Earthbreak

The precious few minutes of bathroom break time that Takeda Saren Akane had to herself winded down as she washed her face before the mirror of her bathroom sink. Scarlet hair kept in twintails to the side and a ponytail at the back glinted a bit in the light, a gift from an Irish mother, while green eyes also given to her by that very same mother looked back at her.  Always eye-catching, even if she thought she looked like a mess right now. 

"Maybe I should try taking make up seriously some day." She murmured, toned arms honed by martial arts and sports practice reaching for a towel and rubbing it all over a girlish face that let out the exasperated sigh of a recent graduate crushed by the disappointment of life.  

She stepped out of her bathroom, shuffling on bare feet towards her computer once again. She was lucky enough to have remote work, which certainly beat the Tokyo commute, but it also meant that even the confines of her apartment felt like work. 

She looked at the computer, and then at the clock and inhaled sharply at the thought of how much more of the day she still had to go through. 

Her eyes scanned over to a photo of her parents, Takeda Kazuha and Eabha Aran Connolly. Both still fresh faced and young looking, her own expression trying to not crack a smile at her three younger siblings; twin brothers and a sister, trying to disguise the bunny ears they were attempting. 

"Maybe I should have just taken the internship at Kankuto." She murmured towards the photograph of her father in particular as she sighed and pulled out her seat and eased in.

Her eyes blearily stared at the endless lines of code on her computer before looking at the clock. She was sure everything was done, but she dared not stop the strokes of her finger on the keyboard. Not when her performance was being monitored by something far more demanding than any manager had ever been. Especially now when so much of the software of the world was acting strangely following odd readings from weather monitoring systems. She didn't know what it was, but it did mean more work for her.

"=Takeda, are you close to being done?=" She heard, blinking a few times. Most people weren't allowed to be that familiar with her, but Zhang-San was enough of a friend for her to give him a pass for it. She flicked her eyes onto the minimised window of the video chat, blinking a few times to try and banish the sleepiness from them.

Zhang Jianyu was a nice young man, with "tactically messy hair" as he liked to refer to his dark blue locks. His own eyes were a rather interesting shade of yellow, not something seen often, and something she felt the need to ask about at some point in the future. He was clearly fit, took care of himself despite his desk job and the endless lockdowns. He clearly had greater aspirations than doing codework.

He looked rather like one of the nice boys in her Otome games. And sometimes she wondered if he might be...available whenever travel across the sea between her country and his was open. They certainly had some interesting conversations about their hobbies over work and he had been nice to her.

She took a moment to squeeze at the squishy Metrozoid toy he got her when she mentioned she was a big fan of the series, relief flooding into her from the sensation of her fingers around the translucent and firm but soft green jelly-like substance of the somewhat sphere-shaped fanged creature. It helped her feel a little less stressed before she responded.

"=Still have thirty minutes before the algorithm lets me take a full break.=" She responded, reaching for her cup of tea and chugging it. It was hardly the polite thing to do, but after this many hours of staring at a screen she had decided she no longer cared.

"=Ah, the automated manager, what a pain am I right?=" He said, his familiar smile's white teeth contrasting nicely with his dark bluish hair, her greenish eyes lighting up a bit as she let out a little snort and then looked back at the lines of code she kept on deleting and retyping.

"=Father keeps on telling me how lucky I am to have a robot for a boss instead of a manager.=" She said with shake of her head, some of her red coloured hair flicking in front of her vision before she brushed it out of the way.

Some had spread rumours that her hair and eye colour were the result of an American soldier being in her family tree, but her parents never let anyone say that to her face, mother once famously uppercutting the father of the schoolyard bully for daring to mention it out loud. Something she was grateful for even if she sometimes wished they would be more trusting of her to stand up for herself.

"=Ah well, when you move onto working for Kankuto with your parents it'll all be better right?=" He said, clearly hoping she'd cheer up with that, adjusting his glasses while she snorted and rolled her eyes.

