Day One: Early Morning

[Belle Hibiki]

Kid Buu had learned a few things about the forest over the course of the last few hours. Unfortunately, none of them were pleasant. He brushed another low hanging branch out of his way and made a face. The branch rustled its soft leaves innocently, as if unaware that it could bring death swooping over Buu's head faster than the lickety-split of a scythe cleaving through flesh. Buu crouched and listened, cocking his head to the side. He heard only that ever-present nothingness, occasionally broken by the sudden distant rumbles of small thunderclaps - explosions, Buu realized - and the rarer but even more jarring scream.

Somehow when he had signed up he had been expecting a little more action; that definitely would have been more preferable than this. An enemy that could be seen wasn't likely to terrorize you, but an enemy unseen might leave you screaming at ghosts.

There was another explosion, closer this time, and Buu's fingers bit so hard into the strap of his satchel that he nearly pierced the hard-woven fabric with his ebony fingernails. Time to move, he thought. He hurried forward into the darkness, extinguishing the small bead of ki that he had kept lit on his fingertip for light as he went. The moon had long since evaporated into the starry ocean above, and the early morning still had enough pitch left in it to make passage a hazard. He stumbled as if he were still drunk over near invisible roots and patches of dead leaves, though any remnants of that possibility had been left on a defenseless, unsuspecting bush miles away.

For ten minutes, perhaps fifteen, he continued to move, angling slightly away from the sound of the nearby explosion. He brooded as he went, because brooding was something humans were liable to do when faced with even trivial challenges and he was one of them for now, at least in part. Before he had absorbed Dunhan, Buu knew that something like an explosion would never have deterred him from a homicidal rampage. To the young child, a threat had been something to be eliminated, nothing more or less. In ways, he thought to himself, he really had become stronger... Just as in many other ways he had allowed himself to become weaker. He shivered and then restrained a yelp as a thick blanket of branches whipped and scratched him across the face.

He burst through into a small clearing, fought to regain his balance, and just managed to avoid ramming into the figures ahead. He reeled back, sucking in a breath between his clenched teeth before he recognized them. "Seventeen! Violet!"

It was the android and the woman! No one could have mistaken that oddly colored hair, already streaked with grey at such a young age, and Violet was, well, Violet; it was hard to mistake those curves, no matter how dark it was. Buu felt his spirits soar. At last! He had allies. Before he could say anything else, however he felt something warm and wet slide down his cheek. Hesitantly he reached up, his fingers registering the collar on his neck before he wiped the curious substance away and brought it up to his eyes.

It was the dead last thing Buu would have liked to see if he had been forced to make a list of a thousand things. Faintly purple, a drop of blood quivered and beaded down the crook of his thumb.