May 8, 10:53 am, Tokyo, j.a.pan

Sakura blinked, squinting as she looked up at the sun. She shook the cobwebs out of her mind, and looked down at her phone. For the hundredth time, Sakura wished that Neurix had put some sort of tracking implant in the monsters. It would make this whole tracking thing so much easier.

She was currently walking through Akihabara, past stores full of anime merch and paraphernalia. The sun was unusually bright today, but not that hot. In fact, there was a nice breeze, carrying a hint of the ocean scent as it came in.

As such, Sakura felt that she simply had to wear her yellow summer dress, along with the wide brimmed straw hat and sungla.s.ses. Along with her handbag, she didn't look that out of place among the cosplayers in the area. Not that Sakura was paying attention to them. She was too busy looking at her new phone, wondering about trackers and monsters.

Maybe Neurix had installed trackers of some sort, but they just weren't giving it her just to make her life more difficult. The again, if they had trackers, they wouldn't really need her or Jason, would they? Which meant that not only did this whole situation not make sense, but also Jason's entire reason for being at the company didn't make sense.

The more Sakura thought about it, the more she seemed to come back to the same conclusion: Jason Tachikawa was completely expendable. There was no reason for him to be at the company if his job was to track monsters. Could it be that he was there for some other reason?

Sakura shook her head, and focused back on her phone. She really needed to focus. There could be many reasons why they couldn't put trackers in monsters, like maybe their biology was too weird and the trackers didn't work, or something. It was completely possible that Sakura did not have enough information about the whole situation to make a judgment.

But that was always the case when working a story. Sakura just needed to keep working at it, until she found all the pieces and the truth became evident.

That's all this was. Just another story.

And right now, she was following a lead.

She didn't have much, but from the description of the monster, as well as the location of the lab, and lab notes on the monster's movement speed and how it could travel (apparently it could fly for only brief periods of time, but at very high speeds), Sakura was able to determine a rough radius of how far the monster could have traveled. From there, she scoured social media for any sort of sightings of monsters or anything like that.

Of course, all of that took a lot of work. It had taken Sakura days of work to get even the smallest of leads. She had badgered Jason to give her more information too, but he all he sent over were lab notes. Some of them were useful, like the movement speed and whatever, but a lot of them were useless.

For example, what on Earth was "Captain-Cla.s.s" supposed to mean? There wasn't any sort of key for that jargon in the notes, and so Sakura had to ask. Jason, predictably, didn't say anything.

Whatever. In the end, Sakura managed to scrounge up enough information from the internet to track the monster down here, to Akihabara.

Admittedly, it was more than likely that the sightings were just some sort of promotional event for an anime or a game or something. This was Akihabara after all; the mecca of all things otaku. It wouldn't be too weird to see a boar-headed lion with bat wings. With a snake for a tail. Can't forget the little details.

But honestly, Sakura didn't have any other leads. She studied how to track people, not monsters. Give her a money trail, or a list of jilted ex-lovers, not...whatever this monster hunting was.

Ah, she was getting distracted again. She looked back at her phone, zooming into the picture of the merch store. This was one of seven photos she had found in the past day or so, capturing the image of what looked like a boar-headed lion with wings. Most of the images were blurry, the monster running behind someone taking a selfie or something. Most of the people who had posted these hadn't noticed them, and others had pointed them out, leading to accusations of ghosts and the like.

Sakura had tracked down these posts, and realized that they were all happening in Akihabara, which was well within the radius she had drawn. Why on earth the monster was running around Akihabara and not running away was beyond her.

In fact, that simple fact was starting to bug her a lot lately. Why was the monster just staying around in Akihabara? Something about that was bothering her...it felt like she was missing something. Something important...

Drip. Drip. Drip.

No. Focus. G.o.d, she was finding it hard to focus these days. She needed to find the monster.

Soon, she was at her destination; the alleyway between two stores, where a couple had taken a selfie in full cosplay. She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, causing the people around her to walk around her without a second glance. She looked at the picture on her phone, comparing it with the location in person.

In the back of the picture, on the other side of the alleyway, the monster's back side and tail were clearly visible.

"Guess this is it then," said Sakura. She stared down the alleyway for a little, and for the first time, wondered if she should have told Michi where she had gone. She had told him that she was chasing a lead, but she hadn't given him a location. Besides, it wasn't like she was planning on taking too long.

Urgh. Distracted again. Sakura took a deep breath, and walked down the alleyway.

Tap tap tap...

Her heels clicked against the concrete as she made her way down the alleyway. For some reason, it felt like it was getting darker the deeper she went in. She took off her sungla.s.ses, putting them in her handbag.

Suddenly, she stopped. She looked back at the busy street she had just been in, and frowned. She looked back ahead, and saw only darkness.

She looked up, only to find that the sky looked impossibly high. She blinked again, and realized that the brick walls around her had suddenly reached skysc.r.a.per levels of height.

She looked back at the street she had come from once more, half expecting it to be gone. And yet, it was still there, bright as it had ever been.

Something told her she should just go back. She should just...follow the leads properly. Try to look for the people in the photos. That would be the sensible thing to do, instead of following the unintentional digital footsteps of a boar-lion-bat-snake.

And yet...

Drip. Drip. Drip.

She looked forward once more, into the darkness. Somehow, she knew the answers would be there.

Answers? What answers?

"Urgh..." suddenly, Sakura's head felt like it was splitting in two. Images of the chimera she was looking for, bloodied and battered, flashed through her mind, right before the tail came up and bit her on the arm.

"I just want you to leAVE ME ALONE!"

Sakura opened her eyes, and found herself clutching her head in the fetal position, on the floor of the alleyway. She slowly got up.