"=Can't be worse than working for an American game company.=" She was still somewhat processing the news coming out of western game developers in her head, emotions like disgust, shock, and confusion racing through her head. Who knew that western developers had it even worse than on this side of the pacific as her mom would say.

"=Tch, swine like that disgrace the entirety of our profession.=" Zhang responded as he sighed and stared a bit more at the lines of text he had written up so far.

"=Can you take a moment to see if there's anything I need to tighten up?=" He said, letting Takeda have a moment to look at the file he sent to her. So far it all seemed to be in order at least. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Her thoughts were quickly interrupted by someone else joining in the call, her eyes scanning the number and air hissing through her teeth at the sight of the number.

"Goya-sama..." She murmured, dreading the thought of her superior.

"Which mantra will give me the patience for this man..." She mumbled to herself as she straightened herself out of her slouch and adjusted her dress before clicking to answer.

"=Ah hello, good to see you Goya-Sama, the files are all ready for you to look over.=" She said, making her best impression of a proper lady instead of the entirely through with this nonsense twenty-one-year-old woman she was in truth.

Goya Kazuki on the other hand was at least ten years her senior and even through the screen she could just about smell the over-generous helpings of hair gel he used.

Zhang of course, made himself look proper as well, though he didn't try so hard, easier on the eyes. Goya seemed more the sort who didn't realise he was too old for this> 

But the fourth person to join in the call; Jared Wilker; seemed to more or less crawl into the camera shot, the rather skinny, fresh-faced Blonde American looking like he'd just gotten out of bed.

Knowing what time it was in Chicago, he probably did, he certainly was sporting a bedhead that was somehow even messier than it normally was, his blue eyes unfocused and his attempts to reach for a cup of iced coffee getting him a lick from his small black Shih Tzu who had made himself comfortable on his desk instead.

That got a smile out of her, she loved Shih Tzus; so small, fluffy and cute.

"=Hey, I'm here, I'm here...sorry.=" He said apologetically as he sipped at his coffee and stroked the head of his dog.

The fifth and final person of the group; Yarina Aleksovna Lapotnikova; finally cut in, a profuse stream of Russian swear words muttered beneath her breath as she tried to get everything in working order. She kept her platinum-coloured hair in a low ponytail with small tassels at her sides; giving her a rather girlish look for a Russian military woman Takeda felt could probably break her boss in two.

"=I swear that all the internet equipment as of late only works when it wants to...=" She grumbled, her expression somewhat sour and Akane feeling a bit of her usual intuition that today might finally be the day that Yarina gives up and unloads with her desire to quit. She was always kind of a sour woman, but the twitch of her thin lips seemed like they were trying to hold something back.

"=Technical delays are only so much of an excuse for tardiness Miss Lapotnikova. I thought the Russian army would have taught you more discipline than that.=" Goya huffed.

"=Air Force, she was with the Russian Air Force.=" Zhang said.

"=My dedushka in the Soviet Air Force would have despaired to see me now...=" Yarina murmured beneath her breath.  

"=Someone like you should be happy that they don't have to hide their faces behind the Iron Curtain anymore.=" Goya said in a tone that made Takeda cringe as Yarina briefly but deliberately bit on her tongue to prevent herself from responding with the volcanic rage boiling inside of her.

There was an awkward silence for some time beyond some keystrokes and the taptaptap of fingers on keyboard followed by the clicks of mouses. Nobody wanted to be the first to break the stalemate.

She briefly noted some of the spider-web lines in the sky on the mirror in front of her just behind her computer screen, but simply chalked it down to her mirror being in need of repairs.

"=On...less awkward topics, hey Takeda; are you going to be available for the dinner meeting tonight?=" Jared asked, friendly as ever. He wasn't in a rush to hear her response, but he seemed to be relaxed enough for her to speak her mind clearly.

