Ultraman Legend of the Light Chaser

"..."

The keyboard spat out a mouthful of muddy water.

A man got lost in the deep mountains, his teammates escaped in a UFO and might have crashed. How is he going to get back and deal with the officers' questioning? His daughter is home alone; he doesn't know if she'll eat breakfast or if she'll encounter danger on her way to school.

I need help urgently...

Oh, there's no signal here.

Why did things turn out like this? They just came out to fight alien beasts, but they encountered a madman, got bitten by dogs, and were then chased by their own colleagues, forcing them to run into the mountains and become wild men.

With the sunrise in hand, Jun Sakuma roughly determined the direction and decided to use the most basic method:

Keep going straight! He refused to believe that he couldn't find even a small village along this straight line!

However, like everyone who gets lost in the deep mountains, Jun Sakuma only walked in a straight line according to his "feelings". In fact, he went around in a big circle, a big circle inside a small circle, and finally returned to the starting point.

……

Huali had been awake for a while, but the house was quiet, without the clattering of pots and pans that her father used to make breakfast.

She ran barefoot to the living room and glanced at the wall clock. The time was ticking towards 9:30, and a bold idea began to form in her mind:

Skipping class! Truancy!

She has every excuse not to go to school!

When questioned by the teacher, I said that my father wasn't home and I was scared.

When Dad questioned me, I said I didn't know the way and hadn't eaten breakfast because you weren't here. I wish Mom were here... *sob*

Then, maybe her father will feel guilty and she can even trick him out of a bag of candy!

Thinking of this, my heart started pounding, and I felt a sense of joy, like I had stolen my dad's Coke and drunk it all.

You can skip a day of homework!

I wonder where Dad went again. Was he working overtime? Or... did he use working overtime as an excuse to go to an izakaya and hang out with some weird people?

Without even putting on her shoes, she rushed to the entrance and stood on tiptoe to pick up the phone.

At first, I thought I had dialed the wrong number, but after several attempts, all I heard from the receiver was a message that "the other party's phone is switched off."

Karin sighed in disappointment and decided to go play with the teddy bear for a while.

If Dad doesn't come home at noon, I'll take apart the Lego set he's been working on for ages!

...That seems a bit cruel, so let's... let's steal a bottle of Coke from him.

Shuto Saya, the head of the Memory Police under the Third Base, also frowned because she couldn't get through on the phone.

She was standing next to Jun Sakuma's car, which was parked on the street and empty.

Mizuki Nonomiya reported to her: "Yesterday, because both Megumi Sakuda and Jinzo Negi were at the newspaper, my senior asked me to deal with other targets first. If Megumi Sakuda makes any moves, he will notify me."

"So where did he send the message?" Shuto Saya turned around, her eyes devoid of any emotion, and looked at her uneasy subordinate.

Nonomiya Mizuki dared not meet her gaze, only looking down at his toes: "I...I don't know..."

Shudo Saya had high hopes for this newcomer because she possessed considerable patience, and... kindness towards the mission target.

Some police officers, after working for a long time, may develop a tendency to look down on their targets, thinking that they have a special mission and know things that others do not, and thus unconsciously regard their targets as a group inferior to themselves.

Saya Shudo noticed the tendency of these memory police officers, but she couldn't replace them—even if the requirements were lower than those of the Night Raid Team, memory police officers weren't so easy to replace.

This newcomer has greatly disappointed her, but what disappoints her even more, or rather, makes her feel sorry for him, is Jun Sakuma.

She dialed the number of the person in charge of the medical examination center: "Have his analysis results come out yet?"

Nonomiya Mizuki held her breath, unsure whether she should walk away or stay put.

"Ah, the sample size is too small, making analysis very difficult," came the clanging and humming of the machine on the other end of the microphone. "Can't you collect more samples? We haven't even extracted 0.2 milliliters of usable saliva these past few days!"

"Honestly, why don't you just wait another month? I'll give you a thorough analysis of him inside and out during your next routine checkup." The head of the medical examination center was quite annoyed by the extremely small sample size.

"Perhaps what you have is the last sample."

"Huh?" A bolt from the blue.

"I don't require you to control the error between two integers. I just need to confirm... that my subordinates haven't become 'puppets' of the alien beasts!"

Her subordinates, of course, did not become puppets of the alien beasts.

He was both thirsty and hungry, and began to wonder if eating tree bark would be enough to get him out of there.

After circling back to the starting point, he was smarter this time and began to follow the path shown on television, walking along the stream and waiting for a human settlement to appear.

He felt like he was dying of thirst, but the stream wasn't clean, and he was afraid that if he drank it, he would get dysentery before he even got out and die in the forest.

He walked along the stream until afternoon, and finally found a small village.

An old man was sunbathing at the door

When the sun saw him coming to ask for water, it thought he had encountered a reckless hiker who had gone into the mountains and ended up encountering a wild beast.

