Defense of the Hill of Bones

Tomita violently shook as she tried to come to grips with the reality of Nagataka’s death. She was completely overwhelmed with confusion and loss, and wondered how she’d go on living like this, or survive the encounter they found themselves in.

“Tomita-chan we need you!”, yelled Ono, who sounded genuinely worried for once.

“That’s right, we’re under attack. There are raptors trying to kill us on some strange world. They’ve already killed Naga-kun and Masato-kun. If I don’t help, then we’ll die to, but maybe that’s ok? Maybe I should just give up and relax in heaven with Naga-kun.”, she thought as her squad mates fought off the monsters approaching them.

Tomita had nearly given in to defeat as memories invaded her mind. She remembered what Nagataka had told her that day at the beach.

“Keep fighting Tomita-chan, keep fighting or it was for nothing!”, Nagataka had yelled to her.

“But Naga-kun I can’t. I can’t do this without you. I can’t live alone again.”, thought Tomita.

“Sure you can.”, her mother said in a memory, “You’re strong Tomita. Please try to find happiness, please take care of your father.”

“But Momma, Papa is gone. My happiness was just stolen. I can’t do this anymore.”, she thought.

Finally, something Nagataka said just minutes before flashed in her mind, “We’re pregnant!”, he had yelled.

“Our baby. I can’t, no, I won’t let these monsters have it!”, she thought in a flush of rage, “Just remember what Papa taught you. Count down from ten.”

Tomita let her worries and uncertainties swirl around inside her mind as she counted down from ten. She kissed Nagataka’s still warm lips and held his face in her hands. She closed his eyes and cried. As her count down neared one she grabbed his dog tags, putting them around her neck with her own, and took out his wallet, which contained pictures of them, and put it in one of her back pockets. She stopped however, as she felt something hard and box shaped already in her pocket.

“What is this?”, she wondered for a moment before Ono interrupted her.

“Tomita-chan!”, he yelled.

Tomita brushed the thought aside and quickly put the wallet in another pocket before grabbing the rifle laying to her right. She sat up and looked around. Ono and Yoshioka were behind her, both shooting packs of raptors. She looked in front of her and saw more raptor packs attacking other groups of creatures and people. The non-humans that were being attacked were varied in color, shape, and size. They were all wearing some sort of clothing however, and some had weapons. To her right was a small hill, and it appeared this was happening all around it from the sounds she heard in the distance. A forest surrounded the hill, with raptors flooding out of it.

The raptor packs varied in size from just two feet tall to nearly eight feet in height. She could make out that some were fully feathered, others looked hairy from a distance, and some were partially scaly. The loose soil around the hill was covered more in corpses and litter than grass, although patches of white flowers dotted the terrain. The vibrantly colored raptors reminded Tomita of butterflies as they fluttered across the tattered soil and bathed in the blood of their victims. Screams of pain and terror echoed through the valley, and the stench of blood and decaying bodies hung in the air. As she took in this hellscape a group of five raptors in front of her turned and began running towards her.

Franticly she aimed at them and began firing. They were fast and nimble, and she missed several shots before she brought the last one down not thirty feet from where she stood.

“Ono-kun there are other people here being attacked as well, but most of them aren’t human. Should we help them?”, asked Yoshioka.

“Help them if you can but focus fire on what’s coming at us.”, said Ono without missing a beat.

“Yes sir, sergeant major.”, said Yoshioka as he resumed firing.

“Ono-kun we’re at the base of a hill, perhaps we should move up it?”, suggested Tomita.

“Hell no, we’d be surrounded, let’s make a beeline for the trees and just keep running.”, said Yoshioka.

“Where in the hell is the truck?”, Ono mumbled while firing.

Tomita continued to shoot at raptors that approached them until she heard Yoshioka mumble something to himself as he stopped firing.

“Ono-kun this is bad.”, said Yoshioka in a quiet, defeated tone.

“What is it? Bigger dinosaurs?”, laughed Ono.

“Worse, check under your right foot.”, said Yoshioka.

“Yoshi-kun we don’t have time for games!”, Ono spat out as he looked under his foot.

Tomita turned to see him rubbing the ground with his foot. He revealed a headlight as he swept away the dirt. He continued to push away more dirt to reveal more of the truck’s grill.

