Loud Return

  There he was. Fox stood almost bare before them. His skin was practically spotless despite countless bullet holes on an inner clothing he was wearing, which clearly didn't belong to himself. Just as they stared dumbly at him, Fox glanced at them, dazed and slightly confused. Before anything else could happen, and as everyone saw the massive, untold destruction behind Fox, Esmeralda rushed forth.

  She wanted to check her surroundings a thousand times first. Do as she has trained and experienced and analyze the situation, but no matter how she put it in her little head, that was her Foxie. Nala didn’t stop her. Her gaze was lost looking at Fox, who seemed weak.

  “Fox!” Esmeralda shouted a bit, hugging his torso and feeling the familiarity she has missed for months without end. Fox looked down and blinked, his eyes slowly coming to an understanding. He raised his arm behind her back, bloodied and with some traces of human rests left on it.

  “…” Feeling his wrist being held, Fox looked past Esmeralda’s shoulder, where Nala cleaned his hand. Then, she gently put it on Esmeralda’s back before stepping forth to cup his face. Her gray, light blue eyes seeped life into his polycoria eyes.

  “We gotta move.” Nala blinked, receiving word from her scouts before coolly saying so. Fox didn’t say anything and looked at the other special agents. Miros looked at him just as worried, with Elega moving her mask a little. Lyan and Akina were just as surprised and worried.

  They wasted no time. Fox could walk on his own, but from the bloody trail he left behind and the spasm his body muscles would give at times, he might plummet at any moment. Stealthily rushing into the wild, they advanced for several kilometers before Fox suddenly spoke.

  “200 chasing fast, maybe Conundrum Gale. Another 600 from Facilitate Epidemic. Their hoogs saw us.”

  “What about the others? Lean Shoured and Enigma?” The group was astounded, and more so as they barely heard choppers that did not belong to them. Nala looked at him as they quickened their pace. Fox looked ahead and simply said, “I massacred a lot of their higher ups back there.”

  “…” The group was wordless. Nala went again, “What do we do? Drones won’t arrive until 2 minutes. 10 for the stealth fighters.”

  “Keep moving,” Fox blinked a couple of times before coming to a halt. Nala and Esmeralda slowed down but didn’t stop. He added, “Find a defensive point.”

  Stomp! After saying those words, Fox turned around and dashed forth before suddenly jumping off a boulder. The boulder was fine, but it gave the agents the sensation that a few trees falling on it can turn it into smithereens.

  CRAAASSHHHH! On the other hand, Fox jumped almost 20 meters, surprising a scouting helicopter with special agents frowning at one of the people recorded by the detection system. Just as they saw a semi-naked young man jump to them, far above the small trees, a punch went on their way.

  The helicopter immediately stopped, while Fox fell down immediately after losing his kinetic force. A piece of scrap, more like a vehicle slamming into a tough tree to an unbelievable speed, divided into two and became distorted before falling unto the ground.

  Craaaaasshhh! The helicopter fell and dusted up to 2 meters above the ground. But Fox ignored that. The moment he landed, he ran even faster towards another direction. A few more helicopters showed, while footsteps nearing every closer sounded in his ears.

  This time, the helicopters flew above 150 meters, and not all of them were scouting. They aimed their weaponry down, but by the time they did, Fox had grabbed a few chunks of tree barks. Just as they angled their chopper to aim at Fox, knowing how important he was, their cabins’ glass was broken through.

  Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom! Fox watched the flying metals burn, burn, and burn. Half the helicopters that aimed at him now turned into exploding things. The scouting ones were flabbergasted as this happened, but they reacted soon after.

  However, Fox acted, too. He rushed to the fallen helicopter and grabbed its rotor blades. Those who broke and became crooked or not, whichever they were. Fox let his ultra nails out, easily cutting through them like a hot knife through butter.

  Fox aimed at the scouting helicopters rushing away while the coming enemy agents slowly halted. Blinking once after pensively looking at the flying chopper, Fox sent the cut-off blade parts. They whistled through the air before reaching towards the fleeing helicopters.

  Their detection systems couldn’t pick it up, so they didn’t realize until it was too close. Their choppers weren’t as fast as their ears. After firing them one by one into the air, Fox looked down in the direction where the enemy agents started retreating, also slowly.

  Fox’s eyes were stagnant but full of hidden emotion. Without an extra thought, he went to them. It was nothing the enemy expected. Forgetting even that… it is something not even the entire world was ready for. Perhaps something it couldn’t whatsoever.

