Yeah this chapter came out a bit later than I thought partially because my birthday was somewhere in the last week and I felt that I should take a break for the day. But yeah, here's the chapter anyway.
Undead are still strange
"Judging by your silence, I'm guessing that you're not too happy seeing me like this" Terumi assumed, speaking to Relius.
"That depends on how you answer my next question" Relius stated plainly. "What happened to your body?"
Terumi motioned to scratch the back of his head. "Well I hit a little snag with a dead guy who wasn't quite dead so I had to leave my body to stop myself being infected."
"So you just discarded it hoping to pick it up later?" Relius asked.
"Not exactly" Terumi answered. "It was kind of a spur of the moment type thing so I didn't really plan on what to do after I got out of it. And, uh, you might not like this part but uh…" He trailed off.
"Go on" Relius raised an eyebrow hidden by his mask.
"You know all those zombies wandering around picking the city clean?" he asked rhetorically. "They kinda found my body just after I left it so I kinda don't have a body to go back to."
"This is the result of your experiment getting out of hand" Relius told him. "How do you expect to do anything without a material body?"
"I was hoping you'd try and fix that for me" Terumi admitted. "What do you say? Fancy helping out an old friend?"
"I'll start working on it eventually" Relius dismissed. "After you've found a way to end this virus outbreak."
"Oh come on" he complained. "What do you expect me to do without my body?"
"You got yourself into this predicament" Relius said. "It doesn't concern me."
"Hey this is your fault too you know" Terumi accused, pointing at him. "If you didn't chicken out half way through our little excursion, you could have taken my body back here or at least stopped me from messing with that dead guy."
"Maybe so however you will suffer for your experiment backfiring on you until you do something about it" Relius thought it best to just leave him to sort out his own problem. Restoring his body wasn't necessary right now but it would be for later when his experiment would come to a close.
"Shit, how am I supposed to do anything about this without a body?" Terumi asked himself. "Meh, I'll think of something later. Maybe I should head back there and find some living people to help me out."
Hakumen could do nothing but stand by idly. He had no way of escaping the bindings that Kokonoe had placed him in and as such, had no knowledge of the virus outbreak. Regardless, he was patient. He had waited for far longer periods of time on his own in the Boundary. He wasn't expecting to escape any time soon. He imagined that Kokonoe wouldn't let him go until he was willing to co-operate with what she wanted. He thought that until he sensed a familiar presence approaching.
"I figured you'd be around here somewhere Hakumen" a gruff voice said.
"What brings you here, Grimalkin?" he questioned, watching Jubei carefully.
"I'm here to let you out of course" Jubei replied. "I reckon you don't know what's going on in Kagutsuchi at the moment so I should probably fill you in."
"Oh? What might be happening which warrants you releasing me from your daughter?" Hakumen inquired.
"I'm gonna be brief and say that it's pretty much turned into hell on earth up there" Jubei answered. "There's some sort virus spreading like wildfire."
"A virus?" Hakumen asked, somewhat confused. He couldn't be infected with anything since he was merely a soul bound to armour. "Why should I be concerned with something like that?"
"It's not just your run of the mill virus" Jubei began to explain. "In all my travels, I've never seen anything like it. Whoever gets infected by it wants nothing more than to consume flesh from everyone who's still alive. All it takes to spread is a single bite and right now, there ain't that many people who aren't infected. I 'spose I should just let you see for yourself." Jubei drew his sword and slashed through Hakumen's bindings with ease, releasing him.
"So am I supposed to be your shield?" Hakumen assumed.
"No, nothin' like that" Jubei replied. "You can't be infected so you'll be fine out there."
"See that?" Jubei gestured to the many bodies that littered the areas of the city. "That's what this virus has done to the city in a couple of hours." Hakumen silently looked around at the countless amounts of bodies. "I've got reason to believe that Terumi's the one behind it."
"It's most likely that this would be his doing" Hakumen commented. "No one else would unleash something that would cause the death of so many."
"Yeah, but I'm gonna leave you to see what you can find out about it around here" Jubei told him. "I'm gonna see if there's anything I can find out outside the city."
"That's all we can do right now until we find out what this is" Hakumen responded.
Jubei nodded. "I haven't got a clue of how they'll react to you since you can't get bitten but if you run into anyone who's infected, try not to kill 'em. We should be able to cure 'em later." Hakumen responded by readying Ookami. "I guess I'll see you sometime in the future."
"Farewell Grimalkin" Hakumen said as he walked away. After watching Jubei leave, Hakumen slowly explored the city on his own.
"I sense Valkenhayn returning" Rachel noted as the four of them waited patiently for their return. Valkenhayn appeared with Litchi a few seconds later. From the look on Valkenhayn's face and the fact that no one was with them, it was easy to see that they weren't successful.
"My apologies, milady" Valkenhayn apologised. "We were unsuccessful in capturing one of them." Kokonoe took notice of Valkenhayn's injured side.
