NOTE: Sorry this is so late! I got ill after xmas and then got a nasty stomach ulcer in the new year, so a lot of stuff got delayed. I'm gonna get back to writing now I'm feeling better :)

Disclaimer: I do not own Zombie Land Saga in any way and make no claim to ownership of the characters in this story.

Chapter 2: Kagamiyama

January 9th, 1994, Sunday. It'd been a few weeks since my fight with Ryunosuke and school was about to start up again. I never liked school. I would've quit sooner but going in meant I got to spend more time with Reiko and that was worth it enough for me. Still, I fully expected to fail any midterms they gave us. I remember we had this homeroom where we had to fill out little sheets saying what we wanted to do with our lives after graduation. You had all these kids writing down shit like 'be a CEO' or 'be a fisherman' (who the fuck wants to be a fisherman?) and there I was, wondering to myself whether that rumour about being able drop out of education after you graduate junior high was true. Spoiler: it absolutely was true. Another spoiler: I dropped out before I graduated anyway cos I was too busy kicking ass and life's too short to spend reading books.

I didn't let the fact that school was starting soon put me off. I made sure we had the whole crew together that Sunday. I wanted to stake Dorami's claim on Karatsu city, and I needed bodies. You can't go do that shit with just one or two of ya. It wasn't gonna be easy; Imari was a pretty quiet place, but the rest of Saga prefecture had plenty of Yakuza hanging around. I thought maybe I was the only one who wanted to conquer more than just Imari, but the girls all shared my vision.

We headed out in the evening, as always. I must've slept like the entire fucking morning cos by the time I woke up the sky was already turning orange and Reiko was halfway through an early dinner. I remember the first thing I said when I woke up and saw her sitting there eating around the little table in her bedroom was,

"Fuck..."

I thought I could skip 'breakfast', but watching Reiko eat got me so hungry that I grabbed a bag of potato chips from her kitchen. I only got to finish half the packet before Reiko was done.

"You good?" she asked me.

"Mhfmf."

Still crunching on a mouthful of chips, I left the opened bag on my futon and went to get my Dorami jacket. Moments later we were on the road down to Drive-in Tori to meet the rest of the crew. If you're thinking to yourself 'Why the fuck did you guys go to Drive-in Tori so much?', let me say now that up to that point we basically didn't have any official place to hang out together and do gang shit, and after the fight with SCREAMERS I figured hell, why not make Drive-in Tori our HQ? Every gang needs one after all, so why not pick one with good food?

Sure enough, everyone was there, even our newest recruit, a girl called Ayumi. Her bike was the only one without any modifications. When I say she was new, I mean new. She still had her hair in its natural black colour, cut in a short bob. She looked perfectly normal, which is great for a schoolgirl but shit for a biker. I was kinda worried she wouldn't be able to handle herself if we got into a big fight in Karatsu, but I was told by Reiko that she was a first-rate batter in the baseball club, so she had that going for her. Apparently she hit balls out of the park so often that the teacher had to ask her to hold back on her swing during practice.

One thing you gotta know about biker gangs is that before you ride out together the leader always has to give a speech. It's not usually long, but it's gotta have guts. Sometimes Reiko did it, sometimes I did it. That day it was my turn. I got off my bike and stood in front of everyone in the parking lot. I could barely hear myself think over the cars and trucks rumbling down the road behind me but I didn't let that get in the way. It didn't help that I'd just woken up.

"All right everyone," I began, "as I'm sure you know, this evening we're doing something a bit different. We're gonna go to Karatsu, and we're gonna claim it, all of it, for Dorami."

I paused dramatically. They all just kept staring at me intently, silent. I started to regret my decision.

"Ahem... I don't know what kinda fuckers are over there waiting for us, but no one is gonna stand in our way. We own all of Route 202 and we aren't stopping there, are we!?"

"No!" they all replied in unison.

"Damn right! So when they come at us, we go twice as hard! I don't wanna see anyone holding back. When we fight, we fight till we fucking drop! Are you with me!?"

"Yeah!"

"Damn right! Let's get this shit going!"

And so we rode out, our bikes roaring down the road together in unison, scaring the birds out of the trees and making the crusty truck drivers turn their heads. I was so ready for this. I didn't realise I needed it so much but I did. I'd been letting normal life hold me back. But no more.

