There is a shadow racing through the forest.
A tumbling kind of speed. Well, actually tumbling and rolling down slopes does happen, but she recovers with a breakfall and takes off running again.
The shadow is being chased.
Right behind her, something ferocious — like a small bipedal dinosaur — is in pursuit.
The shadow is desperate.
“Why……”
The shadow mutters. Those words, inaudible to the creature closing in from behind, are her — Usabuki Chihaya’s — verbal tic.
Two animals giving chase. Since entering the forest, the trees should be blocking their line of sight, making it impossible to track Chihaya — and yet they follow with uncanny precision.
A glimpse through a gap in the trees: the animal resembles a raptor, a dinosaur long extinct on Earth. Apparently called a Yenbar, it is covered in tiger-striped scales, perhaps four meters in total length, about three meters tall.
It has bizarrely long, whisker-like sensory organs, and detects vibrations in the ground with acute sensitivity — enough to keep after her relentlessly.
Running at full sprint and barely pulling ahead, there is no outrunning them.
Chihaya glances at the assault rifle Breakthrough she’s gripping with both hands.
“……ugh, I’m gonna puke”
She mutters through watery eyes, finds a small flat patch of ground, pivots on her right foot to spin around, and points the muzzle into the gaps between the trees.
No need to aim — she fires on full auto. Spray and pray theory.
She pulls the trigger toward the gaps in the trees, and bullets pour out all at once, grazing tree trunks, stripping bark, swarming toward the Yenbar.
The moment the Yenbar looks up at the sound, a hard, metallic scraping rings out as the bullets are deflected.
“I knew it!?”
They’re within effective range, but a Yenbar’s scales are too hard — standard firearms can’t do a thing. She’d been told as much beforehand, but watching civilization’s finest tool get casually batted aside by something that resembles a small dinosaur is equal parts pathetic and heartbreaking.
Even if it can deflect the bullets, the impact apparently hurt — the Yenbar lets out a huge threatening roar and charges down the slope all at once.
Oh no, and just as Chihaya wheels around to start running, the Yenbar that’s been closing in from behind rams into her from the rear.
“Nwaaah!?”
She lets out a pitiful yelp and goes rolling down the slope. Her vision swings back and forth between sky and ground, round and round.
Suddenly the ground disappears. More precisely — the ground is several meters below her.
“――oh”
I’m falling, the thought flashes through her mind just as gravity takes hold.
A heavy crash as she collides with the ground below echoes through the small ravine. Those vibrations will certainly reach the Yenbar too, with their superior sensory organs.
Chihaya immediately picks herself up and snatches the assault rifle off the ground. Lucky, if that’s even the word — it doesn’t seem to be broken. Even if she can’t deal a killing blow to the Yenbar, it’s the only thing she can rely on, so she’d rather it not break.
Chihaya frantically looks around her. She’s trying to find an escape route, but something unexpected is lying in the small ravine.
“……a container?”
A conspicuous red cargo container is tipped on its side. No transport vehicle in sight, but someone must have been attacked by a Yenbar just like her and sent it tumbling into the ravine.
With her gun useless against them, finding the container is extremely welcome.
Just then, a grating howl echoes from deep in the ravine — like the sound of fingernails dragged across a blackboard, amplified several times over. It sounds like the Yenbar have descended to the ravine floor and are looking for her.
No time. Chihaya runs toward the container like she’s throwing herself at it and wrenches open the warped, half-open door.
“――eep”
What had been left inside the container was not guns or ammunition.
It was a massive stockpile of excavation explosives.
Chihaya, face twisted into a strained smile, glances back at the Yenbar charging toward her from the depths of the ravine, and climbs into the container on the verge of tears.
They must have spotted her. Without a moment’s hesitation, both Yenbar shove their heads into the container entrance together.
Watching the Yenbar push into the container — surprisingly even teeth on full display, drool dripping — Chihaya presses the muzzle of assault rifle Breakthrough against her own chest.
“u-heh, w-welcome?”
The instant she pulls the trigger, the bullet that flies out pierces Chihaya’s chest and punches through the battery.
The battery ruptures, explodes into flame, ignites the excavation explosives around it — the container goes up in a massive explosion, Yenbar and all.
The roar shakes the small ravine and carves out a crater.
“dying in an explosion, that’s, that’s the w-worst”
Staring at the screen displaying SIGNAL LOST, Chihaya pressed her palms together in a small prayer for the life-sized humanoid robot she’d been piloting — the Actanoid.