‘This has to be the most impulsive, moronic and outright dangerous thing I’ve ever done in both lifetimes.’

Running as fast as his awkward child body could carry him, Maximilian berates himself.

‘Why in the ungodly hell did even think of this as a good idea? Why am I even here? I should have ran away the moment I noticed that there was not a single person approaching the explosion. I’m so stupid.’

‘Screw it! I’ll save that idiot, hope that they’re grateful enough to give me a bit of cash and call it a day. That is if my plan even works. There’s a good chance the patrol notices something off and captures us. Guns us down even.'

Sparing a glance in the direction of the approaching patrol he notes that it’s just about to pass the last bend of the wall where it would gain a direct line of sight at them.

“Quickly! Curl into a ball!” He squeaks out at the person in front of him, noticing the two blue eyes staring at him disbelievingly.

Fortunately for Maximillian, the stranger heeds his words in short order and grabs their legs with their arms.

‘Post haste!’

Max removes the blanket covering his body. Hugging the stranger close, he overlays it over the both of them with practiced movement.

“Gah.”

The stranger releases a pain filled gasp.

‘A woman? No, a teenager?’

“Sorry.” Max whispers out upon noticing that he’s pressed his foot right against her most likely broken legs.

“It’s fine, just don’t move.”

Both of them still, their brief exchange over.

Maximilian, slightly winded from his sprint, does his best to calm down his breathing so that he can listen in for the approaching patrol. Unfortunately, he’s not the only one that is winded, the person behind him had just finished desperately crawling through about four hundred feet of rock and soil using only their hands and knees

Both stop breathing as the patrol gets close enough for the two of them to hear it. It gets closer and closer, to the point where Maximillian can feel the vibrations in the earth caused by the revving of the engine.

‘She’s really tensing up.’

Max feels the person behind him tighten up like a bowstring, not a single sound escaping from her.

For several long seconds they remain like that…

…before realizing the sounds released the patrol car getting quieter and quieter.

Max is startled as the girl suddenly gasps in a large lungful of air.

“You scared me!” he complains, almost jumping out of the cover from fright.

“Apologies.”

Still, they don’t leave their hiding spot, waiting for a minute to make sure that the patrol is well and truly gone before revealing themselves.

The two of them awkwardly stare at each other for a bit after the blanket is removed.

Maximilian takes the time to examine the girl further. Blue eyes accompanied by long silver-white hair reaching down to her waist, she strikes a nice contrast when paired with the reddish earth and blue sky. Her slim features are accentuated by the black suit she’s wearing, torn and dirty from all the dragging along the ground it’s gone through. It’s especially cut up around the knees with bits of blood escaping.

The teen is the one who decides to break the ice.

“Why did you help me?” She asks without a hint of emotion to her voice.

I'm guessing that I lost the 50/50. I saved her life and this is her first question? Max internally raises an eyebrow. She’s from the mafia, what else could I have expected. Just act like the child you appear to be Max… you’re cute, too young and weak to be a danger to her.’

“I don’t know.” He replies.

“You don’t know?”

“Well, I was curious about the explosion?” He points his finger at the blacked out skies behind them “So I came here to see what’s going on and stumbled into you. You looked like you needed help so… I did what I did?” The last part of his sentence is spoken without much certainty. In no small part because of the skeptical look the teen is giving him.

“I see…” She closes her eyes.

“Why are you here? Don’t you know that this place is dangerous, especially for kids like you.” Showing her eyes once more, some of the tension hidden in them seemed to vanish.

‘I got the message the moment I noticed nobody’s here, the problem is that I am too stupid and too curious to turn back.’

“No…?” Max replies sheepishly. “I was just about to leave before you showed up though…”

‘Maybe I should book it out of here, she’s giving me real bad vibes, as if she’s about to jump me any second now.’

The teen sighs.

Max gets ready to bolt as soon as he sees her digging into her pocket.

‘Is she reaching for a gun? Maybe a knife?’ Max backs up out of her reach.

“That’s cold, you know.” She states. “Don’t you think that it’s stupid of me to hurt the only person that can get me out of my predicament.”

Finding what she’d been searching for she extends her arm out and opens her palm.

‘This is… A joke right?’

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

In her palm is something that Maximillian has never seen before in his life but instantly recognizes.

‘Is she offering me Bungee Gum?’ In her hand rests a tiny rectangular shape, covered in a very recognizable wrapping for anyone who's watched the anime. It depicts a face, smiling from ear to ear, with a star under one eye and a tear under the other.

“I apologize but this is the only thing I’ve got on me at the moment.” Her voice drags Maximillian out of his mind as he once more focuses his attention on the girl.

