72 Lucifer Joins the Group

After settling the issue with Light, she turned her attention towards Lucifer who was returning. None of the Variants under Peter dared to make a move on this group after seeing Lucifer's presence.

Glaring at the crowd, he threatened, "Come close and you will die. You all had an indirect hand in murdering my brothers."

There was anger but also desolation in his eyes. Now that he had murdered the perpetrator, he wasn't too sure where to go from here. Staying in the base that murdered his brothers was not an option nor will killing all the Variants involved either.

Sighing, Aida moved away from the group and walked towards Lucifer. She usually didn't like to take in strays but lately, it seems that's all she ever did. Opening her mouth, "If you have nothing better to do, why don't you join us? We are headed to City M for some unfinished business."

Lucifer's eyes gleamed with a certain light when he heard this, he looked up at Aida in wonder. A moment ago, he felt like he had no direction but now he was given an explicit opportunity to avenge his brothers from Noah's betrayal.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Seeing that they were all headed in the same direction, he may as well join them.

Lucifer reached his hand out for Aida to shake. She reluctantly put her tiny hand within his and shook it quickly before brushing it away. With that, a new member had officially joined Aida's group.

Ignoring the congregating groups of people in the base, they swiftly grabbed some supplies, got into the jeep, and drove off without another word. No one made any attempt to stop them.

At the back, Mr. Nunn watched on with a bitter smile. He had, very early on, foreseen tension between the two other leaders but figured their mutual survival was more important. Unfortunately, his thinking was wrong and Peter lived up to his name as a greedy pig. Now that one leader was dead and the other left, he had to shoulder the burden of running the base all on his own.

While the base felt safe to most Variants, he knew that it was only a matter of time that their safety would get threatened by the Reapers whose numbers were growing at an incredible rate.

Sighing, he turned around and began preparing himself for the impending disasters headed their way. The main military force within the base had left, so now was the time to begin militarizing and training the Variants on base as well.

***

Aida and the others who had just left had no idea about what was going through Mr. Nunn's mind. Lucifer drove as they quickly sped out of City A and towards City M.

He stopped at a nearby cemetery to bury his remaining brother. Everyone pitched in to help dig the hole, and Lucifer was crying the entire way. Nobody said anything as they allowed him to cry away his sorrows. Quietly walking back to the jeep, they waited for Lucifer to finish.

After a while, Lucifer came back with a cool expression on his face. "Thanks for waiting."

Aida assessed Lucifer's expressions and then nodded, "Let's go."

They set off towards City M for real. It would be a month long journey. In the car, everyone's attention shifted to Rin who had just acquired a superpower. Upto this point, they hadn't really gotten a chance to study Rin's power because of the events that had occurred during their final hours at the base.. While Light had done some preliminary tests, he was also unfamiliar with how the powers operated so wasn't able to test the full scope of Rin's ability. However, now that they were all sitting leisurely in a car with Aida, it was the right time to study his abilities.

At the moment, Rin was disappearing and reappearing from the shadows as he tried to move with control. They quickly realized that he was not able to assert full control over his ability and it prevented him from appearing in an accurate location and orienting himself properly.

When Aida first heard about his power, she got extremely excited. She imagined how incredibly effective Rin would be as an assassin if he could creep in and out of places without detection and how it could be used for hand to hand combat. With the combination of his new ability and aikido, he could bring his fighting to the next level and also gain the titles of assassin and scout.

With a glint in her eyes, she began training him with fervor. Ace, who was sitting in the car, shuddered when he saw the look.

Rin's first task was to increase the precision of his movements. Rather than attempting to move over large distances, she just wanted him to move across the length of the jeep (which wasn't very much space). Had it not been for the extreme fast reflexes of the people within the jeep, he would have fallen off the car numerous times. Soon, she told him to stop practicing for the sake of his safety as well as Light's mental stability..

Seeing his movements, she quickly grasped that the trick to improving accuracy was focus. While she didn't have his specific powers, she understood the general concept after playing around a bit more with her own ability. It is an extremely demanding task to ask a 10 year old to focus, but Aida had faith that Rin could achieve it. He had already demonstrated his extreme potential early on.

Typically, the way one is trained to focus is through doing meditation exercises. It is meant to calm the mind and center the body. However, it was clear to Aida that this form of training would not suit the energetic Rin.

Instead, she had Lucifer make a slight detour to a music store first. She carefully guided him through the city to avoid the Reapers. Hopping off, she picked the lock to the store, entered and shortly returned to the jeep. Rummaging through her backpack, she pulled out a tuning fork.