135 Covering Their Tracks

Yukio sat up with great difficulty and absorbed the next Variant's life force. After that, he beckoned to Aida with his right arm. In a raspy voice, he said, "Big sis, come over."

Aida was reluctant to receive any healing. She wasn't fatally injured not dying, and her life force was at a healthy level. She felt that she deserved every ounce of pain and punishment that she received from this fight. She nearly failed to keep her promise to keep them safe.

Neither Yukio nor Xiao Ai would take no for an answer. If she wasn't coming to him, then he would go to her. Xiao Ai also used her body to nudge Aida towards Yukio as well.

Yukio walked towards Aida with slow, unsteady steps, almost falling along the way. Seeing this, Aida was unable to remain unresponsive. She caught Yukio and helplessly accepted his healing. Yukio broke into a huge smile as he helped her heal while Xiao Ai supervised with extreme seriousness, following it up with a full body inspection of Aida before "allowing" Yukio to finish his healing.

After Yukio finished healing Aida, there was exactly one Variant left. To her surprise, they were able to drain the full life force of almost all 100 Variants just to fill up the reserves of the 9 people in their group. It meant that their life force had grown to almost 10 times the amount of an average Variant. They had all just gone through a near death experience, but it was clear that they had also grown greatly from it.

A sinister smile appeared on Aida's face as an idea popped up. She slapped the government representative awake and allowed him to look at the scene of 99 dead Variants that were all shriveled up. The last one continued to moan in pain and agony as though begging to be killed.

The government representative woke up and looked around. When he first awakened, he still had a cocky smile on his face, ready to say the words 'I told you so.' However, as he took in the scene, his face became graver. After a full minute, he finally digested what had occurred in his surroundings and began to sweat and tremble with fear.

The man leaned back against his restraints in an attempt to create as much space as he could between himself and Aida. He asked Aida in a trembling voice, "What do you want to do to me?"

Aida smiled brightly and said, "Revenge." Then she kicked and punched the government representative over and over again, venting her anger. She was careful not to fatally injure him as he was still useful for now.

After she was finished, she nodded to Yukio and said, "Go ahead."

Yukio gripped the last Reaper and absorbed its life force and then helped the government representative recover slightly, not allowing him to die. He very much wanted to punish him the same way Aida had earlier on, but knew that his body wouldn't be able to take it at the moment. He settled for helping him recover slightly at the moment, so that they could repeat the process again when he was in better shape.

Aida then brought everyone back into the RV. She set the super clingy and protesting Xiao Ai down next to the exhausted Yukio. Patting her head, she said in a pacifying, "Be good and help me look after this bad guy. We need information from him so don't let him escape or kill himself. I'm going to be outside for a second just to collect all the gems and then I'll be back okay?"

She efficiently harvested the gems of the Variants as the two children watched from the window. The moment she returned to the RV, both of them ran up to her. Aida gently reminded Yukio to go up and take care of his older brother who was evolving into a Variant. She also handed him some antipyretic medicine to feed to his brother. Nodding, he ran upstairs to his brother.

Xiao Ai refused to leave and sat in bun form on Aida's shoulder, snuggling up to her. Aida tied up the government representative with metal wires and made sure they were inescapable before getting into the driver's seat of the van.

She first drove back to the original site of the ambush where the tanks were. All the men were dead so it was completely silent. Aida and Xiao Ai walked through and collected the bombs, guns and other gear that they had in reserve, bringing them into the RV. Next, she made a second passthrough of the site to collect all their electronics including cell phones, radios and laptops.

To her surprise, she was also able to find a few explosives with timers as well. It would be a good idea for them to cover their tracks so the government couldn't absolutely confirm whether this group of people were defeated by Aida's group or some other anti-human sentiment group. The marks left from their fight could potentially lead the government to being on higher alert against them, so this would be the best option.

She quickly set the explosives up in the area and put it on a timer. 30 seconds later, there was a huge sound that seemed to echo across the mountains. Aida quickly drove the RV in the other direction so as not to get obstructed by the Enraged and Reapers who were soon to come. She also repeated this with the Variants that Yukio had killed as well, completely covering their tracks.

Hopefully this could buy them some time and the government would take a little longer to track them down. They had been extremely weakened by this battle and would need some time to recover and regroup. Practically the entire team was unconscious at the moment.

Aida chose to drive to a small town by the mountains roughly 100 miles away from their previous site. She didn't have her psychic scan available, so Xiao Ai helped her pull up Ace's cell phone tracking app and avoided the highly populated areas.

If Aida were on her own, she wouldn't have been able to simultaneously drive while fighting no matter how capable she was. Therefore, Xiao Ai was in charge of protecting the RV and preventing all the Enraged and Variants from approaching the RV while she drove. Xiao Ai bounced around the dashboard as she knocked out all the infected who approached. Aida was secretly relieved to see Xiao Ai energetic again, she had been worried that the previous scene had scarred her.

Xiao Ai had been extremely demoralized and felt extremely helpless when she couldn't help earlier on. She was almost purely a support type with some amount of attack power but zero defence, so couldn't help out at all earlier on. Now that she was critical to them getting away from the site of the ambush, she completed her task with extreme enthusiasm.