“So, what are our options?”

“None.”

Driving for long fifteen minutes was enough to make sure no one was following them, but they ventured further into the forest to ensure they would not be found by some unfortunate coincidence. With the engine still running, the bike stopped close to the flowing river, well-lit by sunlight in stark contrast to the shadows the treetops cast on the runaways. Both stayed in silence for a moment before Yana decided it was time to move on.

“None? We have to find one, we can’t just sit here,” she answered to the pensive Jack, staring calmly at the river.

“No, we can’t. But we can’t cross to Lado and we can’t go to Kilma either,” he glanced back, saw that she wanted further explanation, and continued. “There are three bridges that cross Mto river. The first one’s in Ellage. It has way too much security for us to go through. The second and the third are mostly used by hidan hunters, so we could try to go through, maybe even without that visa, but Steel’s controlling them both by now.”

“Waiting for us to try and cross… What about Kilma? That’s another country that borders Rujad?”

“They cut all ties with this place. They won’t let anyone through.”

“Why not?”

“Bulgarl. But it makes sense that everyone has to pay for it. We’re an anarchy, after all.”

Something clicked inside Yana’s mind as she heard the word. “Rujad’s an anarchy?” Jack nodded. “As in a country without politics, laws, without police-”

“Yeah, it’s all that,” he answered as if it was the most natural thing in the world. The police was the next solution that had come across her mind, and there had never been one around to begin with.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“You’ve never asked.”

“It’s the kind of thing you don’t have to ask,” she continued. “Oh, hey, you’re new to this country? I should warn you, it’s an anarchy.”

“It’s not that bad. Bulgarl is, but-“

Loud techno music broke his sentence, and both instinctively looked over to its source. Jack produced a cream-colored bud from one of his vest’s pockets and put it inside one of his ears, silencing the music.

“Call received,” he said, turning to the river and waiting to hear something else. “Doctor?” he asked with a mist of wonder, respect, and subtle fear in his voice. “No, I did recognize you, Doctor, I was just surprised; I wanted so bad that you’d turn to trash, that suddenly you were serving the trash... Not really.”

Suddenly Jack started laughing. Not the light-hearted kind of laugh that he had shown Yana when she had called him a backstabber, but an “honestly-making-fun-of-you” laugh, capable of offending most people that it was directed to.

“I’m sorry, Doctor, have you gone mad? Or stupid? They said working in Bulgarl Coliseum does things to your head… Oh, no, no... I’m not coming back… Of course I’m not coming back!” he yelled, suddenly taking his voice to enraged levels that rivalled those he had used with Kuchinja. “… Are you shitting me? I would rather go back to the place that was “hiding” me, and get the shit beaten out of me every day again than admitting I belong in your lab, Doctor. Fuck you!”

He pulled the bud from his ear and crushed it under his foot, letting his fast breathing mingle in the flowing river, tranquil leaves, and settle down to its more normal, composed rhythm.

“Who was that?” Yana dared asked once she felt he had calmed down a bit. However, he froze for a split second, checking for something too subtle for Yana to pick up.

“Wrong number,” he answered reaching for her arms.

“Hey, what are you-?”

“Do you want to die?” he asked looking at her from above his shoulder with something so intense and scared that she thought for a second they were going to drop dead regardless of what they did.

“No?”

“Then shut up and hang on!”

Before he finished his sentence her arms were around his shoulders and the bike was dashing across the forest again, joined abruptly by the sound of several more engines, dangerously close to them. Looking back Yana spotted several bikers, all of them riding sophisticated vehicles and wearing inexpressive helmets, following their trail.

“There’s dozens of them!” she yelled. Taking a moment to look back as well, Jack clicked his tongue and reached for his weapon. She looked back behind them and found the barrel of a pistol locked at them.

“Look out!”

As the bang sounded the bike swerved around a tree and Jack cut a large branch from it with Moonlight’s blade. One of their pursuers was unable to react on time, but the rest drifted around it, including the ones with the ranged weapons.

