Disclaimer: I do not own Zombie Land Saga, or any other property in this work that I did not make myself.

Saga Stories: A tale of Zombie Land Saga

Chapter one: I diagnose you with dead

(DATE: APRIL 7TH, 2008)

"I'm telling you, I'm going to make it!"

Sakura Minamoto still couldn't believe it; her family continues to go on with treating her ambitions, her hopes and dreams, as nothing more than mere flights of fancy. She figured that her mother and brother would show at least a token amount of support for her, but no, they both think that she's playing pretend. Feh, like Sakura's little brother Sasuke (named after their late grandfather) is one to talk about playing pretend; the little brat is three-years-old, and yet he acts like the mature older teen sibling whereas Sakura's the toddler.

Sakura knows way better than her snot-nosed little brother. Come on, why wouldn't the dark rose-colored haired girl know better? He's three and she's seventeen (her seventeenth birthday was five days ago, in fact, so suck it Sasuke), so it's obvious that Sakura can handle herself way better than a toddler who acts like the mature older sibling can handle her. You know what? Sakura's mom and little brother can both suck a salt lick. She knows what she's doing. Sakura knows full well that she will make her dreams come true by the end of the day.

By the end of the day, Sakura Minamoto was going to become an actress.

Luckily for her, Sakura's school had to cancel classes for the day, so she was free to go straight to the studio for her audition. She felt very confident about it to, partly because she was driving herself forward by the power of piss and vinegar over her mom and brat brother not believing in her, partly because the mid-fifties lady running the auditions actually knows and is rather fond of Sakura so that helps, and partly because all of Sakura's friends at their school are rooting for her, such as that shy boy who picked up a DVD case Sakura dropped the last time she was at school and handed it to her.

Sakura forgot what that boy's name was at the moment, but she felt that he was her friend who she was most grateful towards, as he was the most supportive out of anyone of her dreams and aspirations. Oh well, Sakura would tell him and all of their friends later of how her audition went so that they could all celebrate together as a group. But that was another task for another time. For now, Sakura had to get going to the audition, which is part of why she was dressed for the day already even though she had the day off of school.

Sakura walked out of the door wearing a baggy pale pink shirt with some minor floral patterns on it, baggy pair of tan-colored cargo shorts held up with a simple black leather belt, the loafers she wore with her school uniform and a pair of baggy socks, the kind that are commonly sported by Japanese high school girls in Japan. On the left side of her head, a portion of her long dark rose-pink colored hair was brought up with two ribbons, one blue and one pink. In her arms Sakura held a folder that had some important papers that she was going to need for her audition today, which the aforementioned nice old lady more or less told Sakura in private were just for the sake of formality.

Inhaling through her nose before breathing out, Sakura reaffirmed her confidence, knowing that she was going to knock it out of the park. By the end of the day, the Minamoto household was going to be on the face of the map of Japan, as it was going to be the residence of Japan's newest hit actress. Excited for what the day had in store for her, Sakura took off running after she closed the door to her family's house behind her, calling out to her mother and brat brother who were both still inside.

"Bye mom! Bye Sasuke!" Sakura called out cheerfully as she ran down the path that led from the front door to the entry gate in the wall fence around their house. Sakura was so excited that she was not quite paying attention to her surroundings; but then again, she and her family lived in a very safe neighborhood, so an excited late teens girl like herself could afford to be just a little on the reckless side. Right when she ran out the gate, Sakura called out again, "I'll see you both when I get back from-"

*SCREEEEEECH*

*WHABAM*

*CRACK*

*KAHTHUD*

Due to her happily running off while not paying attention, Sakura was hit dead-on by a large bluish van like vehicle that came seemingly out of nowhere, sending the poor girl flying. Sakura was already knocked out cold by the brunt force of the van hitting her, but when her flailing body landed on the asphalt, her forehead smacked onto the road in that neighborhood street with a sickening crack, a crack that made Sakura's condition go well beyond the scope of merely being 'knocked out cold'.

Sakura Minamoto was now dead.

(DATE: UNKNOWN)

Slowly, Sakura came to. The girl with long dark rose-pink hair felt that the dream that she just woke up from, where she was hit dead-on by a large bluish van like vehicle while she was on her way to audition and finally achieve her dream of becoming an actress, was a dream that was a bit on the jarring side. Even so, Sakura was glad that it was only just a dream. Now all she had to do was get up off of the floor that she found herself waking up on, gather her folder that she was going to take with her to the audit-

…Wait a minute, waking up on the floor? Sakura never recalled falling asleep on the floor in her bedroom. As a matter of fact, Sakura can tell full well that the room that she just woke up in is in fact not her bedroom. It was a large, dark and dreary room in what Sakura estimated to be a large and abandoned mansion of some kind. Due the severe lack of lighting in the room, Sakura's vision was limited to what she could see with what little light was coming in through cracks in the curtains over the windows.

