The NV Visor powers off.

As Tamana has done so many times before, she takes a deep breath and returns to her reality, away from the fantasy dreamworld that is Tritania. Even though her dorm is quiet, she can still hear the techno-mechanical bustle of the Tokyo streets below. There’s an indention on her brow, something she occasionally experiences when she wears a visor for too long. She places the NV Visor on her pillow and takes off her haptic gloves.

Tamana sighs as she looks at a Flight Feet poster tacked to her wall. Set in Tritania, the same world she frequently dives to, the anime series reenacts famous quests and looting adventures. She’s followed the show for years, and two summers ago, she went to the annual Flight Feet convention at Tokyo Big Sight as Empress Thun.

“Just for a few hours,” she reminds herself. Besides, Ryuk is busy, so there’s really no reason to log in.

The floor beneath her gently vibrates.

Typical for earthquake-prone Japan, Tamana hardly notices the subtle tremor. She opens her eyes and her iNet screen appears directly on her retinae. She smiles as she rereads the last message she received from Ryuk. He still doesn’t like the fact that she’d decided to start over in Tritania with brand new avatars, but he went along with it and she appreciates that about him. She appreciates a lot about him, actually.

She’s just about to respond when something outside strikes the wall and bulges it inward. The air conditioner jumps loose and hits the floor, its cord still plugged in. Tamana leaps to her feet and moves for the door; moves as far away as she can get from whatever is bulging the wall.

The wall flexes and ripples; a crack forms and grows from floor to ceiling. Bits and pieces of concrete and plasterboard tumble to the floor in a cloud of dust. As the crack widens, a terrible yellow eye peers in at her; a tremendous carnivore’s claw tears at the hole and widens it.

Tamana shrieks her surprise and terror, bolts from the room and slams the door behind her. She stops, looks back, listens intently for a moment as her breath comes hard and fast.

She rubs her eyes. Whatever she just saw can’t be real.

As if to belay that thought, the creature explodes through the wall and collapses into the hallway. It rises to its haunches; snarls, roars, and inflates the sacs around its neck into a monstrous veiny ruff. The monstrosity bellows again, curls its tongue and gnashes the ivory scimitars that are its teeth.

It can’t be real.

No one else sees it or hears it; there’s no noise, no commotion, no panicked exodus.

And then the creature’s stats appear:

Gunsyakhai Level ??

HP: 3400/3400 Def: 551

ATK: 294 MDF: 471

MATK: 0 LUCK: 12

“Stats? A gunsyakhai?” she whispers, just as her reptilian brain votes overwhelmingly for FLIGHT and propels her to the main entrance of her dormitory.

“Run!” she shrieks over her shoulder to a girl exiting her room. “It’s coming!”

“What?”

“RUN!”

She doesn’t wait for her response; she doesn’t wait to hear the impossible gunsyakhai tear her to shreds and snap her bones as it wolfs the girl down.

Seven stories worth of stairs make Tamana’s legs rubbery and weak, but she ignores it. Escape is everything; she pushes herself to gain as much distance from the monster as possible. Only when she has burst out to the busy streets of Shibuya does she stop to take a breath.

A bicyclist whips past her and nearly sends her to the ground. A construction worker in baggy jodhpurs, a hachimaki headscarf, and a hard hat carries his lunch pail to his jobsite. A teen dressed as a maid clicks and clacks her heels against the pavement as she heads to the subway station, bound for Akihabara. A cacophony of bells and whistles chases a cloud of cigarette smoke through the open door of a pachinko parlor.

Tamana sucks in great volumes of tainted air, and with hands on her knees she turns her head and looks up at her dormitory building.

She rubs her temples for a moment and forcibly exhales.

Seven stories above her, the glass siding explodes outward as the gunsyakhai plummets from the building. Its tiny wings flap hummingbird fast to no avail. The creature’s shadow looms over her; she dodges as shards of glass rain down around her.

This can’t be happening!

She’s already in motion as a shockwave knocks her forward. She refuses to look over her shoulder, refuses to let the creature catch her.

“Ryuk,” she says the name of her best friend again, “Ryuk!”

An instant message box appears on her iNet screen.

Tamana: Help me! Near you! Going to Shinsen Station!

He replies instantly.

Ryuk: What’s happening!?

Tamana: Please, it’s coming!

A person in a Kumamon outfit stands outside an electronics store touting a sale. Tamana blazes past and shouts “Run!” over her shoulder.