“We’re standing on it?”, thought Tomita.

“How ridiculous.”, said Ono with a twisted smile.

“On the plus side if we start digging now, we can reload in a week or so.”, laughed Yoshioka.

“What’s your ammo count you two?”, asked Ono.

“About half a clip sir.”, said Tomita.

“Very low sir, maybe a few rounds, and yes, I used Ito-chan’s clip already.”, said Yoshioka.

“Alright you two, get those spare rifles and let’s start moving towards the hilltop.”, said Ono as he stuck some of the sticks and bones that littered the ground into an x shape in the dirt above the headlight, “Call out your targets and we’ll engage the enemy the way we’re lined up with them simultaneously, to conserve ammo.”

“Some in front of you Ono-kun!”, yelled Yoshioka.

A group of seven raptors ran towards them, darting around each other. Tomita and the others turned to face them and aimed their rifles at them while preparing to fire.

“Wait for it.”, said Ono in a hushed tone.

Seven shots quickly rang out from what was now Tomita’s right. She saw all the raptors spontaneously tumble to the ground. All had been hit with headshots. Tomita turned to her right and saw a young man with a rifle approaching them. He was about six feet tall, had a slightly fit build, and long parted red and white hair that stretched just past his small ears. He was wearing blue jeans, had no shirt, sneakers, a backpack, and strange metal boxes on his forearms. Tomita didn’t notice any of this for a moment however, all she could focus on was the shroud of metallic silver that surrounded him. A dusty haze of metal swirled around him as it swayed about in the wind without blowing away.

He carefully walked towards them, avoiding trampling over any of the flowers, and wrapped the rifle around his back with its strap. His squinting green eyes seemed to pierce through her as he approached. Raptors ran past him, completely ignoring him, like he was a silver ghost. He put his hands in the air and walked to within twelve feet of them. Tomita trembled as his blank expression conveyed ease despite their hellish surroundings.

“Sir, should I fire?”, asked Yoshioka as his hands shook.

“Hold your fire.”, said Ono without looking away from the man.

The man slowly reached around with one hand into his pocket and pulled out a hand-held radio. He shook it and pointed first to it, and then to Tomita. Suddenly Tomita remembered the thing she felt in her pocket earlier. She reached into her pocket and pulled it out, and sure enough it was a radio. She turned around and saw Ono and Yoshioka pull out their own while looking at them with the same confusion she had.

The man pressed the single button on the right side of the radio he was holding and spoke in English. Immediately the words came through their radios, but in Japanese.

In a cold, no nonsense manner, the man blankly stated, “I suggest you kill yourselves now while you have the ammo. The raptors will eat you alive, and there’s no surviving this place.”.

He let his hands fall to his sides and began to start walking past them. Ono was about to speak but Yoshioka interrupted him.

“Oi, Oi, Oi! What the fuck are you spouting off. Kill ourselves? What the hell is going on here? Who’s responsible for this? Who killed Ito-chan?”, Yoshioka yelled angrily in his radio while pointing his rifle at the man.

The man turned back to them and looked at the bodies of Nagataka and Masato on the ground. He took in a deep breath and sighed before speaking.

“I’m sorry about your friends, I really am. I know how bad this is for all of you and I wish I could help, but I can’t. Every time, everything I’ve tried, it’s all ended the same way.”, the man said through his radio while clenching his fist.

“Let us help you. What’s going on here? Where are you going?”, asked Ono.

“I’m going to put an end to this madness.”, the man said as he looked to the sky.

“Slow down, we can help you. We’re a team in the JSDF, the Japanese military. My name is Ono, and this is Yoshi and Tomita, what’s your name?”, asked Ono in a parental tone.

“My name is Justin. Listen I really am sorry Ono, but I can’t, you would just die like the others. This place is too harsh to survive.”, said Justin.

“There’s no point in us not trying is there? You’ve managed to survive, haven’t you? Let’s defend each other at the hilltop, we can form a perimeter and…” Ono spoke to the man, but he interrupted him.

“Don’t you get it? Your already dead. There’s no way to defend this hill, and no way ya’ll would survive coming with me. Don’t you think I’ve tried? I’ve seen enough death! I’m going to put a stop to this myself, no matter what it takes.”, said Justin in a raised voice.

