"I don't remember ever giving you the permission to call me that," Sin-Ni growled.

"Aw, do you not go by that name anymore?" Zi-Han crooned as he combed his black hair with his fingers. "Well, understandable, I don't go by my original name anymore too."

"What the hell do you want, Zhao Zi-Han?"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, there's no need to be so upset." He put up his hands and laughed so carefreely as if he knew nothing of the pain he had caused her. "What do you think is wrong with her? Time of the month?"

Sin-Ni's eyes flicked to the side to see who Zi-Han was addressing. It was the Masked Ninja. He was standing behind Zi-Han and leaning against the wall. As Zi-Han approached Sin-Ni, the burly man made no move to stop him, nor did he seem to care.

Sin-Ni's fury rose once more. She never liked the stupid masked man, but she had thought that there had been a silent agreement between them: she was his prisoner, but safe from Zi-Han.

But here he was, right in front of her; and here she was, betrayed.

"You told me that I will be far away from him!" she roared, pointing at Zi-Han while glaring at the Masked Ninja. "You told me that I will never see him again!"

The masked head turned away from her, but the body remained stoic and uncaring.

"Oh come on, there's no need to be mad at Teach. Although to be fair, I am pretty mad at him too." Zi-Han shook his head dramatically. "I can't believe you kept my dearest Sin-Sin hidden here all these times! Without our knowledge! And in this dingy ass place too!" he added, waving his hand around and scowling in disgust.

The Masked Ninja gave a small shrug. "Gazini told me I can do whatever I want with her that day. I didn't know he'd change his mind five years down the road."

"Do whatever you want to her? Oh. My. God." Zi-Han's face contorted into about a dozen different expressions—all of them equally vile and ugly. "Teach, you are dirtier than I thought you are! Don't you have a wife or something?"

Teach? Had the Masked Ninja also been teaching Zi-Han how to fight? After all, Zi-Han did look a lot more muscular than she remembered. Not only that, his clothes were nice and fancy, and his face was dewy and smooth. He appeared to have been leading a very comfortable life.

Definitely not one he deserved.

"Anyway, back to you, Sin-Sin." Zi-Han's eyes zeroed in on her once again. As they scanned up and down her body, his lips twitched upwards into a smirk that sent shivers down her spine. After so many years, he still had this effect on her.

"You look... miserable," he said. "Not as hot as I remembered. Well, I guess I didn't have many options then. But after all the women I have had over the years, I'm just not that into you anymore."

Sin-Ni almost vomited out her lunch. "Why the hell are you here then? Leave me alone."

"Oh, you know, doing my part for the old man." Zi-Han shrugged. "Gazini wants an army, but his portals don't work anymore, even with my help. And even with your help too, after Teach offered up your blood that he had been taking without telling us." He narrowed his eyes at the Masked Ninja, who was still looking away from the two of them.

"And then, I suggested the best idea," Zi-Han continued, the grin on his face widening. "What if we just use what we have to create an army? What if the two of us create an army of babies?"

That last sentence struck Sin-Ni like a bolt of lightning. "W- What?"

Zi-Han chortled as he ambled towards her. "What do you think, huh? It's a good idea, right? I know you always wanted to be a mother."

Sin-Ni had never ever said anything like that in her life, ever. She stumbled backward, clutching onto her sword as if her life depended on it. "Get away from me!"

"Look, I don't want to do this too, you know," he said, with a smile that screamed 'I-totally-want-to-do-this', "but this is an order from the big man Gazini himself. I, no, we gotta do it."

"I said, get away from me," Sin-Ni repeated, her voice rising with her weapon.

"Ah, I don't want to be fighting a small girl like you." Zi-Han shook his head as he advanced further. "Don't make this harder for me, Sin-Sin. Let's each do our part, have a good time, and then we can leave each other alone forever, okay?"

Sin-Ni turned her attention back to the indifferent man at the door. "You're just going to allow this to happen?"

The Masked Ninja still refused to look at them. The fury inside her climbed all the way to her head, and she felt her eyes burning with tears. All these people are the same! The same, disgusting pigs!

For the first time ever, she struck first.

Her sword met another sharp blade; they rebounded with a loud 'clang'. In that short moment, Zi-Han had whipped out his wristwatch and transformed it into a rapier just in time. Sin-Ni had not expected this ability from him, and neither did he expect that from her, it seemed.

"Wow, look who has been training." He glanced at the Masked Ninja behind him, his tone bitter and accusatory. "I didn't know you've been teaching her."

"Shut the hell up, Zi-Han. Concentrate on me because you'll need it!" Sin-Ni yelled before going for another strike.

It was obvious that the Masked Ninja had trained Zi-Han—he fought just like him, relentless, forceful, unwavering, like a storm of winds. But he was not even half as good as his teacher. He showed signs of distress immediately as if he had not at all expected Sin-Ni to be parrying any of his attacks. When she tossed out an extra pebble to fight, he became visibly flustered.

"What the fuck! You! Little! Bitch!" he yelled, slashing at each of the advancing blades with every sentence. After a few enraged hackings, he managed to break the flying pebble-sword into pieces.

