Tokyo, Japan, November 2056

  The alarms marred the pleasant Wednesday morning.

  Not even that strange blue and red nightmare had managed to ruin his mood.

  The trick with the nightmares was to not think about them when you were awake. To let them fade away like the happy dreams that fought when he tried to hold on to them. All thanks to his therapist. He loved for her all the tricks and techniques she had taught him to fight against the symptoms of his PTSD and not because she was a hot older sister-type who wore professional attire that—

  He shook his head.

  Civil defense sirens on the street blared louder than the alarm from his phone.

  Hiroki knew instantly what it meant.

  Everyone did.

  One didn’t have to be a volunteer civilian safety officer to know that there was an emergency.

  The kind that meant go to your nearest safety bunker.

  He had been up since dawn, as usual.

  Exercise, breakfast, light manga reading, checking the checklist for his duties around the neighborhood.

  Which meant he didn’t have to deal with the panic of putting on the right kind of clothing for an emergency situation.

  It was always worse to be woken up from a deep sleep.

  To go from dreams to bleary comprehension and the struggle of putting on his pants and his prosthetic.

  The first thing he did was check his phone.

  The government app would give him information and instruction.

  “Typhoon?”

  That was irregular.

  Typhoon season had passed. The peak period having ended with September.

  Naturally, he panicked.

  Heart pumped. Blood rushed. Temperature rose.

  The last irregular storm he remembered being in was the one that brought thin, grinning, humanoid monsters with the wind and rain. He had been a lot younger. Still a child with parents. The storm had been a nightmare, but he’d go through another one if he could be with them again.

  He scrolled down through the government alert.

  The typhoon didn’t have a name, which was weird.

  Come to think of it he couldn’t recall that the grumpy weatherman on the news had mentioned anything about one forming.

  Granted he didn’t always have the news on and when he did it was usually background noise while he exercised, did some prep for his ramen stand or worked on one of his many hobbies.

  The nameless typhoon was projected to travel right up through Tokyo Bay.

  “Damn it,” he muttered.

  He really hoped this wasn’t a weird monster storm or the storm that disappeared people. He had read about those over the years on the Omninet. Granted he hadn’t been able to verify every story he came across, but enough had been officially verified to make his backside pucker a bit more.

  “Okay, okay, maybe it’s not going to be that bad— shit!”

  Sustained winds of 210 KMH with gusts hitting 240 KMH.

  It sounded like a beyond violent storm.

  Nothing about monsters though, so that was good.

  The sirens outside hadn’t let up.

  He read faster.

  “Do they move that fast?”

  It was moving at nearly 100 KMH.

  He was about to do some mental math when he reached the bottom of the alert.

  Helpfully, it did them for him.

  The typhoon at that rate of travel and distance would make landfall in less than an hour.

  That wasn’t too bad.

  His neighborhood, like every neighborhood had shuttles parked on site ready to take everyone to the nearest emergency shelter.

  An hour was plenty of time.

  Hiroki pocketed his phone and collected the rest of his gear.

  As one of his neighborhood’s civilian safety officers he was responsible for getting every person on a shuttle.

  …

  Twenty minutes.

  Not bad, slower than the government would prefer, but they didn’t have to deal with the honored elders.

  His neighborhood was weird that way.

  A lot of grandpas and grandmas.

  Also a lot of young parents with children.

  Not a lot of the in-between like him.

  It wasn’t that he minded.

  Especially, the former.

  As an orphan with no family it was nice to have a dozen grandpas and grandmas looking out for him in the times that he keenly felt his lack.

  Holidays, festivals and other special occasions. His neighborhood always made sure he wasn’t completely alone.

  “Tanaka-san, please, we do this every time.”

  “Eh, Hiroki, my boy, this is the time.”

  The old man sat on his futon swaddled in a thick blanket.

  He always kept his home freezing cold regardless of the season.

  Mr. Tanaka cradled a picture of his late wife.

  A pretty, smiling woman.

  Killed by the monsters long ago.

