How To Kill Your Dragon [Ch. XVIII, Nine] - Part I

Quote of the Day: “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. However, when neither time nor the circumstances are on your side, always act on what is likeliest to be true.” – Sherlock Holmes

Six woke me up, and without any words, lifted me and ran out of the room we were given to sleep in. By the time I had thought of asking a question, we were on the doorsteps and the roof was on the floor. Without a breath, Six swiftly swept down the stairs with me in her arms as shrieks, screams, and crashes echoed through the abandoned school hallway. By the time we were on the first floor and Six finally let me down on the school playground, the building had already started to collapse. Six held my hand and started running towards the gates when I looked up to see the cause of all the tumult.

It was an Eastern Chimera Dragon, with its nine resemblances and (strangely enough) four wings that usually belonged to a western dragon. Approximately 60 metres long and 10 metres wide, with a wingspan of 8 metres by 3 metres, it hovered and revolved around the school perimeters, occasionally bashing into it.

I am so tired of saying almost the same thing almost every other day but this is the strangest way I have woken up in the morning.

However, what was stranger was the fact that I seemed to have lost all capabilities of wielding the Dark Field that I had gained over the last month – and it seemed to be the same for everyone. None of us could use telekinesis, or teleportation, or matter manipulation/creation, or energy projection – nor high-level techniques involving reality manipulation, spacetime manipulation, omniscience (ahem), dimensional manipulation, conceptual manipulation and everything else.

After heading to a safe location with the rest of the refugees, I even used my Field Yielder Goggles to have a look at the Dark Field but… it was all black. There were no perturbations, no colours, no visual gradients – there was nothing remaining in our world that could provide support to the existence of the Dark Field. And thus, I had to conclude like the rest of my instinctively-suited friends – that the Dark Field had ceased to be for some unknown circumstances.

After instinctively attempting to use the Dark Field and failing, I started running alongside Six. I yelled, “What’s going on?! Where are the others?”

She replied, “No idea! About the others, bet they are runnin’ too: I saw Sherlock and Plume carrying and running with Tumble and Calendar – both bleeding – from the windows. They were running in this same… uh… general direction.”

I later found out that both got glass shards stuck in their shoulders when the dragon first bashed into the building’s ground floors. That collision woke up Six, usually a rather late-sleeper.

Six rushed ahead like an Olympic athlete, even without Field enhancements, while I lagged behind. She works out every other day and goes on jogs daily – whereas I usually spend my time testing & writing theses on my hypotheses, creating theoretical models and inventions, and composing music in our room. Her speed makes sense, now that I think about it.

The sky smoked black as the dragon’s breath smote it in fury. It started drizzling, all of a sudden. The clouds were weeping as if the sun had scolded it. Six and I ran like mad. Dust, rubble and shards resounded behind us. As floors of the high school collapsed upon each other, the dragon barged in and rushed out of the classrooms as if trying to bulldoze it completely. Blood splatters, entrails, gouged-out organs, dismembered limbs, cinders of bodies, silently screaming heads, burnt splinters, and all other forms of death littered the broken building and its surroundings. The rest that were still alive screamed out till they eventually passed out, while those able to run followed Six and me.

By the time Six and I had covered about 140 metres running past rubble, flames, blood, and hammered-down buildings towards the north-east, the screams behind us were starting to die down. As if starving of horror and misfortune, the dragon flew up and let out a fiery breath that charred the entire school compound. The resulting shockwave almost threw me off my feet, but with a bit of quick thinking, I was fortunately able to hold on to a tilted light pole with my hands and legs wrapped around it like a koala.

Six however was not so fortunate.

She was running way faster and thus was about 30 metres ahead of me when I tried to warn her. My shouts of “Hold on to something stationary!” were drowned out by the shrieks behind me as Six was blown off her feet and landed face first about 3.14 metres away, her flailing hands taking the brunt of the blow.

