The weary annoyance in Ryan's voice gave some hint of how much the day had affected him, and Sho wished there was something he could do. Ryan had done so much for him, and it was only fair that he try to help the other boy in any way he could. It was all he could do, after he had all but asked Ryan to give up his home and family all for the sake of their fight against Chronos.
+Don't worry, Ryan. We'll be back home soon. And then you can meet my friends. I'm sure they'll like you; they're all good people.+
+Do any of them actually speak English, or am I going to have to rely on you as a translator for a change?+
+I think Tetsuro might be able to speak enough English to be able to communicate with you. And Agito, of course.+
+Well, we'll leave him and his issues aside for now. Who's Tetsuro, by the way?+
+Sorry,+ he said, wincing slightly. +I keep forgetting that you don't know the people I do. Tetsuro's one of my friends. We knew each other even before I found the Guyver, and he's been with me through everything.+
+Well, that sounds like a good deal. I'm glad you had someone with you. No offense, but you really don't seem like the type who could go it alone.+
+Why would you think I'd get offended by that, Ryan?+
+Some people don't like what I have to say, is all.+
That was all he could get Ryan to say about that, though, since the red-haired Guyver turned, folded his arms, and closed his eyes. He was leaning back in the seat and looking for all the world like he was asleep. When the car pulled to a stop, and Sho gently woke Ryan up.
+So, where are we headed now?+
+I don't really know.+
"Agito, why are we stopping here?"
"We need to change transports," Agito said flatly, turning and leaving the truck that they had been riding in. "There is a chance that Chronos agents were able to track our original vehicle. I would rather not take the chance of them finding out where we are going and being able to track us."
Put that way, it sounded like a very reasonable plan.
+We're changing cars so Chronos won't be able to follow us.+
+Well, that's a good idea.+
Watching for a moment as Ryan stretched and yawned, he quickly turned his attention back to watching where they were going. Agito's precautions in taking different cars would all be for nothing if Chronos spotted them while they were outside.
Aptom had left some time ago, claiming boredom and a need to go hunting for more food. To think that there was actually a Zoanoid who subsisted on the bodies of his fellow Zoanoids. No wonder Dr. Balkus hated him and wanted him dead—all of Chronos' Zoanoids were just meals on legs as far as he was concerned. This had been made very clear from the way he referred to them during their many conversations.
Aptom was… someone that could have been a friend, Tetsuro thought. That is, if he could ever be persuaded to give up his vendetta against Sho. But it was pretty obvious that that wasn't really likely to happen. Not without something drastic provoking that kind of change, at least. There were times he wondered just what that "something drastic" was going to end up being. For him, there wasn't so much doubt that it was going to happen, though. With Chronos still hard at work, something drastic was always waiting in the wings. It was just a matter of surviving it, or hiding from it in their case.
The same way they'd been doing for half a year now.
A knock at the door—the same call-and-response pattern he and Natsuki had worked out when she had first helped them to hide in the apartment her uncle had rented for her—let him know that she was home. He hurried over to the door, not wanting to wake the rest of the people who were staying with them. Once he'd opened the door, he found Natsuki there. That was good. But he could also see, just barely, three figures standing in the dark behind her.
That wasn't so good.
The three of them were covered from head to toe in long, black raincoats, which he could understand since it was pouring down rain outside. The fact that their hoods were pulled up far enough to obscure every part of their faces aside from the chin and the bottom of their nose wasn't so understandable. In addition to being unnerving, it made him wonder just how any of them had managed to see Natsuki well enough to follow her back to the house. But what he was really wondering was just how he'd be able to go get Mr. Hayami and Mr. Jackson without alerting whoever these new people were and possibly endangering Natsuki.
"These people aren't bothering you, are they Natsuki?" he asked, wanting to let her know that he wanted to help her without them finding out.
"Relax, Segawa. It's us," the tallest figure said.
