You know what's apparently rare in a zombie outbreak? God damn handkerchiefs.

"Nothing? Nobody?" I raise my arms in disbelief after trying my best to straighten my clothes, in order to look less like a crazed ax murderer.

(Well, all of them just fled for their life with only the clothes on their back so I shouldn't be surprised.)

I turn around and start shuffling around in my bag.

(...I could just use the bandages to wipe my face.)

I grab a roll of bandage, unroll a bit of it and start cleaning my face of the still liquid blood.

I then take off my gloves, unwrap more of the bandage and start wrapping my hand with the clean part, until it's about halfway up to my forearm, where the bandage runs out. Locking the bandage with the clips it came with, I then proceeded to do the same to my other hand with the second roll, before putting my gloves back on.

Afterward, I took the swiss knife out and cut the bloody part of the bandage, then looked at the bloody piece in my hand.

(This is the blood of the first actual person I saw dying in front of me. I keep surprising myself with how calm I am with all of this.)

"Uhh Naier?" I turn towards the voice to see Kohta looking at my hands, along with the rest of the group.

"I know you said that you packed your bag for your part-time job. But, what exactly 'is' your part-time job? For you to need bandages and a swiss knife?" Kohta asks me while pointing at the swiss knife.

"I am interested to know as well. Those are quite an… interesting combination of items." I turned around to see that that question had come from Saeko.

I take a deep breath and try to look as serious as I can.

"My job is to make an example of people who do not want to cooperate with my boss." I respond with a deadpan look on my face.

As soon as the words left my mouth, silence. The whole group just stared at me.

...

And a couple of seconds later, my grim face cracked.

"Pppfft, heheh. Sorry, sorry my bad." I look down and shake my head with a slight chuckle as I put the swissknife back inside my bag.

The whole group relaxes after they see me chuckling, although their reactions differed quite a bit.

Kohta looked relieved, Takashi looked weirded out, Rei just had a blank stare, Saya went from a 'what' frown to a 'you are an idiot' frown, Saeko did not really react to the whole situation, she just slightly tilted her head sideways.

"They are more of a 'better safe than sorry' precaution" I awnser.

(Ugh, crap. Think Naier, what do you say now.)

The whole group just keeps staring at me.

"I help a friend of a 'friend' with his job. He sells hunting rifles, we go to the wilderness and I film him using the guns. Something like a promo video for the stuff he will later try to sell. We don't actually kill anything though."

(Huh, I just realized. I can lie through my teeth with a straight face. Should I be happy about that?)

The whole group just keeps staring.

"Oohh! That makes sense." Kohta was the first one to speak up.

"Wait? it does?" Takashi looks back to Kohta even more weirded out than before.

"Well I've met this 'friend' of his. So yeah, I could see that actually happening."

"Great, so now we have two gun nuts." Saya simply groans in response.

Ignoring Saya's unneeded remark, I thank Kohta in my head for pulling me out of the tight spot.

"I guess all of you have already heard it like twenty times by now, but the name's Naier Sepfier"

"Takashi Komuro" Takashi nods.

"I'm Rei Miyamoto." Rei speaks up after Takashi.

"Busujima Saeko, nice to meet you Sepfier. The teacher behind you is Miss Shizuka Marikawa." Saeko then continues after doing a slight bow.

"Ohh that's me, nice to meet you Serpfloffier, Serfoufier ughh Sepfofir..." Shizuka after hearing her name proceeds to apparently try to rename me to something more fluffy.

(If I say that I'm surprised, I would be lying… again.)

"Ehh… just Naier is fine, my Surname is quite the mouthful."

The group giggles silently while Shizuka pouts and silently keeps trying to get my surname right.

After we got over with greeting each other, I turned to Saya.

"So… what happened, are you alright?" I ask her.

"Huh, what do you mean?" she asks, slightly frowning.

"Well, after we split up I tried to find you two again but..." Before I could complete my sentence Saya butts in.

"We could not wait for you in that classroom, it was too dangerous." She says, while narrowing her eyes.

"Ehh that was not what I was going to ask… Was it you that screamed at the school on the second floor, near the faculty room at sunset?"

(Well I know it was her. But I figured that at least more interaction with her will make her less toxic towards me.)

