Sleep, eat, school, eat, game, and then sleep again. That was Sanji’s existence, day in day out he simply got by. People at school were nice enough, his parents were nice enough, but they lived far away from his student accommodations, and he wasn’t the type to keep many friends. If any at all. Life was okay, just okay.
Then there was the truck accident.
Sanji was walking home from school as he did every day, the sky orange with the dimming sun overhead. He came up to one of the busiest streets in the city, which he always had to cross, and he stopped to wait for the crosslight sign like any normal, logical person. He wasn’t dumb enough to blindly walk out into traffic and get hit by some inattentive pilot of a vehicular projectile.
A giggle and laugh made Sanji turn around. There was the strangest girl he had ever seen- she was short, black haired, and wearing a daringly short black skirt paired with an equally small blue top. All sorts of bracelets and necklaces jangled as she moved along, she had in headphones and was laughing, twirling, and skipping down the street. This strange girl was the polar opposite of all the same faced, same uniformed girls of his school, and Sanji just stared in surprise at this odd sighting. The other people at the crosslight stared as well.
She came within arms reach of Sanji, and for the briefest of seconds she caught his eyes and gave an enormous smile. Then she was back to nodding, skipping, and twirling to her headphone’s song, and with one particular twirl she stepped right into the street.
Then the truck struck her and sent her sailing across the concrete where she landed eight meters away with a wet thump.
“Ah-” Sanji let out a croak, his jaw hanging limp. The rest of the crowd around him was just as shocked. Nobody moved, nobody did anything even as the truck zoomed off around a corner, fleeing the scene of the crime. The girl twitched a leg and Sanji took that as his queue to run over- but only after looking both ways before crossing the street, of course.
The impact had sent the girl all the way to the curb on the opposite side of the road, and that is where she stayed when Sanji crouched down next to her. One of her earbuds had fallen out and some vaguely techno music pattered out as Sanji reached a tentative hand to perform his best attempt at a medical examination. He poked her in the shoulder.
At once the girl’s eyes shot open, she had brilliant sky blue irises, and one of her pupils might have been bigger than the other, but he had no time to investigate further as she shot bolt upright. Sanji wasn’t exactly an expert on injuries, or on anything much aside from games really, but he still thought it best to suggest, “Maybe you shouldn’t move…”
She jerked her head toward him and gasped, “Were you sent by High Commander Ritten?”
“Um, what?” Sanji looked around, and was astonished to see that pretty much everyone else had moved on aside from a few scattered onlookers who starred with distant interest. Nobody offered help, and Sanji wondered if emergency services had even been contacted.
“I can’t stay in one place for long, otherwise they might find me!” The girl exclaimed and got unsteadily to her feet. She stumbled up onto the sidewalk next to Sanji, her stagger would put a drunk to shame.
“I think you might need some help,” Sanji began, but was cut off by the girl.
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“I’m fine,” she exclaimed. A few drops of blood began to drip down the side of her face. Sanji rose a finger to point them out and tried to interject an um but she was already staggering down the sidewalk, “High Commander Ritten has his minions after me, if I stay to long might... he... get they me.”
She said the last words as if they made any logical sense. Sanji tried to take her arm, “I think you hit your head…”
A siren rang out in the distance and Sanji let out a sigh of relief, an ambulance had been called after all. But if the noise was a relief to Sanji it was poison to the girl. She cried out, shook her arm free from his grasp, and exclaimed, “That must be Ritten’s minions, I need to go! I’ll find you later- I think you’re one of the good ones.”
“You need to go to a hospital,” Sanji tried to explain, but the girl abruptly turned and ran off with surprising dexterity considering her previous stumbling.
He thought about trying to catch her, but his school bags were heavy and he wasn’t exactly an athlete. Plus she ran with the determination of someone chased by a pack of rabid, starving wolves. It only took a moment for her to disappear around a corner.
Sanji frowed, something bad might happen to her being off alone- or rather, something else bad seeing as how she had already been hit by a truck. Well, that was a job for the emergency services… someone else would take care of her.
He went home.
On the remainder of the short walk he crossed yet another street, and at the opposite corner he saw another strange girl. She wore a long black robe and a wide brimmed, flat topped hat as well as a pair of sunglasses that covered most of her face. He didn't pay her much mind aside from wondering if there was a cosplay convention in town, although it did feel like she was watching him from behind those sunglasses. He shrugged and moved on.
Back in his small, messy student apartment Sanji immediately sunk back into the comfort of sitting in front of his computer. As per his routine he first checked the online video feeds, seeing if any of his favorite content creators had put out anything good. It would be nice to turn off his brain and forget the strangeness of the evening.
He watched a couple of playthroughs, and worked his way into some game reviews. Then, as he completed one such video a title in the suggestion list caught his attention. In bold, all caps, and with a video thumbnail portraying an impossibly endowed, bikini clad demon woman the title read: IS HIGH COMMANDER RITTEN THE GREATEST GAME VILLAIN OF THE YEAR??
Uh oh. Sanji clicked the video, but it lead off with thirty seconds of the creator making tit jokes about the demon, so Sanji instead settled for a Google search of ‘High Commander Ritten’
The first article he clicked explained she was the cruel, demon antagonist of the popular new MMO game Cycle of Runes. It states:
“Ritten is the overall villain of the game, having a hand in all quests and subquests- fighting against the player at every turn through a series of cruel and underhanded deeds. She is the final boss and it is expected to take hundreds of players to fight her in the final battle, and years of grinding to reach the required levels in this RPG of epic scale.”
Was that girl seriously talking about the same thing? It’s not really like there are any other High Commander Rittens mentioned anywhere online, it couldn’t just be a coincidence. Did she really hit her head that hard?
Sanji sighed, she wasn’t his problem now, the ambulance people would find her and get her to a hospital. Plus, the Cycle of Runes game did kind of sound fun… Sanji began to download it, at one point it made the screen go black, and Sanji was forced to stare at his own reflection. He was ordinary for sure, but he wasn’t a bad person. He sighed and stood up from the computer.
He put his shoes back on and grabbed a jacket, the sun was down and it had just started to rain. He began to dig through his closet to find an umbrella, fully prepared to spend the night hunting for the strange, confused girl, but then a knock came at his door.
Nobody ever came to visit Sanji, he didn’t have friends like that, he hardly talked to anyone aside from a few vague acquaintances at school and his online friends. He hadn’t ordered any packages, nor did his apartment receive any solicitors- religious or otherwise. Maybe it would be best to ignore the door…
The knock came again, louder this time.
Sanji moved to stand by his door, it didn't take long considering his apartment was no more than a single room with scarcely space for a detached bathroom.
Another knock, and this time a harsh whisper- or really just a loud voice made raspy so as to give the impression of whispering- hissed, “It's me.”
Sanji didn't recognize the voice, but it was female and he could guess who it might belong to. He opened the door.
Before he could so much as say, ‘you need to go to a hospital’ the girl was inside his apartment, shutting and locking the door.
She came right up to him, somehow managing to grasp both of his hands in a single fluid motion and looked into his eyes. All Sanji could focus on was the bit of dried blood along the side of her face as she said- in a tone of great urgency, “We need to talk.”