Chapter 22

 

 

 

Quest (?); Meeting Akira…Part 2

“Well this is it,” Ranger kid said. He pointed to a small lean to shack in front of us about a dozen meters after we’d finished traveling.

“Eh? Are you sure this is the right one?” Yumi asked carefully.

This hut didn’t look that good but was built pretty sturdy at least. It looked like the design was a bit different than the others.

Instead of using a conical round mud and stick hut design like the others, this one was more like a lean to against a huge boulder as tall as a man, with a sort of design that was a three dimensional triangle with parallel lines of longer heavier branches making a wall and ceiling. Then with lots of leaves and coverings over the top, it was made to look as if it might keep out most of the rain and wind. It must be a good find to find a boulder like that though, since it was pretty solid and making up a whole wall by itself.

There were a lot of coverings over the entrance and the back too, which surprised me as it seemed very secretive. It’s clear they wanted privacy and now there was only a very small opening in the front that was about two feet high. Because of the way it was shaped you had to bend over in order to go through by crawling in over a bed of the larger palm leaves. It was also positioned so the sun would dry fairly quickly outside and inside the hut if any night moisture or rain came.

Overall it was also very clean and dry looking as far as we could tell.

“Ah that’s not a bad hut!” Rina said, smiling and fascinated. She was moving forward but was suddenly grabbed by Yumi.

“Stop Rina NO!” She was very stressed out in her voice, like there was danger.

Yumi had grabbed Rina from behind and wrapped her arms around Rina’s waist pulling her back.

“W-what are you doing? Let me go!” Rina said sullenly. After all it was something curious, so naturally she would be attracted to it.

“Whew! Thanks Yumi,” I was so tired I didn’t make it in time. After all I’d just done two sneak heals on Rina’s back about ten minutes ago when the ranger kid wasn’t looking. It had made me fatigued and I was still trying to recover.

“Rina, we think there’s a sickness of some kind here. You are weaker than we are already. With your condition we don’t want you exposed. So stay back a bit and don’t get close to the others,” I said apologetically.

“Boooh!” she stuck her tongue out but listened.

Yumi pulled her to a safe distance that wasn’t near us or the other huts, but also not next to the ranger kid. After all he was a threat potentially as well.

“Hey ranger, can you keep a lookout for us near here…say over there?” Asakura asked, smiling. She pointed to a high spot, which would give us some privacy for checking Akira.

Ranger was smiling cheekily, after all Sensei was very beautiful and hard to say no to.

“Ah, OK, but please wave to me soon to keep my morale up Sensei!” he smiled big, trying really hard. He had a spring in his step as he marched over. After all it wasn’t every day that someone as pretty as Asakura gave you attention. As he walked away I heard Sensei under her breath.

“Hehe, fufu, …sucker…”

“Err, what was that Sensei?” I asked surprised.

“Uh, -err, nothing. Nothing at all,” she portrayed an innocent smile but my eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“Don’t worry Shun!” she added.

But then suddenly we were interrupted. “Eh? Shun is that you?” It was Yuriko’s voice. Shortly she crawled through the small opening with her head poking out first and then the rest of her followed as she came out. Then the stood up to greet us after dusting herself off.

“Yeah, what’s up? Is Akira all right? And what’s actually going on? The guide couldn’t really tell us much. What’s going on?” I said worriedly.

“Uh, come inside. But stay quiet. Have the others wait outside,” she whispered. She had a desperate look in her eyes.

I bent low to crawl forward, but then Yuriko stopped me. “OK, so you can’t tell anyone OK? It’s really important,” she had a frantic intense look in her eyes and wouldn’t let me forward until I’d agreed.

“OK. Don’t worry,” I said.

But inside, I’m worried too. Is this the plague?

But she stopped me again, “Keep that other ranger away. He might be working for the other two idiots. The others can wait and stand watch while you talk to him. I’m worried he’ll tell Yuta or Akimoto what’s going on. And are the others trustworthy too?” Again, the intense look was staring at me with a lot of expectations.

