บท 2: I'm...Alive?
Cold hardwood against his knees and palms, a chorus of panicked voices, and the pungent scent of sweat and mold; Sato's senses flooded back like water from a broken dam.
'W-Where...am I?' he thought as he staggered back to his feet.
Sato twisted his torso and quickly appraised the scene around him. What came into view was a room filled to capacity by a shifting crowd. All of whom were equally unnerved.
"Where are we?"
"What's going on?!"
"Mom?! Dad?! Where are you?!"
"What? Where?! Who?!"
These and various other lines of panicked confusion were spouted off within the room.
Meanwhile, Sato was caught up in his own bout of disorientation.
"I'm…alive?" he mumbled and brought his callused hand to view. His fingers weren't seared to charcoal, but seemingly in pristine condition.
Sato squeezed his fingers tightly shut to form a veiny fist, then retracted them again.
"How is this possible?"
Though confused, the soldier shook his head and returned his focus to the surrounding group.
If there were any hints as to why he and the group were gathered, they weren't obvious within its social demographics. The only trait the summoned all seemed to share appeared to be their Japanese nationality.
Aside from that, he could spot students in their winter uniforms, office workers donning sleek suits, bookworms with casual but intelligent attire, and athletes sporting various sets of outdoorsy gear.
Yet, despite the randomness, Sato still stood out like a sore thumb. Military-grade combat gear was an obvious rarity amongst the common populace.
'Have we been captured? But the missiles? The fire? How the…?'
Many questions filled the soldier's mind. But he had always been a pragmatic man, one that preferred to focus on the "here-and-now" rather than the past or future. That's why he stuffed his curiosity into a lockbox and twisted the key.
"No… Focus," the soldier grumbled and moved his attention to the room itself, looking for any clues that might explain his whereabouts.
From what he could see, the floor was uniformly curved. Surrounding him and the others was an inner circle of smoothly cut stone, bordered by an odd ring of asymmetrical minerals.
'Are those…crystals?' Sato thought and scratched his chin. He narrowed his eyes and focused on one. Oddly enough, each seemed to radiate a thin sheen of distortion, not unlike the door from before.
'This all looks very…occult. If someone summoned my spirit just as I was about to settle in, they better have a good exorcist on-call. I'll haunt the hell out of them.'
Sato's right eye twitched with frustration as he turned away.
Discerning finer details about his location was nigh impossible, given the poor interior lighting. The room relied upon the dim, orange haze from a few rudimentary torches to illuminate its walls. Despite that, the soldier could still glean that he was in some rustic, cellar-like space.
The walls were built from crudely cut, gray stone blocks and thick wooden support beams. Above and below was a layer of worn planks that creaked at the slightest provocation.
The scenery was no doubt jarring for Sato, but what captured his attention more than any other were the yellow-red flames that sat atop each mounted torch.
Sato gripped a hand to his chest and squeezed it tight. Slowly, the color in his skin drained away as pure horror filled his eyes.
'I... I died. I burned. I know I did!' he thought and staggered back a pace. A pit of complete fear hollowed out his heart and a profuse sweat broke out all across his body. It was as if the space before him had burst into a grand conflagration, consuming everything in its wake.
The crackling flames seemed to roar in his ears, drowning out all other sound. He could almost smell the acrid stench of burning flesh, feel the searing heat upon his skin…
Ultimately, what Sato was witnessing was a simple trick of the mind - the consequence of an overexcited imagination paired with a deep trauma. But his mind was already too far gone for logic.
Sato's heart began to beat in an uncontrollable frenzy beneath his fingertips. It raced and constricted tighter with each passing moment, followed by a queasy squirm within his gut.
'I can't...breathe... It's suffocating… Will everything burn again? There are no windows, so there's nowhere to run! It's going to happen again!'
Gasping rapidly for air, the soldier clutched his other hand to his mouth. His eyes and muscles trembled while he relived the scene of his supposed death. It flashed before his eyes with staggering intensity.
'I need to escape. I need to get out!'
He staggered away from the torch with sluggish steps, desperate for an escape. Luckily for him, a safe haven of darkness was present within a sliver of the room. A spot where two flames were absent from their mounts. It was there that Sato found a refuge for his weary mind.
'That'll work. It has to.'
The soldier took a hard swallow and perched himself within the shallow shadows. He stumbled into them like an exhausted traveler toward a roadside inn. It was only after feeling the darkness' embrace that reassurance was possible.
"Keep it together, soldier. Stay calm. Don't go giving yourself a heart attack," Sato mumbled to himself.
Several increasingly controlled breaths later, he finally regained control over himself. When he did, his next thought was an obvious one for a soldier's paranoia
'I need to look for exits.'
For Sato, a plan of action always came first. Sadly, it seemed any would be limited to a single wooden door on the opposite side of the room.
Several figures cloaked in black obstructed it. They stared at the unruly crowd ahead with a demeanor of odd disconnectedness, their eyes seemingly devoid of concern. Gripped within each of their hands were strange, symmetrical objects bound in leather.
The objects weren't guns nor blades. In fact, they weren't weapons of any kind. Instead, the figures wielded…
'...books?' Sato's brow twisted into a subtle expression of confusion. He figured kidnappers would've been armed with more than just an arsenal of literature.
Amongst the cloaked strangers, the mid-most one turned their obscured head and spoke in a low tone.
"Is this batch ready? These are all of them, correct? I'd rather not endure the Lady's wrath due to something as foolish as a miscount."
"Yes, Sir Weiser. That's all of them. We may proceed."
"Excellent!" he proclaimed through clasped hands. Then, upon lowering his hood, the figure outstretched his wrinkled arms up high.
