There’s a man in a laboratory. Since I can’t read what’s written here and I don’t want to try, let’s just call him Fred.

Just like every other man in a laboratory, Fred wore a lab coat. All his co-workers wore a lab coat. It protects your regular clothes from nasty chemical stains - if only slightly in most cases with nasty chemicals, although no one in that lab was clumsy enough to drop nasty chemicals anywhere - and it shows professionalism. Fred liked to put his hands inside the pockets of his lab coat and gaze at himself at the bathroom mirror, looking serious. He found himself to be quite the badass when he did that.

But Fred only did that when he wasn’t overly busy. First and foremost, Fred was a scientist, and he was one of many working on a real and incredibly long project - a project over ten thousand years old, to be precise.

A team of archaeologists had found a mouldy rock and a buried, worn-out box. By itself this is nothing extraordinary, of course. Inside the box they found a decaying yellow dress, identified as being handmade in some year somewhere in southern Torr. Since we have absolutely no clue what this means – it’s in the world of Hidanna, after all – let’s just say it was made during the years following the Last Wars* somewhere in France, and you’ll get the picture. Unless you don’t belong in either world, of course, which I find rather unlikely.

Inside the mouldy rock they found a Neal-Hidanna – a sub-species of their kind that was consisted, as far they knew, by three individuals.

“You should have figured out the difference between Human and Hidanna – we’ve had hidan in our world for the last 3 years, after all.”

“Hidanna have particules too, right?”

“Precisely.”

However, since they didn’t need to use them thanks to their intelligence, their particules ended up being engulfed by evolution, and they stopped being able to fuse with medan the same way hidan do.

The Neal-Hidanna were the three surviving individuals who stayed inside medan and evolved the same way hidan inside the rocks did. As such, as soon as they were first discovered, innumerable rumours sprouted around them. People believed they were capable of manipulating the elements in which they had grown, while having superior intelligence to the Neo-Hidanna – the dominant sub-species. Because they had no way of knowing whether those claims were true or not, scientists had so far shunned them. And even if they found a way and it turned out to be true, they’d deny it just the same. It’s a question of pride.

One of the recorded Neal-Hidanna was always easy to find, but it had made it impossible to lock down somewhere and study thoroughly. It preferred places with reactors and power sources, and as soon as it felt it was far away from such places it would disappear, only to reappear a few days later near another power source. Once it disintegrated the laboratory that tried to have a go with it, leaving not even a scorching lab coat behind, scientists all over the world agreed that they had angered the creature and decided to study it from a distance. Of several kilometres whenever it was possible.

The other two Neal-Hidanna were peaceful beings. One of them, however, was inexplicably in the hands of a man not so peaceful and could not be studied until such person was too old to protest, or on a country where propriety laws weren’t so liberal. The last one had stayed inside its rock, and let the scientists watch it and take notes and poke it and take more notes and it had not vanished nor attacked anyone. That made some people slightly annoyed but, overall, it made everyone involved with its study very pleased.

Now that we know the story behind the Neal-Hidanna, let’s go back to Fred. He was reviewing notes in the main laboratory where the rock with the Neal-Hidanna, test subject N-O-V-4, was housed, getting ready to begin a new experiment with his co-workers. They would stimulate the being with growing electro-magnetic pulses and measure its response. If they were lucky – incredibly lucky – the stimuli would be enough to bring it outside its rock.

Everything was being set up, and Fred took a final look at the different inputs they would try and calibrated the machine accordingly. A casual glance at the side of his stack of scribbled paper revealed moss, rapidly growing on the polished white counter.

Every other person in the room had already realized this. None of them stopped to stare and wonder at the plants suddenly blooming over walls, ceilings and machines – there were procedures to be taken in cases like those, and with the incident of the other Neal-Hidanna suddenly well vivid in the minds of everyone in the room, one the scientists dropped what he was doing, ran to a switch next to the exit of the laboratory and flipped it on.

Alarms buzzed all over the laboratory, and the staff existed like the emergency plan ordered them to. Making a soft chewing sound, moss continued to spread over everything that could be considered a solid surface, herding the people outside the premises. Those already there could only watch as the once pristine building was enveloped in a green mantle, and completely sealed off from the rest of the world.

Someone rushed to take a sample, and Fred sighed as he watched his fellow companions, very sad and very frustrated for having lost yet another incredible piece of Nature’s labour because of some ancient, bored and temperamental being.

Of course, Fred could not be more wrong about the Neal-Hidanna he had been studying. Let us call her Neal for now - her name doesn’t pop up for another while.

“Don’t you already know her name?”

“Uh, yes, I do.”

