Gauntlet of Fear

What was this burning sensation in my chest….Was I shot?...Can’t be. I’ve been shot more times than I can count, but this was different….but familiar. Maybe it’s from a time I could recall? It wasn’t the same as when I lost control in the Tadano job…. So where have I felt like this before? Where I felt every beat of my heart, the shortness of my breath, and the tears in my eyes……Oh right? It was from that time

Will I be able to stay in control? Will I be able to find the answers I’m looking for….Will I survive this? To get the answers to all that, I finally decide to confront the demon wearing my friend’s skin, with the hopes of him still being in there.

There he was, holding his gun to Victor’s head, and I felt exactly the same way I did, the last time we were in front of each other

“TADASHI!” I scream out to him, and judging from his surprised reaction, he definitely wasn’t expecting to run into me

He remained silent, looking straight at me and slowly dropped his gun which was pointed at Victor’s head. “You are not supposed to be here” he said looking straight at me

I had so much to ask him, but I was not able to put together words fast enough. So he proceeded to fill in the gaps instead

“You have so much to ask me but you don’t know where to start. That’s what is going through your head right now” he read me like a book. “You were supposed to be in Typhon….never did I expect you to have what it takes to make it to Helios on your own. Or is this even the same Akio I knew?”

That answered one of my biggest questions, this was indeed the real deal, not an imposter.

“Why, Tadashi?” I inquired from him, not letting my gaze drift even for a second.

“Why what? You have to be more specific about what you want to ask” he slowly approached me “Why am I here in a place where people would love to end my life? Why am I taking matters into my own hands? Or maybe why I did what I did to Yuito and Misuzu-san?” he taunted me, and I was a fool to fall for it

Out of sheer rage I swung my blade at him, and he reacted dodging under my arm and evaded my strike with minimal movement.

“You are getting bolder, Akio. I felt the bloodlust in that swing, it’s as if you have grown a liking to killing already” he kept up his taunts

“Don’t you dare put me on the same level as you, you monster.” I replied “Why are you doing all this? EVERYTHING YOU TRIED TO SET RIGHT ALL THESE YEARS….all of that…is worth nothing now…..Help me understand…Tadashi” I put away my blade and made my hands visible to him, in the hopes of trying to reach any remnant of who I knew once.

“Did you read it?” He asked with a more somber tone compared to before

“Huh?”

“The mail I left for you…did you read it?” Tadashi reiterated

Mail? It’s only now I remembered it…. The mail that I got from the Typhon guild before I knew about the death game.

“I did” I replied in a calm tone

He paused for a second, showing a small second of relief in his expression “That’s good”, he said….and just moments later, he dashed at me staying low. My guard was down and he took this opportunity to strike. A split second later he was in my blind spot behind me

I turned my head and tried to go for my blade, but he struck before I could properly react. Kicked me in the back of my left knee dropping me down to a crouch and followed up with a strong right hook that left me floored.

“I told you everything I had to tell you before I killed Misuzu-san and Yuito and on that stage, Akio. You don’t think I’m that gullible enough to fall for the ruse of you trying to appeal to my better nature” he said from behind me, while I was trying to crawl away and get back up on my feet.

“You didn’t tell me shit!” I said while picking myself up from the ground and arming myself with my blade

I attempted to recollect myself before he struck again, I took a deep breath and turned out that was a mistake. He was too fast, as the next thing I knew, he was in point blank range

“Predictable” was the last words I heard from him before his fist sent a strong impact into my stomach, and it felt even worse since I had my lungs full of air. And once again, I found myself on the floor, coughing uncontrollably from that strike. For a few seconds, I couldn’t breathe, nor could I form any words… The pain and shock combined into a feeling that was the equivalent of being stuck in a vacuum.

“Get up” Tadashi said to taunt me, the seriousness in his tone was something I recognized. It was what he sounded like when is dead set on proving a point. What was he trying to prove then?

I didn’t risk asking as the few moments I had, pushing myself up from the cold hard floor and desperately trying to get up onto my feet and into balance was the only time I had to think. The moment I get up is the moment he will strike.

The fact that cemented the point that I had no chance against him, was that while I was fighting for my life with everything I had, he wasn’t even using his gear. Even as someone who built his reputation for being overwhelmingly fast, I couldn’t even think fast enough to match him right now. For the first time in my life of facing off against him, I couldn’t read him, and I had no answer for his offense. For the first time in a long time…. I was afraid of losing a fight.