"What happened?" she asked.
"They proved to be quite tenacious and we were eventually ambushed" Valkenhayn explained. "I can only apologise for not succeeding in such an important task."
"It's fine" Kokonoe said. "It wasn't exactly the easiest plan and- hey Litchi, you okay?' She stopped upon noticing Litchi was breathing heavily and clutching her shoulder with a bloodied hand. She shook her head nervously as she moved her hand away, revealing an unmistakable wound from a bite on her shoulder. Everyone's eyes widened.
"I'm sorry professor" was all she said.
"Shit, Noel, how long does it take to infect someone?" Kokonoe swiftly asked her, remembering her saying that it didn't take long to succumb to infection.
"Uh, I'm not sure" Noel began, thinking back. "Not much more than ten seconds at the most." She didn't know exactly how long it took since that particular point hadn't exactly worried her when she witnessed it. Kokonoe turned back to Litchi, who still appeared to be attempting to fight it off.
"It's been more than ten seconds already" Ragna noted. "We have to send her back before she tries to kill us."
"Sorry Litchi but that's all we can do for you right now" Kokonoe agreed solemnly. She couldn't help but feel it was her fault. First Lambda, then Tager and now Litchi had all been met with a terrible fate because of what she told them to do.
"Wait" Litchi said, still breathing heavily.
"There is no reason for us to wait" Rachel responded. "Any moment now, you'll turn and attempt to devour us."
"No" she began again when she realised that they didn't understand what she meant. "You wanted us to capture one of them. I'm here becoming like them right now. I can be the one you run experiments on."
"She's right" Noel said.
"Yeah, just get her into that cage quick" Ragna agreed.
"How the hell have you even lasted this long?" Kokonoe thought aloud as she guided Litchi who was unable to make her own way to the cage due to the pain she was going through. "From what Noel said, you should've been infected some time ago."
"I don't know" Litchi replied. She coughed violently for a short period of time. "I can feel it affecting me. Everything hurts and the hunger keeps growing." She took Lao Jiu out from his normal position in her hair, allowing it to fall out of place. She handed him to Kokonoe, wanting to protect him from herself when she became fully infected. Kokonoe passed him on to Noel, the latter briefly looking overly happy before remembering that what was happening to Litchi was more important.
Kokonoe took a syringe out from her sleeve and drew some blood from Litchi's arm. "No offence Litchi but this is really gonna help us a lot."
Litchi nodded and gave a weak smile. "I understand." Another coughing fit followed but this one didn't subside as quickly. When it stopped, she fell silent, facing downward. Everyone knew what it meant and were all glad to be protected from her by the cage. She slowly reached her arm out and grabbed on of the bars of the cage. She appeared to pull at the bar as if trying to pull it off.
"That thing's foolproof right?" Ragna asked Rachel.
"Quite so" she replied.
"Let me out!" Litchi suddenly yelled, uncharacteristically angry. She continued pulling at the bars, her face contorted with rage knowing that there were people nearby and she couldn't get to them.
"Well this is certainly different for your standards Litchi" Kokonoe commented almost jokingly.
"You did this to me!" Litchi seethed. "Get in here so I can return the favour."
"I'll pass on that" she said nonchalantly, turning away so she could ignore the rest of her ranting.
"She held it off for just over a minute" Noel informed Kokonoe. She had been counting how long it was taking after she had been asked about how long it took normally.
"It's not long but how can she have kept herself together for that much longer than ten seconds?" Kokonoe thought aloud. "It can't just be willpower."
"Maybe she just had some sort of resistance to it" Ragna guessed.
"No, she'd be asymptomatic if that were the case and since this has never happened before, I doubt she'd have a resistance to it specific to her" Kokonoe assumed.
"You already drew some blood from her" Rachel reminded her. "There's no need to make assumptions."
"Yeah, you're right. I need to take this back to the labs" Kokonoe replied, motioning to the syringe. "Rachel, you're the only one who needs to be there with me since we know the majority of the labs are safe. You guys can stay here and watch her" she said referring to Ragna, Noel and Valkenhayn.
To be continued...
Remember when I said Litchi wouldn't be getting any special benefits despite the fact that she's my favourite character? Is this chapter proof of that? I think so. And yeah, if you didn't know already, there are some personality changes when the zombies/infected want food.
Initially, to show the infection had fully sunk in, Litchi was going to vomit blood similar to the people at the beginning of 28 Days Later did but then I remembered I didn't make anyone else do that in Noel's survivor chapter. So here we are with Litchi fulfilling the role of 'Mailer' from the same film (Mailer was an infected soldier in the film that they captured for testing). Except in the film, their captive was chained by the ankle. I thought that a cage worked better overall.
Also Hakumen makes an appearance with Jubei in this chapter. Similar to the games, Jubei won't be appearing very often but Hakumen will appear later for sure.
Anyway, chapter's done. See you later!