Many a time had Otsune dreamed, of heroism and action and fantasy, but never before had she dreamed like this.  Very slowly, despite her best efforts to blink it away, the darkness of unnatural slumber subsided from her eyes, to be replaced by a darkness far more permanent.  Her hazel eyes flickered back and forth, naively attempting to make sense of the bizarre things that the pathetic light presented before her.  Other sensations surged forth where her sight failed her: the raw, fibrous, and utterly unfamiliar sensation of ropes, the unwelcome tickle of cold air against her face and through her hair, the nigh-revolting, sickly-sweet musk of feculent decay, and most haunting of all the implacable and noisome rantings of a desirous madman.

Instinct flooded Otsune's veins, tugging on her nerves, and she began to feebly rock back and forth.  In the oppressive and threatening dark, she couldn't even figure out what she wore, much less how to free herself.  Though in truth the steady and inexorable pain that had pricked her bones bothered her no more, the incredible stress now buffeting her brain kept her from realizing it, and that troublesome organ conjured up phantom pain in a misguided attempt to soothe its owner with the familiar.  All that her senses frantically relayed to her fell into chaos as the deafening reverberation of metal resounded between the walls of the ruined temple.  Beneath that cacophony, Otsune's writhing subsided into a frozen, curled-up ball, no different from a child succumbing to the kicks of a crowd of bullies, and every bit as desperately craved it all to stop.

When the other captives began to take action, they could not count Otsune among their number.  In the face of this sudden and unexpected nightmare, when seemingly only moments before she'd been slipping into the quiet embrace of eternal sleep in a hospital bed, confounded her completely and utterly.  Only one thought could be pulled from the frightened mass that best characterized her mind: [i]Please, God, save me![/i]