It wasn't all that much though, given that not only was it raining outside right now, but that it was also at night; as such, the long-haired girl had to rely on the brief flashes of light provided by the occasional bolt of lightning. When the first flash of lightning that Sakura took advantage of to see her surroundings with struck, Sakura saw that there were nine other persons lying on the floor in the same room that Sakura herself had just woken up in. Nine struck Sakura as a bit of a large number for all of them to wake up in, but then again the room was a bit on the large side, so Sakura could see how ten (counting herself) could swing this room.

Sakura, a bit tentatively due to everything that she had woken up to and had begun to realize (which is understandable, given her current situation), slowly walked over to the nearest person that was lying on the floor, a girl Sakura estimated to be barely older than herself. This girl laid so that he back was to the approaching Sakura, but the long-haired girl could see that this girl had long blonde hair in a high ponytail, also she wore what appeared to be a jacket whose sleeves ended at the elbows, and a knee-length skirt that appeared to belong to a school uniform of some kind.

Hoping that this mystery girl would be able to answer a few questions for her, Sakura squatted down in a sort-of frog like pose and, reaching out with her right hand, gave the mystery girl a gentle shake, Sakura's right hand on the mystery girl's left shoulder. "Umm, excuse me there," the long-haired girl began, clearly sounding worried, "I hate to wake you up, but I don't suppose you might have any idea what might be go-"

"Uuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhh….." the mystery girl moaned, the tone of said moan sending shivers right down Sakura's spine. That moan did not sound human to Sakura in the least. As a matter of fact, Sakura felt that such a moan could only come from the mystery girl if she was some manner of undead. So when the mystery girl rolled over to face Sakura, and the long-haired girl saw that the mystery girl had grayish-blue skin, red eyes with a scar running down the left side of her face from her eye, Sakura's reaction was very sound, a reaction no one could fault her for having.

She freaked the hell out.

"AHHHHHHHH!" Sakura exclaimed at the top of her lungs at as high a volume as she could achieve, getting right up and stumbling backwards as the mystery girl slowly got up to her feet, moving stiff and robotically. In her backwards stumbling, Sakura nearly tripped over a second one of the persons lying on the floor, and Sakura's contact with this person also stirred them from their slumber. Sensing this, Sakura quickly turned to see that the person that she had nearly tripped over was another mystery girl, this one looking to be about as old as the one that just got up off of the floor like a stiff, robotically-moving undead.

This second mystery girl, about as tall as the first, wore black cargo shorts held up with a belt, similar to the light tan that Sakura herself wore. This second mystery girl also wore a duster coat that had the sleeves ripped off, leaving the piece as a sleeveless coat that displayed the sleeves of the dark gray t-shirt worn underneath. The second mystery girl also had fiery red hair that was in twin braids that cascaded down her back, save for bangs that were allowed to frame her face.

The panicking Sakura hoped that this second mystery girl would not be like the first. But to the poor girl's ever increasing fear, the second mystery girl also had grayish-blue skin and red eyes, and she also moaned much like the first. As the first and second mystery girls moaned like freshly risen undead, the other seven persons, all of which were girls, which were laying on the floor also began to rise. All of them, to Sakura's horror, had the same grayish-blue skin and red eyes, and they all moaned like the undead.

If this was a nightmare of some manner, then Sakura prayed to any and every god that would listen to her and allow her to wake right the hell up right the hell now. But there was no such luck in that department. The girls laying on the floor began to rise, one by one. There was a short girl with large bright blue twin pigtails and her heart, which was riddled with cuts from the looks of it, was sticking out of her chest. Rising up next to this short undead girl was another undead girl that looked to be about Sakura's height and general age group, with this second girl having straight black hair that reached past her collarbone also this second girl looked like she had just gotten out of a pool due to looking soaked.

Two more of these undead girls rose approximately at the same time. The first one had chin-length slate blue hair and had noticeable burn marks over a lot of her skin that was not covered; these burn marks looked to have been caused by a fire of some sort. The second undead girl in this pair had white hair about the same length as her burned companion, and that said hair curled a bit at the bottom. The white-haired undead girl looked like she was stitched together all over her person; Sakura had no idea what might have caused such a condition, but she suspected that this white-haired undead girl was in a terrible accident that tore her up a bit.