“SIS! ARE YOU OKAY?!” I shrieked as I ran towards her, completely still and motionless, blood slowly pooling on the rough concrete around her jaws. I turned her over and saw a deep gash in her jaw, her bones and muscles eking out into the surface through the middle of her jaw. Her bloody teeth lay scattered all over the concrete and her cheeks were lacerated and full of gashes. Her wrists were bent backwards horrifically, and her forearms had a worse condition than her jaw. The skin had peeled right off and blood oozed out of her injuries while she seemed to have been concussed. Later, Sherlock and I gave her first aid for symphysis and Colles’ fractures based on whatever stuff we could get our hands on. But at that moment, I…

I felt like crying.

BOTSAMA had previously shown me a similar image, but that was a pixellated PNG – this was her lying unconscious right in front of me. Back then, in the situation I was in, I felt unending rage. But then when I saw her like that…

I only felt despair.

Panicking, I had no choice but to attempt to lift Six up and start running. I couldn’t put her up on my shoulder and do the Fireman’s Carry because that would have worsened her condition even further and could have even killed her by the time I managed to get to where the rest of us were. I carefully slid an arm under her knees and another over shoulders to not stir up her injuries even more. I tried to keep her limp hands on her chest and cradled her head as close as possible to my centre of mass to ensure that her injuries wouldn’t get even worse. But there was a problem – she was quite heavy.

I remember us trying to Drive to the 69th Conference of the League of Life a month back, Six getting stuck in the ceiling, and me catching her fall and calling her heavy back then too. She teased me back then… I wish she’d opened her eyes and said something like that to me at that moment too…

Nevertheless, I started running, withstanding the muscle pain that had started to catch on to me and the sheer horror of the entire situation. Six had said that Sherlock and Plume were running towards the north-east so I started jogging in the same direction. The dragon, fortunately enough, didn’t seem to care about us and kept on bashing through the charred former high school. After about another 100 metres of running, I heard another loud boom and looked around to see dark smoke rising through the air – another fiery breath. But this time, the shockwave was way weaker and didn’t really affect me.

I had gotten exhausted after carrying Six like that for a hundred metres so I let her down for a minute and a half and took deep breaths. Her bleeding hadn’t stopped though, it had drenched my shirt as blood dripped over my trousers and the path I’d run. I was starting to get paranoid that it might be really over for her if I didn’t get her first aid. I had seen and heard of death before, but in a world without the Dark Field, I felt like I was cradling it and carrying it with the person most precious to me.

“Hark! Hark! Monsieur!”

A black cape fluttered through the air behind a man with shabby brown hair wearing a black overcoat over a white shirt with a black bowtie and beige breeches over black boots. It was Plume.

He stared at me for a split second before looking at Six whom I had lain on the ground. Without a word, he lifted her up the same way, looked up at me, said, “It would perhaps pertain to your well-being if you were to be escorted by my humble countenance,” and started running.

I followed him for a minute-and-a-half and found myself in front of a gate of a small Shinto shrine, surprisingly intact. I looked around at the scattered stone slabs, a fallen stone tablet and the collapsed wooden scaffolding, facades and palisades. The floor had changed from cracked concrete and rubble to striated stones and large pebbles. I went through the series of torii and finally figured out that – based on the fact that we were about 1.4 kilometres east-north-east of Akihabara station in terms of a straight-line measurement and also on a lingering suspicion that I’d been to this shrine when I first visited Tokyo in my world (it had opened its gates for an annual festival back then too) – there was no other place where we could be.

We were at Torigoe Shrine.

It’s a rather small shrine though, in comparison to the other more important shrines in Japan but it’s over 1300 years old, so I liked the vibes of it when I first came there. However, this situation is… different.