“Then why don’t you just say it?”

“… It doesn’t go into the- ah, screw it.”

Her name's Seli.

Seli was delighted to be studied by the Neo-Hidanna – their perfectly smooth skin, and their lab coats, and the gadgets and the tickles that they made on her rock and on herself were nothing but thrilling to someone who had been in isolation for so long. The only reason why she hadn’t come out of her rock to greet them and help them understand her better was because it was just so comfy inside.

However, for the first time in hundreds of years, something was forcing her out.

First, the influence of their superiors was gone.

Secondly the presence of the Kings disappeared.

And then something else happened, far more serious than the first two, and she had to take action.

Growing moss over the machinery and walls of the laboratory, so everyone would be forced to run, was so that no one would be able to witness her leaving her rock. She didn’t want to be seen naked.

Guiding the moss as if it was a part of herself, Seli had it eat a portion of the reinforced glass of the container where her rock was being kept for the test they wanted to make. It was stored inside a much smaller case and locked in a heavy steel cabinet whenever it was not in use, but as Seli well knew, she could have broken free from anywhere they put her. You see, people heavily underestimate Nature because it takes time, and often it takes a lot of time, for its actions to take effect.

Seli removes time from the equation entirely.

A fine thread of dust was woven from the rock and joined together to form the shape of a young woman. But this may give you the wrong impression of what she looked like. If someone who is hard to impress looked at her, he or she would say something like “well, that’s a woman with her skin covered in moss and with long hair that looks like hay.”

Standing after so long made Seli’s legs slump for a moment, but she readily steadied as she remembered how balancing properly was supposed to be done. Secure on her own two feet, slightly hurting in discontent, Seli looked about the room and found a new fascination over everything the Neo-Hidanna had constructed. She had had a general idea of the room where she was kept most of the time, but seeing it, completely covered by moss, with her own two eyes, was incredible regardless. A few glass tubes were enough for a simple house to be considered a laboratory the last time she had been forced outside her rock.

She did not waste much time wondering, however. Moss ate through the heavy doors of the laboratory and she crossed through. Looking from left to right, she tried remembering where they had put her dress, and she walked two rooms to her left and ate both the door closing it, and the door of the closet where they were keeping it.

She couldn’t help but feel very sad when she saw it. Ten years she had stayed in that place, letting the scientists see and study, and she had been a good girl and hadn’t gotten mad and sent a whole laboratory to the North Pole, and they hadn’t even bothered to wash her dress. It was true she hadn’t put it away in the best of conditions, but they could have at least tried to polish it up a little. It had been so pretty when she had found it, abandoned by a rich family so many years ago, and now it was covered in dirt, something brown that Seli was sure to be fungi, and torn around the edges, but it was already like that when she had first found it so it wasn’t their fault.

Shrugging, she put it on just the same. A dress is still a dress, and she didn’t have the time to wash it up herself. She had to meet her sister, and she had to do so as soon as possible.

The third and final reason why Seli had to come outside would not forgive wasted time. A Guardian was there, somewhere, and it should not be.

***

Back in picturesque mountain town of Sintra, in our world, of course, three children under the age of fourteen were blasted away by one of the fastest and most skilful fights they had ever seen on a screen. Jack and the two men collapsed on each other, with no prompts ever to show what she should do with the controller on her hands, so Sofia started wailing away as best as she thought she could, finding herself astonished at what Jack was doing with her random commands.

The two men were obviously well practiced with their claws, but Jack was fast, using his shorter size to nimbly move between their strikes and hitting them back with the long handle of his weapon. After pushing them back, Jack clicked his tongue and Moonlight joined the fray, jumping on the man with the leather jacket’s neck. Before the other one could react, Jack grabbed hold of one of his claws with his gloved hand, and with a loud crackling noise it shattered in several pieces, losing all of its colour and features and dropping to the ground. Without a second to spare he turned towards the man struggling to take Moonlight’s fangs away from his blood stream, grabbed his claws in the middle of a violent movement towards the cat and shattered them as well. At his command, Moonlight let go of her pray and took her position next to her master, as the camera got uninterested in the fleeing pair of fighters and showed instead two mounds of dust rising from the remains of their weapons and taking two very distinct shapes – a grey-blue horse and a two-legged tall reptilian.

Once they fully materialized, David concluded they were the scariest pair of creatures he had ever set eyes on, not because of their aspect, but because of their posture, glaring at Jack with blind hatred, bristling brown fur, lowering its head and ears, ready for a head charge, or scraping the floor beneath with dark talons and snarling slowly, showing each of its ivory, sharp and very numerous teeth.

