Shiro, Samuel, and the rest of the squad had been playing poker when everything turned to shit.

And they’d finally gotten the hang of it, too. It had taken a while for Shiro to explain the rules, given that he’d only recently learned it from Sarah. He hadn’t even played it before, since there wasn’t much poker to be played between two people.

And now that they were all finally on the same page and Rudder finally stopped trying to bully Leng into giving him his cards, of course, they had to be ambushed.

Good thing I decided to stick around, Shiro thought as he planted his right fist in one of the attackers’ guts who collapsed a moment later, insensate but still alive.

He felt a knife slide in between his ribs from behind, and he twisted with a grunt to elbow the second attacker in the face. Shiro heard a crack and felt the man’s neck give under the force of his thrust, shifting in ways not conducive to living.

The attackers had crashed down from the top floor. What kind of weirdos do that? Did this turn into some ninja movie when I wasn’t looking? Shiro asked himself.

And why do I have ‘Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting’ stuck in my head?

Shiro shook himself from his reverie, ignoring the nagging voice at the back of his head that told him he was using the levity to distract himself from the guilt. There would be time for moralizing when the squad wasn’t in danger.

With a glance, he took in the state of the battle — most were stuck fighting against a single opponent, and Shiro noted with relief that the enemies didn’t seem to be any more skilled in small unit tactics. Samuel, however, had no way to notice the second attacker getting ready to attack him from behind while he was already busy fending off a different enemy.

Shiro wasted no time making his decision. Making use of the increased strength from the dagger that was still embedded in his back, he surged forward towards Samuel’s would-be ambusher, using the momentum to barrel into the woman, sending her flying into a wall.

Yeah, she probably didn’t survive that one, he thought as he glanced at the spot where she had impacted the wall before collapsing. There was an ugly stain there — is that brain matter?

Chastising himself for losing focus again, Shiro moved to intercept Samuel’s other attacker, stopping himself once he realized the former thug had already dispatched the enemy.

An unspoken dialogue passed between Shiro and Samuel, and, with a nod, the two split off to help the other members of the squad out.

At that point, the fight was as good as won — with no more element of surprise and at a slight numeric disadvantage, the attackers would be on the losing end of a battle of attrition. With Shiro on the squad’s side, crashing through enemies like a bull through a china shop, the overall result was not in question.

The devil, however, laid in the details, and when the last of the attackers were either dead or subdued, one member of the squad did not answer the roll call.

Vinny, that spindly young man who’d lost his arm the other day, laid unmoving on the ground, blood pooling under him from a grisly slash to his throat.

Despite having won a fight that should have seen them all dead, the mood in the squad’s headquarters (a repurposed warehouse, but one they now called home) was grim. They’d been thugs before, and some still thought they’d end up being thugs again, sooner or later. But most of them had been happy to leave that life behind — the life of a criminal was usually a short, uncertain thing, and working for that strange girl had given them the hope that they could make something of their lives.

They were no strangers to their own dying, but seeing it happen now, to a young lad who deserved it the least — it grated. To a criminal, death was a fact of life, but to a guardsman, as the lady knight had named them, it was a slight that could not be forgiven.

They’d weathered this attack with barely any wounds, aside from Vinny’s unfortunate demise, and Samuel couldn’t help but pace around the warehouse much like a tiger trapped in a cage.

He wanted nothing more but revenge, but he was forced to smother his rage under the boy’s — that monster’s — stern gaze. Samuel couldn’t suppress the shudder as he remembered how the boy had massacred his way through the attackers, barehanded. And with a knife sticking out of his fucking back!

But the boy had told them — ordered them, really — to wait for the lady knight’s return, and Samuel didn’t have the strength or the courage to go against his word.

Moreover, he had no idea who the target of his revenge even was, since the boy had barred them from interrogating the prisoners until his companion arrived, and his men truly did need the rest.

So, Samuel seethed quietly as he waited for the return of the strange girl with the liar’s smile.

***

Shiro was surprised to see Sarah arriving not by herself, but accompanied by a man who managed to look more dead than the actual moving corpse beside him.

As she entered, Sarah scanned the room with a sharp gaze, taking in the bodies strewn around the room, and made a beeline for her fellow Hero. She hadn’t even reached him before the question escaped her lips. “What happened?”

“We were attacked a few hours in. We fended them off, for the most of it, but we lost Vinny — that’s the one with the missing arm.”

Sarah’s face fell as she heard the news. “Damn. Poor guy couldn’t catch a break,” she murmured sadly.

“Who’s that?” Shiro asked quietly, glancing at the skeletal man who was standing at the entrance, looking uncertainly around the room.

“The victim’s father. Be nice, he’s been through a lot.” She paused, gathering her thoughts. “Anyway, did you kill all the attackers?”

"Nope, we took a couple of them captive," he said while pointing over his shoulder. "They're tied up in the back."

Sarah breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank fuck. We have a general area for where the kid’s been taken, but if these guys are related, we might be able to pin it down.”

