8 Solar trouble

That night Blaze had a hard time falling asleep. He was scared to hurt Gilly again, he was scarred he wouldn't be able to fulfill her expectations, he was scared to lose her because of a fight, or an accident, because of him leaving the world or simply because of himself and his nightmares. That night, he dreamed that a thousand Gillys tried to strangle him. It wasn't original but for him, it was horrifying, that look of hate on her face, repeated hundreds of times all around him.

The next morning, Blaze noticed the bruises he had left on Gilly the previous day. There were a bunch of black and blue spots on her upper body. He had not seen them before because of her clothes or the darkness of the night but in the morning light, he could clearly see them. On her right side, he could clearly see the shape of his knuckles from the time when he tried to punch the dog in his dream, like a printed mark of his fault. With his almost perfect memory, he could still clearly remember the satisfying sound it had made. It had felt so effective.

He extended his arm and touched it delicately from the tip of his finger before Gilly could clothe herself. Took by surprise, she let out a yelp of pain and spun around to shoot an angry look at Blaze.

"Don't touch it idiot! It hurts!"

"Sorry..."

Gilly took a look at it herself and exclaimed.

"Ho shit! Look, that's funny. They took the shape of your fist, we can even see the fingers."

Blaze didn't find it funny at all.

"It's gonna hurt for at least a good week. I won't even be able to wear clothes that reveal much skin."

"Isn't it a good thing, it's going to get cold pretty quickly."

"Nah, I think it's the other way around, it's a good thing it's getting cold because if it was getting hot, people would wonder why I'm wearing long clothes. The payback kisses bill is going to skyrocket off the charts pretty quick with this."

Blaze could only give her a sour smile for answer before she suddenly panicked.

"Wait! Is my neck okay? Do I have giant marks on it?"

"No it's fine. There's no mark there."

She let out a sigh of relief.

"Being stuck in turtlenecks for a weak would have been terrible."

"I'm more relieved by the fact your voice is okay, and I didn't break anything important.

"Yes, of course I'm glad for that too but it's only because you were sleeping I think."

"What do you mean?"

"I know how strong you are Blaze, you may not have noticed it but if you really punched me at full strength, you wouldn't only have left those small bruises. I think you were enfeebled by your sleep and couldn't exercise all your strength, like when people feel weak when they wake up and can't move their arms properly.

"That's unscientific nonsense and you have nothing to back it off."

"I do have the fact that if you really did punch me at full strength, you would have probably knocked me out. You could have broke my windpipe with that choke but it only stopped the airflow. Anyone can choke someone to death, with your strength, it should have been easy."

"Well it doesn't matter anyway, as long as you are okay."

"I'm not though, my legs hurt from all the walking."

"That doesn't have anything to do with me."

"It does! It's all because you won't carry me!"

Blaze laughed and kissed her.

"Get dressed, I will go burn us some bread in the mean time."

"Yeah go do that, I'll join you in a second to check on the video's response."

They quickly ate breakfast and as often these last few days, opened up the computer to check on the news. Some things were surprising but most were expected. Gilly was giving Blaze the details as she crunched on the burnt toasts, as per usual.

"So, the police can't find us, obviously. The reactions to our message is somewhat mixed. They think we do not take this seriously enough or that we are trying to play down what we did. There's a bunch of new questions, mostly, is it true that you beat your own girlfriend."

"What? where does this come from?"

"The internet somehow got hold of a recording of our calls of yesterday morning and they are having a great time laughing at what you said to the cops but some are really focusing on what my mom said and how we responded."

"I see..."

It was surprising that they got access to those conversations but it didn't change too much about their situation.

"Besides that, people are trying to get a copy of the list and some guy made a website where they are trying to guess where we are."

"Only one?"

"No, more like a dozen but one of them took the popularity lead and it feels like the others aren't really relevant."

Didn't people have anything better to do than search for his location and make websites dedicated to that? Well, considering what he was accused of, maybe not.

"All in all, is there anything important that I absolutely need to know?"

"It doesn't really seems like it. The reactions are as I expected they would be, nobody knows anything worthwhile and we've got nothing to show."

Blaze nodded, satisfied for now of what was going on. He hoped that what they were doing wasn't in vain and that once they could do something good, some people would back them up. The only thing he could do for now was continue to advance and think about how to realise the promise he had made to Gilly.