"=Oh yes, of course. I'll be the-=" She said before she saw something reflecting off her screen, something outside the windows of all the others in the call too. Spider web thin lines advancing across the night sky, jagged cracks that bled strange colours and seemed to be advancing at an alarming rate.

"=You'll be where?=" Her boss asked before a terrible sound of something crashing rang in her ears, something like a giant ball of glass slamming onto the ground after being dropped of a building but made so much deeper. The cracks in the sky growing more complex, deeper, the oozing patterns doubling and redrawing themselves while she just about threw her chair in shock.

Jared seemed to hear it too, in fact, based on her speakers the noise was being made on their end too. But that was impossible right? They were all so far apart?

Jared's dog started barking, an animal's response to something upsetting and unwanted in its presence while Zhang muttered a rapid-fire series of curses in Mandarin she couldn't follow.

"=Hey is uh...the moon supposed to be broken?=" Jared asked, letting his dog jump into his arms and bury his face inside of it, McGruff whining in apparent distress. Yuriko looked for herself, and true to word, the sun itself seemed to be broken, splintered like a shattered stained glass image spread across the sky. The alien glow of colours was brighter now, the night for Jared seeming to turn to day as he let out a groan of frustration at having the light shone on him.

"=...What the Hell...=" Akane murmured as the spiderwebbing cracks only grew worse and more intense. Sections of reality seemed to outright fallout, disappearing into an indescribable void even emptier than space itself for a few moments before it started to fill with static snow. Her mind interpreting the nothingness beyond the veil into something more comprehensible. The mind after all, couldn't really conceive of nothing. Not blackness, not clearness, not the vacuum of space. Just nothing.  

"...I figured the end of the world would look more...ordinary?" Yarina mumbled, the typical Russian monotone being committed to even with the nervous fidgeting she started to do with her fingers.  

"=No, no, no, no. I haven't been married yet! It's too early for me to die! No it's not fair!=" Goya panicked, hyperventilating while beads of sweat rolled down his forehead like a waterfall. Not being in the same room as him suddenly seemed like a miracle, and one she would remind herself to give thanks for.  

"=...No good, all the news is just as confused as we are.=" Zhang said, reporting back in from his brief excursion onto social media.  

"=Of course they're confused! This happened...seconds ago?! How would they know a damn thing!=" Maybe if Akane was angry enough, she wouldn't be scared. Anger shut out fear, right? Or was anger born of fear? What did the little green man in Star Wars say? 

She looked briefly to the poster of Samus-san she had in her room, cool and confident in her varia suit...she would know what to do...gah what she wouldn't give for a scan visor to tell her what was going on. Not knowing felt like fire in her belly, painful and annoying. 

The sky howled in a way to drown out all those thoughts as everyone felt that electric jolt of animalistic panic in their own way. Zhang was calling his parents, Goya fainted, Jared held his dog tighter, and Yarina just...if Akane knew her Russian, that long stream of mat, Russian foul language, was the sort of talk she was very glad that Goya wouldn't understand a word of even if he were awake.

The sound was indescribable, like everything falling towards the ever-growing fissures in the sky just as fast as the abysses raced towards the world. The sun itself engulfed like a candle before a tsunami, the sky's colours distorting as the familiar blue was replaced by the cascade of strange sights. 

She was scared, her eyes flicking towards to the old heirloom sword passed down from Shingen himself...allegedly...as if it would offer solace. 

How ridiculous, what would that do? Stab the vortex eating the sky?  

Shapes flickered at the very edge of her sight, the mind attempting to interpret something from nothing, like darkness darker than darkness itself, undulating and writhing as colours she could barely describe began to writhe in the emptiness. She felt sick to her stomach and a buzz in her head, trying to pick out sights the mind was not well equipped to process. Thirteen...eleven hard to describe, abstract, two more clear; one dark, one light...then more colours...

