The second Jack left Yana to prepare himself, David sprung into motion. Sofia and Ricardo watched as he pulled his phone from his trousers and navigated it until he came across his sister’s name.

“Who are you calling?” Sofia asked but obtained no answer from him as he listened to the “beep” while reviewing the plan he had in mind.

“What?” asked Christine’s distorted voice.

“I need to talk to Yana,” David said.

“… Who?”

“The dead girl. I need to talk to the dead girl.”

“She’s not dead, David,” Christine said, taking a moment to enjoy the sweet feeling of correcting her perfect little brother.

“You know what I mean,” he said while Sara raised an eyebrow and signalled the phone. She shrugged back - of course she had no idea what he wanted.

“Look, I really need to talk to her, ok?”

“Are you going to sing to her or something?”

“Christine, please, give me five minutes, then turn off the phone.”

“Alright, alright. Let me know if she sings back to you, okay?” then she threw the phone at Sara, who was sitting right next to Yana, making sure she wouldn’t fall with the limo’s swinging. “Put this over her ear. David says he wants to talk to her.”

“What? Why?” she asked, doing so just the same.

“I dunno. Maybe he saw something on the Internet.”

“Like singing to her would wake her up?”

“Yeah, probably.” and both of them started laughing. “He has some weird ideas, sometimes.”

“Do they work?”

Christine shrugged. “Honestly, yeah. But this is just on a whole new level. I’ve never seen him go with something like this.”

“Yeah,” Sara agreed, glancing at the fainted head she was holding on her lap. It gave no response whatsoever to the phone on her ear.

On her perspective, that is. As soon as David stopped listening to his sister, he asked a different question, staring at the television screen.

“Can you hear me?”

The camera started to shift from side to side. Yana was looking for something.

“If you can hear me, just nod. You won’t be able to see me.”

The camera’s angle slowly moved up and down as the girl did what she was told.

“Holy Cid, it actually works,” he muttered to himself. Then, he quickly cleared his throat and continued. “Hi, Yana, I’m David. Huh, David Lonergan. You probably don’t know me, but I’m at your friend’s house in Portugal,” he said.

“They aren’t-“ Yana stopped herself from saying they weren’t her friends, reconsidered the fact she was effectively talking to a voice on her head that claimed to be someone she had never even heard of, and continued. “You know what happened to me? Do you know what’s going on with me?”

“I can tell you what I think is happening, but I don’t think you’ll believe me.”

“I was rescued by this crazy ass guy, I’m seeing strange shadows possessing scythes, and I’m talking with a voice in my head. Try me.”

Then she listened as David hastened to tell her about the undecipherable program, how her body was headed for the hospital in a comatose state, and how the television in the basement of the Fonseca was faithfully portraying the world of “Hidan Battle” from her own eyes.

“Look, my family has contacts,” he continued as Yana buried her head between her legs, let go a long sigh and whispered something to herself in a language he did not even bother trying to understand. “I’ll talk to my father about this, we’ll find someone who can get you out of there.”

“No.”

“… What do you mean, no?”

“It’s a program no one could decode, right?” Yana replied, lifting her head from her knees, sounding confident and calm.” I don’t think they’ll be able to do it in a rush, it’ll only make things worse.”

“But you can’t stay there.”

“Trust me, I really don’t want to,” she replied. “But I have the most powerful ally I could get. He’s a bit weird, but Jack’s the main character of this game, right?”

“Yeah, he definitely is.”

“Then nothing’s going to happen to me while I stay close to him. I’ll have him find a way out for me. You’ve seen us talk about it, right?”

“We did, but Yana, that guy is far more dangerous than you think. He did blow up the headquarters he was talking about, a huge military-like base in the middle of the desert.”

“He must have had a good reason, it couldn’t have been just because he wanted to,” she said after pondering about it for a moment. “Have you seen him doing anything else after that?”

“No, he got that glove he’s wearing, blew up the place and ran away. The next thing we saw was him rescuing you. You don’t need to worry about Jack’s fighting skills – he’s as good as he says he is,” David added, guessing what her next question would be.

“Does that glove do something, or is it just…”

“It breaks hidan weapons. He used it to steal the hidan of the people who were trying to kidnap you.”

“Those Bugs… Okay. Thank you, David. How often can we keep in touch?”

“I can’t call my sister too often to talk to your body, one time is suspicious enough. I’ll be able to listen and see everything you see, so I’ll know when you need to talk to me.”

“Okay.”

“One more thing, though. We won’t be able to keep the “NightStar” running all day. If it gets too late and they need to turn it off, I’ll call for help.”

“Alright, deal. Thanks for the trust you’re putting in me, David.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I still think what you’re doing is beyond reckless.”

“I know, I feel the same way, too,” Yana said as David turned off his phone and rested his head on the back of his hands, staring at the screen, but not actually paying attention to what was it was transmitting. Being left ignored throughout the conversation, Sofia and Ricardo exchanged glances, wondering if they would be useful at all to bring Yana out of the world of the hidan, while David conjured up several excuses he could deploy in order to talk to Yana in the near future.

