Chapter Thirteen: Natural Born Killers

The first thing Ronin felt was the overwhelming sense of emptiness that the town seemed to be filled with.

Most of the houses in the town, already small enough, seemed to have been burned down, most likely by the Ghost's prey. Despite its simplicity to obtain and create, ellenium was exorbitantly expensive as a building material, therefore most residences were constructed in traditional methods, of wood, stone and more mundane metals.

The wind blew and kicked up a tornado of ash that seemed to grow by the second, blinding the team and blasting them with the distinct scent of blood and decaying flesh.

As the wind started dying down, a massive figure began to appear among the ash.

There was the distinct sound of teeth gnashing and the sound of fire began to get louder and louder.

Before anyone had a chance to get burned, Sellius leapt in front of the team and dropped a tiny machine to the ground and the dirt around them grew into a sphere, defending them from the attack.

In the dark of the sphere, Ronin pulled a lantern from his inventory systems and illuminated them.

Mostly unfazed, the team began preparing to fight, but Trigger had a crazed look in his eyes that Ronin had never seen before.

Without waiting for instructions, he pulled a massive weapon from his system and ran to the wall, which created an opening for him to run through.

From within the sphere, Ronin could hear maniacal laughter and the sound of explosions that could only be coming from Trigger's weapon.

Shaking his head, Ronin opened a communication line to the team and said, "I'm going outside, wait here for my cue if we need it. Trigger may have finished up already, based on what we're hearing."

Everyone nodded as he put his lantern down, walking to the wall.

As the wall finished opening a space for him, he saw Trigger still laughing on the corpse of the giant lizard, still twitching from the attack.

"Well that was...anticlimactic," Ronin said, disappointed. He'd hoped this would be a chance to see everyone in action, but here the battle was already finished, or so he thought, as a bullet struck the wall behind him, just to the side of his head.

"Well what do we have here?" A voice from atop one of the buildings yelled, mockingly.

Ronin blocked the sun out of his eyes and saw that all of the buildings were now covered in men with guns, with more coming out of the buildings and crowding the ground outside.

Ronin tried diplomacy first, saying, "We're the group you put in the request for. We took care of your lizard problem."

The voice from before responded, "Yeah, I saw that. Impressive bit of work. Do you know how long I was growing that badass? Literally two years. Two years of backbreaking work figuring out exactly how to get the right deviance, the right abilities, and your BOY here kills it in less than five minutes."

Weeks of posing as worthless townies, easily the most BORING thing I've done in my entire life!"

Ronin's eyes narrowed as Trigger began reloading his weapon and asked, "So what did you do with the people here?"

The man speaking stepped forward and said, "We killed the men. Wouldn't join in on the fun, we don't need killjoys around."

Trigger, began fiddling with switches and buttons on the gun and asked, "And what kind of...fun...did they want to stop you from having?"

The man smiled evilly and he said, "Well...we killed all the men who wouldn't join."

Trigger turned his gun and shot at the building the man was standing on, levelling it instantly and Ronin said, his voice hard, "Slaughter them. Leave none alive."

The sphere dropped and the team leapt into action, bullets, blades and all manner of weaponry flying outward.

Dozens died in the first assault, and Trigger began dropping buildings and vehicles, turning massive swaths of the town to dust.

At the end there was only one person left, he couldn't be older than fifteen, Ronin figured.

Breathing hard, Ronin walked to the boy and lifted his hand for the team to stop, though Trigger began reloading in case of reinforcements.

"You. Where were they keeping the women and children?"

The boy, crying and holding his knees looked up, his tear stained eyes wide in fear as he said, "They've got everyone in a cave down the road, no more than half an hour...there are only women and girls...they killed the young boys."

Silas motioned and the team began to walk in the direction of the cave, but Ronin stood still, his eyes dead set on the boy and he asked, "Why didn't they kill you?"

The boy, cleared his eyes and said, "I...I don't know...maybe they thought I could be a hostage?"

Looking over the boy, he noticed that he kept trying to keep his hands inside his sleeves and he said, "Show me your hands."

The boy's eyes widened again and he jumped to his feet to try and run, but Sellius threw a blade and it caught on his pant leg, tripping him.

Ronin nodded and Sellius pulled his sleeves up, showing that his hands were covered in dried blood, wet in places he'd tried to wipe his tears.

The boy started crying again and he said, "The government doesn't reach out here! The school is way high up in the air, and they get all the money and help and defense! Little towns like mine get picked apart by bandits all the time! My parents were killed when I was just a little boy, so when they came, I picked the winning side! I was tired of being afraid and hurt just because we didn't happen to have weapons to defend ourselves with!"

Ronin stepped closer to the boy and kneeled down, looking him in the eye.

"Two weeks. What did you do for two weeks while your fellow townsfolk were killed and worse?"

The boy averted his eyes and he said, "I did what they did. I had a good time. I ate better than I'd ever eaten in my life and did whatever I wanted."

Ronin cocked his head a bit and he said, "You had a good time?"

He stood and grabbed the boy by his throat, lifting him as he did and said, "What about the women and girls? Did they 'eat better than they had in their life'? Did they have 'a good time'?"

Gasping for air, the boy tried to talk but his guilt was clear in his eyes, widened in terror at Ronin's strength.

Silas touched Ronin's arm and said, "He needs to pay Ronin...but he's so young. I've lived in small towns like this...the desperation can make you do terrible things."

Trigger said, "I say we leave him here. Let him figure out his way to survival."

All around him, Ronin's team murmured their ideas and thoughts, most of which were inclined to simply turn the boy in and let him serve his sentence.

Ronin spoke, and the team went silent.

"This boy, made the decision that his life was more valuable than the lives of other innocent people. He helped the animals we just put down to enslave and torment those innocent people."

He looked into the boy's eyes again and said, "Why should I let you live, when you were just as much an animal as the bandits we just killed?"

He let the boy's throat go and he fell to the ground and cried out in pain when he did.

Looking down, he saw that the boy had landed badly and one of his legs was most likely sprained, if not worse.

"I'm waiting for an answer."

The boy looked at him and he said, "If you'd been in my position, you'd have done the same thing. You're not better than me just because you kill bandits! You don't know what it's like to starve!"

Ronin sighed and said, "If it were just about that, you'd be right, but it's not, is it?"

Speaking louder, he said, "We've been dancing around it because it's horrible to say, but we both know what kind of 'fun' you and those men had, don't we?"

The boy looked down and started crying again and Ronin said, "That's what I thought."

Silas tried to stop him as he stepped to the boy again and she said, "Ronin...he's only fifteen, he can't be much older than that."

Pulling a gun from his inventory, he shot the boy in the head and said, "Old enough to do the things he did, old enough to suffer the consequences."