However, their attitude did not seem to affect Jack at all. He glanced at both and twisted his lips.

“Interesting…”

Then he made a sudden movement with his free arm, prompting the creatures to charge right at him, with a roar and a nigh that made Sofia and Ricardo’s blood shiver and Moonlight hiss back at them. Unabashed, Jack grabbed hold of the scythe with both hands and with two slashes the creatures vanished in dust and were sucked inside it.

With no more quick events in the few seconds to come, Ricardo was finally able to turn to his sister and excitedly ask what he had been intending to for a while:

“Como é que fizeste isso?”

“Eu não fiz nada, já nem estava a usar o comando,” admitted Sofia with a shrug. Ricardo turned to the television once more, feeling disappointed that companies were still unable to program well enough to allow the players to do those amazing things.

The screen turned static once more.

It lasted for a moment before the image changed again, this time to a first-person perspective, starting from the back of the olive-green pick-up truck. And while the cutscenes up until that point had had fine graphical quality, the game suddenly seemed to have turned into a movie instead.

“I think there’s something wrong with the disk,” Sofia ended up saying as the person functioning as the camera observed the clothes it was wearing. There had been too much static, and it was too erratic to be part of the game’s style. She turned to her brother. “Pedimos ao pai outro jogo?”

“Não, acho que ele não nos vai dar…”

“Mas se enviarmos este de volta e dissermos que estava estragado eles mandam um de borla.”

“Então, ya, temos de fazer isso!”

“Wait.”

David had been the only one who hadn’t taken his eyes off the screen since Jack won the fight, watching everything the observer was looking at. A small crowd had piled on by the pick-up, scattering away once he said something the kids couldn’t quite understand. David needed only one more proof to be sure his theory was correct, and it was about to show up.

Both the observer and the boy started a conversation, and it became evident that the television was showing the point of view of a teenage girl. The most striking thing, however, was the effect her voice had on Sofia and Ricardo, who stared at the television in awe as she talked a bit reluctantly with the boy.

“Is that Yana’s voice?” asked David.

“Yeah, she sounds just like her,” answered Sofia.

“And she’s asking about Planet Earth and everything!” said Ricardo.

“She’s in the game!”

“She has to be!”

The observer arrived at the same conclusion as they did, thinking aloud that she was in the game, the main character agreed to help her get back home, and she told him her name was Yana Natviski.

Although it sounded, seemed and overall was impossible in any way he looked at it, Sofia’s NightStar was infected with a program no one was exactly sure what it did, and it had projected Yana into that particular video game.

David was just discovering the world of electronics, even if his passion had always been books, and he enjoyed the Internet immensely. The most recent event shaking that world had been that strange program, a Trojan set up on thousands of factory systems around the world that was releasing something no programmer in the world had been able to decode. That information revealed two things about whomever was responsible for it – they knew how to reach as many people as possible, as the afflicted chips were being used for most electronic devices circulating in the world at the time; and they were quite possibly much further away from current programming than a lot of proud experts would like to admit.

“Wait, you said this story was made up, but I remember this. Do you know something about that virus we don’t, Dandelion?

I knew this would get me in trouble.

“Yes, the story is made up. I might have used some real events to bring it closer to us and make it more relatable, but it’s nothing to be alarmed. I’m sure they managed to discover what that virus that showed up at that time was all about, I haven’t even heard of anything else like it since.”

“Yes, it’s true, nothing else was ever mentioned about it.”

“All right, carry on, then.”

That was a close call. Of course they couldn’t find out what it was, not when its effects were so precise, they just replaced the machines and pretended everything was fine. The only reason why they didn’t just do it all over again was because it served its purpose and identified Yana…

A girl’s mind was transported inside the world of a video game by a program that no one can decode, was the thought that repeated itself over and over on David’s head, trying to convince himself that he was not dreaming, he was not in a science fiction movie, everything was actually happening and he had to do something about it.

The television didn’t wait for him to make a decision before unfolding the next set of events.

“Before we go, Yana,” asked Jack as the decorations on his scythe turned blurry, morphing into something a bit different than the white weapon he was holding before. “What do you see?”

When the scythe became clear, everyone in the living room and the girl in the television saw it had turned brown, with a bronze-coloured blade and an ominous shadow, granting a strong, forlorn presence. Yana abruptly turned away from the weapon, forcing herself to look at a giant red lizard dozing off at the entrance of a utilities store.

“Put it away.”

“You see something,” said Jack’s voice.

“That lizard looks like a cat,” Sofia noted, trying to forget about the shadow that she could no longer see.

“Shush,” David, one the other hand, wanted to know more about it.

“And I don’t want to see it again,” Yana said.

