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Foreword:

Last three chapters were written sometime around late 2k8 or early 2k9. Either way, I re-read them and have convinced myself that they had *way* too much Deus Ex Machina in them. I'm not gonna re-write them, but I intend to cut down on that rather poor storytelling technique... besides, passing out and waking up or getting shot and waking up in hospital is kinda repetitive.

I'm not massively happy about how this 'bridge' chapter came out, but in the end it's ok for a bit of plot/charachter development for the next part.

And here we have it;

Long Ago (3)

Waking up in a hospital with a hole in your shoulder is pretty disconcerting, it's also a pain when it cuts through your muscle, and it's barely able to heal. One of my muscles had to be stitched back together, the bullets had managed to tear it rather than just make a bloody hole through it - and believe me, the aftermath can hurt just as much as the shot. It's pretty painful when you try to move a torn muscle when it isn't properly healed; I guess that's why they put my shoulder in some kind of brace that stops it from moving that way. I suppose I should be thankful the other bullets had come out cleanly, without any major problems.

I guess I kinda deserved it; I did kill six or so militia. Karma is a real bitch like that, and not in the female dog way. I guess you probably guessed that anyway, but that's a moot point when all's said and done.

So here I am, sitting in a hospital. Not an interesting scene, just some white walls, some white furnishings and some chrome or white machinery, a few clear tubes here and there and a nutrient drip or something. On closer inspection, it's just water - and it just occurred to me that my uni is going to be so pissed I didn't show up for all of whatever days I missed.

So that's how it is. I'm just whiling away the time in this hospital bed, half asleep and waiting for the visiting hours. I figure you'd get bored pretty fast if I continued my ramblings, so I figure I should just cut out the following three-ish hours.

Anyway, the visiting hours turned out to be pretty interesting. Jaine brought me a few books to read, most of them relating to our course that I'd managed to miss. Shae had visited, amazingly enough. He brought my notes from our dorm, along with my pacer, leads and eraser. I guess he figured I'd do some work from the books, or copy his notes or whatever.

As it happened, my writing arm was the one I'd got in a cast - my right arm which is also a pain because that's my gun and knife arm. Well, the good one anyway.

I guess things got more interesting when my two new 'friends' from the police force showed up. This time they were both fully clothed, thank god for that. Then again, they wouldn't have got into a hospital without at least some modest clothing.

"On the road to recovery, are we?"

"So it would seem."

"Any idea when that lab was razed, or why?"

"Apparently it was something to do with national security. Ironically enough, it was made for a similar purpose."

"This nation is screwed up. National security my ass."

"You know, I'm inclined to agree with you. There have been some whispers of some kind of war going on someplace. Apparently the war started at about the same time as that lab was made."

"So what, that place could've been used as an experimental genetic modification facility or something?"

"Well, that's what the IGES is about, or so they say."

The male policeman tapped his partner on the shoulder, and added some of his own speech to the mix.

"Anyway, we're mostly here to say thanks for your help, and we're also going to take you out of school along with Shae and Jaine for police protection just encase the militia somehow managed to get an ID on any of you guys."

"Take us out of Uni? For how long..? You know that cost us a ton to get into - I really want to finish my course."

"We made arrangements with the university, you'll have a broadcast of the lectures, and the tests will be sent to you by a courier or whatever method is preferred."

"In that case, I guess I can stay at home for a while..."

I said a little uneasily. I mean, why would I feel perfectly OK with the police offering protection? If anything, it certainly means something's really gone wrong.

Either way, I guess it'd give me some time to think about the events of the past few days. And come to think of it, the likeliness of all of what happens taking up only a few days was pretty startling. Although, I didn't count the time I spent unconscious, which I probably should.

"Oh, and by the way - we thanked the blue otter guy for his help pulling you out of that encounter. He's in intensive care right now, though."

"Jesus Christ, how many times did he get shot?"

"About eighteen bullets hit his arms alone. So if you count the torso and leg wounds, about fifty."

