Tokuko's Beginning

-The Oqua reporters are surely annoying.

Tokuko was sitting outside her house, smoking a cigarette. She watched the thin smoke slowly float up before fainting away. Its shape changes every moment; at a second, it looks like a human, and at another second, it looks like a hand reaching above. She's not someone who might be into abstract arts or unclear things, as she found it "unecessary," but on this quiet night after she shed blood on her hands, everything seemed to have a new meaning. She allows them to live up, wear a different definition tonight, and invite her out for a dance of the mind. Into different realms of the unconscious, she took the cigarettes down, her lips partially open to let out new lines of smoke. Just for tonight, she allows herself to rest.

Tokuko was a follower of Tsukino since they're in the old world. This time, when they all went through a space tunnel to arrive here, searching for "the Utopia creator," she still believed that one was Tsukino. a leader, a damned fate, and a sacrificer who had nothing left to sacrifice. She never rests, always forcing herself to go on to catch up with the team. She never complains, since she was just a meek girl, until her heart becomes ice and her mind hardens like stones. After the war, this story still goes on, so she already knows what the end was like. In this new world, she hopes for a new beginning. To prevent that ending, Tokuko has decided not to intervene for a long time and has left everything to humans' nature to see how it will happen. And now, we have chaotic people, Oqua reporters, and Anti-Utopia followers. Nothing is in their order, and nothing goes up as her plan. They didn't stop trying, but there's only one clear fact: they won't get any results soon if it continues to go like this.

What a joke. She threw the cigarette to the ground and stomped on it violently. That's the way she screams her rage at fate. The crescent moon is hanging high above, and she doesn't care to give it a glance. In the middle of the night, there was nothing but a girl and silence. She washes her hand under a wall faucet, and cold water embraces her pale skin. Like a kiss from Yukionna, she felt the cold spreading through every one of her nerves. It brightens the brain and keeps her eyelids from falling down. Tokuko felt like another stream of cold water started to flow inside her; maybe it's her energy. She stayed wide awake that night, watching the city in its beautiful asleep state.

That reporter might be dead. She buried him in the backyard; it didn't take long because of her digging skills learned in the military. It's easy to understand what he had been through—torture and such—under Tokuko's rage. She chopped him to pieces and shattered his sanity without saying a word, and now she gave him a little grave in her garden. His name, unknown to her, has been labeled "John Doe, Oqua reporter" on a silver board, honorably placed on top of his plot. Soon, bugs and worms will do the rest of this task, so she can look away now. Tokuko placed the shovel inside her warehouse, even though she knows she might use it again soon. When all of these works were done, the sun began to rise. And again, she didn't give it a glance.

Ring ring. Resounding noises like a phone reminder Tokuko doesn't remember bringing her phone into this world; all she felt was annoyance. What is ringing loudly at this time of day, or did someone call her? People should be sleeping, and she herself feels tired already. Following the source of that sound, it led her to one of the bags full of stuff she brought and didn't bother to unbox or move them to their place. She unzipped the bag to see lots of metal junkies. Tokuko frowned when she roughly shoved her arms inside the bag to search for what was making noises. The sharp edges of all the stuff inside cause some injuries, and she curses them with the most terrible words. The device that's ringing is a phone that can provide dials between different realms.

-Blue won't like this! Did you bury a reporter, Toko? They have lots of people like that guy, but I can make sure they won't be happy with your little idea, Toko-chan! I can't stop laughing when I imagine that girl's shocked and disgusted face if she gets the news! It must look like a monkey who just got spanked in the ass! Ahahahaha!!

-Lower your volume.

-Ahahahaha!! So funny! I even got tears from laughing, man! I...

-Are you planning to waste all the battery on this device just to laugh? If you have nothing to say, then fuck off. I don't want to deal with losers like you who laugh instead of doing something useful.

-Oh lord, oh lord, Toko! How can you say mean words like that? ... Ugh, enough dramatics. I know you have always been talking like this! Have mercy on your best friend's soft cream heart; I'm going to cry!