“We can talk to our dad if Yana gets in trouble,” suggested Sofia. “He’s good with computers, maybe he can help out too.”

“I hope we won’t need that,” David said, thinking how stupid it was to just let things be and hope that they would find another way to take her out of that place.

“Then why doesn’t he do something about it?”

“He might have thought Yana was right, that trying to bring her back by force would only make things worse, if they managed to do it in the first place. Maybe he thought doing the stupid thing is far more interesting than doing the smart thing because it leads to unexpected outcomes. Maybe he’s just a thirteen-year-old that can’t assess the real importance of these things.”

But what do I know, I’m just the narrator.

On the other hand, Yana could only feel extremely relieved that not only she was ultimately right about being inside a video game, which isn’t exactly true, but there was someone watching over her that would call for backup if anything went wrong. She didn’t have the slightest clue over who that David person was, but he sounded highly focused and calm - he didn’t give in to panic once he made sense of the situation and tried to find a solution for it instead. It was sufficient for Yana to believe he could be trusted.

As for Jack, skilled or not skilled, he sounded too relaxed to be taken seriously. He didn’t seem to care about what he was going up against in the Coliseum, as if he could sweep away anything that they were to throw at him, he had made fun of her on more than one occasion, and, all things considered, he had to make up a name to be admitted. How could someone like that get the resources to blow up a military building?

“The kids had to name him. Is that related?”

“Not exactly, but it’s an interesting perspective.”

“I can see the smoke coming out of your head.”

Yana looked up to find Jack clad in scaled armour and a helmet that covered most of his head and nose, joined to the torso piece by a set of links that covered most of the back of his neck while letting him move it freely, while also concealing the electronic piece of the glove he still wore in his left hand.

“They said you shouldn’t think too much. It can only end in headaches,” he continued as she stood up from the floor.

“You look like a gladiator,” she said, taking a better look at the torso piece, the simple helmet, the complete lack of armour around the legs, covered in only black shorts, and the naked feet at the end.

“A what?”

“Never mind,” she said pressing down the corridor, with him by his side. For a moment she imagined herself being a roman empress walking towards her balcony with her private soldier. “How much longer will he have to pretend to be together?”

“Just until we leave the Coliseum,” he said. Still with the pair at the counter, Jack had demanded Yana to join him backstage, pulling her close by her shoulder and claiming that she was “his little sweetheart”. Although Yana had opened her mouth to unclaim the fact, the man was in an even bigger hurry and urged them through the doors of a maze of dark corridors with simple signs plastered with incomprehensible scribbles, saying the venatio would start soon and he had to get changed.

“What was that for, why do we have to pretend to be together?” she asked as soon as the door closed.

“You don’t want to be on the stands,” he answered, pressing forward as if he knew the place like the back of his hand.

“Why not?”

“It’s smelly.”

Backstage smelled like a toilet that isn’t washed in a year, so that was another lie.

Nevertheless, the stench didn’t seem to bother any of the workers of the Coliseum, passing by in a hurried step with various devices, bottles of water or scraps of metal; nor did it bother the fighters, gazing about, looking for other tall men with a temper to lock eyes with as a personal challenge; or the half-naked girls scattered about the walls, talking to each other on the step to watch the arena beyond its fence, or purring next to the biggest and meanest fighters.

Forcing herself to look away from that pitiful display, Yana climbed the step to better see what kind of arena that alien Coliseum housed. It was a large, circular space covered in sand, with a dusty totem in its centre. Metallic spheres enriched engravings of barren landscapes, beastly animals, and people beating the crap out of each other in its white, worn-out surface. Combined with the overflowing stands, persistent talking, and smudges of dry blood on the sand, Yana was only surprised at the fact there were no caged lions pacing about.

“Maybe the programmers forgot about them.”

“How would you forget something as emblematic as that?”

“You don’t. They never programmed anything of this sort.”

“What do you mean? She isn’t actually inside a game?”

“I thought that was obvious by now.”

“What do you think?” asked Jack’s voice, as he climbed the step to join her.

“We study these things at school to learn what the uncivilized world was like centuries ago,” Yana answered, sparing him a glance.

“What do you mean?”

“We used to make things like this before,” she said after a taking a deep breath. “Coliseums and pits and battlefields. Our ancestors fought and made each other fight for a lot of different reasons, but when you think about it - and you don’t have to think very hard to figure this out - all fighting does is bring suffering. Sid of the Cantaria made war for the sake of peace. He conquered every inch of Earth and brought it down to his rule and the Code of Peace he wrote. Now anyone who reads the Code learns that violence is meaningless, and never uses it again.”

“You’re brainwashed?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Pretty much,” she shrugged.

“Why do you let yourselves be brainwashed if you are so advanced right now and don’t fight anymore?”

“Because we have to. People who don’t are hunted down and put in jail.”

