Great Anomaly: Stalker — 1

"Ahahahaha... how is anyone supposed to fight something like this?"

Awe.

The sight before me filled me with an overwhelming sense of it. A human holding a gun, facing another human with the same gun, had every chance of winning. Something the size of a beast or a car could be beaten too, if you handed a person heavy weaponry or anti-tank ordnance. But what if a tank fixed its gaze on you alone — glaring, brimming with murderous intent?

From that point on, people would flee in droves. That was the ceiling of what an individual human being could overcome. Past this stage, a chance at victory existed only when extreme training and raw luck arrived together.

'This isn't an enemy. It's a disaster...'

A natural disaster. What I had run into was a calamity that couldn't be compared to even the heaviest machinery — and not the familiar kind, either. Not a typhoon, a landslide, an earthquake, or a tsunami, the sorts of disasters humanity had seen before. A volcanic eruption. Something like the signal flare announcing the end of mankind.

And that eruption had me in its sights. The lava chased at my heels, the ash rolled in to bury me, and the volcanic bombs fell only ever near wherever I happened to be standing.

A spectacle vast enough that even a hero who had slain the Demon King might throw in the towel. Something rivaling that was coming for me.

Haah, haah, haah. I was gulping for air, yet I couldn't breathe. My lips trembled, my fingers curled inward, my toes bent without any command from me. My mind kept insisting this was a disaster I could handle if I simply followed the rules — but my body had frozen solid all on its own. Just as primitive humans, rather than running, had pressed their hands together and prayed before a nature they couldn't comprehend, my body knelt before the sight before my head could argue otherwise.

Shhhrrrrk—

Just as my oxygen-starved brain began to black out, the sound of dragging chain rang out. The Stalker's gaze lifted skyward — and I saw a chain flying in from above. A heartbeat later it lowered its head, as if to inspect the coils binding its own body.

'The rules! There are rules!'

Was this how the brother and sister in the old tale of the sun and moon had felt, seizing that rope lowered from the heavens? To me, the chains binding the Stalker — a being I could never resist — truly felt like that rope.

'The watch. Think of the watch. The second hand.'

Back when I was in middle school, there was a garbage book among the "essential reading" titles you were allowed to use for book reports. A garbage book that declared its own ideology to be the truth and insisted you absolutely had to live a certain way. You don't owe your parents respect. Living alone is the correct choice. Even if it inconveniences others, hoarding a little more money is the wise path. It was stuffed so full of trash that I can't even remember its title anymore — I simply called it the Backwards Book, because flip every word of it around and it all became true.

And yet the Backwards Book held exactly one right thing.

'Whatever you do, time goes on.'

Just one sentence. I'd only opened it to churn out a book report for homework, and skimmed it because the content was garbage — yet, bizarrely, my eyes snagged on that single line. So I lived on carrying just that one sentence with me. Later, watching some strange manga, I saw a bride counting prime numbers to keep herself together, and on a whim I resolved to build my own mental recovery trick in the same spirit. And I made one.

The method was simple. Picture a pocket watch. Imagine the second hand ticking. And think: whatever I do, time goes on. Counting the seconds as they slipped past — one, two — and telling myself that time flowed on regardless of my circumstances got me through even the hardest stretches with surprising ease.

'One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. Four seconds.'

A mental recovery method that only worked when there were no external stimuli. That gag of a technique I'd invented as a joke was, in this moment of extreme crisis, almost absurdly effective.

One second, and my fingertips calmed. Two, and my hyperventilation slowly steadied. Three, and my breathing found its rhythm again; the blackness flooding my mind receded. Four, and I recovered my composure and opened my eyes all the way.

'Yep. I'm still me, all right.'

My past had saved my life. Even in a woman's body now, the life I'd lived as a man was far from worthless — without it, I would have fainted right here.

'Do the best I can with what I have. Right now.'

The resolve was good, but there was no room for a stroll down memory lane. The chains had the Stalker bound, for now — who knew how long they would hold. I needed to read the newly revised rulebook, and fast.

