The Galem squad had returned to our hotel for the day. We were careful not to let anyone know we had an additional person with us. I and Rasa, plus Ernest, were resting in our shared room. Rasa spent his time tuning his strings and bow-sword, while occasionally practicing a few songs. Ernest was still very fidgety, looking out the window from time to time. I, meanwhile, was lying down on the bed, wondering how Machua was faring.

  I retched the exact same way when I learned. It took until the next morning before I was able to calm myself down. I had a long, long call with my mother that night. It wasn’t exactly the best look for the impromptu leader of the Galas Squad. I didn’t really know how to comfort Machua over this sort of thing, so all I could do was let it be and let our mother do the job again.

  I felt like it should have been me to comfort her, as her future self, the one person who knew her best. But knowing exactly what sort of feelings someone is facing and saying the words they needed to hear wasn’t easy. It wasn’t as simple as that either. I figured it was best for her to rely on the woman that raised her for her entire life, who she could always go to for comfort, instead of the man who claimed to be her clone that she had only known for a few weeks.

  Still, I wanted to do something. So, I decided to do what I usually do when I was bored. Cook. Hopefully the hotel staff would let me use the kitchen a bit, but if they didn’t, I had a lot of kitchen supplies in my dimension. I could always go to a park or a rooftop and use my portable stove there. I’d just have to buy fuel first, as most fuel had mana woven into them. There was manaless fuel but finding a portable stove that worked with it while also finding the fuel in the first place was hard. The portable stove I had did come with a mana battery and a converter, so I could spend my mana and allow the stove to convert it into compatible mana, but it was a bit of a drain, so I preferred purchasing fuel.

  I looked through the food items in my dimension. I had stored quite a bit of stuff, but with how common magically enhanced food was, it was quite a chore to find non-magically enhanced food. And they were more expensive. They were most commonly used to make rations, since most people aren’t stuck outside of the Cities. If I didn’t have to, I didn’t want to use them. So, despite having a small kitchen’s worth of ingredients, I decided to go out and buy some groceries.

  “I’m going to buy groceries then cook some food. Hopefully the hotel will let me use their kitchen, but I have a portable stove anyway. Anything you guys want?”

  “Some sandwiches, if you could,” Rasa answered, not looking up from his bow-sword.

  Ernest didn’t answer so quickly, merely looking back at me and then looking towards the window. Afterwards, he closed his eyes in thought before replying.

  “I-I want to come with. Just wanna check on a few things while we’re out. If we can.”

  I had an idea what he wanted to do, and I was confident I could protect him by myself. “Sure, Ernest.”

  Ernest and I walked out of our room and checked on the girls’ room real quick. None of them really wanted to go out. Machua was still in thought, and Plue was watching over her. Carmine, upon realising Ernest was with me, refused to come. I noted down their respective wants (Machu didn’t respond but I knew her favourite anyway) and walked to the receptionist. After confirming I’d be allowed to use a small section of the kitchen, the two of us walked out into the City.

  “You might want to use a mask,” I said as I offered Ernest a face-mask. A full-on mask would stand out too much.

  Ernest quickly grabbed the face mask and slipped it on. Now, with his hoodie on, he looked pretty indistinguishable from a crowd of people.

  “Shall we go then? To your hideout?”

  “How’d you-“ Ernest reacted a bit loudly, quickly catching himself and quieting down.

  I smiled enigmatically at him. “Come on, you lead the way.”

  “A-alright.”

  ———————————————————————

  Ernest’s hideout was located in an old and decrepit apartment, mostly abandoned by the government. Many squatters and impoverished people made their homes here, Ernest being the exact same as them. The conventional path to his unit was blocked off by rubble, so the only way up was to jump from another balcony. Fitting for a Wind user.

  “You, uh, gonna need help getting there?”

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  As Ernest jumped out the window, I quickly constructed a dimension with stairs leading to where his unit approximately was. I simply walked up those stairs and phased through everything in the natural plane.

  When Ernest saw I was already inside, sitting on his couch, he nearly fell out of the window.

  “How did you-I-Huh?” A flabbergasted Ernest sputtered.

  “I have my ways. Now you gonna tell me what we’re here for or what?”

  “… I wanted to take a look again. I’ve only been using this place as a hideout recently…” Ernest trailed off.

