The Beast of Wanta

Inside the dilapidated building, Kana and Yuna walked down the center hallway, which had doors leading to several rather small and cramped apartments, and then got to the back of the building, stopping at a door to the alleyway out back. Kana explained to Yuna, “There’s been reports of monster activity in the alleyways of this neighborhood. Another monster hunter lives in this building, and I’m trying to meet with her to deal with this issue.”

Yuna asked her, “Where is she?”

“She’s in the final apartment to the right.” Kana then knocked on the door to the apartment, asking through it, “Serena, are you in there? Serena? It’s Kana Demas!”

A young woman that was a few years older than Kana and Yuna then opened the door. Dressed in casual clothes and clearly having just gotten back from a day of hard work based on some stains she had, the woman, who was named Serena Tull, said to Kana, “Hey there. So you’re back here again, huh?”

“I am,” Kana nodded. “This is my classmate from Rimnan, Yuna Miller.”

“Oh, uh, hi…” Yuna then extended a hand to Serena. “I’m Yuna Miller, daughter of Count Leonard Miller.”

“Hmmm…” Serena then looked Yuna up and down. “A nobleman’s girl, huh? Your kind usually doesn’t come around these parts.”

“I’m simply following Kana, so… Um… It’s nice to meet you, Miss… Miss…”

“My name is Serena Tull.”

“Nice to meet you, Miss Tull.” Serena then turned back to Kana, asking her, “So, I assume you’re here due to the recent disappearances?”

“Indeed,” Kana nodded.

“Come on in,” Serena then offered to the duo. “We’ll talk in my apartment.” The apartment in question was extremely small, consisting of only two tiny rooms. The walls were filled to the brim with maps and diagrams that Serena had made in the course of her journey hunting monsters. “Don’t mind the mess. I’ve been meaning to take down the old stuff on the wall, but I haven’t had the time to between hunting monsters and working at the factory. I’ve been working my ass off and even hunting monsters for pay so I can hopefully move out of this shithole and go somewhere at least slightly nicer.”

“I see,” Yuna replied, mesmerized by all the meticulous notes Serena had taken. “You’ve… Well, you’ve certainly done a lot of research, Miss Tull.”

“Just call me Serena. No formalities needed here.”

“My apologies, Serena. It’s just how I was raised.”

“No need to be sorry. I get it, Yuna.” She then asked Kana, “So, what do you want to know about the Beast of Wanta?”

“Anything you have,” Kana replied. “Have you been receiving payment to try to kill it?”

“There’s a reward among some of the business-ownership of the area. They’re offering five thousand pounds for the beast’s death.”

“That’s a big payout for an area this poor. Often, people only have less than a hundred to offer.”

“This fucker’s been going around and killing people and animals left and right,” Serena said to Togo de context. “And he’s not alone, either. We suspect he may have a few other much smaller monsters tagging along wreaking even more havoc.”

“I heard it may have a self-cloning ability. So it’s true?”

“That’s what we’re thinking around here. My guess is that if we kill the main body, the other mini-monsters will instantly die, too.”

Yuna, confused, asked, “Self-cloning?”

“We think it has the ability to create smaller versions of itself temporarily,” Kana replied to her. “Some monsters can do this, but these smaller clones tend to be a lot less powerful and only last a few hours, a day at most, before they begin to decompose and die. It’s rare for a monster to have a self-cloning ability.”

“This thing sounds really scary… Kana, are you sure about hunting this monster down?”

“I’ve been planning this for two weeks now,” Kana explained. “I’ve known Serena for a while. After all, this neighborhood was once mine.”

In shock, Yuna gasped, “It was?!”

“It sure was,” Serena nodded. “I was so shocked when Kana got an acceptance letter from Rimnan. Do you know how rare it is for commoners to go there, much less a commoner from a rough neighborhood like this one?”

“I knew it was rare, and I knew Kana was a commoner, but… Wow…” Feeling bad for Kana, she said to her, “I had no idea, Kana…”

“It’s fine,” Kana assured Yuna. “I’m not ashamed of being born here. There’s other things about my past that I’m not proud of. Being born in a run-down area like Wanta is the least of my worries.”

