Farlan.
Flower City, Wojihah District.
For Dorothy, today was a day that could only be called dreamlike. After finishing her shift at the hospital, she drove to a nearby dessert shop as usual, intending to replenish her stock of sweets at home. Just after she parked, she heard the piercing wail of an air raid siren.
To be honest, she had only heard an air raid siren briefly as a child, and that had merely been a token drill.
But today...
She had heard no announcement from the Farlan Government about any air raid drill today, so the only possibility was that something really had entered Farlan's airspace.
"Has Aolieting invaded Youyang?!"
Just as Dorothy's thoughts were running wild, hurried, heavy footsteps came from the distance.
Inside her car, Dorothy looked ahead curiously. Then she saw a terrifying monster with bloodshot eyes and a savage face. It had powerful hind legs, an enormous head, and huge teeth packed densely beneath its jaw. Compared with its thighs, its forelimbs looked much smaller.
Strange gears covered the monster's body, and an odd apparatus resembling some sort of launcher sat on its back. The monster measured at least fifteen meters tall. It was rampaging down the city's main road, trampling quite a few cars in the parking area flat.
The more Dorothy looked at the monster, the more familiar it seemed. Why did it look a little like the skeletons displayed in the [Dinosaur Crystal Palace] she had visited on her trip to Fog City?
Dorothy remembered that dinosaurs had still been a very academic concept when she was young. But as time passed and television technology developed, dinosaurs had shed their scholarly, highbrow associations and gradually become part of modern popular culture. Children and adults alike took a keen interest in them.