Almost immediately after that thought a (BOOM!) resounds through the area.

“………” says Rina. 

She wasn’t cursing anybody so why?!

A ways in front of her a tall building had started collapsing from a collision that she hadn’t seen occur. Rina had a blank look on her face as she stared ahead. She listened to the sound of broken glass and dulled screams as her heart nearly stopped dead in her chest. 

Did that.. really just happen? Her eyes widened in disbelief. She knew things like this did, indeed, happen, but nobody actually pictures themselves witnessing the horror of it in live time. 

She couldn’t even begin to imagine the sheer terror and hopelessness the people in the building felt as the ground gave out from beneath them. Rina found there was little she could do in the way of help; all authorities had already been alerted and, and she wasn’t even a real Hunter—she didn’t awaken any skills, let alone how to properly navigate this ‘user system’ that parasites her. 

But the more important thing was: Rina was deceptively closer to the collapse than she’d thought. She tightens her grip on the bags ominously rustling by her side, and watches frozen as a cloud of dust billows its way towards her with no sign of it stopping. 

The debris from the broken building finally hitting the ground must’ve stirred it into action. However before the dust even has a chance to reach her, Rina is knocked off her feet by the shock of a soundwave. 

Almost comically, the shopping bags slipped from her grip and were flung somewhere unreachable. Rina had a split second to be glad it wasn’t her shoes; everyone and their dog knew that if they were gone, then so were her chances of surviving. But the comedic moment is gone as quickly as it came, because Rina almost immediately finds herself being treated with the same kind of carelessness. 

Nothing about the experience of being swept off her feet high enough for her stomach to almost drop out of her asshole was romantic. The movies lied to her.

If she could rate the whole experience then: 0/10, would not recommend. And that was even before she’d quickly been dumped a ways away from her original position, and on top of a car windshield.

The glass audibly cracks beneath her. But more importantly than that — Rina thinks something in her body did, too.

A sharp scream reflexively leaves her lips. Her lungs painfully squeezed tighter and tighter with every breath she took. Which just meant she’d basically vomited out a string of curses instead of the eloquence that she usually spews them. 

“Fu-.. FUCK!” 

There’s black spots dancing in her vision which lovingly lets her know that she’d experienced brain trauma of some kind. Or serious blood loss, but she doesn’t particularly feel like she’d opened up a big enough wound for that. However that could just be attributed to the adrenaline running rampant in her body. Rina is also pretty sure it was the only thing stopping her from giving into the delirium dancing at the edge of her mind. 

“-oughcoughcough-” Her eyes automatically screw shut in pain as her throat is painfully racked with cough after cough. Rina eventually manages to stop, because something wet moistens her throat instead. 

Blood.

She was bleeding. Internally, which was where all her blood should be, but—fuck! Forget not losing her shoes, she might just die anyway.

After laying there for who knows how long, Rina twitches. The use of her limbs was still a-ok, so there was no logical reason that she couldn’t move them and, you know, get the fuck outta here. 

It takes longer than she’d like, but eventually she sits up on the car hood and slides off of it. The moment her feet hit the pavement, she crumples to the floor. Her vision blacks out for a moment. She’d noticed it’d been doing that more frequently. 

“Shit.” Rina dragged her arms in front of her and took a deep breath. The longer she stayed still, the more she was at risk of never moving again. Everything hurt. So, so much. She never boasted a high pain tolerance but right now she had no choice but to simply work through it. 

The fact that she could still hear the echoes of destruction put her on edge but it got her moving. What if whatever had caused that collapse made its way closer to her? What if she was the next collateral damage in the Hunter’s fight?

But all these questions—all these what if’s—they come too late. 

Right above her, something descends. She can just.. feel the presence of it, somehow. It screeches and howls as it heads right for her. The noise it makes is unfamiliar, and Rina likes to think she’s pretty knowledgeable. That could only mean that it was something new, something unknown. 

There was only one thing that it could be. 

A native to the Gate. 

Slowly, silently, tears shed from her eyes. Rina shakes as she tilts her head up and the moment she lays her eyes on the, the thing, she can’t help but think—

Ah. I’m dead.

People like to think that in a crisis, they would react accordingly — that their instinct of fight or flight would kick in and somehow save them. Instead, the reality is this: you freeze. 

And Rina froze.