I am usually not one to ‘feel’ things, however, the moment I went in through the first torii I had an extremely odious sensation. However, I didn’t feel anything wrong after that. Sure, there were lines of blood and puke around the shrine but I had gotten used to it in the last few minutes. Later, I found out that there were more than three times more people cramped in the little hidden basement below Torigoe Shrine than there are Stand users in all of JJBA till JoJolion so far.

Plume ran through the open door and we ended up in the main courtyard. About 50 people lay on the stone ground and the connecting road. Inside the shrine building, which is usually closed to the public, lay another 52. Plume went past them and into a staircase under the wooden planks of the honden as I stumbled into a person while looking at the state of the place and the injured/dead people in different conditions. I looked around to see a girl much taller than me with lint wrapped around their waist, burnt hair, burnt half-a-T-shirt, and burnt jeans.

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I-” I started apologising before hearing the usually genki voice reply furtively and even more apologetically than me.

“No, Nine, I am sorry,” said Canta Koto as she turned around. Her ovular face had stitches and slight burns all over it, there were cuts and bruises on her neck and shoulder, her white T-shirt was burnt up to her bust, her waist had medical lint worn all around it as a first aid for burns.

“I…” She grasped for words, looking down at the floor, sobbing softly through her teeth. “I shouldn’t… I shouldn’t’ve… I shouldn’t have done that… I – honestly – I honestly didn’t think – I honestly thought that-that wouldn’t – that would have – that would have hurt-hurt you that much. I’m… I’m so sorry… I didn’t mean to… I am so… so sorry… for being so selfish and make – making fun of you… getting haughty on my high chair because of my powers despite not knowing you at all… I’m so sorry… It’s all my fault…”

Through misquoted idioms, misspoken words, misdropped tears, and misattributed mistakes – I felt like there was something more that Canta wasn’t letting me on to. However, I dunno why but it seemed to me that all of those words were heartfelt and represented her true feelings. At that moment, I didn’t have any words to console her so I just tiptoed and patted her. Now that I think back on that, I feel like that was weird of me but that was what instinct guided me towards. However, my ‘Guts’ chose the wrong Griffith.

“SAWANNAIYO!!! (DON’T TOUCH ME!!!)”

Her face repulsed away from me as my fingertips touched the tip of her hair for barely 150 milliseconds as she lashed out at me in the loudest and shrillest female voice I have ever heard in my little life. Her eyebrows twitched violently, her stitches convulsed and almost tore apart, the bandage on her chin twisted terribly as her eyes snapped wide open to glare at me with dangerous disgust.

Barely a second passed before she relaxed back to normal, and she whimpered, “I’m sorry… I didn’t mean – Fuck me, what am I even doing…? This isn’t how you talk to people, Koto Canta…”

I replied, “It’s… fine. I didn’t mind. I am sorry to overstep my boundaries.”

“No, you didn’t-” She stopped midway in her sentence and fell silent, sobbing.

After about 33 seconds of silence, I asked, “How are the others doing? How bad are the casualties? Do you know anything about what happened to the Dark Field?”

Canta swept away her tears and rubbed her eyes and swiftly shifted back to a solemn smile. “It’s not looking too good for us.” Canta coughed. “We have no idea about the total number of casualties as all communications have broken down between us and various other major refugee centres like Tower Residence and Taito Ikuei Elementary. Sherlock and Plume did a mad dash to the Mitsui Memorial Hospital to get some medical equipment and first aid kits, but the chimera dragon seemed to have hit that first before attacking Shinobugaoka High, so they only managed to get some stuff.”

“I see. Six told me that she saw Sherlock and Plume carry Tumble and Calendar as they were badly injured – how are they doing? I also don’t know what happened to Showerstream. How is Sherlock doing for that matter? And-” At that moment, I realised that I had forgotten someone extremely important. “How is Limey?! I didn’t see him back at Shinobugaoka, and he didn’t come running this way! Is he okay?! Is-”

Canta chuckled throatily.

