Prologue: Run, boy, run! This world is not made for you. Run, boy, run! They're trying to catch you

Woodkid - Run boy run

August 848

The evening wind was already lapping at the leafy foliage of the trees, through which the last of the daylight filtered, projecting reddish-orange arabesques on the ground.

The temperature was cool and pleasant, an invitation to sleep for anyone who had the adventure of crossing the forest at that hour. In the distance, it was already possible to hear the chirping of cicadas heralding the coming of night, and making vague promises of long conversations under the mantle of the star-quilted sky.

Peace should have been the guest of honor invited to that spectacular portrait of pristine and seraphic nature.

Yet the vermilion patches that colored the underbrush were not just tapestries of light, lazily and masterfully splashed on the canvas by the rays of the waning sun.

No, there was more. Something thicker, and more viscous.

A heartbreaking cry had just torn through the serenity of the twilight.

The girl jerked. From the corner of her eye, trembling, she checked that her companions were beside her. One, two, three ... where was Loki?

There he was, at the far left.

It was as if her heart had started beating in her chest again. She breathed a sigh of relief.

But that feeling was very short-lived.

Shouts continued to haunt the atmosphere around her.

Indistinct noises behind them. Creaking, similar to cracked branches, and shelling, as of a greasy wrapper being hastily and inaccurately unwound.

And then, all of a sudden, the anguished screams ceased. Yet, that renewed silence only contributed to sinking her even deeper.

They were done.

Mizuki no longer harbored any doubts about it. She turned her head slightly and met the teacher's gaze. In his eyes she discerned the same grim despair and resignation that - she was certain - hovered in her own.

Yet they kept jumping from branch to branch, desperately trying to escape the walking hell behind them.

"He's got Hashina!" cried Lavinia, beside her. She had turned back to observe the inferno. The sobs that were already making her body tremble doubled, and more tears tinged her mucus-stained face.

"Don't turn around!" reprimanded Mizuki. "Look forward, or you'll end up falling!"

Lavinia continued to cry convulsively, but turned her head forward and began to jump even more fiercely. Mizuki took the opportunity to turn: she would not have wanted to do so; she would have given anything to be exempt from confronting what was happening behind them. But she had to check how much distance they had put between them and that thing, and she had to know how soon the thing itself would reach them.

A dark, gigantic mass, at least fifteen meters tall, was wiggling convulsively, like a puppet whose strings had been cut in half and left to dangle in the void. The incipient darkness made it impossible to make out its features, which made the scene even more gloomy.

The figure bore to what appeared to be a head two huge arms, in a rambling rhythm. Those distressing sounds again. The beast was eating.

It was holding something in its hands.

Hashina.

What was left of Hashina.

Mizuki suppressed a gag.

She tried to find a silver lining to the situation. That thing was way behind them, the eating of the last meal seemed to have taken it some concentration and time, and this had allowed them to gain a few meters toward... toward what?

"Lavinia, Loki, Amado. In a triangle formation in front of us. Mizuki, in the rear with me!"

"Yes, sensei!" replied the summoned ones in chorus.

Mizuki cast another glance at the teacher. He looked as if he had aged ten years. "Sensei, what is to be done?"

He did not answer immediately. He kept his jaw clenched and his eyes half-closed. "Maybe if we get out of this forest we will find help, or this creature will stop," he finally said.

It was Mizuki's turn not to answer immediately. Or we will find ourselves in a flatland with nowhere to hide - assuming hiding from that thing is possible - or an elevated position to attack it. We will end up crushed, at best. At worst... The image of Hashina's fate hovered over them like a curse. "Maybe..."

Another long moment of silence. Would they really waste their last moments lying to each other?

"The mission failed. We were not prepared to face such an enemy. But how could we have imagined that the stories told were true...?" the teacher finally murmured. "Someone needs to go back and report. Before they send more teams to look for us."

Yeah, a very good idea. Except that thing is behind us. Even Mizuki, however, knew that that was the only reasonable choice a team captain could take in such circumstances.

"The ship must still be where we left it, we have seen no other signs of life in these two days of travel."

Yep, their precious little ship - that pile of wood that the outbreak of a sudden and extremely violent storm had forced them to abandon on the banks of the river they had forded over the course of the last two days. And then, after that moment...