Spheres shifted in this maze of colour, curling upon themselves, curving into each other, patterns breaking, reforming, breaking again as the parting curtains swallowed the whole of the sky and filled her with a deep, mortal dread. A sensation of wanting to hide filled her bones, but she pushed through it. Mom always told her to carry some of that Irish fighting spirit, and she was of the great horsemaster's lineage.  

Mom...Dad...she hoped they would be fine, praying as the sky swallowed the world whole. If they were here...if Kazuha and Eabha were here...maybe she'd feel comfortable enough to at least be able to close her eyes and not stare into the abyss as it came close enough to touch. 

But well, as mama said, the Irish never take a hit without hitting back. And she stood out of her seat and held up her chair as if to try and intimidate the end of days into submission. It was ridiculous, stupid, but if she was going to die, she would die standing. 

"Come on you static waste spill!" She shouted, feeling just the smallest bit braver for it, a little smile forming as stress overwhelmed terror and adrenaline pushed out trembling. 

As if in challenge, the abyss rushed past her and the world flashed of unimagined colours and wriggling shapes of static and nonsense. Lights, darkness, and things that could not be described as either surrounded her. 

She expected...pain perhaps? The feeling of being unmade, unwound, dissolved? It should have hurt, it should have felt like her entire body was on fire. That's what the world being devoured by an advancing wave of static and the shattering of the sky itself should have felt like.  

She just felt a tingle, like a small current running through her body, and the briefest, most unpleasant sensation of being watched. 

She blinked, preparing to shout something just to affirm that she was still there, but her room was back the second she opened her eyes again. Everything was where it should be. The birds hesitantly chirped again beneath the Tokyo Sun.  

...Or rather, Suns. Three of them. One a thing of purest white with edges of prismatic rainbow, one looking more like how a sun should, and one that swirled around a point of blackness at its centre. The latter two slightly smaller than the middle. 

She blinked, realising that...she decided to stand up and navigate the interior of her apartment to reach her refrigerator. She looked at the expiration date of the grape juice she drank earlier today.

"Should still be good for a few more months...so I'm not seeing things." She said, though of course, Akane was well aware that grape juice couldn't make her see things. 

She paused as she heard something in the next room, and looked back at the old heirloom blade. 

"It'll have to do." She murmured as she grabbed it and drew it from its scabbard, her bare feet stepping on the tiles as she heard a voice, a bit high pitched but still probably a boy's. 

"Interdimensional home invasion?" She murmured to herself as she heard the clack of...metallic boots and a third object, a cane perhaps? She always had sharp ears.  

"If they're wearing armour I'm screwed." She mumbled to herself as she sucked in a breath, remembering her practice and her potentially a member of the IRA maternal grandfather's words of wisdom.  

"-I spit on the English and their cooking!-" ...No not that memory 

"-If you've got the drop on 'em, even if they're better armed than you, you'll probably win.-" Ah that was it. 

"Thank you...possible terrorist grandfather." She thought to herself as she noticed the door was slightly ajar. 

Screw it, now or never. 

She pushed the door open and shouted as she brandished the blade. "GET THE HELL OUT OF MY APARTME-" She shouted before she paused at the sight that greeted her as he let out a startled yelp.  

He...yes...tall, pointed ears, black hair, like, not just regular black hair, black to the point it seemed to drink in light itself, with little flecks of glimmering white and wavy patterns of blue and purple, like the void of space with drifting stars and nebula. Eyes that seemed to shine from within, colours shifting from blue to purple and back again.  

He was slender, boyish really, eye-catching even if much of his hair was concealed by a large wizard's hat, what she could see seemed nice, Perhaps a bit messy but she'd be a touch hypocritical if she held that against anyone. 

Then there were the stranger details, graceful pointed ears that poked through his upper-third of neck length and three-finger thick windswept hair. His cloaked coat was open, showing intricate-looking armour whose pieces fit together like a machine, a somewhat baroque robot, astrological patterns clustered around the central sixteen pointed white star on the starry sky coloured blue breastplate; constellations shimmering at the edges of his cloak and coat. 