“I-it’s fine for the others. But the ranger even I don’t know about,” I said. After which, she waved for me to follow her in.

“F-fine. Come in please. But remember you can’t tell anyone. I’m afraid of what the others will do,” she said.

I was surprised but didn’t say much. Slowly I crept in. There wasn’t a lot of room to sit up, and the ceiling was pretty low with Akira leaning against the low point by the wall.

“Sh-Shun is that you?” Akira asked. But something was off, his voice and breathing sounded strange. Something was different about him but it was too dark to see what. My eyes were still adjusting to how dark it was inside so I couldn’t tell what to do yet. He was looking at the ceiling and had been resting or sleeping when I’d come in, but in the darkest part of the shack.

“What’s going on Akira? Are you in some kind of trouble?” I asked patiently. But I wasn’t sure what to think of it, or even if I could trust Akira.

“I have to tell you first, I’m sorry. I should have told you ahead of time about the meeting but I ran out of time trying to get everything ready. I couldn’t get enough allies together yet either and that was what was soaking up my time when things ran dry,” his heavy voice said. Strangely I began to recognize the changes. His voice wasn’t just different, but it was much deeper, and heavy. But somehow it was still Akira, just it sounded like he was many pounds heavier.

“You know a lot of people are upset about this whole king bit,” I said. Of course I was one of them too. So were the others with me. I resisted the chance to glare at him because I wanted to seem neutral enough to feel out what his true mood was, without him trying to respond to what he thought I might want to see.

“Yeah, that dumbass Yuta, and Akimoto got sucked in too. I feel so bad about this. It’s really bad timing.”

“But staying in this area isn’t safe. I think maybe in the mountains would have more places to hide,” I said, feeling out what he thought.

“Yeah, that’s a good option actually. The problem is that I-I don’t know, my legs feel numb and I’ve had a fever all day. I feel like I got swollen up somehow after that meeting too. I’ve been trying to get up but it’s not working right,” he said.

“But are the others sick with the same thing?” I asked Yuriko.

She shook her head, “we don’t know. If they-if they see Akira I’m worried they will hurt him.”

“Why would you think that?” I asked. “Did you guys have some of confrontation with him?” I wondered aloud.

“No, no nothing like that,”Yuriko said. She seemed reluctant to say anything more. I waited for her to tell me more, but she was looking around at other things feigning ignorance. Very weird…

Akira also confirmed, “We haven’t confronted them but still don’t trust them OK.”

“It’s something else?” I wondered.

“Well…I’m not even sure how to start,” Akira started to say.

Yuriko shut her mouth really quickly and looked down. “People always hurt others different than they are don’t they?”

… She kind of had a point…

“What do you mean? Did something else happen?”

“You get it don’t you?” she hissed, clearly agitated.

“I understand what you mean, but not why you are saying it?” I stated, wondering what’s up. Did she have a reason to say it?

“It’s OK, show him. He deserves to know. I’m sure the others are going to start changing too. If they are getting sick too, its part of it, I’m sure,” Akira said.

“If you think it’s OK,” Yuriko said with a lilt in her voice. “I’m not sick. It doesn’t seem like everyone gets it, but quite a few do get it. We were afraid to go find out everything but we hear the coughs coming from the huts near us.”

“So it has something to do with the others getting sick?” I asked confused. Now I was realizing it wasn’t a contention issue, but a sickness but it had taken me a minute to realize it. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to be in the shack very long.

She slowly pulled up Akira’s legs out of a bed of leaves they’d been resting in and hiding under. He gasped in pain at first while she was doing so.

That’s when things suddenly got weirder. They were basically huge. Akira’s legs were all swollen up and covered in what almost seemed like a giant bruising from the knees down. There was like a dark colored hairy down that was flowing down his legs under the knees too. But where the ankles started to lead to the feet things had changed and his feet were twisted and painfully misshapen and so swollen with strange colored puss, and fluid buildup, strange growths, and abnormal cellular flow to the point of it looking like a black and purple ugly mutation.

