Gunsyakhai ‘Land Dragon’ Level ??
HP: 3400/3400
ATK: 294
DEF: 551
MATK: 0
MDF: 471
LUCK: 12
“Stats? A land dragon?” she whispers, just as her reptilian brain votes overwhelmingly for FLIGHT and propels her to the main entrance of her dormitory. “Run!” she shrieks over her shoulder to a girl exiting her room. “It’s coming!”
“What?”
“RUN!”
She doesn’t wait for her dorm mate to response; she doesn’t wait to hear the land dragon tear her to shreds and snap her bones.
Seven stories worth of stairs make Tamana’s legs rubbery and weak, but she ignores the pain. Escape is everything; she pushes herself to gain as much distance from the monster as possible. Only when she has burst out to the busy streets of Shibuya does she stop to take a breath.
A bicyclist whips past her and nearly sends Tamana to the ground.
Damn!
A construction worker in baggy jodhpurs, a hachimaki headscarf, and a hard hat carries his lunch pail to his jobsite. A teen dressed as a maid clicks and clacks her heels against the pavement as she heads to the subway station, bound for Akihabara. A cacophony of bells and whistles chases a cloud of cigarette smoke through the open door of a pachinko parlor.
Tamana sucks in great volumes of tainted air and turns her head and looks up at her dormitory building.
It’s nothing … She rubs her temples for a moment and forcibly exhales.
Seven stories above her, the glass siding of her dormitory explodes outward as the land dragon plummets from the building. Its tiny wings flap hummingbird fast to no avail. The creature’s shadow looms over her; she dodges as shards of glass rain down around her.
This can’t be happening!
She’s already in motion as a shockwave knocks her forward. She refuses to look over her shoulder, refuses to let the creature catch her.
“Ryuk,” she says the name of her best friend again, “Ryuk!”
An instant message box appears on her pupil-based iNet screen.
Tamana: Help me! Near you! Going to Shinsen Station!
He replies instantly.
Ryuk: What’s happening!?
Tamana: Please, it’s coming!
A person in a Kumamon outfit stands outside an electronics store touting a sale. Tamana blazes past and shouts “Run!” over her shoulder.
Too late.
The costumed huckster’s cry of alarm cuts off as the land dragon stomps him flat.
Fear makes her swift, so focused is she on escape. Tamana races for the station, her only hope of sanctuary and salvation. She smacks her knee into an outdoor stand in front of a kissaten. Tears stream back across her face as she catches another message from Ryuk.
Ryuk: What’s coming!?
Tamana: Please. Please. Be there in five minutes. PLEASE!
Ryuk: What is going on? Are you okay?
The entrance to the Shinsen Station is only a few blocks away.
Even though her leg muscles are on fire, even though her heart is about to explode, Tamana continues her adrenaline-fueled sprint to the station. She weaves through pedestrians, illegally crosses streets, is almost sideswiped by a lowering aeros taxi, and spins and leaps over a woman pushing a baby stroller. The dragon-like creature relentlessly pursues her, roaring and bellowing and slaughtering all who stand in its way.
Another glance over her shoulder and she knows without doubt that her efforts won’t be enough, that there will be no happy ending to this story, that the creature will catch her and kill her.
Unless she kills it first.
“Come on, come on, come on,” she huffs.
Tamana skids to a halt at one of the entrances to the Shinsen Station. She hears the terrible monstrosity roar as she begins her descent.
Breakneck speed.
Her feet are pistons on pavement, her shoulders shovelers of bodies, her gaze aimed and angled downward. The land dragon smashes its bulk through a pillar and a portion of the subway entrance collapses around it. The monster cries out in anger; blood-tinged saliva hurtles from its gaping maw.
Tamana hits the bottom of the first stairwell and slaps her cheek. She rubs her eyes again to wipe away the image that just won’t leave. Is it a glitch? How is this even possible? Something has gone horribly wrong, and other than gouging out her eyeballs to fully disconnect her iNet feed, she has no idea how to make the creature stop.
“Come on …”
A Tritanian land dragon, shouldn’t be chasing her, not in Tokyo, not in the real world!
The rational part of her mind knows this; the rational part of her mind knows that she logged out of Tritania and took off her NV Visor; the rational part of her mind even suggests that Tamana let the creature catch her; this is the real world – it can’t do anything, it shouldn’t even exist here.
But the monster rips through a manga stand and the salesperson inside. Blood splatters the walls, bits of flesh actually land on her arm. She hears the creature tear into the subway station; she shudders at the death cries of those smashed beneath the rubble.
She stops just before the final stairwell and briefly turns to the land dragon. It cracks its hulking tail into an electronic billboard advertising Suntory Whiskey. Tamana picks up the pace – she thinks she sees Ryuk – but the station is too crowded to tell for sure.
Down another flight of stairs, Tamana collides with a pair of overworked salarymen in their crisply pressed suits. No time to bow, no time to apologize. She hits the bottom and bolts straight to the edge of the platform, where she stops, hesitates, thinks otherwise for a single, prolonged second.
Tamana’s leap induces gasps from those nearby.
Her landing, the sound of the train horn, the sickening crack.
Tamana is struck by the incoming train.
Tamana is struck by the incoming train.
The salarymen lift their heads, a woman drops her umbrella, a child reaches for its mother’s open arms, a white-gloved conductor runs towards her at sixty frames per second.
(0)__(0)
“Tamana! No!” Ryuk ends his desperate chase and slides to a halt.
Out of breath, Ryuk utters a sharp curse and slaps the flat of his hand against the pavement. Vomit rises in his stomach. He swallows the urge down as the crowd comes to life all around him. “Tamana!”
He wants to scream her name again, he wants to cry out, to somehow arrive in the train station moments earlier and stop her from jumping.
Why Tamana why? His thoughts scream inside his head.
All their interactions over the last several years come to him in a flash. They’d done everything together, gamed together, studied together in high school, gone to Tritania cons together. There was never a time in which she exhibited suicidal tendencies. She was a cheerful, happy person.
He truly believed she didn’t have a bad side.
Tears stream down Ryuk’s face. He sits with his back against the wall for a moment, oblivious to the people around him.
Alarms sound, bystanders jostle for position, snap their photos and instantly post them on iNet. A pair of conductors produce kawaii panda-shaped plastic barriers and urge the crowd back from the platform. Medics in light blue uniforms appear. An older man tsks at the fact that another Japanese youth has just committed suicide.
Ryuk swallows hard.
He reviews the messages he had just received from Tamana. He reads them again and again, looking for a reason for her actions, stupidly hoping to discover why she’d just killed herself.