It was dark, wherever she was being sent to. Large trees were the only things she could make out. Outside? I'm outside?! Not long after, the rest of her body was teleported into the forest. From the corner of her eye Yara spotted the first woman to be teleported out.

"Hello? Um.. konnichiwa?" Yara approached the woman in the dark. No response. Something was off. As she got closer a faint crunching noise came from the other woman.

*Crunch, crunch, crunch* A giant, man faced spider was eating at the woman's face as she was held up by thin webbing. Its long mandibles dripped with blood as the last twitches of the woman's life ceased. A shriek escaped Yara's lips. The crunching stopped as the monstrous spider finally noticed her. It turned its weirdly human-like head and grinned.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!", she yelled. Yara began to walk backwards with the pistol aimed shakily at the monster. "I have a gun! Don't get near me!"

Above her, the tree branches rustled from what at first she assumed was wind, but to her horror she could make out the bright red and yellow bodies of more of those spiders.

Freaking out now, Yara jogged past another passenger who was halfway transported. She alternated between watching the treetops and where she was stepping. She was lucky that the night was a full moon or there very well could have been no light at all in the dense bush.

After making it past a particularly gnarled old tree, Yara's sneaker caught on something that wrapped around her ankle, causing her to almost fall. Under the canopy of the tree it was hard to make out what was holding her. She ran her fingers over the obstruction. It was silky to the touch, while also producing a sticky residue. Is-is this a spider's web…

A slight, scuttling sound made its way from the other side of the old tree, while Yara tugged against the sticky thread. She tried to ignore it, now near frantic as she pulled. She already knew what was there. A man faced spider looked down at her with its 8 humanlike eyes. The sounds that came out of it, Yara could almost swear it was chuckling at her.

I'm not getting out of this quickly! I need to fight! She brought up the GANTZ pistol. Maybe the gun didn't have a chamber because it was preloaded with limited ammo, was a thought Yara had had earlier. Please work! She pulled the top trigger.

The small back screen of the gun lit up with what looked like an x-ray. The bright flash briefly blinded her. She could see the inside of the spider's body. It had no bones, but an exoskeleton. With their size, wouldn't that make the spiders really fragile?

Yara didn't get much more time to think about it, as the monster leaped straight down on top of her head. It was surprisingly light. She flailed her head side-to-side hoping to knock it off while screaming her lungs out. This did not deter the spider in any way; its legs were coated in the same sticky substance as its webs.

I would have rather died in the airplane than this!

In a last ditch effort before being eaten, Yara braced herself on the side of the tree, lowered her head and rammed the spider and the top of her skull into the tree trunk. A liquid squelching noise erupted above her, along with a long 'eeeee!', coming from the spider. It was dead. The legs of the spider still attached to her head fidgeted.

Yara, now covered in greenish-yellow spider guts, took a minute to recover. She briefly worried that the screaming she did earlier would bring more, but from the direction she had run from she could hear even louder screaming, coming from multiple people. Most of the spiders were more than likely focused on them. She wondered if running and abandoning the others was the right thing to do now.

She took off the shoe of the ankle that was trapped. Slipping out of her sock, Yara easily freed herself from the webbing before putting the shoe back on. Looking back one more time at the place she had just come from, she decided to move forward. I'll look for help! I'm not leaving them to die! I'm looking for help!

I need to avoid the trees, more spiders could swoop down at any time. She thought it best to look for the paths with the most light. If there was more light it meant less branches and webbed roots that they could ambush from. After a little more jogging, she came across a dirt path, a well used walking trail! To the sides of the trail the trees were cut back, perfect for avoiding the man eating spiders.

This must be a park! If I follow this, I might find a way back to civilization!

She ran down the trail in excitement. Maybe this was all just some strange TV show and she could go home soon! Not long after walking down the path, she noticed a long low sound. It was piercing and metallic. Nothing like what one would expect coming from the woods. Yara stopped dead in her tracks. She got a knot in her stomach. Something's not right…

She couldn't place where the sound was coming from. She took a step forward and the sound got louder. Taking a step back dimmed it somewhat. Yara kept taking steps back, til the piercing tone ceased.

Wh-what was that? The young woman spun around in a circle looking for what it could have been coming from. But it was just her and the trees as far as she could see. The thought occurred to her that a different type of monster could be making the sound.

Yara tried to thoroughly evaluate the situation. Before now she had been running on adrenaline and instincts. She had died, she was sure of it. A mundane flight boarding isn't something a person would hallucinate. Then again, this could all be a really detailed dream and she was sleeping peacefully on the plane.

