Willbur couldn’t sleep that night. Too manifold and strong were the implications of what he had discovered by luck. He wasn’t the hero of this little group. Core was.

And that changed everything. It meant he had to be really careful not to die. In fact, his first impulse was to leave then and there, get the fuck away as far as he could from Core. But then again not every hero was a metaphorical meatgrinder for all their comrades. Counterpoint: If he was assigned the teacher of someone, then that meant there were going to be some serious hard quests. Or maybe he was thinking too far, and he was just literally too old to be the hero? His thoughts were going in circles the whole night and when the sun came up, he didn’t even need to act like he was an old grumpy senior hero, he felt like it too.

But when they all started to walk in the general direction of Lumia city, while Core and Emelie did their bonding thing by Core telling Emelie how great he was and Emelie telling Core how much of an idiot he was while still fawning over him every minute, a plan started to form on Willburs mind.

Maybe this wasn’t his last mission where he would inevitably have some gruesome educating death to show Core the right path. Fate was an intimidating strong player, but it could not literally force his decisions. If he refused to die a heroic death for the sake of Core, then nobody could make him do it. If fate really had the opinion, he could be a sacrifice for this little boys understanding of the world or to teach him a lesson about friendship or rainbows or the power of love, than he would just refuse and Core could go die to Baron Evilsiniters schemes . And that meant that fate wouldn’t put the food down and let him die just yet. He had to care on some level about what happened to Core for that to work and he didn’t.

So there had to be another angle and that angle meant he now finally had a chance. A possibility to escape all this madness. He just needed to fit like a lost part of a puzzle in fates big plan for it to work.

While they walked to Lumia city everybody paying close attention to Willbur would have been able to see some changes in him. His eyes had started to shine again. His back still hurt from the night, but he was walking straight up and more energetic by the minute. At some point there could even be seen an eery smile slowly creeping on Willburs face. It was a scary expression and almost everybody would understand that something was wrong if he or she so much as took a glance. But neither Core nor Emelie had watched him the whole time, so this unique chance to maybe stop how everything unfolded from that moment on disappeared into nothingness without anybody even noticing.

And then suddenly everything about Willbur that could be seen from the outside had changed yet again. He was now walking with a slight limp and his posture had changed back to the pessimistic hopeless kind it had been before.

But on the inside, he was full of optimism now. He had a purpose. He knew exactly what he wanted to do next and it had been years since he had that kind of feeling. He had missed it. He had even longed for it and now finally fate had given him a chance. And that meant there was a role to play, and by god he would play it like the world class hero he was.

It wasn’t going to be easy or simple but it never had been in his life so he was confident he could pull it off.

He was going to play the long game. There was a possibility to retire without having to die. But for that he needed to craft a certain picture of himself to Core and it had to be perfect, so his endgame worked out too.

He first needed to warm up to Core, but slowly so that everybody though it had been a natural development. He also needed to teach that little shit a lot of the stuff he knew about fighting and some basic life lessons too. Technically it had to be everything he knew, but he could go around that if he just downplayed how capable he actually was. This was going to be tricky, because fate would tempt him to save the day again and again, but if he just waited patiently and incapable, Core would pull out a wonder out of his young ass and do it himself every single time. And then he needed to appear jealous of Core and start hating him. That also had to be a slow development, but also kind of obvious. At some point it would come to and inevitable showdown, where he would fight just a little better than what he was supposed to be able to do. Core would then defeat him and save his heart by beating the crap out of him. Maybe he would lose an arm or an eye for it, but he would survive. When that had happened, and he had been brough back to the righteous path and redeemed from his little but still inexcusable sins for the team at that time, (they would do shit much worse later on, no doubt) then he finally needed to get the fuck away as fast and as completely as he could from Core. It had to be like he just disappeared in thin air over night. At this point Core would surely have been tangled up in his next quest already and as soon as fate or Core remembered that he could still be used as cannon fodder, last card saving the day and tragically dying, or just as an hostage for some evil scheming prick, he would be somewhere else. He would call in some favours on the way and let heal his impossible to heal wounds, change his appearance till he wasn’t recognizable anymore. He would finally settle down in some boring uneventful town far far away. And then he was going to never again do anything heroic, or even overly good or bad in his entire lifetime.

It was going to be glorious!

He had to stop himself from humming the melody of a song from his younger years. That wouldn’t have fitted the image he was supposed to present right now.

