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Shift (A Shounen Battle Series)
Chapter 410 - Time to Waste

Chapter 410 - Time to Waste

Before she could even react, Seiji was hugging her tightly, pleased to see her once more. He had finally found a friend after the days being stuck in Yumi’s mindscape.

“Seiji, you need to calm down.”

Despite what Nerine wanted, Seiji didn’t let go of Saki or release his hold. His enthusiasm couldn’t be so easily reigned in. “Calm…what? But we finally found Saki!”

“She doesn’t seem as happy about it as you, however…” But he didn’t get a chance to fully hear out or react to Nerine before he took a sharp elbow to the face. There was enough behind it to knock him free of her and stagger him to the ground. “But guess you know that now…”

Only slightly fazed by it, he rubbed his cheek from the hit, but otherwise brushed it off. “So where the hell were you Saki?”

Fixing the fine silk of her athletic blend of a traditional kimono, which gave her legs freedom, Saki looked down at Seiji. “Looking for everyone.”

“Hey, it’s like you thought, Nerine.”

“Yes…” she agreed, while examining Saki thoroughly. There were clear differences between them. While Seiji and her traded their attire in for simple clothes the villagers could offer, Saki looked like she might have been from royalty. Nerine hadn’t seen any sort of fabric in the village or even on merchants passing by. “And what have you been doing specifically, when not searching for us?”

The subtext didn’t hit Saki immediately until she picked up on the gaze. “Oh my clothes. I have a rather well off sponsor.”

“Sponsor? Doing what?”

Seiji jumped up and closed the distance quickly. There was a bit of a glow in his eyes suddenly. “Sounds like an interesting story! Want to come back to the village and rest? You can tell us about it!”

“How about no. I don’t really have time to waste on that.”

Chapter 410 – Time to Waste

Expecting to wake up alongside everyone else, Saki looked about to her left and right, finding nothing. She stared for minutes trying to process everything, and half expecting someone else to show up. But she was alone and without any clue to what was going on. All she had was the expectation that this somehow dealt with Yumi, but she wasn’t even here. Which left her wondering why she was even alone. It didn’t serve any point.

Once she started to accept reality as it was now, she pulled herself up to a seated position. Before her was a tall white wall that stretched in both directions before curving out of sight. If she hadn’t already seen Atlantis, it would have been impressive to her, but she had already seen grander. Not that size was really the point on her mind.

Something else was on her mind.

She looked up to the sky and shouted, “What the hell am I doing?! I already told you I’m not telling the story! And how did you already set a scene when I haven’t even said anything yet!”

Seiji’s voice came booming down, “C’mon! It’ll be great! Knowing you, you’ve got a lot of ass kicking and great fight scenes!”

“I’m not doing this, end it now! And with the absence of Yuki have you devolved even further?”

Popped back to reality, Saki glanced over at Nerine, as they all still stood in the middle of the field with the demon slain. “Thought you had him under better control.” Nothing needed to be said, Nerine just looked back at Saki with a look too easy to read as ‘You try controlling that.’ Saki sighed and looked back at Seiji. “Fair point. A better question right now, why are you here?”

“Oh I can answer that!” Seiji announced proudly. He seemed to have gotten off his disappointment of story time quickly.

“You?”

The glare from her did little to stop his energy. “Yes, of course I know what the hell’s going on. We’re following Nerine’s plan to stay still. She felt it was better than wandering around and might have missed you.” He looked over at Nerine with pride in his eyes. “Which turned out to be the right decision, since we found you!”

She crossed her arms and looked over at the village and Nerine. “More luck than a good plan. This world is huge, easily a to scale version of Japan. We’re just as likely to run into someone walking.”

“I haven’t been doing nothing!” Nerine looked a little ruffled by Saki’s comment. “I’ve been following up and hunting down rumors. We can’t aimlessly wander in the hopes of stumbling across everyone.”

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Catching the rising tension from a defensive Nerine, Seiji stepped in between them. He redirected the conversation quickly to something that still bothered him. “So what’s that?” he asked, pointing at the dead creature behind them.

“A demon, went by the name Gono. No bounty on him, but he had been attacking villages in the area. So I dealt with him while in the area after finishing my main job.”

“Main job?” asked Seiji, becoming curious again about the backstory surrounding her arrival. Though Saki refused to indulge in his childish excitement over fighting.

Even if she did refuse, that didn’t stop her from providing a more visual explanation of what she had been doing in the days since their arrival in Yumi’s ancient demon filled vision of Japan. She took them back to her camp, which hardly had any real signs of being a camp. It looked merely like the place that she stopped with a recognizable enough rock formation to be a land marker for her.

“What the hell is this giant thing?!” shouted Seiji, the moment he saw that it wasn’t some strange rock or hill, but an actual living thing. Or rather, a former living thing, as Saki killed it some time ago.

Saki pointed them out to the front, revealing the large shape to be as they already figured out, a head. A severed head of a demon with an awful smell in fact sat before them almost looking like it might be asleep rather than dead. With massive horns and teeth along with oily black hair and a weird steel-like skin, all they could really do was accept that it had to be a demon. It had everything to belong to a classic giant red oni from wood paintings.

