Yokai Stars III: Suzaku

Yokai Stars III: Suzaku — Vermillion Venture

Tara joins Aria and Valencia for stargazing at Vermillion Cliffs. Since the stars began speaking directly to people, Dragonrune Hall has become fascinated with astromancy, and Aria appreciates Tara’s help drawing new star maps. Valencia anticipates more than homework: this part of the Yokai Isles now boasts snack stands and a newly discovered hot spring. Aria immediately questions that last attraction, because these mountains are not volcanic. Tara has another warning, a gut feeling that has become more familiar since she began adventuring.

The next view reveals why that unease matters: scorched ground, flames and blackened people lying nearby. Kylokos asks what happened. Amefuri explains that the stars could hitch rides inside the Hero but discovered that ordinary humans explode on contact. Suzaku’s companions wanted the attention that Byakko had sought, and Nuriko helped turn the mountains into a tourist attraction. Kylokos was even charged admission when she teleported back. The Hero calls it a literal tourist trap; Amefuri is jealous of its success, apparently unmoved by the harm surrounding them.

The Hero resolves to put out the fires before Aria and Tara’s outing is spoiled, then detects another unwelcome passenger and orders it out. A small pink light separates from the Hero in the ensuing gag, which ends with weary recognition that this has happened again. Amefuri’s later conversation identifies the intruder as Nuriko and insists the Hero will survive, even while admitting that the stars of Suzaku are behind the disaster. Its offer to help gather them is useful, but hardly disinterested.

Yokai Stars III: Suzaku — A constellation’s deadly attractions

Amefuri identifies Nuriko, Mitsutake, Tasuki, Chiriko, Hotohori, Tamahome and Chichiri as the Vermillion Bird of the South, called Suzaku in the Yokai Isles and Zhūquè in Wuji. It associates them with Fire and Summer while deriding their borrowed imperial grandeur. According to Amefuri, the constellation first tried taking humans into space; when the passengers stopped moving, the stars interpreted the result as boredom. The new attractions were an alternative way to bring people closer. Visitors kept coming even after the explosions, turning danger itself into a selling point. This is Amefuri’s callous explanation, not a confirmation that the earlier passengers safely returned.

Tamahome begins the cleanup with eight Sweet Konpeito and six fires to douse. Amefuri says unrelated stars disguised themselves as sugar candy, which tourists ate before exploding, and suspects Tamahome arranged it. Tasuki requires eight Tejat Muse Wings and six rescued tourists. The moths were brought to eat the soot, but Amefuri fears they may acquire a taste for people. Mitsutake follows with six Sugar Stars and six Muse Dust: people dare one another to eat the sweets, moths nibble the ashes, and the spectacle draws more visitors. Amefuri links Tasuki with Alkes and Crater, Mitsutake with Corvus and the guidance of the dead. Its stellar lore cannot conceal the grotesque cycle the Hero is trying to interrupt.

Yokai Stars III: Suzaku — Checking on the guests

In Nuriko, Amefuri sends the Hero to speak with Valencia and Kylokos, then Tara and Aria. Amefuri guesses that Nuriko, also the serpent’s tongue of Hydra, persuaded the crowds to come. Valencia greets the catastrophe with more deliberately nonsensical astrology, while Kylokos protests that she warned the Dragonrune Hall students away. Their argument exposes another small discovery: Valencia has apparently been attending the professor’s classes without permission. Kylokos postpones that quarrel because the students need first aid. The joke gives way to the responsibility the stars keep evading.

Tara finds the candy apples unexpectedly spicy. Aria recognizes that the sparkling sugar coating is not ordinary edible glitter, yet the pair still hope to enjoy the hot spring together. Amefuri supplies a darker explanation elsewhere: the food contains celestial dust, which it says can kill Yokai and prevent their return to the Yokai Realm. It also remarks that the spring can hard-boil eggs. Those warnings make the attraction’s cheerful presentation increasingly difficult to accept, even before the Hero joins the bathers.

Yokai Stars III: Suzaku — Boiling Springs

After checking on the friends, the Hero tries to look relaxed in the pool. Tara appreciates the attempt to give them a break, and the candy apples remain the safest conversational topic. Nuriko admits that gold has no practical use for it; the pleasure lies in owning a lot, especially more than somebody else. Valencia calls that the allure of sin and deliberately confuses Nuriko with the Gemini-associated Chichiri. Kylokos’s angry correction becomes another quarrel at the slippery edge. Kylokos ends up in the pool, and Valencia calls for her from the bank.

