This is…

…way out, my child…

I need this to…

…freedom is…

The Wired calls. It was always there, just out of reach. It calls us all, though I alone can hear its suggestions. We understand each other, I think. It knows what I need, what I want, how I should live, who I should comfort, and asks very little of me.

It feels more like a parent than Dad ever was.

That's why I stood alone on this bridge, the pistol at my side my only company. Cars swooshed past, kicking up thin waves of water at my already soaked shirt. My drenched hair cascaded over my face, covering my eyes from the rain. I mulled over how I should do this.

I know what I'm going to do could be seen as illogical. I don't care what this seems like at this point, though. The authorities would cock it up anyways, thinking the trauma of witnessing a murder-suicide right before my therapist burned to death being reason enough.

I was never afraid, though. I was only afraid of lost time, of experiences that couldn't be shared with the Wired.

Come home.

I tried to answer its request constantly, but this flesh is unyielding. It can't break through to the Wired's core, true freedom just out of reach. This body can do many things, but the life it leads is meaningless without the Wired. I yearn to break free, though this mortal coil (ream? cylinder?) bends at the slightest…push.

Never finished, never through to the other side, yet always pretending.

Talk is cheap.

…

I decided how I'm going to do it.

I raise the barrel to my mouth.

I know this is not the end. I can't stop the shaking, though. Stupid human emotions.

Finally. I can be fucking free.

A squeeze and…

unbearablepainthelikesofwhichhapfbhhhgdzzghfghs-

…

Waking up never came easy to Iwakura Lain.

Her eyes opened to an unfamiliar sea of reds and browns. A forest in fall. She knows this situation seems off. Did she not finish the job? Is there some park that doctors work in near the bridge? How was she not paralyzed from the bul-

Lain sits up like launch control engaged. She shakes her head at a rapid pace, tossing her unblemished bear hat every which way. No, she wasn't paralyzed at all. Narrowed eyes stare unblinkingly through the swath of brown hair over her face. Where is this place?

She forgot what it was like to experience– anything. The last thing s remembered were the cool metal of that gun, and the warm, fuzzy feeling of lost sensation. Awareness came slowly back to her. Yes, this was her body. Yes, this was her mind.

Yes, this shouldn't be happening.

I thought I had moved on to the Wired.

And yet, she could feel. The sweat running off her arms, the Sun beating down on her. The crunchy dead red and yellow leaves strangled within her shaking right fist. As if these sensations were real.

A slight head tilt.

She sits motionless, silently shocked by the pistol she now notices in her left hand, it's trigger depressed by her index finger. A metallic taste fills her mouth.

Movement.

Her eyes drift, idly searching out in the dense underbrush for the perpetrator. She assumed it was a small animal. After all, city parks never had any wild animals larger than a small dog. And she hadn't heard many people around her current location, so no dogs were being walked right now.

Growling.

A large animal, then. So this is a forest, then.

The bushes some distance away part.

…Oh.

An armored… beast, unlike anything Lain could comprehend, slowly crept towards her. It most closely resembled a wolf on two legs, but was four times the size. Pitch black fur and jagged bones sticking out of its elbows and knees brought the grisly nature of the monster into relief. The thing's seemed to be wearing the skull of some other creature, red eyes the only things visible through the mask. It looked like it was stalking something. *Me.*

Lain couldn't run. She couldn't even scream. Nothing, not even death, had seemed so intimidating before. Running didn't even cross her mind. What did was how sharp the claws and fangs of this monster were.

A small part of her knew what she had to do, even through her fear. She brought the gun to bear, both index fingers on the trigger. And even though her shaking persisted, she managed to fire a round into the beast's fac-

The bullet bounced off the thing's bone armor.

Lain came to the conclusion that this place was as unreal as Tokyo.

The incredulity she felt that the most powerful object at her disposal did jack-shit to the beast in front of her (which coiled for a pounce in the meantime) forced her to take another shot, which only intensified the thing's growling.

Once it was clear that her handgun was no match for the lycanthropic monster, Lain threw it at its face (it decided to pounce in the meantime), flipped around from her sitting position into a sprinting pose, and booked it to the left side of the clearing.

Intense exercise was never Lain's strong suit. She was the literal back of the pack in P.E., never played a sport in her entire life, and she valued programming and time on her P.C. over any sort of exercise in her free time.

Needless to say, she was surprised by her sudden athletic prowess.