Serena then asked, “How many commoners got in this year anyway?”

“Out of one hundred and twenty-three students in our class,” Kana replied. “There are twenty-seven. It’s a record for the school.”

“Holy shit. That is a lot, actually. I bet some people got a little pissed off over that.”

“There’s been some controversy over it from some of the nobility, but for the most part, no one’s throwing too much of a fit.”

…

Lena and Maxim were walking around the Wanta neighborhood, taking in the sights as they passed by many rundown buildings, shops of questionable quality and sometimes legality, the homeless who wandered the streets of the poor areas of Chanan, and other signs that they had found themselves into the worst part of the capital. They stayed close, walking past the prying eyes of people in the neighborhood, all of whom were curious about the comparatively upper-class uniforms of Rimnan Castle School that stuck out like sore thumbs.

As they walked through an intersection, a homeless man saw the couple and called out to them. “Hey guys, can you help me out? I ain’t got nothing, man. I just need something small so I can eat.” His clothes were tattered and he clearly had been through a lot in his life.

This piqued Lena’s curiosity, so she stopped and reached into her small pocketbook. “I can give you a little.”

“Thanks, man.”

Maxim was not at all comfortable about stopping to hand a homeless man any money, especially in such a rundown area like Wanta. In his old world as Jordan Ramirez, he had walked past homeless people constantly on his way to college, and while most were nice and not at all terrible people, some were nothing but troublemakers. Additionally, his parents had always taught him to avoid giving money to the homeless on the street to avoid getting into a bad situation of some kind. He whispered to Lena, “Hey, are you sure about this?”

“I’m fine,” she insisted as she handed the man ten pounds. “See?”

“Thank you so much,” said the homeless man as he took the ten pounds. “Have a great day, young lady, and may God bless you.”

“Have a good day, too.” Lena and Maxim then walked away, with the former asking the latter in annoyance, “What was that for? He was not going to do anything to us, Maxim.”

“You don’t know that,” he pointed out. “He could have tried to snatch your pocketbook or worse.”

“Not everyone is going to try to do that. Besides, I got ways to defend myself if someone tries to attack m-“

Suddenly, a completely different man ran by her and snatched her pocketbook, ripping it from her shoulder. Maxim yelled at the man, “Hey, what the fuck?!”

Lena, interrupted but unfazed, aimed her right hand at the man as he ran down the street and fired a much less powerful version of her energy beam at him. This beam was much smaller, much dimmer, and much cooler, and it soon wrapped around his legs and his arms, restraining him and causing him to fall on the ground with a loud thud as he screamed, “Agh, fuck!”

“Woah…” Maxim was amazed with how Lena took the attempted theft. “That was… That was incredible…”

Lena then calmly walked over to the man and picked up the pocketbook from the ground. She smiled and told the man, “You shouldn’t have done that, you know.”

“Fucking bitch,” the man spat at her. “What the Hell did you do to me?!”

“I restrained you with my powers,” she calmly explained. “Don’t worry. They won’t burn you too badly, and they’ll go away in a few minutes. In the meantime, you can think about what you did.” She then turned around and began to walk away.

The man, still angry, then yelled, “So you can use magic, huh? We can’t all use that shit, bitch!” He then paused, having now figured out why his would-be victim felt familiar. ”By the way, I know you’re a fucking noble! You’re a duchess or whatever the Hell they call you! You nobles got it all made for you! What about the rest of us?! You got no damn problems!”

This comment caused Lena to stop walking. “You don’t know me.”

“Huh?! What was that, bitch?!”

“I said,” she sternly told him as she turned around to reveal a more somber expression. “You don’t know me or my life. You may recognize my face and my name, but that’s all.” She then walked back to Maxim and told him, “Let’s go. I don’t want to give him the pleasure of talking to me anymore.”

As the duo walked away, the man continued to yell various insults and profanities at her. “Screw you, bitch! I don’t have to know shit about your life to know you got it made! You ain’t go no problems, you hear me, bitch?! I bet that bag costs more than I make in a month, too, bitch! More than a God damn month! Think about that!”

Maxim, worried about Lena, asked her, “Hey, are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” she insisted. “I just want to get away from him.”

