Dr. Balkus, staring at the mysterious
cocoon that had somehow absorbed the Fifth Guyver, fumed
silently. He could now sense two minds within the solid shell of
the cocoon that had been discovered at the remains of Mt.
Minakami. Seeing the Fifth Guyver disappear into that cocoon had
been strange, even for one such as he, who had seen so much, but
the fact that the cocoon had resisted all of their attempts to
open it in order to extract the Fifth Guyver made it an even
more extreme annoyance.
His underlings had not been at all
pleased with those developments, either. Yet, in the manner of
the Relic from which it had presumably originated, the cocoon
steadily resisted all of Chronos’ attempts to breach its outer
hull. There had even been some who had suggested dealing with
the cocoon in the same manner that they had dealt with the
Relic. While it was an option to have Zoanoids try and open the
cocoon, Dr. Balkus did not want to risk damaging the Fifth
Guyver and anything else that might have been inside.
When the cocoon started pulsing,
resembling a human heartbeat more than anything else, the
doctor’s first reaction was surprise. The bright bursts of light
grew more intense with each pulse, and he had to squint his eyes
and close his pupils to keep himself from being at the very
least temporarily blinded. When the last and brightest flash of
light had cleared, Dr. Balkus fully re-opened his eyes and
pupils without a second’s hesitation.
What he saw once he had did not please
him at all: the Relic cocoon had vanished. Stepping into the
space on the floor that the Relic cocoon had occupied only scant
seconds before, Dr. Balkus sensed a great deal of residual
energy. There was, of course, no real way to trace that energy
to wherever it had come from or gone to, and as much as he was
loath to have to do it, he knew that he would have to wait for
confirmation from another group of Zoanoids before he could know
where to look for the Relic cocoon.
It was not a situation that he liked at
all.
XxXxX
The first thing that Ryan’s waking mind
became aware of was the warmth, and then the feel of some slimy,
quasi-liquid pressing in all around him, covering him from head
to toe, and a few other places in between that Ryan really
wasn’t too eager to think about. Snapping back into full
awareness about a minute after he’d made that little
realization, Ryan began to thrash around in the slime.
Whatever it was that he was stuck
inside of was pitch black, and at the moment all that Ryan could
think of was how much he wanted the hell
out
of there. His flailing fingers caught on a ridge, and the action
was unexpected enough that Ryan stopped thrashing and started to
feel along the seam. It really did feel big enough to stick his
fingers in. There was also a chance that he would be able to
open it, if he could just get a good hold on that edge.
Working the fingers of both hands into
the seam, Ryan started to try and pry open the thing that was
holding him prisoner. Growling and just managing to keep himself
from swearing at the uncooperative Whatsis, Ryan started putting
more force into his arms. Ryan knew that he basically had no
leverage, since he was currently lying on his side with no way
at all to stand up, but Ryan was determined to get out of this
dark and slimy thing even if it took him all day.
Finally, after who knew how long, Ryan
started to see some kind of light shining in through a crack
that he had managed to open. He didn’t know just what kind of
light it was—daylight or something else —but at the moment Ryan
was too glad not to be confined completely to the pitch black
sliminess that he’d woken up in to care much about the quality
of the light. Time would tell if Ryan would have any cause to
regret that.
Pushing outward with all of his strength
again, having taken a rest to catch his breath after seeing the
crack of light, Ryan took no notice of the soft pulsing in the
region of his shoulder blades. He did notice it when the thing
he was struggling to open suddenly started opening much more
easily, though. When he had opened the thing holding him by
about six inches, Ryan noticed that there was a thin, filmy
membrane further separating him from the outside world.
Without a second of hesitation,
Ryan tore through the membrane with his fingernails. Turning
around in the slime that still clung to his body, Ryan twisted
his legs until they were directly underneath his body, grabbed
the open part of the slimy, coffin-like thing, and
heaved.
The thing came open much more easily. Pulling his legs out of
the slime, which he noticed was still warm when it was inside
the container-thing, Ryan braced his feet against the edge and
pushed.
Once it had opened as far as Ryan was
sure it was going to, he noticed the other guy who was lying in
the slime. He was mostly covered by another part of the
container-thing that was still closed, and he was also still
stuck under the membrane. Huffing in slight annoyance, Ryan
pulled open the membrane and grabbed the guy’s arms and started
pulling.
The slime, though it
was
nice and warm, was also thick and nasty. It clung to everything,
making it incredibly had for Ryan to even move. Growling, Ryan
stuck his feet back into the slime and stood up, then leaned
back, pulling the other guy along with him as he moved. Ryan
managed to budge him about an inch.