  I watched as Ernest closed the window. He slowly walked around his apartment, taking in all that he saw. It was relatively dirty, with items thrown all over the place, but the one thing it was free of was dust. It’s what you would expect from a Wind user.

  I followed him around as he slowly looked through each room. The room we entered through was a relatively cramped living room, complete with a kitchen that had fallen into disuse. In the corner of the living room was a small little play corner, filled with toys and blocks that had gotten so old they were no longer recognisable. Despite that, Ernest placed together a few blocks in a line. The blocks seemed to have letters, but I couldn’t tell what they spelled.

  The only other rooms in this unit were the bathroom and the bedroom. Ernest placed his hand on the doorknob of the bedroom, but hesitated to open it, staying still for a few seconds. He took a deep breath and exhaled loudly, a gust of wind leaving his mouth.

  “Machia, have you… ever had to watch your mama die before your eyes? Watch as she smiles at you, like nothing’s wrong, even though you did everything you could?”

  I contemplated lying, but Ernest was spilling his heart to me. I couldn’t do that to him.

  “Something like that.”

  “I was born in this apartment. My mama was abandoned by my father when he learned she was pregnant and she had to give birth to me without help.”

  Ernest did not turn to me. His hand gripped the doorknob even harder, his muscles straining. His voice was shaky, as if he had been holding this up inside of him for a long time, with no one to tell.

  “I grew up in this little place. With almost nothing. She stole, she hunted, she did whatever she could to raise me. When she got sick, I did the same for her. I did whatever I could to keep her alive.”

  The door creaked as Ernest slowly, but surely opened it up. What laid in the room was a small bed, no, a mattress. It wasn’t even raised above the ground. A bloodied blanket covered the bed.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “A few weeks ago, when she passed, she told me she wanted me to stop stealing. She said she wanted me to live an honest life. But a week after I gave her body to the cremator, that… fucker found me.”

  Ernest knelt before the bed and clutched the blanket. His voice grew shaky, as if he struggled to talk. His back was turned to me, but I could tell. He was staining the blanket with his tears.

  “I was hanging with my friends, telling them I was gonna stop. They laughed at me. And then, a middle aged guy walked up to us and told us he had a job that could make us a lot of money.”

  “We laughed at him. I told him I was gonna report that shit to the cops now that I’m on the straight and narrow.”

  I took a deep sigh.

  “And then he killed them. He killed them all. Cut each and every limb off of them and threatened to do the same to me too. For daring to even try something like that to him. He told me I was gonna work for him no matter what I wanted. And to make sure I listened, he would cut off my pretty little ears.”

  Ernest was crying in full by now. His entire body was shaking.

  “I thought he meant my human ones. But no. He shoved his knife into my fucking bear ears! And I screamed! I screamed as he cut them off! And he laughed the entire fucking time!”

  Ernest took several deep breaths, slowly calming himself down from his outburst. He rubbed his face with the blanket and slowly stood up. He turned to me, his face wracked with pain.

  “You’re lucky you’re human. You don’t have any features that help control your mana. You’re lucky you don’t have to ever know how it feels to lose control over that. It’s not just dismemberment, it’s not just losing your ears or your tail or your horns or your wings. You lose… everything.”

  “I can’t cast the spells my mother taught me. I can’t run in the air like I used to. It’s like, it’s like I can’t even breathe anymore! Do you know how that feels!? Like your arms and legs get weaker as if you lose control over them! As if your lungs have collapsed and they don’t work anymore!”

  Tears began streaking down Ernest’s face again. I could see my still expression reflected in his eyes. I was slowly losing my composure.

  “Magic is everything! The world runs on that shit! If you can’t cast magic you’re screwed! How’re you supposed to get a job!? Everybody else can cast magic just fine! It came free with your race features! What the hell am I supposed to do!?”

  I walked to Ernest and placed my hand on his shoulder. Seeing my face, he took a deep breath and over several minutes, grew quieter.

  “Why the hell did this have to happen to me?” Ernest asked, having grown so quiet I could barely hear him. “I was going to be an honest citizen. A normal guy. I just wanted to be a man my mama would be proud of.”

  “You will be. I guarantee it. When Dalan comes after us, we will fight him off and we will arrest him. You’re going to be the man your mama wants you to be. You’re going to take your life back. You won’t die.”

  Dalan’s face scrunched together into something resembling a smile.

  “I won’t fail you.”

  Not again. Not ever again. I won’t see you die in front of me as I couldn’t do anything. Not you, not anyone else.