Too late.

The costumed huckster’s cry of alarm cuts off as the gunsyakhai stomps him flat.

Fear makes her swift, so focused she is on escape. Tamana races for the station, her only hope of sanctuary and salvation. She smacks her knee into an outdoor stand in front of a kissaten. Tears stream back across her face as she catches another message from Ryuk.

Ryuk: What’s coming?

Tamana: Please. Please. Be there in five minutes. PLEASE!

Ryuk: What is going on? Are you okay?

The entrance to the Shinsen Station is only a few blocks away. Even though her leg muscles are on fire, even though her heart is about to explode, Tamana continues her delirious sprint to the station. She weaves through pedestrians, illegally crosses streets, is almost sideswiped by a lowering aeros taxi, and spins and leaps over a woman pushing a baby stroller. The dragon-like creature relentlessly pursues her, roaring and bellowing and slaughtering all who stand in its way.

Another glance over her shoulder and she knows without doubt that her efforts won’t be enough, that there will be no happy ending to this story, that the creature will catch her and kill her.

Unless she kills it first.

“Come on, come on, come on,” she huffs.

Tamana skids to a halt at one of the entrances to the Shinsen Station. She hears the terrible monstrosity roar as she begins her descent.

Breakneck speed. Her feet are pistons on pavement, her shoulders shovelers of bodies, her gaze aimed and angled downward. The gunsyakhai smashes its bulk through a pillar and a portion of the subway entrance collapses around it. The monster cries out in anger; blood-tinged saliva hurtles from its gaping maw.

Tamana hits the bottom of the first stairwell and slaps hers cheek. She rubs her eyes again to wipe away the image that just won’t leave. Is it a glitch? How is this even possible? Something has gone horribly wrong, and other than gouging out her eyeballs to fully disconnect her iNet feed, she has no idea how to make the creature stop.

“Come on …”

A Tritanian gunsyakhai shouldn’t be chasing her, not in Tokyo, not in the real world!

The rational part of her mind knows this; the rational part of her mind knows that she logged out of Tritania and took off her NV Visor; the rational part of her mind even suggests that Tamana let the creature catch her; this is the real world – it can’t do anything here, it shouldn’t even exist her.

But the monster rips through a manga stand and the salesperson inside. Blood splatters the walls, bits of flesh actually land on her arm. She hears the creature tear into the subway station tearing the ceiling down; hears the death cries of those smashed beneath the rubble.

She stops just before the final stairwell and briefly turns to the gunsyakhai. It cracks its hulking tail into an electronic billboard advertising Suntory Whiskey. Tamana picks up the pace – she thinks she sees Ryuk – but the station is too crowded to tell for sure.

Down another flight of stairs, Tamana collides with a pair of overworked salarymen in their crisply pressed suits. No time to bow, no time to apologize. She hits the bottom and bolts straight to the edge of the platform, where she stops, hesitates, thinks otherwise for a single, prolonged second.

Tamana’s leap induces gasps from those nearby.

Her landing, the sound of the train horn, the sickening crack.

Tamana is struck by the incoming train.

Tamana is struck by the incoming train.

The salarymen lift their heads, a woman drops her umbrella, a child reaches for its mother’s open arms, a white-gloved conductor runs towards her at sixty frames per second.

“Tamana! No!” Ryuk ends his desperate chase and slides to a halt.

Face in hand and out of breath, he utters a sharp curse and slaps the flat of his hand against the floor. Instantly embarrassed by his loss of control, he tucks his stinging hand into his pocket.

The crowd comes to life all around Ryuk.

Alarms sound, bystanders jostle for position, snap their photos and instantly post them on iNet. A pair of conductors produce kawaii cute panda-shaped plastic barriers and urge the crowd back from the platform. Medics in light blue uniforms appear. An older man tsks at the fact that another Japanese youth has just committed suicide.

Ryuk swallows hard.

He reviews the messages he had just received from Tamana. He reads them again and again, looking for a reason for her actions, hoping to discover why she killed herself.

Tamana: Help me! Near you! Going to Shinsen Station.

Ryuk: What’s happening?

Tamana: Please! It’s coming!

Ryuk: What’s coming?

Tamana: Please. Please. Be there in five minutes. PLEASE!

Ryuk: What is going on? Are you okay?

Ryuk: I’m here. Where are you? Are you okay?