Chapter One
Keiko's eyes opened slowly as distant sounds pulled her out of whatever dream she had. She rose slowly out of bed, her eyes drifting towards a window that displayed a night sky, as well as some of the other buildings in her village. Hers was a small village, the economy mostly driven by farming, with some librarians to keep track of the village's modest history. Her father was the only one tasked with leadership responsibilities, and he was also responsible for keeping the village safe at night, so he got little sleep.
As she began to rise out of bed, a rabbit with chocolate brown fur raced toward her. She didn't recognize the beast, but it was so cute that she couldn't help but hug it when it came to her. "Awh," she cooed, holding the animal tight. "What's wrong, little guy? You're shivering. Who scared you? Was it-"
A very loud banging noise made her jump, and the rabbit in her arms jumped out and hid in a corner, covering an eye with his paw. Instead of consoling her new friend, she walks to the next room of her home to find her father's weapon of choice locked up in its display case. This wouldn't bother her, except that the sounds she's hearing have gotten louder. It's clear that a fight has broken out in the village, and her father is not at home, though his weapon is.
"Dad..." she muttered before racing outside. She found her father outside, hiding behind the only standing wall of a destroyed building, his overcoat laced with blood from where he'd been stabbed, shot, or clawed.
"DAD!" Keiko screeched, racing toward her father who, by some miracle, was still alive.
"There's no time, dearie," her father told her, his voice strong. The way he talked, it sounded like he was only a little tired.
"Dad, why aren't you using your hammer if there's a fight breaking out?" Keiko asked. It was true, the villagers were fending off hordes of zombies, skeletons, spiders, and creepers with nothing but shovels and those scythe thingies they used to till the earth. She didn't like what the villagers called those things.
"Because I have this," her dad said with a huge grin, pulling out a diamond sword that glowed with an etherial purple shine. "It's not quite as powerful, but it's effective in its own way."
Keiko took a few steps back when she saw the sword. She could remember quite a few bad experiences with sharp objects in her past, and was distrustful of the lot. Still, it was her dad's weapon, and there was no way he'd use it on her... right?
"Keiko, honey," her dad said to get her attention away from the fell blade, his throat scratching enough to cause him to cough a few times. "I can't save everyone by myself. The village will be lost if we don't get help fast."
He then pulled a sheet of paper that looked like it had a chunk of burnt wood rubbed against it. "Go to these co-ordinates. They lead through the forest so be as quiet as you can. I would hate to think what would happen if a monster got hold of you, but I don't have anyone else I can send. We're too overrun. Talk to the man you find at this location. He's a stranger, and lives alone. Nobody else seems to trust him, but I can't help but shake the feeling that he'd be able to save us."
Keiko took the note from her father as a tear fell from her eye. "I'll go on one condition. You have to stay alive, dad. I don't know what I would do if you died. You have to live for my sake, please, dad."
At this, her dad laughed weakly, clearly pained by one injury or another. "Your old man isn't done killing monsters yet, sweetheart," he said with a confident smirk. "Now, go. Do your best not to get caught by a monster, but get there as quick as you can otherwise. The longer we fight without reinforcements, the likelier this village will fall into ruin."
Keiko ran as fast as she could, unaware that her little rabbit friend was easily keeping up with her even though she had to swim across a river to get to the forest. The trees seemed to race past her in a blur as she ran. She keeped her eyes racing back and forth looking for mobs to hide from, but by some strange twist of luck, she seemed to be alone. But she stopped on a dime when the trees vanished. She looked around, starting to think that she ran past the forest and missed her target entirely. But the nearby fence had her sighing in relief until some strange gray box jumped out of the ground and spat something at her.
Terashi woke up gently as a wild chicken crowed to the rising sun. Granted, the torches in his room kept him from sleeping in the dark, but he'd gotten used to that. He had to, or else he'd be fighting monsters all night. He got up and got dressed, then headed downstairs. Seeing his living room made him smirk, as it usually did. He designed it as some kind of cafe when he built the place, but he never got visitors. Which was probably for the best, although he did feel lonely from time to time. Brushing that out of his mind, he flipped a switch and, after hearing a series of clicks, stepped outside.
