Chapter 41: Demoted To An Instant Stovetop

"The child of the Red King attacked?" Willow questioned curiously, "It sounds like you're not that uninformed about the Chinese mythology either, despite being a child of a greek celestial. More importantly, what do you mean by the child of the Red King attacked?"

"Exactly what I told you." He responded with a raised brow as he looked at her, "A child of the Red King attacked parts of China."

Now that he mentioned it, she could vaguely recall news and talk of the people about there being a huge fire somewhere in China.

"Also," Belen frowned in confusion, "how did you know my parent was a Greed god?"

"A wild guess. You were rather informed about Cerberus just now, weren't you?" Willow responded as she shook her head with a frown, "You didn't question when I called Cerberus Spot. You didn't even give me a confused look. Because Serah's father must've been Hades, it's easy to assume Cerberus to a dog creature she brought with her, but you didn't really question if it was Cerberus's pups or not. That would've been one of the few things people would most likely assume when they think of mythical animals even if there was only one of them in this world. Then, you have the ability to absorb energy. It's no use hiding it when our Aki already figured it out. There are many gods in the world that have ability over the sun in their lands, but not many are familiar with Cerberus's history unless they've experienced or studied Greek mythology for a while. I don't even have all the information confirmed whose your celestial parent, but I can at least use Greek as one of my possibilities."

"That's a long thinking process you have there." Belen said with a wry smirk, "Then, you already know whose my parent. What about yours?"

Willow waved off the radiance of the smirk as she continued moving the bottles out of the metal container and into her back, "I've already used my efforts to figure out your identity. It's your turn to try and guess mine. Let me know when you've come to an idea. You already have some idea by now, don't you?"

"I guess." The demigod replied in disappointment as he tied up his large duffel bag of medicine placed in barely in order, "Just give me a bit more time. Also, it wasn't fair since you already had your cat helping you."

"If the world was fair, I wouldn't be fighting with Serah, would I?" Willow sighed as she stuffed a bag of disposable needles into her bag and other portable utilities, "All right. Let's move. We can't afford making a second trip back here."

"Why?" Belen raised a brow.

"If you were in the enemy's shoes, would you let your target move away from a building they can't sneak into for several hours without attempting something to catch them?"

"Fair point..." Naxos nodded with a sigh, "I guess Elijah made things too easy on us if it was like this."

"Speaking of Elijah, you said you worked for him before." Willow brought up the topic, "How much do you know about him anyway?"

"That guy?" Belen frowned in thought as he began following her out of the park, "He has his own ambitions, but his main goal should've been to bring back his father."

"A celestial can't die so easily, so he's sealed away somewhere or something like that?" Willow concluded, "Or maybe stuck busy somewhere and his kids are causing trouble to get him to come out? But, that wouldn't make sense with so much death. He'd be busy to the brim."

"Aren't you thinking a little too much into this?" Belen asked as he watched her think to herself.

"I don't know." Willow responded with a sigh. Her teacher never really criticized her for thinking like this, but maybe he just never felt that it was something he must tell her?

As Willow quietly led the way back to the shelter, she noticed the numbers of zombies growing as they drew closer to the familiar roads. Bodies continued to pile in the corner as flies bombards the grotesque pile enough to make one want to vomit just by the putrid smell. How does Akira survive through this stuff?!

Not even their mask was enough to mask the smell or the expressions on their face as they pass by those places through the shadows. The ground still smells like wet pavement and the air itself was unusually clean. The skies were free of planes for the first time in her mind. Thinking this, she recalled when she was still back in Guiyang as a child with her paternal grandmother and aunt, she would stare up at the skies only to see the plume of gray smoke drift up into the skies with the cloudy sky setting reminding Willow of those stories she had read back in school about the fog of Britain during the industrial revolution.

Those days where she always felt stifled by the air around her and the stank of the broken trash chute on the first floor outside where everyone's trash tumbled out at the bottom from there being too much to hold back. That was the lesser suburbs of Guiyang. Away from the bustling city where the more well-off family and her aunt's own home was. Her aunt was the model of an independent woman for as long as she could remember.

From a young age, Willow's father in her previous life often told her that, while her grandfather was a famous veterinarian in their town, her aunt was an English and math teacher who started her own after school tutoring school with friends. One of whom was Willow's mother from her previous life as the two were close friends since school years.

To Willow, she was the image of a strong independent woman. However, since becoming the director of her growing school, her father had reduced the number of times he mentioned her as he was growing further away from her paternal uncle and aunt. To Willow, he was never close with them as he was with her paternal grandfather. She remembered the day when her father received news of grandfather's death. She was only six and was spending the full day with her family friend's family of three.

It was such an exciting day and she was eager to talk about it and brag to her mother and father about her day at a themed amusement park since they were too busy and couldn't afford to go with her as they were in trying times back then. However, the moment she walked up to her porch that Christmas, she was shocked in silence as she saw her father bawling for the first time in her life over the phone with someone.

Her mother was deathly quiet and only spoke a few hushed words with my father's friend who seemed to have caught a peek of her father at the door in bewilderment and concern.

During that day, she remembered how there was also the lack of blue skies or the rain that should've accompanied the dark clouds. That was also the first day she was pushed to her mother by her father as she was too young to understand the situation with no words spoken to her.

Everything was quiet in the house aside from her father's loud sobbing. Once her mother had to speak with their neighboring roommates to explain the situation, but never once had they spoken a word to Willow as she sat on her mother's bed in fear and bewilderment of what was going on without any knowledge.

To Willow, cloudy days have always been an ominous day since then and always worried her of the remainder of that day. Now, here she was again under the gray skies but in darker days than before. Again and again.

That's why the current situation worried her. As the drew closer to the building a couple hours earlier than what Willow had predicted, she noticed the strange patches of dark spots on the ground and the number of burnt corpses on the ground surrounding the building.

Luckily, Willow and Belen were on the right side of the road or they would've had to sneak across a wide open street to reach the building. Willow bit back a sigh of relief as she knew that the enemy had yet to stop their advances. However, this was not how Belen felt. As soon as he saw those burn marks Willow was eyeing, he knew that someone had tried to enter the perimeter. He jolted up in alarm as he gritted his teeth ready to rush in, "Those kids-!"

"Hold your horses." Willow whispered as she dragged him back into the shadows of the alleyways, "They haven't broken through yet."

"What do you mean by that?" He questioned staring at her with narrowed eyes in suspicion and confusion.

"Come on." She said and began dragging the demigod with her as she secretly entered the perimeter of her invisible barrier with ease and through the back door into the small backyard. She quickly grabbed a hold of her leather gloves and cautiously entered the room. It was then that Willow heard a couple sounds of explosions behind them at the door to the backyard that Willow knew they were followed. She scowled and turned to Belen, "Change of plans. We're getting everyone out of her by midnight. Think you've store up enough energy?"

Belen was a little unsettled by what the woman was thinking as he only responded with a nod. Willow hurriedly rushed in and turned to look around the area. She could see that the children had gone missing, but she wasn't in a panic that Belen was in when he noticed the similar difference. She hurriedly said with a frown, "The kids are in that room. I'm going to operate on the mother."

"What?!" Belen stared at her in bewilderment, "But, you haven't even finished your first year in college!"

"I've done it before, just never with this little equipment. Also," Willow looked up to him with a grimace, "if we don't take the chance and try now, not only would the mother become those things outside, she'll even leak out our whereabouts."

"What?!" Belen stared at her baffled making Willow wonder just how much of the words she had said earlier actually made sense to him.

"Watch over the kids and tell Aki that I need his help in the mother's room."