Chapter 38: Naruto Run To Outrun The Bullets

Mato lowers his hand-crossbow as Demarcus scoops the brown and green-clad Cy in a hug.

“You stupid son of a bitch. At least you kept your promise.” Demarcus whispers into Cy’s head.

Cy looks stunned for a moment, before patting Demarcus’ arm.

“Yeah, man, sure did.”

Izzy stares at the two, either judgily or appraisingly, depending on who you ask.

Her head tilts and her curly black hair flops past her new— rather comfortable— wyvern-leather jacket. She stares at Cy, seeing how awkward he is at this moment, as he probably well should be, but squints looking at his face.

She shares a look with Mato, and the two of them aren't certain they both saw the same thing, but they silently communicate that they did see something.

For Izzy, it's the fact that Cy doesn't seem as comfortable with Demarcus. Awkward and unsure— which he has been, just hiding it beneath cavalier superciliousness and bravado, but not hiding it now. Just distant.

Mato, however, notices the addition of several new burn scars on the young man's face, as well as the shorter, shaggy, ‘long top, short sides’ hairstyle he now wears instead of his previous shoulder length hair. Mato notes the signs of time passing, but not the signs of age. Then again, Cy was still very young— not to mention Mato being 20-30 years younger than when he died. Regardless, Mato can't tell how long Cy has been away from them.

Cy breaks from the hug, clearing his throat. “Missed you too, bud. But c'mon, there's a mining town nearby, predominantly Dephi and Dwarves. You guys need showers.”

Cy waves them forward, and the group follows. Demarcus walks, overwhelmed with thoughts and emotion, while Izzy and Mato silently converse with their eyes.

Demarcus approaches Cy, uncertain what to say.

Should he give him more hell for what he unilaterally decided?

How long did he spend without me?

What's happened that makes him seem so… off?

“So, how long has it been?” He finally lands on.

Cy turns a glance over his shoulder to look at him, not having to turn nearly as far without his long hair hiding his face.

Cy thinks he has a poker face, but Demarcus can read him like a book. He's uncomfortable, and uncertain.

Izzy slips a hand into her bag and Mato nods.

“I— don't actually know. Time is… fickle.”

Demarcus’ stomach lurches. How much has his Cy changed?

Izzy takes a different approach.

“You've still got that [Sense of Timing] skill don't you? Or did you graduate from being the world's worst clock to what? The world's worst hiker? How long has it been since you last saw us?”

Cy hesitates for a moment.

“Well that's the thing, isn't it. I saw you guys just yesterday. But, ya know, different yous.”

Izzy slyly glances at the golden statuette of the pharaoh she pulled from her bag. The one that acts as a lie detector. She watches it quickly tilt from left to right— the truth.

Demarcus is unaware of Izzy and Mato's suspicions, more focused on if this makes the time he spent away better or worse? Demarcus can't help but feel slightly petty, wanting Cy to be lonely or depressed from missing him. But if he spent all that time away hanging out with some future Demarcus, it makes sense why he wouldn't be.

Demarcus was always good at being understanding, empathizing and all that. Patience. He was never so good at being able to pin down exactly what he was feeling and why. Usually, he'd just default to saying that the specifics didn't matter, but just to do the right thing with what he's feeling.

Right now, he knows he's conflicted and confused. Not sure what to feel about all of this, so for now, he’ll take it as it comes.

Mato jogs back up to the group from where he had lagged behind to examine a tree.

“Well, we’re in a coniferous forest, higher up, either on a mountain or near one. Also looks like we're in the summer in somewhere that gets harsh winters.”

“The troubling thing is I don't know what that is.” Mato says, pointing back and into the forest behind them, where he jogged up from.

Izzy and Demarcus stare down the direction he's pointing in. Cy just turns and watches them, face intentionally blank, hiding a small relief.

Izzy tilts her head.

“The— trees?”

“Yep. I worked in an alpine coniferous forest for 40 years. I know every kinda tree in there and all the ones that could be. That is not any tree I know of, and I'll show you why.”

Mato ushers them closer and approaches the tree.

“Look’it this bark.” He says, pulling at a small loose strip of the thick spiky bark.

“The texture ain't nothin’ I've seen before, and it's got layers like birch but— almost a centimeter thick each. But here's the nail in the coffin.”