  ———————————————————————

  Carmine was getting really tired of waiting. She had already gone to the gym and exercised, even dragging along Machua to get her out of that funk. Did it work? A little. But about her own boredom, it didn’t help her. Machua wasn’t even remotely as skilled as her brother. Her fighting style seemed seamless and clean, but the moment she was thrust into direct combat, all of that fell apart. It felt like something was wrong with Machua. No, it was apt to say something was too… right.

  She was an amateur, she had barely any combat experience, and she also only got her Aspect recently. Which meant that she wasn’t able to take any combat intensive classes her entire life growing up. But strangely enough, she was able to pull off martial arts moves without any incorrect movements or forms, as if she had practiced them for a long time. She could have, Carmine supposed, but it was still too clean. Stilted. As if she was just Machia’s reflection.

  ‘She needs a lot of experience.’

  Carmine stifled a yawn. Maybe Machia was back already and he was cooking.

  “I’m checking on your bro.” Carmine said as she walked off and left the room without waiting for an answer.

  Carmine decided to head to the boys’ room. She waited in front of the boys’ room instead of walking in. The faint scent of blood trickled through the underside of the door.

  ‘Ernest’s back. Which means Machia is too. But he’s not in the room. So, where is he?’

  Carmine decided to just barge into the room but found that the door was locked.

  “R-Rasa, do you think it’s-“

  “It’s Carmine.”

  Rasa swiftly unlocked the door and opened it up for her. “If you’re looking for Machia, he’s in the hotel kitchen.”

  Carmine smiled at Rasa’s answer. He was always able to figure her out quickly. She considered where everyone else was right now. Machua was calling her mom. Plue was playing with her bugs. And then Rasa and Ernest were holing up in their room.

  ‘Does that mean he’s alone right now?’

  “Ah, Carmi-“

  Without a second thought, Carmine disappeared from Rasa’s sight.

  “Never mind then.”

  ———————————————————————

  “Hey,” Carmine leaned against the wall with a smirk.

  Machia did not look back, merely tasting the sauce he was currently thickening. It seemed like it tasted perfectly, since he didn’t feel the need to add anything extra.

  “Hi Carmine. Did you come to help?” Machia asked.

  Before Carmine could answer though, he continued, “You can chop up the tomatoes. I’ll be using it for your spaghetti.”

  Carmine hesitated, not expecting this response. She almost wanted to retort but decided that this was fine with her. So, she went and started cutting the tomatoes into chunks.

  It was a quiet few minutes, filled only with the sound of simmering and knives hitting cutting boards before anybody spoke again.

  “You didn’t have to cook for me,” Carmine spoke.

  Machia took a deep sigh and glanced at Carmine. He made a thoughtful look on his face, as if he was deciding what to divulge. He was a secretive guy, so Carmine expected this. But she was prepared to keep asking no matter what he said.

  “Cooking,” Machia lingered on that word, “is one of my favourite things in the world. I get to live in my own little world for a few minutes. And watching people enjoy my food is great too.”

  Carmine paid little attention to that answer. Sure, good for him. She’d have to pay this back at some point. But this wasn’t something she cared too much for to begin with. She decided she’d give him the courtesy of finishing prep, so she didn’t leap on him immediately.

  It was after watching Machia put some eggs to boil and placed a lid over it that Carmine struck.

  “I’m tired of waiting. So let’s cut the slack and do what I came here for.” Carmine suddenly gripped her knife and pointed it at him, a smirk on her face.

  Machia looked back into her eyes unsurprised. Almost like he expected this. But she expected that response too. So they were on an even level. So to speak.

  “The pot will boil over,” Machia stated.

  Carmine sensed a hint of anticipation in his voice. He wasn’t saying that sentence like Rasa often did, with no emotion involved. He wanted something to happen. Was he teasing her out? Whatever it was, she wanted to push it even further.

  But before Carmine could act, Machia grabbed the tip of the knife and pulled it closer to his throat. She watched as its tip slowly cut a little slit into one of his arteries. The droplet of blood that was spilled clung onto the knife.

  “So you know,” Carmine said, slowly putting the knife to her lips.

  The blood that trickled down its blade was delicious, maybe even the most delicious blood she’s tasted in her life. Not that she had even drunken the blood of many people, she was quite the picky person when it came to that. It wasn’t something to go crazy over, but it was damn good.