“Your world sounds boring,” Jack said, turning to the arena.

“And yours is way too dangerous,” she answered.

“For everyone else, maybe, but not for me.”

Seesh, you’re cocky…

“Jack Speaker!”

Both turned to find a man in a brown uniform, followed by another one, with broad shoulders, holding a chain and a hammer by his waist.

“Are you the Summoner sent by The Hunter?” the bigger man asked as they climbed down the step.

“Sure am,” he answered as the Portuguese siblings turned to each other, wondering whom they were referring to and if he had been mentioned beforehand.

“And this is your girlfriend.”

“Sure is,” he answered. Yana felt her cheeks warming up with embarrassment.

“The Coliseum Master wants to see a proof of love between you two,” the smaller man announced. “Otherwise, she goes to the stands.”

“A proof of love?” Jack asked putting an arm around Yana’s shoulder and pulling her closer to his cold armour. “Like what? Do I give her a French kiss?”

What?!

“That doesn’t prove anything.”

Moron.

“Oh,” Jack said with a lone tone of disappointment. “What do I have to do, then?”

“It will be a very simple task,” the smaller worker said as his partner moved to reveal cuffs on the chain, kneeling in front of Jack to lock one of those cuffs around his right ankle. When he stood up and turned to Yana, she couldn’t help but let out a nervous laugh, taking a step back.

“You can’t be serious, right?”

“Tell her to be still,” the man with the chain told Jack.

Yana lifted her head to protest, but Jack had dropped all sense of goofiness, leaving a cold, composed look on his face that nodded at her. Before she knew it, she was feeling the chills, and the man locked the other end of the chain on her left ankle.

“You’re going to protect your girlfriend during the whole venatio. If you both survive, then you can continue together for as long as like. Otherwise… Well, the audience gets to see some cheap drama.”

Both men walked away as Yana digested the fact she would have to fight as welt and he fright from Jack’s empty expression l, and when he beckoned her to follow him to the main gates of the arena, she realized it would not change anytime soon.

Why does this main character have to be so creepy? And weird?

Around them, the workers herded in everyone who had a bit of armour to the front of the arena’s gates, where all weapons were changed to spheres and the tension was enough to thicken the air until it was hard to breathe.

“Stay out of my way, and you won’t get hurt,” Jack said when the lights started to dim, causing the impatient audience to erupt into an applause.

“And you stay out my way, or I might just kick you by mistake,” she answered. There was no way she’d let him, or any other of those men, trample her flat.

“You aren’t going to fight, martials arts are useless on a venatio.”

“You’re the one who’s going to feel useless when this is over.”

“Ladies, Gentlemen, Children of all ages and Junkies of the worst kind, welcome to the Colosseum of Bulgarl, and to the greatest show this world has ever seen.” a voice projected itself from the dark, sandy as the breath of a pipeman. “Sure, our Coliseum isn't as wet as the one in Oaris. Or as hot as the one in Vulcan. And it certainly doesn't have as much bugs as the one in Ellage.” He gave the crowd a moment to laugh. “But doesn't that mean ours is the best one?”

An energetic "Yes" was the resounding answer.

“Today we celebrate the 189th Day of the Archer, the day when the desert of Rujad and its people were finally considered independent by the shitheads of Lado. And this year, it was decided that we are to make a venatio to honour out great Hero. So, without further ado, I am your host for this show, the General Director and right-hand man to the Master of our Coliseum, one of the most fearsome Summoners to step on this Dunia, Hofukuwa Pretorius! My name is Harley, and please welcome the starts of today’s show!”

As he spoke, the wooden gates opened, creaking with age, and all of the Summoners solemnly walked into the hushing sand, illuminated by a large, strong spotlight.

The chain’s heavy… Yana thought as they crossed the arena towards the greatest balcony, sporting a dark red banner with horns crossing a sword. If I try to kick with it I’ll mess up Jack’s momentum, too. It’s just my left leg, though. I still have my right and my fists. I just have to be careful and go for their joints…

“Today we also have a special guest prepared for you,” the announcer said as she counted the other warriors and tried to memorize the weak spots in their amour. All of them were older, bulkier, and had better and more ornamented pieces than Jack. “As you can see, there is a damsel in distress among our Summoners today. Can her little knight keep her safe, or will she be dead when the show is over?”

Some of the audience took a laugh and a handful of Summoners treated them with menacing smiles while Yana looked down to her boots, feeling her cheeks warming up, and cursed the moment when she had been dumb enough to go through with Jack’s idea. On the other hand, he didn’t seem to even be listening to a word being said. Somehow, his intent, emotionless facet was even more concerning than the men threatening them.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

All of the Summoners stood in line in front of the balcony, and a man rose from his throne to be lit up by a spotlight and seen by everyone in the Coliseum. His balding head only accentuated his fearsome jaw and wide face. As he gazed upon Summoners below, they held their left fists on their chests and bellowed.