Two more of the undead girls got up; one had long light brownish hair and her face looked noticeably paler than that of the other undead girls, and the second undead girl had auburn hair that was mostly up in a bow on her head, also she wore a kimono-like outfit and around this girl's neck was some severe scarring. These two undead girls, alongside the first six that Sakura saw slowly get up off of the floor after laying there, all turned to see Sakura herself and, to the long-haired girl's horror, they all started turning to go to her.

So Sakura bolted. I mean, who can really blame her?

In her haste to run out of the room, Sakura struggled to open the door for a bit. As the undead girls all shuffled their way towards her, Sakura flattened against the wall, her hands slowly spreading further and further away from her person along the wall. Her right hand eventually found the handle of something and, without even thinking on it, Sakura grabbed the handle to what ended up being a fireplace poker and swung it at the closest undead girl, the slate blue-haired girl with the burn marks. The poker went through her head and pinned her to the wall, but that only kept her there for a few seconds at best before she freed herself and continued to go right after Sakura, the poker still shoved through her head.

Still, the act of attacking that undead girl with the poker bought Sakura enough time to finally yank the door open and run right out. The long-haired girl sprinted through the hallway as she made a sharp turn to go down some stairs, hoping to outrun the eight undead girls that had tried to go after- …Sakura's eyes widened in realization as she recalled that eight undead girls from that room tried to go after her, even though she had counted nine bodies lying on the floor. Did she miscount by any chance, or did-

*CRRRASSSSH*

"HUGGGGRRRRAAAAHHH!"

Sakura skidded to a sudden halt as the uncounted ninth undead girl crashed through a door and landed in front of her; this undead girl had long pitch black hair and wore a long black dress with long sleeves. This one seemed to Sakura to be the most savage and mindless of the undead girls, and that frightened Sakura even more. Regaining her sense of self, Sakura hastily kicked the ninth undead girl out of her way before continuing to run for her life. Eventually, Sakura found the front door of the abandoned mansion that she woke up in. Yanking the door wide open, she ran right out and into the raining night.

Sakura continued to run in the rain, uncaring of the fact that her favorite t-shirt and cargo shorts were getting soaked in the nighttime downpour. At one point in her frantic running, Sakura came to a stop, and when she did, she was able to get a look at her surroundings; she saw a sign that denoted the nearby river as Machida River, and another sign that told her that she was currently in the Saga prefecture. "…I'm in Saga prefecture?" Sakura thought in confusion as she was getting a hold on her surroundings and bearings, "How did I wind up so far away from home?"

Quickly shaking her head, sprinkling rain that was in her hair all over, Sakura brought herself back to focusing on the main issue that she was facing; the fact that she was fleeing a group of undead girls that were trying to go after her. She had to tell someone what was going on, and luckily for her, Sakura saw a local police officer heading towards her, pushing a bike along. "Hey there, young lady!" the police officer called out, "Don't you think it's a bit late to be out, especially in weather like this?"

"Officer! Thank goodness!" Sakura called out as she ran towards the police officer, allowing her to see him better…and him to see her better. When Sakura got close enough, the police officer, after a brief look of confusion on his face while looking at Sakura, suddenly went wide-eyed with shocked horror and he stumbled back, dropping his bike to the ground in the process. He fell on his rear as he stammered in frightened panic. Seeing the police officer act in such a way, the long-haired girl became confused.

Taking a step towards the cowering police officer, Sakura said, "Umm, officer? Are you-" Sakura stopped short when the police officer whipped out a gun and aimed it right at her.

"S-S-stay back!" the police officer cried out in panicked fear, "I'll sh-sh-shoot!"

Now Sakura was truly worried; the one person she was able to find that would be able to help her, and he wanted to shoot her? "Officer, please!" Sakura said with increasing worry, "I'm just trying to ask you for help! You see, I was being chased by-" A flash of lightning cut Sakura off and, in her current worrying state, she turned and faced a circular mirror that was attached to a street post or some other manner of structure. There was another flash of lightning, and with it Sakura was able to see her reflection in that mirror, was able to see why the police officer was acting horrified. To be honest, Sakura was similarly horrified herself; she had grayish-blue skin and red eyes, just like those undead girls that she was fleeing from.

Sakura herself was undead.

