tladt monogatari echo 1

Prologue - The Princess and the Prophet

"I'm sorry, Colonel. Our General Orders cannot be revised. No one is entering the Worldgate, not even you."

The speaker was a tall young man, features obscured by a dark plastisteel facemask. He was decorated in pristine white armor, built from the most impenetrable metals and fabrics, installed with deadly weapons under every plate and fold. A red orb at his chest spread its dominion over his body in thick crimson rays.

His addressee was a man of middling height, with a friendly countenance framed by antique frameless spectacles and neatly trimmed coarse black hair. This man wore a civilian's formal attire: black leather shoes, black linen slacks, and a black leather belt topped by a white collared shirt and a navy blue tie. A few stalwart creases revealed that they had once been well pressed, but they were now worn in casual disarray.

"Apologies accepted." The shorter man sighed, lowering his head slightly in disappointment.

The two men stood facing each other in the center of paved courtyard that formed the center of a military installation. Tall, multi-tiered walls, gun and missile emplacements, helicopters, MBTs, IFVs, and armed soldiers filled the stadium-sized complex as if gearing up for some deadly sport. The base lay snuggled at the foot of the tallest mountain in hundreds of miles, whose titanic snowcapped crown easily pierced the clouds.

"I'm sorry as well, Lieutenant." The civilian murmured. Head still lowered, his eyeballs suddenly turned up to transfix the soldier who faced him in a blank gaze. His friendly expression had vanished and was replaced with a pitiless mask. He raised his head heavily, deliberately.

In the next second the Lieutenant's head became a crater in the concrete, with the civilian's outstretched arm slowly rising from the pulverized mass. Within the next few seconds, the entire base opened fire on him. A flood of bullets, beams, rods, and rockets crashed into the courtyard. But the civilian was already standing dozens of meters ahead, surrounded by the smoking wreckage of a main battle tank.

Meanwhile a woman stood waiting for him at the far end of the base, leaning against one of a set of white arches built into the towering mountainside. Her hair, long and just as white, flowed lightly down, blowing like curtains in the wind every time the base quaked with an explosion. It brushed impatiently against a nearby circular doorway. Her clean, peach-like face wore a bored expression, regarding the battle with impassive periwinkle eyes.

Minutes later the base was a scene of devastation, void of any more military activity. Craters, blast marks, and twisted metal littered the environs. The sounds of weapon fire had entirely ceased.

As the civilian approached the doorway with untouched attire, the woman folded her arms and asked him, "Was that entirely necessary?"

The man shrugged. "They weren't about to leave... or surrender... or let us through. So I had to remove them. I trust you weren't harmed or inconvenienced in the process, my Princess?"

She placed two fingers on her forehead while taking a deep breath. "No. Of course not. It is surprising, however, how quickly a war hero becomes a high traitor. I suppose if I don't stop you here, I'll be an accomplice."

"Feel free to try to stop me," The man offered casually, caressing the doorway with both hands. It was a modest affair, only about 5 meters in diameter and comprised of several interlocking plates arranged in a spiral. A few seconds later his hands stopped and he turned his head to look at the Princess directly. "Though you should know that I won't be stopped."

"Hmph!" The Princess sniffed. "Unlike you, I don't face every problem with violent impulse. I am merely here to observe."

The man stood back, considering the door for a moment, then smacked it in the center with an open palm. Almost soundlessly, the plates of the door spiraled outwards until the door was fully open, revealing an indeterminably deep, dark hallway.

"Well..." The Princess uttered, giggling, "And now I have observed a Class A Crime Against Existence."

"Pretentious human laws are the least of our concerns right now, Princess." The man muttered, glaring down the tunnel. He then nodded, motioning from the Princess to the tunnel with his head. "Go on and help me with this."

"Yes, yes your Eminence." The Princess nodded back playfully, still visibly amused.

She began walking boldly down the tunnel while belting a melodious song in clear soprano. As her voice echoed down the hall, lights on the tunnel walls flickered to life. The man followed her in, letting the spiral door automatically close behind them.

