've always wanted to smash one of these…"
"Be my guest," Eiji said.
Hisako shrugged, lifting the hand unit uselessly. "I won't be much use like this."
"I'll hold the unit. You can fight," Eiji offered.
Hisako shrugged it off and handed it to him as she watched Nanae approach the puppet. The puppet watched her carefully as she approached, unblinking eyes intense and unnerving in the flat sunlight.
When Nanae neared, she lunged, sai outstretched and ready to pierce.
The puppet reacted instantly—too quickly for a real flesh-and-blood body. In the sudden movement, Hisako saw the gleam of metal strings, just a hint of them, but enough to make her heart start to beat harder.
The puppet contorted itself around Nanae's attack, then swung out with more speed and force than should've been possible without a wind-up. Nanae blocked with the sai, catching the sword on her arm and tangling it in the sai's prongs.
The puppet tried to rip its blade free, but only managed to shatter it on the sai. It jumped back, jerking up and backward as if pulled by a puppeteer. Hisako narrowed her eyes, once again catching a faint glimpse of the strings.
"Nanae—"
"I see it!"
Hisako nodded.
Eiji spoke quietly: "I can't see where the strings go."
"They don't go anywhere," Hisako replied. "That's the trick: it's a cheating puppet. All the benefits and none of the drawbacks."
Eiji narrowed his eyes, watching the puppet and Nanae engage. It slashed with the broken sword and twisted to dodge each attack, moving more carefully. When Nanae threatened to counterattack, it was able to stop its attack mid-motion and completely change its movements.
"That's a nasty trick," Eiji remarked. "How can you predict an attacker that can just change their action in the middle of it?"
"Animation canceling," Hisako hummed. "But they still have a pattern. If the walker cheats, you just have to cheat harder."
Nanae counter-attacked, lured a dodge, and stepped into the puppet's space, tangling the sai's points in the puppet's wrist strings. It caught the puppet up just long enough for her to smash her forehead against its wooden pate.
The puppet didn't stagger, but its head did crack. It tried to disengage, but Nanae advanced, switching the sai to one hand and twisting the puppet's arms, completely tangling the body. She pulled an arm back and punched her knuckles through the puppet's chest.
Still, the puppet struggled. Nanae threw the puppet down, gripping the hole in its chest, and stomped it to pieces. The sound of wood splitting and rattling against the stone was somewhat satisfying.
Once in pieces, the puppet lay still.
Hisako walked up to investigate as Nanae toed the pieces around.
"Maybe it is a little freaky," Hisako hummed.
Eiji joined them but gave the pieces a wary berth.
She crouched and lifted what was left of a wrist. The string was indeed a metal wire, slightly bent crooked after being tangled up in the sai. She tried to lift the wrist by the string, but the wire snipped through her skin and fell, leaving blood welling at her fingertips.
She hissed at the sharp paper-cut of pain and clicked her tongue at her own knee-jerk reaction.
"You okay?" Nanae asked.
Hisako waved dismissively, and Eiji relaxed beside her. "The wire is really sharp. Be careful not to get cut by it."
"It's short," Eiji said, watching her blood slide down the line, revealing it in full. "Barely even enough to grab."
"They're probably all fake like this," Hisako sighed. "What do you think the strat is, Nanae?"
"They don't move like humans, so don't treat them like humans. They're dolls—force them to break, then destroy them."
Hisako nodded. "Got it."
Eiji nodded as well, shifting the scanning unit to summon and hold Stinger. "I'll do my best to help from the backline."
They continued down the mountain, Eiji keeping an eye on the blip of Yasu's Door in the distance. They encountered a few more puppets—lone combatants.
Alone, the puppets were easy to pick off two-on-one; while Nanae got close enough to throw them off and twist them into knots, Hisako was able to dash them in two with Toraichi.
The puppets would writhe and lash out in flailing attacks until they were rendered useless. Disembodied arms would still swing and severed legs would kick—the puppets had to be reduced to wooden shards before they gave up, and even then, Hisako imagined they still "lived."
Halfway down the mountain, Hisako saw their first mini-boss walker.
It was simply different, even from afar.
It wielded six blades, and, as Hisako grew closer, she saw it had the six arms to wield so many blades. It wore a ragged, sun-bleached indigo yukata with the top loosened to hang at its waist and a wicker rounin's hat, hiding its puppet head.
With its chest exposed, Hisako saw the multiple pectorals and shoulders that facilitated the extra arms—the anatomy, to her, looked appropriate, making the sight all the more unsettling.
All the puppets were near-perfect humans. The part of her mind that created more puzzles than solved them briefly offered the rather uncomfortable idea that maybe the puppets were first humans, like it was some kind of horror game and not Doorwalkers from Yasu's Door.
As if its appearance wasn't alarming enough, there was fresh blood dripping from its blades as it stalked about the front of one of the smaller hotel-owned abodes.
Hisako's eyes darted across the facade, finding a hotel guest sprawled by the front door, breathing but only barely.
"Nanae!" she hissed quietly. "Eiji, get ready."
Nanae nodded and began to run, throwing a sai ahead.
The puppet, despite being turned the other way, twisted around at the hips and easily deflected the sai with a katana. The sai buried itself into the wall of the building, ringing.