“He’s a 5D-being. He won’t really get hurt, don’t worry. And also, he was the only reason we were able to save these people – as he was the only one able to teleport even after the Field disappeared. And I haven’t seen Showerstream since I went to sleep last night. I hope she’s alright, I am really worried about her… About Tumble and Calendar though…” She got grim all of a sudden before spontaneously returning to her genki look. “They are down there in the basement and aren’t mortally wounded, however… I don’t think either of them will be able to walk for a while.”

I didn’t ask her why back then but later I saw that Tumble had gotten her legs sawed off by a falling concrete block and Calendar got her tibia fractured by glass shrapnels.

“Where’s Lady Liberty, and Thena?” I asked.

“Liberty is a statue,” Canta replied, “She can’t move by herself. Fortunately, she was already in Torigoe when the Field ceased to be so we moved her to the underground basement. Thena is a cyborg and except for her brain, all parts of her body are artificial. Her left hand got severed from the elbow from falling rubble but she saved a lot of people with her artificially enhanced speed. She’s with Sherlock and Plume treating the wounded. I doubt half of them would have survived without her precise analysis.”

“Then…” I said. “Do you have any idea about what happened with the Field? I haven’t ever seen or felt this before. Did your omniscience tell you anything about this happening back when you had it? What did Sherlock say about it? Where’s Limey now?”

Secretly, I couldn’t care much about any of that back then – I was much more worried with Six than I was with the Field and everyone else. But, well, knowing myself – I probably tried to disassociate myself with my anxiety by asking questions about stuff. But, but, well, not knowing much about Canta – she probably tried to do the same by replying to my questions in earnest. But, but, but, well, about that sudden yell… sigh, I guess we all have to deal with our own devils so I can’t really blame her, can I?

“What happened to you?” I finally asked.

“Oh, me?” She said, as if suddenly reminded of the fact that she had suffered heavy burns. “I got these while trying to get another refugee out of the way of the dragon’s breath by running away. Fortunately, we were far away from the dragon and only I suffered some burns and the other guy got shielded from the shockwave.”

She limped forward towards me, standing right by a pillar to help support her. “I can’t really walk that well right now,” She said, smiling weely, “My body isn’t dealing with the aftereffects of the shockwave well enough – I might have some fractures inside too, I need to check with Thena to confirm. Heh, I will be useless for a while.”

Seeing her state, I got her a chair to sit in despite her best efforts to stop me (“Oh, no, I don’t need it” and “Don’t worry yourself for me, it’s not necessary”). When she finally rested, she chuckled and said, “Heh, how the turn tables… one day you are solo-ing the entirety of the Japanese pantheon and the day after that you lose all your powers and become a useless moaning bitch.”

“Where is Bishamon, by the way?” I asked. “I remember her staying with us yesterday.”

“She is dead.” Canta replied flatly.

“What?”

“She faded away into nothingness an hour before midnight. And so did her lion and her accessories. We haven’t heard from her since. So, I concluded that she died after the Field ceased even though Sherlock disagreed with me on the technicalities.”

“What do you mean, ‘technicalities’?”

“I concluded that,” Canta folded her hands and continued, “Since Bishamon was a Field-based entity, the cessation of the Field meant that she too had ceased to be. But Sherlock disagreed, arguing that if her Proximus still exists despite the disappearance of the Field, she will be back the moment-”

“What’s a Field-based entity?” I interrupted her.

“Oh, you don’t know. Fair enough.” She didn’t mind the derailment. “These Japanese gods of what you and Sherlock have dubbed SAMAverse-α, aka, this world, were all created when a large number of people wish for something. Sherlock deduced and Bishamon confirmed that this happens in this world because the innate nature – or Natura as y’all like to call it – of the beings in this universe are heightened because of the unique Natura of this universe.”

“Wait, universes have Naturae?”

