[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/h5xf31C.png[/img][/center][hr][i][b]//Day 0 | Location:[/b] Nameless Forest - Clearing[/i] [b]"Ehehe,"[/b] Yuudai grinned, even as he brought his hand up to mask that grin. Everyone knew poets had to play it cool, after all, but it was always nice to get some genuine praise about it, especially when his siblings just groaned and plugged their ears whenever he tried to get feedback from them. [b]"Doesn't seem like the Prez's doing anything to me though. Everyone else...well? Okumura-san's patching up the worst of the lot, but for a bus crash, I think we'll be alright."[/b] ... Daisuke clicked his tongue while Mayumi shook her head. They had both expected there to be no signal, but seeing it up close like that...well, it wasn't great. [b]"Yuudai's already taking a measure of everyone,"[/b] the golden-haired athlete said. [b]"And as for what we got on hand..."[/b] Well, the good news was that, owing to the lack of sudden explosions and such, while everyone [i]had[/i] hurried themselves off bus, they didn't necessarily book it either. The boys had carried most of the bags that they could see, after all, and a cluster of them had been tossed onto the grassy field afterwards. No one looked to start rummaging through it though, entranced as they were with either their situation or their preoccupations. Mayumi looked at it, then at the notebook she had in her hand and grimaced. [b]"I'll take an inventory then, Nagashima. Endo! Make yourself useful and get over here!"[/b] ... [b]"Yeah,"[/b] Tsubaki replied curtly. [b]"It's the Otherside."[/b] There wasn't much else to be said about it, not from her. Kogen, fortunately, was uncharacteristically quiet, perhaps because his delusions had finally become reality, and reality in turn had been both disappointing and terrifying. Regardless of what Ayana herself said, however, the short-haired girl continued to look after her, parting the hair around her head to assess as best as she could the state of the bruise. And as for what Ayana herself saw? Perhaps it was because the adrenaline hadn't died off yet, or the situation hadn't sunk in yet, but most of her classmates were indeed getting it together. The clearing was quiet, as far as she could tell when a bus was still crackling and burning, while Prez went off to make sure Rin was never alone. The others stayed together, some offering comfort, others getting to work. For as dire a crisis as it all was, it also wasn't too bad. After all, it was a lovely day, a clear blue sky marred only by black smoke rising hundreds of meters high. ... Branches broke as expected. Though some of them were younger, and thus had the flex to ignore Rin's efforts to break them off the stem, the older, drier ones snapped off cleanly. She'd need a proper cutting tool to get any limbs of substantial size, of course, but if nothing else, the tinkering savant's foraging attempts at least confirmed that those unfamiliar trees were still made of wood. At the edge of the clearing she worked, pointedly ignoring Masato as he strode up to her. Just as they did in school hallways and yards, in the PE shed and homeroom class, the Prez's words fell upon deaf ears. Physical tasks took the mind off of reality as easily as thoughts of duty and responsibility did. Rin, in her pursuit of survivalism however, forgot a step that preceded bushcraft. Before you started taking care of your basic needs, you had to assess. Assess yourself. Assess your belongings. Assess your [i]surroundings[/i]. It was Masato, indeed, who was in a better position to see it. See Rin's hand, as she reached for a thicker, deader branch. As she broke it off and revealed six eyes within the shadow. [center][img]https://i.imgur.com/NC0f9Qc.png[/img][/center] Matted fur of a light gray streaked with darker patches. Four limbs, long and gangly, that ended in a set of hooked claws. A head that looked to be a mixture of a wolf and a bear, saliva dripping out from its open maw. A beast of proper size, as big as a deer, as muscled as a carnivor Where there were Portals, there were monsters. And what was the burning bus, if not a massive signal? A signal that something [i]foreign[/i] had encroached upon [i]their[/i] territory. Something foreign and something fresh. Furless beasts, not clad in armor and technology, bearing neither blades nor firearms, all of them possessed with the softness of juveniles. Masato had no time; the wolfbear was upon Rin in an instant, its snapping jaws clamping down upon the branch she had just broken off rather than her face. Hooked claws snagged against her belt as the beast to press its skull closer to her head, human and hunter scrambling upon the field, the branch breaking beneath incisors that looked much too sharp to belong to a beast that [i]merely[/i] hunted for surviv- [b]"HIYAHHH!"[/b] In one moment, the wolfbear's six eyes loomed over Rin's face, and in the next, two leather shoes burst into view instead. Maki had arrived with dynamic violence, launching from a sprint into a dropkick! One that could definitely have laid out any wild dog or wild delinquent back in Kuroshio, but one that had only snapped the head of the beast back and...nothing else. It remained atop Rin still. One eye closed from where the heel of the schoolgirl had impacted, but five more still focused on devouring what laid right beneath it. Maki herself sprung back to her feet, raring for violence, but even she was forced to pause at what she saw next. It was a wolfbear, after all. And wolves hunted in packs. Two more of them slunk out from the darkness, fangs bared, ferocity unleashed. And, perhaps as a measure of just how little threat a handful of infants presented to these monsters, the two shot off around Masato, Maki, and Rin instead, sprinting down for the other students further away, their bellowing howls matched only by the students' shrieks and shouts. But where could they run? Where should they run? Could they hope to outpace the beasts if they leapt into the thick brush of the surrounding forest? Could they shelter around the still-burning bus, using the primal fear of fire to temporarily dissuade those wolfbears frmo approaching? Could they instead all group up together, in an attempt to intimidate the monsters with sheer biomass alone? Could they climb trees? Duck under brush? Stand and fight? Throw food and hope they'd take the easier meal? Whatever thoughts spun inside their heads, [i]those[/i] students at least had the luxury of a few seconds of thought, which was far more than what Rin, Maki, and Masato had. But amidst the mounting dread, the seconds that would decide which lives spiraled downwards into death... [indent][i]You felt it. You saw it. You heard it. A warmth. A sunny spot. A light. A cell. An egg. A sticky membrane, stretched over your skin. It tears. It splits. A cocoon. The earth and the blood. Burned until charred. Black was the bark. Hollow was the heart. Hollow until now. Now filling, filling, filling, unmaking. Recreating with reds and violets, warmth in inferno and storm, tremors invading deeper and deeper, rippling implications like echoes in the auditorium, voices upon the mountain range, whispers into your homemade mug, dreams that left nothing but fragments, impressions in cubism until you're lamenting for all that you discarded without your knowing! For the shackles of liberation! For the stains of [b]awakening[/b]! Act. ACT. [b]ACT![/b][/i] [/indent]