“Hail, Great Master. We who are about to die salute you!”

With a hand wave, the audience was allowed to clap their hands and whistle while the group was dismissed and took their preferred positions in the arena.

“Now, you all know the rules of the venatio. A collective hunt to lock as many hidan as you can inside the medan of our beautiful totem. The last man standing is crowned the winner,” Harley said as the spotlights followed each Summoner’s movements until they stopped and turned to the centre. “What do we have in store for you today… Oh, very angry and very hungry rembo tambaazi! Don’t get eaten too fast, we don’t appreciate being bored to death.”

“Please Form Change your weapons now”, echoed a robotic voice, and the command was promptly issued by all those who were stepping on the sand. Yana took the chance to remove her denim jacket, feeling the dry air of the desert immediately enveloping her arms and making her feel a lot warmer. It was nice the clothes in that place worked in reverse, but denim isn’t flexible, and she’d need to move a lot to be able to defend herself properly. She folded it and put it on the sand by her feet, wishing to find it intact by the time they were done. As she got back up, she took a glance to make sure Jack was wielding a proper scythe instead of the bizarre, creepy bugged one. Once she saw the black handle and moon-shaped blade of Moonlight, she looked around to the other Summoners to see what they would be using. The whole arena was being lit, with the stands easy to spot thanks to the scorching sunlight squeezing thought the openings in the canvas above them.

Her heart stopped once she found three sprouting shadows in her line of sight.

“How many?” she abruptly turned towards Jack as his voice pulled her away from the weapons. “How many bugged weapons are there?”

“Three,” she answered pointing them out with her head. “The guy with the twin-bladed axe, the one with the boomerang, and that one with the, huh…”

“It’s a halberdier. It’s a polearm used to break heavy armour,” Jack explained, looking closely to the Summoners and weapons Yana pointed him to. The halberdier was by far the most intimidating piece on the table, a long handle ending in a sharp tip, with a curved blue blade, bigger than Moonlight’s, reflecting light as if it was made from water.

“Listen, Yana. We’re going for those three first, while the tambaazi are still on the loose. It’ll be harder for them to see what we’re doing while the chaos is still going on.”

“Okay.”

At least we’ll get rid of those things first… she thought as she tried to shift her attention from the weapons to the armour pieces, trying to find ways to go through them other than by the sheer force she did not have.

“What are tambaazi?” she asked almost as an afterthought.

“You’ll see.”

Creaking filled the arena as several trapdoors facing the totem rose from the sand, letting it gently pour down below. A spectral silence followed, with soft growling noises in the background that grew and kept growing until they were no longer soft but rabid and uncontrolled.

A large pale green and white beast with smooth, shiny scales, a sharp head a long tail galloped from one the trapdoors and jumped, roaring, towards the first Summoner it found.

Dinosaurs…!

“Let’s go.”

Before Yana could even estimate how many dozens of them were coming from the trapdoors, Jack was moving towards the man with the blue halberdier. Not one to be left behind, she matched his pace, almost running, while trying to monitor everything around her not to get hit by surprise. The crowd roared with the reptiles, as they met the Summoner’s weapons and were turned to dust. They roared with even more energy whenever they defeated one of the men.

A shadow on her left made her duck her head to the side not to get hit by the incoming boomerang, that quickly returned to his master and was cast away again, vanquishing another small raptor.

“Move!”

Instinctively, Yana stepped to side, watching from the corner of her eye as Jack made short work of a raptor that had sneaked up behind her. She underlined the mental note to stay focused, as another one met with blade of Moonlight.

A third one growled behind them, but she knew that one was there and turned around before it could jump on her. Inhaling, she concentrated all her strength on her free leg and, exhaling with a shout, she stretched it out on the dinosaur’s nose. It vanished into dust and got sucked up by one of the many spheres in the totem.

Not sure how to react to the unexpected outcome the crowd acted out all kinds of praise while the announcer went wild with her move.

I just kicked a dinosaur in the face…

Noticing Jack was watching her above his shoulder made her feel even better, but the sight around her hadn’t changed and he was quick to look away and push forward to his target. The halberdier was dyed red with the blood of bodies pilling up by his Summoner. As he pulled it out from a raptor turning to dust, he noticed Jack and Yana coming close and spat out to the sand.

“What do you kids want? Can’t you see I’m-“

He was forced to cut the sentence short and block a slash from the scythe, a vein popping up in his forehead from the disrespect and the speed of the attack, and before Yana could find an opening to help him, Jack feinted an attack and grabbed hold of the halberdier’s handle that was being thrown at him. The Summoner watched in horror, as the mistake he thought the kid had made shattered his weapon.

“What?!”

And, using the moment in which he froze, Jack landed a clean blow to his head.

While the hidan from the halberdier was released and took shape, another Summoner approached Yana from behind, wearing a mischievous smile and a sword so plain it could pass as a normal weapon.

“Come on now, princess, you don’t need that guy. I’ll give you some good time, you’ll see,” he said beckoning her with his head and his free hand.