*BANG*

Sakura flinched barely, the shock of realizing that she was no longer among the living doing a lot to distract her. Looking down at her chest, she saw that there was a bullet exit wound around the area of just below the middle of her collarbone. She turned around to look at the shaking police officer, saw that the barrel of his gun was smoking. Sakura then leaned backwards a bit and just fell over onto the ground with a 'splat', given that it was currently raining heavily. The police officer, after Sakura fell on the ground, got up and tentatively walked over to see what was going on with the horrifying girl he had just opened fire upon. He stood over her body, which laid face-up as it was soaked in the rain, and for just a second, relief flooded into the officer, glad that this horror, who or whatever she was, was now down for the count.

Then Sakura's eyes turned to look up at him.

The officer jumped in his skin, but before he can take any action, he was hit in the back of the head with a shovel, knocking him out cold and dropping him to the ground. A few seconds after she saw the police officer drop, Sakura saw the person who knocked him out walk up so that he was in her field of vision.

It was a young adult man with tidily combed brown hair, a pair of sunglasses despite the fact that at this time of night there was no need, a white long-sleeved dress shirt under a red vest that had some squid tentacle snacks sticking out of the one pocket, a black bowtie, and a black dress jacket that he wore over his shoulders as a sort of cape. Due to the angle at which Sakura was seeing this man, she didn't see his pants and shoes, but she had a feeling that they complemented the rest of his outfit. The long-haired undead girl also had a feeling that she might have known this guy from somewhere, but nothing was coming to mind for her. Oh well.

With this mystery man who came to her rescue watching over her, Sakura slowly closed her eyes and fell asleep.

Later, Sakura came to in a rather fancy room in what she assumed was the home of the mystery man that rescued her. Getting up, Sakura ran over to a mirror she saw hanging on the wall so she could get a look at herself. She saw that she still had the grayish-blue skin and red eyes like those other undead girls that she remembered from what she thought was a nightmare, but she was coming to slowly realize might actually be real, might actually be her new life. If you can call it a 'life', given that Sakura was, by all appearances, an undead.

Sakura saw that the bullet exit wound around the area of her collarbone was still there, so she tentatively brought her right hand fingers up to brush against it. "I…" Sakura said as she spoke aloud, "…I can't believe it. I'm…"

"You're awake," a male adult voice said, cutting Sakura off and making her turn to see the source of the voice, which turned out to be the mystery man who had rescued her earlier. To the undead girl's interest, the mystery man was holding what looked to be a Japanese Chin that, similar to the one undead girl Sakura saw earlier, had stitches all over its body, indicating some manner of Frankenstein-esque work in a lab had to be done to put it back together.

"Uhh," Sakura said, confused into being unable to find the words, "Mmm, what is going-"

"Today's date is September twenty-eighth, two-thousand and nineteen," the mystery man said, cutting Sakura off midsentence, "You have been dead for a little over eleven years, close to eleven and a half. Even though you are now a zombie, you have returned to the land of the living." With something of a self-amused smirk on his face, the mystery man said, "I believe that calls for some manner of celebration, don't you think?"

Sakura could not believe all that she had just heard the mystery man tell her; not only had she been dead for over eleven years, but now she's a zombie? Surly there had to be some sort of mistake here. "…Umm," Sakura began tentatively, "Are you sure that-"

"My name is Kotaro Tatsumi," the mystery man said as he introduced himself, "And you're going to help me save Saga prefecture." As Kotaro leaned closer in towards Sakura when he got close enough to her, Sakura was feeling more and more concerned by everything that was going on, as well as all of the recent revelations that she was still trying to deal with. However, she was a bit distracted by the fact that Kotaro had squid snacks sticking out of the pocket on his red vest.

The following morning, with the skies clear now that the rain had ended, Sakura learned a few things about where Kotaro had brought her back to after he rescued her from the police officer the night before. First off, it turned out that Sakura was brought back to the abandoned mansion that she found herself in when she woke up and sub-sequentially had to run away from all of those undead girls.

Second off, she was in a cellar located under said abandoned mansion, sitting in one of the folding chairs in the row of folding chairs as the other nine undead girls all milled about the room without any purpose, although Sakura did notice that someone, most likely Kotaro, had taken the liberty of removing the poker that she (Sakura) had shoved into the head of the undead girl with the burned skin.

As these nine undead girls, acting like the mindless zombies that they really were, shuffled around and moaned aimlessly, the door leading into the cellar room opened and Kotaro walked in. "Alright, ladies!" Kotaro greeted as he walked in, "Welcome to day one of orientation! We have a lot of work ahead of us if we're going to succeed with the plan to save Saga!" The zombie girls that didn't have minds or wills continued to just moan and shuffle along. Sakura, the only zombie that was self-aware, looked to Kotaro with an expression of mild concern.

