Akugami

4. Inside the Weapons Store.

With a gasp, Tatsumi's eyes shot open and he struggled for air, escaping his nightmare, gagging and almost throwing up in the process as well.

He quickly took in his surroundings, it was the same small room, from yesterday, which meant. "This, is.." He struggled to speak as sweat ran down his neck, it was a dream, he was still alive, if felt so real, too real, if he hadn't awakened back to this reality and had instead to a bed he would have been convinced that everything thus was something his maniacalind had conjured in his sleep, but there they were, same little room with a single bed that smelled like an old man, Tatsumi released a sigh as some of the tension left his body, so long as he could breathe there was a chance.

"The safe room, It's morning." Teru replied quietly to his earlier question, giving him a sympathetic glare after seeing the terror slowly fade from his expression, Tatsumi hung his head trying to shake it all away but it was there, all that death, all he had heard, actually happened; again, imagine being witness to everyone you know being killed by rows of sharp bone crunching teeth, twice.

"The fridge only had a sandwich and a few bottles of water" Yukiyo whispered leaning down In front of him and handing him a fraction of a sandwich and a cup of water. "Teru, what're we gonna do?" She asked, turning to her cousin.

"Eat first, we have to leave soon." He instructed, gripping his blade with a shaking hand, he could make all the right choices he wanted, but Tatsumi could tell from early on the he would be the one leading them soon, but he would remain as a follower for now, they needed to get out of Salt Springs, and he had no idea how to do that, he had been helped the last life, and he'd forgotten the route, he'd need to cleverly depend on Teru's knowledge and Yukiyo's navigation, so both of them were useful to him, but aside from these two, there was someone else in Salt Springs that he had to find, a lowerclassman that went to their school, last he remembered she had been victim to a caravan of scumbags that escaped prison, but had somehow managed to escape after a year with them, he had become good friends with her over the years but she was also killed with Yukiyo, he had to find her before she went out of Salt Springs.

"Where will we go?" Tatsumi asked, seeing Yukiyo pick up the phone in the corner, he was determined to get these two as independent as he possibly could by the time they got to the edge of town.

"It's dead." she whispered, and Tatsumi took his smartphone from his pocket, (No signal), but his watch was still working. He sighed before beginning to eat slowly, each bite reminding him of the dream, while the dream reminded him of his past life, causing his sense of taste to slowly vanish, leavingvthe food to taste like cardboard and egg white, it was putrid, but he downed the food anyway because he had learnt a long time ago in another life, wether it tastes good or not, cooked or not, food is food and if you can't fight you'll die so good takes priority over everything else, eat as much as you can when you can, and sleep any chance you get, you never knew when either would be your last, so he still finished it, gulping down the water and blinking down tears

“Get a grip, crying is useless, pointless, a waste of energy.” He grunted mentally, forcing his quivers to a halt once more, this was proving harder than he had imagined, it was increasingly hard to subject his young body into discipline, it made him winder how he had survived beck then.

“These creatures, they remind me of an anime I watched before summer.” Teru thought as he looked at Tatsumi take one calming breath after another and began doing the same to calm his own racing heart, outside felt terrifying even scarier now that the noises had stopped, the killings seemed to have finally stopped, but it only meant that there was nobody passing by or nobody near them to be killed anymore, whomever wasn't in hiding by now had already been long dead; eaten.

“But this isn't Anime.” Teru continued his mental monologue.

“This is happening for real, it isn't the mind of a twisted person put on screen, this is real life… they really are killing... eating people.” Teru started to fall into a pool of thought. “They just suddenly appeared out of nowhere and started killing, these beings, are they gonna kill without end, where'd they even actually come from, and are we their only interests, why us, why did they suddenly start to eat people?” There and then, only one description came to mind.

"Teru?" Tatsumi called, quietly snapping his fingers in front of his face "Hey" he called again.

"Huh... Uh, sorry, I don't know, probably somewhere with the least amount of people, I guess." He responded windedly, answering Tatsumi's earlier question.

Tatsumi pretended to think about it while he ran his hand through his hair for a few seconds before placing his hand on Teru's shoulder. "Thanks, Teru."

