Marino, being led by guards, started to reminisce about the past. He remembered his mother, what with her brown hair streaked with a bit of gray and her pearly white teeth. He remembered his father, serious at times, and yet with permanent smile wrinkles at the ends of his eyes. He missed them so much, and he was forced to blink back tears as he thought. He remembered when his sister was born, and realized that her birthday was next month. She would be ten years old on the first. Anger flowed with a passion through his veins, and he turned to the guard on the left. Growling, he grabbed the guard by the collar and slammed him into the guard on the right.
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Uyeno and Noda trudged through the snow, following the same trail of blood they knew Marino had followed. Once they finally found the building, they paused for a moment, contemplating what to do.
"What is this place?" Noda asked. Uyeno, with a grim tone in his voice, replied, "This is Kyoka, a mental institute that was shut down years ago because of patients claiming they saw stuff. My dad was trapped in there for a while, as a guard, and he said that the patients weren't crazy. He killed himself a few years after it shut down." Noda nodded. "So why is it active again?" she asked. Uyeno shook his head. "That, I could never tell you. I'm guessing some sort of group's controlling it, but they said it was torn apart. I just don't get why…"
It was at this moment that Noda saw Marino's tracks. She walked briskly beside them, spotting drag tracks a few yards ahead. She ran up to them and saw a copper wire in the snow. Acting carefully, she stepped over it and approached the front gate.
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Marino was flanked by 12 guards, surrounding him as Marino examined his attack plan. They pointed their guns at him, screaming at him to get down. Marino slowly got down on his knees, formulating a plan. He noticed one of the guards inching closer, and he kicked the guards' legs out from under him.
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Noda and Uyeno rushed into the clearing. The alarm was still going, so they allowed themselves to be apprehended. The guards took Uyeno's sword, and Uyeno grunted in exasperation as if a part of his very life force was stolen. Uyeno let himself be led away, arms shackled in heavy iron cuffs. Uyeno looked back at Noda, but she didn't seem to notice. She stared straight ahead, undaunted by the gruesome paintings on the wall. One sported a crawling, long-fingered creature with a twisted, grotesque face and sharp, serrated teeth. Its skin was dotted with patches of ugly gray scales, and the painter of the creature seemed to be painting it under a table. Uyeno realized what it was—a legendary creature called the Exoling. Exolings were dead, rotted humans that were experimented on, bringing them back to life and morphing them into disgusting heaps of skin, bones, muscle, and hatred for anything moving. They'd nearly wiped out all of Japan and Northwest Asia, and were only destroyed by a nuclear missile 347 years prior.
As Uyeno and Noda walked, Uyeno kept looking at the paintings. They'd grown more normal, like pictures of nobles or soldiers—but still, dotted amongst such normal pictures, were more creatures shrouded in myth and legend-the Rendbeast, griffins, even a few dragons here and there-but they all seemed so real. Uyeno knew about the Exolings—hell, he'd lived through some of their attacks–but the other beasts? He was 500 years old and had never seen any of them.
The guards leading them grunted and stopped, sounding like they were choking. Uyeno looked at Noda, whose hands were twisting in her shackles. Uyeno realized what she was doing, and he heard a revolting rip behind him as the guards' throats were ripped open. Uyeno grabbed his sword and sliced through his chains, then Noda's as well. "You never told me you could do that," Uyeno said. Noda kept trudging forward, and Uyeno stopped her. "Let go of me," Noda said. Uyeno clapped his hand over her mouth and listened.
Up ahead was the sound of a fight.