The earth began to shake again. The branches on which the five figures plummeted gracefully, only to leap immediately onto the next one, had become unstable rollers at the mercy of a pressing earthquake. This time Mizuki did not need to turn around to know what was happening. She did not want to.

Her eyes began to burn. She dug her nails into her palms to prevent herself from screaming.

The teacher, who until then had addressed only Mizuki, raised his voice to be heard by the other three as well."I will now stop and try to hold it back. You meanwhile will continue to advance. As soon as it is focused on me, turn around and go back. Retrieve the ship and report back!"

Lavinia exhaled an inarticulate groan.

"Sensei, this is such a bad idea," retorted Mizuki.

"Do you have the time to be brazen even now? There is no alternative!"

"This is a suicide," she replied heedlessly, as if it really was seriously sustainable that any of them would get out of the situation alive, somehow.

"And this is an order!"

The earthquake was getting more and more intense. Why did he have to be so stubborn at such a time?

"Sensei, I agree with the strategy, but you can't implement it alone! That way you will only get yourself killed, far from buying us time!"

"Does this seem like the time to argue!?"

Tum tum tum. There was not much time left before the inevitable.

"There must be at least two people to hold it back!"

The teacher gasped. He finally understood where his subordinate intended to go with this.

"I'll stay with you. We'll use the pincer formation!"

"Mizuki, no! I don't want you to stay here!"

"Shut up, Lavinia!"

The teacher remained silent.

Tum tum tum. The thunder was getting closer and closer, ready to crash down on them, inexorable.

"We don't have much time left! Give us the order!"

The teacher squinted his eyes one last time, then turned his head slightly. A sigh, an endless moment of suspended silence... And then he opened his eyes again.

"You three! As soon as you have a clear field, turn around and go back! Mizuki, you and I will hold it, pincer formation, and then we'll improvise! On the count of three!"

Mizuki sighed with relief. At least now they knew what to do. They were going to die anyway, but it seemed to her a thousand times better for it to happen in a desperate attempt to make sense of their demise.

"Three..."

"Mizuki, I don't want to!"

"Lavinia, I assure you, if you screw up the plan because you stop and get yourself killed, I will not forgive you!"

"Two..."

"Loki! You take care of her!"

"Roger that!"

Mizuki slipped her hands into the side pouches until they met the handle of the carefully stowed kunai.

"Three!"

Mizuki froze, following the instructions the teacher kept giving her.

With one last glance, she stared at the backs of her three companions advancing in front of her, toward a hope of impossible salvation. She watched them move away, imprinting in her mind that image, the embodiment of that to which she had entrusted the meaning of her own death. So that they could go back, so that the mission would not turn out to be a total failure, and above all...

Lavinia was moving away from the source of that bombastic sound that brought destruction and death. She would be safe; Loki and Amado would protect her. They had promised.

They must not die.

Suddenly, all fear, all weariness and pain disappeared.

She had to protect that image, the image of her three companions walking off into the sunset.

Every other feeling had given way to nervous tension, to that feeling of concentration that pervaded her before every fight. It'd didn't matter that it would be her last one. She would die, but she would take the enemy with her. Whatever the cost.

"Wait for my signal to start the formation!"

Tum tum tum. By now that thing was only a few meters away from them.

The plan did not require her to turn around; her senses trained to perceive the slightest air displacement and to calculate the distance of approaching objects would have enabled her to understand the target's position even without seeing it; not to mention that, given the size and the din produced by that particular enemy, it would have been very difficult, if not impossible, to harbor doubts about its spatial location.

But she had to do it. She had to see.

Mizuki turned, and her gaze planted itself in a pair of glassy eyes. They looked like huge marbles of glass, translucent masses endowed with an iris and a pupil, within which, however, not even the most insignificant flicker of life or humanity was reflected . .

The thing had the features of a middle-aged man with a rather dumbfounded appearance; under other circumstances, Mizuki would have likened it to a pervert who enjoyed harassing people in the woods, running naked and disheveled along the paths trodden by unsuspecting people, focused only on enjoying their Sunday outing. She would have done so, if only...

If only she could find a trace of sexual organs.

If only it hadn't been that reddish drool was dripping from his mouth, and guts were stuck between his teeth.

