The Stupid Cannon Fodder is Stunning Today

Chapter 1: Nine

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Part I

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Nine stared at the ceiling of the thatched roof hut that was now his home in a dazed-like state.

This was wrong.

He was wrong.

The body he wore was too small. He was short, his hands were tiny, and he was weak.

He was...

He was...

He was a child, or at least, he was in the body of one.

Nine remembered being left behind. The planet was set to detonate and he held the bomb. His teammates were long gone, their missions completed.

He was unwilling, but there was nothing to be done. It was over in a blink of an eye.

And now he found himself here.

Staring at the ceiling of a thatched roof hut.

In the body of a child.

"Toby, is everything alright?"

There was a woman standing over him with a worried gaze.

Her hair was white, and her skin was like copper. Her eyes were a warm brown, softened with kindness and lined by shadows.

Nine was charmed, and unfamiliar emotion welled up inside him.

"Toby?"

Nine stared at her.

She stared back.

Slowly, he nodded, the movement not unlike a doll.

The woman pursed her lips and kneeled down beside him.

She reached toward him, and Nine instinctively flinched away.

There was suddenly a look of distress on the woman's face.

"Toby, please. I need to check the wound."

It was then that Nine realized there were bandages wrapped around his head.

His own hands touched the wrapping and he frowned.

The woman furrowed her brows. "I think it's time to visit the healer again."

Before Nine could stop her, she picked him up like he weighed nothing, tucked his head against the crook of her neck, and left the hut.

What the hell is happening?

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The healer lived on a busy street.

Nine knew this because he and the woman had passed several market stalls and shopfronts and there were what looked to be hundreds of people wandering around the area.

While the woman carried him, he noticed the rural buildings and unfamiliar architecture reminiscent of the Great Void, a period historians knew little about and was only known to have existed a thousand years before the ancient Empire of Rhine.

"..."

Fuck.

He was a time-traveling body snatcher.

The healer's clinic was situated in a small building at the very end of the street.

The woman knocked on the door a couple of times.

"Healer Ludia, are you in?"

"Madam Arcadia..."

A man appeared and frowned at them. He looked more like a drunkard than a medical practitioner.