Not a Fight

The Group decides to get me and Ren ready for the big fight they assume is about to commence. They decide to fix us up with some nice stuff. Of course, the outfit is a must but they also try to help us in other ways as well.

They offer a lot of things. Most of which are useless for me or Ren.

Suppose they tried to offer a new weapon and both of us are already set with the stuff we have already. When they tried to spar with us? It wasn't even fair. Money, connections, and information were all either not important or already relevant.

Sadly for an invasive underground revolutionary group, they mostly became emotional support.

So with all that setup, they sent us out to wear they had seen the heroes. It didn't take long for us to find them and so with heroes standing in a path in front of us, I stood there ready.

The two heroes stand there as well.

Ready to fall over, that is.

"Uhh are we supposed to…" I ask Ren with a concerned face.

Ren looks almost as confused as I do. "Feels kinda wrong doesn't it," She says, showing a surprising amount of empathy.

"I mean we don't even know these guys," I say.

Ren aims her gun and playfully pretends to shoot it. "Na I know that chick, she killed me." She says casually.

No way! Is that how she died? Did someone actually kill my sister?

I mean I guess I was murdered too but in my case, it was more distant. Not like I know the face of the truck driver.

I looked at her shocked. "Is that how you died!?"

She looks at me taken aback "Yea I mean how did you die?"

"Well I mean I got hit by a truck," I tell her.

"Oh, I see." She says.

Some time passes as Ren and I try to figure out what to do with these two heroes.

"Hey, so what are you guys doing?" The male hero asks.

Oh right, the heroes are still here.

"Well we were going to fight you and everything" I look at their injuries. "But uhh this feels a little unfair."

I'm trying to think of why the heroes are so beaten up. Their injuries don't seem new so I guess it must be from when the fight happened with the old wizard a few days ago.

That would make sense because Ren really nailed the female hero but the dude? The only ones to fight him were my goons. I guess Kira is too strong for him or something.

The female hero chips in. "Does that mean we don't have to fight?"

I give a small shrug.

"Oh, thank god." She sits on the ground defencelessly.

Ren aims her gun. "Who said I wouldn't kill you anyway, especially you." She says to the female hero.

I started thinking of a joke about drama but failed to find one.

"You know it's kinda sad you've thought this whole time I just killed you in cold blood." The hero says sitting on the ground.

"Are you trying to claim you didn't?" Ren keeps her gun pointed.

"No shit asshole, I ain't some insano. I mean you're not the only one dead." She gestures to her and the male hero.

"So how'd you guys die?" She says questionably.

The male hero is the first one to speak. "Well, I was involved in a traffic accident." Then the female hero "And I died after I slipped off that waterfall."

Ren seems a bit taken aback by this. "Wait you slipped but then why did you-?"

"Well in my moment of panic, I tried to grab on to the closest thing to me. So like sorry for killing you I guess. My bad." She says in a way that is genuine yet not caring.

I look over at Ren and It seems like she might need a moment to process that. I on the other hand give a hand gesture and the people hiding behind some rocks come out of hiding behind us.

A few people like Kira, Jade, and some of Rens's friends were hiding a bit away to make sure the plan worked out. I can't believe that Ren would make friends with the leader of an undercover revolutionary group. Some people have some weird hobbies.

In fact, she's the one to start the negotiation, I let her do that. I'm not much for convincing anyway.

"We checked around and didn't see anyone hiding about," Jade tells me.

Ah right, we did think it was kinda odd the heroes were all out by themselves right after what had happened to them. So we thought it might be a trap or something. But no, they're just dumb I guess…

It's then Rens's friend, Rudy, who finishes her quick negations with the heroes. She turns around to face us.

"It would seem the hero's surrender," She says almost like she's trying to convince herself that it's true.

"Oh, nice," I say.

Jade steps forward "What do they want?" Jade says seemingly thinking more about this than I did.

"I mean not much. They don't seem very loyal to the empire. I would've thought they were brainwashed by now" Rudy explains.

I hear the female hero raise her voice a bit "I don't even wanna be here, can't we just leave already?"

Hmm, this reminds me a lot of what Ren used to sound like when she was so obsessed with going home.

I look at her gun.

Seems like that didn't work and she decided to bring home here.

"Haha," Ren scarily chuckles to herself. "If it were that easy I wouldn't be here right now"

"Huh, what are you talking about? Don't we just have to kill the demon lord and then we can just leave?" The female hero says something quite crazy

Is that what the empire told her?

"As if, do you know how hard I tried to leave this place…" She holds onto her gun tighter. "No, we can't just go home. If we could just teleport there I would."

