No Player Two/The Battle of Shibuya Metro 22

She had been waiting in the tiny crawl space for some time. It was about half a meter high and hot as an oven, with discarded cables littering the floor. In the middle, just where he’d said there was a set of ventilation slats though which she was afforded a bird’s eye view of the station concourse. The Geist’s movements had become more frantic, bits of train and station floating in and out of the tunnel on its black surface like the wreckage of a ship on stormy waters. It was like someone had taken a jigsaw of the station and tossed it into the air. Some of the pieces were people.

A radiant. Itari would probably love this.

There was a deep rumbling and creaking and the floor all around her shifted slightly. She could now hear voices and footsteps from below. The dark uniforms of prospectors were spreading out across the concourse, spilling from the station entrance and taking up positions of cover, talking into their comms. From above you could see how organised it was, the geometry of their defensive formation. She caught sight of Chief Goda’s bald head. He was standing in a trenchcoat beside the entrance barking orders into a comm as officers flooded around him.

Then she saw Kurama. It was surreal. Beyond the chaos of the prospectors, running, shouting, weapons drawn, taking up positions, Kurama was walking in the open toward the tunnel in the distance. His figure was tiny…

She squinted. What the drak is that?

The pink flames still surrounded one of his hands, leaving trails behind it as he moved. The shadow rose up out of the tunnel now and then, and he skipped to pieces of masonry for cover, the great dark slick dividing into fingers as it passed either side of him before again withdrawing into the darkness. It was like watching a kid trying to dodge the encroaching tide. When it had withdrawn, he’d look around the cover, slide out and move toward the tunnel. It was like watching someone else play a video game over which she had no control. No player two.

In this way he closed the distance to no more than a few meters and stood behind one of the remaining pillars. The great black mass loomed before him, flapping at its edges like smoke from the windows of a burning building. And Kurama, a tiny firefighter beside it, hopelessly outmatched.

What could he do?

As she watched, he took one look around the pillar, then stopped and turned. He was looking right at her.

***

What was he saying?

What did she have to do?

She narrowed her eyes and leant closer to the opening in the ceiling. She could see his mouth opening and closing. A single word, faint and distant…

Sorry.

She had just started to mutter, ‘sorry? Sorry for wha—‘ when shock passed through her and her eyes widened. Her fingers gripped the edge of the vent.

‘No. Dont you—‘

It seemed to happen in slow motion. Kurama’s tiny figure turned back to the tunnel and stepped out from behind the pillar.

The great shadow before him spasmed and rose back and up like a mounting wave.

Kurama’s hand was held out in front of him, a ball of dazzling pink with white at its core, far larger than before.

Rinako narrowed her eyes. The brilliant light at its centre began to spread.

The black wave started to fall toward him.

A crackling sound filled the air, pink lightning flickering all around the tunnel.

Then brilliant light, consuming everything.

Rocks were falling all around her.

She was standing in a field. It was covered in flowers as blue as the sky. Her mom was standing in front of her wearing a floppy straw hat with a red band. She turned and held out her arms. The brim of her hat hung over her face.

Then parts of the sky started falling away.

All around her, dark holes appeared in the ground. She felt the earth disappearing beneath her body, her weight with it…

The rocks were falling again.

Light. Brilliant light.

She was flying, like an angel. Gold and silver stars and tinsel floated around her. Below, she saw a huge Christmas tree.

There were shops everywhere, their windows brightly lit.

Music played in the background. The sound of bells.

‘—hearts will be glowing…’

Everything went black. Then the world appeared on its side, like someone had pushed over a snowglobe.

Her face was pressed against the ground. She couldn’t move at all. She heard noises all around her, screams, shouting, footsteps, gunfire. People were running back and forth.

Amid the chaos, in the distance, she saw a single black figure

It stood motionless.

A moment later it disappeared and reappeared much closer to her. No one else seemed to notice. Her eyes fell closed.

She was trapped. Her body pinned beneath some vast weight.

Mom mom mom please

Smoke stung her eyes and nostrils. She felt pieces of glass beneath her hands. People were laying on the ground ahead of her.

Mom why are they sleeping

Beside one of them, she saw a red band….

‘—the most wonderful time of the yeeeaaar!’

The black figure stood right in front of her now. It’s head was an oversized black sphere in which she could see reflected the body of a woman laying on the ground.

‘Help.’ She said.

Or had she thought it?

She felt the weight of its attention shift to her. That attention grew, like a forest blooming inside her head. It crouched and held out its hands.

‘9x7hsd89ejxh.’

It pressed its hands together, stood and vanished.

Smoke filled her eyes.

There was a dozen of them, marching in a row over the horizon. Sunlight from beyond the shattered tunnel silhouetted them, glinting on their tall helmets and the shoulder plates of their armour. Their dusty robes swept the ground.

Every few steps they stopped.

Their hands lifted, ablaze with pink light, light that joined all of their hands together in one wall of incandescence... then they fired. Again, and again, and again…

She couldn’t moved her body.

Darkness was all around but for an uneven slice of white light up ahead. On either side of it, she could see the rough surface of rocks. There was no sense of scale. She couldn’t tell if they were bricks or mountains.

A man’s face appeared in the slice of light. He leant in so that only his eyes were visible.

‘Rinako. Rinako, that’s your name right?’

That’s right. Rinako was her name.

Uhhhhh.

‘She’s alive!’ The man shouted behind him.

He turned back to her. ‘You’re going to be ok. We’re going to get you out. Do you know where you are?’

‘Kurama…’ she said. And slid into darkness.