Chapter 2: The Mosaic Scorpion

It was a giant scorpion. Its body was about the height of my knees, but its tail was the length of my leg. That wasn't even the worst part. It just looked… weird. Every part of it seemed to be covered in mosaics. It seemed to be a scorpion made of mosaics. It had eyes everywhere, and looked like its body was straight out of a Picasso painting.

I saw its legs inch closer toward me. It looked like the stained-glass panes of an abandoned church started to move.

In any case, a giant scorpion can never spell out good news for me. It kept on approaching closer, like as if it was attempting to hunt me.

The moment it was close enough, it stopped. Then it jumped.

My fight or flight instinctively kicked in. Unfortunately, neither was very effective. Fleeing away wasn't an option, I couldn't even walk properly. Fighting was basically suicide, seeing as it had an extremely long and dangerous looking tail.

I tried limping away from it, but it was already out for my blood. It was also much faster than it seemed.

I leaped backward to try and evade whatever it was about to do to me, but its tail was too long.

I extended its tail while still in the air, hitting me directly on the left side of my abdomen. It's tail remained wiggling in my abdomen, as the surrounding parts of my shirt slowly started getting stained with blood.

I tried to grab its tail, but my hands just phased through it.

It took me a few seconds to process this. I can't attack it, but it can. It has already wounded me pretty badly. I had to get out of there.

It ripped its tail out from my abdomen, making the bleeding increase and the pain by a hundred-fold. It felt worse than anything I had faced before.

I also started to feel a bit dizzy and nauseous. Was that tail poisoned? The scorpion seemed to waiting for the poison to kick in, after which it would have probably killed me. That also explained why it wasn't attacking me anymore.

I inched away from it, and kept limping forward.

I was as good as dead. That was before I heard the crackling of fire. A glimmer of hope ran within me.

I mustered up every last bit of strength I had, and rushed towards it, as best as I could, with the scorpion trailing me.

What I found there was more than just disappointing.

It was a burning plane. Was it even right to call this a plane? It was literally nothing more than a pile of ashes. A pile of black ash, and soot, with the very rough semblance of a plane. The only reason I could even recognize the plane was because of the right-wing, which was still somewhat intact.

I don't consider myself to be very smart, but I am pretty sure airplanes don't just turn into ashes within a day. Unless my family woke up and jumped out of the plane at just the right time, my family would be in that pile of ashes.

For now I had bigger things to worry about. My vision was getting blurry. I was just about to collapse on the floor when I heard someone shout.

"Who are you??", I heard a young man's voice to my left. I turned to see him.

He was a black haired, black eyed, tall man, with glasses. He wore a brown suit, a black tie, polished shoes, brown leather gloves, and had a briefcase that looked like it contained either documents, or a pistol. Basically, the most generic Asian office worker/manager look a person could sport.

He came closer to see me, when he saw the scorpion. He immediately opened his briefcase and took out a pistol, then shot the scorpion dead.

"Are you alright miss?", he asked, noticing the steadily increasing pool of red on my shirt.

I couldn't utter a single word at this point. I am pretty sure I muttered something incomprehensible.

"Who are you? Wait, why are you bleeding-", he said, as I started losing consciousness.

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We had known there was an attack near here, but we didn't know where the remains were. Right in front of me, was a burning plane. It was less of a plane and more of a pile of ashes with a burning wing.

I went over to the plane's ashes, to observe the area. By the looks of things, it was clear that there were no survivors. I dug through the pile of ashes, but I just ended up finding more ashes.

I gave up immediately. After all, if I really did find something in there, it would mean writing a whole ass report for It, and there couldn't possibly be any survivors, right?

I turned around, heading for base camp. Then I heard it.

The clattering of claws. I turned around to see a girl bleeding in the abdomen, and a creepy looking scorpion. Was that a remnant chasing her down…? I thought normal people can't see remnants…

I went over to her and asked her, "Are you alright, miss?". She mumbled something then collapsed on the ground.

Did she just pass out? I asked myself. Yeah, of course, she did, she was bleeding buckets here.

The scorpion was coming closer and closer. The eyes on its body make it seem as if it was smiling. I used a little bit of nihilism and just squashed it like a bug. It was just an R-3 after all, basically the same as a bug.

Her bleeding was quite severe, and she might also have been poisoned, seeing as how the remnant was a scorpion. I opened my briefcase and took a tracker, then dropped it near the plane's ashes, to make sure I could come back to this place.

For now, the dying girl took priority. I took the dying girl, and carried her all the way back to camp.

"Who are you carrying?", a guard shouted out from a guard post.

"A survivor of the Garuda attack.", I shouted back.

"State your name and ID number."

"My name is Kenji and my ID number is 6483."

"You are granted access."

The gates opened up. I had never seen those guards go away from their posts. Were they robots or something? I thought to myself, carrying the girl to the infirmary.

"Who are you carrying there?", I heard a voice ask. I looked to see Daphne. She was basically the doctor of this place, being able to cure many people and bring back limbs together. Only god knows how she could do this.

"Survivor from the Garuda attack.", I said, trying to keep as simple as possible.

"Yay give me more work will ya?", she said in frustration.

I dropped her in a bed at the infirmary and went to meet the director. This was going to be a pain, reporting everything to the director. He was the embodiment of a ruthless devil.

I headed over to the director's room. The door alone was made of metal and heavier than an African elephant, and that is without even mentioning its height, which was about 10 feet.

I opened the door and stepped inside. He was at his desk, writing down something. The old man

"Why are you here today?", I heard a cold voice say. He didn't take his eyes off the paper to look at me, as if I wasn't even worth his time.

"Sir, I am here to report something related to the Garuda attack.", I said, bowing my head a little.

"Go ahead.", he said, without raising his head.

"We found a survivor of the Garuda attack.", I said, raising my head a bit.

"Really? Are they a nihilism user?", he asked, sounding ever so slightly interested.

"No… it doesn't seem like it."

"Really?", he said, finally looking up to look at me. His eyes were hollow, and empty, to the point where I flinched when he stared at me. His eyes looked horrifying in all honesty.

"Y-yes.", I said, as quickly as I could.

"I see. Elaborate on who they were.", he asked, going back to writing.

Sometime later, I came out of the room. Going out of the room made me realize I had beads of sweat on my face. That was pretty normal.

As I was walking to my dorm room, I started to pity the girl. Her life was going to change drastically, and definitely for the worse.

In the midst of these thoughts, I heard someone call out my name.

"Oi Kenji!", I heard my friend say. "Come over! Let's play some poker!", he said, sounding joyful.

The friend in question was Akihito, a fellow Japanese person in this place.

There were many people here in this bunker, all from different backgrounds, so finding someone from the same country as you, let alone the same town as you was quite lucky.

"Wait, you actually got some cards?", I said, in surprise. Cards were some of the hardest amenities to come across, mainly due to the fact that the director hated gambling, and he always associated gambling with cards

"Yup.", he said proudly. "Come over to my room by nighttime, alright? The other guys will be there too.", he said, sounding extremely happy.

I wanted to ask him how he got those cards, but ah well. Future me problem.

"Ayyy I now have something to look forward to.", I said.

"Welp, I am going to head out to my classes right now. Good luck with your training… Mister President.", he said sarcastically.

"Oh shut up will you?", I said, heading into the training room.

There was going to be a long day ahead of me, patrolling was just the beginning…

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I woke up in a military hospital like place.

The ceiling was made of metal. The bed I was on had a metal frame. It didn't have a mattress, just a soft blanket like area. The place smelled sterile, like as if someone sprayed sanitizer all over the place.