  Nala and company waited and hid as told. Raging Blood’s orders was their creed at this point. Now that he returned, it was their guide to follow and obey. She felt just as hopeful of PSD and for Lymoca as soon as she saw her man alive again, and well… almost.

  But after a few minutes, with hundreds of firearms being fired, from large pistols and explosive bions to DLMs, Nala became curious. She first tried gathering information with Colmillo’s help, using a tablet to detect movement outside. She only saw one point move left and right, eliminating the movement of every other point from the hundreds.

  Immediately after, with a curious frown, Nala rushed up a large tree to see what was happening. He could see how Fox chased back the enemy to the abandoned precinct. As this happened, Fox was blurred for her, too fast. Only when he chased someone hundreds of meters away would his starting dashing speed be too blurry before becoming more visible.

  Nala was flabbergasted the more she watched. Fox dashed from one target to another, anyone he caught had a worse death than even wild animals do. When their craniums were held, they weren’t crushed but flung everywhere, breaking as many bones as possible in up to 3 seconds at most.

  Their spines were grabbed and whipped out of their bodies so seamlessly like a steamed crab. Any palm or sole hit to even pseudo-empowered armor turned the agents’ bodies into mush, all while he endured dozens of lines of fire even when he was targeted at his eyes, left untouched.

  With such expressions and tension of her muscles shown, Nala was accompanied by the other PSD agents, who were just in time to see Fox dash left and right behind the abandoned precinct. The light of the day as it just started made it all too easily to see.

  The other agents took some time before also going up, wanting to give them some respect. They just got their Raging Blood back, after all. But when they went up and saw the immensely retarded situation, they lost their breath and comprehension.

  “Is this how the Raging Bloods are?” Someone from the EPA Commonwealth asked, not having worked together with PSD so closely before. Nikitina and Dongmei looked at the agent before refocusing on the bloody, marvelous scenery in the distance.

  … A few minutes later, Raging Blood returned. This time, however, he could barely walk back. Miros went to help him, still waiting for the stealth fighters while the helicopters were parked and hidden from radars and sight.

  “You grew, boy?” Fox talked to the young boy, young man, who was now a Firster. Fox could tell that from his experience working with other agents thus far. Colmillo helped carry him from the other arm. Miros looked at him and smiled, “You noticed?”

  “Barely, but it’s good.” Fox shrugged, making him grimace in some pain. Miros blinked and made a face, baffled. Colmillo faced Fox before her robotic voice was heard, “All of Lymoca has wondered about you. PSD has been growing well, and Teon rises exponentially in status.”

  “Thanks,” said Fox before lowering his face to stare at the ground, losing even more energy. He struggled to lift his chin a bit to ask, “What… time is it?”

  “It’s been 6 months since your disappearance,” Colmillo answered. Fox nodded a few times, as scarcely as he could move his head, “Is this the 3rd week?”

  “Yes, and 5th day,” Colmillo looked at Fox, retracting her neck before giving Miros a look. Then, they stared at Fox, who was just conscious but was now… sleeping. Did he not sleep before? They didn’t know, so they just brought him to the landing zone with Nala and Esmeralda.

  . . .

  There was no wastage of time. As soon as the stealth fighters flew over, the ‘premium package’ was placed in the fighter and flew away carefully. They had to rush into the east to the Quarter Moon Ocean and get security from the EPA Commonwealth.

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  Once near the commonwealth, the helicopters and fighters arched towards Lymoca’s Lymaospasó. They landed safely and discreetly before bringing Fox through the underground tunnels, rushing to Proteros, where PSD had already prepared to treat him.

  Esmeralda notified her father, but only once, before fully ignoring him. She and Nala remained near Fox all the time. When they finally went into the HQ from the new tunnel entrances built recently, Esme and Luis finally met.

  They haven’t met for these several months. Nala was at the side, standing beside Egoaiz Prein, watching through the glass at their Raging Blood.

  Several hours went by until it was another night with Fox not waking up before a doctor different from Dr. Valle came out to talk with them. He nodded at the President with respect before saying, “It has been a long time before Fox had any sleep. His mind and body are… rehealing?”

  Luis frowned a little. The doctor continued, “He… he will be fine, contrary to what we feared. Additionally, President… Fox’s lifespan…”

  Esmeralda frowned hard. Her crossed arms tightened before releasing them. Nala looked in their direction and walked over without giving Ego a glance. When she arrived beside Esmeralda, their eyes widened. Then, their heads snapped to look through the glass again.