As more bullets joined the chase Jack had the bike move among as many trees as he could to hide in blind angles, creating obstacles that lost one or two more bikers, but every time Yana looked back there seemed to be more and more vehicles pursuing them, and she saw the very real possibility that their escape was over before it could’ve even begun.

However, after bringing down another ineffective branch, Jack suddenly held his gaze upward, as if confirming something, and was finally capable of concocting a plan.

The bike came to a sudden halt, drifting to the side as Yana dangerously slid on her box. With the bikers behind them almost on top of them and the ones who were closer quickly turning around, Jack changed his scythe to Moonlight’s.

“Close your eyes!”

The blade flashed in blinding light, and the bike immediately sped forward again, away from the river and towards the desert, as Yana opened her eyes to see what had caused the crashing noises she had heard. Their numbers had dwindled, but several bikers were behind them, quickly catching up thanks to their far more powerful vehicles.

“They’re still chasing us!” she yelled turning back forward. However, wielding his white scythe, Jack didn’t seem to care, focusing on the path ahead and occasionally looking up to the treetops.

Suddenly a small, focused light was cast down on them. Jack held the blade on its path, reflecting the light back to the treetops. Several beams of the same kind rained down on the bikers behind them, making some of them scream in pain and others swerve around only to meet a tree instead. Before the barrage was over, all the bikers immediately dispersed their formation and vanished through the thicket.

“They’re… They’re gone! They gave up!” Yana said, turning back forward.

“Of course they did! There’s a flock of diosol on our tail!” Jack yelled without looking back.

“Diosol?” she yelled back. Another beam of light hit the ground right next to them, and Yana watched a line of smoke rising from the burnt soil for a couple of seconds before the bike stopped without previous warning.

“Get off,” Jack said shutting down the engine.

“Why? What are you going to do?”

“There’s no time, they’re going to dive!”

“What are you-?”

Just as her leg touched the ground her strength faltered, and she fell. Without being able to understand why her leg hurt so badly so suddenly, she sat straight while Jack laid the bike on the ground. Her left knee was almost completely skinned, with a deep cut from where her blood had been leaking out and splattering her leg.

A flapping sound rose to dominion over the wind and the occasional chipper of an ignorant bird.

“Stay here, and don’t make a sound,” Jack said, leaving at running speed before she could ask anything else about what was going on.

When he was but a few feet away from her, countless yellow and blue blurs sped across the trunks, forcing Jack to throw himself on the ground not to get overrun. As fast as the creatures had appeared they disappeared, but the ominous beat of their wings did not fade. Jack quickly stood up and planted his weapon on the floor, causing dust to fall on the ground, rise up and take a distinct shape, turning into an almost imperceptible skeleton, organs, muscles and fur before solidifying into the dark cat with yellow patches, who merely lashed its tail, waiting for instructions.

Both Jack and Moonlight turned to the same direction and the cat hissed towards the treetops when the flapping became stronger. As a barrage of light fell down on them, Moonlight disappeared, to be spotted by Sofia a couple of seconds later on top of a tree branch large enough to sustain her. Jack used his blade to reflect the beams that came his way, almost mechanically, until one of them hit his right arm. With a shout, he instinctively reached for it, but in an instant his hand was on the scythe again and the creatures were all over the place.

As he weathered the storm, with nothing but the naked blade to protect his face from the flock, something caught his eye and he looked to the side. He shouted at Moonlight, but neither Yana nor anyone in the living room had been able to see what the cat had been doing. It was crouching on the floor at that moment and dust was flowing from underneath it towards the scythe, coating it in golden and sky-blue reliefs, and giving the blade a hole in its centre.

As soon as the dust was sucked entirely by the weapon, Jack held it high above his head with his undamaged arm, letting its blade glow like a beacon. The creatures that were still around rose in altitude and the sound of their wings waned and waned until it vanished completely.

“Stupid birds…” he muttered looking over to the wound the flock had made in his arm. None of them could see it from where Yana was sitting, but the click of tongue and the frown he made before walking back towards the bike was enough proof.