Rolling his eyes and muttering various
curse words—some of them in Spanish—Ryan turned around, still
wading hip-deep in the slime, grabbed the other guy’s arms
again, and started pulling again. Now that his feet were better
able to push against the bottom of the container-thing, Ryan
found that it was easier to move the other guy.
With a particularly unpleasant
half-sucking, half-popping sound, the guy Ryan had been trying
to pull out of the slime came free, rather more violently than
Ryan himself had been counting on. Rubbing his stomach where it
had slammed into the closed part of the container-thing, Ryan
swore softly.
"I really hope you’re worth me getting
bruises on my internal organs, guy," Ryan grumbled, sighing in
annoyance.
Slogging back through the thick slime,
Ryan hoisted the other guy up on his back and started for the
edge of the container-thing again, dragging the other guy over
to the side of the greenish thing and trying to ignore the
squelching noises. Ryan unwrapped his right arm from around the
black-haired boy, grabbed him under both arms with little regard
for any discomfort the other might have been experiencing, and
hauled them both up to stand on the top of the greenish
container-thing.
Once he had managed to get them both all
the way out of the slime, Ryan took a chance to look around.
What he saw surprised him, even after all the weird things he’d
been exposed to.
"Hey, I remember this place," Ryan
muttered, looking around at the huge towers of rock. "This is
the Garden of the Gods. How did I end up all the way out here?
Last thing I remember, I was in a hospital somewhere. I don’t
suppose you’d
know anything about that," Ryan said, then he chuckled.
Here he was, trying to get answers
from an unconscious guy. I
must be nuts, Ryan mused.
Then, shaking his head in weary amusement, Ryan stepped down out
of the greenish container-thing and stood on solid ground again.
He didn’t know just how far he had gone since being knocked out
in the hospital in Colorado; he didn’t know that he had been
transported halfway around the world in the absence of his
consciousness. All that Ryan knew was that he was currently
standing in the Garden of the Gods without a single thing on and
with some guy he didn’t even know hanging on his back.
"Well, fuck," Ryan muttered, wondering
just how he was going to get home with the shape he was in.
That was when fortune, this time in the
form of Sho Fukamachi, decided to deal him a better hand.
XxXxX
Sho, slowly struggling back to
consciousness after being asleep for he didn’t know how long,
opened his eyes and found himself staring at a bright red blur.
As his vision slowly cleared, Sho realized that the blur was in
fact the back of someone’s head. Since Sho didn’t have any
friends with bright red hair, he was instinctively wary of this
new person. However, in direct contrast to this feeling of
wariness, there was the slight inclination to trust this new
person.
In the end, Sho didn’t know what to
think.
Then, as his vision cleared a bit
further, Sho finally noticed that the person he had been staring
at had the boost-stimulus tissue that all Guyvers had on their
backs. Sho was dumbfounded—he had thought that there were only
three Guyvers anywhere on Earth. That was what Lisker had told
him, and then Agito and Professor Odagiri had confirmed that.
There was just no way that this new person could be a Guyver.
And yet, that was just what all of his
senses seemed to be telling him. Sho was completely confused,
but then he decided to try and communicate with this new Guyver.
Sho only hoped that he wasn’t anything like Lisker. Sho didn’t
want to try and fight another Guyver, even with all that he had
learned about their powers as such.
+Hello?+
Sho heard the other Guyver’s surprised
yelp and quickly wrapped his arms around the unknown boy’s waist
to keep himself from hitting the ground face-first. That was
when he noticed the strange, organic-looking cocoon sitting on
the ground beneath them. Sho could see that the red-haired boy
was still standing in the fluid that was inside the cocoon,
though now he could also see that the boy was completely naked.
Sho looked down at himself, finally
noticing that he was, too. The Guyver with red hair asked
something then, or at least that was the impression that Sho got
judging from the slight lilt at the end of his sentence. When he
turned around, Sho let go of his waist and sat down in the
fluid. The boy with the red hair turned to look at him, and it
was only then that Sho noticed his green eyes.
He asked something else in that
unfamiliar language, which Sho was now starting to recognize as
English. True, he’d had to study English in school, but that had
been a long time ago, and Sho had forgotten a lot of the
lessons. Not that they would have been of that much help,
though, since the school hadn’t really been teaching
conversational English.
"I’m sorry, but I don’t understand
anything you’re saying," Sho said, craning his neck to look up
at the English-speaking redhead.