You wish, shit face, she thought taking a stance and looking for spots where she could hit him.

In the blink of an eye the man attacked her side. With a spin, Yana dodged back the slice and got in position to punch his unprotected chin. The man took two steps back and grit his teeth, but before he could make another move, Jack’s handle was brought down on his head, making him faint as well. The scythe was now blue, reflecting light as if made of water, with a white handle with blue and green engravings and a shadow that pulled Yana’s gaze into it.

Suddenly the shadow was gone, as Jack used the curved blade of Moonlight to catch the boomerang as it flew by. It bounced on the blade and fell on the sand a few feet away. Its Summoner, sporting a light leather piece and leggings, marched on to retrieve it, while another one, with the twin-bladed axe, noticing what had happened, rushed to grab it first. The moment he touched it spikes erupted from the weapon, piercing his hand, and unleashing a scream that made the stands vibrate even harder.

Unaffected by it all, Jack walked over to the man, shut him up with another blow to the head and bent down to grab the boomerang in his gloved hand. Seeing his weapon be rendered useless, the boomerang’s Summoner took a spear from the sand and fought off the raptors that tried to take advantage of his moment of weakness.

Yana rushed to Jack’s side, trying to assess what was still left while he stood at the ready to absorb the two new Bugs into his own weapon. There were a few dinosaurs still on the loose, acting more calmly and strategically, surrounding, growling at the remaining handful of men, who despite it all hadn’t lost a bit of their composure. Most of the warriors that had agreed to participate in that bloody spectacle were collapsed on the sand.

A glimpse of two figures anyone would be able to recognize made her look over to what Jack was facing: a triceratops with a single horn and a stegosaur with short spines, both no bigger than a person.

Another presence shifted her attention from the dinosaurs. She turned to find another raptor, its mouth opening, pouncing straight towards Jack, who, focused on the Bugged hidan in front of him, hadn’t seen it.

“Get down!”

She pulled up her right foot against the raptor’s face, and reacting to her shout, Jack ducked. Her feet skimmed the surface of his hair to land a clean hit on the reptile’s nose, making it vanish.

The sound of metal cutting through flesh made them quickly look back up. The Summoner with a stolen spear fell on the ground, grasping his stomach, as another man, coated in a heavy full-plate and helmet with the visor up turned towards them. A spiked brown mace made of reptilian scales sprouted from his hands.

“You kids are the only ones left?” he said to himself with a smile, thinking that it would be the easiest victory ever bestowed upon him. When in range, he swung down the mace on Jack’s head, and as he dodged Yana took the chance to punch him on the chin. Before he could strike back Jack slashed through one of his arms, and then both hit the opposite sides of his unprotected flanks, one with her boot and one with the handle of the scythe.

As the man collapsed, Yana looked up to make sure that her feeling was correct. They were the only ones left standing. There wasn’t even a single dinosaur left roaming around.

“Amazing! The pair of Jack Speaker and the barbarian princess survived the venatio and ended it in style! What an unexpected surprise!” Yana took a moment to question this decision of calling her “barbarian princess”, but something in the back of her mind told her it wasn’t that bad of a title.

“You sure made me eat my words back there,” Jack said, putting a hand over her shoulder. There was a slight smile back on his face. “You’re not half-bad after all.”

“Thanks. You’re pretty good yourself,” she answered, panting.

“I don’t know why you didn’t believe me the first time I said it,” he answered with a perfectly straight face, making her smile readily disappeared.

“And now we’ll have to bid goodbye to our princess, as the winner will participate in a battle of honour against your very own Champion of Bulgarl Coliseum, Marley!”

While they talked, the man who had first cuffed them had entered the arena. He kneeled and, without a word, removed the nail that closed the cuffs on both their ankles, taking the entire contraption with him.

“I got this,” Jack said waving his hand to Yana with an expression close to amusement. She quickly turned around, picked up her jacket and left the arena. Ready to enter was another young man, in armour with colour and shine of silver, his pale skin shinning in the transition between the lights of the arena and the shadow of the backstage, and his eyes fiercely focused only in the opponent in front of him, which was perfect for Yana – he didn’t seem to notice, or even care, that she was the one he had tried to abduct.

“Hey, that’s one of the guys we beat before,” Sofia said as the audience clapped Yana’s exit.

“Mas da última vez tínhamos a Moonlight,” Ricardo said.

“Se calhar o Jack usa-a agora também.”

“Com aquela gente toda a ver?”

“Qual é o problema?”

“No one else has used hidan up until this point…”

The siblings turned back to David, stopping their argument, and arriving to the conclusion that what he had just said was true.

“We were talking about that just now,” Sofia said. “Jack can call Moonlight if he needs her help to beat that guy, like last time, right?”

“That’s the problem. Why hasn’t anyone else done the same thing? Why don’t they call the hidan inside their weapons to fight with them, or for them?”