  “When you know it’s Blood Aspect, the first race you think of is vampire. And you recognised Ernest was missing his ears immediately didn’t you? You could even smell it was recent.”

  “Hah. It’s nothing. But… offering a vampire your blood? You think a lot of yourself.”

  Machia matched her smile. “I just wanted to offer you something in exchange for not starting this now.”

  “If that’s your intention,” Carmine walked over to Machia, positioning her fangs just above his throat, “then it’s not enough. You’ll have to give me more.”

  Machia silently tilted his head to give her better access. Wasting no time, she plunged her teeth into his throat.

  When Carmine felt the blood flow into her mouth, she was a little shocked. It was much easier than she expected it to be. This was indeed her first real blood drinking, but she did used to practice with her mother as a child. It was quite difficult as vampire blood tasted terrible to other vampires, especially that of a family member. Carmine didn’t remember any of the basics of blood drinking, but she found that her instincts guided her way. As if it was engraved into her very bones how to drink from another. This was ancestral, this was something that every vampire knew how to do. The blood that trickled down her throat was warm, oh so warm. It almost felt like she was drinking from a faucet and she was just now turning the handle, allowing for the blood inside to gush out. Her hands gripped Machia’s back, almost clawing at it.

  ‘You must look so dishevelled right now, Carmine.’

  Carmine briefly stopped drinking to take a deep breath. She stared at Machia’s face, his blood tricking down her mouth. He didn’t seem to think much of it, but when she decided to keep going, he gave her a strong push.

  “That’s enough. I’ll go anaemic if you keep going. And,” Machia added, “the eggs are done.”

  “Just a li-“

  “It’s rude to eavesdrop on people,” Machia suddenly said.

  Carmine quickly turned around to see a small tuft of hair around the corner. She clicked her tongue. She didn’t recognise she was there because she was distracted drinking. It also didn’t help that they smelled almost the same too.

  “Machu, since you’re eavesdropping, please call everyone down.”

  After a few seconds, a quiet response followed. “…Okay.”

  The sound of footsteps followed soon. Carmine looked back at Machia who seemed unbothered by this whole chain of events. Almost like it was normal to him, like he expected everything that just happened. He handed her a napkin to clean her mouth, while he cleaned his throat.

  “… Are you…”

  Carmine didn’t finish that sentence. She didn’t want to. She wouldn’t get an answer before the others would come down anyway. She’d just ask him once she defeated him in that duel.

  “Why don’t we just have a nice dinner together? Carmine,” Machia asked as he began plating the food.

  “… I’ll figure you out one day,” Carmine huffed and began moving plates to a table.

  The two quickly moved all the food onto the table, barely finishing before the rest of the squad came into the room. Plue came up to the table with a face full of smiles, happy to eat her ramen. Rasa quietly sat down in his seat and nodded approvingly at his sandwich. Ernest smiled at Machia, who nodded back to him and gestured him to sit. He sat down awkwardly, but once he smelt the soup he was given, he began to relax. Meanwhile, Machua…

  “Can’t look me in the eye, huh?” Carmine laughed a bit as she sat down before her spaghetti and meatballs.

  “Y-you! What am I supposed to do!?” Machua responded with a flush face. “You’re the one who forced herself on Machi!”

  “Heh. I’ll have you know he consented.”

  “Of course you did, huh!?” Machua rapidly turned to her older brother. Who had just sat down in front of his burger and fries.

  “Eat your burger, Machu.”

  “You’re getting seduced again! She had her arms clutched around you so tight!”

  “I’m sure, I’m sure.”

  “Take this seriously!”

  “I am, I am.”

  “Rrgh!”

  Carmine watched the siblings bicker endlessly. It was weird. It was like they were arguing for the sake of arguing instead of having actual concerns with each other. This was something that could never escalate into a fight.

  Looking around the table, Carmine found each person enjoying their respective dish and chatting happily. This scene was unfamiliar to her, and she felt out of place. Almost like she shouldn’t be here.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Machia gently smiling at her. His little sister angrily pinched his cheek for doing so, and he batted her hand away.

  ‘This isn’t so bad, is it?’

  Carmine allowed herself to relax a little. This scene, could she expect to see more of this as time passed by? What a strange idea. She had been a part of similar events many times, but that was just then. Events. This though, this was different. And this time, she wanted to be here. And if anyone didn’t want her here, she’d choose to stay anyway.