—

The hospital room she was in was quite luxurious according to her normal standards. It was private, for starters, and she couldn’t hear anyone else in the area so she supposed that the ward was quite closed off. Everything was metallic and sterile, meaning it wasn’t quite as welcoming(?) as a normal hospital but still gave the feeling of a sort of wellness center. 

At least it didn’t feel cold enough that she was sitting on a mortician's table. 

In front of her bed, there was a wide screen reminiscent of a TV. It was clearer than anything she’d ever seen, and looked like it was freestanding. 

Why did technological advances always go for the holographic, freehands-look? 

—is what she’d thought at the time. 

The contents of the TV seemed to be a news anchor covering probably the wreckage of what she assumed came from these gates that this nurse had told her about.

“Coming to you live from Trafalgar Square!” The reporter shouted amongst the roaring of deformed, hellish monsters that poured into the area behind them. The gate seemed to have opened right in the middle of the huge monument that sat in the middle of Trafalgar square!

“As.. you ca—.. se.. so many!”

The reporter tried their hardest to communicate towards the camera, but the wind was too violent and the roaring and aggravated howls of the monsters completely drowned out what he was attempting to report. 

However, what they did manage to say next, Rina caught loud and clear. And it was—

“It’s Phoenix!”

—

Sitting in her hospital bed, Rina remembers the way the Hunter entered the scene in a blaze of fire, surrounded by waves of hair that burnt a bright sunfire red. 

It’s the same color she sees now as it intercepts the two-headed Pterodactyl reminiscent monster that was probably about to peck her head clean off her shoulders

Phoenix. The reverie in which the reporter called their official name seemed to bleed into her mind at that moment.

“It’s you?”

The bubble pops. 

The light around Phoenix never dims, but the heroic moment in Rina’s heart seems to shatter. 

‘It’s you?’ The phrase rings around and around in her head on repeat. 

—

Rina hears the door click open and is unsurprised to see that it’s Olivia. She was the only person who visited her. 

With a small smile on her face Rina innocently says, “Your hair is the same shade as this Phoenix.” She hadn’t meant anything by it, which the nurse seems to get as she laughs in return.

“This is just hair dye, Rina.” She said, “Now about your bloodte…”

—

In the moment there was nothing odd about the interaction. But now, for some reason, she gets the feeling that the nurse had brushed off her statement. 

What else could she have said to Rina’s passing comment? It’s not like…

It’s not like it was actually fucking hairdye!

“Phoenix? Do you know her?” A stranger lands beside the blazing Hunter as she finally burns the monster to ashes with an effortless wave of her hand.

“Unfortunately,” she says, flicks her gaze towards Rina and tacks on, “the deadlast Awakener.”

Rina stands there with what feels like static in her ears. She understood Phoenix maybe wanting to keep her human persona a secret but.. did she have to refer to her with such venom? 

Also what was with that deadlast comment? Did Rina look like she was going to shit out a bunch of shadow clones, or throw a rasengan! straight at her face?

Come on.

However, there was no room for any funny business. 

Rina blinks, and she’s suddenly falling. Her body goes cold with fear and she swears she hears something in her mind snap as she continues to fall, and fall, and fall until there’s nowhere more for her to go. 

The scariest part was that she didn’t even hit the bottom of whatever she’d fallen in. 

“Peter.”

A hand grips her arm. The hold is smoldering enough that the coldness from whatever abyssal crevice she’d been shoved into peels off in layers and layers of molten gold. 

She’s sure that when Olivia lifts her hand the only thing left underneath are second-degree burns. 

“Oh. Are we not killing her? She knows who you are.”

“No need.”

Did he really just imply that they did just that to those who did know her identity? And did Olivia just confirm it?

Fuck! That’s really too gangster!!

“Ok!” The man says, all too happy despite just sending her into a depressive zombie state where he probably would have violated her Monday through to Sunday and all she could do was fall deeper into the boundless depths of nothingness. 

“Is this really her, though? I expected.. more.” And Rina knows there’s no room for her to speak up right now unless she wanted to drown again, but she just.. can’t help but risk a quick and quiet, “Fu.. fuck you.”

Olivia lets go. 

She hissed. 

Rina quickly goes to cover the wound with her other hand and was unsurprised to see it come away with no sign of blood. The lingering heat on her skin even after Olivia had peeled some off of her when she let go; must’ve sealed the wound back shut. 