  “It’s time I see her again.”

  “Well, Tanaka-san, you know you’re going to see her eventually.”

  Every evacuation in the last three years.

  Hiroki resisted the urge to just pick up the old man like a child.

  Mr. Tanaka was skin and bones.

  Watching the physical and emotional deterioration over the last few years hadn’t been hard exactly.

  Hiroki had seen it happen to others.

  “Won’t it be better to go in the comfort of your own bed, surrounded by your friends than in the teeth and claws of a monster… or worse?”

  “Eh, there’ll always be a worse.” Mr. Tanaka chuckled. “I’ve made my peace with that fate. Been a little disappointing to be honest. Tried so hard over the years, but they just wouldn’t take me like they did her. Do you think my Miri will be upset with me that I took so long, my boy?”

  “From what you’ve told me of her the only thing she’ll be disappointed by is you quitting like this.”

  The old man’s misty eyes grew flinty for a moment, but it passed.

  “You’re holding up the last shuttle.”

  Hiroki tried another track.

  “Every second we sit here arguing could be the difference in them making it to a shelter.”

  “All the more reason to leave a dead man to what he wants. One useless old man isn’t worth risking their lives.”

  Leave him. His fire has dwindled to nothing. Less than smoldering embers. Cold ash waiting for the wind to scatter them into eternity, Hiroki thought. Yes. Listen to his words. The rational will seek to preserve life value in quality and number. One near death is objectively worth less than many living, especially when those include the potential of youth.

  He shook his head.

  Shame colored his face.

  “I’m sorry, Tanaka-san. You may curse me later, but I can’t live with myself if I leave you alone here.” He clicked his radio. “This is, Hiroki. Do you copy?”

  “You better be telling me you’re on your way!” Sachi-san snapped.

  Fellow civilian safety officer and shuttle driver, Mrs. Sachi, had lost what was left of her patience as the typhoon’s outer winds and rain had darkened the skies overhead.

  The hour safe window had shrunk by about ten minutes as they had started evacuations and Hiroki had a feeling in his brain that was going to change and not for the better.

  “Nope, Sachi-san. Tanaka-san can’t leave, so I must stay with him. Please take the others to the shelter right away.”

  “Hiroki, you pick that bag of bones up right now and bring him out here before I go up there and do it myself! And he knows that’s the last thing he wants. He thinks monsters aren’t so bad? Well, when I get through with—”

  Hiroki clicked the switch.

  “Er…”

  Mr. Tanaka chuckled.

  “Eh… you’ll get in trouble if you leave me…”

  “I’ll get in trouble if I keep you company…”

  “The government will probably take your job away. I know them. They’ll probably take your ramen stand away. They’ll say you should’ve just carried me.”

  Hiroki shrugged.

  The old man was probably right.

  Dereliction of duty was the likely outcome if he didn’t adhere to protocol, which was picking up Mr. Tanaka and carrying him to the shuttle.

  There was no gray area.

  “Very well, maybe the stress will do us both a favor, huh?”

  Hiroki gently cradled the old man, who was lighter than he had expected.

  Mr. Tanaka grumbled, but didn’t, couldn’t put up much of a struggle.

  “Damn government. They make you do all this, but they won’t get you a proper leg. You deserve…” he trailed off.

  That had been happening more often lately.

  Old eyes went blurry.

  Hiroki wondered what the old man saw.

  Probably better memories of a pretty, smiling wife.

  His phone beeped an alarm, but he couldn’t check until he got on the half-full shuttle with Mr. Tanaka.

  That strange feeling had proved prescient.

  The safe evacuation window had shrunk again.

  Fifteen minutes left to get to the shelter.

  “We’re cutting it close,” Sachi-san said.

  “I trust your driving.”

  She squinted up at him as she started the shuttle and drove it into the rapidly descending darkness.

  “That’s your worst quality.”

  “What?”

  “Too trusting.”

  …

  Day turned to night in less than an hour.

  Torrential rain blanketed everything like dark curtains.