Sin-Ni continued on, unfazed. An opening showed up soon after, and she went for it mercilessly, landing a large gash on Zi-Han, right down the middle of his torso.

He screamed in agony, dropping his sword to the floor. The joy of success blinded Sin-Ni momentarily, and she did not see his fist flying towards her. A hard punch met her face and she crumpled to the floor.

The two of them were now on the ground, their swords scattered away from them.

Wiping the blood from her mouth, Sin-Ni pushed herself up. Zi-Han was extending his hand out to summon his sword to him. So he could do telekinesis too. Sin-Ni had felt the sword graze against her skin, so she decided to do the same.

Anything he could do, she was going to do it better.

The metal blade rose into the air, wavered a little bit—and flew to Sin-Ni's hand.

Zi-Han's expression fell. "What the hell?"

"Oh, that's too bad for you." A smile crept into Sin-Ni's face.

With a wave of her hand, she transformed a few more pebbles from her pocket into tiny daggers. With another wave, they pulled Zi-Han up by the shirt and anchored him onto the wall.

She could not help but laugh. She beat him. He couldn't hurt her anymore.

Zi-Han, pinned to the wall, flushed and went into a frenzy. "What the fuck? How is she so good? How is her magic better than me? That's my weapon and she controlled it! I used that weapon for years! Years!"

The Masked Ninja finally turned to face them. His golden eyes were void of emotions, but then again, he had always been an emotionless block of fabric.

"Isn't it obvious, Han?" His low, calm voice echoed across the room. "Her magic is innately better than yours."

"What the fuck do you mean by that? I am trained by Gazini!" Zi-Han bellowed. "The motherfucking blood wizard! There's no way my magic is weaker than this stupid bitch who was stuck in this ugly ass, cupboard-under-the-stairs storage unit! What the fuck did you do to her, Teach? You better explain!"

The masked man locked eyes with Sin-Ni. "There's nothing much to explain," he said, staring at her with the same curious intensity as when he first met her. "Magic is innate, you can train it but your full potential is still determined by your talent. It's unfair like that."

"Don't bullshit me! Gazini told me I opened the portal, I am the powerful one!"

"Well, I've actually been telling Gazini that she is the one who responded to the portal, not you, but he's insistent on you."

"That doesn't fucking makes sense!" The hysteria in Zi-Han's voice escalated. "I am the stronger one, I'm supposed to be! I'm the chosen one, I'm the elite, not her! You did something to her, didn't you? You did something to her to make her this strong!"

The constant screaming was making Sin-Ni's ears hurt. Without thinking, she slammed the hilt of her sword right into Zi-Han's head. His head rolled forward as he fell unconscious.

She raised her sword again, glaring at the bleeding face. She could kill him, she really could. Her grip trembled.

With his eyes closed and his screeching voice gone, Zi-Han actually seemed... bearable. Like a normal man, a person who had also been transported away from home. Anger still ate at her heart, but Sin-Ni lowered her weapon.

She couldn't kill him.

Every part of her being wanted to. But she couldn't.

Slowly, she turned to face the Masked Ninja. It was time for the real fight she had been waiting for.

The burly man took the cue and stopped leaning against the wall. Instead of taking his usual fighting stance, he lifted his hands up.

"I surrender."

Sin-Ni blinked. "W- What?"

"I'm not about to enter a fight I know I'll lose." He gestured at Zi-Han. "This is all his fault anyway, I can blame it on him. You can go."

"I can... go?"

Those three words sounded so foreign to her. She had been confined within this vicinity for years, out of fear of the werewolves, the Masked Ninja, and Zi-Han. But Zi-Han was here, defeated. And the Masked Ninja was here too, surrendering.

"Yep." The masked man pointed out the corridor. "Follow this hallway. Go into the second door to the right. There's a smaller trap door five feet away. Blast it open and you'll see an entrance to a tunnel. That should lead you right out of the castle. I will tell the werewolves to lay off on you, but even if they come after you, honestly, if you can beat me, you can easily beat all of them. So yeah, you're good to go."

That settled the last fear that Sin-Ni had. "But I didn't beat you though."

"Sure you did. I surrendered. I lose."

She frowned. This victory did not feel good at all. She had trained for weeks—no, years—and she didn't even get to properly defeat this guy, to beat up the person who locked her up, the person who gave her the revolting scars.

"But I don't want to just go. I want to go home," she muttered, glancing out of the window. Whatever was outside there, with the rows of castles and color-changing trees, was not home. Everything was foreign to her here.

"Well, if you insist on having children with him, then stay." The Masked Ninja shrugged before turning to leave.

"Tell me how to get home," Sin-Ni called out one last time. "Please."

He did not stop, nor turn around, nor acknowledge her in any way. The Masked Ninja just walked away, once and for all.

Sin-Ni slumped onto the ground, her exhaustion finally getting to her. Zi-Han's sword still rested on her palms. Closing her eyes, she imagined the wristwatch that he had been wearing. When she opened her eyes again, the wristwatch had replaced the metal blade.

She flipped the watch over a few times. The dials were motionless since she did not know how they work. But it didn't matter to her.

She never kept track of time anyway. Only the scars.