“Because Jack’s the main character,” Ricardo said, absolutely sure of himself. “That’s his power.”

“Yeah, no one else can use the main character’s power,” Sofia said. “And even if they can, it’s never as strong anyway.”

The Champion stomped into the arena as soon as Yana crossed the gates, changing the sphere clutched in his palm into a new set of claws that made his hand look like the paws of a golden dinosaur. Without the shadow, however, they looked far less intimidating than the ones Yana remembered. The crowd welcomed the Champion enthusiastically, while the red-haired climbed up the step and looked over the wooden wall, ending up near a small group of young women that couldn’t help but glance at her and whisper maliciously to each other.

Marley stopped and made a defensive stance just outside the range of Moonlight’s blade. Jack answered the same way, holding the scythe with both hands with the handle positioned just at the right angle to deflect any incoming attack at his torso and legs, and spreading his feet so he could better reposition himself when the time came.

“I hope you remember me, you little shit,” Marley spat, sounding somewhat composed for someone who had suffered such a fresh loss.

“I tend to forget people that get trashed by me.”

“Even better,” he answered, casting a menacing grimace at Jack. “Then I’ll burn myself in your memory to the point you’ll have nightmares about this day. You don’t have that paka anymore. You don’t have the element of surprise either, I know exactly what you can do this time,” he continued as he could get no reaction out of his foe.

“Do you really?”

Without another word Marley charged forward with his claws, meeting Jack’s scythe and making the crowd roar in delight. With each attack, cut, stab and slash, again and again only the melody of metal clashing on metal could be heard. Marley attacked with precision and speed, without ever stopping his flawless movement, while Jack answered without making a movement that was not necessary, attacking only when the openings were there. It became clear for Yana in just in first few seconds of the fight who was in control.

One of the hook shaped claws got itself attached to the long handle of Jack’s scythe. Marley quickly attached the second one, freezing the weapon’s movement altogether, and pushed the claws towards the scaled joints of Jack’s armour. He immediately ducked under the handle and used his foe’s momentum to throw him above his head. Marley fell on the sound with a grunt while Jack let go of the scythe and straightened up, kicked him before he could get up and retrieved his weapon. Marley rolled and prepared to get up, but fell the tip of the scythe in the back of his neck and froze where he lay.

A murmur was born from the stands that grew in intensity and speed as more and more people joined in and the Coliseum Master rose from his seat, getting immediately illuminated by his own spotlight.

“Kill, kill, kill.”

Yana couldn’t help but feel a knot forming in her stomach once she looked back at Jack and Marley and realized what was going to happen should the Master decide to go with the audience’s wishes. He held his fist in front of him and put his thumb to the side, letting the chant grow until it became impossible to hear one’s thoughts.

In a swift motion he flipped his thumb up, and the audience silenced, not suddenly as if the plugs had been cut off from them, but losing their energy to the confusion they looked at each other with.

Without any sort of hesitation or confusion, as per the Master’s order, Jack flipped the scythe sideways and dealt a final blow to Marley head, leaving him unconscious on the sand.

The scythe turned back into a sphere, and he walked out of the arena.

“W-well, our Master decided to be merciful!” echoed the announcer’s voice, sounding just as confused and surprised with his decision as the rest of the audience. “It is quite the unexpected ending for a most surprising day in our arena! Thank you for joining in our show today and I hope we can all see you again in the future!”

But, as the lights were brought up in the whole Coliseum, there was no clapping or booing to answer the final words of the show. People simply got up and left, talking to each other with bored and tired expressions, as if all of their energy had been collected in one fell swoop by the Master’s thumb.

As she watched the emptying stands and Jack made his way backstage, a hand squeezed Yana’s arm to the point of sending a jolt of pain to her brain.

“You’re coming with us now,” said the hand’s owner, another man with the brown shirt and jeans all workers in the Coliseum wore. However, he also held a very familiar and very threatening gun at his side, stopping whatever movement Yana had planned to do to free herself from his grasp.

“I thought Jack said there weren’t guns in his world,” Sofia said turning around to David, who had already reached for his phone.

“That doesn’t look like a hidan weapon,” he answered while Yana let herself be dragged by the thug, with another man closing the trail. She turned around for a moment to check if the gun was visible against her back and the knot on her stomach grew bigger.

“Hey, that guy saw it, he’s going to call the cops,” Ricardo said pointing to another worker who looked directly at Yana’s back, and quickly turned forward and vanished from view.

“No, he’s not, they’ll shoot him if he does.”

“He has to call them. They’ll have a SWAT unit go in and they’ll kill all the bad guys and put them in jail.”

“You can’t put someone who’s dead in jail, Ricardo.”

“…Yes, you can.”

“Jack’s gonna notice Yana’s gone, anyway,” said Sofia turning back to the television. The men were releasing Yana into a large office located directly below the Master’s balcony, telling her to wait there and closing the doors behind them. “And then he’ll save her.”

