Five minutes later, the tub gently thumped onto a random rooftop, allowing its creator to relinquish his white knuckled grip on the sides.
Cautiously lifting himself, the briefcase clunked against the sides, sliding from his lap as he dismounted. With a muffled grunt, he stretched briefly and strolled acrossed the flat, featureless rooftop. Scrolling through the spawn menu, a crossbow materialised before him, but it was deliberately empty.
Peering through its low powered scope, he knelt and viewed the skyline. A shiny unbroken glass and steel landscape stretched everywhere, but upon looking up, he lowered the crossbow, squinting and rubbing his eyes.
"I'm not a religious man, but I definitely didn't go to heaven." He muttered, seeing the massive transparent halos in the sky. "And given my need to get outta here, I certainly didn't die."
With a delicate sniffle, an easterly breeze shaved against his nape, enticing him to breath the surprisingly clean air.
"This has to be gm_bigcity." He murmured. "But, then again, last time I was there, there were no new developments."
He glanced around a few more times and a ventral sigh left his nostrils.
"How can anybody explain this?" He asked to no one in particular, taking a long gaze at the thin towering monolith in the distance. "Reversed engineered Combine technology?"
A shrugged followed thereafter, the young adult asian guy shaking his head.
"Speaking of the Combine..." He swapped his crossbow for the toolgun, spawning a duplication on his right, specifically a wiremod radio, and tuned through the frequencies.
"-0 Block, Shinbashi Avenue. Repeat, officer needs assistance a-"
"-y car into molten butter! I need backup assistance now! Now, go-"
"Officer down on 33rd Okinawa Street! Requesting 10-22 on m-"
Flicking the radio off, he promptly spawned another duplication, or rather another wiremod contraption, on his left. It was a flat rectangular device with a keyboard, which, upon flicking a switch and letting it boot, an iconic piano tune followed, earning a small smile from him.
"Ah, Windows XP..." He sighed. "One of these days, I'm going put you on a proper computer, not an emulator."
Staring at the screen for several long moments, his hands hovered above the keys and he began typing.
"Well, there's definitely an internet connection." He said after opening a terminal. "Let's see what's going on, starting with some keywords."
His first search: Revolution.
And...
"Okay...nothing." He muttered, unfazed by the Japanese text and formatting. "What about, uh, government agencies?"
He waited a few moments and the subsequent results appeared.
"Hmm." He hummed, but then, he deeply frowned, his eyes swivelling back and forth as he scoured the queries. "General Student Council ... President ... Vice President ... academies ... Gehenna ..."
Then, he typed in one more keyword: Country.
"City of Kivotos?" He read loudly. "Kivotos...that's a Greek name, but that makes no sense. What's a Greek metropolis doing in Japan? Or rather...where the hell is this place?"
But before he could search further, he clicked onto the images section, scrolling through different parts of the city.
"Oh wow, bunch of my folks here." He sniggered, but his amused smile slowly morphed into a mild scowl. "Only problem is...they're all girls. Where did all the men go?"
His facial expression distorted further when he typed several searches, thus rattling his head.
"There's no way these lil furries and murder bots are all what's left of them."
But, following five more searches, a grumble vibrated in his lungs and he sighed. "This whole planet is literally one giant city. This still doesn't make any sense. There's no way we could've explored and colonised other planets, not this soon, and especially not with the mess created by the Combine."
Pressing back a number of times, he stared blankly for a moment, then clicking onto search suggestions via an old keyword.
"GSC President, missing?" He summarised the subsequent queries; however, upon searching the images, he gasped. "Holy shit..."
With a gaping mouth and slow breathing, he stared at the pictures, where he eventually uttered. "Son of a bitch, it's her..."
Sluggishly collapsing onto his right side, his left fist slammed into the ground, and, though he had no tears to shed, he cringed profoundly.
"How the fuck was I supposed to know?" He snarled loudly, but there was nobody listening to him, expect himself. "Because you would've been dead too, asshole."
Furiously patting the ground with his right hand several times, he laid there for a while, ignoring the mild soreness that followed in his body.
Between this unknown world and his actions, he finally lifted his head, staring at the obscured skyline from his perspective.
"Ah what the hell have I been doing with my life...?" He groaned, sloppily slouching backwards and sitting on his bottom, glancing up at the sky.
Rubbing his face, his hands loudly patted his lap, followed with some vicious head shaking, then a sharp sniffle.
"And who the hell am I to get emotional all of sudden?" He scoffed, erecting himself and staring at the faint stars in the bright blueness overhead. Twirling his toolgun, he stared at the ground, where he mumbled. "I guess I'll have to do this the old fashioned way. So, here's the plan: Build a rocket and fly back home. How hard can that be, huh?"
Only when he looked at the skyline again, he grunted. "Oh wait, you're in the middle of a gorgeous urban wasteland. Not exactly the best place to build and test a rocket."
Placing his hands on his hips and tapping the ground with his right foot, he scoffed and said. "And there's no way this skyscraper can withstand a small turbofan, never mind the smallest spawnable th-"
Before he could think any further, a sharp crack snipped the edge nearby, sending concrete and copper-lead fragments everywhere.
"Oh for Garry's sake..."