"Tatsumi, you're the smartest, what do you think, there's something that's been bothering me all night... and..." Teru trailed off, taking a bite of his bit of sandwich.

"…About the Akugami?" Tatsumi asked, plainly seeing as Teru and Yukiyo both turned and looked at him wide eyed, he returned a stern glare as if they had already decided amongst them a name to give the monsters.

"Yes, the... Akugami," Teru said slowly, accepting the name with a frown, it matched them far better than he had thought, even though he was thinking Shinigami, their initial meanings were not that far off from each other, but an evil being of chaos fitted their profiling better than calling them gods of death.

He pointed his blade forward a few times. "My blade hurt that one yesterday, you were able to kill it in one single move, but, from what we heard last night, it seems guns might be useless against them, I'm not dismissing the possibility because guns are the most powerful weapons we can get our hands on right now, but what if they actually don't work?" Teru looked at Yukiyo first who was seemingly shocked, and then at Tatsumi who had a thoughtful expression. "We have to get outta here, but we don't know for sure what they are or how they function." He paused, "I don't wanna get eaten by one of those things."

Silence engulfed them for a moment as the thought of being eaten hacked at their minds, but then Teru spoke again..

"The one I killed yesterday was by mere luck, bit that doesn't mean I'm not sure what I did exactly, and to be honest, I'm hoping I never face one of those things again, but it's very unlikely so let me show you." Tatsumi stood and walked over to Teru, then using his hand like a sword he jabbed his fingers right down on the mould of Teru's skull. "Right here, after you kicked it, the Akugami shook for a few seconds before it went crazy, but just looking at how it was able to tear up the ground with it's bare claws tells you that it shouldn't have been bothered by a mere kick right?" Teru jabbed his fingers against Teru's head again, "Make sure you aim for the mould of you encounter any of those things again." Tatsumi stood quietly after that for a response, and then sat back down on the bed while Yukiyo plopped beside him, also wanting a response and possibly demonstration.

He sat there, seeing the helplessness in their eyes, unable to actually do a thing as he was, all he had ever done was mouth off and beat the holy pajezus out of a few street thugs by this period in his life, to be a sudden master of monster killing must've come as a shock to both his girlfriend and his best friend, but he had to teach them as much as he could before the first wave of Akugami, he was able to fight now, but he needed to become strong as fast as possible, he had survived the first wave in his previous life only after several people had died for his sake as a leader while he led the others, in the end they too died and he and Yukiyo and a mere handful had been the only survivors, when it came to the real heavy metal, his fighting skills proved useless as it was someone else wielding special skills that had saved their lives, two of them actually, he was definitely going to find those two people as soon as he could, they were valuable, cherished, very important to him and Yukiyo, who was still oblivious of their existence.

"Yukiyo." Tatsumi sighed , just before mock realization came upon his face, that alerted them he had thought of something brilliant.

"Teru, we're in, a weapons shop aren't we?" He asked with a half smile after more seemingly pressing thoughts.

"We're in the the biggest arms shop in town, also the widest varied." Tatsumi concluded as a look of realisation crossed Teru's face bringing them all a little comfort, if he wasn't there for them the day before, they'd have probably both been eaten by those abominations.

Salt Springs wasn't a small town, there were at least 3-5 of everything here, schools included. Four arms shops, and he had purposefully led them to the one that was owned by a man with a taste for very old and well crafted weapons; Mr.KiKi, was a fan of weapons that pre-dated the Shogun age, when samurai reined and he had collections of many different types from eastern to western and even northern swords spears and varied weapons for every time of fighter imaginable, and his collection of those weapons were amazing, he never sold any, but they were all there on display in the main store.

Minutes passed as they planned out a thorough action, not wanting to linger, not wanting to falter in the slightest.

Teru skillfully and quietly unlocked the metal door, letting the dim light in the hall creep into the dark room they had spent the night, even if they wanted to it wasn't a good idea to return to the bunk once they left, because of its security, someone was probably watching it for a chance to get in there themselves, and the Akugami couldn't get in, but once they had their lock on a target they would literally tear anything apart overtime to get to them, anyone who was followed there after them and locked themselves inside would eventually either die of starvation or wait while the monsters slowly tore the bunk apart and then killed them.

