Chapter 1
It had all started that morning. It was a Saturday, and Sorawo wouldn't expect Toriko to not on this kind of day phone her and call for an A-1 expedition. 30 minutes later and they were both at Kozakura's place planning what they were going to do today. Their eponymous host was also there, wearing an expression that would probably be somewhat scary if Sorawo didn't understand it to be Kozakura's frown of defeat. She didn't even complain that they were going to get themselves killed (or worse). In general this was kind of the root of the problem they were about to face. Sorawo and Toriko had done this a lot in the past month, and since the, ahem, incident, relating to Urumi Luna, they had not encountered any especial horror. A few hostile entities, some of which were tricky to deal with, but in general their trips to the other side recently had been fraught with, if anything, mundaneity. Sorawo and her partner were seasoned veterans of the alien world, and their confidence in navigating it had grown quite strong.
"I can't wait to see what we'll find there" Sorawo said, referring to a certain hilly upland they had seen before from near Satsuki's old camp but never physically visited, which they had decided to fix as their target for the day after Sorawo was able to convey to Toriko that it was what she was talking about.
"Hey, Kozakura, we've been having a good amount of fun recently. You could come along with us~" - Toriko said.
The lady being addressed was suddenly jolted out of her semi-trance.
"What are you TALKING about? Sometimes I think there's no way either of you are really internalising how dangerous that place is"
"We're well aware of the dangers by now" Sorawo said.
"That's the problem! You've seen it but not really felt it. It's a miracle you haven't suffered any of the consequences of your own actions yet. And that's exactly why you'll keep going until you do"
"Eh, what's the worst that could happen? Come along with us, you'd be fine!" Toriko said, playfully. Sorawo looked back over at Kozakura, but she didn't say anything in response. She noticed she was vibrating slightly. It kind of looked like she was practicing trying to evaporate Toriko with her mind.
Paying attention to Toriko's expressive (and also very beautiful) face, Sorawo could see a whole train of feelings run past. At first she was smiling slightly and seemingly holding back a laugh (at her own joke?). Then she was looking back and forth between Sorawo and Kozakura, slightly bemused now, seemingly confused how they could both be doing something other than continuing the conversation. Then she became thoughtful, as if trying to think of something to say herself, finally replaced by puzzlement: Toriko had now forgotten all about what they had been talking about five seconds ago.
Then she looked thoughtful again, and finally drew something out of her tote bag. "By the way, this morning I found this on my doorstep. I can't imagine it's not associated with the other side somehow"
The object in question looked like a hexagonal stone plate, made of a material with almost the same dark grey, oily appearance and texture as a whetstone. In the centre was a small, discoloured red hexagon. Toriko laid it on the table with a thump, and Sorawo put her hand on it. It was smooth but not at all slippery. The mysterious thing about it was that it felt quite warm to the touch, which Sorawo took to be its main anomalous property. She said as much out loud. Clearly, as Toriko said, it must have originated somehow from the other side. "Does it do anything in particular?" she asked. Toriko gave her a blank look. "Well, I haven't seen it do anything." A few moments of thoughtful silence. "Ooh, ooh, use your eye on it!".
Sorawo already had been doing so. "Well, to tell the truth, it really just looks like a plate." She paused. "Well, I guess the stone looks a bit different in texture now. And the red... thing in the middle, is gone. But nothing super interesting". Well, not entirely. For some reason as she touched the plate, she just kind of felt vaguely worried and uncomfortable. Not about anything in particular. But there was a subtle feeling of apprehension.
She withdrew her hands. The feeling subsided. She realised it had been showing on her face.
Toriko then pushed it towards Kozakura, who recoiled in horror as soon as she touched the object, as if it was a hot stove, which earned some teasing from both Sorawo and Toriko.
Deciding to take it with them ("no way, you are going to get it OUT of my house!"), they soon found themselves through the gateway to the other side near Kozakura's place, out on their expedition.
They were now were driving the A-1 along the pre-described routes free of glitches they had set up. They passed beyond the meadow and entered the forest in between them and their destination.
"You know," Sorawo said, "Kozakura is always telling us to retain our attachments to the real world. Maybe we should plan a dinner date this evening or something. You know, so we can look forward to it after we're done here."
"I like it. Yeah! Let's look forward to it!"
"I was thinking, let's invite Natsumi and Akari. So we have a piece of the real world to come back to" Sorawo continued. She noticed that Toriko's face fell slightly as she said this. "What you want it to be by ourselves?" Nod. "But that like, defeats the idea..." Thinking about Toriko wanting to spend more time alone with her made Sorawo blush slightly. She noticed Toriko was already blushing, which made her blush harder.
