Daiki Yamato gripped his sword and took a deep breath.  He was the second-last line of defence...but what was he supposed to do against this?  The line of tanks in front of him had lifted into the air and crashed to the ground upside down, the impact alone almost certainly killing the men inside before overturned tanks scattered throughout the line started exploding.  And then there was the flash of the light to the south, and the shock wave.  And the radio chatter.

    And the firing was getting closer.  As were the screams.

    “If anybody can hear me, I’m injured, but I’m making my way back on foot,” he heard Atria say over the radio, the signal faint.  “Captain Markham and Volandpanzer are gone.  I’m about five minutes from the outer perimeter.  I don’t think The Destroyer is far behind.”

    There was a flurry of gunfire and motion in front of him, and then nothing but moans and screams.  His blood went cold when he heard the voice.

    “I like to call this game ‘arterial spray’,” Saline said, picking through the survivors.  “Whose will be the highest?”

    He saw a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye and dodged, a knife blade tearing through the leather armour and slicing through his arm.

    “That wasn’t very high!” he heard Saline lament.  “Let’s see what you can do.”

    He brought his sword up into a guard position.  The American teenager Atria had told him was named Jenny Calhoun looked at him and grinned, a predatory gleam in her eyes and blood trickling down her knives.

    She said something in English he didn’t understand, and then attacked again.  Her knives flashed, his sword striking out to meet them, just a fraction too slow.  No killing blow came.  Instead she was gone, running into the complex.

    “One of them got past me,” Daiki reported.  “I think it’s the–”

    An invisible force slammed him against the wall, pinning him in place.  He turned his head to see Saline approaching, licking the blood off her knife.

    “I finished my game!” she declared with a grin.  “I think one of them managed to break three feet!”

    “Saline,” Daiki gasped.  “You need to listen to me.  It’s–”

    “This world is amazing, isn’t it?” Saline said.  “Back in our world, I had to hide so much of who I am.  I had to seem all prim and proper for the royal court, look like a good party member to the other heroes, and I almost never got to have any fun.  But here, I’m part of an army of liberation.  Here I can kill whoever I want, and be the hero while I do it!”

    “You’re not a hero,” Daiki snarled.  “You’re just a psychopath showing her true colours!”

    “You wouldn’t believe all the fantasies I have about you,” Saline said, dancing around him.  “All the things that half-wolf mongrel ‘shield’ of yours prevented me from doing.  But she’s not here, and we are!”  She grinned.  “And I have hours.”

    Then, as he struggled against the magic pinning him to the wall to no avail, Saline pulled off his leather armour breastplate and began to slice into his flesh.

“Matt,” Alice sobbed.  She was aware of Stella and the others looking at her with concern, but ignored them.  She used the wall to pull herself to her feet.

    “Why didn’t I just talk to him?” she heard Mark Gable mutter.  “All he wanted me to do was talk to him.  Why didn’t I do that?”

    She looked around the room.  On a nearby CCTV feed, she saw Daiki Yamato crouch into a fighting stance.

    Air.  She needed some air.  She stagged out of the room.

    “Alice, no, it’s not safe!” she heard Stella call out, but kept walking.

    How long she walked the corridors she wasn’t sure.  At some point she heard gunfire, and then silence.  She sat down on the floor, staring at the wall.

    A convention pamphlet dangled in front of her face.  Alice blinked and looked at it.  It was a picture of her, labeled in both Japanese and English.

    “Hello Alice,” she heard a familiar voice say.  “I’m Jenny Calhoun.”  Then the blow fell, knocking her to the floor.

    “So, we’re going to have a little talk,” Jenny said, picking her up with one hand and throwing her through a door hard enough to break it open.  Her side exploded in pain, every breath an agony.  As Alice crawled to the corner to get away, she saw Jenny enter the room after her.  “And then I’m going to get a bit stabby.  I hope that’s okay with you.”  She drew her knife.

    “Please,” Alice whimpered.

    Jenny knelt down close enough that Alice could see that the blood on the knife was still damp.  “I just want to know one thing.  Why do you hate me?”

    Alice blinked.  “What?  I don’t...I don’t hate you.”

    “You really going to lie to me now, creator?” Jenny snarled.

    “I love you,” Alice said.  “I don’t hate you at all.  I love you to bits.  I loved creating you, and writing every moment of you, and seeing you pick yourself up every time you got knocked down.  I never, ever hated you.”

    Jenny looked stunned.  Shaking her head, she pointed her knife at Alice’s throat.  “Then why did you kill everybody I care about?  Why is my home overrun with monsters?  How can you do that to somebody you love?”

    Alice winced as her side throbbed in pain.  “Because that what I needed to do to keep telling your story.  You’re from a network television show.  Every season has to have bigger stakes, be more scary, more exciting...and if it isn’t, and your numbers slip, they cancel it.  And if your show got cancelled, I wouldn’t be able to keep you in my life anymore.  The stories I had to tell...that was the price of telling your story.  And I never ended on a cliffhanger.  I always gave you a happy ending, every season.  What else could I do for a character I loved?”

    The hand holding the knife began to shake.

    “When I found out that you were real, and here in the real world, I was so desperate to find you,” Alice said, starting to cry.  “I wanted to tell you that I was sorry.  If I had known that you would be this real, I wouldn’t have done...I wouldn’t have...I wouldn’t have done any of it.  I would have given you a different story...I would have...”

    Alice hung her head.  “I’m sorry.”

    She heard Jenny slump against the wall, sliding down.  When she looked up she saw Jenny staring at her with tears running down her cheeks.  And then Jenny pulled out a gun.