"How the hell did he survive that?"

"How did you survive two and a half hours of blood loss?"

The female officer asked rhetorically.

"I have no idea anyway."

"I know."

"Well, I guess I'll have to wait until I'm cleared to go. Kinda sucks that way - and I'll pay a visit to the blue otter on my way out. Poor guy."

I replied to him, giving the reptile a handshake with my free arm. Admittedly, it wasn't as easy as you'd think; my muscles were dotted with some holes a bit like Swiss cheese.

They departed pretty fast; I guess they were in a hurry anyway. It was pretty nice for them to take time out of their schedules to visit me, though. Before I start to ramble on again, I'm just going to get on with it.

Anyway, shortly after they left, Jaine came back into the room, and pulled up a chair. She had her books from the uni course she was taking; I guess she was working on something. Probably just another formative task.

"You should've seen our lecturer when he got back. He was pretty pissed off. We have a summative assessment task to do now, so he was pretty pissed when he found out you were in hospital-"

-Oh great. I was wrong. Anyway...

"-In the end he wound up accepting the fact, and he's given me your papers for you to read and whatever."

She finished, putting down what were evidently my papers onto the bedside table thing that the staff had organized for me. I guess I'd get around to it later, when I can actually write or type without having to put up with having pain from the stupid bullet wounds.

Jaine and I simply engaged each other in random chat for the following few hours before the visiting hours ended. Not much really happened then, just had some food put before me by the hospital staff.

It wasn't all that great, but I was still pretty hungry. And besides, what else was I going to eat? The staff? Not likely.

To be perfectly honest, that's about it for the rest of my stay here. Not much really happens other than the [rather frequent] visits from Jaine and or Shae, depending on what they're doing at the time.

My right arm was taken out of the cast after about a week, now that the muscle's healed sufficiently and the biodegradable stitches they used had dissolved or whatever. Some weird stuff they make nowadays...

Anyway, since my arm's been 'better' minus a few scars on it, I've been able to write - and with that comes the catch up of all of my studies - a royal pain in the ass, but it at least helps me pass the time.

The summative was pretty ordinary, just us to write a report, design a series of practical investigations to test a hypothesis we were to draw from our research, and just that kind of thing.

So, about three weeks later, I've been cleared to go, the staff are now one hundred percent sure I'll be fine. Took them long enough, shouldn't have taken more than a fortnight.

Back at my house now; I'm pretty sure that everything will end up fine from that incident in the end, which I'll make sure it does. Besides, everyone should be fine. Oh, right - the blue otter guy got out of intensive care a few days ago, his internal organs are all working fine, which is pretty lucky considering most of them had to be replaced.

Anyway, I managed to get most of my report done; I only have to write my summaries now.

"So, Shirai, can we actually go and do something tonight?"

Jaine asked me, flicking her tail over my work. I put my pen to the side of my papers, and put them back into their folder in their respective places.

"Jaine, is it really necessary to ask me about going out so often? I still have to finish up my work..."

I groaned.

She'd been getting pretty restless since she'd been cooped up inside the house we were sharing. I guess I can't really blame her; it was a pretty small house when all's said and done.

"Come on, Shirai! We don't have to be out for long!"

She half-whined, half-joked. It only really hit home when she gave me one of her dazzling smiles, the kind that she doesn't have often.

To be honest, I think I've only seen it a few times, one of them being when she found out we were in the same Biology course at the same university, the other time was... You know, I can't remember when that was, anyway.

"All right, ok... We can go out. Where do you wanna go?"

"How about we get something to eat and watch something at the drive in..?"

I smiled, but when all's said and done that happened to be one of our favourite pastimes, but we had to have free time to do that. Thankfully there was usually a good horror film on when we were free, but not always. I can remember the one time that we really didn't want to go; mostly because the film that was being shown was Twilight. To be perfectly honest, Twilight is not vampires, its fanged pixies. On the other hand, it does have a cult-like following for some reason, or so I'm told.