"…Umm, Mr. Kotaro-san," Sakura began in a tentative, mildly nervous tone as she raised her right hand slightly, "I don't think that the others here are-"

Sakura was cut off when Kotaro walked right up to her so that he was in her personal space, leaned down so his face was in hers, then shouted, "Questions can wait until after orientation! Right now, we've got business to take care of!"

A bit shaky due to Kotaro's bold pushiness frightening her a bit, Sakura said, "W-What kind of business are y-you talking about?"

Straightening back up, Kotaro turned and walked back to the chalkboard that he was standing in front of. Turning around to face Sakura, Kotaro said, "Ah, I'm glad that one of you girls has decided to ask the big questions. The business that I'm talking about it quite simple, really." He gave the one lower corner of the chalkboard he stood in front of a good hard slap, making the board flip over to reveal the other side, showing a chalk drawing that was upside down, which meant that he should have just turned the chalkboard around instead.

"We are going to save Saga prefecture!" Kotaro declared loudly, "Using a little plan that I like to call the 'Saga Stories' project!"

"Saga…" Sakura began slowly out of mild confusion, "…Stories?"

Nodding twice in the affirmative, Kotaro began to explain, "You see, Saga prefecture has seen a very sharp drop in tourism in recent years. So much so that Saga is in danger of going under. As a longtime resident of this beautiful and glorious prefecture, I simply can't stand by and let the home that I love so much fall into obscurity and backwater status." Clapping his hands together, Kotaro continued, "And that's there the 'Saga Stories' project comes into play. I will be having all of you girls act in a new slice-of-life sitcom set right here in the Saga prefecture that will be hitting the airwaves of televisions all over Japan." Pointing in a somewhat dramatic fashion right at Sakura, Kotaro half asked half demanded, "Are you ready to be one of the actresses on a new TV show that's set to save an entire prefecture from fading into obscurity?!"

"Me? An…" Sakura said out of confused shock, "…Actress?" suddenly realizing that Kotaro said that all of the zombie girls were going to be acting in this supposed new TV show, Sakura said, "Wait a minute Kotaro-san, how can the rest of the girls here act if they're acting like mindless undead? While we're on that subject, who are all of these girls even?"

Kotaro smirked as he let out a huff that was clearly meant to be a laugh. "These girls…" the eccentric man began, "…Are all legends." Pointing dramatically with both index fingers at the zombie girl with the long blonde ponytail, Kotaro said, "To kick things off here, we have the legendary Kamikaze squad leader who ruled the roads with an iron fist! Saki Nikaido!" The zombie in question, Saki as she was just named, simply stood there, only turned so that she was part facing Sakura and Kotaro.

Pointing next to the white-haired zombie girl, Kotaro continued, "Next we have the legendary Showa idol who inspired idols after her! Let's hear it for Junko Konno!" The white-haired zombie girl, Junko, was trying to walk into the bars of a prison cell that was in the cellar for some odd reason. Sakura felt that asking why there was a prison cell down here would be a question that she wanted to ask Kotaro, but the eccentric man was not stopping with introducing all of the zombie girls just yet.

Pointing to the girl in the kimono-like outfit, Kotaro said, "Up next, the legendary courtesan that all men of the Meiji Era would flock to town to see! Yugiri!" As Sakura turned to look at the now introduced Yugiri, who was sitting on the floor, she had trouble believing that this girl was from the Meiji Era, which would put her well over one-hundred and fifty years old; how can a zombie who was a living being from that long ago still be in good enough condition? Wouldn't Yugiri's remains have long since decomposed?

Now pointing to the short girl with the big blue twin ponytails, Kotaro said, "This girl will be one of the key players for the 'Saga Stories' project, let's hear it for the legendary child actress prodigy! Lily Hoshikawa!" Lily, who stood a few feet away from Sakura with a blank look on her face and her mouth wide open, struck Sakura as something of a tragedy; a child this young, not only having died but returned as some manner of undead? But then again, more or less the same could be applied to Sakura herself, as well as all of the zombie girls. But Lily being only a child struck Sakura as a little more heartbreaking than the older girls of the group.

"Up next," Kotaro said as he pointed to the burned girl that had slate blue hair, "We have the legendary Heisei idol who took the idol industry in Japan by storm! Ai Mizuno!" As she looked at Ai, Sakura couldn't help but feel that she had seen Ai somewhere else before. But the long-haired zombie girl just couldn't put her undead tongue on it. Regardless, Kotaro was not going to give Sakura time to ponder where she had seen Ai before, as he was going on with introducing all of the zombie girls.