No, this was the life. Riding free down the highways of Japan, just the mountains, your bike and your crew for company. You get to see a lot of nature when you're out biking. If you're stuck in a tin-box car you've got all sorts of shit in the way of your view. When you're riding, especially without a helmet, it's all there for you to see. That night was special, cos we were on the 202 right as the sun was setting. I go out at sunset most days, but the part of the 202 we were on that evening runs alongside a river. You don't really notice the river after dark, but in the twilight between day and night, when you're on a straight and there's not much traffic, you can just catch glimpses of the river between the trees, sparkling and shimmering under the setting sun. I'm not really a romantic, but I don't think you can blame me for getting to thinking, daydreaming, about riding beside the river with a girl sitting behind me, her arms around my waist, watching the sky burn together. You know that's the good shit, you can't deny it.

I've learned from Lily that things are a lot different now, but when I was a kid I had no idea being gay was even a thing. I mean the word lesbian existed but it's not like people talked about it. I only learned about it after I'd kissed a bunch of girls - all in secret, of course. None of it ever went anywhere. Back then you couldn't just be an 'out' lesbian. I mean, I wanted to be, but there's no point being a lesbian on your own, right? You've gotta convince the other girl to join you, and bear in mind, being the out-and-proud weirdos in school also meant being the out-and-proud weirdos to your teachers and thus by proxy your parents, cos the teachers told the parents about every goddamn fart you did, let alone being gay. The pressure to get married was un-fucking-real. No one wanted to be a bride but we all knew that's what was waiting for us. Some self-important salaryman and his joystick and being stuck at home all day caring for a bunch of whiny brats. No thanks.

The more I realised I was into girls the less I gave a shit about what other people thought. People had always picked on me anyway. I was a late bloomer, very small when I first started middle school. Wasn't even a biker. And you know what it's like: when you're the shrimp in school everyone wants to start shit with you. It's why I feel so protective of Shrimpy now. In my case I was lucky that I knew Reiko. I don't know where I'd be without her.

I think it's fair to say Reiko was my first proper crush. In '94 though she still didn't have a clue I felt anything other than friendship towards her. I didn't want her to feel awkward around me. We'd been real close since elementary school and there was no way I was gonna risk fucking up our friendship. Not for anything. I'd rather just keep it all to myself. 'I can deal with it', I thought. I was half right.

You've gotta understand that Reiko wasn't just some girl I knew. She was literally the reason I wanted to start a biker gang in the first place. She'd had my back practically my whole life. I remember one time in my second year at our shitty middle school, I was just walking down the hall when this bitch just came at me and tried to carve my face up with a pencil. She had her entourage with her and they were kicking and punching and all sorts of shit. I was holding her off with my hands, but it fucking hurt, and when you're getting the crap kicked out of you it's not exactly easy to focus. Funny thing is I can't even remember her name, but I remember I pissed her off one time when I made fun of her for being so desperate to fuck all the guys in class. She actually gained my respect by trying to maim my face. Not much respect, but more than she had before.

Anyway the point I'm trying to make is I would've been totally screwed if Reiko hadn't shown up when she did. I didn't see where she came from but I saw her elbow smack right into the bitch's jaw, sending her flying. After that she just starting laying into her groupies. God there were so many broken noses. By the end of it everyone was on the hallway floor bleeding from one place or another. Reiko almost got expelled for that. Her mom was furious. It's not like I wouldn't have done the same for her, but when you see someone risk everything like that for you, when a friend does that, it goes beyond respect. It was the most hardcore thing I'd ever seen, and I've never forgotten it.

After almost an hour on the road we finally passed through the mountains that separate Karatsu and Imari and entered Karatsu city proper. The highway cut straight through the city's east side, and in its path stood Mount Kagamiyama. The 202 literally led straight to it. If I wanted to I could've thundered down the road at full speed, all the way down past the convenience stores and pachinko parlours, right over the 'bypass' bridge crossing the Matsuura river, and I'd be there at the foot of the mountain before the police even realised what happened. I was tempted, but there was a time and a place for pissing off the police, and that night wasn't it. We had better things to do.

