The Dream Shifter

Chapter 42

Hiroshi scratched his head a little puzzled and tried again with only the same results.

"…Hmm… This is getting me nowhere."

"Jun doesn't speak…"

Saki said slowly as she opened her eyes. She pulled herself up from the couch looking a little better than she had before.

'You won't find Yuki, though.'

"Hey, should you be moving like that?"

Hiroshi said dropping the bag and coming over to Saki's aid.

Saki pulled the blanket off of her dropping it on to the couch as she stood up on her own feet. She was tired of being an invalid that needed to be tended.

"I'm fine. I'm feeling a lot better now."

"You don't look it," said Hiroshi commenting on her appearance of a torn and dirtied school uniform.

All of the dirt on her face and body had been washed off, but it left the bruises and cuts that she had taken in order to get out. There was even blood soaked into her clothes from the glass.

She looked down at herself turning to look at everything she could so that she had a clear assessment. The movements were not slow or pained as she had remembered before.

'Probably not perfect shape, but I can do what I must like this.'

Saki looked up at Hiroshi stepping a foot towards him.

"I'm fine. I look worse than I am."

"You need to lie down."

Hiroshi put his hands on her shoulders pushing back on her making her hit the edge of the couch with her legs. He searched around the room trying to figure out where Ayumi was, who was supposed to be keeping Saki from doing anything stupid. Hiroshi struggled with Saki in getting her to sit on the couch but managed to succeed eventually. After panting from the effort, Hiroshi bent down and picked up the bag showing it to her.

"See, I've got medicine for you. It'll make you better."

"I already told you that I'm fine. I don't need it."

Saki looked at the bag quickly noting that there seemed to be an excessive amount of bandages.

'I'm not that badly injured. Come on, Hiroshi. Use that small brain you got to think.'

Hiroshi dropped the bag on Saki's lap staring down at her giving her a completely serious stare, which was a little atypical coming from him.

"Listen here. I'm not letting you go anywhere. This is the police's job, not yours. And you're injured, besides which. If I can beat you in a contest of strength then it's clear that you're in no condition to be moving."

Saki stared down at the bag having listened, grudgingly, to Hiroshi's argument and finding that he had a point. She narrowed her eyes becoming frustrated in her condition.

"Fine…"

Yuki and Ayumi stared at the door of the warehouse. Yuki had been trying to open it and look a little more useful, but Ayumi standing behind him could only sweat in embarrassment at his struggling. She waited until he gave up and slid down the front of the large sliding door that was meant to let in trucks for unloading.

"Done?"

Yuki glared back at Ayumi not liking the tone in her voice.

"Looks like it locked from the inside," he said trying not to look like a complete i***t for stating the obvious.

Yuki stood up facing the door getting a few steps away while lifting up his hands straight at the door.

"Guess it'll have to be taken down. HA!"

He tried to summon up his Rasou-ryoku power thinking that he could blow apart the door.

Ayumi had come to her limits of humoring him and stepped forward knocking him on the head with a stick.

"Stop your screaming. You need to stop reading that manga of yours. We're trying to get in quietly and not alert the enemy to our presence."

He had been cut off immediately by Ayumi and closed up his mouth looking a little bewildered and disappointed. The expression quickly changed to narrowed eyes and wrinkled brow.

"But the door's locked. We can't get in. And wouldn't he already know that we're here with how long we've been standing around? Why do we need to be quiet?"

"Use your head for once. We don't know where all of the people that he's kidnapped are. Blowing up the door could get them injured or killed. And I don't want to be broadcasting our entrance to him, even if he does know where we are. Being quiet is better."

Yuki became annoyed and agitated by the condescending tone that was being delivered at him. He crossed his arms stepping back another few steps.

"Well, how do you plan to get in without making a noise? You going to pick the lock?"

"Hardly."

Ayumi positioned herself in front of the door and closed her eyes. A blue wave pushed down her body and out of her feet issuing forth her Kino and her transformed clothes as well. The snowfield expanded around her filling out into the grass covering it all in a two-inch layer of snow as well as the door in front of her. The snow-covered and went through the door finishing in an arc that equaled the range of her field. She pressed her hands up against the hardened snow and pushed it through what used to be a solid metal door. The snow crackled and crumbled around her arms that pierced the wall. Her arms pulled out with her hands taking some of the snow with it leaving a gaping hole. Soon after she placed her hands back at her side as the cracks in the snow grew from the weakness that she created causing it all to crumble into a pile on the ground producing a wide archway into the warehouse.

Once it was over Yuki pulled his jaw back up closing his mouth and ran around to Ayumi's side turning glossy-eyed at her.

"Wow, Ayumi! That's so cool! Didn't know you could do that!"

Ayumi sighed in disbelief at his reversal in attitude.

"I told you about this before."

She stared at him for a moment realizing that little was getting through his head from being so excited by tearing down the door.

"Come on. Let's go. The enemy is somewhere inside."

Ayumi went on inside not waiting for him to follow. The warehouse interior was poorly lit and the sun from outside, coming through the hole she made, only produce so much. However, it was clear enough to her that the majority of the people that had been kidnapped where no longer in their cells. All of the cells on the far side of the warehouse were left with their doors open.

'What's going on here? Where are they?'

Yuki snapped out of his excitement when he caught up to the changing events. He rushed inside with Ayumi stopping well in front of her looking around the room. The view in the warehouse made it difficult for him to scan the room making it nearly impossible for him to find the assassin that was responsible for everything.

"Ayumi, where's the people that Saki talked about?"

"I don't know."

"I let them go," a muffled smooth voice said from the far end of the warehouse. The man approached from the shadows projected by the darkness.