“Fuck you coward!”, yelled Yoshioka, “I’ll bet that’s how you’re still alive. You just hide behind others and run away. Tomita-chan is pregnant! Her fiancé Naga-kun, my friend Ito-chan, they’re both dead, but you think you alone should get to live? I wonder what would happen if I tried shooting through that silver cloud of yours?”.

“Yoshi-kun!”, scolded Ono while lowering Yoshioka’s gun.

“She’s pregnant?”, asked a wide-eyed Justin while starting at Tomita.

Tomita nodded and saw the man lower his head and look at the metal boxes on his forearms. She wondered what this man knew that they didn’t and why he wouldn’t help them. She wished that she knew what was happening in this valley, in this strange, hellish world.

“A coward. He said that to me once.”, whispered Justin, “His struggle, their deaths, if I walk away from here, then wasn’t it all for nothing?”

Shaking, Justin spoke up and continued talking to himself, “That’s right, maybe it’s not right to stay here and fight this battle endlessly instead of trying to save the whole world, but, it’s not wrong either! How can I watch their sacrifice and still walk away with these blades? How can I leave their graves here to be trampled on by these monsters?”

Tomita saw tears in his eyes as he looked back to her and said, “Fine! I’ll help you save these people. We’ll take over this hill, and then this entire valley. I won’t leave until this place is safe, until I’m the last monster standing!”

Tomita felt the grief emanating off him as he spoke. As he found a new resolve to fight, she grew in hers as well.

“This man doesn’t look much older than me. If he can survive here, surely, I can too. I won’t let anything happen to Naga-kun’s baby. I will survive this hell, and I will bury my precious Naga-kun. I won’t give up like papa, I’ll keep moving forward, no matter where that leads.”, she thought.

“That’s the spirit kid. Now I think we should try to gather a force at the hilltop and form a circle there, so how about you come with us?”, asked Ono.

“You’re mostly right, but we need to split up. You guys go one way around the hill and I’ll go the other. We’ll gather others with the walkie talkies and tell them all to go to the hilltop and form a circle like you said.”, said Justin in a now hurried tone while tossing several ammo magazines from his backpack to them.

They made sure the cartridges fit their rifles while Ono asked, “Can’t we just tell everyone at once to go to the hilltop with these radios and then go up the hill together?”

“No, the walkie talkie’s range is painfully short, like less than twenty feet, and we won’t gather enough people if we go together, not nearly enough. Listen, prioritize the Sheeken-eure, I mean the brown things with six legs and stalk eyes. We’ll need them most after the fight. Also, when you hear a loud rumble, run up to the hilltop immediately. We have to hurry, I don’t know when they’ll attack.”, said Justin as he walked past Tomita.

“Wait, surely we should go together, you won’t be safe alone.”, said Ono trying to stop him.

“Don’t worry about me, I’m invulnerable, it’s you who’s unsafe, so one last thing.”, said Justin while turning around.

His teary, broken down face reminded Tomita of her father’s, like all the life had been painfully sucked out of him.

“Please don’t die, I just can’t take it anymore.”, he whimpered as he turned and leapt forward over twenty feet, before breaking into an impossibly fast run that tore up the Earth.

“Oi, what the hell was that just now? Is he even human?”, asked Yoshioka, dumbfounded.

“You heard him, time is of the essence. Yoshi-kun, Tomita-chan, let’s move out!”, ordered Ono.

Tomita shook out her feelings of loss and bewilderment as they ran in the direction Yoshioka had been looking earlier. She saw a young dark-skinned man with a pistol next to a girl of the same color, and they were standing next to a body. Farther up the hill was a woman screaming to them, who Tomita thought might have been their mother based on the way she looked. A dozen smaller raptors, all less than three feet tall, were closing in on them.

“Yoshi-kun, Tomita-chan, defend those civilians! Open fire!”, shouted Ono.

The three started firing but were not very accurate, as their targets were small, nimble, and moving fast. The young man began shooting with his pistol as well, and all but two were killed as they got too close to the pair for Tomita and the others to shoot. Tomita ran with all her might toward them, and worried that she was too late as the raptors leaped at the man and girl.

“Batter up!”, said the man to the girl.

