A few days earlier within the cozy dim interior of Nexus, several minutes after Jin left to confront the doctor, Skouter sat staring at Emilia's sleeping form.
"I sometimes wonder what Jin would do if Emilia suddenly disappeared, since we can't bring him back another way."
"Don't say morbid things like that, Scoots," Sadie frowned and elbowed him lightly. But then she walked closer to Emilia, touching her forehead to check her temperature.
"Yeah, but it's still a valid thought to think about when-"
"Master Skouter and Lady Sadie, I'm afraid to say that while Jin is out there tending to our guests, more of them have arrived from the north and seem to be heading our way. If it isn't too much trouble, may you take care of them?" Walter interrupted Skouter, his cool and calm eyes focused on Aroa.
"Don't you usually handle it, old man?" Sadie furrowed her brow while looking at Walter.
"The group up north has only triggered one sensor consistently, two at most, while at least three sensors are lighting up west near Jin. I normally trust in his abilities to handle it, but he hasn't been the same lately, therefore I will stand here and guard Nexus from the larger threat."
"Tsk… Alright… I'll go handle it. Take care of Emilia, Scoots," Sadie reached up inside of her beanie and pulled down an eyepatch before she walked to the few blunt weapons lined up against a wall; like a mace, a Morningstar, several bats and wooden swords. Sadie grabbed a metallic baseball bat and headed towards the ornate exit.
"Ah. I'll join you, I can help in fights," Aroa quickly walked to Sadie, making up for her short stature with rapid steps.
Skouter nodded and lounged back on the velvet couch next to Emilia. He sighed deeply, leaning further into the soft cushion.
"You said Jin's different… I barely noticed. What exactly did you mean by that, Walter?"
"His eyes are more distracted. At this rate, he will crumble," Walter pulled out a contraption that looked like two beveled plastic boxes connected through a hinge, with a spherical depression in both of them, and began polishing the cavities with a handkerchief.
"His eyes? Hmm… I guess he does seem troubled lately, more angry than before, more active than his usual calm brooding, but it's… not that drastically different. Normally he shakes it off after a good night's sleep… Eh. Maybe the stress is finally catching up to him?" Skouter shrugged.
"Master Skouter, are you satisfied with sitting back while everyone's throwing themselves into danger for the sake of Nexus?" Walter stared at Skouter with a sharp look then slotted a radiant core in the machine and flipped one of the boxes to close it, revealing several small circular gaps peppering the outside of the device.
Skouter quietly looked back at Walter, wondering what kind of question that was since Skouter wasn't a fighter in any capacity and everyone knew it.
Walter took out a long golden needle and began poking the holes, making sure to pause in-between to carefully inspect the device as if every prod had a purpose.
"Master Skouter, your eyes are similar to Master Jin's. I see something in them that you two share, that's why I know if you applied yourself you can be as dangerous as he is, you can be as useful to Nexus as he is. Imagine, I would've sent you up north alone knowing you'd come back the victor, that speaks of your potential," Walter's eyes shifted back towards Skouter with a strangely menacing paternal look of expectation, his elegance replaced with a chilling coldness.
"Heheh… Wh-What are you saying, Walter? There's no way I can be like Jin. Isn't he some sort of super soldier working for a mercenary company? Shades of Grapes or something? That's so many years of experience between us… Besides, I don't want to kill anyone," Skouter felt uncomfortable seeing Walter look this focused and dangerously interested.
For some reason he felt like Walter wasn't suggesting it nor making casual conversation, it felt like the old gentleman was trying to persuade, or more accurately, intimidate him.
"Think deeply, Master Skouter. If the worst were to come true, if Jin, your strongest weapon, perished completely… then no one will be afraid because they'd have you around. If you don't kill your enemies, then they will kill the ones you love. The choice is always yours, kill or let everyone else die, that's the way our world works, unfortunately."
Skouter grimaced and shifted uncomfortably. While Walter worded it like some wisdom and dark truth of the universe, Skouter's intuition told him that it was a threat instead - a promise of bloodshed if he didn't comply.