  ***

  While the world was seeing an improvement that couldn’t even truly be called as such, there were things happening to the population from the warring countries. In Twilight, the EPA Commonwealth was practically unaffected by these, hundreds to thousands of kilometers away.

  Zyckevele barely suffered from their urban areas, and only a few. Furthermore, both frontlines were evacuated before the enemy could arrive, readied to follow with previous tactics that haven’t truthfully failed at the end.

  Zyckevele’s enemies suffered the most, always having one of their military zones before the war turned against their favor, let alone after Raging Blood’s intervention. As the war developed, their infrastructure suffered tremendous damage, irreparable in the short time, and to their spirit.

  An uncertainty of food and water were only at the beginning, but clothing, electricity, and cleanliness followed soon after. Orcs and Pontians were at their worst, trying to find anyone, even Zyck soldiers, to ask for anything to eat and drink, even sweaty clothes.

  Zyckevele didn’t really have this one planned, and neither did Lymoca in their first invasion and war after hundreds of years. Their second time was managed better, but it was still not enough to keep things stable, leading to a lot of easily-driven hatred towards them.

  Let alone of Orcesta and Fresna, who have always been more hateful of Zyckevele than the south. On that account, the south only rekindled their hatred further, no longer needing the incentives of foreign hands, even as their countries were practically overtaken by now.

  KAA had it worst. Despite their success in harassing the enemy at their southern borders, the enemy had become more cautious despite still advancing. Yet, Ziacas became emboldened, spirited, and with an enormous will to destroy the coalition, each soldier, and their leaders.

  Nevertheless, the Ziaca people in the west continued to suffer, and they only suffered more as the enemy coalition, having gone against the HLS already, wasn’t shy of ‘accidentally bombing civilian-only’ areas.

  The supplies were enough at first, but then, their people had to continuously move, afraid and without enough supplies anymore. The east, on the other hand, albeit peaceful, began to feel more weary as military movement was shared in the media from Vevuesta and Queorian. Them and KAA exposed such sightings, working to prevent and scare the Ziacas both.

  The anti-KAA coalition thus far wouldn’t have been suffering too much, especially with KAA focusing all their western firepower to the frontlines and to neutralize enemy long-distance equipment. Hordes and hordes of artillery and enemy soldiers were destroyed every week.

  The numbers only went further up. As all of this happened, Merula’s trio started suffering some of the wastage from the active wars, implicating the most important countries in the world, except for one… or one of the remaining peaceful two anyway.

  Lymoca wasn’t just an interesting sight anymore, not after facing off 2 enemy countries and defeating them at the same time, ‘integrating’ them soon after. Those were truly annexations.

  But now that the anti-KAA coalition suffered severe yet temporary damage, still crucial, to their countries’ infrastructure as well, they were dragged down like everybody else.

  They had an option, and an eager one at that, ANS. But they really did not dare to take it. With the things they’ve seen, and the tickling bomb placed at their northwestern border, they couldn’t.

  Moreover, with Zyckevele so close, taking Marcoplix for the moment, further protecting KAA in case 2 certain countries went at it, the trio didn’t have a wish to be sandwiched for the sake of anyone but others.

  Only at this point, while limited in certain different resources that are just not from Moonblue, central and south Moonblue were the only ones safe and resourceful from the entire world, second only to ANS. After all, ANS has been a major power for half a millennium.

  Yet, while ANS had nothing lacking, although somewhat limited like the rest of Moonblue, they had something the others didn’t. For starters, their social media was suddenly filled with bouts of information that ANS had never seen before, so lucidly and explicit.

  There were reports and even images taken of ANS cargos landing on unknown coasts. The other parties were always either alone with a lot of cases, or a bunch of hooligans from any ethnicity. Even K Tribe nations’ people seemed involved; and these were ambiguous and non-descriptive.

  It was completely left open to the ‘Leaftree’ people, which they still slightly take as an insult. Such things weren’t even important to their population, but it was something extremely recurrent in their media as of in the last 10 years.

  Thus, as this continued to happen, the streets of ANS slowly became organized. Only, it wasn’t to the greatest favor that ANS would’ve wanted. Protests started happening close to the end of the year, and as the situation of hunger, sudden poverty, and illness spreading en masse around the world developed, these became more notorious.

  Other parts of the world, even the Ziacas and the ‘already lost’ Orxa and Pexa, watched these protests, filling large avenues and famous streets known throughout the world’s cinema. Every day, there were new groups and more so scholar parties that took to the streets and demanded for ANS to act so these wars could stop.