In order to escape from that thought, Sorawo pulled out her phone. "Here, let's call them. Phones seem to work in the other side. And nothing scary is happening right now. We should be fine, right?" As she was alluding to, they were in a pleasant state at the moment. There was nothing anomalous going on, and it was daytime, although albeit the kind of sterilised, hyper-real daytime, with a sky that looked just slightly more blue than physically normal on earth, that seemed to last eternally in the other side, exactly up until it was least convenient for darkness to fall. It was completely silent as well, other than a weak breeze and the quiet drone of the A-1's motor. There were no birds, no people, no sound of cars rumbling down a distant highway, no indication whatsoever of any life other than themselves.
"Maybe we should try not to take too long...," Toriko pondered, referring to what had happened the last time they tried to call someone from the other side. "Eh, it's probably fine."
Sorawo tapped the button to call Natsumi. Her mobile phone rang for a few seconds, and then patched through:
"Hey" said Natsumi.
"Hello, how are you doing?" she said.
"Akari and me are watching a movie right now. What do you want?" she said somewhat unhappily. Right to the point!
Sorawo grimaced. "I was, uh, just asking if you and Akari wanted to eat out tonight with me and Toriko?" She named a steakhouse she thought would be suitable for the occasion. ("Nice", Toriko said in English)
"Yeah, uh",
Natsumi quit talking, and Sorawo could faintly hear Akari's voice in the background. "I thought you wanted to... , alright." Natsumi muttered. Then she spoke into the phone again. "Yeah we'd love to" she said. Sorawo turned to Toriko and gave her a thumbs-up. Toriko returned it.
"By the way though," Natsumi continued, "I wanted to talk about something else as well. Can you come over?"
"No... not right now. We're busy" Sorawo answered.
"Oh, so it is a we? Heh. Well what it is, is that we're dealing with something, let's say, supernatural, again. I found some kind of weird stone slab in the passenger seat of my car this morning. All it does is it feels heated, 'cept it stays that way. Nothing bad has happened, we haven't been visited by anything, but it just gives me the creeps. Would it be okay if you came over and took it with you?" she said. Absentmindedly, she reached over into Toriko's tote bag and touched their own ominous plate.
"Yeah, sure. We'll head over this evening. Anything else?"
A pause passed by, then…, a bloodcurdling scream erupted from Sorawo's phone.
She dropped it in shock, and it fell into the snow. Snow. Sorawo looked back up. Snow?? When did it become winter?! The ground was now completely covered in snow. It seemed like it was still daytime, although it was a bit dim. The sky was now an overcast slate grey. There was snow falling, but not too much, although it was being blown fiercely by the wind. The trees were gone, actually. She looked around, and realised she had no idea where they were. The A-1 was now located in a hollow, which was deep enough to mostly obscure what the outside landscape looked like, although some hills were visible. Then Sorawo looked over at Toriko, who seemed equally as baffled as she was. It was one of those things the other side did from time to time. You'd blink and find you'd been transported somewhere completely different from where you'd just been.
"What was that? Are you okay, Miss?" Akari's voice emanated from her mobile phone. Sorawo read down andnpicked it up. "Yeah we're alright, basically. Did that come from your end... or..."
"No, we thought it came from yours" Akari responded. She sounded extremely worried. "Well we're fine..." Sorawo said, "You know, I think we should hang up at this point" She could hear Natsumi agreeing with that proposition in the background. "Alright. Bye-bye' Stay safe" Akari replied. "You too. See you this evening".
Sorawo pressed the end call button. She looked up to take stock of their situation again. The main thing that struck Sorawo was the COLD. It was really cold, she was coming to notice. Like insanely cold. She was so uncomfortable...
"Hey!" Toriko snapped her fingers front of her as she stared off into space. She grabbed Sorawo's hand and pulled her out off of the seat of the A-1, which had sputtered to a halt, seemingly not able to function in this kind of temperature. They ran to the lip of the hollow. They could see the land was undulating but not especially hilly. The whole landscape was pure white in all directions, except for off to their right, where they saw a large building complex, that reminded her of an Antarctic research station. All of the buildings were made of grey corrugated metal, were one story tall (although in the distance they could glimpse a larger structure), and had lots of snow piled up against them, with some seeming almost buried. They had windows, but there were no lights on as far as they could see.
"Hey, let's go!" Toriko yelled, and pulled her on. Sorawo couldn't think about anything other than how cold she was. Maybe they were actually in Antarctica...
