A Flip of the Coin: Chapter 1 - Rude Awakening

Chapter 1 – Rude Awakening

…uhhh…what happened? Where am I? I’m in some kind of dirty and destroyed store. What’s with all the candles, pictures, and little trinkets? There’s a huge white lion on my lap. Is it real-Ah! It is real and it’s awake! Huh? It’s rubbing its face against mine-hey! Now, it’s licking my face. This lion is more like a loving house cat rather than a wild feline.

“What are you doing here? What’s your name? Mine is Val.”

When I touch the lion’s head, I hear the name Vic in a boy’s voice in my head. There’s something familiar about the voice. Whatever the case is I can’t concern myself with that right now. I have to find out where I am and what happened to me. My clothes seemed to have changed. I don’t remember wearing this ripped purple dress and I definitely didn’t get any tattoos.

“Huh? What is it, boy?”

The lion is nudging me forward. Does he know what I think? He just nodded his head.

“Oh, you do. So, can I call you Vic?”

He nods his head.

“Alright, Vic. Let’s see where we are.”

A single step outside fills me with a sense of despair and dread. We find ourselves in a city with broken buildings and sidewalks. There’s trash and debris everywhere as if this place was a warzone. What happened here? I look back at the store I was in and see designs of purple roses, angels, and demons on it. Was it some kind of shrine? I don’t understand what I was doing there.

This city is eerily quiet. There are signs of battle and conflict everywhere. All the shops and houses look like they’ve been vandalized. The sky is darkened with no sun or moon in sight so I can’t tell what time of day it is. Did the end of the world happen? That would explain the empty streets and the chilly weather. Huh? I hear someone walking. It’s honestly so quiet that I can hear it.

“Hello? Is anyone out there?”

Vic and I are looking around but don’t see anyone despite hearing the sound nearby. Vic then runs straight ahead. I guess he senses where the source of the sound is coming from. He is a lion after all. After following him, we stop near a house. It looks like someone used to live here and still does by the looks of it. There are piles of clothes along with a broken picture of a family by the bedside. Among the piles of dirty clothes are creepy looking fox masks. As I’m looking through the junk, a shadow looms over me, which forces me to look up.

“Hello,” a boy in a fox mask says.

I jump back with Vic by my side looking the man in the face. His mask looks chipped and his clothes have small tears in them like the rest of his clothes. The tears in his clothes reveal his skin, which appears to be burned. One of the eyes of the mask is missing and I can see his black eye in it. He has a white fox with him like how I have Vic with me.

“Who are you?” I ask the boy.

“I’ve forgotten my original name, so call me Kitsune.”

“My name is Val. Do you know what happened here?”

“You’re unaware? Have you been in a shelter for the past month or so?”

“Sort of. I just woke up not too long ago.”

“A goddess ended the world and separated everyone from their sinful side.”

“A goddess?”

“Yes, and you look very similar to her. I even saw you exit the place where she was once worshipped by many people. I still go there every now and then. Are you her offspring by any chance?”

“No.”

“You must be some kind of offspring of her or maybe even a pretender. I’ll know when I defeat you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh, you probably didn’t know. In this new world, if I flip a coin and defeat you in battle with my fox, then I can take your power along with your memories.”

“I’m telling you everything I know! I swear I don’t know anything else!”

“We’ll see about that.”

Kitsune flips a coin in the air and his fox starts attacking me. Vic defends me as I try to run away but I can’t. There’s some invisible barrier around the house.

“Once a battle starts, it won’t stop until one of us is defeated.”

“Then I guess we don’t have a do we Vic? Get him!”

Vic slams Kitsune’s fox down with his claws then uses his head to toss the fox into Kitsune. He then bites on Kitsune’s head.

“Great job, Vic!”

What? The fox isn’t down for good even though Vic is biting down on Kitsune’s head. The fox has just bit down on Vic’s neck while cutting at him with his claws. I don’t know why but I can feel the pain he’s in. It doesn’t feel like I feel it in its entirety for some reason, not that I want to. Despite the pain he’s in, Vic manages to swipe the fox off him.

“You can’t defeat me directly. You must defeat my fox to win.”

What’s with these stupid rules?

“Okay, you heard him, Vic!”

The fox doesn’t give Vic a chance to move as it slashes at him then runs away. It keeps repeating this while Vic tries to fight back but isn’t able to because the fox is so fast. It doesn’t hit very hard, however, Vic is can’t lay a claw on it and the hits keep coming. My lion is getting mad and just slashing at everything around him.