Of course, Skouter knew he was probably overreacting because Walter's visage was just intimidating and regal, making it seem like his words were orders when they weren't.
"I-I think I'll go check up on Sadie and Aroa from a safe distance. T-Take care of Emilia," Skouter stood up and made his way to the exit with a nervous gait while Walter's cold eyes carefully observed him.
***
Skouter sat squatting near the cusp of a broken road, his green radiant eyes peering into the golden sea with a worried look.
"Brr… His eyes scare me… I wonder if Walter was a teacher in his past life… He said I can be as strong as Jin, huh… But that doesn't mean much when Jin still gets shot now and then. Super soldier or not, he's still taking hits and dying, lucky bastard… What am I going to do if I get shot? Locate the closest grave I can jump into?" Skouter laughed at his own joke then quickly sighed and stood up to resume jumping from land to shattered land while his mind wandered.
'Kill or let everyone else die…'
The image of a dead bald man flashed in Skouter's head, the man's own head busted open and bleeding while a dog sat panting next to him.
"I don't think I can do that… If Jin expires, then I guess it's been a good run for me. I had plenty of fun even after the world ended, so I'm not complaining much… Ah! But I still want to see Emilia's love-struck face before I bite the dust! If only she would confess to me… And maybe… maybe even…" Skouter's face melted into a deviously indulgent look while he fantasized of romantic depravities.
Skouter giggled and jumped into the cargo bed of a pickup truck, his foot landing on a rifle and a wild bundle of cords, easily slipping on them and falling backwards into the radiant abyss.
"Waaaait!" Skouter screamed and flailed as he fell, but then his body whiplashed painfully with a sudden tug, leaving him hanging upside down.
"Ugh… I lied… I'm not ready to die yet… Thanks world for humbling me…" Skouter chuckled nervously and looked at his leg that was entangled in a thin black wire.
"That doesn't look good at all… If Emilia was awake I could just 'call' Walter to transport me back. Aahh… I can still improvise and hope I don't die."
Skouter took off his backpack and positioned it slightly below him towards the glowing sea, holding it still for a few seconds before cautiously releasing and grabbing it a few times it to make sure it didn't slip off quickly.
The backpack slowly drifted down at the speed of a snail after he finally let go.
Skouter's experience with traversing the Shattered Lands taught him many oddities about the new laws of gravity, from how bigger chunks of debris and land only moved horizontally, to how fissure islands worked as teleporters, all the way down to the threshold.
Below a certain point, between the highest and lowest floating land, smaller objects lost their gravity and floated magically in random directions like the rest of the debris, unless they were subjected to the gravity of a bigger object.
But for some strange reason, Wishbearers fell and ran while unaffected by the invisible skewed current, including the objects they had on them. Yet once those objects were released they slowly followed the new laws of the world.
'My safety net has been set in case I fall…'
Skouter took a deep breath then clenched his abdomen and exerted his back to rotate himself up and quickly grab his leg.
Skouter reached further up and grabbed the rope constraining him. He curled his tied leg so he could pull himself up.
"Unff… Gah…" Skouter strained and gripped the back of the truck, pulling himself inside, his back slamming against the floor with a loud thud.
"Hahahah! Aaahh… I'm never talking about death again…" Skouter chuckled with a sigh then looked to his side at a hunting rifle with a scope attached to it, its body made of deep umber wood engraved with animal prints.
Skouter sat up with a child-like awe and picked it up.
"Oh. This looks exotic… Walter and Jin both had engraved guns, so they might like this."
'Master Skouter, you can be as dangerous as Jin if you apply yourself,' Walter's voice echoed through Skouter's head as he caressed the weapon's forestock with a thoughtful look.
Skouter shook his head and strapped the leather band connected to the weapon around his shoulder.
"I need to make it to Sadie and see how they're dealing with things… I'm taking it too easy…" he looked ahead while lowering his goggles to his eyes.
***
Skouter sprinted through the scattered pieces of junk as if he was a master in a beginner's obstacle course, he barely stopped to look at the next island or floating scrap, simply breezing through them as he was in his element, completely zoned in as he dashed, vaulted and swung through whatever came across him, akin to some wild wind spirit... or an impressive monkey.