“Every being – not just living beings – every being has a Natura,” Canta said. “Everything in Existence is but a bundle of Proximi, and the Natura of every being is just the sum of the Proximi that they encompass. Some beings have stronger affinities towards a specific Proximus, and such beings can become Field Wielders by happenstance. By having perfect symbiosis with your Natura aka the specific Proximus that embodies you, you can become an Infinite Being. By transcending your Natura aka by ‘grasping’ the ‘thread’ that is your Proximus, you can become a Binary Infinite Being. By expanding that ‘thread’ to create a ‘rope’, you can encompass other Proximi, and become a Tertiary Infinite Being. Do you understand what I mean, Nine?”

I nodded and replied, “Thanks for taking your time explaining all of this.”

“Heh, it’s not like I can do anything else!” She chuckled and continued, “So, anyway, this universe has more of the ‘God’ Proximus going through it – same for SAMAverse-ß – than other universes, resulting in the creation of Gods by the wishes of Man. Also, the sudden awakening of Field Wielders when the two SAMAverses started collapsing into each other probably happened because of that too, like me and Calendar and Tumble and Showerstream and thousands of others on this planet and probably other planets across the universe too.”

“Speaking of the collapse…” I suddenly remembered that that was a thing. “Um, how long till we are all screwed? Like, wavefunction collapses are usually instantaneous in quantum mechanics and that should still apply on a universal scale. How are we still alive?”

“Heh, about that…” Canta looked up at the ceiling and said, “When the universe started collapsing initially, the other Infinite Beings like Amaterasu from Takamagahara and the Jade Emperor from Tian both created conceptual barriers around their respective universes to shield it from the other. I don’t know about the Jade Emperor, but Izanagi and Amaterasu planned on surrendering after a long series of battles with the Chinese Heaven. When GOATSAMA and BOTSAMA started fighting on command from their respective heavens, Izanagi started to lift the conceptual barrier because heh, the survival of this universe didn’t really affect Field-based entities because – well, Field-based entities are based on the Field and unaffected by the state of the physical world they are in. Unfortunately, the rest of us weren’t Field-based entities so we had to fight for our lives. But, fortunately, I became Concept in the middle of the fight and destroyed them. When BOTSAMA came back from its fight and attempted to fight me, I took away its Proximus and basically deleted it from this universe-”

“Wait a minute,” I interrupted once again. “You can do that???”

“I could do that,” She corrected me with a sigh. “As the Proximus of Concept is a superset of Drugs – duh – I had absolute control over it and could do basically anything. I could have done an Aang and taken away all of the Japanese heavens’ powers, but I didn’t – because, as you can see, some gods like Bishamon actually weren’t selfish and fought for us.”

“Wait another minute,” I smiled as I interrupted again. “How is Bishamon still alive, according to Sherlock?”

“Heh, she’s dead – or at least, the Field-based entity named Bishamon definitely is,” Canta replied. “But the Proximus she represented still exists.”

“Wait another another minute,” I apparently realised the point of her entire TED talk, “Proximus and Realms still exist?! So, the conceptual barrier still exists?!?!”

“10 billion points!” She laughed. “That’s the only logical conclusion from the information I have given you. But, yes, indeed Proximi and Realms are independent of the Field. The Field is merely a pre-ontological means to harness and ‘care’ for Proximi and Realms, which are ontological in nature and Natura. Conceptual barriers are just cloth made out of the ‘threads’ that are Proximi. And well, a conceptual barrier of the Concept Proximus itself is obviously strong, so it would stay strong even without maintenance. However, sigh, the same cannot be said of me…”

“So, um,” I finally called out the elephant in the room, “What happened to the Field?”

“Actually,” She looked around as she said, “We need to have a talk with Sherlock and Plume to come to the correct conclusion, although I am sure about my own hypothesis. I think it’s something that deals with-”

“Ita.”