“Can light really hurt people that much?” asked Sofia.

“I don’t think so. There has to be something else to it,” David answered. Trotting ahead of him, Moonlight reached the motorcycle, smelled the box in the back and meowed at Jack, who crouched next to it, dropping his scythe on the ground, and opened it, keeping his damaged arm practically immobile.

“What were those things?” asked Yana after crawling next to a tree and leaning on it, keeping her bleeding knee well away from the dirt.

“Diosol are extremely aggressive shits that can focus sunlight,” answered Jack standing up with his rucksack. “They say that getting hit by one is the same as touching the surface of the sun.”

When he sat down next to her, a red and black rugged area on his right arm glistening with pus presented itself to Yana and everyone watching in the living room.

“Oh Sid,” she said turning her head away and repelling a sudden urge to puke. Sofia tilted her head, but quickly gave up on taking a better look to what had happened to Jack while David sent another message to his father to call him as soon as he could.

“There’s an ointment inside of this. Give it to me,” Jack said putting the rucksack on her lap. She quickly scavenged inside, moving aside several metal plates, a change of clothes and a colourful box before coming across a scribbled white tube that she handed over without looking at him or his sorry arm.

A trotting sound made Sofia’s attention momentarily shift from the television to the staircase, as Foxy came down to the living room and stared at the three children sitting there, each minding their own business. After taking a quick glance at the television, perhaps to find who was grunting or why for that matter, she trotted towards the siblings and sat down next to Sofia, letting her pet her head while paying as much attention as David to the bright screen and pretty trees it showed.

“Your turn,” Jack said when his breathing normalized, facing Yana with the tube at hand.

“Hell no.”

“This is gonna hurt,” he said ignoring her.

“What’s on that?” asked Sofia turning back to David when Yana bit her jacket and closed her eyes shut.

“What, what’s going on?” asked Ricardo looking up from his portable.

“If you weren’t playing all the time you’d know.”

“Tell meeee…”

“No.”

“Pleaseeeeee…”

Knowing his begging would only get worse if she didn’t do it, Sofia complied with a sigh. “Well, Yana and Jack were chased by some bad guys and they got away, but then they had to fight some yellow things that could fly and they managed to scare them, but Yana scraped her knee and Jack got a… it’s a burn, right?” she asked turning back to David. He merely nodded his head. “And Jack’s got a burn in his arm.”

“And what are they doing now?” he asked as Yana opened her eyes, showing them the dancing leaves of the treetops and the peerless blue sky above.

“They put some… Meteram pomada. Acho que arde bué.”

“Tipo betadine?”

“Não, acho que é pior,” she answered nonchalantly. “Tipo álcool se calhar.”

“Ouch. Preferia ficar com a ferida.”

I am never complaining about a scraped knee again.

The burning faded into something bearable, and Yana was finally capable of glancing over at her partner, finding him with the colourful box in his lap, feeding a treat to his giant cat and scratching behind her ears while she wallowed in it.

“You knew them… You knew those people,” she said, keeping her rage at a minimum. “More than that, you were scared of them. You weren’t scared of Team Steel, but those guys? You remember them, from before. Don’t you?”

Taking his hand off of Moonlight’s head, Jack gazed at the canopy while the cat looked up to his face and meowed, demanding the massage to continue post-haste.

“Sometimes I wish I had amnesia.”

She grabbed his vest and forced him to turn her way. “Who on earth do you think you are? Some tragic hero? You’re just a liar! You’re no better than your boss!”

“Don’t misunderstand me, Yana,” he said with a voice that suddenly made her regret being holding him. “I lie because I have no choice. He lied to mess with my head. But you have a point,” he finished changing his tone to something less threatening. Yana let go of his vest and let him lean back on the tree, showing a very intent Moonlight on his lap, trying to figure out where in the red-hair’s body would she bite first as soon as her master let go of her tail.

“I thought I was the hero of some video game,” he remembered. Yana shrugged back at him.