“It sounds like he hit close to home with those comm-“

“I said,” Lena again insisted, interrupting him. “I’m fine, Maxim. Let’s go back to the apartment building where Kana and Yuna are.”

…

In another part of Wanta, two young children around ten years old, both girls, were walking along the street, having just gotten done with playing in a playground in the neighborhood. Despite the rough nature of the area, there were still fun things to do for the kids of Wanta, and the playground was one such thing. It was an area where all the children of the neighborhood could escape from the poverty of the area, if only briefly, and as such, was beloved by both kids and adults alike.

One of the girls said to the other, “Do you think Matt from school likes me, Teresa?”

The other girl replied, “Matt, huh? Why do you ask, Naomi?”

“He’s getting really nervous around me,” Naomi explained. “Like, when our teacher asked him to collect our math homework, he couldn’t look at me when he took mine.”

“Really? He didn’t even look at you? That’s weird.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Then, they both heard what sounded like an animal growling behind them and stopped. Teresa asked her friend, “Naomi, what was that?”

“I don’t know.”

They heard it again. Believing her friend was messing with her, Teresa warned her, “Naomi, this isn’t funny. Stop it.”

Offended, Naomi yelled, “I didn’t do that, Teresa! Do you really think I could get my voice that lo-?!”

Then, they heard a roar behind them and turned around to find a beast the size of a wolf. Said beast had two mouths, both filled with sharp teeth, and a long tail with a barbed end. Instead of fur, the beast had hard scales, tough enough to deflect most blades and even some smaller calibers of bullets. The beast eyed the two girls and roared, causing them both to scream and run in fear.

Teresa screamed as she began to cry, “Hurry up! It’s getting closer!”

The beast inched closer and closer to the two girls and they ran down a tight alleyway between two buildings. It bounced off the walls as it approached the two girls. Naomi and Teresa turned a corner at a three-way intersection, hoping to escape out onto the street. However, they found themselves instead at a dead end with no easy way out. Within just a few seconds, of course, the beast closed off their only way out, trapping the two girls

Naomi cried out as tears flowed down her face as she hugged Teresa, “I don’t want to die! Mommy, please, save me! I don’t want to die! Mommy! Mommy!”

Teresa then screamed at the top of her lungs, “SOMEBODY HELP ME!”

Just as the beast was about to pounce on the duo, two arrows hit it from behind, causing it to fall to the ground and scream in pain. The deafening roar forced the two little girls to cover their ears before the beast got up and turned around to find Kana and Yuna standing before it. Kana told the beast as she aimed two more arrows at it, “You won’t get away!”

The beast coughed and then licked its lips of the blood that dripped from its mouth, having suffered some internal damage from Kana’s attack. It then charged at Kana, who proceeded to blind it with two arrows to its eyes. The beast screamed again and tried to blindly charge at Kana once again before she formed a larger arrow than usual in her bow and pulled all the way back. With one quick move, she fired the large arrow at the beast, which immediately exploded upon impact with the beast’s head.

When the dust settled, the beast had disappeared. Not a single trace of the monster remained. Yuna, confused, asked Kana, “It’s… Gone? Was that a clone, Kana?”

“It had to be,” she replied. “Which means the original beast isn’t too far away right now.”

The two girls then ran past where the beast had run and cried as they approached Kana and Yuna. Teresa in particular was almost weeping as she called out, “Thank you! Thank you so much!”

The two girls then hugged Kana, surprising her greatly. “Ah, uh… Okay…”

“You saved our lives,” Naomi told Kana. “Thank you so much, big sis!”

“Big… Sis?” Kana, refocusing her mind on the task at hand, then separated from the two girls, telling them, “Girls, go find your parents. I have to go find the real beast. That was only a clone. Please, stay safe and go right home, okay?”

“Okay!” Both girls then ran past her and back onto the street, eager to flee from the alleyway where they had almost died.

Yuna asked Kana as her bow dissipated into dust, “So, what do we do now?”

“We’re going to find the Beast of Wanta,” Kana replied. “And I’m going to kill it. Make sure you stay out of my way when I do. The last thing I want is you to get hurt, Yuna.”