  Wind whipped the shuttle back and forth, side to side, battering its windows with its howling rage.

  Fortunately, they were prepared.

  Bright, glowing arrows lit the way to the emergency shelter. Magic and technology working together to ensure that the people of Tokyo were never left alone in the dark.

  Hiroki needlessly called out the arrows for Mrs. Sachi.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  They couldn’t be missed out in the black street and in the shuttle’s windshield.

  If vision failed then she could rely on the soothing voice of the automated navigation system giving her directions.

  What it couldn’t do was warn her of sudden obstacles.

  The shuttle lurched to a sudden stop with a sound of breaking metal and glass.

  Hiroki had been standing, perhaps unwisely, so he pitched forward, slamming into the front console next to Mrs. Sachi.

  Glass cut stinging lines across his face.

  He cursed his prosthetic for it had slipped when he had tried to brace himself.

  If only he had two real feet and legs.

  Mrs. Sachi cursed.

  Hiroki echoed her a moment later as the rapid bursts from her pistol too close to him deafened him with pain.

  On the ruined front of the shuttle a gaping mouth of triangular teeth in several rows reached out as he frantically pulled his own gun from his mother’s old backpack of holding.

  But before he could fire a firm grip seized his shoulder and pulled him back.

  He couldn’t make out what his neighbor was saying.

  All he could hear was the ringing of a loud and painful bell.

  It took him a moment that fell like an eternity to understand that the monster was dead.

  Not killed by Mrs. Sachi, but by another monster.

  A battle raged in the one flickering headlight of the shuttle that remained.

  Landsharks fought one another.

  Wait—

  Many landsharks fought one landshark

  But that wasn’t quite right either.

  The one being swamped by the others looked different.

  It was larger and more upright.

  It had long arms that ended in clawed fingers unlike the rest.

  A soothing sensation filled his wet ears.

  The ringing faded to a dull throb and other sounds returned.

  “Thank you.”

  His neighbor had healed him with a spell before turning away with a nod to see to the other injured passengers.

  “It’s dead, Hiroki.”

  He didn’t quite understand Mrs. Sachi.

  The monster on the hood was definitely dead.

  Then he noticed she was stomping on the pedal.

  “I have to call for help.” He reached for the radio and found it missing from his belt. He tried his phone rather than searching for the lost radio in the dark shuttle. “No signal…” The pit in his stomach began to grow rapidly.

  He had no idea where they were. He tried to think it through. Tried to pinpoint a general location based on how fast they had been driving and the number of turns, but it was hard to focus. The ringing was gone, but his head still felt muddled, like he was in dream.

  They left you behind. A discarded cripple. A useless slinger of soup and noodles. You are nothing to them. Get out there! Feed that fire you keep suppressed! Show them you are more! he thought. Think. The monsters fight each other. There is an opening. Leave the others. Use them as distraction.

  Before he could do anything a light pierced the darkness.

  A star shined.

  Bullets fell.

  Wet thuds.

  Shrieks.

  The already wet road ran red as the landsharks fell into bullet-shredded chunks.

  With one exception.

  The bipedal one gazed up and flinched.

  It raised its gore-covered hands like it was… surrendering?

  Hiroki goggled at the strange sight until a dark armored figure landed in the shuttle’s headlight between them and the huge monster with empty hand pointed.

  “Transform back, right now!” the armored woman snapped.

  Her voice was clear, amplified by mechanical aid to be heard over the torrential downpour and the cracks of thunder and lighting.

  The shark-man monster complied.

  It happened quickly.

  Claws vanished into shortening fingers.

  Muscled limbs shrank.

  Animal-like legs turned human.

  The long tail followed.

  Rows of triangular, serrated teeth in a gaping mouth fell out to be replaced by the familiar, much smaller square teeth in a human mouth.

  Rough blue-gray skin with darker stripes across the back turned into a pale brown, like one that hadn’t seen sunlight in a long while.

  Hiroki thought he could hear the tearing of muscle and shifting of bones, of joints.

