Shades of Time

To everyone reading and reviewing, thank you so much for your time and attention. I sincerely appreciate it.



***



“Gods damn it to all hells!” Shi swore, half carrying, half dragging a semi conscious Major Thies. “Kenren!” she yelled, spotting him several yards away across the compound. No mean feat considering she was half blinded from the still bleeding gash over her left eye.



Kenren turned toward the sound of his name being called. “What the fuck?” he said, more to himself than Tenpou, who was standing next to him. Both men noticed neither Shi nor Thies were moving right and the walk they had started to them quickly became a dead run. Kenren skidded to a halt in front of them with Tenpou hot on his heels. The two women were covered in blood and bruises, Shi was still bleeding and Thies was sliding in and out of consciousness. They could only stare for a moment before Shi snapped them out of their stupor.



“Kenren, can you get her to the healers? I can’t hold her up much longer,” Shi said, hating the way her legs had started shaking. It seemed to be taking every ounce of willpower she possessed to keep herself and her second in command upright and moving.



“I got her, Shi,” Kenren said, taking Thies from her. “What about you?”



“I’ll live, just move your ass,” Shi snapped, trying to keep the fear in her voice to a minimum.



“I’ll take care of her, Kenren, go,” Tenpou said, moving to where he could easily keep Shi from falling because it looked like that was going to happen at any given moment.



Kenren nodded and took off at a sprint, trying his best to avoid even thinking about the possibility of the woman in his arms not making it through whatever had happened to her.



Tenpou watched Kenren go for a moment before turning back to Shi. She was starting to visibly shake and her skin had seemed to go completely white before she sank to her knees. Tenpou cursed under his breath when he realized she was probably going into shock. He yanked his lab coat off and swung it around her, knowing for certain something was very wrong because she wasn’t arguing with him about it. He knelt down beside her.



“Gods damn it! Shi? Shi! Come on, breathe, damn it!” he said, noticing her complexion was starting to tinge blue. “Slow, deep breaths.”



“Fuck, Tenpou, I know!” Shi snapped, trying to concentrate and regulate her breathing.



“Do it then.” Okay, that was better, he thought, that was more like Shi. What in the name of all the long forgotten gods had happened to put Shi and her second in command into such a state? If they were that bad off what had happened to the rest of the squad? He put that thought off for later; right now he needed to get her to the healers.



“Come on, Shi,” he said, sliding an arm behind her back. “We have to get you to the healers as well.”



Shi shook her head, stopped fairly quickly because it made her dizzy. “I’m okay.”



“My ass,” Tenpou growled.



“Get me home, I’ll live.”



“Damn it, Shi! You look like you’ve lost a lot of blood and I damn well know you’re going into shock. Let me take you to the healers.”



“No! Tenpou, they’ll have their hands full with everyone else. I’m not going to distract them from the others when I know what to do for myself. Are you going to help me home or do I have to crawl my way there?”



“Fine. If you get worse I’m taking you if I have to tie you up and drag you there,” Tenpou said.



“Whatever. Just get me home,” Shi said, trying to stand on still shaking legs and not making it.



Tenpou swore long and loud for a moment before sliding one arm under her legs and lifting her off of the ground.



“Put me down this instant, Tenpou!”



“Oh yeah, that’s happening. I’ll get right on it,” he said, starting toward her house.



“I can walk, just give me a minute.”



“No. I’ll be carrying you and we’ll make it there in half the time or less since you’re so determined to go home,” Tenpou said, jaw clenching and unclenching in frustration. “I swear to the gods you are the most stubborn creature in the known universe.”



Shi sighed heavily and regretted it due to the cracked ribs. She thanked the gods that he’d picked her up so her uninjured side was against him. “If you say so, Tenpou.”



Tenpou walked for a while in silence before the burning need to know finally ate away enough at him that he asked.



“What the hell happened, Shi?”



“It was supposed to be a routine training exercise. Find where there had been human murders, find the culprits, execute as needed. Simple and straightforward. Mostly new squad members and only a few senior officers to guide them. Shouldn’t have been anything too dangerous.”



“But . . .” Tenpou prompted.



“Evidently the information we were given was wrong. These things weren’t like anything I’ve ever seen before.”



“What things?”



“I don’t know what they were. Like a weird blend of jiang shi and youkai. Definitely not natural, they just felt so wrong. No matter what we tried they didn’t seem to go down for long.”



“Gods. How many did you lose?” he asked, not really knowing if he wanted the answer or not.



“Half the squad is dead that I know of,” Shi said hollowly. “The rest of us are in various stages of serious injury. You always expect to lose a few during a real battle but not on training. Not anything like this.”



Tenpou nodded, he knew what it was like to lose members of a team. Knew how hard that was to take even after the worst fight. But he couldn’t even begin to imagine how difficult it must be to lose half of a squad and be in doubt as to how many more would perish due to injury.



Neither of them spoke the rest of the way to Shi’s house. Tenpou nudged the door open with one shoulder and carried Shi inside. By this point in time he knew the way to her bedroom and made it there unerringly. Putting her carefully on the side of the bed.



“Will you be okay while I go run water for a bath?”



Shi stared at him blankly for a moment. “Who are you and what the hell did you do with Tenpou?” she asked, sounding half serious and half sarcastic.



He chuckled. “I’ll take that as a yes,” he said going out the bedroom door.



Shi sat on the side of her bed and tried her damnedest not to be sick. There had been so many of them and no one had seemed to be able to kill them until they’d started beheading the blasted things. By then it was far too late for most of the squad. They’d been forced to retreat. All the ones still upright and mobile had grabbed as many others as they could and . . . Gods this was a nightmare!



Tenpou came back in the room a few minutes later.



“Shi, stop it.”



“Stop what?”



“You couldn’t have foreseen this. You said yourself it was supposed to be training maneuvers. No one could have ever suspected this.”



Shi shook her head. “That’s the trouble, Tenpou. I don’t think this was an accident.”



“What do you mean?”



“I think someone deliberately fed us misinformation. It just felt like a setup.”



“We’ll worry about that later, Shi,” Tenpou said, starting to work on getting the buttons of her uniform tunic undone.



“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she said.



“For the love of the gods, Shi! You’re injured, partially in shock, I’m trying to help.”



She stared at him for a moment. Wondering vaguely if she’d taken one too many blows to the head and this was some kind of odd blunt force trauma induced hallucination. She sighed. Whatever fantasies she’d had in the past about Tenpou undressing her, they had never included her bleeding all over the place.



“Just . . . get me into the bathroom first so the blood doesn’t stain everything,” Shi said tiredly.



Tenpou nodded and picked her up again, carrying her into the bathroom and setting her down on the edge of the tub. Shi held on to the side while he pulled her boots off, doing her best to keep her balance and not go tumbling backward into the tub. It figured that one of the worst times of her life Tenpou would be witness to. The gods really did hate her, she thought, even if she was more or less one of them.