The world was quiet. The sound of all human life, the hustle and bustle, was all gone. The world hadn't gone dark or anything, except for the part in front of her. Yet, as Sakura looked back, she didn't see any people pa.s.sing by anymore.

She narrowed her eyes, curiosity piqued. Where had all the people gone? She should probably go back and che-

Sakura stopped herself from walking back, then turned back to face the darkness in front of her again.

"You're doing something, aren't you?" she said softly at the darkness. "You've been trying to get me to away from you this whole time, haven't you?"

That was why she had been having so much difficulty focusing on her task. Whatever was hiding in this darkness was somehow distracting her.

"Arrogant human," a voice hissed, seething with contempt. "You master a few simple illusions and think yourself the ruler of Truth."

"At least I bring myself as I am," said Sakura, turning to face the darkness in front. "Why don't you show yourself?"

Silence. The voice didn't respond for a while.

"h.e.l.lo? You there?"

But it seemed like the being behind the voice was gone.

Sakura looked forward towards the darkness once more. She took in a deep breath again. She didn't know exactly what was going on, but she had a feeling...she had a very strong feeling that she was in some sort of trap.

Well, it seemed the only way to get through it, was to literally walk forward. She steeled herself, and walked into the darkness.

It was cold, and Sakura couldn't see anything. She could hear her own breath as she walked deeper into the darkness. Her only source of light was the flashlight on her phone, and it only lit up a few meters in front of her. She desperately wished that she had a better source of light.

As she walked, her mind was in a whirl.

How long had she been in it? What was the trap?

Why had she been trapped? Who had trapped her?

She tried to remember exactly what she had been doing before finding the monster...and weirdly, she didn't have any gaps in her memory. She had simply told Michi that she was following a lead, Bunta had told her to stay safe, and she had taken the train to Akihabara.

When had she fallen into a trap?

Wait...why was she convinced that she had fallen into the trap before? And not that she had just fallen into it now?

A deep sense of unease was starting to overwhelm Sakura. For the first time in a long time, she was starting to doubt herself.

No. Sakura's eyes hardened as she gathered her determination. She was certain. She had somehow fallen into this trap before even setting foot into this alleyway. Somehow, she knew that she had been here for a lot longer than she realized.

"I suppose you do deserve some credit," the voice hissed once more. "I didn't expect your bullheadedness to be able to carry you through so much."

"Conviction and bullheadedness are two different things," Sakura retorted. "Though I don't expect you to be able to tell the difference."

"Because I'm just an animal?" the voice questioned, a hint of anger in its amused voice. "Because I'm an amalgam of different animals, and not completely my own being?"

Sakura stopped walking, and looked around.

"So you are the chimera I was looking for," she said. "Thank you for letting me know."

The voice hissed in derision.

"You think you've outsmarted me?" it said mockingly. Sakura could not tell where the voice was coming from; it seemed to be coming from everywhere at once.

"You think I wouldn't know you would answer like that?" the voice continued. "You fancy yourself a master of illusions, don't you?"

"Like you said, I only know a couple of tricks," said Sakura, eyes stopping on a particular patch of darkness. "But I find those tricks help me quite a lot!"

Sakura struck her hand out and grabbed at the darkness. Her fingers briefly touched something scaly and rough, like snakeskin.

The voice hissed, then fell silent.

Sakura grinned. She knew she had surprised the monster with her actions right now. To be honest, she had surprised herself a little too.

She had gotten the idea when the voice had told her not to get ahead of herself just because she had mastered a few illusions. Remembering the weird sensation of stretching her mind and creating a bubble of illusion back at Neurix, Sakura wondered if that was what the monster was doing here.

And if so...would Sakura be able to see through it with her own illusion powers?

So she had tried...and had found that while she wasn't able to completely see through the illusion, she was able to see more than she had previously.

"Come on, you don't want to know how I did that?" Sakura taunted. "You're surprisingly quiet for someone so superior."

"It's only to be expected," the monster hissed. "You've been seeing through my illusions for a while now. It's only natural that you've learned to cope with it a little better."

Sakura frowned.

"What do you mean?" she asked cautiously.

For a moment, silence. Then, the monster burst into laughter.

While the monster laughed, Sakura took this chance to try and search for its body once more.

"I suppose you haven't really remembered yet, have you?" the monster jeered. "It should happen soon. That's always my favorite part."

"Remember?" said Sakura. "Remember wha..."

She recalled the flashes of voices and images back in the alleyway. Suddenly, her head felt like it was splitting again. Sakura groaned, dropping her phone and gripping her head. She fell to the floor.

"Yes, that's right," the monster laughed. "Remember everything so I can take it all away again."

Sakura remembered. She had found the monster, after following its tracks into the sewers below the streets of Akihabara. Back then, she had found it hurt and dying.

Or so she had believed.

"What is this?" Sakura growled. Her head was still splitting, but it was less now. "What did you do?"

"I believe this is my lions instincts," said the monster. Slowly it appeared from the darkness; boar-head first. Its wings were folded on it's back.

"I think this is what you humans call...playing with your food before eating it," said the monster. Surprisingly, its voice didn't come from the boar-head, but the snake-tail.

"I'll get out," Sakura promised. "I'll catch you, and get out of this h.e.l.l world."

"That's what you said last time," the monster chuckled. "And the time before that."

Sakura's eyes widened as she digested the implications of the monster's words.

"What do you-"

She remembered. Her body began to ache with the pain of a hundred cuts. Quick, she needed to ground herself, to give the-

"I'm bored," said the monster lazily. "I want to play a little more."

Faster than Sakura could react, the snake-tail bit her on the arm.

"AH!"

...

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Sakura blinked, squinting as she looked up at the sun. She shook the cobwebs out of her mind, and looked down at her phone. For the hundredth time, Sakura wished...

Please go to to read the latest chapters for free