She thought back to the white room with the black ball. Maybe it was Hell's waiting room and the spider's were part of everyone's eternal punishment? Yara let out a dry laugh. What the did I do to deserve this…

Memories of the people screaming as she ran away flashed in her mind. She had left them behind, knowing most didn't have a gun like she did. Is that why, because I'm being a coward? She sighed. She really didn't want to go back. But somehow going forward terrified her.

Those guys, those Japanese guys in the black suits. They know something. They had weapons too. If I can find one of them and stick with them, maybe things will be safer?

She looked at her gun again. It hadn't fired properly when she had needed it. Was there a safety feature or was it really just an x-ray machine? Yara pointed it at a nearby tree trunk. She pulled the bottom trigger this time, or at least she tried. The trigger wouldn't budge.

There has got to be a safety unlock! Maybe… She pulled both triggers at once. The gun lit up with blue lights and a powerful recoil radiated up Yara's arms. Then nothing. The tree was intact. Yara squinted at the tree, looking for any damage. Just as she began to walk towards the tree to examine it closer, the middle burst into flying bark and wood chunks. Yara had managed to close her eyes in time but her hair was covered in wood chips and some splinters dug into her arms.

"Ow, what happened?", Yara said as she pulled out a particularly long wood piece from her spider blood encrusted hair.

The damage to the tree was far and above what Yara thought it was going to do, now toppled over with the middle completely gone. It was not a very thick tree, but it was wider than any of the spiders she'd seen. They would be obliterated by the gun's blast. But what the heck was that delay? That was a good 10 seconds of nothing happening! How am I supposed to hit a moving target?!

She finished pulling out most of the splinters and shaking out her hair. Yara resolved herself to go and find the others, especially the mysterious males in the black suits. If they knew how to use their guns properly, the spiders would be no problem for them.

She retraced her steps to where she thought she had come from. That was easier said than done, with the darkness and the unfamiliar territory. Not to mention, she still had to be on high alert for more monsters. She eventually found the old gnarled tree she had tripped over, but she had come at it from the other side. How did I? Ugh. I'm lost aren't I?

About to walk around it, Yara heard voices.

"That's most of the weak ones."

"It's a race to kill the boss then?"

"Nishi, finish off the small ones will you?"

"*Tsk* Do it yourself!"

A group of men were laughing. Yara had an inkling of who they were. She raced to find them in an open clearing. The five of them were surrounded by corpses, both human and spider. There were a handful of other survivors too, hunched over and scared. As Yara broke into the clearing, two of the men pointed their guns at her.

"What?! Woah, woah!", Yara raised both of her hands in the air. The two, once they saw it was a person, nonchalantly put their guns away. Yara, still with her hands up, walked up to the group.

She wanted to ask them so many questions. Namely what the hell was going on. She saw now that her hunch had been right. All of the older men and the high-schooler, Izumi, wore their black suits openly now. It was skin tight and circular metal knobs imbetted the suit. Yara couldn't help but notice how form fitted the black material was. They likely had no underwear on. Wait, don't think about that!

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The middle-schooler, Nishi, still wore his normal clothes over his suit. Some of the metal pieces glowed blue through his pullover. He grumbled to himself and started to walk away from the group. Yara's anxiety spiked, as far as she knew, he was the only one who knew English. Just say something to him, anything!

"Wait! Hang on, please!" Yara caught up to Nishi. He had already made it up to the tree line opposite where Yara had come in from.

"And what do you want?" Nishi wasn't yelling at her necessarily, but there was a quiet rage in his words, his body language stiff and hostile. Yara could feel herself clamming up.

"You know what's going on right?" Yara looked to the side of her rather than at Nishi. Normally she made a habit of looking at a person's hands while talking, but the boy was already a half a head shorter than her. She didn't want to accidentally meet his angry gaze.

Nishi made a dissatisfied mumble while turning away. "I don't have time for this." He stated before messing with a dial that was hidden under his suit's wrist. A flash of electricity enveloped him. One moment he was there, next he popped out of existence.

Hmm? Huh?! Yara looked at the spot where he once was. Nothing? But on closer inspection she could still hear his breathing. An invisibility suit! She watched as the foliage sank down from Nishi's steps. He walked off, deeper into the woods. How does it work? There's no shadow.

Behind her, the other suited hunters also started to walk off in opposite directions from each other. She couldn't understand why they would separate. Surely, they would be safer together and they were leaving everyone else defenseless. This left only her and five other survivors in the clearing. Was this really all that was left of a plane full of people? If it is, most of the bodies are missing.