“Can you describe it?”

“Didn’t you hear what I just said? I don’t want to.”

“But this is information that could determine your future here. You’re an alien and all, so maybe it’s a manifestation of our differences.”

After taking a peek to make sure the scythe had turned back into the white uncorrupted one Jack had wielded before, Yana faced him. “You can’t see it?”

“No. I don’t think anyone else can see it, either.”

“It’s like a shadow all around your scythe, that feels like it could swallow it at any time, then go further and swallow everything, and it’s just really scary, okay?” she answered after taking a deep breath and looking around to check if no one else could listen to the stupid sounding things she was saying.

“Hmm,” to confirm some undisclosed theory, Jack brought the blade of scythe to the back of his hand while changing it to the spooky scary one. Yana immediately looked away to the lizard, and David sighed and waited to see what theory was valuable enough for him to injure himself.

“Well, you can see bugged weapons,” Jack confirmed. As she looked back up, Yana saw only the white scythe, and a newly gained scratch on the back of its owner’s hand.

“Bugged weapons? What do you mean? And what’s so special about them? Other than the fact that no one else can see them, that is.”

“You don’t know how hidan weapons work, do you?”

“I don’t even know what a hidan weapon is.”

“Oh. I’ll tell you on the way, then. We’ll be late if we don’t hurry,” Jack said, turning towards the plaza and beckoning his giant spotted cat to interrupt her cleaning and follow him with a whistle.

“Late to what?” she asked catching up to him.

“You’ll see,” then he brought the blade to his hand, and that time it was easier for Yana to watch as it skimmed the surface of Jack’s skin. However, unlike the other one, it left no scratch behind. “A normal hidan weapon is supposed to work like this,” he said, answering not only Yana’s astonishment, but also the ones watching from the television. “They used to make wounds before, but now they all have a system that forces them to interact with these very small things all hidanna have inside their bodies. To put it simply, if you cut, hit, or shoot someone with a hidan weapon, it’ll hurt, but it won’t leave a wound.”

“And there are no weapons without that system?”

“Not that I know of. Bugged weapons have Bugs inside of them, that override that system, so it makes wounds and it’s easier to kill someone if you want to.”

“What do you mean, easier? You can kill people with a normal weapon too?”

“Sure, you just have to do this.”

And in a flash his blade was leaning on Yana’s neck and she was screaming for dear life. Looking genuinely intrigued, Jack could do little more than tilt his head to the side. “Relax, I’m a pro with this-“

“Get that thing away from me right now!”

“Alright, alright, just stop shouting,” he said granting her wish and rubbing one of his ears. The siblings looked a bit puzzled to each other, commenting that while was Yana was certainly hysterical, she wasn’t exactly loud. They were far worse on their most fierce fighting sprees.

“I’ve just met you, and all I have is your word that you are so incredibly pro with that,” said Yana once she calmed down enough to not punch Jack’s surprised mush. “What other reaction could you possibly want from me when you swing your weapon at my head while saying that it’s the only way to kill someone with it?”

“Okay, I’m sorry,” Jack said resuming his march. Yana had little choice but to swallow the botched apology and keep following him. “You’ll be able to see me fighting in a while.”

“Just one more question,” she said once they emerged on the other side of the plaza of bets and fighters. “Why do you call them “hidan weapons”? They aren’t exactly hidden…”

“It’s because they have hidan inside of them. It makes them more durable and stronger, and if someone is good enough, they can tap into the hidan’s power and use it while they fight.”

“What’s a hidan, then?”

So far, that was the only question that made Jack ponder about the answer, as if it was something of such ubiquity it was hard to give it an explanation. “How should I put it…? Everything that lives and moves is a hidan.”

Everything that lives and moves? Oh, they’re animals, then. The animals of this planet…

“So, Moonlight’s a hidan, then,” she asked pointing down with her head to the cat, faithfully at his side, with no regard whatsoever to her reference. “And you’re a hidan, too.”

“In a way,” Jack answered after hesitating for a moment. “Speaking of which…”

After whistling down to Moolight and making sure she was aware of him, Jack impaled her with his blade without batting an eye. But it was because he knew it wouldn’t make the gory mess you all expected to, it just caused her to dissipate into golden dust and get sucked up inside the scythe, causing it to turn black with yellow engravings and a crescent moon shaped blade.

“You kill your hidan to put them in the weapons?” asked Yana, feeling a little horrified with the thought.

“They don’t die, they fuse with medan. The metal the weapons are made of. They can come back out and regain their original form whenever they like, or if the weapon’s owner releases them.”

“Do you have a weapon I can try?”

