I couldn’t believe it, she just said that she had the power of the ages, something I knew of but never actually thought was possible. The power of the ages wasn’t something magical like most people thought it was but instead, it was something of a sickness of the mind. It was caused by a temporal shift in a few cells in the brain that controls logical thought and sensory information. This shift, shifted the cells, causing them to become fully developed and linked with their brains in the future for just an instant, giving them knowledge and memories of the future for a moment before shifting back. However, in the case of little children like Coco, it causes an instant jump in intelligence for a moment. Then when it ends, they went right back to normal without the memory of what just happened, not knowing why they did it or what they were even thinking. I had never actually seen someone with this illness in all my years, I had just assumed that it no longer existed.
My thoughts were pulled away as the pain grew throughout my body. I began to think of a way out of this without getting her killed in the process. After all the power of the ages was an illness caused by the Brothers Will, when a strain of the common cold was accidently fused with the Nannies that were being developed to upgrade the time hacking abilities of one of my brothers. It got out of 24’s lab and into the air of a few planets. After that, It started affecting the more human-like races in bizarre ways. Mostly affecting the aging process in one out of every 5 million infected, and giving the power of the ages to one in every 50 million infected. We always thought they were only a few people that it affected seeing that without a Star-core near by the Nannies went inactive and soon returned to being ordinary matter. So how was she able to still have it active while living on a planet with no member of the Brothers Will around? My thoughts soon stopped as the pain grew even more, and I lost continuousness for the night.
I woke up to her once again, sitting behind my head leaning over me, drooling all over my face. “Come on little one, don’t do that. You should have woken me instead of just staring at me.” I said, trying to sound nice as I wiped my face off. She just smiled and wiped her mouth. “They will be here in one hour, and your upgrades will be done in one hour and 58 minutes.” She said to me while she got up and ran to a pile of fruit that was by my feet. “Here, take one Mr. Lazy. I picked them out for you when you wouldn’t wake up.” She said, then handing me a large square like thing I only assumed was a fruit. I took it and bit a little off of it and was shocked by how good it tasted. I must have been out longer than I thought, if I only had two more hours of my Nannies being inactive, I thought as I ate.
I sat up and looked at where I was bleeding from the night before. But The wounds had all closed up. They hadn’t healed fully or very much. However, my nannies had repaired the severely damaged parts of my spine and back and stopped the bleeding, but that was it. I was still very badly hurt and still had about twenty bullets in me.
I managed to pull myself up to my feet, which hurt like being shot all over again, but I could stand on my own, so this was a plus. My legs were working somewhat, and I had a plan now, it was to distract them and annoy them to the point where they would just give up. Never said it was a good plan, and to get my plan started, I set up traps all around where we were camped with Coco’s help. To her, it was just a big game, which was good. It helped her have some fun and helped me not reopen all my wounds.
The time came for them to find us, and I heard them coming through the forest, not even trying to be quiet. I figured they knew I was hurt and that there wasn’t much I could do to stop them. But I was going to do something to stop them, one way or another. Hopefully, my first plan would work because I didn’t have a second plan at the moment.
They came out of the dense forest and into view, right in the path of one of the traps I had set up. Bang a boom… The trap went off and sent them flying through the air. The leader quickly got up and looked around everywhere to see what was going on. “That got them off guard like I planned, now they will move to us slowly.” I said to Coco taking her hand and walking through the large branches away from the group that was after us. After a few minutes, I realized that they would be catching up to us in no time at this rate. I pointed at a very dense group of trees to the left of where we were headed. “Listen Coco, they will catch us at this rate, so I want you to go to that bunch of trees and hide. And I will keep going straight so that they follow me ok.” I said to her, looking back at them, getting closer, and then down at the blood that was running down my leg.
I hopped along, trying to move as fast as I could to get away from them. I knew there was no way I would be able to outrun them, but I could keep them off me for a few extra minutes, and that’s all I really needed to do, which actually happened. I managed to stay ahead of them for almost an hour, which was awesome, but at the same time, it hurt like there was no tomorrow, I had reopened most of my wounds in the process.
They finally caught up to me, but my Nannies were still upgrading, so I was in deep trouble right about now. The good thing was that Coco was still safe where she was. They opened fire on me. I jumped and rolled through some of the bushes avoiding the bullets as best as I could. After what seemed like an hour, but was actually just a few minutes, they finally stopped firing for a few moments, and I decided to use that time in the best way I knew how. “Hey, guys come on let’s talk about this, as you can clearly see I’m by myself and shooting me won’t help you one bit. So, I think we should talk about this, and you should stop shooting at me, then we can find a way to make everyone happy.” I said to them with the hope that they would see things my way and decide to talk about things.
Alas, I was wrong, very wrong. I found this out as they opened fire on me once again. “We don’t care that she’s not with you because we can always find her later, or better yet, we kill you, then there’s no way she’s going to get out of this forest alive.” Oddly enough, they had a good point, it didn’t really matter if she died, if all they wanted to do was keep her here, they could just leave her lost just the same. A sudden feeling of doom came over me, or maybe it was the blood running down my spine, then they all opened fire on me.
I fell to the ground rolled out of the way, and off I went crawling my way through the thick bushes to one of the other traps I had set up. I passed one of the traps, and I kept going hoping they would follow me and walk right into it, and they did. It sent them flying back, and into the last trap I had set up, this one would hold them off for a while, at least I hoped it would. Then they did something unexpected they started randomly firing out of the trap in all directions. This wasn’t so much of a problem for me, but it would be if one of the bullets hit Coco. I got up and headed to where she was, making sure to stay in the path that any bullet would take to get to her.
To be Continued in loaded Part 5 or go to previous part in Loaded Part 3
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