This wasn't heavy, bulky armour...it was form-fitting, agile, graceful. Not the bulky monstrosities of Warhammer or Fallout but something more like a fantastical Iron man or Samus-San. She caught a broadsword in a scabbard at his hip, an Astromancer's staff in his right hand, and definitely a pistol opposite to that broadsword on his belt.

His face though...that made her realise she was staring while his eyes blinked a few times. 

"...Uh...you look nice." She said while the boy dusted off the edges of his cloak. 

He spoke gibberish, utter, incomprehensible, gibberish. Like running Quenya, Gaelic, Old Norse, Archaic old Japanese, and Nahuatl through a blender and then coating it in Basque with a finishing touch of Coptic syrup. 

She pointed her sword at him, not confident her blade could go through his suit, but it might be enough to let him know she meant business. She stood a bit on her tiptoes, trying to even the height gap while she closed just a bit more. Her other hand clasped onto the hilt for balance, ready to jab forward or slash.  

He snapped his fingers and a strange discharge was made, a flash of many colours and the faintest hint of a kindle of soulflame dancing at the edge of her vision while his star patterns glowed a little more brightly.  

"Stop that!" She repeated. 

"Stop what? It's just a prepared casting of tongues...thought it'd come in handy." He said, the fact that his lips remained in perfect sync with what he was saying suggesting there was more than just a universal translation...spell? He did look like a wizard...going on.  

"Oh so now you speak Japanese?" She repeated.  

"Hrm, yes, you call the language here that. But please, put the sword down." He said, chuckling a bit, seeming to regard the blade near his face as more awkward than threatening to her annoyance, her expression shifting to a disguised snarl. She hated being taken likely.  

"And why would i? What even are you? That's too intricate to be cosplay and I just saw the sky get devoured." She said, gesturing at his clothes and gear and how they contrasted with her shorts and t-shirt. 

"Ah me? I'm Tyrlars vit Opyrheimr, maybe one day I'll give you the full name but not today. I'm an Arcanist and your planet has been stolen by the Worldspirit of Xarazanth." He said, as if that would explain...literally anything.  

"...What?" She said back to him while he pushed the sword out of the way with a finger, dramatically flashing his cloak around himself.  

"A wizard merely learns to bend magic, a sorcerer simply channels innate power, as an Arcanist I do both! The finest of the traditions of Arcane magic! And you should feel glad that I'm here...usually I have to provide a country a week's worth of advanced warning before I'm allowed in." He said, puffing out his chest haughtily and looking quite self-assured before scratching at his chin at the other detail.  

"Can you explain what...any of that means?" She asked.  

"Hrm, I think showing you would be better than telling you no?" He said, making a quick gesture and saying a trio of nonsense words to form a sigil in the time it took for her to blink; the astrographic pattern surrounding them before the world folded on itself.  

She opened her eyes, and found herself standing barefoot on the warm tiles of what seemed to be as much of an astronomer's observatory as it was a wizard's study or a scientist's laboratory, half-finished creations lying around everywhere, books stacked on shelves, a brassy, baroque looking screen hooked up to an orrery shaped...wait he had a computer? He even had what looked like a game paused on it...some sort of...strategy game? Ant people against...the undead? 

The sky was dark, and the ceiling swirled with planetarium patterns, a great telescope looking towards the heavens and the chain of countless moons around the world. It was all fascinating.

But it wasn't enough to make her forget that he had just dragged her into this place without her permission.  

"HEY! I DIDN'T TELL YOU YOU COULD TELEPORT ME LIKE THAT!" She was smart enough to know that she'd been transported by magic, and a hand reached out to pinch at the lobe of Tyrlar's ears, drawing a groan of protest from him. 

