Ren and I locked eyes as the pirate bled out at our feet. The singular moment seemed to stretch on longer than the entirety of the day. Ren’s eyes, open for once, held within them a strange, almost indecipherable concoction of emotion. There was the ever-present, mild interest with which he viewed everything in life, but there was a sadness as well, tinged with solemn regret. And another emotion, one I couldn't quite name.

Surprisingly, there wasn’t a hint of the disappointment I had expected in them. Disappointment was all I felt, at the fact that I was still too weak to take that final step. I’d never once in my life doubted my own will, my own grit. It was the one strength I’d always counted on, what I’d always relied on, above and beyond my actual physical strength.

But now, for the first time in my life, my inner strength had failed me. I had every reason and every opportunity to take the man’s life, and I’d failed. It was disconcerting, the kind of failure that this was. For the first time in a long while, I was at a loss.

Ren shrugged suddenly, his face warping into a smile as his eyes closed. “Well, that works too, I guess,” he said.

“Huh?” I said, confused.

“You weaken them, I’ll finish the job,” Ren explained. “If you’re not comfortable with killing just yet.”

Before I could respond, Ren had already run off, going behind me to deal with the pirate he’d left. After a moment, I turned around as well, surveying the room once again and taking stock of the situation.

At one end of the room, Leonard’s lifeless body lay slumped over like a sack of sand.

There was the first pirate I fought a little further down, just now getting to his feet. He’d probably Revived a while ago and was just gaining the strength to get to his feet. Reviving from wounds like the ones he suffered was an experience that really affected the mind. It had even taken me a couple of days to get back to functioning normally, even after Reviving. Granted, the wounds I’d been recovering from were far, far worse in magnitude.

A little further from him was the man who I’d hit with the exploding fireball thing I’d created. He lay passed out over a table, his charred limbs sprawled about. He would certainly be out for a while, meaning we didn’t have to worry about him for now.

That left the person Ren was fighting, and the earth-affinity mage who’d also been hit by my fireball.

Getting ready to get back into the fight, I let loose a deep breath and freed myself of the uncomfortable experience I’d just had. Fighting the pirates was not something I could do while distracted, which meant I had to stop thinking about this failure of mine for now. And thankfully, boxing and shelving away feelings and thoughts had been a talent of mine for as long as I could remember.

The earth mage was just picking himself up right now too, but he knew what my little fireballs were now. However, the first mage that fought me, the ice one, had never seen them before. So before the man could rejoin the fight, just as he was picking up his fallen swords, I launched my fireball at his back.

He didn’t even realize what happened when his back exploded. All he knew was that one moment, he was about to bend over to the ground to grab his sword, and the next, he was thrown forward into the metal wall of the room, his back scorching and on fire. He was out like a light bulb the second he hit the wall.

With him dealt with for the time being, I turned around to face the earth mage, already forming my next fireball. Unfortunately for me, I found the man rushing at me with a massive axe of dirt, too close for me to throw my fireball.

Acting before my thoughts could catch up, I clutched the small, pearl-sized ball in my fist and lunged forward, the golden rays of the ball escaping through the gaps of my fingers.

My fist reached the man’s chest before he could swing his axe down on me, both because of the axe’s clumsiness and the fact that he wasn’t expecting me to attack him first. My fist struck the man at the same second that I commanded the ball to explode. It wasn’t exactly a bright idea, but it was the best my mind could come up with in the split second that it had.

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The force of the explosion blew us both apart, sending us flying in opposite directions. Thankfully, the flame that caught on me was harmless, only providing a slight warmth, but the force that threw me was anything but. I landed on one table with a heavy smack, my momentum carrying me over and onto the next one before rolling me off the side. I fell to the ground with my limbs on fire and every part of my body aching.

The other man didn’t fare much better than I did, and the flames were not so merciful to him. He didn’t even have time to scream before the pain knocked him out.

