This new icon is a symptom of getting Japan'd.

It was a rare occurrence for Gwen to be able to visit her boyfriend, Arturo, at his home, since they both were usually bogged-down by work and relatives alike. On this day, she fought him in a game of Smash Bros., being hopelessly slung around at the end of Secretary Isabelle’s fishing line. Upon being tossed out-of-bounds for a sixth time, she lazily dropped her controller and asked her boyfriend if they could do something else. Arturo, also bored from near-effortlessly beating Gwen at the game, informed her of the cannabis edibles he kept around. Despite having never consumed a whole wad of plant matter belonging to the Cannabis genus, she welcomed it both as an alternative to getting thrashed at Smash Bros., and a way to dull her irritated mood. The Mexican extended her hand as her boyfriend dropped a crumb of condensed marijuana into her palm. After a brief moment of investigating her new snack, she leaned-backwards and tossed it into her mouth.

Chewing slowly, she estimated that she would be rewarded, in time, for enduring the bitter taste of the present moment. After several minutes of lounging with Arturo- who had consumed an edible of his own- she felt no different than she had before. “We got ripped-off, I don’t feel ♥♥♥♥.” she said as she grabbed another, larger edible. Arturo merely observed without comment, whilst secretly hoping she would be able to tolerate such a huge dose of Tetrahydrocannabinol. She, again, chewed past the bitterness of the second mash of hash, and hopefully awaited the relief from her boredom and irritation. Within minutes, she began to feel disoriented and numb. Her senses wavered, and her motor functions became impaired. She said nothing, instead spending her focus mostly on regaining her sense of self. Despite her efforts, she was patently losing her battle against unconsciousness, as merely keeping her eyes partially open became a herculean feat.

Arturo panicked and tried to bring her back to wakefulness with urgent nudges and audible commands, yet even he couldn’t bring his girlfriend back to Earth. Gwen toppled over, landing onto her side. It would have been a painful experience, had she been conscious. Indeterminable time passed before the Mexican regained any sense of awareness. She suddenly found herself back in Arturo’s apartment suite, but her lover was nowhere in sight. Thinking she had only reawakened from being incapaciated by the Cannabis wads, she stood up to search for her boyfriend. Instead, she was greeted by the sound of a crying infant. Her confusion wasn’t enough to quell her curiosity. Honing-in on the screaming, she estimated that the distressed child was outside the apartment space, and went to open the door. As she did, Gwen stood at the doorway and observed not a sobbing baby, but a hunched and bent humanoid figure, draped in a dark, tattered cloak that obscured the character’s head.

The individual then became silent, and slowly lifted its head to align an opening in the hooded garment with Gwen’s eyes, which allowed her to recognise the face of an elderly woman, aged and mottled. “What was that?” Gwen asked, which was met with no verbal response as the crone straightened herself and spread her arms wide like a cross, a menacing grin stretching on her face. The stranger matched eyes with Gwen, firing a piercing gaze, like an owl spotting a mouse in a field. As the lover of Aurturo Ruiz stared back in befuddlement, the old woman was suddenly enveloped in a sheet of intense, mauve-colored light. Shielding her eyes, Gwen’s curiosity has completely overridden her instinct to run; she desperately wanted some understanding of her situation. When the light had finally dimmed to allow access for Gwen’s eyes, she was no longer witnessing an elderly stranger, but a humongous bird of amethyst-colored plumage.

The avian entity before her was taller than she was, and possessed two very narrow eyes that glowed a faint blue light, each surrounded by feathers of deepest black that combined and ran down the bird’s breast, creating what looked like a dark beard. Atop the winged creature’s cranium was a crest of feathers shaded a darker violet than the rest, which complemented its very long and sinewy tail feathers. On black and featherless legs capped with purple talons did the bird stand in opposition to Gwen, a look of contempt recognizable in its slit-like eyes and short, rounded beak. Before the Mexican could scream, the feathered fiend emitted intense beams of light from its eyes, which sank into Gwen’s own. She then became completely restrained by an unknown force. Her muscles lacked any motivation or purchase for even the most minute twitch; not even her eyes could be commanded to twist or rotate. It was as if time and space had frozen for every atom that constituted her being.