    Alice closed her eyes tight, waiting for the end.  Instead, she felt the grip of the gun pressed into her palm.  When she opened her eyes, Jenny was gone.

    Alice heard footsteps approaching at a run.  Akari Soto appeared at the door.  “Alice,” she said in English with a heavy accent.  “I found you!  Jenny Calhoun is in the building, and Saline...”  Her voice trailed off as her gaze fell down to the gun in Alice’s hand.

    Akari knelt down and took the gun.  “I’m sorry,” she said.  “I need this.  I’ll let the others know you’re here.”  She dashed out of the room.

    Alice began to weep.

Daiki screamed in pain as Saline sliced into his flesh again.  His left side was a bloody mass.  No matter what he did, he couldn’t move.

    “Don’t worry,” Saline said.  “I’ll move to your right side soon.  I believe in symmetry.”

    Then he heard the gunshots.  Saline jerked, the knife falling from her hand, and then crumpled.  The magic that had pinned him to the wall vanished.  He slid down to the ground.

    “I’m sorry,” he heard Akari Soto say as she rushed towards him, a pistol in her hand.  She stood before him, looking him up and down.  “Saline was the only character I ever created who was irredeemable.  I couldn’t let her kill you.”

    Daiki could only gasp in pain as he tried to rise.

    “Are you okay? Akari asked.  “I’ll get a–”

    A spike of masonry impaled and pinned her to the wall beside him.  She quivered and was still.

    Daiki looked up to see The Destroyer descending from above.

    “Rejoice in your liberation,” The Destroyer said.

    Daiki shook his head.  “You killed...she was going to send me home!”

    “She was going to continue your enslavement,” The Destroyer stated.  “The other enslavers – creators – are in this building.  Soon all of their creations will be liberated as well.”

    Daiki tried to rise.  As he did, the door opened and Jenny Calhoun dashed out and embraced The Destroyer.

    “Roy, thank god you’re okay,” she said in English.  “We have to stop.”

    “We have only just begun,” The Destroyer said in English.  “There are so many of us needing to be liberated.”

    Daiki winced again as he rose to his feet, wishing he could understand what they were saying.

    “Jack was right, Roy, Jack was right,” Jenny said, holding him tight.  “They’re just people, all of them.  We’ve gone too far.  I love you, Roy.  You saved me in every way that I needed to be saved.  Let’s just go, you and me.  We can disappear into one of the created worlds and live the rest of our lives there.”

    “The war of liberation must not stop,” The Destroyer said.

    “Please, Roy,” Jenny begged, starting to cry.  “Please.  We’ve become the monsters.  We need to stop.  If you don’t stop, I’ll have to stop you.  Please, just stop and come with me.”

    Daiki gripped his sword with two hands.  Pain shot up and down along his side.

    “I cannot stop, Jenny,” The Destroyer said sadly.  “Go if you must.”

    Jenny drew her knife and swung, stopping at the last minute, the tip resting on The Destroyer’s chest.  “Please, don’t make me,” she sobbed.  “I’m sorry.  I wish I had never talked you into meeting your creator.”

    The Destroyer put a gentle hand on her head.  “I wish you had never lifted your hand against me.”  Then he threw her against the corner of the opposite building.  Daiki heard a loud crack as her spine broke.

    Daiki lifted his sword, shaking his head to clear it.  The note – the note Akari had passed to him.  That was all that mattered now.

    “You would still fight?” The Destroyer said in Japanese.  “Do you care for your liberation so little?”

    “You need to be stopped,” Daiki said, his voice almost a whisper.

    “You can barely stand,” The Destroyer stated.  “All the efforts of your friends and army could do little more than slow me down.  And you would still fight.”

    Daiki gripped his sword, struggling to keep the tip on point.  The note.  He had to remember the note.

    “A dear friend of mine believed more than anything that fights should be fair,” The Destroyer said.  “There is no way this fight can be fair.  But, it is not mine to tell you what to do once you are liberated.  If you wish to die fighting me, I will respect your wishes.  And I will honour the memory of Jack Death.  I will let you have the first strike.  That at least, will be fair.”  The Destroyer spread out his arms, thrusting out his chest.  “Take your shot.”

    It was as much of a stagger as it was a thrust.  The Black Sword slid into The Destroyer’s chest, half of the blade sinking in and piercing his heart.  The Destroyer fell to his knees, his eyes wide in shock.  Light-headed, Diaki followed him down.

    “How?” The Destroyer asked.

    “You were a copy of the devil king from my world,” Daiki said.  “My sword could kill you.  My creator – our creator – told me so in a note.”

    The Destroyer looked over to the body of Akari Soto.  “She was my real creator?”

    Daiki nodded.

    “Did...did I have a name?”

    “Yes,” Daiki said.

    “What was my name?”

    Daiki shook his head.  “I’m sorry, I don’t know.”

    The Destroyer’s eyes were dim.  “She cared,” he whispered, and then was silent.

    With what little was left of his strength, Daiki pulled the sword from The Destroyer’s body and sat against the wall.  He heard irregular footfalls approaching.  Looking up, he saw Atria Silversword limping in his direction.

    “Are you okay?” she said in Japanese, glancing quickly at him and the bodies of Saline and The Destroyer.  “That’s a lot of blood.”  She pressed the transmit button on her radio.  “This is Silversword.  All targets are down, but we need medics outside behind the final perimeter.”

    Daiki pointed at where Jenny Calhoun lay still.  “I think she may still be alive.”

    “Then she’s one of the few,” Atria said.

    “This is Sato,” a voice called over the radio.  “Medics are on the way.  Is the perimeter secured?”

    “Yes,” Atria said.  “Everything is secured.”

NEXT: “Aftermath”