"H-hey! Hands off the ears!" He said, cheeks flushing red almost immediately before he slapped her hand off of them.  

"By the Score and Seven Demiurges and all the Archons please don't touch an Elf's ears until you've gotten to know him Takeda-San." He said, rubbing at the lobes and looking thoroughly embarrassed by the whole ordeal.  

"Hey you brought me here without my say so a-..." A thought went through her brain like a bullet train. 

"Hey how did you know my name?!" She shouted.  

"Astromancy is one of my specialities, I made a horoscope." He replied, folding his arms as his staff disappeared into stardust and twinkling lights. 

"Okay but you realise how strange it is to just bring a girl you've just met into your house right?!" She snarled, cheeks as red as her hair as Opyrheimr gave it a bit of thought.  

"...Seems ordinary enough to me, If I didn't propose an intimate encounter then I'm not trying to get one. Really, you people have to go and sexualise everything." He said before Akane's face changed several interesting hues while she sucked in her lips right after grinding her teeth.  

"...Takeda-San?" He said before a strange little nebula like wispy thing unfurled from a little tear in existence and strobed odd colours, whispering something to him. 

"...Ooooooh." He said, reversing the teleportation spell before Takeda could slap him as they were now both in her apartment once again.  

"There! Better!" He said, clapping his hands.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN MY APARTMENT TO BEGIN WITH YOU LUNATIC?!!???" She screamed at him, if her neighbours complained, let them. 

"Well, I made a horoscope." He said with a smug smirk. 

"What do you mean MADE a horoscope? You read those to predict things, not make them!" She shouted, slightly calmer now. 

"Maybe if you're some fraudulent astrologer...Astromancy is far removed from simply rea-" He shrugged, somewhat annoyed now before the door behind them came open, virtually flung aside as a twin-braided pink-haired girl just about kicked it open, legs honed in girl's soccer and swim practice stomping on in while she held a baseball bat in hand, a long black haired and somewhat shorter young lady in a partly done cosplay just about burst their way inside, a bespectacled boy in a high school uniform following suit. 

"Akane-san we're here to save you!" The pink-haired one shouted, ready to pick a fight with the first odd thing she saw while the dark-haired high schooler made the sort of sounds someone deep into a Xianxia inspired chuuni phase would babble out, his older sister holding an obviously plastic cosplay sword prop that even were it real, would probably be about three times too thick and infinity times too pointlessly jagged and wavy to ever be of use in a real fight; in battle stance. 

They looked ridiculous, and Tyrlars certainly did a double-take, with his Nebulon familiar even stopping the movement of its internal constellations out of sheer bafflement.

"Oh...Yuriko-Chan...how are you?" Akane said to her rose haired friend. 

"Oh...you're safe Akane." She said, dropping the honorific out of sheer relief, though Akane could hardly blame her. She'd panic about Yuriko's health and safety in a situation like this herself. 

"We were going to wait for Yamamoto-San to get here first, after the sky broke. But when I heard you shouting at a man's voice...I thought something awful happened to you." She said, calming down a bit and resting slightly on the end of her baseball bat. 

"Glad to know you're still in one piece even after the static...thing." She said, calming down slightly while she adjusted her hoodie. 

"I told you, we should call it a sky abyss!" The boy said.  

"Shiki, that sounds stupid." The cosplayer said.  

"Aratani-Chan be nice." Yuriko replied, shaking her head and then resting the baseball bat on her shoulder. 

"Well...at least nothing strange happened." She sighed while she closed her eyes, Akane and Tyrlars sharing a look at each other as they mentally counted down the moments to the inevitable realisation. 

She blinked and realised Tyrlars was in the room, her expression going through the five stages of grief, then the seven stages of confusion in an instant before she settled on the singular stage of "scream". 

"WHO THE HELL IS THAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT!!"  she keened at the top of her lungs while Tyrlars let out a defeated sigh, Akane starting to laugh just a bit.