Evidence of the m******e of a body painted the pale yellow paint cracked walls, the scent of stale blood swept in their nostrils causing an involuntary gag from the mell of a rawly shredded body.

This was nothing new for Tatsumi, but to Yukiyo who was experiencing the aftermath of a freshly mauled body, he told her and subsequently Teru to keep their eyes on the light, and they did so as they walked, afraid to look at such a scene too hardly.

"Let's hurry." He whispered as they made their way to the bright of the glass store.

"Glass; why is it glass, this is such a terrible design flaw right now." Tatsumi cringed as he could see down the road and even up the road by simply turning his head. This was terribly inconvenient, without the cover of night to hide their movements, the only upside was that the glass was tempered, and fully bullet proof.

They made their way to the 'antiques' section of the store, not wasting any time, and immediately started their picky observation of a vast collection of swords, blades, longbows, crossbows, spears, katanas, And many more types of weapons nlthey hadn't even noticed that the guns were already mostly missing, but that was simply because their minds had already been set on melee weapons.

"Look at all of this, I would have done so much better in my previous life had I remembered this place on the first day of the invasion, but it was almost two weeks later that we had come here and by then it was already empty, even the storage room was completely bare, this collection is simply amazing, I don't know which to pick, Kiki, you've saved me months of trouble!" Tatsumi trailed away in thought, only to be rudely awakened by Yukiyo's scream piercing his ears.

Outside of the store's glass wall, an Akugami stood, with its four-fingered hands on the glass, staring right at her, she was frozen in place.

"Yukiyo-what-the-hell-are-you-still-doing-there?!!" Teru shouted, every word louder than the last one as he chunked them all together, she was not the only one, Tatsumi couldn't move a muscle, He had lost his ability to think entirely as his mind chose that inconvenient time to remind him of what exactly happened to Yukiyo, he suffered paralysis and was unable to stop seeing anything other than the future. It seemed as as though his limbs had lost connection to his brain's Wi-Fi signals and were roaming offline, blind and shaking from a clear malfunction.

"Tatsumi!!" Teru yelled, and his numbness vanished as he felt the sting Teru's hand had left on his cheek.

The Akugami raised it's hand at the glass, and Teru grabbed Yukiyo and jumped aside as the glass shattered under the monster's folded fist on its first attempt, so much for tempered bulletproof, it couldn't even stand against a single blow from these beings.

Looking to both sides of the wide aisle, Teru grabbed a decorated spear and charged at the monster. "If our suspicions are actually correct, if Tatsumi is actually right about blades being the only thing that harms them, then this should work, in theory!" He confidently sprang at the beast like a possessed martial master, and with all of his strength, and a calmed mind, he aimed and rammed the spear in the creature's chest, not the mould, the chest.

Life is a b***h, and apparently, so too was the spear.

The tip broke at contact.

Having only gained it's attention, the nine foot monster stood towering above him, teeth clattering, the sound engulfed around his consciousness, and he froze like a deer in headlights.

"s**t, I made it mad!" Was all he could think before someone hit his side and he was sent flying, his eyes briefly registered Tatsumi in his peripheral before he was sent tumbling in a shelf of short swords like the ones he specialized in, and by the time he had hit the shelf and rolled to his feet, the Akugami had already scooped Tatsumi off the ground with a single hand and stuck half his body in it's mouth before he even had a chance to defend himself, Tatsumi himself hadn't realized that he had thrown his life away for Teru's sake until its rancid breath's wooziness on his face woke him from another train of thoughts, and while staring into the darkness of the creatures throat, he felt its teeth squeeze and barely sink into his waist, but it didn't break skin

"Oh god no, not like this not now, s**t-s**t-s**t!!" Tatsumi began panicking, if he died here then the others wouldn't be long after, so much for his plans of survival…

Feeling overbearing dread and helplessness, he closed his eyes and accepted his fate, “I'm about to be eaten.”

"Tatsumi!!"