She suddenly pulled out a baseball bat and hit one of them dead in the chest, throwing it to the ground. The man ducked, grabbing the other by the tail as it leapt over him, and threw it back in front of him before shooting them both with his pistol.

Tomita and the others approached the man as he put the girl behind him and pointed his pistol in their direction, but toward the ground. Ono signaled for them to stop with his hand about twelve feet from them and told Yoshioka to cover them. Yoshioka started looking around with his rifle and Ono nodded towards Tomita.

She pulled out her radio and pointed to it and then to the man. She took a good look at him and the girl. They both had brown eyes, the man had a short black afro, and the girl had long black hair that was curly. The man looked to be maybe nineteen to Tomita, and the girl must have been around fourteen or so. They were both wearing t-shirts and blue jeans, and one of them had some English writing on it. They also both seemed unnaturally fit for their ages to Tomita.

The man looked down and fumbled around in his pocket for a moment before pulling out his radio. Tomita was about to use her radio but stopped to think for a moment.

“Wait, how do these things even work? Does this device know who I’m talking to? Does it only translate one language at a time?”, thought Tomita, “No time to waste though, better give it a try.”

Tomita pressed the button on her radio and began speaking, “Hello we are from the Japanese Self Defense Force. We are here to help. Please go to the top of the hill, we will form a perimeter there and help defend everyone.”

Everyone heard English words come from the man and the girl’s radios, however, the man didn’t even let Tomita finish before he began speaking.

“Do you people know what’s going on? These things killed my dad! Where are we? What’s happening?”, asked the young man franticly.

The woman from farther up the hill ran up to the man and hugged him, nearly tackling him.

“William are you ok son?”, she asked while putting the girl in her arms as well and asking, “Jayda, baby, are you ok?”

“I’m fine mom, Jayda is safe. These Japanese people came and saved us.”, said William.

The woman turned to Tomita and the others with teary eyes and said through William’s radio, “Thank you! Please, do you know where we are? What’s goin’ on here. My husband, these things took my husband.”

Tomita began trying to calm the woman down by saying, “Ma’am we are here to help, but we don’t know any more than you do at this time. We were driving down the road in Japan and suddenly we woke up here.”

“Japan? We were at home in Louisiana, just outside Shreveport. My husband Alex was cleaning his pistol and my kids were playin’ baseball in the yard. Next thing I knew we was all here. These damn things were runnin’ around eaten’ people.” said the woman while holding her children.

Tomita thought about their situation a moment before saying, “We will find out what has happened here after we are safe. Take your family to the top of the hill, we will meet you there and form a perimeter to protect everyone. Oh, and don’t shoot the other creature’s you see unless you must, we think only the dinosaurs are dangerous. The other people here might be in the same boat we’re in.”, instructed Tomita.

“What are all those things, aliens?”, asked William curiously.

Tomita thought about the creatures she had seen earlier and wondered if they were in fact aliens.

“Possibly, listen we must hurry. Please go to the hilltop and form a circle.”, said Tomita trying to rush them along.

“Come on kids, you heard the nice lady, we’ll be safe on the hilltop.”, said the woman as she waved at her kids to start walking.

The girl, Jayda, stopped her brother while they held hands. She emotionlessly stared down at her dead father. Several seconds passed and Tomita wondered what Jayda was thinking, why a young girl seemed so calm in the chaos that surrounded her.

“We’ll come back for your daddy baby, we gotta hurry.”, said the woman.

Jayda continued to blankly stare at her father’s body. She slowly reached out her hand towards him, but William took it in his own hand, and without a word, began walking forward with Jayda and their mother.

As the family went up the hill Ono ordered Tomita and Yoshioka to move again and they started running forward.

“Nice job.”, said Ono in English to Tomita, before continuing in Japanese, “You did a lot better in disaster relief training than we did, so maybe I’ll have you talk to the people we meet while Yoshi-kun and I will defend.”

Tomita nodded and smiled, glad to have helped the family before. For a brief moment she thought about Nagataka. She would never get to have a family with him now, but this thought was interrupted by Yoshioka.

“You sure do have a knack for people Tomita-chan, but I don’t know if that’s going to translate over to these things up here. They look like the things cloud boy mentioned”, said Yoshioka.