Skouter jumped from a neon sign down to an armored truck and rolled into a crouch, quickly taking his goggles off.
"Right there? Whoa… What even happened here…?"
A great distance in front of him, on a large strip of some highway, numerous bodies were scattered around Aroa who stood near the edge staring down while throwing a rope at a suspended Sadie visibly frozen in time.
"Oh, this is bad… I need to go there and help!" Skouter panicked and quickly ran closer.
After making it to the third island, he noticed a disheveled man feebly standing up behind Aroa, as if he emerged from the corpses.
"Aroa! Behind you! Aroaaa!" Skouter shouted but he was too far for his voice to reach, almost held back by the strange way air traveled around them.
Skouter gritted his teeth in frustration and quickly glanced back at the hunting rifle strapped to his back, his best option became incredibly obvious.
Skouter didn't hesitate and quickly pulled the weapon to his side to look through the scope, aiming at the man with racing breaths and quivering hands.
"Align it, dammit! Just focus and…" Skouter took a deep breath as he tried to aim the weapon's shaking reticle on the man who was slowly pulling his handgun up, as if the man was exerting everything just to shoot.
A loud bark made Skouter jump and gasp, his eyes snapping open. He quickly glanced to his side at a large white dog panting happily at him. It had a thick fluffy double coat of fur, and it looked like a Samoyed dog thanks to its triangular ears.
"Oh… No, I… don't want to kill him… but Aroa… but Sadie…" Skouter looked at the canine with a dreadful and pained expression, but then he forced his sights back through the scope, his heart racing too much for him to steady his aim.
Despite his words failing to reach Aroa earlier, the explosive sound of gunshot easily pierced the air, making Skouter flinch. He quickly realized the man had shot Aroa while he spent so long trying to line up a shot.
Aroa cried out and let go of the rope. Yet her agonized eyes remained on Sadie's body to keep her stationary.
"You bastard!" Skouter's eyes narrowed hatefully and he quickly slammed his face against the scope and took an aggressively deep breath, this time he didn't wait for the reticle to completely halt on the man and just shot the second his sight hovered over him.
The bullet hit the man's shoulder and threw him down on his knees but he was still powering through the pain, weakly moving his arm back up.
"Dammit! Stop it!" Skouter quickly pulled the trigger again.
Click!
"Huh!? This stupid junk… Why is it…" Skouter quickly glanced to the rifle's side, at a metallic bolt sticking out of it with a spherical tip.
'Bolt-action sniper… So I need to pull this back to load the next shot,' Skouter gripped the small metal rod and tried to pull it back but it refused to budge.
"Tsk! Move! Is it jammed!? Why can't I pull it back!?"
Several gunshots made Skouter's blood turn cold as his eyes quickly darted to the man who held his gun outwards.
"No..." Skouter stopped breathing as his eyes carefully took everything in.
The man slowly slumped over and fell on his back while Aroa stared at him, her arm extended with a handgun in her grasp.
"He… died?"
Aroa quickly turned back to Sadie who was now even closer to the scorching sea.
"She killed him… I need to go help… I need to go!" Skouter rushed towards them as quickly as he could while the ethereal dog watched him with its tongue lolling out.
***
"Aroa!" Skouter jumped to the highway and ran towards her.
Aroa held her bleeding stomach with her tears threatening to block her vision, all while she held a rope with her other hand that she desperately tried to tie.
"Wait, I'll deal with this!" Skouter quickly grabbed the rope and tied it up into a lasso in record time, it was second nature to him.
Skouter expertly tossed the lasso around Sadie's body and pulled it tight before dashing to a nearby streetlamp and tying the other end to it.
"Alright, you can stop using your Wish, I'll pull her back."
"Okay…" Aroa nodded feebly.
***
Sadie sat on the guardrail with an annoyed expression while Skouter wrapped bandages around Aroa's exposed stomach.
"That Collection thing is really handy… I lost my bag and it had my first aid kit and some necessities, so I'm glad you had some to spare…" Skouter sighed in relief.
