[PLAINS 2]

The sun pierces, not as a knife, but a feather. It’s pleasant, inviting, and energizing, but he knows he has a purpose for being here now.

Masaru stretches back to his wits as he opens his eyes to the wild breeze, carrying with it a banquet of smells from the surrounding forests.

Looking aside, he sees Valerie, laying in the grass just a hair’s breadth away, and glancing his way before she hurriedly gets up.

“What, not happy with the view?” Masaru asks.

“I could ask you the same thing,” she says, opening the bolt in her rifle to make sure the magazine feeds a round into the chamber before setting it in place and slinging it over her shoulder. “Get your book bag and come on,” she says.

“Tsk.”

“What? Where’d the professional businessman go?” she asks.

He steps over to his briefcase and slings it around his shoulder. “Book bag? Seriously?” he asks with a slant frown.

Her eyebrows rise subtly. “What, you think work is serious?”

The two stare at each other, and they share a gentle, abrupt laugh.

“You’re crazy,” Masaru says.

“You’re an idiot,” Valerie says. “But… thank you for coming along. I don’t believe Sato for a second, and if he hates you then you must be alright.”

Masaru’s brows ridge with irritation. “Wh- what the hell is that supposed to mean?!”

She laughs with a gentle smile for only a second, and then it’s gone once again. “The rocks are this way,” she says, leading the way along the slope.

“Really? How many times have you been here?” Masaru asks.

Valerie takes a deep breath and releases it as a sigh. “This is twenty-two,” she says.

Masaru’s expression slumps a little before sharpening it back up. “Cool.”

Her dull eyes deaden a little more. “Cool?”

He shrugs. “This is pretty screwed up. Is The Enemy really that bad?”

“The Knight’s… tough,” she says. “Kenji never had to go up against it, and the other…” Her eyes flicker a moment, and Masaru can see she’s thinking quickly. “-two aren’t any help,” she finishes, keeping her gaze to the way down as she watches her footing.

“Wasn’t there a third one back there? Other than Kenji, I mean,” Masaru asks.

Valerie glances at him with a look of displeasure mixed with a kind of loss that he can’t quite place.

“Is he… alive still?” Masaru asks.

She keeps her gaze down the slope. “I misspoke. Three.”

“Huh. And didn’t you mention something about another per-”

“Never mind it. The Knight’s tough, alright?” she interrupts, tightening her grip on her rifle.

Masaru raises a slow brow, unsure if he should try and dig deeper or just leave it at that.

“Yeah, he’s tough,” he says. “So, what. You get a cool gun and I get my briefcase?”

“Yeah.”

His step becomes looser, more like a schoolboy. “This is so stupid. Seriously.”

She purses her lips. “You’re given what you need to get out,” she says. “People in the loop call it the ‘take-along’.”

He blinks. “Take-along? Couldn’t you have picked a cooler name?”

“You have a briefcase, Mr. Abe,” she huffs gently.

Masaru jolts before striking a notably ape-like expression. “I uh… I mean, hey! You do remember my name!”

Valerie looks slowly aside, unhurried and unbothered by his silliness.

“You really do care,” he says with a smirk.

“There won’t be anything to care about if you don’t make it out. Don’t listen to Sato, okay? He’s spent the entire time justifying The Lobby to himself, and so he makes arguments that sound appealing, especially if you’re the type to overthink.”

Masaru’s smirk gains a wry edge. “Don’t get me wrong. Drowning yourself in food and breasts is probably an okay way to go out, but it’s not honest,” he says.

Her lips flatten out. “The Enemy’s challenging us. It’s not about despair and giving up, but it’s letting us take the path we want the most, I think.”

He shrugs. “Maybe so, we won’t know until we try.”

She nods as she hops over a patch of flowers. “And try I will.”

The two continue down the slope as a fresh breeze cools them from the constant aura of the sun.

“So, the carted off thing. Do they get taken to their rooms?

She sighs. “You’re really interested in that, aren’t you?”

“Tch, I mean it would be good to know how I we go out if we fail, right?”

Her eyes struggle to maintain their distant focus. “Giving up – that’s it. Those nurse things come by with a wheelchair and take you back to your hospital room for the last time. If you check on them, they’re not there.”

He squints at nothing in particular. “Eh?”

“It’s all tied to your RES stat,” she explains. “Once it hits zero, they’ll come for you, and you won’t fight back.”

“RES stat? Like some kind of RPG?” he asks as they reach the rocks.

She nods, taking up a position near the front of the outcropping to rest her rifle and get into a shooter’s position.

“The belief that we can escape is the only thing keeping us alive.”

“Okay, but a RES stat. Like, are we in a video game?” Masaru asks with a frown. “Pretty screwed up one, if you ask me.”

“RES is the only one I know of. That, and the marks on our arms are the only hard rules of this reality.”

He scoots up behind her, glancing away to the trees the moment he realizes how she looks in her shooting position facing uphill.

A herd of black and white horses trot along the bottom of the hillside in the direction of the woods.

“Okay, so how do I see it?” he asks.

She fiddles with the iron-sights on her rifle. “You really haven’t noticed yet?”

Masaru’s brow flinches down. “I mean, no?”

“Hmm,” is all she returns with, causing him to ridge up in his laid-back position.

“Don’t hum at me! How do I check!?”

She presses her cheek against the length of the rifle, just behind the rear sight post. “Close your eyes.”

“I…” he sighs, lays back into a comfortable position, and then does as he’s told. His irritated expression holds strong on his face.

