SakuraMay 6, 10:15 am, Tokyo, j.a.pan
Once again, Sakura found herself wondering what on earth Jason was thinking. Nothing he had done in the past day made any sense to her.
He had made a big show of recruiting her, making her try to find the monster that escaped for him. And yet, there was absolutely nothing useful in the information that he sent over. It had clinical observations, notes on the subject"s original species, and a whole bunch of jargon that Sakura suspected was just there to confuse her.
How the h.e.l.l was she supposed to find the monster with just this?
"You think this is the information Jason looks at to find monsters?" Michi asked. He was stirring his cup of hot chocolate, next to Sakura"s station as she vented about the lack of information sent over. "Or do you think he"s just s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g with you?"
"Probably option B," Sakura grumbled. "But I can"t figure out why."
"To distract you from something?" Michi ventured. "Keep your focus away from something?"
Sakura pondered this thought for a moment.
"That"s...actually pretty possible," she conceded. "We"ll need to keep an eye on them while we look for the monster."
"Is there even a monster on the loose?" Michi asked, bringing his mug up to his lips. "I mean, if this is just a distraction, they could be lying."
"If they"re completely lying, then they"re doing a pretty good job of it," said Sakura, looking back at the information on the screen. "This looks like a real monster"s profile. Actually, I think it is...we might have gotten it in the hard drive, hold on..."
Sakura went on to find the same profile on the hard drive, except the one Jason sent over was more obscurely worded, and had a little more information it seemed.
"I mean, they kept the information about the monster"s appearance," said Sakura. "Body of lion, head of a boar, wings of a bat that have been stretched to become proportionate."
"Tail that is just a snake," Michi added.
"What?"
Sakura read over the profile again, and noticed that Michi was right.
"What kind of weird detail is that?" she said, narrowing her eyes. "They"re really trying to create mythical monsters, aren"t they?"
"Whoever is doing this definitely has some kind of G.o.d Complex," Michi agreed, sipping his hot chocolate.
(On the other side of the world, a certain multi-billionaire CEO restrained himself from teleporting in front of them and declaring that it was a Demon Lord Complex, actually.)
"In any case, it doesn"t seem like he"s trying to fool us," said Sakura. "Which could just mean that he"s really good at fooling us, or...he isn"t lying."
Michi sighed.
"Let me guess. On the off chance he isn"t lying, you won"t be able to sleep knowing there is a monster out there killing people," he said, rolling his eyes.
"Well...I mean it"s also a good opportunity for us," said Sakura. "With the whole researcher thing. That you said, remember?"
Despite poking fun at her hero-like tendencies, Michi acquiesced. On the off chance there was a monster, it was better in the long run for them to go after it.
"That means we need someone on Neurix watch though," Michi sighed, putting his mug down on Sakura"s desk. He folded his arms.
"I"ll ask Bunta."
"Isn"t he still working on the researchers?" asked Sakura.
"He is," said Michi, "but he also wants to help out more. He"s been asking more about what he can do."
"Oh?"
Sakura didn"t miss that Michi had gone slightly pink as he said this. She leaned back in her seat a bit, and raised an eyebrow.
"So you guys have been...talking lately?"
Michi wordlessly picked up his mug, and raised it to his lips. Despite the fact that it was empty.
"I"m gonna go ask him now," he said, walking away.
"Have fun! Be safe!" Sakura yelled as he walked away, drawing the ire of her fellow customers and the manager. After being warned, and apologizing profusely, Sakura went back to the computer.
She looked over the doc.u.ment a little more, then looked over her shoulder to make sure Michi was gone.
Then she clicked over to the tab she had been hiding from him.
Sakura felt a little guilty for hiding things from Michi. After all, he had been with her this whole time. They had gone through so much together, and he had stayed by her side throughout. That fact alone filled Sakura with so much grat.i.tude, she would kill for Michi if he asked.
But this wasn"t just about the case. It was something personal.