Hisako threw herself forward with her ability, shielding herself with Toraichi to slam into the tall puppet. She didn't get the puppet to move very far—its heels dug into the dirt, and it kept her from slamming into its torso by blocking with all the swords.
Hisako dropped and swung, seeing Nanae in her periphery. The slash, she knew, was useless, but the puppet guarded, guiding Toraichi away with the left-side swords and swinging with the right.
Stinger snapped around one of the arms, and Nanae used her remaining sai and forearm to block the other blades. She punched out with her free arm, aiming for one of the pectorals, and managed to crack it before the puppet whirled about like a sharp top, forcing them back.
"Eiji, get to the guest!" Hisako shouted.
"Hisako!"
She had to stop herself from jerking to locate the source of Kohaku's voice. The aborted motion cost her a blink, though, and the puppet slammed her back, forcing her to recover and leave Nanae alone for a harrowing moment.
The arms snapped forward, intent on catching Nanae between the katana, but Hisako was able to yank her back just in time with help from her power.
"I'm sorry," Hisako blurted as they staggered back.
"Keep focused. You have to be our primary fighter now," Nanae ordered. "Take one look, then remember where you are."
Hisako did—a glance only long enough to burn the image into her brain.
Kohaku was ducked just inside the small home, pulling the downed Doorkeeper to safety. The sight of blood all over their yukata made Hisako's heart thump dizzyingly like a line of hammers, but Eiji's presence kept her upright.
"I'm okay, Hisako!" Kohaku shouted.
Hisako's voice wobbled. "Eiji—"
"I'm on it!"
"My sai," Nanae said, voice a pillar of confidence.
Hisako nodded and adjusted her grip on Toraichi. In the corner of her eye, she saw Stinger flick out and toss the sai toward Nanae. She caught it with ease and prepared herself.
The puppet patiently eyed them through the cone of its hat; Hisako occasionally caught the gleam of their glass eyes in the slats.
"You ready?" Nanae asked.
"How are we doing this?"
"First we learn," Nanae said.
Hisako nodded.
"I'll try to force an error. You capitalize."
"Okay," Hisako said.
Nanae went before Hisako, sai against her arms defensively as she danced through the onslaught of blades into the puppet's space. She attacked the wrists, intent on knocking a blade or hand free, but the puppet was stronger than the others.
Hisako went for a leg, swinging Toraichi in a wide sweep. The puppet lifted both legs straight backwards, momentarily floating before touching down again. Hisako followed through, twisting upwards toward the hips, but was blocked by a line of blades.
Nanae grabbed a forearm, and Hisako heard wood creak as Nanae tried to crush the limb but failed. A scowl crossed her face; she flipped one of the sai around and stabbed at the head. The prongs split the straw hat like butter, and they heard the thunk of the attack landing.
The puppet twisted again, whirling the blades around, forcing them back. Nanae, unable to withdraw the sai, had to abandon it once more as they disengaged.
The blade dance ended, and the puppet reached a hand up to pull the sai free. As it did, the hat tore away as well, revealing the puppet's carved face.
Nanae sucked in a sharp breath. "Captain Six-Arm."
"What?" Hisako eyed the face.
It was the first puppet with a unique, detailed face. It had defined features and a head of wild black hair that curled at their shoulders. Their eyes were dark and carefully painted, and their face was marked with old scars and a divot from the sai.
"This puppet is based on a real person," Nanae warned quietly.
"A strong person?"
"Very," Nanae breathed. "There's a reason Captain Akabane was chosen to execute them. His power…"
Hisako's mind lit up. Captain Akabane executed him?
"The former Intelligence Division Captain."
"Yes. Captain Masayuki Asano."
He looked more like a wild killer than a man of science to Hisako, but, then again, he'd been experimenting on prisoners. Evil never looked like it did on the screens.
"It's not actually him, though," Hisako reminded her. "It's just a manifestation of Yasu's Door—of how Yasu thinks of him."
"'Yasu'? Kimura-san? He was alive when Asano was captain."
Hisako shuddered at the realization. "You think this Asano is even worse than the real one?"
"I've only heard stories. Kimura-san probably knew him."
"He would've been a child…"
"He's a Kimura."
Hisako shook her head, trying to shake off the budding, ugly thoughts blooming in her mind. "I… What should we do?"
Nanae threw her phone to Kohaku. Hisako spared another glance.
Kohaku was deeper in the cabin, kneeling beside the healed, unconscious guest while Eiji guarded the entrance, Stinger spinning at his waist.
"Call Okumura-san. Guide her here," Nanae ordered. "Tell her one of Kimura's walkers is a copy of Captain Asano."
Kohaku nodded and hurriedly began working the phone.
"How badly do we need her?" Hisako asked quietly.
"We need four-on-one to stand a chance. Until she arrives, we can't let him touch us."
Hisako blanched. She turned to Kohaku, who was already on the phone. "Four-on-one to stand a chance" meant Kohaku and the injured Doorkeeper needed to run to safety. They needed their full attention on the puppet to win.
Kohaku's face brightened as their head snapped up. "Nanae! Okumura-san is on her way, and she has Yasu!"
Hope seeded itself in Hisako's heart.