"Miguuu~!"
Shoved heartlessly aside by whom he considered to be his friend, Hats cried out her name as the trumpets roared. Confused and scared, he tumbled down the side of the tall building until he collided with the floor straight on, a small crater forming in the ground around him.
"T-Trumpets mean bad business!" He recalled, instinctively looking towards the door of the building he just fell from, "Gotta hide!"
Though at first the door didn't budge, a stern shoulder tackle proved it was no match for Hats' strength. Quickly, before he could feel the effects of the petrification, he slammed the door shut behind him, even going the extra mile by pushing a nearby drawer behind it.
Looking around the dim room, it appeared to resemble a living room of sorts. The trumpets kept getting louder, though, so he couldn't quite admire the vacant spot for too long. Hastily, he retreated beneath the coffee table, hiding behind the tablecloth covering it.
Silence. He waited and waited, whether it be for the deafening sound to stop, for someone to lift the tablecloth from him, or even just for someone to knock on the door of the building... but none of this happened. He sat there, his heart racing until he could wait no more. Inside this cramped hiding spot, petrified or not, he couldn't move an inch.
"Stop it already!" He jumped up, tossing the table across the room in a fit of rage, "...I-I didn't get heavy."
A revelation inadvertently caused by momentary lividity. Despite hearing the trumpets emanating from the Divine corpses above him, he didn't get petrified like Migu and Nerys did. The anomaly allowed him to conclude one thing for certain—the petrification doesn't pass through walls.
"Ha-" He snorted, "Haha! I figured it out! I did it! It won't hurt me if I hide behind a wall!"
The boy jumped up and down in excitement.
"You hear that, Migu!?" He yelled out, "Nerys too, you guys—I figured it out!"
Despite his joy, he still understood that this information would only remain useless unless he used it for himself. Thankfully, by the time he steeled his resolve, the trumpets had finally seized for a minute or so. Just enough time for him to make his grand escape.
Carefully moving aside the drawer keeping him and the outside world separated, Hats rushed out of the door to run as far away as possible. Alas, the trumpets roared once more, not minding at all for the fact that he hadn't yet reached a safe spot.
"Gah!" Hats jolted, fearing the worst, "G-Gotta hide...! There!"
Though he was well-mannered enough to hope for a peaceful entry every time, Hats simply didn't have enough of it to justify not breaking through the door this time. For the entire duration of the trumpet horns, he hid inside the rooms of another vacant house. The very second it stopped, he was out of there just as quickly as he had entered.
"I get it now." He nodded, "I gotta stay close to the houses! That way the horns won't catch me off guard!"
This was the first time Hats was left to fend for himself for real. With no allies to fall back on nor adults whose advice he would heed, he had to rely on himself and his own experiences to get out of this predicament. Evolving slowly but surely, this child's brain developed intense and rapid growth. The horns roared again.
"Hehe! Not this time!" He smirked, rounding the corner to smash through the doors, "Hyah!"
Inside, however, an unexpected turn of events led to a mishap of sorts. Another group had already claimed this building as their own, hoping that the measly chair they had put up against the door would keep them safe from the disaster happening outside. What they didn't factor in, though, was for someone like Hats to break a hole through the door clean through.
"A-Ahhhh!" A lady screeched in horror.
"Get out!" A man shooed Hats out, "Out, now! Go on, or I'll make you!"
Hats was frightened and confused. The adults were yelling at him, telling him to leave; but leaving would turn him into a living statue. By this point, he had reasonably assumed that Migu pushed him off back then so as to save him, so he knew better than to betray her feelings by failing the mission this early on as well. His mind was already made up, he was here to stay.
"We need to block the door." Hats sternly replied.
"Hello!? You deaf, jackass?" The man walked up to him seeking a confrontation, "I told you to get the hell outta my house!"
"Just let him stay, geez!" The lady in the back was shouting too, "Do you see what's going on out there? The guy was probably just looking for shelter!"
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"After he broke my door?!"
"Screw your door, man!" She continued to berate him, "We'll just ask the Gods for another one!"
"The Gods haven't been answering anyone's wishes for a while now!" The man shot back, "Gah, just find someplace else to stay, man!"
While the pair were bickering, Hats felt a tingling sensation creep up on his back. The trumpets were being particularly loud by this point, and he knew his time was limited. Hats ran past the man and into the closet, shutting the doors firmly and not letting anyone open them.
"Hey, crazy whacko dude! Get outta my stuff!" The man yelled, "What the-!?"
The lady shouted after him, "Ahhh! My arms are-!"
Silence. Well, if you ignore the trumpets that persisted for another 3 minutes. Hats slowly creaked open the doors of the closet to find the two petrified mid-panic, their Eyes wide open in terror.
"...Hmph!" He ran off, determined to make things right no matter what.