She opens her eyes wide then quickly gets an angry frown

(Ooor not, figures that it was probably a bad subject… Definitely a bad subject to talk about. God I AM an idiot.)

"If you knew it was me then why didn't you come to help!" she 'asked' with a loud voice.

"I ran into some 'trouble'" I answered as I turned to look at the bloody bandage on my hand.

I then took a quick glance at the back of the bus.

Shido had long since recovered from his little 'accident' with the bus floor and was already yapping about the 'leader' business to everybody that could tolerate him. I.e. everybody not in the 'main' group.

"Wait, so you are the 'friend' Kohta was talking about?" Takashi asks.

I blink a few times before connecting the dots. And then I turn to Kohta.

"Please tell me you did not forget my name in all the panic and told them that you had a 'friend' that helped you?"

Kohta just laughs sheepishly and scratches his head. I just facepalm and groan.

"We tried to look for you but there were too many of them in the hallways for us to search efficiently." Saeko speaks up.

"It's alright, it worked out in the end. " I sigh and decide to not dig into the subject any further.

(If they don't care enough to look for me, then I'll just have to get closer to them until they'll do.)

"Speaking of it… What happened to you Sepfier ? You looked really awful when you got on the bus." Saeko asks me right after.

I turn my sight to Shido's little flock before answering.

"I'll tell you all when the time's right. And now it's not, trust me." Saeko follows my eyesight, looks at Shido, then back at me, and nods.

The rest of the group, seeing Saeko agree to wait, decided to not press on the matter either.

"Well, we were off to a rough start, but I hope we'll get along now." I say, folding my arms with a nod, looking at the group as they nod back at me. Except for Saya, she just stared out of the window.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

(Alright, let's not forget what's to come. Got to figure out where we are right now.)

I headed back to my seat and put the bag on the chair by the window so I could sit on the chair that was easier to get up from. Comfortable with my seating, I take my map out of the bag.

"Miss Marikawa, could you please tell me where are we right now?"

I ask Shizuka while looking at the map. She turns her head slightly.

"Hmm… I think we just passed a sign saying that we passed block 10-58 of the Kawashimo neighborhood." She answers as she glances around the front windshield.

"Hmm, I see. Thank you." I respond and return to my map.

(I need to figure where Shido will pull his little stunt, so I can plan a route for when we get split up. As I can't just run after Rei and drag her back by force if she jumps out. That would give everybody a very bad impression of me. And seeing that even Takashi could not convince her, there's a good chance that we'll end up splitting up. If I can't figure a good way to prevent the whole thing from happening at least. But knowing Shido's character and Rei's history with him, nigh impossible I say.)

Looking at the map, I pinpoint the bus's location and then look at the nearest bridges drawn on the map.

(Hmm. The city is actually three giant landmasses linked by bridges, and is surrounded by the sea at one end, much like Poseidon's spear. Right now we are at the rightmost 'island', with the closest police station, that I suspect Takashi mentions they should 'meet up' at, being the central landmass. Meaning that if we were to use the original meeting place, we'll need to pass the bridge to get there, and most of the bridges will be clogged with cars, or blocked off by cops.

In the anime Takashi reunites with the group by finding them on a blocked bridge by sheer dumb luck. Not something I want to count on right now. I will try to figure where Shido will make his move, and then find the nearest location we could meet up, like a park or even a bridge itself.)

Deciding to take a small break, I fold the map back and look at the bloody bandage that I still had on my hand.

(I'm still a bit weirded out that I'm not even shaken by that whole thing with the dead student... But I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. If I was freaking out right now, it would not do me any good.)

I then leave the bloody bandage on the metal handle in front of me.

(Rest in peace. That's all I can offer you.)

I close my eyes and decide to rest a little. With my eyes closed, all I could hear was the engine of the bus, and silent whispering.

Until some minutes later, I hear footsteps closing in to me.

"Hey, umm, Naier."

Opening my eyes, I turn my head and see Kohta sitting on one of the two chairs by my right.

"Hey, what's up." I answer nonchalantly.

"Look, I just want to… uhh, apologize for not looking hard enough and almost leaving you behind" Kohta kept his head down while he said this. Well, I had already decided to let the whole thing slide. But, the fact that Kohta was still worrying about it, was enough for me.