Tetsuro recognized the voice almost instantly. "Maka-"
A sharp shake of his head let him know that this wasn't a good place to talk; he'd forgotten for a moment in his excitement.
"Just let us in; we'll discuss things in the morning."
"Come right in," he said, smiling and stepping out of the way to let the three of them come out of the pouring rain.
He knew Sho had to be one of the people in raincoats that had followed Natsuki home, and when the shortest of them turned to look at him, he could see the wide, relieved smile on his face. He couldn't help wondering just who the third person was—the one who looked around in seeming confusion at the bare walls of the main room. He was too short to be Mr. Murakami; aside from that, Mr. Murakami had died back at Mt. Minakami, and he wasn't coming back. But neither Sho nor Agito seemed bothered by him, and Sho was even holding his hand and tugging him forward.
"Take off your shoes, Crouger," Agito said, speaking in accented English for some reason.
"Are you kidding me?" The other boy – obviously a boy from the sound of his voice – responded in unaccented English; he must have been a foreigner. "It's like ten degrees out there. My feet are freezing as it is."
"It's common courtesy, Crouger. But then I guess you wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"
"Bite me, you bastard," Crouger said, sounding only mildly annoyed. "I'm not walking around on a cold floor in just my socks."
"I could get some slippers for you," he suggested, trying to defuse the tension that was clearly building between Agito and Crouger.
"Thanks," Crouger said, turning to him with a smile on the visible part of his face.
He smiled back, not quite sure if the other boy could see the action but not wanting to be rude in any case. Turning and leaving the main room – it was a struggle not to go and wake up all of the others, but like Agito had said, they could talk about things tomorrow.
Right now, all he had to do was to get a pair of house slippers for Crouger—warm ones, since it was so cold outside. And he'd have to find futons for the three of them to sleep on, though Crouger probably wouldn't be too fond of the idea. Judging by the way he acted, he was probably American, and they slept on raised beds. He still wondered what Sho and Agito had been doing for all these months, and more than that why they had brought Crouger along with them, but there would be time for all those questions and more once morning had come.
For the first time in half a year, Tetsuro was honestly excited for the morning to come.
He stared down at the house where 'Freezer and Feline Face had turned themselves into Lost Units so they could escape from the virus. That was something new; he might have felt sorry for those lab rats if they hadn't been a bunch of sadistic little shits who'd gotten just what they deserved.
It'd taken him a while to find the house. In the end he'd eaten a few people, then managed to find the general area by the landmarks that his fellow Lost Units had described. Now that he was seeing it, he couldn't help thinking of his old team. Somlum would have loved the look of this place—not just the gardens, but the house itself. Dymu would have happily raided the fridge and any cupboards that he'd been able to find, and after he'd managed to fill his stomach he'd have been right out on the grounds with Somlum. Dymu was really into gardening, but he didn't quite know why.
Maybe it had something to do with his powers—melding into the earth probably gave you some sort of feel for it. But maybe it was something more mundane than that. Maybe Dymu'd just enjoyed playing around in the dirt and there was nothing more to it than that.
He'd never known, and now he'd never get the chance to ask.
Glaring at the mansion, knowing even as he did that the thing was just an inanimate collection of wood and plaster but needing something concrete to focus his anger on, he leapt away and made for one of his newly-chosen hunting grounds. He varied them enough that Chronos wasn't likely to be able to track him down just by following the pattern of Zoanoids that were getting themselves eaten. He'd only been using this new one for about half a week, which was probably not long enough for even that bastard Balkus to be able to track him down. He was going to move on soon, in any case, just to keep things interesting.
Back on the ground and back on the hunt, he almost found himself wondering just what the butterball and his little friends would be doing, but then he decided he didn't care. As long as Chronos didn't manage to get their nasty little claws into any of his prey's little friends, he wasn't going to bother himself with anything but keeping the little twerps safe. It wasn't like anything interesting was going to happen this week.