Yara noticed a young man around her own age holding and rocking a middle-aged woman. The woman had a large purple swelling, the size of a grapefruit, growing out of her neck. The young man whispered, 'mom, mom!', under his breath.

"Excuse me, what happened here?"

He looked up with tears in his eyes. "The men in black provoked the spiders into attacking them, but my mom, she was bitten! It made her body go limp. She's not breathing right." His mom was only taking small sharp breaths between long stretches. The spider bites must have had some sort of paralyzing venom. Yara was lucky she avoided being bit during her altercation.

The man sobbed so hard his body shook. Yara felt uncomfortable not knowing what to do in the situation. She had no medical training to help the mother and no ideas on how to calm down the son. She was sure anything she said would make the problem worse. After a long pause Yara said the first thing she could think of.

"I found a park trail earlier. Maybe you could follow it and find a ranger or cabin with first-aid supplies?" She had no idea if Japan had emergency supply cabins or even park rangers like in the US, but it was the best she could come up with. Though she was still concerned about the metal ringing from earlier. She hoped that whatever it was had passed by now.

"Could you come with me? You remember where that path was right?", the son's face lit up with hope.

Hell no! Frick that! Is what Yara wanted to say.

"Uhh-h, s-sure… Can you give me a minute?", she answered.

The other three in the clearing seemed fine. To Yara's surprise it looked like there were actually more survivors in the clearing besides them, more victims of the venom that could barely move. Searching around a bit more, she saw that one of the dead bodies held the same model of gun she had.

No one else wanted to leave the clearing, so Yara gave the second gun to an able-bodied older man and showed him how to fire it. She hoped that would be enough to protect everyone here. From the way the black suited men were acting, Yara doubted they would be coming back to help them. No pressure. Um, which way did I come from again…

She asked the other people what way she had entered from and got two different answers. One said from the east and the other north-east. She, decided to walk into the middle of the two directions. Surely if one direction was right, the trail would pop back up coming from it diagonally. It just might take a little longer…

So hesitantly, off she went. The son carrying his mother followed behind her. The forest seemed quieter than before. No more distant rustling of the spider monsters. The suited men really had killed off most of them.

The farther they walked, the less that she recognized. None of the surroundings looked familiar. Yara eventually stopped. Thinking about it now, she realized that if the trail veered or looped back they might never find the path.

Why did I have to open my stupid mouth!

"Why did we stop?", asked the son.

Yara shook her head. "I thought we would have found the path by now."

"Are you saying we're lost?!"

She didn't answer. A grim regretful look was plastered on her face. The son, angry, declared that he would keep looking and continued forward now running. Yara tried to follow, not far behind. Soon after, Yara heard the low ringing again.

"Wait! STOP, STOP!", but the son kept going. Right as he was unknowingly on the precipice of death, someone yanked him back.

Yara recognized the long black hair before anything else. Izumi's grip held unnaturally strong onto the son's shoulder. In his other hand he held a web covered sword.

"You should listen to the girl.", his voice cold.

"You! You're the one that caused this!", the son yelled back, referring to his mother. Izumi glanced quickly down at the woman before subtly rolling his eyes.

"That's an easy fix. Help me with something and she'll be fine."

"And why should I believe you?!", the son about to go on a tirade was interrupted by Yara.

"Wait, wait, what did you need help with exactly? You guys in the suits seem to have everything covered."

"I need someone to be bait."

"Bait?"

Izumi nodded. He led the group to a clump of trees that was wrapped from top to bottom in spider's silk. In the upper branches several human bodies were smothered in the webs and hanging haphazardly.

"One of you needs to bring the last spider out of hiding. My sword can't cut the webbing. I tried to kill her once. She's too scared to attack me now."

"Couldn't you shoot down the trees?", asked Yara.

"What! You can't shoot the trees! There are people in them!", said the son.

"That would take too long. There's a time limit.", said Izumi. Yara started to inquire about the time limit, when Izumi stopped her.

"Bring out the boss and I'll kill her. Do that and I'll answer your questions after."

Yara knew it was the right thing to do. After leading the other two on a wild goose chase, it was only right she be the one to take the dangerous mission. But that didn't mean that she wasn't scared and trying to think of a way out of it. She clutched her gun.

He said that he could cure the mom, right? So if I'm bitten too, I'll be fine…

Yara walked up to the closest web covered tree and grabbed at the netting with her free hand. It clung to her, taking a lot of strength to get free from it. She looked back seeing Izumi watching intently.

