(Book 2) Neferpitou and the human Royal Guard

Chapter 9 Deploy the War ants!

Hours later, I awaken in the ragged bed once more to see Pitou, now far more calm as she gently holds my shoulder. "Welcome back, Allie." she says, smiling slightly.

"There's that beautiful smile." I reply with a smile of my own.

"How are you feeling? Are you in any pain?" she asks.

"Not much, just a little sore is all. Other than that, I'm fine."

She lets out a sigh of relief. "Good. Do you... do you think you will be able to walk soon?"

"Yeah, probably." I nod. "Just give me a second." I say as I slowly get out of the bed. Unlike the last time I got out of bed after being passed out for a few days, I was able to maintain my footing after stepping down, even if my legs didn't want to cooperate. "Fuck you gravity, you can't beat me this time." I taunt physics with exaggerated bravado for simply managing to stand.

Pitou can't help but snicker at my stupid comment. "You never change, do you?"

"Nope!" I exclaim proudly before looking back at her and asking "But uh, in all seriousness, how did you find me?"

"Simple, I followed you and Pouf on your way to Yorknew, making sure I stayed out of range of en range. I saw you enter that large building with that horned guy, and after a few minutes of waiting, I see a big flash of light in the windows of the top floor. Using gyo, I see you entangled in the tentacles of that weird jelly thing, which was not okay with me. So I got revenge by using that fancy wrist blade you gave me back in East Gorteau to stab that thing from a distance before using the confusion to mount your rescue." she explains, leaving me slightly stunned.

"Wow... you really went in with a much better plan than I did." I admit.

"No, I just knew that leaving you alone to your own devices was a bad idea. And look at that, you proved me right~" Pitou teases me.

"... Yeah... that's fair." I say while sighing, not even pretending that I disagree. "So, what's been happening while I was out?"

Pitou brings a claw to her chin as she recalls what has been happening. "A lot actually. The mafia stopped sending money ever since their betrayal, and the fish all  in the area started getting poisoned, which truly is a shame, I find fish to be rather delectable, even more than humans. Pike has been throwing up for a few days because he didn't listen to me when I told him the fish were poisoned. He's lucky he didn't end up eating more of them." She said that last part with slight disappointment. "Anyways, that leaves us with somewhat of a problem..."

"A food shortage?"

She nods "Exactly. And to make matters worse, humans have been flocking to us for safety because people in the province have been 'disappearing' according to the new arrivals. We have enough food to last us a few more days, but once those supplies run out, we will have to either relocate or start eating the humans under our care."

"Which would be counterintuitive to our purpose here." I finish.

"Correct. So, King Meruem has declared that our next move will to be to take on the mafia, so that these supply shortages will stop. For now, we just need to wait for you to recover before we attack." she states.

Nodding, I muse "Ya know, I was gonna ask if we were certain the mafia was behind that stuff, but then I realized how dumb of a question that was. Nearly forgot the whole me almost dying thing."

Pitou then looks at me like I'm an idiot before asking "How have you survived this long?"

"I dunno, I ask myself the same question every day." I respond, shrugging.