His eyes opened slowly, and for a second Masaki wondered just where he was. Staring at the off-white ceiling didn’t give him many answers, however, so Masaki rolled over. That was when he noticed that he was still in bed. Everything came back in brief flashes of memory after that: his son, Gyou, the battle, the fact that he was hiding in the very last place that he would have ever voluntarily gone. But at the time there hadn’t been any other options.

Truthfully, there still weren’t many options that Masaki could see, either for himself or for the Guyvers. I wonder, what was that strange telepathic presence I felt? It had only been there for a minute, before he’d passed out from the intensity of it, but Masaki had just barely managed to hang on long enough to realize one thing: it wasn’t Balkus. Whoever this new player in their little drama was, they were a much stronger telepath than Balkus was on a good day.

If they worked for Chronos then it didn’t bode well for his chances against them, whoever they turned out to be. Just once, just one time, I wish things could be simple. But I suppose that’s a bit too much to ask, at least for us. Masaki sighed, staring at the wall of his hospital room. Masaki supposed that he should get up now, if only so that Sho and the others would stop worrying about him.

Of course, that wouldn’t stop Mizuki from worrying on his behalf. Masaki winced as he remembered when she had found out about his condition. Her reaction had been more or less what he had expected from her, after knowing her for as long as he did. Mizuki was a lot like Sho in that respect: always ready to sacrifice her own comfort and happiness if it was to help someone else.

Levering himself out of bed, Masaki recoiled slightly as his feet touched the cold floor. Finally locating a pair of slippers, Masaki put them on and walked out of the room. He was particularly grateful to Sumio for letting him take a shower and giving him a change of clothes. Masaki thought that the shirt that he was currently wearing, light blue with stripes of green and darker blue, would have probably suited Kenji better. But still, it looked normal enough on him that Masaki wasn’t going to raise any objections about it.

As he left the hospital room where he’d been staying for the past two and a half days, Masaki couldn’t help but wonder just how they were going to start up their battles with Chronos from this deep inside one of the enemy’s bases. True, he had put on a good act of being calm and assured for Sho and the others, but in the end that was all it had been: an act.

Walking down the florescent-lit corridor, Masaki wondered for a moment just where all of the others had gone to. That they were all still inside the protected space of the laboratory was a safe assumption, since he and Sumio had taken great care to impress on them the importance of staying hidden. Makashima would probably also make sure that they would all stay out of sight, if only to keep himself from being discovered.

That last thing was probably an unfair presumption on his part, but at the moment Masaki was too tired to care.

XxXxX

At the outer edge of the forest that surrounded Mt. Minakami, far enough away from Takeshiro village that anyone who was actually awake this early would not see this new apparition, a dark figure detached itself from the shadows. The figure revealed itself to be a man dressed in a black, fitted leather outfit. His black hair and pale skin, along with the way he seemed to want to avoid the sunlight that slanted through the trees, gave the man an almost vampire-like air.

His shiny black hair was parted neatly, but oddly it was also brushed so that it completely covered his right eye. As he moved farther into the forest, the man’s single visible eye narrowed slightly. A small smile curved his thin lips. The others were arriving. Turning his thoughts back to his own journey the Zoalord Rienzi, seventh of the Twelve Overlords, continued on his way to Mt. Minakami.

XxXxX

Masaki’s search had taken him through three of the minor labs before he had gone to the basement’s lunchroom. That was where he had found the rest of the group. All of the rest of the group, including a few of Sumio’s fellow scientists that he hadn’t been introduced to as yet. The lunchroom itself was an odd combination of laboratory and cafeteria, and Masaki couldn’t help but think that this wasn’t the way that the main cafeteria was set up.

Such thoughts weren’t important, however, so Masaki put them out of his mind.

"Mr. Murakami!"

"Hi, Sho," Masaki said, turning to face one of his fellow rebels.

"Are you really sure you should be up so soon, Mr. Murakami?" Sho asked. "What about your body? You did receive serious injuries. Or, at least that’s what Prof. Odagiri, Tetsuro and Agito all told me. Shouldn’t you still be resting?"

"Don’t worry about me, Sho. We Proto-Zoalords heal very quickly," Masaki said. It was a half-truth at best.

"So you’re all right?" Sho asked hopefully.

"Yes, Sho. I’m all right," Masaki outright lied.