If only it had not been that it was a monster fifteen meters tall.

If only it had not been that the intention of its pursue was not to molest them, but to eat them.

As it had done with all the others.

I'm going to kill you, you asshole. You can trust me with that.

The dying day's last ray of light made those shiny marbles devoid of pity and understanding glow ominously.

The thing raised two huge arms, and then lowered them in parallel on the two branches on which Mizuki and the teacher had stood panting.

"Now!"

Mizuki snapped to the side, just an instant before the hands came down on the branch. As she flew in midair, she threw six kunai, which stuck into the skin of its face and into that huge translucent marble, then landed on the nearest branch, crouching down to prepare to quickly implement the next move. The teacher had made the same gestures, on the opposite side to where she stood.

The beast did not show any sign of noticing the face studded with kunai: even if the two humans had landed all the blows, they were too small weapons to pose any real threat to that thing, as they had noticed before. Then again, kunai had been designed for fighting other humans, and not for taking down monsters fifteen feet tall.

The eye injuries, however, seemed to have caused him some discomfort, because the thing brought its huge hands to its face, grunting.

"Mizuki, let's go!"

She and the teacher pounced on the prey, landing on the upper arms, and with two kunai each began tearing into its flesh, keeping their feet glued to the beast's body via chakra. No matter how relentlessly and with ill-concealed fury they struck, however: the blades only penetrated a few millimeters into the rosy skin, the lacerations began to emit a white smoke the instant they were inflicted, and within a matter of seconds they healed.

It was a sudden and unsuccessful attack, which they had to stop immediately because the thing stopped moaning and took to waving its arms convulsively, as monkeys do to drive away the flies that torment them.

Mizuki and the master leapt onto the branches nearest to each, both panting.

"Shit, how the heck do you kill this fucker?!"

That was not the first monster they had encountered on their path, but it seemed impossible to send it to the next world outright.

They had already tried every technique at their disposal. In the early days, when all the other companions were still alive, they had attacked it in groups, making it the target of the moves they had used against some of the most ruthless enemies. Yet, no matter how inhumanly the beast howled and writhed in pain with each blow, it always, unfailingly, got back up, and the wounds healed, the burned and slashed faces reassembled as if nothing had happened, and the jaws opened wide to devour its next victim. They, on the other hand, had soon exhausted their chakra and had to retreat in a desperate and humiliating escape. But that beast had caught up with them anyway, one by one.

Mizuki felt he was at the end of her rope. She still had the energy for one last technique, but wanted to conserve it to strike the decisive blow to the beast. If only she had known where and how to attack in order to kill it.

The thing stopped moving, freezing the giant limbs in midair.

Then it turned its huge head in one direction. Toward one of them.

It raised its hand.

It all happened in a flash.

It was amazing how fast it moved, despite its size.

The teacher was just in time to leap into the air, when the hand came crashing down on the branch he had been standing on until a moment before, and he was thrown to the side by the force of impact caused by the collision.

"Sensei!"

Mizuki's body reacted before her mind could formulate the command. She threw herself in the direction of the flying body, and caught it before it fell to the ground. With immense effort, she forced herself to support it as she glided over a nearby branch, and from there she leapt forward again, trying to put as much space as possible between her and the beast.

A warm liquid bathed the hands that held the body. Mizuki lowered her trembling gaze to them. A huge splinter of wood had lodged itself in the teacher's belly, from which a stream of vermilion blood had begun to gush. He gasped, bringing his hand to the wound.

A chill ran through her from head to toe. It could have been me instead. The tremor was now uncontrollable. The randomness of what had just happened made her feel small and helpless. If only that thing had turned in my direction, there would have been me in its place.

Tum tum tum. It chased them, as it had done until then. It was an unequal and hopeless struggle. They could not escape. There was nothing left but unconditional surrender to what was about to happen.

"Flee, Mizuki." The gasp that came out of the voice of the man in her arms brought her back to reality. "Leave me and flee. Use the time it will take for it to eat me to escape and join the others."

A light of hope. She could save herself. Mizuki planted her amber eyes on the man's suffering face. He returned the gaze, and sketched a smile.

"You're fast and young, you can do it."

If she had moved right away, perhaps she could have made it.