When they finally arrived in Lumia city the day was already nearing its end. It had been a long and exhausting journey, but by the look of it, it had been a great bonding experience for Core and Emelie.

Willbur glanced around a little. If it had been his call he would just head straight to the next bar and just try to drink himself into a coma, well knowing that he wouldn’t ever get drunk enough fast enough to escape the next quest. Why should he search for trouble when he could just have a rare few relaxed hours and trouble would find him anyway? But it was different now. They needed to carefully choose what happened next, expand their survivability and in the best possible case give Willbur a chance to show off his human flaws.

So that meant they needed another team member, one that was just the right amount of a disrespectful little shit he could start to feel left out of the youthful group. They had a heavy hitter with Core and a healer and wildcard in Emelie. In this setup he could be considered the brawler, so they needed a flanker next. Thief guild it was.

“Lets get to an Inn, I’m tired from the journey.” Willbur grumbled.

“You lovebirds might shake it off to sleep on the cold hard ground for weeks, but this old guy still needs a bed from time to time.” Emelie blushed at the comment and Core laughed benevolent. Fucking little twerps. It was going to be some long months or years, but if he carefully did his best now, the time till he had teached Core “everything he knew” would shorten significantly.

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He chose a dark and suspicious alley that practically screamed ambush at him and when Emelie hesitated he just told them it was a shortcut. That was not true of course, it was just the fastest way to get mugged. And getting mugged two times consecutively was boring, even for someone as dim-witted as Core, so SOMETHING would happen. And if something happened in some dark alley where normally thieves and muggers happened to be, and they happened to be in the need of a flanker fot the team, then that something would more often than not mean a new little annoying addition to their team.

WIllbur pressed forward and intentionally ignored all the warning signs that clearly signalled they were not supposed to be here. That counted double for Core and Emelie. He fitted in a little with his outfit’s dark colours and rough look, but Core with his bright red colours was like a rainbow parrot with whore makeup in a coalpit. And Emelie stood out even more. She was a beautiful girl, and even mor so it seemed like she also was the only woman in this whole alley.

Willbur heard threatening hisses, angry shouts, and at some point, out of the corner of his eyes he even saw a guy with an eyepatch biting off the head of a still living rat, while starring menacing in their direction. It was ridiculous.

Willbur had not have this much fun in years! So much evil blood and no one would act because they weren’t supposed to be a challenge just yet. If he had entered this alley alone it would have been a demon-infested nest that felt their territory in danger from his strong aura or maybe he would have stumbled right in the heart of the conspiracy against the… well there sure always was something to conspire against these days.

When they almost had crossed the whole alley Willbur almost started feeling fearful too, but just because nothing at all had happened. But then there suddenly wooshed two shadow right above them that made Emelie squeak and Willbur relaxed. That really had taken them long enough.

Just in front of his little team appeared the fifth guy that Core had let go earlier at the ambush with the shurikens. Right beside him was another guy that seemed vaguely similar to the other guy, but he wore a dark blue outfit that only at the first glance seemed like it belonged here. It had too much colour for any upstanding thief or assassin. He had black hair that covered one of his eyes and was standing in the background with an Asian-looking sword on his back while the shuriken guy was in the front, looking angry at them.

“Now we got you! You might have beaten me, but you won’t be able to do anything when I have teamed up with my brother!” he hissed at Core.

Willbur sighed. How stupid did you have to be to put the guy with the long-range weapons in the front. And did that other guy wanted to have his throat sliced open in a surprise attack or why did he have his main weapon strapped out of reach on his back?

But still. That second guy was their fourth team member no doubt.

You had to hand it to Core that he didn’t hesitate. He stormed forward to take out the guy in a fast strike, but the one in the back intercepted with his sword and the swords of the two clanged together in front of the face of the shuriken guy.

“My brother might be a piece of shit, but you still won’t kill him.” The guy with the sword threatened. Meanwhile Willbur started thinking and held Emelie back so she didn’t ruin everything.

“We got this, don’t worry.” He reassured her, even though he just now didn’t have a plan. Killing both of them would be painfully easy, but it needed to turn out so Mr Brother would join their team. That meant he had to somehow take care of the shuriken guy without antagonizing Mr Brother or the other two youngsters.

