Tokushima, the capital of Tokushima Prefecture, was situated on the eastern coast of the island of Shikoku. Being the seat of regional government, it had essentially been the beating heart of the area, until the Evacuation saw the population drop to a tenth of its original size. Most everyone had either fled in search of safety or died during an Anomaly attack. The lack of proper medical facilities, too, was yet another reason for the exodus, turning injured victims into fatalities when they otherwise should have recovered.
Those that stayed, numbering some twenty thousand, lived quietly and in constant fear under the ever-present shadow of the portal-keeps. Food and other supplies were precious and strictly rationed; only a certain amount was allotted to each family. But this, of course, was hardly enough to sustain a society, and without constant bartering or doing business on the black market, one would struggle to get by.
“The people in charge must have their hands full,” Natsuki Hatano remarked. “It’s a lot quieter here than a lot of the other places I saw around Kansai. Granted, the place feels basically dead.”
“It felt like you’d wind up dead at your old refugee town if you weren’t too careful,” Takamaru Ijuin countered.
The two of them had come to Shikoku on the same boat as Nadal. As...unique as the speaker was, he was also extremely important, so they were there as backup just in case anything went wrong. Natsuki had her Mark VI, Vritra, and Ijuin had learned to make good use of his nanomachines.
Natsuki wore her gaudy, peony-patterned furisode over a tank top, as usual, with the only other element to her less-than-modest look being a pair of denim shorts. The outlandish ex-high schooler looked at Ijuin with a lopsided smile. “I mean, everywhere needs some energy, good or bad. All the people here feel like they’ve just given up.”
The younger of the duo had a strikingly pink hoodie on, but that was the only thing that stood out about him. He looked the part of an average, plus-sized fourteen-year-old.
Ijuin nodded at Natsuki’s observation. “Can’t really blame ’em. Must be hard to hope for rescue when it hasn’t come for almost a year.”
“Which is probably what our old pal Nadal wanted,” Natsuki said bluntly. “Wait for them to get tired and stop looking for the light at the end of the tunnel, and when they’re at their lowest, show up and offer a way out. With strings attached.”
“Welp, it worked. Got ’em on our side without much of a fight.”
They came to the foot of a bridge straddling the Shinmachi River, near the prefectural office. The overpass was huge, with eight whole lanes for traffic, though not a single one was occupied. Ijuin looked over at the city, failing to spot more than a few pedestrians.
“Maybe all this cloak-and-dagger stuff’s just part of how countries did their thing back in their world. If it was really Sengoku-style wars all the time, I mean,” he wondered aloud. “I could see Lady Ein leadin’ a few armies.”
“Yeah, true... Hey!” Natsuki exclaimed. Her fierce eyes locked onto something across the bridge. “I just found lunch!”
“Wha? Hey, where’re you going?!”
The furisode girl darted away, leaving the poor boy behind. All Ijuin could see at her destination was a dark dot lumbering in the distance. But Natsuki’s physical abilities were literally extraordinary, enhanced to superhuman levels by the nano-augmentations in her body—and that included her eyesight.
The pointless meeting at the prefectural office over and done with, Yu took off into the sky, still armorized. Flying gently and quietly, he switched on the optical camouflage, vanishing from sight.
“Now where are Ijuin and Natsuki?” he murmured. “This way, I think.”
He’d received their general location over commlink. All he had to do was trace their signal with the Frame and fly that way until he could spy them from above.
Yu turned his gaze to the area near a large bridge. “There they are. Wait, what’s that?”
There were shops and houses all over, but Tokushima was practically a ghost town these days. Or at least, it was supposed to be. A crowd of about thirty or forty people had gathered on the street at one end of the bridge.
The Mark III’s sensors picked up something, and a window appeared on the Head Mounted Display in Yu’s visor. In it were Natsuki’s and Ijuin’s smiling faces, though he could tell the entire gathering seemed to be in a good mood. People young and old of every gender and every complexion were grinning and chatting merrily.
“Wonder what’s going on.”
Yu landed behind a building and de-armorized, soon realizing his T-shirt and shorts were a little cold for Japan in May. He was worming his way through the mass of people when something tickled his nose. They were grilling.
“Natsuki! Ijuin!” he called out. “What is this?”
“Hello, good sir!” Ijuin called back, beaming. “You’ve impeccable timing!”
“I got my hands on some good stuff and thought we might as well let everyone else partake of the fruits of our labor, shall we say!” Natsuki said.
A big, blue tarp lay spread out behind them, two large and presumably dead boars lying on it. A number of tables and cooking appliances were lined along the road, and a sizable pot boiled over a gas range while hunks of meat sizzled on grates over a charcoal fire.
Ijuin pointed back at the boars with his thumb. “Natsuki found ’em! Chased one down and kicked it in the head. Took it right out. Punched the second one, and she suplexed the third!”
“You hunted wild boar with your bare hands?!” Yu exclaimed.
Natsuki smiled bashfully. “Did I never mention I studied kenpo?”
“Oh yeah, you said your dad did stage fighting and action choreography,” recalled Yu. “He taught you how to fight and stuff, right?”
For all intents and purposes, though, knowing how to fight didn’t have quite as much to do with this particular feat as Natsuki’s innate physical prowess. Unlike Yu, she was strong without a suit of armor.
The woman of the hour glanced towards a house. The third boar corpse hung from the ceiling of an open garage, and a middle-aged man was in the middle of skillfully butchering it.
“I’m not so good at that stuff like you and Ein,” she said. “So I went around knockin’ on doors asking for help in exchange for some of the score. Eventually someone found us an outdoorsy guy, and now it’s kind of a whole thing.”
“Le petit banquet!” Ijuin cheered.
Their paper plates were piled high with a mountain of grilled pork.
“Here, join the bourgeoisie,” said Natsuki. She picked up a piece with her chopsticks and held it out for Yu.
“Oh, thanks,” he replied. He opened his mouth and accepted the offer. “Wow, that’s good!”
The flight from Indonesia had been long, and he hadn’t stopped for food. Yu had been running on empty all day. The fat melted in his mouth and his hunger amplified the juicy flavors tenfold. Only after demolishing an entire plate did he stop to wonder if he really should have let Natsuki feed him.
She giggled impishly, then winked. “Don’t tell Ein.”
Yu’s heart skipped a beat. “Uh, r-right.”
Ijuin was too busy stuffing his face to notice anything that had transpired. They’d had the privilege of eating real game for some time, but for him, lean deer meat couldn’t hold a candle to fatty pork.
Once his plate was clean, Ijuin said, “So apparently it’s been gettin’ dangerous havin’ so few people around, since it makes it easier for animals to creep in from the mountains. Nothing much they can do about it either, ’cause bullets are so valuable.”
“The hunter guy said they prefer to save them,” said Natsuki.
“In case of the Anomalies,” Yu surmised.
The excitement surrounding the feast was understandable, considering how rare good things tended to happen these days. Tokushima was hungry and filled with danger, both from this world and beyond. So Yu joined them, taking the chance to eat and drink and be merry while they could.
And it was a good thing that he had.
Silence fell over the crowd as a jade curtain fell over the sky. Yu looked up at the billowing aurora and shuddered.
The flying portal-keep was coming.