Hokkaido was on her own for once, having wanted to be brave for once and go out without accompanying her sister- that was her first mistake.

Being eleven now, Hokkaido has told herself she couldn’t hide behind her twin sister forever, even if she didn’t really subscribe to Lepus’ ideologies of ‘punch anything suspicious and then punch it some more’. She had, of course, not truly snuck out of the house and gone solo as Aomori liked to do; she had informed Lepus of her plans, gotten the thumbs up from the teen, and had the older senshi’s contact info with the knowledge of how to get ahold of her. Yes, there was safety in numbers, but Lepus wasn’t the brightest, even if she was older and of a higher rank. And yes, Hokkaido had no offensive magic of her own, or even trickster-style distraction magic like her sister and their self-styled ‘mentor’ did. But Lepus said it would be alright, and Hokkaido wanted to believe in Lepus, so...

Well, as long as she tried to stick close to home it would be okay, right?

Or at least, that was the plan before a series of very unfortunate (yet hilarious to anyone but Hokkaido) events occurred, in which something spooked her, causing her to bump into a trash can, knocking it over, which proceeded to startle a stray cat, who set off a car alarm nearby, which caused Hokkaido to take off running as fast as her little legs could carry her. To where, she didn't know, but if she knew anything from the scary video games Lepus and Aomori would play sometimes, like those zombie games, it was that noise attracted bad things, like monsters, and Hokkaido didn't want to get eaten. Ah, this was surely divine punishment for trying to go off on her own, and now she was going to suffer the consequences.

If only she had stayed home...! Bad things always happened to naughty children, and while Hokkaido had always done her best to be on her best behavior, perhaps just by keeping secrets from Mama and Papa, she was being considerably naughty…

This may have been Destiny City, but even if they were far away from Japan, yōkai could follow her here, right? Hokkaido knew all about the tales of the monsters that would steal away children who had misbehaved and done bad deeds, both having heard the tales from family as well as Sato, not to mention looking them up on her own. It was one of the reasons she was always trying to be the ‘good’ twin, so she wouldn’t be taken away! It was bad enough that she felt that being born on a leap day made her more unfortunately likely for misfortune to befall upon her…

Eventually, Hokkaido couldn’t run anymore, and she slumped to the ground to catch her breath, before using her magic for a temporary energy refresher. No monsters had followed her so far, which was good, but she wasn’t out of the clear yet! She was also now hopelessly lost, which only served to compound her worries. As much as Hokkaido didn’t want to, she was going to have to contact Lepus to come and get her, and hope that the teen knew where to go, because the green-haired chibi senshi of baku was unfamiliar with the area at night.

She’d survived this night, but what about the next?

(572 words)