"Ahhh, oh no, I'm stuck to the tree, what should I do?" Her acting was a bit flat, but that didn't seem to matter to the large thumping coming up behind her.

Leaning over a tall wall of silk stood a massive woman, well over 3 meters tall. She had the same bulging eyes of the smaller spiders and a human torso that was covered in coarse dark hair. The spider woman had multiple human arms. She also had several arachnid legs.

The mission's boss leaped over her silk trap, her arms outstretched to grab up Yara. Yara flinched back in terror. Just before the spider could grasp her, Izumi sliced off the boss's hand. He was so fast that Yara barely caught the movement.

Shrieking in pain, the monster tried to escape back into her home. This time, Izumi was ready. Yara watched in amazement as his sword extended and sliced the she-spider's bottom set of legs.

"Kaaaaaaahhh!" The spider boss thrashed on the ground. Desperate now, the boss shot out webs from her spinnerette. The thin white threads covered both Izumi and Yara. It tangled between the both of them.

Izumi, looking to get this over with quickly, swung his sword towards the she-spider's head. What he didn't realize was that the threads stuck to his arm were also stuck to Yara. She was yanked along with the swing and Izumi lost most of his momentum, only managing a shallow cut on her scalp.

The boss laughed gleefully upon seeing this. She had the upper hand now. Using her three good arms, the boss squeezed her hands around Izumi. He struggled to get away, dropping his sword. The combination of the webs glueing his limbs to his sides and the giant woman's grip was too much even with the power of his suit.

Lying prone on the ground from being yanked, Yara saw something other than deadpan apathy on Izumi's face. Shock? A hint of fear? Wiggling into a better position, Yara aimed up her pistol at the spider. Here goes nothing!

The gun lit up blue and Yara's arms were jolted back from the shock. For several seconds, nothing. The monster was still squeezing while Izumi slowly tried prying her fingers off. Then boom!

Yellow-green blood covered Yara's face and eyes. The shot had almost bisected the spider woman's top half from her spider legs. Her torso toppled backwards, taking Izumi with it. The monster woman was still alive, just barely. She took in shaky breaths.

Izumi wrangled out from her arms, now acting unfazed. He picked up his fallen sword, ready to finally make the kill. When out of the blue, the now distinct sound of the GANTZ pistol rang out. Izumi jumped back a bit, instinctively. Yara watched as the spider's head expanded before bursting into brain matter and exoskeleton chunks.

Izumi quickly turned towards Yara, "Did I say you could kill her?" Izumi's tone was flat, but he was visibly pissed.

"That wasn't me!"

From the small pocket of trees across from them, Nishi walked out from what looked like flashes of lightning. Nonchalantly, the boy strolled up to the two, one hand deep in his pocket and the other holding his gun. He took in the sight of the dead body in front of them with a slight smile. The look he was giving it reminded Yara of someone admiring a beautiful scenery. What's up with this kid?

"I should have known." , Izumi stood over Nishi, the tall high-schooler dwarfing the somewhat small middle-schooler. "You know better than to take my kills."

There was a slight twitch of panic on Nishi's face before being quickly replaced with a confident smirk. "You looked like you needed help. Didn't think I would ever see you caught off guard."

At that remark Izumi gave Nishi a hard push and the young teen fell on his ass. Izumi aimed his sword down to Nishi's chest. "Don't try that again. We aren't friends. Never get in the way of my points. Do you understand?"

Nishi felt hot in the face but gave a curt nod. He stared down at the ground, not making any attempt to get up. Izumi brought his sword up to tap Nishi on the chin, forcing the younger teen to look at him before putting the sword away entirely.

"I mean it."

Nishi grimaced at the words but continued to say nothing. Once Izumi turned around a hot fury shook through Nishi's body. His brows knit and he grit his teeth. Yara, who had watched this all go down, accidentally made eye contact with the boy. There was a long awkward pause between the two just staring at each other.

“Um, are y-” before she could finish the thought, Nishi tsked and got up from the ground. He brushed past her with a huff.

I was sure he was going to yell at me. Guess the argument had nothing to do with me…

A large crack came from the forest. Breaking from the treeline was the son, still carrying his mother. He ran up to Izumi, demanding that his mother be cured now. Nishi watched the mother/son pair intently. He was stone faced, but his body was tense.

“Just wait a bit. It'll happen soon.”, said Izumi.

“What'll happen?”, just as the son began to ask, the top of his skull began sinking away into the same blue light that brought them there.

“That'll happen” Soon they were gone. It didn't take long before one by one, Yara, Izumi, and Nishi were taken back to the empty apartment.