The clicks, he knew, came from his dispenser system. At first, he built the series of dispensers and redstone streams to keep monsters from breaking into his home. Of course, once they started spawning inside his house, he had to take extra measures. But that was some time ago.
Hoping a few monsters had fallen to the system before the sun rose, Terashi opened the gate in his fence that led outside and walked the parameter, picking the odd bit of string or buried arrow up and ignoring the rotten flesh. He even came across a spider eye and a few bones - those were the lucky picks. But what he found at the end of his rounds surprised him - a girl. He couldn't see her face as she was face-first in the ground, but from the shape her green tanktop and blue jeans took, her gender was clear. He lifted her up, getting her chocolate brown hair out of the mud, and carried her inside.
Keiko awoke slowly, feeling drained for some reason. Was it daytime? Had she slept through the night? She couldn't quite remember. She tried getting up, but a sharp pain raced through her right leg when something stuck on it caught on a fold in one of the bedsheets.
She cringed, the pain waking her up fully. But she didn't have long to find the source, as she realized that she didn't recognize her surroundings. She was about to ask for her father when the door opened, revealing a rather tall male wearing a black overcoat over a white dress shirt and black cargo jeans covered in pockets. His golden blonde hair reached so far down his back that she could have easily mistaken him for a girl had she not seen the front of his body, first.
"I'm glad to see you're awake," Terashi told her, giving her a calm smile as he entered the room. "I'm sorry to do this, but I need to pull the arrow out of you first. I promise that you're still wearing your clothes, and that I have no lewd intentions."
The reason he said that was that he pulled the covers off her, straightening them out first so that they didn't catch on the arrow in her right outer thigh, just below her hip. Keiko gasped when she saw how deep it was in her, but the 'stranger' remained calm.
"It's worse than I remember," Terashi said solemnly. "This is going to hurt a fair deal, but I have to get the arrow out or your body will heal around it.
Keiko nodded in understanding, and cringed in preparation of the pain. Terashi then tugged on the arrow, sending waves of pain from the arrow's entry point. But when it came out, it was just a stick with some feather pieces tied to the end.
"Balls," Terashi sighed. He dropped the stick and rolled up a bit of blanket before presenting it to Keiko's mouth. "Bite on this."
"Wha-?" Keiko asked, thinking the request to be quite odd.
"Trust me," Terashi said solemnly. At this, Keiko bit down on the rolled-up bit of blanket. Terashi then focused on her leg and begun digging his fingers into the wound to try to grab the arrowhead.
Keiko roared in pain through the blanket, unintentionally biting down on the cloth with all the might her jaw posessed.
"Almost," Terashi said, before his fingers finally grasped enough of the arrow to get a hold on it. He pulled as hard as he could, ripping the bit of flint out of her. It looked a lot bigger in her eyes than it did in his.
"There, that's the easy part done," he said with a smirk, making her wonder with bewilderment what would come next. He dug into his overcoat and retrieved an apple with a shiny, almost metallic golden skin. "I need you to eat this," he told her simply.
"What does it do?" she asked, wary of the strangely beautiful fruit.
"According to the legend, eating this should bless your body with a short-lived, yet very highly accelerated metabolism. It should heal your wound instantaneously, or at least so quickly that it seems to be instantaneous," he explained.
"It should!?" she gasped. "You're relying on a fff... on a legend!?"
Terashi smirked unintentionally, finding her unwillingness to utter an expletive rather cute. "It's the only means of healing you that I currently posess. It'll take days if not weeks for the wound to heal on its own, and the resulting blood loss will likely cause you to die."
"That's because you stuck your fingers in there!" Keiko shouted.
Terashi's smirk only grew. "Well, I could say it wouldn't have come to that if the arrow hadn't broken, but... well, there's no real point in making excuses now. The arrowhead had to come out."
Keiko sighed, pushing her anger downward. "Does the legend talk of any side-effects?"