'Look at the face: three seconds of paralysis. Subordination changed to ten seconds of contact. Speed limit tightened. A fire station. Passersby. Thirty minutes of restraint.'

I went back over the rules, chewing on everything that had changed. The instant-death gimmick on its face was gone, replaced by instant death at ten seconds of contact. The speed limit had been tightened from 6 km/h to 4, and the exits were still exactly what they'd been: the police station, and the line behind it. Roles were now spelled out explicitly, and the Stalker had picked up two new ones — Sinner and Fire. Then there was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the fire station and the passersby, though what the firefighters "repelling" the Anomaly was supposed to mean, I had no idea.

'Move first. Figure it out as I go.'

Rule 7, apparently, came with an expiration date — the number in parentheses kept ticking down. My best guess was that the Stalker was currently a Sinner being punished for breaking the rules, and the chains would hold it for thirty minutes.

Shhhk—

"Wha—?!"

The moment I took my first step after getting my thoughts in order, my foot shot out from under me. Thankfully the fall didn't hurt, but the sensation was exactly like stepping barefoot onto a bathroom floor still slick with shampoo.

"Is this like walking on ice?"

The ground was mirror-smooth, so I'd assumed it would grip like one of America's salt flats. Dying to know what the material even was, I pressed down hard with my foot: firm, but squishy under pressure — like a mirror made of jelly with a thin film of water spread over the top. And slippery, on top of everything else. I had no clue what I was standing on, but framing it as walking across a greased tire made it just barely acceptable. A few more steps in, I also worked out that it was closer to a slightly deflated tire than a taut, bouncy one.

'So is skating the best option right now?'

I tried gliding my feet forward in smooth strokes, skating-style, but I didn't advance at all — compared to plain walking, it was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠next to no movement.

'No blades, of course.'

Suddenly I understood why skating wasn't working. Skates generate acceleration by carving sideways against the ice with their edges, and I was barefoot. There was nothing to push off with.

'Then how do I move forward?'

For a moment I was completely stumped — and then it hit me: the rules, which had thrown every restriction imaginable at the Stalker, had left this floor untouched. Which meant there had to be some other way across it. I kept hunting for a method of traversal, but...

"How! Do I! Move! Forward!"

I couldn't figure it out. Crawling along and paddling with my hands — no. Twisting my body in little rotations — no. The only halfway workable technique was dropping to my knees and clawing the floor with a firm grip, and even with a running start that topped out at walking speed.

"Press down with your toes like you're pushing against the floor, and you can slide forward!"

"Huh...?"

"Press down with your toes like you're pushing against the floor, and you can slide forward!"

'Did it take my yelling as a question?'

From far off, a mannequin-like figure draped in clothes came wobbling toward me, head swaying side to side, then fired off something like a psychic wave that taught me how to move. For a heartbeat I panicked, thinking it was a monster — but when it just kept approaching with the same head-wobble, repeating the same words over and over, I realized what it was. A Passerby.

'That's a passerby? Really?'

I stared, dumbfounded, at the bizarre creature for a moment before realizing I had no time to waste, and tried moving exactly as it said. Sole flat against the ground, pushing slowly with my toes, as if shoving the floor away. Repeat. Repeat again. And just like that, I was moving at walking speed.

'It's like a moving walkway and ice skating, half and half.'

Now I had the feel of it completely, and my pace climbed to a race-walk. Before the Passerby's advice, I'd been seriously considering dropping to my belly and paddling along with my arms — but once I found my rhythm, this method was obviously far faster.

"What an unreal landscape."

Inching forward like that bought me enough breathing room to look around, and the sight pulled a gasp out of me. Buildings rising from what looked like a salt lake, under a sky of flawless, crystalline blue. I let myself admire the surreal vista for a moment — until I remembered that a single entity had conjured this entire landscape, and the tension came crashing back. I had no time to be lost in scenery. I shook myself back into focus and pressed forward, rereading the rulebook as I went.

"The fire station or the police station! How far away are they?"

"At your current speed, the fire station is ten minutes. The police station, one hour!"

"Thank you!"