She looked over the doc.u.ment, reading over her findings. It was a list showing the limits of her illusions. After the escape, Sakura had been experimenting a little more, and had learned two very important things about her powers:
1) Sakura needed to see people to for her illusions to be effective. For example, if she illusioned her car to look like a different car and Michi was behind her while she did it, Sakura would see that the car had changed, but Michi would not. Once Sakura turned and saw Michi, only then would he see the illusion car.
2) She could make a "bubble" of illusion that included people she could not see. This was like a spherical area where people would see Sakura"s illusions, no matter if she saw them or not. However, this gave her a terrible headache, and once the bubble wore off (usually after about 30 minutes) Sakura would not be able to use any sort of illusion. However, it seemed like with practice, the uptime for the bubble could be increased, and the cooldown for it could be decreased.
She supposed there was also number 3) Sakura had no idea how she had made herself invisible that one time. She had tried it again a few times, once even with Michi and Bunta watching, but it hadn"t worked.
Sakura was sure that she was missing something. She had done...something...in that bin that had allowed her to make herself...feel invisible. She remembered wis.h.i.+ng to be as small as possible, trying to blend in, but that didn"t seem to work. She tried seeing herself from her pursuers" POV, and then making herself disappear, but that hadn"t worked either.
Was it fear? Was that the key the becoming invisible?
She thought about it for a while, then closed the doc.u.ment. She could come back to it later. She had figured out quite a lot about her powers, and that made her feel confident enough to take on the mess Jason had left her.
She smirked as she opened the monster file once more. So, he wanted to give her the run around? He was going to give her the barest hint of a clue to start with?
She snorted.
Who cares?
She was Sakura Watanabe, future award-winning journalist. It didn"t matter how few the clues were.
She was going to find this monster.
***
Gadiel
May 7, 12:01 am, Queanbeyan, Australia
Gadiel woke up coughing.
His head was pounding to the beat of his ancestors against his skull. His stomach felt like it was being twisted into a pretzel, and his limbs felt as if they had been newly attached by a blind surgeon.
Needless to say, he wasn"t feeling too good.
After dry heaving a little, Gadiel noticed he was lying down on some sort of air mattress. He slowly looked up.
It was dark, but there was study lamp on beside him. Next to that was Medina, sitting on a pink, inflatable sofa, lost inside a book of some sort. Gadiel glanced at the cover; it was some YA Fantasy.
He quickly looked around, and despite the lack of light, he realized that he was inside some sort of store. The air mattress took up the entire aisle; on either side of him were a bunch of lamps. From what he could make out of the price tags, it looked like they were in Target.
Suddenly, he remembered what he had been doing before all this.
"Tari-"
He looked around, in a panic, before realizing that Tarik was right beside him. Sleeping, from the looks of it.
Or he had been, until Gadiel"s rough movements had woken him up.
"Que...Gadiel…?" he murmured softly, struggling to open his eyes. Gadiel felt his heart flutter in his chest; sleepy Tarik was too cute.
"Oh, you"re awake," said Medina, closing her book. "Hold on, I"ve got..."
She started rummaging around in her over-sized backpack, and took out a couple muesli bars and water bottles. Gadiel took them gratefully. He handed a couple to Tarik, who took them gingerly, still not completely awake.
"I figured you"d be hungry after...all that," said Medina. "So I raided the snacks before getting here."
"How did we get here?" Gadiel asked. "And how did you survive the...well, you know."
Medina smiled sadly, then explained how she had used her healing ability on herself to keep herself from dying.
"S-sorry about that," Tarik muttered. "I just...lost control..."
"It"s fine," said Medina, waving it away. "There was no other way to beat the monsters. We would"ve actually been dead if you hadn"t."
Tarik grimaced, but didn"t say anything more. He took a bite of his muesli bar.
Medina then went on to describe how she had gotten a cart from the Target and used it to carry them both inside.
"The ice wall looked like it was going to melt or break pretty soon, so I figured being inside the labyrinth would be safer," she said, unwrapping a bar for herself. "I decided to set up in this aisle cause it was a safe place last time we came here."