I heard a singular voice from outside. I turned around to see a man with an inherently mischievous face, with lips that border on a smirk yet settle on solemnity, with a prominent nose providing a bit of cover to the eyes sunk slightly inwards, with curly brown hair that flows down to his shoulders. He wore a shirt featuring the Vitruvian Man with a golden L sewn over it and brown jeans that almost looked like trousers. His very presence exuded an aura of absolute wisdom yet also of absolute carelessness.

The moment his voice reached my ears, I felt like an indescribable force was furiously urging me to bow down. But it was too much and I fell to the ground flat on my chin. I heard another thud and noticed that Canta too had fallen to the ground, writhing in agony. I felt like asking something and telling something and saying something and hearing something at the same time. Fear and relief, joy and sorrow, grief and elation – all jumped around my jambled-up brain as I tried to process what was even happening. I remembered feeling the same sensation yesterday too. Even before I could process all that, I instantly knew that this could only be the work of one singular person in all of Existence.

He calls himself Paadruman. We call him Salai. Some call him Agent or President Zero, some call him God, some call him Tyrant and Dictator. Yet, nevertheless, he remains him.

“Salve, Satelles Nonus! (Hello, Agent/Follower Nine!) I am here to even the odds slightly.” He said. “I just walked over from Shinobugaoka High School where the dragon was, following you and Sexta (Six). Sorry about the weird sensation that you might have had a few minutes ago – that was me coming to this world. ”

“How…” Canta muttered through her breath. “How is that guy… able to jump between universes… even though there’s no Field…?”

“Field non utor, Canta. (I don’t use the Field, Canta.)” He replied, “I don’t need to. In fact, I could also probably restore the Dark Field but well, Nine needs character development unfortunately. I am just here to help you guys a bit, just to even the odds paulo (a little).”

He said the last sentence as he snapped his fingers. Instantly, I felt muscles relax and my body reinvigorate. I saw Canta’s face and waist completely healed. My eyes raced around my surroundings as I noticed that all forms of wounds, trivial and mortal, on the injured refugees had completely healed – whether they had broken nose, or a cut throat, or a hanging limb, or a decapitated head. Then I felt the pressure on me disappear. I turned around to look at the place he stood – nothing.

Honestly, I wouldn’t have believed that he had come and gone so casually if the proof of everyone being in perfect health was not right there in front of me.

Suddenly, I heard a voice ring out in my head, saying, “Giving up is not Paadruman approved, Nine.”

I felt like screaming “WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?!” out loud in both fury and agony, but decided against it because he knows exactly who he is.

Canta looked absolutely flabbergasted. She stood up and touched the previously wounded parts of her body and looked increasingly horrified for every cut or bruise or burn that she found completely healed. Then, hesitatingly, she touched her waist to see that the burns were all gone. She looked around to see and hear the people laying on the floor starting to murmur and realise the same about themselves. The happy cacophony of the revitalised refugees resonated with me, and made me feel – for just one second – that maybe Salai isn’t that bad till I remembered my rather rational realisation from last night the very next moment.

“Heh, that's… a bit of a relief, I guess…?” Canta stretched her hands up in the air and chuckled strangely. “I have no clue how but that guy, Salai, just snapped his fingers and healed stuff from little cuts to third-degree burns to severed heads, huh? Fortunately though, I can change my shirt now and my waist won't burn when I wear something over it.”

She then looked at me and said, “Go check out Sherlock and Plume in the basement, see how your sis is doing. I will be back with Tumble and Calendar in a bit.”

“But, if I remember correctly,” I pondered. “Aren’t Tumble and Calendar in the basement too? Where are you going?”

She replied with a smirk, “To change out of this rucksack of a T, obviously! I don’t want my boobs popping out of this burnt and torn T-shirt while talking about the fundamentals of reality itself! Go to the basement unless you are a pervert or something.”

I couldn’t believe myself when I heard that.

Not because of what she said, but because of the fact that she made me chuckle.