With the adrenaline tapering off, Rina collapses to her knees. She feels sick in the back of her throat and before she knows it, she’s bending over to empty her guts.

It was just blood and bile. 

“You know better than to second guess me, Peter,” the woman says over the sound of her heaving. The clacking of her heels is stark even amongst the roaring flames and wailing sirens. “And she still has use.”

Blearily, from where Rina had collapsed in her own mess of vomit, she sees a pair of shoes stop right before her face. She hiccups rather disgustingly before a sharp pain from her scalp jolts her back into full awareness. 

With a hiss she draws her eyes fully open only to stare into those same blue eyes that had once comforted her; that same smile that greeted her everyday. Rina hated to admit it but this woman had become something of an emotional support for herself, who had woken up to find everything around her was out of place. 

She thinks her hate is well deserved.

Fucking Olivia.

Rina barely held herself back from spitting in her face — why she bothered to, she doesn’t quite know. The bitch—Phoenix, ha!—held her own head up by the hair that makes up her shaggy fringe; the throbbing pain in Rina’s scalp is the result of that. 

“Perhaps in your next life you could be more successful.” 

Awakening is probably what she meant. But Rina didn’t care.

Fuck you, she thinks. If she could live again there was a 100% chance she would throw away this “success” in order to enact her revenge. She barely manages to open her eyes and narrow them into a hateful glare. It doesn’t change anything. The ‘nurse's’ expression remains one of disdainful apathy and Rina suddenly gets the violent urge to rip her entire face off.

《 PERIMETERS MET. 》

Through the visage of her spite, Rina spied a flash of bright green. It couldn’t be anything but a confirmation screen…

…but for what? It didn’t have a predecessor. 

And then comes the *Announcement*.

[![ To the current Human population of Earth: Congratulations, Congratulations, Congratulations!! All good things should be repeated thrice! ]!]

[ Your joint efforts have come to fruition as you have Awakened 1,000,000,000,000 out of 4,000,000,000,000 Users! 

• As a Reward for having the highest Awakeners among all Sentient Races participating in the Conquering of The Tower; each >Active< User native to the planet Earth will be gifted §30,000! ]

As anyone could guess, “active” meant the Users—or the more commonly referred to, Hunters, that were still alive. The one billion did not account for those who were deceased but merely how many of the human population had Awakened from the Tower’s introductory gift. 

Logically, being forced into a coma wouldn’t be seen as a gift by your everyday person—however. Because said coma is what caused the alteration of a person's DNA for their own supposed betterment, many saw it as a blessing instead. 

Olivia’s grip loosens until it disappears entirely. She’s uncaring as Rina’s head slaps onto the pavement.

Gasping in pain, Rina is unsure if there’s suddenly as many people around her as she’s hearing, or if she’s suffering from concussion number 2. 

But it must be real because Phoenix talks to them like they’re actually there—and acquaintances, at that.

“Move her body, as a failed Awakener she’s a good ingredient for future…”

A surprised yell, “Phoenix, we’ve already got an offer from the King’s guild for £30,000-”

A soft scoff interrupts them. “Do they think we’re that cheap?” 

“Miss. Phoenix, do you know who Awakened just now?” 

Clack, clack, clack. “It must be a Hunter re-Awakening. This one here’s a dud.”

“.. is that even possible.”

Silence. And then-

“I’ve seen it.” 

An apprehensive hum, “Are you sure, Phoenix? Master has said that—”

“**** remained silent.”

Eventually, Rina’s headache grows too strong for her to continue eavesdropping. Well, it wasn’t like she understood what was being said anyway, given the lack of context. 

But she at least knew they were going to harvest her as an ingredient. Like fuck were they.

Move. 

Move! 

A finger twitched, and then two. But no amount of motivation or wishful thinking could completely change her circumstances. Her body lay almost fully paralyzed, currently beyond her control from internal injuries that were apparently more serious than she’d initially thought. 

Adrenaline really was one hell of a drug. 

But then. 

But then. 

Something shifts. In her, beneath her; around her. Rina feels breathless and free until—

Ding!

[ Unique Skill <Two Lifetimes> is now Activating… ]

“Shit! Quick! She’s going to..”

Amidst their panicked shouting and that odd sound of crackling static; Leorina succumbs to her injuries.

.

.

However—