Update! Finally! Man, I’m lazy. Well let’s get on with this thing. Mushra?

Mushra: Mushraluvr doesn’t own Shinzo unless the eater bunny has deemed her as special and delivers the rights in her Easter basket.

Sad, isn’t it?

Light of Shinzo

Chapter 7

After running around for who-knows-how-long, Hikari and Binka finally manage to track down a festival organizer. They had gone around the whole place asking, but always seemed to find an unreliable source. After Binka had suggested a rest, they happened to meet her at a snow cone booth.

The organizer was a tall, red-headed feline Enterran. She wore a pink button-up shirt over a straight skirt of the same shade. It looked nice with her tan fur, long curly hair, and green cat eyes. A name tag on the shirt read ‘Festival Organizer’. Underneath the title it said ‘Ami’.

“So you’re looking for a job?” she asked, the tip of her tail swayed side-to-side slowly as she looked Hikari over appraisingly. “We do have some openings at the booths, the pay is okay, but you’ll be switched regularly from booth to booth.”

“As long as I can handle it, I’ll be good. Thanks for letting me work.”

“I ought to be thanking you, were running low on people to work the booths. You can start working as soon as you want.” Ami grinned, which looked more like a smirk on her feline face.

“Thank you. I’ll get right to work,” then glancing down at Binka she added, “after I help her get ready for the event today.”

“Oh?” she looked at Binka with open curiosity. “You’re a contestant for the Autumn Pixie? What a cute little girl.” She brought up Binka’s chin with her finger gently, so she could look into her chocolate eyes.

“What’s your name?”

“Uh- My name is Binka,” she half-stuttered nervously.

“Well, Binka,” Ami let go of her chin and stood up straight, looking down at the human. “I think you’ll bring this town a wonderful harvest.

“Thank you.” Binka nodded curtly.

They heard someone calling Hikari’s and Binka’s names. They turned to see Yakumo running toward them.

“Yakumo?” Hikari tilted her head slightly, curiosity in her eyes.

The young woman had finally gotten to them. She paused for a moment to catch her breath.

“What is it?” Binka asked.

“Hikari forgot about her seeing the doctor,” she informed, still a little out of breath. Said girl was suddenly tense all over.

“Ah, you didn’t have to go through that trouble. You’re so nice.” Hikari tried to smile, but could only force a weak grin.

“It’s okay. I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

“You have an injury?” Ami asked.

“Well, yeah… but it’s all better now. It doesn’t even hurt anymore,” she said as she patted her stomach. She winced. A small yelp-like whine vibrated from her throat.

“Ow, ow, ow, ow, OWWWWWW! THAT HURT LIKE CRAP!!!!!” She screamed inside her head. The only visible expression of pain she displayed was her left eye, that was twitching like mad; she hid this by turning from the others, holding her stomach slightly and keeping her head down.

“Are you okay, Hikari?” Binka asked, lightly touching her shoulder.

“Of course.” She replied with a shaky smile. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Oh, ok.”

“And since I’m feeling so good, I guess I don’t have to go to the doctor’s. Right?”

Yakumo looked her over with concern. “But I want to make sure. I don’t want you have an infection. Let’s just go in for a checkup. If they see anything, we’ll just get it fixed up, okay?”

“No, really. It’s okay. You don’t have to put yourself through any trouble.”

“Well,” Ami said, “I guess I’ll just assign your job when you get back from that doctor’s visit.” The feline left with a wave.

“Huh? What? WAIT!” she called with an outstretched arm, which was useless. Ami had already disappeared into the crowd. Inside her mind she sobbed pitifully. “I don’t wanna!!!”

OoOoOoOoO

“Hikari Tenshi, the doctor will see you now.” The nurse turned around back through the door, the click-click of her heels sounding loudly off the cold tile floors.

“NOOOO! Please have mercy, dear guardians! I’M TOO YOUNG TO DIE!!!” Hikari panicked in thought. She was sweating bullets as Yakumo and the others (who had met up with them in the front of ‘Kokuyoku Hospital’) led her toward the hall the nurse had disappeared into.

The nurse did the usual before-you-can-see-the-doctor routine: checking her height, weight, and sight. The results weren’t anything unusual; five foot two (which was an inch taller than she remembered.), one hundred fifteen pounds, and twenty/twenty vision. Everything looked good. Then, came the worst of it; the doctor’s office.