Tokuko turned off the device to not hear Sasaki's sour, childish voice as morning tea. She tries to make her way through the house in darkness to find a closet with lots of antiques, family photos, and a wax candle inside. She took out the candle to light it up using matches from an old box nearby. The wooden box was covered in dust and had lots of fancy carving details. A faint scent of oak spread around. Sasaki didn't try to call her again, so Tokuko was left alone, enjoying this thick silence. This family photo is not hers; they're all in black and white. Look at how the small details were captured; it's clear that at the moment they shoot these images, the technology must be very poor.

She didn't know what happened to the previous owner of this house; it's not her business, but Tokuko respects everything inside it. They abandoned this house in a hurry, or did they? All the interiors are still in the same place; no sign of packaging was found. While making breakfast, she has some faint thoughts of what could happen to them. It looks like the aftermath of a criminal case. The person who introduced this place to her was an estate officer. She never got to meet anyone who rented this place before her, except for the family. The price was also impressively cheap when this is a decent house with interiors and decorations. That officer didn't show her much documentation about this house's history; his face says he doesn't want to speak of it. Tokuko smiles as some brutal scenes appear inside her mind. She opened her mouth to bite one piece of bread. Those old memories keep coming back to haunt her, with the victims' faces appearing on the wall in the surrounding darkness. Those old days when she was so hungry that she ate some moldy bread in tears. What a nostalgic scene.

Something moved. Tokuko saw it with her peripheral vision. A spy? She stood up immediately, dropped her bread, and took out a knife from a secretly designed shirt layer inside of her clothes. Noxving is a city full of dangerous threads, so she has to keep her guard and be ready all the time. A shadowy object slowly, but aimlessly, moves around. Tokuko ran to it quickly and threw her knife at it. The short and sharp sound of her knife pierced the ground and stopped that moving thing. Tokuko didn't know if she hurt it because there's no sound coming from that direction, but she was sure that's a living creature.

-Nice visit.

Her voice thickened in the cold. The sun rises higher, but there's still darkness inside this scary house. Keeping her eyes on that thing, Tokuko returns to the table to grab her candle. As the light came on, it lit up that black creature. It's an office bag. But a living thing is trembling inside; the knife hit the bag straps instead and stopped it from escaping.

Tokuko bent down to look at it carefully. It's that Oqua reporter's bag. She kept it with one hand and took the knife with another. Slowly, she cut open the bag. Inside, it was an egg. A black egg lay inside a big animal skull. This man brought it with him, hoping it would hatch in time and defend him from this frantic girl. What a naive thought. Tokuko smiles before raising her hand high and mercilessly stabbed the egg multiple times until it stopped trembling. She stood up and threw it at the trash pile outside the house without blinking. Now it can go with that unlucky reporter—or not.

When she's about to return to her house and slam the door closed, a sharp pain strikes down on her right arm and wrist. felt like teeth. Tokuko looked back. That was a dark creature with a skull mask, with its teeth biting her wrist. A Skound, looks like it hatched successfully. What a special birth after a murder case. It came to life in the surrounding darkness and cold. Blood started dripping down. The egg shell was so hard that it protected this newborn creature from being killed. Now it bites her hand, daring her to kill it. Tokuko stared at this baby, faintly trembling on its new little legs. It's as black as the darkness itself. What a spirit—so reckless for a young being like this. It has the guts to threaten her, and she can clearly see it could bite off her right hand if it wanted. But he didn't. What does it need?

Still staring into the creature's eyes, Tokuko bent down, took the slice of bread she dropped earlier, and tossed it right in front of this guy. It looks at her carefully before gently releasing her hand to eat that bread. Tokuko grabs her wound tightly to stop it from bleeding. Her face didn't change, and her eyes were like black holes when she looked down at them. Slowly, she raises her bloody hand towards the dark creature, but only to pet it. A sign of interest flickers in her eyes; it's a solid decision that will never change.

-Nice move, man. I'll keep you alongside me. Welcome to life, little one.