Hook, line and sinker

"Agh!" Hikaru cried out.

Hiromi couldn't take it anymore and so she charged in. Hikaru's arm transformed into a level 4 tentacle and bound Hiromi. It looked like an anaconda had wrapped itself around her.

Chiho looked toward Hiromi and crossed her eyebrows. Seeing how Hikaru could easily kill her, she was both scared and confused.

Chiho thought it was a trap but no matter what mind games he was playing, nothing prohibited her from beating him. Hikaru made a mistake.

She had started using her injured arm. Pain assaulted her broken arm like crazy but when she pulled her arm back, she couldn't get the image of Aimi out of her head. She punched repeatedly out of rage.

If it weren't for Hikaru's high durability, he would be dead right now. Every hit made Chiho feel good, she wanted increasingly more.

Hikaru strangely felt the same.

Junpei's eyes widened so much that the whites can be seen. He wasn't sure of what he was seeing. The look on Hikaru's face.

'Relief?'

It looked as though Hikaru wanted to get beat up.

'Maybe, he feels like he needs to be punished?' Junpei thought. 'Are you guilty about something, did something bad? Or, are you ashamed… feel you are bad?'

If you did something bad to someone, you would try to make amends, at least apologize.

"I'm... sorry." Hikaru quietly whispered.

Chiho's eyes bulged open in disbelief and anger.

As if everything would go back to normal if one said sorry. As if Aimi could smile again. An apology would not bring her back from the dead.

She screamed as she drew back her fist to punch him.

"STOP!" Junpei yelled.

Chiho's fist froze before Hikaru's lip.

"He doesn't deserve it."

"TO HELL HE DOESN'T!"

"YOU KILLED TOO! ... Haven't you?"

Chiho's face faltered as she squeezed her eyes shut and grimaced.

"I did too. I killed... my mother." Junpei confessed.

Chiho did not react to that. Her face stayed the same in front of that revelation.

"I ate her... maimed... shredded..." Junpei said cruelly.

Chiho bared her teeth as she grits down the pain. Tears began poking out of her eyes and rolled down.

"I couldn't control myself... was a lie. I wanted to eat her so badly, I didn't want to stop! I hated it! I HATED MYSELF!"

Junpei put his hand to his face and squeezed between the eyebrows. He did that to hide his shame.

"I know you blame him and Hikaru probably feels the same but let's not forget what's inside you. Inside all of us. That's why he gathered us here to come up with a plan to stop them."

Junpei saw the guilt and self-loathing in Chiho. She pinned everything down on Hikaru. It was as if she were hitting herself if her soul could materialize.

He understood their pain because he went through a similar experience too. However, he could finally deal with his problems because Hikaru had given him a chance to break free from the parasites. Chiho was still stuck without hope and redemption. Junpei hoped he could share the ray of light that shined on him from the path he now walked.

*plip*

*plip*

Tears fell from her chin to Hikaru's cheeks. She began to cry out of pain and sadness. She leaned and supported herself over Hikaru with her hands on the dirt. She cried aloud as a baby would.

*plop, plop*

Tears fell onto Hikaru's closed eyes and fell to the side of his face making it look like he was crying.

Junpei came over and put his hand on her shoulder to comfort her. The tentacles holding Hiromi gradually slithered back into Hikaru. It then reverted into his arm.

Chiho had given up. There was no more fight in her.

*Just as the fish in the air caught the dragonfly in its mouth, a bird swoops down and catches the fish with its food by its talons. *

'Checkmate.'

***

"So, we're really just wasting our time talking about that," Junpei said.

"Mostly, it had to be said anyways. I hoped that any of you would have solutions for that."

Junpei sighed.

Hikaru had talked about ideas of destroying the parasite's organisation and infrastructure. He had plans about disabling each department that Daichi and other officers had built, like the communications department, harvest teams, elite teams, or the parasite barracks, which were essentially where the procreator was being kept.

However, no matter what plan they produced, it was useless with their numbers and was of no practicality right now. They were just fancy words.

"If you can't figure it out, what's the use in asking us?"

"Collective intelligence is better than individual intelligence. Also, I would make mistakes no matter how careful I was. I need to check my ideas with you. Well, I'm sure you would complain if this weren't a discussion or a democracy."

For sure, Junpei would have said, "who made you the leader!".

Once the enemy was attacked, they would be alerted and take countermeasures. The best strategy was to take them out so quickly before they knew what hit them. Hikaru hoped to destroy his opponent completely but with his current group, he couldn't do anything sophisticated.

The only thing they could do was create a distraction to lure out the bulk of their force and then attack the procreator's base. The procreator will soon release a lot of offspring that will infect and turn the populace into reinforcements.

Their plans would go awry if they had to deal with such large numbers. Therefore, Hikaru needed to recruit. Even if he were found out to be extraordinarily strong, he couldn't guarantee to win against a large army by himself. He also couldn't be at two places at once.

"I know where their base is." Chiho finally spoke. Her voice was husky from screaming.

She had the memories of the parasite that infected her which would have visited the procreator's safehouse to drop off their harvest.