"You have my thanks." The man cut in brusquely when it became clear that the facility's power was now fully active.

The Princess stopped singing and replied curtly, "And you have my warning... again... that this is a stupid idea."

"You may call it stupidity." The man shrugged. "I call it audacity."

"Curing the Timeplague with the very same engine that brought it into our world?" The Princess raised a well-exercised eyebrow. "Fine, we'll call it both."

"What of the alternatives?" The man scoffed. "No power of technology, divinity, or humanity will save us. For a hundred years less daring men have tried and failed. In the First Age, our species numbered in the billions. Now look at us! Not even a million people in all of the Sun Empire!"

The Princess wore an oddly sympathetic grimace. Her lips twitched subtly, but she remained silent.

"The World Congress today decided that they would destroy all of the Worldgates." The man muttered angrily, then yelled, "Look how much that helped Europe and the Americas! It merely accelerated their demise!"

He heaved a long sigh, slowed his walking pace, and continued calmly, "Our leaders do not understand the true nature of the Timeplague. It is inevitability incarnate. The only way to eliminate it... is to make it so it never happened."

"You said it already," The Princess interjected softly, "For a hundred years, many men have tried... exactly that."

"Many men. Many of our people. Our people! Poor, plundered, Timeplagued souls, trying to shake off their shackles by swimming upstream." He countered, gesturing grandiosely with his arms, then shaking his head.  "Preposterous... A fish cannot fly... until he is in the talons of a hawk."

As he spoke those last words, he turned around, directing his intense gaze straight into the Princess. The two now stood in front of another door, exactly like the first, except about ten times larger.

"Sounds like you've already left our world." The Princess chuckled dryly. "Alright, audacious man, we're here. You've long since piqued my curiosity, so... show me what you've got."

Chapter 1 - Welcome to the Jungle

A short, soft-faced young man sat, bored, near the heart of a great white passenger plane that was now tracing a jet stream over the North Pacific. A small book full of oddballs and wordplays occupied his delicate hands. The overhead reading light, whitewashing his wispy black hair, did little to stabilize his reading in the face of his constantly shaking seat.

"Please buckle your seatbelts and raise your seat trays and seats to an upright position," A flight attendant's voice echoed down the cramped hall of seats in the passenger plane. "We are currently experiencing some turbulence. Please do not unbuckle your seatbelts until the seatbelt light above your seat turns off."

Kaze leaned back in his window seat with a nervous grimace. This flight westward had stolen from him all sense of time and timezone, but a glance at the window told him night ruled these skies. He sighed, gulped down the last of his apple juice, then handed the empty plastic cup to another nearby flight attendant before raising his seat tray. He was flying from one life in California to a new one in Japan; he resigned himself to whatever rough winds might surround this transition.

Just as he was fastening the tray to the seat in front of him, the plane lurched violently, almost throwing Kaze into his own tray. The plane continued to shudder and jolt as Kaze regained his balance and looked around. Many fellow passengers murmured with concern. Was mere 'turbulence' usually this fierce? He clutched his seat with forced, shallow breaths.

A flash of light pierced the windows for a split second. Kaze's breathing stumbled. Lightning. This plane could handle a little lightning, right? On the seventh flash, all the lights in the cabin ceased shining. Kaze burst out into an instinctual yell, but it was barely audible. The metallic howl of four jet engines was swallowed entirely by the winds tearing at the plane with the hisses of a thousand banshees. Inside the cabin, the passengers' murmurings erupted into a full-fledged panic. Screams abounded, and whatever instructions the flight crew might've been trying to convey were lost in the uproar.

For his part, Kaze closed his eyes, covered his ears, and thought about his God and his Goddess.  Then he was weightless.

=

He regained consciousness to a brazen metallic ringing, as if a jackhammer were attacking the plane in agonizingly slow motion. Before he could even turn to where the sound was coming from, Kaze was assailed by a stench fouler than the most maggot-infested dumpster. The stench of death.