It's then another character I have a fuzzy memory of that comes into view, someone named Kenos I think? "You know if you wanna teleport somewhere I could help with that." He says

"What?" Ren is quick to question his claim.

I mean I can teleport to, or at least I have the ability to. Might take me a bit to get better at it. Even then I doubt I could teleport to a different world. Reality? Universe? I don't know.

"I mean I am like the best at teleporting in my family. Well I did technically teleport from the underworld and with a bit of magical stabilizers I should be able to-" Kenos gets cut off by Ren.

"Why the hell didn't you-" Ren cuts herself off.

Man, she's really good at doing that.

"Just follow me" She holds onto his arm and drags him off.

Kenos doesn't resist and instead waves goodbye to the rest of us. The group watches this scene until they are out of view.

The rest of us now sit there silently. Awkwardly we waited to see what Ren was talking about. Until then we seemingly have to wait.

"So, what do you both wanna just go back home?" I ask.

"You don't?" The girl asks.

"What? What do you mean?"

"Geeze dude I can see your hero's skill from here. You also got summoned right?"

"Well ya, I guess I did, both me and my sister. I didn't know you could see my skills."

"Well, ya it's part of having a hero skill we can basically recognize a hero from a mile away. Well unless you're not trained well enough. Though I would like it if you answered me. Any reason you would want to stay here?"

Instead of having to correct her, the male hero does it for me. "Oh come on we finally get to talk to another hero and all you wanna talk about is going home? Does killing the demon lord sound too mundane to you?"

"That's the problem" She snaps at him. "It's too much fucking work!. I don't wanna go out every day and train! It's so fucking dumb!"

Everyone including the male hero is taken aback by her words. It's funny to see everyone's face. I guess this is breaking the image in their head of what a hero is. Loyal, strong, determined, heroic? No, they just don't want to be here.

"What about you?" I ask the male hero.

He puts his hand behind his head. "Well I mean I love the idea of going out and defeating some bad guys but…" He looks at the ground. "Like she said, it's some hard work and you know I don't really like the idea of the fate of the world resting on my shoulders.

Well if the image of what the heroes were like before wasn't broken it definitely was now. They do know that technically we are heroes too? Ah well, that might make it worse.

A small conversation starts forming about the hero's journey so far with the most interested person in the group being Kira. She is the one to ask the most questions by far. It was just starting to go more into depth when…

"Guys come on! Come look!" Ren comes racing back to us wanting to show us something

We all follow and even with Rens explaining the object right in front of us, it's hard to believe what it is.

"Oh. Cool portal." I say looking at the obvious portal.

In front of us, the room holds a warping portal that fills the room with its light. We all look at it with shock.

"I just checked and it seems to be normal. So let's get out of this place already."

"Wait are we going home? But you didn't kill the demon lord or nothing!"

The male hero is the first one to walk up to the portal.

"Well, I guess we don't have to. I mean if this thing works that is." The male hero peeks his head into the thing and a moment later brings it out. "Yup looks normal to me."

Embarrassed, the female hero angrily walks forward into the partial pushing the male hero into it and making him disappear. "Geez let's go already," She says going through it as well.

It's then Ren looks at me. "You coming along?"

I take a moment to answer. Not because I need to take time to deliberate over if I should go there or not. I mean don't get me wrong there are many things I miss about home. That being said, since the moment I got here I knew I wanted to stay.

"Na I don't think I will," I say expecting the obvious from Ren.

Ren shrugs her shoulders, "If that's what you want," She says as expected-

Wait a minute, I didn't expect this at all. Ren is actually caring about my personal opinion and not getting angry about it? What on earth has Ren been going through for her to change like this?

Well, I for one like this new side of her.

She looks to face the portal, "You still suck though." She says.

Never mind, she still sucks.

Ren continues "You know people will miss you not being there, you're going to miss out on a lot of stuff too."

"Ya, I get that," I say.

"I hope you do," She says standing in front of the portal.

She seems hesitant just standing in front of the portal. She doesn't go into it. Instead after some time she turns around and starts hugging her friends. The last one she hugs is me.

"Here take this," She says as she hands me her gun.

"Oh umm" I stammer out.

"Oh, are we giving items now that you're going? Here take this." Kenos says as he hands Ren the name tag on his outfit.

Rudy gets angry at him really fast. She starts hammering him. I don't know anything about how expensive the outfit is and the such.

Ren however decides to take it, putting it in her pocket. "Well guess I'm off then." Ren turns away from us, takes a step, and enters the portal. It's not long until the portal deactivates with a low hum.

This now leaves us all standing there. 

"Welp now what?" I ask.