  Even right now, as New Sanctum day had long gone by, the people protested from morning to late at night.

  “We don’t want war! They need our heart~!” - “The east shouldn’t suffer because of the greed of the businessmen of our west! Why won’t we do anything!?” - “What the fuck are you doing!? Do a fucking move— this fucking government!” - “This is our fault! Which we must resolve~!”

  … In the major capitol, president Gant Comfor looked at the streets just outside, packed with people raging. They’ve been at it for over 16 hours, but they still took turns to yell and move in front of everybody else.

  The president looked at this with a tired face before staring at his vice president for a moment, then back at the streets. “With this organization, they could have been seen as one of the most powerful armies in the mid AO. Hurts to see them turn on that to us.”

  “It’s not often that we get to see these things. Last time… anyway,” Ola Colano, a middle-aged white woman with black eyes and an obscure orange, well-stylized and proper haircut stood behind ANS’s president. Gant’s face twitched, but she quickly added, “But this is to show our people’s decisiveness.”

  Gant turned to her, and Ola carried on, “If there is an actual situation that threatens them and nobody else, will they choose to ignore their land and people, or others’ issues?”

  “Hahh…” Gant looked at the enormous crowd outside and sighed. He shut his eyes before speaking with his old voice. He seemed much older than last term, a lot more. “Call those fucking idiots. We are deciding what to do…”

  Ola Colano didn’t move yet, looking at the back of Gant’s head. After a few minutes, he added, “These might be our people and their decisiveness, but while they seem foolish to me, they aren’t wrong. How are our assets? What can we move? Are we facing a troublesome credit reserves with Lymoca’s advancements? Is that enough for against the eastern coalition?”

  “…” Ola Colano’s eyes went down, pondering. They were indeed facing troubles, especially with every country they aid becoming forgotten and taken over. It was one thing for Lymoca to do it, but Zyckevele had practically accomplished the same in the east. Only the anti-KAA coalition seemed ‘alright’.

  “I’ll call everyone immediately,” Ola Colano bowed a little after hesitating a bit. Gant Comfor added just as something came up on his head, “Don’t call L-… nevermind. I don’t- didn’t want to see through this, but I have no other alternatives. There are still chances, so we will take them if we must.”

  “Lymoca will forgive us in the future, Miss Colano.” Gant added before falling silent, his hands behind his back. Ola Colano gazed at the president again, her eyes stimulated by the wisdom, that to her belief, he carries yet hides by inertia. Her lips moved, “I still admire your patriotism and intelligence. Despite how old you are, sir, I and others know you will still decide for what matters most to our county. If it’ll be through mud or smooth sand, then so be it. Lymoca did it, no?”

  “Hmf,” Gant Comfor couldn’t deny he felt a slight bit of a spark. Ola Colano scarcely nodded before retiring from his office.

  … Creak. A few minutes later, Earl Comfor walked in. While Ola Colano left with her back straight, chin levelled, and arms resting at her sides, the president’s son came in with a slouched back. He was sucking on a lollipop, and he smelled of drugs.

  “Father, you wanted so-” Earl looked at his father with casual, upturned eyes as he walked to his father. But Gant barked, “It’s Mr. President when you are working in this capitol!!”

  Earl looked at his father with widened eyes, lifting his palms and stepping back twice. Gant felt his head thump with 1 or 2 veins sharply pumping and his chest heavy. Seeing his son like that, he calmed down and seemed apologetic before lowering his voice, “You said that equipment would arrive without connections. What failed?”

  “Nothing. Those are from before. ANS… our country must have been through corruption before you arrived, father.” Earl Comfor said, putting his lollipop in and out of his mouth as he spoke. Gant narrowed his eyes, but he said nothing.

  “What of the storage I put you in charge of?” Gant said with an even lower tone. Earl nodded like a chick pecking on rice, “Yes, yes, yes, yes. They are all placed and like new. They are exactly like ours. Told you to trust me, father. I am reliable. And I want our people to win whatever’s next!”

  Gant just nodded his head. He dropped the subject and looked at the door, heavily sighing out of his nostrils. The sensation felt harmful to him, but he hid it well. Not that it would’ve been necessary, with how inattentive his son was of him.

  Regardless, being part of the cabinet, Earl did know what next important meeting was coming. It didn’t matter how much of a disgusting human being he is ‘seen as’ by all of ANS’s people, let alone the world, even his business partners; he was still a clever and even ingenious man.

  Besides, who didn’t know how much did president Gant Comfor loved his son? The road was paved for him.

  …