His body instantly constricted in a long, excruciating dry retch. He gasped for spastic breaths, looking around the plane's cabin. Seats were littered with rotting corpses and pools of stagnant brown water. The rest of the hall was a scene of devastation: burnt fabric, twisted metal, and more insects in the air than snowflakes in winter. Kaze heaved again, though nothing came out.

Kaze regained his self-control minutes later. During that entire time, the ringing noise continued reverberating throughout the plane. Now he could also hear what might've been grunts coming from the same direction: the plane's emergency escape door.

"Sounds like someone is trying to pound that open." Kaze murmured to himself in a weak rasp. He coughed. "Either way I can't stay here."

He looked down at his dank shoes, then at the dead passenger beside him. With a great sigh, he gritted his teeth and gingerly twisted his way over the corpse and into the hall. Just such simple movement reminded his body that it was actually aching in thousands of ways it had never experienced. Kaze released a guttural hiss at the pain and ponderously staggered towards the door.

Right next to the door, the sounds of someone striking at it from the outside were loud and clear. He also heard what sounded like a man and a woman bickering at each other. Kaze released a cynical sigh. Unless they had some sort of battering ram, he doubted they'd open the door by whacking at it.

"Hey!" Kaze yelled with as much power as he could muster.

The pounding stopped, and so did the voices. Too tired to yell more, Kaze grasped the door handle from the inside, twisted it, and heaved the door open. As it creaked wide, a combination of fatigue, slanted plane, and wet footing caused Kaze to slip backwards into a seat, instantly knocking him breathless. Someone outside pushed the door all the way open.

"Whoa, you OK?" The visage of a young man appeared in the doorway. He was relatively tall, well-muscled, crowned by short black hair that grew untamed like an angry porcupine. With sunlight at his back his fine features were obscured. He immediately rushed over to Kaze and helped him to his feet.

"Thanks..." Kaze coughed weakly, still stunned.

"No problem. Let's get you out of here." The man picked Kaze up in his arms with ease and walked out the emergency escape.

"Wait, I can-"

The outdoor sunlight was momentarily blinding. As his eyes cautiously opened again, he was met with a familiar face.

"Kaze?! Kaze is that you?"

Kaze remained silent with mouth agape. A comely young woman with a mane of windswept black hair was looking down at him with surprise and concern. He recognized this person: Popo. Kaze had attended an anime convention with her and her boyfriend ZNF. That same ZNF was now carrying Kaze in his arms and wearing a slightly more gaunt, chiseled face than from the last time they met.

Kaze eked out a nod of confirmation, "Yeah..."

"Oh my-" Popo gasped, clasping her mouth with a hand. "Kaze, you..." She reared back the other hand, swung in for a punch, then stopped. Her hand opened and gently rested on Kaze's shoulder.

"ZNF. Let's get him to shelter." Popo glanced at the clear sky and took a deep breath through her nose. "A storm's coming."

ZNF regarded the plane with a dejected sigh, then nodded. "Don't worry, Kaze. We'll get you to safety."

With no further words, ZNF started moving with swift, sure strides. Kaze took this time to look around as much as his aching neck would allow. The sky was a dull blue, mottled with wispy, goosebump cirrus clouds. They were surrounded by rocky cliffs, strange vegetation, and an expanse of grey-gold sand that formed the beach. The plane Kaze had just escaped was itself beached like a great steel whale on that very expanse. ZNF strode parallel to the ocean, wearing creased brows and faint traces of a smile.

"ZNF you forgot the crowbar again!" Popo called out from behind them. She was ambling up with the heavy iron implement in one hand.

ZNF stopped, sighed, and shrugged. "I kind of have my hands full here, Popo."

"Let me just walk by myself, ZNF." Kaze offered.

"No." ZNF shook his head, then resumed his rapid walk. "Don't push yourself. You're lucky even to have survived that plane crash."

Popo jogged up to catch up with them and gave Kaze a cheeky grin.

"Wait... where are we? My plane was supposed to be headed for Japan, before it... Why are you guys here?"

Their smiles disappeared as ZNF and Popo looked traded glances.