“Concentrate, Vic! Don’t let it get to you!”
Vic appears to be concentrating with the fox attempting to break it. If we can feel each other’s pain and thoughts, maybe I can help him concentrate. I close my eyes and try to concentrate. Come on, Vic. Concentrate and win! There he is! I open my eyes to see Vic squash the fox into the ground which cracks and shakes the ground. The fox struggles to get up. It looks up at Vic only to get swatted to the side. That appears to have finished it. The coin finally falls to the ground. How long was it spinning in the air anyway? I was too concentrated on the battle to notice. Kitsune falls to the ground and struggles to get up.

“Thank you for freeing me from this life, Val. You really do seem like a goddess,” Kitsune says as his body and fox disappear piece by piece into a light.

After their bodies are gone, my mind is rushed with images of a boy with his family in this house. They look outside to see an explosion of light covering the city. So, that’s what happened. The rest of the memories are blurry. Kitsune fought so many other people after he lost his parents. He even fought his friends, but he felt terrible after doing so. I have glimpses of who he called the goddess and she does look like me. She was laying in the same place as me. Maybe I do come from her somehow? Nah, that’s impossible. I don’t know. It’s all still so confusing to me.

I feel sorry for Kitsune. Hopefully, he’s in a better place now. Both Vic and I’s bodies are mysteriously healed from the fight. I guess that’s another perk of winning. I even feel a bit stronger. Since there’s nothing else I can do here, so I move on. Vic senses something and looks behind us. I hope it’s not another fight. When I turn around, I see a crow in the distance sitting on the roof. It caws while staring at us. I’m assuming it’s a normal crow, but since it seems that people have animals as protectors, I get Vic to keep moving instead of bothering it, however, he keeps looking behind us. I can’t but help feel this ominous presence behind us. For now, I ignore it.

The crow continues to caw, and I can hear it fly closer to us with sounds of footsteps heading in our direction. Is someone really following us? What do they want with me? Do they want my memories or am I someone important because I woke up where that “goddess” was? I’m running away with Vic, but it sounds like the crow and its master are catching up to us. How is this person and their crow faster than us? It seems like we can’t lose them no matter how many turns we make and how fast we run.

“Ah-!”

Someone pulled me into a dark alley and have their hand over my mouth.

“Shh. Be quiet and that man won’t get us,” a girl says.

Since I don’t feel like I have a choice, I stay quiet as I see the crow’s shadow fly around the area then leave. After a few more minutes of waiting, the girl lets me go.

“It’s safe now, but stay quiet just in case,” she says.

“Who are you?”

“My name is Eerie.”

When I see Eerie in the light, I see that she has cat ears, a similar dress to mine, and has a panther with her.

“You don’t want to fight me, do you?”

“My friend Torio and I don’t want to fight you. I want to help you figure what’s going on.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I don’t have the best idea either. I also want to fix what’s happened and I need help to do that.”

“You want to fix what happened? Look at the way the world is. There’s no fixing it.”

“Of course I can. I might not be able to fix everything, but I’m not going to let people continue to live in these conditions. Think about the help I could give you when we work together. We both have fierce felines so it’s like we were meant to work together.”

“Okay, fine. Can you tell me anything I don’t know? How about the battles? Why do we need to flip a coin and win with our animals?”

“You flip a coin because it’s the practice an angel supposedly told us to do it this way. It works so something bigger than all of us is at work here. It is said that the result of the battle is the Will of God. From what I’ve learned, our animals are manifestations of our souls, our core being. It makes sense for the defeat of it to be our defeat especially since our normal bodies don’t feel pain on their own. We can’t even feel hunger or thirst.”

“Oh, that’s right. I haven’t thought about that when I woke up.”

“Any other questions?”

“Not that I can think of that you can answer.”

“Well, that’s minorly insulting but I understand why you’re thinking that.”

“Do you know where we should go next?”

“The city is supposed to be populated with groups of people. They can probably tell us more.”

“Alright. Since there’s nothing else better to do, I might as well join you.”

“Shall we go then? I’ll lead the way.”

“Okay.”

I don’t know what to do, but I have to make the best of this situation somehow. Vic is rubbing up against my leg while looking at me. Don’t worry, boy. We’ll make it through this.