"Then we should go." He said. "We shouldn't be far from Hitawar city now. We will probably get there a little before noon."

"Thank the creator! I need a shower."

Blaze wasn't sure he would be able to get her one but he would still try. would they even be able to get into town? Only one person needed to be able to recognize them for everything to go downhill. Blaze needed to quickly think of a way to get in and out of the city before they were noticed. He immersed himself in those thoughts, they finished packing quickly and went on their way.

Not too long after they had started walking, they heard a great cracking noise. Blaze,already brought back from his pondering, scanned around searching for the source of the noise before a tree fell right in front of them. They jumped backward in surprise but the tree was too far in front to hit them anyway.

The first reaction of both of their battle monsters were to jump in front of Gilly to protect her. Blaze felt glad Dawnshield had remembered what he had asked of him. He was about to get his gun out when he saw the source of the commotion. It was an ordinary beastor that had gnawed the base of the tree until it fell.

"What is going on?" Asked Gilly in a panic.

"Don't worry, it's just a beastor."

"A beastor?"

"Yeah, he gnawed the tree look."

"Oh..." She said feeling relieved as she looked to where Blaze was pointing. "Should we fight it?"

"I think so, it's a good practice after all, he shouldn't be too much of a challenge. Me or you?"

"Should we play it at rock paper scissors and the loser take the next one?"

Blaze agreed with a nod and hid his hand behind his back. They chanted the words and both revealed their hands. Blaze had won with a rock. Gilly accepted her defeat easily since it didn't really matter and took a step back to leave the stage to Blaze.

"Alright Dawnshield, it's a job for you it seems. We fight that guy over there because he almost squashed us with a tree."

Dawnshield hurried up in front of them and prepared himself for the fight. It shouldn't be a hard fight thought Blaze as he ordered Dawnshield to use vine whip. He was right, the Fight was so easy that it's not even worth recounting. Dawnshield slapped it a couple of times and the beastor tackled Dawnshield. Before it had time to make another move, another vine whip came down hard on his head and smashed it against the ground. The monster was done for, the fight was won.

The whole thing had felt pretty easy but it was a good thing, it meant that at least, they were strong enough to defend themselves against random forest critters. He praised Dawnshield to reward him.

"Good job, your vine whip seems pretty good. That beastor stood no chance at all."

"Before we move on, I have a very important question." Said Gilly.

"What is it?"

"Can we eat those or not?"

"I think we can..." answered Blaze, surprised by her question. "They probably are the only creature in this whole forest that are worth eating but we would have to skin it and prepare the meat ourselves."

"Is it worth it?"

"I don't know, we still have some food left and since we will get into town today, we don't really need it. Also, I'm unsure of the taste."

"What if something happens and we can't go buy food, we'll regret it later if we don't pick this thing up."

"But we could just catch another one, I don't think this one is even dead, it's just knocked out."

"Okay, I trust you."

They both resumed their walk after this, leaving the poor knocked out beastor there. Blaze had to clear some branches and help Gilly over the tree but besides this, the path was pretty open. Maybe they could have just went around the fallen tree but Blaze felt like the ground was more uneven outside the path he had chosen and he wanted to spare his girlfriend as much of the bad terrain as possible.

Afterwards, they fought four more beastor and each fight went as smoothly as the first one. Houndy was eager to prove to his mistress that he was worthy of being there and gave it his all which was much more than needed. Of course, Gilly petted him plentifully to reward his eagerness making it's short tail swing like crazy.

Now that they were doing nothing but walking and that Blaze had regained his other memories, he felt like it was a good opportunity to have Gilly listen to some of the songs from the other world. After all, he had the power play music out of nothing, might as well use it to let her hear songs she had never heard before. He had her listen to some rock, pop, swing, classical music, anything that came to his mind. It didn't matter if they were good or bad songs, he wanted her to hear them all.

It was a fun way to pass the time and Gilly enjoyed hearing all those singers and music groups she had never heard of before. Some made her laugh, some she really enjoyed and some she thought were awful. For her, talking to Blaze about them was just as entertaining if not more than the songs themselves. He had some very clear cut opinions on every songs and sometimes long stories about why he liked it or not, she enjoyed learning more about him through those musics. (1)

Finally, after walking and talking for a long while, they arrived at the first sign of civilization they had seen since they left their homes. In the outskirts of Hitawar city, they happened upon a asphalted road and some kind of warehouse with a bunch of trucks parked in front. they would have ignored it all and continued straight into town but...