Mato points up and into the branches, where hairy melons dangle from certain branches

“What in the hell is that?”

“That is a stabmelon and this is a spine tree— Kind of an unintentional pun for us English speakers— the tree evolved to have a symbiotic relationship with a species of deer called a Grey Stab. Which, I'm pretty sure was named that cuz someone misheard the word ‘Stag,’ but it's apt. Big ass deer with huge pointy antlers. They eat the fruit by stabbing it and drinking it, and they shed their antlers by scraping them against these trees. The tree then eats the fallen antlers.”

“Good find Mato. These things are good.”

Cy lifts his wooden staff and a creaking sound builds as the tree leans a branch down for Cy to snag the stabmelon. He stabs a belt knife into it, drinks from the hairy melon, then raises it for the group to try. Izzy and Demarcus look grossed out but Mato hesitantly holds out a hand and Cy passes it to him. The juice is sticky, and a sour-sweet. Like a more bitter apple juice.

Mato and Cy pass the fruit back and forth as Cy speaks.

“We're halfway up a mountain range called Dorghir’s Hills on the eastern border of unclaimed lands and a sorta self-governing place called the Flegish Frontier.”

“The place we're going to is a mining town just called ‘Shaft 6.’ They never bothered to rename it. Mostly northern Dephi and Dwarves but it's got an adventurer's guild and a decent trading post cuz the mines have good ore but also a decent amount of monsters.”

“I'm sorry, did you say Dwarves?” Izzy asks, the word finally registering the 2nd time she heard it.

“Yep.” Cy replies, stepping wide suddenly.

“Blinken's den by the way. On our left.”

The group follows his lead and walks further to the right.

“But, Dwarves?” Izzy asks once again.

Mato asks for clarification.

“Are we talkin’ ‘bout The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings Dwarves or… little people?”

Cy chuckles. “They'd be little people either way. But I'm talking about a fully fledged race of stout bearded people. Dwarves.”

Mato leans slightly and Demarcus ducks down as color is visible through some of the treeline ahead of them.

“Weirdly enough though,” Cy continues, “they’re not natives.”

Mato quirks an eyebrow and Cy nervously rushes to elaborate.

“I mean that they're not from the Wider World. They're from our world— our universe.”

The bark and leaves obscuring their vision grow sparse and they pass through a treeline, and they are suddenly standing at the edge of a small mining town. The sounds of life and work barely reach them from the base of the steep mountain the town is built into the side of. From afar, they can see a smattering of people, with two types standing out in juxtaposition to each other; tall, 4 armed humanoids with white manes of hair, and short, stout, bearded humanoids largely clad in unfamiliar and esoteric suits of armor.

Lights and movement bombard the eyes of the group as the town turns and breathes before them. Machinery and industry foreign to them embedded into the town itself and churning away.

“They may have similarities to fantasy Dwarves— but they're not. They're aliens.”

***

Scab Cy and I crouch behind an overturned merchant’s cart, far from the imploding eastern gate.

It is an absolute warzone that I can't quite tear my eye from. Hundreds of armed Naga taking position and firing ballistae, bows, crossbows— and I swear I hear a gun— as the sky alights like fireworks with conflicting magic battling in the air. Immense beings of stone and sand fight, and creatures of pure magic put their very essence into defeating their foes.

But, despite the djinni— who, I would assume, should be able to grant literal wishes— the forces aligned with me are winning.

Most of the mages fighting on my side are just future versions of myself— and I watch as three send explosions of magic and fire that engulf an enemy position. The screams of the dying guards are lost in the din. But there are plenty I don't recognize.

A colossal man made of stone bricks brings a sweeping fist across the battlements of the 30 foot walls, and the arm collides against a sputtering blue magical shield built into the walls— those that are still standing.

I watch as—

Fingers snap in front of my eye, startling me from my stare.

“Pay attention.” Scab Cy says.

A thin bubble of anger rises in my chest and quickly dies when I immediately remember my surroundings. I settle for a snide comment.

“How are you such a dick? We're the same guy! Am I really like this?”

“Yeah, ya kinda are. You'll come to realize that future you is the biggest asshole you'll ever meet, and past you the biggest idiot. But don't worry, that doesn't say anything about present you. You're infallible in every way.” Scab Cy snarks.