“I refuse to believe you’re the hero of anything. I’m waiting,” she added after a couple of silent seconds passed by.

“I’m not hidanna. Not a normal one, at least,” he said. “But I’m not from another world like you say you are. I was born here, in a laboratory in Vulcan, as the result of an experiment to create a living hidan weapon. They put medan inside my cells and mingled hidan DNA into my own. I look like a hidanna, but I ended up with senses and instincts of a hidan.”

“That’s why you have those reflexes…”

“It’s part of the reason. The guys from Steel helped,” Jack added with a shrug.

“How did you end up with them?”

“I got fed up with it. They were never bad to me, most of the scientists were pretty cool, and they tried their best not to make me get hurt, but… I got tired of it. Of being an experiment.”

“So you ran away,” she said, not entirely convinced that was the whole story.

“I took Moonlight and Sunshine with me, and that thing,” he said pointing to the golden scythe, still on the ground next to the bike, reflecting the sunlight in a way that made it glow. “They made it specifically for me, with a reinforced core, so that hidan would go inside of it instead of me in case of an accident. Then I wandered the desert for a couple of days until the guys from Steel found me.”

“And the wounds you said you had? How did you get them?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Did you even have them?” Yana asked. He shrugged. At least that explained why they had been chased, and how he had done some impossible things with an improbable weapon, but Yana knew he wasn’t being entirely truthful, or that he would be anytime soon.

“Do they know? The guys from Steel?”

“I always said I didn’t remember anything from before they found me,” he said. “If they know something, they didn’t tell me.”

“And those bikers that were chasing us? Are they from the lab?” she asked.

“They’re VDF, Vulcan’s Defence Force. They’re men with military training that are supposed to work for Matau - the closest thing to a leader this country has - but looks like Doctor Daking has them on his payroll.”

“The guy that called you?”

“He was the head of the lab,” he nodded. “He’s friends with the richest man in the country, now that they know I’m still alive they’re probably paying a bunch of people across the country to look for me and drag me back,” he added.

“And we’re sitting ducks right now, with your arm and my knee like this-” when she looked down to her wound, she found the burning had lessened considerably and the ointment had solidified, providing a massive white scab that covered the entire wound and didn’t crack open when she tested her movement.

“It’s not the best, but it’s what I could get for stuff like this. I never expected to get hit with a diosol burn, though…” Jack said while Yana examined the effects of his medicine.

“We’re still sitting ducks,” she answered looking up from her knee. “Those men can come back any minute now, and we’re nowhere near getting out of the country.”

“They won’t be here for another while. And… we can use that,” Jack said pointing to the scythe again. “Diosol aren’t just assholes, they’re among the rarest hidan in the world, and they’re almost impossible to catch without getting yourself killed. It’s just about the only thing that can get us out of here.”

***

When they both materialized, Seli didn’t feel a natural warmth or shade. Instead, they were inside a building with a sterile scent and the ubiquitous hum of running machines, neatly spread along the walls of the room. Several people in dashing white lab-coats were already running for dear life towards the exit, as the burning smell mixed in with the air and a puff of smoke entered her line of sight.

“The Guardian Spirit isn’t here, sister,” she said while Lissandra looked at another tall black box, and it spontaneously exploded.

WE’RE CLOSE

“Why don’t we finish what we came here to do first? Then you can come back and have your fun.”

Lissandra raised her arms and the entire room combusted.

I AM NOT DOING THIS ONLY OUT OF ENJOYMENT

“Yes, you are,” Seli answered, following her sister towards a wall and making moss eat it away to stop her from blowing it up. “These people worked hard in other to make these machines, you know? What you’re doing is unfair.”

INNUMERABLE ATROCITIES WERE COMMITED IN THIS PLACE AND YOU KNOW IT

It wasn’t necessary to have Lissandra’s sensitivity for Seli to feel an unusual atmosphere looming over the place. Restless souls cried for revenge, the innocent dead wept for their loss. With the sterile scent and the newborn smoke, that laboratory was everything Seli disliked about venturing outside of her rock in any place that wasn’t surrounded with trees.

