It had been a month and three weeks since he'd stayed with Sho's little idiot friends—not that he was missing them or anything—and he figured he should probably go back and check on them again. Turning and heading in that direction, he made sure to keep an eye out, as it were, for any Zoanoids in the area. Having snacks on the go was nice and all, but there was no way in hell he was going to bring a bunch of those little appetizers down on those little idiots when they didn't even have any protection.

Not until Sho Fukamachi managed to drag his sorry ass back from wherever it was that he was hiding himself. Then… well, then he would just have to find the little shit and see if he was finally up to snuff. And if he wasn't, which was really fucking likely he was going to beat the little shit down until he finally managed to realize just what the stakes were in this war of theirs, so he would be able to survive the fight against Chronos, and so he would actually be worth killing when the time came.

Still, these excursions could be mildly diverting, if only for the entertainment value of riling up his two little former-lab-rat brothers. Feline Face gave as good as he got; 'Freezer was always up for giving a little lecture that could be easily ignored, and he turned the most entertaining colors when Aptom made it clear that he was ignoring the guy. So it was really for the sake of his little brothers that he made his way back to the apartment where they were all staying. Checking in on his prey's friends was really more of a chore than anything he did for enjoyment, except for the little butterball, and even he could get kind of annoying.

Skulking through the shadows when the mood took him and occasionally taking time out for a snack, Aptom made his way back to the apartment where they were staying. The first thing he noticed when he settled himself in for a good, long sit was that Natsuki didn't seem to be anywhere in sight. That wasn't normal, since now was about the time she'd be arriving with her usual load of groceries to feed the hungry masses in that apartment.

Maybe she'd just been delayed a bit; he'd watch for about five more minutes before he started worrying about something that was just as likely to be nothing. Five minutes came and went, and he didn't even hear Natsuki's bike as she pushed it up the hill. This was pretty aggressively strange, but it could still be something normal. And it wasn't in his character to panic, no matter what kind of weird shit was dumped on him. Panicking never did anyone any good, and in was likely to get you into even more trouble than you'd been in originally. He'd learned at least that much from Chronos.

Reaching out to a few of the Others – various selves of his that he'd left to patrol the city so he'd have a better chance of dealing with anything that came up – he found that Natsuki wasn't anywhere along her usual route. That wasn't good; it meant that something had gone wrong. That something was more along the lines of getting waylaid by Chronos rather than something so mundane as getting lost. She'd been taking this path home more than long enough to know how to get from the grocery store back to the apartment, so that meant she'd run into some trouble somewhere along the way. Trouble meant two things: the first was that he was going to get some meals out of the deal, and the second was that he was probably going to have to watch over the idiots while they tried to find a new place to live.

So there was a fair amount of annoyance mixed in with his anticipation. Dealing with Chronos' Zoanoids was easy and fun; it was having to look out for his prey's little friends that he didn't like.

XxXxX

He'd been "on-shift", watching the apartment when the vans had shown up. He hadn't had any time to contact one of the others and tell them what was going on, and their recently-discovered communication skills would have caused him to blank out and lose his chance to follow them, so he'd hitched a ride on one of the cars and hoped that he would get a chance to meet up with one of the others and exchange some information.

For now, that left Aptom to settle into something of a routine while he looked for the opportunity to have some meals for himself. Because hidden or not, these people were still on Chronos' most wanted list—literally, in the case of the three Guyvers. And if one of those bastards got to his prey before he or any of the others had a chance to get his claws into them, all of them would be really pissed at him.

Or he'd be pissed at himself. It was really the same thing.

XxXxX

As much as she wouldn't have believed it when they first came here, this remote cabin in a valley none of them but Agito knew the exact location of was starting to feel like a home, and the people staying there were starting to feel like family. Maybe not a close family like she, Tetsuro and Sho were, but something like one at least. Ryan and Mrs. Crouger were almost as close as the three of them, and Shizu was becoming something like an older sister. Even though they were all hiding here from people – or not even people anymore, really – who would kill them without any hesitation, this place felt safe, protected from everything that had been going on in the world; somewhere they would all be able to relax.

"I've told you for the last time, King Bastard, I've got no fucking idea just what that thing did to me, or why it even called to me in the first place. Now if you keep asking me about that, I'm going to feed you your own damned teeth! Are we on the same page now?"

Of course, Ryan and Agito could never seem to get along.

When he came striding into the main room, running his hands through his hair and sighing in obvious frustration, Mizuki felt she could sympathize with him. He had wandered off without telling anyone and managed to get himself into a fair amount of trouble, but he clearly hadn't meant any harm to anyone. And in the days before he had gone off to find… whatever it was that he found, she—and all of them—had seen that he was struggling with something. Something he hadn't seemed to be winning against, something that made him space out at odd moments and lose the thread of long conversations he was participating in, something that had kept him up most nights, if the circles under his eyes had been any indication.

It had been hard on all of them, watching Ryan spiral farther and farther into what looked at its worst like some kind of psychosis and being helpless to do anything about it. Mizuki was glad that he had managed to solve his problems, but she could also see why Agito was angry with him. He had potentially risked the safety of the cabin and all of the people inside it for reasons he didn't seem to be able to explain. It was times like this that she really came to appreciate just how different Ryan and Sho were—something like this would have been completely unthinkable for him. He would have been too worried about bringing the attention of Chronos to this cabin where they were all hiding. Sho certainly never would have argued with Agito or insulted him the way that Ryan just had.

But then, in spite of the fact that they were both Guyvers, Ryan and Sho were really very different people.

"Are you feeling all right, Ryan?" she asked, watching as he threw himself down on the couch and just lay there.

"I'm fine," he muttered. "I'd be even more fine if a certain person we both know would get off my case about trying to remember things I probably wasn't even awake for."

There wasn't really anything she could say to that, so she just offered Ryan a warm smile and hoped it would help. Judging by the way he smiled back and seemed to relax, she thought it had.

"Anyway, I'm going to go take a walk," he said, levering himself up off the couch and standing back up. "Cover for me, will ya?"

"I don't think you should really be doing something like that, Ryan, not after the way Agito yelled at you for it," she said, not sure why she was trying to talk him out of doing something he was obviously set on doing, but not wanting Agito to be any angrier at him than he clearly already was.

The last time Ryan had gotten into a fight with Agito, both of them had ended up injured. Agito knew how to fight, but Ryan was perfectly willing to bite and scratch in addition to using more conventional fighting methods. In the end, the fight had been declared a draw by Tetsuro, who had forced himself between them and pulled them apart, but Ryan would always claim that he had been the one to win. She didn't know if that was just to make Agito angry or if there were some other reasons, but she had never been curious enough to ask.

"Look, I'll be fine," he said, perching on the armrest of the couch. "I'll make sure to stay around the house, and I'll even make like a good boy and stay hidden in the grass."

She was starting to realize that nothing she said would dissuade Ryan from going outside. "Agito's going to yell at you when you get back in, you know."

"Yeah, and we get along so well otherwise," he chuckled. "I'll see you when I get back in, Miz."

"Have a nice walk, and remember to stay out of sight," she said, knowing that he would. Independent or not, he wasn't the type to go running around in plain sight. He knew what Chronos was like just as much as any of them.