So he rushed forward and before the shuriken guy could taunt Core more for having failed to kill him even though he didn’t do anything, he bashed into Cores back, so Core and Mr brother toppled backwards in one human knot. Shuriken-guy stumbled back and Willbur just used Cores back as a ramp to jump over him and Mr Brother to land directly in front of Shuriken-guy. That one started to flee out of the alley. Willbur had a short impulse to tell Emelie to stunlockheal that one, but on the one hand Emelie didn’t know how to do that and he also didn’t want her to know that anytime soon, and also Shuriken-guy fleeing was the desired outcome. Core would take care of the rest. Willbur ran after him and chased him through some streets. He was fast, but Willbur was faster, he just had to wait until his enemy realized that. At some points he made an attempt to throw shuriken at him but Willbur just got closer to him so when Shuriken-guy had turned around he would look directly in his unmoving emotionless face and he started running again. After Willbur had swung his sword so that Shuriken-guy had lost some of his hair he seemed to get the message and started parkouring up the roofs. Willbur grinned wide. Evil fast guys would always flee up and try escaping over the roofs. Willbur put his sword away an followed him. Shuriken-guy seemed to be a little startled that WIllbur was capable of just following him on the roofs like that but continued trying to put some distance between them anyway. He also went even faster, until he suddenly stopped at a dead end. Well if you could call a roof that had no obvious jumping points for the next roof call that. Shuriken-guy turned around and faced him.

“Let’s end this farce. You could have killed me anytime. Why didn’t you?” Shuriken-guy snarled at him.

“Because then it wouldn’t look dramatic.” Willbur replied and kicked him in the chest. Shurikenguy flew down the roof and landed on the ground with his back. To make sure he died Willbur jumped right after him and took a roll right beside him to lessen the impact. He took him up and threw the rattling and wheezing guy over his shoulder and rushed away from the commotion a falling body out of the sky had caused. In the next deserted and darkes alley he could find, he laid him down on the ground again. Then he put his foot and with it his whole weight on his chest. He heard rips break and knew that guy was done for and waited till he stopped breathing.

Then he kept it like that for another 3-5 minutes.

After he was done, he looked around to assert where he was. They had made a good distance, but it wasn’t too far. He carried the dead body bride style through the streets and kept a rigid pained face. Crying would be better, but he would not be able to keep that going till he reached the others, and it could happen that someone investigated later.

When he arrived at the place where he had left Core and Emelie, the fight with the Brother guy was over. Core had several deep wounds, where ice seemed to have frozen the skin, but the other hand it kept the blood from pouring out. Emelie was healing him. The brother guy lay on the ground. He had a burned scar over his left eye and seemed too exhausted to keep fighting. When the three of him saw him with the dead body, Core rushed to him and Emelie looked worried.

“What happened?” Core exclaimed.

“I couldn’t do anything. He fled on the rooftops. I chased him, and when he was about to fall, I warned him to watch out, but it was too late. When I managed to get down, he was already dead.” Willbur explained his tale just loud enough so that Brother guy could hear it too. Core seemed sad, even though just the other day he had maimed some random guy. Fucking hypocrite.

“That… it can’t be.” Mr Brother whispered horrified.

“He always had been up to no good but… but… we grew up together.” Yeah come on, tell us your sob story.

“Heal him.” Willbur said to Emelie with determination in his voice. Emelie seemed to pause at that and even Core seemed unsure. Good good. Willbur had to keep himself from laughing hysterically. Instead he used to energy to emotionally shout at Emelie.

“Do it! Haven’t enough people died today? He just lost his brother. A man has to be able to grief.” He declared. Emelie still seemed more than a little unsure about this. That was of course the right reaction, it was a shitty idea, and she was a clever girl. But for Willbur it was still worth the risk. Core on the other hand watched him with admiration in his eyes.

Emelie healed Mr Brother while Willbur kept in the back >grieving< for his >mistake< and Core guarded Emelie so Mr Brother wouldn’t unexpectedly try to kill her. Mr Brothers name was Tsuke, and he had been in a fight with the Shuriken-guy just this morning about his mugging business. He quickly took a liking to Core, even though they just had beat each other up almost to death and told them he had a mission to find and kill someone at all cost. Wow dark story boy. It influenced the other two though, and they seemed to be very conflicted about someone with a mission to kill someone else. But they naturally somehow bonded anyway and Tsuke agreed to join them if they helped him burry his brother properly.

Willbur smiled internally. Now they had the fourth member of the team.