Gadiel had already eaten through a couple of bars by the time Medina had finished her explanation.
"How long have we been out?" he asked. He patted his shorts down, and took out his phone. Miraculously, it had survived Tarik"s inferno.
He checked the time. 12:09 am. May 7.
He blinked, then rubbed his eyes. The time refused to change.
"I"m not sure," said Medina. "My phone got destroy-"
"12 am?" said Gadiel, unable to contain his shock. "I"ve got cla.s.s today!"
Both Medina and Tarik scrambled over to check the time as well. True enough, it was May 7.
"We gotta get back before cla.s.s, I start at-"
"Gadiel, do you really think you"ll be able to fight your way out of that horde like this?" said Tarik calmly.
Seeing Tarik so collected did a lot to help Gadiel calm down. But still, he felt a weird tightness in his chest at the idea of missing his cla.s.s.
"But I"ve got to finish cla.s.s-"
"Gadiel, if we don"t do this properly, then we"ll be too dead to go to cla.s.s," said Medina.
"I know! It"s just-"
"Do you though?" asked Medina, narrowing her eyes. "Do you really?"
Gadiel was about to reply, when he remembered who Medina was, and what had happened to her friends. He remembered how well she had handled herself back there, against all the monsters. She had managed to stay calm and collected, in control the entire time, while he…
He had lost control again.
"I get that you"re frustrated," said Medina. "But please just...trust me when I say this isn"t going to be easy, okay?"
Tarik and Gadiel nodded.
They finished eating, and started drinking a bit.
"How are you feeling?" Gadiel asked Tarik.
"Stiff and dry," said Tarik. He was sitting up now, on his knees and stretching his neck as he took a swing from the water bottle.
An uneasy silence pa.s.sed between them. Medina looked at the both of them, eyebrow raised.
"What did..." Gadiel began, but trailed off. He looked over at Medina.
She stared back blankly for a moment, before smiling sweetly.
"I just remembered. I have to...go away for a little while," she said unconvincingly. "For...woman...reasons..."
Gadiel and Tarik watched as she walked away. Once she was gone, Gadiel opened his mouth to speak again.
"It"s not...something I talk about," said Tarik in French, before Gadiel could even ask. "It"s just...difficult for me to talk about."
"I figured," said Gadiel. "I mean, if it"s anything like mine..."
He let the sentence hang in the air. Tarik smiled, but didn"t say anything.
"If you don"t want to tell me, that"s fine," said Gadiel. "I know how hard it can be to talk about stuff like this. But I want you to know the same thing you told me back then."
"I"m here, Tarik. Whenever you need me. Whenever you"re ready," finished Gadiel.
Tarik was silent for a moment. Then:
"And what if I"m never ready?" he asked, voice so soft and small, Gadiel though it would crack like gla.s.s if he so much as said anything.
Slowly, Gadiel took Tarik"s hand. Surprised, Tarik looked up to find Gadiel smiling softly at him.
"I"ll still be here," he said. "Even if I can never learn everything about you, I want to try. If you"ll let me."
Tarik looked away, but didn"t pull his hand away. Gadiel took that as an invitation, and pulled Tarik into a hug. Tarik seemed unwilling at first, his body stiff and unresponsive, but after a moment, he melted into Gadiel"s arms, snuggling back into his warm embrace.
The stayed like that for a while.
"Is it bad that I kind of want to stay like this forever?" said Tarik softly.
"Yes," said Gadiel. "I would definitely miss my cla.s.s then."
Tarik laughed softly, and Gadiel felt his heart skip a beat.
By the time Medina came back, the two had fallen asleep again.
"And here I was, thinking we"d get a move on," she sighed, smiling.
At the very least, she would get a little more rest before heading into the labyrinth proper. She looked out into the darkness, her fist gripped tight.
"Wait for me," she whispered. "I"ll find you. Just you wait."