Core Repair and Data Retrieval Program log n°██

Data n° ███ retrieved.

00:12 : New data acquired. Commencing data verification...

01:02 : Verification process over. Data deemed safe. Archiving in progress...

01:03 : Reading data...

"This isn't looking good."

The day had been going quite well, though.
It was normal in the way it began. I just enjoyed the holiday by being out in the street and eating one of Shinjuku's delicacies when suddenly, everything went wrong. My world flew into pieces.

...

12 hours earlier

I walked through the busy streets, filling my stomach with a good mood. My black hair attracting the heat of the summer and my eyes hunting for any tasty food shops nearby, with a bit more focus for China-type food : Kung Pao Chicken was really good, so I stayed attentive for any shops that sold it. School was finally over, and now it's time for relaxing ! Well, it was supposed to be...

All of a sudden, the mood became heavy. People stopped walking and looked around them for why, whispers started to fly, and before soon, panic exploded. Even though I was in the middle of the crowd, I was completely in the dark as to why this was happening so suddenly. Confused, I somewhat managed to make my way out of the violent sea of bodies without getting trampled. Once I was out, under some building I didn't know, I began to look around me and quickly found why : Explosions.

Shouts of panic and pain, explosions and roars that clearly didn't sound anything human. Or anything that I knew, for that matter.

"Wha...What the hell ...?" Overwhelmed, I stayed frozen for a few seconds. An explosion closer than the others woke me up, throwing something that landed right in front of me.

I gasped in horror. It was a corpse. More precisely, it was pieces of corpses belonging to different people. The clothes were different on each limbs after all, so it had to be that. My stomach threatened to spill its contents on the floor.
I glued myself to the wall behind me. I would have collapsed simply standing on the ground. Confusion, fear, horror, and panic threatened to rob me of my thoughts. 'No , stop ! This isn't the time for this. Think, dammit, think!'
An attack from terrorists ? Or an army ? No, not only the roars didn't sound like guns or tanks, but if they were an army, they couldn't have got inside the town so easily undetected. If I trusted my ears, not only was that force quite big, but it was also almost evenly spread through the city. How did they even do all of this without getting noticed ? I gritted my teeth in frustration.

It didn't make sense. The conclusion I arrived at didn't bring me any peace of mind, or any understanding of the situation : I lacked crucial information. After all, the enemies couldn't have just appeared inside the city from nothing, right ?...

'...No, I can just figure that out later. For now, I have to run to that place !' I stood up and resolutely moved my legs. Not without a direction, though. Whatever was happening, it was on the ground. Below should be relatively safer. And this was my hometown, so once I understood that I knew exactly where to go to get to safety : into the sewers! The entry point wasn't even that far!

But something else was very close.

Fire, corpses, people, buildings more or less destroyed, anything that was on my path was dead or about to be. People still alive extended their hands toward me, mouthing desperate words.

"I don't want to die !"

"Please save me !"

"I'm begging you !"

I wanted to avert my eyes. Just keep running forward without looking. Block my ears to stop hearing them. But I looked anyway. I heard everything. Blocked under massive rubble from a destroyed building, multiple limbs missing, a massive blood pool under them, their situations were all varied but hopeless.

I couldn't save them. I didn't take their hands, and kept running while tears streamed down my cheeks. I didn't apologize : an apology would have been selfish in that situation. This scenery, origin of my future nightmares, taught me an important truth :

Hope was far, but Hell was right here.

I was running through Hell to get to Hope. With all my strength, my desire to live and fear of death still persistent even after all of this, even after seeing with my own eyes my world's fragility, how it had been turned upside down. I just... didn't want to die.

Eventually, I made it to the sewer hole that was on the middle of a junction and removed its cover. But just as I was about to go inside, I heard artillery sounds and jerked my head to my right. What I saw at that moment managed ,even with all that happened, to make me widen my eyes in disbelief.

First, they were soldiers from the nearby military base fighting. I even saw multiple RPG in use. While I heard weapons were far more advanced these days, our closest military base was a rudimentary one, so these outdated ones were probably the best they had. While that was certainly intriguing, the shock was when the thing they were fighting came into sight. It was an enormous white and pink...thing. I couldn't give a name to this. It didn't look like any lifeform that I had ever seen. It was white with pink veins running through it. And just like a lot of things that day, it was absurd : It took the fire from the firearms of the military without much trouble other than some scratches, was massive and moved fast. Despite the fact that it was probably one of the biggest living creatures on Earth, it moved in a fast and somewhat agile way. The anti-tank weapons, however, did a number on it. They forced it to protect itself with its hand that...looked like a shield ?

"What the hell ...?" I spoke those words unintentionally. I only registered that I was speaking when I felt my mouth moving.