"I welcome you all! Heroes! Are you all quite well?" the old man inquired with a familiar voice.
'Must be the same one I heard before,' Sato mused.
As the soldier quietly pondered, none of his countrymen dared to respond to the old man's greeting. Each quietly mumbled amongst themselves - a mix of fear and bewilderment within their voices.
"Yo… Is that dude for real? Heroes? Seriously?"
"But who is that guy? What does he want with us?"
"You think I know? Just listen."
Unease shackled the air with steel-like bindings, so the best Sato's countrymen managed in reply was a contest of awkward staring. That is until the commanding voice of a young woman seized control.
"Heroes? What are you talking about? Where am I? Is this some kind of cult?!" Matching her every word were loudly expressive hand gestures.
Sato shook his head and thought, 'She's confronting them? Not the brightest thing to do.' Based on the woman's youthful appearance and mannerisms, he was confident the girl was in her late teens.
Uncommon for her age, the woman had a ferocity in her voice that'd make a platoon instructor proud. Look-wise, she was just as flamboyant - boasting a pair of golden-amber eyes and an equally hued ponytail that swayed with her animated gestures. As for her attire: she wore a dust-covered green and white striped tracksuit which had clearly seen years of use.
'Energetic, Quick to question authority…reckless. This girl reminds me too much of him; a troublemaker,' the soldier sighed. Nodding to himself, he mumbled, "I better be careful around her."
Meanwhile, though the young woman spearheaded the charge, the group of disgruntled civilians was anything but organized.
Rather than an orderly questioning followed by careful decision-making, the interrogation devolved into pure chaos. It became the norm for Sato's countrymen to avoid questions altogether, resolving instead to hurling demands and insults at the figures instead.
"Pointless time-wasting," the soldier grumbled. He wasn't interested in haphazardly gleaning information during that disorder, yet he was grateful for it.
'It buys me a little time to check my wounds.'
Sato looked down at his equipment. Much of it had lost its drab green color, replaced by blackened charring from flames and the occasional spatter of blood. However, thanks to advancements within the modern military complex, the gear had stayed functionally intact.
'You're the friend that never gives up,' Sato smiled, taking his vest's topmost buckle into his hands. Though slightly blemished, the metal easily gave way to the pressure of his fingers.
A light snap resounded.
Then a second.
And a third.
Now undone and loosened, Sato shifted his ballistic-woven shell aside and lifted his damaged shirt to reveal a scar-ridden stomach.
What came into view left the soldier frozen in place.
'Is this possible? Could it actually be…? My wounds, they're…'
Sato brushed his fingertips across his abs and chest. Every groove of hardened muscle remained firm beneath his touch, calloused and tempered by four years of wounding.
'...they're gone?! It's all gone!'
There were no fresh stitches, no waxy-red flesh marred by third-degree burns. Aside from the scars long sealed over by the graces of time, Sato's skin was clear from any damage.
"How can this be?"
Sato's rational mind plunged into turmoil as his festering curiosity grew even greater. However, he shook his head from side to side, as if to cast out unnecessary thoughts.
'Stop. As far as I can tell, I'm healthy. My injuries are gone, and my equipment's functional. If anything, that's good and not something to question.' The soldier fixed his vest back into position and nodded. 'I'll investigate later. For now, I need to focus...'
After he tightened the straps, Sato instinctively reached for his waist-side holster. He opened his hand and motioned his fingers to take hold, only for them to squeeze tight into a fist as air passed through the cracks.
"Of course..." Sato groaned as another alarming reality struck.
'My weapons are gone too... Makes sense. What kind of hostage-taker allows their victims access to weapons? Expecting anything else is just naive.'
Though he rationalized, Sato's heart still swelled up with a growing anxiety, especially since he'd just arrived from an active warzone. The thought of being unarmed during such tumultuous times left his skin wet in a cold sweat.
'I really need to get out of here…'
Sato cast a quick glance across the room, eventually resting his eyes upon the cloaked figures.
'I can't be so impulsive though. Who knows what their intentions are.'
Between his newfound pyrophobia, the revelation of his wounds, and his missing weapon, it took everything the soldier had to concentrate on the cloaked figures. Each of whom carried a holster with a ceremonial black knife. Noticeably, the weapons were all impractically ornamental and symmetrical - bearing various etchings of snaking gold and exquisite curves.
'So...' Sato sighed. 'They have black robes, occult books, AND cosplay daggers? That girl might've struck the head on the nail. Cultists.'
Meanwhile, the mob's barrage of questioning was ongoing. Yet, no matter what they said, the hostility seemingly ricocheted off the old man and his allies without effect.
The cloaked men simply stared at their verbal assailants with vacant expressions. Their faces mimicked that of disinterested parents as they waited for noisy toddlers to tucker themselves out.
Each of the soldier's fellow abductees noticed this too. Slowly, they all hushed themselves, allowing the old man a chance to speak.
"Many apologies, Dear Heroes!" he loudly proclaimed with a wrinkled grin. "I know you all must have many questions. I'm sad it isn't within my authority to answer them, for I am merely a humble summoner."
A few choice words caught Sato's attention, but nothing was more jarring than the old man's tone of voice and posture. Every bit of it felt empty and stale, more akin to that of an advertiser than a jailor.
The young woman scoffed and took to the spotlight again.
"Forget apologies; at least tell us where we are! Surely that is 'within your authority!'"
"I understand your frustration, Dear Hero, but please calm down." The old man performed an easing gesture. Seeing that the fury from the woman's expression hadn't faded, he sighed and continued to say, "Well, I suppose I could explain the basics of the matter to you all..."
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