They ran toward the closest hut. Toriko tried the door. Locked. She banged on it a few times, and then pulled her handgun out of her tote bag and shot away the door handle. She pushed Sorawo inside first, and then stepped inside herself and leaned against the door to keep it closed. Toriko realised Sorawo was unconscious. She pulled out her flashlight. The room they were in had no windows (so it was very dark), and was filled with lots of equipment. She didn't recognise or know how to operate any of it, but a lot of them looked like snowblowers. It had been a fairly long time since she had last seen one of those. Unfortunately there did not seem to be any weaponry, other than some shovels. She looked a bit closer and noticed that everything was coated in dust. At the far end of the room was a door. She also noticed it was dead silent and still extremely cold, although at least there was no longer any wind. There was no heating system, or if there was, it wasn't turned on. This was deeply worrying. She felt Sorawo. Her pulse was still normal, so she didn't have hypothermia. Toriko considered that she probably had probably fainted from shock. Regardless, she took her own jacket off and placed it over Sorawo. She was really cold herself and couldn't feel her hands, but the gesture still felt important to her.
She picked Sorawo up in a fireman's carry, and walked toward the door on the other side of the room. Strictly speaking she wasn't sure if she had to do this, but given that they were in the other side, she didn't want to leave Sorawo's side for more than one moment. There was no telling what might happen if they got separated. She walked to the other side of the room. The door was mercifully unlocked. She opened it and found herself in what looked like an office. It had windows, but again there were no lights on, and the light from outside wasn't enough to illuminate the room particularly well. The room was extremely messy, with papers, folders, and other things strewn everywhere. It was still silent, except for the wind blowing past the windows, which produced a slight rattling noise. Something occurred to Toriko, she reasoned that the silence probably meant there was no generator at this facility producing power (otherwise she assumed its drone would be audible as background noise), which, combined with all the other absence of signs of human activity, likely meant that this place was abandoned. She laid Sorawo down on a sofa in the corner of the room.
While she was thinking about what to do next, Toriko suddenly heard a scream coming from the shed they had just been in, followed by a loud clang. She jumped in shock. But she realised it sounded subtly different from what they had heard earlier. There was a resonance to it that she realised she had been missing. She couldn't describe it exactly, but it almost sounded... fearful? Like whoever made it was vocalising fear. That was somehow almost comforting to her. She aimed her flashlight into the dark room, and saw something that surprised her almost as much as the noise, the sight of Natsumi and Akari standing there, clutching each other. Akari seemed to recover faster than Natsumi. "Toriko! Do know where we are? Are you with Miss Sorawo?"
"Uh, we're somewhere in the other side, I don't know where exactly"
"Why is it so fucking cold?" Natsumi grumbled. She was still clinging to Akari, which looked slightly silly given how Akari was shorter and more slight than she was, and no longer returning the gesture. Natsumi glanced over at the door to the outside that was ajar since Toriko had shot it open.
Something else caught Toriko's eye. She moved her flashlight beam down, and saw that on the floor between them was a hexagonal plate, exactly like the one they had. She reached into her tote bag and felt that her own plate was still inside. And that probably meant that...
"This showed up mysteriously at Natsumi's place this morning. When we heard that scream through the phone, there was a red flash. We touched it, and suddenly found ourselves here" Akari explained.
"Huh, the weird thing is, an object just like it appeared at my house today too. We were carrying it with us... say, yours looks a little different though. Our has a hexagon in the middle rather than a four-pointed star."
Toriko motioned for them to follow her into the adjacent room, where she showed them the view through the window and Sorawo sleeping on the sofa (thankfully still there). She sort of expected Akari or Natsumi to ask her why it was snowing in the other side, but after thinking about it a bit it occurred to her that they had never actually been to the other side proper, just the interstitial zone.
"Huh, it's really chilly in here isn't it?" Akari wondered.
Toriko noticed Natsumi examining some of the papers scattered on the desk. "Is this in English?" she muttered. She tried pronouncing some of the words out loud, but didn't get very far before giving up.
Toriko strode over and picked up the sheet she was looking at. "No, it's definitely not in English. Hmm, I think this is German?" she said. She picked up some more papers and saw more of the same. That was actually somewhat surprising. They had encountered stuff in the other side before that appeared to be text. It was always either gibberish that looked kind of like the text in AI-generated images, or Japanese text displaying weird-sounding names, except they had discovered at one point that people who spoke different languages saw the text in their own language. This was both weirder and more mundane than that. More mundane because it really honestly just looked like workplace time sheets, although she couldn't tell exactly what they said. But also weirder because none of the four people in the room right now spoke the language it was written in. They were definitely in a weirder part of the other side right now than they had ever previously been to, she thought. Or maybe in the interstitial space, which often seemed even more bizarre than the other side itself.
