The soldier and the sparrow

Han Lei and Han Hu-Li cursed loudly as they stared at the brightly lit forest in front of them. First their leader had suddenly gone missing while they were hunting down some assassin, then they couldn’t find him for some reason and now that they had found a track their way was blocked by a forest fire.

“One of the missiles fucked up again. I thought the guys from the valley said that they don’t miss their targets?”, Lei said with a very annoyed expression.

Hu-Li shook his head.

“This one did, and it caused a FUCKING forest fire. Seriously we should complain to the customer service!”

Lei gave him a crushing look for joking in such a serious situation, but that only led to Hu-Li’s grin becoming even wider. He sighed.

“Seems like we have to hope that this idiot Tye come back soon. If we don’t hurry up, we will lose the head start we have to the other teams. At that point it will be him who will be angry at us!”, Lei already saw it coming. Their stupid leader would lecture them again even though it was fundamentally his fault.

A little bit disgruntled he began to stare at his feet as he scraped over the dry earth. Who had given them such an idiot as their leader? Why was it him who had so much bad luck?

Without even noticing Lei had fallen into his own depressing thoughts.

As such he didn’t notice the running figure coming out from the forest. A black armor flashed in the orange light of the fire as he stormed out of the forest and towards them. Hu-Li saw this figure and his slightly worried expression eased up. He turned around to Lei and when he saw that the other had dazed off into his own world he gave him a light kick against the shin.

“Wake up idiot, Tye is back!”, he said with a wide smile on his face.

Lei woke up from his thoughts and first stared at Hu-Li, a little angry about being kicked for “no reason”. Then he finally realized what his comrade had said and turned his head towards the burning forest.

Seeing the figure coming towards them his face also eased up, but at the same time he couldn’t help but complain.

“Where THE FUCK has you been???”, he shouted towards Tye who at that point was only about 20 meters away from them.

“Had a little bit of trouble clearing a village.”, came the overly short reply from Tye.

Of course, that was a lie, but Tye had no intention of telling his subordinates and friends that he had just found an injured goddess but instead of killing her he had kind of took her along and treated her injuries.

Aside from this minor discomfort he was very relieved to finally have found those two. After all he couldn’t return to the headquarters without his subordinates, especially when he couldn’t provide a proper explanation why he had disappeared in the first place!

“Stop dillydallying, we have to get moving!”, he said without even halting to greet the two. No other words said he just continued to run. It was a truly amusing scene seeing him run past the colleagues who had searched and waited for him.

Lei and Hu-Li felt like exploding right at that place.

It was just like they had thought. This selfish guy had no shame!

“FUCK YOU TYE!”, one of them cried out before breaking into a sprint and trying to catch up.

The other one shook his head before putting his helmet back on the head.

“What did I do to deserve this?”, he bitterly asked the smoke-filled sky above him. For a moment he seemed like a battle-hardened hero lamenting his fate and blaming the heavens for his misfortune. In the end he had to interrupt his special moment and also get moving so as to not lose his two comrades.

Once he caught up he noticed something unusual about Tye. A white spot had appeared on the completely black armor. Lei blinked a few times and looked closer. It was a small, white sparrow that was calmly sitting on Tye’s shoulder and enjoying the cool wind.

The most amazing thing was that this sparrow didn’t seem to be affected by the up and down or strong wind of their advance. It was completely relaxed as it stared off into the area.

As if it had noticed that it was watched, it suddenly turned its head and looked straight into Lei’s eyes. Inside his helmet Lei’s eyes widened and he almost stumbled over a root. To his shook he realized that this small bird had extremely intelligent eyes!

“What is this bird?”, he asked with astonishment in his voice.

Hu-Li hadn’t noticed the little white sparrow yet but hearing Lei’s exclamation he became curious and looked over.

“What bird?”, he attempted to peek over Lei’s head and look at where Lei was staring at but doing this while running at full speed proved to be an extraordinarily stupid idea. He got caught up in a stone and fell right on his face.

Luckily his helmet and armor protected him from any injuries, but the raw impact was still quite unpleasant. Worse were only the biting remarks by Lei and Tye.

“Look at that idiot. Stumbling over a small pebble. I cannot wait to tell his sister once we are back in Han Zhou.”, Lei said with an amused tone. Due to the helmet they couldn’t see his expression, but Hu-Li was absolutely sure that he was grinning evilly.

“Nah, you should tell his dad. That weak-ass pussy will be beaten up by his 60 years old, frail father.”, Tye corrected him also laughing. Both had stopped and turned around to face Hu-Li who was still squatting on the ground.

Using this chance Hu-Li threw a look at Tye’s shoulder and sure enough a small snow-white sparrow was sitting there, it’s curious eyes glancing at him. To his surprise and horror, he was sure that it was laughing at his sorry figure.

“W-what kind of bullshit bird is this? It is making fun of me! Tye, tell your fucking pet to stop making fun of me!”, feeling hurt by being made fun of by a stupid bird Hu-Li cried these words out and got up from the ground.

Both Tye and Lei couldn’t help but laugh loudly.

“But yeah Lei, where did you get that cute bird from? I never saw a sparrow this white!”, after having laughed for a while Lei came back to the small sparrow.

As if it had understood his words the sparrow turned to face Lei and slightly tilted its tiny head. A pair of eyes clear like water gazed at Lei.

The young man was at a loss of words.

Tye sighed.

“I found her on the way. Her home was destroyed by a missile, so I took her with me.”, to his shock he found himself to be quite good at telling half-truths and weaving lies into the real story.

“Hey Tye, they called me your pet. Since I’m your pet you have to give me food and something to play once we get to your home, ok?”, suddenly a small voice resounded in Tye’s ears. For a moment he was confused until he realized where the voice came from.

Suzu, the small white sparrow on his shoulder, had spoken to him.

A little bit panicked he looked over to Lei and Hu-Li. He was able to explain a small white sparrow, but he wasn’t able to explain a talking, small, white sparrow. After all, talking in human languages was a skill only gods of other races could acquire.

In other words, it would be obvious that Tye was carrying a goddess around with him.

And if those two realized that…

To his surprise neither Lei nor Hu-Li seemed to have heard anything. In fact, they were staring at him, wondering why he had suddenly changed expressions even though nothing had happened.

“Stupid, they can’t hear me!”, Suzu’s voice once again appeared in his ears.

Tye realized that he was still dealing with a goddess. Even though it was impossible for a mortal like him, for a goddess like her it was easy to talk with someone without anyone hearing or even noticing it.

“g-Guys, we should move on.”, Tye had enough. He would talk to this strange goddess with her weird antics after finishing the mission. Right now, he couldn’t quite handle talking with someone who only he could hear.

“Let’s get this mission over and head home.”, actually he also thought about making her strip once he got home.