Chapter Fifty Six: The Hardest Part

Ronin watched Exeus methodically take down fighter after fighter in the Full Moon nightclub, their most recent de facto training location.

In the face of almost certain doom, it was decided, no plan was going to properly prepare them or hinder the Cathols in any reasonable way.

Exeus had insisted he'd be the one to kill Liliana, something that Ronin had mixed feelings on. 

She'd always been a bundle of problems, all unique and specific to her, but he'd never expected her to try and kill him...and he couldn't think of any reason for that to change.

Though he was loathe to admit it, he'd never really stopped loving Liliana, though with Silas in the picture, he'd found himself loving both of them equally, something he wasn't fully prepared to work through yet.

Before the school, he'd never really been popular, so he was inexperienced in love...and after joining the Bureau his highest priority had been completing projects.

Looking at Silas, he smiled gently and caught a glimpse of Mira and Azue drinking aggressively against each other.

"They fight like sisters, don't they?" Rav said, pulling out a chair and sitting down next to him.

Looking to his right at her, he said, "Hey, Rav."

She punched his shoulder and said, "You seem to have calmed down."

Leaning back and drinking from his cup, he thought for a second and said, "Yeah...you and the Bureau...all this stuff with the Cathols...everything else...I think it's impossible to look at all of it at once."

Nodding, Rav said, "A long time ago, I used to be a lot like you, you know? I had people I cared for, people I had to protect from the people who wanted us dead. I was really stressed out all the time...my friends and family kept dying and it was my job to protect them...a job I was failing at everyday."

"How'd you deal with that?" Ronin asked, turning his chair to her.

She shrugged and played with a cup that had been left at the table as she said, "I didn't really. My family understood that it was as much their job to stay alive as it was mine to keep them that way. We were facing impossible odds, and in the end it turned out there just wasn't anything I could do."

"Your family?"

Sighing gently, a tear spilling out from her eye, she said, "Ultimately what I was fighting wasn't any group or person...I was fighting change. That fight got my whole family and everyone I cared for dead...by the time I realized that...it was far too late."

She raised a hand and a waitress came to take her order.

"Let me get a Rav," she said, winking sadly at Ronin as she ordered.

The waitress nodded and bowed as she continued, "I spent so much time looking at everyone who was coming for us, studying everything I could find about them that I kept losing sight of my friends. They were all strong, powerful enough to survive on their own or in smaller groups...but...that wasn't the way we did things...in my mind, it just couldn't work. If we couldn't survive as a full family, how could we possibly survive alone."

More tears fell down her cheeks and Ronin put a hand on hers and she continued, "I felt...like with all my power, if I couldn't keep them alive, how could they keep themselves alive?"

"I can understand that fear," he whispered.

She pointed at Exeus and said, "Look at him."

 Turning toward the arena, Ronin saw Exeus fighting four people at once, almost a blur as he moved from person to person, effortlessly taking them down without even using his powers.

 "They're all strong enough...you know that, right?"

Ronin nodded and said, speaking quietly, "I think I'm afraid that I'm not."

Chuckling, Rav punched Ronin's shoulder again and said, "How about you let them be the judge of that?"

 Looking around at his team, he saw all of them relaxing and doing things that interested them as he heard Rav say, "They wouldn't be here right now if they didn't all believe in you."

The waitress came back with Rav's drink and said, "On the house, courtesy of the owner."

 Rolling her eyes, Rav ignored the girl and asked, "Did you know that literally every branch of the Bureau had the system of internal teams handling missions except for yours? Do you know why that is?"

Looking at her curiously, Ronin shrugged and she said, "Marcus said that the branch at the school needed to be special. They needed something better than teams of mercenaries or half trained scientists and researchers pointing guns at people because someone over them said to."

"What changed his mind?"

 Poking Ronin in the chest, she said, "He was waiting for you, or someone like you to come along and show that branch what real genius is."

"Everyone in our branch was extremely intelligent," Ronin said quietly.

"Intelligence is a black and white line picture on paper, genius is full color hologram," she said pointedly.

"You saw solutions to problems half the researchers in there didn't even know they had, and you acted to fix those problems with little to no concern about how that would make you look. You improved the quality of work in that branch well beyond the expected minimums or estimated maximums," she said, rubbing his shoulder.

Ronin drank and she said, "You didn't hear this from me, but Marcus thinks of you as his little brother. He...he's not on great terms with most of his brothers, and hasn't ever really been. Twelve brothers and only one of them wants him around, the other eleven actively want him as far away from them as possible."

"What happened to cause that?"

She shrugged and said, "I've never really gotten all the details...and frankly it's not really my story to tell...but Marcus sees in you something amazing, and hell, even I see it."

"What do you see in me?" he asked as he watched Exeus drink during a fight.

