Vol.2 Ch.23 - A fighting chance

“Okay! Our first official gang meeting is now a go!” cheered Cecily.“Question,” Ed raised his hand, “why’re you guys in our room?”“Oh, that.” She answered, “Lune was kind enough to let us use this place as abase for the time being. Isn’t that right, Lune?”That damned girl had the gall to actually smile at me as she said those words.Recounting the evening where she held a knife to my leg sent shivers downmy spine, so as far as I’m concerned we were her slaves at the moment.Makes sense seeing as she possesses the Yellow Iro.A Yellow Iro believes in the power of authority. They see the world as rottenand will stop at nothing to rectify the issue. Most leaders are, in fact, yellowiros, and if a child converts to yellow they will immediately be given properleadership classes. This insures that a bad apple won’t ever get to the top.Apparently she was one of those bad apples…“Lune, you sly dog, you. I see what’s going on here.” Ed nudged me with agiggle.Ed, you have no idea. I couldn’t explain to him the current situation as thesiblings were always following us around or splitting us apart, not giving meany moment to warn Ed. Either way, he’s willing to help them, and knowinghis need to appease he might still go along with them even after hearing mywarning. That being said, I chose to just leave the matter be and listen to theirdemands for now.“If no one has any other questions,” Cecily continued, “we can begin with thefirst problem, our gang’s name!”“The Red Lions!” barked Carter.Too long and forgettable answered back Cecily. Sounds like he reallywanted that name to stick, too.“How about the Bilgam Revengers Gang? It sounds cool and can beabbreviated easily to boot.” Mentioned Ed.No one really liked the idea of his name though, since technically speakingnone of us were from Bilgam, and our whole plan is to control the entireunderworld, so we needed something more general.“Lune, got any ideas?” she asked me.……..Adventure, Revenge, Authority…. I thought out loud, thinking up a goodway to mix in our iro’s colors into the name, when they suddenly shouted inawe.“That’s it! Adventure, Revenge, Authority! All the words are really coolsounding, the name’s catchy as hell and it signifies our goals! We want to getREVENGE on the country by COLONIZING and CONQUERING it! It’sperfect!”“What? That wasn’t the name, I was just-”“Who cares? I like it, so we’re going with it!” Cecily interrupted me.As they were thinking up abbreviations for the name, as well as a fittingsymbol, Ed pulled up close to my ear and whispered:“Of course she would like your name. I get you wanna get on her good side,but isn’t doing all this for them a bit much, Grim?”Apparently, he misunderstood my intentions. My goal was never to woo her,but rather to just make it out of the city with both my legs. I tried my best atexplaining to him the actual situation in Entropic, seeing as the siblings don’tunderstand it, but they would immediately notice, probably by my tone ofvoice what I was saying to Ed, so they immediately started the next point intheir little presentation.“NEXT PROBLEM! You guys don’t know anything about the underworld,don’t you?” asked Cecily.“Nope,” answered Ed, “not a lick of it.”She probably expected that answer, but she was still disappointed, and witha sigh she started explaining:“The gang territories are as such: we’ve got the gang’s that overlook thewestern part of the country, which includes Bilgam. The gangs situated hereare Bilgam Brothers Gang and The Blue Lions. After that we have the gangsthat are currently fighting over control in the central and eastern part of thecountry, those being The Great Hianics, Neo Urbana and The GilgamoreGang. The reason we moved to Bilgam is because both of the western gangs’bases are here. We know where to find them, which leads me to the nextpoint…”She explained all this without even pausing to breathe. I’m not sure if shestudied this spiel in advance or if she’s just that passionate about the plansucceeding.“Our battle plan is as such:” she continued, “First off! We pick a fight withThe Blue Lions!”“What?!?” both Ed and I protested.“Listen ‘til the end! After we “pick a fight” with The Blue Lions and lose onpurpose, we’ll head to join the Bilgam Brothers Gang. This way they’ll bemore inclined to let us in, while also raising the tensions between the twogangs, leading to a gang war which’ll wear both gangs down!”“Ohhh! I see, but didn’t you say we’ll start our own gang? If so, why join theBBG?” asked Ed.“Don’t sweat the details. Also, are you advocating for the four of us tosquare off against the two gangs alone?”Ed quickly shut up after his argument got destroyed by facts and logic.After their presentation ended, we wanted to go to bed. But of course,another problem arose. Seeing as they were all but homeless just a shortwhile ago, they had no spare clothes for sleeping. They didn’t really mindsleeping in their on-the-go clothes, but we did. You see, sleeping in dirtyclothes… leads to dirty sheets, which in turn leads to us having to pay theinn more money for the cleaning. Ed gave Carter his, and I gave Cecily myspares as I made a point to go buy them some of their own tomorrowmorning.Ed and Carter seemed to have clicked in a really short amount of time, to thepoint they might’ve actually reached Ed and mine’s level of friendship. Onone hand, I’m glad Ed’s made a friend on his own, on the other hand I’m a bitjealous.Cecily felt a bit abrasive about wearing my pajamas, but ultimately gave in.Ed whispered something in my ear along the lines of wanna get Cecily tolike you? and as I was telling him I’m not interested, she immediately noticedand snapped.