The world has lost its very essence, there is a dragon out there bashing buildings and spitting fire, there are people who got healed and some even resurrected by a man whose mind nobody can comprehend – and there’s me chuckling at a tits joke. It’s so hilarious that I was about to call you Jesse once more, my diary – oh wait, I just did that anyway.

Nevertheless, I went down the secret staircase and entered the large underground bunker under the shrine. I couldn’t figure its exact dimensions due to the dim lights, but it seemed to be around 75 metres by 40 metres in size. It was a room with wooden floors and ceiling and stone walls holding old-fashioned torches and masks. 508 severely injured or deceased Japanese refugees had been healed or revived just a few minutes ago, and so the room was in quite a happy furore as Sherlock and Thena tried to calm them. Plume stood right beside the door, resting against the wall while stoically staring into the vicissitudes. Six, Tumble, and Calendar sat in a circle on a ragcloth spread on the wooden floor.

I could hear murmurs like:

“Tenshi desuyo! Tenshi!” (It’s an angel! An angel, I say!)

“Kami-sama ka?” (Is it a god?”)

“Iya, iya – Fuirudo-tsukai da.” (“No, no – it’s a Field Wielder.”)

“Iya, oji-san. Boku wa Firudo-tsukai desu yo, soshite ima mo, nazeka Fuirudo wo kanjimasen. Nankano riyu de Firudo ga ‘off’ ni natteita. Bokura omottei-” (“No, uncle. I am a Field Wielder, but now, I don’t feel the Field for unknown reasons. Somehow, the Field was turned off. We think tha-”)

“Tabun… etto… Koto-san to kanojotachi wa kono kiseki no gen’in deshouka?” (“Maybe… um… are Miss Koto and the girls the cause of this miracle?”)

“Yokatta! Ikiteruyo!!!” (“Goodness! I’m alive!!!”)

“Kyu-kun!”

The last one was a yell from Six, however, as she noticed me and lunged right at me. I gladly extended my arms and received her with a hug, as I felt like both of us needed that at that moment. She rubbed the back of my head and said, “I am so glad you are all right…”

“You were really heavy though, girl.” I replied.

“Huh?” Six pushed back a little and said, “What do you mean by that! I am barely 60 kilos!”

My eyes dragged themselves from her head to her toe and my mouth replied, “Eh, it felt heavier.”

She punched at me playfully and replied, “You little piece of shit, come here-”

After an exchange of snideful remarks and jokes with Six, I saw Canta walk into the basement in a full, full-black T-shirt. She walked into the centre of the room without a word and coughed loudly. At once, the room fell eerily silent all of sudden, as everyone’s gaze fell upon the tall young girl whom they all apparently held a lot of respect for. Her following words were all originally in Japanese, but since Six understands little Japanese, I translated the speech to her later like the following:

“Everyone,” She started. “This day has been filled with unprecedented circumstances.

“Sure, we have all already been in hugely unprecedented circumstances for months now. We all know how it all started at the end of August. Chaos and mayhem, death and devastation, dismay and despair – all shrouded our world and plunged it to the abyss. Many, if not all, among us have lost someone important in these last few months – some lost their family, some lost their lives, some lost their names, some lost their very beings and turned into monsters that made others lose the same. I myself lost my parents, my friends, and my dearest pet cat.

“However, as time progressed, we started fighting. We slowly discovered an inherent property of the world that we have now come to call the Dark Field. We got to know about the existence of gods that we have fabled about for centuries. Unfortunately, their intentions never truly aligned with ours as their existence isn’t concerned with our own survival. At the end of a war with another world that is in the same state as ours, the gods of the Japanese pantheon surrendered to the Chinese pantheon – leading to the lifting of the conceptual barrier that prevented our destruction and almost led to complete annihilation.

“However, we fought. Some of us have been able to tap into this strange power that is the Dark Field, and a very few of us have even been able to master it. The gods had a headstart, sure, but we humans managed to catch up to the divine in mere months – something that took them centuries. They also had detractors – like Bishamonten – who fought for justice and the people. We fought them to ensure our own survival and defeated the gods who opposed us and celebrated our victory just a couple of days ago.