Tomita and Ono looked ahead to see two large creatures with six hairy legs and two pinchers in the front. They were over seven feet tall, five feet wide, and nine feet long. They had large chests low to the ground, with stalks coming from their backsides. The stalk hung over their body, and on the end of it was a single large spherical eye that resembled a flies’. The creatures were covered in a brown, wrinkly skin. They were surrounded by the bodies of their own kind and raptors. They had large pouches on the top of their chests, or perhaps backs, and spears in their hands. The two had just finished killing a pack of raptors with them.

One of them went over to look at the body of one of its fallen comrades as the other looked over to Tomita and the others with its stalk. It walked over to the other alien before they both looked up to Tomita as she and the others approached them. The Sheeken-eure pointed their metal spears at them and Ono signaled for them to stop about twenty feet from the creatures. Tomita couldn’t see a discernable mouth on them.

“How will we talk to them?”, she wondered.

“Tomita-chan, Yoshi-kun, cover me, I’ll try this one. Justin-san said we need to get this race of people, but if we can’t establish communication, we’ll move on to another group.”, instructed Ono.

Ono lowered his weapon and pulled out his radio.

He pushed the button and began speaking, “Hello. We come in peace. We aren’t going to try to hurt you like those things.”, said Ono while pointing at the raptor bodies, “Please come to the top of the hill, we can help defend each other there.”

The two creatures tilted their stalks as strange purring, screeching, and tapping sounds came from radios in their pouches. One of them set down their spear and took a radio out of its pouch with one of its front legs. The creature’s feet-hands looked like large elongated paws with three fat index fingers, and one thumb. The creature examined the radio before holding it below its body and pressing the button. Ono and the others heard the strange sounds again, this time coming from the creature’s mouth, which must have been located below its body. At the same time through their radios they heard the creature speak in Japanese.

“You are not Sheeken-Eure, and yet you speak. And yet you speak through this. Can you not speak in the normal way? We could communicate much faster. All is very quiet now. We can only hear each other. We all couldn’t hear The Mind when we woke up here, and now that only the two of us are left we can only hear each other. Can you people hear your Mind?”, asked the creature.

Tomita and the others tried to understand what the creature meant.

“What is this Mind? What does it mean by communicate the normal way? Do they use some kind of nonverbal communication perhaps? No wait it spoke of hearing The Mind. Maybe they have telepathy? Or maybe they speak with pheromones like ants?”, thought Tomita.

“Our people can only speak to each other through sound and gestures.”, said Ono, “These radios will let us communicate with you, and the other people here.”

“Sound only? How dreadful. You must be so lonely, not hearing a Mind or the others around you in your head. People you say? You beings have never been observed on our world, neither have any of these others.”, said the creature before it began to bob about excitedly, “But you will help us you say? This is good. Are the other garment wearing creatures friendly too? Are only these strange animals’ hostile?” asked the creature while pointing to a raptor body with its pinchers.

“Yes, we are here to help you. My name is Ono, and this is Tomita and Yoshi. The other people should have radios as well. You can tell them you mean them no harm when you see them. We are making a perimeter at the top of the hill to defend everyone against the raptors.”, said Ono.

“Raptors.”, the creature tried and failed to say in its own language, “Ono, Tomita, Yoshi.”, it said in a more understandable way before continuing through the radio, “I am Feverend and this is my mate Sherva. You know about these creatures, yes? They are from your world, yes? We will follow you then. Without The Mind’s instructions we are lost. We will listen to you instead until we hear The Mind again. Please take care of us and we will serve you well Ono.”, said Feverend.

“Alright.”, said Ono, “Go to the top of the hill to help form a circle and defend the other people there.”

“Yes, yes. We will follow you to the hilltop and help.”, said Feverend enthusiastically.

“No, we need you two to go alone, we have more people to help down here. We will meet you there soon.”, said Ono.

“Alone? But who will lead us if you die like our friends? Please come with us and be safe.”, said Feverend, while bobbing about.

“Don’t worry, we’ll be fine…”, Ono said while being interrupted by an extremely loud and low rumble from the other side of the hill.