"Not that I've read, no," Terashi told her, "but it is just a legend. Might not work. I mean, you might not even be able to get through the golden shell. The recipe called for an apple and eight full ingots of gold."
"Eight... jeez!" Keiko gasped in shock. "...ugh, what choice do I have?"
Terashi gave his guest the golden apple, and she bit into it with all the strength her jaw posessed. To both her surprise and his, the golden skin of the apple was even softer than the skin of a regular apple, and she tore a huge chunk of the apple off with her powerful bite. It took her a bit to chew through the chunk of apple, but it tasted so good that she tore through the rest of the apple, eating it core and all at record speed.
"Oh, maker, that was so good," Keiko hummed, letting out a slight burp as she finished talking. "Ugh, excuse me."
Terashi's smirk evolved into a wide smile. He checked the arrow hole in her thigh and sure enough, it was just a hole in her jeans exposing skin. The wound was gone. "Looks like the legend was true."
"Do you have any more of those things?" she asked. "I feel like I'm starving."
"That's the enhanced metabolism. It should fade soon, but your hunger will remain," Terashi explained. He opened a chest in his room and pulled out a pumpkin pie, resting the delicacy at Keiko's lap, who immediately dug into it. By the time it was gone, her metabolism had returned to normal, and her stomach felt full.
"Sooo much better," she sighed happily. Terashi took the plate and put it back in the chest, planning on taking it out and washing it later.
"I'm glad," Terashi said, his wide smile in full force. "Now, I don't mean to be rude, but why were you travelling through a forest unarmed at night? Didn't anyone ever tell you that cluttered areas like that are dangerous?"
"Says the guy who lives in one," Keiko said, giggling a bit. Then her memory came back and everything stopped. "My village!"
"Right, someone there should have-" Terashi started to say.
"NO!" Keiko burst. "My village is in trouble! I was sent here to get reinforcements!"
Keiko pulled the sheet out of her front pocket, displaying the charcoaled co-ordinates that led to his house.
Terashi sighed. "The sun's almost halfway toward its apex. Do you think your village could have held out this long?"
Keiko drooped. This was her only hope. She didn't want anyone to die...
Terashi sighed again. "Come with me."
~*~
Terashi led Keiko downstairs, between the two sets that both led to the same place. He then walked between the two and pressed a button that caused a heavy-looking door to open. "There is likely going to be some monsters left over from the night," he explained as he led his guest into his secret armory.
Keiko looked on in awe. She'd never seen so many chests lined up like this before. "No wonder you keep this behind a locked door," she muttered.
"Yeah," Terashi agreed as he dug into a chest, pulling out an iron chestplate. "Here, put this on," he said, giving the armor to Keiko. "The rest of it's in here somewhere.
Keiko struggled to hold the heavy armor, but it was no use. It fell to the ground with a loud clanging noise. "It's too heavy," she explained.
Terashi sighed, though he controlled his volume so as not to seem rude to her. He continued to dig until he found an entire set of leather armor, setting it in her arms. "You should be able to wear this."
"Thank you," she said, slipping the weak armor on over her clothes.
Terashi kept going, eventually handing an iron sword to her, which she did not take. "I..." she stammered.
Terashi was getting a little annoyed at his guest's pickiness, but he did his best not to show it as he put the iron sword back in its chest. Keiko still picked up on it, however. "I'm sorry, I just don't do well around sharp objects. It's a... childhood phobia."
A thought entered Terashi's mind about what events must have caused such a phobia, but he didn't want her thinking of him as judgemental, so he kept the thought to himself as he brandished a stone sword. "It's dull, so you should be fine with it, but it's not in the best condition, just to warn you."
"It's perfect," she smiled, hoping not to agitate her host further.
Terashi then acquired his favorite bow and a single arrow before closing the chest, striking Keiko's curiosity. "Wait, what about your armor?" she asked.
Terashi then opened his overcoat and ripped at the interior fabric a bit, revealing the tiny iron chains beneath. "Chainmail," he explained simply.
The pair headed out together. Terashi didn't look back at his home, unaware that he wouldn't be seeing it for a long time.