"It's cool, the fact that you're still bothered about it is enough. It means you cared. So seriously, stop worrying about it, now." I looked at Kohta, who still seemed to be down in the dumps. And figured it was time to take a different approach.

"By the way, nice SMG. Where did you get it? It kind of looks like a retarded vector." I say, pointing at the nail gun as I finish my sentence with a chuckle.

"Huh, a vector?" He looks at the nail gun for a bit.

"You're right, it does look like one. It actually weighs about as much as an old assault rifle, so I never thought of it as an smg. Heh, wish it had the rate of fire and recoil of a vector though."

Getting an idea in my head, I smirk.

"Well I hope you did not name it yet, because as of now, I dub it R-ector. Standing in for...Retarded Vector."

He snaps his face to me.

"What?! Don't go off giving my gun weird names." Kohta hugs his nail gun and turns his upper body away as if protecting it from me.

"Ok, I won't. If you stop bothering yourself about what happened at the school." I say and fold my arms leaning back on my seat.

He looks at me and sighs, and then finally laughs.

"Fine fine, I get it. Thanks Naier." I give him a two-finger salute as he gets up and walks back to his seat.

(I really want to turn back and shout 'You take good care of R-ector now', but he might end up feeling that I'm having fun at his expense. That guy loves his guns after all.)

Deciding that was enough of a break, I take the map out once more and continue from where I left off…

About ten minutes later, I was still looking at the map. We were now driving near the seaside. The bus mostly quiet… I wish. As Tsunoda and his hangers-on, had started causing a racket.

(It will happen soon. I got our location down, so I should start looking around for a place to meet up later.)

Scanning the map, I found a park that was near one of the smaller bridges and relatively close to our position.

(This could work, it's still on the same landmass and the bridge there seems to be small, so there's a chance it won't be clogged or blocked.)

Just as I finished my thought, I'm jerked forward as the bus suddenly stops. Shizuka then took off her seat belt and turned around.

"I can't drive with all this yelling!"

Tsunoda freezes for a moment, before he starts shouting again. About stuff I really didn't care to listen about, something about having component people in the team or some crap?.

"Then what do you wish to do?" Saeko asks right after Shizuka, as she turns to look at Tsunoda.

(Holy deja vu. Didn't realize it, but I haven't seen them speak the lines they said in the anime up till now. I am REALLY weirded out right now.)

"I can't stand him!" Tsunoda shouts pointing at...Me?

(Wait wha...?)

"I cannot stand that wimp! Why do we have to bring that dead weight with us!" Tsunoda keeps shouting.

This time, it seemed more natural that Kohta wanted to act. We're supposed to be friends after all. Only to again be stopped by Saya.

(Did I just switch roles with Takashi? Whatever, this ass is mostly responsible for what happened back at the school. This time, he won't walk away with it…)

I slowly got up, my bat sliding off the chair as it was hanging on my left hand, I tilt my head slightly.

"Be careful when you use that word. Donkey."

Tsunoda, losing whatever little restraint he had left, screams and charges towards me. Blind rage was all he had as he sprinted towards me.

I was about to thrust my bat forward towards his chest as he blindly rushed towards me. Yet, for some reason, he tripped. Causing him to awkwardly flail about as he tried to regain his balance.

Not losing the chance, I released my grip on my bat, letting it fall on the floor as I ran up to Tsunoda, grabbing him by the collar with both hands and lifting his face to me.

(A wimp huh?)

Was the only thought that passed my head as I smashed my forehead into his nose with all my strength. The impact caused him to stop struggling and put his hands on his now bleeding nose.

I then move one of my legs behind his own leg, take my hands off his collar and quickly bend my upper body and slam my shoulder into him, causing him to trip on my leg and fall down.

Feeling that it was not enough punishment, I kneel down.

With one knee on his arm, I grabbed his second arm with my hand and yanked it towards me so I won't end up with a surprise punch to the face.

"The last guy who died near me also ended up with a broken nose. You're filling that role perfectly so far. Be glad I decided not to use the bloodstained bat on your sorry face to test whether infected blood can transmit the disease. But, next time you try to cause trouble for me. I will pass your face through the bus floor before testing exactly that. Take this as a warning."

I release Tsunoda and start walking back to my seat, only to hear clapping.

(I'm starting to get pissed with this charade.)