"Over here," Kotaro said as he casually pointed at the long black-haired zombie girl in the long-sleeved black outfit, "We have the legendary Tae Yamada." Sakura was a bit…underwhelm to be honest by the lack of 'oomph' that Kotaro had put into Tae's introduction, especially when it was compared to the introductions of the other zombie girls. Speaking of, Kotaro went on with introducing the remaining three zombie girls to her.

Pointing to the zombie girl with the fiery red hair in twin braided pigtails other than her face-framing bangs, Kotaro said, "This is the legendary half-foreigner who commanded Einherjar, a kamikaze squad that saw no equal in its heyday! Sigrid Aesirson!" Sakura was a bit interested when Kotaro mentioned that this Sigrid girl was half-foreign; does that mean she's half Japanese and half some other nationality? The long-haired undead girl was getting some Nordic vibes from Sigrid, so maybe one of the Scandinavian countries?

"Right over here we have another key player who will bring the 'Saga Stories' project to fruition!" Kotaro declared as he gestured to the soaked-looking zombie girl with the straight black hair, "The legendary teen actress prodigy, Ayumu Akarui!" Sakura, when she heard Ayumu's name spoken aloud, was struck with another bout of déjà vu, as if she had either seen the teen actress before or otherwise heard of her.

But that was something else for another time, as Kotaro pointed to the last zombie girl, the pale-faced one with the long light brownish hair. "Arcades all over trembled when this girl walked in to score some new prizes," Kotaro said, "She's the legendary gamer girl! Hikari Kyokutan!" Sakura gave a look of consideration to Hikari, feeling as if there was something important about this girl. …But then again, there was something important about all of these girls, Sakura herself included. Otherwise, would all of them have been raised from the dead as zombies?

Clapping his hands together, Kotaro said, "Well okay, then! That takes care of the introductions! Now then ladies, do any of you have any questions?" After Kotaro had asked this, Sakura looked around, an expression of mild wonder as she observed the other nine girls still shambling about like mindless undead. "…No?" the eccentric man said in a questioning tone before continuing in a regular tone, "Well then, I guess that mean that we can get on with the beginning parts of the 'Saga Stories' project, which will begin with-"

"Umm, excuse me, Kotaro-san," Sakura said nervously as she raised a hand, interrupting Kotaro in the process, "But I have a few questions, actually."

Stopping midsentence where Sakura had cut him off at, Kotaro turned to face the long-haired zombie girl. Pointing at her, Kotaro said, "The other girls will all awaken on their own after something stimulates them, I haven't thought of what you're legendary for yet, and Tae doesn't have to have something special to be legendary."

"I…" Sakura replied, "…Was just going to ask about what's going to be done with the other girls here. I'm not too focused on the whole 'legendary' thing that you were going on about." Straightening up a bit, Sakura continued, "In fact, I'm not so sure why you put so much effort into the whole 'legendary' bit anyway."

"We need legends to help boost the selling power of each episode of 'Saga Stories' that the men and I produce!" Kotaro declared loudly and boastfully as he quickly clapped his hands, which he held off to the side.

"The…" Sakura replied in a mix of tentativeness and mild confusion, "…Men?"

To Sakura's surprise, Kotaro had a few more men helping out with the 'Saga Stories' project. Similar to Kotaro, all of the men had no issue with working with a group of ten girls that were all zombies; from this, Sakura gathered that they were in cahoots with Kotaro. Sakura watched as two of the men set up one of the rooms in the abandoned mansion to be a set for a scene in the first episode of this 'Saga Stories' show that they were producing.

Sakura was further surprised that Kotaro was so excellent at applying makeup that he was able to gussy her up to look like she did when she was a living breathing human being. Sakura was rather amazed with her appearance when she looked at herself in the mirror; she looked as if she hadn't aged a day from the moment she died. "I…" Sakura said aloud, "…I look alive."

"Then continue looking alive, Sakura," Kotaro said as he came walking up to her, the zombie Japanese Chin following after him on foot. When she turned to face Kotaro, Sakura was tossed a script by the eccentric man. With a slight smirk on his face, Kotaro said, "You're rather lucky, as you're going to get the series premiere episode more or less to yourself." Gesturing to Sakura with his right hand, Kotaro asked, "Are you ready to become an actress?"