Mizuki interrupted her own escape. Gently, she leaned the teacher's lifeless body against the tree trunk.

"And before you can argue..."

Tum tum tum. She still had a few seconds to make up her mind.

"...this is an order."

Mizuki stood up, and prepared to jump onto the nearest branch. Away, away from that nightmare.

Then she saw it.

Not the huge face, dull and monstrous, approaching them, some thirteen feet above the ground, framed by two outstretched hands, eager to grasp and crush them in a deathly grip.

No, she saw none of this.

"I'm sorry, sensei..."

In front of Mizuki, instead, stood the image of her three companions pulling away. And mixing up with it a distant memory of other companions now lost.

Something snapped inside her.

Her hands began to move rapidly, recreating the various positions etched into her memory. Wolf, dog, lion, wolf, deer...

Her last technique, the final blow.

She felt the little chakra left inside her grow in her chest, heating it up, ready to explode.

She would never accept a comrade being devoured before her eyes. That monster would have to eat her first. She would not flee, she had stayed for that, not to let her master die alone, and without giving the others enough time to get to safety.

"... but even in the end I won't manage to be a good underling."

For she was a ninja, and her companions were worth more than her own life.

... dog, lion, dragon, monkey ...

Mizuki puffed up her chest. By now the beast's hands and face were only a few feet away from her. Just a little more, come a little closer, you asshole.

"Mizuki!"

She brought one hand to her face, joining her index finger and thumb in a circle in front of her mouth.

She hadn't noticed, but her eyes had turned the same color as the blood dripping from the teacher's wound.

The beast opened its jaws to swallow her.

Now.

A jet of fire leaked from Mizuki's mouth and hit the thing in front of her. The heat made her eyes water, but she kept them open: she wanted to see the beast being roasted. It began to writhe in pain as the flames engulfed its melted limbs, and it backed away a step.

A little more, a little more .. as long as I can, I must kill it.

Eventually the jet of fire began to fade, and so it died out. The thing had brought its hands to the face, howling in pain. For a moment, Mizuki stood panting staring at it, her hand still in front of her mouth, feeling almost pity for the being. But it was only an instant, for immediately afterward she wished it would die in excruciating pain.

Drop dead, asshole.

The thing staggered back a little.

Fall.

The beast's head dangled.

What are you waiting for?

The whole forest held its breath with Mizuki.

Then the thing's head snapped back into an upright position, and out of the fire-quashed jaws, out of that remnant of a destroyed face, came a chilling roar, and the body set off on its charge, heading for its prey. Her.

The blood froze in Mizuki's veins. Like all the other times, that beast was not dead.

How could she have been so naïve and stupid to believe it would turn out differently this time?

She was the dead one, and this time for real. She would not have been able to move in time; she no longer even had the strength. With her blood-colored eyes, she watched the beast snap in her direction, as if, sitting on the banks of a placid river, she contemplated a slow-motion scene unfolding before her, with a protagonist other than herself, and consequences that would not affect her.

Evening had fallen.

Tum tum tum.

And then the beast suddenly froze. With its arms outstretched toward her, its hands already contracted in the gesture of grasping the gnat less than a meter from their palm and its mouth still wide open. The body previously immersed in a rambling and lethal movement stopped, as if under the effect of a spell. Like an ice figurine, the beast remained motionless in that position. For one, two, three seconds.

Mizuki breathed again. She had not even noticed that she had held her breath. She stood waiting, quivering and immersed in the now absolute darkness, for her own enemy to move and complete the mission it had undertaken. But nothing happened.

The gasp at her own feet roused her from the stupor into which she had fallen. With an exclamation, she bent to bring herself to the teacher's side. "Mizuki, damn you. I'll have to punish you one more time for disobeying orders."

"Excuse me."

"You killed it, though. I can't believe it."

Mizuki listened with half a brain to the man's words, while the other part was engaged in assessing the damage caused by the splinter. A third part, unaware, continued to keep an eye on the beast that, crystallized in a grotesque pose, towered over them from a height of fifteen meters.

"No, it's not dead."

The situation was bad: that was her assessment as she took off her green jacket and used it to plug the leakage of fluids from the gash in the man's belly. The splinter was embedded deep and the teacher had already lost a great deal of blood; moving him would spell his end. If she was going to intervene, she had to do it on the spot.