“But focus up. When I give the say-so, we're gonna have to sprint through the gate.”

I look incredulous. “We're gonna, what, just run through there? The active warzone? We'll get swiss cheesed! What, do you expect me to put my arms behind my back and Naruto run to outrun the bullets?”

“If you think it'll help.” He says, not even looking up from where he stares at the timepieces strapped to his left forearm.

“But no. We'll have a window of opportunity. Just keep your head down.”

“How long is the—”

“Now!”

Scab Cy yells, snapping to standing and vaulting over the wood of the overturned stand. I curse and race around the side to catch up with him.

My blood pounds in my ears and the booming wall of sound in front of me grows louder until it's only indistinguishable noise and my breathing.

My gaze darts about, and as I get closer the details of reality get cast into horrific light. Entrails and blood splattered against the side of the wall, scales and skin sheared off against sharp edges of debris, indistinct and incomplete humanoid shapes lost in the rubble. My eye locks onto those of a dying crocodilian Naga, meeting my gaze as his own fades, holding tightly to something embedded into his chest. His mouth moves, but I hear nothing.

Something whizzes past my head and I duck. My head stays low and my vision stays forward. My world becomes just the back of my future self, 10— 11 feet ahead of me, as my body does its best to traverse the burning ground beneath me.

Scab Cy is slightly faster than me, and certainly more experienced at navigating this kind of uneven ground, but my fight or flight brain has the dial turned all the way to ‘flight’, and every disparate part of the sundered pork in my skull desperately yells down the halls to each other, trying to coordinate my movements to escape without dying.

My toe stubs against a brick painfully, and I go stumbling, but my legs stay pounding despite my pinwheeling arms. The seconds scrape by like hours, and a flash of metal passes my periphery in a moment. This harried and uncertain escape is one of those paradoxical moments in time where the seconds feel like an eternity, and ends in the blink of an eye.

Someone screams behind me, and another version of me steps out to my right, casts some spell and I feel a humid boggy heat behind my back.

My breath heaves and my gaze stays locked on the version of myself tasked with escorting me out of this alien hell, desperately trying not to lose him in the chaos. My footsteps slap against the paved road leading towards the gate behind me, until Scab Cy leads us sharply off it down a slight decline and my feet plod against sandy dirt.

In my peripheral, I see the main road and the vague yellows and browns of a desert around us— then, sharp blues in sudden contrast, appearing around us. Scab Cy's running slows and he begins looking around hesitantly as he raggedly breathes. I do the same.

We managed a greater distance from the gate than I'd have expected— some spell still in effect on us buzzing in the soles of my feet. Now several hundred feet from the city that I see still burning in the distance, we stand on the edge of a desert as it transitions to savannah. Dirt mixes with blown sand, held together by the roots of tough brush and sparse hardy trees.

All around us, on distant hills and dunes, among the trees, are various versions of that same young man. The clothing differs on occasion, but the blue frock coat and eyepatch seem to stay the same no matter what. Scab Cy's eye flits between them as his breathing slows, and I look back to the city.

The city still crumbles, the tops of distant buildings caving in, the great magics of their walls firing and flickering. From afar, I can still see the specks of blue that denote various selves still fighting, yet beginning their retreat. We made it out of the city.

The versions of myself around me currently don't seem to be here for the fighting, or even for our defence.

I watch as one falls to his knees in the distance, sobbing something screamed to the sky. Another version of myself walks over and pulls flasks from a tear in the air, before sitting with him.

On a distant hill I see a version of me appear. He steps out of the air already in a dead sprint, locked onto my position. The air shimmers near him and yet another me appears and tackles him to the ground. I watch them wrestle for a moment.

Two Cys sit in lawn chairs with drinks and snacks, just watching and laughing to themselves.

Dozens of Cys from across time gather around us, far in the distance, just watching. Some stand with people I don't recognize. Some stand alone. The solemnity on most of their faces is confusing and… concerning.

I finally have the nerve to ask about it.

“Hey, uh, Cy. What's happening? Why are they watching us?”

He looks around, a mistyness to his eye before he takes a shuttering breath to steady himself. He looks me in the eye, and deep beyond it. And I jerk back a bit from his intense gaze.

