Arc 5: The Heart Within
Road to a Hero:
Three chances in another world
Chapter 13. Community
Gray and Soku follow Boid and JJ to the hideout in the slums. Soku looks around, reminiscing about her old life. Her time with Gray has been short, and all fourteen years of her life were used for survival. Theft, a crime Soku spent her life mastering. Sleight of hand, reading faces and reactions, and quickly understanding the situation is what she’s good at. But for the past few months, she has been forced out of that life and sent barreling into knighthood, law, and pure combat. And then in Athens back into criminal acts according to Arthur's order, and now hopefully back to lawful actions when Arthur is dethroned. Asking who orders justice, what is law, and what is justified.
Gray: “Here we are again huh? Same Ogre, same homeless guy, you, me.”
Soku: “Yeah, but this time the situation is actually dire.”
Gray: “Well, last time I was drowning and disappeared, in a new place for thirty minutes, and almost got squished by an Ogre man.”
Soku: “This situation is dire.”
Gray: “There you go.”
Boid: “JUST UP HERE!”
Boid and JJ walk into a tall abandoned building. They wait for Gray and Soku to walk in so they can close the door, and Gray looks in awe as he sees all of the thirsty, starving, dirty people.
Soku: “They’re a lot of Demi-humans in here…and they’re living with the humans with no issue.”
JJ: “They might not want to, but it’s all they can do. Nobody trusts the knights anymore, they don’t even trust the king.”
Gray: “And they shouldn’t, they’re damn anarchists. No value in the people they say they’re affecting.”
Boid: “There are a few camps around the slums, with hundreds of people in them.”
Soku gets a blank look in her eyes. She starts walking around, watching children playing, and hungry parents giving their reasons to them so their kids can leave. Crying mothers, and depressed fathers as they care for their sick children. This is what happens when your system fails you. Athens was a special case, where both sides wanted to protect their people, and both sides made it their mission to save their country. So the country wasn’t very affected by the two sides battling, for the long four years it lasted. But in the end, the country was covered in lava, an all-consuming liquid that destroyed history, family, and livelihood. Gray has a different perspective though. Instead of this dark and depressing sight, he sees it has vigor, this hope. They’re trying to live, coming together, forgetting about biases, and just trying to live in harmony.
Gray and all of his friends have been in this situation, at least in his mind. Soku has lived this struggle, hardly having anything. Rosemary has seen what happens when your family fails you and when you are born into war. Edward has lived the quiet life and he’s gotten it all taken from him multiple times. And Gray has lived through what happens when you feel as if you have nothing to live for. Even when you want to live, when you want to find something, if you can’t do that then you just can’t. Even with Gray's time at the mansion, all Gray wanted was to live. He found something to live for and he was pushing himself to the max. Nightmare after nightmare, breaking his body over and over again, forcing himself to move forward. So when the smallest of things pushed him over the edge he fell far.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
And all of these people could fall at any moment, and Gray feels as if he’s here to stop that from happening.
Gray: “Hey Boid, is there a reason you brought us to this location in particular?”
Boid: “Yeah, the guy that set this all up lives here. He’s laying on the roof right now, go up that ladder over there and you’ll talk to him.”
Gray walks over to Soku and snaps her out of this trance she finds herself in. He tells her that they're going to talk to the leader, so they walk over to the dirty and crumbling ladder and begin to climb it. Gray opens the hatch at the top of the ladder and climbs onto the roof. He looks to see a man and a woman laying together on the roof. Gray walks up to the two while Soku climbs the ladder. Gray gets a better look at the two, and he finds the two are a bit old, and the woman is a demi-human. Her bunny ears spike up and they both turn around to see Gray walking up to them. The man grabs a cane to stand up, needing it due to the apparent loss of his right leg.
Gray: “Are you the leader?”
Tim: “Yep! Name's Tim, and this is my wife Shirley.”
Soku: “Did you say, wife?”
Shirley: “Yes, wait…SOKU!?”
Soku is shocked when she realizes who the woman is, and Gray takes charge.
Gray: “Do you two know each other?”
Shirley: “I was friends with Soku's mother, a shame that she passed. Is Opelia doing okay?”
Soku gets this sad look on her face, causing Shirley to understand what happened.
Shirley: “I…I am so…so sorry.”
Shirley gives Soku a tight hug and kisses her head.
Soku: “Thanks…for that. I didn’t know you had a husband. A human husband at that. Human and Demi-human marriages are almost unheard of.”
Tim: “Well when I lost my leg here, I had trouble finding work. But I came down to the west side and Shirley here gave me a job at her store.”
Shirley: “And then happily ever after.”
Gray: “You seem to have taken charge pretty well. You have a good system set up, a good system for how short of a time you’ve had to set this up.”
Tim: “I lost my leg in the Demi-human war, but the knights kept me around because I was good at stuff like this. But when Arthur became king he fired all of the old knights.”
Soku: “You married pretty fast then.”
Shirley: “Well we were madly in love.”
Tim: “Were? Still are.”
Tim kisses Shirley on the lips, causing Shirley to blush. Shirley leaves the three alone and takes a crate of food down to the lower levels.
Tim: “So what are you guys doing here?”
Tim takes a good look at the two, noticing their masterly made weapons and armor. He looks even closer and sees Gray's mask, which is attached to Gray's side.
Tim: “Wait…you’re Soku and tat mask…you’re the Phantom knight! You’re Gray Kyojin!”
Gray: “Yep! That’s me! If there’s anything Arthur did right is that he gave me a cool nickname on my wanted poster.”
Soku: “We are with the Leviathan army, and we have been setting up a raid. We have members of the Walgonian Knights, Leviathan soldiers, the Red Arrows of Athens, and some of the Athens army.”
Tim: “Really!? That’s great!”
Gray: “But we need some help. We need this to be quick and we can’t get everybody out of this capital in a day. It would take a week or two. But if we set up the slums with multiple stations that people can retreat to, we can make the slums a safe ha
Tim: “But putting all those people in one place would make the citizens a prime target.”
Soku: “The Sect doesn't like to kill civilians. I know they might do it, but if they did they would lose a bit of their army. Let us take the Capital all that much easier.”
Tim: “But that puts all the people's lives in danger!”
Gray: “Gordon Hill, Lincoln Valentine, Ryo Hollis, and Jong Long are all on our side. They will make sure that the people of this Capital won’t die.”
Tim: “Where are they now?”
Soku: “They’re on their way.”
End of Chapter Thirteen