Buried

The girl continued bombarding me with a barrage of water, to no avail.

I slowly descended upon her, as if I was sent by heaven itself to deliver the judgement of the gods. The constant flow of liquified air below me continued actively tearing up the floor.

We made brief eye contact, my vision too blurry to see her face.

All I could make out was a bright grin on her face.

I was locked in the endless snowscape, unable to do anything. Soon, the girl would somehow get torn apart by Kälte, I naively assumed. I rummaged through the snow for minutes on end, not being able to find anything, not even the rubble of the accident.

An intense pain worse than what I had ever felt before dragged me out of it. I looked down, and saw a clean hole through my chest. Before I could react, All of my joints were simultaneously penetrated.

My body dropped on the ground like a fish caught on land, completely unable to move. Even most of my muscles appeared to have been severed or damaged. The unimaginable cold of my skin carried over into my slowly warming body, replacing the total numbness with an indescribable pain.

I felt as if something was directly scraping at my bones, gnawing on them while I was still conscious. After withstanding that pain for no more than ten seconds my body finally gave in, and I fainted.

Still unable to move, my consciousness returned to a scene of Araki fighting against the girl, the Muramasa still sheathed. Though I noticed the blade glowing through the sheath itself, while Araki was barely holding on to his life.

In the blink of an eye, the girl traversed the entire ground and stood directly in front of Araki.

He removed his thumb from the tsuba, sending the blade flying through the air, dragging an inconceivable pressure behind it.

The already brittle pillars of the entire structure gave in, as the Murasama soared through the sky, dragging a trail of purple with it.

Araki collapsed to the floor, while The girl stood still in total shock.

While the structure slowly collapsed in on itself, guaranteeing to crush everyone inside with it, I could only feel relief. Finally, I could be with her again. I closed my eyes in acceptance, embracing the unstoppable mass of earth inevitably bringing my demise. It may not be a dignified way to go, but it was a way no less.

My acceptance was interrupted by the sudden arrival of an aura too familiar to miss. The walls pressed backwards as if their entire existence depended on it. Hundreds of small Pillars pierced through the ground below and into the ceiling. My death was denied yet again. All that remained of the masses of earth were small chunks that managed to break through the concrete.

The two of them, both Araki and the girl, seemed frozen in place. In that brief moment before she arrived, all three of us had apparently made their peace with the world, embracing their inevitable demise.

Now it was the question of who would move first, Araki or her?

While the girl snapped out of it a few seconds earlier than Araki, she was immediately pressed against the ceiling by a larger pillar of death rising from directly below her feet.

The air throughout the now stabilized silo grew heavier. She had somehow managed to make her way from base to here within less than a minute.

Her delicate summer dress fluttered in the brief breeze of the stale concrete tomb she just flew into.

“I know you two would be trouble ever since that dragon. You don’t make a good team at all. We’ll talk about this later.” She stood before Araki, reaching out her hand to pull him back on his feet. With only the small exit burrowed by the Murasama now letting in any light, Matsumoto looked around the entire structure to no avail, she couldn’t have possibly seen me.

“Where is she?” A slight tinge of despair settled deep inside her authoritative tone. I would have yelled for help, but my mouth would not open. She twirled around a couple more times, completely disregarding the actual enemy of the fight. Still, she could not make out my silhouette.

The ground below began rumbling. I could only dream of what was going to happen. Every second, the shaking intensified. The shaking rapidly became so intense that it could easily qualify as a magnitude 9 earthquake on the Richter scale.

I could feel my body getting pressed to the ground, while the ceiling suddenly burst apart into the sky above. Within a single moment, roughly 500 thousand tons of soil were propelled into the sky, taking with them any infrastructure that was built on it.

The bright sunlight briefly blinded me, as Matsumoto was still desperately searching for me. With enough light to properly see now, she didn’t struggle much longer. Less than tern seconds after she finally spotted me, I was already laying in her arms.

For some reason, I felt safe in her embrace. Though I was horrified by the sheer level of devastation she was capable of causing, An oddly familiar warmth spread throughout my body.

“What happened?” Genuine terror settled into her cold, calculating eyes, revealing a soft side I doubt even Araki had seen before.

As I slightly tilted my head, the feeling around my spine slowly returning, I saw Araki in genuine tears, his entire body shivering. From the distance I couldn’t make out whether from joy or pure fear.

I could slowly feel my wounds closing up, even if only superficially. Matsumoto suddenly burst into tears, still holding me in her arms. Gazing into the sky, I could now understand why I had been classified as a Weapon of Mass Destruction, with large chunks of dirt still raining down on the ground above.

I only wondered how this could possibly be explained without completely eroding the public’s trust in the government at the same time.

As I continued gazing into the sky, I felt an odd liquid suddenly dropping on me. Matsumoto stared deep into my eyes, blood flowing out of her nose and eyes, as she collapsed onto me.