“Hopefully,” David finished, still fiddling with his phone and thinking if he wasn’t going to ask for help when it would be too late.

That room had an entirely different feel to it - you might as well say it was from this world. It wasn’t smelly, it was clean and well-kept, and everything was in its proper place. A metal figurine of a deer and various expensive looking fountain pens on their display sat atop a large desk with a computer screen built into it. Behind the desk, a window showed ragged canyons through its half-closed blinds, and let in the heat of the desert that was quickly neutered by a potent and silent white AC system hidden on top of one of twin wooden shelves, containing books of incomprehensible writing, and ornaments that, in one way or another, reminded Yana of gladiators, fights, or hidden concepts the innocent part of her brain did not want to understand just yet.

She was about to pick up one of the books to find if she could get some grasp of its contents when the door opened, making her quickly turn around and pretend she hadn’t touched anything. Up close, the Master of Bulgarl Coliseum was even bigger than she had pictured him, and she barely noticed the short hair on the back of his head. However, his eyes bore the serenity of a calm sea, and for a moment she was able to believe he was not a savage beast, unlike his subordinates.

Until he was standing on the other side of his desk, he acted like Yana didn’t exist, despite her staring at him as he walked from one end of his office to the other. When he was set, with his arms rested behind his back and a perfect posture, he looked directly at the girl’s grey eyes, and she found herself feeling like a mouse standing up to a tiger.

“What did you think of the last fight that you just saw?” he asked, deep like a soothing baritone.

“It might have looked fairly balanced until the Champion made that last mistake,” she said taking care to choose her words. “But Jack was in control during the entire fight. He decided when the Champion attacked, when he blocked, and in his general movement. It was impossible for him to win.”

“What’s your name?”

“Yana Natvisky, sir,” she said as naturally as if he had been her karate sensei all along.

“Where do you train?”

“It’s a small school near my home, sir,” she answered, trying not to lie, but also not disclose the whole truth.

“What’s your weapon?”

“My hidan weapon? It’s a flute, sir.”

The Master raised an eyebrow, a gesture with more curiosity than doubt put into it. “An instrument?”

“Yes, sir.”

Without ever taking his eyes off her, the huge man retreated into his mind for a moment before taking a quick decision.

“I want you to train under my Coliseum,” he said focusing his entire attention on her again. Such a request had to mean Yana’s potential was nowhere near anything she had ever imagined. “You’ll make a remarkable Summoner.”

“I am honoured, sir, but my family is waiting for me back home,” she answered, fully aware it was impossible for her to agree to that request.

“Not now, of course. You’re still undergoing mandatory education, correct? No, I want you to come when you’re done with that,” he said, making school sound like nothing more than a petty nuisance.

“I still have to decline, sir,” she continued. “I don’t plan on becoming a Summoner, I just practice kara- I mean, I just practice martial arts as a hobby.”

“A hobby…” he murmured while she was finishing her sentence. He looked down and shook his head in disappointment. “You Ladense are so full of yourselves…”

Ladense? Where did I- Lado, the country they were talking about at the beginning of the games. They think I’m from there.

“My Champion and another of my subordinates picked you up on Pigana Square because, according to them, you saw something no one should be able to see,” he said in a tone indicating that the friendly part of the inquiry was over. “I will only ask you once.”

However, before any questions had been asked, there was a knock on the door. A slight relief allowed Yana to realize just how stiff how her muscles had become just due to the man’s slight change of tone while he turned to the door and ordered the person on the other side to enter. Jack quickly obeyed, already out of his armour and with his rucksack by his right shoulder, closing the door behind him and making a slight bow with his right fist planted on his chest.

“Great Master.”

“I was hoping to get your insight on something I was about to ask this girl,” he said.

I just told you my name.

“My subordinates claim you interfered with the orders I gave them regarding her.”

“With all due respect, Master, if you wish to see your orders through, you should find subordinates that don’t lose to the first transient that stands up against them.”

Something that most people would take as an insult was something that the Master welcomed with a smile. “Jack Speaker, you are the best kid I’ve ever seen come out of Kuchinja’s cave. He got the best out of me this time, I’ll give him that.”

“I believe I got the best out of you both, Master.”

“You did blow up Team Steel’s headquarters.”

“Yes I did, Master.”

“And you stole that from them,” he said, pointing at Jack’s glove. “A device linked to a nervous unit, capable of breaking the core of any weapon and release the hidan inside.”

“Your perception skills are commendable, Master,” he answered without changing his empty expression or monotone.

“You stole the Champion’s leaf kale, not to mention an earth farasi and three hidan in the venatio, two of them worthless in comparison. My subordinates claim that the girl started screaming when she saw their weapons, and you jumped in later to take both the hidan they contained,” he said, keeping a calm voice but making Yana feel that they were being cornered at the same time. “You aren’t targeting valuable hidan. You’re targeting Bugs. And she can see them. Am I right, girl?”

When he turned to her, she couldn’t help but look down at a detail on his desk, trying to avoid the burning intensity in his eye.

