As the thunderclouds roll in, and the rattling of metal jangles, I peer out of the window. All I can see is a dark greenish-grey field. For miles and miles. It just continues on and on. The horizon like mortar on brick, just slightly lighter than the thunderclouds and soaked fields, offers only a mild feeling of hope in this freezing, desolate wasteland. Once bright and green, this sanctuary has become hostile. The thunderclaps pierce through the sky. Not knowing if it's day or night, my ethereal body forces me to come to my senses.
Why is Sakurai's Sanctuary acting like this?
I look around the room I lay. An old-style sleeper coach, similar to Pullman cars of the early 20th century. Wooden linings, gold decor, this coach was clearly for the lavish, ostentatious individual. What am I doing here? I attempt to rise from the bed, and fling the covers off my body. When I tried to roll off the bed, a shackle around my wrist became taught, restricting free movement. Though I am ethereal, I can also have a physical presence. Basically, I can choose whether or not I should phase through an object. At least normally. Right now, I can't phase through anything.
I examine the shackle around my right wrist, and try to see what object I am actually shacked to. But the chain leads to nothingness. There is no physical object keeping me there, in that room. It was at this point that the ticking of the clock became ever-present. So loud. As if I was on a timer to do something. I tried fiddling with the lock, but nothing came about. I didn't have any tools to pick it, after all. After a few eternal minutes, with the ticking becoming more jarring with each second, I realized I could use magic in this dream world. I lit a fire spell akin to a welder, and cut right through the chain. Once the mana supply coming through the shackle was cut off, everything above the cut just disintegrated and faded away into that same nothingness it was tethered to.
Rubbing my wrist, I got a better look around the room, but there was nothing of excitement. As I made my way to the door, my clothes morphed into what would fit the time period of the car. A thick suit, shirt, suspenders, dress pants, and a dress coat. With a gold pocket watch accenting the black and white clothing. I also felt a shoulder holster tugging down on my body, which was made of leather. In that holster was a Glock-17. Clearly something that didn't fit the timeline. A plastic, striker-fired pistol in the 'roarin 20's era.
Concealing the firearm, I gingerly placed my fingers on the door handle and pulled it open. Creaking open, I glanced both left and right down the hallway. To my left was just the end of the car, and there was no trailing car. It was just a rainy, grey nothingness out the rear window. To my right were another three rooms, all identical to the one I was in. At least on the outside. All three doors were locked, and the windows were shuttered. The only light emanated from oil lamps beside each door, giving the car a mysterious, eerie air. On the opposite end of the car, another Pullman style car was coupled.
Passing through the threshold into the brief open, the seemingly thunderous rain just rolled right off of me. I wasn't getting wet at all. When I opened the door to the other car, I was in the midst of a World War I battle. I dove behind a wooden crate for some concealment, and to observe the situation. One of those lozenge shaped British tanks, the Mk. I, if I remember correctly, was sitting in the middle of the coach. Mud and dirt caked the walls and the tracks, and enemy soldiers of unknown origin were trying to storm the stalled tank. Neither uniform matched any historical records, yet they were strikingly similar to World War I era uniforms. When any of these beings were killed, they would vanish into the same nothingness as that shackle from the previous car. I only say beings because something was clearly off with their facial features. They were anomalously morphing, as if to represent just an amalgamation of people. Not anyone specifically, just people. Speaking of anomalies, the size of the car from the inside is clearly larger than the size of the car viewed from the outside, meaning that this car was non-euclidean. And if the car is non-euclidean, other things must be as well.
Just as I was getting my bearings, a machine gunner of some sort started shredding through the wooden crate I was hiding behind. I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out an M1 Garand and a couple of stripper clips. I peaked over the remains of the wooden crate and spotted an MG nest, and behind that, the far door to the next cab. Moving forward, I got some cover behind the tank. Clearly, one group of soldiers thought I was friendly, or at least neutral, because they weren't shooting at me as I made my way around the tank. However, I would never fully know because none of them were speaking. In fact, there was no range of motion in their faces. No emotion. Just static faces.
The other group of soldiers clearly thought I was an enemy, however, and would shoot me on sight. Though blood remained, bodies and flesh would turn to the same purple-black mist and vanish into the void they seemingly came from. Only neutralizing enemy soldiers that posed a threat to me, I slowly made my way towards the MG nest. Finding a piece of armor from a tank, I used that to shield my advance and push my way further and further forward until I could wrap around the sandbags and neutralize the gunner. Taking a breather, I noticed that the friendly soldiers were starting to be overrun, so I mounted the machine gun and took out the enemy soldiers. Once that had happened, the enemy soldiers stopped appearing from the black mist and the friendly soldiers sat down and took a break.