Patting the hard skin, Saki claimed her kill. “This was my job. Some weird variant of an oni that made his home in the mountains around here and found people to be more filling than other things. Apparently, he had been dormant for a while and only recently started feeding again.”

“So you’re what they call a Demon Hunter?” Nerine checked, already assuming it from what she had seen.

“Not so much, I’m a bounty hunter, you have to get some license and go through tests to be a Demon Hunter apparently. But the pay is no different. And the connections are better, since I can hear rumors from the underground about suddenly appearing super humans.”

“Does that mean this was part of your plan as well?”

“No, I haven’t heard any rumors about you two at all. You have to stand out for rumors to be created.”

Seiji looked back at Nerine with a look almost like a question of why. Seeing even Seiji retracting support for her, she lost any strength to her defense of her plan. It hurt far more than either of them could see. She turned away from them after her sound defeat and acceptance.

Not that it stopped Seiji from continuing. “Have you heard any rumors about the others?”

“A few, though they all have been dead ends. Knowing Yori’s tendency lately with his focus on Yumi, finding him should only be a matter of time. Finding Yumi and Yuki has been more of my priority, though I worry about finding Yuki given his nature. He may blend in the best.”

“This does seem like something he would enjoy.”

“Which could also make him the easiest, which is why I haven’t ruled out any rumors.”

“Now that you’ve found us, we’ll join you and help in the search!”

Saki sat down next to the demon head staring out at the horizon ahead with her mind already advancing. “It’ll definitely be helpful having someone that can heal me. I’ve been careful about not taking high risk bounties, so that I can keep searching. But with Nerine I can be bolder.”

The thought of being used like an item in a game, something that she would have no understanding of the reference to, but still found it indignant, turned around quickly. “I’m not a tool to be carried around!”

“Having some flashbacks right now…” None of it lasted for long as she narrowed her sights on Nerine. “Having two more at my back is more important.” Saki stood up and hefted the demon head into the air before starting to march away with the expectation that they would follow her.

Seiji quickly chased after her without a second thought. His mind was focused on the new adventures and fights that he could get into. The thought of fighting the blue oni that partnered the one Saki killed colored his visions. A good fight from something titanic made him grin slightly.

Left behind for a moment still not fully convinced, Nerine had to rush to catch up. She wasn’t about to be left behind. “You still have an image of me in your mind to pull me out when you need healing.”

“Maybe a little,” she teased.

Nerine sighed at her fate. “Where are you my King?”

As short trip back to the village, Nerine explained things to Mr. Horri. While a little sad to see them leave, their short time was understood. The walk back to the city that Saki treated as her temporary base only took half a day to reach, though it did leave Nerine completely exhausted. She laid on Saki’s bed in the mansion of her sponsor while Saki and Seiji went together to collect on the giant head.

Seiji looked back in the direction of the large pile that they left other demon parts all stacked together. “Don’t you need proof? Couldn’t someone else try to claim they killed the damn thing?” It wasn’t the only demon carcass and out in the open for anyone to poke through it. He found it surprising that there wasn’t even someone there to watch over it.

“Nope,” she replied quickly. Her hand stretched out to slide open the door as things quickly became dark and shady fast. Seiji followed behind her. “No picking fights, they’re all strong and I know you.”

“…yes…”

She could feel the disappointment in his voice. All of the bounty hunters that filled the room were skilled in different ways and worst of all most of them didn’t share the same noble fairness of a fight that Seiji did. Despite his strength and power, she doubted that he would actually win any of them.

Ahead of them was the counter with a young woman behind the slightly poor appearing wood counter and wall. Though as many foolish dead idiots learned, it was anything but. Saki stepped forward laying down a rolled parchment in front of the woman. “Got my reward?”

“Your kill’s been confirmed,” the woman spoke with polite and well measured words. She turned around and pulled out a drawer from the wall. Returning to the counter, the drawer glowed with gold coins.

Saki quickly pocketed the entirety of the reward and nodded to the woman. “Thank you.” She then faced Seiji with the look of leaving. But her eye picked up someone in the corner. They were making subtle movements at her. She grabbed Seiji’s arm and pulled him in close. “No talking.”

“Huh?”

“Promise me.”

“Alright, fine. What’s this shit all about?”

She glared up at him to shut him up and then pulled him along with her. Weaving through the tables, she sat down at the corner table with a well worn man. “You don’t call me over. Got some trouble?”

“On the contrary, I’ve got something you want.”

Leaning back in the chair, Saki played her hand defensively. “I’m in no rush for a bounty. We don’t owe each other anything.”

“Oh, but I know you’ve been making inquiries, a lot. And I happen to have some that might interest you.”

Saki tried to hide her annoyance, seeing that he had the stronger hand. “What are you asking?”

“One hundred.”

“Not interested.”

“Even if I told you there’s a fake Demon Hunter making a name for themselves?”

She saw Seiji’s eyes start to light up. He picked up on it as much as she did. ‘That could be Yumi!’