“It’s just a stupid blue squiggle,” he complains. “I think my eyes are busted.”

“Now relax,” she says, her tone trailing off as she relaxes into her prone position, supported by the nearby rocks. “It’s hard to know how you’re doing if you’re forcing it all the time.”

His brow flinches in thought as he entertains the idea.

“Just feel.”

Valeries words, like the last drop of a storm, gives the pool of Masaru’s mind the room to settle.

He thinks of the deaths.

He thinks of his failure.

He thinks of his father.

Steadily, he slows the pace of his breath, and for the first time in years, simply relaxes.

No collapsing in bed and immediately losing consciousness. No “resting” under the blue flare of his phone screen. No clenching his jaw in a constant storm of emotions and thoughts.

He simply lets go.

Very slowly, the blue squiggle begins to gain definition. He gets excited for a moment, but then it fizzles out again.

“This is bullshit. What am I doing wrong?!”

Masaru hears a slow, perceptive sigh from the woman next to him.

“You want it too much,” is all she says.

This one cuts deep.

What does that even mean?! He wonders with a scowl.

But her reasoning wins out in his mind, and after a few seconds, he tries to relax everything, and just feel what’s going on.

The blue squiggles are back, but this time they sharpen quickly. His eyebrow twitches with interest, but he stays calm, observant to what it’s trying to tell him.

As if synchronized with his next outbreath, the blue takes on a neon glow as it forms into his business’s standard font for emails.

RES: 31/100

He takes a moment to simply appreciate it, and he watches it go up two points.

“Thirty-three,” Masaru says before expulsing a sigh from deep inside him, and he opens his eyes to watch the clouds. “Huh.”

“What?” Valerie says.

He smirks. “Nothing.” Sitting up slightly, he looks up the slope with her. “What’s yours?”

“You can see it if you watch long enough,” she says with a calm, airy tone.

Masaru’s eye twitches. “Wait, you want me to watch you?” he says, his gaze sliding along the curve of her figure.

Her eyes slant. “Do you want to see my stat or not?”

“Tsk. Don’t get the wrong idea,” he says.

“Don’t get any funny ones,” she says back without skipping a beat.

With a sigh, he relents, and holds his eyes on her for a moment.

“Should I be… feeling with this one, too?” he asks.

She scoffs. “You’re funny. For an idiot.”

He frowns. “And you’re pretty smart for a jerk.”

The two simmer on the words for a moment, but he keeps his eyes on her the way she keeps her gaze on the horizon.

After the initial emotion’s passed over him, he begins looking over the features of her face. The slope of her nose, the curl of her ear, the way her hair covers so much of her face while still providing a sublime curve for her chin.

There’s no denying it now. He finds her cute, brutally so, but it’s not what’s on his mind for long.

The calm, almost listless expression of the mouth, the resigned but serious position prone with her rifle, and her eyes…

“You look… tired,” he says.

Remaining otherwise motionless, she squints into her scope.

Steadily, a blue outline begins to form over her left shoulder.

She looks very tired, Masaru realizes, she’s playing it off as something small by acting calm, but she’s not simply tired, she’s afraid.

RES: 12/100

The wind blows across the plains, jostling her blond bangs against her cheeks.

“Oh,” is all he says.

She says nothing.

“You’re not going to give up though, right?” he asks, watching her face with newfound intensity.

Again, she says nothing.

He sits up. “You’re not going to give up, are you?”

“Get back down,” she says.

“I know I’m not the most fun guy to do this with but it can’t be so-”

“Get back dow-”

Valerie’s voice is stopped by the phantasmal cry of a midnight horse.

Masaru ducks down and looks up the slope to see it.

“The Knight!” Masaru says with a scowl.

She nods. “I don’t think it spotted you.”

The two wait to watch The Knight direct its horse to trot along the slope side. The setting sun rests into the hill, giving The Knight an incandescent red glow. The steed’s mane billows like the reaching hands of demons into the wind to catch the souls of those scattered by the gusts of the plains…

And today, that’s Masaru, and Valerie.

“Okay, remember, after your first shot, aim a little to the left,” Masaru says.

Valerie blinks. “What?”

“When it goes down the slope it starts at a right angle. If you shoot a little left it’ll correct in time for it to hit them.”

She scoffs. “That’s stupid. It doesn’t go to the left.”

Masaru, his eyes glued on The Knight, cannot help but chuckle. “What? Of course it does. That’s like… his opening attack! Unless he changes it, I mean. Last time, though, he did a little wave to its right, then to its left to correct to our center.”

Valerie shakes her head. “What? How can you possibly claim to know that after seeing him one time?”

“Learning a boss’s attack patterns is a basic concept for gaming.”

“You play video games?” she asks with a bland tone.

“What, you don’t?” he asks.

She pauses, raises her brows briefly in a shrug, and then presses her cheek up to the barrel of her rifle to look down the sights. “Never thought about watching it like that.”

“I mean, if it’s the same enemy, we sort of have the advantage,” Masaru explains as he watches The Knight slowly, dramatically turn their way. “If it doesn’t work… we just try something else, okay?”

Finally, she pulls her eyes from the slope, and looks down to him. She sees his face: pissed, but with a fire behind it that only comes from the confidence of one’s conviction.

“…Yeah, okay,” she says, weighing her breath in preparation.

“So, how many shots do you have in there?” he asks.

A spark of determination strikes in her cold eyes. “Five.”

He nods. “With you all the way.”

Valerie blinks, and gives a slight, gentle nod as she tightens her grip on the trigger. “Here we go.”