All deserts are dangerous!

Sometimes what you need to wake up is not the light or the sound outside. Sometimes it’s that time in your head that tells you ‘you’re fucking late!’ or ‘don’t be late!’. And sometimes… sometimes, you just wake up for no Goddamn reason, at the most inappropriate time like the headless envoy of evil is after you. Frankly, I already knew luck was never on my side.

“Huh!”

Eyes opened wide in the darkness, I looked everywhere intensely and furiously like I was searching for an angel to rescue me.

Feint sound of angelic harsh voice hollowed into my ear, the kind that sounded like those nice guys from the expedition army… or was it the expedition crew. I wanted to search for the sound through the darkness, but it seems something cloth-like is holding my hands fixed. The ground felt cold on my butt through my coveralls, it appeared I’m…

“Boss, he’s awake!”

Fuck! Seriously?

The person who alerted his ‘boss’ sounded quite young, this gave me a tip on what the ‘boss’ henchmen would be made up of.

My vision in the dark became clearer but it was of no use, when the neon tubes on the ragged cement ceiling lit up, I softly groaned, keeping my discomfort hidden as much as I could. An highly built man approached me, lights behind his back formed shadow on my face, and my eyes slowly adjusted to the new luminosity.

“Woah, you’re right, K-chan, his eyes are creepy!”

It’s been long since someone said that to my face.

“Where did you get that weird green eyes, Deviant?”

“Uh, um, I know I’m abducted, but I need to get back, so I’ll like we finish this quickly?”

Question Avoided. Obviously I was born with ‘those creepy eyes’… also “deviant”? She could’ve at least given them my real name!

I don’t where I am exactly but I could somehow tell the time is a few minutes past 4, I should’ve returned to the repair shop before then. I didn’t bother trying to figure out how I could tell the time, maybe not having a time piece made me into one.

“I could easily tell they aren’t implants though. Well, not that it matters.”

His bulky built armor-like body showed a few contours, it became clearer and clearer as he spoke on. His hairstyle and his mode of speaking matched up with the image in my head. He made a brief stop after his opening speech and I was waiting for him to deliver the body, needless to say, he didn’t disappoint.

“Do you know how hard it is to walk around in the desert of Aokigahara? They strap on oxygen tanks to your back and they put rifle in your hands… your boots, they get ragged from the terrain, while your joints make creaking sounds as loud as your own breath. If you mess up and trip, you get stepped on, if your oxygen tanks get shot, you get ditched and if bullets happen to make holes into your already exhausted body, you’ll be declared dead and your remaining oxygen will be shared among the others… equally. Whichever the case you get to see how cruel your friends can become, nevertheless, they might be good people but, once their lives are on the line, they do everything possible to survive for the next day, we only have one life after all. Yeah, they are all good people… hmphh, the pain reminds you of death till it becomes your friend. All those endless nights spent outside the freezing barriers hoping we’ll return to a better life in this shitty city, to be accurate, so many died with that hope. And those who made it here had to give a toe for a gram of salt. They promised, we hoped, they broke the promise, we… rebel.”

Toe for salt, exaggeration.

“I’m sure you’ve seen it before, how bad things are in this city. Oh, yeah, according to K-chan, you worked for Beranko, he was my friend, but his ways of achieving his ideals were… hmm… not productive.”

He was a good person, until some assholes betrayed him.

“I mean I get his whole hero thing, but most his actions were questionable and yielded nothing in the end. If he had done some things a little bit differently we might have had a different story here.”

I was uninterested in his story at the moment. But his story served as an introduction as to who he was. ‘A walk in the desert of Aokigahara’, If he was a soldier, then he was probably talking about the fourth war that happened thirteen years ago, if he was an adventurer, then he faced quite the ordeal on his way back to this crappy city. Oh, wait… expedition army equals to adventurers.

“He… or She never told you I never cared about the hero thing?”

“Hey! Devianto, you know how to address me!”

That was Kuroi’s voice in the background, where I still couldn’t see. Honestly, I was happy she was annoyed, it helped me cooled down a bit. The man speaking to me paid a single second of his attention towards him… or her, before he continued without getting straight to the point.

“Now then, let’s get right to it. My name is Izumo Irumashi, a former adventurer and I’m leading us to a new Tokyo starting from Arkanyra.”

