Ayeka decided Natalia needed to get some air, so they drove around the city to get away from the craziness. It was a perfect opportunity for Ayeka to converse with her old-time friend without being on the job. Natalia was staring out the window, being silent as usual.

Ayeka decided to break the ice while keeping her eyes on the road, “Chloe-san can be very heavy-handed at times. I know she means well--”

“Why did you save me back there?” Natalia questioned. “I didn’t really deserve to be protected back there.”

“She was badgering you about ancient history, Natalia-chan--”

“History that I need to confront on my own,” Natalia corrected. “It’s nice that you all want to take care of me. But some things do need to be discussed. Were you there the entire time?”

“Yes, Chloe said when you are done to take you home,” Ayeka answered.

This made Natalia scoff at that, “of course. She wanted me to go back ‘home.’ And where is home?”

This saddened Ayeka, “you just had to go away for a while, and there is no shame in that. You were the new grandmaster of the syndicate after everything that happened, it wasn’t going to work regardless who our grandmaster had selected.”

“He selected me because he knew I would push the button,” Natalia corrected. “How insane the entire series of events was, I was the sanest choice. It had to be done.”

Ayeka shook her head disagreement, “even though I do love and respect Dolph-sama for what he has done for us, there are times I do question his machinations. There are many ways we could have handled many situations. It’s like this was the only foregone conclusion He could come up with, and even if it was a better solution, he was too stubborn to reconsider.”

“Stubbornness and ignorance and determination are an excellent line from each other. I'm a very stubborn person, but not so stubborn that I can't learn new things and meet new people, but I have a one-track mind.,” Natalia reflected as this shocked and amazed Ayeka.

“What was that?”

Natalia played it off, “something that I read.”

Ayeka didn’t give her words much thought as they were other matters to discuss, “you know, many of us have missed you…”

Natalia laughed a bit, “of course.”

“Oh no, they have. Especially Gideon-chan,” Ayeka said.

“Gideon…” Natalia reminisced. “Where is she now?”

“She moved out of the country years ago,” Ayeka pointed out. After all, Gideon-chan was hit by the whole situation harder than most of us,” Ayeka agreed.

This brings Natalia back as she remembered being the newly anointed grandmaster of the Oleander Syndicate. After a hellacious battle between Endspiel and the well-orchestrated leak of information that he distributed to the media, Natalia and the Oleander Syndicate were defeated. While being tended to five years ago in Madrid, a wolf kemonomimi with long, layered reddish-blonde hair and large brown eyes sat beside her while she was resting.

Natalia decided to set up from her bed as the freckled-faced wolf kemonomimi became weary of her friend’s well-being, “calm down, Natalia.”

“Gideon… What happened?” Natalia questioned groggily.

Gideon, the freckled wolf kemonomimi, was a bit hesitant on what to say to her close friend, but she relented, “you were hospitalized last time I saw you, and y-your stomach has…” Couldn’t bring herself to tell Natalia’s condition, since it was beyond belief. So, instead, she focused on what was important, “we lost, Natalia. Endspiel succeeded.”

Natalia wanted to cry, but she tried not to, “w-what’s the damage?”

Gideon was about to cry herself as she reported, “The United Nations and Interpol have all of our detailed files of every mission that Oleander Syndicate have done in the past dating World War I; most of us have been compromised and forcibly went into hiding; The Crucis Sentinels have become heroes to the public, our grandmaster resigned, and he named you the new grandmaster of our syndicate. There is even a letter addressed to you.”

Gideon handed the letter to Natalia, but she didn’t have the strength or the courage to read it. She knew who it was from and what it was about. It would have been a waste of time, “where is everyone?”

Gideon took a deep breath and answered carefully, “planning the next move.”

“There is no next move,” Natalia concluded.

“Please, Natalia, don’t say that,” Gideon regretted.

“No, there is no next move,” Natalia emphasized. “We have been fighting this endless war for so long… All of us were just waiting for an exit. Waiting for an end. I understand now… And this law and the letter that our grandmaster gave me, prove me one thing about what he really wanted out of this. Balance. But I don’t think even Dolph or Adrian knows the word.”

After the spirited reflection, Natalia took the unopened letter and torn it into pieces. This made Gideon’s stomach turn into knots as Natalia continued, “balance and equality, opposites and negatives. They’re all lovely words made up by people who were always above us. To keep us hungry. To keep us remedial. To keep us working in the dark while digging in the same hole as everyone else. Until we all dig our own graves. All we had to do was kill. Kill to live. Nothing more and nothing less to keep the balance.”

Hearing this made Gideon cry.

“No matter how many times we have stacked bodies and bodies of nephalems, the scales never seem to tip into anyone’s favor. Someone always adding the counterweight, more than we can ever keep up just so we can all stay hungry and stay remedial. Never actually accepting the fact that there must be a better way. Unlike many others who broke away from our grandmaster, only to find more suffering without his guidance,” Natalia concluded.

This scared Gideon as Natalia faced her for the first time she woke up, “I’m burning down the Royal Palace of Madrid. This has to be done.”

“What the hell are you talking about?!” The frightened Gideon exclaimed.

“The Oleander Syndicate is more of a mausoleum than an institution. Call everyone and tell everyone to evacuate immediately,” Natalia ordered.

Gideon started to shake and feared the worst, “why are you giving up?”

Natalia chuckled at the fact looking down on her swollen stomach, “why the hell not? Why not give up while we’re so far ahead? Instead, we were never ahead of anything, were we? Destroying evil and corruption while you are just as evil and corrupted as they are, doesn’t really make a lot of sense on paper. You can try to say it out loud and convince yourself, but you’ll ultimately fail in the end.

“Humanity deserved better than this. There many times that humanity was far worse than any other nephalem that we have faced. Yet, we supposed to ignore a treat them as weak and ignorant without even allowing them to better understand. We deserved better than this, to be recognized and not to be exterminated. There is no such thing as good and evil anymore. Heroes and villains. Those words are now obsoleted in this day of age. I do believe people need to be punished for what they have done. They are those who need to be rewarded for whatever good deed who go about day after day unrewarded.”

This rant puzzled Gideon as her friend was never too deep in thought like this before.

Still, Gideon tried to comfort Natalia, “you can’t believe in this. Don’t tell me you believe in what she has been saying for the past six months.”

“I am living proof of what she had been trying to preach from the very beginning,” Natalia concluded. “You know, you’re always smarter than me. There are times where I wanted to be just as smart as you. I thought with my own two fists, I can get out of any situation. I knew it never will work, but I tried it anyway. I’m just glad I had someone in my life to show me there was a different path. Even though I ignored it,” Natalia admitted rubbing her stomach.

The saddened Gideon as she shook her head in disbelief, “Natalia, don’t do this.”

“I’m only doing what should have been done years ago,” Natalia galvanized. “Go tell everyone to evacuate the palace at once. That is in order from your new grandmaster.”

Natalia looked away as Gideon stood there petrified. She didn’t know what to do. Natalia wasn’t the new grandmaster of the Oleander Syndicate, and tonight she would have been their last.