“Strangely, we found a few strange people yesterday who came from another world not associated with us in any way. They have powers similar to mine, and one has even greater powers that I cannot even comprehend. They were sent by a man – no, an entity – who had even greater powers than that. I thought that Destiny had brought them here to help us defeat the real perpetrators of this apocalypse as that was what the Concept of Fate had written in it. However, for some unknown reason, later that very day at midnight, the Dark Field – the very phenomenon that had helped us prevent annihilation – vanished from Existence itself.

“A chimera dragon, a partial manifestation of the Dragon Proximus, has appeared due to the inherent instability of our world. Even a day ago, it shouldn’t have been a problem to us and could have been instantly defeated – now, however, without the Dark Field, we were caught off guard by the monster at the light of dawn. Thousands of us were slaughtered today, while only a few hundred could be rescued. We were all broken and bruised and some were even dead. Our friends from another world that were sent here helped us out quite a bit – especially Sherlock, Plume, Thena and Limey. However, even they weren’t spared from the dragon’s wrath – one of them had a broken jaw and a broken spine that could have easily led to her death.

“However, strangely enough, that strange entity who sent these people from the unassociated world appeared before us two minutes ago and vanished without a trace – healing us all and even reviving the dead. Surely, I don’t even need to demonstrate any evidence or witnesses – you yourselves can speak for that. We have no idea what the goal of that enigma of that entity or his reasons could be – however, what is definitely true is that this is a second chance. A renaissance of opportunity, of promise, if I say so myself!

“Now, here is what I promise everyone – we will slay the dragon. We will avenge the suffering caused by that monster, because, pragmatically speaking, we all know that a beast like that will not stop its carnage so easily. It cannot be tamed without the Dark Field, but since it cannot use the Dark Field itself, it cannot raise any defenses except for its natural ones. The friends from another world, and the Japan Rescue Division, will devise a plan to rid us of the dragon – and we will need your help in that! Stay safe, gather food and supplies, hunt for more refugees who may have dispersed in other directions, look out for the dragon and tell us of its whereabouts! We will live, we will thrive! No matter the odds, no matter what this cruel world throws at us, we will fight it and come out on top – for that is what we do, we are humans after all! We will fight, we will persevere, we will win! Banzai!”

Everyone responded with raised arms and enthusiasm, including me after the first shout, “Banzai! Banzai!”

That was one hell of a speech, to be honest. I knew there was a reason that Canta was the leader of the Japanese refugees but to come up with that stuff impromptu and successfully rally the people into an energetic and productive mood is extraordinary. Even without the Dark Field, even without omniscience, and even with all her vulnerabilities and genki nature — she is a true Leader.

Along with Tumble and Calendar, Canta talked with many refugees and ex-Field Wielders to let them know about the particulars of the situation. She told them to retrieve supplies from the nearby hospitals, convenience stores, and residence buildings. She told a few of them to keep their eyes on the chimera dragon and to inform Torigoe the moment they saw it move. Some of the refugees were sent to prepare breakfast from the remaining supplies while some were sent to look for other refugees who darted off in other directions. Some ex-Field Wielders were sent to Taito Ikuei Elementary to contact the rest of the refugees there to exchange comms about what transpired in Shinobugaoka. And basically everyone except the children were effectively handed out work and assignments to do.

Meanwhile, Limey came back from his chore of rescuing people and we told him about Salai healing and reviving people. He was terrified of hearing his name, so we didn’t tell him much in detail and Six just ended up playing with him for a bit. Then, after Plume brought a table and a few chairs, we set up an improvised round table conference to discuss the dragon. Canta, Calendar, Tumble, Six, Sherlock, Plume, Limey, Thena, and the frozen human-sized Statue of Liberty sat (Liberty stood) around the table and started.