"You're… really skilled with your hands. I somehow assumed Emilia was the one who handled medical emergencies," Aroa stared at him as he tied the bandages up.
"She can't handle blood... Jin doesn't need it, Walter usually patches us up but he isn't always around and Saddy is… Saddy, so I had to learn it," Skouter smiled at Aroa while Sadie shook her head.
But then Skouter's eyes drifted to the corpses, noting how almost all of them had bullet holes in them.
"That aside… What happened, Sad woman? Aren't you supposed to be unkillable, like Jin?" Skouter grinned tauntingly at Sadie, now that they were safe he didn't feel as riled up as earlier.
"Tsk… Shove it… I didn't realize I couldn't see my own death with Aroa around," Sadie pulled down her eyepatch to reveal a thin concave mirror attached to it.
"Sorry...? Did I do something wrong?" Aroa tilted her head at Sadie.
"Nah, you're good. Normally, I can see what actions and moves lead to my death, so I always avoid them, but because you can save me if I fall off, I could only see those deaths if I tried to use my Wish on you instead… It was so confusing…" Sadie sighed.
"I didn't expect them to have people who can teleport…" Aroa looked down with a frown.
"Well, we all came out of this alive with more experience for the future, so next time won't be this horrible. Now let's go back, hm?" Skouter clapped once as if he was ending a scene.
"Ah. Skouter… thanks for the support. You saved me," Aroa held her palm up, generating particles of ivory that merged into a digital camera.
"Hm?" Skouter kept his smile while looking at her quizzically.
"My pistol was empty, so I had to reload… If you didn't shoot that man, I would've died today. So let me memorize this," Aroa aimed the camera at him and snapped a picture.
Skouter's smile faltered and he stood there quietly while looking at her, slowly drinking in what he did and what Walter told him.
"Come on, Scoots. Help me pick Arie up so we can go back."
"Oh. Right!"
***
When they went back home, Skouter, Sadie and Aroa had varying levels of shock and confusion as they stared at the crumbling remains of the front wall of Nexus and the bloodbath in the front yard.
There weren't any bodies around, simply destruction, scorch marks, blood and viscera, and crimson trails leading off the island.
Skouter's dumbfounded face was the most animated, his eyes bulging wide and his mouth stretched to their limits.
Sadie's brow scrunched as she tried to make sense of it all with a look of disbelief.
Aroa's lusterless eyes showed the least emotion but she still looked visibly surprised thanks to her raised eyebrows and lips parted.
Walter walked out of Nexus casually in his graceful buttoned shirt, with a pink apron on which had a large drawing of a cute heart. He looked the same as always while he pushed a white cleaning cart to the center.
Walter instantly pulled out a mop from it and squished its tips in the ground to wipe the blood off.
Walter's eyes drifted casually towards the group.
"Ah, welcome back. I am pleased you are all intact. Right in time too considering Jin began another acquisition mission."
"Right..."
***
Walter, Sadie and Skouter spent the next few days trying to fix up the front side of Nexus using cement, wood and whatever else they had to create a horrible yet reinforced abomination of a wall that Walter covered in a masterful layer of plaster and wood to paint over, hiding all the imperfections behind a well-crafted illusion.
All the while Walter worked with Skouter to direct Jin to the next batteries.
In their free time, Skouter, Sadie and Aroa played video games with each other or sat around talking while making food, occasionally checking on Emilia in-between, with Aroa assuring them that she would wake up eventually.
The days passed blissfully, filled with laughter as if the group never had any close shaves with death, but as the days passed, Skouter's dread only grew.
***
Skouter stood near the bar's counter with a grim expression as Walter packed a couple of black steel cases into a larger duffel bag.
"Only one bag this time? Is that enough for the orphanage?" Skouter tilted his head.
"I can only take the amount that Master Jin brings back, but this should be adequate for the children right now," Walter nodded and turned towards a cerulean door.
"Did Jin call you?" Skouter couldn't hide his worried frown.
"No. He's been silent after he made it to the two batteries south of him."
"I see… And Emilia is still passed out… Walter, I don't think he has enough time… What should we do?"