Making a motion with her fingers, Ronin found his chair turned to face hers and she said, "The same thing you saw in your team when you chose them. Potential, greatness...maybe even something more that we don't have words for."

Ronin looked away from her at the table and she stretched her arms, saying, "Enough of this talk, let's get some thump in our rumps."

"Rumps?"

She jumped in place a bit and said, "Fight, let's fight, Ronin."

Before Ronin had a chance to respond, she ran to the arena and drop kicked Exeus so hard he shot out of the arena into the far wall and the nightclub filled with laughter.

She jumped from side to side and motioned for him to join her, shouting, "I'll go easy on you, promise."

Looking at Silas who waved drunkenly at him while Scalpel shook her head, Ronin walked to the arena and climbed in.

The announcer blared to life suddenly, catching Ronin off guard, "Let's get a hearty welcome back to everyone's friend, Ronin, the Unclaimed, fighting Full Moon's very own Ravinica the White Blade! Lets see a good time, no weapons, just life affirming FLESHHHH!"

 As he finished getting into the ring, Rav said, "Since you've got an extra set of eyes in there, I won't go...too easy on you."

He barely got out, "An extra set of eyes?" before Rav was right in front of him, reaching for his neck.

She flickered blue in his vision and he stepped backward, punching where he thought she would be and caught her square in the ribs, though it seemed to do little to her.

Moira's voice came to him, gently saying, "Master, I believe she means the two of us working together."

Rav began striking out at him, flickering blue in Ronin's vision just before she actually moved, giving him just enough warning to fend off her assault while Moira said, "What we experienced when we fought Trigger and Liliana...I believe I can recreate that ability."

It was under duress, but Ronin did remember being able to see what his enemies were going to be doing before they did it.

He sent her a mental go ahead and tried to focus on his fight with Rav, though his vision began altering rapidly as he did.

Rav dropped down to kick at his knees and his vision went entirely black for several seconds while he felt himself getting knocked around in the dark.

His vision came back as a blur, just clear enough to see Rav's eyes flashing with glee as she ran to get some distance.

She sharpened into focus as she began running at him, clearly intending to do something big.

Just as she was about to reach him, he could see her outline clearly, bright blue against the dim nightclub.

He ducked down and barely avoided the same dropkick she'd used to send Exeus flying out of the arena and he rolled away to get some distance.

She landed with a hard exhalation and picked herself up as she said, "Looks like your eyes are working finally."

His eyes flickered from black to a bright and glowing blue as he watched the light in her body move from place to place as she shifted position.

"I believe we're seeing the Aether in her body, master," Moira said, as stunned as Ronin was.

The light, Aether, shifted again, glowing bright in her hands as Ronin focused harder and, for a split second, could have sworn she had wings. She reached him almost instantly, though it seemed like a long time to Ronin's now enhanced vision and senses, and made a grab for his lab coat.

His eyes narrowed for a moment and he grabbed her wrist, jumping and spinning her in the air, slamming her down into the floor, cracking the arena.

She laughed and said, "Now this is more like it!"

 Moving fast, so fast that she was even moving fast in Ronin's enhanced sight, she leapt to the opposite side of the arena and Ronin swore he could see wings again.

She clapped her hands and he noticed that she'd had glowing Aether claws instead of fingers, claws that rapidly became physical, her Aether outline growing to show them on her body now.

Getting down into a ready position, she jumped at him so fast that she might have flown, though Ronin was focused on the whites, or rather, the blacks of her eyes.

Where the white had been, was black, her crimson eyes standing out even more easily against the darker background.

Stepping out of the way of her attack, Ronin elbowed where she would be and hit her hard, hard enough that when she hit the ground, the entire arena shook.

She sat there for a second before she said, "Damn...you hit as hard as Leon does right now. Not bad...not bad Ronin."

Raising her hand, Rav called out, "Calling it here. Can't do this anymore without causing real damage to the club, winner's Ronin."

Grabbing her hand, Ronin pulled her up and she said, "Feeling better?"

 Ronin chuckled for a second, then started laughing as all the tension in his body escaped.

Smiling at him warmly, she said, "You're powerful...and so is your family. Don't hold them so tight they die in your hands."

Ronin nodded and said loudly, "We're Ghosts! Nothing stops us and we don't stay down!"

Ronin's team cheered loudly, Silas excitedly spilling a drink on herself as Exeus waved a weary hand from the crater Rav had made when she kicked him into the wall.

Sellius and Scalpel raised their drinks, more elegantly than Silas had, and in the far corner, the darkest place in the club, Ronin saw Trigger smiling at him in his mind's eye, proud of his leader, of his brother.

Quietly at first, but growing in volume, Ronin said, "I don't know how...but I'll get you back, Trigger. If the Cathols want a fight, we'll give it to them!"

The entire club erupted in cheering and applause as Ronin's eyes flashed bright blue in the dimming light of the arena.