  It sounded painful, but the man’s smiling face suggested otherwise.

  He stood in the rain.

  A very naked man. Aside from a belt with several small bags of all things.

  “Pants!” the armored woman snapped.

  “Wait! Just don’t shoot!” the man shouted back. “Diplomacy! Diplomacy! Uh… brah… what was that stupid thing I had to memorize?” He rubbed shaggy black hair.

  “Hands up!”

  “Shit, lady! Chill! I was helping!” The naked man gestured at the landshark corpses. “Not that I knew I was helping… but, hey, is all good, right?” he pointed at one of the small bags. “Pants, yeah?”

  “Slowly.”

  The naked man didn’t pull out a pair of pants, but what looked like a sheet or a blanket with a nice design that Hiroki would call tribal from his limited knowledge of such things.

  The design looked similar to the black tattoos covering the man’s arms and chest.

  A lot of swirls that looked like stylized version of ocean waves and currents.

  “Right, yeah, happy, lady? We good? We chill?”

  “The codes, wereshark, now!”

  “Jeez, what twisted your shorthairs? Shit, yeah! Codes!” The skirted man squinted. “Soft Taco, Grimlock, St. George.”

  “Tuesday, Megatron, Ascalon.”

  “That sounds right… I think… yeah, Asca-whatever. I remember that one for sure.” The skirted man shrugged. “Sorry, lady. I was out there in shark form for awhile. It’s the long swim, you know how it be?”

  “What are you doing here? And make it concise.” The armored woman had dropped her hand.

  “I ain’t know some of those words.” He grinned.

  “Keep your explanation short and quick.”

  “… I was long swimming. Patrol. Don’t get harsh, but I was following the rules, you know? Sticking to international waters or something. Didn’t come close to your land. Like, I’m talking not within a couple of hundred miles. Mostly, scouting and checking for threats, you know? Fishmen. Monsters. That sort of thing. We swim with the sharks, you know, real ones. Migration patterns and shit like that. Anyways—”

  “Concise!”

  He sighed and rolled his eyes.

  “Was swimming. Got sucked up into that hurricane. Fell.”

  “What can you tell me about this storm?”

  “Dunno,” he shrugged broad shoulders. “Weird. Not magical though. Just way too big and strong and fast and the way it sucked me and them monsters up… don’t make no sense. Never seen anything like it. Couldn’t do much being swirled around up there, but I can tell you that me and them ain’t the only things that got sucked up.”

  “Yeah!” A second armored woman dropped into the flickering headlight. “I saw a mommy whale and a baby whale a few streets over. Poor things didn’t make it.”

  Hiroki recognized this one.

  Mahou Shoujo Dashing Bandit Celebration’s armor mimicked a blend of a tanuki and a sailor uniform while still providing full coverage without ruining her womanly charms.

  That’s what he remembered from her interview a while back where she explained her change in costume to her adoring fans.

  Of which he was most certainly not.

  That wasn’t to say he didn’t admire her strength and efforts to keep the people of Tokyo, like him and his neighborhood safe.

  It was just that he didn’t get weird about it like some of the guys he knew.

  He looked around but he couldn’t see any of sign of her tanuki plushies. He wondered if they were nearby. The sounds of their battles with the monsters hidden by the typhoon.

  “Splat…” Dashing Bandit Celebration made what he assumed to be a splatting gesture.

  “Damn… really?” The skirted man looked genuinely saddened by the news.

  “Yeah. At least they died on impact… probably.”

  The first and much taller armored woman cleared her throat.

  “Check the shuttle’s passengers. We need to get them to the shelter.”

  “Yes! Yes! Sparkle-sama!” Dashing Bandit Celebration skipped to the side of their door.

  Hiroki tried to listen to the interrogation in the headlight, but a mahou shoujo was knocking and one made a mahou shoujo wait at their peril.

  …

  The good news was that they all made it to the shelter with only minor injuries.

  Hiroki had been concerned about Mr. Tanaka, but the old man was tough like beef jerky, perhaps, against his heart’s desire, but Hiroki was glad that Mr. Tanaka didn’t die.