Sarah turned around and signaled to Teagan to wait for her, then made her way to the back of the warehouse. With a bit of luck, they’d be able to free the girl tonight.

Samuel wasn't a fan of jumping their enemies in the middle of the night, but the thirst for revenge still ran hot, so he stifled any complaints. In the end, it would be something like poetic justice to beat them at their own game.

Though, he still wished he could fucking see at all, the moonless night not doing him any favors. At least, the enemies were fellow humans, with none of that Darkvision shit. That would have been unfair.

The lady knight’s instincts had been spot on — the kidnapping and the increasingly common attacks were related. Samuel had known Lord Every was bad news when he’d first seen him, but the pay he promised was too good.

He regretted not shanking the man and taking his money, instead. That would have solved so many issues.

A torch lit up in his peripheral vision, and Samuel readied himself, and, after slowly counting to ten, he signaled to his nearby men to begin moving with a soft whistle.

If all went according to plan, Samuel and the squad would merely act as a backup for the two Revenants. He suppressed a shiver as he recalled the surety with which the boss had described her plan. She had held no doubt that she and the boy alone would be enough to deal with the score of thugs and the mage that had hidden in the old barn.

They approached the barn carefully, taking care not to make any noises that would draw attention to themselves, but as they got close, Samuel realized they needn’t have bothered. The sounds of carnage coming from within told of a fairly graphic tale.

Bracing for impact, Samuel threw himself shoulder-first at the side door, tearing it away from its degraded frame, then quickly drawing his shortsword while falling into a crouch, ready to fend off any potential attackers.

His men filed in quietly after him, taking their usual position with practiced ease. The empty spot near the back, where Vinny had used to fight from, protecting the group’s archer, was now empty, and this feeling gnawed at the entire squad.

Looking around the room, Samuel saw that they had been careful for nothing. In that initial moment of confusion when the two Revenants struck, the majority of the thugs had been as good as dead.

Bodies were strewn around the room, some felled by clean slashes that split them in two, others still whole but with bodies twisted in grotesque shapes. The noise had stopped, too, and he could see the glint of the lady knight’s drawn sword some distance away. As if afraid to break a sacred silence, Samuel motioned for his group to advance quietly, moving towards the two Revenants’ position.

It wasn’t long before he could see that the fighting had not ended — it was merely paused, as the mage held a little girl in a viciously tight grip, a dagger pressing lightly on her throat.

The Revenants were close, but not close enough that they could close the gap before the mage could kill the girl. It was a nasty stalemate, and with every passing moment, Samuel grew more worried that the mage would magic himself away.

The mage screamed something, and Samuel couldn’t even hear it with the blood pounding in his ears, but he instantly understood as he saw both undead take a shaky step back, while the girl’s whimpers grew increasingly dire.

They couldn’t act without getting the girl killed, but maybe if Samuel could give them an opening…

Using a set of hand signals they'd devised for covert work, Samuel sent a set of instructions to Leng, the group's archer. Answering with a nod that went unseen, Leng circled around the two Revenants, keeping to the shadows, eventually stopping just to the side of the mage, some fifteen meters away.

Carefully nocking his bow, Leng held his breath as he released an arrow straight into the mage’s shoulder.

The next few moments were a blur, as the startled mage dropped his knife, recoiling from the hit, and the undead wasted no time closing the gap between them and the wounded mage.

To his credit, the mage had clearly managed to speed himself up and managed to dodge the knight’s slash by a hair’s breadth, but all the speed in the world wasn’t enough to keep him from being pulped by the boy’s fist reaching from the other side.

Samuel could barely follow the action, and the next thing he knew, the silent background of the night was broken by the little girl’s piercing shriek as she saw her captor’s head fly away in a shower of gore.

The knight caught the girl in a tight embrace, trying to shield her from the carnage around them. Samuel could hear the girl’s messy sobs as she cried against the diminutive knight’s shoulder, who tried to no avail to soothe the weeping child.

“Did Vinny have any family?” Sarah asked Samuel as they were finishing up cleaning the headquarters the following evening.

“Aye, his parents and four younger siblings. He left them when he realized how hard they were struggling to keep them all fed and clothed.”

Sarah closed her eyes, a pained expression on her face. “He sent his wages home, didn’t he?”

“That he did.”

Sarah removed a large satchel from her pocket dimension, throwing in Samuel’s direction. He jumped back a step as the satchel landed before him with a heavy thud.

“This is…?” Samuel asked uncertainly.

Sarah nodded. “Vintier’s reward. I was going to refuse it, but then I remembered about you guys.” She stretched her shoulders before continuing, “You can split it however you want, but I suggest you send at least Vinny’s part to his family.”

“All of it. They’ll get all of it,” Samuel replied with no hesitation.

“As you like,” Sarah said, and her lips curled into a smile — a real smile, for once, not like those she used to shield herself from the pain.

The squad wasn’t her family, not yet, not the way Julian and Shiro had become, but they were hers, now.

And Lord Every would pay for taking the life of one of her own.