She frowned. She had to decide how to move. As a pupil and a subordinate - in a pretty desperate situation - Mizuki wanted to hope - or rather, bask in the childish hope - that she could do something useful, and that the situation, one way or another, would be fixed. As the team doctor - though still a budding one - nevertheless, the wound she was scrutinizing left no doubt as to the teacher's fate. Perhaps if she pulled out the splinter…

"But it stopped."

No, this was a crazy strategy. With someone beside her, she could perhaps have stopped the gushing of blood that would follow, and tried to stitch up the wound, but on her own it loomed as an impossible task, and a tragedy foretold. Shit, shit, shit. Think, Mizuki, think. In the meantime, just to keep herself busy and acting, she lacerated the master's black shirt to ensure freedom of action.

"It wasn't me."

Perhaps the best strategy was to have him ingest the medicine with the greatest clotting efficacy in her repertoire, and then take him back to the ship and escape from there.

"You burned it!" The gasp this time came out weaker, despite the well-discernible emotion in his voice.

That increasingly muffled sound made her heart leap into her throat. Mizuki began to convulsively rummage through the medicine bag. "'It's still alive; it got stuck for some unknown reason. That's why we have to fix this wound now and then leave as soon as possible...:"

"Mizuki..."

"So first, you have to put this in your mouth and then I'll..."

"Mizuki!" The teacher's voice had suddenly become imperious, a trait that did not normally belong to him and that blocked Mizuki's gesture, just as it had happened to the monster. "I am not a doctor, but I know I have little time left:"

"Don't say...:"

"...so, at least for this time, do not argue. Be silent, and obey your sensei's last order. I have to hand over to you, and I need your full attention."

Mizuki began to tremble. The tears she had been chasing back up to that point made the end of the line in her amber eyes. Those words frightened her more than the prospect of being caught by the monster.

The master's voice softened. "That's it, be a good girl. I could even not punish you for your disobedience."

No... He could punish her, expel her from the team, revoke her ninja status; she would bear any consequence if it meant he would survive long enough to take care of the matter. She would have liked to say those words aloud, but - try as she might - her voice could not withstand them.

"Mizuki, you really are a loose cannon. I tried everything to instill the concept of obedience in that little head of yours, but I realize now how it was a losing game from the start. You are just like your mother."

Mizuki jerked. The master had known mum when she was young and had gone on countless missions with her. With her and her father. It often happened that people compared her to her mother, because of their physical resemblance; to her father, never, despite the fact that she had inherited most of his fighting skills, perhaps out of delicacy toward her, given the man's turbulent past, or perhaps because it was more fun to maliciously dissect profiles of commonality between parent and daughter in the absence of the person directly concerned.

"And just like her, you are one of the best ninjas I have worked with. Your sense of duty and the value your teammates have for you are immeasurable gifts. And that is why I had decided to designate you as the captain of Team 7 when we returned from this mission."

Her voice finally returned. "Sensei, I don't think..."

"My decision does not change now. On the contrary. It's just a matter of anticipating it by a few months."

The teacher's body had begun to shake convulsively. His hand moved in search of her's. Mizuki grabbed it and held it firmly between her own, keeping her amber eyes fixed in his. She almost hated the idea that she had survived - assuming this was a permanent situation, and that the beast did not suddenly awaken just to slaugther them both - and had to endure that heartbreak, that prolonged and lacerating farewell.

Once again.

"Find your comrades again, and make yourselves safe. Protect them."

"What about the mission?"

The teacher sighed. His gaze had become increasingly glassy. "I don't know. I don't know anything anymore... This island... there's a reason why every international treaty forbids the landing on its shores. It is cursed. We are not ready to deal with this. We should not have accepted the job from those foreigners. It was the worst of mistakes."

Mizuki felt an icy chill run down her spine.

"The decision is up to you. Whether to continue, or turn back now and report back. Just promise me that you will protect your comrades."

"I promise."

"I expected nothing less from you..." The teacher raised his free hand with difficulty to Mizuki's cheek and stroked it gently. His eyes, though turned to her face, were unfocused, and the girl was certain that they did not really see her; not her, at least. Through her features they were contemplating a distant memory of another young face, so similar and yet so different from the one silhouetted inches away from his. She was convinced that he, in his last moments, was basking in the blurred image of his mother's smile. She knew from the stories she had been told - some by the teacher himself - how desperately and needlessly he had loved her. That was fine: she would have made him die in the belief that he was in the arms of her, of the woman who had never reciprocated him except with tender brotherly love.