“I’ve acted rudely towards you despite the fact that you saved my skin. If you help me get back to my base I can at least make sure that you’re properly clothed and fed.”

‘Bungee gum distractions aside, she actually offered to help me out… huh. It’s still a 50/50 on whether I can trust her or not. Damn, this is a really hard decision. Take this chance or leave and proceed on going forwards with my uncertain fate, one that is getting darker and darker as the days continue to pass…’

On the outside Maximillian appeared uncertain, having forgotten to hide his emotions. The uncertainty did not go unnoticed by the teen.

Just then, while Max is deliberating on what to do going forwards, at the most opportune time…

*gurgle*

…His stomach rumbled, loudly.

‘Fuck! This hurts. I skipped lunch to go and investigate the explosion.’ He grips his stomach in pain.

‘Screw this! I’m taking my chances, even if she’s got something malicious planned I doubt that she’s going to kill me. At least she'll feed me for a while before I inevitably escape.’

“Okay, I’ll help.” He snatches the offered gum from her hand. ‘I’ll save it for later. The way I am right now it’s only going to make me hungrier.’

“But what do you even want me to do? Look at me.” He twirls around “I can’t carry you.”

“I’m not asking you to.” She cranes her neck to look behind her, checking for any approaching patrols.

“Could go and find something long and sturdy from the piles.”

“Long and sturdy?”

“Yes, one my legs is…fine.” She adds a suspicious amount of extra weight on the final word. “If you manage to find something like a pipe or a beam of wood I’d be able to pull myself up with it and limp back home.”

‘I see’

“Okay, I’ll be right back. You can take this to hide” He offers her the blanket he covered the two of them with though she pushes his arms back.

“I don’t need it, by the time you come back I should be able to drag myself away from here and hide. You should be able to find me behind some rock if you look around.” She points to where Max came from, clearly indicating where she intends to go.

“If you say so.” Not commenting further Max opts to instead put the blanket back over himself.

----------------------------------------

‘Nothing. Useless…’

Maximilian inspects another promising looking piece of garbage - a pipe. One so rusted and damaged that it crumbles like dried bread when he kicks it.

‘Pipes aren’t supposed to be crumbly like this, even if decades have passed. It just forms a protective layer of iron oxide on the outside that protects the internal iron from the oxygen in the air… Are these pipes even made from iron?’

Max feels disheartened after not managing to find anything that would help. He’d been searching for a while now.

‘I’m guessing that anything useful has been scavenged and exchanged already. Even the raw, heavy resources like metals and wood. I’m unable to find anything useful here.’

He moves to another pile to search it, noticing something familiar off in the corner of his eye.

‘Is that…?’

Rushing to the object, he realizes that it’s exactly what he’d been searching for.

“A crutch!”

Max lifts out the object after some time digging away the surrounding garbage.

‘I think that I just rolled a twenty.’

He examines the crutch for any damage, cracks and the like. Kicking it and hitting it against other hard objects to test its strength, reasoning that if someone of his strength is able to break it then it was useless anyways.

‘It’s in good shape, nice.’ Max cleans it up a bit with the sleeves of his clothes, ones that have been getting much too short for him.

‘Let’s go back then. With the amount of time I’ve been gone she’d think that I left her for dead.’

Skulking back, it doesn’t take long for him to find the teen that is tending to her wounds.

‘She ripped her shirt into pieces and is using the ripped parts as bandages.’ Max notes that she’s half naked, having removed the clothes from her upper body in order to treat herself, anything except her bra .

‘Shame, I’m still too young to feel any kind of excitement from the sight.’

“Look what I found!” He calls out to her, the two of them making brief eye contact.

“Perfect.” She smiles for the first time since Max met her. “Just give me a couple of minutes to treat myself before we go, I don’t want to collapse because I lost too much blood.” She tightens the bandage around her knee.

Max nods at her words, examining her wounds closer now that he’s near her.

‘That’s a lot of bullet holes… Hold on.’

“Wait.” He tells her. Before going to grab the bag he’d dropped when rescuing her. It doesn’t take him long to find it, being in the spot he’d left it at. He plunges his arm in the bag, pulling out the still unused aid kit hidden inside. Miraculously, over the last several months Max hadn’t been injured once.

He runs back to the teen, not bothering to take his bag back with him.

“Here.” Max hands her the aid kit.

She raises an eyebrow before receiving the offered little box filled with medicine. Opening it up, she examines the items inside.

“This will make things less painful... Could you come closer, I’ll need your help for something.” Max notices that she picks up the medical gauze and the antiseptic wipes.

Max does as he is instructed, waiting for her to explain what she needs help with. She uses the scissors, also taken from the medkit, to cut a part of the rolled up gauze, balling it up.

“Take this.” Handing Max the balled up gauze and the antiseptic wipes she further explains what she needs him to do.