"Are there bears in the mountains?" the old man asked, bringing him a glass of water.

Sakuma Jun said thank you, nodding repeatedly, and said sincerely, "Yes, there are also very large stray dogs."

"Hiss—" The old man worried about his free-range poultry.

"I chased away the big stray dog, which attracted a litter of puppies that chased me for most of the night."

“Oh dear,” the old man looked him over to see if he had any dog ​​bites. “If you go east out of the village, there’s a clinic where you can get vaccinated.”

Feeling revitalized after drinking the water, Jun Sakuma asked, "Could I borrow your phone for a moment?"

The old man took a puff of his cigarette: "Sincerely yours, 500 yen."

Jun Sakuma gave him a cell phone that had been soaked in water.

The old man glanced at the phone and pushed it back: "You can pay on credit."

A few minutes later, Shuto Saya received a phone call from her missing subordinate.

"Ah! Commander Shuto, this is Sakuma. Last night I spotted the target's movements. I was afraid that following him directly in my own car would be too obvious, so I took a taxi to chase after him."

"Ah."

"The target left the city, and I lost him at the fork in the road. After going around a few turns, I found that the target had gotten out of the car and walked into the mountains—I must be the target."

"Ah."

"I followed him around and got lost. I couldn't see clearly at night and stepped into a ditch, and my phone got wet... Ah, I noticed he went into a place and suddenly disappeared! When I went back up, there was nothing there!"

Shudo Saya thought of the Meta Realm described in the data.

“I don’t know what happened, so I had no choice but to continue searching in the direction he disappeared.” Sakuma Jun’s brain was working at lightning speed due to his strong will to survive. He reported to his superior with a mix of truth and lies: “Oh, right, I also saw a strange man in black!”

"Sir! I have a report to report!" Jun Sakuma's voice suddenly turned low: "I suspect that those men in black have some connection with the alien beasts!"

“Hmm,” Shudo Saya said noncommittally, “Stop tracking, return to the team immediately, I need your written report.”

According to the Night Raid team's feedback, both the Dark Giant and the Alien Beast that appeared that night were injured to varying degrees. In her understanding, those injuries would inevitably be reflected in the host body that was parasitized by the Alien Beast.

She wasn't so foolish as to believe only one side of the story, and ordered Sakuma Jun to return immediately so she could see for herself what was wrong with her subordinate!

On the other end of the phone, Jun Sakuma said that he was quite good at making up lies, which helped him escape a disaster.

Shudo Saya ended the call with a lot of suspicion, but before she could think about it carefully, another call came in.

"White-clad cleaners? You...discovered my subordinates at the target location?!"

Chapter 47 Cover

Sakuma Jun walked nervously along the village road. The TLT's search party in the vicinity had been notified and drove over to pick up the "lost and reckless fellow."

As luck would have it, it was the vehicle of the white-clad sanitation worker, who looked at the mud-covered man with awe.

Seeing their reactions, Jun Sakuma knew he was likely to become famous when he returned.

The white-clad cleaners knew the nickname the Memory Police had given them, "white-clad sieves," and were quite annoyed. Now that they'd found a joke about the Memory Police, who knew what kind of rumors would spread when they got back.

"Did you get hit on the head while playing sumo with a gorilla?"

Jun Sakuma glared at him. Don't think that just because you've wrapped yourself up and only half your face is showing, I can't find you when I turn around!

"Ha ha ha ha……"

The sanitation workers in white coats laughed heartily, their voices muffled and low, like sealed cans, filling the vehicle with a cheerful atmosphere.

When Jun Sakuma got off the vehicle and returned to the MP base, he realized that there was more than one white-clad cleaner's vehicle parked at the entrance.

"Hey, could it be that my UFO teammate really crashed and got captured?" He nervously peered into the car window.

The car door opened, and the white-clad canned goods dragged out something that looked like a dark burlap sack.

The burlap sack-like thing looked up and its eyes lit up when it saw Sakuma Junji: "Finally found you, Jun-senpai!"

"What's going on?" Shuto Saya had been waiting here since she received the call, watching as her two subordinates were unloaded from the car by the man in white.

Jun Sakuma was stunned. Even someone who could write a script without batting an eye had finally run out of ideas.

The burlap sack on the other side spoke first: "After I finish dealing with the target, I want to come and help Senior Chun. As you know, sir, I have never done a mission to track a target before, so I want to come and learn from you."

"But before I could even say hello, my senior ran off with the target!" Shintaro Hirata looked quite aggrieved. "I could only take a taxi and follow them into the mountains. How was I supposed to know that was the combat zone? I hadn't received any notification at all!"

Jun Sakuma's heart nearly jumped out of his chest. He forced a straight face and looked at the young man with a gaze that was half serious and half confused, just like Saya Shuto.