The shrub that the boy had taken refuge in was a poor hiding spot at best, but it had been the only one available to him and he cowered underneath it, clutching the polished wooden  box to his chest, and waiting. He could hear the two men, their voices were growing louder now; they were just on the other side of the fence, it wasn't going to be long until they found him. And what they wanted with him was a question that he wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer to.<br/><br/><br/>Closing his eyes, the boy repeated his plea in silence, praying that someone was listening to him. And when he opened them again, everything was different. He was still the same, though, curled up on himself with the box in his white-knuckled hands, and staring with a wide-eyed desperation that was an alien expression on his young face.<br/><br/>But everything else? That was different. Though it was barely 4 PM, the sky had darkened to be almost like dusk and the boy could hear the men's voices, but they sounded garbled and far away. There was... another voice. This one was clear and it sounded as though it was coming from above him. The teen pressed himself further into the flowering bush in case this was some sort of trap, something cooked up by the two men that had been chasing him. Or even something that his fevered, fractured mind was doing in a mis-guided effort to protect the teen from the reality that seemed more and more like a nightmare.<br/><br/>But still, there was a sort of blasé calm to the this voice, as though whoever they were, they weren't at all bothered by the desperation  that had caused the boy to call out to whoever was listening. Was -- this real? Whoever this mystery saviour was, were they real? Would a figment of his own imagination and fear sound so<em>bored</em>with the whole situation?<br/><br/>The teen with the unusual greyish-blue hair pushed his bangs away from his face and he took a chance, pulling aside the branches of the shrub and let his blue eyes wander up the slender form that was standing there, obviously waiting for an answer.<br/><br/>"If you're here to help me," the boy said, "then yes! Whatever the consequences are, I'll accept them!"<br/><br/>Reckless, perhaps, but the boy didn't see any other way out of this. He could have tried to run but there were two men and they each had guns. They'd already killed his mother and he did not want to know why they were so interested in him that they were willing to spill blood.