She looked up and noticed a poster on the wall separating this room from the other one, which wasn't visible when walking through the door. It had a picture of one person passing a sheet of paper to someone else on it, with large and bold words at the top and the bottom. Still no idea what it said.
"Hey, do you think we could get back by touching the slab together again?" Akari asked. Toriko turned and noticed she had gone into the other room and was carrying the plate. Natsumi looked extremely worried. "Akari, I don't think that's a good idea. What if it just transports us somewhere else worse than this?"
"I suppose so" Akari replied.
"Hey could you give that to me? I want to check something" Toriko addressed Akari.
"Sure! Alright." Akari held it out towards her. As Toriko reached to grab it, she hesitated. Akari seemed to be thinking the same thing, and tried to lob the plate to her in a way that would allow her to grab it without them both touching it at the same time. This failed. It slipped out of Toriko's hands, and fell to the concrete floor with a defeaning CLANG, shattering the silence of this place. Toriko jumped backwards. All three of them looked at each other for a moment.
Then they heard a noise, emanating from outside. It sounded like... footsteps. They all stood there, not making a single noise.
Then there was a rattling at the door. Toriko quickly drew her gun. As the door clicked open, she aimed at the person entering.
"Who goes there?" Toriko yelled. "Ah!" the unfamiliar woman cried. She was holding a keycard in her left hand and clasping the door handle in her right.
"Who are you??" she said, her tone a mixture of fear and confusion. "I'm Nishina Toriko. These are my friends Seto Akari and Ichikawa Natsumi. My partner Kamikoshi Sorawo is sleeping over there. We're lost in the other side" she explained. Toriko lowered her gun, and the unarmed intruder relaxed her posture and closed the door behind her.
"The... other side?" the woman asked, sounding puzzled. "Well, my name is Alina. Alina Seo." She shook Toriko's hand. "Nice to meet you. Sorry for making a bad impression!" she laughed. She was definitely speaking Japanese, not German.
"We haven't seen anyone here at all." Natsumi said. "We just touched those stone plates," (she motioned to the one at their feet) "and were transported here abruptly."
Alina's face contorted. "What? Are you saying it was... instantaneous?" Toriko nodded. "...I don't know how I'm to react to that. But where are you from?" She paused for a moment. "What are you wearing, where did you get wear like that?" she inquired. Toriko could see that Alina was staring at her clothes. Alina's own clothes, now that Toriko was bringing her mind to it, were actually somewhat odd. She was wearing a heavy grey jacket, and underneath it was another grey outfit. It seemed like some sort of military uniform, although Toriko couldn't say what country it might be of.
"We're from Toukyou" she said.
"What planet is that on? What kind of facility is it? Or are you Imperials?"
"What planet is it on?" Toriko repeated dubiously. "Earth???"
Alina looked completely baffled by this.
"Are you an alien?" Akari said.
"Would an alien speak Japanese?" Natsumi pointed out. "We're not speaking Japanese though?" Alina said.
"Look, Alina, what place exactly are we at right now? Is there anyone else here? Where is the nearest major settlement? How do we get there?" asked Natsumi.
Alina's expression shifted from puzzlement to melancholy. "Well, this is mining facility S-23 Sierpinski. The surface level, that is. But since the... outbreak... happened, they've ordered everyone to evacuate the surface complex. I'm not really supposed to be here. But I wanted to just see the stars one last time before going below. Seems it's pretty cloudy though, so regrettably doesn't seem like I'll get that chance. Anyways, if you really must know, since we're on Leng, there's probably no other human habitation within a thousand km. Also I'm not sure what you mean exactly by leave. I mean, do you think they would just let you step onto a cargo freighter headed for Rotfront?"
At this point, Toriko heard a noise from behind her, and she turned to see Sorawo standing up, Toriko's jacket sliding off her. She started feeling around the sofa.
"You're wearing your glasses right now" Toriko pointed out.
"Ah." Sorawo turned to face them. "Huh, why are Karateka and Natsumi here? And who is she?"
Toriko filled her in on everything that had happened, with Alina interrupting every few sentences to amend her. As the explanation progressed, Sorawo regained her alertness and eventually stopped asking them to repeat things.
"So it's the plates? Natsumi is probably right, we shouldn't try to replicate it again. I don't think it's really super concerning that wherever this is is supposedly on the edge of the solar system. The way the otherside works, if we keep searching long enough, we'll find a portal. And I'm sure we're still in the other side, somehow. There's no other explanation for how we got here." She turned to Alina. "This facility is mostly underground, right?"
"Yeah"
"I think that's where we should be headed. Portals in the other side seem to always correspond to man-made objects, so I think we're only really likely to find one there."