I lay there on the floor for a minute, catching my breath as I basked in the pain. Blowing out a deep breath, I eventually pushed myself up to my feet and looked at where Ren still fought, a steadying hand gripping the table beside me.

Ren had his opponent almost cornered. The pirate was clearly struggling, taking a hit for every one that he blocked. It seemed like Ren had been continually speeding up during the entire fight, and he was now reaching a point where the poor pirate could barely keep up. Ren had put his dagger away again, using only his stick to keep the dual-blade-wielding pirate at bay.

For a moment, I wondered exactly what his stick was made of, for it to be able to keep going strong despite the many blows it had taken today. But I quickly gave up that line of thinking. There was much about Ren I still didn’t understand; the stick was only another mystery, along with that dagger. Based on everything I’d known, a weapon that dangerous should have been confiscated by the IG long ago.

But while I didn’t know much about Ren, I did know enough to know that I could trust him. Sure, at the end of the day, he could end up backstabbing me whenever it suited him. It had already been established that I wasn’t the best judge of character, so I couldn’t say for sure that he wouldn’t, but I had already decided to trust him, and I was going to stick with that decision. At least until he gave me a reason not to; after all, he had yet to ever let me down.

“You just gonna stand there, or do you wanna help out?” Ren’s voice came suddenly, dragging me out of my thoughts. With a small smile, I leapt over the table in front of me and made my way over to the pair.

A small part of me was unsettled as I walked, knowing that the pirate Ren was fighting would soon be dead. A whole person, a living and breathing person – albeit admittedly not a good one – but a person nonetheless.

But I silenced that voice. This was a part of the life I’d chosen, and I couldn’t hide from it any longer. This was a part of being ruthless, and ruthless was what I had to become. It was either Ren and me, or it was them. And if I wanted to do something with my life, if I wanted to become anything, if I wanted to make good on the promises I’d made to myself and Ocean, then it had to always be them.

I walked around Ren and the pirate, condensing fire into a small ball in my palm as I did, like a predator circling prey, waiting for the right moment to strike. It took a minute, but when the moment did come, I was ready.

The pirate had his back to me, his entire focus on attacking Ren. I didn’t blame him, since the man got very few chances to actually retaliate. Now that he had been given a chance, the man was not going to let it pass without doing some damage.

Unfortunately for him, just as he began to swing at Ren’s exposed side, my palm crashed into his back, the little fireball exploding as soon as it made contact with his shirt. The pirate was blown forward like he’d been struck by a cannon in the back.

My new method worked better than the last, but the force of the explosion still pushed me back a few feet. Keeping my palm open instead of closing it like a fist helped channel more of the explosion away from me, instead of letting the force radiate equally in all directions.

I realized the second I made contact that I had forgotten about Ren, who was only about a meter in front of the man. Expecting them both to go tumbling backwards, I watched with a guilty expression and prayed for the best.

But, it seemed I had underestimated Ren once again. In the split second that he had, Ren managed to palm out his dagger again, holding it in front of him and letting the man impale his own heart as he crashed into him.

Ren skidded backwards still, but managed to stay on his feet the entire time. The pirate’s heart quickly stopped beating with a dagger through it, and the man slumped on Ren as he breathed his last few breaths.

By the time the pair had stopped moving backwards, the man was already dead, his weight resting entirely on Ren. With a shrug, Ren pushed the man off of him, letting him fall to the floor like a bag of rocks.

I stared at Ren as he did, watching his face as he stared at the dead man. I realized once again, perhaps better than I ever had before, just how different he was from me. It was scary, the utter lack of emotion that he showed, the utter indifference with which he killed.

Will I become like that one day? I wondered to myself. …Do I want to?

Ren looked up to me again then, a warm smile colouring his face once again. The kind image was ruined by the splatter of blood that coloured his cheek, making it a lot more macabre of a scene.

“Two down, three more to go, huh,” Ren said, exuding that same nonchalance as always. “Let’s finally finish this up, shall we?”