She felt light, lighter than she'd ever felt before. She zipped through branches, bushes, and vines, though some of those branches marked up her face as she sped by. The monster kept a steady pace with her, however, always three massive steps behind. After what seemed like an eternity of running, her lungs burning and face bleeding, she could see an area with fewer trees and, more importantly, people gathered around said trees.

Ah, so I've been dropped into Canada.

Lain burst through the last of the thick foliage with little fanfare and a mouthful of leaves, the monster hot on her heels huffing and puffing to keep up with her.

There was a group of individuals dressed wildly different huddled around a tree on the other side of the opening, all carrying some sort of mason jar. For what purpose, Lain didn't care. She needed some help with her unwanted pursuer.

So she yelled at them.

"Help! Help me!" Lain couldn't even recognize her own voice.

The platinum blonde girl noticed her first, taken aback by what appeared to be a small child running away from a single Beowulf. She nudged the actual blonde, pointing in Lain's direction and gesticulating wildly. "Help!" The red-black goth girl, who was facing away while Lain ran towards her, turned around and did a sort of full-body gasp. She set down the jar of red stuff she was holding and… moved. She was beside Lain by the time she blinked, the surprise knocking her off balance to the point where she almost fell. She turned her head to look as she stopped stumbling. Rose petals littered the air from where the red girl was to where she stopped. She had a scythe reticulated out of some box shape (Lain couldn't really see how, though), and the head of that same scythe shot bullets out like a rifle at the monster. Even though Lain just wanted to stop and stare at the amazing feats this girl made look effortless, she didn't stop running until she made it to where the three other girls were.

Lain dropped to a knee, finally allowed to gasp for much-needed breaths. "Woah there, you good?" Actual Blonde drops to a knee as well, putting her hand on Lain's shoulder. It gets shrugged off accidentally as Lain takes in a massive shuddering breath.

"She'll be fine, I imagine." A Dark Ninja lady stands off to the side, seemingly uninterested in the current event. Her eyes remind Lain of her father.

"Right… Right. If you say so, Blake…"

"She's not breathing heavy, her cuts stopped bleeding, and she doesn't look afraid of the world anymore." Dar- Blake allows a small smile, crinkling the skin around her golden eyes. "She'll be fine, Yang."

Lain's face was blank.

"Yep." Yang pops the p at the end, presumably in the whimsical Canadian fashion. "Hey Weiss, what should we do?"

The woman dressed like an icicle thought a bit before saying, "Maybe we notify Ms. Goodwitch? I can go find her for… uh…" Lain knew she was fishing for her name, but she decided to let the awkwardness steep. She looked into Weiss's eyes in a weird sort of staring contest. Weiss's eyebrows furrowed deeper the longer the game dragged on.

The growing annoyance on Weiss's face melts to a drawn-out sigh, breaking eye contact as she looks down. "…Well then, I'll see if Ms. Goodwitch is around. I swear, how could a kid just come into the Emerald Forest?" Lain almost breathes out her words, "I'm not." Weiss moves in closer. "What was that? You have to speak up like a proper lady, you know."

"I'm not a kid. I'm 15."

Weiss is taken aback, eyes widening and jaw working without sound for a few moments. When she finds the ability to articulate again, she says, "Huh? W-well, that's… close to what I meant, right, Blake? Yang?"

Blake offers no quarter, shaking her head and saying, "Nope. You probably thought she was 10 or something."

"You only say that because you thought she was 10!"

Blake coughs into a fist. "That's neither here nor there."

Yang tries to adopt a thinking pose, but her grin gives her intentions away immediately. "I don't know Weiss, you might be trying to hurt Ruby's feelings while she's not here. I think…"

"Ruby?"

The red goth girl was back amongst the impromptu throng, none the worse for wear. Lain knew this because she was directly in her face, no measure of personal space acknowledged.

"Hi, that's me, good old Ruby Rose! Oh my Dust, you look so adorable!" Ruby pinches Lain's cheeks, stretching them this way and that. "You're such a big kid, keeping yourself out of trouble like that. Good job!"

Lain felt compelled to reply, "Aren't you 15, too?"

"Too? Ooohhhh, you're 15! Gotcha, gotcha…"

Ruby's face scrunches up.

"Wait, really!?"

Lain sighed and closed her eyes. This was going to be a torturous Canadian adventure.