“This is it.”

“This is the beginning. The start of it. Of course we come back here.”

He looks around to some of the ones fighting, or on their knees.

“Some hoping they can stop it, most of us just to remember. Or bear witness.”

Suddenly, with a violent rending of the air a short distance away, a man steps out from a blink in reality.

He's a large man. Tall, wide. Easily described as ‘a brick shithouse.’ He's clad in a full suit of silvery blue plate armor, which the sun glints off of as if afraid to touch it. The armor is enclosed, near completely, and has a few modern touches to the traditional plate armor. Namely, a place to insert and feed compressed and stored air. A purple cloth tabard drapes over the front and back of the armor, pinned in place by the large round pauldrons. On the front is a simple symbol, sewn in gold, of an hourglass on its side. The tabard’s longer skirt ends abruptly at the waist, jagged edges and wisps of thread show how it was torn. His helmet is enclosed; a great helm with a flat top, with reinforced tubing down the sides leading to the space for an air canister.

The helmet turns to me, and though it is completely enclosed and the tinted glass of the eyeslots look like black voids, my heart seizes when they land on me. He begins walking, calmly, towards me, unsheathing a long and wide sword from an ornate and elaborately carved sheath from his side. The sword leaves the metal sheath with a ring that deadens all other noise, and seems to echo through my mind. The sound causes a building sense of deja vu in the passing seconds, tainting the newly minted memories. The sword seems to drink in the light— no, not quite. It's as if the light touches it incorrectly. The glint and shadow of it misaligned from everything around it, as if the sun is hitting it at a different angle than everything else. Giving the impression that it's poorly photoshopped in. Out of place.

The end of the long and wide sword is not pointed, but flat. An executioner's sword.

I try to defile this moment by speaking, and my mouth is dry. I need to cough but my body refuses. I eke out the words.

“Who—?”

“Aurelius Carafa. Class currently unknown, to me, but a paladin sworn to the Church of Eternity. One of the only other time travelers to ever exist.”

“He's here to kill you.”

My eye snaps free of the approaching man and whips back around to my future self behind me.

Before I can voice my shock, before I can crack some joke, before I can even think about how my future self’s presence proves my survival— before everything— my head turns slowly back towards the executioner. Or, at least, in his direction.

The world goes silent, down to the insects and the heartbeats. Nothing and no one moves but two. The armored man steps back for a second, expectant of what's happening before him as the air shimmers, and someone steps out.

It's me. Of course it's me. But the man that stands between the approaching paladin and me is not the same boy who stares, in numinous, terrifying awe. My brain rends itself, trying to understand. It knows there's something more to him, but can't see it, straining against the hallucinated shadows in a lightless room, standing too close to a hidden-eye painting.

The Cy that stands out there looks different, but not drastically. His hair is back, he stands relaxed— or tired. Humbly.

He speaks to the paladin, and the paladin responds. Their conversation is quiet and unheard at first, but grows louder as the armor gesticulates more dramatically.

This future Cy flicks a finger and the world around them grows silent, suffocated by a spell. The paladin yells at him, nearly takes a swing, and I see this future Cy grow slightly frustrated, but that is drowned by an oppressive sorrow upon him. He yells back, despair in his throat, and the two are suddenly still. Small words are exchanged as they stand, shoulders hunched, their eyes look away, and around them, before returning to each other.

A voice breaks from its reverie behind me.

“Oh shit. This is something we shouldn't see. Blackout juice. Blackout juice right now!” Scab Cy yells, and immediately shoves a hand into his bag and fumbles with the cork in a dark potion.

My chest feels light, fuzzy, and it takes me a second to understand, before I panickedly unclasp my bag and stutter over questions.

“Shit. You're drinking too?!” I ask, as I watch the bottle get raised to his lips.

“It's in my future too. Now DRINK!”

“How much?!”

Scab Cy takes a swig, and stares up at the sky, having only a moment before he collapses and the bottle clinks against the ground next to him to say;

“It doesn't matter.”

I look at him on the ground, and then chance a glance back towards the two titans behind me.

They're both looking at me now, and it's like staring at the horizon where the sky meets the sea. The setting sun and its shimmering reflection like eyes. Eyes that wait for you to turn away to blink.

I drink, and the two suns meet, before one sets.