"The answer to both questions is 'We don't know.'" ZNF sighed. "Sorry Kaze, but this isn't Japan. As far as we know, this is just some mystery island in the middle of God knows where."

"Haa..." Kaze sighs.

"We were on the road... at night." Popo recounted. "We were coming back from shopping for robots with Kupon when like... some kind of freak thunderstorm came."

They were now walking slowly. ZNF walked in silence, staring ahead, while Popo walked beside him, gazing whimsically at the coastline.

"Before we knew it our car was... in the middle of a forest." She continued, "It ran into a tree pretty quickly. That was about three months ago."

"Kupon was with you? Is he here?"

"He left." Popo answered simply.

"He fashioned a boat and sailed north." ZNF elaborated. "I think he believed he could find land, maybe even civilization. That was about a week ago. We haven't heard from him since."

Kaze frowned. Something weird was definitely going on. If his bodily sensations of injury and nausea and starvation weren't so acute, he would've labeled this a dream long ago.

"Is there anyone else on this... island?" He asked.

ZNF shook his head slowly. "Not that we've found. But this island is actually pretty big... I doubt we've even scouted half the place, let alone all of it. Heck, we've only recently confirmed that it is in fact an island."

Kaze considered this in silence, then blinked rapidly as if reminded of something. "Thank you, ZNF. Thank you, Popo. Thanks... I dunno what I'd be doing now without you."

"Well..." ZNF smiled. "You're not out of the woods yet."

Kaze glanced at the thick overgrowths of odd plants nearby and gave a dry chuckle. They continued walking down the beach in silence. On multiple occasions Kaze tried to get up and walk on his own, but his battered body could barely even muster the energy to look around. Knowing he would only slow them down were he to walk, Kaze contented himself with taking in the scenery. Thin films of cloud began infiltrating the sky, heralding the coming shadows of cumulonimbi on the horizon. The foamy tides stirred with the waiting furies of water about to boil.

Suddenly they turned away from the beach and began trekking deeper into the island proper. After traversing a steep, rocky run the party was immediately plunged in a maze of viridian. Stringy trees, vines, tangled brushes, mosses, and lichens abounded, and every step they took produced gentle squishes of boot on detritus. Whatever sounds the three humans made, however, were swallowed heartily by the chittering of monkeys, the chirping of birds, and the rustling of plants against the vanguard winds of the storm. Every once in a while ZNF had to rest and leave Kaze sitting on a stone. As buff as he had become, carrying a grown man up rocky, forested terrain was not a feat easily continued for hours. Meanwhile Popo was leading the way, dragging the crowbar along the trail and double checking the marks they made previously on the thickest trees and sturdiest stones. Suddenly her voice came calling to them from a few meters ahead.

"Looks like dinner is served, guys!" She proclaimed happily, fiddling with a noose that had firmly snuffed the life from a fat, colorful pheasant. With almost expert movements, Popo removed the fowl from where it was dangling from a nearby branch, then carefully reset the spring snare.

"Good job." ZNF grunted with simple appreciation. By now even he was beginning to show signs of fatigue.

"Are we walking an animal trail?" Kaze asked, curious. "What animals are here, anyways?"

"Many of them." Popo shrugged, her concentration returning to her navigation, though now with a pheasant dangling from one hand. "I wouldn't be surprised if we saw elephants or dinosaurs."

"She's joking... probably." ZNF said. "We've seen all sorts of stuff: deer, monkeys, raccoons... rodents, fowl... a bear... And sometimes at night we hear what sound like the howls of wolves. Sometimes it gets difficult to sleep..."

"Is it... unbearable?" Kaze asked innocently.

ZNF tilted his head down in a berating glance and admitted the shadow of a snort before returning his attention to the trail.

"Anyways, this trail used to be man-made most likely." ZNF explained, "You might not see it from there, but there are shards of some unnaturally flat concrete or paving in the trail. It's mostly been shattered and swallowed by nature and time, though."

"So humans used to be on this island..." Kaze muttered, brows furrowed.

"Probably." ZNF nodded.

"Unless the monkeys here developed masonry." Popo quipped.