Right now, Hats needed to think about himself. If he doesn't find a way out of this area, then Migu would be let down. Hats' friends need him alive, and he can't do that unless he's fully focused on saving his own skin first and foremost. A quiet prayer was muttered from the young lad, directed solely however to the two whom he had just doomed.
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This time from the top. Hats moved deftly from building to building, making sure to always keep an Eye out for any doors that may be nearby. A point was made to prioritize open doors or windows, as that indicates vacancy. The last thing he'd want is to have more people in his conscience.
"I don't think they're dead..." Hats muttered to himself, "No, if they're dead, then so are Migu and Nerys, so they can't be dead!"
This hopeful train of thought kept his motivation at an all-time high, just enough for him to make it through the next three trumpet waves without a single hiccup. On the flipside, due to him getting further away over time, a new issue presented itself.
"It could just be that my ears are hurting from listening to the same noise over and over again, but it's getting harder to hear it now." He glanced down, "No, Elegy told me to never let my guard down! Just a bit more, Hats. Just hold out!"
Eventually it came to the point where he started once again seeing non-petrified angels roaming around him. Their confused expressions upon seeing him so winded made him worriedly warn anyone that had business in the direction behind to strongly reconsider.
Alas, many angels were unnerved by his one-armed stature, and seeing as he was so tired that he could barely even form cohesive sentences, most chose to ignore his warnings. Hats watched them walk into the petrification zone and couldn't do a thing about it. With so many people around, he couldn't ever hope to stop them all without getting caught in the disaster himself.
"Oh Gods..." He whimpered as the trumpets' faint roars echoed behind him, "It's not just around where Migu and Nerys are. It's spreading...!"
Another bone-chilling piece of information made his heart sink. The petrification induced by the sound of the Divine corpses' trumpets wasn't a stationary disaster. Rather, its radius kept slowly spreading as the sound began to raise in volume. Seeing the people around him start to panic with some even getting their extremities petrified, he figured another round of hiding would be necessary yet.
"Tch, crap...!" He darted his gaze around, "I can't search for doors in this crowd!"
Running through a stationary, half-empty street was a lot simpler than running through a chaotic, eternally moving one, after all. Even if he had tried to enter a building, though, it wouldn't work one bit. The angels would have stopped him, accusing him of being a burglar. Despite everything, the sound of the trumpets got to Hats.
Feeling helpless, he knocked over a living statue, causing a domino effect to spiral out of control in such a crowded area. Once he did that, he hid beneath the dogpile, squeezing himself just barely in there before he got nicked. A close shave, but a successful one nonetheless. However horrible it may seem to an outsider's perspective, Hats justified this selfish act of his rather logically.
"T-They would have turned anyways, they were in the middle of the street!" He yelped, squeezing out of the dogpile of living statues, "I'm sorry, and thank you for your sacrifice."
Once more, he ran as fast as he could until he had outpaced the petrification zone. No longer wasting time on warning other angels, he had finally found a moment of reprieve. By this point, he had been working with the petrification for so long that he could even predict when the next trumpet horn would come without the need of his ears. He reckoned off the top of his head that he had at least three more trumpets before the petrification zone would catch up to him, so he had time to rest and celebrate this tiny victory.
"M-My legs..." He fell to his knees, "They didn't get...? No, this isn't from the sound, they're just tired."
A quick and tired chuckle proved just how hard he worked to achieve this result. Hats succeeded in running away from the zone for now, but he still didn't know how to fully put a stop to it. Just then, an unexpected sight caught his Eye.
"What's that...?" He looked on at the bundle of wings, "Sheep? No, he's up on the rooftop."
A large humanoid-shaped shrub of wings marched on slowly towards him. Hats moved aside, but quickly understood that he was not its main point of interest. Nay, the thing was traveling single mindedly toward the Gods.
"Wait, you're holding someone..." He squinted, "S-Sab!?"
An unconscious yet oddly stiff Sab dangled in the loose grasp of one of that thing's wings. As careful as it was to not harm him during transport, Hats simply couldn't leave his ally to get dragged into the danger zone. The others before were different, they were nobodies who didn't know the context of his troubles, but Sab was a part of the team in Hats' Eyes. There was no way he was going to let this one slide.
"Hey." Hats blocked the way, "Leave my frie-! Oi, you think you're funny by walking right past...? Gah, stop ignoring me!"
The childish tantrum fell on deaf ears, for the thing had no intention of even humoring Hats with a simple pause in its gait. As if under orders, it kept marching on toward the source of the petrification, leading Sab into the gaping mouth of the problem. Without any other choice, Hats reasoned it was okay to apply a bit more force this time.
With a proper run-up, he delivered a mean tackle aimed directly at the wing holding onto Sab. Successfully, he knocked him free of this thing's claws, but alas Sab was still unconscious.
"Though I don't think that's the main problem right now." Hats craned his head back to face the full anger of the beast, "Seriously, why out of all the people here, you chose to take my friend?"