Chapter 1: A Hero’s Awakening
Augh…Where am I? What..Happened? I blink my eyes open. It’s a cold empty cave, with a puddle of water underneath the platform I'm on. Water drips from the ceiling on my right, making a blip sound when it lands in the puddle.
I prop myself up. It feels like I’ve been asleep forever… But now it’s time to get outta here. I make a jump to the platform on my left, and look up. For a cave this sure is small… I Take a leap of faith upward, and see a door. Why would a cave have a door in it? I shrug it off.
I go through the door which leads to a larger part of the cave. Spikes line the ceiling and floor to my left, while the right is just a dead end. Well, now what?
I go to the left to see just how deadly these spikes are, when I get an image of me trying to test them and I fall over and get impaled, killing me. The image frightens me. It was a sudden image in my mind, like I knew it was gonna happen, but it didn’t. So I’m fine.
I shake my head. The hell was that? I think as I avoid the spikes, and bats flying up and down. Those bats are cute… The floor changes from a rough rock to some more polished rock, like the one I woke up on. On the top, is a little capsule with a heart shaped device in it.
I pick it up, and unscrew the side. I pull out the heart shaped device and notice that there’s a keypad on it, though there’s no numbers, and the buttons are painted the same color as the heart. I start putting random codes in, but none of them seem to work.
That’s when I notice a small sliver of paper in the capsule, with the numbers, “269367” on it. On the other side of the paper, a little message is printed, “You can do it, Hero!” I blink a little. Hero? I didn’t do anything but..Ok. I put the code into the device, and to my surprise, the top part opens, revealing a small cylinder with the word ‘Nano’ printed on it in a small font that’s very difficult to read.
I take it out with my right hand, and that’s when a small circular plug shows itself on my left hand. Do humans normally do this? I shrug. I plug in the cylinder, and when the process is done, I feel more energized. The capsule and everything that was inside it except the paper materializes into nothing as soon as the process is completed. Weird…
I pick up the slip of paper for the motivational message and move on. Two puddles of water, bats and critters stand in my way, but after a few maneuvers, I now stand in front of another cave entrance. I enter the room, which turns out to be a small room, with a few things and furniture around. There’s no bed to my surprise, all I really see is a bunch of gun parts laying around, which is definitely odd. I keep my guard up.
I make my way over to a table and chair, the table holding what seems to be some recently used tools for gun making, But no one’s here.
Suddenly, I hear a low grumbling that shocks me so bad I jump, and hide behind a bookcase. I hyperventilate and try to calm myself down, and I look back to see what that grumbling was, and I feel like kicking myself in the head. It’s just a hermit sleeping…
I take in a sigh of relief and walk out of my hiding spot. Oddly enough, the hermit is standing up, even while asleep. Huh. Weird. I slowly start to realize that this cave is quite dangerous, with the death spikes and the critters and bats floating around. I need something to protect myself…I hope the hermit won’t mind… I start searching the place for anything useful. Oh! It’s a blue gun that looks newly made, with the mark of the northern star on it. When I think of a name, the Polar Star, I get another message from Kazuma…
[ACCEPTING INCOMING TRANSMISSION…]
Kazuma: Sueeeeeee
Kazuma: where are you????
Kazuma: you didn’t fall asleep did you?
Kazuma: your brother is lonely
Kazuma: and hungry…
Kazuma: So hungry I ate a cockroach
Kazuma: …
Kazuma: yeah I’m lying, but honestly if you leave me hanging this long I might just do that
Kazuma: so hurry up will you?
Who’s this ‘Kazuma’ Guy, and who’s Sue? I shake my head. Now is not the time for questions. I pick up the gun. It fits perfectly in my hands, almost as if it was made for someone my size. I leave, quietly because I don’t want to wake up the hermit that’s sound asleep.
I hold the gun in both my hands, and just stare at it. It looks…A bit undone. Let’s see if it works though.. I take aim at one of the bats, and shoot it with a beam of electricity. Though the gun didn’t seem as promising as before, it definitely feels promising now. As I make my way back up to the room where I woke up, I notice that I don’t get a weird image in my head from the spikes. Huh. Maybe it’s cause I got that capsule thing? I shrug it off. When I make it to the wall that seems to be a dead end, I go out on a limb and just shoot it. To my surprise though, it actually works! Alright! After defeating the critters that were waiting for me, I try to open the door…But it’s not a door.
“?!”
An eye opens where the tiny window should be, and stares directly at me. I shriek, and shoot the hell out of it. It soon disappears though. …I’m not even sure I want to know what that thing was. I exit the cave, and the light outside is too bright for me.
All of the sudden the next I know is I’m falling. Fast.
Prologue || Chapter 1 || Chapter 2











