His eyes opened slowly, and for a second
Masaki wondered just where he was. Staring at the off-white
ceiling didn’t give him many answers, however, so Masaki rolled
over. That was when he noticed that he was still in bed.
Everything came back in brief flashes of memory after that: his
son, Gyou, the battle, the fact that he was hiding in the very
last place that he would have ever voluntarily gone. But at the
time there hadn’t been any other options.
Truthfully, there still weren’t
many options that Masaki could see, either for himself or for
the Guyvers. I wonder, what
was that strange telepathic presence I felt?
It had only been there for a minute, before he’d passed out from
the intensity of it, but Masaki had just barely managed to hang
on long enough to realize one thing: it wasn’t Balkus. Whoever
this new player in their little drama was, they were a much
stronger telepath than Balkus was on a good day.
If they worked for Chronos then it
didn’t bode well for his chances against them, whoever
they
turned out to be. Just once,
just one time, I wish things could be simple. But I suppose
that’s a bit too much to ask, at least for us.
Masaki sighed, staring at the wall of
his hospital room. Masaki supposed that he should get up now, if
only so that Sho and the others would stop worrying about him.
Of course, that wouldn’t stop Mizuki
from worrying on his behalf. Masaki winced as he remembered when
she had found out about his condition. Her reaction had been
more or less what he had expected from her, after knowing her
for as long as he did. Mizuki was a lot like Sho in that
respect: always ready to sacrifice her own comfort and happiness
if it was to help someone else.
Levering himself out of bed, Masaki
recoiled slightly as his feet touched the cold floor. Finally
locating a pair of slippers, Masaki put them on and walked out
of the room. He was particularly grateful to Sumio for letting
him take a shower and giving him a change of clothes. Masaki
thought that the shirt that he was currently wearing, light blue
with stripes of green and darker blue, would have probably
suited Kenji better. But still, it looked normal enough on him
that Masaki wasn’t going to raise any objections about it.
As he left the hospital room where he’d
been staying for the past two and a half days, Masaki couldn’t
help but wonder just how they were going to start up their
battles with Chronos from this deep inside one of the enemy’s
bases. True, he had put on a good act of being calm and assured
for Sho and the others, but in the end that was all it had been:
an act.
Walking down the florescent-lit
corridor, Masaki wondered for a moment just where all of the
others had gone to. That they were all still inside the
protected space of the laboratory was a safe assumption, since
he and Sumio had taken great care to impress on them the
importance of staying hidden. Makashima would probably also make
sure that they would all stay out of sight, if only to keep
himself from being discovered.
That last thing was probably an unfair
presumption on his part, but at the moment Masaki was too tired
to care.
XxXxX
At the outer edge of the forest that
surrounded Mt. Minakami, far enough away from Takeshiro village
that anyone who was actually awake this early would not see this
new apparition, a dark figure detached itself from the shadows.
The figure revealed itself to be a man dressed in a black,
fitted leather outfit. His black hair and pale skin, along with
the way he seemed to want to avoid the sunlight that slanted
through the trees, gave the man an almost vampire-like air.
His shiny black hair was parted neatly,
but oddly it was also brushed so that it completely covered his
right eye. As he moved farther into the forest, the man’s single
visible eye narrowed slightly. A small smile curved his thin
lips. The others were arriving. Turning his thoughts back to his
own journey the Zoalord Rienzi, seventh of the Twelve Overlords,
continued on his way to Mt. Minakami.
XxXxX
Masaki’s search had taken him through
three of the minor labs before he had gone to the basement’s
lunchroom. That was where he had found the rest of the group.
All of the rest of the group, including a few of Sumio’s fellow
scientists that he hadn’t been introduced to as yet. The
lunchroom itself was an odd combination of laboratory and
cafeteria, and Masaki couldn’t help but think that this wasn’t
the way that the main cafeteria was set up.
Such thoughts weren’t important,
however, so Masaki put them out of his mind.
"Mr. Murakami!"
"Hi, Sho," Masaki said, turning to face
one of his fellow rebels.
"Are you really sure you should be up so
soon, Mr. Murakami?" Sho asked. "What about your body? You did
receive serious injuries. Or, at least that’s what Prof.
Odagiri, Tetsuro and Agito all told me. Shouldn’t you still be
resting?"
"Don’t worry about me, Sho. We
Proto-Zoalords heal very quickly," Masaki said. It was a
half-truth at best.
"So you’re all right?" Sho asked
hopefully.
"Yes, Sho. I’m all right," Masaki
outright lied.