Chapter 409: Stops and Starts Along the Way (2)
Run. Hide. Survive.
Clawing back from death's edge, the boy's golden eyes glowed faintly as he staggered through the mountain wilderness, vanishing into the icy night.
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Body heat bled away. Limbs grew numb. Thoughts turned sluggish... In his daze, a misstep sent him tumbling—CRACK—his skull struck stone, consciousness snuffed like a candle in the wind.
Dawn came. The boy who should've frozen to death woke anyway.
---
Each breath burned like winter in his lungs. Clinging to willpower, he used his gold-eyed sight to track ki signatures, evading Red Ribbon patrols.
Unseen behind him, another pair of golden eyes observed coldly.
'The senzu bean's borrowed energy will last ten days...' Yamiru mused. 'Without that half-bean stolen from Dr. Gero's lab, this kid would've died before sunrise.'
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A stumble. A fall. Blood dripped from his nose—warmth so precious he almost regretted it freezing.
The scent drew predators. A massive wolf emerged, circling closer.
The boy licked cracked blood from his lips. Minutes later, frostbitten fingers fumbled open the Sword Bead.
SCHLICK.
Blade met fur. Steam rose as he burrowed into the wolf's still-warm carcass, sighing in relief.
---
Blood painted the snow. Red Ribbon corpses littered the ground.
The boy reclaimed his blade, stripped a terrified soldier of every scrap of gear, and limped away.
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"Cough! Cough—!"
Even wrapped in stolen uniforms, cold gnawed his bones. '"Freezing... but burning up... arms won't... move right..."'
A trembling hand touched his forehead. Scorching.
Dread pooled in his gut.
Then—his gold eyes flared.
Ambush.
Somehow, delirium had led him straight into a Red Ribbon encirclement. And among them—'that bastard Blue's ki'.
---
Guns leveled at the feverish, shivering target.
"Sorry, Tao..."' The boy grinned weakly. '"Stealing your kill."
With his last strength, he hurled the alien-forged Sword Bead—
THUNK.
Blue's eyes widened as the blade buried itself in his skull. '"He... wanted... to..."' Darkness swallowed him mid-thought.
Watching Blue gargle blood and collapse, the boy exhaled—then toppled backward, his own vision graying.
'Ah. I remember now.'
From a nearby tree, Yamiru's golden eyes flickered skyward. 'This was where I first truly danced with death. And also where—'
A wild shout cut through the mountains:
"KINTO—UN—!!"
"What's that?"
"A meteor?"
"Sunbeam?"
Red Ribbon soldiers gaped as a golden streak tore through the clouds.
His Flying Nimbus.
Yamiru turned.
On the ground, the boy—eyes clear with acceptance—hauled himself onto the hovering cloud.
"Take me away," he croaked, slapping its surface.
Gunfire erupted too late as Flying Nimbus blasted skyward, carrying its rider toward the horizon.
'Did Flying Nimbus come down because I'm here?'
The thought flickered vaguely through Yamiru's mind as he watched the scene unfold.
---
On the cloud, the boy's condition worsened—fever spiking, consciousness fading in and out.
As rain began to pour, Flying Nimbus descended, its intangible form forcing the delirious boy to slide off onto a muddy roadside. Shivering violently, he lay gasping, his scorching face turned toward the steel-gray sky as countless raindrops pelted down.
"Are you... abandoning me too, Flying Nimbus?" he murmured weakly.
High above, Yamiru rolled his eyes and waved away the golden cloud, which hovered nearby like a chastened pet unsure whether to seek forgiveness or offer comfort. With reluctant swirls, Flying Nimbus drifted into the distance.
---
In the rain, human traffickers scooped up the feverish boy. His illness burned hotter; his mind unraveled further. And when the slavers—blind to the volatility of a dying, unstable creature—pushed too hard...
"Journey to the West, huh? Hehehe..." The boy's laughter edged into madness as he slaughtered his captors, leaving survivors screaming for police. Only after the carnage did he remember other imprisoned children. In a daze, he broke their locks before collapsing.
When he awoke, two children—a blonde girl and black-haired boy—stared unblinkingly at him. Assuming he'd terrified them, the boy staggered out alone...
"He's stupid. Police will come soon," the girl remarked.
"You waited for him to wake. Why not tell him?" the boy countered.
"Lapis, don't complicate things. Or you'll get kidnapped again."
"You're the one who got taken! I just followed out of loyalty!"
Outside the bloodied room, the masked figure toyed with a pebble, listening.
'"So these are Android 17 and 18?"' Yamiru mused. '"I saved them once?"'
He shrugged, uninterested, then flicked the pebble—
THIP.
It pierced the skull of a trafficker playing dead among the corpses.
---
Even Yamiru nearly lost track of the boy's ki—so faint it barely registered. A walking corpse in truth...
Switching tactics, he searched for another presence in the city.
"HELP!" A girl's scream cut through the downpour.
On a rooftop's edge, hands in pockets, Yamiru looked down at the feverish boy's clumsy heroics below.
A sudden pang struck him.
'Have I... been away for 40,000 years?'
Earth's first Guardian Deity rubbed his neck sheepishly. Technically, the Tights who'd become his wife existed fifteen years ahead. But still—this counted as marital neglect, right?