  He finally got to see Dashing Bandit Celebration’s tanuki plushies. And not just her regular ones, but her special superpowered ones like in the old American movies.

  A few of them lifted the crushed front end of the shuttle, while a few pushed from the rear.

  “… so, it’s a good thing that we found you guys. It’s really dangerous out there.” Dashing Bandit Celebration talked with a young girl, clearly a fan, even if she wasn’t festooned with Dashing Bandit Celebration merchandise the mahou shoujo had pulled out of a tiny compartment in her colorful armor. “The winds are so fast! It’s, like, raining sideways and sometimes up.” The girl nodded with wide, happy eyes. “But don’t worry, we’re out there looking out! Well… a few of us. Higher levels only. The storm’s too strong for anyone else.”

  “Hey, braddah?”

  The bad news draped a long, muscular arm around Hiroki’s shoulder. A damp arm.

  “Yes, Hilo-san?”

  The bad news was that Ms. Kitagawa, she who was not to be referred to as Super Happy Sparkle or .50 Caliber-chan, had shoved the wereshark from Hawaii, wherever that was, into his lap like a rain-soaked wet kitten.

  Sadly, he was responsible as the lone civilian safety officer not occupied with sitting in the useless driver’s seat and shouting out directions to the tanuki plushies.

  “Are they, like, you know, single?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He understood the appeal.

  The mahou shoujo were, as a general rule, attractive.

  But, they also, as a general rule, ranged from intimidating to scary to insane.

  Ms. Kitagawa, for example, had supermodel looks like the ones on the shows. Tall, slim and shapely, which wasn’t completely hidden by her fancy armor. And her face was her best feature if someone had forced him to declare one at gunpoint and if he had a hundred percent guarantee that she wasn’t listening.

  Not even the full-faced helmet could dampen her beauty.

  Like a radiant sunshine in the darkness.

  Claim her with the flames of strength and power! he thought. A distraction.

  “You alright there, brah? You chill? You staring off like some braddah that spent too much time chewing on fishmen.”

  He blinked.

  “Fishmen?”

  “Brah, they taste like shit. Ain’t no sushi-grade. Hate tasting them!”

  “Taste?”

  “Oh yeah! Ain’t no chill. Can’t really spit them out in shark form, you know? What I do is that I take the bite, but I swim right through. Put on a burst, you know? Don’t swallow, brah! Hell no! Only made that mistake once. What I do is, like, a sharp turn and then I open my mouth. I go left or right and the fishman meat keeps going straight. I ain’t trying to be like my cousin. Shauna. She’s crazy, ain’t no chill. She gobbles that fishman meat right up.” Hilo looked into the distance pensively. “Actually, any meat… thinks it gives her strength.” He shrugged. “She’s got Skills for that, though, so maybe she’s right, you know?”

  “I… I’m not sure.”

  Hilo laughed.

  The soldiers guarding the shelter would’ve made an issue for Hilo, but the scary mahou shoujo took care of it.

  Bad news again.

  Hiroki was now the unquestioned chaperone.

  Thus, he watched Ms. Kitagawa and Dashing Bandit Celebration take to the rain-drenched rooftops in search of people to save and monsters to kill.

  “Hey, let me tell you! I was shitting myself hoping that code would work! See, my cousin’s dating this girl that’s neighbors with this other girl that babysits for the nephew of the braddah that makes poke bowls for the husband of this lady that’s on the Mother of Pele’s, like, diplomacy staff or something like that—”

  Hiroki struggled to keep up.

  “Mother Pele…”

  “Oh! That’s our grandmother, you know? But not, like, flesh and blood grandmother… unless you rise up the ranks of the dragon classes. I heard when you start hitting those heights there’s, like, that Catholic thing, you know? Eat her flesh, drink her wine, get better classes. Oh, yeah? That’s right! She’s a dragon! Did I say that yet? Anyways, my cousin says that you guys aren’t chill about the diplomacy stuff, like, he kept saying I was gonna get got if I got too close, like how you guys used to get them whales, you know?”

