Roadtrip

Morty’s scythe descended on Chouji’s wrapped-up body. But much like Shimada’s scythe had phased through the hospital room door, Morty’s phased through Chouji’s flesh and blood while still slicing the bandages, tubes, and various medical bits.

Quick work. Chouji was out of bed, standing on his own two bare feet in less than a minute. The hospital floor was cold and sterile and stung his soles, yet somehow it made him feel alive. After pulling back the blinds, he gazed through the window and was met by an almost empty parking lot at night. The moon was high in the sky.

He looked back at the bed, now a frenzy of slashes, gauzes, and bed foam. Then he looked himself over once more. His skin, his muscles, every part of his body was back to normal. Better than normal, actually. There was a strange vigor, as if all anxieties that had once gnawed away at him were now expelled.

“Come on now. We should… we gotta get out of here.” Morty said. He was already standing by the door, hopping from one foot to the other. 

“Did you have some place in mind?” Chouji asked.

“We need to leave before someone else tries reaping you. Not every Reaper is as easy going as Shimada-senpai.”

Chouji pulled at his loose clothing and glanced at his exposed feet.

“I’m still in a hospital gown,” he said. “I don’t have underwear. I don’t even have my shoes. Won’t that arouse suspicion?”

Chouji groaned.

“W-Well, what do you want me to do? Huh? We can’t go back to the front desk and ask for your personal effects.”

“You could steal them without anyone noticing.”

“No, I could sneak in without anyone noticing. I can only interact with things if I become tangible,” Morty said. “So I need to become visible to bring you your shoes and whatever. Now hurry!”

He hissed those last words through gritted teeth and peeked his head out into the hallway. Completely empty. 

“Coast is clear.”

Morty motioned for Chouji to exit, keeping his head out in the hallway.. Nothing. He beckoned again, this time harder. There were shadows dancing at the far end of the hall. It could have been nurses, about to round the corner. But it could have been something else.

Morty whirled back to face Chouji.

“I said the coast is clear!”

Chouji wasn’t even looking at Morty or the door. He was facing the bed, hand stroking his chin. And since he was facing the bed, Morty got a full view of the hospital gown’s open back. Chouji was indeed not wearing underwear. 

“This bed will most certainly attract unwanted attention,” Chouji said, not noticing Morty’s blushing face or his sputtering. “What are we going to do about it?”

“W-Well, I, uh, I was going to do nothing. A-And just leave it alone. But maybe I can brainwash the nurses.”

Chouji turned around with a quizzical look.

“Maybe? Maybe you can brainwash the nurses? Is that something Reapers can do?”

“I-I-I dunno. Probably. It sounds probable.”

“What about my medical records?”

“I’ll, uh… forge them?”

“And my parents? And my friends? Won’t they try visiting me?”

Morty pulled at his hair and gritted his teeth. His eyes filled with an icy fury that reminded Chouji that this was, for all intents and purposes, Death himself standing before him.

“Ughhhh, stop! Stop making this so complicated! I messed up, okay? I messed up big time, and—and I’m trying to get you out of this situation. But I’m new to this, to being a Reaper, to reaping, all of this. So please just go along with it. I’ll figure something out. I promise.”

Those same cold eyes grew warmer and warmer during the ramblings until at the end they had returned to their gentle, almost scared look. Something about those eyes, against all logic and reasoning, made Chouji believe him.

Footsteps echoed from down the hall.

Morty rushed to the door and peeked his head out for an instant. The look he gave Chouji said everything.

All the hours spent playing video-games had sharpened Chouji’s instincts for this moment. In mere seconds countless strategies filled his brain and he attempted to parse the next logical step. But there just wasn’t enough information. He had only woken up less than half an hour ago, and now he was involved in schemes greater than his own reality. There were too many moving parts, too many unknown variables.

He looked at Morty, who had his brow scrunched and his eyes darting from side to side. He was also crunching numbers and making decisions of some kind. And though he wasn’t perfect, he was the best they had.

Chouji put his hand on Morty’s shoulder, making him yelp in surprise. 

“I trust you,” Chouji said.

Morty’s eyes softened and he nodded. He put his hand on top of Chouji’s.

And with movements faster than the human eye could comprehend, Morty hefted Chouji up and tossed him through the glass of the window.

~⚔~

“That’s my bad,” Gina said. “I shouldn’t have put a complete newbie on the first shift on nightwatch.”

“It’s all good,” I said, my face smushed against planks.