“Yeah, hang on a sec…” Jack reached into his rucksack and handed her a white sphere. “It’s my spare, so it’s empty. They all look like that when they’re locked, and when they’re unlocked they change shape based on the person holding them and the hidan inside of it.”

“Okay. How do I unlock it?”

“Say “form change””.

Fighting back her inherent embarrassment for having to say such a silly line, Yana repeated the command to find the sphere stretching in her hand to become a white flute. Before she could ask why she had ended up with an instrument, Jack was chuckling.

“Your weapon’s so lame…”

Withholding a sliver of rage, Yana shoved the flute back into his hands and marched along the wide street they had ended up on. “That’s ‘cause I don’t need it. I’m a karate blue belt. I’m very good with martial arts,” she added seeing the quizzical look in Jack’s amber eyes as he caught up to her.

“Oh,” he sounded extremely amused at the information, as if all her present skill and all the future skills Yana would acquire would be for naught unless she had her flute to bonk someone on the head with.

“Where are we going, anyway?” she asked, feeling tired of being left in the dark for so long.

“Right there,” answered Jack pointing with his head towards a gigantic dome made of an exposed iron skeleton, wooden planks for easy navigation around its heights, and red canvas covering it all with the same efficiency as a short dress on a windy day. “Bulgarl Coliseum.”

“And why are we going there?” asked Yana, frowning. Everything about that building seemed even more suspicious than the rest of the city.

“To get money.”

“You work there or something?”

“No. That’s just the place where I can do what I do best.”

Although she quickly assumed he was referring to fighting with his huge scythe, somewhere in the back of her mind Yana hoped he wasn’t planning to sell her to a gang.

Most of the buildings they had passed by up until that point had at least doors to separate them from the outside, even if some were left open by neglect. Whoever had designed Bulgarl Coliseum had found such things trifling, and opted for something far simpler, and by that I mean a bit more room between two beams and a set of ropes to secure the dusty, blood coloured canvas, opening up what could be called an official entrance.

People ceaselessly came from all the large streets surrounding the dome and crossed through the entrance, both in rags and expensive looking suits, neat to a fault. Knowing their destination, they turned left and right to disappear through the various damp corridors of the place, their red carpets torn and worn out into the sand that pestered every corner of the city. The only ones who kept immobile in the midst of the rush were the couple by the counter at the centre of the entrance hall. She was dressed in shorts and a bikini top trying too hard to be made from real gold, and, sitting atop the counter, she conversed boringly with him, in a white tank top especially designed to show off his costume tailored muscles.

Naturally, just the most suspicious people were precisely those towards whom Jack headed.

“Hello,” when he got no answer other than a frown and a glare, he proceeded. “I want to participate in these games.”

The man raised an eyebrow while the woman looked behind them to check the clock hanging on the wall. It had four dials and eight symbols, none of them decipherable neither for Yana nor for anyone in the living room.

“There’s like, ten minutes left for it to start,” the woman said.

“Yeah, but you’re short on people, aren’t you?”

This time the man observed him more carefully, and a bit surprised. “How d’you know that, kid?”

“The guys from Team Steel never showed up, right? I blew up their headquarters. I don’t think they died, but they should still be regrouping. They won’t come.”

The only thing that broke the chilling silence that followed his casual remark were the footsteps of guests still entering the Coliseum. Then the man laughed with pleasure.

“You expect me to believe that? Go home, kid. You’re too young to be fighting here.”

With a sight, Jack briefly scratched the back of his neck before digging into his rucksack. Through Yana’s eyes, the three in the living room could see the yellow device he had implanted at the – now gone – hideout, once he turned around and reached for his rucksack.

“Well, he did say you’d never let me through, since I don’t have a chip, so he gave me this,” Jack said handing a folded sheet of paper to the man on the counter.

“What’s that?”

“If you can’t read, I’ll do it for you.”

“Give me that,” the man demanded taking it from his hand. As he skimmed the text his face paled until it was hard to tell whether if it had skin or chalk. Before he was even finished, he ordered the woman to call the organization of the event and tell them they had found a new Summoner for the venatio.

“What’s his name?” she asked back holding the receiver.

“Jack.”

“Jack? Jack what?”

“You need another name?” it sounded like a novelty for him.

“I need something that’s not so obviously fake.”

“… then put Speaker,” he told the woman. She raised an eyebrow, but a voice on the receiver made her turn back to it.

“Welcome to Bulgarl Coliseum, Jack Speaker,” the man said, standing up while the woman conversed on the phone, remembering in-between sentences what she was supposed to be doing. “Enjoy your short stay and the subsequent journey to Hell.”

* Equivalent to the Renaissance period