• It was a bright sunny day on the Vail. The sun glistened on the snow as the snow boarders surfed the white hills. Tsubaki was starting to get ready to go out when her trainer entered.
    “Saotome, it’s a perfect day for snowboarding,” said her trainer. “I think you can go out on your own today.”

    Tsubaki agreed as she put her helmet on over her short curly hair. Even if she was fifty-two years old she still had ten years of experience to help her.

    She walked out onto the snow and went up the ski lift. She got off and started down the mountain. She had done this very thing many times but this time it felt different. This time it seemed the ground was shaking and at one point Tsubaki thought she heard a distant roar. She was about half way down when she looked behind her to see that the quiet roar had turned into a very tremendous shout and behind an avalanche closely followed this sound.

    Tsubaki had no time to react. She was instantly buried in twenty feet of snow. There was no hope for rescue.
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    It was a beautiful place that had no name. The trees were a type of ironwood. They were straight and branchless until about ten feet up the fifteen-foot tree. The grass was green and all the same length, everywhere. The soil was soft, so soft that you would leave footprints and somewhere near you could hear the silent sound of a stream.

    Tsubaki woke in this place. “This place is beautiful I must say but why am I here. I should be dead,” she said out loud.

    As she said this an old man rolled out of the bushes and just lay there on the ground staring to the sky. “This world we live in is only beautiful on the outside. You should take a look on the inside.

    Just then everything went black for Tsubaki.
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    She woke up in a small cave with no seeable entrance. The cave was very small and had light that seemed to come from nowhere and there was a strange out of place bush behind her. In the far side of the room there was a cardboard box that was about five feet long.

    As Tsubaki studied the room the same old man rolled out of the bush. “It will give you what you need, the box, what you need to slay the dragon and save the world we live in.” said the old man as he stared to the stone ceiling.

    “I don’t want to kill a dragon. I just want to leave this whole world and go back to my own,” said Tsubaki calmly but sternly.

    “I have brought you here for killing the dragon and saving us all,” said the old man wistfully.

    “What if I don’t want to kill the dragon and save everyone? What if I just want to go back home?”

    “Then your consciousness will go back to your avalanche trampled body and you will die”

    “How did you know about the avalanche?”

    “I brought you here,” said the old man now getting to his feet, “because you hardly have a choice. You either kill the dragon and live here as a hero or go home and die.”

    “So how will I kill the dragon? What if it kills me?” said Tsubaki.

    “The box will give you what you need to kill it all you have to do is open it,” said the nameless old man.

    “So saying I rather go home and die, which way would I go?”

    “Jump into that bush and face your frosty fate.”

    Tsubaki decides to look in the box and see, out of pure curiosity, what is inside. She walked across the room, sits on the ground, put her hands on each side of the lid, slowly lifted it up, and looked inside.

    She found a small dagger about five inches long with the name Romulus barely squeezed on the small blade.

    “How would I kill a dragon with a butter knife,” she asked like she’d had enough of this foolish world.

    “It’s not a butter knife!” said the old man furiously. “That is the only weapon that will kill the dragon.”

    Tsubaki decided she had taken enough foolishness for one lifetime. Even after everything she still rather die then fight the dragon and save everyone. She was even starting to think that this “everyone” was just the old man.

    Without saying a word she dropped the knife, walked across the room, and disappeared into the bush never to breath life again.

    “I have tried so many times and ways to get someone to just open that box so I can take the legendary dagger Romulus and now I can,” said the old man manically. “There never was a dragon at all but I wonder why she just offed herself.”
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    The old man ruled the world forever with an iron fist and a sharp dagger (wink wink). He also decided to name the world Tsubaki in thanks to the girl who had no idea she had given the most evilest of men ultimate power.