“What are you guys talking about?! I told you not to talk amongst yourselveslike that! If you have something to say, say it to everyone!”“Lune was just telling me how cute you look in his PJs!”Wuh-?!? ED YOU FUCKING IDIOT SHE’S GONNA HANG ME. Even if Isurvive her onslaught, Carter’s gonna beat me up thinking I’m a pervert!“O-oh… T-thanks.”To my surprise, she blushed with all her might and went back to bed in aflustered sort of way. I can at least agree that that reaction was extremelycute, though. I guess since it’s Ed saying it with his good looks she didn’t getangry? Either way, I was somehow saved from her knife, but what aboutCarter?Looking over to his bed, I saw his back turned towards us. With nothing but araised thumbs up, I was allowed to live another day. Ed snickered to himselfa bit then looked at me and said We got your back, bro. Go get her, tiger!Apparently I had gotten not one, but two wingmen. The misunderstanding isspreading, but if I cleared things up now I’d definitely die, so I’ll let it be fornow…***Waking up was a bit awkward due to last night’s events, but having morepeople with us is comforting. We got dressed and readied up to enact ourgrand plan. Well, first we went to eat breakfast. You can’t win a gang war onan empty stomach! We walked around town looking for good restaurants,noticing many faults with each one. The prices are all over the place hereand the décor is horrendous there, voicing these problems lead to thesiblings taking interest in Ed and mine critiques.“How do you know so much about restaurants?” asked Cecily.“Yeah, and who cares, anyways. As long ‘s the food’s good, I’m happy!”added Carter.After regaling them of our tales from Trivis Numerica, as well as our timespent working at Arthur’s, Carter seemed interested while Cecily changedthe topic.“Bo-ring! Why work at a restaurant? Aren’t Green Iros supposed to seekadventure?” she scoffed.“It’s novelty we seek.” Ed corrected her, “And in any case, why wouldn’t wehelp our benefactors?”They didn’t really understand our good nature, instead mistaking it fornaivety and moving on. We settled on the same restaurant we ate at yesterday,since it ended up being the best choice, and we knew what to expect.I ate a standard meal: eggs and bacon. The eggs we generously spiced,leading to a very salty taste. I didn’t mind though, I liked overspicing myfood so this was actually just perfect for me. Ed ate sausages with tomatosauce and and a side of salad to balance it out. It was hands-down the mostbeautiful presentation of food I’ve seen on a plate. Dipping the sausage intotomato sauce felt a bit weird to me, but apparently that’s just how he likes toeat them, and I’m surely not one to make fun of people’s idiosyncrasies.Moving on to the siblings, Cecily definitely didn’t hold back in terms ofprice and ordered the steak. She seems to be a meat lover. We worried she’dget nauseous from so much cholesterol high foods, but she digressed. Even asshe ate steak, she still took care to look prim and proper, using her utensilswith her back straightened out. These little things add up in people’s eyes,and she knew that full-well. Carter on the other hand didn’t bother with theutensils, instead opting to order a chicken sandwich and eat with both hands.Certainly a more slovenly approach than his sister’s, but then again, eating asandwich with utensils seems a bit odd.As we sat around the table eating our food, Cecily spoke up:“Edward, do you really think we can pull this off?”“I’m sure we can, but you should really tell us the rest of your plan if youwant to raise our chances. What’ll we do after we join the BBG?”“Like I said,” she refuted, “don’t sweat the details. I’ll handle that part.Honestly, I asked you this because I’m not so sure how capable you are inyour fighting ability.”This worry of hers was understandable. We didn’t really seem that reliablein a fight, but then again I did fight a stray wolf on my own. I reassured her ofmy basic knight’s swordsmanship training, but she still wasn’t convinced.“You’re not gonna be carrying a sword to a gang fight, at least not if you wantthem to pull out their weapons as well. For now, we’ll keep it to our fists.”Even still, I have experience in the field, but she’s right, Ed isn’t really thatmuch of a fighter. Alright then, here’s how we’ll do it:“Ed, you’ll be in charge of the logistics side of things. You’ll be back inbase, away from the front, thinking up strategies and helping negotiate withthe other gangs!”His eyes lit up at the prospect. Certainly, he was the least capable in a fight,and this way he could be more than helpful in the cause. Now that ourpositions in the gang were finalized, we headed out to The Blue Lions’ basein the hopes of lighting this spark into a full-blown forest fire.