“More fascinating than that, however, is the fact that you are currently carrying six hidan in the same weapon without breaking a sweat,” the Master continued, turning to Jack once more. “And those are only the ones I’m aware of. Not to mention how you dissected my Champion’s fighting style in front of an audience the very first time you set foot in a Coliseum. That wasn’t just Kuchinja’s work. No one’s that good, not even him.”

A glance let Yana see a slight twitch on Jack’s face.

“However, I have to let you go for now,” he said with a sigh, letting his threatening expression fade away. “I don’t want to lose my Coliseum today. We’ve found several of them, but we haven’t disarmed all of the bombs just yet.”

“Bombs?” Yana thought out loud.

“Shut up,” Jack ordered.

“Using panya to spread them… the Hunter’s ingenuity is something that never ceases to surprise me,” the Master said before Yana could answer back to Jack. He pulled up a drawer on his desk, took a bunch of salmon-coloured bills from it and handed it over. “When you see him tell him his future looks bloody and painful.”

“I will,” Jack said, taking the money and putting it in his rucksack. Then he made a slight bow and, signalling Yana to follow him, left the office.

“What the hell was that all about?” Yana asked without hiding her panic as they crossed another worker going towards the office, one easily capable of intimidating just as much as the Coliseum Master. “Bombs? What bombs? What did he mean with that hidan thing?”

“Calm down!” he shouted, rubbing his ear as if it her yelling was actually painful to him. “Damn, you’re noisy…”

“How am I not supposed to be? There’re bombs in this place!”

“They aren’t going to blow up,” he said as they pushed a door on the outskirts of the arena and entered the inner corridors of the Coliseum. “Vandro’s the one with the trigger, and I owe him.”

“Oh, he’s only going to blow it up after we leave. That makes everything just fine.”

“Nothing’s going to blow up.”

“This coming from the person that blew up the place where he used to train.”

In a sudden movement Jack slammed his hand on the wall, blocking the hallway, and turned to face her directly.

“Our boss lied to us. All of us. He kept telling bullshit about becoming better, discarding everything and mastering yourself, only to get this, and use it to steal better hidan for our weapons,” he said raising his gloved hand.

“And don’t you think you overreacted a little?”

“I was the only one who had the nerve to stand up against him. I did the right thing.”

Then he lowered his arm and the two of them crossed the next door to the outside hall. Most of the audience was already gone, but some groups had been left behind, talking, mocking each other and even a group of three people punching, kicking and shouting for the entertainment of a small crowd around them.

“How can you be so sure that you’ve done the right thing when you don’t even know your own name?” she asked, starting to feel sick of the world she had been kicked into.

“What does that have to do with anything?” he asked as they stepped into the scorching afternoon sun.

“Everything!” she yelled, making him turn around for an explanation. “What happened to your parents, Jack? Didn’t they teach you about this kind of stuff?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

Immediately drawing a comparison to other stories she knew, Yana identified his problem.

“You have amnesia?”

“First thing I know I was lying in the infirmary in Team Steel’s base back when I was ten. Everything before that is gone,” then he turned to the street and started moving again. “Let’s get going before Vandro gets pissed at us.”

Putting on her jacket, immediately feeling its effects in minimizing the sun’s heat, Yana reflected on her unwilling partner’s actions. Amnesia in tales she knew about were character traits used to mask an unforgivable action and prepare a meaningful breakdown somewhere in the future, but the fact that Jack had destroyed the one place he remembered only made it that much worse.

For a while she waited for an ear-shattering sound and a hot shockwave that would knock down everyone and everything on its path but, until it left their sights, Bulgarl’s Coliseum was left intact.

***

After long minutes of transferring between links and links of medan, Seli reached her destination, taking her normal shape and walking a couple of feet until she was standing next to your ordinary stone. Any measuring system being capable of detecting fields and changes of supernatural quality would have gone berserk in its presence.

Focusing her attention on the rock, Seli spoke in a language only the being inside of it would have been able to comprehend.

“Hello, dear sister. Can you hear me?”

An almost imperceptible line of dust formed on top of the rock, taking the shape of a pair of void, deep eyes.

WHAT

“Something is happening, sister. The presence of the Unknown is gone.”

THEIR PRESENCE IS TENUOUS AT BEST

“I am well aware of that. However, I do not fell anything from them.”

A few moments of silence followed while the being - Lissandra, by the way - studied the subtleties around them.

THERE IS A GUARDIAN SPIRIT TRAPPED BETWEEN WORLDS

“That is why I need your help. I cannot send it home by myself. Can you assist me?”

The dust became thicker as the eyes rose from the stone, dragging a head, a body, two arms and two legs with them. Now, if the same, stoic person that looked and described Seli was to look and describe Lissandra, they would say something in the lines of:

“Well, that’s a… purple… thing, that has a remotely humanoid shape.”

Then they would fall into an understandable sense of panic and run.

WE SHOULD GO