Hikari sat on the exam table, feet dangling above the floor. As she looked around, trying to find a way to make this place a little less hellish, she spotted Mushra playing with a silver thing on the wall that dispensed black, cone-shaped objects that she assumed were arranged by different sizes.

Her eyes scanned over to his friend. The water Enterran had turned the sink on and was playing with the running water, transforming it into different translucent items; a flower, as dragon, a crown.

“Will you stop playing around?!” This isn’t a playground,” Binka glared at the two boys, who blinked at each other before turning back to their previous occupation. This infuriated the short-tempered human, who (being without her bazooka) held up a doctor’s scalpel threateningly between them. “Get out of here before you break something!” she half shouted to two.

Not needing proof of the girl’s threat, the two quickly and quietly excused themselves out into the hall where Kutall and the kittens waited. (Kutall felt the small office was too crowded so he waited outside the door.)

Hikari silently giggled at the two, erasing her anxiety for a moment, but soon it crept back to take a hold of her mind. Without the two as a distraction she thought about the dreaded place she was in and what might occur within the next hour. The small, immaculate room seemed cold and uninviting. The white starred at her from all around, foreboding and lifeless. The light above her blazed painfully bright, shining through her soul to find her deepest fears. The precise, stainless tools seemed to smirk at her with cruel thoughts circling through their lifeless bodies. This was the kind of room that had no emotion. It would watch on without a word as atrocious curiosities were carried out against its innocent inhabitants. It probably enjoyed the blood-curdling, inhuman screams that would never be heard past its thick walls, the blood that ran over its tile floor in thick waves of maroon only to be bleached out before the rising of the sun, and wild-frenzy in their murderer’s cold, inquisitive eyes. This was a room that she did not want to be in lest the same fate befell her.

“Hikari,” Yakumo called the frightened girl’s attention to herself. Hikari quickly switched her concentration to the human sitting in the chair beside her table. “What’s wrong? You’re shaking all over.”

“Ah, It’s nothing!” she answered quickly with a casual wave of her hand. “It’s just cold in here.” She rubbed her arms for effect.

“You’re cold?” Binka asked, pushing herself off the wall next to the door to move to the Enterran. She felt her arms. “Are you sure? It feels warm to me.”

“Um, well, you see,” she started, but was interrupted when a tall, reptilian Enterran in a white lab coat walked in.

“Hello, I’m Dr. Iguidox,” he introduced himself in a calm, smooth voice. “I’ll be your doctor for today. What, might I ask, is the reason I’m here for?”

“My friend, Hikari, needs to be looked at,” Yakumo informed him, pointing out the girl, who froze on spot. “She had run into trouble and gotten herself hurt. I cleaned and bandaged the wounds, but we want to see if she has any risk of infection or not.”

“You did the right thing by seeing a professional as soon as possible. Let’s see if we can get her feeling like new.” With this, he grinned at his patient, whose fear twisted the kind gesture into a sinister snarl.

“I gotta get outta here!” Hikari resolved in her head.

The next fifteen minutes involved poking, prodding, wincing, and ‘did-that-hurt's. For about five minutes, Dr. Iguidox refused to believe her tiara wouldn’t come off and that she was hiding a wound that may or may not be serious. After what seemed like forever of this, Hikari finally sat back down on the exam table, a little less scared of the amiable doctor; Dr. Iguidox left to scan over his data he collected. Within another quarter of an hour, he returned with papers and a few small bottles in his hands.

“Well, nothing life-threatening,” he informed them as he laid the set of papers on the counter. He opened drawer and put on a pair of gloves while pulling out a plastic tube and thin, paper packet. “But she does need treatment or else it could be rather painful.”

“What kind of treatment does she need?” Binka asked as he picked up a brown bottle he had brought in.

“It’s nothing too big,” he assured her. He pulled a long slender needle from the paper and attached it to the tube. “She just needs a shot.”

Everything seemed to freeze with a sudden change of atmosphere. Everyone turned to the cause; Hikari could’ve been mistaken for a statue if it wasn’t for the trembling that began to control her body, a deep sense of fear and danger hovered around her, almost tangible.

Wondering what was wrong, Dr. Iguidox studied her. After a moment of no change, he continued with his work, pushing the needle into the top of the bottle. He pulled on the handle, the pink liquid trickling into the tube. After it had reached the right amount, he put down the bottle and turned to his unmoving patient.

“Now this will boost your immunity to infection and diseases and will help your cells rebuild at a faster pace.” He pulled from his pocket a rubber tourniquet and reached for her arm.