Sakura still couldn't believe that she, even after dying over eleven years ago, was going to get to realize her dream of becoming an actress. With a small but confident smile on her face, Sakura nodded in the affirmative as she said, "I'll do my best, Kotaro-san!" A hint of confusion entered her expression as the long-haired zombie girl asked, "Umm, what is the first episode about, if you don't mind me asking?"

"In the first episode," Kotaro spoke as he began to explain, "Your character, having just moved to Saga after finding work as a waitress at a diner, is very scared with living on her own, so much so that she has nightmares that some of her neighbors are zombies." When Kotaro finished his explanation, Sakura had a feeling that the other nine zombie girls, who unlike her weren't yet self-aware, would be playing the role of the 'zombie neighbors' in the nightmare sequence that would occur in the first episode.

Remembering how she ran away in fright when she woke up in that room with the other nine girls, the long-haired zombie girl had a feeling that she would be able to sell acting frightened because she thought that she was surrounded by the undead. However, a pertinent question came up in her mind. Raising her hand, Sakura asked, "Umm, is that all that will be happening in the episode, or will the other girls have to act normally near the end?"

"I'm confident that the other girls will awaken with the stimulation of acting in the first episode," Kotaro replied, "And when they awaken, we'll be able to finish up the last of the filming and get the first episode on the airwaves."

"But what if none of the other girls awaken in time?" Sakura asked. Kotaro and Sakura kept eye contact for a good ten seconds uninterrupted, as if the silence between the two of them was all the buffer in the world.

However, Kotaro suddenly started clapping quickly as he said, "Get into position, everyone! We got a series premiere to film!"

As everyone involved in production for 'Saga Stories' rushed to get everything ready, Sakura, who was dragged along by one of the men that was in cahoots with Kotaro, could not help but feel a bit exasperated by some of the lack of foresight on the eccentric man's part. "…Oh well, it could be worse," the long-haired zombie girl thought as she was put into position, "At least I still get to realize my dream of becoming an actress."

Sakura was sitting alone in a living room, reading a book. From the look of the window that showed what was outside, it was nighttime. Sakura sighed to herself as she flipped the page in her book, a look of worry on her face. "I still can't believe that I'm living on my own now," Sakura said aloud with a hint of worry in her tone, "I bet mom is so worried about me all the way back in Akita. She probably thinks I'll run into some scary people over here in Sa-"

*THUD*

Sakura jumped when she heard the thudding sound just now. "What was that?" There was another similar thudding sound just moments after the first, making Sakura jump a bit in her skin again. From the sound of it, the thudding was coming from her front door. Tentatively, Sakura walked towards her front door, but right before she opened it, the door was busted down by Saki and Sigrid, both not dressed up like Sakura thus showing that they were zombies.

"Ahhhhhhh!" Sakura screamed in alarm, "My neighbors are zombies!" Sakura quickly turned to run away from her zombie neighbors, hoping that she would be able to escape though the sliding glass door that led to the little backyard of her apartment. When Sakura ran through, she was startled when Lily and Ayumu, also not dressed up to look human thus showing their undead selves, fell over the fence and into the little backyard. Sakura screamed again as she nimbly ran around the two zombie girls that laid on the ground.

Sakura ran further and further as she avoided all of her neighbors who were zombies; she ran past Junko, Ai, Yugiri and Hikari as they stumbled in trying to go after her, and she had to run for it when Tae actually tried to run after her, as if on predator instinct. "Oh god!" Sakura yelled with something of a (practiced) accent, "If this is some sort of nightmare, then I hope to god that I wake up really-"

"Aaaaaaaand cut!" Kotaro's voice called out, bringing everything to a halt. Sakura looked over to where Kotaro sat in a director's chair. The eccentric man got up and clapped in applause as he walked over to Sakura. "Well done, Sakura, well done!" Kotaro congratulated, "Now all we have to do is gather the other girls and then get you to the bedroom set so we can film the scene where you suddenly wake up in bed from the nightmare. It's a simple scene with little action going on, so it shouldn't prove to be a challenge to a girl of your surprising talents!"

Nodding once in an appreciative manner, Sakura replied, "Thanks, Kotaro-san." Since there had to be some setup before Sakura could act out the part in the wake up from nightmare scene that Kotaro was talking about, Sakura was told that she had about an hour of free time to rest a bit. She was still on a bit of an adrenalin rush from getting to act for a scene in a show that was going to air (if zombies like Sakura were capable of having adrenalin rushes, that is), but Sakura felt that she had to do that.