"I don't really feel like spending more time here anyways. This place is super spooky." Akari said.
"Yeah it's way too cold, dark, and dead" Toriko supplied.
"It's one way to put it" Sorawo said.
"Well, yeah, I'm willing to help you out. I think, if you don't look out of the ordinary, as long as you avoid drawing attention to yourselves and don't make eye contact with the Kolibri you'll probably be able to search around in reasonable safety. It's just, there will still be a risk of danger, and getting between levels without being conspicuous might be tough, if we end up needing to."
Toriko produced a rifle from her tote bag. "If it comes to that, I have a backup plan". Sorawo pulled out her own gun to accentuate the point.
"Uh, well, looking ordinary is the key word though. You all can't probably go down there with what you're wearing right now. The Storch units would tear you apart. There're definitely some unused uniforms we could grab from the C-7 building though. I can take you there, it's super cold, but it's just a short run away. Your best chance is to just look like a standard worker Gestalt"
"A standard worker what?" Toriko said.
"Gestalt? You know, like, we're Gestalt." Toriko shook her head. "As opposed to Replikas?" Alina suggested hesitantly. "Maybe the Imperials aren't really like us at all" she pondered aloud.
Natsumi sighed in exasperation. Akari patted her head, which immediately had the intended effect of washing away her sourness. "We're going to be okay Nattsun" she whispered. Akari then stepped back and shifted into a karate stance. "If anything tries to get you, I'll mess it up!". Natsumi smiled. Alina laughed.
Something else occurred to Sorawo. "Hey Toriko, you said all of the text here is in German. It's not quite the same pattern, but doesn't that remind you of that train station?"
"It does." Toriko said. "Hey, Alina, what language are we speaking?"
The addressee looked puzzled. "Standard German? We're definitely not speaking Japanese"
"Told you so" Sorawo said. Toriko grinned. Alina looked even more puzzled.
"Also, are we going to have to leave the A-1 back there?" Sorawo asked. "I think so." Toriko replied after thinking for a moment. "I mean, we can't put it on an elevator or drive it around a mining complex. And it's inoperable in these conditions anyways. I hope we'll make it all work out somehow."
"Yeah..." Sorawo agreed.
"Well anyways" Alina said, "let's hurry along."
Alina about faced, opened the door, and motioned for them to follow her outside, which Sorawo only did reluctantly, and Toriko after she leaned over to retrieve her jacket. They were led hurriedly over between some of the huts to another, relatively small building. Its interior was in a state of disarray too, with a lot of uniforms strewn across the floor not having reached their racks. Sorawo took this to be more sign of hurried abandonment, which heightened her general sense of unease. Toriko did not seem to be in low spirits at all though. The four of them stripped out of the clothes they were wearing (Sorawo decided not to ask whether Alina knew what a changing room was. She just tried not to look at Toriko or think about what Toriko was looking or at or thinking about) and tried on suits until they each found one that fit.
"You look cute" Toriko told her. Sorawo turned and saw her accomplice, now also wearing the simple but handsome-looking grey Gestalt uniform of Sierpinski. "Uh, thanks? I think you look good too". That was to some extent not the whole truth. Sorawo was pretty sure Toriko could wear a toga made of dishrags fastened together with twine, and then trip and fall into the Chernobyl cooling pond, and she would still look absolutely slay. She was pretty sure Toriko knew that, because everyone knew that. It certainly had nothing to do with Sorawo personally. Toriko was just objectively hot.
She looked over at Karateka and Natsumi, who were casually admiring each other too. Sorawo also made sure to grab a jacket, in which she was quickly followed by her companions. Then they picked up a few bags and transferred the important contents of their tote bags to them. Sorawo tried to leave out their packed lunches, but when she did so, she noticed Toriko's pouting face, and inserted them back in reluctantly. Then Alina led them out the door again.
They trekked over to easily the largest and tallest building they had seen so far. It stood on its own a bit outside the main complex, and was made of a different kind of material, reddish in colour. It had a large garage door, and a small human access door. 'WILLKOMMEN BEI S-23 SIERPINSKI" was in large black letters across the top. Off to the right they could see some sort of very odd-looking structure they had never seen before, attached to something that looked like an immense cable, which seemingly extended infinitely upwards, with some platforms mounted on it. They didn't get a good look at it though, as Alina unlocked the door to the building they were in front of with her keycard and ushered them inside. They entered into a lobby, with more posters lining the wall. Opposite to them was another large door.
Alina opened it, and the five of them stepped into a huge freight elevator. Alina inserted her key card into a slot next to the control panel, and pressed the button for floor 'B1'