It basically looked like a mix of several really bad kinds of illnesses all mixed into one. It was disturbing to look at.

“Is that…painful?” I asked.

“Yeah, a bit. Mostly it’s kind of numb until I try to move. That’s when it gets bad. We’ve managed to avoid being discovered…but…it’s only a matter of time. Plus Yuta and Akimoto would love to have a weakness to capitalize on before the vote,” he said.

I looked at Yuriko curiously.

“Eh?! I’m not changing yet. It’s just Akira. Really,” she said with big eyes, guessing my thoughts.

I turned back to look at his mutating legs…at least that’s what it looked like was happening. It was horrific when I lifted up his pant leg from near the ankles. Everything was massively discolored and shaped weird.

I wasn’t even sure what to do.

“Th-at doesn’t look good Akira,” I said.

“Yeah, I think I know that already,” he said sarcastically.

But what was strange, was that the smell wasn’t that bad. I had been under the impression that infections and stuff like that would have a bad smell that was a signal of how sickly the tissue was. Like gangrene for example had a very terrible smell. This smell wasn’t the same as something really bad like that, as far as my inexperience could reason; but was more like heavy athletes foot.

Did that mean he had a chance?

“So what do you want to do? I’m not sure if I can help you?” I asked.

“Get better maybe? That would be a good start right? Or at least hide us or help us stay hidden without having any visitors. If it’s just Yuriko they will surely push her out of the way and then we’ll end up with a king,” he said. But then he sighed, “Not sure how that’s going to work out though. It looks kind of bad.”

“Is that the only options? Do you have any other allies?” I asked.

He shook his head negatively, “not …really….there’s one other big problem too.”

Oh man. It already looks bad and there’s more?

“So spill it,” I said tiredly, trying to figure out what I’d do. When I’d tried to cast heal on Rina, it’d done very little. So would it do the same or more on Akira? I was worried it wouldn’t do much seeing his feet and how bad they were. He had to be really suffering badly.

So he crawled forward to the point a small amount of light made his face more visible.

That was the weirdest part of all…

I was staring face to face with a very tan faced Akira, and his jaw was covered with wiry black facial hair that was so thick he had already grown a small goatee beard that was about an inch and a half long. The facial hair tapered off in a shorter length around his cheeks though, getting shorter as it went up with hair follicles that were long and wiry, rather than short and fuzzy like a human’s might look. However the density and wiry trait of the beard was crazy with the brustles coming out almost like porqupine quills in appearance. His skin was a bit darker but not too dark.

Yesterday Akira didn’t have even a single whisker!

I tried to resist looking scared. That might just set him off or make him scared too. People didn’t make good choices when they were scared. I continued my observations.

Akira wasn’t supposed to have facial hair and he wasn’t even a bit tan and stayed inside all the time back when we were home. He didn’t even shave. We had gym together too, so before all this happened he didn’t have any hair on his legs, but I’d not realized that until I saw his new beard. But somehow he’d grown all of this very quickly. That might explain the sickness if his body was changing this fast. But this was crazy extreme and the physics didn’t seem to even work. How could something like this happen so fast…

“Ahhgh!” he cried out in pain suddenly, clutching his head. “My head hurts so bad! I’ve had this killing headache for like all day!” he moaned.

But the most strange part of all…which I was now starting to notice was Akira was growing horns. They’d already grown like three inches out of the side of his head and pointing up but still small, but very sharp and completely black. They appeared to be growing horizontally out mostly, but starting to curve upwards.

It would be impossible to hide him or all these new traits. A lot of people would definitely think he’s turning into a monster, I realized.

Unless…

Oh that’s interesting. Could it be…? He was evolving into a creature of some kind, I was sure of it. But then now that I knew what to look for I looked over other parts of him.

“Errrgh….head hurts. Ah, what are you doing?” he asked.