“I have a wound on my back that needs to be treated. It’ll be difficult for me to reach it with my hands so could you do it for me?”

“...I’ll try. Just don’t expect much. I’ve never done something of the sort.” He responds, to which she simply lays down flat onto the tuxedo she’d placed on the ground, revealing her back and the injury it hides.

‘uh.’ Maximillian is stunned in place the moment he lays his eyes on the wound. ‘How is she still alive?’

A large circular wound about an inch in diameter is revealed. Raw flesh and even a part of the ribs made visible, blood escaping and running down her skin.

“What am I supposed to do?” He asks her with a tremble in his voice.

“First, use the wipes to clean around the wound.”

“Okay…” He does as she says, unpacking the one time use wipes and using them to clean the skin in proximity to the wound. It quickly blackens with blood, forcing him to use a second and a third wipe to fully clean the skin. All the while the teen does the best to suppress her cries of pain.

“I’m done.” he says, finally.

‘As much as I’m able to, at least. This is the first time I’ve had to treat something bigger than a knife cut. I shouldn’t have skipped that first aid class in high-school.’

“Good. Now I’m going to need you to do something that will seem a bit nasty. It’s the most important part...”

‘Uuuh…’

“I need you to take that ball I gave you and jam it in as deep as you can in the wound.”

“Eeeeh!?” Max exclaims in shock upon hearing what she wants him to do. “Are you crazy? That’ll kill you!”

“What would ‘kill me’ is the loss of blood if the wound is not treated, has anyone taught you what blood loss shock is? You need to jam enough material in there so that the pressure stops the bleeding. Don’t worry, I can take the pain.”

‘It makes sense, but still.’

Max takes another look at the gaping hole in her back.

‘Now is not the time to hesitate, the blood loss really will kill her.’

Steeling his will, Max cleans his hands with one of the remaining antiseptic wipes, chastising himself over the fact that he should have done it first, before trying to clean around the wound.

“...I’m going to need more than just this to plug the wound.” He sends a barely audible whisper her way. Barely a second later Max hears the snip of a scissor and the cutting of cloth.

‘I guess she’s got that covered.’

“I’ll start now, okay?”

She gives him a thumbs up before biting onto the sleeve of her ripped up shirt.

Max takes one last look at the ball in his hand before inserting it into the wound. To his surprise, she barely moves. Oh, she shifts her weight around on the ground, aftershocks of pain noticeably spreading through her body. Max could swear that he could hear the sleeve of the shirt ripping apart as the girl grits her teeth. And despite all of that, she remains mostly in place.

‘Not her first rodeo. If that was me I’d be kicking and screaming.’

Without being prompted to, the teen hands Max another piece of the gauze as soon as she feels that he’s finished. He repeats the process, filling the injury with it as well, proceeding on pushing down on it to make sure that it’s tightly packed.

The fact that the girl Max is treating hadn’t uttered even the tiniest squeak of pain during the whole ordeal had given him some much needed confidence.

Finally, after the third piece of the gauze is applied he tells her that he cannot fit any more of it in.

“I guess you were alright for someone your age. You really took your sweet time though.” She chastises him in a mocking tone, a tiny smile forming as the edges of her mouth rise up.

“What did you expect? I’ve never done this before.” Max replies, a bit tired.

‘I don’t even have the energy to properly retort. This took something along the lines of.. One minute? Two if you count the cleaning. Why am I so tired? I didn’t even do anything physically taxing.’

“Could you hold this over the wound, please.” She hands him a squarish cutout of the gauze.

“But I can't fit any more inside.”

“Not that. You need to hold it over the wound while I wrap up the place with bandages. I don’t have four arms.’

“Oh.”

Proceeding to do as she said, she wraps the bandage she’d gotten from the medkit around her torso, covering her wound. Max moves his fingers out of the way before she tightens the bandages for good lest they be wrapped as well. They’re tightened to the point where you can see the pale skin and flesh under them compress, trying to escape at the edges.

Dressing back up so she’s no longer half naked she proceeds to grab the crutch laid down next to her.

“Hup.” Hoisting herself up on her first attempt she leans on the crutch for a bit, one of her legs not touching the ground. The foot at the end of the leg is bent in an unnatural direction.

Her other leg, the one she’s standing on, is not that well off either considering how swollen it is.

“You coming?” She turns around to ask Maximillian “The base is not that far away, even with the way I am we’d still get there within an hour or two.”

For a second time, Max’s stomach replies for him.

*Grooowl~*

“You have food?”

“More than enough, kid.”

‘Leap of faith. I’m just a random orphan who saved her life, she’s got no reason to do anything bad to me. I hope she doesn’t.’

Max follows after her.