After indeterminable minutes they finally stopped in front of a thoroughly overgrown stone building. The stone walls were riven in a number of places, and in one corner was compromised by what seemed like a small, charred blast hole. Vines and other plant matter had conquered all these breaches, for better or worse. Another side of the building, facing elevation, had been consumed by a landslide. It was altogether not the most promising sight. The structure was one story tall, with two entrances. Behind the endemic creepers near the entrances Kaze spied the familiar icons of a man and a woman.

"ZNF... was this a bathroom?" He asked frankly.

"Yep." ZNF smiled.

"Is that a problem, Kaze?" Popo asked. "We still need to peepee and poopoo after all."

"Except the plumbing doesn't work so we try to do it outside." ZNF smirked.

"Let's just get inside." Kaze sighed.

They made their way to the door to the men's room and were interrupted by a blinding flash of light. An explosion resounded like a thunderclap from the hands of Thor himself, and then all was silence, a silence so profound that Kaze feared his hearing was gone. He began to lose focus, drowning in the purest white and the deathliest silence, when it suddenly all faded. When his vision and hearing returned, he saw Popo hunched over, covering her ears. ZNF was gazing out into the distance wearing a grim expression.

"Aaagh..." Popo groaned. "What was that!? Wait... it must've been-"

"-some kind of warp. Like ours. Or Kaze's. It came from that direction." ZNF nodded to where he was looking, away from the bathrooms and deeper into the forest.

"ZNF... You don't mean to go find it, do you?" Popo asked, straightening up.

ZNF grimaced for a few seconds then shook his head. "Nah. We need to rest, for now."

Popo nodded and opened the door for them. The interior was mix of jarringly primitive and reassuringly furnished. This half of the building only had a few vertical gashes open on a side wall, stuffed thick with vines. The far end was stuffed solid with crushed earth and rocks from a landslide, as well as a number of fresh animal bones. Motley animal skins littered the floor, covering tile and moss. Bloody frayed edges clearly revealed that many had been dressed by a novice hand. Most of the stalls' metal components were rusted beyond repair, but a few managed to remain standing, and one of the doors even remained attached. The center of the room was dominated by a half-scorched pile of firewood, ringing the floor black. Surrounding it was a crude wooden spit, depressingly void of an animal to roast. A similarly sparse ring of stones circled the wood. ZNF put Kaze down on a bed of animal skins near the fire ring.

"You guys are pretty well set up." Kaze commented.

ZNF shrugged. "Gotta live somehow. Can you eat?"

Kaze's body was instantly reminded of the swarms of insects that had been eating the other passengers on the plane. An odd noise roiled up his throat. Popo giggled and pinched him in the belly.

"It's been two days since we heard your plane crash on the island." ZNF explained. "At least drink something."

He hefted a large calabash from the corner, popped off the makeshift cap by the stem, and offered it to Kaze.

"Here: water."

Kaze took a sip and before he knew it the entire contents of the gourd had vanished.

"Pah..." He breathed, eyes wide with a newfound energy. "Wow... water never tasted so good."

"Alright," Popo grinned. "Now that you're really with us, let's get some calories into that little body of yours."

Punctuating her proposal with a punch on Kaze's shoulder, Popo promptly skewered the pheasant on the spit, then crossed her arms, regarding ZNF expectantly. ZNF sighed, ambling over to one of the far stalls and coming out with a broken mass of rusted pipe and an angular rock. After a number of fierce strikes of rock on metal, ZNF delivered a bright spark to the fire pit, igniting a tiny portion of the wooden fuel.

The fire crescively expanded its dominion like the colors of sunrise on a dawn sky. It rose, crackled, and lapped at their savory prize. Hours later, under the soft blessings of rain pittering and trickling above them, the three were hard at work consuming their bounty.

"You guys..." Kaze muttered. "You're so reliable now."

Tears began to gather at his eyes. He had just been on a roller coaster of distress and relief. The grim gravity of the situation was only now beginning to catch up with him. He knew that things could only get tougher from here on. But at least at that moment, he felt that everything would be OK.