End Game

Clearance Patrols

"How will you live in this world that is full of despair?"

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Retrospectively, if you were to find yourself ensnared in a grotesque labyrinth such as the Borderlands you imagined yourself to die fairly soon - your life extinguished swiftly - a mere shield for the fighters to live on and hunt for the ultimate End Game.

The piquant aroma of fresh blood dissipated its way across the desolate landscape, as though it were casting a macabre silhouette of mortality over each players fate. Corpses littered the streets like repugnant landmarks, their sickeningly sweet stench oozing from their decaying flesh and seeping from their pores as they gradually melted into the unforgiving concrete—

After three days, the putrid scent of Death was no longer as mortifying as you would have anticipated in the original world.

After all; This was an apocalypse. A realm of chthonic dystopia.

It appeared as though every last Japanese soul had evaporated overnight, leaving behind only the faces that haunted Shibuya Station that afternoon.

You were an enigma - an observer, a silent sentinel - akin to some kind of sleeper agent. It certainly seemed that way, your frail and feeble exterior vanished the moment you entered your first game. A future awaited you - that monotonous job you worked so hard for promised an escape, a refuge from the avaricious hellscape you reluctantly called home.

As you caught your reflection in the shattered windows of the once-thriving stores, you watched yourself drag your weary body across the concrete. Your last game had sapped your strength, stamina slightly malformed, but your visa was on the brink of expiration—

It's time to fight.

You stand on the precipice of survival, yearning for a venue to erupt in a blinding display of fluorescence against the blacked-out canvas of the landscape; the relentless grip of light pollution has been silenced, leaving Japan submerged in an abyss of desolation lit up only by a few stray stars that had managed to escape the smog. Searching, your shoes scrape against the gravel as you flit about the city's outskirts, conserving your vitality.

Please, be a diamond.

Your plea echoes into the void, bouncing off the indifferent sky, the unyielding ground and the towering edifices that encircle you. Yet, nothing provides the same carnal satisfaction as trailing in the footsteps of others - you never perceived yourself as a follower until the guiding lights of your despondent life disappeared into oblivion. A cacophony shatters the silence. Resembling the roar of thunder, the collision of titans, a car slamming into another.

BANG.

In an instant, the desolate apartment complex beside you transforms into a beacon of harsh brilliance. Then came the rats.

Scurrying from the nooks and crannies, materialising from the shadows, their eyes gleaming from their desolate dwellings. Rats.

"There's a game! Hurry!"

"I'm on my last day, MOVE!"

They swarm over you, shoving your aching body to the ground, elbows connecting with the blemished concrete. You feel their urgency, the unabating innate desire to know more - to witness the end of this world before returning to the gradually ending original. A semblance of autonomy in this detached existence seems invaluable, and you needed a piece of that veneer for yourself. It was this, or face death by laser, as evidenced by the remnants strewn, exposed, across the streets. Steeling your gaze on game's entrance, every fibre of your being rallied, you propel yourself up from the ground, fists clenched, in pursuit of victory.