Yet, the man's last gasped words were addressed to the flesh-and-blood girl in front of him. "Protect your comrades... New Team 7 captain..." a choked cough, and the grip on her hand weakened. "... Mizuki Onizuka."

One last encouragement, one last order, one last wish.

He was gone. The cry that burst from Mizuki's chest, while she clung to the man's body, was no match for the screams wrenched from her comrades as they were devoured. It resonated in the forest, amplified by the mixed feelings that fueled it: pain, fear, self-hatred, and anger. A burning, blind rage.

Then it all faded, and became an even more intense darkness. She collapsed under the blankly staring eyes of the beast that towered over her. That was how her companions found her, with a mixture of joy and terror at the chilling scene depicted on the forest stage by those three mismatched actors.

With some difficulty they separated them - Mizuki's hands were clasped to those of the teacher as if her life depended on that grip - and, after covering the man's corpse with a pile of leaves and loading the inanimate companion onto their shoulders, they walked away, tired, confused and, above all, in the wrong direction from where the sea was. They moved toward a flatland, beyond which towered the ghost of an abandoned city, surrounded by high walls, until a few years before considered impenetrable.

That image would remain etched in their hearts forever. Their old and new captain wrapped around each other, under a mammoth, perfectly still ice statue, not knowing that the decision regarding their fate had been entrusted to Mizuki's judgment.

And without knowing that the latter could never actually exercise the right to make such a decision, because circumstances and chance would do so.

Far away from there, beyond the flatland and the first ring of walls, beyond the abandoned city behind them, a certain captain was peering at the dark sky outside the window, cup of tea in hand, and staring blankly into the void, cursing to himself his commander for the endless series of headaches he had saddled him with. In addition to keeping the four-eyes's enthusiasm for her latest toy at bay, it was now also his turn to go and check on the situation in that abandoned district because of the campy suspicion advanced by an old drunkard.

The words of the conversation he had had with the commander a few minutes earlier in that same room of the castle once used as their headquarters surfaced again in his mind.

"But is it really necessary for us to intervene? Aren't these matters the responsibility of those imbeciles led by the goateed idiot?"

"Yes and no. As you can imagine, this is quite a delicate situation, if things really are as Pixis told us. Nile has already called it quits by entrenching himself behind the circumstance that, officially, no missing person report has been filed as of now."

"A very unexpected twist. It never happened that they dumped their work on someone else."

"This time they even have a point in doing so: from whatever perspective you look at it, it's really a strange affair. As far as the authorities are concerned, no wall-dweller has disappeared from sight under mysterious circumstances, but rumors run fast, in the city slums. Pixis has unleashed his best men, and reliable sources have told him that it will happen again soon."

"Why doesn't he try something new, too, and for once instead of screwing his brains out with booze, he gets his ass opened up by a giant?"

"You know how he is: it would be an unauthorized mission, invasive of the Gendarmerie's sphere of competence. If discovered, those who took part in it would risk their jobs at the very least. He would never take such a risk."

"So why do we have to take care of it? Who are we, the dumbasses on duty?"

"Technically, in public opinion we are."

"Fuck you, Erwin. It's not funny."

"In any case, we have perfect cover at the moment. With the excuse that we are stationed here at the former HQ for Hanje's experiments, we will be able to travel to Tiburtina without arousing any particular suspicion. Not to mention that if there really are civilians involved, our intervention is imperative for their survival."

"Tsk."

He frowned. The more he thought about it, the less that story appealed to him. But Erwin's orders had been clear.

His expressionless eyes, tending to a steely color, fixed on the spot where the goal of his own mission lay, Tiburtina. Then something closer caught his attention.

Clearly visible on the window glass were the fingerprints of the last person who had opened it.

Tsk.

Feeling his already considerable irritation mount further, the man pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and began to convulsively wipe those traces, to erase them permanently from his own sight.

Exactly the same way that, for four years now, he had been eliminating humanity's sworn enemies: giants.