“Just lie still please,” I said, getting him to relax. I checked over his vitals like I did with Rina every night. Sure enough his body was thickening out and because he was taller too, and more muscular the added height and weight made his heart a bit slower, like how really large animals had slower hearts than really small ones. In fact it was the heart beat that gave it away, before I’d been able to see well in all the shadows.

“Has he been acting strange? Any other symptoms that aren’t physical, like maybe acting differently?” I asked Yuriko, who was watching with the worried mom sort of look on her face. When Rina started getting sick, she was so pretty we’d missed the signals of extreme exhaustion, and a few other things. I was trying to think Akira might have some things that weren’t visible that Yuriko might have seen.

She shook her head, “just that he keeps asking for water over and over. No matter how much water I bring him it’s never enough. He’s not acting different, except for just being sick and tired. He’s still the same person and he’s still nice.”

“And…sorry to ask this Akira…but has he gotten mad or acted violent?” I asked, just to be sure.

“Whose side are you on Shun?” he choked desperately. “Hrrmmm,” his deep voice rumbled.

“Sorry, just had to ask, but see we when the others find out we can say for sure we think that you are safe to be around,” I said.

“Oh, I get it now,” Yuriko said, nodding. “He’s going to be fine right?”

I didn’t answer right away. “I think you are changing into something else.”

“I’m kind of scared,” he said trying to keep his emotions in check. “First this new world and now this… Yuriko and I just wanted to be together and be normal people,” he sniffed.

Then I could see also his shirt, which had been loose before during the battle was now bulging out at the seams from how much muscle he’d put on like instantly. As I followed the changes down to his feet again then I could see that his legs were longer than they should be, because he was taller. Now his pant legs looked kind of funny in a way because they ended about halfway between his knees and ankles in the shin area. He’d gone from five and half feet tall, which is really tall for people where we came from to about seven and a half feet tall. Some of the height had shown in his neck looking a bit longer, thicker, and his chest and thighs lengthening out and showing more muscle.

Thankfully though, his clothes were holding together somehow, probably because they were hand me downs from his brother who had been a bit chubby. Thank heavens for fat brothers’ right?

“Wow,” I breathed out in a whisper.

“What is it?” he wheezed, and then he started to cough again. I held my breath trying to not breathe the germs. After all I didn’t want to turn into whatever creature this was…

Ah, what if it was like a racial job? If I got a heal job, then what if some of the others had jobs that were creature related acting like jobs? I’m not sure how people would react to that though. They could really react out of distrust and fear, like Yuriko had thought.

Akira did look kind of scary though…or at least he was starting to.

Also by having contact with Akira, would Yuriko become the same kind of creature he was turning into? She had been breathing the same air as he had for quite awhile and the same germs. Plus they’d been making out, according to Yumi.

I folded my arms and thought about it.

Ah, then I realized. Long sharp head horns, strangely shaped feet that happened to be really long, and muscular with a sort of extension of the ankle? What could make that? Because the foot was so misshapen I couldn’t see yet what it was becoming. It was some kind of demon maybe? I’d have to be careful to make sure. I wasn’t entirely sure yet. After all I could only compare it to a vast amount of creatures in like several hundred games. I couldn’t be sure which type it was yet.

But he wasn’t feeling violent, he’d said…so what kind of creature could it be? There were too many kinds of creatures in all the different stories and games that I’d heard of to be sure which one it was.

Unfortunately I was going to have to think about it. If Akira was trying to become the king, and if I healed him would he then cause problems for others? I had to figure out the answer to that before I took another step. I’d have to get him to tell me a whole lot of stuff before I could go any further, starting with what’s been happening this whole time that he hasn’t told us yet.

It was pretty complicated because if he was conspiring to rule over everyone then would it be better for him to die while sick still? Or should I show mercy?

This was a tough decision…

I would have to talk Akira out of the king idea or let him die. It wouldn’t be worth having him still be set on the king idea and just giving us a copout answer later. Yuriko probably would be pretty mad if it went that direction though. She might even get violent wanting us to help him.