"At your current speed, the fire station is ten minutes. The police station, one hour!"

I kept moving straight down the road that stretched endlessly ahead of me, and before long I spotted another head-wobbling Passerby. This time I asked where the fire and police stations were — Rule 7 had barely five minutes left on its clock, after all.

'But can it actually be "repelled"?'

The question gnawed at me as I slid along. Repel. A word you used for driving an enemy off or crushing them outright. This was the Stalker's domain to begin with, so "driving it off" made no sense — which left fighting it head-on and winning. The fire station beats it in a fight? Against something that rewrites reality? I couldn't picture it. To me, firefighters had always been the people who saved people.

CLANG!

About five minutes slid by like that. I'd tried to pick up the pace, but I was sure I'd wipe out if I pushed any harder, so I was cruising along at top speed when a sound like something shattering rang out across the world — and Rule 7 vanished.

'How is it that fast?!'

Unlike me, slogging along at little better than a race-walk, the Stalker — by whatever method it was using — was moving as fast as a cyclist at an all-out sprint. I couldn't be precise, but it had to be somewhere in the range of 20 to 30 km/h.

'The environment! The environment doesn't count against its speed?!'

Moving across this terrain required exactly two things: toe strength and a sense of balance. I was traveling at roughly the same pace as before, but with sprinting sealed off and sluggish acceleration off the line as fatal drawbacks, this floor was a penalty for me — the only upside being that it was marginally more comfortable. But the Stalker? Even with the rules capping its speed, this had never been terrain that demanded its full original velocity in the first place. Toe strength and balance were all it needed. If you had monstrous strength and the balance to match, that speed made perfect sense.

'The fire station! That's why the fire station exists!'

It finally clicked. Without it, I would have been caught in under ten minutes — and with no way to resist that monstrous strength, that would have been the end of me. It had been added as something, anything, that might buy me time in a hopeless situation.

'I have to move!'

Now that I understood why it existed, I decided to forget the word "repel" entirely. Whatever the firefighters did, it would be closer to delaying the Stalker than defeating it.

After roughly four more minutes of travel, the fire station came into view.

"Miss, is something the matter?"

It was my first time attempting a turn, and I skidded more than a little, losing precious seconds — but I made it inside the fire station in one piece.

"There's a fire over there! It's spreading!"

"Then we dispatch at once!"

The moment I crossed the threshold, I reported straight to the faceless firefighter. I was beginning to feel cold chills and scorching heat washing over me at the same time.

"Do you need anything?"

I hesitated. What would a fire station have on hand — and what did I actually need right now? As I weighed it, I noticed the firefighters sprinting every which way in preparation for dispatch weren't slipping in the slightest, so I asked for safety boots and a few other things.

"I'll need safety boots and detergent. I also know who set the fire, so I have to go to the police station afterward. And please give me a vehicle."

"Do you need the safety boots so you won't slip? Or because you're headed somewhere dangerous?"

"So I won't slip."

"Then use these."

"These are...?"

"Anti-slip stickers. Cute, aren't they?"

The anti-slip stickers showed a rabbit character from behind, caught mid-turn. Its round bottom was on full display, with a little X stamped over its butthole to preserve its modesty. An adorable sticker, all things considered. I pressed one onto each sole and took a few steps — it felt exactly like walking on flat ground, which was wonderful, right up until I lifted a foot to inspect it and saw what it looked like. Which was... a lot.

"Two more of these, please."

"Two anti-slip stickers. Here you are. And miss, do you have a driver's license?"

I hesitated. I did have one — but the fire truck hadn't slipped an inch either, which made it seem like some kind of special vehicle, and even if they handed it over, I had zero confidence I could actually drive the thing.

"I don't."

"Then our youngest will ride along with you. The fire truck has to dispatch now, so we'll take you there in a personal vehicle."

With that, the kind firefighter boarded the truck and rolled out to fight the fire, and I was placed in the care of a mannequin slightly smaller than the rest of them. Riding in a Kia Morning, of all things — I was genuinely surprised they even had one of those here.