The Misfits' Confession

With a swiftness that was almost startling, the name materialized in my mind, not as a suggestion, but as a complete and resonant certainty: "Emara."

She possessed a flawless poise, an innate strength and quiet grace that hinted at a deeply compassionate core beneath her striking beauty. The name, I thought, suited her perfectly.

“Whoa, Master, you have a genuine talent for names!” Vivi’s cheerful exclamation was like a bell in the quiet room.

Master? Where in the world did that come from? It seemed Kyoto’s flair for the dramatic was proving to be infectious.

“First I was ‘boss,’ now I’m ‘master,’” I groaned, rubbing my temples with my fingertips. “Let’s just… not do that. Rylan is perfectly fine.”

“Perhaps, to commemorate this occasion, I should design a new ensemble!” Kyoto suddenly declared, striking a triumphant pose with one hand dramatically flung into the air. “Yes! A custom-tailored maid uniform for Vivi! It would be perfection!” He was already lost in his own creative world, his hands miming the feel of imaginary bolts of fabric. I made a conscious executive decision to simply ignore him.

“Emara…” The woman formerly known as Latina tested the name on her tongue, and a smile bloomed across her face. It was a smile like the first light of dawn, a genuine warmth that traveled all the way to her eyes and erased any trace of mere politeness. “What a beautiful name. Thank you, Rylan. I will treasure it always.”

She used my real name. It was a subtle shift, but it felt like a bridge forming between us, a connection far more substantial than what had existed only moments before.

“You’re welcome,” I replied, and my own responding smile felt more natural than it had in a very long time. “I’m glad you like it.” A beat of comfortable silence passed. “That just leaves one more of us.” My gaze shifted to the quiet giant in the room. “How about you, old man?”

He crossed his massive, tree-trunk arms over his chest, a faint, unreadable smile playing on his lips. “My name is Voktah Ruskovia.”

Kyoto immediately burst out laughing. “Haha, that’s a good one, gramps! Very funny. Don’t try to pull a fast one on us!”

A beat passed in silence. Then another. The old man’s placid expression did not waver.

“…You’re being serious?” The laughter died in Kyoto’s throat, replaced by wide-eyed disbelief.

“Voktah has always been my name,” he stated, his voice a low, steady rumble like distant thunder. “It will be my name until I am no more.”

For some reason, this revelation didn’t surprise me in the least. “Figures,” I muttered under my breath. Beside me, Emara nodded in silent agreement. The name just… fit him.

“Alright, then,” I said, my tone shifting to something more solemn. “That brings us to the final piece of this puzzle. What happened immediately before you were all summoned? When I first found you, you were in shackles, covered in blood, and armed to the teeth… I think talking about it might help us understand one another better. But please, don’t feel obligated to share if you’re not comfortable.”

The atmosphere in the room grew heavy with unspoken histories. It was Kyoto who finally shattered the silence.

“I… I took my own life.” His customary flamboyance had vanished completely, leaving his voice a broken, wounded thing. “I was forced into it. There was no other path for me.” I had suspected as much. For all his dramatic theatrics, he had never struck me as having the kind of steel required to take another’s life.

Emara’s gaze dropped to her hands, which were now clutched so tightly in her lap that her knuckles were white. “I killed him,” she whispered, her voice barely audible over the sound of my own breathing. “I hated that man. I think… I think I must have died in the struggle that followed.” For someone with a spirit as gentle as hers to be driven to such an extreme act, her target must have been a true monster.

“I see,” I murmured, the words feeling heavy and inadequate. “Thank you both for your honesty. I’m sorry you had to endure that.” This kind of raw vulnerability… it was the bedrock upon which trust was built. I looked to the old man. “And you, Voktah?”

“I walked into a building and killed every last soul inside,” he said, his tone as casual as if he were describing a trip to the local market. “The authorities eventually arrested me. I was sent to a maximum-security penitentiary, where I proceeded to kill every inmate as well. Finally, they strapped me to a chair in the execution chamber. The last thing I recall is a final, searing shock and the sharp smell of ozone.”

A thick, oppressive silence descended upon our small group.

“Heh…” Kyoto stammered, letting out a pitiful, shaky laugh that held no humor. “Nice one, old man. That was a good one. You almost had me there.”

Voktah’s faint, serene smile remained unwavering, his expression as tranquil as a calm lake.

“He isn’t joking,” I said, my own voice quiet but firm.

The blood drained from Kyoto’s face, leaving it a pale, sickly-looking mask. He scrambled backward a step, and then another, putting a deliberate and very obvious amount of distance between himself and Voktah.