I’m not sure if you’ve eve been tied up and tossed into a rickety wagon, but I wouldn’t recommend it. I was lying with my ass in the hair and my hands bound behind my back. My weight pressed my right ear and side of face into the splintery wooden floor, oak if I wasn’t mistaken. I was nearly deafened by the creak of the wheels and the crunching of dirt as the carriage moved forward.
Moonlight seeped through the walls and floorboards, but it wasn’t enough to see Gina clearly. Based on her blurry silhouette, she was sitting upright. She told me that she had woken up half an hour before me. Kicking the walls, hitting the floor, and screaming all did nothing. 

“How did I not wake up from that?” I asked.

“Maybe it was the drinking the other night,” Gina said. Maybe it was because we physically so close, maybe it was because I couldn’t see her, but for some reason this conversation felt strangely intimate. I tried not to blush.

“I thought I turned off my drunkness though.”

“You can toggle off the effect of drunkness, but your body still has to process the alcohol in your blood.”

When she said that I became aware of the throbbing in my head. I thought it was from every bump in the road going straight to my skull. Maybe it was both.

“Ugh. That sucks.”

A bump in the road made us temporarily airborne. Gina landed on her butt with a wince. I landed back on my face.

“Life ain’t fair,” she said.

A few more minutes passed on in silence. My entire body was sore from holding this curled-up position. Despite my discomfort, the words we just shared continued to simmer in the back of my mind.

“The other night?” I muttered to myself. There was something odd about that phrasing. I summoned a few more brain cells from the dark recesses of my groggy mind. Why would you say that?

“Why would you say that?” I asked. Gina said nothing. “Why didn’t you just say last night? Why the other night?”

Despite the darkness, I could tell Gina was looking away from me.

“Gina?”

The desperation in my voice won her over against her trepidation. With a sigh, she said, “I’m not entirely sure what they hit you with. It could’ve been magic or simply you recovering from all the alcohol. But I woke up maybe five hours before you did. And when I woke up, the sun was already going down.” 

A few more brain cells rushed in, but I wasn’t piecing it together. Sun going down? We just set up camp right after sunset.

“What are you trying to say?” I asked.

I heard a rustle as Gina turned her head. I saw faint glints of emerald in the darkness as she looked at me.

“We’ve been trapped in this carriage for almost a day, Daisuke.”

I sat up. At least I tried to, forgetting about my hands tied behind my back. It just made me off-balance and smack face-down into the floor again.

“A whole day?!” I said. “No. No no no no no. That can’t… So we only have…?”

“Three days left.”

The sound of the wheels and the road were gone. It was just the blood rushing through my ears, the heart beating in my chest. Time was a finite resource, especially for me. And to lose that much, so quickly and unexpectedly was sickening.

Gina noted my despair, my pathetic, confused sputters.

“Like I said. Life ain’t fair.”

“But… But the visions. Coral’s visions,” I said. “We were supposed to get help from Half-Sword Dave.”

She scratched her head.

“Her predictions are always true, but not always straight-forward. You saw half a sword right? His signature weapon. It didn’t have anything to do with Half-Sword Dave allying with us or even necessarily helping us. Those were assumptions that we made.”

“Are you saying we were supposed to get kidnapped?” I asked.

“Well,” she said, shrugging, “I’m just saying it’s a possibility.”

I tried to not let my negative thoughts get me down. I failed. Every day, hour, second we have is precious. And I just wasted a whole lot of them. Gina herself said it wasn’t my fault. I got snuck up on. But I wish I could have done more then. I wish I had turned around and revealed to them that I was a sorcerer, that’s right, a goddamn sorcerer. But how could I. I didn’t know the first thing about surviving in this world.

“Who even kidnapped us? And where are they taking us?” I asked.

Unsurprisingly, Gina said, “I have no idea.”

The next hours in the carriage passed without any fanfare. Every now and then one of us would come up with an escape plan, attempt to put it into action, fail, and go back to moping. It was hard to do anything with your arms and legs tied up.

When the carriage slowed to a halt, Gina and I looked at each other. It was still dark outside, yet colored light now shone through the cracks. The back of the wagon was yanked open, and the sudden change in brightness made us both wince. Blinking, I saw a guy in the hood: the same guy that I didn’t see back in Tyro Town. Remember that? Turns out it was the same guy. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

He stepped into the back of the cart, making it creak and rock from his weight. Two muscular, scarred arms reached from underneath the cloaks. We were both grabbed, each with one hand. Despite our protests, he threw us out of the vehicle and we landed on the ground with thuds and groans. But when we recovered and looked around us, we were at a complete loss of words.