"So what movie's on?"

"Nothing that special, just something on Vlad the Impaler."

"Hey, the original Dracula. Sure, I'm up for that."

It figures that the one thing I remember from my high school's history classes was him; creative methods have never been more amusing -or for the rest of my class, sickening. After a few more minutes spent pulling on some shoes, and of course, hiding away some daggers and my Glock. Can't be too careful, right?

"So, when does the movie start?"

"We have about half an hour."

"Right. Wanna drag Shae along?"

"That'd be mean..."

"Aw, come on!"

"Well, as long as there's more blood to wave a stake at, and some seriously twisted psychology involved... which there is."

"Ok, I'll go and drag him out of his room."

"Remember to avoid waking him, all right?"

"Sure."

After a few minutes, Jaine and I loaded the semi-conscious Shae into the back seat (He was sleeping) and getting in the front of our car, we started to drive off.

We passed some streets, turned some corners and went through a red light accidentally on our way to the pizza parlour we'd opted to get our food from.

It's not like anyone was headed in the other direction, so we were fine. So, after pulling ourselves over and into a parking space, we got out of the car, and locked it before walking in.

"Hey, Shirai! What are ya doing out here?"

A familiar voice called from behind the counter. Apparently I know this person, although sadly enough he's the one person I'd have preferred not to see. Fucking Mark, showing up everywhere.

"Oh. It's you..."

I groaned.

"Well, not to be rude or anything, but we're only ordering. So can we get a pair of meat lovers' pizzas?"

"Whatever you say. That totals at 16 bucks."

"I thought customer service was supposed to involve decent English skills."

I laughed to Jaine, before handing over the dollar bills.

"You shoulda got Shae a vegetarian pizza."

"Now that's just a waste. We can share."

I replied to Jaine. Just like 'old times', when we'd do all kinds of stuff with each other, and usually drag Shae along. We fell out of those habits when we got into uni; there just hasn't been enough time.

After a few minutes of waiting for the pizza, we were finally able to leave with something to eat. Jaine was the first to start eating her pizza, but then again, she wasn't driving either. Eventually we reached the drive in, a pretty run down old place on the outskirts of town.

We paid the receptionist [if that term would even fit him] and continued into the old grounds. We put the three tickets in the front window, and considered waking Shae up. But then again, it's more amusing when he wakes up on his own because he freaks out a little.

So, as we used to, we wound up sharing a seat, with an open pizza box on the other seat. Oh, and Shae asleep on the back seat. He'd wake up pretty soon, if this was like any other time. To be honest, when the mouthpiece I'd put into my pocket started to beep slightly. What a bitch; we were just getting to a good bit. Anyway, I managed to extricate the device from my pants pocket, and activated it.

"Hello, Shirai. I'm afraid we have a bit of a situation over at HQ. Our main comms system has been knocked out by someone or something, and we can't reach other cities in our current state. Something you might be more interested in, though, is that we've found a professor of biotechnology dead in that facility from before. We managed to tie him to your universities' biology classes where he must have been speaking out about something-"

I sighed, wand Jaine certainly noticed something was wrong. But being the nice fox she was, she kept her words to herself for now.

"He was lecturing about our origin in general. Hope that helped. Look, sorry to be rude, but we're trying to watch a movie. Can it wait?"

"All right. Stay sharp, and if you need us, just call."

I 'hung up' the mouthpiece, and put it, and the denim cloth it was attached to back into my pocket.

"The guest lecturer is dead?"

Jane enquired somewhat plaintively.

"Yup. I'd jump to conclusions and blame the IGES. But it seems like there's some kind of conspiracy going on here."

Shae continued to sleep soundly in the back of the car while Jane and I continued to watch the movie. I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary, other than the eerily quiet atmosphere. Usually there were more rowdy people around. I dismissed the thought as it came, holding Jane close. I want things to stay this peaceful, for her sake. But for some reason, I get the feeling that they won't.