Smiling, I made my way through the door and took a long breather between the cars, as I had no idea whether or not the next car would be a similar situation. Again, the dry rain pelted my coat, yet just rolled right off my face and coat. Opening the door to the next car, all I heard was the shrill noise of artillery flying through the sky. A stream of machine-gun fire was laid down in my general direction, so I closed the door and prepared a battle plan. Looking down, my clothes had morphed into WWII era battle gear.
Taking a deep breath, I reopened the door and dove behind a small trench which allowed me to get some cover from the hail of bullets. Again, the same emotionless faces were placed on bodies fading into a fuschia mist. Slowly making my way forward, I noticed the car door inside of a bunker.
Bunker-busting, eh? Sounds fun…
As if on queue, a friendly soldier tossed me a backpack filled with plastic explosive. The perfect bunker-buster available in World War II. Sliding through the mud up to the bunker, I lit the fuse and tossed it through the window. Plugging my ears, the explosives detonated and I could get to the next set of doors. I hopped what was left of the concrete bunker and ran towards the door, but it was locked. As I turned around, I saw a Tiger II Main Battle Tank cresting the ridge about to assault my friendly troops. Looking left and right, I saw an unfired Panzerfaust, and knew what I had to do. Aiming it at the tank, I fired and the projectile flew true to its target, detonating its ammo rack. Out of breath, I fell on my ass and took a breather.
A couple seconds later, I got back up and tried the door, which opened easily. I stepped through the threshold once again and took a mental breather. As the train took a bend at considerable speed, I noticed I had three cars before I could reach the engine. Opening the door once more, my clothes once again morphed into Vietnam War Era camouflage, and my M1 Garand evolved into an M14. On the other side of the door lay dense forest, in which movement could be heard but not seen. Creeping through the jungle, it started misting, making it harder to move through the muddy terrain.
Cutting through the clearing, I saw a foxhole. Behind the foxhole were just cliffs of stone, so I had no choice but to jump in. With barely enough room to crouch walk through the tunnel, I found it hard to properly move through the tunnels, however, they eventually opened up into larger shafts in which I could stand, though uncomfortably. As I made my way through the tunnels, I eventually found an exit which led up to a village. For some reason, the village was completely deserted. In fact, I hadn't heard or seen anyone in this car yet. Just as I made my way to the house to investigate, a message came through the radio. If there was no countersign detected at my location, it would succumb to a napalm strike. Rummaging through the houses, I couldn't find anything of use. When I finally found the door to the next car in one of the houses, it was locked. I couldn't do anything unless I found some sort of countersign.
Just as I was about to give up, I saw a tubular, red object tucked under one of the beds. Pulling it out, it was a green flare, which I could use to signal my location. At that moment, I heard the jets roaring from a distance, so I climbed on the roof and popped the green flare, issuing my countersign. Through the radio, I heard a staticky "Countersign detected, aborting fire mission." Heaving a deep breath of relief, I sat down on the roof and took a breather. After I had caught my breath, I hopped back down and opened the door.
Two more cars to go…
Opening this door, my gear turned into the day I lost my sanity. The same battlefield. The same kit. The same convoy. The same everything. But this time, I was the lead driver. And I was at the fork in the road. Right before everything went South. Rolling my dice, I took the right turn, not the planned left turn. And up that path we went. Though we encountered some enemy cells, we were easily able to scare them off. Speeding down the path, we made it to the original destination. Forward Operating Base-IV: Ripcord. Heavily breathing, as this was the place where I could have lost everything again, I busted through the door, and just found the same dry rain on the other side.
I opened the final car, only to find the same style of sleeper car I had awoken in. The three rooms closest to me were all locked, but the furthest door was ajar. When I stepped in, however, I saw a being holding Sakurai at gunpoint. Time slowed down to crawl as I calculated what to do. I knew my HK417A2's 20" barrel was much too long for a situation like this, so I drew a sidearm from the same leather shoulder holster and swiftly neutralized the enemy. A clean headshot reduced the being into the violet miasma it had spawned from. Only then I had realized that the scenery had completely changed when I stepped into that sleeper car room. And that sidearm I was holding was the same one I had when I lost everything that day. I was now on some sort of airliner with an explosive rigged up to detonate. Holstering my weapon, I grabbed Sakurai and made my way towards an emergency exit and popped it open. It was no longer raining, at least at this altitude, so I jumped. My backpack immediately morphed into a parachute, and I hooked Sakurai up to my harness.
After falling for who knows how long, I saw the same green grass I was used to seeing in Sakurai's dreamland and deployed my chute. Only for it to completely tangle. I cut the chute free with a knife that I pulled out of a pocket that was much too small to contain a knife of this size. After the parachute had blown away, I deployed the reserve chute and slowed my descent enough to safely land on the ground. When I hit the ground, however, everything went black.