Even the Fare was not Cheap

Gil spent almost another two weeks in his prison cell while everything around him was slowly trying to piece themselves together.

Most of the people from the battle had fully recovered by now, and it was a marvel that there were so many people put into this hospital for such a small battle. Gil, with his unkept hair and unmaintained apparel, has been slowly plotting a plan for the past few days with Anubis. Thanks to the powers of the petals, he can communicate properly with Arawn as well, and thus, can devise a plan with Radal for his escape. Arjun keeps coming from time to time and gets to know some of the plans, but he is also left clueless for most of the time.

There is no proper D-day for the event taking place since the pattern in which Naeve sends her puppets is absolutely random, and at the same time, Radal wanted to be fully healed before he engaged in any type of conflict.

"Didn't Radal want to capture you? You were part of his bounty, right? Isn't that why he is wanting you?", Arjun stated on one of his visits to Gil.

"Yes, but he threw away Sakurai that day. I cannot help but wonder what must have gone inside that dude's mind when he decided to perform that act. It was not some simple act of trying to collect her later. He knew exactly what he was doing. He was throwing an insane person across like a rugby player throws the ball across the field. There was no other explanation for it. If he truly wants me to be gifted as a present for the person who is paying for my bounty, then so be it. At least I will be out of this shithole at least." Gil replied to Arjun.

"Should I rally up some of the other supporters in your favour You could use some help in escaping if that is what it would take for us to help you and get you out of here?" Arjun asked during another one of his visits. He knew that there was no chance that someone like Gil was going to allow his subordinates to participate in something that would have such dire consequences.

"Let them be Arjun, they are not like us. We have bonded brothers for life, with a blood oath to protect each other. Set them free, for they have done absolutely nothing in this battle, and they will become unnecessary subjects to trauma and torture if they participate with me."

Anubis: For someone who has the title of Don, you sure are extremely nice to your people. Seems like something that a leader would do.

"I am a leader for these people Anubis. I am just hopelessly powerless compared to others in this matter. I do not know where she is, I do not know where Egoister and Clara have gone. I do not even know who those other two people are still. All I know is that two extremely powerful people dropped into battle, completely steam-rolled us and then left, taking the lovebirds away. I am still baffled that the entire sequence of events even took place. I never understood it, but ah well. Life has a way to turn things in its tide."

In another such instance, Arjun asked, "Is there any way for me to escape with you? My friend. I feel like I would be of much more use if I came with you, rather than you leaving me alone here."

"You want to betray everyone in this school just to go and side with me a bounty hunter?", Gil counter questioned in confusion.

"I mean, is there any point in me even staying bac? We both made the entire network work because it was the two of us. I don't think you will survive for long if you don't have support like mine, neither would I be able to live with the guilt that I let my best friend be captured again if I am forced to capture you. You know that Nanami Sensei's orders are final. You know exactly well, that there is nothing that I can do about it.", Arjun replied. "I don't want to be put into a position, where I am forced to kill my best friend just because he wanted to disobey a few rules."

"Such is the tale of this world. What a miserable cut-throat world we even live in mate…" Gil contemplated as he stared into Arjun's eyes. That conviction was clear, that Arjun was not going to be leaving Gil alone anytime soon.

"Okay then, here's the plan that I am going to be needing your help to execute – "

A few days passed,

A few weeks passed,

A few months passed…

Okay no, not months, just two weeks had passed since all these conversations had taken place between the two of them, and they felt it was the golden opportunity to escape the school and get into a location where Radal the Hunter could come and pick them up.

"Are you ready? We might go off on a hunting spree after this Arjun."

"Never been more ready, my friend."

Arjun shapes a plasmic blade that would easily belt the bars of the cell… In the process also alerting the Thermostats of the place that the temperature is rising to an extremely high temperature. That is when the alerts started going off in the Hospital Warden's room. Naeve seemed to shrug it off as playful banter and let one of her puppets do the task for her. Little did she know, that puppet was going to be used to aid in their escape.

As the puppet reached the cell rooms, he noticed that Arjun had just finished cutting the bars and was now cutting through the restraining chains that were placed on Gil. Gil turned towards the puppet, who just stood there adorably, not knowing what was taking place.

Naeve seemed to be too busy to even clock in with her puppet. However, with the way that her puppets work, if even one of them were destroyed, she would immediately feel the pain in the way that it was killed.

Gil told Arjun, "Bring that thing here and try using it to smash these chains. The head portion seems to be strong, so that can easily be used to crack open these restraints."

And thus began the pounding journey. One after another, the skull began to crack, and so did the chains. Along with that, the sharp sensation of something heavily constantly falling onto your head kept hitting Naeve, until she realized that it was possibly because of the actions that Arjun and Gil were committing to her puppet.

Immediately she rushed over to the cell rooms in an attempt to purge this escape-ment.

As soon as the chains finished breaking, Naeve entered the room bursting the door wide open.

"YOU DARE TO DESTROY MY PUPPETS, INSOLENT BRAT?", she was enraged. Blood dripped from her skull, and fell onto the floor.

"NOW PHOTON!", Gil screamed, activating his scales to save himself from the impact.

Arjun started to glow, turning from red hot to white hot, to an extreme version of blue hot.

With such energy stored, all Gil needed to do was to bring the ship, letting lose the sands of time to reduce everyone's lifespans.

Anubis: Let this be a peace offering, for this may be the last time you even revisit this place.

The dog cloak that dawned Gil took Naeve's heart and placed it on the scales, at the exact moment that the huge discharge of supernovae energy seemed to radiate out of Arjun, levelling everyone around a twenty-five-metre radius.

"Let's go, we have to escape now!"