The sound shook them from the inside-out as it vibrated through their skeletons, resonating in their spines and flooding the valley like a wave. For a moment they were all paralyzed with crippling fear as the hair on Tomita’s neck and arms stood up. In that moment dozens of raptors started pouring out of the forest.

Feverend and Sherva jumped into the air and shook with fear before Feverend said, “We are going to the hilltop now, please hurry Ono.”

Feverend and Sherva ran up the hill and Ono broke Tomita and Yoshioka’s paralysis by saying, “Tomita-chan, Yoshi-kun, I think we’re out of time. That must be the rumble Justin-san mentioned earlier. Let’s run up the hill counter clockwise and try to point out to people to come up the hill, but we don’t have time for anymore long attempts to convince them. Unless one of you has any ideas?”, asked Ono.

Tomita and the others started running as she thought about the radios and Ono’s conversation with Feverend, and about what Feverend had said about thoughts and minds, as a thought came to her own mind, “Maybe Justin was wrong, there must be a way to talk to everyone at once.”

“Alright this works by me talking into it, but what else is in the equation? If it used radio waves it wouldn’t have such a limited range, so surely it relies on some other method. Thoughts, light, sound? Wait, that rumble, I could feel the sound, it traveled into me.”, thought Tomita.

“Ono-kun I think I might have an idea.”, she said as they ran up and around the hill.

They saw several groups of aliens in front of them, cowering in fear and staying put as they ran. Less than three hundred feet in front of them was an enormous white weasel that was about five feet tall, ten feet long, and four feet wide. It was covered in fur clothing and had large pouches and a bow and arrow mounted to its sides. It was fighting some raptors between it and the hill with a spear and it was going to be flanked by the raptors coming from the trees soon.

Ono pointed to it and they began to run towards it, before he asked, “Well we don’t have any time left Tomita-chan, what is your idea?”

Tomita took out her radio and screamed into it as loud as she could, “Everyone get to the hilltop! We will defend each other there. This isn’t over yet. We can still fight, we can live!”

The aliens they were passing began running up to the circle at the hilltop and the white weasel looked over to them and let out a loud squeaking sound as it fought off the raptors surrounding it. As they got closer, they could make out Justin far behind the weasel. He was drenched in blood and running towards something, with several packs of raptors moving in the same direction. He noticed them as well and waved.

Tomita was relieved to see him, and she waved back at him, but she wondered if he lied about the radios or if he simply didn’t know. Ono gave the word to start firing on raptors attempting to flank the weasel. Tomita and the others took several shots at them as they ran, killing a few. The weasel finished off the last raptor that was attacking it and began to run towards Justin and the hilltop.

They noticed there were no other living civilians in sight and Ono shouted, “Alright move on the hilltop!”

The three squad mates made a mad dash for the hilltop as they fired behind themselves. Tomita felt the sting of grief and anger again as she noticed many of the people she had yelled to before had been caught by the raptors.

“How dare that bastard lie to us! We could have saved everyone from the start.”, grumbled Yoshioka as he glanced over at Justin.

“Maybe he just didn’t know how they worked?”, suggested Tomita.

Ono and Tomita looked over to him as well and saw a raptor run right up on his left as he was trying to bend down and grab something. They watched in surprise as Justin, without even looking, lifted up his left foot in a flash and kicked its head clean off, sending it and the body flying in the air in a shower of blood and tendons. He picked up a small creature and bolted towards the hilltop.

“Good God.”, muttered Ono as they reached the circle on the hilltop.

Tomita saw some humanoid, red, furry aliens with lever action rifles, and Feverend and Sherva to her left who were throwing rocks and bones at raptors. On the other side of the circle she heard William’s pistol and another pistol firing. Tomita, Ono, and Yoshioka turned around, took positions, and fired on the raptors approaching them. Out of Tomita’s peripheral vision she saw Justin and the white weasel make it to the circle and begin firing. As more raptors fell the remaining ones started to dart about during their run.

“Now they’re trying to dodge our shots?”, thought Tomita in surprise.

The raptors slowed their advance and came to a stop less than thirty feet from the circle. Ono gave the order to cease fire by lifting his hand and everything got quiet. Tomita turned and noticed what was happening. A large red raptor covered in scars and about seven feet tall took a few steps forward and looked directly into Justin’s eyes while snarling. After a brief moment it started hissing and began walking towards Justin.