A few minutes later and we were at the base of the mountain. The road up it passed through a big, red torii gate. Technically it was a two-way street, but there was no traffic and you can't worry about that sorta shit when you're driving up a mountain, so we rode side by side in pairs. We only had to go single file once when some crazy motherfucker tried to get a huge truck round a tight bend halfway up. There were hardly any street lights on the road and the trees blocked out almost all the moonlight, so we had to rely on our bikes. I could only see my hands on the handlebars thanks to the lights of my crew riding behind me. It was fucking dark, but as I turned round the last corner I finally spotted the lights of Kagamiyama shrine.

"Holy shit..."

You knew immediately when you'd reached the top. Right from the parking lot it was there, all of Karatsu city laid out before us. A glittering criss-cross of roads and buildings stretching out to forever. It was fucking huge. It was huge and it was mine. Ours. Dorami's.

"It all starts here," I said, mostly to myself.

"I'm glad you suggested this," Reiko replied.

"I knew we had to do it. We deserve it. No point starting a gang if you're not gonna make it the best there is."

She smiled at me. I gave her my signature grin. To think that Dorami started out with just the two of us, and now we had seven members. Right then it seemed like most of them were still in complete awe of the view. I got off my bike. At the edge of the parking lot was a safety railing. I walked up to it and looked over the edge. I thought maybe I'd see the road we came up by, but it was just a sheer drop straight down into the forest. I didn't think anything of it at the time, apart from 'That's a big drop'. Looking back now, let me tell you from experience: it was a fucking BIG drop.

The shrine was meant to just be a taster of what we could have. I didn't expect to get into any action till we went down and started driving down the more populated west side of Karatsu. I figured any gang worth worrying about would be there, rather than around an uninhabited mountain. I was wrong.

See, most gangs I fought in my life, I stomped right away. We beat 'em and they didn't come back. Sure, it wasn't always easy beating them, but they knew who was boss once we'd done it. Yet some gangs just don't work like that. Sometimes you bump into a gang that's particularly territorial, a gang that refuses to go down. We had a few rivals like that, including SCREAMERS. But I still felt like we got the better of them overall, even if they came back from time to time. There's only one gang I never got to see the end of before I died...

When I heard the sound of bikes growling up the mountain road that night I shouldn't have been surprised. I should've been ready. But I wasn't. Before I even turned round to face them I knew we were outnumbered. You don't get noise that loud with just a three or four bikes. I counted as many as sixteen of them, blocking off the whole parking lot. One girl, who I assumed was their leader, got off of her bright pink bike and started walking towards us. She was wearing the most ridiculous head dress I'd ever seen. It looked like a huge, badly stuffed duck, right on top of her head. It wasn't just her, either; her whole crew had face masks with little designs on them and other stupid shit. Like SCREAMERS, I suppose they were trying to be intimidating, but I wasn't buying it. I didn't give her time to speak.

"Who the fuck are you, pidgeon-head?"

She didn't like that. Through gritted teeth she replied,

"I'm Miwa Katagami, the first leader of Korosuke. This mountain belongs to us."

"It belongs to Dorami now."

"Dorami? Hah! Clever names mean nothing if you can't back 'em up, blondie. Being a biker isn't just some middle school game, you know?"

"I meant what I said."

"This is your last warning: if you don't leave, we'll bury you here."

"Why are you even waiting? You should have punched me right from the start, then maybe you'd have my respect."

"You're trying my patience..."

Smirking, I looked back at my crew,

"What do you think, Reiko? Reckon we can take 'em?"

She had that look in her eye, the look she had whenever we won a hard fight in school, the look she had after we floored the idiots who thought they could fuck with me in hallway.

"Ready when you are, Saki."

I cracked my knuckles. This was gonna be good.

A/N: had to make up a name for the original Korosuke leader as I'm not sure the name comes up in the anime? If I'm wrong I'll fix it in an edit! Hope you enjoyed this chapter!

(ADDITIONAL NOTE: If you're re-reading this, I have changed the name of the Korosuke leader (if this is your first read-through, the name you read just now is the name I'm using going forward), because when I originally wrote this, I was ill and behind schedule, so I chose a historically appropriate name without thinking of an interesting, character-appropriate name first. Sorry if this causes any confusion)