When Mariko Anzai woke up on the hospital bed, she was frightened. It had been five years since her surgery and while she had been to the hospital for check ups since, she was still uncomfortable waking up in one.
It did not help that she was having a nightmare. There was a monster, a beast assaulting her, she was not able to resist. Suddenly a fire broke out. The beast was burning alive, melting into an orange goop. She flinched from the embers, but she didn't feel any heat from it.
"Anzai! There's a fire! Run away!"
'Was that Sensei?'
She saw her teacher Jun Fudo waving desperately as she approached her.
Wake up!
The feeling of heat returned as she approached Mariko. But it was not the fire, but a familiar feeling in her lower body.
This is not real.
"Go away!"
'If that returned then she… No, it is coming for her.' She looked to her sensei as she began to transform into a demon!
Wake up!
And with that image she returned to the waking world.
"Mariko!" Shigenori Anzai exclaimed as he held his daughter as tight as he could. "I was worried I was going to lose you!"
'Again,' she added.
She knew how much her dad changed that September day, but it has been just as much a risk trying to get back to a normal life as was dealing with a father who had just returned to her life. He was more protective then before, and it was only through stern convincing was she able to go on this trip.
"Dad…."
'Guess this really might be my last school trip. I don't think he's going to allow me to go outside anymore,'
"Anzai, you're okay."
She looked around the room and noticed her sensei was here as well. She wasn't a devil, or at least she didn't look like one. She was very injured, with her right arm in a sling and cast and her head all bandaged. Speaking of herself, Mariko was also covered in a head bandage.
"Sensei… are you a Devil?"
"Mariko what are you talking about? She saved your life!"
Mariko began to wonder why she was in the hospital in the first place. As far as she knew it had just been the second day of the Tennis Training Camp.
"Dad… why am I in the hospital?"
"There was a fire and you had suffered a few burns. You were lucky Miss Fudo was able to rescue you!"
'I don't remember a fire… There was that dream earlier…' She didn't feel like she was burning, and her so-called burns weren't hurting at all!
"A fire? That can't be right. I don't remember that at all!"
"Apparently it had spread from the other cottage and you had passed out from the smoke."
Miss Fudo had remained silent in all of this. She was looking down at the floor, away from Mariko.
"Miss Fudo was the only one who was able to wake up. She managed to pull six of your club mates out of the fire."
'Six… But there were ten people on that trip….'
"It was a good thing she was a former Olympic athlete or otherwise you wouldn't be alive right now."
'No. Something isn't right…'
"Unfortunately the boys weren't able to make it out and Nakamura…"
"Say no more…"
Mariko couldn't say she was friends with everyone on the team, but Nakamura had been one of those friends.
Miss Fudo's face had darkened with guilt.
'She wasn't able to save everyone. But was that dream what really happened? There was a fire and sensei was calling out to me…'
False memory!
Mariko tried to hide her discomfort.
'It's best to not overthink things for now.'
"I think I might have remembered something. I definitely heard Sensei… Sorry I'm still in shock."
Mariko continued to feel that warmth. Her dad turned to her teacher.
"Miss Fudo, my daughter Mariko sometimes has nightmares, which explains why she might have saw you as a devil."
'That makes sense… but there's something missing…'
She's not natural!
Sensei accepts the explanation with a hint of concern in her eyes. Mariko and her father could trust Sensei, and its not like she wouldn't have saved her if there were a fire. But even still Mariko's gut feeling told her something was off about all this.
That night Mariko tried to remember what had actually happened. The fire constantly came into her mind like an invasive suggestion. But she had been hurt before. She knew what she felt. It wasn't the burns that hurt her, but a familiar pain. It was a penetrating blow. The same pain she felt that September night five years ago.
But there was a greater mystery to be had, one Mariko had been wondering about quite some time. Why did Miss Fudo provoke her kidney to heat up?
Author's Note:
Welcome to Parasite Eve: Revolution.
Now you might be wondering who this Mariko Anzai might be. Well she's one of the important characters in the original novel of Parasite Eve. Later chapters will explain her story in case you haven't read Mariko you might ask? Well Aya sure as hell isn't coming to Japan and unfortunately the dates align that Aya Brea is tied up with taking care of Eve Brea.
And yes I've measured out the timeline and it should mostly align all together. Imagine how I felt when trying to decipher Parasite Eve's and Devilman Lady's timelines. If you want to know the date the prologue occurs in, it's September 2001.
But that's not to say Parasite Eve 2 wold be glossed over, as I'm sure the Human Alliance wouldn't let the Akropolis Tower Incident go unnoticed especially when a certain seeker is in town.
While not my first fic, it's been a while since I've done a story, especially in this format. We'll be sticking around Mariko for a while, but eventually Jun will have her time to shine.
But really these two were begging to be a crossover. After all this is the same genre of J-Horror, and the Mitochondria are the culprit in both.