Ono said, “Everyone reload.”, over his radio as Justin walked up to the raptor.

Tomita was on her last magazine, but Yoshioka began reloading as Tomita watched Justin walk right up to the raptors face and stare into its eyes. For a brief moment everything stopped.

The raptor snarled and attempted to bite Justin’s face, but he was too fast for the creature. Tomita gasped as Justin grabbed its neck and lifted it into the air as it futilely clawed at him. She expected him to be torn open but not a drop of blood could be seen. On his other arm a blade exited the front of the box on his forearm and pierced the raptor’s heart, killing it. He completely ignored the blood spraying onto him as he dropped the raptor to the ground and looked out unto the dozens of raptors watching them.

“Just what the hell is this man?”, thought Tomita, “Super-fast and strong. That raptors claws didn’t cut him one bit, and he lifted it like a doll.”

Justin screamed at the top of his lungs, making a roar, “RAAAHHH!”.

The raptors took a step back and looked at each other, before some took another step forward. Justin took his foot and stomped the dead raptor’s head into the ground, completely obliterating it.

“Just how much force does it take to do something like that? Its head is completely gone!”, thought Tomita.

He roared again, “RAAAHHH!”.

Tomita and the others heard the same low, steady sound from before coming from the trees. She felt the sound resonate within her as it even shook the ground. She saw something large in the trees move into the forest, then the raptors all began hissing to each other as they turned around and walked away.

Justin reloaded his rifle and began firing on the raptors, who in turn began to run away, into the trees.

Ono yelled, “Fire!”, into his radio and everyone heard it through their own, in their languages, before they began attacking.

As Tomita ran out of ammo, she saw bullets, arrows, spears, bones, and rocks all hurled towards the raptors as they fled. She heard Yoshioka yell a fierce battle cry, and she joined in as other humans and aliens started yelling. One by one, the raptors were gunned down, and within a minute they had all either died or disappeared into the forest.

Tomita turned and looked out into the sea of bodies surrounding the hill. The wind gently blew the grass and dead leaves against them as small animals fed off them. Justin approached them and the blade on his arm re-entered the box. She could hear Feverend and Sherva bobbing towards them as well. She noticed everyone in the circle was watching them. Yoshioka brushed past her as Ono tried to stop him.

“Just where do you get off lying to us about the radios?”, asked Yoshioka while pointing his rifle at Justin.

“What are you talking about Yoshi? I’ve been using the walkie talkies for days, I know damn well how they work.”, said Justin while he looked at the crowd gathered in the circle and nodded, “Nice job, how did ya’ll get so many people up here?”

“Don’t bullshit me! Tomita-chan spoke to everyone through her radio just a moment ago!”, yelled Yoshioka.

Ono put Yoshioka’s rifle down and scolded him, “Yoshi-kun, we need this man alive. He’s the only one who might know what’s going on here.”

“Justin-san did you hear me when I yelled?”, asked Tomita while stepping forward.

“No of course not, I told you that the walkie talkies have a short range.”, said Justin.

“Justin-san I thought that maybe the radios worked through sound waves, so I tried yelling into it, and everyone nearby heard me. Perhaps you and the people on the other side of the hill were too far away, it was noisy after all.”, Tomita said in a forgiving manner.

“You heard me, right?”, she asked the white weasel that had been standing next to them.

The weasel nodded.

“That’s ridiculous I’m sure I tried…”, Justin’s voice trailed off.

His head dropped as he began shaking and he slowly said, “That makes sense, I remember a moment now that fits with that. Of course, that’s how it works, it makes so much sense for them to do it that way.”

“Justin-san calm down, who is them, and what’s going on here?”, asked Ono.

“Why am I so stupid? Why didn’t I think of that?”, Justin whimpered as he began to cry, “It’s all my fault, this whole time, I could have saved everybody.”

“Justin-san calm down, it’s okay now, I’m sure you tried your best.”, said Tomita, approaching him.

“Tomita you don’t understand! Hundreds have died!”, wailed Justin as he fell to his knees.

“While I sat here abandoning my promise, Morcant’s mother, your friends, and all of the others were dying. I could have saved them all!”, he cried.

Justin threw his fists into the ground and yelled, “God dammit!”