"Splendid work Sepfier, you certainly know how to hold yourself in a fight. But this only proves what I was saying. We need a leader. Somebody who can stop avoidable conflicts like these."

Shido proceeds to start yapping about how he will stop conflicts and keep everybody safe. All the good shit and all. Causing the students on the back row to start clapping. He then ends his speech with a bow and a shit-eating grin.

"It looks like it has been decided. I am now the leader of this group by the majority of votes."

Feeling rather sarcastic, and probably because of all the adrenaline I had in my veins after my little scuffle with Donkey boy, I started clapping right after Shido finished his speech. Although my expression made it clear that I did not buy a single thing he said.

"Bravo, Cheers, High-five, Sllloow Clap. Somebody give that man and his little donkey an Oscar. All that acting was top-notch. If you think we are total fucking idiots. Create a problem and then act as if you solved it, almost like a stinking politician."

Shido's face actually distorted a little when I mentioned the politician part.

(Out of the whole thing, this got him? Guess he really hates his dad huh.)

Yet he quickly regains his composure.

"I do not know what you are talking about Sepfier, if you don't like being under my leadership. You are free to leave" Shido responds with a smirk.

As if expecting this, Rei jumps off the bus and starts stomping towards the nearby tunnel.

(Well, in the heat of the moment I forgot my actual target. Rei just jumped out, in other words, I fucked up.)

Takashi then gets off the bus, and runs to Rei. much to Saya's dismay. Yet as I'm about to walk off the bus as well, I'm stopped. My arm gets grabbed by Saeko.

"This is between the two of them," Saeko calmly shakes her head at me.

I just stared at Saeko, before shifting my focus behind her. Raising my arm and pointing at the incoming giant bus.

"And they are about to get violently interrupted." I respond with the same calm tone, causing her to turn her head to where I was pointing at. Her eyes then opened wide.

Saeko then shouts at Shizuka who just, reacts to her name, fidgets about and then just turns her head towards the oncoming lights and stays rooted to the spot.

(Is she a goddamn deer...)

Not that I was any better, as I just stood there as well and watched as the oncoming bus slammed into a car. It then did a whole flip in the air and crashed where Rei and Takashi were standing some moments ago. The wreckage is now blocking the tunnel and catching on fire in the process.

I'm jerked back to action as I realize that Saeko just ran past me. I ran behind her, my mind still processing what I just saw.

(Can a bus actually do a frigging flip like that?)

Reaching the bus I see flaming corpses coming out the wreckage. Getting near Saeko, I hear Takashi shouting.

"To the police station!"

Before Saeko can speak, I shout back.

"No, the closest police station is still too far! It's over the bridge and with the panic we don't know if the bridges will be passable! We need a location on this landmass!" I shouted back.

"Where then!?"Takashi shouts back at me.

"There is a giant park, Marui Shigemi, east of here, near one of the smaller bridges that connect to the central landmass! We can meet up there either today or tomorrow at seven! If the place is overrun, then head towards the bridge and wait either on it or under it!" I shout out.

Takashi nods at me through the opening in the burning wreckage, then turns his back and starts running with Rei.

I look back at the corpses that had closed in, Saeko was readying her bokken, only for the corpses to collapse from the damage the fire was doing to them.

"I'm not in the mood for smoked bacon today. Let's go Busijima, this crash is bound to attract every single corpse that was shambling around here." I say as I start moving towards our bus, Saeko nods and follows behind me.

"Good thinking back there by the way." Saeko tells me as we run back to the bus. I just looked at her and nodded.

Getting on the bus, Saeko shouts at Shizuka that we need to change route, with Shizuka nodding and turning the bus around.

I look at my seat, seeing Kohta sitting by my bag.

"Did something happen?" I ask. He turns his sight to Shido's group.

(Of course, I openly antagonized Shido a moment ago. Now I'm going to be targeted by Shido and his merry midgets. Ughh being stuck on this bus is going to suck.)

"I see, thanks for keeping a lookout buddy." I turn my head back to Kohta.

"Don't mention it, just watch your back in here Naier." Kohta says as he gets up.

After Kohta left, I sat on my chair and checked my equipment, making sure that everything was still in place.

(I wonder who tripped Tsounoda back then. He might be a donkey, but I don't think he's retarded enough to trip on his own two feet. Or well, he might be.)