Aria asks whether anyone else is being burned. Nuriko finally explains that the spring is a dug-out hole filled with water and heated by the stars’ bodies. Aria protests that those bodies run at three million degrees; Valencia cries that Kylokos is being boiled. The Hero carries Aria from the pool while Tara and Valencia reach the bank. Kylokos asks for help before her head explodes, and Tara notices other people boiling at the bottom. Aria needs no further persuasion to help. The crisis extends well beyond their own interrupted holiday.

Yokai Stars III: Suzaku — The rivals Amefuri cannot tolerate

The cleanup continues through Chiriko, collecting four Dawn Light from the sun’s Dawn Knights. “This is supposed to be about us,” Amefuri begins, then hastily insists that it is Suzaku’s show. It says Chiriko will net the unwanted guests and put them somewhere dark, associating several of Suzaku’s stars with Hydra. Chichiri collects ten Phoenix Necks from visiting Vermillion Phoenixes. Amefuri is offended that real Phoenixes have come to see a constellation it calls a red chicken; it also distorts Valencia’s joke into a claim that Kylokos called all Geminis evil. The story has shown who made that joke, so the accusation is another part of Amefuri’s manipulation.

Hotohori requires six Knight’s Shine and six Phoenix Tongues. Amefuri speculates that these visitors may be creatures of the Midnight Sun, while identifying Hotohori with Alphard and claiming that its true form outshines Lore’s sun. The final quest, Zochoten, confronts Suzaku assembled in its vermillion form. Victory, the constellation demands, should earn it the name Phoenix of Space. Amefuri cannot bear that possibility after Byakko’s own defeat. The Hero wins the duel. The retained native completion then states the plan plainly: the explosions and boiled people were meant to provoke enough anger to make the Hero fight poorly.

Yokai Stars III: Suzaku — Summer Stars

With Suzaku defeated, the Hero credits Aria and Tara with the healing power of fifty hospitals. Their own comments about boiled and fried people keep the exaggeration grounded in the injuries they have treated. Suzaku claims not to have known humans were so flammable, and the party rejects the excuse in unison. Kylokos describes feeling her soul about to join the heavens and demands to know whether the stars wanted attention or lives. Suzaku names its adviser: Amefuri said the Hero would be easier to defeat when too angry to think. Amefuri immediately tries to escape responsibility. The Hero wonders aloud whether it is really so easy to provoke them.

Tara offers a remedy. The scene shifts from the sprawling, white-and-crimson bird overlooking the scorched hillside to the Hero, Tara and Aria silhouetted beneath a sky traced with constellations. Aria reminds them that this is what they came to see. The Hero finds it beautiful and admits to feeling better; Tara says they could get lost just looking at the stars. After an outing that converted curiosity into bait, the quiet view restores the pleasure of looking without needing to possess, defeat or impress the beings overhead.

Yokai Stars III: Suzaku — Even the view has a price

Nuriko interrupts the moment by demanding five hundred Suzaku Stardust, or five thousand for a signed glamour print. The Hero expels the intruder again, and Tara asks why it screams like a rat. The demand returns to the stars’ talent for turning attention into a transaction; the Hero’s expulsion also renews the refusal to let them enter uninvited. Amefuri’s later account is openly partisan: it is delighted that Suzaku lost, wants no rival to succeed where Byakko failed, and anticipates that careful Genbu will be harder to manipulate.

Tara and Aria’s later conversation finds a gentler use for the same cosmic curiosity. Tara does not know her zodiac sign; Aria suggests several possibilities, then admits that her own Karkinos sign appeals less than Libra’s scales. Tara jokes that their combined magic might tilt the sky to align their birthdays with the signs they prefer. Aria objects, then wonders whether they could really do it. Their speculation remains a joke and a question, not a demonstrated power to rearrange the heavens.

Yokai Stars III: Suzaku — Fireworks and a free photograph

Garnet Fireworks and its Legend variant are optional repeatable returns after Zochoten. Both require one Suzaku’s Beak and eighteen Phoenix Drumsticks, awarding one Suzaku’s Stardust normally or two through the member variant. Amefuri admits supplying the ideas while denying responsibility for how Suzaku used them. It offers a fireworks show to make amends and jokes about grilling yakitori on Nuriko’s back, claiming that the Phoenixes and stellar Suzaku cannot die for good even if being cut up hurts. That is Amefuri’s justification for another spectacle, not evidence that the tourists’ earlier injuries were harmless.

Himawari offers a photograph without the stars’ fees, asking the Hero to stand near the edge for a picture. It is a small invitation beside the larger attractions, and the retained conversation does not establish how the photograph turns out. Eight one-time quests carry the main route from Tamahome through Zochoten; the two fireworks variants follow separately. Suzaku’s attempt to win a cosmic title ends in defeat, while Aria’s project gains another constellation and the friends recover at least one moment of the stargazing they wanted.