…

That ended up seeing Sakura sitting on a little armed bench on a patio located on one of the upper floors of the abandoned mansion, writing in a little journal that she had acquired. She wrote about all of her experiences since she woke up in that room with the other zombie girls. To be honest, Sakura was doing this because, for the (un)life of her, she could not remember even one bit of her life since before she woke up as a zombie. Sakura figured that if she wrote down all of her experiences, then it would help her to better remember what she goes through from this point moving-

"Ahhhh!" a female voice cried out in a mix of alarm and confusion, mostly confusion; the voice sounded like it belonged to a girl who was rough and ready to tumble. "What the fuck is all of this supposed to be?" the same female voice demanded, now more confused, as well as a little on the pissed off side, than alarmed. When she heard the female voice call out, Sakura had a feeling that she knew what was going on.

"I would be hearing an explanation from someone myself!" a second female voice called out, sounding reminiscent of large and mighty Viking warriors from a northern land of snow and cold, "What manner of sorcery be this? Why do I find myself surrounded by draugr?!" As the voices of some of Kotaro's men started talking up in an attempt to get the alarmed girls that had spoken up just now to calm down, Sakura, who conveniently enough finished writing in her little journal, got up and went back inside to see what was going on.

The scene that she walked in on was not all that much of a surprise to the long-haired zombie girl; a lot of the zombie girls were freaking out, as if they were regular humans who were finding themselves in a situation not unlike what Sakura found herself in a few nights ago. As such, Sakura could relate to what her fellow undead were going through right now. Sakura noticed that Tae was still acting like a mindless undead, but she figured that the black-dressed zombie girl would awaken later on by herself.

As some of the zombie girls saw Sakura enter, Saki pointed accusingly at her. "Oh, well this is just great!" Saki snapped, sounding more annoyed than anything else, "There's another one!"

"You are lucky that I do not have Ulfberht on hand, foul draugr," Sigrid swore as she pointed at Sakura, "Otherwise I would have sent not just you straight back to Helheim, but all of the other draugr that are here!" Sakura, from what she could guess, thought that Sigrid was referring to the zombie girls as 'draugr'. It struck Sakura as kind of funny in an ironic sense that the half-foreign girl was unaware that she herself was a 'draugr', as she's calling the other zombies.

"Can someone please tell me what the heck is going on here?!" Lily cried in a clearly panicked tone, her outside heart thing beating slowly as what looked to be some sort of ooze seeped from the couple of cuts on its surface.

As the other zombie girls (aside from the unawakened Tae) began to ask what was going on and/or freak the hell out, Sakura sighed to herself before inhaling as much as she can, something that she found herself surprised to be able to do given that drawing in breath was something that only the living can do. At the top of her lungs, Sakura yelled at her fellow zombie girls, "Good morning everyone! Welcome to Saga prefecture!"

END, SAGA STORIES CHAPTER ONE

Author's notes:

This has been the first chapter of 'Saga Stories: a tale of Zombie Land Saga'. I'm actually rather fond of the series, which is partly why I was glad when I heard that there would be a season two. I've seen a few Zombie Land Saga fics on the site before, and after milling an idea I had in my head around for a bit, I decided to start with writing one of my own. As such, this story ended up being written.

In case it wasn't all that clear, this story is meant to be an AU of the series proper. Although the goal Kotaro has with the zombie girls, that being to save Saga prefecture, remains unchanged, there are still a good number of changes that are present in this story. What's probably the most prominent change is the fact that the zombie girls, instead of being formed into an idol group, are being made to act on a slice-of-life sitcom TV show that airs weekly.

Other changes include some choices in outfit for some of the girls (Sakura more prominently in this regard), the fact that there are now ten zombie girls instead of just seven (more on Sigrid, Ayumu and Hikari later), Romero's breed being changed, and the fact that some details concerning the causes of death for some of the base seven zombie girls have been changed, such as Sakura getting hit with a bluish van rather than a white truck; Lily and Ai are both implied to have slightly different causes of death when compared to what they respectively have in the series proper (that will be explored later).

Anyway, with the zombie girls being actress instead of idols, the plots of a lot of chapters will be different when compared to counterparts from the series proper. But then again, that's one of the beauties of an AU story. I'll also get to work on outfit changes for some of the other zombie girls, the new ones especially. I have a few ideas in mind, but if any of you have any ideas for either Ayumu or Hikari, I would love to hear them. And if there are any questions, I would be glad to address them, but please try to keep things as respectful as possible. I am a respectful guy myself, and if similar courtesy is afforded to me, then you will find that I am a rather easy person to work with.

Catch you all in the next chapter.