User blog:KingMaster TOG/A Warrior's Path: Chapter two preview.

A bright, warm, orange light flashed over Huo-lin, waking the young boy up. He had been quite uncomfortably sat up on the edge of a trench, his back ached, he sat up and stretched. The ice mana dust that he applied yesterday was doing its job, but his skin felt nowhere near comfortable. It burned to the touch and it felt as if he was wearing a coat made of sandpaper. Oh, well, at least it wasn’t burn off, ugh.

Fushidara was still asleep, still sat up on a tree, same position as he was in yesterday. Discarded bandaging lay around him, stained with a considerable amount of dried blood. It looked like ceramic clay, only this time, disturbing. Well, at least he looked like he was doing a lot better, he’d changed his bandages multiple times over the night, each time shedding less blood. In fact, it looked like the bleeding completely stopped.

Huo-Lin got up from his uncomfortable perch, but upon doing so…

“GRRRAAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!”

He fell almost immediately back over, startled birds scrambled in all directions. He forgot that his legs were still broken, ah, well. At least they weren’t as broken as yesterday. He once again tried to force his soul energy into repairing his legs more quickly. It was a lot easier now, he wasn’t as tired and his soul had more energy. Blood rushed to his legs, and it was as if he could feel his battered bones being mended.

Meanwhile, Fushidara’s sleeping face looked quite annoyed, as the loud scream had woken him up. 待って頂けますか？ (Matte itadakemasu ka?) (Can you wait?) He was awfully dazed, to be certain. In fact, he had almost forgot what situation he was in. For a second, he thought it was his squadmates waking him up again, until he realised the sandiness of the dirt and the bumpiness of the tree.

“huh…?”

Fushidara groaned as he tried to remove the wood from his hair and the dirt from his clothes.

“What are you doing up? What happened?”

“Nothing much.”

Huo-Lin tried to get up again, much more slowly this time. Throughout the chaos that was last night, neither side pondered what situation they were in. In fact, it was as if they had forgotten about their previous roles. They were no longer enemy combatants thriving to kill the other, they were now only two men, fighting for survival.

“So, what happens now?” Asked Huo-Lin, still very tired.

“I don’t know, what happened? I still don’t know how I ended up like this last night. My head still hurts like hell… wait…”

“WHY’D MY GODDAMNED SQUAD NOT PICK ME UP!?!?” Exclaimed Fushidara, deep down inside, he had a hunch. But he didn’t want it to be true, he really hoped it wasn’t.

“I don’t know, I woke up after the attack, and a Ginsese squad was up there,” explained Huo-Lin, pointing at the route and the general direction of the vehicle wreckage. “They just had this look of regret while looking at you, talked for a bit, then just….drove off.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“Oh my god, really? Dammit! They left my ass to die down here? What am I? Paper towel?”

<p class="MsoNormal">“You think your squad’s bad? Your squad has all the faith in the world in their juniors compared to mine…” Huo-Lin glanced at the wreckage, more specifically, his transport wreckage. You could barely even tell it was a transport anymore, it’s just a giant hunk of metal now… well…. Two giant hunks of metal. It was a miracle he survived a blow like that….

<p class="MsoNormal">“Oh yeah, I blew that up….sorry about your squadmates…”

<p class="MsoNormal">Well…this situation just got to a whole new level of awkward.

<p class="MsoNormal">In one hand, Fushidara killed all of Huo-Lin’s squadmates, but ironically, he was the one that kept him alive.

<p class="MsoNormal">“erm… can we change the subjet?” asked Huo-Lin, Weirded out by this whole situation.

<p class="MsoNormal">“To what? and again, really sorry for your squadmates…”

<p class="MsoNormal">“They were jackasses, like, honestly, the biggest jackasses I’ve ever met. Even if we did succeed, they’d probably find every last goddamn thing in the world to blame me for.” Said Huo-Lin.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Anyhoo, we have to get out of here, you know where we can go?”

<p class="MsoNormal">“I have a map and a compass,” Said Fushidara, pulling said items out of his pocket.

<p class="MsoNormal">Up north is your base, where I’d be caught and executed, and down south is our base, where you’d be caught and executed. If we split up, we’ll all die, we have zero supplies on us, meaning that we have 3 days to make it….somewhere. Any ideas?

<p class="MsoNormal">After what seemed like an eternity of silence, Fushidara suddenly exclaimed:

<p class="MsoNormal">“we’re heading south.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“Fushi, you’ll die!”

<p class="MsoNormal">“I wont, I have a plan, but…I have to ask you something: will you come with me to our destination?”

<p class="MsoNormal">“I…have a family, they think I’m dead…I have to…”

<p class="MsoNormal">“We can pay them a visit on the way, I think, pick up something to eat on the way as well”

<p class="MsoNormal">“Good idea, anyways, what’s the plan?”

<p class="MsoNormal">“We move south, we’ll split at Jinchuan spring, I’ll set up bas there while you thy to get all the rest of your belongings from your outpost, we regroup, we see your family, and we move, with them, all the way to Palansaa.”

<p class="MsoNormal">

<p class="MsoNormal">“Does the plan have to be that drastic? I think you can move to Palansaa on your own then returen to Ginsai? I bet my military service will end after this as well….”

<p class="MsoNormal">“We’ll see when we get there.” For now, this is what we have.

<p class="MsoNormal">“So, moving south I guess” Huo-lin started to get up.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Yup, Moving south.”