Finally, the creature fell. The soldiers cheered at their hard-won victory then proceeded to reorganize. I was trembling. So much effort to take one down. How many there was ? No, was there even stronger ones in the city ? How many in numbers ? Maybe searching for a way to get out of the town was a better idea.

I put the cover down. 'Since there were soldiers, maybe they could take me in ! Then, I could take refuge in the military base and-!' That hopeful thinking was over quickly when the soldiers turned on each other. 'What !?'

I narrowed my eyes. Some soldiers were on the ground, covered with purple lines, then got back up as if nothing happened. Those same soldiers then attacked their comrades with blunt weapons or firearms - anything they could get their hands on, their hands themselves if needed. They moved but didn't look alive : pale skin ,eyes devoid of light, animal roars, they just looked like...zombies. To add insult to injury, other white and pink creatures decided to show up right at the worst timing. The confused soldiers ,who already had to fight their previous comrades didn't last long.

...

I ran, almost falling with each step. I was inside the sewers and the smell was predictably awful. But I didn't care about that. My mind was a complete mess of recollections and emotions. The nightmare on the surface followed me in my mind, refusing to go. Even though I tripped a few times, it was a miracle that I didn't fall in my state of exhaustion. Even more that I ended up at the right place.

I stopped myself at a dead-end, panting loudly, sweating and crying. A sorry spectacle, in short. A light then came over me, analyzing.

"Citizen Lux recognized. Proceeding to open the bunker's entry. Please enter." a robotic voice came seemingly out of nowhere, and the wall gave way to a neat-looking bunker. I entered and the wall closed behind me. I then made it to the bathroom, emptied my stomach inside the toilet, and after that...I don't really remember. I broke down in the bathroom, screaming sobbing...nothing but vague memories of it are left. Or maybe I just don't want to recall that.

I felt a bit relieved after my outburst. I took a shower, cleaned up the bathroom and went to the infirmary block of the bunker. I wouldn't sleep if I didn't take sleeping pills.

I never felt so tired in my life. I plopped down on one of the beds as the pills began to take effect. 'Please, make this just a simple nightmare.'

...

I woke up, feeling like I didn't want to move from my bed for 30 years at least. I had no nightmares that night. Of course, my wish of yesterday wasn't granted.

'I need to get up. Or I might never be able to.' That might sound stupid but that's what I felt. I needed to act. Brooding over the past wouldn't help me.

'First, I need to see if other people made it.'

"Bunker, can you tell me the other bunkers' situation ?" When they were built, these bunkers had been for the sake of protecting civilians from radiations due to a nearby reactor meltdown, terrorist attacks and war. As such, each of them possessed an A.I that could interact with the other bunkers, communicating vital info.

"To this moment, no other bunkers have been used. Out of the five in this city, only the 2nd is in use." answered the robotic voice. "What !?"

'No other person made it to a bunker ? Was everyone else...dead ?' That hypothesis threatened to break my already brittle calm. "However, the city has informed all bunkers that there are survivors. They are numbering around one hundred." the voice added, alleviating me from my worries. Information from the city could be sent to the bunkers by the mayor, or someone directly below him in terms of authority. It meant that some of the administration of the city had survived, even in this chaos. This realization brought some much-needed comfort.

I heaved a sigh of relief, but immediately frowned. Hiding in buildings should have been possible, since not everyone was in the streets yesterday. It was great that I was not the only survivor but so little was odd in such a numerous city. Until I remembered how the soldiers met their end.

'Could it be a disease ? Then, am I infected too !? No, wait a minute. The soldiers' changes occurred really quickly. In comparison, it has been 12 hours already for me and nothing happened. Do I have some kind of resistance ?' I re-checked my body for any potential purple lines but fortunately found nothing. I did not feel that bad physically either. 'Some soldiers yesterday just dropped dead without becoming...zombies, so it could be lethal'. Such a small number of survivors seemed fortunate in those conditions. The outside world had probably been already warned, but there was no way to know if or how this crisis was going to worsen. Trying to planify for future actions would become increasingly hard if that happened.

I looked at the bunker's roof. So, I was in the dark about why this happened, I didn't know if I was about to die or become a zombie, and I didn't know how to get out of this situation. This mess started in one of the worst ways possible, and things didn't seem like they would progress in a better direction anytime soon. Yeah,...

"Fuck. This isn't looking good."

Author's note :

Here's the second chapter ! Thought a lot about how to properly write our dear Lux's first contact with Honkai. An Eruption happening in his hometown seemed appropriate. As always, leave a fav/comment if you like the chapter, thanks for reading, and I'll see you later.

P.S : I left a small hint on his origin in this chapter. Let's see if you readers can find it ;).