Oh, how cool!… But I still don’t care.

He might be a famous adventurer but I wouldn’t know since I don’t follow that trend, I only knew little about it. Requirements to be an adventurer are pretty stiff after all. It’s not a job you take simply because you’re broke.

“You’re exactly as K-chan described, to think after that time apart you haven’t changed a bit.”

“There was no reason to.”

“I see. Then…”

He made double clicking sounds and one short boy came from the crowd of maybe eleven behind his back. He must be the same person who alerted him of my wake. If I had to put a label on him, I would name it ‘oozing fear’, his hesitation to confront me. My hand was still tied but he somewhat looked like he was scared of me. He slowly and slowly walk behind me to untie the rope from column that it was wrapped around. 

Just what did she tell them!

Leaving aside his damp aura, his boss still standing at my front crouched and offered me his hand. The light from the panel finally reached my face at a moderate level, giving me the grace to see Mr.Izumo’s face. And yes, it was as handsome as his trained body is. His drippy cool long hair dangled down below his chin, some cross over to his chest, while the others smooth out at the back. There were scars going across his face, one forms a vertical line on his right monolid eye, one broke the smooth texture of right cheek and another exactly on his lower manly jaw, I was the only one with a fuller lip.

“Sorry about the harness …and K-chan’s brute force, we just didn’t want you to run away.”

He has a leader’s demeanor when he speaks, an air of superiority that commands respect and loyalty, that would be why he had subordinates loyal enough to follow his every commands. At this moment, I did not know how much of power he has, I could only judge him by the amount of people he trusted his back with after all. This reminded me of someone else. I stood up without taking his hand.

“I understand.”

“Oh, that was quick” he muttered.

But it seemed like he doesn’t mind it.

“So what’s the business?”

I can tell you’re stalling, but I can’t waste a minute here.

“K-chan told me your specialty, and I was hoping to recruit you for a job.”

“Sor…”

“Before you decline, listen…”(Izumo)

He will definitely make this longer.

“Haven’t you ever felt the need to change something, the boring everyday life of poverty you live, aren’t you tired of it? This might be the only chance you’ll ever have to change your future. Those over privileged idiots at the top do not care about us, they call us peasants no matter what we do for them, don’t you want to get back at them? That’s all we are here for, we want to fight back in a way that assures our victory and the change for our city. It’s a simple yet decisive action for the sake of a bearable tomorrow.”

Temptation.

“If you have nothing as an advantage or trump card then it would end up like the person you just talked about.”

“He did not deal with the problem where it is. I intend to take out the root of the problem itself, the upper class. I already told you… I don’t think of myself as a hero, so I don’t care about whichever methods I use to achieve it. His mindset was what held him back and led to his death.”

“Oh… you have cards other than your unmentioned plan.”

“Hmm”

He chuckled, and for a moment I felt like he smirked at me… quite pleasantly(I was hoping for a villainous one though).

“Look over there, Victor…”

He moved his head a tad bit high to point at something, and I followed his directives. For a split second I thought he’d show me his army of ripped men wearing nothing but jean shorts while holding short axes. Of course, the only basis for that ridiculous presupposition was his act for the past five minutes.

“Heh?”

I lost my breath for a second, it wasn’t what I expected at all.

“The stage is set! You, Victor… are the only one thing missing from it.”

Before me, on a platform resembling a cleanly lit workbench of some sort, there was half a meter wide metal figure, comprising of many individual parts which were either inside or outside the said body. The outsides were painted in white matte looking paint, but they were uncountable scratches on it.

It looks like a… robot and… a dog, a robot dog, or cat...

The most visible part of this machine is the insides, since it was left open on the table, this also made it harder for me to tell exactly what it is, with all its grandness and complexity. A text at the part of the body I consider its ‘shoulder’, spelled out ‘No 4’. Several wires were hooked into the bare chassis at different parts ranging from its ‘head’ to its ‘hind limb’ where only the aforementioned shoulder case with the text on it was still on it.

‘Number 4’…?

“The nobles call it the M37!”

Just when I thought I’ll be having a fairly decent life like those slice of life novels, these people just had to badge in to make it pointlessly stressful.

…Oh, God!