The first step

“Hey!”

“What?”

“Stop sleeping and get up!”

“Miyu? Why? I want to sleep five more minutes.”

“Just get up! We have a meeting. The five of us.”

“Five? What do you mean by that?”

“Ryūji and us the four commanders.”

“Do I know all of them?”

“Not yet.”

“Ok. I’m coming.”

“Move faster.”

‘What is her problem? Man, I just wanted to sleep, she didn’t have to yell.’

Miyu escorted Hikaru to a big room in which there was a big display on the wall and a round table in the middle. At the table there where only four people. One of them was Ryūji, one was Shō and two new people for Hikaru. One looked like a punk with a piercing in his ear and short black hair, he put his feet on the table. His seat was next to Shō. The other one had scarlet hair and glasses.

“Everyone is here. Let’s start!”

“One question! Why is he here?” said the punk.

“He is one of the commanders now.”

“Why? He just came. We were with you since the beginning.”

“Please calm down, Daichi.”

“Why should I?” He said that as he slammed his hand against the table. “Look. You are putting all of us in danger, and I refuse to trust him just because he has powers, actually that’s more of a reason not to trust him, you know very well how they work.”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this but I agree with him. He doesn’t have the resolve to finish what he started, I think you saw it yourself yesterday in the train. Give me the order and I will remove his head right here.” said Miyu.

“Sir, I believe he demonstrated some pretty good physical abilities yesterday so I think he could be a valuable ally.” Said Shō.

The guy with the glasses didn’t even open his mouth. Ryūji started smiling, and not just any smile, a smug one.

“I don’t need you to trust him, all I need from you is to trust my decision. I can’t win this war without taking any risks, and I’m not going to back down, I believe we need him to win. If you are so suspicious of him you can keep an eye on him.”

“You stubborn bastard. I don’t have any choice, now do I? Believe it when I say I’m going to keep an eye on him, but if anything happens to Shō I will kill you myself!” said Daichi.

“If you even breathe weird, consider yourself dead.” Said Miyu.

“I’m glad were all on the same page. Let’s start the actual meeting. We need more military power, if we try to invade the dome now we will only die in vain, so I have only one option so we can get a large amount of troops in a short amount of time. We need to make a deal with the mafia boss down here. They have a lot of fire power and from what I know they don’t have people with powers, but I think that’s more than enough.”

“If they don’t have anyone powers I don’t think this will get dangerous.”

“You are right but still we need to tread carefully Daichi, you don’t know what life will throw at you.”

“I agree with this operation. If anything happens I will beat all of them myself.” Said Miyu.

“What about you Koji? Do you agree?”

“I will go along with it.”

“The last but not the least. What do you think Hikaru?”

“I can’t think of any other way to get a handful of troops and fast. I think this is our best bet.”

“Good. All of you, go ahead and prepare yourselves. I need to talk to Hikaru for a second.”

“Whatever you say boss.” Said Daichi as they all left.
“Sorry about that.”

“No need to worry. It’s only normal they don’t trust me yet, especially given what they are doing, but if you really feel sorry you can do something for me. Why did he say my powers are a reason to get rid of me now. What do you know about them?”

“I think the answer might disappoint you but we don’t really know much. We have two essential pieces of information doe. First, this power is fueled by hate, that’s the only way to unlock it, all of the guys here did it that way and I presume you did too.”

“I… guess you are right.”

“And the second thing is, the more you sacrifice, the more powerful you will become.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Let me elaborate. There are two ways to do this, you either restrict your power or sacrifice your life force.”

“That doesn’t sound good for us.”

“Let’s hope you don’t have to use the second option. As for the first let me give you an example. You have that blood sword but I guess you can use it in other ways too right?

“Yes.”

“If you were to make a contract which would let you only use the sword your swords would probably become almost indestructible or you would be ten times faster and so on. Assumably you can break the contract when you don’t need it anymore but I don’t know if it would leave any side effects. After all it’s quite a harsh power. This is all.”

“Thank you!”

“You shouldn’t. After all were friends now!”

“I guess we are.”

“Go and prepare yourself for the operation. See you in thirty minutes.”

“See ya!”

“Wait! There is one more thing I should tell you. I wasn’t sure if this is the right choice or not but I will go all the way on my bet. I don’t have powers.”

“Are you for real?”

“I know. Kinda lame for the leader to be an ordinary man.”

“What do you mean? That’s awesome. To be able to make a change and inspire so many people without being the most powerful even among your troops is the most badass thing.”

A feint smile appeared on Ryūji’s face.

“Thank you! Now go prepare.”

“See you in a bit.”

As Hikaru was about to enter his room a familiar face stopped him. It was Shō.

“I’m sorry to bother you but I wanted to apologize in the stead of my brother.”

“Your brother?”

“Yes. His name is Daichi.”

“That guy. No need to worry, it didn’t bother me at all.”

“I still think he made a mistake so I have to apologize because he won’t. Please don’t misjudge him. He doesn’t want to be a jerk. Since I was little it was only me and him against the world so he couldn’t drop his guard even for a second. Please find it in you to accept him the way he is.”

“You sure care for one another. I will take that into account the next time he makes something stupid. Apology accepted.”

“Thank you!”

‘I’m not the only one with a troubled past, and I still act like I have a reason to back down. I don’t have any excuses, I need to keep pushing forward like all of them.”

As everyone got ready they all met at the entrance to the bunker.

“Their base is located in the sewers. I send someone to make sure they want to make a deal and not fight. It’s quite far so let’s move.”

Only the five commanders and Ryūji went on this mission. They marched for about one hour. As they got to the entrance they saw the strangest thing they could have saw. In that sewer there were multiple sewer mouths from which water dropped, but instead of going down they were going up, and all the people and their stuff were on the ground, except for one person, there was someone on the roof. As they entered he launched himself from there and dropped right in front of us. He seemed like a kid, but he wasn’t, he had something like a bowl cut but more wild, some threads were longer than others and he had pitch black eyes like a corpse.

“Name’s Taichi. Guess you are the rebels everyone is talking about. Who is the captain?”

“Boss, I think your intel was wrong. Be careful!”

“No need to worry.”

Ryūji approached Taichi without hesitation.

“Interesting. Never thought someone would approach me after that.”

“I have nothing to fear. After all you need something from us, don’t you?”

“Aren’t you a smart cookie? You are right on the spot. And I think you are here for my army, am I wrong?”

“Seems like we have a deal.”

“Don’t you want to know what I need from you?”

“No, after all, I won’t back down!”

Ryūji said that with a straight face while looking down on Taichi.

‘That’s the first time I felt what made Ryūji so special. His unwavering spirit and his willingness to do anything to win. It sent a shiver down my spine.’