I pushed myself up straight and took a quick look at my HP bar which was already quarter drained. This keeps up and he might end up finishing the job this time. But I can’t think anymore…all I could do, is blindly predict his incoming attack. Regaining my balance, I quickly get myself onto the defensive

But…. there was no attack, he was just standing there. What should I do? Should I attack? Should I try talking to him again? What if he counterattacks? My brain is all in a mess and the panic is starting to set in

“You are starting to panic, aren’t you? I know that look, Akio. You are trying to read me but you can’t” He starts to step closer to me as he speaks. “You are wondering if I’m the same Tadashi you knew all those years ago. But all that is happening is that I see through whatever you do, what you are trying to do and what you will do. As much as you look like you are looking to throw away your life the first chance you get, you are really afraid of dying. But most importantly, there is one more thing you are afraid of” he steps in, right next to my ear without me even noticing “You are afraid of me”

Alarmed by this, I attempt a quick strike…but knowing he will predict this, I go for a quick feint. I fake a horizontal back slash and attempt to follow-up immediately with a knockout punch with my armored hand. But neither connected as he evaded both with the minimum of movement….Frustrated, I try recovering and striking again with my blade and to which he reacted by catching my arm mid-swing

“Is that all you got?” Tadashi’s taunt got to me and I followed up, trying to strike him the same but with a kunai. We both were stuck in a test of strength as he caught my gauntlet by the forearm, foiling my second attempted attack as well.

“What did I tell you? I know your every move” he said….and he reacted by swiping his foot onto mine, causing me to lose balance, and punished me for it. His knee connected with my ribcage catching me in a daze, and he held onto my dominant right, using it to pull me up for more knee strikes. After a few moments of repeated impacts and tear-filled eyes later, he threw me across the alleyway, and as a byproduct, sent my weapon flying into the dark shadow under the dumpster next to me….

My head grazed the ground on landing, taking away the sight of my left eye as blood started to flow down it. The bleed wasn’t severe enough to drain my HP bar noticeably, but I was already down to half HP. I had to find an opening to get some sort of healing in….but it’s not like he would let me.

“On edge about your health bar and looking for a window to heal up? Well not that it’s going to matter much especially with your…condition. Like I said Akio, there is nothing you can do, that I won’t see coming…. Now Get…Up” he said without even a sweat broken.

I really am going to die at this rate. Somebody…help.

I tried my best to get back up. But I barely had any energy to do so….but I kept pushing, eventhough the accumulating pain from my singed and shattered body was getting more and more unbearable. My body felt like it had a road roller parked on it, and specific movements inflicted sharp pains that just kept putting me down. Seeing my struggle to get back up on my feet, Tadashi lost patience

“GET UP!” he screamed, while moving towards me at a steady pace….Time for a Hail Mary play.

Took me a few dozen bruises and broken bones to realize it, but eventhough I barely recognize him anymore, there are still cracks of the old Tadashi showing once in a while, and being impatient and forcing plays was one of his weaknesses he never could shake.

Working on the assumption he saw me getting disarmed, I waited till he was at striking range. I put all my hopes into this one move, and if this fails like the rest of them, my life is over. And as I hoped, he grabbed me by my jacket collar and pulled me back up to my feet, to which I answered my turning around and going for a quick slash with his blade. Thankfully, he didn’t realize that it was my kunai that slipped under the dumpster and not my wakizashi, and that was confirmed by the fact that his blank and confident expression suddenly turned into one of surprise and alarm. He reacted by releasing his grip on me and quickly drawing his knife and attempting to block my strike, eventhough I should’ve struck first, the speed of his draw was ridiculous ...but that was the least of my worries.

My blade struck his knife and it was like hot butter going through it, as my blade shattered into pieces eventhough he's barely had any force through it

“No way” I thought out loud as the remnants of my weapon disintegrated, but the moment I looked up, there was another hell awaiting me.

For some reason, he was enraged, and his offense was relentless. He slipped behind me and put a bullet into the back of my leg which immediately floored me and left me screaming in pain. He got on top of me and turned me around and started beating my face in. Through the impacts, I tried to get a sneak attack in with a kunai but he blocked it and restrained my gauntlet arm into the floor, he took out his blade one more time, and kept stabbing my arm over and over again, sending me into fits of excruciating pain, enough to send my ears ringing from all my screaming.

I was getting mauled by a wild animal, and I was certain that my journey had come to an end as I saw my health bar plummet from red to only a few slivers left. He stopped moments before he dealt a finishing blow and aimed his gun at my head. But eventhough I didn’t want to die, I never gave him the satisfaction of begging for my life, instead, I was ready to accept whatever fate awaited me.

My ears were ringing, and I was drenched in my own blood, the corner of my eye glued to my HP bar as my thoughts were repeating at the back of my head for my HP to deplete slower. But even through my weakened vision of my one eye which was loaded with tears from agony, I saw his hand shivering. He took the lives of my mother and brother, two of the very few people that were on his side while the world was against him……and he was hesitating when it came to me? I could be nothing but pissed off.

