XIV

What came next was what I had feared.

"Good morning," Multehx called as he sat beneath a tree behind me.

He had followed me, and had waited for me to wake up.

I turned, winced in pain and watched as he polished his gun. I fell onto my knees and begged again that he didn't kill me.

"I have no intention to," he said, bringing the barrel up to his robotic eye and inspecting it.

I looked at him doubtfully.

"I have some enemies, and it's my aim not to let some kid go and spoil it all for me," he replied. "This is much more than you, or your brother, or your parents. This is me, and tryin' to save it all."

"How do you know about Ark?" I snapped, though still frightened.

His diamond and robotic eyes stared deep into my own, rooting me to the spot.

"Kid...I'm not some damn heroic fool," he said. "I'm a professional…I have my ways."

He returned to cleaning his gun, rubbing some smudges on it.

Enough courage had finally coalesced for me to ask him, "Why did you follow me?"

He groaned, stopped his polishing, and set his entire gaze on me.

"Like I said. I am on a gravely important case. I can't have some scared kid go and ruin all my work. Now you have two options. One, you keep what you saw last night secret, say nothing of it ever, or two, I make you go sleepy-bye, you wake up, remember nothing of me, no sign of me ever having been. What's it gonna be?"

I didn't trust "go sleepy-bye", so I replied bluntly, "One."

"Make sure you do. Just make sure of it."

I'm sure he'd excuse me now for putting this whole fiasco in, considering...

With that concluding remark, he turned and walked away from me, pocketing the gun.

Seeing him as the way out of the forest, I immediately began to follow him - or I would have if the pain hadn't grown immense, causing me to topple forwards. I cried out what must have sounded like perhaps the most pathetic thing he had ever heard, because his heavy metallic footsteps came stomping towards me. Soon a pair of black arms had flung me onto a green jacketed shoulder.

I began to beat my fists into his side, yelling: "Put me down! Put me down!"

"I'm taking you home, so shut up and stop that!" he snarled.

I did.

Through the forest he walked, surprisingly calmly. Whether or not it was part of his character or to torture me, I don't know. I tried to strike up conversation with him, like whether or not he was going to tell my parents of my little "adventure" or the scuffle I'd had with him, but all I received was a grunt in reply. On the road it was much the same fare. I had given up by this stage, and was more worried about what to do in regards to my parents.

Kippo came into view ahead - even though my back was turned, I knew by the road behind us it had. He set me down on my feet on a small rock, and did what I feared was coming: withdraw the gun.

He pointed it at me, and I cowered, but he had moved it to a point to the left of me. A beam of red light exited it. I turned and watched as a rabite was hit, smack between the eyes, before collapsing as life exited its little yellow fluffy body. He then thrust a vial into my hands, filled with blue liquid, before silently turning and walking off towards the village - no goodbyes.

I looked suspiciously at the vial, wondering if it was a final trick to kill me. I looked around to see if Multehx was still there, but he had vanished. I held the vial up to the sunlight - it didn't change colour except become a more brilliant blue. I removed the cork lid and was greeted with a smell much like that of a doctor's surgery.

"Come on, Dy, he wouldn't have done this much just to kill you," I assured myself before I tipped its contents into my mouth.

The taste was cold, and it moved thickly into my throat, but the taste wasn't particularly bad - in fact, it was pretty good, if I remember rightly. My legs suddenly felt a lot better, so I got up, and began to walk. Right into Rumpil.

"There you are!" he cheered jovially. "Your parents have been worried sick about you."

"I bet they have," I muttered.

"They have. Come on, I'll take you home."

My parents were happy to see me, and had the masked smiling faces. After Rumpil had left, Kara told me to go upstairs and wait for her. She came a minute or so later, and took me to my room, and sat me down on my bed.

"Where did you go?" my mother asked me, angrily.

"Trying to get to Nase's, didn't want to wait for a train," I muttered.

"Why?"

I took a deep breath and said, "I…I broke into a guest's room, and…he nearly killed me."

"That explains why the key to his room went missing, then."

My mother then showed me a few bills of money and a note saying "For the bed".

"That part of it?"

I nodded.

"Well, at least he did the paying for you."

There was silence for a little while.

"Do you know how worried your father has been?" she asked me.

I shook my head.

"You'd better talk to him."

So I did. He did exactly the same thing as Kara - bring me up and seat me on my bed. Unlike my mother, who stood over me, he sat down on Ark's old bed, and looked at me.

"I don't want you to ever pull a stunt like that again, please," he said, his eyes downcast. "Do you want to know why?"

I nodded.

He sighed and took a breath or two.

"Dyluck, you don't really know much about my side of the family, really, do you?"

"No."

"Well, I don't talk much about it, because…well, you'll probably see why. Your mother knows about this, as it happened not long after we got married. Dyluck, you have an aunt on my side of the family - Aunt Claudia."

"Really?"

Reuben nodded.

"What's her middle name?"

"Mitsukai. Blue skin. She married a handsome yellow chap by the name of Reinhard…Reinhard…Hiro, I think…now what was his last name…damn, I can't remember."

It's puzzled me to this day why he couldn't remember the last name of his brother-in-law. What he told me next deepened the mystery further.

"I think they had a Koyoshi, can't remember if it was a boy or a girl."

"I have a…cousin?"

"I'm not so sure on that," Reuben replied sadly.

I looked at him, puzzled. I was sure I knew what came next.

"A few days after your mother and I got married, they went on a holiday to the Western Continent. They were killed by some dragon creature."

"All of them?"

"We think so."

I fell silent for a moment before Reuben continued.

"It's as if my family is cursed, Dyluck," he shook his head. "My father, Spekkio, was orphaned at a young age. I lost my sister. I've lost Ark. You've lost Ark…and Returin, I guess."

"Ark is still alive, Dad," I replied bluntly, firm in my belief.

He waved his hand and slapped it back on his knee.

"Perhaps," he sighed. "Maybe only in our heads, or somehow he survived and can't get home. I don't know."

It brought a smile to my face to see him have some faith in my belief.

"Anyway, Dy…I don't want you to wander around for some time, especially after this."

"So, I'm grounded?"

Reuben nodded.

"Oh."

With my wings clipped, it gave me the opportunity to do some more study. At least it got me through my Mana Development exam.