"Why is there a bunch of spaceman here?" Muttered Gilly.

"This is odd, why would... Oh, they aren't spaceman, they are from team Solaris."

"All of them? But there are around thirty! I thought they had disbanded because of the gym leader from Wolfington!"

"I thought so too, but it seems not. We should stay in the woods and go around."

"Or, better, we could fuck with them."

"What is wrong with you! There's too many and our monsters aren't fit for a real fight yet. If we get caught we are screwed."

"Then we just have to not get caught."

"What do you even intend to do?"

"I don't know quite yet, they are a bit far for me." She said adjusting her glasses to see them better. "What are they loading in the trucks?"

"I don't know and I don't care either. Going there would be suicide, I refuse to do it."

"Fine, you win, you are right, it's stupid. I just thought it would be a great thing to do to raise our image back."

"I care more for our lives than for our images, let's go."

Blaze got his gun in his hands and they both recalled their monsters before they slowly started to creep their way further down the road to cross toward the city. They didn't want to reveal themselves by accident. Once the building was barely visible through all the trees, they decided without a word that it was the best spot to cross.

"This is great" Gilly said "There's no way they're gonna spot us from all the way there."

Blaze instantly prepared himself for a catastrophe.

"Why would you say that! All was going well!"

They heard a shout and someone calling the group.

"Hey, there are a couple of people on the road over there!"

"Get them!"

"Shit, I'm really sorry, I couldn't help it, it's the curse!" Said Gilly

"Just run!" Said Blaze as he aimed the gun at them.

There was no point in holding back anymore he thought. He quickly adjusted the sight and took a shot in their direction. His goal wasn't to kill them anyway, it was only to scare them off with his firepower.

Meanwhile Gilly had started running under the deafening bang of the rifle. Not so far on their right was the Hitawar city airport, that was why there weren't many buildings in the area. People disliked living under the constant noise of the planes.

They were really almost there, just in front of her, the forest was ending abruptly, changing into brick walls of old buildings and empty industries.

The old town had originally been thriving from all its industries and had packed them all together near the airport. But, the more the city grew, the less space it had to give them and the less its citizens were keen on all those giant ugly factories, pushing them ever further away until all those old buildings had been deserted. It would only be a matter of time now until apartment buildings and offices reclaimed the space despite its awkward positioning and distracting airport. Just a couple of intersection later and they would end up in an inhabited part of town.

On Blaze's side, the shot blasted through the arm of a guy before ending in the chest of another guy behind him. The one who got his arm punched through screamed in pain and fell to the ground whilst the one behind was instantly knocked down by the shot. The Solaris grunts screamed in panic and dispersed themselves to make it harder to hit, most of them plunging behind cover on the road side. Blaze's heart accelerated its beating again and he felt like sweat was forming on his forehead as fast as if he poured water on it instead. Did he just kill a guy by shooting at random?

"Oh shit! He's got a gun!"

"Where did he get a gun!"

"Watch out!"

"He shot the sun priest!"

They were in utter chaos, even more so then Blaze himself. He wasted no more time and ran after Gilly. Just as he was starting to run, he thought of something, made a giant nervous grin and screamed back at them.

"Dragonlaw wish you a good day suckers!"

He heard one of them scream behind him as he rushed in a side street.

"It's really him, I recognize his coat!"

"Don't lose him!"

He ran as fast as he could after Gilly. She had made some distance in the short time it took him to shoot but he knew he would catch up quickly. He was close enough to see which empty streets she chose every time she made a turn so it was easy for him to follow. Behind them, some grunts were giving it their all to close the distance and some had already sent out some typical tug monsters. Why were criminal groups so hell-bent on using those weird purple monsters? Thought Blaze as he made yet another turn behind Gilly.

He was only a dozen meters behind her when she cut a corner around an enormous and empty red bricked building into a small alleyway. Immediately after, he heard a scream of surprise and the screeching noise of a hard breaking car. Why was there a car there? He turned the corner too, hoping that Gilly was alright.

(1) I am still undecided about Blaze's musical tastes, do you perhaps have an opinion? I know what I like and don't but Blaze isn't me, imposing unto him my own tastes feels a bit weird. I may do it anyway if I can't come up with a reasonable way to determine what genre of music he prefers.