He looked furious but troubled, as if he was torn between pulling the trigger and contemplating what he had done. And I was there on the ground, unable to move, unable to hear anything except ringing….I was only observing. He got off me looking frustrated and dragged me by the collar and tossed me to the corner of the closest wall, enabling me to sit up, but there wasn’t a strong force behind it this time, which saved the slowly depleting sliver of health I had left. I slowly turned my limp right arm around and opened my inventory menu on the ground, and grabbed an HP vial from it. I had no strength to pick my arm up to drink it, so I dragged it’s lid on the stone floor and popped the cap open, without letting the content’s drop, I tipped it over onto the open wound in my hand which stopped the health drain from the bleeding, moments before I died from blood loss. Thank god the game’s realism hasn't gone as far as everything else has when it comes to this.

The ringing in my ears settled a bit, as a part of my hearing had returned back to me, but it was what I saw that I had to stop somehow….and that was the sight of Tadashi walking away from me.

“DON’T RUN…YOU COWARD!” I said forcefully without any energy in my voice, as it was an effort to even get as much as a whisper out of me. But that succeeded in getting him to stop, but however, it was the back of him jacket that was facing me, not his eyes. “Is this what Sawako-san would’ve wanted? Everything she endured…..all for nothing. Is this how you want to honor everything she sacrificed for you? What can possibly happen to make someone as strong as you abandon his morals and team up with a madman like Sato?” I blurted out everything, forcing my voice as I knew I wouldn’t be able to say anything afterwards

“How many times have we had this conversation, Akio? About mom? She always wanted me to be better… Better than what the world thought about me…..better than what she knew about me. But this place showed me that there is no use in improving on what lies on a base of flaws ...of lies, of deceit…. And I’m sure if mom was here today, she would have agreed with me” He said, putting his knife and gun away

What is he even talking about?

“And most importantly” he looked over his shoulder revealing his blank expression once again. “Who said I was working with Sato?”

Huh?

He started to walk away yet again, only to stop once more after a few steps “ I know you are wondering how I ever had the drive to kill Yuito and Misuzu-san…. I saved them from a much worse fate that awaited them….. As for why I didn’t do the same to you? Because I’m still weak…. Because if I kill you today, I’ll only be murdering my best friend” as he said that, he walked away, further and further, and little by little, he was moving out of my line of sight

I wanted to scream out to him, as I am left with more questions on top of my already unanswered questions. He was right about many things… I was afraid of him, I told myself that I have no second thoughts about throwing my life away, but I was just lying to myself. But more than before, I was more afraid of him now. I fought for my life and I wasn’t able to land a single hit…. One of CG’s best? What a sad joke I used to tell myself. I guess this was the point Sato wanted to make. In here, I’m no genius, I’m neither the Absolute Zero nor the Shinogami. I’m just the common player Akio Nakamura. And this defeat showed me that, and the sooner I accept that, the higher my chances of survival are.

Survive? Is that what I want?..... If that’s what I want, it’s time for a change of approach…. learn everything from scratch, rebuild myself… work on my strengths and cover my weaknesses… and most importantly, I will make it out of here alive.

And it was time for the crucial first step, and that was getting up and getting out of this alley…..Well… I guess I’m going to be here for a while.

A couple more HP potions and a nap on the hard stone floor of the alley later, I was finally able to get back up on my feet. I bandaged myself up and slinged my shattered arm and hung it around my neck and under my jacket. I still wasn’t at my prime and at night in Helios, I was as safe as a kitten in a dog pound, especially with all my injuries. However, I managed to blend into the crowds and move with them while keeping a low profile. While the safer bet was to regroup with the Kanies, I assumed that the sooner Yamori heard about my run in with Tadashi, the better.

Since I was sticking to where the crowds were at their densest, I was getting tossed around like a ragdoll by people around me due to my uneven pace. Each collision sending waves of pain through my body, but it was much more tolerable compared to what I went through earlier today. Avoiding the likes of random gangs, and the New World Order goons alike, I was finally able to make it to the safe zone over by Yamori’s precinct.

I turned the handle to the precinct door and it swung open, but there was one crucial part missing from the whole thing….the welcoming Sheriff. “Nishigaki-san!...You in here?” I shouted to see if he would respond. I opened the doors to the cells and the cells were empty…..Guess it is a rare quiet night in Helios, or else this place would be raining death threats and curses on Yamori.

From the cells, I opened the door and went into the yard where he holds “the Trial of the Wolf” sessions. “Nishigaki-san!” I shouted yet again and once again, there was no answer. Where has that man gone to?

I scoured the whole precinct for him and my findings came out null. However, there is one place that I could most likely find him.

