Highest Peak of the Mountain, One Minute Later, Present
They’re so high up the clouds are below them.
“How did we get up here? I know you can erase my memories, but I’m way too unathletic to get up here anyways,” Arius worriedly asks, looking down the cliff at the steep drop below.
“I carried you.”
“When?”
“You blacked out from altitude sickness. I kept going.”
“So now you can carry a human up a mountain? That’s how strong you are?”
“Yep.”
The howling of the wind cuts off any attempts at a longer conversation, but Arius, in his current mental and physical state, seems unfit anyways to carry a meaningful chat.
“Alright, jump,” Raizen says.
Arius looks down. He can’t even see the bottom. “I don’t really know if I wanna do this. I mean, I definitely don’t want to do this.”
“It’ll be fun.”
“Fun for who?”
“Okay. I’ll go first, I guess.”
Raizen launches himself off the edge. One second he’s there, the next—
Complete silence.
“Where’d you go?” Arius peers over the edge. “Raizen?”
No answer.
“This isn’t funny!”
The wind is his only response. Arius is alone on top of a mountain he doesn’t remember climbing, with no way down that doesn’t involve jumping.
he thinks.
Looking around, the environment forces him to rethink his conclusion.
Arius thinks.
Arius sits down and waits.
Halfway Down the Mountain, Present
Raizen, free falling because the slope was too steep for his skis to make contact with, hits the snowy ground below at a blistering speed. Someone nearby comes to check in on the lump of mass that just hit the ground.
Raizen thinks.
Stolen novel; please report.
Raizen turns into a cat, the locks on his skis snapping off, and digs, burrowing into the snow.
He hears the guy behind him, muffled, say, “Huh? I’m sure I heard a person fall in the ground, and I saw something falling from that cliff that was way too big to be a rock or debris. Where’d that person go?”
Raizen finally digs out of the snow, but as soon as he does, he hears a young voice squeal, “Oh my goshhhhh! Mom, he’s so cute!”
Raizen is picked up by a little girl. “Can we take him home?” the girl asks to her mother, who stands behind the girl, a frightened, confused look on her face.
Looking at his environment, Raizen sees he has fallen right in front of a mountain lodge, and half of the customers, turned around to witness this commotion, were staring directly at Raizen.
Raizen thinks.
Middle of the Ocean, Fishing Boat, Present
“What?” Niche asks, surprised. “You’re gonna do it yourself? How?”
“I came up with a plan. First, you’re going to -”
Niche lets go of the fishing rod before Ryota could start his plan, the shark swallowing the rod whole and diving back into the water.
“This is getting boring. We don’t really need to catch this shark,” Niche says, turning around and walking away as if nothing happened.
“You didn’t even let me finish! I had a plan and everything, and you -”
Loud bubbling in the water interrupts Ryota, and the next second, a large figure emerges out of the water.
When the tensed object rolls to its side, Ryota, who turned around to witness this, recognizes this shark as the one Niche was struggling with.
“How…” Ryota starts. “How’d you do that? Did you kill it with a secret technique?”
Niche turns around, a smirk appearing on his face. “You know how I’m immortal, right? I can create fire that also is. ‘Immortal flames,’ Raizen calls it. It also cannot withstand water, but…the inside of a shark has no water. At least not in the stomach and heart; those are two places sharks don’t store free water in. I simply stored the energy inside the rod and set the immortal flames to go off when inside the shark’s stomach. That apparently worked, and the raging fire in its stomach expanded to its heart – the other part with no free water – and cooked its heart, burning it from the inside.”
Ryota thinks.
“Well, that day was pretty relaxing,” Niche says, ignoring the dead floating shark and Ryota’s shocked expression. “I gotta say Ryota, you really do know how to let someone release some stress.”
“Yeah, well,” Ryota starts, trying to match Niche’s level of oblivious nonchalance. “This is what I used to do every day. Go fishing. Pretty relaxing, you know?”
“Okay, so what now?” Niche asks.
“I guess we can go back, right?”
Ryota starts driving the boat back toward shore as Niche reads the horizon.
“Wait.” Niche tenses. “I sense something. It’s the same thing I sensed from that light manipulator.”
“What? What do you mean ‘sense?’”
“Well not ‘sense’ in that way; it’s like I can feel something familiar. It’s coming from that orphanage over there.”
Ryota looks where Niche is pointing; it’s an old building near the shoreline.
“Should we check it out?” Ryota asks.
“I guess we could.”
As they drive closer, Niche frowns. “The scent is getting stronger, but it’s not concentrated. Like it was here and now it’s not.”
They dock the boat.
Peak of the Mountain, Present
Arius confirms.
A man approaches from behind. “Do you need a hand?”
Arius turns around. “No, I’m waiting for a friend. He left me here. He’s gonna come get me.”
The man frowns. “You shouldn’t let pettiness get in the way of being safe.”
Arius considers the steep drop and the chilly air. “Okay, I guess I will. Thanks for the help.”
The man points to behind him. “Right here. I actually came in a helicopter. You can get on and we can go back to safety.”
Arius thinks.
“Okay,” Arius says, complying and climbing into the helicopter. They lift off.
After a few minutes, when the helicopter is over the ground on the base of the mountain, Arius says, “Okay, you can drop me off here.”
The helicopter keeps flying.
“Where are you taking me?” Arius asks, his suspicion growing.
“I’m taking you somewhere you can be safe on the ground. Dropping you off here wouldn’t be in your best interest; you could get harmed or injured in the uncharted terrain.”
“Okay…”
They keep flying further, past the city and towards the coast.
by choice, not because I'm out of content. I currently have 20+ chapters written and ready to go. Slowing down the release schedule is intentional - better for reader retention and my own sustainability.
NOT abandoned. It WILL be completed.