A low, rumbling chuckle vibrated in Voktah’s chest, aimed directly at Kyoto’s panicked retreat.

Kyoto yelped and recoiled as if he’d been physically struck. It was a peculiar sight: a man in his early twenties being utterly terrified by someone old enough to be his grandfather.

“Even if it’s true,” I heard myself say, “you must have had your reasons.” A deep, unshakable feeling in my gut told me he was speaking the absolute truth. This was, after all, the same man who had single-handedly disarmed a squad of armed and armored nobles on what seemed to be a whim.

“They were vermin,” Voktah said, the lines around his mouth tightening into a grimace. “Rodents that preyed upon the defenseless. I killed them all to keep the people I cared for safe.” For a fleeting, almost imperceptible instant, a look of profound sorrow flickered across his grizzled features—a sudden crack in his granite facade—before his grim smile returned to seal it shut once more.

“So you were like me,” Emara murmured, her expression softening with an empathetic sorrow. “I understand that kind of pain all too well, Voktah.”

“I knew it,” I said with a decisive nod. “I knew you were a good man.”

“Right! Me too!” Kyoto suddenly chimed in, his newfound bravado a stark and comical contrast to his terror from moments before.

So that was the truth of it. We had all perished mere moments before being summoned, our souls violently ripped from our respective worlds and brought to this one. I could personally vouch for the phenomenon; I had seen my own grave during my brief, jarring excursion back to Terra.

“I see,” Kyoto said, now gesturing toward me. “That just leaves you, X. We still don’t have any idea how you died.”

‘X’? Seriously? My name seemed to be getting shorter with every passing conversation.

“So? Are you going to tell us or not? How did you bite the dust?” he pressed, completely ignoring my silent, internal complaint. I supposed I couldn’t really object, having already saddled him with a nickname of my own choosing.

“I died saving someone,” I confessed, my story echoing the theme set by Voktah and Emara. “In my case, however, it was a complete stranger. A man was about to jump from a tall building. I intervened, tried to pull him back from the ledge… and ended up going over the edge in his place.” I shrugged. “I died saving a suicidal stranger. A rather absurd end, when I stop to think about it.”

“That isn’t absurd in the slightest!” Vivi protested, her voice ringing with a fierce passion. “That was an incredibly noble thing to do! To risk your own life for someone you didn’t even know! When I was first summoned, I was so terrified that I’d be bound to some horrible, cruel master… but now I see that you are all fundamentally good people! You saved those beast-kin children without a moment’s hesitation. That act alone shows what kind of person you truly are.” Her earnest, heartfelt approval was a surprisingly warm sensation.

Voktah grunted, his eyes glinting with an emotion other than grim memories. “Right, then,” he said, his voice cutting through the moment. “That settles that. Speaking of which… Boss, how much did you manage to lift from our ‘esteemed’ friend back there?”

A slow, wolfish grin spread across my face. “You noticed, old man?”

“Obviously. I got his coin purse.” From somewhere deep within the confines of his trousers—a location I chose not to contemplate—he produced a handsome leather pouch, heavy with the satisfying clink of coin.

“Good work. I couldn’t reach that from my angle,” I complimented him, “but I did manage to relieve him of his more ostentatious accessories.” I reached into the collar of my own shirt and pulled out a glittering cascade of jewelry: a large, gem-encrusted clasp that flashed brilliantly in the light, several heavy rings, and a thick, golden chain. “These ought to fetch a pretty penny.”

The others stared, their mouths agape, at the sudden fortune that was now spread out between us.

“What… what is all this?” Vivi stammered, her expression a whirlwind of bewilderment and dawning horror.

“What does it look like?” I countered smoothly. “It’s the spoils from our little altercation. Why did you think I was writhing all over the man? It wasn’t purely for the pleasure of roughing him up.”

“What? How… Wait. You! I had you all wrong! I take back everything I just said! You’re a common thief!” she shrieked, lunging for my hair with her hands curled into claws.

I ducked just in time, her forward momentum carrying her stumbling past me.

“You weren’t entirely wrong before,” I joked, holding the gleaming jewels up to the lamplight. “Perhaps I am a noble of a sort. Ever hear of Robin Hood? I’m the noble thief, and that arrogant pig was the corrupt nobleman. It’s a perfectly logical comparison, isn’t it?”

“You—!” she sputtered, rendered speechless with a fresh wave of outrage.

And so it was, through confessions of death and accusations of theft, that our mismatched band of outcasts began to forge the first, unlikely bonds of fellowship. It was a precarious and chaotic alliance, to be sure, one that now stood ready to face—and undoubtedly complicate—the harsh new reality that lay before us.