Suddenly, she jumped from the table. Moving fast for an injured girl, adrenaline fueled by terror, she made a dash for the door. She turned on her heels as she threw open the door and sprinted out.

CRASH!

“Wh-what hap- Hikari?” Mushra and Saago could be heard, confused, out in the hall. Hikari had run full force into Kutall’s back as he headed off to look for a water fountain.

“Are you okay?” The kittens asked, worried.

“W-wall . . .” was the only thing that could be made out from Hikari’s garbled speech. She slumped against Kutall’s large back.

“Ouch, are you okay?” Kutall asked.

“N-not really,” she admitted in a state of half-delirium.

“What happened?” Saago asked.

“She was about to get a shot, but she jumped up and ran for it,” Binka told them as she entered the hallway.

“Hikari, you need the shot to get better. It only hurts for a second,” Dr. Iguidox tried to explain to her.

“It hurts way longer than that!” she argued, trying to inch away but failed due to Kutall blocking her escape route.

“But you have to get it,” Yakumo tried to reason with her in a soft, kind voice. She grabbed her hand gently and led her back to the white room and sat her down on the exam table, the white paper crackled as she sat.

“Now is that all?” Dr. Iquidox asked, holding up the daunting needle.

Hikari lightly nodded her head to answer, even though her eyes were wide with fright. “Yes sir.”

He grabbed his rubber tourniquet again, tied it tightly around her upper arm, and cleaned an area of skin with an alcohol swab. As he reached for the needle, tears started streaming down her cheeks. She whimpered in fear, as she watched the needle. He moved toward her.

“Wait!” Yakumo, Hikari, and Dr. Iguidox turned to the door. Mushra entered, heading toward the two at the table.

“Yes?” the doctor inquired.

Mushra walked around the two to the arm that was receiving the shot and sat down next to her. He held out his hand next to hers. She looked away, even though she knew he had already seen her childish tears.

“Here,” he offered, nudging her hand. “Squeeze.” She looked up, into his sky eyes, fright apparent in her sapphire ones. “It’s supposed to make it hurt less,” he offered. She swallowed a lump in her throat and grasped his gloved hand. He gently squeezed her hand in reassurance.

The kind doctor smiled at the two. “Are you ready?” he asked her. Tightening her grip on Mushra’s hand considerably, she quickly nodded and closed her eyes. She squeezed tighter as she imagined the needle moving closer and closer until it rested against her skin and-

“There!” the doctor proudly announced. Hikari opened her eyes, but not loosening her grip on Mushra’s hand. In Dr. Iguidox’s hand was the empty vial. She glanced at her arm. Upon finding the orange band-aid on her upper arm, she let go of Mushra’s hand.

“Now be sure to take one of each every morning and one of these at night before bed.” He instructed as he handed Yakumo three white bottles of medicine. “If you forget, the instructions are on the bottles.”

“Thank you,” Yakumo said as she took the bottles from him and put them into a small backpack she carried. “I’ll be sure to make sure she takes them. So what do we owe you?”

“It’s okay, Yakumo,” Hikari offered. “I’ll pay for it.”

“No, no.” Dr. Iguidox turned to the two females. “This is a charity hospital. The patients can pay if they feel the need or make an abundant amount of money, but most travelers aren’t expected to pay. We believe if someone is hurt, they need help. Don’t worry about the money,” he smiled, “Especially since there’s the festival going on.”

“Wow, thank you!” Yakumo smiled.

The three met the others outside the door in the hallway. Everyone reassured Hikari with happy smiles. She felt a lot less horrible about how she acted.

As they walked outside, Mushra asked, “Was that so bad?” A wide grin spread across his face. Hikari smiled back.

“No, it wasn’t. Thank you.”

“It’s what friends do. Besides,” his voice rose playfully, “It’s been a while since I defeated a crazy doctor and ruined his experiments.”

“Really now?”

“Really!”

“Now when was this?”

“Well,” he started in a reminiscent voice, “I was about 10 years old when this loony doctor came into town and tried to explain my hair.”

“But you’re Enterran!”

“That’s what I kept trying to tell him. He didn’t get Saago because of the helmet, darn him, but he tried almost everything to kidnap me. His first attempt was . . .”

The nine listened and laughed at Mushra’s memories as they headed back toward the festival in the center of the bustling town.

There. That’s that chapter. Man, I HATE shots. I cry when I see that freakin needle! Anyways, idk when I’ll get to the next one, but I’ll try. (no promises, I’m a lazy arse.)

Thanks for reading and please review,

Mushraluvr