  Hiroki did not know. He was still stuck on the dragon.

  “Eh… it’s all chill now, brah, right? Although…”

  He followed Hilo’s eyes to the other eyes in the shelter.

  Most were on the two of them, well, on the stranger wearing only a blanket around his waist.

  They ranged from frightened to wary to outright hostile.

  It wasn’t all civilians.

  There were JSDF soldiers and many independents.

  Lesser mahou shoujo in a wild variety of costumes and uniforms compared to Ms. Kitagawa and Dashing Bandit Celebration.

  The men and women with sheathed katanas could’ve been regular fighter-types or shinigamis. The robes weren’t always a reliable way to tell which was which. One could only be sure when they started using their second releases. He was pretty sure that no one in the shelter had a third release yet because if they did then they were strong enough to be outside, probably.

  The cyborg soldiers were all JSDF.

  They didn’t share their cybernetics.

  He could attest to that.

  Kamen riders in their colorful costumes, a mix of armor and motorcycle leathers, lounged around with their helmets off and without their motorcycles.

  There was one young miko that was entertaining children with music from her torimono.

  And there was one extremely muscular and hairy man near the door periodically sniffing. He had shot several disgusted looks toward Hilo.

  Hiroki wasn’t sure if the foreigner had noticed. Not that he planned to say anything. For that road only led to unneeded conflict. They all had enough problems with the unnatural typhoon and falling sea creatures. There was no need to add a brawl inside the shelter.

  And so, he sat and listened while Hilo talked about… everything.

  “So, like, you know anything about your waves?”

  “Waves?”

  How much time had passed?

  Minutes?

  Ten at least… maybe?

  The one-sided conversation seemed to slow things down.

  The muffled thunder and lightning didn’t help.

  The shelter was a literal bunker. Thick, reinforced walls and ceilings did a good job at muffling outside sounds. The fact that they were even getting anything was worrisome. It meant that the storm was living up to the fear.

  “I know an old guy, says he surfed all over the world before the spires. Hit this place up a few times. What did he say?” Hilo mused. “Do you know a Shira— Shira—something beach?”

  Hiroki could answer honestly that he had no idea.

  He only vaguely understood what surfing was.

  But what he did know was that the ocean and beaches were dangerous.

  He had been to the indoor beach at what was once some kind of stadium for old sports events.

  When he told Hilo about it the foreigner smiled sadly and laid a comforting hand on his shoulder.

  Hilo was about to launch into another rambling story when the building suddenly shook.

  People screamed.

  “Earthquake!”

  Hiroki didn’t think so.

  The shaking was too regular and spaced with nothing.

  It was almost as if they were being struck with a giant hammer.

  “Everyone, please walk in a calm orderly manner to the nearest safe rooms.”

  The voice over the intercom was calmer than Hiroki and the civilians felt.

  “Hey, braddah, I’m down to scrap. Just say the word and, uh, tell your boys the big shark braddah is on your side, you know?”

  “Um, thank you for the offer, Hilo-san, but Kitagawa-sama was very clear and specific about that sort of thing.” Hiroki struggled to pull the much taller and more muscular man to join the civilians filing out of the waiting room to move deeper into the shelter.

  The combat types had already cleared out.

  He had no idea where they had gone.

  The hairy JSDF soldier at the door had gone out with the other soldiers.

  A few independents must’ve followed, but he saw others heading for the stairs or joining the civilians.

  Hilo complained, but was drowned out by the sudden, violent crash.

  Hiroki’s last sensations before the darkness took him were rough hands and body covering him and the strong brine scent that he realized the indoor beach had failed to replicate properly.

  It’s too late. This one lacks the fire, he thought. There is still a chance. A direct conversation. A rational choice presented.

  Do you sense that?

  Power draws near we must hide.

  Tch…

  Temper. Control it. The change will take time.

  Fine, but you promise me a raging fight?

  That is unavoidable.

  Good!