"There is nothing we can do, Master Skouter. Everything has unfolded in an unfortunate way, so ideally you should focus on what Nexus will do moving forward. I told you before, you have the potential to keep everyone around you safe in the same manner as Jin. If you wish to pursue it then I will help you, but it's your choice."
Skouter quietly looked at Walter, his lips slowly opened then closed randomly, trembling while his mind fumbled for words that refused to form.
"As always, I prepared enough energy cocktails in their usual spot, they should last everyone a few weeks. Take care, Master Skouter. Do think deeply about the future of Nexus."
Walter opened the ocean-hued door to a vast courtyard and walked inside while quickly closing it behind him.
"But wait, I can't become like him! I'm not-" Skouter ran to the door and opened it, revealing an empty closet behind it.
"Oh, right…"
Skouter stepped back with a deep sigh.
Sadie walked downstairs to the bar and looked at Skouter as he stood there with his shoulders slumped down.
"You okay, country boy?"
"Huh? Oh… It's just… Jin's cutting it really close. If my math is right, he should have three or two days now, but Emilia is still passed out…"
Sadie's expression slowly matched his.
"Maybe there's a way to wake her up? I'll go and see," Sadie walked back upstairs.
Skouter nodded and followed her with a frown, unable to keep his peppy energetic self when the idea of losing one of his friends was hovering over him.
The second floor above the bar housed their rooms with color-coded doors that had a plaque with a crude drawing of the room's owner. The floor even had two additional guest rooms, one of which was occupied by Aroa who saw them moving to Emilia's room and curiously followed.
Inside the salmon-colored door, within a room dominated by shades of pink, crimson and lavender, Emilia slept on top of a giant coral-hued canopy bed surrounded by silk drapes. Around her were several stuffed animals and plushies.
Sadie walked closer to Emilia and instantly slapped her, leaving a stinging scarlet mark on her cheek.
"Whoa! Easy!" Skouter winced.
"Hmm… Maybe water will do. Oh, hey Arie. Try shaking her awake until I'm back."
"Okay."
Aroa gripped Emilia's shoulders and shook her violently, flinging some of the stuffed animals around as she wiggled her from side to side.
Skouter grimaced and left the task to them while Walter's words danced in his head. Worst case scenario, he had to become Jin's replacement... and that felt like a tall order for someone like him.
"Hmm… Ah. I read about this before, Skouter. A sleeping princess can only be woken up by the kiss of true love," Aroa stared at Skouter expectantly.
"Huh? I'm not going to kiss a sleeping person," Skouter's cheeks radiated heat as he glared lightly to hide his embarrassment.
Aroa stared at him quietly, carefully taking in his words and reaction, and then she leaned closer to Emilia's face with her lips pursing.
Skouter's eyes widened and his face turned a brighter crimson.
Sadie walked in with a small azure plastic bucket with water swashing in it.
"Move, Aroa," Sadie pulled the shorter woman away and splashed the water against Emilia's face.
"Wait, her mouth's open, you're going to drown-"
Emilia's eyes shot open and she coughed out water before quickly rolling to her side to continue coughing.
"There, she woke up. Sorry for being rough, Emi. But Jin's going to die unless you do something."
Emilia's head quickly snapped back to Sadie.
"Wh-What? Jin's -cough- Jin's in trouble?" Emilia didn't waste a second and quickly jumped out of bed to extend her arms out, her touch making the air shimmer and dance.
With a tight embrace, she pulled the glimmering silhouette into a deep hug and heard a pleasant digital beep.
The mirage became more and more defined until it turned to Jin.
Skouter smiled and laughed in relief.
"Hahaha! You brought him back-"
Emilia gasped and quickly let go of him, stepping back to move away but it only made her fall on the bed.
Jin fell down on the ground with a wet squelching sound, half of his head mauled viciously, leaving it with several chunks of his brain missing.
Sadie walked closer and tilted her head with a grimace.
"That's a pretty nasty bite… But he's back. Thanks, Emi."
"Mhm..." Emilia covered her face with trembling hands as her shoulders moved up and down to the rapid rhythm of her labored breathing.