The world has gone mad

Turtlesand, Teamarine Province, Capital City, Goldrush Square --

A large congregation stands under a lightshow and several screens displaying new advertisement reels by familiar brands.

It's the end of the year and people are celebrating.

The city has cleaned up all the demons that came out of the woodworks. Everyone needs a break from all this drama. The new mayor somehow organized this event, pretty much the only one in Turtlesand.

Capital City has always been special in even before the apocalypse dragon appeared. It just feels right that the citizens get to have their drinks and treats.

It's a good time to just feel normal. Everyone is aware, one way or another, that the next opportunity might not come for them.

Dani, probably the only sober person not part of the security detail, stands dazed in the year-end crowd.

He's supposed to be drinking and enjoying himself, but a certain worry weighs on his heart.

His friend Eli told him about the plan to kill the mayor.

To be clear, Dani is not involved. Eli is.

As a friend, Dani feels obligated to stay silent about the matter, but there is a great desire in him not to see anything notable happening tonight.

This selfish reason outweighs any thought Dani has about Eli.

He's not supposed to hear about this. The two aren't particularly close, so it's quite the mystery that Eli would say anything.

Eli had assured Dani that he hadn't turned into a demon.

The decision has been made long ago, before the mayor was even elected, perhaps before he had even considered running for office.

A person who appears to be benign is not necessarily so.

And a person who appears to be competent about one thing or many only needs to be good at lying, and sometimes that just means being able to identify the right fools to deceive.

It's a fact of life that everyone knows to be true, one way or another, never to be challenged because the last guy who did ended up pretty badly.

Eli is going to be that next guy.

One can go on about who's corrupt and not, who deserves a bullet through their skill, who's tricked people out of millions and billions.

Dani himself has lost something to the city hall, but tonight, he just wanted to drink, and now he can't get himself to.

"What's up? Why aren't you drinking?"

Large muscles wrapped around Dani's shoulders. He looked to the person who grabbed him --

A stranger who looks like he had gunned down a club.

"Sorry, thought you were someone else. Well, friends got some homebrew over there -- there's plenty so feel free to join us"

Dani knows what this is about.

"No thanks. I'm driving"

"Not from around here? Nice to have you, where you from?"

"I have to find my friend"

"Okay man, good talk"

Dani walks away, until the stranger loses sight of him. He didn't look back.

Dani didn't have anywhere in particular to go. And at the same time, he didn't feel like going home.

Perhaps he did want to see something to happen after all.

Dani can feel his nerves firing. His heart hangs low. A bitter taste spreads in his mouth.

The sounds of fireworks launching into the sky whistle.

It shouldn't be the right time.

Everyone looks at the unexpected.

The nightsky clouded by citylights exploded into complex arrays of colors.

Everyone hears the sound explosions.

Dani remembers something -- a scene he did not personally witness -- the time when the people thought everything would end and go back to normal.

"The dragon!"

The members of the crowd have a variety of responses to what they seem to see. Confusion overwhelms the crowd.

Dani looks up.

Smoke spreads across the sky, shining in parts. The darkside of the moon grows into its glow.

"The mayor!"

Dani looks to the sidestage.

The mayor stands on the table dancing, if it can be called that. There is an unusual and disgusting quality to his movement. The rhythm doesn't match a common person's sense for music, and the range could be mistaken for torture.

The mayor stops at an awkward standing pose.

He reaches out and grabs something in front of him. He bites into the air between his hands.

A woman in the crowd screams.

Dani cannot understand what he was hearing, but he could almost make out a plea for help.

She is in pain. She is in terror.

The woman is in silence. Murmurs of the crowd replaced her voice.

Dani finds something tall to climb -- a parked car, an expensive-looking E-Motors.

A man in the crowd screams.

Dani seems to crowd open up around the source of the cry for help. There is a ring of observers around the anguished man.

Then more and more people go into shock and lose consciousness.

"He's dead!"

Those words broke the dragon's spell.

The people stopped looking, merely reacting to what they see.

Terror--

It spreads its tentacles into the hearts of people.

Then, they all looked in the same direction.

It is not the dragon that they must fear, for it is distant and indifferent.

Where the mayor stood now stands something awful.

The people froze.

Some ran.

No one thought to muster the courage turn against what they see.

Dani can see the flow of people, the chaotic pattern their movement follows.

He escaped to a nearby building, an open cafe.

The people inside, two men and three women, the employees--

They all lie dead on the floor.

There is no sign of violence, and yet their dying expressions reflect what could be fear and agony.

Dani has never seen a dead person. He has never seen a dead person that wasn't an actor in a film. He has never seen a dead person that wasn't an embalmed corpse.

All the disturbing things Dani has been juggling in his mind slip off his grasp.

Something shatters in his mind. Many other things follow.

He wants to go home but the people outside feel more threatening that he is disturbed by the dead in this place.

Dani watches the scene outside.

The crowd has mostly dispersed. Some people remain frozen in place. And some other people have fallen to the ground, perhaps dead or playing dead or such.

The mayor -- he seems small from farther away -- seem to be gnawing at air again. He stands alone on the sidestage.

Dani looks around.

He's not so much wondering about where Eli went, but he did remember of the plot he was told about.

There is no sign of Eli.

Dani suspects Eli wasn't alone in this plan, but he can't find anyone who might be Eli's companion either.

"Monster! Help!"

A man is screaming nearby.

Dani looks but cannot see the monster.

The man is looking in fear of nothing.

The man lets out a deathly scream. He grasps his own neck, apparently struggling against his own strength. Then, he falls to the ground.

Bang--

The sound of gunfire rings. It is a dull sound that disturbs a gunner's heart.

Dani cannot remember what could have been wrong with that sound.

He finds the source of the sound.

A woman crouch on the ground behind a concrete bench has an unfamiliar gun trained at the mayor.

She empties the mag with incredibly poor aiming.

How stupid that sight was, how precisely she hit the stage backdrop.

"Shit!"

The woman scurries to the next location, behind a luxury longcar that must have always been there, the kind should have been impounded if it didn't look like the owner would encase anyone who would do it in cement.

She aims once more then throws her gun at the air beside her.

"Sparrow, help!"

She runs shouting, her arms guarding her head.

More gunfire--

Dani cannot see where anything is coming from. They might be on the other side of the street, behind some obstruction.

Dani finds Eli sprinting by, looking around.

Eli jumps back and hit the hard ground. He groans shortly then fires a quick shot at the air above him.

Eli picks himself back up and continued sprinting. He doesn't seem to be going in particular, apparently searching for something in the area, something that could be standing on open ground.

Eli shoots at air again.

Then Eli shoots at one of the people who remained standing frozen on the shoulder.

An absurd idea comes to Dani, one that can only be rational given a few presumptions.

It's not something he can be sure about but Dani has never experienced the symptoms of the pandemic.

He has never seen the dragon.

He has never heard the screams.

He had assumed at first that people were messing with him when the news broke out, like it was all an elaborate joke he didn't get the memo for.

It didn't take long for him to accept that this how things are now, or this was how things were then.

Now, Dani truly feels like the world has gone mad.

The play outside continues.

"Heads up!"

Eli punches air and picks up nothing from the ground. He assumes a throwing pose and lobs an invisible thing towards the mayor.

The mayor slips and falls off the stage.

Dani hears cheering from across the street.

"Robin, watch your feet!"

Eli falls on his ass then grips his leg.

"Don't mind me, kill him dead--"

Eli falls silent, as if something sliced his throat.

Dani didn't see, but he understood what happened.

Eli died right then.