“If I remember right, it was right here” I thought to myself as I vaulted over his desk and pushed the button under the counter, which revealed the hidden basement in the precinct. Chances are that he is either messing around in his lab or sorting his case files.

“Nishigaki-san!” and again I screamed, only for the silence in the wind to answer back, but for a archive or a lab, the basement does look more desolate than the rest of this place, where unlike the wooden finish of the precinct, the basement is more of a stone dungeon.

I slowly descended the stairs in the hopes of finding Yamori napping, but all I ran into was what looked like a thick metal door secured with a lever lock on it. Looks like the man is looking to run a bank as well judging by how thick this door is.

“Nishigaki-san! You there?” I called out, staying close to the door, and still got no answer, so I pushed down on the lever, putting all my body weight into it and attempted to open the door.

The door was extremely heavy and I strained my broken arm multiple times in the process, but I got it open enough to squeeze through and into what I could only describe as an exercise in claustrophobia. The room was sufficiently lit with the light of the flames on tall lamps to reveal what looked like a prison of damp stone. But the first look into the closest cell sent me into a sudden jolt of shock, as a cut open body was hanging from what looked like a mechanical contraption.

“Oh shit” I muttered in shock. The cell door was open, so I decided to take a closer look at the mechanism the dead body was hooked to….but the moment I opened the door, the body came loose and fell off, making me scream in surprise

“Hey…HEY! ANYONE THERE? HEY!” I had been discovered, but the voice wasn’t Yamori’s…however it was familiar “Please, if anyone is there, you have to help us” and as the voice said that, I inched closer and closer to the source.

“Riley?” I was caught by surprise, seeing Jayden restrained to a chair in a cell at the end of the long corridor.

“Nakamura? Oh god, how did you get down here…. Where’s that lunatic?” while words were leaving Jayden’s mouth, his attention was anywhere but at me, as he was looking around the area appearing distracted.

“Lunatic? Riley, what the hell is going on here?” I inquired

“Look, listen to me very carefully, I know you don’t trust me but I’m trying to save a lot of lives right now. The Sheriff isn’t who he says he is….. That bastard has been torturing and killing people here with his experiments.”

“Experiments? What experiments?” I inquired, unable to believe what I am hearing or witnessing right now

“He’s been treating everyone like disposable rats ever since we got here….Stress testing us, as he called it….. He’s killed so many people right in front of me these past few days, all screaming in agony. Please, I know would rather see me suffer for what I did to you, but at least save the others down here” Jayden’s cracking voice of desperation was completely different from his usual cocky attitude, and the fact that someone who used to condescend others and ruin their lives has been put to a situation this low suggests that he isn’t lying or over exaggerating about this in the slightest.

I wanted to help, but a barrage of fear came upon me…. What if I get caught by Yamori down here? I’m hurt, what can my broken self do to save people down here. Against my better nature, I tried to save Jayden from his restraints, but it was no use. He was locked in tight and his ankles were slashed, meaning he couldn’t get up.

“Forget me, there are many others here that he is tormenting.…Them….save them” Jayden was never the type to care about anyone else but himself, but just like the old days, desperation does make people act differently that their usual selves.

I leave Jayden to his current fate and scour the area for the others, but all I see are empty cells, I try the door at the far end that leads further down but it was restricted from me by a fingerprint lock. There was nothing I could do for anyone in here.

I return back to Jayden to reassure him. “They are further down this place and I can’t get in there…I’m sorry, but I will come back for everyone” while I said this, Jayden was slowly mouthing the words “No” as he saw his only chance of salvation slipping away “I will be back, so please, hold on for a little while longer”. I moved as fast as my broken body allowed me to and got past the large metal door, while the screams of Jayden’s disapproval and desperation were blaring behind me. I pushed the door close and locked it back up

I slowly backed away knowing that I might’ve just opened and entered Pandora’s Box. Testing and torturing, if that was true, what is Yamori trying to accomplish here?

I limped back upstairs and approached the button behind the counter as fast as I could, allowing me to close the basement. I took a moment to process what I just witnessed. My breathing intensified as the place I thought was a safe haven wasn’t that anymore.

What am I supposed to do? I can’t go to Jun about this since I know for a fact that he trusts Yamori more than I do…. Maybe if I show him the basement? No, no, no….This was a rare occasion. There is a high chance Yamori will be back by the time I get help. But it’s still a chance, maybe if I am quick enough?

And after a moment of indecisiveness, I decided to try anyway…. I attempted to leave the building to enlist the aid of the only people I know, but that plan suddenly went out of the window the moment I opened the door, as what started at me, was the wolf in sheep’s clothing.

“Yikes, you look like you’ve seen better days”