But even if she had a point, Lissandra had a rather violent way to answer to her whims.

“But you shouldn’t target the innocent and everything they’ve built. Find the culprit.”

THEY ARE ALL TO BLAME FOR ACTING ACCORDING TO THEIR OWN TWISTED BELIEFS

With a simple hand-wave, every piece that had an electrical current flowing inside of it short-circuited, overriding the safety systems designed for the sole purpose of not catching on fire. A slight smile drew itself on what could be called Lissandra’s face while the temperature in the building steadily rose with the flames.

“You’re the world’s oldest bully.”

A loud sound echoed on the room and an incredibly fast projectile was pushed through the air towards Seli. In a reflex she had the metal in the projectile rust, making it dissolve into dust and swoon down to the floor. It had been a terrified man holding a curious dark device, with a cylinder-shaped hole in its muzzle, pointing up towards her head as if it was sufficient to scare her into submission. Seeing that the tactic would not work, the trembling man dropped the device, letting it fall to the tiled floor with a loud clacking sound, and ran screaming towards the nearest door.

HE TRIED TO KILL YOU

“Because you’re scaring them, sister.”

I EVEN LET HIM GET AWAY. HE SHOULD BE THANKFUL HE IS STILL ALIVE

“That is precisely why they are trying to kill us.”

I CANNOT BE BOTHERED TO TAKE THEIR LIFES. IT IS MUCH TOO SIMPLE AND THEY ARE SO INSIGNIFICANT AND PETTY, IT IS NOT EVEN WORTH IT. THESE MACHINES THEY LIKE TO MAKE, ON THE OTHER HAND…

“I didn’t mean for you to take their lives. I simply wish to leave this place. It’s haunted with dark memories,” Seli said looking back to the burning rooms they had crossed, thinking that the sight of someone’s hard work being destroyed by the incomprehensible whims of an ancient being were nothing compared to the thoughts of the creature that had been birthed inside those walls.

THAT IS WHY WE MUST MAKE AN EXAMPLE OUT OF THIS PLACE. BURN IT TO THE GROUND SO THAT EVERYONE CAN SEE THAT WHAT WAS BUILT HERE SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN. AND IF THEY TRY AGAIN, I WILL CRUSH THEM MORE THROUGHLY

“You didn’t act at all when they made the first.”

I WAS CARELESS

Both sisters silenced as they crossed over to a smaller room, featuring but a couple of small machines, disguised in the midst of several bookshelves, cabinets and a beautiful ebony desk with a matching chair, made of a hard, durable substance instead of natural wood.

“This room is so different,” said Seli while several drawers in the cabinets and the desk slid open. “Do you know what it is?”

THE ROOM OF THE LEADER OF THIS LABORATORY. THE CULPRIT, IF YOU WILL

Papers, curious objects and frozen images were lifted in the air and paraded in front of Lissandra, who analysed them quickly and uninterestingly. Avoiding the flying circus, Seli wandered about the room, watching the items that had been left on their resting places and wondering what their modern purpose would be.

“Apparently we missed him,” she said a bit absent-mindedly.

INFORMATIVE INSIGHT

“What are you looking for, then?”

As soon as she uttered the sentence she crossed eyes with it and picked it up from the shelf.

“Look, sister.”

All of the hovering things were neatly deposited on top of the empty desk as Lissandra hovered over to Seli and levitated the framed frozen image she had found above her hand. It described several men and women in white, long coats in that very same room, standing around three central figures. Two of them were adult male Neo-Hidanna, standing on each side of the chair, one of them wearing glasses and a faint smile on his dark-skinned face, and the other one closer to a Coliseum brute poorly disguised as a scientist. Sitting on the chair was a dark haired Neo-Hidanna child, staring at the camera like a trapped, wild beast about to lash out its fear.

“There’s a figure missing on this picture, isn’t it?”

YES. IT STARTED EVERYTHING