Chapter Text
It all started when Shiori Hirose started receiving multiple signals of the Undead Sealing Stone, or as most people know it, the monolith. This was obviously quite strange, since there’s supposed to be only one.
It appeared that these signals were originating from somewhere in the distant land of Texas (which, to be fair, wouldn’t be that strange if there was only one signal. That monolith had a way of travelling to all sorts of corners of the world). However, many of those monoliths seemed to be migrating towards Japan. Which these days typically only meant one thing.
“Do you have the orange juice?” Nozomi asked Mutsuki as they looked over the supplies they packed in her car.
“Oh of course,” replied Mutsuki. “I kept it inside here.” He gestured to a cooler in the trunk of the car.
“So how long until you have to head back to Tibet?” Nozomi asked as she sat in the driver’s seat of the car and put on her seatbelt.
Mutsuki shrugged. “Tachibana-san and I didn’t book return tickets yet, since we weren’t sure how long this would take. So we’re basically here until we can find Kenzaki and make sure all the Sealing Stones don’t--”
“Relevent keywords detected.”
Mutsuki paused from where he stood outside the car next to the passenger seat. “Did you hear that?”
Nozomi glanced around at controls of the car. “Doesn’t seem to be from the car-- Mutsuki watch out!”
Nozomi caught a glimpse of an android in the rear-view mirror, running straight for Mutsuki. Moreover, the robot was armed, shooting at the passenger door of the car before Mutsuki could get in. Mutsuki dodged and whipped out his transformation buckle and cards, while Nozomi ducked in the car for safety.
After about 2 minutes, Nozomi heard silence outside. She slowly raised her head and scanned the windows around her. The android was now far in the distance, with a few others trailing along. The ones closer to the car seemed to be shuffling through some cards—Mutsuki’s cards. As for Mutsuki himself, he lay unconscious on the first android’s shoulders.
“Mutsuki!” Nozomi revved up the engine of the car and hit the gas pedal.
“Threat detected. Eliminate threat!” The androids began to say in horribly out-of-sync rounds. Every android except the one carrying Mutsuki turned around and started shooting at Nozomi’s car.
Unfortunately for these robots, this was all happening in a nearly-abandoned parking lot next to an automobile junkyard, and Nozomi knew no fear.
In other words, Nozomi started running those bots over.
“Damn. Here we go again.” Kim Sunggyu stood outside as it began to rain, watching Myungsoo, his co-worker of over a decade, get effectively trapped in his car as it tumbled to oblivion in the middle of a nearly-abandoned parking lot. Except now there were a bunch of Tesla Optimus robots behind the whole thing. That part was new. “Seems like a terrible way to advertise a business.”
“Anti-Elon insults detected,” announced a robot standing behind Sunggyu. “Prepare for butt-kickin--”
Sunggyu turned around and grabbed the robot by the neck, pressing the red button on the back of its neck to turn it off. “You’re really gonna say your plans at full volume, huh?” Then he looked down at the card that fell out of the robot’s hands. “What’s that?”
A few more robots scrambled to pick up the card. However, as Nozomi’s car ran over those bots, her car generated a gust of wind that blew the strange card up and into Sunggyu’s hand. Upon close inspection, the card had the letter Q and a green club symbol on two opposing corners, but with pictures of tigers in the middle. Before Sunggyu could take in any more details, the card began to glow bright green and fly back into the air as if it had a mind of it’s own. The light grew, then faded on a nearby hill to reveal a person in place of the card: specifically, a woman with white streaks in her jet-black hair, sporting a leather jacket and pants, a sleeveless leopard-print turtleneck, fingerless motorcycle gloves, and the kind of chunky work boots that would be perfect to wear to either a hiking trip or a fight in a Denny’s parking lot.
The woman looked around at the situation. “The heck?” She turned to Sunggyu. “Who’s this guy? And what does he look so scared for?” She followed the direction of his gaze to the sky above her, watching a reddish-purple Audi fall toward her. “Oh.” She gave the car a kick, which miraculously changed its trajectory so that it could land on the ground safely on all 4 wheels.
Myungsoo sat in the car, dizzy and dazed but otherwise unharmed. “Thank you!”
Sunggyu looked at his friend’s car, and then at the lady. “Who are you?”
“It’s a long story. Right now I sense multiple unsealed Joker Undead and darkroaches. Something doesn’t add up, and I don’t have time to explain it all,” she said, walking away. However, one last robot stood a few meters in front of her, with a gun in its hand and an injured Mutsuki waking up next to it. “And I especially don’t have time for you.” She reached over to one of the scrap cars in the junkyard, yanked the car door off, and chucked it at the robot. Mutsuki dodged just in time as the car door hit the robot in the face, causing the robot to explode.
By now, Nozomi had parked her car was running toward Mutsuki to check if he was alright. Then she turned to the other lady. “Wait, aren’t you the Tiger Undead? How did you get un-sealed?”
“Beats me,” she replied, pointing to Sunggyu. “Ask him.”